Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Ah, but there… there lay the problem. After centuries of beatings and subjugation, to rouse women to action would be difficult enough; but then to make them see the necessity of accepting the new discipline that the struggle demanded called for a very special approach. Once mobilised, the great constituency of women must inevitably change the values and practice of party discourse, and multiply the already numerous points of disagreement. True, the majority of women could be expected to shy away from Nicolai’s dictatorial precepts, which would be no bad thing. The bolshiviki would remain menschiviki forever. But once Nicolai had been defeated, what then? Trying to whip the women into line would be like trying to cap a volcano.

His eyes still closed, Trotsky frowned. Without needing to ask, he knew how his senior comrades felt on the matter: women would spoil things. Women had the inner need endlessly to debate and re-examine past decisions and to hesitate and defer to one another until there was an overwhelming consensus for action. The trouble was, there were too few women like that young Dutch girl, Rosa, who had visited him in the prison before the trial.

Now there was an old head on young shoulders, he thought approvingly.

The fact remained that women, who often represented half of the work force, did not have a loud enough voice in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Where was the vigour and resilience that had been shown by the women in the Moscow textile factories? And so many of the women that were party members seemed distracted: the younger ones by what they could do to the world; the older women by what the world had done to them. Hardly the stuff that heroines were made of. Inspired by the historical example of Vera Figner, too many activists who could have joined the RSDLP had turned to the Social Revolutionaries and the gun. Women like Anna Smirnoff, who had been stripped naked and flogged in the street, the December snowflakes settling lightly on each welt raised by the sergeant’s knout. Women like Maria Spiridonova who had witnessed Luchenovsky, Governor of Tamboff, mounted on his fine black charger like Ivan Redhand, applauding the sight of the Cossack troop attacking her village.

Maria Spiridonova had seen his nod of approval as the soldiers had dragged the younger women (only schoolgirls, some of them) out into the roadways and raped them in front of him. Maria Spiridonova had watched it all and had never forgotten. Her spirit had burnt like a slow fuse, allowing her to calmly plan her revenge. To obtain the shabby workingman’s clothes for her disguise, and from somewhere else (she never said where) a revolver with five bullets. To stalk the governor’s party for days, waiting for her moment to come at the railway station just as he was boarding the ten o’clock morning train to Moscow. Surrounded by fawning local dignitaries and placemen, he had paid no attention to the scruffily dressed young figure making its way along the edge of the platform. With the crowds and the noisy approach of the incoming train, it was doubtful he even realised what was happening. Then the pistol was bucking in Maria’s fist, shaking her arm so that she had to drop the bundle which she had used to mask it and use both hands to fire the third and fourth shots into his side and back. She had deliberately saved the last bullet for herself, but, like an amateur, she had allowed her weapon to be knocked from her hand before she could raise the smoking barrel to her temple. She had fallen under the flurry of blows and punches that winded her and bloodied her nose and in falling, her cap had been torn from her head to reveal her long brown hair.

“It’s only a girl!” the crowd of scared, frock-coated gentlemen had cried angrily. “Just a girl!”

The sight of her beautiful hair had infuriated them. They grabbed it, tore it out by handfuls, used it to drag her to the station waiting room where she was placed in the custody of the governor’s military escort that had suddenly materialised; too late to save the man whose life they had been charged to protect, but in time to make the best job of what they had left. Barring the door and closing the shutters of the waiting room windows, they exacted their revenge on the governor’s assassin.