“Is it as bad in other parts?” my hostess asked. “How is it in Germany—my people come from there.”
“Germany has also had a revolution,” I informed her. “The Kaiser is gone.”
“Rev‑o‑lution?” she repeated in utter incomprehension. “Did Germany have war?”
I spent the night on a straw heap in the outhouse, joining our party early in the morning. The scenes of the previous day repeated themselves all along our route.
A very old city and once an important shipbuilding center, Nikolayev has played a prominent part in the labor and socialist history of Russia. It was the scene of the first great strike in the country, in the early days of the nineteenth century. In the “Nihilist” and “People’s Will” period, it was the field of much underground revolutionary activity. In later years Nikolayev was the home of the “South Russian Union,” one of the first Social-Democratic groups in lower Ukraine, with Trotsky as its intellectual leader. Among the old archives we came upon documents relating to the case of Netchayev, which in some strange manner found their way there, though that famous terrorist had never been arrested in this city. We also discovered police “search orders” issued against Lopatin, Bakunin, and other celebrated revolutionists of that period.
Nikolayev still retains some of its former beauty, though its boulevards have been entirely denuded of trees, cut down within the two days’ interregnum between the leaving of the Whites and the coming of the Bolsheviki. The streets are oppressively quiet: the city is in direct line of Wrangel’s advance. The Communists are feverishly active to rouse the population to united defense, appealing particularly to the proletarians and reminding them of the slaughter of the workers by Slastchev, Wrangel’s chief general, notorious as a labor executioner.47
The attitude of the surrounding districts is causing the Bolsheviki much anxiety. The peasantry has been in continual rebellion against the Soviet regime, and the arbitrary methods of labor mobilization have alienated the workers. The documents I have examined at the unions and the statistics concerning the distribution of labor power (rabsil) and desertion, show that almost every village in the provinces of Kherson and Nikolayev has offered armed resistance. Yet the peasants have no sympathy with the monarchism of Wrangel; his victory may deprive them of the land they have taken from the large estates. Several provincial Soviets have sent delegates to Nikolayev to assure the authorities of their determination to fight the Whites. Encouraged, the Communists are conducting an intensive agitation among the peasantry along the route of Wrangel.
Fear of the Whites has revived stories of their atrocities. The Jewish population lives in mortal dread, previous occupations having been accompanied by fearful pogroms. At the “underground” restaurant near the Soviet House the guests relate incidents of almost incredible barbarities. They speak indiscriminately of Whites, Greens, Mariusa, Makhno, and others who have at various times invested the city. It is asserted that Mariusa, an amazon of mysterious identity, refrains from pillage: she “kills only Communists and Commissars.” Some insist that she is a sister of Makhno (though the latter has none), while others say she is a peasant girl who had sworn vengeance against the Bolsheviki because her lover was killed by a punitive expedition.
“The black years may know who they all be,” the hostess comments. “When Makhno was here last time people said they saw Mariusa with him. They beat and robbed Jews at the docks.”
“You are wrong,” the young Soviet employee who has been assigned to aid my work protests. “I helped to examine the men caught at that time. They were Greens and Grigoriev bandits. Mariusa wasn’t then in the city at all.”
“I heard Makhno himself speak,” remarked Vera, the daughter of the hostess, a young college girl. “It was on the square, and someone held a big black flag near him. He told the people they had nothing to fear, and that he would not permit any excesses. He said he would mercilessly punish anyone attempting a pogrom. I got a very favorable impression of him.”
“Whoever it is that makes pogroms,” her mother retorted, “we Jews are always the first victims.”
“Jews and Commissars,” the youth corrects.
“You are both—you’d better look out,” a guest teased him.
“Better take off that kurtka” (leather jacket), another warns.
XXXIV
A Bolshevik Trial
Having learned that old police records are in possession of the Extraordinary Commission, I visited Burov, the predsedatel of the Cheka. Very tall and broad, of coarse features and curt demeanor, he gave me the impression of a gendarme of the Romanov regime. He spoke in an abrupt, commanding tone, avoided my look, and seemed more interested in the large Siberian dog at his side than in my mission. He declined to permit me to examine the archives of the Third Department, but promised to select some material the Museum might be interested in, and asked me to call the next day.
His manner was not convincing, and I felt little faith in his assurances to aid my efforts. The following morning his secretary informed me that Burov had been too busy to attend to my request, but he could be seen at the Revolutionary Tribunal, where a trial was in progress.
On the dais of the Tribunal three men sat at a desk covered
