Arriving at Yuriev’s, Lunacharsky found over forty famous actors in the cozy quarters with its velvet armchairs. To his surprise he recognized among them the imposing figure of one of the Cadets party leaders, Vladimir Nabokov, the father of the future writer. The diplomatic Yuriev explained that he understood, as did everyone else, that a political storm was gathering over the capital and it was not clear which party would be in power tomorrow. Therefore he was asking Lunacharsky and Nabokov, each of whom had a chance to become the next minister of culture, to state his views on the theater’s future.
In response the wily Lunacharsky gave an eloquent ninety-minute speech, assuring the actors that in the case of a Bolshevik victory not a single “bourgeois” theater would be closed. Nabokov, in a manner typical of the Russian liberals, avoided a discussion with the Bolshevik parvenu and announced with an ironic smile that his party could not propose any Utopian programs.
Nabokov must have imagined that he sounded quite respectable and realistic. But actually, he was losing ground to the Bolsheviks without firing a shot. In that decisive moment of Russian history a multitude of similar episodes were being played out in every sphere of life in Petrograd, with the same results. The Bolsheviks, unchallenged, were gaining everywhere.
Months passed in political maneuvering, in attempted coups from right and left, while the soldiers and workers of the capital continued rumbling, rallying, and making ever more radical demands. Finally, the Petrograd garrison voted to recognize the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which was dominated at the time by the Bolsheviks, as the only legal power in the capital. On the morning of October 25, 1917, posters were plastered all over the city proclaiming the overthrow of the provisional government and the transfer of all power to the Soviets.
That evening two ballets were presented at the Maryinsky Theater—
When the performance began, the audience jumped at the sound of shots. The cruiser
But even Lenin, seizing power, could not have thought in those autumn days that he had led one of the most far-reaching upheavals of the twentieth century. It not only radically changed the historical course of one of the biggest countries on earth but also started a chain of major social changes and mortal conflicts throughout the world that was to last for most of the century. The effect of that fateful day was still being felt decades later in places far from the marvelous city on the Neva, among all kinds of peoples, some of whom didn’t even know the city existed.
At the start of his rule, Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades in arms seriously doubted they would be able to hold onto the power that had fallen into their hands so unexpectedly. One young artist peeked into the empty Winter Palace the day after the coup and ran into the new minister of culture—People’s Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky; the prediction of the actor Yuriev had turned out to be correct. Lunacharsky commented philosophically that the Bolsheviks apparently would not be able to stay here more than two weeks, “after which they would be hanged from those balconies.”113
A joke widely circulated in the capital held that the provisional government held its sessions standing instead of sitting. The Bolsheviks, having founded in Petrograd the most radical communist regime in the world, also felt very uncertain. They were surrounded by a sea of hostility.
A few days after the coup the Petrograd theaters ceased working in protest against the “illegal government of Lenin and Lunacharsky.” When Lunacharsky announced that he wanted to meet with intellectuals prepared to cooperate, only a few persons showed up, easily fitting onto one couch. Of course, among them were such extraordinarily talented individuals as Blok, Mayakovsky, Altman, and Meyerhold. (Meyerhold soon went even further and joined the Communist Party.)
