Explore "The Bolshevik Myth" by Alexander Berkman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Krestchatik, Kiev's main thoroughfare, pulsates with intense life. Straight as an arrow it lies before me, a magnificent broad avenue stretching far into the distance and finally disappearing in the superb Kupetchesky Park, formerly the pride of the city. Ancient, the storms of time and human strife defying, Kiev stands picturesquely beautiful, a radiant mosaic of iridescent foliage, golden cathedrals and monasteries of exotic architecture, and green-clad mountains towering on the banks of the Dnieper flowing majestically below.
Recent days revived the bloody scenes the old city had witnessed in the centuries past, when Mongol and Tartar, Cossack, Pole, and fierce native tribes had fought for its possession. But more sanguinary and ferocious have been the struggles of yesterday. Foreign armies of occupation, German, Magyar, and Austrian, native gaidamaki, Poles, Russians -- each turned the ancient city into a shamble. Skoropadsky, Petlura, Denikin, like the savage atamans of Gogol's tales, have vied with each other in filling the streams that crimson the Dnieper in these the darkest days of Russia.