I asked him about other craft he had served with. He said he had known many better ships than this, but that the
I told him about the flying machine I had invented in Kiev, about my Violet Ray. He said he had certain ideas of his own: ships which would be jointed so that they would ride the waves naturally. He showed me some drawings he had made. They were rather crude. I began to sketch again, to illustrate the sort of notions I had conceived in St Petersburg. I said that the future lay with us. It was our duty to lend our enthusiasm and knowledge in the cause of human comfort. We discussed such matters all the way to Constantinople.
The following are taken from Box I of Pyat’s manuscripts. They were composed mainly on poor-quality writing paper which seems to date from the mid-forties, unless it is of more recent East European origin. I reproduce the material pretty much in the order in which I discovered it, but without the little scrawled pictures. The breaks are mine. The final sequence is translated from the Russian.
After the Kerenski revolution of February 1917, the Ukraine set up its own Rada, or parliament, although still acknowledging the authority of the Provisional Government. Its first president, Michael Hrushevsky, made tentative claims for Ukrainian nationalism, apparently under pressure from soldiers and ‘Haidamaki’ (armed peasants borrowing their name from those who had resisted Polish and Russian imperialism in previous centuries). Although paying lip-service to the idea that it was a branch of the Russian constitutional assembly, the Rada became increasingly nationalist in its claims and ambitions. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists, the dominant political movement at this time, was liberal rather than radical. Hrushevsky eventually left to join the more left-wing Ukrainian Party of Social Revolutionaries which was soon elected as the majority party in the Rada. Further to the left was the Ukrainian Socialist Democratic Labour Party. One of its leading lights was Semyon (Simon) Petlyura, a convinced nationalist. Dissatisfaction with delays in announcing an independent Ukraine led to the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress in Kiev, May 18, 1917. Free Cossacks (militia formations) and units from every Ukrainian fighting force (then still at war with the Central Powers) were represented and came together in defiance of Kerenski, Minister of War. It elected a council of 130 to the Central Rada, to represent the interests of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors. Other groups - including Bolsheviks and Anarchists - resisted the idea of nationalism, which they saw as reactionary, but sometimes supported the idea of federalism within the states of a dismembered Russian Empire. In June 1917 relations with the Provisional Government had degenerated so badly that the nationalists broke with it and announced the impossibility ‘of collaboration with the Russian government’. A coalition Rada formed the first provisional Ukrainian government. The Russians continued to attempt to negotiate with the Ukrainians. The Ukraine was a vital area and Ukrainian soldiers were needed to continue the war against the Central Powers. For an understanding of the important geographical and economic position of the Ukraine in the politics of this area see the map in the introduction. Before matters came fully to a head between Kerenski and the Rada, the Bolshevik counter-revolution of November (October, old calendar) 1917 took place and politics in Kiev were further confused by various groups supporting Bolsheviks, Kerenski, democratic Whites, full-blooded nationalism, or even a return to Russian authoritarian monarchism. A miniature civil war broke out between these factions. From it the Central Rada again emerged as the leading force, faced with the problems of large gangs of demobilised troops looting the rural areas. These gangs frequently described themselves as ‘Cossacks’ or ‘Haidamaki’ and claimed loyalty to a variety of political parties. Those who supported, say, the Bolsheviks were called by the Bolsheviks ‘revolutionary soldiers’, those who did not support them were called by the Bolsheviks ‘bandits’. They were primarily hungry, weary, brutalised and confused men who were often not even certain which country they were in. It is now impossible to tell how many were actually motivated by revolutionary idealism or loyalty to an earlier regime; most were ferociously tired. The Jews (the Ukraine was the chief Russian territory ‘beyond the Pale’) were, as always, their main victims.
