What had happened in Kherson was this: Hrihorieff issued an ultimatum to the garrison’s C-in-C. The dignified Greek replied it was his duty to defend the city to the last. He had confined leftist hostages and their families in a warehouse. The French frigates in the river opened fire on Hrihorieff’s Cossacks as they swept into Kherson. The French used incendiary shells. These set the warehouse alight. Hundreds of men, women and children were burned alive. Hrihorieff took ghastly revenge. The French escaped, but not a single Greek was spared. They were killed as they fought or as they surrendered. Hrihorieff filled a ship with their bodies and sent it down the river to Odessa: the first modern corpse-ship. The effect on the morale of the French garrison in Odessa and, when the news came, Nikolaieff’s German garrison, was of course devastating.
Kherson had given up her materieclass="underline" tanks, guns, ammunition, food. The city was looted in true Cossack fashion. Hrihorieff continued to pretend he served ‘Soviet’ authority. His men were seen selling their booty in our camp, in every village they stopped at: women’s dresses, suits, boots, crucifixes, ikons, paintings, delicacies, antiques. Half the ‘boorzhoos’ had sought refuge in Kherson. The Cossacks had found them easy victims.
Nikolaieff surrendered soon after this and Hrihorieff gained greater strength. Thousands of Cossacks, Haidamaki, partisan divisions, tanks, infantry in armoured trains, began to move on Odessa. Panic filled me. Anything could happen to my mother and Esmé. I applied through Antonov’s field commanders to be returned to Odessa. I received no reply.
I heard a rumour. One of our trains was leaving for the ‘Odessa Front’. It carried Bolshevik troops. Antonov hoped to strengthen Hrihorieff’s units and pretend Bolsheviks were responsible for the victory. With Brodmann and one other, I at last got myself assigned as political commissar: because I knew the city well I could contact Bolshevik comrades already spreading propaganda amongst the French, local people and Whites.
I shared the staff-carriage with a dozen half-drunk Red Army officers, Brodmann and the other commissar. His name was something like Kreshchenko. When the train was on its way the officers revealed their orders. We were not going direct to Odessa. Our first job was to contact Makhno to try to gain his sympathy and help in curtailing Hrihorieff. Apparently Makhno disapproved of Hrihorieff. His support, the equal to the Ataman’s, had been given reluctantly. The Red Army men said the French were weak, divided at home, confused in their orders, understanding nothing of the issues involved. Those Moscow Bolsheviks could as easily have said the same of themselves. They had no clear idea of Makhno’s or Hrihorieff’s political stand. Their distaste for the irregulars was evident (they were all ex-Tsarists). I sympathised, but I had been forced to survive amongst the rabble. I knew at least how feelings ran. Even the Red Cossacks believed ‘Russian chauvinists’ were not true Communists. The Cossacks, they argued, were Communists by tradition and experience. The single fact Trotsky understood was that Ukrainian partisans were hard to discipline. It had been easy enough for him to take over the remnants of the Tsar’s army; but he loathed the peasant fighters. He would destroy as many as he could once they had served their turn. Stalin completed his work. Every Bolshevik success involved a revival of Tsarist methods. Tell me who was vindicated. Tell me who was responsible for Pan-Islam? We have no Cossacks now.
The ghosts of those murdered Greeks hang over the misty waters of the Dnieper; they rise and fall on the bloody waves of the Black Sea. The marrow was sucked from their bones. Greece, Mother of Civilisation: your children dishonour your name. And what if Cassandra had been there to see, to warn them, would they have listened? The good do not listen; the innocent do not listen; only the evil listen. Their faces were smashed with rifle-butts. Their clothing was torn from their bodies. They were piled like rotten meat into the boats and sent down our Russian river to our own sea. How the Turk must have chuckled when he learned with what brutality we had turned upon one another. Those noble Greeks. Betrayed by French and Russians alike. And we allow ourselves to speak of Democracy. We use their language, their religion, their culture, their logic, and we let them rot. We give them up to the infidel. Greece is our common cause and we do not see it. Our standard, our ideal. Those tourists coo over the bones of Greece; those perverts leer at naked statues and make a mockery of the teachings of Plato; they disgrace themselves with kebabs and retsina and silly dances. In Athens, the Greeks sell themselves to anyone; they destroy their honour: but can they be blamed? Greece, Mother of the World, raped by her own sons. So she becomes a cynical, painted whore? Odysseus! We built a city in your name; and we defiled it. We filled it up with offal. We killed your brave men. We stabled our horses in your holy places. We raped your priestesses. We tore down your golden paintings and smashed your statues. But Greece must rise as Christ shall rise; ennobled by sacrifice, strengthened through pain. They beat me with their rods. And God comes to me. Istanbul? What sort of feeble name is that for the city of Constantine the Great, who brought Faith to Rome? Byzantium! These are names to sing. But Istanbul! That is a name to wail from corrupted towers raised by self-pitying, greedy, cruel Turks; to shriek for jehad and revenge on the People of the Lamb. Aйя-coфия...и bcem beκam – ιιρиmρ ІΟctиhиaha... For a thousand years she guarded the East. Even the Turk could not conquer her. Below the trappings, the tired images of Communism, she still lives, the ikons glow, the Mother of God, the Son of God; and the old man is Stalin drooling in his death-agonies. God the Son has not perished. His day is not yet. Byzantium and Rome will unite against the Tatar, the Negro, the Jew, the Teuton. Let the Turks celebrate their Suleimans and Harouns, their treacherous Lawrences. Their oil will flow into the sea and the world shall die. Fear Africa. No one will listen. They are fools. They are innocents. They call me a racist. I am not. Race is nothing. It is their religion I fear. Religion based on hate and envy. Carthage, with its dark and ancient eye, its red lips, its blue-black beard, growls for vengeance. Byzantium shall rise. The drums shall cease. The gongs shall not echo. The snow shall be our own and our rivers will be silver. We defended Europe. We built a Byzantine colony on the ruins of Carthage but it was foredoomed; for the Romans dedicated the ruins to the infernal gods and invoked an evil which exists to this day. I have been there. At least, to Tunis. We must be ready. Brave, free Cossacks and the Byzantine Faith. Are they to go the way of Greece? Will our Cossacks dance and drone on dull red stages and our priests sell dirty photographs in Leningrad streets? Where is peace? Where is the Lamb of God? They took Krassnoff and they hanged him from a black tree. They plotted to kill Hrihorieff. They killed Makhno’s commanders. They drove others to suicide. And you tell me they are not to be feared? You think this is God’s plan? How can it be? Has God changed sides? How could the Turk fulfil His purpose? Are we not tested enough? For two thousand years we have suffered. Is it guilt? Carthage was destroyed. Is it guilt? For what?
Brodmann was nervous of visiting Makhno. He sat in a corner of the carriage and complained. He hated Anarchists worse than Whites. He had probably supported both in his time. He argued that History was not ready for Kropotkin’s dreams. Men were too vicious and self-seeking; they had to be trained to the idea of Communism, as dogs. He was like a religious convert who turns against all he once admired because it has not proven perfect. I have met the type often. He sought to impose a grey vision on the objective world because he had lost his centre, his inner life. Christian or Communist, the temperament is the same. They hated Makhno, in those days. The Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Allies. Not only was he as successful as Hrihorieff, he had been able to hold his gains better. He became a drunkard in Paris. A lost, wretched, confused consumptive whose wife and child left him, who talked and coughed and wept his way to extinction. I was to meet him there, in Paris, where so many lonely Russians live.