Viktor Kravchenko, Youth in the Red
Kravchenko’s story as the first major defector from the Soviet Union to the West was once well known. There were others who followed his example. But our interest in selecting this passage partly reflects the subtitle of his book regarding his personal life. The various motivations which turned him to communism in his youth are absorbingly articulated: words, ideas, faith, enthusiasm. In a revolutionary setting, all of these increased sharply in meaning and resonance. Kravchenko’s predisposition toward radicalism was also shaped by his father, a worker- agitator, who devoted his life to the revolutionary movement. Taken from Viktor Kravchenko,
Here, for the first time, I came to know an intellectual household, where literature, music and the theater seemed as real and vastly more important than bread and work. The elder Spiridonov steered our avid reading into broader channels, not only among the Russian classics but among the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Anatole France, Knut Hamsun, Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, Dickens.
Looking back, I am amazed by the extent and variety of my reading during that springtime of mental discovery. Somehow the beauty and the pathos of books, along with the exalted hopes of my father, became part of the revolution as it swept over an eleven-year-old boy. It seemed as if in a few weeks the distance between literature and reality, between words and deeds, was being bridged.
The storm clouds burst in the last week of February 1917 (early March in the Western calendar). Even those who had been most certain of its advent were surprised and bewildered. Revolution, which had been an intimate and half-illicit word, was suddenly in the open, a wonderful and terrifying reality.
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What had seemed a simple solution of all problems had exploded into a million new problems, some of them ridiculously petty, like finding food and clothes.
The seams of accustomed life came apart. Schools, factories, public institutions lost their old meanings. The people of our city crowded into the snow-covered streets. It was as if homes and offices and workshops had been turned inside out, dumping their human contents into the squares and parks. Demonstrations, banners, cheering, flaring angers, occasional shooting—and above it all, enveloping it, almost smothering it all, there was talk, talk, talk. Words pent up for centuries broke through in passionate oratory; foolish and inspired, high-pitched and vengeful oratory.
Slogans filled the air and seemed to have a proliferating life of their own.
Platforms grew on the main squares. Speakers followed one another in a loud procession. Men and women who had never spoken above a timid whisper now felt the urge to scream, preach, scold and declaim. Educated men with well-tended beards made way for soldiers and workmen. “Right! Right!” the crowds thundered or “
Once, on a day of demonstrations under a forest of homemade banners, my father spoke from a platform. Everyone seemed to know his name.
“Friends and brothers! Workers, peasants, intellectuals and soldiers!” he began.
It was the first time I had heard him speak in public and I could scarcely contain my excitement. His voice was resonant and he seemed transfigured, so that I had to reassure myself that it was, indeed, my own father. Words and ideas that had been intimately our own, almost a family secret, were miraculously public, so that everyone became part of the family. He told about prison and exile, about the heroic life of Comrade Paramonov, about the beautiful future. He pleaded for order and self-control and warned against those who would drown the revolution in blood. He spoke with marvelous simplicity and sincerity, as if these were his three sons multiplied to hundreds.
When he stepped from the platform and a band played the
“You see, Vitenka,” he said, “now people will be free. It was worth fighting for this!”
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I knew then, or perhaps I only understood later, that he was justifying himself, explaining the years of penury and worry he had visited on his family.
The honeymoon of the revolution, however, soon trailed off into dissensions, accusations, suffering. Enthusiasm gave way to anger and bitterness. Stones, fists, revolver shots were increasingly mixed with the words and arguments. At the same time food became scarcer; wood, coal and kerosene seemed to disappear; some factories worked only intermittently, others closed down altogether. “There’s your revolution! You asked for it!” people, especially the well-dressed people, now muttered.
My father grew more depressed, more silent, with every passing day. He became more irritable than I had ever seen him in the years of danger and sacrifice. When I pressed him for an explanation of the many parties and programs he seemed embarrassed.
“It’s too complex,” he would say. “You’re not old enough to understand. This is a struggle for power. No matter what any party stands for, it will be bad if
Another time, after we had listened to Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Kadets [Constitutional Democrats, K D’s in Russian] and others in the Mining Institute, now the headquarters of the Ekaterinoslav Soviet, he shook his head sadly and said:
“I have been fighting to overthrow Tsarism. For freedom, for plenty, not for violence and vengeance. We should have free elections and many parties. If one party dominates, it’s the end.”
“But what are you, papa? A Menshevik, Bolshevik, a Social Revolutionary or what?”
“None of these, Vitia. Always remember this: that no slogan, no matter how attractive, is any indication of the real policy of any political party once it comes to power.”
The newspapers were shrill with the call to a better life for the country. Poor and backward Russia was at last on the highroad to progress—it only remained for everyone to dig more coal, raise more grain, acquire more culture. I read the invocations as if they were addressed personally to me. Occasionally one of the great new leaders—Petrovsky, Rakovsky or even Lunacharsky —passed through our district. Listening to them, I felt myself
