'MO. 1. S P 1
B. C.
*
V-
RUSSIA IN 1919
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LITERARY CRITICISM.
A History of Story-telling. 1909.
Edgar Allan Poe. 1910.
Oscar Wilde. 1912.
Portraits and Speculations. 1913.
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Souls of the Streets. 1904.
The Stone Lady. 1905.
Bohemia in London. 1907.
BOOKS FOB CHILDREN.
Highways and Byeways in Fairyland. 1906.
The Trap, the Elf and the Ogre. 1906.
Old Peter's Russian Tales. 1916.
ROMANCE.
The Foofmarks of the Faun and other Stories. 1911.
The Elixir of Life. 1915.
RUSSIA IN 1919
BY
ARTHUR RANSOME
.
NEW YORK B.W.HUEBSCH MCMXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY B. W. HUEBSCH
Published August, 1919
Second printing, August, 1919
Third printing, October, 1919
R3G-3
tE - ' [BRA BY
LOCAL NO. i,..-s. P. OF c
VANCOUVER, B. C.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
On August 27, 1914, in London, I made this
note in a memorandum book : "Met Arthur Ran-
some at 's ; discussed a book on the Russian's
relation to the war in the light of psychological
background folklore." The book was not writ-
ten but the idea that instinctively came to him per-
vades his every utterance on things Russian.
The versatile man who commands more than
respect as the biographer of Poe and Wilde ; as the
translator of and commentator on Remy de Gour-
mont; as a folklorist, has shown himself to be
consecrated to the truth. The document that
Mr. Ransome hurried out of Russia in the early
days of the Soviet government (printed in the
New Republic and then widely circulated as a
pamphlet), was the first notable appeal from a
non-Russian to the American people for fair play
in a crisis understood then even less than now.
iii
The British Who's Who that Almanach de
Gotha of people who do things or choose their
parents wisely tells us that Mr. Ransome's re-
creations are "walking, smoking, fairy stories."
It is, perhaps, his intimacy with the last named
that enables him to distinguish between myth and
fact and that makes his activity as an observer and
recorder so valuable in a day of bewilderment and
betrayal.
B. W. H.
IV
1 NO. 1, OF C
VANCOUVER, B. C.
INTRODUCTION
I AM well aware that there is material in this book
which will be misused by fools both white and
red. That is not my fault. My object has been
narrowly limited. I have tried by means of a
bald record of conversations and things seen, to
provide material for those who wish to know what
is being done and thought in Moscow at the pres-
ent time, and demand something more to go upon
than secondhand reports of wholly irrelevant atro-
cities committed by either one side or the other,
and often by neither one side nor the other, but
by irresponsible scoundrels who, in the natural
turmoil of the greatest convulsion in the history
of our civilization, escape temporarily here and
there from any kind of control.
The book is in no sense of the word propa-
ganda. For propaganda, for the defence or at-
tack of the Communist position, is needed a knowl-
edge of economics, both from the capitalist and
socialist standpoints, to which I cannot pretend.
v
Very many times during the revolution it has
seemed to me a tragedy that no Englishman prop-
erly equipped in this way was in Russia study-
ing the gigantic experiment which, as a country,
we are allowing to pass abused but not examined.
I did my best. I got, I think I may say, as near
as any foreigner who was not a Communist could
get to what was going on. But I never lost the
bitter feeling that the opportunities of study which
I made for myself were wasted, because I could
not hand them on to some other Englishman,
whose education and training would have enabled
him to make a better, a fuller use of them. Nor
would it have been difficult for such a man to
get the opportunities which were given to me
when, by sheer persistence in enquiry, I had over-
come the hostility which I at first encountered as
the correspondent of a "bourgeois" newspaper.
Such a man could be in Russia now, for the Com-
munists do not regard war as we regard it. The
Germans would hardly have allowed an Allied
Commission to come to Berlin a year ago to in-
vestigate the nature and working of the Autocracy.
The Russians, on the other hand, immediately
vi
agreed to the suggestion of the Berne Conference
that they should admit a party of socialists, the
majority of whom, as they well knew, had already
expressed condemnation of them. Further, in
agreeing to this, they added that they would as
willingly admit a committee of enquiry sent by
any of the "bourgeois" governments actually at
war with them.
I am sure that there will be many in England
who will understand much better than I the drudg-
ery of the revolution which is in this book very
imperfectly suggested. I repeat that it is not my
fault that they must make do with the eyes and
ears of an ignorant observer. No doubt I have
not asked the questions they would have asked,
and have thought interesting and novel much
which they would have taken for granted.
The book has no particular form, other than
that given it by a more or less accurate adherence
to chronology in setting down things seen and
heard. It is far too incomplete to allow me to
call it a Journal. I think I could have made it
twice as long without repetitions, and I am not
at all sure that in choosing in a hurry between
vii
this and that I did not omit much which could
witji advantage be substituted for what is here
set down. There is nothing here of my talk with
the English soldier prisoners and nothing of my
visit to the officers confined in the Butyrka Gaol.
There is nothing of the plagues of typhus and
influenza, or of the desperate situation of a peo-
ple thus visited and unable to procure from abroad
the simplest drugs which they cannot manufacture
at home or even the anaesthetics necessary for
their wounded on every frontier of their country.
I forgot to describe the ballet which I saw a few
days before leaving. I have said nothing of the
talk I had with Eliava concerning the Russian
plans for the future of Turkestan. I could think
of a score of other omissions. Judging from what
I have read since my return from Russia, I imagine
people -will find my book very poor in the matter
of Terrors. There is nothing here of the Red
Terror, or of any of the Terrors on the other side.
But for its poverty in atrocities my book will be
blamed only by fanatics, since they alone desire
proofs of past Terrors as justification for new
ones.
viii
On reading my manuscript through, I find it
quite surprisingly dull. The one thing that I
should have liked to transmit through it seems
somehow to have slipped away. I should have
liked to explain what was the appeal of the revo-
lution to men like Colonel Robins and myself,
both of us men far removed in origin and upbring-
ing from the revolutionary and socialist move-
ments in our own countries. Of course no one
who was able, as we were able, to watch the men
of the revolution at close quarters could believe
for a moment that they were the mere paid agents
of the very power which more than all others rep-
resented the stronghold they had set out to de-
stroy. We had the knowledge of the injustice
being done to these men to urge us in their de-
fence. But there was more in it than that.
There was the feeling, from which we could never
escape, of the creative effort of the revolution.
There was the thing that distinguishes the creative
from other artists, the living, vivifying expression
of something hitherto hidden in the consciousness
of humanity. If this book were to be an accurate
record of my own impressions, all the drudgery,
ix
gossip, quarrels, arguments, events and experiences
it contains would have to be set against a back-
ground of that extraordinary vitality which obsti-
nately persists in Moscow even in these dark days
of discomfort, disillusion, pestilence, starvation
and unwanted war.
ARTHUR RANSOME.
OF C
VANCOUVER :
CONTENTS
PAGE
To PETROGRAD i
SMOLNI 13
PETROGRAD TO Moscow 20
FIRST DAYS IN Moscow 25
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON THE REPLY TO
THE PRINKIPO PROPOSAL 44
KAMENEV AND THE Moscow SOVIET .... 64
AN EX-CAPITALIST 71
A THEORIST OF REVOLUTION 80
EFFECTS OF ISOLATION 85"
AN EVENING AT THE OPERA 88
THE COMMITTEE OF STATE CONSTRUCTIONS . . 95
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND THE TERROR . 108
NOTES OF CONVERSATIONS WITH LENIN . . . . 117
THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF PUBLIC ECONOMY . . 124
THE RACE WITH RUIN 132
A PLAY OF CHEKHOV 139
THE CENTRO-TEXTILE 143
MODIFICATION IN THE AGRARIAN PROGRAMME . .151
FOREIGN TRADE AND MUNITIONS OF WAR . . . 153
PAGE
THE PROPOSED DELEGATION FROM BERNE . . .156
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON THE RIVAL PAR-
TIES 161
COMMISSARIAT OF LABOUR 170
EDUCATION 179
A BOLSHEVIK FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY . . 189
DIGRESSION 192
THE OPPOSITION . 194
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL 213
LAST TALK WITH LENIN 224
THE JOURNEY OUT 231
ENDING LIBRARY
LOCAL NCX 1, S, P. OF C.
VANCOUVER, B." C,
RUSSIA IN 1919
TO PETROGRAD
ON January 30 a party of four newspaper corre-
spondents, two Norwegians, a Swede and myself,
left Stockholm to go into Russia. We travelled
with the members of the Soviet Government's
Legation, headed by Vorovsky and Litvinov, who
were going home after the breaking off of official
relations by Sweden. Some months earlier I had
got leave from the Bolsheviks to go into Russia
to get further material for my history of the revo-
lution, but at the last moment there was opposition
and it seemed likely that I should be refused per-
mission. Fortunately, however, a copy of the
Morning Post reached Stockholm, containing a
report of a lecture by Mr. Lockhart in which he
had said that as I had been out of Russia for six
months I had no right to speak of conditions there.
i
Armed with this I argued that it would be very
unfair if I were not allowed to come and see things
for myself. I had no further difficulties.
We crossed by boat to Abo, grinding our way
through the ice, and then travelled by rail to the
Russian frontier, taking several days over the
journey owing to delays variously explained by
the Finnish authorities. We were told that the
Russian White Guards had planned an attack on
the train. Litvinov, half-smiling, wondered if
they were purposely giving time to the White
Guards to organize such an attack. Several nerv-
ous folk inclined to that opinion. But at Viborg
we were told that there were grave disorders in
Petrograd and that the Finns did not wish to fling
us into the middle of a scrimmage. Then some-
one obtained a newspaper and we read a detailed
account of what was happening. This account
was, as I learnt on my return, duly telegraphed to
England like much other news of a similar char-
acter. There had been a serious revolt in Petro-
grad. The Semenovsky regiment had gone over
to the mutineers, who had seized the town. The
Government, however, had escaped to Kronstadt,
2
whence they were bombarding Petrograd with
naval guns.
This sounded fairly lively, but there was noth-
ing to be done, so we finished up the chess tourna-
ment we had begun on the boat. An Esthonian
won it, and I was second, by reason of a lucky win
over Litvinov, who is really a better player. By
Sunday night we reached Terijoki and on Monday
moved slowly to the frontier of Finland close to
Bieloostrov. A squad of Finnish soldiers was
waiting, excluding everybody from the station
and seeing that no dangerous revolutionary should
break away on Finnish territory. There were no
horses, but three hand sledges were brought, and
we piled the luggage on them, and then set off to
walk to the frontier duly convoyed by the Finns.
A Finnish lieutenant walked at the head of the
procession, chatting good-humouredly in Swedish
and German, much as a man might think it worth
while to be kind to a crowd of unfortunates just
about to be flung into a boiling cauldron. We
walked a few hundred yards along the line and
then turned into a road deep in snow through a
little bare wood, and so down to the little wooden
3
bridge over the narrow frozen stream that sepa-
rates Finland from Russia. The bridge, not
twenty yards across, has a toll bar at each end,
two sentry boxes and two sentries. On the Rus-
sian side the bar was the familiar black and white
of the old Russian Empire, with a sentry box to
match. The Finns seemingly had not yet had
time to paint their bar and box.
The Finns lifted their toll bar, and the Finn-
ish officers leading our escort walked solemnly to
the middle of the bridge. Then the luggage was
dumped there, while we stood watching the trem-
bling of the rickety little bridge under the weight
of our belongings, for we were all taking in with
us as much food as we decently could. We were
none of us allowed on the bridge until an officer
and a few men had come down to meet us on the
Russian side. Only little Nina, Vorovsky's
daughter, about ten years old, chattering Swed-
ish with the Finns, got leave from them, and
shyly, step by step, went down the other side of
the bridge and struck up acquaintance with the
soldier of the Red Army who stood there, gun
in hand, and obligingly bent to show her the
4
sign, set in his hat, of the crossed sickle and ham-
mer of the Peasants' and Workmen's Republic.
At last the Finnish lieutenant took the list of his
prisoners and called out the names "Vorovsky,
wife and one bairn," looking laughingly over his
shoulder at Nina flirting with the sentry. Then
"Litvinov," and so on through all the Russians,
about thirty of them. We four visitors, Grim-
lund the Swede, Puntervald and Stang, the Nor-
wegians, and I, came last. At last, after a gen-
eral shout of farewell, and "Helse Finland" from
Nina, the Finns turned and went back into their
civilization, and we went forward into the new
struggling civilization of Russia. Crossing that
bridge we passed from one philosophy to another,
from one extreme of the class struggle to the other,
from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to a dicta-
torship of the proletariat.
The contrast was noticeable at once. On the
Finnish side of the frontier we had seen the
grandiose new frontier station, much larger than
could possibly be needed, but quite a good ex-
pression of the spirit of the new Finland. On
the Russian side we came to the same grey old
5
wooden station known to all passengers to and
from Russia for polyglot profanity and passport
difficulties. There were no porters, which was
not surprising because there is barbed wire and
an extremely hostile sort of neutrality along the
frontier and traffic across has practically ceased.
In the buffet, which was very cold, no food could
be bought. The long tables once laden with ca-
viare and other zakuski were bare. There was,
however, a samovar, and we bought tea at sixty
kopecks a glass and lumps of sugar at two roubles
fifty each. We took our tea into the inner pass-
port room, where I think a stove must have been
burning the day before, and there made some sort
of a meal off some of Puntervald's Swedish hard-
bread. It is difficult to me to express the curious
mixture of depression and exhilaration that was
given to the party by this derelict starving station
combined with the feeling that we were no longer
under guard but could do more or less as we
liked. It split the party into two factions, of
which one wept while the other sang. Madame
Vorovsky, who had not been in Russia since the
first revolution, frankly wept, but she wept still
6
more in Moscow where she found that even as the
wife of a high official of the Government she en-
joyed no privileges which would save her from
the hardships of the population. But the younger
members of the party, together with Litvinov,
found their spirits irrepressibly rising in spite of
having no dinner. They walked about the vil-
lage, played with the children, and sang, not revo-
lutionary songs, but just jolly songs, any songs
that came into their heads. When at last the
train came to take us into Petrograd, and we found
that the carriages were unheated, somebody got
out a mandoline and we kept ourselves warm by
dancing. At the same time I was sorry for the
five children who were with us, knowing that a
country simultaneously suffering war, blockade
and revolution is not a good place for child-
hood. But they had caught the mood of their
parents, revolutionaries going home to their revo-
lution, and trotted excitedly up and down the
carriage or anchored themselves momentarily, first
on one person's knee and then on another's.
It was dusk when we reached Petrograd. The
Finland Station, of course, was nearly deserted,
7
but here there were four porters, who charged
two hundred and fifty roubles for shifting the
luggage of the party from one end of the plat-
form to the other. We ourselves loaded it into
the motor lorry sent to meet us, as at Bieloostrov
we had loaded it into the van. There was a long
time to wait while rooms were being allotted to
us in various hotels, and with several others I
walked outside the station to question people about
the mutiny and the bombardment of which we
had heard in Finland. Nobody knew anything
about it. As soon as the rooms were allotted and
I knew that I had been lucky enough to get one
in the Astoria, I drove off across the frozen river
by the Liteini Bridge. The trams were running.
The town seemed absolutely quiet, and away
down the river I saw once again in the dark,
which is never quite dark because of the snow,
the dim shape of the fortress, and passed one by
one the landmarks I had come to know so well
during the last six years the Summer Garden,
the British Embassy, and the great Palace Square
where I had seen armoured cars flaunting about
during the July rising, soldiers camping during
8
the hysterical days of the Kornilov affair and,
earlier, Kornilov himself reviewing the Junkers.
My mind went further back to the March revo-
lution, and saw once more the picket fire of the
revolutionaries at the corner that night when the
remains of the Tzar's Government were still fran-
tically printing proclamations ordering the people
to go home, at the very moment while they them-
selves were being besieged in the Admiralty.
Then it flung itself further back still, to the day
of the declaration of war, when I saw this same
square filled with people, while the Tzar came
out for a moment on the Palace balcony. By that
time we were pulling up at the Astoria and I had
to turn my mind to something else.
The Astoria is now a bare barrack of a place,
but comparatively clean. During the war and
the first part of the revolution it was tenanted
chiefly by officers, and owing to the idiocy of a
few of these at the time of the first revolution in
shooting at a perfectly friendly crowd of soldiers
and sailors, who came there at first with no other
object than to invite the officers to join them, the
place was badly smashed up in the resulting scrim-
9
mage. I remember with Major Scale fixing up
a paper announcing the fall of Bagdad either the
night this happened or perhaps the night before.
People rushed up to it, thinking it some news about
the revolution, and turned impatiently away. All
the damage has been repaired, but the red carpets
have gone, perhaps to make banners, and many
of the electric lights were not burning, probably
because of the shortage in electricity. I got my
luggage upstairs to a very pleasant room on the
fourth floor. Every floor of that hotel had its
memories for me. In this room lived that brave
reactionary officer who boasted that he had made
a raid on the Bolsheviks and showed little Ma-
dame Kollontai's hat as a trophy. In this I used
to listen to Perceval Gibbon when he was talking
about how to write short stories and having in-
fluenza. There was the room where Miss Beatty
used to give tea to tired revolutionaries and to still
more tired enquirers into the nature of revolution
while she wrote the only book that has so far
appeared which gives anything like a true impres-
ionist picture of those unforgettable days. 1 Close
1 "The Red Heart of Russia."
10
by was the room where poor Denis Garstin used
to talk of the hunting he would have when the
war should come to an end.
I enquired for a meal, and found that no food
was to be had in the hotel, but they could supply
hot water. Then, to get an appetite for sleep, I
went out for a short walk, though I did not much
like doing so with nothing but an English pass-
port, and with no papers to show that I had any
right to be there. I had, like the other foreign-
ers, been promised such papers but had not yet
received them. I went round to the Regina,
which used to be one of the best hotels in the
town, but those of us who had rooms there were
complaining so bitterly that I did not stay with
them, but went off along the Moika to the Nevsky
and so back to my own hotel. The streets, like
the hotel, were only half lit, and hardly any of
the houses had a lighted window. In the old
sheepskin coat I had worn on the front and in
my high fur hat, I felt like some ghost of the old
regime visiting a town long dead. The silence
and emptiness of the streets contributed to this
effect. Still, the few people I met or passed were
11
talking cheerfully together and the rare sledges
and motors had comparatively good roads, the
streets being certainly better swept and cleaned
than they have been since the last winter of the
Russian Empire.
12
SMOLNI
EARLY in the morning I got tea, and a bread card
on which I was given a very small allowance of
brown bread, noticeably better in quality than
the compound of clay and straw which made me
ill in Moscow last summer. Then I went to
find Litvinov, and set out with him to walk to the
Smolni institute, once a school for the daughters
of the aristocracy, then the headquarters of the
Soviet, then the headquarters of the Soviet Gov-
ernment, and finally, after the Government's
evacuation to Moscow, bequeathed to the North-
ern Commune and the Petrograd Soviet. The
town, in daylight, seemed less deserted, though it
was obvious that the "unloading" of the Petrograd
population, which was unsuccessfully attempted
during the Kerensky regime, had been accom-
plished to a large extent. This has been partly
the result of famine and of the stoppage of fac-
13
tories, which in its turn is due to the impossibility
of bringing fuel and raw material to Petrograd.
A very large proportion of Russian factory hands
have not, as in other countries, lost their connec-
tion with their native villages. There was al-
ways a considerable annual migration backwards
and forwards between the villages and the town,
and great numbers of workmen have gone home,
carrying with them the ideas of the revolution.
It should also be remembered that the bulk of
the earlier formed units of the Red Army is com-
posed of workmen from the towns who, except
in the case of peasants mobilized in districts which
have experienced an occupation by the counter-
revolutionaries, are more determined and better
understand the need for discipline than the men
from the country.
The most noticeable thing In Petrograd to any-
one returning after six months' absence is the
complete disappearance of armed men. The town
seems to have returned to a perfectly peaceable
condition in the sense that the need for revolu-
tionary patrols has gone. Soldiers walking about
no longer carry their rifles, and the picturesque
figures of the revolution who wore belts of ma-
chine-gun cartridges slung about their persons
have gone.
The second noticeable thing, especially in the
Nevsky, which was once crowded with people too
fashionably dressed, is the general lack of new
clothes. I did not see anybody wearing clothes
that looked less than two years old, with the ex-
ception of some officers and soldiers who are as
well equipped nowadays as at the beginning of
the war. Petrograd ladies were particularly fond
of boots, and of boots there is an extreme short-
age. I saw one young woman in a well-preserved,
obviously costly fur coat, and beneath it straw
shoes with linen wrappings.
We had started rather late, so we took a tram
half-way up the Nevsky. The tram conductors
are still women. The price of tickets has risen
to a rouble, usually, I noticed, paid in stamps.
It used to be ten kopecks.
The armoured car which used to stand at the
entrance of Smolni has disappeared and been re-
placed by a horrible statue of Karl Marx, who
stands, thick and heavy, on a stout pedestal, hold-
15
ing behind him an enormous top-hat like the muz-
zle of an eighteen-inch gun. The only signs of
preparations for defence that remain are the pair
of light field guns which, rather the worse for
weather, still stand under the pillars of the portico
which they would probably shake to pieces if ever
they should be fired. Inside the routine was as
it used to be, and when I turned down the passage
to get my permit to go upstairs, I could hardly
believe that I had been away for so long. The
place is emptier than it was. There is not the
same eager crowd of country delegates pressing
up and down the corridors and collecting litera-
ture from the stalls that I used to see in the old
days when the serious little workman from the
Viborg side stood guard over Trotsky's door, and
from the alcove with its window looking down
into the great hall, the endless noise of debate
rose from the Petrograd Soviet that met below.
Litvinov invited me to have dinner with the
Petrograd Commissars, which I was very glad to
do, partly because I was hungry and partly because
I thought it would be better to meet Zinoviev thus
than in any other manner, remembering how sourly
16
he had looked upon me earlier in the revolution.
Zinoviev is a Jew, with a lot of hair, a round
smooth face, and a very abrupt manner. He was
against the November Revolution, but when it
had been accomplished returned to his old alle-
giance to Lenin and, becoming President of the
Northern Commune, remained in Petrograd when
.he Government moved to Moscow. He is neither
an original thinker nor a good orator except in
debate, in answering opposition, which he does
with extreme skill. His nerve was badly shaken
by the murders of his friends Volodarsky and
Uritzky last year, and he is said to have lost his
head after the attack on Lenin, to whom he is ex-
tremely devoted. I have heard many Com-
munists attribute to this fact the excesses which
followed that event in Petrograd. I have never
noticed anything that would make me consider
him pro-German, though of course he is pro-Marx.
He has, however, a decided prejudice against the
English. He was among the Communists who
put difficulties in my way as a "bourgeois jour-
nalist" in the earlier days of the revolution, and
I had heard that he had expressed suspicion
17
and disapproval of Radek's intimacy with me.
I was amused to see his face when he came in
and saw me sitting at the table. Litvinov intro-
duced me to him, very tactfully telling him of
Lockhart's attack upon me, whereupon he became
quite decently friendly, and said that if I could
stay a few days in Petrograd on my way back from
Moscow he would see that I had access to the his-
torical material I wanted about the doings of the
Petrograd Soviet during the time I had been away.
I told him I was surprised to find him here and
not at Kronstadt, and asked about the mutiny and
the treachery of the Semenovsky regiment. There
was a shout of laughter, and Pozern explained
that there was no Semenovsky regiment in exist-
ence, and that the manufacturers of the story,
every word of which was a lie, had no doubt tried
to give realism to it by putting in the name of
the regiment which had taken a chief part in put-
ting down the Moscow insurrection of fourteen
years ago. Pozern, a thin, bearded man, with
glasses, was sitting at the other end of the table,
as Military Commissar of the Northern Com-
mune.
18
Dinner in Smolni was the same informal affair
that it was in the old days, only with much less
to eat. The Commissars, men and women, came
in from their work, took their places, fed and went
back to work again, Zinoviev in particular stay-
ing only a few minutes. The meal was extremely
simple, soup with shreds of horse-flesh in it, very
good indeed, followed by a little kasha together
with small slabs of some sort of white stuff of no
particular consistency or taste, Then tea and a
lump of sugar. The conversation was mostly
about the chances of peace, and Litvinov's rather
pessimistic reports were heard with disappoint-
ment. Just as I had finished, Vorovsky, Madame
Vorovsky and little Nina, together with the two
Norwegians and the Swede, came in. I learnt
that about half the party were going on to Mos-
cow that night and, deciding to go with them,
hurried off to the hotel.
PETROGRAD TO MOSCOW
THERE was, of course, a dreadful scrimmage
about getting away. Several people were not
ready at the last minute. Only one motor was
obtainable for nine persons with their light lug-
gage, and a motor lorry for the heavy things. I
chose to travel on the lorry with the luggage and
had a fine bumpity drive to the station, reminding
me of similar though livelier experiences in the
earlier days of the revolution when lorries were
used for the transport of machine guns, red guards,
orators, enthusiasts of all kinds, and any stray per-
sons who happened to clamber on.
At the Nikolai Station we found perfect order
until we got into our wagon, an old third-class
wagon, in which a certain number of places which
one of the party had reserved had been occupied
by people who had no right to be there. Even
this difficulty was smoothed out in a manner that
20
would have been impossible a year or even six
months ago.
The wagon was divided by a door in the middle.
There were open coupes and side seats which be-
came plank beds when necessary. We slept in
three tiers on the bare boards. I had a very de-
cent place on the second tier, and, by a bit of good
luck, the topmost bench over my head was occu-
pied only by luggage, which gave me room to
climb up there and sit more or less upright under
the roof with my legs dangling above the general
tumult of mothers, babies, and Bolsheviks below.
At each station at which the train stopped there
was a general procession backwards and forwards
through the wagon. Everybody who had a kettle
or a coffee-pot or a tin can, or even an empty meat
tin, crowded through the carriage and out to get
boiling water. I had nothing but a couple of
thermos flasks, but with these I joined the others.
From every carriage on the train people poured
out and hurried to the taps. No one controlled
the taps but, with the instinct for co-operation for
which Russians are remarkable, people formed
themselves automatically into queues, and by the
21
time the train started again everybody was back
in his place and ready for a general tea-drinking.
This performance was repeated again and again
throughout the night. People dozed off to sleep,
woke up, drank more tea, and joined in the vari-
ous conversations that went on in different parts
of the carriage. Up aloft, I listened first to one
and then to another. Some were grumbling at
the price of food. Others were puzzling why
other nations insisted on being at war with them.
One man said he was a co-operator who had come
by roundabout ways from Archangel, and describ-
ing the discontent there, told a story which I give
as an illustration of the sort of thing that is being
said in Russia by non-Bolsheviks. This man, in
spite of the presence of many Communists in the
carriage, did not disguise his hostility to their
theories and practice, and none the less told this
story. He said that some of the Russian troops
in the Archangel district refused to go to the front.
Their commanders, unable to compel them, re-
signed and were replaced by others who, since the
men persisted in refusal, appealed for help. The
barracks, so he said, were then surrounded by
22
American troops, and the Russians, who had re-
fused to go to the front to fire on other Russians,
were given the choice, either that every tenth man
should be shot, or that they should give up their
ringleaders. The ringleaders, twelve in number,
were given up, were made to dig their own graves,
and shot. The whole story may well be Arch-
angel gossip. If so, as a specimen of such gossip,
it is not without significance. In another part of
the carriage an argument on the true nature of
selfishness caused some heat because the dispu-
tants insisted on drawing their illustrations from
each other's conduct. Then there was the diver-
sion of a swearing match at a wayside station
between the conductor and some one who tried to
get into this carriage and should have got into
another. Both were fluent and imaginative
swearers, and even the man from Archangel
stopped talking to listen to them. One, I re-
member, prayed vehemently that the other's hand
might fly off, and the. other, not to be outdone,
retorted with a similar prayer with regard to the
former's head. In England the dispute, which
became very fierce indeed, would have ended in
23
assault, but here it ended in nothing but the col-
lection on the platform of a small crowd of ex-
perts in bad language who applauded verbal hits
with impartiality and enthusiasm.
At last I tried to sleep, but the atmosphere in
the carriage, of smoke, babies, stale clothes, and
the peculiar smell of the Russian peasantry which
no one who has known it can forget, made sleep
impossible. But I travelled fairly comfortably,
resolutely shutting my ears to the talk, thinking
of fishing in England, and shifting from one bone
to another as each ached in turn from contact with
the plank on which I lay.
FIRST DAYS IN MOSCOW
IT was a rare cold day when I struggled through
the crowd out of the station in Moscow, and be-
gan fighting with the sledge-drivers who asked a
hundred roubles to take me to the Metropole. I
remembered coming here a year ago with Colonel
Robins, when we made ten roubles a limit for the
journey and often travelled for eight. To-day,
after heated bargaining, I got carried with no
luggage but a typewriter for fifty roubles. The
streets were white with deep snow, less well
cleaned than the Petrograd streets of this year
but better cleaned than the Moscow streets of last
year. The tramways were running. There
seemed to be at least as many sledges as usual,
and the horses were in slightly better condition
than last summer when they were scarcely able to
drag themselves along. I asked the reason of the
improvement, and the driver told me the horses
25
were now rationed like human beings, and all got
a small allowance of oats. There were crowds
of people about, but the numbers of closed shops
were very depressing. I did not then know that
this was due to the nationalization of trade and a
sort of general stock-taking, the object of which
was to prevent profiteering in manufactured goods,
etc., of which there were not enough to go round.
Before I left many shops were being reopened as
national concerns, like our own National Kitchens.
Thus, one would see over a shop the inscription,
'The 5th Boot Store of the Moscow Soviet" or
"The 3rd Clothing Store of the Moscow Soviet"'
or "The nth Book Shop." It had been found
that speculators bought, for example, half a dozen
overcoats, and sold them to the highest bidders,
thus giving the rich an advantage over the poor.
Now if a man needs a new suit he has to go in his
rags to his House Committee, and satisfy them
that he really needs a new suit for himself. He is
then given the right to buy a suit. In this way
an attempt is made to prevent speculation and
to ensure a more or less equitable distribution of
the inadequate stocks. My greatest surprise was
26
given me by the Metropole itself, because the old
wounds of the revolution, which were left un-
healed all last summer, the shell-holes and bullet
splashes which marked it when I was here before,
have been repaired.
Litvinov had given me a letter to Karakhan of
the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, asking him
to help me in getting a room. I found him at
the Metropole, still smoking as it were the cigar
of six months ago. Karakhan, a handsome Ar-
menian, elegantly bearded and moustached, once
irreverently described by Radek as "a donkey of
classical beauty," who has consistently used such
influence as he has in favour of moderation and
agreement with the Allies, greeted me very cor-
dially, and told me that the foreign visitors were
to be housed in the Kremlin. I told him I should
much prefer to live in an hotel in the ordinary
way, and he at once set about getting a room for
me. This was no easy business, though he ob-
tained an authorization from Sverdlov, president
of the executive committee, for me to live where
I wished, in the Metropole or the National, which
are mostly reserved for Soviet delegates, officials
27
and members of the Executive Committee. Both
were full, and he finally got me a room in the old
Loskutnaya Hotel, now the Red Fleet, partially
reserved for sailor delegates and members of the
Naval College.
Rooms are distributed on much the same plan
as clothes. Housing is considered a State monop-
oly, and a general census of housing accommoda-
tion has been taken. In every district there are
housing committees to whom people wanting
rooms apply. They work on the rough and ready
theory that until every man has one room no
one has a right to two. An Englishman acting
as manager of works near Moscow told me that
part of his house had been allotted to workers in
his factory, who, however, were living with him
amicably, and had, I think, allowed him to choose
which rooms he should concede. This plan has,
of course, proved very hard on house-owners, and
in some cases the new tenants have made a hor-
rible mess of the houses, as might, indeed, have
been expected, seeing that they had previously
been of those who had suffered directly from the
decivilizing influences of overcrowding. After
28
talking for some time we went round the corner to
the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, where we
found Chicherin who, I thought, had aged a good
deal and was (though this was perhaps his man-
ner) less cordial than Karakhan. He asked about
England, and I told him Litvinov knew more
about that than I, since he had been there more
recently. He asked what I thought would be
the effect of his Note with detailed terms pub-
lished that day. I told him that Litvinov, in an
interview which I had telegraphed, had mentioned
somewhat similar terms some time before, and that
personally I doubted whether the Allies would at
present come to any agreement with the Soviet
Government, but that, if the Soviet Government
lasted, my personal opinion was that the commer-
cial isolation of so vast a country as Russia could
hardly be prolonged indefinitely on that account
alone. (For the general attitude to that Note,
see page 44.)
I then met Voznesensky (Left Social Revolu-
tionary), of the Oriental Department, bursting
with criticism of the Bolshevik attitude towards
his party. He secured a ticket for me to get din-
29
ner in the Metropole. This ticket I had to sur-
render when I got a room in the National. The
dinner consisted of a plate of soup, and a very
small portion of something else. There are Na-
tional Kitchens in different parts of the town sup-
plying similar meals. Glasses of weak tea were
sold at 30 kopecks each, without sugar. My sister
had sent me a small bottle of saccharine just be-
fore I left Stockholm, and it was pathetic to see
the childish delight with which some of my friends
drank glasses of sweetened tea.
From the Metropole I went to the Red Fleet to
get my room fixed up. Six months ago there were
comparatively clean rooms here, but the sailors
have demoralized the hotel and its filth is inde-
scribable. There was no heating and very little
light. A samovar left after the departure of the
last visitor was standing on the table, together
with some dirty curl-papers and other rubbish.
I got the waiter to clean up more or less, and or-
dered a new samovar. He could not supply
spoon, knife, or fork, and only with great diffi-
culty was persuaded to lend me glasses.
The telephone, however, was working, and after
30
tea I got into touch with Madame Radek, who had
moved from the Metropole into the Kremlin. I
had not yet got a pass to the Kremlin, so she
arranged to meet me and get a pass for me from
the Commandant. I walked through the snow
to the white gate at the end of the bridge which
leads over the garden up a steep incline to the
Kremlin. Here a fire of logs was burning, and
three soldiers were sitting around it. Madame
Radek was waiting for me, warming her hands at
the fire, and we went together into the citadel of
the republic.
A meeting of the People's Commissars was go-
ing on in the Kremlin, and on an open space under
the ancient churches were a number of motors
black on the snow. We turned to the right down
the Dvortzovaya street, between the old Cavalier
House and the Potyeshny Palace, and went in
through a door under the archway that crosses the
road, and up some dark flights of stairs to a part
of the building that used, I think, to be called the
Pleasure Palace. Here, in a wonderful old room,
hung with Gobelins tapestries absolutely undam-
aged by the revolution, and furnished with carved
31
chairs, we found the most incongruous figure of
the old Swiss internationalist, Karl Moor, who
talked with affection of Keir Hardie and of Hynd-
man, "in the days when he was a socialist," and
was disappointed to find that I knew so little about
them. Madame Radek asked, of course, for the
latest news of Radek, and I told her that I had
read in the Stockholm papers that he had gone
to Brunswick, and was said to be living in the
palace there. 1 She feared he might have been in
Bremen when that town was taken by the Gov-
ernment troops, and did not believe he would
ever get back to Russia. She asked me, did I
not feel already (as indeed I did) the enormous
difference which the last six months had made in
strengthening the revolution. I asked after old
acquaintances, and learnt that Pyatakov, who,
when I Last saw him, was praying that the Allies
should give him machine rifles to use against the
Germans in the Ukraine, had been the first Presi-
dent of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, but had
since been replaced by Rakovsky. It had been
1 It was not till later that we learned he had returned to
Berlin, been arrested, and put in prison.
32
found that the views of the Pyatakov government
were further left than those of its supporters, and
so Pyatakov had given way to Rakovsky who was
better able to conduct a more moderate policy.
The Republic had been proclaimed in Kharkov,
but at that time Kiev was still in the hands of the
Directorate.
That night my room in the Red Fleet was so
cold that I went to bed in a sheepskin coat under
rugs and all possible bedclothes with a mattress
on the top. Even so I slept very badly.
The next day I spent in vain wrestlings to get
a better room. Walking about the town I found
it dotted with revolutionary sculptures, some very
bad, others interesting, all done in some haste and
set up for the celebrations of the anniversary of
the revolution last November. The painters also
had been turned loose to do what they could with
the hoardings, and though the weather had dam-
aged many of their pictures, enough was left to
show what an extraordinary carnival that had
been. Where a hoarding ran along the front of
a house being repaired the painters had used the
whole of it as a vast canvas on which they had
33
painted huge symbolic pictures of the revolution.
A whole block in the Tverskaya was so decorated.
Best, I think, were the row of wooden booths al-
most opposite the Hotel National in the Okhotnia
Ryadi. These had been painted by the futurists
or kindred artists, and made a really delightful
effect, their bright colours and naif patterns seem-
ing so natural to Moscow that I found myself
wondering how it was that they had never been
so painted before. They used to be a uniform
dull yellow. Now, in clear primary colours, blue,
red, yellow, with rough flower designs, on white
and chequered back-grounds, with the masses of
snow in the road before them, and bright-ker-
chiefed women and peasants in ruddy sheepskin
coats passing by, they seemed less like futurist
paintings than like some traditional survival, link-
ing new Moscow with the Middle Ages. It is
perhaps interesting to note that certain staid
purists in the Moscow Soviet raised a protest
while I was there against the license given to the
futurists to spread themselves about the town,
and demanded that the art of the revolution should
be more comprehensible and less violent. These
34
criticisms, however, did not apply to the row of
booths which were a pleasure to me every time
I passed them.
In the evening I went to see Remstein in the
National. Reinstein is a little old grandfather,
a member of the American Socialist Labour Party,
who was tireless in helping the Americans last
year, and is a prodigy of knowledge about the rev-
olution. He must be nearly seventy, never misses
a meeting of the Moscow Soviet or the Executive
Committee, gets up at seven in the morning, and
goes from one end of Moscow to the other to lec-
ture to the young men in training as officers for
the Soviet Army, more or less controls the English
soldier war prisoners, about whose Bolshevism he
is extremely pessimistic, and enjoys an official po-
sition as head of the quite futile department which
prints hundred-weight upon hundred-weight of
propaganda in English, none of which by any
chance ever reaches these shores. He was terribly
disappointed that I had brought no American
papers with me. He complained of the lack of
transport, a complaint which I think I must have
heard at least three times a day from different
35
people the whole time I was in Moscow. Po-
litically, he thought, the position could not be
better, though economically it was very bad.
When they had corn, as it were, in sight, they
could not get it to the towns for lack of locomo-
tives. These economic difficulties were bound to
react sooner or later on the political position.
He talked about the English prisoners. The
men are brought to Moscow, where they are given
special passports and are allowed to go anywhere
they like about the town without convoy of any
kind. I asked about the officers, and he said that
they were in prison but given everything possible,
a member of the International Red Cross, who
worked with the Americans when they were here,
visiting them regularly and taking in parcels for
them. He told me that on hearing in Moscow
that some sort of fraternization was going on on
the Archangel front, he had hurried off there with
two prisoners, one English and one American.
With some difficulty a meeting was arranged.
Two officers and a sergeant from the Allied side
and Reinstein and these two prisoners from the
Russian, met on a bridge midway between the op-
36
posing lines. The conversation seemed to have
been mostly an argument about working-class con-
ditions in America, together with reasons why the
Allies should go home and leave Russia alone.
Finally the Allied representatives (I fancy Amer-
icans) asked Reins tein to come with them to Arch-
angel and state his case, promising him safe con-
duct there and back. By this time two Russians
had joined the group, and one of them offered his
back as a desk, on which a safe-conduct for Rein-
stein was written. Reinstein, who showed me the
safe-conduct, doubted its validity, and said that
anyhow he could not have used it without instruc-
tions from Moscow. When it grew dusk they
prepared to separate. The officers said to the
prisoners, "What 4 ? Aren't you coming back with
us 1 ?" The two shook their heads decidedly, and
said, "No, thank you."
I learnt that some one was leaving the National
next day to go to Kharkov, so that I should prob-
ably be able to get a room. After drinking tea
with Reinstein till pretty late, I went home, bur-
rowed into a mountain of all sorts of clothes, and
slept a little.
37
In the morning I succeeded in making out my
claim to the room at the National, which turned
out to be a very pleasant one, next door to the
kitchen and therefore quite decently warm. I
wasted a lot of time getting my stuff across.
Transport from one hotel to the other, though the
distance is not a hundred yards, cost forty roubles.
I got things straightened out, bought some books,
and prepared a list of the material needed and
the people I wanted to see.
The room was perfectly clean. The chamber-
maid who came in to tidy up quite evidently took
a pride in doing her work properly, and protested
against my throwing matches on the floor. She
said she had been in the hotel since it was opened.
I asked her how she liked the new regime. She
replied that there was not enough to eat, but that
she felt freer.
In the afternoon I went downstairs to the main
kitchens of the hotel, where there is a permanent
supply of hot water. One enormous kitchen is
set apart for the use of people living in the hotel.
Here I found a crowd of people, all using different
parts of the huge stove. There was an old grey-
38
haired Cossack, with a scarlet tunic under his
black, wide-skirted, narrow-waisted coat, decorated
in the Cossack fashion with ornamental cartridges.
He was warming his soup, side by side with a little
Jewess making potato-cakes. A spectacled elderly
member of the Executive Committee was busy
doing something with a little bit of meat. Two
little girls were boiling potatoes in old tin cans.
In another room set apart for washing a sturdy
little long-haired revolutionary was cleaning a
shirt. A woman with her hair done up in a blue
handkerchief was very carefully ironing a blouse.
Another was busy stewing sheets, or something of
that kind, in a big cauldron. And all the time
people from all parts of the hotel were coming
with their pitchers and pans, from fine copper ket-
tles to disreputable empty meat tins, to fetch hot
water for tea. At the other side of the corridor
was a sort of counter in front of a long window
opening into yet another kitchen. Here there was
a row of people waiting with their own saucepans
and plates, getting their dinner allowances of soup
and meat in exchange for tickets. I was told that
people thought they got slightly more if they took
39
their food in this way straight from the kitchen
to their own rooms instead of being served in the
restaurant. But I watched closely, and decided
it was only superstition. Besides, I had not got
a saucepan.
On paying for my room at the beginning of the
week I was given a card with the days of the week
printed along its edge. This card gave me the
right to buy one dinner daily, and when I bought
it that day of the week was snipped off the card
so that I could not buy another. The meal con-
sisted of a plate of very good soup, together with
a second course of a scrap of meat or fish. The
price of the meal varied between five and seven
roubles.
One could obtain this meal any time between
two and seven. Living hungrily through the
morning, at two o'clock I used to experience defi-
nite relief in the knowledge that now at any mo-
ment I could have my meal. Feeling in this way
less hungry, I used then to postpone it hour by
hour, and actually dined about five or six o'clock.
Thinking that I might indeed have been specially
favoured I made investigations, and found that
40
the dinners supplied at the public feeding houses
(the equivalent of our national kitchens) were of
precisely the same size and character, any differ-
ence between the meals depending not on the food
but on the cook.
A kind of rough and ready co-operative system
also obtained. One day there was a notice on the
stairs that those who wanted could get one pot of
jam apiece by applying to the provisioning com-
mittee of the hotel. I got a pot of jam in this
way, and on a later occasion a small quantity of
Ukrainian sausage.
Besides the food obtainable on cards it was pos-
sible to buy, at ruinous prices, food from specu-
lators, and an idea of the difference in the prices
may be obtained from the following examples:
Bread is one rouble 20 kopecks per pound by card
and 15 to 20 roubles per pound from the specula-
tors. Sugar is 12 roubles per pound by card, and
never less than 50 roubles per pound in the open
market. It is obvious that abolition of the card
system would mean that the rich would have
enough and the poor nothing. Various methods
have been tried in the effort to get rid of specu-
41
lators, whose high profits naturally decrease the
willingness of the villages to sell bread at less
abnormal rates. But as a Communist said to me,
"There is only one way to get rid of speculation,
and that is to supply enough on the card system.
When people can buy all they want at 1 rouble 20
they are not going to pay an extra 14 roubles for
the encouragement of speculators." "And when
will you be able to do that*?" I asked. "As soon
as the war ends, and we can use our transport for
peaceful purposes."
There can be no question about the starvation of
Moscow. On the third day after my arrival in
Moscow I saw a man driving a sledge laden with,
I think, horseflesh, mostly bones, probably dead
sledge horses. As he drove a black crowd of crows
followed the sledge and perched on it, tearing
greedily at the meat. He beat at them contin-
ually with his whip, but they were so famished
that they took no notice whatever. The starving
crows used even to force their way through the
small ventilators of the windows in my hotel to
pick up any scraps they could find inside. The
pigeons, which formerly crowded the streets, ut-
42
terly undismayed by the traffic, confident in the
security given by their supposed connection with
religion, have completely disappeared.
Nor can there be any question about the cold.
I resented my own sufferings less when I found
that the State Departments were no better off than
other folk. Even in the Kremlin I found the
Keeper of the Archives sitting at work in an old
sheepskin coat and felt boots, rising now and then
to beat vitality into his freezing hands like a Lon-
don cabman of old times.
43
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON THE
REPLY TO THE PRINKIPO PRO-
POSAL
February loth.
IT will be remembered that a proposal was made
by the Peace Conference that the various de facto
governments of Russia should meet on an island
in the Bosphorus to discuss matters, an armistice
being arranged meanwhile. No direct invitation
was sent to the Soviet Government. After at-
tempting to obtain particulars t-hrough the editor
of a French socialist paper, Chicherin on February
4th sent a long note to the Allies. The note was
not at first considered with great favour in Rus-
sia, although it was approved by the opposition
parties on the right, the Mensheviks even going
so far as to say that in sending such a note, the
Bolsheviks were acting in the interest of the whole
of the Russian people. The opposition on the
44
left complained that it was a betrayal of the revo-
lution into the hands of the Entente, and there
were many Bolsheviks who said openly that they
thought it went a little too far in the way of con-
cession. On February loth, the Executive Com-
mittee met to consider the international position.
Before proceeding to an account of that meet-
ing, it will be well to make a short summary of the
note in question. Chicherin, after referring to
the fact that no invitation had been addressed to
them and that the absence of a reply from them
was being treated as the rejection of a proposal
they had never received, said that in spite of its
more and more favourable position, the Russian
Soviet Government considered a cessation of hos-
tilities so desirable that it was ready immediately
to begin negotiations, and, as it had more than
once declared, to secure agreement "even at the
cost of serious concessions in so far as these should
not threaten the development of the Republic."
"Taking into consideration that the enemies
against whom it has to struggle borrow their
strength of resistance exclusively from the help
shown them by the powers of the Entente, and
45
that therefore these powers are the only actual
enemy of the Russian Soviet Government, the
latter addresses itself precisely to the powers of
the Entente, setting out the points on which it con-
siders such concessions possible with a view to
the ending of every kind of conflict with the afore-
said powers." There follows a list of the conces-
sions they are prepared to make. The first of
these is recognition of their debts, the interest on
which, "in view of Russia's difficult financial po-
sition and her unsatisfactory credit," they propose
to guarantee in raw materials. Then, "in view
of the interest continually expressed by foreign
capital in the question of the exploitation for its
advantage of the natural resources of Russia, the
Soviet Government is ready to give to subjects of
the powers of the Entente mineral, timber and
other concessions, to be defined in detail, on con-
dition that the economic and social structure of
Soviet Russia shall not be touched by the internal
arrangements of these concessions." The last
point is that Which roused most opposition. It
expresses a willingness to negotiate even concern-
ing such annexations, hidden or open, as the Allies
4 6
may have in mind. The words used are "The
Russian Soviet Government has not the intention
of excluding at all costs consideration of the ques-
tion of annexations, etc. . . ." Then, "by an-
nexations must be understood the retention on this
or that part of the territory of what was the Rus-
sian Empire, not including Poland and Finland,
of armed forces of the Entente or of such forces
as are maintained by the governments of the En-
tente or enjoy their financial, military, technical
or other support." There follows a statement
that the extent of the concessions will depend on
the military position. Chicherin proceeds to give
a rather optimistic account of the external and
internal situation. Finally he touches on the
question of propaganda. "The Russian Soviet
Government, while pointing out that it cannot
limit the freedom of the revolutionary press, de-
clares its readiness, in case of necessity, to include
in the general agreement with the powers of the
Entente the obligation not to interfere in their
internal affairs." The note ends thus : "On the
foregoing bases the Russian Soviet Government
is ready immediately to begin negotiations either
47
on Prinkipo island or in any other place whatso-
ever with all the powers of the Entente together
or with separate powers of their number, or with
any Russian political groupings whatsoever, ac-
cording to the wishes of the powers of the Entente.
The Russian Soviet Government begs the powers
of the Entente immediately to inform it whither
to send its representatives, and precisely when and
by what route." This note was dated February
4th, and was sent out by wireless.
From the moment when the note appeared in
the newspapers of February 5th, it had been the
main subject of conversation. Every point in it
was criticized and counter-criticized, but even its
critics, though anxious to preserve their criticism
as a basis for political action afterwards, were des-
perately anxious that it should meet with a reply.
No one in Moscow at that time could have the
slightest misgiving about the warlike tendencies
of the revolution. The overwhelming mass of the
people and of the revolutionary leaders want
peace, and only continued warfare forced upon
them could turn their desire for peace into des-
perate, resentful aggression. Everywhere I heard
the same story: "We cannot get things straight
while we have to fight all the time." They would
not admit it, I am sure, but few of the Soviet
leaders who have now for eighteen months been
wrestling with the difficulties of European Russia
have not acquired, as it were in spite of them-
selves, a national, domestic point of view. They
are thinking less about world revolution than
about getting bread to Moscow, or increasing the
output of textiles, or building river power-stations
to free the northern industrial district from its
dependence on the distant coal-fields. I was con-
sequently anxious to hear what the Executive
Committee would have to say, knowing that there
I should listen to some expression of the theoret-
ical standpoint from which my hard-working
friends had been drawn away by interests nearer
home.
The Executive Committee met as usual in the
big hall of the Hotel Metropole, and it met as
usual very late. The sitting was to begin at
seven, and, foolishly thinking that Russians might
have changed their nature in the last six months,
I was punctual and found the hall nearly empty,
49
because a party meeting of the Communists in the
room next door was not finished. The hall looked
just as it used to look, with a red banner over the
presidium and another at the opposite end, both,
inscribed "The All Russian Executive Commit-
tee," "Proletariat of all lands, unite," and so on.
As the room gradually filled, I met many acquaint-
ances.
Old Professor Pokrovsky came in, blinking
through his spectacles, bent a little, in a very old
coat, with a small black fur hat, his hands clasped
together, just as, so I have been told, he walked
unhappily to and fro in the fortress at Brest dur-
ing the second period of the negotiations. I did
not think he would recognize me, but he came up
at once, and reminded me of the packing of the
archives at the time when it seemed likely that
the Germans would take Petrograd. He told me
of a mass of material they are publishing about
the origin of the war. He said that England
came out of it best of anybody, but that France
and Russia showed in a very bad light.
Just then, Demian Biedny rolled in, fatter than
he used to be (admirers from the country send him
50
food) with a round face, shrewd laughing eyes,
and cynical mouth, a typical peasant, and the poet
of the revolution. He was passably shaved, his
little yellow moustache was trimmed, he was wear-
ing new leather breeches, and seemed altogether a
more prosperous poet than the untidy ruffian I
-first met about a year or more ago before his
satirical poems in Pravda and other revolution-
ary papers had reached the heights of popularity
to which they have since attained. In the old days
before the revolution in Petrograd he used to send
his poems to the revolutionary papers. A few
were published and scandalized the more austere
and serious-minded revolutionaries, who held a
meeting to decide whether any more were to be
printed. Since the revolution, he has rapidly
come into his own, and is now a sort of licensed
jester, flagellating Communists and non-Com-
munists alike. Even in this assembly he had
about him a little of the manner of Robert Burns
in Edinburgh society. He told me with expan-
sive glee that they had printed two hundred and
fifty thousand of his last book, that the whole
edition was sold in two weeks, and that he had had
51
his portrait painted by a real artist. It is actually
true that of his eighteen different works, only two
are obtainable to-day.
Madame Radek, who last year showed a genius
for the making of sandwiches with chopped leeks,
and did good work for Russia as head of the Com-
mittee for dealing with Russian war prisoners,
came and sat down beside me, and complained
bitterly that the authorities wanted to turn her
out of the grand ducal apartments in the Kremlin
and make them into a historical museum to illus-
trate the manner of life of the Romanovs. She
said she was sure that was simply an excuse and
that the real reason was that Madame Trotsky did
not like her having a better furnished room than
her own. It seems that the Trotskys, when they
moved into the Kremlin, chose a lodging ex-
tremely modest in comparison with the gorgeous
place where I had found Madame Radek.
All this time the room was filling, as the party
meeting ended and the members of the Executive
Committee came in to take their places. I was
asking Litvinov whether he was going to speak,
when a little hairy energetic man came up and
52
with great delight showed us the new matches in-
vented in the Soviet laboratories. Russia is short
of match-wood, and without paraffin. Besides
which I think I am right in saying that the bulk
of the matches used in the north came from fac-
tories in Finland. In these new Bolshevik
matches neither wood nor paraffin is used. Waste
paper is a substitute for one, and the grease that
is left after cleaning wool is a substitute for the
other. The little man, Berg, secretary of the
Presidium of the Council of Public Economy,
gave me a packet of his matches. They are like
the matches in a folding cover that used to be com-
mon in Paris. You break off a match before
striking it. They strike and burn better than any
matches I have ever bought in Russia, and I do
not see why they should not be made in England,
where we have to import all the materials of
which ordinary matches are made. I told Berg
I should try to patent them and so turn myself
into a capitalist. Another Communist, who was
listening, laughed, and said that most fortunes
were founded in just such a fraudulent way.
Then there was Steklov of the Izvestia^ Ma-
53
dame Kollontai, and a lot of other people whose
names I do not remember. Little Bucharin, the
editor of Pravda and one of the most interesting
talkers in Moscow, who is ready to discuss any
philosophy you like, from Berkeley and Locke
down to Bergson and William James, trotted up
and shook hands. Suddenly a most unexpected
figure limped through the door. This was the
lame Eliava of the Vologda Soviet, who came up
in great surprise at seeing me again, and reminded
me how Radek and I, hungry from Moscow, aston-
ished the hotel of the Golden Anchor by eating
fifteen eggs apiece, when we came to Vologda last
summer (I acted as translator during Radek's con-
versations with the American Ambassador and Mr.
Lindley). Eliava is a fine, honest fellow, and
had a very difficult time in Vologda where the
large colony of foreign embassies and missions nat-
urally became the centre of disaffection in a dis-
trict which at the time was full of inflammable
material. I remember when we parted from him,
Radek said to me that he hardly thought he would
see him alive again. He told me he had left Vo-
logda some three months ago and was now going
54
to Turkestan. He did not disguise the resentment
he felt towards M. Noulens (the French Ambas-
sador) who, he thought, had stood in the way of
agreement last year, but said that he had nothing
whatever to say against Lindley.
At last there was a little stir in the raised presi-
dium, and the meeting began. When I saw the
lean, long-haired Avanesov take his place as secre-
tary, and Sverdlov, the president, lean forward a
little, ring his bell, and announce that the meeting
was open and that "Comrade Chicherin has the
word," I could hardly believe that I had been away
six months.
Chicherin's speech took the form of a general
report on the international situation. He spoke a
little more clearly than he was used to do, but even
so I had to walk round to a place close under the
tribune before I could hear him. He sketched the
history of the various steps the Soviet Government
has taken in trying to secure peace, even including
such minor "peace offensives" as Litvinov's per-
sonal telegram to President Wilson. He then
weighed, in no very hopeful spirit, the possibilities
of this last Note to all the Allies having any seri-
55
ous result. He estimated the opposing tendencies
for and against war with Russia in each of the
principal countries concerned. The growth of
revolutionary feeling abroad made imperialistic
governments even more aggressive towards the
Workers' and Peasants' Republic than they would
otherwise be. It was now making their interven-
tion difficult, but no more. It was impossible to
say that the collapse of Imperialism had gone so
far that it had lost its teeth. Chicherin speaks as
if he were a dead man or a ventriloquist's lay fig-
ure. And indeed he is half-dead. He has never
learnt the art of releasing himself from drudgery
by handing it over to his subordinates. He is per-
manently tired out. You feel it is almost cruel to
say "Good morning" to him when you meet him,
because of the appeal to be left alone that comes
unconsciously into his eyes. Partly in order to
avoid people, partly because he is himself accus-
tomed to work at night, his section of the foreign
office keeps extraordinary hours, is not to be found
till about five in the afternoon and works till four
in the morning. The actual material of his report
was interesting, but there was nothing in its man-
56
ner to rouse enthusiasm of any kind. The audi-
ence listened with attention, but only woke into
real animation when with a shout of laughter it
heard an address sent to Clemenceau by the emigre
financiers, aristocrats and bankrupt politicians of
the Russian colony in Stockholm, protesting
against any sort of agreement- with the Bolsheviks.
Bucharin followed Chicherin. A little eager
figure in his neat brown clothes (bought, I think,
while visiting Berlin as a member of the Economic
Commission), he at least makes himself clearly
heard, though his voice has a funny tendency to
breaking. He compared the present situation with
the situation before Brest. He had himself (as I
well remember) been with Radek, one of the most
violent opponents of the Brest peace, and he now
admitted that at that time Lenin had been right
and he wrong. The position was now different,
because whereas then imperialism was split into
two camps fighting each other, it now showed signs
of uniting its forces. He regarded the League of
Nations as a sort of capitalist syndicate, and said
that the difference in the French and American
attitude towards the League depended upon the
57
position of French and American capital. Capital
in France was so weak, that she could at best be
only a small shareholder. Capital in America was
in a very advantageous position. America there-
fore wanted a huge All-European syndicate in
which each state would have a certain number of
shares. America, having the greatest number of
shares, would be able to exploit all the other na-
tions. This is a fixed idea of Bucharin's, and he
has lost no opportunity of putting out this theory
of the League of Nations since the middle of last
summer. As for Chicherin's Note, he said it had
at least great historical interest on account of the
language it used, which was very different from
the hypocritical language of ordinary diplomacy.
Here were no phrases about noble motives, but a
plain recognition of the facts of the case. "Tell
us what you want," it says, "and we are ready to
buy you off, in order to avoid armed conflict."
Even if the Allies gave no answer the Note would
still have served a useful purpose and would be a
landmark in history.
Litvinov followed Bucharin. A solid, jolly,
round man, with his peaked grey fur hat on his
58
head, rounder than ever in fur-collared, thick coat,
his eye-glasses slipping from his nose as he got up,
his grey muffler hanging from his neck, he hurried
to the tribune. Taking off his things and leaving
them on a chair below, he stepped up into the
tribune with his hair all rumpled, a look of ex-
treme seriousness on his face, and spoke with a
voice whose capacity and strength astonished me
who had not heard him speak in public before.
He spoke very well, with more sequence than
Bucharin, and much vitality, and gave his sum-
mary of the position abroad. He said (and Lenin
expressed the same view to me afterwards) that
the hostility of different countries to Soviet Russia
varied in direct proportion to their fear of revolu-
tion at home. Thus France, whose capital had
suffered most in the war and was weakest, was the
most uncompromising, while America, whose capi-
tal was in a good position, was ready for agree-
ment. England, with rather less confidence, he
thought was ready to follow America. Need of
raw material was the motive tending towards
agreement with Russia. Fear that the mere exis-
tence of a Labour Government anywhere in the
59
world strengthens the revolutionary movement
elsewhere, was the motive for the desire to wipe
out the Soviet at all cost. Chicherin's note, he
thought, would emphasize the difference between
these opposing views and would tend to make im-
possible an alliance of the capitalists against
Russia.
Finally, Kamenev, now President of the Mos-
cow Soviet, spoke, objecting to Bucharin's com-
parison of the peace now sought with that of Brest
Litovsk. Then everything was in a state of ex-
periment and untried. Now it was clear to the
world that the unity of Russia could be achieved
only under the Soviets. The powers opposed to
them could not but recognize this fact. Some
parts of Russia (Ukraine) had during the last
fifteen months experienced every kind of govern-
ment, from the Soviets, the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat, to the dictatorship of foreign invaders
and the dictatorship of a General of the old regime,
and they had after all returned to the Soviets.
Western European imperialists must realize that
the only Government in Russia which rested on
60
the popular masses was the Government of the
Soviets and no other. Even the paper of the
Mensheviks, commenting on Chicherin's note, had
declared that by this step the Soviet Government
had shown that it was actually a national Govern-
ment acting in the interests of the nation. He
further read a statement by Right Social Revolu-
tionaries (delegates of that group, members of the
Constituent Assembly, were in the gallery) to the
effect that they were prepared to help the Soviet
Government as the only Government in Russia
that was fighting against a dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie.
Finally, the Committee unanimously passed a
resolution approving every step taken in trying to
obtain peace, and at the same time "sending a fra-
ternal greeting to the Red Army of workers and
peasants engaged in ensuring the independence of
Soviet Russia." The meeting then turned to talk
of other things.
I left, rather miserable to think how little I had
foreseen when Soviet Russia was compelled last
year to sign an oppressive peace with Germany,
61
that the time would come when they would be
trying to buy peace from ourselves. As I went
out I saw another unhappy figure, unhappy for
quite different reasons. Angelica Balabanova,
after dreaming all her life of socialism in the most
fervent Utopian spirit, had come at last to Russia
to find that a socialist state was faced with diffi-
culties at least as real as those which confront
other states, that in the battle there was little sen-
timent and much cynicism, and that dreams
worked out in terms of humanity in the face of the
opposition of the whole of the rest of the world
are not easily recognized by their dreamers. Poor
little Balabanova, less than five feet high, in a
black coat that reached to her feet but did not
make her look any taller, was wandering about like
a lost and dejected spirit. Not so, she was think-
ing, should socialists deal with their enemies.
Somehow, but not so. Had the silver trumpets
blown seven times vn vain, and was it really neces-
sary to set to work and, stone by stone, with bleed-
ing hands, level the walls of Jericho ?
There was snow falling as I walked home.
Two workmen, arguing, were walking in front of
62
me. "If only it were not for the hunger," said
one. "But will that ever change 1 ?" said the
other. '
KAMENEV AND THE MOSCOW SOVIET
February nth.
LITVINOV has been unlucky in his room in the
Metropole. It is small, dark and dirty, and colder
than mine. He was feeling ill and his chest was
hurting him, perhaps because of his speech last
night; but while I was there Kamenev rang him
up on the telephone, told him he had a car below,
and would he come at once to the Moscow Soviet
to speak on the international situation*? Litvinov
tried to excuse himself, but it was no use, and he
said to me that if I wanted to see Kamenev I had
better come along. We found Kamenev in the
hall, and after a few minutes in a little Ford car
we were at the Moscow Soviet. The Soviet
meets in the small lecture theatre of the old Poly-
technic. When we arrived, a party meeting was
going on, and Kamenev, Litvinov, and I went
behind the stage to a little empty room, where we
were joined by a member of the Soviet whose
name I forget.
It was Kamenev's first talk with Litvinov after
his return, and I think they forgot that I was
there. Kamenev asked Litvinov what he meant
to do, and Litvinov told him he wished to establish
a special department of control to receive all com-
plaints, to examine into the efficiency of different
commissariats, to get rid of parallelism, etc., and,
in fact, to be the most unpopular department in
Moscow. Kamenev laughed. "You need not
think you are the first to have that idea. Every
returning envoy without exception has the same.
Coming back from abroad they notice more than
we do the inefficiencies here, and at once think
they will set everything right. Rakovsky sat here
for months dreaming of nothing else. Joffe was
the same when he came back from that tidy Berlin.
Now you; and when Vorovsky comes (Vorovsky
was still in Petrograd) I am ready to wager that
he too has a scheme for general control waiting in
his pocket. The thing cannot be done. The only
way is, when something obviously needs doing, to
put in some one we can trust to get it done. Soap
65
is hard to get. Good. Establish a commission
and soap instantly disappears. But put in one
man to see that soap is forthcoming, and somehow
or other we get it."
"Where is the soap industry concentrated?"
"There are good factories, well equipped, here,
but they are not working, partly for lack of mate-
rial and partly, perhaps, because some crazy fool
imagined that to take an inventory you must bring
everything to a standstill."
Litvinov asked him what he thought of the posi-
tion as a whole. He said good, if only transport
could be improved; but before the public of Mos-
cow could feel an appreciable improvement it
would be necessary that a hundred wagons of
foodstuffs should be coming in daily. At present
there are seldom more than twenty. I asked Ka-
menev about the schools, and he explained that
one of their difficulties was due to the militarism
forced upon them by external attacks. He ex-
plained that the new Red Army soldiers, being
mostly workmen, are accustomed to a higher stand-
ard of comfort than the old army soldiers, who
were mostly peasants. They objected to the
66
planks which served as beds in the old, abomin-
able, over-crowded and unhealthy barracks.
Trotsky, looking everywhere for places to put his
darlings, found nothing more suitable than the
schools; and, in Kamenev's words, "We have to
fight hard for every school." Another difficulty,
he said, was the lack of school books. Histories,
for example, written under the censorship and in
accordance with the principles of the old regime,
were now useless, and new ones were not ready,
apart from the difficulty of getting paper and of
printing. A lot, however, was being done.
There was no need for a single child in Moscow to
go hungry. 150,000 to 180,000 children got free
meals daily in the schools. Over 10,000 pairs of
felt boots had been given to children who needed
them. The number of libraries had enormously
increased. Physically workmen lived in far worse
conditions than in 1912, but as far as their spirit-
ual welfare was concerned there could be no com-
parison. Places like the famous Yar restaurant,
where once the rich went to amuse themselves
with orgies of feeding and drinking and flirting
with gypsies, were now made into working men's
clubs and theatres, where every working man had
a right to go. As for the demand for literature
from the provinces, it was far beyond the utmost
efforts of the presses and the paper stores to
supply.
When the party meeting ended, we went back
to the lecture room where the members of the
Soviet had already settled themselves in their
places. I was struck at once by the absence of the
general public which in the old days used to
crowd the galleries to overflowing. The political
excitement of the revolution has passed, and to-
day there were no more spectators than are usually
to be found in the gallery of the House of Com-
mons. The character of the Soviet itself had not
changed. Practically every man sitting on the
benches was obviously a workman and keenly in-
tent on what was being said. Litvinov practi-
cally repeated his speech of last night, making it,
however, a little more demagogic in character,
pointing out that after the Allied victory, the only
corner of the world not dominated by Allied capi-
tal was Soviet Russia.
The Soviet passed a resolution expressing "firm
68
confidence that the Soviet Government will suc-
ceed in getting peace and so in opening a wide road
to the construction of a proletarian state." A note
was passed up to Kamenev who, glancing at it, an-
nounced that the newly elected representative of
the Chinese workmen in Moscow wished to speak.
This was Chitaya Kuni, a solid little Chinaman
with a big head, in black leather coat and breeches.
I had often seen him before, and wondered who he
was. He was received with great cordiality and
made a quiet, rather shy speech in which he told
them he was learning from them how to introduce
socialism in China, and more compliments of the
same sort. Reinstein replied, telling how at an
American labour congress some years back the
Americans shut the door in the face of a represent-
ative of a union of foreign workmen. "Such," he
said, "was the feeling in America at the time when
Gompers was supreme, but that time has passed."
Still, as I listened to Reinstein, I wondered in how
many other countries besides Russia, a representa-
tive of foreign labour would be thus welcomed.
The reason has probably little to do with the good-
heartedness of the Russians. Owing to the gen-
69
eral unification of wages Mr. Kuni could not rep-
resent the competition of cheap labour. I talked
to the Chinaman afterwards. He is president of
the Chinese Soviet. He told me they had just
about a thousand Chinese workmen in Moscow,
and therefore had a right to representation in the
government of the town. I asked about the Chi-
nese in the Red Army, and he said there were two
or three thousand, not more.
70
AN EX-CAPITALIST
February 13th.
I DRANK tea with an old acquaintance from the
provinces, a Russian who, before the revolution,
owned a leather-bag factory which worked in close
connection with his uncle's tannery. He gave me
a short history of events at home. The uncle had
started with small capital, and during the war had
made enough to buy outright the tannery in which
he had had shares. The story of his adventures
since the October revolution is a very good illus-
tration of the rough and ready way in which theory
gets translated into practice. I am writing it, as
nearly as possible, as it was told by the nephew.
During the first revolution, that is from March
till October 1917, he fought hard against the
workmen, and was one of the founders of a Soviet
of factory owners, the object of which was to de-
feat the efforts of the workers' Soviets. 1 This, of
1 By agreeing upon lock-outs, etc.
71
course, was smashed by the October Revolution,
and "Uncle, after being forced, as a property
owner, to pay considerable contributions, watched
the newspapers closely, realized that after the na-
tionalization of the banks resistance was hopeless,
and resigned himself to do what he could, not to
lose his factory altogether."
He called together all the workmen, and pro-
posed that they should form an artel or co-opera-
tive society and take the factory into their own
hands, each man contributing a thousand roubles
towards the capital with which to run it. Of
course the workmen had not got a thousand roubles
apiece, "so uncle offered to pay it in for them, on
the understanding that they would eventually pay
him back." This was illegal, but the little town
was a long way from the centre of things, and it
seemed a good way out of the difficulty. He did
not expect to get it back, but he hoped in this way
to keep control of the tannery, which he wished to
develop, having a paternal interest in it.
Things worked very well. They elected a com-
mittee of control. "Uncle was -elected president,
I was elected vice-president, and there were three
72
workmen. We are working on those lines to this
day. They give uncle 1,500 roubles a month,
me a thousand, and the bookkeeper a thousand.
The only difficulty is that the men will treat uncle
as the owner, and this may mean trouble if things
go wrong. Uncle is for ever telling them, 'It's
your factory, don't call me Master,' and they
reply, 'Yes, it's our factory all right, but you are
still Master, and that must be.' "
Trouble came fast enough, with the tax levied
on the propertied classes. "Uncle," very wisely,
had ceased to be a property owner. He had given
up his house to the factory, and been allotted
rooms in it, as president of the factory Soviet.
He was therefore really unable to pay when the
people from the District Soviet came to tell him
that he had been assessed to pay a tax of sixty
thousand roubles. He explained the position.
The nephew was also present and joined in the
argument, whereupon the tax-collectors consulted
a bit of paper and retorted, "A tax of twenty thou-
sand has been assessed on you too. Be so good as
to put your coat on."
That meant arrest, and the nephew said he had
73
five thousand roubles and would pay that, but
could pay no more. Would that do*?
"Very well," said the tax-collector, "fetch it."
The nephew fetched it.
"And now put your coat on."
"But you said it would be all right if I paid the
five thousand !"
"That's the only way to deal with people like
you. We recognize that your case is hard, and
we dare say that you will get off. But the Soviet
has told us to collect the whole tax or the people
who refuse to pay it, and they have decreed that
if we came back without one or the other, we shall
go to prison ourselves. You can hardly expect us
to go and sit in prison out of pity for you. So on
with your coat and come along."
They went, and at the militia headquarters were
shut into a room with barred windows where they
were presently joined by most of the other rich
men of the town, all in a rare state of indignation,
and some of them very angry with "Uncle," for
taking things so quietly. "Uncle was worrying
about nothing in the world but the tannery and
the leather-works which he was afraid might get
74
into difficulties now that both he and I were un-
der lock and key."
The plutocracy of the town being thus gathered
in the little room at the militia-house, their wives
came, timorously at first, and chattered through
the windows. My informant, being unmarried,
sent word to two or three of his friends, in order
that he might not be the only one without some
one to talk with outside. The noise was some-
thing prodigious, and the head of the militia
finally ran out into the street and arrested one of
the women, but was so discomfited when she re-
moved her shawl and he recognized her as his host-
ess at a house where he had been billeted as a sol-
dier that he hurriedly let her go. The extraordi-
nary parliament between the rich men of the town
and their wives and friends, like a crowd of hoodie
crows, chattering outside the window, continued
until dark. I
Next day the workmen from the tannery came
to the militia-house and explained that "Uncle"
had really ceased to be a member of the propertied
classes, that he was necessary to them as president
of their soviet, and that they were willing to secure
75
his release by paying half of the tax demanded
from him out of the factory funds. Uncle got
together thirty thousand, the factory contributed
another thirty, and he was freed, being given a
certificate that he had ceased to be an exploiter or
a property owner, and would in future be subject
only to such taxes as might be levied on the work-
ing population. The nephew was also freed, on
the grounds that he was wanted at the leather-
works.
I asked him how things were going on. He
said, "Fairly well, only uncle keeps worrying be-
cause the men still call him 'Master.' Otherwise,
he is very happy because he has persuaded the
workmen to set aside a large proportion of the
profits for developing the business and building a
new wing to the tannery."
"Do the men work?"
"Well," he said, "we thought that when the
factory was in their own hands they would work
better, but we do not think they do so, not notice-
ably, anyhow."
"Do they work worse?"
"No, that is not noticeable either."
I tried to get at his political views. Last sum-
mer he had told me that the Soviet Government
could not last more than another two or three
months. He was then looking forward to its
downfall. Now he did not like it any better, but
he was very much afraid of war being brought
into Russia, or rather of the further disorders
which war would cause. He took a queer sort of
pride in the way in which the territory of the Rus-
sian republic was gradually resuming its old fron-
tiers. "In the old days no one ever thought the
Red Army would come to anything," he said.
"You can't expect much from the Government,
but it does keep order, and I can do my work and
rub along all right." It was quite funny to hear
him in one breath grumbling at the revolution and
in the next anxiously asking whether I did not
think they had weathered the storm, so that there
would be no more disorders.
Knowing that in some country places there had
been appalling excesses, I asked him how the Red
Terror that followed the attempt on the life of
Lenin had shown itself in their district. He
laughed.
77
"We got off very cheaply," he said. "This is
what happened. A certain rich merchant's widow
had a fine house, with enormous stores of all kinds
of things, fine knives and forks, and too many of
everything. For instance, she had twenty-two
samovars of all sizes and sorts. Typical mer-
chant's house, so many tablecloths that they could
not use them all if they lived to be a hundred.
Well, one fine day, early last summer, she was told
that her house was wanted and that she must clear
out. For two days she ran hither and thither try-
ing to get out of giving it up. Then she saw it
was no good, and piled all those things, samovars
and knives and forks and dinner services and table-
cloths and overcoats (there were over a dozen fur
overcoats) in the garrets which she closed and
sealed, and got the president of the Soviet to come
and put his seal also. In the end things were so
friendly that he even put a sentinel there to see
that the seal should not be broken. Then came
the news from ,Petrograd and Moscow about the
Red terror, and the Soviet, after holding a meet-
ing and deciding that it ought to do something, and
being on too good terms with all of us to do any-
78
thing very bad, suddenly remembered poor Maria
Nicolaevna's garrets. They broke the seals and
tumbled out all the kitchen things, knives, forks,
plates, furniture, the twenty-two samovars and the
overcoats, took them in carts to the Soviet and de-
clared them national property. National prop-
erty ! And a week or two later there was a wed-
ding of a daughter of one of the members of the
Soviet, and somehow or other the knives and forks
were on the table, and as for samovars, there were
enough to make tea for a hundred."
79
A THEORIST OF REVOLUTION
February 13th.
AFTER yesterday's talk with a capitalist victim of
the revolution, I am glad for the sake of contrast
to set beside it a talk with one of the revolution's
jchief theorists. The leather-worker illustrated the
revolution as it affects an individual. The revolu-
tionary theorist was quite incapable of even con-
sidering his own or any other individual interests
and thought only in terms of enormous move-
ments in which the experiences of an individual
had only the significance of the adventures of one
ant among a myriad. Bucharin, member of the
old economic mission to Berlin, violent opponent
of the Brest peace, editor of Pravda, author of
many books on economics and revolution, indefa-
tigable theorist, found me drinking tea at a table
in the Metropole.
I had just bought a copy of a magazine which
80
contained a map of the world, in which most of
Europe was coloured red or pink for actual or po-
tential revolution. I showed it to Bucharin and
said, "You cannot be surprised that people abroad
talk of you as of the new Imperialists."
Bucharin took the map and looked at it.
"Idiotism, rank idiotism!" he said. "At the
same time," he added, "I do think we have entered
upon a period of revolution which may last fifty
years before the revolution is at last victorious in
all Europe and finally in all the world."
Now, I have a stock theory which I am used to
set before revolutionaries of all kinds, nearly al-
ways with interesting results. (See p. 118.) I
tried it on Bucharin. I said :
"You people are always saying that there will
be revolution in England. Has it not occurred to
you that England is a factory and not a granary,
so that in the event of revolution we should be
immediately cut off from all food supplies. Ac-
cording to your own theories, English capital
would unite with American in ensuring that within
six weeks the revolution had nothing to eat. Eng-
land is not a country like Russia where you can
8l
feed yourselves somehow or other by simply walk-
ing to where there is food. Six weeks would see
starvation and reaction in England. I am in-
clined to think that a revolution in England
would do Russia more harm than good."
Bucharin laughed. "You old counter-revolu-
tionary !" he said. "That would be all true, but
you must look further. You are right in one
thing. If the revolution spreads in Europe, Amer-
ica will cut off food supplies. But by that time
we shall be getting food from Siberia."
"And is the poor Siberian railway to feed Rus-
sia, Germany, and England*?"
"Before then Pichon and his friends will have
gone. There will be France to feed too. But
you must not forget that there are the cornfields
of Hungary and Roumania. Once civil war ends
in Europe, Europe can feed herself. With Eng-
lish and German engineering assistance we shall
soon turn Russia into an effective grain supply for
all the working men's republics of the Continent.
But even then the task will be only beginning.
The moment there is revolution in England, the
English colonies will throw themselves eagerly
82
into the arms of America. Then will come Amer-
ica's turn, and, finally, it is quite likely that we
shall all have to combine to overthrow the last
stronghold of capitalism in some South African
bourgeois republic. I can well imagine," he said,
looking far away with his bright little eyes through
the walls of the dark dining room, ''that the work-
ing men's republics of Europe may have to have a
colonial policy of an inverse kind. Just as now
you conquer backward races in order to exploit
them, so in the future you may have to conquer the
colonists to take from them the means of exploita-
tion. There is only one thing I am afraid of."
"And what is that?"
"Sometimes I am afraid that the struggle will
be so bitter and so long drawn out that the whole
of European culture may be trampled under foot."
I thought of my leather-worker of yesterday,
one of thousands experiencing in their own persons
the appalling discomforts, the turn over and re-
valuation of all established values that revolution,
even without death and civil war, means to the
ordinary man; and, being perhaps a little faint-
hearted, I finished my tea in silence. Bucharin,
83
after carelessly opening these colossal perspectives,
drank his tea in one gulp, prodigiously sweetened
with my saccharin, reminded me of his illness in
the summer, when Radek scoured the town for
sweets for him, curing him with no other medicine,
and then hurried off, fastening his coat as he went,
a queer little De Quincey of revolution, to disap-
pear into the dusk, before, half running, half walk-
ing, as his way is, he reached the other end of the
big dimly lit, smoke-filled dining room.
EFFECTS OF ISOLATION
February 14th.
I HAD a rather grim talk with Meshtcheriakov at
dinner. He is an old Siberian exile, who visited
England last summer. He is editing a monthly
magazine in Moscow, mostly concerned with the
problems of reconstruction, and besides that doing
a lot of educational work among the labouring
classes. He is horrified at the economic position
of the country. Isolation, he thinks, is forcing
Russia backwards towards a primeval state.
"We simply cannot get things. For example, I
am lecturing on mathematics. I have more pupils
than I can deal with. They are as greedy for
knowledge as sponges for water, and I cannot get
even the simplest text-books for them. I cannot
even find in the second-hand book stores an old
Course of Mathematics from which I could myself
make a series of copies for them. I have to teach
85
like a teacher of the middle ages. But, like him,
I have pupils who want to learn."
"In another three years," said some one else at
the table, "we shall be living in ruins. Houses
in Moscow were always kept well warmed. Lack
of transport has brought with it lack of fuel, and
water-pipes have burst in thousands of houses.
We cannot get what is needed to mend them. In
the same way we cannot get paints for the walls,
which are accordingly rotting. In another three
years we shall have all the buildings of Moscow
tumbling about our ears."
Some one else joined in with a laugh: "In
ten years we shall be running about on all fours."
"And in twenty we shall begin sprouting tails."
Meshtcheriakov finished his soup and laid down
his wooden spoon.
"There is another side to all these things," he
said. "In Russia, even if the blockade lasts, we
shall get things established again sooner than any-
where else, because we have all the raw materials
in our own country. With us it is a question of
transport only, and of transport within our own
borders. In a few years, I am convinced, in spite
86
of all that is working against us, Russia will be a
better place to live in than anywhere else in Eu-
rope. But we have a bad time to go through.
And not we alone. The effects of the war are
scarcely visible as yet in the west, but they will
become visible. Humanity has a period of tor-
ment before it. . . ."
"Bucharin says fifty years," I said, referring
to my talk of yesterday.
"Maybe. I think less than that. But the
revolution will be far worse for you nations of the
west than it has been for us. In the west, if there
is revolution, they will use artillery at once, and
wipe out whole districts. The governing classes
in the west are determined and organized in a way
our home-grown capitalists never were. The
Autocracy never allowed them to organize, so,
when the Autocracy itself fell, our task was com-
paratively easy. There was nothing in the way.
It will not be like that in Germany."
AN EVENING AT THE OPERA
I READ in one of the newspapers that a member of
the American Commission in Berlin reasoned from
the fact that the Germans were crowding to thea-
tres and spectacles that they could not be hungry.
There can be no question about the hunger of the
people of Moscow, but the theatres are crowded,
and there is such demand for seats that speculators
acquire tickets in the legitimate way and sell them
illicitly near the doors of the theatre to people who
have not been able to get in, charging, of course,
double the price or even more. Interest in the
theatre, always keen in Moscow, seems to me to
have rather increased than decreased. There is a
School of Theatrical Production, with lectures on
every subject connected with the stage, from stage
carpentry upwards. A Theatrical Bulletin is pub-
lished three times weekly, containing the pro-
grammes of all the theatres and occasional articles
on theatrical subjects. I had been told in Stock-
holm that the Moscow theatres were closed. The
following is an incomplete list of the plays and
spectacles to be seen at various theatres on Feb-
ruary 13 and February 14, copied from the Theat-
rical Bulletin of those dates. Just as it would be
interesting to know what French audiences en-
joyed at the time of the French revolution, so I
think it worth while to record the character of
the entertainments at present popular in Moscow.
Opera at the Great Theatre. "Sadko" by Rim-
sky-Korsakov and "Samson and Delilah" by
Saint-Saens.
Small State Theatre. "Besheny Dengi" by Os-
trovsky and "Starik" by Gorky.
Moscow Art Theatre. 'The Cricket on the
Hearth" by Dickens and "The Death of Pa-
zuchin" by Saltykov-Shtche'drin.
Opera. "Selo Stepantchiko" and "Coppelia."
People's Palace. "Dubrovsky" by Napravnik
and "Demon" by Rubinstein.
Zamoskvoretzky Theatre. "Groza" by Ostrovsky
and "Meshtchane" by Gorky.
Popular Theatre. "The Miracle of Saint An-
thony" by Maeterlinck.
Komissarzhevskaya Theatre. "A Christmas
Carol" by Dickens and "The Accursed
Prince" by Remizov.
Korsh Theatre. "Much Ado about Nothing" by
Shakespeare and "Le Misanthrope" and
"Georges Dandin" by Moliere.
Dramatic Theatre. "Alexander I" by Merezh-
kovsky.
Theatre of Drama and Comedy. "Little Dorrit"
by Dickens and "The King's Barber" by Lu-
nacharsky.
Besides these, other theatres were playing K. R.
(Konstantin Romanov), Ostrovsky, Potapenko,
Vinitchenko, etc. The two Studios of the Mos-
cow Art Theatre were playing "Rosmersholm" and
a repertoire of short plays. They, like the Art
Theatre Company, occasionally play in the subur-
ban theatres when their place at home is taken by
other performers.
I went to the Great State Theatre to Saint-
Saens' "Samson and Delilah." I had a seat in the
90
box close above the orchestra, from which I could
obtain a view equally good of the stage and of the
house. Indeed, the view was rather better of the
house than of the stage. But that was as I had
wished, for the house was what I had come to see.
It had certainly changed greatly since the pre-
revolutionary period. The Moscow plutocracy of
bald merchants and bejewelled fat wives had gone.
Gone with them were evening dresses and white
shirt fronts. The whole audience was in the
monotone of everyday clothes. The only contrast
was given by a small group of Tartar women in
the dress circle, who were shawled in white over
head and shoulders, in the Tartar fashion. There
were many soldiers, and numbers of men who had
obviously come straight from their work. There
were a good many grey and brown woollen jerseys
about, and people were sitting in overcoats of all
kinds and ages, for the theatre was very cold.
(This, of course, was due to lack of fuel, which
may in the long run lead to a temporary stoppage
of the theatres if electricity cannot be spared for
lighting them.) The orchestra was also variously
dressed. Most of the players of brass instruments
91
had evidently been in regimental bands during the
war, and still retained their khaki-green tunics
with a very mixed collection of trousers and
breeches. Others were in every kind of everyday
clothes. The conductor alone wore a frock coat,
and sat in his place like a specimen from another
age, isolated in fact by his smartness alike from
his ragged orchestra and from the stalls behind
him.
I looked carefully to see the sort of people who
fill the stalls under the new regime, and decided
that there has been a general transfer of brains
from the gallery to the floor of the house. The
same people who in the old days scraped kopecks
and waited to get a good place near the ceiling now
sat where formerly were the people who came here
to digest their dinners. Looking from face to face
that night I thought there were very few people in
the theatre who had had anything like a good
dinner to digest. But, as for their keenness, I
can imagine few audiences to which, from the
actor's point of view, it would be better worth
while to play. Applause, like brains, had come
down from the galleries.
92
Of the actual performance I have little to say
except that ragged clothes and empty stomachs
seemed to make very little difference to the orches-
tra. Helzer, the ballerina, danced as well before
this audience as ever before the bourgeoisie. As I
turned up the collar of my coat I reflected that the
actors deserved all the applause they got for their
heroism in playing in such cold. Now and then
during the evening I was unusually conscious of
the unreality of opera generally, perhaps because
of the contrast in magnificence between the stage
and the shabby, intelligent audience. Now and
then, on the other hand, stage and audience seemed
one and indivisible. For "Samson and Delilah"
is itself a poem of revolution, and gained enor-
mously by being played by people every one of
whom had seen something of the sort in real life.
Samson's stirring up of the Israelites reminded me
of many scenes in Petrograd in 1917, and when, at
last, he brings the temple down in ruins on his tri-
umphant enemies, I was reminded of the words at-
tributed to Trotsky : "If we are, in the end, forced
to go, we shall slam the door behind us in such a way
that the echo shall be felt throughout the world."
93
Going home afterwards through the snow, I did
not see a single armed man. A year ago the streets
were deserted after ten in the evening except by
those who, like myself, had work which took them
to meetings and such things late at night. They
used to be empty except for the military pickets
round their log-fires. Now they were full of foot-
passengers going home from the theatres, utterly
forgetful of the fact that only twelve months be-
fore they had thought the streets of Moscow un-
safe after dark. There could be no question about
it. The revolution is settling down, and people
now think of other matters than the old question,
will it last one week or two*?
94
THE COMMITTEE OF STATE
CONSTRUCTIONS
February 15th.
I WENT by appointment to see Pavlovitch, Presi-
dent of the Committee of State Constructions. It
was a very jolly morning and the streets were
crowded. As I walked through the gate into the
Red Square I saw the usual crowd of peasant
women at the little chapel of the Iberian Virgin,
where there was a blaze of candles. On the wall
of what used, I think, to be the old town hall, close
by the gate, some fanatic agnostic has set a white
inscription on a tablet, "Religion is opium for the
People." The tablet, which has been there a long
time, is in shape not unlike the customary frame
for a sacred picture. I saw an old peasant, evi-
dently unable to read, cross himself solemnly be-
fore the chapel, and then, turning to the left, cross
himself as solemnly before this anti-religious in-
95
scription. It is perhaps worth while to remark in
passing that the new Communist programme, while
insisting, as before, on the definite separation of
church and state, and church and school, now in-
cludes the particular statement that "care should
be taken in no way to hurt the feelings of the re-
ligious." Churches and chapels are open, church
processions take place as before, and Moscow, as
in the old days, is still a city of church bells.
A long line of sledges with welcome bags of
flour was passing through the square. Soldiers of
the Red Army were coming off parade, laughing
and talking, and very noticeably smarter than the
men of six months ago. There was a bright clear
sky behind the fantastic Cathedral of St. Basil,
and the rough graves under the Kremlin wall,
where those are buried who died in the fighting at
the time of the November Revolution, have been
tidied up. There was scaffolding round the gate
of the Kremlin which was damaged at that time
and is being carefully repaired.
The Committee of State Constructions was
founded last spring to co-ordinate the manage-
ment of the various engineering and other con-
96
structive works previously carried on by independ-
ent departments. It became an independent or-
gan with its own finances about the middle of
the summer. Its headquarters are in the Nikol-
skaya, in the Chinese town, next door to the old
building of the Anglo-Russian Trading Company,
which still bears the Lion and the Unicorn sculp-
tured above its green and white fagade some time
early in the seventeenth century.
Pavlovitch is a little, fat, spectacled man with
a bald head, fringed with the remains of red hair,
and a little reddish beard. He was dressed in a
black leather coat and trousers. He complained
bitterly that all his plans for engineering works
to improve the productive possibilities of the coun-
try were made impracticable by the imperious de-
mands of war. As an old Siberian exile he had
been living in France before the revolution and,
as he said, had seen there how France made war.
"They sent her locomotives, and rails for the loco-
motives to run on, everything she needed they sent
her from all parts of the world. When they sent
horses, they sent also hay for their food, and shoes
for their feet, and even nails for the shoes. If we
97
were supplied like that, Russia would be at peace
in a week. But we have nothing, and can get
nothing, and are forced to be at war against our
will.
"And war spoils everything," he continued.
"This committee should be at work on affairs of
peace, making Russia more useful to herself and
to the rest of the world. You know our plans.
But with fighting on all our fronts, and with all
our best men away, we are compelled to use ninety
per cent, of our energy and material for the imme-
diate needs of the army. Every day we get
masses of telegrams from all fronts, asking for
this or that. For example, Trotsky telegraphs
here simply "We shall be in Orenburg in two
days," leaving us to do what is necessary. Then
with the map before me, I have to send what will
be needed, no matter what useful work has to be
abandoned meanwhile, engineers, railway gangs
for putting right the railways, material for bridges,
and so on.
"Indeed, the biggest piece of civil engineering
done in Russia for many years was the direct result
of our fear lest you people or the Germans should
take our Baltic fleet. Save the dreadnoughts we
could not, but I decided to save what we could.
The widening and deepening of the canal system
so as to shift boats from the Baltic to the Volga
had been considered in the time of the Tzar. It
was considered and dismissed as impracticable.
Once, indeed, they did try to take two torpedo-
boats over, and they lifted them on barges to
make the attempt. Well, we said that as the
thing could be planned, it could be done, and the
canals are deepened and widened, and we took
through them, under their own power, seven big
destroyers, six small destroyers and four submarine
boats, which, arriving unexpectedly before Kazan,
played a great part in our victory there. But the
pleasure of that was spoilt for me by the knowl-
edge that I had had to take men and material from
the building of the electric power station, with
which we hope to make Petrograd independent of
the coal supply.
"The difficulties we have to fight against are, of
course, enormous, but much of what the old regime
failed to do, for want of initiative or for other
reasons, we have done and are doing. Some of
99
the difficulties are of a most unexpected kind.
The local inhabitants, partly, no doubt, under the
influence of our political opponents, were ex-
tremely hostile with regard to the building of the
power station, simply because they did not under-
stand it. I went there myself, and explained to
them what it would mean, that their river would
become a rich river, that they would be able to get
cheap power for all sorts of works, and that they
would have electric light in all their houses.
Then they carried me shoulder high through the
village, and sent telegrams to Lenin, to Zino-
viev, to everybody they could think of, and
since then we have had nothing but help from
them.
"Most of our energy at present has to be spent
on mending and making railways and roads for
the use of the army. Over 1 1,000 versts of rail-
way are under construction, and we have finished
the railway from Arzamas to Shikhran. Twelve
hundred versts of highroad are under construction.
And to meet the immediate needs of the army we
have already repaired or made 8,000 versts of
roads of various kinds. As a matter of fact the
100
internal railway net of Russia is by no means as
bad as people make out. By its means, hampered
as we are, we have been able to beat the counter-
revolutionaries, concentrating our best troops, now
here, now there, wherever need may be. Remem-
ber that the whole way round our enormous fron-
tiers we are being forced to fight groups of reac-
tionaries supported at first mostly by the Germans,
now mostly by yourselves, by the Roumanians, by
the Poles, and in some districts by the Germans
still. Troops fighting on the Ural front are fight-
ing a month later south of Voronezh, and a month
later again are having a holiday, marching on the
heels of the Germans as they evacuate the occu-
pied provinces. Some of our troops are not yet
much good. One day they fight, and the next they
think they would rather not. So that our best
troops, those in which there are most workmen,
have to be flung in all directions. We are at work
all the time enabling this to be done, and making
new roads to enable it to be done still better.
But what waste, when there are so many other
things we want to do !
"All the time the needs of war are pressing on
101
us. To-day is the first day for two months that
we have been able to warm this building. We
have been working here in overcoats and fur hats
in a temperature below freezing point. Why*?
Wood was already on its way to us, when we had
suddenly to throw troops northwards. Our wood
had to be flung out of the wagons,. and the Red
Army put in its place, and the wagons sent north
again. The thing had to be done, and we have
had to work as best we could in the cold. Many
of my assistants have fallen ill. Two only
yesterday had to be taken home in a condition
something like that of a fit, the result of prolonged
sedentary work in unheated rooms. I have lost
the use of my right hand for the same reason."
He stretched out his right hand, which he had been
keeping in the pocket of his coat. It was an ugly
sight, with swollen, immovable fingers, like the
roots of a vegetable.
At this moment some one came in to speak to
Pavlovitch. He stood at the table a little behind
me, so that I did not see him, but Pavlovitch,
noticing that he looked curiously at me, said, "Are
you acquaintances?" I looked round and saw
102
Sukhanov, Gorky's friend, formerly one of the
cleverest Writers on the Novaya Jizn. I jumped
up and shook hands with him.
"What, have you gone over to the Bolsheviks'?"
I asked.
"Not at all," said Sukhanov, smiling, "but I
am working here."
"Sukhanov thinks that we do less harm than
anybody else," said Pavlovitch, and laughed.
"Go and talk to him and he'll tell you all there is
to be said against us. And there's lots to say."
Sukhanov was an extremely bitter enemy of the
Bolsheviks, and was very angry with me when,
over a year ago, I told him I was convinced that
sooner or later he would be working with them.
I told Pavlovitch the story, and he laughed again.
"A long time ago," he said, "Sukhanov made
overtures to me through Miliutin. I agreed, and
everything was settled, but when a note appeared
in Pravda to say that he was going to work in
this Committee, he grew shy, and wrote a contra-
diction. Miliutin was very angry and asked me
to publish the truth. I refused, but wrote on
that day in my diary, 'Sukhanov will come.'
103
Three months later he was already working with
us. One day he told me that in the big diary of
the revolution which he is writing, and will write
very well, he had some special abuse for me. 'I
have none for you,' I said, 'but I will show you
one page of my own diary,' and I showed him
that page, and asked him to look at the date.
Sukhanov is an honest fellow, and was bound to
come."
He went on with his talk.
"You know, hampered as we are by lack of
everything, we could not put up the fight we are
putting up against the reactionaries if it were not
for the real revolutionary spirit of the people as
a whole. The reactionaries have money, muni-
tions, supplies of all kinds, instructors, from out-
side. We have nothing, and yet we beat them.
Do you know that the English have given them
tanks? Have you heard that in one place they
used gases or something of the kind, and blinded
eight hundred men? And yet we win. Why"?
Because from every town we capture we get new
strength. And any town they tal^e is a source of
weakness to them, one more town to garrison
104
and hold against the wishes of the population."
"And if you do get peace, what then 4 ?"
"We want from abroad all that we cannot make
ourselves. We want a hundred thousand versts
of rails. Now we have to take up rails in one
place to lay them in another. We want new rail-
ways built. We want dredgers for our canals and
river works. We want excavators."
"And how do you expect people to sell you these
things when your foreign credit is not worth a
farthing?"
"We shall pay in concessions, giving foreigners
the right to take raw materials. 'Timber, actual
timber, is as good as credit^. We have huge areas
of forest in the north, and every country in Eu-
rope needs timber. Let that be our currency for
foreign purchases. We are prepared to say, 'You
build this, or give us that, and we will give you
the right to take so much timber for yourselves.'
And so on. And concessions of other kinds also.
As a matter of fact negotiations are now proceed-
ing with a foreign firm for the building of a rail-
way from the Obi to Kotlas."
"But part of that district is not in your hands."
105
"If we get peace we shall be able to arrange
that without difficulty."
Just as I was going he stopped me, and evi-
dently not in the least realizing that English peo-
ple generally have come to think of him and his
friends as of some strange sort of devils, if not
with horns and tails, certainly far removed from
human beings, he asked: "If we do get peace,
don't you think there will be engineers and skilled
labourers in England who will volunteer to come
out to Russia and help us"? There is so much to
do that I can promise they will have the best we
can give them. We are almost as short of skilled
men as we are of locomotives. We are now taking
simple unskilled workmen who show any signs of
brains and training them as we go along. There
must be engineers, railwaymen, mechanics among
English socialists who would be glad to come.
And of course they need not be socialists, so long
as they are good engineers."
That last suggestion of his is entirely character-
istic. It is impossible to make the Bolsheviks
realize that the English people feel any hostility
towards them. Nor do they feel hostility towards
106
the English as such. On my way back to the
hotel I met a party of English soldiers, taken
prisoners on the northern front, walking free, with-
out a convoy, through the streets.
107
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND
THE TERROR
February
MY general impression that the Soviet revolution
has passed through its period of internal struggle
and is concentrating upon constructive work so
far as that is allowed by war on all its frontiers,
and that the population is settling down under the
new regime, was confirmed by the meeting of the
Executive Committee which definitely limited the
powers of the Extraordinary Commission. Be-
fore the sitting was opened I had a few words with
Peters and with Krylenko. The excitement of
the internal struggle was over. It had been bit-
terly fought within the party, and both Krylenko
of the Revolutionary Tribunal and Peters of the
Extraordinary Commission were there merely to
witness the official act that would define their new
position. Peters talked of his failure to get away
108
for some shooting; Krylenko jeered at me for
having refused to believe in the Lockhart con-
spiracy. Neither showed any traces of the bitter
struggle waged within the party for and against
the almost dictatorial powers of the Extraordinary
Commission for dealing with counter-revolu-
tion.
The sitting opened with a report by Dserzhin-
sky, that strange ascetic who, when in prison in
Warsaw, insisted on doing the dirty work of
emptying the slops and cleaning other people's
cells besides his own, on a theory that one man
should where possible take upon himself the evil
which would otherwise have to be shared by all;
and in the dangerous beginning of the revolution
had taken upon himself the most unpopular of all
posts, that of President of the Extraordinary
Commission. His personal uprightness is the
complement of an absolute personal courage,
shown again and again during the last eighteen
months. At the time of the Left Social Revolu-
tionary mutiny he went without a guard to the
headquarters of the mutineers, believing that he
could bring them to reason, and when arrested by
109
them dared them to shoot him and showed so bold
a front that in the end the soldiers set to watch
him set him free and returned to their allegiance.
This thin, tallish man, with a fanatic face not un-
like some of the traditional portraits of St. Francis,
the terror of counter-revolutionaries and criminals
alike, is a very bad speaker. He looks into the
air over the heads of his audience and talks as if
he were not addressing them at all but some one
else unseen. He talks even of a subject which he
knows perfectly with curious inability to form his
sentences ; stops, changes words, and often, recog-
nizing that he cannot finish his sentence, ends
where he is, in the middle of it, with a little odd,
deprecating emphasis, as if to say : "At this point
there is a full stop. At least so it seems."
He gave a short colourless sketch of the history
of the Extraordinary Commission. He referred
to the various crises with which it had had to deal,
beginning with the drunken pogroms in Petrograd,
the suppression of the combined anarchists and
criminals in Moscow (he mentioned that after that
four hours' struggle which ended in the clearing
out of the anarchists' strongholds, criminality in
110
Moscow decreased by 80 per cent.), to the days
of the Terror when, now here, now there, armed
risings against the Soviet were engineered by for-
eigners and by counter-revolutionaries working
with them. He then made the point that through-
out all this time the revolution had been threat-
ened by large-scale revolts. Now the revolution
was safe from such things and was threatened only
by individual treacheries of various kinds, not by
things which needed action on a large scale. They
had traitors, no doubt, in the Soviet institutions
who were waiting for the day (which would never
come) to join with their enemies, and meanwhile
were secretly hampering their work. They did
not need on that account to destroy their institu-
tions as a whole. The struggle with counter-
revolution had passed to a new stage. They no
longer had to do open battle with open enemies;
they had merely to guard themselves against indi-
viduals. The laws of war by which, meeting him
on the field of battle, the soldier had a right to
kill his enemy without trial, no longer held good.
The situation was now that of peace, where each
offender must have his guilt proved before a
111
court. Therefore the right of sentencing was re-
moved from the Extraordinary Commission; but
if, through unforeseen circumstances, the old con-
ditions should return, they intended that the dic-
tatorial powers of the Commission should be re-
stored to it until those conditions had ceased.
Thus if, in case of armed counter-revolution, a dis-
trict were declared to be in a state of war, the
Extraordinary Commission would resume its old
powers. Otherwise its business would be to hand
offenders, such as Soviet officials who were habit-
ually late (here there was a laugh, the only sign
throughout his speech that Dserzhinsky was hold-
ing the attention of his audience), over to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, which would try them
and, should their guilt be proved, put them in
concentration camps to learn to work. He read
point by point the resolutions establishing these
changes and providing for the formation of Revo-
lutionary Tribunals. Trial to take place within
forty-eight hours after the conclusion of the inves-
tigation, and the investigation to take not longer
than a month. He ended as he ended his sen-
tences, as if by accident, and people scarcely real-
112
ized he had finished before Sverdlov announced
the next speaker.
Krylenko proposed an amendment to ensure
that no member of the Revolutionary Tribunal
could be also a member of the Extraordinary
Commission which had taken up and investigated
a case. His speech was very disappointing. He
is not at his best when addressing a serious meet-
ing like that of the Executive Committee. The
Krylenko who spoke to-night, fluently, clearly, but
without particular art, is a very different Krylenko
from the virtuoso in mob oratory, the little, dan-
gerous, elderly man in ensign's uniform who
swayed the soldiers' mass meetings in Petrograd a
year and a half ago. I remember hearing him
speak in barracks soon after the murder of Shin-
garev and Kokoshkin, urging class struggle and at
the same time explaining the difference between
that and the murder of sick men in bed. He re-
ferred to the murder and, while continuing his
speech, talking already of another subject, he went
through the actions of a man approaching a bed
and killing a sleeper with a pistol. It was a trick,
of course, but the thrilling, horrible effect of it
moved the whole audience with a shudder of dis-
gust. There was nothing of this kind in his short
lecture on jurisprudence to-night.
Avanesov, the tall, dark secretary of the Execu-
tive Committee, with the face of a big, benevolent
hawk hooded in long black hair, opposed Krylenko
on the ground that there were not enough trust-
worthy workers to ensure that in country districts
such a provision could be carried out. Finally
the resolution was passed as a whole and the
amendment was referred to the judgment of the
prsesidium.
The Committee next passed to the consideration
of the Extraordinary Tax levied on the propertied
classes. Krestinsky, Commissary of Finance,
made his report to a grim audience, many of whom
quite frankly regarded the tax as a political mis-
take. Krestinsky is a short, humorous man, in
dark spectacles, dressed more like a banker than
like a Bolshevik. It was clear that the collection
of the tax had not been as successful as he had
previously suggested. I was interested in his ref-
erence to the double purpose of the tax and in the
reasons he gave for its comparative failure. The
114
tax had a fiscal purpose, partly to cover deficit,
partly by drawing in paper money to raise the
value of the rouble. It had also a political pur-
pose. It was intended to affect the propertied
classes only, and thus to weaken the Kulaks (hard-
fists, rich peasants) in the villages and to teach the
poorer peasants the meaning of the revolution.
Unfortunately some Soviets, where the minority of
the Kulaks had retained the unfair domination
given it by its economic strength, had distributed
the tax-paying equally over the whole population,
thus very naturally raising the resentment of the
poor who found themselves taxed to the same
amount as those who could afford to pay. It had
been necessary to send circular telegrams empha-
sizing the terms of the decree. In cases where the
taxation had been carried out as intended there
had been no difficulty. The most significant rea-
son for the partial unsuccess was that the proper-
tied class, as such, had already diminished to a
greater extent than had been supposed, and many
of those taxed, for example, as factory owners were
already working, not as factory owners, but as paid
directors in nationalized factories, and were there-
fore no longer subject to the tax. In other words,
the partial failure of the tax was a proof of the
successful development of the revolution. (This
is illustrated by the concrete case of "Uncle" re-
corded on p. 73.) Krestinsky believed that the
revolution had gone so far that no further tax of
this kind would be either possible or necessary.
116
NOTES OF CONVERSATIONS WITH
LENIN
WHATEVER else they may think of him, not even
his enemies deny that Vladimir Ilyitch Oulianov
(Lenin) is one of the greatest personalities of his
time. I therefore make no apology for writing
down such scraps of his conversation as seem to
me to illustrate his manner of mind.
He was talking of the lack of thinkers in the
English labour movement, and said he remembered
hearing Shaw speak at some meeting. Shaw, he
said, was "A good man fallen among Fabians"
and a great deal further left than his company.
He had not heard of "The Perfect Wagnerite,"
but was interested when I told him the general
idea of the book, and turned fiercely on an inter-
rupter who said that Shaw was a clown. "He
may be a clown for the. bourgeoisie in a bourgeois
state, but they would not think him a clown in a
revolution."
117
He asked whether Sidney Webb was consciously
working in the interests of the capitalists, and
when I said I was quite sure that he was not, he
said, "Then he has more industry than brains.
He certainly has great knowledge."
He was entirely convinced that England was
on the eve of revolution, and pooh-poohed my
objections. "Three months ago I thought it
would end in all the world having to fight the
centre of reaction in England. But I do not think
so now. Things have gone further there than in
France, if the news as to the extent of the strikes
is true."
I pointed out some of the circumstances, geo-
graphical and economical, which would make the
success of a violent revolution in England proble-
matical in the extreme, and put to him the same
suggestion that I put to Bucharin (see page 81),
namely, that a suppressed movement in England
would be worse for Russia than our traditional
method of compromise. He agreed at once, but
said, "That is quite true, -but you cannot stop a
revolution . . . although Ramsay MacDonald
will try to at the last minute. Strikes and Soviets.
If these two habits once get hold, nothing will
keep the workmen from them. And Soviets, once
started, must sooner or later come to supreme
power." Then, "But certainly it would be much
more difficult in England. Your big clerk and
shop-keeping class would oppose it, until the work-
men broke them. Russia was indeed the only
country in which the revolution could start. And
we are not yet through our troubles with the peas-
antry."
I suggested that one reason why it had been pos-
sible in Russia was that they had had room to
retreat.
"Yes," he said. "The distances saved us.
The Germans were frightened of them, at the time
when they could indeed have eaten us up, and won
peace, which the Allies would have given them
in gratitude for our destruction. A revolution in
England would have nowhere whither to retire."
Of the Soviets he said, "In the beginning I
thought they were and would remain a purely
Russian form; but it is now quire clear that un-
der various names they must be the instruments
of revolution everywhere."
He expressed the opinion that in England they
would not allow me to tell the truth about Russia,
and gave as an example the way in which Colonel
Robins had been kept silent in America. He
asked about Robins, "Had he really been as
friendly to the Soviet Government as he made
out 1 ?" I said, "Yes, if only as a sportsman ad-
miring its pluck and courage in difficulties." I
quoted Robins' saying, "I can't go against a baby
I have sat up with for six months. But if there
were a Bolshevik movement in America I'd be
out with my rifle to fight it every time." "Now
that," said Lenin, "is an honest man and more
far-seeing than most. I always liked that man."
He shook with laughter at the image of the baby,
and said, "That baby had several million other
folk sitting up with it too."
He said he had read in an English socialist paper
a comparison of his own theories with those of an
American, Daniel De Leon. He had then bor-
rowed some of De Leon's pamphlets from Rein-
stein (who belongs to the party which De Leon
founded in America), read them for the first time,
and was amazed to see how far and how early De
120
Leon had pursued the same train of thought as the
Russians. His theory that representation should
be by industries, not by areas, was already the
germ of the Soviet system. He remembered see-
ing De Leon at an International Conference. De
Leon made no impression at all, a grey old man,
quite unable to speak to such an audience: but
evidently a much bigger man than he looked,
since his pamphlets were written before the ex-
perience of the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Some days afterwards I noticed that Lenin had
introduced a few phrases of De Leon, as if to do
honour to his memory, into the draft for the new
programme of the Communist party.
Talking of the lies that are told about Russia,
he said it was interesting to notice that they were
mostly perversions of truth and not pure inven-
tions, and gave as an example the recent story
that he had recanted. "Do you know the origin
of that?" he said. "I was wishing a happy New
Year to a friend over the telephone, and said
'And may we commit fewer stupidities this year
than last !' Some one overheard it and told some
one else. A newspaper announced 'Lenin says we
121
are committing stupidities' and so the story
started."
More than ever, Lenin struck me as a happy
man. Walking home from the Kremlin, I tried
to think of any other man of his calibre who had
had a similar joyous temperament. I could think
of none. This little, bald-headed, wrinkled man,
who tilts his chair this way and that, laughing
over one thing or another, ready any minute to
give serious advice to any who interrupt him to
ask for it, advice so well reasoned that it is to his
followers far more compelling than any command,
every one of his wrinkles is a wrinkle of laughter,
not of worry. I think the reason must be that he
is the first great leader who utterly discounts the
value of his own personality. He is quite without
personal ambition. More than that, he believes,
as a Marxist, in the movement of the masses which,
with or without him, would still move. His
whole faith is in the elemental forces that move
people, his faith in himself is merely his belief
that he justly estimates the direction of those
forces. He does not believe that any man could
122
make or stop the revolution which he thinks inevi-
table. If the Russian revolution fails, according
to him, it fails only temporarily, and because of
forces beyond any man's control. He is conse-
quently free with a freedom no other great man
has ever had. It is not so much what he says
that inspires confidence in him. It is this sen-
sible freedom, this obvious detachment. With
his philosophy he cannot for a moment believe
that one man's mistake might ruin all. He is,
for himself at any rate, the exponent, not the
cause, of the events that will be for ever linked
with his name.
123
THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF PUBLIC
ECONOMY
February 2oth.
TO-DAY was an unlucky day. I felt tired, ill
and hungry, and had arranged to talk with both
Rykov, the President of the Supreme Council of
People's Economy, and Krestinsky, the Commissar
of Finance, at such awkward times that I got no
tea and could get nothing to eat until after four
o'clock. Two such talks on an empty stomach
(for the day before I had had only a plate of
soup and a little scrap of fish) were a little too
much for me, and I fear I did not gather as much
information as I should have collected under bet-
ter conditions.
I had a jolly drive, early in the morning,
through the Chinese Town, and out by the gate
in the old wall, up Myasnitzkaya Street, and
round to the right to a building that used to be
124
the Grand Hotel of Siberia, a loathsome place
where I once stayed. Here in the old days pro-
vincial merchants put up, who did not mind high
prices and a superfluity of bugs. It has now been
turned into a hive of office work, and is the head-
quarters of the Supreme Council of Public Econ-
omy, which, controlling production and distribu-
tion alike, is the centre of the constructive work
going on throughout the country.
This Council, the theorists tell me, is intended
to become the central organization of the state.
The Soviets will naturally become less and less
important as instruments of political transition
as that transition is completed and the struggle
against reaction within and without comes to an
end. Then the chief business of the state will
no longer be to protect itself against enemies but
to develop its economic life, to increase its produc-
tivity and to improve the material conditions of
the workers of whom it is composed. All these
tasks are those of the Supreme Council of Public
Economy, and as the bitterness of the struggle
dies away this body, which came into being almost
unnoticed in the din of battle, will become more
125
and more important in comparison with the So-
viets, which were in origin not constructive organ-
izations but the instruments of a revolution, the
hardest stages of which have already been accom-
plished.
It is perhaps worth while to set out here the
constitution of this Council. It is considered at
present as the economic department of the Ail-
Russian Central Executive Committee, to which,
and to the Council of People's Commissaries, it is
responsible. It regulates all production and dis-
tribution. It reports on the various estimates
of the state budget and, in conjunction with the
Commissariats of Finance and State Control, car-
ries out the financing of all branches of public
economy. It consists of 69 members, and is com-
posed as follows: Ten representatives from the
All-Russian Executiye Committee, thirty from the
All-Russian Industrial Productive Union (a union
of Trade Unions), twenty from the ten District
Councils of Public Economy, two from the Ail-
Russian Council of Workers' Co-operative So-
cieties, and one representative each from the Com-
missariats of Supply, Ways of Communication,
126
Labour, Agriculture, Finance, Trade and Indus-
try, and Internal Affairs. It meets as a whole at
least once in every month. The work of its mem-
bers is directed by a Prsesidium of nine members,
of which it elects eight, the President being elected
by the All-Russian Central Executive Commit-
tee, and enjoying the rank of a People's Commissar
or Minister.
I had a long talk with Rykov, the President,
or rather listened to a long lecture by him, only
now and then succeeding in stopping him by forc-
ing a question into the thread of his harangue.
He stammers a little, and talks so indistinctly
that for the first time (No. The first time was
when Chicherin gabbled through the provisions
of the Brest Treaty at the fourth All-Russian As-
sembly.) I felt willing to forgive normal Rus-
sians, who nearly always talk as if they were in
Petrograd and their listener in Vladivostok.
Part of what he said is embodied in what I
have already written. But besides sketching the
general aims of the Council, Rykov talked of the
present economic position of Russia. At the mo-
ment Russian industry was in peculiar difficulties
127
owing to the fuel crisis. This was partly due to
the fact that the Czechs and the Reactionaries,
who had used the Czechs to screen their own
organization, had control of the coalfields in the
Urals, and partly to the fact that the German
occupation of the Ukraine and the activities of
Krasnov had cut off Soviet Russia from the Donetz
coal basin, which had been a main source of sup-
ply, although in the old days Petrograd had also
got coal from England. It was now, however,
clear that, with a friendly Ukraine, they would
have the use of the Donetz basin much sooner than
they had expected.
The Brest peace and the deprivations it in-
volved had made them consider the position of
the industrial districts from a new standpoint,
and they were determined to make Petrograd and
Moscow as far as possible independent of all fuel
which had to be brought from a distance. He
referred to the works in progress for utilizing wa-
ter power to provide electrical energy for the
Petrograd factories, and said that similar electrifi-
cation, on a basis of turf fuel, is planned for Mos-
cow.
128
I asked how they were going to get the machines.
He said that of course they would prefer to buy
them abroad, but that, though this was impossible,
the work would not be delayed on that account,
since they could make a start with the machines
they had. Turbines for the Petrograd works they
still hoped to obtain from abroad when peace had
been arranged. If the worst came to the worst
he thought they could make their own. "That
is one unexpected result of Russia's long isolation.
Her dependence on imports from abroad is lessen-
ing." He gave an example in salt, the urgent
need of which has led to the opening of a new
industry, whose resources are such as to enable
Russia not only to supply herself with salt, but
the rest of the world as well if need should be.
I asked what were their immediate plans with
regard to the electrification of Moscow. He said
that there was no water power near Moscow but
big turf deposits which would be used as fuel.
In order not to interfere with the actual lighting
of the town from the power-station already in
existence, they are taking the electric plant from
the Provodnik works, which will supply enough
129
electricity for the lighting of the town. As soon
as that is set up and working, they will use it
for the immediate needs of Moscow, and set about
transferring the existing power-station to the new
situation near the turf beds. In this way they
hope to carry out the change from coal to turf
without interfering with the ordinary life of the
town. Eventually when things settle down they
will get a larger plant.
I said, "Of course you have a double object in
this, not only to lessen the dependence of the in-
dustrial districts on fuel that has to be brought
from a distance, and of which you may be de-
prived, but also to lessen the strain on transport*?"
"Yes," he said. "Indeed at the present mo-
ment the latter is our greatest difficulty, hamper-
ing everything we would wish to do. And trans-
port we cannot put right without help from
abroad. Therefore we do everything we can to
use local resources, and are even developing the
coal deposits near Moscow, which are of inferior
quality to the Donetz coal, and were in the old
days purposely smothered by the Donetz coal-
owners, who wished to preserve their monopoly."
130
I asked him if in his opinion Russia could organ-
ize herself without help from abroad. He said,
"I rather think she will have to. We want steam
dredgers, steam excavators, and locomotives most
of all, but we have small hope of getting them in
the immediate future, because the effects of the
war have been so serious in the disorganization
of industry in the western countries that it is
doubtful whether they will be in a position to
supply even their own needs."
While we were talking Berg, the secretary, came
in. I asked him how his Soviet matches were
progressing, and he said that the labels were being
printed and that the first lot would soon be ready.
They will be distributed on the card system, and
he had calculated that they could sell them at
twelve kopecks a packet. I paid a rouble for a
box of ordinary matches at Bieloostrov, and a
rouble and a half here.
THE RACE WITH RUIN
AFTER leaving Rykov I went to see Krestinsky,
the Commissar of Finance, the curious little op-
timist whose report on the Extraordinary Tax I
had heard at the last meeting of the Executive
Committee. I found him in the Ilyinka street,
in the Chinese town. I began by telling him that
I did not believe that they meant to pay the loans.
He laughed and gave me precisely the answer I
had expected : "Of course we hope there will be
a revolution in other countries, in which case they
will repudiate their debts and forgive us ours.
But if that does not happen we know very well
that we shall have to pay, and we are prepared
to pay, and shall be able to pay, in concessions,
in raw material which they need more than they
need gold."
Then, being myself neither an economist nor a
theoretical socialist, I put before him what had
132
been said to me in Stockholm by an Englishman
who was both one and the other; namely, that,
being isolated from European finance, the Soviet
Government of Russia was bound to come to an
end on economic and financial grounds alone.
He said: "That would certainly be so, if ris-
ing prices, rising wages, were to mean indefinitely
increased demands on the printing machines for
paper money. But, while we are at present forced
to print more and more money, another process
is at work which, in the long run, will bring this
state of things to an end. Just as in our dealings
with other countries we exchange goods instead of
paying in money, so within our own frontiers
money is ceasing to be the sole medium of ex-
change. Gradually the workmen are coming to
receive more and more in other forms than money.
Houses, for example, lighting and heating are
*
only a beginning. These things being state mo-
nopolies, the task of supplying the workman's
needs without the use of money is comparatively
easy. The chief difficulty is, of course, food sup-
plies, which depend on our ability to keep up an
exchange of goods with the villages. If we can
133
supply the villages with manufactured goods,
they will supply us with food. You can fairly
say that our ruin or salvation depends on a race
between the decreasing value of money (with the
consequent need for printing notes in ever greater
quantities) and our growing ability to do without
money altogether. That is of course, a broad
view, and you must not for a moment suppose that
we expect to do without money in the immediate
future. I am merely showing you the two op-
posing tendencies on which our economic fate de-
pends."
I will not set down here what he said about the
Extraordinary Tax, for it was merely a repetition
of what I had heard him say in committee. In
connection with it, however, he admitted that
capitalism and profiteering were hard things to
root out, saying that they had great difficulty in
getting at what he called "the new bourgeoisie,"
namely the speculators who have made fortunes
since the revolution by selling scarce food products
at fantastic prices. It was difficult to tax them
because they carried on their operations secretly
and it was next to impossible to find out who they
134
were. They did not bank their money, and
though an attempt had been made to get at them
through the house committees, it was found that
even these committees were unable to detect them.
They will, however, be made to disgorge their
ill-gotten gains when the measure first proposed
by Sokolnikov last summer is put into practice.
This is a general exchange of new money for old,
after which the old will be declared invalid.
"Of course," said Krestinsky, "they will cheat in
every possible way, scattering out the money
among a number of friends and relations. But
something will have been done in cleaning them
up, and that process will be completed by a sec-
ond exchange of money later on."
Fifteen milliards of new notes for the first ex-
change are already printed, but they think that
twenty milliards will be necessary.
I asked if the new money was better looking
than the old, if it looked more like money that
was worth having than the wretched little notes
printed by the Provisional Government and scorn-
fully called "Kerenkies" by the populace. Kres-
tinsky said he was afraid not, but that the second
135
and final exchange would be made in notes which
they expected to be permanent. They did not
expect the notes of the first exchange to circulate
abroad, but the notes of the second would carry
with them state obligation and they expected them
to go into general currency. He added, smiling,
that the words "Proletariat of all lands, unite,"
were to appear on the notes in eight languages.
The question of the look of the notes, of their
ability to inspire confidence by their mere appear-
ance, is of real importance in a country where so
many of the peasantry will judge their value by
nothing else.
I reminded him of the hostility roused in some
villages by mistakes in the assessment and collect-
ing of the Extraordinary Tax, mistakes which (so
other Communists had assured me) would cost
them more, politically, than the tax was worth
to them, and asked him, "Will you not have great
difficulty in getting the exchange made, and are
you not running the risk of providing the reaction-
aries with a new profitable basis of agitation?"
He said that of course they would not make
the attempt unless they felt sure they were po-
136
litically strong enough to carry it through. "If
it is properly explained to the villages there will
be nothing to fear, because the measure will not
threaten any but the rich and therefore the small
minority of the peasantry. It would be a differ-
ent matter if the same thing were to be tried by
the counter-revolutionaries, because they would
not discriminate in favour of the poor. If Kol-
chak and Company overthrow us and try to sub-
stitute their money for ours, their action would
affect rich and poor alike, minority and majority
together. If there were not a hundred other
causes guaranteeing the insecurity of their posi-
tion, the fact that they will be unable to get rid
of our money without rousing ^.the most violent
opposition in the masses throughout the country
would alone be sufficient to do it."
I asked whether that was the reason why they
intended to print on the notes "Proletariat of all
lands, unite," so that the counter-revolutionaries,
unable to tolerate money bearing that hated
phrase, should be forced to a step disastrous for
themselves.
He laughed, and said that he did not think
137
counter-revolution in the least likely unless
brought in by invasion, which he did not think
politically possible.
138
A PLAY OF CHEKHOV
February 2ist.
I SAW Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" acted by the
cast of the Art Theatre in the First Studio. This
is a little theatre holding just over 200 people.
It was of course full. It was curious to see how
complete the revolution had been in a social sense.
It was impossible to tell to what class in pre-
revolutionary days any particular member of the
audience had belonged. I was struck by the new
smartness of the boy officers of the Red Army,
of whom a fair number were present. As we
waited for the curtain to rise, I thought how the
mental attitude of the people had changed. A
year ago, we lived with exhilaration or despair on
a volcano which might any day erupt and sweep
away the new life before any one had become
accustomed to live it. Now the danger to the
revolution was a thousand miles away on the va-
139
rious fronts. Here, in the centre, the revolution
was an established fact. People had ceased to
wonder when it would end, were settling into
their places in the new social order, and took their
pleasures not as if they were plucking flowers on
their way to execution, but in the ordinary routine
of life.
The play is well known, a drama of bourgeois
society in a small country place. A poor land-
owner scraping money for an elder brother in the
town, realizing at last that the brother was not the
genius for whom such sacrifice was worth while;
a doctor with a love for forestry and dreams of
the future ; the old mock-genius's young wife ; his
sister; his adoring mother; the old nurse and the
ancient dependent adopted, as it were, with the
estate; all these people in their own way make
each other suffer. Chekhov's irony places before
us wasted lives, hopelessness, exaggerated interest
in personalities, vain strugglings after some better
outlet for the expression of selves not worth ex-
pressing.
That play, acted to-day, seemed as remote as a
play of the old regime in France would have
140
seemed five years ago. A gulf seemed to have
passed. The play had become a play of historical
interest; the life it represented had gone for ever.
People in Russia no longer have time for private
lives of such a character. Such people no longer
exist ; some of them have been swept into the flood-
tide of revolution and are working as they never
hoped to have the chance to work; others, less
generous, have been broken and thrown aside.
The revolution has been hard on some, and has
given new life to others. It has swept away that
old life so absolutely that, come what may, it will
be a hundred years at least before anywhere in
Russia people will be able to be unhappy in that
particular way again.
The subject of "Uncle Vanya" was a great deal
more remote from the Russian audience of to-day
than was the opera of "Samson and Delilah"
which I heard last week. And, if I realized that
the revolution had come to stay, if I realized
that Chekhov's play had become a play of his-
torical interest, I realized also that Chekhov was
a great master in that his work carried across the
gulf between the old life and the new, and affected
141
a revolutionary audience of to-day as strongly
as it affected that very different audience of a few
years ago. Indeed, the play seemed almost to
have gained by the revolution, which had lent it,
perhaps, more irony than was in Chekhov's mind
as he wrote. Was this the old life 1 ? I thought,
as I stepped out into the snow. If so, then thank
God it has gone !
1 4 2
THE CENTRO-TEXTILE
February 22nd.
THIS morning I drove to the Dielovoi Dvor, the
big house on the Varvarskaya Square which is
occupied by the central organization of the textile
industry. The head of this organization is No-
gin, an extremely capable, energetic Russian, so
capable, indeed, that I found it hard to believe
he could really be a Russian. He is a big man,
with a mass of thick brown shaggy hair, so thick
that the little bald patch on the top of his head
seems like an artificial tonsure. Nogin sketched
the lines on which the Russian textile industry was
being reorganized, and gave orders that I should
be supplied with all possible printed matter in
which to find the details.
The "Centro-Textile" is the actual centre of
the economic life of Russia, because, since textiles
H3
are the chief materials of exchange between the
towns and the villages, on its success depends the
success of everything else. The textile industry
is, in any case, the most important of all Russian
industries. Before the war it employed 500,000
workmen, and Nogin said that in spite of the dis-
organization of the war and of the revolution
400,000 are employed to-day. This may be so
in the sense that 400,000 are receiving pay, but
lack of fuel or of raw material must have brought
many factories to a standstill.
All the big factories ha.ve been nationalized.
Formerly, although in any one town there might
be factories carrying out all the different processes,
these factories belonged to different owners. A
single firm or bank might control factories scat-
tered over Russia and, so that the whole process
should be in its hands, the raw material travelled
from factory to factory through the country, in-
stead of merely moving about a single town.
Xhus a roll of material might have gone through
one process at Jaroslav, another at Moscow, and
a third at Tula, and finally come back to Jaroslav
144
to be finished, simply because the different fac-
tories which worked upon it, though widely scat-
tered, happened 'to be under one control. Na-
tionalization has made possible the rational re-
grouping of factories so that the complete process
is carried out in one place, consequently saving
transport. There are twenty-three complete
groups of this kind, and in the textile industry
generally about fifty groups in all.
There has been a similar concentration of con-
trol. In the old days there were hundreds of
different competitive firms with their buildings and
offices in the Ilyinka, the Varvarka, and the Ni-
kolskaya. 1 The Chinese town 1 was a mass of
little offices of different textile firms. The whole
of that mass of struggling competitive units of
direction had now been concentrated in the house
in which we were talking. The control of the
workers had been carried through in such a way
that the technical experts had proper weight.
(See p. 171.) There were periodical conferences
of elected representatives of all the factories, and
1 Streets and a district in Moscow.
H5
Nogin believed that the system of combined
elective workmen's and appointed experts' repre-
sentation could hardly be improved upon.
Nationalization had had the effect of standard-
izing the output. Formerly, an infinite variety of
slightly different stuffs were produced, the varia-
tions being often merely for the sake of being
different in the competitive trade. Useless va-
rieties had now been done away with, with the
result of greater economy in production.
I asked what he could tell me about their diffi-
culties in the matter of raw material. He said
they no longer get anything from America, and
while the railway was cut at Orenburg by the
Cossacks, they naturally could get no cotton from
Turkestan. In fact, last autumn they had cal-
culated that they had only enough material to
keep the factories going until December. Now
they found they could certainly keep going to the
end of March, and probably longer. Many small
factories, wishing to make their cases out worse
than they were, had under-estimated their stocks.
Here, as in other things, the isolation of the revo-
146
lution had the effect of teaching the Russians that
they were less dependent upon the outside world
than they had been in the habit of supposing.
He asked me if I knew it had been considered
impossible to combine flax and cotton in such a
way that the mixture could be worked in machines
intended for cotton only. They had an infinite
supply of flax, much of which in the old days had
been exported. Investigations carried on for the
Centre-Textile by two professors, the brothers
Chilikin, had ended in the discovery of three dif-
ferent processes for the cottonizing of flax in such
a way that they could now mix not only a small
percentage of their flax with cotton and use the
old machines, but were actually using fifty per
cent, flax and had already produced material ex-
perimentally with as much as seventy-five per
cent.
(Some days later two young technicians from
the Centro-Textile brought me a neatly prepared
set of specimens illustrating these new processes
and asked me to bring them anything of the same
sort from England in return. They were not
*47
Bolsheviks were, in fact, typical non-politicals.
They were pleased with what the Centre-Textile
was doing, and said that more encouragement was
given to research than ever formerly. But they
were very despondent about the economic position.
I could not make them understand why Russia
was isolated, and that I might be unable to bring
them technical books from England.)
Nogin rather boastfully said that the western
linen industry would suffer from the isolation of
Russia, whereas in the long run the Russians would
be able to do without the rest of the world. With
regard to wool, they would have no difficulty now
that they were again united with a friendly
Ukraine. The silk industry was to be developed
in the Astrakhan district where climatic conditions
are particularly favourable.
I asked about the fate of the old textile manu-
facturers and was told that though many had gone
abroad many were working in the nationalized
factories. The engineering staff, which mostly
struck work at the beginning of the revolution,
had almost without exception returned, the
148
younger engineers in particular realizing the new
possibilities opening before the industry, the con-
tinual need of new improvements, and the imme-
diate welcome given to originality of any kind.
Apart from the question of food, which was bad
for everybody, the social standard of the work-
ers had risen. Thus one of their immediate diffi-
culties was the provision of proper houses. The
capitalists and manufacturers kept the workers
in barracks. "Now-a-days the men want better
dwellings and we mean to give them better.
Some have moved into the old houses of the own-
ers and manufacturers, but of course there are not
enough of these to go round, and we have exten-
sive plans in the way of building villages and
garden cities for the workmen."
I asked Nogin what, in his opinion, was most
needed by Russia from abroad, and he said that
as far as the textile industries were concerned they
wanted machinery. Like every one else to whom
I put this question, he said that every industry
in Russia would be in a better position if only
they had more locomotives. "Some of our fac-
149
tories are stopping now for lack of fuel, and at
Saratov, for example, we have masses of raw ma-
terial which we are unable to get to Moscow."
150
IN the afternoon I met Sereda, the Commissar of
Agriculture. He insisted that the agrarian pol-
icy had been much misrepresented by their enemies
for the purposes of agitation. They had no in-
tention of any such idiocy as the attempt to force
the peasants to give up private ownership. The
establishment of communes was not to be com-
pulsory in any way; it was to be an illustrative
means of propaganda of the idea of communal
work, not more. The main task before them was
to raise the standard of Russian agriculture, which
under the old system was extremely low. By
working many of the old estates on a communal
system with the best possible methods they hoped
to do two things at once: to teach the peasant to
realize the advantages of communal labour, and
to show him that he could himself get a very
great deal more out of his land than he docs.
"In other ways also we are doing everything we
can to give direct help to the small agriculturists.
We have mobilized all the agricultural experts in
the country. We are issuing a mass of simply
written pamphlets explaining better methods of
farming."
(I have seen scores of these pamphlets on for-
estry, potatoes, turf, rotation of crops, and so on,
besides the agricultural journals issued by the
Commissariat and sent in large quantities to the
villages.)
I told Sereda I had heard that the peasants
were refusing to sow more than they wanted for
their own needs. He said that on the contrary
the latest reports gave them the right to hope for
a greater sown area this year than ever before, and
that even more would have been sown if Den-
mark had not been prevented from letting them
have the seed for which they had actually paid.
I put the same question to him that I put to Nogin
as to what they most needed; he replied, "Trac-
tors."
152
FOREIGN TRADE AND MUNITIONS
OF WAR
February 25th.
I HAD a talk in the Metropole with Krasin, who
is Commissar for Trade and- Industry and also
President of the Committee for Supplying the
Needs of the Army. He had disapproved of the
November Revolution, but last year, when things
looked like going badly, he came to Russia from
Stockholm feeling that he could not do otherwise
than help. He is an elderly man, an engineer,
and very much of a European. We talked first
of the Russian plans with regard to foreign trade.
All foreign trade, he said, is now concentrated in
the hands of the State, which is therefore able to
deal as a single customer. I asked how that
would apply to purchase, and whether they ex-
pected that countries dealing with them would
organize committees through which the whole
153
Russian trade of each such country should simi-
larly pass. Krasin said, "Of course that would
be preferable, but only in the case of socialist
countries. As things are now it would be very
much to our disadvantage. It is better for us to
deal with individual capitalists than with a ring.
The formation of a committee in England, for
example, with a monopoly of trade with Russia,
would have the effect of raising prices against us,
since we could no longer go from a dear shop to
a cheaper one. Besides, as socialists we naturally
wish to do nothing to help in the trustification of
English manufacturers."
He recognized that foreign trade on any large
scale was impossible until their transport had
been improved. Russia proposed to do her pay-
ing in raw material, in flax, timber, etc., in ma-
terials of which she had great quantities although
she could not bring them to the ports until her
transport should be restored. It would, there-
fore, be in the foreigner's own interests to help
them in this matter. He added that they were
confident that in the long run they could, without
foreign help, so far restore their transport as to
154
save themselves from starvation ; but for a speedy
return to normal conditions foreign help was es-
sential.
The other question we touched was that of mu-
nitions. I expressed some surprise that they
should be able to do so well although cut off from
the west. Krasin said that as far as that was
concerned they had ample munitions for a long
fight. Heavy artillery is not much use for the
kind of warfare waged in Russia; and as for light
artillery, they were making and mending their
own. They were not bothering with three-inch
shells because they had found that the old regime
had left scattered about Russia supplies of three-
inch shells sufficient to last them several years.
Dynamite also they had in enormous quantities.
They were manufacturing gunpowder. The car-
tridge output had trebled since August when Kra-
sin's committee was formed. He thought even
as things were they could certainly fight for a
year.
155
THE PROPOSED DELEGATION FROM
BERNE
I DO not remember the exact date when the pro-
posal of the Berne International Conference to
send a Commission of Enquiry to Russia became
known in Moscow, but on February 2oth every-
body who came to see me was talking about it,
and from that date the question as to the reception
of the delegates was the most urgently debated
of all political subjects. Chicherin had replied
immediately to Berne, saying that "though they
did not consider the Berne Conference either so-
cialist or in any degree representative of the work-
ing-class they nevertheless would permit the Com-
mission's journey into Russia, and would give it
every opportunity of becoming acquainted from
all sides with the state of affairs, just as they
would any bourgeois commission directly or in-
directly connected with any of the bourgeois gov-
156
ernments, even with those then attacking Russia."
It may well be imagined that a reply in this
style infuriated the Mensheviks who consider
themselves more or less affiliated to the parties
epresented at Berne. What, they shrieked, Kaut-
sky not a socialist 1 ? To which their opponents
replied, "The Government which Kautsky sup-
ports keeps Radek in irons in a gaol." But to
me the most interesting thing to observe was that
Chicherin's reply was scarcely more satisfactory
to some of the Communists. It had been sent off
before any general consultation, and it appeared
that the Communists themselves were widely di-
vided as to the meaning of the proposal. One
party believed that it was a first step towards
agreement and peace. The other thought it an
ingenious ruse by Clemenceau to get "so-called"
socialist condemnation of the Bolsheviks as a basis
for allied intervention. Both parties were, of
course, wrong in so far as they thought the Allied
Governments had anything to do with it. Both
the French and English delegates were refused
passports. This, however, was not known in
Moscow until after I left, and by then much had
157
happened. I think the Conference which founded
the Third International in Moscow had its origin
in a desire to counter any ill effects that might
result from the expected visit of the people of
Berne.
Litvinov said he considered the sending of the
Commission from Berne the most dangerous
weapon yet conceived by their opponents. He
complained that he had been unable to get either
Lenin or Chicherin to realize that this delegation
was a preparation for hostilities, not a prepara-
tion for peace. "You do not understand that
since the beginning of the war there has been a
violent struggle between two Internationals, one
of which does not believe in revolution while the
other does. In this case a group of men already
committed to condemn the revolution are com-
ing to pass judgment on it. If they were not to
condemn the revolution they would be condemn-
ing themselves. Chicherin ought to have put a
condition that a delegation of Left Socialists
should also come. But he replied within an hour
of getting the telegram from Berne. These idiots
here think the delegation is coming to seek a
158
ground for peace. It is nothing of the sort. It
is bound to condemn us, and the Bourgeois Gov-
ernments will know how to profit by the criticism,
however mild, that is signed by men who still re-
tain authority as socialists. Henderson, for ex-
ample (Henderson was at first named as one of
the delegates, later replaced by MacDonald), will
judge simply by whether people are hungry or
not. He will not allow for reasons which are not
in our control. Kautsky is less dangerous, be-
cause, after all, he will look below the obvious."
Reinstein remembered the old personal hostility
between Lenin and Kautsky, whom Lenin, in a
book which Reinstein thought unworthy of him,
had roundly denounced as a renegade and traitor.
The only man in the delegation who could be
counted on for an honest effort to understand was
Longuet.
As the days went on, it became clear that the
expected visit had provided a new bone of conten-
tion between the Russian parties. The Com-
munists decided that the delegates should not be
treated with any particular honour in the way of
a reception. The Mensheviks at once set about
159
preparing a triumphal reception on a large scale
for the people whom they described as the repre-
sentatives of genuine socialism. Demian Biedny
retorted in an extremely amusing poetic dialogue,
representing the Mensheviks rehearsing their parts
to be ready for the reception. Other Communists
went to work to prepare a retort of a different
kind. They arranged a house for the Berne dele-
gates to live in, but at the same time they pre-
pared to emphasize the difference between the two
Internationals by the calling of an anti-Berne con-
ference which should disclaim all connection with
that old International which they considered had
gone into political bankruptcy at the outbreak of
the European war.
160
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON
THE RIVAL PARTIES
February 26th.
IN the afternoon I got to the Executive Com-
mittee in time to hear the end of a report by
Rykov on the economic position. He said there
was hope for a satisfactory conclusion to the ne-
gotiations for the building of the Obi-Kotlas rail-
way, and hoped that this would soon be followed
by similar negotiations and by other concessions.
He explained that they did not want capitalism
in Russia but that they did want the things that
capital could give them in exchange for what they
could give capital. This was, of course, referring
to the opposition criticism that the Soviet was
prepared to sell Russia into the hands of the
"Anglo-American Imperialistic bandits." Rykov
said that the main condition of all concessions
would be that they should not effect the interna-
161
tional structure of the Soviet Republic and should
not lead to the exploitation of the workmen.
They wanted railways, locomotives, and machines,
and their country was rich enough to pay for these
things out of its natural resources without sensible
loss to the state or the yielding of an inch in their
programme of internal reconstruction.
He was followed by Krestinsky, who pointed
out that whereas the commissariats were, in a
sense, altered forms of the old ministries, links
with the past, the Council of Public Economy,
organizing the whole production and distribution
of the country, building the new socialist state,
was an entirely new organ and a link, not with the
past, but with the future.
The two next speeches illustrated one of the
main difficulties of the revolution. Krasin (see
p. 153) criticized the council for insufficient con-
fidence in the security of the revolution. He said
they were still hampered by fears lest here or
there capitalism should creep in again. They
were unnecessarily afraid to make the fullest pos-
sible use of specialists of all kinds who had taken
. a leading part in industry under the old regime
162
and who, now that the old regime, the old system,
had been definitely broken, could be made to serve
the new. He believed that unless the utmost use
was made of the resources of the country in tech-
nical knowledge, etc., they could not hope to or-
ganize the maximum productivity which alone
could save them from catastrophe.
The speaker who followed him, Glebov, de-
fended precisely the opposite point of view and
represented the same attitude with regard to the
re-organization of industry as is held by many
who object to Trotsky's use of officers of the old
army in the re-organization of the new, believing
that all who worked in high places under the old
regime must be and remain enemies of the revo-
lution, so that their employment is a definite source
of danger. Glebov is a trade union representa-
tive, and his speech was a clear indication of the
non-political undercurrent towards the left which
may shake the Bolshevik position and will most
certainly come into violent conflict with any defi-
nitely bourgeois government that may be brought
in by counter-revolution.
In the resolution on the economic position which
163
was finally passed unanimously, one point reads
as follows: "It is necessary to strive for just
economic relations with other countries in the form
of state regulated exchange of goods and the bring-
ing of the productive forces of other countries to
the working out of the untouched natural resources
of Soviet Russia." It is interesting to notice the
curiously mixed character of the opposition.
Some call for "a real socialism," which shall make
no concessions whatsoever to foreign capital,
others for the cessation of civil war and peace with
the little governments which have obtained Allied
support. In a single number of the Printers 1
Gazette, for example, there was a threat to appeal
against the Bolsheviks to the delegation from
Berne and an attack on Chicherin for being ready
to make terms with the Entente.
The next business on the programme was the
attitude to be adopted towards the repentant So-
cial Revolutionaries of the Right. Kamenev
made the best speech I have ever heard from him,
for once in a way not letting himself be drawn
into agitational digressions, but going point by
point through what he had to say and saying it
164
economically. The S.R.'s had had three watch-
words: "War and alliance with the Allies,"
"Coalition with the bourgeoisie," and "The Con-
stituent Assembly." For over a year they had
waged open war with the Soviet Government over
these three points. They had been defeated in
the field. But they had suffered a far more se-
rious moral defeat in having to confess that their
very watchwords had been unsound. "War and
Alliance with the Allies" had shown itself to mean
the occupation of Russian territory by foreign
troops in no way concerned to save the revolution,
but ready, as they had shown, to help every force
that was working for its suppression. "Coalition
with the Bourgeoisie" had shown itself to be a path
the natural ending to which was the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie through military force. "The
Constituent Assembly" had been proved to be no
more than a useful mask behind which the enemies
of the revolution could prepare their forces and
trick the masses to their own undoing.
He read the declaration of the Right Social
Revolutionaries, admitting that the Soviet Gov-
ernment was the only force working against a
165
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and calling upon
their troops to overthrow the usurping govern-
ments in Siberia, and elsewhere. This repentance,
however, had come rather late and there were those
who did not share it. He said finally that the
Executive Committee must remember that it was
not a party considering its relations with another
party, but an organ of government considering the
attitude of the country towards a party which in
the most serious moment of Russian history had
admittedly made grave mistakes and helped Rus-
sia's enemies. Now, in this difficult moment,
every one who was sincerely ready to help the
working masses of Russia in their struggle had the
right to be given a place in the ranks of the fight-
ers. The Social Revolutionaries should be al-
lowed to prove in deeds the sincerity of their re-
cantation. The resolution which was passed re-
capitulated the recantations, mentioned by name
the members of the party with whom discussions
had been carried on, withdrew the decision of
June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Exec-
utive Committee on the ground of their counter-
revolutionary tendencies) with regard to all groups
166
of the party which held themselves bound by the
recently published declarations, gave them the
right equally with other parties to share in the
work of the Soviets, and notified the administra-
tive and judicial organs of the Republic to free
the arrested S.R.'s who shared the point of view
expressed in the recantations. The resolution was
passed without enthusiasm but without opposi-
tion.
There followed the reading by Avanesov of the
decree concerning the Menshevik paper Vsegda
Vpered ("Forever Forward," but usually de-
scribed by critics of the Mensheviks as "Forever
Backward"). The resolution pointed out that in
spite of the Mensheviks having agreed on the need
of supporting the Soviet Government they were
actually carrying on an agitation, the effect of
which could only be to weaken the army. An
example was given of an article, "Stop the Civil
War," in which they had pointed out that the
war was costing a great deal, and that much of
the food supplies went to the army. On these
grounds they had demanded the cessation of the
civil war. The Committee pointed out that the
167
Mensheviks were making demagogic use of the
difficulties of the food supply, due in part to the
long isolation from the Ukraine, the Volga dis-
trict and Siberia, for which those Mensheviks who
had worked with the White Guard were them-
selves partly responsible. They pointed out that
Russia was a camp besieged from all sides, that
Kolchak had seized the important centre of Perm,
that Petrograd was threatened from Finland, that
in the streets of Rostov and Novo Tcherkassk
gallows with the bodies of workmen were still
standing, that Denikin was making a destructive
raid in the northern Caucasus, that the Polish
legionaries were working for the seizure of Vilna
and the suppression of Lithuania and the White
Russian proletariat, and that in the ports of the
Black Sea the least civilized colonial troops of the
Entente were supporting the White Guards.
They pointed out that the Soviet Government had
offered concessions in order to buy off the impe-
rialistic countries and had received no reply.
Taking all this into consideration the demand to
end civil war amounted to a demand for the dis-
arming of the working class and the poor peasantry
168
in the face of bandits and executioners advancing
from all sides. In a word, it was the worst form
of state crime, namely, treason to a state of work-
ers and peasants. The Committee considered use-
ful every kind of practical criticism of the work
of the Soviet Government in all departments, but
it could not allow that in the rear of the Red
Army of workers and peasants, under that army's
protection, should be carried on unrestrained an
agitation which could have only one result, the
weakening of Soviet Russia in the face of its
many enemies. Therefore Vsegda Vpered would
be closed until the Mensheviks should show in
deed that they were ready to stand to the defence
and support of the revolution. At the same time,
the Committee reminded the Mensheviks that a
continuation of their counter-revolutionary work
would force the Soviet Government "to expel them
to the territories of Kolchak's democracy." This
conclusion was greeted with laughter and ap-
plause, and with that the meeting ended.
169
COMMISSARIAT OF LABOUR
February 28th.
THIS morning I went round to the Commissariat
of Labour, to see Schmidt, the Commissar.
Schmidt is a clean-shaven, intelligent young man,
whose attention to business methods is reflected
in his Commissariat, which, unlike that of For-
eign Affairs, is extremely clean and very well
organized. I told him I was particularly inter-
ested to hear what he could say in answer to the
accusations made both by the Mensheviks and by
the Extremists on the Left that control by the
workers has become a dead letter, and that a
time will come when the trades unions will move
against the state organizations.
Schmidt answered: "Those accusations and
suggestions are all very well for agitational pur-
poses, but the first to laugh at them would be the
trades unions themselves. This Commissariat,
170
for example, which is the actual labour centre, is
controlled directly by the unions. As Commissar
of Labour, I was elected directly by the General
Council of the Trades Unions. Of the College
of nine members which controls the whole work
of the Commissariat, five are elected directly by
the General Council of the Trades Unions and
four appointed by the Council of People's Com-
missaries, thus giving the Unions a decisive ma-
jority in all questions concerning labour. All
nine are confirmed by the Council of People's Com-
missaries, representing the state as a whole, and
the Commissar is confirmed by the All-Russian
Executive Committee."
Of course control by the workers, as it was first
introduced, led speedily to many absurdities and,
much to the dissatisfaction of the extremer ele-
ments, has been considerably modified. It was
realized that the workers in any particular fac-
tory might by considering only their own inter-
ests harm the community as a whole, and so, in
the long run, themselves. The manner of its
modification is an interesting example of the way
in which, without the influence of tanks, a'fro-
171
planes or bayonets, the cruder ideas of communism
are being modified by life. It was reasoned that
since the factory was the property, not of the par-
ticular workmen who work in it, but of the com-
munity as a whole, the community as a whole
should have a considerable voice in its manage-
ment. And the effect of that reasoning has been
to ensure that the technical specialist and the
expert works manager are no longer at the caprice
of a hastily called gathering of the workmen who
may, without understanding them, happen to dis-
approve of some of their dispositions. Thus the
economical, administrative council of a national-
ized factory consists of representatives of the
workmen and clerical staff, representatives of the
higher technical and commercial staffs, the di-
rectors of the factory (who are appointed by the
Central Direction of National Factories), repre-
sentatives of the local council of trades unions,
the Council of Public Economy, the local soviet,
and the industrial union of the particular indus-
try carried on in the factory, together with a rep-
resentative of the workers' co-operative society
and a representative of the peasants' soviet of the
172
district in which the factory is situated. In this
council not more than half of the members may
be representatives of the workmen and clerical
staff of the factory. This council considers the
internal order of the factory, complaints of any
kind, and the material and moral conditions of
work and so on. On questions of a technical char-
acter it has no right to do more than give advice.
The night before I saw Schmidt, little Finberg
had come to my room for a game of chess in a
very perturbed state of mind, having just come
from a meeting of the union to which he belonged
(the union of clerks, shop assistants and civil
servants) where there had been a majority against
the Bolsheviks after some fierce criticism over this
particular question. Finberg had said that the
ground basis of the discontent had been the lack
of food, but that the outspoken criticism had taken
the form, first, of protests against the offer of
concessions in Chicherin's Note of February 4th,
on the ground that concessions meant concessions
to foreign capitalism and the formation in Rus-
sia of capitalist centres which would eventually
spread; and second, that the Communists them-
173
selves, by their modifications of Workers' Control,
were introducing State Capitalism instead of So-
cialism.
I mentioned this union to Schmidt, and asked
him to explain its hostility. He laughed, and
said: "Firstly, that union is not an industrial
union at all, but includes precisely the people
whose interests are not identical with those of the
workmen. Secondly, it includes all the old civil
servants who, as you remember, left the ministries
at the November Revolution, in many cases tak-
ing the money with them. They came back in
the end, but though no longer ready to work
openly against the revolution as a whole, they re-
tain much of their old dislike of us, and, as you .
see, the things they were objecting to last night
were precisely the things which do not concern
them in particular. Any other stick would be
as good to them. They know well that if they
were to go on strike now they would be a nuisance
to us, no more. If you wish to know the attitude
of the Trades Unions, you should look at the
Trades Union Congress which wholly supported
us, and gave a very different picture of affairs.
174
They know well that in all questions of labour,
the trades unions have the decisive voice. I told
you that the unions send a majority of the mem-
bers of the College which controls the work of
this Commissariat. I should have added that the
three most important departments the depart-
ment for safeguarding labour, the department for
distributing labour, and that for regulating wages
are entirely controlled by the Unions."
"How do politics affect the Commissariat'?"
"Not at all. Politics do not count with us,
just because we are directly controlled by the
Unions, and not by any political party. Men-
sheviks, Maximalists and others have worked and
are working in the Commissariat. Of course if
a man were opposed to the revolution as a whole
we should not have him here, because he would
be working against us instead of helping."
I asked whether he thought the trade unions
would ever disappear in the Soviet organizations.
He thought not. On the contrary, they had
grown steadily throughout the revolution. He
told me that one great change had been made in
them. Trade unions have been merged together
175
into industrial unions, to prevent conflict between
individual sections of one industry. Thus boiler-
makers and smiths do not have separate unions,
but are united in the metal-workers' union. This
unification has its effect on reforms and changes.
An increase in wages, for example, is simultaneous
all over Russia. The price of living varies very
considerably in different parts of the country,
there being as great differences between the cli-
mates of different parts as there are between the
countries of Europe. Consequently a uniform
absolute increase would be grossly unfair to some
and grossly favourable to others. The increase
is therefore proportional to the cost of living.
Moscow is taken as a norm of 100, and when a
new minimum wage is established for Moscow
other districts increase their minimum wage pro-
portionately. A table for this has been worked
out, whereby in comparison with 100 for Mos-
cow, Petrograd is set down as 120, Voronezh
or Kursk as 70, and so on.
We spoke of the new programme of the Com-
munists, rough drafts of which were being printed
in the newspapers for discussion, and he showed
176
me his own suggestions in so far as the programme
concerned labour. He wished the programme to
include, among other aims, the further mechaniza-
tion of production, particularly the mechanization
of all unpleasant and dirty processes, improved
sanitary inspection, shortening of the working day
in employments harmful to health, forbidding
women with child to do any but very light work,
and none at all for eight weeks before giving
birth and for eight weeks afterwards, forbidding
overtime, and so on. "We have already gone far
beyond our old programme, and our new one steps
far ahead of us. Russia is the first country in the
world where all workers have a fortnight's holi-
day in the year, and workers in dangerous or un-
healthy occupations have a month's."
I said, "Yes, but don't you find that there is
a very long way between the passing of a law and
its realization*?"
Schmidt laughed and replied : "In some things
certainly, yes. For example, we are against all
overtime, but, in the present state of Russia we
should be sacrificing to a theory the good of the
revolution as a whole if we did not allow and en-
177
courage overtime in transport repairs. Similarly,
until things are further developed than they are
now, we should be criminal slaves to theory if we
did not, in some cases, allow lads under sixteen
years old to be in the factories when we have not
yet been able to provide the necessary schools
where we would wish them to be. But the pro-
gramme is there, and as fast as it can be realized
we are realizing it."
178
EDUCATION
February 28th.
AT the Commissariat of Public Education I showed
Professor Pokrovsky a copy of The German-
Bolshevik Conspiracy, published in America, con-
taining documents supposed to prove that the
German General Staff arranged the November
Revolution, and that the Bolsheviks were no more
than German agents. The weak point about the
documents is that the most important of them
have no reason for existence except to prove that
there was such a conspiracy. These are the docu-
ments bought by Mr. Sisson. I was interested to
see what Pokrovsky would say of them. He
looked through them, and while saying that he
had seen forged documents better done, pointed
as evidence to the third of them which ends with
the alleged signatures of Zalkind, Polivanov, Mek-
hanoshin and Joffe. He observed that whoever
179
forged the things knew a good deal, but did not
know quite enough, because these persons, de-
scribed as "plenipotentiaries of the Council of
Peoples' Commissars," though all actually in the
service of the Soviet Government, could not all,
at that time, have been what they were said to be.
Polivanov, for example, was a very minor official.
Joffe, on the other hand, was indeed a person of
some importance. The putting of the names in
that order was almost as funny as if they had
produced a document signed by Lenin and the
Commandant of the Kremlin, putting the latter
first.
Pokrovsky told me a good deal about the or-
ganization of this Commissariat, as Lunacharsky,
the actual head of it, was away in Petrograd.
The routine work is run by a College of nine mem-
bers appointed by the Council of People's Commis-
sars. The Commissar of Education himself is
appointed by the All-Russian Executive Commit-
tee. Besides this, there is a Grand College which
meets rarely for the settlement of important ques-
tions. In it are representatives of the Trades
Unions, the Workers' Co-operatives, the Teachers'
180
Union, various Commissariats such as that for
affairs of Nationality, and other public organiza-
tions. He also gave me then and at a later date
a number of figures illustrating the work that has
been done since the revolution. Thus whereas
there used to be six universities there are now six-
teen, most of the new universities having been
opened on the initiative of the local Soviets, as
at Astrakhan, Nijni, Kostroma, Tambov,
Smolensk and other places. New polytechnics
are being founded. At Ivano-Vosnesensk the new
polytechnic is opened and that at Briansk is be-
ing prepared. The number of students in the
universities has increased enormously though not
to the same proportion as the number of universi-
ties, partly because the difficulties of food supply
keep many students out of the towns, and partly
because of the newness of some of the universities
which are only now gathering their students about
them. All education is free. In August last a
decree was passed abolishing preliminary exami-
nations for persons wishing to become students.
It was considered that very many people who
could attend the lectures with profit to them-
181
selves had been prevented by the war or by pre-
revolution conditions from acquiring the sort of
knowledge that could be tested by examination.
It was also believed that no one would willingly
listen to lectures that were of no use to him.
They hoped to get as many working men into the
universities as possible. Since the passing of that
decree the number of students at Moscow Uni-
versity, for example, has more than doubled. It
is interesting to notice that of the new students a
greater number are studying in the faculties of
science and history and philosophy than in those
of medicine or law. Schools are being unified on
a new basis in which labour plays a great part.
I frankly admit I do not understand, and I gather
that many teachers have also failed to understand,
how this is done. Crafts of all kinds take a big
place in the scheme. The schools are divided into
two classes one for children from seven to twelve
years old, and one for those aged from thirteen to
seventeen. A milliard roubles has been assigned
to feeding children in the schools, and those who
most need them are supplied with clothes and
footgear. Then there are many classes for work-
182
ing men, designed to give the worker a general
scientific knowledge of his own trade and so pre-
vent him from being merely a machine carrying
out a single uncomprehended process. Thus a
boiler-maker can attend a course on mechanical
engineering, an electrical worker a course on
electricity, and the best agricultural experts are
being employed to give similar lectures to the
peasants. The workmen crowd to these courses.
One course, for example, is attended by a thou-
sand men in spite of the appalling cold of the
lecture rooms. The hands of the science pro-
fessors, so Pokrovsky told me, are frostbitten from
touching the icy metal of their instruments during
demonstrations.
The following figures represent roughly the
growth in the number of libraries. In October,
1917, there were 23 libraries in Petrograd, 30 in
Moscow. To-day there are 49 in Petrograd and
85 in Moscow, besides a hundred book distribut-
ing centres. A similar growth in the number of
libraries has taken place in the country districts.
In Ousolsky ouezd^ for example, there are now
73 village libraries, 35 larger libraries and 500
183
hut libraries or reading rooms. In Moscow edu-
cational institutions, not including schools, have
increased from 369 to 1,357.
There are special departments for the circula-
tion of printed matter, and they really have de-
veloped a remarkable organization. I was shown
over their headquarters on the Tverskaya, and saw
huge maps of Russia with all the distributing cen-
tres marked with reference numbers so that it was
possible to tell in a moment what number of any
new publication should be sent to each. Every
post office is a distributing centre to which is sent
a certain number of all publications, periodical
and other. The local Soviets ask through the post
offices for such quantities as are required, so that
the supply can be closely regulated by the de-
mand. The bookselling kiosks send in reports of
the sale of the various newspapers, etc., to elimi-
nate the waste of over-production, a very impor-
tant matter in a country faced simultaneously by
a vigorous demand for printed matter and an ex-
treme scarcity of paper.
It would be interesting to have statistics to
illustrate the character of the literature in de-
184
mand. One thing can be said at once. No one
reads sentimental romances. As is natural in a
period of tremendous political upheaval pamphlets
sell by the thousand, speeches of Lenin and Trot-
sky are only equalled in popularity by Demian
Biedny's more or less political poetry. Pamphlets
and books on Marx, on the war, and particularly
on certain phases of the revolution, on different
aspects of economic reconstruction, simply written
explanations of laws or policies vanish almost as
soon as they are put on the stalls. The reading
of this kind has been something prodigious during
the revolution. A great deal of poetry is read,
and much is written. It is amusing to find in a
red-hot revolutionary paper serious articles and
letters by well-meaning persons advising would-be
proletarian poets to stick to Pushkin and Lermon-
tov. There is much excited controversy both in
magazine and pamphlet form as to the distin-
guishing marks of the new proletarian art which
is expected to come out of the revolution and
no doubt will come, though not in the form ex-
pected. But the Communists cannot be accused
of being unfaithful to the Russian classics. Even
185
Radek, a foreign fosterchild and an adopted Rus-
sian, took Gogol as well as Shakespeare with him
when he went to annoy General Hoffmann at
Brest. The Soviet Government has earned the
gratitude of many Russians who dislike it for
everything else it has done by the resolute way
in which it has brought the Russian classics into
the bookshops. Books that were out of print and
unobtainable, like Kliutchevsky's "Courses in Rus-
sian History," have been reprinted from the
stereotypes and set afloat again at most reason-
able prices. I was also able to buy a book of his
which I have long wanted, his "Foreigners' Ac-
counts of the Muscovite State," which had also
fallen out of print. In the same way the Gov-
ernment has reprinted, and sells at fixed low prices
that may not be raised by retailers, the works of
Koltzov, Nikitin, Krylov, Saltykov-Shtchedrin,
Chekhov, Goncharov, Uspensky, Tchernyshevsky,
Pomyalovsky and others. It is issuing Chukov-
sky's edition of Nekrasov, reprints of Tolstoy,
Dostoievsky and Turgenev, and books by Pro-
fessor Timiriazev, Karl Pearson and others of a
scientific character, besides the complete works of
186
Lenin's old rival, Plekhanov. It is true that most
of this work is simply done by reprinting from
old stereotypes, but the point is that the books
are there, and the sale for them is very large.
Among the other experts on the subject of the
Soviet's educational work I consulted two friends,
a little boy, Glyeb, who sturdily calls himself a
Cadet though three of his sisters work in Soviet
institutions, and an old and very wise porter.
Glyeb says that during the winter they had no
heating, so that they sat in school in their coats,
and only sat for a very short time, because of the
great cold. He told me, however, that they gave
him a good dinner there every day, and that les-
sons would be all right as soon as the weather got
warmer. He showed me a pair of felt boots
which had been given him at the school. The
old porter summed up the similar experience of
his sons. "Yes," he said, "they go there, sing
the Marseillaise twice through, have dinner and
come home." I then took these expert criticisms
to Pokrovsky who said, "It is perfectly true. We
have not enough transport to feed the armies, let
alone bringing food and warmth for ourselves.
187
And if, under these conditions, we forced children
to go through all their lessons we should have
corpses to teach, not children. But by making
them come for their meals we do two things, keep
them alive, and keep them in the habit of coming,
so that when the warm weather comes we can do
better."
188
A BOLSHEVIK FELLOW OF THE
ROYAL SOCIETY
AT Sukhanov's suggestion I went to see Professor
Timiriazev, the greatest Russian Darwinian, well-
known to many scientific men in this country, a
foreign member of the Royal Society, a Doctor
of Cambridge University and a Bolshevik. He
is about eighty years old. His left arm is para-
lysed, and, as he said, he can only work at his
desk and not be out and about to help as he would
wish. A venerable old savant, he was sitting writ-
ing with a green dressing gown about him, for his
little flat was very cold. On the walls were por-
traits of Darwin, Newton and Gilbert, besides
portraits of contemporary men of science whom
he had known. English books were everywhere.
He gave me two copies of his last scientific book
and his latest portrait to take to two of his friends
in England.
189
He lives with his wife and son. I asked if his
son were also a Bolshevik.
"Of course," he replied.
He then read me a letter he had written, pro-
testing against intervention. He spoke of his old
love for England and for the English people.
Then, speaking of the veil of lies drawn between
Soviet Russia and the rest of the world, he broke
down altogether, and bent his head to hide his
tears.
"I suffer doubly," he said, after excusing him-
self for the weakness of a very old man. "I suffer
as a Russian, and, if I may say so, I suffer as an
Englishman. I have English blood in my veins.
My mother, you see, looks quite English," pointing
to a daguerreotype on the wall, "and my grand-
mother was actually English. I suffer as an Eng-
lishman when I see the country that I love misled
by lies, and I suffer as a Russian because those lies
concern the country to which I belong, and the
ideas which I am proud to hold."
The old man rose with difficulty, for he, like
every one else in Moscow, is half starved. He
showed me his Byron, his Shakespeare, his En-
190
cyclopaedia Britannica, his English diplomas. He
pointed to the portraits on the wall. "If I could
but let them know the truth," he said, "those
friends of mine in England, they would protest
against actions which are unworthy of the Eng-
land we have loved together."
191
DIGRESSION
AT this point the chronological arrangement of
my book, already weak, breaks down altogether.
So far I have set down, almost day by day, things
seen and heard which seemed to me characteristic
and clear illustration of the mentality of the Com-
munists, of the work that has been done or that
they are trying to do, and of the general state of
affairs. I spent the whole of my time in ceaseless
investigation, talking now with this man, now
with that, until at the end of a month I was so
tired (besides being permanently hungry) that I
began to fear rather than to seek new experiences
and impressions. The last two weeks of my stay
were spent, not in visiting Commissariats, but in
collecting masses of printed material, in talking
with my friends of the opposition parties, and,
while it was in progress, visiting daily the Confer-
ence in the Kremlin which, in the end, definitely
192
announced itself as the Third International. I
have considered it best to treat of that Confer-
ence more or less as a whole, and am therefore
compelled to disregard chronology altogether in
putting down on paper <the results of some of my
talks with the opposition. Some of these took
place on the same days as my visits to the Kremlin
conference, and during those days I was also partly
engaged in getting to see the British prisoners in
the Butyrka prison, in which I eventually suc-
ceeded. This is my excuse for the inadequacy of
ny account of the conference, an inadequacy which
I regret the more as I was the only non-Communist
who was able to be there at all.
193
THE OPPOSITION
No man likes being hungry. No man likes being
cold. Everybody in Moscow, as in Petrograd, is
both hungry and cold. There is consequently very
general and very bitter discontent. This is of
course increased, not lessened, by the discipline
introduced into the factories and the heavy burden
of the army, although the one is intended to
hasten the end of hunger and cold and the other
for the defence of the revolution. The Com-
munists, as the party in power, naturally bear the
blame and are the objects of the discontent, which
will certainly within a short time be turned upon
any other government that may succeed them.
That government must introduce sterner discipline
rather than weaker, and the transport and other
difficulties of the country will remain the same,
unless increased by the disorder of a new up-
heaval and the active or passive resistance of many
194
who are convinced revolutionaries or will become
so in answer to repression.
The Communists believe that to let power slip
from their hands at this moment would be treach-
ery to the revolution. And, in the face of the
advancing forces of the Allies and Kolchak many
of the leaders of the opposition are inclined to
agree with them, and temporarily to submit to
what they undoubtedly consider rank tyranny.
A position has been reached after these eighteen
months not unlike that reached by the English
Parliament party in 1643. I am reminded of a
passage in Guizot, which is so illuminating that
I make no apology for quoting it in full :
"The party had been in the ascendant for three
years: whether it had or had not, in church and
state, accomplished its designs, it was at all events
by its aid and concurrence that, for three years,
public affairs had been conducted; this alone was
sufficient to make many people weary of it ; it was
made responsible for the many evils already en-
dured, for the many hopes frustrated; it was de-
nounced as being no less addicted to persecution
than the bishops, no less arbitrary than the king:
195
its inconsistencies, its weaknesses, were recalled
with bitterness; and, independently of this, even
without factions or interested views, from the mere
progress of events and opinions, there was felt a
secret need of new principles and new rulers."
New rulers are advancing on Moscow from Si-
beria, but I do not think that they claim that they
are bringing with them new principles. Though
the masses may want new principles, and might
for a moment submit to a reintroduction of very
old principles in desperate hope of less hunger and
less cold, no one but a lunatic could imagine that
they would for very long willingly submit to
them. In the face of the danger that they may
be forced to submit not to new principles but to
very old ones, the non-Communist leaders are un-
willing to use to the full the discontent that exists.
Hunger and cold are a good enough basis of agita-
tion for anyone desirous of overturning any exist-
ing government. But the Left Social Revolu-
tionaries, led by the hysterical but flamingly hon-
est Spiridonova, are alone in having no scruples
or hesitation in the matter, the more responsible
parties fearing the anarchy and consequent weak-
196
ening of the revolution that would result from
any violent change.
THE LEFT SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES
The Left Social Revolutionaries want something
so much like anarchy that they have nothing to
fear in a collapse of the present system. They
are for a partisan army, not a regular army. They
are against the employment of officers who served
under the old regime. They are against the em-
ployment of responsible technicians and commer-
cial experts in the factories. They believe that
officers and experts alike, being ex-bourgeois, must
be enemies of the people, insidiously engineering
reaction. They are opposed to any agreement
with the Allies, exactly as they were opposed to
any agreement with the Germans. I heard them
describe the Communists as "the bourgeois gen-
darmes of the Entente," on the ground that hav-
ing offered concessions they would be keeping
order in Russia for the benefit of Allied capital.
They blew up Mirbach, and would no doubt try
to blow up any successors he might have. Not
wanting a regular army (a low bourgeois weapon)
197
they would welcome occupation in order that they,
with bees in their bonnets and bombs in their
hands, might go about revolting against it.
I did not see Spiridonova, because on February
1 1, the very day when I had an appointment with
her, the Communists arrested her, on the ground
that her agitation was dangerous and anarchist in
tendency, fomenting discontent without a pro-
gramme for its satisfaction. Having a great re-
spect for her honesty, they were hard put to it
to know what to do with her, and she was finally
sentenced to be sent for a year to a home for
neurasthenics, "where she would be able to read
and write and recover her normality." That the
Communists were right in fearing this agitation
was proved by the troubles in Petrograd, where
the workmen in some of the factories struck, and
passed Left Social Revolutionary resolutions
which, so far from showing that they were await-
ing reaction and General Judenitch, showed sim-
ply that they were discontented and prepared to
move to the left.
198
THE MENSHEVIKS
The second main group of opposition is domi-
nated by the Mensheviks. Their chief leaders are
Martov and Dan. Of these two, Martov is by
far the cleverer, Dan the more garrulous, being
often led away by his own volubility into agita-
tion of a kind not approved by his friends. Both
are men of very considerable courage. Both are
Jews.
The Mensheviks would like the reintroduction
of capitalists, of course much chastened by expe-
rience, and properly controlled by themselves.
Unlike Spiridonova and her romantic supporters
they approved of Chicherin's offer of peace and
concessions to the Allies (see page 44). They
have even issued an appeal that the Allies should
come to an agreement with "Lenin's Government."
As may be gathered from their choice of a name
for the Soviet Government, they are extremely
hostile to it, but they fear worse things, and are
consequently a little shy of exploiting as they
easily could the dislike of the people for hunger
and cold. They fear that agitation on these lines
199
might well result in anarchy, which would leave
the revolution temporarily defenceless against
Kolchak, Denikin, Judenitch or any other armed
reactionary. Their non-Communist enemies say
of the Mensheviks: "They have no constructive
programme; they would like a bourgeois govern-
ment back again, in order that they might be in
opposition to it, on the left."
On March 2nd, I went to an election meeting
of workers and officials of the Moscow Co-opera-
tives. It was beastly cold in the hall of the Uni-
versity where the meeting was held, and my nose
froze as well as my feet. Speakers were an-
nounced from the Communists, Internationalists,
Mensheviks, and Right Social Revolutionaries.
The last-named did not arrive. The Presidium
was for the most part non-Communist, and the
meeting was about equally divided for and against
the Communists. A Communist led off with a
very bad speech on the general European situation
and to the effect that there was no salvation for
Russia except by the way she was going. Lozov-
sky, ( the old Internationalist, spoke next, support-
ing the Bolsheviks' general policy but criticizing
200
their suppression of the press. Then came Dan,
the Menshevik, to hear whom I had come. He is
a little, sanguine man, who gets very hot as he
speaks. He conducted an attack on the whole
Bolshevik position combined with a declaration
that so long as they are attacked from without he
is prepared to support them. The gist of his
speech was: i. He was in favour of fighting
Kolchak. 2. But the Bolshevik policy with re-
gard to the peasants will, since as the army grows
it must contain more and more peasants, end in the
creation of an army with counter-revolutionary
sympathies. 3. He objected to the Bolshevik
criticism of the Berne delegation (see page 156)
on very curious grounds, saying that though
Thomas, Henderson, etc., backed their own Impe-
rialists during the war, all that was now over, and
that union with them would help, not hinder, revo-
lution in England and France. 4. He pointed
out that "All power to the Soviets" now means
"All power to the Bolsheviks," and said that he
wished that the Soviets should actually have all
power instead of merely supporting the Bolshevik
bureaucracy. He was asked for his own pro-
201
gramme, but said he had not time to give it. I
watched the applause carefully. General dissatis-
faction with the present state of affairs was obvi-
ous, but it was also obvious that no party would
have a chance that admitted its aim was extinction
of the Soviets (which Dan's ultimate aim certainly
is, or at least the changing of them into non-politi-
cal industrial organizations) or that was not pre-
pared to fight against reaction from without.
I went to see Sukhanov (the friend of Gorky
and Martov, though his political opinions do not
precisely agree with those of either), partly to get
the proofs of his first volume of reminiscences of
the revolution, partly to hear what he had to say.
I found him muffled up in a dressing-gown or
overcoat in an unheated flat, sitting down to tea
with no sugar, very little bread, a little sausage and
a surprising scrap of butter, brought in, I suppose,
from the country by a friend. Nikitsky, a Men-
shevik, was also there, a hopeless figure, prophesy-
ing the rotting of the whole system and of the revo-
lution. Sukhanov asked me if I had noticed the
disappearance of all spoons (there are now none
but wooden spoons in the Metropole) as a symbol'
202
of the falling to pieces of the revolution. I told
him that though I had not lived in Russia thirty
years or more, as he had, I had yet lived there long
enough and had, before the revolution, sufficient
experience in the loss of fishing tackle, not to be
surprised that Russian peasants, even delegates,
when able, as in such a moment of convulsion as
the revolution, stole spoons if only as souvenirs
to show that they had really been to Moscow.
We talked, of course, of their attitude towards
the Bolsheviks. Both work in Soviet institutions.
Sukhanov (Nikitsky agreeing) believed that if the
Bolsheviks came further to meet the other parties,
Mensheviks, etc., "Kolchak and Denikin would
commit suicide and your Lloyd George would give
up all thought of intervention." I asked, What
if they should be told to hold a Constituent Assem-
bly or submit to a continuance of the blockade 4 ?
Sukhanov said, "Such a Constituent Assembly
would be impossible, and we should be against it."
Of the Soviets, one or other said, "We stand abso-
lutely on the platform of the Soviet Government
now: but we think that such a form cannot be
permanent. We consider the Soviets perfect iix-
203
struments of class struggle, but not a perfect form
of government." I asked Sukhanov if he thought
counter revolution possible. He said "No," but
admitted that there was a danger lest the agitation
of the Mensheviks or others might set fire to the
discontent of the masses against the actual physi-
cal conditions, and end in pogroms destroying Bol-
sheviks and Mensheviks alike. Their general the-
ory was that Russia was not so far developed that
a Socialist State was at present possible. They
therefore wanted a state in which private capital
should exist, and in which factories were not run
by the state but by individual owners. They be-
lieved that the peasants, with their instincts of
small property-holders, would eventually enforce
something of the kind, and that the end would be
some form of democratic Republic. These two
were against the offering of concessions to the
Allies, on the ground that those under considera-
tion involved the handing over to the concession-
aires of the whole power in northern Russia
railways, forests, the right to set up their own
banks in the towns served by the railway, with all
that this implied. Sukhanov was against conces-
204
sions on principle, and regretted that the Menshe-
viks were in favour of them.
I saw Martov at the offices of his newspaper,
which had just been suppressed on account of an
article, which he admitted was a little indiscreet,
objecting to the upkeep of the Red Army (see page
167). He pointed eloquently to the seal on some
of the doors, but told me that he had started a new
paper, of which he showed me the first number,
and told me that the demand for it was such that
although he had intended that it should be a
weekly he now expected to make it a daily. Mar-
tov said that he and his party were against every
form of intervention for the following reasons:
1. The continuation of hostilities, the need of an
army and of active defence were bound to inten-
sify the least desirable qualities of the revolution,
whereas an agreement, by lessening the tension,
would certainly lead to moderation of Bolshevik
policy. 2. The needs of the army overwhelmed
every effort at restoring the economic life of the
country. He was further convinced that inter-
vention of any kind favoured reaction, even sup-
posing that the Allies did not wish this. "They
205
cannot help themselves," he said, "the forces that
would support intervention must be dominated by
those of reaction, since all of the non-reactionary
parties are prepared to sink their differences with
the Bolsheviks, in order to defend the revolution
as a whole." He said he was convinced that the
Bolsheviks would either have to alter or go. He
read me, in illustration of this, a letter from a
peasant showing the unreadiness of the peasantry
to go into communes (compulsion in this matter
has already been discarded by the Central Govern-
ment). "We took the land," wrote the peasant
in some such words, "not much, just as much as we
could work, we ploughed it where it had not been
ploughed before, and now, if it is made into a com-
mune, other lazy fellows who have done nothing
will come in and profit by our work." Martov
argued that life itself, the needs of the country and
the will of the peasant masses, would lead to the
changes he 'thinks desirable in the S6viet regime.
THE RIGHT SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES
The position of the Right Social Revolution-
aries is a good deal more complicated than that of
206
the Mensheviks. In their later declarations they
are as far from their romantic anarchist left wing
as they are from their romantic reactionary ex-
treme right. They stand, as they have always
stood, for a Constituent Assembly, but they have
thrown over the idea of instituting a Constituent
Assembly by force. They have come into closer
contact with the Allies than any other party to the
left of the Cadets. By doing so, by associating
themselves with the Czech forces on the Volga
and minor revolts of a reactionary character inside
Russia, they have pretty badly compromised them-
selves. Their change of attitude towards the
Soviet Government must not be attributed to any
change in their own programme, but to the realiza-
tion that the forces which they imagined were sup-
porting them were actually being used to support
something a great deal further right. The Print-
ers' Gazette, a non-Bolshevik organ, printed one
of their resolutions, one point of which demands
the overthrow of the reactionary governments sup-
ported by the Allies or the Germans, and another
condemns every attempt to overthrow the Soviet
Government by force of arms, on the ground that
207
such an attempt would weaken the working class
as a whole and would be used by the reactionary
groups for their own purposes.
Volsky is a Right Social Revolutionary, and was
President of that Conference of Members of the
Constituent Assembly from whose hands the Di-
rectorate which ruled in Siberia received its au-
thority and Admiral Kolchak his command, his
proper title being Commander of the Forces of the
Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assem-
bly members were to have met on January ist of
this year, then to retake authority from the Di-
rectorate and organize a government on an All-
Russian basis. But there was continual friction
between the Directorate and the Conference of
members of the Constituent Assembly, the Di-
rectorate being more reactionary than they. In
November came Kolchak's coup d'etat, followed
by a declaration against him and an appeal for
his overthrow issued by members of the Con-
stituent Assembly. Some were arrested by a
group of officers. A few are said to have been
killed. Kolchak, I think, has denied respon-
sibility for this, and probably was unaware of
208
the intentions of the reactionaries under his
command. Others of the members escaped to
Ufa. On December 5th, 25 days before that
town was taken by the Bolsheviks, they an-
nounced their intention of no longer opposing the
Soviet Government in the field. After the cap-
ture of the town by the Soviet troops, negotiations
were begun between the representatives of the
Conference of Members of the Constituent Assem-
bly, together with other Right Social Revolution-
aries, and representatives of the Soviet Govern-
ment, with a view to finding a basis for agreement.
The result of those negotiations was the resolution
passed by the Executive Committee on February
26th (see page 166). A delegation of the mem-
bers came to Moscow, and were quaintly housed
in a huge room in the Metropole, where they had
put up beds all round the walls and big tables in
the middle of the room for their deliberations. It
was in this room that I saw Volsky first, and after-
wards in my own.
I asked him what exactly had brought him and
all that he represented over from the side of Kol-
chak and the Allies to the side of the Soviet Gov-
209
ernment. He looked me straight in the face, and
said: "I'll tell you. We were convinced by
many facts that the policy of the Allied representa-
tives in Siberia was directed not to strengthening
the Constituent Assembly against the Bolsheviks
and the Germans, but simply to strengthening the
reactionary forces behind our backs."
He also complained: "All through last sum-
mer we were holding that front with the Czechs,
being told that there were two divisions of Ger-
mans advancing to attack us, and we now know
that there were no German troops in Russia
at all."
He criticized the Bolsheviks for being better
makers of programmes than organizers. They
offered free electricity, and presently had to admit
that soon there would be no electricity for lack of
fuel. They did not sufficiently base their policy
on the study of actual possibilities. "But that
,they are really fighting against a bourgeois dicta-
torship is clear to us. We are, therefore, prepared
to help them in every possible way."
He said, further: "Intervention of any kind
210
will prolong the regime of the Bolsheviks by com-
pelling us to drop opposition to the Soviet Govern-
ment, although we do not like it, and to support it
because it is defending the revolution."
With regard to help given to individual groups
or governments fighting against Soviet Russia,
Volsky said that they saw no difference between
such intervention and intervention in the form of
sending troops.
I asked what he thought would happen. He
answered in almost the same words as those used
by Martov, that life itself would compel the Bol-
sheviks to alter their policy or to go. Sooner or
later the peasants would make their will felt, and
they were against the bourgeoisie and against the
Bolsheviks. No bourgeois reaction could win per-
manently against the Soviet, because it could have
nothing to offer, no idea for which people would
fight. If by any chance Kolchak, Denikin and
Co. were to win, they would have to kill in tens
of thousands where the Bolsheviks have had to kill
in hundreds, and the result would be the complete
ruin and the collapse of Russia in anarchy. "Has
211
not the Ukraine been enough to teach the Allies
that even six months' occupation of non-Bolshevik
territory by half a million troops has merely the
effect of turning the population into Bolsheviks?"
212
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
March 3rd.
ONE day near the end of February, Bucharin,
hearing that I meant to leave quite soon, said
rather mysteriously, "Wait a few days longer, be-
cause something of international importance is
going to happen which will certainly be of interest
for your history." That was the only hint I got of
the preparation of the Third International. Bu-
charin refused to say more. On March 3rd Rein-
stein looked in about nine in the morning and said
he had got me a guest's ticket for the conference in
the Kremlin, and wondered why I had not been
there the day before, when it had opened. I told
him I knew nothing whatever about it; Litvinov
and Karakhan, whom I had seen quite recently,
had never mentioned it, and guessing that this
must be the secret at which Bucharin had hinted,
I supposed that they had purposely kept silence.
213
I therefore rang up Litvinov, and asked if they
had had any reason against my going. He said
that he had thought it would not interest me. So
I went. The Conference was still a secret.
There was nothing about it in the morning papers.
The meeting was in a smallish room, with a dais
at one end, in the old Courts of Justice built in the
time of Catherine the Second, who would certainly
have turned in her grave if she had known the use
to which it was being put. Two very smart sol-
diers of the Red Army were guarding the doors.
The whole room, including the floor, was deco-
rated in red. There were banners with "Long
Live the Third International" inscribed upon them
in many languages. The Prsesidium was on the
raised dais at the end of the room, Lenin sitting in
the middle behind a long red-covered table with
Albrecht, a young German Spartacist, on the right
and Flatten, the Swiss, on the left. The audito-
rium sloped down to the foot of the dais. Chairs
were arranged on each side of an alleyway down
the middle, and the four or five front rows had
little tables for convenience in writing. Every-
body of importance was there ; Trotzky, Zinoviev,
214
Kamenev, Chicherin, Bucharin, Karakhan, Lit-
vinov, Vorovsky, Steklov, Rakovsky, representing
here the Balkan Socialist Party, Skripnik, repre-
senting the Ukraine. Then there were Stang
(Norwegian Left Socialists^ Grimlund (Swedish
Left), Sadoul (France), Finberg (British Social-
ist Party), Reinstein (American Socialist Labour
Party), a Turk, a German-Austrian, a Chinese,
and so on. Business was conducted and speeches
were made in all languages, though where possible
German was used, because more of the foreigners
knew German than knew French. This was un-
lucky for me.
When I got there people were making reports
about the situation in the different countries.
Finberg spoke in English, Rakovsky in French,
Sadoul also. Skripnik, who, being asked, refused
to talk German and said he would speak in either
Ukrainian or Russia, and to most people's relief
chose the latter, made several interesting points
about the new revolution in the Ukraine. The
killing of the leaders under the Skoropadsky re-
gime had made no difference to the movement,
and town after town was falling after internal
215
revolt. (This was before they had Kiev and, of
course, long before they had taken Odessa, both
of which gains they confidently prophesied. ) The
sharp lesson of German occupation had taught the
.Ukrainian Social Revolutionaries what their expe-
riences during the last fifteen months had taught
the Russian, and all parties were working to-
gether.
But the real interest of the gathering was in its
attitude towards the Berne conference. Many
letters had been received from members of that
conference, Longuet for example, wishing that the
Communists had been represented there, and the
view taken at 'Moscow was that the left wing at
Berne was feeling uncomfortable at sitting down
with Scheidemann and Company; let them defi-
nitely break with them, finish with the Second
International and join the Third. It was clear
that this gathering in the Kremlin was meant as the
nucleus of a new International opposed to that
which had split into national groups, each sup-
porting its own government in the prosecution of
the war. That was the leit motif of the whole
affair.
216
Trotsky, in a leather coat, military breeches and
gaiters, with a fur hat with the sign of the Red
Army in front, was looking very well, but a strange
figure for those who had known him as one of the
greatest anti-militarists in Europe. Lenin sat
quietly listening, speaking when necessary in al-
most every European language with astonishing
ease. Balabanova talked about Italy and seemed
happy at last, even in Soviet Russia, to be once
more in a "secret meeting." It was really an
extraordinary affair and, in spite of some childish-
ness, I could not 'help realizing that I was present
at something that will go down in the histories of
socialism, much like that other strange meeting
convened in London in 1848.
The vital figures of the conference, not counting
Flatten, whom I do not know and on whom I can
express no opinion, were Lenin and the young
German, Albrecht, who, fired no doubt by the
events actually taking place in his country, spoke
with brain and character. The German Austrian
also seemed a real man. Rakovsky, Skripnik, and
Sirola the Finn really represented something.
But there was a make-believe side to the whole
217
affair, in which the English Left Socialists were
represented by Finberg, and the Americans by
Reinstein, neither of whom had or was likely to
have any means of communicating with his con-
stituents.
March 4th.
In the Kremlin they were discussing the pro-
gramme on which the new International was to
stand. This is, of course, dictatorship of the pro-
letariat and all that that implies. I heard Lenin
make a long speech, the main point of which was
to show that Kautsky and his supporters at Berne
were now condemning the very tactics which they
had praised in 1906. When I was leaving the
Kremlin I met Sirola walking in the square out-
side the building without a hat, without a coat, in
a cold so intense that I was putting snow on my
nose to prevent frost-bite. I exclaimed. Sirola
smiled his ingenuous smile. "It is March," he
said, "Spring is coming."
March 5th.
To-day all secrecy was dropped, a little prema-
218
turely, I fancy, for when I got to the Kremlin I
found that the first note of opposition had been
struck by the man who least of all was expected to
strike it. Albrecht, the young German, had op-
posed the immediate founding of the Third Inter-
national, on the double ground that not all nations
were properly represented and that it might make
difficulties for the political parties concerned in
their own countries. Every one was against him.
Rakovsky pointed out that the same objections
could have been raised against the founding of the
First International by Marx in London. The
German-Austrian combated Albrecht's second
point. Other people said that the different parties
concerned had long ago definitely broken with the
Second International. Albrecht was in a minority
of one. It was decided therefore that this confer-
ence was actually the Third International. Plat-
ten announced the decision, and the "Interna-
tional" was sung in a dozen languages at once.
Then Albrecht stood up, a little red in the face,
and said that he, of course, recognized the decision
and would announce it in Germany.
219
March 6th.
The conference in the Kremlin ended with the
usual singing and a photograph. Some time be-
fore the end, when Trotsky had just finished speak-
ing and had left the tribune, there was a squeal of
protest from the photographer who had just
trained his apparatus. Some one remarked "The
Dictatorship of the Photographer," and, amid
general laughter, Trotsky had to return to the
tribune and stand silent while the unabashed pho-
tographer took two pictures. The founding of the
Third International had been proclaimed in the
morning papers, and an extraordinary meeting in
the Great Theatre announced for the evening. I
got to the theatre at about five, and had difficulty
in getting in, though I had a special ticket as a
correspondent. There were queues outside all the
doors. The Moscow Soviet was there, the Execu-
tive Committee, representatives of the Trades
Unions and the Factory Committees, etc. The
huge theatre and the platform were crammed, peo-
ple standing in the aisles and even packed close
together in the wings of the stage. Kamenev
opened the meeting by a solemn announcement of
220
the founding of the Third International in the
Kremlin. There was a roar of applause from the
audience, which rose and sang the "International"
in a way that I have never heard it sung since the
All-Russian Assembly when the news came of the
strikes in Germany during the Brest negotiations.
Kamenev then spoke of those who had died on the
way, mentioning Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem-
bourg, and the whole theatre stood again while the
orchestra played, "You fell as victims." Then
Lenin spoke. If I had ever thought that Lenin
was losing his personal popularity, I got my answer
now. It was a long time before he could speak at
all, everybody standing and drowning his attempts
to speak with roar after roar of applause. It was
an extraordinary, overwhelming scene, tier after
tier crammed with workmen, the parterre filled,
the whole platform and the wings. A knot of
workwomen were close to me, and they almost
fought to see him, and shouted as if each one were
determined that he should hear her in particular.
He spoke as usual, in the simplest way, emphasiz-
ing the fact that the revolutionary struggle every-
where was forced to use the Soviet forms. "We
221
declare our solidarity with the aims of the Soviet-
ists," he read from an Italian paper, and added,
"and that was when they did not know what our
aims were, and before we had an established pro-
gramme ourselves." Albrecht made a very long
reasoned speech for Spartacus, which was trans-
lated by Trotsky. Guilbeau, seemingly a mere
child, spoke of the socialist movement in France.
Steklov was translating him when I left. You
must remember that I had had nearly two years of
such meetings, and am not a Russian. When I
got outside the theatre, I found at each door a
disappointed crowd that had been unable to get in.
The proceedings finished up next day with a re-
view in the Red Square and a general holiday.
If the Berne delegates had come, as they were
expected, they would have been told by the Com-
munists that they were welcome visitors, but that
they were not regarded as representing the Inter-
national. There would then have ensued a
lively battle over each one of the delegates, the
Mensheviks urging him to stick to Berne, and the
Communists urging him to express allegiance to
the Kremlin. There would have been demonstra-
222
tions and counter-demonstrations, and altogether
I am very sorry that it did not happen and that I
was not there to see.
LAST TALK WITH LENIN
I WENT to see Lenin the day after the Review in
the Red Square, and the general holiday in honour
of the Third International. The first thing he
said was : "I am afraid that the Jingoes in Eng-
land and France will make use of yesterday's do-
ings as an excuse for further action against us.
They will say 'How can we leave them in peace
when they set about setting the world on fire*?'
To that I would answer, 'We are at war, Mes-
sieurs! And just as during your war you tried to
make revolution in Germany, and Germany did
her best to make trouble in Ireland and India, so
we, while we are at war with you, adopt the meas-
ures that are open to us. We have told you we
are willing to make peace.' "
He spoke of Chicherin's last note, and said they
based all their hopes on it. Balfour had said
somewhere, "Let the fire burn itself out." That it
224
would not do. But the quickest way of restoring
good conditions in Russia was, of course, peace
and agreement with the Allies. "I am sure we
could come to terms, if they want to come to terms
at all. England and America would be willing,
perhaps, if their hands were not tied by France.
But intervention in the large sense can now hardly
be. They must have learnt that Russia could
never be governed as India is governed, and that
sending troops here is the same thing as sending
them to a Communist University."
I said something about the general hostility to
their propaganda noticeable in foreign countries.
Lenin. "Tell them to build a Chinese wall
round each of their countries. They have their
customs-officers, their frontiers, their coast-guards.
They can expel any Bolsheviks they wish. Revo-
lution does not depend on propaganda. If the
conditions of revolution are not there no sort of
propaganda will either hasten or impede it. The
war has brought about those conditions in all coun-
tries, and I am convinced that if Russia to-day
were to be swallowed up by the sea, were to cease
to exist altogether, the revolution in the rest of
225
Europe would go on. Put Russia under water for
twenty years, and you would not affect by a shill-
ing or an hour a week the demands of the shop-
stewards in England."
I told him, what I have told most of them many
times, that I did not believe there would be a revo-
lution in England.
Lenin. "We have a saying that a man may
have typhoid while still on his legs. Twenty,
maybe thirty years ago I had abortive typhoid,
and was going about with it, had had it some
days before it knocked me over. Well, England
and France and Italy have caught the disease al-
ready. England may seem to you to be un-
touched, but the microbe is already there."
I said that just as his typhoid was abortive ty-
phoid, so the disturbances in England to which he
alluded might well be abortive revolution, and
come to nothing. I told him the vague, discon-
nected character of the strikes and the generally
liberal as opposed to socialist character of the
movement, so far as it was political at all, re-
minded me of what I had heard of 1905 in Russia
226
and not at all of 1917, and that I was sure it
would settle down.
Lenin. "Yes, that is possible. It is, perhaps,
an educative period, in which the English workmen
will come to realize their political needs, and turn
from liberalism to socialism. Socialism is cer-
tainly weak in England. Your socialist move-
ments, your socialist parties ... when I was in
England I zealously attended everything I could,
and for a country with so large an industrial popu-
lation they were pitiable, pitiable ... a handful
at a street corner ... a meeting in a drawing
oom ... a school class . . . pitiable. But you
must remember one great difference between Rus-
sia of 1905 and England of to-day. Our first
Soviet in Russia was made during the revolution.
Your shop-stewards committees have been in
existence long before. They are without pro-
gramme, without direction, but the opposition they
will meet will force a programme upon them."
Speaking of the expected visit of the Berne dele-
gation, he asked me if I knew MacDonald, whose
. name had been substituted for that of Henderson
227
in later telegrams announcing their coming. He
said : "I am very glad MacDonald is coming in-
stead of Henderson. Of course MacDonald is not
a Marxist in any sense of the word, but he is at
least interested in theory, and can therefore be
trusted to do his best to understand what is hap-
pening here. More than that we do not ask."
We then talked a little on a subject that inter-
ests me very much, namely, the way in which in-
sensibly, quite apart from war, the Communist
theories are being modified in the difficult process
of their translation into practice. We talked of
the changes in "workers' control," which is now a
very different thing from the wild committee busi-
ness that at first made work almost impossible.
We talked then of the antipathy of the peasants to
compulsory communism, and how that idea also
had been considerably whittled away. I asked
him what were going to be the relations between
the Communists of the towns and the property-
loving peasants, and whether there was not great
danger 01 antipathy between them, and said I re-
gretted leaving too soon to see the elasticity of
228
the Communist theories tested by the inevitable
pressure of the peasantry.
Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty
sharp distinction between the rich peasants and the
poor. "The only opposition we have here in Rus-
sia is directly or indirectly due to the rich peasants.
The poor, as soon as they are liberated from the
political domination of the rich, are on our side
and are in an enormous majority."
I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, where
property among the peasants is much more equally
distributed.
Lenin. "No. And there, in the Ukraine, you
will certainly see our policy modified. Civil war,
whatever happens, is likely to be more bitter in
the Ukraine than elsewhere, because there the in-
stinct of property has been further developed in
the peasantry, and the minority and majority will
be more equal."
He asked me if I meant to return, saying that I
could go down to Kiev to watch the revolution
there as I had watched it in Moscow. I said I
should be very sorry to think that this was my last
229
visit to the country which I love only second to my
own. He laughed, and paid me the compliment
of saying that, "although English," I had more or
less succeeded in understanding what they were at,
and that he should be pleased to see me again.
\RY
" 330 C-
VANCOUVER, B. C?
THE JOURNEY OUT
March 15'th.
THERE is nothing to record about the last few days
of my visit, fully occupied as they were with the
collection and packing of printed material and
preparations for departure. I left with the two
Americans, Messrs. Bullitt and Steffens, who had
come to Moscow some days previously, and trav-
elled up in the train with Bill Shatov, the Com-
mandant of Petrograd, who is not a Bolshevik but
a fervent admirer of Prince Kropotkin, for the dis-
tribution of whose works in Russia he has probably
done as much as any man. Shatov was an emigre
in New York, returned to Russia, brought law and
order into the chaos of the Petrograd-Moscow rail-
way, never lost a chance of doing a good turn to an
American, and with his level-headedness and prac-
tical sense became one of the hardest worked serv-
ants of the Soviet, although, as he said, the mo-
231
mcnt people stopped attacking them he would be
the first to pull down the Bolsheviks. He went
into the occupied provinces during the German
evacuation of them, to buy arms and ammunition
from the German soldiers. Prices, he said, ran
low. You could buy rifles for a mark each, field
guns for 1 50 marks, and a field wireless station for
500. He had then been made Commandant of
Petrograd, although there had been some talk of
setting him to reorganize transport. Asked how
long he thought the Soviet Government could hold
out, he replied, "We can afford to starve another
year for the sake of the Revolution."
THE END
232
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