PAGE
Preface[vii]
CHAPTER
[I.] Odessa[1]
[II.] Returning to Moscow[13]
[III.] Back in Petrograd[27]
[IV.] Archangel and Return[41]
[V.] Death and Funeral of Peter Kropotkin[54]
[VI.] Kronstadt[65]
[VII.] Persecution of Anarchists[78]
[VIII.] Travelling Salesmen of the Revolution[95]
[IX.] Education and Culture[110]
[X.] Exploiting the Famine[130]
[XI.] The Socialist Republic Resorts to Deportation[136]
[XII.] Afterword[144]

MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
IN RUSSIA

CHAPTER I
ODESSA

AT THE numerous stations between Kiev and Odessa we frequently had to wait for days before we managed to make connections with trains going south. We employed our leisure in visiting the small towns and villages, and formed many acquaintances. The markets were especially of interest to us.

In the Kiev province by far the greater part of the population is Jewish. They had suffered many pogroms and were now living in constant terror of their repetition. But the will to live is indestructible, particularly in the Jew; otherwise centuries of persecution and slaughter would long since have destroyed the race. Its peculiar perseverance was manifest everywhere: the Jews continued to trade as if nothing had happened. The news that Americans were in town would quickly gather about us crowds of people anxious to hear of the New World. To them it was still a “new” world, of which they were as ignorant as they had been fifty years before. But not only America—Russia itself was a sealed book to them. They knew that it was a country of pogroms, that some incomprehensible thing called revolution had happened, and that the Bolsheviki would not let them ply their trade. Even the younger element in the more distant villages was not much better informed.

The difference between a famished population and one having access to food supplies was very noticeable. Between Kiev and Odessa products were extremely cheap as compared with northern Russia. Butter, for instance, was 250 rubles a pound as against 3,000 in Petrograd; sugar 350 rubles, while in Moscow it was 5,000. White flour, almost impossible to obtain in the capitals, was here sold at 80 rubles a pound. Yet all along the journey we were besieged at the stations by hungry people, begging for food. The country possessed plenty of supplies, but evidently the average person had no means of purchase. Especially terrible was the sight of the emaciated and ragged children, pleading for a crust of bread at the car windows.