Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/209

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CHAOS
193

they have terrorised and debased, while there in the very depths of the hungry masses, trembling fingers are sewing the gigantic "Black Flag" of an anarchy overflowing all bounds of any external form of nationhood.

There, Solncev-Blejchman, the poet Gordin, Suknotov, all leaders of anarchism, are making ready for a new struggle for a "new Russia," for a few short but "jolly" days.

In a proclamation issued some time ago Solncev said:

"The Soviets are defrauding you every day, prolonging our agonies of hunger and disease. We have had enough of it! Let us hoist our Black Flag on Kremlin, let us take the cities, factories, and estates, with our arms in hand let us share out everything and be safe for a few days. Then, nourished and secure, we can think how we ought and can arrange the life of the entire nation. Be ready! Get your arms! Attention! Our day will soon come! Long live the 'Black Flag'!"

Thus speaks and thereof dreams the minstrel of anarchy.

And at the same time the exiles, the Russian emigres, split up into ever smaller and uninfluential political groups.

Kerensky, Milyukov, Guchkov, have a policy of their own. The monarchists are forging a crude, concise, and reactionary scheme of the restoration of mon-