Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/208

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166
Ten Days that Shook the World

at the gate of the fortress, and went forward under the faint glimmer of rare electric lights along the side of the church where lie the tombs of the Tsars, beneath the slender golden spire and the chimes, which, for months, continued to play Bozhe Tsaria Khrani[1] every day at noon… The place was de-

"Pass from the Department of Prisons of the Soviet Government to visit freely all prisons of Petrograd and Cronstadt." (John Reed)
"Pass from the Department of Prisons of the Soviet Government to visit freely all prisons of Petrograd and Cronstadt." (John Reed)
Pass from the Department of Prisons of the Soviet Government to visit freely all prisons of Petrograd and Cronstadt.
(Translation)
Commissar
Chief Bureau of Prisons
6th of November, 1917.
No. 213
Petrograd, Smolny Institute, room No. 56—
PASS

To the representative of the American Socialist press, John Reed, to visit all places of confinement in the cities of Petrograd and Cronstadt, for the purpose of generally investigating the condition of the prisoners, and for thorough social information for the purpose of stopping the flood of newspaper lies against democracy.

Chief Commissar
Secretary


serted in most of the windows there were not even lights. Occasionally we bumped into a burly figure stumbling along in the dark, who answered questions with the usual, “Ya nié znayu.”

On the left loomed the low dark outline of Trubetskoi Bastion, that living grave in which so many martyrs of liberty

  1. “God Save the Tsar.”