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Title: My Disillusionment in Russia
Author: Emma Goldman
Release Date: September 17, 2019 [eBook #60315]
Language: English
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MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
by
EMMA GOLDMAN
[Illustration: Decoration]
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1923
Copyright, 1923, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
Printed in the United States
at
The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.
First Edition
PREFACE
The decision to record my experiences, observations, and reactions
during my stay in Russia I had made long before I thought of leaving
that country. In fact, that was my main reason for departing from that
tragically heroic land.
The strongest of us are loath to give up a long-cherished dream. I had
come to Russia possessed by the hope that I should find a new-born
country, with its people wholly consecrated to the great, though very
difficult, task of revolutionary reconstruction. And I had fervently
hoped that I might become an active part of the inspiring work.
I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal
that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise.
It required fifteen long months before I could get my bearings. Each
day, each week, each month added new links to the fatal chain that
pulled down my cherished edifice. I fought desperately against the
disillusionment. For a long time I strove against the still voice
within me which urged me to face the overpowering facts. I would not
and could not give up.
Then came Kronstadt. It was the final wrench. It completed the terrible
realization that the Russian Revolution was no more.
I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every
constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and
disintegrating everything. Unable and unwilling to become a cog in
that sinister machine, and aware that I could be of no practical use
to Russia and her people, I decided to leave the country. Once out of
it, I would relate honestly, frankly, and as objectively as humanly
possible to me the story of my two years' stay in Russia.
I left in December, 1921. I could have written then, fresh under the
influence of the ghastly experience. But I waited four months before
I could bring myself to write a series of articles. I delayed another
four months before beginning the present volume.
I do not pretend to write a history. Removed by fifty or a hundred
years from the events he is describing, the historian may seem to
be objective. But real history is not a compilation of mere data.
It is valueless without the human element which the historian
necessarily gets from the writings of the contemporaries of the
events in question. It is the personal reactions of the participants
and observers which lend vitality to all history and make it vivid
and alive. Thus, numerous histories have been written of the French
Revolution; yet there are only a very few that stand out true and
convincing, illuminative in the degree in which the historian has
_felt_ his subject through the medium of human documents left by the
contemporaries of the period.
I myself--and I believe, most students of history--have felt and
visualized the Great French Revolution much more vitally from the
letters and diaries of contemporaries, such as Mme. Roland, Mirabeau,
and other eye witnesses, than from the so-called objective historians.
By a strange coincidence a volume of letters written during the French
Revolution, and compiled by the able German anarchist publicist,
Gustav Landauer, came into my hands during the most critical period
of my Russian experience. I was actually reading them while hearing
the Bolshevik artillery begin the bombardment of the Kronstadt rebels.
Those letters gave me a most vivid insight into the events of the
French Revolution. As never before they brought home to me the
realization that the Bolshevik régime in Russia was, on the whole, a
significant replica of what had happened in France more than a century
before.
Great interpreters of the French Revolution, like Thomas Carlyle and
Peter Kropotkin, drew their understanding and inspiration from the
human records of the period. Similarly will the future historians of
the Great Russian Revolution--if they are to write real history and not
a mere compilation of facts--draw from the impressions and reactions of
those who have lived through the Russian Revolution, who have shared
the misery and travail of the people, and who actually participated in
or witnessed the tragic panorama in its daily unfoldment.
While in Russia I had no clear idea how much had already been written
on the subject of the Russian Revolution. But the few books which
reached me occasionally impressed me as most inadequate. They were
written by people with no first-hand knowledge of the situation and
were sadly superficial. Some of the writers had spent from two weeks
to two months in Russia, did not know the language of the country, and
in most instances were chaperoned by official guides and interpreters.
I do not refer here to the writers who, in and out of Russia, play
the rôle of Bolshevik court functionaries. They are a class apart.
With them I deal in the chapter on the "Travelling Salesmen of the
Revolution." Here I have in mind the sincere friends of the Russian
Revolution. The work of most of them has resulted in incalculable
confusion and mischief. They have helped to perpetuate the myth that
the Bolsheviki and the Revolution are synonymous. Yet nothing is
further from the truth.
The _actual_ Russian Revolution took place in the summer months of
1917. During that period the peasants possessed themselves of the
land, the workers of the factories, thus demonstrating that they knew
well the meaning of social revolution. The October change was the
finishing touch to the work begun six months previously. In the great
uprising the Bolsheviki assumed the voice of the people. They clothed
themselves with the agrarian programme of the Social Revolutionists and
the industrial tactics of the Anarchists. But after the high tide of
revolutionary enthusiasm had carried them into power, the Bolsheviki
discarded their false plumes. It was then that began the spiritual
separation between the Bolsheviki and the Russian Revolution.
With each succeeding day the gap grew wider, their interests more
conflicting. To-day it is no exaggeration to state that the Bolsheviki
stand as the arch enemies of the Russian Revolution.
Superstitions die hard. In the case of this modern superstition the
process is doubly hard because various factors have combined to
administer artificial respiration. International intervention, the
blockade, and the very efficient world propaganda of the Communist
Party have kept the Bolshevik myth alive. Even the terrible famine is
being exploited to that end.
How powerful a hold that superstition wields I realize from my own
experience. I had always known that the Bolsheviki are Marxists. For
thirty years I fought the Marxian theory as a cold, mechanistic,
enslaving formula. In pamphlets, lectures, and debates I argued against
it. I was therefore not unaware of what might be expected from the
Bolsheviki. But the Allied attack upon them made them the symbol of the
Russian Revolution, and brought me to their defence.
From November, 1917, until February, 1918, while out on bail for
my attitude against the war, I toured America in defence of the
Bolsheviki. I published a pamphlet in elucidation of the Russian
Revolution and in justification of the Bolsheviki. I defended them
as embodying _in practice_ the spirit of the revolution, in spite
of their theoretic Marxism. My attitude toward them at that time is
characterized in the following passages from my pamphlet, "The Truth
About the Bolsheviki:"[1]
The Russian Revolution is a miracle in more than one respect.
Among other extraordinary paradoxes it presents the phenomenon
of the Marxian Social Democrats, Lenin and Trotsky, adopting
Anarchist revolutionary tactics, while the Anarchists Kropotkin,
Tcherkessov, Tschaikovsky are denying these tactics and falling
into Marxian reasoning, which they had all their lives repudiated
as "German metaphysics."
The Bolsheviki of 1903, though revolutionists, adhered to the
Marxian doctrine concerning the industrialization of Russia
and the historic mission of the bourgeoisie as a necessary
evolutionary process before the Russian masses could come into
their own. The Bolsheviki of 1917 no longer believe in the
predestined function of the bourgeoisie. They have been swept
forward on the waves of the Revolution to the point of view held
by the Anarchists since Bakunin; namely, that once the masses
become conscious of their economic power, they make their own
history and need not be bound by traditions and processes of a
dead past which, like secret treaties, are made at a round table
and are not dictated by life itself.
In 1918, Madame Breshkovsky visited the United States and began
her campaign against the Bolsheviki. I was then in the Missouri
Penitentiary. Grieved and shocked by the work of the "Little
Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," I wrote imploring her to
bethink herself and not betray the cause she had given her life to. On
that occasion I emphasized the fact that while neither of us agreed
with the Bolsheviki in theory, we should yet be one with them in
defending the Revolution.
When the Courts of the State of New York upheld the fraudulent methods
by which I was disfranchised and my American citizenship of thirty-two
years denied me, I waived my right of appeal in order that I might
return to Russia and help in the great work. I believed fervently that
the Bolsheviki were furthering the Revolution and exerting themselves
in behalf of the people. I clung to my faith and belief for more than a
year after my coming to Russia.
Observation and study, extensive travel through various parts of the
country, meeting with every shade of political opinion and every
variety of friend and enemy of the Bolsheviki--all convinced me of the
ghastly delusion which had been foisted upon the world.
I refer to these circumstances to indicate that my change of mind
and heart was a painful and difficult process, and that my final
decision to speak out is for the sole reason that the people everywhere
may learn to differentiate between the Bolsheviki and the Russian
Revolution.
The conventional conception of gratitude is that one must not be
critical of those who have shown him kindness. Thanks to this notion
parents enslave their children more effectively than by brutal
treatment; and by it friends tyrannize over one another. In fact, all
human relationships are to-day vitiated by this noxious idea.
Some people have upbraided me for my critical attitude toward the
Bolsheviki. "How ungrateful to attack the Communist Government after
the hospitality and kindness she enjoyed in Russia," they indignantly
exclaim. I do not mean to gainsay that I have received advantages while
I was in Russia. I could have received many more had I been willing to
serve the powers that be. It is that very circumstance which has made
it bitter hard for me to speak out against the evils as I saw them
day by day. But finally I realized that silence is indeed a sign of
consent. Not to cry out against the betrayal of the Russian Revolution
would have made me a party to that betrayal. The Revolution and the
welfare of the masses in and out of Russia are by far too important to
me to allow any personal consideration for the Communists I have met
and learned to respect to obscure my sense of justice and to cause me
to refrain from giving to the world my two years' experience in Russia.
In certain quarters objections will no doubt be raised because I have
given no names of the persons I am quoting. Some may even exploit the
fact to discredit my veracity. But I prefer to face that rather than
to turn any one over to the tender mercies of the Tcheka, which would
inevitably result were I to divulge the names of the Communists or
non-Communists who felt free to speak to me. Those familiar with the
real situation in Russia and who are not under the mesmeric influence
of the Bolshevik superstition or in the employ of the Communists will
bear me out that I have given a true picture. The rest of the world
will learn in due time.
Friends whose opinion I value have been good enough to suggest that
my quarrel with the Bolsheviki is due to my social philosophy rather
than to the failure of the Bolshevik régime. As an Anarchist, they
claim, I would naturally insist on the importance of the individual
and of personal liberty, but in the revolutionary period both must
be subordinated to the good of the whole. Other friends point out
that destruction, violence, and terrorism are inevitable factors in a
revolution. As a revolutionist, they say, I cannot consistently object
to the violence practised by the Bolsheviki.
Both these criticisms would be justified had I come to Russia expecting
to find Anarchism realized, or if I were to maintain that revolutions
can be made peacefully. Anarchism to me never was a mechanistic
arrangement of social relationships to be imposed upon man by political
scene-shifting or by a transfer of power from one social class to
another. Anarchism to me was and is the child, not of destruction, but
of construction--the result of growth and development of the conscious
creative social efforts of a regenerated people. I do not therefore
expect Anarchism to follow in the immediate footsteps of centuries of
despotism and submission. And I certainly did not expect to see it
ushered in by the Marxian theory.
I did, however, hope to find in Russia at least the beginnings of the
social changes for which the Revolution had been fought. Not the fate
of the individual was my main concern as a revolutionist. I should have
been content if the Russian workers and peasants as a whole had derived
essential social betterment as a result of the Bolshevik régime.
Two years of earnest study, investigation, and research convinced me
that the great benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism
exist only on paper, painted in glowing colours to the masses of Europe
and America by efficient Bolshevik propaganda. As advertising wizards
the Bolsheviki excel anything the world had ever known before. But
in reality the Russian people have gained nothing from the Bolshevik
experiment. To be sure, the peasants have the land; not by the grace
of the Bolsheviki, but through their own direct efforts, set in motion
long before the October change. That the peasants were able to retain
the land is due mostly to the static Slav tenacity; owing to the
circumstance that they form by far the largest part of the population
and are deeply rooted in the soil, they could not as easily be torn
away from it as the workers from their means of production.
The Russian workers, like the peasants, also employed direct action.
They possessed themselves of the factories, organized their own shop
committees, and were virtually in control of the economic life of
Russia. But soon they were stripped of their power and placed under the
industrial yoke of the Bolshevik State. Chattel slavery became the lot
of the Russian proletariat. It was suppressed and exploited in the name
of something which was later to bring it comfort, light, and warmth.
Try as I might I could find nowhere any evidence of benefits received
either by the workers or the peasants from the Bolshevik régime.
On the other hand, I did find the revolutionary faith of the people
broken, the spirit of solidarity crushed, the meaning of comradeship
and mutual helpfulness distorted. One must have lived in Russia,
close to the everyday affairs of the people; one must have seen
and felt their utter disillusionment and despair to appreciate
fully the disintegrating effect of the Bolshevik principle and
methods--disintegrating all that was once the pride and the glory of
revolutionary Russia.
The argument that destruction and terror are part of revolution I do
not dispute. I know that in the past every great political and social
change necessitated violence. America might still be under the British
yoke but for the heroic colonists who dared to oppose British tyranny
by force of arms. Black slavery might still be a legalized institution
in the United States but for the militant spirit of the John Browns.
I have never denied that violence is inevitable, nor do I gainsay it
now. Yet it is one thing to employ violence in combat, as a means of
defence. It is quite another thing to make a principle of terrorism, to
institutionalize it, to assign it the most vital place in the social
struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself
becomes counter-revolutionary.
Rarely has a revolution been fought with as little violence as the
Russian Revolution. Nor would have Red Terror followed had the people
and the cultural forces remained in control of the Revolution. This was
demonstrated by the spirit of fellowship and solidarity which prevailed
throughout Russia during the first months after the October revolution.
But an insignificant minority bent on creating an absolute State is
necessarily driven to oppression and terrorism.
There is another objection to my criticism on the part of the
Communists. Russia is on strike, they say, and it is unethical for
a revolutionist to side against the workers when they are striking
against their masters. That is pure demagoguery practised by the
Bolsheviki to silence criticism.
It is not true that the Russian people are on strike. On the contrary,
the truth of the matter is that the Russian people have been _locked
out_ and that the Bolshevik State--even as the bourgeois industrial
master--uses the sword and the gun to keep the people out. In the case
of the Bolsheviki this tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan:
thus they have succeeded in blinding the masses. Just because I am a
revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia
is called the Communist Party.
Till the end of my days my place shall be with the disinherited and
oppressed. It is immaterial to me whether Tyranny rules in the Kremlin
or in any other seat of the mighty. I could do nothing for suffering
Russia while in that country. Perhaps I can do something now by
pointing out the lessons of the Russian experience. Not my concern for
the Russian people only has prompted the writing of this volume: it is
my interest in the masses everywhere.
The masses, like the individual, may not readily learn from the
experience of others. Yet those who have gained the experience must
speak out, if for no other reason than that they cannot in justice to
themselves and their ideal support the great delusion revealed to them.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
Berlin, July, 1922.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York, February, 1917.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
CHAPTER
I. DEPORTATION TO RUSSIA 1
II. PETROGRAD 11
III. DISTURBING THOUGHTS 22
IV. MOSCOW: FIRST IMPRESSIONS 32
V. MEETING PEOPLE 46
VI. PREPARING FOR AMERICAN DEPORTEES 57
VII. REST HOMES FOR WORKERS 67
VIII. THE FIRST OF MAY IN PETROGRAD 74
IX. INDUSTRIAL MILITARIZATION 79
X. THE BRITISH LABOUR MISSION 90
XI. A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA 94
XII. BENEATH THE SURFACE 107
XIII. JOINING THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION 118
XIV. PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG 126
XV. THE TRADE UNIONS 132
XVI. MARIA SPIRIDONOVA 141
XVII. ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN 153
XVIII. EN ROUTE 160
XIX. IN KHARKOV 166
XX. POLTAVA 194
XXI. KIEV 211
MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
DEPORTATION TO RUSSIA
On the night of December 21, 1919, together with two hundred and
forty-eight other political prisoners, I was deported from America.
Although it was generally known we were to be deported, few really
believed that the United States would so completely deny her past as
an asylum for political refugees, some of whom had lived and worked in
America for more than thirty years.
In my own case, the decision to eliminate me first became known when,
in 1909, the Federal authorities went out of their way to disfranchise
the man whose name gave me citizenship. That Washington waited till
1917 was due to the circumstance that the psychologic moment for the
finale was lacking. Perhaps I should have contested my case at that
time. With the then-prevalent public opinion, the Courts would probably
not have sustained the fraudulent proceedings which robbed me of
citizenship. But it did not seem credible then that America would stoop
to the Tsaristic method of deportation.
Our anti-war agitation added fuel to the war hysteria of 1917, and
thus furnished the Federal authorities with the desired opportunity to
complete the conspiracy begun against me in Rochester, N. Y., 1909.
It was on December 5, 1919, while in Chicago lecturing, that I was
telegraphically apprised of the fact that the order for my deportation
was final. The question of my citizenship was then raised in court, but
was of course decided adversely. I had intended to take the case to a
higher tribunal, but finally I decided to carry the matter no further:
Soviet Russia was luring me.
Ludicrously secretive were the authorities about our deportation. To
the very last moment we were kept in ignorance as to the time. Then,
unexpectedly, in the wee small hours of December 21st we were spirited
away. The scene set for this performance was most thrilling. It was six
o'clock Sunday morning, December 21, 1919, when under heavy military
convoy we stepped aboard the _Buford_.
For twenty-eight days we were prisoners. Sentries at our cabin doors
day and night, sentries on deck during the hour we were daily permitted
to breathe the fresh air. Our men comrades were cooped up in dark,
damp quarters, wretchedly fed, all of us in complete ignorance of the
direction we were to take. Yet our spirits were high--Russia, free, new
Russia was before us.
All my life Russia's heroic struggle for freedom was as a beacon to me.
The revolutionary zeal of her martyred men and women, which neither
fortress nor _katorga_ could suppress, was my inspiration in the
darkest hours. When the news of the February Revolution flashed across
the world, I longed to hasten to the land which had performed the
miracle and had freed her people from the age-old yoke of Tsarism. But
America held me. The thought of thirty years of struggle for my ideals,
of my friends and associates, made it impossible to tear myself away. I
would go to Russia later, I thought.
Then came America's entry into the war and the need of remaining true
to the American people who were swept into the hurricane against their
will. After all, I owed a great debt, I owed my growth and development
to what was finest and best in America, to her fighters for liberty, to
the sons and daughters of the revolution to come. I would be true to
them. But the frenzied militarists soon terminated my work.
At last I was bound for Russia and all else was almost blotted out.
I would behold with mine own eyes _matushka Rossiya_, the land freed
from political and economic masters; the Russian _dubinushka_, as the
peasant was called, raised from the dust; the Russian worker, the
modern Samson, who with a sweep of his mighty arm had pulled down the
pillars of decaying society. The twenty-eight days on our floating
prison passed in a sort of trance. I was hardly conscious of my
surroundings.
Finally we reached Finland, across which we were forced to journey in
sealed cars. On the Russian border we were met by a committee of the
Soviet Government, headed by Zorin. They had come to greet the first
political refugees driven from America for opinion's sake.
It was a cold day, with the earth a sheet of white, but spring was in
our hearts. Soon we were to behold revolutionary Russia. I preferred to
be alone when I touched the sacred soil: my exaltation was too great,
and I feared I might not be able to control my emotion. When I reached
Beloöstrov the first enthusiastic reception tendered the refugees was
over, but the place was still surcharged with intensity of feeling. I
could sense the awe and humility of our group who, treated like felons
in the United States, were here received as dear brothers and comrades
and welcomed by the Red soldiers, the liberators of Russia.
From Beloöstrov we were driven to the village where another reception
had been prepared: A dark hall filled to suffocation, the platform lit
up by tallow candles, a huge red flag, on the stage a group of women in
black nuns' attire. I stood as in a dream in the breathless silence.
Suddenly a voice rang out. It beat like metal on my ears and seemed
uninspired, but it spoke of the great suffering of the Russian people
and of the enemies of the Revolution. Others addressed the audience,
but I was held by the women in black, their faces ghastly in the yellow
light. Were these really nuns? Had the Revolution penetrated even the
walls of superstition? Had the Red Dawn broken into the narrow lives of
these ascetics? It all seemed strange, fascinating.
Somehow I found myself on the platform. I could only blurt out that
like my comrades I had not come to Russia to teach: I had come to
learn, to draw sustenance and hope from her, to lay down my life on the
altar of the Revolution.
After the meeting we were escorted to the waiting Petrograd train,
the women in the black hood intoning the "Internationale," the whole
audience joining in. I was in the car with our host, Zorin, who had
lived in America and spoke English fluently. He talked enthusiastically
about the Soviet Government and its marvellous achievements. His
conversation was illuminative, but one phrase struck me as discordant.
Speaking of the political organization of his Party, he remarked:
"Tammany Hall has nothing on us, and as to Boss Murphy, we could teach
him a thing or two." I thought the man was jesting. What relation could
there be between Tammany Hall, Boss Murphy, and the Soviet Government?
I inquired about our comrades who had hastened from America at the
first news of the Revolution. Many of them had died at the front,
Zorin informed me, others were working with the Soviet Government. And
Shatov? William Shatov, a brilliant speaker and able organizer, was
a well-known figure in America, frequently associated with us in our
work. We had sent him a telegram from Finland and were much surprised
at his failure to reply. Why did not Shatov come to meet us? "Shatov
had to leave for Siberia, where he is to take the post of Minister of
Railways," said Zorin.
In Petrograd our group again received an ovation. Then the deportees
were taken to the famous Tauride Palace, where they were to be fed
and housed for the night. Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself to
accept his hospitality. We entered the waiting automobile. The city was
dark and deserted; not a living soul to be seen anywhere. We had not
gone very far when the car was suddenly halted, and an electric light
flashed into our eyes. It was the militia, demanding the password.
Petrograd had recently fought back the Yudenitch attack and was still
under martial law. The process was repeated frequently along the route.
Shortly before we reached our destination we passed a well-lighted
building. "It is our station house," Zorin explained, "but we have
few prisoners there now. Capital punishment is abolished and we have
recently proclaimed a general political amnesty."
Presently the automobile came to a halt. "The First House of the
Soviets," said Zorin, "the living place of the most active members
of our Party." Zorin and his wife occupied two rooms, simply but
comfortably furnished. Tea and refreshments were served, and our hosts
entertained us with the absorbing story of the marvellous defence
the Petrograd workers had organized against the Yudenitch forces.
How heroically the men and women, even the children, had rushed to
the defence of the Red City! What wonderful self-discipline and
coöperation the proletariat demonstrated. The evening passed in these
reminiscences, and I was about to retire to the room secured for me
when a young woman arrived who introduced herself as the sister-in-law
of "Bill" Shatov. She greeted us warmly and asked us to come up to
see her sister who lived on the floor above. When we reached their
apartment I found myself embraced by big jovial Bill himself. How
strange of Zorin to tell me that Shatov had left for Siberia! What did
it mean? Shatov explained that he had been ordered not to meet us at
the border, to prevent his giving us our first impressions of Soviet
Russia. He had fallen into disfavour with the Government and was being
sent to Siberia into virtual exile. His trip had been delayed and
therefore we still happened to find him.
We spent much time with Shatov before he left Petrograd. For whole days
I listened to his story of the Revolution, with its light and shadows,
and the developing tendency of the Bolsheviki toward the right. Shatov,
however, insisted that it was necessary for all the revolutionary
elements to work with the Bolsheviki Government. Of course, the
Communists had made many mistakes, but what they did was inevitable,
imposed upon them by Allied interference and the blockade.
A few days after our arrival Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself
to accompany him to Smolny. Smolny, the erstwhile boarding school for
the daughters of the aristocracy, had been the centre of revolutionary
events. Almost every stone had played its part. Now it was the seat of
the Petrograd Government. I found the place heavily guarded and giving
the impression of a beehive of officials and government employees. The
Department of the Third International was particularly interesting. It
was the domain of Zinoviev. I was much impressed by the magnitude of it
all.
After showing us about, Zorin invited us to the Smolny dining room. The
meal consisted of good soup, meat and potatoes, bread and tea--rather a
good meal in starving Russia, I thought.
Our group of deportees was quartered in Smolny. I was anxious about my
travelling companions, the two girls who had shared my cabin on the
_Buford_. I wished to take them back with me to the First House of the
Soviet. Zorin sent for them. They arrived greatly excited and told
us that the whole group of deportees had been placed under military
guard. The news was startling. The people who had been driven out of
America for their political opinions, now in Revolutionary Russia again
prisoners--three days after their arrival. What had happened?
We turned to Zorin. He seemed embarrassed. "Some mistake," he said, and
immediately began to make inquiries. It developed that four ordinary
criminals had been found among the politicals deported by the United
States Government, and therefore a guard was placed over the whole
group. The proceeding seemed to me unjust and uncalled for. It was my
first lesson in Bolshevik methods.
CHAPTER II
PETROGRAD
My parents had moved to St. Petersburg when I was thirteen. Under the
discipline of a German school in Königsberg and the Prussian attitude
toward everything Russian, I had grown up in the atmosphere of hatred
to that country. I dreaded especially the terrible Nihilists who had
killed Tsar Alexander II, so good and kind, as I had been taught. St.
Petersburg was to me an evil thing. But the gayety of the city, its
vivacity and brilliancy, soon dispelled my childish fancies and made
the city appear like a fairy dream. Then my curiosity was aroused by
the revolutionary mystery which seemed to hang over everyone, and of
which no one dared to speak. When four years later I left with my
sister for America I was no longer the German Gretchen to whom Russia
spelt evil. My whole soul had been transformed and the seed planted for
what was to be my life's work. Especially did St. Petersburg remain in
my memory a vivid picture, full of life and mystery.
I found Petrograd of 1920 quite a different place. It was almost in
ruins, as if a hurricane had swept over it. The houses looked like
broken old tombs upon neglected and forgotten cemeteries. The streets
were dirty and deserted; all life had gone from them. The population
of Petrograd before the war was almost two million; in 1920 it had
dwindled to five hundred thousand. The people walked about like living
corpses; the shortage of food and fuel was slowly sapping the city;
grim death was clutching at its heart. Emaciated and frost-bitten men,
women, and children were being whipped by the common lash, the search
for a piece of bread or a stick of wood. It was a heart-rending sight
by day, an oppressive weight at night. Especially were the nights of
the first month in Petrograd dreadful. The utter stillness of the
large city was paralysing. It fairly haunted me, this awful oppressive
silence broken only by occasional shots. I would lay awake trying to
pierce the mystery. Did not Zorin say that capital punishment had been
abolished? Why this shooting? Doubts disturbed my mind, but I tried to
wave them aside. I had come to learn.
Much of my first knowledge and impressions of the October Revolution
and the events that followed I received from the Zorins. As already
mentioned, both had lived in America, spoke English, and were eager
to enlighten me upon the history of the Revolution. They were devoted
to the cause and worked very hard; he, especially, who was secretary
of the Petrograd committee of his party, besides editing the daily,
_Krasnaya Gazetta_, and participating in other activities.
It was from Zorin that I first learned about that legendary figure,
Makhno. The latter was an Anarchist, I was informed, who under the Tsar
had been sentenced to _katorga_. Liberated by the February revolution,
he became the leader of a peasant army in the Ukraina, proving himself
extremely able and daring and doing splendid work in the defence of the
Revolution. For some time Makhno worked in harmony with the Bolsheviki,
fighting the counter-revolutionary forces. Then he became antagonistic,
and now his army, recruited from bandit elements, was fighting the
Bolsheviki. Zorin related that he had been one of a committee sent to
Makhno to bring about an understanding. But Makhno would not listen
to reason. He continued his warfare against the Soviets and was
considered a dangerous counter-revolutionist.
I had no means of verifying the story, and I was far from disbelieving
the Zorins. Both appeared most sincere and dedicated to their work,
types of religious zealots ready to burn the heretic, but equally ready
to sacrifice their own lives for their cause. I was much impressed by
the simplicity of their lives. Holding a responsible position, Zorin
could have received special rations, but they lived very poorly, their
supper often consisting only of herring, black bread, and tea. I
thought it especially admirable because Lisa Zorin was with child at
the time.
Two weeks after my arrival in Russia I was invited to attend the
Alexander Herzen commemoration in the Winter Palace. The white marble
hall where the gathering took place seemed to intensify the bitter
frost, but the people present were unmindful of the penetrating cold. I
also was conscious only of the unique situation: Alexander Herzen, one
of the most hated revolutionists of his time, honoured in the Winter
Palace! Frequently before the spirit of Herzen had found its way into
the house of the Romanovs. It was when the "Kolokol," published abroad
and sparkling with the brilliancy of Herzen and Turgenev, would in
some mysterious manner be discovered on the desk of the Tsar. Now the
Tsars were no more, but the spirit of Herzen had risen again and was
witnessing the realization of the dream of one of Russia's great men.
One evening I was informed that Zinoviev had returned from Moscow and
would see me. He arrived about midnight. He looked very tired and was
constantly disturbed by urgent messages. Our talk was of a general
nature, of the grave situation in Russia, the shortage of food and fuel
then particularly poignant, and about the labour situation in America.
He was anxious to know "how soon the revolution could be expected in
the United States." He left upon me no definite impression, but I was
conscious of something lacking in the man, though I could not determine
at the time just what it was.
Another Communist I saw much of the first weeks was John Reed. I had
known him in America. He was living in the Astoria, working hard and
preparing for his return to the United States. He was to journey
through Latvia and he seemed apprehensive of the outcome. He had been
in Russia during the October days and this was his second visit. Like
Shatov he also insisted that the dark sides of the Bolshevik régime
were inevitable. He believed fervently that the Soviet Government
would emerge from its narrow party lines and that it would presently
establish the Communistic Commonwealth. We spent much time together,
discussing the various phases of the situation.
So far I had met none of the Anarchists and their failure to call
rather surprised me. One day a friend I had known in the States
came to inquire whether I would see several members of an Anarchist
organization. I readily assented. From them I learned a version of the
Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik régime utterly different from what
I had heard before. It was so startling, so terrible that I could not
believe it. They invited me to attend a small gathering they had called
to present to me their views.
The following Sunday I went to their conference. Passing Nevsky
Prospekt, near Liteiny Street, I came upon a group of women huddled
together to protect themselves from the cold. They were surrounded
by soldiers, talking and gesticulating. Those women, I learned, were
prostitutes who were selling themselves for a pound of bread, a piece
of soap or chocolate. The soldiers were the only ones who could
afford to buy them because of their extra rations. Prostitution in
revolutionary Russia. I wondered. What is the Communist Government
doing for these unfortunates? What are the Workers' and Peasants'
Soviets doing? My escort smiled sadly. The Soviet Government had closed
the houses of prostitution and was now trying to drive the women off
the streets, but hunger and cold drove them back again; besides,
the soldiers had to be humoured. It was too ghastly, too incredible
to be real, yet there they were--those shivering creatures for sale
and their buyers, the red defenders of the Revolution. "The cursed
interventionists, the blockade--they are responsible," said my escort.
Why, yes, the counter-revolutionists and the blockade are responsible,
I reassured myself. I tried to dismiss the thought of that huddled
group, but it clung to me. I felt something snap within me.
At last we reached the Anarchist quarters, in a dilapidated house
in a filthy backyard. I was ushered into a small room crowded with
men and women. The sight recalled pictures of thirty years ago when,
persecuted and hunted from place to place, the Anarchists in America
were compelled to meet in a dingy hall on Orchard Street, New York, or
in the dark rear room of a saloon. That was in capitalistic America.
But this is revolutionary Russia, which the Anarchists had helped to
free. Why should they have to gather in secret and in such a place?
That evening and the following day I listened to a recital of the
betrayal of the Revolution by the Bolsheviki. Workers from the Baltic
factories spoke of their enslavement, Kronstadt sailors voiced their
bitterness and indignation against the people they had helped to
power and who had become their masters. One of the speakers had been
condemned to death by the Bolsheviki for his Anarchist ideas, but had
escaped and was now living illegally. He related how the sailors had
been robbed of the freedom of their Soviets, how every breath of life
was being censored. Others spoke of the Red Terror and repression in
Moscow, which resulted in the throwing of a bomb into the gathering of
the Moscow section of the Communist Party in September, 1919. They told
me of the over-filled prisons, of the violence practised on the workers
and peasants. I listened rather impatiently, for everything in me cried
out against this indictment. It sounded impossible; it could not be.
Someone was surely at fault, but probably it was they, my comrades, I
thought. They were unreasonable, impatient for immediate results. Was
not violence inevitable in a revolution, and was it not imposed upon
the Bolsheviki by the Interventionists? My comrades were indignant.
"Disguise yourself so the Bolsheviki do not recognize you; take a
pamphlet of Kropotkin and try to distribute it in a Soviet meeting. You
will soon see whether we told you the truth. Above all, get out of the
First House of the Soviet. Live among the people and you will have all
the proofs you need."
How childish and trifling it all seemed in the face of the world event
that was taking place in Russia! No, I could not credit their stories.
I would wait and study conditions. But my mind was in a turmoil, and
the nights became more oppressive than ever.
The day arrived when I was given a chance to attend the meeting of
the Petro-Soviet. It was to be a double celebration in honour of the
return of Karl Radek to Russia and Joffe's report on the peace treaty
with Esthonia. As usual I went with the Zorins. The gathering was in
the Tauride Palace, the former meeting place of the Russian Duma. Every
entrance to the hall was guarded by soldiers, the platform surrounded
by them holding their guns at attention. The hall was crowded to the
very doors. I was on the platform overlooking the sea of faces below.
Starved and wretched they looked, these sons and daughters of the
people, the heroes of Red Petrograd. How they had suffered and endured
for the Revolution! I felt very humble before them.
Zinoviev presided. After the "Internationale" had been sung by the
audience standing, Zinoviev opened the meeting. He spoke at length.
His voice is high pitched, without depth. The moment I heard him I
realized what I had missed in him at our first meeting--depth, strength
of character. Next came Radek. He was clever, witty, sarcastic, and
he paid his respects to the counter-revolutionists and to the White
Guards. Altogether an interesting man and an interesting address.
Joffe looked the diplomat. Well fed and groomed, he seemed rather
out of place in that assembly. He spoke of the peace conditions
with Esthonia, which were received with enthusiasm by the audience.
Certainly these people wanted peace. Would it ever come to Russia?
Last spoke Zorin, by far the ablest and most convincing that evening.
Then the meeting was thrown open to discussion. A Menshevik asked for
the floor. Immediately pandemonium broke loose. Yells of "Traitor!"
"Kolchak!" "Counter-Revolutionist!" came from all parts of the audience
and even from the platform. It looked to me like an unworthy proceeding
for a revolutionary assembly.
On the way home I spoke to Zorin about it. He laughed. "Free speech
is a bourgeois superstition," he said; "during a revolutionary period
there can be no free speech." I was rather dubious about the sweeping
statement, but I felt that I had no right to judge. I was a newcomer,
while the people at the Tauride Palace had sacrificed and suffered so
much for the Revolution. I had no right to judge.
CHAPTER III
DISTURBING THOUGHTS
Life went on. Each day brought new conflicting thoughts and emotions.
The feature which affected me most was the inequality I witnessed in my
immediate environment. I learned that the rations issued to the tenants
of the First House of the Soviet (Astoria) were much superior to those
received by the workers in the factories. To be sure, they were not
sufficient to sustain life--but no one in the Astoria lived from these
rations alone. The members of the Communist Party, quartered in the
Astoria, worked in Smolny, and the rations in Smolny were the best in
Petrograd. Moreover, trade was not entirely suppressed at that time.
The markets were doing a lucrative business, though no one seemed able
or willing to explain to me where the purchasing capacity came from.
The workers could not afford to buy butter which was then 2,000 rubles
a pound, sugar at 3,000, or meat at 1,000. The inequality was most
apparent in the Astoria kitchen. I went there frequently, though it was
torture to prepare a meal: the savage scramble for an inch of space on
the stove, the greedy watching of the women lest any one have something
extra in the saucepan, the quarrels and screams when someone fished
out a piece of meat from the pot of a neighbour! But there was one
redeeming feature in the picture--it was the resentment of the servants
who worked in the Astoria. They were servants, though called comrades,
and they felt keenly the inequality: the Revolution to them was not a
mere theory to be realized in years to come. It was a living thing. I
was made aware of it one day.
The rations were distributed at the Commissary, but one had to fetch
them himself. One day, while waiting my turn in the long line, a
peasant girl came in and asked for vinegar. "Vinegar! who is it calls
for such a luxury?" cried several women. It appeared that the girl was
Zinoviev's servant. She spoke of him as her master, who worked very
hard and was surely entitled to something extra. At once a storm of
indignation broke loose. "Master! is that what we made the Revolution
for, or was it to do away with masters? Zinoviev is no more than we,
and he is not entitled to more."
These workingwomen were crude, even brutal, but their sense of justice
was instinctive. The Revolution to them was something fundamentally
vital. They saw the inequality at every step and bitterly resented
it. I was disturbed. I sought to reassure myself that Zinoviev and
the other leaders of the Communists would not use their power for
selfish benefit. It was the shortage of food and the lack of efficient
organization which made it impossible to feed all alike, and of course
the blockade and not the Bolsheviki was responsible for it. The Allied
Interventionists, who were trying to get at Russia's throat, were the
cause.
Every Communist I met reiterated this thought; even some of the
Anarchists insisted on it. The little group antagonistic to the Soviet
Government was not convincing. But how to reconcile the explanation
given to me with some of the stories I learned every day--stories of
systematic terrorism, of relentless persecution, and suppression of
other revolutionary elements?
Another circumstance which perplexed me was that the markets were
stacked with meat, fish, soap, potatoes, even shoes, every time that
the rations were given out. How did these things get to the markets?
Everyone spoke about it, but no one seemed to know. One day I was in
a watchmaker's shop when a soldier entered. He conversed with the
proprietor in Yiddish, relating that he had just returned from Siberia
with a shipment of tea. Would the watchmaker take fifty pounds? Tea
was sold at a premium at the time--no one but the privileged few could
permit themselves such a luxury. Of course the watchmaker would take
the tea. When the soldier left I asked the shopkeeper if he did not
think it rather risky to transact such illegal business so openly.
I happen to understand Yiddish, I told him. Did he not fear I would
report him? "That's nothing," the man replied nonchalantly, "the Tcheka
knows all about it--it draws its percentage from the soldier and
myself."
I began to suspect that the reason for much of the evil was also within
Russia, not only outside of it. But then, I argued, police officials
and detectives graft everywhere. That is the common disease of the
breed. In Russia, where scarcity of food and three years of starvation
must needs turn most people into grafters, theft is inevitable. The
Bolsheviki are trying to suppress it with an iron hand. How can they
be blamed? But try as I might I could not silence my doubts. I groped
for some moral support, for a dependable word, for someone to shed
light on the disturbing questions.
It occurred to me to write to Maxim Gorki. He might help. I called
his attention to his own dismay and disappointment while visiting
America. He had come believing in her democracy and liberalism, and
found bigotry and lack of hospitality instead. I felt sure Gorki would
understand the struggle going on within me, though the cause was not
the same. Would he see me? Two days later I received a short note
asking me to call.
I had admired Gorki for many years. He was the living affirmation of my
belief that the creative artist cannot be suppressed. Gorki, the child
of the people, the pariah, had by his genius become one of the world's
greatest, one who by his pen and deep human sympathy made the social
outcast our kin. For years I toured America interpreting Gorki's genius
to the American people, elucidating the greatness, beauty, and humanity
of the man and his works. Now I was to see him and through him get a
glimpse into the complex soul of Russia.
I found the main entrance of his house nailed up, and there seemed
to be no way of getting in. I almost gave up in despair when a woman
pointed to a dingy staircase. I climbed to the very top and knocked
on the first door I saw. It was thrown open, momentarily blinding me
with a flood of light and steam from an overheated kitchen. Then I
was ushered into a large dining room. It was dimly lit, chilly and
cheerless in spite of a fire and a large collection of Dutch china on
the walls. One of the three women I had noticed in the kitchen sat
down at the table with me, pretending to read a book but all the while
watching me out of the corner of her eye. It was an awkward half hour
of waiting.
Presently Gorki arrived. Tall, gaunt, and coughing, he looked ill and
weary. He took me to his study, semi-dark and of depressing effect.
No sooner had we seated ourselves than the door flew open and another
young woman, whom I had not observed before, brought him a glass of
dark fluid, medicine evidently. Then the telephone began to ring;
a few minutes later Gorki was called out of the room. I realized
that I would not be able to talk with him. Returning, he must have
noticed my disappointment. We agreed to postpone our talk till some
less disturbed opportunity presented itself. He escorted me to the
door, remarking, "You ought to visit the Baltflot [Baltic Fleet]. The
Kronstadt sailors are nearly all instinctive Anarchists. You would
find a field there." I smiled. "Instinctive Anarchists?" I said, "that
means they are unspoiled by preconceived notions, unsophisticated, and
receptive. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes, that is what I mean," he replied.
The interview with Gorki left me depressed. Nor was our second meeting
more satisfactory on the occasion of my first trip to Moscow. By
the same train travelled Radek, Demyan Bedny, the popular Bolshevik
versifier, and Zipperovitch, then the president of the Petrograd
unions. We found ourselves in the same car, the one reserved for
Bolshevik officials and State dignitaries, comfortable and roomy. On
the other hand, the "common" man, the non-Communist without influence,
had literally to fight his way into the always overcrowded railway
carriages, provided he had a _propusk_ to travel--a most difficult
thing to procure.
I spent the time of the journey discussing Russian conditions with
Zipperovitch, a kindly man of deep convictions, and with Demyan
Bedny, a big coarse-looking man. Radek held forth at length on his
experiences in Germany and German prisons.
I learned that Gorki was also on the train, and I was glad of another
opportunity for a chat with him when he called to see me. The one thing
uppermost in my mind at the moment was an article which had appeared in
the Petrograd _Pravda_ a few days before my departure. It treated of
morally defective children, the writer urging prison for them. Nothing
I had heard or seen during my six weeks in Russia so outraged me as
this brutal and antiquated attitude toward the child. I was eager to
know what Gorki thought of the matter. Of course, he was opposed to
prisons for the morally defective, he would advocate reformatories
instead. "What do you mean by morally defective?" I asked. "Our young
are the result of alcoholism rampant during the Russian-Japanese War,
and of syphilis. What except moral defection could result from such a
heritage?" he replied. I argued that morality changes with conditions
and climate, and that unless one believed in the theory of free will
one cannot consider morality a fixed matter. As to children, their
sense of responsibility is primitive, and they lack the spirit of
social adherence. But Gorki insisted that there was a fearful spread
of moral defection among children and that such cases should be
isolated.
I then broached the problem that was troubling me most. What about
persecution and terror--were all the horrors inevitable, or was there
some fault in Bolshevism itself? The Bolsheviki were making mistakes,
but they were doing the best they knew how, Gorki said drily. Nothing
more could be expected, he thought.
I recalled a certain article by Gorki, published in his paper, _New
Life_, which I had read in the Missouri Penitentiary. It was a scathing
arraignment of the Bolsheviki. There must have been powerful reasons to
change Gorki's point of view so completely. Perhaps he is right. I must
wait. I must study the situation; I must get at the facts. Above all, I
must see for myself Bolshevism at work.
We spoke of the drama. On my first visit, by way of introduction, I had
shown Gorki an announcement card of the dramatic course I had given
in America. John Galsworthy was among the playwrights I had discussed
then. Gorki expressed surprise that I considered Galsworthy an artist.
In his opinion Galsworthy could not be compared with Bernard Shaw. I
had to differ. I did not underestimate Shaw, but considered Galsworthy
the greater artist. I detected irritation in Gorki, and as his hacking
cough continued, I broke off the discussion. He soon left. I remained
dejected from the interview. It gave me nothing.
When we pulled into the Moscow station my chaperon, Demyan Bedny, had
vanished and I was left on the platform with all my traps. Radek came
to my rescue. He called a porter, took me and my baggage to his waiting
automobile and insisted that I come to his apartments in the Kremlin.
There I was graciously received by his wife and invited to dinner
served by their maid. After that Radek began the difficult task of
getting me quartered in the Hotel National, known as the First House of
the Moscow Soviet. With all his influence it required hours to secure a
room for me.
Radek's luxurious apartment, the maidservant, the splendid dinner
seemed strange in Russia. But the comradely concern of Radek and the
hospitality of his wife were grateful to me. Except at the Zorins
and the Shatovs I had not met with anything like it. I felt that
kindliness, sympathy, and solidarity were still alive in Russia.
CHAPTER IV
MOSCOW: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Coming from Petrograd to Moscow is like being suddenly transferred
from a desert to active life, so great is the contrast. On reaching
the large open square in front of the main Moscow station I was amazed
at the sight of busy crowds, cabbies, and porters. The same picture
presented itself all the way from the station to the Kremlin. The
streets were alive with men, women, and children. Almost everybody
carried a bundle, or dragged a loaded sleigh. There was life, motion,
and movement, quite different from the stillness that oppressed me in
Petrograd.
I noticed considerable display of the military in the city, and scores
of men dressed in leather suits with guns in their belts. "Tcheka
men, our Extraordinary Commission," explained Radek. I had heard of
the Tcheka before: Petrograd talked of it with dread and hatred.
However, the soldiers and Tchekists were never much in evidence in
the city on the Neva. Here in Moscow they seemed everywhere. Their
presence reminded me of a remark Jack Reed had made: "Moscow is a
military encampment," he had said; "spies everywhere, the bureaucracy
most autocratic. I always feel relieved when I get out of Moscow.
But, then, Petrograd is a proletarian city and is permeated with the
spirit of the Revolution. Moscow always was hierarchical. It is much
more so now." I found that Jack Reed was right. Moscow was indeed
hierarchical. Still the life was intense, varied, and interesting.
What struck me most forcibly, besides the display of militarism, was
the preoccupation of the people. There seemed to be no common interest
between them. Everyone rushed about as a detached unit in quest of
his own, pushing and knocking against everyone else. Repeatedly I saw
women or children fall from exhaustion without any one stopping to lend
assistance. People stared at me when I would bend over the heap on the
slippery pavement or gather up the bundles that had fallen into the
street. I spoke to friends about what looked to me like a strange lack
of fellow-feeling. They explained it as a result partly of the general
distrust and suspicion created by the Tcheka, and partly due to the
absorbing task of getting the day's food. One had neither vitality nor
feeling left to think of others. Yet there did not seem to be such a
scarcity of food as in Petrograd, and the people were warmer and better
dressed.
I spent much time on the streets and in the market places. Most of
the latter, as also the famous Soukharevka, were in full operation.
Occasionally soldiers would raid the markets; but as a rule they were
suffered to continue. They presented the most vital and interesting
part of the city's life. Here gathered proletarian and aristocrat,
Communist and bourgeois, peasant and intellectual. Here they were bound
by the common desire to sell and buy, to trade and bargain. Here one
could find for sale a rusty iron pot alongside of an exquisite ikon;
an old pair of shoes and intricately worked lace; a few yards of cheap
calico and a beautiful old Persian shawl. The rich of yesterday, hungry
and emaciated, denuding themselves of their last glories; the rich of
to-day buying--it was indeed an amazing picture in revolutionary Russia.
Who was buying the finery of the past, and where did the purchasing
power come from? The buyers were numerous. In Moscow one was not so
limited as to sources of information as in Petrograd; the very streets
furnished that source.
The Russian people even after four years of war and three years of
revolution remained unsophisticated. They were suspicious of strangers
and reticent at first. But when they learned that one had come from
America and did not belong to the governing political party, they
gradually lost their reserve. Much information I gathered from them and
some explanation of the things that perplexed me since my arrival. I
talked frequently with the workers and peasants and the women on the
markets.
The forces which had led up to the Russian Revolution had remained
_terra incognita_ to these simple folk, but the Revolution itself had
struck deep into their souls. They knew nothing of theories, but they
believed that there was to be no more of the hated _barin_ (master)
and now the _barin_ was again upon them. "The _barin_ has everything,"
they would say, "white bread, clothing, even chocolate, while we have
nothing." "Communism, equality, freedom," they jeered, "lies and
deception."
I would return to the National bruised and battered, my illusions
gradually shattered, my foundations crumbling. But I would not let
go. After all, I thought, the common people could not understand
the tremendous difficulties confronting the Soviet Government: the
imperialist forces arraigned against Russia, the many attacks which
drained her of her men who otherwise would be employed in productive
labour, the blockade which was relentlessly slaying Russia's young and
weak. Of course, the people could not understand these things, and I
must not be misled by their bitterness born of suffering. I must be
patient. I must get to the source of the evils confronting me.
The National, like the Petrograd Astoria, was a former hotel but not
nearly in as good condition. No rations were given out there except
three quarters of a pound of bread every two days. Instead there was
a common dining room where dinners and suppers were served. The meals
consisted of soup and a little meat, sometimes fish or pancakes, and
tea. In the evening we usually had _kasha_ and tea. The food was not
too plentiful, but one could exist on it were it not so abominably
prepared.
I saw no reason for this spoiling of provisions. Visiting the kitchen I
discovered an array of servants controlled by a number of officials,
commandants, and inspectors. The kitchen staff were poorly paid;
moreover, they were not given the same food served to us. They resented
this discrimination and their interest was not in their work. This
situation resulted in much graft and waste, criminal in the face of
the general scarcity of food. Few of the tenants of the National, I
learned, took their meals in the common dining room. They prepared or
had their meals prepared by servants in a separate kitchen set aside
for that purpose. There, as in the Astoria, I found the same scramble
for a place on the stove, the same bickering and quarrelling, the same
greedy, envious watching of each other. Was that Communism in action, I
wondered. I heard the usual explanation: Yudenitch, Denikin, Kolchak,
the blockade--but the stereotyped phrases no longer satisfied me.
Before I left Petrograd Jack Reed said to me: "When you reach Moscow,
look up Angelica Balabanova. She will receive you gladly and will put
you up should you be unable to find a room." I had heard of Balabanova
before, knew of her work, and was naturally anxious to meet her.
A few days after reaching Moscow I called her up. Would she see me?
Yes, at once, though she was not feeling well. I found Balabanova in
a small, cheerless room, lying huddled up on the sofa. She was not
prepossessing but for her eyes, large and luminous, radiating sympathy
and kindness. She received me most graciously, like an old friend, and
immediately ordered the inevitable samovar. Over our tea we talked
of America, the labour movement there, our deportation, and finally
about Russia. I put to her the questions I had asked many Communists
regarding the contrasts and discrepancies which confronted me at every
step. She surprised me by not giving the usual excuses; she was the
first who did not repeat the old refrain. She did refer to the scarcity
of food, fuel, and clothing which was responsible for much of the graft
and corruption; but on the whole she thought life itself mean and
limited. "A rock on which the highest hopes are shattered. Life thwarts
the best intentions and breaks the finest spirits," she said. Rather an
unusual view for a Marxian, a Communist, and one in the thick of the
battle. I knew she was then secretary of the Third International. Here
was a personality, one who was not a mere echo, one who felt deeply the
complexity of the Russian situation. I went away profoundly impressed,
and attracted by her sad, luminous eyes.
I soon discovered that Balabanova--or Balabanoff, as she preferred
to be called--was at the beck and call of everybody. Though poor in
health and engaged in many functions, she yet found time to minister
to the needs of her legion callers. Often she went without necessaries
herself, giving away her own rations, always busy trying to secure
medicine or some little delicacy for the sick and suffering. Her
special concern were the stranded Italians of whom there were quite
a number in Petrograd and Moscow. Balabanova had lived and worked in
Italy for many years until she almost became Italian herself. She felt
deeply with them, who were as far away from their native soil as from
events in Russia. She was their friend, their advisor, their main
support in a world of strife and struggle. Not only the Italians but
almost everyone else was the concern of this remarkable little woman:
no one needed a Communist membership card to Angelica's heart. No
wonder some of her comrades considered her a "sentimentalist who wasted
her precious time in philanthropy." Many verbal battles I had on this
score with the type of Communist who had become callous and hard,
altogether barren of the qualities which characterized the Russian
idealist of the past.
Similar criticism as of Balabanova I heard expressed of another leading
Communist, Lunacharsky. Already in Petrograd I was told sneeringly,
"Lunacharsky is a scatterbrain who wastes millions on foolish
ventures." But I was eager to meet the man who was the Commissar of one
of the important departments in Russia, that of education. Presently an
opportunity presented itself.
The Kremlin, the old citadel of Tsardom, I found heavily guarded and
inaccessible to the "common" man. But I had come by appointment and
in the company of a man who had an admission card, and therefore
passed the guard without trouble. We soon reached the Lunacharsky
apartments, situated in an old quaint building within the walls. Though
the reception room was crowded with people waiting to be admitted,
Lunacharsky called me in as soon as I was announced.
His greeting was very cordial. Did I "intend to remain a free bird"
was one of his first questions, or would I be willing to join him
in his work? I was rather surprised. Why should one have to give
up his freedom, especially in educational work? Were not initiative
and freedom essential? However, I had come to learn from Lunacharsky
about the revolutionary system of education in Russia, of which we
had heard so much in America. I was especially interested in the care
the children were receiving. The Moscow _Pravda_, like the Petrograd
newspapers, had been agitated by a controversy about the treatment
of the morally defective. I expressed surprise at such an attitude
in Soviet Russia. "Of course, it is all barbarous and antiquated,"
Lunacharsky said, "and I am fighting it tooth and nail. The sponsors
of prisons for children are old criminal jurists, still imbued
with Tsarist methods. I have organized a commission of physicians,
pedagogues, and psychologists to deal with this question. Of course,
those children must not be punished." I felt tremendously relieved.
Here at last was a man who had gotten away from the cruel old methods
of punishment. I told him of the splendid work done in capitalist
America by Judge Lindsay and of some of the experimental schools for
backward children. Lunacharsky was much interested. "Yes, that is just
what we want here, the American system of education," he exclaimed.
"You surely do not mean the American public school system?" I asked.
"You know of the insurgent movement in America against our public
school method of education, the work done by Professor Dewey and
others?" Lunacharsky had heard little about it. Russia had been so long
cut off from the western world and there was great lack of books on
modern education. He was eager to learn of the new ideas and methods. I
sensed in Lunacharsky a personality full of faith and devotion to the
Revolution, one who was carrying on the great work of education in a
physically and spiritually difficult environment.
He suggested the calling of a conference of teachers if I would talk
to them about the new tendencies in education in America, to which I
readily consented. Schools and other institutions in his charge were to
be visited later. I left Lunacharsky filled with new hope. I would join
him in his work, I thought. What greater service could one render the
Russian people?
During my visit to Moscow I saw Lunacharsky several times. He was
always the same kindly gracious man, but I soon began to notice that he
was being handicapped in his work by forces within his own party: most
of his good intentions and decisions never saw the light. Evidently
Lunacharsky was caught in the same machine that apparently held
everything in its iron grip. What was that machine? Who directed its
movements?
Although the control of visitors at the National was very strict, no
one being able to go in or out without a special _propusk_ [permit],
men and women of different political factions managed to call on me:
Anarchists, Left Social Revolutionists, Coöperators, and people I
had known in America and who had returned to Russia to play their
part in the Revolution. They had come with deep faith and high hope,
but I found almost all of them discouraged, some even embittered.
Though widely differing in their political views, nearly all of my
callers related an identical story, the story of the high tide of the
Revolution, of the wonderful spirit that led the people forward, of
the possibilities of the masses, the rôle of the Bolsheviki as the
spokesmen of the most extreme revolutionary slogans and their betrayal
of the Revolution after they had secured power. All spoke of the
Brest Litovsk peace as the beginning of the downward march. The Left
Social Revolutionists especially, men of culture and earnestness,
who had suffered much under the Tsar and now saw their hopes and
aspirations thwarted, were most emphatic in their condemnation. They
supported their statements by evidence of the havoc wrought by the
methods of forcible requisition and the punitive expeditions to the
villages, of the abyss created between town and country, the hatred
engendered between peasant and worker. They told of the persecution of
their comrades, the shooting of innocent men and women, the criminal
inefficiency, waste, and destruction.
How, then, could the Bolsheviki maintain themselves in power? After
all, they were only a small minority, about five hundred thousand
members as an exaggerated estimate. The Russian masses, I was told,
were exhausted by hunger and cowed by terrorism. Moreover, they had
lost faith in all parties and ideas. Nevertheless, there were frequent
peasant uprisings in various parts of Russia, but these were ruthlessly
quelled. There were also constant strikes in Moscow, Petrograd, and
other industrial centres, but the censorship was so rigid little ever
became known to the masses at large.
I sounded my visitors on intervention. "We want none of outside
interference," was the uniform sentiment. They held that it merely
strengthened the hands of the Bolsheviki. They felt that they could
not publicly even speak out against them so long as Russia was being
attacked, much less fight their régime. "Have not their tactics and
methods been imposed on the Bolsheviki by intervention and blockade?" I
argued. "Only partly so," was the reply. "Most of their methods spring
from their lack of understanding of the character and the needs of the
Russian people and the mad obsession of dictatorship, which is not even
the dictatorship of the proletariat but the dictatorship of a small
group _over_ the proletariat."
When I broached the subject of the People's Soviets and the elections
my visitors smiled. "Elections! There are no such things in Russia,
unless you call threats and terrorism elections. It is by these alone
that the Bolsheviki secure a majority. A few Mensheviki, Social
Revolutionists, or Anarchists are permitted to slip into the Soviets,
but they have not the shadow of a chance to be heard."
The picture painted looked black and dismal. Still I clung to my faith.
CHAPTER V
MEETING PEOPLE
At A conference of the Moscow Anarchists in March I first learned of
the part some Anarchists had played in the Russian Revolution. In the
July uprising of 1917 the Kronstadt sailors were led by the Anarchist
Yarchuck; the Constituent Assembly was dispersed by Zhelezniakov;
the Anarchists had participated on every front and helped to drive
back the Allied attacks. It was the consensus of opinion that the
Anarchists were always among the first to face fire, as they were
also the most active in the reconstructive work. One of the biggest
factories near Moscow, which did not stop work during the entire period
of the Revolution, was managed by an Anarchist. Anarchists were doing
important work in the Foreign Office and in all other departments. I
learned that the Anarchists had virtually helped the Bolsheviki into
power. Five months later, in April, 1918, machine guns were used to
destroy the Moscow Anarchist Club and to suppress their press. That
was before Mirbach arrived in Moscow. The field had to be "cleared of
disturbing elements," and the Anarchists were the first to suffer.
Since then the persecution of the Anarchists has never ceased.
The Moscow Anarchist Conference was critical not only toward the
existing régime, but toward its own comrades as well. It spoke frankly
of the negative sides of the movement, and of its lack of unity and
coöperation during the revolutionary period. Later I was to learn more
of the internal dissensions in the Anarchist movement. Before closing,
the Conference decided to call on the Soviet Government to release the
imprisoned Anarchists and to legalize Anarchist educational work. The
Conference asked Alexander Berkman and myself to sign the resolution
to that effect. It was a shock to me that Anarchists should ask any
government to legalize their efforts, but I still believed the Soviet
Government to be at least to some extent expressive of the Revolution.
I signed the resolution, and as I was to see Lenin in a few days I
promised to take the matter up with him.
The interview with Lenin was arranged by Balabanova. "You must see
Ilitch, talk to him about the things that are disturbing you and the
work you would like to do," she had said. But some time passed before
the opportunity came. At last one day Balabanova called up to ask
whether I could go at once. Lenin had sent his car and we were quickly
driven over to the Kremlin, passed without question by the guards, and
at last ushered into the workroom of the all-powerful president of the
People's Commissars.
When we entered Lenin held a copy of the brochure _Trial and
Speeches_[2] in his hands. I had given my only copy to Balabanova, who
had evidently sent the booklet on ahead of us to Lenin. One of his
first questions was, "When could the Social Revolution be expected in
America?" I had been asked the question repeatedly before, but I was
astounded to hear it from Lenin. It seemed incredible that a man of his
information should know so little about conditions in America.
My Russian at this time was halting, but Lenin declared that though he
had lived in Europe for many years he had not learned to speak foreign
languages: the conversation would therefore have to be carried on in
Russian. At once he launched into a eulogy of our speeches in court.
"What a splendid opportunity for propaganda," he said; "it is worth
going to prison, if the courts can so successfully be turned into a
forum." I felt his steady cold gaze upon me, penetrating my very being,
as if he were reflecting upon the use I might be put to. Presently he
asked what I would want to do. I told him I would like to repay America
what it had done for Russia. I spoke of the Society of the Friends of
Russian Freedom, organized thirty years ago by George Kennan and later
reorganized by Alice Stone Blackwell and other liberal Americans. I
briefly sketched the splendid work they had done to arouse interest in
the struggle for Russian freedom, and the great moral and financial aid
the Society had given through all those years. To organize a Russian
society for American freedom was my plan. Lenin appeared enthusiastic.
"That is a great idea, and you shall have all the help you want. But,
of course, it will be under the auspices of the Third International.
Prepare your plan in writing and send it to me."
I broached the subject of the Anarchists in Russia. I showed him a
letter I had received from Martens, the Soviet representative in
America, shortly before my deportation. Martens asserted that the
Anarchists in Russia enjoyed full freedom of speech and press. Since
my arrival I found scores of Anarchists in prison and their press
suppressed. I explained that I could not think of working with the
Soviet Government so long as my comrades were in prison for opinion's
sake. I also told him of the resolutions of the Moscow Anarchist
Conference. He listened patiently and promised to bring the matter to
the attention of his party. "But as to free speech," he remarked, "that
is, of course, a bourgeois notion. There can be no free speech in a
revolutionary period. We have the peasantry against us because we can
give them nothing in return for their bread. We will have them on our
side when we have something to exchange. Then you can have all the free
speech you want--but not now. Recently we needed peasants to cart some
wood into the city. They demanded salt. We thought we had no salt, but
then we discovered seventy poods in Moscow in one of our warehouses.
At once the peasants were willing to cart the wood. Your comrades
must wait until we can meet the needs of the peasants. Meanwhile,
they should work with us. Look at William Shatov, for instance, who
has helped save Petrograd from Yudenitch. He works with us and we
appreciate his services. Shatov was among the first to receive the
order of the Red Banner."
Free speech, free press, the spiritual achievements of centuries, what
were they to this man? A Puritan, he was sure his scheme alone could
redeem Russia. Those who served his plans were right, the others could
not be tolerated.
A shrewd Asiatic, this Lenin. He knows how to play on the weak sides of
men by flattery, rewards, medals. I left convinced that his approach to
people was purely utilitarian, for the use he could get out of them for
his scheme. And his scheme--was it the Revolution?
I prepared the plan for the Society of the Russian Friends of American
Freedom and elaborated the details of the work I had in mind, but
refused to place myself under the protecting wing of the Third
International. I explained to Lenin that the American people had little
faith in politics, and would certainly consider it an imposition to be
directed and guided by a political machine from Moscow. I could not
consistently align myself with the Third International.
Some time later I saw Tchicherin. I believe it was 4 A. M.
when our interview took place. He also asked about the possibilities
of a revolution in America, and seemed to doubt my judgment when I
informed him that there was no hope of it in the near future. We spoke
of the I. W. W., which had evidently been misrepresented to him.
I assured Tchicherin that while I am not an I. W. W. I must state
that they represented the only conscious and effective revolutionary
proletarian organization in the United States, and were sure to play an
important rôle in the future labour history of the country.
Next to Balabanova, Tchicherin impressed me as the most simple and
unassuming of the leading Communists in Moscow. But all were equally
naïve in their estimate of the world outside of Russia. Was their
judgment so faulty because they had been cut off from Europe and
America so long? Or was their great need of European help father to
their wish? At any rate, they all clung to the idea of approaching
revolutions in the western countries, forgetful that revolutions are
not made to order, and apparently unconscious that their own revolution
had been twisted out of shape and semblance and was gradually being
done to death.
The editor of the London _Daily Herald_, accompanied by one of his
reporters, had preceded me to Moscow. They wanted to visit Kropotkin,
and they had been given a special car. Together with Alexander Berkman
and A. Shapiro, I was able to join Mr. Lansbury.
The Kropotkin cottage stood back in the garden away from the street.
Only a faint ray from a kerosene lamp lit up the path to the house.
Kropotkin received us with his characteristic graciousness, evidently
glad at our visit. But I was shocked at his altered appearance. The
last time I had seen him was in 1907, in Paris, which I visited after
the Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. Kropotkin, barred from France
for many years, had just been given the right to return. He was then
sixty-five years of age, but still so full of life and energy that he
seemed much younger. Now he looked old and worn.
I was eager to get some light from Kropotkin on the problems that were
troubling me, particularly on the relation of the Bolsheviki to the
Revolution. What was his opinion? Why had he been silent so long?
I took no notes and therefore I can give only the gist of what
Kropotkin said. He stated that the Revolution had carried the people
to great spiritual heights and had paved the way for profound social
changes. If the people had been permitted to apply their released
energies, Russia would not be in her present condition of ruin. The
Bolsheviki, who had been carried to the top by the revolutionary wave,
first caught the popular ear by extreme revolutionary slogans, thereby
gaining the confidence of the masses and the support of militant
revolutionists.
He continued to narrate that early in the October period the
Bolsheviki began to subordinate the interests of the Revolution to the
establishment of their dictatorship, which coerced and paralysed every
social activity. He stated that the coöperatives were the main medium
that could have bridged the interests of the peasants and the workers.
The coöperatives were among the first to be crushed. He spoke with much
feeling of the oppression, the persecution, the hounding of every shade
of opinion, and cited numerous instances of the misery and distress of
the people. He emphasized that the Bolsheviki had discredited Socialism
and Communism in the eyes of the Russian people.
"Why haven't you raised your voice against these evils, against this
machine that is sapping the life blood of the Revolution?" I asked.
He gave two reasons. As long as Russia was being attacked by the
combined Imperialists, and Russian women and children were dying from
the effects of the blockade, he could not join the shrieking chorus of
the ex-revolutionists in the cry of "Crucify!" He preferred silence.
Secondly, there was no medium of expression in Russia itself. To
protest to the Government was useless. Its concern was to maintain
itself in power. It could not stop at such "trifles" as human rights or
human lives. Then he added: "We have always pointed out the effects of
Marxism in action. Why be surprised now?"
I asked Kropotkin whether he was noting down his impressions and
observations. Surely he must see the importance of such a record to
his comrades and to the workers; in fact, to the whole world. "No,"
he said; "it is impossible to write when one is in the midst of great
human suffering, when every hour brings new tragedies. Then there may
be a raid at any moment. The Tcheka comes swooping down in the night,
ransacks every corner, turns everything inside out, and marches off
with every scrap of paper. Under such constant stress it is impossible
to keep records. But besides these considerations there is my book on
Ethics. I can only work a few hours a day, and I must concentrate on
that to the exclusion of everything else."
After a tender embrace which Peter never failed to give those he loved,
we returned to our car. My heart was heavy, my spirit confused and
troubled by what I had heard. I was also distressed by the poor state
of health of our comrade: I feared he could not survive till spring.
The thought that Peter Kropotkin might go to his grave and that the
world might never know what he thought of the Russian Revolution was
appalling.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] _Trial and Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman before
the Federal Court of New York, June-July, 1917._ Mother Earth
Publishing Co., New York.
CHAPTER VI
PREPARING FOR AMERICAN DEPORTEES
Events in Moscow, quickly following each other, were full of interest.
I wanted to remain in that vital city, but as I had left all my effects
in Petrograd I decided to return there and then come back to Moscow to
join Lunacharsky in his work. A few days before my departure a young
woman, an Anarchist, came to visit me. She was from the Petrograd
Museum of the Revolution and she called to inquire whether I would take
charge of the Museum branch work in Moscow. She explained that the
original idea of the Museum was due to the famous old revolutionist
Vera Nikolaievna Figner, and that it had recently been organized by
non-partisan elements. The majority of the men and women who worked in
the Museum were not Communists, she said; but they were devoted to the
Revolution and anxious to create something which could in the future
serve as a source of information and inspiration to earnest students
of the great Russian Revolution. When my caller was informed that I was
about to return to Petrograd, she invited me to visit the Museum and to
become acquainted with its work.
Upon my arrival in Petrograd I found unexpected work awaiting me.
Zorin informed me that he had been notified by Tchicherin that a
thousand Russians had been deported from America and were on their way
to Russia. They were to be met at the border and quarters were to be
immediately prepared for them in Petrograd. Zorin asked me to join the
Commission about to be organized for that purpose.
The plan of such a commission for American deportees had been broached
to Zorin soon after our arrival in Russia. At that time Zorin directed
us to talk the matter over with Tchicherin, which we did. But three
months passed without anything having been done about it. Meanwhile,
our comrades of the _Buford_ were still walking from department to
department, trying to be placed where they might do some good. They
were a sorry lot, those men who had come to Russia with such high
hopes, eager to render service to the revolutionary people. Most of
them were skilled workers, mechanics--men Russia needed badly; but
the cumbersome Bolshevik machine and general inefficiency made it a
very complex matter to put them to work. Some had tried independently
to secure jobs, but they could accomplish very little. Moreover, those
who found employment were soon made to feel that the Russian workers
resented the eagerness and intensity of their brothers from America.
"Wait till you have starved as long as we," they would say, "wait till
you have tasted the blessings of Commissarship, and we will see if you
are still so eager." In every way the deportees were discouraged and
their enthusiasm dampened.
To avoid this unnecessary waste of energy and suffering the Commission
was at last organized in Petrograd. It consisted of Ravitch, the then
Minister of Internal Affairs for the Northern District; her secretary,
Kaplun; two members of the Bureau of War Prisoners; Alexander Berkman,
and myself. The new deportees were due in two weeks, and much work
was to be done to prepare for their reception. It was unfortunate
that no active participation could be expected from Ravitch because
her time was too much occupied. Besides holding the post of Minister
of the Interior she was Chief of the Petrograd Militia, and she also
represented the Moscow Foreign Office in Petrograd. Her regular working
hours were from 8 A. M. to 2 A. M. Kaplun, a very able administrator,
had charge of the entire internal work of the Department and could
therefore give us very little of his time. There remained only four
persons to accomplish within a short time the big task of preparing
living quarters for a thousand deportees in starved and ruined Russia.
Moreover, Alexander Berkman, heading the Reception Committee, had to
leave for the Latvian border to meet the exiles.
It was an almost impossible task for one person, but I was very anxious
to save the second group of deportees the bitter experiences and the
disappointments of my fellow companions of the _Buford_. I could
undertake the work only by making the condition that I be given the
right of entry to the various government departments, for I had learned
by that time how paralysing was the effect of the bureaucratic red
tape which delayed and often frustrated the most earnest and energetic
efforts. Kaplun consented. "Call on me at any time for anything you may
require," he said; "I will give orders that you be admitted everywhere
and supplied with everything you need. If that should not help, call
on the Tcheka," he added. I had never called upon the police before, I
informed him; why should I do so in revolutionary Russia? "In bourgeois
countries that is a different matter," explained Kaplun; "with us the
Tcheka defends the Revolution and fights sabotage." I started on my
work determined to do without the Tcheka. Surely there must be other
methods, I thought.
Then began a chase over Petrograd. Materials were very scarce and
it was most difficult to procure them owing to the unbelievably
centralized Bolshevik methods. Thus to get a pound of nails one had to
file applications in about ten or fifteen bureaus; to secure some bed
linen or ordinary dishes one wasted days. Everywhere in the offices
crowds of Government employees stood about smoking cigarettes, awaiting
the hour when the tedious task of the day would be over. My co-workers
of the War Prisoners' Bureau fumed at the irritating and unnecessary
delays, but to no purpose. They threatened with the Tcheka, with the
concentration camp, even with _raztrel_ (shooting). The latter was the
most favourite argument. Whenever any difficulty arose one immediately
heard _raztreliat_--to be shot. But the expression, so terrible in its
significance, was gradually losing its effect upon the people: man gets
used to everything.
I decided to try other methods. I would talk to the employees in
the departments about the vital interest the conscious American
workers felt in the great Russian Revolution, and of their faith and
hope in the Russian proletariat. The people would become interested
immediately, but the questions they would ask were as strange as they
were pitiful: "Have the people enough to eat in America? How soon will
the Revolution be there? Why did you come to starving Russia?" They
were eager for information and news, these mentally and physically
starved people, cut off by the barbarous blockade from all touch with
the western world. Things American were something wonderful to them. A
piece of chocolate or a cracker were unheard-of dainties--they proved
the key to everybody's heart.
Within two weeks I succeeded in procuring most of the things needed
for the expected deportees, including furniture, linen, and dishes. A
miracle, everybody said.
However, the renovation of the houses that were to serve as living
quarters for the exiles was not accomplished so easily. I inspected
what, as I was told, had once been first-class hotels. I found them
located in the former prostitute district; cheap dives they were, until
the Bolsheviki closed all brothels. They were germ-eaten, ill-smelling,
and filthy. It was no small problem to turn those dark holes into a
fit habitation within two weeks. A coat of paint was a luxury not to
be thought of. There was nothing else to do but to strip the rooms
of furniture and draperies, and have them thoroughly cleaned and
disinfected.
One morning a group of forlorn-looking creatures, in charge of two
militiamen, were brought to my temporary office. They came to work, I
was informed. The group consisted of a one-armed old man, a consumptive
woman, and eight boys and girls, mere children, pale, starved, and in
rags. "Where do these unfortunates come from?" I inquired. "They are
speculators," one of the militiamen replied; "we rounded them up on
the market." The prisoners began to weep. They were no speculators,
they protested; they were starving, they had received no bread in two
days. They were compelled to go out to the market to sell matches or
thread to secure a little bread. In the midst of this scene the old
man fainted from exhaustion, demonstrating better than words that he
had speculated only in hunger. I had seen such "speculators" before,
driven in groups through the streets of Moscow and Petrograd by convoys
with loaded guns pointed at the backs of the prisoners.
I could not think of having the work done by these starved creatures.
But the militiamen insisted that they would not let them go; they had
orders to make them work. I called up Kaplun and informed him that
I considered it out of the question to have quarters for American
deportees prepared by Russian convicts whose only crime was hunger.
Thereupon Kaplun ordered the group set free and consented that I give
them of the bread sent for the workers' rations. But a valuable day was
lost.
The next morning a group of boys and girls came singing along the
Nevski Prospekt. They were _kursanti_ from the Tauride Palace who were
sent to my office to work. On my first visit to the palace I had been
shown the quarters of the _kursanti_, the students of the Bolshevik
academy. They were mostly village boys and girls housed, fed, clothed,
and educated by the Government, later to be placed in responsible
positions in the Soviet régime. At the time I was impressed by the
institutions, but by April I had looked somewhat beneath the surface.
I recalled what a young woman, a Communist, had told me in Moscow
about these students. "They are the special caste now being reared in
Russia," she had said. "Like the church which maintains and educates
its religious priesthood, our Government trains a military and civic
priesthood. They are a favoured lot." I had more than one occasion to
convince myself of the truth of it. The _kursanti_ were being given
every advantage and many special privileges. They knew their importance
and they behaved accordingly.
Their first demand when they came to me was for the extra rations of
bread they had been promised. This demand satisfied, they stood about
and seemed to have no idea of work. It was evident that whatever else
the _kursanti_ might be taught, it was not to labour. But, then, few
people in Russia know how to work. The situation looked hopeless. Only
ten days remained till the arrival of the deportees, and the "hotels"
assigned for their use were still in as uninhabitable a condition as
before. It was no use to threaten with the Tcheka, as my co-workers
did. I appealed to the boys and girls in the spirit of the American
deportees who were about to arrive in Russia full of enthusiasm for
the Revolution and eager to join in the great work of reconstruction.
The _kursanti_ were the pampered charges of the Government, but they
were not long from the villages, and they had had no time to become
corrupt. My appeal was effective. They took up the work with a will,
and at the end of ten days the three famous hotels were ready as far as
willingness to work and hot water without soap could make them. We were
very proud of our achievement and we eagerly awaited the arrival of the
deportees.
At last they came, but to our great surprise they proved to be no
deportees at all. They were Russian war prisoners from Germany.
The misunderstanding was due to the blunder of some official in
Tchicherin's office who misread the radio information about the party
due at the border. The prepared hotels were locked and sealed; they
were not to be used for the returned war prisoners because "they were
prepared for American deportees who still might come." All the efforts
and labour had been in vain.
CHAPTER VII
REST HOMES FOR WORKERS
Since my return from Moscow I noticed a change in Zorin's attitude:
he was reserved, distant, and not as friendly as when we first met.
I ascribed it to the fact that he was overworked and fatigued, and
not wishing to waste his valuable time I ceased visiting the Zorins
as frequently as before. One day, however, he called up to ask if
Alexander Berkman and myself would join him in certain work he was
planning, and which was to be done in hurry-up American style, as he
put it. On calling to see him we found him rather excited--an unusual
thing for Zorin who was generally quiet and reserved. He was full of
a new scheme to build "rest homes" for workers. He explained that on
Kameniy Ostrov were the magnificent mansions of the Stolypins, the
Polovtsovs, and others of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and that he
was planning to turn them into recreation centres for workers. Would
we join in the work? Of course, we consented eagerly, and the next
morning we went over to inspect the island. It was indeed an ideal
spot, dotted with magnificent mansions, some of them veritable museums,
containing rare gems of painting, tapestry, and furniture. The man in
charge of the buildings called our attention to the art treasures,
protesting that they would be injured or entirely destroyed if put to
the planned use. But Zorin was set on his scheme. "Recreation homes for
workers are more important than art," he said.
We returned to the Astoria determined to devote ourselves to the work
and to go at it intensively, as the houses were to be ready for the
First of May. We prepared detailed plans for dining rooms, sleeping
chambers, reading rooms, theatre and lecture halls, and recreation
places for the workers. As the first and most necessary step we
proposed the organization of a dining room to feed the workers who were
to be employed in preparing the place for their comrades. I had learned
from my previous experience with the hotels that much valuable time
was lost because of the failure to provide for those actually employed
on such work. Zorin consented and promised that we were to take charge
within a few days. But a week passed and nothing further was heard
about what was to be a rush job. Some time later Zorin called up to
ask us to accompany him to the island. On our arrival there we found
half-a-dozen Commissars already in charge, with scores of people idling
about. Zorin reassured us that matters would arrange themselves and
that we should have an opportunity to organize the work as planned.
However, we soon realized that the newly fledged officialdom was as
hard to cope with as the old bureaucracy.
Every Commissar had his favourites whom he managed to list as employed
on the job, thereby entitling them to bread rations and a meal.
Thus almost before any actual workers appeared on the scene, eighty
alleged "technicians" were already in possession of dinner tickets and
bread cards. The men actually mobilized for the work received hardly
anything. The result was general sabotage. Most of the men sent over
to prepare the rest homes for the workers came from concentration
camps: they were convicts and military deserters. I had often watched
them at work, and in justice to them it must be said that they did not
overexert themselves. "Why should we," they would say; "we are fed on
Sovietski soup; dirty dishwater it is, and we receive only what is
left over from the idlers who order us about. And who will rest in
these homes? Not we or our brothers in the factories. Only those who
belong to the party or who have a pull will enjoy this place. Besides,
the spring is near; we are needed at home on the farm. Why are we kept
here?" Indeed, they did not exert themselves, those stalwart sons of
Russia's soil. There was no incentive: they had no point of contact
with the life about them, and there was no one who could translate to
them the meaning of work in revolutionary Russia. They were dazed by
war, revolution, and hunger--nothing could rouse them out of their
stupor.
Many of the buildings on Kameniy Ostrov had been taken up for boarding
schools and homes for defectives; some were occupied by old professors,
teachers, and other intellectuals. Since the Revolution these people
lived there unmolested, but now orders came to vacate, to make room
for the rest homes. As almost no provision had been made to supply
the dispossessed ones with other quarters, they were practically
forced into the streets. Those friendly with Zinoviev, Gorki, or other
influential Communists took their troubles to them, but persons lacking
"pull" found no redress. The scenes of misery which I was compelled to
witness daily exhausted my energies. It was all unnecessarily cruel,
impractical, without any bearing on the Revolution. Added to this was
the chaos and confusion which prevailed. The bureaucratic officials
seemed to take particular delight in countermanding each other's
orders. Houses already in the process of renovation, and on which much
work and material were spent, would suddenly be left unfinished and
some other work begun. Mansions filled with art treasures were turned
into night lodgings, and dirty iron cots put among antique furniture
and oil paintings--an incongruous, stupid waste of time and energy.
Zorin would frequently hold consultations by the hour with the staff
of artists and engineers making plans for theatres, lecture halls, and
amusement places, while the Commissars sabotaged the work. I stood the
painful and ridiculous situation for two weeks, then gave up the matter
in despair.
Early in May the workers' rest homes on Kameniy Ostrov were opened with
much pomp, music, and speeches. Glowing accounts were sent broadcast
of the marvellous things done for the workers in Russia. In reality,
it was Coney Island transferred to the environs of Petrograd, a gaudy
showplace for credulous visitors. From that time on Zorin's demeanour
to me changed. He became cold, even antagonistic. No doubt he began to
sense the struggle which was going on within me, and the break which
was bound to come. I did, however, see much of Lisa Zorin, who had just
become a mother. I nursed her and her baby, glad of the opportunity
thus to express my gratitude for the warm friendship the Zorins had
shown me during my first months in Russia. I appreciated their sterling
honesty and devotion. Both were so favourably placed politically that
they could be supplied with everything they wanted, yet Lisa Zorin
lacked the simplest garments for her baby. "Thousands of Russian
working women have no more, and why should I?" Lisa would say. When
she was so weak that she could not nurse her baby, Zorin could not be
induced to ask for special rations. I had to conspire against them by
buying eggs and butter on the market to save the lives of mother and
child. But their fine quality of character made my inner struggle the
more difficult. Reason urged me to look the social facts in the face.
My personal attachment to the Communists I had learned to know and
esteem refused to accept the facts. Never mind the evils--I would say
to myself--as long as there are such as the Zorins and the Balabanovas,
there must be something vital in the ideas they represent. I held on
tenaciously to the phantom I had myself created.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST OF MAY IN PETROGRAD
In 1890 the First of May was for the first time celebrated in America
as Labour's international holiday. May Day became to me a great,
inspiring event. To witness the celebration of the First of May in a
free country--it was something to dream of, to long for, but perhaps
never to be realized. And now, in 1920, the dream of many years was
about to become real in revolutionary Russia. I could hardly await the
morning of May First. It was a glorious day, with the warm sun melting
away the last crust of the hard winter. Early in the morning strains of
music greeted me: groups of workers and soldiers were marching through
the streets, singing revolutionary songs. The city was gaily decorated:
the Uritski Square, facing the Winter Palace, was a mass of red, the
streets near by a veritable riot of colour. Great crowds were about,
all wending their way to the Field of Mars where the heroes of the
Revolution were buried.
Though I had an admission card to the reviewing stand I preferred to
remain among the people, to feel myself a part of the great hosts that
had brought about the world event. This was their day--the day of their
making. Yet--they seemed peculiarly quiet, oppressively silent. There
was no joy in their singing, no mirth in their laughter. Mechanically
they marched, automatically they responded to the claqueurs on the
reviewing stand shouting "Hurrah" as the columns passed.
In the evening a pageant was to take place. Long before the appointed
hour the Uritski Square down to the palace and to the banks of the Neva
was crowded with people gathered to witness the open-air performance
symbolizing the triumph of the people. The play consisted of three
parts, the first portraying the conditions which led up to the war and
the rôle of the German Socialists in it; the second reproduced the
February Revolution, with Kerensky in power; the last--the October
Revolution. It was a play beautifully set and powerfully acted, a play
vivid, real, fascinating. It was given on the steps of the former
Stock Exchange, facing the Square. On the highest step sat kings and
queens with their courtiers, attended by soldiery in gay uniforms.
The scene represents a gala court affair: the announcement is made
that a monument is to be built in honour of world capitalism. There is
much rejoicing, and a wild orgy of music and dance ensues. Then from
the depths there emerge the enslaved and toiling masses, their chains
ringing mournfully to the music above. They are responding to the
command to build the monument for their masters: some are seen carrying
hammers and anvils; others stagger under the weight of huge blocks
of stone and loads of brick. The workers are toiling in their world
of misery and darkness, lashed to greater effort by the whip of the
slave drivers, while above there is light and joy, and the masters are
feasting. The completion of the monument is signalled by large yellow
disks hoisted on high amidst the rejoicing of the world on top.
At this moment a little red flag is seen waving below, and a small
figure is haranguing the people. Angry fists are raised and then flag
and figure disappear, only to reappear again in different parts of the
underworld. Again the red flag waves, now here, now there. The people
slowly gain confidence and presently become threatening. Indignation
and anger grow--the kings and queens become alarmed. They fly to the
safety of the citadels, and the army prepares to defend the stronghold
of capitalism.
It is August, 1914. The rulers are again feasting, and the workers are
slaving. The members of the Second International attend the confab
of the mighty. They remain deaf to the plea of the workers to save
them from the horrors of war. Then the strains of "God Save the King"
announce the arrival of the English army. It is followed by Russian
soldiers with machine guns and artillery, and a procession of nurses
and cripples, the tribute to the Moloch of war.
The next act pictures the February Revolution. Red flags appear
everywhere, armed motor cars dash about. The people storm the Winter
Palace and haul down the emblem of Tsardom. The Kerensky Government
assumes control, and the people are driven back to war. Then comes the
marvellous scene of the October Revolution, with soldiers and sailors
galloping along the open space before the white marble building.
They dash up the steps into the palace, there is a brief struggle,
and the victors are hailed by the masses in wild jubilation. The
"Internationale" floats upon the air; it mounts higher and higher into
exultant peals of joy. Russia is free--the workers, sailors, and
soldiers usher in the new era, the beginning of the world commune!
Tremendously stirring was the picture. But the vast mass remained
silent. Only a faint applause was heard from the great throng. I was
dumbfounded. How explain this astonishing lack of response? When I
spoke to Lisa Zorin about it she said that the people had actually
lived through the October Revolution, and that the performance
necessarily fell flat by comparison with the reality of 1917. But my
little Communist neighbour gave a different version. "The people had
suffered so many disappointments since October, 1917," she said, "that
the Revolution has lost all meaning to them. The play had the effect of
making their disappointment more poignant."
CHAPTER IX
INDUSTRIAL MILITARIZATION
The Ninth Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party, held in March,
1920, was characterized by a number of measures which meant a complete
turn to the right. Foremost among them was the militarization of labour
and the establishment of one-man management of industry, as against
the collegiate shop system. Obligatory labour had long been a law upon
the statutes of the Socialist Republic, but it was carried out, as
Trotsky said, "only in a small private way." Now the law was to be made
effective in earnest. Russia was to have a militarized industrial army
to fight economic disorganization, even as the Red Army had conquered
on the various fronts. Such an army could be whipped into line only by
rigid discipline, it was claimed. The factory collegiate system had to
make place for military industrial management.
The measure was bitterly fought at the Congress by the Communist
minority, but party discipline prevailed. However, the excitement did
not abate: discussion of the subject continued long after the congress
adjourned. Many of the younger Communists agreed that the measure
indicated a step to the right, but they defended the decision of their
party. "The collegiate system has proven a failure," they said. "The
workers will not work voluntarily, and our industry must be revived if
we are to survive another year."
Jack Reed also held this view. He had just returned after a futile
attempt to reach America through Latvia, and for days we argued about
the new policy. Jack insisted it was unavoidable so long as Russia was
being attacked and blockaded. "We have been compelled to mobilize an
army to fight our external enemies why not an army to fight our worst
internal enemy, hunger? We can do it only by putting our industry
on its feet." I pointed out the danger of the military method and
questioned whether the workers could be expected to become efficient or
to work intensively under compulsion. Still, Jack thought mobilization
of labour unavoidable. "It must be tried, anyhow," he said.
Petrograd at the time was filled with rumours of strikes. The story
made the rounds that Zinoviev and his staff, while visiting the
factories to explain the new policies, were driven by the workers from
the premises. To learn about the situation at first hand I decided to
visit the factories. Already during my first months in Russia I had
asked Zorin for permission to see them. Lisa Zorin had requested me to
address some labour meetings, but I declined because I felt that it
would be presumptuous on my part to undertake to teach those who had
made the revolution. Besides, I was not quite at home with the Russian
language then. But when I asked Zorin to let me visit some factories,
he was evasive. After I had become acquainted with Ravitch I approached
her on the subject, and she willingly consented.
The first works to be visited were the Putilov, the largest and most
important engine and car manufacturing establishment. Forty thousand
workers had been employed there before the war. Now I was informed that
only 7,000 were at work. I had heard much of the Putilovtsi: they had
played a heroic part in the revolutionary days and in the defence of
Petrograd against Yudenitch.
At the Putilov office we were cordially received, shown about the
various departments, and then turned over to a guide. There were four
of us in the party, of whom only two could speak Russian. I lagged
behind to question a group working at a bench. At first I was met
with the usual suspicion, which I overcame by telling the men that
I was bringing the greetings of their brothers in America. "And the
revolution there?" I was immediately asked. It seemed to have become
a national obsession, this idea of a near revolution in Europe and
America. Everybody in Russia clung to that hope. It was hard to rob
those misinformed people of their naïve faith. "The American revolution
is not yet," I told them, "but the Russian Revolution has found an echo
among the proletariat in America." I inquired about their work, their
lives, and their attitude toward the new decrees. "As if we had not
been driven enough before," complained one of the men. "Now we are to
work under the military _nagaika_ [whip]. Of course, we will have to
be in the shop or they will punish us as industrial deserters. But how
can they get more work out of us? We are suffering hunger and cold.
We have no strength to give more." I suggested that the Government
was probably compelled to introduce such methods, and that if Russian
industry were not revived the condition of the workers would grow even
worse. Besides, the Putilov men were receiving the preferred _payok_.
"We understand the great misfortune that has befallen Russia," one of
the workers replied, "but we cannot squeeze more out of ourselves.
Even the two pounds of bread we are getting is not enough. Look at the
bread," he said, holding up a black crust; "can we live on that? And
our children? If not for our people in the country or some trading on
the market we would die altogether. Now comes the new measure which is
tearing us away from our people, sending us to the other end of Russia
while our brothers from there are going to be dragged here, away from
their soil. It's a crazy measure and it won't work."
"But what can the Government do in the face of the food shortage?"
I asked. "Food shortage!" the man exclaimed; "look at the markets.
Did you see any shortage of food there? Speculation and the new
bourgeoisie, that's what's the matter. The one-man management is our
new slave driver. First the bourgeoisie sabotaged us, and now they are
again in control. But just let them try to boss us! They'll find out.
Just let them try!"
The men were bitter and resentful. Presently the guide returned
to see what had become of me. He took great pains to explain that
industrial conditions in the mill had improved considerably since the
militarization of labour went into effect. The men were more content
and many more cars had been renovated and engines repaired than within
an equal period under the previous management. There were 7,000
productively employed in the works, he assured me. I learned, however,
that the real figure was less than 5,000 and that of these only about
2,000 were actual workers. The others were Government officials and
clerks.
After the Putilov works we visited the Treugolnik, the great rubber
factory of Russia. The place was clean and the machinery in good
order--a well-equipped modern plant. When we reached the main workroom
we were met by the superintendent, who had been in charge for
twenty-five years. He would show us around himself, he said. He seemed
to take great pride in the factory, as if it were his own. It rather
surprised me that they had managed to keep everything in such fine
shape. The guide explained that it was because nearly the whole of
the old staff had been left in charge. They felt that whatever might
happen they must not let the place go to ruin. It was certainly very
commendable, I thought, but soon I had occasion to change my mind. At
one of the tables, cutting rubber, was an old worker with kindly eyes
looking out of a sad, spiritual face. He reminded me of the pilgrim
Lucca in Gorki's "Night Lodgings." Our guide kept a sharp vigil, but
I managed to slip away while the superintendent was explaining some
machinery to the other members of our group.
"Well, _batyushka_, how is it with you?" I greeted the old worker.
"Bad, _matushka_," he replied; "times are very hard for us old people."
I told him how impressed I was to find everything in such good
condition in the shop. "That is so," commented the old worker, "but it
is because the superintendent and his staff are hoping from day to day
that there may be a change again, and that the Treugolnik will go back
to its former owners. I know them. I have worked here long before the
German master of this plant put in the new machinery."
Passing through the various rooms of the factory I saw the women and
girls look up in evident dread. It seemed strange in a country where
the proletarians were the masters. Apparently the machines were not the
only things that had been carefully watched over--the old discipline,
too, had been preserved: the employees thought us Bolshevik inspectors.
The great flour mill of Petrograd, visited next, looked as if it were
in a state of siege, with armed soldiers everywhere, even inside the
workrooms. The explanation given was that large quantities of precious
flour had been vanishing. The soldiers watched the millmen as if they
were galley slaves, and the workers naturally resented such humiliating
treatment. They hardly dared to speak. One young chap, a fine-looking
fellow, complained to me of the conditions. "We are here virtual
prisoners," he said; "we cannot make a step without permission. We are
kept hard at work eight hours with only ten minutes for our _kipyatok_
[boiled water] and we are searched on leaving the mill." "Is not the
theft of flour the cause of the strict surveillance?" I asked. "Not at
all," replied the boy; "the Commissars of the mill and the soldiers
know quite well where the flour goes to." I suggested that the workers
might protest against such a state of affairs. "Protest, to whom?" the
boy exclaimed; "we'd be called speculators and counter-revolutionists
and we'd be arrested." "Has the Revolution given you nothing?" I asked.
"Ah, the Revolution! But that is no more. Finished," he said bitterly.
The following morning we visited the Laferm tobacco factory. The place
was in full operation. We were conducted through the plant and the
whole process was explained to us, beginning with the sorting of the
raw material and ending with the finished cigarettes packed for sale or
shipment. The air in the workrooms was stifling, nauseating. "The women
are used to this atmosphere," said the guide; "they don't mind." There
were some pregnant women at work and girls no older than fourteen. They
looked haggard, their chests sunken, black rings under their eyes. Some
of them coughed and the hectic flush of consumption showed on their
faces. "Is there a recreation room, a place where they can eat or drink
their tea and inhale a bit of fresh air?" There was no such thing, I
was informed. The women remained at work eight consecutive hours; they
had their tea and black bread at their benches. The system was that of
piece work, the employees receiving twenty-five cigarettes daily above
their pay with permission to sell or exchange them.
I spoke to some of the women. They did not complain except about being
compelled to live far away from the factory. In most cases it required
more than two hours to go to and from work. They had asked to be
quartered near the Laferm and they received a promise to that effect,
but nothing more was heard of it.
Life certainly has a way of playing peculiar pranks. In America I
should have scorned the idea of social welfare work: I should have
considered it a cheap palliative. But in Socialist Russia the sight
of pregnant women working in suffocating tobacco air and saturating
themselves and their unborn with the poison impressed me as a
fundamental evil. I spoke to Lisa Zorin to see whether something
could not be done to ameliorate the evil. Lisa claimed that "piece
work" was the only way to induce the girls to work. As to rest
rooms, the women themselves had already made a fight for them, but
so far nothing could be done because no space could be spared in the
factory. "But if even such small improvements had not resulted from
the Revolution," I argued, "what purpose has it served?" "The workers
have achieved control," Lisa replied; "they are now in power, and
they have more important things to attend to than rest rooms--they
have the Revolution to defend." Lisa Zorin had remained very much the
proletarian, but she reasoned like a nun dedicated to the service of
the Church.
The thought oppressed me that what she called the "defence of the
Revolution" was really only the defence of her party in power. At any
rate, nothing came of my attempt at social welfare work.
CHAPTER X
THE BRITISH LABOUR MISSION
I was glad to learn that Angelica Balabanova arrived in Petrograd to
prepare quarters for the British Labour Mission. During my stay in
Moscow I had come to know and appreciate the fine spirit of Angelica.
She was very devoted to me and when I fell ill she gave much time to
my care, procured medicine which could be obtained only in the Kremlin
drug store, and got special sick rations for me. Her friendship was
generous and touching, and she endeared herself very much to me.
The Narishkin Palace was to be prepared for the Mission, and Angelica
invited me to accompany her there. I noticed that she looked more worn
and distressed than when I had seen her in Moscow. Our conversation
made it clear to me that she suffered keenly from the reality which was
so unlike her ideal. But she insisted that what seemed failure to me
was conditioned in life itself, itself the greatest failure.
Narishkin Palace is situated on the southern bank of the Neva, almost
opposite the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. The place was prepared for
the expected guests and a number of servants and cooks installed to
minister to their needs. Soon the Mission arrived--most of them typical
workingmen delegates--and with them a staff of newspaper men and Mrs.
Snowden. The most outstanding figure among them was Bertrand Russell,
who quickly demonstrated his independence and determination to be free
to investigate and learn at first hand.
In honour of the Mission the Bolsheviki organized a great demonstration
on the Uritski Square. Thousands of people, among them women and
children, came to show their gratitude to the English labour
representatives for venturing into revolutionary Russia. The ceremony
consisted of the singing of the "Internationale," followed by music and
speeches, the latter translated by Balabanova in masterly fashion. Then
came the military exercises. I heard Mrs. Snowden say disapprovingly,
"What a display of military!" I could not resist the temptation of
remarking: "Madame, remember that the big Russian army is largely the
making of your own country. Had England not helped to finance the
invasions into Russia, the latter could put its soldiers to useful
labour."
The British Mission was entertained royally with theatres, operas,
ballets, and excursions. Luxury was heaped upon them while the people
slaved and went hungry. The Soviet Government left nothing undone to
create a good impression and everything of a disturbing nature was kept
from the visitors. Angelica hated the display and sham, and suffered
keenly under the rigid watch placed upon every movement of the Mission.
"Why should they not see the true state of Russia? Why should they not
learn how the Russian people live?" she would lament. "Yet I am so
impractical," she would correct herself; "perhaps it is all necessary."
At the end of two weeks a farewell banquet was given to the visitors.
Angelica insisted that I must attend. Again there were speeches and
toasts, as is the custom at such functions. The speeches which seemed
to ring most sincere were those of Balabanova and Madame Ravitch. The
latter asked me to interpret her address, which I did. She spoke in
behalf of the Russian women proletarians and praised their fortitude
and devotion to the Revolution. "May the English proletarians learn the
quality of their heroic Russian sisters," concluded Madame Ravitch.
Mrs. Snowden, the erstwhile suffragette, had not a word in reply. She
preserved a "dignified" aloofness. However, the lady became enlivened
when the speeches were over and she got busy collecting autographs.
CHAPTER XI
A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA
Early in May two young men from the Ukraina arrived in Petrograd. Both
had lived in America for a number of years and had been active in the
Yiddish Labour and Anarchist movements. One of them had also been
editor of an English weekly Anarchist paper, _The Alarm_, published
in Chicago. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Revolution, they left for
Russia together with other emigrants. Arriving in their native country,
they joined the Anarchist activities there which had gained tremendous
impetus through the Revolution. Their main field was the Ukraina.
In 1918 they aided in the organization of the Anarchist Federation
_Nabat_ [Alarm], and began the publication of a paper by that name.
Theoretically, they were at variance with the Bolsheviki; practically
the Federation Anarchists, even as the Anarchists throughout Russia,
worked with the Bolsheviki and also fought on every front against the
counter-revolutionary forces.
When the two Ukrainian comrades learned of our arrival in Russia they
repeatedly tried to reach us, but owing to the political conditions and
the practical impossibility of travelling, they could not come north.
Subsequently they had been arrested and imprisoned by the Bolsheviki.
Immediately upon their release they started for Petrograd, travelling
illegally. They knew the dangers confronting them--arrest and possible
shooting for the possession and use of false documents--but they
were willing to risk anything because they were determined that we
should learn the facts about the _povstantsi_ [revolutionary peasants]
movements led by that extraordinary figure, Nestor Makhno. They wanted
to acquaint us with the history of the Anarchist activities in Russia
and relate how the iron hand of the Bolsheviki had crushed them.
During two weeks, in the stillness of the Petrograd nights, the two
Ukrainian Anarchists unrolled before us the panorama of the struggle
in the Ukraina. Dispassionately, quietly, and with almost uncanny
detachment the young men told their story.
Thirteen different governments had "ruled" Ukraina. Each of them had
robbed and murdered the peasantry, made ghastly pogroms, and left
death and ruin in its way. The Ukrainian peasants, a more independent
and spirited race than their northern brothers, had come to hate all
governments and every measure which threatened their land and freedom.
They banded together and fought back their oppressors all through the
long years of the revolutionary period. The peasants had no theories;
they could not be classed in any political party. Theirs was an
instinctive hatred of tyranny, and practically the whole of Ukraina
soon became a rebel camp. Into this seething cauldron there came, in
1917, Nestor Makhno.
Makhno was a Ukrainian born. A natural rebel, he became interested in
Anarchism at an early age. At seventeen he attempted the life of a
Tsarist spy and was sentenced to death, but owing to his extreme youth
the sentence was commuted to _katorga_ for life [severe imprisonment,
one third of the term in chains]. The February Revolution opened the
prison doors for all political prisoners, Makhno among them. He had
then spent ten years in the Butirky prison, in Moscow. He had but a
limited schooling when first arrested, but in prison he had used his
leisure to good advantage. By the time of his release he had acquired
considerable knowledge of history, political economy, and literature.
Shortly after his liberation Makhno returned to his native village,
Gulyai-Poleh, where he organized a trade union and the local soviet.
Then he threw himself in the revolutionary movement and during all of
1917 he was the spiritual teacher and leader of the rebel peasants, who
had risen against the landed proprietors.
In 1918, when the Brest Peace opened Ukraina to German and Austrian
occupation, Makhno organized the rebel peasant bands in defence against
the foreign armies. He fought against Skoropadski, the Ukrainian
Hetman, who was supported by German bayonets. He waged successful
guerilla warfare against Petlura, Kaledin, Grigoriev, and Denikin. A
conscious Anarchist, he laboured to give the instinctive rebellion of
the peasantry definite aim and purpose. It was the Makhno idea that the
social revolution was to be defended against all enemies, against every
counter-revolutionary or reactionary attempt from right and left. At
the same time educational and cultural work was carried on among the
peasants to develop them along anarchist-communist lines with the aim
of establishing free peasant communes.
In February, 1919, Makhno entered into an agreement with the Red
Army. He was to continue to hold the southern front against Denikin
and to receive from the Bolsheviki the necessary arms and ammunition.
Makhno was to remain in charge of the _povstantsi_, now grown into
an army, the latter to have autonomy in its local organizations, the
revolutionary soviets of the district, which covered several provinces.
It was agreed that the _povstantsi_ should have the right to hold
conferences, freely discuss their affairs, and take action upon them.
Three such conferences were held in February, March, and April. But
the Bolsheviki failed to live up to the agreement. The supplies which
had been promised Makhno, and which he needed desperately, would
arrive after long delays or failed to come altogether. It was charged
that this situation was due to the orders of Trotsky who did not look
favourably upon the independent rebel army. However it be, Makhno was
hampered at every step, while Denikin was gaining ground constantly.
Presently the Bolsheviki began to object to the free peasant Soviets,
and in May, 1919, the Commander-in-Chief of the southern armies,
Kamenev, accompanied by members of the Kharkov Government, arrived at
the Makhno headquarters to settle the disputed matters. In the end
the Bolshevik military representatives demanded that the _povstantsi_
dissolve. The latter refused, charging the Bolsheviki with a breach of
their revolutionary agreement.
Meanwhile, the Denikin advance was becoming more threatening, and
Makhno still received no support from the Bolsheviki. The peasant army
then decided to call a special session of the Soviet for June 15th.
Definite plans and methods were to be decided upon to check the growing
menace of Denikin. But on June 4th Trotsky issued an order prohibiting
the holding of the Conference and declaring Makhno an outlaw. In a
public meeting in Kharkov Trotsky announced that it were better to
permit the Whites to remain in the Ukraina than to suffer Makhno.
The presence of the Whites, he said, would influence the Ukrainian
peasantry in favour of the Soviet Government, whereas Makhno and his
_povstantsi_ would never make peace with the Bolsheviki; they would
attempt to possess themselves of some territory and to practice their
ideas, which would be a constant menace to the Communist Government.
It was practically a declaration of war against Makhno and his army.
Soon the latter found itself attacked on two sides at once--by the
Bolsheviki and Denikin. The _povstantsi_ were poorly equipped and
lacked the most necessary supplies for warfare, yet the peasant army
for a considerable time succeeded in holding its own by the sheer
military genius of its leader and the reckless courage of his devoted
rebels.
At the same time the Bolsheviki began a campaign of denunciation
against Makhno and his _povstantsi_. The Communist press accused him of
having treacherously opened the southern front to Denikin, and branded
Makhno's army a bandit gang and its leader a counter-revolutionist
who must be destroyed at all cost. But this "counter-revolutionist"
fully realized the Denikin menace to the Revolution. He gathered new
forces and support among the peasants and in the months of September
and October, 1919, his campaign against Denikin gave the latter its
death blow on the Ukraina. Makhno captured Denikin's artillery base
at Mariopol, annihilated the rear of the enemy's army, and succeeded
in separating the main body from its base of supply. This brilliant
manoeuvre of Makhno and the heroic fighting of the rebel army again
brought about friendly contact with the Bolsheviki. The ban was lifted
from the _povstantsi_ and the Communist press now began to eulogize
Makhno as a great military genius and brave defender of the Revolution
in the Ukraina. But the differences between Makhno and the Bolsheviki
were deep-rooted: he strove to establish free peasant communes in the
Ukraina, while the Communists were bent on imposing the Moscow rule.
Ultimately a clash was inevitable, and it came early in January, 1920.
At that period a new enemy was threatening the Revolution. Grigoriev,
formerly of the Tsarist army, later friend of the Bolsheviki, now
turned against them. Having gained considerable support in the south
because of his slogans of freedom and free Soviets, Grigoriev proposed
to Makhno that they join forces against the Communist régime. Makhno
called a meeting of the two armies and there publicly accused Grigoriev
of counter-revolution and produced evidence of numerous pogroms
organized by him against the Jews. Declaring Grigoriev an enemy of the
people and of the Revolution, Makhno and his staff condemned him and
his aides to death, executing them on the spot. Part of Grigoriev's
army joined Makhno.
Meanwhile, Denikin kept pressing Makhno, finally forcing him to
withdraw from his position. Not of course without bitter fighting all
along the line of nine hundred versts, the retreat lasting four months,
Makhno marching toward Galicia. Denikin advanced upon Kharkov, then
farther north, capturing Orel and Kursk, and finally reached the gates
of Tula, in the immediate neighbourhood of Moscow.
The Red Army seemed powerless to check the advance of Denikin, but
meanwhile Makhno had gathered new forces and attacked Denikin in
the rear. The unexpectedness of this new turn and the extraordinary
military exploits of Makhno's men in this campaign disorganized the
plans of Denikin, demoralized his army, and gave the Red Army the
opportunity of taking the offensive against the counter-revolutionary
enemy in the neighbourhood of Tula.
When the Red Army reached Alexandrovsk, after having finally beaten
the Denikin forces, Trotsky again demanded of Makhno that he disarm
his men and place himself under the discipline of the Red Army. The
_povstantsi_ refused, whereupon an organized military campaign against
the rebels was inaugurated, the Bolsheviki taking many prisoners and
killing scores of others. Makhno, who managed to escape the Bolshevik
net, was again declared an outlaw and bandit. Since then Makhno had
been uninterruptedly waging guerilla warfare against the Bolshevik
régime.
The story of the Ukrainian friends, which I have related here in
very condensed form, sounded as romantic as the exploits of Stenka
Rasin, the famous Cossack rebel immortalized by Gogol. Romantic and
picturesque, but what bearing did the activities of Makhno and his
men have upon Anarchism, I questioned the two comrades. Makhno, my
informants explained, was himself an Anarchist seeking to free Ukraina
from all oppression and striving to develop and organize the peasants'
latent anarchistic tendencies. To this end Makhno had repeatedly called
upon the Anarchists of the Ukraina and of Russia to aid him. He offered
them the widest opportunity for propagandistic and educational work,
supplied them with printing outfits and meeting places, and gave them
the fullest liberty of action. Whenever Makhno captured a city, freedom
of speech and press for Anarchists and Left Social Revolutionists was
established. Makhno often said: "I am a military man and I have no time
for educational work. But you who are writers and speakers, you can do
that work. Join me and together we shall be able to prepare the field
for a real Anarchist experiment." But the chief value of the Makhno
movement lay in the peasants themselves, my comrades thought. It was
a spontaneous, elemental movement, the peasants' opposition to all
governments being the result not of theories but of bitter experience
and of instinctive love of liberty. They were fertile ground for
Anarchist ideas. For this reason a number of Anarchists joined Makhno.
They were with him in most of his military campaigns and energetically
carried on Anarchist propaganda during that time.
I have been told by Zorin and other Communists that Makhno was a
Jew-baiter and that his _povstantsi_ were responsible for numerous
brutal pogroms. My visitors emphatically denied the charges. Makhno
bitterly fought pogroms, they stated; he had often issued proclamations
against such outrages, and he had even with his own hand punished
some of those guilty of assault on Jews. Hatred of the Hebrew was of
course common in the Ukraina; it was not eradicated even among the Red
soldiers. They, too, have assaulted, robbed, and outraged Jews; yet
no one holds the Bolsheviki responsible for such isolated instances.
The Ukraina is infested with armed bands who are often mistaken for
Makhnovtsi and who have made pogroms. The Bolsheviki, aware of this,
have exploited the confusion to discredit Makhno and his followers.
However, the Anarchist of the Ukraina--I was informed--did not idealize
the Makhno movement. They knew that the _povstantsi_ were not conscious
Anarchists. Their paper _Nabat_ had repeatedly emphasized this fact.
On the other hand, the Anarchists could not overlook the importance of
popular movement which was instinctively rebellious, anarchistically
inclined, and successful in driving back the enemies of the Revolution,
which the better organized and equipped Bolshevik army could not
accomplish. For this reason many Anarchists considered it their duty
to work with Makhno. But the bulk remained away; they had their larger
cultural, educational, and organizing work to do.
The invading counter-revolutionary forces, though differing in
character and purpose, all agreed in their relentless persecution of
the Anarchists. The latter were made to suffer, whatever the new
régime. The Bolsheviki were no better in this regard than Denikin or
any other White element. Anarchists filled Bolshevik prisons; many
had been shot and all legal Anarchist activities were suppressed. The
Tcheka especially was doing ghastly work, having resurrected the old
Tsarist methods, including even torture.
My young visitors spoke from experience: they had repeatedly been in
Bolshevik prisons themselves.
CHAPTER XII
BENEATH THE SURFACE
The terrible story I had been listening to for two weeks broke over
me like a storm. Was this the Revolution I had believed in all my
life, yearned for, and strove to interest others in, or was it a
caricature--a hideous monster that had come to jeer and mock me?
The Communists I had met daily during six months--self-sacrificing,
hard-working men and women imbued with a high ideal--were such people
capable of the treachery and horrors charged against them? Zinoviev,
Radek, Zorin, Ravitch, and many others I had learned to know--could
they in the name of an ideal lie, defame, torture, kill? But, then--had
not Zorin told me that capital punishment had been abolished in Russia?
Yet I learned shortly after my arrival that hundreds of people had been
shot on the very eve of the day when the new decree went into effect,
and that as a matter of fact shooting by the Tcheka had never ceased.
That my friends were not exaggerating when they spoke of tortures by
the Tcheka, I also learned from other sources. Complaints about the
fearful conditions in Petrograd prisons had become so numerous that
Moscow was apprised of the situation. A Tcheka inspector came to
investigate. The prisoners being afraid to speak, immunity was promised
them. But no sooner had the inspector left than one of the inmates, a
young boy, who had been very outspoken about the brutalities practised
by the Tcheka, was dragged out of his cell and cruelly beaten.
Why did Zorin resort to lies? Surely he must have known that I would
not remain in the dark very long. And then, was not Lenin also guilty
of the same methods? "Anarchists of ideas [_ideyni_] are not in
our prisons," he had assured me. Yet at that very moment numerous
Anarchists filled the jails of Moscow and Petrograd and of many other
cities in Russia. In May, 1920, scores of them had been arrested in
Petrograd, among them two girls of seventeen and nineteen years of
age. None of the prisoners were charged with counter-revolutionary
activities: they were "Anarchists of ideas," to use Lenin's expression.
Several of them had issued a manifesto for the First of May, calling
attention to the appalling conditions in the factories of the
Socialist Republic. The two young girls who had circulated a handbill
against the "labour book," which had then just gone into effect, were
also arrested.
The labour book was heralded by the Bolsheviki as one of the great
Communist achievements. It would establish equality and abolish
parasitism, it was claimed. As a matter of fact, the labour book was
somewhat of the character of the yellow ticket issued to prostitutes
under the Tsarist régime. It was a record of every step one made, and
without it no step could be made. It bound its holder to his job, to
the city he lived in, and to the room he occupied. It recorded one's
political faith and party adherence, and the number of times he was
arrested. In short, a yellow ticket. Even some Communists resented the
degrading innovation. The Anarchists who protested against it were
arrested by the Tcheka. When certain leading Communists were approached
in the matter they repeated what Lenin had said: "No Anarchists of
ideas are in our prisons."
The aureole was falling from the Communists. All of them seemed to
believe that the end justified the means. I recalled the statements
of Radek at the first anniversary of the Third International, when
he related to his audience the "marvellous spread of Communism" in
America. "Fifty thousand Communists are in American prisons," he
exclaimed. "Molly Stimer, a girl of eighteen, and her male companions,
all Communists, had been deported from America for their Communist
activities." I thought at the time that Radek was misinformed. Yet it
seemed strange that he did not make sure of his facts before making
such assertions. They were dishonest and an insult to Molly Stimer and
her Anarchist comrades, added to the injustice they had suffered at the
hands of the American plutocracy.
During the past several months I had seen and heard enough to become
somewhat conversant with the Communist psychology, as well as with
the theories and methods of the Bolsheviki. I was no longer surprised
at the story of their double-dealing with Makhno, the brutalities
practised by the Tcheka, the lies of Zorin. I had come to realize
that the Communists believed implicitly in the Jesuitic formula that
the end justifies _all_ means. In fact, they gloried in that formula.
Any suggestion of the value of human life, quality of character, the
importance of revolutionary integrity as the basis of a new social
order, was repudiated as "bourgeois sentimentality," which had no place
in the revolutionary scheme of things. For the Bolsheviki the end to
be achieved was the Communist State, or the so-called Dictatorship of
the Proletariat. Everything which advanced that end was justifiable
and revolutionary. The Lenins, Radeks, and Zorins were therefore quite
consistent. Obsessed by the infallibility of their creed, giving of
themselves to the fullest, they could be both heroic and despicable at
the same time. They could work twenty hours a day, live on herring and
tea, and order the slaughter of innocent men and women. Occasionally
they sought to mask their killings by pretending a "misunderstanding,"
for doesn't the end justify all means? They could employ torture and
deny the inquisition, they could lie and defame, and call themselves
idealists. In short, they could make themselves and others believe that
everything was legitimate and right from the revolutionary viewpoint;
any other policy was weak, sentimental, or a betrayal of the Revolution.
On a certain occasion, when I passed criticism on the brutal way
delicate women were driven into the streets to shovel snow, insisting
that even if they had belonged to the bourgeoisie they were human,
and that physical fitness should be taken into consideration, a
Communist said to me: "You should be ashamed of yourself; you, an old
revolutionist, and yet so sentimental." It was the same attitude that
some Communists assumed toward Angelica Balabanova, because she was
always solicitous and eager to help wherever possible. In short, I had
come to see that the Bolsheviki were social puritans who sincerely
believed that they alone were ordained to save mankind. My relations
with the Bolsheviki became more strained, my attitude toward the
Revolution as I found it more critical.
One thing grew quite clear to me: I could not affiliate myself with
the Soviet Government; I could not accept any work which would place
me under the control of the Communist machine. The Commissariat of
Education was so thoroughly dominated by that machine that it was
hopeless to expect anything but routine work. In fact, unless one was
a Communist one could accomplish almost nothing. I had been eager
to join Lunacharsky, whom I considered one of the most cultivated
and least dogmatic of the Communists in high position. But I became
convinced that Lunacharsky himself was a helpless cog in the machine,
his best efforts constantly curtailed and checked. I had also learned
a great deal about the system of favouritism and graft that prevailed
in the management of the schools and the treatment of children. Some
schools were in splendid condition, the children well fed and well
clad, enjoying concerts, theatricals, dances, and other amusements.
But the majority of the schools and children's homes were squalid,
dirty, and neglected. Those in charge of the "preferred" schools had
little difficulty in procuring everything needed for their charges,
often having an over-supply. But the caretakers of the "common" schools
would waste their time and energies by the week going about from one
department to another, discouraged and faint with endless waiting
before they could obtain the merest necessities.
At first I ascribed this condition of affairs to the scarcity of food
and materials. I heard it said often enough that the blockade and
intervention were responsible. To a large extent that was true. Had
Russia not been so starved, mismanagement and graft would not have
had such fatal results. But added to the prevalent scarcity of things
was the dominant notion of Communist propaganda. Even the children
had to serve that end. The well-kept schools were for show, for the
foreign missions and delegates who were visiting Russia. Everything was
lavished on these show schools at the cost of the others.
I remembered how everybody was startled in Petrograd by an article in
the Petrograd _Pravda_ of May, disclosing appalling conditions in the
schools. A committee of the Young Communist organizations investigated
some of the institutions. They found the children dirty, full of
vermin, sleeping on filthy mattresses, fed on miserable food, punished
by being locked in dark rooms for the night, forced to go without their
suppers, and even beaten. The number of officials and employees in the
schools was nothing less than criminal. In one school, for instance,
there were 138 of them to 125 children. In another, 40 to 25 children.
All these parasites were taking the bread from the very mouths of the
unfortunate children.
The Zorins had spoken to me repeatedly of Lillina, the woman in
charge of the Petrograd Educational Department. She was a wonderful
worker, they said, devoted and able. I had heard her speak on several
occasions, but was not impressed: she looked prim and self-satisfied,
a typical Puritan schoolma'am. But I would not form an opinion until
I had talked with her. At the publication of the school disclosures I
decided to see Lillina. We conversed over an hour about the schools
in her charge, about education in general, the problem of defective
children and their treatment. She made light of the abuses in her
schools, claiming that "the young comrades had exaggerated the
defects." At any rate, she added, the guilty had already been removed
from the schools.
Similarly to many other responsible Communists Lillina was consecrated
to her work and gave all her time and energies to it. Naturally, she
could not personally oversee everything; the show schools being the
most important in her estimation, she devoted most of her time to them.
The other schools were left in the care of her numerous assistants,
whose fitness for the work was judged largely according to their
political usefulness. Our talk strengthened my conviction that I could
have no part in the work of the Bolshevik Board of Education.
The Board of Health offered as little opportunity for real
service--service that should not discriminate in favour of show
hospitals or the political views of the patients. This principle of
discrimination prevailed, unfortunately, even in the sick rooms.
Like all Communist institutions, the Board of Health was headed by a
political Commissar, Doctor Pervukhin. He was anxious to secure my
assistance, proposing to put me in charge of factory, dispensary,
or district nursing--a very flattering and tempting offer, and one
that appealed to me strongly. I had several conferences with Doctor
Pervukhin, but they led to no practical result.
Whenever I visited his department I found groups of men and women
waiting, endlessly waiting. They were doctors and nurses, members of
the _intelligentsia_--none of them Communists--who were employed in
various medical branches, but their time and energies were being wasted
in the waiting rooms of Doctor Pervukhin, the political Commissar. They
were a sorry lot, dispirited and dejected, those men and women, once
the flower of Russia. Was I to join this tragic procession, submit to
the political yoke? Not until I should become convinced that the yoke
was indispensable to the revolutionary process would I consent to it. I
felt that I must first secure work of a non-partisan character, work
that would enable me to study conditions in Russia and get into direct
touch with the people, the workers and peasants. Only then should I be
able to find my way out of the chaos of doubt and mental anguish that I
had fallen prey to.
CHAPTER XIII
JOINING THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION
The Museum of the Revolution is housed in the Winter Palace, in the
suite once used as the nursery of the Tsar's children. The entrance to
that part of the palace is known as _detsky podyezd_. From the windows
of the palace the Tsar must have often looked across the Neva at the
Peter-and-Paul Fortress, the living tomb of his political enemies. How
different things were now! The thought of it kindled my imagination. I
was full of the wonder and the magic of the great change when I paid my
first visit to the Museum.
I found groups of men and women at work in the various rooms, huddled
up in their wraps and shivering with cold. Their faces were bloated and
bluish, their hands frost-bitten, their whole appearance shadow-like.
What must be the devotion of these people, I thought, when they can
continue to work under such conditions. The secretary of the Museum,
M. B. Kaplan, received me very cordially and expressed "the hope
that I would join in the work of the Museum." He and another member
of the staff spent considerable time with me on several occasions,
explaining the plans and purposes of the Museum. They asked me to join
the expedition which the Museum was then organizing, and which was to
go south to the Ukraina and the Caucasus. Valuable material of the
revolutionary period was to be gathered there, they explained. The
idea attracted me. Aside from my general interest in the Museum and
its efforts, it meant non-partisan work, free from Commissars, and an
exceptional opportunity to see and study Russia.
In the course of our acquaintance I learned that neither Mr. Kaplan
nor his friend was a Communist. But while Mr. Kaplan was strongly
pro-Bolshevik and tried to defend and explain away everything, the
other man was critical though by no means antagonistic. During my stay
in Petrograd I saw much of both men, and I learned from them a great
deal about the Revolution and the methods of the Bolsheviki. Kaplan's
friend, whose name for obvious reasons I cannot mention, often spoke of
the utter impossibility of doing creative work within the Communist
machine. "The Bolsheviki," he would say, "always complain about lack
of able help, yet no one--unless a Communist--has much of a chance."
The Museum was among the least interfered with institutions, and work
there had been progressing well. Then a group of twenty youths were
sent over, young and inexperienced boys unfamiliar with the work. Being
Communists they were placed in positions of authority, and friction
and confusion resulted. Everyone felt himself watched and spied upon.
"The Bolsheviki care not about merit," he said; "their chief concern
is a membership card." He was not enthusiastic about the future of the
Museum, yet believed that the coöperation of the "Americans" would aid
its proper development.
Finally I decided on the Museum as offering the most suitable work for
me, mainly because that institution was non-partisan. I had hoped for
a more vital share in Russia's life than the collecting of historical
material; still I considered it valuable and necessary work. When I had
definitely consented to become a member of the expedition, I visited
the Museum daily to help with the preparations for the long journey.
There was much work. It was no easy matter to obtain a car, equip it
for the arduous trip, and secure the documents which would give us
access to the material we set out to collect.
While I was busy aiding in these preparations Angelica Balabanova
arrived in Petrograd to meet the Italian Mission. She seemed
transformed. She had longed for her Italian comrades: they would bring
her a breath of her beloved Italy, of her former life and work there.
Though Russian by birth, training, and revolutionary traditions,
Angelica had become rooted in the soil of Italy. Well I understood her
and her sense of strangeness in the country, the hard soil of which
was to bear a new and radiant life. Angelica would not admit even to
herself that the much hoped-for life was stillborn. But knowing her as
I did, it was not difficult for me to understand how bitter was her
grief over the hapless and formless thing that had come to Russia. But
now her beloved Italians were coming! They would bring with them the
warmth and colour of Italy.
The Italians came and with them new festivities, demonstrations,
meetings, and speeches. How different it all appeared to me from my
memorable first days on Belo-Ostrov. No doubt the Italians now felt as
awed as I did then, as inspired by the seeming wonder of Russia. Six
months and the close proximity with the reality of things quite changed
the picture for me. The spontaneity, the enthusiasm, the vitality had
all gone out of it. Only a pale shadow remained, a grinning phantom
that clutched at my heart.
On the Uritski Square the masses were growing weary with long waiting.
They had been kept there for hours before the Italian Mission arrived
from the Tauride Palace. The ceremonies were just beginning when a
woman leaning against the platform, wan and pale, began to weep. I
stood close by. "It is easy for them to talk," she moaned, "but we've
had no food all day. We received orders to march directly from our work
on pain of losing our bread rations. Since five this morning I am on my
feet. We were not permitted to go home after work to our bit of dinner.
We had to come here. Seventeen hours on a piece of bread and some
_kipyatok_ [boiled water]. Do the visitors know anything about us?" The
speeches went on, the "Internationale" was being repeated for the tenth
time, the sailors performed their fancy exercises and the claqueurs on
the reviewing stand were shouting hurrahs. I rushed away. I, too, was
weeping, though my eyes remained dry.
The Italian, like the English, Mission was quartered in the Narishkin
Palace. One day, on visiting Angelica there, I found her in a perturbed
state of mind. Through one of the servants she had learned that the
ex-princess Narishkin, former owner of the palace, had come to beg for
the silver ikon which had been in the family for generations. "Just
that ikon," she had implored. But the ikon was now state property, and
Balabanova could do nothing about it. "Just think," Angelica said,
"Narishkin, old and desolate, now stands on the street corner begging,
and I live in this palace. How dreadful is life! I am no good for it; I
must get away."
But Angelica was bound by party discipline; she stayed on in the palace
until she returned to Moscow. I know she did not feel much happier than
the ragged and starving ex-princess begging on the street corner.
Balabanova, anxious that I should find suitable work, informed me one
day that Petrovsky, known in America as Doctor Goldfarb, had arrived in
Petrograd. He was Chief of the Central Military Education Department,
which included Nurses' Training Schools. I had never met the man in the
States, but I had heard of him as the labour editor of the New York
_Forward_, the Jewish Socialist daily. He offered me the position
of head instructress in the military Nurses' Training School, with a
view to introducing American methods of nursing, or to send me with
a medical train to the Polish front. I had proffered my services at
the first news of the Polish attack on Russia: I felt the Revolution
in danger, and I hastened to Zorin to ask to be assigned as a nurse.
He promised to bring the matter before the proper authorities, but I
heard nothing further about it. I was, therefore, somewhat surprised
at the proposition of Petrovsky. However, it came too late. What I
had since learned about the situation in the Ukraina, the Bolshevik
methods toward Makhno and the _povstantsi_ movement, the persecution
of Anarchists, and the Tcheka activities, had completely shaken my
faith in the Bolsheviki as revolutionists. The offer came too late. But
Moscow perhaps thought it unwise to let me see behind the scenes at the
front; Petrovsky failed to inform me of the Moscow decision. I felt
relieved.
At last we received the glad tidings that the greatest difficulty had
been overcome: a car for the Museum Expedition had been secured. It
consisted of six compartments and was newly painted and cleaned. Now
began the work of equipment. Ordinarily it would have taken another
two months, but we had the coöperation of the man at the head of the
Museum, Chairman Yatmanov, a Communist. He was also in charge of all
the properties of the Winter Palace where the Museum is housed. The
largest part of the linen, silver, and glassware from the Tsar's
storerooms had been removed, but there was still much left. Supplied
with an order of the chairman I was shown over what was once guarded
as sacred precincts by Romanov flunkeys. I found rooms stacked to
the ceiling with rare and beautiful china and compartments filled
with the finest linen. The basement, running the whole length of the
Winter Palace, was stocked with kitchen utensils of every size and
variety. Tin plates and pots would have been more appropriate for the
Expedition, but owing to the ruling that no institution may draw upon
another for anything it has in its own possession, there was nothing to
do but to choose the simplest obtainable at the Winter Palace. I went
home reflecting upon the strangeness of life: revolutionists eating out
of the crested service of the Romanovs. But I felt no elation over it.
CHAPTER XIV
PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG
As some time was to pass before we could depart, I took advantage of
the opportunity which presented itself to visit the historic prisons,
the Peter-and-Paul Fortress and Schlüsselburg. I recollected the dread
and awe the very names of these places filled me with when I first
came to Petrograd as a child of thirteen. In fact, my dread of the
Petropavlovsk Fortress dated back to a much earlier time. I think
I must have been six years old when a great shock had come to our
family: we learned that my mother's oldest brother, Yegor, a student
at the University of Petersburg, had been arrested and was held in
the Fortress. My mother at once set out for the capital. We children
remained at home in fear and trepidation lest Mother should not find
our uncle among the living. We spent anxious weeks and months till
finally Mother returned. Great was our rejoicing to hear that she had
rescued her brother from the living dead. But the memory of the shock
remained with me for a long time.
Seven years later, my family then living in Petersburg, I happened to
be sent on an errand which took me past the Peter-and-Paul Fortress.
The shock I had received many years before revived within me with
paralyzing force. There stood the heavy mass of stone, dark and
sinister. I was terrified. The great prison was still to me a haunted
house, causing my heart to palpitate with fear whenever I had to pass
it. Years later, when I had begun to draw sustenance from the lives
and heroism of the great Russian revolutionists, the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress became still more hateful. And now I was about to enter its
mysterious walls and see with my own eyes the place which had been the
living grave of so many of the best sons and daughters of Russia.
The guide assigned to take us through the different ravelins had been
in the prison for ten years. He knew every stone in the place. But
the silence told me more than all the information of the guide. The
martyrs who had beaten their wings against the cold stone, striving
upward toward the light and air, came to life for me. The Dekabristi,
Tchernishevsky, Dostoyevsky, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and scores of others
spoke in a thousand-throated voice of their social idealism and their
personal suffering--of their high hopes and fervent faith in the
ultimate liberation of Russia. Now the fluttering spirits of the heroic
dead may rest in peace: their dream has come true. But what is this
strange writing on the wall? "To-night I am to be shot because I had
once acquired an education." I had almost lost consciousness of the
reality. The inscription roused me to it. "What is this?" I asked the
guard. "Those are the last words of an _intelligent_," he replied.
"After the October Revolution the _intelligentsia_ filled this prison.
From here they were taken out and shot, or were loaded on barges never
to return. Those were dreadful days and still more dreadful nights."
So the dream of those who had given their lives for the liberation of
Russia had not come true, after all. Is there any change in the world?
Or is it all an eternal recurrence of man's inhumanity to man?
We reached the strip of enclosure where the prisoners used to be
permitted a half-hour's recreation. One by one they had to walk up and
down the narrow lane in dead silence, with the sentries on the wall
ready to shoot for the slightest infraction of the rules. And while
the caged and fettered ones treaded the treeless walk, the all-powerful
Romanovs looked out of the Winter Palace toward the golden spire
topping the Fortress to reassure themselves that their hated enemies
would never again threaten their safety. But not even Petropavlovsk
could save the Tsars from the slaying hand of Time and Revolution.
Indeed, there _is_ change; slow and painful, but come it does.
In the enclosure we met Angelica Balabanova and the Italians. We
walked about the huge prison, each absorbed in his own thoughts set in
motion by what he saw. Would Angelica notice the writing on the wall,
I wondered. "To-night I am to be shot because I had once acquired an
education."
Some time later several of our group made a trip to Schlüsselburg, the
even more dreadful tomb of the political enemies of Tsarism. It is a
journey of several hours by boat up the beautiful River Neva. The day
was chilly and gray, as was our mood; just the right state of mind to
visit Schlüsselburg. The fortress was strongly guarded, but our Museum
permit secured for us immediate admission. Schlüsselburg is a compact
mass of stone perched upon a high rock in the open sea. For many
decades only the victims of court intrigues and royal disfavour were
immured within its impenetrable walls, but later it became the Golgotha
of the political enemies of the Tsarist régime.
I had heard of Schlüsselburg when my parents first came to Petersburg;
but unlike my feeling toward the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, I had no
personal reaction to the place. It was Russian revolutionary literature
which brought the meaning of Schlüsselburg home to me. Especially the
story of Volkenstein, one of the two women who had spent long years
in the dreaded place, left an indelible impression on my mind. Yet
nothing I had read made the place quite so real and terrifying as when
I climbed up the stone steps and stood before the forbidding gates. As
far as any effect upon the physical condition of the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress was concerned, the Revolution might never have taken place.
The prison remained intact, ready for immediate use by the new régime.
Not so Schlüsselburg. The wrath of the proletariat struck that house of
the dead almost to the ground.
How cruel and perverse the human mind which could create a
Schlüsselburg! Verily, no savage could be guilty of the fiendish
spirit that conceived this appalling tomb. Cells built like a bag,
without doors or windows and with only a small opening through which
the victims were lowered into their living grave. Other cells were
stone cages to drive the mind to madness and lacerate the heart of the
unfortunates. Yet men and women endured twenty years in this terrible
place. What fortitude, what power of endurance, what sublime faith one
must have had to hold out, to emerge from it alive! Here Netchaev,
Lopatin, Morosov, Volkenstein, Figner, and others of the splendid
band spent their tortured lives. Here is the common grave of Ulianov,
Mishkin, Kalayev, Balmashev, and many more. The black tablet inscribed
with their names speaks louder than the voices silenced for ever. Not
even the roaring waves dashing against the rock of Schlüsselburg can
drown that accusing voice.
Petropavlovsk and Schlüsselburg stand as the living proof of how futile
is the hope of the mighty to escape the Frankensteins of their own
making.
CHAPTER XV
THE TRADE UNIONS
It was the month of June and the time of our departure was approaching.
Petrograd seemed more beautiful than ever; the white nights had
come--almost broad daylight without its glare, the mysterious soothing
white nights of Petrograd. There were rumours of counter-revolutionary
danger and the city was guarded against attack. Martial law prevailing,
it was forbidden to be out on the streets after 1 A. M.,
even though it was almost daylight. Occasionally special permits
were obtained by friends and then we would walk through the deserted
streets or along the banks of the dark Neva, discussing in whispers
the perplexing situation. I sought for some outstanding feature in
the blurred picture--the Russian Revolution, a huge flame shooting
across the world illuminating the black horizon of the disinherited and
oppressed--the Revolution, the new hope, the great spiritual awakening.
And here I was in the midst of it, yet nowhere could I see the promise
and fulfilment of the great event. Had I misunderstood the meaning and
nature of revolution? Perhaps the wrong and the evil I have seen during
those five months were inseparable from a revolution. Or was it the
political machine which the Bolsheviki have created--is that the force
which is crushing the Revolution? If I had witnessed the birth of the
latter I should now be better able to judge. But apparently I arrived
at the end--the agonizing end of a people. It is all so complex, so
impenetrable, a _tupik_, a blind alley, as the Russians call it. Only
time and earnest study, aided by sympathetic understanding, will show
me the way out. Meanwhile, I must keep up my courage and--away from
Petrograd, out among the people.
Presently the long-awaited moment arrived. On June 30, 1920, our car
was coupled to a slow train called "Maxim Gorki," and we pulled out of
the Nikolayevski station, bound for Moscow.
In Moscow there were many formalities to go through with. We thought
a few days would suffice, but we remained two weeks. However, our
stay was interesting. The city was alive with delegates to the Second
Congress of the Third International; from all parts of the world the
workers had sent their comrades to the promised land, revolutionary
Russia, the first republic of the workers. Among the delegates there
were also Anarchists and syndicalists who believed as firmly as I
did six months previously that the Bolsheviki were the symbol of the
Revolution. They had responded to the Moscow call with enthusiasm.
Some of them I had met in Petrograd and now they were eager to hear
of my experiences and learn my opinions. But what was I to tell
them, and would they believe me if I did? Would I have believed any
adverse criticism before I came to Russia? Besides, I felt that my
views regarding the Bolsheviki were still too unformed, too vague, a
conglomeration of mere impressions. My old values had been shattered
and so far I have been unable to replace them. I could therefore not
speak on the fundamental questions, but I did inform my friends that
the Moscow and Petrograd prisons were crowded with Anarchists and other
revolutionists, and I advised them not to content themselves with the
official explanations but to investigate for themselves. I warned them
that they would be surrounded by guides and interpreters, most of them
men of the Tcheka, and that they would not be able to learn the facts
unless they made a determined, independent effort.
There was considerable excitement in Moscow at the time. The Printers'
Union had been suppressed and its entire managing board sent to prison.
The Union had called a public meeting to which members of the British
Labour Mission were invited. There the famous Socialist Revolutionist
Tchernov had unexpectedly made his appearance. He severely criticised
the Bolshevik régime, received an ovation from the huge audience
of workers, and then vanished as mysteriously as he had come. The
Menshevik Dan was less successful. He also addressed the meeting, but
he failed to make his escape: he landed in the Tcheka. The next morning
the Moscow _Pravda_ and the _Izvestia_ denounced the action of the
Printers' Union as counter-revolutionary, and raged about Tchernov
having been permitted to speak. The papers called for exemplary
punishment of the printers who dared defy the Soviet Government.
The Bakers' Union, a very militant organization, had also been
suppressed, and its management replaced by Communists. Several months
before, in March, I had attended a convention of the bakers. The
delegates impressed me as a courageous group who did not fear to
criticise the Bolshevik régime and present the demands of the workers.
I wondered then that they were permitted to continue the conference,
for they were outspoken in their opposition to the Communists. "The
bakers are 'Shkurniki' [skinners]," I was told; "they always instigate
strikes, and only counter-revolutionists can wish to strike in the
workers' Republic." But it seemed to me that the workers could not
follow such reasoning. They did strike. They even committed a more
heinous crime: they refused to vote for the Communist candidate,
electing instead a man of their own choice. This action of the bakers
was followed by the arrest of several of their more active members.
Naturally the workers resented the arbitrary methods of the Government.
Later I met some of the bakers and found them much embittered against
the Communist Party and the Government. I inquired about the condition
of their union, telling them that I had been informed that the Russian
unions were very powerful and had practical control of the industrial
life of the country. The bakers laughed. "The trade unions are the
lackeys of the Government," they said; "they have no independent
function, and the workers have no say in them. The trade unions are
doing mere police duty for the Government." That sounded quite
different from the story told by Melnichansky, the chairman of the
Moscow Trade Union Soviet, whom I had met on my first visit to Moscow.
On that occasion he had shown me about the trade union headquarters
known as the _Dom Soyusov_, and explained how the organization worked.
Seven million workers were in the trade unions, he said; all trades
and professions belonged to it. The workers themselves managed the
industries and owned them. "The building you are in now is also owned
by the unions," he remarked with pride; "formerly it was the House of
the Nobility." The room we were in had been used for festive assemblies
and the great nobles sat in crested chairs around the table in the
centre. Melnichansky showed me the secret underground passage hidden
by a little turntable, through which the nobles could escape in case
of danger. They never dreamed that the workers would some day gather
around the same table and sit in the beautiful hall of marble columns.
The educational and cultural work done by the trade unions, the
chairman further explained, was of the greatest scope. "We have our
workers' colleges and other cultural institutions giving courses and
lectures on various subjects. They are all managed by the workers. The
unions own their own means of recreation, and we have access to all the
theatres." It was apparent from his explanation that the trade unions
of Russia had reached a point far beyond anything known by labour
organizations in Europe and America.
A similar account I had heard from Tsiperovitch, the chairman of the
Petrograd trade unions, with whom I had made my first trip to Moscow.
He had also shown me about the Petrograd Labour Temple, a beautiful and
spacious building where the Petrograd unions had their offices. His
recital also made it clear that the workers of Russia had at last come
into their own.
But gradually I began to see the other side of the medal. I found that
like most things in Russia the trade union picture had a double facet:
one paraded before foreign visitors and "investigators," the other
known by the masses. The bakers and the printers had recently been
shown the other side. It was a lesson of the benefits that accrued to
the trade unions in the Socialist Republic.
In March I had attended an election meeting arranged by the workers
of one of the large Moscow factories. It was the most exciting
gathering I had witnessed in Russia--the dimly lit hall in the factory
club rooms, the faces of the men and women worn with privation and
suffering, the intense feeling over the wrong done them, all impressed
me very strongly. Their chosen representative, an Anarchist, had been
refused his mandate by the Soviet authorities. It was the third time
the workers gathered to re-elect their delegate to the Moscow Soviet,
and every time they elected the same man. The Communist candidate
opposing him was Semashko, the Commissar of the Department of Health.
I had expected to find an educated and cultured man. But the behaviour
and language of the Commissar at that election meeting would have put
a hod-carrier to shame. He raved against the workers for choosing a
non-Communist, called anathema upon their heads, and threatened them
with the Tcheka and the curtailment of their rations. But he had no
effect upon the audience except to emphasize their opposition to him,
and to arouse antagonism against the party he represented. The final
victory, however, was with Semashko. The workers' choice was repudiated
by the authorities and later even arrested and imprisoned. That was
in March. In May, during the visit of the British Labour Mission, the
factory candidate together with other political prisoners declared a
hunger strike, which resulted in their liberation.
The story told me by the bakers of their election experiences had the
quality of our own Wild West during its pioneer days. Tchekists with
loaded guns were in the habit of attending gatherings of the unions
and they made it clear what would happen if the workers should fail to
elect a Communist. But the bakers, a strong and militant organization,
would not be intimidated. They declared that no bread would be baked
in Moscow unless they were permitted to elect their own candidate.
That had the desired effect. After the meeting the Tchekists tried to
arrest the candidate-elect, but the bakers surrounded him and saw him
safely home. The next day they sent their ultimatum to the authorities,
demanding recognition of their choice and threatening to strike in
case of refusal. Thus the bakers triumphed and gained an advantage
over their less courageous brothers in the other labour organizations
of minor importance. In starving Russia the work of the bakers was as
vital as life itself.
CHAPTER XVI
MARIA SPIRIDONOVA
The Commissariat of Education also included the Department of Museums.
The Petrograd Museum of the Revolution had two chairmen; Lunacharsky
being one of them, it was necessary to secure his signature to our
credentials which had already been signed by Zinoviev, the second
chairman of the Museum. I was commissioned to see Lunacharsky.
I felt rather guilty before him. I left Moscow in March promising
to return within a week to join him in his work. Now, four months
later, I came to ask his coöperation in an entirely different field.
I went to the Kremlin determined to tell Lunacharsky how I felt about
the situation in Russia. But I was relieved of the necessity by the
presence of a number of people in his office; there was no time to
take the matter up. I could merely inform Lunacharsky of the purpose
of the expedition and request his aid in the work. It met with his
approval. He signed our credentials and also supplied me with letters
of introduction and recommendation to facilitate our efforts in behalf
of the Museum.
While our Commission was making the necessary preparations for the trip
to the Ukraine, I found time to visit various institutions in Moscow
and to meet some interesting people. Among them were certain well-known
Left Social Revolutionists whom I had met on my previous visit. I
had told them then that I was eager to visit Maria Spiridonova, of
whose condition I had heard many conflicting stories. But at that
time no meeting could be arranged: it might have exposed Spiridonova
to danger, for she was living illegally, as a peasant woman. History
indeed repeats itself. Under the Tsar Spiridonova, also disguised as
a country girl, had shadowed Lukhanovsky, the Governor of Tamboy, of
peasant-flogging fame. Having shot him, she was arrested, tortured,
and later sentenced to death. The western world became aroused, and it
was due to its protests that the sentence of Spiridonova was changed
to Siberian exile for life. She spent eleven years there; the February
Revolution brought her freedom and back to Russia. Maria Spiridonova
immediately threw herself into revolutionary activity. Now, in the
Socialist Republic, Maria was again living in disguise after having
escaped from the prison in the Kremlin.
Arrangements were finally made to enable me to visit Spiridonova, and
I was cautioned to make sure that I was not followed by Tcheka men.
We agreed with Maria's friends upon a meeting place and from there we
zigzagged a number of streets till we at last reached the top floor of
a house in the back of a yard. I was led into a small room containing
a bed, small desk, bookcase, and several chairs. Before the desk,
piled high with letters and papers, sat a frail little woman, Maria
Spiridonova. This, then, was one of Russia's great martyrs, this woman
who had so unflinchingly suffered the tortures inflicted upon her
by the Tsar's henchmen. I had been told by Zorin and Jack Reed that
Spiridonova had suffered a breakdown, and was kept in a sanatorium.
Her malady, they said, was acute neurasthenia and hysteria. When I
came face to face with Maria, I immediately realized that both men
had deceived me. I was no longer surprised at Zorin: much of what he
had told me I gradually discovered to be utterly false. As to Reed,
unfamiliar with the language and completely under the sway of the new
faith, he took too much for granted. Thus, on his return from Moscow
he came to inform me that the story of the shooting of prisoners _en
masse_ on the eve of the abolition of capital punishment was really
true; but, he assured me, it was all the fault of a certain official of
the Tcheka who had already paid with his life for it. I had opportunity
to investigate the matter. I found that Jack had again been misled. It
was not that a certain man was responsible for the wholesale killing
on that occasion. The act was conditioned in the whole system and
character of the Tcheka.
I spent two days with Maria Spiridonova, listening to her recital of
events since October, 1917. She spoke at length about the enthusiasm
and zeal of the masses and the hopes held out by the Bolsheviki; of
their ascendancy to power and gradual turn to the right. She explained
the Brest-Litovsk peace which she considered as the first link in
the chain that has since fettered the Revolution. She dwelt on the
_razverstka_, the system of forcible requisition, which was devastating
Russia and discrediting everything the Revolution had been fought for;
she referred to the terrorism practised by the Bolsheviki against
every revolutionary criticism, to the new Communist bureaucracy and
inefficiency, and the hopelessness of the whole situation. It was a
crushing indictment against the Bolsheviki, their theories and methods.
If Spiridonova had really suffered a breakdown, as I had been
assured, and was hysterical and mentally unbalanced, she must have
had extraordinary control of herself. She was calm, self-contained,
and clear on every point. She had the fullest command of her material
and information. On several occasions during her narrative, when she
detected doubt in my face, she remarked: "I fear you don't quite
believe me. Well, here is what some of the peasants write me," and
she would reach over to a pile of letters on her desk and read to me
passages heart-rending with misery and bitter against the Bolsheviki.
In stilted handwriting, sometimes almost illegible, the peasants of the
Ukraine and Siberia wrote of the horrors of the _razverstka_ and what
it had done to them and their land. "They have taken away everything,
even the last seeds for the next sowing." "The Commissars have robbed
us of everything." Thus ran the letters. Frequently peasants wanted to
know whether Spiridonova had gone over to the Bolsheviki. "If you also
forsake us, _matushka_, we have no one to turn to," one peasant wrote.
The enormity of her accusations challenged credence. After all, the
Bolsheviki were revolutionists. How could they be guilty of the
terrible things charged against them? Perhaps they were not responsible
for the situation as it had developed; they had the whole world
against them. There was the Brest peace, for instance. When the news
of it first reached America I happened to be in prison. I reflected
long and carefully whether Soviet Russia was justified in negotiating
with German imperialism. But I could see no way out of the situation.
I was in favour of the Brest peace. Since I came to Russia I heard
conflicting versions of it. Nearly everyone, excepting the Communists,
considered the Brest agreement as much a betrayal of the Revolution as
the rôle of the German Socialists in the war--a betrayal of the spirit
of internationalism. The Communists, on the other hand, were unanimous
in defending the peace and denouncing as counter-revolutionist
everybody who questioned the wisdom and the revolutionary justification
of that agreement. "We could do nothing else," argued the Communists.
"Germany had a mighty army, while we had none. Had we refused to sign
the Brest treaty we should have sealed the fate of the Revolution. We
realized that Brest meant a compromise, but we knew that the workers
of Russia and the rest of the world would understand that we had been
forced to it. Our compromise was similar to that of workers when
they are forced to accept the conditions of their masters after an
unsuccessful strike."
But Spiridonova was not convinced. "There is not one word of truth in
the argument advanced by the Bolsheviki," she said. It is true that
Russia had no disciplined army to meet the German advance, but it had
something infinitely more effective: it had a conscious revolutionary
people who would have fought back the invaders to the last drop of
blood. As a matter of fact, it was the people who had checked all
the counter-revolutionary military attempts against Russia. Who else
but the people, the peasants and the workers, made it impossible for
the German and Austrian army to remain in the Ukraine? Who defeated
Denikin and the other counter-revolutionary generals? Who triumphed
over Koltchak and Yudenitch? Lenin and Trotsky claim that it was the
Red Army. But the historic truth was that the voluntary military
units of the workers and peasants--the _povstantsi_--in Siberia as
well as in the south of Russia--had borne the brunt of the fighting
on every front, the Red Army usually only completing the victories of
the former. Trotsky would have it now that the Brest treaty had to be
accepted, but he himself had at one time refused to sign the treaty and
Radek, Joffe, and other leading Communists had also been opposed to it.
It is claimed now that they submitted to the shameful terms because
they realized the hopelessness of their expectation that the German
workers would prevent the Junkers from marching against revolutionary
Russia. But that was not the true reason. It was the whip of the party
discipline which lashed Trotsky and others into submission.
"The trouble with the Bolsheviki," continued Spiridonova, "is that
they have no faith in the masses. They proclaimed themselves a
proletarian party, but they refused to trust the workers." It was
this lack of faith, Maria emphasized, which made the Communists bow
to German imperialism. And as concerns the Revolution itself, it was
precisely the Brest peace which struck it a fatal blow. Aside from
the betrayal of Finland, White Russia, Latvia, and the Ukraine--which
were turned over to the mercy of the German Junkers by the Brest
peace--the peasants saw thousands of their brothers slain, and had
to submit to being robbed and plundered. The simple peasant mind
could not understand the complete reversal of the former Bolshevik
slogans of "no indemnity and no annexations." But even the simplest
peasant could understand that his toil and his blood were to pay the
indemnities imposed by the Brest conditions. The peasants grew bitter
and antagonistic to the Soviet régime. Disheartened and discouraged
they turned from the Revolution. As to the effect of the Brest peace
upon the German workers, how could they continue in their faith in the
Russian Revolution in view of the fact that the Bolsheviki negotiated
and accepted the peace terms with the German masters over the heads of
the German proletariat? The historic fact remains that the Brest peace
was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution. No doubt other
factors contributed to the debacle, but Brest was the most fatal of
them.
Spiridonova asserted that the Left Socialist Revolutionary elements had
warned the Bolsheviki against that peace and fought it desperately.
They refused to accept it even after it had been signed. The presence
of Mirbach in Revolutionary Russia they considered an outrage against
the Revolution, a crying injustice to the heroic Russian people who had
sacrificed and suffered so much in their struggle against imperialism
and capitalism. Spiridonova's party decided that Mirbach could not
be tolerated in Russia: Mirbach had to go. Wholesale arrests and
persecutions followed upon the execution of Mirbach, the Bolsheviki
rendering service to the German Kaiser. They filled the prisons with
the Russian revolutionists.
In the course of our conversation I suggested that the method of
_razverstka_ was probably forced upon the Bolsheviki by the refusal of
the peasants to feed the city. In the beginning of the revolutionary
period, Spiridonova explained, so long as the peasant Soviets existed,
the peasants gave willingly and generously. But when the Bolshevik
Government began to dissolve these Soviets and arrested 500 peasant
delegates, the peasantry became antagonistic. Moreover, they daily
witnessed the inefficiency of the Communist régime: they saw their
products lying at side stations and rotting away, or in possession of
speculators on the market. Naturally under such conditions they would
not continue to give. The fact that the peasants had never refused to
contribute supplies to the Red Army proved that other methods than
those used by the Bolsheviki could have been employed. The _razverstka_
served only to widen the breach between the village and the city. The
Bolsheviki resorted to punitive expeditions which became the terror of
the country. They left death and ruin wherever they came. The peasants,
at last driven to desperation, began to rebel against the Communist
régime. In various parts of Russia, in the south, on the Ural, and in
Siberia, peasants' insurrections have taken place, and everywhere they
were being put down by force of arms and with an iron hand.
Spiridonova did not speak of her own sufferings since she had parted
ways with the Bolsheviki. But I learned from others that she had been
arrested twice and imprisoned for a considerable length of time. Even
when free she was kept under surveillance, as she had been in the time
of the Tsar. On several occasions she was tortured by being taken
out at night and informed that she was to be shot--a favoured Tcheka
method. I mentioned the subject to Spiridonova. She did not deny the
facts, though she was loath to speak of herself. She was entirely
absorbed in the fate of the Revolution and of her beloved peasantry.
She gave no thought to herself, but she was eager to have the world and
the international proletariat learn the true condition of affairs in
Bolshevik Russia.
Of all the opponents of the Bolsheviki I had met Maria Spiridonova
impressed me as one of the most sincere, well-poised, and convincing.
Her heroic past and her refusal to compromise her revolutionary ideas
under Tsarism as well as under Bolshevism were sufficient guarantee of
her revolutionary integrity.
CHAPTER XVII
ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN
A few days before our Expedition started for the Ukraine the
opportunity presented itself to pay another visit to Peter Kropotkin.
I was delighted at the chance to see the dear old man under more
favourable conditions than I had seen him in March. I expected at least
that we would not be handicapped by the presence of newspaper men as we
were on the previous occasion.
On my first visit, in snow-clad March, I arrived at the Kropotkin
cottage late in the evening. The place looked deserted and desolate.
But now it was summer time. The country was fresh and fragrant; the
garden at the back of the house, clad in green, smiled cheerfully,
the golden rays of the sun spreading warmth and light. Peter, who was
having his afternoon nap, could not be seen, but Sofya Grigorievna,
his wife, was there to greet us. We had brought some provisions given
to Sasha Kropotkin for her father, and several baskets of things sent
by an Anarchist group. While we were unpacking those treasures Peter
Alekseyevitch surprised us. He seemed a changed man: the summer had
wrought a miracle in him. He appeared healthier, stronger, more alive
than when I had last seen him. He immediately took us to the vegetable
garden which was almost entirely Sofya's own work and served as the
main support of the family. Peter was very proud of it. "What do you
say to this!" he exclaimed; "all Sofya's labour. And see this new
species of lettuce"--pointing at a huge head. He looked young; he was
almost gay, his conversation sparkling. His power of observation, his
keen sense of humour and generous humanity were so refreshing, he made
one forget the misery of Russia, one's own conflicts and doubts, and
the cruel reality of life.
After dinner we gathered in Peter's study--a small room containing an
ordinary table for a desk, a narrow cot, a wash-stand, and shelves of
books. I could not help making a mental comparison between this simple,
cramped study of Kropotkin and the gorgeous quarters of Radek and
Zinoviev. Peter was interested to know my impressions since he saw me
last. I related to him how confused and harassed I was, how everything
seemed to crumble beneath my feet. I told him that I had come to doubt
almost everything, even the Revolution itself. I could not reconcile
the ghastly reality with what the Revolution had meant to me when I
came to Russia. Were the conditions I found inevitable--the callous
indifference to human life, the terrorism, the waste and agony of it
all? Of course, I knew revolutions could not be made with kid gloves.
It is a stern necessity involving violence and destruction, a difficult
and terrible process. But what I had found in Russia was utterly unlike
revolutionary conditions, so fundamentally unlike as to be a caricature.
Peter listened attentively; then he said: "There is no reason whatever
to lose faith. I consider the Russian Revolution even greater than the
French, for it has struck deeper into the soul of Russia, into the
hearts and minds of the Russian people. Time alone can demonstrate
its full scope and depth. What you see to-day is only the surface,
conditions artificially created by a governing class. You see a
small political party which by its false theories, blunders, and
inefficiency has demonstrated how revolutions must _not_ be made." It
was unfortunate--Kropotkin continued--that so many of the Anarchists
in Russia and the masses outside of Russia had been carried away by
the ultra-revolutionary pretenses of the Bolsheviki. In the great
upheaval it was forgotten that the Communists are a political party
firmly adhering to the idea of a centralized State, and that as
such they were bound to misdirect the course of the Revolution. The
Bolsheviki were the Jesuits of the Socialist Church: they believed in
the Jesuitic motto that the end justifies the means. Their end being
political power, they hesitate at nothing. The means, however, have
paralysed the energies of the masses and have terrorized the people.
Yet without the people, without the direct participation of the masses
in the reconstruction of the country, nothing essential could be
accomplished. The Bolsheviki had been carried to the top by the high
tide of the Revolution. Once in power they began to stem the tide.
They have been trying to eliminate and suppress the cultural forces of
the country not entirely in agreement with their ideas and methods.
They destroyed the coöperatives which were of utmost importance to the
life of Russia, the great link between the country and the city. They
created a bureaucracy and officialdom which surpasses even that of the
old régime. In the village where he lived, in little Dmitrov, there
were more Bolshevik officials than ever existed there during the reign
of the Romanovs. All those people were living off the masses. They were
parasites on the social body, and Dmitrov was only a small example
of what was going on throughout Russia. It was not the fault of any
particular individuals: rather was it the State they had created, which
discredits every revolutionary ideal, stifles all initiative, and sets
a premium on incompetence and waste. It should also not be forgotten,
Kropotkin emphasized, that the blockade and the continuous attacks on
the Revolution by the interventionists had helped to strengthen the
power of the Communist régime. Intervention and blockade were bleeding
Russia to death, and were preventing the people from understanding the
real nature of the Bolshevik régime.
Discussing the activities and rôle of the Anarchists in the Revolution,
Kropotkin said: "We Anarchists have talked much of revolutions, but
few of us have been prepared for the actual work to be done during the
process. I have indicated some things in this relation in my 'Conquest
of Bread.' Pouget and Pataud have also sketched a line of action in
their work on 'How to Accomplish the Social Revolution.'" Kropotkin
thought that the Anarchists had not given sufficient consideration
to the fundamental elements of the social revolution. The real facts
in a revolutionary process do not consist so much in the actual
fighting--that is, merely the destructive phase necessary to clear
the way for constructive effort. The basic factor in a revolution is
the organization of the economic life of the country. The Russian
Revolution had proved conclusively that we must prepare thoroughly for
that. Everything else is of minor importance. He had come to think that
syndicalism was likely to furnish what Russia most lacked: the channel
through which the industrial and economic reconstruction of the country
may flow. He referred to Anarcho-syndicalism. That and the coöperatives
would save other countries some of the blunders and suffering Russia
was going through.
I left Dmitrov much comforted by the warmth and light which the
beautiful personality of Peter Kropotkin radiated; and I was much
encouraged by what I had heard from him. I returned to Moscow to help
with the completion of the preparations for our journey. At last, on
July 15, 1920, our car was coupled to a train bound for the Ukraine.
CHAPTER XVIII
EN ROUTE
Our train was about to leave Moscow when we were surprised by an
interesting visitor--Krasnoschekov, the president of the Far Eastern
Republic, who had recently arrived in the capital from Siberia. He had
heard of our presence in the city, but for some reason he could not
locate us. Finally he met Alexander Berkman who invited him to the
Museum car.
In appearance Krasnoschekov had changed tremendously since his Chicago
days, when, known as Tobinson, he was superintendent of the Workers'
Institute in that city. Then he was one of the many Russian emigrants
on the West Side, active as organizer and lecturer in the Socialist
movement. Now he looked a different man; his expression stern, the
stamp of authority on him, he seemed even to have grown taller. But at
heart he remained the same--simple and kind, the Tobinson we had known
in Chicago.
We had only a short time at our disposal and our visitor employed
it to give us an insight into the conditions in the Far East and
the local form of government. It consisted of representatives of
various political factions and "even Anarchists are with us," said
Krasnoschekov; "thus, for instance, Shatov is Minister of Railways. We
are independent in the East and there is free speech. Come over and try
us, you will find a field for your work." He invited Alexander Berkman
and myself to visit him in Chita and we assured him that we hoped to
avail ourselves of the invitation at some future time. He seemed to
have brought a different atmosphere and we were sorry to part so soon.
On the way from Petrograd to Moscow the Expedition had been busy
putting its house in order. As already mentioned, the car consisted
of six compartments, two of which were converted into a dining room
and kitchen. They were of diminutive size, but we managed to make a
presentable dining room of one, and the kitchen might have made many
a housekeeper envy us. A large Russian samovar and all necessary
copper and zinc pots and kettles were there, making a very effective
appearance. We were especially proud of the decorative curtains on our
car windows. The other compartments were used for office and sleeping
quarters. I shared mine with our secretary, Miss A. T. Shakol.
Besides Alexander Berkman, appointed by the Museum as chairman and
general manager, Shakol as secretary, and myself as treasurer and
housekeeper, the Expedition consisted of three other members, including
a young Communist, a student of the Petrograd University. En route
we mapped out our plan of work, each member of the Expedition being
assigned some particular branch of it. I was to gather data in the
Departments of Education and Health, the Bureaus of Social Welfare and
Labour Distribution, as well as in the organization known as Workers'
and Peasants' Inspection. After the day's work all the members were to
meet in the car to consider and classify the material collected during
the day.
Our first stop was Kursk. Nothing of importance was collected there
except a pair of _kandai_ [iron handcuffs] which had been worn by
a revolutionist in Schlüsselburg. It was donated to us by a chance
passer-by who, noticing the inscription on our car, "Extraordinary
Commission of the Museum of the Revolution," became interested
and called to pay us a visit. He proved to be an intellectual,
a Tolstoian, the manager of a children's colony. He succeeded in
maintaining the latter by giving the Soviet Government a certain amount
of labour required of him: three days a week he taught in the Soviet
schools of Kursk. The rest of his time he devoted to his little colony,
or the "Children's Commune," as he affectionately called it. With
the help of the children and some adults they raised the vegetables
necessary for the support of the colony and made all the repairs of
the place. He stated that he had not been directly interfered with
by the Government, but that his work was considerably handicapped by
discrimination against him as a pacifist and Tolstoian. He feared that
because of it his place could not be continued much longer. There was
no trading of any sort in Kursk at the time, and one had to depend for
supplies on the local authorities. But discrimination and antagonism
manifested themselves against independent initiative and effort.
The Tolstoian, however, was determined to make a fight, spiritually
speaking, for the life of his colony. He was planning to go to the
centre, to Moscow, where he hoped to get support in favour of his
commune.
The personality of the man, his eagerness to make himself useful, did
not correspond with the information I had received from Communists
about the _intelligentsia_, their indifference and unwillingness to
help revolutionary Russia. I broached the subject to our visitor. He
could only speak of the professional men and women of Kursk, his native
city, but he assured us that he found most of them, and especially the
teachers, eager to coöperate and even self-sacrificing. But they were
the most neglected class, living in semi-starvation all the time. Like
himself, they were exposed to general antagonism, even on the part of
the children whose minds had been poisoned by agitation against the
_intelligentsia_.
Kursk is a large industrial centre and I was interested in the fate
of the workers there. We learned from our visitor that there had been
repeated skirmishes between the workers and the Soviet authorities.
A short time before our arrival a strike had broken out and soldiers
were sent to quell it. The usual arrests followed and many workers were
still in the Tcheka. This state of affairs, the Tolstoian thought,
was due to general Communist incompetence rather than to any other
cause. People were placed in responsible positions not because of their
fitness but owing to their party membership. Political usefulness was
the first consideration and it naturally resulted in general abuse of
power and confusion. The Communist dogma that the end justifies all
means was also doing much harm. It had thrown the door wide open to the
worst human passions, and discredited the ideals of the Revolution. The
Tolstoian spoke sadly, as one speaks of a hope cherished and loved, and
lost.
The next morning our visitor donated to our collection the _kandali_ he
had worn for many years in prison. He hoped that we might return by way
of Kursk so that we could pay a visit to some Tolstoian communes in the
environs of the city. Not far from Yasnaya Polyana there lived an old
peasant friend of Tolstoi, he told us. He had much valuable material
that he might contribute to the Museum. Our visitor remained to the
moment of our departure; he was starved for intellectual companionship
and was loath to see us go.
CHAPTER XIX
IN KHARKOV
Arriving in Kharkov, I visited the Anarchist book store, the address
of which I had secured in Moscow. There I met many friends whom I had
known in America. Among them were Joseph and Leah Goodman, formerly
from Detroit; Fanny Baron, from Chicago, and Sam Fleshin who had worked
in the Mother Earth office in New York, in 1917, before he left for
Russia. With thousands of other exiles they had all hastened to their
native country at the first news of the Revolution, and they had been
in the thick of it ever since. They would have much to tell me, I
thought; they might help me to solve some of the problems that were
perplexing me.
Kharkov lay several miles away from the railroad station, and it would
have therefore been impractical to continue living in the car during
our stay in the city. The Museum credentials would secure quarters for
us, but several members of the Expedition preferred to stay with their
American friends. Through the help of one of our comrades, who was
commandant of an apartment house, I secured a room.
It had been quite warm in Moscow, but Kharkov proved a veritable
furnace, reminding me of New York in July. Sanitary and plumbing
arrangements had been neglected or destroyed, and water had to be
carried from a place several blocks distant up three flights of stairs.
Still it was a comfort to have a private room.
The city was alive. The streets were full of people and they looked
better fed and dressed than the population of Petrograd and Moscow.
The women were handsomer than in northern Russia; the men of a finer
type. It was rather odd to see beautiful women, wearing evening gowns
in the daytime, walk about barefoot or clad in wooden sandals without
stockings. The coloured kerchiefs most of them had on lent life
and colour to the streets, giving them a cheerful appearance which
contrasted favourably with the gray tones of Petrograd.
My first official visit was paid to the Department of Education.
I found a long line of people waiting admission, but the Museum
credentials immediately opened the doors, the chairman receiving
me most cordially. He listened attentively to my explanation of the
purposes of the Expedition and promised to give me an opportunity to
collect all the available material in his department, including the
newly prepared charts of its work. On the chairman's desk I noticed a
copy of such a chart, looking like a futurist picture, all lined and
dotted with red, blue, and purple. Noticing my puzzled expression the
chairman explained that the red indicated the various phases of the
educational system, the other colours representing literature, drama,
music, and the plastic arts. Each department was subdivided into
bureaus embracing every branch of the educational and cultural work of
the Socialist Republic.
Concerning the system of education the chairman stated that from
three to eight years of age the child attended the kindergarten or
children's home. War orphans from the south, children of Red Army
soldiers and of proletarians in general received preference. If
vacancies remained, children of the bourgeoisie were also accepted.
From eight to thirteen the children attended the intermediary schools
where they received elementary education which inculcates the general
idea of the political and economic structure of R.S.F.S.R. Modern
methods of instruction by means of technical apparatus, so far as the
latter could be secured, had been introduced. The children were taught
processes of production as well as natural sciences. The period from
twelve to seventeen embraced vocational training. There were also
higher institutions of learning for young people who showed special
ability and inclination. Besides this, summer schools and colonies
had been established where instruction was given in the open. All
children belonging to the Soviet Republic were fed, clothed, and
housed at the expense of the Government. The scheme of education also
embraced workers' colleges and evening courses for adults of both
sexes. Here also everything was supplied to the pupils free, even
special rations. For further particulars the chairman referred me to
the literature of his department and advised me to study the plan in
operation. The educational work was much handicapped by the blockade
and counter-revolutionary attempts; else Russia would demonstrate to
the world what the Socialist Republic could do in the way of popular
enlightenment. They lacked even the most elemental necessaries, such as
paper, pencils, and books. In the winter most of the schools had to be
closed for lack of fuel. The cruelty and infamy of the blockade was
nowhere more apparent and crying than in its effect upon the sick and
the children. "It is the blackest crime of the century," the chairman
concluded. It was agreed that I return within a week to receive the
material for our collection. In the Social Welfare Department I also
found a very competent man in charge. He became much interested in the
work of the Expedition and promised to collect the necessary material
for us, though he could not offer very much because his department had
but recently been organized. Its work was to look after the disabled
and sick proletarians and those of old age exempt from labour. They
were given certain rations in food and clothing; in case they were
employed they received also a certain amount of money, about half of
their earnings. Besides that the Department was supporting living
quarters and dining rooms for its charges.
In the corridor leading to the various offices of the Department
there were lines of emaciated and crippled figures, men and women,
waiting for their turn to receive aid. They looked like war veterans
awaiting their pittance in the form of rations; they reminded me of the
decrepit unemployed standing in line in the Salvation Army quarters
in America. One woman in particular attracted my attention. She was
angry and excited and she complained loudly. Her husband had been dead
two days and she was trying to obtain a permit for a coffin. She had
been in line ever since but could procure no order. "What am I to do?"
she wailed; "I cannot carry him on my own back or bury him without a
coffin, and I cannot keep him in my room much longer in this heat." The
woman's lament remained unanswered for everyone was absorbed in his own
troubles. Sick and disabled workers are thrown everywhere on the scrap
pile--I thought--but in Russia an effort is being made to prevent such
cruelty. Yet judging from what I saw in Kharkov I felt that not much
was being accomplished. It was a most depressing picture, that long
waiting line. I felt as if it was adding insult to injury.
I visited a house where the social derelicts lived. It was fairly well
kept, but breathing the spirit of cold institutionalism. It was, of
course, better than sleeping in the streets or lying all night in the
doorways, as the sick and poor are often compelled to do in capitalist
countries, in America, for instance. Still it seemed incongruous that
something more cheerful and inviting could not be devised in Soviet
Russia for those who had sacrificed their health and had given their
labour to the common good. But apparently it was the best that the
Social Welfare Department could do in the present condition of Russia.
In the evening our American friends visited us. Each of them had a
rich experience of struggle, suffering, and persecution and I was
surprised to learn that most of them had also been imprisoned by the
Bolsheviki. They had endured much for the sake of their ideas and
had been hounded by every government of Ukraina, there having been
fourteen political changes in some parts of the south during the last
two years. The Communists were no different: they also persecuted
the Anarchists as well as other revolutionists of the Left. Still
the Anarchists continued their work. Their faith in the Revolution,
in spite of all they endured, and even in the face of the worst
reaction, was truly sublime. They agreed that the possibilities of
the masses during the first months after the October Revolution were
very great, but expressed the opinion that revolutionary development
had been checked, and gradually entirely paralysed, by the deadening
effect of the Communist State. In the Ukraina, they explained, the
situation differed from that of Russia, because the peasants lived
in comparatively better material conditions. They had also retained
greater independence and more of a rebellious spirit. For these reasons
the Bolsheviki had failed to subdue the south.
Our visitors spoke of Makhno as a heroic popular figure, and related
his daring exploits and the legends the peasants had woven about his
personality. There was considerable difference of opinion, however,
among the Anarchists concerning the significance of the Makhno
movement. Some regarded it as expressive of Anarchism and believed
that the Anarchists should devote all their energies to it. Others
held that the _povstantsi_ represented the native rebellious spirit
of the southern peasants, but that their movement was not Anarchism,
though anarchistically tinged. They were not in favour of limiting
themselves to that movement; they believed their work should be of a
more embracing and universal character. Several of our friends took
an entirely different position, denying to the Makhno movement any
anarchistic meaning whatever.
Most enthusiastic about Makhno and emphatic about the Anarchist value
of that movement was Joseph, known as the "Emigrant"--the very last
man one would have expected to wax warm over a military organization.
Joseph was as mild and gentle as a girl. In America he had participated
in the Anarchist and Labour movements in a quiet and unassuming manner,
and very few knew the true worth of the man. Since his return to Russia
he had been in the thick of the struggle. He had spent much time with
Makhno and had learned to love and admire him for his revolutionary
devotion and courage. Joseph related an interesting experience of his
first visit to the peasant leader. When he arrived the _povstantsi_ for
some reason conceived the notion that he had come to harm their chief.
One of Makhno's closest friends claimed that Joseph, being a Jew, must
also be an emissary of the Bolsheviki sent to kill Makhno. When he saw
how attached Makhno became to Joseph, he decided to kill "the Jew."
Fortunately he first warned his leader, whereupon Makhno called his
men together and addressed them somewhat in this manner: "Joseph is a
Jew and an idealist; he is an Anarchist. I consider him my comrade and
friend and I shall hold everyone responsible for his safety." Idolized
by his army, Makhno's word was enough: Joseph became the trusted
friend of the _povstantsi_. They believed in him because their _batka_
[father] had faith in him, and Joseph in return became deeply devoted
to them. Now he insisted that he must return to the rebel camp: they
were heroic people, simple, brave, and devoted to the cause of liberty.
He was planning to join Makhno again. Yet I could not free myself of
the feeling that if Joseph went back I should never see him alive any
more. He seemed to me like one of those characters in Zola's "Germinal"
who loves every living thing and yet is able to resort to dynamite for
the sake of the striking miners.
I expressed the view to my friends that, important as the Makhno
movement might be, it was of a purely military nature and could not,
therefore, be expressive of the Anarchist spirit. I was sorry to see
Joseph return to the Makhno camp, for his work for the Anarchist
movement in Russia could be of much greater value. But he was
determined, and I felt that it was Joseph's despair at the reactionary
tendencies of the Bolsheviki which drove him, as it did so many others
of his comrades, away from the Communists and into the ranks of Makhno.
During our stay in Kharkov I also visited the Department of Labour
Distribution, which had come into existence since the militarization of
labour. According to the Bolsheviki it became necessary then to return
the workers from the villages to which they had streamed from the
starving cities. They had to be registered and classified according to
trades and distributed to points where their services were most needed.
In the carrying out of this plan many people were daily rounded up on
the streets and in the market place. Together with the large numbers
arrested as speculators or for possession of Tsarist money, they were
put on the list of the Labour Distribution Department. Some were sent
to the Donetz Basin, while the weaker ones went on to concentration
camps. The Communists justified this system and method as necessary
during a revolutionary period in order to build up the industries.
Everybody must work in Russia, they said, or be forced to work. They
claimed that the industrial output had increased since the introduction
of the compulsory labour law.
I had occasion to discuss these matters with many Communists and I
doubted the efficacy of the new policy.
One evening a woman called at my room and introduced herself as
the former owner of the apartment. Since all the houses had been
nationalized she was allowed to keep three rooms, the rest of her
apartment having been put in charge of the House Bureau. Her family
consisted of eight members, including her parents and a married
daughter with her family. It was almost impossible to crowd all into
three rooms, especially considering the terrific heat of the Kharkov
summer; yet somehow they had managed. But two weeks prior to our
arrival in Kharkov Zinoviev visited the city. At a public meeting he
declared that the bourgeoisie of the city looked too well fed and
dressed. "It proves," he said, "that the comrades and especially the
Tcheka are neglecting their duty." No sooner had Zinoviev departed than
wholesale arrests and night raids began. Confiscation became the order
of the day. Her apartment, the woman related, had also been visited and
most of her effects taken away. But worst of all was that the Tcheka
ordered her to vacate one of the rooms, and now the whole family was
crowded into two small rooms. She was much worried lest a member of the
Tcheka or a Red Army man be assigned to the vacant room. "We felt much
relieved," she said, "when we were informed that someone from America
was to occupy this room. We wish you would remain here for a long time."
Till then I had not come in personal contact with the members of the
expropriated bourgeoisie who had actually been made to suffer by the
Revolution. The few middle-class families I had met lived well, which
was a source of surprise to me. Thus in Petrograd a certain chemist I
had become acquainted with in Shatov's house lived in a very expensive
way. The Soviet authorities permitted him to operate his factory, and
he supplied the Government with chemicals at a cost much less than the
Government could manufacture them at. He paid his workers comparatively
high wages and provided them with rations. On a certain occasion I was
invited to dinner by the chemist's family. I found them living in a
luxurious apartment containing many valuable objects and art treasures.
My hostess, the chemist's wife, was expensively gowned and wore a
costly necklace. Dinner consisted of several courses and was served
in an extravagant manner with exquisite damask linen in abundance. It
must have cost several hundred thousand rubles, which in 1920 was a
small fortune in Russia. The astonishing thing to me was that almost
everybody in Petrograd knew the chemist and was familiar with his mode
of life. But I was informed that he was needed by the Soviet Government
and that he was therefore permitted to live as he pleased. Once I
expressed my surprise to him that the Bolsheviki had not confiscated
his wealth. He assured me that he was not the only one of the
bourgeoisie who had retained his former condition. "The bourgeoisie is
by no means dead," he said; "it has only been chloroformed for a while,
so to speak, for the painful operation. But it is already recovering
from the effect of the anesthetic and soon it will have recuperated
entirely. It only needs a little more time." The woman who visited me
in the Kharkov room had not managed so well as the Petrograd chemist.
She was a part of the wreckage left by the revolutionary storm that had
swept over Russia.
During my stay in the Ukrainian capital I met some interesting people
of the professional classes, among them an engineer who had just
returned from the Donetz Basin and a woman employed in a Soviet Bureau.
Both were cultured persons and keenly alive to the fate of Russia. We
discussed the Zinoviev visit. They corroborated the story told me
before. Zinoviev had upbraided his comrades for their laxity toward the
bourgeoisie and criticized them for not suppressing trade. Immediately
upon Zinoviev's departure the Tcheka began indiscriminate raids, the
members of the bourgeoisie losing on that occasion almost the last
things they possessed. The most tragic part of it, according to the
engineer, was that the workers did not benefit by such raids. No one
knew what became of the things confiscated--they just disappeared.
Both the engineer and the woman Soviet employee spoke with much
concern about the general disintegration of ideas. The Russians once
believed, the woman said, that hovels and palaces were equally wrong
and should be abolished. It never occurred to them that the purpose of
a revolution is merely to cause a transfer of possessions--to put the
rich into the hovels and the poor into the palaces. It was not true
that the workers have gotten into the palaces. They were only made to
believe that that is the function of a revolution. In reality, the
masses remained where they had been before. But now they were not alone
there: they were in the company of the classes they meant to destroy.
The civil engineer had been sent by the Soviet Government to the Donetz
Basin to build homes for the workers, and I was glad of the opportunity
to learn from him about the conditions there. The Communist press was
publishing glowing accounts about the intensive coal production of the
Basin, and official calculations claimed that the country would be
provided with sufficient coal for the approaching winter. In reality,
the Donetz mines were in a most deplorable state, the engineer informed
me. The miners were herded like cattle. They received abominable
rations, were almost barefoot, and were forced to work standing
in water up to their ankles. As a result of such conditions very
little coal was being produced. "I was one of a committee ordered to
investigate the situation and report our findings," said the engineer.
"Our report is far from favourable. We know that it is dangerous to
relate the facts as we found them: it may land us in the Tcheka. But
we decided that Moscow must face the facts. The system of political
Commissars, general Bolshevik inefficiency, and the paralysing effect
of the State machinery have made our constructive work in the Basin
almost impossible. It was a dismal failure."
Could such a condition of affairs be avoided in a revolutionary
period and in a country so little developed industrially as Russia? I
questioned. The Revolution was being attacked by the bourgeoisie within
and without; there was compelling need of defence and no energies
remained for constructive work. The engineer scorned my viewpoint. The
Russian bourgeoisie was weak and could offer practically no resistance,
he claimed. It was numerically insignificant and it suffered from a
sick conscience. There was neither need nor justification for Bolshevik
terrorism and it was mainly the latter that paralysed the constructive
efforts. Middle-class intellectuals had been active for many years in
the liberal and revolutionary movements of Russia, and thus the members
of the bourgeoisie had become closer to the masses. When the great day
arrived the bourgeoisie, caught unawares, preferred to give up rather
than to put up a fight. It was stunned by the Revolution more than any
other class in Russia. It was quite unprepared and has not gotten its
bearings even to this day. It was not true, as the Bolsheviki claimed,
that the Russian bourgeoisie was an active menace to the Revolution.
I had been advised to see the Chief of the Department of Workers' and
Peasants' Inspection, the position being held by a woman, formerly
an officer of the Tcheka, reputed to be very severe, even cruel, but
efficient. She could supply me with much valuable material, I was
told, and give me entrance to the prisons and concentration camps. On
my visiting the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection offices I found the
lady in charge not at all cordial at first. She ignored my credentials,
apparently not impressed by Zinoviev's signature. Presently a man
stepped out from an inner office. He proved to be Dibenko, a high Red
Army officer, and he informed me that he had heard of me from Alexandra
Kollontay, whom he referred to as his wife. He promised that I should
get all available material and asked me to return later in the day.
When I called again I found the lady much more amiable and willing to
give me information about the activities of her department. It appeared
that the latter had been organized to fight growing sabotage and graft.
It was part of the duties of the Tcheka, but it was found necessary to
create the new department for the inspection and correction of abuses.
"It is the tribunal to which cases may be appealed," said the woman;
"just now, for instance, we are investigating complaints of prisoners
who had been wrongly convicted or received excessive sentences." She
promised to secure for us permission to inspect the penal institutions
and several days later several members of the Expedition were given the
opportunity.
First we visited the main concentration camp of Kharkov. We found
a number of prisoners working in the yard, digging a new sewer. It
was certainly needed, for the whole place was filled with nauseating
smells. The prison building was divided into a number of rooms, all of
them overcrowded. One of the compartments was called the "speculators'
apartment," though almost all its inmates protested against being
thus classed. They looked poor and starved, everyone of them anxious
to tell us his tale of woe, apparently under the impression that we
were official investigators. In one of the corridors we found several
Communists charged with sabotage. Evidently the Soviet Government did
not discriminate in favour of its own people.
There were in the camp White officers taken prisoners at the Polish
front, and scores of peasant men and women held on various charges.
They presented a pitiful sight, sitting there on the floor for lack of
benches, a pathetic lot, bewildered and unable to grasp the combination
of events which had caught them in the net.
More than one thousand able-bodied men were locked up in the
concentration camp, of no service to the community and requiring
numerous officials to guard and attend them. And yet Russia was badly
in need of labour energy. It seemed to me an impractical waste.
Later we visited the prison. At the gates an angry mob was
gesticulating and shouting. I learned that the weekly parcels brought
by relatives of the inmates had that morning been refused acceptance
by the prison authorities. Some of the people had come for miles and
had spent their last ruble for food for their arrested husbands and
brothers. They were frantic. Our escort, the woman in charge of the
Bureau, promised to investigate the matter. We made the rounds of the
big prison--a depressing sight of human misery and despair. In the
solitary were those condemned to death. For days their look haunted
me--their eyes full of terror at the torturing uncertainty, fearing to
be called at any moment to face death.
We had been asked by our Kharkov friends to find a certain young
woman in the prison. Trying to avoid arousing attention we sought
her with our eyes in various parts of the institution, till we saw
someone answering her description. She was an Anarchist, held as
a political. The prison conditions were bad, she told us. It had
required a protracted hunger strike to compel the authorities to
treat the politicals more decently and to keep the doors of those
condemned to death open during the day, so that they could receive a
little cheer and comfort from the other prisoners. She told of many
unjustly arrested and pointed out an old stupid-looking peasant woman
locked up in solitary as a Makhno spy, a charge obviously due to a
misunderstanding.
The prison régime was very rigid. Among other things, it was forbidden
the prisoners to climb up on the windows or to look out into the
yard. The story was related to us of a prisoner being shot for once
disobeying that rule. He had heard some noise in the street below and,
curious to know what was going on, he climbed up on the window sill of
his cell. The sentry in the yard gave no warning. He fired, severely
wounding the man. Many similar stories of severity and abuse we heard
from the prisoners. On our way to town I expressed surprise at the
conditions that were being tolerated in the prisons. I remarked to our
guide that it would cause a serious scandal if the western world were
to learn under what conditions prisoners live and how they are treated
in Socialist Russia. Nothing could justify such brutality, I thought.
But the chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection remained
unmoved. "We are living in a revolutionary period," she replied;
"these matters cannot be helped." But she promised to investigate some
cases of extreme injustice which we had pointed out to her. I was not
convinced that the Revolution was responsible for the existing evils.
If the Revolution really had to support so much brutality and crime,
what was the purpose of the Revolution, after all?
At the end of our first week in Kharkov I returned to the Department of
Education where I had been promised material. To my surprise I found
that nothing had been prepared. I was informed that the chairman was
absent, and again assured that the promised data would be collected and
ready before our departure. I was then referred to the man in charge
of a certain school experimental department. The chairman had told me
that some interesting educational methods were being developed, but I
found the manager unintelligent and dull. He could tell me nothing of
the new methods, but he was willing to send for one of the instructors
to explain things to me. A messenger was dispatched, but he soon
returned with the information that the teacher was busy demonstrating
to his class and could not come. The manager flew into a rage. "He
must come," he shouted; "the bourgeoisie are sabotaging like the other
damnable _intelligentsia_. They ought all to be shot. We can do very
well without them." He was one of the type of narrow-minded fanatical
and persecuting Communists who did more harm to the Revolution than any
counter-revolutionary.
During our stay in Kharkov we also had time to visit some factories.
In a plough manufacturing plant we found a large loft stacked with the
finished product. I was surprised that the ploughs were kept in the
factory instead of being put to practical use on the farms. "We are
awaiting orders from Moscow," the manager explained; "it was a rush
order and we were threatened with arrest for sabotage in case it should
not be ready for shipment within six weeks. That was six months ago,
and as you see the ploughs are still here. The peasants need them
badly, and we need their bread. But we cannot exchange. We must await
orders from Moscow."
I recalled a remark of Zinoviev when on our first meeting he stated
that Petrograd lacked fuel, notwithstanding the fact that less than a
hundred versts from the city there was enough to supply almost half the
country. I suggested on that occasion that the workers of Petrograd
be called upon to get the fuel to the city. Zinoviev thought it very
naïve. "Should we grant such a thing in Petrograd," he said, "the
same demand would be made in other cities. It would create communal
competition which is a bourgeois institution. It would interfere
with our plan of nationalized and centralized control." That was the
dominating principle, and as a result of it the Kharkov workers lacked
bread until Moscow should give orders to have the ploughs sent to the
peasants. The supremacy of the State was the cornerstone of Marxism.
Several days before leaving Kharkov I once more visited the Board of
Education and again I failed to find its chairman. To my consternation
I was informed that I would receive no material because it had been
decided that Ukraina was to have its own museum and the chairman
had gone to Kiev to organize it. I felt indignant at the miserable
deception practised upon us by a man in high Communist position. Surely
Ukraina had the right to have its own museum, but why this petty fraud
which caused the Expedition to lose so much valuable time.
The sequel to this incident came a few days later when we were
surprised by the hasty arrival of our secretary who informed us that
we must leave Kharkov immediately and as quietly as possible, because
the local executive committee of the party had decided to prevent our
carrying out statistical material from Ukraina. Accordingly, we made
haste to leave in order to save what we had already collected. We knew
the material would be lost if it remained in Kharkov and that the plan
of an independent Ukrainian museum would for many years remain only on
paper.
Before departing we made arrangements for a last conference with our
local friends. We felt that we might never see them again. On that
occasion the work of the "Nabat" Federation was discussed in detail.
That general Anarchist organization of the south had been founded as a
result of the experiences of the Russian Anarchists and the conviction
that a unified body was necessary to make their work more effective.
They wanted not merely to die but to live for the Revolution. It
appeared that the Anarchists of Russia had been divided into several
factions, most of them numerically small and of little practical
influence upon the progress of events in Russia. They had been unable
to establish a permanent hold in the ranks of the workers. It was
therefore decided to gather all the Anarchist elements of the Ukraina
into one federation and thus be in condition to present a solid front
in the struggle not only against invasion and counter-revolution, but
also against Communist persecution.
By means of unified effort the "Nabat" was able to cover most of the
south and get in close touch with the life of the workers and the
peasantry. The frequent changes of government in the Ukraina finally
drove the Anarchists to cover, the relentless persecution of the
Bolsheviki having depleted their ranks of the most active workers.
Still the Federation had taken root among the people. The little
band was in constant danger, but it was energetically continuing its
educational and propaganda work.
The Kharkov Anarchists had evidently expected much from our presence
in Russia. They hoped that Alexander Berkman and myself would join
them in their work. We were already seven months in Russia but had
as yet taken no direct part in the Anarchist movement. I could sense
the disappointment and impatience of our comrades. They were eager we
should at least inform the European and American Anarchists of what
was going on in Russia, particularly about the ruthless persecution of
the Left revolutionary elements. Well could I understand the attitude
of my Ukrainian friends. They had suffered much during the last years:
they had seen the high hopes of the Revolution crushed and Russia
breaking down beneath the heel of the Bolshevik State. Yet I could
not comply with their wishes. I still had faith in the Bolsheviki, in
their revolutionary sincerity and integrity. Moreover, I felt that as
long as Russia was being attacked from the outside I could not speak
in criticism. I would not add fuel to the fires of counter-revolution.
I therefore had to keep silent, and stand by the Bolsheviki as the
organized defenders of the Revolution. But my Russian friends scorned
this view. I was confounding the Communist Party with the Revolution,
they said; they were not the same; on the contrary, they were opposed,
even antagonistic. The Communist State, according to the "Nabat"
Anarchists, had proven fatal to the Revolution.
Within a few hours before our departure we received the confidential
information that Makhno had sent a call for Alexander Berkman and
myself to visit him. He wished to place his situation before us, and,
through us, before the Anarchist movement of the world. He desired to
have it widely understood that he was not the bandit, Jew-baiter, and
counter-revolutionist the Bolsheviki had proclaimed him. He was devoted
to the Revolution and was serving the interests of the people as he
conceived them.
It was a great temptation to meet the modern Stenka Rasin, but we were
pledged to the Museum and could not break faith with the other members
of the Expedition.
CHAPTER XX
POLTAVA
In the general dislocation of life in Russia and the breaking down
of her economic machinery the railroad system had suffered most. The
subject was discussed in almost every meeting and every Soviet paper
often wrote about it. Between Petrograd and Moscow, however, the real
state of affairs was not so noticeable, though the main stations
were always overcrowded and the people waited for days trying to
secure places. Still, trains between Petrograd and Moscow ran fairly
regularly. If one was fortunate enough to procure the necessary
permission to travel, and a ticket, one could manage to make the
journey without particular danger to life or limb. But the farther
south one went the more apparent became the disorganization. Broken
cars dotted the landscape, disabled engines lay along the route, and
frequently the tracks were torn up. Everywhere in the Ukraina the
stations were filled to suffocation, the people making a wild rush
whenever a train was sighted. Most of them remained for weeks on the
platforms before succeeding in getting into a train. The steps and even
the roofs of the cars were crowded by men and women loaded with bundles
and bags. At every station there was a savage scramble for a bit of
space. Soldiers drove the passengers off the steps and the roofs, and
often they had to resort to arms. Yet so desperate were the people and
so determined to get to some place where there was hope of securing
a little food, that they seemed indifferent to arrest and risked
their lives continuously in this mode of travel. As a result of this
situation there were numberless accidents, scores of travellers being
often swept to their death by low bridges. These sights had become
so common that practically no attention was paid to them. Travelling
southward and on our return we frequently witnessed these scenes.
Constantly the _meshotchniki_ [people with bags] mobbed the cars in
search of food, or when returning laden with their precious burden of
flour and potatoes.
Day and night the terrible scenes kept repeating themselves at every
station. It was becoming a torture to travel in our well-equipped car.
It contained only six persons, leaving considerable room for more; yet
we were forbidden to share it with others. It was not only because of
the danger of infection or of insects but because the Museum effects
and the material collected would have surely vanished had we allowed
strangers on board. We sought to salve our conscience by permitting
women and children or cripples to travel on the rear platform of our
car, though even that was contrary to orders.
Another feature which caused us considerable annoyance was the
inscription on our car, which read: Extraordinary Commission of the
Museum of the Revolution. Our friends at the Museum had assured us
that the "title" would help us to secure attention at the stations and
would also be effective in getting our car attached to such trains as
we needed. But already the first few days proved that the inscription
roused popular feeling against us. The name "Extraordinary Commission"
signified to the people the Tcheka. They paid no attention to the other
words, being terrorized by the first. Early in the journey we noticed
the sinister looks that met us at the stations and the unwillingness
of the people to enter into friendly conversation. Presently it
dawned on us what was wrong; but it required considerable effort
to explain the misunderstanding. Once put at his ease, the simple
Russian opened up his heart to us. A kind word, a solicitous inquiry,
a cigarette, changed his attitude. Especially when assured that we
were not Communists and that we had come from America, the people
along the route would soften and become more talkative, sometimes even
confidential. They were unsophisticated and primitive, often crude.
But illiterate and undeveloped as they were, these plain folk were
clear about their needs. They were unspoiled and possessed of a deep
faith in elementary justice and equality. I was often moved almost to
tears by these Russian peasant men and women clinging to the steps of
the moving train, every moment in danger of their lives, yet remaining
good-humoured and indifferent to their miserable condition. They
would exchange stories of their lives or sometimes break out in the
melodious, sad songs of the south. At the stations, while the train
waited for an engine, the peasants would gather into groups, form a
large circle, and then someone would begin to play the accordion,
the bystanders accompanying with song. It was strange to see these
hungry and ragged peasants, huge loads on their backs, standing about
entirely forgetful of their environment, pouring their hearts out in
folk songs. A peculiar people, these Russians, saint and devil in one,
manifesting the highest as well as the most brutal impulses, capable of
almost anything except sustained effort. I have often wondered whether
this lack did not to some extent explain the disorganization of the
country and the tragic condition of the Revolution.
We reached Poltava in the morning. The city looked cheerful in the
bright sunlight, the streets lined with trees, with little garden
patches between them. Vegetables in great variety were growing on them,
and it was refreshing to note that no fences were about and still the
vegetables were safe, which would surely not have been the case in
Petrograd or Moscow. Apparently there was not so much hunger in this
city as in the north.
Together with the Expedition Secretary I visited the government
headquarters. Instead of the usual _Ispolkom_ [Executive Committee of
the Soviet] Poltava was ruled by a revolutionary committee known as the
_Revkom_. This indicated that the Bolsheviki had not yet had time to
organize a Soviet in the city. We succeeded in getting the chairman of
the _Revkom_ interested in the purpose of our journey and he promised
to coöperate and to issue an order to the various departments that
material be collected and prepared for us. Our gracious reception
augured good returns.
In the Bureau for the Care of Mothers and Infants I met two very
interesting women--one the daughter of the great Russian writer,
Korolenko, the other the former chairman of the Save-the-Children
Society. Learning of the purpose of my presence in Poltava the women
offered their aid and invited me to visit their school and the near-by
home of Korolenko.
The school was located in a small house set deep in a beautiful garden,
the place hardly visible from the street. The reception room contained
a rich collection of dolls of every variety. There were handsome
Ukrainian lassies, competing in colourful dress and headgear with their
beautiful sisters from the Caucasus; dashing Cossacks from the Don
looked proudly at their less graceful brothers from the Volga. There
were dolls of every description, representing local costumes of almost
every part of Russia. The collection also contained various toys, the
handwork of the villages, and beautiful designs of the _kustarny_
manufacture, representing groups of children in Russian and Siberian
peasant attire.
The ladies of the house related the story of the Save-the-Children
Society. The organization in existence, for a number of years, was of
very limited scope until the February Revolution. Then new elements,
mainly of revolutionary type, joined the society. They strove to extend
its work and to provide not only for the physical well-being of the
children but also to educate them, teach them to love work and develop
their appreciation of beauty. Toys and dolls, made chiefly of waste
material, were exhibited and the proceeds applied to the needs of the
children. After the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviki possessed
themselves of Poltava, the society was repeatedly raided and some
of the instructors arrested on suspicion that the institution was a
counter-revolutionary nest. The small band which remained went on,
however, with their efforts on behalf of the children. They succeeded
in sending a delegation to Lunacharsky to appeal for permission to
carry on their work. Lunacharsky proved sympathetic, issued the
requested document, and even provided them with a letter to the local
authorities, pointing out the importance of their labours.
But the society continued to be subjected to annoyance and
discrimination. To avoid being charged with sabotage the women offered
their services to the Poltava Department of Education. There they
worked from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, devoting
their leisure time to their school. But the antagonism of the Communist
authorities was not appeased: the society remained in disfavour.
The women pointed out that the Soviet Government pretended to stand
for self-determination and yet every independent effort was being
discredited and all initiative discouraged, if not entirely suppressed.
Not even the Ukrainian Communists were permitted self-determination.
The majority of the chiefs of the departments were Moscow appointees,
and Ukraina was practically deprived of opportunity for independent
action. A bitter struggle was going on between the Communist Party of
Ukraina and the Central authorities in Moscow. The policy of the latter
was to control everything.
The women were devoted to the cause of the children and willing to
suffer misunderstanding and even persecution for the sake of their
interest in the welfare of their charges. Both had understanding
for and sympathy with the Revolution, though they could not approve
of the terroristic methods of the Bolsheviki. They were intelligent
and cultured people and I felt their home an oasis in the desert of
Communist thought and feeling. Before I left the ladies supplied me
with a collection of the children's work and some exquisite colour
drawings by Miss Korolenko, begging me to send the things to America as
specimens of their labours. They were very eager to have the American
people learn about their society and its efforts.
Subsequently I had the opportunity of meeting Korolenko who was still
very feeble from his recent illness. He looked the patriarch, venerable
and benign; he quickly warmed one's heart by his melodious voice and
the fine face that lit up when he spoke of the people. He referred
affectionately to America and his friends there. But the light faded
out of his eyes and his voice quivered with grief as he spoke of the
great tragedy of Russia and the suffering of the people.
"You want to know my views on the present situation and my attitude
toward the Bolsheviki?" he asked. "It would take too long to tell you
about it. I am writing to Lunacharsky a series of letters for which
he had asked and which he promised to publish. The letters deal with
this subject. Frankly speaking, I do not believe they will ever appear
in print, but I shall send you a copy of the letters for the Museum as
soon as they are complete. There will be six of them. I can give you
two right now. Briefly, my opinion is summarized in a certain passage
in one of these letters. I said there that if the gendarmes of the
Tsar would have had the power not only to arrest but also to shoot
us, the situation would have been like the present one. That is what
is happening before my eyes every day. The Bolsheviki claim that such
methods are inseparable from the Revolution. But I cannot agree with
them that persecution and constant shooting will serve the interests
of the people or of the Revolution. It was always my conception that
revolution meant the highest expression of humanity and of justice. In
Russia to-day both are absent. At a time when the fullest expression
and coöperation of all intellectual and spiritual forces are necessary
to reconstruct the country, a gag has been placed upon the whole
people. To dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called
dictatorship of the proletariat or of the Communist Party leaders is
considered a crime. We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence
of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at
the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly
for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental
changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its
reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia."
With heavy heart I took leave of the famous writer, one of the last of
the great literary men who had been the conscience and the spiritual
voice of intellectual Russia. Again I felt him uttering the cry of that
part of the Russian _intelligentsia_ whose sympathies were entirely
with the people and whose life and work were inspired only by the love
of their country and the interest for its welfare.
In the evening I visited a relative of Korolenko, a very sympathetic
old lady who was the chairman of the Poltava Political Red Cross. She
told me much about things that Korolenko himself was too modest to
mention. Old and feeble as he was, he was spending most of his time
in the Tcheka, trying to save the lives of those innocently condemned
to death. He frequently wrote letters of appeal to Lenin, Gorki, and
Lunacharsky, begging them to intervene to prevent senseless executions.
The present chairman of the Poltava Tcheka was a man relentless and
cruel. His sole solution of difficult problems was shooting. The lady
smiled sadly when I told her that the man had been very gracious to
the members of our Expedition. "That was for show," she said, "we know
him better. We have daily occasion to see his graciousness from this
balcony. Here pass the victims taken to slaughter."
Poltava is famous as a manufacturing centre of peasant handicrafts.
Beautiful linen, embroidery, laces, and basket work were among the
products of the province's industry. I visited the Department of Social
Economy, the _sovnarkhoz_, where I learned that those industries
were practically suspended. Only a small collection remained in the
Department. "We used to supply the whole world, even America, with our
_kustarny_ work," said the woman in charge, who had formerly been the
head of the _Zemstvo_, which took special pride in fostering those
peasant efforts. "Our needlework was known all over the country as
among the finest specimens of art, but now it has all been destroyed.
The peasants have lost their art impulse, they have become brutalized
and corrupted." She was bemoaning the loss of peasant art as a mother
does that of her child.
During our stay in Poltava we got in touch with representatives of
various other social elements. The reaction of the Zionists toward the
Bolshevik régime was particularly interesting. At first they refused
to speak with us, evidently made very cautious by previous experience.
It was also the presence of our secretary, a Gentile, that aroused
their distrust. I arranged to meet some of the Zionists alone, and
gradually they became more confidential. I had learned in Moscow, in
connection with the arrest of the Zionists there, that the Bolsheviki
were inclined to consider them counter-revolutionary. But I found the
Poltava Zionists very simple orthodox Jews who certainly could not
impress any one as conspirators or active enemies. They were passive,
though bitter against the Bolshevik régime. It was claimed that the
Bolsheviki made no pogroms and that they do not persecute the Jews,
they said; but that was true only in a certain sense. There were two
kinds of pogroms: the loud, violent ones, and the silent ones. Of the
two the Zionists considered the former preferable. The violent pogrom
might last a day or a week; the Jews are attacked and robbed, sometimes
even murdered; and then it is over. But the silent pogroms continued
all the time. They consisted of constant discrimination, persecution,
and hounding. The Bolsheviki had closed the Jewish hospitals and now
sick Jews were forced to eat _treife_ in the Gentile hospitals. The
same applied to the Jewish children in the Bolshevik feeding houses.
If a Jew and a Gentile happened to be arrested on the same charge, it
was certain that the Gentile would go free while the Jew would be sent
to prison and sometimes even shot. They were all the time exposed to
insult and indignities, not to mention the fact that they were doomed
to slow starvation, since all trade had been suppressed. The Jews in
the Ukraina were suffering a continuous silent pogrom.
I felt that the Zionist criticism of the Bolshevik régime was inspired
by a narrow religious and nationalistic attitude. They were Orthodox
Jews, mostly tradesmen whom the Revolution had deprived of their sphere
of activity. Nevertheless, their problem was real--the problem of the
Jew suffocating in the atmosphere of active anti-Semitism. In Poltava
the leading Communist and Bolshevik officials were Gentiles. Their
dislike of the Jews was frank and open. Anti-Semitism throughout the
Ukraine was more virulent than even in pre-revolutionary days.
After leaving Poltava we continued on our journey south, but we
did not get farther than Fastov owing to the lack of engines. That
town, once prosperous, was now impoverished and reduced to less than
one third of its former population. Almost all activity was at a
standstill. We found the market place, in the centre of the town, a
most insignificant affair, consisting of a few stalls having small
supplies of white flour, sugar, and butter. There were more women
about than men, and I was especially struck by the strange expression
in their eyes. They did not look you full in the face; they stared
past you with a dumb, hunted animal expression. We told the women that
we had heard many terrible pogroms had taken place in Fastov and we
wished to get data on the subject to be sent to America to enlighten
the people there on the condition of the Ukrainian Jews. As the news
of our presence spread many women and children surrounded us, all much
excited and each trying to tell her story of the horrors of Fastov.
Fearful pogroms, they related, had taken place in that city, the
most terrible of them by Denikin, in September, 1919. It lasted eight
days, during which 4,000 persons were killed, while several thousand
died as the result of wounds and shock. Seven thousand perished from
hunger and exposure on the road to Kiev, while trying to escape the
Denikin savages. The greater part of the city had been destroyed or
burned; many of the older Jews were trapped in the synagogue and there
murdered, while others had been driven to the public square where
they were slaughtered. Not a woman, young or old, that had not been
outraged, most of them in the very sight of their fathers, husbands,
and brothers. The young girls, some of them mere children, had suffered
repeated violation at the hands of the Denikin soldiers. I understood
the dreadful look in the eyes of the women of Fastov.
Men and women besieged us with appeals to inform their relatives in
America about their miserable condition. Almost everyone, it seemed,
had some kin in that country. They crowded into our car in the
evenings, bringing scores of letters to be forwarded to the States.
Some of the messages bore no addresses, the simple folk thinking the
name sufficient. Others had not heard from their American kindred
during the years of war and revolution but still hoped that they were
to be found somewhere across the ocean. It was touching to see the
people's deep faith that their relatives in America would save them.
Every evening our car was filled with the unfortunates of Fastov. Among
them was a particularly interesting visitor, a former attorney, who had
repeatedly braved the pogrom makers and saved many Jewish lives. He
had kept a diary of the pogroms and we spent a whole evening listening
to the reading of his manuscript. It was a simple recital of facts and
dates, terrible in its unadorned objectivity. It was the soul cry of
a people continuously violated and tortured and living in daily fear
of new indignities and outrages. Only one bright spot there was in the
horrible picture: no pogroms had taken place under the Bolsheviki. The
gratitude of the Fastov Jews was pathetic. They clung to the Communists
as to a saving straw. It was encouraging to think that the Bolshevik
régime was at least free from that worst of all Russian curses, pogroms
against Jews.
CHAPTER XXI
KIEV
Owing to the many difficulties and delays the journey from Fastov
to Kiev lasted six days and was a continuous nightmare. The railway
situation was appalling. At every station scores of freight cars
clogged the lines. Nor were they loaded with provisions to feed the
starving cities; they were densely packed with human cargo among whom
the sick were a large percentage. All along the route the waiting rooms
and platforms were filled with crowds, bedraggled and dirty. Even
more ghastly were the scenes at night. Everywhere masses of desperate
people, shouting and struggling to gain a foothold on the train. They
resembled the damned of Dante's Inferno, their faces ashen gray in
the dim light, all frantically fighting for a place. Now and then an
agonized cry would ring through the night and the already moving train
would come to a halt: somebody had been thrown to his death under the
wheels.
It was a relief to reach Kiev. We had expected to find the city almost
in ruins, but we were pleasantly disappointed. When we left Petrograd
the Soviet Press contained numerous stories of vandalism committed by
Poles before evacuating Kiev. They had almost demolished the famous
ancient cathedral in the city, the papers wrote, destroyed the water
works and electric stations, and set fire to several parts of the
city. Tchicherin and Lunacharsky issued passionate appeals to the
cultured people of the world in protest against such barbarism. The
crime of the Poles against Art was compared with that committed by
the Germans in Rheims, whose celebrated cathedral had been injured by
Prussian artillery. We were, therefore, much surprised to find Kiev in
even better condition than Petrograd. In fact, the city had suffered
very little, considering the numerous changes of government and the
accompanying military operations. It is true that some bridges and
railroad tracks had been blown up on the outskirts of the city, but
Kiev itself was almost unharmed. People looked at us in amazement when
we made inquiries about the condition of the cathedral: they had not
heard the Moscow report.
Unlike our welcome in Kharkov and Poltava, Kiev proved a
disappointment. The secretary of the _Ispolkom_ was not very amiable
and appeared not at all impressed by Zinoviev's signature on our
credentials. Our secretary succeeded in seeing the chairman of the
Executive Committee, but returned very discouraged: that high official
was too impatient to listen to her representations. He was busy, he
said, and could not be troubled. It was decided that I try my luck as
an American, with the result that the chairman finally agreed to give
us access to the available material. It was a sad reflection on the
irony of life. America was in league with world imperialism to starve
and crush Russia. Yet it was sufficient to mention that one came from
America to find the key to everything Russian. It was pathetic, and
rather distasteful to make use of that key.
In Kiev antagonism to Communism was intense, even the local Bolsheviki
being bitter against Moscow. It was out of the question for anyone
coming from "the centre" to secure their coöperation unless armed with
State powers. The Government employees in Soviet institutions took no
interest in anything save their rations. Bureaucratic indifference
and incompetence in Ukraina were even worse than in Moscow and were
augmented by nationalistic resentment against the "Russians." It was
true also of Kharkov and Poltava, though in a lesser degree. Here the
very atmosphere was charged with distrust and hatred of everything
Muscovite. The deception practised on us by the chairman of the
Educational Department of Kharkov was characteristic of the resentment
almost every Ukrainian official felt toward Moscow. The chairman was a
Ukrainian to the core, but he could not openly ignore our credentials
signed by Zinoviev and Lunacharsky. He promised to aid our efforts but
he disliked the idea of Petrograd "absorbing" the historic material
of the Ukraina. In Kiev there was no attempt to mask the opposition
to Moscow. One was made to feel it everywhere. But the moment the
magic word "America" was spoken and the people made to understand that
one was not a Communist, they became interested and courteous, even
confidential. The Ukrainian Communists were also no exception.
The information and documents collected in Kiev were of the same
character as the data gathered in former cities. The system of
education, care of the sick, distribution of labour and so forth were
similar to the general Bolshevik scheme. "We follow the Moscow plan,"
said a Ukrainian teacher, "with the only difference that in our schools
the Ukrainian language is taught together with Russian." The people,
and especially the children, looked better fed and clad than those of
Russia proper: food was comparatively more plentiful and cheaper. There
were show schools as in Petrograd and Moscow, and no one apparently
realized the corrupting effect of such discrimination upon the teachers
as well as the children. The latter looked with envy upon the pupils
of the favoured schools and believed that they were only for Communist
children, which in reality was not the case. The teachers, on the
other hand, knowing how little attention was paid to ordinary schools,
were negligent in their work. All tried to get a position in the show
schools which were enjoying special and varied rations.
The chairman of the Board of Health was an alert and competent man,
one of the few officials in Kiev who showed interest in the Expedition
and its work. He devoted much time to explaining to us the methods of
his organization and pointing out interesting places to visit and the
material which could be collected for the Museum. He especially called
our attention to the Jewish hospital for crippled children.
I found the latter in charge of a cultivated and charming man, Dr.
N----. For twenty years he had been head of the hospital and he took
interest as well as pride in showing us about his institution and
relating its history.
The hospital had formerly been one of the most famous in Russia, the
pride of the local Jews who had built and maintained it. But within
recent years its usefulness had become curtailed owing to the frequent
changes of government. It had been exposed to persecution and repeated
pogroms. Jewish patients critically ill were often forced out of their
beds to make room for the favourites of this or that régime. The
officers of the Denikin army were most brutal. They drove the Jewish
patients out into the street, subjected them to indignities and abuse,
and would have killed them had it not been for the intercession of the
hospital staff who at the risk of their own lives protected the sick.
It was only the fact that the majority of the staff were Gentiles that
saved the hospital and its inmates. But the shock resulted in numerous
deaths and many patients were left with shattered nerves.
The doctor also related to me the story of some of the patients,
most of them victims of the Fastov pogroms. Among them were children
between the ages of six and eight, gaunt and sickly looking, terror
stamped on their faces. They had lost all their kin, in some cases
the whole family having been killed before their eyes. These children
often waked at night, the physician said, in fright at their horrible
dreams. Everything possible was being done for them, but so far the
unfortunate children had not been freed from the memory of their
terrible experiences at Fastov. The doctor pointed out a group of young
girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, the worst victims of
the Denikin pogrom. All of them had been repeatedly outraged and were
in a mutilated state when they came to the hospital; it would take
years to restore them to health. The doctor emphasized the fact that
no pogroms had taken place during the Bolshevik régime. It was a great
relief to him and his staff to know that his patients were no longer
in such danger. But the hospital had other difficulties. There was the
constant interference by political Commissars and the daily struggle
for supplies. "I spend most of my time in the various bureaus," he
said, "instead of devoting myself to my patients. Ignorant officials
are given power over the medical profession, continuously harassing
the doctors in their work." The doctor himself had been repeatedly
arrested for sabotage because of his inability to comply with the
numerous decrees and orders, frequently mutually contradictory. It
was the result of a system in which political usefulness rather than
professional merit played the main rôle. It often happened that a
first-class physician of well-known repute and long experience would be
suddenly ordered to some distant part to place a Communist doctor in
his position. Under such conditions the best efforts were paralysed.
Moreover, there was the general suspicion of the _intelligentsia_,
which was a demoralizing factor. It was true that many of that
class had sabotaged, but there were also those who did heroic and
self-sacrificing work. The Bolsheviki, by their indiscriminate
antagonism toward the _intelligentsia_ as a class, roused prejudices
and passions which poisoned the mainsprings of the cultural life of
the country. The Russian _intelligentsia_ had with its very blood
fertilized the soil of the Revolution, yet it was not given it to reap
the fruits of its long struggle. "A tragic fate," the doctor remarked;
"unless one forget it in his work, existence would be impossible."
The institution for crippled children proved a very model and modern
hospital, located in the heart of a large park. It was devoted to the
marred creatures with twisted limbs and deformed bodies, victims of the
great war, disease, and famine. The children looked aged and withered;
like Father Time, they had been born old. They lay in rows on clean
white beds, baking in the warm sun of the Ukrainian summer. The head
physician, who guided us through the institution, seemed much beloved
by his little charges. They were eager and pleased to see him as he
approached each helpless child and bent over affectionately to make
some inquiries about its health. The hospital had been in existence
for many years and was considered the first of its kind in Russia. Its
equipment for the care of deformed and crippled children was among the
most modern. "Since the war and the Revolution we feel rather behind
the times," the doctor said; "we have been cut off from the civilized
world for so many years. But in spite of the various government changes
we have striven to keep up our standards and to help the unfortunate
victims of strife and disease." The supplies for the institution were
provided by the Government and the hospital force was exposed to no
interference, though I understood from the doctor that because of his
political neutrality he was looked upon by the Bolsheviki as inclined
to counter-revolution.
The hospital contained a large number of children; some of those who
could walk about studied music and art, and we had the opportunity
of attending an informal concert arranged by the children and their
teachers in our honour. Some of them played the _balalaika_ in a most
artistic manner, and it was consoling to see those marred children
finding forgetfulness in the rhythm of the folk melodies of the Ukraina.
Early during our stay in Kiev we learned that the most valuable
material for the Museum was not to be found in the Soviet institutions,
but that it was in the possession of other political groups and private
persons. The best statistical information on pogroms, for instance, was
in the hands of a former Minister of the Rada régime in the Ukraina.
I succeeded in locating the man and great was my surprise when, upon
learning my identity, he presented me with several copies of the
_Mother Earth_ magazine I had published in America. The ex-Minister
arranged a small gathering to which were invited some writers and poets
and men active in the Jewish _Kulturliga_ to meet several members
of our Expedition. The gathering consisted of the best elements of
the local Jewish _intelligentsia_. We discussed the Revolution, the
Bolshevik methods, and the Jewish problem. Most of those present,
though opposed to the Communist theories, were in favour of the Soviet
Government. They felt that the Bolsheviki, in spite of their many
blunders, were striving to further the interests of Russia and the
Revolution. At any rate, under the Communist régime the Jews were not
exposed to the pogroms practised upon them by all the other régimes
of Ukraina. Those Jewish intellectuals argued that the Bolsheviki at
least permitted the Jews to live, and that they were therefore to be
preferred to any other governments and should be supported by the
Jews. They were fearful of the growth of anti-Semitism in Russia and
were horrified at the possibility of the Bolsheviki being overthrown.
Wholesale slaughter of the Jews would undoubtedly follow, they believed.
Some of the younger set held a different view. The Bolshevik régime
had resulted in increased hatred toward the Jews, they said, for the
masses were under the impression that most of the Communists were Jews.
Communism stood for forcible tax-collection, punitive expeditions, and
the Tcheka. Popular opposition to the Communists therefore expressed
itself in the hatred of the whole Jewish race. Thus Bolshevik tyranny
had added fuel to the latent anti-Semitism of the Ukraina. Moreover,
to prove that they were not discriminating in favour of the Jews, the
Bolsheviki had gone to the other extreme and frequently arrested and
punished Jews for things that the Gentiles could do with impunity. The
Bolsheviki also fostered and endowed cultural work in the south in
the Ukrainian language, while at the same time they discouraged such
efforts in the Jewish language. It was true that the _Kulturliga_ was
still permitted to exist, but its work was hampered at every step.
In short, the Bolsheviki permitted the Jews to live, but only in a
physical sense. Culturally, they were condemned to death. The _Yevkom_
(Jewish Communist Section) was receiving, of course, every advantage
and support from the Government, but then its mission was to carry the
gospel of the proletarian dictatorship to the Jews of the Ukraina.
It was significant that the _Yevkom_ was more anti-Semitic than the
Ukrainians themselves. If it had the power it would pogrom every
non-Communist Jewish organization and destroy all Jewish educational
efforts. This young element emphasized that they did not favour the
overthrow of the Bolshevik Government; but they could not support it,
either.
I felt that both Jewish factions took a purely nationalistic view of
the Russian situation. I could well understand their personal attitude,
the result of their own suffering and the persecution of the Jewish
race. Still, my chief concern was the Revolution and its effects upon
Russia _as a whole_. Whether the Bolsheviki should be supported or not
could not depend merely on their attitude to the Jews and the Jewish
question. The latter was surely a very vital and pressing issue,
especially in the Ukraina; yet the general problem involved was much
greater. It embraced the complete economic and social emancipation of
the whole people of Russia, the Jews included. If the Bolshevik methods
and practices were not imposed upon them by the force of circumstances,
if they were conditioned in their own theories and principles, and if
their sole object was to secure their own power, I could not support
them. They might be innocent of pogroms against the Jews, but if they
were pogroming the whole of Russia then they had failed in their
mission as a revolutionary party. I was not prepared to say that I
had reached a clear understanding of all the problems involved, but
my experience so far led me to think that it was the basic Bolshevik
conception of the Revolution which was false, its practical application
necessarily resulting in the great Russian catastrophe of which the
Jewish tragedy was but a minor part.
My host and his friends could not agree with my viewpoint: we
represented opposite camps. But the gathering was nevertheless
intensely interesting and it was arranged that we meet again before our
departure from the city.
Returning to our car one day I saw a detachment of Red Army soldiers
at the railway station. On inquiry I found that foreign delegates were
expected from Moscow and that the soldiers had been ordered out to
participate in a demonstration in their honour. Groups of the uniformed
men stood about discussing the arrival of the mission. There were many
expressions of dissatisfaction because the soldiers had been kept
waiting so long. "These people come to Russia just to look us over,"
one of the Red Army men said; "do they know anything about us or are
they interested in how we live? Not they. It's a holiday for them. They
are dressed up and fed by the Government, but they never talk to us
and all they see is how we march past. Here we have been lying around
in the burning sun for hours while the delegates are probably being
feasted at some other station. That's comradeship and equality for you!"
I had heard such sentiments voiced before, but it was surprising to
hear them from soldiers. I thought of Angelica Balabanova, who was
accompanying the Italian Mission, and I wondered what she would think
if she knew how the men felt. It had probably never occurred to her
that those "ignorant Russian peasants" in military uniform had looked
through the sham of official demonstrations.
The following day we received an invitation from Balabanova to attend
a banquet given in honour of the Italian delegates. Anxious to meet
the foreign guests, several members of our Expedition accepted the
invitation.
The affair took place in the former Chamber of Commerce building,
profusely decorated for the occasion. In the main banquet hall long
tables were heavily laden with fresh-cut flowers, several varieties
of southern fruit, and wine. The sight reminded one of the feasts
of the old bourgeoisie, and I could see that Angelica felt rather
uncomfortable at the lavish display of silverware and wealth. The
banquet opened with the usual toasts, the guests drinking to Lenin,
Trotsky, the Red Army, and the Third International, the whole company
rising as the revolutionary anthem was intoned after each toast, with
the soldiers and officers standing at attention in good old military
style.
Among the delegates were two young French Anarcho-syndicalists. They
had heard of our presence in Kiev and had been looking for us all
day without being able to locate us. After the banquet they were
immediately to leave for Petrograd, so that we had only a short time at
our disposal. On our way to the station the delegates related that they
had collected much material on the Revolution which they intended to
publish in France. They had become convinced that all was not well with
the Bolshevik régime: they had come to realize that the dictatorship
of the proletariat was in the exclusive hands of the Communist Party,
while the common worker was enslaved as much as ever. It was their
intention, they said, to speak frankly about these matters to their
comrades at home and to substantiate their attitude by the material in
their possession. "Do you expect to get the documents out?" I asked La
Petit, one of the delegates. "You don't mean that I might be prevented
from taking out my own notes," he replied. "The Bolsheviki would not
dare to go so far--not with foreign delegates, at any rate." He seemed
so confident that I did not care to pursue the subject further. That
night the delegates left Kiev and a short time afterward they departed
from Russia. They were never seen alive again. Without making any
comment upon their disappearance I merely want to mention that when
I returned to Moscow several months later it was generally related
that the two Anarcho-syndicalists, with several other men who had
accompanied them, were overtaken by a storm somewhere off the coast of
Finland, and were all drowned. There were rumours of foul play, though
I am not inclined to credit the story, especially in view of the fact
that together with the Anarcho-syndicalists also perished a Communist
in good standing in Moscow. But their disappearance with all the
documents they had collected has never been satisfactorily explained.
The rooms assigned to the members of our Expedition were located in a
house within a _passage_ leading off the Kreschatik, the main street of
Kiev. It had formerly been the wealthy residential section of the city
and its fine houses, though lately neglected, still looked imposing.
The _passage_ also contained a number of shops, ruins of former glory,
which catered to the well-to-do of the neighbourhood. Those stores
still had good supplies of vegetables, fruit, milk, and butter. They
were owned mostly by old Jews whose energies could not be applied to
any other usefulness--Orthodox Jews to whom the Revolution and the
Bolsheviki were a _bête noire_, because that had "ruined all business."
The little shops barely enabled their owners to exist; moreover,
they were in constant danger of Tcheka raids, on which occasions the
provisions would be expropriated. The appearance of those stores did
not justify the belief that the Government would find it worth while
raiding them. "Would not the Tcheka prefer to confiscate the goods
of the big delicatessen and fruit stores on the Kreschatik?" I asked
an old Jew storekeeper. "Not at all," he replied; "those stores are
immune because they pay heavy taxes."
The morning following the banquet I went down to the little grocery
store I used to do my shopping in. The place was closed, and I was
surprised to find that not one of the small shops near by was open. Two
days later I learned that the places had all been raided on the eve of
the banquet in order to feast the foreign delegates. I promised myself
never to attend another Bolshevik banquet.
Among the members of the _Kulturliga_ I met a man who had lived in
America, but for several years now was with his family in Kiev. His
home proved one of the most hospitable during my stay in the south,
and as he had many callers belonging to various social classes I was
able to gather much information about the recent history of Ukraina.
My host was not a Communist: though critical of the Bolshevik régime,
he was by no means antagonistic. He used to say that the main fault of
the Bolsheviki was their lack of psychological perception. He asserted
that no government had ever such a great opportunity in the Ukraina
as the Communists. The people had suffered so much from the various
occupations and were so oppressed by every new régime that they
rejoiced when the Bolsheviki entered Kiev. Everybody hoped that they
would bring relief. But the Communists quickly destroyed all illusions.
Within a few months they proved themselves entirely incapable of
administering the affairs of the city; their methods antagonized the
people, and the terrorism of the Tcheka turned even the friends of the
Communists to bitter enmity. Nobody objected to the nationalization
of industry and it was of course expected that the Bolsheviki would
expropriate. But when the bourgeoisie had been relieved of its
possessions it was found that only the raiders benefited. Neither
the people at large nor even the proletarian class gained anything.
Precious jewellery, silverware, furs, practically the whole wealth of
Kiev seemed to disappear and was no more heard of. Later members of the
Tcheka strutted about the streets with their women gowned in the finery
of the bourgeoisie. When private business places were closed, the doors
were locked and sealed and guards placed there. But within a few weeks
the stores were found empty. This kind of "management" and the numerous
new laws and edicts, often mutually conflicting, served the Tcheka as a
pretext to terrorize and mulct the citizens and aroused general hatred
against the Bolsheviki. The people had turned against Petlura, Denikin,
and the Poles. They welcomed the Bolsheviki with open arms. But the
last disappointed them as the first.
"Now we have gotten used to the situation," my host said, "we just
drift and manage as best we can." But he thought it a pity that
the Bolsheviki lost such a great chance. They were unable to hold
the confidence of the people and to direct that confidence into
constructive channels. Not only had the Bolsheviki failed to operate
the big industries: they also destroyed the small _kustarnaya_ work.
There had been thousands of artisans in the province of Kiev, for
instance; most of them had worked by themselves, without exploiting
any one. They were independent producers who supplied a certain
need of the community. The Bolsheviki in their reckless scheme of
nationalization suspended those efforts without being able to replace
them by aught else. They had nothing to give either to the workers
or to the peasants. The city proletariat faced the alternative of
starving in the city or going back to the country. They preferred the
latter, of course. Those who could not get to the country engaged
in trade, buying and selling jewellery, for instance. Practically
everybody in Russia had become a tradesman, the Bolshevik Government
no less than private speculators. "You have no idea of the amount of
illicit business carried on by officials in Soviet institutions," my
host informed me; "nor is the army free from it. My nephew, a Red Army
officer, a Communist, has just returned from the Polish front. He can
tell you about these practices in the army."
I was particularly eager to talk to the young officer. In my travels I
had met many soldiers, and I found that most of them had retained the
old slave psychology and bowed absolutely to military discipline. Some,
however, were very wide awake and could see clearly what was happening
about them. A certain small element in the Red Army was entirely
transformed by the Revolution. It was proof of the gestation of new
life and new forms which set Russia apart from the rest of the world,
notwithstanding Bolshevik tyranny and oppression. For that element the
Revolution had a deep significance. They saw in it something vital
which even the daily decrees could not compress within the narrow
Communist mould. It was their attitude and general sentiment that the
Bolsheviki had not kept faith with the people. They saw the Communist
State growing at the cost of the Revolution, and some of them even
went so far as to voice the opinion that the Bolsheviki had become the
enemies of the Revolution. But they all felt that for the time being
they could do nothing. They were determined to dispose of the foreign
enemies first. "Then," they would say, "we will face the enemy at home."
The Red Army officer proved a fine-looking young fellow very deeply in
earnest. At first he was disinclined to talk, but in the course of the
evening he grew less embarrassed and expressed his feelings freely. He
had found much corruption at the front, he said. But it was even worse
at the base of supplies where he had done duty for some time. The men
at the front were practically without clothes or shoes. The food was
insufficient and the Army was ravaged by typhoid and cholera. Yet the
spirit of the men was wonderful. They fought bravely, enthusiastically,
because they believed in their ideal of a free Russia. But while they
were fighting and dying for the great cause, the higher officers,
the so-called _tovaristchi_, sat in safe retreat and there drank and
gambled and got rich by speculation. The supplies so desperately
needed at the front were being sold at fabulous prices to speculators.
The young officer had become so disheartened by the situation, he had
thought of committing suicide. But now he was determined to return to
the front. "I shall go back and tell my comrades what I have seen," he
said; "our real work will begin when we have defeated foreign invasion.
Then we shall go after those who are trading away the Revolution."
I felt there was no cause to despair so long as Russia possessed such
spirits.
I returned to my room to find our secretary waiting to report the
valuable find she had made. It consisted of rich Denikin material
stacked in the city library and apparently forgotten by everybody.
The librarian, a zealous Ukrainian nationalist, refused to permit the
"Russian" Museum to take the material, though it was of no use to Kiev,
literally buried in an obscure corner and exposed to danger and ruin.
We decided to appeal to the Department of Education and to apply the
"American amulet." It grew to be a standing joke among the members of
the Expedition to resort to the "amulet" in difficult situations. Such
matters were always referred to Alexander Berkman and myself as the
"Americans."
It required considerable persuasion to interest the chairman in the
matter. He persisted in refusing till I finally asked him: "Are you
willing that it become known in America that you prefer to have
valuable historical material rot away in Kiev rather than give it to
the Petrograd Museum, which is sure to become a world centre for the
study of the Russian Revolution and where Ukraina is to have such an
important part?" At last the chairman issued the required order and our
Expedition took possession of the material, to the great elation of our
secretary, to whom the Museum represented the most important interest
in life.
In the afternoon of the same day I was visited by a woman Anarchist
who was accompanied by a young peasant girl, confidentially introduced
as the wife of Makhno. My heart stood still for a moment: the presence
of that girl in Kiev meant certain death were she discovered by the
Bolsheviki. It also involved grave danger to my landlord and his
family, for in Communist Russia harbouring--even if unwittingly--a
member of the Makhno _povstantsi_ often incurred the worst
consequences. I expressed surprise at the young woman's recklessness in
thus walking into the very jaws of the enemy. But she explained that
Makhno was determined to reach us; he would trust no one else with the
message, and therefore she had volunteered to come. It was evident that
danger had lost all terror for her. "We have been living in constant
peril for years," she said simply.
Divested of her disguise, she revealed much beauty. She was a woman
of twenty-five, with a wealth of jet-black hair of striking lustre.
"Nestor had hoped that you and Alexander Berkman would manage to come,
but he waited in vain," she began. "Now he sent me to tell you about
the struggle he is waging and he hopes that you will make his purpose
known to the world outside." Late into the night she related the story
of Makhno which tallied in all important features with that told us
by the two Ukrainian visitors in Petrograd. She dwelt on the methods
employed by the Bolsheviki to eliminate Makhno and the agreements they
had repeatedly made with him, every one of which had been broken by
the Communists the moment immediate danger from invaders was over.
She spoke of the savage persecution of the members of the Makhno
army and of the numerous attempts of the Bolsheviki to trap and kill
Nestor. That failing, the Bolsheviki had murdered his brother and
had exterminated her own family, including her father and brother.
She praised the revolutionary devotion, the heroism and endurance
of the _povstantsi_ in the face of the greatest difficulties, and
she entertained us with the legends the peasants had woven about the
personality of Makhno. Thus, for instance, there grew up among the
country folk the belief that Makhno was invulnerable because he had
never been wounded during all the years of warfare, in spite of his
practice of always personally leading every charge.
She was a good conversationalist, and her tragic story was relieved by
bright touches of humour. She told many anecdotes about the exploits
of Makhno. Once he had caused a wedding to be celebrated in a village
occupied by the enemy. It was a gala affair, everybody attending. While
the people were making merry on the market place and the soldiers
were succumbing to the temptation of drink, Makhno's men surrounded
the village and easily routed the superior forces stationed there.
Having taken a town it was always Makhno's practice to compel the rich
peasants, the _kulaki_, to give up their surplus wealth, which was then
divided among the poor, Makhno keeping a share for his army. Then he
would call a meeting of the villagers, address them on the purposes of
the _povstantsi_ movement, and distribute his literature.
Late into the night the young woman related the story of Makhno and
_makhnovstchina_. Her voice, held low because of the danger of the
situation, was rich and mellow, her eyes shone with the intensity
of emotion. "Nestor wants you to tell the comrades of America and
Europe," she concluded, "that he is one of them--an Anarchist whose
aim is to defend the Revolution against all enemies. He is trying to
direct the innate rebellious spirit of the Ukrainian peasant into
organized Anarchist channels. He feels that he cannot accomplish it
himself without the aid of the Anarchists of Russia. He himself is
entirely occupied with military matters, and he has therefore invited
his comrades throughout the country to take charge of the educational
work. His ultimate plan is to take possession of a small territory in
Ukraina and there establish a free commune. Meanwhile, he is determined
to fight every reactionary force."
Makhno was very anxious to confer personally with Alexander Berkman
and myself, and he proposed the following plan. He would arrange to
take any small town or village between Kiev and Kharkov where our
car might happen to be. It would be carried out without any use of
violence, the place being captured by surprise. The stratagem would
have the appearance of our having been taken prisoners, and protection
would be guaranteed to the other members of the Expedition. After our
conference we would be given safe conduct to our car. It would at the
same time insure us against the Bolsheviki, for the whole scheme would
be carried out in military manner, similar to a regular Makhno raid.
The plan promised a very interesting adventure and we were anxious
for an opportunity to meet Makhno personally. Yet we could not expose
the other members of the Expedition to the risk involved in such an
undertaking. We decided not to avail ourselves of the offer, hoping
that another occasion might present itself to meet the _povstantsi_
leader.
Makhno's wife had been a country school teacher; she possessed
considerable information and was intensely interested in all cultural
problems. She plied me with questions about American women, whether
they had really become emancipated and enjoyed equal rights. The young
woman had been with Makhno and his army for several years, but she
could not reconcile herself to the primitive attitude of her people
in regard to woman. The Ukrainian woman, she said, was considered an
object of sex and motherhood only. Nestor himself was no exception
in this matter. Was it different in America? Did the American woman
believe in free motherhood and was she familiar with the subject of
birth control?
It was astonishing to hear such questions from a peasant girl. I
thought it most remarkable that a woman born and reared so far from
the scene of woman's struggle for emancipation should yet be so alive
to its problems. I spoke to the girl of the activities of the advanced
women of America, of their achievements and of the work yet to be
done for woman's emancipation. I mentioned some of the literature
dealing with these subjects. She listened eagerly. "I must get hold of
something to help our peasant women. They are just beasts of burden,"
she said.
Early the next morning we saw her safely out of the house. The same
day, while visiting the Anarchist club, I witnessed a peculiar sight.
The club had recently been reopened after having been raided by
the Tcheka. The local Anarchists met in the club rooms for study
and lectures; Anarchist literature was also to be had there. While
conversing with some friends I noticed a group of prisoners passing
on the street below. Just as they neared the Anarchist headquarters
several of them looked up, having evidently noticed the large sign over
the club rooms. Suddenly they straightened up, took off their caps,
bowed, and then passed on. I turned to my friends. "Those peasants are
probably _makhnovstsi_" they said; "the Anarchist headquarters are
sacred precincts to them." How exceptional the Russian soul, I thought,
wondering whether a group of American workers or farmers could be so
imbued with an ideal as to express it in the simple and significant
way the _makhnovstsi_ did. To the Russian his belief is indeed an
inspiration.
Our stay in Kiev was rich in varied experiences and impressions. It
was a strenuous time during which we met people of different social
strata and gathered much valuable information and material. We closed
our visit with a short trip on the river Dniepr to view some of the
old monasteries and cathedrals, among them the celebrated Sophievski
and Vladimir. Imposing edifices, which remained intact during all the
revolutionary changes, even their inner life continuing as before. In
one of the monasteries we enjoyed the hospitality of the sisters who
treated us to real Russian tea, black bread, and honey. They lived as
if nothing had happened in Russia since 1914; it was as if they had
passed the last years outside of the world. The monks still continued
to show to the curious the sacred caves of the Vladimir Cathedral and
the places where the saints had been walled in, their ossified bodies
now on exhibition. Visitors were daily taken through the vaults, the
accompanying priests pointing out the cells of the celebrated martyrs
and reciting the biographies of the most important of the holy family.
Some of the stories related were wonderful beyond all human credence,
breathing holy superstition with every pore. The Red Army soldiers in
our group looked rather dubious at the fantastic tales of the priests.
Evidently the Revolution had influenced their religious spirit and
developed a sceptical attitude toward miracle workers.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA***
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