Mirrors of Moscow

by Louise Bryant

I think that he knew even before he began to question her that hers was one of those unavoidable, personal tragedies that are part of change and war and revolution. She had owned a big country house, but the peasants had taken it when they divided the land and they had allotted her but two rooms to live in. She was humiliated, discouraged and resentful. She cried out, forgetting that Kalinin was also a peasant, “I can’t bear to see those creatures using my pretty things, walking with great muddy boots in my house. My soul is in that house!”

Kalinin shook his head. He seemed willing and even anxious to help her but he seemed more like a doctor in that moment than an executive. Very gently he asked her to remember that two rooms were more than most people had now in Russia, that these were difficult times; even so they would go over the case together if she would wait her turn. But no sooner had he closed the door than every peasant in the room began addressing the bewildered woman. They said that she should be ashamed of such petty complaints and accused her of asking for “special privileges.” The widest range of arguments were put forward, from the man who had lost a cow and considered the government responsible to the woman whose two sons had been killed at the front.

I was not so much interested in the arguments as in the remarkably true reflection which the scene presented of what had happened all over Russia. I had never realized before how completely submerged the upper classes had become; how ruthless and inevitable was the vast upward surge of the peasantry. Here was this woman, one time barishna (lady), crushed and defeated in her own village, finding the same thought in Moscow as in Nizhni-Novgorod or Kazan or Baku.

When Kalinin called her she went forward but one could see that she had already given up hope and would not fight any further; perhaps for the first time the real significance of the revolution had become clear to her.

It is hard for Americans, where a peasant population has never existed, to realize the position of the peasants in a revolution. They are the rock in the whirlpool. They are the great levellers, the great destroyers as well as the great builders. In Russia they pulled down everything about them and they were not always gentle in their wrath. Often they ruined wilfully and needlessly. In the cities, practically no buildings were destroyed and no treasures looted, but in the provinces men often remembered the knout with red flames of fire and even with death.

Because the peasants’ desires are simple, the world is apt to give them credit for a deep, political wisdom which they do not possess and while there is no doubt about their taking the business of government seriously, their inexperience often leads them into grave blunders. It was the peasants, and not the Communists, who most stubbornly opposed recognition of the foreign debts. It was the peasants who demanded from every government since the Tsar’s, schools, hospitals and protection from invasion, but who always resented the most ordinary and reasonable tax put upon them by the central authorities. Until Kalinin had educated them they were wont to ask like children, “Aren’t we free now? Can’t we be left alone?”

The great irony about the rising of the peasants is that they were the first to abandon the very equality they fought for. The equalization of property in the provinces was brought about through the workings of peasant proletariat organizations known as Committees of the Poor, which not only divided the estates of the rich landlords but broke the power of the kulaks (rich peasants). When the whole country was reduced to the same status, the peasants were faced with the necessity of a great decision. There were no longer rich peasants or proletarian peasants but only what is known in Russia as the “middle” farmers. The question of how to maintain such an equality now arose. The Communists urged them to abandon the idea of private property and work the land in communes, pointing out that any other course must inevitably lead to the re-establishment of all the old values and a new bourgeoisie. But the peasants were afraid of this new and untried road of Socialism. Their demands for trade, silver money, the opening of markets and stores, are ample evidence that they have turned back on to the old familiar road of capitalism. If Russia had been an industrial instead of an agricultural country, the decision of the masses might have been quite otherwise.

Even our own presidents know the value of a lecture tour in a national crisis. In our immediate political past, we have the memory of presidents who took “issues” to the people, but it is hard to conceive of a Chief Executive lecturing almost steadily for over two years. Yet that is even a short estimate of the time actually spent by Kalinin in going from one end of Russia to the other, shuttling in and out of Moscow.

His meetings were more like tribunals, people’s courts, than ordinary political assemblies. The peasants gathered at the railway stations, in the village squares or even in the fields. They heard what he had to say and then he heard them. They argued, complained, demanded, compromised. Always some sort of understanding was arrived at. This was partly due to Kalinin’s wonderful tact, his almost divine reasonableness which never allowed an argument to develop into a quarrel. And partly because he knows the peasant mind which is easily touched by stories of suffering, by flattery or tears, but impossible to move by threats. But fundamentally, the secret of Kalinin’s success is due to the fact that he himself is a peasant and no walls of caste can exist between him and the people.