Yashka · Part III · Chapter 12 (2/2)

I asked myself, as I led the group of distinguished visitors into the house, what it all meant. “If it means that they have come to persuade me to form a committee,” I thought, “then it will be very hard for me, but I shall resist all persuasion.”

My anticipation proved correct. The General had brought all these patronesses of mine to help him overcome my obstinacy. He immediately launched into an exposition of the necessity for complying with general regulations and introducing the committee system in the Battalion. He argued along the already familiar lines, but I would not yield. He gradually became angry.

“Are you a soldier?” he repeated the question put to me by Kerensky.

“Yes, General!”

“Then why don’t you obey orders?”

“Because they are against the interests of the country. The committees are a plague. They have destroyed our army,” I answered.

“But it is the law of the country,” he declared.

“Yes, and it is a ruinous law, designed to break up the front in time of war.”

“Now I ask you to do it as a matter of form,” he argued in a different tone altogether, perhaps himself realizing the truth of my words. “All the army committees are beginning to make inquiries about you. ‘Who is this Bochkareva?’ they ask, ‘and why is she allowed to command without a committee?’ Do it only for the sake of form. Your girls are so devoted to you that a committee elected by them would never seriously bother you. At the same time it would save trouble.”

Then my lady-visitors surrounded me and begged and coaxed me to give way. Some of them wept, others embraced me, all of them exasperated my nerves. Nothing was more calculated to enrage me than this wheedling. I grew impatient and completely lost self-control, abandoning myself to hysteria.

“You are rascals, all of you! You want to destroy the country. Get out of here!” I shrieked wildly.

“Be silent! How dare you shout like that? I am a General. I will kill you!” Polovtzev thundered at me, trembling with rage.

“All right, you can kill me! Kill me!” I cried out, tearing my coat open and pointing to my chest. “Kill me!”

The General then threw up his hands, muttering angrily under his breath: “What the devil! This is a demon, not a woman! There is nothing to be done with her,” and with his mixed following he withdrew.

The following morning a telegram came from General Polovtzev, informing me that I should be allowed to continue my work without a committee!

Thus ended the dispute caused by the mutiny in the Battalion, which had nearly wrecked the entire undertaking. It was a hard fight that I had made but, convinced of my right, there was no question of retreating for me.

Events have completely justified my conviction. The Russian Army, once the most colossal military machine in the world, was wrecked in a few months by the committee system. Coming from the trenches, where I had learned at first hand what a curse the committees were proving, I realized early their fatal significance. To me it has always been clear that a committee meant ceaseless speechmaking. That was the outstanding factor about it to me. I considered no other aspect of it. I knew that the Germans worked all day while our men talked, and in war, I always realized that it was action that counted and conquered.