The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917

Chapter 7

in which Black-Hundreder Alexander Dubrovin creates the first Russian party of the state, and oppositioner Maxim Gorky asks the West to stop funding Russia

THE GOOD DOCTOR

Alexander Dubrovin is angry. A popular Saint Petersburg pediatrician who closely follows politics, he cannot stand the chairman of the Committee of Ministers, Sergei Witte. The news of the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth seems terrible to him. He considers Witte a traitor, working in the interests of “world Jewry.” Dubrovin is outraged by the peace with Japan: he is sure that Russian troops were halted on the cusp of victory. He is even more indignant about the accolades heaped upon Witte, who has handed half of Sakhalin Island to the enemy. “Count Semi-Sakhalin” he now calls the hated prime minister.

Dr. Dubrovin is not alone in his convictions. Russia is now home to dozens of monarchist organizations, but so far none enjoys nationwide coverage. These organizations are united not only by their love of the autocratic system, but also their hatred of Jews and other “aliens.” Their members go by the name of the “Black Hundreds.”

The dream of the Black Hundreds—to create a mass patriotic movement—becomes possible only when the state joins the cause. A new organization is sanctioned by the Interior Ministry, and its first meetings are held at Dubrovin’s apartment. One of the organizers of the event, Boris Nikolsky, will later describe the doctor in less than glowing terms: “A crude, repulsive animal shunned by all, yet at the same time a wealthy intellectual. Desperate to play a role, he curried favor with everyone and was elected chairman.”

In summer 1905, the head of the Saint Petersburg secret police, Gerasimov, asks his colleague, Deputy Police Chief Rachkovsky, why the authorities are not trying to create an organization to “counter the detrimental influence of the revolutionaries on the masses.” The surprised Rachkovsky promises to introduce him to Dr. Dubrovin, “who is indeed setting up a monarchist organization.” Through the efforts of Dubrovin and the Interior Ministry, the amorphous Black Hundreds gradually turn into a state institution.

TREPOV TAKES CONTROL

The most influential person in the country is still General Trepov, the only police officer able to disperse the crowd after the 9 January tragedy. His people skills have gotten him close to the tsar. In fact, Nicholas II has made Trepov a mediator between himself and outside world, giving him access to intimate family affairs. The tsar’s diary in 1905 is all about his children and hunting; state business, it seems, has been outsourced to the trusty Trepov.

However, the skills of a professional police officer are not sufficient to govern the state, which Trepov understands. It is not just that he has no political program; he does not know how to cope with the machinery of the state that has ended up in his hands.

In need of reliable advisers, Trepov turns to the circle he knows best—the siloviki. More than anyone else he trusts Pyotr Rachkovsky, an experienced secret police agent who once led Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Rachkovsky is Witte’s long-time favorite, and the two enjoy good relations. Through Rachkovsky, Trepov gets closer to Witte and soon begins saying, even to the tsar, that Witte is the only person able to bridge the divide between the regime and society, something that is necessary to prevent new unrest, believes Trepov.

At the end of the summer of 1905, Trepov still considers it his task to lure the intelligentsia over to the side of the authorities. To do so, he decides to fulfill one of the main demands of the liberals: autonomous universities, which enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (but only for people with higher education). Trepov is sure that now the intellectual elites will calm down.

Under the new “temporary rules” adopted on 27 August 1905, higher educational institutions can choose their own rectors, and the police no longer have the right to enter university grounds without permission. The newly elected rector of Moscow University is Sergei Trubetskoy, one of the leaders of the Liberation Union.

But there is no calming the intelligentsia. In a country where all rallies are banned, the introduction of autonomous universities has the opposite effect: educational institutions become a place of free assembly for all layers of society.

“It’s all a complete mess,” recalls the head of the secret police, Gerasimov. Mass political rallies are held in assembly halls. Some lecture theatres host meetings of workers from specific professions. There are posters everywhere: “Assembly of cooks,” “Assembly of shoemakers,” “Assembly of tailors,” etc. The police meeting is advertised as follows: “Comrade policemen, be ready to talk about your needs.”

Trepov and his advisers are astonished by the ingratitude of the intelligentsia. They expected that students and professors would talk only about academic matters, not politics.

THE BIRTH OF THE SOVIETS

While Gapon is abroad, the workers find themselves new idols. One of them is Gapon’s namesake, Georgy Nosar, a lawyer specializing in labor disputes. In the summer, he meets members of the Liberation Union and the “Union of Unions” (a wide alliance of trade unions) and tries to create a new working group (based on Gapon’s model). As a result, he is arrested for two months. This only increases his popularity. Nosar is younger than Gapon, only twenty-eight.

Another rising star is the twenty-five-year-old Leon Bronstein, nicknamed “Pen” (“Pero” in Russian). Before 9 January 1905 he lived in Geneva, writing for Spark. But after Bloody Sunday he breaks loose and returns to Russia. Like Lenin, he has numerous names: according to his passport he is Pyotr Petrovich Vikentiev; his party comrades know him by the surname Yanovsky, but he writes articles under the pseudonym Trotsky. Although he maintains friendly relations with Lenin, he considers himself a Menshevik—like almost all Marxists in Russia.

Trotsky joins the newly formed Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies—the organization leading the workers’ strikes in the capital. A year ago Gapon would surely have been elected chairman. If Trotsky had come a day earlier, perhaps he would have become chairman. But he is late, and on the eve of his arrival the Soviet votes for the modest worker Pyotr Khrustalev. This pseudonym conceals the identity of the lawyer Nosar. An intense rivalry arises between Bronstein-Trotsky and Nosar-Khrustalev, which no one except them seems to notice. Trotsky takes the upper hand.

Years later, Nosar will argue that he created an organization called the “Soviet of Workers’ Deputies” back in January 1905—an attempt to exaggerate his role. Nevertheless, Nosar’s main contribution to history is the name he coins. All the subsequent Soviets, as well as the name “Soviet Union,” originate from this Petersburg Soviet.

STRIKES AND STROKES

On 20 September 1905 two Moscow printing houses go on strike, and three days later a further eighty-nine have laid down their fonts. Newspapers are no longer published. The strike is joined by tram staff and confectioners. They all gather for rallies on the grounds of Moscow University.

On 23 September the authorities close the university, so, instead of classes, the students go out into the street. A demonstration of thousands begins from the university building on Manezhnaya Square and advances up Tverskaya Street to the governor-general’s house. The crowd chants political slogans: “Down with autocracy!” “Long live the revolution!” “Long live the republic!” Cossack regiments try to disperse the rally, but they are greeted with a hail of stones. The unrest spreads, and soon almost the whole city is on strike.

On 29 September the democratically elected university rector Sergei Trubetskoy travels to Saint Petersburg. During a seven-hour meeting with the education minister, the forty-three-year-old Trubetskoy suffers a stroke and dies. On 3 October the rector’s funeral turns into a powerful protest. More than a hundred enterprises in Moscow are already on strike, and the railway workers are joining in. As a sign of solidarity with Moscow, printing houses in Saint Petersburg also stop publishing.

On 10 October trains from Moscow stop running completely. That is followed on 12 October by a strike at the telegraph—Moscow is cut off from the entire world. On the same day, Saint Petersburg’s trains also come to a halt. Fuel supplies dry up, bringing plants and factories to a virtual standstill. On 13 October, the Moscow Duma announces a general strike.

In Saint Petersburg, too, everyone is now on strike: the municipal and zemstvo councils, banks, shops, post offices, and the telegraph, even government officials. By the evening of 13 October, both capitals are severed from the world and from each other.

On 9 October, Sergei Witte, now a count and still buoyed by his American triumph, visits Nicholas II. Despite being back in favor, he still has no real authority (other than his formal position). The tsar still sees him as an outsider—after all, Witte has been absent for so long that he did not take part in drafting the new manifesto on setting up a legislative council.

Analyzing the growing unrest, Witte tells the tsar that he has two choices: appoint a “military dictator” who will suppress all demonstrations, or make major political concessions. Witte himself favors the second option. Moreover, he gives the emperor a “note”—or rather a lengthy political treatise on the inevitability of reform.

Witte’s “note” is a historical, even revolutionary, document. Never before has the head of government in Russia delivered anything like it to the head of state. He starts by reasoning about why the state exists at all—a question that Nicholas II is unlikely ever to have pondered. “The state cannot live and develop merely because it exists.… There must be a goal; the state must live for the sake of something,” Witte begins. He proceeds to explain that the sole objective of any state is to ensure the moral and material welfare of its people.

The principal “moral” benefit, says Witte, is freedom. “Man always strives for freedom,” since freedom is the most ancient and natural human condition. Autocracy, argues Witte, like all other forms of statehood, is something new, a relatively recent invention. The struggle for freedom, however, dates back to the dawn of humankind.

This thought is in itself revolutionary, so to speak. In the worldview of Nicholas II, instilled by Pobedonostsev, autocracy is God’s design. It was God who made him tsar. Witte’s concept differs from Pobedonostsev’s as much as Darwin’s theory of evolution from the Book of Genesis.

Witte reinforces his theory with examples: “The liberation movement was not born a year ago. Its roots lie in the depths of time—in Novgorod and Pskov,^* in the protests against Peter’s reforms,^† in the Decembrist revolt,^‡ in the Petrashevsky case,^§ in the great act of 19 February 1861,^¶ and in the nature of every person.”

Witte then moves to the present, arguing that man’s striving for freedom cannot be suppressed: “Executions and bloodbaths only accelerate the eruption. They provoke the wild revelry of base human instincts.” The only solution, in Witte’s view, is for the slogan “freedom” to turn into government activity.^** Witte seems to have picked up these ideas during his trip to America, although he does not refer to it anywhere in the “note”—so that the tsar does not think that he dreams of being the first president of the “United States of Russia.”

Witte believes that the authorities should lead the reforms, rather than trail behind the demands of society: first, no more arbitrary rule on the part of the law enforcement agencies; second, civil rights for all; third, reforms of the system of state administration; and lastly, the worker, agrarian, and regional issues need to be addressed once and for all.

“Historical progress is irrepressible. The idea of civil liberty will triumph if not by way of reform, then by way of revolution. But in the latter case, it will be reborn from the ashes of overthrowing a thousand years of history. The Russian uprising, senseless and merciless, will sweep everything away and all shall turn to dust,” Witte predicts. He will never know just how accurate his forecast is.

The emperor listens attentively to Witte’s prognosis, and duly consults his wife. They discuss his report together. Nicholas II promises to think about it.

On the day of Witte’s report, 9 October, the situation does not seem alarming from the tsar’s perspective at his Peterhof residence outside the capital. But by 12 October everything has changed. He discovers that he is effectively a prisoner. Ministers from Saint Petersburg cannot reach him at Peterhof, since the roads are blocked. They have to commandeer two warships, the Dozorny and the Razvedchik, to get to him. The railway network across the length and breadth of Russia has stopped working. The telegraph is also silent.

“What lovely times!!” Nicholas II notes ironically in his diary. The emperor is incredibly isolated. He has effectively lost control of the country and only learns about what is happening in the capital in snippets.

In the Gulf of Finland, near Peterhof, there appear two German cruisers. It is not a threat—they have come to rescue Nicholas II. Kaiser Wilhelm II, Empress Alexandra’s cousin, who never fails to send the tsar detailed written recommendations on Russian domestic policy, believes that the situation in Saint Petersburg is out of control. The German emperor advises his Russian counterpart to go abroad, and offers asylum in Germany. Moreover, he is ready to assist in suppressing the unrest: German troops can be dispatched to Saint Petersburg, or any Russian region, to put things in order immediately. In the capital, rumors spread that German troops are already on the move to Russia.

Wilhelm’s letter becomes the talk of high society—many welcome the proposal. Revolutionaries are everywhere, and they no longer trust their own military, which could join the other side at any moment. German soldiers are far more reliable. Many advise the tsar to leave and let the Germans in. Witte believes that if he does, he will not be able to return. Trepov vacillates.

It is difficult to understand the tsar’s emotional state at this time. All his attendants describe him as a man of incredible restraint, able to hide his emotions. Yet at the same time, he is often described as suspicious and distrustful. The brutal assassination of King Alexander I of Serbia and his wife, Queen Draga, by members of their inner circle in 1903 has had a profound effect on Nicholas. He knew Alexander personally and was deeply shocked by his murder. Two years later, he still remembers the unfortunate fate of the Serbian monarch and fears a conspiracy.

THEATRICAL MUTINY

With Russia’s two capitals roiling in political activism, Maria Andreyeva cannot sit still in the provincial Finnish backwater of Kuokkala (now Repino). Despite all the previous scandals, she returns to the Moscow Art Theatre to rehearse a new play, Children of the Sun, by her civil-law husband. Gorky himself still resides in Finland. But it is not really the theatre that draws Andreyeva back to Moscow.

She is a member of the underground revolutionary movement and revels in the role. Back in Kuokkala, she and Gorky gave underground performances to raise money for the revolutionaries. She, her husband, and the writer Leonid Andreyev read poetry and prose, and passed a reticule around the audience marked with the words: “Please donate to the militant organization.” The money Andreyeva sent to the leader of the organization, Leonid Krasin.

Now in Moscow, Andreyeva takes an even greater liking to revolutionary activity. She again collects money on behalf of Krasin to help fund the Social Democrats’ underground press and help prisoners escape from jail, among other things. Andreyeva copes admirably with the task. Meanwhile, the play is at risk.

On 14 October, the Moscow Art Theatre holds a dress rehearsal of Children of the Sun. Suddenly, in the middle of the play, the lights go out. Moscow’s power stations have joined the strike.

Andreyeva demands that the theatre should also strike. Three meetings are held to discuss whether or not to take part in the political struggle. Andreyeva delivers a passionate speech. But Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko announce that the theatre shall “express sympathy with the strikers by giving a performance for the benefit of their families.”

For the most part, protesting is very fashionable. The strikes are supported by university professors, who donate three days’ wages to the striking workers, as well as by previously apolitical intellectuals and artists. The Imperial Theater elects a “strike committee,” which includes Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, and Mikhail Fokine, all future stars of Diaghilev’s ballets.

The Directorate of the Imperial Theatres plans to fire the instigators and demands that all employees sign a declaration of loyalty (similar to when the captain of the battleship Potemkin divided the crew into willing and non-willing soup eaters). Few agree, but some, such as Diaghilev’s friend, the choreographer Sergei Legat, go ahead and sign it.^*

Diaghilev is in a state of nervous excitement: “It’s impossible to describe what’s going on: everything’s locked—newspaper stands, telephone booths, telegraphs—all in anticipation of machine guns. Last night I walked along Nevsky Proskpekt. It was ghost-like and pitch-black, save for a shaft of light from the Admiralty’s vast searchlight. The effect was amazing. The pavements are black, the people are like shadows, the houses are like cardboard cut-outs,” he writes to his friend Benois in France.

Diaghilev’s cousin and former male lover, Dima Filosofov, has also become interested in politics. He has long since distanced himself from Sergei, and now lives together with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky—the so-called Troyebratstvo or “brotherhood of three.” Only five years ago the Merezhkovskys despised the politicized older generation and were focused on spiritual, mystical, and religious matters. But in summer 1905 Merezhkovsky tells his wife: “Autocracy comes from the Antichrist.” She writes the phrase on a box of chocolates so as not to forget it.

In October 1905 Zinaida Gippius experiences a mystical presentiment of the revolution, like a doom-monger predicting the end of the world. On 17 October, she writes a letter to Filosofov, which will be published years later as proof of her prophetic ability. In it, she says that, if the regime does not avert disaster by implementing reform, there will be a revolution in March (the year is unspecified) led by the Social Democrats.

The authorities believe that the strike movement is part of a diabolical plan hatched by the opposition. Trepov and even more so Gerasimov are convinced that the strike has been organized by the Union of Unions, which created the Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. Nicholas II is also convinced of this, writing to his mother about the “infamous Union of Unions, which has caused all the unrest.” This, of course, is a slight exaggeration. Following the arrest of Milyukov and company, the central bureau of the Union of Unions ceases to exist. Their places are gradually taken by other less familiar faces. In October, after the strike in Moscow, the new central bureau of the Union of Unions sends delegates to the Saint Petersburg Soviet. It sounds like a coordinated plan, but is in fact spontaneous and haphazard.

What has the former head of the powerful Union of Unions Pavel Milyukov been up to since his release from the Kresty prison? No longer linked to the organization, on 12 October he holds the founding congress of the new Liberal Party—the first legal opposition party in Russia, based on the Liberation Union. Funding for it comes from his former lover Margarita Morozova, a widow of a rich merchant and an ardent fan of Milyukov. However, there is a problem: the railways go on strike and three-quarters of the delegates are unable to get to Moscow for the congress, including almost all the ones from Saint Petersburg. But Milyukov believes that it cannot be postponed. So, a few months after returning from delivering a series of lectures at Chicago University, he ejects all the veterans of the Russian liberal movement and becomes the sole leader of the party, which becomes known as the “party of people’s freedom” and, more officially, the Constitutional Democratic Party. Its members are called Kadets.^*

Milyukov’s personal life and circumstances have a strong influence on the work of the congress. Despite the congress being sponsored by his former mistress, Milyukov’s wife Anna is actively involved. It is she who raises the question of whether universal suffrage should be extended to women (in the liberal constitution drafted by members of the Liberation Union in spring 1905, there was no mention of it). Milyukov is opposed, believing that it is not necessary to burden the party program with unnecessary minutiae. But his offended wife is supported by most of the congress participants. As such, Russia’s first liberal party starts to champion women’s right to vote.

As the Kadets are discussing women’s rights, strikes are breaking out all over Russia.

CONSTITUTION OR DEATH

On 13 October Witte receives a telegram informing him of his appointment as the new chairman of the Council of Ministers. There is no mention of the proposed reforms. Witte requests an audience with the tsar, saying that he cannot accept the position if his political agenda is not adopted.

But Nicholas II cannot adopt the proposals of Witte and Wilhelm II at the same time, both of which seem to violate the oath that he gave on accession to the throne, namely that he would pass it on to his son, just like he had received it from his father. He hears this repeatedly from Alexandra, who is obsessed with the notion that Tsarevich Alexei must receive what is rightfully his. The solution is simple. The rebellion must be crushed.

To this end, the tsar summons Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (known in the family as Uncle Nikolasha), with whom he has a special relationship. He is forty-nine years old, twelve years older than Nicholas, and one of the tsar’s most trusted men. The feeling is mutual.

The grand duke is known for his mysticism, like his brother Peter and the “black princesses”—the best friends of Empress Alexandra, the Montenegrins Stana and Milica. They were all under the spell of Dr. Philippe. Now, in the autumn of 1905, they are passionate about a new preacher in town, Grigory Rasputin.

Yet Nikolai Nikolaevich is not only a mystic, but also a professional soldier. The tsar believes that he is the one to suppress the rebellion.

In the midst of the strikes the task will not be easy. Nevertheless, Uncle Nicky makes the journey to Peterhof on 15 October to talk to his nephew. However, he is in an uncertain frame of mind, not dictatorial at all. Before setting off, he takes out a gun and says to the minister of the court, Count Fredericks: “I am going to go to see the Emperor to entreat him to sign the manifesto and the proposals of Count Witte. Either he signs, or I shoot myself in the forehead with this revolver in front of his very eyes.”

Nicholas II acquiesces, says Witte, and orders that a draft manifesto be drawn up. The tsar spends a few days (15–17 October) in talks with Witte and other officials about the wording of the manifesto. He consults with everyone he can. Uncle Nicky, Count Fredericks, and Witte are in favor. His wife is against. His aide Orlov (nicknamed “Vladi”) also tries to dissuade the tsar: “Do not be pressured into granting a constitution; it would better to wait at least half a year,” he says.

Nicholas asks Trepov how many days it would take to restore order in Saint Petersburg without bloodshed, if at all possible: “I can give no guarantees. The sedition has spread so far and deep that it now depends on the mercy of God,” responds Trepov. “Trepov is a coward,” says Vladi Orlov. The emperor disagrees.

At 5 p.m. on 17 October Witte brings a revised version of the text. The tsar puts pen to paper. The manifesto guarantees “civil liberties on the basis of personal integrity, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association,” and gives the vote to all “classes of the population presently deprived of electoral rights.” Lastly, it states that a parliament, or State Duma, is to be set up without the consent of which no law can be passed. It is essentially the first constitution in the history of Russia.

Having signed the document, Nicholas summons Orlov. “Don’t leave me today. It’s too much to bear,” says Nicholas II, holding his head and crying. “I feel like I’ve lost the crown. It’s over.” Orlov consoles him by saying that he can still “unite the forces of reason and rescue the situation.” Orlov telephones Rachkovsky and urges him to do just that.^*

“After such a day, my head is heavy and my thoughts are confused. Lord, help us. Save and reconcile Russia,” the tsar writes in his diary.

At the same time, a decree is published to officially set up the new Council of Ministers and appoint Witte as its chairman, based on the model of European prime ministers. Also published is the “Report of Count Witte”—the new government’s effective agenda, perhaps the most liberal ever in the history of Russia. The text says that Russia “has outgrown the existing system and is committed to building a legal order on the basis of civil liberties.” The government undertakes not to interfere with the elections to the State Duma and to “repeal repressive measures against actions that do not threaten the state.”

In addition, Witte ponders the needs of Russian society: “It cannot be that Russian society wants anarchy and the dismemberment of the state.” However, the new prime minister is only briefly distracted by such thoughts—he has a new government to appoint.

Trepov learns the news from Witte over the phone. “Thank God, the manifesto is signed. We’ll have civil liberties and popular representation,” says the relieved general to his adviser Rachkovsky. “Tomorrow they’ll be triple-kissing^* in the streets of Saint Petersburg,” echoes Rachkovsky and, turning to Gerasimov, continues: “That means no more work for you.” “If that’s the case, I’ll be happy to resign,” responds Gerasimov.

That evening Prime Minister Witte gathers his ministers to discuss the manifesto and some extra details not yet prescribed in law: in particular, the forthcoming amnesty. Witte wants the release of all political prisoners, the return of all exiles, and the emptying of the Shlisselburg prison in order to show that “the old Russia is gone.” He is opposed by Finance Minister Kokovtsov, who is against a general amnesty for the “terrorists” inside Shlisselburg Fortress. Witte’s nerves get the better of him, and he screams at Kokovtsov in front of all those present: “The finance minister’s ideas would be better suited to governing the Zulus.”

October 18^th becomes a nationwide celebration that is still marked ten years later. Saint Petersburg’s intellectuals rejoice. Sergei Diaghilev buys a bottle of champagne and celebrates the constitution with his family. “We’re delirious! Yesterday we even drank champagne courtesy of Sergei. It’s miraculous!” writes his Aunt Nona, the mother of Dima Filosofov.

The strike comes to an end, and the water supply system, trains, and everything else start working again. There are demonstrations in both capitals: half with portraits of Nicholas II, the other half with red flags. Some sing the national anthem, others revolutionary songs. “Both sides are out of control. Passers-by who don’t doff their caps to them risk getting attacked,” recalls the Moscow governor Dzhunkovsky. The police do not intervene.

In Moscow the sister of Margarita Morozova arranges a magnificent banquet to mark the end of the congress, not expecting there to be a second, far more momentous occasion. The hall is full and in an enthusiastic mood. “We are gathered here to commemorate the congress and the manifesto together,” says Milyukov. As the hero of the day, he is raised aloft and placed on the table to make a speech. But Milyukov acts with restraint, saying that it is only the beginning: “We cannot become complacent or abandon our battle stations.” He finishes his speech on a gloomy note: “Nothing has changed yet, the war goes on.”

At roughly the same time, the antithesis of the forty-six-year-old Milyukov, the twenty-five-year-old Leon Trotsky, is shouting from a university balcony at the rejoicing crowd below: the “semi-victory” is insufficient; the enemy is implacable; traps lie ahead. He tears the imperial manifesto into pieces and scatters them to the wind.

There is even less clarity in the provinces. No one there has even heard of this seminal document until the morning of 18 October, when it is published in the local newspapers. Even then, no one understands what it means.

Vasily Shulgin, a monarchist and future State Duma member, who at the time is a warrant officer and resident of Kiev, describes how the advent of political freedom is celebrated on Dumskaya Square, which will be known as Maidan (Independence Square) one hundred years later and will become a venue for all subsequent Ukrainian revolutions. The square is packed from end to end, with people hanging from the balconies on either side. In the midst of the “sea of heads” are “huge boxes dripping with people.” “I didn’t realize at first that they were trams. From the roofs of these trams, people were making speeches, waving their arms, but the roar of the crowd drowned them out. They opened their mouths like fish thrown on the sand,” writes Shulgin. The mood is joyous: some celebrate quietly; others are drunk on adrenaline. The City Duma holds an emergency meeting. Its members demand the release of all political prisoners and sing the Eternal Memory to the “champion freedom fighter”—the deceased rector of Moscow University, Prince Trubetskoy. Then the Duma members go out onto the balcony of the building, which is decorated with the tsarist monogram and crown. They dismantle and replace them with a red flag.

The monarchist Shulgin describes it histrionically: “The tsarist crown broke off and crashed onto the dirty pavement in front of the 10,000-strong crowd. The metal cried out on impact with the stone.… The crowd gasped. A sinister whisper spread: ‘The yids have smashed the crown.’” Shulgin does not even suspect that in twelve years’ time he will be the one who really does dismantle the crown—he will take the act of abdication from the hands of Nicholas II himself.

But for now Shulgin is horrified by what is happening in Kiev: students are ransacking the City Duma building, tearing down the royal portraits, piercing the eyes. One student sticks his head through a portrait of the tsar and runs around with the torn canvas around his neck, shouting: “Look at me, I’m the tsar!”

Kiev differs from Saint Petersburg and Moscow in that it is inside the Pale of Settlement. Anti-Semitic sentiments are very strong. The Kievite, one of the most conservative, monarchist, and anti-Semitic newspapers in Ukraine (known as “Little Russia” back then), is edited by Shulgin’s stepfather, Dmitry Pikhno.

In the evening of 18 October, a crowd of students and workers goes to the editorial office of The Kievite, planning to loot it. The police threaten to open fire. Meanwhile, Pikhno is trying to get the typesetters to print the latest issue. They are afraid, saying that the revolutionaries have threatened to slaughter their families if they carry on working for a paper that supports the Black Hundreds. The editor delivers an impassioned speech: “I ask you to do it not for yourselves, but for Russia.… If we give in now, they will destroy everything and you will not have a single crust of bread to eat, nor will Russia.” Two senior typesetters agree. They tearfully ask Shulgin for “a rouble to buy some vodka” and then risk their lives by typesetting the new issue of The Kievite, which is only two pages long. It is the only newspaper that comes out the next day, 19 October.

The protests around the City Duma do not last long. Cossack troops arrive and disperse the crowd. A terrible stampede ensues that claims some lives: “Five minutes ago there was a crowd of many thousands. Now there are corpses, crumpled hats, galoshes, umbrellas and a few ladies’ garments,” The Kievite describes the events of that day. “Battles took place on the square and in the side streets between the Black Hundreds on one side, and the intelligentsia and the Jews on the other. By evening, and over the next two days, it turned into a pogrom.”

According to Shulgin, the pogrom was provoked by the rumor that “the yids have smashed the crown,” which the angry urban poor use as a pretext to raid Jewish shops. Officer Shulgin, the stepson of a pro-Black Hundreds publisher, goes around the city with a detachment of troops, trying to prevent the killing of Jews. The mobs cannot understand why the military is not on their side: “Officer, why are you going after us?! We support you.” Shulgin struggles to persuade them not to attack Jewish homes: “No sooner had I dispersed one group, another formed at the edge of the wasteland. It turned into a game of cat and mouse.”

THE UNION OF RUSSIANS

Dr. Dubrovin is extremely worked up by the manifesto. His followers gather at his huge apartment the next day. They believe that Witte has “extorted” the manifesto from the tsar with threats, and hence it has no legal force. Dubrovin comes up with a name for the nationwide organization that the monarchists have long dreamed of creating—the Union of the Russian People.

The “unionists” (as members of the organization call themselves) intend to fight the manifesto of 17 October and restore the unlimited power of the sovereign. They also describe themselves as “true Russians”—the very “forces of reason” that the imperial aide Vladi Orlov had in mind.

Dubrovin’s apartment becomes the epicenter of monarchist Petersburg. The police supply volunteers. After all, Rachkovsky has long mentored the trusty Dubrovin. Funding comes directly from the Interior Ministry.

REFORM OR TRAP

A couple of days after the signing of the manifesto, the news reaches Geneva, the capital of the Russian opposition. The leaders of the most powerful opposition party—Mikhail Gotz, Yevgeny Azef, and Viktor Chernov—study the latest issue of Journal de Geneve, which has published the text of the tsar’s manifesto. Chernov does not believe it is for real. “It’s a concession. The general strike is clearly having an effect,” he says. “But we have to stay on our toes.”

Chernov is not alone. Almost all the SRs are unanimous that it is “another trick, a cold-bloodied trap” to lure the “underground émigrés back to Russia” and then “sweep Russia clean of sedition.”^* Only Gotz and Azef disagree. “Do you really think they would turn the entire state system upside down and embolden the whole opposition for the sake of a police operation?” asks Azef.

Gotz agrees: “The old regime is finished. It is the end of absolutism and the start of a new era.” Moreover, in his opinion, “terrorism has also run its course.” It is time to do away with the militant organization.

The dismantling of the militant organization is opposed by Savinkov. But he is still subordinate to the central committee. But his younger comrade Mikhail Sokolov, who has not yet taken part in any terror operations, but dreams of doing so, does not feel beholden to the central committee. He and others decide to launch their own terror.

Gotz dispatches Chernov to Russia to start printing an SR Party newspaper in Saint Petersburg, which it can now do legally for the first time. Chernov comes to say goodbye to the party’s ideologist, who intends to remain in Europe. Gotz is now paralyzed from the waist down, and his hands are becoming numb as well. Gotz’s wife plays a gramophone record, and Chernov sings along in a “happy, silly mood.” The cause of Gotz’s illness is a tumor in the spinal cord, and his doctors have recommended a highly complex operation. But he and Chernov do not discuss health issues. They only talk about the future of Russian politics. “I selfishly did not want to spoil my own joy with pessimism,” recalls Chernov.

THE PIG, THE TOAD, AND OTHER MINISTERS

Under the new system, the Russian capital becomes a completely different city. Whereas before it was “ghost-like,” now it is one big carnival.

On 21 October, the Petersburg Soviet issues a (somewhat ironic) decree: “Only newspapers whose editors do not send issues to the censors can be published”; the next day every newspaper in the capital is published uncensored. The trade union of typographical workers refuses to typeset the censored newspapers.

The dissidents feel proud that their erstwhile guardians are now lying low. The striking dancers at the Mariinsky Theatre claim victory, but those who signed the declaration of loyalty are disgraced. The choreographer Sergei Legat, who gave in to the authorities, commits suicide. The entire theatre is shocked. Sergei Diaghilev writes an article entitled “The Dance of Death,” in which he accuses culture officials of driving him to take his own life.

It is at this time that Diaghilev becomes acquainted with Maxim Gorky, and together they discuss the idea of publishing an art magazine. It is a remarkable alliance: the aesthete Diaghilev’s projects are all state-funded, while Gorky, a living symbol of the protests, spent a month in jail last winter and is still awaiting trial. However, no one believes that the trial will now go ahead.

Gorky’s civil-law wife, Maria Andreyeva, becomes the publisher of the new magazine, which is called New Life. The popular actress is, of course, purely a figurehead—the brains behind the publication are Andreyeva’s Bolshevik friends. For them, it is their first lawful outlet of expression.

Autumn 1905 sees the return of political exiles and the release of political prisoners. Crowds gather to welcome home the Swiss exiles Viktor Chernov, Julius Martov, Vladimir Ulyanov, and Peter Struve.

For Struve, who is still in Paris, 17 October is a special day, for his wife gives birth. The contractions have already started when her husband bursts into the ward, shouting, “Nina, there’s a constitution!” After a couple of days he leaves his wife and newborn baby, closes the now defunct émigré magazine Liberation, and goes to Saint Petersburg to start a new magazine, this time on home soil.

The magazine takes a while to get off the ground. Struve is busy touring around, making speeches, and warning everyone of the danger of dictatorship hanging over Russia. He fears both the “dictatorship of the so-called ‘Black Hundreds’ and of the so-called ‘revolutionary proletariat.’” Struve believes that “Russia does not need any sort of dictatorship, only human rights, freedoms and economic revival.”

Lenin at this time prudently takes Andreyeva’s New Life under his wing, and dismisses the entire staff that she has recruited. Martov, for his part, begins to edit another newspaper, called Beginning. The Menshevik paper is far more popular and features articles by the “protester-in-chief” Leon Trotsky. Day after day Trotsky calls for a popular uprising. The main targets of his publications are Sergei Witte and Peter Struve. “Witte is an agent of the stock exchange, and Struve is an agent of Witte,” says one of his articles. He is full of bad blood for his enemies. He condemns the liberals even more violently than the government.

Freedom of speech knows no bounds. Right there on Nevsky Prospekt, outside Saint Catherine’s Catholic Church, stands a stall selling newspapers from Geneva, Paris, and London, which the day before were illegal, including back issues of Spark, Revolutionary Russia, Liberation, and others. The head of the secret police, Gerasimov, is shocked. Loitering by the counter, he rummages through the piles and buys something out of interest for his personal collection.

The metropolitan press, free from censorship, is forced to fight for readership with the revolutionary publications. A whole galaxy of satirical magazines ridicules the authorities.

Gerasimov’s new hobby is to deliver a selection of the latest cartoons to Interior Minister Durnovo: “This is Count Witte as a pig. And here, in the form of a toad, is you, Your Excellency.” However, only when the cartoonists mock the tsar does the minister take offence. He orders the immediate confiscation of any such magazines, which only spurs demand for them: instead of the usual five kopecks,^* “banned” issues sell for one,^† two,^‡ or even five roubles.^§

Saint Petersburg’s “constitutional” civil society tries to assume ever-greater authority, even in areas that the state did not intend. The Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies passes a resolution for a new eight-hour working day (although it fails to implement it). Meanwhile, the Soviet’s official newspaper Izvestia discusses the regulation of food prices and lower rents for the poor.

The Soviet also forms its own “militia” in order to police the police. Its “officers” are granted entrance to inspect the prisons to verify that the amnesty is being honored. Gerasimov is outraged and dismisses the police officers who let them in.

He is even more indigent about something that randomly catches his own eye: on Liteyny Avenue a man with a bandaged hand approaches a guard and says something to him. Gerasimov goes up to the man and asks him what the problem is. “The sanitary conditions in this yard are unacceptable. There is a cesspit that has not been cleared for a long time and stinks terribly. I suggested to the guard that action should be taken,” says the man with the bandage.

Despite the stinking cesspit, Gerasimov is furious. He cannot understand on what basis society has claimed such authority: “Excuse me, but who are you?” he shouts. “I am a representative of the militia under the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies,” states the bandaged man assuredly. Gerasimov orders the guard to arrest the “representative of the militia,” but Gerasimov is not in uniform and the guard does not know who he is. The latter taps his temple, showing that he thinks Gerasimov is a head case, and follows the bandaged man into the yard to draw up a report on the unsanitary conditions.

Witte, who wants to start everything anew, fails to take into account the reaction of the bureaucracy. No one bothered to explain what the new rules of the game would be. And thousands of people sincerely believe that the old order was better and do not want change.

From day one, Gerasimov advises the new interior minister Durnovo to arrest all leaders of social organizations. “Well, if we could arrest half of Petersburg, that would be great,” jokes Durnovo, who himself is itching to do something. But he restrains himself: “We are a constitutional government. There is no going back and you must behave accordingly.” But many, Gerasimov included, do not want to. They do not believe in the new policy and demand arrests.

THE WITTE GOVERNMENT

It would seem that Sergei Witte has achieved his life’s aim. He is the new shogun, the grand vizier, as his enemies in Petersburg high society acidly describe him. He is now the most powerful government official in the history of Russia, and is suitably placed to carry out his own program of reforms. Moreover, he is the first head of government able to choose his own ministers, regardless of the tsar.

Witte begins to look for personnel, but it turns out that most public figures want nothing to do with him. The first people he summons are Dmitry Shipov, the former head of the Moscow zemstvo and the first leader of the opposition, and Alexander Guchkov, an extremely active member of the Moscow Duma. They are both unhappy with Witte’s choice for the post of interior minister, Pyotr Durnovo, who worked as both Sipyagin’s and Plehve’s deputy. Next Witte meets with representatives of the Zemstvo Congress (including Prince Georgy Lvov, who twelve years later will head the Provisional Government). They all say that the manifesto of 17 October is not a constitution, merely a declaration of intent on the part of the government. First and foremost, the authorities must convene a constituent assembly. Witte even seeks out Milyukov, who advises him not to form a government of national trust, but to select a technocratic “business-minded” cabinet.

Witte consults with media owners. The publisher of the popular Stock Exchange Gazette tells him face to face that no one wants to work with him because no one trusts him.

In the new atmosphere of free speech, the old-timer Witte is an unappealing figure. All prospective ministers shy away, because even talking to him is a blow to their reputation. The Petersburg Soviet, Trotsky, and the leftist newspapers Beginning and New Life are riding high, and the public is far more radical than a year ago. Leftist ideas are in vogue, and no one wants to tarnish themselves by shaking hands with Witte. Supporting Witte, says Milyukov, would mean “losing face.”

In his memoirs, Witte complains about the liberal intelligentsia. If it had not rejected his proposals, everything would have been different, he opines. Later, even the liberals themselves will remember the moment as a unique opportunity lost.

As a result, Witte’s cabinet is formed not of public figures, but of timeworn tsarist officials. Yet the structure of power changes. The tsar’s recent favorite, Trepov, is appointed court commander. He is no longer the sole intermediary between the nation and the tsar, but simply the most important confidant, responsible for the sovereign’s personal safety.

But perhaps an even more epoch-defining resignation is that of the highly influential Grand Duke Vladimir, who commanded the army on the fateful 9 January 1905 and authorized the Bloody Sunday massacre. But his departure has nothing to do with the killings; it is simply that Nicholas II disapproves of the marriage of his son, Grand Duke Kirill, a first cousin of the tsar himself. Kirill has provoked a scandal by marrying the recently divorced wife of Alexandra’s elder brother, Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse. The tsar (under the influence of his wife) banishes Kirill from Russia. Enraged by this act, Uncle Vladimir hands in his notice. So begins the most protracted and internecine feud ever to occur inside the imperial family, with Nicky and Alix on one side, and Uncle Vladimir, his wife Miechen, and their children on the other. The feud lasts all the way until 1917.

A SAINT AND A REBELLION

The adoption of the manifesto is not the end of the crisis. On 23 October tempers flare at Kronstadt, Russia’s largest military port, just thirty kilometers from Saint Petersburg. In the evening the Kronstadt sailors learn that a commandant has arrested forty soldiers for having demanded better conditions. The sailors stop the train with the arrested soldiers. In response, the convoy opens fire, killing one sailor. It signals the start of an uprising of twelve naval barracks.

The uprising descends into attacks on local shops. Residents start fleeing in panic. On the morning of the 27th, even the most famous local, Father John of Kronstadt, leaves town.

Nicholas II writes in his diary on 27 October: “Disorder and riots broke out in Kronstadt yesterday. News of it was hard to come by, since the phones are not working. What times we live in!!!”

The next day of the uprising turns into a drunken brawl. The sailors smash up shops without making any demands.

The task of suppressing the unrest falls to two generals: Nikolai Ivanov and Mikhail Alekseyev, who will go on to lead the Russian army a decade later and become the tsar’s two closest generals in 1917. But in 1905 they are still unknown to the general public, having both just returned from the Manchurian front. They make short shrift of the drunken sailors. General Ivanov uses his stentorian voice, shouting with all his might at the mutineers: “On your knees!” The dumbfounded sailors obey. The rebellion is fully quashed with the help of a machine-gun crew and an infantry regiment. There are fifty dead and two hundred wounded.

The very next day Nicholas II writes: “Things have calmed down after the sailors’ drunken unrest.” But the story does not end there. After the suppression of the rebellion, the Petersburg Soviet announces a protest strike, which involves around a hundred and fifty thousand people. Strikes in support of the Kronstadt sailors are held in Moscow, Vilnius, Kharkov, and Kiev.

The seventy-six-year-old priest John of Kronstadt stays in the capital for three days until everything in the island town calms down. For a long time afterwards, the liberal press mocks the “people’s priest” who fled the uprising: a newspaper prints a cartoon in which he is depicted on a donkey wading through the Gulf of Finland to the mainland.

It is a difficult time for Russia’s most famous prelate. He is forced to move house temporarily to escape the opprobrium. Into the breach steps his young friend, the thirty-six-year-old Grigory Rasputin. On 31 October, the tsar and his wife pay a visit to the Montenegrin princesses, Stana and Milica. There, they are acquainted with Milica’s new protégé—“the man of God, Grigory.”

Their new acquaintance makes a strong impression on the imperial family. The emperor and empress are still in shock over the 17 October manifesto, which goes against their belief that the tsar’s power is God-given. Rasputin thinks so, too (or so he says). Nicholas and Alexandra perceive him as the true conveyor of the thoughts and feelings of the common people; he tells them what they want to hear and offers to help knock down the “wall” of officials and courtiers (as well as liberals and intellectuals) that separates the tsar from his people. Rasputin appears just when the tsar is flirting with democracy; he will gradually come to replace that democracy with his own vision; he will become for Nicholas the voice of God and the voice of the people. In modern parlance, he will act as a focus group and the most reliable opinion poll.

“It is strange that such a clever man could have erred in his attempts to pacify,” Nicholas II writes to his mother about Count Witte. Indeed, there is no pacification in sight. Nosar, Trotsky, and the Petersburg Soviet are still urging the workers to go on striking indefinitely. The situation is not as desperate as it was in early October, but is still the opposite of what Witte had promised.

In late October Prime Minister Witte receives a delegation of workers, all former activists of Gapon’s organization. The workers request an amnesty for Gapon and the return of the confiscated sum of 30,000 roubles^* that was in the organization’s accounts. Witte promises to return the money, but refuses to amnesty Gapon. But Gapon comes back all the same, under false papers.

The city has changed immeasurably since January. Without his cassock and beard, no one recognizes Gapon (he writes that without his robes he feels like Samson without his hair). The former priest goes into the building of the Free Economic Society, where, disguised, he and Gorky had addressed the crowd in the evening of 9 January. It is now the home of the Petersburg Soviet, headed by Nosar. There Gapon meets an old friend, Pinhas Rutenberg, who has been granted an amnesty.

Rutenberg advises Gapon to walk into the conference hall and say to Nosar: “I, Georgy Gapon, ask for your protection,” in which case no one will dare touch him and he will soon be amnestied. But Gapon disagrees, believing that his life will still be in danger. Moreover, he does not want to be in hock to the Petersburg Soviet and wants to revive his own organization.

But while Gapon ponders his next move, the situation changes very quickly. News arrives from Crimea on 11 November that several warship crews have mutinied. Lieutenant Pyotr Schmidt has appointed himself commander of the Black Sea Fleet.

The newspapers have only scraps of information about the uprising, but it is clearly a fatal blow to Witte’s pacification policy. After the adoption of his manifesto, things have only become worse. The influence of the silovik Interior Minister Durnovo increases as a result. Even Witte himself starts demanding stricter measures.

The government issues a decree imposing new penalties for striking: up to eighteen months in prison for participants and up to four years for organizers. Troops are dispatched to Sevastopol.

On 13 November, the Petersburg Soviet discusses a new general strike, but decides not to announce one. The next day enterprises and factories begin mass layoffs of more than one hundred thousand workers.

It is at this point that Witte remembers Gapon and comes up with a new role for him. The prime minister has no interest in using Gapon to cajole the Petersburg workers, for his connections abroad are far more useful. Gapon is approached by Witte’s personal assistant, the former police agent Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, who promises to help revive the workers’ organization and even finance it, in return for assistance. Although less popular in Saint Petersburg than before, Gapon is still revered among the Russian opposition abroad. Witte’s new government is desperately in need of a huge loan—the economy is spluttering and all negotiations with France’s bankers have stalled. Gapon’s task is to go to Paris and inform local media that the Russian government under Witte is stable and efficient; there will be no revolution and all loans are risk-free.

Gapon agrees. He is given 500 roubles for the trip,^* and the promise of the return of his organization’s confiscated funds. The government requests that he keep this payment a secret, to which he consents. He is firmly convinced that it is he who is using Witte, and not the other way round.

November 21^st marks a long-awaited grand event: the reopening of Gapon’s Assembly of Petersburg Factory Workers, attended by four thousand people. Gapon is happy to have achieved his goal once again. As the leader of a powerful organization, he is a force to be reckoned with.

However, the opening of Gapon’s organization on 21 November is overshadowed by another far more significant event: the first meeting of the “Union of the Russian People.” The authorities allocate the building of the Mikhailovsky Manege for the occasion. A raised platform is set up in the center of the arena for the speakers. The total number of participants is not clear: the Interior Ministry employee Vladimir Gurko estimates around two thousand, but the Black Hundred newspaper publisher Pavel Krushevan is sure it is twenty thousand.

The participants recall a tense atmosphere: “The air was electric.” There are fears that after the meeting there will be smashing and looting.

The intermittent raids and pogroms that the monarchists and their sympathizers carry out are the flip side of the unrest of autumn 1905. On one side of the street Marxists bear red flags calling for strikes, while on the other “right” side of the street there are banners and portraits of the emperor. The monarchists often force passers-by to remove their hats (sometimes violently). In addition, they often beat up anyone they consider to be Jewish or a student—the perpetrators of the unrest in their eyes. Even in Saint Petersburg (and especially in provincial towns) a man in glasses is not safe.

This repels many from the monarchist movement. On the eve of the gathering on 21 November, Dr. Dubrovin and his friends visit Saint Petersburg Metropolitan Anthony, asking him to bless the flags and banners of the Union. But in these more liberal times Metropolitan Anthony, who four years previously signed the excommunication of Tolstoy, no longer feels the need to oblige the Black Hundreds, even if they enjoy the backing of the Interior Ministry. “I do not support your right-wing parties and consider you to be terrorists,” Metropolitan Anthony tells Dubrovin. “The left-wing terrorists throw bombs, while the right-wing parties hurl stones at anyone who disagrees with them.” He shows the unionists the door. Dubrovin is very offended and does not forgive Metropolitan Anthony.

The meeting of 21 November, however, passes without incident. The speakers include Dubrovin himself, a few monarchist publicists, and two bishops. All believe that the rally in support of the regime in the midst of revolution is a success. On 27 November the union starts publishing its own newspaper under the title Russian Banner. The protagonist of every issue is Prime Minister Witte (a.k.a. “Count Semi-Sakhalin”), whom Dubrovin and his associates despise with a burning intensity. Witte’s resignation is called for in almost every publication. The union receives money from the government, but that does not prevent it from waging war on the prime minister.

Dr. Dubrovin goes into overdrive. He meets with all officials who are dissatisfied with Witte, and offers them his services. In early December, Dubrovin is received by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who six weeks earlier had implored the emperor to take on Witte, and now bitterly regrets it. “Witte, egged on by the Jews, is leading Russia to revolution and disintegration,” Dubrovin exhorts the grand duke. Nikolai Nikolaevich promises to arrange a meeting between Dubrovin and the tsar’s right-hand man, Trepov.^*

Witte is caught in the crossfire between the attack from the left led by Trotsky and the one from the right led by Dubrovin. As a result, the prime minister loses most of his support. Almost all of liberal society is under the influence of the revolutionaries, and the officials who yesterday supported Witte are today more attuned to the Union of the Russian People.

THE END OF THE SOVIETS

On 25 November Gapon, as agreed, sets off for Paris. The day after, the chairman of the Petersburg Soviet, Nosar-Khrustalev, is arrested. The new chairman is his deputy, Leon Trotsky. But Gerasimov does stop there. He demands the arrest of the entire Petersburg Soviet.

The now twenty-six-year-old Trotsky is one of the youngest revolutionaries, and the most energetic. Like Gapon, he takes instant decisions and infects others with his self-assurance. More experienced leaders pale in comparison. Even Martov and Lenin are sidelined. The latter writes for New Life, but has no role in the Petersburg Soviet.

The executive committee of the Petersburg Soviet discusses how to respond to “the government’s kidnapping of Comrade Nosar,” and adopts a so-called “financial manifesto.” It urges people to take out their savings from the banks and demand that all settlements, including salaries, be paid in gold. This will be a huge drain on the State Bank’s gold reserves and will accelerate the government’s financial crisis. Even without the appeal, savings are being withdrawn: by early December the State Bank’s gold reserves have shrunk by 250 million roubles.^*

On 2 December eight newspapers publish the “financial manifesto.” All copies are immediately withdrawn from circulation, and the papers are closed down, including Lenin and Andreyeva’s New Life, Martov and Trotsky’s Beginning, and the new Kadet newspaper edited by Milyukov, People’s Freedom.

The next day the police surround the building of the Free Economic Society. An officer presents an arrest warrant, but the presiding Trotsky does not give him the floor: “Please do not interrupt the speaker. If you wish to speak, give me your name, and I will ask the assembly if it wishes to hear from you.” The bemused officer waits for the end of the speech and then reads out the warrant. Trotsky says that the Petersburg Soviet will take note of it and asks the officer to leave the room. He goes to get reinforcements. Trotsky, however, tells a different story. Before his arrest, having learned that the building is surrounded by troops, he orders that there be no resistance. There is a clanging of metal as deputies throw their revolvers to the floor. Either way, the entire Petersburg Soviet is soon under arrest.

On the eve of the arrest of the Petersburg Soviet, Witte orders the printing of a thousand copies of Gapon’s appeal to the workers: “Stop! Proletariat, beware of an ambush. Not a step forward, not a step back. No sudden movements so as not to provoke the dark, embittered reactionary monster. Avoid bloodshed, enough has been spilt already.” It is a surprising about-face—in January Trepov used regime-loyal workers to oppose Gapon’s march; now Witte wants to use Gapon as a counterweight to the Petersburg Soviet.

Gapon, meanwhile, gives a scheduled interview to the French press. “Mr. Witte’s current policies at least partially satisfy the requirements of the Russian people,” says Gapon in an interview with the newspaper Le Matin. “Although Mr. Witte refused to grant me an amnesty, I have changed my negative opinion of him. I think that he is the only one who can save us. If the revolutionaries find a common language with him, it could form the basis of the liberation of Russia.”

Two weeks later Gapon arranges an informal press conference and invites correspondents from several newspapers, both Russian and French, for breakfast in order to refute accusations that he is working for Witte. “Under Witte, there is freedom to write and speak. It is better that Witte be in power than Durnovo. That’s all. Any talk of dealings between me and Witte is nonsense,” says Gapon.

As the leader of the opposition in exile, Gapon’s popularity soars once more. After the arrest of members of the Petersburg Soviet, he is invited to all sorts of events on the situation in Russia: he is summoned to the French parliament, and meets with the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès and the writer Anatole France.

Gapon’s next port of call is the south of France. All the while, he yearns to return to Russia and be officially pardoned. In the meantime, he acts as an intermediary for Witte in negotiations in Monte Carlo. Soon the Russian tabloids are writing that Gapon was seen playing roulette while blood was flowing in Moscow.

Gapon’s appeal has no effect in Saint Petersburg or Moscow. Unlike the Petersburg Soviet, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is still calling for the general strike to turn into an armed uprising. Leaflets to that effect are scattered around the city. Moscow is becoming a crucial battleground.

MOSCOW CARNAGE

The Moscow protest is full of youthful folly. One member of the Moscow Soviet, the SR Vladimir Zenzinov, recalls that the decision to start a rebellion was taken on the spur of the moment. There is no chance of success. The rebels are students and young workers armed with “lousy revolvers,” seemingly ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a revolutionary whim. Zenzinov in December 1905 is twenty-five years old, and many protesters are even younger.

There are no social media or mobile devices back then—even the ordinary telephone is not available to everyone. But thousands of twenty-year-old Muscovites are under the spell of newspapers and discussion groups. They are ready and even willing to die. Years later, Zenzinov will say that the December massacre in Moscow was all a childish prank: “It was a peculiarity of those times. Even when blood was spilt, it was all seen as a bit of fun, just childish defiance.” Zenzinov recalls that, in the early stages, unarmed boys and girls laughingly disarmed police officers, who were too bemused to resist.

On 7 December, the situation becomes more serious: railways, post offices, telegraphs, trams, and factories in Moscow go on strike, and newspapers are not published. The lack of news creates panic: it is rumored that the Black Hundreds are starting to eradicate the intelligentsia, although most members are, in fact, at home.

On 8 December, a ten-thousand-strong crowd gathers at the Aquarium Garden. Police surround it and arrest those who are armed. However, the protesters do not want to surrender and most of them jump over the fence and take cover. The rally ends without bloodshed, but rumors spread that the gathering was dispersed violently. The young revolutionaries, led by Zenzinov, decide to take revenge. They throw a bomb at the building of the Moscow Police Department. The result is better than expected: the explosion rips off the roof and the building burns to the ground, along with the officers inside. Henceforth, it is no longer a game.

Zenzinov’s comrades, the SR leaders, are in Saint Petersburg at the time, preparing an armed uprising in the capital. Azef appoints Boris Savinkov to lead it. Having recently returned to Russia, Savinkov lives on Ligovsky Avenue and is surprised not to have been arrested. He does not try to hide and even writes articles under his real name. At the same time, he sees that city residents do not want an uprising of any sort. They are even growing tired of striking.

Savinkov goes to a meeting of the district combat unit commanded by Rutenberg. Rutenberg, Gapon’s SR friend, delivers a fiery speech. But that is tempered by Savinkov, who says that it is important to understand what sort of fight local residents are ready to engage in.

There are three groups, he says. The first consists of volunteers willing to engage in terrorism by attacking Witte’s house or blowing up government and other such buildings. The second is a revolutionary army that could attempt to seize the Peter and Paul Fortress. The third is made up of people willing to defend their neighborhoods. The absolute majority belongs to the third group. They are willing to defend themselves, but not participate in any kind of uprising or terrorism.

Late in the evening of 6 December, Interior Minister Pyotr Durnovo learns that the Moscow Soviet is publishing leaflets calling for a general strike and an armed insurrection. He decides not to disturb his immediate superior, Sergei Witte, and places a direct call to Tsarskoye Selo, waking up the tsar. The following morning, they meet at 7 a.m. and decide that drastic action is called for: “Clearly, it is either us or them. The situation cannot continue. I authorize you to take any measures you deem necessary,” says Nicholas II.

Durnovo gives Gerasimov the go-ahead to start mass arrests. He is happy to do so. He writes in his memoirs that he actually started preparing for repressive measures almost immediately after the signing of the manifesto on 17 October. On the first day over three hundred and fifty people are arrested in Saint Petersburg, and around four hundred the next. People are detained at random: for example, the twenty-four-year-old lawyer Alexander Kerensky, who does not yet have anything to do with the revolutionaries (he wanted to join the military organization of the SRs, but was not accepted). In twelve years’ time Kerensky will issue an arrest warrant for General Gerasimov.

When Prime Minister Witte wakes on 7 December, he cannot believe his eyes. His power has disappeared literally overnight. The tsar, Durnovo, and Gerasimov have decided everything without him.

But the main events take place in Moscow. The city’s governor-general, Dubasov, asks Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich for reinforcements. The latter answers that he has no spare forces, so Dubasov takes matters into his own hands.

A civil war breaks out in the heart of the city. Gorky is delighted: “The public mood is amazing! Honest to God, I didn’t except anything of the sort. It’s businesslike when fighting mounted police and building barricades, but fun and playful in between. An excellent atmosphere!” Gorky is thirty-seven years old, but infected with youthful revolutionary zeal. He is not bothered by people being killed: “We’re used to gunshots, wounds and corpses. When a fire fight starts, people happily join in. Sure, the authorities will win the battle, but not the war.”

Dubasov continues to insist on reinforcements. Finally, on 15 December fresh troops from the Semenov Regiment are dispatched, having suppressed the recent Kronstadt mutiny in exemplary fashion. Dubasov also enlists more and more volunteers from the Union of the Russian People.

The insurgents employ what today would be described as guerrilla or even terrorist tactics: they hide in homes and fire at the soldiers from the windows and roofs. The latter respond with artillery fire. Most of the victims are civilians. The sympathies of the majority of Muscovites lie with the revolutionaries. “The population is terrorized and embittered, while the revolutionaries are fearless,” writes the monarchist publicist Lev Tikhomirov in his diary. “I pity the dying residents, soldiers and revolutionaries themselves. So much blood and for what? To preserve the incurable ulcer that is ravaging Russia?”

Even more outspoken is the Saint Petersburg police chief Gerasimov: “The most dangerous part was that the revolutionary parties had the active support of the entire population, even where you wouldn’t expect to find it. We, the custodians of law and order, were isolated. It pains me to say that there were very few people willing to oppose the revolution as a matter of principle, not simply for material gain. The revolutionaries who sought not only to overthrow the tsarist government, but to overturn the very foundations of the existing order had support and sympathy at every step.”

The total death toll is unknown. The newspapers report two thousand injured and estimate at least one thousand killed. There is an information blackout, and Muscovites remain in the dark for a week. Fanciful rumors spread that the true aim of the revolutionaries was to lure as many troops as possible from Saint Petersburg so as to overthrow the government in the capital. The idea that, in fact, the young revolutionaries had no objectives at all is difficult to believe, especially for the relatives of victims and residents of neighborhoods destroyed by artillery fire, who want to think that there is some underlying reason. They would not understand this explanation given by the young Zenzinov: “There are times when people go into battle with no hope of victory—it is not a matter of strategic or political calculation, but of honor. So it was with the Decembrists, who faced certain defeat.”

Incidentally, Vladimir Zenzinov is neither killed, nor injured, nor arrested—he calmly buys a train ticket and slips away to Saint Petersburg. Opposite him in the carriage is the red-bearded Peter Struve, who resents what is happening and “blames both sides.” Zenzinov has “no desire to argue with him.”

KRASNOYARSK REPUBLIC

Rebellion in the name of revolution and democracy is not only big-city entertainment. In autumn 1905 the entire empire is infected with the epidemic. The October strike is nationwide, and its effects are visible everywhere. It happens in parallel with the demobilization of troops, who are returning from the Far East to European Russia. Demoralized by the senseless war, the soldiers spread revolutionary sentiments along the way, stirring up the local population. The soldiers put forward demands and refuse to move until the officers comply. Such a strike is instigated in Krasnoyarsk by the 3rd Railway Battalion. The soldiers find a common language with local workers, and together they set up a joint soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, which begins championing the rights of Krasnoyarsk residents. The chairman of the soviet is Warrant Officer Andrei Kuzmin.

The main cause of the resentment among the workers is the elections to the Krasnoyarsk Duma. Under the existing electoral law, only the propertied classes are allowed to vote. In Krasnoyarsk, that means only around one hundred people have the right to elect the fifty-member city council. The Krasnoyarsk Soviet intends to right this wrong.

It is all surprisingly simple: the soldiers peacefully disarm the police, take over responsibility for law and order, and announce forthcoming elections on the basis of universal suffrage, including women. The former Krasnoyarsk authorities look on in amazement. They do not interfere because they can’t. Even the governor-general loses his administrative functions to the “President of the Republic of Krasnoyarsk” Andrei Kuzmin. Meanwhile, the Soviet sets up an electoral commission, the legitimacy of which is recognized even by the old city council and the local cell of the Kadets, which sends a delegation of representatives. The election commission draws up a list of voters. Meanwhile, life in the city goes on: theatres, shops, and newspapers all continue as normal. Public meetings are held almost every day to discuss current issues.

Krasnoyarsk’s democratic utopia begins on 10 December—the same day that civil war breaks out in Moscow. The “utopia” lasts for two weeks. Only on 17 December, after learning about the suppression of the Moscow uprising, does the governor request reinforcements to suppress the “Krasnoyarsk republic” (apparently the thought never occurred to him before). Finally, on 24 December, soldiers arrive from the Omsk Regiment. They occupy the post office and put up posters around the city declaring martial law. The rebellious soldiers and workers barricade themselves inside workshops and are besieged by the loyalist troops until 2 January. Almost all the leaders of the uprising, including the “President” Kuzmin, somehow manage to escape. Kuzmin moves to France. In early January about five hundred rebels are arrested.

The tale of Krasnoyarsk is typical for the autumn of 1905. Democratic governments spontaneously emerge in Chita, Sochi, Kharkov, Poland, Georgia, and in the suburbs of Moscow. These “republics” exist from one week to two months before the imperial authorities recover from the shock and restore order.

Leo Tolstoy at this time is living at his Yasnaya Polyana estate, where the situation is much calmer. He spends the whole of December writing an “Appeal to the Russian people: the government, the revolutionaries and the common folk.” It outlines his political agenda, which is both anti-government and anti-revolutionary. It closely corresponds in spirit to the natural processes occurring in the country. Tolstoy argues that the Russian people do not need a government—they can work out for themselves how to live: “If urban and rural working people ceased to obey and serve the government, its power would vanish, and with it the conditions of slavery in which they live. These conditions are enforced by the regime. You feed this enforcement yourselves.” The micro-republics mushrooming around the country, albeit briefly, embody Tolstoy’s idea.

Although Tolstoy is equally critical of the intelligentsia (“a parasite on the body of the people”) and the revolutionaries (“who want to replace one form of violence with another”), he considers the present government to be doomed: “Whether or not the revolutionaries are right to pursue their goals, they seek a new system of life. They want one thing: to be in the same favorable position as those who wave the banner of autocracy, albeit with constitutional amendments.”

THE PARTY OF POWER

Although Tolstoy opposes the revolution, in conservative eyes he is considered its progenitor and root cause. Tolstoy’s sworn enemy is John of Kronstadt. The seventy-eight-year-old writer and the seventy-nine-year-old priest represent the two poles of Russian society. They do not lead public opinion (the tone is set by the younger generation), but they are viewed by most as living symbols: Tolstoy represents the struggle against the regime; Father John symbolizes the Black Hundreds.

In 1906, John of Kronstadt applies for membership to the Union of the Russian People. He donates 10,000 roubles^* to its coffers and attends the solemn consecration of its gonfalon. Everyone forgets Metropolitan Anthony’s rejection of the organization: the “people’s priest” is a far more popular figure than the head of the church.

John of Kronstadt speaks about his motives for joining the Union of the Russian People in an interview with the foreign correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian: “Our people are very ignorant; so it is better not to give them a reason to stray from the true path.… Our intelligentsia is not fit for purpose and full of godless anarchists like Leo Tolstoy, whom they adore but I strongly condemn. That is why they hate me so much and want to erase me from the face of the Earth. But I’m not afraid of them and pay no heed.”

In December 1905 the Union of the Russian People and Dr. Dubrovin hit the peak of their popularity. The crackdown on the revolution leads to an incredible surge in the Black Hundreds movement across the country.

In early December, Dubrovin sends Nicholas II a telegram requesting him not to release the arrested members of the Petersburg Soviet and others suspected of revolutionary activity. “Quite right,” replies Nicholas. On 22 December, immediately after the suppression of the Moscow uprising, the tsar officially receives a group of representatives of the Union of the Russian People, headed by Dubrovin, at Tsarskoye Selo.

Dubrovin reads the emperor an appeal on behalf of the union. “We, Sire, shall defend You faithfully and unflinchingly, just as our fathers and grandfathers defended their Tsars, now and forever.”

The appeal sets forth three conditions for preserving the “strength and power of the Russian State”: the autocratic power of the tsar, the suppression of “the handful of evil mutineers,” and a solution to the agrarian issue.

Nicholas II is content. He accepts the ensign of the union, which the unionists interpret as a gesture that he and the tsarevich have joined the organization. Nicholas even mentions the meeting in his diary, albeit skimpily. This means that it made a great impression upon him.

More importantly, Dubrovin makes the acquaintance of Empress Alexandra and totally charms her. She always knew that “real” Russian people love the tsar, and now she has proof. Alexandra becomes the main lobbyist for the Union of the Russian People and the organizer of her husband’s meetings with the Black Hundreds—sometimes informally, without the knowledge of the imperial court or the chancellery.

The meeting is a turning point in the history of the Union of the Russian People. The organization effectively turns into a state institute, the “party of power.”^* Although not a political party as such, the Union of the Russian People receives copious public funding (10 million roubles^† in the first year alone) and forms a vast network of branches across the country. It enjoys plentiful administrative resources, and its regional leaders are often local government officials who believe in the cause.

The Union of the Russian People is thriving, and Dubrovin is an excellent fundraiser. According to those close to him, he is “skilled at collecting private donations off the record.” One of his major sponsors and female admirers is Poluboyarinova, a rich widow, who makes regular contributions to the union and eventually becomes its accountant.

By a curious coincidence, both the liberal People’s Freedom Party and the monarchist Union of the Russian People appear at roughly the same time and both are fronted by a middle-aged, charismatic leader (the fifty-year-old Dubrovin and the forty-six-year-old Milyukov) funded by a besotted female millionaire (the forty-year-old Poluboyarinova and the thirty-two-year-old Morozova). However, the similarity ends there. In everything else, the “allies” and the Kadets are polar opposites. They despise each other passionately and spare no expense in the struggle. Incidentally, Milyukov and Morozova’s romance does not last long, while Poluboyarinova remains true to Dubrovin until her death.

However, not all monarchists want to join the Union of the Russian People. State Council member Boris Stürmer believes that it is “pitiable and laughable” to listen to the Union of the Russian People “histrionically advocating autocracy.” For Stürmer, the problem is not Dubrovin, but Nicholas II. “He’s to blame for these so-called ‘knights of sorrowful countenance,’ these Don Quixotes. As long we have this tsar, there will be no order in Russia,” he says. In ten years’ time the tsar will appoint Stürmer to the post of prime minister.

But the imperial favorite at the moment is Dubrovin. He regularly and frequently discourses with senior government officials: on 30 December, he is received by Trepov, and on 15 January by the emperor once again. But in particular proximity to Dubrovin is the new governor of Saint Petersburg, Major General von der Launitz. Despite being an ethnic German, von der Launitz becomes a fierce supporter and lobbyist of the organization of “true Russian people.”

On 13 February the Union of the Russian People celebrates Shrovetide with pancakes. The atmosphere, recall witnesses, is highly charged. In his speech Dubrovin alleges, perhaps metaphorically, that Witte has “put the tsar in a cage.” The crowd becomes frenzied: “Where does Witte live? Let’s go and kill him!” Saint Petersburg only narrowly avoids mayhem.

Since October 1905, pogroms have been taking place throughout Russia. Whereas hearsay once attributed them to the Interior Ministry, it is now believed that they are the work of the Union of the Russian People. Dubrovin’s printing press is said to print not only the newspaper Banner, but also pamphlets calling for attacks on Jewish socialists. They circulate throughout the Pale of Settlement.

It is Dr. Dubrovin who, during the Moscow uprising of December 1905, begins to promulgate the idea that the revolution can only be defeated by fighting fire with fire. If the revolutionaries are armed and are trying to incite nationwide revolts, waiting until the rebellion breaks out would be a mistake. The unionists must be permanently on guard and ready to quash it at any moment. They are the anointed defenders of the Faith, the Tsar, and the Fatherland.

By December 1905 Dubrovin’s ideas are already being put into practice: combat units are created under the aegis of the Union of the Russian People. Union members are issued weapons by the Interior Ministry. The weapons are delivered in batches and stored in the basement of Dubrovin’s house, where they are handed out to the combatants against written acknowledgement of receipt. The operation is overseen by Governor von der Launitz.

One member of the Union of the Russian People, Nikolai Markov, who will soon challenge Dubrovin for the leadership, proudly believes that it is the world’s first fascist organization: “The people’s movement appeared long before the rise of Fascism and National Socialism. It was their prototype.… The Union of the Russian People battled for control of the streets, and the mighty Russian fist, braving the bombs and pistols, delivered such a blow to the skull of the Judeo-Masonic revolution that for many years it hid underground, not daring to show its nose.”

All of this Markov will write thirty-two years later, in 1937 in Berlin, as an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler. He goes on to compare the invention of fascism to the invention of the light bulb: “We, Russians, never bring our inventions to completion. The light bulb, for instance, was invented by our compatriot Pavel Yablochkov long before Edison. It worked, everyone was gasping with amazement, but nothing came of it. Then Edison came along and invented exactly the same thing. The Union of Russian People was made up of Yablochkovs, all vaguely aware of the need to resist internationalist evil with a popular-national idea.”

The Union of the Russian People is both anti-Marxist and anti-liberal. It professes populist ultra-nationalism, romanticizes violence, and rejects democratic values. In January-February 1905, when preparations begin for the elections to the State Duma, Dubrovin is single-minded: he refuses to recognize the validity of the exercise and declares that the Union of the Russian People will not participate. He firmly believes that Russia should be governed autocratically, and that the tsar has no need for a State Duma in any shape or form.

GAPON FALTERS

As the Union of the Russian People gains strength, Gapon’s “assemblies” start to receive money allocated by Witte. The cashier Matyushensky supposedly receives two large payments from a “merchant in Baku,” after which one of Gapon’s assistants lets slip that the money is from Witte. A scandal erupts. Gapon hastily convenes a meeting in Finland to explain to other members where the money came from. It later transpires that there is no money after all—Matyushensky has taken the cash and fled.

Gapon’s position is desperate. He is in Finland illegally, and his name is being dragged through the mud in the tabloids. He is accused of being an agent of Witte, and his own organization splits in two—one man even kills himself during the meeting.

But worst of all for Gapon is the lack of news: there is no amnesty from the authorities, and the Interior Ministry has not authorized the assemblies or the opening of new branches. It turns out that Witte has abandoned him—or, rather, Interior Minister Durnovo is no longer under Witte’s thumb. Having suppressed the Moscow uprising, Durnovo realizes that liberalism is out of fashion and stops listening to the prime minister. So there is no need to allow Gapon’s assemblies.

Gapon is back to square one. He has to start again from scratch and try to rebuild relations with the authorities. He is advised to speak to Rachkovsky.

Gapon tells his associate Rutenberg about the meeting with Rachkovsky, which Rutenberg reports to his boss, Azef, who makes a quick decision: “Let’s get rid of that rat Gapon.” The task is assigned to Rutenberg himself. Savinkov likes the plan, while Chernov sympathizes with Rutenberg, who has to become an unwilling murderer. “Azef and especially Savinkov had Rutenberg pinned to a wall. Savinkov was seething with rage, tearing into the poor, bedraggled Rutenberg.… Rutenberg was their whipping boy.”

Meanwhile, new accusations are being made against Gapon, not only of collaborating with the government: the tabloids also discuss his relations with women, saying that “Gapon lives high on the hog in Monte Carlo, burning money at the roulette table, dressed to the nines and surrounded by courtesans.”

On 21 February Gapon writes a detailed letter to the newspaper Rus: “My name is being trashed by hundreds of newspapers, both Russian and foreign. They slander and reproach me. Deprived of civil rights and denied an amnesty, I am being attacked mercilessly from all sides. They call me a thief and a provocateur. They want to see me crucified.” Gapon asks to be tried by a “comrades’ court”: “I will answer all the accusations. My conscience is clear.”

Petersburg Gazette publishes a piece entitled “At Gapon’s”—a journalistic report describing how modestly he, his wife Uzhdaleva (a former fosterling at the orphanage where he worked), and newborn son live in a small, huddled apartment.

Preparations are made for the court session. Gapon finds a lawyer, and participants in the “comrades’ court” are selected, including the history professor and liberal politician Pavel Milyukov and the journalist Alexander Stolypin, who works for Suvorin and is the brother of the governor of Saratov, Pyotr Stolypin, the future prime minister.

Gapon eagerly awaits the trial. He writes letters to the newspapers and to the Saint Petersburg prosecutor’s office, proposing that he be either amnestied or tried as a runaway criminal. Gapon does in fact want to be arrested, for it would greatly enhance his reputation. But the prosecutor’s office ignores his plea.

On 27 March Gapon goes to the Saint Petersburg District Court asking for a case to be brought against him as a runaway criminal. He is unexpectedly given a certificate of amnesty backdated to 27 October the previous year. In other words, Witte simply lied to him that he had not been amnestied together with the other workers.

It is a weight off Gapon’s shoulders. He can now restore his reputation and revive the “assemblies.” The next day he goes to meet Rutenberg at Ozerki Station, north of Saint Petersburg.

Having met on the platform, they head for Rutenberg’s rented house. Along the way the newly inspired Gapon outlines his plans to his supposed friend: “I’m going to help the workers. We’ll create workshops and bakeries. That’s what we need. In time we’ll have a factory. You’ll be the director.” Politics is in the past—it is now all about the “theory of small deeds.”^*

They enter the house. Four men appear from a side room. Gapon tries to resist as they put a rope around his neck. Rutenberg leaves so as not to witness what comes next.

TIME TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY

In Saint Petersburg almost no one is looking for Gapon. Last year’s hero is forgotten, and his corpse hangs at an abandoned dacha outside Saint Petersburg.

The winter of 1905-1906 is probably the most frustrating time, and the worst hangover, in Russian history. Everything that Russian society has been so passionate about over the past two years has all been a letdown. There is the closure of newspapers, more and more arrests, nationwide strife, the omnipotent Black Hundreds.… “It’s time to leave the country” is the mood of the middle classes in Saint Petersburg and even more so in Moscow. After the suppression of the December uprising, Muscovites want a new regime or emigration.

Even some revolutionaries—who returned under Witte’s amnesty and now face new criminal charges—want to leave. Apolitical types are also packing their bags. They initially took interest in the “democratic spring,” but now have no desire to participate in the dirty, brutal struggle that has ensued.

Dima Filosofov moves to Paris, followed by Gippius and Merezhkovsky. They are “doing a Herzen,”^* says Diaghilev disparagingly, but soon he too leaves—he wants to organize an exhibition of Russian art, again in Paris.

For Maxim Gorky and his civil wife Andreyeva, departure is the only way out, so to speak. They spend January 1906 performing in Finland, sending all the money from their readings to help victims of the December clashes (i.e., to the Social Democrats). However, Finland is part of the Russian Empire, so to avoid arrest Gorky and Andreyeva move to Berlin.

There Gorky writes an appeal entitled “Do Not Give Money to the Russian Government.”^† The article is one of the most amazing texts ever written by a Russian oppositionist. Today it would be described as Russophobic: “Is Europe really so unconcerned about having as its neighbor a country of 140 million people whom the authorities are trying to turn into animals, instilling in them hostility and hatred for anything that is not Russian, inculcating not just cruelty and violence, but a passion for violence? Do Jewish bankers in Europe understand that they are giving money to Russia to fund Jewish pogroms?”

For this article, a new criminal case is filed against Gorky in Russia. But he does not plan to return to his homeland, and sets off to America.

Gorky’s trip with his wife is arranged by Lenin, who is grateful for the money they sent from Finland. Lenin asks Gorky to promote the Bolsheviks abroad and to continue agitating against the tsarist government. Lenin plans everything in minute detail, right down to hiring a PR man and security guard.

In New York, the writer is received enthusiastically. At the port, he is met not only by journalists, but also by crowds of Russian émigrés. Gorky’s photo appears on the front pages of newspapers. Everywhere he is recognized and welcomed. He and Andreyeva ride on the underground. Fellow passengers look at the photos in the papers they are reading and say: “Hey there, Mr. Gorky.” On day two, a dinner is held in his honor, attended by the seventy-year-old Mark Twain. Gorky is only thirty-seven and worships the master of American prose, who also admires his young Russian colleague. Together, they announce the creation of a fund to collect money for the Russian revolution. The press describes Gorky as the “Russian Jefferson.” Plans are made for a trip to Washington and a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt.

But everything goes sour on 15 April. An American tabloid uncovers that “Mr. and Mrs. Gorky” are not husband and wife after all. The real Mrs. Gorky (i.e., Ekaterina Peshkova) is in Russia with their two children. She and Gorky are not divorced. Meanwhile, the woman pretending to be the writer’s wife is none other than the famous Russian actress Maria Andreyeva.

The kompromat^* has a shuddering effect. The United States in 1905, it turns out, is far more puritanical than the Russian Empire.

The tour is derailed: events in Boston and Chicago are cancelled, and the White House withdraws its invitation. A group of female supporters of the Republican Party demand Gorky’s deportation. The writer is forced to leave his hotel and find a room in a hostel, which he also has to vacate. Two complete strangers unexpectedly come to the rescue: Prestonia and John Martin invite Gorky and Andreyeva to live in their house: “We cannot let an entire country descend upon an unprotected young woman, which is why we offer you both our hospitality,” they say.

Gorky accepts. They move first to the Martins’ luxurious villa near New York City, and then to their estate in the north of New York State, near the Canadian border. There will be no more touring, Gorky decides. Instead, there in the tranquil American outback, he writes the novel The Mother, which will become a major work of Soviet literature, the “Bible of the Revolution,” and Lenin’s favorite book.

HOWLING CATS, SODDEN APPLES

Witte is also disgruntled. The man who in October handed the tsar a philosophical treatise on the pursuit of freedom now speaks with fear and disgust of the State Duma that he himself conceived. During endless government meetings, he says that Russian society is uncultured and that ministerial sessions cannot be made public, otherwise ministers will be showered with “sodden apples and howling cats.”^*

On 11 December, he publishes a new electoral law—just after Durnovo has arrested all of Saint Petersburg’s dissidents and a full-scale war has begun in Moscow. Witte’s electoral law makes a mockery of all the principals he preached only a couple of months ago.

It is far from offering the universal, equal suffrage by secret ballot that oppositionists long for. Under the new law, one electoral delegate represents two thousand nobles, or four thousand townspeople, or thirty thousand peasants, or ninety thousand workers. But not everyone has the right to vote, only those who own property or pay sufficient tax. In the cities, for example, students do not have the right to vote: voters must either have their own accommodation or be employees.

Both the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats decide to boycott the Duma elections. In fact, the only real political party in the country is the Kadets, the liberal People’s Freedom Party, created by Milyukov on the basis of the Liberation Union.

Peter Struve, having returned from Paris, is also going through a testing period. He wants to resume the publication of Liberation, but Milyukov is having none of it. He does not need Struve’s hard-hitting publication and wants to set up his own newspaper. With money from a new sponsor, an engineer by the name of Yulian Bak, Milyukov founds the newspaper Speech, which he not only manages by himself, but also writes all the editorials. Liberation never sees the light of day again.

The election produces a sensation, with the Kadets claiming a stunning victory. With hindsight, it is not so remarkable—it is the only party that conducted an election campaign and the only opposition party that took part, since both the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats boycotted the vote.

Nicholas II and his entourage are perturbed. They do not know what to expect from the “seditious” liberals. Witte tells the tsar that Interior Minister Durnovo is to blame for everything—his repressive measures angered society, which then voted for the opposition.

The new Duma has not yet assembled, but everywhere there is talk of its imminent dissolution. Nicholas II criticizes Witte’s electoral law, saying that it would be better if there were more representatives of the peasantry in the Duma, since the common man loves the tsar, unlike the intelligentsia. He is told that the peasants would almost certainly demand land. “Tell them to lump it,” says Nicholas II. “They will rebel.” “Then send in the troops,” comes the dismissive response.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The ongoing struggle with the liberals is the main issue of 1906 for Russian Marxists. While Gorky is relaxing in America, Leon Trotsky is at the Peter and Paul Fortress, outraged by the betrayal of the liberals. In February 1906, he writes an article cursing his ideological enemy Peter Struve. According to Trotsky, the liberals in the Duma should: 1) demand the resignation of the government, 2) form a new government themselves, 3) hold elections to a constituent assembly, 4) dismiss and replace regional officials, and 5) put the former authorities on trial. But, of course, Trotsky sneers, the Duma liberals will do nothing of the sort—they will simply tiptoe around and negotiate with the tsarist officials, achieving nothing.

At the same time, similar conversations are being held by conservatives in the opposite camp. They fear that the Duma will soon announce the convocation of a constituent assembly.

Despite the success of the Kadets, the party leaders remain outside the Duma. The central election commission bars both Milyukov and Struve from the elections. The former does not qualify under the property rules, while the latter is under investigation for extremist publications. But other prominent liberals become members of Duma, including Ivan Petrunkevich, Prince Dolgorukov, Prince Shakhovskoy, and Fyodor Rodichev. Aware of their role as the first parliamentarians in the history of Russia, they worry about how strident their tone should be. Meanwhile, Milyukov complains that the liberals are trapped between Scylla and Charybdis: the conservatives consider them enemies and revolutionaries, while for the Marxists they are traitors and government agents.

“RUSSIA IS A MADHOUSE”

In mid-April, Gorky and Andreyeva, still living at the Martins’ Adirondack estate, receive a telegram from Russia. The lawsuit between Krasin and Morozov’s widow over the health insurance left to Andreyeva has ended in a payout of 100,000 roubles^* to the latter. They happily spend the whole evening dancing; even their cordial hosts the Martins join in.

At the same time, another telegram is received by Witte—from Paris on the negotiations about a loan to Russia. The French banks have finally given the nod. As the talks come to an end, French Prime Minister Clemenceau suddenly asks the Russian emissary: “Tell me, why doesn’t your sovereign invite Mr. Milyukov to head the new government?” The imperial envoy Kokovtsov replies that the tsar will appoint whomever he chooses.

On learning that the loan has been approved, Nicholas II summons the trusty Trepov and asks him to select a new prime minister, because he cannot tolerate Witte any more: “I have finally parted company with Count Witte, and we shall not meet any more,” he states categorically.

The tsar’s main criteria are that the new prime minister should be the complete opposite of Witte, lack personal ambition, and not bury the tsar with reform projects. In a word, he must be loyal. The ideal candidate is Ivan Goremykin, the former interior minister. Goremykin’s reputation precedes him. He is said to be a politician who is “totally uninterested in politics” and “indifferent to everything.”

Witte’s departure means the dissolution of the government. Witte learns of his “resignation” a week before the opening of the new State Duma. “Before you there stands the happiest of mortals. The Sovereign could not have done me a greater favor than to relieve me of the hard labor in which I was languishing,” he says to Kokovtsov, recently arrived from Paris. “I am going abroad for treatment. I want nothing more to do with matters here. Russia is a complete madhouse, the intelligentsia above all.” However, he is striking a wounded pose. Witte is sure that everything will collapse and he will be needed once more.

Kokovtsov, the tsar’s choice of finance minister, declines the position, asserting that the government that prepared the draft laws should be the one to push them through the Duma. But the new Prime Minister Goremykin reassures him that the previous government did not draft a single bill.

The Union of the Russian People rejoices—its main enemy, Count Witte, has fallen. Dr. Dubrovin writes an article about his vanquished foe. However, the struggle is not over. As the convocation of the State Duma draws nearer, he and his associates become increasingly convinced of the need to employ the same methods as their revolutionary opponents, namely terrorism. The enemies of autocracy must be destroyed, says the doctor.

* East Slavic republics which existed in the thirteenth–fifteenth centuries.

† Government reforms of Peter the Great of the early eighteenth century aimed to modernize Russia based on European model.

‡ Uprising of army officers and soldiers in the center of Saint Petersburg in 1825.

§ The Petrashevsky circle was a radical literary discussion group; its members were arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1849, among them Dostoevsky.

¶ The Emancipation reform of 1861 which abolished serfdom.

** Russian authorities in the early twenty-first century tried to lead the reforms. During Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term the government announced economic reforms as their main goal, but they were halted as soon as oil prices started to go up. Next time it was Dmitry Medvedev who announced economic and political reforms aimed at liberalization of the public life. Some of these reforms have never begun, and some were canceled or even reverted as soon as Medvedev’s presidential term ended.

* In the early twenty-first century loyalty of cultural workers is still very important to the authorities: those who receive state funding are usually supposed to publicly support government policy, sign open letters in condemnation of the opposition, and show their loyalty in other humiliating ways.

* Abbreviated from the Russian name of the party: Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskaya Partiya.

* In the twenty-first century the Presidential Administration is responsible for the matters that used to be handled by the Interior Ministry in the early twentieth century. The matters remain the same: creating artificial public organizations and movements that serve as a power base for the regime. Such formations range from the party of the state to niche pro-government organizations. Their number has increased a hundred times over, the scale of their funding, perhaps, a thousand times over.

* Three times on the cheek as a greeting, especially on Easter Sunday.

* Chernov talks in line with many political scientists of the early twenty-first century (both in Russia and abroad): he believes that all actions of the authorities are parts of a very clever and even cunning master plan that is calculated for many steps ahead in order to trap and destroy all enemies of the regime.

* About $0.7 in 2017.

† About $13.2 in 2017.

‡ About $26.4 in 2017.

§ About $65.9 in 2017.

* About $395,500 in 2017.

* About $6,592 in 2017.

* Attacks on the government, but not on the leader of the nation, are a very typical feature of Russian politics in early twenty-first century. Even loyal journalists and members of the “United Russia,” let alone the puppet opposition, often criticize the government (for instance, Dmitry Medvedev), but Vladimir Putin is regarded as sacred and above any criticism.

* About $3,295,833,333 in 2017.

* About $131,833 in 2017.

* As the pro-Putin party United Russia is called.

† About $131,833,333 in 2017.

* See chapter three.

* The writer and thinker Alexander Herzen was a fervent supporter of revolution in Russia, but preferred to live in self-imposed exile abroad.

† Gorky’s appeal can be compared only to the views of the most radical members of the Russian opposition in early twenty-first century—for instance, Garry Kasparov, ex-world champion in chess. In the 2010s Russian civil society is mostly moderate. Many people leaning towards opposition even advocate lifting sanctions against Russia.

* Meaning “compromising evidence,” a new word in English thanks to Donald Trump.

* The art of cat-throwing dates back to the Middle Ages, apparently.

* About $1,318,333 in 2017.