The Bolshevik Myth by Alexander Berkman — Read

I walked to the Hotel Savoy to meet a friend whom I expected from Petrograd. Nearing the Okhotny Ryad I was surprised to find the raided market in full operation again. All day long women and children are huckstering their wares there, and great crowds are about, trading and bargaining. One cannot tell buyer from seller. Everyone seems to have something for sale, and everyone is pricing things. An old Jew is offering to exchange secondhand trousers for bread; a soldier is trading a new pair of high boots for a watch. Colored kerchiefs and laces, an antique brass candlestick, kitchen utensils, chairs -- every imaginable object is collected there, awaiting a buyer. In the store windows meat, butter, fish, and flour, even wheat, are exposed for sale. I know that soldiers and sailors sell their surplus, but the quantities to be seen on the Okhotny, the Sukharevka, and other markets are very large. Could the rumors be true that trainloads of provisions often disappear? I have heard it whispered about that some commissars in charge of food supplies are in league with the traders. But such commissars are always Bolsheviki, members of the Party. Is it possible that the Communists themselves, rob the people: secretly aid speculation while officialy punishing it?

Passing the corner where I fell into the raid last week, I was hailed by a young voice: