Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [462]
And then all hell broke loose. The liberal zemstvos protested at the outrage. Strikes broke out. With consummate foolishness, the government closed the universities, leaving the student population on the streets with nothing to do. Every dissatisfied group in the empire, sensing a looming crisis, saw its chance to protest. There were riots in Finland, the Baltic states and Poland, as well as in Russia proper. By summer, police records detailed 492 significant disturbances. The huge textile mills at Ivanovo, north of Vladimir, were in an uproar. In journals and leaflets circulating in the cities, revolutionary articles began to appear under a pseudonym that until then had been known only in revolutionary circles: V. I. Lenin. During May and June came yet more crushing news from the east: the whole Russian fleet had been sunk. Soon after this, down at the Black Sea port of Odessa, the Russian battleship Potemkin had mutinied.
What was the government to do? The police could not cope; the army was mostly in the east, defeated and beyond recall. All Russia waited.
And now little Ivan was in a fever of excitement. What was happening at Russka?
Until that morning, the town and the Suvorin factory had remained quiet. But just before noon, a man returning from the town reported: ‘Something’s going on there in the weaving shops.’ By mid-afternoon word came: ‘It’s a strike.’ And soon afterwards three girls from the village who worked at the cotton mill appeared and reported: ‘They told us to go home.’ And by these signs little Ivan understood that the revolution had come to Russka.
It was late that afternoon, however, that his Uncle Boris began to behave strangely.
Alexander Bobrov was still brooding irritably as he entered the market place at Russka that day.
He was a handsome, fair-haired boy, just fourteen, with the first faint down of a moustache on his upper lip. He had hurried towards the town as soon as he heard about the trouble. But not before certain words had passed between him and his father – words that could not be unsaid. Which was why he was still frowning when he reached the town. Why couldn’t he control himself?
They were a strange couple, father and son: so alike in looks, yet mentally so different. I suppose, Nicolai had thought, as he gazed at the boy that morning, some people are just born conservative.
The sad death of Nicolai’s elder son some years before had left Alexander as his only heir now, and the boy took his position very seriously. A religious fellow, he liked to go to church with his grandmother Anna and was extremely proud of his family’s ancient connection with the monarchy. Above all, he was anxious to take over the estate: and this, for a long time, had been the source of the tension between them.
How well Nicolai remembered his own disgust with his father Misha’s handling of the estate; now it was his turn. Had he done any better? No. The Riazan estate, bit by bit, had gone; he had had numerous offers for pieces of the remaining woodlands and pastures at Russka – one from the village commune, and two, for small parcels, from Boris Romanov. But each time he had refused because of the protests of his mother Anna and young Alexander. Now, he knew, he could not hold out much longer. ‘The fact is,’ he would say, ‘since the Emancipation there hasn’t been enough land for the peasants or for me.’ His fate was not uncommon: half the landowners he knew had sold their estates in recent years, as the Russian nobility slipped into its final decline. But it was no use telling that to young Alexander.
And even this shortcoming was nothing compared to Nicolai’s latest crime. ‘For why,’ his son had accused, ‘are the workers making these wicked demands of the Tsar? It’s because of the zemstvos, Father – because of you.’
Nicolai knew that he should have chastised the boy for such impertinence. Yet as he looked at his son standing there with indignant tears