Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Yet, the attraction of the deed – the cathartic effect of the bomb blast and the crack of the pistol shot – could not be denied. How uncomfortable it made the honest law-abiding bourgeois gentlemen on the St. Petersburg Express, peering over the tops of their morning newspapers at the pale-faced young woman sitting in the corner seat. They looked at her stern features, her sober dress, her air of quiet certainty and wondered… Who is she? What is her journey? A respectable governess travelling to the capital to take up a new position? The granddaughter of a retired general perhaps, returning to her studies at the conservatoire? Or a latter day Spiridonova nervous in her travelling clothes, gripping the large reticule containing the kitchen knife or heavy pistol that will soon bring the inglorious career of another minister to a sudden end?

Trotsky felt a blow on his left arm. Annoyed by the interruption to his thoughts, he opened his eyes and looked blearily at his guard. The soldier was offering him the stone bottle again. The very thought of the noxious liquor made his stomach turn. Pulling a face, Trotsky feebly pushed the bottle away and settled his head against the hard wooden arm of the seat, gathering up the travelling skins that had slipped down his chest. With a shrug, the soldier took another draught then passed the bottle back to the driver.

Trotsky’s lips curled in disgust as he closed his eyes again. Disgust at his travelling companions, at the taste of the alcohol on his tongue and, most of all, disgust with himself. How could he even think himself capable of writing a book that would address the female case? Behind his closed eyes, the figure of Vera Zasulich arose and admonished him. He had even forgotten Vera Zasulich! The young woman who had put a bullet in General Trepoff and then surrendered without a struggle, determined as he, Trotsky, had been, to face her accusers in open court. She had been the greatest of them all, the paragon of revolutionary virtue. But how desperately disappointing it had been to meet her face to face. Vera still believed in a gentleman’s revolution, where the untutored masses would rise and subside obediently, forgetting how the real waves of the sea smash and drag, unless channelled and dammed. He wondered where she was now.

Opening his eyes again, Trotsky peered out into the deepening gloom of the forest. The warm flush of the alcohol had passed, to be replaced by a chill deep in his bones that made him wrap his overcoat tighter around himself. His body ached from the journey of the sleigh, his head ached from the foul liquor, he was desperately tired, and his stomach craved food. How much longer could it be, he wondered, before they reached their destination? A week? A fortnight? Perhaps even a month? He had heard that there would be one further break in the journey: a few days’ rest at the place called Berezovo, but beyond that lay the unknown.

Maybe the driver was right. Somewhere on the road ahead lay his extinction; first political, then moral and finally physical. He smiled bitterly at the thought of how his first wife, Alexandra, would laugh when she heard the news of his death.

Chapter Six

Thursday 1st February 1907

Berezovo, Northern Siberia

On the afternoon of the day following Madame Wrenskaya’s ‘at home’, Yeliena Tortsova sat sewing in the comfortable drawing room of her house at Number 8, Ostermann Street. She resented the tedium of her task, but Katya’s needlework could not be trusted and her husband could not afford to pay for the services of Lev Polezhayev or his daughter every time a hem needed catching or a button replacing. Money, or the lack of it, was preying on her mind. Her anxiety had been exacerbated by the knowledge that this was one of the few subjects that Vasili stubbornly refused to discuss with her, despite the high probability that she would outlive him.

Nature dictated that a man was destined for a short life of activity and accumulation, whereas a woman had to endure a longer existence of subservience and expenditure. In her own case, this natural discrepancy was further widened by the difference between their ages: soon it would be the doctor’s fifty-sixth birthday, while she was only thirty-five. And, as if these two factors were not enough, her husband’s profession demanded that he should encounter danger and risk infection more often than men half his age. Who else in Berezovo travelled such vast distances, alone, in the depths of winter, visiting the breeding grounds of disease? Madame Wrenskaya’s observation the previous day about the need to prepare for her husband’s succession had robbed Yeliena of several hours’ sleep. No reasonable woman, given her health, could expect to die before such a husband.