He had had a strange life. Back in 1874, after his sudden departure from Russka, he had wandered in the Ukraine for months and the Suvorins had wondered if he had died. Then, however, needing money, he had contacted his brother Vladimir in Moscow; and Vladimir, feeling he must, had let old Savva know that his grandson was alive.
Was it, perhaps, Savva Suvorin who had sealed Peter’s fate? According to his lights, the old man had been forgiving. For the letter he had seen, supposedly written by Peter and confessing to laying the fire, had been a terrible blow. For months afterwards, in secret, he would mutter to himself: ‘To attack his own family!’ It would have been hard to say whether this treachery, or the accidental killing of the two young people, shocked him more; and he was so shaken that he never told anyone, including Vladimir, about it. Now, therefore, when news of Peter came, Savva sent him a strongly worded message: return at once to make amends for his terrible crimes or be cut off from the family for ever. It seemed to Savva that he was acting with forbearance. And he was shocked still further when, having received the message with a groan, Peter refused to return. ‘His heart is hardened into sin,’ old Suvorin declared, and never spoke of the young man again. Six months later he died.
The Will of Savva Suvorin was clear. The dangerous revolutionary Peter was cut out of all control of the Suvorin enterprises and left with only a modest allowance. ‘You could contest it,’ Vladimir told him frankly. ‘Or I’ll give you part of my fortune myself.’ But Peter was young and proud. ‘Besides, I want no part of it anyway,’ he said. He returned to Moscow and his studies. He fell in love but was rejected. He discovered a talent for physics, studied the subject deeply, and even wrote a small textbook on the subject which was published successfully. He told himself that he was happy enough. And he continued, steadfastly, to look for a better world.
He came to Marxism in the 1880s. Ever since his first meeting with Popov, he had become a student of revolutionary thought. He had several times encountered Popov again, and that secretive fellow had put him in touch with certain radical groups; but by all these people he was seen as a kindly dreamer. In Marxism, however, he had found a system that gave him more stature. Here was his longed-for utopia, but scientifically arrived at – not by some violent, conspiratorial overthrow, but by a gradual and natural historical process. ‘You call my views utopian,’ he would say to Vladimir, ‘but I just call them human progress.’ And in his heart he secretly believed that one day the Suvorin factories would pass into the hands of the workers with scarcely a shot fired.
Strangely, it was his early interest in Marxism that had convinced the tsarist authorities that the mild-mannered professor was harmless to the state. That very year a senior official had privately conveyed the government’s attitude to Vladimir Suvorin himself.
‘My dear fellow, as long as your brother sticks to studying Marx we’re not very worried. We’ve looked at all these things, you know,’ he added wisely. ‘This Marx was an economist. We’ve even allowed some of his works to be translated and published – because right or wrong, no one can understand a word of him anyway. It’s revolutionaries we’re worried about, not economists – and I can’t see your brother throwing any bombs, can you?’
It was a strange relationship between the brothers – the rich industrialist and the poor professor, the family man and the lonely bachelor. They were fond of each other, but some strain was inevitable. Nor was it helped by the fact that Vladimir’s handsome young second wife, who loved to entertain in the great Moscow house, could not help feeling rather sorry for this kindly man whom she regarded as a poor unfortunate. ‘Peter should marry,’ she would tell Vladimir. ‘But I’m afraid he’s too timid.’ Peter sensed her feelings and it hurt his pride. He did not go to the Suvorin house often.
This evening’s meeting was small, but Peter Suvorin believed it was important, and he was especially anxious it should go well. As he spoke, therefore, he tried to gauge the reaction of the audience carefully. With admirable precision, he outlined for these young people the developments in Europe. Only three years before, an important Socialist conference, the Second International, had been held for delegates from many countries. The last year had seen, for the first time, groups of workers in Russia celebrating May Day as a token of solidarity with the international workers’ movement. ‘And these things, in their infancy now, will shape the future of civilization in generations to come,’ he assured them.
Only when he was sure he had them with him did Peter Suvorin broach the real subject that was on his mind, and the reason why he had been so anxious to address them that night. Which was that they were Jewish.
He began carefully, and subtly, by alluding to some of their grievances: for in recent years the tsarist government, for reasons never explained, had undoubtedly turned vigorously against the Jewish community and treated them shabbily. Jews had been forbidden to buy land and told they must only live in towns; education quotas were being applied against them so that only a miserably small percentage of students in higher education could be Jews, even in the big cities in the Pale. And the laws of the Pale were suddenly being enforced with such viciousness that the previous year some seventeen thousand Jews had been thrown out of Moscow. Worse yet were the repeated outbreaks of violence since the pogroms of 1881, which the government had done little to prevent.
It was hardly surprising therefore if in recent years the Jewish workers had begun to think of setting up their own workers’ committees, quite independent of the others. Peter could hardly blame them. But this was exactly what he was anxious to combat.
‘The workers of the world must unite,’ he told them. ‘All groups, all nations, shall be one.’ He saw this vision so clearly. ‘And besides,’ he warned them, ‘as part of a larger movement, your voice will be much stronger than it ever would be as a separate group.’
They listened to him politely, but he could see they were uncertain. And then a tousle-haired young man near the front quietly addressed him. ‘You say we should remain part of a larger brotherhood. Well and good. But what are we to do if our non-Jewish brothers refuse to defend us? What then?’
It was the question Peter had been awaiting. For it was true, he knew, that Russian workers had mixed feelings about their Jewish brothers. In Russia proper, they were foreigners; in the Pale, they were competition; and there were even activists and Socialists who had failed to stand up against the pogroms for fear of alienating the workers they were trying to win over to their cause.
Peter was too honest to deny the problem, but it was a phase that would pass, he assured the young man. ‘Remember, we are at the very first beginnings,’ he said. ‘Even many of the activist workers have to be educated; but as the great brotherhood develops in size and consciousness, this problem will fall away. And,’ he added, ‘you will speed that process by staying on the inside, not by splitting off.’ There was a long pause. He was not sure if he had convinced the young man or not. Some other questions followed.
It was just as the meeting was about to end that the girl stood up. She had been sitting towards the back, just behind a large youth, and he had only been aware of her mass of black hair. Now, suddenly, she was staring at him, with huge, luminous eyes and a look of genuine puzzlement on her face. And indeed, Rosa Abramovich was puzzled. She had listened intently to all that Peter Suvorin had said. She had caught his vision of the great sweep of human history and the better world to come, and it had touched her profoundly: she had never heard anyone speak like that before. Yet when she considered her own life, and her memories of what had passed in the Ukraine, there was something she found she could not understand. And so now, she faced him a little awkwardly and asked in a soft voice: ‘But when the new world comes, when the Socialist state has been achieved, will that mean that the Jews are not persecuted any more – that men will have changed?’