UNDER MARTIAL LAW
The journey to the “Oil City”--First view of the Caspian--Armenians
and Tartars--Russia’s monstrous misrule--Tiflis blood-stained and
battered--How to wield a Caucasian dagger--Daily
perils--Chiaroscuro of officers’ life--A stirring departure.
The officers occupied the first-class compartments of two cars attached
to a regular train, run from Moscow to Baku and Tiflis, and the escort
of some forty odd Cossacks who accompanied our party were relegated to a
fourth-class car somewhere at the rear of the train. The first two cars
immediately behind the engine were filled with political prisoners who
were being transferred from one prison to another. For the most part
conversation among the officers was on topics very remote from the
political situation of their country, remote even from the business in
hand. Whenever I cared to bring up the subject, however, my questions
were always readily and frankly answered. They accepted the
revolutionary situation as unfortunate and unhappy, but a situation to
be solved through military measures rather than through political
concessions or altered civil administration.
I shared a compartment with a dashing young captain, the son of one of
the most distinguished families in Caucasia. The father of my friend was
at one time the viceroy of the region. In discussing with him his own
personal sensations when combating the revolutionary activity, I was
startled to have him tell me that “nowadays in shooting at a human being
he felt precisely the same as he used to feel when, as a younger man, he
used to shoot deer in the mountains.” “The people here,” he added, “are
all deserving of what they get.” Thereupon he dilated upon the wicked
ways of the Tartars and the Armenians, whose constant feuds were then
spattering Baku and Tiflis, and much of the country which lies between,
with crimson stains. This same officer who spoke with such carelessness
of the taking of human life had all of the instincts and the fineness of
a man of refined and poetic temperament. At night, for example, I found
him sitting at the car window, hour after hour, entranced with the
marvelous beauty of the night; the snow-capped peaks of the mountains,
fast receding from us as we sped toward Daghestan; the glorious vault of
blue studded with bright, but cold, metallic stars; and as I asked him
why he did not sleep, he answered: “I am fond of sleeping but not in the
night-time; this beauty attracts me more than my couch.”
The next morning I awoke before the sun. Our way lay close to the shores
of the Caspian. My companion was up before me and insisted that I come
to the window to watch the beauty of the scene about to be revealed.
Presently the whole east was bathed in startling brightness; it was as
though the sea tossed crimson waves out there where water met sky, and
as the brilliant colors fell toward the dropping heavens, the atmosphere
caught their gleams and held them. In another moment sky and sea were
indistinguishable one from another, for over all was spread the
increasing depth and height of color. Behind us still lay the ashen,
somber light of dawn, reluctantly yielding to the brilliance of coming
day. The degree of appreciation that I found in my friend of this
perfect manifestation of Nature filled me with wonder and admiration. He
was touched to the depth of his being by the glories of the beauty we
beheld. Afterward I thought often of the man’s emotion at this time,
when I came into contact with that other side of his character, which
presented only adamant hardness when he turned to the restoration of
order in that district which was then, as it had been for months past,
in the throes of bitter conflict. “In my heart you see,” he remarked one
day, “I am a soldier and I cannot look upon our political situation save
from the standpoint of an officer.”
The Armenians in Baku, as indeed throughout this whole region, have
small reason for loving Russia. Russia in her treatment of these people
has builded herself a monument of ingratitude. Without the support of
the Armenians, Russia never would have conquered, even nominally, the
Caucasus. Not only did Armenians serve in the ranks, but some of the
best generals Russia has ever had have been Armenians--notably General
Loris-Melikoff, who was at one time the minister to Alexander the Second
and who is popularly supposed to have drawn up the constitution which
that monarch might have granted to his people at the time of his death.
But having used Armenians to serve its own ends, Russia began, a few
years ago, to alter its policy toward them. The changed policy began on
the 25th day of June, 1903, when M. von Plehve issued a now historical
decree, declaring that as the property of the Armenian church was badly
managed and used for political purposes, the state of Russia must
interfere and take control of that money. In view of the fact that this
money belonged not to the Armenians alone but to the whole orthodox
church of which the Armenian is a part, this was considered an affront
to the entire church. This arbitrary, high-handed measure converted the
whole Armenian population into Russian revolutionists at a single
stroke. Prince Galitzin, the then viceroy of the Caucasus, maintained a
régime of unprecedented severity toward the Armenians, arresting and
punishing them by the hundreds and inaugurating an era of governmental
terrorism which had never before threatened these people. From that day
until now the Armenians have maintained a constant guerilla warfare
against Russia and Russian soldiers. Added to this is the bitter race
hatred encouraged by the Russian authorities between the Armenians and
the Tartars, which has again and again been traced directly to the
Russian administration, for where races are warring one against the
other, a military régime finds the complete subjection of both peoples
simpler.
Riot, destruction of property, bloodshed, murder, were all a part of
each day’s work in Baku. The vast oil wells which are the mainstay of
the city, were burned, the great tanks wrecked, and on every hand
mountains of wreckage and debris were patrolled by Cossacks. Near to the
station as we alighted from the train a murdered Armenian was lying in
the gutter. Blood still oozed from his head. What immediately struck me
was that no one gave him the slightest heed. Passers-by stepped over the
corpse as if it were the carcass of a dog. My Armenian courier alone
seemed troubled. He remarked: “The trouble, sir, here in the Caucasus,
is all due to the Russian government. The Russian government first stirs
up the fights and then it does not allow us to finish them as we would.”
“How would you manage it?” I asked. “Manage it, sir?” he replied, “Give
the Armenians guns, leave them alone and in ten days there would not be
a Tartar left north of the Persian frontier.” Although naturally
peaceful, the Armenians are good soldiers and strong fighters; they
shoot well and are by no means cowards, although by nature they prefer
the peaceful walks of life. In this respect they are different from the
Georgians, their near neighbors, who are natural warriors, proud of
their prowess and of the distinguished officers that from time to time
their race has produced.
Not only was the Armenian church robbed of its treasure, but at the same
time the Russian government deprived the Armenians of their national
schools, thus treading upon the finest flowers of nationality, and
forever engendering the hatred of the Armenian people. During the long
and biased administration of Prince Galitzin the Armenians were
constantly persecuted, while the Tartars were allowed greater liberties.
The Tartars were not slow in appreciating this situation, and a depot
for the importation of arms was established that they might prepare
themselves for the uprising soon to take place. As nearly as can be
gathered the plan upon which the Tartars were acting was to slaughter
all of the Armenians in eastern Caucasia. The authorities unquestionably
were aware of this plot, but did nothing whatever to prevent it during
all of the preliminary stages. Indeed the authorities themselves
frequently circulated reports that an Armenian-Tartar war would
presently break out, and the Tartars were constantly spurred on to
greater activity by the reports that were allowed free circulation--that
the Armenians would one day attack them. That this plan did not
culminate was due probably to the turn of events in the far East; for
when Russia began its retreat, beaten at every point by the little
yellow men of the Mikado, every nationality held in subjection by the
Czar began to count anew upon the realization of the dreams of
nationalism. The removal of Prince Galitzin from the Caucasus in July,
1904, doubtless saved the situation there, for Count
Vorontzoff-Dashkoff, who followed as viceroy of the Caucasus, was a man
without the strong prejudices of his predecessor, and did much to
reconcile the Armenians, although it was under his régime that the
frightful massacres of February, March, and May, 1905, occurred. The
massacre of February 19, 1905, was only one of a whole series of
massacres planned by the Russian administration. The details of this
dastardly affair are still unforgotten, and inasmuch as no one knows
when there may be another, the whole populace is kept in a state of
almost perpetual panic.
Prince Nakashidze, a Georgian nobleman, one of the lieutenants of Prince
Galitzin who had assisted in the confiscation of the Armenian church
property, was at this time governor of Baku.
A group of Armenian Journalists waited upon the governor and heard from
his excellency’s own lips a strange theory of a hypothetical feud
between the Armenians and the Tartars which might result in a _pogrom_,
or massacre. The dangers of such an outbreak, he declared, lay in the
fact that he did not have troops enough at his command to suppress any
such trouble, and that the police could not be relied upon, owing to the
fact that so many of them were themselves Tartars. It was afterward
pointed out that the report of the governor, of the outbreak which
actually took place, corresponded almost word for word with the
supposition advanced by Prince Nakashidze to the journalists previous to
the massacre. The massacre actually occurred as a result
[Illustration: Arrest of suspected working-men--an hourly incident in
Baku]
[Illustration: Devastated oil-fields. Baku]
of a trifling incident. The body of a murdered Armenian, named Babaieff,
was being carried in funeral procession past the Tartar quarter of the
city. The sight of this procession aroused the Tartars; and the incident
which had led to the death of this man--a purely personal vendetta
affair--was taken as an excuse for an attempt to massacre all the
Armenians in the city. The Armenians defended themselves for a time, but
owing to the fact that the Tartars were in superior numbers and much
better armed, the casualties among the Armenians were very heavy. During
this attack of the Tartars upon the Armenians, the authorities refused
absolutely to bestir themselves or make the slightest effort to end the
fight. Prince Nakashidze practically turned a deaf ear upon the
delegation of Armenians who appealed to him for help, declaring he had
no troops at his command, although there were two thousand men stationed
near by, which could easily have been employed to quell the disturbance
in its early stages.
According to the stories gathered at the time and which have never been
contradicted, it appears that the governor himself took pains to openly
encourage the Tartars and to stimulate them to greater activity in the
fight. The massacre went on for four days, until both sides were ready
to quit through sheer exhaustion. In the meantime some three hundred and
fifty men and women had been killed and very many wounded. Although it
was recognized everywhere that the government was directly responsible
for this massacre, the amount of race hatred which was occasioned by
this attack has not to this day subsided, and probably will not
disappear for years to come. Periodic outbreaks occurred from that time
on, and at the time that our party passed through Baku and around the
easterly spur of the Caucasus, and turned our faces toward the Nucha
district and on to Tiflis, we passed through regions devastated and
bare, now placed under military guard; heavy Cossack patrols guarding
the piles of debris--for actually more attention was given to guarding
the wreckage than had previously been given to guarding the lives of the
people.
There was nothing to detain us in Baku. A condition of utter lawlessness
prevailed so far as the people were concerned, and even more outrageous
lawlessness on the part of the military. It is always so under martial
law. A diary of daily events in the Caucasus for the five weeks I was
there would fill a large book. I can only speak of significant events,
and incidents, which throw light on the whole confused situation. Among
ourselves--the officers of my party--there was ceaseless merriment and
good fellowship. We lived comfortably, we dined well, we wined much, we
were as happy and care-free as though we were on a holiday. About us
were the most horrible conditions: dire poverty, distress, a veritable
carnival of all the elements of wickedness and suffering of which this
world knows.
For the hopeless people of Baku I envied the nomads of the Daghestan
hills who tended their cattle and sheep along the steep hillsides,
knowing nothing of, and caring nothing for, anything in the world save
their own daily bread. At least they were not a part of the perpetual
brawl of the town; at least they were not yet belabored by Russian
police or military oppressors. Sometimes we saw long camel trains
creeping across the sands of Nucha from Persia (lying just below the
southern horizon). The dreamy leisureliness of the plodding camels, the
calm indifference of the merchants, afforded an illusion of relief from
the hostile atmosphere through which
[Illustration: Tiflis. Showing result of artillery fire on town
Note the wall pierced by a solid shell]
we moved. From a hilltop out of Baku we looked strainingly through the
haze to the snow mountains of the south Caucasus, one peak of which is
called Ararat. No longer does the dove fly forth from this ancient
mountain, to return with a sprig of olive. The waters of the earth no
longer threaten this region, but the terrible tides of men--waves of
oppression, oceans of misery, seas of shame--ever and always menace all
who here pitch their tents. It is the oldest region of the world, if the
Scriptures be true, yet in reality to-day it is the least civilized.
Here Christianity first took root, yet to-day the entire region is given
over to cruel and diabolical practices worthy of pagans and barbarians.
Tiflis lay torn and battered on both banks of the river Kur, revealed by
the lifting of the early morning mists, as our train crept slowly down
from the heights to the center of the town. Tiflis, the ancient capital
of Georgia, has been the battle-ground of many a fight and conflict ever
since it was first established by Vakhtang Goroslan, King of Georgia, in
the fifth century. Occupying as it does a point of considerable
strategic importance, commercially as well as geographically, it is one
of the cities of the world which must ever remain a natural capital,
whether vested with the rights of empire or not. It commands the highway
from the Black Sea to the Caspian, the main route to Persia, and the
only road which leads over the Caucasus to Europe.
The Tartar and Persian quarters of Tiflis were in a frightful mess. The
Tartars, as Ivan, my indomitable Armenian courier, explained to me, had
taken possession of a slight elevation near their section of the city,
and begun firing upon the Armenians, whose quarter was a little way
removed. Between the Armenian quarter and the hill occupied by the
Tartars, was the Persian quarter. The innocent Persians, unhappily,
received many of the bullets from both sides, with the result that most
of the Persian merchants had fled in panic. The fighting continued for
several days until the Russian troops came up and fired indiscriminately
upon the three sections, using light artillery. I photographed some of
the demolished houses, securing one or two interesting pictures of the
walls of houses which had been burst through by solid shells.
All the time I remained in Tiflis Ivan was suspicious of my associates,
the officers. “Bloody Russians,” he called them, and he had no use for
them whatever. Being one of the race who had been victimized by Russian
treachery so often since the confiscation of the church property, and
the abolition of the schools in 1903, he could no more put faith in any
man representing the government of the Czar. He was most thoughtful of
me, however, and after we had got to know each other better, he proved
himself measurably loyal. Early in our acquaintance, he had taught me
how to use my dagger. For he insisted that since I carried a dagger, I
should know how to handle it when occasion demanded. He told me how to
grasp the handle with my hands and to thrust it into the bowels of my
opponent, giving it the right twist so as to make short work of my
enemy, after the manner of his own countrymen. “But, sir,” he added,
“you are to use it this way only when you are forced to meet your man
face to face. It is better for you to get behind your enemy and to plant
your dagger between his shoulders when he is not looking.” Ivan’s
fighting ethics were built upon a wholly practical basis. He knew no
other standard. In this, he was like all the peoples of Caucasia.
Besides the demolished foreign quarters of Tiflis, there were evidences
a-plenty of riot and revolt in all sections of the town; whole blocks of
houses sometimes with windows broken, as a result of a recent bomb;
telegraph lines down; traffic interrupted; streets torn up and day by
day reports came in of clashes between the peoples, and sometimes
between the populace and the authorities, and never a day without murder
or assassination.
The streets of the town were never safe. A bomb was liable to drop in
the vicinity of any official at any time, and robbery was a commonplace
of the night. In Tiflis I found a state of actual and continuous
guerilla war. Nothing spectacular or dramatic happened, but every day
some one was killed, a building wrecked, a consignment of government
money stolen. Political arrests were hourly scenes. Workmen were taken
from their work; private citizens were snatched from their homes;
newspapers that appeared one day were suppressed the next; officials who
had to move from place to place were accompanied by heavy escorts. The
atmosphere was electric with unrest. Tiflis quivers and cowers through
miserable days and hideous nights--all because Russia’s civil policy is
as it is, often in open violation of the usual customs of nations and of
humanity. Tiflis, olden capital of ancient Georgia, Tiflis the lovely,
the beautiful, the fair--I found a city of inquisition, of fire and
blood, of despair. Yet through it all we--my officers and I--were
established in the comfortable _Hotel de Londres_. At night we were
merry, and oblivious to everything about us. Sometimes we went to a
_café chantant_ called the Bellvue, where lovely Georgian girls sang
brisk American songs (done into Russian) and painted Armenian maidens
danced languorous, lascivious dances....
For a time I was fascinated by this paradoxical life. How human beings
could drink champagne through long nights when horrible starvation
besieged every window and door; how the officers of the busiest army in
the world could squander hours and days and weeks, when mutiny and
sedition were daily eating into the ranks; how men of such excellent
_camaraderie_ spirit could look upon suffering with a cool shrug--all
this was new to me, and made me wonder greatly. But after a time the
reports coming in from Kutais, to the west of Tiflis, were so startling
that I grew more and more impatient to witness what an army of
“pacification” reveals. There in Kutais, the dreaded and hated General
Alikhanoff was pushing forward the grim work of repression.
My good friend Prince Andronnikov secured for me the necessary
permission, and one memorable Monday evening I ordered Ivan to be ready
to start for Kutais that evening.
Kutais lies to the west of Tiflis, about eight hours’ journey on the
railroad. The train I planned to take left Tiflis a little before
midnight. Ivan insisted that we leave the hotel more than an hour before
train-time. I thought this an unreasonable margin of time, but before we
reached the station I realized that it is always safe to allow ample
time for the unexpected in Caucasia. We had crossed the bridge spanning
the Kur and had turned into a dark unlighted street, running toward the
station, when suddenly the cries of “_Stoi! Stoi!_” (Halt! Halt!) rang
out in the darkness. Five soldiers sprang out of the shadow and stopped
our carriage, while a sixth leveled a bayonet at my breast, so close
that when I threw open my _bourka_ (a long hairy cape extending from the
shoulders to the ground), and reached for my passport and credentials,
it brushed against the steel point. My uniform was only distinguishable
under the _bourka_. The officer in charge of the search-party spoke
[Illustration: Caucasian types]
French and, upon examining my credentials, promptly permitted us to
continue on our way. We had not proceeded two blocks, however, when once
more the imperative shout of “_Stoi! Stoi!_” stopped us. This time a
larger party of soldiers surrounded us. Two infantrymen sprang to the
heads of the horses, bringing them to an immediate standstill. The
officer in command of the second party proved an ignorant fellow and we
found it somewhat difficult to satisfy him as to our legality, for a man
wearing the uniform of a Cossack officer provided with an American
passport was an unusual phenomenon, even in Tiflis, the very center of
strange and mysterious men and circumstances. At last, however, he
appeared satisfied that we were known to the authorities and that our
credentials were genuine, and once more we started for the still distant
station. We were nicely settled and on our way when once again the cry
of “_Stoi! Stoi!_” startled us. This time, however, it came from behind.
Impatient at these repeated delays and fearful lest after all we miss
the train, Ivan, giving one quick glance behind, foolishly thought to
take a long chance at escape. The soldiers were twenty yards or more to
the rear, so Ivan called to the driver to go on quickly. The driver
cracked his whip and the horses strained forward to a gallop. A perfect
volley of “_stois_” followed us. I looked back to see how the soldiers
would take this,--just in time to see the men raising their guns to
their shoulders to fire. Springing to my feet I shouted in Russian, “All
right; all right!” my arms raised to signify that we were in their
hands. The sound of my voice warned the driver to stop the horses. The
soldiers rushed upon us and at first were inclined to be rough, for they
naturally thought we had tried to elude them. The officer was
exasperatingly deliberate in examining our papers and he was so
persistent in his questions that had he delayed us two minutes longer
than he actually did we would have lost our train, in spite of the hour
to spare that Ivan had insisted upon.
On the train we found many passengers relating their experience with the
search-parties. Nearly all had been stopped at least once, and many
twice, so we knew that the city was being searched with extraordinary
thoroughness that night for weapons, bombs, and contraband of war that
continuously and mysteriously find their way into Tiflis to enable the
people to maintain their perpetual fight against their oppressors.