Fall Of Giants

When Gus Dewar sees Katerina being beaten by Pinsky on the streets of Saint Petersburg, he gets out of the car, “outraged,” to demand why a police officer would be kicking a helpless woman (99). Grigori reflects that it was lucky that Gus was passing at that moment, as “only foreigners would object to a policeman kicking a peasant” (99). His reflection reveals how commonplace police corruption and cruelty were in Russia during this time.

A decade earlier, when Grigori’s mother is shot in the face and killed by tsarist soldiers during a peaceful demonstration, an old man stops Grigori and tells him, with “anguish and rage in his voice,” to “never forget this” (113). The man hopes that Grigori will live “long enough to take revenge on the bloodstained tsar for the evil he has done this day” (113). This incident and the rage of the old man suggest the Russian revolution was the result of decades of mistreatment and cruelty.

Anecdotes such as these explain the determined anger and rage of the workers and peasants who march toward the city center of Petrograd during March of 1917, holding banners declaring “Down with the Tsar” and “Bread, Peace, and Land” (636). As Grigori helps to arm the protesters, he reflects on the anguished man on the day of his mother’s death and thinks “your wish may come true, old man” (640). Russia’s participation in the war meant many angry and discontented men were armed and organized into divisions. Grigori declares that “a military unit is subordinate to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and its committees” (658). The Petrograd armies placed themself under the control of the Bolsheviks, as did many of the army divisions around Russia. In this way, Russia’s participation in the war accelerated the revolution.

The war also fueled the discontent of the British working class. Before the war, Billy had often reflected that the working class was made powerless by systems that privileged the voices of the aristocrats, such as the franchise system that denied all of the Aberowen miners the vote. At the Battle of the Somme, men are sent out in organized lines to be picked off by German machine-gun fire. Billy was furious at the aristocratic officers’ failure. He reflects that “Earl Fitzherbert and his like had planned this. They were in charge, and they were to blame for this slaughter” (493). Individuals like Billy, who were already dissatisfied with a social hierarchy that left a small few living in luxury and the majority barely scraping by, were further alienated and frustrated by the poor leadership of aristocratic officers. Many were also invigorated by the revolution in Russia. Billy angrily tells Fitz that the tsar “was a tyrant who murdered thousands of his subjects, and all civilized men are rejoicing today” (667).

At the end of the story, Billy addresses the people of Aberowen before the election where he hopes to become the local member of Parliament. He speaks of officers in the war: “they had the wrong strategy and the wrong tactics […] their thinking was out of date […] but they wouldn’t change their ideas until millions of men had been killed” (982). Billy calls for “major change,” so men can be “promoted for brains, not birth” (982). Billy’s success in being voted into the House of Commons along with the fact that women achieve the vote and Ethel becomes an MP suggests that this “major change” is indeed underway (982).