The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

My affairs started to improve when I commenced writing for a second provincial newspaper, Pridneprovskii Krai, published in Ekaterinoslav. But my prosperity did not last long. A situation occurred which was characteristic of the position of the press and the mood of journalists. Pridneprovskii Krai was larger and incomparably wealthier than the Iaroslavl newspaper. I knew no one in the editorial office. But they liked my articles, embraced me right away, and asked me to write more. I wrote them of everything that came to mind—theater, books, news of life abroad and foreign literature. My first stories were published in Pridneprovskii Krai. I did not, of course, touch on political themes. The censor’s office did not allow them. But no matter what we wrote about, the authorities sensed an obstinate oppositional spirit in our words and in those things which we passed over in silence. And they were right. But we were not at fault either for feeling constricted, for outgrowing the enclosures into which the government stubbornly forced Russian thought. The government did not wish to, did not know how to, provide an outlet for

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Chapter Five

the accumulated social emotions and political needs. It did not understand that an energy was building and that it was dangerous to hold it back.

Censorship hurt us in the wallet as well. Both editors, in Iaroslavl and in Ekaterinoslav, accepted all my articles and were ready to publish them. Not infrequently, the censors disallowed them. No one paid me for these pieces. It was not easy to figure out what would pass and what would not.

In Ekaterinoslav a battle was also being waged between the lieutenant governor and the editor, Lemke. The latter was a retired military officer, feisty, and with a substantial desire to play a role in leftist circles. Later, he wrote several books on censorship and on the revolution. But at that time, he was a neophyte journalist. I do not know whether he was already a member of the Social Democrat Party, though later he became a member of the Communist Party. As editor of Pridneprovskii Krai, Lemke warred ardently against the local censors as did, by the way, many provincial editors. The sequence was as follows. The galleys of the typeset issue were sent to the censor. He would check off the unacceptable segments. When the sheet, marked up in red censor’s ink, was returned to the editorial office, it had to be patched up hurriedly at night. The offending sections had to be somehow patched up by filling the devastated galleys with material previously passed by the censorship.

Lemke tried establishing a new procedure. He started to distribute the newspaper in the form in which it was received from the censor. The pages were replete with white spaces. The bureaucrats were angry, but there was no law forbidding blank spaces within articles and between articles. Finally, Lemke overdid it. I do not know if he put together an issue that was particularly severe or whether the censor was angry that evening. The galley proofs returned almost wholly smeared with red. No clean space was left, just the headlines and broken lines of unintelligible text. Lemke printed the bald newspaper and sent his subscribers the blank pages with scattered separate phrases.

The authorities went crazy. Pridneprovskii Krai was shut down. However, the newspaper’s proprietor, the millionaire contractor Kopylov, was on good terms with the local administration and knew how to handle his affairs. He obtained permission to publish the newspaper anew but without Lemke. The latter, in response to his firing, immediately sent his colleagues a letter in which he announced that he had left the editor’s post on a “matter of principle.” He asked whether we were agreeable to signing a collective statement that we were also leaving and would not work for Pridneprovskii Krai without him.

For myself and for the majority of the contributors, this was a most unpleasant event. Pridneprovskii Krai buttressed my lean budget. They paid me five kopeks per line and paid punctually, something that could not be said

Aleksandra Tyrkova-Williams, A Woman’s Autonomy

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about Severnyi Krai. But, nothing could be done. Such was the habit of Russian writers and journalists. We were employed by, and left editorial offices like small herds. I sighed, but wrote Lemke that he could use my signature.

A few days had passed when my servant led a stocky gentleman into my living room. He had a round beard, quick eyes, and a thick gold chain which gleamed on his colorful vest.

“Allow me to introduce myself—Kopylov.”

With a dandyish actor’s gesture, playing the part of a grandee on the provincial stage, he raised my hand to his lips and audibly kissed it.

“I am very pleased to meet you. Kindly be seated.”