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etc., for Denikin's so-called „Volunteer„ Army, Nabokov describes how the admiral treated him with the utmost contempt—and him an aristocrat and representative of the C. D. Party—insulted him so that on leaving the ship he seriously contemplated drowning himself. You see, comrades, to what extent French generals, hirelings of the French bourgeoisie, despise those Russian White officers—even though nobles, who sell themselves to them.
But even to these White officers I say: Instead of begging and cringing to the French bourgeoisie and its hirelings, and striving for them to despise you like that—deservedly too, for anyone will despise a man who sells his own people, and goes to the French bourgeoisie, begging help to shoot Russian workers and peasants and crawling on his belly before Frenchmen and Englishmen—were it not better, gentlemen, to realize once for all that it is the People who are in power in Russia now, that you can never again see the old-time estates, the old-time palaces; so you had better go on your knees to your own people and beg their forgiveness of your many sins against them, (Applause, Cries of „Bravo! Bravo“),
IV. The Soviet Government is Averse to Petty Vengeance.
To every such officer the Soviet government will say, „there shall be more joy over one
