Читать книгу The Red Reign. The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russia онлайн

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After breakfast I ventured out for a survey of the town—much to Ivan’s disgust. Ivan was a brave fellow in the mountains, but he had seen the Cossacks of this same General Alikhanoff, who now commanded Kutais, hack off the fingers of fine ladies for the rings they wore, in Tiflis only a few months before.

During the first hour we were out I must have seen

A Georgian village

It was from hamlets like this that General Alikhanoff tried to collect taxes with machine-guns and field-artillery

twenty political arrests. Demolished houses were in every block. Occasionally an entire block had been swept away by fire. That afternoon when I talked with General Alikhanoff he explained to me that when “his soldiers were ordered to burn down a certain house they do not always have time to see that other houses do not burn also!”

Toward noon we came upon a group of Cossack barracks, and I proposed to Ivan that we run through them.

“Not for a thousand rubles,” replied the redoubtable Ivan. But I finally persuaded him.