The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

Fraternal Greetings P Kropotkin

My association with the fortunes of the Doukhobors ended with a slight incident some time later. A peasant, unable to speak any language or dialect that we could command in the house or neighborhood, presented a card at our door on which were written these three words, “Kropotkin, Crosby, Wald.” When an interpreter was secured from Ellis Island we learned that, hearing of the pilgrimage of the Doukhobors to Canada, he had decided to follow them, and for clews had only the remote connection of Kropotkin’s sympathy with Russian peasants, Ernest Crosby’s devotion to Tolstoi, and some rumor of his and my interest in these people. That he should have succeeded in finding me seemed quite remarkable. He was sent to Canada, and subsequent letters from him gave evidence of his contentment with the odd sect to which he had been attracted.

After rather serious conflict between their religious practices and the Canadian regulations, the Doukhobors are reported to have settled their differences and to have established flourishing communistic colonies where thousands of acres have been brought under cultivation.

The Friends of Russian Freedom, a national association with headquarters in New York, is composed of well-known American sympathizers, and, like the society of the same name in England, recognizes the spirit that animates Russians engaged in the struggle for political freedom, and is watchful to show sympathy and give aid.

An occasion for this arose about eight years ago, when the Russian Government demanded the extradition of one Jan Pouren as a common criminal. The Commissioner before whom the case was brought acceded to Russia’s demands and Pouren was held in the Tombs prison to await extradition. Then this insignificant Lettish peasant became a center of protest. Pouren, it was known, had been involved in the Baltic uprisings, and acquiescence in Russia’s demands for his extradition would imperil thousands who, like him, had sought a refuge here, and would take heart out of the people who still clung to the party of protest throughout Russia. A great mass-meeting held in Cooper Union bore testimony to the tenacity with which high-minded Americans clung to the cherished traditions of their country. Able counsel generously offered their services, and it was hoped that this and other expressions of public protest would induce the Secretary of State to order the case reopened.

My own participation came about because of a request from the members of the Russian Revolutionary Committee in New York that I present to President Roosevelt personally the arguments for the reopening of the case. An hour preceding the weekly Cabinet meeting was appointed for my visit. I took to the White House an extraordinary letter sent by Lettish peasants, now hard-working and law-abiding residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It read: “We hear Jan Pouren is in prison, that he is called a criminal. We called him ‘brother’ and ‘comrade.’ Do not let him fall into the hands of the bloodthirsty vampire.” To this letter were appended the signatures and addresses of men who had been in the struggle in Russia and who, by identifying themselves with Pouren, placed themselves in equal jeopardy should the case go against him. They offered to give sworn affidavits, or to come in person to testify for the accused. With the letter had come a considerable sum of money which the signers had collected from their scanty wages for Pouren’s defense. I also had with me a translation of the report to the second Duma on the Baltic uprisings wherein this testimony, in reference to the attempt of the Government to locate those involved in the disturbances, was recorded: “They beat the eight-year-old Anna Pouren, demanding of her that she should tell the whereabouts of her father.”

The President and the Secretaries concerned discussed the matter, and I left with the assurance that the new evidence offered would justify the reopening of the case. At the second hearing the Commissioner’s decision was reversed and Russia’s demands refused, on the ground that the alleged offenses were shown to be political and “not in any one instance for personal grievance or for personal gain.”[11]

George Kennan, who first focused the attention of Americans upon the political exiles through his dramatic portrayal of their condition in the Siberian prisons, is still the eager champion of their cause. Prince Kropotkin, who thrilled the readers of the Atlantic Monthly with his “Autobiography of a Revolutionist”;[12] Tschaikowsky, Gershuni, Marie Sukloff[13]—a long procession of saints and martyrs, sympathizers, and supporters—have crossed the threshold of the House on Henry Street and stirred deep feeling there. Katharine Breshkovsky (Babuschka, little grandmother)[14], most beloved of all who have suffered for the great cause, is to many a symbol of the Russian revolution.

Who of those that sat around the fire with her in the sitting-room of the Henry Street house can ever forget the experience? We knew vaguely the story of the young noblewoman’s attempt to teach the newly freed serfs on her father’s estate in the early sixties; how her religious zeal to give all that she had to the poor was regarded as dangerous by the Czar’s government, and how one suppression and persecution after another finally drove her into the circle of active revolutionists. Her long incarceration in the Russian prison and final sentence to the Kara mines and hard labor was known to us, and we identified her as the woman whose exalted spirit had stirred Mr. Kennan when he met her in the little Buriat hamlet on the frontier of China so many years ago.