PART TWO
Chapter
Five
The
tramcar crawled laboriously up Fundukleyevskaya Street, its
motors groaning with the effort. At the Opera House it stopped
and a group of young people alighted. The car continued the
climb.
"We'd
better get a move on," Pankratov urged the others,
"or we'll be late for sure."
Okunev
caught up with him at the theatre entrance.
"We
came here under similar circumstances three years ago, you
remember, Genka? That was when Dubava came back to us with the
'Workers' Opposition'. A grand meeting! And tonight we've got
to grapple with him again!"
They
had presented their passes and been admitted into the hall
before Pankratov replied:
"Yes,
history is repeating itself on the very same spot."
They
were hissed to silence. The evening session of the conference
had already begun and they had to take the first seats they
could find. A young woman was addressing the gathering from
the rostrum. It was Talya.
"We're
just in time. Now sit quiet and listen to what wifie has to
say," Pankratov whispered, giving Okunev a dig in the
ribs.
".
. .It's true that we have spent much time and energy on this
discussion, but I think that we have all learned a great deal
from it. Today we are very glad to note that in our
organisation Trotsky's followers have been defeated. They
cannot complain that they were not given a hearing. On the
contrary: they have had every opportunity to express their
point of view. As a matter of fact they have abused the
freedom we gave them and committed a number of gross
violations of Party discipline."
Talya
was nervous; you could tell by the way she kept tossing back a
lock of hair that fell forward over her eyes as she spoke.
"Many
comrades from the districts have spoken here, and they have
all had something to say about the methods the Trotskyites
have been using. There are quite a number of Trotskyites at
this conference. The districts deliberately sent them here to
give us another opportunity to hear them out at this city
Party conference. It is not our fault if they are not making
full use of this opportunity. Evidently their complete defeat
in the districts and cells has taught them something. They
could hardly get up at this conference and repeat what they
were saying only yesterday."
A
harsh voice from the right-hand corner of the hall interrupted
Talya at this point:
"We
haven't had our say yet!"
Talya
turned in the direction of the voice:
"All
right, Dubava, come up here now and speak, we'll listen to
you."
Dubava
stared gloomily back at her and his lips twisted in anger.
"We'll
talk when the time comes!" he shouted back. He thought of
the crushing defeat he had sustained the day before in his own
district. The memory still rankled.
A
low murmur passed over the hall. Pankratov, unable to restrain
himself, cried out:
"Going
to try shaking up the Party again, eh?"
Dubava
recognised the voice, but did not turn round. He merely dug
his teeth into his lower lip and bent his head.
"Dubava
himself offers a striking example of how the Trotskyites are
violating Party discipline," Talya went on. "He has
worked in the Komsomol for a long time, many of us know him,
the arsenal workers in particular. He is a student of the
Kharkov Communist University, yet we all know that he has been
here with Shumsky for the past three weeks. What has brought
them here in the middle of the university term? There isn't a
single district in town where they haven't addressed meetings.
True, during the past few days Shumsky has shown signs of
coming to his senses. Who sent them here? Besides them, there
are a good number of other Trotskyites from various
organisations. They all worked here before at one time or
another and now they have come back to stir up trouble within
the Party. Do their Party organisations know where they are?
Of course not."
The
conference was expecting the Trotskyites to come forward and
admit their mistakes. Talya, hoping to persuade them to take
this step, appealed to them earnestly. She addressed herself
directly to them as if in comradely, informal debate:
"Three
years ago in this very theatre Dubava came back to us with the
former 'Workers' Opposition'. Remember? And do you remember
what he said then: 'Never shall we let the Party banner fall
from our hands.' But hardly three years have passed and Dubava
has done just that. Yes, I repeat, he has let the Party banner
fall. 'We haven't had our say yet!' he just said. That shows
that he and his fellow Trotskyites intend to go still
further."
"Let
Tufta tell us about the barometer," came a voice from the
back rows. "He's their weather expert."
To
which indignant voices responded:
"This
is no time for silly jokes!"
"Are
they going to stop fighting the Party or not? Let them answer
that!"
"Let
them tell us who wrote that anti-Party declaration!"
Indignation
rose higher and higher and the chairman rang his bell long and
insistently for silence. Talya's voice was drowned out by the
din, and it was some time before she was able to continue.
"The
letters we receive from our comrades in the outlying
localities show that they are with us in this and that is very
encouraging. Permit me to read part of one letter we have
received. It is from Olga Yureneva. Many of you here know her.
She is in charge of the Organisational Department of an Area
Committee of the Komsomol."
Talya
drew a sheet of paper out of a pile before her, ran her eye
over it and began:
"All
practical work has been neglected. For the past four days all
bureau members have been out in the districts where the
Trotskyites have launched a more vicious campaign than ever.
An incident occurred yesterday which aroused the indignation
of the entire organisation. Failing to get a majority in a
single cell in town, the opposition decided to rally their
forces and put up a fight in the cell of the Regional Military
Commissariat, which also includes the Communists working in
the Regional Planning Commission and Educational Department.
The cell has forty-two members, but all the Trotskyites banded
together there. Never had we heard such anti-Party speeches as
were made at that meeting. One of the Military Commissariat
members got up and said outright: 'If the Party apparatus
doesn't give in, we will smash it by force.' The
oppositionists applauded that statement. Then Korchagin took
the floor. 'How can you applaud that fascist and call
yourselves Party members?' he said, but they raised such a
commotion, shouting and banging their chairs, that he could
not go on. The members who were disgusted by this outrageous
behaviour demanded that Korchagin be given a hearing, but the
uproar was repeated as soon as he tried to make himself heard.
'So this is what you call democracy!' he shouted above the
din. 'I'm going to speak just the same!' At that point several
of them fell on him and tried to drag him off the platform.
There was wild confusion. Pavel fought back and went on
speaking, but they dragged him off the stage, opened. a side
door and threw him onto the stairway, his face was bleeding.
After that, nearly all the members left the meeting. That
incident was an eye-opener for many. ..."
Talya
left the platform.
Segal,
who had been in charge of the Agitation and Propaganda
Department of the Gubernia Party Committee for two months now,
sat in the presidium next to Tokarev and listened attentively
to the speeches of the delegates. So far the conference had
been addressed exclusively by young people who were still in
the Komsomol.
"How
they have matured these past few years!" Segal was
thinking.
"The
opposition is already getting it hot," he remarked to
Tokarev, "and the heavy artillery has not yet been
brought into action. It's the youth who are routing the
Trotskyites."
Just
then Tufta leapt onto the platform. He was met by a loud buzz
of disapproval and a brief outburst of laughter. Tufta turned
to the presidium to protest against his reception, but the
hall had already quieted down.
"Someone
here called me a weather expert. So that is how you mock at my
political views, Comrades of the majority!" he burst out
in one breath.
A
roar of laughter greeted his words. Tufta appealed indignantly
to the chairman:
"You
can laugh, but I tell you once again, the youth is a
barometer. Lenin has said so time and again."
In
an instant silence reigned in the hall.
"What
did Lenin say?" came voices from the audience.
Tufta
livened up.
"When
preparations were being made for the October uprising Lenin
issued instructions to muster the resolute working-class
youth, arm them and send them together with the sailors to the
most important sectors. Do you want me to read you that
passage? I have all the quotations down on cards." Tufta
dug into his portfolio.
"Never
mind, we know it!"
"But
what did Lenin say about unity?"
"And
about Party discipline?"
"When
did Lenin ever set up the youth in opposition to the old
guard?"
Tufta
lost the thread of his thoughts and switched over to another
theme:
"Lagutina
here read a letter from Yureneva. We cannot be expected to
answer for certain excesses that might occur in the course of
debate."
Tsvetayev,
sitting next to Shumsky, hissed in fury: "Fools barge in.
. . ."
"Yes,"
Shumsky whispered back. "That idiot will ruin us
completely."
Tufta's
shrill, high-pitched voice continued to grate on the ears of
his hearers:
"If
you have organised a majority faction, we have the right to
organise a minority faction."
A
commotion arose in the hall.
Angry
cries rained down on Tufta from all sides:
"What's
that? Again Bolsheviks and Mensheviks!"
"The
Russian Communist Party isn't a parliament!"
"They're
working for all sorts of factionists, from Myasnikov to
Martov!"
Tufta
threw up his arms as if about to plunge into a river, and
returned an excited rapid-fire:
"Yes,
we must have freedom to form groups. Otherwise how can we who
hold different views fight for our opinions against such an
organised, well-disciplined majority?"
The
uproar increased. Pankratov got up and shouted:
"Let
him speak. We might as well hear what he has to say. Tufta may
blurt out what the others prefer to keep to themselves."
The
hall quieted down. Tufta realised that he had gone too far.
Perhaps he ought not to have said that now. His thoughts went
off at a tangent and he wound up his speech in a rush of
words:
"Of
course you can expel us and shove us overboard. That sort of
thing is beginning already. You've already got me out of the
Gubernia Committee of the Komsomol. But never mind, we'll soon
see who was right." And with that he jumped off the stage
into the hall.
Tsvetayev
passed a note down to Dubava. "Mityai, you take the floor
next. Of course it won't alter the situation, we are obviously
getting the worst of it here. We must put Tufta right. He's a
blockhead and a gas-bag."
Dubava
asked for the floor and his request was granted immediately.
An
expectant hush fell over the hall as he mounted the platform.
It was the usual silence that precedes a speech, but to Dubava
it was pregnant with hostility. The ardour with which he had
addressed the cell meetings had cooled off by now. From day to
day his passion had waned, and after the crushing defeat and
the stern rebuff from his former comrades, it was like a fire
doused with water, and now he was enveloped by the bitter
smoke of wounded vanity made bitterer still by his stubborn
refusal to admit himself in the wrong. He resolved to plunge
straight in although he knew that he would only be alienating
himself still further from the majority. His voice when he
spoke was toneless, yet distinct.
"Please
do not interrupt me or annoy me by heckling. I want to set
forth our position in full, although I know in advance that it
is no use. You have the majority."
When
at last he finished speaking it was as if a bombshell had
burst in the hall. A hurricane of angry shouts descended upon
him, stinging him like whiplashes.
"Shame!"
"Down
with the splitters!"
"Enough
mud-slinging!"
To
the accompaniment of mocking laughter Dubava went back to his
seat, and that laughter cut like a knife-thrust. Had they
stormed and railed at him he would have been gratified, but to
be jeered at like a third-rate actor whose voice had cracked
on a false note was too much.
"Shumsky
has the floor," announced the chairman.
Shumsky
got up. "I decline to speak."
Then
Pankratov's bass boomed from the back rows.
"Let
me speak!"
Dubava
could tell by his voice that Pankratov was seething inwardly.
His deep voice always boomed thus when he was mortally
insulted, and a deep uneasiness seized Dubava as he gloomily
watched the tall, slightly bent figure stride swiftly over to
the platform. He knew what Pankratov was going to say. He
thought of the meeting he had had the day before with his old
friends at Solomenka and how they had pleaded with him to
break with the opposition. Tsvetayev and Shumsky had been with
him. They had met at Tokarev's place. Pankratov, Okunev,
Talya, Volyntsev, Zelenova, Staroverov and Artyukhin had been
present. Dubava had remained deaf to this attempt to restore
unity. In the middle of the discussion he had walked out with
Tsvetayev, thus emphasising his unwillingness to admit his
mistakes. Shumsky had remained. And now he had refused to take
the floor. "Spineless intellectual! Of course they've won
him over," Dubava thought with bitter resentment. He was
losing all his friends in this frenzied struggle. At the
university there had been a rupture in his friendship with
Zharky, who had sharply censured the declaration of the
"forty-six" at a meeting of the Party bureau. And
later, when the clash grew sharper, he had ceased to be on
speaking terms. Several times after that Zharky had come to
his place to visit Anna. It was a year since Dubava and Anna
had been married. They occupied separate rooms, and Dubava
believed that his strained relations with Anna, who did not
share his views, had been aggravated by Zharky's frequent
visits. It was not jealousy on his part, he assured himself,
but under the circumstances her friendship with Zharky
irritated him. He had spoken to Anna about it and the result
had been a scene which had by no means improved their
relations. He had left for the conference without telling her
where he was going.
The
swift flight of his thoughts was cut short by Pankratov.
"Comrades!"
the word rang out as the speaker took up a position at the
very edge of the platform. "Comrades! For nine days we
have listened to the speeches of the opposition, and I must
say quite frankly that they spoke here not as fellow fighters,
revolutionaries, our comrades in the class struggle. Their
speeches were hostile, implacable, malicious and slanderous.
Yes, Comrades, slanderous! They have tried to represent us
Bolsheviks as supporters of a mailed-fist regime in the Party,
as people who are betraying the interests of their class and
the Revolution. They have attempted to brand as Party
bureaucrats the best, the most tried and trusty section of our
Party, the glorious old guard of Bolsheviks, men who built up
the Russian Communist Party, men who suffered in tsarist
prisons, men who with Comrade Lenin at their head have waged a
relentless struggle against world Menshevism and Trotsky.
Could anyone but an enemy make such statements? Is the Party
and its functionaries not one single whole? Then what is this
all about, I want to know? What would we say of men who would
try to incite young Red Army men against their commanders and
commissars, against army headquarters and at a time when
the unit was surrounded by the enemy? According to the
Trotskyites, so long as I am a mechanic I'm 'all right', but
if tomorrow I should become the secretary of a Party Committee
I would be a 'bureaucrat' and a 'chairwarmer'! Isn't it a bit
strange, Comrades, that among the oppositionists who are
fighting against bureaucracy and for democracy there should be
men like Tufta, for example, who was recently removed from his
job for being a bureaucrat? Or Tsvetayev, who is well known to
the Solomenka folks for his 'democracy'; or Afanasyev, who was
taken off the job three times by the Gubernia Committee for
his highhanded way of running things in Podolsk District? It
turns out that all those whom the Party has punished have
united to fight the Party. Let the old Bolsheviks tell us
about Trotsky's 'Bolshevism'. It is very important for the
youth to know the history of Trotsky's struggle against the
Bolsheviks, about his constant shifting from one camp to
another. The struggle against the opposition has welded our
ranks and it has strengthened the youth ideologically. The
Bolshevik Party and the Komsomol have become steeled in the
fight against petty-bourgeois trends. The hysterical
panic-mongers of the opposition are predicting complete
economic and political collapse. Our tomorrow will show how
much these prophecies are worth. They are demanding that we
send old Bolsheviks like Tokarev, for instance, back to the
bench and replace him by some weather-vane like Dubava who
imagines his struggle against the Party to be a sort of heroic
feat. No, Comrades, we won't agree to that. The old Bolsheviks
will get replacement, but not from among those who violently
attack the Party line whenever we are up against some
difficulty. We shall not permit the unity of our great Party
to be disrupted. Never will the old and young guard be split.
Under the banner of Lenin, in unrelenting struggle against
petty-bourgeois trends, we shall march to victory!"
Pankratov
descended the platform amid thunderous applause.
The
following day a group of ten met at Tufta's place.
"Shumsky
and I are leaving today for Kharkov," Dubava said.
"There is nothing more for us to do here. You must try to
keep together. All we can do now is to wait and see what
happens. It is obvious that the All-Russia Conference will
condemn us, but it seems to me that it is too soon to expect
any repressive measures to be taken against us. The majority
has decided to give us another chance. To carry on the
struggle openly now, especially after the conference, means
getting kicked out of the Party, and that does not enter into
our plans. It is hard to say what the future holds for us. I
think that's all there is to be said." Dubava got up to
go.
The
gaunt, thin-lipped Staroverov also rose.
"I
don't understand you, Mityai," he said, rolling his r's
and slightly stammering. "Does that mean that the
conference decision is not binding on us?"
"Formally,
it is," Tsvetayev cut him short. "Otherwise you'll
lose your Party card. But we'll wait and see which way the
wind blows and in the meantime we'll disperse."
Tufta
stirred uneasily in his chair. Shumsky, pale and downcast,
with dark circles under his eyes, sat by the window biting his
nails. At Tsvetayev's words he abandoned his depressing
occupation and turned to the meeting.
"I'm
opposed to such manoeuvres," he said in sudden anger.
"I personally consider that the decision of the
conference is binding on us. We have fought for our
convictions, but now we must submit to the decision that has
been taken."
Staroverov
looked at him with approval.
"That
is what I wanted to say," he lisped.
Dubava
fixed Shumsky with his eyes and said with a sneer:
"Nobody's
suggesting that you do anything. You still have a chance to
'repent' at the Gubernia Conference."
Shumsky
leapt to his feet.
"I
resent your tone, Dmitri! And to be quite frank, what you say
disgusts me and forces me to reconsider my position."
Dubava
waved him away.
"That's
exactly what I thought you'd do. Run along and repent before
it is too late." With that Dubava shook hands with Tufta
and the others and left. Shumsky and Staroverov followed soon
after.
Cruel
cold marked the advent in history of the year one thousand
nine hundred and twenty-four. January fastened its icy grip on
the snowbound land, and from the second half of the month
howling storms and blizzards raged.
The
Southwestern Railway was snowed up. Men fought the maddened
elements. The steel screws of snowploughs cut into the drifts,
clearing a path for the trains. Telegraph wires weighted down
with ice snapped under the impact of frost and blizzard, and
of the twelve lines only three functioned the
Indo-European and two government lines.
In
the telegraph office at Shepetovka station three apparatuses
continued their unceasing chatter understandable only to the
trained ear.
The
girl operators were new at the job; the length of the tape
they had tapped out would not have exceeded twenty kilometres,
but the old telegrapher who worked beside them had already
passed the two-hundred-kilometre mark. Unlike his younger
colleagues he did not need to read the tape in order to make
out the message, nor did he puzzle with wrinkled brow over
difficult words or phrases. Instead he wrote down the words
one after the other as the apparatus ticked them out. Now his
ear caught the words "To all, to all, to all!"
"Must
be another of those circulars about clearing away the
snow," the old telegrapher thought to himself as he wrote
down the words. Outside, the blizzard raged, hurling the snow
against the window. The telegrapher thought someone was
knocking at the window, his eyes strayed in the direction of
the sound and for a moment were arrested by the intricate
pattern the frost had traced on the panes. No engraver could
ever match that exquisite leaf-and-stalk design!
His
thoughts wandered and for a while he stopped listening to the
telegraph. But presently he looked down and reached for the
tape to read the words he had missed.
The
telegraph had tapped out these words:
"At
6.50 in the afternoon of January 21. . .." Quickly
writing down the words, the telegrapher dropped the tape and
resting his head on his hand returned to listening.
"Yesterday
in Gorki the death occurred...." Slowly he put the
letters down on paper. How many messages had he taken down in
his long life, joyous messages as well as tragic ones, how
often had he been the first to hear of the sorrows or
happiness of others! He had long since ceased to ponder over
the meaning of the terse, clipped phrases, he merely caught
the sounds and mechanically set them down on paper.
Now
too someone had died, and someone was being notified of the
fact. The telegrapher had forgotten the initial words:
"To all, to all, to all." The apparatus clicked out
the letters "V-l-a-d-i-m-i-r I-l-y-i-c-h ', and the old
telegrapher translated the hammer taps into words. He sat
there unperturbed, a trifle weary. Someone named Vladimir
Ilyich had died somewhere, someone would receive the message
with the tragic tidings, a cry of grief and anguish would be
wrung from someone, but it was no concern of his, for he was
only a chance witness. The apparatus tapped out a dot, a dash,
more dots, another dash, and out of the familiar sounds he
caught the first letter and set it down on the telegraph form.
It was the letter "L". Then came the second letter,
"E"; next to it he inscribed a neat "N",
drawing a heavy slanting line between the two uprights,
hastily added an "I" and absently picked up the last
letter "N".
The
apparatus tapped out a pause, and for the fraction of a second
the telegrapher's eye rested on the word he had written:
"LENIN".
The
apparatus went on tapping, but the familiar name now pierced
the telegrapher's consciousness. He glanced once more at the
last words of the message "LENIN". What? Lenin?
The entire text of the telegram flashed before his mind's eye.
He stared at the telegraph form, and for the first time in all
his thirty-two years of work he could not believe what he had
written.
He
ran his eye swiftly thrice over the lines, but the words
obstinately refused to change: "the death occurred of
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin." The old man leapt to his feet,
snatched up the spiral of tape and bored it with his eyes. The
two-metre strip confirmed that which he refused to believe! He
turned a deathlike face to his fellow workers, and his
frightened cry fell on their ears: "Lenin is dead!"
The
terrible news slipped through the wide open door of the
telegraph office and with the speed of a hurricane swept over
the station and into the blizzard, whipped over the tracks and
switches and along with the icy blast tore through the
ironbound gates of the railway shops.
A
current repair crew was busy overhauling an engine standing
over the first pit. Old Polentovsky himself had crawled down
under the belly of his engine and was pointing out the ailing
spots to the mechanics. Zakhar Bruzzhak and Artem were
straightening out the bent bars of the fire grate. Zakhar held
the grating on the anvil and Artem wielded the hammer.
Zakhar
had aged. The past few years had left a deep furrow on his
forehead and touched his temples with silver. His back was
bent and there were shadows in his sunken eyes.
The
figure of a man was silhouetted for a moment in the doorway,
and then the evening shadows swallowed him up. The blows of
the hammer on iron drowned out his first cry, but when he
reached the men working at the engine Artem paused with his
hammer poised to strike.
"Comrades!
Lenin is dead!"
The
hammer slid slowly from Artem's shoulder and his hands lowered
it noiselessly onto the concrete floor.
"What's
that? What did you say?" Artem's hand clutched
convulsively at the sheepskin of the man who had brought the
fearful tidings.
And
he, gasping for breath, covered with snow, repeated in a low,
broken voice:
"Yes,
Comrades, Lenin is dead."
And
because the man did not shout, Artem realised that the
terrible news was true. Only now did he recognise the man
it was the secretary of the local Party organisation.
Men
climbed out of the pit and heard in silence of the death of
the man with whose name the whole world had rung.
Somewhere
outside the gates an engine shrieked, sending a shudder
through the group of men. The anguished sound was echoed by
another engine at the far side of the station, then by a
third. Their mighty chorus was joined by the siren of the
power station, high-pitched and piercing like the flight of
shrapnel. Then all was drowned out by the deep sonorous voice
of the handsome engine of the passenger train about to leave
for Kiev.
A
GPU agent started in surprise when the driver of the Polish
engine of the Shepetovka-Warsaw express, on learning the
reason for the alarming whistles, listened for a moment, then
slowly raised his hand and pulled at the whistle cord. He knew
that this was the last time he would do so, that he would
never be allowed to drive this train again, but his hand did
not let go of the cord, and the shriek of his engine roused
the startled Polish couriers and diplomats from their soft
couches.
People
crowded into the railway shops. They poured through all the
gates and when the vast building was filled to overflowing the
funeral meeting opened amid heavy silence. The old Bolshevik
Sharabrin, Secretary of the Shepetovka Regional Committee of
the Party, addressed the gathering.
"Comrades!
Lenin, the leader of the world proletariat, is dead. The Party
has suffered an irreparable loss, for the man who created the
Bolshevik Party and taught it to be implacable to its enemies
is no more.... The death of the leader of our Party and our
class is a summons to the best sons of the proletariat to join
our ranks...."
The
strains of the funeral march rang out, the men bared their
heads, and Artem, who had not wept for fifteen years, felt a
lump rising in his throat and his powerful shoulders shook.
The
very walls of the railwaymen's club seemed to groan under the
pressure of the human mass. Outside it was bitterly cold, the
two tall fir-trees at the entrance to the hall were garbed in
snow and icicles, but inside it was suffocating from the
heated stoves and the breath of six hundred people who had
gathered to the memorial meeting arranged by the Party
organisation.
The
usual hum of conversation was stilled. Overpowering grief
muffled men's voices and they spoke in whispers, and there was
sorrow and anxiety in the eyes of many. They were like the
crew of a ship that had lost her helmsman in a storm.
Silently
the members of the bureau took their seats on the platform.
The stocky Sirotenko carefully lifted the bell, rang it gently
and replaced it on the table. This was enough for an
oppressive hush to settle over the hall.
When
the main speech had been delivered, Sirotenko, the Secretary
of the Party organisation, rose to speak. And although the
announcement he made was unusual for a memorial meeting, it
surprised no one.
"A
number of workers," he said, "have asked this
meeting to consider an application for membership in the
Party. The application is signed by thirty-seven
comrades." And he read out the application:
"To
the railway organisation of the Bolshevik Party at Shepetovka
Station, Southwestern Railway.
"The
death of our leader is a summons to us to join the ranks of
the Bolsheviks, and we ask that this meeting judge of our
worthiness to join the Party of Lenin."
Two
columns of signatures were affixed to this brief statement.
Sirotenko
read them aloud, pausing a few seconds after each name to
allow the meeting to memorise them.
"Stanislav
Zigmundovich Polentovsky, engine driver, thirty-six years of
service."
A
murmur of approval rippled over the hall.
"Artem
Andreyevich Korchagin, mechanic, seventeen years of
service."
"Zakhar
Filippovich Bruzzhak, engine driver, twenty-one years of
service."
The
murmur increased in volume as the man on the platform
continued to call out the names of veteran members of the
horny-palmed fraternity of railwaymen.
Silence
again reigned when Polentovsky, whose name headed the list,
stood before the meeting.
The
old engine driver could not but betray his agitation as he
told the story of his life.
".
. . What can I tell you, Comrades? You all know what the life
of a workingman was like in the old days. Worked like a slave
all my life and remained a beggar in my old age. When the
Revolution came, I confess I considered myself an old man
burdened down by family cares, and I did not see my way into
the Party. And although I never sided with the enemy I rarely
took part in the struggle myself. In nineteen hundred and five
I was a member of the strike committee in the Warsaw railway
shops and I was on the side of the Bolsheviks. I was young
then and full of fight. But what's the use of recalling the
past! Ilyich's death has struck right at my heart; we've lost
our friend and champion, and it's the last time I'll ever
speak about being old. I don't know how to put it, for I never
was much good at speech making. But let me say this: my road
is the Bolsheviks' road and no other."
The
engine driver tossed his grey head and his eyes under his
white brows looked out steadily and resolutely at the audience
as if awaiting its decisive words.
Not
a single voice was raised in opposition to the little
grey-haired man's application, and no one abstained during the
voting in which the non-Party people too were invited to take
part.
Polentovsky
walked away from the presidium table a member of the Communist
Party.
Everyone
was conscious that something momentous was taking place. Now
Artem's great bulk loomed where the engine driver had just
stood. The mechanic did not know what to do with his hands,
and he nervously gripped his shaggy fur cap. His sheepskin
jacket, threadbare at the edges, was open, but the high-necked
collar of his grey army tunic was fastened on two brass
buttons lending his whole figure a holiday neatness. Artem
turned to face the hall and caught a fleeting glimpse of a
familiar woman's face. It was Galina, the stonemason's
daughter, sitting with her workmates from the tailor shop. She
was gazing at him with a forgiving smile, and in that smile he
read approval and something he could not have put into words.
"Tell
them about yourself, Artem!" he heard Sirotenko say.
But
it was not easy for Artem to begin his tale. He was not
accustomed to addressing such a large audience, and he
suddenly felt that to express all that life had stored within
him was beyond his powers. He fumbled painfully for words, and
his nervousness made it all the harder for him. Never had he
experienced the like. He felt that this was a vital turning
point for him, that he was about to take a step that would
bring warmth and meaning into his harsh, warped life.
"There
were four of us," Artem began.
The
hall was hushed. Six hundred people listened eagerly to this
tall worker with the beaked nose and the eyes hidden under the
dark fringe of eyebrows.
"My
mother worked as cook for the rich folk. I hardly remember my
father; he and mother didn't get along. He drank too much. So
mother had to take care of us kids. It was hard for her with
so many mouths to feed. She slaved from morning till night and
got four rubles a month and her grub. I was lucky enough to
get two winters of school. They taught me to read and write,
but when I turned nine my mother had to send me to work as an
apprentice in a machine shop. I worked for three years for
nothing but my grub. . .. The shop owner was a German named
Foerster. He didn't want to take me at first, said I was too
young. But I was a sturdy lad, and my mother added on a couple
of years. I worked three years for that German, but instead of
learning a trade I had to do odd jobs around the house, and
run for vodka. The boss drank like a fish. . . . He'd send me
to fetch coal and iron too.. . . The mistress made a regular
slave out of me: I had to peel potatoes and scour pots. I was
always getting kicked and cuffed, most times for no reason,
just out of habit. If I didn't please the mistress and she
was always on the rampage on account of her husband's drinking
she would beat me. I'd run away from her out into the
street, but where could I go, who was there to complain to? My
mother was forty miles away, and she couldn't keep me
anyway.... And in the shop it wasn't any better. The master's
brother was in charge, a swine of a man who used to enjoy
playing tricks on me. 'Here boy,' he'd say, 'fetch me that
washer from over there,' and he'd point to the corner by the
forge. I'd run over and grab the washer and let out a yell. It
had just come out of the forge; and though it looked black
lying there on the ground, when you touched it, it burned
right through the flesh. I'd stand there screaming with the
pain and he'd burst his sides laughing. I couldn't stand any
more of this and I ran away home to mother. But she didn't
know what to do with me, so she brought me back. She cried all
the way there, I remember. In my third year they began to
teach me something about the trade, but the beatings
continued. I ran away again, this time to Starokonstantinov. I
found work in a sausage factory and wasted more than a year
and a half washing casings. Then our boss gambled away his
factory, didn't pay us a kopek for four months and
disappeared. I got out of that hole, took a train to Zhmerinka
and went to look for work. I was lucky enough to meet a
railwayman there who took pity on me. When I told him I was a
mechanic of sorts, he took me to his boss and said I was his
nephew and asked him to find some work for me. By my size they
took me for seventeen, and so I got a job as a mechanic's
helper. As for my present job, I've been working here for more
than eight years. That is all I can tell you about my past.
You all know about my present life here."
Artem
wiped his brow with his cap and heaved a deep sigh. He had not
yet said the chief thing. This was the hardest thing of all to
say, but he had to say it before anyone asked the inevitable
question. And knitting his bushy eyebrows, he went on with his
story:
"Why
did I not join the Bolsheviks before? That is a question you
all have the right to ask me. How can I answer? After all, I'm
not an old man yet. How is it I didn't find the road here
until today? I'll tell you straight, for I've nothing to hide.
I missed that road, I ought to have taken it back in nineteen
eighteen when we rose against the Germans. Zhukhrai, the
sailor, told me so many a time. It wasn't until 1920 that I
took up a rifle. When the storm was over and we had driven the
Whites into the Black Sea, we came back home. Then came the
family, children. ... I got all tied up in family life. But
now that our Comrade Lenin is gone and the Party has issued
its call, I have looked back at my life and seen what was
lacking. It's not enough to defend your own power, we have to
stick together like one big family, in Lenin's place, so that
the Soviet power should stand solid like a mountain of steel.
We must become Bolsheviks. It's our Party, isn't it?"
When
he finished, a little abashed at having made such a long
speech, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from
his shoulders, and, pulling himself up to his full height, he
stood waiting for the questions to come.
"Any
questions?" Sirotenko's voice broke the ensuing silence.
A
stir ran over the gathering, but no one responded at first to
the chairman's call. Then a stoker, straight from his engine
and black as a beetle, said with finality:
"What's
there to ask? Don't we know him? Vote him in and be done with
it!"
Gilyaka,
the smith, his face scarlet from the heat and the excitement,
cried out hoarsely:
"This
comrade's the right sort, he won't jump the rails, you can
depend on him. Vote him, Sirotenko!"
At
the very back of the hall where the Komsomols were sitting,
someone, invisible in the semidarkness, rose and said:
"Let
Comrade Korchagin explain why he has settled on the land and
how he reconciles his peasant status with his proletarian
psychology."
A
light rustle of disapproval passed over the hall and a voice
rose in protest:
"Why
don't you talk so us plain folks can understand? A fine time
to show off...."
But
Artem was already replying:
"That's
all right, Comrade. The lad is right about my having settled
on the land. That's true, but I havent betrayed my
working-class conscience. Anyhow, that's over and done with
from today. I'm moving my family closer to the sheds. It's
better here. That cursed bit of land has been sticking in my
throat for a long time."
Once
again Artem's heart trembled when he saw the forest of hands
raised in his favour, and with head held high he walked back
to his seat. Behind him he heard Sirotenko announce:
"Unanimous."
The
third to take his place at the presidium table was Zakhar
Bruzzhak, Polentovsky's former helper. The taciturn old man
had been an engine driver himself now for some time. When he
finished his account of a lifetime of labour and brought his
story up to the present, his voice dropped and he spoke softly
but loud enough for all to hear:
"It
is my duty to finish what my children began. They wouldn't
have wanted me to hide away in a corner with my grief. That
isn't what they died for. I haven't tried to fill the gap left
by their death, but now the death of our leader has opened my
eyes. Don't ask me to answer for the past. From today our life
starts anew."
Zakhar's
face clouded and looked stern as painful memories stirred
within him. But when a sea of hands swept up, voting for his
acceptance into the Party, his eyes lit up and his greying
head was no longer bowed.
Far
into the night continued this review of the new Party
replacements. Only the best were admitted, those whom everyone
knew well, whose lives were without blemish.
The
death of Lenin brought many thousands of workers into the
Bolshevik Party. The leader was gone but the Party's ranks
were unshaken. A tree that has thrust its mighty roots deep
into the ground does not perish if its crown is severed.
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