‘And now,’ Popov announced, ‘it’s time to set up a proper village committee.’
Bringing the revolution to the countryside – it wasn’t easy. But the new plan which the leadership had hit upon had a certain brutal logic. The kulaks, the swindlers, the rich peasants, must be hounded out: and who better to do this than the poor peasants – the majority? Committees of the Poor must be set up at once, therefore, to seize control of the villages.
Privately this was one of the few ideas of Lenin’s that Popov did not agree with. ‘For the simple fact is,’ he would argue, ‘that the majority of peasants aren’t poor: they’re middling. They can’t employ labour usually, but they have a modest surplus of their own. The poor peasant half the time is just an ordinary peasant who’s become a drunkard.’
However, if Vladimir Ilich wanted his Committees of the Poor, he should have them. Popov looked about him. ‘You,’ he suddenly pointed to young Ivan, ‘your mother’s a widow. What land do you hold in the village?’
It was true that, as an orphan and with no help from his uncle, Ivan actually had the smallest holding of any male in the village just then.
‘I am putting you in charge of the Committee,’ Popov said with a smile. ‘How’s that?’
There would be a Committee on paper, anyway. He wondered how long the boy would last.
It was late afternoon when Popov, satisfied with his day’s work, returned to Russka. On his way, he passed the monastery. It was empty now. The monks had been forced to abandon their home after the confiscations of January; but strangely enough, hoping that the government might relent or be overthrown, they had left everything in place. An old priest who still resided in the town kept an eye on things.
Since he was here, it occurred to Popov he might as well inspect the monastery too. ‘We’ll go in,’ he said.
It was entirely empty and very quiet. The kitchens and storehouse had been ransacked at some point, and a few of the windows had been broken, but otherwise the monastery had not been harmed. Popov walked all over it, carefully, by himself. When he had finished, he was glad he had taken the trouble; he made a brief note: ‘Monastery at Russka will make an excellent small prison or detention house. Inform Cheka.’
He had certainly done a good day’s work.
When he returned to the entrance, he found that the soldiers had built a small bonfire. The young commissar was busy carrying things out of the church to burn. Popov looked at him in mild surprise: the objects he was carrying were icons. ‘I didn’t know you were so strongly anti-religion,’ he remarked mildly.
‘Oh, yes. Aren’t we all?’
Popov shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
He glanced at the icon the fellow was tossing on the fire. It looked vaguely familiar. ‘I think that one may be rather good,’ he remarked.
‘No such thing as a good icon,’ the other replied.
‘Perhaps.’ He watched the little object begin to burn. Its lines had a remarkable grace.
And so disappeared the greatest gift of the Bobrovs to the little religious house: the icon by the great Rublev.
As darkness fell that summer night, long after the little bonfire in the monastery had died down, a single figure emerged from the woods below the village to the river bank where Arina was waiting with a small boat.
Ivan had been hiding since the soldiers left. After the events of that afternoon, he had no choice. Would the sons of Boris Romanov forgive him for getting their father killed? Would the villagers forget he had given away their grain? As for this position the Bolshevik had just given him on this Committee – that in itself might have been his death warrant. ‘If I’m here in the morning, I’ll be dead,’ he had told his mother, and she knew it was true.
Now she helped him into the boat.
‘Which way are you going?’ she asked.
‘South. I daren’t go past the village. I’ll get down to the Oka, then follow it to Murom, I dare say.’
‘And what will you do?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Join the army maybe.’ He smiled despite himself. ‘Seems the safest place to be!’
‘Here’s money.’ Arina kissed him. ‘You’re my only son,’ she said simply. ‘If you die, I want to know. Otherwise I shall believe you are alive.’
‘I’ll live.’
Once again he embraced her, then got into the boat.
There was a quarter moon, away to the south. He pushed the boat out and began to row, slowly up the silvery stream towards it.
1920, October
It was getting cold but the work was nearly done: a simple mopping up operation. The truck and the artillery piece before them were little more than charred metal. Half a dozen bodies lay there, and one man apparently alive. An officer.
Ivan moved forward, cautiously. All around, the empty steppe of south Russia extended to the horizon.
The war was almost over. The Whites and their foreign allies had nearly been successful once or twice. For a brief period it had seemed Petrograd itself would fall. Denikin, Wrangel and others had fought well. But they had always lacked the coordination that the Reds enjoyed. And, perhaps, the determination. Now the final White front was being rolled back, and the capitalist allies – Britain, America, Japan, Italy – had all given up.
And now here was a Cossack officer still alive. A handsome devil certainly, but doomed.
Karpenko watched Ivan draw close. It was a pity, certainly, to be dying. Two years ago he could never have imagined himself fighting like this. But, to his great surprise, it had brought him a kind of satisfaction. The pain in his stomach was like a fire.
It seemed to him that the young Red looked vaguely familiar; but it scarcely mattered.
‘Well, comrade, you’d better put me out of my misery,’ he said cheerfully.
Which Ivan did, as kindly as he could. As it happened, it was the last shot he had to fire.
The revolution had been won.
Coda
1937
Softly, softly, the music began, and although it was late at night, the eleventh hour, he felt fresh and confident.
If there were still just time.
Dimitri Suvorin’s pen moved quickly over the paper.
It was a short piece, the Suite. A little programmatic piece inspired by Russian folklore. Children and adults, he thought, could enjoy it. Everything was written now, except the coda.
In the room next door, his wife and children were sleeping. There was one boy, named after his grandfather, Peter, and a girl, Maryushka. The little boy, people said, was very like him. As he wrote, Dimitri smiled to himself. The Suite was for all his family, but especially for little Peter. He had dedicated it to him that very evening and he knew that it was important he should do so. For then, when the boy heard it, perhaps he would understand.
It was the answer to the terrible secret they shared.
The Suite was a charming idea. It was the story of some hunters who go into the forest and meet a bear. Naturally, they are afraid of the bear, but they capture it and bring the huge beast back with them in chains. On their way back through the forest, they catch a glimpse of the magical firebird. One of the hunters, knowing its wonderful properties, races after the bird, trying to get one of its feathers. But he fails. The gleaming bird, as it always does, flies away, taunting, elusive.
Dimitri was pleased with the musical characterizations: the bear had a slow, heavily accented tune, representing his simple nature and his heavy footfall; the firebird a haunting little melody which would suddenly break out into brilliant, staccato bursts of sound as its feathers glittered and burst into flame.