Meanwhile everybody knew what was coming, and people began to get very nervous. The most ordinary thing was enough to start a panic. At the sound of machine-guns practising I have seen a crowd gather and then, taken by a sudden impulse, run like a flock of sheep, they knew not where. During these long months all classes of society displayed a feverish gaiety. Never were the streets so full, the theatres and cinematographs so crowded, or the shops so busy. Money seemed to have no value except to purchase one more pleasure, before the time when there would be no pleasures at all. I shall not easily forget the evening when there came a lying telegram that Venice had fallen. The people in the streets acclaimed the news with shouts of wild laughter, and they could not have been merrier if their own army had taken Berlin. It was not so much want of sympathy for Italy, as extreme nervousness finding some excuse for expression. The sword of Damocles hung above our heads, and nobody knew when or upon whom it would fall. Ordinary good-byes in those days had something of the solemnity of an eternal farewell. The afternoon before the fighting began, I had been giving a lesson in the town and was taking leave of the family. They asked the usual question, “When will you come again?” A silence fell upon us. Who knew if we should ever meet again?
The storm broke at last. The Bolsheviks occupied the chief Government institutions and issued an ultimatum to the Younkers and Cossacks to deliver up their arms. As this was equivalent to saying, “Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed,” the invitation was refused and the fighting began. On one side were a thousand Younkers and Cossacks armed with rifles and machine-guns; on the other, twenty thousand Bolshevik soldiers and Red Guards, supported by four batteries of Field Artillery, some heavy howitzers, and a number of siege guns. Between these unequal forces the battle raged for ten days. The Younkers had possession of a few brick and stone buildings near the river Angara. The Cossacks were in their wooden barracks, and they afterwards took a children’s hospital commanding their position. The Bolsheviks were everywhere else. The Younkers showed great bravery in attack. At the third attempt they stormed the bridge over the Angara and blew it up, thus preventing reinforcements from reaching the Bolsheviks by this route. They also took the White House, the largest and strongest building in Irkutsk. Here they captured some of the leading members of the Soviet, whom, however, they treated with perfect courtesy. The cowardice of the Bolshevik soldiers was appalling. At the White House some ran and hid themselves in cellars and some in the lofts, while others reported themselves sick. It was a building which ten men could have held against a thousand, and which need never have been taken at all. The Younkers asked one lot of prisoners why they were fighting so badly. “Well,” answered the soldiers, “we are only fighting because we are ordered to.” “Aren’t you Bolsheviks, then?” “No, nothing of the sort.” “Would you fight for the Czar?” “Yes, certainly, if we were ordered to.” The Bolshevik theory of equality between officers and men worked out as it always will do under stress of actual danger. On one occasion two scouts were wanted to carry a message across a valley infested with Cossacks. A whole company refused, one after the other. At last the only two educated men in the ranks volunteered. They had held back, not out of cowardice, but merely because they had been doing all the dangerous work for the company since the fighting began. It was interesting to watch the Bolshevik general with his men. They used to come slouching in from patrol and the general would try to get a report from them. He had to put on a jovial, hail-fellow-well-met air and clap them heartily on the back, saying, “Now, comrade, what have you been doing with yourself?” The comrade might, or might not, have seen something of the enemy. Then the general, with extreme politeness, as of a shopwalker conducting a lady to the silk-counter, would suggest, “Now, comrade, do you think you could just go and have a look along those houses over there?” “Oh no,” said the soldiers, “we are hungry, comrade. We must go and have our dinner.” And the poor general had to wait about in the cold, until he could coax or wheedle some soldier into doing that bit of patrol for him.
We were privileged to be in the thick of the fighting. Our house was the nearest of the regimental buildings to the Cossacks and the most exposed to danger. On the first night a desperate struggle took place half a mile to the north of us, where the Cossacks tried to rush a Bolshevik battery. In our courtyard the air was alive with the singing of bullets, but this did not prevent us from paying or receiving visits. And then, amid the thunder of artillery, the rattle of machine-guns, and all the tumult of a battle, a report was brought to us that a mad dog in the neighbourhood had broken loose and bitten a woman, and therefore it was not advisable for us to venture out of doors! This anti-climax was too much for us, and we gave way to helpless laughter. Next morning we were in a more serious mood. During breakfast we noticed a Bolshevik soldier crouching down under our window. We asked him what he was doing. He explained that in the night the Cossacks had driven them back and that our house was now the foremost point in the Bolshevik line. We went out to have a look, and could see the Cossacks converging in upon us, while just behind our garden the Bolsheviks were advancing in open order. With all possible speed we packed a few things together and made our way through the Bolshevik lines to the barracks, bullets whistling past our ears, or burying themselves with a dull thud in the snow as we passed. At the barracks we found the remaining officers of the regiment, and their families, assembled. Those officers, who did not choose to fight for the Bolsheviks, could declare themselves neutral and were not molested. If they asked any questions, the soldiers simply ignored them. Some officers were really active on the side of the Bolsheviks; but the soldiers would not listen to their advice, with the result that hundreds of lives were lost.
IRKUTSK BOMBARDED
In spite of the stupidity and cowardice of the Bolsheviks, the bravery of the Younkers was of little avail, as the numbers against them were too overwhelming. The town was ringed in with a girdle of fire; night and day the batteries poured down upon it an unending rain of shell. I climbed on the top story of the barracks in order to follow the results of the shooting, and saw what I would give much to forget. An especial target of the Bolsheviks was the children’s hospital occupied by the Cossacks. We could see the shells strike it, smashing in the windows and tearing great holes in the fabric, while, from the other end of the building, the children were being carried away as quickly as possible. Not all the children were saved. Great columns of smoke and fire rose unceasingly from all parts of the town, and it seemed as if nothing could survive that bombardment. After their day’s work the cannoneers, a horrible glee shining through the grime on their faces, used to go home snapping their fingers and dancing with triumph, carried beyond themselves with the lust of blood and sheer joy of destruction. In that weird setting, the red light of burning houses tingeing all the atmosphere, their dark, leaping figures seemed like devils straight from hell.
The Younkers were caught in a trap and their fate appeared certain. However, the Consuls interfered, and secured an end of fighting on honourable terms. The Younkers were to lay down their arms and to receive a safe-conduct to their homes. The Bolsheviks pledged themselves to retain only certain of their younger classes under arms, the rest were to be demobilised, and, like the Younkers, sent home. The fighting had cost the lives of about two thousand men. The numbers of the wounded will never be known, because many of the officers and others of the bourgeoisie, concealed their wounds out of fear of revenge. Even schoolboys had stolen away to take part in the fighting. Afterwards they crept back to their families again, and only their immediate friends knew anything about it.
BOLSHEVIK TRIUMPH
After so long a bombardment, I expected to find Irkutsk laid waste. But, on the whole, surprisingly little damage was done. Certain buildings held by the Younkers had been battered about, one or two schools and a printing establishment had been burnt outright. The soldiers had plundered and then set fire to Vtorova’s—the Harrod’s of Irkutsk. There was also some miscellaneous bombardment of houses in which lived capitalists obnoxious to the Bolsheviks. This was mean and dastardly, but fortunately the shooting was very bad, and the houses suffered little. Considering that the town was quite at the mercy of a victorious and revolutionary soldateska, it came off marvellously well. The soldiers looted whatever houses they were quartered in, but there was little forcible entry. One Jewish tradesman told me how a party of soldiers broke into his shop and demanded food. He was in great fear of the Bolsheviks, and thought they were going to rob him of all he possessed. But they only took thirty pounds of sausage, and left him without troubling about anything else. He was amused, because the sausages happened to be “kosher,” and contained no pork at all. I am the more inclined to insist on the comparative moderation of the soldiers, because the most alarming reports of the Irkutsk fighting have appeared in American and English magazines. Here is a specimen. In an article which appeared in Harper’s and the Fortnightly for November, 1918, an American journalist says that a Russian gave him the following account of the fight: “We had a nice little fuss here in January at the time the Red Guards captured the city. Some of the finest buildings were shelled. Three thousand citizens lost their lives after a terrible siege in the public museum. Several Englishmen and Americans were killed.” Scarcely one of these statements is true; in fact, the passage is pure invention on the face of it. The fighting took place, not in January, but in December. Only two thousand fell altogether, of these few were non-combatants, and not a single one was American or English.
UNCHAINED RUSSIA
One non-combatant certainly was foully murdered. This was the Socialist-Revolutionary Patlych. He was one of the great champions of Socialism, and he had repeatedly suffered under the Czar for his opinions. All who knew him respected him for the firmness with which he had borne hardship, and for the unspoiled kindliness of his nature. Conceiving a great horror of bloodshed, he took no part in the fighting, but worked for the Red Cross among the wounded. After a time it occurred to him that he might be able to put a stop to the slaughter by ascertaining the terms on which the parties were prepared to negotiate. Accompanied by a friend, he first went to the Younkers, who received him politely, and communicated to him their terms. Afterwards he went to the Bolsheviks, who treated him with great harshness and suspicion. At last they took him to their leaders—three common soldiers who refused to have anything to do with him. He was led back through the Bolshevik lines, and then suddenly shot from behind. His friend managed to escape, although the Bolsheviks did their best to kill him too, in order to get rid of an inconvenient witness. Patlych received a public funeral, the most imposing that I have seen in Russia, and Russia is a land of imposing funerals. All classes of society joined in showing their respect to the great Socialist, and even the Bolsheviks had the insolence to follow in the procession. But they did nothing to punish his murderers. I have mentioned the crime because it is so characteristic of the Bolshevik system. They have been extolled by certain journalists as having discovered a new principle of universal benevolence and the world-wide brotherhood of the working-man. An American journalist, C. E. Russell, has written a book, “Unchained Russia,” in which he sweetly discourses on the loving-kindness of the Bolsheviks. And yet we find them murdering a fellow-socialist only because his opinions were a shade less red than their own. Their doctrine is not one of love, but of hate, and much as they hate the capitalist, they hate other Socialists far more. Family quarrels are always the bitterest, and the lot of the Socialists has been harder under the Bolsheviks than it ever was under the Czar.