Larin and Radek severally summed up and made final attacks on each other's positions, after which Radek's resolution approving the theses of the Central Committee was passed almost unanimously.Larin's four amendments received 1, 3, 7 and 1 vote apiece.This result was received with cheering throughout the theater, and showed the importance of such Conferences in smoothing the way of the Dictatorship, since it had been quite obvious when the discussion began that a very much larger proportion of the delegates than finally voted for his resolution had been more or less in sympathy with Larin in his opposition to the Central Committee.
There followed elections to the Party Conference in Moscow.Rostopchin, the president, read a list which had been submitted by the various ouyezds in the Jaroslavl Government.They were to send to Moscow fifteen delegates with the right to vote, together with another fifteen with the right to speak but not to vote.Larin, who had done much work in the district, was mentioned as one of the fifteen voting delegates, but he stood up and said that as the Conference had so clearly expressed its disagreement with his views, he thought it better to withdraw hiscandidature.Rostopchin put it to the Conference that although they disagreedwith Larin, yet it would be as well that he should have the opportunity of stating his views at the All-Russian Conference, so that discussion there should be as final and as many-sided as possible.The Conference expressed its agreement with this.Larin withdrew his withdrawal, and was presently elected.The main object of these conferences in unifying opinion and in arming Communists with argument for the defence of this unified opinion a mong the masses was again illustrated when the Conference, in leaving it to the ouyezds to choose for themselves the non- voting delegates urged them to select wherever possible people who would have the widest opportunities of explaining on their return to the district whatever results might be reached in Moscow.
It was now pretty late in the evening, and after another very satisfactory visit to the prison we drove back to the station.Larin, who was very disheartened, realizing that he had lost much support in the course of the discussion, settled down to work, and buried himself in a mass of statistics.I prepared to go to bed, but we had hardly got into the car when there was a tap at the door and a couple of railwaymen came in.They explained that a few hundred yards away along the line a concert and entertainment arranged by the Jaroslavl railwaymen was going on, and that their committee, hearing that Radek was at the station, had sent them to ask him to come over and say a few words to them if he were not too tired.
"Come along," said Radek, and we walked in the dark along the railway lines to a big one-story wooden shanty, where an electric lamp lit a great placard, "Railwaymen's Reading Room." We went into a packed hall.Every seat was occupied by railway workers and their wives and children.The gangways on either side were full of those who had not found room on the benches.We wriggled and pushed our way through this crowd, who were watching a play staged and acted by the railwaymen themselves, to a side door, through which we climbed up into the wings, and slid across the stage behind the scenery into a tiny dressing-room.Here Radek was laid hold of by the Master of the Ceremonies, who, itseemed, was also part editor of a railwaymen's newspaper, and made to give a long account of thepresent situation of Soviet Russia's Foreign Affairs.The little box of a room filled to a solid mass as policemen, generals and ladies of the old regime threw off their costumes, and, in their working clothes, plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen.When the act ended, one of the railwaymen went to the front of the stage and announced that Radek, who had lately come back after imprisonment in Germany for the cause of revolution, was going to talk to them about the general state of affairs.I saw Radek grin atthis forecast of his speech.I understood why, when he began to speak.He led off by a direct and furious onslaught on the railway workers in general, demanding work, work and more work, telling them that as the Red Army had been the vanguard of the revolution hitherto, and had starved and fought and given lives to save those at home from Denikin and Kolchak, so now it was the turn of the railway workers on whose efforts not only the Red Army but also the whole future of Russia depended.He addressed himself to the women, telling them in very bad Russian that unless their men worked superhumanly they would see their babies die from starvation next winter.I saw women nudge their husbands as they listened.Instead of giving them a pleasant, interesting sketch of the international position, which, no doubt, was what they had expected, he took the opportunity to tell them exactly how things stood at home.And the amazing thing was that they seemed to be pleased.They listened with extreme attention, wanted to turn out some one who had a sneezing fit at the far end of the hall, and nearly lifted the roof off with cheering when Radek had done.I wondered what sort of reception a man would have who in another country interrupted a play to hammer home truths about the need of work into an audience of working men who had gathered solely for the purpose of legitimate recreation.It was not as if he sugared the medicine he gave them.His speech was nothing but demands for discipline and work, coupled with prophecy of disaster in case work and discipline failed.It was delivered like all his speeches, with a strong Polish accent and a steady succession of mistakes in grammar.
As we walked home along the railway lines, half a dozen of the railwaymen pressed around Radek, and almost fought with each other as to who should walk next to him.And Radek entirely happy, delighted at his success ingiving them a bombshell instead of a bouquet, with one stout fellow on one arm, another on the other, two or three more listening in front and behind, continued rubbing it into them until we reached our wagon, when, after a general handshaking, they disappeared into the night.
