We offered soap—a rare luxury in the cities—to a girl selling rye bread, but she disdainfully declined it. “Can I eat it, what?” she demanded.
“You can wash yourself with it.”
“There’s plenty of snow for that.”
“But in the summer?”
“I’ll scrub the dirt off with sand. Ain’t got no use for soap at any time.”
Communication between Petrograd and the Western border is reduced to a minimum. We met no train in our three days’ journey till we reached Novo-Sokolniki, formerly an important railroad center. There we were joined by two representatives of the Central Plenbezh (Department of War Prisoners). With them was a youngish man dressed from head to foot in shining black leather, with a huge nagan (Russian army gun) attached to his belt by a stout crimson cord. He introduced himself as “Tovarish Drozdov of the Veh-Cheka,” informing us that he was to examine and photograph the deportees and to detain such of them as may appear suspicious. The train crew regarded the Chekist with unfriendly eyes. “From the center,” I heard them whisper, distrust and antagonism in their manner.
“You will pardon a small but necessary preliminary,” I said to Drozdov; “as the predsedatel14 of the Commission I am compelled to fulfill a certain formality and must trouble you for your identification papers.”
I showed him my credentials, issued by the Executive Department of the Petro-Soviet, whereupon he handed me his documents. They were stamped and signed by the All-Russian Commission Waging War against Counterrevolution and Speculation (the Veh-Cheka) and vested its bearer with exceptional powers.
During the journey I became better acquainted with the young Chekist. He proved of pleasant disposition, very sociable and an inveterate talker. But coolness developed between him and Karus. The latter also evinced much antagonism toward the Jewish boys of the Plenbezh, never missing an opportunity to sneer at their organization and even threatening to arrest them for sabotage.
But whenever Karus was not about, the dining-room of our car was filled with the strong young voice of Drozdov. His stories dealt mostly with the activities of the Cheka, sudden raids, arrests and executions. He impressed me as a convinced and sincere Communist, ready to lay down his life for the Revolution. But he thought of the latter as a simple matter of extermination, with the Cheka as the ruthless sword. He had no conception of revolutionary ethics or spiritual values. Force and violence were to him the acme of revolutionary activity, the alpha and omega of the proletarian dictatorship. “Revolution is a prize fight,” he would say, “either we win or lose. We must destroy every enemy, root every counterrevolutionist out of his lair. Sentimentalism, bosh! Every means and method is good to accomplish our purpose. What’s the use of having a Revolution unless you use your best effort to make a success of it? The Revolution would be dead long ago if not for us. The Cheka is the very soul of the Revolution.”
He loved to talk of the methods the Cheka employs to unearth counterrevolutionary plots, and he would grow eloquent about the cleverness of some “agents” in trapping speculators and forcing them to reveal the hiding places of their diamonds and gold; promising them immunity for “confessing” and then leading them to execution in the company of a betrayed wife or brother. With admiration he spoke of the ingenuity of the Cheka in collaring the bourzhooi, tricking them into voicing anti-Bolshevik sentiments, and then sending them to their death. His favorite expression was razstreliat—to shoot summarily; it repeated itself in every story and was the refrain of every experience. The non-Communist intelligentsia was especially hateful to him. “Sabotazhniki and counterrevolutionists, all of them,” he insisted; “they are a menace, and it is a waste of food to feed them. They should be shot.”
“You don’t realize what you are saying,” I would protest. “The stories you tell are enormous, impossible. You’re just romancing.”
“My dear tovarish,” he would reply condescendingly, “you may be old in the movement, but you are young in Russia. You speak of atrocity, of brutality! Why, man, you don’t know what a vile enemy we have to deal with. Those counterrevolutionists would cut our throats; they’d flood the streets of Moscow with our blood, if they once got the upper hand. And as for romancing, why, I haven’t told you half the story yet.”
“There may be some individuals in the Cheka guilty of the acts you relate. But I hope such methods are not part of the system.”
“There is a Left element among us that favors even more drastic methods,” Drozdov laughed.
“What methods?”
“Torture to extort confessions.”
“You must be crazy, Drozdov.”
He laughed boyishly. “It’s true, though,” he kept repeating.
II
In Sebezh our train was held up. We could not proceed further, the authorities informed us, because of military activities on the border, about twenty-five versts distant.
It was the 22nd of March, the day the American deportees were to reach the frontier. Fortunately a supply train was leaving for Rozanovskaia, the Russian border town, and several members of our group succeeded in catching a teplushka—an old cattle car. We were congratulating ourselves on our
