Chapter 31: Bloody Sunday

Russia in 1905 was not a country anyone could call a good place for ordinary people to live, not even out of politeness.

It professed to be a capitalist society like the other European powers, but it was a different animal from Britain or France, where the men in charge had begun to feel they ought at least to pretend to care how workers were treated.

Working hours ran from 10 hours a day at the low end to 12 at the high end.

Base wages were barely enough to keep bread on the table, and even so the factory owners were frantic to shave them down further.

Cough while working, or turn up so much as 1 second late, and 30 percent of a month’s pay was stripped away as a fine.

Sometimes the factories even paid wages in vouchers rather than cash, pleading hard times.

There is always a reason a country ends up having a revolution.

The Russian nobility, of course, had not the faintest awareness that any of this was wrong.

“Yeah, don’t like it? Then get out. There’s plenty who’ll do the work without you.”

Workers were the one thing Russia had in endless supply. They ought to be grateful for the chance to earn their bread at all, and here they were bawling about welfare?

It was all the fault of the commies, poisoning workers’ heads with their twisted ideas.

And if the workers said they’d had enough and staged a demonstration?

String a few up as an example, and if that still didn’t knock sense into them, one bullet quieted the rest. Where was the problem?

But grievances that are suppressed rather than resolved are bound to burst sooner or later.

Even with victory won in the Russo-Japanese War, even with the organization that had covered the Tsar’s eyes and ears gone, nothing at all had changed in how Russian workers were treated.

However much nationalist kool-aid was pumped in to keep them standing, human patience has its limits.

“Are we asking for anything crazy? Just let us work 8 hours a day. Please.”

“If we work overtime, at least pay us properly for it! You toss us gift vouchers we can’t even spend, so what in God’s name are we supposed to do with them?!”

“His Majesty… His Majesty will hear what we’re suffering!”

Astonishingly, the Russian people were extraordinarily deferential, and they revered and followed their Emperor with complete sincerity.

The reigning Tsar, Nicholas II, had even carried them to victory in the Russo-Japanese War, so there was hope that with that remarkable judgment of his he would lend an ear to their demands.

And at precisely that moment, a bomb dropped.

Documents detailing the corruption of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Governor-General of Moscow, had leaked into public circulation.

The source was unknown.

But the contents were so specific that there was no room to suspect a forgery.

“Sergei Alexandrovich, Governor-General of Moscow, took kickbacks from factory owners in exchange for exempting their plants from labor condition inspections!”

“They say the Holy Synod budget allotted for Orthodox Church missionary work went straight into the Governor-General’s office slush fund!”

Above all, what set fire to the workers’ hearts was the record of the petitions.

Workers’ petitions received by the Moscow Governor-Generalship, 47 in all.

The number acted upon, 0.

Some of them were found in the Governor-General’s storeroom, not even opened.

“47 times! We appealed to him 47 times and he never read a single one?”

“And while we were starving to death, this so-called Governor-General was taking bribes from the factory owners!”

“Governor-General of Moscow Sergei Alexandrovich, explain yourself!”

As luck would have it, word spread far and wide once again that his elder brother, the Grand Duke Alexandrovich who had been blown apart by socialists, had embezzled 30 million rubles.

The elder brother had siphoned off the naval budget to buy jewels for his mistress and been blown to pieces for it, and the younger was embezzling the Moscow Governor-Generalship’s budget while throwing workers’ petitions in the rubbish bin?

The infamy of the embezzler Grand Duke brothers, unmatched by anyone in Russia, blanketed all of Moscow in an instant.

After the Putilov Ironworks, Moscow’s factories stopped work one after another, and the workers poured into the streets.

With matters at that pass, the Tsar made the extraordinary decision to provisionally suspend Sergei Alexandrovich from his post as Governor-General of Moscow and to hear out the workers’ demands.

By rights, the flames should have died down there.

It was not an outright dismissal, but the Tsar himself had declared he would listen to the voices of the workers.

Yet right after Sergei’s corruption broke, as though someone had been waiting for it, documents denouncing the corruption of the Grand Dukes burst out all at once in Petersburg, Odessa, Baku, and every other major industrial city in Russia.

-Evidence that at Vladimir Alexandrovich’s Imperial Guard munitions plant, a portion of the wages owed to the workers had vanished outright

-An accounting of how, at the naval shipyard Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich had a hand in, half the workers’ pay had been drained away under the heading of equipment costs

-Indications that Nicholas Nikolaevich had parcelled out favors from the Far East Army budget to officers of his own faction

Watching corruption peel off in layers like an onion, even a small child could work out how things stood.

Why were the workers of this country, a great power second only to Britain, a country that marched from victory to victory in war after war, going so hungry?

The answer was painfully simple.

Because the thieves sitting up above were gorging themselves on the share that should have gone to the workers.

“Hey, you garbage bastards!”

“Our Father the Tsar, we beg you, help us!”

“Just let us live like human beings! Like human beings, that’s all! That’s the only thing we ask!”

After Moscow came Petersburg, then Odessa, then Baku, strike after strike, and the ranks of the demonstrators swelled at a frightening rate.

The situation had already grown past anyone’s power to contain.

* * *

“Your Majesty, large-scale strikes are currently breaking out simultaneously in the major industrial cities, Moscow, Petersburg, Odessa, Baku, and others. The number of workers taking part is estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000.”

As Section Chief Yakov finished his report, the blood drained clean out of the Tsar’s face.

“Wh-what in the world is this! We won the war, so why would something like this suddenly….”

“Your Majesty, there’s no need to worry at all.”

I put on my most unbothered expression and beamed away, so that the flustered Tsar would feel reassured.

“Hm? A thing like this has broken out, how could I not worry….”

“It does look big, but all of it is running inside our Okhrana’s control. Isn’t that right, Section Chief?”

The Tsar’s eyes went round.

“Control? With 300,000 out in the streets?”

“Yes. I reported it to you before, remember? Father Gapon, the one who does the poor relief work. That Father has the core of that workers’ union completely in hand.”

To be precise, I had poured oil on the fire by scattering every last scrap of the Grand Dukes’ corruption to the socialists under the name of M, but there was no need to mention that part.

What mattered was making our dear Niki see the whole thing as a fixed game.

“Father Gapon is acting as a leader among the workers and steering the direction of the demonstration. So that it doesn’t spill over into violence, and so that it stays focused only on small improvements to how the workers are treated.”

The Tsar’s face relaxed a little at a time as understanding slowly settled in.

“So… it’s a demonstration designed from the start so that nothing dangerous can happen.”

“Yes. The workers’ anger itself is real, of course. They really are having a hard time. We’re only managing it so that the anger doesn’t fly off in some strange direction.”

“Hahaha, quite so. If my subjects are in difficulty, then hearing out their troubles is also the Emperor’s part to play.”

-The second he decides there’s nothing to worry about, the swagger comes roaring right back.

Let him enjoy it.

He needed to be riding that high if he was going to feel like walking onstage as the lead of this play.

“So what is it that I should do?”

“Yes. We’ve settled everything already. Your Majesty need only say that you will listen to those wronged workers, that one sentence and nothing more.”

“Truly? That is all?”

“Yes. Then our people will take up their demands within the limits we’ve agreed on in advance and work out the details, and the workers will offer their thanks to Your Majesty the Tsar and go back where they came from.”

The Tsar stroked his chin and murmured.

“Still… meeting the people in person is rather….”

“Your Majesty, you don’t have to meet them in person at all.”

I put a little weight into my voice.

“You only have to look them over from a distance and show them your majesty. And then the strike of hundreds of thousands of workers shaking all of Russia goes quiet at a single word from you, like magic. Imagine what a spectacle that would be.”

Nicholas II hesitated for a moment, then closed his eyes and nodded.

Hundreds of thousands falling silent the instant his one majestic word was spoken, then drenching the Tsar in rapturous praise.

Nicholas II, who had already tasted enormous acclaim from the Russo-Japanese War, could not stop the corners of his mouth from twitching.

“Every subject in this country will realize it all over again. The only one who watches over us is Your Majesty, the Father of all the people… that’s what they’ll think.”

“Yes… yes! Hearing it put that way, what I must do is perfectly clear!”

The man who 10 seconds earlier had been hemming and hawing about going anywhere near the people now turned toward Section Chief Yakov with a face brimming with authority.

“Section Chief!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“From this moment until I step forward myself, opening fire on the workers or attempting forcible suppression is absolutely forbidden. This is my direct command, so convey it to the Imperial Guard at once.”

“Yes!”

Hear that? From this moment on, any man who orders opening fire or forcible suppression is no better than a traitor defying an imperial command.

Of course, the nuance carried by that no-fire order would be delivered to the outside world juuust a little differently, but the day the Tsar found that out would never come.

Once Section Chief Yakov bowed and left, the Tsar turned back to me.

“Then, Misha, when should I show myself before the people?”

“January 22nd. By the Julian calendar it’s January 9th, a Sunday.”

“Sunday, so the workers have the day off as well?”

“Yes. They’ll finish the service at church and come to petition carrying portraits of Your Majesty the Tsar. There’ll be nothing about them like an armed mob, so please don’t worry.”

-A bloodbath that happened on a Sunday, so they call it Bloody Sunday. Real on-the-nose naming, that.

This time around it would probably be remembered under some similar name too.

Though it would be the day the blood of traitors ran, not the blood of workers.

* * *

The Tsar had made the Okhrana into his own private organization, yet a fair number of informants in Russia still belonged to no part of it.

The Grand Dukes, too, had their own independent informants planted in the palace.

Who in the world could have counted precisely how many of the servants working in the palace were drawing pocket money from Grand Duke Vladimir?

Only, the information those servants carried out was, in the end, a processed thing that had already passed through someone else’s mouth and ears.

“From what I have been told, His Majesty was so alarmed by the sheer scale of the workers that he forbade the use of force.”

“So he lost his nerve, then?”

“Something very like it, apparently. He went white as a sheet in the audience chamber, and only calmed down after Section Chief Yakov and that child Misha worked desperately to reassure him….”

“Heh heh, an Emperor comforted by a nine-year-old… what a pathetic excuse for a man.”

The faces of the Grand Dukes gathered once more at Vladimir Alexandrovich’s residence were altogether different from those at the last conclave.

Their anticipation at the opportunity spread out before them ran deeper than their anger over Sergei’s suspension from duty.

“The Sergei business is regrettable, but Niki’s handling of this makes it plain. His nature has not changed in the slightest. The moment things grow serious, he chickens out and backs away.”

“Naturally. That is precisely Niki’s limit. We all know he is a man who retreats every single time he ought to press hard, do we not?”

“Forbidding the use of force, is that supposed to make sense? 300,000 workers running riot in the streets, and he intends to soothe them one by one?”

When had Russia ever once given that ignorant rabble a proper hearing?

Everyone knew that even a puppy grew spoiled if it was indulged, so how much worse with men?

“Militarily this makes no sense either. A mob approaching the palace, and the response is nonviolence? If it fails, the Tsar’s authority falls to the ground.”

“Just so. This is a matter of the imperial house’s security.”

Vladimir set down his wine glass and let his gaze travel once around the room.

“So in the end, are we not the only grown men who can settle this crisis?”

“Of course. He went so far as to suspend Sergei from duty, and now that the crisis has actually broken he can do nothing by his own strength. Which means we must step forward and clear it away.”

The Grand Dukes’ eyes gleamed as they nodded.

For decades this formula had never once failed.

When something blew up, Niki hid himself behind them, and the ones who always dealt with the troublesome business were the Grand Dukes of the imperial house, were they not?

“Haa… still, is it not pitiful? The man who calls himself Tsar of Russia, chickening out because a handful of workers rose up a little.”

“In the end it has worked out well for us, has it not?”

“Quite right. However much Niki plays at being strong, it has simply been proven once again that he is Niki.”

And just as he said, if the ignorant rabble, who would take fright and scatter after a few shots, could be offered up as sacrifice to put a leash on the Tsar, where was there better bang for the buck than that?

“Send the order to the Imperial Guard. They are to wait in readiness to open fire at any moment for the protection of the imperial house.”

The single shot that would ring out on that day, when the workers marched on the palace without knowing their place, would change the future of this empire.

The Grand Dukes could not hold back the laughter leaking out of them.

~~~

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