“I will tell you why,” I replied. “I have no objection to your beautiful plans for the future of Russia. But as for the immediate situation, if you take the soldiers away from the front, you are destroying the country.”
“But we do not want any more war. We are going to conclude peace,” the two leaders replied.
“How can you conclude peace without soldiers at the front? You are demobilizing the army already. You have got to make peace first and then let the men go home. I myself want peace, but if I were in the trenches I would never leave before peace had been signed. What you are doing will ruin Russia.”
“We are sending the soldiers away because the Germans will not advance against us, anyhow. They do not want to fight either,” was the reply.
It irritated me, this view of the Germans held by the men who now controlled the Government of my country.
“You don’t know the Germans!” I cried out. “We have lost so many lives in this war, and now you would give everything away without a struggle! You don’t know war! Take the soldiers away from the front and the Germans will come and seize upon everything they can lay hands on. This is war. I am a soldier and I know. But you don’t. Why did you take it upon yourselves to rule the country? You will ruin it!” I exclaimed in anguish.
Lenin and Trotzky laughed. I could see the irony in their eyes. They were learned and worldly. They had written books and travelled in foreign lands. And who was I? An illiterate Russian peasant woman. My lecture undoubtedly afforded them amusement. They smiled condescendingly at my suggestion that they did not know what war was in reality.
I rejected their proposal to co-operate with them and asked if I were free to leave. One of them rang a bell and a Red Guard entered. He was requested to accompany me out of the room and to provide me with a passport and a free ticket to Tomsk. Before leaving I asked for my arms, but was refused. I explained that they were partly of gold and given to me on an occasion that rendered them almost priceless to me. They answered that I would receive them back as soon as order was restored. Of course, I never got them back.
I left the room without saying good-bye. In the next room I was given a passport, and proceeded by tramcar to the station. I decided not to linger in Petrograd and to depart without even seeing any of my friends. On the way I was recognized everywhere, but was allowed to proceed unmolested. The same evening I boarded one of the three cars attached to a train that went to Irkutsk by way of Vologda and Tcheliabinsk. I was going home. With me I had some two thousand roubles (about £211 2s. 3d.), saved during my command of the Battalion, when I had received a salary of four hundred roubles (about £42 4s. 5d.) a month.
The train was overcrowded with returning soldiers, almost all ardent Bolsheviks. I remained in the compartment for eight days, leaving it only occasionally at night. I sent out a companion passenger to buy food for me at the stations. As we neared Tcheliabinsk, at the end of the eight days, the crowd had diminished in number, and I thought, I might safely go out on to the gangway and get off at the great station for a little walk. No sooner did I appear on the gangway than I was recognized by some soldiers.