I remember those ‘Lorelei’ days of the twenties. The Reds tried to lure their artists, scientists and intellectuals back. The sweet voices deceived many. They went back: Gorki, Alexei Tolstoi, Zamyatin, and many more; and they were almost all dead by the time the thirties ended. That was the value Bolsheviks put on Russian talent. When the Nazis came Stalin had to release starving, wretched ex-Red Army ‘heroes’ to run the War. Not that it would have mattered. Stalin ran the War. Lucky for the world he did, as someone once said of Hitler. It was a war between a couple of psychotics who had the talent of being all things to all men. It wasted millions of lives and achieved nothing but a small shift of boundaries. Better lock them away with maps and toy soldiers, where no real harm is ever accomplished. That is what H.G. Wells advised a friend of mine.
My mother blossomed under Petlyura even more wonderfully than she had under the Bolsheviks. I offer no interpretation. Admittedly things were quieter in the outlying suburbs. There were no more fires burning in Podol. My mother was distressed by inhumanity of any sort. When people expressed their dislike of Jews she always became upset, refusing to join in. The usual talk was harmless enough. But she would say ‘God has designed a role for each of us. It is not the race or the religion, it is the man or the woman that is important.’ I was thus brought up in a more tolerant atmosphere than most Kievan children. It has helped me understand people, encouraged my humanity, allowed me to mix, without feeling uncomfortable, with all sorts, black or white, high or low. When we heard that French Zouaves had occupied Odessa, in support of Denikin, that the city was ‘colonised by black men’, as the papers put it, we were all horrified. But Mother made a joke of it. ‘It will be lovely,’ she said, ‘to see a bit of extra colour in Ukraine.’ I began to understand how she and my father had come together. She had a broad, humane and trusting faith in the beauty of the world, of people’s natural tendency to help one another. He shared her ideals but felt betrayed by those he had sought to support. People were far more complex and yet far more ordinary than he wished to believe. The socialist Utopia did not spring from the ground overnight. He began to attack those whom he regarded as responsible for threatening his hopes. The simple fact is that my mother was mature, in the way of women, and could see that the best way of improving things was to lead a good, clean, kindly life.
Revolutionists almost invariably attempt to simplify the workings of the human heart. This planet of ours is full of generous, warm-spirited, good-humoured and intelligent women supporting raving, idiotic fools like my father. All that was ever betrayed was his own humanity. How long can a woman live with a jealous man? That is the simple question in which lies the answer to my own background, I think.
Those months of the Directorate became relatively easy. I began to move into the world again. Many of the new politicians were sympathetic to my schemes for mechanisation and industrialisation. ‘We must use the wealth of the Ukraine,’ they said, ‘to make ourselves strong and independent.’ So, for the time being, I became a nationalist, couching my arguments in terms of the province rather than the country. Luckily the letter-heads and cards I had had printed: ALL-UKRAINE ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS, Managing Director Dr M. A. Pyatnitski, still had the appropriate ring and The Hotel Yevropyaskaya, having become something of a headquarters for Petlyura’s henchmen, was a perfect address. I moved back into my old suite. I began to entertain as I had done before. Inflation, the retreat of the Germans, a lack of faith by Russian and Ukrainian investors in Petlyura’s reforms meant I had to augment my income again. It was easy enough to do. I had contacts in every part of the city. But it was irritating, for instance, to be a courier for someone who did not want it evident he sniffed cocaine; or to arrange girls for some under-Minister anxious that his wife should not find out; or to act as a go-between for a factory-owner needing certain forms stamped in a hurry; but it continued to help me keep my way of life and my friends. I was an agent of change, a catalyst. Much which was good about Petlyura’s government was directly or indirectly to do with help and advice I had been able to provide.
I was not distracted, now, by notes from my mother. I did make use, though, of Esmé’s free time. With her strawberry-blonde hair and her superlative taste she made a perfect hostess for my special evenings. Everyone complimented me on Madame Pyatnitski if they were under the impression we were married, or on my ‘fiancée’ or on my ‘cousin’. To intimates I let it be known she was my half-sister. I think that spiritually she was my sister through and through. It was no lie to claim a little blood, too. We had mingled it, often enough, in our childish games. Esmé found enjoyment in what she called my ‘farces’. She would cheerfully lend her energy and her imagination while always insisting that her world outside was ‘real’. This was because she was a nurse and saw so much of the disease, malnutrition and physical destruction. Gangs of homeless children, bezhprizhorni, were beginning to become a serious problem. They had the courage of the pack, the hunger of starving dogs. Cripples and wounded in the streets were impossible to count. Beggars were given public handouts but there were far too many for the system to accommodate. A strong police force was badly needed. Haidamaki militia were inclined either to sudden savagery or absolute laziness when it came to maintaining the Law. There were attempts to recruit former police officers back into the service. But this was only partially successful. In time, Petlyura might have modified and improved conditions, and even rid himself of the hampering burden of nationalism. He did not hate Russia, he said. He hated the ‘enslaving institutions’. He also, I know, hated the Orthodox Church. He had been raised a Catholic, like so many Ukrainians, and here was a fundamental difference few were anxious to touch upon. We were witnessing a low-key religious war. One of my Petlyurist friends actually expressed it best in a joke at his own expense: ‘Some say that a Jesuit is just a Jew who happens to have been born a Christian.’ And there you have it. Many ‘old Bolsheviks’, and a number of new ones in today’s Party, have secret links with the Church which they dare not admit. How much better for us all if they did. A little sanity would return to Russia.
We had a taste of the old rivalry between the Roman Empire of the West and the Hellenic Empire of the East. Kiev saw as many emperors come and go in as short a time as Rome or Constantinople when those Empires fell apart. As my mother said in her merry way: ‘At least under the Rus or the Tatars people had time to get used to their rulers. These days it’s impossible to know who you’re supposed to cheer.’ But she liked Petlyura and his white horse and his gaudy Haidamaki with their baggy trousers and fancy waistcoats and scalp-locks. The Haidamaki had saved Ukraine from Polish oppression in the eighteenth century. They represented another calling on the past in support of a hoped-for future. Ends are defeated by means. The future will always be defeated by the past. The past is a useful metaphor but it is a terrible precedent.
My mother hoped the laundry would be nationalised. As manageress, she would have security without the same responsibility. Petlyura’s brand of socialism, she said, seemed fair enough. Petlyura needed to court what remained of the business people. Again I found myself rising in the world. I knew everyone. I was invited to various high-level meetings. I was called ‘Doctor Pyatnitski’ by everyone and regarded as a scientific Wunderkind. I was allowed to expand on the possibilities of Ukrainian monorails, Ukrainian civil airlines, Ukrainian garden-cities for the workers. My ideas no longer struck people as fantastic. All Ukraine’s potential was to be used. I mentioned special cinemas, education centres, aerial guard-ships which could protect our frontiers from Bolshevik aggression. We should soon have the cream of Russian genius, I pointed out, back in Kiev. Kiev could become the capital of a new Russian Empire (diplomatically I termed it ‘an expanded Ukrainian state’). I spoke of my dreams and I helped others to dream. That was my gift. I offered it to the government and at last the government began to accept. I had no official position. I thought it foolish to accept one. I was only just nineteen years old. At last I had found a ready audience for more complicated ideas, such as my invisible ray device. I made no large claims. Such machines could, however, form a defensive ring (‘an iron ring of light’ as someone said) about a city, making it almost invulnerable. This was the nearest thing to the recent force-field notions of the Americans.