I stood up, folded my arms and eyed the crowd sternly. I must confess that a tremor ran over me as my eyes passed from one rascal to another. They were a desperate lot, looking more like beasts than human beings. The dregs of the army, truly.
“Look at yourselves,” I began, “and think what has become of you! You, who once advanced like heroes against the enemy’s devastating fire and suffered like faithful sons of the Motherland in the defence of Russia, lying for weeks in the muddy, vermin-infested trenches, and crawling through No Man’s Land. Consider for a moment what you are now and what you were a little while ago. Only last winter you were the pride of the country and the world. Now you are the execration of the army and the nation. Surely there are some among you who belonged to the Fifth Siberian Corps, aren’t there?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then you ought to remember me—Yashka—or have heard of me.”
“Yes, we do! We know you!” came from several parts of the crowd.
“Well, if you know me, you ought also to know that I waded in the mud of the trenches together with you; that I slept on the same wet ground as you or your brother; that I faced the same dangers, suffered the same hunger, shared the same cabbage soup that you had. Why then do you attack me? Why do you jeer at me? How and when have I earned your contempt and derision?”
“When you were a common soldier,” answered a couple of voices, “you were like one of us. But now, being an officer, you are under the influence of the bourgeoisie.”
“Who made me an officer if not you? Didn’t your comrades, the common soldiers of the First and Tenth Armies, send special delegates to honour me and present icons and standards to me, thus raising me to the grade of officer? I am of the people, blood of your blood, a toiling peasant girl.”
“But we are tired of war. We want peace,” they complained, unable to find fault with me personally.
“I want peace, too. But how can you have peace? Show me how?” I insisted vigorously, observing that my words were soothing the temper of the crowd considerably.