Russia in 1919 | Page 6

from one extreme of the class struggle to the
other, from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to a dictatorship of the
proletariat.
The contrast was noticeable at once. On the Finnish side of the frontier
we had seen the grandiose new frontier station, much larger than could
possibly be needed, but quite a good expression of the spirit of the new
Finland. On the Russian side we came to the same grey old wooden
station known to all passengers to and from Russia for polyglot
profanity and passport difficulties. There were no porters, which was
not surprising because there is barbed wire and an extremely hostile
sort of neutrality along the frontier and traffic across has practically
ceased. In the buffet, which was very cold, no food could be bought.
The long tables once laden with caviare and other zakuski were bare.
There was, however, a samovar, and we bought tea at sixty kopecks a
glass and lumps of sugar at two roubles fifty each. We took our tea into
the inner passport room, where I think a stove must have been burning
the day before, and there made some sort of a meal off some of
Puntervald's Swedish hard-bread. It is difficult to me to express the
curious mixture of depression and exhilaration that was given to the
party by this derelict starving station combined with the feeling that we
were no longer under guard but could do more or less as we liked. It
split the party into two factions, of which one wept while the other sang.
Madame Vorovsky, who had not been in Russia since the first
revolution, frankly wept, but she wept still more in Moscow where she
found that even as the wife of a high official of the Government she
enjoyed no privileges which would save her from the hardships of the
population. But the younger members of the party, together with
Litvinov, found their spirits irrepressibly rising in spite of having no
dinner. They walked about the village, played with the children, and
sang, not revolutionary songs, but just jolly songs, any songs that came
into their heads. When at last the train came to take us into Petrograd,
and we found that the carriages were unheated, somebody got out a

mandoline and we kept ourselves warm by dancing. At the same time I
was sorry for the five children who were with us, knowing that a
country simultaneously suffering war, blockade and revolution is not a
good place for childhood. But they had caught the mood of their
parents, revolutionaries going home to their revolution, and trotted
excitedly up and down the carriage or anchored themselves
momentarily, first on one person's knee and then on another's.
It was dusk when we reached Petrograd. The Finland Station, of course,
was nearly deserted, but here there were four porters, who charged two
hundred and fifty roubles for shifting the luggage of the party from one
end of the platform to the other. We ourselves loaded it into the motor
lorry sent to meet us, as at Bieloostrov we had loaded it into the van.
There was a long time to wait while rooms were being allotted to us in
various hotels, and with several others I walked outside the station to
question people about the mutiny and the bombardment of which we
had heard in Finland. Nobody knew anything about it. As soon as the
rooms were allotted and I knew that I had been lucky enough to get one
in the Astoria, I drove off across the frozen river by the Liteini Bridge.
The trams were running. The town seemed absolutely quiet, and away
down the river I saw once again in the dark, which is never quite dark
because of the snow, the dim shape of the fortress, and passed one by
one the landmarks I had come to know so well during the last six
years-the Summer Garden, the British Embassy, and the great Palace
Square where I had seen armoured cars flaunting about during the July
rising, soldiers camping during the hysterical days of the Kornilov
affair and, earlier, Kornilov himself reviewing the Junkers. My mind
went further back to the March revolution, and saw once more the
picket fire of the revolutionaries at the corner that night when the
remains of the Tzar's Government were still frantically printing
proclamations ordering the people to go home, at the very moment
while they themselves were being besieged in the Admiralty. Then it
flung itself further back still, to the day of the declaration of war, when
I saw this same square filled with people, while the Tzar came out for a
moment on the Palace balcony. By that time we were pulling up at the
Astoria and I had to turn