One of his hands flew out of the armhole of his waistcoat, as if to annihilate an invisible foe, and remained suspended over the audience.
"When the workers, their wits fuddled by the slogans of the profiteers, clamour for the unrestricted sale of grain, the import of motor lorries and other transport machinery, we reply to them that this means to go to the aid of the kulaks.... We will never take that path.... We will seek the support of the workers, with whom we gained the victory in October, we will carry our decisions through only by means of imposing proletarian discipline upon all sections of workers.
We are faced with a historic task. And we will fulfil it.... The most fundamental of all questions—that of bread—is dealt with in the latest decrees.
These are all based upon three ruling principles.
The first is the principle of centralization, or the combining of all for a single, common task under guidance from the centre.... There are many who point out to us that the grain monopoly is being thwarted at every step by private buyers and profiteers.
We hear with ever increasing frequency from the intellectuals that the profiteers are doing them a great service, are keeping them alive.... Yes, that is so.... But the private traders are doing it in the kulak way, the way that will lead to the consolidation, the establishment, the perpetuation of the power of the kulaks...."
The hand, with a sweeping gesture, wiped out a situation that would never again be tolerated.
"Our second slogan is the unity of the workers.
It is they who will rescue Russia from the desperate, the stupendous difficulties in which she finds herself.
We will call to our aid the organizations of workers' food detachments, of the starving people from the non-agricultural famine districts, it is to them that our Commissariat for Supplies will address itself, and upon them that we will call to join our crusade for bread!"
There was heavy fury in the thunders of applause which broke out.
Dasha noticed how the speaker stepped back, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and raising his shoulders.
A spot of colour burned on each cheekbone, his eyelids quivered, his forehead was damp.
"We are creating a dictatorship.... We are building up a proletarian dictatorship against exploiters...."
These words, too, were drowned in applause.
Silencing his hearers with a peremptory gesture, he waited for quiet to be restored, before continuing:
"... 'Representatives of the poor, unite!'—that is our third slogan.
We are faced with a historic task: the task of imbuing a class which is new to history with class consciousness.... All over the world the ranks of town workers, of industrial workers, have united to a man.
But practically nowhere in the world have systematic, disinterested, self-sacrificing attempts ever been made to unite those living in remote country districts, on tiny farmsteads, their minds dulled by the benighted, lonely conditions in which they are forced to live.
We are faced, here, with the task of identifying the struggle against famine with the struggle for the profound and significant system of socialism.
In this struggle we must be ready to use our whole strength, to stake our all, for it is the struggle for socialism, the struggle for the final State system of the toilers and the exploited...."
He passed the palm of his hand rapidly across his forehead.
"... In the districts surrounding Moscow, and in the neighbouring provinces... even now—in Kursk, Orel, Tambov—we have, on the most conservative estimate, up to ten million poods of surplus grain.
Let us attack this matter with combined forces, Comrades!
Nothing but the combined forces, the uniting of those who are the greatest sufferers in the famine centres and districts, will be of any use to us, and this is the path to which the Soviet power calls you: the uniting of the workers, the uniting of the very poorest, of their vanguard, for spreading everywhere the idea of war with the kulaks for bread...."
He wiped his brow with his hand more and more frequently, and the ring had gone out of his voice. He had said all that he intended to say.
He picked up a sheet of paper from the table, glanced at it, and gathered up the rest of the pile.
"And so, Comrades, if we assimilate all this, if we do all this, we are sure to win."
Suddenly his face was lit up by a frank, good-humoured smile.
And everyone understood: this is one of us!
They shouted, clapped, stamped.
He hastened from the platform, his head seeming to shrink into his shoulders.
Dasha's white-toothed neighbour bellowed out, in a voice as powerful as the bellowing of a bull.
"Long live Ilyich!"
All that Dasha could find to say was that she had heard and seen "something new." On returning from the meeting she sat down on her bed, staring with wide-open eyes at the flourishes on the wallpaper.
On her pillow lay a note from Zhirov:
"Mamont expects you at 11 at the Metropole."
And on the floor, just over the threshold, lay another note: "Be at the Gogol monument this evening at 6."
In the first place this "something new" was austerely moral, and therefore sublime.... It was bread that had been talked about.
Formerly she had known that bread could be bought, or got in exchange for something else, at a price which everybody knew: a sack of flour cost a pair of unpatched trousers.
But now it appeared that the revolution repudiated such bread with fury.
Such bread was unclean.
Better to starve than partake of it!
Three thousand hungry men and women had today repudiated this unclean bread.
"Repudiated it in the name of...." (But here everything was once more all mixed up in Dasha's poor head.) "In the name of the insulted and oppressed...." That was what he had said, wasn't it?
"To devote all one's strength, to stake one's all, one's life—for the toilers and the exploited...." This is what gave them that tragic austerity....
Kulichok had told her that all over the world helping hands were being extended, hands with bread in them.... They had only to destroy the Soviet power.... Destroy it, and then there would be bread.... In the name of what?
In the name of the salvation of Russia.
But who was Russia to be saved from?
From ourselves.... But it was not thus that they wanted to save her—she had seen that for herself....