The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [14]
When he graduated from the Politeknik with a degree in engineering, he got a job with the railway company in Moscow. At last he knew how to build the bridges he had dreamed about as a boy. But that dream was already fading into one of the new Russia owned by the people, for the people, a utopia where ultimately all social categories would be eliminated. Grigori truly believed in his heart that with this accomplished, all men would be equal and would share in their country’s prosperity.
He became more and more active in the Party, touring the regions, recruiting members, and encouraging the local workers’ committees, or “Soviets,” to strike for their rights. The Bolshevist leader, Lenin, the man glimpsed on the bleak station platform in Siberia twenty years before, remained his idol.
It was on one of these trips that he met Natalya. She was sixteen years old, the age his own mother had been when she married his father, and she had the cool white skin, rosy cheeks, and bright blond hair typical of the region of Byelorussia. Natalya became his only other obsession. It didn’t matter that she was uneducated. The stocky dark peasant was sensually in love with her plump milky fairness. It was enough just to touch her smooth, flawless skin, to kiss her cherry-red lips that were as innocent as his own and run his hands through her coarse yellow hair. Her family knew he was a catch for Natalya, and the couple were married within a month.
Grigori took his new bride back to the dismal room that was his “home” in Moscow, and the country girl struggled her best to cope with life in the big city. She kept the old-fashioned samovar bubbling so that she could serve tea to his “friends” when they came for meetings and was secretly shocked when all they drank was vodka. But she had no idea of what their talk of “anarchy” meant, and Grigori traveled so much she was often alone.
He knew she was unhappy, and after a few months, when she was pregnant with their first child, he took her back to her family in Byelorussia, visiting her as often as he could. Four sons were born in quick succession. He was happy and over the years his prestige with the Party increased. And then tragedy struck with the typhus epidemic that wiped out many thousands of people, including three of his boys. Only Boris, the youngest, was spared.
In 1914 Russia went to war against the Germans and Grigori was inducted into the army. Because of his degree and his riding skills, he was made a noncommissioned officer in a cavalry unit of the tsar’s army, but the war quickly took its toll with great losses for Russia, and suddenly he found himself promoted to full captain. He was sickened with the futile waste of life he saw every day at the front. Passage over Russia’s narrow muddy roads was slowed to a crawl by supply wagons that never got through, and his men were being mown down by an inexorable enemy. The frozen, hungry soldiers were being slaughtered or were dying of dysentery, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
The revolution he had worked toward for so long began with riots in St. Petersburg in February 1917 over shortages of bread and coal. After returning from the front, Grigori helped to form the new militant Soviet of Works. Soon Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate. But as the months passed it became obvious that the new government was incapable of dealing with the food shortages. Lenin arrived back in Russia and under his leadership the October Revolution began.
Grigori’s finest hour had been when he was presented to his hero.