World's War Events Volume II Part 34

[Sidenote: The first snarl of the mob.]

That afternoon I went to the Duma, where the mismanagement of the food situation throughout Russia was being discussed. I had a gla.s.s of tea with a member of the liberal Cadet Party, and he seemed more concerned with the victualing of the country than with the particular situation in Petrograd. Toward evening I drove back along the Nevsky and my 'ishvos.h.i.+k was blocked for a few minutes while a wave of working people, in unusual numbers for that part of town, pa.s.sed. They were being urged on by Cossacks, but they were mostly smiling, women were hanging to their husbands' arms, and they were decidedly unhurried. It was not a crowd that could be in any sense called a mob, and was perfectly orderly, but it did not go fast enough to suit the police and a dozen of them came trotting up. Their appearance wiped the smile away, and when they began really roughing I heard the first murmurings of the snarl which only an infuriated mob can produce. I wondered what the police were up to. They were obviously provoking trouble. I felt then we might be in for serious difficulties--and the att.i.tude of the police gave me the fear.

[Sidenote: Watching for the Cossacks to act.]

[Sidenote: A red flag.]

Friday morning only a few street cars were running, but the city was quiet enough until after ten in the morning. Then the agitators, their small following, and the onlookers, sure now of having a spectacle, began gathering in considerable numbers. I was still expecting the rough work to commence with the Cossacks, but after watching them from the colonnades of the cathedral for half an hour I walked out through the crowd and, s.h.i.+fted but slightly out of my route by the sway of the crowd as Cossacks trotted up and down the street, crossed the thick of it.

Green student caps were conspicuous, and one of the students told me the universities had gone on strike in sympathy with the bread demonstration. As a company of Cossacks swung by, lances in rest, rifles slung on their shoulders, I scanned their faces without finding anything ferocious there. Some one waved a red flag, the first I had seen, before them, but they pa.s.sed, unnoticing.

[Sidenote: Crowd not yet dangerous.]

This time the crowd did not break up but began to bunch here and there as far as the Fontanka Ca.n.a.l. All afternoon the Cossacks kept them stirring, and occasionally the police gave them a real roughing. Each time the police appeared, I heard that menacing murmur, but by Friday evening, when the day's crowd disappeared, the increase in discontent and anger had not developed sufficiently in twenty-four hours to be really dangerous. I felt the Government still had plenty of time to remove the discontent, and an announcement pasted up conspicuously everywhere saying there would be no lack of bread seemed like an a.s.surance that the Government would somehow overnight provide all bakers with sufficient flour. That was the one obvious thing to do.

[Sidenote: A tour of the Wiborg factory district.]

During the afternoon I made a long tour through the Wiborg factory district, which was thickly policed by infantrymen. Occasional street cars were still running, but otherwise the district was ominously silent. The bread-lines were very long here, and on the corners were groups of workmen. Their silent gravity struck me as being something to reckon with. Still the lack of real trouble on the Nevsky as I came back in a measure rea.s.sured me.

[Sidenote: Crowd friendly with Cossacks.]

Sat.u.r.day morning the crowd on the Nevsky gathered at the early Petrograd hour of ten, but they seemed to be there to encourage the Cossacks.

Wherever the Cossacks pa.s.sed, individuals called out to them cheerfully and, even though they crowded in so close to the trotting hors.e.m.e.n as to be occasionally knocked about, they took it good-humoredly and went on cheering. I went away for an hour or so and when I returned the fraternizing of the crowd and the Cossacks was increasingly evident. By this time all sorts of ordinary citizens, catching the sense of events, were joining in the general acclamation. I was just beginning to get a glimmering of the meaning of all this when I was bowled over by the mounted police in front of the Singer Building.

[Sidenote: Crowd beginning to challenge police.]

[Sidenote: Soldiers fire but wound few.]

[Sidenote: Police inviting quarrel.]

The more timorous average citizens began to lose interest, but the workmen and students who were in the Nevsky now in considerable numbers, and arriving hourly, accepted the challenge of the police. They began throwing bottles, the police charged afresh, and by the early part of Sat.u.r.day afternoon there was really a mob on the Nevsky. Liberally mixed through the whole, though, were the ordinary onlookers, many of them young girls. The Nevsky widens for a s.p.a.ce before the Gastenidwor (the Russian adaptation of the oriental bazaar), and infantrymen were now detailed to hold the people back at the point of the bayonet. Meanwhile, all the side streets were wide open and the appearance of a large, angry mob was kept up by constant arrivals. The crowd becoming unwieldy, the soldiers fired into it several times, but they did not wound many, indicating that they were extracting many bullets before they fired. The shooting only augmented the crowd, as Russians do not frighten very easily, and though at a few points it was necessary to turn the corner, I found no difficulty in going back and forth all afternoon between Kasan Cathedral and the Nicola Station--the main stretch of the Nevsky.

There was general roughing along this mile and a half of street which could have been stopped at any time in fifteen minutes by closing the streets. Instead, the police charged with increasing violence without doing anything to prevent the people coming from other parts of town.

The idea was now unescapable that the police were inviting the people to a quarrel.

[Sidenote: Rioting at the Nicola Station.]

[Sidenote: Evident Cossacks are with people.]

The Cossacks were sometimes riding pretty fast themselves, but never with the violence of the police, and the cheering was continuous. At any point I could tell by the quality of the howl that went up from the mob whether it was being stirred by Cossacks or police. At the Nicola Station the rioting was the roughest, the police freely using their sabres. The crowd, though unarmed, stood its ground and howled back, and when possible caught an isolated mounted policeman and disarmed him. In one case the mob had already disarmed and was unseating a policeman, and other sections of the mob were rus.h.i.+ng up to have a turn at manhandling him, when a single Cossack, with nothing in his hands, forced his way through and rescued the policeman, amid the cheers of the same people who were hara.s.sing him. It was quite evident that the people and the Cossacks were on the same side, and only the unbelievable stupid old Russian Government could have ignored it.

[Sidenote: Machine guns installed.]

At nightfall the crowd had had its fill of roughing, but Sunday was evidently to be the real day. There would have been, of course, nothing on the Nevsky, if properly policed, and I have been unable to understand how the old Government, unless overconfident of its autocratic power and disdainful of the people, could have let things go on. But though half the regiments in Petrograd were on the point of revolt and their sympathy with the people was evident even to a foreigner, Sunday was mismanaged like the days before. It was even worse. The powers that were had, as early as Friday, been so silly as to send armored motor cars screeching up and down the Nevsky. Now they began installing machine guns where they could play on the crowd. Up to this time I had been a neutral, if disgusted, spectator, but now I hoped the police and the whole imperial regime would pay bitterly for their insolence and stupidity. The few corpses I encountered during the day on the Nevsky could not even add to the feeling. They were the mere casualties of a movement that was beginning to attain large proportions.

[Sidenote: Many soldiers firing blanks.]

[Sidenote: At the French theatre.]

The late afternoon and evening of Sunday were b.l.o.o.d.y. The Nevsky was finally closed except for cross traffic, and at the corner of the Sadovia and the Nevsky by the national library there was a machine gun going steadily. But it was in the hands of soldiers and they were firing blanks. The soldiers everywhere seemed to be firing blanks, but there was carnage enough. The way the crowds persisted showed their capacity for revolution. The talk was for the first time seriously revolutionary, and the red flags remained flying by the hour. That evening the air was for the first time electric with danger, but the possibilities of the next morning were not sufficiently evident to prevent me from going to the French theatre. There were a sufficient number of other people, of the same mind, including many officers, to fill half the seats.

[Sidenote: Imperial box saluted for the last time.]

As usual, between the acts, the officers stood up, facing the imperial box, which neither the Emperor nor any one else ever occupied. This act of empty homage, which always grated on my democratic nerves in a Russian theatre, was being performed by these officers--though they did not even seem to suspect it--for the last time.

[Sidenote: Lively rifle fire Sunday night.]

On my way home at midnight I picked up from wayfarers rumors of soldiers attacking the police, soldiers fighting among themselves and rioting in barracks. But outwardly there was calm until three in the morning, when I heard in my room on the Moika Ca.n.a.l side of the Hotel de France some very lively rifle fire from the direction of the Catherine Ca.n.a.l. This sounded more like the real thing than anything so far, so I dressed and tried to get near enough to learn what was going on. But for the first time the streets were really closed. The firing kept up steadily until four. Farther on in the great barracks along the Neva beyond the Litenie it kept up until the revolting soldiers had command.

[Sidenote: Revolt spreads like a prairie fire.]

I regret not having seen the revolt getting under way in that quarter. I regret missing the small incidents, the moments when the revolt hung in the balance, when it was the question of whether a certain company would join, for when I reached there it was still in its inception and the most interesting thing about it was to watch it spread like a prairie fire.

[Sidenote: The Duma dissolved.]

Still not realizing, like most people in Petrograd, that we were within a few hours of a sweeping revolt, I wasted some precious hours that morning trying to learn what could be done with the censor. But toward noon I heard the Duma had been dissolved, and, as there had not been since Sunday any street cars, 'ishvos.h.i.+ks, or other means of conveyance, I started out afoot with Roger Lewis of the a.s.sociated Press to walk the three miles to the Duma.

[Sidenote: A silence like that of Louvain.]

The hush of impending events hung over the entire city. I remember nothing like that silence since the day the Germans entered Louvain. On every street were the bread lines longer than ever. All along the Catherine Ca.n.a.l, the snow was pounded by many feet and spotted with blood. But there were no soldiers and few police. We hurried along the Nevsky, gathering rumors of the fight that was actually going on down by the a.r.s.enal on the Litenie. But many shops were open and there was a semblance of business. All was so quiet we could not make out the meaning of a company of infantry drawn up in a hollow square commanding the four points at the junction of the Litenie and Nevsky, ordinarily one of the busiest corners in the world.

[Sidenote: Cavalry commands arrive.]

[Sidenote: The barricade on the Litenie.]

[Sidenote: Haphazard rifle-fire.]

But as soon as we turned down the Litenie we could hear shots farther down, and the pedestrians were mostly knotted in doorways. Scattered cavalry commands were arriving from the side streets, and the Litenie began looking a little too hot. So we chose a parallel street for several blocks until we were within three blocks of the Neva, where we had to cross the Litenie in front of a company drawn up across the street ready to fire toward the a.r.s.enal, where there was sporadic rifle fire. Here there were bigger knots of curious citizens projecting themselves farther and farther toward the middle of the street, hoping for a better view, until a nearer shot frightened them closer to the walls. The barricade on the Litenie by the a.r.s.enal, the one barricade the revolution produced, was just beginning to be built two hundred feet away as Lewis and I reached the shelter of the Fourshtatzkaya, on the same street as the American Emba.s.sy. By crossing the Litenie we had entered the zone of the revolutionists. We did not realize this, however, and were puzzled by the sight of a soldier carrying simply a bayonet, and another with a bare officer's sword. A fourteen-year-old boy stood in the middle of the street with a rifle in his hand, trifling with it. It exploded in his hand, and when he saw the ruin of the breech block he unfixed the bayonet, threw down the gun, and ran around the corner. A student came up the street examining the mechanism of a revolver. There seemed to be rifle-fire in every direction, even in the same street, but haphazard.

[Sidenote: An officer recruiting for the revolution.]

If we had not been living in a troubled atmosphere these small indications would have impressed us deeply, but neither of us gathered immediately the significance of events. Before we reached the next corner we pa.s.sed troops who evidently did not know yet whether or not they were still on the side of the Government. An automobile appeared full of soldiers, an officer standing on the seat. He waved toward him all the soldiers in sight and began haranguing them. There was no red flag in sight, and, until we caught his words, we thought he was urging them to remain loyal. He was really recruiting for the revolution.

[Sidenote: Automobiles and motor trucks.]

As we kept on toward the Duma we encountered other automobiles, many of them, and motor trucks, literally bristling with guns and sabres. Half the men were civilians and the number of young boys with revolvers who looked me over made me feel it was a very easy time in which to be killed. I was wearing an English trench coat and a fur cap, so to prevent any mistake of ident.i.ty I stopped and presented a full view to each pa.s.sing motor. Still I knew my continued existence depended on the sanity of any one of thirty or forty very excited men and boys on each truck, and when I reached the protection of the enormous crowd that was storming the entrance to the Duma I felt more comfortable.

[Sidenote: The Duma waits, but finally takes command.]

The Duma had just been dismissed by imperial decree, an ironical circ.u.mstance in view of the thousands of soldiers and civilians ma.s.sed before its doors under the red flag. Their leaders were within, asking the Duma to form a provisional government. The Duma was not yet convinced, and the mental confusion within was more bewildering than the revolution without. This was early in the afternoon, and the Duma held off for hours. Even when it was known that the Preobarzhenski regiment, which began its career with Peter the Great, had turned revolutionary, the Duma insisted on waiting. But at nine o'clock in the evening, when every police station, every court, was on fire and the revolutionists completely controlled the city, President Rodzianko decided that the Duma must take command.

[Sidenote: Automobiles dart boldly everywhere.]

It is interesting to watch a revolution grow, and even at this time, early Monday afternoon, the revolutionists controlled only a corner of Petrograd. They were working up excitement, and, as often before in the war, the motor trucks played an important part. They thundered back and forth through doubtful streets, students, soldiers, and workmen standing tight and bristling with bayonets like porcupines. They carried conviction of force, and, as each foray met with less resistance, it was not long before they were das.h.i.+ng boldly everywhere. That accounts for the rapid control of the city. It could not have been done afoot.

[Sidenote: The revolutionists take the a.r.s.enal.]

All day, from the time the a.r.s.enal fell into their hands, the revolutionists felt their strength growing, and from noon on no attack was led against them. At first the soldiers simply gave up their guns and mixed in the crowd, but they grew bolder, too, when they saw the workmen forming into regiments and marching up the Fourshtatzkaya, still fumbling with the triggers of their rifles to see how they met the enemy at the next corner. The coolness of these revolutionists, their willingness to die for their cause, won the respect of a small group of us who were standing before the American Emba.s.sy. The group was composed chiefly of Emba.s.sy attaches who wanted to go over to the old Austrian Emba.s.sy, used by us as the headquarters for the relief of German and Austrian prisoners in Russia; but though it was only a five minutes' walk, the hottest corner in the revolution lay between.

[Sidenote: Soldiers ground arms and become revolutionists.]