The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia by Abraham Cahan
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.
Alexander III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palaceat Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The youngCzar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically,the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in thepotentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine.Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of villagefamilies were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowdedwith such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrialcentres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, ademoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The masses hadseen one Czar--the ward of a vigilant guardian angel--prostrated. Thecrown's prestige was shaken, and the Czar's seeking refuge in a secludedvillage did anything but retrieve it. The number of _lese majeste_ caseshad suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase theseoffences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to theobscure depths of "justice by administrative order." From several placescame reports of riots against the police, while the universitiesmanifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscriptionlists for a monument to the assassinated Czar were torn to pieces andthose who circulated them were publicly hissed and insulted. Theportents of turbulence were in the air.
Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the "constitution" of whichAlexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. AlexanderIII. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: "Very wellconceived"; and two days later, after the project had been carried at acabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, whileconversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to beintroduced, said, joyfully:
"I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders."
But the conservative party at court had the support of a new powerbehind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly tutor of the presentCzar and now his favourite adviser, was a man of much stronger purposethan Loris-Melikoff. He fought against the innovation tooth and nail,and the publication of it in the _Official Messenger_ was postponed fromday to day. The leader of the Panslavists was invited from Moscow; everyconservative influence was brought to bear upon a Czar who wasabsolutely incapable of forming his own opinion. All this was done inthe strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.
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Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the approval of the"constitution" by a majority of the ministers and twelve days subsequentto the execution of the regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke outin Elisavetgrad, a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazedmob had possession of the town during two days, demolishing andpillaging hundreds of houses and shops, covering whole streets withdebris and reducing thousands of people to beggary. And neighbouringtowns and villages followed the example of the larger city.
The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a popular upheaval.
"It's only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial Majesty,"Pobiedonostzeff reassured him. "There was one like that ten years ago,in Odessa."
The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local affair, but ithappened at a time that was highly favourable to occurrences of thatnature. Originally organised by some high-born profligates, victims of agang of Jewish usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situationsave in so far as there was in the hungry masses a blind disposition toattack somebody; a disposition coupled with a feeling that the usualties of law and order had been loosened. When, in addition, the targetof assault happened to be the stepchild in Russia's family of peoples,the one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself, the rioters'sense of security was complete. Moreover, among the victims of Jewishusurers were hundreds of army officers and civil officials who livedbeyond their means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity. Theattack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted mob acted on its ownlogic, with the result that thousands of artisans, labourers, poortradesmen, teachers, rabbis, dreamers, were plundered and ill-treatedwhile the handful of usurers escaped.
The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring towns and villagesfollowed the example of Elisavetgrad, and ten days later, May 8-9,similar atrocities, but with a far greater display of fury andbestiality, occurred in Kieff, where a dozen murders and an enormouslist of wounded and of outraged women was added to the work ofdevastation and plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged all this in athousand ways, while individual officers and men took part in thepandemonium of havoc and rape.
"Easy, boys," said the governor of the province, with an amused smile,as he drove past the busy rioters at the head of a procession offashionable spectators.
Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for theseoccurrences. He had his own cares to worry him. The reins were fastslipping out of his hands. Indeed, the attitude of governors, chiefs ofpolice, military officers, toward the spreading campaign against theJews was a matter of instinct. The "spirit of the moment," as it hadbecome customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish feeling inofficial circles, gleamed forth clear and unequivocal, and localauthorities acted upon it on their own hook. The real meaning of this"spirit of the moment" lay in the idea that if there was a state ofgeneral unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spendingitself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud was gatheringover the crown, an electric rod had been found in the Chosen People.
The Czar took courage.
Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto, framed byPobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the continuance of unqualifiediron-handed absolutism. The "constitution" went into the archives.Loris-Melikoff's public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, acorrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior and a policyof restriction and repression was adopted that brought back the days ofNicholas I.
Ignatyeff encouraged the "spirit of the moment" with all the means athis command. One of the very first things he did was to order theexpulsion of thousands of Jews from Kieff. At the trial of some of therioters the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for thedefendants.
The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone conclusion.The general inference was that anti-Jewish riots met with thegovernment's approval. The outrages passed from Kieff to neighbouringcities; from there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of thesouth. They were spreading throughout the region in which Miroslav islocated with the continuity of a regular crusade and with a uniformityof detail that was eloquent of a common guiding force.
It was a new phase of White Terrorism.
* * * * *
To Pavel the crusade against Clara's race was a source of mixedencouragement and anxiety.
"Hurrah, old fellow," he said to Godfather one morning. "It does look asthough the Russian people could kick, doesn't it?"
"Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don't see why they could notturn upon the government some day."
"And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering nobility, uponfellows like you and me, eh?" He poked Urie in the ribs gleefully.
In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject was neverbroached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and uneasiness. He couldnot help being aware that instead of usurers the chief target of attackin every riot, without a single exception, were Jewish artisans,labourers, teachers and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clarawas concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel's race, for whosesake she was facing the solitary cell and the gallows, that theseChristian people were brutally assaulting and pillaging, reducing tobeggary and murdering poor honest, innocent people of her own blood,Jews like her father, mother, sister, like herself.
But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory. That golden halowhich had been painted about the common Christian people by theecstasies of the anti-serfdom movement of twenty years ago had not yetfaded. The Gentile masses were still deified by the Nihil
That the crusade was part and parcel of the "white terror" of the thronehad not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.
As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her grief over the deathof Sophia and the four men that so far the riots (no unheard-of thing inthe history of the Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal toher imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her race and herpast. The outbreaks seemed to be taking place in some strange, distantcountry.
The execution of the five regicides had been described quite fully inthe _Official Messenger_ and the account had been copied in all othernewspapers. Clara kept the issue of the _Voice_ containing the report ina book, and although she knew its salient passages by heart, she oftenconsulted the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There was asacred mystery in the letters in which the description was printed.
"The five prisoners approached the priests almost at the same moment andkissed the cross; after which they were taken by the hangmen each to hisor her rope." Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed underone of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness. Herimagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce the scene with thetangibility of life. Each time she read how the hangman, dressed in ared shirt, slipped the noose about Sophia's neck amid the roll of drums,and how he wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she plungedwith a jerk, and how the next instant her body hung motionless in theair, each time Clara read this she was smitten with an overpowering pangof pity and of helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes shewould fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from the hangman'shands a second before their execution, and carried triumphantly throughthe streets by an army of victorious revolutionists, but the next momentit would come back to her that this had not been the case, and then there-awakening to reality was even more painful than the original shock.If a rescuing force were now ready to attack the hangman and thethousand-bayoneted guard around him, it would be too late. Sophia wasdead, irretrievably dead; there was nobody to rescue. And Clara's heartsank in despair. At such moments she would seek relief in those passagesof the report where the calmness of the condemned revolutionists wasdepicted. "Jeliaboff whispered to his priest, fervently kissed thecross, shook his hair and smiled. Fortitude did not forsake Jeliaboff,Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the face of Christ) tothe very moment of donning the white-hooded death-gown"--these passagesgave Clara thrills of religious bliss.
Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved, cursed thegovernment; but Clara usually remained gloomily taciturn. The wound inher soul was something too sacred to be talked about. Words seemed toher like sacrilege. Their hearts understood each other well enough, why,then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless communion? Some ofhis effusions and outbursts jarred on her. On the other hand, hersilences made him restless.
"You'll go insane if you keep this up," he once said, irascibly.
"I don't care if I do," she answered. "Don't nag me, Pashenka, pray."
"But the thing is becoming an _idee fixe_ in your mind, upon my word itis. Can't you try and get back to your senses? What is death after all?Absolute freedom from suffering, that's all. There is nothing to gocrazy over anyhow. There is nothing but a dear, a glorious, a beautifulmemory of them, and that will live as long as there is such a thing ashistory in the world."
She made no reply. She tried to picture Sophia free from suffering, butthis only sharpened her pain. Sophia not existing? The formula was evenmore terrible than death. In reality, however, her atheism was powerlessto obliterate her visions. Sophia existed somewhere, only she wassolemnly remote, as though estranged from her. Clara could have almostcried to her, imploring for recognition.
* * * * *
But this mood of hers could not last forever. Sooner or later she wouldawaken to the full extent of the riots and to the fact that they wereraging in the vicinity of Miroslav, threatening the safety of hernearest relatives. How would she take it then? The question intrudedupon Pavel's peace of mind again and again.
For the present, however, she was taken up with her thoughts of Sophia,Zachar or Hessia. Poor Hessia! They had robbed her of her baby, thethugs, even as they had that woman of the "gay bard's" poem. "To lead amarried life under conditions such as ours is pure madness," she said toherself.
One afternoon, as she and her lover sat on the lounge, embracing andkissing deliriously, she suddenly sprang to her feet, her cheeksburning, kissed Pavel on his forehead and crossed over to the window.
He shrugged his shoulders resentfully.