[My last post presented Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s gigantic-canvas historical novel The Red Wheel, and provided lists of the five volumes that have been translated into English, and of the four which remain to be. Having read the first three, I gave summary accounts of August 1914 and November 1916, and indicated I would say more soon about March 1917, Book 1. That’s what I do here, but by means of a collage-like method, one similar to what Solzhenitsyn himself does with newspaper headlines in several parts of The Red Wheel. I select and arrange--mostly but not always in order of appearance--bits of the book, in order to convey the overall course of events, the power of the portrayal, and a few of the key themes.]
[This will indicate better than any review could how amazing the book is, as well as how creepily timely June 2020 made its portrayal of a revolution unfolding gradually, day-by-day out of events that initially seem only slightly different, even “ordinary,” and anyhow logical, given the widespread belief that “shameful regime” was “a sane definition of the Russian state.” As indicated previously, the scenes are related from the perspectives of scores of different characters, and in a few special sections, from the standpoint of an omniscient history-recounting narrator. While the book’s plot is such that the term “spoiler” doesn’t really apply—multiple storylines, and the main outcome is already known--, if you haven’t read it and want a totally virginal reaction, you should save this for later.]
[My italicized/bold-faced headings indicate some of the main topics and movements.]
A Character Speaks for the Reader of Histories of Revolutions
…what he really wanted was to observe. And think lofty thoughts. Somehow watch everything going on from a very very high summit.
[Just what March 1917, Book 1 shows you is impossible for any person on the scene!]
Initial Disturbances, Sparked by Bread Shortages and Rumors
A mounted patrol, a dozen or so men—but at a gallop! A gallop!...
Convulsed fear! And without waiting for them!
The crowd runs, scatters in all directions—
as if blown away! Nevsky is clear—all the way to the Duma.
They never do bare their swords.
~~~
Not a single red flag was displayed all day, not a slogan; the crowd hadn’t been prepared by anyone in any way, and it was not seen to have leaders… …At the meeting at the city governor’s offices, no one proposed or undertook any decisive measures. Despite the injuries to a few policemen and factory foremen, no one had suggested arresting or searching anyone…
~~~
Early in the morning, a notice went up on the Petrograd streets:
Over the last few days, the same quantity of flour has been issued to bakeries for bread baking in Petrograd as previously. There should be no shortage... If some shops are short of bread, that is because many people, concerned about a shortage of bread, bought it to set aside for rusks…
~~~
If someone’s time had come, it was the adolescents’. Mischief—sanctioned mischief!—that was great! What’s what—that was for grownups to know, not us! They ran down Ligovka with sticks and smashed the sundries shop windows. Smash! Smash!
They smashed six—and ran on. You’d never catch them.
Russian Parliamentary Politics
…Not a single discussion—about the township zemstvo, transportation, fuel, or food supplies—was carried through to completion but was instead interrupted by some hysterical, urgent inquiry, which would collide and jostle with more and more new inquiries and questions, also not carried through to any decision…
~~~
It is very striking that once the Socialists were removed, calm, practical discussion began in the Duma.
~~~
“We believed that the highest goal was to preserve our reputation in leftist circles. Our constant mistake was not to distance ourselves dramatically from the leftists, from all the socialists.”
~~~
So this public-parliamentary-newspaper game (which we were observing on the eve of the Russian Revolution but without weary vision often seen in today’s West) became a self-absorbed, deceptive procession, the carnival, before toppling over. The eye and foot ceased to distinguish where there was still firm ground and where its spectral, mirror reflection.
The Build-Up
Once again, a sunny, slightly frosty, cheerful day. Polite society felt a mounting urge to throw something, to spite the authorities. People were waiting for the workers to start something.
~~~
…a crowd moving down Nevsky, down the street. And two flags overhead, red ones.
But the atmosphere was not the least bellicose. The public crowded right up to the soldiers’ ranks, from behind and the side, and coaxed them, not desperately, but merrily, provocatively: “Good soldiers, don’t shoot! Mind you don’t shoot!”
~~~
…War Minister Belyaev advised Khabalov that if people crossed the Neva over the ice, the troops should shoot so that the bullets struck in front of them. No, the Emperor had objected without reservation. They had to make do without firearms.
~~~
Nevsky’s bourgeois spirit had been broken—and without a fight, in the dark. …People clustered… “…The godforsaken night of government reaction!...The delusion of the fatherland’s defense!....They got off cheap with their victory in ’05!...Down with the handful of bandits who plotted the war!...The dissolute government…”
He carried on glibly. And the people listened without objections. Shlyapnikov discovered that slogans could now be advanced more and more boldly….
~~~
…the old police chief, Colonel Shalfeev…tried to persuade them to disperse. In reply the crowd surged toward him, dragged him off his horse, beat him lying there… …smashed the bridge of his nose, lashed his gray head, and broke his arm.
And the Cossacks didn’t lift a finger.
~~~
What made this day different was that there was none of the good cheer or play of the two preceding. …and the people no longer feared the police, either. On the contrary, the people were confronting them, and with mounting malice.
Confidence had abandoned the police. No one was for them, not even their superiors, and their few numbers, lost in crowds of thousands, were supposed to hold something back.
[A passage recalled, of course, during the “ACAB!” June nights of 2020.]
~~~
And when the speakers stood up, they shouted not about bread but: Thrash the police! Bring down the criminal government!
~~~
Yesterday Khabalov had for a long time been unable to believe that a Cossack had killed a police officer. If that was so, then how had it happened? What should be done?
Last night the disturbances reached such a scale that Khabalov had to report in detail by telegram to General Alekseev at GHQ. Sunday morning had started out so hopefully… …Clashes had begun in the side streets, so far only with the mounted police. But pieces of ice, stones, and bottles had flown at the troops—and how much were the troops supposed to stand? In a few spots…they had fired, first in the air and here and there with blanks—but the crowds did not disperse as a result and merely mocked them, already used to their impunity. Then they fired straight into the assemblage. But even those who did scatter, leaving the dead and wounded on the pavement, did not run far, but hid in nearby courtyards and side-streets and again began to gather. What should he do?
…Nonetheless, they got by without major attacks by the crowd on the troops, and there was hope that the crowd’s ardor was cooling…
~~~
…here and there a university student, or even a high school student, a youth with ideas, would take an instigating shot (those who needed pistols had them), inevitably exacerbating the clash.
~~~
He wrote a telegram and handed it over to be sent:
“I command that tomorrow the disturbances in the capital, inadmissible in a difficult time of war, with Germany and Austria, be stopped. Nikolai.”
~~~
In Petrograd, all day, anyone who had a telephone made a great number of calls. Learning and passing on news. Everyone was advising everyone else to stock up on water and fill their bathtubs.
The Moment of Collapse—the Main Mutiny
It wasn’t scary when the decision was being made. Or when they assembled the section leaders. Here’s when: when it is all done, when everything is cut off, and the last two hours remain. And you, alone with yourself….while on the other side of morning there might be a noose dangling for you.
…He [Kirpichnikov] said to Misha nearby, across the aisle:
“If the other units don’t join us tomorrow, they’ll hang us.”
“Yeah…”
“Still, it’s better to die a soldier than kill innocents, right?
“Yeah…”
Oh, it’s so hard to start! Starting—starting is the hardest of all. But someone has to.
~~~
…more than an hour had passed, and they hadn’t rushed over or separated us off.
~~~
What was so unusual was that these were soldiers, not under any command but in a horde, a gang, and each going wherever he pleased, and obeying whoever he pleased, if only himself. …If Kirpichnikov was obeyed, then it was by the closest handful, and only if that person wanted to. And so they ran---in clusters, not crowds, and no one remembered who in a cluster had made what suggestion, but it was taken up. ...And so they ran, not understanding where they should go. No longer Volynian, Lithuanian, Preobrazhensky, or sappers, but hundreds of mixed and diverse soldiers, worse than drunk and only correctly grasping that stopping would mean the end and they’d be executed.
~~~
The street was very quiet and uncrowded, …but as they got closer to Voskresensky Prospect, …the brothers hear up ahead on the right…a long, unprecedented sound of great force and closer to a human voice. No individual voice could go on that strong and long, but a hundred voices? A thousand? A long cry or howl, ebbing and flowing, but not stopping for a second. Only a crowd could shout that way, and a very agitated crowd. The sound was coming closer. The voices were male, but they were shouting heart-rendingly high.
~~~
For many months, cursing the government, they had only gloated over the fact that it could not cope with anything and had wished it would fail to cope even worse and bankrupt itself utterly. But today, when the mutiny, chaos, weapons looting, and freeing of criminals had begun, the Bloc’s leaders, and every Duma member, now as ordinary citizens of the country, could expect of this government at least some minimal firmness, at least some attempt to establish order, couldn’t they? But that day, in this terrible moment, this astonishing government had not shown the faintest signs of life!
They were like children who keep pushing at a cupboard, believing it unshakable—and suddenly it tips over with all the dishes.
~~~
The general…he was constantly calling military men he knew in different parts of the city. Everywhere in Petrograd was even worse than here. Nowhere had a single seat of resistance formed that they might join. In the center no one was resisting the uprising at all.
What Revolution Is
Everyone knew, as one, that life would be very good and bright very very soon!
~~~
Coming out into freedom along with the politicals were all the criminals… In those very same hours robberies, arson, and killings began throughout the city.
~~~
Under the present conditions the Council of Ministers cannot cope with the situation that has transpired and proposes disbanding itself after appointing as prime minister an individual who enjoys society’s confidence…
~~~
When the first news suddenly started pouring through the telephone, it took Sasha more than a minute, more than an hour to see that the Revolution was finally ripping the mask off its inspired face.
Nonetheless, he did realize it before others. At the midday break, without clearing the papers from his desk, he slipped out of his institution with no intention of returning that day. Maybe ever.
Where had the people found this unexpected strength? And why had the enemy proved so weak?
What was to be done now on the street? How was it to make a revolution? …Sasha guessed that the revolution was first of all a matter of pace, of how many new supporters it managed to attract in an hour.
~~~
But this phenomenon—“revolution”—we don’t know it in everyday life. It has no part in our accumulated life experience—and you make a mistake at the very first step. Especially if you’ve spent your entire life between taut legal strings. It had been hard to realize it this morning, from the first mutinies…that henceforth the concept of law would cease to exist, and even he, head of the Empire’s upper legislative chamber, was no longer protected by any regulations whatsoever. [He] was one of Russia’s strongest jurists; ….[He] was persistent, stern, and resourceful—as long as he stood on the path of the law. But once off it in the slightest—and he lost his way.
~~~
The hour of universal vengeance.
~~~
Right at the [Duma] palace, in front of it and on the square, vehicles of all kinds and types were parked, starting, snorting, stopping, and setting off; armed men hopped into some and jumped out of others, and there were women in nearly every one. Rifle bayonets flashed by, poked up, everywhere. They were loading cases onto one vehicle, and from another, on the contrary, unloading food supplies. The most terrible chaos and clamor reigned, and nearly everyone was giving orders that no one was obeying. It was impossible to engage a single vehicle in conversation.
~~~
But it should be acknowledged that during these hours the rebels’ command had not undertaken any actions against government forces either.
~~~
And he wasn’t afraid—not one bit. Anyone who acts boldly really isn’t in the greatest danger.
~~~
Motorcar expeditions were fitted out to hunt down policemen.
The thought of the masses freed from the police matured swiftly. Why not storm private houses? In apartments, even if you didn’t find an officer, oh yes, there was so much in goods you could snatch. They started going from apartment to apartment. “No officers here? Let us check.”
~~~
People kept rushing around—university students with rifles, sailors with rifles, women with rifles. On the streets there was constant shooting—no one knew by whom or at what. …Through the streets, which were now freed of crowds, motorcars tore ever faster and more madly, constant honking, shots, shouts. …each inhabitant of the capital, each of its two and half million, was left to fend for himself…
From the Dream Chapter (Placed just before the one on the mutiny’s beginning)
Kozma Gvozdev…dreamed he saw an old grayhair in bast shoes sitting on a big white rock wearing fresh, well-washed hemp clothes. …an ordinary village grandad…He was weeping, not a glance for Kozma, weeping, and the tears rolled down—you could see each one separately—down his wrinkled cheek or stopped at his gray beard. “What’s the matter, granddad? Why do you weep so?” …But now he raised his eyes—and those eyes set Kozma to trembling, and turned his insides to ice. This was no ordinary granddad, this granddad was a saint.
And he was weeping not for himself, but for him, for Kozma, whom he pitied.
“But why are you weeping for me?” Kozma endeavored to console him further. “Do not weep for me. Soon they’ll let me go.”
But the wisdom in the old man’s eyes turned around—and Kozma froze again and realized that no, it would not be soon. Oh, not soon not soon not soon. Longer than a man’s life.
And so the granddad centenarian did not utter a word. He dropped his head and sobbed. How he sobbed!
Then Kozma felt even icier. Might he be weeping not for me? There could not be so many tears for me alone.
So who were they for?