Inside the Russian Revolution

by Rheta Childe Dorr

Even in the hospitals it got so that the doctors and the nurses were without authority. If a man was ordered to take a pill he wanted to call a committee meeting to discuss the thing. It is an actual fact that men refused to take treatment or undergo operations until they had consulted the Tavarishi about it. From that to refusing to obey any orders is a short step, and Red Cross nurses have told me some fantastic stories about life in Russian lazarets. Some wounded men refused to take their clothes off and insisted on wearing them, boots and all, to bed. Others refused to go to bed at night, preferring to snooze during the day and wander around in pajamas and dressing gowns at night. Some insisted on being discharged before they should be, while others, on being discharged, declined to go.

They were not like that in all hospitals, of course. Ivan is a great child, and very often he is a stupid and an unruly child. But often he is good, especially when he is sick and suffering and in need of women’s care and kindness. I don’t want to describe the bad hospital conditions without admitting that they have the other kind, too, in Russia. I remember seeing at the corner of a street below a big lazaret in Petrograd a dozen discharged wounded men and a group of nurses and orderlies. They were waiting for the tram which was to carry the men to the railroad station. Some still wore bandages, some were on crutches, some walked with the aid of sticks. Two were blind. But all were wildly happy at the prospect of going home to the old village. The nurses and orderlies shared in the excitement. Some of them were going to the station, and had their arms full of bundles, clothes, food and souvenirs of battle. One nurse carried a competent looking cork leg, the future prop of a pale young fellow on crutches. The car swung around the corner, full of passengers, idle soldiers mostly, but even they, at the command of the energetic sister, vacated their seats for the invalids. They climbed aboard, and those who were most helpless were lifted. The cork leg was handed in through an open window and delivered to one of the more able-bodied men. There had been plenty of time for farewells before, but parting was difficult, and for five minutes after boarding the car the men continued to shake hands with the nurses, to shout last messages, and to kiss their hands to those on the sidewalk. The nurses patted their charges’ arms and shoulders, and called anxious admonitions. “Take care of that leg, Ivan Feodorovitch. You know how to bandage it. Don’t try to walk too much, and keep out of the sun.” You didn’t have to know a word of Russian to understand what those nurses were saying.

The street car conductor wrung her hands and begged to be allowed to go on. The time schedule had to be observed. “Please, sister, please,” she entreated, and at last she was permitted to ring the bell and send her car forward. As it turned the corner the men were still waving and laughing and wiping the tears from their cheeks. I don’t believe those men had called any committee meetings before obeying their nurses, or ever reminded the doctors that it was a free country now and they could take medicine or not as they pleased.

You certainly got tired of that overworked phrase “It’s a free country now.” You hear it on all sides in Russia. “It’s a free country,” says a man with a third-class ticket taking possession of a first-class compartment. “It’s a free country,” declares a soldier, tossing a handful of sunflower seed shells on a woman’s white shoes in a street car. “It’s a free country,” say a group of men, stripping off their clothes before a crowd of women and children and taking a bath in the Neva. This occurs frequently on the Admiralty quay, a great pleasure resort in Petrograd.

“They called them Sans Culottes during the French Revolution,” said a clever woman writer in one of the newspapers. “Our men will go down to fame as Sans Caleçons. The difference, perhaps, between a political and a social revolution.” The first French phrase means without trousers. The second carries the denuding process to its concluding stage.

In this kind of a free country nobody is free. Try to imagine how it would be in Washington, in the office of the secretary of the treasury, let us say, if a committee of the American Federation of Labor should walk in and say: “We have come to control you. Produce your books and all your confidential papers.” This is what happens to cabinet ministers in Russia, and will continue until they succeed in forming a government responsible only to the electorate, and not a slave to the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates. Of course, the simile is grossly unfair to the American Federation of Labor. Our organized labor men are the most intelligent working people in the community, and most of them have had a long experience in citizenship. Above all, their loyalty, as a body, has been amply demonstrated. The Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates has among its members loyal, honest, intelligent men and women. But it has also a number of extreme radicals, people who would dishonor the country by concluding a separate peace with Germany, and who care nothing for the interests of any group except their own. Nobody in Russia has very much experience in citizenship, and the working people have less than others. Yet the soviet, to give the council its local name, deems itself quite capable of passing on all affairs of state, not only in Russia but in the allied countries as well. The soviets have had the presumption to announce that they are going to name the peace terms, although Russia has virtually ceased to fight. “No annexations or contributions,” is the formula, very evidently made in Germany. I am sure that not one in a thousand knows what this means.

“Have you ever thought,” I asked a member of the Petrograd council, “what your program would mean to the working people of Belgium? Don’t you think that the farmers and artisans of northern France are entitled to compensation for their ruined homes and blasted lives?”

“Yes, but not from Germany,” was the astounding reply. “All countries should contribute.”

“If I were a cashier in a bank and stole a million dollars of the depositors’ money, do you think I ought to be made to pay it back, or should all the employés be taxed?” To this question I got no answer. There isn’t any answer.

In all this confusion of mind, this whirlwind of ideas and theories, are there no Russians who can think clearly? Are there no brave and courageous people left in Russia? None who realize the ruin and desolation which is being prepared for them? There are. Russia has its submerged minority of thinkers. It has at least two fighting elements which are ready to die to restore peace, order and bright honor to their distracted land. These two elements are the Cossacks and the women.