The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

The year 1917 brought many new things to us, the boys of Gomel. The revolution took place in February. Suddenly everything was permitted: freedom. “Free-ee-dam.” But in March, after a short exchange of rifle fire, Gomel was taken by German troops. The garrison was small and the Germans hardly interfered in the routine of the town.

The life of the civilian population went on as usual, but it was a totally different kind of life. Everything had gone off the tracks. Even we, children, felt this. Almost every one of our fathers and elder brothers was gone. Some were slain in the war, others were wasting away as prisoners, and those still in the army were cut off from us by the war security zone. Values and customs were quickly crumbling everywhere. Even we, first-year gimnazium students, were visited by an upperclassman, a huge lanky fellow with a budding mustache, who conducted elections for the gimnazium “committee” and then gave a long speech of which we understood nothing and only remembered the word

113

114

Chapter Eleven

“freedom.” The teachers became far less demanding and even the inspector, a terror to the underclassmen, went soft and the golden buttons on his uniform lost their luster. With the coming of spring we would simply walk out of the afternoon classes and avoid going to [mandatory] church services altogether. It was such fun to use this freedom and slip away to the river Sozh, skip stones on the water and clamber up hawsers into empty barges.

The street began to rule our lives, and with the street, gang leaders appeared, rough boys with a devil-may-care attitude. They were ready for trouble anywhere and at any time. They would break windows in houses, especially if no one lived there; injure dogs with a well-aimed stone; tie a can to a cat’s tail and chase the terrified animal with shrieks and yelps. When adults appealed to our conscience we had one answer for them: “It’s our freedom, too.” Gradually all adults, except for immediate family, became our adversaries and even enemies.

I was eight years old. I came, as it was said back then, from a good family. My father, who worked in private business, was drafted into the army and wounded in the shoulder. At his request he was placed in a military hospital near Gomel for recuperation. My mother had to take care of me and my two brothers, aged two and four. I was bored with their company and constantly listened for the summoning whistle of our chief, Stepka K. [diminutive of Stepan/Stephen]. He was a twelve-year-old hoodlum who had subjugated the wills and aspirations of all the kids on our street. Stepka was covered in scrapes and bloody bruises. He had a freckled face, pug nose, and steely gray eyes. With him at our head we fearlessly attacked gangs from neighboring streets. Stepka’s father and older brother were killed in the war and his mother was struck down by paralysis. Perhaps this was why in Stepka’s speech, movements, and habits there was a constant challenge, a desire for revenge, to force his pain on others. He stopped going to school, paid scant attention to his mother, who lived on a minuscule pension, and spent all his days in the street where he was the true boss. I knew that it was wrong to be in Stepka’s gang, but there was such compelling power in his stare and in his body, that none of us had any control over ourselves. I would tell mother that I was going to my school chum’s to do homework, but then, once with Stepka, I’d always be on the lookout for her.

Stepka was always thinking up new capers, but they did not always work out and some of the boys felt burdened by his doings. One fine day toward evening at the end of May 1917 Petka T., who had lived on our street, ran up to us shouting with excitement that young men were being rounded up on the town square and that they were to be sent to the front. Petka’s excitement was so evident and the news so staggering that we all sprinted for the town square which was on the high right bank of the Sozh. It was true. On the green quad-

Georgii Altaev, How I Became a Cub Scout

115

rangle of the town square boys were lined up in a U-shaped formation. They were in strange outfits, greenish shirts and pants only down to the knees, black socks and boots. They wore broad-brimmed hats with the left brim turned up with some sort of colored badge on it. On their left shoulders they had two multi-colored ribbons and blue scarves around their necks like girls. The bigger boys held smooth rods in their right hands, as soldiers held rifles, with the butts at the toe of their right boot. Some of the rods had pennants with some sort of images on them. Several young men stood in the middle of this troop, also dressed strangely except that they had many badges on their pockets and sleeves. One of them, apparently the leader, was explaining something with everyone attentively listening.