FACING LENIN AND TROTZKY
Petrograd seemed populated by Red Guards. One could not make a step
without encountering one. They kept a strict watch over the station and
all the incoming and outgoing trains. My escorts left me on the station
platform, as they were to return to the front immediately.
I had hardly emerged from the station, intending to look for a cabman,
when a Red Guard Commissary, accompanied by a private with a naked
sword, stopped me with the polite query:
“Madame Botchkareva?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come with me, please?” he suggested.
“Where?” I asked.
“To the Smolny Institute.”
“But why?”
“Because I have orders to detain all officers returning from the
front,” he replied.
“But I am only going home!” I tried to argue.
“Yes, I understand. But as an officer you will also understand that I
must obey orders. They will probably release you.”
He hailed a cabman and we drove to the Smolny Institute, the seat of
the Bolshevik Government. It impressed me as a strongly garrisoned
fortress. There were armed sentries everywhere. Accompanied by Red
Guards I was led inside. There were Guards at every desk. I was taken
before a sailor. He was very rough and brusque.
“Where are you going?” he demanded curtly.
“I am going home, to a village near Tomsk,” I replied.
“Then why are you armed?” he sneered.
“Because I am an officer, and this is my uniform,” I answered.
He blazed up.
“An officer, eh? You will be an officer no more. Give me that pistol
and sword!” he ordered.
The arms were those given to me at the consecration of the flag of the
Battalion. I prized them too much to hand them over to this rogue of a
sailor, and I refused to comply with his demand. He grew furious. It
would have been useless to resist as the room was full of Red Guards.
I declared that if he wanted my arms he could take them, but I would
never surrender them myself.
He violently tore the pistol and sword from me and pronounced me under
arrest. There was a dark cellar in the Institute which was used as a
place of detention, and I was sent down there and locked up. I was
hungry, but received no answer to all my calls, and remained in the
hole till the following morning. As soon as I was brought upstairs I
began to demand my arms. The various officials, however, remained deaf
to my pleas.
I was informed that I should be taken before Lenin and Trotzky, and
was soon led into a large, light room where two men of contrasting
appearance were seated, apparently expecting my entrance. One had a
typical Russian face. The other looked Jewish. The first was Nikolai
Lenin, the second Leon Trotzky. Both arose as I stepped in and walked
toward me a few steps, stretching out their hands and greeting me
courteously.
Lenin apologized for my arrest, explaining that he had learned of it
only that morning. Inviting me to a seat, the two Bolshevik chiefs
complimented me upon my record of service and courage, and began to
sketch to me the era of happiness that they intended to procure for
Russia. They talked simply, smoothly and very beautifully. It was for
the common people, the toiling masses, the disinherited that they were
fighting. They wanted justice for all. Wasn’t I of the working class
myself? Yes, I was. Wouldn’t I join them and co-operate with their
party in bringing happiness to the oppressed peasant and workman? They
wanted peasant women like myself: they had the highest esteem for them.
“You will bring Russia not to happiness but to ruin,” I said.
“Why?” they asked. “We seek only what is good and right. The people are
with us. You saw for yourself that the army is behind us.”
“I will tell you why,” I replied. “I have no objection to your
beautiful plans for the future of Russia. But as for the immediate
situation, if you take the soldiers away from the front, you are
destroying the country.”
“But we do not want any more war. We are going to conclude peace,” the
two leaders replied.
“How can you conclude peace without soldiers at the front? You are
demobilizing the army already. You have got to make peace first and
then let the men go home. I myself want peace, but if I were in the
trenches I would never leave before peace had been signed. What you are
doing will ruin Russia.”
“We are sending the soldiers away because the Germans will not advance
against us, anyhow. They do not want to fight either,” was the reply.
It irritated me, this view of the Germans held by the men who now
controlled the Government of my country.
“You don’t know the Germans!” I cried out. “We have lost so many lives
in this war, and now you would give everything away without a struggle!
You don’t know war! Take the soldiers away from the front and the
Germans will come and seize upon everything they can lay hands on. This
is war. I am a soldier and I know. But you don’t. Why did you take it
upon yourselves to rule the country? You will ruin it!” I exclaimed in
anguish.
Lenin and Trotzky laughed. I could see the irony in their eyes.
They were learned and worldly. They had written books and travelled
in foreign lands. And who was I? An illiterate Russian peasant
woman. My lecture undoubtedly afforded them amusement. They smiled
condescendingly at my suggestion that they did not know what war was in
reality.
I rejected their proposal to co-operate with them and asked if I were
free to leave. One of them rang a bell and a Red Guard entered. He
was requested to accompany me out of the room and to provide me with
a passport and a free ticket to Tomsk. Before leaving I asked for my
arms, but was refused. I explained that they were partly of gold and
given to me on an occasion that rendered them almost priceless to me.
They answered that I would receive them back as soon as order was
restored. Of course, I never got them back.
I left the room without saying good-bye. In the next room I was given
a passport, and proceeded by tramcar to the station. I decided not
to linger in Petrograd and to depart without even seeing any of my
friends. On the way I was recognized everywhere, but was allowed
to proceed unmolested. The same evening I boarded one of the three
cars attached to a train that went to Irkutsk by way of Vologda and
Tcheliabinsk. I was going home. With me I had some two thousand roubles
(about £211 2_s._ 3_d._), saved during my command of the Battalion,
when I had received a salary of four hundred roubles (about £42 4_s._
5_d._) a month.
The train was overcrowded with returning soldiers, almost all ardent
Bolsheviks. I remained in the compartment for eight days, leaving it
only occasionally at night. I sent out a companion passenger to buy
food for me at the stations. As we neared Tcheliabinsk, at the end of
the eight days, the crowd had diminished in number, and I thought, I
might safely go out on to the gangway and get off at the great station
for a little walk. No sooner did I appear on the gangway than I was
recognized by some soldiers.
“Oh, look who is here!” one exclaimed.
“It’s Botchkareva! The harlot!” a couple of others echoed.
“She ought to be killed!” shouted somebody.
“Why?” I turned on them. “What harm have I done to you? Oh, you fools,
fools!”
The train slowed down, approaching the station. I had scarcely turned
my head away from the insolent fellows, when I was suddenly lifted
by two pairs of arms, swung to and fro once, twice, three times, and
thrown off the moving train.
Fortunately the momentum of the swinging was so great that I was thrown
across the parallel tracks and landed in a bank of snow piled along the
railway. It was the end of November, 1917. It was all so sudden that
the laughter of the brutes behind me still rang in my ears as I became
conscious of pain in my right knee.
The train was halted before pulling into the station. In a few moments
a big crowd collected round me, composed of passengers, railway
officials and others. All were indignant at the brutality of the
soldiers. The Commandant of the station and members of the local
committee hurried to the spot. I was placed on a stretcher and taken to
the hospital. It was found that I had a dislocated knee, and my leg was
bandaged. I then declared that I desired to continue the journey, and I
was given a berth in a hospital coach attached to a train going east.
There were attendants and a medical assistant on the car.
My injured leg grew more and more painful as I proceeded homeward.
It began to swell, and the medical assistant telegraphed to the
stationmaster of Tutalsk, the village in which my family now lived, to
provide a stretcher for me.
My sister, Arina, was employed at the station as attendant at the
tea-urn, which is always kept boiling at Russian railway stations.
It was this employment of hers that had caused the family to move to
Tutalsk from Tomsk, where they had no means of livelihood whatever.
When the message from the doctor in charge of the car reached my
sister and through her my parents, there was an outburst of grief.
It was three years since they had seen their Marusia and now she was
apparently being brought to them on her death-bed!
On the fourth day of the journey from Tcheliabinsk the train stopped at
Tutalsk. My leg was badly swollen and was as heavy as a log. The pains
were agonizing. My face was deadly pale.
A stretcher was prepared for me at the station. My sisters, my mother
and father and the stationmaster were at the door of the coach when I
was carried out. My mother shrieked in heartrending tones, “My Marusia!
My Manka!” stretched her hands toward heaven and threw herself full
length on me, mourning over me as if I were ready for burial.
Her prodigal daughter had returned, my mother sobbed, but in what a
condition! She thought that I must have been wounded and have asked
to be sent home to die. I could not speak, I could only grasp her
bony arms, as my throat was choked with a tempest of tears and sobs.
Everybody was crying, my sisters calling me by caressing names,
my father standing over me bent and white, and even the strange
stationmaster....
I became hysterical and the doctor was sent for. He had me removed
home immediately, promising in response to my mother’s entreaties to
do everything in his power for me. I was ill for a month, passing
Christmas and meeting the New Year, 1918, in bed.
The two thousand roubles I had saved I gave to my parents. But this
sum, which would have been reckoned a fortune before the war, was
barely sufficient to keep us for a few months. It cost nearly a hundred
roubles (about £10 11_s._) to buy a pair of shoes for my youngest
sister, Nadia, who was going about barefoot! It cost almost twice as
much to buy her a second-hand jacket at the Tomsk market. Manufactured
goods sold at a premium when they were to be had, but it was much more
difficult to find what one needed than to pay an exorbitant price for
it. There was plenty of flour in the country. But the peasants would
not sell it cheaply because they could get nothing in town for less
than fifty or a hundred times its former price. The result was that
flour sold at sixty roubles (about £6 6_s._ 8_d._) a _pud_ (32 pounds)!
It may be imagined how far two thousand roubles would carry one in
Russia.
Tutalsk had also been swept by the hurricane of Bolshevism. There
were many soldiers who had returned from the front imbued with
Bolshevik teachings. Just before my arrival the newly-fledged heretics
even burned the village church, to the great horror of the older
inhabitants. It was not an unusual case; it was typical of the time.
Hundreds of thousands of deluded young men had returned from the
trenches with the passion to destroy, to tear down everything that had
existed before: the old system of Government, the church, nay, God
Himself--all in preparation for the new order of life they were going
to establish.
But one institution--the scourge of the nation--they failed to wipe
out. Nay more, they restored it. The Tsar had abolished vodka. The
prohibition was continued in force by the new régime, but only on
paper. Nearly every returned soldier took to distilling vodka at home,
and the old plague of the country recovered its power and took its part
in the building of the Bolsheviks’ new world.
Every town and village had its committee or Soviet. They were supposed
to carry out orders from the Central Government. An order was issued to
confiscate all articles of gold and silver. Committees searched every
house for such belongings. There was, also, or was supposed to be, an
order taxing furniture and clothes. When the taxes arbitrarily demanded
were not paid, the furniture and clothes were taken away.
In the towns it was the townsmen who suffered, in the villages the
peasants, all under the pretext of confiscating the riches of the
bourgeoisie. It was sufficient for a peasant to buy a new overcoat,
perhaps with his last savings, for him to be branded as an exploiter
and lose his precious garment. The peculiar thing about such cases was
the fact that the confiscated article would almost invariably appear on
the back of one of the Bolshevik ringleaders. It was merely looting,
and the methods were pure terrorism, practised mostly by the returned
soldiers.
I received some letters at Tutalsk. One was from my adjutant, Princess
Tatuyeva, who had arrived safely in Tiflis, her native town.
One morning I went to the post office to ask for letters.
“There goes Botchkareva!” I heard a man cry out.
“Ah, Botchkareva! She is for the old régime!” another fellow replied,
apparently one of the Bolshevik soldiers.
There were several of them and they shouted threats and insults at me.
I did not reply but returned home with a heavy heart. Even in my own
home I was not safe.
“My God,” I prayed, “what has come over the Russian people? Is this my
reward for the sacrifices I have made for my country?”
I resolved not to leave the house again. Surely this madness would not
last long, I thought. I spent most of the day reading the Bible and
praying to Heaven for the awakening and enlightenment of my people.
On the 7th of January, 1918, I received a telegram from Petrograd,
signed by General X. It read:
“Come. You are needed.”
The same day I bought a ticket for the capital, bade farewell to my
family, and set out. I removed the epaulets from my uniform, thus
appearing in the garb of a private.
About this time the Germans, to the profound shock of the revolutionary
masses, began their sudden advance into Russia. It had an almost
miraculous effect on the Bolshevik sympathizers. The train was as usual
packed with soldiers, but there was a noticeable difference in their
expression and conversation. All the braggadocio had been knocked out
of them by the enemy’s action. They had been lulled into the sweet
belief that peace had come and that a golden age was about to open for
them. They could not reconcile that with the swift advance of the
Kaiser’s soldiers toward Petrograd and Moscow.
It was refreshing, exhilarating to listen to some of the men.
“We have been sold!” one heard here and there.
“We were told that the German soldiers would not advance if we left the
front,” was another frequent expression.
“It is not the common people, it is the German bourgeoisie that is
fighting us now,” was an argument ordinarily given in answer to the
first opinions, “and there is nothing to be afraid of. There will soon
be a revolution in Germany.”
“Who knows,” some would doubtfully remark, “that Lenin and Trotzky have
not delivered us into the hands of the accursed Germans?”
There were always delegates from local committees going somewhere, and
they talked to the soldiers, answering questions and explaining things.
They could not very well explain away the German treachery, but they
held out the promise of a revolution in Germany almost any day. The
men listened but were not greatly impressed by the assurances of the
agitators. One felt that they were still groping in the dark, although
the light was dawning on their minds. The awakening could not be long
postponed.
I had a safe and comfortable journey to Petrograd. Nobody molested me,
nobody threatened my life. I arrived at the capital on the 18th of
January. The station was not as strongly guarded as two months before.
Red Guards were not in such evidence in the streets, which appeared
more normal. I went to one of my former patronesses and learned of the
terror in which the capital lived.
The following day I called on General X, who greeted me cordially.
Kiev, he told me, had just been captured by the Germans. They were
threatening Petrograd, and the opposition of the Red Guards would not
prevent or even postpone its capture by one day if the Germans were
bent upon taking the city.
Red Terror was rampant in Petrograd. The river was full of corpses of
officers who had been slain and lynched. Those who were alive were
leading a wretched existence, fearing to show themselves in public
because of the temper of the mob, and therefore on the verge of death
from starvation. Even more harrowing was the situation of the country.
It was falling into the hands of the enemy so rapidly that immediate
action of some sort was imperative.
A secret meeting of officers and sympathizers had been held at which
it was decided to get in touch with General Kornilov, who was reported
as operating in the Don region. There were so many conflicting reports
concerning Kornilov that it had been suggested that a courier should be
sent to him to find out definitely his plans and his resources. After
an exhaustive discussion General X suggested that I, as a woman, was
the only person who could possibly get through the Bolshevik lines and
reach Kornilov. Would I go?
“I would not join the officers here or Kornilov in the South for the
purpose of waging war against my own people,” I replied. “I can’t do it
because every Russian is dear to my heart, whether he be a Bolshevik, a
Menshevik, or a Red Guard. But I will undertake to go to Kornilov, in
order to satisfy your, as well as my own, desire for information.”
It was agreed that I should dress as a Sister of Mercy. A costume was
obtained for me, and I put it on over my uniform. My soldier’s cap I
tucked away in a pocket and donned the ordinary head-gear of a Sister
of Mercy, which left visible only my eyes, nose, mouth and cheeks, and
made me look like a matron of about forty-five.
A passport was furnished to me, bearing the name of Alexandra
Leontievna Smirnova, which was to be my name on the journey. As I wore
army boots there was no danger of my trousers showing under the skirt.
I took with me a letter from Princess Tatuyeva, in which she invited me
to visit her in her home in the Caucasus. A ticket from Petrograd to
Kislovodsk, a Caucasian health resort within several hundred miles of
the place where Kornilov was stationed, was given me, to be used only
in an emergency. It was agreed that in case of danger I should discard
my garb of a Sister of Mercy, and disclose my identity, supported by
the evidence of the emergency ticket to Kislovodsk and the letter from
Princess Tatuieva, declare that I was on my way to take a cure at that
place. In addition, I was, of course, provided with money for expenses.
It was very amusing to lose one’s identity and appear as a complete
stranger. I was no longer Maria Botchkareva, but Alexandra Smirnova.
And as I glanced at myself in the mirror it seemed even to my own eyes
that I had been reincarnated from a soldier into a Sister of Mercy.
When I started from Petrograd my destination was Nikitino, a station
which one would ordinarily pass on the way to Kislovodsk. Nobody
recognized me on the train. Sometimes a soldier asked:
“Where are you going, little sister?”
“Home, to Kislovodsk,” was my usual answer.
The next question would be about the service I had seen at the front,
and the sectors at which I worked. I would reply with facts from
my actual experience as a soldier. There was nothing strange about
a Sister of Mercy returning home, and as I preferred silence and
solitude to conversation, I reached Nikitino, at the end of several
days, without any trouble.
From Nikitino all trains were by order of the authorities switched off
to other lines and sent to their destination by roundabout routes.
The road running directly south from Nikitino was used for military
purposes exclusively by the Bolshevik forces engaged in fighting
Kornilov. Twenty miles farther on, at Zverevo, the so-called front
began. Private passengers were therefore not allowed to go to Zverevo.
It was evident that vast preparations were being made for a campaign
against General Kornilov. There were many ammunition trains and large
numbers of men concentrated there waiting transportation. There was
apparently no lack of money, and there was iron discipline, reminding
one of the early days of the war. There was order everywhere.
The first problem confronting me was how to get to Zverevo. I went to
the Commandant of the station, complained that I was penniless, that I
could not wait indefinitely for the end of the fighting to return home
to Kislovodsk, and urgently begged him to advise me what to do. I made
such an appeal to him that he finally said:
“A munition train is just about to leave for Zverevo. Come, get into it
and go to Zverevo. Perhaps they will pass you through the lines at the
front. There is a second-class carriage attached to the train.”
He led me to the carriage, in which were only the five soldiers who
were in charge of the train. He introduced me to the chief of them as a
stranded Sister of Mercy and asked for their indulgence. I thanked the
obliging Commandant profusely and from the bottom of my heart.
The train moved out of the station, but although satisfied with the
first stage of my enterprise, I was by no means cheerful as to my
prospects in Zverevo, the Bolshevik war zone. The head of the party sat
down opposite me. He was a dirty, ugly moujik. I did not encourage him
to engage me in conversation, but he was evidently wholly insensible to
my feelings in the matter.
After the preliminary questions, he expressed his surprise that I
should have chosen such an inopportune moment to go to Kislovodsk.
“But my mother is ill there,” I lied, “perhaps she is dying now. It
broke her heart when I went to the front.”
“Ah, that’s different,” he declared, moving over to my side. “They will
pass you in that case.”
From an expression of sympathy he had no hesitation in proceeding to an
attempt at flirtation. He moved closer to me and even touched my arm.
It was a delicate situation. I could not well afford to provoke his
antagonism, so I warded off his advances with a smile and a coquettish
glance. He treated me to a good meal, during which the conversation
turned to general conditions. He was, of course, a rabid Bolshevik
and a savage opponent of Kornilov and all officers. My part in the
conversation was confined to brief expressions of acquiescence, till
suddenly he asked:
“Have you heard of the Women’s Battalion of Death?”
My heart thumped violently.
“What Battalion did you say?” I asked with an air of ignorance.
“Why, Botchkareva’s Battalion!” he replied in a loud voice.
“Botchkareva’s?” I asked reminiscently. “Oh, yes, Botchkareva; yes, I
have heard about her.”
“The ----! She is a Kornilovka!” he exclaimed. “She is for the old
régime.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “I thought she was non-partisan.”
“We know them all, the counter-revolutionists! She is one of them,” my
companion declared emphatically.
“Well, but the Battalion of Death no longer exists, and Botchkareva has
apparently vanished,” I suggested.
“Yes, we know how they vanish. Many of them have vanished like that.
Kornilov had vanished, too. Then they all pop up again somewhere or
other and cause trouble,” he declared.
“Now, what would you do to her if she were to pop up here?” I ventured
to inquire.
“Kill her. She would never get away alive, you may stake an oath on
that,” he assured me. “We have the photographs of all the leading
counter-revolutionaries, so that they can’t conceal their identity if
they are caught.”
The conversation then took a more profitable turn for me. I learned all
about the plans of the Bolshevik force against Kornilov. The arrival of
the train at Zverevo put an end to my association with my travelling
companion. I thanked him warmly for all his kindness to me.
“You know, Sister,” he unexpectedly declared before parting, “I like
you. Will you marry me?”
I was not prepared for this. It rather took me aback. He was such a
dirty, repulsive-looking creature, and the proposal was so ludicrous
that it was with difficulty that I controlled my desire to laugh. The
situation was not one for merriment.
“Yes, with pleasure,” I responded to his offer, with as much
graciousness as I could command, “but after I have seen my mother.”
He gave me his address and asked me to write to him, which I promised
to do. Perhaps he is still waiting for a letter from me.
I left him at the train and went toward the station. There were
Red Guards, sailors, soldiers, even Cossacks, who had joined the
Bolsheviks, on the platform and inside the station. But there were no
private citizens in sight. I sat down in a corner and waited. I was
taken for a nurse attached to the Bolshevik army, and was not molested.
One, two, three hours passed and still I could find no opportunity
to proceed to my destination. A civilian, who somehow found his way
into the station, was placed under arrest before my eyes without any
preliminaries. I, therefore, preferred to sit quietly in my corner
rather than move about.
Finally a pleasant looking young soldier became interested in me. He
walked up and asked:
“Why are you waiting here, Sister?”
“I am waiting for a comrade,” I answered.
“What is his name?” he inquired, interested.
“Oh, that is a secret,” I replied in a teasing manner.
He sat down near me, and asked me if I had worked at the front. I said
that unfortunately I had been detailed only to hospitals in the rear.
“Why was that man arrested?” I ventured to ask.
“Because he had no papers from the Soviet,” was the reply. “He will be
shot immediately.”
“Do you execute everybody who has no papers?” I asked.
“Everybody, without distinction.”
“Even women?” I inquired.
“Yes, even women,” was the reply. “This is a war zone.”
“Holy Mother!” I exclaimed in horror. “How terrible! You really slay
them all? Without even a trial?”
“There is little time for trials here. Once fallen here, there is no
escape. Our firing squads make an end of all suspected persons on
the spot,” he informed me kindly. “Come, would you like to see the
execution-grounds? They are quite near here.”
I followed him reluctantly. A few hundred feet away from the station we
stopped. I could go no further. The field in front of us was covered
with scores of mangled, naked corpses. It made my flesh creep.
“There are about two hundred of them here, mostly officers who had
joined or sought to join Kornilov,” he explained.
I could not help shivering. The dreadful scene nearly shattered my
nerves and it was all I could do not to collapse.
“Ah, you women, women,” my escort nodded sympathetically. “You are all
weak. You don’t know what war is. Still,” he admitted, “there are some
who can compare with men. Take Botchkareva, for instance, she would not
shudder at sights like this.”
“Who is she, this Botchkareva?” I was curious.
“Haven’t you heard of her?” he asked in surprise. “Why, she was a
soldier of the old régime and organized the Women’s Battalion of Death.
She is for Kornilov and the bourgeoisie. They gave her an officer’s
rank and bought her over to their side, although she is of peasant
blood.”
It was all very interesting, this theory of my corruption. I had heard
it before, but not stated in such definite terms. At the same time I
was haunted by the picture of those mangled bodies, and the thought
rankled in my mind of the treacherous Bolsheviks who had opposed
capital punishment in the war against Germany but introduced it in the
most brutal fashion in the war against their own brothers.
I then told my friend of the trouble in which I found myself, that I
was penniless, that I had to get home to Kislovodsk and that I did
not know how to get through the front. He explained to me that the
so-called front was not a continuous line but a series of posts,
maintained on this side by the Bolsheviks and on the opposite side by
Kornilov.
“Sometimes,” he added, “the peasants of the neighbouring villages are
allowed by both sides to pass through to Novotcherkask, Kornilov’s
headquarters. If you follow that road,” and he pointed to it, “you will
come to a village about three miles from here. One of the peasants may
be willing to convey you across.”
I thanked him for the valuable information, and we parted friends. The
walk to the village was uneventful. On the outskirts of it I saw an
old moujik working outside of his hut. There was a stable and horses
attached to it.
“Good day, grandfather!” I greeted the old man.
“Good day, little sister,” he answered.
“Would you drive me to the city?” I asked.
“Great God! How is it possible? The Bolsheviks are fighting in front of
the city, and they don’t let anybody pass,” he said.
“But people do go sometimes, don’t they?”
“Yes, sometimes they do.”
“Well, I will give you fifty roubles for driving me to the city,” I
offered.
The moujik scratched his neck, reconsidering the matter.
“But aren’t you a political?” he inquired cautiously.
“No,” I assured him, “I am not.”
He went into the cabin to talk it over with his _baba_. It was a
tempting offer and her consent was apparently quickly obtained, for he
soon returned and said:
“All right, we will go. Come into the house. We will have tea and
something to eat.”
The invitation was welcome indeed, as I had grown hungry during my long
wait at the station and the walk to the village. When we had finished
our tea and lunch and the peasant harnessed his horse, I asked for
a large apron, which I put on over my clothes. I then asked for the
_baba’s_ winter shawl and wrapped it over my head and shoulders, almost
completely covering my face, so that I no longer looked like a Sister
of Mercy, but one of the local peasant-women.
Praying to God to grant me a safe journey, I seated myself in the cart.
The horse started off along the road.
The Bolshevik front was still ahead of me. But I was making
progress....