Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Twelve Days in Germany (1921).pdf/7

 heads of the Scheidemann party, well-informed as they were, knew that a split was inevitable in any case, and were in favour of allowing the representative of the Third International to appear in order to make the petty bourgeois and nationalist workers believe that "Moscow" was to blame for the split.

Such was the combination of forces among the bourgeois and Social Democratic leaders, which finally led to my obtaining leave to enter Germany.

… I am getting ready hurriedly, and at 1 a.m. on 9th October leave for Reval. In Reval I remained only a few hours. I took the Esthonian steamer "Wasa," a small passenger and cargo steamer. She usually takes only twenty/thirty persons on board. This time she had to take no less than seventy-five. Most of the new passengers came on board, to the surprise of the captain, during the last few hours. The captain owes this sudden incursion of passengers to me.

Why this sudden rush of passengers? The riddle is easily solved. They were spies of all countries and of all nations. Reval has absolutely no claim to be and no chance of becoming an important international centre, but it can claim the honour of having become the centre of an international spy system. It is honeycombed with them. One can hardly walk along without hitting against one of them. They spy over one another. All the Great Powers of the world, and the lesser powers as well, keep a couple of dozen spies at Reval. It can be imagined what a sensation was caused among these gentry when they suddenly learned that I was passing through Reval, boarding a steamer, and going to Germany!

Well-informed comrades told me that this sudden news caused extraordinary excitement among the spies of all countries. Every secret service had its own quasi-scientific theory as to why I was going, how it was that I had been admitted, etc., etc. At the same time each agency pretended to possess the most authentic information, which the agencies of the rival country would never be able to obtain. In consequence, these honourable gentlemen swarmed our ship like flies on a lump of sugar. This presented a most picturesque scene. I was accompanied by a Bulgarian comrade, Shablin, and a Petrograd comrade, Yonov. Besides, there were on the