struggle to the other, from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
to a dictatorship of the proletariat.


The contrast was noticeable at once. On the Finnish side of
the frontier we had seen the grandiose new frontier station,
much larger than could possibly be needed, but quite a good
expression of the spirit of the new Finland. On the Russian
side we came to the same grey old wooden station known
to all passengers to and from Russia for polyglot profanity
and passport difficulties. There were no porters, which was
not surprising because there is barbed wire and an extremely
hostile sort of neutrality along the frontier and traffic across
has practically ceased. In the buffet, which was very cold,
no food could be bought. The long tables once laden with
caviare and other zakuski were bare. There was, however, a
samovar, and we bought tea at sixty kopecks a glass and
lumps of sugar at two roubles fifty each. We took our tea
into the inner passport room, where I think a stove must
have been burning the day before, and there made some sort
of a meal off some of Puntervald's Swedish hard-bread. It
is difficult to me to express the curious mixture of
depression and exhilaration that was given to the party by
this derelict starving station combined with the feeling that
we were no longer under guard but could do more or less as
we liked. It split the party into two factions, of which one
wept while the other sang. Madame Vorovsky, who had not
been in Russia since the first revolution, frankly wept, but
she wept still more in Moscow where she found that even
as the wife of a high official of the Government she enjoyed