Red Mutiny (19 page)

Immediately after the meeting had broken up, sailors Alekseyev and Bredikhin, both of whom knew the city well, sneaked into port. They found the streets quiet and deserted, showing few signs of the previous night's violence, except for some overturned trams. Their task was to connect with Odessa's revolutionary groups, seek their guidance on taking over the city, and request their help in notifying Tsentralka members in Sevastopol to hurry and launch the fleetwide uprising and join the
Potemkin.
While in Odessa, Alekseyev and Bredikhin were also to distribute the committee's proclamation appealing to the soldiers and Cossacks stationed in the city to surrender their weapons. If their commanders attempted to attack the
Potemkin
or thwart their plans, the proclamation warned, "we will raze Odessa to the ground."

Now that the day had dawned, the sailors on board moved quickly to carry out the committee's other plans. Time was of the essence.
The longer the battleship stood in the harbor, the more opportunities they gave the tsar and his naval command to crush the rebellion before it had a chance to gather strength. On the side of the ship opposite of where Kovalenko stood, the men prepared to bring Vakulenchuk into the port. They had carefully dressed him in a fresh uniform, laid him on a stretcher, and draped a military flag over his body. They had also pinned a note to his chest, written by Nikishkin:

Citizens of Odessa!

Before you lies the body of the Battleship
Potemkin
sailor Vakulenchuk who was savagely slain by the first officer because he refused to eat borscht that was inedible. Comrades! Workers! Rally under our banner and we shall stand up for ourselves! Death to the oppressors! Death to the vampires! Long live freedom!

The crew of the Battleship
Potemkin.
One for all and all for one.

The sailors lowered Vakulenchuk's body into a launch; his hands lay across his chest, and his stoic face remained uncovered. The
Ismail
escorted two launches with forty sailors and their martyred leader to one of the harbor's piers. Matyushenko headed the detachment. Roughly two hundred people stood on the pier, mostly dockworkers curious about the battleship's mysterious appearance in their harbor. The sailors brought Vakulenchuk ashore and erected over him a tent of sailcloth and spars. First, the dockworkers came forward to look at his body. Over the course of the next hour, more and more people arrived at the pier. Matyushenko and the other sailors told the Odessans of the mutiny and how they needed their help in bringing down a government that had the very men who protected Russia eat maggot-infested meat.

The crowd was stunned and moved by their story, punctuated most forcefully by the presence of Vakulenchuk's body. Some offered assistance, promising to bring the
Potemkin
food and supplies. Others simply pledged their allegiance, gripping the sailors by the hand or taking off their hats and yelling, "Down with the tsar!" Watching the tremendous outpouring of support, Matyushenko felt that there was little the sailors could not accomplish: they would first sweep away
the tsar's minions in Odessa, then spread the fight from city to city around the Black Sea, and finally bring liberty to all of the Russian people. The sight of crew members embracing the dockworkers in solidarity struck him as nothing less than beautiful.

An honor guard of sailors was left to watch over Vakulenchuk to ensure nobody disturbed his body. Then Matyushenko boarded the launch. A worker had told him that a collier docked at a nearby pier contained more than enough coal to satisfy their needs. When Matyushenko arrived at the collier
Emerans,
the men unloading the coal onto the pier stopped their work and cheered the sailors. Matyushenko offered to buy the coal from the
Emerans
's captain. He had no choice but to relinquish his supply.

While the dockworkers hitched the collier to the torpedo boat to tow it to the
Potemkin,
a sailor next to Matyushenko noticed a boat approaching their battleship. Several port officials and a host of gendarmes were aboard. Matyushenko directed his launch to speed back to the
Potemkin.
With a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other, he stood at the bow as the boat cut across the water. The gendarmes did not have their guns drawn, but they were almost certainly armed. Under no circumstances did Matyushenko want them to board the
Potemkin
and influence the crew.

The launch neared the battleship. The sailors on the decks above yelled at the port officials to go away, refusing to answer their questions about who was in charge and why the
Potemkin
had come to Odessa. Everyone turned toward Matyushenko as he approached.

"What do you want on our battleship?" Matyushenko asked, aiming his rifle at the three officials, whose faces were now drawn and pale.

"We want to investigate and report on what has happened here," the port official, Gerasimov, said, as much confused as scared. As the port's second-highest-ranking official, he was unaccustomed to being addressed by a lowly sailor, let alone one pointing the barrel of a gun at him.

"Throw your revolvers into the water," Matyushenko ordered the gendarmes. "We dropped your superiors overboard and we don't need new ones."

The gendarmes looked at the revolutionary sailor, then at the port
officials, and finally at one another. Slowly, they stood and dropped their revolvers into the water.

"Same goes for your sabers, you cowards," Matyushenko added.

Following Matyushenko, several sailors on the
Potemkin
now aimed their guns at the officials. The gendarmes removed their sabers. Gerasimov stood helplessly by as his men followed Matyushenko's orders without the slightest resistance.

"Now off you go, you tsar's slaves. Turn around and get lost," Matyushenko barked.

The boat pushed off from the
Potemkin
and retreated toward the shore. The sailors cheered Matyushenko for his boldness in chasing the officials away.

A flotilla of fishing and rowboats gathered around the
Potemkin
to greet the sailors, some bringing gifts of tea, sugar, tobacco, and fruit. On his way back toward the
Emerans,
Matyushenko stopped one of these boats, which happened to be carrying Konstantin Feldmann, who had convinced some workers to row him out to the
Potemkin.

"Where are you going?" Matyushenko asked, worried that visitors, some of whom might be spies for Odessa's authorities, were overrunning the
Potemkin.

"To the free revolutionist ship," Feldmann told the sailor, unaware he was speaking to the battleship's leader.

"And who are you? A Social Democrat?"

Feldmann nodded but was then asked to verify it. "I haven't got proof," he replied caustically. "They don't ask for proof when they send us to rot in prison or to Siberia."

"Come on then, get in here with us." Matyushenko beckoned, smiling at Feldmann's answer.

At the same time, on the pier where Vakulenchuk's bier had been erected, Kirill stood in a swarm of people. Thousands of Odessans had come down to the port after the arrival of the dead sailor. No police or troops were in sight. The whole city appeared to be emptying into the port; everyone was curious to see this funeral bier and to find out what the sailors were doing in their city.

A long line on the pier led to the sailor's corpse under the tent, sheltered from the June morning sun. Men and women, young and
old alike, shuffled forward to have a look, stooping to read the message written by the
Potemkin'
s crew. The faces of those who emerged from the tent a few moments later expressed a range of emotions: inspiration, horror, rage, sadness. Many crossed themselves or sobbed uncontrollably. Some laid flowers alongside the bier or dropped a coin into the little bucket that someone had left to collect money for a monument to the sailor. Few left unaffected. Turning back toward the port, they paused to stare at the
Potemkin.
In their eyes Kirill saw suffering and the desperate hope that the battleship would take revenge on the tsar's forces and help lead the strikers to victory.

Standing on top of a woodpile, one speaker gestured toward the
Potemkin
and declared, "We may have lacked firearms in the past, but
now
we have them." His words were met with a chorus of agreement. Another speaker railed, "Enough of this enduring! Death to tyrants! Let's die for freedom!" Thunders of applause punctuated his tirade. On several merchant ships in the harbor, sailors blew steam whistles and raised red shirts on their masts (lacking flags of the same color) in solidarity with the
Potemkin
sailors.

Kirill grew more and more excited as the crowd's emotions rose. After one speaker stepped down from the barrel he was using as a platform, Kirill dashed forward and climbed onto it himself, eager to speak to those around him. "Comrades!" he started, his voice like a lion's roar. "There are thousands of us here, and none of us will stand for the slavery and oppression of the tsar any longer. Everyone, let's march to the city center. With rifles and the protection of the
Potemkin'
s guns, we'll gain our freedom and a better—" He tried to finish, but his voice was drowned out by the boisterous crowd.

Minutes later, fifty mounted Cossacks and a phalanx of policemen descended into the port. They charged toward the pier to break up the huge assembly. As the Cossacks rode forward to clear the way, they were slowed by the crush of people. Still, they forced their horses down the pier, threatening the crowd with sabers if they failed to open a path. Some had to jump into the water to escape being trampled.

A worker who had seen the government forces arrive had rushed out on a boat to alert the
Potemkin.
When the Cossacks neared Vakulenchuk, a battle flag was suddenly seen rising on the battleship's
mast. A member of the honor guard posted at the bier screamed out, "Comrades, run away! They'll fire at the Cossacks from the guns." A mad scramble ensued on the pier. The Cossacks hastened back toward the port, scattered by the threat; Kirill even saw a police lieutenant jump into a pile of coal, begging his officers to cover him with the pieces and hide him.

As the Cossacks and the police hurried off the pier, the ship's guns remained silent. After the
Potemkin
's battle flag was lowered, the crowd reassembled, more confident than ever that their victory was at hand. Kirill left to board a rowboat heading out to the battleship. He needed to convince the sailors that an attack on the city must begin straight away.

On his approach, he noticed the collier
Emerans
anchored at the
Potemkin
's side. Three hundred dockworkers joined with the sailors in loading the coal, a vision that struck Kirill as a true sign that the revolution had begun. On the collier, the workers shoveled coal into huge canvas sacks that weighed over one hundred pounds each when full. These were carried to the edge of the
Emerans
and then hoisted by crane onto the
Potemkin'
s decks. Sailors then emptied the sacks into chutes leading to the coal bunkers. A black cloud of dust hung over the area, and many covered their mouths and nostrils with cloth or stuck oakum between their teeth to avoid inhaling the contaminated air. Yet everyone labored enthusiastically. Time and again, a sailor and a worker embraced and shouted together, "Long live democracy!"

A rope ladder was lowered to allow Kirill to climb onto the battleship. Once aboard, he declared himself a Social Democrat who represented some of the dockworkers. The sailors warmly shook his hand. They invited him to walk through the guarded gun deck to reach the forecastle, where some of the crew had gathered to meet with other Odessans. Along the way, several sailors asked him about the situation in the city. He described the strikes that had taken place over the past few days and how the police and soldiers had met each one with butchery.

As he had the chance, Kirill asked different sailors how and why the mutiny had started. Dymchenko, the committee member who had greeted Kirill at the ladder, believed wholeheartedly that it was right
to get rid of their officers. His sunburnt face and expressive eyes lit up as he told Kirill of his hope that the
Potemkin
would lead Russia to revolution. But other sailors that Kirill spoke to lacked this confidence, undercutting the impression of unity that had inspired Kirill as he watched the coaling. Several looked at him with distrust, thinking him a rabble-rouser who would get the sailors in more trouble than they already faced. One sailor told Kirill how afraid he was of the crew's revolutionaries, who had so swiftly and cruelly dispensed with their officers and how he failed to understand their cause. Another reported a conversation he had shared with a petty officer a few hours before; this traitor told him that the tsar would only punish those who continued to support the mutiny, and therefore, if he wanted to keep his head, he should act against its leaders. By the time Kirill reached the upper deck, he realized the sailors would need constant attention to keep them informed and faithful to revolution. Otherwise, they might easily lose the battleship to apathy and traitorous actions from within their ranks.

At the forecastle, Kirill found his comrade Feldmann surrounded by sailors, delivering the kind of speech the crew needed:

You might at any moment be carried off into warfare ... For whose benefit? The autocracy's. So you had to struggle against it. But how could this be done? Could you hope to triumph over the tsar's forces alone? No! On whom then could you depend? On the people, and on the people alone....
You
were the first who dared to bridge the separation between the people and the military. Let us pass boldly along that bridge, and, united with the people in the great conflict, achieve liberty for all of us.

In response to Feldmann's words, the crew chanted with enthusiasm, "Death or freedom! Death or freedom!" Another Odessan revolutionary, a Jewish Bundist, echoed Feldmann's words. Then Kirill stood to speak, but a whistle blew, signaling lunch. The sailors asked the Odessan Social Democrats to join them in the mess deck for lunch. Seated at a long bench there, Kirill tipped back a dram of vodka and ate cabbage soup with the others. He shared a look with Feldmann, as if to say, "Can it be that this is not a dream? Can the freedom of Russia be so near?"