Red Mutiny (8 page)

Once the war had ended, Golikov served for the next twelve years aboard the tsar's yachts (first for Alexander II, then his son), gaining little naval experience but rather a good deal of the royal family's favor during their long vacation voyages. He counted among his close friends Konstantin Nikolayevich, cousin of Tsarevich Nicholas. Despite this advantage, he ascended at only a typical pace through the ranks, remaining a lieutenant for eleven years until promoted to captain second rank in 1892. Seven subsequent years aboard a grab bag of transport vessels, steamers, and coast-defense ironclads earned him first-rank status. After several naval staff positions, he was appointed to the
Potemkin.
At the time, he preened because of the "special favor" he enjoyed from Nicholas II and the General Admiral of the navy, Aleksei Aleksandroyich, and he was festooned with twelve separate medals and ribbons, most of them honorary. Golikov had never distinguished himself, in service or ability, but naval promotion was based on seniority and loyalty to the tsar. In his new position, he earned one hundred times a typical sailor's yearly salary.

When Golikov took command of the
Potemkin,
the Black Sea Fleet was beginning to face a crisis: the spread of revolutionaries (or "half-educated Godless traitors," as the senior flagman called them) among the sailors. Golikov was told to conduct periodic searches for illegal literature among his sailors, especially new recruits and those returning from overseas cruises, and to limit sailors' interaction with local workers. As long as he kept his sailors insulated from outside agitators, he was told, there would be no trouble. That sailors may have been open to radicalization as a direct result of their service conditions occurred neither to him nor to his superiors, nor did it inform their actions. Yet, try as Golikov might to eliminate this revolutionary influence, he discovered increasing amounts of literature, especially as the war in Japan began to go poorly. One seized pamphlet, tided "To All Sailors on Patrol," revealed the nature of the threat:

So to arms, comrades! We know you have them loaded. Turn against your oppressors, fire at your blood-thirsty commanders.... Show them you know how to die not as slaves in an unnecessary war, nor to protect the bloodstained throne of the tsar-executioner,
but for the freedom of your comrades, as true citizens. Down with autocracy! Long live the democratic public! Down with war!

Deeply troubled over the gathering strength of revolutionaries in the fleet, the Naval Ministry appointed Vice Admiral Grigory Chukhnin in July 1904 to rescue Golikov and the other officers from these threats. An old campaigner, Chukhnin made marble look warm and malleable. Raised from the age of seven by the navy, he was strictly devoted to the tsar's motto: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality." A stern, decisive man with a wide-ranging knowledge of naval life and an exacting intelligence, he stood out as one of the tsar's best officers. Although he had recently reformed the Naval Cadet School, to great acclaim, he was passed over in favor of Rozhestvensky to lead the squadron heading to the Far East. Instead, the ministry chose him for the Black Sea Fleet.

Chukhnin roared into Sevastopol with his own methods of rooting out the "revolutionary hooligans" and "illiterate sailors who blindly repeat words they can't possibly understand." His measures included additional and more frequent searches, the enlistment of spies, and the placement of undercover agents among the sailors. He demanded obedience to traditional naval discipline—no exceptions. He instructed Golikov and the other captains to put the men in their place, no matter how strenuous their efforts needed to be.

Four months into this new regime, the Black Sea Fleet sailors went on a rampage at the naval base after being refused passes into the city. This was one of several new repressive measures, along with longer shifts and limited fraternization, that Chukhnin had instituted. After breaking down the gates while shouting "Beat them! Hurrah!" several hundred sailors turned their fury on the base, breaking windows, destroying furniture, and torching their barracks and the courthouse. Some officers shot blindly into the dark at the sailors; others simply hid in cellars until relief arrived. The onset of a thunderstorm dispersed most of the sailors; the arrival of a large police force several hours later dealt with the rest. The brief uprising was met with serious consequences. Thirty-six sailors were tried by court-martial, all but seven receiving sentences of hard labor or transfer to disciplinary battalions—despite Chukhnin's attempt to have several hanged. Those suspected of ties to radical organizations were transferred out
of their unit; those caught reading illegal pamphlets or participating in secret meetings faced court-martial, and if insufficient evidence was found to convict them, they simply remained in prison until Chukhnin ordered their release. Sevastopol soon ran out of jail cells, so Chukhnin petitioned St. Petersburg for money to build more prisons. He ordered each ship captain to keep a secret log of sailors suspected of revolutionary activity and to periodically deliver this list to him, so he could arrange for arrests.

After Bloody Sunday, unrest in the fleet worsened still. Pamphlets, which Chukhnin saw after they had been seized, urged sailors to fire on their officers and ridiculed the tsar for finally managing to score a "mighty victory"—not in Manchuria or Port Arthur, but in front of the Winter Palace. In February, Chukhnin lost his patience and delivered a harsh speech to his sailors on life's realities, much as a father might resort to scolding his child after other efforts had failed. Then he had his lecture posted throughout the naval base for good measure.

He made clear he would brook no compromise nor listen to complaints about service conditions. Any such grumbling was wholly the product of "pernicious traitors and cowards" trying to drive a wedge between the sailors and their love for Tsar Nicholas. Although the speech foretold how the revolution would end in dictatorship ("The radical will promise the people a better life.... This is only the means to get power"), it would have been an empty diatribe, had Chukhnin not believed passionately in its truth. He intended to discipline his sailors until they turned away, as he said in his speech, from the "path of vileness and disgrace of the Russian name."

Still the sailors refused to toe the line. When Chukhnin sent hundreds of unreliable sailors from the fleet into service in the Far East, they revolted again. While changing trains midway through their journey, the sailors refused to reboard and a riot broke out. Eventually they had to be sent back to Sevastopol. As Chukhnin noted in a letter to the ministry in St. Petersburg, a missive unusual in its bluntness, this cycle of rebellion was rooted not only in revolutionary unrest but also in the fleet's idleness (because of the 1856 Treaty of Paris, Russian warships were restricted from passing through the Bosphorus Strait) and in the worthless officers he had inherited from his predecessor.

Legend has it that Admiral Nelson could "in ten days' time restore
most mutinous crews," but he had the advantage of good officers at his side. Chukhnin was burdened with the likes of Golikov, whose efforts to enforce discipline and stamp out radicals on the
Potemkin
included barging into sailors' quarters in the middle of the night and demanding to know why a particular hammock was empty—only to discover that the sailor was on duty; bribing his own men to spy on other sailors, then having them arrested for not bringing enough information; inviting musicians on board to sing patriotic songs about obeying one's officers and the tsar; and making a big show of interrogating and then punishing a sailor for possessing an illegal pamphlet even though he was illiterate. Few sailors escaped some kind of punishment from the captain, whether for staining the deck, arriving late for roll call, or simply reading a book that his officers were unfamiliar with. Corporal punishment was not his style, but even for the most minor offense, he would dock a sailor's pay, throw him in the brig for twenty-four hours, make him stand at attention with a fifty-pound bag of sand around his neck, or keep him on duty for three straight shifts.

Golikov was also prone to speeches that resonated with misplaced romance and sheer stupidity. On April 15, to celebrate the final completion of the
Potemkin,
he gathered his sailors together and said, "It took nine years to build this ship. It was dead all that time, but now is endowed with life, like a man, to have arms, legs, a head, and eyes. You should love and cherish this ship as a mother loves her children." After the defeat at Tsushima, he took the opportunity to opine about a mutiny he had experienced aboard the cruiser
Svetlana,
after which several sailors were executed: "This is what happens to sailors who ignore discipline." Hearing the speech, his engineer officer, Aleksandr Kovalenko, muttered under his breath, "Lord, Lord, is he ignorant." These were Golikov's only words of so-called inspiration to his crew after hundreds of their fellow sailors had died in that battle.

Golikov may have been useless, but he was not mean-spirited. However, allowing his second officer, Gilyarovsky, full expression of his viciousness toward the sailors confirmed the captain's unfitness for command. Decorated for bravery at the Battle of Chemulpo against Admiral Togo at the start of the Russo-Japanese War, the tall, rail-thin Gilyarovsky had the personality of a cocked fist. He told his fellow officers that he planned on taking an ax to those "St. Petersburg liberals" for opposing the war as soon as he was finished with his
Sevastopol duties. He treated his sailors with a similar penchant for violence. Once when a new recruit passed him on the street, Gilyarovsky stopped him: "Do you know me?"

"Yes, Your Honor," the recruit replied.

"So what is my name?"

The recruit did not know.

"You don't know my name?"

"No, Your Honor."

"Well, then let me introduce myself," Gilyarovsky said, before striking the recruit repeatedly in the face. This was the man Golikov charged with discipline and order.

As the
Potemkin
steamed toward Tendra Island for maneuvers, any opportunity for Golikov to earn his sailors' respect and address their concerns had long since passed. With the short-fused Gilyarovsky at his side and the imminent threat of mutiny after months of Vice Admiral Chukhnin's misguided measures, trouble could come from any quarter. Inevitably, on a ship of 763 ill-fed sailors, tightly grouped in hot weather on a choppy sea, it would.

Late that night of June 12, Matyushenko looked out over the ship's side, catching occasional flashes of light from signals ashore. He could not sleep, agitated by the day's activities and his desire to make a move on the officers straight away. Finally he went to look for Vakulenchuk to talk about accelerating their plans.

Since they left Sevastopol, he and the other revolutionary sailors had brought as many of their comrades to their side as possible, cornering them on the foredeck, in the engine room, and in the sleeping quarters, on duty and off. Only an officer or petty officer walking by gave pause to their efforts. The revolutionaries beat the drum on the miserable lives they shared before joining the navy: hardship in their villages and exploitation by parasitic factory owners in the cities. Then they turned the discussion to life in the navy, describing how Golikov owned three fine houses in Sevastopol paid for by money siphoned from the sailors' food budget; how Nikolayev's mayor had ordered that sailors passing his house must stop and salute; how the caskets of the dead were streaming into Russia from the Far East; and how an officer had sent a sailor who had been awarded the St. George
Cross, Russia's highest military honor, to the hospital with a serious beating after merely getting in the officer's way on the street.

Once they had infuriated the sailors with these examples, Matyushenko and his fellow revolutionaries urged them to join the cause: "Taking care of these dragons depends on you" or "If we all get together, we can get rid of these dragons."

Word of the planned uprising spread among the crew, but many spoke out against it. They hated their officers, but surely the tsar was not to blame. He would address their troubles, if he only knew. As for mutiny—this took matters too far, much too far.

"It's not the tsar's fault, but the people surrounding him," one sailor said. "Why shed blood if we can come to an agreement with the tsar?"

Matyushenko had listened to similar arguments throughout the day, and he was convinced they must act immediately before someone betrayed them. Too many sailors now knew of the mutiny; it would no doubt reach the captain's ear eventually. They had enough sailors on their side—now—to take over the ship. Only twenty officers and an equal number of petty officers stood in their way—half of them asleep in their cabins. Every minute they waited increased their chance of arrest or Golikov's returning the battleship to Sevastopol.

As the
Potemkin
steamed through the night, Matyushenko found Vakulenchuk, who, as an artillery quartermaster, worked near the weapons cache, where the two often met in secret. Because of the firing exercises, the
Potemkin
was loaded with approximately ten thousand high-explosive and fragment shells, enough to lay waste an entire city. The stacks of ammunition provided ample hiding places where they could speak privately.

"We've got to start now," Matyushenko insisted.

"Rushing matters will only hurt us," Vakulenchuk replied evenly, having heard this plea many times from his friend. "Look, could you break a gun over your knee if I gave you one?"

Matyushenko shook his head.

"You're right; it's impossible. But you can take it apart—piece by piece," Vakulenchuk said.

"Go on."

"Think, Afanasy! It's difficult to fight a whole squadron, but a single ship is a different story. The tsar could easily take back one battleship. Soon, Matyushenko. Very soon. The rest of the ships will arrive, and then we'll strike out."

"I'll try and tolerate it some more," Matyushenko reluctantly agreed. "But I wish it could be now."