The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Our mood has changed recently. Since we learned that the Cossacks have abandoned the front and are creating disturbances in Russia, now everyone has nothing but curses and threats for the Cossacks. They’ll be in a bad way when the war is over, people want to destroy them forever. Any of their movements and uprisings will be put down right away. The Cossacks formerly enjoyed the reputation of being invincible, but in this war they served in headquarters, a safe distance from the action, they are considered cowards, they fear the Germans, went off to war to fight against women, but encounter soldiers with the character of Hindenburg.

You, Olga Valerianovna, imagine the break-up of Russia. That will never ever be, because we will not stand for German aggression, and Russia will become a strong and fearsome state. Do not trouble yourself, Olga Valerianovna with concern for my existence, I never worry for myself, because my life is cheerless. Just imagine, for all the hardships, the cold, hunger and difficult marches that I have endured and experienced in this war, when the war is over I will have to go to work in the mines or in a factory and I will again be re-

Nikolai Filatov, A Soldier’s Letters

129

garded as a criminal element. I really don’t want to go there, but am driven by need; there is no chance for me to take up farming. There is little land available and no capital to re-establish operations. I regret that on 14 September 1915 that shell didn’t blow my head off, but now I’d like to live a bit more and see how the war ends.

I am dreadfully bored, my only entertainment is reading books, and I don’t spare my eyes, anything to forget my gloom. I thank you, Olga Valerianovna, for your kindness towards me, your books alone sustain me, if not for the books, I would die from boredom and melancholy. I am quite fed up with living in the mountains. We are fed poorly, and the animals are fed very poorly, so that they can barely pull even empty carts. I cannot imagine, what will be next. I request, Olga Valerianovna, if you have the time, that you write what is happening in Moscow. For now, Olga Valerianovna, good bye, be healthy, I wish you all the very very best.

—Respectfully yours N. Filatov. Village Shvartstal

NOTES

Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerensky became the Minister of War and Navy in the Russian Provisional Government a month prior to Filatov’s letter, in May 1917. That same year Kerensky became prime minister in July and commander-in-chief in September.

The November 1917 elections to the Constituent Assembly were the first and only free multiparty elections in Russia until the post-Soviet era. Each of Russia’s five wartime fronts constituted an electoral district. The remote Romanian front, on which Filatov fought, was largely insulated from Bolshevik agitation for immediate withdrawal from the war and confiscation of land and voted predominantly for the Socialist Revolutionaries. Of 1,128,000 votes cast by Russian soldiers on the Romanian front, 679,000 went to the Socialist Revolutionaries, while the Ukrainian Social Democrats received 181,000 votes to 167,000 for the Bolsheviks. Party lists were identified by numbers, and Filatov’s numbers correspond to these three parties. On the Western front, by contrast, where Bolshevik agitation was rife, these proportions were reversed: the Bolsheviks received 653,000 votes of 976,000 cast, to 181,000 for the Socialist Revolutionaries.

Chapter Thirteen

Konstantin Paustovskii, Save Your Strength

Please see note to the previous Paustovskii entry.

[. . .] But everyone was convinced that the war was not in vain, and that justice finally would be restored.

“Worst of all, there ain’t no truth or justice!” said a village shoemaker, a puny fellow with a sunken chest. “Travel around Russia, ask all of them people and you’ll see that each one’s got his own idea of truth. A local idea. And if you put them all together then you’d get the one and only, an all-Russian truth, so to speak.”

“Well, and what sort of local truth have you got?” I asked.

“Why, it’s standing over there, our truth!” answered the shoemaker and pointed at the hillock over the river. There a decrepit manor house was visible in the midst of a gnarled apple orchard. It was not very large, but it preserved all the features of the “Empire” style that had flourished on Russian estates during the reign Alexander the First: a pediment with peeling columns, narrow and tall windows rounded off at the top, two low semi-circular wings, and a broken cast-iron railing of rare beauty.

“Please explain to me,” I asked, “what does this old house have to do with your local truth?”