OR SCENES IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION BY HENRY W. NEVINSON ILLUSTRATED LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS 45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1906...

I have not attempted in this book to do more than describe some of the scenes which I witnessed in Russia during the winter of 1905–1906, while I was acting there as special correspondent for the Daily Chronicle . For the most part, the descriptions are given in the same words which I wrote down at the time, either for my own memory or for the newspaper. But the whole has been re-arranged and rewritten, while certain scenes have been added for which a daily paper has no room. I have also inserte

Away in the western quarter of St. Petersburg, at some distance from the fashionable centre, stands a rather decrepit hall of debased classic. In England one would have put it down to George II.’s time, but in St. Petersburg everything looks fifty years older than it is, because fashions used to travel slowly there from France. Among the faded gilding of stucco pilasters and allegorical emblems of the virtues and the arts, are hung the obscure portraits of long-forgotten men—philosophers, govern

The Schlüsselburg road runs nearly all the way beside the great stream of the Neva, which was still pouring down in flood in those November days, though it sounded incessantly with the whisper of floating ice. The road leads from St. Petersburg along the whole course of the river up to that ill-omened fortress in the Ladoga lake, where so many of the martyrs of freedom have enjoyed the imprisonment or death with which Russia rewards greatness. For six or seven miles the road passes through a ser

The morning of December 4th was damp and misty, but from an early hour crowds of working people were standing in the slushy snow outside the queer old arrangement of two or three huge sheds which is known as “Salt Town.” It is across the Fontanka canal from the School of Engineers, not very far from the two churches that commemorate the murder of two Tsars. I suppose it has been used at some time or other as a depôt for a Government salt monopoly, and so received its name. In ordinary peaceful y

In those happy weeks when freedom still was young and living, two things ruled the country—speech and the strike, the word and the blow. The strike was everywhere felt. No letter or telegram went or came. Each town in Russia was isolated, and the whole Empire stood severed from the world. Banks sent their money to Europe by special messengers, like kings. Telegrams were carried a twenty-four hours’ journey to the frontier. Almost every night I was down at the Warsaw station watching the passenge

Under the waning moon, before the dawn of a December day, I drove out of the town of Toula in my tiny sledge—so close to the snow that the great black horse with his high yoke looked monstrous in the twilight. It is a typical Russian town, about a hundred miles south of Moscow, and as nearly as possible in the centre of the country. Two great roads cross each other there, and pass on to the points of the compass. Oldish churches, surrounded by a fortified wall, make a kind of Kremlin. Ancient ho

On the morning of Saturday, December 9th, the day after I had arrived in Moscow, I happened to be passing the unfinished buildings of the empty University. Minute snow was lashing through the air before a bitter wind, but it thawed as it fell, and people in goloshes went slopping about among the filthy puddles of the street. Trailing in disorder through the dirt and wind, mixed up with the market people and the little open cabs like sledges that were always dashing up and down with men and women

St. Nicholas’ Day of December 19th had long been awaited with expectation, both of triumph and fear. It was the Tsar’s christening day—one of the four festivals which were given to St. Nicholas every year, because, on his way to see Christ, he stopped to help a peasant’s cart out of the mud and made his clothes all dirty. It had been rumoured with confidence that the work of the great Manifesto would then be completed—that the Tsar himself would come to Moscow, and from the very shrine of the Em

Next day (December 20th), I had determined to start for the Caucasus, because very severe fighting was reported there, and it was said, I believe truly, that in some places the Georgians had set up an independent government of their own. Accordingly I sledged to the station, took my ticket, and registered my luggage to Baku by Rostoff-on-Don, occupied my place in the heated train, hung up my fur coat and snow boots, and prepared to endure the full blast of a Russian carriage for the four days an

The next day was our Christmas Eve—a Sunday. I had stayed the night, as I said, in the west of the disturbed district, and in the early morning some revolutionists came into the house, and reported large numbers of killed—rooms crowded with people all blown to pieces by the shells, walls bespattered with blood, and other horrors, which one always hears in war, and which are sometimes true. They also said they had just taken part in an assault upon a body of unmounted dragoons, who were cautiousl

In many battles there comes a moment when little or nothing appears to have changed, and yet you suddenly realize that all is over but the running. Such a moment came on the morning of Christmas Day as I went up the Sadovaya towards the central revolutionist position where I had been the afternoon before. The barricades were still standing, the Sodovaya was still covered with such a network of wire about four feet from the ground that one had to walk under it bent double like a hoop, and no hors

The failure at Moscow fell like a blight upon all Russia, and hope withered. The revolutionists, certainly, protested that much was gained. They admitted that they had allowed their hand to be forced by the Government. The attempt, they knew, was ill-timed and ill-devised. But they had not intended to win this time; the rising was only a dress rehearsal for the great revolution hereafter. They were teaching the proletariat the methods of street fighting, and after all it was something to have he

When I reached Odessa, after travelling over the peculiarly desolate steppe from Kieff, only about eleven weeks had passed since she celebrated an amazing festival of liberty. Her straight streets had laughed for joy, and the old Black Sea had reflected the smile. Youths paraded with flags and trumpets, aged professors embraced in tears, and women, as on a Russian Easter Day, felt hurt if they were not kissed—all because the Tsar had issued a manifesto and freedom had risen into life. The long s

In St. Petersburg the successors of the original Strike Committee had declared the general strike at an end, on January 1st. The thing had not been a success. Either because the leaders were in prison, or that the work-people were harassed by the frequent repetition of strikes when funds were low, only about 20,000 remained away from work, and most of these were locked-out by the employers. Outwardly, the city continued quiet, in spite of the deep indignation excited by the arrest of all the pop

The shallows of the Gulf of Finland were frozen hard, and from a distance the sea looked like a huge flat plain covered with snow, while wind and grey storms of drift raged over it, blotting out the horizon. But when, almost imperceptibly, the sledge quitted the flat land for the flat sea, the green ice sometimes lay bare upon the surface, or threw up a sharp green edge, and sometimes the hollow rumble of the runners told of the deeper water beneath. At one place a few planks had been thrown acr

At the end of January I left St. Petersburg for Riga and the Baltic Provinces. As in other parts of Russia, the hopes of change had faded there, and the whole land lay prostrate under a bloodthirsty suppression, the more savage because it was encouraged by a double race hatred—the ancient feud of German, Russian, and Lett. As I came at sunrise through the fir forests and frozen heaths of Livonia, twenty-five men were being shot in cold blood among the sandhills beside the railway. They were tied

Outside the discussion of an English Education Bill, I suppose that upon the world’s surface you would not find such an atmosphere of energetic pettiness and trivial virulence as in Warsaw. Not that the ultimate aims of the chief combatants are petty, but that many natures take so much more delight in clawing their friends over trifles than in uniting against the common enemy. In speaking of the Poles in St. Petersburg, I have already described a Polish restaurant there which was sharply divided

When for a time I left Russia in February, the powers of reaction were at their highest, and at such a moment it might well seem absurd to speak of the dawn, for the ancient darkness of Russia appeared again to have closed in upon the land. In looking back upon the things I had witnessed, they naturally presented themselves to me as the scenes of a great drama, in which the old Titans and demigods of humanity played from behind strange masks, compelled by the rival immortals of Freedom and Oppre

The 10th of May had long been announced as the official birthday of Russian freedom, but every one was astonished when the birth actually took place, and the officials were the most astonished of all. Stars and omens were unpropitious. The astrologers muttered of a secret and violent influence, already blighting the future hope before it breathed. At the door was sitting an obscure and gigantic form with hands ready to throttle its earliest cry; and in the heavens, Orion’s sword, with point dire