The Russian Kipling
Richard West
The recent report that Soviet warships had Shelled dissident troops in the Ethiopian interior, brought to mind that sinister episode in Conrad's Heart of Darkness When, on the other side of Africa: ‘. • . we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It aPPears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy. swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and Water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent'.
Even at that time, the 1880s, Russia entertained hopes of forming an African colony, on just that Ethiopian coast which her ships are shelling this year. Ethiopia had been singled out on the grounds that, like Russia, she was an Empire; that her orthodox Church was close in doctrine to that of Russia; and that, above all, this was a Part of Africa not so far coveted by one of the other European powers. Russia dispatched an expedition to Ethiopia but soon drew back from the venture because the Tsar's navy was too weak to give such an expedition support. The Russians were not capable, like the French in West Africa, of 'firing into a continent'.
The idea of forming a colony in the Horn of Africa later inspired a poet, Nikolai Gumilev, who made two journeys to Ethiopia and Somalia, advocated annexing them for the Tsar, and came to be known, both by his friends and enemies as 'the Russian Kipling'. Since Gumilev was an anti-Bolshevik, his work remains officially banned in the Soviet Union, and all I could learn of his life comes from a former Colleague — Strakhovsky's memoir in Craft°nen of the Word, published in 1949. Gutrtilev was the founder and almost the Only member of the Acmeist Movement, set klIP to oppose the Symbolist Movement that neld sway in Russia during the first decade of the century. He went to study in Paris,
became renowned for his brilliant conversation, and married (later divorcing) the poetess Anna Ahmatova, who went on to survive the purges, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin and even Khrushchev.
The Acmeist Movement stood for the masculine virtues: action, adventure and ambition; Gumilev's first volume of verse was named The Way of the Conquistadors. In one of his summer vacations, Gumilev travelled to Egypt and the Sudan, and a few years later visited Ethiopia and Somalia, being particularly entranced by the Ogaden towns of Harar and Jinja, the very places where this year Russian generals led the Ethiopian troops to victory over Somalia. In 1913, Gumilev returned to this region as leader of an ethnographical and geographical expedition organised by the Russian Academy of Science. Back in St Petersburg, he urged the Tsar to annex this part of Africa to the Russian crown.
Gumilev did not condemn the Ethiopians as a savage race fit only for servitude; indeed he hymned their noble qualities, often reminding the Russians that Pushkin himself had an Ethiopian grandfather. While praising the Christian Ethiopians, Gumilev warned of the threat of Islam, in particular from the Somalis. Just as the Soviet Union, during the last ten years, armed a 'Marxist' Somalia only to see her invade the even more 'Marxist' Ethiopia, so Gumilev railed in one of his poems.
In all Africa there are none as fierce as the Somalis, No one more depressing on earth; How many whites have been speared in the dark, By their sandy wells, So that the Ogaden might speak of their deeds With the voices of hungry hyenas?
At the outbreak of the world war, Gumilev was the only eminent Russian poet to volunteer for active service, joining the ranks and going on to become a much decorated officer. He was in Paris during the revolution but unlike most Russians of his class and political views chose to return home rather than go into exile. There is a pleasant account in Strakhovsky of how Gumilev would turn up at a soiree of revolutionary literati, dressed in sweaters and scarves, wearing his white tie and tails with decorations to match. As an outspoken royalist, he knew that he was not likely to die 'between the doctor and the lawyer', and indeed he was shot in 1921, for taking part in an anti-Bolshevik plot. The members of the firing squad were struck by his dignity and fearlessness.
In the same year, 1921, the Soviet Communist Party considered what might be done to spread the revolution to Africa, The leading exponent of world revolution, Leon Trotsky, ruled that the Black Africans were not yet ripe for insurrection, although propaganda work might be carried on by imported Negro Americans. However, the Russians spotted the revolutionary potential of the White South African working class, above all the gold miners who feared that Blacks would be brought in to undercut their wages. The Russians set up the South African Communist Party which next year, 1922, astonished the world by a bloody strike on Witwatersrand, whose 'Red Guards' went into battle against the army under the slogan 'Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa'.
Although the insurrection failed, the White miners, and afterwards all White South African workers, obtained the system of 'job reservation', the basis of the apartheid system, which must be considered as Trotsky's major contribution to politics. The White South African miners are this month threatening to go on strike again over what they consider the unfair intrusion of Blacks into 'reserved' jobs; but this time, one thinks, they lack the support of the Russian Communist Party. However, the Russians have sent their Cuban mercenaries to Mozambique and may send them to Zambia in the attempt to conquer Rhodesia.
Already Russia has almost fulfilled Gumilev's dream of a colony in Ethiopia, although much resistance remains in Eritrea. And although Gumilev's verse is still officially banned, he is said to have a secret following among the new Russian imperialists. They would appreciate his poem 'To My Readers': The old vagabond in Addis Ababa Who conquered many tribes Sent me one of his black lancers Greeting me with my own poetry.
A lieutenant who used to lead a gunboat Under enemy fire Recited my poems So me all through the night Upon the southern seas.
It cannot be long before Gumilev returns to offical favour, and young naval officers once more recite his verse in their gunboat, lying offshore and firing into a continent.
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