‘From the NEP, a socialist Russia will grow’
The Kronstadt rebellion had brought the Bolsheviks close to disaster. Lenin called it a threat more dangerous than the Whites. A regime claiming to rule on behalf of the people had come perilously close to being deposed by the people.
Russia in 1921 was sick of the Bolsheviks’ War Communism, weary of hunger and economic meltdown, no longer willing to suffer in the name of some future Utopia. Mass terror could no longer contain rebellion.
Lenin made concessions. His New Economic Policy offered to soften the state’s dictatorship and reintroduce some elements of capitalism. The hated practice of grain seizures was abandoned. If peasants handed over a portion of their produce, they would be allowed to sell the rest. In industry, small private cooperatives would be permitted. And the black market trade in food that had been stigmatised and banned would now be tolerated.
It was the only way to placate the people, but hard-line Bolsheviks were appalled. The NEP seemed a betrayal of Communist ideals, a capitulation to capital. Even Mayakovsky lampooned it:
They asked me if I love the NEP.
I said I do,
If it weren’t so darned absurd.
Come on, comrades!
Get out there
And slug it out with the businessmen and merchants!
Lenin says it’s ‘here for good’:
But who knows?
Another revolution could be along soon!
The New Economic Policy halted the decline in agriculture and industry and averted the threat of counter-revolution. But Lenin feared the ferocity of opposition in the Party and he moved to crush it. His decree ‘On Party Unity’ demanded the dissolution of dissenting groups. Debate was throttled. Divergent views were denounced as ‘factionalist’ treachery. Show trials of political opponents began. The way was paved for the intolerant, monolithic Communist Party that would rule for seventy years.
‘From the NEP, a socialist Russia will grow’
The NEP did wonders for the Pegasus café. The black market spivs who previously hid their wealth for fear of having their collars felt now spent with abandon, drank more, ate more, dressed even more garishly and showered their floozies with ever more expensive gifts. The new class of NEP-men exploited the economic freedoms. The people hated them and needed them.
Tables at the Pegasus were rarely empty. Demand for the poets grew. Sergei spent the days writing, evenings reciting and nights with Zinaida. She noticed he was returning home later and smelling of alcohol, but she said nothing.
For the public, the NEP was a brief mirage of tolerance. It seemed an indication that the Bolsheviks were willing to heed the people’s wishes. In reality, it was a ploy to keep themselves in power until circumstances allowed them to ditch it.
For Sergei, it was a period of acclaim. The themes of his poetry – love, doubt, sorrow, loneliness – resonated with a population weary of official jollity and vacuous socialist cheerleading. A review in the Narodny Uchitel – ‘People’s Teacher’ – magazine pinpointed the reasons for his appeal.
No living poet evokes the reader’s sympathies as much as Sergei Yesenin. Yesenin lacks the sweep and strength of Mayakovsky, the cultural resonance of Mandelstam or the lyrical intensity of Pasternak. But he has the quality that is most important of all – the ability to reach the reader’s heart, to move us and touch us. That is something quite rare in the times we live in. Yesenin has no agenda to push, no -ism to promote. He does not seek to convince us of anything, addresses no issues. He tells us only about himself. But when a Yesenin poem says ‘I’, it sounds almost always like ‘we’. He has understood the heart of the Russian people. He shares our emotions, our fears and our need for love.
Sergei was enjoying his recitals again, the applause, the respect and the lines of admirers. His lust for fame, the thirst for personal validation he had harboured since childhood, drove him on. But the more it was assuaged, the more he needed. If his pre-eminence was questioned, he felt belittled.
When Boris Pasternak recited two of his poems and was well received, Yesenin sought him out, pretending not to know who he was.
‘Your poems are like tongue-twisters,’ he said. ‘No one will ever understand them. The people will never admire you.’
Pasternak replied with feigned courtesy that one should be cautious when invoking ‘the people’; but Yesenin would not back off.
‘I know the people,’ he said. ‘And I know that in future they will say, “Pasternak? A poet? Never heard of him . . . although we do like vegetables!” ’ referring to the word pasternak, which in Russian means parsnip.
Later he went after the man whose status as Russia’s number one irked him the most. Yesenin and Mayakovsky were performance poets in an age when poets were stars, equal in fame to any actor or singer. Mayakovsky, too, was a provocateur, given to scandalous acts and shocking outbursts. His verse, noisily celebrating modernity and the march of Soviet industrialisation was the antithesis of Sergei’s gentle laments for the disappearing world of the old Russian village.
At a poetry evening chaired by the venerable Symbolist Valery Bryusov, Yesenin and Mayakovsky came to blows. Mayakovsky began by decrying the decadent backwardness of poets who praise the past and lack the vision to understand the communist future.
Yesenin, who had been drinking, responded with a volley of abuse, to which Mayakovsky made an insulting reply.
‘Attention!’ he boomed to the audience. ‘News of a crime! Some children have killed their mother. They said she was a no good, dissolute whore. The mother was Poetry. The murderers are Yesenin and his Imagist cronies!’
Yesenin tore off his jacket and tie and leapt on to the chairman’s table.
‘We are not the murderers of poetry!’ he yelled. ‘You are! You don’t write poems! You write stupid jingles and whorish propaganda!’
The auditorium erupted. Punches were thrown. Marienhof pulled Sergei away, but not before he had been hit in the face.
When Zinaida saw his injuries, he shrugged.
‘It’s an act,’ he said. ‘Poetry. It’s about being noticed. About being heard.’
Yesenin
Mayakovsky
It was true that the Bolsheviks were changing the way people thought. They claimed they were creating a new breed of men, with socialist minds that thought in socialist ways. But there were other changes. In the old days, a knock at the door meant a friend or a neighbour. Now it filled people with terror. The fear that agents of the state might at any moment appear moulded the thoughts of every Russian.
When Zinaida opened the door, a man with a revolver staggered in. She screamed. He waved the gun in a theatrical sweep. It flashed through her mind that he was drunk.
‘Calm yourself, madam,’ the man said. ‘No need for alarm . . . I have come . . . I have come . . .’
His words were slurred.
‘I have come to visit the criminal, Seryozha! . . . The criminal Seryozha, who is under my charge . . . ! Yakov Blumkin, at your service. I shall enter your apartment . . .’
She tried to push him out, but he was already past her.
‘So this is the residence of the criminal Seryozha!’ he said, gesturing with his revolver.
Zinaida had experience dealing with drunks. She took the gun from him.
‘Yes, madam. Good precaution. That gun has killed and shall kill again! Not you, of course . . . Not such a beauty as yourself . . .’
She offered him tea. He was walking unsteadily towards the kitchen.
‘Not tea, madam! Something stronger . . . something such as this!’
He glanced at the bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth and poured a glass of vodka. It seemed to calm him.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Better. Now to business. I have, as you know, been empowered to supervise . . . to oversee . . . you know, Seryozha and I are good friends, drinking partners, even . . . and I am also his moral guardian while he remains subject to the . . . I am unsure of his crime . . . but I do know he must comply with my demands – and my demand is that you produce him at once to have a drink with me!’
‘He’s not here,’ Zinaida said.
‘Then where is he?’ Blumkin’s tone was immediately suspicious. ‘You are not attempting to conceal the subject from me, are you? . . . Are you concealing a criminal from the duly empowered agents of the . . . ?’
‘Of course not,’ Zinaida said. ‘He isn’t here. I’m surprised you don’t know where he is. He seems to spend more time drinking with you and Marienhof than he spends with his wife and children.’
Blumkin picked up the nuance.
‘Ah, madam’s husband deserting her? Neglecting madam’s needs . . .’
He was advancing towards her. ‘We can remedy that!’
He had his arm around her waist, pulling her towards him. She screamed, but he clamped her mouth.
‘No need for resistance,’ he said. ‘Blumkin at your service . . . to satisfy, as they say, your every . . .’
He was strong, pushing her towards the bedroom.
‘Not in there!’ Zinaida managed to say. ‘The children are sleeping!’
Mention of the children chastened him. He released her.
Zinaida ran to the window, but Blumkin raised his hand.
‘No need for that, madam. No need to shout . . . I see how things . . . I am Jewish . . .’
The incongruity of it made her pause.
‘I know you are Jewish. Why are you telling me?’
‘Because you are also Jewish. I thought that you . . .’
‘I’m not Jewish,’ Zinaida said.
‘Then whence cometh this Raikh of yours?’
‘My father’s family were from Germany.’
‘Aha!’ Blumkin leapt to his feet, suddenly alert. ‘Then you are the enemy! . . . the enemy that we fought for so—’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Zinaida said. ‘My father’s as Russian as they come. And you Bolsheviks keep telling us to forget national identities and concentrate on class warfare, workers of all nations united against the ruling class. My father did plenty of that.’
Blumkin seemed exhausted, his arguments defeated.
‘Oh well,’ he mumbled. ‘There’s nothing more to say.’
He was at the door on his way out when he remembered why he had come.
‘Before I go,’ he said. ‘This is for Seryozha.’
After he left, she read what he had handed her.
DECISION IN THE CASE OF KUSIKOV, RUEBEN BORISOVICH
Rueben Kusikov stands accused of counter-revolutionary activities under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code, a charge carrying the death penalty.
The subject was questioned in regard to his service in the Circassian Regiment of the White Army’s Savage Division, suspected of the perpetration of war crimes.
The charges of counter-revolution against him were investigated by the State Political Directorate of the Cheka.
Having carried out our inquiries, we conclude that the charges against the subject remain unproven. Decision: release the subject on the surety of Comrade Yakov G Blumkin.
She realised her hands were shaking. It wasn’t just the brush with Blumkin. Her nerves were shot.
Poetry has always been Russia’s secret garden of liberty, defying censorship, keeping freedom alive when autocracy strove to crush it. The Bolsheviks recognised its power. They bullied it and courted it, trying to buy off its censure.
Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Nikolai Klyuev and others would resist the regime’s blandishments. They would use poetry’s currency against the autocrats. All would suffer for it. Others hesitated.
Mikhail Kuzmin, the playwright who had long ago been Klyuev’s lover, wrote enthusiastically in praise of the revolution.
We’re building us a brand-new home.
Tomorrow we’ll find space for all.
Laugh now, don’t be dour;
Heed the revolution’s call!
The Soviets’ giddy, shining promise
Of food and freedom for all men,
The word we heard and heard again,
Proud and mighty, ‘Soviet citizen’!
Our Revolution’s youthful, chaste and good.
Not like the French; more than its equal,
An angel of deliverance in workers’ clothes,
A promise written in our blood.
Sergei sniffed when he read it. Alexander Blok’s assessment of the revolution was more subtle, an ambiguous, equivocal epic titled, ‘The Twelve’.
Black night,
White snow.
The wind, the wind!
It all but lays you low.
The wind, the wind,
Across God’s earth it blows!
Stumbling and tumbling,
Folk slip and fall.
God pity all!
Oh, what bitter sorrow!
A sweet life we have won!
Now we vow we’ll set the world on fire,
Flaming, flaming amidst blood –
Bless us, Lord God!
March to the revolution’s pace:
We’ve an enemy to face!
On and on, the steady beat
Of the workers’ marching feet!
. . . And The Twelve, unblessed, unhallowed,
Still go marching on.
Ready for what chance may offer,
Pitying none.
On, with rifles lifted,
Through dead alleys where sleet has sifted,
Where the blizzard tosses free.
Onward, where the snow has drifted
Clutching at the marcher’s knee.
The red flag
Whips their faces.
Creaking snow,
Measured paces.
The grim foe
Marks their traces.
Crrack-crack-crack!
Crrack-crack-crack!
. . . Forward as a haughty host they tread.
A starving mongrel shambles in the rear.
Above them flies the banner, bloody red,
That He holds in hands no bullets sear;
Hidden as the flying snow veils veer.
Lightly walking on the wind, as though
He Himself were diamond snow,
With mist-white roses garlanded:
Jesus Christ is marching at their head!
The poem moved Sergei. He sat down to write, fired with determination to love the revolution. Great historical events, the social, political upheaval engulfing Russia demanded to be addressed. It wasn’t his natural subject matter, but he had to do it.
I know a thing about talent; poetry’s a simple game.
But when the subject is my love for Russia,
That tortured, burned-out love of my land,
It’s not so easy to write it all the same.
Turn out a couplet, dash off a rhyme –
Anyone can do it: the moon and girls and love and bed –
But that’s not the tenor of the time,
Not the thing that fills my head.
I want to be a poet and a citizen now,
A shining son of the mighty Soviet state!
Someone she can be proud of,
Not a bastard come too late.
He showed Marienhof the first three stanzas of what he planned to be a celebration of Russia’s redemption, a paean to the men leading her to the fulfilment of communism.
‘Poor little Seryozha,’ Marienhof laughed. ‘Always scurrying to do what the big boys tell him. You don’t believe any of this socialist nonsense! You’re making yourself write doggerel for the sake of keeping them happy.’
‘It’s not doggerel,’ Sergei said. ‘And I do admire what they are doing for Russia. But it’s hard. I still love the world they are destroying – the old world of the village, rural backwardness, old-fashioned affection . . .’
‘So write what you feel,’ Marienhof said. ‘Write the rest of it sincerely. Then come back and show me.’
Zinaida forced herself to be calm. It helped that the children were behaving well – she wondered if Tanya and Kostya could sense that their mother was struggling and were trying to help her.
She decided she would tell Sergei. Then decided she wouldn’t. Then decided she needed to tell him or she would go mad.
When he came in she hugged him, but she didn’t mention Blumkin. She didn’t know why not. She told herself it was because Sergei needed protecting. He would go and confront the man, put himself in danger. Perhaps she had another fear – that Sergei would make light of her ordeal, say it was nothing, laugh at her distress.
She resolved to say nothing. Then in bed he was so tender, his lovemaking so kind and patient, so affectionate, that she told him everything.
Sergei cursed the man who had tormented his wife. He leapt out of bed, pulled on his clothes. He would find Blumkin, beat him to pulp. Zinaida took his arm. He was going to shoot the bastard. Zinaida embraced him, laid her head on his shoulder. He hugged her. He was in tears.
They huddled together under the bedclothes and held each other close in the consolation of love.
In the morning, Sergei asked Marienhof if he had seen Blumkin.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We were expecting him last night, but he didn’t come. I think something might have happened to him.’
‘Something has!’ Sergei said. ‘And something worse is about to!’
He explained. Marienhof shook his head.
‘You can’t go against Blumkin,’ he said. ‘The man’s too powerful, too close to Trotsky and the Cheka. He would crush you and all of us with you. They’d close down the Pegasus; the bookshop, too. These people are vengeful, Seryozha.’
Sergei didn’t listen. He found Blumkin in a bar on Tverskaya. He threw himself at him with animal ferocity. He was landing punches on the man’s face and neck, kicking him, yelling obscenities.
Blumkin was taken by surprise. When he roused himself, he was more than a match. He held Sergei at arm’s length.
‘What the hell is this about?’
‘You know what it’s about!’
Sergei had laid the charge and Blumkin nodded his acceptance.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything. She stopped me, anyway.’
‘Goddam lucky for you that she did!’
They sat in silence.
‘All right,’ Sergei said. ‘It may seem a trifle to you. But it comes on top of everything else. It’s all got too much for her . . . and for me . . .’
When he told Zinaida what had happened, she cried.
‘It’s not just Blumkin,’ she said. ‘It’s the children, the violence, the times we live in . . .’
He comforted her; she was shaking.
‘I’m under pressure to go back to work,’ Zinaida said. ‘I’ve had extra maternity leave because Kostya’s been ill, but it’s run out now. If I don’t go back, they won’t keep the job for me. Have you seen the new slogan they’ve come up with? “He who does not work shall not eat!” We thought it was aimed at the aristos – they don’t give them jobs anyway, so they starve to death – but it’s aimed at us, too!’
Sergei took her hand.
‘Don’t worry, Zina. I won’t let you starve. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.’
‘Blumkin molesting me just made me realise how defenceless we are,’ she said. ‘We live in a country where things happen and people can do what they like to us. We don’t have the right to defend ourselves. It’s like a dog sitting waiting for someone to kick you or stroke you. It robs you of certainty; it torments your mind.’
In the morning, Zinaida was calmer. She spoke more encouragingly about the prospect of going back to work. There was an opening in the Commissariat’s Theatre Directorate.
‘I’ve always loved the theatre,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to spend my life working on propaganda. I want to be an actress.’
‘I know,’ Sergei said. ‘And you’ve got a boss who will do what he can to help you. Lunacharsky’s on your side – look how he helped get me and the Kusikov brothers released.’
Kusikov brought his brother to the Pegasus Stable. Rueben was celebrating his release then planning to leave town. The weeks in the Lubyanka, the shadow of the death penalty had taken their toll. Moscow was a jungle, filled with threats and lurking danger.
Marienhof opened champagne. Shershenevich arrived. The four of them began the toasts. Midnight struck and Sergei had still not appeared.
‘Looks like Seryozha’s decided he loves his wife more than us,’ Kusikov said with a laugh.
‘He’s besotted,’ said Marienhof. ‘He picked a fight with Blumkin to defend her, even though I told him it would put every one of us in danger. We need to do something before he loses all sense of proportion.’
Sergei appeared the following day with a sheaf of poems, eager to show Marienhof what he had written. Marienhof had laughed at the opening stanzas of his planned epic in praise of the Revolution. The poet’s desire to be a good citizen of the Soviet state had rung hollow. The continuation of the poem suggested why.
I’m not a canary! I’m a poet!
Not one of your tame and sorry hacks!
Sure, I’m drunk; and at times I blow it,
But my mind’s wild genius seldom lacks.
I see through it all; I understand!
You reckon your New Era’s pretty grand,
That the name of Lenin, like the wind,
Must whistle thunder through the land.
OK then, I’m with you! Yesenin, make an effort!
Start reading Marx – read, digest, take note!
Start guessing at the depth and wisdom
Of all that boring stuff he wrote!
For so long I hated Moscow,
Where, drunk and bridling, they’d hold me in a cell.
I can’t deal with a policeman’s greeting
When vodka dumps me in my hell.
A prisoner on a prison bench
Yelling poems in my drunken voice
Of sad canaries in a cage
Is not my scenario of choice.
The rest of the poem dealt with canonical subjects of socialist realism, industrial power and the electrification of the country. But it was shot through with mockery – who would believe the poet’s contention that he would rather sing of streetlights than the stars?
He showed Marienhof other poems that were more direct in their criticism. ‘The Stern October has Deceived Me’ was a barely coded lament for Yesenin’s disappointment with the October Revolution. Another, unfinished draft seethed with Hieronymus Bosch-like images of the revolution’s cruelty.
If the wolf bays at a star,
Cloud has eaten the sky.
The ripped open bowels of mares
And crows’ black sails slide by.
The azure thrusts no rays
Through the snows’ red coughing stench.
A garden of skulls, goldly glowing,
Circles beneath the whinnying storm.
You heard the cheerful knocking?
Sunset rakes the groves.
With chopped-off arms for oars
They are rowing us to the Promised Land.
My Russia, can this be you? Whose bucket
Plumbs the scum of your snows?
Along the roads, voracious hounds
Of a dead dawn devour the land.
Who’s then to sing? O who,
In this mad radiance of corpses?
I sang the Wondrous Guest, it’s clear now,
Only in self-derision.
Evil October strews from the brown
Birch-hands its rings.
You beasts, come near, weep out
Your grief in my cupped hands.
He had tried to love the revolution; this was the result. Marienhof advised him against publishing any of what he had written.
‘I’ll publish the one that describes my efforts to understand Karl Marx,’ Sergei said. ‘It’s called “Stanzas”. At least it’ll convince them I’m trying!’
