Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

2 February, evening. Demyanskoye.

Despite the fact that the red banner which greeted us at Yurovskoye yesterday was seized by the troops, this morning, as we were leaving the village, there was a new one stuck on a long pole into a snowdrift. This time nobody touched it; the soldiers had only just settled into their sleighs and no one felt like getting out again. And so we paraded past it. Further on, a few hundred yards from the village, where the road dips down to the river, we saw an inscription in huge letters on the snowy slope: ‘Long Live the Revolution!’ My driver, a fellow of eighteen or so, burst out laughing when Leon he read the inscription. “Do you know what that means – long live the revolution?” I asked him. “No, I don’t,” he said after a moment’s thought, “all I know is that people keep shouting these words, ‘Long Live the Revolution!’” But you could tell by his face that he knew more than he was prepared to say. Altogether the local peasants, especially the young ones, are extremely well disposed towards the ‘politicals’.

We arrived at Demyanskoye, the large village where we are stopping for the night, at 1:00 p.m. A large crowd of exiles came to meet us (there are more than sixty here). This caused great confusion among some of our escort. The corporal at once gathered his faithful around him in case of need. Luckily there was no trouble. It was obvious that they had been waiting for us here for a long time and with a good deal of nervous tension. A special commission to organize our reception had been appointed. A magnificent dinner and comfortable quarters were prepared in the local “commune”. But we were not allowed to go there, and had to stop in a peasant house; the dinner was brought here. Meeting the politicals is extremely difficult; they were able to get in to see us only for a few minutes at a time, in twos and threes, carrying various parts of the dinner. Apart from that we took turns to visit the local shop, accompanied by soldiers, and on the way were able to exchange a few words with comrades who waited in the street all day long.

“Tell her about the woman,” said Sverchkov, who had been reading over Trotsky’s shoulder what he was writing.

“She won’t want to read about that.”

“Yes she will. People like reading about themselves, or people like themselves.”

Trotsky turned and, smiling up at Sverchkov, acknowledged with a nod of his head the truth of what his comrade had said. They had shared the same privations at the Peter-Paul Fortress and at the House of Preliminary Detention and he had become used to finding Sverchkov at his side. It was, he knew, personal admiration masquerading as comradeship, and slightly embarrassing. At the same time, it felt odd to have one’s steps dogged by another man who was willing to fetch and run errands, instead of waiting to arrest him.

My own little Flemish, he thought fondly.