Living My Life - Emma Goldman [254]
Sasha did not gainsay this. [ ... J He himself had come to see that revolution in action is a quite different thing from revolution in the realm of theory mouthed by parlour radicals. It meant blood and iron, and it was unavoidable.
The dear companionship of my old pal and our intellectual harmony had mitigated much of the lacerating process of finding my way through the Soviet labyrinth. Sasha was all that had been left me from the tornado that had swept over my life. [ ... ] I was certain my friend would in time realize the falsity of his position. I knew that his desperate attempt to defend Bolshevik methods was his last stand in a lost battle, the battle we had been the first to wage in the United States in behalf of the October Revolution.
Among our many callers during our Moscow stay had been an interesting young woman, Alexandra Timofeyevna Shakol. [ ... ] An expedition was being planned, she explained, that was to cover the length and breadth of the country in search of documents bearing on the Revolution and the revolutionary movement of Russia since its inception. The collected material would ultimately serve as archives for the study of the great upheaval. Would we join such a venture?
For a moment we had been carried away by the plan and by the opportunity it offered to see Russia in her Revolutionary everyday life, to learn at first hand what the Revolution had done for the masses and how it affected their existence. We might never have such another chance. But on second thought we felt it bitter irony that would condemn us to collect dead material amidst the raging life of Russia. Thirty years long we had stood in the very thick of the social battle, always on the firing line. Could we now be content with anything less in our reborn native land? [... ]
Since our return to Petrograd we had been so busy chasing Soviet windmills, so eagerly reaching out for a new hold, that we had hardly thought of our comrade Shakol and her proposal. But with every hope of useful work gone, her offer once more came to our minds. It might afford an escape from our meaningless existence. [ ... ] We finally decided to try it, since nothing else was open to us. “If only the new project will also not turn out a bubble,” I said to Sasha on our way to the Winter Palace, where the Museum of the Revolution was located. [ ... ]
We were received by the secretary, M. B. Kaplan, a man in the middle thirties, of pleasant and intelligent appearance. [ ... ] Though it was the latter part of May, the vast chambers of the Winter Palace were breathing a penetrating chill. We were warmly clad, yet we quickly felt benumbed with the cold. We marvelled at the men and women working in the fearful dampness all through the severe months of the Petrograd winter. They had been employed there for almost three years now. Their faces were streaked with blue blotches, their hands frost-bitten. Some had contracted severe cases of rheumatism and tubercular [afflictions]. His own health had become undermined, the secretary admitted. But it was revolutionary Russia, and he and his co-workers were happy to be privileged to help in building its future. Most of them, like himself, were non-partisan. He was all eagerness to be able to count on our aid. His enthusiasm was too infectious to resist, and we agreed. [ ... ]
We left the genial secretary and his collaborators in a more cheerful frame of mind. We did not yet feel about the work before us as did the other members of the museum. We knew we could not for long be content with merely collecting parchments when more important work was so urgently needed which we might do. But the devotion and fortitude of those people had lifted the weight of despair from our hearts. [... ] These great souls redeemed for us much that was hateful in the Bolshevik regime.
Preparations for the expedition were progressing