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KONSTANTIN FEDIN

p In the autumn of 1919, a young soldier, still in his army greatcoat, came to revolutionary Petrograd; this was Fedin (born 1892), the future author of Towns and Years, Early Joys, No Ordinary Summer and other novels widely known in many countries.

p He was mobilised for the Red Army immediately on arrival and worked on its newspapers up to the end of the Civil War. The abundance of impressions he gained fed a longstanding urge to write. And Fedin wrote a lot. He made the acquaintance of Gorky and the latter became the first judge of Fedin’s stories. In the following extracts from Gorky Among Us Fedin tells us of his meetings with Gorky during the early years of the revolution.

“His role in shaping the newborn Soviet literature of the twenties,” wrote Fedin, "was a tremendous one and his interest in the fate of a writer often determined the entire further development of a talented person and brightened the path of many a young writer.”

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p But no! That was reality; it was
more than reality—it was
reality and reminiscence.

p Leo Tolstoy

p In the autumn of 1919, when I was demobilised and reached Petrograd, the city was an armed camp. It was, in fact, called the "Petrograd Fortified Area" and the headquarters of the area was in the heart of the city, in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Yudenich’s Whiteguards had reached its outskirts. His officers could see the Moscow Toll-gate through field-glasses from the Pulkovo Heights. They intended either taking the city by storm or besieging it.

p Then the Petrograd workers and the Red Army made an effort that many people regarded as impossible—they checked the enemy’s advance, and hurled him back. Yudenich’s army was routed and disgraced.

p Every street, every house, every stone of Petrograd bore traces of that heroic effort for a long time.

p The population of the city was only a third of what it had been in peacetime. The people were suffering from hunger, from typhus and from the cold; they were tormented by thousands of petty privations and illnesses whose very existence they had never even suspected in peacetime....

p But that hungry, icy fort was kept alive by undying faith in its new, fantastic morrow....

p Like everyone else around me, I had to struggle for physical survival. Never once, however, did I forget literature. I was completely alone in that huge city, in yesterday’s capital, which never suspected that yet another young man had appeared 276 on its wide avenues who also dreamed of the writing profession and hoped to make some conquests and, perhaps, gain fame.

p I had an insatiable urge to understand everything and was certain that nothing could satisfy that urge better than literature. The strongest feeling that I brought to the revolution after what I had experienced as a prisoner of war, was the feeling of Russia as my homeland. That feeling was not driven away by the revolution; it merged with it___

p Many people thought as I did and—I am sure of this—many expected a weighty word from literature.

p In that heroic, hungry, epidemic-ridden and silent Petrograd there was one man who seemed to stand aloof from the rest, but who in reality was the focal point of a movement that was just beginning to grow. The man was Gorky. And the movement was the beginning of the Soviet work of the intelligentsia.

p Gorky played the call to muster on his magic flute, and gradually people began to take courage and to peep out of their holes and caves. There was something medieval in the way the dead guilds reappeared in the light of day; writers came out and warmed up their frozen ink, scientists appeared and took their places at their laboratory benches. Gorky had many ways of bringing influence to bear. The chief of them was his personality. No sensible person, of course, doubted the purity of Gorky’s motives; purity of motives, however, was no rarity among the intelligentsia. Gorky had one advantage over all the intellectuals—his life had been woven into the history of the revolution and belonged to it. He was the biography of his times. It was, therefore, natural that in the revolution he should be on the right side of the barricades and 277 that his appeals should contain no suggestion of fortuitousness or calculation. And his earlier fame, his influence in art and, therefore, his power over the intellect were so great that he had no need to multiply them.

The sarcastically inclined may say that Gorky’s magic flute was the bread ration. But everybody could see that there was no hidden strategy in this—it was just another thing that Gorky did for culture. He was part of that culture and he could not have had any other idea than the one he had—to compel that culture to live.

p Gorky was writing beside a broad window looking out on to Kronverksky Street. I could see his silhouette bent over a big desk where everything was in such apple-pie order that it looked empty. His glasses glinted in the sun as he looked over the top of them, noticed me and took them off. He walked easily towards me, one shoulder lowered and jutting angularly, took me by the elbow and propelled me towards another small desk.

p “Here, if you please!”

p He slapped a pile of books with his hand, then began opening them at the title page, one by one, and, with his head tilted slightly backwards, tapped the names of the authors with’ his finger-nail.

p “Very clever, very. ..” he kept repeating. “But ironical, it’s all tongue-in-cheek, and often without reason. This one is a light-weight, but he is knowledgeable, gives a lot of facts.... No sense at all in his arguments—-Don’t be tempted—- This one is so witty and brilliant it would be more suited to a Frenchman. He is consistent, however; despite his German origin he has no system at all, and is a cynic. ...

p “That is all I’ve so far managed to dig out on the 1848 revolution. There was an excellent book, 278 but it got lost. I can’t find it anywhere. There are all kinds of scamps who steal books from my shelves, you know. I ought to lock them up, I suppose.”

p The bookshelves were arranged like those of a public library, end-on to the wall; there were only narrow gangways between them, but in this big room the sunshine found its way even into those narrow spaces.

p Gorky tore himself away from the books with a faint smile.

p “Don’t restrict yourself in any way,” he rumbled in his low bass. "Make use of the biggest stage. You can have the circus if you want it. Or a city square with hundreds and thousands of actors. Would you like to use the church steps, for instance?. .. That could make a glorious spectacle....”

p Back he went to his desk in a cloud of tobacco smoke. He ran his fingers over the few things on it, as though making sure they were all there—blue pencil, ashtray, glasses, sheets of lined paper.

p “I have more and more contact with our scientists,” he told me. "Extraordinary people! They sit in their studies, their hands in home-made gloves, their feet wrapped in blankets, and write. Just as if the sergeant of the guard might arrive at any moment to check up whether they were at their posts.. . . They wander over pathless mountains in the Urals and gather fantastic collections of precious stones for the Academy of Sciences. They don’t see a scrap of bread for months on end. One wonders what they live on—must live by hunting, like savages! This isn’t California at the time of the gold rush, you know. Money doesn’t interest them, they’re not filling their own coffers. They’re people we should be proud of. ...

p “We have to save Russian science—-We need food, even at the highest price—food!

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p “This never happened to me in the past, you know—pains in the heart and swollen legs. Not enough phosphorus. No sugar....”

p He stopped suddenly (talking about himself again!).

p “The nervous strain of our work makes phosphorus essential,” he informed me didactically.

p “My last visitor before you was Professor Fersman,” he said in a more lively voice. "He had just spoken to Lenin over the direct line to Moscow about the work of the commission set up to improve scientists’ conditions. Lenin was very sympathetic and was ready to help. Fersman assured me that Lenin is all for the intelligentsia. ...”

p Again I see him when he is talking about Lenin. With just a touch of miming, a jerking of the shoulders he reproduces a Gorky-Lenin conversation with affectionate humour.

p “This is not the first year I’ve been arguing that short-sighted people will regret their neglect of the intelligentsia. We’ll have to go begging to those same academicians aud professors. It has become obvious that we cannot do anything without the intelligentsia___And then what? That, of course, made the educated gentlemen gloat. And that is no good, either. No good at all. ...”

p I wanted to tie up the books he had selected for me.

p “Give them to me, give them to me,” he demanded, “I have a lot of experience as a packer.”

p “So have I.”

p “Let’s see who’s best!”

p With experienced hands he straightened out a sheet of blue sugar-wrapping, straightened up the pile of books and put them on the paper, grasped the paper firmly in his hands and folded it over, twisted a piece of string round his index finger and, hugging the parcel close to him, passed the string 280 tightly round it in two directions. He then made a loop over his left hand with the string, with a jerk snapped it skilfully and fastened the end at the place where the strings crossed. He brought the parcel to me, clicked his heels and smiled. "If you please, sir!... Who’s better?”

p “I could do it just as well___"

p “We’ll see about that another time___"

Like a fresh initiate I carried his parting words away with me. I kept a h’rm hold on the packet of books in which my future was perhaps hidden—precepts for work, the secrets of art, the truth of life—who could know?

p In the summer I saw Lenin and Gorky together.

p It was in July at the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International. The fact that Lenin had come for the Congress and had spoken in a city that had shortly before with great sacrifices defended its walls against the enemy, and that representatives of workers’ parties from almost all parts of the world had gathered here—all this gave the occasion a triumphal air. There were, however, in this triumph certain harsh and relentless notes—the struggle, the life-and-death struggle, was still going on and the Congress was conducted with clenched teeth, with a determination to fight to the end.

p Lenin’s arrival in the hall was striking.

p The dull yellow light from the chandeliers, made even duller by the strong light of day that came in through the skylight, seemed to increase the excitement in the packed hall. The air in the palace had become oppressive long before the Congress opened. And suddenly the tension created by this strange combination of electric light and sunlight, and by the stuffiness, and the long waiting broke out in applause that began in bursts in the 281 musiclans’ gallery, then merged into one and began to spread slowly downwards until it embraced the whole palace and seemed actually to rock it; Lenin, his head bent forward, as though he were cutting his way through an opposing air stream, strode through the entire hall at the head of a crowd of delegates. He made his way quickly to the place allotted to the presidium and disappeared from view while the ovation grew in volume. Then he suddenly appeared again and ran lightly up the gangway of the amphitheatre. He was seen and people began to move towards the place where he had stopped; the ring tightened round him, and the thunder of applause again rocked the hall. Lenin was engaged in friendly conversation with Mikha Tskhakaya, and kept bending closer to his ear until, finally, he gave what seemed to be an angry wave of the hand at the lack of order, almost had to force his way through the ring of people and hurried down the gangway.

p He had to endure a third ovation when he took the floor to make his report. He stood for a long time on the rostrum looking through some papers. Then he raised his arm high and waved his hand to quieten an audience that refused to be silenced. Alone amidst that rumbling noise he suddenly pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, as if defending himself, showed it to the crowd and tapped angrily on the glass—but nothing helped. Then he again began nervously turning over his papers, as though he were quite unable to reconcile himself to the unfortunate breach of good order.

p Lenin’s very first words brought him into living contact with his audience. He did not speak very loudly, but in a high-pitched’ voice with a slightly guttural “r”; he spoke of matter-of-fact, prosaic things, but he spoke with unusual inspiration, the inspiration of the true orator. He read out lists of 282 figures, holding his notes close to his eyes to do so; everything in his words was clear and practical, with no ornaments or embellishments, but his speech, taken together with his simple, persuasive gestures and with the mobility and lightness of his whole body, seemed to burn with an inward fire.

p Lenin’s speech revealed a big world, the world of struggle for mankind waged by the first Soviet state on earth. He seemed to take history by the hand and lead her easily into the hall, while she obediently unfolded before our eyes the deeds of recently defeated Poland and routed Wrangel, and the deeds of their defender, Britain, who had suddenly become imbued with love of peace and had proposed to mediate between the Soviets and the counter-revolution. Lenin recorded only a moment in history, but his practical words resembled the calculations of a scientist, and in them there was the dream of a new world that throbbed like the beating of a heart; the Congress delegates not only followed the dynamics of Lenin’s thoughts but seemed to reach out and place their hands on Lenin’s heart.

p The press-box where I was sitting was. next to the rostrum. I did not take my eyes off Lenin and I got the impression that, had I been an artist, I could have drawn his portrait from memory.

p I saw him again at the end of the session when he was going towards the exit in the midst of a crowd of delegates. There was a terrible crush, and in that stuffy atmosphere and the milling crowd hundreds of people were trying to push their way forward to see him closer at hand, and all the time he was moving through the corridors, in the circular hall and in the lobby, he was hemmed in by the crowd.

p Suddenly I saw Gorky’s head, high above Lenin and high above the crowd. The whole crowd came 283 to a halt at the doors, and then began slowly trickling out through the exit. That was how Lenin and Gorky left the palace, pressed together by the crowd, hand in hand, but outside, on the porch, the crowd again halted and they were surrounded by jostling photographers with their cameras clicking, and their heads hidden under black cloths or kerchiefs. Gorky stood bareheaded beside a column behind Lenin and his head, lit up by the sun, was visible from afar and his name was being mentioned all round me. I saw something new in Gorky’s face, something I could not remember having seen at our previous meetings. He was, no doubt, profoundly moved and was struggling to overcome his agitation; this made his glance harsh and the usually mobile folds in his cheeks had become rigid. He seemed to me to have a masterful look about him, his whole appearance, as it were, expressing the profound determination that had just emanated from Lenin’s speech and inspired the whole Congress.

Jostled by the crowd and watching them over the heads and shoulders of others, I did my best to catch every movement made by those two menstanding together—Lenin and Gorky. It struck me that the best I had ever thought of Gorky was embodied in him at that moment, in his closeness to Lenin, his closeness to the higher comprehension of everything that had been going on in the world.

p I went to him thinking, as usual, of nothing but the coming meeting and did not notice that there was somebody else in the room, probably hidden between the bookshelves. During our talk he took me by the hand and turned me lightly round.

p “Meet Vsevolod Ivanov. Also a writer. From Siberia. Hm-m.”

p A man in a shabby semi-military jacket, his legs 284 bound in puttees, was standing with his back to the stove. This outfit, all too common in those days, had long since acquired the torn and faded look that comes from lengthy campaigning. His face and hands were of an ashen hue; he was gaunt, almost haggard, you could see he had done plenty of journeying on foot and on the whole he looked like a runaway.

p “It’s terrible what he’s been telling me,” said Gorky with a sigh.

p That was true, he was telling a story of horrors. He had just arrived, probably on foot, from the East and visions of the Kolchak regime were still in his narrow eyes behind the tiny lenses of a pince-nez that did not suit his broad face. He had been in the holocaust of the Civil War for two years and had come out of it unscathed, if that was at all possible. He spoke about the horrors very tersely, in short, disconnected phrases. He kept his hands behind his back, his face seemingly indifferent to what he was saying, his voice calm.

p “They rip the guts out of a Red Army soldier. Nail them to a post. Then drive him round and round the post with their rifle butts until his guts are all wound on the post.”

p “What sort of post?" asked Gorky, stern and practical.

p “Any sort. A telegraph pole, for instance.”

p “Pretty awful,” said Gorky, rubbing his hands as though he were cold. “Pretty awful. What about the partisans?”

p “The partisans are all right. They are easy to get along with.”

p Gorky gave Ivanov a suspicious look, but curiosity and sympathetic admiration gained the upper hand; there was something epic in the fugitive’s improbable stories, he could hardly be lying, he had seen too much—and if he embellished his 285 stories a bit, well, it was so well done it would have been a pity not to have heard his horrible embellishments.

p After that the fugitive found a place to live in the Vyborg District, in the altar room of a former hospital chapel; the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, looked down piously at his desk from their home on the ceiling. A strange sort of life was going on on that desk, nothing like the mysteries at the throne of the Lord; sheets of calendered paper with tables, maps and pictures on one side and covered with pencilled scribble on the other, were being piled i up, torn and cut. Vsevolod Ivanov was writing horror stories on illustrations torn from an encyclopaedia and was writing them with the frantic speed of a man haunted by memories of the horrors he had witnessed. Gorky telephoned him occasionally. He ran from the altar room to a neighbouring apartment and listened to Gorky’s solicitous questions.

p “Are you getting any bread?.. . Are you writing?. .. Excellent, carry on.”

p That was the beginning of Gorky’s solicitude for the daily bread of absolutely unknown young writers, and Vsevolod Ivanov was the first of them to queue up with a sack over his back to obtain bread at the House of the Scientists.

p I am confident that Ivanov was one of the boldest writers of the post-October period. He managed to achieve chemical fusion of scarcely compatible things—the brutal truth and winged fantasy. His prose writings about the Civil War were one of the fountain-heads of Soviet literature. His fellow writers had to admit that he was the first after the war to introduce new revolutionary material into the writer’s craft with great artistic strength; this was something the entire rising generation of Russian literature was trying to achieve.

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Vsevolod Ivanov was probably one of the most fortunate discoveries Gorky ever made among writers.

p ... Early 1921 was the most difficult time for Gorky. His illness was developing rapidly, and it would be hard to name another ailment that can compare with consumption in its great ability to disturb the equilibrium of the spirit.

I saw him in January at the House of the Arts, on the occasion of an evening devoted to world literature. Sitting at a little table, he opened the proceedings with a speech of a few phrases. In the silence of the hushed hall his laboured breathing could be clearly heard. He had made an effort to overcome fatigue and had mustered the last of his strength—that was obvious and was the cause of great concern to those present. He finished speaking and, swaying a little, walked out with long, slow strides, as if his usual light tread had deserted him for ever.

p Never before had I climbed the narrow staircase on Kronverksky Street in such a state of mind; it was not because it was cold and gloomy as it usually is in October, and not because I was ill—it was neither, it was because I knew I was going there for the last time, that I was going to say “ goodbye”. Gorky was going vaway for a cure, as we said in those days, at first to Nauheim and then, probably, to Finland. What could be better? I knew only too well that he was approaching the point beyond which there might be no cure and I could well imagine how he would look when I entered and he rose to greet me. But that one word “ goodbye" cast a gloom over everything, and an involuntary selfishness would not be reconciled with the inevitable: Gorky needed it, it would do him good, 287 but would it be good for me, for us, for the whole world of hopes that he had founded with such good will and at such great speed? Of course, he had to go away for treatment. Dying was not so very clever—Blok’s terrible end was still fresh in the memory and everyone was still amazed at the rapidity of it. But what should I do about my feelings of pity, the bitter consciousness that I would be talking to him for the last time?...

p Much later Gorky quoted in his reminiscences of Lenin a letter that finally made him decide on a trip abroad.

p Spitting blood the way you are and not wanting to go!! Really, it’s a shameless and quite irrational attitude. In Europe, in a good sanatorium, you’ll not only take a cure but get three times as much work done. Really! Here you can neither be treated nor work. It’s just turmoil, all turmoil. Do go and get well. Please, don’t be stubborn.

p Yours,
Lenin

p I was again astonished that Gorky mostly displayed concern for others, for those whom he was leaving. But he also spoke about himself, clumsily, confusedly, smiling shyly and raising first one, then the other shoulder.

p The folds on his face had increased in number and they were more pendulous. His eyes burnt more brightly and the blue of them was more transparent; the fever did not put more life into his glance but only gave greater prominence to the fatigue that had forced its way into his every feature.

p “I almost died in Moscow, I can tell you. Nothing like it ever happened to me before. I’ve been in danger before but never felt it. But this time I felt it, you understand, I felt that I might possibly die.”

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p He laughed vivaciously, in childish amazement, and repeated it several times with wide-open eyes:

p “I felt I might die. ... Very possible, you understand, very.... They discovered I had some sort of dilatation of the heart.... And the worst of it is I have to believe it....”

p Becoming suddenly serious, as though he had caught himself talking of something that had no importance, he began to question me.

p “What’s happening to you, sir?”

p I had just come out of a clinic and would soon have to go to hospital for an operation and, when I told him so, he began to ask me anxiously who would operate, who would take care of me after the operation.

p “It’s a simple operation,” he said, not believing his own words or that I would be deceived by them. "But what will you do after it? You’ll need food, that is, of course ... an inconvenience. Where to get the food from, eh?”

p He had a fit of coughing that lasted a long time, and all the while he shook an outstretched forefinger to indicate that he had an idea and that I should have patience—when he had finished coughing he would tell me.

p “Just wait a bit,” he managed to say, barely recovering his breath. "My books are coming out, I’ll get the fees and I’ll send the money. To all the Serapionites.”

p “Take care of yourself,” he said suddenly and with a tenderness that came from the heart. "Tell your people to look after you, too. Yes, that’s right—look after one another.... I have the warmest feelings for that group. It must be saved, it must be preserved at any cost—-"

p He strode across the room to me smiling his onesided smile that had formerly upset me very much, 289 and tapped me on the shoulder, clumsily, trying to keep his emotions under control.

p “You’ve got terribly thin,” he muttered softly. “And so Grekov is going to cut you up, eh? A good surgeon, a master. ... Of course, it might be better if Fyodorov did it... .”

p He looked at me in anxiety, and then argued confidently against himself.

p “It’s care after the operation that matters, and that we’ll arrange. That we’ll certainly arrange___"

p Once again, for the last -time, I got the momentary feeling that I could go right into his eyes; then the feeling was gone, it was behind me, as everything else was behind me.

p I stood for a while downstairs, by the gate, and before I left I had to get over a feeling that was disturbing me, disturbing me because I could not understand it. I had to muster a lot of strength, sheer physical strength, and when, at last, I succeeded, I said to myself with a sudden sense of emancipation—but I’m a lucky man. What a lucky man I am!...

p Translated by George H. Hanna

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p Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. 1911.

p The Peter and Paul Fortress is one of the largest history museums in Leningrad. In tsarist times it was a prison for particularly dangerous political offenders

Simon Arshakovich Ter-Petrosyan (“Kamo”)

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