Suddenly a couple of men raised their voices, shouting protests, denouncing the speaker, even threatening him. They were promptly seized and placed under arrest, and quiet was restored.
“Allow me to answer the question!” I shouted to the chairman from the distant place I occupied.
“Bochkareva! It’s Bochkareva!” a number of voices passed the word to the platform, and immediately I was lifted up and carried on to the platform.
“It’s a pleasure to speak to you now,” I began, “only a few weeks ago you would have torn me to pieces.”
“Yes, it’s true! We killed many!” several men interrupted. “But we were told that the officers wanted to enslave us, that’s why we killed them. We now see that our real enemies are not the officers, but the Germans.”
“Before I answer the question put by the previous speaker, let me ask you what your attitude is toward the Allies?” I said.
“America, England, and France we trust. They are our friends. They are free countries. But we distrust Japan. Japan wants Siberia,” came in reply from many directions.
Here a soldier interrupted and asked permission to ask a question. It was granted.
“I can’t understand why our Allies do not defend us,” he said. “Not even one of them has come to our help at a time when Germany is devouring our land. The Allied envoys are running away from Russia, and those that remain do not listen to the voice of the masses, but to the representatives of Lenin and Trotsky. At Moscow I saw an official of the Soviet escort an Englishman to a train. I was hungry. There were hundreds of soldiers like me at the station. Our hearts were aching. We wanted to give him a message, but he did not even turn to us. Instead, he warmly shook hands with the Soviet official.”
“What if we should appeal to the Allies, to America, England, and France, to furnish us with bread, arms and money for the reconstruction of the front?” I resumed.
“How can we trust them?” I was interrupted again. “They will come here and work in league with Lenin and his band of bloodsuckers.”
“Why not join forces and elect a Constituent Assembly, and let your own leaders cooperate with the Allies?” I suggested.
“But whom could we choose?”
“That we would decide later. There are plenty of good men still left in Russia,” I answered. “But what if I, for instance, should want to do something, would you trust me?”
“Yes, yes! We know you! You are of the people!” hundreds of voices cried out.
“Well, let me tell you then, I am going to America and England. If I should succeed and come back with an Allied force, would you come to aid me in saving Russia?”
“Yes, we will! Yes, yes!” the crowd roared.
With this the meeting ended. The train was now about to start and we hurried towards it, singing on the way. I felt happy and hopeful. Several thousand soldiers were not to be disregarded. They were almost unanimous in their new view of the country’s condition. Taken in combination with what I had observed in Moscow and on the way to Petrograd, this meeting further reinforced my hopes for Russia’s salvation. It was obviously a phenomenon of widespread occurrence, this awakening of the soldiers.
My mother had received Petrukhin’s letter, and for six weeks had mourned me as dead. She was overwhelmed with joy upon my return, but became a little uneasy as she perceived a long line of girls, many of them almost barefoot, file after me into the little hut. She took me aside and asked what it meant, confiding to me that she had only fifty roubles left of the money I had brought home on my previous visit. I begged her to be patient and assured her that I would arrange matters promptly. I immediately went to the owner of the hut and several others of the leading peasants of the community, got them together, explained to them the situation, informed them that I had only one thousand roubles to spend toward the support of the girls, and asked if they would undertake to feed and house them on credit till my return from America.
“I swear that I will pay every kopeck due to you. I will get enough money to pay not only the debts, but to ensure for them sustenance and shelter to the end of their lives. Now I want you to keep a record of all your expenses. Will you trust me?”
“Yes,” replied the peasants. “We know that you have done a great deal for Russia, and we have confidence in you.”
This was the arrangement under which the thirty invalids of my Battalion of Death were left by me in the village of Tutalsk in March, 1918. The thousand roubles I gave to my mother with instructions to buy shoes for the most destitute of the girls. Of the five hundred roubles given to me by the Consul, I gave three hundred to my mother. I decided to take my youngest sister, Nadia, with me to America. Accompanied to the station by my parents, the thirty girls, and half the community, I started eastward, for Irkutsk and Vladivostok, dressed once more as a woman.
At the station in Irkutsk I noticed a young girl, with two tiny children in her arms. Somehow her face looked familiar to me, but I could not recall who she was. She was evidently in trouble, poor and ragged. For a while she stared at me. Then she ran up and cried out breathlessly:
“Mania!”
She was the younger daughter of the woman Kitova, whose husband had killed the dog-catcher and who had accompanied him into exile, at the same time that I had gone into exile with Yasha. Then she was only a little girl, not more than eleven or twelve years old. Now she was the mother of two children.
For three days, she told me, her mother and herself had been living on the
