THE STRIKE AND THE MANIFESTO OF OCTOBER (30TH) 17TH
MOSCOW, _November 3rd_.
My return journey from Kharbin to Moscow was entirely uneventful until
we arrived at Samara. At Irkutsk I had got a place in the Trans-Siberian
express, which was crowded with all sorts and conditions of men:
officers, merchants, three Germans, three Americans who had returned
from working a mine in Siberia, a Polish student, and some ladies.
The first inkling that I received of the fact that a revolution was
going on in Russia came to me in the following manner. We had crossed
the Urals and had only been travelling thirteen days. We had arrived at
Samara, when the attendant, who looked after the first-class carriage,
came into my compartment and heaved a deep sigh. I asked him what was
the matter. “We shan’t get further than Toula,” he said. “Why?” I asked.
“Because of the unpleasantnesses” (_niepriyat nosti_). I asked, “What
unpleasantnesses?” “There is a mutiny,” he said, “on the line.” We
passed the big station of Sisran and arrived at the small town of
Kouznetsk. There we were informed that the train could not go any
further because of the strike. Nobody realised the extent of the strike,
and we expected to go on in a few hours. By the evening the passengers
began to show some signs of restlessness. Most of them telegraphed to
various authorities. A petition was telegraphed to the Minister of Ways
and Communications, saying that an express train full of passengers,
overtired by a long and fatiguing journey, was waiting at Kouznetsk, and
asking him to be so good as to arrange for them to proceed further.
There was no answer to this telegram. The next day a sense of
resignation seemed to come over the company. Although every evening,
towards dinner-time, one heard innumerable complaints such as “only in
Russia could such a _bezobrazie_ (literally an ugliness, _i.e._, a
disgraceful thing) happen,” and one passenger suggested that Prince
Kilkoff’s portrait, which was hung in the dining-car, should be turned
face to the wall. The Polish student, who had accompanied the Americans
and made music for them, playing by ear any tune they whistled to him,
and consequently a great many tunes from the Gaiety repertoire, played
the piano with exaggerated facility and endless fioriture and runs. I
asked an American mechanic who was with the mining managers whether he
liked the music. He said he would like it if the “damned hell” were
knocked out of it, which was exactly my feeling. But on the second day
after our arrival my American friends left by road for Samara, to
proceed thence by water to St. Petersburg. The passengers spent the time
in exploring the town, which was somnolent and melancholy in the
extreme. Half of it was a typical Russian village built on a hill, a
mass of brown huts; the other half, on the plain, was like a village in
any country. The idle guards and railway officials sat on the steps of
the station-room whistling. Two more trains arrived: a sanitary train
and an ordinary slow passenger train.
The passengers from these trains wandered about the platform, mixing
with the idlers from the town population. A crowd of peasants and
travellers, engineers, and Red Cross attendants, soldiers, and merchants
sauntered up and down in loose shirts and big boots, munching sunflower
seeds and spitting out the husks till the platform was thick with
refuse. A doctor who was in our train, and who was half a German, with
an official training and an orthodox official mind, talked to the
railway servants like a father. It was very wrong to strike, he said.
They should have put down their grievances on paper and had them
forwarded by the proper channels. The officials said that that would be
waste of ink and caligraphy. “I wonder they don’t kill him,” said my
travelling companion, and I agreed with him. Each passenger was given a
rouble a day to buy food. The third-class passengers were given checks,
in return for which they could receive meals. However, they deprecated
the idea, and said that they wanted the amount in beer. They received
it. Then they looted the refreshment room, broke the windows, and took
away the food. This put an end to the check system. The feeling among
the first-class passengers deepened. Something ought to be done, was the
general verdict; but nobody quite knew what. They felt that the train
ought to be placed in a position of safety. The situation on the evening
of the second day began to resemble that described in Maupassant’s
masterpiece, “Boule de Suif.” Nothing, however, could be done except to
explore the town of Kouznetsk. It was warm autumn weather. The roads
were soft and muddy, and there was a smell of rotting leaves in the air.
It was damp and grey, with gleams of pitiful weak sunshine. In the
middle of the town was a large market-place where a brisk trade in geese
was carried on. One man whom I watched failed to sell his geese during
the day, and while driving them home at night talked to them as if they
had been dogs, saying, “Cheer up, we shall soon be home.” A party of
convicts who belonged to the passenger train were working hard by the
station, and implored the passing tribute of a sigh and a cigarette.
Both were freely given. Convicts in Russia are always alluded to as
“unfortunates.” I met them near the station and they at once said, “Give
the unfortunates something.” In the evening, in one of the third-class
carriages, a party of Little Russians, assistants in the Red Cross, sang
songs in parts—melancholy, beautiful songs, with a strange trotting
rhythm and no end and no beginning; and opposite their carriage on the
platform a small crowd of moujiks gathered together and listened, saying
that the men sang with cunning (_lovko paiout_).
On the morning of the fourth day after we had arrived the impatience of
the passengers increased to fever pitch. A colonel who was with us, and
who knew how to use the telegraph, communicated with Piensa, the next
big station. For although the telegraph clerks were on strike they
remained in the office conversing with their friends on the wire all
over Russia. The strikers were most affable. They said they had not the
slightest objection to the express proceeding on its journey, that they
would neither boycott nor beat anybody who took us, and that if we could
find a friend to drive the engine, well and good. We did. We found a
friend, an amateur engine-driver, and an amateur engine, and on the 28th
of October we started for Piensa. We broke down on the way. The
engine-driver was supported by public contributions. The moment the
engine stopped work all the passengers volunteered advice as to how it
should be mended, one man producing a piece of string for the purpose.
However, another stray engine was found, and we arrived at last at
Piensa. There I saw mentioned in the telegrams the words “rights of
speech and assembly,” and I knew that the strike was a revolution. At
Piensa the rage of the military—who had had their return journey from
the Far East delayed—against the strikers was indescribable. They were
lurching about the station in a state of inebriate frenzy, using
language about strikes and strikers which is not fit to repeat. One of
them asked me if I was a striker. We stopped at Piensa for the night. We
started again the next morning for Moscow, but the train came to a dead
stop at two o’clock the next morning at Riansk, and when I woke up the
first-class attendant came, with many deep sighs, and said that we
should go no further until the unpleasantnesses were at an end. But an
hour later news came that we could go to Riazan in another train, which
we did. Riazan station, when we arrived, was guarded by soldiers. A
train was ready to start for Moscow, but the scuffle for places in it
was terrific. I found a place in a third-class carriage. Opposite me was
an old man with a grey beard. He attracted my attention by the
extraordinary courtesy with which he prevented a woman, with many
bundles, from being turned out of the train by another moujik. I asked
him where he came from. “Eighty versts from the other side of Irkutsk,”
he said. “I was sent there, and I am returning home now after thirteen
years at the Government’s expense. I was a convict.” “What were you sent
there for?” I asked. “Murder!” he answered very gently. The other
passengers asked him to tell his story. “It’s a long story,” he said.
“Tell!” shouted the other passengers. His story briefly was this: He had
got drunk, set fire to a barn, and when the owner interfered he had
killed him. He had served two years’ hard labour and eleven years’
banishment. He was a gentle, humble creature, with a very mild
expression, like an apostle in disguise. He had no money, and lived on
what other passengers gave him. I gave him a cigarette. He smoked a
quarter of it and said he would keep the rest for the journey, as he had
still got five hundred versts to travel. We arrived at Moscow at eleven
o’clock in the evening and found the town in darkness, save for the
glimmer of oil lamps. The next morning we woke up to find that Russia
had been given a Magna Charta; that the railway and other officials had
obtained the same concessions from the Government as the Barons had won
from King John seven hundred years ago.
MOSCOW, _October 30th_ (Old Style, _October 17th_).
The first thing which brought home to me that Russia had been granted
the promise of a Constitution was this. I went to the big Russian baths.
Somebody came in and asked for some soap, upon which the barber’s
assistant, aged about ten, said with the air of a Hampden, “Give the
‘citizen’ some soap” (_Daite grajdaninon mwilo_). Coming out of the
baths I found the streets decorated with flags, and everybody in a state
of frantic and effervescing enthusiasm. I went to one of the big
restaurants. There old men were embracing each other and drinking the
first glass of vodka to free Russia. After luncheon I went out into the
Theatre square. There is a fountain in it, which forms an excellent
public platform. An orator mounted it and addressed the crowd. He began
to read the Emperor’s Manifesto. Then he said: “We are all too much used
to the rascality of the Autocracy to believe this; away with the
Autocracy!” The crowd, infuriated—they were evidently expecting an
enthusiastic eulogy—cried: “Away with you!” But instead of attacking the
speaker who had aroused their indignation they ran away from him! It was
a curious sight. The spectators on the pavement were seized with panic
and ran too. The orator, seeing his speech had missed fire, changed its
tone and said: “You have misunderstood me.” But what he had said was
perfectly clear. This speaker was an ordinary Hyde Park orator, and not
to be confused with the University professors who afterwards spoke from
the same platform. Later in the afternoon a procession of students
arrived opposite my hotel with red flags, and collected outside the
Governor-General’s house. He appeared on the balcony and made a speech,
in which he said that now there were no police he hoped that they would
be able to keep order themselves. He asked them also to replace the red
flag which was hanging on the lamp-post opposite the palace by the
national flag. One little student climbed like a monkey up the lamp-post
and hung a national flag there, but did not remove the red flag. Then
the Governor asked them to sing the National Anthem, which they did; and
as they went away they sang the Marseillaise.
“On peut très bien jouer ces deux airs à la fois
Et cela fait un air qui fait sauter les rois.”
At one moment a Cossack arrived, but an official came out of the house
and told him he was not needed, upon which he went away amidst the
jeers, cheers, hoots, and whistling of the crowd. The day passed off
quietly on the whole, the only untoward incidents being the death of a
woman and the wounding of a student and a workman while trying to rescue
a student from the prisoners’ van. A veterinary surgeon called Bauman
was also shot on this day.
To-day for the first time I heard the phrase “Black Gang” used. I was
standing on the doorstep of the Hôtel de France, when a woman rushed
frantically up and said the “Black Gang” were coming. A student,
belonging to a very good family, who was standing there, also explained
that the “Black Gang” consisted of roughs who supported the autocratic
cause. His hand, which was bandaged, had been severely hurt while he was
in the act of taking off his hat that day, by a Cossack who had beat it
with a whip, thinking he was about to make a disturbance. He came up to
my room and from the hotel window we had a good view of the crowd which
proceeded to—
“attaquer la Marseillaise en _la_
Sur les cuivres, pendant que la flûte soupire
En _mi bèmol_: Veillons au salut de l’Empire.”
MOSCOW, _November 7th_.
I went to see Maxim Gorki’s new play at the Artistic Theatre of Moscow,
“The Children of the Sun.” It was the second night that it had been
performed. M. Stanislavoshi, one of the chief actors of the troupe and
the stage manager, gave me his place. The theatre was crammed. There is
a scene in the play, where a doctor, living in a Russian village, and
devoting his life to the welfare of the peasants, is suspected of having
caused an outbreak of cholera. The infuriated peasants pursue the doctor
and bash some one on the head. On the first night this scene had reduced
a part of the audience to hysterics. It was too “actual.” People said we
see enough of our friends killed in the streets without going to the
play for such a sight. On the second night it was said that the
offensive scene had been suppressed. I did not quite understand what had
been eliminated. As I saw the scene it was played as follows. A roar is
heard as of an angry crowd. Then the doctor runs into a house and hides.
The master of the house protests; a peasant flies at his throat and half
strangles him until he is beaten on the head by another peasant who
belongs to the house. The play is full of interesting moments, and was
played with the finished perfection which makes this theatre famous and
unique. But M. Gorki has not M. Tchekoff’s talent of representing on the
stage the uneventful passage of time, the succession of the seemingly
insignificant incidents of people’s everyday lives, chosen with such
skill, depicted with such an instinct for mood and atmosphere that the
result is enthrallingly interesting. M. Gorki’s plays have the faults
and qualities of his stories. They are unequal, but contain moments of
poignant interest and vividness. I do not think, however, that his gifts
are pre-eminently suited for the stage.