Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“Then you will tell us a story?”

“Yes, yes. What would you like?”

“Something with wolves in it,” the first boy piped up eagerly.

“No, wolves are silly,” said the little girl, pinching her brother’s arm.

With a howl of pain, the boy ran away and hid behind Trotsky’s coat.

“Tell us a true story,” the girl demanded.

“Wolves are better,” came the muffled protest.

Seeing that it was time to restore order, Trotsky drew the little boy out from behind him and, sitting down on the floor, placed him on his knee.

“Now, now,” he chided them. “Quiet, both of you, otherwise there will be no story at all. The Professor here is quite right. True stories are the best. And maybe,” he added quickly, “I can remember one with a wolf in it.”

Satisfied, the girl sat down beside him and slipped her hand into his.

“Have you been a prisoner before?” she wanted to know.

“Oh yes, a long time ago.”

“Did you escape?”

“Of course.”

“Tell us about that, then.”

Trotsky smiled regretfully.

“I’m afraid I can’t. You see, I promised some people I wouldn’t. But I can tell you how I got caught. That’s quite a story. Will that do?”

“Maybe,” she replied, doubtfully.

The little boy wriggled on his lap to get more comfortable.

“Well then,” Trotsky began. “As I say, it all happened a long time ago. At the time, I was living at a place called Nikolayev, far to the south of here.”

“Was it warm there?” the boy asked dreamily.

His sister shushed him. The room had fallen quiet; the exiles that remained awake were listening to his tale.

“Yes, it was warm, in the summer anyway,” Trotsky recalled. “I and a few other students had decided to organise ourselves and form a Union. We had our own newspaper, which we printed on a secret press, and circulated throughout the area. To begin with, there were only a handful of us; maybe five or six, no more. We used to meet at the hut of an old gardener called Shvigorsky. He was a fine old man. You would have liked him.”

The little boy nodded thoughtfully.

“Soon,” Trotsky continued, “we became famous amongst the workers in factories of the town, and beyond. Hundreds of them wanted to join the Union, even from as far away as Odessa. But we were very careful because it was a secret organisation and we didn’t want the police to know our names. Every day, thousands of workers would read our newspaper and wonder who we were. Even the Okhrana, when they got to hear about us, refused to believe that this mighty organisation was led by just a few students in a gardener’s hut. But they watched us all the same. For the longest time they watched us and sent in their spies but still they could prove nothing against us. We were that careful.”

“So how did you get caught?” asked the girl, with a puzzled frown.

“It was like this. It was getting near winter and lately the police had been asking far too many questions about us for our liking. So we, that is the leaders of the Union, decided that it was time to lie low for a while and to leave Nikolayev for a few weeks, to put them off our scent. It was all planned. I would go to one place, the rest of the students would go to other places.”

“What about poor old Shvigorsky?” asked one of the Deputies.

“Oh, he was all right,” Trotsky assured her. “A wealthy landowner called Sokanin had given him a job on his estate for the winter.”

“But what about your paper?” asked another Deputy.

“I’m coming to that. Of course the paper still continued to be distributed by our comrades but before we could leave, there were a hundred and one details that had to be taken care of so that things could run smoothly in our absence. Among them was securing the lines of distribution for our newspaper. What we used to do was print it, wrap it in bundles and take them to a series of special places where they would be hidden. Then someone else would collect them and smuggle them into the factories for the workers to read. It ran like clockwork.

“Then, one day, just before I was about to leave Nikolayev, one of our pick-up men, a carpenter called Nesterenko, insisted that he had to meet me at the hiding place in person.”

Trotsky acknowledged the muttered chorus of disapproval that arose from the older members of his audience with a rueful grin.

“I was so green,” he admitted, “I never suspected a thing. Off I went with my bundle of papers, the ink still wet on some of them.”

Trotsky paused and looked down at the rapt faces of the children sitting beside him.

“The meeting place was a cemetery, at midnight,” he continued. “I remember the moon was full and everywhere there was a perfect stillness over the deep snow. Beyond the cemetery wall the fields spread out like a frozen desert in the moonlight. Well, there I was, with the papers stuffed under my coat and there was Nesterenko, bang on time. Just as I was handing him the bundle, a figure detached itself from the cemetery wall and began stealing towards us, like a wolf.”

“Was it the O.?” breathed the girl.

He nodded solemnly.