CHAPTER III

THE STRIKE AND THE MANIFESTO OF OCTOBER (30TH) 17TH

MOSCOW, _November 3rd_.

My return journey from Kharbin to Moscow was entirely uneventful until we arrived at Samara. At Irkutsk I had got a place in the Trans-Siberian express, which was crowded with all sorts and conditions of men: officers, merchants, three Germans, three Americans who had returned from working a mine in Siberia, a Polish student, and some ladies.

The first inkling that I received of the fact that a revolution was going on in Russia came to me in the following manner. We had crossed the Urals and had only been travelling thirteen days. We had arrived at Samara, when the attendant, who looked after the first-class carriage, came into my compartment and heaved a deep sigh. I asked him what was the matter. “We shan’t get further than Toula,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “Because of the unpleasantnesses” (_niepriyat nosti_). I asked, “What unpleasantnesses?” “There is a mutiny,” he said, “on the line.” We passed the big station of Sisran and arrived at the small town of Kouznetsk. There we were informed that the train could not go any further because of the strike. Nobody realised the extent of the strike, and we expected to go on in a few hours. By the evening the passengers began to show some signs of restlessness. Most of them telegraphed to various authorities. A petition was telegraphed to the Minister of Ways and Communications, saying that an express train full of passengers, overtired by a long and fatiguing journey, was waiting at Kouznetsk, and asking him to be so good as to arrange for them to proceed further. There was no answer to this telegram. The next day a sense of resignation seemed to come over the company. Although every evening, towards dinner-time, one heard innumerable complaints such as “only in Russia could such a _bezobrazie_ (literally an ugliness, _i.e._, a disgraceful thing) happen,” and one passenger suggested that Prince Kilkoff’s portrait, which was hung in the dining-car, should be turned face to the wall. The Polish student, who had accompanied the Americans and made music for them, playing by ear any tune they whistled to him, and consequently a great many tunes from the Gaiety repertoire, played the piano with exaggerated facility and endless fioriture and runs. I asked an American mechanic who was with the mining managers whether he liked the music. He said he would like it if the “damned hell” were knocked out of it, which was exactly my feeling. But on the second day after our arrival my American friends left by road for Samara, to proceed thence by water to St. Petersburg. The passengers spent the time in exploring the town, which was somnolent and melancholy in the extreme. Half of it was a typical Russian village built on a hill, a mass of brown huts; the other half, on the plain, was like a village in any country. The idle guards and railway officials sat on the steps of the station-room whistling. Two more trains arrived: a sanitary train and an ordinary slow passenger train.

The passengers from these trains wandered about the platform, mixing with the idlers from the town population. A crowd of peasants and travellers, engineers, and Red Cross attendants, soldiers, and merchants sauntered up and down in loose shirts and big boots, munching sunflower seeds and spitting out the husks till the platform was thick with refuse. A doctor who was in our train, and who was half a German, with an official training and an orthodox official mind, talked to the railway servants like a father. It was very wrong to strike, he said. They should have put down their grievances on paper and had them forwarded by the proper channels. The officials said that that would be waste of ink and caligraphy. “I wonder they don’t kill him,” said my travelling companion, and I agreed with him. Each passenger was given a rouble a day to buy food. The third-class passengers were given checks, in return for which they could receive meals. However, they deprecated the idea, and said that they wanted the amount in beer. They received it. Then they looted the refreshment room, broke the windows, and took away the food. This put an end to the check system. The feeling among the first-class passengers deepened. Something ought to be done, was the general verdict; but nobody quite knew what. They felt that the train ought to be placed in a position of safety. The situation on the evening of the second day began to resemble that described in Maupassant’s masterpiece, “Boule de Suif.” Nothing, however, could be done except to explore the town of Kouznetsk. It was warm autumn weather. The roads were soft and muddy, and there was a smell of rotting leaves in the air. It was damp and grey, with gleams of pitiful weak sunshine. In the middle of the town was a large market-place where a brisk trade in geese was carried on. One man whom I watched failed to sell his geese during the day, and while driving them home at night talked to them as if they had been dogs, saying, “Cheer up, we shall soon be home.” A party of convicts who belonged to the passenger train were working hard by the station, and implored the passing tribute of a sigh and a cigarette. Both were freely given. Convicts in Russia are always alluded to as “unfortunates.” I met them near the station and they at once said, “Give the unfortunates something.” In the evening, in one of the third-class carriages, a party of Little Russians, assistants in the Red Cross, sang songs in parts—melancholy, beautiful songs, with a strange trotting rhythm and no end and no beginning; and opposite their carriage on the platform a small crowd of moujiks gathered together and listened, saying that the men sang with cunning (_lovko paiout_).

On the morning of the fourth day after we had arrived the impatience of the passengers increased to fever pitch. A colonel who was with us, and who knew how to use the telegraph, communicated with Piensa, the next big station. For although the telegraph clerks were on strike they remained in the office conversing with their friends on the wire all over Russia. The strikers were most affable. They said they had not the slightest objection to the express proceeding on its journey, that they would neither boycott nor beat anybody who took us, and that if we could find a friend to drive the engine, well and good. We did. We found a friend, an amateur engine-driver, and an amateur engine, and on the 28th of October we started for Piensa. We broke down on the way. The engine-driver was supported by public contributions. The moment the engine stopped work all the passengers volunteered advice as to how it should be mended, one man producing a piece of string for the purpose. However, another stray engine was found, and we arrived at last at Piensa. There I saw mentioned in the telegrams the words “rights of speech and assembly,” and I knew that the strike was a revolution. At Piensa the rage of the military—who had had their return journey from the Far East delayed—against the strikers was indescribable. They were lurching about the station in a state of inebriate frenzy, using language about strikes and strikers which is not fit to repeat. One of them asked me if I was a striker. We stopped at Piensa for the night. We started again the next morning for Moscow, but the train came to a dead stop at two o’clock the next morning at Riansk, and when I woke up the first-class attendant came, with many deep sighs, and said that we should go no further until the unpleasantnesses were at an end. But an hour later news came that we could go to Riazan in another train, which we did. Riazan station, when we arrived, was guarded by soldiers. A train was ready to start for Moscow, but the scuffle for places in it was terrific. I found a place in a third-class carriage. Opposite me was an old man with a grey beard. He attracted my attention by the extraordinary courtesy with which he prevented a woman, with many bundles, from being turned out of the train by another moujik. I asked him where he came from. “Eighty versts from the other side of Irkutsk,” he said. “I was sent there, and I am returning home now after thirteen years at the Government’s expense. I was a convict.” “What were you sent there for?” I asked. “Murder!” he answered very gently. The other passengers asked him to tell his story. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Tell!” shouted the other passengers. His story briefly was this: He had got drunk, set fire to a barn, and when the owner interfered he had killed him. He had served two years’ hard labour and eleven years’ banishment. He was a gentle, humble creature, with a very mild expression, like an apostle in disguise. He had no money, and lived on what other passengers gave him. I gave him a cigarette. He smoked a quarter of it and said he would keep the rest for the journey, as he had still got five hundred versts to travel. We arrived at Moscow at eleven o’clock in the evening and found the town in darkness, save for the glimmer of oil lamps. The next morning we woke up to find that Russia had been given a Magna Charta; that the railway and other officials had obtained the same concessions from the Government as the Barons had won from King John seven hundred years ago.

MOSCOW, _October 30th_ (Old Style, _October 17th_).

The first thing which brought home to me that Russia had been granted the promise of a Constitution was this. I went to the big Russian baths. Somebody came in and asked for some soap, upon which the barber’s assistant, aged about ten, said with the air of a Hampden, “Give the ‘citizen’ some soap” (_Daite grajdaninon mwilo_). Coming out of the baths I found the streets decorated with flags, and everybody in a state of frantic and effervescing enthusiasm. I went to one of the big restaurants. There old men were embracing each other and drinking the first glass of vodka to free Russia. After luncheon I went out into the Theatre square. There is a fountain in it, which forms an excellent public platform. An orator mounted it and addressed the crowd. He began to read the Emperor’s Manifesto. Then he said: “We are all too much used to the rascality of the Autocracy to believe this; away with the Autocracy!” The crowd, infuriated—they were evidently expecting an enthusiastic eulogy—cried: “Away with you!” But instead of attacking the speaker who had aroused their indignation they ran away from him! It was a curious sight. The spectators on the pavement were seized with panic and ran too. The orator, seeing his speech had missed fire, changed its tone and said: “You have misunderstood me.” But what he had said was perfectly clear. This speaker was an ordinary Hyde Park orator, and not to be confused with the University professors who afterwards spoke from the same platform. Later in the afternoon a procession of students arrived opposite my hotel with red flags, and collected outside the Governor-General’s house. He appeared on the balcony and made a speech, in which he said that now there were no police he hoped that they would be able to keep order themselves. He asked them also to replace the red flag which was hanging on the lamp-post opposite the palace by the national flag. One little student climbed like a monkey up the lamp-post and hung a national flag there, but did not remove the red flag. Then the Governor asked them to sing the National Anthem, which they did; and as they went away they sang the Marseillaise.

“On peut très bien jouer ces deux airs à la fois Et cela fait un air qui fait sauter les rois.”

At one moment a Cossack arrived, but an official came out of the house and told him he was not needed, upon which he went away amidst the jeers, cheers, hoots, and whistling of the crowd. The day passed off quietly on the whole, the only untoward incidents being the death of a woman and the wounding of a student and a workman while trying to rescue a student from the prisoners’ van. A veterinary surgeon called Bauman was also shot on this day.

To-day for the first time I heard the phrase “Black Gang” used. I was standing on the doorstep of the Hôtel de France, when a woman rushed frantically up and said the “Black Gang” were coming. A student, belonging to a very good family, who was standing there, also explained that the “Black Gang” consisted of roughs who supported the autocratic cause. His hand, which was bandaged, had been severely hurt while he was in the act of taking off his hat that day, by a Cossack who had beat it with a whip, thinking he was about to make a disturbance. He came up to my room and from the hotel window we had a good view of the crowd which proceeded to—

“attaquer la Marseillaise en _la_ Sur les cuivres, pendant que la flûte soupire En _mi bèmol_: Veillons au salut de l’Empire.”

MOSCOW, _November 7th_.

I went to see Maxim Gorki’s new play at the Artistic Theatre of Moscow, “The Children of the Sun.” It was the second night that it had been performed. M. Stanislavoshi, one of the chief actors of the troupe and the stage manager, gave me his place. The theatre was crammed. There is a scene in the play, where a doctor, living in a Russian village, and devoting his life to the welfare of the peasants, is suspected of having caused an outbreak of cholera. The infuriated peasants pursue the doctor and bash some one on the head. On the first night this scene had reduced a part of the audience to hysterics. It was too “actual.” People said we see enough of our friends killed in the streets without going to the play for such a sight. On the second night it was said that the offensive scene had been suppressed. I did not quite understand what had been eliminated. As I saw the scene it was played as follows. A roar is heard as of an angry crowd. Then the doctor runs into a house and hides. The master of the house protests; a peasant flies at his throat and half strangles him until he is beaten on the head by another peasant who belongs to the house. The play is full of interesting moments, and was played with the finished perfection which makes this theatre famous and unique. But M. Gorki has not M. Tchekoff’s talent of representing on the stage the uneventful passage of time, the succession of the seemingly insignificant incidents of people’s everyday lives, chosen with such skill, depicted with such an instinct for mood and atmosphere that the result is enthrallingly interesting. M. Gorki’s plays have the faults and qualities of his stories. They are unequal, but contain moments of poignant interest and vividness. I do not think, however, that his gifts are pre-eminently suited for the stage.

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