Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“I must say, with no disrespect to you, Colonel,” he retorted, “I find it strange that the police should be more trusted than the army. After all, if I remember correctly, it was only the intervention of the army which prevented the country sliding into wholesale chaos. Why, during the preliminary enquiry into the causes of the Insurrection, your colleagues even stole the briefcase of the Chief Investigation Officer, General Ivanov. It was in all the newspapers.”

“Your naïveté does you no credit, Captain,” replied Izorov blithely. “If the army fought as well as it talked, we would still hold Port Arthur.”

He stood up, and dropping his half smoked cigarette onto the bare boards, ground it to shreds beneath his boot. Turning to face the young cavalry officer, he glared at him.

“Don’t think,” he said, for the first time letting anger creep into his voice, “that I am blind to the faults of some of my colleagues. I am not. Neither am I ignorant of what this will mean to the town.”

Coming out from behind his desk he took a few paces nearer to Steklov.

“How long have you been here, Captain?” he asked rhetorically. “Ten months? A year perhaps? I have been Chief in Berezovo now for ten years! Ten years of cleaning up other people’s messes. It’s not the kind of job which attracts princes trying to place their pampered offspring. I have survived being punched, shot at, stabbed and bombed. So you will obey my instructions not because my rank is superior to yours but because my experience is superior to yours. The army may be the armour that the country puts on to protect itself against external threats, but it has no place in a situation like this. Whereas the police force is…”

Colonel Izorov hesitated, searching for the right word. At last it came to him.

“The police force is the very skeleton,” he declared, placing a broad powerful hand on his chest, “upon which the body of Russia relies. As for myself,” he added deprecatingly, “I have no illusions about my place in this world. I am one of the smaller bones. If I pride myself on any achievement, it is this: that in Berezovo it is not the severity of the punishment that deters people from breaking the law, but the inevitability of it. I know who the radicals are and who are the members of the Black Gangs and while I am Chief of Police here, there won’t be any riots or pogroms. The rule of law and the maintenance of order are the twin pillars upon which our so-called civilisation rests. Those are the two tasks the Tsar has entrusted to me. There is no talk of glory, or even of victory; just stemming the tide of filth and chaos is all I can hope for. Can you honestly say that you envy me my task?”

Captain Steklov said nothing.

With a sad shake of his head, Colonel Izorov turned away and walked back behind his desk. Motioning the young man to sit down, he picked up the tin of cigarettes again.

“Do you recall that young fool, in Tobolsk last year?” he remarked as he offered the tin to the soldier. “Your regiment, if I recall; a captain, same as you. Perhaps you knew him? He looked the other way and let a student escape from custody. He was reduced to the ranks for his pains and sent to a punishment battalion. Not very pleasant, and that was only for a lousy student. Can you imagine what they would do to someone who let one of these bastards escape?”

Sitting once more opposite him, Steklov eyed the colonel warily. Despite his outwardly calm composure, the colonel’s earlier vehemence had unnerved him. There was something feral about Izorov that told him that he would have readily gone beyond verbal assault if he felt it was necessary. Declining the proffered cigarette, he now attempted to regain some of the ground he had lost.

“I take your point, Colonel,” he replied, “but I too have my duty. Both to my Tsar and to my regiment. I must ask you, to which regiment does this escort you mentioned belong?”

“To your own. To the Sibirsky.”

“Then in law as well as practice, they come under my command. You may do with the prisoners what you will, but I insist that you recognise my responsibility for the troops.”

Colonel Izorov’s anger seemed to evaporate as rapidly as it had grown.

“Certainly,” he agreed pleasantly, “I did not intend otherwise. Now, let us get down to practicalities.”

Picking up one of the sheets of paper from the desk, he passed it across to the captain.

“These are my notes. Take them and read through them later. As you will see, you will need stabling for about eighty ponies for a period of three weeks to a month. If you don’t have room for all of them at the barracks, Lepishinsky at the Livery stables should be able to help you out. The convoy’s final destination is Obdorskoye, about five hundred versts from here. I’ve calculated that it should take them about a fortnight to get there and slightly less to get back.”

“So the Mayor will have his deer back after all?”