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Representatives of the Central Statistical Office and its local organs had a right to be present at the meeting of these committees of three, or "Troikas," but had not the right to vote. An organization or a factory requiring labor, was to apply to the Labor Department of the local Soviet. This Department was supposed to do its best to satisfy demands upon it by voluntary methods first.

They were to be elected for six months, but their members could be withdrawn and replaced by the Factory Committee with the approval of the local "Troika." These Commissions, like the "Troikas," consisted of three members: from the management of the factory, from the Factory Committee, from the Executive Committee of the workers.

For had they not a whole morning of sight-seeing still to do on the morrow, and then their thirty versts in troikas to arrive at Milasláv. So the ladies all trouped off to rest. "Leave your door open into my room, Tamara dear, if you do not mind," her godmother said. "I am always nervous in hotels " "I trust everything is going quietly," she added to herself, "but one never can tell."

I fancy the object of this arrangement was to prevent local "Troikas" from referring to Government "Troikas," and so directly to Dzerzhinsky's Central Committee. If they had been able to do this there would obviously have been danger lest a new network of independent and powerful organizations should be formed.

Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse, all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya, Great Sea Street, and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three.

Mead and qvass flowed in the very streets, and the castle trumpets could not be heard for the sound of troikas and balalaikas. The hour of Simon Petrovitch had struck: with the inspiration smuggled to him by Prince Boris, he had arranged a performance which he felt to be his masterpiece. Anxiety as to its reception kept him sober.

The "Troikas" have the right to deal administratively with the less important crimes by deprival of freedom for not more than two weeks. No one can be brought to trial except by the Committee for Industrial Conscription on the initiative of the responsible director of work, and with the approval either of the local labor inspection authorities or with that of the local Executive Committee.

This, however, proved unsatisfactory, so, disregarding the "Troikas," they organized things for themselves in the whole area immediately behind the front. They divided up the forests into definite districts, and they worked these with soldiers and with deserters. Gradually their work developed, and they built themselves narrow-gauge railways for the transport of the wood.

The colder it grew the better was our speed, the horses feeling the crisp air and the driver being anxious to complete his stage in the least time possible. With uniform roads and teams one can judge pretty fairly of the temperature by the rate at which he travels. From Barnaool we did not have the horses of the post, but engaged our first troikas of a peasant who offered his services.

Taking up a pen, he would spend hours in idly sketching houses, huts, waggons, troikas, and flourishes on a piece of paper; while at other times, when he had sunk into a reverie, the pen would, all unknowingly, sketch a small head which had delicate features, a pair of quick, penetrating eyes, and a raised coiffure.