My departure from Reval was most carefully and kindly superintended by my late Bolshevik hosts, whose representatives in Reval and also Professor Lomonosoff and his staff did everything in their power to be kind and attentive.
We are on our way now to Stockholm, I find the same Swedish banker, Mr. Aschberg, on board who went across with us in September. He is in charge of a cabin full of gold. He takes good care of me and I am glad to find a friend. I am told the food on board is very bad, but I think it is marvellous.
November 16th. Stockholm, Sweden.
I have lost all track of time. Storms forced our little boat to anchor under the shelter of an Aland isle for two days and a night.
On our arrival late at night at Stockholm we were met by Professor Lomonosoff’s representative with a car, and after we had all been submitted to a search, not for arms, but for insects, and declared fit to step on to Swedish soil, I was whirled off to the Hotel Anglais.
I had fully expected to be lost and forgotten on leaving Moscow, but here I am being taken care of in the third country away. If the Stockholm experiences foreshadow my coming reception in England, it promises to be hectic. I am not allowed breathing space, nor eating space.
Reporters besiege me. They even walk up to my room without being announced. I am so ignorant of the papers they represent that I say all the wrong things. One paper, a Conservative one, says that I declared Trotsky to be a perfect gentleman. This, if it gets back to Moscow, is most embarrassing. Never in my wildest moments would I use so mediocre a description to apply to Trotsky. I might say he was a genius, a superman, or a devil. Anyway, in Russia we talk of men and women and not of ladies and gentlemen. I dare say that the editor meant well, and that things get distorted in translation.
The experience of returning through Stockholm is rather unique. Because we have both come out of Russia together, Mr. Vanderlip and I have been entertained at the same parties, but for me Frederick Ström and the Russian Bolsheviks are invited and for Vanderlip the leading Swedish bankers. It is a queer amalgamation, but it works well.
The first evening I talked to Socialist Ström and a Conservative banker for an hour and a half in flowing but execrable German. They did not laugh at my grammar, but listened and spurred me on with questions. The German of my childhood slightly practised in Moscow has returned to me with a rush.
I have been invited to do a monument for a public square in Stockholm representing Peace uniting the workers of the Right and Left Wings. The money has been subscribed in kroner by the workpeople. It is an international thing, and they would be pleased if I would do it. It is a subject which rather lends itself to allegorical treatment and appeals to the imagination.