As Maria entered her eighteenth year, she found herself caught up in the whirlwind of revolution and political change. Given her family background and the aspirations of the Russian intelligentsia in these last stifling years of Tsarism, it is hardly surprising that Yudina greeted the February Revolution of 1917 and the abdication of the Tsar with enthusiasm. She had recently enrolled in Petrograd’s Lesgaft Courses,* which offered women free teacher-training courses. Because of their democratic social principles, the courses were associated with political ferment. Now, Yudina was swept up in the revolutionary fervour that overtook Petrograd as Russia gained its first short-lived taste of democracy.
The militia had taken over the Lesgaft Course building, and the courses were closed. Maria joined the streams of people thronging the streets:
In no time I reached the quarter of town where the Conservatoire and the Lesgaft Courses were situated [. . .] Everything was in commotion, some people were being given food, others were being bandaged or handed rifles [. . .] Arms were being given out to the prisoners who had just been released from the Litovsky fortress, and I gave rifles to whomsoever I was told. I obeyed orders unquestioningly, in a totally natural way – we had after all been commanded in ‘The name of the People’, and that surely meant ‘for the general good’ [. . .] I too was given a loaded rifle and was taught how to use it. But the wretched thing went off by itself! The bullet went through the ceilings of four storeys, and I was very lucky that I didn’t wound anybody on the fifth! I wasn’t punished or dismissed, but I was teased for the rest of the day – ‘What a warrior!’ And once again I was shown the basic rules of handling a gun.17
After this adventure Yudina called by her friend Yevgeniya Otten’ (her future godmother) and her sister Vera. They recalled Maria’s bemusement, as she recounted how ‘we have been giving out weapons to murderers and thieves.’18 Yudina then hurried home to Pushkin Street where she shared an apartment with her two elder sisters, Flora and Anna. Flora was studying at the Bekhterev Institute for Psycho-Neurology, while Anna was a student of natural sciences at the Lokhvitskaya-Skalon Courses. After reassuring them that she was still alive, Maria rushed back to her revolutionary work. This now involved the militia making a census of the population. ‘We all pinned red ribbons on our coats and went to people’s houses in groups of 2 or 3, to record the “makeup” of the population. We wore armbands, boarded the trams at the front saying “svoi” (“one of us”) with great pride.’ One day amidst this commotion Yudina happened to bump into her idol, Professor Cherepnin:
He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. ‘We’ve been worried stiff about you – we looked for you everywhere!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what’s this?’ He touched my militia armband. I was overcome by confusion. Suddenly Weber’s overtures, Schubert and Mozart’s symphonies, swept through my mind. I thought of my timpani playing in the student orchestra. I found nothing to say, mumbling words about ‘my duty to the people’ [. . .] At that moment the spontaneous revolutionary in me gave way to ‘symphonism’. I resumed my Conservatoire studies.19
Yudina had by now been appointed secretary to the Kolomenskaya branch of the People’s Militia in Petrograd. She would appear in class with files and registers swollen from the immense amount of paperwork after the overthrow of the Tsarist regime, and would plonk them down on the table together with her orchestral and piano scores. As her cousin Gavriil recalled, ‘Cherepnin would cry out in mock horror: “Maria Veniaminovna, where do you think you are? Is this a conductor’s classroom or a militia point?”’20
By the summer of 1917 Yudina had relinquished her position with the militia, and she completed the academic year at the Conservatoire, as well as her training as pre-school teacher at the Lesgaft Courses. In mid-June she returned to her parents’ home, just a few months short of her eighteenth birthday. Her decision to move back to Nevel’ was due to the uncertain political situation in Petrograd, but her mother’s illness required her presence at home as well. Maria had also strained her hands, in what transpired to be a first attack of rheumatic fever, something which plagued her throughout her life and would periodically stop her from playing the piano.
Now was the ideal time for her to put her Lesgaft training into practice. Yudina combined forces with some of the town’s young teachers to open the first summer play-school in Nevel’. They were given permission to use the grounds of the town park. As Yudina later recalled: ‘It was ideal, full of shade, with its straight lines of outlandish trees, a wide sand pit useful for our games, and several ponds.’21 The forty children who attended were divided into two Russian-language groups and a larger Jewish group. ‘Our acknowledged leader was a Jewish woman, a professional instructor and wonderful teacher, thoughtful, affectionate, and responsible, with a kind heart, and a great love of children. Despite being petite and fragile she knew how to keep the group under rein. We all learnt from her.’22
A commission created by the town council oversaw the group, providing encouragement and money as necessary. Yudina’s father served on it as an active member. Maria was thrilled by the children’s accomplishments over the summer months: ‘In the autumn, when the trees in the park shimmered with gold, we handed over our work to the commission. Everybody was happy – the children proud of their success and delighted at being the centre of attention. They all received small prizes and medals, and we teachers wept with joy.’23
Not all the work was plain sailing, as Yudina discovered:
In my Russian-language group there was a small orphaned boy called Akinfa. He was about eight years old and lived with unloving and unloved relations. He tortured and teased everybody, mocked the Jewish children, imitating their accent, their gesticulations and whining voices, and got into fights. We all tried to correct him through word and example, and as I was responsible for him, I tried particularly hard. But one day Akinfa overstepped the limits of the permissible – he beat up a boy, was rude to a staff member, and stole something. It was voted that he should be expelled. And when the time came for the sentence to be imposed, at the hour of parting, I suddenly burst into tears. And my weeping was responsible for Akinfa’s ‘second birth’ – he too burst into tears and asked to be pardoned, and returned the stolen goods. Thereafter he followed me around like a devoted dog. He announced that ‘never in my long life’ had he ever witnessed a teacher cry over a pupil.24
Her cousin Gavriil recalled that after her work, ‘Marila came back so exhausted that she would instantly fall asleep over lunch, unable even to wait for a bowl of soup to be put in front of her by her elder sister.’25 Sometimes Maria and her siblings would swim in the river at the bottom of the garden, and on occasion they took a whole day’s boating expedition with their parents, rowing down the Emenka into nearby Lake Nevel’ and out of it down the gently winding river Plissa, whose grassy banks were strewn with white lilies, and which emerged into Lake Plisskoye, a spot of unparalleled beauty.
Yudina was intent on expanding her horizons, and mostly spent her spare time reading, studying philosophy, and learning orchestral and operatic repertoire. As she recovered the use of her hands, she would play through the great stage works of Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov for relatives and friends. She herself loved Parsifal best, but for cousin Gavriil, who much preferred Rimsky-Korsakov to Wagner, she often played through The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.
By sheer coincidence some of the country’s best philosophical minds, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Matvei Kagan, Valentin Voloshinov and Boris Zubakin, found themselves in this small town in the Pale of Settlement around the time of the Revolution. The leading spirit amongst this circle of thinkers around Bakhtin was the literary critic, Lev Vasilyevich Pumpyansky. Born as Leib Meerovich Pumpyan into a Jewish family in Vilnius in 1891, he befriended Mikhail Bakhtin and his brother Nikolai while attending the First Vilenskaya gymnasium. In 1912 Pumpyansky enrolled at the German-Romance faculty of St Petersburg/Petrograd University, which he attended intermittently until 1919. His studies were interrupted in 1915 by military service. By chance Pumpyansky was stationed outside Nevel’, where his linguistic skills made him useful in military counter-espionage, and as an interpreter during the interrogations of German prisoners of war. When not on military duty, he taught at Nevel’s United Soviet School of Labour, and gave private coaching in Latin and modern languages.