Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/27

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The Revolution at Petrograd

where with fixed bayonets and a red rosette in their buttonholes. The Revolution is well guarded. But our papers are in order, and we are taken in at once to the Executive Committee.

Tscheidze is presiding, with Skobeleff beside him. We recognize some other friends whom we have met before in this same Tauride Palace or at the International Congresses. But how many new figures there are! Siberia has given up her exiles. The Revolutionary emigration has come back to its own. Amongst the members of the Executive Committee, moreover, all

are not Russians. Without mentioning the Jews, who are very numerous, Mme. Kolontay, sitting among the Leninists, is Finnish. And there is Rakowski, too, the Socialist leader of Roumania: one never knows exactly whether he is Roumanian or Bulgarian. He had been sent to prison by the Government at Jassy, and set free by Russian soldiers! From this cosmopolitan assembly we receive a cordial but reserved welcome. They applaud, however, when Albert Thomas announces that in France the Socialists are inaugurating a

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