Knight Without Armour

His subordinates respected him, with the possible exception of Kashvin, the assistant commissar. Kashvin, a local youth of considerable intelligence, felt that the Petrograd authorities had needlessly superseded him in bringing Andreyeff from Krasnoiarsk, and he was the more antagonistic to his superior because he could not, with all his shrewdness, understand him. The two men, indeed, were complete opposites. Kashvin was cordial, unscrupulous, an astute observer of politics, and an impassioned orator. Probably, too, he was clever enough to foresee that power at Petrograd would eventually pass into the hands of extremists. During the autumn the normally easy-going life of Khalinsk did very rapidly deteriorate; a garrison of soldiers arrived from Europe with new and wilder doctrines; they were hardly willing to obey their own officers, much less a local commissar. Great excitement, also, had been caused by the establishment, in custody, of the ex-Emperor and his family at Tobolsk, a few hundred miles away. Throughout October conditions grew more and more turbulent, and it was clear that the situation in Petrograd was already slipping out of the hands of the moderates. Then in November came news of the Bolshevik revolution, and an immediate acceleration in Khalinsk and all such places of the trend already in progress.

Even Kashvin found it increasingly difficult to keep his balance on the political tight-rope. Following a custom beginning to be prevalent, the soldiers had got rid of their officers and had elected others from their own ranks; unfortunately, however, they obeyed their elected superiors no better than anyone else. Kashvin’s loudest oratory could not persuade them to cease their plundering raids into the town shops. Andreyeff did not try the oratorical method; he collected a few personal supporters and made arrests. Sternness succeeded for a while, until, quite suddenly, the blow was struck. While the Commissar was sitting at the courthouse one morning in January, the building was surrounded by soldiers and a spokesman entered to deliver an ultimatum. The soldiers, he announced, wished to choose their own commissar as well as their own officers; they had been in communication with Petrograd and had received official support; so would, therefore, the Commissar kindly consent to consider himself no longer a commissar until a vote had been taken? Most observers expected Andreyeff to give a sharp answer, but, to general surprise, he merely smiled (which he so rarely did) and replied: “Certainly—with pleasure.” The vote was taken there and then, and Kashvin was elected Commissar, with Andreyeff as his civilian assistant. Again it was expected that the latter would indignantly refuse to serve under his recent subordinate, but Andreyeff continued to give surprise by his easy acceptance of the situation. And, indeed, the reversal of position made more difference in theory than in fact. Kashvin, though nominally in authority, was completely at the mercy of his military supporters, while Andreyeff, exactly as before, continued his patient work of issuing ration- cards, arranging for the distribution of food and fuel, and making out travel- passes.

During the early months of the new year the position at Khalinsk was still worsening. The nearness of Tobolsk, with its illustrious prisoners, brought to the district a heavy influx of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary spies, German and Allied secret agents, and freelance adventurers of all kinds. Tobolsk was their goal, but Khalinsk was a safer place for plotting. Half the pedlars and market-dealers were in the service of one or other organisation, and every day brought new and more startling rumours. In March a regiment of the new Red Army arrived from Ekaterinburg to relieve the older men who had already served through most of the Siberian winter. Many were criminals freshly released from European prisons; the best of them were miners and factory-workers lured into the army by generous pay and rations. They were all completely undisciplined and changed their officers with monotonous regularity.

Towards the end of March the long succession of rumours did at length culminate in something actual. Late one night the telephone-bell rang in the commissary office; A.J., who was there working, answered it; the call came from a post-house half-way between Khalinsk and the railway. The message reported that there were rumours that the Trans-Siberian line had been cut by White guards, assisted by Czecho-Slovak prisoners-of-war.