I. PETROGRAD

1.

... and, post factum, everybody claims that "he (or more often she) predicted it long ago, but they would not listen." It is a lie; we all knew that the war has been conducted abominably, that Rasputin and Sturmer were plotting, that the administration was greatly inclined to graft,--all gossip of the town. But no one whom I had seen since the execution of the monk was aware of the real fact: the revolution was in the air. Rodzianko, to whom I spoke at the Club only a fortnight before the abdication, said that everything would turn out all right.

In fact, the Court, and people around it,--were much better posted; perhaps they felt something growing instinctively, as they were too silly to crystallize their fears in some concrete conception.

Maroossia was in Tsarskoye Selo not long before the old Admiral's death; they said that the danger was expected from the "Town and Country Union." But all these whispers and chatterings were always of the category of a "so-and-so, whose brother's friend knew a man who...."

With all my running around about the town I must confess I did not notice any movement; I always thought that the reason of the unrest--was the shortage of food, and a little provocation, to put Sturmer in a disagreeable position. The realization of the serious danger approaching all of us came to me only when the police fired on the mob on the Nevsky and the first real clash took place. I happened to cross the Liteinyi near Basseinaya Street, when I heard for the first time in my life the whistling of bullets and the peculiar drumming of the machine guns. I felt weak in the knees and around the waist and had to stand in a porte-cochere for a while. It was only for a few moments, and I felt ashamed of this disgusting feeling of fear.

A crowd of cooks, or maids, passed near me shouting and screaming for help; they had disgustingly lost their self-control. I reached home in a hurry and found Maroossia pale and frightened. I had to tell her not to show her nose in the streets. Then Mikhalovsky called me up and asked how did I like the revolution. He did not like it: his cook had been shot in the knee; a very moderate cook, in fact.

2.

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!

3.

Everybody is sure and proud that he is building up the new Russia.

Lawyers and doctors, engineers and priests, all run with busy faces,--they think a statesman of today must run,--everybody gives orders, counter-orders, nobody carries them out, nobody listens. There are about 200,000 Napoleons in Petrograd today; as they multiply by section, this number will be enormous before long. The situation, however, does not improve....

In the office there was quite a discussion of the probabilities, and I was listening to the younger people. Criticism and "my own opinion"

are the main sicknesses. Perhaps the private initiative used to be so hardly oppressed, that it comes out at present in excess.

Why should lawyers be convinced, that their profession gives them the right, _primo genio_ to be statesmen? I should suggest an archeologist, or a man in charge of a lighthouse.

4.

We all went to the "Farce," Maroossia and F., myself and Misha.

Afterwards we had supper. At the next table to us were the M's., Alexander Ivanitsky and the Baroness B. Since her return she certainly looks much better. At first I did not see her, then before all she reprimanded me in her usual kind manner. She had grown a little thinner and has more jewelry I should say, and is as fascinating as before. When she speaks one can see that she thinks of far distant things.

"We all are busy these days," she said, when I asked her whether she came here from England just for curiosity to see all of us under the Provisional Government. "You did not change at all." Misha, who did not know B. before, did not like her very much,--in fact, they all think she is suspicious. Aren't these youngsters peculiar? Especially Misha who is so grouchy lately--all seems dangerous to him. I never think that a woman can be anything but pretty or hideous. There is no middle, and no suspicion about them. If a woman is, what they perhaps would call "suspicious"--then there is a man's influence behind her--so find the man (and it is easy) and she is as plain as a card on the table. Baroness B. is pretty. And if she likes to talk like a Pythia,--that's her way of making people interested in her.

Maroossia complained of a headache, so we left early. Baroness is in the Hotel d'Europe--she is so sorry that "her Astoria" became such a hole. Well--not only her Astoria.

5.

It certainly would be a wonder to expect anything but confusion from the men who recently became the leaders of 180 millions. The leaders are sure they can make wonders.

Prince Lvov! This old squeaking carriage, as Polenov says, is a man from whom I would not expect anything. It is enough to look at his beard, with remnants of yesterday's dinner on it, at his small blue foxy eyes always reddish and always dropping tears. Miliukov! Minister of Foreign Affairs! All his experience consists of a continuous chain of political breaks and a series of moderately paid, superficial articles on Balkan questions in a provincial newspaper. And, Monsieur Kerensky,--_la fine fleur_--the Minister of Justice, a little man with a single kidney and a double ambition. Insects!

These people would not be able to administer a small country community, and here they are confronted with three immense propositions: the Great War, the building up of a new state, and the fighting of an organized propaganda directed against the war, and against order.

It was enough for the ladies (and for Maroossia too) to see all of these people in power, in order to find interesting points, not only in their political activities, that would not be so bad--but in their private lives too. They all already know who these people are, what they eat, when and where they were born, what their wives and mistresses look like, etc., etc., up to the most intimate deeds and traits of their characters. The foreign ladies also take a very keen interest in those little tea-chats. All prefer to listen to them much rather than to the events at the front.

Vadbolsky wrote me a letter sent through the "Help the Soldiers"

society. Of course he could not say much. They all realize that discipline is going down with tremendous speed, at least at the Northern front. The soldiers listen more to what the Council of Deputies say than to anything else. This treble power--the Council, the Government and the Army Authorities--must be united, but there is no one to realize it; and if there were, there would be no possibility of co-ordinating the different currents.