And suddenly Alexander doubled up with pain as a rifle butt was swung and hit him in the stomach. He went down.
‘What shall we do with him, lads?’
‘Take him to a tribunal.’
‘Search him first, maybe.’
‘I think you’d like to have a nice talk with the Cheka. That’s what I reckon,’ the first said with a laugh. ‘Up you get, baron. Come along, Excellency. What a fine officer you are, sir, to be sure.’
He staggered up. Thank God he had no papers on him.
‘My name’s Ivanov,’ he said weakly.
Then one of the soldiers cried out: ‘Here’s the man we need. He’s on the Committee. Let’s ask him.’
And Alexander looked up to see Yevgeny Popov, who gazed at him with mild surprise, while the soldiers told him what they’d found. ‘Says his name’s Ivanov,’ the first one added. Then Popov smiled.
For a few, long seconds he said nothing. His green eyes rested upon Alexander, yet it seemed he was thinking of something else. At last he spoke.
‘This man, comrades, is a good Bolshevik. He’s one of us.’
The soldier who had discovered Alexander gazed in amazement.
‘But he talks like a noble,’ he protested. ‘I swear he was an officer.’
Popov smiled. ‘Have you heard Vladimir Ilich speak?’ he asked. It was a subject of some amusement that Lenin pronounced his diatribes against the capitalist classes in an accent that was markedly upper-middle class. ‘Besides, comrade, there are officers who served in the imperial army who are loyal Bolsheviks now.’ It was true that, even in the higher command, there were men who had thought it their patriotic duty to obey the new government as thoroughly as they had the old. ‘We just shoot them if they don’t,’ Popov added pleasantly.
The men looked at him doubtfully. ‘Are you sure, comrade?’
Popov shrugged. ‘Ask him,’ he said. And he smiled again at Alexander.
Afterwards, Alexander often wondered how he got through the next few minutes. Probably because his life was at stake. He had not prepared himself, and there was no time to think.
‘My name is Alexander Pavlovich Ivanov,’ he began slowly. It was not a long story. He was terrified that if he made it long, he might forget what he had said. He told them that he had been wounded in action, that on his return he had become disgusted with the old régime and that, immediately after the October coup, he had offered his services to the Bolsheviks. ‘I’ve got no money,’ he said. ‘And unfortunately I’m still sick.’ Then he offered to show them his wounds.
‘Long live the revolution,’ Popov said quietly.
‘Long live the revolution,’ Alexander repeated.
The soldiers turned to Popov.
‘You heard him,’ he said. ‘I vouch for him.’
‘Oh, well, if you’re one of us,’ the first soldier said. And he clapped Alexander on the back. ‘Pity you’ve got no cigarettes,’ he added. Then the soldiers left.
As he stood there, watched by Popov, Alexander felt physically sick. It was not only the blow from the rifle, nor the fear: it was the complete humiliation of having to swear to these pathetic lies in front of the man he hated and despised the most in the world. Unwillingly, he met Popov’s eye.
‘Why?’ he asked.
For a moment Popov did not reply. It seemed that he, too, was contemplating. ‘Do you remember that you once called me a liar?’ he said. ‘I used a false name too. That disgusted you, didn’t it?’ He paused, still looking at Alexander coolly. ‘You called me a coward too, I recall.’ He nodded slowly. ‘And why did you lie just now, so eagerly, Alexander Nicolaevich? I will tell you. You didn’t do it for a cause. You haven’t got a cause. You did it to save your skin.’
Alexander couldn’t deny it.
‘I just wanted to see,’ Popov said calmly. ‘It was interesting to watch. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, you’ll be caught. And then I shan’t save you. You’ll be on your own. If they ask me, I shall tell them exactly what you are.’ He paused. ‘But in the meantime, you see,’ and now it seemed that Popov was speaking for a lifetime, ‘you will know that you are no better than me. In fact, you are worse. You’re nothing. Goodbye.’
He walked away.
And Alexander Bobrov, looking after him, wondered if he was right.
The next day the Bobrovs left for Finland.
1918, July
In the months leading up to June 1918, a rather unexpected change began to take place in Vladimir Suvorin. Whether it was the effect of the events surrounding him, or whether it was one of those physical changes which sometimes occur rather suddenly with age, it was hard to say.
The events of that spring might have shattered a lesser man.
A week after his wife had left, the Cheka called him in to ask him where she was. He told them with perfect truth that she had gone to Finland. ‘We estimate your fortune at twenty-five million roubles,’ one of the men remarked. ‘What have you to say?’
‘I didn’t know I had so much,’ he answered blandly.
‘You won’t for long,’ they promised.
In March Vladimir was informed that the Art Nouveau house belonged to the state; two days later, the great Suvorin mansion became a museum. In April, the factories at Russka were taken over. Late in May, after asking him to spend several days explaining various aspects of their workings, all the Moscow plants followed. By the month of June, Vladimir controlled nothing.
It was strange. He had never taken a great interest in affairs outside Russia except in so far as art was concerned. He had no overseas investments. The only deposits in foreign countries that the great industrialist possessed were the accounts in London and Paris that his son and he used for purchasing works of art and enough for Mrs Suvorin to live on for a while, but no more. By June, therefore, Vladimir was poor.
He was not personally harassed. When the house became a museum, he received a personal visit from the minister, Lunarcharsky, a kindly man, who with his bald pate and pince-nez perched on his nose looked more like a professor than a revolutionary. Lunarcharsky was straightforward: ‘My dear fellow, the museum needs a curator. Who better than you? Nadezhda can be your deputy.’ And they were permitted to inhabit a small apartment at the back of the house, which had once been used by the housekeeper.
Each day, therefore, Vladimir would solemnly lead round the parties of workers whom Lunarcharsky would enthusiastically send along in lorries, while Nadezhda would try to explain a Picasso to puzzled peasant women, or quietly sweep the floor.
The physical change in Vladimir was two-fold. In the first place, he lost weight, so that now his clothes hung somewhat loosely on his large frame. But secondly, whether it was his weight loss which showed the bone structure of his face, or whether some other process was also at work, his physiognomy began to change. His jaw seemed longer, his eyes more deepset, and his nose appeared to be longer and coarser. By the end of June, though not quite so tall, the resemblance had become extremely striking – he looked just like his grandfather, old Savva Suvorin.
And perhaps hardship had given him something of Savva’s temperament, too. For now the man for whom all things were always possible had become rather silent and cautious. And determined.
He watched events closely. Since the spring, two important developments had taken place. First, the capital was transferred from Petrograd to Moscow. Second, under Lenin’s direct instructions a peace had been signed with Germany at Brest Litovsk. It gave way to all Germany’s demands. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia all became independent. So, under German control, did the Ukraine. The loss was devastating in terms of agriculture and mineral resources. But as Russia was then in no position to fight, it may have saved the Bolshevik régime. Since Russia was no longer their active ally, however, the peace also caused the western powers to look carefully at the new Socialist government whose leaders had long and actively espoused the cause of world revolution. By summer, a British force had already established a beachhead in the far north, officially to guard allied ammunition supplies; and soon a Japanese force, encouraged by the United States, had landed upon the Pacific shore in distant Vladivostok. Other forces were also at work. In the far south, the Don Cossacks were preparing to resist the Bolsheviks; other opposition was gathering in the east beyond the Volga. Lenin, clearly anxious, was busily recruiting a new Red Army. Trotsky was in personal charge. In Moscow, they had been offering steadily higher salaries all spring to get recruits. ‘There’s going to be a civil war,’ Vladimir told Nadezhda. ‘Though God knows who’ll win it.’