REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY
Ex-Tsar Nicholas and two able-bodied assistants could have conducted
a successful counter-revolution on December 25, 1917. But the Tsar,
whatever else may be said of him, was a Russian, so he was otherwise
engaged.
On a holiday no Russian, high or low, orthodox, old believer or
unbeliever, Jew or Gentile, has time for anything but play. The Russian
calendar, lagging nearly two weeks behind the schedule of western
Europe, provided the foreigners with a double portion of festivity. In
the midst of war and revolution, we not only celebrated Christmas, but
we celebrated it twice.
To my sunshine-fed California soul, that Christmas stepped ready-made
from a fairy tale. The lazy lie-abed sun doesn’t get up until nearly
noon, and before the afternoon is half gone it has brushed the snow
with streaks of coral and rose, and departed, leaving a glowing memory
painted upon the horizon.
Petrograd, before she puts on her white cloak of winter, is just a bit
shabby. The red and yellow stucco palaces could do with a new coat of
paint. Here and there the plaster is badly in need of patching, and
the ornate scroll-saw ruffles around the buildings are pathetically
like cheap lace. When the beauty of winter comes toppling out of the
heavens, she stretches her arms and catches it all. The snow piles
in billows on roofs and chimneys, and the icicles hang like crystal
fringes from the woodwork. Against the background of the white snow,
the faded yellows and the bricky reds become warm and glowing. The
little trees in the palace courtyards, stripped of leaves and clothed
in swan’s feathers, are like ghosts or shadows of trees, so vague and
frail they are.
Christmas against such a background must have elements of beauty,
however empty the shops or troubled the people. Vera and Ivan take
their play-time seriously. Because they wept yesterday and die
to-morrow, they play the more lustily to-day. Though revolution
raged, machine-guns rattled, and cabinets fell, the ballet pursued
its uninterrupted course to the end of the season. At the Marinsky
Theater, Karsavina and Smirnova fought to hold the honors of the dance
against all new comers, and Shalyapin sang the parts that made him
famous in the days of Nicholas with all his accustomed gusto. When the
proper time arrived, the winter slides for the children were put in
their usual places in the parks, and until the snows came the “American
mountain” (roller-coaster) in the Russian Coney Island had done a
record-smashing business.
Of course they would celebrate Christmas--revolution or no revolution!
It never occurred to any one that it might be otherwise.
As the date of our holiday drew near, my Russian friends plied me with
questions. To the chef of the Hotel Europe, an American mince pie was
a riddle without an answer. The Red Cross Mission gave a luncheon for
the American correspondents Christmas Day, and Major Allen Wardwell and
I were commissioned to go shopping. Colonel Robins suggested turkey,
mince pie, and a Christmas tree as desirable trimmings, and we had
great fun and many adventures achieving them.
The luncheon table was set in a large, high-ceilinged room with red
velvet hangings. A crackling fire blazed on the hearth, and in the
center of the table a gleaming tree stepped from a mossy bed of crimson
tulips. We pulled down the blinds and shut out war and revolution,
while we laughed merrily over the Russian conception of mince pie, and
wondered secretly, each in his own terms, what they were doing off
there across the world at home.
Major Thatcher and Major Webster had the bad judgment to choose that
day upon which to go to bed with colds, so we had a second celebration
in their rooms. On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at the old
police station to leave a book and a “Merry Christmas” for Jacob Peters.
“It’s a Christmas box,” he said, a wistful smile lighting his tired
face. He was weary and disillusioned and hungry for an open fireplace,
his little girl, and his British “missis.” “There is nothing in the
world like an English Christmas,” he said.
We talked for a few minutes, then I hurried back to the hotel to dress.
In the National City Bank Building, that night, the whole American
colony came out to celebrate Christmas. That party was a triumph,
taxing all the ingenuity of a clever woman and half a dozen resourceful
men. It was a supper dance, and the miracle of providing food for two
hundred people with Petrograd’s cupboard stripped almost bare was a
real achievement. The presiding genius was Mrs. Mildred Farwell, an
American who quietly did any number of nice things not only for the
Americans, but for many poor stranded Russians whose lives had unfitted
them to meet the topsy-turvy order.
All Russia contributed to load the buffet with eatables of the “kind
that mother used to make,” and many a Russian cook was a wiser person
before the party was over. They brought baking powder from Vladivostok,
six thousand versts away, to make American layer cakes. The eggs came
from Pskoff, up near the Russian front. The Ambassador’s pantry was
robbed of its white flour. And the turkeys came from heaven knows
where.
In the days before the war the National City Bank Building was the
Turkish Embassy, and for a night it took on all its former glory.
The huge mirrors reflected a whirling company of women in shimmering
frocks and men whose evening clothes had not been out of their creases
for many a day. There was a balalika band, and between one-steps and
waltzes couples chattered in palm-secluded corners. Not a speech was
made that night. Mrs. Farwell was determined that we should play, and
play we did.
December 25 on the Russian calendar fell on Monday. Sunday morning I
crossed the Neva with a friend, and drove to the quiet woods out on
the islands. It was a favorite haunt of mine; for here winter, whose
mysteries I was discovering for the first time, was at its best. The
bough-bent pines and spruces groaned beneath the white weight upon
their outstretched arms, and the deserted forests were big, silent, and
untroubled.
To-day the woods came marching toward me. Along the sidewalk a
procession of shabby men and worn-looking women hurried homeward, and
over the shoulder of each was a tiny tree. In the forest we found the
scars--lovely pines clipped off at the top, baby spruces cut off at
the roots, familiar families broken up.
“It’s a shame,” said my companion warmly. “It’s vandalism, nothing
else.”
At first I too could see only the scars there in the great whiteness.
Then it was night, and through the windows of Petrograd I saw the
trees. They were candle-lighted, and the shining eyes of little
children looked upon them with delight.
“It’s the price,” I said. “A different destiny, but who knows--perhaps
a happier one. Perhaps it is better to make the gift of a glorious
hour, to find immortality in the memory of a child, than to live on to
a green old age.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
That afternoon, along the Sadovaya, where peasant women and crippled
soldiers sold herrings and candles, apples and sausages, crude toys and
painted cradles, sugarless candy and ugly dolls, I found the mothers
of Petrograd pathetically trying to contribute to that hour. They paid
thirty rubles a dozen for tiny apples, and twelve rubles a pound for
candy. It was a lean Christmas, but it was Christmas nevertheless. The
world stopped for three days; war, revolution, hunger, mattered not.
All of them must make way for Christmas. The restaurants and the hotel
dining-rooms were closed, and, unless we had taken the precaution to
lay in a supply of sardines beforehand, or had friends with a farther
vision than our own, we might have gone hungry.
At midnight Christmas Eve I crossed the square to St. Isaac’s for
the Christmas service. The church was deserted. I stood alone in the
dark under the towering columns, waiting; but nobody came. Back in
the hotel, I discovered that the service was to be at four in the
morning. At four, with some friends, I returned. This time the church
was lighted, and the priests were there in their gold robes. There was
a table where communion bread and candles were for sale. We bought
the bread and the candles, and listened while the rich, deep voices
of the priests sang the holiday mass. In other days that church had
been packed. This morning it was practically empty. A few servant
girls, a few soldiers, here and there a tired mother with four or
five children--that was all. They were celebrating, but not in the
cathedrals.
We went back to the hotel to make tea and to fight the battles of the
world--religion, economics, wars, and all the rest of it--until seven
o’clock. At the Europe that night we relit the tree, and sat around the
fire, talking of home.
During the holiday week all of Petrograd went to the ballet, or the
opera, or some other place of amusement within its means. There were
morning matinées and afternoon matinées and festival performances of
all sorts.
One afternoon we had a box at the Marinsky Theater. The ballet was “The
Hunchback Horse.” The old Russian fairy tale, in its wonderful Bakst
setting, was done as it is done in Petrograd and nowhere else. Another
night it was a festival performance of Glinka’s opera, “Russlan and
Ludmilla,” celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of its initial
production. Shalyapin sang, and there was a gorgeous ballet with
costumes that must have come from the treasure-chests of ancient nobles.
Another afternoon I was going with Edgar Sisson, Arthur Bullard, and
some other Americans to hear “Boris Gudonof.” I arrived at the theater,
and found myself sole occupant of the box. I sat there, wondering what
had happened to every one else and turning possible revolutions over
in my mind, when a messenger arrived with word that a message from
President Wilson was coming over the wires.
It was the thing for which we in Petrograd had hoped above everything
else in the world. Russia in that hour seemed utterly alone. She had
been pleading with the other powers to state their war aims and to come
to a peace conference, but they had remained silent. At last America
was speaking. The message came in fragments, a bit here and a bit
there. It was two days before we had the full text; but we knew from
the first paragraph that President Wilson was sounding Russia’s right
to the friendship and the protection of our country.
There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle
and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more
compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled
air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people.
They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the
grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no
pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered, and yet their soul is not
subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action.
The conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for
them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view,
a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must
challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have
refused to compound their ideas or desert others that they themselves
may be safe. They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in
what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differs from theirs;
and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to
respond with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present
leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that
some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the
people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered
peace.
All that week Russia celebrated busily and gaily. On New Year’s Eve I
found myself at the peasants’ headquarters on the Fontanka Canal. There
were about a hundred of us crowded together in a small room to watch
the New Year come to Petrograd. Marie Spiridonova was our hostess.
We sat on benches at long tables, and ate soup, roast pig, meat
cutlets, and Russian pasties made of light bread and filled with
chopped cabbage and chopped meat.
The room was lit with candles planted in the necks of bottles or poised
upon the pointed spears of desk-files. In one corner was a Christmas
tree, a sad little tree with crude red crape paper ornaments and
anemic-looking candles. Outside the door, lighting the hall, where from
time to time we adjourned to dance the Russian waltz or the mazurka,
was a single kerosene lamp.
Beside me sat a pale-faced girl with short hair, deep circles beneath
her eyes, and that look of utter exhaustion which characterized all the
revolutionists in those disappointing days full of the weary work of
trying to make reality match dreams.
At the end of the table was a typical great Russian peasant, his gray
belted blouse buttoned beneath a shaggy growth of blond beard, his
round blue eyes wide with questions. The toast-master was a Russian Jew
with the face of a poet or a musician. The year before he would not
have been allowed to live in certain parts of Petrograd unless he paid
a bribe to some official for overlooking the fact of his race. This
hour was his. Whatever the new year might hold, he had been a free
man among men. A year since he had been an exile in a strange land,
and “free Russia” a shadowy dream. A year hence-- No one could say; no
one could think that far. They took the moment, conscious of all its
possibilities, and gloried in it.
It was a strange evening’s entertainment--an odd but typical Russian
mixture of comedy and tragedy. They made speeches, and parodied the
eloquence of the day by talking a strange and meaningless jumble of
words, switching with lightning rapidity from one topic to another,
while the crowd rocked with laughter at the strange effects they
produced. Just at the merriest moment, when the Minister of Posts and
Telegraphs had been tried and found guilty of a number of amusing
offenses against the Revolution, and the company had voted to deprive
him of his _sladky_ (dessert), some one proposed that they sing
the hymn of eternal memory to the comrades who had fallen in the
Revolution. Silently they stood, and, while the church bells outside
chimed a requiem to the great red year of tragedy and glory, they sang
the solemn tribute to their dead.
Marie Spiridonova went from table to table, trying to make the strange
ones feel at home. She was sitting beside me, quietly talking, when a
sudden murmur ran through the crowd and a flare of light touched the
ceiling. We looked up to find the doorway filled with flames. The lamp
had caught fire. The little revolutionist made a bound toward it, and
threw a coat over the burning mass. The spirit of panic had run like
flames through the room, and at least half of the occupants were on
their feet, rushing for the door. Spiridonova lifted her tiny hands
and waved them as I have seen her do so many times in the peasants’
conventions.
“Tavarischi! Tavarischi! Tiche! Tiche!” she cried, and they settled
quietly back in their places.
On New Year’s night the first volunteer army of the Revolution left
Petrograd for the front. They gathered in the Mikhailovsky Menage,
which has seen many strange meetings in the revolutionary year. In the
old days the aristocracy came here to watch “officers and gentlemen”
take part in riding competitions. Since the war it has been used as
a garage for armored motor-cars, and many a sharp contest between
revolutionary leaders took place here. The meeting was called for two
o’clock, and Nicolai Lenin was to review the forces. As usual, it was
seven before the ceremonies started. Two armored cars, decorated with
evergreens and red banners, stood watch at the entrance. Inside a third
armored car had been trimmed for use as a tribunal. On either side of
the huge building were rows of formidable mud-colored motors.
The place was swarming with men. They were a tatterdemalion lot, who
made up in spirit what they lacked in equipment. There were a few
soldiers among them, but most of them were factory workers. They had no
uniforms, no blankets; some of them wore short jackets and some of them
long coats. They were going they knew not where, but going to fight
the foes of revolution. Their tin pails and meager packs were strapped
to their backs or tied on with rope or string, and each man’s most
precious possession was his rifle. They were bound for the trenches,
to fill up the gaps left by deserting soldiers. Most of them were
undersized; some were mere boys; but all were fired with faith in their
cause.
[Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman “It was a dangerous partnership, for
when the state fell the church tottered also”]
[Illustration: New Russia votes for the Constituent Assembly]
[Illustration: Young Russia makes revolutionary demonstration at school]
Dark settled early upon the big garage. By four o’clock it was quite
black. For a while we stood there, unable to distinguish one face
from another, listening to them sing. Then candles were brought. One
man came with a balalika, another with a tambourine, a third with
an accordion. They struck up a lively village tune, and a couple of
soldiers, packs and guns still on their backs, began to dance. A ring
was quickly formed, and, one after another, the men from the various
provinces clicked off the favorite dances of their villages. Three
times the word came that Lenin had arrived, and the men lined up to
salute him. Each time it was a false alarm, and they went back to their
dancing.
At last he came, and a mighty cheer went up. His brown eyes were
shining, and the chill winter evening had painted two bright spots upon
his cheeks. He wore a black fur cap and a black overcoat, and there
was a brisk, pleasant cheeriness about him that the rogues’-gallery
pictures of him do not suggest.
“He looks like a prosperous French bourgeois banker,” said an
Englishman standing beside me.
“No,” I answered; “more like a contented Irishman behind a freshly
filled pipe.”
I was standing beside the tribunal, and he stopped to shake hands with
me before he climbed to the improvised platform. He spoke briefly,
telling the men that the fate of the Revolution was in their hands and
they must guard it against all foes. He spoke well, but without the
eloquence with which I had seen Trotzky sweep so many crowds.
When he had finished, the chairman asked Albert Williams to speak.
He had been studying Russian strenuously, and decided to try to talk
to the men in their own language. They were as delighted as children
over his effort, and when he began groping frantically for a word,
Lenin laughingly supplied it. When he finished they cheered him until
the building rocked. He had stolen the honors from the Commissary of
Commissaries, and none was more pleased than Lenin himself.
He talked with us for a few minutes, then drove away in a closed
limousine with two or three other men. He had hardly got out of sight
when a bullet came crashing through the windows of his car and whizzed
over his head. A man sitting beside him was slightly injured, but Lenin
was unhurt. It was the first of many attempts upon his life. No one
ever knew who had fired the shot. The next holiday date on the Russian
calendar was January 8. That was the day of the “Blessing of the
Waters.” Except for the great Easter, there was formerly no holier day
in all of Holy Russia. All over the Empire the people, from the Tsar in
the Winter Palace to the simplest peasant in the most remote village,
always turned out in festival processions. The priests, in splendid
robes, with painted ikons and silken banners held aloft, marched to the
banks of the frozen rivers, followed by the singing multitudes. This
year the great day passed unnoticed.
At the appointed hour for the ceremony I left the War Hotel and crossed
the square to the huge St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I looked through the door
into a vast empty cavern. I made my way toward the Neva. There was no
procession in sight. Not a living thing was abroad on the banks of
the river. Instead of the usual mighty gathering, a handful of people,
perhaps a dozen at most, had started out, grown discouraged, and turned
back. For the first time in the memory of the oldest peasant in Russia,
the waters went unblessed.
It was a significant fact. When the Tsar crashed down from his throne
in March, he carried more with him than the rest of the world dreamed
at that moment. His picture shared a place on the wall beside the
sacred ikon. He represented on earth that which God represented in
heaven. It was a dangerous partnership; for when the state fell, the
Church tottered also.
The Russian Church of the past was on the side of the established
order. It was as much a tool of absolutism as the secret police. The
priests were used to help intrench the Tsar, enforce the will of
the bureaucracy, and carry out the orders of the gendarme. The deep
religious craving of the Russian nature was perverted to keep the
people in subjection. The Church was not of the people, nor for the
people. When the great crisis came, they repudiated it. Despite all
attempts at democratization, the people drifted further and further
away. The lamps before the sacred shrines on the street-corners went
out, and the number of the passers-by who stopped to cross themselves
grew smaller and smaller. The great power of the Russian Church,
around which so much of the life of the past clustered, was gone. No
one could predict what the future would hold. On that day there was
some discussion about it. Some said that reaction would come and a
disillusioned people would return to their old gods.
“Some day,” I heard one Russian say, “the peasant will awake in the
midst of his misfortunes, and recall that on January 8, 1918, the
waters were not blessed. To this he will attribute all his troubles.”
The Russian peasant, mystic, simple, childlike person that he is,
accepts or rejects the whole. In his past the Church pervaded every
aspect of his life. It was one of the few streaks of color that pierced
the drabness of existence. When his disillusionment came, it was
complete.
Some said that the Russian would attempt to construct an ethical
religion upon the ruins of the picturesque orthodox church; some that
he will substitute a new faith for his saints of other days. Some
hope that the freed priests, whose very existence depended upon their
submission to the evils of the old order, may become new leaders and
helpers.
No one can tell. In the meantime, the candlesticks before the ikons are
empty.