That last suggestion of his is entirely characteristic. It is
impossible to make the Bolsheviks realize that the English
people feel any hostility towards them. Nor do they feel
hostility towards the English as such. On my way back
to the hotel I met a party of English soldiers, taken prisoners
on the northern front, walking free, without a convoy,
through the streets.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND THE TERROR
February 17th.
My general impression that the Soviet revolution has passed
through its period of internal struggle and is concentrating
upon constructive work so far as that is allowed by war on
all its frontiers, and that the population is settling down
under the new regime, was confirmed by the meeting of the
Executive Committee which definitely limited the powers of
the Extraordinary Commission. Before the sitting was
opened I had a few words with Peters and with Krylenko.
The excitement of the internal struggle was over. It had
been bitterly fought within the party, and both Krylenko of
the Revolutionary Tribunal and Peters of the Extraordinary
Commission were there merely to witness the official act that
would define their new position. Peters talked of his failure
to get away for some shooting; Krylenko jeered at me
for having refused to believe in the Lockhart conspiracy.
Neither showed any traces of the bitter struggle waged
within the party for and against the almost dictatorial powers
of the Extraordinary Commission for dealing with counter-revolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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