A RUSSIAN INTERLUDE
Odessa, like the rest of the Ukraine, had exchanged Bolshevism for
Austro-German domination and confiscation. Already, when we passed
through the docks, it was easy to see who were the masters. Austrian
customs officers controlled the quays; Austrian and German soldiers
guarded the storehouses; Austrian sentries stood at the dock gates and
sometimes demanded to see civilians' passports. Had we not been vouched
for by the uniforms of the _Batoum_'s third engineer and third mate,
the sentries might well have stopped White and me.
Once outside the gates we hired a cab, and drove to an address given us
by Mr. S.--that of the sister and the mother of a Russian professor at
Robert College, Constantinople. Arrived there, we left Josef and
Kulman, with very sincere expressions of goodwill.
The professor's sister received us cordially but calmly, as if it were
an everyday event for two down-at-heel British officers to drop on her
from the skies with a letter of introduction but without the least
warning.
"Why, only three days ago," she related, "two officers of the Russian
Imperial Army arrived here under like circumstances. They made their
way from Petrograd, through the Soviet territory. They now occupy the
room below ours."
Once again Providence seemed to have played into our hands; for when
these ex-officers were asked how best we could live in the
German-occupied city, they produced the two false passports by means of
which they had travelled through Bolshevist Russia. They now lived in
the Ukraine under their own names and with their own identity papers;
and the false passports, no longer necessary to them, they handed to
White and me.
Without passports we could scarcely have found lodging or rations, for
every non-Ukrainian in Odessa had to register with the Austrian
authorities. Tom White, therefore, became Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff,
originally from Turkestan, and I became Evgeni Nestorovitch Genko, a
Lett from Riga. This origin suited me very well; for the Letts,
although former subjects of Imperial Russia, can mostly speak the
German patois of the Baltic Provinces. My passport made me a young
bachelor, but White's allotted him a missing wife named Anastasia, aged
nineteen.
There were still in Odessa a few British subjects who had remained
through the dreadful days of the Bolshevist occupation and the more
peaceful Austro-German régime. It happened that the professor's sister
knew one of them, a leather manufacturer named Hatton. In his house we
found refuge until other arrangements could be made. Like most people
in Odessa, he showed us every kindness in his power, as did his Russian
wife and her relations. It was, however, unwise to remain for long with
an Englishman, for he himself would have been imprisoned if the
Austrians discovered that he was harbouring two British officers.
The professor's sister played providence yet again, and produced
another invaluable friend--one Vladimir Franzovitch B., a hard-up
lieutenant in the Ukrainian artillery. Vladimir Franzovitch lived in
two small rooms. The larger one he shared with us, there being just
room enough for three camp beds placed side by side and touching each
other. The second room was occupied by his mistress.
Obviously the situation had its drawbacks. It also had its advantages,
as the rooms were in one of the city's poorest quarters. The
neighbours, therefore, included no enemy soldiers, for the Germans and
Austrians had naturally spread themselves over the more comfortable
districts.
The _dvornik_ was an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard, with a bitter
hatred of Bolshevism and all its works. The tale which Vladimir
Franzovitch told of us--that we were English civilians escaped from
Moscow--was in itself a guarantee that he would befriend us. He took
our false passports to the food commissioners, and thus obtained bread
and sugar rations for Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff and Evgeni
Nestorovitch Genko.
Our principal interest was now in the news from Bulgaria, for on it
hinged our future movements. We visited Hatton each day to obtain
translations from the local press. These I supplemented from the
two-day-old newspapers of Lemberg and Vienna, bought at the kiosk.
The Bulgarian armistice was an accomplished fact, but the German troops
had been given a month to leave Bulgaria. Our problem was whether to
remain in Odessa until the end of this month and then try to make for
Bulgaria, or to leave for Siberia at once.
Wilkowsky all but tipped the scales in favour of Siberia. He arrived
suddenly from Constantinople, having hidden on a steamer that weighed
anchor a few days after the _Batoum's_ departure. From being a
penniless prisoner, without even the means of corresponding with his
family, he was now prosperous and comfortable; for his father was a
wealthy lawyer living in Odessa, and his uncle Minister of Justice in
Skoropadsky's Ukrainian Cabinet.
Among his friends was the local commissary of General Denikin, whose
volunteer army, composed of Kuban Cossacks and ex-officers of the
Imperial Army, was preparing to advance against the Bolshevist forces
in the Caucasus. Every few days the commissary sent a party of
ex-officers, by way of Novorosisk, to the volunteer Army Headquarters
at Ekaterinodar. General Denikin was hoping for aid from the Allies; so
that the commissary was delighted at the chance of enlisting two
British aviators. His offer was that we should fly with Denikin's army
for a few weeks and help to organize the Flying Corps, after which we
could proceed by aeroplane to some Allied detachment in Siberia.
The adventure seemed attractive, and we hesitated over it. But illness
took the decision from our hands. I was laid low by yellow jaundice,
and unable to travel with the next party that left for Novorosisk.
Weakened as I was by various forms of hardship, several days passed
before I recovered, under the kind-hearted ministrations of Elena
Stepanovna, Hatton's Russian wife.
The aftermath of jaundice once brought us what we least
desired--conspicuousness. In hot weather the Russians living around the
Black Sea bathe from the beach in the altogether. There, men's bathing
costumes attract almost as much attention as would a lack of them at
Brighton or Atlantic City. Hatton, White, and I formed a bathing party
soon after I felt better. Until we were crossing the beach below the
public gardens none of us realized that the colour of my skin was still
a warm yellow. The spectacle of a yellow man in all his nakedness drew
many sightseers from the gardens, including Austrian soldiers. I
dressed under cover of a rock, and lost no time in leaving the gardens.
No sooner was I free from jaundice than fate sent another setback.
White and I succumbed to the plague of influenza which swept across
Europe from west to east, and which in one week killed forty thousand
inhabitants of Odessa. For three days we lay in Vladimir Franzovitch's
little room, weak, feverish, miserable, and at times light-headed,
while his mistress fed us with milk and heaped every kind of clothing
over us for warmth.
Recovery was hastened by the best possible tonic--news that the way to
Varna, on the Bulgarian coast, was open to us. Thanks were due to
several good friends for this means to freedom. Hatton had introduced
us to a cosmopolitan Britisher named Waite, who enlisted the help of
Louis Demy, a Russian sea-captain. Demy spoke of us to Commodore
Wolkenau, the Ukrainian officer who, under the Austrians, controlled
the shipping at Odessa. Wolkenau, having been an officer of the Russian
Imperial Navy, was a good friend of the British. Moreover, the daily
bulletins made it apparent that the Allies were winning the war, so
that he was glad of an opportunity to prove his sympathies by helping
British officers. He arranged for our passage on a Red Cross ship which
was to repatriate Russian prisoners from Austria, now waiting at Varna.
Meantime, there was an interval of ten days' waiting before the boat
would sail. These we passed in moving about the city, in consorting
with Ukrainian officers and officials introduced by Wilkowsky, and in
collecting information likely to be of use to the British Intelligence
Department.
Our usual companion was one Pat O'Flaherty, an Irishman on the staff of
the Eastern Telegraph Company, who had stayed in Odessa during the
Bolshevist and Austro-German occupations. Entering a café with
O'Flaherty was like a blindfold draw in a sweepstake of identities.
Always he met friends; but until the moment of introduction neither we
nor he knew how or as what we were to be presented. To one man we were
merchants from Nikolaieff; to another, motor-car agents from Moscow; to
a third oil experts returned from Baku.
"Signor Califatti," said O'Flaherty on one occasion, presenting me to a
wealthy Jewish speculator.
"When he was at Nijni Novgorod Fair," he continued in all seriousness,
"Signor Califatti bought a beautiful fur overcoat. He now wants to sell
it. Perhaps you would like to buy it."
The Jew offered a thousand roubles for the mythical overcoat, provided
it conformed to the Irishman's declaration that it was of first-class
astrakhan, in four skins; while White and I remained speechless with
astonishment, embarrassment, and the desire to grin.
In those days the Bolsheviki of Odessa, after months of suppression by
the German Military Command, were beginning to raise their heads again.
There was much talk of a withdrawal of German and Austrian troops from
the Ukraine, to reinforce the French and Italian fronts. The Bolsheviki
were ready, if this happened, to rise up and capture the city.
The possession of arms by civilians was strictly forbidden, and any man
found in the streets with a revolver was liable to be shot offhand by
Austrian soldiers or Ukrainian gendarmes. But the Bolsheviki laughed at
the many proclamations anent the handing over of firearms. They hid
rifles, revolvers, and ammunition in cellars and attics, or buried them
in the ground.
Many of our neighbours in the working-class quarter were Bolsheviki.
Often they scowled at and threatened Vladimir Franzovitch, as he passed
them in his uniform of a lieutenant of the Ukrainian artillery; and it
was evident that when the Austrians withdrew our room would be rather
more dangerous as a home than a powder factory threatened by fire.
The consul of Soviet Russia was preparing lists of men willing to serve
in the corps of Red Guards that had been planned, and was spending
hundreds of thousands of roubles in propaganda. An immediate rising was
threatened; whereupon Austrian and Ukrainian military police surrounded
the consulate, captured the lists, and arrested and imprisoned the
consul and two hundred Bolsheviki who had given their names as
prospective Red Guards. Sixty of them were shot.
Even that lesson failed to frighten the half-starved men who lurked in
the poorer quarters. Often, in the evening, they haunted the streets in
small gangs that held up passers-by and stripped them of their
pocket-books and watches, and sometimes of their clothes.
The ugliest aspect of an ugly situation was that many soldiers of the
Austrian forces, particularly the Magyars and the Poles, sympathized
with the Bolsheviki, and were ready to join them, exchanging uniform
for looted civilian suits if the troops were withdrawn. The sudden
realization that Austria was beaten, coupled with hatred of Austrian
Imperialism, went to their heads like new wine. They foresaw an era in
which the working man and the private soldier would grab whatever they
wanted. Bands of Hungarian privates proved their belief in this
millennium by sacking the warehouses in the docks under cover of night.
Odessa was overfull of members of the bourgeoisie who had flocked to
what they regarded as the last refuge against Bolshevism in European
Russia. Refugees had swelled the population from six hundred thousand
to a million and a half. The middle classes--professional men,
merchants, traders, and speculators--knew they were living on the edge
of a volcano, and tried to drown the knowledge in reckless revelry.
Each evening parties costing thousands of roubles were given in the
restaurants. Wine and vodka, as aids to forgetfulness of the fear that
hovered over every feast, were well worth their sixty roubles a bottle.
Their orgy of speculation in inflated prices and their mock merriment
left the bourgeoisie neither time nor energy to take action against the
horrors that threatened them. In general they adopted a pose of
fatalistic apathy, and tried hard to soothe themselves into the belief
that the Allies would save them, since they would not save themselves.
For the rest they laughed hysterically, speculated unceasingly, and
talked charmingly and interminably.
The only serious preparation against a renewal of the Red Terror in
Odessa was made by ex-officers, who banded themselves into a
semi-official corps. But they possessed few arms and less ammunition.
Even the official forces of the Ukraine could place only a dozen
small-calibre guns round Odessa, and were obliged to be content with
one rifle between two or three men. In any case, the loyalty of the
private soldiers in the small Ukrainian army was a doubtful quantity,
and unlikely to be proof against the temptations of rich loot and
rapine.
Small arms were worth their weight in silver. Vladimir Franzovitch,
discovering that White and I possessed German revolvers, implored us to
sell them to him before we left. He offered thirty pounds apiece for
them. In Constantinople we had bought them for eight pounds each, and
in England they would have cost less than forty shillings.
Vladimir Franzovitch was weighed down by the most extreme pessimism
over the future of Russia.
"We cannot be a nation again for a hundred years," he said. "The people
are either revelling in brute-instinct, drunk with the strong wine of a
spurious and half-understood idealism, or are dying in their thousands
of starvation. Most of the strong men who might have helped to save the
country have been killed, and the bourgeoisie folds its arms and awaits
destruction in sheep-like inaction."
He saw but one hope--the Cossacks and officers who were rallying,
through incredible hardships, to Denikin's army in the Caucasus; and
Denikin could make no important move unless the Allies backed him with
arms and munitions. Until this happened his small army would be but an
oasis in the desert of hopelessness.
We were present at several gatherings of officers, in Vladimir
Franzovitch's room. Over bread and salted fish, washed down by tea,
they discussed the black past and the blacker future. From them we
heard awful tales of massacres and looting during the Bolshevist
domination over the Black Sea regions. Of these the most dreadful was
that of the cruiser _Almaz_. There have been published many imaginative
reports of Bolshevist massacres; but for horror these are equalled by
many true stories that have never been fully told, and never will be
until the veil of isolation is lifted and the seeker after truth is
free to gather his information at first-hand.
I have every reason to believe the story of the _Almaz_. It was vouched
for not only by Vladimir Franzovitch and other Russians whom we met in
Odessa, but by Englishmen who were living in the city at the time, and
are now back in England. Moreover, it is perpetuated in a local song
similar to those of the French Revolution.
The Bolsheviki who first occupied Odessa, in the early spring of 1918,
made their headquarters on the cruiser _Almaz_. Their first batch of
arrests comprised about two hundred officers, with a few officials and
other civilians. These were taken to the _Almaz_, and lined up on the
deck. Each man in turn was asked: "Would you prefer a hot bath or a
cold?" Those that chose a cold bath were thrown into the Black Sea,
with weights tied to their feet. Those that said "hot" were stoked into
the furnaces--alive.
Later, one Murravieff, believed to have been formerly a _agent
provocateur_ of the Tsarist secret police, came to Odessa as Bolsheviki
commissary. He divided the city into four sections and the Red Guards
into four parties, each of which was allotted its particular district
for three days of licensed looting. The Saturnalia was due to begin in
three days' time, when the first Austro-Hungarian detachment landed to
restore order, in response to the Ukrainian Provisional Government's
invitation. Many of the looters were rounded up and shot; but the
Bolsheviki leaders, including Murravieff and several Jews, escaped with
millions of roubles, commandeered from the bank reserves. Murravieff
afterward had the decency to commit suicide, but his Jewish colleagues
continued to flourish in Soviet Russia.
Odessa had a respite from Bolshevist domination until the tragedy of
March, 1919. Then, after a period of occupation by an insufficient
Franco-Greek force, the city was evacuated in the face of an army of
Soviet troops. Credible eye-witnesses report the massacre of three
thousand people within a few days of Odessa's recapture by the
Bolsheviks.
For all I know to the contrary, Lenin--despite the proved and damning
evidence of past connections with the German Kaiser's penetration
agents and the Russian Tsar's police agents--may be an intellectual
idealist who considers all means justifiable in establishing a form of
communism that may eventually better the world. But I do know with
certainty that Bolshevism, as practised locally in Russia by unthinking
hordes who are not and do not pretend to be intellectual idealists,
means universal injustice, flagrant robbery, senseless, butchery, and a
tyranny at least equal to that of Ivan the Terrible or any Oriental
despot. All the writings of biased minority mongers who have confined
their investigations to consorting with Soviet officials at Moscow and
Petrograd, all the blinkered sympathy of labour agitators who devote
their lives to fostering a diabolic discontent, all the chirruping of
the mentally perverted women and men who, at a safe distance of
thousands of miles from actuality, have adopted theoretical Bolshevism
as the latest fashion in parlour enthusiasms, cannot condone the fact.
Money and life were the only cheap commodities in Odessa. Paper roubles
of every denomination--Imperial notes, Kerensky notes, Ukrainian notes,
and Municipal notes--they were in scores and hundreds of thousands; and
each issue was trailed by several kinds of forgery, so that only an
expert could tell the true from the false.
Everything else was rare, and wildly expensive. Meat was ten, weak tea
a hundred and ten roubles a pound. New suits of clothes were
unobtainable at any price, for there was no cloth. Second-hand clothes
could be bought in the Jewish market, where the dealers demanded from
eight hundred roubles for a shoddy suit and from five hundred for an
overcoat. A collar cost eight roubles; a handkerchief four. Other
prices were proportionate.
Seven-eighths of the factories were idle. As for the rich grain lands
of the Ukraine, about three-quarters of their produce went to Austria
and Germany, this being the price paid by Skoropadsky's government for
the policing of the Ukrainian Republic.
The colossal price of things was due as much to Jewish speculation as
to scarcity. Everything for sale passed through the hands of a
succession of middlemen before it reached the public. A consignment
from Austria or Germany, or the produce of a local factory, would be
bought by one speculator, sold to another, re-sold to a third, and
perhaps to a fourth and a fifth. Each of the middlemen would allot
himself a profit of from twenty to two hundred per cent. The same
process was applied to the boots, foodstuffs, and equipment which
Austrian officers and soldiers stole from their military stores and
sold to the speculators.
All day long Franconi's and Robinart's, the two principal cafés of
Odessa, were infested by swarms of swarthy Jews, who wandered from
table to table, selling and re-selling, and piling up enormous fortunes
in paper roubles. And elsewhere in the city hundreds of thousands of
Russians were in little more than rags, many thousands of them half
dead from want of nourishment.
As they passed the cafés where the Jews sat and haggled and made it
ever more difficult for the half-starved masses to keep alive, the
poorer Russians talked of pogroms. The talk culminated later, when the
Germans and Austrians had withdrawn from Odessa, in massacres of the
less prosperous Jews, while the richer ones, who were the real
promoters of discord, were warned in time and stole away with their
wealth; as always happens when pogroms are threatened. The actions of
the Ukrainian Jews during the Austro-German occupation provided a very
typical instance of the provocative part played by the Jews of Eastern
Europe. The Hebrew--more calculating and infinitely more cunning than
the Slav peasant and workman--ties, binds, and enmeshes him in a web of
usury, speculation, mortgage, and irksome liability; until the Slav,
goaded beyond his powers of endurance by the men who prey on his
instability and ignorance, rises up and seeks a solution in regrettable
violence.
* * * * *
Glorious news heartened White and myself during the period of waiting
for the Red Cross ship to sail. Each morning we walked down the
principal street of Odessa until we reached Austrian Headquarters,
outside of which were posted the daily official and press bulletins
written in German. I mingled with the crowd before the notice board
while White looked in a shop window until I rejoined him and related
the latest Allied victory--the capture of Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, La
Bassée, Ostend, or the final phases of Allenby's advance in Syria. With
Hatton, Waite, and other Britishers we rejoiced greatly in private;
while the German soldiers became glummer and glummer, and the Austrian
officers lost a portion of their corseted poise as they strutted,
peacock-wise, along the boulevards.
The Russian bourgeoisie remained apathetic as ever. Their main interest
in the prospect of a general armistice seemed to be the probable effect
on prices, and on the rouble's value, of the expected arrival of the
British. As for our Bolshevist neighbours, they continued to unearth
and clean their rifles and revolvers; while the corps of ex-officers
drilled, and planned defence works outside Odessa.
Under cover of dusk we slipped past the Austrian sentry at the dock
gates on the evening before the Red Cross ship left for Varna, and
boarded her. Louis Demy and Pat O'Flaherty accompanied us as far as the
gangway.
We remained hidden throughout the night, and only ventured into the
open when, at ten o'clock in the morning, we steamed out of the
wide-curved harbour to the open sea.