Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [515]
But nothing had happened. The Provisional Government, as it did in all things, moved slowly, legalistically and hesitantly.
It was in late April that he had led the villagers onto the estate. It had been very simple. There was nobody to stop them. When he entered the house, only Arina had been there to protest.
‘What right have you got to do this?’
He had grinned. ‘The people’s right.’ And when she had foolishly tried to bar his way, he had just shoved her aside with a laugh. ‘This is the revolution,’ he had told her.
It was a curious situation – as if the place had entered a sort of limbo. Technically the estate still belonged to Vladimir Suvorin, just as did the factories at Russka. But Vladimir was in Moscow now. Arina continued to live in the house; so did her son Ivan, who for the time being continued his woodwork. Meanwhile, the villagers cut down some of Suvorin’s trees and grazed their cattle on the slope before the house. And who was going to say anything? It was only a question of time before it was all made legal, whatever that might mean.
And as far as Boris Romanov was concerned, this was the revolution.
To others, perhaps, it might involve something more. That very month there had been an attempt to take over the Provisional Government in Petrograd. A madcap plan – an armed rising – by those Bolsheviks. Boris knew about Bolsheviks. They were fellows like that accursed red-head, Popov. They had been growing in numbers lately with their slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’, and their screaming editorials in their paper, Pravda. But their revolt had been smashed. One of their leaders, Trotsky, was in jail. Another, Lenin, had fled abroad. ‘And let’s hope that’s the last of them,’ Boris had said.
There was a new man at the head of the government now, a Socialist called Kerensky. He’d called in General Kornilov to restore order. Perhaps he’d speed up the Constituent Assembly and the legalizing of the land distribution, too.
Slowly now Boris mounted the stairs. During the last three months he had examined the house and its contents with interest. There were certainly some strange-looking books and paintings there. The grand piano, however, he had much admired. One of his sons had played a tune on it.
Only today had it occurred to him that there was one part of the house he had never investigated. He would go to the attic.
Rather to his disappointment, however, he found that Suvorin had made no use of it. The long low room under the roof was almost empty, the floorboards bare. Only at one end did he notice, under a small round window, a few dusty old boxes.
With slow deliberation, but not much interest, he opened them, then made a grimace. Papers. Old letters, bills, and other nonsense of the Bobrovs. He shrugged. He couldn’t be bothered to look at them, and he was just about to turn away when he noticed one piece of paper that seemed to be sticking out slightly from the rest. Along the top, he noticed, was a heading: ‘Fire at Russka’.
He frowned and pulled it out, to find another slip of paper folded inside the first. It seemed to be a letter of some sort.
It was signed: Peter Suvorin.
1917, 2 November
It was one in the morning and they were alone.
The night before, when the Moscow Kremlin had still been holding out, there had been fighting in the streets; but now the city was quiet. In Petrograd and in Moscow, Lenin and his Bolsheviks were now in power.
Or were they?
Popov smiled at Mrs Suvorin, and despite all that was passing, she smiled back. She thought he looked younger.
‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘what really happened.’
And then he laughed.
The world-shattering event known as the October Revolution was, strictly speaking, nothing of the kind. It was a coup by a minority party, about which the majority of the population did not even know.
All through that year of 1917, since the abdication of the Tsar, Russia had staggered along under a strange duality: a Provisional Government,