The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

Art Reproduction Co.

THE NEW ERA.

From Sulphur (Jupel).

On the Wednesday I was unable to go out, except only to cross the Theatre Square. And there I found a group of soldiers who had just taken part in an execution in the middle of the place. Some inmate of a hotel opposite the Métropole, possessed by a crazy spirit of slaughter or revolt, had fired a pistol at large from his window. The battery was placed in front of the hotel and the surrender of the man demanded. The proprietor gave him up without dangerous hesitation, and in a minute or two he was shot in front of the window from which he had fired. One would have liked to discover the kind of mania that seized him, but his death made that impossible.

The evening of the same day—or perhaps it was the evening before—another execution was carried out, more terrible in its circumstances, but better deserved, if any execution is deserved. A band of revolutionists—the English papers, getting news chiefly through St. Petersburg, said three hundred of them, but that is absurd—made their way by some means unobserved to the house of the chief of the secret police, close to the gendarmes barracks. Knocking at the door, they demanded to see Voiloshnikoff, the chief himself. He came out to them, his wife and children looking on with terror in the background, and in spite of the entreaties and tears of woman and child, they placed him in front of the door and shot him on the spot. No doubt he had done many atrocious things, and had cared little enough for the entreaties of women and children himself. But most people regarded this act of wild justice as inhuman, and regretted, not the paid criminal’s removal from the world, but the manner of it.

An hour or two before daylight next day (Thursday, the 28th), I had to go to a house on the further side of the Sadovaya to help bring provisions and toys for an English family which had taken refuge in the hotel after spending some dull days in cellars. As we walked through the streets standing in silence audible under the transparent darkness of the morning, we saw the pickets squatting round orange fires of planks which they had kindled in the middle of the road. But beyond searching us once or twice, they did not interfere with our purpose, and the only real danger came from the police, who had that morning received brand new rifles—light-coloured things like toys, with fixed bayonets—which they hugged in both arms, or held horizontally over their shoulders, to the peril of all bystanders, while in their hearts they longed to put them to their natural use, with all the tremulous bravery of girls out rabbit-shooting.

But before we reached the Sadovaya, we had passed all the pickets, and hardly any one was visible on the streets. Some of the barricades were on fire or gently smouldering; the rest stood deserted. The pavements were strewn with glass and bricks. Houses on both sides were ruined with shell. Some were burning, and in two or three the beds and furniture were being thrown out of the shattered windows. We noticed how wild the shell-fire had been, for houses quite a hundred yards from the main streets were struck, evidently at random. But all was unguarded now. When daylight found us leaving the English flat with our load, there was still no one visible, and I think a battalion might have marched through the district in fours without receiving a shot. Even the red flags had been removed from the barricades, to be kept, one hopes, for another occasion, and almost the only sign of life was that here and there I observed a dvornik (the door-keeper who watches the Russian home) cutting down the network of telegraph wire with a hatchet and rolling it up. He reminded me of some trusty servant methodically putting away the stage properties on the morning after private theatricals.

For the rest of that day the guns and soldiers were engaged in clearing the quarter of barricades, entanglements, and all. It was an easy task now, though the firing was more violent than ever, as the progress was more rapid. For the revolutionists had received orders from their committee that morning to abandon the street fighting and scatter to their homes or out into the country, continuing the propaganda and holding themselves ready for the next opportunity. Some escaped, at least for the time. Some refused to obey, but continued the fighting, as we soon discovered. Many were seized, and for days afterwards small parties of soldiers or police in every street drove some unhappy creature in front of them with his hands tied. What became of these prisoners, we only suspected at the time; we found out later. On this part of the Moscow rising, there is no more to chronicle but massacre. And so the barricades and their defenders faded into history, and law and order were restored.

That Thursday at noon, a decree went forth from Admiral Dubasoff commanding all shutters to be taken down, all doors opened, and business to be resumed on pain of martial law. Then the heart of the shopkeeper was glad. For eight days all shops had been shut; banks were closed, merchants did no business, and, as the German song says, no mill wheel turned around. It is always hard not to smile at the money-making classes whenever the great passions of human existence appear upon the surface and shake their routine. Yet we need not make light of their sufferings. They had suffered at the heart. For months past they had been deprived of the profit which is their single aim. For more than a week they had taken absolutely nothing, and the whole credit of the country was so shaken that they could not hope for advance of capital. Their occupation was gone, and no return of it seemed likely. Besides the ordinary bankers, merchants, and shopkeepers, we must include among them the hotel and restaurant keepers, the theatrical managers, actresses, music-hall people, prostitutes, and all such as live by pleasing or amusing the wealthy. We ought further to include artists, musicians, authors, lawyers, journalists, and professors, but as a rule their profits are so small that their losses would hardly count in the universal ruin. To take a single instance of the immense injury to trade, the mere damage to house property from the shells and bullets was estimated at £10,000,000, and all of it was dead loss, except to the builders and glaziers. The Sytin printing works, wantonly destroyed by the Government for printing the Liberal newspapers, was valued at £300,000. There was no reason to be surprised, therefore, at the comfortable joy which welcomed the Government’s ruthless decree. Perhaps it might seem a little indecent, while the dead who had fought for freedom were still lying in frozen layers at the police stations, or were being thrown neck-and-crop upon sledges for their unknown burial. But we must make a large allowance for business habits, which tiresome revolutions interrupt. Think of the feelings of our own City men if suddenly the morning train which for years they had caught successfully, stopped running and shells rained from Holborn Viaduct to Aldgate Pump! With what common sense they would welcome the restoration of any tyranny, with what scorn decry the fallen sentimentalists who had cared for freedom! So in Moscow, returning law and order met a greasy smile, and many extolled the Governor-General and officers for the vigour of their action. Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his livelihood.