Entry 2 - Trotsky

 
 Bolsheviks military committee, 1917

Committees, everywhere committees! Everywhere suspicions! No
more cheerful faces! Permanent meetings of the new elements! Much
conversation! Greetings! Wishes of prosperous free life! Hopes of the
Allies that we will continue the war!

All this still characterizes our poor country.

Today -- for the first time in my life (it is only the beginning!) I
saw a real communist alive. He was a man of rather short size and dark
complexion, if such could be detected under his greasy cheeks. He wore
a small beard twisted at the end in a tin hook. His ears -- transparent
and pale -- were unproportionately big. I stopped near the Elisseiev store 
to buy score cards for this evening's bridge, when a little
group of men -- civilians and soldiers -- gathered near the communist.

The usual crowd of nowadays loafers -- shabby looking, discussing
something, casting around looks full of hostility, hatred and
superiority. 

A boy brought a chair from a cigar counter, and the
communist stepped on it, and started his talk. "Tovarishshi," he said,
"the time has come."... They all applauded, though nobody knew
what was going to be next, and the speaker could even have been a
reactionary.

"This is he," shouted a sailor to me; a big chap with hair falling off
of his cap.

"Who is he?" I questioned.

"You, burjooi," a soldier said to me, "no wonder you do not know him.
This is Comrade Trotzky. He comes from America. You had better move
on or I'll tell who you are," -- he continued staring at me very
resolutely, and spat on the sidewalk right near my foot.


 
I moved on. What people!

I crossed Nevsky and stood on the other side. From there I could not
hear Comrade Trotzky, but studied his movements and gesticulation, his
manner of scratching his nose, of quickly turning his head in a derby,
and the nervous shrugging of his shoulders. The mob applauded him
after every phrase, making his speech a series of separate sentences
and thus giving him the advantage of thinking of most radical ideas,
while awaiting for the listeners to finish the applause.

I have finally decided to give in my resignation. What is the use? No
work is being done. We only talk. The whole administration, the whole
administrative machinery, stands still, evidently retrograding every
day.

Many understand it. Rodzianko is going away south; a man whom they
think too old and too much of a reactionary. He is quite depressed,
I presume, but likes to look perfectly satisfied. When I asked him
whether the war looked to him as though it were to be continued, he
gazed at me, and not after hesitation sighed, and said:

"Yes, if the army will stand the effects of order number one."

And then, fearing the next question coming, he assumed the air of a
busy man and shook hands --"as he had to go and see his relatives."

Nearing the house I saw Kerensky in the Emperor's car, proud, and
smiling to left and right. His Excellency, the Minister of Justice!


Alexander Kerensky, Chairman of
the Provisional Government, 
July - November 1917.