Red Mutiny

Red mutiny: eleven fateful days on the battleship Potemkin / by Neal Bascomb; narrated by John McDonough.— Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, p2007.

13 sound discs (15 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

ISBN: 9781428137318

1. Bronenosets "Potemkin".
2. Russia--History--Revolution, 1905-1907.

947.083

In 1905 the Russian emperor Nicholas II was losing a war with Japan and facing massive popular resistance at home. Although he was not fond of governing, he was convinced that since God had placed him upon the throne, it was his duty to rule the empire on the principle that his father had set down, a rule of absolute autocracy. He was unprepared for the humiliating defeats his navy suffered against their better trained Japanese opponents. He was also unprepared when over a hundred thousand of his people marched on his capital in St. Petersburg in January to petition for a redress of their grievances. His guards opened fire, and hundreds were killed. It became known as “Bloody Sunday.” It began a year of unrest, industrial strikes, and simmering revolution.

In June, far to the South of St. Petersburg and Moscow, in the Black Sea port of Odessa workers were striking and carts were burning in the streets, when a requisitioning crew from the largest and best armed battleship in the navy, the Potemkin, came ashore to buy food. The market was in disarray, the officer in charge found meat hard to come by, so with the hasty approval of the ship’s doctor, he quickly purchased what was available, despite the warning of one of the crew that the meat was tainted.

The next day, back aboard the battleship, the meat began to swarm with maggots. Since it was stored on deck, hanging on racks behind a tent, each watch of the crew had a chance to view it and comment about what was about to be chopped up and tossed in their luncheon borscht. It turned out to be the final insult. The ordinary seamen were drafted into a navy run by officers that were part of the hereditary aristocracy, and they never let the peasants under their command forget it. Beatings, insults and arbitrary discipline were the norm. Among the crew, their officers were known disparagingly as “dragons.” Now crewmembers were going to be made to eat soup made from meat that they wouldn’t feed to a dog. They petitioned the captain. Captain Golikov went to inspect the meat with the ship’s doctor. They declared that it just needed to be rinsed off before it went in the soup.

After lunch Golikov was enraged when he learned that nobody ate the borscht. He ordered the entire crew of eight hundred onto the deck of the battleship. He fumed and fussed and threatened them, but without effect. But when he ordered a group of the resisters shot, and then ordered them to stand on a tarpaulin so the blood wouldn’t stain the deck, he lost first control of his ship and then his life. A member of the torpedo crew, Afanasy Matushenko, yelled at the firing squad, “Don't shoot; you can't kill your own shipmates!”

In little more than an hour Matushenko, a Ukrainian peasant with little formal education, was a member of the council commanding the ship. The officers had been shot or sent overboard, or thrown overboard and shot in the water as they tried to swim away. The Tsar’s flag was torn from the mast. In its place the red flag of revolution flew. The ship was taken with such speed and efficiency because a well organized secret network of revolutionaries had been planning a mutiny on every ship in the Black Sea for months. The rotten meat was an unexpected spark that lit the fuse of revolt.

Neal Bascomb’s narrative, smoothly read by narrator John McDonough, does an excellent job of putting the mutiny in its historical context, and clearly portraying the character of the Tsar, the Naval Officers sent to hunt down the rogue battleship, and the motives and characters of the revolutionaries who seized the ship. It’s well worth the investment of fifteen hours listening.