Down at the station, a group of soldiers rhythmically hurled themselves against its locked doors as others urged them on. “Come on, boys!” “Heave-ho!” “Eyy ukhnem…”—the song of the Volga boatmen. Strikers and ordinary citizens pressed in to watch.

My heart was flying in my chest, thinking of yesterday’s massacre. What if the police came rushing out? But I hadn’t seen a policeman since we’d arrived on this side of the barricades. At last the doors gave way, tearing at the locks. The black maw of the station gaped like a mouth in an O. But now the soldiers hesitated, clustered on the steps, speaking among themselves.

“What are they waiting for?” Varvara shouted. “Why don’t they go in?”

“It might be a trap,” replied a soldier with a pale face and bloodshot eyes. “They could be waiting for us. Leave this to us, little comrade.”

Finally, a small group of soldiers decided there was nothing for it but to go in, rifles leveled, bayonets fixed. In a moment, a second group followed them. Then workers entered, pouring through the gap like water through a sluice. Varvara flashed a grin, tipped her head toward the opening. She wanted us to follow them. I backed up to join the crowd of the less determined as she vanished through the broken doors. After yesterday, I preferred my blood inside my skin. I knew Sofia Yakovlevna was watching from the windows, so I turned and waved. She could honestly say she’d never let me out of her sight.

After a few minutes, people reappeared in the doorway. They were handing out boxes of papers, dumping them onto the sidewalk. I joined the human chain. The piles grew. As we waited, I picked out a piece of paper from the mass. Boris Vissarionovich Agazhanian. A report from a police agent. His address, his place of business. They were dumping police files, the hated surveillance that all Russians suffered. The country was riddled with agents—every dvornik was paid to report on the comings and goings of the house. And if you were involved in public life, nothing you did would go unnoticed. For a prominent critic like Father, an outspoken Kadet, frequent contributor to liberal journals, it took day-to-day courage to go about his business. He knew every word and action would be recorded, reported, anything could be used against him. Varvara probably had a dossier by now. Maybe I did, too. We threw hundreds of these files onto the pavement. A young, nimble striker lit the corners of the pile with a seriousness of one lighting a candle in church. Black smoke feathered up. I set Boris Vissarionovich Agazhanian onto the flames, set him free from his petty sins, the gossip of his neighbors, the political innuendo. He and the others. A spark fell onto a woman’s skirt and she quickly batted it out. When the bonfire grew too hot, we threw the files in from a distance.

Then a man appeared in the broken doorway. He stopped on the step and gazed bewildered at the crowd. Others emerged, like ghosts from the underworld. Two, three, then a dozen, wearing gray pajamas. They were letting the prisoners go.

“It’s your lucky day, Comrades!” an old man shouted out to them. “You’re free!” One after another, they began to realize that their situation had changed for the better, and they melted into the crowd. Znamenskaya Square was not the end, after all, but only the beginning.


After dark Solomon Moiseivich returned to the Katzev flat, ash from the fires dusting his greatcoat, smearing his face. Seryozha jumped up to take the camera and tripod from him. Sofia Yakovlevna ran to him, smiling with relief as she helped him out of his coat and brushed at soot with vigorous blows.

“They broke into the police station,” Shusha clamored. “Varvara went in.”

“Telephone’s out,” Mina said.

Shusha twirled on the parquet, her red ribbon flying. “Look, I’m a mutineer.”

“Greetings, Comrade,” her father said with a laugh. He sat heavily in his chair at the table.

His wife went to get him his dinner while Dunya pulled off his boots. “Korolenko down the hall says the emperor’s sending troops from the front. Is it true?”

“There’s a lot of territory between here and the front,” the big man said, sighing with pleasure as the boots left his feet and his slippers replaced them. “Many things can happen before then, child. Every hour it’s something new.” He pulled Shusha toward him, kissed the side of her head.

“They broke into the police station. Marina was there! They let the prisoners out.”

Sofia Yakovlevna gave me an exasperated look as she set her husband’s soup before him. She was still angry at me for not coming back after the police station. Instead I’d followed Varvara up to the Arsenal. We’d heard that soldiers had broken in and were handing out rifles and pistols to the strikers like prizes at a fair. If the people were armed, surely the revolution would not be put down so easily. They would defend themselves. They would not be mowed down again. I saw it for myself: soldiers passing crate after crate to the crowd, the people breaking the wooden boxes open. Even though I knew it had to be, it was a chilling sight—the wartime arsenal of Russia delivered into the hands of the revolution. I hadn’t seen Varvara since then, she’d been lost in the crowd.

Now the bearish photographer squeezed Seryozha’s skinny arm. “I hope you’re rested. We’re going to have a long night. Ready?”


It was one in the morning when Seryozha woke us. No one had gone to bed, we slept in the parlor. Too much was at stake. We crowded, bleary-eyed, in the darkroom, our faces painted red from the safety light. Solomon Moiseivich’s deep round voice rang out in the dark. “I got a call early this morning. Vasily Rodionovich from the Echo said the Pavlovsky regiment was breaking out of barracks, headed for the Winter Palace. Marching behind their regimental band. I dressed so fast I almost forgot my shirt.” Into the bath went the first print. The photograph bloomed: a ragged parade crossing Palace Square.

He indicated with a flick of his fingers for Seryozha to transfer the paper to the next tray while he took down another square of processed film, exposed the next shot. I could hear Uncle Aaron’s wheezing. The chemicals were hard on the old man’s lungs, they stung the eyes. Mina shoved her glasses back up on her nose. Seryozha poked at the paper with tongs.

A line appeared… a roofline bisecting the paper, studded with the familiar statues decorating the Winter Palace. We stared into that sink as if into a scrying basin. And against the glowing white of the sky, clear as ink on rice paper, a tattered banner flew, dark against light. I knew it was red. History was emerging from its shell like a chick from an egg.

“And the emperor?” Sofia Yakovlevna whispered.

“Still at Stavka,” her husband replied. Stavka, staff headquarters at the front. “But they took the Winter Palace. The sentries surrendered without a fight. They all but handed over the keys to the tsar’s washroom.”

Without a fight. I thought of those guns handed out today. I no longer believed in miracles.

A new page hit the developer. Upon the familiar stone steps of the Tauride Palace, seat of the Duma, a man harangued a large crowd. I recognized the long, equine face and squarish head of cropped hair—Kerensky, the radical lawyer and Duma member. Father considered him a rabble-rouser, vain and emotionally unstable. But he got results. He wore a military tunic instead of the usual frock coat and tie, and the photo caught him midbreath, giving an impassioned speech. “What did he say?”

Solomon Moiseivich indicated with lifted palms for Seryozha to keep agitating the print. “He called for seizure of the telegraph, the railway, all the government offices. He demanded the ministers be arrested.”

Other elements in the Duma were moving ahead of Father. The telephone was already out, they must have taken it. Again, I felt the thrill of the burning police files. This was really happening. And we were all part of it, together, the whole country moving into the unknown.

My brother pulled the photo into the stop bath as the big man continued his story. “Kerensky’s playing liaison between the Duma and the Workers’ Group. It’s now called the Workers’ Soviet. He shuttles between them like a tennis ball. The Duma’d better do something, or the Soviet will.” We demand a Workers’ Soviet. We demand ice cream on Tuesdays and an automobile for every scrubwoman. So they had their Soviet now. What else might have happened while we dozed in the Katzevs’ parlor? I could not believe how fast the world could change once it started to move.

In the tank, a hall with pillars and red flags appeared on the sheet, hundreds of pale faces. “This is the Soviet. Think, Mama, this morning these people were prisoners in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Now they’re meeting with delegates and writing proclamations.”

Sofia Yakovlevna covered her mouth, her eyes glittering but unsure.

“But which one is the government?” Shusha asked. “The Soviet or the Duma?”

“It remains to be seen, my dove,” her father replied.


As we settled down to sleep that night, all of us stinking of the darkroom chemicals, there was one image I could not get out of my head. A rough band of common soldiers, eighty men or more, posing for Solomon Moiseivich around a commandeered automobile, grimly defiant, each face fiercely focused. Men who just yesterday had been about to be shipped to the front to fight in this hopeless war were suddenly masters of their own fate, history thrust into their hands. What would they do with such unexpected power? You could see it in their eyes, behind their defiance—a terrified confusion. Today they were for the revolution, but what about tomorrow? They themselves did not know.