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bayoneted rifles poking over the top.
Traffic was nil on this late afternoon. Only a few wagons, coaches,
and mounted horsemen braved the street, and few pedestrians dared
walk its icy concrete sidewalks. No travelers wanted to be caught in
another sudden outbreak of violence.
Nonetheless, two white horses pulled Count Sergei Yulyevich
Witte in his caleche down Nevsky Prospect. Witte was the former
finance minister and chairman of the Committee of Ministers. Now
the emperor was seriously considering appointing him premier. But,
Witte had promised himself, he would not accept the appointment
unless the emperor permitted him to handle the revolutionary unrest
his way.
Witte was scheduled for a meeting with the emperor the next day to
detail his program, and had been consulting with influential high offi-
cials about it beforehand. One more to go, he thought, but I think I
almost know word for word what his responses will be. Still, it is im-
portant to seem to consult and listen.
He believed the measures being taken against the surviving demon-
strators, known social democrats, and strikers were too harsh. Torture,
beatings, and summary executions in some cases were just increasing
the opposition to the government, encouraging strike leaders and the
revolutionaries, and alienating those liberals who still strongly sup-
ported the monarchy, but also wanted a Western-style representative
government.
This had been a horrible month for the monarchy. Witte did not
think it would survive the mass upheaval unless the government s re-
sponse was deep reform. He shook his head and rubbed the back of his
neck, sighing. The vast majority of the people have gone mad.
Red Terror Never Again 43
There had been a great wave of strikes and demonstrations in St.
Petersburg and Moscow, including a total shutdown of publishers. And
Witte found it hard to believe, but the evidence lying along the street
was undeniable: there were frequent violent clashes with armed squads
of revolutionaries. Shocking, the number of weapons the strikers had.
In St. Petersburg alone, they had killed over three hundred Cossacks;
over a hundred Cossacks in Moscow.
Witte shook his head. This was going on everywhere. In Revel,
2,300 killed; more thousands in Tomsk. And then Ivanovo-
Voznesensk, Kharkov, Revel, Smolensk, Lodz, Minsk, Petersburg,
Vilna, Kazan, Tiflis. Peasant uprisings. Another mutiny of sailors in
Odessa that was a more dangerous repeat of the Potemkin mutiny in
June.
Do pizdy it s a fucked up situation.
He ran his hand over his receding hairline and then down his long
thin face, stopping to stroke his black beard. Now, a national railroad
strike had hit here, and in Moscow, Nizhnii-Novgorod, Ryazan, Yaro-
slavl, Kursk, and the Urals; the Okhrana reported that tomorrow it
would reach Kiev and Voronezh, and strikers had shut down telephone
and telegraph service throughout central Russia. Well over two million
strikers. I cannot believe it, but that is what the Okhrana just told the
emperor.
What to do? What to do? That stupid reactionary Trepov is urging
the most drastic, bloody measures to end these strikes and unrest. Witte
had warned the emperor not to appoint him assistant interior minister,
but he had wanted a clampdown on All these treasonous revolutionar-
ies. When General Trepov asked him what to do with the twenty-three
arrested after a shootout at the railroad station, he d said, Shoot them.
Ebanashka stupid.
Witte s coachman steered the caleche into the wide inner courtyard
of Piotr Arkadevich Stolypin s St. Petersburg home. He was governor
of Saratov Province on the Volga River, had the ear of the emperor,
who thought highly of him, and it was clear to Witte that at some time
he would be appointed premier. He was in St. Petersburg at the request
of the emperor to advise him on what to do about the serious unrest.
Witte was sure that the emperor would not look happily on Witte ignor-
ing Stolypin.
Witte s caleche pulled up to the large, pillared portico. He had
made an appointment with Stolypin to consult with him here so that
they would not be seen talking together by the court sycophants. The
44 Rudy Rummel
emperor was much concerned about conspiracies and had told that nu
vse Trepov to be on guard, what with his full control of the police he
was really the city s unofficial dictator. Witte wanted the emperor to
find out he had consulted with Stolypin only when he told him, and not
through the whispered warnings of some prince or count.
As Witte walked up the steps to the massive front doors with their
large bronze handles, a footman in a red and green swallow-tail coat,
knee britches, and a tasseled red Havelock cap who had been on watch
for him bowed and said, My master has been waiting for you in the
study. Please follow me and I will announce your presence.
Witte followed the footman through the front doors, into a recep-
tion hall with statues in niches, up a winding, carpeted staircase, and
down a long, stuffy hallway lit only by a few gas lamps. Both walls
were lined with oil portraits, beginning with one of Emperor Nicholas
II, leading on to Stolypin s father and mother; presumably the rest were
ancestors. All wore expressions so solemn that they looked as though
they were at a funeral. The footman stopped at a large, carved oak door,
knocked, opened the door, and announced Witte s presence.
Witte walked in, waved a greeting at Stolypin, and said, Piotr
Arkadevich, thank you for meeting with me.
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