My Disillusionment in Russia - Emma Goldman (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

exposure, and exhaustion; some were slain by the power of darkness which now, even more than in Tolstoy’s time, holds many sections of Russia in its grip. Doctors, nurses, and relief workers were often killed by the unfortunates they had come to aid, as evil spirits who had willed the famine and the misfortunes of Russia. These were the real heroes and martyrs, unknown and unsung. XXXII The Socialist Republic Resorts to Deportation

The Cheka had succeeded in terrorizing the whole people. The only exceptions were the politicals, whose courage and devotion to their ideals defied the Bolsheviki as it had the Romanovs. I knew many of those brave spirits, and I saw in them the only hope to sustain one amid the general wreckage. They were the living proof of the powerlessness of terror against an Ideal.

Typical of this class was a certain Anarchist who had long been sought for by the Cheka as an important Makhnovetz. He was a member of the military staff of the revolutionary povstantsi of the Ukraine and the close friend and counsellor of Makhno. He had already known him intimately when they were together in katorga in the days of the Tsar. He had shared all the hardships and danger of the povstantsi life and participated in their campaigns against the enemies of the Revolution. After the defeat of Wrangel and the last treachery of the Bolsheviki toward Makhno, when the latter’s army had become scattered and many of its members killed, this man succeeded in escaping the Bolshevik net. He determined to come to Moscow, there to write a history of Makhnovstchina. It was a perilous journey, made under most difficult conditions, with death constantly treading his footsteps. Under an assumed name he secured a tiny room in the environs of the capital. He lived in most abject poverty, always in danger of his life, visiting his wife in the city only under cover of darkness. Once in every twenty-four hours he would come to the appointed place for a little respite and his sole meal of the day, consisting of potatoes, herring, and tea. Every moment he risked being recognized, for he was well known in Moscow, and recognition meant summary execution. His wife also, if discovered, would have met the same fate⁠—the devoted woman who, though with child at the time, had followed him to Moscow. After a desperate hunt for employment she found a position in a crèche, but as pregnant women were not accepted in such institutions, she had to disguise her condition. All day long she had to be on her feet, attending to her duties, and living in constant fear for the safety of her husband.

When the baby was born the situation became more aggravated. The woman was harassed by her superiors because she had obtained the position without their knowledge of her condition. Petty officialdom and hard work exhausted her energies and the daily anxiety about the man she loved nearly drove her frantic. Yet never a sign of all that troubled her when the man would visit her.

Many evenings I spent with this couple. They were entirely cut off from the outside world and former friends, all alone save for the fear of discovery and death which was their constant companion. In the dreary, damp room, the baby asleep, we passed many hours talking in subdued voices about the Ukrainian peasantry and the Makhno movement. My friend was familiar with every phase of it from personal experience, which he was now incorporating into his book on Makhno. He was absorbed in that work, which was for the first time to give to the world the truth about Makhno and the povstantsi. Deeply concerned about his wife and child, he was entirely oblivious to his own safety, though knowing that every day the Cheka net was drawn closer about him. With great difficulty he was finally prevailed upon to leave his beloved Russia, as the only way of saving his family. What a commentary on the Socialist Republic, whose bravest and truest sons must keep in hiding or forsake their native soil!

Life in Russia had become to me a constant torture; the need of breaking my two years’ silence was imperative. During all the summer I was in the throes of a bitter conflict between the necessity of leaving and my inability to tear myself away from what had been an ideal to me. It was like the tragic end of a great love to which one clings long after it is no more.

In the midst of my struggle there happened an event which further served to demonstrate the complete collapse of the Bolsheviki as revolutionists. It was the announcement of the return to Russia of the Tsarist General Slastchev, one of the most reactionary and brutal militarists of the old regime. He had fought against the Revolution from its very beginning and had led some of the Wrangel forces in the Crimea. He was guilty of fiendish barbarities to war prisoners and infamous as a maker of pogroms. Now Slastchev recanted and was returning to “his Fatherland.” This arch counterrevolutionist and Jew-baiter, together with several other Tsarist generals and White Guardists, was received by the Bolsheviki with military honours. No doubt it was just retribution that the anti-Semite had to salute the Jew Trotsky, his military superior. But to the Revolution and the Russian people the triumphal return of the imperialists was an outrage.

The old general had changed his colours but not his nature. In his letter to the officers and men of the Wrangel Army he delivered himself of the following:

I, Slastchev Krimsky, command you to return to your Fatherland and into the fold of the Red Army. Our country needs our defence against her enemies. I command you to return.

As a reward for his newly fledged love of the Socialist Fatherland Slastchev “Krimsky” was commissioned to quell the