It was at the suggestion of one of the Delegates that the Bolsheviki kindly arranged a trip down the Volga, that great central waterway which flows for nearly two thousand miles to the Caspian Sea, and which is fifty miles broad where it empties itself into this great lake. We went in our special train, accompanied by interpreters, agents, secretaries and journalists, a party of thirty to forty people, all anticipating a good time, to the famous city of Nijni-Novgorod. The plan was to take the steamer there and go to Saratov, calling at towns and villages on the way, and returning by train to Moscow. It was estimated the trip would occupy six days.
There is no longer any great Fair at Nijni-Novgorod. Foreign trade has practically stopped, owing to the breakdown of communications. The booths are empty and closed. The streets in this part of the city are neglected and untidy. The coloured domes of the churches glitter and sparkle with the old, quaint loveliness, but the city is the centre of what has been described as “a starving province,” and is as sad as the rest of Russia.
The usual Trade Union deputations, with soldiers, banners, bands and speeches met us at the railway station. We were shown over the great Somova iron-works, and made speeches to the hungry-looking workpeople. We were informed that it is difficult to keep down the spirit of rebellion here; but this one would have expected of the population of Nijni-Novgorod, with its history of democratic struggles in the past. Unlike the men at the Putiloff Works, these men complain, not only of hunger, but of the incapable bureaucracy which is keeping back production.
We had a great public meeting in the theatre in the evening, following a dinner given us by the Soviet and Trade Unions, and, after the speeches, we formed into a procession, and followed by numbers of the townspeople as well as the audience, and accompanied by several regiments of soldiers, we marched down to the S.S. Bielinsky which was to take us on our voyage. The procession marched all round the higher part of the town that we might see the finest buildings and the splendid view from the heights above the river, singing revolutionary songs all the way.
The summer days are hot but the nights are bitterly cold on the Upper Volga. One of our number neglected himself, and contracted pleurisy and pneumonia within twenty-four hours of our setting sail, and his illness obliged some of us to go forward to Astrakhan and return the same way to Saratov. The organisation of the steamship, a magnificent vessel, was mystifying to us. First there was the recognised commander. Then there was Sverdloff, the Acting-Commissar for Ways and Communications, who appeared to be the highest authority; then came the Trade Union Delegate who travels with the ship; then the man in charge of our party, who seemed to be armed with authority over the crew as well. There were occasions when orders conflicted, and the result was very funny. After the great bulk of the people left at Saratov the ship’s human machinery ran with greater smoothness.
A trip on the Volga was supposed to be one of the great experiences of the rich traveller before the war. It is an experience anyone may be very glad and proud to have had. More of the heart and soul of Russia lies on each bank of this mighty river than can be found in Russia’s cosmopolitan cities. The country is low and fertile, except for the desert stretches of the lower reaches. The green of its grass is a bright emerald. Its roads and farm-buildings are a consistent brown, like its sun-tanned, wind-bitten peasant people. Wild horses roam the steppes with the Cossacks and Tartar tribes, some of whom live close to the river, their brown, substantial houses seeming to rise straight out of the water in the estuary of the Volga. The enormous rafts which float slowly down the river, composed of the trunks of great trees bound together, are things of wonder. They are of enormous size. Whole families live on them, and huts have been erected on them for shelter. It takes weeks, even months for these rafts to creep down the river to the places for which they are bound. Often the rafts are built the shape of a boat and so sent floating to their destination.
The friendly people waved us their handkerchiefs as we passed. The passion for art of the Russian everywhere showed itself in the decoration with green branches of these rafts, of our own handsome steamer, and of the railway trains in which we travelled.
We called at many little villages or larger towns on the way down the river. The banks of the river and the plains beyond teem with people. It was no lonely prairie that we gazed upon as we floated idly. The millions of dead fish in the river were symbolic of the country’s past state and present suffering, and of its fearful fate if left too long without substantial help. Nobody could tell us authentically why those fish had died. Could the cholera germ have worked this miracle of death? Or was it Koltchak’s poison gas? Their numbers made them remarkable.
Our talks with the peasant men and women revealed the fact that they were not Communists in the Marxian sense, scarcely Communist in any sense. They were content not to quarrel with the Government because it was so much better than the régime of Koltchak, whom they hated; and because of the war. They grumbled at the requisitions of food, and hated the soldiers sent to collect it. But they were amenable to persuasion. One friend of the peasants, a Communist, told me that he was sent by the Government to talk to the peasants, because he was so successful in persuading them to give up their spare produce. He was a man of quiet and gentle manner whom it would be difficult at all times to resist.
The peasants we saw were a big, blond, stalwart race, with any quantity of shaggy, curly hair and with matted beards. Their features were Slav. They had large mouths, thick lips and broad noses. They wore high boots, much the worse for wear, and smocks with broad belts. Their women were big for the most part, pleasant and round-faced, and their legs were bound in what looked like white canvas which gave them a tubular appearance. They wore canvas or felt shoes, very inadequate for country roads. Their aprons and blouses were amazingly white in one village, which gave one the impression that there they probably made their own soap. The children were attractive replica of their parents. One small boy showed us proudly that he could write his own name in a good hand.