Living My Life - Emma Goldman [298]
Belo-Ostrov, January 19, 1920. O radiant dream, O burning faith! O Matushka Rossiya, reborn in the travail of the Revolution, purged by it from hate and strife, liberated for true humanity and embracing all. I will dedicate myself to you, O Russia!
In the train, December 1, 1921! My dreams crushed, my faith broken, my heart like a stone. Matushka Rossiya bleeding from a thousand wounds, her soil strewn with the dead.
I clutch the bar at the frozen window-pane and grit my teeth to suppress my sobs.
CHAPTER LIII
Riga! Jostling crowds at the station, strange speech, laughter, and glaring lights. It was bewildering and it aggravated my feverish condition from the bad cold I had contracted on the way. We planned to go to our comrade Tsvetkov, who was employed in the Soviet transport department. [ ... ] I needed a rest and I wanted to forget—to shut out the nightmare behind me and not to have to think of the void before me. We considered it inadvisable to go to a hotel: we would arouse too much attention and we were particularly anxious to avoid newspaper men. At Tsvetkov’s we could live quietly.
Our first thought was to prepare a manifesto setting forth the appalling conditions of the politicals in the Communist State and urging the anarchist press in Europe and America to help save them from a slow death. It was our desperate cry after twenty-one months of forced silence, the initial step of fulfilling the pledge given our people to make known to the world the colossal fraud wrapped in the Red mantle of “October.”
News from Germany was reassuring. Our comrades were working to secure our admission and they were confident of success. But they needed a little more time. [...]
When they returned, I knew the result without a word being spoken. Our application was refused.
Again it was necessary to procure a prolongation of our stay in Latvia. The sullen youngsters in office demurred, but finally permitted us another forty-eight hours. At the expiration of that time we must leave, they insisted, whether we procured any visa by then or not. “You’ll go back to your own country,” they declared peremptorily. Our country? Where was it? The war had destroyed the ancient right of asylum, and Bolshevism had turned Russia into a prison. We could not return even there. Nor would we if we could. We’ll go to Lithuania, we thought, and we should have really gone there if we had not missed the train on our arrival in Riga.
Our friend Tsvetkov would not hear of it. Lithuania was a trap, he declared. It would be impossible for us to get to Germany from there, nor could we return to Riga again. He would arrange a sub rosa route. He knew some freighters whose crews were syndicalists, and he would manage the matter. But could Emma stand being stowed away? I bristled at the implication that I could stand less than the boys. “But your cough—it will give you all away!” he retorted. I protested vigorously. To escape my feminine indignation our friend left to establish the necessary connexions. But his scheme proved a bubble—luckily for us all. For on the following day, the last we could remain in Latvia, came Swedish visas that our syndicalist comrades in Stockholm had obtained. Mr. Branting, the Socialist Prime Minister, had proved more decent than his German comrades.I
Accompanied by Tsvetkov and Mrs. C., Secretary Shakol’s sister, who had befriended us and supplied us with a large lunch-basket for