Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 4
The weeks turned into a month and that into almost two without a fresh summons dropping through the letter box of his Fitzrovia flat. He filled his time as best he could, reading the more serious newspapers from front page to back, paying particular attention to events in Russia, many of which he assumed Caitlin would now be witnessing. So far the Bolsheviks seemed to be doing all that she hoped, successfully keeping opponents at bay and introducing a raft of progressive legislation.
He kept a close watch on military developments elsewhere. The campaigns against the Turks in Mesopotamia and Palestine were clearly going well, but there didn’t seem much change on the Western Front. The battles around Ypres and Passchendaele had ground to a halt without an obvious victor, and a new one had started around Cambrai in which armored vehicles had been used en masse for the first time. This had surprised the Germans, but no one expected the advantage gained to be anything other than brief. More depressingly still, the Italians were in danger of being routed by the Austrians, and Caitlin’s Bolsheviks were suing for an Eastern Front armistice.
The one piece of really good news was that Jed had survived the latest Ypres battle and was resting with his unit some way behind the front. McColl heard this from his mother, who showed every sign of coping well with widowhood—her letters were full of Clydeside politics and Caitlin’s good fortune in witnessing the future firsthand.
A letter from his brother arrived the week before Christmas. More words were blacked out than not, but Russia was mentioned several times, and always in splendid isolation. Reading between the lines, McColl was left in little doubt that the boys in the trenches were taking more than a casual interest in Caitlin’s revolution.
3
A Fault Worth Cultivating
In Finland the snow had been several days old, but on the approaches to Petrograd there was little more than a dusting, a harbinger of winter rather than the real thing. The wide Neva Estuary might be the color of ice, but for now the water still rippled.
Caitlin had crossed into newly Bolshevik Russia at Tornio, after enduring a lengthy grilling from the Swedish border authorities. The Russians had been quicker and had contented themselves with a full body search, carried out with all due decency by a stocky young girl in overalls. Three days of Finnish lakes and forests had followed. Three days of endless pauses in dismal clearings, snow drifting down from darkened skies. Of black bread and coffee, the former so hard that it needed soaking, the latter so weak it barely deserved the name.
Some of her fellow passengers seemed unconcerned by the train’s snaillike progress—Russians returning after years of voluntary exile were unlikely to begrudge a few extra days. Others bridled at the delays—they could hardly wait to reach Petrograd, if only to find out what was going on. Caitlin had heard nothing since Oslo—the Swedish press had been strangely silent on Russian affairs—and for all she knew, Lenin and his Bolsheviks had already been overthrown. Many of her current companions would rejoice if that proved to be the case; others would break down and weep. But most of those trapped in the slow-moving train had decided on returning before the second revolution, and they were suspending judgment. Almost everyone had heard of Lenin and his party, but few could say with any precision what the Bolsheviks actually stood for.
They were about to find out. The train was in the northern suburbs, and as it rattled through industrial Vyborg, Caitlin could see the chimneys flaunting red flags, the factory roofs emblazoned with slogans. She settled into her seat and smiled. She was back.
She wasn’t expecting any help with her bags, but two young Red Guards insisted on carrying them out to the famous forecourt, where the prodigal Lenin had addressed his supporters that spring. This time it lay empty, and she waited several minutes for a droshky. As they crossed the river, the middle-aged driver happily answered her questions. Yes, the Bolsheviks were still in control. Yes, a few people had been killed—mostly young fools from the military academy. And yes, the Red Guards had given the reactionaries a bloody nose on the western outskirts.
As the driver seemed slightly surprised by this litany of successes, she asked if he thought the Bolsheviks would still be around at Christmas.
He thought about that for a while. “They do seem in a terrible hurry,” he said eventually. “Maybe they know something that I don’t.”
Of the two hotels she’d patronized that summer, Caitlin preferred the Angleterre—the central location and the friendliness of its mostly youthful staff more than made up for the tawdry state of the rooms. Her old one was taken, but even this turned out a blessing—the new one had a wonderful view of the square and its cathedral. After dumping her suitcases on the sagging bed, she stood at the window watching the snowflakes drift by. Outside the cathedral a few soldiers in plain uniforms were talking in a group, their cigarettes glowing in turn. Beyond them two young girls were playing hopscotch, having drawn their boxes in the thin carpet of snow. She was here!
It was almost dark. Though she was dog-tired, her soul rebelled against simply going to bed. She had to go out.
On the pavement outside the hotel, she hesitated for a moment, wondering where to go. She knew the cafés and clubs where the foreign correspondents and their Russian friends gathered but decided she’d rather renew their acquaintance tomorrow. After three days with so little sleep, she was too tired for long conversations, and a strong voice inside her was pleading to be alone. With Russia and its revolution, if that didn’t sound too silly. And even if it did.
She walked up toward the Admiralty, then right along the edge of the Alexandrov Gardens, where someone had already built a snowman. After taking a peek at the deserted plaza in front of the Winter Palace—a few Red Guards were standing sentry outside the darkened building—she went back to the top of Nevsky Prospect and started down the city’s famous promenade. The streetlights were on, which seemed promising, but many shop windows were empty. Those that were not—one emporium specializing in jewel-encrusted dog collars, another in French cosmetics—bore eloquent witness to the class of residents now departed. Caitlin had encountered some of the women in Stockholm, bewailing their fate at Bolshevik hands while they bought new jewelry with the money their husbands had smuggled out.
The Club of the Noblesse, she noted with some satisfaction, was unlit and boarded shut. Closed by history was daubed on the door, a length of red cloth looped across the brass doorknobs.
She crossed the Moika Canal and ambled on toward Kazan Cathedral. There were fewer promenading couples than she remembered, but that might be the change of season. There were more Red Guards, and she suddenly realized she hadn’t yet seen a streetcar.
The dislocation that any political upheaval might leave in its wake? Or something more serious? This was going to be the hardest journalistic assignment of her career, if only because she felt so invested in what she was reporting. She would need to be constantly on guard against seeing only what she wanted to see.
Nearing the bridge over the Catherine Canal, she spotted an open café a short way down a side street. There was nothing but shchi, vegetable soup, to eat, and the tea proved as weak as the coffee on the train, but it was so quintessentially Russian—the smoky warmth and excited chatter, the bizarre mix of costumes all bathed in a kerosene glow. Perhaps there were fewer prostitutes, but there in the corner was the obligatory youth with burning eyes busy scribbling poetry. Every café had one.
The others at her table knew she was a foreigner—if the accent hadn’t given her away, the clothes most certainly would have—but once she’d answered the usual questions—where was she from, and what was she doing in Russia?—no one insisted on knowing more. She sat sipping her tea, a smile on her face, quietly reveling in simply being there.
On the table in front of her, a small card advised against leaving a gratuity: “Just because a man must make his living by being a waiter, do not insult him by offering a tip.”
Caitlin felt proud of herself for understanding the Russian, proud of the Russians for understanding the insult.
It was late when she woke the next morning, and she went down to the hotel restaurant with suitably low expectations. There was butter for the black bread, however, and two chunks of sugar for her tea.
The desk clerk wasn’t sure there was a functioning foreign office at present but agreed that someone from the new government would want to check her journalistic credentials. He thought Smolny was her best bet—most of the new ministers had gotten such a hostile reception at their ministries that they’d retreated to the comfort of home, which for them was the former school for girls of the nobility where the Bolshevik had set up their party HQ.
Having been woken twice in the night by the sounds of distant gunfire, she asked if the streets were safe.
“Safe as they’ll ever be,” was the cheerful reply. According to him, there hadn’t been any real fighting in Petrograd, “not even on the night they took over.” And these days it was more likely to be Red Guards firing on scavengers who’d found another abandoned wine cellar than anyone with a political ax to grind.
Partly reassured, Caitlin set off for the Smolny Institute, which she knew was a mile or more upriver. The sky had cleared again, which made for a pleasant walk, even if the pale lemon sun seemed reluctant to throw off any warmth. Staring across the Neva at the Peter and Paul Fortress, she wondered how many of the old regime were now enjoying its hospitality.
The walk proved longer than she expected, but after about an hour, a bend in the river brought the blue-and-silver domes of Smolny Convent into view. The institute was just behind it, a long, three-story building with a huge colonnaded entrance. The courtyard in front was teeming with people, mostly men and mostly armed, the sailors prominent in their singular caps and leather jerkins. Two armored cars, both still bearing the names of former czars, were parked to one side.
There were no sentries at the doors, so she went through into the entrance hall, which was twice as crowded as the courtyard and at least five times as noisy. The only people not talking were two soldiers fast asleep in their chairs, legs splayed and mouths hanging open.
She pressed on, picking one of the corridors that led away from the bedlam, then stopping at the first open doorway to inquire about foreign affairs. All but one man ignored her, and he just pointed her farther down the passage.
This happened several times, until she felt like Alice in Wonderland, lost in some vast and cavernous maze. Most people seemed so busy, and nearly everyone looked tired, including the famous Trotsky, who strode past her on one dark corridor, gesticulating wildly at an audience only he could see. The few idle hands belonged to the sleeping—curled up in office chairs and down among the stacks of pamphlets and books that lined so many of the dimly lit passages—often with rifles perched beside them.
She was beginning to despair of ever getting out, let alone finding Foreign Affairs, when someone she recognized came rushing around a corner and almost knocked her over. She had met this young man with the rounded glasses and short dark hair in the summer; his name was Volodarsky. A Jew from Ukraine, and an active revolutionary from an early age, he’d lived in the United States from 1913 until earlier this year. In that time he’d been active in the American socialist movement, and during their last conversation he and Caitlin had discovered several common acquaintances in Philly and New York City.
He did a double take when he saw her, then embraced her with a happy laugh. When she explained her reasons for being there, he volunteered himself as her guide. As they walked down corridors she was sure she’d seen before, he insisted on their meeting again, if both could find a minute to spare. “It’s chaos,” he said when he dropped her off at the office she needed. “But so exhilarating!”
After only a very few questions, the officials inside agreed to provide her with papers. Finding a typist and a typewriter took some time, but once this had been accomplished and her details put on file, an appointment was made with the press-liaison officer, who would tell her all she needed to know about sending dispatches home. She was welcome to use the mess hall while she waited.
She did so, sitting at a long wooden table on a long wooden bench, eating cabbage soup with a wooden spoon. Several Bolshevik leaders were having their lunch, including Bukharin and Kamenev, who seemed more interested in waving their spoons at each other than in sampling the excellent soup. There had to be several hundred people in the hall, and most of the others were eating at speed. There was a revolution to make, and only so much time in which to make it.
The one Bolshevik leader whom Caitlin could actually call a friend was conspicuous by her absence, and the thought of entering the maze for a second time was hardly welcoming. But this time she was luckier: another acquaintance from the summer—a young woman named Galina whom she’d met at the Rabotnitsa editorial offices—was entering the hall as Caitlin walked out. She learned from Galina that Alexandra Kollontai had been given the Ministry of Welfare to run and was the only woman in the Bolshevik cabinet. Her ministry was on Kazanskaya Street, and that was where Caitlin would probably find her.
After seeing the press-liaison officer, she hailed a droshky and gave the address to its driver. He eschewed the route along the river, zigzagging his way eastward through a part of the city she barely knew. People were thin on the ground, but for a city that had just seen a revolution, Petrograd seemed virtually unscathed. There were no broken windows, no bullet-riddled doors, no bodies awaiting burial.
By a strange coincidence, Kazanskaya Street was where she had eaten on the previous evening. The ministry was housed in an old palace a quarter mile beyond the café, across from the canal. Two Red Guards kept vigil outside the massive doors.
One examined her papers with interest; both smiled when she explained that the new minister was an old friend. The young woman at reception was not so amenable—the minister was terribly busy, and there was no way of knowing when she’d be free.
“If you’d just tell her I’m here,” Caitlin suggested. “I’m happy to wait.” She took a seat in one of the two aging armchairs and looked around. The wall was covered in faded rectangular patches where paintings had been removed.
She sat back and thought about Kollontai. Caitlin had first met her Russian friend—who was actually half Ukrainian, half Finnish—in the summer of 1915. As the European correspondent of a neutral nation, Caitlin had been traveling to Germany to assess the situation there for her American readers. Her route had passed through Norway, and her British friend Sylvia Pankhurst had recommended that Caitlin stop off and visit the famous Russian feminist and socialist. The two women had hit it off immediately and spent the next three days in a whirlwind discussion of politics, love, and everything in between.
They’d corresponded ever since and had met on several occasions during Kollontai’s American sojourn in the fall and winter of 1916. They had further renewed their friendship that summer, in the weeks between Caitlin’s arrival in Russia and Kollontai’s July arrest. At the time of their meeting in Norway, Kollontai had only recently resolved to join the Bolsheviks, and now here she was, less than three years later, a prominent member of Lenin’s government.
A familiar voice was just about audible on the receptionist’s telephone. “She’ll see you now,” the woman said, getting up. “Follow me.”
They walked along a corridor and were about to ascend a wide flight of stairs when several children came barreling down. The receptionist’s call for more decorum elicited a few shouted apologies but no appreciable deceleration.
Kollontai was waiting at the top of the stairs, a broad smile on her face. She looked none the worse for her summer in prison, and the blue-gray eyes were their usual riot of life. The two women enjoyed a long hug before Kollontai took one of Caitlin’s hands and gently pulled her into the adjacent office.
“So this is a minister’s office,” Caitlin said, eyeing the tables stacked high with papers and files.
“And I am the minister,” Kollontai confirmed with a shake of the head. “Who would have thought it?”
“I would,” Caitlin told her. “Who were all those children?”
“Ah. They’re from one of the city homes for older orphans. I have sacked all the people who ran it and proclaimed it a tiny republic. Now the children run the place themselves—they elect their own leaders, keep order, choose what food they want to eat . . .” She laughed. “When there’s food to choose from, of course. But they come here to tell me how things are going—that was their executive committee.”
Caitlin smiled. “It’s good to see you. And to see things going so well.”
“Don’t count too many chickens. You should have been here a week ago. After Lenin gave me this job—much to my astonishment, I have to tell you—I was driven here in an automobile, full of myself and my mission, and I couldn’t even get through the doors. There was this huge commissioner, dressed up like one of those hotel doormen, and he wouldn’t let me pass. No matter what I said, he just kept repeating that visiting times were over for the day! I had to leave with my tail between my legs. I soon discovered that everyone inside was on strike, and when I did get through the doors next morning with the help of few Red Guards, I found smashed-up typewriters and torn-up documents and most of the staff gone, along with the keys to the safes and half the records.”
Caitlin was shocked. “What did you do?”
“We tidied up, we tried to make sense of what was still there, and we waited for the staff to realize that they needed their jobs to live. And over the next few days, most of them came back. I called a meeting of everyone who works here, in the biggest hall we have. And I told them that everyone would be earning the same amount of six hundred rubles a year and that anyone—administrators, secretaries, cleaners—who had suggestions for improving our work would find a ready audience. Of course the few who’d been earning twenty-five thousand rubles a year were outraged, not least by the thought that the underlings they’d abused for years are no less important than they are.” Kollontai leaned forward, her eyes alight. “And what a response! You wouldn’t believe how many men and women have come to this office and pointed out better ways of doing things which hadn’t occurred to their so-called betters.”
