“And what do you think happened to that train my daughter was to have taken?” he asked. It was the regular night express to Petrograd, corresponding somewhat to the Congressional Limited between New York and Washington. A few miles out of Moscow a difference arose between the engineer and the stoker, and in order to settle it they stopped the train and had a fight. One of the men hit the other on the head with a monkey wrench, injuring him pretty badly. Authority of some kind stepped in and arrested the assailant. The engineer’s cab was blood-stained, and some authority unhitched the engine and sent it back to Moscow as evidence. The train all this time, with its hundreds of passengers, stood on the tracks waiting for a new engine and crew, and if it was not run into and wrecked it was because it was lucky.
About the middle of August an American correspondent traveled on that same express train from Petrograd to Moscow. The night was warm, and as the Russian occupants of his carriage had the usual constitutional objection to raised windows, he insisted on leaving the door of the compartment open. In the middle of the night a band of soldiers boarded the train and went into every one of the unlocked compartments, five in all, neatly and silently looting them of all bags and suitcases. The American correspondent lost everything he possessed—extra clothes, money, passport, papers. There was a Russian staff officer in that compartment and he lost even the clothes he traveled in, and was obliged to descend in his pajamas. The conductor of the train admitted that he saw the robbery committed, that he raised no hand to prevent it, nor even pressed the signal which would have stopped the train. “They would have killed me,” he pleaded in extenuation. “Besides, it happens almost every night on a small or large scale.”
There is only one way of getting at the facts of the Russian situation, and that is by living as the Russians do, associating with Russians, hearing their stories day by day of the tragedy of what has been called the bloodless revolution. This I did, as nearly as it was possible, from the end of May until the 30th of August, in Petrograd, Moscow and behind one of the fighting fronts. In Petrograd I lived in the Hotel Militaire, formerly the Astoria, the headquarters of Russian officers and of the numerous English, French and Roumanian officers on missions in Russia. This was the hotel where the bitterest fighting took place during the revolutionary days of February, 1917. The outside of the building is literally riddled with bullets, every window had to be replaced, and the work of renovating the interior was still going on when I left. Under the window in my bedroom was a pool of dried blood as big as a saucer, and the carpet was stained with drops leading from the window to the stationary washbowl in the alcove dressing room. Over the bed were two bullet holes.
Since the revolution the Hotel Militaire has been a garrison, soldiers sleeping in several rooms on the ground floor and two sentinels standing day and night at the door and at the gateway leading into the service court. I do not know why, when I asked for a room, the manager gave it to me. Two other women writers had rooms there, but one was in a party which included American officers, and the other was introduced by an English officer attached to the British embassy. However, I took the room and was grateful, because whatever happened in Petrograd was quickly known in the hotel. Also, it faced the square on which was located the Marie Palace, where the provisional government held many of its meetings, and where several important congresses were held. Whenever the Bolsheviki broke loose this square always saw some fighting. It was an excellent place for a correspondent to live.
I spent much of my time in the streets, listening, with the aid of an interpreter, a young university girl, to the speeches which were continually being made up and down the Nevski Prospect, the Litainy and other principal streets. I talked, through my interpreter, with people who sat beside me on park benches, in trams, railroad trains and other public places. I met all the Russians I could, people of every walk of life, of every political faith. I spent days in factories. I talked with workers and with employers. I even met and talked with adherents of the old régime. I talked for nearly an hour with the last Romanoff left in freedom, the Grand Duchess Serge, sister of the former empress, widow of the emperor’s uncle. I went, late at night, to a palace on the Grand Morskaia where in strictest retirement lives the woman who has been charged with being the closest friend and ally of Rasputin, the one who, at his orders, is alleged to have administered poison to the young Czarevitch. I traveled in a troop train two days and nights with a regiment of fighting women—the Botchkareva “Battalion of Death”—and I lived with them in their barrack behind the fighting lines for nine days. I stayed with them until they went into action, I saw them afterward in the hospitals and heard their own stories of the battle into which they led thousands of reluctant men. I talked with many soldiers and officers.
Russia is sick. She is gorged on something she has never known before—freedom: she is sick almost to die with excesses, and the leadership which would bring the panacea is violently thrown aside because suspicion of any authority has bred the worst kind of license. Russia is insane; she is not even morally responsible for what she is doing. Will she recover? Yes. But, God! what pain must she bear before she gets real freedom!
CHAPTER II “ALL THE POWER TO THE SOVIET”
About the first thing I saw on the morning of my arrival in Petrograd last spring was a group of young men, about twenty in number, I should think, marching through the street in front of my hotel, carrying a scarlet banner with an inscription in large white letters.