Another thing Russia needs is the soda fountain. A cold soft drink in summer and a hot chocolate in winter, easily accessible and cheap, would do more to take Ivan’s mind off moonshining vodka than all the laws in the world. Last summer there were times when I would cheerfully have given a dollar for a frosty glass of soda, any kind, any flavor. And there were plenty of others in Petrograd of my mind.
The best place to have luncheon in Petrograd is at the officers’ stores in the street which bears the appalling name of Bolshaia Konnyushennyaia. Here the food, government supplied, is good and it is sold for something approaching reasonable prices. The best meal I had every day was luncheon at the officers’ stores. The place is crowded from 11 to 4 every week-day, military men and their families predominating. Once, on a hot July day, there appeared on the counter where hors d’oeuvres were sold a cold delicious drink. It was a sort of cherry phosphate, and there were glass pitchers and pitchers of it, literally gallons. It sold for about twenty cents a small glass, and within half an hour it was gone, every drop. The crowd swarmed to that counter waving its money in the air, swallowed the cherry phosphate in one gulp, so to speak, and clamored loudly for more. I remember that I pleaded almost with tears for a second glass and could not get it. There is a fortune waiting for the capitalist who will take cold, soft drinks to Russia, and he will have besides the fortune the additional satisfaction of bringing hope to the sodden victims of vodka.
An army that will obey orders; a government that will govern; leaders in business, in transportation, in agriculture and a people willing to obey those leaders; education, wholesome life. Russia needs all these, and in her coming mighty struggle to achieve them the whole world of democracy, and especially our United States, must lend willing and sympathetic help and guidance.
CHAPTER XXV WHAT NEXT?
Man must hope. He must believe that his fight is a winning fight or he must give up in despair. That is why the Americans place credence in every despatch from Russia which seems to indicate that the disorganized fighting forces are being whipped into form again. That is why any hint that Kerensky had not succeeded in restoring order in the empire was for some time received with incredulity by the reading public. But why refuse to face the facts? We must face them some time.
In late September I read in one of the newspapers a headline which stated that the so-called democratic congress then in session in Petrograd had voted to sustain Kerensky’s demand for a coalition ministry. The headlines were wrong. What the dispatch really stated was that the congress had voted not to form any coalition with the bourgeois element, or with members of the Constitutional Democratic party. That is, the congress would not support a ministry that had any non-socialist members in it. “All the power to the Soviets” was retired as too conservative a slogan. It was “all the power to the Bolsheviki” then, for that is precisely what the vote in that so-called Democratic Congress meant.
Since June, 1917, no fewer than six congresses or conventions have been held in Russia with the object of finding a way out of the chaos with which the country is threatened. Every one of them was hailed beforehand as the one which was going to be a revelation of the intentions and desires of the people. The most important of these was the all-Russia congress of Soviets held last July, and before that the preliminary convention to prepare for the constituent assembly. The one was to decide once and for all whether or not the moderate or the extreme element in the Soviets was to rule, and the other was to quiet both elements by showing that the government intended to prepare a liberal and a democratic constitution for them to debate, amend and adopt when the time came. Lastly, there was the great Moscow congress of last August. I don’t remember what the stated object of that congress was, but it does not matter much. The real object was to find out which was the stronger man, Kerensky or Korniloff. Kerensky won by a narrow margin, a very narrow margin. And then they held another convention, and Kerensky lost.