On June 23rd we came to a big river. There were a crowd of people on the opposite bank; evidently wood-floating was in preparation. We had noticed during the past week a certain change in our surroundings, signs of order and culture; and we had found a cigarette box with an inscription that was not in Russian. The workmen on the river bank were much better clothed than Russian workmen are. After long hesitation and uneasiness we decided that the frontier lay behind us. We called for a boat to be sent from the other side. The workmen who came across explained to us, certainly not without difficulty, that the U.S.S.R. lay far in our rear.
For a moment or two we could not utter a word for mingled joy and weariness; all our strength seemed suddenly to leave us. Bezsonoff chronicled that unforgettable moment in his diary in one significant word: "Finland."
Our "dictator" kept this diary on the inside of the cover, the back of the table of contents, and the last (440th) page of the "New Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (Synod edition of 1916). He made short pencil notes daily. These disconnected entries, which had in truth been through fire and water, give the clearest possible picture of all the vicissitudes of our flight. It was thanks to them that we did not lose count of the days.
I give some typical extracts from Bezsonoff's diary:
| May | 18th, 1925. — Disarmed escort and escaped. . . . . | |
| " | 21st. — | Bivouac in woods. Stayed in hut on |
| account of snowstorm. . . . . | ||
| " | 24th. — | Snow continued. Stopped in evening. . . . |
| " | 26th. — | Snow thawing. At 2 p.m. started for |
| river Kem, at 7 p.m. came to hamlet | ||
| Poddiujnoe. 11 p.m., met two peasants. | ||
| Got some bread. Night. Going along | ||
| river Kem. In good spirits. At | ||
| Poddiujnoe ambushes of Red soldiers, who | ||
| went off in search of us. | ||
| May | 27th. — | Marched all night and day without rest. |
| Food quite finished. At 7 p.m. came to | ||
| dairy farm 22 miles from Poddiujnoe. | ||
| Going into farm fell into ambush of Red | ||
| soldiers. After firing Red soldiers cleared | ||
| off in boat. We hurried along Kem, | ||
| getting food from fishermen. Not much | ||
| food. Have to go hungry. Horribly | ||
| tired. At 2 a.m. left bank of Kem and | ||
| halted for rest at 6 a.m. | ||
| " | 28th. — | Rested all day. Little to eat. All have |
| legs badly swollen. . . . . | ||
| " | 29th. — | Night march through "impassable" |
| marshes. Day resting. Pushed on in | ||
| evening. Rest. Cloudberries, geese, hare. | ||
| Midnight. Malbrodsky unable to march | ||
| from exhaustion, rested. . . . | ||
| " | 30th. — | About 11 p.m. successfully crossed r. |
| Shomba. Relief and joy great. God be | ||
| praised. Marched all night. . . . . | ||
| June | 1st. — | In the morning unexpectedly came to |
| fishermen's hut; they were out fishing. | ||
| Took bread from them, leaving 3 roub. | ||
| Great help. Going on. Lost our way | ||
| among lakes. Made raft. Ferried over. | ||
| Creator. Nearly morning. All slept. | ||
| God be praised. Help us in the future | ||
| also, O God, and save us from our enemies. | ||
| And I believe He will help us. | ||
| June | 6th. — | Rest. The little hut. At the moment I |
| am morally and physically a happy man. | ||
| Nature, sky, beauty. . . . God has wrought | ||
| a miracle. | ||
| " | 8th. — | Weather changed. Warm. Water falling. |
| Eat every 2 hours and thank God. Almost | ||
| night. Fire. I cannot sleep. I keep watch. | ||
| Situation good. Nothing of note. We | ||
| reckon we have covered 18 miles of | ||
| "impassable" marshes. . . . | ||
| " | 11th. — | Marched all night. In the morning stopped |
| for "short halt" to drink hot water. | ||
| Went on. Rested at 6 p.m. Little hut | ||
| No. 2. Moved on in evening. So much | ||
| the nearer our goal. I reckon we are | ||
| thirteen miles from frontier. I have two | ||
| pieces of bread left, Malbrodsky none at all. | ||
| " | 12th. — | Early this morning drank hot water in little |
| shed by lake. Paths, lake, rain. Halt in | ||
| broken-down hut. Nervy. No food. | ||
| Lord help us! Went on in evening. | ||
| Marching all night. Rain. Dew. Cold. | ||
| Path. | ||
| June | 13th. — | Lake. Red soldiers. Line of patrols? Go |
| round. Rest without fire. Nearly 6 miles | ||
| west and no sign of frontier. According to | ||
| my reckoning we crossed the frontier at | ||
| 12 p.m. Marched all night. Cold. Lit | ||
| fire and halted till morning. No food at | ||
| all. | ||
| " | 14th. — | River. Retreat. Path. Ambushes. Shots |
| point blank. God saved us. Praise Him. | ||
| Flight. Back to river. Ghastly crossing. | ||
| " | 15th. — | Rest after crossing. Spent day and night |
| drying ourselves. Shared out food. Quarrel. | ||
| Peace made. . . . | ||
| " | 17th. — | Killed deer by lucky shot. . . . Ate nearly |
| all. | ||
| " | 18th. — | Moved off in morning. Halted for rest at |
| 12 p.m. Stopped all day. | ||
| " | 19th. — | At 7 p.m. crossed a clearing. Rested. |
| Clearing leads nowhere. Raid on dairy | ||
| farm. Rest "with cows." . . . . | ||
| " | 21st. — | Moved off in morning. Exhaustion. |
| Uncertainty. Reluctance to march. | ||
| Clearing. Came to an end. Came out on | ||
| clearing. Telephone line. River. Wood- | ||
| floating. Finland! | ||
Bezsonoff evidently did not note all the days in his diary, for in reality our flight came to an end on June 23rd, 1925.
The Finlanders received us very kindly, gave us food in abundance and sent us to Uleaborg. The Chief of Police of Uleaborg moved us all to tears by his attentions; he not only brought a quantity of food to the prison for us, and supplied us with money, but he took me himself to a doctor to have my frost-bitten feet bound up. I, in outward appearance a complete bandit, dirty and in rags, felt strange in his smart carriage, and could read on the faces of the people we met the dubious query: "Who on earth is that convict in the Chief of Police's trap?"
We were, however, not liberated immediately. It appeared that the owner of the dairy farm from which we had taken food a few days before, paying for it with only about a rouble in silver (as the people would not take our Soviet paper money), had made a complaint against us, demanding compensation to the amount of 1,000 marks. The newspapers, privately informed of the occurrence, wrote that "five Bolshevist bandits had crossed the frontier and made an armed raid on a Finnish dairy farm." While this affair was being settled, we had to spend several weeks in prison, first at Uleaborg and then at Helsingfors. But even prison seemed paradise to us after the Solovky and the Karelian jungles!
When we arrived at Helsingfors, the president of the special committee for Russian affairs in Finland, A. N. Fenoult, came to see us in prison. Thanks to his extraordinary energy, and the infinite trouble he took on our behalf, we were very soon set at liberty, and were able to get ourselves decent clothes and assume once more a human aspect. It was significant that Malbrodsky (the other Pole, Sazonoff, being a native of the former Government of Vilna, was not recognised as being a Polish subject), who had immediately appealed to the Polish Consul, did not leave prison until later than we, who had no official diplomatic protection.
I should like to conclude my simple narrative by expressing our heartfelt gratitude to all, both Finlanders and Russians, from whom, on our arrival in Finland, we received so much kindness and sympathy. After the ferocity shown by man towards man in the concentration camps, after the devastating egoism, the hardness, the inhuman callousness, with which the Bolsheviks have inoculated the unhappy Russian people, the reception we met with in Finland touched us to the bottom of our hearts.