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diff --git a/old/60173-0.txt b/old/60173-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ab47e79..0000000 --- a/old/60173-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2661 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Russia in the Shadows, by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Russia in the Shadows - -Author: H. G. (Herbert George) Wells - -Release Date: August 26, 2019 [EBook #60173] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - RUSSIA - IN THE SHADOWS - - H. G. WELLS - - -[Illustration: - - STREET SCENERY IN PETERSBURG: - SITE OF A DEMOLISHED WOODEN HOUSE - _Frontispiece_. -] - - - - - RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS - - - BY - H. G. WELLS - - AUTHOR OF “THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY,” “MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH,” - ETC., ETC. - - - ILLUSTRATED - - NEW [Illustration] YORK - GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1921, - BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I PETERSBURG IN COLLAPSE 15 - - II DRIFT AND SALVAGE 41 - - III THE QUINTESSENCE OF BOLSHEVISM 71 - - IV THE CREATIVE EFFORT IN RUSSIA 105 - - V THE PETERSBURG SOVIET: A LEGISLATIVE MASS MEETING 135 - - VI THE DREAMER IN THE KREMLIN 145 - - VII THE ENVOY 171 - - - - - ILLUSTRATIONS - - - PLATE - - I STREET SCENERY IN PETERSBURG: SITE OF DEMOLISHED - WOODEN HOUSE _Frontispiece_ - - PAGE - - II STREET SCENERY IN PETERSBURG 24 - - MR. WELLS DISCOVERS A STREET UNDER REPAIR 24 - - III A PETERSBURG STREET CAR EN ROUTE 33 - - MESSRS. LENIN AND WELLS IN CONVERSATION 33 - - IV GORKY IN THE GREAT DUMP OF ART AND VIRTUOSITY IN - PETERSBURG 56 - - V THE STATUE OF MARX OUTSIDE THE SMOLNY INSTITUTE - (HEADQUARTERS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY) 73 - - VI THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO - CAPITALISM AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM: ZENOVIEFF, - RADEK AND BELA KUN 92 - - VII THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO - CAPITALISM AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM: THE BODY OF - THE HALL 93 - - VIII PROLETARIANS OF ASIA À LA BAKU 112 - - IX GUESTS AT THE HOME OF REST FOR WORKMEN ON THE - KAMENNI OSTROF 129 - - X THE PETERSBURG SOVIET IN SESSION: LENIN AT THE - ROSTRUM, ZENOVIEFF AND THE PRESIDENT, OFFICIALS - AND OFFICIAL VISITORS 148 - - XI LENIN, GORKY, ZORIN, ZENOVIEFF AND RADEK 165 - - - - - RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS - - - - - I - PETERSBURG IN COLLAPSE - - -In January 1914 I visited Petersburg and Moscow for a couple of weeks; -in September 1920 I was asked to repeat this visit by Mr. Kameney, of -the Russian Trade Delegation in London. I snatched at this suggestion, -and went to Russia at the end of September with my son, who speaks a -little Russian. We spent a fortnight and a day in Russia, passing most -of our time in Petersburg, where we went about freely by ourselves, and -were shown nearly everything we asked to see. We visited Moscow, and I -had a long conversation with Mr. Lenin, which I shall relate. In -Petersburg I did not stay at the Hotel International, to which foreign -visitors are usually sent, but with my old friend, Maxim Gorky. The -guide and interpreter assigned to assist us was a lady I had met in -Russia in 1914, the niece of a former Russian Ambassador to London. She -was educated at Newnham, she has been imprisoned five times by the -Bolshevist Government, she is not allowed to leave Petersburg because of -an attempt to cross the frontier to her children in Esthonia, and she -was, therefore, the last person likely to lend herself to any attempt to -hoodwink me. I mention this because on every hand at home and in Russia -I had been told that the most elaborate camouflage of realities would go -on, and that I should be kept in blinkers throughout my visit. - -As a matter of fact, the harsh and terrible realities of the situation -in Russia cannot be camouflaged. In the case of special delegations, -perhaps, a certain distracting tumult of receptions, bands, and speeches -may be possible, and may be attempted. But it is hardly possible to -dress up two large cities for the benefit of two stray visitors, -wandering observantly often in different directions. Naturally, when one -demands to see a school or a prison one is not shown the worst. Any -country would in the circumstances show the best it had, and Soviet -Russia is no exception. One can allow for that. - -Our dominant impression of things Russian is an impression of a vast -irreparable breakdown. The great monarchy that was here in 1914 and the -administrative, social, financial, and commercial systems connected with -it have, under the strains of six years of incessant war, fallen down -and smashed utterly. Never in all history has there been so great a -_débâcle_ before. The fact of the Revolution is, to our minds, -altogether dwarfed by the fact of this downfall. By its own inherent -rottenness and by the thrusts and strains of aggressive imperialism the -Russian part of the old civilised world that existed before 1914 fell, -and is now gone. The peasant, who was the base of the old pyramid, -remains upon the land, living very much as he has always lived. -Everything else is broken down, or is breaking down. Amid this vast -disorganisation an emergency Government, supported by a disciplined -party of perhaps 150,000 adherents—the Communist Party—has taken -control. It has—at the price of much shooting—suppressed brigandage, -established a sort of order and security in the exhausted towns, and set -up a crude rationing system. - -It is, I would say at once, the only possible Government in Russia at -the present time. It is the only idea, it supplies the only solidarity, -left in Russia. But it is a secondary fact. The dominant fact for the -Western reader, the threatening and disconcerting fact, is that a social -and economic system very like our own and intimately connected with our -own has crashed. - -Nowhere in all Russia is the fact of that crash so completely evident as -it is in Petersburg. Petersburg was the artificial creation of Peter the -Great; his bronze statue in the little garden near the Admiralty still -prances amid the ebbing life of the city. Its palaces are still and -empty, or strangely refurnished with the typewriters and tables and -plank partitions of a new Administration which is engaged chiefly in a -strenuous struggle against famine and the foreign invader. Its streets -were streets of busy shops. In 1914 I loafed agreeably in the Petersburg -streets—buying little articles and watching the abundant traffic. All -these shops have ceased. There are perhaps half a dozen shops still open -in Petersburg. There is a Government crockery shop where I bought a -plate or so as a souvenir, for seven or eight hundred roubles each, and -there are a few flower shops. It is a wonderful fact, I think, that in -this city, in which most of the shrinking population is already nearly -starving, and hardly any one possesses a second suit of clothes or more -than a single change of worn and patched linen, flowers can be and are -still bought and sold. For five thousand roubles, which is about six and -eightpence at the current rate of exchange, one can get a very pleasing -bunch of big chrysanthemums. - -I do not know if the words “all the shops have ceased” convey any -picture to the Western reader of what a street looks like in Russia. It -is not like Bond Street or Piccadilly on a Sunday, with the blinds -neatly drawn down in a decorous sleep, and ready to wake up and begin -again on Monday. The shops have an utterly wretched and abandoned look; -paint is peeling off, windows are cracked, some are broken and boarded -up, some still display a few flyblown relics of stock in the window, -some have their windows covered with notices; the windows are growing -dim, the fixtures have gathered two years’ dust. They are dead shops. -They will never open again. - -All the great bazaar-like markets are closed, too, in Petersburg now, in -the desperate struggle to keep a public control of necessities and -prevent the profiteer driving up the last vestiges of food to incredible -prices. And this cessation of shops makes walking about the streets seem -a silly sort of thing to do. Nobody “walks about” any more. One realises -that a modern city is really nothing but long alleys of shops and -restaurants and the like. Shut them up, and the meaning of a street has -disappeared. People hurry past—a thin traffic compared with my memories -of 1914. The electric street cars are still running and busy—until six -o’clock. They are the only means of locomotion for ordinary people -remaining in town—the last legacy of capitalist enterprise. They became -free while we were in Petersburg. Previously there had been a charge of -two or three roubles—the hundredth part of the price of an egg. Freeing -them made little difference in their extreme congestion during the -home-going hours. Every one scrambles on the tramcar. If there is no -room inside you cluster outside. In the busy hours festoons of people -hang outside by any handhold; people are frequently pushed off, and -accidents are frequent. We saw a crowd collected round a child cut in -half by a tramcar, and two people in the little circle in which we moved -in Petersburg had broken their legs in tramway accidents. - -The roads along which these tramcars run are in a frightful condition. -They have not been repaired for three or four years; they are full of -holes like shell-holes, often two or three feet deep. Frost has eaten -out great cavities, drains have collapsed, and people have torn up the -wood pavement for fires. Only once did we see any attempt to repair the -streets in Petrograd. In a side street some mysterious agency had -collected a load of wood blocks and two barrels of tar. Most of our -longer journeys about the town were done in official motor-cars—left -over from the former times. A drive is an affair of tremendous swerves -and concussions. These surviving motor-cars are running now on kerosene. -They disengage clouds of pale blue smoke, and start up with a noise like -a machine-gun battle. Every wooden house was demolished for firing last -winter, and such masonry as there was in those houses remains in ruinous -gaps, between the houses of stone. - -[Illustration: - - STREET SCENERY IN PETERSBURG. -] - -[Illustration: - - MR. WELLS DISCOVERS A STREET UNDER REPAIR. -] - -Every one is shabby; every one seems to be carrying bundles in both -Petersburg and Moscow. To walk into some side street in the twilight and -see nothing but ill-clad figures, all hurrying, all carrying loads, -gives one an impression as though the entire population was setting out -in flight. That impression is not altogether misleading. The Bolshevik -statistics I have seen are perfectly frank and honest in the matter. The -population of Petersburg has fallen from 1,200,000 to a little over -700,000, and it is still falling. Many of the people have returned to -peasant life in the country, many have gone abroad, but hardship has -taken an enormous toll of this city. The death-rate in Petersburg is -over 81 per 1,000; formerly it was high among European cities at 22. The -birth-rate of the underfed and profoundly depressed population is about -15. It was formerly about 30. - -These bundles that every one carries are partly the rations of food that -are doled out by the Soviet organisation, partly they are the material -and results of illicit trade. The Russian population has always been a -trading and bargaining population. Even in 1914 there were but few shops -in Petersburg whose prices were really fixed prices. Tariffs were -abominated; in Moscow taking a droshky meant always a haggle, ten -kopecks at a time. Confronted with a shortage of nearly every commodity, -a shortage caused partly by the war strain,—for Russia has been at war -continuously now for six years—partly by the general collapse of social -organisation, and partly by the blockade, and with a currency in -complete disorder, the only possible way to save the towns from a chaos -of cornering, profiteering, starvation, and at last a mere savage fight -for the remnants of food and common necessities, was some sort of -collective control and rationing. - -The Soviet Government rations on principle, but any Government in Russia -now would have to ration. If the war in the West had lasted up to the -present time London would be rationing too—food, clothing, and housing. -But in Russia this has to be done on a basis of uncontrollable peasant -production, with a population temperamentally indisciplined and -self-indulgent. The struggle is necessarily a bitter one. The detected -profiteer, the genuine profiteer who profiteers on any considerable -scale, gets short shrift; he is shot. Quite ordinary trading may be -punished severely. All trading is called “speculation,” and is now -illegal. But a queer street-corner trading in food and so forth is -winked at in Petersburg, and quite openly practised in Moscow, because -only by permitting this can the peasants be induced to bring in food. - -There is also much underground trade between buyers and sellers who know -each other. Every one who can supplements his public rations in this -way. And every railway station at which one stops is an open market. We -would find a crowd of peasants at every stopping-place waiting to sell -milk, eggs, apples, bread, and so forth. The passengers clamber down and -accumulate bundles. An egg or an apple costs 300 roubles. - -The peasants look well fed, and I doubt if they are very much worse off -than they were in 1914. Probably they are better off. They have more -land than they had, and they have got rid of their landlords. They will -not help in any attempt to overthrow the Soviet Government because they -are convinced that while it endures this state of things will continue. -This does not prevent their resisting whenever they can the attempts of -the Red Guards to collect food at regulation prices. Insufficient forces -of Red Guards may be attacked and massacred. Such incidents are -magnified in the London Press as peasant insurrections against the -Bolsheviks. They are nothing of the sort. It is just the peasants making -themselves comfortable under the existing _régime_. - -But every class above the peasants—including the official class—is now -in a state of extreme privation. The credit and industrial system that -produced commodities has broken down, and so far the attempts to replace -it by some other form of production have been ineffective. So that -nowhere are there any new things. About the only things that seem to be -fairly well supplied are tea, cigarettes, and matches. Matches are more -abundant in Russia than they were in England in 1917, and the Soviet -State match is quite a good match. But such things as collars, ties, -shoelaces, sheets and blankets, spoons and forks, all the haberdashery -and crockery of life, are unattainable. There is no replacing a broken -cup or glass except by a sedulous search and illegal trading. From -Petersburg to Moscow we were given a sleeping car de luxe, but there -were no water-bottles, glasses, or, indeed, any loose fittings. They -have all gone. Most of the men one meets strike one at first as being -carelessly shaven, and at first we were inclined to regard that as a -sign of a general apathy, but we understood better how things were when -a friend mentioned to my son quite casually that he had been using one -safety razor blade for nearly a year. - -Drugs and any medicines are equally unattainable. There is nothing to -take for a cold or a headache; no packing off to bed with a hot-water -bottle. Small ailments develop very easily therefore into serious -trouble. Nearly everybody we met struck us as being uncomfortable and a -little out of health. A buoyant, healthy person is very rare in this -atmosphere of discomforts and petty deficiencies. - -If any one falls into a real illness the outlook is grim. My son paid a -visit to the big Obuchovskaya Hospital, and he tells me things were very -miserable there indeed. There was an appalling lack of every sort of -material, and half the beds were not in use through the sheer -impossibility of dealing with more patients if they came in. -Strengthening and stimulating food is out of the question unless the -patient’s family can by some miracle procure it outside and send it in. -Operations are performed only on one day in the week, Dr. Federoff told -me, when the necessary preparations can be made. On other days they are -impossible, and the patient must wait. - -Hardly any one in Petersburg has much more than a change of raiment, and -in a great city in which there remains no means of communication but a -few overcrowded tramcars,[1] old, leaky, and ill-fitting boots are the -only footwear. At times one sees astonishing makeshifts by way of -costume. The master of a school to which we paid a surprise visit struck -me as unusually dapper. He was wearing a dinner suit with a blue serge -waistcoat. Several of the distinguished scientific and literary men I -met had no collars and wore neck-wraps. Gorky possesses only the one -suit of clothes he wears. - -Footnote 1: - - I saw one passenger steamboat on the Neva crowded with passengers. - Usually the river was quite deserted except for a rare Government tug - or a solitary boatman picking up drift timber. - -At a gathering of literary people in Petersburg, Mr. Amphiteatroff, the -well-known writer, addressed a long and bitter speech to me. He suffered -from the usual delusion that I was blind and stupid and being -hoodwinked. He was for taking off the respectable-looking coats of all -the company present in order that I might see for myself the rags and -tatters and pitiful expedients beneath. It was a painful and, so far as -I was concerned, an unnecessary speech, but I quote it here to emphasise -this effect of general destitution. And this underclad town population -in this dismantled and ruinous city is, in spite of all the furtive -trading that goes on, appallingly underfed. With the best will in the -world the Soviet Government is unable to produce a sufficient ration to -sustain a healthy life. We went to a district kitchen and saw the normal -food distribution going on. The place seemed to us fairly clean and -fairly well run, but that does not compensate for a lack of material. -The lowest grade ration consisted of a basinful of thin skilly and about -the same quantity of stewed apple compote. People have bread cards and -wait in queues for bread, but for three days the Petersburg bakeries -stopped for lack of flour. The bread varies greatly in quality; some was -good coarse brown bread, and some I found damp, clay-like, and -uneatable. - -[Illustration: - - A PETERSBURG STREET CAR EN ROUTE. -] - -[Illustration: - - MESSRS. LENIN AND WELLS IN CONVERSATION. -] - -I do not know how far these disconnected details will suffice to give -the Western reader an idea of what ordinary life in Petersburg is at the -present time. Moscow, they say, is more overcrowded and shorter of fuel -than Petersburg, but superficially it looked far less grim than -Petersburg. We saw these things in October, in a particularly fine and -warm October. We saw them in sunshine in a setting of ruddy and golden -foliage. But one day there came a chill, and the yellow leaves went -whirling before a drive of snowflakes. It was the first breath of the -coming winter. Every one shivered and looked out of the double -windows—already sealed up—and talked to us of the previous year. Then -the glow of October returned. - -It was still glorious sunshine when we left Russia. But when I think of -that coming winter my heart sinks. The Soviet Government in the commune -of the north has made extraordinary efforts to prepare for the time of -need. There are piles of wood along the quays, along the middle of the -main streets, in the courtyards, and everywhere where wood can be piled. -Last year many people had to live in rooms below the freezing point; the -water-pipes froze up, the sanitary machinery ceased to work. The reader -must imagine the consequences. People huddled together in the ill-lit -rooms, and kept themselves alive with tea and talk. Presently some -Russian novelist will tell us all that this has meant to heart and mind -in Russia. This year it may not be quite so bad as that. The food -situation also, they say, is better, but this I very much doubt. The -railways are now in an extreme state of deterioration; the wood-stoked -engines are wearing out; the bolts start and the rails shift as the -trains rumble along at a maximum of twenty-five miles per hour. Even -were the railways more efficient, Wrangel has got hold of the southern -food supplies. Soon the cold rain will be falling upon these 700,000 -souls still left in Petersburg, and then the snow. The long nights -extend and the daylight dwindles. - -And this spectacle of misery and ebbing energy is, you will say, the -result of Bolshevist rule! I do not believe it is. I will deal with the -Bolshevist Government when I have painted the general scenery of our -problem. But let me say here that this desolate Russia is not a system -that has been attacked and destroyed by something vigorous and -malignant. It is an unsound system that has worked itself out and fallen -down. It was not communism which built up these great, impossible -cities, but capitalism. It was not communism that plunged this huge, -creaking, bankrupt empire into six years of exhausting war. It was -European imperialism. Nor is it communism that has pestered this -suffering and perhaps dying Russia with a series of subsidised raids, -invasions, and insurrections, and inflicted upon it an atrocious -blockade. The vindictive French creditor, the journalistic British oaf, -are far more responsible for these deathbed miseries than any communist. -But to these questions I will return after I have given a little more -description of Russia as we saw it during our visit. It is only when one -has some conception of the physical and mental realities of the Russian -collapse that we can see and estimate the Bolshevist Government in its -proper proportions. - - - - - II - DRIFT AND SALVAGE - - -Among the things I wanted most to see amidst this tremendous spectacle -of social collapse in Russia was the work of my old friend Maxim Gorky. -I had heard of this from members of the returning labour delegation, and -what they told me had whetted my desire for a closer view of what was -going on. Mr. Bertrand Russell’s account of Gorky’s health had also made -me anxious on his own account; but I am happy to say that upon that -score my news is good. Gorky seems as strong and well to me now as he -was when I knew him first in 1906. And as a personality he has grown -immensely. Mr. Russell wrote that Gorky is dying and that perhaps -culture in Russia is dying too. Mr. Russell was, I think, betrayed by -the artistic temptation of a dark and purple concluding passage. He -found Gorky in bed and afflicted by a fit of coughing, and his -imagination made the most of it. - -Gorky’s position in Russia is a quite extraordinary and personal one. He -is no more of a communist than I am, and I have heard him argue with the -utmost freedom in his flat against the extremist positions with such men -as Bokaiev, recently the head of the extraordinary commission in -Petersburg, and Zalutsky, one of the rising leaders of the Communist -party. It was a very reassuring display of free speech, for Gorky did -not so much argue as denounce—and this in front of two deeply interested -English enquirers. - -But he has gained the confidence and respect of most of the Bolshevik -leaders, and he has become by a kind of necessity the semi-official -salvage man under the new _régime_. He is possessed by a passionate -sense of the value of Western science and culture, and by the necessity -of preserving the intellectual continuity of Russian life through these -dark years of famine and war and social stress, with the general -intellectual life of the world. He has found a steady supporter in -Lenin. His work illuminates the situation to an extraordinary degree -because it collects together a number of significant factors and makes -the essentially catastrophic nature of the Russian situation plain. - -The Russian smash at the end of 1917 was certainly the completest that -has ever happened to any modern social organisation. After the failure -of the Kerensky Government to make peace and of the British naval -authorities to relieve the military situation in the Baltic, the -shattered Russian armies, weapons in hand, broke up and rolled back upon -Russia, a flood of peasant soldiers making for home, without hope, -without supplies, without discipline. That time of _débâcle_ was a time -of complete social disorder. It was a social dissolution. In many parts -of Russia there was a peasant revolt. There was chateau-burning often -accompanied by quite horrible atrocities. It was an explosion of the -very worst side of human nature in despair, and for most of the -abominations committed the Bolsheviks are about as responsible as the -Government of Australia. People would be held up and robbed even to -their shirts in open daylight in the streets of Petersburg and Moscow, -no one interfering. Murdered bodies lay disregarded in the gutters -sometimes for a whole day, with passengers on the footwalk going to and -fro. Armed men, often professing to be Red Guards, entered houses and -looted and murdered. The early months of 1918 saw a violent struggle of -the new Bolshevik Government not only with counter-revolutions but with -rollers and brigands of every description. It was not until the summer -of 1918, and after thousands of looters and plunderers had been shot, -that life began to be ordinarily safe again in the streets of the -Russian great towns. For a time Russia was not a civilisation, but a -torrent of lawless violence, with a weak central Government of -inexperienced rulers, fighting not only against unintelligent foreign -intervention but against the completest internal disorder. It is from -such chaotic conditions that Russia still struggles to emerge. - -Art, literature, science, all the refinements and elaboration of life, -all that we mean by “civilisation,” were involved in this torrential -catastrophe. For a time the stablest thing in Russia culture was the -theatre. There stood the theatres, and nobody wanted to loot them or -destroy them; the artists were accustomed to meet and work in them and -went on meeting and working; the tradition of official subsidies held -good. So quite amazingly the Russian dramatic and operatic life kept on -through the extremest storms of violence, and keeps on to this day. In -Petersburg we found there were more than forty shows going on every -night; in Moscow we found very much the same state of affairs. We heard -Shalyapin, greatest of actors and singers, in _The Barber of Seville_ -and in _Chovanchina_; the admirable orchestra was variously attired, but -the conductor still held out valiantly in swallow tails and a white tie; -we saw a performance of _Sadko_, we saw Monachof in _The Tzarevitch -Alexei_ and as Iago in _Othello_ (with Madame Gorky—Madame Andreievna—as -Desdemona). When one faced the stage, it was as if nothing had changed -in Russia; but when the curtain fell and one turned to the audience one -realised the revolution. There were now no brilliant uniforms, no -evening dress in boxes and stalls. The audience was a uniform mass of -people, the same sort of people everywhere, attentive, good-humoured, -well-behaved and shabby. Like the London Stage Society, one’s place in -the house is determined by ballot. And for the most part there is no -paying to go to the theatre. For one performance the tickets go, let us -say, to the professional unions, for another to the Red Army and their -families, for another to the school children, and so on. A certain -selling of tickets goes on, but it is not in the present scheme of -things. - -I had heard Shalyapin in London, but I had not met him personally there. -We made his acquaintance this time in Petersburg, we dined with him and -saw something of his very jolly household. There are two stepchildren -almost grown up, and two little daughters, who speak a nice, stiff, -correct English, and the youngest of whom dances delightfully. Shalyapin -is certainly one of the most wonderful things in Russia at the present -time. He is the Artist, defiant and magnificent. Off the stage he has -much the same vitality and abounding humour that made an encounter with -Beerbohm Tree so delightful an experience. He refuses absolutely to sing -except for pay—200,000 roubles a performance, they say, which is nearly -£15—and when the markets get too tight, he insists upon payment in flour -or eggs or the like. What he demands he gets, for Shalyapin on strike -would leave too dismal a hole altogether in the theatrical world of -Petersburg. So it is that he maintains what is perhaps the last fairly -comfortable home in Russia. And Madame Shalyapin we found so unbroken by -the revolution that she asked us what people were wearing in London. The -last fashion papers she had seen—thanks to the blockade—dated from -somewhen early in 1918. - -But the position of the theatre among the arts is peculiar. For the rest -of the arts, for literature generally and for the scientific worker, the -catastrophe of 1917–18 was overwhelming. There remained no one to buy -books or pictures, and the scientific worker found himself with a salary -of roubles that dwindled rapidly to less than the five-hundredth part of -their original value. The new crude social organisation, fighting -robbery, murder, and the wildest disorder, had no place for them; it had -forgotten them. For the scientific man at first the Soviet Government -had as little regard as the first French revolution, which had “no need -for chemists.” These classes of worker, vitally important to every -civilised system, were reduced, therefore, to a state of the utmost -privation and misery. It was to their assistance and salvation that -Gorky’s first efforts were directed. Thanks very largely to him and to -the more creative intelligences in the Bolshevik Government, there has -now been organised a group of salvage establishments, of which the best -and most fully developed is the House of Science in Petersburg, in the -ancient palace of the Archduchess Marie Pavlova. Here we saw the -headquarters of a special rationing system which provides as well as it -can for the needs of four thousand scientific workers and their -dependents—in all perhaps for ten thousand people. At this centre they -not only draw their food rations, but they can get baths and barber, -tailoring, cobbling and the like conveniences. There is even a small -stock of boots and clothing. There are bedrooms, and a sort of hospital -accommodation for cases of weakness and ill-health. - -It was to me one of the strangest of my Russian experiences to go to -this institution and to meet there, as careworn and unprosperous-looking -figures, some of the great survivors of the Russian scientific world. -Here were such men as Oldenburg the orientalist, Karpinsky the -geologist, Pavloff the Nobel prizeman, Radloff, Bielopolsky, and the -like, names of world-wide celebrity. They asked me a multitude of -questions about recent scientific progress in the world outside Russia, -and made me ashamed of my frightful ignorance of such matters. If I had -known that this would happen I would have taken some sort of report with -me. Our blockade has cut them off from all scientific literature outside -Russia. They are without new instruments, they are short of paper, the -work they do has to go on in unwarmed laboratories. It is amazing they -do any work at all. Yet they are getting work done; Pavloff is carrying -on research of astonishing scope and ingenuity upon the mentality of -animals; Manuchin claims to have worked out an effectual cure for -tuberculosis, even in advanced cases; and so on. I have brought back -abstracts of Manuchin’s work for translation and publication here, and -they are now being put into English. The scientific spirit is a -wonderful spirit. If Petersburg starves this winter, the House of -Science—unless we make some special effort on its behalf—will starve -too, but these scientific men said very little to me about the -possibility of sending them in supplies. The House of Literature and Art -talked a little of want and miseries, but not the scientific men. What -they were all keen about was the possibility of getting scientific -publications; they value knowledge more than bread. Upon that matter I -hope I may be of some help to them. I got them to form a committee to -make me out a list of all the books and publications of which they stood -in need, and I have brought this list back to the Secretary of the Royal -Society of London, which had already been stirring in this matter. Funds -will be needed, three or four thousand pounds perhaps (the address of -the Secretary of the Royal Society is Burlington House, W.), but the -assent of the Bolshevik Government and our own to this mental -provisioning of Russia has been secured, and in a little time I hope the -first parcel of books will be going through to these men, who have been -cut off for so long from the general mental life of the world. - -If I had no other reason for satisfaction about this trip to Russia, I -should find quite enough in the hope and comfort our mere presence -evidently gave to many of these distinguished men in the House of -Science and in the House of Literature and Art. Upon many of them there -had evidently settled a kind of despair of ever seeing or hearing -anything of the outer world again. They had been living for three years, -very grey and long years indeed, in a world that seemed sinking down -steadily through one degree of privation after another into utter -darkness. Possibly they had seen something of one or two of the -political deputations that have visited Russia—I do not know; but -manifestly they had never expected to see again a free and independent -individual walk in, with an air of having come quite easily and -unofficially from London, and of its being quite possible not only to -come but to go again into the lost world of the West. It was like an -unexpected afternoon caller strolling into a cell in a jail. - -All musical people in England know the work of Glazounov; he has -conducted concerts in London and is an honorary doctor both of Oxford -and Cambridge. I was very deeply touched by my meeting with him. He used -to be a very big florid man, but now he is pallid and very much fallen -away, so that his clothes hang loosely on him. He came and talked of his -friends Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. He told me -he still composed, but that his stock of music paper was almost -exhausted. “Then there will be no more.” I said there would be much -more, and that soon. He doubted it. He spoke of London and Oxford; I -could see that he was consumed by an almost intolerable longing for some -great city full of life, a city with abundance, with pleasant crowds, a -city that would give him still audiences in warm, brightly-lit places. -While I was there, I was a sort of living token to him that such things -could still be. He turned his back on the window which gave on the cold -grey Neva, deserted in the twilight, and the low lines of the fortress -prison of St. Peter and St. Paul. “In England there will be no -revolution—no? I had many friends in England—many good friends in -England....” I was loth to leave him, and he was very loth to let me go. - -Seeing all these distinguished men living a sort of refugee life amidst -the impoverished ruins of the fallen imperialist system has made me -realise how helplessly dependent the man of exceptional gifts is upon a -securely organised civilisation. The ordinary man can turn from this to -that occupation; he can be a sailor or a worker in a factory or a digger -or what not. He is under a general necessity to work, but he has no -internal demon which compels him to do a particular thing and nothing -else, which compels him to be a particular thing or die. But a Shalyapin -must be Shalyapin or nothing, Pavloff is Pavloff and Glazounov is -Glazounov. So long as they can go on doing their particular thing, such -men will live and flourish. Shalyapin still acts and sings -magnificently—in absolute defiance of every Communist principle; Pavloff -still continues his marvellous researches—in an old coat and with his -study piled up with the potatoes and carrots he grows in his spare time; -Glazounov will compose until the paper runs out. But many of the others -are evidently stricken much harder. The mortality among the -intellectually distinguished men of Russia has been terribly high. Much, -no doubt, has been due to the general hardship of life, but in many -cases I believe that the sheer mortification of great gifts become -futile has been the determining cause. They could no more live in the -Russia of 1919 than they could have lived in a Kaffir kraal. - -[Illustration: - - GORKY IN THE GREAT DUMP OF ART AND VIRTUOSITY IN PETERSBURG -] - -Science, art, and literature are hothouse plants demanding warmth and -respect and service. It is the paradox of science that it alters the -whole world and is produced by the genius of men who need protection and -help more than any other class of worker. The collapse of the Russian -imperial system has smashed up all the shelters in which such things -could exist. The crude Marxist philosophy which divides all men into -bourgeoisie and proletariat, which sees all social life as a stupidly -simple “class war,” had no knowledge of the conditions necessary for the -collective mental life. But it is to the credit of the Bolshevik -Government that it has now risen to the danger of a universal -intellectual destruction in Russia, and that, in spite of the blockade -and the unending struggle against the subsidised revolts and invasions -with which we and the French plague Russia, it is now permitting and -helping these salvage organisations. Parallel with the House of Science -is the House of Literature and Art. The writing of new books, except for -some poetry, and the painting of pictures have ceased in Russia. But the -bulk of the writers and artists have been found employment upon a -grandiose scheme for the publication of a sort of Russian encyclopædia -of the literature of the world. In this strange Russia of conflict, -cold, famine and pitiful privations there is actually going on now a -literary task that would be inconceivable in the rich England and the -rich America of to-day. In England and America the production of good -literature at popular prices has practically ceased now—“because of the -price of paper.” The mental food of the English and American masses -dwindles and deteriorates, and nobody in authority cares a rap. The -Bolshevik Government is at least a shade above that level. In starving -Russia hundreds of people are working upon translations, and the books -they translate are being set up and printed, work which may presently -give a new Russia such a knowledge of world thought as no other people -will possess. I have seen some of the books and the work going on. -“_May_” I write, with no certainty. Because, like everything else in -this ruined country, this creative work is essentially improvised and -fragmentary. How this world literature is to be distributed to the -Russian people I do not know. The bookshops are closed and bookselling, -like every other form of trading, is illegal. Probably the books will be -distributed to schools and other institutions. - -In this matter of book distribution the Bolshevik authorities are -clearly at a loss. They are at a loss upon very many such matters. In -regard to the intellectual life of the community one discovers that -Marxist Communism is without plans and without ideas. Marxist Communism -has always been a theory of revolution, a theory not merely lacking in -creative and constructive ideas, but hostile to creative and -constructive ideas. Every Communist orator has been trained to contemn -“Utopianism,” that is to say, has been trained to contemn intelligent -planning. Not even a British business man of the older type is quite -such a believer in things righting themselves and in “muddling through” -as these Marxists. The Russian Communist Government now finds itself -face to face, among a multiplicity of other constructive problems, with -the problem of sustaining scientific life, of sustaining thought and -discussion, of promoting artistic creation. Marx the Prophet and his -Sacred Book supply it with no lead at all in the matter. Bolshevism, -having no schemes, must improvise therefore—clumsily, and is reduced to -these pathetic attempts to salvage the wreckage of the intellectual life -of the old order. And that life is very sick and unhappy and seems -likely to die on its hands. - -It is not simply scientific and literary work and workers that Maxim -Gorky is trying to salvage in Russia. There is a third and still more -curious salvage organisation associated with him. This is the Expertise -Commission, which has its headquarters in the former British Embassy. -When a social order based on private property crashes, when private -property is with some abruptness and no qualification abolished, this -does not abolish and destroy the things which have hitherto constituted -private property. Houses and their gear remain standing, still being -occupied and used by the people who had them before—except when those -people have fled. When the Bolshevik authorities requisition a house or -take over a deserted palace, they find themselves faced by this problem -of the gear. Any one who knows human nature will understand that there -has been a certain amount of quiet annexation of desirable things by -inadvertent officials and, perhaps less inadvertently, by their wives. -But the general spirit of Bolshevism is quite honest, and it is set very -stoutly against looting and suchlike developments of individual -enterprise. There has evidently been comparatively little looting either -in Petersburg or Moscow since the days of the _débâcle_. Looting died -against the wall in Moscow in the spring of 1918. In the guest houses -and suchlike places we noted that everything was numbered and listed. -Occasionally we saw odd things astray, fine glass or crested silver upon -tables where it seemed out of place, but in many cases these were things -which had been sold for food or suchlike necessities on the part of the -original owners. The sailor courier who attended to our comfort to and -from Moscow was provided with a beautiful little silver teapot that must -once have brightened a charming drawing-room. But apparently it had -taken to a semi-public life in a quite legitimate way. - -For greater security there has been a gathering together and a -cataloguing of everything that could claim to be a work of art by this -Expertise Commission. The palace that once sheltered the British Embassy -is now like some congested secondhand art shop in the Brompton Road. We -went through room after room piled with the beautiful lumber of the -former Russian social system. There are big rooms crammed with statuary; -never have I seen so many white marble Venuses and sylphs together, not -even in the Naples Museum. There are stacks of pictures of every sort, -passages choked with inlaid cabinets piled up to the ceiling; a room -full of cases of old lace, piles of magnificent furniture. This -accumulation has been counted and catalogued. And there it is. I could -not find out that any one had any idea of what was ultimately to be done -with all this lovely and elegant litter. The stuff does not seem to -belong in any way to the new world, if it is indeed a new world that the -Russian Communists are organising. They never anticipated that they -would have to deal with such things. Just as they never really thought -of what they would do with the shops and markets when they had abolished -shopping and marketing. Just as they had never thought out the problem -of converting a city of private palaces into a Communist -gathering-place. Marxist theory had led their minds up to the -“dictatorship of the class-conscious proletariat” and then intimated—we -discover now how vaguely—that there would be a new heaven and a new -earth. Had that happened it would indeed have been a revolution in human -affairs. But as we saw Russia there is still the old heaven and the old -earth, covered with the ruins, littered with the abandoned furnishings -and dislocated machinery of the former system, with the old peasant -tough and obstinate upon the soil—and Communism, ruling in the cities -quite pluckily and honestly, and yet, in so many matters, like a -conjurer who has left his pigeon and his rabbit behind him, and can -produce nothing whatever from the hat. - -Ruin: that is the primary Russian fact at the present time. The -revolution, the Communist rule, which I will proceed to describe in my -next paper, is quite secondary to that. It is something that has -happened in the ruin and because of the ruin. It is of primary -importance that people in the West should realise that. If the Great War -had gone on for a year or so more, Germany and then the Western Powers -would probably have repeated, with local variations, the Russian crash. -The state of affairs we have seen in Russia is only the intensification -and completion of the state of affairs towards which Britain was -drifting in 1918. Here also there are shortages such as we had in -England, but they are relatively monstrous; here also is rationing, but -it is relatively feeble and inefficient; the profiteer in Russia is not -fined but shot, and for the English D.O.R.A. you have the Extraordinary -Commission. What were nuisances in England are magnified to disasters in -Russia. That is all the difference. For all I know, Western Europe may -be still drifting even now towards a parallel crash. I am not by any -means sure that we have turned the corner. War, self-indulgence, and -unproductive speculation may still be wasting more than the Western -world is producing; in which case our own crash—currency failure, a -universal shortage, social and political collapse and all the rest of -it—is merely a question of time. The shops of Regent Street will follow -the shops of the Nevsky Prospect, and Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Bennett -will have to do what they can to salvage the art treasures of Mayfair. -It falsifies the whole world situation, it sets people altogether astray -in their political actions, to assert that the frightful destitution of -Russia to-day is to any large extent the result merely of Communist -effort; that the wicked Communists have pulled down Russia to her -present plight, and that if you can overthrow the Communists every one -and everything in Russia will suddenly become happy again. Russia fell -into its present miseries through the world war and the moral and -intellectual insufficiency of it’s ruling and wealthy people. (As our -own British State—as presently even the American State—may fall.) They -had neither the brains nor the conscience to stop warfare, stop waste of -all sorts, and stop taking the best of everything and leaving every one -else dangerously unhappy, until it was too late. They ruled and wasted -and quarrelled, blind to the coming disaster up to the very moment of -its occurrence. And then, as I will describe in my next paper, the -Communist came in.... - - - - - III - THE QUINTESSENCE OF BOLSHEVISM - - -In the two preceding papers I have tried to give the reader my -impression of Russian life as I saw it in Petersburg and Moscow, as a -spectacle of collapse, as the collapse of a political, social, and -economic system, akin to our own but weaker and more rotten than our -own, which has crashed under the pressure of six years of war and -misgovernment. The main collapse occurred in 1917 when Tsarism, -brutishly incompetent, became manifestly impossible. It had wasted the -whole land, lost control of its army and the confidence of the entire -population. Its police system had degenerated into a _régime_ of -violence and brigandage. It fell inevitably. - -And there was no alternative government. For generations the chief -energies of Tsarism had been directed to destroying any possibility of -an alternative government. It had subsisted on that one fact that, bad -as it was, there was nothing else to put in its place. The first Russian -Revolution, therefore, turned Russia into a debating society and a -political scramble. The liberal forces of the country, unaccustomed to -action or responsibility, set up a clamorous discussion whether Russia -was to be a constitutional monarchy, a liberal republic, a socialist -republic, or what not. Over the confusion gesticulated Kerensky in -attitudes of the finest liberalism. Through it loomed various ambiguous -adventurers, “strong men,” sham strong men, Russian monks and Russian -Bonapartes. What remained of social order collapsed. In the closing -months of 1917 murder and robbery were common street incidents in -Petersburg and Moscow, as common as an automobile accident in the -streets of London, and less heeded. On the Reval boat was an American -who had formerly directed the affairs of the American - -[Illustration: - - THE STATUE OF MARX OUTSIDE THE SMOLNY INSTITUTE. - (Headquarters of the Communist Party.) -] - -Harvester Company in Russia. He had been in Moscow during this phase of -complete disorder. He described hold-ups in open daylight in busy -streets, dead bodies lying for hours in the gutter—as a dead kitten -might do in a western town—while crowds went about their business along -the sidewalk. - -Through this fevered and confused country went the representatives of -Britain and France, blind to the quality of the immense and tragic -disaster about them, intent only upon _the_ war, badgering the Russians -to keep on fighting and make a fresh offensive against Germany. But when -the Germans made a strong thrust towards Petersburg through the Baltic -provinces and by sea, the British Admiralty, either through sheer -cowardice or through Royalist intrigues, failed to give any effectual -help to Russia. Upon this matter the evidence of the late Lord Fisher is -plain. And so this unhappy country, mortally sick and, as it were, -delirious, staggered towards a further stage of collapse. - -From end to end of Russia, and in the Russian-speaking community -throughout the world, there existed only one sort of people who had -common general ideas upon which to work, a common faith and a common -will, and that was the Communist party. While all the rest of Russia was -either apathetic like the peasantry or garrulously at sixes and sevens -or given over to violence or fear, the Communists believed and were -prepared to act. Numerically they were and are a very small part of the -Russian population. At the present time not one per cent. of the people -in Russia are Communists; the organised party certainly does not number -more than 600,000 and has probably not much more than 150,000 active -members. Nevertheless, because it was in those terrible days the only -organisation which gave men a common idea of action, common formulæ, and -mutual confidence, it was able to seize and retain control of the -smashed empire. It was and it is the only sort of administrative -solidarity possible in Russia. These ambiguous adventurers who have been -and are afflicting Russia, with the support of the Western Powers, -Deniken, Kolchak, Wrangel and the like, stand for no guiding principle -and offer no security of any sort upon which men’s confidence can -crystallise. They are essentially brigands. The Communist party, however -one may criticise it, does embody an idea and can be relied upon to -stand by its idea. So far it is a thing morally higher than anything -that has yet come against it. It at once secured the passive support of -the peasant mass by permitting them to take land from the estates and by -making peace with Germany. It restored order—after a frightful lot of -shooting—in the great towns. For a time everybody found carrying arms -without authority was shot. This action was clumsy and bloody but -effective. To retain its power this Communist Government organised -Extraordinary Commissions, with practically unlimited powers, and -crushed out all opposition by a Red Terror. Much that that Red Terror -did was cruel and frightful, it was largely controlled by narrow-minded -men, and many of its officials were inspired by social hatred and the -fear of counter-revolution, but if it was fanatical it was honest. Apart -from individual atrocities it did on the whole kill for a reason and to -an end. Its bloodshed was not like the silly aimless butcheries of the -Deniken _régime_, which would not even recognise, I was told, the -Bolshevik Red Cross. And to-day the Bolshevik Government sits, I -believe, in Moscow as securely established as any Government in Europe, -and the streets of the Russian towns are as safe as any streets in -Europe. - -It not only established itself and restored order, but—thanks largely to -the genius of that ex-pacifist Trotsky—it re-created the Russian army as -a fighting force. That we must recognise as a very remarkable -achievement. I saw little of the Russian army myself, it was not what I -went to Russia to see, but Mr. Vanderlip, the distinguished American -financier, whom I found in Moscow engaged in some financial negotiations -with the Soviet Government, had been treated to a review of several -thousand troops, and was very enthusiastic about their spirit and -equipment. My son and I saw a number of drafts going to the front, and -also bodies of recruits joining up, and our impression is that the -spirit of the men was quite as good as that of similar bodies of British -recruits in London in 1917–18. - -Now who are these Bolsheviki who have taken such an effectual hold upon -Russia? According to the crazier section of the British Press they are -the agents of a mysterious racial plot, a secret society, in which Jews, -Jesuits, Freemasons, and Germans are all jumbled together in the maddest -fashion. As a matter of fact, nothing was ever quite less secret than -the ideas and aims and methods of the Bolsheviks, nor anything quite -less like a secret society than their organization. But in England we -cultivate a peculiar style of thinking, so impervious to any general -ideas that it must needs fall back upon the notion of a conspiracy to -explain the simplest reactions of the human mind. If, for instance, a -day labourer in Essex makes a fuss because he finds that the price of -his children’s boots has risen out of all proportion to the increase in -his weekly wages, and declares that he and his fellow-workers are being -cheated and underpaid, the editors of _The Times_ and of the _Morning -Post_ will trace his resentment to the insidious propaganda of some -mysterious society at Königsberg or Pekin. They cannot conceive how -otherwise he should get such ideas into his head. Conspiracy mania of -this kind is so prevalent that I feel constrained to apologise for my -own immunity. I find the Bolsheviks very much what they profess to be. I -find myself obliged to treat them as fairly straightforward people. I do -not agree with either their views or their methods, but that is another -question. - -The Bolsheviks are Marxists Socialists. Marx died in London nearly forty -years ago; the propaganda of his views has been going on for over half a -century. It has spread over the whole earth and finds in nearly every -country a small but enthusiastic following. It is a natural result of -world-wide economic conditions. Everywhere it expresses the same limited -ideas in the same distinctive phrasing. It is a cult, a world-wide -international brotherhood. No one need learn Russian to study the ideas -of Bolshevism. The enquirer will find them all in the London _Plebs_ or -the New York _Liberator_ in exactly the same phrases as in the Russian -_Pravda_. They hide nothing. They say everything. And just precisely -what these Marxists write and say, so they attempt to do. - -It will be best if I write about Marx without any hypocritical -deference. I have always regarded him as a Bore of the extremest sort. -His vast unfinished work, _Das Kapital_, a cadence of wearisome volumes -about such phantom unrealities as the _bourgeoisie_ and the -_proletariat_, a book for ever maundering away into tedious secondary -discussions, impresses me as a monument of pretentious pedantry. But -before I went to Russia on this last occasion I had no active hostility -to Marx. I avoided his works, and when I encountered Marxists I disposed -of them by asking them to tell me exactly what people constituted the -proletariat. None of them knew. No Marxist knows. In Gorky’s flat I -listened with attention while Bokaiev discussed with Shalyapin the fine -question of whether in Russia there was a proletariat at all, -distinguishable from the peasants. As Bokaiev has been head of the -Extraordinary Commission of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in -Petersburg, it was interesting to note the fine difficulties of the -argument. The “proletarian” in the Marxist jargon is like the “producer” -in the jargon of some political economists, who is supposed to be a -creature absolutely distinct and different from the “consumer.” So the -proletarian is a figure put into flat opposition to something called -capital. I find in large type outside the current number of the _Plebs_, -“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” -Apply this to a works foreman who is being taken in a train by an -engine-driver to see how the house he is having built for him by a -building society is getting on. To which of these immiscibles does he -belong, employer or employed? The stuff is sheer nonsense. - -In Russia I must confess my passive objection to Marx has changed to a -very active hostility. Wherever we went we encountered busts, portraits, -and statues of Marx. About two-thirds of the face of Marx is beard, a -vast solemn woolly uneventful beard that must have made all normal -exercise impossible. It is not the sort of beard that happens to a man, -it is a beard cultivated, cherished, and thrust patriarchally upon the -world. It is exactly like _Das Kapital_ in its inane abundance, and the -human part of the face looks over it owlishly as if it looked to see how -the growth impressed mankind. I found the omnipresent images of that -beard more and more irritating. A gnawing desire grew upon me to see -Karl Marx shaved. Some day, if I am spared, I will take up shears and a -razor against _Das Kapital_; I will write _The Shaving of Karl Marx_. - -But Marx is for the Marxists merely an image and a symbol, and it is -with the Marxist and not with Marx that we are now dealing. Few Marxists -have read much of _Das Kapital_. The Marxist is very much the same sort -of person in all modern communities, and I will confess that by my -temperament and circumstances I have the very warmest sympathy for him. -He adopts Marx as his prophet simply because he believes that Marx wrote -of the class war, an implacable war of the employed against the -employer, and that he prophesied a triumph for the employed person, a -dictatorship of the world by the leaders of these liberated employed -persons (dictatorship of the proletariat), and a Communist millennium -arising out of that dictatorship. Now this doctrine and this prophecy -have appealed in every country with extraordinary power to young -persons, and particularly to young men of energy and imagination who -have found themselves at the outset of life imperfectly educated, -ill-equipped, and caught into hopeless wages slavery in our existing -economic system. They realise in their own persons the social injustice, -the stupid negligence, the colossal incivility of our system; they -realise that they are insulted and sacrificed by it; and they devote -themselves to break it and emancipate themselves from it. No insidious -propaganda is needed to make such rebels; it is the faults of a system -that half-educates and then enslaves them which have created the -Communist movement wherever industrialism has developed. There would -have been Marxists if Marx had never lived. When I was a boy of fourteen -I was a complete Marxist, long before I had heard the name of Marx. I -had been cut off abruptly from education, caught in a detestable shop, -and I was being broken in to a life of mean and dreary toil. I was -worked too hard and for such long hours that all thoughts of -self-improvement seemed hopeless. I would have set fire to that place if -I had not been convinced it was over-insured. I revived the spirit of -those bitter days in a conversation I had with Zorin, one of the leaders -of the Commune of the North. He is a young man who has come back from -unskilled work in America, a very likable human being and a humorous and -very popular speaker in the Petersburg Soviet. He and I exchanged -experiences, and I found that the thing that rankled most in his mind -about America was the brutal incivility he had encountered when applying -for a job as packer in a big dry goods store in New York. We told each -other stories of the way our social system wastes and breaks and maddens -decent and willing men. Between us was the freemasonry of a common -indignation. - -It is that indignation of youth and energy, thwarted and misused, it is -that and no mere economic theorising, which is the living and linking -inspiration of the Marxist movement throughout the world. It is not that -Marx was profoundly wise, but that our economic system has been stupid, -selfish, wasteful, and anarchistic. The Communistic organisation has -provided for this angry recalcitrance certain shibboleths and passwords: -“Workers of the World unite,” and so forth. It has suggested to them an -idea of a great conspiracy against human happiness concocted by a -mysterious body of wicked men called capitalists. For in this mentally -enfeebled world in which we live to-day conspiracy mania on one side -finds its echo on the other, and it is hard to persuade a Marxist that -capitalists are in their totality no more than a scrambling disorder of -mean-spirited and short-sighted men. And the Communist propaganda has -knitted all these angry and disinherited spirits together into a -world-wide organisation of revolt—and hope—formless though that hope -proves to be on examination. It has chosen Marx for its prophet and red -for its colour.... And so when the crash came in Russia, when there -remained no other solidarity of men who could work together upon any but -immediate selfish ends, there came flowing back from America and the -West to rejoin their comrades a considerable number of keen and -enthusiastic young and youngish men, who had in that more bracing -Western world lost something of the habitual impracticability of the -Russian and acquired a certain habit of getting things done, who all -thought in the same phrases and had the courage of the same ideas, and -who were all inspired by the dream of a revolution that should bring -human life to a new level of justice and happiness. It is these young -men who constitute the living force of Bolshevism. Many of them are -Jews, because most of the Russian emigrants to America were Jews; but -few of them have any strong racial Jewish feeling. They are not out for -Jewry but for a new world. So far from being in continuation of the -Jewish tradition the Bolsheviks have put most of the Zionist leaders in -Russia in prison, and they have prescribed the teaching of Hebrew as a -“reactionary” language. Several of the most interesting Bolsheviks I met -were not Jews at all, but blonde Nordic men. Lenin, the beloved leader -of all that is energetic in Russia to-day, has a Tartar type of face and -is certainly no Jew. - -This Bolshevik Government is at once the most temerarious and the least -experienced governing body in the world. In some directions its -incompetence is amazing. In most its ignorance is profound. Of the -diabolical cunning of “capitalism” and of the subtleties of reaction it -is ridiculously suspicious, and sometimes it takes fright and is cruel. -But essentially it is honest. It is the most simple-minded Government -that exists in the world to-day. - -Its simple-mindedness is shown by one question that I was asked again -and again during this Russian visit. “When is the social revolution -going to happen in England?” Lenin asked me that, Zenovieff, who is the -head of the Commune of the North, Zorin, and many others. - -Because it is by the Marxist theory all wrong that the social revolution -should happen first in Russia. That fact is bothering every intelligent -man in the movement. According to the Marxist theory the social -revolution should have happened first in the country with the oldest and -most highly developed industrialism, with a large, definite, mainly -propertyless, mainly wages-earning working class (proletariat). It -should have begun in Britain, and spread to France and Germany, then -should have come America’s turn and so on. Instead they find Communism -in power in Russia, which really possesses no specialised labouring -class at all, which has worked its factories with peasant labourers who -come and go from the villages, and so has scarcely any “proletariat”—to -unite with the workers of the world and so forth—at all. Behind the -minds of many of these Bolsheviks with whom I talked I saw clearly that -there dawns now a chill suspicion of the reality of the case, a -realisation that what they have got in Russia is not truly the promised -Marxist social revolution at all, that in truth they have not captured a -State but got aboard a derelict. I tried to assist the development of -this novel and disconcerting discovery. And also I indulged in a little -lecture on the absence of a large “class-conscious proletariat” in the -Western communities. I explained that in England there were two hundred -different classes at least, and that the only “class-conscious -proletarians” known to me in the land were a small band of mainly Scotch -workers kept together by the vigorous leadership of a gentleman named -MacManus. Their dearest convictions struggled against my manifest -candour. They are clinging desperately to the belief that there are -hundreds of thousands of convinced Communists in Britain, versed in the -whole gospel of Marx, a proletarian solidarity, on the eve of seizing -power and proclaiming a British Soviet Republic. They hold obstinately -to that after three years of waiting—but their hold weakens. - -[Illustration: - - THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO CAPITALISM AND BRITISH - IMPERIALISM. - Zenovieff (_by the bell_); to the right of him (_i.e._ on his left) - are Radek (_spectacles_) and Bela Kun (_rather foggy_). -] - -[Illustration: - - THE BAKU CONFERENCE SWEARS UNDYING HOSTILITY TO CAPITALISM AND BRITISH - IMPERIALISM: - The Body of the Hall. -] - -Among the most amusing things in this queer intellectual situation are -the repeated scoldings that come by wireless from Moscow to Western -Labour because it does not behave as Marx said it would behave. It isn’t -red—and it ought to be. It is just yellow. - -My conversation with Zenovieff was particularly curious. He is a man -with the voice and animation of Hilaire Belloc, and a lot of curly -coal-black hair. “You have civil war in Ireland,” he said. -“Practically,” said I. “Which do you consider are the proletarians, the -Sinn Feiners or the Ulstermen?” We spent some time while Zenovieff -worked like a man with a jigsaw puzzle trying to get the Irish situation -into the class war formula. That jigsaw puzzle remained unsolved, and we -then shifted our attention to Asia. Impatient at the long delay of the -Western proletarians to emerge and declare themselves, Zenovieff, -assisted by Bela Kun, our Mr. Jack Quelch, and a number of other leading -Communists, has recently gone on a pilgrimage to Baku to raise the -Asiatic proletariat. They went to beat up the class-conscious wages -slaves of Persia and Turkestan. They sought out factory workers and slum -dwellers in the tents of the steppes. They held a congress at Baku, at -which they gathered together a quite wonderful accumulation of white, -black, brown, and yellow people, Asiatic costumes and astonishing -weapons. They had a great assembly in which they swore undying hatred of -Capitalism and British imperialism; they had a great procession in which -I regret to say certain batteries of British guns, which some careless, -hasty empire-builder had left behind him, figured; they disinterred and -buried again thirteen people whom this British empire-builder seems to -have shot without trial, and they burnt Mr. Lloyd George, M. Millerand, -and President Wilson in effigy. I not only saw a five-part film of this -remarkable festival when I visited the Petersburg Soviet, but, thanks to -Zorin, I have brought the film back with me. It is to be administered -with caution and to adults only. There are parts of it that would make -Mr. Gwynne of the _Morning Post_ or Mr. Rudyard Kipling scream in their -sleep. If so be they ever slept again after seeing it. - -I did my best to find out from Zenovieff and Zorin what they thought -they were doing in the Baku Conference. And frankly I do not think they -know. I doubt if they have anything clearer in their minds than a vague -idea of hitting back at the British Government through Mesopotamia and -India, because it has been hitting them through Kolchak, Deniken, -Wrangel, and the Poles. It is a counter-offensive almost as clumsy and -stupid as the offensives it would counter. It is inconceivable that they -can hope for any social solidarity with the miscellaneous discontents -their congress assembled. One item “featured” on this Baku film is a -dance by a gentleman from the neighbourhood of Baku. He is in fact one -of the main features of this remarkable film. He wears a fur-trimmed -jacket, high boots, and a high cap, and his dancing is a very rapid and -dexterous step dancing. He produces two knives and puts them between his -teeth, and then two others which he balances perilously with the blades -dangerously close to his nose on either side of it. Finally he poises a -fifth knife on his forehead, still stepping it featly to the distinctly -Oriental music. He stoops and squats, arms akimbo, sending his nimble -boots flying out and back like the Cossacks in the Russian ballet. He -circles slowly as he does this, clapping his hands. He is now rolled up -in my keeping, ready to dance again when opportunity offers. I tried to -find out whether he was a specimen Asiatic proletarian or just what he -symbolised, but I could get no light on him. But there are yards and -yards of film of him. I wish I could have resuscitated Karl Marx, just -to watch that solemn stare over the beard, regarding him. The film gives -no indication of his reception by Mr. Jack Quelch. - -I hope I shall not offend Comrade Zorin, for whom I have a real -friendship, if I thus confess to him that I cannot take his Baku -Conference very seriously. It was an excursion, a pageant, a Beano. As a -meeting of Asiatic proletarians it was preposterous. But if it was not -very much in itself, it was something very important in its revelation -of shifting intentions. Its chief significance to me is this, that it -shows a new orientation of the Bolshevik mind as it is embodied in -Zenovieff. So long as the Bolsheviki held firmly with unshaken -conviction to the Marxist formula they looked westward, a little -surprised that the “social revolution” should have begun so far to the -east of its indicated centre. Now as they begin to realise that it is -not that prescribed social revolution at all but something quite -different which has brought them into power, they are naturally enough -casting about for a new system of relationships. The ideal figure of the -Russian republic is still a huge western “Worker,” with a vast hammer or -a sickle. A time may come, if we maintain the European blockade with -sufficient stringency and make any industrial recuperation impossible, -when that ideal may give place altogether to a nomadic-looking gentleman -from Turkestan with a number of knives. We may drive what will remain of -Bolshevik Russia to the steppes and the knife. If we help Baron Wrangel -to pull down the by no means firmly established Government in Moscow, -under the delusion that thereby we shall bring about “representative -institutions” and a “limited monarchy,” we may find ourselves very much -out in our calculations. Any one who destroys the present law and order -of Moscow will, I believe, destroy what is left of law and order in -Russia. A brigand monarchist government will leave a trail of fresh -blood across the Russian scene, show what gentlemen can do when they are -roused in a tremendous pogrom and White Terror, flourish horribly for a -time, break up and vanish. Asia will resume. The simple ancient rhythm -of the horseman plundering the peasant and the peasant waylaying the -horseman will creep back across the plains to the Niemen and the -Dniester. The cities will become clusters of ruins in the waste; the -roads and railroads will rot and rust; the river traffic will decay.... - -This Baku Conference has depressed Gorky profoundly. He is obsessed by a -nightmare of Russia going east. Perhaps I have caught a little of his -depression. - - - - - IV - THE CREATIVE EFFORT IN RUSSIA - - -In the previous three papers I have tried to give my impression of the -Russian spectacle as that of a rather ramshackle modern civilisation -completely shattered and overthrown by misgovernment, under-education, -and finally six years of war strain. I have shown science and art -starving and the comforts and many of the decencies of life gone. In -Vienna the overthrow is just as bad; and there too such men of science -as the late Professor Margules starve to death. If London had had to -endure four more years of war, much the same sort of thing would be -happening in London. We should have now no coal in our grates and no -food for our food tickets, and the shops in Bond Street would be as -desolate as the shops in the Nevsky Prospect. Bolshevik government in -Russia is neither responsible for the causation nor for the continuance -of these miseries. - -I have also tried to get the facts of Bolshevik rule into what I believe -is their proper proportions in the picture. The Bolsheviks, albeit -numbering less than five per cent of the population, have been able to -seize and retain power in Russia because they were and are the only body -of people in this vast spectacle of Russian ruin with a common faith and -a common spirit. I disbelieve in their faith, I ridicule Marx, their -prophet, but I understand and respect their spirit. They are—with all -their faults, and they have abundant faults—the only possible backbone -now to a renascent Russia. The recivilising of Russia must be done with -the Soviet Government as the starting phase. The great mass of the -Russian population is an entirely illiterate peasantry, grossly -materialistic and politically indifferent. They are superstitious, they -are for ever crossing themselves and kissing images,—in Moscow -particularly they were at it—but they are not religious. They have no -will in things political and social beyond their immediate -satisfactions. They are roughly content with Bolshevik rule. The -Orthodox priest is quite unlike the Catholic priest in Western Europe; -he is himself typically a dirty and illiterate peasant with no power -over the wills and consciences of his people. There is no constructive -quality in either peasant or Orthodoxy. For the rest there is a -confusion of more or less civilised Russians, in and out of Russia, with -no common political ideas and with no common will. They are incapable of -producing anything but adventures and disputes. - -The Russian refugees in England are politically contemptible. They -rehearse endless stories of “Bolshevik outrages”: chateau burnings by -peasants, burglaries and murders by disbanded soldiers in the towns, -back street crimes—they tell them all as acts of the Bolshevik -Government. Ask them what government they want in its place, and you -will get rubbishy generalities—usually adapted to what the speaker -supposes to be your particular political obsession. Or they sicken you -with the praise of some current super-man, Deniken or Wrangel, who is to -put everything right—God knows how. They deserve nothing better than a -Tsar, and they are incapable even of deciding which Tsar they desire. -The better part of the educated people still in Russia are—for the sake -of Russia—slowly drifting into a reluctant but honest co-operation with -Bolshevik rule. - -The Bolsheviks themselves are Marxists and Communists. They find -themselves in control of Russia, in complete contradiction, as I have -explained, to the theories of Karl Marx. A large part of their energies -have been occupied in an entirely patriotic struggle against the raids, -invasions, blockades, and persecutions of every sort that our insensate -Western Governments have rained upon their tragically shattered country. -What is left over goes in the attempt to keep Russia alive, and to -organise some sort of social order among the ruins. These Bolsheviks -are, as I have explained, extremely inexperienced men, intellectual -exiles from Geneva and Hampstead, or comparatively illiterate manual -workers from the United States. Never was there so amateurish a -government since the early Moslem found themselves in control of Cairo, -Damascus, and Mesopotamia. - -I believe that in the minds of very many of them there is a considerable -element of dismay at the tremendous tasks they find before them. But one -thing has helped them and Russia enormously, and that is their training -in Communistic ideas. As the British found out during the submarine war, -so far as the urban and industrial population goes there is nothing for -it during a time of tragic scarcity but collapse or collective control. -We in England had to control and ration, we had to suppress profiteering -by stringent laws. These Communists came into power in Russia and began -to do at once, on principle, the first most necessary thing in that -chaos of social wreckage. Against all the habits and traditions of -Russia, they began to control and ration—exhaustively. They have now a -rationing system that is, on paper, admirable beyond cavil; and perhaps -it works as well as the temperament and circumstances of Russian -production and consumption permit. It is easy to note defects and -failures, but not nearly so easy to show how in this depleted and -demoralised Russia they could be avoided. And things are in such a state -in Russia now that even if we suppose the Bolsheviks overthrown and any -other Government in their place, it matters not what, that Government -would have to go on with the rationing the Bolsheviks have organised, -with the suppression of vague political experiments, and the punishment -and shooting of profiteers. The Bolsheviki in this state of siege and -famine have done upon principle what any other Government would have had -to do from necessity. - -[Illustration: - - PROLETARIANS OF ASIA À LA BAKU. -] - -And in the face of gigantic difficulties they are trying to rebuild a -new Russia among the ruins. We may quarrel with their principles and -methods, we may call their schemes Utopian and so forth, we may sneer at -or we may dread what they are doing, but it is no good pretending that -there is no creative effort in Russia at the present time. A certain -section of the Bolsheviks are hard-minded, doctrinaire and unteachable -men, fanatics who believe that the mere destruction of capitalism, the -disuse of money and trading, the effacement of all social differences, -will in itself bring about a sort of bleak millennium. There are -Bolsheviki so stupid that they would stop the teaching of chemistry in -schools until they were assured it was “proletarian” chemistry, and who -would suppress every decorative design that was not an elaboration of -the letters R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic) as -reactionary art. I have told of the suppression of Hebrew studies -because they are “reactionary”; and while I was with Gorky I found him -in constant bitter disputes with extremist officials who would see no -good in any literature of the past except the literature of revolt. But -there were other more liberal minds in this new Russian world, minds -which, given an opportunity, will build and will probably build well. -Among men of such constructive force I would quote such names as Lenin -himself, who has developed wonderfully since the days of his exile, and -who has recently written powerfully against the extravagances of his own -extremists; Trotsky, who has never been an extremist, and who is a man -of very great organising ability; Lunacharsky, the Minister for -Education; Rikoff, the head of the Department of People’s Economy; -Madame Lilna of the Petersburg Child Welfare Department; and Krassin, -the head of the London Trade Delegation. These are names that occur to -me; it is by no means an exhaustive list of the statesmanlike elements -in the Bolshevik Government. Already they have achieved something, in -spite of blockade and civil and foreign war. It is not only that they -work to restore a country depleted of material to an extent almost -inconceivable to English and American readers, but they work with an -extraordinarily unhelpful personnel. Russia to-day stands more in need -of men of the foreman and works-manager class than she does of -medicaments or food. The ordinary work in the Government offices of -Russia is shockingly done; the slackness and inaccuracy are -indescribable. Everybody seems to be working in a muddle of unsorted -papers and cigarette ends. This again is a state of affairs no -counter-revolution could change. It is inherent in the present Russian -situation. If one of these military adventurers of the Yudenitch or -Deniken type were, by some disastrous accident, to get control of -Russia, his success would only add strong drink, embezzlement, and a -great squalour of kept mistresses to the general complication. For -whatever else we may say to the discredit of the Bolshevik leaders, it -is undeniable that the great majority lead not simply laborious but -puritanical lives. - -I write of this general inefficiency in Russia with the more asperity -because it was the cause of my not meeting Lunacharsky. About eighty -hours of my life was consumed in travelling, telephoning, and waiting -about in order to talk for about an hour and a half with Lenin and for -the some time with Tchitcherin. At that rate, and in view of the -intermittent boat service from Reval to Stockholm, to see Lunacharsky -would have meant at least a week more in Russia. The whole of my visit -to Moscow was muddled in the most irritating fashion. A sailor-man -carrying a silver kettle who did not know his way about Moscow was put -in charge of my journey, and an American who did not know enough Russian -to telephone freely was set to make my appointments in the town. -Although I had heard Gorky arrange for my meeting with Lenin by -long-distance telephone days before, Moscow declared that it had had no -notice of my coming. Finally I was put into the wrong train back to -Petersburg, a train which took twenty-two hours instead of fourteen for -the journey. These may seem petty details to relate, but when it is -remembered that Russia was really doing its best to impress me with its -vigour and good order, they are extremely significant. In the train, -when I realised that it was a slow train and that the express had gone -three hours before while we had been pacing the hall of the guest house -with our luggage packed and nobody coming for us, the spirit came upon -me and my lips were unsealed. I spoke to my guide, as one mariner might -speak to another, and told him what I thought of Russian methods. He -listened with the profoundest respect to my rich incisive phrases. When -at last I paused, he replied—in words that are also significant of -certain weaknesses of the present Russian state of mind. “You see,” he -said, “the blockade——” - -But if I saw nothing of Lunacharsky personally, I saw something of the -work he has organised. The primary material of the educationist is human -beings, and of these at least there is still no shortage in Russia, so -that in that respect Lunacharsky is better off than most of his -colleagues. And beginning with an initial prejudice and much distrust, I -am bound to confess that, in view of their enormous difficulties, the -educational work of the Bolsheviks impresses me as being astonishingly -good. - -Things started badly. Directly I got to Petersburg I asked to see a -school, and on the second day of my visit I was taken to one that -impressed me very unfavourably. It was extremely well equipped, much -better than an ordinary English grammar school, and the children were -bright and intelligent; but our visit fell in the recess. I could -witness no teaching, and the behaviour of the youngsters I saw indicated -a low standard of discipline. I formed an opinion that I was probably -being shown a picked school specially prepared for me, and that this was -all that Petersburg had to offer. The special guide who was with us then -began to question these children upon the subject of English literature -and the writers they liked most. One name dominated all others. My own. -Such comparatively trivial figures as Milton, Dickens, Shakespeare ran -about intermittently between the feet of that literary colossus. Being -questioned further, these children produced the titles of perhaps a -dozen of my books. I said I was completely satisfied by what I had seen -and heard, that I wanted to see nothing more—for indeed what more could -I possibly require?—and I left that school smiling with difficulty and -thoroughly cross with my guides. - -Three days later I suddenly scrapped my morning’s engagements and -insisted upon being taken at once to another school—any school close at -hand. I was convinced that I had been deceived about the former school, -and that now I should see a very bad school indeed. Instead I saw a much -better one than the first I had seen. The equipment and building were -better, the discipline of the children was better, and I saw some -excellent teaching in progress. Most of the teachers were women, very -competent-looking middle-aged women, and I chose elementary geometrical -teaching to observe because that on the blackboard is in the universal -language of the diagram. I saw also a heap of drawings and various -models the pupils had done, and they were very good. The school was -supplied with abundant pictures. I noted particularly a well-chosen -series of landscapes to assist the geographical teaching. There was -plenty of chemical and physical apparatus, and it was evidently put to a -proper use. I also saw the children’s next meal in preparation—for -children eat at school in Soviet Russia—and the food was excellent and -well cooked, far above the standard of the adult rations we had seen -served out. All this was much more satisfactory. Finally by a few -questions we tested the extraordinary vogue of H. G. Wells among the -young people of Russia. None of these children had ever heard of him. -The school library contained none of his books. This did much to -convince me that I was seeing a quite normal school. I had, I now begin -to realise, been taken to the previous one not, as I had supposed in my -wrath, with any elaborate intention of deceiving me about the state of -education in the country, but after certain kindly intrigues and -preparations by a literary friend, Mr. Chukovsky the critic, -affectionately anxious to make me feel myself beloved in Russia, and a -little oblivious of the real gravity of the business I had in hand. - -Subsequent enquiries and comparison of my observations with those of -other visitors to Russia, and particularly those of Dr. Haden Guest, who -also made surprise visits to several schools in Moscow, have convinced -me that Soviet Russia, in the face of gigantic difficulties, has made -and is making very great educational efforts, and that in spite of the -difficulties of the general situation the quality and number of the -schools _in the towns_ has risen absolutely since the Tsarist _régime_. -(The peasant, as ever, except in a few “show” localities, remains -scarcely touched by these things.) The schools I saw would have been -good middle schools in England. They are open to all, and there is an -attempt to make education compulsory. Of course Russia has its peculiar -difficulties. Many of the schools are understaffed, and it is difficult -to secure the attendance of unwilling pupils. Numbers of children prefer -to keep out of the schools and trade upon the streets. A large part of -the illicit trading in Russia is done by bands of children. They are -harder to catch than adults, and the spirit of Russian Communism is -against punishing them. And the Russian child is, for a northern child, -remarkably precocious. - -The common practice of co-educating youngsters up to fifteen or sixteen, -in a country as demoralised as Russia is now, has brought peculiar evils -in its train. My attention was called to this by the visit of Bokaiev, -the former head of the Petersburg Extraordinary Commission, and his -colleague Zalutsky to Gorky to consult him in the matter. They discussed -their business in front of me quite frankly, and the whole conversation -was translated to me as it went on. The Bolshevik authorities have -collected and published very startling, very shocking figures of the -moral condition of young people in Petersburg, which I have seen. How -far they would compare with the British figures—if there are any British -figures—of such bad districts for the young as are some parts of East -London or such towns of low type employment as Reading I do not know. -(The reader should compare the Fabian Society’s report on prostitution, -_Downward Paths_, upon this question.) Nor do I know how they would show -in comparison with preceding Tsarist conditions. Nor can I speculate how -far these phenomena in Russia are the mechanical consequence of -privation and overcrowding in a home atmosphere bordering on despair. -But there can be no doubt that in the Russian towns, concurrently with -increased educational effort and an enhanced intellectual stimulation of -the young, there is also an increased lawlessness on their part, -especially in sexual matters, and that this is going on in a phase of -unexampled sobriety and harsh puritanical decorum so far as adult life -is concerned. This hectic moral fever of the young is the dark side of -the educational spectacle in Russia. I think it is to be regarded mainly -as an aspect of the general social collapse; every European country has -noted a parallel moral relaxation of the young under the war strain; but -the revolution itself, in sweeping a number of the old experienced -teachers out of the schools and in making every moral standard a subject -of debate, has no doubt contributed also to an as yet incalculable -amount in the excessive disorder of these matters in present-day Russia. - -Faced with this problem of starving and shattered homes and a social -chaos, the Bolshevik organisers are _institutionalising_ the town -children of Russia. They are making their schools residential. The -children of the Russian urban population are going, like the children of -the British upper class, into boarding schools. Close to this second -school I visited stood two big buildings which are the living places of -the boys and of the girls respectively. In these places they can be kept -under some sort of hygienic and moral discipline. This again happens to -be not only in accordance with Communist doctrine, but with the special -necessities of the Russian crisis. Entire towns are sinking down towards -slum conditions, and the Bolshevik Government has had to play the part -of a gigantic Dr. Barnardo. - -We went over the organisation of a sort of reception home to which -children are brought by their parents who find it impossible to keep -them clean and decent and nourished under the terrible conditions -outside. This reception home is the old Hotel de l’Europe, the scene of -countless pleasant little dinner-parties under the old _régime_. On the -roof there is still the summertime roof garden, where the string -quartette used to play, and on the staircase we passed a frosted glass -window still bearing in gold letters the words _Coiffure des Dames_. - -Slender gilded pointing hands directed us to the “Restaurant,” long -vanished from the grim Petersburg scheme of things. Into this place the -children come; they pass into a special quarantine section for -infectious diseases and for personal cleanliness—nine-tenths of the -newcomers harbour unpleasant parasites—and then into another section, -the moral quarantine, where for a time they are watched for bad habits -and undesirable tendencies. From this section some individuals may need -to be weeded out and sent to special schools for defectives. The rest -pass on into the general body of institutionalized children, and so on -to the boarding schools. - -Here certainly we have the “break-up of the family” in full progress, -and the Bolshevik net is sweeping wide and taking in children of the -most miscellaneous origins. The parents have reasonably free access to -their children in the daytime, but little or no control over their -education, clothing, or the like. We went among the children in the -various stages of this educational process, and they seemed to us to be -quite healthy, happy, and contented children. But they get very good -people to look after them. Many men and women, politically suspects or -openly discontented with the existing political conditions, and yet with -a desire to serve Russia, have found in these places work that they can -do with a good heart and conscience. My interpreter and the lady who -took us round this place had often dined and supped in the Hotel de -l’Europe in its brilliant days, and they knew each other well. This lady -was now plainly clad, with short cut hair and a grave manner; her -husband was a White and serving with the Poles; she had two children of -her own in the institution, and she was mothering some scores of little -creatures. But she was evidently keenly proud of the work of her -organisation, and she said that she found life—in this city of want, -under the shadow of a coming famine—more interesting and satisfying than -it had ever been in the old days. - -I have no space to tell of other educational work we saw going on in -Russia. I can give but a word or so to the Home of Rest for Workmen in -the Kamenni Ostrof. I thought that at once rather fine and not a little -absurd. To this place workers are sent to live a life of refined ease -for two or three weeks. It is a very beautiful country house with fine -gardens, an orangery, and subordinate buildings. The meals are served on -white cloths with flowers upon the table and so forth. And the worker -has to live up to these elegant surroundings. It is a part of his -education. If in a forgetful moment he clears his throat in the good old -resonant peasant manner and spits upon the floor, an attendant, I was -told, chalks a circle about his defilement and obliges him to clean the -offended parquetry. The avenue approaching this place has been adorned -with decoration in the futurist style, and there is a vast figure of a -“worker” at the gates resting on his hammer, done in gypsum, which was -obtained from the surgical reserves of the Petersburg hospitals.... But -after all, the idea of civilising your workpeople by dipping them into -pleasant surroundings is, in itself, rather a good one.... - -[Illustration: - - GUESTS AT THE HOME OF REST FOR WORKMEN ON THE KAMENNI OSTROF. -] - -I find it difficult to hold the scales of justice upon many of these -efforts of Bolshevism. Here are these creative and educational things -going on, varying between the admirable and the ridiculous, islands at -least of cleanly work and, I think, of hope, amidst the vast spectacle -of grisly want and wide decay. Who can weigh the power and possibility -of their thrust against the huge gravitation of this sinking system? Who -can guess what encouragement and enhancement they may get if Russia can -win through to a respite from civil and foreign warfare and from famine -and want? It was of this re-created Russia, this Russia that may be, -that I was most desirous of talking when I went to the Kremlin to meet -Lenin. Of that conversation I will tell in my sixth paper. - - - - - V - THE PETERSBURG SOVIET: A LEGISLATIVE MASS MEETING - - -On Thursday the 7th of October we attended a meeting of the Petersburg -Soviet. We were told that we should find this a very different -legislative body from the British House of Commons, and we did. Like -nearly everything else in the arrangements of Soviet Russia it struck us -as extraordinarily unpremeditated and improvised. Nothing could have -been less intelligently planned for the functions it had to perform or -the responsibilities it had to undertake. - -The meeting was held in the old Winter Garden of the Tauride Palace, the -former palace of Potemkin, the favourite of Catherine the Second. Here -the Imperial Duma met under the Tsarist _régime_, and I visited it in -1914 and saw a languid session in progress. I went then with Mr. Maurice -Baring and one of the Benckendorffs to the strangers’ gallery, which ran -round three sides of the hall. There was accommodation for perhaps a -thousand people in the hall, and most of it was empty. The president -with his bell sat above a rostrum, and behind him was a row of women -reporters. I do not now remember what business was in hand on that -occasion; it was certainly not very exciting business. Baring, I -remember, pointed out the large proportion of priests elected to the -third Duma; their beards and cassocks made a very distinctive feature of -that scattered gathering. - -On this second visit we were no longer stranger onlookers, but active -participants in the meeting; we came into the body of the hall behind -the president’s bench, where on a sort of stage the members of the -Government, official visitors, and so forth find accommodation. The -presidential bench, the rostrum, and the reporters remained, but instead -of an atmosphere of weary parliamentarianism, we found ourselves in the -crowding, the noise, and the peculiar thrill of a mass meeting. There -were, I should think, some two hundred people or more packed upon the -semicircular benches round about us on the platform behind the -president, comrades in naval uniforms and in middle-class and -working-class costume, numerous intelligent-looking women, one or two -Asiatics and a few unclassifiable visitors, and the body of the hall -beyond the presidential bench was densely packed with people who filled -not only the seats but the gangways and the spaces under the galleries. -There may have been two or three thousand people down there, men and -women. They were all members of the Petersburg Soviet, which is really a -sort of conjoint meeting of its constituent soviets. The visitors’ -galleries above were equally full. - -Above the rostrum, with his back to us, sat Zenovieff, his right-hand -man Zorin, and the president. The subject under discussion was the -proposed peace with Poland. The meeting was smarting with the sense of -defeat and disposed to resent the Polish terms. Soon after we came in -Zenovieff made a long and, so far as I could judge, a very able speech, -preparing the minds of this great gathering for a Russian surrender. The -Polish demands are outrageous, but for the present Russia must submit. -He was followed by an oldish man who made a bitter attack upon the -irreligion of the people and government of Russia; Russia was suffering -for her sins, and until she repented and returned to religion she would -continue to suffer one disaster after another. His opinions were not -those of the meeting, but he was allowed to have his say without -interruption. The decision to make peace with Poland was then taken by a -show of hands. Then came my little turn. The meeting was told that I had -come from England to see the Bolshevik _régime_; I was praised -profusely; I was also exhorted to treat that _régime_ fairly and not to -emulate those other recent visitors (these were Mrs. Snowden and Guest -and Bertrand Russell) who had enjoyed the hospitality of the republic -and then gone away to say unfavourable things of it. This exhortation -left me cold; I had come to Russia to judge the Bolshevik Government and -not to praise it. I had then to take possession of the rostrum and -address this big crowd of people. This rostrum I knew had proved an -unfortunate place for one or two previous visitors, who had found it -hard to explain away afterwards the speeches their translators had given -the world through the medium of the wireless reports. Happily, I had had -some inkling of what was coming. To avoid any misunderstanding I had -written out a short speech in English, and I had had this translated -carefully into Russian. I began by saying clearly that I was neither -Marxist nor Communist, but a Collectivist, and that it was not to a -social revolution in the West that Russians should look for peace and -help in their troubles, but to the liberal opinion of the moderate mass -of Western people. I declared that the people of the Western States were -determined to give Russia peace, so that she might develop upon her own -lines. Their own line of development might be very different from that -of Russia. When I had done I handed a translation of my speech to my -interpreter, Zorin, which not only eased his task but did away with any -possibility of a subsequent misunderstanding. My speech was reported in -the _Pravda_ quite fully and fairly. - -Then followed a motion by Zorin that Zenovieff should have leave to -visit Berlin and attend the conference of the Independent Socialists -there. Zorin is a witty and humorous speaker, and he got his audience -into an excellent frame of mind. His motion was carried by a show of -hands, and then came a report and a discussion upon the production of -vegetables in the Petersburg district. It was a practical question upon -which feeling ran high. Here speakers arose in the body of the hall, -discharging brief utterances for a minute or so and subsiding again. -There were shouts and interruptions. The debate was much more like a big -labour mass meeting in the Queen’s Hall than anything that a Western -European would recognise as a legislature. - -This business disposed of, a still more extraordinary thing happened. We -who sat behind the rostrum poured down into the already very crowded -body of the hall and got such seats as we could find, and a white sheet -was lowered behind the president’s seat. At the same time a band -appeared in the gallery to the left. A five-part cinematograph film was -then run, showing the Baku Conference to which I have already alluded. -The pictures were viewed with interest but without any violent applause. -And at the end the band played the _Internationale_, and the audience—I -beg its pardon!—the Petersburg Soviet dispersed singing that popular -chant. It was in fact a mass meeting incapable of any real legislative -activities; capable at the utmost of endorsing or not endorsing the -Government in control of the platform. Compared with the British -Parliament it has about as much organisation, structure, and working -efficiency as a big bagful of miscellaneous wheels might have beside an -old-fashioned and inaccurate but still going clock. - - - - - VI - THE DREAMER IN THE KREMLIN - - -My chief purpose in going from Petersburg to Moscow was to see and talk -to Lenin. I was very curious to see him, and I was disposed to be -hostile to him. I encountered a personality entirely different from -anything I had expected to meet. - -Lenin is not a writer; his published work does not express him. The -shrill little pamphlets and papers issued from Moscow in his name, full -of misconceptions of the labour psychology of the West and obstinately -defensive of the impossible proposition that it is the prophesied -Marxist social revolution which has happened in Russia, display hardly -anything of the real Lenin mentality as I encountered it. Occasionally -there are gleams of an inspired shrewdness, but for the rest these -publications do no more than rehearse the set ideas and phrases of -doctrinaire Marxism. Perhaps that is necessary. That may be the only -language Communism understands; a break into a new dialect would be -disturbing and demoralising. Left Communism is the backbone of Russia -to-day; unhappily it is a backbone without flexible joints, a backbone -that can be bent only with the utmost difficulty and which must be bent -by means of flattery and deference. - -Moscow under the bright October sunshine, amidst the fluttering yellow -leaves, impressed us as being altogether more lax and animated than -Petersburg. There is much more movement of people, more trading, and a -comparative plenty of droshkys. Markets are open. There is not the same -general ruination of streets and houses. There are, it is true, many -traces of the desperate street fighting of early 1918. One of the domes -of that absurd cathedral of St. Basil just outside the Kremlin gate was -smashed by a shell and still awaits repair. The tramcars we found were -not carrying passengers; they were being used for the transport of -supplies of food and fuel. In these matters Petersburg claims to be -better prepared than Moscow. - -[Illustration: - - THE PETERSBURG SOVIET IN SESSION. - Lenin at the rostrum; below him are the women stenographers; - immediately behind him is Zenovieff and the President. - Behind these again are officials and ministerial persons, official - visitors and the like. -] - -The ten thousand crosses of Moscow still glitter in the afternoon light. -On one conspicuous pinnacle of the Kremlin the imperial eagles spread -their wings; the Bolshevik Government has been too busy or too -indifferent to pull them down. The churches are open, the kissing of -ikons is a flourishing industry, and beggars still woo casual charity at -the doors. The celebrated miraculous shrine of the Iberian Madonna -outside the Redeemer Gate was particularly busy. There were many peasant -women, unable to get into the little chapel, kissing the stones outside. - -Just opposite to it, on a plaster panel on a house front, is that now -celebrated inscription put up by one of the early revolutionary -administrations in Moscow: “Religion is the Opium of the People.” The -effect this inscription produces is greatly reduced by the fact that in -Russia the people cannot read. - -About that inscription I had a slight but amusing argument with Mr. -Vanderlip, the American financier, who was lodged in the same guest -house as ourselves. He wanted to have it effaced. I was for retaining it -as being historically interesting, and because I think that religious -toleration should extend to atheists. But Mr. Vanderlip felt too -strongly to see the point of that. - -The Moscow Guest House, which we shared with Mr. Vanderlip and an -adventurous English artist who had somehow got through to Moscow to -execute busts of Lenin and Trotsky, was a big, richly-furnished house -upon the Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya (No. 17), directly facing the great wall -of the Kremlin and all the clustering domes and pinnacles of that -imperial inner city. We felt much less free and more secluded here than -in Petersburg. There were sentinels at the gates to protect us from -casual visitors, whereas in Petersburg all sorts of unauthorised persons -could and did stray in to talk to me. Mr. Vanderlip had been staying -here, I gathered, for some weeks, and proposed to stay some weeks more. -He was without valet, secretary, or interpreter. He did not discuss his -business with me beyond telling me rather carefully once or twice that -it was strictly financial and commercial and in no sense political. I -was told that he had brought credentials from Senator Harding to Lenin, -but I am temperamentally incurious and I made no attempt whatever to -verify this statement or to pry into Mr. Vanderlip’s affairs. I did not -even ask how it could be possible to conduct business or financial -operations in a Communist State with anyone but the Government, nor how -it was possible to deal with a Government upon strictly nonpolitical -lines. These were, I admitted, mysteries beyond my understanding. But we -ate, smoked, drank our coffee and conversed together in an atmosphere of -profound discretion. By not mentioning Mr. Vanderlip’s “mission,” we -made it a portentous, omnipresent fact. - -The arrangements leading up to my meeting with Lenin were tedious and -irritating, but at last I found myself under way for the Kremlin in the -company of Mr. Rothstein, formerly a figure in London Communist circles, -and an American comrade with a large camera who was also, I gathered, an -official of the Russian Foreign Office. - -The Kremlin as I remembered it in 1914 was a very open place, open much -as Windsor Castle is, with a thin trickle of pilgrims and tourists in -groups and couples flowing through it. But now it is closed up and -difficult of access. There was a great pother with passes and permits -before we could get through even the outer gates. And we filtered and -inspected through five or six rooms of clerks and sentinels before we -got into the presence. This may be necessary for the personal security -of Lenin, but it puts him out of reach of Russia, and, what perhaps is -more serious, if there is to be an effectual dictatorship, it puts -Russia out of his reach. If things must filter up to him, they must also -filter down, and they may undergo very considerable changes in the -process. - -We got to Lenin at last and found him, a little figure at a great desk -in a well-lit room that looked out upon palatial spaces. I thought his -desk was rather in a litter. I sat down on a chair at a corner of the -desk, and the little man—his feet scarcely touch the ground as he sits -on the edge of his chair—twisted round to talk to me, putting his arms -round and over a pile of papers. He spoke excellent English, but it was, -I thought, rather characteristic of the present condition of Russian -affairs that Mr. Rothstein chaperoned the conversation, occasionally -offering footnotes and other assistance. Meanwhile the American got to -work with his camera, and unobtrusively but persistently exposed plates. -The talk, however, was too interesting for that to be an annoyance. One -forgot about that clicking and shifting about quite soon. - -I had come expecting to struggle with a doctrinaire Marxist. I found -nothing of the sort. I had been told that Lenin lectured people; he -certainly did not do so on this occasion. Much has been made of his -laugh in the descriptions, a laugh which is said to be pleasing at first -and afterwards to become cynical. This laugh was not in evidence. His -forehead reminded me of someone else—I could not remember who it was, -until the other evening I saw Mr. Arthur Balfour sitting and talking -under a shaded light. It is exactly the same domed, slightly one-sided -cranium. Lenin has a pleasant, quick-changing, brownish face, with a -lively smile and a habit (due perhaps to some defect in focussing) of -screwing up one eye as he pauses in his talk; he is not very like the -photographs you see of him because he is one of those people whose -change of expression is more important than their features; he -gesticulated a little with his hands over the heaped papers as he -talked, and he talked quickly, very keen on his subject, without any -posing or pretences or reservations, as a good type of scientific man -will talk. - -Our talk was threaded throughout and held together by two—what shall I -call them?—_motifs_. One was from me to him: “What do you think you are -making of Russia? What is the state you are trying to create?” The other -was from him to me: ‘Why does not the social revolution begin in -England? Why do you not work for the social revolution? Why are you not -destroying Capitalism and establishing the Communist State?” These -_motifs_ interwove, reacted on each other, illuminated each other. The -second brought back the first: “But what are you making of the social -revolution? Are you making a success of it?” And from that we got back -to two again with: “To make it a success the Western world must join in. -Why doesn’t it?” - -In the days before 1918 all the Marxist world thought of the social -revolution as an end. The workers of the world were to unite, overthrow -Capitalism, and be happy ever afterwards. But in 1918 the Communists, to -their own surprise, found themselves in control of Russia and challenged -to produce their millennium. They have a colourable excuse for a delay -in the production of a new and better social order in their continuation -of war conditions, in the blockade and so forth, nevertheless it is -clear that they begin to realise the tremendous unpreparedness which the -Marxist methods of thought involve. A hundred points—I have already put -a finger upon one or two of them—they do not know what to do. But the -commonplace Communist simply loses his temper if you venture to doubt -whether everything is being done in precisely the best and most -intelligent way under the new _régime_. He is like a tetchy housewife -who wants you to recognise that everything is in perfect order in the -middle of an eviction. He is like one of those now forgotten -suffragettes who used to promise us an earthly paradise as soon as we -escaped from the tyranny of “man-made laws.” Lenin, on the other hand, -whose frankness must at times leave his disciples breathless, has -recently stripped off the last pretence that the Russian revolution is -anything more than the inauguration of an age of limitless experiment. -“Those who are engaged in the formidable task of overcoming capitalism,” -he has recently written, “must be prepared to try method after method -until they find the one which answers their purpose best.” - -We opened our talk with a discussion of the future of the great towns -under Communism. I wanted to see how far Lenin contemplated the dying -out of the towns in Russia. The desolation of Petersburg had brought -home to me a point I had never realised before, that the whole form and -arrangement of a town is determined by shopping and marketing, and that -the abolition of these things renders nine-tenths of the buildings in an -ordinary town directly or indirectly unmeaning and useless. “The towns -will get very much smaller,” he admitted. “They will be different. Yes, -quite different.” That, I suggested, implied a tremendous task. It meant -the scrapping of the existing towns and their replacement. The churches -and great buildings of Petersburg would become presently like those of -Novgorod the Great or like the temples of Paestum. Most of the town -would dissolve away. He agreed quite cheerfully. I think it warmed his -heart to find someone who understood a necessary consequence of -collectivism that many even of his own people fail to grasp. Russia has -to be rebuilt fundamentally, has to become a new thing.... - -And industry has to be reconstructed—as fundamentally? - -Did I realise what was already in hand with Russia? The electrification -of Russia? - -For Lenin, who like a good orthodox Marxist denounces all “Utopians,” -has succumbed at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians. He is -throwing all his weight into a scheme for the development of great power -stations in Russia to serve whole provinces with light, with transport, -and industrial power. Two experimental districts he said had already -been electrified. Can one imagine a more courageous project in a vast -flat land of forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with -no technical skill available, and with trade and industry at the last -gasp? Projects for such an electrification are in process of development -in Holland and they have been discussed in England, and in those -densely-populated and industrially highly-developed centres one can -imagine them as successful, economical, and altogether beneficial. But -their application to Russia is an altogether greater strain upon the -constructive imagination. I cannot see anything of the sort happening in -this dark crystal of Russia, but this little man at the Kremlin can; he -sees the decaying railways replaced by a new electric transport, sees -new roadways spreading throughout the land, sees a new and happier -Communist industrialism arising again. While I talked to him he almost -persuaded me to share his vision. - -“And you will go on to these things with the peasants rooted in your -soil?” - -But not only are the towns to be rebuilt; every agricultural landmark is -to go. - -“Even now,” said Lenin, “all the agricultural production of Russia is -not peasant production. We have, in places, large scale agriculture. The -Government is already running big estates with workers instead of -peasants, where conditions are favourable. That can spread. It can be -extended first to one province, then another. The peasants in the other -provinces, selfish and illiterate, will not know what is happening until -their turn comes....” - -It may be difficult to defeat the Russian peasant _en masse_; but in -detail there is no difficulty at all. At the mention of the peasant -Lenin’s head came nearer to mine; his manner became confidential. As if -after all the peasant _might_ overhear. - -It is not only the material organisation of society you have to build, I -argued, it is the mentality of a whole people. The Russian people are by -habit and tradition traders and individualists; their very souls must be -remoulded if this new world is to be achieved. Lenin asked me what I had -seen of the educational work afoot. I praised some of the things I had -seen. He nodded and smiled with pleasure. He has an unshaken confidence -in his work. - -“But these are only sketches and beginnings,” I said. - -“Come back and see what we have done in Russia in ten years’ time,” he -answered. - -In him I realised that Communism could after all, in spite of Marx, be -enormously creative. After the tiresome class-war fanatics I had been -encountering among the Communists, men of formulæ as sterile as flints, -after numerous experiences of the trained and empty conceit of the -common Marxist devotee, this amazing little man, with his frank -admission of the immensity and complication of the project of Communism -and his simple concentration upon its realisation, was very refreshing. -He at least has a vision of a world changed over and planned and built -afresh. - -He wanted more of my Russian impressions. I told him that I thought that -in many directions, and more particularly in the Petersburg Commune, -Communism was pressing too hard and too fast, and destroying before it -was ready to rebuild. They had broken down trading before they were -ready to ration; the co-operative organisation had been smashed up -instead of being utilised, and so on. That brought us to our essential -difference, the difference of the Collectivist and Marxist, the question -whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether -it is necessary to overthrow one social and economic system completely -before the new one can begin. I believe that through a vast sustained -educational campaign the existing Capitalist system could be _civilised_ -into a Collectivist world system; Lenin on the other hand tied himself -years ago to the Marxist dogmas of the inevitable class war, the -downfall of Capitalist order as a prelude to reconstruction, the -proletarian dictatorship, and so forth. He had to argue, therefore, that -modern Capitalism is incurably predatory, wasteful, and unteachable, and -that until it is destroyed it will continue to exploit the human -heritage stupidly and aimlessly, that it will fight against and prevent -any administration of national resources for the general good, and that -it will inevitably make wars. - -I had, I will confess, a very uphill argument. He suddenly produced -Chiozza Money’s new book, _The Triumph of Nationalisation_, which he had -evidently been reading very carefully. “But you see directly you begin -to have a good working collectivist organisation of any public interest, -the Capitalists smash it up again. They smashed your national shipyards; -they won’t let you work your coal economically.” He tapped the book. “It -is all here.” - -And against my argument that wars sprang from nationalist imperialism -and not from a Capitalist organisation of society he suddenly brought: -“But what do you think of this new Republican Imperialism that comes to -us from America?” - -Here Mr. Rothstein intervened in Russian with an objection that Lenin -swept aside. - -And regardless of Mr. Rothstein’s plea for diplomatic reserve, Lenin -proceeded to explain the projects with which one American at least was -seeking to dazzle the imagination of Moscow. There was to be economic -assistance for Russia and recognition of the Bolshevik Government. There -was to be a defensive alliance against Japanese aggression in Siberia. -There was to be an American naval station on the coast of Asia, and -leases for long terms of sixty or fifty years of the natural resources -of Khamchatka and possibly of other large regions of Russian Asia. Well, -did I think that made for peace? Was it anything more than the beginning -of a new world scramble? How would the British Imperialists like this -sort of thing? - -[Illustration: - - LENIN. - Behind him stands Gorky: to the right of Gorky (_i.e._ on his left) - are Zorin (_hat_) and Zenovieff. Behind with cigarette is Radek. -] - -But some industrial power had to come in and help Russia, I said. She -cannot reconstruct now without such help.... - -Our multifarious argumentation ended indecisively. We parted warmly, and -I and my companion were filtered out of the Kremlin through one barrier -after another in much the same fashion as we had been filtered in. - -“He is wonderful,” said Mr. Rothstein. “But it was an indiscretion——” - -I was not disposed to talk as we made our way, under the glowing trees -that grow in the ancient moat of the Kremlin, back to our Guest House. I -wanted to think Lenin over while I had him fresh in my mind, and I did -not want to be assisted by the expositions of my companion. But Mr. -Rothstein kept on talking. - -He was still pressing me not to mention this little sketch of the -Russian American outlook to Mr. Vanderlip long after I assured him that -I respected Mr. Vanderlip’s veil of discretion far too much to pierce it -by any careless word. - -And so back to No. 17 Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya, and lunch with Mr. -Vanderlip and the young sculptor from London. The old servant of the -house waited on us, mournfully conscious of the meagreness of our -entertainment and reminiscent of the great days of the past when Caruso -had been a guest and had sung to all that was brilliant in Moscow in the -room upstairs. Mr. Vanderlip was for visiting the big market that -afternoon—and later going to the Ballet, but my son and I were set upon -returning to Petersburg that night and so getting on to Reval in time -for the Stockholm boat. - - - - - VII - THE ENVOY - - -In these seven papers I have written in the first person and in a -familiar style because I did not want the reader to lose sight for a -moment of the shortness of our visit to Russia and of my personal -limitations. Now in conclusion, if the reader will have patience with me -for a few final words, I would like in less personal terms and very -plainly to set down my main convictions about the Russian situation. -They are very strong convictions, and they concern not merely Russia but -the whole present outlook of our civilisation. They are merely one man’s -opinion, but as I feel them strongly, so I put them without weakening -qualifications. - -First, then, Russia, which was a modern civilisation of the Western -type, least disciplined and most ramshackle of all the Great Powers, is -now a modern civilisation _in extremis_. The direct cause of its -downfall has been modern war leading to physical exhaustion. Only -through that could the Bolsheviki have secured power. Nothing like this -Russian downfall has ever happened before. If it goes on for a year or -so more the process of collapse will be complete. Nothing will be left -of Russia but a country of peasants; the towns will be practically -deserted and in ruins, the railways will be rusting in disuse. With the -railways will go the last vestiges of any general government. The -peasants are absolutely illiterate and collectively stupid, capable of -resisting interference but incapable of comprehensive foresight and -organisation. They will become a sort of human swamp in a state of -division, petty civil war, and political squalour, with a famine -whenever the harvests are bad; and they will be breeding epidemics for -the rest of Europe. They will lapse towards Asia. - -The collapse of the civilised system in Russia into peasant barbarism -means that Europe will be cut off for many years from all the mineral -wealth of Russia, and from any supply of raw products from this area, -from its corn, flax, and the like. It is an open question whether the -Western Powers can get along without these supplies. Their cessation -certainly means a general impoverishment of Western Europe. - -The only possible Government that can stave off such a final collapse of -Russia now is the present Bolshevik Government, if it can be assisted by -America and the Western Powers. There is now no alternative to that -Government possible. There are of course a multitude of -antagonists—adventurers and the like—ready, with European assistance, to -attempt the overthrow of that Bolshevik Government, but there are no -signs of any common purpose and moral unity capable of replacing it. And -moreover there is no time now for another revolution in Russia. A year -more of civil war will make the final sinking of Russia out of -civilisation inevitable. We have to make what we can, therefore, of the -Bolshevik Government, whether we like it or not. - -The Bolshevik Government is inexperienced and incapable to an extreme -degree; it has had phases of violence and cruelty; but it is on the -whole honest. And it includes a few individuals of real creative -imagination and power, who may with opportunity, if their hands are -strengthened, achieve great reconstructions. The Bolshevik Government -seems on the whole to be trying to act up to its professions, which are -still held by most of its supporters with a quite religious passion. -Given generous help, it may succeed in establishing a new social order -in Russia of a civilised type with which the rest of the world will be -able to deal. It will probably be a mitigated Communism, with a -large-scale handling of transport, industry, and (later) agriculture. - -It is necessary that we should understand and respect the professions -and principles of the Bolsheviki if we Western peoples are to be of any -effectual service to humanity in Russia. Hitherto these professions and -principles have been ignored in the most extraordinary way by the -Western Governments. The Bolshevik Government is, and says it is, a -Communist Government. And it means this, and will make this the standard -of its conduct. It has suppressed private ownership and private trade in -Russia, not as an act of expediency but as an act of right; and in all -Russia there remain now no commercial individuals and bodies with whom -we can deal who will respect the conventions and usages of Western -commercial life. The Bolshevik Government, we have to understand, has, -by its nature, an invincible prejudice against individual business men; -it will not treat them in a manner that they will consider fair and -honourable; it will distrust them and, as far as it can, put them at the -completest disadvantage. It regards them as pirates—or at best as -privateers. It is hopeless and impossible therefore for individual -persons and firms to think of going into Russia to trade. There is only -one being in Russia with whom the Western world can deal, and that is -the Bolshevik Government itself, and there is no way of dealing with -that one being safely and effectually except through some national or, -better, some international Trust. This latter body, which might -represent some single Power or group of Powers, or which might even have -some titular connection with the League of Nations, would be able to -deal with the Bolshevik Government on equal terms. It would have to -recognise the Bolshevik Government and, in conjunction with it, to set -about the now urgent task of the material restoration of civilised life -in European and Asiatic Russia. It should resemble in its general nature -one of the big buying and controlling trusts that were so necessary and -effectual in the European States during the Great War. It should deal -with its individual producers on the one hand, and the Bolshevik -Government would deal with its own population on the other. Such a Trust -could speedily make itself indispensable to the Bolshevik Government. -This indeed is the only way in which a capitalist State can hold -commerce with a Communist State. The attempts that have been made during -the past year and more to devise some method of private trading in -Russia without recognition of the Bolshevik Government were from the -outset as hopeless as the search for the North-West passage from England -to India. The channels are frozen up. - -Any country or group of countries with adequate industrial resources -which goes into Bolshevik Russia with recognition and help will -necessarily become the supporter, the right hand, and the consultant of -the Bolshevik Government. It will react upon that Government and be -reacted upon. It will probably become more collectivist in its methods, -and, on the other hand, the rigours of extreme Communism in Russia will -probably be greatly tempered through its influence. - -The only Power capable of playing this _rôle_ of eleventh-hour helper to -Russia single-handed is the United States of America. Other Powers than -the United States will, in the present phase of world-exhaustion, need -to combine before they can be of any effective use to Russia. Big -business is by no means antipathetic to Communism. The larger big -business grows the more it approximates to Collectivism. It is the upper -road of the few instead of the lower road of the masses to Collectivism. - -The only alternative to such a helpful intervention in Bolshevik Russia -is, I firmly believe, the final collapse of all that remains of modern -civilisation throughout what was formerly the Russian Empire. It is -highly improbable that the collapse will be limited to its boundaries. -Both eastward and westward other great regions may, one after another, -tumble into the big hole in civilisation thus created. Possibly all -modern civilisation may tumble in. - -These propositions do not refer to any hypothetical future; they are an -attempt to state the outline facts and possibilities of what is going -on—and going on with great rapidity—in Russia and in the world generally -now, as they present themselves to my mind. This in general terms is the -frame of circumstance in which I would have the sketches of Russia that -have preceded this set and read. So it is I interpret the writing on the -Eastern wall of Europe. - - - THE END - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. - 2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as - printed. - 3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers. - 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Russia in the Shadows, by -H. G. 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