Living My Life - Emma Goldman [278]
On Christmas Eve, still held up on the road, Shakol and Sasha gave me a surprise. A wee pine-tree, decorated for the occasion and studded with coloured candles, gaily lit up our compartment. America contributed the gifts, or rather my women friends who had sent presents before we sailed. A good hot grog, brewed from the rum supplied us in Archangel, helped to make the festivity complete.
I thought of our Christmas of a year ago—of 1919. Sasha and I, together with many other undesirable rebels on the Buford, torn away from our work, our comrades, and our loved ones, cruising to an unknown destination. In enemy hands, under rigid military discipline, our male companions herded below deck like cattle and fed on wretched food, all of us exposed to imminent danger from war mines. Yet we did not care. Soviet Russia was beckoning us, liberated and reborn, the fulfilment of the heroic struggle of a hundred years. Our hopes ran high, our faith flamed red-white, all our thoughts centred on our Matushka Rossiya.
Now it was Christmas 1920. We were in Russia, her soil serene after the raging storms, her attire of white and green under a jewelled sky. Our house on wheels was warm and cozy. My old pal was at my side and a new dear friend. They were in a holiday mood and I longed to join in their merriment. But in vain. My thoughts were in 1919. Only a year had passed, and nothing was left but the ashes of my fervent dreams, my burning faith, my joyous song. [ ... ]
Our expedition was being reorganized and arrangements made for our third tour, which was definitely decided upon as a journey to the Crimea. But at the eleventh hour our plans were blocked by an order of the Ispart, the newly created Communist body for the purpose of collecting data on the history of the Communist Party. The Museum of the Revolution was curtly notified that henceforth the new organization would take charge of all expeditions, the Ispart claiming precedence, by virtue of its Communist character, in all such undertakings. [ ... ]
Our efforts in behalf of the Petrograd Museum were being blocked on every hand by the concentrated authority of Communist machinery and were proving fruitless. Petrograd urged a personal report and we decided to return there. We had already bought our tickets when word came from Dmitrov that our old comrade Peter Kropotkin had been stricken with pneumonia. The shock was the greater because we had visited Peter in July and had found him in good health and buoyant spirits. He seemed then younger and better than when we had seen him the previous March. The sparkle in his eyes and his vivacity had impressed us with his splendid condition. The Kropotkin place had looked lovely in the summer sunshine, with the flowers and Sophie’s vegetable garden in full bloom. With much pride Peter had spoken of his companion and her skill as a gardener. Taking Sasha and me by the hand, he had led us in boyish exuberance to the patch where Sophie had planted a special kind of lettuce. She had succeeded in raising heads as large as cabbages, their leaves crispy and luscious. He himself had also been digging in the soil, but it was Sophie, he had reiterated, who was the real expert. Her potato crop of the previous winter had been so large that there was enough left over to exchange for fodder for their cow and even to share with their Dmitrov neighbours, who had few vegetables. Our dear Peter had been frolicking in his garden and talking about these matters as if they were world events. Infectious had been the youthful spirit of our comrade, carrying us along by its freshness and charm.
In the afternoon, assembled in his study, he had again become the scientist and thinker, clear and penetrating in his judgment of persons and events.