Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

  As the evenings grew darker and colder, we began to hear rumours of heavy German defeats, of revolutionary activity similar to the kind which had sparked the Petrograd risings. It was obvious that my German acquaintances were wondering if they themselves would have a country to which they could safely return. In the meantime Ataman Petlyura was gaining strength. His Cossack cavalry and his Sich riflemen were joined by many irregulars and it seemed he represented a more popular and stronger force than Skoropadskya’s. The Germans were thinking they had backed the wrong man.

  The Hetman should at least have made some pretence of deferring to peasant demands, but he was too honourable to do anything save obey his own conscience and God’s will. And so he fell. Winter drew down upon Kiev and my hopes were dashed. Almost overnight, my German colleagues left, my Hetmanate contacts deserted me, and the politicians drove me again from The Yevropyaskaya hotel. Germany’s Hindenburg Line had been breached. The German Chancellor proposed to accept an armistice plan drawn up by the Americans. The British refused to consider the idea. They wanted blood. By November a Communist Soviet was established in Bavaria and revolution broke out in Berlin itself. The Kaiser abdicated. Prince Max of Baden, the Chancellor, relinquished his position to a socialist. Germany became a Republic and was no longer an ally against Bolshevism. Maps were taken out and lines were re-drawn. We had lost our Crimean territories to Tatars. In spite of the treaty signed with the Don and Kuban Cossacks we had not gained a real ally against the socialists. Just before Christmas, 1918, Petlyura was back in full command promising, in Ukrainian, a secure national future. Not only Russians found his posturing dangerous; a good many Ukrainians decided it would be wiser to give up the struggle. Half the industrialists vanished. During the festive season I again entertained my family at a good hotel; again I spoke of my plans for my engineering business. But it seemed I had achieved little beyond making some money, most of which I should probably never be able to claim. Even my work was likely to be curtailed by the socialists. I had no Special Diploma. I had no career worth speaking of. There was hardly any working industry in Ukraine. I was unable to read most of the newspapers because they were suddenly in an alien language. I had trouble filling in simple forms. I was insulted if I did not ask for my tram-fare in Ukrainian. I had again become some sort of second-class citizen. I thought of going to Odessa where at least now it would be possible to book passage on a ship. But I would bide my time for a little while, until the Greens settled in. I moved back to my mother’s flat. She was cheerful and well again. This was a relief. But her moods remain a mystery to me to this day.

  Esmé had continued nursing through at least three different regimes. She was beginning to look drawn. It was Esmé, I thought, who suffered from exhaustion now. My mother devoted herself, with maniacal quixotism, to learning Ukrainian from the badly-printed books available. New schools and universities had been established. All, of course, taught in Ukrainian. There was no longer a chance for me to work as a teacher. I had not received a single reply to my requests for a position, though it was generally accepted amongst my friends and the business community that I had done brilliantly at Petrograd. I admit the impression was useful. I was often, these days, addressed as ‘Doctor’ and more than once I was called ‘Professor’. I found this comforting. It did no harm. When I received my Special Diploma I could go on to receive a proper doctorate almost anywhere. I want no one to think I made these claims for myself. But life is often hard. If people wish to have illusions about one, then it is sometimes foolish to spend unnecessary energy denying them. Doubtless because she was overworking, Esmé could sometimes be condescending and irritatingly sharp when I wanted to discuss my plans for the future. On the other hand my mother would sometimes call me ‘Doctor’ just for the sound of it. She would stand on our landing and say, for instance: ‘Well, well, Doctor, here’s our old friend Captain Brown to see us.’

  Captain Brown was beginning to decay almost by the day. His face was blotchy and his hands had an obvious drunkard’s shake. His craving for alcohol was pathetic. Sometimes I was tempted not to pander to him. But Esmé would say ‘What else has he to live for?’ and I could not argue. His stories became more confused, though substantially familiar. He was baffled by what he called ‘this fake language with its fake government, its fake bank-notes and its fake history.’ We hushed him when he uttered such sentiments in Russian. It did not matter when he spoke English, as he did most frequently now. Esmé had learned a little English from me, but not enough for her to understand him clearly. Once, she told me, he had been found in Bessarabskaya market where he had gone up to one of Petlyura’s Sich riflemen and asked him which circus he belonged to. He had spoken first in English, then in French, then in German, then in Russian and then, it seemed, in Polish. The soldier had either misunderstood him or had not bothered to take exception to the insult. A couple of friends had brought the captain home.

  I visited Bessarabskaya myself. Cocaine was plentiful and cheap there, though not of particularly good quality. I was building up a supply for a rainy day, as they say in England. The market was booming, with old family heirlooms to be purchased for a mere chag or two. Chags and karvovantsis were the new monetary units. The notes were so easily forged nobody bothered to check them unless it was in the post office. Inflation was running at a ridiculous rate. At least for a while the prostitutes became younger and prettier. Two of them actually turned out to be the virgins they claimed to be. I was again in a mood to take my pleasures as they came, in case they should not come too frequently later.

  If only all Cossacks and those claiming Cossack freedoms had managed to work together in one huge host we would easily have driven the Reds back to Moscow (now their capital). Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin and the rest would have ended their days as querulous old exiles. The genuinely humane people would have encouraged a Russian renaissance. Our country would have been the most glorious centre for the flowering of art and science the world had known since the days of the Italian Medici. Everybody says so. What drove Sikorski away? Bolsheviks. What drove Prokofiev away? Bolsheviks.

  I remember those ‘Lorelei’ days of the twenties. The Reds tried to lure their artists, scientists and intellectuals back. The sweet voices deceived many. They went back: Gorki, Alexei Tolstoi, Zamyatin, and many more; and they were almost all dead by the time the thirties ended. That was the value Bolsheviks put on Russian talent. When the Nazis came Stalin had to release starving, wretched ex-Red Army ‘heroes’ to run the War. Not that it would have mattered. Stalin ran the War. Lucky for the world he did, as someone once said of Hitler. It was a war between a couple of psychotics who had the talent of being all things to all men. It wasted millions of lives and achieved nothing but a small shift of boundaries. Better lock them away with maps and toy soldiers, where no real harm is ever accomplished. That is what H.G. Wells advised a friend of mine.

  My mother blossomed under Petlyura even more wonderfully than she had under the Bolsheviks. I offer no interpretation. Admittedly things were quieter in the outlying suburbs. There were no more fires burning in Podol. My mother was distressed by inhumanity of any sort. When people expressed their dislike of Jews she always became upset, refusing to join in. The usual talk was harmless enough. But she would say ‘God has designed a role for each of us. It is not the race or the religion, it is the man or the woman that is important.’ I was thus brought up in a more tolerant atmosphere than most Kievan children. It has helped me understand people, encouraged my humanity, allowed me to mix, without feeling uncomfortable, with all sorts, black or white, high or low. When we heard that French Zouaves had occupied Odessa, in support of Denikin, that the city was ‘colonised by black men’, as the papers put it, we were all horrified. But Mother made a joke of it. ‘It will be lovely,’ she said, ‘to see a bit of extra colour in Ukraine.’ I began to understand how she and my father had come together. She had a broad, humane and trusting faith in the beauty of the world, of people’s natural tendency to help one
another. He shared her ideals but felt betrayed by those he had sought to support. People were far more complex and yet far more ordinary than he wished to believe. The socialist Utopia did not spring from the ground overnight. He began to attack those whom he regarded as responsible for threatening his hopes. The simple fact is that my mother was mature, in the way of women, and could see that the best way of improving things was to lead a good, clean, kindly life.

  Revolutionists almost invariably attempt to simplify the workings of the human heart. This planet of ours is full of generous, warm-spirited, good-humoured and intelligent women supporting raving, idiotic fools like my father. All that was ever betrayed was his own humanity. How long can a woman live with a jealous man? That is the simple question in which lies the answer to my own background, I think.

  Those months of the Directorate became relatively easy. I began to move into the world again. Many of the new politicians were sympathetic to my schemes for mechanisation and industrialisation. ‘We must use the wealth of the Ukraine,’ they said, ‘to make ourselves strong and independent.’ So, for the time being, I became a nationalist, couching my arguments in terms of the province rather than the country. Luckily the letter-heads and cards I had had printed: ALL-UKRAINE ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS, Managing Director Dr M. A. Pyatnitski, still had the appropriate ring and The Hotel Yevropyaskaya, having become something of a headquarters for Petlyura’s henchmen, was a perfect address. I moved back into my old suite. I began to entertain as I had done before. Inflation, the retreat of the Germans, a lack of faith by Russian and Ukrainian investors in Petlyura’s reforms meant I had to augment my income again. It was easy enough to do. I had contacts in every part of the city. But it was irritating, for instance, to be a courier for someone who did not want it evident he sniffed cocaine; or to arrange girls for some under-Minister anxious that his wife should not find out; or to act as a go-between for a factory-owner needing certain forms stamped in a hurry; but it continued to help me keep my way of life and my friends. I was an agent of change, a catalyst. Much which was good about Petlyura’s government was directly or indirectly to do with help and advice I had been able to provide.

  I was not distracted, now, by notes from my mother. I did make use, though, of Esmé’s free time. With her strawberry-blonde hair and her superlative taste she made a perfect hostess for my special evenings. Everyone complimented me on Madame Pyatnitski if they were under the impression we were married, or on my ‘fiancée’ or on my ‘cousin’. To intimates I let it be known she was my half-sister. I think that spiritually she was my sister through and through. It was no lie to claim a little blood, too. We had mingled it, often enough, in our childish games. Esmé found enjoyment in what she called my ‘farces’. She would cheerfully lend her energy and her imagination while always insisting that her world outside was ‘real’. This was because she was a nurse and saw so much of the disease, malnutrition and physical destruction. Gangs of homeless children, bezhprizhorni, were beginning to become a serious problem. They had the courage of the pack, the hunger of starving dogs. Cripples and wounded in the streets were impossible to count. Beggars were given public handouts but there were far too many for the system to accommodate. A strong police force was badly needed. Haidamaki militia were inclined either to sudden savagery or absolute laziness when it came to maintaining the Law. There were attempts to recruit former police officers back into the service. But this was only partially successful. In time, Petlyura might have modified and improved conditions, and even rid himself of the hampering burden of nationalism. He did not hate Russia, he said. He hated the ‘enslaving institutions’. He also, I know, hated the Orthodox Church. He had been raised a Catholic, like so many Ukrainians, and here was a fundamental difference few were anxious to touch upon. We were witnessing a low-key religious war. One of my Petlyurist friends actually expressed it best in a joke at his own expense: ‘Some say that a Jesuit is just a Jew who happens to have been born a Christian.’ And there you have it. Many ‘old Bolsheviks’, and a number of new ones in today’s Party, have secret links with the Church which they dare not admit. How much better for us all if they did. A little sanity would return to Russia.

  We had a taste of the old rivalry between the Roman Empire of the West and the Hellenic Empire of the East. Kiev saw as many emperors come and go in as short a time as Rome or Constantinople when those Empires fell apart. As my mother said in her merry way: ‘At least under the Rus or the Tatars people had time to get used to their rulers. These days it’s impossible to know who you’re supposed to cheer.’ But she liked Petlyura and his white horse and his gaudy Haidamaki with their baggy trousers and fancy waistcoats and scalp-locks. The Haidamaki had saved Ukraine from Polish oppression in the eighteenth century. They represented another calling on the past in support of a hoped-for future. Ends are defeated by means. The future will always be defeated by the past. The past is a useful metaphor but it is a terrible precedent.

  My mother hoped the laundry would be nationalised. As manageress, she would have security without the same responsibility. Petlyura’s brand of socialism, she said, seemed fair enough. Petlyura needed to court what remained of the business people. Again I found myself rising in the world. I knew everyone. I was invited to various high-level meetings. I was called ‘Doctor Pyatnitski’ by everyone and regarded as a scientific Wunderkind. I was allowed to expand on the possibilities of Ukrainian monorails, Ukrainian civil airlines, Ukrainian garden-cities for the workers. My ideas no longer struck people as fantastic. All Ukraine’s potential was to be used. I mentioned special cinemas, education centres, aerial guard-ships which could protect our frontiers from Bolshevik aggression. We should soon have the cream of Russian genius, I pointed out, back in Kiev. Kiev could become the capital of a new Russian Empire (diplomatically I termed it ‘an expanded Ukrainian state’). I spoke of my dreams and I helped others to dream. That was my gift. I offered it to the government and at last the government began to accept. I had no official position. I thought it foolish to accept one. I was only just nineteen years old. At last I had found a ready audience for more complicated ideas, such as my invisible ray device. I made no large claims. Such machines could, however, form a defensive ring (‘an iron ring of light’ as someone said) about a city, making it almost invulnerable. This was the nearest thing to the recent force-field notions of the Americans.

  We needed something quickly. We had Poles attacking from the West, Whites from the South, Reds from the North. There were Rumanians invading Bessarabia. French and Greek forces had been landed in Odessa. A variety of Cossack and pseudo-Cossack insurgent chieftains (atamany) and Anarchist brigands, such as Makhno, changed sides almost as rapidly as the regular units, a few of which still supported Skoropadskya. Ataman Hrihorieff (sometimes called Grigoriev in English) had turned against the Directorate to join the Bolsheviks. He took with him a large rabble of so-called ‘insurgent cavalry’; looters and pogromchiks to a man. We in Kiev believed no rumours whatsoever. If Bolsheviks were said to be occupying the Left Bank Dnieper, we cocked our heads. If we heard no unusual artillery- or rifle-fire, we continued about our business. At that time Petlyura seemed likely to drive the Bolsheviks out of Russia altogether. Then he allowed the farce of ’Ukrainianisation’ of the Church. Suddenly Orthodox services we’re performed in Ukrainian and half the Church’s intellectuals were dismissed from their offices or actually killed by their parishioners, simply for arguing the unchallengeable fact that there was no such thing as a Ukrainian Church, since all were subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople. The nationalist mania was spreading.

  It was to destroy my homeland, the birthplace of Russian culture.

  * * * *

  ELEVEN

  ONE EVENING in the middle of January 1919, I was invited to dinner at The Savoy Hotel by a group of industrialists, educationalists and politicians. They said the meeting was to be of considerable importance. My presence was absolutely necessary.

  I arrived at the hot
el dressed in my best. I wore my heavy fox-fur overcoat, hat, gloves and my felt-and-rubber galoshes. I carried my silver-topped cane. All these were left in the foyer. The manager apologised that the elevator was temporarily out of action. In a dark three-piece suit, with a conventional collar and tie, I made my way up the wide staircase to the first floor. I stopped outside a huge door which I assumed led into a ball-room. I was admitted by a uniformed servant. It was, in fact, the master-suite of the hotel. It put my little suite at The Yevropyaskaya to shame. I walked along a short passage which was entirely mirrored on sides and ceiling. A green curtain was pulled back to allow me into the main dining-room which, with its crystal and gilt, had not changed since Tsarist days. It was occupied by cigar-smoking men. Some were in evening dress and some wore uniform. Others were dressed as I was in what were in those days recognised as tastefully classless suits. I was greeted by the journalist Elanski. He had the reputation of being a pro-Bolshevik and a terrorist. He was a mild-looking man with spectacles and a goatee. I had met him at The Cube where, because I kept my peace, I was considered a socialist sympathiser. Elanski introduced me to a variety of men whose names I knew. They shook hands with me and thanked me for sparing the time to come. They evidently believed me an important figure, but I was not sure what my importance to them was. Shortly after I had arrived, the green curtain was swept back and our self-styled Supreme Commander, Semyon Petlyura, came in. He was shorter than I had guessed, with the pink, smooth skin known as ‘typically Ukrainian’, a small moustache and a birdlike way of moving his fingers together when he talked. He wore a green and gold uniform. I addressed him as ‘Pan’, which was a term used only in Ukraine and Poland. He said he would prefer to be known here as Comrade Petlyura. He smiled. He said it made him feel more relaxed; that he was amongst friends. He, too, thanked me very deeply for finding time to join the meeting. We sat down to dinner. To my surprise I was given a place on Petlyura’s left, while Elanski occupied his right. Next to me was a general and opposite the general was a high-ranking minister in charge of the Civilian War Effort. I was called ‘Comrade Pyatnitski’ throughout the dinner and found the fact privately amusing. I understood during the meal something of the euphoria of holding powerful political office. It made me more determined than ever to keep out of politics in future. All the men there were worried about Bolshevik gains. Without proper allies our lines of supplies and communications would soon be cut off. Kiev would have to be abandoned. The insurgents were unreliable. Most of them had little idea of the importance of railways and telegraphs. They tended to fight only for local territory, often with the intention, Petlyura thought, of setting up tiny nations along old Cossack lines. He was even uncertain of his own Zaporizhian forces once they had gained what they wanted. ‘We have plenty of cavalry, plenty of infantry, a fair number of machine guns, plenty of trains, no aeroplanes, little artillery worthy of the name, no tanks or armoured cars. In fact, we are only slightly better equipped to fight a modern war than Stenka Razin.’ While we laughed at this, Petlyura’s small face became stern. He made a movement of his lower lip which had the effect of strengthening his jaw. ‘And that is why, Comrade Doctor, we have asked you to let us know your views.’