Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/306

252 Union, and a Commissar of the Military Revolutionary Committee during the fighting…

“You see me!” he cried, showing his decrepit clothing. “I was with the boys in the Kremlin when the yunkers came the first time. They shut me up in the cellar and swiped my overcoat, my money, watch and even the ring on my finger. This is all I’ve got to wear!”

From him I learned many details of the bloody six-day battle which had rent Moscow in two. Unlike in Petrograd, in Moscow the City Duma had taken command of the yunkers and White Guards. Rudnev, the Mayor, and Minor, president of the Duma, had directed the activities of the Committee of Public Safety and the troops. Riabtsev, Commandant of the city, a man of democratic instincts, had hesitated about opposing the Military Revolutionary Committee; but the Duma had forced him… It was the Mayor who had urged the occupation of the Kremlin; “They will never dare fire on you there,” he said…

One garrison regiment, badly demoralised by long inactivity, had been approached by both sides. The regiment held a meeting to decide what action to take. Resolved, that the regiment remain neutral, and continue its present activities—which consisted in peddling rubbers and sunflower seeds!

“But worst of all,” said Melnichansky, “we had to organise while we were fighting. The other side knew just what it wanted; but here the soldiers had their Soviet and the workers theirs… There was a fearful wrangle over who should be Commander-in-chief; some regiments talked for days before they decided what to do; and when the officers suddenly deserted us, we had no battle-staff to give orders…”

Vivid little pictures he gave me. On a cold grey day he had stood at a corner of the Nikitskaya, which was swept by blasts of machine-gun fire. A throng of little boys were gathered there—street waifs who used to be newsboys. Shrill,