Up to 1918 Semyon had served in the Black Sea Fleet, as a sailor on the destroyer Kerch.
The fleet was under the command of Admiral Kolchak.
For all his intellect, education, and what seemed to him his selfless love for Russia, Kolchak understood nothing of what was going on, or of what was bound to take place.
He knew the strength and armaments of all the world's navies, could recognize the silhouette of any warship in a sea fog, was an expert on mines, and one of the initiators of the campaign for raising the efficiency of the Russian navy after the catastrophe of Tsusima. But if anyone had spoken to him before 1917 about politics, he would have replied that he was not interested in politics, that he did not understand them, and considered them the business of students, dingy blue stockings, and Jews.
For him, Russia was a smoking column of battleships (existing and to be), with the St. Andrew's flag proudly fluttering from the flagship, making Germany quake in her shoes.
He loved the severe Empire style entrance to the building of the Ministry for War, with its familiar hall porter, who would help him off with his coat with paternal care and say:
"Nasty weather, Alexander Vasilievich!"; he loved his well-bred elegant colleagues, and the reserved, friendly spirit of the Officers' Club.
The tsar was the fountainhead of this system, of these traditions.
And there was another Russia, which Kolchak loved no less: The Russia which lined up on the quarter-deck —sailors in ribboned caps, broad-faced, tanned, strong-limbed; the Russia which could be felt in the splendid voices singing the evening prayer, when the flag was lowered at sunset; the Russia which knew how to lay down her life without a murmur when she was told to do so.
It was a country to be proud of.
In 1917 Kolchak took the oath of fealty to the Provisional Government without a moment's hesitation, and went on commanding the Black Sea Fleet.
With embittered submission bowing to the inevitable, he endured the fall of the head of the empire, and, clenching his teeth, recognized the Seamen's Committees and the revolutionary order, all for the sake of keeping the navy and Russia in a state of war with Germany.
He would, have gone on fighting so long as he had a single torpedo boat left.
He went to seamen's meetings in Sevastopol, and, replying to the incendiary speeches of local and visiting orators—workers, all of them—said that he personally had no need of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, since he had neither lands nor factories, and nothing to export, but that he demanded war, war, war, "and not as a hireling of the bourgeoisie" (here a fastidious grimace distorted his clean-shaven face, with the strong chin, weak mouth and sunken eyes), "but as a Russian patriot."
The seamen laughed.
It was appalling!
Only the day before zealously ready to go through fire and water for their country and for the flag of St. Andrew, they were now shouting at their Admiral:
"Down with the hirelings of imperialism!"
He had uttered the words "Russian patriot" with force, with a frank gesture, ready at that moment to lay down his life, and the seamen—the devil must have got into them—had listened to the Admiral as if he were an enemy trying to entrap, them with his wiles.
At meetings Semyon Krasilnikov learned that it was not "patriots," but industrialists and big landed proprietors who wished to prolong the war, which was yielding them great profits, and that the people did not need the war.
He learned that the Germans were peasants and workers like the Russians, only fighting because they had been deceived by their own bloodthirsty bourgeoisie and Mensheviks.
At meetings the sailors worked themselves up into a frenzy of hate:
"They have been deceiving the Russian people for a thousand years!
They have been drinking our blood for a thousand years!
The landowners, the bourgeoisie—oh, the vipers!"
Eyes were opened: that's why we have always lived worse than cattle... that's where the enemy lurks!
And though Semyon was terribly homesick for his abandoned farm and his young wife, he clenched his fists as he listened to the speakers, grew drunk like all the rest on the wine of revolution, and in this intoxication forgot his homesickness, and his longing for the beautiful Matryona....
One day a famous agitator, Vasili Rublev, came from Petrograd.
He put the question:
"Are you going to play the fool for ever, brothers, and be content with showing your teeth at meetings?
Kerensky has long ago sold you to the capitalists.
They'll give you a little more time for holding forth, and then the counterrevolutionaries will begin chopping off everybody's heads.
Get rid of Kolchak before it's too late, take the "navy in your workers' and peasants' hands...."
The next day a radio message was sent out from a battleship: "disarm all officers."
A few officers shot themselves, the rest surrendered their arms.
On flagship St. George the Conqueror, Kolchak had the entire crew called to the upper deck.
The sailors, laughing, came up on the quarter-deck.
Admiral Kolchak stood on the bridge dressed in full uniform.
"Sailors!" he cried in a shrill, cracked voice. "An irreparable misfortune has occurred. The enemies of the people, secret German agents, have disarmed the officers.
And who is such a fool as to speak seriously of an officers' counterrevolutionary plot?
Generally speaking I am bound to say that there is no such thing as counterrevolution—it doesn't exist."
Here the Admiral began pacing the bridge, his sword clattering, the better to (give rein to his feelings.
"I regard all that has occurred as first and foremost a personal insult to myself, as your senior officer, and naturally I neither can nor will go on commanding the navy, and shall immediately send a cable to the Government: 'Giving up the navy and leaving.'
I've had enough!"
Semyon saw the Admiral seize the gold hilt of his sword in both hands, try to unfasten it from his belt, and, finding it entangled, tug at it violently. His very lips were blue.
"Every honest officer would do the same in my place!"
He raised his sword and cast it into the sea.
But this heroic gesture made not the slightest impression on the sailors.
From that moment the navy was in a turmoil, and storms were in the offing.
The sailors, closely united by life at sea, healthy, audacious and agile, having seen oceans and foreign lands, were less backward than the soldiers, and more alive to the impassable gulf between the wardroom and crew's quarters, and all this made of them a highly inflammable element.