The dawn in Russia

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

So “intercourse was resumed,” and the shop-keeping heart rejoiced. But on Friday morning an uneasy feeling stole abroad that all was not quite satisfactory yet. About two miles west of the Kremlin there is an isolated manufacturing district called Presna or Presnensky. A little stream with two or three ponds, running from the back of the Zoological gardens into the Moscow river, separates it from the main town, and to the north of it lies that ill-fated Khodinsky Polé, the plain where the crowds were crushed to death at the Tsar’s coronation. The district is about a mile square, and various factories stand there, for cotton, furniture, varnish, boiler-making, and sugar. Some of them are under English management, and in English commerce the place is known as Three Hill Gates, because the country beyond gently rises into slopes that would pass for hills in Russia.

“INTERCOURSE IS RESUMED.”

From Streli (Arrows).

It gradually became known that a large number of work-people—ten thousand of them it was said—were holding this district, and had set up there a little revolution of their own, under an organized system of sentries, pickets, and fighting force. A few students and educated girls had come over to them from the revolutionists of the barricades disguised as mill hands; indeed, a girl of eighteen was described as their most powerful leader, and in all probability those streets which I had seen barricaded on the extreme left of the Government advance on the Wednesday, were blocked to give time for the Presnensky preparations. But in the main it was a work-people’s affair, and on the Friday they held undisturbed possession of the district, their sentries marching up and down with revolvers and red flags, while they naïvely boasted themselves confident of terminating the exploitation of labour and establishing Social Democracy at a stroke.

But law and order were already at their work of disillusionment. That very day the fashionable regiment of the Semenoffsky Guards, under command of Colonel Min, already notorious as a slaughterer of the people, arrived from St. Petersburg, though the revolutionists made a gallant attempt to stop the railway by tearing up the lines. In the evening a cordon of troops was drawn round the district, and batteries were placed on five positions, at ranges of 1000 to 2000 yards. One stood on a high bank near a bridge over the little stream I mentioned; another was a point nearer the Zoo, where the gunners had to fight for the position, and burnt down several rows of small houses; a third was in the cemetery, where they met with no opposition; a fourth far away on the lowest slope of the Three Hills; and the fifth must have been stationed somewhere down by the Moscow river, but I did not discover it.

The district was thus surrounded by batteries, and at dawn on Saturday the guns opened upon the mills and neighbouring houses. There were no guns to reply, and the gunners consequently made “excellent practice,” plumping their shells down where they liked, crashing through the windows, or raising red clouds of brickdust from the battered walls. It was about as leisurely and safe a piece of slaughter as ever was seen. The large furniture factory was soon alight, and burnt quickly to the ground. So did the fine house of its owner and manager, a German-Russian named Schmidt, who was justly suspected of holding Liberal opinions, and was afterwards shot for the crime. The Marmentoff varnish works on the top of the hill also took fire, and its tanks continued to burn for many days and nights, rolling thick clouds of smoke into the air all day, and casting a brilliant crimson light upon the evening sky. The great Prokhoroffsky cotton mill was battered, and many shells burst in its rooms, but it was saved from fire by its automatic “sprinklers,” which, however, ruined the machinery by rust. Many shells burst against the owner’s house on the hill, for he too had committed the sin of Liberalism. During the bombardment, his wife gave birth to a child, an unpropitious time for herself and the nurses. But the guns were chiefly directed against the large workmen’s barracks attached to the mills, and these were soon shattered, though they did not burn. The small rows of cottages, where the married men lived with their families, being made of wood, blazed up at once, and it was in them that most of the people were killed. At the time it was reported that the gunners were ordered to fire on the lower stories, so that the people upstairs might not escape. I doubt whether gunners could make that distinction at the range, but, in any case, many people were cut to pieces by the segment shells and stifled by the flames. In one upper story alone, nine old men and women, who had been collected there for safety, were burnt to death.

The shelling was particularly heavy from eight to nine in the morning, and again from one to two. As the wooden houses caught fire, and the work-people were driven out in helpless crowds from their barracks by the crash of shells, the soldiers came crowding in with rifle and sword, and met with little organized resistance. The troops employed were Cossacks, a Warsaw regiment, and the fashionable Semenoffsky Guards, who had arrived, as I noticed, only the day before, and to the end of the insurrection displayed a surpassing blood-thirstiness and brutality. No Moscow men were present, though I was told by an officer that the Rostoff regiment, which had been regarded as dubious for some weeks past, entreated to be set in the front throughout the fighting, and at every chance engaged in the slaughter with a ferocity well calculated to recover the Government’s esteem. The whole of that Saturday appears to have been one long massacre of men, women, and children, who were blown up, shot, and hewn in pieces with delightful ease, and almost uninterrupted security. But that day I was myself unable to penetrate the thick line of sentries which surrounded the district and were engaged in shooting down escaping refugees and preventing witnesses of the massacre from entering.

In the afternoon an event happened which illustrates the spirit in which the Government’s agents carried out their work. Living in the Presnensky district, which has some streets of wealthy villas at the upper end, was a doctor named Vorobieff, well known in Russia as a man of science and a writer on medical discoveries. At the beginning of the bombardment he hung an ambulance flag from his window, to give notice to the wounded where they might obtain assistance. His landlord came and asked him to take it down, because the red cross would naturally draw the fire of Government troops. He took it down, but continued attending to any wounded who came. Presently a party of police, under an officer named Ermoleff, who had formerly been an officer in the Guards cavalry, came to the house and accused him of assisting revolutionists. He replied that he was not a revolutionist himself, but it was his duty as a surgeon to give every possible help to the wounded, no matter what their opinions might be. “Have you a revolver?” Ermoleff suddenly asked him. Yes, he said, he had a revolver, but he held the Government licence for it. “Go and fetch your licence,” cried Ermoleff. And as the doctor turned to go upstairs, he fired his pistol into the back of his head and blew his brains out. “Oh, what have you done?” cried his wife, who had been standing at the doctor’s side. “Hold your tongue, and wipe up that mess,” answered the ex-officer of the Guards cavalry, and withdrew his party.[2]

All that night Moscow saw the flames raging to the sky. Many of the revolutionists, and many of the ordinary work-people too, tried to escape from the district, especially across the frozen river, and it was along the river banks that most of them were shot down. Early next morning, on the excuse of visiting the English overseers who were shut up in the district, I succeeded in penetrating the cordon of troops, though I was searched nine or ten times from head to foot, and the sledge was searched as well. Two Russian journalists from St. Petersburg, who tried to follow me, were less fortunate, for by the command of the officers, they were so shamefully beaten and stamped upon that they hardly escaped alive, and one of them, still exhausted with terror and pain, came to my room some hours later to have his wounds dressed. All round the edge of the district, the wretched work-people were now trying to escape to their villages upon any kind of sledge that would move. Into these sledges they had heaped all their household possessions—feather beds, furniture, cooking things, and heavy old trunks with clothes. Sometimes the toys already bought for Christmas were laid carefully on the top—the doll or scarlet parrot—and one woman carried a baby on one arm and a wooden horse under the other. But when it came to the line of pickets, every sledge was emptied, all the boxes unpacked, and their contents strewn upon the snow. The people also were searched with customary brutality—the old people beaten, the young insulted. The soldiers thrust their hands into the girls’ breasts and under their skirts. One girl was passed on from soldier to soldier and searched six times within about twenty yards. “God spit at them!” muttered the women as they crawled away.