PETROGRAD

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 107, 7 May 1924, Page 20

PETROGRAD

VERY LIKE A CINEMA FILM

THE DAYS BEFORE THE WAR

I4US3IAN LIVERPOOL OF TO-DAY.

I have not known Petrograd for verylong, writes Arthur Ransome in the "Manchester Guardian." Ten years only, but just long enough to'have seen it : .pass with painful fits and spasms through the most dramatic period. that it has known since the days when Peter the Great live'd!in his, little.house there, built; his -ships >along the."river, pulled out-his courtiers' teeth (you can still see there a box of the trophies of his dentistry, each tooth labelled with the name of its onetime owner), and, not knowing the word "impossible," tried with edict, stick, and executioneer to make the Russians live and work in the tempo demanded .by his own remorseless energy. When I thing of Petragrod now I cannot help seeing it as,a kind of cinematograph film, a series of flashlights flung on a changing cityj without continuity, yet such that the 'Petrograd of, to-day seems to. need for its dramatic valuation'; a memory of those earlier moments. . i ''■■•.'■ . •■' ,r There is the. old Petrograd of the days .before the war. I remember an odd jumble of things, an open-air staging, of; the seige of .Azov in one of the parks, a. baker's boy. flung from a moving tram by a conductor, coach-men' with 'brightly-coloured puffed silken sleeves, porters asleep1 at night at .the door-.ways,- ships crowding through the -bridges in the early.morning,' nightinggales, at midnight on the shores of the gulf, the, litle theatre of. the Winter Palace whore Catherine the Great enjoyed French drama before the French Revolution moved her to throw the bust ox Voltaire indignantly into- a lumber-, room; and on the other side1 of the river, the. fortress of, Si: Peter and ,S. Paul with the spire of its church like a gold thorn piercingvthe mist; Iperhaps most vividily: of all, my : first sight of the Troubetskoy statue of Alexander 111. by the Nikolai: : station, a hugo man seated like a dead weight on the back of a gigantic draught horse,; the statue from which at its. unveiling the Czar Nicholas 11. "is said to have'turned his head,'so .vivid, a'criticism was it of his father,, and,' indeed, :of the Russian autocracy, seated so heavily,' so dully on that powerful beast.■..'.-.-'•.•-"■.■■••.■" . '■-: . RUSSIAN MOBILISATION- ■: '-.-' Then, in 1914; the days of ; the Russian mobilisation, and the begining of the war; the- cavalry';horses tied under the trees along the Alexander Garden, the crowds of. the recruits with their; kettles tied to their bundles, the weepwomen marching beside them,, the tremendous gathering in.the Palace Square when Nicholas ; li.. showed' himself to his -people.. A little figure in a white uniform, appeared on a balcony of the red-brown palace. . Nobody shot at it.Everybody cheered, and a moment • later it;was replaced by another little figure also in white uniform, this time indeed the Czar of All the Russias. . •<■■'<'. Just after.Christmas in 1916 I came back to it to iind'-it markedly changed. Rasputin had been killed,; and his murder was like/the first lightning: flash of a long-gathered storm. < Everyone fciiew/.that something was going ; to. happen.. Ihe questions on i everybody's lipsSwere What and When?' One wild rumour; chased, another,- through. the winter streets; Then the days of February and March, and Petrogratl turned over a leaf in its history so violently that it broke the back'of the book.; Cossacks before the Kazan, Cathedral,, cavalry aimlessly' moving on .the. paverr. ants among '.the people, shots fired away at the Jukolai. ;station,- and the end of the autocracy. I. spent four days' arid nights „moving to and fro about1 : the: ..city,' saw the taking of the prison in, the Ofizerskaya, soldiers "going over to the. people" and giving their, rifles up to street boys, who, regardless of the crowds, used them to fae,at pigeons in the street ; : I saw. the' flauris Palace 'turned into a mixed dosshouse,' arsenal; and seat of two rival Parliaments, heard-Miliukov declare to an amazed revolution that "We have.' decidod to preserve the dynasty,-' Eaw: returned political ':. convicts.": dragging their legs still' conscious of the chains that,had just been struck oil, and presently found the, whole city of, Petrograd , become a vast Hydo Park, with more orators than there were street corners. ;.' ' : ... ' ..- : _.; '■ .." ■ -.-■ ;.r-.v ■.'■-.■ , THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION.; Then, after the 'October Revolution: a new Petrograd,, grim, hungry, threatened by the hostility of v the Germans without and of the Allies within, the whole of-the Oiyil Service on strike, armed: patrols, by little watchhres.: in the streets at uight, occasional, pitched battles to. pre-. vent the looting of wine stores by-the soldiery, 'and. almost ..daily touches of comic opera, inevitable with a Government oE enthusiastic amateurs and Mm-; istries staffed for the most .part by young people who had never been inside a Government .before. Of that Petrograd I have a- still .more -. curious: . tangle of ; recoJlections. .In the general' excitement of .the Revolution it seemed that.no ono had time to clear the snow: from the. streets,.' and, sledging was like mountaineering.. I remember being-over-turned, sledge and all, when my -driver/ greatly-.daring, tried to cross, the valleys , and mountain ranges from one Bide of the road to. the other. Odd-' fragments of memory persist; . the frantic bell-ringing of. the President of the Constituent Assembly, Lemn sitting smiling in the hall of the Tauris Palace while the meeting within, in spite of itself, digested his uncompromising arguments, the working of Trotsky's shoulders as with Colonel Robins .I'-looked- down from the gallery behind; him while he was making the ■ finest Bpeech, -as oratory; that I heard during the Revolution,; on his- return. : frcm •Brest-Litovski Then days- and flights when it was thought that the Germans ymight- march into the town, tho '.untidy flight of embassies, the. quite dofinitely .comic removal of the . Government to'.Moseow,. when one of the new Ministers }got;left behind while filling, his pockets with potatoes at a wayside station^ but, : by hard running; caught the train and continued his journey \oh. one of the buffers of the van. And ;ifter that, Petrograd as an increasingly hungry, resentful city that by losing the Government had lost at that time its only reason,for existence,;and had become'no 'more than a tour de force that had somehow lost its point. '•-•.. -. Its b'nly- hope of . recovery was as a-j port, and for some years the. cranes on tlie quays rusted .where they lay. Nothing left. Petrograd. Nothing came in. In 1919, a hostile army was within sight of its cathedrals,. and there were barricades and trenches in the streets ready for its reception., Petrograd.-. knew the worst rigours and cruelties of civil strife intensified by foreign intervention. In the spring of 1920 it was a city so hard hit that it. scarcely seemed that recovery 'was- possible. The streets at night .were like catacombs, and even by day-! lieht, one s-iw little but blind,' boarded window.?. Tilings moved towards a breaking-point,- and in March, 1921, when in Moscow. I got a. Rcval paper -, announcing the Kron'stadt. revolt, and L reporting that PeUograd waa being boni-

barded 1 took the traiii and Went to see what might well be the end of the city. Ihei city, was undamaged, the revolt, was presently crushed, and from this turningrpoint v with, the . announcement of the iSew Economic Policy or the retreat irom militant Communism, Petrosnad began slowly,' inch by inch, as it were, to grope its-way back to normality. ,

PETROGRAD- TO-DAY. „ A t nd/. now?"■"'■ What of the Petrograd' tnat the present-day visitor finds: It looks very, mut .h a s it did in old days, « , r,tJle S aPs wlle Ye wooden houses or scattoWmgs have been taken down and Durnt. A friend commented on this as/ we were driving, to the station, and the sledge-dnyer: turned angrily- round :— V,ould you have us die of cold, so that tlie town should look nice for visitors?"

•, •■;:'? sharp reminder that revolution is still alive. V i

The main landmarks of Petrograd are unchanged, the gold spire of the fortressbeyond the river, the blue dome of the .Mohammedan mosque, the Bourse, still ™^ ked, by the machine-gun bullets of 1917,, the half-sunken barges. -The red 'vir of- T .the garden at:the end of the Winter Palace are gone, and children play on the space within. The shops are open. I was able, without difficulty and cheaply,i.to get a motor-car to take me to visit-some British ships in the port. Ihe Hotel Europe is better than any hotel in Moscow. The K'evski Prospect is again a crowded, lively street, and at night the windows blaze, and fiery letters invite you to visit cinematograph theatres. But the spirit of the town is different. Petrograd and Moscow have changed functions in the life of Russia. The removal of the capital, the disappearance, of the Court, have left this convalescent Petrograd with nothing to hope for but an importance as entirely commercial as was formerly that of Moscow. The Winter Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, are.relics,; no 'more, interesting solely as historical, monuments. Ambitious young people, .seeking careers, think not of Pelrograd but of Moscow. Petrogracl, an outlying'city, has no longer any artificial buttreES to its importance. It hasa chance.of being the Russian Liverpool/it has ceased to be the Russian London: It is now a ■ town with struggling industries, a harbour on.the Baltic, ■which,, by historical accident, - contains one. of': the finest picture galleries in Europe and some \excellent theatres. By the Nikolai Station, the heavy ; figure: of Alexander'Hl. sits, still upon his monstrous horse/a thing, immovable, unshakable. not : to be disturbed, and seems to have taken a new symbolism ugon itself,-. and to be not only a criticism of the old autocracy, but also an image of the huge vitality,of^'Russia, that eveii'in this tour de force of '-. an,''. artificial .pity remains,, scarcely pertubed by events, cannot, be crushed, -and- will still'remain to cou.fute.anew all prophets of its collapse. ';