Radek is a different kind of personality. His speech and his movements are quick. In appearance he is a thin, ascetic-looking man, with side-whiskers and curly hair, and looks not unlike a picture of an early Victorian squire. He has long, thin, nervous hands, very eloquent in gesture. Conversation with him is a monologue, in which he runs on endlessly from one subject to another, and from one point to another, anticipating your questions. He deals much in irony, but his large, pleasant eyes covered with horned spectacles gleam not unkindly whilst he scorches you with his words. He shows an infinite knowledge of the Socialist movements of the world, connecting personalities therein with events in a most marvellous fashion. Like most fanatics he is intolerant of the opinions of others and uses strong and even abusive language in dealing with those from whom he differs. He is a shrewd judge of men and events; but I am convinced that his is the fanaticism which would run the ship of State upon the rocks if not controlled by more temperate men.
His great interest is the Third International, an organisation of Communists who have adopted the dictatorship of the proletariat, government on the Soviet plan, and revolution by violence as the three main points in their platform. This International is the rival to the Second International held at Berne in 1919, three months after the armistice. Their principal quarrel with the Second International is the inclusion in it of those Socialists who supported the war and joined bourgeois governments. These men, they say, deny Socialism, if not in words, by the implication of their actions, and they can have nothing to do with such. The Second International also maintains an old-fashioned belief in political democracy which they declare has been tested and found wanting.
Communists in Moscow themselves told me that there is little to be hoped from the Third International as at present constituted; that it was formed irregularly by a few forceful and domineering men, who thrust a programme upon it, which they made it accept; that the representatives of foreign countries who were present at the initial gathering were not accredited, but were the returned exiles who happened to be on the spot; and that the insistence of a rigid discipline within the organisation, whilst it might exclude weak and wavering societies who would be a weakness and not a strength, would so restrict its numbers and eventually weary its members that it could not become effective as it is. These men were themselves in favour of the world social revolution, so that their criticism is important.
The document sent to this country by the Executive Committee of the Third International in reply to questions addressed to it by some of the British visitors will definitely exclude all but the bitterest and extremest of British Socialists, who for their intellectual sport play with vast explosive human forces very much as a little child plays with fire. Since this document is immediately to be published in a separate volume, and so made available for all who care to read it, it is unnecessary to quote it at length. Sufficient to say, it follows the lines already indicated as the plan of action proposed for the proletarians of the whole world by the Third International sitting in its Second Conference in Moscow as I write these words.
Dr. Semasco, the People’s Commissar of Public Health is one of the most admirable and devoted men it has been my lot to meet. Against the most appalling sanitary conditions left by war, poverty, pestilence and famine, this heroic doctor is putting up a magnificent fight. He and his band of gallant helpers have few means with which to work. They are almost entirely lacking soap and disinfectants, as the needs of the army must be first supplied and production in these things is almost at a standstill; but in spite of this, he is doing marvellous things and rapidly stamping out some of the epidemic diseases which have raged all over the country. As every town and village in Russia has been, in a more or less degree, affected by one or another of the plagues of typhus, small-pox, dysentery, cholera and recurrent fever, the first line of attack on these things has been through the strict control of the means of communication. Every train carries its medical staff, and includes in its make-up a carriage to which discovered cases of actual or incipient disease can be at once removed and attended to. Control stations have been placed at fixed points on the lines, and here people have to undergo compulsory examination, bathing and disinfecting as far as means will permit.
Besides these measures, a house-cleaning campaign, for which women have been largely employed, is undertaken at frequent intervals, when people are made thoroughly to clean the insides and outsides of their dwellings and their furniture. Stern treatment follows neglect of this order and the result shows great improvement.
The figures for typhus cases for all Russia for some of the months of the present year reveal the excellent progress being made.
| February | 369,859 (civilians) |
| March | 313,624 ” |
| April | 158,308 ” |
| January | 66,113 (army) |
| February | 75,978 ” |
| March | 57,251 ” |
| April | 16,505 ” |
Dr. Semasco is a short, spare man, dark in appearance, energetic in action. He is a stern foe of all alcoholic drinks and is, besides, an opponent of the smoking habit, both on purely health grounds. He neither drinks nor smokes himself. He is one of the very few doctors who are Communists, and has served a term in prison under the old régime for some inoffensive piece of Socialist activity. It is impossible properly to judge Russia, after all, without taking into account its revolutionary history and its inheritance from the past. The slightest thing was regarded as an offence against the Government by the stupid Autocracy which has gone, and punished with abominable severity; such things, for instance, as the teaching of the peasants to read and write. If there is much to be condemned in the present suppression of freedom, in common fairness it must be remembered where the present rulers learnt their lessons in tyranny.
One of the very ablest of the People’s Commissars is the Acting-Commissar for Ways and Communications, Sverdloff. We travelled in his company from Nijni-Novgorod to Astrakhan. He it was who kindly put at our disposal the train de luxe which carried our sick friend from Saratov to Reval, and whose considerate kindness on the ship enabled us to save his life.