Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Moscow, 1918
And there is something amazing all around: almost everyone is unusually cheerful for some reason - no matter who you meet on the street, there’s just a radiance emanating from their faces:
- That's enough for you, my friend! In two or three weeks he himself will be ashamed...
Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, stupid), he squeezes his hand and runs on.
Today we have the same meeting again,” Speransky from Russkie Vedomosti. And after that I met an old woman in Merzlyakovsky. She stopped, leaned on the crutch with trembling hands and began to cry:
- Father, take me to your education! Where should we go now? Russia has disappeared, for thirteen years, they say, it has disappeared!
I was at a meeting of the “Book Publishing House of Writers” - great news: the “Constituent Assembly” was dispersed!
About Bryusov: everything is moving to the left, “almost already a full-fledged Bolshevik.” Not surprising. In 1904, he extolled autocracy and demanded (quite Tyutchev!) the immediate capture of Constantinople. In 1905 he appeared with “Dagger” in Gorky’s “Struggle”. From the beginning of the war with the Germans he became a jingoist. Now a Bolshevik.
From the first of February they ordered a new style. So, in their opinion, today is already the eighteenth.
Yesterday I was at the Wednesday meeting. There were a lot of “young people”. Mayakovsky, who, in general, behaved quite decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting the Stoeros directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with the collar of his jacket raised, like poorly shaven individuals who live in bad rooms wear , in the morning to the outhouse.
Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber. Sasha Koiransky said about them:
Ehrenburg howls,
Inber eagerly catches his cry, -
Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg
They will not replace Berdichev.
In the newspapers - about the beginning of the German offensive. Everyone says: “Oh, if only!”
We went to Lubyanka. In some places there are “rallies”. A red-haired man, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with red curly eyebrows, a freshly shaved, powdered face and gold fillings in his mouth, speaks monotonously, as if reading, about the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women intervene vehemently and inappropriately, interrupting the argument (a principled one, as the red-haired man puts it) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, meant to prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers apparently do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything) and shake their heads suspiciously.
A man approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, coming up, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding, not believing anything or anyone. A tall blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chew and look incredulous and gloomy. An evil and cheerful smile, disdain plays on the worker’s face, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.
The lady hastily complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, but now she has dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:
– Who got better from the Bolsheviks? It has become worse for everyone, and first of all for us, the people!
Interrupting her, some oiled bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come, and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.
“Before the Germans come, we will cut you all off,” the worker said coldly and walked away.
The soldiers confirmed: “That’s right!” - and also left.
The same thing was said in another crowd, where another worker and an ensign were arguing. The ensign tried to speak as softly as possible, choosing the most harmless expressions, trying to influence with logic. He was almost ingratiating himself, and yet the worker shouted at him:
– Your brother needs to be silent more, that’s what! There is no need to spread propaganda among the people!
K. says that R. visited them again yesterday. He sat for four hours and all the time mindlessly read someone’s book about magnetic waves that was lying on the table, then he drank tea and ate the bread that they were given. He is by nature meek, quiet and certainly not at all impudent, but now he comes and sits without any conscience, eating all the bread with complete inattention to the owners. A man is falling quickly!
Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan (P.S.) admires. I haven’t read it yet, but I supposedly told its contents to Ehrenburg - and it turned out to be very true. The song is generally simple, but Blok is a stupid person.
From Gorky’s “New Life”:
“From today on, it becomes clear to even the most naive simpleton that there is no need to talk about not only any kind of courage and revolutionary dignity, but even the most basic honesty in relation to the policies of the people’s commissars. Before us is a company of adventurers who, for the sake of their own interests, for the sake of prolonging the agony of their dying autocracy for a few more weeks, are ready for the most shameful betrayal of the interests of their homeland and the revolution, the interests of the Russian proletariat, in whose name they are committing outrages on the vacant throne of the Romanovs.”
From "Power of the People":
“In view of the repeatedly observed and every night repeated cases of beating of those arrested during interrogation in the Council of Workers' Deputies, we ask the Council of People's Commissars to protect them from such hooligan antics and actions...” This is a complaint from Borovichi.
From the Russian Word:
Tambov men from the village of Pokrovskoye drew up a protocol: “On January 30, we, society, pursued two predators, our citizens Nikita Aleksandrovich Bulkin and Adrian Aleksandrovich Kudinov. By agreement of our society, they were pursued and killed at the same time.”
This “society” immediately developed a unique code of punishment for crimes:
– If someone hits someone, the victim must hit the offender ten times.
- If someone hits someone with injury or a broken bone, then the offender will be deprived of his life.
- If anyone commits a theft, or anyone accepts stolen goods, then take his life.
– If someone commits arson and is discovered, then take his life. Soon two thieves were caught red-handed. They were immediately “tried” and sentenced to death. First they killed one: they smashed his head with a steelyard, pierced his side with a pitchfork, and stripped the dead man naked and threw him onto the road. Then they started on another...
You read something like this every day now.
On Petrovka, monks crush ice. Passers-by celebrate and gloat:
- Yeah! Kicked out! Now, brother, they will force you!
In the courtyard of a house on Povarskaya, a soldier in a leather jacket is chopping wood. A passing man stood and looked for a long time, then shook his head and said sadly:
- Oh, so yours! Oh, deserter, so yours! Rossea is missing!
In “Power of the People” the editorial: “The terrible hour has come - Russia and the Revolution are perishing. All in defense of the revolution, which so recently shone so radiantly to the world!” - When she was shining, were your eyes shameless?
In the Russian Word: “The former chief of staff, General Yanushkevich, was killed. He was arrested in Chernigov and, by order of the local revolutionary tribunal, was transported to Petrograd in Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way, the general was accompanied by two Red Guards. One of them killed him with four shots at night when the train was approaching the Oredezh station.”
Something was constantly being destroyed and desecrated in the country. All this points to cynicism historical figures influencing the course of history. They did not always kill, but despite this, Russia periodically found itself knee-deep in blood. And sometimes death was the only deliverance from never-ending suffering.
The life of the population in the renewed Russia was a slow death. Having quickly destroyed values, including religious ones, created over centuries, the revolutionaries did not offer their national, spiritual wealth. But the virus of anarchy and permissiveness was actively developing, infecting everything in its path.
Chapter "Moscow 1918"
The work itself is written in the form of diary notes. This style very colorfully reflects a contemporary’s vision of the current reality. The post-revolutionary period was triumphant on the street, changes were taking place in government activities. Bunin was very worried about his homeland. This is exactly what is reflected in the lines. The author felt pain for the suffering of his people, he felt it himself in his own way.
The first entry in the diary was made in January 18. The author wrote that the damned year is already over, but the people still have no joy. He cannot imagine what awaits Russia next. There is no optimism at all. And those small gaps that do not lead to a bright future do not improve the situation at all.
Bunin notes that after the revolution, bandits were released from prison, who felt the taste of power with their guts. The author notes that having driven the king from the throne, the soldiers became even more cruel and punished everyone, indiscriminately. These hundred thousand people took power over millions. And although not all the people share the views of the revolutionaries, it is not possible to stop the insane machine of power.
Chapter "Impartiality"
Bunin did not hide the fact that he did not like revolutionary changes. At times, the public both in Russia and abroad accused him of the fact that such judgments were very subjective. Many said that only time can indicate impartiality and objectively assess the correctness of revolutionary directions. To such statements, Ivan Alekseevich had one answer: “impartiality actually does not exist, and in general such a concept is incomprehensible, and his statements are directly related to terrible experiences.” Having thus a clear position, the writer did not try to please the public, but described what he saw, heard, and felt as it really is. Bunin noted that the people have every right to individual hatred, anger and condemnation of what is happening around them. After all, it is very easy to just watch what is happening from a distant corner and know that all the cruelty and inhumanity will not reach you.
Once in the thick of things, a person’s opinion changes radically. After all, you don’t know whether you will return alive today, you experience hunger every day, you are thrown out onto the street from your own apartment, and you don’t know where to go. Such physical suffering is not even comparable to mental suffering. A person realizes that his children will never see the homeland that was before. Values, views, principles, beliefs change.
Chapter “Emotions and Feelings”
The plot of the story “Cursed Days,” like the life of that time, is filled with devastation, facts of depression and intolerance. The lines and thoughts are presented in such a way that a person, after reading them, sees in all the dark colors not only negative aspects, but also positive. The author notes that dark pictures that do not have any bright colors, are perceived much more emotionally and sink deeper into the soul.
The revolution itself and the Bolsheviks, who are placed on snow-white snow, are represented as black ink. Such a contrast is painfully beautiful, at the same time causing disgust and fear. Against this background, people begin to believe that sooner or later there will be someone who can defeat the destroyer of human souls.
Chapter "Contemporaries"
The book contains a lot of information about Ivan Alekseevich’s contemporaries. Here he gives his statements and thoughts about Blok, Mayakovsky, Tikhonov and many other literary figures of that time. Most often, he condemns writers for their incorrect (in his opinion) views. Bunin cannot forgive them for bowing to the new usurper government. The author does not understand what kind of honest business can be conducted with the Bolsheviks.
He notes that Russian writers, on the one hand, are trying to fight, calling the government adventurist, betraying their views common people. On the other hand, they live as before, with Lenin posters hung on the walls and are constantly under the control of security organized by the Bolsheviks.
Some of his contemporaries openly declared that they intended to join the Bolsheviks themselves, and they did. Bunin considers them stupid people who previously exalted autocracy, and now adhere to Bolshevism. Such dashes create a kind of fence from under which it is almost impossible for people to get out.
Chapter "Lenin"
It should be noted that the image of Lenin is described in a special way. It is imbued with strong hatred, although the author did not particularly skimp on all kinds of epithets addressed to the leader. He called him insignificant, a swindler, and even an animal. Bunin notes that various leaflets were hung around the city many times, describing Lenin as a scoundrel, a traitor who was bribed by the Germans. Bunin doesn’t really believe these rumors and considers people. Those who hung up such advertisements were simple fanatics, obsessed beyond the bounds of reason, standing on the pedestal of their adoration. The writer notes that such people never stop and always go to the end, no matter what the disastrous outcome of events.
Bunin special attention focuses on Lenin as a person. He writes that Lenin was afraid of everything like fire; he imagined conspiracies against him everywhere. He was very worried that he would lose power or life and until recently did not believe that there would be victory in October.
Chapter “Russian Bacchanalia”
In his work, Ivan Alekseevich gives the answer to why such nonsense arose among the people. He relies on the well-known works of world critics at that time - Kostomarov and Solovyov. The story gives clear answers to the causes of fluctuations spiritual plan among the people. The author notes that Russia is a typical brawler state.
Bunin presents the reader with the people as a society constantly thirsting for justice, as well as change and equality. People who want better life, periodically stood under the banners of impostor kings who had only selfish goals.
Although the people were of the most diverse social orientation, by the end of the bacchanalia only thieves and lazy people remained. It became completely unimportant what goals were set initially. The fact that previously everyone wanted to create a new and fair order was suddenly forgotten. The author says that ideas disappear over time, and only various slogans remain to justify the resulting chaos.
The work created by Bunin described facts from the writer’s life until January 1920. It was at this time that Bunin, together with his family members, was fleeing from new government in Odessa. Here part of the diary was lost without a trace. That is why the story ends at this stage.
In conclusion, it is worth noting the exceptional words about the Russian people. Bunin had immense respect for his people, as he was always connected by invisible threads with his homeland, with his fatherland. The writer said that in Russia there are two types of people. The first is dominance, and the second is weird fanatics. Each of these species can have a changeable character, changing their views many times.
Many critics believed that Bunin did not understand and did not love people, but this is absolutely not true. The anger arising in the writer’s soul was directed at dislike for the people’s suffering. And the reluctance to idealize the life of Russia during the period of revolutionary changes makes Bunin’s works not only literary masterpieces, but also historical information sources.
Moscow, 1918
January 1 (old style).
And there is something amazing all around: almost everyone is unusually cheerful for some reason - no matter who you meet on the street, there’s just a radiance emanating from their faces:
- That's enough for you, my friend! In two or three weeks he himself will be ashamed...
Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, stupid), he squeezes his hand and runs on.
Today we have the same meeting again,” Speransky from Russkie Vedomosti. And after that I met an old woman in Merzlyakovsky. She stopped, leaned on the crutch with trembling hands and began to cry:
- Father, take me to your education! Where should we go now? Russia has disappeared, for thirteen years, they say, it has disappeared!
January 7.
I was at a meeting of the “Book Publishing House of Writers” - great news: the “Constituent Assembly” was dispersed!
About Bryusov: everything is moving to the left, “almost already a full-fledged Bolshevik.” Not surprising. In 1904, he extolled autocracy and demanded (quite Tyutchev!) the immediate capture of Constantinople. In 1905 he appeared with “Dagger” in Gorky’s “Struggle”. From the beginning of the war with the Germans he became a jingoist. Now a Bolshevik.
February 5th.
From the first of February they ordered a new style. So, in their opinion, today is already the eighteenth.
Yesterday I was at the Wednesday meeting. There were a lot of “young people”. Mayakovsky, who, in general, behaved quite decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting the Stoeros directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with the collar of his jacket raised, like poorly shaven individuals who live in bad rooms wear , in the morning to the outhouse.
Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber. Sasha Koiransky said about them:
Ehrenburg howls,
Inber eagerly catches his cry, -
Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg
They will not replace Berdichev.
February 6.
In the newspapers - about the beginning of the German offensive. Everyone says: “Oh, if only!”
We went to Lubyanka. In some places there are “rallies”. A red-haired man, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with red curly eyebrows, a freshly shaved, powdered face and gold fillings in his mouth, speaks monotonously, as if reading, about the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women intervene vehemently and inappropriately, interrupting the argument (a principled one, as the red-haired man puts it) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, meant to prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers apparently do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything) and shake their heads suspiciously.
A man approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, coming up, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding, not believing anything or anyone. A tall blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chew and look incredulous and gloomy. An evil and cheerful smile, disdain plays on the worker’s face, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.
The lady hastily complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, but now she has dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:
– Who got better from the Bolsheviks? It has become worse for everyone, and first of all for us, the people!
Interrupting her, some oiled bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come, and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.
“Before the Germans come, we will cut you all off,” the worker said coldly and walked away.
The soldiers confirmed: “That’s right!” - and also left.
The same thing was said in another crowd, where another worker and an ensign were arguing. The ensign tried to speak as softly as possible, choosing the most harmless expressions, trying to influence with logic. He was almost ingratiating himself, and yet the worker shouted at him:
– Your brother needs to be silent more, that’s what! There is no need to spread propaganda among the people!
K. says that R. visited them again yesterday. He sat for four hours and all the time mindlessly read someone’s book about magnetic waves that was lying on the table, then he drank tea and ate the bread that they were given. He is by nature meek, quiet and certainly not at all impudent, but now he comes and sits without any conscience, eating all the bread with complete inattention to the owners. A man is falling quickly!
Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan (P.S.) admires. I haven’t read it yet, but I supposedly told its contents to Ehrenburg - and it turned out to be very true. The song is generally simple, but Blok is a stupid person.
From Gorky’s “New Life”:
“From today on, it becomes clear to even the most naive simpleton that there is no need to talk about not only any kind of courage and revolutionary dignity, but even the most basic honesty in relation to the policies of the people’s commissars. Before us is a company of adventurers who, for the sake of their own interests, for the sake of prolonging the agony of their dying autocracy for a few more weeks, are ready for the most shameful betrayal of the interests of their homeland and the revolution, the interests of the Russian proletariat, in whose name they are committing outrages on the vacant throne of the Romanovs.”
From "Power of the People":
“In view of the repeatedly observed and every night repeated cases of beating of those arrested during interrogation in the Council of Workers' Deputies, we ask the Council of People's Commissars to protect them from such hooligan antics and actions...” This is a complaint from Borovichi.
From the Russian Word:
Tambov men from the village of Pokrovskoye drew up a protocol: “On January 30, we, society, pursued two predators, our citizens Nikita Aleksandrovich Bulkin and Adrian Aleksandrovich Kudinov. By agreement of our society, they were pursued and killed at the same time.”
This “society” immediately developed a unique code of punishment for crimes:
– If someone hits someone, the victim must hit the offender ten times.
- If someone hits someone with injury or a broken bone, then the offender will be deprived of his life.
- If anyone commits a theft, or anyone accepts stolen goods, then take his life.
– If someone commits arson and is discovered, then take his life. Soon two thieves were caught red-handed. They were immediately “tried” and sentenced to death. First they killed one: they smashed his head with a steelyard, pierced his side with a pitchfork, and stripped the dead man naked and threw him onto the road. Then they started on another...
You read something like this every day now.
On Petrovka, monks crush ice. Passers-by celebrate and gloat:
- Yeah! Kicked out! Now, brother, they will force you!
In the courtyard of a house on Povarskaya, a soldier in a leather jacket is chopping wood. A passing man stood and looked for a long time, then shook his head and said sadly:
- Oh, so yours! Oh, deserter, so yours! Rossea is missing!
February 7.
In “Power of the People” the editorial: “The terrible hour has come - Russia and the Revolution are perishing. All in defense of the revolution, which so recently shone so radiantly to the world!” - When she was shining, were your eyes shameless?
In the Russian Word: “The former chief of staff, General Yanushkevich, was killed. He was arrested in Chernigov and, by order of the local revolutionary tribunal, was transported to Petrograd to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way, the general was accompanied by two Red Guards. One of them killed him with four shots at night when the train was approaching the Oredezh station.”
The snow is still shiny like winter, but the sky turns bright blue, like spring, through the cloudy shining vapors.
A poster about Yavorskaya’s benefit performance is pasted up on Strastnaya. A fat pink-red woman, angry and impudent, said:
- Look, they’re putting it up! Who will wash the walls? And the bourgeoisie will go to the theaters. We don't go here. Everyone is afraid of the Germans - they will come, they will come, but somehow they don’t come!
A lady is walking along Tverskaya in pince-nez, a soldier's sheepskin hat, a red plush jacket, a torn skirt and absolutely terrible galoshes.
Many ladies, students and officers stand on street corners, selling something.
A young officer entered the tram car and, blushing, said that he “unfortunately cannot pay for the ticket.”
Before evening. On Red Square, the low sun and the mirror-like, beaten snow are blinding. It's freezing. We went to the Kremlin. There is a month in the sky and pink clouds. Silence, huge drifts of snow. Near the artillery warehouse, a soldier in a sheepskin coat, with a face as if carved out of wood, creaks with his felt boots. How unnecessary this guard seems now.
They left the Kremlin - they ran and the boys shouted with delight, with unnatural accents:
– Capture of Mogilev by German troops!
February 8.
Andrei (brother Yuli's servant) is becoming more and more crazy, even scary.
He has been serving for almost twenty years and has always been invariably simple, sweet, reasonable, polite, and cordial to us. Now I'm definitely crazy. He still serves carefully, but apparently through force, he cannot look at us, he avoids talking to us, he trembles all inwardly with anger, and when he cannot stand the silence, he abruptly utters some mysterious nonsense.
This morning, when we were with Yuli, N.N. spoke, as always, that everything was lost, that Russia was flying into the abyss. Andrey, who was putting the tea set on the table, suddenly had his hands jumping and his face filled with fire:
- Yes, yes, it’s flying, it’s flying! And who is to blame, who? Bourgeoisie! And you will see how they will cut it, you will see! Remember then your General Alekseev!
Julius asked:
- Yes, you, Andrey, at least once really explain why you hate him most of all?
Andrey, without looking at us, whispered:
– I have nothing to explain... You yourself must understand...
“But a week ago you stood up for him with all his might.” What happened?
- What's happened? But wait, you understand...
D. arrived and fled from Simferopol. There, he says, there is “indescribable horror,” soldiers and workers “walk knee-deep in blood.” Some old colonel was roasted alive in a locomotive firebox.
February 9.
Yesterday we were at B. Quite a crowd gathered - and all with one voice: the Germans, thank God, are advancing, they took Smolensk and Bologoe.
I went to the city in the morning.
Crowd on Strastnaya.
He came up and listened. A lady with a muff on her hand, a woman with an upturned nose. The lady speaks hastily, blushes with excitement, and gets confused.
“This is not a stone for me at all,” the lady says hastily, “this monastery is a sacred temple for me, and you are trying to prove...
“I have no need to try,” the woman interrupts impudently, “for you it is consecrated, but for us it is stone and stone!” We know! We saw it in Vladimir! The painter took the board, smeared it on it, and there you have God. Well, pray to him yourself.
“After that, I don’t want to talk to you.”
- Don’t say it!
A yellow-toothed old man with gray stubble on his cheeks argues with a worker:
“Of course, you have nothing left now, neither God nor conscience,” says the old man.
- Yes, there are none left.
“You shot five civilians over there.”
- Look! How have you been shooting for three hundred years?
On Tverskaya, a pale old general in silver glasses and a black hat is selling something, standing timidly, modestly, like a beggar...
How amazingly quickly everyone gave up and lost heart!
Rumors about some Polish legions that are also supposedly coming to save us. By the way, why exactly “legion”? What an abundance of new and increasingly pompous words! Everything is a game, a farce, a “high” style, a pompous lie...
The wives of all these S.S., holed up in the Kremlin, are now talking on different direct wires just like on their home phones.
February 10.
“Peace, peace, but no peace. Among My people are the wicked; They keep watch like bird catchers, crouch to the ground, set traps and catch people. And My people love it. Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring destruction upon this people, the fruit of their thoughts.”
This is from Jeremiah - I've been reading the Bible all morning. Amazing. And especially the breakdown: “And My people love this... behold, I will bring destruction upon this people, the fruit of their thoughts.”
Then I read the proofs of my “Village” for Gorky’s publishing house “Parus”. The devil has connected me with this establishment! But “Village” is still an extraordinary thing. But only available those who know Russia. Who knows?
Then I looked through (also for “Sail”) my poems for the year 16.
The owner died, the house is full,
Vitriol blooms on the glass,
The barn is overgrown with nettles,
The brewhouse, long empty, is open,
And manure smokes through the barns...
Heat, suffering... Where is it flying?
A stray dog passing through the estate?
I wrote this in the summer of 16, sitting in Vasilyevskoye, anticipating what in those days was probably foreseen by many who lived in the village, close to the people.
Last summer this came true in full:
The rye is burning, the grain is flowing,
And who will reap and knit?
Here the smoke is pouring out, the alarm is ringing,
But who will decide to fill it?
Here comes the demon-possessed army
And, like Mamai, he will pass through all of Rus'...
I still don’t understand how we decided to spend the entire summer of ’17 in the village and how and why our heads survived!
“The time has not yet come to understand the Russian revolution impartially, objectively...” You hear this now every minute. Impartially! But there will never be real impartiality. And most importantly: our “bias” will be very, very dear to the future historian. Is the “passion” of only the “revolutionary people” important? Well, aren’t we people?
In the evening on Wednesday. I read Auslander - something extremely wretched, like Oscar Wilde. All sort of dead, with dried out dark eyes, on which there is a golden reflection, like on dried linden ink.
The Germans allegedly do not go as they usually do in war, fighting, conquering, but “simply ride along railway"- occupy St. Petersburg. And this will happen in 48 hours, no more, no less.
There is an article in Izvestia where the Soviets are compared with Kutuzov. The world has never seen more brazen swindlers.
February 14.
Carries warm snow.
There is hell on the tram, clouds of soldiers with bags - fleeing from Moscow, fearing that they will be sent to defend St. Petersburg from the Germans.
Everyone is sure that the occupation of Russia by the Germans has already begun. The people also talk about this: “Well, the German will come and restore order.”
As always, there are a terrible number of people near the cinemas, eagerly looking at the posters. In the evenings, cinemas are simply jammed. And so on all winter.
At the Nikitsky Gate, a cab driver collided with a car and crushed its wing. The cab driver, a red-bearded giant, was completely at a loss:
- Forgive me, for God’s sake, I bow at your feet!
The driver, pockmarked, sallow, strict, but merciful:
- Why at your feet? You are a working person like me. Just make sure you don’t get caught by me next time!
He feels like a boss, and for good reason. New gentlemen.
Newspapers with white columns – censorship. Muralov “dropped out” from Moscow.
A cab driver near “Prague” with joy and laughter:
- Well, let him come. He, a German, had fallen in with us before anyway. There, they say, he arrested thirty of the main Jews. What do we need? We are a dark people. Tell one “touch”, and then everyone else will follow.
February 15.
After yesterday evening's news that St. Petersburg has already been taken by the Germans, the newspapers are very disappointed. All the same calls to “stand up as one to fight the German White Guards.”
Lunacharsky calls on even high school students to enroll in the Red Guard, “to fight the Hindenburg.”
So, we are giving the Germans 35 provinces, worth millions of guns, armored cars, trains, shells...
It's blowing with wet snow again. The schoolgirls walk surrounded by it - beauty and joy. One was especially beautiful - lovely blue eyes from behind a fur muff raised to her face... What awaits this youth?
By evening, everything is lit by the sun like spring. In the west the clouds are golden. Puddles and not yet melted white, soft snow.
February 16.
Last night at T. The conversation, of course, was all about the same thing - about what’s going on. Everyone was horrified, only Shmelev did not give up, he kept exclaiming:
– No, I believe in the Russian people!
I've been wandering around the city all morning today. A conversation between two passing soldiers, cheerful and cheerful:
- Moscow, brother, is not worth it now.
- Now the province is not... worth it.
- Well, the German will come and restore order.
- Certainly. We don't use power anyway. Everywhere there are only horned ones.
“If it weren’t for the horned ones, you and I would now be rotting in the trenches...
In Belov’s store, a young soldier with a drunken, well-fed face offered fifty pounds of butter and said loudly:
“We have nothing to be ashamed of now.” Our current commander-in-chief, Muralov, is a soldier like me, and the other day he drank twenty thousand of the king’s money.
Twenty thousand! Probably an enthusiastic creation of boorish fantasy. Although who knows, maybe it’s true.
At four o'clock in the Art Circle there is a meeting of journalists - “to develop a protest against Bolshevik censorship.” Melgunov presided. Kuskova called for no newspapers to be published at all as a sign of protest. Just think how scary this will be for the Bolsheviks! Then everyone ardently assured each other that the Bolsheviks were living their last hours. They are already taking their families out of Moscow. Fritsche, for example, has already taken it out.
They talked about Salikovsky:
- Yes, just think! And he was a lousy journalist, but this ridiculous Rada, and Salikovsky, the Kiev governor-general!
We returned with Chirikov. He has the most reliable and up-to-date information: General Kamenev shot himself; on Povarskaya - the main German headquarters; it is very dangerous to live on it, because there will be the hottest battle; the Bolsheviks work in contact with monarchists and merchant leaders; in agreement with Mirbakh, it was decided to elect Samarin to the kingdom... With whom, in this case, will there be a hot battle?
At night. Having said goodbye to Chirikov, he met on Povarskaya a soldier’s boy, ragged, skinny, disgusting and completely drunk. He poked his muzzle into my chest and, staggering back, spat on me and said:
- Despot, son of a bitch!
Now I’m sitting and sorting out my manuscripts and notes - it’s time to get ready for the south - and I’m just finding some evidence of my “despotism”. Here is a note from February 22, 15:
– Our maid Tanya apparently loves to read. Taking out a basket with tattered drafts from under my desk, he selects some, folds them, and reads them in his free moment—slowly, with a quiet smile on his face. And he’s afraid to ask me for a book, he’s embarrassed... How cruel, disgusting we live!
Here is the winter of 16 in Vasilievsky:
– Late evening, I’m sitting and reading in the office, in an old calm chair, in warmth and comfort, near a wonderful old lamp. Marya Petrovna enters and hands over a crumpled envelope of dirty gray paper:
- Asks for more. The people have become completely shameless.
As always, on the envelope it was written in a jaunty way in purple ink by the hand of an Izmalkovo telegraph operator: “Pay the messenger 70 kopecks.” And, as always, with a pencil and very roughly, the number seven is corrected to eight, corrected by the boy of this very “special one,” that is, the Izmalkov woman Makhotochka, who brings us telegrams. I get up and walk through the dark living room and dark hall into the hallway. In the hallway, spreading the strong smell of a sheepskin coat, mixed with the smell of a hut, stands a small woman, wrapped in a frosty shawl, with a whip in her hand.
- Makhotochka, did you charge it for delivery again? And are you asking for more?
“Master,” Makhotochka answers, in a wooden voice from the frost, “look at the road.” Bump on the bump. My whole soul was knocked out. Again, shame, it’s cold, my knees are a couple of sore. After all, twenty miles there and back...
I shake my head reproachfully, then hand Makhotochka a ruble. Walking back through the living room, I look out the windows: the icy month-long night is shining on the snowy yard. And immediately a vast bright field appears, a shiny bumpy road, frozen sledges pounding on it, a shallowly running side-sided horse, all overgrown with frost, with large eyelashes gray from frost... What is Makhotochka thinking about, shrinking from the cold and fiery wind, leaning on her side? in the front corner?
In the office I tear up the telegram: “Together with the whole of Strelna we drink the glory and pride of Russian literature!” This is why Makhotochka bumped into potholes for twenty miles.
February 17.
“I can’t imagine,” said A.A. Yablonovsky, - I can’t imagine Hohenzollern’s signature next to Bronstein’s signature!
Today I was at Zubov’s house (on Povarskaya). There Kolya is sorting out some books. It’s completely spring, very bright from the snow and the sun - in the branches of the birch trees, blue-blue, the sky is especially good.
At half past five on Arbat Square, bathed in bright sunshine, crowds of people are tearing “Evening News” from the hands of newspapermen: peace has been signed!
I called “Power of the People”: is it true that it’s signed? They answer that they just called Izvestia and that they gave a firm answer: yes, it is signed.
So you have “I can’t imagine.”
February 18.
In the morning there is a meeting at the Book Publishing House of Writers. Before the start of the meeting, I criticized the Bolsheviks with the very last words. Klestov-Angarsky - he is already some kind of commissar - not a word.
Someone has put up posters on the walls of houses incriminating Trotsky and Lenin in connection with the Germans, that they were bribed by the Germans. I ask Klestov:
- Well, how much exactly did these scoundrels get?
“Don’t worry,” he answered with a dull grin, “pretty much... Around the city.” common voice:
– The peace was signed by Russia, the Germans refused to sign... Stupid self-consolation.
By evening, the crosses of the churches glowed with matte pink gold.
February 19.
Kogan told me about Steinberg, the Commissioner of Justice: an Old Testament, devout Jew, does not eat treif, sacredly honors the Sabbath... Then about Blok: he is now in Moscow, a passionate Bolshevik, Lunacharsky’s personal secretary. Kogan's wife with emotion:
– But don’t judge him harshly! After all, he is completely, completely a child!
At five o'clock in the evening I learned that drunken soldiers had thrown a bomb at the Economic Society of Officers on Vozdvizhenka. They say that either sixty or eighty people were killed.
I read the “resolution” just brought from Sevastopol, passed by the crew of the battleship “Free Russia”. Absolutely wonderful piece:
- To everyone, everyone and abroad of Sevastopol, aimlessly shooting in a bad way!
“Comrades, you will end up shooting to your death, soon there will be nothing to shoot at the target, you will shoot everything and sit on the beans, and then you, my dears, will be taken away empty-handed.”
– Comrades, the bourgeoisie is swallowing those who are now lying in coffins and graves. You, traitors, shooters, by wasting cartridges, help her and the others to swallow. We call on all comrades to join you and ban everyone with a horse's head.
“Comrades, let’s make sure from now on that every shot tells us: “One bourgeois, one socialist is no longer alive!” Every bullet we fire must fly into the thick belly; it must not foam the water in the bay.
- Comrades, take care of your cartridges better than your eyes. You can still live with one eye, but you can’t live without cartridges.
“If shooting resumes in the city and the bay at the next funeral, remember that we, the sailors of the battleship Free Russia, will fire once, and then don’t blame us if everyone’s eardrums and glass in the windows burst.”
- So, comrades, there will be no more empty, bad shooting in Sevastopol, there will be only business shooting - at the counter-revolution and the bourgeoisie, and not through water and air, without which no one can live for a minute!
February 20.
I went to Nikolaevsky station.
Very, even too sunny and slightly frosty. From the mountain beyond the Myasnitsky Gate - a bluish distance, piles of houses, golden domes of churches. Ah, Moscow! The square in front of the station is melting, the whole square glitters with gold and mirrors. Heavy and strong type of dray carts with boxes. Is there really an end to all this power and excess? A lot of men, soldiers in different overcoats and with different weapons - some with a saber on their side, some with a rifle, some with a huge revolver at their belts. Now the owners of all this, the heirs of this colossal inheritance - they...
There is, of course, a crush on the tram.
Two old women furiously scold the “government”:
“They give it to you, close their eyes, about an eighth of crackers, I’m guessing they’ve been lying around for a year, if you chew it, it stinks, your soul is on fire!”
Next to them is a man, listening stupidly, looking stupidly, smiling strangely, deadly, idiotically. The dirty rags of a white Manchu coat hung over her brown face. The eyes are white.
And among all the others, sitting and standing, towering over everyone by a whole head, stands a military giant in a magnificent gray overcoat, tightly tied with a good belt, in a gray round military cap, like Alexander the Third wore. He is all large, purebred, with a shiny brown beard like a shovel, and holds the Gospel in his gloved hand. A complete stranger to everyone, the last Mohican.
On the way back, the street going straight into the sun is blinding. Suddenly everyone stands up and looks: a scene of ancient Moscow, a painting by Surikov: a crowd of men and women in sheepskin coats, surrounding a man in a rye-bread-colored jacket and a red calfskin cap, who is hastily unharnessing a horse lying and struggling on the pavement; huge sledges filled with straw, the shafts of which she disgracefully twisted as she fell, climbed onto the sidewalk. The man screams with all his guts: “Guys, knock me down!” But no one touches.
We left at six. We met M. He said that he had just heard that the Kremlin was being mined and that they wanted to blow it up when the Germans arrived. At that time I was just looking at the amazing green sky above the Kremlin, at the old gold of its ancient domes... The Grand Dukes, the tower, Spas-on-Boru, the Archangel Cathedral - how everything is dear, blood and only now properly felt and understood! Explode? Anything is possible. Now everything is possible.
Rumors that in two weeks there will be a monarchy and a government of Adrianov, Sandetsky and Mishchenko; all the best hotels are being prepared for the Germans.
The Social Revolutionaries are allegedly preparing an uprising. The soldiers seem to be on their side.
February 21.
There was Kamenskaya. They are being evicted, like hundreds of others. The deadline is only 48 hours, and their apartment cannot be assembled in a week.
Met Speransky. He says that, according to Russkiye Vedomosti, a German commission is going to St. Petersburg to count the losses caused to German citizens, and that there will be German police in St. Petersburg; there will also be German police in Moscow and there is already a German headquarters; Lenin is in Moscow, sitting in the Kremlin, which is why the Kremlin has been declared under a state of siege.
February 22.
In the morning there is a sad job: we select books - what to keep, what to sell (I collect money for departure).
Julia from “Power of the People” was given “the most accurate information”: St. Petersburg was declared a free city; Lunacharsky is appointed mayor. (City Governor Lunacharsky!) Then: tomorrow Moscow banks are handed over to the Germans; The German offensive continues... In general, the devil will break his leg!
In the evening at Bolshoi Theater. The streets, as always now, are in darkness, but in the squares in front of the theater there are several lanterns, which make the darkness of the sky even thicker. The façade of the theater is dark, funereal-sad; the carriages and cars, as before, are no longer in front of it. The inside is empty, only some boxes are occupied. A Jew with a brown bald head, with a gray beard trimmed on his cheeks and wearing gold glasses, kept patting his daughter on the backside, a girl in a blue dress who looked like a black ram, who was sitting on the barrier. They said that this was some kind of “emissary”.
When we left the theater, between the columns there was a black-blue sky, two or three foggy blue spots of stars, and a sharp cold breeze. It's scary to drive. Nikitskaya without lights, grave-dark, black houses rise in the dark green sky, seem very large, stand out somehow in a new way. There are almost no passers-by, and those who walk are almost running.
What the Middle Ages! Then at least everyone was armed, the houses were almost impregnable.
On the corner of Povarskaya and Merzlyakovsky there are two soldiers with guns. Guards or robbers? Both.
February 23.
“Bourgeois newspapers” began to appear again—with large empty spaces.
We met K. “The Germans will be in Moscow in a few days. But it’s scary: they say they will send Russians to the front against the allies.” Yes, everything is the same. And still the same anxious, tedious, unresolved waiting.
We all talk about where to go. I visited Yuli in the evening and came under fire while returning home. They were frantically firing rifles from somewhere above Povarskaya.
P. had polishers. One with black greasy hair, bent, in a burgundy shirt, the other with pockmarks, wildly curly hair. They danced, shook their hair, their faces were shiny, their foreheads were sweaty. We ask:
- Well, what do you say, gentlemen, is it nice?
- What can you say? Everything is bad.
“God knows,” said the curly man. - We are a dark people. What do we know? I can barely read, but he is completely blind. What will happen? That’s what will happen: they let criminals out of prison, so they rule us, but we shouldn’t let them out, but they should have been shot with a filthy gun a long time ago. The king was imprisoned, but nothing like this happened with him. And now you can’t fight these Bolsheviks. The people have weakened. I can’t slaughter chickens, but I could very easily kill them. The people have weakened. There are only a hundred thousand of them, but there are so many millions of us and we can’t do anything. Now if only they would open the breech, they would give us freedom, we would take them all out of their apartments piece by piece.
“They’re all Jews there,” said the black one.
- And the Poles, too. He and Lenin, they say, are not real - they killed him long ago, the real one.
– What do you think about peace with the Germans?
- This world will not exist. This will stop soon. And the Poles will be ours again. The main thing is that there is no bread. Yesterday he bought himself a crumpet for three rubles, and I just slurped the empty soup...
February 24.
The other day I bought a pound of tobacco and, to keep it from drying out, hung it on a string between the frames, between the vents. Window to the courtyard. This morning at six in the morning there was something banging on the glass. I jumped up and saw: there was a stone on the floor, the glass was broken, there was no tobacco, and someone was running away from the window. Robbery everywhere!
Cirrus clouds, sometimes sunshine, blue patches of puddles...
In the house opposite us there is a prayer service, they brought the icon of “Unexpected Joy”, the priests are singing. It seems very strange now. And very touching. Many were crying.
Again they insist that there are many monarchists among the Bolsheviks and that in general all this Bolshevism is designed to restore the monarchy. Again nonsense, invented, of course, by the Bolsheviks themselves.
Savich and Alekseev are supposedly now in Pskov, “forming a government.”
Calls the “Power of the People” station: give me 60-42. They connect. But the phone turns out to be busy - and “Power of the People” unexpectedly overhears someone’s conversation with the Kremlin:
“I have fifteen officers and adjutant Kaledin.” What to do?
- Shoot immediately.
About anarchists: they seem to be unusually cheerful and kind people; the Bolshevik “Council” is very afraid of them; The head is Barmash, a completely crazy Caucasian.
In Sevastopol, the “chitaman” of the sailors is a certain Rivkin, an arshin tall, with a tufted beard; participated in many robberies and murders; “a man of the most tender soul.”
Many people now always pretend that they have information that no one else has.
Adrianov, the former Moscow mayor, was allegedly seen in Filippov’s coffee shop. He is supposedly one of the most important secret advisers in the “Council of Workers’ Deputies”.
February 25.
Yurka Sablin, commander of the troops! A twenty-year-old boy, an expert in kakuoku, sweet-looking...
Bunin began writing his “Cursed Days” in 1918, in Moscow, and finished it in 1920, in Odessa. In general, this diary entries(which is confirmed by a comparison of the records of the Odessa period - Bunin and his wife, Vera Muromtseva-Bunina: the same events, meetings were described, that is, the basis is purely documentary), which the author subsequently processed a little, and in 1925-27. partially published in the Parisian emigrant newspaper "Renaissance". They were published in full, as a separate edition, in 1936. In the USSR, “Cursed Days” were completely banned, which is why people liked to read them from time to time on Radio Liberty, choosing percussive fragments.
Bunin I. A. Damned days
St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, Team A, 2014. - 288 p. - (Lenizdat-classics). - ISBN 978-5-4453-0648-1.
And it was difficult to choose, because “Cursed Days” is simply saturated with hatred towards Soviet power, to Bolshevism, communism and to the masses in general.
The revolution ruined Bunin's life. Literally - by 1917, Bunin was one person, a famous Russian writer (one of the five best contemporary writers), an honorary academician St. Petersburg Academy Sciences, a wealthy and free 47-year-old man who rightfully takes his place and is happy with it. Three years later, 50-year-old Bunin emigrated (essentially, fled) from Russia forever.
“Cursed Days” describes, as they say, a transition period in real time - stability and prosperity are replaced by lawlessness and poverty, the foundations of the old government - by a chaotic new order; gradually, one after another, hopes for a quick return to the old good life. The realization that Soviet power has come for a long time is superimposed on all the new outrages and crimes (in Bunin’s understanding) of this power. The world is collapsing. Traditions are breaking, the new - blood-red, ruthless and disgustingly senseless - is coming.
If you look through Bunin’s eyes, and this happens without any particular problems, given his literary talent, undeniable ability to observe and notice the details of life, then Bunin’s hatred for the various leaders of the Revolution who ruined his life is understandable. In general, he does not mince words. For him, Lenin is a “planetary villain”, “a mad and cunning maniac”, “a degenerate, a moral idiot from birth.”
Well, the leaders are understandable, the executors are security officers, commissars who rose “from rags to riches”, it is also understandable - however, Bunin abundantly pours out hatred towards the people as a whole, and already at some biological level: “Voices from the womb, primitive. The women’s faces are Chuvash, Mordovian, the men’s faces are all customized, criminal, others are directly Sakhalin.” “And how many faces are pale, high-cheeked, with strikingly asymmetrical features among... the Russian common people - how many of them, these atavistic individuals, steeply implicated in Mongolian atavism! All, Muroma, White-eyed Chud...” Unalloyed hatred of the “boor.”
The intensity of hatred in “Cursed Days” surprised even those who, to put it mildly, did not like the Bolsheviks. A good illustration of this surprise is the words of Bunin’s mistress Galina Kuznetsova, who wrote in her Grasse Diary: “Ivan Alekseevich ... gave his “Cursed Days.” How heavy is this diary!! No matter how right he is, it’s hard to accumulate anger, rage, and rage at times.” Zinaida Gippius also did not like either the Bolsheviks or the Soviet regime, and her diaries are evil, but there is a huge distance between this anger and Bunin’s hatred.
The easiest way would be to explain such Bunin passages by the well-known excessive emotionality, hypersensitivity of Bunin, for whom the world is always dualistic, and on the side of good is exclusively what is in at the moment Bunin likes it. And everything else is evil. Bunin repeatedly wrote about himself that he perceives people not with his mind, but with his gut, and not only people, but also all sorts of phenomena and their manifestations, for example, being present at a rally organized by the Odessa Bolsheviks for some reason, Bunin perceives what is happening in details - visual, sonically, the red color of posters and flags makes him - physically - sick. All this, of course, played a role, but something else is important.
Bunin, in general, did not idealize the people even before the Revolution - he constantly visited “his” village, communicated with peasants, and in 1917 too, and had no illusions about them; on the contrary, he more than once said that Russian intellectuals At first they themselves created the mythical image of a “god-bearing man,” and then they were severely disappointed when the image diverged from reality. Somewhere in Bunin there was an explanation for this - they say, this myth was started by Russian landowners (and their children), who came to their native villages for the summer, where they were greeted with affection by servants, but these landowners did not get to know the real man. Maybe so. In any case, Bunin, more or less knowing the peasant nature, did not encounter non-peasant masses. And it’s one thing in the village to communicate with familiar peasants on your own terms, when you can interrupt such communication at any moment, and besides, when all these peasants live according to tsarist laws, accordingly, Bunin (or some other gentleman) was initially protected. It’s another matter when the laws have disappeared and there is no protection; moreover, the Bunins suddenly found themselves among an oppressed social minority, in a situation where anyone can offend an artist... This lack of freedom, dependence, the impossibility of avoiding communication with people who Bunin sincerely considered inferior, of course However, the writer is infuriated to the point of impossibility, which is manifested in his diaries.
Bunin’s “hatred of the people” is addressed precisely to the people he saw in Moscow and Odessa squares and streets in the years Civil War- for him, this people consisted of morally corrupted idler soldiers, evil proletarians, constantly promising the bourgeoisie a knife in the fat belly, hysterical students and holy fools of the World Revolution... They say, all these Morlocks were sitting somewhere in the suburbs and basements, and before they were not visible in such terrible numbers, but those who were visible behaved appropriately, they immediately came in large numbers, and revealed themselves, showed themselves...
Any diary is a subjective chronicle, Bunin’s is no exception, and if we discard the obvious emotional excesses, what remains is a very interesting snapshot of the first years of Soviet power, with many details, everyday details, for example, that the time was advanced by 2 hours, and when it was nine in the evening “ according to tsarist times,” according to Soviet times it was eleven (there was such a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars in May 1918, “in order to save on lighting materials”).
It is important that Bunin, being a notorious egocentric on a personal level, was an equally ardent extrovert in his relations with the world; he was, so to speak, information-dependent - whenever possible, every day, often with his last pennies, he bought newspapers, he simply could not live without it. to find out news; This was the case both during the Civil War and after - when Bunin from 1940 to 1944. sat in isolation in Grasse, buying French and Swiss newspapers (but there he had a good radio, and had the opportunity to listen to a lot of things - Moscow, Berlin, London, etc.). Therefore, Bunin abundantly quotes the news that interested him from Soviet newspapers (of course, with caustic comments), and all of these are everyday details, excerpts from newspapers, retelling of rumors and conversations with the most different people, creates a complex picture of what is happening, albeit written mainly in gloomy tones.
He himself expressed Bunin’s credo regarding the Revolution as follows: “Didn’t many people know that the Revolution is only a bloody game of changing places, always ending only in the fact that the people, even if they managed to sit, feast and rage for some time in the master’s place, always ends up falling out of the frying pan and into the fire?”
The book was first published in the USSR, in 1990, with a circulation of 400,000 copies in the publishing house " Soviet writer”, then reprinted several times.
Valuable historical source, a document of the era, written by the hand of a master. A must-read for anyone interested in Russian history and the history of the Civil War.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Damned days
Moscow, 1918
January 1 (old style).And there is something amazing all around: almost everyone is unusually cheerful for some reason - no matter who you meet on the street, there’s just a radiance emanating from their faces:
- That's enough for you, my friend! In two or three weeks he himself will be ashamed...
Cheerfully, with cheerful tenderness (out of pity for me, stupid), he squeezes his hand and runs on.
Today we have the same meeting again,” Speransky from Russkie Vedomosti. And after that I met an old woman in Merzlyakovsky. She stopped, leaned on the crutch with trembling hands and began to cry:
- Father, take me to your education! Where should we go now? Russia has disappeared, for thirteen years, they say, it has disappeared!
January 7.
I was at a meeting of the “Book Publishing House of Writers” - great news: the “Constituent Assembly” was dispersed!
About Bryusov: everything is moving to the left, “almost already a full-fledged Bolshevik.” Not surprising. In 1904, he extolled autocracy and demanded (quite Tyutchev!) the immediate capture of Constantinople. In 1905 he appeared with “Dagger” in Gorky’s “Struggle”. From the beginning of the war with the Germans he became a jingoist. Now a Bolshevik.
February 5th.
From the first of February they ordered a new style. So, in their opinion, today is already the eighteenth.
Yesterday I was at the Wednesday meeting. There were a lot of “young people”. Mayakovsky, who, in general, behaved quite decently, although all the time with a kind of boorish independence, flaunting the Stoeros directness of judgment, was in a soft shirt without a tie and for some reason with the collar of his jacket raised, like poorly shaven individuals who live in bad rooms wear , in the morning to the outhouse.
Read Ehrenburg, Vera Inber. Sasha Koiransky said about them:
Ehrenburg howls,
Inber eagerly catches his cry, -
Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg
They will not replace Berdichev.
In the newspapers - about the beginning of the German offensive. Everyone says: “Oh, if only!”
We went to Lubyanka. In some places there are “rallies”. A red-haired man, in a coat with an astrakhan round collar, with red curly eyebrows, a freshly shaved, powdered face and gold fillings in his mouth, speaks monotonously, as if reading, about the injustices of the old regime. A snub-nosed gentleman with bulging eyes angrily objects to him. Women intervene vehemently and inappropriately, interrupting the argument (a principled one, as the red-haired man puts it) with particulars, hasty stories from their personal lives, meant to prove that the devil knows what is going on. Several soldiers apparently do not understand anything, but, as always, they doubt something (or rather, everything) and shake their heads suspiciously.
A man approached, an old man with pale swollen cheeks and a wedge-shaped gray beard, which he, coming up, curiously thrust into the crowd, stuck between the sleeves of two gentlemen who were silent all the time, only listening: he began to listen attentively to himself, but also, apparently, nothing not understanding, not believing anything or anyone. A tall blue-eyed worker and two more soldiers approached with sunflowers in their fists. The soldiers are both short-legged, chew and look incredulous and gloomy. An evil and cheerful smile, disdain plays on the worker’s face, he stood sideways near the crowd, pretending that he paused only for a minute, for fun: they say, I know in advance that everyone is talking nonsense.
The lady hastily complains that she is now without a piece of bread, she used to have a school, but now she has dismissed all the students, since there is nothing to feed them:
– Who got better from the Bolsheviks? It has become worse for everyone, and first of all for us, the people!
Interrupting her, some oiled bitch naively intervened and began to say that the Germans were about to come, and everyone would have to pay for what they had done.
“Before the Germans come, we will cut you all off,” the worker said coldly and walked away.
The soldiers confirmed: “That’s right!” - and also left.
The same thing was said in another crowd, where another worker and an ensign were arguing. The ensign tried to speak as softly as possible, choosing the most harmless expressions, trying to influence with logic. He was almost ingratiating himself, and yet the worker shouted at him:
– Your brother needs to be silent more, that’s what! There is no need to spread propaganda among the people!
K. says that R. visited them again yesterday. He sat for four hours and all the time mindlessly read someone’s book about magnetic waves that was lying on the table, then he drank tea and ate the bread that they were given. He is by nature meek, quiet and certainly not at all impudent, but now he comes and sits without any conscience, eating all the bread with complete inattention to the owners. A man is falling quickly!
Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan (P.S.) admires. I haven’t read it yet, but I supposedly told its contents to Ehrenburg - and it turned out to be very true. The song is generally simple, but Blok is a stupid person.
From Gorky’s “New Life”:
“From today on, it becomes clear to even the most naive simpleton that there is no need to talk about not only any kind of courage and revolutionary dignity, but even the most basic honesty in relation to the policies of the people’s commissars. Before us is a company of adventurers who, for the sake of their own interests, for the sake of prolonging the agony of their dying autocracy for a few more weeks, are ready for the most shameful betrayal of the interests of their homeland and the revolution, the interests of the Russian proletariat, in whose name they are committing outrages on the vacant throne of the Romanovs.”
From "Power of the People":
“In view of the repeatedly observed and every night repeated cases of beating of those arrested during interrogation in the Council of Workers' Deputies, we ask the Council of People's Commissars to protect them from such hooligan antics and actions...” This is a complaint from Borovichi.
From the Russian Word:
Tambov men from the village of Pokrovskoye drew up a protocol: “On January 30, we, society, pursued two predators, our citizens Nikita Aleksandrovich Bulkin and Adrian Aleksandrovich Kudinov. By agreement of our society, they were pursued and killed at the same time.”
This “society” immediately developed a unique code of punishment for crimes:
– If someone hits someone, the victim must hit the offender ten times.
- If someone hits someone with injury or a broken bone, then the offender will be deprived of his life.
- If anyone commits a theft, or anyone accepts stolen goods, then take his life.
– If someone commits arson and is discovered, then take his life. Soon two thieves were caught red-handed. They were immediately “tried” and sentenced to death. First they killed one: they smashed his head with a steelyard, pierced his side with a pitchfork, and stripped the dead man naked and threw him onto the road. Then they started on another...
You read something like this every day now.
On Petrovka, monks crush ice. Passers-by celebrate and gloat:
- Yeah! Kicked out! Now, brother, they will force you!
In the courtyard of a house on Povarskaya, a soldier in a leather jacket is chopping wood. A passing man stood and looked for a long time, then shook his head and said sadly:
- Oh, so yours! Oh, deserter, so yours! Rossea is missing!
February 7.
In “Power of the People” the editorial: “The terrible hour has come - Russia and the Revolution are perishing. All in defense of the revolution, which so recently shone so radiantly to the world!” - When she was shining, were your eyes shameless?
In the Russian Word: “The former chief of staff, General Yanushkevich, was killed. He was arrested in Chernigov and, by order of the local revolutionary tribunal, was transported to Petrograd to the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way, the general was accompanied by two Red Guards. One of them killed him with four shots at night when the train was approaching the Oredezh station.”
The snow is still shiny like winter, but the sky turns bright blue, like spring, through the cloudy shining vapors.
A poster about Yavorskaya’s benefit performance is pasted up on Strastnaya. A fat pink-red woman, angry and impudent, said:
- Look, they’re putting it up! Who will wash the walls? And the bourgeoisie will go to the theaters. We don't go here. Everyone is afraid of the Germans - they will come, they will come, but somehow they don’t come!
A lady is walking along Tverskaya in pince-nez, a soldier's sheepskin hat, a red plush jacket, a torn skirt and absolutely terrible galoshes.
Many ladies, students and officers stand on street corners, selling something.
A young officer entered the tram car and, blushing, said that he “unfortunately cannot pay for the ticket.”
Before evening. On Red Square, the low sun and the mirror-like, beaten snow are blinding. It's freezing. We went to the Kremlin. There is a month in the sky and pink clouds. Silence, huge drifts of snow. Near the artillery warehouse, a soldier in a sheepskin coat, with a face as if carved out of wood, creaks with his felt boots. How unnecessary this guard seems now.
