"Don't you know? I am a student going to school again," she said. Mrs. Slova had gone to Russia with her daughters immediately following my return to New York from London. She was glad once more to be in the land of her birth, where formerly she was ostracized because she belonged to the Jewish group. But her three daughters, who were born and reared in comparative comfort in London, were frightened of the confusion of the new burgeoning society. Mrs. Slova quickly and expertly arranged a mariage de convenance for each of her daughters with English comrades visiting Russia and sent them back to London. But she remained in Moscow.
I asked if she did not miss her children. "I raised them right, until now they are of age to act for themselves," she said. "They couldn't fit into the new conditions here. Young people are not like us older heads." I said I thought the Communist movement was primarily the movement of youth, and if she in middle age could adapt herself to the changed life, it should have been easier for her daughters.
"Pooh!" Mrs. Slova exclaimed. "Youth is all right when guided and led by older heads. They act more from enthusiasm than from thinking and will rush headlong into anything when they are excited, for youth is the time of excitement. That is why they are preferred as soldiers. But they soon get sulky when there is no more excitement to feed on. All the great statesmen are middle-aged experienced men, even in Red Russia." I was amazed at Mrs. Slova. I never considered her bourgeois because she dressed well, but I always thought that she was oversentimental and romantic. But after all she was a wise person.
She had no desire to return to England. Communally living in a dormitory, sleeping on a cot with her belongings in a locker, she did not hanker after her comfortable middle-class home in London. She was studying languages in the Eastern University, with the intention of entering the eastern diplomatic service. She didn't think any revolution was going to take place in Western Europe for a long time, she said. The Bolshevik leaders would at last wake up to that fact. She believed in the East, the future of Russia in the East, and that was why she had become a student at the Eastern University.
A Great Celebration
Of all the big Bolshevik leaders, I had desired most to have a personal word from Lenin. I had been amazed in 1920, when I received in London a message from John Reed informing me that Lenin had brought the Negro question before the Communist Congress and inviting me to visit Moscow.
I had not gone to Moscow then because I did not consider myself qualified to do what John Reed had asked, which was to represent the American Negro group. But now that I was there, I was anxious to get Lenin's opinion out of his own mouth. But Lenin apparently had become very ill again after his couple of speeches at the Communist and Soviet Congresses in the late fall of 1922. At one of the sessions of the Communist Congress I was seated directly behind Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, and I was introduced to her by Clara Zetkin (the first woman member of the Reichstag), who was very friendly and affectionate to me. I seized the chance to ask Krupskaya if it were possible to have an interview with Lenin. She said she would see. But nothing came of that. Some time after I visited the office of Pravda with a Communist sympathizer. He was acquainted with Lenin's sister, who held a position on the staff, and he introduced me to her. I told her that I would like to have a word from Lenin himself and she said frankly that it was impossible, for Lenin was very sick.