Julius Caesar, so they called it February 23. The rest of Europe had been using the modern calendar for three hundred years.
The rise in temperature coincided with International Women’s Day, and the female workers from the textile mills came out on strike and marched from the industrial suburbs into the city center to protest against the bread queues, the war, and the tsar. Bread rationing had been announced, but it seemed to have made the shortage worse.
The First Machine Gun Regiment, like all army units in the city, was detailed to help the police and the mounted Cossacks keep order. What would happen, Grigori wondered, if the soldiers were ordered to fire on the marchers? Would they obey? Or would they turn their rifles on their officers? In 1905 they had obeyed orders and shot workers. But since then the Russian people had suffered a decade of tyranny, repression, war, and hunger.
However, there was no trouble, and Grigori and his section returned to barracks that evening without having fired a shot.
On Friday more workers came out on strike.
The tsar was at army headquarters, four hundred miles away at Mogilev. In charge of the city was the commander of the Petrograd Military District, General Khabalov. He decided to keep marchers out of the center by stationing soldiers at the bridges. Grigori’s section was posted close to the barracks, guarding the Liteiny Bridge that led across the Neva River to Liteiny Prospekt. But the water was still frozen solid, and the marchers foiled the army by simply walking across the ice-to the delight of the watching soldiers, most of whom, like Grigori, sympathized with the marchers.
None of the political parties had organized the strike. The Bolsheviks, like the other leftist revolutionary parties, found themselves following rather than leading the working class.
Once again Grigori’s section saw no action, but it was not the same everywhere. When he got back to barracks on Saturday night, he learned that police had attacked demonstrators outside the railway station at the far end of Nevsky Prospekt. Surprisingly, the Cossacks had defended the marchers against the police. Men were talking about the Comrade Cossacks. Grigori was skeptical. The Cossacks had never really been loyal to anyone but themselves, he thought; they just loved a fight.
On Sunday morning Grigori was awakened at five, long before first light. At breakfast there was a rumor that the tsar had instructed General Khabalov to put a stop to strikes and marches using whatever force was necessary. That was an ominous phrase, Grigori thought: whatever force was necessary.
After breakfast the sergeants were given their orders. Each platoon was to guard a different point in the city: not just bridges but intersections, railway stations, and post offices. The pickets would be connected by field telephones. The nation’s capital was to be secured like a captured enemy city. Worst of all, the regiment was to set up machine guns at likely trouble spots.
When Grigori relayed the instructions to his men, they were horrified. Isaak said: “Is the tsar really going to order the army to machine-gun his own people?”
Grigori said: “If he does, will soldiers obey him?”
Grigori’s mounting excitement was paralleled by fear. He was heartened by the strikes, for he knew the Russian people had to defy their rulers. Otherwise the war would drag on, the people would starve, and there was no prospect that Vladimir might live a better life than Grigori and Katerina. It was this conviction that had caused Grigori to join the party. On the other hand, he cherished a secret hope that if soldiers simply refused to obey orders the revolution might go off without too much bloodshed. But when his own regiment was ordered to set up machine-gun emplacements on Petrograd street corners he began to feel that his hope had been foolish.
Was it even possible that the Russian people could ever escape from the tyranny of the tsars? Sometimes it seemed like a pipe dream. Yet other nations had had revolutions, and overthrown their oppressors. Even the English had killed their king once.
Petrograd was like a pan of water on the fire, Grigori thought: there were wisps of steam and a few bubbles of violence, and the surface shimmered with intense heat, but the water seemed to hesitate, and the proverbial watched pot did not boil.
His platoon was sent to the Tauride Palace, the vast summer town house of Catherine II, now home to Russia’s toothless parliament, the Duma. The morning was quiet: even starving people liked to sleep late on Sunday. But the weather continued sunny, and at midday they started to come in from the suburbs, on foot and in streetcars. Some gathered in the large garden of the Tauride Palace. They were not all factory workers, Grigori noticed. There were middle-class men and women, students, and a few prosperous-looking businessmen. Some had brought their children. Were they on a political demonstration, or just going for a walk in the park? Grigori guessed they themselves were not sure.
At the entrance to the palace he saw a well-dressed young man whose handsome face was familiar from photographs in the newspapers, and he recognized the Trudovik deputy Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky. The Trudoviks were a moderate breakaway faction from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Grigori asked him what was going on inside. “The tsar formally dissolved the Duma today,” Kerensky told him.
Grigori shook his head in disgust. “A characteristic reaction,” he said. “Repress those who complain, rather than address their discontents.”
Kerensky looked at him sharply. Perhaps he had not been expecting such an analysis from a soldier. “Quite,” he said. “Anyway, we deputies are ignoring the tsar’s edict.”
“What will happen?”
“Most people think the demonstrations will peter out as soon as the authorities manage to restore the supply of bread,” Kerensky said, and he went inside.
Grigori wondered what made the moderates think that was going to happen. If the authorities were able to restore the supply of bread, would they not have done so, instead of rationing it? But moderates always seemed to deal in hopes rather than facts.
Early in the afternoon Grigori was surprised to see the smiling faces of Katerina and Vladimir. He normally spent Sunday with them, but had assumed he would not see them today. Vladimir looked well and happy, much to Grigori’s relief. Evidently the boy had got over the infection. It was warm enough for Katerina to wear her coat open, showing her voluptuous figure. He wished he could caress her. She smiled at him, making him think of how she would kiss his face as they lay on the bed, and Grigori felt a stab of yearning that was almost unbearable. He hated to miss that Sunday afternoon embrace.
“How did you know I would be here?” he asked her.
“It was a lucky guess.”
“I’m glad to see you, but it’s dangerous for you to be in the city center.”
Katerina looked at the crowds strolling through the park. “It seems safe enough to me.”
Grigori could not dispute that. There was no sign of trouble.
Mother and child went off to walk around the frozen lake. Grigori’s breath caught in his throat as he watched Vladimir toddle away and almost immediately fall over. Katerina picked him up, soothed him, and walked on. They looked so vulnerable. What was going to happen to them?
When they returned, Katerina said she was taking Vladimir home for his nap.
“Go by the back streets,” Grigori said. “Keep away from crowds. I don’t know what might happen.”
“All right,” she said.
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
Grigori saw no bloodshed that day, but at the barracks in the evening he heard a different story from other groups. In Znamenskaya Square soldiers had been ordered to shoot demonstrators, and forty people had died. Grigori felt a cold hand on his heart. Katerina might have been killed just walking along the street!
Others were equally outraged, and in the mess hall feelings were running high. Sensing the mood of the men, Grigori stood on a table and took charge, calling for order and inviting soldiers to speak in turn. Supper turned rapidly into a mass meeting. He called first on Isaak, who was well known as the star of the regimental soccer team.
“I joined the army to kill Germans, not Russians,” Isaak said, and there was a roar of approval. “The marchers are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers-and their only crime is to ask for bread!”
Grigori knew all the Bolsheviks in the regiment, and he called on several of them to speak, but he was careful to point to others too, not to seem overly biased. Normally the men were cautious about expressing their opinions,
