THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Frank Miller
 
 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA
 
 JESSIE M. SCHWARTZ, SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEATH
 
 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 BY 
 
 M. ALEXANDER SCHWARTZ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE
 
 f\ C/ 
 
 Copyright, 1921, 
 By E. P. Dutton & Company 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 FEINTED IN THE UNITS!) 
 STATES OF AMERICA
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 1Y/TR. M. A. SCHWARTZ, an American 
 * Socialist from San Francisco, an active 
 member of the American Federation of Labor 
 and an organizer for the Amalgamated Street 
 Railways of America, went to Bolshevist Rus- 
 sia on April 24, 1920, together with his wife, 
 a prominent Socialist worker, member of the 
 Executive Board of the Socialist Party of the 
 State of California, known nnder the name of 
 Jessie M. Molle. 
 
 Both Mr. Schwartz and his wife went to Rus- 
 sia as sympathizers with Bolshevism. They 
 spent about seven months in Rnssia and 
 studied closely the conditions not only in Mos- 
 cow and Petrograd, but also Tambov, Tula, 
 Nizhni-Novgorod, Kazan, Samara and many 
 other important centers. As the result of 
 their close study of the Bolshevist regime, 
 and after many uncensored conversations with 
 Russian workingmen and peasants, they came
 
 vi FOREWORD 
 
 to the conclusion that the Bolshevist rule whicH 
 they thought to be a realization of Socialism, 
 the highest state of democracy, is in reality 
 the worst tyranny possible. They did not 
 hesitate to express their views frankly to the 
 Bolshevist leaders and to the Second Congress 
 of the Third International, and were arrested 
 by the famous "Extraordinary Commission" 
 and thrown into prison. They spent four 
 months in the Bolshevist prison under most 
 terrible conditions. Mrs. Schwartz died as 
 the result of these experiences. Mr. Schwartz 
 survived them and has undertaken the task 
 of acquainting the American people with the 
 actual conditions in Bolshevist Russia. 
 
 Mr. Schwartz was born in Odessa, Southern 
 Russia, near the Black Sea, in 1870. After 
 living thirty-five years in Russia, he came to 
 this country in 1906. While in this country 
 he participated actively in the Labor and the 
 Socialist movements.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. WE Go TO FREE RUSSIA 1 
 
 II. PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN ... 16 
 
 III. Moscow REVISITED 34 
 
 IV. WORTHLESS MONEY AND HUMAN 
 
 SUFFERING 58 
 
 V. SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY .... 79 
 
 VI. COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA ... 97 
 
 VII. WE VISIT TULA AND TOLSTOI'S HOME . . 121 
 
 VIII. LIFE IN Moscow 143 
 
 IX. THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL WE ARE 
 
 ARRESTED 157 
 
 X. PRISON LIFE 180 
 
 XI. FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE . . 202 
 
 Vll
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 JESSIE M. SCHWARTZ, SHOBTLY BEFORE HER DEATH 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 M. ALEXANDER SCHWARTZ 20 
 
 PAUL LEVI, A GERMAN DELEGATE AND A MEMBER 
 OF THE REICHSTAG 52 
 
 NIKOLAI LENIN, HEAD OF THE SOVIET GOVERN- 
 MENT 52 
 
 TYPES OF SOAP USED IN RUSSIA, ILLUSTRATING 
 CLASS DISTINCTIONS 68 
 
 LUNACHARSKY, MINISTER OF EDUCATION . . . 124 
 
 G. ZINOVIEV, PRESIDENT OF THE EXECUTIVE COM- 
 MITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALE . 124 
 
 BELA KUN, ONCE DICTATOR OF THE HUNGARIAN 
 GOVERNMENT 140 
 
 MADAME BALABANOVA, ORATOR OF THE PROPA- 
 GANDA BUREAU, OUR GUIDE ON THE VOLGA . . 140 
 
 PETROGRAD. THE GREAT SOVIET PAGEANT ON THE 
 STEPS OF THE OLD EXCHANGE, JULY 19, 1920 . 164 
 
 SYLVIA PANKHURST, THE FAMOUS ENGLISH SUF- 
 FRAGIST, A DELEGATE TO THE CONGRESS . . . 204 
 
 JOHN REED AS HE APPEARED TO A RUSSIAN ARTIST 204 
 
 ix
 
 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA
 
 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 
 
 IT is my hope in publishing this book that I 
 may be able to give the world, and espe- 
 cially the people of the United States, a vivid 
 impression of the harsh realities of life in 
 Soviet Russia today. It is inconceivable that 
 the people of this fortunate land will be unable 
 to bring some relief to the suffering millions of 
 what was once a great and powerful nation. 
 Since I am not a writer by profession, I must 
 tell my story as best I can, but if in my halting 
 phrases you are able to understand the depths 
 into which Russia has fallen, I will consider 
 that my task has been sufficiently rewarded. 
 
 I am a Russian by birth, as were my father 
 and forefathers ; I was educated in Russia and 
 lived there until I was thirty-five years of age. 
 Until my eighteenth year I lived in Odessa, 
 perhaps the most beautiful city of Russia, 
 
 l
 
 2 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 where I was born in 1870, graduating from one 
 of the city high schools, or gymnazia. My 
 memories of the old vanished Russia are keen 
 enough, and include practically every city of 
 importance in the country. After I left Odes- 
 sa, I was a commercial traveler for a wholesale 
 jewelry factory for three years, and traveled 
 through the length and breadth of the land, 
 from Siberia to the Baltic, and came into con- 
 tact with every type of Russian, with the muz- 
 hik as well as the tradesmen of the towns. 
 
 When I reached the age of twenty-one, I 
 was forced to join the army, as in Russia 
 there was compulsory military service. I did 
 not enter the army willingly, though my rea- 
 son was not that of most of the young con- 
 scripts of my day, for I came from a military 
 caste, my father and my grandfather having 
 been soldiers of the empire. My father served 
 under Alexander the Second as an officer, but 
 in 1877, impressed by the suffering caused 
 by the Turkish-Russian war, he took an active 
 part in the Nihilist movement, and when the 
 Russian Government discovered this through 
 their spies, he was secretly arrested and shot.
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 3 
 
 I was then too young to realize the signifi- 
 cance of this, but when I grew older my 
 mother told me one day what had been his 
 fate. 
 
 Naturally, when I joined the army myself, 
 I was not over-loyal, knowing as I did, that I 
 had become a part of the great machine that 
 had killed my father. It was not long before 
 the Nihilists seized upon me as a convert, 
 although I understood very little of the aims 
 of their mysterious organization. At first, 
 I was anxious to learn and I absorbed their 
 doctrines readily enough, with the result that 
 I had soon become an active Nihilist myself. 
 In 1891, when my turn of compulsory military 
 service had been completed, I re-enlisted, 
 partly because I liked the life, and because as 
 a soldier I could best serve the cause to which 
 I was devoted. For fourteen years I occupied 
 different positions under the Eussian Govern- 
 ment, but my Nihilistic activities were event- 
 ually discovered, and I was arrested one day 
 in Petrograd and banished to Siberia. 
 
 From the first I determined to escape, and 
 aided by the underground system that took
 
 4 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 so many political prisoners out of Siberia, I 
 made my way in disguise and with a great 
 deal of hardship, back to European Russia 
 and Moscow. There I purchased a passport 
 under another name, for at that time the sale 
 of false passports was a regular business, and 
 with it I managed to make my way through 
 the Prussian border and eventually to the 
 United States by way of Hamburg and New 
 York. The secret society of which I was a 
 member gave me money for the trip out of 
 their funds which had been, secured for propa- 
 ganda. Curiously enough, the money for the 
 escape of political prisoners and for propa- 
 ganda abroad was supplied to most of these 
 societies by wealthy Russians who believed 
 in a change of government and in revolution, 
 but were unwilling to take any active part in 
 the movement. 
 
 In the officers' training school in the old 
 days, I had listened to talks by the officers of 
 the General Staff, and was particularly im- 
 pressed by their description of life in Cali- 
 fornia. So I went West immediately upon 
 my arrival in America and secured work on
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 5 
 
 the street railway system of San Francisco. 
 I soon became active in the Labor movement 
 as an organizer for the Amalgamated Street 
 Eailways of the United States, of which W. 
 Mahon is the National President. I was a 
 member of Division No. 192 of the Street Car 
 Men's Union in Oakland. 
 
 When war broke out in 1914, I left the 
 organization and spoke to workmen's gather- 
 ings throughout the United States. To thou- 
 sands of workmen I told the story of the 
 despotism of the Czar's regime. But when 
 the revolution broke out in that country and 
 Nicholas the Second was displaced by Ker- 
 ensky, I became a strong supporter of the 
 new government, and from my hatred of the 
 old order of things, put my whole heart and 
 soul into the effort to get the support of the 
 people of this country for the new Socialist 
 Government of Eussia. "When the Bolshevists 
 came into power I left my platform work, 
 went West again, and together with my wife, 
 worked there for the Socialist movement. 
 
 My wife, Jessie Molle, was an American, 
 born in Portage, Wisconsin, and a graduate
 
 6 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 of the University of Wisconsin. She became 
 interested in Socialism while she was in col- 
 lege, and would often address meetings in 
 Chicago. She joined the Socialist Party in 
 1892 and became very active in the move- 
 ment, particularly in California, where she 
 was for many years on the State Executive 
 Board. My wife also worked for the Nation- 
 alist Socialist Party at their headquarters in 
 Chicago under Otto Brandstadter, and became 
 a well-known speaker, lecturing for the party 
 and collecting money for it, from San Fran- 
 cisco to New York. 
 
 Jessie Schwartz gave her whole life to the 
 cause in which she believed, and in the end 
 she died for that cause, in Reval, on the bor- 
 ders of Russia, thousands of miles from her 
 home and from her children, another martyr 
 to the despotism that has developed there 
 under the name of the government of the 
 working people. It is the story of her hero- 
 ism and of her suffering that I wish to tell 
 you. 
 
 In 1919, the convention of the Socialists of 
 the United States at Chicago was stampeded
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 7 
 
 and split, and there were thus founded another 
 party, commonly known as the Communist 
 Party, which the late John Eeed and many 
 older and more prominent Socialists joined. 
 The newly made Communists returned to their 
 respective states and succeeded in capturing 
 for a time the property, the press and the 
 funds of the Socialist organization. My wife, 
 unwilling to change her convictions, fought 
 bitterly against them, but I myself was in 
 favor of the ideals of Communism, endorsing 
 the action of the new Communist Party. It 
 was finally decided that the Socialist Party, 
 as a whole, would affiliate with the Third In- 
 ternational of Russia, and the decision to do 
 so was carried by a substantial majority. 
 
 For the first time in our married life, my 
 wife and I found that we disagreed with each 
 other fundamentally. Finally, my wife, too, 
 decided to give up her work with the Socialist 
 Party, for which she had labored for over 
 eighteen years, and when I asked her why 
 she was doing this, she said, " Because the 
 Socialist Party in America does not under- 
 stand Bolshevism." Many days and nights
 
 8 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 we talked together about this Socialism for 
 which we had both worked so long in America 
 and this new sort of Socialism in Russia, of 
 which we read so many contradictory reports. 
 It was becoming so big a problem in our lives, 
 that I finally proposed to her that we should 
 go to Eussia together to find out what "Com- 
 munism" might mean to the working people 
 of the world. "We decided to obtain the ap- 
 proval and endorsement of the Socialist Party 
 for our project, since our whole object in 
 going would be to satisfy ourselves as to the 
 truth and report it to our own people on our 
 return. Leaving our home in California, we 
 went to the National Headquarters in Chicago, 
 where the leaders of the Party told us that 
 it would be an immense help to them if we 
 should go, although they had no funds avail- 
 able for sending us. We were given creden- 
 tials, letters and resolutions from the Social- 
 ists of America, besides personal letters to 
 Tchicherin, Zinoviev and Lenin. 
 
 "We applied for passports for Europe, with- 
 out stating that our ultimate aim was Russia, 
 and on April 24, 1920, we left on the Maure-
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 9 
 
 tania. To us it seemed the beginning of a 
 pilgrimage. As the Mohammedan goes to 
 Mecca, so we turned our faces toward this 
 new government, founded, as we thought, for 
 the interests of the common working man for 
 whom we had both labored for so long. Per- 
 haps the reader will appreciate how much it 
 meant to us, when I say that for the trip I 
 had drawn out of the bank practically all of 
 the savings that we had reserved for our old 
 age and I was then fifty-one and my wife 
 was not far behind. It is difficult for me to 
 describe my wife's delight when she found 
 herself actually on the way. She told me later 
 that these were the happiest days of her life, 
 as they were indeed of mine. I am sure that 
 she felt that there was something sacred to 
 her in this first voyage of hers across the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 On our arrival in London, we saw the lead- 
 ers of the English Socialist Party and the 
 trades unions, and visited the Labor Council 
 in London, where we addressed a meeting and 
 told our audience that we were going to Rus- 
 sia to investigate conditions under the Bol-
 
 10 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 shevist Government. They approved of our 
 mission and we were made honorary members 
 of the British Labor Party and were given 
 letters to the Russian Government. From 
 there we went to Germany, through Holland, 
 and managed to hide the letters relating to 
 our visit to Russia when we were searched on 
 the border. We remained in Berlin for two 
 weeks and had an interview with the President, 
 Herr Ebert, and with General Noske. We 
 also attended the Reichstag and visited the 
 headquarters of the Labor Unions and the 
 Communist groups centered in Berlin, and 
 were given more letters to the Russian Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 I did not believe then that there was any 
 justification for the part that General Noske 
 had taken in the arrest and death of Lieb- 
 knecht. We were invited to Madame Lieb- 
 knecht's house for dinner, where we talked 
 with her until late at night. It was a sad 
 evening. The poor woman was pathetically 
 shaken by the death of her husband and was 
 bitter against Noske and the other officials 
 who, she said, had decreed his death. She
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 11 
 
 cried when she said that Carl had been killed 
 in cold blood and without any justification. 
 She said that while his enemies declared them- 
 selves Socialists, they were really devoted to 
 capitalism, and that her husband and Rosa 
 Luxembourg and countless others had been 
 done away with because these Socialists feared 
 that the working people might take possession 
 of the country and establish a government for 
 the people. Liebknecht's influence must have 
 been tremendous. She described the great 
 meetings at which he had presided, and said 
 that thousands had cheered him on the streets 
 wherever he appeared. She showed us letters 
 that she had received, stating that if she took 
 any active part in the threatened revolution her 
 son would have the same fate as his father. She 
 had decided to keep what little life had left her 
 and retire from the movement, living quietly 
 at home and looking after her children. 
 
 On the following day I bought some flowers 
 and on Sunday we went to the cemetery where 
 Karl Liebknecht and Eosa Luxembourg were 
 buried, in the midst of other revolutionists 
 who had been killed, and we decorated all their
 
 12 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 graves in honor of the two leaders of the 
 Communist cause. Thirty-two others, men 
 and women, were buried in the same spot, 
 and my poor wife cried bitterly as she put in 
 her note-book the names of the dead, with 
 the dates of their death. 
 
 The next day we left for Russia. We should 
 have traveled through Poland, but at that 
 moment Poland was at war with Russia, and 
 since my sympathies were with the Bolshevist 
 Government, I did not feel it right to pay 
 500 German marks to the* Polish Government 
 for my vise. Accordingly, we took the trip 
 by sea, traveling from Stettin to Konigsburg. 
 The boat was so packed with passengers, that 
 it was impossible to find room to sit. We 
 were both sick and suffered terribly during the 
 twenty-four hours of the trip. Finally, after 
 much hardship, and after the usual tiresome 
 delays for innumerable visits to crowded con- 
 sulates, we arrived at Reval. 
 
 The town was packed with visitors, prosper- 
 ous traders, homeless refugees and penniless 
 exiles, and we were unable to find any rooms. 
 Most of the people were, like ourselves, wait-
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 13 
 
 ing to get into Kussia; others had fled from 
 there and were just waiting and waiting for 
 whatever fate might have in store for them in 
 the future. Eventually, we had to find a place 
 for ourselves in the already crowded railway 
 station. They are all alike those stations of 
 Eastern Europe packed with men, women and 
 children, the crippled, the sick, and the well, 
 clinging together on the dirty floors as if a 
 gigantic bee-hive had been overturned. But 
 at least it was better than the open air, and 
 although still suffering from our journey, we 
 endured the discomforts and the sour odor of 
 tobacco and humanity as best we might. The 
 next morning we looked for rooms again, wan- 
 dering around from one house to another. 
 Finally, we noticed an automobile which car- 
 ried the American flag, and found it belonged 
 to the Secretary of the American Y. M. C. A. 
 at Eeval, a Mr. Gott. We told him that we 
 were Americans and that we had been unable 
 to find quarters. His reply was very like the 
 man. 
 
 "Don't worry," he said, "I will fix you up." 
 He certainly did so, for he gave us one of
 
 14 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 the finest rooms that we had during our jour- 
 ney, and even found food for us, refusing to 
 let me pay him for it. 
 
 Esthonia was the first government to recog- 
 nize the Soviet Government, and the Russian 
 Commissars occupied a whole building in 
 Reval, which they called the Hotel Petrograd. 
 I sent word of our presence to the representa- 
 tives of the Bolshevist Government, and finally 
 went to see the Secretary of the Consul. "We 
 showed him our letters from the various So- 
 cialist parties, and resolutions and other docu- 
 ments that had been given us for the Russian 
 Government, and he asked us dozens of ques- 
 tions which we answered in an apparently 
 satisfactory manner. But nevertheless he told 
 us that in spite of our credentials we would 
 have to wait in Reval until orders came from 
 the Commissar of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. 
 But he assured us that this would not take 
 very long, as our papers were in good order 
 and that he had already had word that we 
 were on our way into Russia. 
 
 We met a few Americans in the same build- 
 ing, also trying to get permission to enter the
 
 WE GO TO FREE RUSSIA 15 
 
 country, and a great many motion picture 
 operators. Two of them, a Mr. Estes and Mr. 
 Frick, told me that they had been waiting for 
 over a month and had about decided to turn 
 back again. Later on I heard that they had 
 finally made their way over the border, but 
 that they had been arrested by the Extraordi- 
 nary Commission on the day they went into 
 Moscow, and when I left that city in Decem- 
 ber, they were still in prison. 
 
 Eussia today is like a quicksand. You see 
 a man walking forward with confidence on 
 what seems to be a firm earth, and suddenly 
 without a struggle, he sinks from sight and is 
 lost perhaps forever.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 PETROGRAD AXD EMMA GOLDMAN 
 
 A TELEGRAM came a week later from 
 -** Moscow, from Tchicherin, Commissar of 
 Foreign Affairs, ordering us to proceed at 
 once. A special car was attached to the only 
 daily train from Reval to Petrograd, for my 
 wife, myself and the courier, whose ostensible 
 duty was to escort guests of the Government 
 into Russia. We were both as excited as a 
 pair of children, my wife even more than I, 
 for she had about given up hope indeed, she 
 was so much elated, that in the confusion she 
 allowed some needy gentleman to relieve her 
 of her pocketbook and gloves. When we came 
 to the Russian frontier, I was anxious to get 
 my first glimpse of the Red Army that ex- 
 traordinary army of revolutionaries which has 
 become the greatest armed force in Europe. 
 Finally the train stopped alongside of a group 
 
 16
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 17 
 
 of soldiers with red ribbons on their shoulders, 
 the typical stalwart, unkempt private of Rus- 
 sia. They might have been brothers of the 
 men I had drilled years ago. To express my 
 enthusiasm, I snatched a red necktie from my 
 valise and waved it wildly out of the window. 
 
 One of the soldiers smiled, and now I think 
 I know what that smile meant. It was not 
 one of mere welcome. Perhaps he was think- 
 ing, "Wait till you come back this way, my 
 friend. If you are glad to see me then, it will 
 be because you are headed in another direc- 
 tion." 
 
 After we had passed the border, we stopped 
 frequently to load up with wood for the engine, 
 since there is no coal available for the rail- 
 roads, and in many places we noticed that the 
 heavy labor of loading the logs into the tender 
 was done by young women. My wife was 
 astounded, since she had never seen women 
 performing this sort of work before, and I 
 think that her first feeling of disillusionment 
 of Russia's Government of the Proletariat, 
 came then. She remarked that she could not 
 understand why the railroad Soviets permitted
 
 18 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 these girls to do hard manual labor. I tried 
 to talk with some of the girls, asking them 
 why they worked in this way and what pay 
 they received for it, but the courier who was 
 with us always managed to interrupt our con- 
 versation and to get me away from them. In 
 fact, I began to suspect that he was more of 
 a guard than a courier. 
 
 We stopped for half an hour at one station, 
 and in an effort to shake off this too friendly 
 companion, I walked about the platform. A 
 group of people had collected around our 
 carriage and were apparently discussing us. 
 Since they did not know that I could speak 
 Russian, I stood near them and listened. There 
 I caught the first whisper of the discontent 
 that is being uttered in every corner of Rus- 
 sia, a discontent that is pathetic -because it 
 seems hopeless, but that may some day end 
 in a blaze of anger which will throw down 
 everything before it. 
 
 "Tchicherin lets two foreigners have a spe- 
 cial car to themselves," one man was saying 
 in a discontented voice, "two of them in a 
 whole car, while we who are Russians have
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 19 
 
 to travel in freight car packed in like sardines. 
 What do people who are looked after as if they 
 were children of the Czar know about condi- 
 tions in Russia? When they get back what 
 have ihey to write in their foolish books but 
 'There is plenty to eat; they stuffed us like 
 pigs, and we traveled like princes and lived 
 in palaces.' If the fools could only talk Rus- 
 sian they might learn something, but even 
 then no one w,ould dare to do any more than 
 ask one of them for a cigarette." 
 
 I faced them suddenly. "What is that you 
 are saying about being afraid to talk to me?" 
 
 "Are you a Russian?" somebody asked. 
 "We thought you were English." 
 
 "I am a Russian," I said, "but I haven't 
 been here for fifteen years. I have come to 
 find out everything that I can." 
 
 They burst into a chorus of voluble com- 
 plaints. One man said he had been robbed of 
 everything but his life in his home village. 
 Soldiers had descended upon it one day and 
 had taken his grain, burned his house, killed 
 one of his brothers, and had taken him away 
 with them. Now he had to work on the rail-
 
 20 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 way under dreadful conditions with hardly 
 enough to eat to keep him -alive. Another man 
 in a torn army coat, said that he would freeze 
 when next winter came, as all of his clothes 
 had been taken, and that it was impossible to 
 save enough money to get more clothes. He 
 had to buy extra bread with anything he had 
 left or see his wife starve. 
 
 "The survival of the fittest," I thought 
 gloomily, "or rather the survival of the lean- 
 est." 
 
 The interpreter who had been out of sight 
 for a few moments, now caught sight of me, 
 and as he hurried tow-ard me the big group 
 suddenly melted away. But later on I was 
 able to get a few words with some of the train 
 crew, one of whom, an intelligent man, had 
 been a conductor .on another route before the 
 Revolution. He spoke bitterly of the appalling 
 change in his life. He used to live comforta- 
 bly on 150 roubles a month. Now he received 
 an allowance of a common laborer, 3500 rou- 
 bles, worth about a dollar in actual purchas- 
 ing power, besides the usual insufficient ra- 
 tions, and both he and his family were always
 
 M. ALEXANDER SCHWARTZ
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 21 
 
 on the verge of starvation. He tried to im- 
 press on me his indignation at the general 
 neglect of the railroads the great confusion 
 into which a once orderly system had fallen. 
 
 "From Reval, only one train a day, and 
 that is packed to suffocation and I hear that 
 everywhere else it is just as bad. And I must 
 go on," he said, "for I must somehow live." 
 
 Finally another man came up, who proved 
 to be a genuine Communist. "Don't listen to 
 him," he said. "He is really a 'bourjou' 
 (bourgeois). I know more about conditions 
 than he does and I tell you that it is not the 
 Government's fault. They are doing the best 
 they can." 
 
 I shook hands with him and returning to 
 our car gave him a new pair of shoes, over- 
 joyed to find a good Bolshevist. The man 
 looked at me in a startled way for a moment, 
 for later I found out that shoes are enormously 
 expensive in Russia. He felt, I presume, as 
 I would at home if a stranger had suddenly 
 given me his pocketbook stuffed with bills. 
 
 "But I have nothing to give you in return," 
 he said. "I have no money." I told him that
 
 22 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I had two more pairs and that I did not need 
 them. 
 
 "Not need them!" he cried. "Good God!" 
 and he suddenly rushed away. But just be- 
 fore the train was to leave he reappeared, 
 panting, carrying a clothes brush engraved 
 with his name, which he insisted on my tak- 
 ing. It was ridiculous to think of his tearing 
 through the streets to bring me so absurd a 
 present, but at the same time, it showed some- 
 thing of the state of things. 
 
 Our courier, or interpreter, or whatever he 
 was, kept his eye on us sharply for the rest 
 of the journey. He was a young Jew, typical 
 of a multitude of others who were thriving 
 under the service of the Soviet Government, 
 for they seem to have a peculiar facility for 
 adapting themselves to conditions under which 
 the ordinary man sinks. I was old enough to 
 have been his father, and found his rudeness 
 almost unbearable. He was constantly break- 
 ing into my conversation with my wife, and he 
 was amazingly lacking in common sense. His 
 chief aim seemed to be to pump absurd propa- 
 ganda into the ears of strangers.
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 23 
 
 "We have organized life magnificently for 
 what nsed to be called the lower classes, and 
 for the workmen," I heard him say. "Every 
 other nation but Soviet Kussia neglects them, 
 exploits them, lets them rot " 
 
 And yet every few moments throngh the 
 train windows an example of this magnificent, 
 organized life would pass by, a ragged peasant 
 or a lean woman with a pale child. We had 
 with us for a time the official representative 
 of Esthonia, a uniformed officer. He became 
 visibly impatient at this torrent of misguided 
 information. 
 
 "You need not tell me any more," he said 
 finally. "I know Russia and we have nothing 
 against your people. You asked us for peace 
 and for it you paid us fifteen million in gold. 
 We accepted it. That is sufficient for me." 
 
 At last we steamed into the station at Petro- 
 grad, where we were met by two officers who 
 had been sent by Zinoviev, the Governor of 
 Petrograd. We were only going to stay in 
 Petrograd for a few hours, for the same train 
 was taking us to Moscow that night. A motor 
 car was waiting outside the station, and we
 
 24 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 bumped over dilapidated and half deserted 
 streets to the great Osomvsky Palace, where 
 formerly the meetings of the Duma were held, 
 and where Zinoviev now has his offices. The 
 Hall of the Duma is at present nsed for oc- 
 casional public meetings, for conventions and 
 festivities of different kinds. 
 
 Zinoviev rose from an enormous desk to 
 greet us. He told us that Petrograd was open 
 for our inspection and that we could go about 
 where we wished until it was time for our 
 train to leave. I asked him what had become 
 of the deported anarchists who had been sent 
 back to Russia from the United States. He 
 said that Alexander Berkman and Emma Gold- 
 man and a few others of the original two 
 hundred and forty-nine from the "Soviet 
 Ark" were in Petrograd, and that Emma Gold- 
 man and Berkman were living at one of the 
 government hotels and were getting on very 
 well, he believed. This completed the inter- 
 view and we were promptly presented to an- 
 other interpreter. I told this particular fellow 
 that I could get along perfectly well without 
 him since I spoke Russian as well as he did,
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 25 
 
 but he insisted firmly that I needed him. Ap- 
 parently, it was the rule not to allow any 
 foreigner to go out alone. We were to hear 
 only what they wanted us to hear, and see 
 only what they were determined that we should 
 see. It soon came to be more than I could 
 put up with for me, a Russian, to be guided 
 about in my own country in this absurd way. 
 Our latest friend started out with us for a 
 pre-arranged sight-seeing tour. I half ex- 
 pected to see a bus outside with "Chinatown 
 and the Bowery " written on it. "We were 
 motored down Petrograd's great boulevard, 
 Nevski Prospect, and started on the tour of 
 churches and public buildings as if we were 
 typical American tourists bound on "doing 
 the town" before dinner. I was prepared for 
 a contrast with the great and brilliant city 
 that I had known, but the Petrograd that I 
 saw struck me with almost a chill of fear. 
 The great thoroughfare was there, and the 
 majestic buildings that I recalled, but there 
 was an air of melancholy and ruin every- 
 where. The shops shuttered ; windows broken ; 
 shabbiness and decay and dirt everywhere.
 
 26 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Imagine Fifth Avenue vacant and deserted ; its 
 gorgeous shops boarded np; great gaps in its 
 
 pavement; its hotels empty . It was like 
 
 a city of the dead. 
 
 After we had visited the second empty 
 church, my wife rebelled. 
 
 "I did not come to see this sort of thing, 
 Mitri," she said. "Can't we get rid of him 
 in some way?" 
 
 I told our guardian that my wife was tired 
 and that we would go back to the train. So 
 we were driven to the station where he saw 
 us safely on board and left us. As soon as 
 he was out of sight we went out into the street 
 again and made our way toward the hotel 
 where I had just been told Emma Goldman 
 and Alexander Berkman were living. It was 
 the Astoria, the most famous and most gor- 
 geous of the old Petrograd hotels, in the old 
 days comparable to the Ritz of London or 
 New York in its luxuriousness. I found it 
 dilapidated and filthy, the carpets torn and 
 soiled, the elevator out of commission, as if 
 it had been sacked by an invading army. We 
 were met at the door by soldiers with rifles,
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 27 
 
 who told me that I must have a pass to enter 
 the hotel, when I said that I wanted to visit 
 comrades from the United States. 
 
 They showed us into a little reception room 
 where we could obtain a pass, and here, in a 
 space of about twenty feet by fifteen, so blue 
 with smoke that it gave the appearance of a 
 Turkish bath, there were a score of men and 
 women listlessly waiting. Finally, since no 
 one seemed to be the least interested in us, I 
 went up to one of the officers and asked him 
 if I could see Emma Goldman. I told him 
 that I had understood from Zinoviev that she 
 had been staying there for a long time. 
 
 "I never heard of her before," he said. 
 "But if Zinoviev says she is here I will try 
 to find out." He looked through the register 
 for a moment. 
 
 "All right! She is here! Now what do 
 you want to see her for?" 
 
 "We were comrades in the United States. 
 My wife and I are delegates from the Socialist 
 Party of America." 
 
 At last we were given a pass and we found 
 our way to the room that he had indicated,
 
 28 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 passing a soldier on each floor. I rapped on 
 the door, which was opened by Alexander 
 Berkman. 
 
 "Great God! What are you doing here?" 
 he said. 
 
 "Where is Emma!" my wife asked. 
 
 "She is downstairs trying to cook," Berk- 
 man answered. "I will get her np here in a 
 moment. ' ' 
 
 He telephoned to her, and while we were 
 waiting I looked aronnd the room. There was 
 a sword hanging on the wall near the writing 
 desk, and I asked him what he used it for. He 
 told me that he was an officer, and that it was 
 part of his equipment as a member of the 
 Eed Army. 
 
 Presently the door opened, and Emma Gold- 
 man came in, carrying a tray. 
 
 "For the love of Mike! How did yon get 
 here?" she exclaimed. She pnt her tray down 
 on the center table, and after her first aston- 
 ishment was over we sat down to eat. There 
 were some canned peaches that had a familiar 
 look about them, and my wife asked her if this 
 food had been supplied them by the govern-
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 29 
 
 ment, but it turned out that she was still get- 
 ting along with the reserve supply that she 
 had brought from the United States. 
 
 We stayed with them several hours, as both 
 of them seemed delighted to see somebody who 
 had just come from the States, and they asked 
 us innumerable questions about their comrades 
 whom they had left behind. Then the talk 
 turned to Kussia, that tremendous enigma 
 which is puzzling the entire civilized world. 
 It did not take me long to find out what was 
 Emma Goldman's opinion of the Soviet Gov- 
 ernment. She was as frank about it as she 
 could be. I had explained to her my bewilder- 
 ment at the things I had seen and heard in 
 the few hours that I had already spent in 
 Russia. Could she explain away this atmos- 
 phere of hostility and fear on the part of the 
 very people for whom this dictatorship of the 
 proletariat had been founded? 
 
 "Tell me, Emma," I begged, "what is this 
 government of Russia?" 
 
 "It is too rigid. There is too much sys- 
 tem!" she exclaimed. She waved her hand 
 violently. "There is no government here. I
 
 30 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 mean that. Conditions are horrible. I would 
 rather live in prison in America than be free 
 in Russia. " 
 
 My astonishment was so great that I almost 
 fell off my chair. The first realization of how 
 great was the difference between the reality 
 and the illusion that the working people of 
 America and ourselves had entertained con- 
 cerning Bolshevism began to impress itself 
 on my consciousness. 
 
 That night we left for Moscow, arriving 
 there early in the morning. At the station we 
 were met by several officers of the Red Army, 
 and a company of soldiers and a military band. 
 It was an extremely noisy reception. The sol- 
 diers shouted and the band played the "Inter- 
 nationale" until the whole place resounded 
 with it. It was too much honor, I felt, for a 
 simple person like myself. I might have been 
 the Czar in the old days returning to his faith- 
 ful city of Moscow. After the cheering and 
 the waving of red flags had quieted down, we 
 were greeted by the official reception com- 
 mittee and were taken to a magnificent limou- 
 sine outside, the same car, I was told, in which
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 31 
 
 the Czar used to ride, and were driven to the 
 hotel which is used by the Government to in- 
 stall their guests, the old Commercial House. 
 It could hardly be recognized under its new 
 dress, for it was decorated with red flags and 
 bunting faced with enormous letters in prac- 
 tically every language of Europe German, 
 French, Russian, English, Italian. The four- 
 story building had completely disappeared 
 under this mass of decoration. 
 
 My wife and I were given three rooms 
 equipped with all modern improvements, 
 steam heat, electricity, telephone and bath. 
 Breakfast, we were told, would be ready at 
 nine o 'clock in the common dining room, where 
 we would meet delegates from all over the 
 world. 
 
 I changed from my traveling clothes, and 
 feeling that one ought to be suitably attired 
 for meeting this illustrious gathering of Inter- 
 national Socialists, I put on the ceremonial 
 frock coat, white vest, and an uncomfortable 
 high collar. I did not want the American 
 Socialist Party to be ashamed of one of its 
 members.
 
 32 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 But when I came into the dining room with 
 my wife at nine o'clock and saw that every- 
 one was glancing at me with utmost surprise, 
 I wished that my appearance was not quite 
 so formal. Later on I discovered that nearly 
 everyone thought that I was there as an ec- 
 clesiastical representative from the churches 
 of the United States. I felt so much out of 
 place in the midst of all these men in ordinary 
 business clothes that I slipped out again im- 
 mediately and put on the suit which I had 
 just taken off. Every one smiled when I took 
 my place again beside my wife. The first man 
 to greet me was Patrick Quinlan, who had 
 come there as the American representative of 
 the I. W. "W. I met John Reed and a few 
 other Americans, and then the French, English 
 and Italian delegates who were in the room. 
 There were interpreters for all languages. 
 The breakfast was simple but there was plenty 
 to eat, the famous Russian cereal, "kasha," 
 plenty of bread and cheese, coffee, tea, sugar 
 and fresh milk. 
 
 After dinner an automobile was provided 
 for us, and my wife and I were taken to the
 
 PETROGRAD AND EMMA GOLDMAN 33 
 
 State Department, which is now in the Hotel 
 Metropole, where we met Tchicherin, the Com- 
 missar of Foreign Affairs, and an assistant 
 who was introduced to us as Comrade Rosen- 
 berg. We spent about an hour with Tchich- 
 erin, who furnished us with credentials as 
 delegates to the Second Congress of the Third 
 International. Tchicherin said that this gave 
 us the privilege of going anywhere we wished 
 in Moscow, although we must not go outside 
 the city without special permission. From 
 the Foreign Office we were driven back to the 
 hotel, where black bread, chicken, candy, ice 
 cream, tea and cheese were served to a still 
 larger gathering of delegates. It was obvious 
 that the guests of the Government were not 
 to go hungry.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 
 
 the next evening after our arrival, we 
 were taken to the Imperial Theatre, the 
 great opera house of Moscow. The enormous 
 auditorium was filled to capacity. The aris- 
 tocracy and beauty of the old days were gone ; 
 the decorations over the Czar's box had been 
 torn away. Here, where what was perhaps 
 the most brilliant society of Europe used to 
 gather, was now a mass of common soldiers, 
 officers with the Bed insignia, young boys and 
 girls, and a host of shabbily dressed men and 
 women. Gone were the jewels, the gorgeous 
 gowns, the lavish display of wealth, the nobil- 
 ity of Russia the great landowners who spent 
 their winters in Moscow, the officers in their 
 gorgeous uniforms, who always stood motion- 
 less facing the Czar's box during the inter- 
 mission. The golden ceiling, the staring boxes, 
 
 34
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 35 
 
 tier after tier, looked down upon the Prole- 
 tariat. The inner fortress of society, of capi- 
 talistic luxury had been captured by the people 
 who used to stand outside its doors enviously 
 watching these people of a higher world de- 
 scend from their carriages. 
 
 When we entered the theatre with the other 
 delegates, a great shout rang out, "Long live 
 the Third International!" The entire audience 
 rose to its feet and sang the national air of 
 new Russia, the chant of social revolution, 
 which has the same significance in Eussia as 
 did the "Marseillaise" once in revolutionary 
 France. With its innumerable stanzas it took 
 almost ten minutes to complete it, and then, 
 still standing, they sang it all over again. I 
 thought to myself, that these people were 
 either enormously patriotic or else they were 
 enormously patient. Later on, when I heard 
 this melancholy and yet stirring air for the 
 ten thousandth time, I grew so weary of it 
 that I felt I never wanted to hear it again. 
 When the audience finished applauding itself 
 for its part in the performance, Shaliapin, the 
 greatest bass in the world, sang for us. He is
 
 36 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 extremely popular with the public, as indeed, 
 are nearly all the great singers and actors of 
 the old regime who have not fled to Paris or 
 America. They are paid enormous salaries. 
 For example, I was told that Shaliapin for 
 singing before us that evening received 200,000 
 roubles. It is true that while I was in Russia 
 I could exchange one of Uncle Sam's ten dol- 
 lar gold pieces for 100,000 roubles, or over 
 50,000 roubles for our paper currency in the 
 same amount. With my small store of coins 
 it would have been possible for me to have 
 ordered a private performance of an entire 
 opera. But nevertheless it is obvious that in 
 Russia a fifth of a million roubles is still an 
 immense sum. 
 
 After the performance, and after the audi- 
 ence had favored us again with the "Inter- 
 nationale," we were taken back to the hotel, 
 where supper was served at eleven. 
 
 Both my wife and I were greatly impressed 
 with what we had seen, but we agreed that 
 we had not come to Moscow for music and 
 caviar and receptions. We wanted to know 
 how it fared with the Russian people them-
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 37 
 
 selves. We had had four hearty meals that 
 day, and there must have been thousands of 
 men in the great factories of Petrograd and 
 Russia who had gone to bed hungry and who 
 were wondering whether the next week would 
 bring them enough black bread to keep their 
 children from starvation. So it used to be in 
 the old days in Russia, and so it was today. 
 
 We decided that at the earliest possible op- 
 portunity we would get away together from 
 the government interpreters and go about the 
 city ourselves. But in the morning we were 
 told that we had an appointment with Karl 
 Radek, the President of the Third Interna- 
 tional of the World. There is something iron- 
 ical in the fact that Radek 's office is in the 
 former German Embassy, a stately building 
 from which the eagle of Germany had been 
 torn down. When we entered, I was astounded 
 at the beauty of the interior, luxurious furni- 
 ture, crystal chandeliers, and valuable paint- 
 ings which must have been worth a fortune. 
 We met Comrade Radek in what was formerly 
 Count Mierbach's office. Radek is a Jew, and 
 an extremely excitable man. As soon as he
 
 38 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 saw us he began to shont as if he were in a 
 violent rage about the errors that the Socialist 
 Party in the United States, and incidentally 
 my wife and I, had committed. 
 
 "Why was the Socialist Party so slow with 
 the revolution in America? Why were you so 
 much behind other countries? Why have you 
 waited so long to endorse the Communist 
 Party!" 
 
 I told him that I would explain all of that 
 later on to the best of my ability, but at the 
 present time I had come to get a permit which 
 would enable us to go about Moscow freely. 
 
 "Very well," said Eadek. "I will see that 
 you have an interpreter so that you will be 
 able to understand everything that you see." 
 
 WTien we returned to the hotel, we were 
 formally registered and put through a form 
 of cross-examination by the commandant of 
 the hotel, who had his soldiers stationed in 
 every hallway. It was very much as if we 
 were arrested. He also gave us a pass by 
 which we were enabled any time to enter or 
 leave the hotel. The commonest acts of life 
 seemed to be bound up with an insufferable
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 39 
 
 amount of red tape. As we were leaving the 
 hotel for a walk through the city, a young Jew 
 by the name of Feinberg stopped ns at the 
 door. There seemed to be no way of dodging 
 these interpreters. 
 
 "But I do not need you," I protested. "I 
 speak Russian perfectly and I served in the 
 army and I have lived in Moscow." But it 
 was of no use. Feinberg said that things had 
 changed, that even streets were changed, and 
 that he really could not permit us to go alone. 
 So, weary and in silence, we tramped with 
 him around more buildings and churches, and 
 even went into a soldiers ' home. But we spoke 
 to no one. It was a repetition of our experi- 
 ence in Petrograd, and when we returned we 
 decided that it must not continue and the 
 next morning we would slip away from the 
 hotel too early to be caught by these tireless 
 guides. 
 
 Quite early the next morning, before the 
 official breakfast was served, we slipped out 
 between the guards at the entrance and started 
 to see what Moscow was like in reality. Out- 
 wardly, at first there seemed to be no great
 
 40 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 change. The main streets were not in such 
 bad repair as in Petrograd, there were fewer 
 blank windows. On the whole, the people who 
 passed seemed to be a little better clothed. 
 But the same air of decay and misery hang 
 about them and pervaded the city. The shat- 
 tered shops, many with their plate glass win- 
 dows smashed, told that commerce was dead; 
 but as we penetrated deeper into the poor 
 living quarters of the city the true condition 
 of things became more and more apparent. 
 We met men and women walking, or rather 
 shuffling up and down the streets as if they 
 had been driven out of their lodgings by sheer 
 inability to stay still. You have seen animals 
 pacing up and down in their cages. It was 
 like that. In the parks they sat in the sun- 
 light motionless, abject and hopeless. These 
 were the people who had not found a place for 
 themselves under the dictatorship of the Prole- 
 tariat. Driven to the very verge of misery, 
 they looked forward hopelessly to a future of 
 suffering from which they could not escape, 
 and there was no possibility of a revolt against 
 this future left in them. The complexions of
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 41 
 
 most of them were unpleasantly yellowish, 
 and they seemed slightly bloated. Here and 
 there we saw people, as we had in Petrograd, 
 whose jaws were bandaged, for their food, or 
 lack of it, affected their teeth and there are 
 no dentists, nor money to pay them if there 
 had been. Here in these poorer quarters yon 
 could see that civilization was dying. The 
 stench of its decay was everywhere. Once we 
 penetrated into a courtyard, which was faced 
 with the black windows of a hundred tene- 
 ments. It would be useless to try to describe 
 it. I have seen the slums of other great cities, 
 but never have I been so impressed with the 
 sufferings of human beings as in these back 
 streets of Moscow. 
 
 My poor wife was so oppressed by what we 
 had seen that we made our way towards the 
 broader avenues for fresh air. And here, 
 though the air was clearer, was the same pic- 
 ture of decadence. The cement of the side- 
 walks was cracked so that it was dangerous 
 to walk on them; windows were smashed and 
 gaping from the blackened fronts of the 
 houses with rusty tin stove-pipes projecting
 
 42 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 from them, which must have poured their 
 smoke into every tenement above. 
 
 The sewer pipes were broken, and through 
 cracked basement windows we could see foul 
 lakes of black water with refuse and garbage 
 and dead cats. I did not wonder so much that 
 people were dying under these horrible con- 
 ditions, as that under them it is possible to 
 live at all. And yet, somehow, they were 
 managing to live, dragging on from day to 
 day. And children were being born to them 
 and were dying in the foul atmosphere of the 
 streets, for there were no medicines, no doc- 
 tors, or milk, and the mothers themselves were 
 undernourished and gaunt. 
 
 Many of the men and women in the streets 
 were barefooted, some in their stocking feet, 
 carrying their shoes in their hands to save 
 them for the winter. Old men and women and 
 cripples were begging openly, dozens on every 
 block. Anyone decently dressed became a 
 mark for them and they rushed toward my 
 wife and myself in swarms. "We gave them 
 money, of course, paper money, and twice 
 women fell upon their knees and blessed us.
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 43 
 
 It was insufferably painful and there was no 
 pleasure in giving it, for what possible use 
 could they make of a score or so of roubles 
 when a pound of bread that was sour and 
 black is worth almost twenty times what I 
 had given them? 
 
 To escape, we went into a church, which was 
 empty, save for one or two old women and a 
 priest. From the outside we expected to find 
 it looted, for the ikons were so rusted that it 
 was impossible to distinguish their subjects, 
 and the very stones were dingy with neglect. 
 But inside it had not changed, for the great 
 paintings, the brilliant mosaics, and the huge 
 gilt altar with its bronze gates had not been 
 injured. But it was deserted, cast aside by 
 the people like a worn-out shoe. 
 
 "We sat down in the great cool building to 
 rest for a moment, and I tried to tell my wife 
 as best I could what Moscow had been like 
 fifteen years ago. At home, before the war, 
 I had always promised her that some day we 
 would go abroad and visit Petrograd and Mos- 
 cow and Odessa. In her mind she had thought 
 of these far-off cities as far more picturesque
 
 44 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 and Beautiful than anything she had ever 
 seen in her own country. She realized, of 
 course, that four years of war and three more 
 of social revolution had changed their outward 
 aspect. But, nevertheless, her disappointment 
 was intense. "When once a house has fallen to 
 ruins, when its paint is peeling off, and its 
 roof sags with decay, it is hard to picture it 
 fresh and clean, the home of prosperous hap- 
 py people. I felt that she must think that I 
 had deceived her, so I told her how clean the 
 streets were kept, of the three-horse troikas 
 that used to race through the boulevards in 
 winter with their silver bells; of the porter 
 at the door of every house, who used to wash 
 the pavements with water every morning, 
 standing in the doorway with a white apron 
 for the rest of the day; of the order that 
 reigned everywhere; the gorgeous shops where 
 anything in the world could be bought; the 
 restaurants with their gypsy orchestras; the 
 great crowds and marvelous music of the male 
 choirs in the churches ; of the festivities in the 
 parks of everything that came to mind, as 
 part of the brilliant despotic civilization that
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 45 
 
 one recalled now as a distant and faint mem- 
 ory of something beautiful that is gone for- 
 ever. I told her that the air rang with the 
 sound of bells from the churches in the Krem- 
 lin and from every part of the city on Sundays 
 and sacred days, and what the great Hotel 
 Metropole had once been like before it had 
 become the Department of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 "But that was bad, Mitri," she said. "And 
 the poor man suffered to produce all that 
 wealth and beauty." 
 
 "Yes," I said, "it was bad, and I fought 
 against it." 
 
 Jessie was silent for a moment, and then 
 she looked at me sadly. "I wonder after what 
 has happened, Mitri, if this is any better?" 
 
 "It must be better," I said. "The dream 
 which we have held for a life-time has been 
 too great to be dispelled overnight. It must 
 be better!" Yet I was haunted \\ith the fear 
 that these men who governed Russia had made 
 it worse. 
 
 As I was anxious to enter into conversation 
 with some of the people, I spoke to the first 
 man we met after we had left the church. He
 
 46 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 was of the old type of Kussian Jew, and wore 
 a long beard, so I asked him if there were 
 many synagogues in Moscow. 
 
 "Yes," he -said. "But I worry about get- 
 ting something to eat, and not about syna- 
 gogues in these days." 
 
 When I told him that we were American 
 Socialists, and that we were interested in the 
 condition of the country outside -of its public 
 affairs, he asked that pathetic question to 
 which later on I grew accustomed the ques- 
 tion not about our opinion of Kussia, not 
 about the revolution in America, which their 
 papers tell them is imminent but this: 
 
 "Can you get all the bread you want in 
 America!" 
 
 "Yes," I said. "We have -bread and any- 
 thing else you want." 
 
 He turned to us earnestly. "I suppose it is 
 true," he said. "You have everything and 
 in this country we are starving. And yet we 
 have no right to protest. We have no right 
 to criticize, to publish anything that the Bol- 
 sheviki do not like to hear. The only press is 
 their press. There isn't even justice. I used
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 47 
 
 to be in business, a good business, and now 
 I try to make a few miserable roubles on the 
 side, and some day perhaps an enemy will 
 bring charges against me. I will be shot in 
 some dirty courtyard. That is the sort of rule 
 we are living under. But I know yon people ; 
 you won't tell America that." 
 
 I asked him if the Government interfered 
 in any way with the Jewish services at the 
 synagogues. 
 
 " Always a spy is there," he said. "And 
 if anyone says anything against the Bolsheviks 
 he hears of it the next day. They still let us 
 go to church, but in winter they do not furnish 
 us with any wood, and naturally most of us 
 have stopped going." 
 
 "But it isn't cold now," I objected. 
 
 "We are too worried and frightened to 
 bother about it any more. The rabbis used to 
 live on what we gave them at the church. Now 
 many have died. Our God has forsaken us." 
 
 "I used to be a tailor," he went on bitterly. 
 "My shop was taken away from me three 
 years ago. They robbed me of everything, 
 and now for working for the Government
 
 48 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 eight hours a day I get just enough to keep 
 soul and body together." 
 
 I told him that the Government was doubt- 
 less allowing him as much as they could, but 
 he did not listen to me. 
 
 "They are a gang of cut-throats and 
 thieves," he shouted, and then, as if he were 
 afraid of what he had said, he walked rapidly 
 away. 
 
 As my wife was fatigued, we made our way 
 back to the hotel, where we found that a num- 
 ber of Communists and delegates were about 
 to go to a children's farm which had been 
 organized by the Government, outside the city. 
 I rode out with them, while my wife rested. 
 The farm is situated seven or eight miles be- 
 yond the city limits, and we entered just in 
 time to take dinner with the children, who 
 came trooping in from the fields. We ate with 
 them, and if their dinner was a sample of their 
 customary rations, I fail to see how it is enough 
 for a growing child. It consisted of two 
 slices of bread, a bowl of thin soup and a 
 plate of kasha; there was no milk or sugar. 
 But the children looked fairly well, beyond all
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 49 
 
 comparison better than the poor little wretches 
 we had seen on the city streets, for at least 
 they had green fields and fresh air. In the 
 city they were thin and sickly, and dirty with 
 neglect, for a mother cannot clean her child's 
 clothes without soap. The feeling of oppres- 
 sion that had been stealing on me more and 
 more lightened; here was an effort to relieve 
 a little of the pervading misery, one con- 
 structive thing that the Government was do- 
 ing for its people. I realized, however, that 
 this school was used as an example by the 
 Government in order to impress the delegates, 
 and that there are only a few of them, a little 
 oasis in the midst of hundreds of thousands 
 of suffering children of the cities. 
 
 While the interpreter was telling the dele- 
 gates of this and the other educational reforms 
 which the Government was attempting, I talked 
 to some of the children outside. I had heard 
 a few uncomfortable rumors about the way 
 some of the schools were conducted, for in the 
 one we were visiting, and in many others, the 
 teachers were all men, with boys and girls 
 there together from fifteen to eighteen years
 
 50 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 of age. However, as far as I am aware, there 
 is no justification for these rumors; but since 
 human nature is what it is, it is undoubtedly 
 a profound error on the part of the authorities 
 to house girls and boys of this age under the 
 charge of men teachers. 
 
 Eemembering the religious education of the 
 children of my days, I asked them if they were 
 accustomed to pray in the morning when they 
 got up. Ono of the girls answered that they 
 did not, and that they had no Bibles. The 
 girls were allowed to wear crosses, but the 
 boys had laughed at them so that they took 
 them off. Their family ikons had to be kept 
 in their trunks. They were not allowed to 
 have them in sight in their rooms. 
 
 Later on I went up to one of the teacher's 
 rooms to drink tea with him. The walls were 
 covered with pictures of the Communist lead- 
 ers. There were Lenin and Trotsky, Karl 
 Marx and Liebknecht, and others of allegori- 
 cal subjects portraying the fall of capitalism. 
 I asked him in what way their teaching dif- 
 fered from the education before the revolution. 
 
 "Aside from the elementary things, the three
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 51 
 
 B's and in this school, agriculture, we are 
 teaching them to be good Communists," he 
 explained. "For history they have the class 
 struggle between the laborers and their mas- 
 ters through the ages. They must learn, for 
 instance, the Communist Manifesto of 1864 ; the 
 story of the Second International in 1889 and 
 its evolution in 1917 to the Third International. 
 Then they are told of class consciousness, of 
 the struggle between labor and capital, of the 
 various methods to overthrow the governments 
 of the world. One of the advanced courses 
 concerns the effective use of propaganda. 
 They are taught, in short, to take their places, 
 when they graduate, as thorough Communists 
 and revolutionists." 
 
 It occurred to me that the great school sys- 
 tems outside of Eussia might do well to take 
 something for their own benefit out of the 
 Communist conception of education. A great 
 deal might be gained even in schools in Amer- 
 ica in teaching pupils some of the economic 
 conditions which are to rule their lives, for 
 though I do not pretend to any expert knowl- 
 edge of education, I know that the children
 
 52 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 of our schools are brought np in ignorance of 
 the mechanics of the capitalistic system under 
 which they must live. 
 
 In another hour we left the school and re- 
 turned to Moscow, where in the evening about 
 two hundred delegates of the International 
 from all over the world met and discussed 
 conditions in the various countries. It was a 
 veritable tower of Babel; one heard at the 
 same time Italian, Spanish, German, French, 
 English and Eussian; to say nothing of the 
 speech of our compatriots from Turkey and 
 the Balkans. There were several interpreters 
 present, who were the most astonishing lin- 
 guists that can be imagined, and could turn 
 from one tongue to another with the greatest 
 facility and ease. 
 
 On the next day we paid a visit to Lenin, 
 who is perhaps the most remarkable man in 
 the world today. He has surrounded himself 
 with so many barriers and so much red tape, 
 that to get into his presence is almost as diffi- 
 cult as it would be to secure an interview with 
 royalty in other countries. It has its justifi- 
 cation in the threats and attempts that have
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 53 
 
 Been made against his life. Indeed, the visitor 
 to Russia, when he sees the violent hatred 
 that surrounds the Government, cannot help 
 constantly wondering why the Bolshevist lead- 
 ers have not been assassinated before this. 
 Certainly it is not from lack of experience 
 with this form of terrorism. 
 
 The City Commandant of Moscow gave us 
 the necessary permit which would take us to 
 the gates of the Kremlin, where we were 
 stopped by two soldiers, who, after examining 
 our passports, telephoned to an office inside 
 for permission to allow us to enter. 
 
 In the great enclosure of the Kremlin, sur- 
 rounded by an immense, ancient wall, are the 
 most beautiful and the oldest churches in Rus- 
 sia. In one of them, which was severely in- 
 jured by a shell during the fighting of the 
 second revolution, the Czars of Russia had 
 been crowned for generations. Nearby lay 
 the huge, historic bell which has been photo- 
 graphed by so many thousands of tourists, 
 and beyond it the long, low facade of the 
 old royal palace where the Czar stayed on his 
 visits to Moscow.
 
 54 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 This place is now the center and the soul of 
 the Russian Government, for in it Nikolai 
 Lenin has his headquarters. Standing between 
 the buildings are huge cannon, artillery guns 
 and mortars, with shells of enormous size, for 
 in case of another revolution, if the Govern- 
 ment loses the protection of the Kremlin, its 
 position in the capital could not be held. It 
 was in the Kremlin that the Kerensky Govern- 
 ment made its last stand for the control of 
 Moscow, and I have heard it said that if the 
 resistance of the young cadets who garrisoned 
 the fortress had been supported by the anti- 
 Bolshevist citizens of Moscow, the city would 
 not have fallen. 
 
 Except that it is so dingy that you cannot 
 tell its original color, the Czar's palace is un- 
 injured. We went in by the great door, but 
 after going through the usual ceremony of 
 presenting our documents and passes we were 
 told to wait in the palatial hall. Around us 
 nothing seemed to have been touched. Doubt- 
 less it is exactly the same as it was when the 
 Czar of all the Russias lived there. The pol- 
 ished floors shine like glass, and around us
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 55 
 
 were the beautiful paintings and furnishings 
 of the Romanoffs. 
 
 In about ten minutes I saw the familiar fig- 
 ure of Lenin approaching. In appearance he 
 is an extraordinary contrast to one's idea of 
 how the dictator who rules all Russia with an 
 iron hand should look. If you were to meet 
 him on the streets of Moscow as an ordinary 
 citizen, I doubt if it would occur to you to 
 give him a second glance. He might be a 
 clergyman from a small town in the States, 
 or perhaps a middle-class and not too success- 
 ful business man. But when you examine him 
 closely you can understand a little of the 
 great force that emanates from him. He has 
 the broad forehead of the thinker, but it is 
 his eyes that are most impressive, for they 
 are sharp and penetrating and very shrewd. 
 ^Vhen he is conversing casually he seems ex- 
 tremely amiable, and when he smiles his eyes 
 are so narrowed that they almost disappear. 
 He has a rough good humor, and is constantly 
 saying things that make people around him 
 laugh. He is not an orator, but is an extraor- 
 dinarily well read man, and he talks on the
 
 56 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 affairs of Russia and the world very freely. 
 He appeared to me to be perfectly familiar 
 with the conditions of Europe, also those of 
 America, and I doubt very much if he is in 
 the slightest degree deluded by the propaganda 
 that floods the country. I presume that he is 
 in constant communication with loyal Commu- 
 nists of various countries. But when he talks 
 seriously about the social revolution and the 
 struggle abroad he becomes grave and stern, 
 and it is then that you see the force of his 
 greatness. 
 
 Lenin was very affable to ns and spoke in 
 his broken English, since my wife did not un- 
 derstand Russian. We told him who we were 
 and why we had come to Russia, and he asked 
 me questions about the growth of the revolu- 
 tionary feeling in the United States, the Social- 
 ists, the Labor and the Communist movements 
 and other things, which I answered briefly and 
 as well as I could. The conversation turned 
 upon Russia. 
 
 "If your government had not interfered 
 with us," he said, "Russia would now be 
 prosperous, in a better condition, perhaps,
 
 MOSCOW REVISITED 57 
 
 than any other country in the world. But we 
 are not to blame. It is you Socialists on the 
 other side who are allowing the capitalist 
 class to blockade us." . 
 
 I answered that we were not yet sufficiently 
 powerful in number, and he shrugged his 
 shoulders in an unbelieving way and changed 
 the subject. Then he told us that since we 
 were there, we must certainly stay for the 
 congress of the International, which was going 
 to be held the next month. 
 
 "You will have a message, and a powerful 
 one," he said, "to give to the working people 
 of America when you return." 
 
 This closed the interview, and he shook 
 hands with us again and left us.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY AND HUMAN SUFFERING 
 
 T N order to complete the downfall of the 
 * capitalist system in Russia, buying and 
 selling is forbidden by order of the Govern- 
 ment. Theoretically, all property in Russia 
 belongs to the nation and cannot be exchanged 
 privately for gain. But with the great cities 
 literally starving, and with the complete lack 
 of the vital necessaries of life, the attempt 
 to suppress what must be one of the most 
 primitive instincts of mankind, has failed. The 
 paper money is debased to almost nothing, 
 nevertheless it still has purchasing power, and 
 so, day after day, peasants from the surround- 
 ing country secretly bring into the city small 
 quantities of flour and vegetables, while sec- 
 ond-hand clothing, fur hats and matches, and 
 even jewelry, are offered for sale in the 
 markets. 
 
 The center for this illegal trading, which 
 58
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 59 
 
 actually goes on all over the city, is the great 
 open market, with the adjacent bazaar, which 
 was once called the "Jews' Market." By the 
 time we arrived, the Government had begun to 
 wink openly at this illegal trading, though 
 their spies prowled about the market-place in 
 order to catch the criminal who operated on 
 a larger scale, the speculator. Occasionally, a 
 particularly zealous commissar would attempt 
 to put a stop to it by arresting everyone in 
 sight, but on the next day it went merrily on 
 as if nothing had happened. I was told that 
 at one time ten thousand people were rounded 
 up in this market, but as there was no room 
 for them in the jails, they were released very 
 soon afterwards. 
 
 We visited the market on the day after our 
 interview with Lenin. It was a pathetic spec- 
 tacle, and to me it was a final denial of the 
 essential principle of Communism. Many of 
 the Bolshevists believe that their failure to 
 stop petty trading is the result of the preva- 
 lent scarcity of necessaries. If Russia were 
 prosperous, so that the Government could 
 furnish the population with sufficient food and
 
 60 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 clothing, they believe that this illegal traffic 
 would cease. But that does not account for 
 the many objects I saw offered for sale that 
 were not necessaries of life, such as rings, 
 jewelry, cigarette boxes. There seemed to be 
 a desire among the people of this poverty- 
 stricken city to own things that would dis- 
 tinguish them in some way from their neigh- 
 bors. If Eussia becomes prosperous again, 
 this desire of the individual to own property 
 in addition to what the Government gives him 
 will increase rather than diminish; for how 
 can any ruling group of men foresee all the 
 desires of mankind! 
 
 When we arrived at this market, which is 
 about four or five blocks in length, it was 
 swarming with people, and all of them seemed 
 as nervous as a herd of cattle who were about 
 to stampede. Bulkier objects were laid on the 
 ground, the more valuable things hidden under 
 coats and in pockets. The prices, which seemed 
 to be regulated from some mysterious source, 
 were quite stable. Bread, for example, was 
 500 roubles a pound; a very indifferent her- 
 ring, for which a housewife in the United
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 61 
 
 States would refuse to give ten cents, was 
 offered to me for 3000 roubles. A package of 
 ten cigarettes, made of the horrible tobacco 
 which the soldier smokes, wrapped up in news- 
 paper, was 500 roubles. A single piece of 
 dirty lump sugar obtained the enormous value 
 of 200 roubles, and a box of matches cost just 
 half as much. As for shoes, a single pair was 
 priced at 50,000 roubles, while a pair of cow- 
 hide boots was for sale for 100,000 roubles, 
 and both the dealer and purchaser stood in 
 great danger of arrest, for a transaction in- 
 volving such a sum came almost within the 
 limits of speculation, which meant perhaps 
 summary arrest and death. 
 
 The ground of the market was filthy, and 
 my wife came to the limit of her endurance 
 when she looked into a barrel of mashed pota- 
 toes which were offered for 250 roubles a 
 pound, so we turned back toward the open 
 street. 
 
 At the entrance I met a man with a pound 
 of flour who seemed eager to give me informa- 
 tion. I asked him how much it would take 
 to live reasonably well in Eussia today.
 
 62 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "A single man can live luxuriously on 
 200,000 roubles a month," he said. 
 
 "What do you mean by luxury?" I asked. 
 
 "Food, enough food! Butter, perhaps a 
 little sugar, good meat and now and then 
 chicken, besides, of course, the usual black 
 bread and fish." 
 
 "How about clothes?" I asked. 
 
 "No, you couldn't buy clothes on it, though 
 if you cut down on some of the other things 
 you might be able to get a pair of shoes." 
 
 I asked him to make out a list of the living 
 expenses of this hypothetical Russian with a 
 millionaire's income. It ran something like 
 this: Sixty pounds of bread for 30,000 rou- 
 bles; chicken three times during the month, 
 30,000 roubles; meat four times, 25,000 rou- 
 bles; three pounds of sugar, 20,000 roubles; 
 butter, 14,000 roubles; four boxes of matches, 
 400 roubles; occasionally fruit, such as straw- 
 berries, pears, prunes, approximately 25,000 
 roubles. The remainder might be spent for 
 coffee and tea, salt and incidentals, and per- 
 haps for tobacco. 
 
 Theoretically, again, in the ideal Communist
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 63 
 
 state there should be only one class the Prole- 
 tariat. But here again a universal instinct of 
 mankind has fought and has won the battle 
 against theory. In America, the place you 
 occupy in society is indicated by your educa- 
 tion, your work, the house you live in, the 
 clothes you wear and the food you eat. Here 
 it is largely a matter of wealth. In Russia, 
 the same distinctions, the same classes exist, 
 although wealth has been destroyed. In Rus- 
 sia a man who is a member of the Government, 
 a commissar, is at the top of the heap, then 
 comes the employee of the Government, the 
 prosperous peasant, the soldier, the man who 
 is listed as a Communist. After these fortu- 
 nate members of society come the common 
 laborer, the bourgeois, and lastly, the unfor- 
 tunate man who cannot work with his hands 
 and is too much a part of the old system to 
 secure employment in the Government. And 
 in the structure of Russian society he is 
 doomed, as the drunkard and the degenerate 
 are doomed in our social scale. It is true that 
 in Russia the actual difference between the 
 upper and lower sections of the scale seems
 
 64 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 less than it does elsewhere, but it is greater 
 than the difference between the millionaire 
 and the workingman in this country. 
 
 Toward the top of the ladder yon can be 
 warm in winter, sufficiently clothed and have 
 enongh to eat; at the bottom you live in a 
 frozen, Trninhabitable tenement, surrounded by 
 dirt and disease, your clothes are in rags, and 
 you are always a little more than half-starved. 
 It is the difference between comfort and utter 
 misery. One man gets two pounds of bread 
 a day, and has the power of buying more for 
 his family; another gets a pound, and a third 
 receives three-quarters of a pound for two 
 days. The same distinction applies in every 
 way. I have brought back with me, for ex- 
 ample, three pieces of soap which were made 
 in Petrograd and distributed there. The first 
 is an oval-shaped cake or ordinary soap such 
 as one can buy in this country, intended for 
 the Commissars; the second is a rough chunk 
 of gray substance, for their assistants and for 
 officers: and the third is a small cube, hard 
 as stone and black as ink, which is distributed
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 65 
 
 to the proletariat workers. If yon are below 
 that rank you get none at all. 
 
 After our visit to the market, we returned 
 to the hotel and to what was getting to be the 
 accustomed routine of dinner and theatre, in- 
 terspersed with repetitions of that song of 
 revolution, the "Internationale," and the next 
 day we went out to a military hospital near 
 the Kremlin, where we distributed to the sol- 
 diers cigarettes which had been thoughtfully 
 provided by the Government before we left. 
 
 The men seemed glad to see us and asked 
 me the conventional questions about America. 
 "Had we enough to eat there? "What salaries 
 were paid, and could the workingman get white 
 bread?" There were two large wards filled 
 with men, cared for by a few male nurses, 
 owing to the nature of their disease. A man 
 told me that the usual length of their stay was 
 about two weeks, and that, although of course 
 there was no chance of their being cured, since 
 they were not given medicine or drugs of any 
 sort, they would be sent back to the front as 
 soon as they were able to walk. They received 
 exactly the same food as at the front, black
 
 66 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 bread, sonp, Jcaslia and tea. But on the whole 
 these men did not seem to care greatly. 
 They grumbled, of course, but the Russian 
 trooper has always been the most stolid and 
 long-suffering soldier in the world. It is on 
 this quality of infinite patience that the power 
 of the Soviets rests. 
 
 After leaving the hospital we visited a 
 church nearby. It was almost empty, but in 
 the distance, limping across the pavement, I 
 saw the priest. In appearance he seemed 
 infirm, very old and emaciated to the last 
 degree. His complexion was that unpleasant 
 grayish yellow which I had seen on the streets. 
 One -eye was gone, leaving a gaping wound. 
 My wife gasped and instinctively drew back. 
 I questioned this spectre of misfortune. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "I am the priest of 
 this church. I was born in Moscow and I have 
 lived here all my life." 
 
 "I want to find out as much as I can," I 
 said, "about the conditions today in Russia. 
 We are Americans, and you can trust ua 
 thoroughly." I could see that he was still 
 afraid that I had been sent there as a spy, but
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 67 
 
 finally, when I told him that the sooner the 
 American people knew the truth about Russia, 
 the better it would be for his people, he gave 
 in. 
 
 "Can you come behind the altar!" he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 He led us through the door to a place where 
 we could not be seen from the front of the 
 church. 
 
 "Look at me!" he exclaimed. "How old 
 do you think I am?" 
 
 "Sixty-five or seventy," I answered, "per- 
 haps more." 
 
 "I am forty-five ! The Bolsheviki have killed 
 my wife and children. You know, of course, 
 that in Eussia all of the priests used to be 
 married. Instead of killing me, the soldiers 
 gouged one of my eyes out. It is a miracle 
 that I am still alive. Many other priests 
 suffered the same fate when the Kerensky 
 Government was overthrown." 
 
 The thought came to me that it would have 
 been better if he had been killed, for though 
 a man may be deprived of everything, no one 
 can take from him his capacity to suffer.
 
 68 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "What hurts me most," he said, "is to see 
 the misery of the small remnant of my people 
 who still come here. The poor souls bring 
 pieces of bread to me as their offering, de- 
 priving their own children of food that they 
 need desperately, and sometimes I am ashamed 
 to take it, but while there is life in me I must 
 go on." 
 
 "Do you get anything from the Govern- 
 ment?" I asked. 
 
 "Now and then I can find a place with the 
 gangs sweeping the streets or sawing wood, 
 but they will not give me any clerical or office 
 work." 
 
 "You would be better off," I said, "if you 
 joined the Communist Party and became one 
 of them." 
 
 The wretched man looked at me for a mo- 
 ment, and then said quietly, "My dear brother, 
 understand that my father was a priest and 
 his father before him, and the Communists 
 know it well." 
 
 "But you are old now," I said. "What 
 would happen if you became really sick? 
 Could you get a doctor?"
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 6 
 
 "It is simple enough," he said. "I will die. 
 But what is death? Life is nothing to me, 
 and whenever God calls me I am ready. After 
 losing my wife and children I have no cares 
 left. This miserable existence does not de- 
 serve to be called life. If when you go away 
 you wish to report me to the authorities, I 
 shall not care ; I shall only pray that you may 
 be forgiven." 
 
 I told him not to worry, and that we would 
 not betray him, and after my wife and I had 
 shaken hands with him warmly, we went to a 
 nearby park, as she said, to get the chill of 
 that place out of our bones. 
 
 "It was like having a conversation with a 
 dead man, Mitri," she said. "Hell cannot 
 be worse than what he is going through." 
 
 There were a number of Austrian prisoners 
 walking restlessly about the park, prisoners 
 of a war that had ended three years ago. 
 Apparently one of them heard us talking in 
 English, and he came up to us and asked us 
 if we were Americans, and if so what we were 
 doing in Russia. He had been captured in the 
 second year of the war and had been sent to
 
 70 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Siberia, where he had stayed for three years 
 and had finally been brought to Moscow to be 
 deported to Austria. But the release had 
 never come and he and a few comrades that 
 were left, for many had died of their hard- 
 ships, were working as laborers for the Gov- 
 ernment. Another Austrian, who seemed by 
 his bearing to be an officer, asked me if I spoke 
 Russian, and if I could speak to him privately 
 for a few minutes, so we walked a short dis- 
 tance away from the rest. 
 
 "Tell me," he begged, "what is going on 
 outside of Russia. 1 " 
 
 "What do you mean?" I asked. 
 
 "The Allies. Aren't they going to come 
 into Russia?" And when I told him that they 
 were not coming, "God!" he cried, "we have 
 been waiting and waiting for years for that 
 to happen. It was the only hope we had, and 
 we were ready to help them. We are worn to 
 the bone and there is no end to it." 
 
 He turned abruptly and walked away. 
 
 I could see some of the men muttering 
 among themselves, so I told my wife that we 
 were among prisoners and that there was
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 71 
 
 danger that they would think I was a spy, so 
 we hurried away. As we walked, I could not 
 help reflecting that never had I seen so much 
 bitterness in every class of society toward any 
 existing government. In the old days it was 
 hatred and anger against the despotic govern- 
 ment of the Czar, hut today these people had 
 not enough courage left to he angry. They 
 were bitter and hopeless. Even the waiter at 
 the hotel had been sullen when I asked him 
 if he received the same food that we were 
 getting. 
 
 "We would be just as badly off as anybody 
 else/* he said, "if we didn't steal. They 
 watch us, but we manage to get away with a 
 good deal after you have left the table." 
 
 I was astonished when he told me that he 
 was not a Communist. He did not believe in 
 their doctrines. There were not enough Com- 
 munists, he said, to fill positions of that sort 
 and they have to put up with anyone they 
 can get. 
 
 When we reached the hotel, my wife asked 
 me if it would not be possible to get in touch 
 with some of the women of the city. "No one
 
 72 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 seems to think or care about them. They are 
 just as much a part of Russia as the men." 
 
 So that afternoon we went straight to a 
 park where I had noticed a number of mothers 
 sitting with their children under the trees. A 
 group of curious women in shawls, and bare- 
 footed, ragged children, gathered about us. 
 This was their time for rest, it seems. Most 
 of them had already worked and had gone 
 home to bring their children to the park. In 
 an hour or so they would have to go back to 
 work again. 
 
 I told them that we were Americans, and one 
 little boy of about three, after staring at me 
 earnestly for a few minutes, said, ''Please, 
 Uncle, can you get nice things to eat in Am- 
 erica!" This pathetic question from a child 
 who was little more than a baby, was really 
 heart-rending. The boy's mother, a young 
 woman, burst into tears, and Jessie asked me 
 what he had said. We have had children of 
 our own, and I did not want to make her sad, 
 but she insisted. "Tell him, Mitri," she said, 
 "that we will come back tomorrow with some- 
 thing for him to eat," and she put her arms
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 73 
 
 aronnd him and kissed him with tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 We were so anxious to get back to the chil- 
 dren that we thought that the next morning 
 would never come. My wife insisted that we 
 must bring them candy, too. 
 
 "A little bread won't be of much use to 
 them, Mitri," she said. "They want some- 
 thing sweet, and you have to get some candy, 
 if you have to steal it." 
 
 So I became a thief. After lunch I robbed 
 both tables of all the candy that I could put 
 into my pockets, and my wife waited with me 
 until the delegates had left the table and 
 stuffed her bag with more. Then I found 
 some sugar on the sideboard and wrapped it 
 up in a newspaper with all the bread we could 
 find. We walked to the park as fast as we 
 could, and found a small host of youngsters 
 waiting at the entrance for us. We sat down 
 on the grass with the children in a circle 
 around us, and distributed our spoils. One 
 candy and one lump of sugar to each. The 
 count did not come out even, so we divided 
 all that was left and gave it to the mothers.
 
 74 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 One of the poor creatures told me that it was 
 the first time in six years that she had had a 
 piece of candy. 
 
 Among the rest was a very attractive yonng 
 woman, who it was obvious had once belonged 
 to the upper class. "I do not ever hope to be 
 happy again, " she said. ''The old days have 
 gone forever. When I was married just be- 
 fore the War, the whole world seemed so 
 beautiful. It is like a dream now. My hus- 
 band is dead, and I work for the Government, 
 and it is hard to get enough to live on. Ex- 
 cept for my boy over there, I have no one 
 else left. You see they killed my poor hus- 
 band, shot him without trial as a counter- 
 revolutionist, which was not true; he was not 
 doing any harm. I hate them and I have to 
 work for them. It is not so bad in summer, 
 but last winter was so dreadful, I do not want 
 to live through another. I have no clothes 
 except what I have on, and the winters are 
 so dreadfully long." 
 
 When I translated this to my wife, she went 
 back to the hotel for a heavy sweater that I 
 had brought with me. When she came back
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 75 
 
 with it, it did not seem fair to give it to her 
 in the presence of the others, some of whom 
 were in perhaps greater need, so I asked them 
 to draw lots for it, and we were delighted 
 when the young woman who had won onr 
 sympathies proved to be the winner. 
 
 That afternoon while we were in the park, 
 several of the foreign delegates with their 
 interpreters passed by, and I felt certain that 
 they would do something to stop my wander- 
 ing about the city by myself. And I was 
 right, for the next morning the Commandant 
 asked me to come to his office, where he in- 
 formed me politely that it would be really 
 wiser if I went out with some of the inter- 
 preters in the future. 
 
 "But," I objected, "I am a Eussian and I 
 know Moscow well. It is absurd for me to go 
 around like a tourist in a foreign country." 
 
 "Very well," he said, "suit yourself. I 
 have simply given you my advice." 
 
 I determined, however, to be more circum- 
 spect in the future, because I felt certain that 
 I would be watched. Their intention was ob- 
 vious. They did not want the delegates to
 
 76 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 come into contact with the suffering that was 
 going on in the city. But it was impossible 
 to avoid this, for it met one at every turn. 
 
 One evening, when I was coming home late 
 from the theatre, I saw a girl lying on the 
 sidewalk in front of the old Hotel Metropole. 
 The night air was cold and she had wrapped 
 her bare feet in newspaper. The poor crea- 
 ture told me that her parents had died and 
 that she had no home, and had slept the night 
 before in the park. 
 
 "Why don't you go to some of the Red 
 -Guard for help?" I asked. "They ought to 
 give you a corner to sleep in." 
 
 "I have been to them, but they will not 
 listen to me. Can't you take me home with 
 you!" 
 
 "But I am married," I objected, "and I 
 live in a hotel." 
 
 "Then take me to your wife," she pleaded, 
 "and tell them that I am your sister." 
 
 "But that isn't possible," I said. "They 
 know I have no sister. I will give you money 
 instead." 
 
 "But I don't know where to find a room!
 
 WORTHLESS MONEY 77 
 
 Yon can't do anything with money in Mos- 
 cow." 
 
 However, she took the few hundred roubles, 
 but although she thanked me and cried, she 
 did not let me go. She seemed to see in me 
 her only salvation for the future. At the 
 corner of the street a group of soldiers were 
 standing, so I went up to them and told them 
 that I had found a girl sleeping on the side- 
 walk in great misery. 
 
 One of them shrugged his shoulders. "Well, 
 what of it?" he said. "You see scores of 
 them every night. There are thousands just 
 like them all over the country. Everybody 
 is starving." 
 
 I wanted to walk away and leave her, but 
 something compelled me to turn back. "Come 
 with me," I said, "and I will see what can 
 be done for you." She started to kiss my 
 hand and seemed half insane with joy and 
 gratitude. 
 
 But at the door of the hotel the soldiers 
 would not let her in. She had no pass, and 
 that settled it as far as they were concerned. 
 I sent word to my wife to come down, because
 
 78 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I thought she might have some influence on 
 them. She asked me to tell the guards that 
 since we had three rooms we could take care 
 of her, and that she would look after the girl 
 herself, and be responsible for her until we 
 were able to provide for her in some way. 
 But it was no use, and it ended by our leaving 
 this poor, lost creature sobbing in front of 
 the door, while we went safely up to our com- 
 fortable quarters.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 
 
 TT^OR some time I had been anxious to in- 
 speet one of the Moscow prisons, which 
 I had heard were very much over-crowded, to 
 see if the conditions there were as bad as they 
 had been reported. So one afternoon, during 
 the following week, I went to one of the jails 
 which had been used for political prisoners in 
 the old regime. The usual soldiers were 
 guarding the gate. I asked one of them for 
 what crime the majority of their prisoners 
 had been convicted. 
 
 "Most of them have been caught buying 
 and selling in the streets, and besides that we 
 have a lot of speculators, but they don't stay 
 with us long." And then he added with a 
 grin, "We are pretty well filled up, but I guess 
 I can find room for you inside if yon are 
 anxious for a little vacation." 
 
 79
 
 80 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I told him that I was a delegate from the 
 convention and had a pass allowing me to go 
 anywhere in Moscow, so finally he was per- 
 suaded to summon the Commandant. A man 
 in a dishevelled uniform came out, and as 
 soon as he saw the red badge I wore on my 
 coat, lie allowed me to go in with my wife. 
 
 Those who had told me that the conditions 
 in the prisons were horrible had fallen wide 
 of the mark. They we,re unspeakable. The 
 rooms were black with filth, and some of them 
 were so dark that they were like caves, for 
 rags had been stuffed into the windows to take 
 the place of the broken glass. In each room 
 there were five or six men, who glanced at us 
 with an air of utmost anxiety as soon as the 
 door opened. I was to learn the cause of their 
 anxiety later on. Every man that I spoke to 
 told me that he was there for trading in the 
 streets, but no one would admit that he had 
 been speculating. They were not physically 
 maltreated or punished in any way, it seemed, 
 unless, indeed, any punishment could be greater 
 than having to sit in one of those stifling cells 
 day after day.
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 81 
 
 From there I went to a political prison in 
 another quarter of the city, but I was told 
 that in order to get in it would be necessary 
 to see the head of the much feared "Extraor- 
 dinary Commission." The guard said that he 
 had never known a stranger to be allowed to 
 enter, so I gave up the idea readily. 
 
 A few days later, Ivanoff, one of the Gov- 
 ernment Commissars in the Department of 
 Propaganda, called on me at the hotel and 
 asked me if I would lecture before several 
 thousand soldiers garrisoned in Moscow, at 
 the clubhouse of the Red Army. I accepted, 
 and the next day my wife and I were driven 
 out to a large structure, which in many of 
 its essentials was very like a Y. M. C. A. build- 
 ing in the United States. It provided a res- 
 taurant, card rooms, a theatre and a lecture 
 hall, etc., for the men. 
 
 The building was crowded with troops when 
 we entered, and we had dinner with a number 
 of officers at a long table in the restaurant. 
 Most of them were a careless and cheerful lot 
 of youngsters. But there were several older 
 and more serious men, who I imagined had
 
 82 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 been officers in the old days. Few of these 
 older officers are Communists at heart. They 
 are serving with the Bed Army because they 
 are soldiers by profession and because they 
 must do that or starve. I have heard that 
 many of them have become ardent Bolshevists, 
 but it is difficult to imagine that an officer 
 who had been trained to believe that he be- 
 longed to a totally different social order from 
 the private, could ever accept the new equal- 
 ity. In the old days their life was regulated 
 by the strictest formality; but since then they 
 have seen their men mutiny and their brother 
 officers murdered. Xow they had to call these 
 peasants whom they commanded, "Tavarish," 
 comrade. 
 
 Soon after, I stood on the platform, facing 
 a sea of khaki-colored uniforms. There must 
 have been over two thousand men present. 
 They were very attentive, for I spoke to them 
 about the United States, and of the great in- 
 terest that the American workingmen had in 
 Soviet Russia. I knew the sort of speech that 
 I was intended to make, and delivered it to 
 the best of my ability, and then went on to
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 83 
 
 tell them more abont conditions here. When 
 I came to the description of the wages paid 
 in the United States and the cost of living, 
 the interest of my audience became intense. 
 
 A representative of Ivanoff was sitting be- 
 side my wife, and when I happened to glance 
 at him once, I saw that he was violently shak- 
 ing his head. Things were not going as he 
 had wished, and I realized instantly that I 
 was not on the right track. I brought my lec- 
 ture to a close, with the usual request for the 
 audience to ask me any questions that they 
 wished. 
 
 One man after another shouted to me from 
 his seat, not the sort of questions that you 
 would have expected from these soldiers who 
 were fighting for the Revolution of the World 
 Proletariat. Not one of them inquired of onr 
 government or of our institutions. They were 
 the same pathetic questions I had heard so 
 many times can you buy in the United States 
 all the bread and the sugar and the milk that 
 you want? Can the ordinary workingman buy 
 clothes if he needs them? Can a poor man get 
 a decent meal in a restaurant! The Questions
 
 84 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 were thundered at me from every corner of 
 the auditorium. I shouted out one or two an- 
 swers, and then the Commissar, who obviously 
 had become more and more disturbed, jumped 
 up on the platform. I continued to shout my 
 answers, for I did not see why I had not a 
 perfect right to speak, but the Commissar 
 stepped in front of me, and when he obtained 
 silence he told them that Comrade Schwartz 
 had not come from the United States to an- 
 swer their questions, but to tell them of the 
 progress of the world revolution, and to bring 
 to them the greetings of the American Social- 
 ist Party. 
 
 "Long live the Government of the Prole- 
 tariat !" he shouted, and when the cheering 
 was over, the meeting dispersed. 
 
 Afterwards I shook hands with a long line 
 of men, and it occurred to me that since we 
 could not speak to each other as we wished 
 with our tongues, they were trying to express 
 what they felt in another way. All of them, 
 I am sure, knew that I had spoken the truth, 
 but they must have wondered why it was so 
 much at variance with what they had heard
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 85 
 
 of the results of the capitalistic despotism of 
 America on their own class. Some of them 
 must have had relatives in the United States, 
 for the Russians emigrated to the United 
 States before the war in large numbers. Many 
 of them, including a group of officers, asked 
 me to speak to them again. I told them that 
 whenever I was invited, I would give up any- 
 thing to come to them, but I knew well that 
 this would be the last time I would ever have 
 the chance, for I had made a serious blunder 
 in letting them know that the American work- 
 ingman is well paid and that he has good food 
 and clothes. They had endured so much suf- 
 fering and want, these men of Russia, who 
 ought to be plowing the fields around their 
 villages, or at work in the factories! And 
 I had opened to them the vision of a paradise 
 such as they did not know existed anywhere. 
 In many of them, I presume, the thought had 
 half formed itself, "For what have we fought, 
 when in America, which still suffers the bur- 
 den of capitalism, a common man may have 
 everything that we lack?" 
 When I left the building, I told my wife
 
 86 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 that it was impossible to get in touch with 
 the soldiers by speaking to them in public. 
 What the Bolshevists wanted from me was 
 propaganda for their own cause, and therefore 
 it was impossible for me to speak the truth, 
 or get in touch with the men themselves. The 
 best way was to wait until the opportunity 
 presented itself to speak to them in private. 
 
 One day in the latter part of June, on my 
 way out from the Kremlin, I noticed a num- 
 ber of soldiers eagerly discussing something. 
 I told them that I was an American Socialist, 
 and that I wanted to get as much information 
 as I could. 
 
 "But we have just come back from the 
 Polish front," one of them said, "and are 
 trying to find out what has happened since 
 we left." 
 
 "I don't mean about Moscow," I replied, 
 "but about the army itself. For instance, 
 what do they pay you?" 
 
 "They pay us nothing," said another, sul- 
 lenly. "We get 600 roubles a month, and you 
 can just about get a pound of bread and a 
 handful of tobacco for that."
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 87 
 
 "But your rations," I said. "'You get 
 bread from the Government, of course." 
 
 The man laughed. "Yes! One pound a 
 day, and I could eat two pounds without stop- 
 ping and then be hungry for more. It has 
 been weeks since my belly has been more than 
 half full. If any one wants to know what the 
 Russian Army is like, you can tell them it is 
 as hungry as a wolf." 
 
 "But you get other things besides bread," 
 I objected. 
 
 "A chunk of meat now and then," he said, 
 "but usually it makes you half sick to eat it. 
 It has a fine, rich smell. Sometimes they give 
 us a little sugar, but most of the time they 
 don't. Besides that we get a little cabbage 
 soup and kasha. That sounds all right, but 
 just the same I tell you I am hungry. We 
 are all hungry." 
 
 "But you have established a government 
 of the proletariat," I said. "You are fighting 
 for it, and you belong to it yourself. I don't 
 see why you complain?" 
 
 No one answered, and I saw that they were 
 beginning to be a little frightened of me, so
 
 88 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I asked them about their duties. It seems that 
 they were not allowed to enter the city except 
 with a permit, and could not carry a revolver 
 on the streets, and that they were regularly 
 on duty, when they were not at the front, for 
 eight hours a day. 
 
 Several officers were in the group, and one 
 of them asked me why I wanted to know these 
 things. 
 
 "Because I have served myself in the army 
 for over fifteen years, " I said, "and naturally 
 I am interested in the new methods." 
 
 "Those were good old days," another man 
 said. 
 
 "Perhaps," I answered, "but you had no 
 liberty then, and after all that is what you are 
 fighting for." 
 
 No one replied to this, but from the atti- 
 tude of several of the officers, I could see that 
 they wanted to speak to me alone. Now it was 
 time for their drill. Two companies had 
 formed in front of a nearby building, which 
 served as their barracks, and I watched the 
 men lining up in the old formation with which 
 I was so familiar. One of the officers came
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 39 
 
 up to me and asked me what rank I had held 
 in the army. When he heard that I had been 
 a lieutenant, he suggested that I might like 
 to drill them for a moment. 
 
 "But you have probably made a great many 
 changes since my time," I said. 
 
 "Try it, anyhow/' he urged. "A little of 
 the old-fashioned methods wouldn't do them 
 any harm." So it ended by my stepping out 
 in front of the line and giving the old com- 
 mands. Someone gave me a gun and I went 
 through the manoeuvres that were the fashion 
 twenty years ago. It caused a good deal of 
 laughter, but in some ways the old methods 
 were much simpler. For example, when the 
 troops were ordered to fire, they shouldered 
 their guns and fired instantaneously. Today, 
 five separate movements are involved before 
 the gun is fired. But on the whole, they knew 
 their business well, though they presented a 
 ragged and disreputable appearance to any- 
 one who remembered the old army. 
 
 "When the drilling was over, the officer took 
 me into the barracks, where I talked to the 
 men for a long time, and I heard a great deal
 
 90 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 of what they had endured during the war on 
 the German front. Certainly it had been 
 enough to make any army in the world revolt. 
 They had been treated like cattle, crowded 
 together in the trenches with men who were 
 sick with the worst infectious diseases. They 
 had been cut off from their food supplies 
 sometimes for whole days, and almost con- 
 stantly suffered from the belief that they 
 were being betrayed by the German agents 
 and sympathizers in their own country. 
 
 When I left the barracks, the officer who 
 had spoken to me before, followed me, and 
 with a mysterious air asked me if he could 
 make an appointment to speak to me alone 
 that afternoon. 
 
 "I can tell you something about the real 
 state of affairs in the army," he said. "I 
 can't say anything to you now because we 
 might be seen together and it is always best 
 to be careful. I will bring another officer, a 
 friend of mine, with me." 
 
 I told him that if there was any conspiracy 
 on foot, I preferred not to have anything to 
 do with it, that my only reason for agreeing
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 91 
 
 to meet him at night would be that he might 
 be able to give me information which would 
 be of interest to me and my people when I 
 returned home. 
 
 "Don't think that I am going to get yon 
 into trouble," he went on. "I can't come to 
 the hotel where you are staying because I have 
 no permit to enter, but if you will meet me 
 after supper in the park opposite the Imperial 
 Theatre, I assure you that you will never 
 regret it." 
 
 "All right, I will come," I said, "though 
 I think it is dangerous. But I will bring my 
 wife with me, because I am certain that if 
 she is there it will seem less suspicious if we 
 are recognized." 
 
 But my wife, when I told her, was fright- 
 ened at this mysterious interview. 
 
 "For all you know, they may be spies, 
 Mitri," she urged, "who are taking this 
 method of finding out your opinion of the 
 Government. It is too dangerous, and for 
 some time I have felt that we are not as safe 
 here as you think. I have seen so much mis- 
 ery in this country that I want to get home."
 
 92 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "Don't worry, mother," I said, "they 
 never dare harm ns. We have come here as 
 delegates from the United States, and they 
 will have to let us go back safely whenever 
 we want to leave." 
 
 She was still unconvinced, but finally agreed 
 that we had better go together. At eight 
 o'clock we were in the park. Suddenly we 
 heard footsteps coming up behind us and 
 someone seized me by the shoulder. My wife 
 cried out with fright, because she thought that 
 this time we were certainly being arrested 
 But it proved to be the two officers whom I 
 had agreed to meet, and after introducing 
 them to my wife, we paced up and down the 
 park together while they told me their story, 
 which I tried to interpret to her as we went 
 along. 
 
 "Comrade," the man that I had met that 
 afternoon said, "what you see here is a 
 country enslaved: the people have lost their 
 freedom, and no one dares open his mouth to 
 protest. I did all that was in my power to 
 bring about the first revolution, and so did 
 my friend here. But I would rather live un-
 
 SOLDIERS OF THE RED ARMY 93 
 
 der the worst Czar that Kussia has ever had 
 than in what they tell us is 'Free Kussia' 
 today." 
 
 "Mr. Schwartz," the other man said sol- 
 emnly, "when you go back to America, I wish 
 you would tell as many of your countrjonen 
 as you can what the people of Russia have 
 endured at the hands of the Bolshevik Gov- 
 ernment. They have robbed our fathers, in- 
 sulted our sisters, and killed our brothers." 
 
 "But all that is too vague," I broke in. 
 "Everyone knows that you cannot have a rev- 
 olution without some bloodshed." 
 
 "But it is going on today," he went on. 
 "Every day men are arrested and shot with- 
 out trial. Families are torn apart, men dis- 
 appear and no one knows what has happened 
 to them, except that they are never seen alive 
 again." 
 
 "That may be," I said, "but I came here 
 to hear about the army." 
 
 "It is held together by fear," he said, "just 
 as everything else is. Everywhere the men 
 are dissatisfied, and although every resource 
 of the Government is used to keep up its
 
 94 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 morale, I do not see how it can be held to- 
 gether a great deal longer. The men are 
 supplied with plenty of propaganda, but they 
 cannot eat words and they are getting to the 
 point where they do not believe what is told 
 them any longer. Ever since you told our 
 men this morning that there was prosperity 
 in America and food enough for everyone, 
 they have been arguing about the difference 
 between life in Kussia and in your country." 
 
 I told them that I had not intended to make 
 any trouble, and that that was not my reason 
 for coming to Kussia, for I was beginning to 
 feel more and more that these officers might 
 be spies. I knew that one of the delegates 
 had already been arrested after he had talked 
 too freely with a friendly officer. 
 
 "No one's life is safe here," he went on. 
 "If you should report, for instance, that we 
 asked you to meet us here this evening, we 
 would both of us be shot inside of twenty- 
 four hours. There is less disorder in the 
 streets than there was in 1917, but a system 
 of terrorism has grown up by means of the 
 spies of the Extraordinary Commission that
 
 makes it just as bad. There are murders in 
 secret now instead of in the open streets." 
 
 For an hour or more they continued to tell 
 me of what they had been through in the last 
 three years. Both of them had been in Petro- 
 grad when the cadets surrendered to the Bol- 
 shevists. They had seen scores of these young 
 officers pulled out into the streets from the 
 buildings they had been defending and beaten 
 to death with the butts of revolvers. Ordi- 
 nary citizens had been dragged out of their 
 houses and shot without mercy. Armed Com- 
 munists had gone to the restaurants and tea 
 shops to terrorize everyone inside. Later on 
 in Moscow, the brother of one of these men 
 for an inoffensive remark had been killed be- 
 fore his eyes by two of these Communist bul- 
 lies and his body had been left to freeze in the 
 snow all night before he was allowed to take 
 it away for burial. One of them had seen the 
 massacres in Kiev; the other had been in the 
 south and had more horrors to tell. But it 
 would be useless to relate them here. 
 
 Finally they left us, and on the way back 
 to the hotel, my wife and I decided that we
 
 96 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 were in some danger. We could not rid our- 
 selves of the suspicion that the men we had 
 been speaking to had not been sincere and 
 that they had laid a trap for me. But I had 
 said nothing that would actually incriminate 
 me except once, when I remarked that the 
 Bolshevist Government had no place in the 
 twentieth century. But it must have been ob- 
 vious to them that I was not in sympathy 
 with the Soviet Government. That alone was 
 enough to insure my arrest.
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 
 
 next morning, since we were still re- 
 solved to leave Kussia at the earliest 
 moment, I went to the Foreign Office and 
 asked Tchicherin for passports. 
 
 "Comrade," he said emphatically, "you 
 must not think of leaving before the meetings 
 of the Congress, which are to be held in a 
 short time. You have come all the way from 
 the United States to Kussia, and we want you 
 to be able to assure the working people of 
 America of the solidarity of their brothers 
 throughout the world. 
 
 "Also, we are sending a special boat for 
 Borne of the delegates down the Volga, where 
 you will see some excellent work that we have 
 accomplished in the cities along the river. It 
 will take you about two weeks, and you will 
 be back in time for the first meeting of the 
 Congress, which will be held in Petrograd. 
 
 97
 
 98 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "No! My advice to you is to stay a while 
 longer/* he said finally. "We cannot let yon 
 go so soon, comrade. The trip down the Volga 
 will be very enjoyable and you will find that 
 places are reserved for you. Good-bye and 
 a pleasant journey." 
 
 Tchicherin had been polite enough out- 
 wardly, but it was obvious that we were 
 completely at his mercy, and that we could 
 not leave Russia until he was ready to let us 
 go. It was amusing to be refused on the 
 grounds that we had not seen enough of the 
 country. Imagine the State Department of 
 the United States refusing to allow a for- 
 eigner to go home until he had visited the 
 Niagara Falls or taken a trip down the Mis- 
 sissippi! The invitation to go on this pleasure 
 trip on the Volga had been actually a com- 
 mand and Russia had become a prison. 
 
 There were a great many rumors at the 
 hotel about this trip, and some of the dele- 
 gates were not anxious to go because of vague 
 reports that there were anti-Bolshevist bands 
 along the river who might capture or blow 
 up the boat. Someone said that the wires in
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 99 
 
 that direction were being constantly cut. How- 
 ever, I did not take this seriously, and was 
 glad to find that my wife was anxious to go. 
 She was tired of the monotony of life in Mos- 
 cow and longed for the green fields of the 
 country. 
 
 Finally the night arrived when we were told 
 to pack up and be ready for the train to Nizni- 
 Xovgorod. Twenty-eight delegates assembled 
 in the station, mainly Italian, French, English 
 and Dutch. Two interpreters had been sent 
 with us, both prominent workers for the Com- 
 munist cause, Comrade Losovsky, a member 
 of the Central Committee, and Madame Ade- 
 lina Balabanova, one of their most active prop- 
 agandists, and famous as an orator. Both 
 were great linguists, speaking German, French, 
 Italian and English with great fluency, and 
 having a considerable knowledge of many 
 other languages. 
 
 A special train was made up for ns. The 
 engine was decorated with red flags, long red 
 banners stretched along the sides of the cars 
 with "Long live the Third Internationale and 
 the Proletariat of the "World" printed on
 
 100 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 them. The Communists are clever propa- 
 gandists, and they are constantly spreading 
 throughout the country by means of propa- 
 ganda trains, and these "Red Specials" such 
 as ours, the idea that the working people, the 
 masses of every country, are behind the Sovi- 
 et Government. It forces the people of the 
 remote cities and villages to believe that it 
 would be useless to rebel against the present 
 government, since in the end every other na- 
 tion will be ruled in the same way. 
 
 As usual, the way had been prepared for 
 us. At every station we were met by red flags 
 and regiments of soldiers with their brass 
 bands stretched along the length of the plat- 
 forms. At the larger cities the trains stopped 
 long enough to give the foreign delegates time 
 to deliver addresses from the steps of the 
 cars, which were interpreted by Madame Bal- 
 abanova and Comrade Losovsky. I was the 
 only one who was not called upon repeatedly 
 before the end of the trip, for they had evi- 
 dently learned their lesson. If a delegate 
 spoke to these people in their own tongue he 
 would have to answer their questions and
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 101 
 
 they did not want the public to know the 
 prosperity and the contentment of the average 
 American workingman. It did not suit their 
 purposes. 
 
 At one or two of these stations I left the 
 train and spoke to the people about me in the 
 station, but in each case the rumors spread 
 about that one of the delegates was from 
 America and could speak Bussian, and the 
 crowd about me instantly became so dense that 
 even those who were listening to the interpre- 
 ters joined it. I could see that it was making 
 me decidedly unpopular with -the rest, so I 
 had to stop, but actually it proved that the 
 people were desperately anxious for real in- 
 formation from the outside world, and that 
 they were not greatly deluded by what we in 
 America would call "canned speeches" of the 
 Bolshevist orators. Bolshevist propaganda ap- 
 pears everywhere; soap box orators on the 
 street, posters, pamphlets, the stage and all 
 of the newspapers have repeated the worn-out 
 phrases so many times during the last three 
 years that it was probably true *that most of 
 them have lost all of their significance. When. 
 
 UN1VERSPY Or CALIFORNIA
 
 102 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 you tell a man the same tiling a hundred times 
 he may end by believing it, but he will cer- 
 tainly -be bored to death by it. 
 
 The reception that we had at Nizni-Novgo- 
 rod surpassed any that we had seen yet. 
 Thousands of troops were massed in the sta- 
 tion with their flags and brass bands, and we 
 were almost deafened by the tumult of cheers 
 and music. The station was a mass of red 
 bunting, and so were the automobiles which 
 took us to a hotel dining-room where break- 
 fast was awaiting us. It was a plentiful meal, 
 for almost everything that one could imagine 
 eating at that time of the morning was on the 
 table. Afterwards reporters from the news- 
 papers obtained interviews with us, and in 
 this case mine was entirely satisfactory, for 
 I knew that if I said anything that they did 
 not like it would be censored before it ap- 
 peared in print. Later we were driven about 
 the city, and at noon reviewed a military pa- 
 rade in our honor, which included regiments 
 of cavalry and artillery. 
 
 Nizni-Novgorod is built upon a hill and is 
 one of the most beautiful cities in Russia.
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 103 
 
 It spreads ont on both sides of the Volga, 
 which is crossed by picturesque wooden 
 bridges. As I recalled the city, one of its 
 most interesting and busiest places used to 
 be the enormous open market in a wide 
 square, where innumerable objects were of- 
 fered for sale in the open or in the small 
 shops and passages along the sides. It was 
 once one of the largest markets in the world. 
 Now it is used by the Government as a ware- 
 house and is as dilapidated as everything 
 else is that was once prosperous in Russia. 
 The shop windows are smashed, the doors are 
 barred by rusty chains, and everywhere there 
 are soldiers with rifles on guard. The great 
 square is desolate and dirty. Indeed, the en- 
 tire business section of the city was in the 
 same condition as in Petrograd and Moscow. 
 Not a single store was open and there were 
 few people on the streets. I spoke to one or 
 two who were passing along what was for- 
 merly the most important street of the city, 
 but they looked at me in a frightened way 
 and hurried away without answering. 
 
 After the parade we dined with several
 
 104 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 members of the city administration and other 
 prominent Communists. Again the tables were 
 loaded with food, as if to prove that the hun- 
 ger of Russia was a myth. In the evening we 
 went to the opera house, where in the inter- 
 missions between the opera and ballet the "In- 
 ternationale" was played so many times that 
 one of the delegates at my right was almost 
 overcome with boredom. Then there were 
 speeches, delivered by our friends the inter- 
 preters in our behalf, in which they expressed 
 for us our great joy at being present in Soviet 
 Russia, and our hope that our own people 
 would join Russia in the world revolution. It 
 was with a good deal of difficulty that I wa3 
 able to keep my mind on what they were say- 
 ing so as to be able to interpret it to my wife, 
 for I had heard it all a great many times. 
 
 I was startled when these tiresome speeches 
 were greeted by loud and enthusiastic cheers 
 from all the soldiers present. Later on I 
 discovered that the enthusiasm which our pres- 
 ence met with everywhere on the part of the 
 soldiers was simply a matter of routine orders. 
 The officers had ordered them to chee^ and
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 105 
 
 they were simply obeying their commands. 
 Our visit to Nizni-Novgorod and down the 
 Volga was really a matter of propaganda. 
 It was intended that we should be impressed 
 by the outbursts that greeted our arrival 
 everywhere, and the people, on the other hand, 
 were to be assured through us that the work- 
 ers of the rest of the world were unanimously 
 supporting the Bolshevist Government. In- 
 deed, to a foreigner who could not understand 
 Russian, and so look behind the scenes, it 
 might very well have seemed that all that we 
 saw of Russia was unitedly in support of the 
 Communist rule. 
 
 On the next day we left the city and 
 boarded the river steamer which was to take 
 us down the Volga as far as Saratov. Day 
 after day we slid along the green banks of 
 "Mother Volga." But it was a different river 
 from the one that I had known in the old 
 days. Gone were all but a few of the count- 
 less small steamers and barges and rafts that 
 used to carry the traffic of the great fertile 
 plain where a great quantity of the grain for 
 exporting to Europe was grown. Most of the
 
 106 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 wharves that used to be piled with the prod- 
 ucts of the farms and with manufactured 
 goods from the cities had the appearance of 
 being deserted. This great river thorough- 
 fare that flows through the center of Russia 
 has suffered the same fate as the railroads. 
 When we stopped for wood at some of the 
 smaller villages, the peasants looked at us 
 sullenly. 
 
 At every one of the larger towns where 
 we stopped, we were received in the same 
 manner. Parades of troops and working- 
 men; mass meetings in local theatres where 
 speeches were made for us by Losovsky and 
 Madame Balabanova; band concerts and din- 
 ners. Sometimes it was relieved by the pre- 
 sentation of gifts to the delegates. "We re- 
 ceived boots, shirts of local manufacture, Rus- 
 sian belts and new samovars, and our cabins 
 were loaded down with spoil. Comrade Lo- 
 sovsky was the keeper of the treasury, and 
 we were informed that if we needed Soviet 
 money he would give us all we wanted, and 
 square it with his department of the Govern- 
 ment by adding it in with his expense account.
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 107 
 
 Personally, I did not make use of this ex- 
 traordinary generosity, but most of the other 
 delegates filled their pockets with paper rou- 
 bles whenever they wanted them. After we 
 had stopped at half a dozen towns, it occurred 
 to me that our expedition was not unlike a 
 vaudeville troupe doing the rounds of the 
 Chautauquas in the United States, with Losov- 
 sky as our manager and Madame Balabanova 
 as our press agent. 
 
 Simbiersk, where Nikolai Lenin was born, 
 outdid all the others in our honor. We ar- 
 rived there on a very hot day in the middle 
 of July, and after we had been serenaded by 
 brass bands and had been given a huge lunch- 
 eon on board the boat, most of the delegates 
 were taken by motor car to see the city. My 
 wife and I, however, deserted the sightseeing 
 party and walked to the little bazaar of the 
 town. As we made our way up the sandy and 
 dusty hill which led from the river bank, we 
 passed two young women seated on a pile of 
 heavy timber by the roadside. My wife called 
 my attention to them because they were so
 
 108 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 ragged in appearance and because one of them 
 looked so ill. 
 
 "Good-day, sister," I said. 
 
 "Good-day, sir," one of them answered. 
 "Are you one of the foreign delegates from 
 Moscow?" 
 
 I told her that we had come from America, 
 and the other girl asked my wife in a weak 
 voice if we had any bread that we could sell. 
 
 I answered for her that I would be glad to 
 give her some money so that she could buy 
 some. 
 
 "We don't want money," she said. "My 
 sister and I have a little ourselves. But we 
 have not been able to find any bread for sale 
 this morning. We have got to walk home and 
 we are very hungry." 
 
 I translated what she said to my wife, who 
 was greatly distressed and urged me to go 
 back to the boat and bring them something to 
 eat. So I rushed down the hill again and into 
 the boat dining-room to get a package of 
 bread, and brought it back to them. 
 
 The sick girl fell on her knees to thank my 
 wife, and both of them began to eat the coarse,
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 109 
 
 black bread like hungry wolves. Mrs. Schwartz 
 was so distressed that she could not watch 
 them, and walked up the hill with me, crying. 
 
 As there was nothing to be seen in the 
 bazaar, since it was as deserted as all the 
 others that we had visited, a useless monument 
 to former prosperity, we turned back toward 
 the boat, and almost at the bottom of the hill 
 saw a group of people standing around a dead 
 horse. Sitting on the ground by the horse's 
 head, was the driver, a bearded peasant. He 
 was crying bitterly, like a child who has 
 broken his toy. Several of my companions 
 from the boat were laughing at him, for there 
 was something ludicrous in the sight of a 
 husky peasant shedding tears for a raw-boned 
 horse to whom death had brought a happy 
 release from his sufferings. 
 
 "I wonder if he would cry that way if his 
 mother-in-law died?" I heard one of the dele- 
 gates say in English. 
 
 They turned back to go to the boat. I told 
 my wife, who was always so warm-hearted 
 that the sight of suffering or grief made her 
 unhappy, to go back to the boat with them.
 
 110 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Finally the poor devil of a carter stopped 
 his sobs and picked up a rock from the road- 
 side. With this and with a clumsy piece of 
 iron he tried desperately to tear off one of 
 the horseshoes from the dead animal. I put 
 my hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "Comrade," I said, "yon can't take off the 
 shoes with that kind of a tool. They are of 
 no use to you anyhow.'* 
 
 The poor creature looked up at me. "I can 
 get a thousand roubles for them, and I haven't 
 a kopeck to my name," and he started in again 
 to try to wrench off one of the shoes. 
 
 "Leave that alone," I said. "I will give 
 you the thousand roubles myself. Was it your 
 horse!" 
 
 "It was all that I had in the world," he 
 said bitterly, "and without him I will starve. 
 I haven't even any boots any longer. I sold 
 them yesterday to buy feed for him, and now 
 I have got the feed and no horse and no boots 
 for next winter. Is it any wonder that I cry 
 about it!" 
 
 "How much did you get for your boots!" 
 I asked.
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 111 
 
 "Fifty thousand roubles." 
 
 I dug into my pocket and took out a few 
 pieces of paper. "Here yon are," I said. 
 "Don't worry any more about it." 
 
 The man looked at me with a dazed and 
 frightened expression, as if he thought I had 
 suddenly gone mad. 
 
 "Who are you!" he said, "and where do 
 you get so much money that you can give it 
 away to a stranger!" 
 
 I told him that I had come from America, 
 and that fifty thousand roubles in the money 
 of my country was worth only ten roubles of 
 the old Russian money before the revolution. 
 
 The man stuffed my money into his pocket 
 and burst out into loud exclamations of joy. 
 I regretted that my friends from the boat who 
 had laughed at him, had not stayed, for I 
 should like to have told them how terrible a 
 catastrophe the loss of his horse had been to 
 this poor man. Doubtless, when they return 
 to their own countries they will write that 
 the Russian people are so sentimental and 
 have so great a love for their horses that they 
 bury them with tears.
 
 112 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I took the carter, still dazed with the good 
 fortune that had befallen him, back to the 
 town to a restaurant controlled by the Govern- 
 ment, where free meals are served to govern- 
 ment workers, but where anyone could buy 
 food with Soviet roubles. I asked two or 
 three hungry-looking men, who were standing 
 at the door of the restaurant as if they hoped 
 to satisfy themselves by the smell of food, to 
 have something to eat with us. "Without a 
 word they fell in line behind me, where we 
 waited our turn, for the restaurant was run 
 on the system of a cafeteria. 
 
 I had to put up a deposit for all the dishes 
 and the utensils used; 100 roubles for each 
 spoon, cup or dish, and even 50 roubles for 
 the bottles in which lemonade is served. I 
 was given a round badge with a number on 
 it, and when we filed out again the deposit 
 money was returned to me. The commonest 
 objects had become of such great value, that 
 the owner of a restaurant could not run the 
 risk of having them stolen. 
 
 At last we were served with a bowl of 
 "kasha, some strange soup, the smell of which
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 113 
 
 was so offensive that it completely took away 
 my appetite, black bread and a glass of weak 
 tea. My companions, however, seemed to en- 
 joy it enormously, and had not the slightest 
 reluctance to finish everything that I had left. 
 
 I had taken off my delegate's badge because 
 I did not want to excite too much curiosity, 
 and we sat at the table for over an hour while 
 they told me of their increasingly difficult 
 struggles to find work enough to keep them 
 alive, and the final result was that I gave 
 away almost all the money that I had with 
 me. I realized that it was useless charity, for 
 it would serve them for only a few days. But 
 it was impossible to resist my desire to re- 
 lieve their distress even for a short time. 
 
 All of them were violent anti-Bolshevists, 
 and they believed in some vague way that the 
 people of America, which they thought of as 
 a land where everyone was fabulously rich, 
 would be able to help them, if they could be 
 told of the desperate condition of Eussia. 
 
 They told me that at night their houses 
 were constantly broken into by Communist 
 agents, who searched them from cellar to
 
 114 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 garret. If they found that any one ownec! 
 more than a single suit of clothes, or one pair 
 of boots, they would be taken from him. Forty 
 thousand roubles was the limit of the amount 
 of money they were allowed to have, and they 
 were forbidden to own any jewelry, gold 
 watches or gold wedding rings, or foreign 
 money of any sort. Often it ended in a figh f 
 between the soldiers and the occupants of the 
 house who were searched, which usually re- 
 sulted in one or two people being shot while 
 the rest were taken away to jail. In other 
 words, the city government deprived every 
 man who was not a Communist, of absolutely 
 everything of value, leaving him and his fam- 
 ily only enough clothing to cover their naked- 
 ness and enough money to buy food for five 
 or six days. 
 
 It struck me that the Soviet Government 
 was the most remarkable institution in the 
 world, since it assured the masses not of pros- 
 perity, but of poverty, abject, hopeless pov- 
 erty. They can look forward to no more than 
 two or three days of security; the poverty 
 that means utter destitution and in which
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 115 
 
 starvation follows directly on the heels of 
 sickness or temporary incapacity to work. 
 Under the conditions of today there is no 
 future for the people who live in the cities of 
 Russia. The peasant is certain that the fertile 
 earth will bring him food for the next year, 
 providing soldiers from the cities do not rob 
 him of his stores; he does not need money. 
 But the city dweller, since he can save noth- 
 ing, is every day faced with disaster. Death 
 is his only relief from the greatest fear of 
 man, the fear of hunger. 
 
 As we were leaving the restaurant, it oc- 
 curred to me that it would be interesting to 
 know the other side of the story, if there was 
 one, so I asked one of the waiters if I could 
 see the manager of the restaurant. 
 
 "You will find him upstairs," he said. "Go 
 up and knock at the first door." 
 
 I did so and found two men, who were ob- 
 viously of the better class, sitting at a long 
 table drinking tea. 
 
 "Good-day, comrades," I said, "I am one 
 of the delegates to the Third International, 
 and have just come in on their steamer."
 
 116 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "What do you think of the country?" the 
 older man asked. "You seem to be a Russian, 
 so I suppose that you knew it in the old 
 days." 
 
 I told him that I had been in Russia only 
 a short time. 
 
 "It isn't necessary to go far," he said. 
 ""We are just as cheerful and contented in 
 Simbiersk as they are in Moscow. You dele- 
 gates are lucky people," he went on. "I sup- 
 pose that the Government has even allowed 
 you to keep a watch on the end of your chain. 
 They took mine long ago, chain and all." 
 
 It was easy to see that the man was not a 
 Bolshevist. I asked him to tell me about his 
 work, and apparently he was willing to be- 
 lieve me when I told him that I was not a 
 Communist myself. 
 
 "I hold a very distinguished position," he 
 said. "I am the manager of this restaurant. 
 My friend here is in my employ, and when 
 you came in I was trying to get him to change 
 places with me. I want him to be the manager 
 of the restaurant, and I will be delighted to 
 be his assistant."
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 117 
 
 I turned to the other man. "Why don't 
 you take his job?" I asked. "It sounds like 
 a good chance." 
 
 "Not me!" he said. "I am not looking for 
 any more trouble than I have got. Why 
 should I take all that responsibility for a 
 pound of bread a day and two horrible meals. 
 If anything goes wrong I don't want to be 
 the one to blame." 
 
 "But don't you have more privileges?" I 
 asked the manager. 
 
 "I have more responsibility and probably 
 less food than he has," he said. "He has 
 regular hours and I have to stay here until 
 all hours looking after the accounts and pre- 
 paring for the next day. If anything is stolen 
 I suffer for it. It is a great life, my friend. 
 Once I had everything; now I have nothing." 
 
 I asked him if he spoke any other language 
 besides Kussian, because he had explained 
 that he had been one of the wealthy, educated 
 class in the old days. 
 
 "Yes, I speak German and French, but it 
 is absolutely of no use to me now. The man 
 who speaks the language of the people, the
 
 118 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 ordinary, ignorant workman before the revo- 
 lution^ is now my master. An intelligent man, 
 whose education should make him of some use, 
 can barely make a living. I am more fortu- 
 nate than most of them." 
 
 He suddenly changed the subject. 
 
 "Have you ever seen government coffee?" 
 he asked. 
 
 I told him that we used to get it in Moscow. 
 
 "Well," he said, "this is the sort of stuff 
 I have to serve here. It is not quite what you 
 delegates have been getting." He took some 
 of it out of a box and showed me a queer, 
 dark substance. It was unlike anything that 
 I had ever seen before. 
 
 "You have been talking freely with me," I 
 said. "Aren't you afraid that I have been 
 spying on you and will report you to head- 
 quarters?" 
 
 "I will tell you something, my friend," he 
 replied, earnestly. "You see in me a man 
 who has not the courage to commit suicide. 
 I tell you honestly, if after you leave I am 
 arrested and shot in front of a wall, I will 
 be thankful to you for what you have done
 
 COMMUNISM ALONG THE VOLGA 119 
 
 for me, for I am sick of the life I have to 
 lead. Imagine what it was like last winter. 
 It was six below zero sometimes in my bed- 
 room, and my blankets and pillows had been 
 taken away. I covered myself with rags and 
 old clothes. My whole family, four or five of 
 us, slept together in one bed, so that the heat 
 of our bodies might keep ns alive. We had 
 just enough fuel to use for cooking. For 
 weeks at a time none of us washed. When 
 the first warm day came, I tell you that I 
 could hardly believe that we lived through it 
 and were still alive. It is August now; in 
 October the cold weather comes again. The 
 winter lasts for six months. Go ahead and 
 report me, my friend, if you want to." 
 
 "If Trotsky came in here," he went on with 
 a smile, "I think I would tell him the same 
 thing. We have lost everything and we have 
 nothing to gain by going on living. You can 
 tell your friends in America that you have met 
 a man in Russia who would be glad to die if 
 he could. And tell them that there are a 
 million others like me." 
 
 I thanked him as best I could for his con-
 
 120 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 fidence, and after shaking hands with both of 
 them, went back to the boat, where I fonnd 
 Mrs. Schwartz was greatly worried about my 
 absence. I told her everything that happened, 
 and as all the rest of the party were on board, 
 we left Simbiersk in a few minutes and headed 
 down the river again.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 WE VISIT TULA AND TOLSTOI *S HOME 
 
 OAMARA was the next important city that 
 ^ we reached. We had been told a good 
 deal about the government colony for chil- 
 dren that had been started just outside the 
 city, and after we had been motored about 
 Samara, which lies three miles from the river 
 bank, we were taken there to inspect the 
 school. It had once been the country place 
 of a wealthy nobleman, and we found a plen- 
 tiful dinner waiting for us in the dining-room, 
 with the unusual dessert of strawberries and 
 ice-cream as its climax. 
 
 Later we were taken to one of the reception 
 rooms, where we were addressed in schoolboy 
 fashion by a neatly dressed boy, with a big 
 red ribbon on his shoulder, who seemed about 
 thirteen. His speech, which he rattled off 
 with great fluency and with many gestures, 
 was interpreted to us by Madame Balabanova. 
 
 121
 
 122 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 It had been so obviously written for him by 
 one of the masters and was so unlike any- 
 thing that a boy might say under the circum- 
 stances, that it deserves to be quoted. 
 
 "I am very glad," he said, "that I have 
 had this chance to speak to the world dele- 
 gates of the Third International. I want you 
 to know how well the Soviet Government 
 treats us here. "We have a beautiful place 
 to live in and have fine clothes and excellent 
 food, and our education here is given to us 
 free. Long live the Soviet Government ! Long 
 live the Third International! Long live the 
 Proletariat of the World!" 
 
 Of course we cheered the boy, and he fol- 
 lowed this by speaking to the British dele- 
 gates in broken English. 
 
 "Under the old government we were slaves," 
 he exclaimed this time. "We had no school, 
 and we had to work in the factories. Our 
 fathers and mothers were slaves. Now we 
 have liberty and we will devote our lives to 
 Soviet Russia. Long live the revolution!" 
 
 We cheered him again, but he did not seem 
 to be at all flustered. He bowed to us, and
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 123 
 
 departed as coolly as a trained orator, waving 
 a red flag which he carried at the end of a 
 stick. 
 
 We were then shown over the grounds of 
 the school, which were kept in good order. 
 Madame Balabanova used it as the text for a 
 speech to the delegates, not mentioning, how- 
 ever, that a capitalist had been responsible 
 for the beauty of the place, and that there 
 was room for a great many more than sev- 
 enty-five pupils there, while in the city of 
 Samara we had seen hundreds of sickly and 
 pale children in the streets. 
 
 We went back to one of the classrooms, 
 where one of the teachers explained that they 
 had introduced self-government by the pupils 
 under the supervision of the teachers. IFhey 
 are given instruction in organization work and 
 appoint committees and officers for every de- 
 partment of school life. The question of re- 
 ligion is apparently never brought into their 
 lives. Communism takes the place of religion, 
 and the teachers must be sincere Communists 
 to hold their positions. 
 
 The walls of the classrooms are hung with
 
 124 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 portraits of revolutionists and of the martyrs 
 who had fallen for the cause. Many of them 
 were copies of those I had seen in the Moscow 
 school we had visited. I asked a number of 
 children whether they had heard of George 
 Washington. "When none of them replied, I 
 asked them if they had heard of Woodrow 
 "Wilson. A few children raised their hands. 
 
 "Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was?'* 
 I asked. 
 
 One boy answered, "Yes, I know about 
 Abraham Lincoln. He is your father, isn't 
 hef You look like him." 
 
 I laughed and said, "You are a good boy. 
 Here is a thousand roubles for that compli- 
 ment. I am glad yon think I resemble him." 
 
 I questioned them about Lenin and all of 
 them raised their hands. Trotsky and Karl 
 Marx brought the same result; but none of 
 them had heard of Eugene V. Debs. Later, 
 one small girl said that she had heard of 
 Teddy Roosevelt, and Tolstoi was familiar to 
 all of them. 
 
 In the small towns and villages the schools 
 are little wooden shacks. The only outward
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 125 
 
 change from the old days is that there is a 
 red flag flying from a big pole in front. The 
 teachers do not seem to be very strict with 
 the children, and there is less division be- 
 tween the boys and girls than at any other 
 school that I have ever seen. Discipline is 
 very lax, and from the confusion that reigns 
 in the classrooms there does not seem to be 
 very much respect for the teachers. Once as 
 I watched the children playing in a school- 
 yard I saw one of the boys slapping a girl's 
 face until she cried, and the teacher who stood 
 nearby did not seem to take any notice of it. 
 A woman of the neighborhood told me that 
 they wanted her to go to school also, but that 
 she was forty years old and had gotten along 
 very well without knowing how to read or 
 write, so that she had refused after one or 
 two trials. 
 
 "They made me sing the 'Internationale' 
 until it almost made me sick. All of that 
 nonsense is of no use to me; what I want is 
 food and clothes." 
 
 A few days after we had left Samara, a 
 holiday was declared to break the monotony
 
 126 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 of the trip. The steamer stopped in the mid- 
 dle of the river and we pnt out in small boats- 
 and went in swimming. Several of ns crossed 
 over to the other side of the Volga and bathed 
 from the shore. Afterward we lay on the 
 sand discussing the various phases of our trip 
 as well as we could, for we had no interpreter 
 with us. But the scenery was so beautiful, 
 with the blue sky and trees and the green, 
 sloping fields, that it was difficult to argue 
 seriously about anything. These woods and 
 meadows had been the same when Ivan the 
 Terrible ruled in Moscow. 
 
 After we had dressed, I walked along the 
 bank and saw two women walking across the 
 fields toward the river. A heavy timber raft 
 which served as a ferry was just ahead of me. 
 It was a primitive affair, on which passengers 
 and carts are pulled across the Volga by 
 means of a chain which is connected to both 
 banks. The river is about half a mile wide 
 at this point, and the passengers themselves 
 furnish their own motive power in pulling the 
 chain. 
 
 I explained to the two women that I had
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 127 
 
 come from America to find out as mnch as I 
 could about Kussia. 
 
 "Won't you tell me how you manage to 
 make ends meet in these days?" I asked. 
 
 At first they did not answer and seemed 
 frightened at my questions, but the older one 
 finally said, "We get on about as well as any- 
 body else. We live in a town two or three 
 miles back and have to work hard to get 
 enough to eat, and we have no clothes except 
 what we are wearing. We have just come 
 from work, loading wagons with bags of salt. 
 We do that for four hours, then go home to 
 take care of our children for two hours, and 
 after that go back to work again." 
 
 "But I was told that there is very little salt 
 in the country," I said. 
 
 "There is plenty of it here," she answered. 
 "Do you want to buy any? I can sell you 
 a pound or two, if you want it." 
 
 "Does the Government allow you to sell 
 it?" I asked. 
 
 "No, but we have a little, and we will sell 
 it to you if you want to buy it." 
 
 I did not see that either of them had any
 
 128 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 salt with them. They had light dresses and 
 were barefooted and bareheaded. I told her 
 I would be glad to buy all she had. The 
 woman asked me for my coat to put the salt 
 in, but I gave her a newspaper and watched 
 her curiously when she spread it on the 
 ground, loosened her belt and stood over it, 
 shaking herself vigorously. The salt rattled 
 down on the paper. She bundled it up with- 
 out a word and gave it to me. 
 
 "What is it worth?" I asked. 
 
 "About five thousand roubles a pound," she 
 answered. 
 
 I gave her twice as much as she had asked, 
 and tears of gratitude came into her eyes. 
 She divided the money that I had given her 
 with the other woman, and thanking me again, 
 they hurried down to the raft which was about 
 to leave. I kept the salt in my pocket, and 
 during the months that I spent in prison later, 
 I was very glad that I had it. 
 
 We had been on the Volga for fifteen days, 
 and some of the most interesting of my expe- 
 riences were the result of deserting the official 
 expeditions to visit nearby villages. The
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 129 
 
 others were helplessly tied to the interpreters, 
 for I was the only one of the entire group of 
 twenty-eight delegates who conld speak Rus- 
 sian. Some of them were very prominent 
 men, and I am sure that they realized that 
 there was another side to the story than the 
 one which was being impressed upon them by 
 the Government. In the capital it was pos- 
 sible to find many who spoke foreign lan- 
 guages, especially French, but in these towns 
 along the Volga they were utterly lost with- 
 out Losovsky or Madame Balabanova. 
 
 It was strange to see these men having to 
 accept as true everything they were told 
 such men as Quelch and McLaine of England; 
 the famous Italians, Serrati and Bombacci; 
 Cachin, the editor of the great Paris journal, 
 "Humanite," and Sadoul, a former French 
 officer who had been sent to Russia to inves- 
 tigate Bolshevism for the French Government 
 and who had become a Communist and the 
 organizer of their spy system. It was like 
 sending a deaf and dumb man to investigate 
 the conditions of life in a country that was 
 totally unfamiliar to him.
 
 130 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Several times I took a droshky to the near- 
 est village, while my companions were attend- 
 ing celebrations that had been carefully pre- 
 pared in advance, and listening to speeches of 
 welcome that were nearly always alike. Ar- 
 riving in a village, I would ask the first man 
 I met to notify his neighbors that I had come 
 from America and wanted to tell them of con- 
 ditions outside of Eussia, and to ask them 
 questions about the country. Generally I was 
 taken to the largest house in the village, and 
 in about twenty minutes the living-room would 
 be packed to suffocation with curious people. 
 In another half hour the crowd usually be- 
 came so dense outside of the house that I had 
 to repeat the proceedings in the open air. 
 
 There had been less rain than usual that 
 summer, and I found that the peasants were 
 greatly worried about the condition of their 
 crops. As everyone knows, the peasants all 
 over Eussia are sowing only enough for their 
 immediate needs, for nearly all of the villages 
 near the great cities had been raided time and 
 time again by soldiers, who either took their 
 products without payment or paid them in al-
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 131 
 
 most worthless paper money. Consequently, 
 all of them expressed the greatest hostility 
 toward the Government, though I could not 
 see that it would lead, at least in that section 
 of the country, to any action on their part. 
 They did not seem to be greatly interested in 
 the politics of the moment. The revolution 
 has secured for them what they have been 
 looking for all their lives the distribution of 
 the estates and farms of the old land holders. 
 Now they want to be left alone to raise their 
 crops in peace. To the majority of them, I 
 do not think that it greatly matters whether 
 Russia is ruled by a Czar or by a Communist 
 Government, though they are in desperate 
 need of every kind of manufactured goods, 
 from farm implements to kitchen utensils and 
 clothing. Almost everything that was perish- 
 able has been used up and must be replaced. 
 Without it the peasant villages of Russia are 
 slowly drifting back to the primitive life of 
 centuries ago, where everything that is used 
 must be laboriously made by hand. But no 
 matter how long it takes for Russia to re- 
 establish herself, even though the cities fall
 
 132 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 into complete barbarism, the country will still 
 live through the peasantry, who form nine- 
 tenths of the population, for their fields are 
 fertile enough to feed not only themselves but 
 the entire continent of Europe. 
 
 Below Samara the Volga bends westward, 
 and is crossed by the main line that runs 
 from Siberia to Moscow and Petrograd. At 
 this junction a train was waiting to take ns 
 to Tula, where one of the government arsenals 
 is situated. We arrived at that city after a 
 long trip of almost four hundred miles, early 
 in the morning, and were met with the usual 
 enthusiastic reception from the soldiers, who 
 had been waiting for us since midnight. "We 
 went to the factory, where it was said over 
 ten thousand people were engaged in making 
 rifles and machine guns. The workers were 
 massed together in the yard outside the fac- 
 tory, where a platform had been erected for 
 the usual addresses. Together, they were not 
 unlike the workers from any great factory in 
 America or Europe, but individually, many 
 of them seemed to me to be pale and worried 
 and lifeless, with expressions that seemed
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 133 
 
 almost stupid, due, I suppose, not only to the 
 monotony of their work, 'but to their insuffi- 
 cient food and to the bad conditions in their 
 homes. 
 
 The delegates addressed them from the plat- 
 form, and the speeches were interpreted as 
 usual by Losovsky and Madame Balabanova. 
 None of the workers spoke, but stood packed 
 together listening dumbly to what these stran- 
 gers from another world had to tell of their 
 enthusiasm for Communist rule. One of the 
 Bolshevist Commissars in charge of the fac- 
 tory answered us in Eussian, and his speech 
 was in turn translated into English, French 
 and German for our benefit. Altogether, I 
 am sure that our friends below found it a 
 very dull performance indeed. The remarks 
 of this man deserve to be quoted. 
 
 "I want you to tell the workingmen of the 
 rest of the world," he exclaimed, "that we 
 are making two thousand rifles a day in this 
 arsenal, and that we will keep on making them 
 until bloody revolution has spread all over 
 the world. We will not stop until then. The 
 workingmen of Eussia are united not only in
 
 134 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 this factory, but in all the factories of tl 1 ^ 
 country, and it will not be long before you 
 have a Soviet Government in America, ir. 
 France and in England. We have been your 
 example and you can depend on us for sup- 
 port." 
 
 This war-like speech closed the proceedings, 
 and we filed out again through the silent 
 crowd. "VVe returned to the city, where I later 
 found out from a newspaper man that there 
 had recently been a serious strike in the arse- 
 nal for higher wages and more bread, but its 
 purpose was to create a general strike in other 
 cities with the idea of paralyzing and even- 
 tually overthrowing the Communist Govern- 
 ment. The plot was detected by government 
 spies employed in the factory, and the lead- 
 ers had been arrested and shot within forty- 
 eight hours. Naturally, the strike had stopped, 
 though the feelings of the workingmen who 
 were sent back to the shops the next day 
 under heavy guard can be well imagined. This 
 was reason enough for their almost hostile 
 attitude toward us that afternoon, and it ex- 
 plained why one of the workmen, an older
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 135 
 
 man with a gray beard, had refused to shake 
 hands with me as I passed him. You cannot 
 expect workmen to show enthusiasm for a gov- 
 ernment that forbids strikes and shoots their 
 leaders in cold blood. 
 
 When some of the delegates heard that Tol- 
 stoi's family lived only seven or eight miles 
 from Tula, we unanimously decided that we 
 ought to pay a visit to his home. Madame 
 Balabanova, however, objected, presumably 
 because the Soviet Government had not treated 
 them well and because it was known that Tol- 
 stoi's elder daughter, Madame Sukotina, who 
 lived at home, was decidedly opposed to Com- 
 munism. I managed to get a number of dele- 
 gates to insist on seeing the place, whereupon 
 our guardians told us that it was impossible 
 because all the automobiles were in use at the 
 front, and the few that were left were broken 
 down. The reader understands, of course, 
 that the only automobiles in use in Kussia 
 are in the service of the Government. We 
 managed, however, to get hold of a motor 
 truck which was used by the army, and a
 
 136 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 score of us started ont the next morning, 
 although we had to stand up all the way. 
 
 At last we came to the small white, two- 
 story country house, in which Russia's great- 
 est man spent most of his days. It lies about 
 a quarter of a mile away from the village of 
 Yasnaya Polyana, and beyond it there is a 
 small lake where Tolstoi drifted about in -his 
 boat. At the back of the house are .the stables 
 and a cottage for the servants. We found Ma- 
 dame Sukotina and her daughter, who had no 
 idea that we were coming, at lunch in the 
 sunny dining-room. She asked me to tell the 
 others that she regretted that she could not 
 invite us to dine with them, as she would have 
 done in the old days, but we must understand 
 that they were fortunate to be able to have 
 enough for themselves. I replied that we had 
 only come for a friendly visit, and io take this 
 opportunity to pay our respects to the grave 
 of her father. Presently we started out. I 
 walked with her daughter, a beautiful young 
 girl of about thirteen, who spoke French and 
 German fluently, as well as Russian, while 
 her mother spoke in French to the delegates.
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 137 
 
 My young companion told me that the Red 
 soldiers had come there not long ago and had 
 tried to take away the home where she and 
 her grandfather before her had been born, but 
 her mother had protested and sent word to 
 Lenin. 
 
 "Finally," she said, "they gave us back the 
 house, but not the land. They have allowed 
 us to keep some of our servants who did not 
 want to go away, but everything that is grown 
 on the estate is taken by the Government, and 
 we have to get our food from them like every- 
 one else." 
 
 I asked about what the people in the vil- 
 lage thought about the Bolshevists. 
 
 "If they treat the family of Count Tolstoi 
 in this way," she answered, "I can imagine 
 what they do to others who have no claim on 
 their sympathies. But you ought to go and 
 talk to them yourself." 
 
 Finally, we came to a clump of four immense 
 trees at the edge of a little wood, and in the 
 center was the grave of the great old Eussian 
 who had died of a broken heart. His daugh-
 
 138 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 ter told us why he had been buried in that 
 spot. 
 
 "When father was a young boy, he had a 
 cousin with whom he used to play. One, day 
 he said, 'Let both of us write something on a 
 stick and bury it here. "\Vhen one of us dies 
 the other, who will find this message, will try 
 to live up to it for the rest of his life.' My 
 father had written * Believe in the truth,' and 
 later he expressed a wish to be buried between 
 these trees. " 
 
 Madame Sukotina told us many other things 
 about Tolstoi's life; that he used to have his 
 regular h'ours for visitors, for writing and for 
 working, and for reading the Bible, which he 
 did constantly. Later she showed us his bed- 
 room exactly as it had been left when he last 
 slept there. Even the clock had never been 
 wound up again. The room was very plainly 
 furnished, with a wash-stand, a picture, two 
 chairs and a small bed. 
 
 Then we were taken up to his private study. 
 Here were many portraits and photographs of 
 himself when he was an army officer, and 
 others of dozens of writers from all over the
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 139 
 
 world. We also visited his library where 
 there were hundreds of books which Tolstoi's 
 daughter informed us were never dusted. 
 "Father used to read them constantly," she 
 said. 
 
 Afterwards we walked out in the grounds 
 and sat down on the grass. Tolstoi's daughter 
 asked me when I intended to return to Amer- 
 ica, and when I answered that I would leave 
 as soon as the meetings of the Third Inter- 
 national were over, she urged me to take a 
 letter addressed to her brother, with me. Un- 
 fortunately, it was found among my papers 
 when I was arrested, and I have always sin- 
 cerely hoped that there was nothing in it 
 which would injure her in any way in the 
 eyes of the authorities. She walked out to 
 the motor truck which was ready to take us 
 back, with my wife, who was the only woman 
 in the party, and told her the distressing 
 moral conditions in the little village, the roofs 
 of which we could see in the distance. It 
 seems that the new ideas had altered the old 
 ideas of the peasantry. They were fast losing 
 their belief in religion, and the effect was
 
 140 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 most marked on the conduct of the girls and 
 young women in the villages. 
 
 On our way back, as the truck was bumping 
 along a rough, narrow road, we had to pass 
 a peasant and his wife who were driving in 
 the opposite direction. Their horse took 
 fright and dashed by us, overturning the cart 
 and throwing the occupants onto the road. 
 The driver of the truck did not even look 
 back, but plowed ahead, refusing to stop. I 
 argued with him about it, but he growled out 
 that it didn't matter whether they were killed 
 or not, there were plenty more like them. In 
 the old Eussia, the man would have stopped to 
 rescue them as a matter of course, for the 
 Eussian is no more brutal than the average 
 man in any other country, but the ideals of 
 this new Eussia have made men callous to the 
 sufferings of others; human life has become 
 of little account. 
 
 "We left Tula in the evening. Another band 
 was waiting to serenade us outside of the 
 government dining hall, and during dinner, 
 Madame Balabanova delivered an address on 
 the splendid morality of the Eussian people
 
 / \
 
 WE VISIT TOLSTOI'S HOME 141 
 
 under the teachings of the Soviet Govern- 
 ment. What she said contrasted so violently 
 with what I myself had seen, and with what 
 Tolstoi's daughter told my wife, that a few 
 words about this extraordinary woman who 
 had accompanied us on our trip, will not be 
 out of place. 
 
 Madame Balabanova, as I have said, is an 
 excellent orator, and as a propagandist is of 
 great value to the Government. But her con- 
 duct on the trip was startling, to say the least, 
 when one considers that she had been chosen 
 by the Government to accompany the delegates 
 of so many foreign countries, whose good-will 
 was very necessary in spreading the ideas of 
 Communism abroad. During the warm days 
 of July, on the Volga, she wore a voluminous 
 red wrapper, most of the time on board the 
 boat, and went about in this garment without 
 shoes or stockings. On several occasions she 
 addressed the crowds of curious peasants and 
 town people crowded below us on the banks, 
 with this wrapper as her only covering. 
 
 Though she is a woman of about forty-five, 
 with thick lips and a heavy nose, she has an
 
 142 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 extraordinary air of vitality, which shows in 
 her small, piercing eyes. Partly due to the 
 fact that Italy was on the verge of an out- 
 break, Madame Balabanova was extremely at- 
 tentive to the Italian delegates. She spoke 
 Italian perfectly and had lived there for some 
 time. Indeed, her interest in them had become 
 so intimate, that after I had listened to her 
 remarks on the newly acquired virtue of the 
 Russian people under the influence of Com- 
 munist ideals, I was so astonished and dis- 
 gusted by her hypocrisy, that I left the dining 
 hall and did not return until she had finished. 
 On the following day we headed for Moscow 
 by train, stopping at several cities en route, 
 where the usual receptions, banquets and gala 
 performances at the local theatres were re- 
 peated.
 
 CHAPTER Vin 
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 
 
 TN Moscow it was rumored that the first 
 * meeting of the Third International was to 
 be held in Petrograd on the 19th of July, and 
 I spent the intervening time in going about 
 Moscow, as far as some of the villages on the 
 outskirts. One day I visited an army ware- 
 house, where enormous quantities of uniforms, 
 boots and other clothing were stored. I was 
 told that in Moscow, Petrograd and other 
 centers, there were enough supplies of food 
 stored up for the army for over two years. 
 Almost all of the productive energy of Kus- 
 sia is diverted to the army. 
 
 Our evenings were taken up with official 
 entertainments, and one night after we had 
 heard Shaliapin sing before an audience of 
 Government Commissars and delegates, and 
 were returning to the hotel at about three in 
 
 143
 
 144 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 the morning, for the concert had been followed 
 by a banquet, I noticed a woman sweeping the 
 streets, and was struck by the contrast with 
 that which we had just left, where we had 
 had the unusual luxuries of white bread, butter 
 and sugar, and even ice cream and wine and 
 candy. 
 
 I spoke to the woman, who kept on vigor- 
 ously raising the dust with her broom. 
 
 "I have got seven blocks to finish before 
 six o'clock," she explained, "and although 
 I am so tired, I don't dare to stop to rest. 
 My husband is sick, so I have to work at night 
 in order to take care of him in the day time." 
 
 "Do you get enough to eat!" I asked her. 
 
 "They only allow me half a pound of bread 
 a day, and we have sold everything we had 
 to get enough food to keep us alive. My pay 
 from the Government has to do for the whole 
 family since my husband cannot work. "We 
 have two children, too, and one of them will 
 be thirteen tomorrow." 
 
 "Can't your children help you?" I asked 
 her. 
 
 "They can't earn any wages until they are
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 145 
 
 sixteen," she said, "but they try to earn a 
 little by selling cigarettes on the street. I 
 can 't do anything with my girl any more. This 
 awful life has spoiled her and she is beginning 
 to run around with older men. It breaks my 
 heart, but she won't listen to me any longer." 
 
 I told her that if she would tell me where 
 she lived, I would get her something to eat 
 for her boy's birthday. She dropped her 
 broom in astonishment and asked me who I 
 was. 
 
 I told her that I was an American, and 
 agreed to meet her the following morning at 
 eleven o'clock at the same place, with food 
 enough for their dinner. 
 
 The poor woman cried when we left her. 
 "God bless you!" she exclaimed. 
 
 The next morning I made up a package of 
 bread, caviar, cheese, sugar and salt, and 
 found her waiting for me. My wife wanted 
 to give it to her with her own hands, and as 
 she did so, the poor woman fell on her knees 
 and kissed her shoes. She told me how ex- 
 cited her children were at the idea of having 
 a birthday dinner with enough to eat, and
 
 146 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 begged us to come and see them at her home 
 the following evening. 
 
 It was a miserable hovel, with a door so 
 low that I had to bend my head to enter. In- 
 side, the sick man was lying on a wooden box 
 covered with a straw mattress. A ragged 
 coat took the place of bed clothes. The chil- 
 dren were in the room, and the girl, a child 
 of about twelve, sat callously smoking a ciga- 
 rette, while her parents told me that they had 
 completely lost control of her and that she 
 stayed out till one or two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, refusing to tell them where she had been. 
 
 Her father was crippled by rheumatism, I 
 discovered. 
 
 "This is what the Communists have done 
 for us," he cried. "I was once the owner 
 of a hotel in Moscow, but they took that away 
 from me along with everything else. My 
 eldest son was killed in the war, and now I 
 am dying by degrees. God knows what will 
 happen to the rest of us. My wife can't live 
 through much more of this night work. Last 
 winter she used to come home every morning 
 half frozen and so exhausted that she could
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 147 
 
 hardly eat. What sort of life will my children 
 have when we are gone? My son will be a 
 common laborer, and my daughter is already 
 on the streets." 
 
 Mrs. Schwartz was so much moved by the 
 misery of this wretched family that she could 
 not endure it any longer, and after leaving 
 them some money we went out together with 
 a sigh of relief. 
 
 On the following day we were walking in 
 the park opposite the Imperial Theatre, and 
 I noticed that two well dressed men were dis- 
 cussing us. Finally, one of them stopped me 
 on the pretext of asking me for a match and 
 questioned me as to what we were doing in 
 Russia. 
 
 He told me that he was a Communist and 
 the Governor of a province. I had heard of 
 him before, but do not think it wise to use 
 his name. The Governor and his friend were 
 greatly interested in the conditions of Amer- 
 ica, so I told him as briefly as I could of the 
 position of the Socialists and of the Labor 
 movement when I left. 
 
 "Are you a Communist?" he asked, and in
 
 148 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 reply I told him that I had come to Russia 
 as a representative of the Socialist Party of 
 America. 
 
 "Do yon believe in the Communist Govern- 
 ment as you have seen it in Russia?" 
 
 "That is a pretty direct question to ask of 
 a stranger," I said, "and it is difficult to 
 answer it offhand." 
 
 "Well, if you are still doubtful as to what 
 Communism means, I will tell you. Let me 
 ask you if you believe in God?" 
 
 "I have never heard of a man being hung 
 for that," I answered. "Yes, I do. Are all 
 the Communists atheists?" 
 
 "Look here," he went on, "you are repre- 
 senting the Socialist Party from America, and 
 I want to ask you if you believe in a govern- 
 ment that does not allow you free speech, free 
 press and a free religion." 
 
 I was afraid to commit myself, so I said, 
 "Do you mean to tell me that the Soviet 
 Government means the opposite of that!" 
 
 He did not answer but pulled out from his 
 pocket a little chain with a cross attached. 
 "Look at this," he exclaimed. "My mother
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 149 
 
 gave me this when I was a little boy and told 
 me to wear it always. She is religious and 
 is greatly hurt because I never go to church 
 with her any longer. As a member of the 
 Communist Government I have to hide this 
 cross as if it were a crime, and I don't dare 
 be seen entering a church with her. It might 
 mean the end of my position and the end of 
 me. Do you think that is right?" 
 
 I refused to answer, and the Governor's 
 friend asked him why he insisted so strongly 
 on knowing what I thought. 
 
 "I want his answer," he insisted, and again 
 repeated, "Is that right?" 
 
 I suspected that the man was a spy; but 
 I admitted that it was both wrong and very 
 foolish if it was true. 
 
 "That is what Bolshevism is," he went on. 
 "They have broken up our lives, our church, 
 and I, who am the Governor of a province and 
 a Communist myself, do not hesitate to tell 
 you that." 
 
 "If that is the case, the Government will 
 have a hard road to travel," I replied, and 
 turned my back on him and walked away. I
 
 150 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 was afraid that it was a trap that had been 
 laid for me, for I felt certain that Madame 
 Balabanova had reported my lack of interest 
 in the official ceremonies on the trip and my 
 habit of investigating conditions personally. 
 Later, I became convinced that the man was 
 sincere, since Russia is full of extraordinary 
 contrasts. I do not doubt that there are many 
 men who are in high positions in the Bolshev- 
 ist Government who are bitterly opposed to 
 the methods Lenin uses in forcing it on the 
 country. 
 
 Coming back from this curious meeting, we 
 passed the building occupied by the Extraor- 
 dinary Commission, which literally holds the 
 life of every Russian in its hand, for it can 
 condemn a man to prison or to death without 
 publicity and without trial. Its spies are 
 everywhere, and the three men who are in 
 arbitrary control of the system are more feared 
 than was the Czar's Chief of Police before the 
 revolution. On the steps of the building I 
 saw a group of women surrounding a young 
 woman who was crying bitterly. A soldier 
 came up to them and asked them roughly to
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 151 
 
 move on, so I asked one of them what the 
 trouble was. 
 
 "You see the poor girl who is crying," she 
 answered. "She lives near me, and last night 
 her husband ran away from the camp where 
 he was stationed, about thirty miles from Mos- 
 cow. They had not been married for very 
 long. He came in about one o'clock, and at 
 three some one knocked, at the door. When 
 it was not opened immediately, soldiers broke 
 it in with their rifles, ordered him to dress, 
 searched the house and took him away with 
 them. This morning his wife tried to find 
 him at the prison, and then came here. One 
 of the Commissars told her that he had been 
 shot at dawn." 
 
 This is but one of the scattered incidents 
 that happen in the capital of Russia today un- 
 der the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 
 
 On another day I passed by a hospital which 
 received sick and wounded soldiers from the 
 front. One of the men told me that before 
 daybreak that morning, fifty men had been 
 shot in the yard at the back of one of the 
 buildings. The Government had suddenly ar-
 
 152 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 rested thirty-nine soldiers and eleven doctors 
 on the charge that the doctors had been receiv- 
 ing money from soldiers to declare them unfit 
 for service in the army, while the soldiers had 
 been shot for bribery. He said that one of 
 the men who had no money to free himself 
 from the army by this means had reported 
 this to the Extraordinary Commission, who 
 had arrested every one involved and had killed 
 them without trial on the following morning. 
 I asked several people if they knew anything 
 about this incident, and finally the street 
 sweeper, a woman, informed me that early in 
 the morning a truck had driven up to the 
 hospital and had been loaded with barrels. 
 She had been able to see into one of them, 
 which had been packed with dead bodies. 
 
 Everyone knows that these sudden and mys- 
 terious executions are carried out every day. 
 The Bolshevist official paper, the "Pravda," 
 admitted in July that in fifty-six days, eight 
 hundred people had been shot in Moscow 
 alone, a daily average of fifteen to sixteen 
 executions. Is it any wonder that the very 
 air of Moscow seems filled with suspicion and
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 153 
 
 fear ? A great part of the population is driven 
 by hunger to commit acts that are in direct 
 opposition to the theories on which the Com- 
 munist Government rests. Moscow is a ceme- 
 tery, a nest of every disease, where misery 
 and starvation stand behind every man who 
 is not one of the elect, and no man can ap- 
 peal to justice, for neither justice nor mercy 
 exist. 
 
 During one of these days while we were 
 waiting for the Third International to open 
 its session in Petrograd, we drove out to visit 
 Prince Peter Kropotkin, the famous old anar- 
 chist, who was perhaps one of Russia's great- 
 est men. He has died since then and he was 
 very old and weak when we saw him. He was 
 reclining in a big invalid's chair, dressed in 
 a morning coat. He coughed a good deal while 
 we were there, and I was certain that he 
 would not live long. We conversed in Eng- 
 lish, which he spoke as well as he did Russian. 
 
 Prince Kropotkin asked me not to quote 
 him while I was in Russia, and after I had 
 promised that I would not do so, he went on 
 to say that he had returned to his own country
 
 154 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 almost at the same time that Lenin came in 
 through Germany in March, 1917. 
 
 "AYhen I saw Lenin and the others who had 
 gathered around him," he said, "I knew that 
 my country would bleed under their manage- 
 ment ; and I was right. I knew that they would 
 bring misery and confusion with them. 
 
 "Now I am too old and sick to do anything 
 more for my people, but if I could live my life 
 over again I would fight Bolshevism to the 
 bitter end. It is now the duty of you who 
 are still safe from it to do your share. I have 
 done all I could do for humanity. That is all 
 I have to say." 
 
 After a long silence, he went on, "I am 
 sorry that I cannot offer you any hospitality, 
 but we have nothing in the house but tea 
 without sugar and a little bread and fish." 
 I thanked him and told him that we delegates 
 had more to eat than we wanted. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "it is not changed. One 
 man still gets four meals a day and another 
 one. That is not what those who came before 
 us gave their lives for. TVhen you return to 
 the United States, tell them what old Kropot-
 
 LIFE IN MOSCOW 155 
 
 kin said to you, and if you pass through Eng- 
 land, give that country my best wishes, for 
 I am very fond of England and the English 
 people." 
 
 There was another silence, and my wife, 
 who had been greatly impressed by what he 
 had said, nodded to me and we went out 
 together. 
 
 When we returned to Moscow, I found a 
 notice waiting for me at the hotel, to prepare 
 for the journey to Petrograd, since the con- 
 vention was to open immediately. We ex- 
 pected to leave on the next day, but it was 
 finally five days before word was sent us that 
 the train was ready. The other delegates were 
 waiting also, and were very much disturbed 
 by the delay. It was rumored that there had 
 been a general strike on the railroads which 
 had tied up all the trains and that the wires 
 were also down. 
 
 We finally left Moscow quietly, in auto- 
 mobiles that were separated from each other 
 by several blocks. I presume that they feared 
 that some demonstration might be made 
 against us. Several hundred delegates and
 
 156 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Commissars finally arrived at the almost de- 
 serted station, where we found the two special 
 trains decorated with red flags. The foreign 
 delegates and the Russian representatives 
 were placed in separate trains. After an un- 
 explained delay of several hours we started, 
 and did not stop until we arrived in Petro- 
 grad, although when we passed stations along 
 the route the train slowed down while the 
 soldiers who were lined up along the platform 
 cheered us.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL WE ARE ARRESTED 
 
 reception we received in Petrograd 
 excelled anything we had seen in Russia. 
 
 "When we left the station after nine o'clock, 
 the broad Nevsky Prospect was massed with 
 people as far as the eye could reach. They 
 packed every window and were standing on 
 the roofs. We drove between solid lines of 
 soldiers, passing regiments of artillery and 
 cavalry, as if we were attending a military 
 review. Bands marched in front of us playing 
 the "Internationale," but their music was 
 drowned by the roars of the crowds. Every- 
 where were banners with "Welcome to the 
 World Delegates" on them. 
 
 At last we arrived at the building in which 
 the meetings of the Duma were formerly held, 
 and which had now become the center of world 
 revolution. The delegates were seated in the 
 
 157
 
 158 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 great assembly hall, while the important Com- 
 munists and Government Commissars, who 
 were not delegates to the Congress, were in 
 the balcony above. On the desk before each 
 delegate were portfolios and pencils, and a 
 leather covered notebook printed in gold with 
 " Second Congress of the Third International." 
 The Bureau of Propaganda had not neglected 
 this opportunity. The desks were covered 
 with pamphlets and photographs of govern- 
 ment officers, palaces and graves and martyrs, 
 and even the morning paper, with glowing 
 descriptions of the events of the day. We 
 waited for about three hours for the arrival of 
 Lenin, who was to open the first session, but 
 delays of this nature are expected in Russia, 
 where official business often begins late in the 
 afternoon and is continued until late at night. 
 The Hall was badly ventilated and it soon 
 became unbearably hot. Lenin arrived shortly 
 after one, and took his seat behind the ros- 
 trum on the platform. Everyone rose and 
 cheered him wildly for five minutes. Zinoviev, 
 the International President of the Communist 
 Party, began the proceedings of the day.
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 159 
 
 "In the name of the Central Executive Com- 
 mittee of the Government of Russia," he said, 
 "I declare that the work of the Second Con- 
 gress of the Third International will now 
 begin. Red Petrograd has opened its arms 
 to receive the best fighters and the best blood 
 of the Proletariat of the World." 
 
 He went on to speak of the martyrs that 
 had fallen in the struggle during the first and 
 second revolution. He spoke of the death of 
 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg of 
 Germany, and others of their comrades who 
 had been imprisoned by the capitalistic class 
 throughout the world. As he spoke of the 
 well-known Communists who had fallen in 
 Russia and abroad, everyone rose while the 
 music played a few strains of a funeral march. 
 It was a very impressive ceremony, for these 
 men who were in charge of the Government of 
 Russia had learned the value of dramatic 
 effects of this kind. 
 
 When we were seated, Zinoviev went on to 
 describe what he called the "War of the 
 Capitalists" of 1914. It had been brought on, 
 he declared, by the rivalry between the capital-
 
 160 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 ists of Germany and England to control the 
 finances and industry of the world. It had 
 brought the impoverishment of entire nations 
 and led to the destruction of twenty million 
 lives. 
 
 "We, the Communists of the world,** he 
 said, "will make it certain that there will be 
 no more wars of that kind." He went on for 
 about twenty minutes to prove that revolution 
 and Communism could alone save humanity. 
 He was interpreted in German by Karl Radek, 
 Secretary of the Third International, while 
 Madame Balabanova addressed us in French 
 and Italian. 
 
 Zinoviev then introduced Kalinin, President 
 of the Peasants and Workers Soviets, who 
 welcomed us in the name of the workmen and 
 peasants of Russia. He spoke of the solidar- 
 ity of the proletariat of the country and of 
 their determination to fight to the end for 
 world Communism. "We who represent the 
 masses of other nations, ought to unite with 
 them and strike the final blow against capital- 
 ism," he declared, "and then establish a 
 world-wide Communist government."
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 161 
 
 After he finished, Bukharin, a member of 
 the National Executive Council, followed him 
 and proposed the names of members to pre- 
 side at the Congress. Comrade Levi of Ger- 
 many, Comrade Eosner of France, Comrade 
 Serrati of Italy, and Lenin and Zinoviev of 
 Eussia, were unanimously accepted without 
 debate, and it became apparent from the first 
 that the delegates were supposed to follow a 
 pre-arranged program. 
 
 Nikolai Lenin was then introduced by Zino- 
 viev. "I will call upon the greatest man of 
 today, Comrade Lenin," he announced. Lenin 
 stood up and the cheering broke out again 
 while the band burst into the familiar "Inter- 
 nationale." 
 
 The Dictator of Eussia is one of the shrewd- 
 est men in the world, and he is not above 
 playing to the gallery. When he had first 
 entered the hall, a blind workingman who had 
 lost his eyes in one of the electrical plants in 
 Petrograd was introduced to him. In the 
 sight of all of us he had embraced him and 
 kissed him several times. He had shown us 
 one side of his character, his humility and his
 
 162 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 feeling of brotherhood for men in humble 
 positions. But it was another Lenin who 
 spoke to us from the platform intelligent, 
 well-read, and logical, a man of iron will. He 
 spoke without notes and without a single pause 
 for an hour and a quarter, principally on 
 international affairs, and the futile efforts of 
 the politicians of the capitalist nations to 
 bring order after the war. He spoke with 
 bitter irony of Woodrow ^Vilson and the Four- 
 teen Points, and of the proceedings at the Ver- 
 sailles Conference. He left nothing out. The 
 efforts of Lloyd George and the German mili- 
 taristic autocracy to stay in power, the crimes 
 of American capitalism, the human lives 
 thrown away in the war for the benefit of 
 bankers, lawyers and politicians. He spoke 
 also about the debt of Russia to English 
 capitalists. 
 
 "Of course," he said, laughing, "we won't 
 pay, and we told them that we are not going 
 to pay. The people did not receive the money. 
 They will have to get it from the Czar who is 
 responsible for it." He laughed again and 
 everyone joined in with him.
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 163 
 
 After his speech, which was, of course, the 
 great feature of the meeting, a band played 
 the "Internationale" again, and the Congress 
 was adjourned. 
 
 "We were to hold the next meeting in Mos- 
 cow, we were told, in a few days, although the 
 exact date was not mentioned. 
 
 We filed out of the beautiful hall, and were 
 met outside by a dense crowd of people. While 
 we were trying to force our way through, for 
 the police system seemed to have entirely 
 broken down, my wife was literally torn away 
 from me and it was impossible to turn back 
 to find her. 
 
 An immense parade was formed and the 
 delegates, thousands of workingmen, and 
 women and children marched through the 
 streets with innumerable bands playing a 
 funeral march, until we came to the square 
 where the martyrs of the second revolution 
 had been buried. I presume that their graves 
 were being decorated, but I was hemmed in by 
 the crowd and it was impossible to see any- 
 thing. Airplanes flew over our heads, firing 
 their machine guns as a salute. Then the
 
 164 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 crowd formed a line again and we marched to 
 the great open space in front of the Exchange 
 Building. On the immense sweep of marble 
 steps a spectacle had been arranged, in which 
 fifteen thousand people took part. In tho 
 dazzling light of countless searchlights, we 
 saw the Czar seated on a throne surrounded 
 by members of the court and generals, then a 
 red star was raised over the heads of the 
 actors. Thousands of workmen and common 
 soldiers hurled themselves at the steps and 
 tore down the throne and the imperial deco- 
 rations in the background. Then came the 
 second revolution, and gradually the Com- 
 munist state was evolved, and a fine pageant 
 was staged showing the triumph of the prole- 
 tariat, and the prosperity of the united work- 
 ers of the world. 
 
 When I returned to the train, I was dis- 
 turbed and frightened because my wife had 
 not yet come in, but in a few moments, she 
 appeared, worn out with her efforts to fight 
 her way through the crowd. She had gotten 
 lost and had had great difficulty in finding the 
 station. The poor woman had been worried
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 16S 
 
 about me and cried with happiness when she 
 saw me waiting for her in the compartment. 
 After we returned to Moscow, there was 
 another long delay before the second meeting 
 of the Congress was opened. Nearly all of the 
 delegates were anxious to get back to their 
 respective countries as soon as they could^ 
 and although we discussed the matter end- 
 lessly and sent committees to call upon the 
 Government, everyone seemed to be in com- 
 plete ignorance about the date set for the 
 opening. There were rumors flying about of 
 revolutionary plots and projects to dynamite 
 the assembly. But finally, we were informed 
 by the Commandant that he was ready to sup- 
 ply us with new passes for entering the Krem- 
 lin, where the Congress was to be held. 
 Finally, on the 27th of July, we were admitted 
 through the doors of the Andrievsky Palace 
 in the Kremlin. Each of us had been previ- 
 ously put through a strict cross-examination, 
 and had been forced to show our passes again 
 and again. It was easy to see that the Govern- 
 ment had become very nervous and appre- 
 hensive of some outbreak, or perhaps of an
 
 166 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 attempt to assassinate Lenin. In the palace 
 itself we were examined again, and our passes 
 were inspected three times before we were 
 allowed into the Hall. All of these excessive 
 precautions, together with the soldiers armed 
 with rifles and bayonets, whom we passed at 
 every step, alarmed some of the delegates 
 greatly. Whether the fears of the authorities 
 were justified or not, it is certain that nothing 
 occurred during the next eleven days in which 
 the Congress met, to disturb us. 
 
 There was an entirely different atmosphere 
 in the second session of the Congress from the 
 noisy demonstration in Petrograd. Lenin ap- 
 peared as soon as we were seated, followed 
 by Trotsky, Commanding General of the Rus- 
 sian Army, and the meeting was immediately 
 opened by Zinoviev. There was no cheering, 
 and even the band had been suppressed; the 
 business of the meeting proceeded in a quite 
 determined fashion. There were no visitors, 
 only the delegates and the officers of the Gov- 
 ernment who were guests of the Third Inter- 
 national, nearly all of them members of the 
 Central Executive Committee. Committees
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 167 
 
 were appointed for ways and means, propa- 
 ganda, etc. The Congress had decided the 
 proceedings should be conducted in Russian, 
 German and French, but John Reed protested 
 vigorously. He insisted that the proceedings 
 should be carried on in English also, and in 
 spite of the fact that the matter had already 
 been decided by vote, the chairman answered 
 him in French and told him that he would 
 have to put his protest in writing, but Reed 
 kept on protesting loudly. 
 
 "I want you to understand," he cried, "that 
 there are twenty-nine English-speaking dele- 
 gates present, and in their names I demand 
 that you listen to me in my own tongue." 
 
 Shouts of protest arose from every side, 
 and for a while I felt certain that he would 
 be arrested and thrown out of the Hall, but 
 John Reed had made himself an important 
 and powerful figure in Russian politics, and 
 had made them believe that he was the leader 
 of a powerful Communist party which he had 
 founded in the United States. Even Lenin 
 attempted to stop him, but Reed pounded on 
 the table with his fist and demanded that the
 
 168 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 vote should be taken again. It was finally 
 carried by a small majority that the meeting 
 would be conducted in four languages, Eus- 
 sian, French, German and English. 
 
 The Congress closed on August 7th, and 
 more than one of the delegates breathed a sigh 
 of relief, for it had grown extremely monoto- 
 nous, principally on account of our ignorance 
 of each other's language, and the necessity of 
 listening to long speeches and reports which 
 had to be interpreted over and over again. 
 The individual committees met apart from the 
 general assemblies, and on each day a differ- 
 ent report was brought up and discussed and 
 voted upon. The most interesting discussion 
 arose over the question of propaganda, for 
 their program was enormous in extent, con- 
 sisting of an attempt to spread Communist 
 doctrines into the working classes of every 
 country in the world. 
 
 It was decided to make a special effort to 
 find converts to Communism in the trades 
 unions of England and America, and arrange- 
 ments were made to distribute vast quantities 
 of literature, mostly pamphlets, which were
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 169 
 
 to be translated into every language and sent 
 to the different countries by means of secret 
 agents. As far as possible, workmen were 
 to be instructed in actual revolution by sug- 
 gesting means of obtaining arms, and were to 
 organize themselves after the model of the 
 Red Army in Eussia. Wherever it was pos- 
 sible, the Russian army itself was to be used 
 to aid their fellow workers in other countries 
 after their revolution had been started. 
 
 After the meetings, we occasionally took 
 lunch in the palace, with Lenin, Radek, Zino- 
 viev and Trotsky usually present. Only a 
 few delegates were present at the meetings 
 in the evening, which occasionally lasted until 
 very late. After listening all the morning to 
 long debates in languages we could not under- 
 stand, we were usually too worn out to think 
 of going through it again during the same 
 day. Besides the monotony of which I have 
 already spoken, the Executive Committee of 
 the Congress ruled the meetings with an iron 
 hand, and as every detail was thoroughly 
 planned in advance, there was no opportunity 
 for an individual to express himself. The
 
 170 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 steam roller which the Russians knew how to 
 apply so successfully to their own Soviet 
 meetings was applied to us, and no one dared 
 to say a word that did not fit in with the 
 pre-conceived scheme of the Committee. 
 
 One day when I came back to the hotel with 
 my wife, I was met by five German delegates. 
 One of them asked me, since I spoke Russian 
 myself, to tell him all I could of the Russian 
 Government, and to give him some idea of 
 my opinion of the feelings of the country as 
 a whole concerning the Bolshevists. The 
 spokesman for the party told me that their 
 ignorance of Russian had made them feel 
 there was a great deal in the situation they 
 had not been able to grasp. I answered that 
 I had nothing to tell them, and that as there 
 were plenty of interpreters who spoke their 
 language, it would be best for them to in- 
 vestigate themselves. I felt that I could not 
 express myself enthusiastically enough to con- 
 vince them that I was in favor of Commu- 
 nism. Whether they reported to the Govern- 
 ment what I had told them, I do not know. 
 Although I had not committed myself in any
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 171 
 
 way, I became still more uneasy about my 
 position. 
 
 A short time before this, another incident 
 had happened to add to my uncertainty. While 
 we were in the dining car, going from Petro- 
 grad to Moscow, Boris Reinstein, a natural- 
 ized American, who had worked for many 
 years for the Socialist Party in America, and 
 who had gone to Russia on the outbreak of 
 Bolshevism, asked me in the presence of other 
 delegates, to tell him all that I could about 
 the Communist Party in America. Reinstein 
 was at that time attached to Lenin's office 
 and was very much in the confidence of the 
 members of the Committee of the Interna- 
 tional. I told him, what I knew to be true, 
 that the Communists in America were limited 
 in number, and after John Reed had left for 
 Russia it had almost completely dissolved as a 
 party. I have already explained that it was 
 partly due to Reed that the Socialist Party 
 of the United States was split at the conven- 
 tion held in Chicago in 1919, and that Reed's 
 power in Russia was largely due to the fact 
 that he represented himself as the leader of a
 
 172 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 powerful movement which might in the end 
 succeed in overturning the Government of the 
 United States. 
 
 As soon as he heard what I had said, Rein- 
 stein hurried into another car and brought 
 John Reed back with him. He asked me point 
 blank if it was true that I had said that there 
 was no Communist Party in America. 
 
 "I told Reinstein that there are Communists 
 in America, but no Communist Party," I re- 
 plied, "and you know that that is true." 
 
 Reed became extremely angry and left me 
 without another word, but after that incident 
 he never spoke to me again, and I realized 
 that I had unwisely made him my enemy. His 
 dislike of us grew so pointed, that one day 
 when my wife asked him to escort her to one 
 of the meetings of the labor council, without 
 any explanation, he definitely refused to do so. 
 During my stay in Russia it was obvious that 
 Reed was fanatically and violently attached 
 to Communist ideals and there was no question 
 about the power that he exercised over the 
 lesser members of the Communist Party. In 
 addition to his position in the Bolshevist Gov-
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 173 
 
 eminent, he was also a member of the Ex- 
 ecutive Board of the International Communist 
 Party, and it had been decided during one of 
 the propaganda meetings of the Congress, that 
 John Eeed was to go to Canada and from 
 there to the United States to conduct a propa- 
 ganda campaign, taking with him Communist 
 literature. 
 
 Everywhere, I found the impression had 
 been created that the Communists had over- 
 thrown the Socialist Party in America, and 
 had become so great an influence in American 
 politics that the Government itself had become 
 terrified, and Reed was naturally mentioned 
 as the one who had been responsible for this 
 change. The fact that the American Govern- 
 ment was taking very strict measures against 
 the Communists in the United States was used 
 to back up this theory. 
 
 Alexander Stoslitsky, another American who 
 was prominent at the meetings of the Con- 
 gress, had been influential in creating this 
 false opinion of the strength of Communism 
 in America. Since John Reed's death, he has, 
 I believe, taken up his work and has been
 
 174 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 lately in Reval, where lie lias been conducting 
 a propaganda campaign. 
 
 Another disturbing incident had given me 
 warning that I was not in favor with the 
 Communist officials. One morning at one of 
 the sessions of the Congress, Trotsky asked 
 me when the "Yellows" would turn Red in 
 America, that is to say, when would the So- 
 cialists become radical enough to attempt to 
 overthrow the Government. I answered him 
 that I expected that the United States Gov- 
 ernment would be the last country in the 
 world to follow Communist principles. 
 
 Reed, who had been listening attentively, 
 jumped to his feet immediately. ""Why do 
 you say that, Schwartz!" he shouted. 
 
 "Jack," I replied, "you know perfectly 
 well, and so does Comrade Trotsky, that all 
 labor cannot be classed in the United States 
 in one mass, since it is really divided into 
 many groups. There are workmen there who 
 earn anywhere from three to eight dollars a 
 day for eight hours work. You may be able 
 to persuade the common laborer earning a 
 minimum wage to take up a gun and a red
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 175 
 
 flag and start a revolution, but how can you 
 persuade a man who is making eight dollars 
 a day, a man with a family, with a home which 
 he perhaps owns himself, and with children 
 attending school, to listen to you when you 
 talk to him about revolution? What would 
 he say about that? 
 
 "Let me ask you if you think that the 
 capitalist class is asleep in America? If you 
 do, you are bitterly mistaken. They are awake 
 and they see every move that is going on here 
 and there. Therefore, I repeat that America 
 is likely to be the last country that will be- 
 come Communist." I saw that it was unwise 
 to continue this argument, so I left the Hall 
 immediately, and later, after I had left Rus- 
 sia, heard that Zinoviev had told the delegates 
 when I was not present, that it would not be 
 wise to listen to me, stating that mentally I 
 was capitalistic, and that I could not be 
 trusted. 
 
 In the meantime, I visited the Office of For- 
 eign Affairs and asked for a passport to leave 
 the country as soon as the Congress finished, 
 but I know now that orders had been given
 
 176 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 to watch me carefully. For two or three clays 
 I went there constantly, and always it was the 
 same story: "We will have it for yon when 
 you call again. " Finally I went to see Tchi- 
 cherin himself, bnt I could only see his secre- 
 tary. I complained to him of my failure to 
 get a passport, but could get nothing satis- 
 factory out of him. 
 
 That night we attended the last evening 
 meeting of the Congress, which was held in 
 the Imperial Theatre. Officers were elected 
 for the next meeting, or rather they were 
 proposed and voted on without comment. 
 John Reed became a delegate from the United 
 States, Serrati from Italy, and Sadoul from 
 France. 
 
 We reached the hotel at about eleven o'clock, 
 and after a late supper with the delegates in 
 the dining room, my wife went back to her 
 room to go to bed. While I was talking to 
 one of the English delegates, three soldiers 
 with revolvers in their hands burst into the 
 dining room, walked straight up to me, and 
 asked me if I was Comrade Schwartz. I ad- 
 mitted it, and was told that I was under arrest. 
 I asked them if this was a practical joke.
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 177 
 
 Everyone around me was so astonished that 
 they could hardly speak. 
 
 "What charges have you against me?" I 
 demanded. 
 
 "You are under arrest by order of the 
 Extraordinary Commission," said one of them. 
 "You are to come with us quietly to your 
 room. ' ' 
 
 My wife was so frightened when we entered 
 together that I tried to lau^h the matter off. 
 
 "Mother, we are arrested," I said. 
 
 She did not believe me and asked what the 
 soldiers were doing in the room. Finally I 
 convinced her that it was tfue, and tried to 
 make her believe that it was only a formality 
 and was nothing to worry about. 
 
 They began to cross-examine me. Two sol- 
 diers were stationed out in the hall to keep 
 everyone out of the room, and the officer who 
 questioned me sat at the table with a note- 
 book in which he took down all of my replies. 
 
 My valise was opened, my clothes were 
 searched, and they also took out my pocket- 
 book and searched me for letters. One of the 
 soldiers who seemed to know his business well, 
 cut the lining of my coat; they even looked
 
 178 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 under the beds, in fact they neglected nothing, 
 even cntting open the mattresses and the up- 
 holstery on the chairs, and taking the lining 
 out of my hat to see if there were any papers 
 hidden inside. All my money was taken from 
 me, including over a thousand dollars in Am- 
 erican gold. I was asked how long I had been 
 in Moscow, to what party I belonged, where 
 I got my money, if I had met any European 
 officers or had spoken with Polish officers on 
 the border, and whether I had had any com- 
 munication with the United States while I had 
 been in Russia. 
 
 This fruitless searching and questioning took 
 them until five o'clock in the morning, and my 
 wife became so exhausted before the end of 
 it, that she asked to be allowed to sleep. We 
 were both under a terrific strain. 
 
 The authorities who had been responsible 
 for my arrest knew that I was not a spy and 
 that I was exactly what I reported myself to 
 be. They knew that I was guiltless of any 
 action against the Bolshevist Government in 
 Russia, but they were aware that my attitude 
 toward their government had been unsympa-
 
 WE ARE ARRESTED 179 
 
 thetic, and that in itself constituted a crime. 
 They knew that I had investigated conditions 
 in Russia on my own account, while I should 
 have accepted the word of their paid inter- 
 preters and spies. And for this, my wife and 
 I were put in prison for four long months. 
 
 My wife's reputation as a Socialist worker 
 in the United States was also known to them, 
 and that she had given eighteen years of her 
 life to that cause. "Whatever their reason was 
 for punishing me, it was certainly needless 
 and brutal cruelty to treat her in the same 
 way. To imprison a woman of fifty, a stranger 
 to their country, who could not speak their 
 language, in their foul jails, without trial, was 
 almost a death sentence. They knew that and 
 they did not care. The life of Jessie Schwartz 
 was sacrificed for no reason whatever. If I 
 had been guilty of the worst treason, she 
 would have still been the innocent victim of 
 one of the most despotic and cruel govern- 
 ments that the world has ever seen, the "Dic- 
 tatorship of the Proletariat."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PRISON LIFE 
 
 T 1 7E were taken in a motor car with the 
 * same guard who had arrested us, to the 
 prison of the Extraordinary Commission on 
 Lnbenka Street. 
 
 Lnbenka No. 2, as it is known in Moscow, 
 was formerly a hotel, and is built around a 
 great square courtyard. All the rooms facing 
 this courtyard are nsed as prison cells, while 
 the rooms facing the streets have been con- 
 verted into officers' barracks. During the 
 weeks which I spent there, I satisfied myself 
 that it was utterly impossible to escape. Sol- 
 diers were stationed at the doors and paced 
 up and down corridors with rifles and bay- 
 onets. The sentries were constantly making 
 the circuit of the square under our windows, 
 which were all above the ground floor. In 
 addition, officers were stationed in the court-
 
 PRISON LIFE 181 
 
 yard to prevent the guards from communicat- 
 ing with the prisoners. 
 
 We reached the prison a little after five 
 o'clock in the morning, and there the tire- 
 some examination was continued by the com- 
 mandant in charge. We were searched again 
 for concealed papers or money, and I was 
 ordered to give him a ring that I wore, which 
 was too tight for me. One of the soldiers 
 nearly broke my finger in his efforts to wrench 
 it off. 
 
 The only thing that my wife still possessed 
 of any value, was a small pin which her 
 mother had given her when she died and 
 which she had worn for thirty years. The 
 soldiers wanted to take it from her, but she 
 refused to give it up and began to cry. I 
 tried to tell the soldiers what it meant to her, 
 but they insisted they must have it. 
 
 "I am not going to give it up, Mitri," she 
 said. "I have kept it for thirty years and 
 they will have to kill me if they want it." 
 
 I tried to calm her. "There is no use in 
 making them angry, Mother. If you take 
 things easily we may be here only for a few
 
 182 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 hours, and I will get it back for yon when we 
 are free." But she wouldn't listen to me and 
 pressed it with both hands tight against her 
 breast. The soldier was holding his revolver 
 in his right hand, and with his left tried to 
 force her hands down. She cried out with 
 pain, and suddenly turned on him, outraged 
 at this indignity to a woman old enough to be 
 his mother, tore one of her hands free and 
 slapped his face. In an instant the man 
 dropped his revolver and struck her on the 
 mouth with his fist. 
 
 "Mitri!" she cried, and turned to show me 
 the blood running from her lips. 
 
 For a moment I saw red, and in spite of the 
 efforts of another soldier to prevent me, threw 
 myself in front of her. 
 
 I can remember shouting, "Let her alone, 
 you dog! What do you mean by striking a 
 woman! You ought to be shot for this!" 
 
 The Commissar had gone into another room, 
 but rushed back when he heard my shouts. 
 I begged him not to let the men hurt her, for 
 Jessie, her eyes bright with anger, was still 
 clasping the pin to her breast. I told him
 
 PRISON LIFE 183 
 
 that she was an American and didn't under- 
 stand why the soldier was so brutal. "We are 
 delegates to the convention, " I said, "not 
 thieves or spies or counter-revolutionists. We 
 have done nothing and we may be released in 
 a few hours. Tell your men to leave her 
 alone." 
 
 He motioned to the soldier, who stood back 
 sullenly. "She can keep it, it isn't worth 
 anything, anyhow." He gave another order, 
 and a guard seized my wife 's arm. 
 
 "You are not going to take her away from 
 me!" I cried. "For God's sake let us go 
 together. She doesn't understand, she will 
 be lost here." Just as she reached the door, 
 Jessie pulled back for a moment and smiled 
 at me. She had stopped crying and her old 
 courage had come back to her. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mitri," she said quietly. "Per- 
 haps it won't be for long." She gave me 
 a final smile and disappeared through the 
 door 
 
 I was so torn with grief and anger at that 
 last sight of her that I hardly knew what they 
 were doing to me or where they were taking
 
 184 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 me. Finally I was pushed into a room, the 
 door was slammed and bolted behind me. It 
 was a small room of about fifteen feet by 
 twenty, with one window, and in it were three 
 men who looked at me curiously, and began 
 immediately to ask me who I was and why I 
 had been arrested. I answered them briefly 
 and looked about me. There were four wooden 
 benches, each with a dirty, straw mattress. 
 There was no other furniture, and no blankets 
 or pillows, towels or soap not a book, not a 
 paper. My companions were pale and dirty. 
 One of them was sick. The youngest of them 
 said he had been there four months. I told 
 them that I was sure that they would only 
 hold me for a few days, but the sick man, who 
 coughed constantly, laughed bitterly. 
 
 "God knows I don't wish you any hard 
 luck," he said, "but it is not as easy to get 
 out of here as you think. I have been here 
 ten months, and I am beginning to think that 
 I will never leave here alive." 
 
 I felt a cold chill go through me. In ten 
 months what would become of my wife? I 
 fell into a moody silence that must have lasted
 
 PRISON LIFE 185 
 
 for hours, and the next thing I was conscious 
 of was being given a miserable plate of thick 
 cabbage soup and a small piece of fish. The 
 smell of this fish was so vile that I could not 
 believe that a human being could stomach it, 
 but my fellow prisoners devoured my share 
 as well as their own eagerly. A lump of wet, 
 sour black bread completed the meal and al- 
 most nauseated me when I tried to eat it. 
 
 "You will get over it," I w r as told. "It 
 takes a little time, but after a few days you 
 will feel that you could eat a piece of shoe 
 leather." 
 
 Supper consisted simply of a plate of soup, 
 which I failed to eat for the same reason, and 
 which was carefully divided by my three com- 
 panions. Night came on, but I could not sleep. 
 All day I had been expecting that I would be 
 taken out for some kind of a hearing, and I 
 was -terribly worried about my wife, for I did 
 not see how she could go through with it for 
 long. She had not been well for some time, 
 and I thought that the dreadful food and 
 above all, her desperate loneliness in this 
 strange place where she would be unable to
 
 186 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 understand anything that was said, would 
 drive her frantic. 
 
 On the next morning an officer came in and 
 asked if anyone had any complaint to make. 
 I told him that I had only one that I wanted 
 to see my wife for a moment. He refused, 
 and one of the prisoners jeered at me. 
 
 "You must think that you are in America," 
 lie laughed. "If you think that you are going 
 to get out of here today or tomorrow, you are 
 mistaken, and you had better make up your 
 mind to it now." So I waited. 
 
 The third day I was so hungry that I tried 
 to swallow the horrible soup which was brought 
 into me at noon, and managed to get it down 
 with some of the sour bread. It served the 
 purpose at least of keeping me alive. On the 
 next morning, since there was still no sign 
 that any one in the world outside remembered 
 my existence, I wrote to Tchicherin, the Com- 
 missar of Foreign Affairs,, and to Lenin. A 
 week passed arid there was no answer. I 
 seemed to have dropped out of sight and out 
 of the world as if I had never existed. The 
 guards did not speak to us when they brought
 
 PRISON LIFE 187 
 
 us our food, and we four men were silent hours 
 at a time, sitting on our benches, staring ab- 
 jectly at the walls, or pacing up and down the 
 room as if we were animals in a cage. The 
 monotony was almost unbearable. There was 
 absolutely nothing to do but go over and over 
 again in our minds our unhappy memories. 
 We were not even allowed to look out of the 
 window, where at least there was the sight 
 of blue sky and sunshine. After two weeks 
 I became so ill that I begged the guard to 
 take me to the hospital, but I was told gruffly 
 that there was no hospital and that I would 
 have to stay there. The conditions were ter- 
 rible. The window was shut tight, so that the 
 atmosphere was stifling. Finally, a fifth man 
 was crowded into the room, and that night 
 the young man who had been there for four 
 months was taken out. After this the changes 
 were frequent, except for the sick man, whose 
 condition had become alarming. Usually, the 
 guard would come for them after midnight, 
 and now and then, if we listened attentively, 
 their visit would be followed by a shot. Some- 
 times we heard as many as a dozen muffled
 
 188 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 reports. The death squad was at work, exe- 
 cuting those who had been convicted by the 
 Extraordinary Commission. 
 
 Sometimes one of the prisoners would break 
 into a long, feverish recital of his grievances 
 against the Government, telling us the most 
 intimate details of his life, as if he was un- 
 able any longer to keep his thoughts to him- 
 self. Then suddenly he would stop and begin 
 his monotonous pace around the room. Four 
 steps and then a turn, backward and forward, 
 hour after hour. 
 
 About once a month the prisoners were 
 taken to a bath-house several miles from the 
 prison, marching to it in a line, heavily 
 guarded. Each of us was given not more 
 than thirty minutes to bathe and try to wash 
 our linen before we were pushed out into the 
 street through another exit and marched back 
 to the prison. For a sick man it was a terrible 
 ordeal, and I was told that in winter many of 
 the prisoners caught consumption on going 
 out into the bitter cold, insufficiently clothed, 
 after the moist heat and steam of the bath. 
 
 The sick man told us that he had been ar-
 
 PRISON LIFE 189 
 
 rested for being involved in a counter-revolu- 
 tionary movement, as the secretary of a secret 
 organization. This organization had decided 
 to assassinate Trotsky; two men had been 
 selected and had attended a meeting at which 
 Trotsky was present, where they threw a 
 bomb into the crowd. Eight were killed and 
 a number wounded. 
 
 But Trotsky was uninjured, and as he came 
 out from the building, he said that for each 
 life that had been taken a hundred men would 
 be killed. During thirty days time, eight hun- 
 dred had been executed by the Extraordinary 
 Commission. The secretary of the organiza- 
 tion had been arrested and expected as a 
 matter of course to be shot, but they had kept 
 him alive in the hope of a confession, and 
 now they seemed to have forgotten his ex- 
 istence. 
 
 At first he had been put into a black cell in 
 the basement, where he had to lie down on the 
 cement floor which was covered with an inch 
 of filthy water. The air in this place, he said, 
 was so damp and foul from the sewer pipes 
 that it was impossible to breathe it without
 
 190 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 choking. After three days they took him out 
 in a fainting condition and placed him in the 
 room where I met him. This man was about 
 thirty years old, but his hair was gray, and he 
 had become so weak it was impossible for him 
 to walk across the room without falling. We 
 were all sorry for him, for he was an intelli- 
 gent and courageous man, a graduate of the 
 University of Moscow. 
 
 Later they had tried to force him to confess 
 the names of all the men associated with him 
 in the secret society. He had been taken down 
 to the basement; his clothes were stripped 
 from him, and he was faced with a firing squad 
 of revolvers. "This is your last chance," the 
 officer said. Then he slowly counted three 
 times before he gave the command of fire. 
 
 The men fired, but they shot over his head, 
 and the poor wretch fell to the floor uncon- 
 scious. Several times this happened to him, 
 and finally his nerves were so shattered that 
 he could not endure it any longer, and when 
 once more after many months of this mental 
 agony, he was taken out again to be shot, he 
 suddenly broke down and confessed the names
 
 PRISON LIFE 191 
 
 of everyone who had been involved with him. 
 
 Later on they had come to him with an offer 
 to release him if he would be willing to serve 
 as a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. 
 
 "No," he told them. "I have betrayed my 
 comrades, but I will not betray my country. 
 I would rather die where I am than serve 
 you." 
 
 One morning the door opened, and a man 
 about thirty years of age came in and said 
 that he had been arrested in Petrograd, and 
 that the charge against him was treason. He 
 told us that he expected to be shot within a 
 few days, and he was so nervous that he could 
 neither sleep nor eat. This was his story: 
 
 "I was the station master of a small town 
 near the border of Finland. My wife and I 
 were allowing men whom we knew to be 
 counter-revolutionists and spies across the 
 border. At last it was discovered and a trap 
 was laid for us. A detective of the Extraor- 
 dinary Commission came to see me, and said 
 that he had escaped from prison and must 
 cross into Finland. The man had letters of 
 introduction from others whom I had recently
 
 192 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 passed over the border, so I let him go. On 
 the next day he returned with soldiers, ar- 
 rested both of us, and brought us to Moscow." 
 Since there was no question of our new 
 companion's guilt, we felt certain that there 
 was no hope for him. It was pitiful to watch 
 him; every time the door opened, the poor fel- 
 low would turn as pale as a ghost; at night 
 he couldn't sleep, and at the slightest noise 
 would scream with fright. Although his case 
 was more perilous than that of the rest of us, 
 we were all of us in constant terror of the 
 sudden midnight visits of the guards. The 
 suspense was enough to shatter the strongest 
 nerves. Fortunately, his wife's brother hap- 
 pened to be in a position of some importance 
 with the Government, Head Commissar of Fuel. 
 In a few days a package of food and clothing 
 was brought in to him, with a letter from his 
 brother-in-law, and two days later he was 
 released. It was a fair example of Communist 
 justice. My wife and I, who had done nothing, 
 were left in prison without trial, while this 
 man, who was actually guilty of plotting the 
 Government's overthrow, was released because
 
 PRISON LIFE 193 
 
 his wife's brother was a minor Government 
 official. 
 
 On another occasion, a Pole, and a young 
 Austrian of nineteen, who had been taken 
 prisoner six years before, became our com- 
 panions in misery for a time. The poor Aus- 
 trian boy had never learned to speak Russian, 
 though he had been arrested in 1914 for carry- 
 ing provisions across the Russian front and 
 had been sent to Siberia, where he was held 
 in a miserable prison camp until 1918. When 
 the camp was broken up he tried to reach 
 home, and with incredible hardship had worked 
 his way westward from town to town, until 
 his clothes were in tatters. On the outskirts 
 of Moscow he had been picked up by a detach- 
 ment of Red Guards. He was accused of being 
 a spy and was sent to our jail without any 
 investigation. 
 
 The Pole had been a representative of his 
 government at Baku. He had been in the city 
 when it was captured, and said that without 
 any provocation, hundreds of unarmed people 
 had been massacred in the streets by the Red 
 troops. Instead of being killed, as he had
 
 194 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 expected, he was imprisoned in a small cell 
 in a Baku jail with fifteen other men, where 
 the rations consisted of one bowl of soup and 
 half a pound of bread a day. He contracted 
 consumption from one of his companions and 
 was coughing blood when he was with us in 
 Moscow. I tried to get him released, and sent 
 word to the Commissar that he was too ill to 
 stay with us. On the next day he was exam- 
 ined by a doctor in the office and sent back to 
 us again with the report that there was noth- 
 ing much the matter with him. He stayed 
 with us for a month, getting constantly 
 weaker, when he was suddenly taken away. 
 What his fate was I never learned. 
 
 And so the days passed in the same deadly 
 monoton3 r . I wrote many letters to members 
 of the Government, and finally, when there 
 was no response, I gave up hope, expecting 
 every day to be taken out and shot. I began 
 to lose weight terribly, and realized that it 
 would be impossible for me to live through 
 many more months of this existence. My only 
 desire was that my wife should be released
 
 PRISON LIFE 195 
 
 to go home to our children again. At least 
 they would then know what my fate had been. 
 
 One night shortly after midnight, the door 
 was flung open and my name was called. An 
 officer with a revolver entered, followed by two 
 soldiers carrying rifles. My companions were 
 panic-stricken until they realized that it was 
 Schwartz who was wanted. I could hardly 
 move from fright, but at last I got control of 
 myself. I can remember stammering out, 
 ' 'Good-bye. This is my last journey. . I am 
 going to be killed." 
 
 I shuffled out into the corridor with them, 
 and as we came to the stairway the suspense 
 became terrible; for I knew that if we went 
 down it would be to the cellars, where the 
 executions were held. The officer reached the 
 head of the stairs and I clutched the guard's 
 arm to steady myself. But the officer turned 
 around to grin at me, and walked straight 
 ahead. He knew well enough what I was feel- 
 ing. My strength came back to me miracu- 
 lously and I walked ahead in a daze, and 
 suddenly I found myself confronting a tall 
 man in uniform. 
 
 "What is your name!" he asked.
 
 196 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 "Dmitri Alexander Schwartz," I answered 
 weakly. 
 
 "Sit down, comrade," he said in a friendly 
 voice. 
 
 I took a seat near him, and suddenly was 
 aware that I was shaking violently as if I 
 had taken a chill. 
 
 "Yonr case has been brought up for exami- 
 nation," he said, "and we have found that we 
 have made a serious mistake. It was sus- 
 pected that you were a spy and counter-revo- 
 lutionist, but now you are to be liberated and 
 you can return to the United States when you 
 want." 
 
 "That is good. I am glad," I answered. 
 "Where is my wife? I haven't seen her for 
 over two months." 
 
 "She is alive and will be here in a moment," 
 he replied. 
 
 At last the door opened, and Jessie came 
 in. The shock I received at seeing her was 
 almost greater than my joy. She looked old 
 and worn, years older than when I had seen 
 her last, and her hair had turned very gray. 
 For a moment she did not seem to recognize
 
 PRISON LIFE 197 
 
 me, for I had grown a beard, and was also 
 emaciated from sickness and insufficient food. 
 The poor woman sat down beside me without 
 saying a word and took my hand as if she 
 would never let it go again. I could think 
 of nothing to say to her except "Don't cry, 
 Mother, " which I repeated over and over 
 again. 
 
 "I haven't any tears left, Mitri," she said. 
 "I have cried them all out in that horrible 
 room back there. I thought you had been 
 killed. Why have they kept us away from 
 each other so long?" 
 
 "It is all right now," I told her. "We are 
 free and can go home together." 
 
 "Thank God!" she cried, and put her arms 
 around me and kissed me. 
 
 The officer who had been watching us care- 
 fully without interrupting us, now called the 
 guard, and suddenly we were torn away from 
 each other again. 
 
 "I can't go back to that place again," 
 Jessie said. "I thought we were free." 
 
 I tried to calm her. "Just another day, 
 only until we get our passports. Go back
 
 198 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 quietly and don't worry. It is going to come 
 out all right." 
 
 They dragged her off, protesting bitterly. 
 and in a moment I was back again with im- 
 prison companions, who were all glad to see 
 me, for they had been certain that my last 
 hour had come. Two days later I was called 
 out again. I said a final good-bye, and we 
 embraced each other as if we had been broth- 
 ers. Indeed, our common misery had linked 
 us together until, in spite of my joy at the 
 thought of freedom, it hurt me to leave them. 
 
 But in the corridor, instead of meeting my 
 wife as I had hoped, I was put at the end of 
 a line of prisoners under guard, and we were 
 all marched to the office. To my amazement 
 I recognized two of them, Pat Quinlin, an 
 American I. "W. "W., and Xathan Schabro of 
 New York. Quinlin said that he had written 
 a letter to Ireland, in which he had said in 
 Gaelic, "To hell with the Bolshevists," and 
 that he supposed this was the cause of his 
 sudden arrest. He could think of nothing 
 else. Schabro seemed to think he was there 
 because his brother was in the Police Depart-
 
 PRISON LIFE 199 
 
 ment in New York. It was strange to find 
 three American delegates to the International 
 in the same prison, for we had gone to Russia 
 almost in the position of diplomatic envoys. 
 
 Suddenly I saw that my wife had been 
 brought in, but when I tried to speak to her, 
 a guard stopped me and shook his revolver 
 at me. A numb of fear began to steal over 
 me. Perhaps we were not free after all. This 
 might be the beginning of new miseries. 
 
 The prisoners, about twenty of us, were 
 marched into the courtyard, and I heard that 
 we were to be taken to the railroad station. 
 
 "But where is our money and our pass- 
 ports f" my wife asked. "We can't leave 
 without them." 
 
 I protested to the officer, who said that we 
 would receive them at the station. But my 
 wife refused to go without them. We were 
 ordered to march, but still she would not 
 move. Finally, two soldiers seized her by the 
 arms and began to drag her along between 
 them. I shouted at the officers to stop them. 
 The man grew angry. 
 
 "Bring her along," he called to the sol-
 
 200 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 diers. Then to me, "Yon are not going to 
 the station. You are going to another jail, 
 and after that we will bring yon back here 
 and give you everything that belongs to you." 
 
 I told my wife what he had said, and she 
 began to scream at the officer, until I was 
 frightened for fear that she had lost her mind. 
 
 But there was no help. The gates were 
 thrown open and we found ourselves in the 
 street. It was snowing outside, and it was 
 bitterly cold. Many of us were half sick from 
 hunger, yet we had to walk more than five 
 miles through the night air to another prison 
 at the other end of Moscow. After we had 
 gone about two miles, my wife said that she 
 was too tired to take another step, and that 
 they could kill her right there if they wanted 
 to. 
 
 I begged the officer to let her have a drosh- 
 ky, and all of us waited until one passed by. 
 The officer requisitioned it and commanded 
 the driver to take her to the prison. Evi- 
 dently she had been hoping that the office^ 
 would let both of us ride together, and that 
 perhaps we might find some way of escape,
 
 PRISON LIFE 201 
 
 for when she saw that one of the soldiers got 
 in beside her instead of me, she suddenly 
 began to struggle with him and succeeded in 
 knocking his rifle out of his hands. The sol- 
 dier cursed her violently and I was certain 
 that he was going to shoot, so I shouted to 
 the officer that she was not responsible for 
 what she was doing. He told the soldier to 
 stop, but after that my wife refused to ride 
 and in spite of her fatigue managed to walk 
 all the way to the prison.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 
 
 second prison had been a monastery 
 before the revolution. Around it was a 
 high stone wall, four or five blocks square, 
 with a chapel, a cemetery, and the monastery 
 itself inside. Now it held five hundred pris- 
 oners, both men and women. Life was far 
 more possible there than it had been in the 
 prison on Lubenka Street, for we were allowed 
 to walk around the yard during the day 
 and even had newspapers and books to read. 
 There were English, French, Germans, Jews, 
 and Italians, besides Russians there, and as 
 my wife was able to speak again in her own 
 tongue and to see me once a day, she did not 
 mind very much at first. 
 
 At seven o'clock in the morning the prison- 
 ers were aroused and given a cup of hot water 
 for breakfast. At eight o'clock we were sent 
 
 202
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 203 
 
 ont to work at such tasks as sweeping the 
 yard, chopping and sawing wood, repairing 
 the buildings and many other things. At 
 twelve o'clock, when we had become so faint 
 from hunger that we could hardly stand, a 
 plate of soup and half a pound of the usual 
 sour bread was given to us. At two o'clock 
 we went back to work again until five. It was 
 fatiguing and we were all in a desperate con- 
 dition from hunger, but there was relief at 
 least from the dreadful monotony of our pre- 
 vious life. Many of the prisoners had curious 
 tales to tell. 
 
 I met, for example, the ruler of a little 
 mountain state near Georgia, who had been 
 sent here with his officials after his land had 
 been invaded by the Red Army. There were 
 twenty of them altogether; the ruler, his 
 brother, his son, a priest, and a number of 
 generals. Not one of them had ever done a 
 day's work before in his life, and it was amus- 
 ing to see their scorn of their menial tasks. 
 The ruler, his brother and his son, were kept 
 busy sweeping the yard, cleaning away the 
 snow. As soon as one of the soldiers who
 
 204 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 were watching turned his back, one of them 
 would usually drop his broom and then pick 
 it up again when the man had turned around. 
 It was his method of protesting against this 
 indignity. None of them could speak a word 
 of Russian except the boy, and soldiers were 
 always trying to convert him to Communism. 
 Later he would tell his royal father and uncle 
 the new ideas that he was learning, until they 
 were speechless with anger. This boy became 
 the mascot of the prison. They dressed bim 
 in a uniform, boots and soldier's cap, gave 
 him plenty of food, and allowed him to go 
 wherever he wanted. 
 
 I found out that many people were in jail 
 who were utterly ignorant of any reason for 
 being there, and in many cases I am sure 
 that they had been entirely forgotten by the 
 authorities. There seemed to be no system 
 whatever in keeping track of the prisoners. 
 Once we were all called out into the yard and 
 an officer read out a long list of our names. 
 "When he came to a name to which no one 
 answered he merely scratched it out and went 
 on. Among them was a woman called Zmern-
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 205 
 
 off, who, I was told by a nurse who stood 
 beside me, had died six months before. 
 
 The women prisoners were divided into three 
 classes those who had the hardest work, such 
 as washing and scrubbing; a second class, 
 who were given sewing and clerical work, 
 while the third class did nothing. This was 
 made up of women who were for the moment 
 in favor with the prison officials. I need not 
 say that the moral conditions of the prison 
 were extremely lax and that the soldiers when 
 they were off guard spent most of their time 
 in the women 's section. But the common 
 women, the old, the illiterate and the ugly, 
 were driven about like slaves, for even in 
 prison, Communism divided mankind into the 
 same classes that exist in any other social 
 system the favored, the less favored and 
 the proletariat. 
 
 Although we were allowed a certain amount 
 of liberty outside of our cells, the overcrowd- 
 ing in this prison was even worse than in the 
 other. There were forty-seven men in the 
 room where I was placed, some of whom were 
 Asiatics and whose personal habits were in-
 
 206 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 describable. All of us slept packed together 
 on straw mattresses on the floor. Our over- 
 coats served as our only covering and the 
 temperature was far below freezing, for the 
 heat of our bodies was all that warmed the 
 air. The nights were a perfect bedlam of 
 noises; coughing, swearing, shouting and sing- 
 ing went on in a half-dozen languages, until 
 the prisoners fell asleep from exhaustion. It 
 was like a madhouse. 
 
 There were fourteen Hungarian officers in 
 that room who were being used by the Gov- 
 ernment as hostages for a number of Com- 
 munists who had been sentenced to death in 
 Hungary. Besides them, there were a num- 
 ber of other men who had already been sen- 
 tenced to be shot by the Extraordinary Com- 
 mission, but who, for some reason or other, 
 had been given twenty years imprisonment 
 instead, although it was obvious that only the 
 strongest man could live through more than 
 two or three of such winters as we were 
 having. 
 
 The old chapel of the monastery outside the 
 prison was, of course, never used, but every
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 207 
 
 day or so a new grave was dug in the ceme- 
 tery, the bodies being taken from the prison 
 hospital, and laid in the frozen earth without 
 ceremony of any kind. 
 
 One day my wife told me she had made up 
 her mind if we were not free in a week or so, 
 she would try to kill herself in some way. 
 
 "I will not live under these conditions. If 
 I can't be free I want to die." 
 
 I told the Commandant of her resolution, 
 but he said that there were hundreds dying 
 throughout Russia every day, and that it 
 would make very little difference to anyone 
 whether she killed herself or not. 
 
 That was the beginning of her resolution 
 to go on a hunger strike until we were re- 
 leased, although I protested so bitterly against 
 her decision, and assured her that it would be 
 only a matter of a short time before we were 
 free, so she agreed to wait. Several weeks 
 passed by and we were still in jail, when one 
 day one of Tchicherin's secretaries came to 
 tell me that in a few days our passports would 
 be ready for us so that we could return to the 
 States. We heard nothing more of it, and
 
 208 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 our next visitor was Madame Balabanova, who 
 told me that John Reed had died that morn- 
 ing, and that she was certain that we were 
 to be released the next day. 
 
 Another week passed, and my wife, who 
 managed to secure paper and ink for the pur- 
 pose, wrote to Tchicherin at the Office of For- 
 eign Affairs. Her letter follows: 
 
 "AXDROWIESKI LAGER, 
 
 TCHICHERIN, 
 
 Commissar of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 Saturday, November 13/20. 
 "Fourteen weeks ago today I was arrested 
 along with my husband. I have never had a 
 hearing of any kind and don't know why I was 
 arrested, or why I am being held as a pris- 
 oner. It was my plan to get back to the 
 United States the first of September, to take 
 part in the last campaign, and I expected to 
 have a message from the Third International 
 for our Comrades. 
 
 "I have been a paying member of the So- 
 cialist Party of the U. S. A. for eighteen years. 
 The greater part of that time I was engaged
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 209 
 
 in active work as lecturer and organizer for 
 the party. I have given my time, my money, 
 and my life to the revolutionary, class-con- 
 scious movement. I came here to Russia and 
 brought with me a letter of greeting from the 
 comrades of the U. S. A., signed by our Na- 
 tional Secretary, Comrade Otto Bronstetter, 
 also the resolutions passed by a large major- 
 ity of the Socialist Party, endorsing the Third 
 International and expressing our desire to 
 become a part of it. 
 
 "The fifth of August I was arrested with 
 my husband. Everything we owned was taken 
 away from us, and we were separated and 
 locked up in prison. For eight weeks I had 
 no communication with anyone. I tried to get 
 information as to why I was arrested and 
 begged for a -hearing, but I could get no an- 
 swer of any kind. At the end of eight weeks, 
 Friday, October 1st, I was aroused about mid- 
 night and made to understand that I was ex- 
 pected to dress and go somewhere. I was 
 taken out and saw my husband for the first 
 time. He said we were free. 
 
 "Instead of that we were taken to another
 
 210 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 prison and have been here ever since. "We 
 have been assured by your secretary, Com- 
 rade Nortave, who visited the prison Friday, 
 October 15th, that it would be only a few days 
 before we would be sent home, as soon as he 
 could get our passports fixed up. Comrade 
 Balabanova came here the following Sunday 
 and told us that we would be released imme- 
 diately. This was a month ago and we are 
 still here. 
 
 "As a Socialist and a member of the work- 
 ing class, representing the Socialist Party of 
 the United States, I did not expect this treat- 
 ment at the hands of the Working Class Gov- 
 ernment of Russia. I can 't stand it any longer. 
 It is killing me ; I am dying inch by inch. But 
 I have made up my mind I am not going to 
 die in this way. Ill make it short. Next 
 Friday evening, November 19th, I will eat my 
 last meal in prison. If you keep me here and 
 let me die, you will be guilty of killing one 
 of the well-known revolutionary Socialists of 
 America. 
 
 "(Signed) JESSIE M. SCHWARTZ."
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 211 
 
 When several days went by with no answer 
 to this letter, my wife began her hunger strike, 
 and five days later was sent to the hospital. 
 But that evening I was summoned by an officer 
 and was taken out to the courtyard where I 
 found my wife, who was being carried by two 
 soldiers. There was an automobile waiting 
 for us, and with an officer and a guard we 
 drove through Moscow. But it was to still 
 another prison we were taken, not to the sta- 
 tion. The officials of the prison we had left 
 had been afraid that -there would be a sympa- 
 thetic hunger strike, since there were five other 
 Americans there who said that they would not 
 allow an American woman to die of hunger, 
 and would refuse to eat if she was not im- 
 mediately released. 
 
 This third prison was but a repetition in 
 its misery of the other two. I was put in a 
 room not more than twenty feet square, where 
 there were -a dozen members of Kolchak's 
 General Staff who had been captured in Si- 
 beria. My wife went with me; one woman 
 among thirteen men. She had become still 
 weaker, although every man in the room kept
 
 212 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 begging her to eat. I tried to have her placed 
 in a separate room, for it was horrible to see 
 these men who were covered with vermin try- 
 ing to retain their propriety in the presence 
 of a woman, for in spite of their wretched- 
 ness they were all gentlemen. Four days later 
 we were called into the office, and one of the 
 guards had to aid me to carry my wife. I 
 asked for my money, and they refused to give 
 it to me. I asked for a passport and I was 
 refused even that. I told the Commandant 
 that I would not move without it, and at last 
 after a great deal of telephoning and confu- 
 sion, it was brought to me. AVe were taken 
 out to a car, driven to a freight train which 
 stood just outside the station. We were free 
 at last, but my wife was so ill, and I myself 
 was so desperate with anxiety and weakness, 
 that it did not seem to matter any longer. 
 
 That journey to the Russian border will 
 always stand out in my mind as one of the 
 bitterest experiences of my life. Packed in 
 an ordinary freight car with forty to fifty 
 people, with a temperature outside below zero, 
 I had to sit upright holding my wife's head
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 213 
 
 on my shoulder, for there was no room to lie 
 down. There was a little stove in the middle 
 of the car, which gave out enough heat to keep 
 us alive, but the atmosphere was so thick that 
 it wa;s difficult to breathe. 
 
 At every station the door was opened and 
 more peasants carrying bundles forced their 
 way in, pushed up by the soldiers behind them. 
 After the train had been going for a few min- 
 utes, the car was searched, and anyone who 
 was found with more than ten pounds of 
 bread, or flour or meat, was deprived of every- 
 thing he had. It was, of course, mere rob- 
 bery, for these provisions never reached the 
 authorities but were eaten or sold by the sol- 
 diers. Usually they gave a receipt for what 
 they had taken, but how worthless it was was 
 shown by an old peasant who threw his out 
 of the door. He had twenty-five pounds of 
 ham and bacon and a package of bread. When 
 they began to search he tried to escape, for 
 the train was going slowly, but he was called 
 back, protesting bitterly that his family was 
 sick and that he was taking this food home 
 to them.
 
 214 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Later, a peasant woman came in carrying 
 a large chicken. One of the soldiers solemnly 
 told her that it was against the law to carry 
 live-stock among human beings and that he 
 would have to take it away from her. At last 
 the hen was forced out of her arms, squawk- 
 ing, and as the woman continued to shout 
 abuse at them, she herself was put out at the 
 next station, about twenty miles from where 
 she had gotten on. But in spite of their 
 troubles, these rough peasants were very kind 
 to us as soon as they saw that my wife was 
 ill. The poor woman was deathly pale and 
 could hardly speak. They gave us some of 
 the bread they had left, and even wanted to 
 cover her with their overcoats, but I refused 
 this because I knew that they were infested 
 with insects. 
 
 At last we reached the Esthonian border, 
 and were turned over to an officer at the 
 Yomburg station. There was a quarantine 
 law in effect between Kussia and Esthonia, but 
 I begged him not to apply this to us, but to 
 send us to Eeval immediately. He was kind 
 enough to telegraph to the Minister of For-
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 215 
 
 eign Affairs, who replied that we were to be 
 sent first class. I cannot describe the feeling of 
 relief when we reached the compartment that 
 was reserved for us on the Eeval train. There 
 was no one else in it, and it was actually 
 warm. The attendant brought us tea and milk 
 and white bread, and my wife managed to eat 
 a little, for the first time in eleven days. A 
 little color came back to her face, and I felt 
 suddenly happy again. Our sufferings were 
 over, and my wife was going to live, and we 
 were safe and free at last. I remembered the 
 soldier who had smiled sarcastically at me 
 when I had waved my red necktie at him at 
 the same station on the way into Russia in 
 June. 
 
 The rumor spread through the train that 
 there was a sick American woman on board 
 who had been imprisoned in Russia, and sev- 
 eral kind-hearted people came to see if they 
 could do anything for us. Crossing the bor- 
 der was like going into another world, a world 
 where there is humanity and kindness, even 
 for a penniless man, for I had not a cent 
 with me.
 
 216 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 When we arrived in Eeval, an Esthonian 
 officer was kind enough, to give me money to 
 take a carriage. He helped me carry my wife 
 to it, and we drove straight to the Y. M. C. A., 
 the manager of which, Mr. Gott, had helped us 
 on our previous visit. He was amazed to see 
 us so changed and I tried to give him a brief 
 account of our experiences. He told me not 
 to worry because we had fallen into good 
 hands at last. 
 
 "We will take care of you and see that you 
 reach home. You can stay here and rest until 
 you are able to travel," he said. 
 
 My wife was put in charge of a nurse, and 
 though she was still very ill, I felt certain 
 that she would improve rapidly with good 
 care and nourishing food. On the next day 
 the Minister of Education of Esthonia sent 
 me a note requesting my presence at the De- 
 partment of Justice. Although I had not yet 
 recovered my strength, I went to see him, and 
 was asked if I would be willing to deliver a 
 lecture on what Bolshevism means to civiliza- 
 tion, but I refused because I was afraid that 
 it would involve my host and the Y. M. C. A.
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 217 
 
 in difficulties, for they were supposed to be 
 in a strictly neutral position. But the news- 
 papers had gotten hold of my story and pub- 
 lished the fact that I had escaped with my 
 wife from Russia after great suffering and 
 that I was to deliver a public address describ- 
 ing what I had seen. 
 
 A few hours after this account appeared in 
 the papers, the Esthonian representative of 
 the Bolshevist Government sent a message for 
 me to go immediately to the Russian Embassy. 
 I was taken at once to see the Secretary of the 
 Commissar of Finance of Russia, who had 
 been sent to Reval to take charge of diplomatic 
 relations with Esthonia. It is obvious, how- 
 ever, that the work consists far more in an 
 attempt to spread Bolshevist propaganda into 
 Europe than in questions of mere diplomacy. 
 
 "I have been robbed of all the money I had 
 over three thousand dollars," I told this 
 man. "My wife is sick perhaps she is dying 
 and I myself am not well. We have worked 
 for years for Socialism and were treated in 
 Russia in the most outrageous way." 
 
 "I am not to blame for your arrest, and
 
 218 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 I am sorry that it happened," he answered. 
 "I have sent a telegram to the Commissar of 
 Foreign Affairs in Moscow and asked him for 
 money to get you home. How much do you 
 want!" 
 
 "Five hundred pounds, which is less than 
 was taken from me, but it will get me home." 
 
 He wanted me to promise that I would leave 
 Reval that night, for he was evidently fright- 
 ened of the effect that my story might have 
 on the elaborate Communist propaganda that 
 was being distributed in the city, but I refused 
 to give any promise since it depended on how 
 soon my wife recovered her strength. 
 
 When I returned to the Y. M. C. A., after 
 this brief absence, I found her much worse, 
 and two days later she died. The Y. M. C. A. 
 and the American Consul helped me to make 
 arrangements for her burial and were present 
 at the funeral. It was a melancholy and lonely 
 ending to the life of the brilliant young woman 
 who almost thirty years before had left the 
 University of Wisconsin to attend her first 
 Socialist meeting in Chicago. 
 
 The shock was so great that I became sick
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 219 
 
 again myself, and for a week lay in bed 
 hardly caring whether I lived or died. Then 
 a little courage came back to me and I got 
 ready for my long journey to the United 
 States. I felt lonely and broken, for the 
 ideals for which I had labored most of my 
 life seemed suddenly to have become utterly 
 useless and even worse than useless. 
 
 All of my life, from the early days in Eussia 
 when I learned of Nihilism in the army, I had 
 believed in the coming some day of the broth- 
 erhood of man, when the present unjust and 
 cruel system should be changed into a new 
 world where every man had equal opportunity 
 and equal rights. Russia has instituted the 
 first government of the toiling masses that the 
 world has ever seen. It has been done in 
 the name of Communism, it is true. Neverthe- 
 less, the essential principle seemed almost the 
 same as the things that I had been fighting 
 for, and this first government of the proleta- 
 riat, this first attempt to erect a Communist 
 state had immediately become a dictatorship, 
 an autocracy that was as cruel and as unjust 
 as any of the most despotic governments in
 
 220 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 Russian history. Temporarily, at least, Rus- 
 sia had deprived me of my faith and had 
 taken the life of my wife. 
 
 I will never forget the last night I spent in 
 Keval. On a bitterly cold night I walked out- 
 side the city limits for several miles to the 
 cemetery where Jessie had been buried. I 
 carried a candle and matches with me. I went 
 through the cemetery alone, walking around 
 the graves with the candle in my hand, until 
 I found the raw cut in the frozen earth which 
 marked her resting-place. 
 
 I took my hat off and went down on my 
 knees and prayed. "Dear little Mother, you 
 are gone, but I will work for you, for myself 
 and for the world. Everywhere I will try to 
 spread the message of the tyranny of cruelty 
 of the Russian Government that has taken 
 your life." 
 
 For a long time I stood there, for it was 
 hard for me to leave my companion of so 
 many years in this desolate and frozen place, 
 thousands of miles from our home. I put a 
 little dust and a few stones from the grave 
 in my pocket, and at last, with a final fare-
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 221 
 
 well, I walked slowly back to the station. 
 There I boarded the train due to leave in a 
 short time, and after a journey of consider- 
 able hardship, in which I had to stand up all 
 night, I arrived in Germany where I called 
 on Madame Liebknecht to tell her that the 
 Communist government had killed my wife. 
 
 She looked at me with tears in her eyes. I 
 shall never forget what she said. "What will 
 happen to the world now, for we can no longer 
 believe?" 
 
 The next day I delivered a lecture at the 
 invitation of the President of the University 
 of Berlin. Shortly afterwards one of the Ger- 
 man delegates to the Third International, who 
 had questioned me in Russia about my opinion 
 of Bolshevism, told me that after I had been 
 arrested, the German delegates had gone to 
 see Zinoviev to ask him to release us, and that 
 Zinoviev had told him that we had been sent 
 out of Russia and were on our way to the 
 United States. 
 
 After leaving Germany, I went through 
 Belgium and France, and finally reached Lon- 
 don, where I spent two weeks. During that
 
 222 THE VOICE OF RUSSIA 
 
 time I came into contact with some of the 
 Englishmen who had been to the Moscow Con- 
 gress. They were delivering addresses on 
 their visit to Russia and had challenged any- 
 one to debate with them on the subject, so I 
 wired them that I would meet them wherever 
 they wished, but though the telegram was read 
 at a public meeting, I never heard from them 
 again, and after delivering several lectures 
 before Socialist bodies, I left England and 
 reached the United States in February. I had 
 been gone nine months, and brief though that 
 time is, to me, when I look back upon it, it 
 is an eternity. 
 
 In retrospect the rest of my life seemed 
 as nothing in comparison to these last few 
 months of my return to my native land. My 
 wife and I had gone there with the sincerity 
 of pilgrims, filled with the great hope that we 
 would find in Russia the secret of the future 
 happiness of mankind, and that in spite of 
 its errors we would see the beginning of a 
 new social order of brotherhood and justice, 
 the Utopia of which philosophers had dreamed 
 for centuries. We had hoped to bring back
 
 FREEDOM THE FINAL SACRIFICE 223 
 
 a message to our people in America which 
 would help in the furtherance of the great 
 aim for which we had both labored for years. 
 Instead, my dear wife had been sacrificed 
 and I was left alone, disillusioned and heart- 
 broken, but with a feeling of bitterness and 
 hatred which will never leave me. A great 
 people, after incredible sufferings, had torn 
 itself free from the chains of an age-old des- 
 potism, but it had fallen into a new slavery, 
 more brutal, more intolerant than ever. The 
 knowledge of the extent of this last catas- 
 trophe to the Russian people is slowly spread- 
 ing abroad, and I can only hope that this book 
 will help the Democracy of America to under- 
 stand the meaning of the "Dictatorship of the 
 Proletariat/' and that it will some day come 
 to the aid of our brothers on the other side of 
 the world,
 
 Date Due 
 
 A 000 631 083 3 
 
 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137