International Woman's Day

When people think of the Russian Revolution, they usually attribute it to the events of October 1917.  However, the true beginning of the Revolution was not that of Lenin, but of Women.  On 8 March, 1917, women took the streets of Petrograd celebrating International Woman's day and their right to vote in the new Russia.  What happened during that march turned the tide of history.

The March in Petrograd

My novel, Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia relived the Petrograd march though the eyes of one of the marchers, a mill worker named Valentina Kondakova.

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           When twenty-year-old Valentina Kondakova left her tenement in the Vyborg district of Petrograd, she did not intend to bring down a government. All she wanted was to participate in the International Woman’s Day and demonstrate for bread and justice.

International Woman's Day March - Petrograd 1917

At Liteiny Prospect, Valentina’s group unfolded their banner and took up their position in the front of the march. Valentina grabbed the staff on the right side of the Neva Thread Mills Workers’ soviet banner and held it high for all to see. The unfurled banner did not contain saintly ikon or the likeness of the Tsar. Instead, it delivered a simple and direct message: “Increase Rations for Soldiers’ Families, the Defenders of Freedom and a People’s Peace.” When the marchers turned onto Nevsky Prospect and came within sight of the Winter Palace, there was no turning back. Valentina squared her shoulders and steeled herself for what lie ahead. The fuse had been lit.

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The marchers followed the same route as those who marched twelve years prior in what would become Bloody Sunday.  Would Valentina's fate be the same as those who also wanted justice?

No longer a second class citizen

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Valentina could not stop now if she wanted. The crush of the women behind her forced her forward and even the fierce sound emanating from the soldiers could not stem their advance. Valentina had resigned herself to die, but then understood the soldiers weren’t taunting―they were cheering. “Keep coming, sisters,” one shouted. “Press harder,” yelled another. Soon all the shouts blended into one single, irresistible chant, “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” The powder keg had exploded.

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The Future Is in Her Hands

 

I named the commander of the soldiers' battalion after one of my relatives. When I told him his namesake ordered his troops to defy orders and stand down, he replied, "I would have ordered them to shoot." Perhaps because of this attitude, International Woman's Day marches continue today. However, none have yet had the repercussions of that one held in 1917.

Women Marching in Pakistan

The Joys of Childhood?

Ah, childhood, that carefree period remembered through the golden filter of old-age.  But in reality what we so blissfully recall probably was not all that carefree.  To various degrees, all of us went through some form of juvenile trauma, be it the fanciful boogeyman in our closet to the all too real school shooting.

Students evacuating their school

Real Life Trauma

I interjected this phase of childhood into my third novel, Banners: Our Children, Our Future with several examples.  I don't know if children a century ago were hardened against what we would consider life altering occurrences, or they just appear that way in faded back-and-white photos.  Judging from the scene shown below, youngsters were often not shielded from the horrors of the day.  In Banners, my young protagonists witnessed a such a hanging.

Bolsheviks executed by White forces

Inspired by this photo, my young characters reacted to the execution with youthful bravado. Anyone familiar with boys knows they would rather eat glass than loose face with their buddies. Maxsim, the oldest village boy and the leader of the Brati, would never allow himself to appear weak in front of his gang.  In this excerpt from Chapter Nine, Maxsim embellishes his tentative experience with death to impress his charges.

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“You didn't really see a guy get killed―did you?” Stepha asked, his eyes widening.

“Yes, I did. I saw it at the cinema,” Maksim told him. “In Chelyabinsk. He got shot by a firing squad.” Maksim had assembled his subjects behind a collapsed izbah and conducted their emotions like an orchestra. Looking from right to left, he lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “The soldiers came and put this guy against a wall,” he said and mimicked bringing up a rifle up to eye. When the boys leaned closer, he shouted. “Then, POW. The smoke came from the guns and he flew backwards and his cap fell off and everything.” Maksim snapped his fingers, “Just like that, he was dead.”

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During the hanging, the boys jostled for favorable positions, both to witness the event and to pose afterward for the war correspondents.

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“Come on. They're taking fotografia.” Maksim grabbed Stepha's arm and together they ran toward the gallows."

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I didn't have the boys suffer any effects from trauma.  The closest they came to reliving the hanging was a superstition concerning walking past the gallows' site. 

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When their path led past the gallows, Vanya hesitated. “I don't want to go there.”

“It'll be alright,” Stepha assured him. "All you have to do is hold your hand over your mouth and nose and hold your breath. Then the spirits can't enter your body.”

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Nightmares Real and Imagined

Perhaps those children from a century ago appear callous because they were subjected to a daily string of terrors, both real and imagined. Many endured lives full of sadistic school masters, drunken parents, mean-spirited relatives, brimstone hurling preachers and a string of bullies like Stepha's Kolya.

Just one of Stepha's childhood memories

As if these fears were not enough, children were subjected to imaginary terrors that caused them to  hide.in terror  In addition to the river-dwelling rusalka, child-devouring baba-yaga, ghouls beneath the privy, and legions of night demons; youngsters were bombarded with endless dire warnings from each other.  Older children cautioned their smaller siblings to hold their breath while walking past a graveyard, not to step on a crack and to beware of even the most benign creatures.

Beware the graveyard ghosts

In Chapter Thirteen of Slogans, Stepha comes face to face with one of these creatures, the flying darning needle.  While a dragonfly may not elicit terror in an adult, it can in a child. I placed Stepha in this situation to illustrate his courage to overcome fear, yet remain cautious.

Dragonfly

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The story of flying darning needles stitching children's lips together might be just another of Teta Kataya's scary myths but Stepha wasn't taking the chance. Even after he passed through Old Rosina's tusked archway and was sure the stryadrakon was gone, he waited before taking his hand away from his mouth.

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Including childhood terrors in an historical novel broadens the culture of the period and also provides an avenue to expand your characters.  Plus, it's fun to recall old childhood fears and discover new ones from the safety of old age.