George Melchoir is president of the Moscow Central Federation of All-Russian Professional Alliances. He worked for a long time at Bayonne, New Jersey, but like many others returned to Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. He took an active part in organizing the taking of Moscow in the early days of the Bolshevist uprising.
Melchoir has been a working man all his life, and is extremely intelligent. The position which he holds demands a great deal of technical knowledge, as well as executive ability, and every one agreed that he was thoroughly qualified for his post. I had a long talk with him. He was enthusiastic about the future of Russia. It would be built up, he said, by the various unions and peasant organizations.
He is probably thirty-five years of age, of medium height, with a bulky figure, full of vigor and enthusiasm.
PETERS
In the early days of the revolution Peters was chief of the Internal Defense of Petrograd. American newspapers said of him that “his fingers were cramped from writing death warrants.” I asked him how many death warrants he had signed and he told me three hundred in all. He expressed regret that he had been looked upon in other countries as a murderer, and said it was unfortunate that those people did not understand the conditions that surrounded Russia while in the throes of a revolution. He insisted that the warrants he had signed had been necessary in the interest of the country as a whole, and that they had been signed only after investigation and a trial of the individuals, and that in no case had there been an execution to gratify the personal revenge of any one.
He is a Lett, very young, perhaps between twenty-eight and thirty years old, short and stocky, with a mass of black hair combed straight back. He lived in England for a number of years, and speaks the English language easily and fluently.
BORIS REINSTEIN
As a former resident of Buffalo, New York, and member of the American Socialist Labor Party, Boris Reinstein returned to Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. He was for some time an assistant in the Foreign Office; later a lecturer in a military school, and is now an official lecturer in the large college for training writers and speakers in Moscow. This school was running full blast while I was there. Classes number from seventy-five to one hundred each. Pupils are elected by various Soviet organizations over the country, and at the end of six months’ training are returned to their various communities and others are sent into their places. The Government supports all these pupils while they are in training.
Reinstein is an excellent speaker and a tireless worker, and is one of the kindest and most conscientious men I have ever met. He is certainly not the “wild-eyed agitator” he has been pictured in the American press. He has given valuable service to the revolution, though he has lost twenty-five pounds in doing so.