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By Root 3706 0

in his eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to. For the fact was, the charge was perfectly true. It had been last year, even before the troubles broke out, that he and the other liberal men of the zemstvo councils had met in St Petersburg and drafted their proposal to the Tsar, asking for an elected assembly, a parliament, to help govern the nation. How heady and exciting those meetings had been. Some present had declared that it was like the meeting of the Estates General before the French Revolution; and Nicolai himself had suddenly felt the same wonderful exaltation he had briefly known as a student, during The Going to the People, thirty years ago. If my son’s a born conservative, I suppose I’m a born radical, he thought with a smile. And it was certainly true that when the troubles broke out after Bloody Sunday, the workers and revolutionaries, having no prepared political plan, had simply taken over the demands of the zemstvo men, and demanded an elected assembly. And how much it says about our backward Russia, Nicolai reflected, that even now, in the year 1905, for the people to demand a vote in their country’s affairs is seen by the government as little short of treason.

It was certainly treason to young Alexander. For that was what the boy, in a flood of tears, had called back at his father as he rushed out of the room: ‘Traitor!’

Alexander was halfway across the market square when he saw a familiar figure, and at once he smiled. It was Vladimir Suvorin.

The relationship between the young noble and the industrialist was very simple. The industrialist was Alexander’s hero. Suvorin had hardly changed with the years: he was slightly heavier; there was a just perceptible greying at the temples; but for as long as Alexander could remember, his robust and perfectly tended figure had always been the same. It was not only Suvorin’s extraordinary charm that captivated the boy; nor was it his great culture, of which Alexander was only dimly aware. The figure that the boy saw at Russka was the practical man of affairs: and above all, he was a conservative.

Though he took little interest in politics, it was almost inevitable that Vladimir Suvorin should be a conservative. Knowing young Alexander’s tsarist loyalties, he used to laugh and say: ‘You must not give me too much credit, my friend. It’s only self-interest that makes me love the Tsar.’

Sometimes Suvorin would try to enlighten the boy. ‘The Tsars have always seen the larger merchants as arms of the state, to make Russia strong,’ he would explain. ‘Peter the Great just taxed the great merchants into bankruptcy; but later administrations have been more intelligent, and nowadays they give us government contracts and protect us from outside competition with tariffs.’ Once or twice, trying to give the boy a better appreciation of the world as it really was, he would caution him: ‘Russian industry mostly prospers, Alexander, by exporting raw materials and by selling manufactured goods, usually of rather inferior quality, to our own huge empire and the poorer countries of the east. So the Tsar and his empire are good for me, that’s all.’ But even these blunt explanations did little to modify Alexander’s view of Russia or his hero. Suvorin supported the Tsar. That was all that mattered. And it amused the older man, in a bluff way, to rest a large hand on the boy’s shoulder and remark: ‘My grandfather was your grandfather’s serf, my friend. But I don’t mind if you don’t.’

When Alexander came up with him, Suvorin was walking towards the cotton mill. He nodded briefly as the youth fell into step beside him. ‘It is really a strike?’ young Bobrov asked.

‘Yes.’ The industrialist seemed quite calm.

‘What will you do?’ Alexander whispered. ‘Call in the Cossacks?’ He knew several strikes had already been broken up by the dashing Cossack cavalry squadrons. But to his surprise, Suvorin shook his head. ‘I’m not such a fool,’ he replied.

For half an hour they walked round various parts of the Suvorin enterprise – the mill, the weaving looms, the dormitories. All the machines lay idle,