Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“Most public shows of patriotism are not genuine love of country but nationalist twaddle,” he interjected. “Personally I have no time for nationalism – it is the whore of political ideologies, willing to get in bed with anyone who offers to sate its appetite for imaginary privileges – but I recognise that in many people the thirst for freedom from want, and from poverty, and from fear manifests itself as longing for independent nationhood. ‘When we are an independent country everything will be better!’ and so forth. Time and again History has shown this to be a false promise, a blood stained illusion, yet people still go on believing it. They hark back to ancient kingdoms and wave forbidden flags. As if a flag ever fed the hungry! What they don’t realise is that it is the system they are living under, the capitalist system where man treads on man, that is responsible for their unhappiness, if you get rid of the foreign rulers but keep the same system then you are just exchanging one band of robbers for another. But, yes, I recognise that if you define patriotism as a deep love of one’s land and its people, then our commitment to the future should be regarded as patriotism.”

“And in the name of this patriotism,” Nadnikov retorted, “you are prepared to rob banks, kill ministers, and terrorise innocent people? Where is your ‘justice’ then? What about the attacks on the police? How can you defend them when you talk about peace?”

Dr Feit smiled wolfishly at the librarian, his pipe clenched firmly between his teeth. As a Socialist Revolutionary he was more than content with the principle of liquidating the agents of the oppressor.

“That is not our doing,” said Trotsky, shooting the Doctor a warning glance. “I would never support a movement that relied on crime or the bomb. After all, we are communists, not gangsters, whatever you may think. Why should we put our trust in guns, when we have a far more powerful weapon: the Russian people itself and all the other peoples that constitute the Empire?”

“Ah!” cried Maslov, pointing at him accusingly. “But you still support terrorism, don’t you? Even though you might not do it yourself.”

“No!” said Trotsky truthfully. “The Social Democratic Labour Party supports the right of the working class to defend itself, which is not the same thing at all. Of course we understand the causes, the frustrations that give rise to the impulse to strike back. But none of us believes that terrorism is the way to go about effecting a permanent change. All it does is provide an unproductive distraction and provoke a reaction that makes the oppression even worse. If you like, it is just knocking off the occasional slate, instead of the whole roof.”

“If you want to find the real terrorists,” broke in Sverchkov excitedly, “don’t look at us, look at the police! They’re the ones behind the massacres. For every policeman or government official killed, literally hundreds if not thousands of workers have been brutally murdered. Remember Bloody Sunday? How many policemen died then? None! How many troops? None! Remember October 1905? In the same month that we were finally promised a proper constitution, four thousand Jews were slaughtered. Four thousand, in the space of a single month!”

“Ah well,” Nadnikov said with a shrug. “Jews. That’s different.”

“They were still citizens of the Empire,” said Dr. Feit, “and human beings. Remember the massacres at Gamel and Vilna? In Bialystok, they were hanging them from lampposts.”

“Bialystok is in Poland,” protested Maslov. “They’re always rioting. Stick to the point!”

“But that is the point,” insisted Dr Feit. “The peoples of the Russian empire are not, and have never been, held together by love of the Motherland or loyalty to the Tsar but by an iron hoop of violence and despotism. The very same boot that crushed that unhappy country is crushing us. What about the murders at Kiev or Nikolaiev? At Alexandrovsk or Tsarizyne or Vologda? The list is endless. We Socialists aren’t the real terrorists.”

Until this moment, their host had kept his counsel. Now, despite himself, Roshkovsky interrupted the Doctor.

“But Doctor, on each of the occasions you have mentioned, it was the Black Hundreds who were to blame, not the police.”

Inwardly Trotsky smiled, recognizing the land surveyor’s ploy. From what he had learnt from Karseneva and from observing the land surveyor across the table, Roshkovsky was being disingenuous. He knew very well what the Doctor’s reply would be and, rather than go on record as saying it himself, he was prompting one of the “visitors” to say it for him.