INSIDE FACTS OF RUSSIA TOLD BY NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN

Hector Boon, Trading Expert, Describes in Series of Articles Prepared for The World Conditions Under Regime of Soviet Which He Believes Will Not Last More Than Two Years Longer—First Instalment Relates Experiences in Eastern Siberia After Defeat of Kolchak—He Sought to Recover 5,000 Furs Stolen by Bandit Chief Semionov.

Here is Russia from the inside as seen at close hand for ten months by an unusual observer—not an author, not an artist, not a propagandist, not a sympathizer, not an enemy, not a Socialist, not a reformer, not a reactionary, but a hard-headed, clear-seeing, unimaginative, fair-minded, give-the-other-fellow-a-chance kind of American business man.

Hector Boon saw things as they are—not as some one else says they are—not what Russia promises but what Russia is performing. And in a series of articles which he prepared exclusively for The World he tells plainly and with exactness what he has observed, what he has heard, what he has thought.

Mr. Boon, although of English nativity, is a thorough New Yorker—a keen, wideawake, practical man of affairs, whose business as a financial expert and trading expert, particularly for fur importers, has taken him to many parts of the world. He has just returned from Russia, into whose condition he had opportunities for thorough insight. It was not new territory to him; he knew the country before the Red regime and is able to draw contrasts between that period and the present. He believes the Soviet rule will not last more than two years longer.

The World offers his narrative to its readers for exactly what it is on the face of it—the actual and recent experiences of a plain business man in the land which has been so clouded in mystery despite the reports of writers of various types. Mr. Boon stands sponsor personally for all the statements and opinions contained in his articles.

By Hector Boon.

Sitting here comfortably in New York, with peace and plenty on all sides, I find it hard to realize that it is only a little more than ten months ago since I said goodby in Harbin to one of the principals of the New York firm I represent, and then set forth on my long and interesting journey into Soviet Russia.

During the summer of 1919 we had purchased large quantities of raw furs in Eastern Siberia, and with the defeat of Kolchak these had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevists; so my object in going into Russia was to induce the Soviet authorities to release these furs.

Brands Wells’s Articles as Skilful Bolshevik Propaganda

I entered Soviet Russia on April 6, and left it on Oct. 12, when I crossed the Russian-Latvian line at Sebesh. I arrived in London on Oct. 19, spent some time there recuperating from the effects of months of semistarvation in Moscow, and reached New York Dec. 23.

During my stay in London I read the diary of Mrs. Clare Sheridan, the sculptress; Mr. H. G. Wells’s articles on Russia which were published in the London Sunday Express, and Mr. Winston Churchill’s reply to that modest gentleman who permitted the newspaper in which his articles appeared to describe him as “the world’s greatest living author.”

As these articles have doubtless also appeared in American journals, I venture to believe that the American public will be interested to read the experiences of a New York business man in Russia (notwithstanding that he is an Englishman) and compare them with those of Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Wells.

I have no aptitude for “sculping”; I lay no claim to literary ability; I am not endowed with the sweet womanly nature which would render me sad at the thought that I should never see again that foul, blood-drenched scoundrel Dzherjinsky; I am simply a business man, and at that have had no experience of life behind a draper’s counter. Had I had, I should probably, like Mr. Wells, be able to tell England and the world how to trade with Russia.

Mrs. Sheridan’s diary, piled with sympathy for the butchers and precious little for their victims, can be dismissed as a breach of good taste on the part of a notoriety seeking female, but we cannot thus lightly dismiss the articles of Mr. Wells. Whereas Mr. Wells’s experience of the Bolsheviks, according to his own admission, was gained as the result of a two weeks’ stay in Russia, mine dates from the time of Lenine’s first attempt, in July, 1917, to overthrow the Kerensky Government.

I regard Mr. Wells’s articles as the most skilful piece of propaganda which the Bolsheviks have so far put forth. Mr. Wells makes no attempt to cloak the appalling conditions of life which to-day obtain in Petrograd and Moscow. In fact he has drawn a very faithful picture of them. Having done so he proceeds to tell the world that these conditions were brought about not by Bolshevism but by the imperialism and capitalism of the Czar’s regime. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I propose, in the course of this series, to show that the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks alone, are responsible for the deplorable condition in which Russia finds herself to-day. In order to do this I shall take the reader with me on my journey through Russia.

In June, 1917, I travelled from Vladivostok to Petrograd over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. On that occasion the journey took ten and a half days, all stops included; this year our actual running time (all stops excluded) was twenty-eight days.

In 1917 I remained in Russia until September, when I went to New York, returning to Petrograd in December, where I remained until April, 1918, when, with my assistants, I was forced to escape on sledges through Karelia into Finland. In October, 1918, I arrived in Vladivostok and remained in Siberia, a close observer of the Kolchak regime, until I crossed the Urals in June this year on my way to Moscow.

In June, 1919, the Ataman Chief Semionov stole from my firm some 5,000 white fox skins at the Station Manchuria, and in July I proceeded to his headquarters at Chita to negotiate for the return of them. I was unsuccessful and went to Omsk, where I spent two-and-a-half fruitless months endeavoring to secure compensation from the Kolchak Government.

Dictator in Name Only.

During my stay in Omsk, where I came into contact with the leading members of the Government, I had an opportunity of studying the methods of Kolchak and his Cabinet. Kolchak, admittedly a man of great personal courage, was a dictator in name only; he possessed none of the qualities fitting him for such an onerous position; his Cabinet consisted principally of unscrupulous adventurers who neglected no opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the cause, which they ultimately, by their corruption and treachery, destroyed.

In October, realizing that the fall of Omsk was imminent, I left and went to Chita and reopened negotiations with the bandit of the Trans-Baikal. My stay in Chita was somewhat unpleasantly disturbed by a ten days’ sojourn in the Ataman’s jail which was brought about by my calling him a thief to his face. On my release from prison, which was secured by the British Military Mission, I remained in Chita until the first week in December when, having secured a promise from the Ataman that he would pay for the stolen foxes upon presentation of certain certified statements, I went to Vladivostok to get them.

I left Vladivostok on the return journey toward the end of January. On my arrival in Harbin, however, I was called to Tientsin for a conference with my principals. At this conference they requested me to make an effort to get to Irkutsk from Chita and endeavor to secure the return of a large quantity of furs which we then had in Irkutsk and the surrounding district.

On my return from Tientsin to Harbin I found my friend, Capt. H. S. Walker, the British Military Mission’s representative in China, who had recently left there under the impression that Semionov’s days were numbered. My chances of getting through to Chita looked decidedly small, and when Consul Gen. Harris with the consular staff, and Col. McMorrow with the 27th United States Infantry from Verkni-Udinsk blew into the town with much the same story as Walker’s, they looked even smaller.

However, I decided to try and break through and left on the post train on the 22d of February for the Station Manchuria, although I was assured in Harbin that it was impossible to get past that point as the Baikal Railroad was blocked on both lines with the Czech evacuation. At Manchuria, by great good fortune, I found Lieut. Lee of the American Railroad Corps, with a train of flour destined for the coal miners west of Chita who were supplying coal for the Czechs, and he very kindly agreed to take me through in his private car. We made the journey in 32 hours, a remarkable performance considering that it had taken evacuating Americans ten days.

Saw Remnants of Army.

We got to Chita just in time to witness the arrival of Gen. Voitzikofsky with the remnants of the Kolchak Army, which had retreated from west of Omsk, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, partly on sledges and partly on foot, in the depth of winter, through a semi-hostile country—a magnificent feat of courage and endurance.

Those of us who were anti-Semionov had great hopes of Voitzikofsky. We looked to him to oust the bandit and his pillaging, murdering associates, and set up a democratic form of government in the Trans-Baikal. When E. B. Thomas, the American Vice Consul and myself interviewed Voitzikofsky, a few days after his arrival, he indirectly led us to believe that he intended to depose the Ataman.

However, he delayed action and his army diminished daily as the result of wholesale desertions. He was credited with having 27,000 officers and men when he arrived. Three weeks later this force had dwindled to 7,000 and Semionov, who had been quaking in his shoes, gradually began to assert himself. When the Japanese finally decided not to evacuate the Trans-Baikal, which had been their intention as soon as the Czechs had passed through, Semionov was once more in the saddle and Voitzikofsky dropped into comparative obscurity.

My negotiations with Semionov came to nothing. It is true he signed an order on the Finance Department to pay the claim in gold (of which he had plenty, having stolen it from a Kolchak echelon some months previously), but when the order was presented the Finance Department declined to honor it and referred us back to Semionov. The Ataman, who obviously had no intention of paying, then impudently referred us to the Czechs for payment, stating that as they had been entrusted with the safe conveyance of the Russian gold reserve to Vladivostok, they were the people to apply to. This, of course, had reference to the action of the Czechs at Irkutsk when, in order to insure the unhampered evacuation of their forces, they traded Kolchak and the gold in return for noninterference with their movement eastward.

I applied to the Japanese Military Mission for assistance, but although the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokio had pledged us, through the American Embassy, the active assistance of their mission in Chita, the Military Mission not only declined to intervene but disclosed to the Ataman private and confidential documents belonging to me, which caused me great embarrassment and undoubtedly endangered my position in the town.

Troops Permitted Thefts.

The Japanese, throughout their occupancy of the Trans-Baikal, acted in a manner prejudicial to the real interests of the White cause. Their troops were engaged in guarding the railway, but they never on any occasion intervened to prevent Semionov from levying on supplies en route to the front or stealing goods belonging to Russian and Allied merchants.

The seizure of goods by Semionov reached such proportions during the summer of 1919 that merchants in Eastern Siberia refused to forward goods through the Trans-Baikal, and in consequence Western Siberia was deprived of the supplies which, if they had been forthcoming, would have done much to win the support of the peasantry and townspeople for the White cause.

Capt. Walker and his assistant, Capt. R. C. Carthew, returned to Chita after I had been there a few days, and at once commenced, with the assistance of the American Railroad Corps, who had a direct wire to Verkni-Udinsk, to make inquiries in respect to the officers and men of the British Railway Mission who had been captured by the Bolsheviks at Krasnoyarsk.

When Capt. Carthew induced the Bolsheviks, through Krassnochokoff, the Commissar at Verkni, to have these prisoners brought to Irkutsk, he obtained a safe conduct to proceed there with food, clothing and medical supplies and kindly offered me a place on his car provided I was able to procure a similar safe conduct.

I then telegraphed Krassnochokoff intimating that I wished to go to Irkutsk for the purpose of discussing trading possibilities with the authorities there, and requested a safe conduct. He telegraphed me back the Russian Socialistic Federated Soviet Republic’s full safe conduct to travel to Irkutsk, guaranteeing my liberty of movement while there, and the right to leave the territory of his Government at my will.

Armed with these documents we said goodby to “Johnny” Walker and Thomas on a bitterly cold afternoon in April and proceeded with a special train consisting of our private car and a goods wagon for our interpreters and servants. We flew a large Union Jack from our observation platform which created a great deal of attention at the stations at which we stopped. We met the last Czech echelon east of Moxon and felt that we had then said goodby to civilization, Carthew for a couple of weeks and I—indefinitely.