PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG
As some time was to pass before we could depart, I took advantage of
the opportunity which presented itself to visit the historic prisons,
the Peter-and-Paul Fortress and Schlüsselburg. I recollected the dread
and awe the very names of these places filled me with when I first
came to Petrograd as a child of thirteen. In fact, my dread of the
Petropavlovsk Fortress dated back to a much earlier time. I think
I must have been six years old when a great shock had come to our
family: we learned that my mother's oldest brother, Yegor, a student
at the University of Petersburg, had been arrested and was held in
the Fortress. My mother at once set out for the capital. We children
remained at home in fear and trepidation lest Mother should not find
our uncle among the living. We spent anxious weeks and months till
finally Mother returned. Great was our rejoicing to hear that she had
rescued her brother from the living dead. But the memory of the shock
remained with me for a long time.
Seven years later, my family then living in Petersburg, I happened to
be sent on an errand which took me past the Peter-and-Paul Fortress.
The shock I had received many years before revived within me with
paralyzing force. There stood the heavy mass of stone, dark and
sinister. I was terrified. The great prison was still to me a haunted
house, causing my heart to palpitate with fear whenever I had to pass
it. Years later, when I had begun to draw sustenance from the lives
and heroism of the great Russian revolutionists, the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress became still more hateful. And now I was about to enter its
mysterious walls and see with my own eyes the place which had been the
living grave of so many of the best sons and daughters of Russia.
The guide assigned to take us through the different ravelins had been
in the prison for ten years. He knew every stone in the place. But
the silence told me more than all the information of the guide. The
martyrs who had beaten their wings against the cold stone, striving
upward toward the light and air, came to life for me. The Dekabristi,
Tchernishevsky, Dostoyevsky, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and scores of others
spoke in a thousand-throated voice of their social idealism and their
personal suffering--of their high hopes and fervent faith in the
ultimate liberation of Russia. Now the fluttering spirits of the heroic
dead may rest in peace: their dream has come true. But what is this
strange writing on the wall? "To-night I am to be shot because I had
once acquired an education." I had almost lost consciousness of the
reality. The inscription roused me to it. "What is this?" I asked the
guard. "Those are the last words of an _intelligent_," he replied.
"After the October Revolution the _intelligentsia_ filled this prison.
From here they were taken out and shot, or were loaded on barges never
to return. Those were dreadful days and still more dreadful nights."
So the dream of those who had given their lives for the liberation of
Russia had not come true, after all. Is there any change in the world?
Or is it all an eternal recurrence of man's inhumanity to man?
We reached the strip of enclosure where the prisoners used to be
permitted a half-hour's recreation. One by one they had to walk up and
down the narrow lane in dead silence, with the sentries on the wall
ready to shoot for the slightest infraction of the rules. And while
the caged and fettered ones treaded the treeless walk, the all-powerful
Romanovs looked out of the Winter Palace toward the golden spire
topping the Fortress to reassure themselves that their hated enemies
would never again threaten their safety. But not even Petropavlovsk
could save the Tsars from the slaying hand of Time and Revolution.
Indeed, there _is_ change; slow and painful, but come it does.
In the enclosure we met Angelica Balabanova and the Italians. We
walked about the huge prison, each absorbed in his own thoughts set in
motion by what he saw. Would Angelica notice the writing on the wall,
I wondered. "To-night I am to be shot because I had once acquired an
education."
Some time later several of our group made a trip to Schlüsselburg, the
even more dreadful tomb of the political enemies of Tsarism. It is a
journey of several hours by boat up the beautiful River Neva. The day
was chilly and gray, as was our mood; just the right state of mind to
visit Schlüsselburg. The fortress was strongly guarded, but our Museum
permit secured for us immediate admission. Schlüsselburg is a compact
mass of stone perched upon a high rock in the open sea. For many
decades only the victims of court intrigues and royal disfavour were
immured within its impenetrable walls, but later it became the Golgotha
of the political enemies of the Tsarist régime.
I had heard of Schlüsselburg when my parents first came to Petersburg;
but unlike my feeling toward the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, I had no
personal reaction to the place. It was Russian revolutionary literature
which brought the meaning of Schlüsselburg home to me. Especially the
story of Volkenstein, one of the two women who had spent long years
in the dreaded place, left an indelible impression on my mind. Yet
nothing I had read made the place quite so real and terrifying as when
I climbed up the stone steps and stood before the forbidding gates. As
far as any effect upon the physical condition of the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress was concerned, the Revolution might never have taken place.
The prison remained intact, ready for immediate use by the new régime.
Not so Schlüsselburg. The wrath of the proletariat struck that house of
the dead almost to the ground.
How cruel and perverse the human mind which could create a
Schlüsselburg! Verily, no savage could be guilty of the fiendish
spirit that conceived this appalling tomb. Cells built like a bag,
without doors or windows and with only a small opening through which
the victims were lowered into their living grave. Other cells were
stone cages to drive the mind to madness and lacerate the heart of the
unfortunates. Yet men and women endured twenty years in this terrible
place. What fortitude, what power of endurance, what sublime faith one
must have had to hold out, to emerge from it alive! Here Netchaev,
Lopatin, Morosov, Volkenstein, Figner, and others of the splendid
band spent their tortured lives. Here is the common grave of Ulianov,
Mishkin, Kalayev, Balmashev, and many more. The black tablet inscribed
with their names speaks louder than the voices silenced for ever. Not
even the roaring waves dashing against the rock of Schlüsselburg can
drown that accusing voice.
Petropavlovsk and Schlüsselburg stand as the living proof of how futile
is the hope of the mighty to escape the Frankensteins of their own
making.