‘I’d love to hear it, Mikhail,’ he said, raising his binoculars to his eyes and staring out to the south.
‘“A Most Humble and Loyal Address of the Workers of St Petersburg Intended for Presentation to His Majesty on Sunday at two o’clock on the Winter Palace Square,”’ Mikhail began. ‘“Sire: We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to Thee, O Sire, to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished; we are oppressed, overburdened with excessive toil, contemptuously treated. We are not even recognized as human beings, but are treated like slaves who must suffer their bitter fate in silence and without complaint. And we have suffered, but even so we are being further (and further) pushed into the slough of poverty, arbitrariness and ignorance. We are suffocating in despotism and lawlessness. O Sire, we have no strength left, and our endurance is at an end. We have reached that frightful moment when death is better than the prolongation of our unbearable sufferings.”’
Way off in the distance Powerscourt thought he could hear singing. He strained his head towards the noise but nothing was clear.
‘Christ,’ said de Chassiron, peering at the Russian characters over Mikhail’s shoulder, ‘I shouldn’t think anybody’s talked to the Tsar in that tone of voice in his entire life. I shouldn’t think even his bloody wife talks to him like that. What do you reckon, Mikhail?’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Mr de Chassiron,’ said Mikhail tactfully, his eyes skimming further sections of the proclamation. ‘I suspect the great ruler would be furious if he ever read this.’
‘I wonder if it isn’t always the same question,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Why this great march now? Why today? Are things much worse now than they were before? Much worse than the day before yesterday or last month? If marches and proclamations today, why not last year? Perhaps you’d better translate a bit more, Mikhail.’
‘“And so we have left our work,”’ Mikhail was frowning slightly as he spoke, as if the gap between his life and those described here was almost too great to cross, ‘“and told our employers that we will not go back to it until they have agreed to our demands. Our first request was that our employers discuss our needs with us. But they refused, they would not allow us the right to talk about our needs, because the law does not recognize such a right for us. Our requests also seemed to them to be illegaclass="underline" reducing the hours of work to eight per day; drawing up a schedule of wage rates for our work along with us and with our agreement; investigating our disputes with the lower management of the factories; increasing the wages of unskilled workers and women to one rouble per day; abolishing overtime; treating us with attention and without abuse.”’
Powerscourt thought you could have taken the language and the sentiments and applied them to any industrial dispute in any country in Europe. The poor and the working classes of Birmingham or Bologna or Berlin would feel at home with this proclamation. Truly, Peter the Great’s ambition to make Russia European had been realized, but not in ways he would have welcomed. Carried in by subversive pamphlets posted from overseas, brought in by hand by the more daring or least known revolutionaries, maybe even hidden in secret compartments or lining the bottoms of hollow suitcases in the trains and ferries that linked Russia to the West, the seditious thoughts of Europe had come to Peter’s capital as surely as the great columns and pilasters of his baroque architects two centuries before.
‘Look, Lord Powerscourt!’ Mikhail shouted. ‘Down there to the south! My God, there’s thousands of them!’
Staring through his binoculars Powerscourt could see a great column, led by a priest in a long white cassock carrying a crucifix. He was surrounded by a primitive bodyguard. At the front, just behind the man of God, there marched two young men, one with a portrait of the Tsar, the other with a huge icon of the Virgin. Behind them was a large white banner with the words ‘Soldiers, do not shoot at the people!’ A new sound rang out to join the singing. The church bells were ringing to bless people on the way to meet their Tsar.
‘That’s the Russian National Anthem they’re singing, Lord Powerscourt.’ Up there on the roof Mikhail gave his own special version in an attractive tenor voice.
‘God save the noble Tsar!
Long may he live, in power,
In happiness,
In peace to reign!
Dread of his enemies,
Faith’s sure defender,
God save the Tsar!
Faith’s sure defender,
God save the Tsar!
Faith’s sure defender,
God save the Tsar!’
‘God knows why you have to repeat the last bit three times, gentlemen,’ Mikhail apologized for the reprise, ‘but people get very cross if you don’t.’
‘It’s not that different from our own National Anthem, actually,’ said Powerscourt. ‘God, faith, death to the enemies, all the usual stuff.’ De Chassiron was staring through his binoculars at the great column that snaked its way forward behind the priest. Many of them carried their children with them, cradling the little ones in their arms, the fathers holding them on their shoulders for a better view. The old were at the back, shuffling slowly along the ice. They walked with an air of great purpose, as if on this day they walked with destiny. Now Mikhail was tugging his arm again and pointing to the other side of the river. Another vast army from the Petrograd district was approaching the Troitsky Bridge that would bring them very close to Palace Square itself. Further east again the people of Vyborg, behind the Finland station, were also approaching the river. Powerscourt found himself wondering how many of the marchers could be locked up inside the Peter and Paul Fortress. The church bells were ringing out all over the city now for the hour of one o’clock, sixty short minutes before all the marchers were due to arrive in Palace Square. Down below them a group of students, dressed in black from head to foot, were advancing very slowly, taking it in turns to read from the proclamation.
‘My God, Powerscourt,’ Mikhail was bright with excitement, ‘they’re not mincing their words, the people who wrote this proclamation. They’ve dropped all the weasel words and all the weasel sentiments. They’re asking the Tsar for the vote. The vote! People have asked for it before but not tens and tens of thousands of them, all heading for the Winter Palace!’ He began translating again:
‘“Let there be here capitalist and worker, official, priest, doctor, teacher: let them all, whoever they are, elect their representatives. Let everyone be equal and free in their right to vote, and to that end decree that the elections to the constituent assembly be carried out under universal, secret and equal suffrage.”’ Mikhail stared at Powerscourt. ‘Assemblies, votes for everyone, not just the rich, I reckon the Winter Palace will fall down if that petition gets anywhere near it.’
Powerscourt was thinking that these Russian radicals were asking for a wider franchise than that applying in his own country, supposedly a cradle and mother of democracy.
‘Do we know anything about that priest? The one leading the column towards the Narva Gates?’ asked Powerscourt.
De Chassiron laughed bitterly. ‘I have spent quite a lot of time investigating this man, Powerscourt. Forgive me, Mikhail, if I sound unsympathetic to some of your fellow countrymen. It does not apply to you or your family.’ He peered over the balcony, small sections of plaster falling off the parapet as he leant forward to inspect the students beneath. ‘The priest’s name is Gapon, Father Georgy Gapon.’ De Chassiron paused for a moment. ‘Let’s suppose you are the secret police, Powerscourt. You’re quite smart in this country if you’re a secret policeman. After all, some of the time they’re the only thing keeping the imperial family alive. Anyway, you look at all these new factories with their horrible working conditions and their pathetic rates of pay springing up in all the great cities. The lessons from abroad tell you that, at some point, the Russian worker will join a trade union like the German worker or the British worker or the French worker. Fine, you say. Then you have your brainwave. Wouldn’t it be much better, a senior secret policeman called Zubarov thought, if we controlled these trade unions, not the radicals or the revolutionaries or the undesirables. Let’s have Tsarist trade unions without any of the members knowing about it. So lots of these stooges are put in place all over the country briefed to run the trade unions the way the government tells them. Including Father Gapon here in St Petersburg. It’s as if the last French King had not just Danton on his payroll but St Just and possibly Robespierre as well. And what happens? The government gives these Gapons money to set up their union. After a while they go native, or they may go native. They join the opposition. I have reason to believe that our Father Gapon had a meeting with the authorities yesterday but I am sure his heart is with the marchers today. They say he wrote sections of the proclamation after all.’