Red Mutiny (26 page)

Lenin labored night and day, feverishly committed to freeing Russia of the tsar. Yet he spent most of his effort in battles with the Mensheviks, delivering invectives against the tsar and liberal bourgeoisie and sending letters to his Bolshevik representatives in Russia. He begged them for news and complained that they weren't doing enough for the cause. His organization was poorly funded and limited in number. Bloody Sunday, and the outbreak of strikes in its aftermath, took him by surprise. Throughout, he remained in Geneva, as did Martov and the great majority of other exiles, reacting to and interpreting events, rather than participating in them.

However, on the morning of June 16, when Lenin ran his eyes across the front page of the
La Tribune de Geneve
and spotted the surprising news about the
Potemkin
mutiny below the underwhelming headline "The Situation in Russia," he could barely contain his excitement. This was the beginning of a revolutionary army, he thought. He rushed to find Mikhail Vasilyev-Yuzhin, a fellow Bolshevik who had once lived in Odessa. That afternoon, they met in the apartment of another revolutionary off the rue de Carouge. Rumors about the mutiny had shot through Geneva's exile community.

"You'll leave for Odessa tomorrow," Lenin told Vasilyev-Yuzhin, whose neat suit, tight-collared shirt, and air of propriety made him look like a clergyman.

"I'm ready today if you want. What's the job?"

"It's of the most serious nature. I fear our comrades in Odessa won't succeed in making use of the revolt. You must try, at all costs, to get on board the battleship, to convince the sailors they must act decisively. If need be, don't hesitate to shell the government institutions. We
must
seize the town. Then arm the workers at once."

Vasilyev-Yuzhin, who had known Lenin for several years, had never seen him so eager to take action. He remained silent.

"Further, it's essential to get the rest of the fleet in our hands."

"You can't seriously think that's possible, Vladimir Ilyich?"

"Obviously I think it's perfectly possible. It's merely necessary to act boldly."

Vasilyev-Yuzhin left with his orders, wondering whether Lenin was not too carried away to think that the sailors would simply relinquish their leadership over the battleship to him—if he somehow managed to arrive in time. It was more than likely that most of the sailors had never even heard of Lenin.

A
N ORTHODOX PRIEST
led the funeral procession slowly down Preobrazhenskaya Street at 4
P.M.
on the afternoon of June 16. Matyushenko and eleven other
Potemkin
sailors followed behind the horse-drawn carriage bearing Vakulenchuk in his wooden coffin. Thousands of Odessans lined the street and stood on their balconies overhead. Many held candles. Some tossed flowers as the carriage passed on its way to Uspensky Cathedral. It was so quiet that one could hear little else than the
clop-clop
of horse hooves on the cobblestones. Save the escort of two mounted Cossacks, General Kakhanov's forces held back in the side streets.

Matyushenko looked at the tear-strewn faces in the crowd to his left and to his right. These people had already suffered so much, but here they were now, risking their lives again to pay their respects to a man they had never known. The funeral was helping align the Odessans with the sailors, so they could act as one. Given the sailors' plan to bombard the military meeting that night, they would soon need the citizens' help to take over the city. But still, for Matyushenko, this funeral was about more than its contribution to the struggle. He did not need to serve in the honor guard—it put him within grasp of the soldiers if Kakhanov betrayed them and kept him away from the battleship, where the crew was dangerously unsettled. But he did so anyway.

Matyushenko had come to honor his friend, who had thought only of helping free his enslaved fellow sailors. For his efforts, he had died before ever seeing the revolutionary flag fly over the
Potemkin.
Still, he was not forgotten, and the sight of so many people in the streets, risking their own blood to honor his friend, struck Matyushenko deeply. Vakulenchuk had been born one of the many millions of nameless peasants who lived out their days under the yoke of oppression. But now, Matyushenko thought, his friend was being celebrated in a way that a king or tsar could only hope to match.

After the simple funeral service at Uspensky Cathedral, the procession moved toward the cemetery. As they approached Chumka Hill, a company of soldiers cut off the thousands of Odessans following the carriage. When the crowd pushed against their line, a soldier shot his rifle into the air. Matyushenko approached the company's sergeant to complain.

"Keep moving, or we will open fire!" the sergeant screamed.

Matyushenko turned away though he was tempted to strike the officer; for once he held back his temper, which could surge with such speed and ferocity that he easily became a prisoner to it. Instead he continued to the cemetery. Several minutes later, hundreds of Odessans circumvented the blockade and emptied out of side streets behind them once again. Outmaneuvering the soldiers had charged up the crowd, and the procession took on a celebratory mood. People called out, "Long live freedom! Long live equality! Long live solidarity!" On Chumka Hill, many more had gathered in advance to attend the burial. A few held banners proclaiming,
DOWN WITH AUTOCRACY
! As they filed into the cemetery, the crowd voiced their solidarity with the sailors.

"We'll never forget this," Matyushenko told a worker.

Before the ceremony took place, a Cossack officer dismounted and walked up to Matyushenko, saying that the sailor and his men would have to leave immediately; their presence was stirring up the crowd too much. Unarmed and unwilling to cause trouble for the Odessans, Matyushenko agreed to leave. He and the other sailors climbed into some carriages waiting outside the cemetery, and they left before Vakulenchuk was lowered into the ground. Halfway back to the port, on Preobrazhenskaya Street, a company of soldiers blocked their path. "You'll have to walk," the officer in charge commanded. Matyushenko suspected nothing, as they had been allowed to hold the funeral peacefully. The sailors stepped out of the carriages.

But as they walked forward, a second company of soldiers appeared down a side street, rifles drawn, blocking their escape to the right. The moment Matyushenko realized they had stepped into an ambush, a trumpet blasted. It was the signal to fire. The twelve sailors spun around, looking for cover and finding none. The line of rifles cracked. The first barrage missed Matyushenko. He sprinted down the block with several others at his side.

Another round of fire thundered.

Matyushenko scrambled around the corner, narrowly escaping the first volleys. He did not have a chance to see who had survived along with him as he heard footsteps beat behind him—the soldiers gave chase. The
Potemkin
sailors dashed down several side streets, one after the other, getting lost. Nonetheless, they kept running, not sure where to go but with instinct telling them to rush until their lungs burned and legs deadened. At every corner they stopped and peered around the building's edge, expecting to face a line of rifles. Finding none, they kept running. Finally, they managed to shake loose their pursuers. When Matyushenko slowed his pace, he realized that three of his shipmates were missing—killed or arrested in the ambush. He would never know.

Matyushenko led the surviving sailors to the port and commandeered a fishing boat to return them to the
Potemkin.
On their way out, he discovered a bullet hole in his pant leg, proving how narrow and lucky his escape had been. He was certain, however, that they all would have died, had several soldiers not purposely aimed astray—the other sailors agreed that they had seen this.

When Matyushenko stepped back onto the battleship, he had one thought: they must bombard Odessa now. They would have their revenge on Kakhanov, and the battle to take the city would finally begin. It was time.

When an officer reported that all but three of the sailors had escaped the ambush, Kakhanov set off to meet with his commanders at the city theater to decide on further steps to pacify the workers and defend themselves against the
Potemkin.
With thousands of troops pouring into the city from the surrounding region, Odessa was in a state of lockdown. A curfew had been set for dusk; the streets were under heavy patrol; and the approaches to the city and its major government buildings and foreign consuls were all under guard. Except for a few confrontations in the city's outskirts, everything was calm. But now matters had changed.

When Kakhanov had authorized the ambush, a plan he had developed after the sailors petitioned him about the funeral, he was working with little information and few options. He had expected the squadron's arrival before the funeral procession even began. A morning telegram from the Admiralty had informed him that Vishnevetsky would near Odessa by 3
P.M.
, but that was the last he had heard from either St. Petersburg or Sevastopol. Therefore, arresting the sailors who came ashore to bury Vakulenchuk, particularly if this group contained some of the battleship's mutinous leaders, made strategic sense, as it would decapitate the
Potemkin'
s leadership before the naval confrontation. But as the day passed, with the squadron yet to appear, Kakhanov had to decide what to do himself.

Although in a desperate position, at least he had known more about the sailors' plans than he had the night before. After leaving the ship, the
Potemkin's
deposed officers had informed him that the crew was already committed to bombing the city and arming the workers. If so, then ambushing the sailors was not going to put the city in more peril than it already was threatened with. Kakhanov could not simply let mutinous sailors come and go as they pleased within his city. Perhaps he would capture one of their leaders—perhaps even this Matyushenko himself; the officers had said that he controlled the crew. By making a move on the sailors after the funeral, Kakhanov would avoid inciting another riot.

But now the ambush had failed and Vice Admiral Chukhnin's squadron was still nowhere in sight. Now, Kakhanov despaired, the
Potemkin
would begin its bombardment long before the squadron appeared.

At 5:20
P.M.
, the battleship
Three Saints,
commanded by Rear Admiral Vishnevetsky, dropped anchor off Tendra Island. The rest of his squadron—the battleships
St. George
and
Twelve Apostles,
the light cruiser
Kazarsky,
and four torpedo boats—followed its lead. Ten minutes later, Vishnevetsky called a meeting of commanders aboard his battleship.

Although he had orders to engage the
Potemkin,
he clearly told his officers that he would do no such thing, at least until Krieger came with reinforcements. They would approach Odessa, but if the
Potemkin
refused to capitulate and remove the red flag from its mast, Vishnevetsky's squadron would not fire on it, inciting a sea battle. Instead they would surround the harbor entrance and lay siege to the battleship, until it ran out of food or coal.

He explained to his officers that, given the unreliability of the squadron's crews, this was a better tactic than engagement, echoing the advice he had received from the former Black Sea commander, Admiral Nikolai Skrydlov, before setting to sea. Vishnevetsky planned to send a note to Odessa, ordering city officials to prevent the
Potemkin
from accessing supplies. Eventually, the sailors would be forced to surrender.

The squadron would attack only if the
Potemkin
fired first, and in this case, their strategy would be to send torpedo boats into the harbor, while the battleships stayed at sea and kept the
Potemkin
from escaping. Vishnevetsky reminded his officers that this option would be only the last resort. Early the next morning, he said, they would advance toward Odessa, but before they did, two torpedo boats would reconnoiter the area. The crews should prepare for a night attack against the squadron by laying out anti-torpedo nets around each battleship and keeping a close watch. Before dismissing his officers, he handed out copies of a proclamation for them to read to their crews. Gently and without creating alarm, they were to inform their men of what to expect in the coming hours.

But Vishnevetsky was too late. A couple of hours into the journey, on board the
Twelve Apostles,
sailor Mikhail Volgin had learned the reason for the rushed departure from Sevastopol. The officers were obviously nervous, smoking more than usual and trying to fraternize with the sailors as if they wanted a favor.

Then a comrade approached him, winked, and said, "What's wrong? Either you've lost everything gambling or something very bad happened." The coded greeting meant there was a meeting of sailor revolutionaries in the machine room.

After Volgin and the others arrived, one of the battleship's senior mechanics, Gerasimov, a dedicated Social Democrat, confirmed that their mission was against the
Potemkin.
Then he said, "The question's whether we take over the
Twelve Apostles
ourselves, or go to the bottom of the sea instead."

Those gathered gave the mechanic a questioning look.

"All the other captains said they can't rely on their crews," he continued. "But our Captain Kolands, the old fool, has given his word to Krieger that he'll destroy the
Potemkin.
If his crew hesitates to fire, he promised to ram the
Potemkin
and blow up both ships."

The sailors left the machine room with troubled looks. Few slept more than a couple of hours during the early morning voyage to Tendra. Instead, Volgin and the others plotted how they could stop their officers and considered the consequences if they failed. Throughout the squadron, similar conversations played out. A few sailors had told their officers, even before they arrived at Tendra Island, that the crew would refuse to fire on the
Potemkin
if directed to.