Towards the close of the summer of 1918 life in Russia became almost
indescribably chaotic and miserable. Most of the shops were closed, and
only the few who could pay fantastic prices were able to buy food. There
was a little bread, a very little butter, some meat, and a few farm
products. Tea and coffee had completely disappeared, dried leaves taking
their places, but even these substitutes were frightfully dear and very
difficult to find. The trouble was that the Bolshevist authorities
forbade the peasants to bring any food into Petrograd, and soldiers were
kept on guard at the railway stations to confiscate any stocks that
tried to run the blockade. Frequently the market stalls were raided, and
what food was there was seized, and the merchants arrested. Food
smuggling went on on a fairly large scale, and if one had money he could
at least avoid starvation. Most people of our class lived by selling,
one by one, jewels, furs, pictures, art objects, an enterprising class
of Jewish dealers having sprung up as by magic to take advantage of the
opportunity. There was also a new kind of merchant class, people of the
intelligentsia, who knew the value of lace, furs, old china and
embroideries, who dealt with us with more courtesy and rather less
avarice than the Jews.
My mother and I fell into dire poverty. A home we had, and even a few
valuable jewels, but we clung to everything we had as shipwrecked
sailors to their life belts. We could not look far ahead, and we viewed
complete bankruptcy with fear and dread. I recall one bitter day in that
summer sitting down on a park bench weary and desolate as any pauper,
for I had not in my pocket money enough to go home in a tram. I do not
remember how I got home, but I remember that in that dark hour a former
banker whom we had long known called at our lodgings and told us that he
had a little money which he was about to smuggle to the Imperial Family
in Siberia. He wanted us to accept twenty thousand rubles of this for
our immediate needs, and gladly we did accept it. Very soon afterwards
the banker suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and his fate remains
to this day a profound mystery. I do not even know if he succeeded in
getting the money to Siberia. However, with the hope he inspired in me I
began to think of possible resources which I might turn to account. My
hospital in Tsarskoe Selo had been closed by the Bolsheviki, but its
expensive equipment of furniture, instruments, horses and carriages
still remained, and I employed a lawyer to go over the books and to
estimate what money I could realize from a sale of the whole property.
To my dismay I learned that the place with everything in it had been
seized by my director and head nurse who, under the Bolshevist policy of
confiscation, claimed all, ostensibly as state property but really as
their own, for they had become ardent Bolshevists. I made a personal
appeal to these old employees of mine to let me have at least one cow
for my mother who, being very frail, needed milk. They simply laughed
at me. My lawyer took steps to protect my rights, and the result of this
rash action was that the former director denounced me to the Chekha as a
counter-Revolutionist, and in the middle of an October night our home
was invaded by armed men who arrested me and my nursing sister, and
looted our rooms of everything that caught their fancy. Among other
things they took was a letter from the Emperor to my father explaining
the conditions which led him to assume supreme command of the army. This
letter, treasured by me, seemed to them somehow very incriminating.
Driven ahead of the soldiers, I went downstairs and climbed into a motor
truck which conveyed us to the headquarters of the Chekha in Gorohvaia
Street. After my name had been taken by a slovenly official I followed
the guard to one of two large rooms which formed the women’s ward of the
prison. There must have been close to two hundred women crowded in these
rooms. They slept sometimes three to a narrow bed, they lay on the
tables and even on the bare floor. The air of the place was, of course,
utterly foul, for many of the women were of the class that never washes.
Some were of gentle birth and breeding, accused of no particular
offense, but held, according to Bolshevist custom, as hostages and
possible witnesses for others who were under examination or who were
wanted and could not be found. In the early morning all the prisoners
got up from their narrow beds or the hard floor and made their way under
soldier escort to a toilet where they washed their faces and hands. As
I sat miserably on the edge of my bed a woman came up to me introducing
herself as Mlle. Shoulgine, the oldest inhabitant of the place, and
therefore a kind of a monitor. It was her business, she said, to see
that each prisoner received food and to handle any letters or petitions
the women might desire to send out. I told her that I desired to send a
petition to the head of the Chekha, or to whatever committee was in
charge of the prison, asking the nature of the charges against me, and
begging for an early trial. This petition was duly dispatched, and very
soon after a very large man, a Jew, came to see me and promised that my
affair would be promptly investigated. The soldiers on guard spoke to me
kindly and offered, if I had money, to carry letters back and forth from
my home. I gave them money and was comforted to hear from my mother that
Dr. Manouchine was once more working for my release. Although not a
Bolshevist, the doctor’s skill was greatly respected by the Communists,
who had appointed him head physician of the old Detention House. There
was a student doctor attached to our prison, and merely because he was a
friend of Dr. Manouchine and knew that I was also, he was courteous and
attentive to me. So potent is the influence of a truly great character.
The five days I spent in that filthy, crowded cell will never leave my
memory. Every moment was a nightmare. Twice a day they served us with
bowls of so-called soup, hot water with a little grease and a few wilted
vegetables. This with small pieces of sour black bread was all the food
vouchsafed us. Some of the prisoners got additional food from outside,
and usually these fortunate ones divided what they had with the others.
There was one beautiful woman of the half-world who daily received from
some source ample food, and like most of the women of her class she was
generous. I was told that she had been arrested because she had hidden
and helped her lover, a White officer, to escape, and that she felt
proud to be suffering for his sake. Perhaps it was from friends of his
that she received the food, yet women of her kind, God knows, very
seldom meet with gratitude even from those who owe it most.
Although I was accused of no crime and had no idea what accusations
could be brought against me, I lived as all the others lived, in a state
of constant anxiety and fear. All day and all night we heard the sound
of motors and of motor horns, we saw prisoners brought in, and from our
windows we could see great quantities of loot which the Bolshevist
soldiers had collected, silver, pictures, rich wearing apparel,
everything that appealed to them as valuable. In the courtyard we could
see the men fighting like wolves over their spoils. It was like living
in a pirates’ den rather than a prison, and yet we were often enough
reminded that we were prisoners. One day all the women in my room were
roughly ordered into a larger room literally heaped with archives of the
Imperial Government. With soldiers standing over us we set to work like
charwomen to sort the papers and tie them up in neat bundles. Very often
in the night when we were sleeping exhausted in our cell rooms the
electric lights would suddenly be turned on, guards would call out
names, and half a dozen frightened women would get up, gather their rags
about them, and go out. Some returned, some disappeared. No one knew
whose turn would come next or what her fate would be.
The name of my nursing sister was called before mine, and within a short
time she returned smiling to say that she was to be sent home at once
and that I should soon follow. Two hours later soldiers appeared at the
grating and one called out my surname: “Tanieva, to Viborg Prison.” I
had spirit enough to demand the papers consigning me to this dread
women’s prison, but the soldiers merely pushed me back with the butts of
their guns and bade me lose no time in obeying orders. I still had a
little money with which I paid for a cab instead of walking the long
distance to the prison, and I begged the soldiers to stop on the way and
let me see my mother. For this privilege I offered all the money
remaining in my purse, which the soldiers took, also bargaining for the
ring I wore on my hand. This I declined to give so they philosophically
said: “Oh, well, why not?” And stopped the cab at the door of my
mother’s lodgings. Of course my poor mother was overjoyed to see me,
even for a moment, and so was old Berchik, now almost at the end of his
life. Both assured me that everything was being done in my behalf and
that at the Viborg prison I would be in less danger of death than at the
Chekha headquarters. I might even hope to be admitted to the prison
hospital.
A little heartened in spite of myself I went on to Viborg, which lies in
a far quarter of the town on what is known as the Viborg side of the
Neva. A rather pretty Bolshevist girl was in charge of the receiving
office, and when I pleaded ill health and asked to be sent to the
hospital she promised to see what could be done. Viborg prison was one
of many which during the first frenzied days of the Revolution were
thrown open, the prisoners released, and the wardresses murdered. I do
not know how other women were induced to take their places, but I do
know that the women in whose charge I was placed were so kind and
considerate that had any attempt been made against them the prisoners
themselves would have fought in their defense. The wardress who locked
me in my cell stopped to say a comforting word, and because she saw that
I was shivering with cold as well as nervousness, she brought me bread
and a little hot soup.
After some hours I had another visitor, Princess Kakouatoff, accused of
being the ringleader of an anti-Bolshevist plot, who had been six months
in Viborg and was regarded as a “trusty.” Among other privileges she had
the right to telephone friends of new prisoners, and at my request she
telephoned messages to friends who could be of use to my mother if not
to me. The princess brought me a little portion of fish which I ate
hungrily, and I think she was also instrumental in finally getting me
into the prison hospital. This was after I had fainted on the floor of
my cell, and everyone in authority, including the prison doctor, knew
that I was in no condition to endure the noisy confusion of the huge
cell house. The hospital was a little cleaner than the rest of the
prison, but it was a pretty dreadful place just the same. For nurses we
had good-conduct prisoners, women of low type who stole food and
everything else they could lay hands on. They stripped me of my clothes,
substituting the prison chemise and blue dressing gown, and took away
all my hairpins. I was given a bed in a room with six other women, one
of them a particularly awful syphilis case, and two others, very dirty,
who spent most of their time going over each other’s heads for vermin. I
stayed in this ghastly place a very short time, a woman doctor and a
prisoner of my own class, Baroness Rosen, succeeding in getting me
transferred to a better ward. Nevertheless the whole prison hospital was
horrible. The trusties in charge of the wards were in the habit of
eating the meat out of the prisoners’ bowls, and fighting for food among
prisoners throughout the institution was a daily occurrence. I can
describe Viborg prison and most of its inmates in one word--beastly.
Many of the women were syphilitic, most were verminous, some were half
mad. One who slept near me had murdered her husband and burned his body.
Nearly all sang the most obscene songs and held unrepeatable
conversations. Mostly they were so depraved that the doctor in his
rounds showed that he was afraid of them. Yet there were among them a
few women who, like myself, had led sheltered and religious lives, and
who were only now learning that such abandoned specimens of womanhood
existed on the earth. There was no attempt at reforming the women. Once
there had been a church attached to the prison, but this the Bolsheviki
had closed, substituting a cinema to which on special occasions some of
the prisoners were admitted. Not many political prisoners had this
privilege because they were treated much more rigorously than common
criminals. It was the common criminals also, the thieves, murderers,
prostitutes, who were released in advance of “counter-Revolutionists,”
those accused, however vaguely, of political activities.
All the prisons of Petrograd by this time were so crowded with so-called
political prisoners that even the women’s prison was obliged to receive
an overflow of sick men prisoners. This wholesale imprisonment of
anti-Bolshevists naturally led to the shooting of thousands of citizens,
shooting being simpler than feeding and housing, and in addition an
economy of effort on the part of those charged with the mockery of
trials. Later the Chekha dispensed with this mockery, but in those days
prisoners were given the pretense of a hearing. I can testify to their
futility, because I went through more than half a dozen trials and in no
case was I accused of any crime, tried for any definite offense, or
given anything like a fair hearing. On September 10, 1918, word was
brought to the Viborg prison that on the next morning I was to be taken
away not to return. This seemed to be a death sentence, and all that
night I lay awake thinking of my poor mother and wondering what would
become of her alone in the midst of the Bolshevist inferno. Silently and
long I prayed for her and for the peaceful release of my own tried soul.
Very early in the morning I was summoned, my own clothes were given me,
and I was led to the receiving office of the prison. Here two soldiers
waited, and I was taken out between them and marched to the headquarters
of the Chekha. In a small, dirty room I underwent an examination by two
Jewish Communists, one of whom, Vladimirov--nearly all Jewish Communists
assume Russian names--being prominent in the councils of the Communist
central committee. For fully an hour these men did everything they could
to terrorize me. They accused me of being a spy, of plotting against the
Chekha, of being a dangerous counter-Revolutionist. They told me that I
was to be shot at once and that they intended to shoot all the
intellectuals and the “Bourju,” leaving the proletariat in full
possession of Russia. They continued this bluster until from sheer
weariness they stopped, then one of the men leaned his elbows on the
table and with a smile that was meant to be ingratiating said
confidentially: “I tell you what. You relate the _true_ story of
Rasputine and perhaps we won’t have you shot, at least not today.” I
assured the man that I knew no more about Rasputine than they did,
perhaps not as much, since I had no access to police records and they
had. Then they wanted to know all about the Czar and the life of the
Court. As well as I could I satisfied their curiosity, which was that of
ignorant children, and at the end of an exhausting interrogation they
actually sent me, not to a wall and a firing squad, but back to the
filthy cell in the Viborg prison. I dropped on my dirty bed, swallowed a
little food brought me by a sympathetic fellow prisoner, and resigned
myself for what next might happen to me. What happened was astonishing.
A soldier came to the door and called out: “Tanieva, with your things
to go home.”
Within a short time I stood trembling and weak on the pavement in front
of the prison. I could not have walked to my lodgings, in fact I felt
incapable of walking at all, but a strange woman observing me and my
piteous condition approached, put her arm around me, and helped me into
a drosky. I had a little money, perhaps fifty rubles, and I gave it all
to the ischvostik to drive me home. Here I found an amazing state of
affairs, the general immorality and demoralization into which Bolshevism
was driving the people having penetrated our own place. Everyone was
turning thief, and my nursing sister, who had been with me since 1905,
whom my mother had treated like a daughter, had become inoculated with
the virus of evil. The woman had not only appropriated almost all the
clothes I possessed, but had stolen all the trinkets and bits of jewelry
she could lay hands on. She had even taken the carpets from the floors
and stored them in her room. Not daring to attempt to regain any of this
property I asked the nurse to please take what she wanted and leave the
apartment. “Not at all,” she replied. “This place suits me very well and
as long as I choose I shall remain.” She had embraced Bolshevism, not I
am sure from principle, but as the safest policy, and in time she became
rich in jewels, finery, and miscellaneous loot. It was months before we
finally induced her to leave, and after her departure I have reason to
believe that she did everything she could to keep me in trouble with the
Bolshevists.
By this time the Communist régime was fully organized. The whole town
was divided into districts, each one under command of a group of
soldiers who had full license to search--and rob--houses, and to make
arrests. Every night the search went on. At seven o’clock all electric
lights were turned off, and when, two or three hours later, they
suddenly flashed up again, every soul in the district was seized with
fear, knowing that this was the signal for the invasion. Often women
were included in the searching parties, terrible women dressed in silks
and strung with jewelry, stolen of course from the hated “Bourju.” Seven
times our home was raided, once on the authority of an anonymous letter
charging that we were in possession of firearms. Once more I was dragged
off to an interminable examination, this time before the staff of the
Red Army in a house in Gogol Street. The close connection between the
Chekha and the Red Army was apparent because in the two hours during
which I sat in the ante-chamber waiting examination a Lettish official
of the Chekha passed freely in and out of the committee room,
occasionally throwing me a reassuring word. My case would be settled
favorably, he said, and it was, for the committee after bullying me for
a length of time, dropped the subject of concealed firearms, assumed the
snobbish and half cringing air with which I was becoming familiar to the
point of nausea, and began asking questions about the Imperial
household. They produced a large album of photographs and made me go
through it and identify each picture. Finally the head inquisitor told
me magnanimously that I could go home, cleared by the highest
authority, but that soldiers would go with me and make sure that there
were no revolvers or pistols in the house. The search was made anew, and
then the men left, obviously disappointed that practically nothing worth
stealing had come to light.
Two things of importance were happening in those days. The White Army
was approaching Petrograd, and in all the streets soldiers were drilling
in anticipation of a battle. Airplanes whirred overhead, and once in so
often a shell screamed over the housetops. We prayed for the coming of
the White Army, and at the same time dreaded the massacres we knew would
precede its entry into the town. The second thing that marked this date
was the Communist system of public feeding, free food being furnished by
cards distributed according to the status of the individual. The
Bolshevist authorities and the soldiers of course had the most food and
the best. Next came the proletariat, so-called, and last of all the
“Bourju” was provided for. These of the lowest strata in society got
hardly anything at all and would have starved, most of them, had it not
been for the food smuggling which constantly went on, the peasants from
out of town boldly bringing in bulky parcels, and taking back in return
for their food, not Bolshevist money, which they disdained, but
everything they could accumulate in the way of furniture or dress
materials. They even accepted window curtains and table linen, anything,
in fact, that could be fashioned into clothing. These same peasants
before the Revolution had been expert spinners and weavers, but now they
scorned such plebeian occupations because it was easier to barter
grains, milk, vegetables, and other produce for the last possessions of
the townspeople.
We went on living, somehow, parting with clothing and furniture, burning
boxes and even chairs for fuel, walking miles for stray bits of wood,
praying for the success of the White forces, praying for protection
against what must happen before that success could be achieved. My
mother all these days was very ill with dysentery, which was rife in
Petrograd, and I had that additional suffering, for I knew that it would
take little to bring her frail life to an end.