They were Bolsheviki.

On their big Astrakhan caps I made out the red stars of Bolshevism and on their blouses the dirty red bands.

We greeted each other and sat down.

The soldiers had already prepared tea and so we drank this ever welcome hot beverage and chatted, suspiciously eyeing one another the while.
To disarm this suspicion on their part, I told them that I was a hunter from a distant place and was living there because I found it good country for sables.

They announced to me that they were soldiers of a detachment sent from a town into the woods to pursue all suspicious people.
"Do you understand, 'Comrade,'" said one of them to me, "we are looking for counter-revolutionists to shoot them ?" I knew it without his explanations.