When I returned from Petrograd to Moscow I told Sen Katayama that I wanted to go home. It was the beginning of April. Sen Katayama said that, as an unofficial delegate, I would be given my return fare. He was very pleased with my success and the part he had played in making it possible. He said: "I welcome all the Japanese and Chinese who come here. Some are not Communists, but I see that they are treated right, for I want to make them all Communists." He said it had been decided that I should not go back by way of Poland, since some of the delegates had had trouble in passing through. A Japanese had been put in prison and lost all his papers. It was considered better for me to go as I had come, by boat.
I bade my friends goodbye and returned to Petrograd. But the harbor was ice-locked and I had to wait six weeks before a boat could sail. I was put up in the house of the former Grand Duke Alexander, who was a patron of arts. I had the Duke's own bedroom and study, and his valet to wait on me. The valet was a nice old fellow, but he was like a ghost wandering through the palace. He lived entirely in the past and spoke of the sumptuous days in Berlin and Paris with the Grand Duke. He spoke fluently in French and English. He was shocked at the state of my wardrobe. The only thing in it that he thought fitting for a Grand Duke's closet was a fine pair of boots which had been given to me by Eugen Boissevain.
I did not like the palace rooms, especially the study. It reminded me of a cathedral altar. All the walls were rococo, carved and painted in inharmonious brick red. But the cadet who had made himself my orderly thought the rooms very grand. The cadet wanted to do everything, so I dispensed with the valet's services, but tipped him every week.
I got to know Petrograd thoroughly during those weeks. I was shown all the works, among them the great Putilov iron and steel plant and the rubber factory. I liked the visits, but I thought it must have been rather bothersome to the managers of factories who were always pestered by having to take visitors over the plants. I went down into the dungeon of the prison of Sts. Peter and Paul to see the cell in which Prince Kropotkin had been confined. I visited the Department of Nationalities, and Rayeva, the secretary, explained the status of the minority peoples under the Soviets. Also I visited the Department of Woman's Work at the Smolny Institute, where Nicolayeva, the secretary, told me all about the new regulations concerning marriage and divorce and joint individual property, and how the factory workers were cared for during the period of pregnancy and childbirth. She sent me to a meeting of enthusiastic women workers, who passed a resolution asking that a group of colored working girls visit Russia.
May Day in Petrograd was a mighty celebration of workers and soldiers and sailors. Never before or since have I seen such a demonstration. Half-empty Petrograd was filled with the shouting of millions who peopled the streets, marching and singing and holding high their red banners of hope. For hours I stood with Zinoviev and other Petrograd leaders in the reviewing stand in the Uritsky Square. And the demonstration so tremendously swept me along that after attending the People's Theater that night, I could not sleep. I sat down at the table of the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexander, looking out on the Neva, with the gorgeous silver of the beautiful white night of Petrograd shining upon its face, and wrote until dawn. I was happy. Petrograd had pulled a poem out of me.
The poem was published in the Petrograd Pravda and reprinted all over Russia. It was the last thing I wrote in Russia. I was overwhelmed with praise. The praise of the Communists was expected. I was their guest. But I was gratified most by the praise of the Petrograd literati. For they were a proud lot, cold or passive to the revolution. The Russian translator of Walt Whitman said that I had composed a classic. But they had it in translation. I think it should be exhibited here in the original.
PETROGRAD: MAY DAY, 1923