Denouncer by Paul M. Levitt Read Free Book Online

not himself fought in the war, he had shared the nationalists’ fears of fragmentation.
    Artur Krasnov chain-smoked. A tall, elderly man, poorly barbered, with thin lips, furtive eyes, a beaked nose, long curved fingernails, and a sickly yellow complexion, he coughed so often that his chest rattled like loose change. A former Tsarist officer who had initially fought with the Whites, he had early in the war changed sides, and therefore regarded himself as an expert on matters touching upon the Bolshevik military, the Volunteer Army, and the Cossack rebellion. Pointing to the Don River and the steppe lands marked on the map, he asked:
    “How great a role in the war do you think pillaging played, especially in Ukraine and the Don?”
    Sasha pondered the question, which was a minefield. All sides had engaged in unlawful acts against citizens, though the Bolsheviks were inclined to minimize their rapaciousness and emphasize that of the Cossacks and Whites.
    “It would be hard to measure, but we do know that such behavior was counterproductive, because the local populations would readily change sides when mistreated. How else can we explain the desire on the part of the Cossacks to have their own nation?”
    Lighting a fresh cigarette from the former, Krasnov greedily devoured the smoke and exhaled a stream through his nose. Extending the pack of cigarettes toward Sasha, he paused, tapped a fingernail on his folder, and remarked, “I’d forgotten. You don’t enjoy the habit.”
    Sasha forced a smile and acknowledged his abstemiousness.
    “On the basis of social class,” asked Krasnov, “do you think the Bolshevik officers or the White officers were more inclined to steal?”
    Again, the question was fraught with danger. The Bolsheviks had argued that they represented the exploited classes, while the Whites had contended that their officers came from the upper classes and would never stoop to plundering. Of course, both sides had forcibly recruited in their service misfits and miscreants and could not account for their behavior.
    Knowing that Krasnov took pride in his having once served in the Tsar’s officer corps, which he regarded as the height of military service, Sasha replied, “The qualities of fairness and mercy can be found in any class. Where people evinced such qualities, brigandage was not a problem.”
    “Are you saying, then,” Krasnov probed, toying with his cigarette, “that royalty is an innate quality and not bestowed by education or rank?”
    Again trying to walk a fine line, Sasha replied, “The privileges of money often lead to education and good manners, but not necessarily to a good heart. The poor may be deficient in education but rich in feeling for their fellow man.”
    When his coughing subsided, Krasnov snorted and nodded to Simyonski to call on someone else. The chairman, seeing that Pavel Polyakov was keen to speak, called on him.
    “Do you think, Sasha Parsky, that if Petrograd had fallen to the Whites, we’d still be living under a Tsar; or do you think a revolution was inevitable and the monarchy, in any case, doomed?”
    Simyonski grimaced and poured himself a glass of water. The question was precisely the kind he despised, academic and theoretical. And whatever answer Sasha gave, what would it matter? Theory, he mused, was all gray, and the golden tree of life green.
    Outside the one window, which looked into a courtyard, the sky remained bright, even though the afternoon was eroding. The glorious hours of honeyed Russian sunshine were all too ephemeral, and the dreary cold all too lasting. At that moment, Sasha wished to be running through the fields behind his parents’ house and flushing quail from the wheat fields. He could picture the bustards and crows overhead, and he could see the wide stream in which he and his father fished. In May, the sound of the melting ice resembled the report of a gun, as the melting floes hiccupped and heaved. His mind wandered to Tolstoy and