Fall of Giants

Grigori had thirty men and two corporals. He had stationed them in four lines of eight across the road, blocking the end of the bridge. Pinsky had about the same number of men, half on foot and half on horseback, and he placed them at the sides of the road.

Grigori peered anxiously at the oncoming march. He could not predict what would happen. On his own he could have prevented bloodshed, by offering only token resistance then letting the demonstrators pass. But he did not know what Pinsky was going to do.

The marchers came nearer. There were hundreds of people-no, thousands. They were men and women in the blue tunics and ragged coats of industrial workers. Most wore red armbands or red ribbons. Their banners read Down with the Tsar and Bread, Peace, and Land. This was no longer merely a protest, Grigori concluded: it had become a political movement.

As the leaders came nearer, he sensed the tightening anxiety among his waiting men.

He walked forward to meet the marchers. At their head, to his surprise, was Varya, the mother of Konstantin. Her gray hair was tied up in a red scarf, and she carried a red flag on a hefty stick. “Hello, Grigori Sergeivich,” she said amiably. “Are you going to shoot me?”

“No, I’m not,” he replied. “But I can’t speak for the police.”

Although Varya stopped, the others came on, pressed from behind by thousands more. Grigori heard Pinsky urge his mounted men forward. These horseback policemen, called Pharaohs, were the most hated section of the force. They were armed with whips and clubs.

Varya said: “All we want is to make a living and feed our families. Isn’t that what you want too, Grigori?”

The marchers were not confronting Grigori’s soldiers, or attempting to get past them onto the bridge. Instead they were spreading out along the embankment on both sides. Pinsky’s Pharaohs nervously walked their horses along the towpath, as if to bar the way to the ice, but there were not enough of them to form a continuous barrier. However, no marcher wanted to be the first to make a dash for it, and there was a moment of stalemate.

Lieutenant Pinsky put his megaphone to his mouth. “Go back!” he shouted. The instrument was no more than a piece of tin shaped like a cone, and made his voice only a little louder. “You may not enter the city center. Return to your workplaces in orderly fashion. This is a police command. Go back.”

Nobody went back-most people could not even hear-but the marchers started to jeer and boo. Someone deep in the crowd threw a stone. It struck the rump of a horse, and the beast started. Its rider, taken by surprise, almost fell off. Furious, he pulled himself upright, sawed on the reins, and lashed the horse with his whip. The crowd laughed, which made him angrier, but he brought his horse under control.

A brave marcher took advantage of the diversion, dodged past a Pharaoh on the embankment, and ran onto the ice. Several more people on both sides of the bridge did the same. The Pharaohs deployed their whips and clubs, wheeling and rearing their horses as they lashed out. Some of the marchers fell to the ground, but more got through, and others were emboldened to try. In seconds, thirty or more people were running across the frozen river.

For Grigori, that was a happy outcome. He could say that he had attempted to enforce the ban, and he had in fact kept people off the bridge, but the number of demonstrators was too great and it had proved impossible to stop people crossing the ice.

Pinsky did not see it that way.

He turned his megaphone to the armed police and said: “Take aim!”

“No!” Grigori shouted, but it was too late. The police took up the firing position, on one knee, and raised their rifles. Marchers at the front of the crowd tried to go back, but they were pushed forward by the thousands behind them. Some ran for the river, braving the Pharaohs.

Pinsky shouted: “Fire!”

There was a crackle of shots like fireworks, followed by shouts of fear and screams of pain as marchers fell dead and wounded.

Grigori was taken back twelve years. He saw the square in front of the Winter Palace, the hundreds of men and women kneeling in prayer, the soldiers with their rifles, and his mother lying on the ground with her blood spreading on the snow. In his mind he heard eleven-year-old Lev scream: “She’s dead! Ma’s dead, my mother is dead!”

“No,” Grigori said aloud. “I will not let them do this again.” He turned the safety knob on his Mosin-Nagant rifle, unlocking the bolt, then he raised the gun to his shoulder.

The crowd was screaming and running in all directions, trampling the fallen. The Pharaohs were out of control, lashing out at random. The police fired indiscriminately into the crowd.

Grigori aimed carefully at Pinsky, targeting the middle of the body. He was not a very good shot, and Pinsky was sixty yards away, but he had a chance of hitting him. He pulled the trigger.

Pinsky continued to yell through his megaphone.