Inside Sevastopol
There's a sort of perverse reserve overdrive hidden within the Russian national character which kicks in just when anyone else would think 'honour is satisfied, but now common sense tells us we have to surrender.' Recent examples like the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle for Stalingrad spring easily to mind. The (First) Defence of Sevastopol was no exception.
The famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was a young man of 26, and an officer in the artillery. He spent a year in the Crimea and for a short time was in command of a battery in No 4 'Mât' or 'Flagstaff' Bastion, during the heaviest action. He recorded his impression of the defenders when he arrived in his literary sketch 'Sevastopol in December'.
"The quayside contains a noisy jostle of soldiers in grey, sailors in black, and women in all sorts of colours. Peasant women are selling rolls, Russian muzhiks (peasant men) with samovars are shouting 'Hot sbi-ten' (a common spiced honey drink), and right here...are rusty cannonballs, shells, grapeshot and cast-iron cannon of various calibres. A little further off there is a large open area strewn with enormous squared beams, gun carriages and the forms of sleeping soldiers; there are horses wagons, green field-guns and ammunition boxes, infantry muskets stacked in criss-cross piles; a constant movement persists of soldiers, sailors, officers, merchants, women and children; carts laden with hay, sacks or barrels come and go; and here and there a Cossack or an officer is passing on horseback, or a general in his droshky....Your first impression is bound to be a most disagreable one: the strange intermingling of camp and town life...it may even appear to you that everyone is afraid, that all these people are scurrying about with no idea of what to do. But take a closer look at the faces of those who are moving around you, and you will realise that the truth is altogether different.... Not on a single face will you read the signs of flurry or dismay, nor even those of enthusiasm, readiness to die, resolve - of that there is none; you will see ordinary everyday people going about their everyday business...the hanging signs of shops and taverns on both sides of the streets; the merchants, the women in bonnets or kerchiefs, the dandified officers - all these things will impress you with the strength of mind, the security and self-confidence of the inhabitants."
Of course, unlike Russell of the London 'Times', Tolstoy was writing for publication in an environment where censorship was routinely applied, often pettily and incomprehensively. But this particular sketch escaped unscathed, admittedly because the tone was mostly upbeat and positive. Tolstoy though like Russell, believed in reporting what he saw, and later sketches were to see him in running battles with the censors. This extract from his diary illustrates his strongly held views.
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