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ge—that offends the eye. The city just now seems a desert: closed shops, little light—we seem to have stepped backward. All this must be offensive to the average officer. He is used to seeing the Nevsky swarming with people, brilliant with beautiful shops and uninterrupted traffic. And looking on such abomination of desolation, he thinks we are ruining our country, and doubt seizes him—can he support such a state of things?
But the average officer, when he has done his thinking, will have to realize what has caused all this, and ask himself: Was it really, after all, such an ideal state of things when the Nevsky swarmed with people, when the shops were open, when choice eatables were exposed, accessible to some five thousand people out of two millions, and inaccessible even to him, the average officer? Was it really so very nice when some favoured officers paraded the Nevsky, feeling very well, but surrounded with an atmosphere of general distrust and hatred, and looked on by the people as strangers, as henchmen of the Tsar, as those who, on the 9th of January shot down the working men on the Winter Palace Square.
XIV. The «Whites» and the «Reds».
That which has happened for the last five years has been so unusual, so unheard-of, turning upside down all relations between men
