Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [448]
Nicolai studied Ulyanov. A revolutionary cadre: the leaders or the new men, as he and Popov used to call themselves years ago. And suddenly remembering the arguments with his own father in those days, he asked the strange-looking fellow: ‘Tell me – your cadre: should it use any means to promote the revolution?’
The lawyer stroked his beard thoughtfully.
‘I should say yes.’
‘Including terrorism?’
‘If it’s useful,’ Ulyanov responded calmly, ‘why not?’
‘I just wondered,’ Nicolai said.
The conversation moved on after this, to other things. Nicolai tried to find out a little more about what Popov was doing, but soon gave up, and shortly afterwards Ulyanov announced that he felt tired and would retire to his carriage.
It was just before they parted, however, that one scrap of conversation occurred which, for some reason, always stuck in Nicolai’s mind afterwards. They had been discussing the famine, and he had told them about his father’s letter. ‘It’s quite true,’ Popov told him. ‘Things are terrible in the central provinces.’
And then Ulyanov spoke.
‘It’s a great mistake,’ he remarked.
‘What is?’ Nicolai asked.
‘This attempt at famine relief. We should do nothing to help. Let the peasants starve. The worse things are, the more it weakens the tsarist government.’ It was said quite calmly, without any anger or malice, in a detached, matter-of-fact voice.
‘He’s been saying that all week,’ Popov laughed.
‘I am correct,’ the lawyer replied, in the same tone. And it occurred to Nicolai that it was this very lack of emotion which might make this curious Chuvash rather formidable.
They parted in a friendly manner. Nicolai supposed he might never see either of them again. And, formidable or not, he certainly had no premonition that the balding lawyer with the little reddish beard would ever place himself at the head of a revolution.
It is a favourite hobby of those who study Russian history to choose – each having his own theory – a particular year from which, he will argue, the Russian revolutionary process began, and was perhaps inevitable. ‘This was really the beginning,’ he or she will say.
For Nicolai Bobrov, however, there was not just a year, but a single day: a day on which a tiny domestic scene took place that was witnessed only by himself. And though he participated afterwards in many of the great events that were seen on the stage of world history, it was to this small and unknown incident that he would always return in his mind and say: ‘That – that was the day when the revolution began.’
It took place some five months after the conversation in the train.
If Nicolai had wondered if his father might be exaggerating the difficulties at Russka, that suspicion died the day he arrived home.
The situation was desperate. The harvest of ’90 had been poor, not only at Russka, but down on the Bobrovs’ other estate in Riazan province too. In ’91 therefore, Misha Bobrov and his fellow members of the zemstvo board had tried to save the situation by urging the peasants to sow a mixed crop. ‘Extra potatoes,’ Misha had said. ‘Even if the cereals fail, there will be something to eat.’ But nothing had gone right. The entire potato crop had been blighted; every other crop had failed too. There had been nothing like it since the terrible year of 1839, and by autumn it was clear there would be famine.
Something else Nicolai quickly realized was that, for his father, the famine was also a personal crisis. Though seventy, and not in the best of health, Misha Bobrov had plunged into activity with a fervour that was almost reckless. ‘For the fact is,’ he confessed, ‘as a member of the zemstvo gentry, I feel a double burden these days.’
Nicolai knew very well what he meant. Ever since the elected zemstvo assemblies had been set up by the reforming Tsar Alexander, the government had tinkered with its