THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--III
In many battles there comes a moment when little or nothing appears
to have changed, and yet you suddenly realize that all is over but
the running. Such a moment came on the morning of Christmas Day as
I went up the Sadovaya towards the central revolutionist position
where I had been the afternoon before. The barricades were still
standing, the Sodovaya was still covered with such a network of wire
about four feet from the ground that one had to walk under it bent
double like a hoop, and no horse could have moved. The guns had not
come perceptibly nearer, and in the centre of the town I had seen an
officer stopped and deprived of his sword by half a dozen men with
revolvers, who threatened to strip him naked, as another had been
stripped the day before. There were rumours of all manner of wild
enterprises on foot--attacks on stations, on prisons, on barracks. All
these were favourable signs. Yet as I went along, I suddenly realized,
“instinctively” as it is called, that the tide had turned, and that
the highest moment of revolutionary success lay behind us.
I was so convinced of this that, wishing to photograph the barricades
before they disappeared, I went all the way back to the hotel for my
kodak. There was a brilliant sun, and as the firing had not yet become
severe, I walked leisurely through the main position, selecting in my
mind the best places; for I had only one roll of films left, the rest
having gone down the line. As on the previous day, a good many people
were moving about in groups, besides the usual number of women passing
up and down unconcernedly, since children must be fed, revolution or
not. But from a number of unconscious signs, I felt the place was to
be abandoned, and it appeared likely that the fighting revolutionists
had already gone. So I began taking the views, and had just secured a
fine construction of doors, benches, barrels, railings, shop-signs,
and trees, when I found myself surrounded by a group of young men,
evidently displeased. I soon perceived I had fallen into the midst
of my friends. They were very quiet about it, and only one of them
spoke. He was a dark Pole of about twenty-five, dirty and red-eyed
with sleepless fighting, and he appeared to be informing me that I
was a spy and must at once give up my camera. To make his meaning
plainer, he stealthily drew a revolver from his coat pocket, and held
it close against my side, whilst he repeated his demands in the same
low voice. In two or three unknown tongues I appealed to him and
the others, who had now closed in all round me, ready with the same
stealthy argument. I smiled my hardest, assuring them I was at least as
good a revolutionist by nature as they, and would rather explode the
universal spheres than betray a stick of their barricades. I think they
understood the smile, for their manner became less anti-social. But
there was a movement among the crowd, and as I tried to escape in it,
they again grew painfully insistent. In the end I had to give up the
roll of films, and with that they appeared content, for they graciously
let me keep the camera. But by their action their finest barricades
lost a chance of immortality.
The incident only proved how impossible it was to know where the
revolutionists were stationed, or in what force. There was nothing
to distinguish these men from the numbers of others with whom they
were mixing quite freely. It is true that, after this experience, I
recognized them almost by intuition. As though by a law of nature,
they assumed the conspirators’ habit--the hat drawn down to the eyes,
the long coat with the collar turned up, the hand constantly feeling
in the pocket, the quick look of suspicion glancing every way. After
a few days I think I could have picked out the leaders simply by
their pale and intellectual faces, or their appearance of nervous and
bloodshot excitement. But the possession of a revolver was the only
admissible evidence, and that required search. By the soldiers it was
taken as sufficient evidence for death without phrase, and any one
caught with a revolver in his pocket had no further chance. Of course,
the revolutionists were aware of this, and knew that death was as good
as surrender. Whilst I was among them that morning, for instance, an
English officer only a few streets away saw five men suddenly come upon
a strong picket. They were summoned to halt, but, instead of halting,
they walked quietly on, taking no notice. One after another they were
shot down, till only one was left, and he also walked on, taking no
notice. Then he was shot, and there was an end of the five. No doubt
the more usual form of courage would have been to rush upon the picket
and die fighting. But they may have been out of cartridges, and in any
case it would be hard to surpass their example in passive bravery.
In expectation of sudden death like theirs, all the students, both
men and girls, had stitched little labels inside the backs of their
coats, so that, when they were killed, their parents might possibly
hear the news and know the pride of having produced an adventurous
child. I think most of the revolutionists had done the same, but the
dead were piled up and carted into the country for burial with such
indiscriminate carelessness, that I doubt if the precaution was of
very much avail. And, indeed, it was not the revolutionist who suffered
most during the days of combat, but the sightseers and the ordinary
passers-by.
For myself, I was very unfortunate all that day. The guns began firing
heavily again about eleven, and I tried many devices to reach their
main position on the Tverskaya by passing from lane to lane in their
rear. I even reached the Pushkin statue, from which I could see the
limbers of the guns waiting under cover. But the continual threats of
bayonets and rifles on every side, and the violent searching by the
sentries became strangely demoralizing. Certainly the process of search
that day was pleasingly simple in my case, because what underclothing I
still possessed had gone to the wash, and all the shops were shut. But
my kodak excited the utmost suspicion; all the more, perhaps, because
it was empty now.
Tired of all this, I turned down the main Boulevard westward for an
interval of peace, but again I was singularly disappointed in my hope.
The further I went, the more disturbed and dangerous the atmosphere
of things became. Something was evidently happening down that way.
Troops were marching hastily about, and two guns passed at full gallop.
At one place I heard an officer’s voice shouting some order, and the
few people on the pavement near me began to run for their lives. I
saw no reason to run till two soldiers came dashing at me through the
trees with fixed bayonets. Then running was too late, and, seated on
a railing, I awaited them, feeling that the centre of indifference
was reached at last, and life and death were equal shades. But
something induced them to respect so obvious a foreigner, and having
again searched me and taken half a crown each as their reward for
international amenity, they conducted me past an angle of a church and
waved adieu.
Then I discovered the reason of all this excitement. New barricades
were rapidly appearing across many of the streets leading down into
the Boulevard from the right-hand, or north-west side. I continued
along the circle almost to the point where the Boulevard ends, close
to the great cathedral of the Saviour near the river, and all the way
I saw signs of fresh conflict and heard sudden outbursts of rifle or
revolver-firing. It was only after two or three days that I understood
the real significance of this movement, by which the revolutionists
were preparing for their final stand in the extreme north-west of the
city. But at the time I thought they were merely attempting a feint
upon the Government’s left, just as they had tried on the right the day
before. It seemed probable, also, that the movement was intended to
cover their withdrawal from the main position where I had lately left
them. And that, indeed, was their object, though they hoped rather to
change their centre than to abandon the contest altogether.
Yet the crisis, as I had felt in the morning, was really over. When
I passed through the middle of the city again, and out to my own
quarter, the crowds were still running to and fro in panic round the
Theatre Square, men and women were still falling unexpectedly in the
streets, there was as much to do as ever in helping the wounded, and
the ambulance yards were continually being filled. But the life seemed
to have dropped out of the rising. People were talking with terror
of a great peasant invasion, hundreds of thousands strong, that was
already marching to deliver their Little Mother Moscow, and hew us all
to pieces. With better reason they said that Mischenko, the hero of
the Japanese war, was coming as military governor with 7,000 Cossacks.
Hour by hour the citizens were agitated by new alarms, and the cautious
began to think enough had been done for freedom, and to remember
that something, after all, was due to the sacred stove of home. That
night the revolutionists issued appeals calling for volunteers at six
shillings a day and a revolver, the term of service to be limited to
three days. For Russian fighting, or indeed for fighting in any land,
the pay was magnificent. Even in nations like our own the risk of life
is not valued above two shillings, and though the Russian soldier’s pay
was raised for this occasion, it only amounted to threepence three
farthings. It was certainly safer for the moment to be a revolutionist
than any other kind of citizen, because revolutionists generally
knew which was the enemy and where he lay, but I do not think many
volunteered for the sake of the pay or the mere delight of firing a
revolver. Even if any recruits were gained by such inducements, their
fighting, not being inspired by revolutionary spirit, was not likely to
be glorious.
During the next two days, there was very little outward change in the
position, except that the feeling of disaster grew, and most people
began to recognize the winning side and arrange their own behaviour
accordingly. The guns still sprinkled bullets over the barricades and
wrecked the houses on each side. The soldiers continued their slow
and perilous advance from street to street. People fell at random;
the hospital and ambulances were crowded beyond limit. On the Tuesday
evening an official estimate put the killed and wounded at between
8,000 and 9,000. In ordinary wars all numbers are exaggerated, but in
civil war the Government would probably not overstate the number of
their victims, and when I went up on Tuesday, the troops had advanced
very near to the Sadovaya, the firing was very heavy, and many were
hit. But the sense of disaster and failure lay over all, and on that
day, for the first time, I heard revolutionists beginning to
describe the whole movement as a dress rehearsal and to congratulate
themselves upon the excellent practice in street fighting which they
had enjoyed.
[Illustration:
_Art Reproduction Co._
THE NEW ERA.
From _Sulphur_ (_Jupel_).]
On the Wednesday I was unable to go out, except only to cross the
Theatre Square. And there I found a group of soldiers who had just
taken part in an execution in the middle of the place. Some inmate of a
hotel opposite the Métropole, possessed by a crazy spirit of slaughter
or revolt, had fired a pistol at large from his window. The battery was
placed in front of the hotel and the surrender of the man demanded. The
proprietor gave him up without dangerous hesitation, and in a minute
or two he was shot in front of the window from which he had fired. One
would have liked to discover the kind of mania that seized him, but his
death made that impossible.
The evening of the same day--or perhaps it was the evening
before--another execution was carried out, more terrible in its
circumstances, but better deserved, if any execution is deserved.
A band of revolutionists--the English papers, getting news chiefly
through St. Petersburg, said three hundred of them, but that is
absurd--made their way by some means unobserved to the house of the
chief of the secret police, close to the gendarmes barracks. Knocking
at the door, they demanded to see Voiloshnikoff, the chief himself.
He came out to them, his wife and children looking on with terror in
the background, and in spite of the entreaties and tears of woman and
child, they placed him in front of the door and shot him on the spot.
No doubt he had done many atrocious things, and had cared little enough
for the entreaties of women and children himself. But most people
regarded this act of wild justice as inhuman, and regretted, not the
paid criminal’s removal from the world, but the manner of it.
An hour or two before daylight next day (Thursday, the 28th), I had
to go to a house on the further side of the Sadovaya to help bring
provisions and toys for an English family which had taken refuge in the
hotel after spending some dull days in cellars. As we walked through
the streets standing in silence audible under the transparent darkness
of the morning, we saw the pickets squatting round orange fires of
planks which they had kindled in the middle of the road. But beyond
searching us once or twice, they did not interfere with our purpose,
and the only real danger came from the police, who had that morning
received brand new rifles--light-coloured things like toys, with fixed
bayonets--which they hugged in both arms, or held horizontally over
their shoulders, to the peril of all bystanders, while in their hearts
they longed to put them to their natural use, with all the tremulous
bravery of girls out rabbit-shooting.
But before we reached the Sadovaya, we had passed all the pickets,
and hardly any one was visible on the streets. Some of the barricades
were on fire or gently smouldering; the rest stood deserted. The
pavements were strewn with glass and bricks. Houses on both sides were
ruined with shell. Some were burning, and in two or three the beds and
furniture were being thrown out of the shattered windows. We noticed
how wild the shell-fire had been, for houses quite a hundred yards
from the main streets were struck, evidently at random. But all was
unguarded now. When daylight found us leaving the English flat with our
load, there was still no one visible, and I think a battalion might
have marched through the district in fours without receiving a shot.
Even the red flags had been removed from the barricades, to be kept,
one hopes, for another occasion, and almost the only sign of life was
that here and there I observed a dvornik (the door-keeper who watches
the Russian home) cutting down the network of telegraph wire with
a hatchet and rolling it up. He reminded me of some trusty servant
methodically putting away the stage properties on the morning after
private theatricals.
For the rest of that day the guns and soldiers were engaged in clearing
the quarter of barricades, entanglements, and all. It was an easy task
now, though the firing was more violent than ever, as the progress
was more rapid. For the revolutionists had received orders from their
committee that morning to abandon the street fighting and scatter to
their homes or out into the country, continuing the propaganda and
holding themselves ready for the next opportunity. Some escaped, at
least for the time. Some refused to obey, but continued the fighting,
as we soon discovered. Many were seized, and for days afterwards small
parties of soldiers or police in every street drove some unhappy
creature in front of them with his hands tied. What became of these
prisoners, we only suspected at the time; we found out later. On this
part of the Moscow rising, there is no more to chronicle but massacre.
And so the barricades and their defenders faded into history, and law
and order were restored.
That Thursday at noon, a decree went forth from Admiral Dubasoff
commanding all shutters to be taken down, all doors opened, and
business to be resumed on pain of martial law. Then the heart of the
shopkeeper was glad. For eight days all shops had been shut; banks
were closed, merchants did no business, and, as the German song
says, no mill wheel turned around. It is always hard not to smile
at the money-making classes whenever the great passions of human
existence appear upon the surface and shake their routine. Yet we
need not make light of their sufferings. They had suffered at the
heart. For months past they had been deprived of the profit which
is their single aim. For more than a week they had taken absolutely
nothing, and the whole credit of the country was so shaken that they
could not hope for advance of capital. Their occupation was gone,
and no return of it seemed likely. Besides the ordinary bankers,
merchants, and shopkeepers, we must include among them the hotel and
restaurant keepers, the theatrical managers, actresses, music-hall
people, prostitutes, and all such as live by pleasing or amusing the
wealthy. We ought further to include artists, musicians, authors,
lawyers, journalists, and professors, but as a rule their profits are
so small that their losses would hardly count in the universal ruin.
To take a single instance of the immense injury to trade, the mere
damage to house property from the shells and bullets was estimated
at £10,000,000, and all of it was dead loss, except to the builders
and glaziers. The Sytin printing works, wantonly destroyed by the
Government for printing the Liberal newspapers, was valued at £300,000.
There was no reason to be surprised, therefore, at the comfortable joy
which welcomed the Government’s ruthless decree. Perhaps it might seem
a little indecent, while the dead who had fought for freedom were still
lying in frozen layers at the police stations, or were being thrown
neck-and-crop upon sledges for their unknown burial. But we must make
a large allowance for business habits, which tiresome revolutions
interrupt. Think of the feelings of our own City men if suddenly the
morning train which for years they had caught successfully, stopped
running and shells rained from Holborn Viaduct to Aldgate Pump! With
what common sense they would welcome the restoration of any tyranny,
with what scorn decry the fallen sentimentalists who had cared for
freedom! So in Moscow, returning law and order met a greasy smile, and
many extolled the Governor-General and officers for the vigour of their
action. Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his
livelihood.
So “intercourse was resumed,” and the shop-keeping heart rejoiced.
But on Friday morning an uneasy feeling stole abroad that all was not
quite satisfactory yet. About two miles west of the Kremlin there is an
isolated manufacturing district called Presna or Presnensky. A little
stream with two or three ponds, running from the back of the Zoological
gardens into the Moscow river, separates it from the main town, and to
the north of it lies that ill-fated Khodinsky Polé, the plain where the
crowds were crushed to death at the Tsar’s coronation. The district is
about a mile square, and various factories stand there, for cotton,
furniture, varnish, boiler-making, and sugar. Some of them are under
English management, and in English commerce the place is known as Three
Hill Gates, because the country beyond gently rises into slopes that
would pass for hills in Russia.
[Illustration: “INTERCOURSE IS RESUMED.”
From _Streli_ (_Arrows_).]
It gradually became known that a large number of work-people--ten
thousand of them it was said--were holding this district, and had set
up there a little revolution of their own, under an organized system
of sentries, pickets, and fighting force. A few students and educated
girls had come over to them from the revolutionists of the barricades
disguised as mill hands; indeed, a girl of eighteen was described
as their most powerful leader, and in all probability those streets
which I had seen barricaded on the extreme left of the Government
advance on the Wednesday, were blocked to give time for the Presnensky
preparations. But in the main it was a work-people’s affair, and on the
Friday they held undisturbed possession of the district, their sentries
marching up and down with revolvers and red flags, while they naïvely
boasted themselves confident of terminating the exploitation of labour
and establishing Social Democracy at a stroke.
But law and order were already at their work of disillusionment. That
very day the fashionable regiment of the Semenoffsky Guards, under
command of Colonel Min, already notorious as a slaughterer of the
people, arrived from St. Petersburg, though the revolutionists made a
gallant attempt to stop the railway by tearing up the lines. In the
evening a cordon of troops was drawn round the district, and batteries
were placed on five positions, at ranges of 1000 to 2000 yards. One
stood on a high bank near a bridge over the little stream I mentioned;
another was a point nearer the Zoo, where the gunners had to fight for
the position, and burnt down several rows of small houses; a third was
in the cemetery, where they met with no opposition; a fourth far away
on the lowest slope of the Three Hills; and the fifth must have been
stationed somewhere down by the Moscow river, but I did not discover it.
The district was thus surrounded by batteries, and at dawn on Saturday
the guns opened upon the mills and neighbouring houses. There were no
guns to reply, and the gunners consequently made “excellent practice,”
plumping their shells down where they liked, crashing through the
windows, or raising red clouds of brickdust from the battered walls.
It was about as leisurely and safe a piece of slaughter as ever was
seen. The large furniture factory was soon alight, and burnt quickly
to the ground. So did the fine house of its owner and manager, a
German-Russian named Schmidt, who was justly suspected of holding
Liberal opinions, and was afterwards shot for the crime. The Marmentoff
varnish works on the top of the hill also took fire, and its tanks
continued to burn for many days and nights, rolling thick clouds of
smoke into the air all day, and casting a brilliant crimson light upon
the evening sky. The great Prokhoroffsky cotton mill was battered,
and many shells burst in its rooms, but it was saved from fire by its
automatic “sprinklers,” which, however, ruined the machinery by rust.
Many shells burst against the owner’s house on the hill, for he too had
committed the sin of Liberalism. During the bombardment, his wife gave
birth to a child, an unpropitious time for herself and the nurses. But
the guns were chiefly directed against the large workmen’s barracks
attached to the mills, and these were soon shattered, though they did
not burn. The small rows of cottages, where the married men lived with
their families, being made of wood, blazed up at once, and it was in
them that most of the people were killed. At the time it was reported
that the gunners were ordered to fire on the lower stories, so that the
people upstairs might not escape. I doubt whether gunners could make
that distinction at the range, but, in any case, many people were cut
to pieces by the segment shells and stifled by the flames. In one upper
story alone, nine old men and women, who had been collected there for
safety, were burnt to death.
The shelling was particularly heavy from eight to nine in the morning,
and again from one to two. As the wooden houses caught fire, and the
work-people were driven out in helpless crowds from their barracks by
the crash of shells, the soldiers came crowding in with rifle and
sword, and met with little organized resistance. The troops employed
were Cossacks, a Warsaw regiment, and the fashionable Semenoffsky
Guards, who had arrived, as I noticed, only the day before, and to
the end of the insurrection displayed a surpassing blood-thirstiness
and brutality. No Moscow men were present, though I was told by an
officer that the Rostoff regiment, which had been regarded as dubious
for some weeks past, entreated to be set in the front throughout the
fighting, and at every chance engaged in the slaughter with a ferocity
well calculated to recover the Government’s esteem. The whole of that
Saturday appears to have been one long massacre of men, women, and
children, who were blown up, shot, and hewn in pieces with delightful
ease, and almost uninterrupted security. But that day I was myself
unable to penetrate the thick line of sentries which surrounded the
district and were engaged in shooting down escaping refugees and
preventing witnesses of the massacre from entering.
In the afternoon an event happened which illustrates the spirit in
which the Government’s agents carried out their work. Living in the
Presnensky district, which has some streets of wealthy villas at the
upper end, was a doctor named Vorobieff, well known in Russia as a man
of science and a writer on medical discoveries. At the beginning of the
bombardment he hung an ambulance flag from his window, to give notice
to the wounded where they might obtain assistance. His landlord came
and asked him to take it down, because the red cross would naturally
draw the fire of Government troops. He took it down, but continued
attending to any wounded who came. Presently a party of police,
under an officer named Ermoleff, who had formerly been an officer in
the Guards cavalry, came to the house and accused him of assisting
revolutionists. He replied that he was not a revolutionist himself,
but it was his duty as a surgeon to give every possible help to the
wounded, no matter what their opinions might be. “Have you a revolver?”
Ermoleff suddenly asked him. Yes, he said, he had a revolver, but he
held the Government licence for it. “Go and fetch your licence,” cried
Ermoleff. And as the doctor turned to go upstairs, he fired his pistol
into the back of his head and blew his brains out. “Oh, what have you
done?” cried his wife, who had been standing at the doctor’s side.
“Hold your tongue, and wipe up that mess,” answered the ex-officer of
the Guards cavalry, and withdrew his party.[2]
All that night Moscow saw the flames raging to the sky. Many of the
revolutionists, and many of the ordinary work-people too, tried to
escape from the district, especially across the frozen river, and it
was along the river banks that most of them were shot down. Early
next morning, on the excuse of visiting the English overseers who
were shut up in the district, I succeeded in penetrating the cordon
of troops, though I was searched nine or ten times from head to foot,
and the sledge was searched as well. Two Russian journalists from St.
Petersburg, who tried to follow me, were less fortunate, for by the
command of the officers, they were so shamefully beaten and stamped
upon that they hardly escaped alive, and one of them, still exhausted
with terror and pain, came to my room some hours later to have his
wounds dressed. All round the edge of the district, the wretched
work-people were now trying to escape to their villages upon any kind
of sledge that would move. Into these sledges they had heaped all
their household possessions--feather beds, furniture, cooking things,
and heavy old trunks with clothes. Sometimes the toys already bought
for Christmas were laid carefully on the top--the doll or scarlet
parrot--and one woman carried a baby on one arm and a wooden horse
under the other. But when it came to the line of pickets, every sledge
was emptied, all the boxes unpacked, and their contents strewn upon the
snow. The people also were searched with customary brutality--the old
people beaten, the young insulted. The soldiers thrust their hands into
the girls’ breasts and under their skirts. One girl was passed on from
soldier to soldier and searched six times within about twenty yards.
“God spit at them!” muttered the women as they crawled away.
The guns were still in position around the district, and firing was
to begin again in an hour. But on such mills as were still standing,
the white flag now waved. Arms were being surrendered, and the dead
were collected in rows upon the frozen surface of a pond. In one place
was a mutilated child of nine; in another a baby’s arm, cut off at
the shoulder and across the fingers, lay on the snow. For law and
order were being restored. Near the mills I found many hundreds of
work-people standing idly round their ruined barracks and smouldering
homes. A barrack for mill-hands, as I have already shown, is not much
of a place. The beds are jammed close together in rows; everything
is hideous, the smell intolerable. Nor are the doghutch homes for
married people much better. But at all events they had been warm. Now
the workmen and their families had nowhere to go, and for the last
three mornings the thermometer had stood at eighteen degrees below
zero (Réaumur). Probably many homeless people were given shelter at
night in other crowded rooms, but all day long they remained shivering
helplessly among the ruins.
I waited for some time in an English manager’s house, expecting the
guns to re-open fire. But no firing came, though the guns remained
all day in position. As far as open fighting went, the Moscow rising
was over. When I returned next morning (Monday, January 1st) I found
the guns had been withdrawn, and the streets and ruins and mills were
held by strong detachments of Cossacks and Guards. The surrender was
complete. Three of the leaders had just been bayoneted to death,
and their bodies were lying outside a shed. The remains of the last
revolutionary band were cooped up as prisoners in the sugar-mill yard,
and soldiers stood round the thick crowd of them, while the leaders
were being sorted out for execution. Many women were found among them,
and a large proportion of the dead were women too. Indeed, considering
that this was mainly a work-people’s movement, it was remarkable how
large a part the women played.
Of the killed it was impossible to form an accurate estimate. In the
Presna district itself they said that eighty work-people were killed
during the bombardment of Saturday morning. Perhaps 200 were killed
in all, including those who tried to escape across the river. As to
the larger question of the casualties during the whole ten days of
the rising, every kind of estimate was heard between 5000 and 20,000.
I have even heard of enterprising newspapers which put the total
of killed alone at 25,000. But it takes a lot of killing to make a
thousand dead, and after going carefully into such figures as I could
get with two experienced officials who knew the city well, it seemed
to me probable that the killed numbered about 1,200, and the wounded
perhaps ten times that amount. But the truth can never be accurately
known. The frozen bodies were piled up in police stations and other
places till they could be carried out into the country by train and
laid in hasty trenches. When I was in St. Petersburg many weeks later,
a truck full of them arrived by mistake at the Moscow station there.
The authorities denied it, but no one doubted the truth.
After our New Year’s Eve the process of vengeance and execution went on
without further interruption. In the Presnensky district the prisoners
were usually shot in batches--sixteen, twenty, or even thirty-five
together, as I was told by an overseer who lived close by and saw it
done. The work-people were set in a row before the firing party, and
were driven forward three at a time. Three by three they were shot down
before the eyes of the others. The heap of dead increased. Three more
were driven forward to increase it, till at last only a heap of dead
was left. In the case of two workmen, suspected of being leaders, there
was a variety in the proceedings, perhaps by way of a practical joke.
They were ordered by the officer just to walk round a corner of the
sugar mill. They went carelessly, with their hands in their pockets,
and when they turned the corner they were faced by eight soldiers
standing at the present. In an instant they fell dead, and their bodies
remained for a long time lying on the ground for all passers-by to see.
Such executions continued among these factories for more than a week,
and the numbers of those poor and uneducated men and women who died for
their protest against despotism will never be known.
Nor will the numbers of the victims within the city itself be known.
As I have said, on every street you met parties of soldiers and armed
police bringing them to the police-stations. Even at the beginning of
the rising, we have seen that prisoners were shot because the prisons
were too full to hold them. It is quite certain that they had no mercy
now, but what exactly became of them inside the walls, one could only
judge from terrible hints and rumours that people whispered to each
other. On the last day of the year, in a friend’s house, I met a
skilled craftsman, an educated and middle-aged man, who from his own
workroom could reach a window overlooking a police-yard. There, he
said, one could watch the prisoners brought in and briefly examined by
an officer. They were then strapped to a board and beaten almost to
death, and if they were people of no account they were handed over to
the executioners to be “broken up”--that is the English sportsman’s
phrase for hares and foxes overtaken by the hounds. They were broken
up. Their bones were smashed, their legs and arms lopped off with
swords, and it did not take them very long to die.
The story may have been one of the exaggerations of war, but the man
was a quiet and ordinary citizen, with no reason for lying, and he
invited us quite freely to come and view the place, always soaked with
blood. People of both parties who had lived many years in Moscow,
did not hesitate to believe it, and they often told me of things
still worse--of nameless things committed in the empty and windowless
chambers of police-stations, where no light enters and no cry escapes.
One murder was especially talked about, because the victim happened to
be the son of a leading barrister, who was a friend of the Governor
himself. The boy was seized near the Riding School Barracks, close to
the university, either on suspicion or for open hostility. The Sumsky
Dragoons flogged him as usual, and their officer, finding him still
alive, asked why they had not finished him off. An infantry officer
who was standing by, took the news to the father, and he appealed to
the Governor in person, asking only that the guard to take his son to
prison should be composed of Moscow infantry and not of dragoons. The
Governor replied that of course his request should be granted, and
every consideration shown. Nevertheless, it was dragoons who formed
the guard, and the boy never reached the prison alive.
Rumours reached us also about the fate of the revolutionists who had
walked away into the country or afterwards escaped by train. I found
some of them as prisoners a few weeks afterwards, at a long distance
from Moscow; but many were overtaken on the road or shot by soldiers
at the stations. The Semenoffsky Guards especially distinguished
themselves by their zeal in hunting them down, and their exultation
in the slaughter; but considerable allowance must be made for them,
because they had not been given a chance of slaughtering the Japanese,
and like all brave soldiers they naturally pined for active service.
[Illustration: DUBASOFF’S ROLL-CALL.
From _Burelom_ (_The Storm_).]
So much for the men and women who had dared to strike for liberty.
But having extinguished their efforts, Admiral Dubasoff devised a
further method for discouraging the growth of Liberal opinions in the
future--a method much applauded by the supporters of law and order, who
hailed it as an admirable means of bringing ridicule upon the whole
revolutionary cause. He ordered the police to arrest all suspected boys
and girls in the Moscow schools and bring them to the police-stations.
There they were handed over to soldiers, who stripped them, and, if
they were under fifteen, beat them with their hands. Between fifteen
and eighteen, the girls and boys alike were stripped and beaten with
rods, though the girls received only five strokes and the boys
twelve. I was told of this new device by reactionaries who had heard
it from police-officers, knew of cases in which it had been carried
out, and admired its admixture of sensuality with cruelty as likely
to keep young people in their places for the future. But I could not
help wondering how long a government in England would last if it handed
grown girls over to soldiers to be stripped and flogged because they
were suspected of Liberal opinions. I wondered also whether our own
people who were then beginning to ridicule the revolutionists, and
to welcome the restoration of order, ever in the least realized what
is meant by order under Russian rule. And I wondered most of all how
Frenchmen could still be found to advance money for the support of such
a Government. But investors have neither pity nor shame.
In the midst of these scenes came the Russian Christmas Day (January
7th). It was celebrated as usual with superb ceremony in the enormous
church of Christ the Saviour, which stands in the west of the city,
above the river. Soon after dawn the people began to assemble, and by
ten o’clock the vast space under the domes was packed with crowds,
all standing up, except when, here and there, a man or woman forced
the neighbours to make room for prostration on the floor. Bodies of
troops stood at every corner round the building. The Governor-General
arrived, the military staff arrived, the scene was radiant with
uniforms. In any case, the ceremony is half military, for the great
church of Christ the Saviour was built to commemorate Napoleon’s
retreat. But it was not of Napoleon that the heroes of massacre were
thinking that day.
The service began. In the centre, under the dome, stood a
bishop--perhaps an archbishop--with gleaming mitre, his robes stiff
with gold, his appealing arms supported by gorgeous priests. Between
him and the altar veiled books were carried to and fro, books were
brought with an escort of priests to be kissed, or were read in the
unintelligible mutter of solemnity. Long-haired figures bore candles
up and down; the bishop raised two candles high in air, crossing them
so that they guttered down his robes, while he turned to the compass
points of the church, to bestow his blessing upon all. Old priests and
young, glittering in the uniforms of holiness, came to kiss his hands.
In splendid humility he was supported to the altar. A veiled basin was
brought for him to wash in. A golden priest knelt with the sacred towel
hanging round his neck. The bishop washed, and upon the golden priest’s
neck he replaced the sacred towel. The Re-incarnation of Christ
began. On each side of the altar a choir of boys and men, apparelled
in scarlet and black and gold, raised the glory of Russian music in
alternate chant. From arch to arch ran the gleam of the kindling
tapers till the marble walls and gilded capitals shone with points of
fire.
Muttering and sobbing with devotion, the masses of mankind swayed up
and down, as they bowed and crossed themselves in the gloom below.
Struggling to touch the polished pavement with their foreheads, they
fell upon the ground. The boom of distant bells was heard; a small
bell tinkled close at hand. In front of the altar stood a black-maned
priest, and with uplifted arm and upturned face, he called upon Christ.
He called and called again, his immense voice bellowing round the
cathedral, as though an organ had been wrought up to full power and one
great note held firmly down. So he called upon Christ to come--Christ
the Saviour, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace.