The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

The honeymoon of the revolution, however, soon trailed off into dissensions, accusations, suffering. Enthusiasm gave way to anger and bitterness. Stones, fists, revolver shots were increasingly mixed with the words and arguments. At the same time food became scarcer; wood, coal and kerosene seemed to disappear; some factories worked only intermittently, others closed down altogether. “There’s your revolution! You asked for it!” people, especially the well-dressed people, now muttered.

My father grew more depressed, more silent, with every passing day. He became more irritable than I had ever seen him in the years of danger and sacrifice. When I pressed him for an explanation of the many parties and programs he seemed embarrassed.

“It’s too complex,” he would say. “You’re not old enough to understand. This is a struggle for power. No matter what any party stands for, it will be bad if one party wins. That will only mean new masters for the old—rule by force, not by the free will of the people. It is not for this that the revolutionists gave their lives.”

Another time, after we had listened to Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Kadets [Constitutional Democrats, K D’s in Russian] and others in the Mining Institute, now the headquarters of the Ekaterinoslav Soviet, he shook his head sadly and said:

“I have been fighting to overthrow Tsarism. For freedom, for plenty, not for violence and vengeance. We should have free elections and many parties. If one party dominates, it’s the end.”

“But what are you, papa? A Menshevik, Bolshevik, a Social Revolutionary or what?”

“None of these, Vitia. Always remember this: that no slogan, no matter how attractive, is any indication of the real policy of any political party once it comes to power.”

The newspapers were shrill with the call to a better life for the country. Poor and backward Russia was at last on the highroad to progress—it only remained for everyone to dig more coal, raise more grain, acquire more culture. I read the invocations as if they were addressed personally to me. Occasionally one of the great new leaders—Petrovsky, Rakovsky or even Lunacharsky —passed through our district. Listening to them, I felt myself part of something new, big, exciting. In the Moscow Kremlin sat men whom we called simply Comrade—Lenin, Trotsky, Dzherzhinsky—but I knew them to be of the stature of gods.

176

Chapter Eighteen

Looking back to my private history as a Communist, I am inclined to date my conversion to the arrival of Comrade Lazarev, who gave a series of lectures on the problems of socialism. He was a man of about thirty, on the staff of the University of Sverdlovsk, tall, slim, neatly dressed. He talked simply in his own words, not in quotations from Marx or Lenin. What impressed me especially was that he wore a necktie, thereby bringing powerful reinforcement to those of us who argued that one could be a good Soviet citizen yet indulge in such bourgeois accessories.

One day I was in the library, engrossed in a book, when someone behind me said:

“What are you reading? I’m curious.”

I turned around. It was Comrade Lazarev.

“The Disquisitions of Father Jerome Cougniard by Anatole France,” I replied, smiling in embarrassment.

“So? Anatole France,” he said. “Why not the Russian classics, or some contemporary Soviet writer?”

“I find a lot in Anatole France that I don’t find in the Soviet writers,” I said. “He’s subtle and very honest. I do read Russian classics, but the new au-thors—they write only politically and seem to avoid the real life around us.”

“Very interesting, let’s discuss it some night. Come to my room and we’ll get acquainted.”

I met him again a few days later at a subbotnik: a work session, when hundreds of volunteers pitched in to do some urgent job without pay. On this occasion it was the removal of a mountainous heap of coal to clear a road. Comrade Lazarev was in work clothes, covered with soot and plying a shovel with great diligence. He greeted me like an old friend and I was pleased.

That evening he saw me again in the library. And what was I reading now, he wanted to know. What to Do? [aka What’s to Be Done?] by Cherni-shevsky, I told him.

“An important work,” he nodded approvingly.

“Yes, and his question, what to do, is one that bothers me now,” I said.

“It’s a question that has already been answered for millions by Lenin, and before him by Marx. Have you read Lenin and Marx?”

“A little of Lenin, here and there,” I replied, “but not Marx. I’ve read the Party literature, of course, but I’m not sure that it quite answers the question what to do.”

“Come over to my room, we’ll have a glass of tea and some refreshments and we’ll talk without disturbing anyone,” Comrade Lazarev smiled.