[...] The Red divisions on the Estonian front, exposed to lice and hunger, were demoralized. In the shattered trenches I saw emaciated, dejected soldiers, absolutely incapable of any further effort. The cold rains of autumn came, and the war went by dismally for those poor fellows, without hope, or victories, or boots, or provisions; for a number of them it was the sixth year of war, and they had made the Revolution to gain peace! They felt as though they were in one of the rings of Hell. Vainly the ABC of Communism explained that they would have land, justice, peace, and equality, when in the near future the world revolution was achieved. Our divisions were slowly melting away under the ghastly sun of misery.

[...] From honest dealers in Helsinki we would buy excellent weapons, Mauser pistols in wooden cases which were delivered to us on a quiet sector of the front (quiet because of this minor traffic) fifty or so kilometers from Leningrad. To pay for these useful commodities, we printed whole casefuls of beautiful 500-ruble notes, watery in appearance, with the image of Catherine the Great and the signature of a bank director as dead as his bank, his social order, and the Empress Catherine. Case for case, the exchange was made silently in a wood of somber firs—it was really the maddest commercial transaction imaginable. Obviously the recipients of the Imperial banknotes were taking out a mortgage on our deaths, at the same time furnishing us with the means for our defense.

[...] Socialism isn’t only about defending against one’s enemies, against the old world it is opposing; it also has to fight within itself against its own reactionary ferments. A revolution seems monolithic only from a distance; close up it can be compared to a torrent that violently sweeps along both the best and the worst at the same time, and necessarily carries along some real counterrevolutionary currents. It is constrained to pick up the worn weapons of the old regime, and these arms are double-edged. In order to be properly served, it has to be put on guard against its own abuses, its own excesses, its own crimes, its own moments of reaction. It has a vital need of criticism, therefore, of an opposition and of the civic courage of those who are carrying it out. And in this connection, by 1920 we were already well short of the mark.