Red Mutiny (23 page)

Russian and international correspondents scrambled about the
city, dodging patrols and wading through the smoke-filled streets to report on the slaughter. Foreign consuls bolted their doors and cabled their embassies in St. Petersburg that a mutinous battleship had taken Odessa hostage and that the city was descending into chaos. General Kakhanov stared out at the harbor, fearing the
Potemkin
would let loose its guns at any moment. The billows of smoke passing across his window allowed him only the occasional chance to catch its searchlights.

As the first fires began to spread in the port, at 10
P.M.
, Lieutenant Kovalenko stood on the battleship's gun deck, the still night air sending a chill through him. He was lost in thought. The sailor committee had decided to send the
Vekha's
officers, as well as Gilyarovsky's wife and baby daughter, ashore in an outlying district. Now they were deliberating on what to do with Kovalenko and the rest of the
Potemkin'
s officers. The day's events had inspired Kovalenko: workers embracing the sailors as comrades, Odessan officials trembling in the battleship's presence, the taking of another ship, a feeling among the crew that they were participating in historic events. He wondered if this was the beginning of the revolution that he and other students in Kharkov had once conceived of in only distant terms. Should he cross the Rubicon and ask to join the sailors now?

Kovalenko considered the question. With the isolated fires in the port and the faint but unmistakable sound of sporadic gunshots, he imagined workers fighting the government's troops and breaking into their arsenal. Then a sailor interrupted this daydream, telling Kovalenko to return to the quarters where the officers had been held over the past day and a half.

The room felt like a morgue. His fellow officers leaned against the bulkheads, listless and fearful about their fate. Several minutes later, Matyushenko stepped in, with two committee members at his side. He looked around, making sure everyone was there, before he spoke. "Officers, the crew has decided to send you ashore. But before this is done, would any of you like to stand alongside us?"

Astonishment and confusion met this offer. Kovalenko felt his heart leap in his chest. This was the moment to choose. He could leave the
Potemkin
and be safe. But would he then be able to face the knowledge that he had forsaken the chance to fight against the regime
that had subjugated the Ukrainian people for so long? This battleship might indeed be the spark that would light the revolution. Kovalenko nearly rose to accept the offer when fresh doubts overcame him. Did Matyushenko speak for the entire crew? What if the next day the committee retracted their offer? Then Kovalenko would have risked everything, only to be sent ashore, where he would face charges of treason.

"Listen, Matyushenko," he finally said; the other officers turned to him in surprise. "I'm on your side and would consider it an honor to share the crew's fate. But I'm tortured by doubt. Can I be sure that among seven hundred sailors, there aren't some who would want me gone?"

"Let's step aside." Matyushenko took Kovalenko by the arm to the corner of the room. Quietly he said, "I have to tell you there are very few officers we'd like to see left on the ship. There are some who, even if they wanted to join us, the crew can't accept. As for you, I give you my word the crew will gladly take you as one of our own. If you want, I'll bring you a statement—"

"No." Kovalenko interrupted. "I trust you and I want to stay."

"I knew you'd do this!" Matyushenko grinned, obviously pleased. He turned to the rest of the room. "What have you decided?"

An officer glared at Kovalenko and whispered, "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm doing what my conscience tells me," he replied.

Then Dr. Golenko stood. "As a doctor, I consider it my duty not to leave the sick and wounded that I'm responsible for on the ship. I'll stay as well."

The others remained silent, and Matyushenko invited Kovalenko and the doctor to participate in a committee meeting. As they left, Ensign P. V. Kaluzhny came to Kovalenko's side. Twenty-one years old and chronically nervous, he appeared more a child than a Russian naval officer.

"I'll stay with you, too," he said, fearing that Odessa was already in the hands of revolutionaries who would have him killed once he went ashore.

"Are you sure?" Kovalenko asked. "If you stay, you can't go back to your old life."

"And still, I'd like to stay."

"Then I'll tell Matyushenko."

When Kovalenko entered the admiral's stateroom, he pledged his solidarity with the sailors, telling them that he had long held a desire to fight the tsar's regime. Golenko followed, saying that he was the son of a simple farmer and wanted to help the sailors. A few questioned the doctor's sincerity, asking where he was when the captain ordered them to eat foul meat. Needing a doctor aboard the battleship, however, the committee voted that he could stay as well. Afterward the two officers were asked to leave.

For the next hour, the committee debated what to do when the squadron arrived and how to prevent a potential counter-mutiny. They decided to pass out revolvers to those among them who were the most committed to the cause. As the conversation turned to Vakulenchuk's burial, a watchman burst through the door in a panic. "Fire! The city's on fire! The city's on fire!"

Matyushenko led the rush through the door. He had seen a few conflagrations in the port when they convened the meeting but dismissed their importance. Looking out at Odessa now, he was horrified. Fires devoured nearly every building in the port. Feldmann, who was by his side, later described what they saw: "A terrible spectacle unfolded before our eyes. A vast glow of red lit up the whole bay. Wherever one turned his gaze, it met gigantic tongues of flame. They leapt ever higher and higher, and spread ever wider and wider, like beacons flashing the tiding of the all-devouring vengeance of the old regime."

Then they heard a distant but unmistakable series of gunshots. A sailor turned the ship's powerful searchlights toward the shore to see where the shots were coming from, but the light failed to penetrate the columns of smoke.

"They're firing on the people!" a sailor screeched.

Ensign Alekseyev, who always seemed to be lurking at the opportune moment, offered a different opinion. "What nonsense are you talking! That firing? It's simply the roofs cracking in the heat."

Not sure what to think, Matyushenko ran to board a launch, to see for himself. Kirill, hoarse after two hours of speeches aboard the
Vekha,
followed him. Minutes later, they cast off from the battleship.
As they approached the port, buildings buckled and collapsed. Oil drums exploded. The closer they came, the sharper the rifle fire sounded, and they saw people stumbling about in the flames.

The horror was too great for words. Matyushenko felt a shiver run down his body. He had come to free the people of Odessa, and instead, they were facing wholesale slaughter. Matyushenko and Kirill attempted to get close to the piers to help some escape, but waves of heat and smoke forced them away before they could catch sight of the Richelieu Steps, where the Cossacks had launched their attack. They directed the launch to a beach at the port's edge, where some people had gathered to avoid the inferno. These people told Matyushenko of the cordon around the port and how the troops were shooting at anyone who tried to break through. For Matyushenko, no amount of curses, hand wringing, or pounding on the launch's side could relieve the furies that seethed inside him. He had seen countless injustices served up by the tsar's men, but nothing on this scale of cruelty.

He directed the launch back to the
Potemkin.
Returning to the other leaders of the ship, Matyushenko demanded, without explanation, that they shell the city. The crew looked toward Kirill, who told the sailors what they had seen. It was agreed, and a battle alarm soon rang on the
Potemkin.

As the crew ran to their positions, Ensign Alekseyev asked how they were planning to aim the guns. The city was hidden in smoke. They lacked firing coordinates. He insisted the leadership on the bridge reconsider this idea. Several terrible moments of indecision passed. Reluctantly, one by one the sailors realized Alekseyev was right. Shooting blind, they were as likely to hit workers as government troops.

"Whom will we be killing?" one sailor, Kuzma Perelygin, reasoned. "There are many poor people who can't leave, and for this we'll be cursed. That's why we can't bombard the city."

Matyushenko felt sick to think that they commanded a battleship able to decimate Odessa's forces, yet they were relegated to watching the fire and listening to the
rat-tat-tat
of gunfire. Having to accept this fact, he left the quarterdeck, escaping from the sights and sounds of the massacre before they drove him mad.

F
ELDMANN AND SEVERAL
Potemkin
sailors took a launch into the harbor at first light on June 16, the mutiny's third day. The waters were eerily absent of boats, and in the distance, a haze of smoke still covered the port. As they neared one of the piers, the extent of the fire's destruction became sickeningly clear. The launch passed several bloated corpses floating in the water. Barges and steamers anchored by the piers were burned-out skeletons. Scores of buildings had been gutted in the inferno, and small fires were consuming any that had survived the night. The elevated railway had pardy collapsed, and tens of wagons that it had supported were now piles of smoking timber. The endre port, from one end to the other, had been leveled to ashes.

Dressed in a sailor's tunic, breeches, and a cap with the ship's name embroidered on it, Feldmann stepped ashore, to make the arrangements to bury Vakulenchuk. Before dawn, some workers had rowed to the
Potemkin
to tell how the presence of the sailor's body had started the terrible violence. Speaking to the ship's leaders, Dr. Golenko insisted, "We can't let people go on being killed for the sake of a dead man. We must bury him and make an end of it. If no one will go with me, I am going alone." The assistant surgeon, who had chosen to stay on the battleship to tend the wounded, seemed only to care about saving lives, if he could. Though the sailors agreed with him, they refused to simply cast their hero anonymously into the sea. They wanted a martyr's ceremony, both to honor Vakulenchuk for his sacrifice and bring together the workers and the sailors.

In an effort to avoid another massacre, Feldmann planned to request permission from General Kakhanov to hold the funeral. Although he might be arrested—or shot—on sight, Feldmann had volunteered for the mission to show the sailors that he too was willing to risk his life. The machinist Vasili Kulik, two other committee members, and Father Parmen accompanied him. None were armed. They hoped the general would not dare seize them or prevent the funeral, since the
Potemkin's
guns threatened even more ruin if Kakhanov took such action.

On the pier, they found that some people had stacked sandbags around the bier to protect Vakulenchuk's body from the fire. Still, the heat and the smoke had blackened his face, which had begun to decompose. The stench from the body almost made Feldmann gag. Parmen prayed over the sailor, and then the deputation walked toward the Richelieu Steps.

Everywhere lay corpses, many burned beyond recognition. A lone cart pulled by two horses rocked and creaked on the cobblestones. Its driver stopped now and again to allow two men walking behind to pick up a body and heave it onto the cart. Climbing the steps, Feldmann tripped over a young worker, his face frozen in horror, bloodstains on his shirtfront. Feldmann turned to Kulik, who was also looking down at the dead man. They shared a glance, silently asking how this could have happened. Then they climbed upward.

On the plaza, near the statue of Richelieu, a large detachment of soldiers, with bayonets raised, suddenly encircled the party from the
Potemkin.
One officer took Father Parmen by the arm and led him away, promising that he would be treated well. Feldmann and the others were pushed along after him, toward the commander's headquarters. Feldmann explained their purpose, but the soldiers were uninterested.

The scene on the city streets made it difficult for Feldmann to disguise his increasing panic. Soldiers occupied corner after corner, and notices of a military occupation were posted everywhere. Every shop was closed, and no trams were running. Patrols marched past Feldmann, eyeing him and the other sailors with murderous looks. The few groups of people in the street talked in whispers, their faces weary and distraught, no doubt expecting more violence. Every few minutes a gunshot rang out, occasionally accompanied by a cry of
pain. In Sobornaya Plaza, soldiers were building a military camp, some raising tents, others huddling around a makeshift kitchen while their horses nosed a pile of hay.

Feldmann and the others were ushered into the courtyard of the military headquarters, sure they were going to be shot. Cossacks stood around the perimeter, glaring at them. Kulik, a descendant of Cossacks, tried to speak with them, but they turned away from him. Fear of what was in store for the sailors finally overwhelmed him.

"Look here, I'm going to be hanged, maybe, any minute," Kulik fumed, "and you shun me like a leper. For whose sake do you think we're going to our death? Is it for our own? Is it—?"

He stopped his tirade when he heard a nearby rifle report. His words had clearly had some effect on the Cossacks, who now assuaged him. "Don't worry about that," one of them said to Kulik. "They're just firing in the air to scare people."

Soon the Cossacks had warmed to Kulik enough to tell him that thousands of troops were on their way to Odessa from the surrounding regions; some were bringing heavy artillery. Feldmann eavesdropped, becoming more convinced every minute that the
Potemkin
could not simply wait for the arrival of Black Sea Fleet squadron before moving on the city. They needed to act before the government strengthened its forces. But now he might never get the chance to alert the battleship. An hour had passed since their arrival at military headquarters, and still there was no word about what the soldiers meant to do with them. Feldmann cursed his foolishness. He might soon die over a funeral that could have easily been arranged at sea.