The meeting took place between the gaunt brick walls of a huge
unfinished building, ten thousand black-clothed men and women packed
around a scaffolding draped in red, people heaped on piles of lumber
and bricks, perched high upon shadowy girders, intent and
thunder-voiced. Through the dull, heavy sky now and again burst the
sun, flooding reddish light through the skeleton windows upon the
mass of simple faces upturned to us.
Lunatcharsky, a slight, student-like figure with the sensitive face
of an artist, was telling why the power must be taken by the
Soviets. Nothing else could guarantee the Revolution against its
enemies, who were deliberately ruining the country, ruining the
army, creating opportunities for a new Konilov.
A soldier from the Rumanian front, thin, tragical and fierce, cried,
"Comrades! We are starving at the front, we are stiff with cold. We
are dying for no reason. I ask the American comrades to carry word
to America, that the Russians will never give up their Revolution
until they die. We will hold the fort with all our strength until
the peoples of the world rise and help us! Tell the American workers
to rise and fight for the Social Revolution!"
Then came Petrovsky, slight, slow-voiced, implacable: "Now is the
time for deeds, not words. The economic situation is bad, but we
must get used to it. They are trying to starve us and freeze us.
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