Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/33

Rh knowing so well the turbid side of his anarchic people, solicits unintentionally our sympathy for those who shed the blood of the unhappy, hated bourgeoisie.

His genius succeeded in convincing Russia of the amiability of these cavemen of Odessa and of the motley crowd which thronged the public-houses of the ports. According to him they were the "eagle's breed" whom the bourgeois reptile crawling on the ground tried to imitate with awkward clumsiness.

Thus it came that all of a sudden, like the hawk upoii a flight of sparrows, the "barefooters" fell upon the Russian society—drew the knife concealed in their bosom and started the slaughter for, &hellip; there was then no policeman and no prison bar.

"How many were there in all Russia?" asks the curious reader—"one thousand, one hundred thousand, or a million?"

There is an answer to this question. The main support of the Soviets are eight provinces situated round Moscow. Thirty million peasants, for a long time deprived of land, of every tie with their native village, enjoying the "famous" freedom of wandering from factory to factory, from mine to mine, from port to port, from prison to prison. &hellip;

They defeated the Soviets, created the Third International, formed the leading Russian Communist Party, and crushed Kornilov, Denikin, Kolchak—the last supporters of statehood in Russia.

They were the "barefooters" living from hand to