Who could you trust? No one. In short, our plan for me to dress up like a chorister and blow up the Tsar was found out. Stupid people. Evil snakes. There were spies everywhere, all of whom could be bought for a ruble or two. Or just a jug of samogon-home brew-the worst vodka made from the nastiest of potatoes. The Russian peasant-he was a lazy good-for-nothing, loyal to neither master nor collective, only to liquid spirits, no matter how bad.
It had seemed like such a good plan, to strike right at the heart of the beast-oh, how glorious it would have been if I’d succeeded in blowing up Nicholas the Bloody and his kin in his own home, and right before Christmas, no less! I would have been such a hero, so famous! Why, it would have been like hurling gas on a fire, for that was our goal, not simply to kill or maim but to incite revolution, to spread it fast and furious. And if I’d succeeded it would have done so much good for our cause-the chaos would have spread so quickly, burning and burning, and how the people would have risen up against the oppressors!
But foo…
Some pathetic soul informed on a handful of our comrades, and these men were promptly arrested. Within a matter of days a kind of tribunal was set up, all of ours were found guilty, and that very day, within a few hours, they were hung. All of them.
Of course, following this we searched long and hard for the right target, not merely as revenge but, again, to move the people to action and help them liberate themselves from the chains of the capitalist and tsarist masters. And this target we did not find until the spring of 1906, and he was called Pyotr Stolypin. I actually never saw the man until that fateful day when we took action against him and his, and by then our bloody Tsar had seen fit to make this Stolypin the very top man, some kind of big minister. Some said we chose Stolypin as a target simply because he was so high up-supposedly, the bastard controlled everything from the security forces to the censors and even the passports-while others claimed we needed to get rid of him because his reforms were doing too much good and therefore soothing the masses and making it easier for them to tolerate the Tsar and his money- grubbing hounds. But really, I think, it was because of how many of us he killed. Yes, that was the immediate problem. It was this Stolypin who continued-no, made even bigger-the program of catching and immediately convicting and killing our people. Within a matter of months, thousands of good revolutionaries were hanging and dangling in the wind from Stolypin’s so-called neckties. Because we lost such a lot of comrades and so quickly, too, the call to action came fast. It was either do something or dwindle into dust and blow away, the hopes of the downtrodden forever ruined.
We all knew that to keep the Organization alive we had to get rid of this Stolypin, and I was ordered to return to the capital, and there I was to work as a spy. And this was my duty: to track the comings and goings of this Mr. Minister, who settled not really in Sankt Peterburg but just outside of town in a comfortable country house on Aptekarski Island. I took a job across the lane in another house, nothing special, just minding the garden, but it gave me plenty of time to watch. In this way, I learned and reported the rhythms of the Minister’s house and when he himself, the big sheeshka-pinecone-came and went, as well as who actually lived in the house, who guarded it, and so on. He and his wife and their brood of four children lived in this big wooden dacha with lots of rooms, and there were many servants and lackeys running this way and that, all bowing without end, and there was, too, a pleasant garden out back for them to stroll in and the children to play. There was lots of fresh air, of course, and greenhouses as well. I was told the Minister himself liked this fresh air and plentiful exercise, too. Watching their pretty lives, I couldn’t help remembering how poorly my Shura and I had lived, there in the corner of a basement, four families sharing a kitchen and one filthy toilet, the air so disgusting. There were millions upon millions of comrades who lived like that, too, and yet here was this bourgeois family living so sweetly in the country air, such a good place for the little ones. Yes, while the rest of us suffered in filth and cramped quarters, here was Mr. Minister who was waited on hand and foot by a herd of uniformed lackeys. I was sure that he and his were eating as much meat as they wanted-even as much white bread, when all that the narod-the masses-could afford was black. What pigs. How we suffered so they could live such a nice, fat life.
One of my jobs was to count the number of carriages attached to the house, because they would be useful when the uprising finally came. We could use them for barricades.
It was by my calculation that every Saturday Stolypin stayed at this summer mansion and received all sorts of people, petitioners from all sorts of classes wanting this or that from him. And when I made my report of this we quickly decided that it was on such a Saturday that we would kill him.
“The perfect time for us to get directly into the house,” one of my leaders reported.
There lived with Stolypin an old maid, Annushka, who was not quite right in the head but was devoted to her master. I learned that Stolypin had brought her from his large estate in a distant province. This Annushka was short and ugly and gray, and had been attached to the family forever-she’d been born a serf to them-and though the Emancipation had been long ago, the poor woman didn’t understand that she was free. She would not step one foot beyond the edge of her master’s property. Her only job was to sweep the front steps, and there she stood all day long, sweeping with her twig broom after each and every visitor mounted the steps and entered the house. She swept with such determination that soon she scratched away all the paint and the steps had to be repaired.
Anyway, though Annushka wouldn’t leave her master’s territory, I met her several times at the rear of the garden, there by a wicket fence. I asked of her master, of her master’s beautiful dacha, and she told me many things freely and without hesitation. She was all innocence, that one, and through her I learned that Mr. Minister Stolypin’s study, cloak room, and two reception rooms were all downstairs, off to one side, while off the other way was one parlor and the dining room, the kitchens too. Upstairs were all the bedrooms and a parlor.
“And that’s where my mistress sits, up there in that big window, you see?” Annushka told me with a near- toothless smile. “She sits up there in her parlor and does her needlework. She makes such pretty things, sometimes even aprons for me!”
From where we stood, she pointed to all the windows of the big dacha, telling me where her master worked, where his children played, and generally making sure I understood her household and how it operated. She was very proud to belong to the family, and it was from this simple Annushka’s description that we made our plan-how we would enter the house, where we would find Mr. Minister, and precisely where we should throw the bomb. I begged desperately to do the deed, but was not allowed. My face was already known in the neighborhood, and it was feared I would be blocked from the property altogether. New comrades were needed who could come in disguise and not be recognized.
After much talk, we finally decided on a particular Saturday, and when that day arrived it was warm and sunny. Lots of people came to see the Minister and beg his help. Some were important people with official petitions from banks or other cities, some were ordinary folk with hungry children in tow, even a few priests. By late morning, I had counted almost fifty souls who had entered the house, Annushka sweeping the stoop after each of them passed.
It was about then that I saw our two comrades coming up the lane in an open carriage. They were dressed as policemen, helmets and all. They didn’t look at me, and I pretended not to see them, even though I wanted to cheer them on. Really, it was so exciting. How could they not succeed?
When they turned onto the property of the dacha, a guard immediately stopped the carriage, demanding, “What business do you have here?”
One of our men, a tall, thin comrade who did not look quite comfortable in his police uniform, for it was too small for him, replied, “We have two portfolios to deliver to Mr. Minister Stolypin.”
“Hand them to me and I’ll make sure he receives them,” demanded the guard.
The other comrade, who was shorter and smarter, too, quickly called from the carriage, saying, “We would gladly do so, my friend, but we carry important papers-official government ones at that-and our instructions are to place them only in the hands of Mr. Minister himself.”
With a shrug, the guard, who that morning had already heard so many sad stories from those wanting to get in, thought nothing of it and opened the gate and let the carriage pass. This was all according to plan, and the carriage with our two fake policemen rolled onto the Minister’s property.
But within seconds, just after they had passed through the gate, things started to take a nasty turn. The house was not too far down the drive, but suddenly I heard shouts and saw men running after the carriage. Someone, a soldier, was demanding what kind of police our two men were, where they had come from, who had sent them, and what exactly they were carrying.
“We’re here to deliver two portfolios to Mr. Minister Stolypin, that’s all!” shouted our tall policeman with a
