Red Mutiny (16 page)

Instead Klodt watched the mutiny unfold, delivering no orders. Supply officer Makarov was the first swimmer to arrive at the torpedo boat's side. The crew helped him aboard, desperate to know what had happened. Makarov removed his jacket and asked for a shirt, in such a state of shock that he ignored their questioning and counted the soggy bank notes stuffed in his pocket. He was brought down to the small wardroom to dry off and settle down.

Finally, twenty minutes after the first shot was fired on the
Potemkin,
Klodt decided that the
Ismail
should get away. He told his crew to weigh anchor, but the mooring line accidentally twisted around the anchor buoy. Klodt ordered his sailors to cut the line, but they were unsuccessful. Now terrified that he might actually be captured and killed, Klodt tried to sever the line by starting the engines and reversing the ship. At this point, the
Potemkin
mutineers started shooting at his crew with rifles. He had lingered too long.

"Your Excellency," Klodt's signalman yelled, "the
Potemkin
is aiming its guns at us."

His crew cried out that they needed to surrender. Ignoring their protests, Klodt ordered full steam. Suddenly, one of the
Potemkin'
s aft forty-seven-millimeter guns cracked. The shot sailed over the bow. The
Ismail
shuddered backward, Klodt swinging the wheel around as he tried to break free from the mooring line. A second shot sounded. The third cut through the torpedo boat's funnel.

"Your Excellency," the signalman desperately urged, "they're ordering us to stop. Please."

Knowing the
Potemkin
could easily blow the torpedo boat to bits, Klodt stepped out of the small wheelhouse and notified the
Potemkin
of his surrender. Revolutionary sailor Alekseyev rowed to the
Ismail
from the battleship with several armed sailors to arrest Klodt and take control of the torpedo boat. They met no resistance. A few minutes later they dragged Klodt, Makarov, and several other officers from the
Ismail
onto the
Potemkin,
where their fate would be decided. After Alekseyev ripped off their epaulettes, the officers began begging for their lives. Meanwhile, several more of the battleship's revolutionary
sailors (two machinists, two stokers, and a helmsman) went over to man the torpedo boat.

The crew's thirst for blood slackened with each killing. Within a half-hour of the first shot, they completely controlled the ship and its torpedo boat escort. The sailors found officers and petty officers hidden behind oil tanks and underneath canvases; one had even crawled out to the end of the foremast. All were dragged by their heels or pushed and shoved toward the quarterdeck. They huddled along the railing, looking much like the sailors threatened with the tarpaulin before the mutiny broke out. Several crew members surrounded the officers, their rifles pointed at them, fingers poised on the triggers. Still they had yet to find Captain Golikov.

While the sailors continued their search, officers Kovalenko and Kharkevich, having escaped the first barrage of shots, floated several hundred yards away from the
Potemkin.
Their arms were wrapped over a tree trunk that had been dropped into the sea that morning for target practice. Some of the crew waved their hats at them, shouting Kovalenko's name. He heaved himself onto the trunk.

"You're an easy target now," Kharkevich said.

"They wouldn't call me if they wanted to kill me," Kovalenko reasoned, and then shouted toward the
Potemkin,
"What do you want?"

"Engineer Officer Kovalenko! Return to us! We won't harm you."

Kovalenko recognized some of his engine room machinists and decided it was safe. As he swam toward the
Potemkin,
the sailors sent a boat to retrieve him and Kharkevich. One of his machinists was on board and pulled him by the arm onto the boat, smiling. A few even apologized, explaining that they had always considered him their friend. Kovalenko was stunned that these men, who only moments before had tried to kill him, were now treating him so well. He soon learned how fortunate he was.

With the hollers of the sailors and the crack of their gunshots dying down, Captain Golikov prepared to dash out of the admiral's stateroom and make his way overboard through the port window. He was stripped down to his underwear and had a flotation vest slung over his shoulder. A young ensign named Dmitry Alekseyev was by his side, also undressed and ready to escape with his captain.

After retreating from the quarterdeck, Golikov had first gone to his cabin, with Ensign Alekseyev at his heels like a puppy the entire time. The captain decided it was too obvious a place to hide, so they slipped across to the admiral's stateroom and locked the door behind them. In a room rarely used except when dignitaries were aboard, he prayed the sailors would overlook them. They had. Now he needed to get off the
Potemkin.

Suddenly the stateroom's door shuddered. Then again. They had been found. The sailors outside demanded they open the door, but Golikov refused, huddled at the far end of the stateroom. Finally, revolutionary Aleksei Syrov and several others broke down the door. They hauled Golikov and Alekseyev toward the quarterdeck, disregarding their screams to be let go.

Syrov, who held a particular grudge against Golikov after his recent demotion for a minor violation, threw the captain onto the deck at Matyushenko's feet. The crew circled around Golikov as he raised himself to his knees. Many eagerly waited to see him killed. Revolver in hand, Matyushenko looked down at Golikov. He felt strange, seeing the same individual who, less than an hour before, had been all powerful and ready to condemn the crew to death, now groveling for his own life, in his underwear. Matyushenko was struck that the officer, whose sagging pale flesh was exposed, simply looked silly and pathetic.

"I surrender to your command," Golikov said pitifully. "Please, brothers, spare me. I'm an old fool. Show some mercy. There has been enough killing." He spoke quickly, promising there would be no more mistreatment and that he would personally petition the tsar to pardon the sailors for the uprising. Golikov then begged the sailors to forgive him for his sins against them.

Matyushenko allowed Golikov to finish, weighing whether he should kill him. The captain represented the very system that had oppressed and exploited Matyushenko throughout his life. He had suffered under the agents of its authority many times: the police officer who beat him senseless in a prison cell as a teenager, the Kharkov factory foremen, the merchant ship officers, the railroad bosses in Vladivostok, and officer after officer in the navy. Killing Golikov would represent a strike against all of them, yet the captain was helpless now. The others killed that morning, Gilyarovsky and Ton, had threatened the sailors
as they strove to take over the ship. Now the
Potemkin
was theirs. Matyushenko could easily arrest Golikov as they had the other captured officers and lock him away until they decided what to do.

"I've nothing against you, personally," Matyushenko finally said. Then he looked around at the sailors. "The crew must decide."

"Hang him!" a sailor shouted.

"He threatened us with the yardarm. Let him hang on it," another agreed.

Although some sailors were indifferent, nobody spoke in Golikov's defense. For some, the mutiny was incomplete until the captain was dead. Others simply wanted retribution or were still caught up in bloodlust. In putting the question to the crew, Matyushenko had to know their only decision would be death. But he would not deliver the coup de grâce. Perhaps he felt a tinge of guilt at killing the defenseless captain himself, or he sensed that it was better for the unified crew to choose Golikov's fate and carry it out. For whatever reason, and Matyushenko may not have known himself, he did nothing to stop the execution.

"We've waited long enough. Let's shoot him," Syrov said, pushing through the sailors with a revolver in his hand.

Golikov stood and backed away. The captain shuffled toward the railing, pleading again for mercy. Syrov raised his revolver. Behind him, several sailors raised their rifles. A moment passed. Golikov stared at his executioners, standing only a couple feet away. He said nothing else. Then Syrov pulled his trigger; his shot was followed by several rifle shots in rapid succession. Before the smoke from the guns cleared, Golikov was dead. As they had done with the other officers, the sailors lifted him onto the railing and tipped him overboard. His body splashed into the water, and the sea's current carried him toward the
Potemkin
's stern before he slipped unseen into the anoxic waters below.

After Golikov's death, the killing ended. Ensign Alekseyev wept that he would serve the sailors if they gave him a chance. He was led away. Some sailors wanted Makarov killed for purchasing the rotten meat in the first place; others focused their remaining rage on two of the most hated petty officers, who descended to their knees and begged for their lives as well.

"Enough blood," Matyushenko ordered. He felt no remorse for
Golikov's death, but he was not about to sanction a massacre of the rest of the officers and petty officers. Nothing in the Tsentralka plan for mutiny called for the indiscriminate killing that had already been witnessed on the battleship. "Leave them alone. We'll always have time to punish them if they betray us."

The crowd of sailors backed down, and the remaining officers and petty officers were taken to their cabins and locked inside. Medics carried several wounded sailors to the infirmary. The crew brought washing soda onto the quarterdeck and began to swab away the blood and gore.

There was no celebration among the sailors over what they had done. Some milled about the decks, going over the details of the mutiny's first minutes with their comrades, relating how a particular officer faced his death or was captured underneath a pile of oily rags. There was the occasional sound of laughter, but for the most part, the sailors reflected on how easily and unexpectedly they had overthrown their officers and what this meant now. The silence was eerie. The crack of rifle shots and enraged screams had been replaced with the caw of seagulls and sounds of the sea lapping against the battleship's hull. No officers or bosuns barked orders at the crew. They could do or say what they pleased, but they did not yet know what to do with this liberty. So they stood quietly about the decks.

Many of the new recruits, totaling half of the
Potemkin'
s crew, were confused and scared. One later recounted, "I was stricken as with a thunderbolt; I didn't know what to do, which side to take.... I wasn't against the uprising; I wasn't for it, because I didn't understand it." They knew the tsar to be just but also swift and cruel to those who betrayed his authority. Some had witnessed, or at least heard of, how harshly his troops dealt with peasant jacqueries in the countryside. If the sailors got caught, they knew the tsar would punish their actions with nothing less than death. But at the moment, the sounds of violence having faded, nobody yet was fully aware of what they had done.

Leaning against the ship's railing, Matyushenko looked across the battleship at what he later described as a "terrible but triumphant picture"—bloodstains on the quarterdeck, the crumpled tarpaulin from the oar boat, forgotten sailor caps, a revolver, and a pair of discarded rifles. Sailors walked about the decks, rid of the tyranny of their officers—but not without cost. Vakulenchuk was absent from the deck, dying below in the infirmary, and far away in Sevastopol, the Black Sea Fleet command would want revenge once they learned of the mutiny. Many more would likely die.

Still, Matyushenko and his fellow revolutionaries had succeeded. They controlled the most powerful battleship in the Russian navy. Now they would carry their fight to the tsar himself. Before he turned to the many challenges they faced, Matyushenko surveyed the scene one last time, and a smile eased across his face. He felt free for the first time in a very long while.

"W
HO WILL LEAD
the ship?" a sailor asked as he and his comrades swabbed the last of the blood from the quarterdeck. Throughout the
Potemkin,
clusters of men raised the same question. Some spoke of blowing up the ship to deprive the tsar of its might; others wanted to go to Sevastopol to surrender or to flee to a foreign port and live as exiles. The core group of revolutionaries thought only of Odessa.

After checking on the engine room and the arrest of the officers, Matyushenko returned to the quarterdeck, knowing the crew needed to choose the ship's leaders. He called for a drumroll to summon a meeting of sailors. With several revolutionaries at his side, Matyushenko climbed onto the same capstan that Golikov had used that very afternoon when he threatened to hang the traitors on the yardarm. Hundreds of men surrounded Matyushenko, looking not only for direction but also for validation that they had signed their own death warrants for more than a refusal to eat bad meat.

"All of Russia is waiting to rise and throw off the chains of slavery. The great day is near," Matyushenko began, pumping his fist for emphasis. "And it's on
this
ship that the revolution has started. Soon the other vessels of the Black Sea Fleet will join us, and then we shall link up with our brothers on shore—the workers in the factories and those who slave on the land. We have the most powerful ship with the most modern guns in the navy. The
Potemkin
can fight whole armies and defeat them. But we'll be helpless if we don't work together. That's why there must be discipline. There will never again be tyranny on the
Potemkin,
but there must be some to give orders and
some to carry them out if we're to win. So there must be a people's committee."

Aside from the occasional shout of agreement, the sailors listened to Matyushenko in rapt silence; his conviction was revealed in every word. Above everything else, he understood his fellow sailors: what they needed to hear and how they needed to be led. As one who participated in the mutiny later wrote, "Matyushenko had a rare intuition, and instinctively felt not only the ruling temper of the crowd, but also what was brooding within it.... He knew the people, knew their psychology, and therein lay his power and his influence. He was the foremost of them."