The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

Her murder was conducted according to all the rules of “revolutionary democracy.” The peasants of Evlashev debated the bloody deed in a village gathering. Anyone could speak. A deserter from the front, the Bolshevik hooligan Budkin, incited the people towards murder, but other peasants spoke

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up against murder. When the majority, enflamed by Budkin, voted to kill the old woman, those who did not agree asked for a decree stating that they were not involved. The gathering pronounced a “resolution” to kill the old woman and to grant those who did not agree a decree.

Straight from the gathering, armed with fence stakes, the crowd thronged to the Lukin estate to kill the old woman together with her daughter, whom the whole village had known since childhood and half-affectionately and half-jokingly called “little chick.” One of the peasants warned M.V. Lukina that they were coming to kill her. But the old woman didn’t even make it to the barn. The “revolutionary people” killed her in the yard with the stakes. But “little chick” experienced a miracle. All bloody, she came to her senses near the carriage house with her Irish setter licking her face. Accompanied by the setter, she managed to crawl to the nearby farmstead of the Sbitnevs and they took her to the hospital in Saransk.

I emphasize that the whole peasantry was not totally possessed by the madness of murder, pillaging, and arson. There was also a minority which did not agree, but it was overwhelmed by the Bolshevik fervor of the deserters, who gushed into the countryside from the front.

I remember how “little chick” Natalia Vladimirovna Lukina came to see us. Her head was bandaged, and she could move her neck only with great difficulty. Telling about the murder of her mother, she cried plaintively, while pathetically smiling at something. As strange and as unnatural as it may seem, she didn’t bear any malice towards those who murdered her mother and the peasants who nearly beat her to death.

“They’re beasts, simply beasts. . . . But when they found out that I wasn’t dead, but in the hospital, women from Evlashev started to visit. They took pity on me, cried, brought eggs, cottage cheese . . .”

“Oh, they were probably afraid that they would have to answer for their deeds!”

“No, what are you saying? Whom would they have to answer to? There are no authorities. No, it’s true. They pitied me . . .” Then “little chick” cried, drooping her bandaged head. In my opinion, in her spiritual condition there was something Christian, but at the same time there was a submission to an all-engulfing evil that I found unpleasant.

I would like to emphasize one fact of the Russian Revolution that has never been written about by anyone, i.e., how Russian people of wealth and means (whom the Marxists called the “propertied classes,” “bourgeoisie,” “exploiters,” and “capitalists”) accepted the loss of their property. Bolshevik writings talk about the “resistance of the bourgeoisie,” the “conspiracy of the bourgeoisie” and how the “heroic Bolsheviks” finally triumphed over the pernicious bourgeoisie. It is all a shameless lie. The Russian “bourgeoisie” (if

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one wishes to call it by that name) lost its property in isolation (without trying to organize), without a whimper, without resistance. While it is true that during the February Revolution there was a so-called “Union of Landholders,” it existed primarily on paper. All it did was send reports to the revolutionary Minister of Land Affairs about disorders, pillaging, and arson. The minister, busy with revolutionary affairs, probably never even answered any of these communications since he had other concerns. By October, this “union” had already dissolved.

In general, Russians easily part with material things. In my opinion, they do so much more easily than Westerners. I recall what the chairman of the Penza local government, a young well-educated landowner named Er-molov (a relative of the famous general Ermolov), said when at a huge gathering some Bolsheviks and Mensheviks began to interrupt his speech with demagoguery: “Well, what about your land?!” He answered scornfully: “My land? You know gentlemen, I won’t stoop down to join the crush of the crowd rushing to pick up fallen apples. I once had land. Now I won’t. That’s it.”

The same gloating shouts were heard at a meeting in Petrograd at which the chairman of the State Duma M.V. Rodzianko was speaking. “That’s all fine and good,” they shouted, “but what about your land?” He replied: “As the Constituent Assembly decides, that’s how it will be.” Like all sound-minded people, he clearly understood that in Russia all land belonging to landlords, the state, and the nobility would be transferred to the peasantry. There wasn’t any attempt at “resistance” by property owners.