On the train I caught a glimpse of Pasha in the car behind the one I entered, so I knew that all was still well with her. After a few stations I joined her. She was not in the least agitated, though perfectly aware that she would have to flee the country for the time being. That the Fox might know where she was living made it perilous for her to return there, even for her necessary clothing. We also knew that she might not obtain her passport, which was in the hands of the concierge of her house. Without a passport she could not cross the frontier. Obviously there was but one thing to do. When we reached St. Petersburg she would go to the house of a friend, where she would remain in hiding until I had made the necessary arrangements for her escape, and this might mean several days. As soon as we were agreed on this plan I again left her, nor did I see her again until I returned with a passport which I knew would carry her to safety.
Thus ended our trip to Kronstadt—quite without climax; and I might almost have persuaded myself that our danger at the time was more fancied than real but for what happened shortly after. A few weeks later Pasha was captured on another count—not nearly so serious as conspirative work in the military organization, but serious enough to send her to prison on an indeterminate sentence. As for Paul, he turned up the next morning at my rooms behind the Kazan Cathedral while I was breakfasting. He was excited over Pasha’s close shave at Kronstadt, but continued to “work” there until the night Kronstadt rose, after the dissolution of the Duma—when Paul was one of the captured. But these incidents belong to other chapters.
CHAPTER XI
THE KRONSTADT UPRISING
Kronstadt on the eve of mutiny—Influences encouraging uprising—Make-up of the garrison—Wild rumors—A grand plan for general army and navy uprising—A successful beginning—Silence—A momentous telegram—A sudden signal—Mutiny—Trapped!—Slaughter—Illuminating lessons of the Kronstadt fiasco—The terrible cost in life and liberty.
HE Kronstadt fiasco revealed the value to the government of the agent provocateur.[12] During the entire year 1906 there was no shrewder nor cleverer piece of work executed. It must be said at the same time, however, that the revolutionists themselves were somewhat to blame. They generally are. Some one is stupid, hesitating in the crisis, or recklessly premature, and the psychological moment is lost. This is the deepest tragedy of the revolution. There is always consolation in the wake of the inevitable, but when disasters are precipitated by unnecessary or preventable causes, by carelessness or inefficiency, there is only black regret. At the Kronstadt rising scores of lives were sacrificed, the careful preparatory work of months was undone, and the current of the revolution itself for the moment arrested.
When I attended a revolutionary meeting and listened to the singing of the Marseillaise within the very walls of the fortress, there was large promise of a successful uprising when the time should come. This was the second week in June. Two days after my visit a committee of “sailors and soldiers of the St. Petersburg and Kronstadt garrisons” forwarded to the Group of Toil in the Duma a telegram of support and appeal, closing with the following sentence:
“Though you are in the Duma in the minority, still you must firmly remember that you express the will of the whole peasantry and laboring class; that is, all of the toilers of the land.
“But if on account of small numbers you are not able to carry through and realize all these reforms which are indispensable and which you are empowered by the people to obtain, then you must sound a call to the people and army, calling them to rise for the struggle.
“Your call will not be a voice in the desert, but, on the contrary, it will sound like thunder through the whole land and all as one will arise—all of the enslaved and oppressed—for the defense of their trampled rights, for land, and for freedom.”