Red Mutiny (45 page)

On the quarterdeck, Matyushenko came across committee member Illarion Shestidesyaty. He was looking out into the darkness.

"Can't sleep, Illarion?" Matyushenko asked.

"Not after what happened this morning. Nightmares."

"Things went terribly in Theodosia. We shouldn't have exposed ourselves to attack in that way. Poor Nikishkin and Koshuba. And the others. They'll all be missed, my dear brother," Matyushenko said. "But now we must be prepared against the petty officers, do you understand? It's better to die than to return to Sevastopol."

Shestidesyaty volunteered to keep watch, well aware that Chukhnin would pardon the petty officers while showing no mercy to the rest of the crew.

Matyushenko thanked him warmly and left to enlist others to guard key sections of the battleship. He was right to be worried. Down in a secluded corner of the lower decks, forty-five petty officers and sailors plotted to take over the
Potemkin.
None wanted to go to Romania, never to see Russia again. They believed their opportunity had come. The sailor committee had lost much of its influence over the crew. The officers only needed to arrest Matyushenko and other chief instigators of the mutiny for the crew to fall into line behind them, agreeing to return to the Black Sea Fleet's base. At the meeting, the counter-mutineers resolved to kill any revolutionary sailors who resisted.

After disbanding, the petty officers scouted each committee member's location. Unarmed, they knew their best chance was to attack the ship's leaders while they slept. To their surprise, they discovered most of them awake and stationed throughout the battleship, many holding revolvers, obviously anticipating a counter-mutiny. Their presence dissuaded the petty officers from taking action, even though they knew this was likely their last chance to take over the
Potemkin
before arriving in Constanza.

At daybreak on June 24, ten days after they had first mutinied, the sailors found themselves, once again, crossing the Black Sea with no land or other ships in sight. Apart from a few squawking, venturesome seagulls, they were alone on the calm waters. Morning passed and the scorching June sun loomed constantly overhead, as if tracking them across the water. On the forecastle, the sailors had little to sing or laugh about as they rested between watches. Most talked among themselves, sullen and reflective. "Everyone wondered what the future might bring," sailor Lychev later recounted. "What awaited us in a strange, unknown land? An unfamiliar language and customs of a distant country. This upset everyone."

Many worried about what kind of work they would do and if they would ever see their families again. Even so, they knew a worse fate (hard labor, at best; execution, at worst) awaited them if they returned to Russia. This dilemma, coming after ten days of intense emotion and punishing physical hardship, was too much for some. At one point on the return voyage to Constanza, a sailor rushed onto the spar deck, his face livid and eyes wild. He ran from railing to railing, screaming that they should blow up the battleship. It took several men to restrain him. While being carried to the infirmary, he lost consciousness. Several hours later, he died.

Kirill could scarcely bear to stay on the
Potemkin,
certain the crew had abandoned the revolution for their own safety. If only the sailors had better understood the historical chance the mighty battleship gave them, he thought, then they would have remained true to the cause instead of taking what he saw as the coward's path of escape. So humiliated was he by the retreat, he contemplated taking a small boat loaded with arms and some food and casting off into the sea. He abandoned this idea after realizing that he was unlikely to reach the shore. Kirill brooded alone in a stateroom, dejected and blaming himself for not doing more. Lost in depressed thoughts, he missed the ceremony that took place that afternoon aboard the
Potemkin.

The sailors had already held funerals for two of the sailors who returned with Matyushenko after the ambush in Theodosia, wrapping their bodies in canvas shrouds, stitching them shut, and then dropping them into the sea. Now the crew met on the quarterdeck to bury the revolutionary flag. A sailor lowered from the mast the large red flag they had stitched with the words
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY
. Solemnly, Matyushenko and the others brought it to the railing. Then they let it fall from their hands, overboard. "It was tragic to watch the flag disappear," Matyushenko later recalled. "And then it suddenly rose in the ship's wake, as if urging all the sailors to carry on the struggle."

He knew, however, that there was no such hope for them now. Looking back on the past days, he lamented how close they had come to succeeding. In Odessa, after the confrontation with the squadron, they could have moved on the city, capturing Kakhanov's arsenal and transferring it to the workers. But then Dr. Golenko and the
St. George's
crew had betrayed them, throwing their plans into disarray and sending them around the Black Sea on a fruitless search for help. Matyushenko imagined that other revolutionaries would reproach them with scornful words for returning to Romania—"You pitiful cowards! What an enormous and powerful fortress you surrendered." Although he accepted blame for their failure, he felt that the people whose liberty they had attempted to win had abandoned them. "Why were you asleep?" he later wrote. "Why were you asleep for eleven days when we searched for fresh water throughout the Black Sea? You know well that no one can drink saltwater or run a battleship without coal. Why didn't you help us?" The best Matyushenko could do now was to make sure the crew reached Constanza and won their own freedom.

By dusk, the placid sea became choppy. As the sailors traveled westward through the night, a developing storm sent waves crashing against the battleship's side. Upon heavy rolling seas, with uncertain steps, the machinists and stokers labored in the holds to keep the engines running; the boilers were all but ruined by saltwater. Coal stocks were perilously low as well. A couple of hours from the Romanian coast, a towering wave severed the towline connecting the
Ismail.
The
Potemkin
turned back to search for the torpedo boat in the rough seas and the darkness. After making contact, the
Ismail
stayed close to the battleship for shelter.

At 11
P.M.
the ships finally approached Constanza; the waves eased as they came closer to shore. The
Potemkin'
s searchlights panned the waters for marker buoys as the ship navigated into the harbor. Its crew assembled on the forecastle, looking out at the brightly lit city in the distance—a welcome sight after two days at sea. The engines were cut, and the battleship drifted forward until it barely cut a wake. In the silence, the sailors heard faint sounds of music coming from the port. It pained them to think of how their dire predicament compared to the carefree evening enjoyed by the people of Constanza.

"Drop anchor!" came the order from the bridge, piercing the quiet. The anchor splashed into the water, its heavy chain clanging and screeching as it traveled through the hawsehole. By the time the sailors had secured the anchor, the music had ceased in the port, and the lights from the Romanian cruiser
Elizaveta
shined in their eyes.

Shortly after midnight, Captain Negru, Constanza's port commander, strode down the quay to meet the
Potemkin'
s launch. He was clueless about the crew's intentions in returning to the city, but newspaper reports that Krieger's squadron had sunk the mutineers were, obviously, false. The day before, Negru had finished drafting his report to the Romanian foreign minister about the
Potemkin
's first visit. Now, once again, he faced a force that he had no ability to repel.

Among the sailors in the launch, he recognized Matyushenko, whom Negru had described to his superiors as the "soul of the mutiny."

"What do you want here?" Negru asked him stiffly.

"Have you seen the
Sinop
or the
Ekaterina II
?" Matyushenko asked, explaining that in Theodosia they had heard of revolts aboard the two Russian battleships.

"They haven't come into this port," Negru said, sensing that the sailors clearly harbored some hope that others had joined their struggle.

"Then we've decided to surrender," Matyushenko announced.

No doubt it took Negru a moment to believe the good fortune the sailor's statement represented, but he recovered quickly. He asked the sailors to meet him at the old lighthouse on the end of Constanza's promontory. Before Negru left, Captain Banov of the Russian transport ship
Psezuape
came to the quay to ask to attend the discussions. Negru told him his services were not needed. Too much was at stake for Negru to play diplomat—nor did he have much patience left for the Russians.

When Negru arrived at the lighthouse an hour later, General G. Angelesku, the commander of the troops, and several other city officials joined him. They made it clear to Matyushenko that the crew must surrender the battleship and all arms before coming ashore. They were prohibited from conducting political propaganda campaigns while in Romania. In exchange, the entire crew would be granted asylum and allowed to live freely within the country. Under no circumstances, General Angelesku assured Matyushenko, would his government deport them to Russia. The sailors promised to take the offer to the crew for a final vote. Then they returned to the battleship.

Once the
Potemkin
had appeared again in the Romanian port, telegrams burned up the wires between Constanza, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, and Sevastopol about how to manage this latest turn of events in the crisis. The Russian diplomat charged with Romanian affairs sent a curt early morning message to General Yacob Lagovari, King Carol's foreign minister, with a thinly veiled threat:

I have the honor to ask the Imperial Government not to let the crews of the
Potemkin
and
Ismail
to come ashore, nor to supply them with coal or provisions. At the same time, I have the obligation to inform you as per orders of my government that the crews of these ships have stained them with murders and robberies.

General Lagovari knew that if he followed the tsar's instructions, the
Potemkin
crew would be left with few options other than to shell his chief port. Then again, he could not allow the sailors everything they wanted, which would anger Nicholas. His third option, the one he had sanctioned Negru to take, was to offer the sailors the same terms he had during their first stopover. Then, in a deft diplomatic maneuver, the foreign minister would feign not to have received the Russian diplomat's request until after he had negotiated the
Potemkin'
s surrender. Then he would advise St. Petersburg that it was too late to change the terms. But the Russians shouldn't be too unhappy with that. After all, Nicholas had praised these very measures when the
Potemkin
left Constanza four days before—Lagovari would take pleasure in reminding the Russians of that.

In Sevastopol, Chukhnin's staff awakened him with a report that the
Potemkin
had finally been located and wanted to surrender in Constanza. He immediately dispatched Rear Admiral Pisarevsky, the commander of the training detachment, to take two battleships and four torpedo boats to capture the
Potemkin
before the sailors abandoned the ship or decided to take off again. Pisarevsky would likely arrive too late, however, reaffirming Avelan's rebuke to Chukhnin, delivered after the
Potemkin
had retreated from Theodosia, that the fleet was always a "step behind" the mutineers.

Chukhnin had not had much sleep before he was disturbed with this news. The previous night, he had worked late, writing to Nicholas and describing how impossible he found it to explain the deep crisis with the Black Sea Fleet, but that harsher measures would need to be taken to restore authority, including stripping his officers of their present ranks. One can only imagine that Chukhnin feared he might well receive that same punishment.

On June 25, the sun rose over the Black Sea, bathing the Romanian coasdine in a soft iridescent light. For all its beauty, the sailors looked toward the land with little affection. Once they committed themselves to stepping onto that shore, most knew they would likely never return to their homeland.

The crew made their way to the quarterdeck to vote on the surrender. Matyushenko explained the terms they had settled with Captain Negru. Then he said, "Comrades, you all know the situation. There's no coal. Our fresh water ran out a long time ago. We're out of food. Sailing to Sevastopol and confessing means to admit failure. The tsar will subject us to the harshest punishment. Now the Romanians have refused us coal, water, and provisions, but they've guaranteed our safety."

"How can you be sure they won't turn us over to the tsar?" a sailor asked.

"That's doubtful," Matyushenko said. "King Carol's no friend to Nicholas, and the Romanian people, I think, would never allow that betrayal. The main point to know is that we'll be free, and this means we will be free to fight."

"Better to surrender to the Romanians than to the Russian government!" another sailor declared. The majority of the crew agreed.

Before Matyushenko left to inform Negru, an oar boat pulled alongside the
Potemkin
carrying a man with a flower in his jacket buttonhole. After stepping aboard, he announced that he was a Social Democrat and then handed his visiting card to Matyushenko. It read "Doctor Rakovsky." Several members of the sailor committee drew him aside. Christian Rakovsky, a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary who was close to Georgy Plekhanov and lived in Constanza, promised he would find a way to supply the battleship if the crew could hold out for several more days. But the sailors doubted his ability to obtain what they needed, particularly since they had failed themselves over the whole past week. Furthermore, their low supplies made waiting with the engines running, even for a day, nothing short of impossible. They explained to Rakovsky that the crew was already committed to leaving the battleship. Dropping the discussion, he reassured them the Romanians would stand by any agreement. He offered to help the mutiny's leaders when they came ashore. Then he went down to the infirmary to check on the wounded sailors. It was the most help the sailors had been offered from the Social Democrats since the mutiny began.