ALIEXIEV IVANOVITCH RYKOV

No other Russian enjoys the solid political and popular backing of Aliexiev Rykov; he is the logical successor to Lenin.

Rykov is one of those “unknown-quantity” men which are in every government and every political party and who are on the “inside” of every government decision, men who silently assume more and more power but remain unknown to the press until some event brings them to the public attention. Rykov, although he has held for several years four of the most important posts in Russia, was never heard of in England or France or America until Lenin’s illness brought to everyone’s lips the question of who would be the next Premier. Rumor suggested Kaminev and Trotsky and numerous other Commissars. As Rykov himself explained to me, “none of these men could take Lenin’s place for the very logical reason that they had held government posts which had nothing to do with the Premiership. It was like expecting one of your Secretaries of War or Navy to take your President’s place in case your President died or fell ill.” Rykov, happening to be vice-Premier, automatically became acting-Premier. (Under the Soviets this office is called Chairman of the People’s Council of Commissars.)

Rykov’s background is interesting and worth knowing, since he will be a figure of importance in Russia for a long time to come. He is forty-one years old and, aside from being Premier, he is vice-Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense, Member of the Presidium of the All Russian Congress of Soviets and Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party.

He was born of a peasant family living in the province of Vatka. His education was paid for by an elder sister who had married well. Because of revolutionary activities he was sentenced to Siberia and served seven years in solitary confinement. When he told me this, I was so astonished that I asked him to repeat it. It is a trial which would have broken almost any man; yet I think I never met a man with less “nerves” than Rykov has. By his manner and his good humor and his serenity, he resembles Lenin to a startling degree. It is rather amazing that Russia produced two men of the same type during the same period. That is one reason why the government machinery ran along so smoothly after Lenin stepped out.

Rykov has been in such close touch with Lenin in the last years that he almost anticipates Lenin’s decisions. He told me that for three years he has been sharing Lenin’s work. When the Council of Labor and Defense was formed during the blockade, Lenin headed it and Rykov and Alexander Demietrievitch Tsurupa served with Lenin. They also shared Lenin’s work on the Council of People’s Commissars; and when Rykov was temporarily elevated to Lenin’s office, Tsurupa was elevated to Rykov’s. As Lenin grew stronger, after his operation, Rykov went to the country about once a fortnight to consult him on vital matters of state. It is his opinion that Lenin will soon be back in the Kremlin. But if Rykov’s prediction does not prove true, Rykov himself will be able to guide, with a steady hand, the shifting fortunes of war-torn and famine-ridden Russia. I do not think he will go down in history as a great figure; he will probably be overlooked by history as has many another such unselfish and solid builder of empire, who worked always in the shadow of a greater man.

JACOB PETERS, FEDORE S. DZERZHINSKY
AND THE
EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION

It is a curious but indisputable fact that Jacob Peters, known to the world as “Peters, the Terrorist,” has never been head of the Russian Extraordinary Commission. Since its inception, Fedore Dzerzhinsky has had charge of that sombre institution, which in the revolutionary vernacular is known as the “Cheka,” a word derived from the initial letters of “extraordinary” and “commission.”

Dzerzhinsky is a Pole, forty-four years of age, with an unusually classical background for a Chief Executioner. He ranks high even among the intelligentsia. After finishing his literary studies in a Russian university, he took post-graduate courses in Vienna, Berlin and Zurich.

He has a temperament much like Tchicherin; shy, aloof and deeply puritanical. One feels he can neither understand nor forgive moral weaknesses in others, since he himself possesses that fanatical devotion which has made it possible for him to travel the hard, bitter road where his ideals lead. He asks nothing of life but to serve the cause of Socialism. Ease, wealth and happiness, he puts behind him as he would Satan. Such a man can sign away life with an unruffled firmness that would break one of a warmer temperament. He needs only to be convinced that his course is righteous; nothing else matters. The individual is not considered in that “Nirvana” which is his ultimate goal.

Dzerzhinsky adores Lenin and serves him with the abject faithfulness of a slave; in his eyes Lenin can do no wrong. In the first days of the terror, he brought his doubts before Lenin, doubts which had only to do with the effect of such measures on the national and international political situation and not with his own soul. Lenin, when all is said, is the only man who cannot afford to be swayed by doubts. His responsibilities are those of a field marshal during a battle; he has no right to indecision. He reserves only the right to change his tactics—which is quite another matter.

The terror was established in a moment when the revolution was almost lost. The liberal government had fallen, the moderate Socialist government had fallen. If the Bolsheviks fell, only chaos or a return to the monarchy was possible. So it was that when Dzerzhinsky came to the Kremlin and stood hesitating like a school-boy before his master, it was often Lenin who for the moment became the high lord of life and death.

I can see that scene in my mind’s eye. In his hand Dzerzhinsky would have a list of prisoners and the evidence hastily gathered. Lenin would look at Dzerzhinsky’s list, asking sharp, short questions in his shrewd way. Most of the names of the counter-revolutionary conspirators were familiar to him. He could quickly piece together the scanty evidence of the secret trials. In his mind thoughts like these must have traveled: “Ah, yes, there is X—— caught plotting with Y——, which, of course, entirely accounts for the rising at B——.” Suddenly he would turn to Dzerzhinsky and say without excitement and without raising his voice: “It would be better to shoot these two, hold these five and release the rest.”

In justice to Lenin it must be recorded that he was always against capital punishment for his political rivals, or even for those who plotted to assassinate him; he believed in the death penalty only for those who attempted forcibly to overthrow the government. His dictatorship of the Cheka, like his dictatorship of other government departments, ceased with the first semblance of order. At the same time, I do not believe for a moment that the Cheka ever got beyond his control. Recently, when he saw it growing into a power which interfered with the natural development of the country, he began at once to weaken it. Dzerzhinsky will no doubt assist him in such an undertaking with the same zeal which he brought to its creation.

A good deal of political manœuvering has always been necessary in order to appease popular opinion about the Cheka. When time has cooled our emotions for and against the Communist idea, we will realize that Jacob Peters and Fedore Dzerzhinsky were just as much victims of the revolution as were those counter-revolutionaries who came under their stern jurisdiction.

Peters was sent away from Moscow in 1919 because he had become, however unjustly, a symbol of terror in the public mind and life was beginning to settle down again into more normal ways. As a matter of fact, Peters but countersigned orders already bearing the signature of Dzerzhinsky. It was his duty to see that the prisoners were quickly and humanely disposed of. He performed this grim task with a dispatch and an efficiency for which even the condemned must have been grateful, in that nothing is more horrible than an executioner whose hand trembles and whose heart wavers.

Pursuing the same devices, a few weeks back when Lenin forced the Cheka to be made subservient to the Department of Interior and Communications, the public looked upon this step as a real compromise and a definite move toward the abolition of the secret police. Trials again became public with employers and other unbelievers in Socialism openly represented by lawyers, who had long ceased to regard their profession as anything but a dead asset. Lenin never dismisses men he can trust, so while Dzerzhinsky ceased to be head of the once all-powerful Extraordinary Commission, he was elected in the same moment Commissar of the Interior and Communications, although temporarily he was sent to Siberia to expedite grain shipments for the famine areas. Thus the history of the Cheka repeats itself.

In the first moments of elation following the March revolution when prison doors were thrown open all over Russia and prison records publicly burned, it seemed as if the day of the secret police was forever passed. In those joyous days it was almost impossible to keep one’s perspective, or to feel a premonition of the rising storm of world opposition to the development of the revolution. When Kerensky abolished the death penalty in the army, he sacrificed his last shred of control to the dictates of his heart. At that time even the Communists did not believe in capital punishment. Once Trotsky, in an impassioned speech at Smolny, during the November days, made mention of a guillotine. His remarks let loose the most violent opposition. For weeks this issue was discussed everywhere; in the press, at public gatherings, even in street cars and on railway trains. He was vigorously denounced for holding such opinions. And he had merely said that this was something to be considered in a national crisis.

By the summer of 1918 the Soviet government found itself surrounded by an iron ring of death. Also, there was graft and intrigue and dishonor in the Communist ranks. It was Peters himself, torn between the right and wrong of re-establishing capital punishment, who said to me in January, 1918, “If we ever have to kill, it must begin in our own ranks.” His face was white and stern; he appeared on the verge of collapse.

“Will it ever really come to that?” I asked.

He passed his hand across his eyes with the weary gesture of a man who has not slept well for many nights. Before him on his desk, was a pile of papers. He pointed to them and said, “If you could know what evidence I have here, you would see how necessary it is if the revolution is to continue, for the Communists to purify their own ranks.”

It is a matter of record that the first persons put to death were opportunists who pretended to believe in Communism and had accepted bribes or otherwise had betrayed their own party.

The momentum of the revolution rapidly increased after the signing of the first death warrant. It was not long before the despised secret police once more made their appearance. They were back again protecting now a revolutionary government as energetically as they once protected the Tsar!

It is impossible to say how many of the old police force actually served under the Soviets. I found, on personal investigation, that many of the stories were largely myths. The most typical legend was the one concerning Lapochine, once head of the Okrana and exiled by the Tsar for telling a Social Revolutionist that Azef was a spy. The rumor that he now holds an important post in the Cheka is not true. His daughter was one of my intimate friends in Moscow and I went very often to her home. Her father was holding two small clerkships which took all his time, in order to get double rations to support himself and his invalid wife. Lapochine was never connected with the secret police after his exile, although he was brought back to Russia after six years in Siberia and publicly forgiven by the Tsar. He was governor of Esthonia at the outbreak of the revolution. However, to the ordinary individual, all this makes little difference. A detective is simply a detective, working in dark ways, someone to be feared and someone to be despised. And as for the Lapochines, the last time I heard of them they were trying to borrow money in America to start a sausage factory near Moscow.

All the important posts in the Cheka have been and still are largely held by Letts or Poles with unimpeachable revolutionary records. The rank and file are Russians. There are scarcely any Jews. The reason why the Russians hold minor positions is not exactly clear but the general calculation is that they are more susceptible to bribery and more easily influenced. Certainly, the Cheka has played an important rôle in the revolution; it is no exaggeration to state that without the vigilance of the Extraordinary Commission, the Soviets would never have maintained themselves through numerous critical moments. It was Peters and other Lettish secret agents who discovered such counter-revolutionary plots as the Lockwood plan to blow up bridges and cut off Petrograd and the government from all communications. And as military intervention developed, the Communists were forced to consider Russia in a state of siege and the Cheka their most necessary means of self-protection.

In a speech before a session of the Extraordinary Delegation, Trotsky made this statement: “The monopoly of using force and reprisals in any normally functioning state, regardless of its external form, is an attribute of the government.... Every state organization is in this way fighting for its existence. It is sufficient to picture to one’s self the society of the present day, this complicated and contradictory co-operation in such a tremendous country as Russia, for example, in order at once to understand that in the present condition of affairs, torn by every social contradiction, reprisals are absolutely inevitable.”

It is absurd to consider the Extraordinary Commission in any but an objective way. The little border states of Finland, Lithuania, Roumania, and even Poland, have just as elaborately developed Chekas, searching just as diligently for Bolshevik plotters as Russia does for anti-Bolshevik plotters. Finland, for example, has a much more cruel revolutionary record. The division of the Red and White forces there was more equal; therefore, the struggle was intensified and the terror magnified accordingly. Only, in this case, it was White Terror instead of Red.

Even we ourselves have a Cheka, but we call it a Department of Justice, and we have a thousand little independent Chekas known as private detective agencies. And now that America is in a happier state of mind we like to forget how our “intelligence” departments grew into formidable institutions during the short period of our participation in the war. Very soon after the declaration of war we began to suspect one another on a wholesale scale, all sorts of innocent persons were “trailed” and otherwise humiliated. If we remember those days, we can better understand what happens when the very life of a nation is at stake. Ours never has been.

No one claims that the state electrician who pushes the button for the electric chair at Sing Sing is a criminal, or that his private life need necessarily be immoral. Yet the Sing Sing executioner is paid something like three hundred dollars for each life taken and one might almost imagine him having more than a routine interest in a good crop of homicides. If Peters and Dzerzhinsky were dismissed from office to-morrow, they would have nothing but the clothes on their backs and broken health with which to begin new careers. I give this example for the sake of comparison or contemplation, not as a justification for either the American or the Russian official conscience.

The temptations of St. Anthony pale beside those of Peters and Dzerzhinsky. They have been flattered and offered every sort of bribe. I know of a single instance where Peters was offered what amounted to a cool million dollars. He did not refuse it, however, until he had all his tempters enmeshed beyond retreat.

The most romantic revolutionary story I know is the one Peters told me himself about his return to Russia, bound up as it was with Sir Roger Casement’s execution. Up until the day of that unhappy event he was immersed in the life of London and almost untouched by the struggle in Russia. He had a comfortable post in an export house, an English wife and a baby whom he adored. Quite naturally thoughts of revolution had grown vague and alien to his mind. So it was that, wrapped in British complacency, on a gray morning he started happily to work and encountered unexpectedly a little company of Irish folk bound for the Tower of London. At first he must have looked at them as he would have regarded any other procession. But he noticed, to his surprise, how emotional they were. Tears ran down their faces of which they were unashamed. He remembered then that this was the day when Sir Roger Casement was to die. Something, he said, made him follow that crowd, although they were going in an opposite direction from his office. Can you imagine the punctilious Mr. Peters, so highly efficient, never a minute late, for a reason unexplainable to himself, following a little group of Irish mourners? Perhaps he had even grown English enough to be a little embarrassed at his impulsiveness.

He described how he stood when the others knelt down outside the prison and began to pray. He would never forget, he said, how he suddenly realized what a vast, irreconcilable temperamental barrier lay between the English and the Irish people.

By the time the bugler announced the execution, Jacob Peters was another man. Something called conscience or national pride or revolutionary honor awoke in him and with it came a deep homesickness for Mother Russia. He felt himself burning with shame. It was as if Sir Roger Casement were pointing a finger at him and saying, “See how I am able to die, you who once called yourself a revolutionist.” Those devout people reminded him of the Russian peasants; they had the potency of an old tune. We have all seen men weep over some dear, familiar melody.

Peters never went back to work. He walked the London streets all day, wandered along the docks, watched the great ships and thought about Russia. All the dreams of his youth returned. At night he went home and told his wife he was going to Petrograd.

It seems almost regrettable that Sir Roger Casement could not have known that in that multitude come to mourn his death, was a little London clerk who, by the power of association, was somehow transformed into one of the characters that now make Russian history.

Neither Peters nor Dzerzhinsky bear much resemblance to their revolutionary predecessor, Marat, the venomous public prosecutor of the French revolutionary days. Dzerzhinsky is far too reserved to be an orator and I doubt if he understands the meaning of revenge. He must have known all too well the horror of prison life ages before he became head of the prisons. He spent eleven years in a Warsaw prison, an experience which permanently wrecked his health.

Early in his confinement a spirit of religious fervor, manifested in self-sacrifice and humbleness, was evident. He wished to abase himself in the same way a priest does penance before God. He took upon himself the most repulsive tasks in the prison in order to save his fellow prisoners, such as washing floors and emptying refuse pails. His only reply when questioned was, “It is necessary that someone should perform the lowest tasks in order that the others may be relieved of them.” And it was this man whose fate it was to perform the lowest and hardest tasks for the young republic. The meek can be truly terrible in positions of authority, as can the virtuous, since ordinary souls feel no defense against them.

In appearance Dzerzhinsky is tall and noticeably delicate, with white slender hands, long straight nose, a pale countenance and the drooping eyelids of the over-bred and super-refined. I never knew anyone who was a close friend of Dzerzhinsky’s; he has, perhaps, too secluded a nature to permit of warm and intimate companionship. He is as distinctly aristocratic as Peters is distinctly a man of the people.

Peters is short, snub-nosed and almost stocky in build, with bristling, short, brown hair. He has read a good deal but is by no means a littérateur. He is a workman risen above the mass, risen just high enough to be an excellent interpreter. He has played in these years since March, 1917, other important rôles than that of executioner. As Governor of Turkestan he has shown that he can create as well as destroy.

When Peters returned from England he went almost immediately to the front and joined a Lettish regiment. Because of his superior knowledge or his fervor he soon became a figure of importance among the soldiers. He was the favorite spokesman at the soldier meetings, which at that time were of great importance, since the soldiers were deciding very largely for themselves whether or not they would remain in the trenches. Even Kerensky found it necessary to take fortnightly trips to the front to argue and plead with them.

To certain men who once served in Peters’ regiment, was some months later entrusted the keeping of the Royal Family. Every man in that guard was a Lett. As in other instances, had they been Russians, they might have shown more leniency or outright sentimentalism in a crisis. The Letts were instructed never to allow their royal prisoners to be rescued alive and the Letts are soldiers who understand the iron rules of military discipline.

Lenin has long put great trust in Peters. When he was in hiding during the first two months of 1917, Peters was in charge of that seclusion. Lenin’s famous “Letters to the Comrades,” which were sent out and printed broadcast, and caused so much havoc with the Provisional Government, were entrusted to Peters and his subordinates. Peters was very proud of this trust. Once he said to me when I was living on a little street just off Nevsky Prospect, “Lenin is not far from this house.” Little did I comprehend what an important confidence that was!

Peters speaks English fluently. In 1917 he translated a life of Kerensky for me and over tea cups he told me many things about the revolution which I did not understand. I should never have believed, in those days, that this mild-mannered and almost inspired youth would soon have such sinister work to do.

The last time I met Peters he was living in Tashkent which is the capital of the Province of Turkestan. He had even more sweeping powers than an ordinary governor, since he was the most important revolutionary official in a community not yet settled down to normal life.

I also met the new Madame Peters. The English wife divorced him at the time of the terror. The second Madame Peters was a very pretty, redheaded Russian who had been a teacher and who still worked at her profession. They lived in a single room, shared a dining room with twenty others and were poorly dressed. When we discussed this point, Peters bitterly denounced several Soviet officials who, he said, were “living soft.” “A revolutionist cannot expect to force privations on other people if he is not willing to be an example of self-sacrifice,” he declared.

He had become known almost as a conservative among the Left-Communists because he had refused to close the Mohammedan bazaars, saying these people were not ready for Communism. His public trials were attended by large crowds and proved of great educational value in a very unenlightened community.

I found him much older. He seemed to have lived thirty years in three. He never mentioned the terror, nor did his wife, and I could not bring myself to. Only once did he indirectly refer to it. The three of us were starting to a local Soviet meeting. He picked up a revolver from his table and, for a moment, stood regarding it. Then he turned to me and said, “Have you ever used one of these?” I said, “Of course, I know how, but I’ve never had to.” And then he exclaimed, “I wish to God I never had!” After all, what a story can be condensed into a single sentence!

The Cheka was really the beginning of law and order; it marked the beginning of the first government which showed real strength and purpose. There was no doubt something very definitely nationalistic about the growth of the Cheka, in spite of the fact that it was established by Communists. It had all the hardness of purpose and the narrowness possessed by the maximum of patriotism. Any student of history will remember what Carlyle said of those terror-ridden days when the guillotine ruled France. “Tigress nationale! Meddle not with a whisker of her! Swift rending is her stroke; look what a paw she spreads—pity has not entered her heart.” Such acts Carlyle claimed would some day be known as the “Crimes of the Revolution,” when they should rightly be recorded as the birth pains of the republic. Very naturally, conduct of open and avowed suppression will always be hated and condemned by liberals the world over, and used as campaign ammunition by political opponents.

One of the highest officials of the Cheka said to me, “Most foreign correspondents write about the Extraordinary Commission as if we had no right on our side. Now I will give you two examples of the sort of problems continually confronting us, and if you would submit them to any American police official, he would tell you very promptly that the Cheka had no other course than the one which it pursued.

“First, there is the case of Marie Spirodonova. She is a woman with an honored revolutionary past. Naturally, we don’t want to have her behind bars. But she was for years a terrorist, she killed the Governor of Tambov and she still believes that individual acts of terror are justified. As you know, the Communists were always against such a policy. We believe in mass action and not individual violence.

“Marie Spirodonova is a highly-strung, sensitive person. She makes a splendid agitator but we have gotten to the point of reconstruction, of building, not tearing down. Russia was forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty. You may agree with me that that was a bad thing to do or you may disagree with me, but as an American, understanding and believing in government, you will certainly agree that we had to protect the representatives of Germany after the peace was signed.

“When Mirbach came to Moscow, it was very bitter for any of us to receive him. But it is another matter to go to his house and kill him with a bomb. This was the plan of Marie Spirodonova. Now what could we do? Were we to allow her and her associates to kill any foreign representative who came here? How could we ever hope for relations with other nations if we could offer their representatives no protection? Then why are we criticized because we put Spirodonova in a sanatorium? And we allowed her to escape. I confess that we have kept a watch over her. The woman in whose house she stayed used to report to us. That was merely to prevent any repetition of the Mirbach affair.

“One thing I wish the world could understand, one thing that my experience in the Cheka has taught me, that a person capable of starting a revolution is not necessarily capable of finishing one or even carrying one on after it is started.”

Another time the same official gave me his version of the Anarchist problem. “We had Bill Shatov as Chief of Police in Petrograd. He was formerly an Anarchist but had come over to work with us. He had quarreled with the Anarchists and he claimed that a lot of loafers and thieves had joined their organizations just to have an excuse not to do any work.

“Some time later there were a lot of robberies in Petrograd. One night Bill Shatov arrested every so-called Anarchist in town. He held them two weeks without trial. In those two weeks not a single robbery took place in Petrograd!

“When the trial came up, Bill had a novel way of trying cases. He put each man through a sort of Anarchist’s catechism. All those who knew their litany he released—the others he held.

“Anarchists are the most difficult of all groups during a revolution. They not only lack balance and refuse to co-operate but they are really dangerous. There is hardly a Soviet official whose life has not been threatened by Anarchists. Twice, you know, they nearly finished Lenin.

“What does the outside world really expect us to do? We have to be especially vigilant now because these are harassing times. Later we will be no more formidable than your own police.”

The Soviet Government has a passion for exhibits. The Labor Temple in Moscow almost all year round has about half its space devoted to educational displays. In a little room here I once saw a most curious and gruesome show. On the walls hung photographs of people executed for high treason, robbery and murder, with little cards attached giving the history of each case. In a corner were rifles of the type used in executing. There were also pictures of the victims of some of the criminals—pictures of Jews murdered in pogroms, for example, and of houses blown up. Any person from the street was allowed to go there quite freely, without any special pass, and acquaint himself with the workings of the committee.

There is always something appalling when one comes face to face with such a display of law and order. It reminds me of a very eccentric Russian doctor of my acquaintance. This man had a habit of killing flies. If he saw one on a window pane or hovering about the table he would somehow manage, with great deftness, to capture it. Thereupon he would solemnly take out his pocket knife and behead the insect. Once I protested, saying that such a performance was disgusting. With great seriousness he admonished me. “So, you do not believe in killing.... Well, nevertheless, we are all forced to kill. Flies annoy you, they poison your food, endanger your life and the lives of your children. In some desperate moment you strike out in a furious and chaotic manner. What is the result? Ugh, an ugly smash. Is there anything fine about that? You condemn me, but what do I do? I simply execute flies in a sanitary way—I am a true symbol of civilization.”

ANATOL VASSILIEVITCH LUNACHARSKY
AND RUSSIAN CULTURE

“Oh, happy earth! Out of the blood of generations

Life yet will blossom, innocent and wise,

And thou, my planet, shall be cleansed of lamentations,

A jade-green star in the moon-silvered skies.”

Thus wrote the Soviet Minister of Education, Anatol Lunacharsky, in those remote days when a revolution was only a vague goal and when he could not believe that in his own lifetime a day would come when he would be torn from his quiet study and forced to put his dreams into practice, or as near into practice as dreams ever reach.

Reality is revolting and disappointing to any artist, but Lunacharsky possesses enough recuperative powers to overcome his artistic sensitiveness. If he had not had enough also of that saving grace of fanaticism which marks all leaders, he would have lacked the enthusiasm which has carried him through every battle for culture which he has had to wage since the dramatic crash of the Tsardom. Only once did he actually lose heart and Lenin overcame that attack of panic by showering responsibility upon him. Given responsibility he showed more courage than men of coarser grain.

Lunacharsky’s battles in the five years he has been in office have not been concerned with bullets. “Illiteracy,” he told me once, “is the great curse of Russia; we must fight illiteracy like the plague.” And he fought it like the plague. This delicate poet, who in appearance is more like a scholarly Frenchman than a Russian, who has the manners and elegance of another age, has left off composing sonnets to fight ignorance, superstition, drunkenness, prejudice, disease, dirt.... And he has been more bitterly attacked than any other official of the new Russian Government.

With practically nothing at his disposal he had to plan and execute a vast educational campaign. That is why his achievements are so extraordinary. When Fedore Chaliapin was here last winter, winning the heart of America by his sweet and wonderful voice, he and I talked a good deal about Lunacharsky and the difficulties which confronted him. “Remember,” said Chaliapin, “if you have no pens and no paper and no ink, you cannot write; if you have no wood you cannot make a fire—in Russia all these things were literally true. Under such circumstances, no matter how willing the government might be, art and education must suffer with the rest.”

I will not go into figures here, but one can get an idea of what Lunacharsky has done. He has practically eliminated adult illiteracy from the cities, he has established thousands of schools. Only a very few of them, to be sure, are up to the required mark, but every school opened is an achievement. And there is not a single part of Russia, however remote or however dark, where a school has not been started.

But establishing and maintaining schools and universities was only a part of the work allotted to Lunacharsky. He had to build new theatres, keep up the standard of the old and show himself worthy of that great responsibility Lenin bestowed upon him when he made him guardian of all the art treasures of Russia.

If Nikolai Lenin had been a mediocrity, he would never have appointed Lunacharsky guardian of the art of Russia, and Russian art would now be scattered to the four winds, swallowed up in private collections or enriching the pockets of speculators. A mediocrity will not admit his limitations even if he is aware of them, but Lenin somehow understands that a man cannot spend his life studying political economy and carrying on revolutionary propaganda, and at the same time be an art connoisseur. What is more remarkable is that he allowed Lunacharsky to tell him so. The story of Lunacharsky’s appointment is interesting and characteristic of the Russian Premier’s method of political generalship.

When the Red and White forces were struggling for the possession of the Kremlin in Moscow in 1917, a wire to Petrograd announced that the beautiful and fantastic church of Vassili Blazhanie on the Red Square had been razed to the ground. Lunacharsky, poet, scholar, playwright and revolutionist, as well as friend and follower of Lenin, wrote an open letter to the press in which he gave vent to his horror. He stated: “What is taking place in Moscow is a horrible and irreparable misfortune!” He wrote another letter to Lenin, renouncing all connection with the revolution. And he took to his bed, ill with shock and disappointment.

Lenin did not accept his resignation. Lenin never accepts resignations from men who are valuable to the state. Instead, he went to call on Lunacharsky, and an amazing conversation took place which was repeated to me by a friend of both men.

Lenin, with his usual directness, said to Lunacharsky, “Do not be overcome by this calamity. If this church is destroyed, let us build a bigger and a better one.”

Lunacharsky, in tears of anguish, explained to Lenin that such a thing was not possible; such a lovely, imaginative piece of architecture might never again be created. Lenin listened and went thoughtfully away. A few days later Lunacharsky was given charge of the entire art of Russia.

Up to that time, the valuable collections, as well as the buildings, had been in the hands of a revolutionary committee which also might very well have been of the opinion that art could be replaced by “bigger and better” things.

Lunacharsky did not take his task lightly. He issued another public declaration asking for the solemn co-operation of all loyal Russians. “Upon me rests the responsibility of protecting the entire artistic wealth of the people,” he said, “and I cannot fulfill my duty without your help.”

It will not be known for a long time against what strong and subtle forces he had to battle to guard that trust. There was movement after movement to sell such treasures as the Rembrandt Collection in the Hermitage at Petrograd or the historic paintings and tapestries in Moscow. But Lunacharsky, ever on the alert, defeated every one of these attempts. He often fought bitter battles in his own party. Every possible sort of intrigue was manufactured against him. I remember times when he had to appear in public and defend himself against atrocious slander. Yet up to the present day he has saved absolutely everything except the pearls and diamonds of the royal family which, after all, were never of any particular artistic value. He saved even the Tsarist statues from the mobs that would have destroyed them, and stored them away in buildings for a calmer moment. He never lost his artistic perspective, art was always art and he “could look with a just regard upon the shattered corpse of a shattered king” provided that the monument was executed by a talented artist.

Nikolai Lenin has the genius to read men well; he recognized instantly that a man who could be so affected by the rumored loss of a single historic building that he could scarcely bear to face life, would be the very man to defend passionately the art of the nation. And Lenin has continued to defend Lunacharsky against every charge brought by his enemies. These charges have often been serious because they were brought by revolutionists who claimed that Lunacharsky was partial to the bourgeoisie in his efforts to get extra rates for scientists and artists; that he was not a real Communist because he put art before political propaganda. There was a terrible period when the loyalty of all men was questioned whose allegiance was not wholly given to the defense from military attack at whatever cost to art or personal life. It was through that period that Lunacharsky had to guide Russian culture.

“Think what vitality the theatre had to possess,” said Chaliapin, “to maintain itself through the revolution.” “Think what hunger the Russian masses had for learning,” said Madame Lenin, “that they could grasp even this hard moment to learn to read and study.” Both these assertions are true, but in spite of that hunger and that vitality both forces might have gone down for some years, had it not been for the splendid leadership of Lunacharsky.

Even those ardent revolutionists who could see no further than the immediate moment are beginning to realize that the very fact that the Soviets have kept intact their national art gives them a prestige which money could never buy; it is an indisputable evidence of their faith in civilization. And it is Lunacharsky who has managed to save for them this evidence of faith when hotheads would have cast it aside.

It always seems a pity that we are aware now of only the prominent political figures in Russia. If we can think back on the French guillotine days and the burning of libraries, the mad destruction of art, the sacking of palaces by angry mobs, we can understand that if there had been men in France in those days who could have held those mobs in check and made them want to read the books they were burning, made them turn the palaces into museums, Napoleon might never have worn a crown. In Russia the influence of the men who hold the political reins would be so much slighter and so much less significant if they were not backed up by men like Lunacharsky.

He had the art galleries heated in the most bitter of the fuel famine days and the immense crowds going in partly to keep warm strolled all day under historical canvases and came to know all the great pictures of Russia. The Winter Palace became a Revolutionary Museum, one of the most unique museums in the whole world, the Palace of Nicholas II at Tsarskoe Selo became a Children’s Home, as did every great estate in the provinces threatened with destruction by quarreling peasants.

It is interesting to note that the wives of three prominent revolutionists rendered Lunacharsky valuable aid in his difficult work, the wife of Trotsky, the wife of Gorky, and the wife of Leo Kaminev.

Madame Trotsky has under her direction all private art collections and all the small palaces; she hands a monthly inventory of these places over to Lunacharsky. In the last three years she has been very gradually and systematically removing the most valuable objects in the collections to the museums.

Madame Kaminev, Trotsky’s sister, is the head of Prolocult, a movement which aims at a new culture, especially in the theatre, which is free from Greek or other influences. It is Madame Kaminev’s theory that such a culture, springing from the workers and peasants and unspoiled by the imperfections and influences of former civilizations, will do much to stimulate and renew art in general, which she believes has become decadent

Marie Andreeva (Madame Gorky), who is herself an actress of note and was at one time a star in the famous Art Theatre in Moscow, had charge of Narodny Dom, a people’s theatre, which was started under the Tsar and is continued under the Soviets. Marie Andreeva recently made a tour of Europe to study the theatres.

But it is Stanislavsky, the director of the Moscow Art Theatre, who has rendered Lunacharsky the greatest assistance. Stanislavsky is conceded to be the greatest stage director in the world. Under his guidance, all the great Russian playwrights for the last generation have blossomed. It was Stanislavsky’s firm conviction that the Russian people must maintain the theatres, hundreds of theatres, during the revolution, in order that they might not find a life of hunger and cold too monotonous for a desire to live. With his brave little company he has managed to keep his theatre in the capital at the very highest pitch. He established and kept under his direction three other theatres in Moscow and he has put on a number of new operas. Absolutely nothing seems to discourage him. The loss of his personal fortune, which had been very great, and even the loss of his beloved workshop which was turned into a Chauffeurs’ Club, did not destroy his calm. “It is never Lenin or Lunacharsky, big men, who are to blame for these mistakes of the Soviet Government,” he told me. “It is always the little foolish, frantic men. When they took my workshop I wrote to Lenin. He did everything he could and when he was outvoted by Kaminev and the Moscow Soviet, he managed to get me another place, really just as good but lacking the old atmosphere.”

Many tales could be told about Lunacharsky. The most typical, I think, and the one that shows his persistency is the story of the Hermitage museum, which Catherine the Great founded in Petrograd.

When the Germans were knocking at the gates of Petrograd in 1917 the historic tapestries in the Winter Palace and the entire Hermitage collection were sent by dead of night to Moscow and stored in the Kremlin. One day in the winter of 1921 I called at Lunacharsky’s office. He was in a fine state of happiness. “I have great news for you,” he exclaimed. “To-day we sent the Hermitage collection back to Petrograd—intact! I wonder if you can realize what that means? I wonder if the world will know how nearly those precious things came to destruction? How wonderful it is, after all, that in another month one can go to Petrograd and behold everything arranged as it has been for centuries.

“Yes, there have been times when I did not think it possible to save the collection, not because there were reckless revolutionists who always brought up movements to sell one part or another, but by a much worse destruction. Can you imagine my anxiety when fighting, actual fighting, was going on in palaces where the old porcelains were stored? We had put the Rembrandts and other canvasses in the Kremlin cellars, and I was in constant terror that rats would gnaw them. Sometimes I was afraid to go down and look. But I feel that the worst days of such struggles are over for us. I am happy that Russia has demonstrated to the world that Russians are not barbarians. We have saved our art in spite of hunger and disease and death.”

Lunacharsky has a rare grace of spirit and while he is himself a modernist and wants to bring art as close to the people as bread, he never allows his own feelings to intrude on the feelings of his fellow artists. Himself a writer of note, he has sacrificed his own writing to save art and the creators of art. A devout revolutionist, he can allow the intricate designs of the Tsardom, the great black eagles, insolent against the sky over the turrets of the Kremlin, to remain, because they are part of the original designs of the old palaces. He can bring himself to regild the church roofs from his scanty funds although he is not at all religious, and he could faithfully gather old ikons and make of them a marvelous little collection in one of the new museums. Only such a man could have held together the temperamental army composed of the artists of Russia. Such men as Lunacharsky give the revolution the balance which prevents its collapse.

Periods of transition are always bitter and more than bitter for delicate creative souls. Once I mentioned Lunacharsky’s tact in handling artists to Helena Soochachova, the young and beautiful star at the Moscow Art Theatre. She smiled and thus characterized him: “Ah, Lunacharsky,” she said, “he is a great gentleman, he is, no doubt, the great gentleman of the revolution. That is the secret of his success and the reason his political enemies cannot defeat him and we artists cannot desert him—because he struggles so magnificently and is a man sans peur et sans reproche.”