Communism -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921
“Let’s arrest him,” said the Red Guard, venomously. “He is Kerensky’s
man. He has stolen the money and given it to Kerensky.”
Baklanov did not want to. “Oh, no,” he said. “It was the Kornilovitz
before him. He is not to blame.
“The devil!” cried the Red Guard. “He is Kerensky’s man, I tell you. If
_you_ won’t arrest him, then _we_ will, and we’ll take him to Petrograd
and put him in Peter-Paul, where he belongs!” At this the other Red
Guards growled assent. With a piteous glance at us the Colonel was led
away….
Down in front of the Soviet palace an auto-truck was going to the
front. Half a dozen Red Guards, some sailors, and a soldier or two,
under command of a huge workman, clambered in, and shouted to me to
come along. Red Guards issued from headquarters, each of them
staggering under an arm-load of small, corrugated-iron bombs, filled
with _grubit_—which, they say, is ten times as strong, and five times
as sensitive as dynamite; these they threw into the truck. A three-inch
cannon was loaded and then tied onto the tail of the truck with bits of
rope and wire.
We started with a shout, at top speed of course; the heavy truck
swaying from side to side. The cannon leaped from one wheel to the
other, and the _grubit_ bombs went rolling back and forth over our
feet, fetching up against the sides of the car with a crash.
The big Red Guard, whose name was Vladimir Nicolaievitch, plied me with
questions about America. “Why did America come into the war? Are the
American workers ready to throw over the capitalists? What is the
situation in the Mooney case now? Will they extradite Berkman to San
Francisco?” and other, very difficult to answer, all delivered in a
shout above the roaring of the truck, while we held on to each other
and danced amid the caroming bombs.
Occasionally a patrol tried to stop us. Soldiers ran out into the road
before us, shouted _“Shtoi!”_ and threw up their guns.
We paid no attention. “The devil take you!” cried the Red Guards. “We
don’t stop for anybody! We’re Red Guards!” And we thundered imperiously
on, while Vladimir Nicolaievitch bellowed to me about the
internationalisation of the Panama Canal, and such matters….
About five miles out we saw a squad of sailors marching back, and
slowed down.
“Where’s the front, brothers?”
The foremost sailor halted and scratched his head. “This morning,” he
said, “it was about half a kilometer down the road. But the damn thing
isn’t anywhere now. We walked and walked and walked, but we couldn’t
find it.”
They climbed into the truck, and we proceeded. It must have been about
a mile further that Vladimir Nicolaievitch cocked his ear and shouted
to the chauffeur to stop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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