# From President to Prison/Chapter 16

AN EREMITE OF THE LAW
IN the meantime darker and darker clouds were massing on the horizon. Owing to the intrigues of the monarchists, the army began to display a boisterous spirit and demanded that the railroad officials, whom they accused of wishing "to keep them for ever in Manchuria," should be punished. Chief among those who asked that revenge be taken upon the Union of Workers was General Batianoff, who had a great deal of influence in St Petersburg and at the Court.
He proposed to the Commander-in-Chief a punitive expedition to Harbin and, after a very spirited interview with General Linievitch, succeeded in eliciting his acquiescence in the plan. The next day he was already on the way with his detachment. The officials of the stations north of Ssupingkai allowed General Batianoff's train to pass, in view of the fact that he hung the station-master at one of the first stops when the man protested that he had no right to allow a special train, not included in the regular schedule, to move without the permission of the Board of the Union.
The moment I learned of this, I immediately called General Linievitch by telegraph and spent an hour in arguing with him and pointing out to him the danger and ramifications of this measure of the Staff. Linievitch finally acquiesced and at once telegraphically recalled ​Batianoff, who, however, disregarded his superior's orders and continued northward.
This forced us to act independently and, in doing so, to use our wits and lose no time. We hurried Vlasienko off to the second station below the railway bridge over the Sungari, where he was to meet General Batianoff and carry out our plans for his reception. At the same time we ordered the rails taken up from a section of the track below the bridge, after Vlasienko should have passed. As soon as Vlasienko was at his post, I again telegraphed General Linievitch and urgently requested him to despatch immediately an officer of high rank to overtake General Batianoff and order him to return at once.
It seems appropriate here to give the narrative in the words of Vlasienko himself, supplemented with the telegrams which came to us from down the railway line.
"I am here waiting for Batianoff and your orders," was Vlasienko's first message.
To this we answered by sending a gang of workers to repair the line below the bridge. A few hours later Vlasienko reported:
"Batianoff's train is here. I am talking with the General, who is quietly waiting for the line to be repaired. The train with Linievitch's Staff Officer on board will be here in half an hour."
We telephoned to the division engineer at the bridge to inquire if everything was in order and received his affirmative answer. Almost at the same time Vlasienko wired:
"Be ready to receive a guest."
Two hours later we saw a locomotive with a single car attached come booming up the road and pull up very sharply right in front of the main entrance of the Harbin station. The austere General alighted from his ​sumptuous car and glanced sternly all around. His eyes soon rested on a detachment of armed workers, with Vlasienko at their head, approaching him. Then Batianoff gave another quick survey of the scene and demanded:
"Where is my train and my detachment?"
The smiling Vlasienko amiably answered:
"Your train, General, is at this moment on its way back to Ssupingkai and Your Excellency will continue his journey alone."
"Where am I going?" the now troubled General demanded.
"To the Manchurian frontier and then on to Chita," returned the former hussar, standing at attention.
Everything seemed entirely in order, and in the merry flashes from the eyes of Vlasienko the General found something which did not leave him any tendency to protest. A few moments afterwards he swung round and re-entered his car, and the big drive wheels of the engine turned slowly over to begin the westward journey that carried him out of Manchuria for ever, leaving no one among us to regret especially his departure. Once the necessity for ceremonious dignity was removed, Vlasienko broke into a hearty laugh and told us the rest of the story.
"When Batianoff arrived at the station where I was to meet him, I told him the track was under repair but that it would be ready in a little while. In the meantime I was keeping an eye out for the Staff Officer's train and, the moment I saw the smoke of it in the distance, I ordered my men to execute swiftly our plan to cut the General's car, which was next to the locomotive, off from the others, at the same time jumping on the engine and giving the engineer the word to open up full speed. The rest of the train with the soldiers on board remained ​there in the station, and I had also managed to get the aides-de-camp of the General involved in a puzzling telephone conversation with the next station to the north just before the train from the south was due, so that I snatched the poor man off by himself and brought him to you."
On the following day, after Batianoff had already been despatched westward from Manchouli, I learned that our arch-enemy, General Ivanoff, was tearing his hair in his anger at having been kept in ignorance of our reception of General Batianoff and over his inability to have assisted this great dignitary with so much influence at the Tsar's Court. The moment his spies had uncovered for him all the details of our management of the General's itinerary, he hurried a cipher telegram to St. Petersburg, accusing General Linievitch of complicity in the plot against the "venerable and meritorious General."
Unfortunately this report made a very distinct impression in St. Petersburg and reacted upon us in a most undesirable manner; for, as the evacuation of the army was now nearly completed, Linievitch was recalled to the capital and General Ivanoff made the senior commanding officer in Manchuria.
As soon as old Linievitch, who took a very friendly leave of us, was well away, Ivanoff at once began to use his authority against us. One of his first acts was to free his namesake, the anarchist Ivanoff whom I had arrested, which he followed by ordering the officers who had been members of the Vladivostok Revolutionary Committee to appear before the military court.
The anarchist Ivanoff left Harbin this same day and, as a final courtesy, wrote to me and to the other members of the former Central Committee, assuring us that he would honour us with his presence when the tribunals ​of Nicholas II should send us to the gallows. It turned out that his prophecy came aggravatingly near to being the truth, as only one short step separated us from the very end he sketched for us—and this author of these not quite elegant letters was for a long time an executioner in the Transbaikal. This anarchist, who understood so well how to influence the masses of Russian labourers, had been for five years in a criminal prison as a fiery disturber of the peace, and afterwards, for the sake of a career, became an agent of the political police and finally an executioner!
At the news that the officers were to be had up for trial, Vladivostok staged a great street demonstration, which disturbed not only the military authorities but also the local branch of the Union of Workers. A request came up to our Board for someone to be sent immediately to consult about the dangerous situation in which this port, so capable of paralysing disturbances, now found itself. Inasmuch as I had previously lived in Vladivostok and had enjoyed most friendly relations with the people of the port, the Board chose me for the undertaking. That very same day a service car was coupled to the first outgoing train and carried me to Vladivostok to be a witness to most critical events.
It was seven o'clock on the morning of January 9, 1906, when I reached the city and was met by the members of the local Committee, who informed me that the revolutionary groups in the town were planning to commemorate this day as the anniversary of the bloody massacre of workers by the Tsar's Guard in St. Petersburg on the Place before the Winter Palace and in other parts of the capital. These groups had arranged for a new procession as a protest against the returning reaction of the old regime.
​Half an hour after my arrival I was in consultation with the leaders of the revolutionary parties. My advice and my requests that they forgo this demonstration proved entirely vain in the face of the finality of their dictum that there was no other effective way in which to fight the Government of the Tsar save by the armed struggle behind street barricades or through the death of unarmed revolutionaries in the streets of the Tsar's own towns, where the blood of the victims could so cry out to, and make an impression upon, other nations, that they would declare their opposition to the criminal reign of Nicholas II and demand that it cease. I understood with poignant personal appreciation that these elements of society were obsessed by an immutable resolution of dumb despair, dictated and congealed by the thought of the approaching revenge of the Tsar.
After my futile meeting with these leaders I went at once to the Commander of the Fortress, General Kazbek, who was the virtual ruler of the whole town. He was a Georgian, a man of no great intelligence, ambitious and very desirous of making a career for himself. It was my purpose to try to persuade him to remain neutral, as the demonstration was to be of an entirely peaceful character and its leaders were determined not to allow the crowd to make any trouble or disturbance. Kazbek listened to me, smiling rather mysteriously as I spoke. Noticing this, I said to him:
"The fate of Vladivostok depends upon your honesty' and wisdom, General!"
These words came almost involuntarily from me and seemed, after I had uttered them, somewhat grandiloquent; but the future proved that I was quite right.
At eleven o'clock the procession came in grave silence down the Svetlanskaya, the principal street of the town, ​gathering more and more adherents at every corner. The head of the column stopped and was soon engulfed by its own body in front of the Orthodox Cathedral, where all heads were bared during the chanting of prayers for the souls of those who had been killed in the Revolution. Then the great human mass uncurled and started again. Occasional cries of "We demand a constitution! We demand a parliament!" marked its progress as the only variant of the complete order in which it proceeded to Aleut Street, that led in the direction of the railway station and past the residence of the Commander of the Fortress. The crowd advanced along this street quietly, and even joyously, at finding that the authorities offered no resistance to its progress.
At the head of the procession was Mrs. Sophie Volkenstein, and following her came Dr. Lankowski and engineer Piotrowski, together with other leaders of the Union of Workers and of the revolutionary groups.
As I mention the name of Sophie Volkenstein, there comes before my eyes a lifelike picture of the quiet, attractive, sweet face of a woman no longer young. Streaks of grey are plainly visible in the black hair. In the hazel eyes and around the fresh lips an expression of crushing despair, mixed with pain and sadness, speaks out as the tragic composite of the life of this revolutionary personality.
When she was a student of twenty, her revolutionary conscience thrust her into the ranks of the terrorists and gave her a part in an attempt against the life of Tsar Alexander II. For her share in this plot she was condemned to death but had her sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. After some years in a solitary cell at the terrible prison of Schlusselburg, about forty miles to the east of St. Petersburg on Lake Ladoga, ​Volkenstein was sent on the long journey to Sakhalin, that cursèd island of banishment and death, of which I had occasion to write more fully in Man and Mystery in Asia. There Volkenstein became the good angel of the inmates of the prison, helping them medically and spiritually. Even the administrators of the penal island valued the fine qualities of this unusual woman, full of patience, forgiveness and sacrifice for others, and, in recognition of her qualities and service, finally obtained permission for her to live in Vladivostok, as her health was far from good.
Sophie Volkenstein, with a sad but sweet smile, marched at the head of the procession of demonstrators, thinking how she was now voicing her demand that human and ordinary citizen's rights be granted the Russian people, demanding them from the grandson of him who, because he would not acknowledge and grant these rights, was torn into shreds by a bomb thrown by a revolutionist.
"The Romanoffs have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing," this sad woman bitterly reflected.
The noise of machine-guns interrupted this train of thought with a suddenness as sharp as it was bitter. The whistling bullets cut the cold air; then they were silent. The panic-stricken crowd scattered in every direction, scurrying over the Place in front of the station, sheltering in the school building hard by or fleeing into the side streets. Two bodies remained behind on the pavement. One was that of Sophie Volkenstein, this woman who yearned for the freedom of a people and who went down without a shadow or spot on her conscience, disheartened and disgusted with vacillating officials, who sacrificed everything sacred to the greed of a career. She fell as she had lived—fighting in the front rank. The ​other figure that did not run was that of a schoolboy, ten years old.
On this day General Kazbek accomplished much toward the furtherance of his career. In his report to St. Petersburg he telegraphed:
"The faithful soldiers of Your Majesty under my command gallantly dispersed an immense crowd of hostile agitators."
But life works out its own nemesis for criminal baseness—this is the law of inscrutable, ever-existing Supreme Justice.
The crowd dispersed itself in panic throughout the whole town. The news that the soldiers had fired upon the unarmed and peacefully disposed procession flew from mouth to mouth with lightning speed, reaching the forts on Russian Island and the ships in the Golden Horn. Among the soldiers there were many revolutionary minded, while the sailors were practically all of this mould. The moment they had the news, they snatched up their arms and ran over the ice to the town, while the soldiers hoisted the red banner of revolution over one of the forts on the Island. Only one regiment, which had lately arrived from Russia, remained passive and obedient to the orders of the Staff.
When General Kazbek learned of this state of affairs, he ordered this regiment to turn their pieces on the town and on the ships. The guns from the batteries controlled by the mutinied soldiers and the naval guns on the ships answered the very first shots and brought bursting shells into parts of the town and into the forts which were hidden on the hills above it. Fires broke out in various places, an especially fierce one among the shops in the Chinese quarter. Soon the flames began to surge through ​the narrow streets of the Japanese section and thus made their way to the Svetlanskaya in the centre of the town.
Amid the wild flames, the tumult of falling houses and the rolling clouds of smoke there coursed gangs of men like wild jackals, composed of the scum of the town, the members of monarchist organizations and hunghutzes who had gathered from the mountains and the deserted shores of the Amur and had been sheltering in the city. In several quarters armed fights took place, and on this day no one counted the number of the killed and the wounded. Hate, hidden for a long time, the desire for revenge, the lust for blood and spoil, all had at this hour of crime and disaster full liberty of expression. By night three-fourths of Vladivostok lay in ruins. The glare of the gradually lessening fires trembled on the sky, while clouds of acrid smoke drew a veil over the moonlight that had sought to make the city beautiful.
Late in the evening, when I returned to my car, I could still hear the wild shouts of the raging crowd, the carbine shots, the noise of falling buildings and the nervous whistles of the soldiers who were patrolling the streets.
On January 12th I returned to Harbin, where the details of the Vladivostok catastrophe were already fully known. As soon as I had made my report to the Board of the Union, I went to see General Ivanoff to inform him about the happenings in Vladivostok and to remind him that the same fate could visit Harbin in the event of tactical errors on his part. However, the General refused me an interview, so that I had to leave my message with his aide-de-camp and request that he convey it to his chief.
On my return to my residence I found Colonel Zaremba and Captain von Ziegler waiting for me. After ​they had asked me about the details of the occurrences in Vladivostok, Colonel Zaremba remarked with apparent irrelevance:
"Remember the service car will always be ready and waiting for you."
"But I have no journey in view."
"I strongly advise you to go away. Anxious times are at hand," added von Ziegler.
To my expression of inquiry an eloquent glance was the only answer; and, after shaking my hand, they went away. Two days passed. One might have inferred that everything was quiet. But earfy on the morning of January 16th Captain von Ziegler came to my house and, in broken phrases, began to whisper:
"A train goes at two o'clock to the south. … I shall order your car to be attached to it. … Get out at once, for Heaven's sake. Go anywhere. … I can say no more … but go!" He rushed out of the room without even looking back.
I realized that something serious was brewing and, directing my manservant to put a few necessary articles into a small valise, went at once to the house of Nowakowski, who lived quite near me. I wanted to seek his advice and perhaps to go away together with him, after we had arrived at an understanding with the other associates in our stormy revolutionary career.
I knocked at the door, but for a long time no one answered. Then one of the windows was first opened just a slight crack and, after a second, enough to allow the head of my friend's old cook to be thrust warily out. An evil presentiment took control of me, as I hurried to the window and demanded:
"What is the matter?"
"Hush!" she whispered in a quaver of fear and ​excitement, "my master was arrested during the night and taken to prison."
Jumping into a drosky, I made the round of the residences of all my former associates but, alas, I found no one at home, for all of them had been arrested in the same manner. For the moment I alone was left at liberty; and now I understood the full meaning of the visit of Zaremba and von Ziegler, especially the nervous haste of the second warning of this morning.
However, I did not attempt to leave Harbin, as I felt it only right that I should remain to do what I could for my imprisoned associates and to share with them whatever fate our concerted acts might have in store. Without leaving my house I waited until midnight, wondering when the next development would come. At this hour, while I was seated at the desk in my study, I saw through a window the face of a soldier and his shining bayonet. I arose and went into the drawing-room, only to find the same outlook there, a soldier outside each window. Just as I was saying to myself that they had probably completely surrounded the house, the bell in the vestibule rang, followed by the cry of my frightened servant and the clatter of swords and spurs, as some gendarmes and agents of the political police appeared in the hall.
Then followed quickly a minute search of the whole house and the writing of the official report with all its details of whether I knew how to read and write, whether I was baptized, and the like. An hour later the iron door of a cell in the military prison clanged with a dull sound of finality behind me and, through the little barred aperture in the middle, a guard began staring at me.
"Fifty-three days as President of the Russian Far East, then prison! From President to prison—a dramatic and exciting way, though short withal!"