Fat Shubin
at 2:30 pm (Other Writ, Royalism, The Building Blocks of Democracy, War)Comte Louis de Robien was a cynical French diplomat attached to St. Petersburg during the First World War: in his diary of the final years he detailed the Revolutions and that curious time when at any given time Tsarists, democrats, bolsheviks, socialists, the German army, Ukrainians and many other groups of varying sizes could be either fighting each other, or in very temporary alliance contesting the other groups singly or in concert…
Monday 9th April 1917
Shubin is still very worried. The apparent orderliness of the demonstration in honour of the victims of the revolution does not reassure him.
He analysed the psychology of Russian crowds to us with great shrewdness — he understands them better than we do, their mentality is so far removed from ours.
“I saw,” he told us, “a troop of a thousand demonstrators in a small side-street, waiting their turn to take up their position in one of the processions. There they stood, each one in his place, from ten o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night, marking time in the melting snow without the slightest sign of impatience, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink, without asking for anything from the neighbouring houses. The bearers laid five or six red coffins down on the bare earth, and none of this great crowd gave any sign of impatience. And yet, on the banners which they carried, the most extreme and violent demands were inscribed. From time to time a leader raised his baton, giving the note, and they began to sing: ‘We will pillage ! — we will kill ! — we will cut throats ! — to the gallows with the Tsar ! — the bourgeois are vampires !‘ etc. . . . The tenors cried out for the heads of the aristocrats, the sopranos for that of the Tsar, the basses wanted no one spared. Then, when the verse was over they rested for ten minutes and then, at a new signal, they started again. It wasn’t until that night that the procession could start marching, the bearers lifted the coffins on to their shoulders, and the crowd left in an orderly fashion, singing: ‘We will pillage ! — We will murder !‘ etc. . . .”
Fat Shubin mimed the scene all the while he described it, rolling his pale blue eyes, beating time, singing first in a tenor voice, then in a bass… and then marching across the drawing-room with superb calm.
He was most amusing. But his observation is very exact. In no other country could people confine themselves to words like this, without breaking into action. But how dangerous it all is ! Because, once let loose, these brutes are terrifying. In 1905 there were atrocious scenes and the moujiks, so mild in appearance, pillaged everywhere with sadistic cruelty. Someone told me about one ‘estate’, where the peasants cut three legs off all the sheep. In other places they tore out the cattles’ tongues and put out their eyes. Let us hope that we do not see horrors like these !
Wednesday 8th August 1917
Everyone is interested in the battalions of women soldiers who exercise in the courtyard of the Paul Palace on the Fontanka . . . people talk of the ‘heroism of the Russian women‘ and they get all excited about it… as for myself, I feel that it is rather unpleasant histrionics. As far as fighting goes these women can only be thinking of the rough-and-tumble !
Tuesday 14th August 1917
What strikes one about the present events is the lack of men … the Kadets, who stirred up so much trouble in the opposition under the old regime, have shown themselves to be lamentably incompetent when in power. It makes one wonder whether the Emperor wasn’t quite right in not calling on their help. If he had given them power, far from saving him they would have precipitated his downfall, because they have shown themselves to be doctrinaires, muddlers and blunderers. . . .
During the first days of the revolution one of these brilliant theoreticians came to see Shubin, completely panic-stricken. Shubin expressed astonishment at his being in such a state at the moment when the event which he had spent his whole life preparing for was actually taking place…. “Yes,” his visitor replied, “the revolution is all very well, but it is not happening the way I wrote about it in my book….” The whole history of the Kadet party is contained in that answer.
