Page:My Further Disillusionment In Russia.djvu/102

. Many of those wounded in the attack on Kronstadt had been brought to the same hospital, mostly kursanti. I had opportunity to speak to one of them. His physical suffering, he said, was nothing as compared with his mental agony. Too late he had realized that he had been duped by the cry of "counter-revolution." There were no Tsarist generals in Kronstadt, no White Guardists he found only his own comrades, sailors and soldiers who had heroically fought for the Revolution.

The rations of the ordinary patients in the hospitals were far from satisfactory, but the wounded kursanti received the best of everything, and a select committee of Communist members was assigned to look after their comfort. Some of the kursanti, among them the man I had spoken to, refused to accept the special privileges. "They want to pay us for murder," they said. Fearing that the whole institution would be influenced by these awakened victims, the management ordered them removed to a separate ward, the "Communist ward," as the patients called it.

Kronstadt broke the last thread that held me to the Bolsheviki. The wanton slaughter they had instigated spoke more eloquently against