Here are various remarks I heard. One man, a commissionaire, asked whether I thought it was right to fire on the revolutionaries. I hesitated, gathering my thoughts to explain that I thought that they thoroughly deserved it since they began it, but that the Government nevertheless had brought it about by their dilatoriness. (This is exactly what I thought.) Misunderstanding my hesitation, he said: “Surely you, a foreigner, need not mind saying what you think, and you know it is wrong.” (This was curious, because these people—commissionaires, porters, etc.—were often reactionary.) A cabman said to me: “Who do you think will get the best of it?” I said: “I don’t know; what do you think?” “Nothing will come of it,” he said. “There will still be rich people like you and poor people like me; and whether the Government is in the hands of the chinovniks or the students is all one and the same.” Another man, a porter, an ex-soldier, said it was awful. You couldn’t go anywhere or drive anywhere without risking being killed. Soldiers came back from the war and were killed in the streets. A bullet came, and then the man was done for. Another man, a kind of railway employee, said that the Russians had no stamina; that the Poles would never give in, but the Russians would directly. Mamonov, who was fond of paradox, said to me that he hoped all the fanatics would be shot, and that then the Government would be upset. A policeman was guarding the street which led to the hotel. I asked if I could pass. “How could I not let a Barine with whom I am acquainted pass?” he said. Then a baker’s boy came up with a tray of rolls on his head, also asking to pass—to go to the hotel. After some discussion the policeman let him go, but suddenly said: “Or are you a rascal?” Then I asked him what he thought of it all. He said: “We fire as little as possible. They are fools.” The wealthier and educated classes were either intensely sympathetic or violently indignant with the revolutionaries; the lower classes were sceptically resigned or indifferent—“Things are bad; nothing will come of it for us.”
At midnight the windows of our house had been shaken by the firing of guns somewhere near; but on Christmas morning (not the Russian Christmas) one could get about. I drove down one of the principal streets, the Kuznetski Most, into another large street, the Neglinii Proiesd (as if it were down Bond Street into Piccadilly), when suddenly in a flash all the cabs began to drive fast up the street. My cabman went on. He was inquisitive. We saw nothing. He shouted to another cabman, asking him what was the matter. No answer. We went a little farther down, when along the Neglinii Proiesd we saw a patrol and guns advancing. “Go back,” shouted one of the soldiers, waving his rifle—and away we went. Later, I believe there was firing there. Farther along we met more patrols and ambulances. The shops were not only shut but boarded up.
Next day I walked to the Nikolayev Station in the afternoon. It was from there that the trains went to St. Petersburg. The trains were running then, but how the passengers started I didn’t know, for it was impossible to get near the station. Cabs were galloping away from it, and the square in front of it had been cleared by Cossacks. I think it was attacked that afternoon. I walked into the Riask Station, which was next door. It was a scene of desolation; empty trains, stacked-up luggage, third-class passengers encamped in the waiting-room. There was a perpetual noise of firing. The town was under martial law. Nobody was allowed to be out of doors after nine o’clock under penalty of three months’ imprisonment or a 3000 roubles fine. Householders were made responsible for people firing out of their windows.
On the morning of 27th December there was considerable movement and traffic in the streets; the small shops and the tobacconists were open. Firing was still going on. They said a factory was being attacked. The troops who were supposed to be disaffected proved loyal. The one way to make them loyal was to throw bombs at them. The policemen were then armed with rifles and bayonets. A cabman said to me: “There is an illness abroad—we are sick; it will pass—but God remains.” I agreed with him.
CHAPTER XVII
RUSSIA: THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION
I spent all the winter of 1905-6 at Moscow with occasional visits to St. Petersburg and to the country. The strikes were over, but it was in a seething, restless state. Count Witte was Prime Minister. When he took office after making peace with the Japanese he was idolised as a hero, but he soon lost his popularity and his prestige. He satisfied neither the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries, and he was neither King Log nor King Stork. Elections were held in the spring for the convening of the Duma, the first Russian Parliament, but they were not looked upon with confidence and they were boycotted by the more extreme parties. Russia was swarming with political parties, but of all these divisions and subdivisions, each with its programme and its watchword, there were only two which had any importance: the Constitutional Democrats called Kadets,[11] which represented the Intelligentsia, and the Labour Party, which represented the artisans and out of which the Bolsheviks were ultimately to grow. The peasants stood aloof, and remained separate.
None of these parties produced either a statesman or remarkable man. There were any amount of clever men and fine orators in their ranks, but no man of action.
A man of action did ultimately appear, but in the ranks of the Government—P. A. Stolypin—and he governed Russia for several years, till he was murdered.