Chapter 32: Bloody Sunday (2)

Workers rising up in Russia was nothing new, but this time was different.

An uprising of hundreds of thousands of workers in nearly every major city was an event without precedent, and the revolutionaries had no doubt at all that a new world was coming.

“A passport! Let’s get a forged passport made, right now!”

Lev Trotsky was no exception.

The plan to build a false identity in Geneva and slip into Russia was one he had been thinking over for a long time already.

And now word had come that hundreds of thousands had risen in Russia’s major cities, so how could Trotsky’s heart not pound?

If not now, then when would he ever go back to Russia?

But just as he was about to rush ahead, a letter arrived that cooled that burning heart in an instant.

“…M again.”

The secret letter, delivered through Father Gapon, was brief.

The workers’ uprising had escalated into a power struggle inside the imperial family.

The Tsar and the Grand Dukes were colliding, and to pick a side carelessly now could drag the entire revolutionary movement into the abyss, and so.

Wait and see.

“Haaah. Wait and see, this time too?”

Irritation surged in him, but what had to be admitted had to be admitted.

Not once, not a single time so far, had M’s judgment been wrong.

He had been right when he told them to refuse Japanese money during the Russo-Japanese War, and hadn’t it landed exactly on the mark when he handed the revolutionaries the Grand Dukes’ corruption and told them to induce a split in the ruling class?

M’s judgment has passed beyond prediction and reached the realm of foresight.

“All right…for now I had better follow M’s advice and watch how the wind blows.”

Of course, he had not cancelled the plan to enter Russia itself.

If he went to Petersburg, he could at least meet M.

Faster than Lenin.

For the Trotsky of this moment, meeting the man mattered more than the workers’ uprising did.

* * *

Sunday, 22 January 1905.

The morning of that fateful day, 9 January by the Julian calendar, was unexpectedly quiet.

The workers of Petersburg finished the early service at church and came out into the streets.

Some held a wife’s hand, some a child’s.

In their hands, in place of weapons, they carried portraits of the Tsar and Orthodox icons, and from their mouths came “Long live the Tsar” and hymns.

A crowd of well over tens of thousands flowing slowly toward the palace looked less like a demonstration than a pilgrimage.

At its head was Gapon.

Behind Gapon, in his cassock with a bronze cross at his throat and the Tsar’s portrait lifted high, an endless procession filled the great avenues of Petersburg from side to side.

Of course, to the men watching from behind the Imperial Guard, even this peaceful march looked like nothing but a mob on the charge.

“…What is this? That many of them turned out?”

Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich glared and drew a deep breath.

There is no end in sight.

The black tide packing the avenue, pressing toward the palace slowly but without ever stopping, was far more overwhelming than he had imagined.

“All of those are workers?”

“The estimate is somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000, Your Imperial Highness.”

“What? H-how many tens of thousands?”

“70,000 is simply an army by any other name….”

Too many.

Far, far more than he had expected.

Vladimir turned toward the commander of the Guards regiment and asked irritably.

“You still have made no preparations?”

“Your Imperial Highness, His Majesty has issued an imperial command that no force of any kind be used….”

“Are you men blind? Do you not see what is before you? That mob! They are coming to trample the palace underfoot!”

Vladimir’s voice rose of its own accord.

“His Majesty does not properly see the danger they pose. His love for his subjects is so excessive that he cannot tell a genuine threat from anything else!”

He could hardly call the Emperor a moron, so he dressed it in the most plausible excuse he could manage, and in doing so handed the Guard a justification of their own.

Kirill, standing at his side, lent his weight to his father’s words.

“Precisely. Once 70,000 men have pushed their way up to the palace, it will already be too late. Is it not our duty to protect the safety of the imperial house?”

The face of the Guards regiment’s commander went rigid.

The Tsar’s imperial command and the Grand Dukes’ orders had split clean apart, and for the man who actually had to carry them out there could be no shittier position than this.

As he listened to the orders, his eyes flicked ceaselessly left and right.

Through all of it, the procession did not stop.

The head of the column, led by Gapon, reached the entrance to Palace Square.

The footfalls of a crowd past 50,000 and closing on 70,000 rolled dully across the snow-covered square.

The chorus of hymns rode the wind and passed over the heads of the Imperial Guard.

“Long live His Majesty the Tsar! Punish the thieves!”

“Great Emperor of Russia! Have mercy, we beg you, upon us who are starving!”

Beyond the muzzles, an endless wave of shouting surged in.

Old men holding icons, mothers with children in their arms, workers holding the Tsar’s portrait high.

But there were far too many of them.

The pressure of that endless crowd pressing in without pause traveled all the way into the fingertips of the soldiers gripping their rifles.

“Th…then perhaps a warning shot, at least….”

The Guards regiment’s commander turned urgently to Vladimir.

“A warning? You think 70,000 men will fall back for a warning, you idiot?”

Sweat had beaded on Vladimir’s forehead as well.

He had come thinking a few shots would quiet them down, but with far more people than he had expected, the pressure had naturally begun to tell on him.

And on top of that, whatever had gotten into them, the Guards regiment would not obey no matter how many times he told them to fire.

“Just shoot, damn it! Fire once and they scatter on their own, I tell you!”

“But, sir….”

If everything went to plan, they were worthless peasants who would take fright at a few rounds and run, but standing face to face with that crowd he could not shake the feeling of his heart being squeezed.

“F-first, warn them not to come any closer.”

Guardsmen stepped out in front of the line and shouted.

“Halt! Come no closer! His Majesty resides here!”

The procession did not stop.

At its head Gapon raised the Tsar’s portrait higher still and lifted his voice.

“We have come to meet His Majesty the Tsar! We beg you, carry our voices to him!”

Footsteps that would not stop.

Between the 70,000 and the Imperial Guard’s line, a bare few dozen meters remained.

Vladimir’s jaw trembled.

“ Fire…open fire! Fire!”

The Guards regiment’s commander shouted, all but screaming.

“Your Excellency! His Majesty’s imperial command….”

“I am the Commander-in-Chief of this Imperial Guard! Here and now I am the only man who can protect the imperial house! As Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Guard, I give the order! Pay no mind to His Majesty’s order and open fire!”

Kirill bellowed.

“Shoot! Shoot, I said! Not shooting is insubordination!”

The soldiers’ muzzles wavered.

Obey the Tsar’s order?

Or obey the Grand Duke’s order?

“If you are the Imperial Guard, then protect the imperial house! ”

Vladimir’s scream rang out across the square.

And.

Bang!

A heavy gunshot rang out.

* * *

The instant the shot rang out, the air over the square froze.

70,000 people stopped breathing at once.

But no one fell.

The muzzle had been aimed at the sky.

The man who pulled the trigger was Colonel Evgeny Sokolov, deputy regimental commander of the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment.

He was one of the Okhrana’s knives, placed here in advance by Section Chief Yakov.

Colonel Sokolov emptied every remaining round into the air.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

When all six loaded rounds had vanished into the sky, he raised the empty weapon high and shouted with all the strength his lungs could give.

“I proclaim once more the imperial command received from His Majesty! Under no circumstances is fire to be opened upon the citizenry! Any man who defies this is to be considered a traitor!”

The muzzles of the Guardsmen came down as one.

The soldiers who had been wavering between the imperial command and the Grand Duke’s order had tipped to one side.

“Wh-what is this! What do you think you are doing!”

Vladimir’s face went white.

“Arrest that man at once! This is treason against a superior officer!”

But Colonel Sokolov did not back down.

“Arrest the man who defied an order given by the Tsar himself and commanded that fire be opened upon the citizenry, on the charge of treason!”

The Guard’s eyes went back and forth between Vladimir and Sokolov.

What could the soldiers possibly do?

An unheard-of situation had arisen, with a Grand Duke shouting for an arrest and a deputy regimental commander shouting for the Grand Duke to be arrested.

Naturally, not one soldier could move a single step.

Into that vacuum drove Gapon’s voice, ringing out at full volume.

The timing was exactly as someone had told him it would be, and so he knew that this was the moment to step forward.

Gapon, in his cassock, thrust the Tsar’s portrait high into the sky at the head of the procession and poured his booming voice out over the tens of thousands.

“Behold! However the nobles may try to obstruct us, our Father Tsar stands on the side of the people! The loyal Guard, which has the Tsar’s command, stands with us as well!”

The crowd, on the very edge of collapsing into pandemonium, faltered at Gapon’s cry.

A priest holding the Tsar’s portrait was standing tall in the moment right after the gunfire, proclaiming that the Tsar was on their side, so what words could possibly be more reassuring than that?

“Long live the Tsar! Long live the Tsar!”

The crowd that had been about to scatter in terror began to gather back together, shouting the Tsar’s name.

At that very moment, having measured the timing precisely, I appeared in the distance together with Yakov, the Tsar in tow.

The Tsar had jumped clean out of his skin at the gunfire and was raising every kind of fuss demanding that the situation be confirmed, so coming outside had been unavoidable in any case.

“What in the world is that shooting! I gave the order not to fire!”

“Your Majesty, Their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Dukes ignored your imperial command and ordered the Imperial Guard to open fire.”

At the section chief’s report the Tsar’s mouth fell open, and even then it did not close.

Beside the frozen Tsar, I calmly laid out the situation for him.

“Your Majesty, according to the urgent report that just came in, what is happening outside is roughly this. The Grand Dukes ignored your order and told them to shoot at the people. But a loyal officer who puts your order above everything turned his muzzle to the sky, and right now he is facing off with the Grand Dukes.”

“Facing off, then the casualties….”

“Not one, thankfully. But every one of the tens of thousands of citizens out there saw the Grand Dukes defy your order and command that fire be opened.”

Yakov, as if he had been waiting for the opening, added his own explanation.

“Your Majesty, there is only one reason the Grand Dukes did such a thing. If Your Majesty wins the absolute adoration of the people, the Grand Dukes’ own standing narrows. They preferred to let the people’s blood be seen, so that Your Majesty’s prestige would fall and they themselves would be the ones to set matters right.”

The Tsar’s fists shook.

Before the eyes of the Emperor himself, of all people.

Ignore an order the Tsar handed down in person and give the command to shoot My subjects?

No chance. Pushover or not, this one he cannot let slide.

“Section Chief Yakov. Misha. What is it I should do?”

I said quietly.

“You just have to go outside and show them Your Majesty’s dignity. The section chief will handle all the fiddly business himself.”

The Tsar clenched his teeth and nodded.

And of course, that single nod was enough to send everything rolling along without a hitch.

A messenger ran between the soldiers drawn up before the palace, and the Tsar’s will was proclaimed to Gapon’s delegation.

“The imperial command handed down by the Tsar is hereby proclaimed!”

The square fell silent.

Tens of thousands of eyes and ears gathered toward the messenger.

“Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the authors of this entire affair, are stripped of every office they hold and are to be arrested at once on the charge of treason!”

“Wh…what did he say, treason? Who has committed treason….”

Vladimir’s face crumpled like a scrap of wastepaper.

“Have you all lost your….”

“To every citizen who has gathered in this place in trust of the Tsar, an improvement of conditions is promised! It is promised in the name of the Tsar, father to every citizen who draws breath in Russia!”

That last sentence echoed out through every corner of the demonstrators by way of Gapon’s mouth.

A brief silence, not even 1 second long, followed.

“Long live the Tsar! Long live the Tsar! Long live His Majesty the Emperor!”

The roar of a crowd nearing 70,000 shook the walls of the palace.

Within that crucible of fervor, weeping and cheering all mixed together, the sight of Vladimir and Kirill being surrounded by the Imperial Guard came dimly into view.

Far off, beyond a palace window, I could see the corners of the Tsar’s mouth soaring all the way up to the sky as he looked down on the ecstasy of tens of thousands.

In the eyes of Nicholas II, who had just tasted the greatest dopamine hit of his life, an unhidable delight came seeping out.

The traitors had given themselves away in real time, and the witnesses to it were the tens of thousands of citizens standing in that square, and the Emperor.

“Your Majesty, all of Russia will go wild over your every word and every act.”

There is not one single reason left not to begin the purge.

~~~

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