Wired again today to Chicherin and Shatov, urging haste in sending a committee to meet the deportees on the Russian border.
—In Teryoki, near the border. No reply from Russia yet. The Finnish military authorities demand we should cross the frontier at once. We have refused because the Russian border guard, not informed of our identity, might regard us as invading Finns and shoot, thus giving Finland a pretext for war. A sort of armed truce exists now between the two countries, and feeling is very tense.
—The Finns are worried about our continued presence. We refuse to leave the train.
Representatives of the Finnish Foreign Office agreed to permit a Committee of the Deportees to go to the Russian frontier to explain the situation to the Soviet outpost. Our party selected three persons, but the Finnish military would consent only to one.
In company with a Finnish Officer, soldier, and interpreter, and trailed by several correspondents (among them, needless to say, an American press man) I advanced to the border, walking in deep snow through the sparse forest west of the destroyed frontier railroad bridge. Not without trepidation did we trudge through those white woods, fearing possible attack from the one side or the other.
After a quarter of an hour we reached the border. Opposite us were drawn up the Bolshevik guards—tall, strapping fellows in strange fur attire, with a black-bearded officer in charge.
“Tovarish!” I shouted in Russian across the frozen creek, “permit speech with you.”
The officer motioned me to step nearer, his soldiers standing back as I approached. In a few words I explained the situation to him and our predicament at Chicherin’s failure to reply to our repeated radios. He listened imperturbably, then said: “The Soviet Committee has just arrived.”
It was happy news. The Finnish authorities consented to permit the Russian Committee to come on Finnish soil as far as the train, to meet the deportees. Zorin and Feinberg, representing the Soviet Government, and Mme. Andreyeva, Gorky’s wife, who came with them unofficially, accompanied us to the railroad station.
“Kolchak has been arrested and his White Army broken up,” Zorin announced, and the deportees greeted the news with enthusiastic shouts and hurrahs. Presently arrangements were completed to transport the men and their luggage to the other side, and at last we crossed the border of revolutionary Russia.
II
On Soviet Soil
—Late in the afternoon yesterday we touched the soil of Soviet Russia.
Driven out from the United States like criminals, we were received at Beloostrov with open arms. The revolutionary hymn, played by the military Red Band, greeted us as we crossed the frontier. The hurrahs of the red-capped soldiers, mixed with the cheers of the deportees, echoed through the woods, rolling into the distance like a challenge of joy and defiance. With bared head I stood in the presence of the visible symbols of the Revolution Triumphant.
A feeling of solemnity, of awe overwhelmed me. Thus my pious old forefathers must have felt on first entering the Holy of Holies. A strong desire was upon me to kneel down and kiss the ground—the ground consecrated by the lifeblood of generations of suffering and martyrdom, consecrated anew by the revolutionists of my own day. Never before, not even at the first caress of freedom on that glorious May day, 1906—after fourteen years in the Pennsylvania prison—had I been stirred so profoundly. I longed to embrace humanity, to lay my heart at its feet, to give my life a thousand times to the service of the Social Revolution.
It was the most sublime day of my life.
At Beloostrov a mass meeting was held to welcome us. The large hall was filled with soldiers and peasants come to greet their comrades from America. They looked at us with large, wondering eyes, and asked many strange questions. “Are the workers starving in America?—Is the revolution about to break out? How soon shall we get help for Russia?”
The crowded place was heavy with the human smell and the fumes of tobacco. There was much pushing and jostling, and loud shouting in rough border speech. Darkness had fallen, but the hall remained unlit. I felt a peculiar sensation in being swayed here and there by the noisy human billows, without being able to distinguish any faces. Then the voices and the motion ceased. My eyes turned toward the platform. It was lit by a few tallow candles, and in their dim light I could make out the figures of several women clad in black. They looked like nuns just out of the cloister, their countenances severe, forbidding. Then one of them stepped to the edge of the platform.
“Tovarishi,” she began, and the significant word vibrated through my whole being with the intensity of the speaker’s ardor. She spoke passionately, vehemently, with a note of bitter defiance at the antagonistic world at large. She told of the high heroism of the revolutionary people, of their sacrifices and struggles, of the great work still to be done in Russia. She castigated the crimes of counterrevolutionists, the Allied invasion and murderous blockade. In fiery words she forecast the approach of the great world revolution, which is to destroy capitalism and the bourgeoisie throughout Europe and America, as Russia has done, and give the earth and the fullness thereof into the hands of the international proletariat.
Tumultuously the audience applauded. I felt the atmosphere charged with the spirit of revolutionary struggle, symbolic of the titanic war of two worlds—the new breaking violent path for itself amid the confusion and chaos of conflicting passions. I was conscious of a world in the making, of the all-uprooting Social Revolution in action, and myself in the midst of it.
Zorin followed the woman in black, welcoming the arrivals in the name of Soviet Russia, and bespeaking their cooperation in the work of the Revolution. Then several of the deportees appeared on the rostrum. They were deeply moved
