Fall of Giants

Grigori mumbled an excuse about needing to piss and slipped away from his men. He walked back the way he had come along Nevsky Prospekt. The people had won today’s battle. The tsar’s police and army officers had been defeated. But if that led only to an orgy of violence, it would not be long before people clamored for a return of the old regime.

Who was in charge? The Duma had defied the tsar and refused to close, according to what Kerensky had told Grigori yesterday. The parliament was more or less impotent, but at least it symbolized democracy. Grigori decided to go to the Tauride Palace and see if anything was happening there.

He walked north to the river, then east to the Tauride Gardens. Night had fallen by the time he got there. The classical façade of the palace had dozens of windows, and they were all lit up. Several thousand people had had the same idea as Grigori, and the broad front courtyard was crammed with soldiers and workers milling around.

A man with a megaphone was making an announcement, repeating it over and over again. Grigori worked his way to the front so that he could hear.

“The Workers’ Group of the War Industry Committee has been released from the Kresty Prison,” the man shouted.

Grigori was not sure who they were, but their name sounded good.

“Together with other comrades, they have formed the provisional executive committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.”

Grigori liked that idea. A soviet was a council of representatives. There had been a St. Petersburg soviet in 1905. Grigori had been only sixteen at the time, but he knew the soviet had been elected by factory workers and had organized strikes. It had had a charismatic leader, Leon Trotsky, since exiled.

“All of this will be officially announced in a special edition of the newspaper Izvestiia. The executive committee has formed a food supply commission to ensure that workers and soldiers are fed. It has also created a military commission to defend the revolution.”

There was no mention of the Duma. The crowd was cheering, but Grigori wondered whether soldiers would take orders from a self-elected military commission. Where was the democracy in all this?

His question was answered by the final sentence of the announcement. “The committee appeals to workers and soldiers to elect representatives to the soviet as quickly as possible, and to send their representatives here to the palace to take part in the new revolutionary government!”

That was what Grigori had wanted to hear. The new revolutionary government-a soviet of workers and soldiers. Now there would be change without disorder. Full of enthusiasm, he left the courtyard and headed back toward the barracks. Sooner or later, the men would come back to their beds. He could hardly wait to tell them the news.

Then, for the first time, they would have an election.

{IV}

On the morning of the next day, the First Machine Gun Regiment gathered on the parade ground to elect a representative to the Petrograd soviet. Isaak proposed Sergeant Grigori Peshkov.

He was elected unopposed.

Grigori was pleased. He knew what life was like for soldiers and workers, and he would bring the machine-oil smell of real life to the corridors of power. He would never forget his roots and put on a top hat. He would make sure that unrest led to improvements, not to random violence. Now he had a real chance to make a better life for Katerina and Vladimir.

He walked quickly across the Liteiny Bridge, alone this time, and headed for the Tauride Palace. His urgent priority had to be bread. Katerina, Vladimir, and the other two and a half million inhabitants of Petrograd had to eat. And now, as he assumed responsibility-at least in his imagination-he began to feel daunted. The farmers and the millers in the countryside had to send more flour to the Petrograd bakers immediately-but they would not do so unless they were paid. How was the soviet going to make sure there was enough money? He began to wonder whether overthrowing the government might have been the easy part.

The palace had a long central façade and two wings. Grigori discovered that both the Duma and the soviet were in session. Appropriately, the Duma-the old middle-class parliament-was in the right wing and the soviet in the left. But who was in charge? No one knew. That would have to be resolved first, Grigori thought impatiently, before they could start on the real problems.

On the steps of the palace Grigori spotted the broomstick figure and bushy black hair of Konstantin. He realized with a shock that he had not made any attempt to tell Konstantin of the death of Varya, his mother. But he saw immediately that Konstantin knew. As well as his red armband, Konstantin was wearing a black scarf tied around his hat.

Grigori embraced him. “I saw it happen,” he said.

“Was it you who killed the police sniper?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. But her real revenge will be the revolution.”