The regiment held a meeting to decide what
action to take. Resolved, that the regiment remain neutral, and
continue its present activities-which consisted in peddling rubbers
and sunflower seeds!
"But worst of all," said Melnichansky, "we had to organise while we
were fighting. The other side knew just what it wanted; but here the
soldiers had their Soviet and the workers theirs.... There was a
fearful wrangle over who should be Commander-in-chief; some regiments
talked for days before they decided what to do; and when the officers
suddenly deserted us, we had no battle-staff to give orders...."
Vivid little pictures he gave me. On a cold grey day he had stood at
a corner of the Nikitskaya, which was swept by blasts of machine-gun
fire. A throng of little boys were gathered there-street waifs who
used to be newsboys. Shrill, excited as if with a new game, they
waited until the firing slackened, and then tried to run across the
street.... Many were killed, but the rest dashed backward and forward,
laughing, daring each other....
Late in the evening I went to the _Dvorianskoye Sobranie_-the Nobles'
Club-where the Moscow Bolsheviki were to meet and consider the report
of Nogin, Rykov and the others who had left the Council of People's
Commissars.
The meeting-place was a theatre, in which, under the old r?gime, to
audiences of officers and glittering ladies, amateur presentations of
the latest French comedy had once taken place.
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