FOOD IS SCARCE IN OMSK, AND MOSCOW IS NO BETTER OFF

By Hector Boon.

Thanks to Jansen, I was able to live in an apartment of six rooms, quite an extraordinary privilege, bearing in mind that people were being crowded four and five in a room. When I took possession of it my drawing room was occupied by an engineer and his family and four other people, making in all nine persons. This engineer, a well-known member of Irkutsk society, had been turned out of his house to make room for a Commissar. His presence in my house led to an unpleasant incident which gave me a glimpse of the methods of the “Chika.”

I was awakened one morning at 2 A. M. by my servant with the news that the house was being searched. On going out to investigate I found half a dozen soldiers and a Commissar busily engaged in searching the effects of the engineer and his family. I formally protested to the Commissar, but as he most politely informed me that my personal rooms would not be disturbed, I was left with no alternative but to go back to bed. I took the precaution, however, of leaving my servant on guard, and he reported to me at breakfast that the search party had left at 6 A. M. with the engineer under arrest.

I inquired into the charges against this man and found that he had been arrested primarily because he was supposed to be rich and also because he had been associated with an organization for sending comforts to the troops during Kolchak’s regime. He was still in prison when I left Irkutsk.

Lack of Food in Omsk Due Solely to Soviet’s System

After two months’ negotiation with the Revolutionary Committee it was found impossible to arrive at any definite arrangement in respect to trading, and I received a telegraphic invitation from the Siberian Revolutionary Committee to go to Omsk and discuss the matter with them, which I accepted. Jansen placed a compartment at my disposal in a private car which was attached to the post train, and I left for Omsk with my two assistants and my servant on the 22d of May.

The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.

The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.

Method Embitters Peasants.

In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia, and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it was intended.

We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer, however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions and they were terrified of the “Chika.”

I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika” would make short work of him.

I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.

Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.

On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep their mouths shut.

The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of British general service wagons and other British stores which had been captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.

Only Commissars Dine Well.

Waxoff offered to take me to the Moscow Soviet to inquire for rooms. We took a cab outside the Jaroslavski Station. The driver at first demanded 10,000 roubles—i. e., $5, but after some bargaining agreed to take us to the house of the Soviet, which was formerly the residence of the Military Governor of Moscow, for half that sum. The pre-war fare was 15 cents. At the Soviet we saw a Commissar, who gave me a letter to the Foreign Office, which, it appeared, arranged all accommodation for foreigners. As this man interviewed us he partook of his dinner, which I was interested to notice consisted of very good cabbage soup with a large piece of meat in it, followed by a large plate of meat and vegetables, good black bread and tea with sugar. This certainly did not look like starvation. I later discovered to my cost that only Commissars were fed thus well.

At the Foreign Office we met a Jew named Contorovitch, who spoke English fluently. He furnished me with rooms at the Foreign Office Guest House at No. 10 Mala Haritonofskaya, which formerly was the home of a wealthy German merchant. At this house the first person I met was Mrs. Harrison, the correspondent of the Associated Press.

The other people living in the house were Bobroff, a naturalized American Jew (former Russian subject), who was soliciting orders from the Bolsheviki; an Esthonian representative, two tame Bolsheviki from Siberia, two red, or seemingly red, delegates from Corea, and Axionoff.

This man, formerly Colonel of the Imperial Guard, scion of a noble Russian family, was ostensibly working in the Foreign Office, but was in fact a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. He was specially planted in the house to watch the movements of foreigners and report their conversations to Mogilevski, the Chief Commissar of the Foreign Department of the Vetchika (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).

During my stay in Moscow I saw a great deal of this mustache-twirling, beard-combing, smirking, Iscariotic apology for a man, and the more I saw of the cowardly renegade the more repulsive I found him. Axionoff, however, was not the only member of the aristocracy I met who had sold his honor and purchased a modicum of comfort and a degree of safety by spying on and betraying his friends. By far the most dangerous spies in Moscow were those recruited from the upper classes.

Potatoes a Delicacy.

The meals at No. 10, which is one of the best guest houses in the city, consisted of tea and black bread and butter or cheese for breakfast; water soup, decorated with particles of vegetables and kasha, or occasionally rice, for dinner, and black bread and again kasha for supper. On rare occasions we were given as a special delicacy boiled potatoes sprinkled with minute portions of meat. As the meat had invariably been a long time dead we found it advisable to remove it before eating the potatoes.

As at all the Soviet guest houses there were two soldiers always on guard at the door, who carefully noted one’s comings and goings. Visitors were only allowed to enter on production of their documents, particulars of which, together with the name of the person visited, were entered in a book which was periodically sent to the Vetchika. In addition to the guard we had a rat-faced commandant who padded about the house in noiseless boots, probably relics of his former occupation.

On calling at the Department for Foreign Trade, which had been presided over by Krassin before he left for Scandinavia and England, I met a Commissar of the name of Voronatzki, who expressed himself as most anxious to trade with us. He proved to be a very decent fellow, but possessed of little or no knowledge of the matters he was handling. The proposition I made him was the same as that which I had advanced in Irkutsk, namely, to supply the Irkutsk district with goods forwarded via Mongolia and the Jakutsk district, in the fur-bearing region northeast of Irkutsk, via Olan, a port on the Pacific, provided the Soviet power agreed to return to us the furs they had seized in Eastern Siberia; payment for the goods to be supplied by us to be made in furs.

These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no political interest.