Part + 

IV + 

Terror + 

XVI + 

The Triumph of Bolshevism + 

I returned to the front. The trains were frightfully crowded, but fortunately I found accommodation in a first-class compartment. At Molodechno I reported to General Valuyev, Commander of the Tenth Army, and lunched with the staff. The General was painfully surprised to learn of the punishment I had received at the hands of the soldiers. + 

“Did they really strike you?” he asked incredulously, as if he found it hard to imagine the soldiers maltreating Yashka. + 

“Yes, General, they did,” I answered. + 

“But why?” + 

I told him of the German I had wounded as he came over with several comrades. + 

“God, what has become of my once glorious army!” he cried out. + 

As I related to him the remaining phases of the episode, he punctuated my story with exclamations of surprise. + 

At the end of the meal General Valuyev informed me that I had been promoted to the rank of Captain. He pinned an extra star on my epaulets and congratulated me. + 

I was provided with a car and driven to Corps Headquarters, where I reported to my Commanding General. He and the officers of the Corps Staff were anxious to know of the latest developments in the rear. I told them the impression made upon me by Kerensky and Verkhovsky two days before. + 

“Their appearance bears witness to the fact that all is lost,” I said. + 

“And how about the transfer?” the General asked. “The Battalion is waiting for you to come and take it to a more sympathetic sector.” + 

I answered that orders would soon arrive for the transfer, and showed the certificate authorizing me to command without a committee. The General was glad for my sake. + 

Meanwhile, my girls learned of my arrival. They formed ranks, desiring to give me a cheerful welcome. My presence seemed to put heart into them. After thanking them for their welcome, I went with them to mess. It was my custom to eat the same food as the girls. Only I seldom ate with them. Before eating, I usually supervised the mess, satisfying myself that there was plenty of food and that all was in good order. I knew from experience that there is nothing like food for keeping up a soldier’s heart. + 

Was it my promotion that was the cause of a happy mood, or my return to the girls, to whom I had grown deeply attached? I don’t know. But after dinner it occurred to me that it would be the right thing to let the girls have some fun. So I suggested a game, and my soldiers took up the idea with delight. As the game proceeded, many men gathered round the circle in which it was going on. They watched longingly, clearly desirous to play too, but not daring to join in for fear lest I should order the girls away. It gave me pleasure to observe how these grown-up children longed to take part in the sports. But I pretended not to notice it. + 

Finally they sent several delegates to express their desire to me. + 

“Captain,” the men said bashfully, “we want to speak to you.” + 

“All right, speak out,” I answered, “only don’t address me as an officer. Call me plain Yashka or Bochkareva.” + 

“May we be allowed to take part in the game?” they asked, encouraged by my words. + 

“Yes, but only on condition that you do not molest my girls and consider them as fellow-soldiers only,” I declared. + 

The men swore that they would behave, and the girls were not at all displeased at the new arrangement. They played for two or three hours, and the men kept their pledge. When the game ended they left with quite a different feeling towards me. It was a feeling of respect and even love, instead of their former one of hostility. + 

The Battalion remained in the reserve billets for several days. There developed, as a result of that game, a new attitude on the part of many soldiers toward us women. Companies of them would come over and join the Battalion in sports or singing and various entertainments. + 

The expected order for a transfer did not come promptly. Meanwhile, the time arrived to relieve the Corps in the trenches. I decided that we had had enough rest, and upon our arrival at the fighting line I put my Battalion on a regular war footing. I sent out scouting parties, established observation posts, and swept No Man’s Land with my machine guns and rifles. The Germans were very much agitated. Our own soldiers became excited too, but because of the friendly relations we had established in the rear, they contented themselves with sending delegates and committees to argue the matter with me. + 

“We have freedom now, you say,” I argued. “You insist that you do not want to fight. Very well. I will not ask you to fight the Germans. But you have no right to ask me to act against my convictions. We came here not to fraternize but to fight, to kill and get killed. I claim my freedom to get killed if I want to. Then let me fight the Germans at my sector. Let the Germans fight only against the Battalion. We will leave you alone, and you leave us alone.” + 

The soldiers admitted that this was no more than fair and consented to such an arrangement. When they asked me why I was so anxious to kill Germans I told them that I wanted to avenge my husband who was slain early in the war. For this invention I had only a slight foundation⁠—a rumour that had reached me of the death in battle of Afanasy Bochkarev. Of course, it was an absurd excuse. But I had used it before and I used it afterwards on a number of occasions, and it finally became widely known and believed. + 

It was exhilarating to be able to do some real fighting again. It is true, we were a mere handful, scarcely two hundred women. But we raised quite a storm. Our machine guns rattled and No Man’s Land was turned from a promenade for agitators and drunkards into a real No Man’s Land. The news spread rapidly along the front of the activity of the Women’s Battalion, and I believe that for hundreds of miles our little sector was the only fighting part of the line. I was naturally very proud of this distinction. + 

For several days this state of affairs continued. Finally the Germans became so annoyed that they ordered their artillery to bombard my position. There had not been any artillery fire at our sector for some time, and the opening of the big guns caused tremendous excitement. Many of the men were caught in the bombardment and were killed or wounded. The Battalion’s casualties were four dead and fifteen wounded. + 

The whole Corps was roused to a high state of agitation, and a stormy meeting took place immediately. The men demanded my instant execution. + 

“She wants war,” they cried, “and we want peace. Kill her and make an end of it!” + 

But the members of the committee and my friends insisted that I acted in accordance with an agreement. “She only engages her own Battalion in fighting,” my defenders argued, “and leaves us alone. It is not her fault that the German artillery could not find the range quickly and killed some of our comrades.” + 

When word reached me of the indignation and threats of the men I decided to organize an offensive of my own and die fighting. I requested our artillery to answer in kind the enemy’s fire. The engagement developed into a regular little battle. We were firing furiously. + 

While this was going on and the soldiers in the rear were holding the meeting the news arrived of the overthrow of Kerensky and the Bolshevists’ victory in Petrograd. It was announced to the men by the Chairman and was hailed with such an outburst of enthusiasm that the shouts almost drowned the rattling of the machine guns. + 

“Peace! Peace!!” thundered through the air. + 

“We will leave the front now! We are going home! Hurrah for Lenin! Hurrah for Trotsky! Hurrah for Kollontai!” + 

“Land and freedom! Bread! Down with the bourgeoisie!” + 

As the rejoicing was at its height, the ears of the multitude suddenly caught the sound of the shooting at my sector. The men were roused to fury. + 

“Kill her! Kill them all! We have peace now!” they roared as they stampeded in our direction. + 

Several girls dashed up to me to tell me of the approach of the bloodthirsty mob. Almost simultaneously the Commanding General rang up on the field telephone. + 

“Run!” was his first word. “We are all lost. I am escaping myself. Go to Krasnoye Selo!” + 

I ordered my girls to seize their rifles and whatever belongings they could and run without stopping. To one of the men instructors I gave the direction in which we were to go, asking him to transmit the information to our supply detachment. + 

Meanwhile the mob was advancing. It encountered in the immediate rear about twenty of my girls, who were engaged in the supporting line. + 

These twenty girls were lynched by the maddened mob. + 

Four of the instructors, who made an attempt to defend these innocent women, were crushed under the heels of the savage crowd. + 

I and my remaining soldiers ran for ten miles. Although we could see no sign of pursuers we ran no risks. We stopped in the woods beside the road to Molodechno. It was dark. We drank tea for supper and prepared sleeping quarters under the trees. Our supply train came up during the night and was intercepted by one of the sentries. + 

We were up at four in the morning. I had a connection made with the telephone wire running to Army Headquarters at Molodechno and talked to the officer in charge, telling him of our approach and asking for dugouts. The officer replied that Molodechno was overflowing with deserters and that it was as dangerous a place for the Battalion as the front itself. + 

But what could I do? I had to go somewhere. I could not very well continue living in the forest. It was an awful situation. We had escaped from one mob, leaving twenty victims in its hands, and were running straight into the arms of another, perhaps even more bloodthirsty. So we resumed our march. Within two miles of Molodechno I led the Battalion far into the woods and left it there with the supply detachment, comprising twenty-five men. I went to Molodechno alone, having decided to make preliminary investigations and see what was to be done. + 

Groups of soldiers here and there, in the streets of Molodechno, stopped me with jeering remarks: + 

“Ha, there goes the Commander of the Women’s Battalion. She demands iron discipline. Ha, ha!” they would laugh, turning to me, “What now?” + 

With smiles and conciliatory answers I managed to get to Headquarters. I made a report to the Commandant and was assigned some dugouts for the Battalion. There were crowds of soldiers everywhere as I walked to the billets. They began to harangue me. + 

“You were late with your Battalion,” they said. “It’s peace now.” + 

“I am always with you, I am myself a common peasant soldier,” I answered. “If you make peace now I will abide by your decision. I am not going to fight against the people.” + 

“Yes, you are for the people now, but where were you before?” they inquired. “You maintained the discipline of the old regime in your Battalion.” + 

“If I had had no discipline,” I answered, “my Battalion would have become a shameful thing. You would have sneered at it yourselves. Women are not like men. It is not customary for women to fight. Imagine what would have become of three hundred girls among thousands of men let loose without supervision and restraint, and you will agree with me that I was right.” + 

The men appreciated my argument. + 

“We think you are right about that,” they assented, and became more sympathetic. + 

I requested their help in cleaning out the dugouts for my girls, and they gave it cheerfully. I dispatched an instructor for the Battalion, and by night my soldiers were comfortably quartered. Under the protection of sentinels picked from the men attached to my unit we passed a restful night. But our presence offered too good an opportunity for the agitators to let it pass. So in the morning after breakfast, as I started on my way to Headquarters, a small group of insolent soldiers, not more than ten in number, blocked my path, heaping insults upon me. + 

In a few minutes the ten ruffians were increased to twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred. I tried to parry their jeers and threats, but without success. In ten minutes I was almost surrounded by several hundreds of these ruffians in uniform. + 

“What do you want with me?” I cried out, losing patience. + 

“We want to disband your Battalion. We want you to surrender all the rifles to us.” + 

Now there can hardly be a greater dishonour for a soldier than to surrender his arms without a fight. However, my girls knew that I hated the idea of perishing at the hands of a mob. When they heard of the demand of the crowd they all came out, with rifles in hand. + 

I made a couple of attempts to argue, but it was apparent that the men came with the purpose fixed in their minds by propagandists. They would not give way and finally cut me short by giving me three minutes to decide. One of the ringleaders stood there, watch in hand, counting the time. Those were moments of indescribable agony. + 

“I would rather advance against an entire German army than surrender arms to these Bolshevik scoundrels,” I thought. “But it is not my life only that is at stake. Everything is lost, anyhow. They say that peace has been declared already. Have I a right to play with the lives of my girls? But, Holy Mother, how can I, a soldier true to my oath and loyal to my country, order the surrender of my Battalion’s arms without a fight?” + 

The three minutes were up. I had arrived at no decision. Still, I mounted the speaker’s bench. There was complete silence. The crowd of course expected my capitulation. My girls waited in great tension for their Commander’s orders. My heart throbbed violently as my mind still groped for a solution. + 

“Shoot!” I suddenly shouted at the top of my voice to the girls. + 

The men were so surprised that for a moment they remained petrified. They were unarmed. + 

A volley from two hundred rifles went up into the air. + 

The crowd dispersed in all directions. My order almost drove the men out of their senses with rage. They ran to their barracks for weapons, threatening to return and do for us all. + 

The real crisis now arose. There was no question that the mob would return, several times stronger, and tear us to pieces. A decision had to be arrived at and carried out instantly. It would take not more than ten minutes for the men to come back. If we did not escape it was certain death. + 

“In five minutes the Battalion must be ready to march!” I thundered. I sent one of my instructors to the barracks, to mix with the crowd, and later report to me in the woods on the mob’s activity. Simultaneously I directed the supply detachment to follow the road in the direction of Krasnoye Selo. Then I called for a volunteer from among the instructors to take care of our battle flag under oath that he would defend it to his death. Accompanied by three other instructors he was sent ahead with the flag. + 

All this was done in less than five minutes. It was no ordinary feat for a military unit to form in full marching formation in that space of time. But my girls did it. I sent one squad after another into the woods, leaving with the last squad myself. + 

I had fixed as our destination a certain clearing in the woods, five miles distant. This distance we covered at breakneck speed. I knew that the infuriated men would follow the road in pursuing us, and I ordered the Battalion to go into the heart of the woods. There were few of us who did not trip on the way several times. Our uniforms were torn by thorns and brambles, and many of us had cuts in our legs and arms. There was little time for dressing the wounds. + 

A couple of hours later, after reaching the clearing, we heard a distant whistle, the signal of the instructor I had left behind. He was in high glee over his own experience, and in spite of our precarious position we heartily enjoyed his story. + 

The mob, it appeared, had returned to our billets, as we had anticipated, fully armed. The men were in a ferocious mood and rushed into the dugouts. They were thunderstruck upon discovering that the dugouts were deserted! They ran about like madmen, scouring the neighbourhood, but there was no sign of us. They could not realize that in such a brief space of time the Battalion had been marched away with all the equipment. + 

“The witch!” they shouted. “She must have spirited them away.” + 

But this did not seem a plausible explanation to the cooler heads. They telephoned to Headquarters, but received an answer of complete astonishment. Nobody there knew of my sudden withdrawal. The mob started along the road to Krasnoye Selo and soon overtook my supply wagons, which were in charge of old soldiers. These said that they had received orders to leave for Krasnoye, and that they knew nothing of the movements of the Battalion. The mob decided that we were on the same road and sent a couple of horsemen to overtake us. The horsemen, of course, returned empty-handed. + 

“She is a witch!” many soldiers shook their heads with superstitious awe. + 

“A witch, undoubtedly!” was repeated in tones of uneasiness by others. + 

The four men with our flag lost their way in the woods, and seeing that they did not arrive, I sent out about twenty girls and instructors to look for them. They were finally discovered. Next we had to get in touch with the supply wagons, and managed to bring them to our camp. Once this was accomplished we were fairly well established behind the protection of the thickets. There was only one question confronting us: How to get away in safety. + 

Molodechno was not to be thought of. Krasnoye Selo was also a dangerous place, as our pursuers had warned the garrison there of our approach and had requested that we should be dealt with summarily. The prospects were far from cheerful. I decided to get into secret communication with the Commandant through the instructors. + 

We camped in the forest for a couple of days, till the Commandant found an opportunity to slip out and come to see us. We held a conference for the purpose of finding a way out of the dilemma. + 

It was agreed that the career of the Battalion was ended and that nothing remained but to disband it. The problem was, how? The Commandant suggested that he should procure women’s garments for the girls and let them return home. + 

The plan did not strike me as practical. It was hardly possible to obtain nearly two hundred costumes for us in a day or two. It might, therefore, take a couple of weeks to disband the Battalion, which would not be advisable. I proposed a different scheme, namely, to discharge the girls singly and dispatch them to a score of scattered stations and villages. This plan was adopted, as it did not seem difficult for individual members of the Battalion to board trains or obtain vehicles in the neighbouring villages and get away. + 

It took a day or so for the Commandant to get ready the necessary documents and funds for all the girls. Then the disbanding began. Every ten or fifteen minutes a girl was sent away, now in one direction, now in the opposite. It was a pitiful finale to an heroic chapter in the history of Russian womanhood. The Battalion had struggled gallantly to stem the tide of destruction and ignorance. But the tide was too strong. It had swamped all that was good and noble in Russia. Russia herself seemed wrecked forever in that maelstrom of unbridled passions. One did not want to live. There remained only the glory and satisfaction of sharing the overthrow of all that had been honourable in the country. Everything seemed upside down. There was no friendship, only hatred. The unselfishness of the days when Tsarism was overthrown, now, after the fall of Kerensky, had given place to a wave of greed and revenge. Every soldier, every peasant and workman, saw red. They all hunted phantom bourgeoisie, bloodsuckers, exploiters. When freedom was first born there was universal brotherhood and joy. Now intolerance and petty covetousness reigned supreme. + 

As I kissed my girls goodbye and we exchanged blessings, my heart quivered with emotion. What had I not hoped from this Battalion! But as I searched my soul I could find little to regret. I had done my duty by my country. Perhaps I had been too rash when I had imagined that this handful of women could save the army from ruin. And yet I was not alone in that expectation. There was a time when even Rodzianko believed as I did, and Brusilov and Kerensky had thought that the self-sacrifice of the women would shame the men. But the men knew no shame. + 

My girls had departed. Of the whole Battalion there remained only myself and a few of the instructors. In the evening I made my way to the road where a motorcar was waiting to smuggle me away. The Commandant had arranged for me to go to Petrograd under the personal escort of two members of the Army Committee. They were to join me at the train. The peril lay in the journey to the station. Hidden at the bottom of the car, I was driven to the railway, where the two men took me under their protection. I had decided to go home, to the village of Tutalsk, near Tomsk, where my people had moved during the war. + 

XVII + 

Facing Lenin and Trotsky + 

Petrograd seemed populated by Red Guards. One could not make a step without encountering one. They kept a strict watch over the station and all the incoming and outgoing trains. My escorts left me on the station platform, as they were to return to the front immediately. + 

I had hardly emerged from the station, intending to look for a cabman, when a Red Guard Commissary, accompanied by a private with a naked sword, stopped me with the polite query: + 

“Madame Bochkareva?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“Will you come with me, please?” he suggested. + 

“Where?” I asked. + 

“To the Smolny Institute.” + 

“But why?” + 

“Because I have orders to detain all officers returning from the front,” he replied. + 

“But I am only going home!” I tried to argue. + 

“Yes, I understand. But as an officer you will also understand that I must obey orders. They will probably release you.” + 

He hailed a cabman and we drove to the Smolny Institute, the seat of the Bolshevik Government. It impressed me as a strongly garrisoned fortress. There were armed sentries everywhere. Accompanied by Red Guards I was led inside. There were Guards at every desk. I was taken before a sailor. He was very rough and brusque. + 

“Where are you going?” he demanded curtly. + 

“I am going home, to a village near Tomsk,” I replied. + 

“Then why are you armed?” he sneered. + 

“Because I am an officer, and this is my uniform,” I answered. + 

He blazed up. + 

“An officer, eh? You will be an officer no more. Give me that pistol and sword!” he ordered. + 

The arms were those given to me at the consecration of the flag of the Battalion. I prized them too much to hand them over to this rogue of a sailor, and I refused to comply with his demand. He grew furious. It would have been useless to resist as the room was full of Red Guards. I declared that if he wanted my arms he could take them, but I would never surrender them myself. + 

He violently tore the pistol and sword from me and pronounced me under arrest. There was a dark cellar in the Institute which was used as a place of detention, and I was sent down there and locked up. I was hungry, but received no answer to all my calls, and remained in the hole till the following morning. As soon as I was brought upstairs I began to demand my arms. The various officials, however, remained deaf to my pleas. + 

I was informed that I should be taken before Lenin and Trotsky, and was soon led into a large, light room where two men of contrasting appearance were seated, apparently expecting my entrance. One had a typical Russian face. The other looked Jewish. The first was Nikolai Lenin, the second Leon Trotsky. Both arose as I stepped in and walked toward me a few steps, stretching out their hands and greeting me courteously. + 

Lenin apologized for my arrest, explaining that he had learned of it only that morning. Inviting me to a seat, the two Bolshevik chiefs complimented me upon my record of service and courage, and began to sketch to me the era of happiness that they intended to procure for Russia. They talked simply, smoothly and very beautifully. It was for the common people, the toiling masses, the disinherited that they were fighting. They wanted justice for all. Wasn’t I of the working class myself? Yes, I was. Wouldn’t I join them and cooperate with their party in bringing happiness to the oppressed peasant and workman? They wanted peasant women like myself: they had the highest esteem for them. + 

“You will bring Russia not to happiness but to ruin,” I said. + 

“Why?” they asked. “We seek only what is good and right. The people are with us. You saw for yourself that the army is behind us.” + 

“I will tell you why,” I replied. “I have no objection to your beautiful plans for the future of Russia. But as for the immediate situation, if you take the soldiers away from the front, you are destroying the country.” + 

“But we do not want any more war. We are going to conclude peace,” the two leaders replied. + 

“How can you conclude peace without soldiers at the front? You are demobilizing the army already. You have got to make peace first and then let the men go home. I myself want peace, but if I were in the trenches I would never leave before peace had been signed. What you are doing will ruin Russia.” + 

“We are sending the soldiers away because the Germans will not advance against us, anyhow. They do not want to fight either,” was the reply. + 

It irritated me, this view of the Germans held by the men who now controlled the Government of my country. + 

“You don’t know the Germans!” I cried out. “We have lost so many lives in this war, and now you would give everything away without a struggle! You don’t know war! Take the soldiers away from the front and the Germans will come and seize upon everything they can lay hands on. This is war. I am a soldier and I know. But you don’t. Why did you take it upon yourselves to rule the country? You will ruin it!” I exclaimed in anguish. + 

Lenin and Trotsky laughed. I could see the irony in their eyes. They were learned and worldly. They had written books and travelled in foreign lands. And who was I? An illiterate Russian peasant woman. My lecture undoubtedly afforded them amusement. They smiled condescendingly at my suggestion that they did not know what war was in reality. + 

I rejected their proposal to cooperate with them and asked if I were free to leave. One of them rang a bell and a Red Guard entered. He was requested to accompany me out of the room and to provide me with a passport and a free ticket to Tomsk. Before leaving I asked for my arms, but was refused. I explained that they were partly of gold and given to me on an occasion that rendered them almost priceless to me. They answered that I would receive them back as soon as order was restored. Of course, I never got them back. + 

I left the room without saying goodbye. In the next room I was given a passport, and proceeded by tramcar to the station. I decided not to linger in Petrograd and to depart without even seeing any of my friends. On the way I was recognized everywhere, but was allowed to proceed unmolested. The same evening I boarded one of the three cars attached to a train that went to Irkutsk by way of Vologda and Chelyabinsk. I was going home. With me I had some two thousand roubles (about £211 2s. 3d.), saved during my command of the Battalion, when I had received a salary of four hundred roubles (about £42 4s. 5d.) a month. + 

The train was overcrowded with returning soldiers, almost all ardent Bolsheviks. I remained in the compartment for eight days, leaving it only occasionally at night. I sent out a companion passenger to buy food for me at the stations. As we neared Chelyabinsk, at the end of the eight days, the crowd had diminished in number, and I thought, I might safely go out on to the gangway and get off at the great station for a little walk. No sooner did I appear on the gangway than I was recognized by some soldiers. + 

“Oh, look who is here!” one exclaimed. + 

“It’s Bochkareva! The harlot!” a couple of others echoed. + 

“She ought to be killed!” shouted somebody. + 

“Why?” I turned on them. “What harm have I done to you? Oh, you fools, fools!” + 

The train slowed down, approaching the station. I had scarcely turned my head away from the insolent fellows, when I was suddenly lifted by two pairs of arms, swung to and fro once, twice, three times, and thrown off the moving train. + 

Fortunately the momentum of the swinging was so great that I was thrown across the parallel tracks and landed in a bank of snow piled along the railway. It was the end of November, 1917. It was all so sudden that the laughter of the brutes behind me still rang in my ears as I became conscious of pain in my right knee. + 

The train was halted before pulling into the station. In a few moments a big crowd collected round me, composed of passengers, railway officials and others. All were indignant at the brutality of the soldiers. The Commandant of the station and members of the local committee hurried to the spot. I was placed on a stretcher and taken to the hospital. It was found that I had a dislocated knee, and my leg was bandaged. I then declared that I desired to continue the journey, and I was given a berth in a hospital coach attached to a train going east. There were attendants and a medical assistant on the car. + 

My injured leg grew more and more painful as I proceeded homeward. It began to swell, and the medical assistant telegraphed to the stationmaster of Tutalsk, the village in which my family now lived, to provide a stretcher for me. + 

My sister, Arina, was employed at the station as attendant at the tea-urn, which is always kept boiling at Russian railway stations. It was this employment of hers that had caused the family to move to Tutalsk from Tomsk, where they had no means of livelihood whatever. When the message from the doctor in charge of the car reached my sister and through her my parents, there was an outburst of grief. It was three years since they had seen their Marusia and now she was apparently being brought to them on her deathbed! + 

On the fourth day of the journey from Chelyabinsk the train stopped at Tutalsk. My leg was badly swollen and was as heavy as a log. The pains were agonizing. My face was deadly pale. + 

A stretcher was prepared for me at the station. My sisters, my mother and father and the stationmaster were at the door of the coach when I was carried out. My mother shrieked in heartrending tones, “My Marusia! My Manka!” stretched her hands toward heaven and threw herself full length on me, mourning over me as if I were ready for burial. + 

Her prodigal daughter had returned, my mother sobbed, but in what a condition! She thought that I must have been wounded and have asked to be sent home to die. I could not speak, I could only grasp her bony arms, as my throat was choked with a tempest of tears and sobs. Everybody was crying, my sisters calling me by caressing names, my father standing over me bent and white, and even the strange stationmaster.⁠ ⁠… + 

I became hysterical and the doctor was sent for. He had me removed home immediately, promising in response to my mother’s entreaties to do everything in his power for me. I was ill for a month, passing Christmas and meeting the New Year, 1918, in bed. + 

The two thousand roubles I had saved I gave to my parents. But this sum, which would have been reckoned a fortune before the war, was barely sufficient to keep us for a few months. It cost nearly a hundred roubles (about £10 11s.) to buy a pair of shoes for my youngest sister, Nadia, who was going about barefoot! It cost almost twice as much to buy her a secondhand jacket at the Tomsk market. Manufactured goods sold at a premium when they were to be had, but it was much more difficult to find what one needed than to pay an exorbitant price for it. There was plenty of flour in the country. But the peasants would not sell it cheaply because they could get nothing in town for less than fifty or a hundred times its former price. The result was that flour sold at sixty roubles (about £6 6s. 8d.) a pood (thirty-two pounds)! It may be imagined how far two thousand roubles would carry one in Russia. + 

Tutalsk had also been swept by the hurricane of Bolshevism. There were many soldiers who had returned from the front imbued with Bolshevik teachings. Just before my arrival the newly-fledged heretics even burned the village church, to the great horror of the older inhabitants. It was not an unusual case; it was typical of the time. Hundreds of thousands of deluded young men had returned from the trenches with the passion to destroy, to tear down everything that had existed before: the old system of Government, the church, nay, God Himself⁠—all in preparation for the new order of life they were going to establish. + 

But one institution⁠—the scourge of the nation⁠—they failed to wipe out. Nay more, they restored it. The Tsar had abolished vodka. The prohibition was continued in force by the new regime, but only on paper. Nearly every returned soldier took to distilling vodka at home, and the old plague of the country recovered its power and took its part in the building of the Bolsheviks’ new world. + 

Every town and village had its committee or Soviet. They were supposed to carry out orders from the Central Government. An order was issued to confiscate all articles of gold and silver. Committees searched every house for such belongings. There was, also, or was supposed to be, an order taxing furniture and clothes. When the taxes arbitrarily demanded were not paid, the furniture and clothes were taken away. + 

In the towns it was the townsmen who suffered, in the villages the peasants, all under the pretext of confiscating the riches of the bourgeoisie. It was sufficient for a peasant to buy a new overcoat, perhaps with his last savings, for him to be branded as an exploiter and lose his precious garment. The peculiar thing about such cases was the fact that the confiscated article would almost invariably appear on the back of one of the Bolshevik ringleaders. It was merely looting, and the methods were pure terrorism, practised mostly by the returned soldiers. + 

I received some letters at Tutalsk. One was from my adjutant, Princess Tatuyeva, who had arrived safely in Tiflis, her native town. + 

One morning I went to the post office to ask for letters. + 

“There goes Bochkareva!” I heard a man cry out. + 

“Ah, Bochkareva! She is for the old regime!” another fellow replied, apparently one of the Bolshevik soldiers. + 

There were several of them and they shouted threats and insults at me. I did not reply but returned home with a heavy heart. Even in my own home I was not safe. + 

“My God,” I prayed, “what has come over the Russian people? Is this my reward for the sacrifices I have made for my country?” + 

I resolved not to leave the house again. Surely this madness would not last long, I thought. I spent most of the day reading the Bible and praying to Heaven for the awakening and enlightenment of my people. + 

On the 7th of January, 1918, I received a telegram from Petrograd, signed by General X. It read: + 

Come. You are needed. + 

The same day I bought a ticket for the capital, bade farewell to my family, and set out. I removed the epaulets from my uniform, thus appearing in the garb of a private. + 

About this time the Germans, to the profound shock of the revolutionary masses, began their sudden advance into Russia. It had an almost miraculous effect on the Bolshevik sympathizers. The train was as usual packed with soldiers, but there was a noticeable difference in their expression and conversation. All the braggadocio had been knocked out of them by the enemy’s action. They had been lulled into the sweet belief that peace had come and that a golden age was about to open for them. They could not reconcile that with the swift advance of the Kaiser’s soldiers toward Petrograd and Moscow. + 

It was refreshing, exhilarating to listen to some of the men. + 

“We have been sold!” one heard here and there. + 

“We were told that the German soldiers would not advance if we left the front,” was another frequent expression. + 

“It is not the common people, it is the German bourgeoisie that is fighting us now,” was an argument ordinarily given in answer to the first opinions, “and there is nothing to be afraid of. There will soon be a revolution in Germany.” + 

“Who knows,” some would doubtfully remark, “that Lenin and Trotsky have not delivered us into the hands of the accursed Germans?” + 

There were always delegates from local committees going somewhere, and they talked to the soldiers, answering questions and explaining things. They could not very well explain away the German treachery, but they held out the promise of a revolution in Germany almost any day. The men listened but were not greatly impressed by the assurances of the agitators. One felt that they were still groping in the dark, although the light was dawning on their minds. The awakening could not be long postponed. + 

I had a safe and comfortable journey to Petrograd. Nobody molested me, nobody threatened my life. I arrived at the capital on the 18th of January. The station was not as strongly guarded as two months before. Red Guards were not in such evidence in the streets, which appeared more normal. I went to one of my former patronesses and learned of the terror in which the capital lived. + 

The following day I called on General X, who greeted me cordially. Kiev, he told me, had just been captured by the Germans. They were threatening Petrograd, and the opposition of the Red Guards would not prevent or even postpone its capture by one day if the Germans were bent upon taking the city. + 

Red Terror was rampant in Petrograd. The river was full of corpses of officers who had been slain and lynched. Those who were alive were leading a wretched existence, fearing to show themselves in public because of the temper of the mob, and therefore on the verge of death from starvation. Even more harrowing was the situation of the country. It was falling into the hands of the enemy so rapidly that immediate action of some sort was imperative. + 

A secret meeting of officers and sympathizers had been held at which it was decided to get in touch with General Kornilov, who was reported as operating in the Don region. There were so many conflicting reports concerning Kornilov that it had been suggested that a courier should be sent to him to find out definitely his plans and his resources. After an exhaustive discussion General X suggested that I, as a woman, was the only person who could possibly get through the Bolshevik lines and reach Kornilov. Would I go? + 

“I would not join the officers here or Kornilov in the South for the purpose of waging war against my own people,” I replied. “I can’t do it because every Russian is dear to my heart, whether he be a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, or a Red Guard. But I will undertake to go to Kornilov, in order to satisfy your, as well as my own, desire for information.” + 

It was agreed that I should dress as a Sister of Mercy. A costume was obtained for me, and I put it on over my uniform. My soldier’s cap I tucked away in a pocket and donned the ordinary headgear of a Sister of Mercy, which left visible only my eyes, nose, mouth and cheeks, and made me look like a matron of about forty-five. + 

A passport was furnished to me, bearing the name of Alexandra Leontievna Smirnova, which was to be my name on the journey. As I wore army boots there was no danger of my trousers showing under the skirt. I took with me a letter from Princess Tatuyeva, in which she invited me to visit her in her home in the Caucasus. A ticket from Petrograd to Kislovodsk, a Caucasian health resort within several hundred miles of the place where Kornilov was stationed, was given me, to be used only in an emergency. It was agreed that in case of danger I should discard my garb of a Sister of Mercy, and disclose my identity, supported by the evidence of the emergency ticket to Kislovodsk and the letter from Princess Tatuieva, declare that I was on my way to take a cure at that place. In addition, I was, of course, provided with money for expenses. + 

It was very amusing to lose one’s identity and appear as a complete stranger. I was no longer Maria Bochkareva, but Alexandra Smirnova. And as I glanced at myself in the mirror it seemed even to my own eyes that I had been reincarnated from a soldier into a Sister of Mercy. + 

When I started from Petrograd my destination was Nikitino, a station which one would ordinarily pass on the way to Kislovodsk. Nobody recognized me on the train. Sometimes a soldier asked: + 

“Where are you going, little sister?” + 

“Home, to Kislovodsk,” was my usual answer. + 

The next question would be about the service I had seen at the front, and the sectors at which I worked. I would reply with facts from my actual experience as a soldier. There was nothing strange about a Sister of Mercy returning home, and as I preferred silence and solitude to conversation, I reached Nikitino, at the end of several days, without any trouble. + 

From Nikitino all trains were by order of the authorities switched off to other lines and sent to their destination by roundabout routes. The road running directly south from Nikitino was used for military purposes exclusively by the Bolshevik forces engaged in fighting Kornilov. Twenty miles farther on, at Zverevo, the so-called front began. Private passengers were therefore not allowed to go to Zverevo. + 

It was evident that vast preparations were being made for a campaign against General Kornilov. There were many ammunition trains and large numbers of men concentrated there waiting transportation. There was apparently no lack of money, and there was iron discipline, reminding one of the early days of the war. There was order everywhere. + 

The first problem confronting me was how to get to Zverevo. I went to the Commandant of the station, complained that I was penniless, that I could not wait indefinitely for the end of the fighting to return home to Kislovodsk, and urgently begged him to advise me what to do. I made such an appeal to him that he finally said: + 

“A munition train is just about to leave for Zverevo. Come, get into it and go to Zverevo. Perhaps they will pass you through the lines at the front. There is a second-class carriage attached to the train.” + 

He led me to the carriage, in which were only the five soldiers who were in charge of the train. He introduced me to the chief of them as a stranded Sister of Mercy and asked for their indulgence. I thanked the obliging Commandant profusely and from the bottom of my heart. + 

The train moved out of the station, but although satisfied with the first stage of my enterprise, I was by no means cheerful as to my prospects in Zverevo, the Bolshevik war zone. The head of the party sat down opposite me. He was a dirty, ugly muzhik. I did not encourage him to engage me in conversation, but he was evidently wholly insensible to my feelings in the matter. + 

After the preliminary questions, he expressed his surprise that I should have chosen such an inopportune moment to go to Kislovodsk. + 

“But my mother is ill there,” I lied, “perhaps she is dying now. It broke her heart when I went to the front.” + 

“Ah, that’s different,” he declared, moving over to my side. “They will pass you in that case.” + 

From an expression of sympathy he had no hesitation in proceeding to an attempt at flirtation. He moved closer to me and even touched my arm. It was a delicate situation. I could not well afford to provoke his antagonism, so I warded off his advances with a smile and a coquettish glance. He treated me to a good meal, during which the conversation turned to general conditions. He was, of course, a rabid Bolshevik and a savage opponent of Kornilov and all officers. My part in the conversation was confined to brief expressions of acquiescence, till suddenly he asked: + 

“Have you heard of the Women’s Battalion of Death?” + 

My heart thumped violently. + 

“What Battalion did you say?” I asked with an air of ignorance. + 

“Why, Bochkareva’s Battalion!” he replied in a loud voice. + 

“Bochkareva’s?” I asked reminiscently. “Oh, yes, Bochkareva; yes, I have heard about her.” + 

“The ⸻! She is a Kornilovka!” he exclaimed. “She is for the old regime.” + 

“How do you know?” I asked. “I thought she was nonpartisan.” + 

“We know them all, the counter-revolutionists! She is one of them,” my companion declared emphatically. + 

“Well, but the Battalion of Death no longer exists, and Bochkareva has apparently vanished,” I suggested. + 

“Yes, we know how they vanish. Many of them have vanished like that. Kornilov had vanished, too. Then they all pop up again somewhere or other and cause trouble,” he declared. + 

“Now, what would you do to her if she were to pop up here?” I ventured to inquire. + 

“Kill her. She would never get away alive, you may stake an oath on that,” he assured me. “We have the photographs of all the leading counterrevolutionaries, so that they can’t conceal their identity if they are caught.” + 

The conversation then took a more profitable turn for me. I learned all about the plans of the Bolshevik force against Kornilov. The arrival of the train at Zverevo put an end to my association with my travelling companion. I thanked him warmly for all his kindness to me. + 

“You know, Sister,” he unexpectedly declared before parting, “I like you. Will you marry me?” + 

I was not prepared for this. It rather took me aback. He was such a dirty, repulsive-looking creature, and the proposal was so ludicrous that it was with difficulty that I controlled my desire to laugh. The situation was not one for merriment. + 

“Yes, with pleasure,” I responded to his offer, with as much graciousness as I could command, “but after I have seen my mother.” + 

He gave me his address and asked me to write to him, which I promised to do. Perhaps he is still waiting for a letter from me. + 

I left him at the train and went toward the station. There were Red Guards, sailors, soldiers, even Cossacks, who had joined the Bolsheviks, on the platform and inside the station. But there were no private citizens in sight. I sat down in a corner and waited. I was taken for a nurse attached to the Bolshevik army, and was not molested. One, two, three hours passed and still I could find no opportunity to proceed to my destination. A civilian, who somehow found his way into the station, was placed under arrest before my eyes without any preliminaries. I, therefore, preferred to sit quietly in my corner rather than move about. + 

Finally a pleasant looking young soldier became interested in me. He walked up and asked: + 

“Why are you waiting here, Sister?” + 

“I am waiting for a comrade,” I answered. + 

“What is his name?” he inquired, interested. + 

“Oh, that is a secret,” I replied in a teasing manner. + 

He sat down near me, and asked me if I had worked at the front. I said that unfortunately I had been detailed only to hospitals in the rear. + 

“Why was that man arrested?” I ventured to ask. + 

“Because he had no papers from the Soviet,” was the reply. “He will be shot immediately.” + 

“Do you execute everybody who has no papers?” I asked. + 

“Everybody, without distinction.” + 

“Even women?” I inquired. + 

“Yes, even women,” was the reply. “This is a war zone.” + 

“Holy Mother!” I exclaimed in horror. “How terrible! You really slay them all? Without even a trial?” + 

“There is little time for trials here. Once fallen here, there is no escape. Our firing squads make an end of all suspected persons on the spot,” he informed me kindly. “Come, would you like to see the execution-grounds? They are quite near here.” + 

I followed him reluctantly. A few hundred feet away from the station we stopped. I could go no further. The field in front of us was covered with scores of mangled, naked corpses. It made my flesh creep. + 

“There are about two hundred of them here, mostly officers who had joined or sought to join Kornilov,” he explained. + 

I could not help shivering. The dreadful scene nearly shattered my nerves and it was all I could do not to collapse. + 

“Ah, you women, women,” my escort nodded sympathetically. “You are all weak. You don’t know what war is. Still,” he admitted, “there are some who can compare with men. Take Bochkareva, for instance, she would not shudder at sights like this.” + 

“Who is she, this Bochkareva?” I was curious. + 

“Haven’t you heard of her?” he asked in surprise. “Why, she was a soldier of the old regime and organized the Women’s Battalion of Death. She is for Kornilov and the bourgeoisie. They gave her an officer’s rank and bought her over to their side, although she is of peasant blood.” + 

It was all very interesting, this theory of my corruption. I had heard it before, but not stated in such definite terms. At the same time I was haunted by the picture of those mangled bodies, and the thought rankled in my mind of the treacherous Bolsheviks who had opposed capital punishment in the war against Germany but introduced it in the most brutal fashion in the war against their own brothers. + 

I then told my friend of the trouble in which I found myself, that I was penniless, that I had to get home to Kislovodsk and that I did not know how to get through the front. He explained to me that the so-called front was not a continuous line but a series of posts, maintained on this side by the Bolsheviks and on the opposite side by Kornilov. + 

“Sometimes,” he added, “the peasants of the neighbouring villages are allowed by both sides to pass through to Novocherkassk, Kornilov’s headquarters. If you follow that road,” and he pointed to it, “you will come to a village about three miles from here. One of the peasants may be willing to convey you across.” + 

I thanked him for the valuable information, and we parted friends. The walk to the village was uneventful. On the outskirts of it I saw an old muzhik working outside of his hut. There was a stable and horses attached to it. + 

“Good day, grandfather!” I greeted the old man. + 

“Good day, little sister,” he answered. + 

“Would you drive me to the city?” I asked. + 

“Great God! How is it possible? The Bolsheviks are fighting in front of the city, and they don’t let anybody pass,” he said. + 

“But people do go sometimes, don’t they?” + 

“Yes, sometimes they do.” + 

“Well, I will give you fifty roubles for driving me to the city,” I offered. + 

The muzhik scratched his neck, reconsidering the matter. + 

“But aren’t you a political?” he inquired cautiously. + 

“No,” I assured him, “I am not.” + 

He went into the cabin to talk it over with his baba. It was a tempting offer and her consent was apparently quickly obtained, for he soon returned and said: + 

“All right, we will go. Come into the house. We will have tea and something to eat.” + 

The invitation was welcome indeed, as I had grown hungry during my long wait at the station and the walk to the village. When we had finished our tea and lunch and the peasant harnessed his horse, I asked for a large apron, which I put on over my clothes. I then asked for the baba’s winter shawl and wrapped it over my head and shoulders, almost completely covering my face, so that I no longer looked like a Sister of Mercy, but one of the local peasant-women. + 

Praying to God to grant me a safe journey, I seated myself in the cart. The horse started off along the road. + 

The Bolshevik front was still ahead of me. But I was making progress.⁠ ⁠… + 

XVIII + 

Caught in a Bolshevik Deathtrap + 

“What shall I say to the sentries?” the muzhik asked me as we approached the front positions. + 

“Tell them that you are carrying your sick baba to a hospital in the city, as she is suffering from high fever,” I answered, and I asked him to wrap me in the huge fur overcoat on which he was seated. I was warm enough without it, but I thought that it would raise my temperature even more, and I was not mistaken. Under all the wrappings I looked more like a heap than a human form. When we reached the outposts I began to moan as if in pain. + 

“Where are you going?” I heard a voice ask my driver sharply, as the horse stopped. + 

“To a hospital in the city,” was the answer. + 

“What have you got there?” the inquirer continued. + 

“My baba. She is dying. I am taking her to a doctor,” the peasant replied. + 

Here I groaned louder than ever. I was suffocating. My heart was thumping with dread of a sudden exposure and discovery. Every particle of time seemed an age. + 

The sentry who had stopped us apparently talked the matter over with some of his comrades, to the accompaniment of my loud moans. Without uncovering my face he issued a pass to the muzhik. + 

My heart beat joyfully as the horse started off at a rapid pace. For a while I still held my breath, hardly daring to believe that I had left Bolshevik territory behind me with so little difficulty. + 

After some time we arrived at Kornilov’s front. The posts along it were held by officers, of whom his force was almost exclusively composed. At one such post we were stopped by an imperative “Halt!” + 

The driver was about to repeat the story of his sick baba when I surprised him by throwing off the fur coat, then the shawl, and jumping out of the vehicle, heaving a deep sigh of relief. I could not help laughing. + 

The muzhik must have thought me mad at first. The officers at the post could not understand it either. + 

“What the devil!” a couple of them muttered under their breath. I proceeded very coolly to pay the fifty roubles to the peasant, and thereupon to dismiss him, to his great amazement. + 

“I shall get to the city all right from here,” I informed him. + 

“The deuce you will!” blurted out the officer in charge. “Who are you?” + 

“Why, can’t you see, I am a Sister of Mercy,” I answered impatiently. + 

“Where are you going?” + 

“I am going to see General Kornilov,” I said, laughing. + 

The officers were getting furious. + 

“You will not go a step further,” the chief officer ordered. + 

“Oh, yes, I will,” I announced emphatically. + 

“You are arrested!” was the reply. + 

I burst out laughing, while the officers turned white with fury. + 

“Don’t you recognize me? I am Bochkareva,” and I threw off my headdress of the Sister of Mercy, revealing my own self. The officers gasped, and then immediately crowded round me congratulating me and shaking me by the hand. Kornilov was notified by telephone of my arrival and of the joke I had played on the sentries. + 

“How do you do, little sister?” he greeted me laughingly when I was brought to his headquarters. The story of my arrival and of the way I had got through the lines amused him very much. He looked very thin and somewhat aged, but as energetic as ever. + 

I reported to him that I was sent from Petrograd by General X and other officers, for the purpose of ascertaining his plans and exact situation. I also informed him that the Bolsheviks were making big preparations for an attack against him, that I had seen eleven cars with ammunition at Zverevo, and that the blow was planned to take place in a couple of days. + 

Kornilov replied that he knew of the impending offensive and that his condition was precarious. He had no money and no food, while the Bolsheviks were amply supplied with both. His soldiers were deserting him one by one. He was cut off from his friends and surrounded by enemies. + 

“Was it your intention to remain with me and join my force?” he asked me. + 

“No,” I said, “I could not fight against my own people. The Russian soldier is dear to me, although he has been led astray for the present.” + 

“It is also very hard for me to fight the men that I loved so much,” he declared. “But they have turned beasts now. We are fighting for our lives, for our uniforms. The life of every Russian officer is at the mercy of the mob. It is a question of organizing for self-defence. One cannot hope to do much for the country, if the Bolsheviks are waging civil war when the Germans are advancing into Russia. This is a time for peace and union among all classes. It is a time for presenting a united front to the enemy of the Motherland. But Bolshevism has perverted the minds of the people. What is necessary, therefore, is to enlighten the masses. We can’t hope to enlighten them by fighting. If it were possible to organize a counter-propaganda, to convince the Russian peasants that the Bolsheviks are rapidly driving our country to utter ruin, then they would rise and make an end of Lenin and Trotsky, elect a new Government, and drive the Germans out of Russia. This is the only solution that I can see, unless the Allies aid us in conciliating our soldiers and reestablishing a front against Germany.” + 

This, in substance, was Kornilov’s view of conditions in Russia, when I saw him in February, 1918. I remained only one day at his headquarters. From conversations with the men attached to his Staff, I learned that Kornilov’s force comprised only about three thousand men. The Bolshevik army opposing it was about twenty times its strength. I left Novocherkassk in the evening, after an affectionate parting from Kornilov. He kissed me as he bade me farewell, and I wished him success for the sake of the country. But there was no success in prospect. We both knew it only too well. A heavy darkness had settled on Russia, stifling all that was still noble and righteous. + 

Encouraged by my success in reaching Kornilov’s line, I determined to return by myself. I was taken to the outposts by a group of officers, and from there, accompanied by their blessings, I started out through the war zone alone. I crawled on all-fours as if through No Man’s Land, and advanced a couple of versts without any mishap. The experience I had gained at the front stood me in good stead. I scented the approach of a patrol and hid just in time to escape being observed. The patrol turned out to be one of Kornilov’s force, but I remained hidden. After some more crawling I caught the sound of voices coming from the direction of a coal-mine and judged the place to be one of the front positions. Exercising extreme caution, I managed to pass beyond it safely. Some distance away, dimly standing out against the horizon, was a wood. + 

A Bolshevik force got wind of the patrol I had encountered and went out to capture it by a flank operation. I decided to conceal myself behind a pile of coal and wait till quiet was restored. On my right and left were dumps of coal. + 

Keeping close against the coal-heap, I breathlessly awaited the result of the enterprise. After a little while the Bolsheviks returned with the prey. They had captured the patrol! There were twenty captives, fifteen officers and five cadets, I discovered. They were led to a place only about twenty feet distant from the coal-heap behind which I was concealed. + 

The hundred Bolshevik soldiers surrounded the officers, cursed them, beat them with the butts of their rifles, tore off their epaulets and handled them in the most brutal fashion. The five youthful cadets must have suddenly seen an opportunity to escape, for they dashed off a few minutes afterwards. But they failed in their attempt. They were caught several hundred feet away and brought back. + 

The Bolshevik soldiers then decided to gouge out the eyes of the five youths in punishment for their attempt to run away. Each of the victims was held by a couple of men in such a position as to allow the bloody torturers to do their frightful work. In all my experiences of horror this was the most horrible crime I witnessed. + 

One of the officers could not contain himself and shrieked: + 

“Murderers! Beasts! Kill me!” + 

He was struck with a bayonet, but only wounded. All the fifteen officers begged to be killed outright. But their request was refused. + 

“You must be taken before the Staff first,” was the answer. Soon they were led away. + 

The five martyrs were left to expire in agony where they were. + 

My heart was petrified. My blood congealed. I thought I was going mad, that in a second I should not be able to control myself and should jump out, inviting death or perhaps similar torture. + 

I finally gathered strength to turn round and crawl away, in the opposite direction, toward the woods. At a distance of several hundred feet from the forest it seemed to me safe to rise and run for it. But somebody noticed me from the mine. + 

“A spy!” went up in a chorus from several throats, and a number of soldiers set off after me, shooting as they ran. + 

Nearer and nearer the pursuers came. I raced faster than I ever did before in my life. Here, within another hundred feet or so, were the woods. There, I might still hope to hide. I prayed for strength to get there. Bullets whistled by me, but firing as they ran the men could not take aim. + 

The woods! the woods! It was the one thought that possessed my whole being. Louder and louder grew the shouts behind me: + 

“A female-spy! A female-spy!” + 

The woods were within my reach. Another bound, and I was in them. Onward I dashed like a wild deer. Was it because there were only a few soldiers left at the post and they could not desert it to engage in a hunt, or because the men decided that I could not escape from the forest anyhow, that my pursuers did not follow me into the woods? I know only that they were satisfied with sending a stream of bullets into the forest and then ceased to trouble about me. + 

I concealed myself in a hollow till everything was quiet again. Then I got out and tried to work out the right direction, but I made a mistake at first and returned to the edge at which I had entered. I then walked to the opposite side, struck a path and before taking it, I threw off my costume of a Sister of Mercy and hid it, drew out my soldier’s cap, destroyed the passport of Smirnova, and appeared again in my own uniform. I realized that reports must have been sent out by my pursuers of a spy dressed as a nurse and determined that as Bochkareva I might still have a chance of life, but as Smirnova I was done for. + 

Day was breaking, but it was still dark in the woods. I met a soldier, who greeted me. I answered gruffly, and he passed on, evidently taking me for a comrade. A little later I encountered two or three other soldiers, but again passed them without being suspected. I pulled out my direct ticket to Kislovodsk and the letter from Princess Tatuyeva. These were my two trump-cards. After walking for about thirteen miles I came in view of the station at Zverevo. A decision had to be adopted without delay. I felt that loitering would be fatal, and so I made up my mind to go straight to the station, announce my identity, claim that I had lost my way and surrender myself. + 

When I opened the door of the station, which was filled with Red Guards, and appeared on the threshold, the men gaped at me as if I were an apparition. + 

“Bochkareva!” they gasped. + 

Without stopping to hear them I walked up to the first soldier, with my legs trembling and my heart in my mouth, and said: + 

“Where is the Commandant? Take me to the Commandant!” + 

He looked at me with an ugly expression, but obeyed the order and led me to an office, also packed with Red Guards, where a youth of not more than nineteen or twenty was introduced to me as the head of the investigation committee, who was acting as chief in the absence of the Commandant. Again everybody gave vent to exclamations of surprise at my unexpected appearance. + 

“Are you Bochkareva?” the young man inquired, showing me to a seat. I was pale, weak and travel-worn and I sank into the chair gratefully. Looking at the young man, hope kindled in my breast. He had a noble, winning face. + 

“Yes, I am Bochkareva,” I answered. “I am going to Kislovodsk, to cure my wound in the spine, and I have lost my way.” + 

“What were you thinking of? Are you in your senses? We are just preparing for an offensive against Kornilov. How could you take this route at such a time? Didn’t you know that your appearance here would mean your certain death?” the young man asked, greatly agitated over my fatal blunder. + 

“Why,” he continued, “I just had a telephone call telling that a woman-spy had crossed from Kornilov’s side early this morning. They are looking for her now. You see the situation into which you have brought yourself!” + 

The youthful chief was apparently favourably inclined toward me. I decided to try to win him over completely. + 

“But I came of my own accord,” I said, breaking into sobs. “I am innocent. I am just a sick woman, going to take a cure at the springs. Here is my ticket to Kislovodsk, and here is a letter from a friend of mine, my former adjutant, inviting me to come to the Caucasus. Surely you will not murder a poor, sick woman, if not for my own sake, at least for the sake of my wretched parents.” + 

Several of the Red Guards present cut short my entreaties with angry cries: + 

“Kill her! What is the use of letting her talk! Kill her, and there will be one slut less in the world!” + 

“Now wait a minute!” the Acting Commandant interrupted. “She has come to us of her own free will and is not one of the officers that are opposing us. There will be an investigation first and we will ascertain whether she is guilty or innocent. If she is guilty, we will shoot her.” + 

The words of the chief of the investigation committee gave me courage. He was evidently a humane and educated man. Subsequently I learned that he was a university student. His name was Ivan Ivanovitch Petrukhin. + 

As he was still discoursing, a man dashed in like a whirlwind, puffing, perspiring, but rubbing his hands in satisfaction. + 

“Ah, I have just finished a good job! Fifteen of them, all officers! The boys got them like that,” and he bowed and made a sign across the legs. “The first volley peppered their legs and threw them in a heap on the ground. Then they were bayoneted and slashed to pieces. Ha, ha, ha! There were five others captured with them, cadets. They tried to escape and the good fellows gouged their eyes out!” + 

I was petrified. The newcomer was of middle height, heavily built, and dressed in an officer’s uniform but without the epaulets. He looked savage, and his hideous laughter sent shudders up my spine. The bloodthirsty brute! Even Petrukhin’s face turned pale at his entrance. He was no less a person than the assistant to the Commander-in-Chief of the Bolshevik Army. His name was Pugatchov. + 

He did not notice me at first, so absorbed was in the story of the slaughter of the fifteen officers. + 

“And here we have a celebrity,” Petrukhin said, pointing at me. + 

The Assistant Commander made a step forward in military fashion, stared at me for an instant and then cried out in a terrifying voice: + 

“Bochkareva!” + 

He was beside himself with joy. + 

“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed diabolically. “Under the old regime. I should have received an award of the first class for capturing such a spy! I will run out and tell the soldiers and sailors the good news. They will know how to take care of her. Ha, ha, ha!” + 

I arose horror-stricken. I wanted to say something but was speechless. Petrukhin was greatly horrified too. He ran after Pugatchov, seized him by the arm, and shouted: + 

“What is the matter, have you gone mad? Madame Bochkareva came here of her own accord. Nobody captured her. She is going to Kislovodsk for a cure. She is a sick woman. She says that she lost her way. Anyhow, she has never fought against us. She returned home after we took over the power.” + 

“Ah, you don’t know her!” exclaimed Pugatchov. “She is a Kornilovka, the right hand of Kornilov.” + 

“Well, we are not releasing her, are we?” retorted Petrukhin. “I am going to call the committee together and have her story investigated.” + 

“An investigation!” scoffed Pugatchov. “And if you don’t find any evidence against her, will you let her go? You don’t know her! She is a dangerous character! How could we afford to save her? I wouldn’t even waste bullets on her. I would call the men and they would make a fine gruel of her!” + 

He made a motion toward the door. Petrukhin kept hold of him. + 

“But consider, she is a sick woman!” he pleaded. “What is the investigation committee for if not to investigate before punishing? Let the committee look into the matter and take whatever action it considers best.” + 

At this point the Commandant of the station arrived. He supported Petrukhin. “You can’t act like that in such a case,” he said, “this is clearly a matter for the investigation committee. If she is found guilty, we will execute her.” + 

Petrukhin went to summon the members of the investigation committee, who were all, twelve in number, common soldiers. As soon as he told the news to each member, he told me later, the men became threatening, talking of the good fortune that brought me into their hands. But Petrukhin argued with every one of them in my favour, as he was convinced of the genuineness of my plea. In such a manner he won some of them over to my side. + 

Meanwhile Pugatchov paced the room like a caged lion, thirsting for my blood. + 

“Ah, if I had only known it before, I would have had you shot in company with those fifteen officers!” he said to me. + 

“I should not have the heart to shoot at my own brothers, soldier or officer,” I remarked. + 

“Eh, you are canting already,” he turned on me. “We know your kind.” + 

“Taking you all in all,” I declared, “you are no better than the officers of the old regime.” + 

“Silence!” he commanded angrily. + 

Petrukhin came in with the committee at that instant. + 

“I must ask you not to make such an uproar,” he said, turning to Pugatchov, feeling more confident with the committee at his back. “She is in our hands now, and we will do justice. It is for us to decide if she is guilty. Leave her alone.” + 

There were only ten members of the committee within reach. The other two members were absent and the ten, as they made a quorum, decided to go on with the work. + 

“Whether you find her guilty or not, I will not let her get out of here alive!” Pugatchov declared. “What am I?” he added. “I am no enemy either.” + 

However, this threat worked in my favour, as it touched the committee’s pride. They were not to be overridden like that. Pugatchov demanded that I should be searched. + 

“I am at your disposal,” I said, “but before you proceed further I want to hand over to you this package of money. There are ten thousand roubles in it, sent to me by Princess Tatuieva, my former adjutant, to enable me to take the cure at the springs. I kept this money intact, because I hoped to return it to her upon reaching the Caucasus.” + 

The money had in reality been given to me by Kornilov, to secure my parents and myself from starvation in the future. + 

The valuable package was taken away, without much questioning. I was then ordered to undress completely. Petrukhin protested against it, but Pugatchov insisted. The dispute was settled by a vote, the majority being for my undressing. + 

The search was painstaking but fruitless. There was the ticket to Kislovodsk, the letter from Princess Tatuieva, a little bottle of holy water, given to me by my sister Nadia, and a scapular, presented to me before leaving for the front by one of the patronesses of the Battalion. + 

“Ah, now we have got it!” exclaimed Pugatchov, seizing the sacred bag. “There is the letter from Kornilov!” + 

The bag was ripped open and a scroll of paper was taken out on which a psalm had been written in a woman’s hand. I declared that the sin of tearing it open would fall on their heads and that I would not sew it up again. One of the soldiers obtained a needle and thread and sewed up the bag again. + 

The members of the committee apologized for having been obliged to have me searched in such a manner. + 

“What shall you do with me now?” I asked. + 

“We shall have you shot!” answered Pugatchov. + 

“What for?” I demanded in despair. + 

The brute did not reply. He merely smiled. + 

Petrukhin was afraid to defend me too warmly, lest he should be suspected of giving aid to a spy. He preferred to work indirectly for me, by influencing the members of the committee individually. It was decided, I believe, at the suggestion of Petrukhin, that the case should be submitted to the Commander-in-Chief, Sablin, for consideration and sentence. This was merely a device for preventing an immediate execution, but the feeling among the men was that my death was certain. Nevertheless, I was deeply grateful to Petrukhin for his humane attitude. He was a man of rare qualities, and among Bolsheviks he was almost unique. + 

I was ordered to a railway carriage used as a jail for captured officers and other prisoners. It was a death-chamber. Nobody escaped from it alive. When I was led inside, there were exclamations: + 

“Bochkareva! How did you get here? Coming from Kornilov?” + 

“No,” I answered, “I was on my way to Kislovodsk.” + 

There were about forty men in the car, the greater part of them officers. Among the latter there were two Generals. They were all shocked at my appearance among them. When my escort had departed, the prisoners talked more freely. To some of them I even told the truth, that I had actually been to Kornilov. None of them gave me any hope. All were resigned to death. + 

One of the Generals was an old man. He beckoned to me and I sat down beside him. + 

“I have a daughter like you,” he said sadly, putting his arm round my shoulders. “I had heard of your brave deeds and had come to love you like my own child. But I never expected to meet you here, in this deathtrap. Is it not dreadful? Here are we, all of us, the best men of the country, being executed, tormented, crushed by the savage mob. If it were only for the good of Russia! But Russia is perishing at this very moment. Perhaps God will save you yet. Then you will avenge us.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I broke down, convulsed with sobs, and leaned against the General’s shoulder. The old warrior could not restrain himself either and wept with me.⁠ ⁠… + 

The other officers suddenly sang out in a chorus. They sang from despair, in an effort to keep from collapsing. + 

I cried long and bitterly. I prayed for my mother. + 

“Who would support her?” I appealed to Heaven. “She will be forced to go begging in her old age if I am killed.” Life became very precious to me, the same life that I had exposed to a hundred perils. I did not want to die an infamous death, to lie on the field unburied, food for carrion crows. + 

“Why haven’t you allowed me to die from an enemy’s bullet?” I asked of God. “How have I deserved being butchered by the hands of my own people?” + 

The door swung open. About forty soldiers filed in. Their leader had a list of names in his hand. + 

“Bochkareva!” he called out first. + 

Somehow my heart leaped with joy. I thought that I was to be released. But the officers immediately disillusioned me with the statement that it was a call for execution. I stepped forward and answered: + 

“I am here!” + 

“Take off your clothes!” + 

The order stupefied me. I remained motionless. + 

Some soldiers came up, pushed me forward and repeated the order several times. I awoke at last and began to undress. + 

The old General’s name was read off the list next. Then a number of other officers were called out. Every one of them was ordered to cast off the uniform and remain in his undergarments. + 

The Bolsheviks needed all the uniforms they could get, and this was such an inexpensive way of obtaining them. + 

Tears streamed down my cheeks all the time. The old General was near me. + 

“Don’t cry!” he urged me. “We will die together.” + 

Not all the prisoners were in our group. Those remaining kissed me farewell. The partings between the men were alone sufficient to rend one’s heart. + 

“Well, we shall follow you in an hour or two,” those who were left behind said bravely. + 

After I had taken off my boots, I removed the icon from my neck and fell before it on my knees. + 

“Why should I die such a death?” I cried. “For three years I have suffered for my country. Is this shameful end to be my reward? Have mercy, Holy Mother! If not for the sake of humble Maria, then for the sake of my destitute old mother and my aged father! Have mercy!” + 

Here I collapsed completely and became hysterical. + 

After a few moments an officer approached me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said: + 

“You are a Russian officer. We are dying for a righteous cause. Be strong and die as it befits an officer to die!” + 

I made a superhuman effort to control myself. The tears stopped. I arose and announced to the guards: + 

“I am ready.” + 

We were led out from the car, all of us in our undergarments. A few hundred feet away was the field of slaughter. There were hundreds upon hundreds of human bodies heaped there. As we approached the place, the figure of Pugatchov, marching about with a triumphant face, came into sight. He was in charge of the firing squad, composed of about one hundred men, some of whom were sailors, others soldiers, and others dressed as Red Guards. + 

We were surrounded and taken toward a slight elevation of ground, and placed in a line with our backs toward the hill. There were corpses behind us, in front of us, to our left, to our right, at our very feet. There were at least a thousand of them. The scene was a horror of horrors. We were suffocated by the poisonous stench. The executioners did not seem to mind it so much. They were used to it. + 

I was placed at the extreme right of the line. Next to me was the old General. There were twenty of us altogether. + 

“We are waiting for the committee,” Pugatchov remarked, to explain the delay in the proceedings. + 

“What a pleasure!” he rubbed his hands, laughing. “We have a woman today.” + 

“Oh, yes,” he added, turning to us all, “you can write letters home and ask that your bodies be sent there for burial, if you wish. Or you can ask for similar favours.” + 

The suspense of waiting was as cruel as anything else about the place. Every officer’s face wore an expression of implacable hatred for that brute of a man, Pugatchov. Never have I seen a more bloodthirsty scoundrel. I did not think that such a man was to be found in Russia. + 

The waiting wore me out soon and I fell again on my knees, praying to the little icon, and crying to Heaven: + 

“God, when have I sinned to earn such a death? Why should I die like a dog, without burial, without a priest, with no funeral? And who will take care of my mother? She will expire when she learns of my end.” + 

The Bolshevik soldiers burst out laughing. My pleading appealed to their sense of humour. They joked and made merry. + 

“Don’t cry, my child,” the General bent over me, patting me. “They are savages. Their hearts are of stone. They would not even let us receive the last sacrament. Let us die like heroes, nevertheless.” + 

His words gave me strength. I got up, stood erect and said: + 

“Yes, I will die as a hero.” + 

Then, for about ten minutes I gazed at the faces of our executioners, scrutinizing their features. It was hard to distinguish in them signs of humanity. They were Russian soldiers turned inhuman. The lines in their faces were those of brutal apes. + 

“My God! What hast Thou done to Thy children?” I prayed. + 

All the events of my life passed before me in a long procession. My childhood, those years of hard toil in the little grocer’s shop of Nastasia Leontievna; the affair with Lazov; my marriage to Bochkarev; Yasha; the three years of war; they all passed through my imagination, some incidents strangely gripping my interest for a moment or two, others flitting by hastily. Somehow that episode of my early life, when I quarrelled with the little boy placed in my charge and the undeserved whipping I got from his mother stood out very prominently in my mind. It was my first act of self-assertion. I had rebelled and escaped.⁠ ⁠… Then there was that jump into the Ob. It almost seemed that it was not I who sought relief in its cold, deep waters from the ugly Afanasy. But I wished that I had been drowned then, rather than die such a death.⁠ ⁠… + 

XIX + 

Saved by a Miracle + 

The investigation committee finally appeared in the distance. Petrukhin was leading it. There were all the twelve members present, the two absentees apparently having joined the other ten. + 

“You see, how kind we are,” some of the soldiers said. “We are having the committee present at your execution.” + 

Not one of us answered. + 

“We have all been to see Sablin, the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin announced as soon as he approached near enough to Pugatchov. “He said that Bochkareva would have to be shot, but not necessarily now and with this group.” + 

A ray of hope was kindled in my soul. + 

“Nothing of the sort!” Pugatchov bawled angrily. “What’s the matter here? Why this delay? The list is already made up.” + 

The soldiers supported Pugatchov. + 

“Shoot her! Finish her now! What’s the use of bothering with her again!” cried the men. + 

But just as Pugatchov guessed that Petrukhin had obtained the delay in the hope of saving me, so the latter had realized that spoken words would not be sufficient to secure the fulfilment of his order. He had provided himself with a note from Sablin. + 

“Here is an order from the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin declared, pulling out a paper. “It says that Bochkareva shall be taken to my compartment in the railway carriage and kept there under guard.” + 

Pugatchov jumped up as if he had been stung. But the committee now rallied to the support of Petrukhin, maintaining that orders were orders, and that I should be executed later. + 

Not the least interested spectator of the heated discussion was myself. The officers followed the argument breathlessly, too. The soldiers grumbled. The forces of life and death struggled within me. Now the first would triumph, now the second, depending on the turn of the quarrel. + 

“That won’t do!” shouted Pugatchov, thrusting aside the order of the Commander-in-Chief. “It’s too late for orders like that. We will shoot her! Enough of talking!” + 

At this moment I became aware that one of the two newly-arrived members of the committee was staring at me intently. He took a couple of steps toward me, bent his head sideways and fixed his eyes on me. There was something about that look that electrified me. As the man, who was a common soldier, craned his neck forward and stepped out of the group, a strange silence gripped everybody, so affected were all by the painful expression on his face. + 

“A‑r‑e y‑o‑u Y‑a‑s‑h‑k‑a?” he sang out slowly. + 

“How do you know me?” I asked quickly, almost overpowered by a presentiment of salvation. + 

“Don’t you remember how you saved my life in that March offensive, when I was wounded in the leg and you dragged me out of the mud under fire? My name is Peter. I should have perished there, in the water, and many others like me, if not for you. Why do they want to shoot you now?” + 

“Because I am an officer,” I replied. + 

“What conversations are you holding here?” Pugatchov thundered. “She will have to be shot, and no arguments!” + 

“And I won’t allow her to be shot!” my God-appointed saviour answered back firmly, and walked up to me, seized my arm, pulled me out of my place, occupying it himself. + 

“You will shoot me first!” he exclaimed. “She saved my life. She saved many of our lives. The entire Fifth Corps knows Yashka. She is a common peasant like myself, and understands no politics. If you shoot her, you will have to shoot me first!” + 

This speech put new life into me. It also touched the hearts of many in the crowd. + 

Petrukhin went up, took a place beside Peter and myself, and declared: + 

“You will shoot me, too, before you execute an innocent, suffering woman!” + 

The soldiers were now divided. Some shouted, “Let’s shoot her and make an end of this squabble! What’s the use of arguments?” + 

Others were more human. “She is not of the bourgeoisie, but a common peasant like ourselves,” they argued. “And she does not understand politics. Perhaps she really was going to seek a cure. She was not captured, but came to us of her own accord, we must not forget that.” + 

For some time the place was transformed into a debating-ground. It was a strange scene for a debate. There were the hundreds of bodies scattered round us. There were the twenty of us in our undergarments awaiting death. Of the twenty only I had a chance for life. The remaining nineteen held themselves stoically erect. No hope stirred within them. No miracle could save them. And amidst all this a hundred Russian soldiers, a quarter of an hour before all savages, now half of them with a spark of humanity in their breasts, were debating! + 

The members of the committee finally recovered their wits and took charge of the situation. Turning to Pugatchov, they declared: + 

“Now we have an order here from the Commander-in-Chief, and it shall be obeyed. We are going to take her away.” + 

They closed about me and I was marched out of the line and off the field. Pugatchov was in a white rage, raving like a madman, grinding his teeth. As we walked away, his brutal voice roared: + 

“Fire at the knees!” + 

A volley rang out. Immediately cries and groans filled the air. Turning my head, I saw the savages rush upon the heap of victims with their bayonets, digging them deep into the bodies of my companions of a few minutes before, and crushing the last signs of life out of them with their heels. + 

It was frightful, indescribably frightful. The moans were so penetrating, so bloodcurdling that I staggered, fell to the ground my full length, and swooned. + 

For four hours I remained unconscious. When I came to, I was in a compartment of a railway coach. Petrukhin sat by me, holding my hand, and weeping. + 

When I thought of the circumstances that had led to my fainting, the figure of Pugatchov swam up before my eyes, and I took an oath there and then to kill him at the first opportunity, if I escaped from the Bolshevik trap. + 

Petrukhin then told me that Peter had aroused such compassion for me among the members of the Investigation Committee that they had agreed to go with him to Sablin, and petition the Commander-in-Chief to send me to Moscow for trial by a military tribunal. About fifty soldiers were also won over to my side by Peter’s accounts of Yashka’s work in the trenches and No Man’s Land, and of my reputation among all the men. Petrukhin had remained at my bedside till I recovered consciousness, but he now wished to join the deputation. I thanked him gratefully for his kindness towards me and his desperate efforts to save my life. + 

Before he left, word reached him that Pugatchov had incited some of the men against me, threatening to kidnap and lynch me before I was taken away. Petrukhin placed five loyal friends of his at my compartment, with orders not to surrender me at any cost. + 

I prayed to God for Petrukhin, and hearing my prayer he said: + 

“Now, I, too, believe in God. The appearance of this man, Peter, was truly miraculous. In spite of all my efforts, you would have been executed but for him.” + 

“But what are my chances of escaping death now?” I asked. + 

“They are still very small,” he answered. “Your record is against you. You do not deny being a friend of Kornilov. Your strict discipline in the Battalion and your fighting the Germans at a time when the whole front was fraternizing, are known here. Besides, the death penalty has become so customary here that it would be very unusual for one to escape it. Only the other day a physician and his wife, on their way to Kislovodsk to the springs, somehow arrived in Zverevo. They were arrested, attached to a party about to be shot, and executed without any investigation. Afterwards papers from their local Soviet were found in their clothes, certifying that they were actually ill, the physician suffering from a cancer, and requesting that they should be allowed to proceed to Kislovodsk.” + 

Petrukhin kissed my hand, and left, warning me: + 

“Wait here till I return. Nobody will harm you in my absence.” + 

He locked the door behind him. I took out the little bottle of holy water, given to me by my youngest sister, Nadia, and drank it. On my knees before the little icon, I prayed long and devoutly to God, Jesus, and the Holy Mother. My ears caught a noise outside the car: it came from several menacing soldiers who wanted to get in and kill me on the spot. I prayed with greater fervour than before, pleading for my life in the name of my mother, my father and my little sister. My heart was heavy with sorrow and despair. + 

As I was hugging the little icon, tears streaming from my eyes, I suddenly heard a voice, a very tender voice, say to me: + 

“Your life will be saved.” + 

I was alone in the compartment. I realize that it is a daring statement to make. I do not seek to make anyone believe it. It may be accepted or not. But I am satisfied that I did hear the voice of a divine messenger. It was soothing, elevating. Suddenly I felt happy and calm. I thanked the Almighty for His boundless grace and vowed to have a public prayer offered at the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour at the first opportunity, in commemoration of His miraculous message to me. + 

Then I fell asleep, and rested calmly till the arrival of Petrukhin. His face was wreathed in smiles, he clasped my hand joyfully, saying: + 

“Thank God! Thank God! You are at least saved from the mob. Sablin has ordered you to be sent to Moscow. The necessary papers are being prepared now.” + 

At this point Peter came in, followed by some members of the investigation committee. All were happy. It was a wonderful moment. How an act of humanity transforms men’s countenances! Peter and his comrades congratulated me, and I was too overcome to express all the gratefulness that I felt toward these men. + 

Petrukhin then narrated how he had dealt with the infuriated soldiers, who had clamoured for my life. He told them that I was being led away to Moscow in the hope that I would there deliver up several counterrevolutionary Generals, associated with Kornilov. + 

“Will she be shot afterwards?” they inquired. + 

“Of course,” Petrukhin declared. The lynchers went away satisfied. + 

I was curious to know what would be done to me in Moscow. Petrukhin replied to my inquiries that among the papers relating to my case, which my escort would take with them to Moscow, the chief document was the protocol. That protocol had been drawn up by himself, in the capacity of chairman of the Investigation Committee. He described in it how I had lost my way while going to Kislovodsk, getting stranded at Zverevo, and how I had reported of my own free will to the authorities, adding that I had with me a ticket to Kislovodsk, an invitation from Princess Tatuyeva to come to the Caucasus, and a certificate from a physician certifying to my ill-health. The last was, of course, an invention. Petrukhin sent the ticket and the letter from Tiflis, adding that he had misplaced the physician’s certificate and would send it on later. + 

“It is unlikely,” he said to me, “that you would be punished with death in the face of such evidence. I should expect your release, sooner or later. But in any event, here is a poison pill. I prepared it for you originally to take in case the mob got their way, so that you should escape torture at the hands of these savages. I hope you will not need to resort to it in Moscow.” + 

I still carry with me that poison pill wherever I go.⁠ ⁠… + 

Petrukhin gave me forty roubles for expenses, as I was penniless. I thanked him and asked him to write a letter to my people, telling them where I was. We then took leave of one another. Petrukhin and Peter exchanged kisses with me, and I again and again reiterated how much I owed to them, swearing that in any future emergency, whatever happened, I would always be ready to do everything within my power for them. We all realized that many a change was still in store for Mother Russia, before she settled down to a peaceful existence. + 

Accompanied by my friends and surrounded by four armed guards, forming my escort, I was led to an empty railway coach, attached to an engine. On this train, consisting of cattle-trucks and my coach, I was taken to Nikitino. There I was brought before the Commandant, with a request to provide accommodation for the party on an ordinary train. It was the very Commandant who had helped me so generously to get to Zverevo on the munition train. Of course, he did not recognize the Sister of Mercy in Bochkareva. + 

On the platform I had another striking encounter. The news that Bochkareva had been seized and was being taken to Moscow became known in the station and a number of Red Guards and soldiers gathered about me, showering upon me insults, curses and threats. Among these, in the foremost rank, was the repulsive-looking man who was in charge of the train on which I went to Zverevo and who had proposed marriage to me. + 

The beast did not recognize me now. He sneered in my face, and repeated my name syllable by syllable, taking a peculiar joy in distorting it and railing generally at my appearance and reputation. + 

“The slut! We have got her, the harlot!” he raved. “Only I can’t understand why they didn’t shoot her there. Why bother with such a slut!” + 

I could not help laughing. I laughed long, without restraint. It was so amusing. I was almost tempted to disclose to him how I had duped him. He still has no idea that Alexandra Smirnova, whose fictitious address at Kislovodsk he, in all probability, cherishes yet, was Maria Bochkareva! + 

For three days I travelled with my escort from Nikitino to Moscow. I was treated with consideration, but always as a prisoner. The guards would get food for me and themselves at the stations on the way. Upon our arrival at Moscow I was taken in a motorcar to the Soldiers’ Section of the Soviet, established in what was formerly the Governor’s mansion. My guards delivered me to a civilian, with all the documents of the case, and left. + 

“What, coming from Kornilov?” the official asked me gruffly. + 

“No, I was on my way to take the cure at Kislovodsk,” I replied. + 

“Ah, yes, we know those cures! What about the epaulets? Why did you take them off?” + 

“Because I am a plain peasant woman. I have defended my country bravely for three years. I am not guilty.” + 

“Well, we will see about that later,” he interrupted and ordered me to be led away to prison. + 

I was locked up in a small cell, in which there were already about twenty prisoners, officers and civilians, all arrested by agents who had overheard them talk against the Bolshevik regime! A fine reincarnation of the worst methods of Tsarism. + 

The cell was in a frightful condition. There was no lavatory in it, and the inmates were not permitted to leave the room! The stench was indescribable. The men smoked incessantly. The prisoners were not even allowed to take the short, daily promenade outside, which was granted by the old regime. + 

Apparently in order to make me confess, I was subjected to a new form of torture, never practised by the Tsar’s jailers. I was denied food! For three days I did not receive even the niggardly ration given to the other prisoners. My companions were all kind to me, but the portions that they received were barely enough to sustain life in their own bodies. So for three days and three nights, I lay on the bunk, in a heap under a cover, on the point of suffocation, starved, feverish, and thirsty, as no water was allowed me. + 

During these days the Commandant of the prison, a sailor, would come in several times daily to torment me with his tongue. + 

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. + 

“What? You will be shot!” was his answer. + 

“Why?” + 

“Ha, ha. Because you are a friend of Kornilov’s.” + 

Those were the hours when I hugged the pill given me by Petrukhin, expecting every moment an order to face a firing squad. + 

Soon one of the arrested officers, who had been caught cursing Bolshevism while drunk, was set free. Before he went some of his companions entrusted him with messages to their relatives. I thought of the Vasilievs, who had so kindly taken me from the hospital to their home in the autumn of 1916, and begged the officer to visit them and tell them of my plight. He promised to do so and carried out his pledge. I sent them a message that I expected to be executed and asked their help. + 

When Daria Maximovna got the message she was horrified and immediately set out to get permission to see me. But when she called at the Soldiers’ Section for a pass to see Bochkareva, she was taken for a friend of Kornilov’s and would have been badly mauled if not for the fact that her son Stepan, who had belonged to my Company and who had brought about the friendship between his mother and myself, was now one of the Bolshevik chiefs. Daria Maximovna cried out that she was the mother of Stepan Vasiliev, of such and such a department, and he was brought to identify his mother. + 

This rescued her from a severe punishment. She appealed to her son to intervene in my behalf, but he refused, saying that he could not come to the aid of an avowed friend of Kornilov’s. He, however, obtained a pass to my cell for his mother. Later he responded to her entreaties and did say a few good words for me, telling the proper authorities that I was a simple peasant woman with no understanding of politics. + 

On the fourth day of my imprisonment I received a quarter of a pound of bread, some tea and two cubes of sugar. The bread was black, consisting partly of straw. I could not even touch it and had to satisfy myself with three cups of tea. Later in the day a sailor came in, and, addressing me as comrade, informed me that one Vasilieva was waiting to see me. I was weak, so weak that I could not move a few feet without assistance. As soon as I got up and made a step, I sank back on the bed in a helpless condition. + 

“Are you ill?” the sailor asked. + 

“Yes,” I murmured. + 

He took me by the arm and led me to a chair in the office. I was bathed in perspiration after the little walk and so dizzy that I could not see anything. When Daria Maximovna saw me she fell on my neck and wept. Turning to the officials, she cried out bitterly: + 

“How could you ever have such a woman arrested and subjected to torture? A woman who was so kind to the soldiers, and suffered so much for your own brothers!” + 

She then opened a package, took out some bread and butter, and handed them to me with these words: + 

“Manka, here is a quarter of a pound of bread. All we got today was three-eighths of a pound. And this is a quarter of a pound of butter, our entire ration.” + 

I was full of gratitude to this dear woman and her children, who had sacrificed their own portions for me. The bread was good. The difficulty was, according to Daria Maximovna, to get enough for them all. Even their meagre ration was not always obtainable. + 

I then told her my troubles and the punishment I was expecting, begging her to write to my mother in case of my execution. + 

I spent two weeks in that abominable cell before I was taken before the tribunal. I was marched along the Tverskaya, Moscow’s chief thoroughfare, and recognized on the way by the crowds. The tribunal was quartered in the Kremlin. For a couple of hours I waited there, at the end of which time I was surprised to see Stepan Vasiliev come in and approach me. + 

“Marusia, how did you ever get into this?” he asked me, shaking my hand and inviting me to sit down. + 

I told him the story of my going to Kislovodsk to take the cure. + 

“But how did you ever get to Zverevo?” he inquired. + 

“I had a ticket to Kislovodsk. I did not know that Zverevo was such a forbidden place. Once they sold me a ticket, I thought it all right to follow the regular route,” I answered excitedly. + 

“I spent a couple of hours yesterday examining your case and the documents relating to it, but I could not quite understand how you got to Zverevo,” Stepan said. “Perhaps you really did go to see Kornilov?” + 

“I do not deny my friendship for Kornilov,” I declared, glad at heart that Stepan had turned up in such a position of authority. “But you know that I am almost illiterate and understand no politics and do not mix with any party. I fought in the trenches for Russia and it is Mother Russia alone that interests me. All Russians are my brothers.” + 

Stepan answered that he knew of my ignorance of political matters. He then went out to report to the tribunal, and shortly afterwards I was called in. There were six men, all common soldiers, seated at a long table covered with a green cloth, in the middle of a large hall, richly decorated. I was asked to sit down and tell my story, and how I got into Zverevo. The six judges were all young men, not one of them over thirty. + 

I was about to rise from the chair to tell my story, but was very courteously asked to remain seated. I then told of my wound in the back, of the operation that I still needed for the extraction of a piece of shell, and of my consulting a Petrograd physician who had advised me to go to the Springs at Kislovodsk. I said that I had heard of the fighting between Kornilov and the Bolsheviks, at Novocherkassk, but had no idea what a civil war was like and had never thought of a front in such a struggle. I, therefore, continued my journey to Nikitino, where the Commandant had sent me on to Zverevo. Of course, I failed to mention the fact that the Commandant had sent on to Zverevo, not Bochkareva, but Smirnova, a Sister of Mercy. I concluded with the statement that as soon as I reached Zverevo I realized that I was in a dangerous situation, and had surrendered to the local authorities. + 

I was informed that it would take a week for my case to be cleared up and a decision reached. Instead of sending me to the Butirka, the prison in which I had spent the last two weeks, I was taken to the military guard house, opposite the Soldiers’ Section. Drunken sailors and Red Guards were usually confined there. The room in which I was put was narrow and long, the windows were large but closely grated. There were about ten prisoners in it. + 

“Ah, Bochkareva! Look who’s here!” + 

I was met with these words as soon as I crossed the threshold. They quickly turned into phrases of abuse and ridicule. I was quiet, and sought seclusion and rest in a corner, but in vain. The inmates were Bolsheviks of the lowest sort, degenerates and former criminals. I was the object of their constant ill-treatment, so that torturing me day and night became their diversion. If I tried to sleep, I soon found someone near me. When I ate or drank, the beasts assembled about me, showering insults on me and playing dirty tricks. Weeping had no effect on them. Night after night I was forced to stay awake, sometimes throwing myself upon an intruder with my teeth in an effort to drive him away. I implored the warder to give me a cell to myself. + 

“Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from these drunken brutes!” I would plead. + 

“We will take you away soon⁠—to shoot you!” the warder would joke in reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors. + 

The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my case. The days⁠—long, cruel, agonizing days⁠—passed slowly by. The impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep! + 

Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand. + 

“Bochkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the door facing me. + 

I was so surprised that I thought at first that this was another trick to torture me. + 

“Free?” I asked. “Why?” I had grown to believe the warder’s tales of what awaited me, and I could not imagine him as the carrier of such tidings. + 

“Am I free for good?” I asked. + 

“Yes,” was the answer. “You will go with a guard to the Soldiers’ Section, where you will get the necessary papers.” + 

I bade farewell, with a sigh of relief, to the chamber of horrors, and went immediately to get the document from the tribunal, which stated that I had been arrested but found innocent of the charge and that, as I was ill, I was to be allowed complete freedom of movement in the country. With this passport in my pocket I was set at liberty. + 

XX + 

I Set Out on a Mission + 

The Vasilievs were the only people I could go to in Moscow. They lived on the outskirts of the city. I made an attempt to walk to their house, but was too weak to proceed more than two blocks. There was a cabman near at hand, but he wanted twenty-five roubles to take me to my friends. I tried to bargain, offering fifteen, but he would not hear of it. As I had no money, I finally hired the cab in the hope that Daria Maximovna would pay for it. The alternative was to remain where I was. + 

Madame Vasilieva received me as if I were her own daughter. She was overwhelmed with joy at my release. I was too weak and worn out to appreciate fully my miraculous deliverance from torture and death. I was given some light food, and Daria Maximovna began to prepare a bath for me. I had not changed my undergarments for several weeks, and my body was blacker than it ever had been during my life in the trenches. My skin was in a terrible condition from vermin. The bath was a greater relief at the moment than my release itself. And the long hours of sleep following it were even more welcome. I doubt if sleep ever tasted sweeter to anyone. + 

It was impossible to remain long as a guest in Moscow in those early days of March, 1918. Stepan lived away from his home, as he and his parents held widely divergent views in regard to the political situation. The family consisted of Daria Maximovna, her husband and the younger son. The daughter, Tonetchka, was married and lived elsewhere. The three Vasilievs received daily a pound and one-eighth of bread! The weekly meat ration was a pound and a half. I, therefore, promptly realized what a burden I was bound to be. But I could not make up my mind where to go and what to do. The Vasilievs offered to buy me a ticket home, but the document I had from the Soldiers’ Section was in itself a ticket. + 

I recalled that some of my wounded girls had been sent to Moscow, to be quartered in the Home for Invalids, and I thought of looking them up. I took a walk to the city. When I approached the block in which the Home was situated, I noticed a crowd in the street, largely composed of soldiers, holding meetings of indignation. When I reached the Home I saw a number of wounded soldiers, some of them without legs or arms, dispersed about the front grounds. + 

On inquiry I learned that the Bolshevist authorities had turned the hundreds of crippled inmates of the Home into the street. Many of them, including my girls, had already disappeared, some no doubt being forced to beg, others being cared for by charitable people and societies. But still a goodly number remained, crying, cursing Lenin and Trotsky, and asking passersby for food and shelter. It was a pathetic sight. The cruelty of the order made one’s blood boil. It was evidently an act of wanton brutality. The excuse that the Government needed the building was certainly no justification for it. + 

There were about two hundred soldiers in the crowd, and I stopped to listen to their conversation. All of them had been attracted to the place by the complaints of the ejected invalids. Their talk came as a revelation to me. They were in a mutinous spirit, stirred up against the regime of Lenin and Trotsky. For several hours I lingered round the various groups, sometimes taking part in the discussions. + 

“See what you have brought about by your own acts. You have shamefully beaten and killed your officers. You have forgotten God and destroyed the Church. Now, this is the result of your deeds.” In some such manner I would address the men, and they would answer somewhat as follows: + 

“We believed that by overthrowing our officers and the wealthy class, we should have plenty of bread and land. But now the factories are demolished and there is no work. We are terrorized by the Red Guards, who are recruited mostly from drunkards and criminals. If there are any honest soldiers among them, it is because hunger and poverty force them to enlist in order to escape starvation. If we demand justice and fair play, we are shot down by the Red executioners. And all the while the Germans are advancing into Russia, and nobody is sent to fight them, our real enemies.” + 

At these words I crossed myself, thanking the Almighty for the deep change He had wrought in the minds of the people. + 

The crowd became so excited that the authorities were notified and a detachment of the Red Guard was sent to suppress it. It arrived suddenly and warned us to disperse by firing a volley into the air. The gathering separated and vanished from the street. A group of about ten soldiers, including myself, rushed into a neighbouring courtyard and continued the conversation there behind the gates. + 

“See, what you get now! If you were armed, they would not dare to treat you like that. They made you surrender your arms and now oppress you worse than the Tsar. Who ever heard of a thousand sick persons being thrown out into the street under the old regime?” I asked. + 

“Yes, we have been betrayed. It is clear now. The Germans are taking away all our bread, occupying our land, destroying our country, demanding all our money and possessions. We have been betrayed,” nodded several men. + 

“Ah, so you are beginning to see the truth!” + 

“Yes, we are,” declared one fellow. “A month ago I wouldn’t have talked to you. I was then the chairman of a local Soviet. But I see what it all means now. We are being arrested, searched, robbed, terrorized by the Red Guard mercenaries. I would, myself, shoot Lenin and Trotsky for this outrageous treatment of the hospital patients. A month ago I was a fool, but I see now that I was all wrong in my ideas about you and other opponents of the Bolsheviks. You are not an enemy of the people, but a friend.” + 

Accompanied by a couple of soldiers I walked away. One of them told me he had seen one of my girls begging, after she had been turned out of the Home. My heart ached at the thought, but I was absolutely without means. What could I have done for her? We reached the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and I remembered the vow I had made to have a public mass celebrated in commemoration of my miraculous escape from death. + 

I took leave of my companions and entered the church. There were about five or six hundred people there. On that very day, I believe, the order was promulgated separating the Church from the State. All the devout members of the Cathedral came to the Communion service that afternoon. + 

I went to see the deacon in the vestry and told him of the miracle that had been vouchsafed me and the vow I had made. I did not fail to mention the fact that I was penniless and could not pay for the service. At the conclusion of the Communion, the priest announced: + 

“There has just come here a Christian woman who has suffered greatly for the country and whose name is known throughout the land. A miracle saved her in a desperate moment. God listened to her prayers and sent her an old friend, whose life she had once saved, on the eve of her execution. The execution was postponed. She then prayed to God again, and a divine voice informed her that her life would be spared. She vowed to offer public prayers in this Cathedral in the event of her release. The Lord mercifully granted her freedom, and she is now here to fulfil the vow.” + 

The priest then asked the deacon to bring me up to the altar. When I was led there, a murmur went through the assembly: + 

“Heavens! It’s Bochkareva!” + 

Candles were lit and for fifteen minutes prayers of praise to the Lord were read, glorifying His name. + 

I returned to the Vasilievs by tram. On the car there were many soldiers, and again their conversation cheered me up. + 

“A fine end we have come to! The Germans are moving nearer and nearer, and here they are shooting and arresting the people!” the men said to one another. “Why don’t they send the Red Guard to resist the enemy? We are being sold to the Germans.” + 

This was my second encounter with sober-minded soldiers in one day. I arrived at Daria Maximovna’s in high spirits. The awakening of the Russian soldier had begun! + 

I had left my medals and crosses in Petrograd before starting out on the fateful errand. Borrowing some money from Madame Vasilieva, I went to Petrograd to fetch them. The railway carriage in which I travelled was packed with about a hundred and fifty soldiers. But they were no longer the cutthroats, the incensed and revengeful ruffians of two months ago. They did not threaten. They did not brag. The kindness of their true natures had again asserted itself. They even made a place for me, inviting me to sit down. + 

“Please, Madame Bochkareva,” they said, “take this seat.” + 

“Thank you, comrades,” I answered. + 

“No, don’t call us comrades any more. It’s a disgrace now. The comrades are at present fleeing from the front, while the Germans are threatening Moscow,” some of them remarked. + 

I felt among friends. This comradeship was what endeared the Russian soldier to my heart. Not the comradeship of the agitators, not the comradeship so loudly proclaimed in the Bolshevik manifestoes and proclamations, but the true comradeship that had made the three years in the trenches the happiest of my life. That old spirit again filled the air. It was almost too good to be true. After the nightmare of revolutions and terror, it seemed like a dream. The soldiers were actually cursing Bolshevism, denouncing Lenin and Trotsky! + 

“How has it come about that you all talk so sensibly?” I asked. + 

“Because the Germans are advancing on Moscow, and Lenin and Trotsky don’t even raise a finger to stop them,” came the answer. “A soldier has escaped from Kiev and has just telegraphed that the Germans are seizing Russians and sending them to Germany to help to fight against the Allies. Lenin and Trotsky told us that the Allies were our enemies. We now see that they are our friends.” + 

Another soldier, who had been home on leave, told of an armed Red Guard detachment that had descended on his village one fine day and robbed the peasants of all the bread they had, the product of their sweat and toil, exposing them to starvation. + 

“The people are hungry, that’s why they join the Red Guard,” one of the men remarked. “At least then they get food and arms with which to plunder. It is getting so that no one is safe unless he belongs to the Red Guard.” + 

“But why don’t you do something?” I addressed myself to them. “Everywhere I see the people are indignant, but they do nothing to cast off the yoke.” + 

“We have demanded more than once the resignation of Lenin and Trotsky. There were large majorities against them at several elections. But they are supported by the Red Guard and keep themselves in power in spite of the will of the people. The peasants are against them almost to a man.” + 

“The more reason why you should act,” I said. “Something ought to be done!” + 

“What? Tell us what!” several inquired. + 

“Even to get together, for instance, and reestablish the front!” I suggested. + 

“We would, but we have nobody we can trust to lead us. All our good people are fighting among themselves,” they argued. “Besides, we should need arms and food.” + 

“You just said that the Allies were our friends. Suppose we asked them to send us arms and food and help us to reorganize the front, would you be willing to fight the Germans again?” I inquired. + 

“Yes,” answered some, “we would.” + 

“No,” replied others; “what if the Allies got into Russia and wanted to take advantage of us, like the Germans?” + 

“Well, you must elect your own leader to cooperate with the Allies only on condition that we fight till we defeat the enemy and finish the war,” I proposed. + 

“But whom could we choose as our leader?” the men persisted. “All our chiefs are divided. Some are reputed to be monarchists. Others are said to be exploiters of the poor working people. Others are declared to be German agents. Where could we find a man who did not belong to one or other of these parties?” + 

“What if I, for instance, took charge, and became your leader?” I ventured to ask. “Would you follow me?” + 

“Yes, yes!” they cried. “We could trust you. You are a peasant yourself. But what could you do?” + 

“What could I do? You know that these scoundrels are destroying Russia. The Germans are seizing everything they can lay hold on. I would try to restore the front!” + 

“But how?” they asked. + 

At this moment, the idea of going to America originated in my mind. We had all heard that America was now one of the Allies. + 

“What if I should go to America to ask there for help?” I ventured. + 

My companions all burst out laughing. America is so remote and so unreal to the Russian peasant. It did not sound like a practical proposition to the soldiers. But they raised only one objection. + 

“How would you ever get there? The Bolsheviks and Red Guards will never let you out of the country,” they said. + 

“But if I did get there and to the other Allies,” I insisted, “and came back with an army and equipment, would you join me then, and would you persuade all your friends to come with you?” + 

“Yes, we would! Yes! We know that you could not be bought. You are one of us!” they shouted. + 

“In that event, I will go to America!” I announced resolutely, there and then making up my mind to go. The soldiers would not believe me. When we reached Petrograd, and I parted from them affectionately, with their blessings following me, I did not forget to warn them to remember their pledge upon hearing of my return from foreign lands with troops. + 

I spent only a few hours in Petrograd and did not go to see General X. I got my war decorations from the woman friend with whom I had left them, and saw only a few of my acquaintances. I told all of them of the great change in the state of mind of the soldiers, and they were delighted. + 

“Thank God!” they exclaimed. “If the soldiers are waking up, then Russia will yet be saved.” + 

After dinner I took a train back to Moscow. As usual, soldiers formed the bulk of the passengers. I listened to their discussions attentively, although this time I took no part in them, as there were a few Bolsheviks among the men, and I did not wish to divulge my plans. I heard many curse Lenin and Trotsky, and all expressed their willingness to go to fight the Germans. One fellow asked: + 

“How could you fight them, without leaders and organization?” + 

“Ah, that’s the trouble,” answered several at once. “We have no leaders. If some appeared and only appealed to us, we would make short work of the Bolsheviks and drive the Germans out of Russia.” + 

I said nothing, but I took good note of their words. The people were groping for light. It strengthened my determination to go to the Allied countries in search of help for Russia. But it was necessary to evolve some plan whereby I could get out of the country. A happy thought then occurred to me: I would make my destination the home of my valued friend, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst in London. + 

Upon my arrival at Moscow, I announced to the Vasilievs my decision to go to London. It was explained to me that the only way out of Russia lay through Vladivostok, and that I should have to cross America before coming to England. That suited me perfectly. + 

Before taking the necessary steps for the departure I resolved to look up my girls and I visited a hospital to which my poor little soldiers were said to have been taken. When I arrived at the address I found the building closed and was referred to a certain professor, whom I finally traced. He told me that those of the girls who were not severely wounded had left for their homes. Only about thirty invalids remained. Five of these were suffering from shell shock and were either hysterical or insane. Many of the others were nervous wrecks. He had worked hard to get them into the Home for Invalids, but hardly had they arrived there when the building was requisitioned by the Bolsheviks and the inmates turned out into the streets. Vera Michailovna, a wealthy woman, had rescued them from the streets and sheltered them in her house, but just before my visit she had telephoned to him that the Bolsheviks had now requisitioned her own house, and she was at a loss to know how to dispose of the girls. He concluded with the suggestion that both of us should go over to Vera Michailovna. + 

With a heavy heart I entered the large house in which my unfortunate girls were staying, expecting every moment to be ordered to leave. My visit was a complete surprise to them. But there was no joy in my heart as I crossed the threshold of their room. It was not a happy reunion. I had no means with which to help them, no power, no influential friends. + 

“The Commander! the Commander!” the women exclaimed joyously as soon as they saw me, rushing toward me, throwing themselves upon my neck, kissing me, hugging me. + 

“The Commander has come! She will save us! She will get us money, bread, a home!” + 

They danced about me in high glee, making me feel even more bitter and miserable. + 

“My dear girls!” I said, in order to undeceive them at once, “I am myself penniless and hungry. You mustn’t expect any help of me now.” + 

“No matter! You know how to get everything!” they said confidently. “You will take us to fight the Bolsheviks as we fought the Germans!” + 

There was a conference between Vera Michailovna, the professor and myself on the problem confronting us. Vera Michailovna suggested that I should take the girls along with me to my village. I rejected the idea at first, both because I did not intend to remain at Tutalsk, but only to pass through it on the way to Vladivostok and because of my lack of funds. Vera Michailovna, however, insisted that the wisest thing in the circumstances would be to take them away from Moscow. She told me that several of the girls had been enticed away and maltreated by the Bolshevik soldiers and that the result of leaving them in Moscow would be their ruin. She offered to provide tickets for them all to my village and a thousand roubles in ready money. I finally consented to take my invalids with me, hoping to obtain sufficient funds in America to ensure them a life of peace and comfort. + 

I had resolved to go to America. But I had no funds. As my destination was to be London, for the reasons mentioned, I thought of seeking assistance from the British Consul in Moscow. With the aid of the Vasilievs I succeeded in finding the Consul’s offices and went to see him. There were many people waiting to see the Consul, and I was informed that he could not be seen. His secretary came out and asked me the purpose of my call. I gave him my name, told him of my plight and of my decision to go to London, to visit Mrs. Pankhurst, and asked for aid on the ground that I had fought and sacrificed much for the cause of Russia and the Allies. He reported my presence to the Consul, who received me almost immediately. + 

The Consul was very courteous. He met me with a smile and a cordial handshake, said that he had read in the papers of my arrest at Zverevo and inquired what he could do for me. I showed him the document from the Soviet, but did not reveal to him the fact of my mission to Kornilov, adding: + 

“Consul, this paper, as you see, allows me freedom of movement. I want to take advantage of it and go to London, to visit my friend, Mrs. Pankhurst. But I am without means. I came to ask you to send me, as a soldier, who had fought for the Allied cause, to England. If Russia should awake, I shall eagerly resume my service on behalf of this cause.” + 

The Consul explained that the Bolsheviks would not allow him to draw on the Consulate’s deposits in the banks, but, in view of my circumstances, he could supply me with some money for expenses. As to my visit to London, he said there were almost insuperable difficulties in the way, even for his own countrymen, let alone Russians. + 

But I would not alter my mind, and persisted in begging him to send me to his country. He promised to consider the matter and give a definite answer that night. He then invited me to dine with him at eight o’clock that evening. + 

When I returned for dinner the Consul informed me that he had already telegraphed to the British Consul at Vladivostok of my going to London by way of America, requesting him to aid me in every way he could. At dinner I told the Consul how Mrs. Pankhurst had come to know me, but kept to myself the real purpose of my journey, as I feared that the Consul would not want to antagonize the Bolsheviks by extending his protection to me. He gave me five hundred roubles (about £52 15s. 6d.), and I decided to leave immediately. A Siberian express was leaving at 12:40 the same night. I had a few hours left to get my girls to the station and to bid farewell to the Vasilievs. + 

My immediate destination was Tutalsk, on the Great Siberian Line. I was uneasy about the treatment our party might receive from the soldiers, who occupied three-quarters of the space on the train. But here again the mental transformation was obvious. The passengers discussed affairs sensibly. There were many officers on the train, but they were not molested. The soldiers were friendly to them and to us. The all-absorbing topic was the advance of the Germans. Lenin and Trotsky were cursed and denounced as despots worse even than the Tsar. There were many refugees from the newly-invaded provinces, and their tales further increased the mutinous spirit of the men. + 

“We were promised bread and land. Now the Germans are taking both away.” + 

“We wanted an end to the war, but Lenin has got us into a worse position than before.” + 

“We went to the Bolshevist offices and told them of our hunger, and they advised us to enlist in the Red Guard.” + 

“It is impossible to find work, all the factories are shut down or disorganized.” + 

These and similar sentiments were expressed on every side. Underlying them all was a greater hatred for the Germans than ever. There was no doubt in my mind that those men were ready to follow any trusted leader, with arms and food, against the Germans. + 

At Chelyabinsk the train stopped for a couple of hours. There were two regiments stationed there, and there were several hundred soldiers on the express. A meeting was quickly organized quite near the station, within a short distance of the place where I had been thrown off the train some three months ago. But how different was the mood of the masses now! There were thousands at the meetings. A refugee addressed the crowd. He made a stirring, sarcastic speech. + 

“Every one of us,” he began, “has something at stake in Russia. We all want to defend our country. We have all made our sacrifices. For three years I fought in this war. Then I was set free to return home. But I found my home in the hands of the Germans. I could not return. I lost my parents, my wife, my sisters! What do I now get for all my sacrifices? + 

“Liberty! I came to Petrograd. For three days I went hungry. I was not alone. There were many other soldiers who suffered the same fate. They gave us no bread. What have we gained? + 

“Liberty! + 

“I went to see the chief of the Government in Petrograd. But I was not admitted to him. I was nearly beaten to death and thrown out of the building. Why? + 

“Liberty! + 

“The Germans are taking everything they can lay hands on, and at the same time the Red Guard is being strengthened in order to fight⁠—whom, the Germans?⁠—no, the so-called bourgeoisie! But are they not our own brethren, our own blood? In whose name are we urged to slaughter our own people while the Germans ravish our land? + 

“In the name of Liberty! + 

“Our country has been disgraced and ruined and still we are being called upon to destroy our own educated and intelligent classes. + 

“Is this liberty? + 

“I hear that in Moscow a thousand invalids were thrown out into the street. These invalids are soldiers like yourselves and myself, only maimed and crippled for life. Why were they thrown out? + 

“For the sake of liberty!” + 

We were all deeply impressed by this speech. Not a single voice was raised in protest. Every heart felt that the liberty we had received was not the kind of liberty we had dreamed of. We wanted peace, happiness, brotherhood, not civil war, foreign invasions, strife, starvation and disease. + 

Another speaker arose and said: + 

“He is right. We have been deceived and disgraced. We go hungry and no one cares. But how can we get out of this shameful situation? We should have to overthrow the present leaders, and reestablish the front. The Japanese are already moving into Siberia, and the Germans are occupying Russia, all because we are divided. We shall be under some foreign yoke if we don’t join our forces. We quarrelled with our officers, but how can we ever hope to do anything without officers? We might make peace with them, but where can we get arms to overthrow our present leaders, who have surrounded themselves with bands of Red Guards?” + 

For a moment the vast gathering remained silent. It was a pathetic calm. There was a painful sense that our much-cherished freedom had turned into an oppressive bondage. + 

Suddenly a couple of men raised their voices, shouting protests, denouncing the speaker, even threatening him. They were promptly seized and placed under arrest, and quiet was restored. + 

“Allow me to answer the question!” I shouted to the chairman from the distant place I occupied. + 

“Bochkareva! It’s Bochkareva!” a number of voices passed the word to the platform, and immediately I was lifted up and carried on to the platform. + 

“It’s a pleasure to speak to you now,” I began, “only a few weeks ago you would have torn me to pieces.” + 

“Yes, it’s true! We killed many!” several men interrupted. “But we were told that the officers wanted to enslave us, that’s why we killed them. We now see that our real enemies are not the officers, but the Germans.” + 

“Before I answer the question put by the previous speaker, let me ask you what your attitude is toward the Allies?” I said. + 

“America, England, and France we trust. They are our friends. They are free countries. But we distrust Japan. Japan wants Siberia,” came in reply from many directions. + 

Here a soldier interrupted and asked permission to ask a question. It was granted. + 

“I can’t understand why our Allies do not defend us,” he said. “Not even one of them has come to our help at a time when Germany is devouring our land. The Allied envoys are running away from Russia, and those that remain do not listen to the voice of the masses, but to the representatives of Lenin and Trotsky. At Moscow I saw an official of the Soviet escort an Englishman to a train. I was hungry. There were hundreds of soldiers like me at the station. Our hearts were aching. We wanted to give him a message, but he did not even turn to us. Instead, he warmly shook hands with the Soviet official.” + 

“What if we should appeal to the Allies, to America, England, and France, to furnish us with bread, arms and money for the reconstruction of the front?” I resumed. + 

“How can we trust them?” I was interrupted again. “They will come here and work in league with Lenin and his band of bloodsuckers.” + 

“Why not join forces and elect a Constituent Assembly, and let your own leaders cooperate with the Allies?” I suggested. + 

“But whom could we choose?” + 

“That we would decide later. There are plenty of good men still left in Russia,” I answered. “But what if I, for instance, should want to do something, would you trust me?” + 

“Yes, yes! We know you! You are of the people!” hundreds of voices cried out. + 

“Well, let me tell you then, I am going to America and England. If I should succeed and come back with an Allied force, would you come to aid me in saving Russia?” + 

“Yes, we will! Yes, yes!” the crowd roared. + 

With this the meeting ended. The train was now about to start and we hurried towards it, singing on the way. I felt happy and hopeful. Several thousand soldiers were not to be disregarded. They were almost unanimous in their new view of the country’s condition. Taken in combination with what I had observed in Moscow and on the way to Petrograd, this meeting further reinforced my hopes for Russia’s salvation. It was obviously a phenomenon of widespread occurrence, this awakening of the soldiers. + 

My mother had received Petrukhin’s letter, and for six weeks had mourned me as dead. She was overwhelmed with joy upon my return, but became a little uneasy as she perceived a long line of girls, many of them almost barefoot, file after me into the little hut. She took me aside and asked what it meant, confiding to me that she had only fifty roubles left of the money I had brought home on my previous visit. I begged her to be patient and assured her that I would arrange matters promptly. I immediately went to the owner of the hut and several others of the leading peasants of the community, got them together, explained to them the situation, informed them that I had only one thousand roubles to spend toward the support of the girls, and asked if they would undertake to feed and house them on credit till my return from America. + 

“I swear that I will pay every kopeck due to you. I will get enough money to pay not only the debts, but to ensure for them sustenance and shelter to the end of their lives. Now I want you to keep a record of all your expenses. Will you trust me?” + 

“Yes,” replied the peasants. “We know that you have done a great deal for Russia, and we have confidence in you.” + 

This was the arrangement under which the thirty invalids of my Battalion of Death were left by me in the village of Tutalsk in March, 1918. The thousand roubles I gave to my mother with instructions to buy shoes for the most destitute of the girls. Of the five hundred roubles given to me by the Consul, I gave three hundred to my mother. I decided to take my youngest sister, Nadia, with me to America. Accompanied to the station by my parents, the thirty girls, and half the community, I started eastward, for Irkutsk and Vladivostok, dressed once more as a woman. + 

At the station in Irkutsk I noticed a young girl, with two tiny children in her arms. Somehow her face looked familiar to me, but I could not recall who she was. She was evidently in trouble, poor and ragged. For a while she stared at me. Then she ran up and cried out breathlessly: + 

“Mania!” + 

She was the younger daughter of the woman Kitova, whose husband had killed the dog-catcher and who had accompanied him into exile, at the same time that I had gone into exile with Yasha. Then she was only a little girl, not more than eleven or twelve years old. Now she was the mother of two children. + 

For three days, she told me, her mother and herself had been living on the floor of the station. They had only seventy kopecks left in their possession. With this money the mother had gone to the town to find a lodging! More than three months they had been travelling from Yakutsk, where this girl had married a political. All the money in my purse was two hundred roubles. I gave forty and then another twenty to the poor girl. + 

While I was nursing one of the two babies, an official approached me. + 

“Are you Bochkareva?” he asked. + 

“Yes,” I answered. + 

He wanted to detain me, but some of the soldiers who had travelled on the same train with me hurried to my defence. There was a hot argument. I drew out my pass from the Soviet and claimed the freedom to go wherever I pleased. I was finally left in peace. + 

I waited for the return of old Kitova to the last minute, desirous to see her and especially to learn about Yasha and other friends in North Siberia. Her daughter could only tell me that Yasha had married a Yakut woman, after the local fashion, and was still in Amga when last she heard.⁠ ⁠… + 

We resumed the journey eastward. At Khabarovsk, about 460 miles from Vladivostok, we changed trains and had to accommodate ourselves for the night at the station in the women’s waiting-room. When I was about to settle down for the night, the door opened and a voice behind me called out sharply: + 

“Commander Bochkareva?” + 

“Yes,” I replied, alarmed at this form of address. + 

“Are you going to England?” was the next question. + 

“No.” + 

“Where, then, are you going?” + 

“To Vladivostok, to stay with some relatives.” + 

The official then demanded my baggage in order that he might search it. He found a letter from the Moscow Consul to his Vladivostok colleague. I explained that, the Consul had helped me in Moscow and now asked the English representative at Vladivostok to help me also. The official told me in a whisper that he was only fulfilling orders, but did not sympathize any longer with Lenin’s regime. He had left four soldiers outside the room in order to facilitate matters for me. His eyes then fell on a photograph of me in the trunk. It showed me in full uniform and was the last copy in my possession. He asked for it and my autograph, and to win his good will I gave it to him without demur. He then advised me to conceal the letter from the Consul, and I sent it by Nadia to Ivanov, one of my fellow-travellers outside. One of these was a member of a provincial Soviet, an ex-Bolshevik. He and other soldiers aided me while I was on the train to evade the Red Guards, who used to search it daily, at various stations, for officers going to join General Semenov. More than once, in an emergency, I was concealed under their overcoats. When the Guard asked: + 

“Who’s there?” + 

“A sick comrade,” was the answer, and they passed on. + 

The official had received orders to take me to the town and detain me. Escorted by the four Guards, Nadia and I were taken to the police station. I was locked up, while the official went to call a meeting of the local Soviet. Nadia remained outside the cell, and I suddenly heard her cry for help. Rushing to the door, I saw through the keyhole that the Red Guards were annoying her. I banged at the door, shouting to the rascals to leave her alone, appealing to their sense of shame, but they only jeered and continued to torment her. My helplessness behind the locked door infuriated me. I dare not think of what the ruffians would have done to Nadia had not my friend Ivanov come in with two other soldiers to plead for me. + 

They found Nadia crying and me banging at the door in a white fury. I told them of the behaviour of the four Red Guards toward my sister, and a sharp quarrel ensued. Presently the chairman of the local Soviet and the majority of its members arrived. My case was taken up. It appeared that orders had been received from Moscow or Irkutsk to detain me. As the search had not led to the discovery of any incriminating evidence against me, my claim that I was going to Vladivostok could not be refuted. + 

Ivanov and the two soldiers put up a valiant defence, arguing that I was a sick woman, that they had come to know me during our companionship on the train as a real friend of the people, and that it would be a disgrace to arrest me and send me back with no evidence against me. But for these three defenders, I should in all probability have been dispatched under escort to Moscow or Tutalsk. With their aid, I was able to make such a favourable impression on the Khabarovsk Soviet that I was permitted to proceed to Vladivostok, where I arrived about the middle of April, 1918, with five roubles and seventy kopecks in my purse. + 

The Soviet in Vladivostok kept a close watch over all the people who were arriving and departing. As soon as Nadia and I reached a lodging house, our documents were demanded in order that they might be sent to the Soviet for inspection. Nadia had a regular passport, while I made use of the paper from the Moscow Soldiers’ Section. It is usual for such documents to be returned to their owners with the stamp of the local Soviet on the back. But ours were slow in arriving⁠—not a good omen. + 

I went to the English Consul and was received in his office by an elderly Russian Colonel, who served there in the capacity of secretary and interpreter. He recognized me at once, as a telegram from Moscow announcing my coming had preceded me. The Consul was very kind and cordial when I was shown into his study, but declared that his position was such that he could not take it upon himself to obtain a passport for me from the Soviet, as he was suspected of counterrevolutionary activities. + 

Without revealing to the Consul the true purpose of my journey, I explained to him that my journey to London was undertaken not merely as a social visit to Mrs. Pankhurst, but as an escape from the terror of Bolshevism, which made life perilous for me anywhere in Russia. He advised me to go to the local Soviet, tell them of my desire to go to Mrs. Pankhurst, of whom the Bolsheviks had certainly heard, and ask for passports. The Consul thought that the Soviet could not find anything suspicious about my journey to his country, and would allow me to proceed unmolested. I replied with an account of some of the things I had endured at the hands of Lenin’s government and said that I was certain that my formal application for a passport would be the end of my adventure. He then telephoned to the American Consul at Vladivostok, informed him of my arrival and my plight, and enlisted his interest. + 

I returned to the hotel, with three hundred roubles in my purse, given me by the Consul. The place was dirty and without conveniences, but it was almost impossible to obtain decent accommodation in the city. However, the proprietor of the inn was very helpful and later saved me from trouble. + 

The following day the Consul told me that all efforts to win the goodwill of the Soviet toward me had not only failed but had been met with threats. The Bolsheviks might even send me back, I learned. I renewed my entreaties to the Consul to send me away, even without the Soviet’s passport. He would not promise to do so, but under the pressure of my appeals finally showed an inclination to consider the matter. + 

Upon leaving the Consulate I was stopped in the street by a soldier. + 

“Bochkareva?” he asked. + 

“Yes,” I answered. + 

“Why did you come here to tramp the streets?” was the next question. + 

“I came to visit my relatives, but found that they had moved, so I am going back soon.” + 

He let me go my way. As soon as I arrived at the inn, the proprietor took me aside to tell me that representatives of the Soviet had called in my absence, and inquired as to my doings and my plans. He had informed them that I had come to visit some relatives, but was unable to find where they were living. They had left with the threat that they would return to arrest me. I did not intend to wait for their arrival and allow myself to be detained and sent back. I telephoned to the Consul and told him of the latest development. Fortunately he had some good news for me. An American transport was to touch at Vladivostok two days later! + 

Nadia and I hurried to the Consulate. The Consul declared that the Bolsheviks had threatened him if he should be found aiding me to get away. Meanwhile he proceeded to have all the necessary foreign passports prepared for us, and we were photographed for that purpose. The difficulty of leaving Vladivostok without a pass from the Soviet still confronted us. The harbour was under strict supervision, and the boats that were used to ferry passengers from the shore to the steamships were manned and inspected by Bolsheviks. + 

For nearly two days I remained in my room, in constant dread of the appearance of Red Guards to arrest me. They did not come, however, apparently convinced that I could not escape them anyway. They had ample reason afterwards to change their minds about this. I then went to the Consul again. The American transport Sheridan was due that night, he said, but he was not sure yet if the Captain would be willing to take me on board. + 

Meanwhile we sought a means to elude the inspectors at the port. A large travelling basket was tried, and I managed to pack myself into it, but the Consul decided that I might be suffocated in case the basket should be left at the pier for a couple of hours. So I got out of the basket. + 

The transport arrived in the evening, and the Captain expressed his willingness to carry me across the Pacific. At the request of the Consul I remained in his house, while my sister, accompanied by an officer, went to the inn to get my things, and with them left for the vessel. Two hours later I called up the inn to find out whether Nadia had been there with the officer. The proprietor informed me that about fifty Red Guards had just been there looking for me, and had been disagreeably surprised to learn that I had departed already. + 

“Where did she go?” they asked the proprietor. + 

“To the railway station, to take a train,” he lied. + 

“What train?” they shouted indignantly. “There are no trains leaving tonight.” With that they went away, presumably to search for me. + 

I communicated to the Consul what I had learned, and he hid me in a closet. Shortly afterwards several Red Guards arrived, asking for Bochkareva. The Consul denied knowledge of my whereabouts, declared that I had come to him only once, as a result of which he had applied to the Soviet for a passport for me, but since he was refused he washed his hands of my case. The Red Guards said that I had been observed entering the Consulate, but had not been seen to leave it. They glanced about for me and then left, after the Consul’s denial of my visit. + 

The old Colonel returned, after taking Nadia aboard the transport, with the news that I should have company on the way, as eight Russian officers were to be passengers on the same vessel. Hundreds of Russian officers had arrived in Vladivostok in the belief that they could join the British army there and be transported to France. Unfortunately the Allies would not accept their services and they found themselves in difficult circumstances, without means to return to European Russia and with no desire to do so, as long as Bolshevism was still rampant there. Some of them succeeded by various means in making their way to the United States or Canada. + 

The Colonel asked me if I wanted to meet my fellow-travellers. I answered in the affirmative, and as they were at the moment at the Consulate, he took me into the room in which they were waiting. Scarcely had I crossed the threshold, when, glancing at the small group of officers, my eyes suddenly fell on Leonid Grigorievitch Filippov, my former battle adjutant, who had carried me unconscious under German fire to safety in that unhappy advance of the Battalion. + 

“What are you doing here?” both of us asked each other simultaneously, astonished at this unexpected meeting. + 

I had always felt that I owed my life to Lieutenant Filippov after I had been stunned by a shell and injured while running from the enemy at the end of the fruitless offensive launched by the Battalion. He had taken charge of the Battalion after I had been sent to the Petrograd hospital, and later left for Odessa to train as an aviator. + 

From a short private conversation I learned that Lieutenant Filippov was in the same plight as all the other officers who had come to Vladivostok under the impression that they would be accepted by the Allies. I decided to ask the Consul to allow him to assume his former post of adjutant to me and let him become a member of my party. The Consul graciously consented, and I was happy at the thought of journeying to foreign lands in the company of an educated friend, with a knowledge of languages, peoples and geography, who was also devoted to Russia with all his heart. + 

After another conference with the Consul, it was decided that I should be dressed as an Englishwoman and as such make an effort to get to the American transport. The necessary clothes were obtained, and in fifteen minutes I appeared no longer as a soldier, but as a veiled foreign lady who did not understand a word of Russian. Accompanied by the Colonel, I left for the harbour, after having expressed my deepest thanks to the Consul for his great sacrifices in my behalf. + 

I was supposed to play a speechless role and leave everything to my escort. This I did, although more than once my heart jumped when a guard seemed to scrutinize me closely, and now and then I had to suppress an impulse to laugh when the Colonel, in reply to questions, said that I was an Englishwoman returning home. It was dark when I was ferried to the transport, and everything went off without mishap. But that was not the end of the adventure. + 

The transport had to remain for another day in the harbour, and it was expected that the Soviet would search it for me. To baffle all attempts to discover me I was placed in a cabin, the entrance and all approaches to which were guarded. Nobody was allowed to come near the room, all inquirers being told that an important German general was detained there on his way to an American prison camp. Even Lieutenant Filippov did not know of the trick and was greatly worried over my non-arrival as the hour for the departure of the ship drew near. If any Bolshevik emissary was sent on board the vessel to look for me, he was stopped in front of a certain cabin by American soldiers and informed that no one would be permitted to get within so many feet of the imprisoned enemy general. + 

When the anchors of the Sheridan were raised and the ship began to move, I came out of the cabin, to the liveliest merriment of everybody who had expected to see a stern Teuton general emerge from the door. + 

I was free! + 

It was April 18, 1918, when I left Russian soil for the first time in my life. Under the American flag, on an American transport, I was heading for that wonderful land⁠—America⁠—carrying in my breast the message of the Russian peasant-soldier to the Allies: + 

“Help Russia to release herself from the German yoke and become free⁠—in return for the five million lives that she has sacrificed for your safety, the security of your liberties, the preservation of your own lands and lives!” + 