Then Smidovich, secretary of the Soviet of People’s Commissars, appeared on the stage and said the session would be somewhat delayed and asked the Bolsheviks to join him at a nearby building for a party meeting. The Bolsheviks left. The hall emptied. No one but the Left SRs remained. Everyone now understood that only something extraordinary could account for the delay in the day’s session. The journalists bolted for the telephones to call their editors and ask what had happened. But an armed Red Army soldier stood guard over each telephone and no one was allowed near. The theatre’s exits had all been locked and were watched by armed guards. They were under orders not to let anyone leave.
Soon, a rumour of unknown origin began to spread through the theatre that Count Mirbach had been killed three hours earlier at his embassy. The journalists were seized with panic. The Left SRs silently got up and went to sit by the exits. Strange sounds from outside could be heard in the theatre – a muffled crash followed by heavy pounding, as if wooden piles were being driven into the ground not far from the theatre. A grey-haired usher beckoned me over with his finger and said: ‘If you wish to know what’s going on in the city, take that iron staircase up to the flies. But don’t let anyone see you. You’ll find a tiny window off to the left up there. Have a look-see. You really ought to. Oh, what troubles! Dear Lord, save and protect us!’
I carefully climbed the steep iron stairs (there was no railing) up to a small, dusty window, more like a narrow slit cut into the thick wall. I looked and could see the far edge of Teatralnaya Square and one side of the Hotel Metropole. From the direction of the City Duma Red Army men were running crouched forward towards the Metropole, dropping suddenly to the pavement, quickly firing from their rifles, and then getting back up and running on. Then, from off to the left in the direction of Lubyanskaya Square, came the staccato clatter of a machine-gun and the boom of a cannon. It was now clear that while we had been sitting locked in the theatre with the Left SRs, an uprising had begun in Moscow.
I quietly returned to the orchestra pit. Just then Spiridonova came running out onto the stage and the scene with which I began this chapter took place. It all became perfectly clear – it was the Left SRs who had started the uprising. In reply to Spiridonova’s cry all the Left SRs drew revolvers from their pockets and out from under their jackets. But at that very moment the calm, stern voice of the Kremlin commandant rang out from the gallery: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Left SRs! If you make one move to leave the theatre or to use your weapons, we shall open fire on the whole hall from the upper gallery. I advise you to sit quietly and await your fate.’
None of us journalists cared to perish due to the negligence of the guards, who had, evidently, forgotten to let us out in time. We sent a delegation headed by Oleg Leonidov to speak to the commandant. He replied, politely but firmly, that, unfortunately, he had not received any instructions about the journalists. Eventually, however, he gave in to our pleas and ordered all of us to gather quietly in the vestibule of the theatre, where the guards quickly threw open the doors and pushed us out into Teatralnaya Square. At first, after the dim light of the theatre, I was blinded by the setting sun. Suddenly, a bullet struck the column beside me, hissed and then seemed to fly off in the direction it had come from. After this, as if upon someone’s order, bullets started methodically cracking along the length of the wall, fortunately above our heads.
‘To Kopievsky Lane!’ Leonidov yelled out, bending over towards the ground and then racing around the corner of the theatre. The rest of us ran after him.
Around the corner everything was calm. The bullets were still flying by, and closely, but off to the side. We could tell only by the light whistling sound and the bursting glass and the puffs of white plaster erupting like fountains off the building across from the theatre. As Shchelkunov was running a tattered old book fell out of his briefcase. Several times he turned and tried to run back around the corner to retrieve it, but we held him by his arms and wouldn’t let him go. Eventually he managed to break free, crawled across the ground to the book and returned flushed and covered in dirt, but happy.
‘You and those books of yours, you’re a dangerous maniac!’ Leonidov yelled at him. ‘You’re mad!’
‘What?!’ Shchelkunov shot back. ‘This happens to be a first edition of Rousseau’s Confessions. You’re the one who’s mad, not me.’
The gunfire quickly moved away beyond Lubyanskaya Square. The Left SRs were retreating. Back at the newspaper I learned that Count Mirbach had indeed been killed that morning by the Left SR Blyumkin. This had been the signal for the uprising. The rebels had managed to seize the Pokrovsky Barracks and the telegraph office on Myasnitskaya Street and advanced almost all the way to Lubyanskaya Square. The Left SRs in the theatre had all been arrested soon after we had been let out. By that evening the rebels had been forced out of the city and retreated to the goods station on the Kazan Railway and the main road to Ryazan, where they began to disperse.
As suddenly as it had begun, the uprising was over.
76
Material for a History of Russian Houses
Sometimes the history of houses can be more interesting than the lives of people. Houses last longer and are witnesses to several generations. Local historians are the only ones who take the trouble to study the history of old houses, and it’s normal for these historians to be treated with condescension as harmless lunatics. Yet it’s these same people who collect our history one little bit at a time and teach us to know and love our country and its traditions.
I am convinced that if we could reconstruct the history of some old house in every last detail, to follow the lives of everyone who had lived there, to describe their ways of life, and to learn everything that had happened there, we would end up with a great roman de mœurs perhaps more revealing than the novels of Balzac. Moreover, the life of every house is joined together with quite a number of things that have also been around for a long time and experienced their own extensive and revealing journeys. Unfortunately, such a history is well-nigh impossible. Things don’t talk, and people are forgetful, lack for curiosity, and treat their faithful though inanimate assistants with insulting carelessness.
Things are crafted by human hands, like for example Pinocchio, who was carved out of a knotty log by the old carpenter Geppetto. Pinocchio came to life and started a train of events such as only a magical fairy could sort out. If things really could come to life, what a mess they would unleash in our lives and how much richer history would be. They would have something to say.
No one can say for certain how many large, private homes there were in Moscow before the October Revolution. People say at least three hundred. These were mostly merchants’ homes. Only a few of them belonged to the nobility. Nearly all their urban mansions had burned down back in 1812. Following the October Revolution, the anarchists seized most of these homes of the Moscow merchants. They enjoyed life amid all the fine old antique furniture, chandeliers and rugs, and treated these furnishings in their own distinctive way. Paintings were used for target practice with their Mausers. Exquisite rugs replaced tarpaulins to cover the stacks of cartridge cases out in the yard. Rare books from the library were used to board up the windows as protection against gunfire. Ballrooms with intricate parquet floors served as dormitories for the anarchists and all sorts of dubious characters.