... Mysterious individuals
circulated around the shivering women who waited in _queue_ long
cold hours for bread and milk, whispering that the Jews had cornered
the food supply-and that while the people starved, the Soviet
members lived luxuriously....
At Smolny there were strict guards at the door and the outer gates,
demanding everybody's pass. The committee-rooms buzzed and hummed
all day and all night, hundreds of soldiers and workmen slept on the
floor, wherever they could find room. Upstairs in the great hall a
thousand people crowded to the uproarious sessions of the Petrograd
Soviet....
Gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk to dawn, with
champagne flowing and stakes of twenty thousand rubles. In the
centre of the city at night prostitutes in jewels and expensive furs
walked up and down, crowded the caf?s....
Monarchist plots, German spies, smugglers hatching schemes....
And in the rain, the bitter chill, the great throbbing city under
grey skies rushing faster and faster toward-what?
Chapter III
On the Eve
IN the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there
comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the
masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt....
The proposal to abandon Petrograd raised a hurricane; Kerensky's
public denial that the Government had any such intention was met with
hoots of derision.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95