The People's Train. By Thomas Keneally

The People’s Train

Thomas Keneally

Published in 2009 by Sceptre (Hodder and Stoughton)

Keneally’s best known book is ‘Schindler’s Ark’, but I have also read and liked ‘The Commonwealth of Thieves’, about the establishment of the first English colonies in Australia, and ‘Towards Asmara’, about the Eritrean struggle. ‘The People’s Train’ is named for a monorail designed by a Russian exile in Brisbane, Australia, in the first decade of the 20^th century, but the title also refers to the Russian communist revolution which forms the main backdrop of the novel. The book follows the revolutionary activities of Artem Samsurov. The story starts in Australia, before moving to Russia. But in chronological order, Samsurov is a worker in Tsarist Russia, a comrade of Vladimir Illich Lenin. He tries to organize the workers in Russia and is sent to a Siberian prison for his pains. After a year or so in prison camp, he escapes, via China and Japan, to Australia, where he takes up work as a labourer in a meat warehouse (reminiscent of Conrad Hensley, the character in Tom Wolfe’s ‘A Man in Full’). Here he organizes the labour, and along with fellow Russian exiles, other ‘English’ Australian workers, and lead by Australian socialist politicos, journalists and lawyers, takes part in a general strike. But the war (WW I) puts paid to his efforts at internationalism – nationalism trumps everything, and it becomes more important to defeat Germany than the capitalist bosses. In the meantime, Artem has a love affair with his lawyer Hope Mockridge. When on a picinic with Hope and other friends, a Russsian blackleg and police informer shoots himself. Artem and couple of others are arrested for murder, but with the help of Hope’s cuckolded lawyer husband and some journalists sympathetic to the cause, Artem and the others are set free. Artem then goes back to Russia, where the revolution is heating up. He takes his Australian journalist friend Paddy Dykes along. The revolution is going through the expected chaotic and confusing stage. The Tsar has been overthrown, but the new administration is not in place. Lenin (and Stalin – who has a ‘walk-on’ role) along with Trotsky and others are organising for the Bolsheviks come to power. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, with an important role, at least in this novel, for Artem. The novel ends inconclusively, the revolution is not as yet over, but clearly the future belongs to the Bolsheviks.

Keneally is always good to read. Like the other books mentioned above, he has based this novel on the true story of a Russian exile, though the true information he has is apparently mainly to do with the Australian part, the part narrated in the first person by Artem. The Russian part is supposed to be written by Paddy, and, maybe deliberately, it’s an outsider’s view. Perhaps because of that, it’s somewhat less convincing. The writing, as on critic on the blurb says is ‘remarkably uninformed by hindsight’, meaning, probably, that though the novel  was written in 2009, there is no criticism even implied of communism, Soviet Russia, Lenin and, of course, Stalin. The critic may have meant to snidely disparage Keneally, but the novel is as honest as possible and as neutral as possible, though, of course, any fair-minded reader of history would have to support the Bolsheviks at that point of time in Russia. Keneally, to his great credit, doesn’t try to establish his neutrality by going the other way to point out to the futility of what happened, but he doesn’t overdo the idealism, either. On the whole a very good book, though it drags a bit towards the end. I must read more books by Keneally.