that it burnt like a collar of
fire, and for a long time I was unable to get to sleep.

In the morning Radek, the two conductors who had charge of the wagons
and I sat down together to breakfast and had a very merry meal, they
providing cheese and bread and I a tin of corned beef providently sent
out from home by the Manchester Guardian. We cooked up some coffee on
a little spirit stove, which, in a neat basket together with plates,
knives, forks, etc. (now almost unobtainable in Russia) had been
a parting present from the German Spartacists to Radek when he was
released from prison in Berlin and allowed to leave Germany.

The morning was bright and clear, and we had an excellent view of
Jaroslavl when we drove from the station to the town, which is a mile or
so off the line of the railway. The sun poured down on the white snow,
on the barges still frozen into the Volga River, and on the gilt and
painted domes and cupolas of the town. Many of the buildings had been
destroyed during the rising artificially provoked in July, 1918, and its
subsequent suppression. More damage was done then than was necessary,
because the town was recaptured by troops which had been deserted by
most of their officers, and therefore hammered away with artillery
without any very definite plan of attack. The more important of the
damaged buildings, such as the waterworks and the power station, have
been repaired, the tramway was working, and, after Moscow, the town
seemed clean, but plenty of ruins remained as memorials of that wanton
and unjustifiable piece of folly which, it was supposed, would be the
signal for a general rising.

We drove to the Hotel Bristol, now the headquarters of the Jaroslavl
Executive Committee, where Rostopchin, the president, discussed with
Larin and Radek the programme arranged for the conference. It was then
proposed that we should have something to eat, when a very curious state
of affairs (and one extremely Russian) was revealed. Rostopchin admitted
that the commissariat arrangements of the Soviet and its Executive
Committee were very bad. But in the center of the town there is a
nunnery which was very badly damaged during the bombardment and is now
used as a sort of prison or concentration camp for a Labor Regiment.
Peasants from the surrounding country who have refused to give up their
proper contribution of corn, or leave otherwise disobeyed the laws, are,
for punishment, lodged here, and made to expi