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120 ANDREA GRAZIOSIfather (freed in 1917, Zhuk died in the Civil War fighting for the Reds).Thus, Piatakov's privileged education, the "gentility" of his family background,and his "Western culture" were very soon subjected to severeshocks, which exposed the fragility of these influences in a country such asthe Russian Empire (and, shortly thereafter, the First World War revealedtheir fragility on a European scale).At the time of the robbery, Piatakov, who had broken off relations withthe anarchists, was already in St. Petersburg, enrolled at the Faculty of Lawin order to study economics. He did not go back to Kiev, except for a briefinterval in 1911, until 1917, just in time for the revolution and the UkrainianCivil War, perhaps the most ferocious one.For Piatakov, the Civil War was a continual succession of victories anddefeats. The Bolsheviks had to seize power three times in Ukraine, since thefirst two attempts both ended in catastrophy. Moments of exaltation werethus followed by periods of deep depression. Both were linked to andamplified by events in Europe, primarily in Germany and Hungary.This violent see-sawing between extremes of states of mind was accompaniedby the practice of violence tout court, of which we will mention onlya few episodes: the barbaric murder of Piatakov's brother Leonid in Kiev inJanuary 1918; his service in a machine-gun unit in March and April of thatyear (Piatakov was thus not spared the key experience of being a soldier inthe First World War); and above all, the active part he played in the outbreaksof generalized cruelty over the following months and years. Alreadyat the end of 1918, after the first stage of the Red Terror, Piatakov hadargued for mass shootings. In Kharkiv in June 1919, as president of thelocal Revolutionary Tribunal, he publicly exalted terror, while in the prisonsof the city terrible things were taking place (this stance disgusted the oldKorolenko, who protested against it). A few months before, in March,Piatakov's former companion, Evgeniia Bosh, had directed the massacres inAstrakhan', and the following year Piatakov, who had participated in theassault at Perekop, was apparently in charge of the even more terrible massacreswhich took place in the Crimea after the defeat at Vrangel' (it is saidthat many tens of thousands were shot in a few days). According toVeresaev, even Dzerzhinskii was indignant at Piatakov's and his friendBêla Kun's ferocity.From a theoretical, Marxist standpoint (and so, for Piatakov, in rationalterms), all of the above was taking place within a process which, as we havesaid, was losing its meaning or, rather, was becoming increasingly difficultto explain in spite of the ever-growing resort to rhetorical and psychologicalexaltation.