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Title: Through Bolshevik Russia
Author: Snowden, Ethel (Mrs. Philip)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Through Bolshevik Russia" ***
RUSSIA ***
THROUGH
BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA
BY
MRS. PHILIP SNOWDEN
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1920
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 7
CHAPTER
1. A STARVING PEOPLE 13
2. MAKING OUR PLANS 23
3. GHOSTS 33
4. INVESTIGATION OR PROPAGANDA? 45
5. THE COMMUNISTS 58
6. THE ARTISTIC LIFE OF RUSSIA 70
7. THE MILITARY POWER OF RUSSIA 81
8. EDUCATION AND RELIGION 93
9. OFF TO MOSCOW 105
10. AN INTERVIEW WITH LENIN 115
11. TALKS WITH COMMUNISTS AND OTHERS 128
12. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNISTS 140
13. THE SUPPRESSION OF LIBERTY 154
14. DOWN THE VOLGA 164
15. THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA 178
INTRODUCTION
I have written these impressions of Bolshevik Russia with the object of
promoting peace with that great country, by adding the evidence to that
already given in numerous articles and books of one more eye-witness of
the terrible sufferings of the Russian people.
I paid a six weeks’ visit to Russia as a member of the Delegation
chosen by the Executive Committee of the Labour party and of the Trades
Union Congress, in fulfilment of a resolution passed by a special Trade
Union Congress held on December 10th, 1919, which demanded of the
British Government “the right to an independent and impartial enquiry
into the industrial, economic and political conditions of Russia.”
So much about Russia that was contradictory had appeared in the
newspaper press, with the balance of statement on the side of evil
report, that it was increasingly felt by the organised workers of
Great Britain the truth must at all costs be discovered, if that were
possible, by investigators selected by themselves.
In addition, it was thought right and wise to discover if there
existed anything in the behaviour of the Russian Government and
people so menacing to ourselves as to warrant the attacks upon Russia
of foreign Governments, including our own. We did not believe that
any possible conduct of the Government of Russia could justify the
supply of British men, arms and money to Russia’s enemies; and we have
returned unanimously confirmed in that judgment, convinced that Russian
internal affairs are her own business and not ours.
The Delegation left Newcastle on April 27th, and travelled by
Christiania, Stockholm and Reval. We returned to England on June 30th.
Wherever we went we discovered the greatest interest in our mission.
We came in contact with representatives of the Socialist and Labour
movement in all the towns through which we passed. In Christiania
we found that the Labour party had so far expressed its approval of
the doings in Moscow as to have applied for membership of the Third
International, that great symbol of Communism, and the international
organ through which the Communists propose to work for world-revolution.
In applying for this membership, the Norwegian party made two important
reservations: It wished to leave its members free on the point of armed
revolution, and it insisted on equality of voting power for peasant
and artisan. No reply had been received from Moscow at the time of our
visit. I afterwards discovered in Moscow a sternly unrelenting attitude
on the question of revolution by violence.
In Stockholm the great bulk of the Labour movement is against
Bolshevism, although a small section approves it. We behaved with
strict impartiality to both kinds, and received and gave hospitality
indiscriminately.
The same story was repeated at Reval. And in common fairness to the
Bolsheviki it must be admitted that they have a grievance against the
Moderates of Reval as great as any grievance the Moderates may have
against them. They appear to attack each other with equal ferocity.
I have not attempted in these pages to argue right down to the last
syllable any one of the great questions which are pivotal to modern
political controversies. Other writers have done that, or will do it.
Russian Communist literature circulates abundantly in this country for
all those whose interest in the Russian experiment lies deep. I have
sought only to give a series of pen-pictures of Russian life under the
Bolsheviki, and to state interesting facts about that small piece of
mighty Russia which it was my great privilege to see. In choosing to do
this I shall have satisfied neither of the two sorts of extremist, who
will, without doubt, quote my sentences in defence of the Red and the
White.
A friend said to me in discussing the question that there was an
explosive quality in the word _Bolshevism_ which caused it to be
popular with those who wished to destroy some hated thing. Such a word
as _aneurism_ could not be employed with one-tenth of the effect; but
Bolshevism! The word is a veritable bomb when exploded in the ears of
the timid and conventional.
The simple fact of the matter is, that in regard to Bolshevism, as in
other matters, the truth lies between the two extremes of statement.
What is being said and done in Russia is neither perfectly good nor
wholly bad. The same with the men and women themselves. They are
creatures very much like ourselves, who are called upon to deal with
a situation which is extremely difficult, and who are dealing with it
in the way which to them seems best. They have made mistakes, some of
these very big mistakes. But Lenin and some of the others have had
the courage to admit this. There is abundant hope for a country whose
rulers know when they are mistaken and are willing to adapt themselves
and to try again. If this sensible type of governor has less power than
the other at the moment, it will not always be so. Much depends upon
the conduct of the outer world.
If Russia be speedily restored to the family of nations and real
intercourse with her be again established, the result will be, in all
human probability, a surprising approximation of Russian methods to
those of the rest of Europe. Let us hope it may also mean a quicker
stride of European democracies outside Russia in the path of social
progress and economic salvation along which Russia has attempted,
perhaps too rapidly for success, to advance.
For myself, the result of our investigations is summed up in this: I am
not hostile to the Russian Revolution which the tyrannous regime of the
Czars made necessary and inevitable; but I am utterly opposed to the
_coup d’état_ of the Bolsheviki, as I should be to the seizing of power
by any small minority of the people; for out of this action has sprung
a large part of the misery the unhappy people of Russia endure.
THROUGH BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
A Starving People
In every country in the world oceans of eloquence and torrents of
passion are being poured out in the attempt to prove that Bolshevist
Russia is a heaven or a hell. The friendships of a lifetime are being
broken in fruitless efforts to prove either the faultlessness or the
folly of the theory of Communism. The doctrines of Karl Marx and
the philosophy of Bakounin are the twin rocks upon which the Labour
movement in every land threatens to split. Without in the remotest
degree intending or desiring it, Lenin has drawn to his head a halo
of some magnificence, and an odour of sanctity, notwithstanding the
inscription upon its walls, envelops that part of the Kremlin where the
little, great man sits and issues his decrees.
All this discussion of the attempt of a handful of sincere and
brilliant men and women to build upon the ruins of war, famine and
pestilence a new and better social system in one gigantic effort is
inevitable; and in common fairness it must be said that the experiment
in Russia might have been of the greatest possible value to the
rest of the world had its purity not been sullied by civil wars and
unpardonable alien aggression. As it is, much may be learnt from the
mistakes which the Bolsheviki have made and which they themselves
admit. It is not the frank critic of Bolshevism who is doing harm to
the Bolshevik cause. It is those supporters of Lenin in this, and
other countries, who maintain that no compromise with the old has been
made by the new in Russia, and who, if they could be made to admit
that their Russian comrades had modified their decrees to meet the
necessities of the hour, would regard this conduct as traitorous, and
would denounce with equal extravagance of language the men they had
before incontinently adored.
But through all the noise of argument and heat of propaganda about
the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolution by violence and
the programme of the Third International, comes the low wailing of
the suffering and the dying, an appeal for help to the pitying heart
of mankind which should take precedence of the claim on the world’s
attention of all political and economic theories, however promising
those may be.
For this reason the members of the British Labour Delegation took
speedy and unanimous action towards bringing to an end the war between
Russia and Poland, and with equal unanimity protested to their own
Government against the blockade, which is supposed to be abolished in
theory but which is as effective in practice as ever. The cruel effects
of the blockade upon Russia’s hapless people became obvious through
the evidence of our own eyes in the first twenty-four hours of our
investigation. So unmistakable was that evidence that a telegram was
despatched to Great Britain, urging the folly of helping the war and
maintaining in effect the blockade, and requesting that the British
people might no longer continue to be implicated in either.
The number of Russian people is variously estimated at one hundred and
twenty-five to one hundred and eighty millions. In a country where the
fortunes of war add twenty millions of inhabitants to the country’s
population in one lucky day or take fifty millions away as the result
of a disastrous encounter with the enemy, this statistical looseness
has a reasonable explanation.
But to take the lower number, one hundred and twenty-five millions.
Leaving out of account the army, which is very well fed, and the
majority of the children, who undoubtedly receive special care and
attention, most of the people are either terribly ill-clad or hungry,
probably both. Most of them are suffering from dirt and disease;
many of them are actually ill or dying. Millions have already died.
Many millions more are fore-doomed to death from cold this coming
winter unless help of the right kind and in sufficient quantities
comes speedily. Of what immediate concern to these unfortunate masses
of unhappy people is the materialist conception of history, the
proletarian dictatorship, or even the Third International? Eighty-five
per cent of the population is composed of peasants, most of whom I am
convinced never heard of such things. To these, Lenin is no more than a
name, a devil to the rich peasant, a name with which to conjure out of
both rich and poor peasant the stocks of food they are believed to be
hiding. Of such a sort was the late Czar to these poor, ignorant folk.
But the old Czar was their “little father” and crept closer and more
warmly to their imagination than the new ruler.
Poor, unhappy, lovable people of Russia! The hardening, educating,
organising process which is going on in your midst may one day prove
a boon to you, though it adds unspeakably to your present misery. The
discipline of the West, if taken with its civilisation, may add to
the fullness of your future life. But what you want at the moment is
very much less and very much simpler than the ardent theorists have
conceived you need, and that you ought to want and must be made to have.
The people of Russia want peace and bread, peace that will last and
bread that they can eat. I am convinced without the shadow of a
doubt, that they are everywhere sick to the very soul of bloodshed.
They dislike even the talk about war and revolutions. They sing “The
Internationalé” whenever the orchestra strikes up, but it is with the
mechanical tones of a musical-box or a street-organ. They long for rest
and quiet. They want to marry and have children and be able to feed and
house them properly. The peasants want to till their farms undisturbed,
and in the quiet evenings to sing their quaint and mournful songs to
one another or in happy chorus in the village club. The town workers
want to do their day’s work in the factory or the shop and to spend
glad, talkative hours in the cafés as in those days before the misery
of war came upon them.
Petrograd has all the appearance of a dying city. Before the war it was
reputed to have a population of two and a half millions; now it numbers
between eight and nine hundred thousand souls. Where have all these
people gone? I asked a Communist the question.
A relatively tiny number of the rich are in exile. Many have died in
the war. Some have fled to the country, where living is more abundant.
But hundreds of thousands have died of hunger and disease. Besides the
lack of food there is an almost entire lack of medicines, anæsthetics,
linen for bandages, disinfectants and soap. These things have been kept
out by the blockade. Disease has been epidemic and carried off hosts of
people in face of the heroic but helpless doctors and nurses, very many
of whom gave their own lives in a noble attempt to succour and save. A
striking feature in Petrograd was the enormous number of short-haired
girls and women.
“Is this a Russian custom?” I asked. “Not more than in any other
country,” was the reply. “In all probability all these women and girls
have had typhus quite recently and lost their hair through it.”
Those who have never seen the hunger-look in human eyes cannot even
faintly imagine the pain of walking about the streets of a Russian
town. I had experienced it first in Vienna, that once supremely gay
and still very beautiful city. The knowledge of what the privations
of the unhappy Austrians were (and still are) first came to me in a
cheap restaurant, where I had gone to dine simply because the expensive
meals at the hotel were so disgusting in their extravagance. I raised
my eyes from my plate for a second. At least a dozen pairs of eyes
were glued hungrily to the simple food I was eating, and as hastily
withdrawn when detected in the act. I found it almost impossible to eat
in public after that, except when some hungry Austrian would consent to
share the meal.
I have seen in Vienna old and young officers in uniform creep into
hotels after dusk in the hope of getting scraps of food for their
hungry children. I have seen a woman of refinement, with three small
children clinging to her skirts, drop the red roses she was trying
to sell as she reeled with fatigue against a wall. I have tasted the
coloured water and imitation coffee in the cafés of the Ringstrasse.
I have seen the skeleton babes and consumptive wives of the Austrian
workmen and soldiers in their own homes. And because I had seen these
things in Vienna I knew, without asking any questions in Petrograd,
that the two cities share with most of the cities of Eastern and
Central Europe the bonds of a common suffering.
This much must be said for the Communist Government: It is doing its
best to secure an equal distribution amongst all sections of the
working community of the very limited supplies of everything. The
passport to food and clothing is work. St. Paul’s dictum is taken
literally in Russia. If the workers go short it is probably because
the food is not to be had. Either it is not procurable, because
non-existent; or transport difficulties prevent it reaching the people.
Of course the speculator enters into the question, the adventurous
private trader who, defiant of the law and at the risk of his life,
buys from the peasant at a much higher price than the Government fixed
price, and sells to the people privately or even in the open market.
The Extraordinary Commission has a special department to deal with this
man, and is very hard on him when caught; but he flourishes all the
same, and will continue to do so just as long as it continues to be
impossible for the citizen to live on the Government ration.
The loathsome black bread which is the people’s daily diet is four
hundred roubles[1] a pound when bought in the open market. White bread,
which is really a light brown, is one thousand roubles a pound. Only
children and sick persons are permitted white bread. Black bread can be
bought more cheaply at the Soviet stores, but is often not procurable
there for the last comers. Long queues of tired women are everywhere to
be seen waiting their turn outside the Government bread shops.
[1] The pre-war value of the rouble was about 2s.
And then the clothing! From Petrograd to Astrakhan I am quite sure
that not a hundred people were seen in clothing that was not shabby
and worn to a degree. Most of the British delegates wore their oldest
clothes, garments which had been cast off and suddenly restored to use
in contemplation of the trip to Russia. But those dear Russian people
thought we were attired like princes. They turned us round to admire
us. They patted and stroked our dresses and over-coats. They turned
longing eyes upon our boots, and took great pleasure in handling the
soft leather. One plutocrat offered fifty thousand roubles for a very
ordinary pair of British shoes. Eighty thousand roubles was the price
placed upon my own stout walking boots. When, out of gratitude to
her for repeated little acts of kindness, I gave the girl who looked
after my room a warm woollen jacket she fell on her knees and covered
my hands with kisses. When, by way of thanks, I gave a dress and coat
to the good woman who helped to nurse a sick friend, she sobbed on my
shoulder from sheer overwhelming gratitude!
University professors came to see us, dressed like English tramps!
A great singer sang to us with the toes sticking through his boots!
Women of gentle birth and upbringing walked the hard pavement with
their feet bound in strips of felt. Many had naked feet. Poor women
were seen frequently who, judging by their outlines, had no shred of
underclothing under their thin, cotton dresses. Socks for big girls
and grown women were a common sight and excited the curiosity of one
Delegate who enquired if that were the latest fashion amongst the women
in Russia.
“No” came the quick reply in the perfect English to which we were
becoming accustomed, “it is not the latest fashion but the last
economy. Socks use up less wool than stockings. It is considered good
fortune to have either socks or stockings. Most people have neither.”
This form of economy, welcome during the hot summer weather, is
frightful to contemplate for the hard Russian winter.
When one thinks of the passionate joy excited by the gift of a pair of
stockings to each of a few gentle, self-respecting Russian girls; of
what a reel of thread meant to the mother of a young family; of how
much comfort an old flannel nightdress gave to a sick woman, since dead
of debility due to lack of nourishment; of the amount of happiness
a present of a tablet of soap conferred, the wrangling of political
theorists, particularly in those countries where such sufferings have
not been dreamt of, much less experienced, appear monstrous and cruel
to the extent that these divert the public mind from the immediate
problem of succour and relief.
CHAPTER II
Making Our Plans
The individual has yet to be born who can be perfectly just. Even
educated and cultured people find it difficult in any given set of
circumstances not to exhibit their predilections; prejudice will be the
last vice to disappear and toleration the last virtue to develop in any
large number of human beings. The most that the members of the British
Delegation would claim for themselves would be that each made a serious
and honest attempt to prepare his, or her, mind for straight looking
at, and hard thinking about, the great experiment with which we were
soon to come to close quarters.
We knew we were going to a land radically different from all the
European countries we had hitherto visited. We knew that serious
and amazing things were alleged to have taken place there. Whilst
we discounted most of the atrocity stories of the sensation-loving
newspapers, we realised that, since war was not merely a game nor
revolution a picnic, frightful things must have happened. We had very
definite views of the main principles embodied in the various Communist
manifestos which, from time to time, had mysteriously found their way
into this country. But we were solid in our conviction that, whatever
we found in Russia, good, bad or indifferent, it was the concern of the
Russians themselves, and became our business only when it was sought to
impose upon Great Britain the same things, without regard to the vital
differences between the two countries.
On the beautiful sea-trip from Stockholm to Reval we discussed with
one another the possibilities of our excursion. Our little Swedish
ship hugged the coast of Finland to avoid the many thousands of mines
said to be loose upon the waters between Sweden and Esthonia, and the
loveliness of a myriad wooded islands amongst which we threaded our way
absorbed the best part of our interest until the open sea was reached.
“I wonder if we shall be allowed perfect freedom of action,” murmured
one of our number. “What shall we do if we find ourselves a sort of
Cook’s tourist party or the Royal Family?”
One was quite sure that, although we might be the guests of the
Government, we should be allowed to go where we liked and do what we
pleased. Another thought we should see as little as the Royal Family
sees when it takes an excursion amongst the people. A third welcomed
the idea of a conducted party because of the language difficulty. A
fourth expressed the view that we should ask for our passports and
return home at once if we were placed under any kind of restraint. It
was finally decided that we should wait and see!
After thirty hours of pleasant sailing, four only in the open sea, we
entered the harbour at Reval in a half-moon, just in time to see the
last rays of light from the setting sun make resplendent the gilded
domes of the churches. Town and harbour appeared quaint and exquisite
in the fading evening light, and the frank voices of the forty or fifty
Esthonian Socialists who met us robbed the strangeness of its slight
discomfort. These pleasant friends were representative of all the
various Socialist sections in Reval--Left, Right and Centre; and whilst
they turned cold looks on one another, they united in warmth of welcome
to us. Before we left the town we had supped with the Right and dined
with the Left and insisted on taking an indiscriminate pleasure with
all at the concert which the great Chaliapine gave that same evening in
the big public hall of the city.
In the Hotel Petrograd, in Reval, sits Gowkovsky, the Bolshevik
representative, through whose competent hands pass all communications
between Russia and the rest of Europe. He is a short man with brown
beard and kind, shrewd eyes and very pleasant manner. He spread a royal
banquet for us which included amongst its provisions the prohibited
vodka, bidding us drink to the social revolution in a beverage which
the Revolutionary Government, following the example of the Czar, has
had the wisdom to forbid. The properties of this fiery drink must be of
a very peculiar character, for one of the Delegates, who is not a total
abstainer, has since commended the late Czar’s ordinance abolishing the
drink traffic and has publicly declared that the coming Revolution in
Great Britain will have to be accompanied by the total prohibition of
strong drink.
The absence of drinking-shops and of public drinking, and consequently
of men and women the worse for liquor is a commendable feature of
social life in Russia, and accounts for many good things, probably
for the Revolution itself, almost certainly for the almost unvaried
success of the Red armies. Of course there is wine in the country,
sweet champagne, red Caucasian wines and the golden wines of Persia;
but these are for the sick and are not accessible to ordinary folk.
A doctor’s certificate is necessary to secure them. Almost certainly
there are illicit stills in the country districts, and speculators are
able to get hold of spirituous liquors illegally; but it would be an
entirely hopeless business for the ordinary man or woman to try to
discover strong drink anywhere, or to buy the expensive light wines
that here and there can be discovered amongst the bottles of raspberry
vinegar and lemonade. And the attitude of the Government to the
question of drinking is evidenced in the fact that if a railway worker
is discovered drunk, having possessed himself illegally of vodka, he is
promptly shot.
Having feasted and entertained us to good Russian music, admonished
us and put our passports in order, the kind-hearted Gowkovsky packed
us off to Petrograd in charge of half a dozen or more of his trusty
henchmen. Several of these were Jews--clever, brainy, shrewd, dogmatic;
excellent linguists, perfect interpreters.
One of the facts we marked very soon in our adventurous career was
the large number of Jews who occupy positions of trust and influence
in the Revolutionary Administration. We remarked upon it to the Jews
themselves. We were informed that only two of the seventeen People’s
Commissars were Jews, but that very considerable numbers indeed were
employed in administrative posts, both nationally and locally, and by
the Extraordinary Commission. As the membership and activity of large
numbers of Jews is a feature of continental Socialist societies,
particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, it is worth considering for
a moment why this should be so. And in view of the deplorable tendency
all over Europe towards Anti-Semitism, it is an obligation upon
everybody to try sympathetically to understand the character and point
of view of the Jew in Europe.
He forms, in the first place, a very large part of the population of
all the great cities and smaller towns of Central Europe and Russia.
He is, generally speaking, the best-educated part of the population
where educational facilities have been open to him. The boycott of
ages and the cruelties of centuries have sharpened his wits, developed
his cunning, forced his energies into less desirable channels, and
caused him to regard the men outside his race as his enemies against
whom he must take care continuously to defend and protect himself. The
Jewish mind is hard, logical and dogmatic. The Jew’s temperament is
artistic but his training is utilitarian. He is passionately interested
in theory and will try to carry out his favourite one at all costs,
given the power. Having no country of his own, where he does not love
the country of his adoption he is more than usually international in
his viewpoint and regards race before nation, and both, less than his
theory of mankind. He has great powers of organisation. I speak of him
as I have known him and admired him in half the countries of Europe
and the United States of America.
Over a plastic, passive people like the typical indolent Russian he was
bound to have enormous power and influence. Said one of the best-known
Jewish leaders in Russia to me when I had gently complained of too much
discipline and too little freedom:
“But the Russian people are like children. They are not educated. They
know nothing. They have been accustomed for centuries to slavery and
dictation. Would you have us allow them to destroy themselves by their
own incapacity and inexperience? Would you give a vote to each of those
millions of ignorant peasants? It would be like putting a knife into
the hands of a baby.”
How familiar it all sounded to me, as reminiscences of the Woman
Suffrage fight in England came to my mind, and I recalled the fact that
this baby and carving-knife argument was one of the pet excuses for
denying women their freedom.
None the less is it true that the Russian people in the main are
unaccustomed to freedom, and by their nature and temperament are proper
material for the exercise of power by the educated, dominating Jew. It
would not be fair, however, to neglect to say that of those persons
who spoke to me privately in condemnation of the Bolsheviki, a very
considerable number, if not the majority, were also Jews. One is driven
to the conclusion that it is the activity and strength of his mind, and
not necessarily a proclivity for Bolshevist theory which is chiefly
responsible for the commanding position of the Jew in the political
affairs of Europe in general and of Russia in particular.
Another Jew, a fair-haired, blue-eyed Jew from the United States, met
us on the Russian frontier, and offered us greetings in the name of the
Soviet Republic. He was an interesting personality, whose history as a
leader of strikes in America he unfolded to us on the journey from the
frontier to Petrograd. He had a special train waiting for us, gaily
decorated with red bunting, fervent mottoes, and the green branches of
trees. The train was attended by a number of Red Guards and Bashkir
cavalrymen in gorgeous purple uniforms, with wonderful cloaks and long
swords. From Reval to Narwa we had been just a plain, ordinary Cook’s
Tourist Party. From the Russian frontier to the end of our visit we
were the Royal Family!
Perhaps the most thrilling and dramatic note was struck by the fixture
of a big red flag on the frontier. The sight of it was altogether
too much for some of our more ardent spirits. They burst rapturously
into song, first “The Internationalé” and then “The Red Flag,” the
favourite song of Socialists in Great Britain.
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead.
And ere the lips grew stiff and cold,
Their heart’s blood dyed its every fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we’ll live or die;
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the Red Flag flying here.
At last we were about to enter the country where the Red Flag had
become the national emblem, and was flying over every public building
in the cities of Russia. The thought thrilled like new wine.
Half-way to Petrograd deputations from Trade Unions and Soviets came
into the train and made complimentary speeches in a half-bashful
manner, to which suitable responses were made. What a pleasant modest
set of fellows they were, with big, blue innocent eyes and reluctant
unobtrusive manner. We liked them immensely. We liked the plain people
of Russia wherever we met them. At Petrograd itself a large company
met us although it was three o’clock in the morning, and we were told
that gigantic crowds had loitered about the station all the day in
expectation of our coming and in the hope of getting a glimpse at the
English strangers. We were at once motored to the quarters which had
been prepared for us, the palace of a Russian princess, and there, at
four o’clock in the morning, we sat down to a simple but sufficient
meal and received our welcome from the Trade Union officials who were
to be our hosts during our stay.
We were behind the “iron curtain” at last!
CHAPTER III
Ghosts
When I was a little child I had a lively and delicious contact with
fairies. We used to laugh and sing and dance together through many
happy hours like the good comrades we were. But I cannot say that I
have ever seen a ghost; that is, I had never seen one until I went to
Russia. During the whole of the time I was in Russia I was haunted.
The Russian novelists have been very faithful to their people.
Turgenieff, Dostoievski, Gorky, Tolstoy, and the rest of them take
one into the real Russia as one reads. It is a country peopled with
human beings who dream dreams and see visions, who have suffered more
cruelly and aspired more loftily than the people of most other European
countries.
The Narishkin Palace in which we were lodged is a fine house devoted to
the mistress of one of the Czars by her lover. It lies on the banks of
the Neva and faces, on the other side, the grim fortress of St. Peter
and St. Paul. I stood on the balcony and looked across the river at
the place of horrors where so many of Russia’s noblest men and women
had gone to their deaths, the poor victims of tyrant princes and their
ministers. The abominable cruelties practised upon the martyrs for
Russian freedom have been as familiar to one’s mind as the alphabet,
and for almost as long. One’s youngest, purest and best emotion has
been given throughout one’s life to those who have endured torture,
disgrace and death for truth and liberty.
I recalled a meeting with Volkhovsy in England, deaf and crippled
by his sufferings in this hideous fortress; of Prince Kropotkin,
one of the oldest of the surviving victims of Czarist tyranny; of
Madame Breshskovski, the “grandmother of the Revolution”; of Marie
Spirodovna, whose special sufferings as a young woman were loathsome
and unspeakable. In sad procession these figures of tortured and
wounded and dead passed silently before my eyes as I leaned over the
stone balcony and gazed into the red light of the sky behind the dark
fortress we were sometime soon to visit.
And into my dreams they pursued me. The room in the Narishkin Palace
which I shared with Madame Balabanov was once on a time a beautiful
_salon_. A scanty curtain which stretched only half-way across the room
made a pretence of dividing it in two and securing privacy for each of
us. Behind the curtain was the door which opened into the dining-room.
Close to my bed was a second door which led to the corridor, at the end
of which was a bedroom. There were neither long curtains nor blinds
to keep out the everlasting light. Some thin and inadequate muslin
was drawn across the lower half of the windows, but was too scanty to
afford any protection against observers in the building opposite.
On entering the room after the intense fatigue and excitement of the
long journey one felt its beauty comforting and refreshing. The fine
linen sheets, the soft silk hangings, the eiderdown bed-covers, the
thick velvety carpet, the quaint, carved and gilded furniture spoke of
gentle living utterly unlooked-for by us, and, to do ourselves justice,
undesired by us in a country full of people slowly dying for lack of
the barest necessaries. It was the most exaggerated kindness on the
part of our hosts, so anxious to make us comfortable and happy, to give
us the very best they possessed.
But there, for me, was the trouble. They gave us all this luxury and
beauty, but was it theirs to give or ours to receive? _They_ had no
doubts on this score whatever. They could see nothing at all in the
argument that the present possessor of property that belongs morally,
if not legally, to the State, having been permitted to grow up in the
belief that what the law sanctioned must necessarily be right, is not
quite fairly treated if he is quite suddenly turned into the streets
without resources, and his property confiscated.
One would not dispute for a moment the principle that nobody should
possess luxuries or even superfluous comforts until the elementary
needs of everybody have been amply satisfied and secured; or that
a royal palace is put to much better use when it shelters many
industrious persons than when it houses a king’s mistress and her
lackeys. But there is a difference as great as between black and
white and right and wrong, between the declared will of the majority
of the citizens acting through their National Assembly or Parliament
which, in the interest of the community dispossesses an individual but
secures the future of his wife and children as well as himself, and
the arbitrary action of the minority in power, who roughly confiscate
without consideration for the dispossessed.
“Where is the owner of this beautiful house?” I asked several times,
but I could get no reply. Nobody knew. I heard the story of a Princess
Narishkin who was doing good work for the children under the Soviet,
but do not know if it was true. One heard so many contradictory
stories. If true, was she happy, I wondered? It might conceivably
be so. The old revolutionary movement in Russia was by no means a
one-class movement. Many of the old régime have willingly consented to
the confiscation of their estates and goods and are content to do hard
work for the new Republic. In such cases no question of right or wrong
arises. These are rare souls.
Before the end of the visit I met an old man who was the millionaire
owner of a great line of steamships before the Revolution. The
Revolution had completely dispossessed him. I found him quite content
and happy about it. He formed part of the secretariat of an important
Committee on Communications and travelled regularly as a Government
employé on his own ships. His one grievance was the way in which the
inventory of his fortune had been taken. He felt that his revolutionary
record might have secured him more considerate treatment in the method
of taking over his enterprises; but even on this point he was entirely
without bitterness.
In Astrakhan we met the owner of a great fish-curing industry, who
had yielded up everything to the Republic without a murmur, and who
declared himself happier making nets along with his former workpeople
than he had ever been in his life.
I slipped quickly into my bed that first night in Petrograd and tried
to sleep and forget the ghost my self-questioning had raised; but sleep
refused to come. It was not because no darkness came and the pale light
streamed in through the unshaded windows. It was not altogether the
lack of privacy, though the fact that one’s room was regarded as a
public highway through which the men and women of the household tramped
indiscriminately whenever they chose was, to say the least of it,
disconcerting. I felt like a guilty thing, lying uninvited by its owner
in that soft, white bed, whilst the poor creature who once occupied it
might be sleeping on straw. I dozed; and inevitably cold, sad eyes in a
thin, hungry-looking face would gaze at me with the look of any woman
whose house had been entered by intruders she was powerless to put
outside.
I tried very hard to control my imagination, but it was very difficult.
Cruelty is one of the vices which madden one. When we rode in the late
Czar’s motor-car, I did not feel the presence of my fellow-delegates,
but the ghosts of the murdered unhappy little man and his family. The
car was a thing of beauty, large and luxurious. Without it one could
have seen very little. But the perfect joy of using it was marred
by two things--the sight of the sore and undressed feet of many of
the weary proletarians of Moscow who had not the means even for a
tram-ride, much less a ride in an automobile or a droshky; and by the
obvious joy and satisfaction with which those who accompanied us on our
investigations regarded the capture of the Czar’s car as an emblem of a
cruel triumph.
“Whenever you are tempted to feel concerned about the execution of
the Czar and his family,” said a friendly Communist, “think about the
millions of innocent human beings who have recently lost their lives
through the policies of that man and his ministers. And call to your
mind the vast hosts of martyrs who have fallen victims to the cruelties
of his predecessors.”
The advice was well-meant but unnecessary. I have already said that it
would be impossible to forget the martyrs of the Revolution and the
tortures of those grand idealists of Russia. The visit in Petrograd to
the graves of some of them is an incident in a wide experience in many
countries, the memory of which will stay with me to the end of my days.
It was so sincere, yet so dramatic.
A large open space in the heart of the city called the Field of Mars,
and devoted in the old times to military reviews and the drilling of
troops, is being converted by the Communists into a fine memorial
of the heroes of the Revolution who have lost their lives in some
prominent fashion in the struggle for freedom. Voluntary labour and
the labour of the Red Army is digging up the hard soil and planting
beautiful trees in symmetrical designs. In the middle of this large
tract a simple stone memorial has been erected. It is not a flaunting
column shouting to the sky, but it takes the form of a low, solid,
granite wall, enclosing in four sections with rounded corners a burial
ground. The spaces between the sections permit people to enter. From
all parts of Russia the bodies have been brought and are laid just
inside the wall and all the way round. A footpath follows the wall and
encloses the graves on the other side. The centre of the square is
at present a grass-plot with flowers and shrubs. The whole thing is
naturally on a very large scale.
One lovely evening, after a most enthusiastic gathering inside the
People’s Hall, we were taken in a decorated tramcar to see the
Martyrs’ Memorial. I have experienced nothing in my life so moving and
impressive. A great crowd from the meeting accompanied us, and stood in
silent groups outside the wall whilst we walked slowly round. The eyes
of the leaders shone with the light of a great pride and a deep passion
as they approached one by one the graves of their honoured dead. The
pride melted into tears at some of the graves, when we stopped in our
walk and sang slowly a verse of the plaintive martyrs’ hymn, a sad and
haunting melody with just a single note of triumph in it. One after
another the heroes were pointed out to us. Here was a man who had
been tortured to death. Here was one who was shot by hired Government
assassins. Here lay one who was blown to bits by his own bomb; here a
tender girl who gave up her life for the cause.
The tears were quickly dried. Russian revolutionaries do not weep
easily. Instead of tears a hard glitter filled the eyes of a fierce
fellow. “But we will be avenged,” he shouted. “For every one of our
comrades who has died like this we will send ten of the bourgeois to
their graves.” I shuddered in the presence of a terrible fanaticism.
Poor ghosts! If they could rise from the dead would they not tell us to
make no more human sacrifices to their memory? Would they not speak to
us of a better way?
I tried hard to get a copy of the mournful song we sang on this and
many occasions subsequently. I was several times promised it but it
never came. The words I never knew for they were Russian, but the
melody I captured and I give it as it printed itself upon my mind. It
will be recognised by Russian readers.
[Music: SONG OF THE MARTYRS]
This habit of seeing ghosts brought me a good deal of chaff not only
from the Communists but from my own friends. One of the Communists made
a speech in defence of violent methods and gave a sidelook at me when
he reminded the British Delegates that “once on a time the British
Government made its king shorter by a head,” as did the people of
France.
“It is quite true,” I said afterwards to a group of Communists who were
discussing with us the meeting. “King Charles the First was executed
three hundred years ago in England. But it was after a proper trial by
the recognised Courts of Justice. He was found guilty of the charges
laid against him. And we did not shoot his wife and children. But if
the idea of his execution was to get rid of kings it was the wrong way;
for kings we have still with us. And they will remain with us so long
as the king-idea continues to be acceptable to the human mind. The
Allies will never destroy the idea of Communism with their guns. The
Communists can never destroy the idea of kingship and capitalism with
their scaffolds. Only a good idea can slay a bad one. Only by proving
that there is more manliness in democracy than autocracy, and more
morality in Communism than in capitalism will the one institution give
way to the other.”
Of course I spoke to people who could never be convinced in a thousand
years of argument. Neither could they understand the distinction one
made between the system and the individual. To them all is the same.
And individuals must be made responsible for the suffering which is
caused by the system, even though they may themselves be tender and
pitiful, and innocent of wrong.
It was the great point of difference which separated spiritually my
hosts and me. “You can never build a permanent system on hate,” I said
again and again; but they believe they can. And because of this belief
they have no pity to spare for the innocent children of a hated monarch
and his foolish, fanatical wife, all shot in the name of Authority for
the crime of being themselves.
Their poor ghosts flitted in and out of the compartments in the train
which was lent to us in our journey from Saratov to Reval, the train
belonging to the Czar’s daughters. And following them, in tragic
sequence, the endless procession of ghosts tramping their way through
the snows to Siberia to the crack of the Cossack whips.
Russia is full of ghosts.
CHAPTER IV
Investigation or Propaganda?
People in Russia appear to be able to live without sleep. At any rate
they never go to bed before the small hours of the morning. Very rarely
were we allowed to go to our rooms before two o’clock, and it was
frequently three o’clock in the morning. On entering Russia we were
asked to alter our watches by three hours, making the time so much in
advance of English time, and we used to console ourselves that it was
“really only midnight” when, almost too weary to stand, we staggered to
our rooms at this terribly un-English hour. Soon we became quite used
to the sight of little children playing about at eleven and twelve at
night, and to the spectacle of a ploughman ploughing his land at an
hour when it was difficult to say whether twilight or the dawn lighted
his labours. The hour of rising is correspondingly late, and breakfast
was seldom served earlier than 9.30 or 10 o’clock.
The first meal at a Russian table was naturally to be a matter of
interest to us. At this, the first, and at all subsequent meals, there
was an ample supply, though not a riotous abundance, of very simple
food. Every nerve had been strained to make the change from profusion
to scarcity as easy as possible. It was realised that it takes a long
time to get used to black bread after white, thin soup after thick, and
imitation tea after the real thing.
Real tea and coffee are well-nigh unprocurable in Russia at present.
Yet they procured these for the British guests. These good things came
to us, we were informed, because great stores of them had been captured
from Judenitch who had received them through the British War Office.
For our hosts this fact added a piquancy to their hospitality, which a
sufficiently developed sense of humour enabled us to understand.
Our breakfast consisted of a sufficient supply of brown bread, hard
but not unpleasant to the taste, butter and thin slices of cheese.
On alternate mornings we had smoked fish or slices of ham. There was
abundance of tea served in glasses from the samovar, with sugar but
no milk. Occasionally there was coffee. We were served by a dignified
“tovarisch” (_tovarisch_ is Russian for “comrade”) who looked as though
he were a typical English butler, and who, I was credibly informed,
actually was a relic of the old régime. His was a stolid, grave face,
as became the servant of departed princes. What his thoughts were as
he moved quietly about the room I would have given many roubles to know.
At the head of the table, our brilliant little hostess in Petrograd,
sat Madame Angelica Balabanov. This lady is one of the most wonderful
linguists I have ever met. She seems to have all the languages on the
tip of her tongue. She is a speaker of enormous power and eloquence,
so eloquent indeed, and so fiery, that I am certain, given the right
kind of human material to work upon, she could make a revolution by
herself. Small wonder the Soviet Government wished to make her their
ambassador to Rome. No wonder at all that the Italians were too
frightened to have her. She loves Italy passionately. She looks like
an Italian with her dark skin, mysterious glowing eyes and twin plaits
of long black hair reaching far below her waist when uncoiled; and
with this appearance and her magic tongue, she might soon have won the
Italians for Bolshevism. She is one of the kindest of women in all
normal relationships. But I could well imagine her destroying her best
friend for the glory of Bolshevism, should such a sacrifice appear to
be necessary.
After that first breakfast the Delegation met in the bedroom of the
chairman to discuss our programme and the plans which we saw had been
prepared for us, and the methods of investigation we proposed to
adopt. There was a division of opinion about the latter, which hinged
upon the propriety or otherwise of delivering ourselves into the hands
of our hosts.
In numerous speeches, both public and private, we had been assured
not only of the warmth of our welcome, but of the intention of the
Bolsheviki to let us see everything--good, bad and indifferent. “We
have nothing whatever to hide, so why should you not be free to go
where you will and see what you wish.” This sounded splendid. We heaved
a sigh of relief. We had been in mortal terror of being a conducted
party.
The theory was, therefore, that we were to go where we pleased and
see what we chose and speak to whom we desired to speak; in short, to
have perfect freedom. But in practice this freedom was every whit as
illusory as the raising of the British blockade. As events transpired,
we were everywhere accompanied by representatives of the Authorities,
who were sent, it was said, partly to act as interpreters and partly to
protect us from counter-revolutionaries and Polish spies who might be
lurking about with bombs! The number of such persons who accompanied us
on most of our visits, whether to inspect a factory or a workshop or to
interview a Commissar, was seldom less than half a dozen and generally
was ten or even twenty. Sometimes as many as fifty people by actual
count accompanied us round a factory. They got fearfully in the way,
and often crowded out members of the Delegation eager to get close to
charts and maps and anxious to ask questions. But we were all very
good-humoured about this, because we realised that this was the first
time for five years that these people had been permitted to look upon
the face of the foreigner, and that a perfectly natural curiosity was
entitled to be satisfied.
It was not so much the number of persons who accompanied us that was
the trouble, although this host of followers gave our enterprise a
circus-like quality which some of us would have been glad to exchange
for a more business-like atmosphere. There is certainly a lack of
freedom in the feeling that one is being watched all the time, and
one’s words and actions and the people with whom one speaks noted
by gentlemen who hold positions in Government service, either in
connection with the Foreign Office or the Extraordinary Commission, as
was the case with several of our closest attendants.
But there were other factors which operated to place a check upon our
activities.
In the first place a programme of places to be visited and things to
be seen was presented to us which, if carried out only in part, would
have absorbed every second of our time and lessened still further the
number of hours to be devoted to sleep. The time-tables given to us
when we entered Petrograd and Moscow were simply staggering. “Can human
beings go through that and live?” we asked one another. We thought we
began to see some of the reasons why Russian men and women look ten
years older than they are--no sleep, too much tea, and this sort of
thing! Needless to say, we edited those programmes with much firmness
and vigour. And even so, some of us found it extremely difficult to get
as much time to ourselves as was necessary to take a bath or darn a
sock.
Another curious fact speedily unfolded itself. The real nature
of our mission to Russia appeared not to be understood. It was
believed, or the belief was affected, that we had come in the spirit
of full agreement with them, whereas we were there to enquire and
to inform ourselves. It was frequently suggested, both privately
and publicly, that “the representatives of the revolutionary
working-class movement in Great Britain had come to bring greetings
and assistance to the revolutionary Government of Russia.” From this
belief, or the affectation of it, sprang the clever notion of using
us in every possible way to advance their propaganda. Immense public
demonstrations, both indoor and outdoor, at which we were expected to
make speeches were already arranged for us when we arrived there.
We were never consulted about our desires in the matter. There were
enormous military parades and Trade Union marches, which we were made
to watch from a high platform, where we became the easy victims of the
Government Press photographer and the moving picture operator.
On several occasions members of the Delegation addressed the troops in
language eminently satisfying to the Bolshevik Commissars, and those
like myself, who declined to do this on the ground that we had not come
for such a purpose, became objects of suspicion and of quiet dislike.
Dinners and suppers followed each other in quick succession, at which
the soon-to-be-familiar revolutionary toasts were made the occasion
for more speeches. We were displayed in the box of the late Czar at
the Opera to interested spectators numbering several thousands on each
occasion both in Petrograd and Moscow. The way in which our clever
hosts contrived to place us under a very real and lasting obligation by
their generous regard for our physical welfare during the whole period
of our visit, and at the same time to extract from us for their own
purposes the last ounce of propaganda usefulness excited my warmest
admiration.
As propagandists there is surely no race and no class to surpass the
Russian Communists. At such work they are simply superb. I am quite
convinced from my own observation that they have won their victories
on the battlefield far more through their leaflets than their bullets.
The propaganda trains they are sending daily to the Polish front are
marvels of ingenuity. Inside and outside these trains are covered
with vivid pictures portraying side by side the horrors of Capitalism
and the glories of Communism in simple intelligible form, the horrid
capitalist murdering the poor peasant or standing triumphant over a
dying woman and child, whilst Communist fields bursting with grain
yield to the sickle of the happy, sun-browned, well-fed harvester.
Posters giving simple but effective figures, making glowing promises,
or issuing electric appeals to the proletariat to “rise and shake off
the hated chains of the bourgeoisie” decorate these railway carriages
through the whole of their length. Over the Polish lines burst shrapnel
cases filled with leaflets. Or they scatter Russian passports for all
the Poles who wish to desert and come over the lines.
The value of propaganda on a big scale for the prosecution of its aims
was discovered by the Government in Great Britain during the war. Large
sums of public money were spent upon it. Against this use of the taxes
British Socialists protested with warmth and unanimity as a violation
of personal rights. But not so would the Communists have acted. The
Government of Russia conducts such operations on an incredible scale.
Whole buildings of great size are stuffed from floor to ceiling with
pamphlets and leaflets printed in every well-used language in the
world, and a tireless and powerful propaganda in the principles of
Communism is carried on at the expense of the Russian State in every
country in the world to which Bolshevist agents have access. Here is
the last sentence in the section devoted to Education in the Communist
Manifesto of 1919:
“To develop the propaganda of Communist ideas on a wide scale, and for
that purpose, _of taking advantage of the State means and apparatus_.”
Our first public reception in Petrograd was at a dinner given to
us by the Petrograd Soviet. It was held in a great room which had
formerly been a stable but had been converted into the hall of a very
fine public assembly-room. All along the walls were banners specially
prepared for our coming, on some of which were sentences in English,
tendering us good advice on the lines of “Go thou and do likewise.”
Some of the thoughts so advertised were very fine, and one I cannot
refrain from mentioning, representing as it does all that is best
and finest in the Communist idea: “We are working for the children,
for the future, for humanity.” This is a much bigger conception than
the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which is a very big and very
important section, but only a section of “humanity.”
As we entered the long passage which led to this dining-hall we heard
in the distance the strains of “The Internationalé.” Alas, I thought,
we are guilty of the rudeness of being late. Not at all! This was
simply the orchestra getting itself into form. As we entered, it burst
forth again with joyful hilarity. We stood by our seats till the end,
and then proceeded to talk to our neighbours. For the third time the
band broke into the strain. Some members of our party had strolled in
late. It was essential that they should have a royal reception also.
We settled down once more. Suddenly everybody started to his feet
again. It was “The Internationalé” for the fifth time, sung to welcome
the President of the Soviet to his chair. Then came the food, and, at
intervals, the speeches. After each speech came “The Internationalé,”
and whatever we were doing, eating or speaking, it had to cease until
the National Anthem of the world-proletariat, if I may so describe it,
had been sung. And a curiously amusing feature of this singing was,
that it indicated the degree of approval conferred upon the speech.
If the speech were a blood-red revolutionary speech in the recognised
style, the whole of the three verses was sung. If the speech were of
a quieter pattern, two verses followed. If, as happened in one case,
the speech kept close to the facts of the situation and lacked vim,
one verse only was its reward. All this may have happened without
design, but it happened so. And anyhow, we learnt the tune of “The
Internationalé” unforgettably that night, for it was sung whole or in
part, exactly seventeen times!
“Are you not afraid,” I asked, of a Communist who was near me, “that
the people will get tired of that song if you sing it so often? I can
imagine nothing more tiresome to the ears of our king than the public
prayer for his salvation put up for him every time he pays a public
call.”
“Why, yes,” he replied, “the people are a little tired of it; but it
is necessary to supersede the old National Anthem and such songs as
are associated with the old order, and instil into them revolutionary
melodies. It is good propaganda.”
Shades of the departed! Will the music of the country also be
sacrificed to the insatiable spirit of Karl Marx?
THE INTERNATIONALÉ
[Music:
1. Arise, ye starvelings, from your slumbers, Arise, ye criminals
of want, For reason in revolt now thunders, And at last ends the age
of cant. Now away with all superstitions, Servile masses, arise!
arise! We’ll change forthwith the old conditions, And spurn the dust
to win the prize.
CHORUS.
Then, comrades, come rally, the last fight let us face, The
Internationalé, Unites the human race, Then, comrades, come
rally, The last fight let us face, The Internationalé Unites the
human race.]
2. These kings defile us with their powder,
We want no war within the land;
Let soldiers strike: for peace call louder,
Lay down arms and join hand in hand.
Should these vile monsters still determine,
Heroes to make us in despite;
They’ll know full soon the kind of vermin
Our bullets hit in this last fight!
CHORUS: Then comrades, etc.
CHAPTER V
The Communists
Accompanying the British Delegation were two British journalists, one
representing a great Liberal daily and the other a well-known Radical
weekly journal. At Reval we were joined by an American writer. Later
a French and an Italian journalist were added to the number. Later
still came a German writer on the scene; and in addition a considerable
number of Swedes and Norwegians who had come to Russia to make a
special study of industrial life, with a view to organising assistance
from Sweden of the various big constructive plans contemplated by the
Russian Government. We were all housed under the same roof, fed at
the same tables, carried about in the same fleet of automobiles and
subjected to the same supervision during the visit to Petrograd and
Moscow.
Radios sent out by delegates and journalists were censored by the
Authorities, who have sole control of all the means of communication
with the outer world, a very natural state of affairs in a country at
war with so many enemies. Very natural, also, is it that in this, as in
other ways, the Russian Government should exactly copy the methods of
other Governments in selecting for world-distribution those messages
which tell in its favour. It must certainly be conceded in their behalf
that never in the history of mankind has the public Press been used to
pervert the truth and exaggerate the evil more than for the purposes of
destroying the detested Communist régime.
But of this monopoly of the wires by the Government we were ourselves
occasionally the victims, the smiling and amused victims I may say; as
when a fiery speech on true Bolshevist lines by an eloquent Britisher,
unable to resist his atmosphere, was flashed around the world, whilst a
more sober utterance was treated with contemptuous disregard.
I remember one little incident which caused those of us who were aware
of it the greatest entertainment as evidencing the methods of some of
the more timid and consequently the more autocratic of the Communists.
The representative of the _Daily News_ and the American journalist
wished to extend their trip on the Volga and to go down to Astrakhan.
To do this it was necessary to have permission from the Foreign Office.
They drew up a telegram and handed it to the Commissioner in charge
of our party, who smilingly assured them that the telegram should be
sent and that they might expect the reply in a few hours. They waited.
The point at which the Delegation was to leave the ship and return to
Moscow was reached. They approached the Commissioner and asked him if
there were any news for them.
“The message was sent at once, but no reply has come; therefore it is
impossible for you to stay on the ship” he replied in good French,
lying without a wink. Their message had never been sent to Moscow!
Red Petrograd is very proud of its name. The reason why it is “redder”
than Moscow is due in all probability to the fact that, as the capital
city and the place of residence of the Czars, it has been the scene of
more revolutionary propaganda and anarchist intrigues than any other
single city in the wide dominions of Russia. Add to this the terrors
of the blockade, the invasion by Judenitch, who crept very close to
the city, and the very fearful sufferings of Petrograd during the war
and there is sufficient to explain the more terrible reaction. The
marked despotism and even cruelty of the men in power in Petrograd
became noticeable to us before we left. A brief conversation with one
Communist there lingers in my mind.
“There is a rivalry between Moscow and Petrograd,” he informed me
“which threatens to become something very serious.”
“Very much like the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool or
Lancashire and Yorkshire, I suppose?” was my reply.
“Not in the very least” was his answer. “Perhaps rivalry is not the
right word. Rather is it a conflict; or only a rivalry in the sense of
striving to keep the Communist ideal untarnished.”
I was interested, and bade him continue.
“There are certain elements in Moscow which are still tainted
with the spirit of compromise. Even Lenin himself is not above
suspicion. There is a great and growing opposition to Lenin in Red
Petrograd. We do not like his tenderness for the interests of foreign
concessionaires. We do not approve of the toleration shown in Moscow to
the counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. It is
necessary we yield nothing to those who are not fully with us in our
programme and our methods. These traitors will undermine the fabric of
the Communist Republic. Lenin himself must go if this is his way.”
The man was a bitter and gloomy fanatic. But his words were
interesting. “You do not suggest that Lenin is seeking compromise for
his own ends, do you?” I asked, unwilling that anything so squalid
should fasten itself to the reputation of one of the most amazing
personalities the war has produced. I was promptly reassured on that
point.
“Oh, no, indeed no,” was his answer. “Lenin is pure. He seeks nothing
for himself. But he is making mistakes. The influences in Moscow are
not good. Here we are strong. Red Petrograd is different from Moscow.”
So I learnt first, and afterwards was confirmed in the knowledge,
that there are several varieties of Communists in Russia, and that
to criticise those in power at present is not by any means to be an
opponent of Communism. Everybody is behind the Government at present,
because of the war. Soldiers and statesmen of the old régime who have
not fled; literary men like Gorky; bourgeois citizens who remain in
Russia are serving the Government, and every variety of Socialist,
hating the methods of the Communist with a deadly hatred, is none the
less tacitly behind it so long as the country is in danger from outside
aggression.
Men like Kameneff, Sverdloff and Krassin, who hold high and responsible
positions in the State service, good and sincere Communists, would not
rise to power nor maintain their position by indiscriminate slaughter
and brutal methods of tyranny, but having faith in the ultimate
triumph of their principle, would establish it through education and
organisation. That men of a more violent character hold the reins
of power is due, in my considered judgment, to the fatal policy of
the Allies, and in these days, of the Poles, in seeking to decide
the issue by the sword. The resumption of war by the misguided Poles
and the consequent fear that fell upon the Russian people, joined
to a perfectly proper patriotism, gave that powerful instrument of
tyranny, the Extraordinary Commission, with its secret police, the
opportunity to revive itself, and fasten itself like the plague upon
terror-stricken population and frightened administrators alike.
But the extreme men, with their gospel of a world-revolution by
violence, and the dictatorship of one class over the rest of mankind,
are a painful phenomenon. Pure and unselfish idealists as many of
them undoubtedly are, and born out of due time, they are the terrible
progeny of the maddest war and the cruellest “peace” that ever tore
civilisation to tatters.
Some work quietly, live nobly, and starve on the rations which only
the very best men decline to augment. But, for the most part, the
Communists live better than the rest and form the new aristocracy.
Their duties are specially dangerous and hazardous, and the difference
is justified for this reason. If there is an epidemic to be fought
or special labour to be performed, the Communists are the first to be
called upon to do the work; but there are privileges also, as with
the aristocracy of any other country. Of the civilian population,
Communists only may carry arms. Special food and clothing privileges
are made available for Communists. The children of Communists form
the greater number in the country colonies for children. The way to
professional advancement and to positions of power and responsibility
is through the Communist Party. This fact may explain the position
within the Party of one able man with whom I spoke. I had been trying
to convince a little Communist lady that there was no Communist Party
as such in Great Britain and that the number of Communists in England
was very small.
“There are no published statistics, but,” I said, “I do not believe
there are five thousand Communists in the whole of England. I doubt if
there are five hundred Communists there who have thought the thing out
to the very bottom, and who give to Communism anything more than an
emotional support.”
“And do you really think there are more than five thousand or even
five hundred Communists of the better sort in this country?” was his
question.
“Indeed I do,” I replied. “I believe that there are 650,000 Communists
according to your own published statistics.”
“Published statistics are queer things,” he said slowly. “It is not
easy to join the Communist Party. There is six months’ probation to
be served. One has to have two guarantors. But when joining the Party
is the only sure way to sufficient nourishment and some prospect of
advancement, even the dangerous duties cannot deter all from joining.”
He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He, along with the rest of
the Trade Unionists, had been ordered under threat of penalties to
join the parade in the Uritzky Platz which had been organised for the
British Delegation.
The first public meeting in Petrograd and a similar occasion in the
Moscow Opera House were like every other meeting we had in Russia. The
slight difference between these two gatherings was that in Petrograd
the audience was restricted to Trade Unionists as the hall-space was
limited to about two thousand, and the meeting was held under the
auspices of the Unions, whilst in Moscow the meeting was open to the
general public and was three times as big as in Petrograd.
Speeches were made by Russians and British alternately. At the
Moscow meeting a Menshevik was permitted to speak, and made a plucky
performance under very trying circumstances. The Russian official
speeches were all of one quality and directed towards very definite
ideas. These speeches soon became so familiar that we learnt to
anticipate the phrases. When a little boy of ten was brought forward at
one of the schools to repeat to us his Communist lesson, we recognised
the words of the father on the lips of the child. There was the same
talk of the dictatorship of the working masses, the same passionate
appeal to the British workers to drop their old method and march
into the streets and to the barricades, the same prophecies of a
world-revolution, the same sneers at those who hope to achieve their
object by peaceful and democratic means, the same wearisome exclamatory
phrases at the end. “Long live the Soviet Republic!” “Long live the
Workers Revolution!” “Long live the international solidarity of
Labour!” Admirable phrases were some of these, but incongruous in the
mouth of a pale little fellow of ten, undersized on his cabbage soup
and black bread; and unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed
lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the
delivery of explosive perorations. “Long live Soviet Russia!” “Long
live the Russian Communist Party!” “Long live the Workers Revolution!”
A few phrases from the speeches of the Russian orators will illustrate
the kind of message they wished to give us and will show the
misunderstanding of our mission and of the state of the Labour Movement
in Great Britain of which I wrote in a previous chapter. To take the
following sentences from a speech delivered by Ziperovitch, of the
Trades Union Council of the Province of Petrograd:
“It is with a feeling of deep satisfaction that the Russian Trades
Union Council notices that the mighty pressure of the British
Revolutionary Movement has at last made the Government of Lloyd George
give up the police methods (as the refusal of passports) so degrading
to the British proletariat.”
Was it, I wonder, the “mighty pressure of the British Revolutionary
Movement” which accomplished this? Or was it due to the Prime
Minister’s desire to begin the movement for happier relations with
Russia? Take another phrase:
“I am deeply convinced that the visit of our British comrades is a
promising symbol of the great moral upheaval in that country.”
Knowing as I did the ideas about the British Labour Movement they
have in mind in Russia, I felt it incumbent upon me for the sake of
the Russians themselves, to disabuse them of the notion that there is
any evidence worthy of the name to show that the British workers are
within appreciable distance of using Communist methods of violence for
what, in some respects, is a oneness of _ultimate_ ideal; but that
history, tradition, temperament, training and the great fact of our
comparative freedom and prosperity all precluded the hope on their part
of entering together upon the last decisive fight for world revolution.
From the speech of Losowsky, also a Trade Union leader, I have selected
the following phrases to show the aim of the Bolshevik leaders:
“The Labour movement of Russia stands determinedly and definitely for
the Social Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Social Revolution and
the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
“The working class has taken the power into its own hands and with fire
and sword annihilates all who seek to turn Russian history backward.”
“No compromise. Merciless war on the bourgeoisie to the victorious end.”
The terrible danger of this inflammatory talk lies in the fact that
the deeds of the Communists in power march with their words, and as
every person who ventures to disagree in the slightest particular with
the principles of the Party is regarded as a traitor, he comes under
the suspicion of the Authorities and goes about daily in fear of being
denounced and punished as a counter-revolutionary.
But for many of these bitter men, much excuse may be made when the
facts of their lives are known. Many of them have been the greatest
sufferers from the tyranny of the Czardom. Many of them have had long
terms of imprisonment or exile, have suffered from the knout or the
bayonet, have been sentenced to death and escaped, or have lost health
and happiness in Siberian wilds. Six years in solitary confinement
does not tend to sweeten a man’s outlook on life. Fourteen years in
the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the daily terror of being
taken out of his cell and shot, does not make for sweetness and light.
Outrage and torture of women very naturally hardens them and forms
into a thin cruel line many of the lips made to press tender kisses on
the foreheads of little children. Very few of the Communist leaders of
Russia there are who have not had to endure one or all of these hideous
experiences. That they should be infected, unconsciously to themselves,
by the virus of cruelty is not to be wondered at. And the greater
part of the blame for all that has happened and is happening to the
opponents of unadulterated Communism must be laid upon the shoulders of
those who, by promoting wars, civil and foreign, have made their task
of government impossibly hard.
CHAPTER VI
The Artistic Life of Russia
Almost everybody in Russia is hungry and cold, and many surface critics
in Russia blame the Government for conditions for which they cannot be
held in any great degree responsible. It is perfectly true that in the
beginning, Committee management of an industry sometimes brought that
industry to a full stop. Kameneff is reported by Arthur Ransome to have
explained the non-working of certain excellent soap factories on the
double ground of lack of material and “because some crazy fool imagined
that to take an inventory you must bring everything to a standstill.”
“Establish a Commission,” he had previously said, “and soap instantly
disappears. But put in one man to see that soap is forthcoming, and
somehow or other we get it.” The greater part of the blame for the
hunger and privation must be placed upon those who made the wars which
have afflicted Russia so long.
Nobody can criticise the Government on one point, and that their
protection and encouragement of Art. The most grudging in his praise
must perforce admit that the Bolsheviki have shown their wisdom in
leaving undamaged up to the present the artistic side of Russian life;
whilst the just will give them credit for fostering Art by taking
special care of the artists and by bringing it within the reach of the
poorest classes in the community, hitherto totally shut out from the
best and finest which Art can give.
The concert halls and theatres of Petrograd and Moscow are crowded
every night. The British Delegation were taken several times to the
most wonderful performances of plays and operas it has been the lot
of most of them to see. I have myself seen operatic performances in
several European capitals, London and New York. It is true that the
orchestra in Vienna is finer. “Die Götterdämmerung” as performed in
Berlin excites the greatest admiration. Chaliapine himself has thrilled
immense audiences in Covent Garden. The singing and orchestration
in the two great Russian cities were very fine indeed, perhaps not
so fine as special performances in the other European capitals in
happier circumstances. But in the mere technique of production I have
seen nothing to equal the Russian performances. Not a detail had
been neglected, not a dress, nor a colour, nor a pose unstudied. The
lighting effects were astonishing. Here, a moon gave a moon’s light,
and a daybreak came as gently and softly as in Nature, and not with
the suddenness of breaking china.
In Petrograd we saw two performances, one Gluck’s “Orpheus” and the
other Bizet’s “Carmen.” In addition we had an hour at the ballet
on our way to the railway train and Moscow. The ballet is known in
London for the exquisite thing it is. A special interest for us
in Petrograd was the inclusion in the caste of gifted proletarian
children, whose dancing did nothing to lower the standard in these
things to which Russia has accustomed the rest of Europe for so long.
It was a very lovely rendering of the dream of a hopeless lover of his
princess-bride, who dies of grief and shock when the vision fades and
he is left with nothing but her veil of gauze.
Of “Carmen” I have seen a better performance from the point of view of
chorus singing and orchestral accompaniment. There was a disturbing
failure to keep together of chorus and orchestra which marred an
otherwise wonderful presentation of this well-known and favourite
opera. But again, the way in which it was staged was marvellous beyond
all words. And similarly with “Orpheus.” This wonderful work, rendered
with exquisite art, developed in one a mood of exaltation, and left one
with the feeling that here in the world of mystery and imagination,
of passionate and pure aspiration are the things which matter most,
and that the sordid battles of political theorists for intellectual
victories and argumentative triumphs are of very secondary importance.
One or two of the Delegates went to the green room between the scenes
to discover how far the new order of Society was satisfying to the
artists. One of the chief of these was asked if he experienced as much
sympathy and appreciation from the new type of audience as the old, and
whether he liked singing to the new as well as to the old. He replied
that to him the social position of the members of his audience did not
matter; that the mere appendages of the old-time theatre, the dresses,
the fans, the flowers and other fripperies meant nothing at all; that
understanding and sympathy were everything to the singer, and that in
these things, there was no difference between the old and the new.
The audiences were certainly very attentive and most appreciative.
They were composed in the main of quiet working folk and professional
men and women. There were very few good clothes, but everybody was
neat and tidy except about the feet. The only thing I noticed which
seemed to indicate that many in the audience were new to the music
was the applause when the curtain descended and before the orchestra
finished. The “clappers” were reproved by the more instructed part of
the audience, and will probably learn in time to respect the music till
the end. And anyhow, I have seen in London theatres exhibitions of bad
manners from people who fussed with their hats and cloaks during the
last moments of the play or concert, infinitely harder to endure than
the premature enthusiasm of the new opera-goers in Petrograd.
Certain nights at the Opera and theatre are reserved for soldiers and
sailors, certain others for Trade Unionists and other workers, and the
remainder are for the general public. The public pay for their places,
the workers go in free. The tickets are distributed to them in turn
through their organisations. So great is the demand for tickets that
many people are able to sell theirs at double the price, which they
frequently do, preferring the extra money to the music; whilst cunning
speculators buy up quantities of tickets and make a profitable deal
with them.
But the outstanding fact remains: That Opera and the best music and
plays are accessible to all, free to most, and that Art is tenderly
nurtured under the Soviet administration.
Artists are able to command big salaries in roubles, which, however,
are not really big salaries when compared with those offered by
foreign syndicates. Chaliapine, we were told by a Commissar, is able
to earn two hundred thousand roubles in one night. But when it is
borne in mind that ten thousand roubles can be bought for an English
pound and that £20 is the nightly sum commanded by one of the greatest
singers who ever lived, it is not so outrageous a reward as the little
Commissar appeared to think. It is, of course, very large when compared
with the two thousand to eight thousand roubles which (in round
figures) is the salary scale per month of the Trade Unions of Russia.
Sometimes the artists are paid in kind. The men and women who sang and
danced for our entertainment at the dinner in Petrograd were paid in
white flour, a much valued commodity; and were paid well.
During the big interval in the first opera in Moscow, a performance
of “Prince Igor,” an interesting thing happened: Trotsky came into
the anteroom to see the Delegates. We all crowded round him eager to
have the latest news from the Polish front from which he had just come
and to which he was immediately returning. He had to tell of great
victories over the Poles, and spoke with magnificent confidence of
overwhelming success to the Red armies.
Trotsky made his name and fame in Europe as the greatest of pacifists
and anti-militarists; but not in the garb of St. Francis did he enter
our midst!
Physically he is a remarkably fine-looking man; a Jew, dark and keen,
with penetrating eyes, and a quiet manner suggestive of enormous
reserves of strength. He was in an officer’s uniform, which fitted him
extremely well. When one of the Delegates was presented to him as a
conscientious objector who had served a term in prison for his faith,
he turned quickly and said, though not unkindly: “We can have nobody
here who preaches peace and wants to stop the war.”
The bell rang, and with Trotsky in our midst we re-entered the box, the
late Czar’s place in the vast theatre. Trotsky took his place in the
middle of the front row. I occupied the seat next to him on his right,
and so was in a position to see everything that happened. As soon as
the great audience caught a glimpse of Trotsky it rose like one man,
and with wild enthusiasm applauded its hero again and again. Naturally
we rose with the rest to pay our respects to the man who was leading in
his country’s battles and winning all the time. The cheers doubled and
trebled. People shouted themselves hoarse. It was the most spontaneous
thing I have ever seen. It was wonderful! And then a great burly sailor
in the first gallery sprang to the front and led both orchestra and
audience in the singing of “The Internationalé.” It was the one great
occasion on which we joined in the singing of this overworked ditty
with real and undiluted pleasure. This was because it was a natural
bursting into song of a great gathering standing to welcome its
conquering hero. It was a fine occasion.
Trotsky speaks only a very little English, but his French is fluent and
he was well understood. I should think he is very fond of music, for he
gave the closest and most serious attention to the performance.
At one point in the performance there came a tender love-scene.
“There,” said Trotsky turning to me and speaking in English for the
first time, “is the great international language.”
“Yes,” I replied, “you are right. But there is also another--Art. These
two great international languages of Love and Art will unite the world
in peace and happiness at last.”
I should think Trotsky is a man of throbbing vitality and of strong
feeling; once of splendid vision. The banner of international peace
and good-will on the basis of those principles afterwards adopted by
President Wilson, raised by Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk and since trampled
upon by the militarists of the world, marked him then a man of superb
ideals. He failed at Brest-Litovsk as Wilson failed at Paris. Only when
the nations dream them can such dreams as these come true.
The Art Theatre in Moscow is supposed to stand alone in lofty
pre-eminence amongst the world temples of Art. Men and women have come
from the four corners of the world to see how the work there is done.
We saw an old Russian drama enacted here, “Czar Feodor.” It was done
in the Russian language, but so perfect was the acting that the story
unfolded itself easily before our eyes; and, so far as an understanding
of the characters was concerned, we did not need the few notes in
English courteously supplied to us by the management.
It is a small theatre, without ornamentation of any kind. The audience
suggested a meeting of the Fabian Society in type, the middle-class
intellectual predominating. From beginning to end there was no
applause. It is the custom. Such fine art neither needs nor desires
noisy approval. So exacting is the service of Art here that the Czar
himself would not have been admitted before the interval had he been so
discourteous as to come late.
There is another little theatre in Moscow some of us visited, which is
developing along new lines, and which is leading a revolt against the
old, dramatic forms. Here we saw a perfect riot of extravagant colour
and design on Futurist lines. It was a mad story, madly told. Not to
this place would the weary worker come after a day’s hard toil, unless
the orgy of colour, the almost savage tilting at everything normal and
conventional in stage-life and stage-production could contribute to
the stimulation of tired nerve and body. The first impression was of a
madhouse. On second thoughts we rather liked it. Finally, we rejoiced
to know that the amiable Director is bringing his company to London as
soon as matters can be satisfactorily arranged.
It was eleven o’clock when we left this theatre, but still fresh and
fit we drove to a large house in a distant part of Moscow which was
the home of a Russian countess, but at present is called the Palace
of Arts, a club for intellectuals of the front rank. The countess is
graciously permitted the use of two or three rooms in the building,
but the rest is open to the members of the club and their guests. We
“happened in” on a very pleasant occasion, the birthday celebration
of one of Russia’s most distinguished living poets, Belmont. A gentle
little man, with grey hair and a pleasant smile, he extended to us the
hand of friendship and bade us welcome in a warm speech. One of us
replied suitably, and we then settled down to listen to the greetings
in their own verse or song of the poet’s brothers and sisters in the
craft. All had something to give him besides their words, a kiss on the
hand or the cheek, or a nosegay of flowers. It was very touching. It
showed us the old Art life of Russia still living in spite of the awful
conditions.
But as we went out I caught sight of a man whose poor knee pushed its
way through his torn garment, a poet whose fine eyes in a sunken face
were full of pain. And in the lobby in front of me as I prepared to
descend the grand old staircase was a woman in sables, though the night
was hot, whose feet were bound in slippers of felt.
We drove home in the early morning, the last light of sunset contending
with the first streaks of dawn. And I could not help wishing that the
Communists would ask the lady of the house to step out of her rooms in
the basement and consent to act as gentle hostess to these young and
enthusiastic worshippers of Art who assembled nightly in her house.
The next day I discussed with a young, curly-headed Communist whose
English was better than my own the wonders of art in Moscow.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “We were never able to have anything like that in
London. It cost too much. And the cheap seats were always full. It is
very fine indeed. But let me whisper something,” and here he gave a
half-rueful, mischievous smile, “it would be good to see and hear dear
old George Robey again!”
CHAPTER VII
The Military Power of Russia
It is fondly to be hoped that when these words come to be printed,
peace between Russia and Poland will have been satisfactorily
established. The need of Europe and the world for a real peace and
the awful possibilities of the alternative ought to be the subject of
everybody’s prayer and the impulse to everybody’s endeavour until peace
becomes an accomplished fact.
The situation as it now stands is this. The Russians have everywhere
defeated the Poles, as they told us they would, and are threatening to
move on Warsaw. The Poles have cried to the Allies for help. The Allies
have sent a note to Russia asking for an armistice between Russia
and Poland on certain well-defined terms. The Russians have replied
carefully, expressing a desire for peace, but requesting the Poles
themselves to sue for it, and promising them better terms than the
Allies themselves suggest in the matter of their boundary line.
The territory claimed by the Poles and for which they entered upon
this foolish and wicked adventure is an area of about four hundred
square miles, containing a population which is not ten per cent Polish.
The remaining ninety per cent do not wish to belong to the Polish
Empire. The claim of the Poles to this territory is of the shadowiest
description and dates back to the time when the United States of
America was still a part of the British Empire. Undoubtedly, the claim
upon this land rests upon the ambition of the Poles to make it a
jumping-off ground for an imperialist adventure which would establish
Polish rule from Warsaw to Odessa. No Russian Government, whatever its
name or quality, would accept such an arrangement, and it is the most
natural thing in the world that the insolent campaign of Poland should
have united behind the Soviet Republic every section of the Russian
populace.
Although morally and legally in the right, and full of indignation at
the unworthy part played by certain European statesmen and soldiers in
the business, who have either openly or covertly, helped and encouraged
the Poles, the Russian Government has repeatedly made efforts to
conclude peace, and has offered to concede much of the Poles’
outrageous claim in order to secure it. The Russians need so sorely to
get on with their work of internal reconstruction that only the most
stupid blunderer could for a moment imagine they were eager for spoils
and conquests. The last offer, which was made months ago, was to accept
for an armistice the lines now occupied by the terrified Poles; but it
was refused. The Allies were requested to temper the rapacity of Poland
and help forward peace, but no attention was paid to this appeal. And
now the victorious Russians are requested to stop fighting, to make
peace on terms prepared for them by interested outsiders who have
helped their foes, or to prepare to have brought against them the armed
power of Great Britain and, it may be, the rest of the Allies. It is a
preposterous situation, in which only the Russians occupy a position of
credit. The invocation of the League of Nations by Great Britain, after
the League had remained silent, whilst one of its members, Poland,
played the pirate, has brought still greater contempt upon that poor
ghost of the thing designed to help mankind.
One’s whole sympathy is with the Russians. By every precedent
established by history, by the precedent of every government engaged in
the recent war, Russia would be entitled to march on and bid the Allies
do their worst. But the best friends of Russia must hope that she will
avoid the bad example of the rest of Europe and, in spite of great and
sore temptation, choose the better way.
When we were in Moscow, we noted the passionate longing of the people
for peace. It was clear that the majority of the men in power also
wanted peace. But a minority existed which was totally indifferent to
peace, whilst a few were glad of the war, since it united the masses of
the population behind the extremer Communists at the head of the State.
The policy towards Poland will depend upon which of the sections gets
its way. If the moderate men win, the armistice will be concluded, and
the terms will be generous. If the others gain the day, the war will go
on until Poland consents to reform her Government on Bolshevist lines.
In such case Lemberg and Warsaw will be occupied and the bourgeois
population may suffer a hard fate.
But what an opportunity presents itself for reversing the thinking
world’s judgment of the men who are managing Russian affairs; or if not
quite reversing it, of modifying it! For the choice of peace on fair
terms will prove the Bolshevik commanders superior in international
morals to any European Government engaged in the recent war. A
government capable of such self-control and a people capable of such
self-denial would go down into history as marking a new epoch. There
would be a new faith in idealism born to Europe, which would help to
undo the cruel wrong to Faith and Hope dealt by the treaties miscalled
of Peace.
Our experience of Russia fills us with mingled fear and hope. During
the last two and a half years of bitter fighting the Russian Government
has trained and equipped a magnificent army. Its navy is utterly
devoted to it. In a sense the Revolution is the child of the navy, for
the sailors brought the thing to birth. It is not possible to estimate
the exact number of men in the active forces, but it is very large
indeed, and it is a very different army from the ragged, ignorant,
ill-equipped forces of the Czar, cheated and abused by corrupt generals
and politicians.
In Petrograd we witnessed an enormous display of Reserve Troops,
numbering not less than fifty thousand, in the Uritzky Platz, which
is the new name given to the great square opposite the Winter Palace.
Accompanying these troops were machine guns and much of the regular
paraphernalia of war. The uniforms were smart and the men were well
shod. Two similar displays in Moscow took place, the one chiefly of
young officers in training, the other of fully trained officers about
to leave for the Polish front. The oath which these men took in public,
and in the presence of the British Delegation, is translated as follows:
“1. I, son of the working people, citizen of the Soviet Republic, take
upon myself the name of a warrior of the Labour and Peasant Army.
“2. Before the working classes of Russia and of the whole world I
undertake to carry this name with honour, to follow the military
calling with conscience and to preserve from damage and robbery the
national and military possessions as the hair of my head.
“3. I pledge myself to submit strictly to revolutionary discipline and
to fulfil without objection every command issued by authority of the
Labour and Peasant Government.
“4. I undertake to abstain from and to deter any act liable to
dishonour the name of citizen of the Soviet Republic; moreover, to
direct all my deeds and thoughts to the great aim of liberation of all
workers.
“5. I pledge myself to the defence of the Soviet Republic in any danger
or assault on the part of any of her enemies at the first call of the
Labour and Peasant Government, and undertake not to spare myself in the
struggle for the Russian Soviet Republic, for the aims of Socialism and
the Brotherhood of Nations to the extent of my full strength and of my
life.
“6. Should this promise be broken, let my fate be the scorn of my
fellows. Let my punishment be the stern hand of revolutionary law.”
If one may judge by appearances, by the expression of their faces, by
the brisk march and the smart response to the word of command, by their
bright smiles and thundering cheers, the Red Army at least is well
content to serve the present Government. And it is not by any means
solely because life, except for those in the front lines of battle,
is more assured than for the rest of the population. True it is that
the army receives first attention. It is well-clothed, it receives one
hundred per cent of the food it needs; the small supply of medicines
goes to the troops; but this is the simplest wisdom. The _moral_ of the
Red Army is drawn from its patriotism, and whatever Government were
in power, provided it showed itself true to the people and able for
defence, it would make no difference to the soldiers if the enemy were
thundering at the gate.
Besides the ordinary Reserve Troops, we witnessed a great parade of
the Armed Workers’ Militia. Every industrial worker between the ages
of eighteen and forty has to undergo compulsory military training
of two-hour drills twice a week. In the parade we saw were included
metal workers, building trade workers, railway workers, transport
workers and distributors of food; women workers, university graduates,
technicians, and a variety of others. It took four solid hours for them
to pass a given point at a quick march. There were at least forty
thousand workpeople, of whom twelve thousand were active members of
the Communist party. In addition, there were hundreds of Boy Scouts,
hundreds of Girl Guides, hundreds of women. The women generally marched
in separate detachments, and carried no arms; but in many cases they
were actually marching with the men and dressed in uniform. We were
informed they were there at their own special request that they might
be trained as soldiers. There were one or two companies of nurses in
uniform. On being asked as they passed the stand where the British
Delegation stood if they were prepared, they shouted back gleefully:
“We are prepared.”
And finally, semi-military and gymnastic training is given to the
school children. This all shows a great nation of one hundred and
twenty-five millions of people going through a process of rapid
militarisation which may one day breed menace to the rest of Europe
unless understanding can be reached and maintained. At Kazan, eighty
thousand splendidly trained troops were got ready for our inspection;
and all along the line it was the same.
The unwisdom of encouraging this to go farther by constant attacks from
outside is dawning upon the mind of the world at last; but to revert
once more to the fear felt by some of the Delegation and expressed
in these pages more than once, the question is this: Has it or has
it not gone too far already? Has the evident pride in their new Red
Army already bitten deep into their souls, so that every fresh victory
adds a glory to it? A boy with a knife wants to whittle something.
Is it certain that even peace-loving Russians may not be willing to
allow their brave men to advance from one conquest to another in the
hope, either of making their country feared and respected by the other
Powers, or in the still larger hope of accomplishing by this means the
world-revolution of which their leaders dream?
The education of the army at the front is a wonderful thing. The
political staff there includes amongst its personnel of eight
hundred, artists, writers, printers and teachers. University courses
are provided which include instruction in all branches of civil
reconstruction. It is contemplated employing many of these soldiers in
the Labour Army when the military war is over, and until the economic
foundations of the country are re-established. At Smolensk there is
a school of drama, always an important part of Russian educational
schemes.
Twelve thousand Communists, specially chosen, the very pick of the
party, have been drawn from responsible administrative posts and sent
to the front to receive special instruction in Red Cross work. This
drastic disturbance of so many people’s lives, and of the valuable
constructive work of the State, is explained and justified on the
ground that the work at the front may be long, perhaps twelve months,
as they have to “get through to Germany.” It has been obvious for a
long time to all but the unimaginative men who hold the destinies
of Europe in their hands that this threat about getting through to
Germany is not a light and foolish boast, but part of the extremists’
plan. Should the moral temperature in Germany be pressed much below
zero, the German junkers might reasonably hope to find a way out by
imitating the Russian Czarist officers and throwing in their lot with
the half-million Communists of Germany who would join themselves to the
victorious armies of Trotsky.
For the fact is that almost all the higher commands are held in Russia
by officers of the old regime. General Baltiski, commanding the Volga
area, spoke quite frankly of the open and unequivocal acceptance by
these old soldiers of the new Government, so disgusted were they with
the old. We were informed that these men and the new working-class
officers were working well together, and that the discipline of the
army was daily improving.
It is suggested in some quarters that the old officers are acting with
Machiavellian cunning, and joining the Red Army in order to undo it
at some favourable opportunity. I must confess that in long talks with
generals and admirals I was not able to detect the slightest evidence
that this was even remotely true. But if it were, their chances of this
are small indeed. To every regiment is attached a regimental political
Commissar. Of the Revolutionary War Council two members represent the
Army along with the Commander-in-Chief, and to act with him there are
two political members of the Council. Put quite simply, the chief
business of the two political members of the Revolutionary Council is
to watch the Chief Commander; the chief business of each political
agent is to note the behaviour of the commander of his regiment.
These political agents have to watch military operations, but are not
supposed to interfere with purely military business even in the event
of an alteration of plans. If a serious matter, or what he regards
as serious, or mysterious, arises in connection with the conduct of
the Commanding Officer, the political agent is supposed to report the
matter only. But if it is obviously _very_ serious, he frequently takes
the responsibility of acting, even to the point of suspending the
commander, or of having him shot in a clear case of treachery to the
Republic. The danger of this power lies in the fact that the political
agent is usually a keen Communist but often an ignorant man, and
in that other indisputable fact: that every utterance which implies
criticism of the Government, its principles or its policy, is regarded
as counter-revolutionary by the Government’s agents.
Discipline in the Red Army is of the most severe kind, stricter than
in the old army, stricter than in most armies, particularly strict for
Communist soldiers. For neglecting their duties or muddling orders men
are frequently shot. To the Commander-in-Chief, Trotsky, life is very
cheap, they say. I wonder if that is the reason why so many people,
including many Communists, spoke of the one-time pacifist as “that
beast Trotsky”?
CHAPTER VIII
Education and Religion
The Communists have placed at the head of their Education Commissariat
a man of remarkable character and great ability. Before we went to
Russia reports concerning Lunacharsky had encouraged us to the belief
that in him we should meet a genuine benefactor of his country. As
a matter of fact I did not meet him at all, as he was not in Moscow
at the time of our visit, but travelling in the south on business
connected with his department.
Friends of his in Moscow discussed him with us and spoke of the
incessant, obvious turmoil of a mind wrestling with two ideals, the
one leading him back to the imaginative, romantic, anarchist system
of a world of the past, with its leisured class and intellectual
aristocracy; the other compelling him to the necessity of bringing
organisation and discipline to bear in order to carry out a programme
of general communisation in education and educational ideal. That he
does not allow himself to be completely subdued by the dominating
Communist passion for disciplined classification and routine, is shown
in the fact that he is said to be an advocate in education of what
might be described as “Luciferism”--his own word; by which he means the
habit of challenging authority, wherever it shows itself.
Moreover, the Communist Government has thought fit to encourage the
artistic proclivities of the Russian people, and Art is by nature
explosive and rebellious.
In Russia the theatre, the concert, dancing, drawing and the rest of it
come under the control of the Minister of Education, as one department
of his branch of work. Almost every school or children’s colony of any
size has its theatre. Self-expression through the body is in every way
encouraged.
In Petrograd, education is in charge of a lady whose name is Lilina.
She is the wife of Zinoviev, the founder, with Balabanov, of what
is known as the Third International, and, I believe, its present
secretary. She is a brisk little woman, of medium height, with a rather
hard face but capable manner. She spoke French with great fluency, but
no English. We spent an interesting half-hour in her room in the great
Education Office before proceeding to inspect some of the schools.
It was stated that in Russia education is free and compulsory for all
children up to the age of seventeen, and that food, clothing and
school materials are supplied gratis. University education is open to
all, and maintenance allowances are granted to workmen and others who
may wish to take the University course but whose means are limited.
They must show capacity and be prepared to serve the State--two
perfectly reasonable conditions.
But a single drive through the city taught us that these regulations
are not universally complied with. On one occasion, I believe it was
during the drive to the Putiloff Works on the extreme edge of the city,
I observed considerable numbers of young children between the ages of
five and fifteen playing in the streets or in the doorways of houses. I
asked Madame Balabanov, who was with us, if she could explain this.
“I thought education in Russia was compulsory, and yet I see
innumerable children everywhere during school hours. Can you explain
it?” was my query.
“Oh, yes,” was the quick reply, “on account of your blockade we are
without the necessary materials. We are short of desks, of pens and
pencils, of books, even of school buildings. Until trade is resumed
with other countries we cannot accommodate all our children with the
things they need.”
“Do the parents appear to be anxious to have their children educated?”
I asked, specially interested in everything that concerned education.
“Have you any difficulty with them?”
“Yes, we have. Many of them do not yet understand the value of
education nor the wisdom of compulsion in the matter. We are slowly
educating the parents to keep the law. When there are enough schools
for the children we shall bring great pressure to bear on the parents.”
The schools we visited in Petrograd were three, and included one said
to be the best in the city. Considering the limited resources of the
authorities it was certainly very good. There was a fine school-house,
fairly well equipped, in which the children took their meals. We sat
down to a typical lunch. We had a large plate of vegetable soup,
followed by a herring and brown bread, with a rather dry and hard piece
of cake and thin coffee to follow. The children are not given coffee,
but the rest of the food we were assured was their customary diet. It
was much better than most meals eaten by the people of Petrograd.
The children slept in a separate building, the boys in one part and the
girls in another. The little beds had a very attractive look, ranged in
their white rows; but a close look here and there revealed a pathetic
improvisation, with such inadequate materials as they had, to meet the
needs of the little pupils.
The children themselves were with their teachers in the large garden,
and very happy and brown they looked. They were utterly fearless of us,
and wound their arms round our waists and kissed us on the cheek with
the freedom and confidence of people who have learnt to expect nothing
but kindness from their fellow-mortals.
It was in this school I saw M. Kerensky’s small son, and it was a great
pleasure to be able to report to his father that the little fellow
looked well and happy.
The second school was not nearly so good. Here the children had a very
ill and underfed appearance. But nothing was seen to indicate that
the very best possible was not being done for them. This also was a
school in the country environs of Petrograd. The third place was for
the special treatment of defective children. A clinic was shown us with
a certain just pride, where skilled scientists devote themselves to
the study and treatment of the imbecile, making an attempt to follow
the splendid lead of certain of the United States physicians in their
treatment of the morally defective as sick and not wicked people.
A very charming feature of the Russian educational system is the
establishment in all parts of the country of boarding-schools for
proletarian children, which they describe as “school colonies.” The
expropriated houses of wealthy persons are being used for this purpose.
The house-buildings have been altered and furnished appropriately,
and the large grounds and park-lands frequently attached serve for
the fresh-air culture of the children, or are turned into farm lands
for the provision of milk and other suitable produce. Although the
regulations on account of the scarcity forbid milk to children in towns
who have passed the infant years, the rule is most happily broken in
the country where it is possible to break it; but sometimes even in the
country milk is very, very scarce, and I visited one children’s colony
in Samara where the despairing teachers confessed that the children got
practically no milk at all.
At some of these children’s colonies we had most entertaining times
with the children. One little fellow, the musical genius of the
place, gave us one of his original compositions on the piano. I have
already written of the little chap who rattled off his father’s or
his teacher’s pet Communist speech, probably without understanding a
word of it. But at one place, a particularly bright boy of twelve or
thirteen put us to shame by demanding to know why the English workers
were fighting the Russian workers, and why we were trying to starve
Russian children with our blockade. This same lad ringingly demanded
that we should “go home and tell the British workmen to turn their
rich people into the streets.”
And here is my sole, real quarrel with the sincere and devoted
educationists of Russia. The great outstanding purpose of their
ordinary education is to teach Communism. They declare this in their
manifestos. The education system has its truly beautiful artistic side,
and so long as that is not stultified the soul of Russia is safe; but,
for the most part, the Russian system is utilitarian, with, I repeat,
Communism as its ultimate purpose, the making of Communists its goal.
I could quote extensively from Communist sources to prove this, as to
prove other matters; and there are those Socialists who would justify
it. But I have been interested in education all my life, and I feel
very strongly that it is a wrong to a child to bend its mind towards
any special theories, Communist or other. To teach a child to read and
write; to think and observe; to sift and weigh evidence; to create in
it a love of beauty and a passion for truth; to develop in it gracious
manners and a consideration for others--this it seems to me is the
whole of the law and the prophets so far as educational ideal is
concerned.
It may be taken as a general rule, however, that in Bolshevist Russia
the children are given very serious consideration. After the needs of
the army have been served come those of the children. The army very
naturally gets 100 per cent of its needs in food satisfied. Then come
the children, who are better fed than the adults, which means in fact
that a very large part of the adult population of the towns gets not
more than 25 per cent of its needs in food unless it can supplement
the ordinary Government rations. A modification of this appalling
state of things lies in the fact that part of a man’s wage is paid in
kind, and that in addition to his roubles he gets food. Otherwise, the
extravagant nonsense of prejudiced newsmongers might come true, and
corpses be found lying about the streets of Moscow and Petrograd.
A noteworthy and admirable feature of the educational system is the
school for Adult Education. These schools are springing up everywhere.
It is realised that the greater part of the Russian people are
illiterate, and the defect is sought to be remedied by giving the
older folk opportunities of attending all sorts of evening classes.
We visited one of these adult evening schools, and saw grown men and
women with young people and children join together in singing, dancing
and dramatic performances; saw their sewing and their painting, their
sculpture and their design; and without being a Communist one could
heartily congratulate those who were responsible for bringing so much
light and happiness into the lives of men and women for whom these
good things had been unattainable in the past.
The perfect pleasure of this occasion was once more marred by one of
those incidents, become painfully numerous by this time. I was asked by
a young Communist if I would take a letter to his relative in Berlin:
“But please,” he said, “I will not hand it to you openly or it would be
necessary to explain and there might be trouble.” How I got the letter,
I shall not disclose; but I handed it to its owner in the hotel in
Berlin, who rejoiced with mingled tears and smiles to learn that her
loved one was alive and well.
The education of village children is at present, even in design, more
modest and less complete than that of town children. It is carried on
during the winter months only, as the children are required for field
work in the summer; and it is given to children between the ages of
eight and thirteen only. Some day it is hoped to educate everybody, but
the official estimate of the number of children actually in receipt of
education is about 25 per cent of the whole. This is probably a very
generous estimate, as is the estimate that two million children are
being housed and fed at the expense of the State in children’s boarding
schools and colonies. If the statement which was made to us is even
approximately true, that one child in three in Russia is without either
one parent or both, it is a sad reflection on modern civilisation,
and should be an added spur to the resolve to make peace as soon as
possible so that no more children may be orphaned.
The State has taken religious teaching out of the schools, which, to
men and women in England who have seen in the quarrels of sectarians
a real barrier to progress in education, may have some merit in it.
But the Communists have gone further. The use of the word God is
forbidden to the teachers. Holy pictures and ikons are not supposed
to be used, but actually are used, and the authorities do not think
it wise to interfere. At the head of almost every little bed in the
children’s dormitories was a picture of Jesus or of the Holy Mother;
in the Putiloff Works large ikons stood, some covered up it is true,
but others undraped. The view of the Communist leaders on this matter
is well-expressed in their manifestos. They declare that “religion was
one of the means by which the bourgeoisie maintained their tyranny
over the working masses; that the Russian Communist party must be
guided by the conviction that only the realisation of class-conscious
and systematic social and economic activity of the masses will lead
to the disappearance of religious prejudices.” They declare that
“the aim of the party is finally to destroy the ties between the
exploiting classes and organisations for religious propaganda, at
the same time helping the working class actually to liberate its mind
from religious superstitions, and organising on a wide scale secular
and anti-theological propaganda. It is, however, necessary to avoid
offending religious susceptibilities of believers which leads only to
the strengthening of religious fanaticism.”
The last phrase explains, doubtless, why there is no interference with
attendance at church; and it is certainly to be noted that the churches
are crowded to the doors and, apparently, most of the time. Some hope
and believe that the separation of State and Church and the obligation
placed upon believers to maintain their own churches out of their
own pockets will have this good effect at least: that the quality of
religious preaching will improve and the standard of the ministry be
raised. If the poor duped populace can be successfully delivered from
the brigandage and trickery of unscrupulous and avaricious priests, of
whom there has been a great host in the past, it will be a benefit not
only to the suffering people but to the cause of true religion itself.
And what I describe as “true religion,” the living spirit of goodness
in the hearts and minds of men, is growing in the very land where God
is regarded as counter-revolutionary and banished, officially, as a
traitor to mankind. Not by the decrees of Lenin nor of any other
person will that which is rooted in the nature and needs of men be cast
out--the need of worship and the aspiration after the ideal.
The Communists realise that “Logicians may reason about abstractions
but the great mass of men must have images,” to this extent, at least,
that they have placed in every school and public building portraits
and busts of Karl Marx and Lenin. The only time some of us saw Lenin
he was sitting for the sculptor, who was busy preparing his new graven
image! And whether they realise it or not, it remains the fact that the
Communists have not destroyed religion. They have simply changed the
creed. And for the Inquisition, with its thumb-screws and its flaming
faggots, the Extraordinary Commission supplies an adequate substitute!
CHAPTER IX
Off to Moscow
Off to Moscow at last, the city of our dreams! I have not told one
half of our adventures in Petrograd. It is not possible to do so. The
tour of the great Putiloff Works was of enormous interest, and may
be referred to in a later part of the narrative. Our visit to the
gloomy fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul at midnight had a mournful
fascination for those who have steeped themselves in the lore of the
martyrs of the Revolution. The old keeper of the cells is still there,
impassive and unresponsive as a man of such responsibilities might well
be, as quietly content to serve the new order as the old, human enough
to be pleased that no one occupied his quarters at the time of our
visit. We saw the large, damp, gloomy cells, twice as big as the cells
of an English prison, whose sole claim to comfort lay in the provision
in each cell of running water and a sanitary convenience. These things
were not, of course, in the punishment cells, which were entirely dark
and partly under water. The high-walled, narrow gully, where prisoners
were taken to be shot, from which no sound could penetrate to the
outer world, sent thrills of cold horror down our backs. The ingenious
methods of torture made us physically sick. Altogether it was a
gruesome experience, unrelieved of its sad associations by the humorous
writings on the wall of British prisoners temporarily incarcerated on
suspicion of promoting counter-revolutionary activity.
Off to Moscow! The city of golden domes and spires! So different from
Peter the Great’s city of the marshes, new and splendid though that is,
with the broad Neva to add to its beauty.
The same comfortable train took us there in thirteen hours. Usually it
takes longer; but orders had come through that we must be in Moscow
by noon the day following, and we were there to a minute. The crowds
which met us in the railway station and lined the approaches to the
station beggar description, both for their size and the warmth of
their reception. Here was an open-hearted, generous lot of people, to
whom we felt drawn from the very first minute. It did not take long
to sense a difference between these folk and those we had just left.
There was less of strain and torment here, more of human jolliness
and kindliness; less of the burning fever of revolution, more of its
constructive hope.
The representatives of the Soviets and the Trade Unions met us. The
bands played merrily, the flags and banners waved briskly and gleamed
brightly. The usual speeches of welcome were made and properly
acknowledged. And then we left in the fleet of motor-cars provided for
us to the large and commodious Hotel Delavoy Dvor, a whole floor of
which had been devoted to our use. Special passes were handed to us
at the station which admitted us to all the public buildings of the
Government, and we prepared ourselves for a useful and strenuous time.
The hotel in which we were lodged was a modern business men’s place
taken over by the Government with the rest of Moscow’s great public
buildings. It stands at the entry to a large square and is within a
good stone’s throw of the Kremlin. Our quarters were very comfortable,
almost luxurious, with substantial furnishings and good beds; but
alas for the scriptural injunction: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the
terror by night nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness!” A
new “Red Army” left its trail of blood along our pillows, one which,
after the first night, drove us from our beds to the refuge of the
more comfortable sofas. I give my word, there are more crawling things
in that Moscow hotel than I had imagined were contained in the whole
universe! Not in ones, nor twos, but in battalions, they came, making
the night hideous. Soon their slain bodies began to make effective
patterns upon the wall-paper; but they had the advantage of numbers and
we were compelled to yield to superior forces, and give up the attempt
to annihilate them.
Moscow is indeed the real Russian city, semi-oriental in type. The
number of its churches is amazing, and their vari-coloured domes and
cupolas glittered beautifully in the hot, bright sun. The streets
were in fairly good condition, and were much cleaner than we had been
led to expect, or than the streets of some other towns which were
visited. The people here looked under-nourished, as in Petrograd, but
there was more spring in their gait, less misery in their mien. Sober,
stolid, unemotional, indifferent, they spent little time in looking at
us beyond the tops of our boots, which in their shockingly bootless
condition were the things which interested them most. Sometimes
they frowned at our cars when these scattered dust all over them or
threatened to run them down.
The open markets of Moscow present a very interesting spectacle.
Private trading has not been abolished. It has only been driven into
the streets. Almost all the shops have been closed; all the big ones.
The lively appearance of the streets in most big cities is due to the
brightly dressed shop-windows, displaying tempting stores of goods of
all sorts. All this side of life has vanished. There are the Soviet
Stores, the Co-operative Stores and the displays of peasant arts and
crafts; but these present no attractive appearance and the goods
supplied tend towards standardisation, the thing which robs shopping of
half its joys. Besides these there are small shops selling those goods
which are not Government monopolies, such small wares as bootlaces,
pins; certain fruits and flowers; agricultural products such as eggs,
milk, potatoes, carrots, green vegetables and pork. Bread, both black
and white, is on sale, the black bread at 400 roubles and the white at
1000 roubles a pound.
I paid a visit to the Moscow markets on several occasions for the
purpose of discovering market prices, and actually bought eggs at 150
roubles each, flowers (peonies) at 400 roubles each blossom, sour milk
at 130 roubles a tumblerful (half a pint) and small cucumbers at 140
roubles each. In addition I discovered that the price of potatoes in
the open market was 130 roubles a pound and horseflesh from 460 to 600
roubles a pound. The average wage of an unskilled labourer in Moscow is
about 2000 roubles per month. The average wage of a good skilled worker
is not more than 4000 roubles a month. It is true that an addition is
made to the value of the wage by the gift of one good meal, and in
some special circumstances, of two meals a day. But it is also true
that the Government ration is only half what the people require for
health and that men and women must perforce buy in the open market or
go without necessary food. According to the prices and wages ruling in
Moscow at the present time, the money wage of a very well-paid skilled
worker, 4000 roubles a month, would buy ten pound loaves of black bread
or four pound loaves of white bread; about seven pounds of horseflesh,
twenty-seven fresh eggs or twenty-four pints of milk (at 180 roubles a
pint), and so on. Naturally, he must go without these things and do his
best to eke out a living on Government supplies.
There are rows of shaded booths in the marketplace, with regular
salesmen and women in attendance; but most of the trading is done by
individuals without stalls, refined and gentle folk, bourgeois many
of them, coming in the lowest categories for food, untrained in work
for the most part, and keeping soul and body together by selling
one by one articles of clothing or pieces of jewellery to whoever
will buy. Speculators haunt the place, and buy the most valuable
jewels and clothes for a mere song, re-selling to others, sometimes
peasants, in exchange for food, sometimes foreign profiteers out for
big fortunes. As private trading is against the law, in theory at
least, the Government sends periodically its emissaries to sweep down
upon the offenders, and a poor man or unhappy woman is sent to prison
for a term in order to deter the rest. Real criminals are sometimes
caught in this fashion, and when their premises are searched are
discovered to have hoards of valuable trinkets, costly clothing and
precious stones for sale at some future time and at fabulous prices
to the “new bourgeoisie,” or the rich peasantry, able to buy with
their agricultural produce, and frantic to possess the things they had
scarcely been allowed to look at before. But very often it is some poor
trembling soul who is famished and cold who is pounced upon, and unused
to the rough ways of the new world goes to her punishment in fear and
trembling, to come out of prison a nervous wreck and shadow of her
former self.
Many of these people we saw, and were filled with pity. Surreptitiously
one would produce a tiny jewelled watch, a magnificent diamond ring,
a costly fur, a beautifully ornamented comb, an exquisite enamel, or
a piece of rare china, looking fearfully at us lest after all we were
_agents provocateurs_ come to tempt before destroying. I have seen
nothing more pitiful in all my life than the struggle of these poor
souls to live.
There appear to be no automobiles in Moscow except those owned and
worked by the Government. Materials for repairs are greatly needed to
keep even these running smoothly. Many times the good cars devoted to
our service broke down. Once when we were thirty versts out of Moscow
at three o’clock in the morning, our car went wrong. Another came
running up alongside. Our driver ran to beg assistance. Instantly he
was covered with a revolver. He stood back sharply and the car drove
on; but not before we had caught a glimpse in the bright moonlight
of one of the occupants. It was Trotsky. Whether he thought we were
seeking his life, or whether he was in a vast hurry and did not wish
to be detained by a broken-down car we shall never know. But there was
more than a slight thrill in the adventure for the man who looked down
the muzzle of that revolver!
The trams were running in Moscow, and they were as crowded as the
London tube railway-carriages at the evening hour during the war. On
every inch where a foothold could be maintained, both inside and out,
people stood or clung. We were told that this happened on the railways
during the winter, with awful consequences to scores of people who
could not be restrained. Under the necessity of travelling, these poor
souls froze to death on the tops of carriages, clinging to footboards
or riding on buffers, their dead bodies being picked up by railway
workers on the line.
The droshky drivers, of whom few are left in Petrograd but many in
Moscow, are a picturesque race of old fellows, with their tall,
broad-brimmed hats, their thick, ample coats with leather or metal
belts, their high boots and profuse whiskers. For a thousand roubles
you might drive a mile or so in a very comfortable little carriage out
of which it would be almost impossible to fall.
There is perfect order in the city streets. By night or by day one can
walk with absolute safety. During the summer months it never really
grows dark. People take long leisure hours in the parks and open spaces
as in every other great city. Or they go to church. One or two open-air
cafés appear to be still in existence patronised in the main by the
old and new bourgeoisie, those of the former class who have not quite
spent their all, and those of the latter class who are spending in this
way for the first time. For one thousand roubles a plate of tolerable
ice-cream can be had, or coffee and cakes. There is little of gaiety,
none of the old café laughter and play. The general gloom pervades
everything.
I have been in both Vienna and Berlin since the overwhelming cataclysm
of the war. Berlin and Vienna are both unhappy cities, filled with
people who are hungry and despairing. Moscow was at least no worse
than these cities, either in appearance or in fact; and in some
respects proved to be better than either. It is crowded with people
and hotel accommodation is difficult to find. Enquirers from the four
corners of the globe are there. Peacemakers from the border states
are there. American, Swedish and other traders are there. Admirers of
Sovietism and worshippers of Lenin have come to bow the knee to the new
lord of the Kremlin.
Moscow is the Government’s headquarters. It is the home of the
Commissars. It is the seat of one of the most amazing experiments the
modern world has seen. It is a place of great interest for the whole
of the watching world. It is the pivot upon which earth-shaking events
will turn. And it deserves to be treated with respect, and not with the
ignorant contempt which stupid people shower upon it.
Mistakes have been made there, cruel things are being done there; but
the mistakes are not bigger nor the cruel things more cruel than have
recently been made and done in other capital cities by men who, for
character and integrity, ability and personality are not fit to tie the
shoe-strings of the best of the men and women of Moscow.
CHAPTER X
An Interview with Lenin
I am not so foolish as to think that one brief interview of an hour
and a half entitles one to be dogmatic about any individual, much
less about the character of Lenin. It is not possible to know anyone
in so short a time. I had read much of what Lenin had written, and
disagreed very profoundly with most of it; but I knew that he had kept
together his Government in circumstances of tremendous difficulty and
discouragement for more than two and a half years. One after another
he and his tireless colleague, Trotsky, had overcome his country’s
enemies, both civil and alien. Koltchak, Denikin, Judenitch, Petliura
and all the great host of lesser foes I had seen go down before the
more terrible hosts of Lenin, and had marvelled, as had the whole world
with me. What sort of man was this Lenin, it was questioned? Was he
man or devil? Whence came his power over the people? What helped and
enabled him to keep all the main forces of his country together and to
sweep, one by one, his enemies out of his path?
We visited him in his room in the Kremlin. Every approach to this room
was guarded by a sentry. We were required to show our passes several
times before we reached the inner sanctum. He received us quietly but
graciously. An artist was engaged upon a bust of him whilst we talked.
He is a small man with a bald head, having a fringe of reddish hair
at the back and a tiny red beard. His mouth is large and his lips
thick; his eyes are red-brown, and possess the merriest twinkle. Do
not, gentle visitor, when you meet the great man fall victim to this
twinkling eye, and make the mistake of thinking it betokens a tender
spirit. I am sure Lenin is the kindest and gentlest of men in private
relationships; but when he mentioned his solution of the peasant
problem, the merry twinkle had a cruel glint which horrified. “Do you
not have a great deal of trouble with the peasants?” he was asked.
“Do they not, as in the rest of Europe, object very strongly to the
communisation of land?”
“Oh, yes,” was the reply, “we have trouble occasionally; but it is with
the rich peasants chiefly. But we soon get over that. We send to the
village a good Communist, who explains to the poor peasant the position
and shows to him how the rich peasant is his enemy, and the poor
peasant does the rest. Ha! ha! ha!”
Lenin’s method with his visitors is clever. He has a most engaging
frankness. He suggests by his manner a more or less confidential
exchange of opinions. But when the interview is over, it is found that
he has told you far less than you have told him.
He impressed me with his fanaticism. This is surely the source of
his driving power. And yet I am told that compared with the really
fanatical Communist Lenin is mildness itself and should be classed with
the “Right.” It was rumoured that he is engaged on a new book to be
given the name “The Infant Diseases of Communism,” or some such title,
which suggests an honest confession of mistakes made in the early days
of the Commune. If this be true there is hope of happiness for Russia
yet. But I must confess, his firm belief in the necessity of violence
for the establishment throughout the world of his ideals makes one
doubt miserably.
He showed a surprising lack of knowledge of the British Labour
Movement. He gave to conscious and intelligent Communism a far larger
place in British politics than can truly be accorded to it, seeing
there is as yet no organised Communist party, but only a handful of
extremists of the older Socialist movements.
When asked why he considered a certain individual to be of importance
in the political world of Great Britain he gave as his reason that the
British Government had arrested her! He did not seem to be aware of the
fact that the policy of the British Government during the war was, as
a rule, to arrest the little people who were without following and let
the bigger folk go free. Scores of examples of this could have been
supplied to him had it been of importance, which was not the case.
Lenin believes that a very tiny Communist group, working upon a mass
of inflammable human beings, suffering from unemployment and hunger,
can make the revolution necessary to establish a new order of society.
He urges all Communists in Great Britain to get together in one party
and work to this end. He appears to think that the British revolution
is imminent. He has no use for the pacifist philosophy of life and
believes that only the working classes should be armed and the rest
disarmed. He looks for a world-revolution in which the toiling masses
shall own and control everything. I do not know from personal speech
his opinion on the Polish business; but I was credibly informed that he
is more or less indifferent to peace and cares little about the raising
of the blockade and the resumption of trade with Great Britain. His
view is simple. Everything that promotes conditions favourable for a
world-revolution is to be approved. The rest matters little.
At the same time, I believe him to be altogether too sane to be ready
to throw away when it offers opportunities of really beginning to
develop the Communist State.
Lenin, like all the Communists, conveys the impression of awful
sureness of himself, of an immovable and overpowering self-confidence.
It is not the smiling self-complacency, the shallow cocksureness of
that very common individual amongst us who is sure that wisdom will die
with him. It is the deadly certainty that he is right and everybody
who differs from him is wrong, of the scholar and fanatic who would
sacrifice his own head as readily as he would sacrifice yours in the
believed interests of the thing he loves. The war has proved the
danger of entrusting the world’s training and the affairs of State to
professors. And Lenin is above all things the keen-brained, dogmatic
professor in politics.
Radek is a different kind of personality. His speech and his movements
are quick. In appearance he is a thin, ascetic-looking man, with
side-whiskers and curly hair, and looks not unlike a picture of an
early Victorian squire. He has long, thin, nervous hands, very eloquent
in gesture. Conversation with him is a monologue, in which he runs on
endlessly from one subject to another, and from one point to another,
anticipating your questions. He deals much in irony, but his large,
pleasant eyes covered with horned spectacles gleam not unkindly whilst
he scorches you with his words. He shows an infinite knowledge of the
Socialist movements of the world, connecting personalities therein
with events in a most marvellous fashion. Like most fanatics he is
intolerant of the opinions of others and uses strong and even abusive
language in dealing with those from whom he differs. He is a shrewd
judge of men and events; but I am convinced that his is the fanaticism
which would run the ship of State upon the rocks if not controlled by
more temperate men.
His great interest is the Third International, an organisation of
Communists who have adopted the dictatorship of the proletariat,
government on the Soviet plan, and revolution by violence as the three
main points in their platform. This International is the rival to
the Second International held at Berne in 1919, three months after
the armistice. Their principal quarrel with the Second International
is the inclusion in it of those Socialists who supported the war and
joined bourgeois governments. These men, they say, deny Socialism, if
not in words, by the implication of their actions, and they can have
nothing to do with such. The Second International also maintains an
old-fashioned belief in political democracy which they declare has
been tested and found wanting.
Communists in Moscow themselves told me that there is little to be
hoped from the Third International as at present constituted; that
it was formed irregularly by a few forceful and domineering men,
who thrust a programme upon it, which they made it accept; that
the representatives of foreign countries who were present at the
initial gathering were not accredited, but were the returned exiles
who happened to be on the spot; and that the insistence of a rigid
discipline within the organisation, whilst it might exclude weak and
wavering societies who would be a weakness and not a strength, would so
restrict its numbers and eventually weary its members that it could not
become effective as it is. These men were themselves in favour of the
world social revolution, so that their criticism is important.
The document sent to this country by the Executive Committee of the
Third International in reply to questions addressed to it by some of
the British visitors will definitely exclude all but the bitterest and
extremest of British Socialists, who for their intellectual sport play
with vast explosive human forces very much as a little child plays
with fire. Since this document is immediately to be published in a
separate volume, and so made available for all who care to read it,
it is unnecessary to quote it at length. Sufficient to say, it follows
the lines already indicated as the plan of action proposed for the
proletarians of the whole world by the Third International sitting in
its Second Conference in Moscow as I write these words.
Dr. Semasco, the People’s Commissar of Public Health is one of the most
admirable and devoted men it has been my lot to meet. Against the most
appalling sanitary conditions left by war, poverty, pestilence and
famine, this heroic doctor is putting up a magnificent fight. He and
his band of gallant helpers have few means with which to work. They are
almost entirely lacking soap and disinfectants, as the needs of the
army must be first supplied and production in these things is almost
at a standstill; but in spite of this, he is doing marvellous things
and rapidly stamping out some of the epidemic diseases which have raged
all over the country. As every town and village in Russia has been, in
a more or less degree, affected by one or another of the plagues of
typhus, small-pox, dysentery, cholera and recurrent fever, the first
line of attack on these things has been through the strict control of
the means of communication. Every train carries its medical staff, and
includes in its make-up a carriage to which discovered cases of actual
or incipient disease can be at once removed and attended to. Control
stations have been placed at fixed points on the lines, and here people
have to undergo compulsory examination, bathing and disinfecting as far
as means will permit.
Besides these measures, a house-cleaning campaign, for which women
have been largely employed, is undertaken at frequent intervals, when
people are made thoroughly to clean the insides and outsides of their
dwellings and their furniture. Stern treatment follows neglect of this
order and the result shows great improvement.
The figures for typhus cases for all Russia for some of the months of
the present year reveal the excellent progress being made.
February 369,859 (civilians)
March 313,624 ”
April 158,308 ”
January 66,113 (army)
February 75,978 ”
March 57,251 ”
April 16,505 ”
Dr. Semasco is a short, spare man, dark in appearance, energetic in
action. He is a stern foe of all alcoholic drinks and is, besides,
an opponent of the smoking habit, both on purely health grounds.
He neither drinks nor smokes himself. He is one of the very few
doctors who are Communists, and has served a term in prison under the
old régime for some inoffensive piece of Socialist activity. It is
impossible properly to judge Russia, after all, without taking into
account its revolutionary history and its inheritance from the past.
The slightest thing was regarded as an offence against the Government
by the stupid Autocracy which has gone, and punished with abominable
severity; such things, for instance, as the teaching of the peasants
to read and write. If there is much to be condemned in the present
suppression of freedom, in common fairness it must be remembered where
the present rulers learnt their lessons in tyranny.
One of the very ablest of the People’s Commissars is the
Acting-Commissar for Ways and Communications, Sverdloff. We travelled
in his company from Nijni-Novgorod to Astrakhan. He it was who kindly
put at our disposal the train _de luxe_ which carried our sick friend
from Saratov to Reval, and whose considerate kindness on the ship
enabled us to save his life.
He is in appearance slight and pale, of Jewish birth, with dark
expressive eyes and rather autocratic manner. He has been many times
in prison for his political faith, although his revolutionary record
appears to have been less lurid than that of his brother who recently
died of the pestilence. He was in exile in America and England for
some years, and studied with acute intelligence American business
methods, particularly American business discipline. He has brought
this knowledge and training to bear upon Russia’s greatest internal
problem--the restoration of her lines of communication. He realises
that these can be fully and quickly restored only by the hardest work
and severest discipline. His colleagues and subordinates he works
eighteen hours a day. When they are disobedient or neglectful in the
slightest degree the punishment is severe. But the work is done, and
the men adore him. An officer of high rank who was five minutes late
to the ship was given twenty-four hours in prison, to be worked off in
his leisure and not in his labour time. Rebellious workmen, loading a
ship with fish in the hot sun at Astrakhan, who struck for a rest were
driven back to their work by Communist sailors with loaded rifles.
These two things I know to be true, for I saw them.
But the importance of his work cannot be exaggerated, and Sverdloff’s
impatience with Soviet interference in industry can be well understood.
People dying for lack of food and medicines cannot wait for the debates
of Committees to decide this or that point in the organisation of
train or steamship communication. Managerial responsibility is the only
way.
Through Sverdloff’s able organisation the whole of the railways
and bridges destroyed by the Koltchak bands have been restored.
Communication with Siberia has been re-established. Fleets of oil-ships
are bringing from Baku millions of poods of oil, so necessary for
railway engines and workshop machinery. And when the economic life of
Russia is fully restored, no small part of the credit must be given to
this extraordinarily able and commanding personality.
There are others of the Communists who might with interest be
described, men like Serada, the Commissar for Agriculture, of blameless
life and lofty idealism; Tchicherine, Commissar for Foreign Affairs,
gentle by nature, artistic by temperament, uncomfortable in the
whirlpool of politics as it seemed to me, and shrinking, sad-eyed,
into nothing with the burden of the office unto which he was not born,
turned tyrant through suffering, the instrument of less admirable men
than himself. Of the able Communist women Madame Colontai was reported
in Kharkoff. Madame Lenin was too seriously ill to be seen. Madame
Trotsky never came to see us, though she was said to be in the Opera
House when her husband made his sudden and dramatic appearance. Madame
Kameneff, who has charge of one department of educational work, is a
charming little lady who gives the impression of great ability joined
to an amiable manner. Of the humbler men and women Communists talked
with I shall have something to say in later chapters.
CHAPTER XI
Talks with Communists and Others
The peasants form more than three-quarters of the population of
Russia, and one of the greatest friends of the peasants, who was also
an intimate of Tolstoy’s, kindly invited three of us to his home, and
came to the hotel to fetch us. His name is Tcherkoff, and for some
years he lived in England as head of a tiny Co-operative Colony near
Bournemouth. He is extremely interested in Co-operation which, in his
view, is the right line of social development, particularly for a
country like Russia. It is said there were eighty-eight million members
of the Russian Co-operative Societies before the war.
An amusing little episode occurred as we prepared to leave the hotel.
A second car was filling with other Delegates, bound to a great
propaganda meeting under the auspices of Madame Balabanov. As this car
left ours behind, Madame Balabanov waved her hand and shouted for all
to hear, pointing at Tcherkoff:
“We are going to life. They are going to death,” which I take it
was her pleasant way of characterising the anti-government, pacifist
philosophy of our friend and host.
Tcherkoff lives with his wife and family in a house on the outskirts
of Moscow. Madame Tcherkoff is a great invalid, and apologised for
not being able to rise from her chair to receive us. She is a gentle
little lady, of very frail and delicate appearance. Her husband is
magnificently tall, grey-haired and pale, with beautiful hands. They
both looked under-nourished. Being non-workers in the Communist sense
they probably come in the lowest category for food. I was told that
they must have died of sheer hunger but for the packets of biscuit
and other food surreptitiously sent to them by unknown peasant
friends. They gave us of their scanty supply of tea, and we had a most
delightful talk.
There were, perhaps, ten persons present, all conscientious objectors
to war in any and every circumstance. A newspaper rumour that one
pacifist member of our Delegation had denied his principles had
sincerely disturbed these good men, who, by the way, included Paul
Birukoff, the biographer of Tolstoy. It was sought to reassure them
on this point, and then we proceeded to ask questions for our own
information.
According to their replies we learnt that though the present Government
is bad, as from their point of view all governments must be,
especially highly centralised ones, this Government was better than the
preceding one, and they would do nothing to add to its difficulties
till better times came.
At the same time they deplored the restrictions upon liberty, which
they declared were more and worse than under the Czars. They spoke
with quiet dignity of the killing of conscientious objectors, of whom
fifteen, personally known to members of this group, and certified by
Tcherkoff’s Committee as genuine objectors, had been shot, some of
them in their cells. Nobody who has come into personal contact with
Tcherkoff would believe for one moment that such a man could lie.
We talked much and long about peace and non-resistance, and our
half-frozen minds melted again under the kindly, human tones of the
voices of gentle dreamers who to the world would seem mad, but whose
way, the way of personal gentleness and kindly toleration, the world
will have to take ultimately if it is to be saved. They sent us away
with cheers and words of blessing; and I, at least, and I think the
others also, felt that we had indeed been blessed.
The Theosophical Society in Petrograd has had its headquarters closed
as being a counter-revolutionary organisation; but in Moscow it still
meets on occasion for the mutual comfort and help of its members. Some
of its people have brought themselves within the law and have paid the
penalty. For giving aid to the Government’s enemies by sheltering an
agent of Koltchak, who was also a personal friend, two members of the
society, one an old woman, have been shot. Technically in the wrong,
one wonders how much of it was ignorance on the part of these unhappy
people, and if the country’s interests would not have been better
served if a warning had been given (with a term of imprisonment if
thought fit) instead of the drastic action that actually was taken.
Amongst those who are not of the Government but are doing nothing to
hinder or hamper it we met Emma Goldman, the famous American anarchist
deportee. For the life of me I was unable to discover why so mild
a little woman should have been sent out of America. Her opinions,
compared with those of the average Communist in Russia, appeared to
be as water is to strong wine. She reminded me of nobody so much as a
typical member of the Women’s Co-operative Guild or of a Woman’s Social
Service Club in the United States. She is certainly not happy where she
is, and ought to be allowed to return if she wishes. She complained
that very many anarchists, known to her, had been shot in Petrograd for
counter-revolutionary activity. She was very bitter about this. It
will come as a shock of surprise to many people to learn that violent
anarchism is not tolerated by the Bolsheviki; not at any rate when
directed against themselves. Anarchism is the negation of the Bolshevik
aim and ideal. I do not know what Emma Goldman’s exact record is. I
only know that to me she seemed a kind, motherly little woman who would
as soon think of cutting off her own nose as throwing a bomb at anybody
else.
Of the humbler folk of the city and of the second rank of Communist
leaders I saw much and learnt greatly from them. It is idle to say
that there are no class divisions in Communist Russia. The differences
may not be so wide, but they are clearly marked. Even the generous
use of the word comrade (_tovarisch_) cannot cover up the fact that
class distinctions exist. The comrades who waited upon us at table
and who looked after our rooms and drove us about in cars were called
_tovarisch_, but I did not observe that the courtesy due to equals was
shown to them. I have never seen servants anywhere treated with less
consideration. They began their work early in the morning, at seven or
eight, and they were frequently working at one and two o’clock the next
morning. People never came at the time they promised to their meals,
and put them to any amount of inconvenience. Drivers were left sitting
on their cars for interminable hours. I never saw any of them thanked
by any Russian in the place. The typists who were sent to serve us were
ordered to eat in a little back kitchen until one of the Delegates
intervened. The waiters on train and ship appeared to be incessantly
on duty. It may of course be the Russian way, and I am bound to say
I heard no complaints. But then one does not question the members of
the household of one’s host about their working conditions. I simply
say that the way in which those who did the hard, unpleasant work were
treated would have sent British domestics on strike in battalions and
left the bourgeois citizens of England servantless.
Two private talks with members of the intelligent rank and file of
Socialism in Russia gave me much light on the situation. One was an
elderly man of very keen understanding who still refused to believe
that human beings would not answer to the reasoned appeal, responding
only to the whiplash of politics. He had been a lifelong revolutionary
and had served many years in Siberia. He was frankly disappointed
in the present Government and deplored many of its tendencies. This
no doubt explained the fact that no position of power is held by
this man, for on grounds of sheer ability and training as well as of
revolutionary ideal he could have been of enormous service. He is a
member of the Communist party, but believes in the obligation of trying
to keep it pure and wholesome through criticism.
“Why are you disappointed with Soviet Russia?” I enquired, eager to be
instructed on the point.
“Chiefly because it is not carrying out Socialism,” was his reply.
“In theory the land is nationalised, in practice we have a system of
peasant proprietorship. In theory classes have been abolished, in
practice there is a new bourgeoisie and a new proletariat springing
up. In theory it is a ‘Peasants and Workers Government,’ in practice
there is no political equality and no democracy; for the peasants,
the biggest part of the population, have only one vote where the
townspeople have five. The peasants are making themselves rich by the
sale of their produce for goods. These they will store until such a
time as they can sell for big prices. They will be the new capitalists.”
“But is not all this inevitable, considering the war and the continued
existence of Capitalism in other countries,” I queried?
“Perhaps. But they must not call it Communism, nor even Socialism. My
quarrel with them is that they misname the thing. It is an autocracy,
with a fresh group of autocrats. It is a bureaucracy very much
like the old one for greed, incompetence and corruption. And if the
personnel were reduced by fifty per cent, the work would be done just
as well.”
I could see he was almost bitter in his disappointment.
“But education will remedy that in time,” I said hopefully.
“I doubt it. The nation is being rapidly militarised. The whole thing
will harden into a system. The ground is being prepared for a new Czar
or a Napoleon. I am full of grave fear for the future.” So the old man
talked.
“Let us hope you are wrong,” I said, and left him to talk to a bright
girl who had called for a good pair of boots I was able to spare.
But I must frankly say that this note was very frequently struck. By
some it was regarded as the way of deliverance; by others, like my old
friend, as the death-knell of all their hopes.
“They ought never to have attempted the experiment,” said another
distinguished servant of the Republic, speaking of the Bolsheviki, “if
they had no more promise of success than this. It was a crime against
the nation, for the Allies would not have made war against a National
Assembly chosen by the whole people, and the people of Russia would now
have been a long way on the road to reconstruction and happiness.”
My girl friend was a Manchester lass who was working in a Soviet
office. I asked her if she was happy, and she looked wistful and said
she was hungry a good deal and that she could “do very well with some
stockings and underclothes,” but that she liked her work, which was
translating, and had no complaints on that score.
“But,” I said, “why don’t you go home? Are you being kept here against
your will?”
“Oh no,” she replied very quickly, “I could go home if I wanted to,
but--” and here a deep, red blush spread over her pretty face and told
me her story without further words. She will not leave until her lover
can come too. As a productive worker he cannot be spared at present. So
the two stay and work and love and hope together.
I find these complications not uncommon. There is an English colony in
Petrograd, suffering greatly from lack of means, and anxious to have
the British Government send out a Commissioner to help them in various
ways. They have full leave from the Russian Government to repatriate
their members. But domestic tangles lie in the way. A mother has two
daughters, one British and the other (perhaps by marriage) Russian.
She cannot bear to go away and leave one child behind, and the Russian
child is not at present acceptable to the British Government. Or a
lover is involved as in the case of Miss W----. Or a dead husband
has left his wife bound in the chain of his Russian nationality. One
Government or the other refuses to give the necessary papers.
What the sufferings of the citizens of Petrograd and Moscow must
have been in the early days of the Revolution, and during the whole
of the period of the first Revolution, chiefly from the general
disorganisation and the advantage taken of it by disorderly bands of
soldiers and ordinary thieves and criminals it is impossible properly
to imagine.
One young Communist told me something of the experiences of himself and
his wife. He told the story quietly, in the passive Russian fashion,
as if it were the kind of tale one tells at the nursery fire to a
sleepy child. This fatalism is the most amazing quality of the Russian
character.
“We had our little house in Petrograd, my wife and I. We expected
our first baby very soon. We were very happy in each other, but cold
and hungry all the time. That didn’t matter. We were happy.” Here he
stopped and gave a despairing look.
“I blame myself bitterly,” he said. “My wife is an English girl. We
were married in England the year before the War. I brought her to
Russia. Russia was England’s ally then. How could I foresee the war
that very few wiser people foresaw? How could I know that revolution
would come when it did, and that it would make so many differences?”
There was a long pause. “Poor girl, she was not used to such
sufferings. And I brought them on her.” He showed me a photograph.
“Look,” he said, “and please take this. I have put the address of her
brother and sister in England on the back. I have sent her and the
little baby to Helsingfors. She is very ill. Her spine is packed in
plaster of Paris. I sold everything that was left and gave her fourteen
pounds, all I could raise. I sent her to England to her family. I hope
she will arrive safely.”
I looked incredulous at the courage and, I must confess, what looked
like the folly of it. “Has she a British passport?” I asked. “She is
now a Russian, you know, since her marriage with you, and she may have
difficulties in getting into England. They are frightened of Bolsheviks
in England.” “No, she has no passport,” he said, “but I am sure the
British Consul will be kind and help her home. I am sure of it. She
too has absolute confidence in her country’s Government, and would be
utterly amazed to receive any unkindness from it.”
With my own experience of passport difficulties in mind I marvelled at
such faith. I have since learnt that it has been amazingly justified,
and that the poor girl is safe at home. Her husband also learnt it
before we left him. “But go back to your story of Petrograd,” I said,
very interested.
“Well, we lived happily in our little house, selling first one thing
and then another for food. One night, a gang of men forced their way
in, showed Soviet passports, and took a great many of our valuable
things. We were glad our lives were spared. Three times this thing
happened, and we had very little left. One night, when my brother was
with us, there came another intruder in the name of the Government.
He tried to kill my brother. I shot him in the legs. He crawled to my
feet and begged for his life. My brother and I left to hide. We were in
hiding four months. The man I shot in the legs really was a Commissar.
All the others were thieves with forged warrants. My wife was tormented
every day to make her tell where I was. She did not know. She nearly
died of suffering. And the little baby came.” He looked dreamily away.
“If she had stayed in Petrograd for the coming winter she would have
died. It was the only way.”
“She shall come to me in England if she needs a home,” I said. And with
this promise, that any human being would have given, he was greatly
comforted.
CHAPTER XII
The Dictatorship of the Communists
One baleful result of the late European war has been to weaken faith
in political democracy amongst those people whom it most seriously
concerns. And the most pitiful part of the tragedy is that the wounds
of democracy have been delivered in the house of its friends. That is
a big story which will one day be written in full. The important fact
remains, that Parliamentary political machinery is in danger of being
thrown upon the scrap-heap by those who see in it something antiquated
and rusty and so incapable of serving their needs. With this in mind,
we sought to discover if Russia had truly anything better to offer.
The vocational franchise upon which the Soviet is based has something
to be said for it; but does the Soviet work? Is it what it is claimed
to be, a more democratic form of government, and one more accurately
reflecting the people’s will? To this question it was difficult
to get an answer. But whatever it might be capable of doing in a
highly educated, industrially efficient country like England or the
United States, _it does not work in Russia_. There is not an ounce
of democratic control in the politics of Russia. The theory is that
everybody is entitled to vote. But the peasants have only one vote to
the townspeople’s five, or, to put it the other way, each townsman
votes--if he works--but five peasants together cast one vote. All who
do no work or who employ labour for profit, or who follow the priestly
vocation are disfranchised. Women stand on the same footing as men in
theory. But in the villages we explored we discovered a difference
in eligibility to the Soviets. An illiterate man may be eligible, an
illiterate woman is definitely not so.
The elections are not free. If free, in my judgment there would not
be a majority for the Communists. Voting is by show of hands, so that
those who vote against the candidates chosen for them by the Executive
of the Communist party or sent down from the People’s Commissars become
marked men and women. In spite of this, the Mensheviki have secured
majorities in certain districts where their candidates were well-known
and needed no electioneering to carry them in; for, had they needed
that their case would have been hopeless. As all the halls belong
to the Government it is the simplest device in the world to engage
them for the sole use of Communist or approved candidates during an
election. And as all the printing-presses likewise are the property and
under the control of the Government, its opponents find it well-nigh
impossible to have their case presented to the electors.
The Mensheviki have secured a little more than a quarter of the
seats on the Moscow Soviet, in spite of all difficulties, which fact
speaks volumes for their probable real strength. One story was told
us of a factory which voted for an opposition candidate to Lenin by a
proportional vote of something like seventy to eight, and when ordered
to conduct a new election for the purpose of reversing the decision
had the courage to stick to their guns and record seventy and eight
the second time; but such instances are not numerous, for the fear of
authority is very great.
Theoretically “All Power to the Soviet,” a favourite piece of rhetoric,
is a true saying, or was so. For I discover in reading carefully the
Thesis of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
recently published to the world, that a new line is being taken.
The pretence of democracy is vanishing. Every species of tyranny by
the Communist party over the rest of the proletariat and people is
justified, as it always has been in the writings of the principal men
of the Communist Movement, until Communism becomes the accepted creed
of mankind and the Communist system is firmly established all over the
earth.
The Soviet elects an Executive Committee. In Moscow this numbers forty
persons. This Committee elects a Presidium. In Moscow this numbers
nine. The power which may still linger in the Soviet to a small degree
resides in this Presidium. But on this body and over the election
of both the Presidium and the Executive Committee, the Government
exercises great pressure, and naturally the Government nominees, who
are all Communists, are elected to the Presidium, which sits daily.
Great play is made in defending this undemocratic arrangement and
these terrific powers, of the “recall,” which they allege, operates
frequently and is a check on conduct. If recalls are as frequent as
is claimed, the efficiency of business must be seriously jeopardised.
But the recall is frequently exercised because some elected persons
are obliged to go to the front and it is thought wise to put others
in their places. Drinking, which is another reason for recall, should
not be possible in a prohibition country. Personal spite and jealousy
frequently come into the business. And an eloquent speaker, working
upon an ignorant and changeable mass can so change their political
point of view as to bring their representative easily within the
criticism of his constituents unless he changes with them. I have
frequently observed in Russia the same person applauding the exactly
opposite sentiments, a characteristic by no means confined to Russian
men and women!
Seldom does the All-Russian Soviet meet, and then only to do formal
business, such as recording the decrees issued by the People’s
Commissars or to ratify the decisions of the Communist party. The
People’s Commissars, of whom there are seventeen, have the power to
issue decrees without consulting the Soviets at all. More than that,
each Commissar can issue decrees relative to the work of his own
department; or two Commissars can do this in their joint names on a
matter jointly affecting their two departments. These decrees have all
the force of law, and must be obeyed under heavy penalties.
To the slaves of theory, the abstractionists and dogmatists, the
decrees which consent to the modifications in committee management of
industry must be considered wholly bad. But when I record the fact that
the power of workmen to interfere through those committees in highly
important productive and reconstructive work, either through delays,
or ignorance, or in the name of a democratic principle run to seed,
has given place all over Russia to control by experts, and management
on lines of personal responsibility, I am placing on record what I
consider to be a good and wise thing.
In Russia Trade Unionism is of very recent birth. In February, 1917,
there were three Trade Unions in Russia with a membership of less than
one thousand five hundred persons. When the revolution broke out, some
of the workmen thought it part of the plan to smash the machinery in
the workshops, so ignorant were they of the source of their woes and
of the remedy for these. The want of Trade Union training, the lack
of discipline, the absence of co-ordination, both in industry and in
their organisations, helped still further to increase the sufferings of
the people, by delaying the work of rebuilding. The fear of bourgeois
technical and scientific experts, who were accused freely of sabotage,
caused their necessary skill and labour for a long period to be
refused; this still further aggravated the situation. And it appears
to be entirely creditable that, in those matters where the special
training and specialised mind are essential, the Communist rulers have
seen proper to change their method.
But it is too dangerous a step on the road to complete centralisation
of power to have made of the Trade Unions, as is practically the case,
a Government department working under the control of the Supreme
Economic Council.
The Supreme Economic Council, when its structure is complete, will have
fifty productive departments under its control, a department of finance
and a department for the co-ordination and supervision of the local
Economic Councils which are spread all over the country. A Collegium
of three or five members is in charge of each department, whilst the
greater body, the Supreme Economic Council itself is controlled by a
Presidium of eleven members, nominated by the Executive Committee of
the Trade Unions and confirmed by the Council of People’s Commissars.
We had speech with Miluitin, assistant to Rekoff, the People’s
Commissar for this department, who told us that, of the five thousand
nationalised enterprises, seventy per cent were working more or
less satisfactorily; but that whilst war and the blockade continued
they could not hope to do more than maintain their industries in
the condition of their comparative efficiency. They hoped, however,
to develop and extend later on. All large industries such as coal,
gold, iron, platinum, petroleum and their products, machinery,
railway engines, etc., are nationalised; textiles, railways and large
shipping; retail shops and banking. Banking has become the book-keeping
department of the State. Money is still in use, but it is hoped to
establish a system of exchange which will remove the necessity of
money altogether.
Russia has complete conscription of labour. All men and women of from
eighteen years to fifty are obliged to work. The forms of Labour
organisation are being militarised. A worker must go where he is sent
and do what he is told under very heavy penalties. Late-coming and
dilatory behaviour are punished heavily. Nobody is allowed to be idle,
except, of course, the very old and the infirm.
This cannot be wholly condemned in Russia’s present terrible condition.
Those who would wish to stand idle in such circumstances ought to be
constrained by hunger if public opinion is not sufficient, and if the
discipline is at times over-severe, the breakdown of Russia’s economic
life is a very substantial excuse, if not a complete justification.
Those soldiers of the Red Army drafted into the Labour Army and the
many civilian corps added to their numbers are doing good work in
reconstruction in the mines, on the railways, at the oilfields and in
the workshops. They are a mobile force, and are drafted in tens of
thousands from one place to another as the need requires.
I was told that every effort was made not to disturb industries that
are running satisfactorily by taking their workpeople for the Labour
Army. As far as possible the least usefully employed are diverted to
the Labour Army. There have been administrative difficulties of a minor
sort, and occasional revolts against the conscription of their labour
by men who objected to leaving their homes and families, but on the
whole the plan has worked well and has been of great benefit in the
restoration of the railways and the oil supplies. It is not proposed to
demobilise the Labour Army until the economic life of the country is
re-established.
The Co-operative Societies have also become a great Government
department, and it is hoped to hand over to them completely the work of
the Food Commissariat. When their new organisation on these lines is
completed the Co-operative Society, or “Centrosoyu” as it is called,
will work under the authority of the Supreme Economic Council for the
distribution of all articles of monopoly, such things as wheat, bread,
coal, sugar, fur, textiles, clothing and timber. In distributing goods
which are not monopolised by the Government at present the _Centrosoyu_
will be guided by its method in respect of the other things. The
Co-operative Societies are represented on the Supreme Economic Council,
and the chairman has the right to attend the meetings of the People’s
Commissars, but he may not vote. Citizens are informed that there is
no compulsion on them to join the Co-operative Society, and there
is no longer the attraction of the dividend; but as theirs is the
monopoly of bread, and the only other source of supply is the outlawed
“speculator,” whose charges are prohibitive--four hundred roubles for a
pound of black bread--it is obvious that the freedom is illusory.
Similarly with the Trade Unions. Technically, I suppose, there is no
compulsion to join a Trade Union; but as it is impossible to live
unless one does, since the more important part of the pay is in the
food given to a worker and his family, and since such privileges as
tickets for supplies of boots and clothing and other necessaries and
free passes for the theatres and the concert-halls are supplied through
the Trade Unions, or the Soviets, which are largely Trade Union in
character, the wise man does not care to remain outside. These facts
may account for the phenomenal increase in Trade Union membership,
which is said to have leapt to nearly five million during the last
three years. Five millions out of a population made up of eighty-five
per cent peasants is a very considerable proportion of the industrial
population, and constitutes a miraculous conversion of the multitude on
any other supposition than the one I suggest.
And by all these signs we learn what the “dictatorship of the
proletariat” really means. Let there be no mistake whatever about this.
I am wholly hostile to the artificial dictatorship of any class in
those matters which are the serious concern of all. I believe in the
dictatorship of the idea, that is in the power of the idea to conquer
without force, and the right of the majority to decide all those
matters of high policy which cannot be settled amicably without a vote;
but I consider that the sources of information should be available
for all, the right of propaganda be universal and unrestricted, and
the liberties and rights of the minorities safeguarded in all those
things where the well-being of the community is not manifestly to all
threatened by too great concessions. I believe that the Parliamentary
machine needs very considerable overhauling; that something of the
nature of proportional representation should be devised; that a
chamber elected upon a vocational basis might very usefully replace
the hereditary House of Lords. I believe in the devolution of power in
national and local affairs, and would give not only to Ireland, but
to Scotland and Wales and England their separate national one-chamber
Parliaments. I would extend the vote to all adult women, as in Russia,
and encourage the work of committees; all this to better secure the
expression in politics of the real will of the people.
But the Russian dictatorship does not do this. It is, at the best,
an attempt by a few men to compel the people of Russia to have what
in their opinion is good for them. It may very well be that what they
seek to impose and the methods by which they seek to impose it will in
some ways benefit a lethargic race, unused to the ways of freedom. I
express no opinion on the point, beyond saying this: That the argument
of unfitness to manage one’s own affairs has a very familiar ring about
it to women. It was the favourite argument against granting the vote to
women of a certain class of English opponent. Our good was sought, not
our freedom.
But though the freedom was denied for so long, the good lingered
also; and the Russian people might reasonably protest, and in many
cases do protest, that there the good is lingering also. The great
and fundamental question for all who are thinking seriously about
these things is this: Has a handful of brilliant and thoughtful men,
however good and sincere they may be, the moral right to enforce upon
a whole community the system they believe in but the community as a
whole rejects, with all the tyranny and cruelty such dictatorship must
inevitably mean? Had the men of Russia the moral right to break up
their own National Assembly, however inadequate and faulty, thereby
bringing upon their country civil war and alien aggression, for the
sake of a theory however magnificent?
It might be suggested that the majority in Russia does not reject
the idea of Communism, because the whole population is behind the
Government; which is perfectly true. But the population is behind
the Government because it is a patriotic population, and it is
threatened once more by the horror of foreign invasion. This is why
the experiment in Russia has been spoiled. The really big things
which are being attempted cannot be judged on their merits. Their
success or their failure are inextricably mixed up with the various
wars which Russia has suffered since the Revolution and with the
blockade so cruelly drawn around her. When the history of these times
comes to be faithfully written, it will not be the Russian Communists
whose records will blacken the pages of history most. It will be the
records of certain Allied statesmen, hitherto believed to be gentlemen
and Christians, which will throw into bright relief the courage and
resourcefulness of the present rulers of Russia.
No words can be too strong with which to condemn the action of those
who first intervened to destroy Revolutionary Russia; and no loss to
the world is more to be regretted than that loss of a valuable social
experiment which would have shown the rest of the world what to imitate
and what to avoid in its march towards a happier lot for all mankind.
It is the old, old story of force breeding force, and evil producing
evil. The inhabitants of Russia lived so long with the evil system of
the Czar’s bureaucracy, with its Cossacks, and knouts, its prisons and
scaffolds, that the thing has entered into their very blood, and under
the necessity of maintaining their power, the Communist rulers slip
easily and naturally into the same institutions and methods, adopting
even the old machinery and the ancient servitors. But the cruelties and
suppressions, said by them and their supporters to be necessary and
inevitable in all the circumstances, will breed a resistance amongst
themselves which will bring the structure tottering to the ground,
unless the madness of their foes continues until the grip upon the
people becomes too strong. Even so, such a thing will come to an end in
time.
In the interests of Russia herself it is for those who care, to stop
all alien wars against her, and so give her people a chance of shaking
themselves free of tyranny, both within and without.
And for ourselves, we shall be wise to move as quickly as may be along
the sure and peaceful paths of political and industrial democracy,
seeking by education and by constant endeavour and sacrifice to
convince the minds of men and women that the world has something better
to give them of culture as well as comfort than the best of them have
ever dreamed.
CHAPTER XIII
The Suppression of Liberty
In December of 1917 there was established in Russia for the protection
of the Revolution and “to carry on the merciless struggle against those
trying to overthrow the Soviet system; against sabotage, banditage and
espionage and speculation” an organisation known as the Extraordinary
Commission. It has an Advisory Board of fifteen persons, all members
of the Communist party. Its head and chief is a man named Dserzhinsky,
a fanatical Communist whose adoration of Lenin is notorious. He is
assisted in his work, according to the Vice-President, with whom we
had an interview, by a definite staff of four thousand five hundred
persons, estimated by others who were present on this occasion at a
number enormously greater than that. These assistants consider it their
duty to arrest all whose actions appear to them to be inimical to the
welfare of the Communist State.
This great army of spies and police agents, largely the same men as
served the Czar’s régime, arrest for the most trivial offences and
on the slightest suspicion. A young man who has saved his money and
is buying his sweetheart a few expensive blossoms on her birthday is
arrested by the person standing next him in the shop on suspicion of
having received the money from some counter-revolutionary organisation.
He is kept in prison for several months. A delicate woman is kept
three days in prison for having too large a supply of white flour in
her house. She got it for a dying father and a sick sister by selling
valuable household goods. She was “denounced” by a former servant who
occupies a room in the same house though he is not now in their service.
This Extraordinary Commission has its agents everywhere, in every
organisation and at every public gathering; and nobody can be sure
of his neighbour or even of his friend. It has its own soldiers, who
enjoy better rations than the men at the front, its own prisons and
its “secret police.” It formerly had the power of life and death, and
has executed thousands of persons without trial. Though nominally that
power has been taken from it and handed over to the Revolutionary
Tribunals, it is by no means clear that the power does not actually
remain. In any case, the Revolutionary Tribunals work in complete
sympathy with the Commission, so there is no real change.
The Extraordinary Commission works independently of the Government
and is so strong, thanks to the fear created by the war, that it is
regarded as the Government in everything that matters. It was said that
there is nobody in Russia who does not go in fear of it except Lenin. I
have no means of testing this, of course; but I know that everybody I
met in Russia outside the Communist party goes in terror of his liberty
or his life. The pervading fear worked terribly on the subconscious
selves of some of us, and we lived hourly in a spirit of hot hate of
the cruelties and tyrannies which met us at every turn.
The fair young English girl who came to beg us to help her and her baby
to her friends in England, told us calmly but pathetically that her
husband had been shot in prison.
“I do not know why,” she said. “He was not political. He never
talked politics to me. He translated for the Russians in the army of
Judenitch. But he was sent there by the Government.”
Poor thing. Her husband was possibly guilty. But he had had no trial.
She had lost him by violence. And she herself was threatened with
starvation and was refused permission to leave the country.
Two hundred and forty-one anarchists we heard were shot out of hand in
Petrograd, the new order against capital punishment being kept back
until this had been done.
We were very glad of an opportunity of meeting those who claimed
to speak authoritatively for the Commission, for the confession
of shooting without trial ten thousand persons admitted in the
Government’s organ, _Isvestia_, had been deeply distressing to us.
“Is it true,” the chairman was asked, “that the Extraordinary
Commission has shot ten thousand people without trial?”
“No, it is not true. The number is exaggerated. Only eight thousand
five hundred were shot, and not without trial. They were brought before
the Revolutionary Tribunals and examined.” This answer was said to be
quite untrue by credible persons to whom it was reported. Not only was
a much greater number than ten thousand put to death without trial, but
many were shot in their cells in circumstances of cruelty, and their
relatives were refused information about them. I met one woman whose
husband had disappeared from prison in suspicious circumstances and who
was afterwards discovered to have been shot for selling something at
a profit of a few shillings in English money. This private trading is
what is meant by “speculating.”
The chairman of the Commission had said in his opening address that
there was perfect liberty of speech and action in the country. As
I knew that a real terror existed I suggested to him that, in all
probability, the arrest of certain persons for imagined or trivial
offences was due to the exaggerated zeal of ignorant minor officials
working under the Commission. The reply was that this could not be so,
since the agents who behaved like this would be punished very severely.
I did not consider the answer conclusive, nor an explanation of the
terror.
“Why,” I asked, “have many people expressed a fear of coming to see
us? And when they come, why are they afraid to speak with perfect
confidence?”
“Because,” said this clever person, sarcastic and evasive, “English
people have been here before and have tempted our people into
counter-revolutionary activities which have got them into very serious
difficulties. They do not want to be caught again.”
I ventured to ask one more question. “Does the Extraordinary Commission
maintain spies and _agents-provacateurs_ for its work?”
To this an absolute denial was given. “But,” he continued, “every
good citizen considers himself under an obligation to report to
the Commission everything he sees which he considers to be of a
counter-revolutionary nature.”
It was denied that any conscientious objector had been shot. It was
denied that anybody had been shot without trial. It was denied that
any great tyranny was exercised. It was declared that the object of
the Extraordinary Commission was to protect perfect liberty of speech
outside of those who were fomenting armed opposition to the Republic.
The independent translator who was with us on this occasion said before
leaving the room, her eyes swimming with tears: “It is hard for me to
hear these replies and be able to say nothing.”
I left the room cold with horror and dislike, for I knew without the
implication of the interpreter’s words that much of what had been said
to us was absolutely untrue.
There had been held a few days before this a meeting of Mensheviki, or
moderate Socialists, the members of the old Social Democratic party.
The meeting was held under the auspices of the Printers’ Union, a body
numbering seventy thousand members in Russia. This meeting was attended
by some thousands of persons, including (as I was informed) about three
hundred Communists, a noisy little group in the heart of the gathering.
I was not myself present, but I give the story as I had it from one of
the members of the British Delegation, not himself in sympathy with the
Mensheviki.
The Communists had telegraphed to England that the British Delegates
had attended a public meeting at which they heard in perfect freedom
the great Menshevik, Tchernoff, make a speech. The facts of the case
are these.
An unknown man made a passionately eloquent speech which was greatly
applauded by the vast body of the meeting and frequently interrupted by
the Communists present. At the end of his speech the audience loudly
demanded his name. He hesitated. He was strongly pressed not to give
it. He then stepped forward, and in ringing tones announced: “My name
is Tchernoff.” Instantaneously the vast audience broke into tumultuous
applause, during which Tchernoff made his escape. The leading Communist
present fumed, and declared loudly he would have Tchernoff arrested. He
had come to the meeting with his pocket full of warrants!
But Tchernoff had gone. And the circumstances of his coming and going
were interesting in view of the claim of free speech. For fifteen
minutes before his speech nobody was allowed to enter the hall. For
fifteen minutes after he got away, nobody was allowed to go out. The
telephone wires had been disconnected so that no communication with the
police could be made.
Tchernoff’s wife and children were arrested as hostages, but afterwards
released. He himself lives in a garret in Moscow, and was seen by one
of the Delegates in a condition of starvation.
After the British Delegates left Russia several of those who organised
and addressed these meetings were arrested. And so it is everywhere and
all the time. The people are afraid of the police and spies, the spies
are afraid of one another. All dwell in an atmosphere of suspicion,
and the Red Terror is a terrible reality. And it is no consolation
to me to learn, as I did, that the White Terror was even worse. I am
absolutely satisfied on the evidence I have seen, that where the Red
Terror has slain its thousands the White Terror has destroyed its tens
of thousands.
Evidence which will shortly be published in great detail will establish
beyond doubt the enormous atrocities committed by Koltchak and Denikin
in their cruel marches across the country, especially against the
Jews. Men, women and children in hundreds in every district in their
respective areas were hanged, shot or tortured on the mere suspicion
of belonging to or aiding with food and clothing a member of the
Red Army or the Communist party. Innocent persons whose beliefs and
activities were never even enquired into were murdered to discourage
the population. The peasants were everywhere robbed with violence.
The neglected troops of Koltchak, themselves decimated by disease
and filth, spread typhus and small-pox amongst the unhappy people.
Instead of burning or burying the corpses, the bodies were packed into
warehouses, or left lying about; and in one district, in less than a
dozen versts, ten thousand corpses were picked up by the Red Army when
it drove back the rebels.
One more story only let me tell. It concerns the sister of one of the
People’s Commissars and that sister’s husband. She lived in a little
town in the Volga basin. During the march of Koltchak her home was
invaded, and she and her husband, with twenty others, were thrown into
prison. After a while, they were taken out into the bitterly cold night
and, without trial, shot. The White soldiers bayoneted them to be sure
the work was done, and retired.
By the most marvellous accident, the husband was not killed. His hand
had been shot away, and the bayonet had entered his side, but he was
living. He waited till all was dark and quiet. He bent over his wife,
but she was quite dead. Then he crawled softly away, and very weak,
reached his home. He found his little daughter of five sleeping, but
safe. He dared not stay longer than to have his bleeding hand bound,
for they would come at dawn and count the bodies, and his would be
missing. So he went to the mayor, and the mayor contrived his escape.
And the man is now in Moscow, as one may well imagine, a stern
supporter of the Government, and not unready for reprisals.
I am inclined to believe that much of the support of the Bolsheviki
is due to the fear that their overthrow would mean the coming of a
great White Terror that would be infinitely worse than the thing they
are enduring. The fiery threats of exiled Russians, the distressing
activities in Russia of British agents, and, I am afraid, the wicked
suggestions to certain European Governments, that a “Jewish pogrom in
Russia would bring the Bolshevik Government to the ground,” give some
justification for the fear. Not till one side or the other declines to
take revenge will the awful see-saw of horrors be discontinued, and a
normal government by consent be substituted for the systems based on
power and domination.
CHAPTER XIV
Down the Volga
It was at the suggestion of one of the Delegates that the Bolsheviki
kindly arranged a trip down the Volga, that great central waterway
which flows for nearly two thousand miles to the Caspian Sea, and which
is fifty miles broad where it empties itself into this great lake.
We went in our special train, accompanied by interpreters, agents,
secretaries and journalists, a party of thirty to forty people, all
anticipating a good time, to the famous city of Nijni-Novgorod. The
plan was to take the steamer there and go to Saratov, calling at towns
and villages on the way, and returning by train to Moscow. It was
estimated the trip would occupy six days.
There is no longer any great Fair at Nijni-Novgorod. Foreign trade has
practically stopped, owing to the breakdown of communications. The
booths are empty and closed. The streets in this part of the city are
neglected and untidy. The coloured domes of the churches glitter and
sparkle with the old, quaint loveliness, but the city is the centre of
what has been described as “a starving province,” and is as sad as the
rest of Russia.
The usual Trade Union deputations, with soldiers, banners, bands and
speeches met us at the railway station. We were shown over the great
Somova iron-works, and made speeches to the hungry-looking workpeople.
We were informed that it is difficult to keep down the spirit of
rebellion here; but this one would have expected of the population
of Nijni-Novgorod, with its history of democratic struggles in the
past. Unlike the men at the Putiloff Works, these men complain, not
only of hunger, but of the incapable bureaucracy which is keeping back
production.
We had a great public meeting in the theatre in the evening, following
a dinner given us by the Soviet and Trade Unions, and, after the
speeches, we formed into a procession, and followed by numbers of
the townspeople as well as the audience, and accompanied by several
regiments of soldiers, we marched down to the S.S. _Bielinsky_ which
was to take us on our voyage. The procession marched all round the
higher part of the town that we might see the finest buildings and the
splendid view from the heights above the river, singing revolutionary
songs all the way.
The summer days are hot but the nights are bitterly cold on the Upper
Volga. One of our number neglected himself, and contracted pleurisy and
pneumonia within twenty-four hours of our setting sail, and his illness
obliged some of us to go forward to Astrakhan and return the same way
to Saratov. The organisation of the steamship, a magnificent vessel,
was mystifying to us. First there was the recognised commander. Then
there was Sverdloff, the Acting-Commissar for Ways and Communications,
who appeared to be the highest authority; then came the Trade Union
Delegate who travels with the ship; then the man in charge of our
party, who seemed to be armed with authority over the crew as well.
There were occasions when orders conflicted, and the result was very
funny. After the great bulk of the people left at Saratov the ship’s
human machinery ran with greater smoothness.
A trip on the Volga was supposed to be one of the great experiences of
the rich traveller before the war. It is an experience anyone may be
very glad and proud to have had. More of the heart and soul of Russia
lies on each bank of this mighty river than can be found in Russia’s
cosmopolitan cities. The country is low and fertile, except for the
desert stretches of the lower reaches. The green of its grass is a
bright emerald. Its roads and farm-buildings are a consistent brown,
like its sun-tanned, wind-bitten peasant people. Wild horses roam the
steppes with the Cossacks and Tartar tribes, some of whom live close
to the river, their brown, substantial houses seeming to rise straight
out of the water in the estuary of the Volga. The enormous rafts which
float slowly down the river, composed of the trunks of great trees
bound together, are things of wonder. They are of enormous size. Whole
families live on them, and huts have been erected on them for shelter.
It takes weeks, even months for these rafts to creep down the river
to the places for which they are bound. Often the rafts are built the
shape of a boat and so sent floating to their destination.
The friendly people waved us their handkerchiefs as we passed. The
passion for art of the Russian everywhere showed itself in the
decoration with green branches of these rafts, of our own handsome
steamer, and of the railway trains in which we travelled.
We called at many little villages or larger towns on the way down the
river. The banks of the river and the plains beyond teem with people.
It was no lonely prairie that we gazed upon as we floated idly. The
millions of dead fish in the river were symbolic of the country’s past
state and present suffering, and of its fearful fate if left too long
without substantial help. Nobody could tell us authentically why
those fish had died. Could the cholera germ have worked this miracle
of death? Or was it Koltchak’s poison gas? Their numbers made them
remarkable.
Our talks with the peasant men and women revealed the fact that they
were not Communists in the Marxian sense, scarcely Communist in any
sense. They were content not to quarrel with the Government because
it was so much better than the régime of Koltchak, whom they hated;
and because of the war. They grumbled at the requisitions of food,
and hated the soldiers sent to collect it. But they were amenable to
persuasion. One friend of the peasants, a Communist, told me that he
was sent by the Government to talk to the peasants, because he was so
successful in persuading them to give up their spare produce. He was a
man of quiet and gentle manner whom it would be difficult at all times
to resist.
The peasants we saw were a big, blond, stalwart race, with any quantity
of shaggy, curly hair and with matted beards. Their features were Slav.
They had large mouths, thick lips and broad noses. They wore high
boots, much the worse for wear, and smocks with broad belts. Their
women were big for the most part, pleasant and round-faced, and their
legs were bound in what looked like white canvas which gave them a
tubular appearance. They wore canvas or felt shoes, very inadequate for
country roads. Their aprons and blouses were amazingly white in one
village, which gave one the impression that there they probably made
their own soap. The children were attractive replica of their parents.
One small boy showed us proudly that he could write his own name in a
good hand.
Whenever we left the ship, we did so between two lines of peasants with
country produce for sale, eggs, milk and fruit; so there was no lack of
food on this river trip.
We talked to the peasants about the land. They were happier than before
for they had now more land, and all had some. The big estates had
been broken up and divided amongst them. Nominally it was the State’s
land, but it would have been counter-revolutionary propaganda to have
said this aloud. Really there is a system of peasant proprietorship,
with the substantial difference that the peasant may not part with his
land for money. If he works it well, it remains undisturbed in his
possession and usually it goes to the son after the father. The local
Soviet settles land disputes, and we were the interested spectators in
the adjudication of one quarrel.
One little house we entered was very clean and neat, but the rooms
were too dark and too small, and too many people lived in the house.
We were told that this specimen was very much above the average. In
every room was an ikon, and in every village a church, crowded with
worshippers, filled with expensive things. Truly, the Commissars would
be well advised to commandeer and not condemn the institution which has
so great a grip on the lives and affections of the people.
I am reminded here of a curious and beautiful adventure of ours, a
few versts on this side of Astrakhan. It was two in the morning, with
a bright round moon in the sky, when the ship stopped and boats were
lowered. A violin softly played, and the crooning of their Volga songs
by the boatmen added charm to the scene. We took to the boat and landed
on the right bank of the river. Millions of crickets chirped in the
grass. In the distance a bullfrog croaked himself hoarse. Suddenly
there came upon our view the outlines of an Eastern building. Its
cupola shone in the moonlight. It was a Buddhist temple.
We marched up to the door and entered, much to the concern of the
priest, who feared, doubtless, a revolutionary attack upon his person
and the church. He was a quaint old man, round and stout, dressed in a
bright red robe, his good-natured, Chinese-looking face adding to the
novelty of the scene. He was a Kalmuk, and his ministry extended over
a population of ten thousand Kalmuks, living in the little town beyond.
It was an amazing thing to discover this little bit of Asia in Europe.
The Kalmuks are an attractive race in appearance, clean, strong and
efficient-looking. The women have glossy black hair which they wear
neatly in two braids. Their children are chubby and well fed, with
slanting brown eyes and olive skins. We left this temple and its people
possessed of several tiny brass gods and holy pictures with which the
priest appeared not unwilling to part.
At Samara some of us went to inspect a children’s colony outside the
town. As usual, it was the expropriated dwelling of a former rich
citizen. Indeed, several houses were devoted to this good purpose. The
woman Communist who kindly conducted us had all the smiling good nature
of her race. She was evidently devoted to the children, and proud of
what had been accomplished. She was obviously in great need of new
clothes. Her legs were bare. One poor sock was falling over her shoe
top. The naked toes were peeping out of the other shoe. Her jacket was
the last word in shabbiness. Yet she was bright and cheerful as a bird
and infinitely pathetic as she asked me, with pride in her voice: “Have
you anything like this (meaning the summer school) in England?”
We drove back to the ship impressed with the pluck and cleverness of
those heroic people making bricks without straw. A great windstorm
caught us. The dust whirled about our heads. The rain began to fall. I
hid behind a bank of flowers, which had been given us, to avoid seeing
the half-eaten corpse of a dead dromedary as well as to shelter from
the rain. We reached the steamship. The whistle hooted, and off we went
to the next scene.
Saratov is the finest city we saw on the Volga. It is a great deal
cleaner than most, and compares in this very favourably with Tsaritzin.
But Tzaritzin has experienced more of the depredations and disorders of
the Koltchak bands, so must be excused.
It was at Saratov we discovered the origin of that silly story of
the nationalisation of women. Whoever knows the Russian woman would
wonder if she had changed to allow herself to be nationalised. I
could not imagine those huge women fish-curers and net-makers at
Astrakhan tolerating for one second of time any such gross interference
with their personal liberty; nor the gentle Kalmuk women, nor the
self-respecting peasant wives. There is not one atom of truth in the
story, and those who repeat it cover themselves with discredit. The
story had its origin in Saratov, where a tiny anarchist sect had for
one of their remote objects a state of society in which men and women
would dispense with marriage in their relationships with one another.
It was unscrupulous propaganda to place this upon the Bolshevik
Government.
It is true that marriage laws have been altered. Marriage is very cheap
now, since only a State ceremony is needed. Divorce is very easy,
but equal for all classes and both sexes. The children are the first
concern of the State, and illegitimate children are not penalised. But
there is nothing relative to marriage in Russia which is not true of
some Western state; and it is believed that with the reorganisation of
life on a sound economic basis, prostitution will entirely disappear,
as it has certainly been considerably reduced. The women of Russia
are not very happy, but their misery is not due to any sex-tyranny or
Government brutality. It is due to the lack of food and clothing for
themselves and their families, and to the bitter cold which makes their
work in the home so hard.
For during last winter almost everybody lived in his house in a
temperature of five degrees of frost. Tender children and old people
died like flies, of simple cold. Frost-bitten hands and feet and the
consequent loss of fingers and toes was a common occurrence. Pipes
were frozen, and when the thaw came, broke, everything in the house
being destroyed. There were no materials for repairs. Waiting in the
long queues their turn at the baker’s shop, trying to keep children and
home clean without soap, having to go long distances for water, without
coal and wood to cook and clean, with children crying for milk or food,
little bodies frozen for lack of blankets--these are the real griefs of
women in Russia, and not the ludicrous stories of imaginary wrongs.
We called at Kazan on our way down the river, and here we had a
curiously funny experience. At Kazan, and increasingly as we descended
the river, we were plagued with flies. They were so numerous, these
tiny little beasts, that they made a misty curtain round us, and filled
eyes and mouths and ears in a most irritating fashion.
We walked from the boat for about a quarter of a mile, ploughing our
way through deep sand, to the place which had been appointed for our
reception. We walked between lines of soldiers and sailors standing
strictly to attention. The local Commissars were late, so the lesser
officials thought it wise to begin, as the flies were troublesome and
the English guests were not used to them.
A ramshackle droshky, with an old Chinese driver, was commandeered for
a platform. One of our speakers mounted, and, standing on the seat,
commenced his oration. The horse showed a tendency to bolt at every
sentence, whether because of the flies or the unknown language it is
not quite certain. The sentences came explosively, as every movement of
the animal jerked the orator off his balance. The old Chinaman seized a
large twig branch from a man who was fanning himself and tried to keep
the horse quiet by driving away the flies. Round about our heads surged
and hummed masses of flies. We shook ourselves, we smoked, we did a
great many things besides; but the flies remained, and the speeches,
one after another, went on with interminable eloquence. For a solid two
hours we stood there suffering and grinning at the Chinaman, the flies,
the absurd seriousness of everybody, the familiar phrases: “Long live
the Proletarian Revolution.” “Long live the Soviet Republic.” “Long
live Lenin and Trotsky.”
At last we were released, to learn that a great demonstration of eighty
thousand troops had been arranged for the following day. We could not
stay, however, and bade our friends a warm good-bye; the flies also,
but for a different reason.
Seriously, though, the insect life of that part of Russia is
incredible. It is no exaggeration to say that at Astrakhan, when the
meal was finished, the big black flies on the table were so many that
it looked as though we had dined off a black instead of a white
tablecloth. The mosquitoes are so vicious and poisonous that they often
give one malaria, and the lice are inveterate conveyers of typhus.
Astrakhan is the dirtiest city it has been my lot to visit. Cesspools
and stagnant water pollute the streets. Piles of human excrement
lie about everywhere. The water-supply is thoroughly poisoned. The
market-places are abodes of filth. And it appears to be nobody’s
business to alter this state of affairs. Astrakhan and cities like it
should come under the supervision of an international Board of Health
if their governments are powerless to alter things, for they are a
menace to the well-being of the whole world. Cholera coming up the
river from Astrakhan could poison all Europe in time, and may yet do so
unless something drastic be done.
But Astrakhan is becoming busy again. Its shipping is very active.
We saw the loading of rice and fish, the curing of herrings, the
preparation of caviare, the making of nets, the ferry-boats loaded with
passengers, a general air of liveliness which contrasted so favourably
with the deadness of Petrograd. Persian carpets are to be bought for
a mere song in Astrakhan, and antique treasures of all kinds for the
equivalent in English of a few shillings or pounds.
The temperature at Astrakhan was 122 degrees in the shade when we
were there, and we simply wilted under the blazing sun. We talked of
Siberian snows and American ice cream to try to make ourselves feel
cool, when to our pleased surprise, the magician, Sverdloff, contrived
to conjure ice cream out of the kitchen and so saved our lives for
another day’s work.
Those last days on the Volga were very happy, in spite of heat and
flies and the anxiety we felt for our sick friend. The tumultuous crowd
had left us at Saratov; the atmosphere of politics disappeared; our
talk was of more interesting things; we sang our folk-songs and read
our books. In the hot evenings on the way back, we sat at the front of
the ship facing the glorious red sunset, and thought of home and of
dear old England, and of the kindly spirit which rules where peace and
plenty abound.
CHAPTER XV
The Future of Russia
The Delegation having been divided through the unfortunate sickness
of one of their number, we left the country and returned to England
in several groups and by different routes. The group of which I was a
member took train at Saratov, and was enabled to go all the way through
to Reval without a change. The country looked pleasant and peaceful.
Large herds of cows were a frequent feature of a prosperous-looking
landscape--for it cannot be too often impressed that the country is not
lacking in food so much as clothing and other goods, and that if the
means of transportation were better the peasants could supply much more
to the towns. The green of the fields looked inviting after the brown
of the river. The cool winds of the plains blew in on us through the
carriage windows and were a grateful relief after the shimmering heat
of Astrakhan and the lower reaches of the Volga.
Having little to do but prepare our meals after Moscow was left behind,
we discussed with one another our impressions. We speculated upon the
possible change of view which might have been effected in some of us
by our experiences. What should we say to the people who had sent us
out? And what ought we to say to the great working-class public at home
anxious to have our report? One thing we were unanimous in hoping:
That nothing might be said or done that would make it more difficult
for peace with Russia to be concluded speedily. Never for a second was
there a shade of difference amongst the Delegates that the war was a
crime in its inception and a blunder in its continuance. But on other
matters we differed. Some came out of Russia filled with uncritical
enthusiasm for the Bolsheviki; others were bitterly disappointed in
their expectations; others again were confirmed in former opinions.
As we approached the frontier once more, I put my head out of the
window to take a last look at the Red Flag. There it was gaily waving
in the wind. A colleague started to whistle a familiar air.
“What is that you are whistling?” I asked, “a last verse of ‘The
Internationalé’?”
“No,” he replied with a wry smile, “a new verse of the Red Flag.”
We were curious and he obliged us with the words:
“The people’s flag is palest pink,
It’s not so red as you might think;
We’ve been to see, and now we know
They’ve been and changed its colour so.”
“So, my irreverent friend, that is how you feel, is it?” I asked,
feeling that I understood.
“It is,” he replied. “I went out without the slightest bias in the
world against what I regarded as a very big thing, the establishment of
a great Socialist Republic, and I have come out with a deep feeling of
disappointment. There is practically no Socialism in Russia worthy of
the name. And the people are utterly wretched.”
I could see that his flippant mood covered a very real disappointment,
and was silent for a while; then I reminded him that perhaps we had
expected too much, and he seemed to agree.
There are many ways of regarding the problem of Russia, each one
leading to a different conclusion and generally a faulty one. There
is the man who considers it solely from the point of view of present
achievement without regard to the special difficulties which have had
to be overcome. Such a critic is not reasonable and is bound to be
contemptuous, for judging the thing just as it stands, and chiefly
by the condition of the people who live under it, Bolshevism is a
failure. It was bound to be a failure. No living human being faced by
so many and such frightful difficulties could have made it a success.
Alien invasion, internal disorder, counter-revolutionary activities,
scarcities of necessaries of all sorts, the blockade of Russia--all
these things made it quite impossible for the Russian Revolutionary
Government with the best brains and the finest intentions in the world
to carry out more than a fraction of its programme in a very imperfect
manner. The wonder is not that they have failed to establish Socialism,
but that they have successfully accomplished so much that is good.
But the person who maintains that so much has been done and done
admirably that the other nations should immediately copy is making just
as big a mistake in the other direction. Much might advantageously
be imitated by countries where the war has created similar problems.
Russia has communised her housing accommodation, so that now everybody
has shelter and nobody need be overcrowded. This is all to the good.
From such things the overcrowded towns and cities of Europe might take
a lesson from Moscow; but unless and until the new institutions of
Russia, political, industrial, and social, prove themselves to be of
more social value than the similar institutions of other lands, the
men are doing a disservice to their country who advocate the slavish
copying of Russia.
One of the most admirable features of the Russian Administration so
far has been its elasticity. In spite of the extremists and because of
the pressure of circumstances, the Russian Administration has shown a
disposition to scrap its failures and to turn from one experiment to
another in a way which well might serve as an example to the hide-bound
politicians of other lands.
To some people method does not matter; the end is all in all. Such
people do not feel the tyranny which is exercised over the people to
be offensive, nor do the cruelties excite their wrath. They regard
these things as temporary, and to them the end always justifies the
means. To them, no doubt, it appears that the end will be achieved by
such means. Nor are they possessed by any fear that what is meant to
be temporary will harden into a system and become permanent. With eyes
on some splendid future they would tolerate the worst crimes committed
under the régime of the Czar if done in the name and for the sake of
Communism. It was with this class of supporter of Bolshevism with whom
I was in hourly conflict.
For I believe very sincerely that in such a matter as this the good
end cannot be achieved by vile means, and that the extremists who use
methods of force and violence are preparing the ground for a reaction
so complete that it would not be surprising if it ended with a new king
on every one of the vacant thrones of Europe.
But the biggest blunder of all is made by those people who start with
the assumption that Russia is like the rest of Europe, and that her
people are the same as ours. It is the most fatal blunder.
Russia is, in size, not a country, but a continent. It contains one
hundred and twenty-five millions of people who speak fifty different
languages. The neighbouring federated states take their orders
from Moscow in everything except local affairs, and the so-called
independent border states will one day discover their economic
relationship to Russia and will federate. Such a population, with such
resources as Russia possesses, will become a blessing or a menace to
the rest of the world.
The Russian people are the most illiterate in Europe. Their
civilisation is generations behind Western civilisation and is of a
different sort. They have a tradition of tyranny that sets them in
a different category from the people of Anglo-Saxondom. They are a
silent, passive people for the most part, sentimental and idealistic.
They are composed, in the main, of peasants whose chief absorbing
interest is the land which they love with intense passion.
Such a people are in huge contrast to the teeming industrial
populations of Great Britain and America. In these countries the
workers have long enjoyed a measure of political and social freedom
unknown to the people of Russia. They have organised themselves
politically and industrially on a big scale, and the standard of
comfort they have been able to exact for themselves and their families
from the employing classes and from Parliament is very considerably
higher in average than the best the Russian workman has known.
Most of the organised workers of Great Britain (and probably of
America also) possess a little property, if it is only the dividend
they draw from the Co-operative Stores. The illiterate man or woman is
practically unknown amongst them. Their children enjoy free education.
Their cities are organised and comparatively healthy. With the power of
the franchise and the industrial power of their trade organisation they
can achieve any reform they may desire. They possess a tradition of
freedom of conscience, of speech, of Press, of general living which no
tyrant in office would dare long and without good cause to defy.
They are moving slowly but surely towards the achievement of that
economic freedom without which they cannot hope to make secure the
rest. And this they are doing without the bloodshed and suffering to
themselves and innocent people that violent change would inevitably
produce. Why, then, should they copy Russia, whose condition is so
different and to whom it might have appeared there was no other way
out? I feel myself so strongly the value of liberty that I would not
jeopardise it, even for a hypothetical Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
I do not think the British workman is in danger of committing this
folly. He sees much too far for that. By temperament he is slow but
sure. He is not easy to move along unaccustomed paths, but he jogs
steadily along the old high road. He is often charged with loving
comfort and his glass of beer too fondly; but the ruling passion as I
have seen it in him is his love of home and wife and children. He will
not readily risk their happiness in pursuit of a chimerical Garden of
Eden which might rob him of his present content. He knows there are
even greater things in the world than bread and meat, important though
these things be. If the alternative were placed before him of security
without freedom, or the liberty to live his own life in his own way
with as much risk of losing his livelihood as he suffers under the
present system, he would choose liberty.
And he would do this because instinctively he would feel that tyranny
was an evil, and that kindliness and toleration are worth more than the
most perfect system in the world without these things. And he would be
right.
The choice is not an inevitable one. The tyranny in Russia is due to
the domination of a minority, to the seizing of power by violence,
and the necessity of holding it by force. It is not inherent in the
Socialist system if that be achieved gradually and in harmony with the
people’s desires and developing intelligence.
My great hope for the future of Russia lies in the possibilities of
peace. If outside aggression really ceases Russia can begin at once
to amend herself. If the blockade be really broken down, contact with
the world will soften many of the acerbities of the Communist rulers
and ameliorate the condition of the people; but it must be a real
breakdown. The people of England must see that they are not deceived
by misleading replies to Parliamentary questions. There are more ways
than one of blockading a country. Postal, telegraph and commercial
relations should be at once established; there should be no Customs
rules and regulations to block the way to full free trade; the people
of the two countries should be given liberty freely to travel from
one land to the other, and the Governments of Europe should recognise
diplomatically the established Government of Russia, and treat it with
all the courtesies usually accorded by one nation to another when there
is peace between them.
When fear is removed from their hearts, the fountains of internal
criticism will once more begin to play upon the Russian Government.
Its rough edges will be smoothed, its corners rubbed off. It will be
obliged by facts and circumstances to move still further along the path
of honourable compromise with the outside world. There will be much
more personal freedom, less hunger, more happiness; at least, so I hope
and believe.
For the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. The alternative
is either a renewal of civil strife on the part of those whom the
continuation of an extreme policy would continue to deprive of their
freedom; or the development in the Communist party and the Russian
people of a kind of Imperialist Communism, which would regard it as a
duty to direct the country’s organisation towards the establishment of
world-Communism.
But even if this latter idea should ultimately dominate it will not
be made manifest at once. Russia’s material needs are too great. From
the very beginning I have maintained that nothing would menace the
worst features of Bolshevism so greatly as a return to the people of
a measure of prosperity; for it is upon masses of hungry and unhappy
people and not upon the prosperous and well-fed that the eloquent
tyrant with land and plenty to offer them is able to work his malignant
will.
Let us intervene, then, in Russian affairs with the only intervention
that was ever justified--with food and clothing and medicines; with raw
materials, agricultural machinery and sanitary supplies; with doctors
and nurses and sanitary experts; with railway workers, plumbers and
engineers. Let us do all in our power to help the Russians quickly to
re-establish their economic life. Then, perhaps, the past may come to
be forgotten and forgiven, and Russia become what she was destined from
before the foundations of the world to become--a great leader in the
humanitarian movements of the world.
For the Russians are amongst the world’s most tender dreamers. Humanity
sorely needs their vision in this hour. At a time when the fatal folly
and weakness of a few has flung mankind into the pit of materialism, it
would be of incalculable value to Europe and the world to restore to it
the idealism of a hundred millions of dreamers.
_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England._ William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
F. 40. 8.20.
Transcriber’s Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 49: “for for five years” changed to “for five years”
Page 103: “attendence at church” changed to “attendance at church”
Page 156: “was ot political” changed to “was not political”
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