MIRRORS OF MOSCOW

MIRRORS OF MOSCOW

BY

LOUISE BRYANT

With five illustrations by
CÉSARE

New York
THOMAS SELTZER
1923

Copyright, 1923, by
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc.
———
All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO THREE WISE EDITORS—

M. KOENIGSBERG
BRADFORD MERRILL
PHILLIP FRANCIS

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

Revolution! The air is filled with flames and fumes. The shapes of men, seen through the smoke, become distorted and unreal. Promethean supermen, they seem, giants in sin or virtue, Satans or saviours. But, in truth, behind the screen of smoke and flame they are like other men: no larger and no smaller, no better and no worse: all creatures of the same incessant passions, hungers, vanities and fears.

So it is in Russia. And in this book I have tried to show the leaders of the revolution as they really are, as I know them in their homes, where the red glare does not penetrate and they live as other men.

Great events make great men. For to be strong enough even to maintain one’s self amid great events is to be great. Without the event the strength is nothing. Had the revolt of 1917 failed, like the revolt of 1905, Lenin would have worked his life out in an attic in Geneva, Trotsky would have lived and died in a New York garret, Kalinin would have remained a disappointed, debt-burdened peasant, Tchicherin a futile ex-diplomatist in exile. The world would not have known their names: just as the world would not have known Napoleon or Danton or Marat or Robespierre had Louis XVI been a trifle less desperately dull. But the revolt of 1917 became a revolution and its colossal drive and heave flung up the exiles to greatness. As men it did not change them.

They differ from the political leaders one meets in Washington, London and Paris, largely because they are able to be franker and more themselves. Public opinion, which is the boon of politicians and the bane of statesmen, does not drive them to drab conformity or high-sounding platitude. The public they have to satisfy is small and sophisticated—the trade unions of the larger cities. And these workingmen demand, above all else, frankness and the unpowdered truth. An address by Lenin is, therefore, as direct, unsentimental and full of facts as a statement to a board of directors by an executive of an American corporation. The slow, strong wants of the peasants have to be heeded, too; but they are simple wants, land and free trade, and do not yet touch intricate things, remote from the daily life of the farm, like foreign affairs and higher economics. In the end the peasants will rule Russia, but to-day public opinion is the opinion of the class-conscious workingmen of the cities. Therefore, the leaders of Russia can afford to be frank.

In the western democracies, politics is the art of seeming frank while not being so. Only three types of politicians ever emerge in the highest places. First, the statesman of brilliant intellectual understanding, like Lloyd George, who always knows what he ought to do, and never does it—until the public also comes to understand, usually some months, or years, later. Second, the sentimentalist, who is always able to muddle an inconvenient understanding of facts and muffle his conscience with high-sounding principles that endear him to the public heart. Third, the kindly blockhead, who discovers what ought to be done just a little later than the public. These types do not exist in Russia. The trade unions compel the Russian politician to be a stark realist, talking frankly, acting on the best information he can obtain and giving that information fully to his public. The leaders pictured in this book will seem, therefore, franker and more direct than the leaders of the western world.

They will also seem more desperate; not because it is their natural character to be desperate but because they face as desperate a problem as ever strained the human brain. They have been caught, from the first, on the horns of the revolutionary dilemma. The same intolerable breakdown of economic life, which alone makes revolution possible, also predestines revolution to almost certain failure. That dull beast, the public, will move to revolution only when life has become unbearable, only when the established order has broken down so completely that ruins alone remain. Revolution does not come before ruin. And to build on ruins a new and fairer life is a task almost beyond the powers of men. So much of the exhausted energy of the nation must be consumed in re-establishing the mere fundamentals of life—food, shelter, clothing and security from fear—that little remains to attack the task of remoulding life in a shape that is closer to the heart’s desire. But to this task the leaders of Russia have dedicated their lives. And if they succeed or if they fail, they will be remembered always for their courage in following an ideal through destruction, famine, death and the hatred of the world.

Here, then, they are: the Russians of to-day: close to the Tartar and the Cossack of the plain, children of serfs and Norsemen and Mongols—close to the earth and striving for the stars.

Louise Bryant.

LENIN AND HIS SUBORDINATES

NIKOLAI LENIN
CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY
ABRAHAM KRASNICHAKOV
LEO KAMINEV AND GREGORY ZINOVIEV
PETER STOOTCHKA
ALIEXIEV IVANOVITCH RYKOV

LENIN

LENIN AND HIS SUBORDINATES

NIKOLAI LENIN

Lenin became an active revolutionist through the spiritual motives that have moved all great reformers—not because he himself was hungry and an outcast, but because he could not stand by unmoved in a world where other men were hungry and outcast. Such characters are predestined internationalists; the very quality that lifts them above materialism places them above borders and points of geography; they strive for the universal good. Lenin believes that the only thing worth living for is the next generation. Communism is his formula for saving the next generation from the injustices and inequalities of the present.

When I think of Lenin and his place in the Russian revolution I am reminded of a statue which, until the late Fall of the year 1918, adorned the busy square before the entrance to the Nikoliavski station in Petrograd. It represented one of the former rulers of Russia astride a huge stallion. One could not fail to be struck by the tremendous strength of the animal and the frailty of the rider. The contrast was intentional; the titled sculptor meant to warn his sovereign of the dangers threatening the throne. Russia was the wild horse, fierce, untamed, powerful, a force as yet unaroused but which might wake up any moment and cast off its royal burden.

When Lenin took the reins of state, he was in exactly the same position as a man riding a runaway horse. The utmost his constituents could have expected was that he would guide Russia away from complete destruction. They could hold him responsible for immediate situations but not for ultimate results. To what goal those vast urges and desires which caused the revolution would carry Russia, was beyond him or any man to command. His heart and his mind wished to direct it toward the crimson portals of socialism. Russia, however, in its stampede seems to have slowed up dangerously near the old, familiar gates of capitalism. Nevertheless, she will never be the same; Lenin is responsible for it that Russia has forever gained the larger fruits of the revolution.

Legends spring up around every famous man, manufactured largely by his enemies, who spread tales of his lavish extravagance, his vices, his affairs with women. It is important to know such facts about a man’s life. His personal relationships mean a great deal; if he fails in these, he eventually fails in all ways. The life of the leader of a great world movement must harmonize with his doctrines; his conduct must be as austere or as lax as his doctrines dictate. That is why we have a natural antipathy to dissolute priests and none at all to dissolute poets and Bacchanalians. So it is worthy of note that even the narrowest moralist could not pick a flaw in Lenin’s personal conduct I am convinced that if he had lived in any other way than he has, he could not have maintained his remarkable poise.

Whatever inward storms arose he was impressive because of his outward serenity, because of his calm, majestic as a Chinese Buddha’s. Without any fuss he took power, faced world opposition, civil war, disease, defeat and even success. Without fuss he retired for a space, and without fuss he has returned again. His quiet authoritativeness inspired more confidence than could any amount of pomp. I know of no character in history capable, as he was through such distressing days, of such complete, aristocratic composure.

Every normal man is pushed forward or back to some degree by women. It is my theory that Lenin’s amazing stability was substantially strengthened by the women who meant most to him. Those women were: his mother, his wife, his sister and his lifelong friend and, in late years, chief secretary, Fotiva.

During all the years since the Bolshevik uprising, Fotiva has been his assistant. On days when he was ill or away in the country she actually had charge of the office. She is a highly efficient woman of forty, tall, dark, healthy and full of enthusiasm. She is quiet, also, and cheerful, and creates a pleasant atmosphere about her.

Lenin’s office, with Fotiva managing all the under-secretaries, is an agreeable office to enter. You never feel like an intruder, nor, at the same time, that it is a place to loaf in, which means that she knows how to preserve a happy balance. In all one’s dealings with Fotiva, one finds her a woman of her word. She has the very un-Russian quality of always being on time for appointments and never going back on her promises. She is a Communist of old standing and occasionally contributes articles to newspapers and magazines.

As for Madame Lenin, no one could be disturbed in her presence. How different the state of the Soviet Premier’s temper might have been on occasions were his wife the sort of woman who would weep because her apartment in the Kremlin was small, or would quarrel with the other Commissars’ wives, or would be jealous of Fotiva. The truth is, she admires Fotiva and is entirely glad of her existence.

Madame Lenin, whose real name is Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya Ulianova, acted for many years as Lenin’s secretary. Only ill health prevented her from continuing the work.

When Lenin was editor of Iskra in Switzerland, she was the secretary of the whole Iskra organization, which not only had charge of publishing a newspaper but carried on vast party activities. All the correspondence was in her hands. At one time she was in communication with every revolutionist in Russia.

That is one reason why she is so well known from one end of the country to the other and why people still continue to call her by her revolutionary name.

Under the Tsar, Lenin was twice exiled and Krupskaya always shared his fate. Together they passed hard years in Switzerland, England and especially Paris, where for two years Lenin spent almost his entire time studying in the national library. His only means of existence was by his writings, and he wrote solely for and about the revolution—by no means a remunerative occupation. The entire period of exile extended over ten long years. In that time the Lenins never knew a day of ease or luxury. They had become accustomed to privations long before the revolution, had lived in the meanest quarters of every city they visited, occupying, as a rule, only one room, where they ate, slept, studied and carried on their revolutionary work.

It does not seem mere romance to infer that Krupskaya has had a good deal to do with keeping Lenin’s nerves steady.

There were moments when Trotsky lost his head, when the Extraordinary Commission gave way to doubts, when Tchicherin hesitated—but never Lenin. Without doubt the secret of his power is that he is the only man in Russia, of any political group, whose purpose always remained clear and whose hand never trembled.

He made all manner of blunders. That he was able to admit his mistakes emphasizes his quality of mind. It is a scientific mind: a mind so well disciplined that he is able to face every fact, failure as well as success. Moreover, he has a way of grasping a situation almost by instinct; at least he grasps it at a stroke.

Nikolai Lenin strives for two great things—to westernize Russia and to keep alive the fountainhead of the Socialist State.

He told me that he did not want to grant a single foreign concession, whether a factory, a mine or a forest concession, unless he could establish a similar Russian institution alongside of it so that the Russians might continually see before their eyes the superiority of the American or the English way of doing things.

He is more interested in America than in any other country.

I remember one afternoon just before I went up to interview him, an official in the Foreign Office told me that if America did not hurry and start trade negotiations with Russia, Russia would be forced to make a trade alliance with Japan. I mentioned this to Lenin and he said:

“Nonsense! Even if we could trust Japan, which we cannot, what could she give us? We need thousands of tractors, railway engines, cars, things like that. We must get such things from America, we must make friends with America.”

I think he feels in closer contact with the United States, too, because of the number of former exiles who once fled to our shores and who returned after the revolution and now hold office under the Soviet Government. He likes the way they have been trained here.

It has given him the idea of working concessions in the manner I have described. He also feels gratitude toward Raymond Robins and always asks about him, considers William C. Bullitt a man of honor, while John Reed was as near to his heart as was ever any Russian.

He is continually reading American papers, books and magazines. When I came home I sent him the “Mirrors of Washington,” and I know how he will chuckle over it as he used to chuckle over William Hard’s articles in the New Republic.

He admires American energy so much that he comes very near understanding an American reporter’s need for on-the-minute news, which no other Soviet official appreciates, except Trotsky.

I will never forget the day during the blackest time of the blockade when I went to Lenin and asked permission to go to the Middle East after the Foreign Office had flatly refused me this permission. He simply looked up from his work and smiled.

“I am glad to see there is someone in Russia,” he said, “with enough energy to go exploring. You might get killed down there, but you will have the most remarkable experience of your life; it is worth taking chances for.”

In two days I was on my way, with every necessary probsk to ride on any train or stop in any government hotel. I carried a personal letter from Lenin and had two soldiers for escort! Any other official in Russia would have considered me an infernal nuisance even to suggest such an adventure in the middle of a revolution.

Lenin has always stood for allowing political enemies to leave Russia. This shows an unexpected softness in his make-up which only those who know him well comprehend.

Naturally, the Cheka disagrees with him on this point, holding that when these people “succeed in getting out of Russia” they are just as much a part of the war on Russia as the White Army is.

The explanation is that Lenin has by no means a forbidding personality: revenge never occupies his mind. He will flay an opponent in a debate and walk out of the hall arm-in-arm with him. He is extraordinarily human and good-natured and wishes to see everyone happy.

In the beginning of the revolution he imagined that he could maintain a free press, free speech and be liberal toward his enemies. But he found himself faced by a situation where iron discipline was the only method capable of saving the day.

There were times when he rather ruthlessly suppressed the Anarchists, but only because they threatened violence at every step. The supreme test of his power to forgive came during the Social Revolutionary trial, which took place in the summer of this year. He was lying ill in the country from the effects of an operation to remove an assassin’s bullet from his neck. The people responsible for the bullet were duly sentenced to death after a long and illuminating trial, in which the absolute evidence of their guilt was established. It was through the irrepressible influence of Lenin that their sentences were all commuted.

Lenin never scorns a deep affection or a personal sentiment. At the time of Kropotkin’s death, the widow and daughter sent a telegram to Lenin asking that the Anarchist leaders then imprisoned in Moscow be allowed to attend the funeral. Lenin let them go “on their honor” without guards for three days.

The Cheka objected, the Foreign Office objected and the Moscow Soviet objected, but Lenin’s will, as usual, prevailed. This generosity toward his enemies costs Lenin nothing and helps him to maintain his astonishing equilibrium.

Every man in Lenin’s cabinet, with the exception of Trotsky and Tchicherin, has been working with him for over twenty years; they really are his disciples. He knows their characteristics as well as if they were his own children. He knows just how much brains and ability each one has.

Once he was asked why he keeps a certain man, who is so obviously inferior to the others. He smiled and said, “Isn’t it always necessary to have at least one fool in every cabinet?”

Lenin makes an interesting contrast to Woodrow Wilson. Lenin picks the strongest minds he can get and complains that he cannot find enough brains. He feels a particular lack of brains in the diplomatic service. The small corps around Tchicherin will be highly inadequate to spread over the earth when the time comes for sending ambassadors and consuls to every country in the world. Russia will be as slip-shoddily represented as America. It is only the English who realize the value of a school for diplomats.

Lenin has never been known to dismiss a man after he has worked with him only half a year. And no man has ever deserted him no matter how Lenin may have ridden down his opposition.

Politically, Lenin has a hard, cold, calculating brain and uses all men to his own ends. They forgive him because he does it openly and for no personal gain.

The Soviet Premier is by no means a vain man. He rarely autographs pictures of himself, and the diary the American editors always request us to ask him about will never be written. He says he is too tired to write down notes after the day’s mass of work has been done. Lack of vanity and conceit is an equal reason.

He hates to be flattered or to have his portrait painted. He was in real distress because he consented to allow Claire Sheridan to do his bust. Angelica Balabonova was spending an evening with the Lenins in their apartment that same week and she said, reprovingly:

“Revolutionaries have something else to do beside spend their time in such a way.”

Lenin answered:

“I agree with you and I felt unhappy about it, but when Comrade Litvinov asked me to sit, it seemed such a small matter that I didn’t like to be disagreeable.”

As a matter of fact, he only gave Mrs. Sheridan a few hours and, from her own account, worked all the time he was posing.

In private conversation, no subject is too small for his attention. I remember one time some foreign delegates were talking about the Russian theatre and particularly about the lack of costumes and stage property.

Someone said that Gellser, the great ballerina, complained that she had no silk stockings. The delegates were of the opinion that this was a slight matter. Not so Lenin.

He frowned and said he would see to it that Gellser had everything she needed immediately. Calling his stenographer, he dictated a letter to Lunacharsky about it. Yet Lenin had never seen Gellser dance and took no further interest in the affair.

On the one occasion, in three years, that he found time to attend the theatre, he chose Shakespeare. Telephoning to Lunacharsky he announced, “I want to see the best performance at the Art Theatre.”

Lunacharsky was in doubt but mentioned Helena Soochacheva’s superb performance in “Twelfth Night.” Lenin interrupted, “I’ll see that.” And once in the theatre he forgot his million worries and enjoyed himself with the abandon of a child. Hunting and horseback riding he goes in for with the same enthusiasm.

I have often been asked just what was back of Lenin and his colleagues; what moved them to attempt to establish Socialism at such a moment and against such odds.

Most of us agree that it was partly a revolt against an age of commercialism. But fundamentally it was a demonstration.

Radek told Arthur Ransome that the Bolshevik leaders did not expect to hold power two months when they seized the reins of government.

Half a year after Lenin became Premier, he wrote:

“If they crush us now, they can never efface the fact that we have been. The idea will go on.”

It is ridiculous to contend that Lenin has “repented” because he has found it necessary to go back to a modified capitalism. One need not repent because one has failed. If Lenin is forced to abandon every vestige of Communism, it will not mean that he no longer believes in Marx.

It will more likely mean that, finding circumstances too much for him, he is retreating to a position as strategic as he can find. That he remains master of the retreat indicates that he will move backward only as far as he is pushed.

It is hard now to realize on what a fine thread many important situations during the last years have hung, situations that would have completely changed future history. It is hard to realize, for example, that the Germans almost reached Paris or that the White forces almost took Petrograd.

Perhaps Lenin was the only man in Russia who fully realized how near the Soviets came to being overthrown. There was one moment when the morale of the Red Army was exceedingly low and when even the trusted Lettish sharpshooters guarding the Kremlin grew discouraged and sampled the wine in the Kremlin cellars to make life more interesting. A Lett who went through these days told me an amazing story.

“One night the Old Man himself came down to the barracks, called the officers out, felt in our pockets and, finding one or two flasks of vodka, smashed them on the cobblestones and went away without saying a word. He only had to come once; we were deeply ashamed.”

How much truth there is in this story I do not know, but it sounds so exactly like Lenin that I am inclined to give it full credence.

From this low ebb he built his power solidly, never forgetting to reckon on the peasants. Now face to face at last with Mr. Lloyd George, Lenin is backed by a strong Red Army and a loyal staff.

From the moment he took office Lenin never had a serious political rival. And the blockade bestowed on him a peculiar legendary significance which will remain with him as long as he does not leave Russia.

Nikolai Lenin has been a conscious revolutionist since he was sixteen, but he has never been a “terrorist.” A terrorist, in revolutionary vernacular, is one who believes in individual acts of violence. His mind is too ordered and his plans too wide for such incoherent emotionalism.

His father was a small landed (hereditary) noble, holding the office of State Councillor, having an estate in Simbirsk. Vladimir Illyitch Ulianov, which is Lenin’s real name, was born there on April 10, 1870. There were in all five children, three boys and two girls.

It was a closely-knit family. One of Lenin’s best friends and advisers even now is his sister Anna. She spends most of her time in Moscow. He has a brother living in the provinces, who comes to see him occasionally, a quiet, studious man, not interested in politics, and, perhaps, even a little repelled by the strenuousness of them, especially in Russia.

There is no doubt that Lenin’s determination to fight the Tsar’s government crystallized at the time of his brother’s death. His eldest brother, Alexander, was away at the University of Petrograd. All that they heard from him at home was about the winning of gold medals and honors of all sorts until one day came the terrible news that he had been arrested for a plot against the Czar.

Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, rushed away to Petrograd. When she reached her son’s side he burst into tears and immediately confessed everything to her. He begged her to forgive him for bringing sorrow to his beloved family. At the trial he made no defense and asked no mercy. He was executed in the courtyard of Schlüsselberg fortress on May 20, 1886.

And back home in the little preparatory school called the “gymnasium” were two youths profoundly touched by this tragedy. One was the present Premier and the other was Alexander Kerensky, whose father was master of the school; evolution works in strange ways.

The Lenins have no children. They have devoted their lives to the revolution. Madame Lenin is a pale, scholarly woman, usually in very poor health. It was she who devised the new scheme for adult education in Russia which Lunacharsky told me has proved highly efficient.

Lenin adores his wife and speaks of her with enthusiasm. The first time I told him that I wanted to meet her, he said:

“Yes, you must do that because you will like her, she is so intelligent.”

I found her both intelligent and sympathetic.

She invited me to take tea with her in her apartment and I was very glad to go, since I wanted to see for myself how the Lenins lived.

They have two small rooms, which is the regulation in overcrowded Moscow. Everything was spotlessly clean, though, as she explained, she had no servant. There were quantities of books, plants in the windows, a few chairs, a table, beds and no pictures on the walls.

I found her to have the same charm which Lenin has and the same way of focusing all her attention on what her visitor is saying.

When you go to Lenin’s office he always jumps up and comes forward smiling, shakes hands warmly and pushes forward a comfortable chair. When you are seated he draws up another chair, leans forward and begins to talk as if there was nothing else to do in the world but visit.

He likes harmless gossip and will laugh mightily over some story about how Mr. Vanderlip fought with a Hungarian over a few sticks of wood on a cold day, or an incident which occurred on a train, or in the street. He himself loves to tell stories, and tells them very well. But no conversation runs on lightly for long with Lenin. He will stop suddenly in his laughter and say:

“What sort of a man is Mr. Harding, and what is his background?”

It does not matter how determined one is to ply him with questions, one always goes away astonished because one has talked so much and answered so many questions instead of asking them. He has an extraordinary way of drawing one out and of putting one in an expansive mood.

This capacity for personal contact must be a big influence with the men with whom he comes constantly in touch.

No wonder he dominates his Cabinet! When he narrows his small Tartar eyes, looks at one with such understanding and intimacy, one feels he is the best friend in the world; it would be impossible to oppose him.

We are wont to think of Lenin as a destroyer, but he is more of a builder.

When he could not build a Communist State he did not throw up his hands. He built the best State he could in its place and now he is saying that Russia is the safest country in Europe; that it has reached its lowest level and is climbing up, while other countries in Europe are still declining.

It is just possible that he is right!

CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY

The world, which now very generally concedes to Lenin great political adroitness, is not fully aware of the extent of his talent. What other man could have managed, under the stress of the hour, to have kept control of the politics of great Russia, the Ukraine, the Far Eastern Republic and even of China? And not only does he guide the destinies of these Republics, he subordinates the men at the head of them. Thus he is consolidating Russia. In Moscow, people believe that Lenin will some day bring the Baltic States back into the Soviet federation.

Christian Rakovsky, President of the Ukraine, never reaches any important decision without consulting Lenin. Rakovsky is an interesting personality and a man whose star is ascending. He is undoubtedly one of the strongest men in Russia, and since Lenin backs him, he ought to go far.

Rakovsky was born in the little Bulgarian town of Kotel. His family is one of the best known in all the Balkans. The name Rakovsky is woven through Balkan history and revolutionary struggles.

Expelled from college for revolutionary activities, young Rakovsky went to Geneva in 1890 and joined the Russian Social Democratic Party. In 1892 he was arrested in Geneva for an encounter with an agent-provocateur; he was expelled from Berlin the same year for participation in the German labor movement.

After some difficulty he was permitted to remain in France, where he carried on his studies. He was graduated from a French medical college in 1897 and returned to Bulgaria.

Two years later he published a large historical volume called “Russian Policy in the East.” He also wrote what was considered a brilliant dissertation on criminology and degeneracy.

Rakovsky went to Russia in 1900, but was immediately arrested and expelled by the Tsar’s police. He returned to Germany and there he wrote his best known book, “Present Day France,” which was published under the pen-name of Insarov.

A short time after completing this book he entered the judicial faculty of the University of Paris, but was so interested in the Russian revolution that he gave up his post after a year and went again to Russia, only to be expelled promptly.

He organized the Socialist Party in Roumania in 1904 and in 1907 was arrested following some peasant uprising. He was deprived of all political rights, exiled and forbidden ever to return to Roumania. But he had such a large and staunch following and so many serious riots took place that the Government was too embarrassed to carry out its decision. In a riot in Bucharest more than fifty persons were killed. In 1912 he was re-enfranchised, which was considered a great victory for the Roumanian labor leader.

Rakovsky is an habitual publicist; in the course of his career he has founded ten newspapers.

During the war he was so active in his anti-war propaganda that he was imprisoned in Roumania, but the first days of the 1917 revolution gave him back his freedom when the Russian garrison in Jassy decided of its own initiative to release all political prisoners.

He was not popular with the Provisional Government and, fearing his influence, Burstev requested his arrest in a note to Tereschenko and in a telegram to Kerensky. Learning of this order, he went to Sweden and was in Stockholm at the time of the Bolshevik coup d’état.

In 1919 he was elected head of the Ukraine by the action of the Third Congress of Ukrainian Soviets. I say “head” because he is at present Premier, President and Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Third International in Moscow.

While I was in Moscow Rakovsky and his wife spent several weeks in the house in which I lived. Madame Rakovsky is the sort of woman who adds interesting and insuppressible variety to the leveling influence of the revolution. She is a princess, speaks French in preference to Russian after the manner of the old Russian aristocracy, and still uses a lorgnette. She is an enthusiastic Communist. Everything about her is charming, distinguished and—eminently exclusive! She always accompanies her husband wherever he goes, is present at all interviews, and one can tell by the way he listens to her opinions that he places particular value on her advice.

Rakovsky himself is in manner and appearance more like an Old World diplomat than a revolutionist. But in spite of his suavity he has Lenin’s ability to face situations squarely. He once gave me such a frank statement about conditions in the Ukraine that instead of going over the cables to my paper it was officially chucked into the waste basket by Tchicherin.

ABRAHAM KRASNICHAKOV

Out in Chicago Abraham Moiseyevitch Krasnichakov was plain Mr. Tobinson, but for three years he has enjoyed great authority under his own name as head of the Far Eastern Republic.

There is nothing lacking in either romance or adventure in the story of A. Stroller Tobinson. He was born in the city of Chernobyl, in the province of Kiev, in Russia, and fled to the United States about the time his brother was executed in Odessa for some connection with revolutionary activities. This was in 1904.

Tobinson was a Russian law student of unusual ability, but when he arrived in America a poor immigrant he found his Russian education of little use; he first had to learn the English language.

In Chicago he went to work as a house painter and attended night school. In 1912 he was admitted to the bar, but never was a great success as a lawyer. And while he took only a passive interest in the radical movement, yet he continually gave his services in all sorts of labor cases.

Not until he, somehow, became interested in organizing a preparatory school for workers who wanted to go to college did he seem to hit his medium. From that time on he rapidly developed into an organizer and leader, and soon assumed charge of all the educational work connected with the Workers’ Institute.

He started with a broad program which shut out all petty, political and group influences. He was a born teacher, and nothing is more rare than a good teacher.

His intense interest in the education of the masses was really what carried him back to Siberia in 1917. And there one of those curious historical situations arose which suddenly thrust him unexpectedly and unprepared into power.

He was one of the numerous candidates for President up before the Constitutional Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic. He certainly never expected to be elected. It was the stupidity of his political rivals which gave him this position.

A day or two before the election some one wrote a vicious attack upon him in one of the papers, asking the people of Siberia if they wanted a “porter,” a common house painter, to guide the affairs of the republic.

When Tobinson read this he was furious to think that his hard struggles in America as an emigrant were thrown at him as if they were a disgrace. He sat down and wrote a letter explaining that he had had a good education, both in Russia and America, that he was not actually a workman, but a lawyer. When he had finished writing this explanation, he put it in his pocket and started toward the office of the same paper. On the street he was met by a delegation of workingmen, who threw their arms around him and called him “Comrade.”

One of them said: “We were against you until we read what the bourgeois are saying, but now we are all on your side; we want a man who is one of us.” This was the beginning of Tobinson’s popularity and this is the story of how he became President of the Far Eastern Republic.

Tobinson was not a Communist. His connections had been more with groups who simply revolted against the medieval tyranny which had existed in Russia. But he admired Lenin above all the revolutionists, and was of the opinion that Lenin was the only revolutionary leader who could hold Russia together. Therefore he secretly allied himself with the Communist government at Moscow.

He had two strong convictions. One was that Siberia wasn’t ready for Communism, and that even if it was it would be destroyed by the Japanese or by the Allies. Therefore, the only thing to do was to keep it a buffer state between Japan and the Soviets. To do this and placate all sides took infinite tact.

Tobinson proved equal to the task. His record in the last three years is a record of extraordinary achievement. He has established schools with the most modern methods; and against the most terrific odds he has slowly but surely made the life of the Far Eastern Republic one of steady, national reconstruction. I don’t think he believed for a minute that it should be permanently separated from Russia.

LEO KAMINEV AND GREGORY ZINOVIEV

Toward the end of the first week of the Bolshevik uprising, Zinoviev and Kaminev lost heart. With Mylutin, Nogin and Rykov, they handed in resignations to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. Lenin read the letters at a great meeting in Smolny and cried: “Shame upon these men of little faith, who hesitate and doubt!”

Lenin has long since conquered their opposition, but he has not changed their souls. Kaminev and Zinoviev are in his cabinet, as satellites, however, not as leaders; they are the weakest members.

Kaminev is President of the Moscow Soviet and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets. He is on the national famine committee and probably makes a very good impression on the American Relief people with whom he comes in contact. They ought to feel quite at home with him; he has the genial manners of an American small-town politician.

He has certainly retained a middle class consciousness in spite of five years of actual revolutionary experience, in spite of what is known in Russia as a steady revolutionary past. I don’t think his idea of Communist discipline can be very well defined. He likes to be magnanimous and promises everything to everybody. He is generous, and since it is hard to be generous in a Socialist State where one owns nothing to be generous with, his only recourse is to be generous with the property of the State.

In a glow of hospitality he once gave a sable coat worth thousands of dollars to a lady he admired and was genuinely astonished and grieved, I think, by the bitter criticisms then hurled at him. Had there been enough “trusted and trained” men to go round (which there never are in any government), this particular attack of giving might have cost him his career, though in any other society his actions would have been quite normal.

Kaminev is an excellent subordinate and capable of making a fortune in a capitalist society. He cannot be accused of having no ideals; he can be accused only of having the average politician’s moral stamina.

Bela Kun is the only other Soviet official who parallels Kaminev’s distrust of the press. I once went to Bela Kun’s office to get a statement. After ten promises and ten delays, I was in a small rage myself and asked him why he had not said in the first instance that he had no intention of giving a statement. He looked up from his desk, ran his chubby fingers through his hair, and said in a bewildered way, “Well, you see, I have just taken aspirin.” A young Russian officer sitting nearby smiled at me and said dryly, in English, “No wonder the Hungarian Soviets fell!”

Kaminev will probably remain in office many years for no better or no worse reason than the reason for which many of our Senators are returned to Washington term after term.

Zinoviev’s position is much more important and much harder to define. Aside from being in the Cabinet, he is President of the Petrograd Commune and President of the Third International. He really has great power and he is known to be wilful and arbitrary. His party opponents claim that his capriciousness has split the German Communist party into six factions and confused and alienated most of the parties in the other countries.

A Russian professor, who was interested in political movements merely as an observer, explained Zinoviev’s curious tenacity in office in this way: “The Communists,” he said, “insist so strongly upon party discipline and party loyalty that they have never been able to face the fact that Zinoviev is not a leader.”

Zinoviev’s appearance is against him. He is short, heavily built, flabby. Yet he is not devoid of vanity; he is the most photographed man in Russia. And while he has little imagination, he has real dramatic sense, he has a way of staging everything.

At Baku, at one moment he had the Easterners unsheathing their swords and declaring a holy war; at another moment he had a group of Mohammedan women in the gallery tearing off their veils. All this was distinctly impressive and dramatic, but the real drawback was that the effect of the second act almost ruined the effect of the first.

I often wonder if a man can be a great leader, and be utterly devoid of humor. When Zinoviev says anything clever he is not even aware of it and invariably spoils it by a second act.

During the Kronstadt uprising the Esthonian government, with its wish father to its thought, sent a wire to Petrograd which read: “What sort of government have you in Petrograd?” And Zinoviev replied: “The same government that has been here since 1917.”

If he could only have stopped at that one sentence he might have been able to lead a world revolution, or at least catch the imagination of the workers. Instead he insisted upon being didactic. He wired page after page, delivering an orthodox Marxian lecture! But the International is not without men of talent and daring. There are men under Zinoviev—Italians, Frenchmen, Germans, Bulgarians, Americans, with real fire and ability.

Bucharin, editor of Pravda, is by far the most brilliant of the Russians. No matter how much one may disagree with Bucharin, one must concede his brilliancy. The Letts have an exceptionally able group in the International. Some of these men were actually in power during the brief time that Latvia was “red.” The leader of the group is a stately old man called Stootchka. For four months he was President of Latvia.

PETER STOOTCHKA

Peter Stootchka is one of those advisers and assistants of Lenin that the world has not yet discovered. He is a man of capacious mind and one of Lenin’s closest friends. He is a lawyer by profession and for many years was the editor of a Lettish progressive paper in Riga. He was exiled to Siberia for some criticism of the Tsar’s government.

He was the first Commissioner of Justice under the Soviets and only resigned his post to accept one as President of Latvia. When Riga fell he went back to Moscow, took up quarters near Lenin in the Kremlin, and there he remains.

It was Stootchka who wrote the Soviet constitution, as well as most of the present laws. Evidently he did not always find writing laws an easy task. He often confessed his inability to judge just how the personal and family life would grow up around the great economic change which had taken place. Stootchka is nearly seventy and he felt that he might be a little old-fashioned in regard to some matters, especially concerning marriage and divorce. In the end he left it for those most concerned to decide.

One afternoon he called into his office five young Russian women, all typical revolutionists, and said to them: “For centuries women have been oppressed, they have been the victims of prejudice, superstition and the selfish desires of men. In writing the marriage laws I don’t mind if women have even a slight advantage over men. What I am concerned with most is to see that they get full justice. So I have asked you here as representatives of the new order. Think these matters over and give me your conclusions.”

Naturally, these conclusions had to be voted on by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, but since they were passed and written, it is now an historical fact that five young women are the real authors of the new and rather free marriage laws.

ALIEXIEV IVANOVITCH RYKOV

No other Russian enjoys the solid political and popular backing of Aliexiev Rykov; he is the logical successor to Lenin.

Rykov is one of those “unknown-quantity” men which are in every government and every political party and who are on the “inside” of every government decision, men who silently assume more and more power but remain unknown to the press until some event brings them to the public attention. Rykov, although he has held for several years four of the most important posts in Russia, was never heard of in England or France or America until Lenin’s illness brought to everyone’s lips the question of who would be the next Premier. Rumor suggested Kaminev and Trotsky and numerous other Commissars. As Rykov himself explained to me, “none of these men could take Lenin’s place for the very logical reason that they had held government posts which had nothing to do with the Premiership. It was like expecting one of your Secretaries of War or Navy to take your President’s place in case your President died or fell ill.” Rykov, happening to be vice-Premier, automatically became acting-Premier. (Under the Soviets this office is called Chairman of the People’s Council of Commissars.)

Rykov’s background is interesting and worth knowing, since he will be a figure of importance in Russia for a long time to come. He is forty-one years old and, aside from being Premier, he is vice-Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense, Member of the Presidium of the All Russian Congress of Soviets and Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party.

He was born of a peasant family living in the province of Vatka. His education was paid for by an elder sister who had married well. Because of revolutionary activities he was sentenced to Siberia and served seven years in solitary confinement. When he told me this, I was so astonished that I asked him to repeat it. It is a trial which would have broken almost any man; yet I think I never met a man with less “nerves” than Rykov has. By his manner and his good humor and his serenity, he resembles Lenin to a startling degree. It is rather amazing that Russia produced two men of the same type during the same period. That is one reason why the government machinery ran along so smoothly after Lenin stepped out.

Rykov has been in such close touch with Lenin in the last years that he almost anticipates Lenin’s decisions. He told me that for three years he has been sharing Lenin’s work. When the Council of Labor and Defense was formed during the blockade, Lenin headed it and Rykov and Alexander Demietrievitch Tsurupa served with Lenin. They also shared Lenin’s work on the Council of People’s Commissars; and when Rykov was temporarily elevated to Lenin’s office, Tsurupa was elevated to Rykov’s. As Lenin grew stronger, after his operation, Rykov went to the country about once a fortnight to consult him on vital matters of state. It is his opinion that Lenin will soon be back in the Kremlin. But if Rykov’s prediction does not prove true, Rykov himself will be able to guide, with a steady hand, the shifting fortunes of war-torn and famine-ridden Russia. I do not think he will go down in history as a great figure; he will probably be overlooked by history as has many another such unselfish and solid builder of empire, who worked always in the shadow of a greater man.

JACOB PETERS, FEDORE S. DZERZHINSKY
AND THE
EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION

JACOB PETERS, FEDORE S. DZERZHINSKY
AND THE
EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION

It is a curious but indisputable fact that Jacob Peters, known to the world as “Peters, the Terrorist,” has never been head of the Russian Extraordinary Commission. Since its inception, Fedore Dzerzhinsky has had charge of that sombre institution, which in the revolutionary vernacular is known as the “Cheka,” a word derived from the initial letters of “extraordinary” and “commission.”

Dzerzhinsky is a Pole, forty-four years of age, with an unusually classical background for a Chief Executioner. He ranks high even among the intelligentsia. After finishing his literary studies in a Russian university, he took post-graduate courses in Vienna, Berlin and Zurich.

He has a temperament much like Tchicherin; shy, aloof and deeply puritanical. One feels he can neither understand nor forgive moral weaknesses in others, since he himself possesses that fanatical devotion which has made it possible for him to travel the hard, bitter road where his ideals lead. He asks nothing of life but to serve the cause of Socialism. Ease, wealth and happiness, he puts behind him as he would Satan. Such a man can sign away life with an unruffled firmness that would break one of a warmer temperament. He needs only to be convinced that his course is righteous; nothing else matters. The individual is not considered in that “Nirvana” which is his ultimate goal.

Dzerzhinsky adores Lenin and serves him with the abject faithfulness of a slave; in his eyes Lenin can do no wrong. In the first days of the terror, he brought his doubts before Lenin, doubts which had only to do with the effect of such measures on the national and international political situation and not with his own soul. Lenin, when all is said, is the only man who cannot afford to be swayed by doubts. His responsibilities are those of a field marshal during a battle; he has no right to indecision. He reserves only the right to change his tactics—which is quite another matter.

The terror was established in a moment when the revolution was almost lost. The liberal government had fallen, the moderate Socialist government had fallen. If the Bolsheviks fell, only chaos or a return to the monarchy was possible. So it was that when Dzerzhinsky came to the Kremlin and stood hesitating like a school-boy before his master, it was often Lenin who for the moment became the high lord of life and death.

I can see that scene in my mind’s eye. In his hand Dzerzhinsky would have a list of prisoners and the evidence hastily gathered. Lenin would look at Dzerzhinsky’s list, asking sharp, short questions in his shrewd way. Most of the names of the counter-revolutionary conspirators were familiar to him. He could quickly piece together the scanty evidence of the secret trials. In his mind thoughts like these must have traveled: “Ah, yes, there is X—— caught plotting with Y——, which, of course, entirely accounts for the rising at B——.” Suddenly he would turn to Dzerzhinsky and say without excitement and without raising his voice: “It would be better to shoot these two, hold these five and release the rest.”

In justice to Lenin it must be recorded that he was always against capital punishment for his political rivals, or even for those who plotted to assassinate him; he believed in the death penalty only for those who attempted forcibly to overthrow the government. His dictatorship of the Cheka, like his dictatorship of other government departments, ceased with the first semblance of order. At the same time, I do not believe for a moment that the Cheka ever got beyond his control. Recently, when he saw it growing into a power which interfered with the natural development of the country, he began at once to weaken it. Dzerzhinsky will no doubt assist him in such an undertaking with the same zeal which he brought to its creation.

A good deal of political manœuvering has always been necessary in order to appease popular opinion about the Cheka. When time has cooled our emotions for and against the Communist idea, we will realize that Jacob Peters and Fedore Dzerzhinsky were just as much victims of the revolution as were those counter-revolutionaries who came under their stern jurisdiction.

Peters was sent away from Moscow in 1919 because he had become, however unjustly, a symbol of terror in the public mind and life was beginning to settle down again into more normal ways. As a matter of fact, Peters but countersigned orders already bearing the signature of Dzerzhinsky. It was his duty to see that the prisoners were quickly and humanely disposed of. He performed this grim task with a dispatch and an efficiency for which even the condemned must have been grateful, in that nothing is more horrible than an executioner whose hand trembles and whose heart wavers.

Pursuing the same devices, a few weeks back when Lenin forced the Cheka to be made subservient to the Department of Interior and Communications, the public looked upon this step as a real compromise and a definite move toward the abolition of the secret police. Trials again became public with employers and other unbelievers in Socialism openly represented by lawyers, who had long ceased to regard their profession as anything but a dead asset. Lenin never dismisses men he can trust, so while Dzerzhinsky ceased to be head of the once all-powerful Extraordinary Commission, he was elected in the same moment Commissar of the Interior and Communications, although temporarily he was sent to Siberia to expedite grain shipments for the famine areas. Thus the history of the Cheka repeats itself.

In the first moments of elation following the March revolution when prison doors were thrown open all over Russia and prison records publicly burned, it seemed as if the day of the secret police was forever passed. In those joyous days it was almost impossible to keep one’s perspective, or to feel a premonition of the rising storm of world opposition to the development of the revolution. When Kerensky abolished the death penalty in the army, he sacrificed his last shred of control to the dictates of his heart. At that time even the Communists did not believe in capital punishment. Once Trotsky, in an impassioned speech at Smolny, during the November days, made mention of a guillotine. His remarks let loose the most violent opposition. For weeks this issue was discussed everywhere; in the press, at public gatherings, even in street cars and on railway trains. He was vigorously denounced for holding such opinions. And he had merely said that this was something to be considered in a national crisis.

By the summer of 1918 the Soviet government found itself surrounded by an iron ring of death. Also, there was graft and intrigue and dishonor in the Communist ranks. It was Peters himself, torn between the right and wrong of re-establishing capital punishment, who said to me in January, 1918, “If we ever have to kill, it must begin in our own ranks.” His face was white and stern; he appeared on the verge of collapse.

“Will it ever really come to that?” I asked.

He passed his hand across his eyes with the weary gesture of a man who has not slept well for many nights. Before him on his desk, was a pile of papers. He pointed to them and said, “If you could know what evidence I have here, you would see how necessary it is if the revolution is to continue, for the Communists to purify their own ranks.”

It is a matter of record that the first persons put to death were opportunists who pretended to believe in Communism and had accepted bribes or otherwise had betrayed their own party.

The momentum of the revolution rapidly increased after the signing of the first death warrant. It was not long before the despised secret police once more made their appearance. They were back again protecting now a revolutionary government as energetically as they once protected the Tsar!

It is impossible to say how many of the old police force actually served under the Soviets. I found, on personal investigation, that many of the stories were largely myths. The most typical legend was the one concerning Lapochine, once head of the Okrana and exiled by the Tsar for telling a Social Revolutionist that Azef was a spy. The rumor that he now holds an important post in the Cheka is not true. His daughter was one of my intimate friends in Moscow and I went very often to her home. Her father was holding two small clerkships which took all his time, in order to get double rations to support himself and his invalid wife. Lapochine was never connected with the secret police after his exile, although he was brought back to Russia after six years in Siberia and publicly forgiven by the Tsar. He was governor of Esthonia at the outbreak of the revolution. However, to the ordinary individual, all this makes little difference. A detective is simply a detective, working in dark ways, someone to be feared and someone to be despised. And as for the Lapochines, the last time I heard of them they were trying to borrow money in America to start a sausage factory near Moscow.

All the important posts in the Cheka have been and still are largely held by Letts or Poles with unimpeachable revolutionary records. The rank and file are Russians. There are scarcely any Jews. The reason why the Russians hold minor positions is not exactly clear but the general calculation is that they are more susceptible to bribery and more easily influenced. Certainly, the Cheka has played an important rôle in the revolution; it is no exaggeration to state that without the vigilance of the Extraordinary Commission, the Soviets would never have maintained themselves through numerous critical moments. It was Peters and other Lettish secret agents who discovered such counter-revolutionary plots as the Lockwood plan to blow up bridges and cut off Petrograd and the government from all communications. And as military intervention developed, the Communists were forced to consider Russia in a state of siege and the Cheka their most necessary means of self-protection.

In a speech before a session of the Extraordinary Delegation, Trotsky made this statement: “The monopoly of using force and reprisals in any normally functioning state, regardless of its external form, is an attribute of the government.... Every state organization is in this way fighting for its existence. It is sufficient to picture to one’s self the society of the present day, this complicated and contradictory co-operation in such a tremendous country as Russia, for example, in order at once to understand that in the present condition of affairs, torn by every social contradiction, reprisals are absolutely inevitable.”

It is absurd to consider the Extraordinary Commission in any but an objective way. The little border states of Finland, Lithuania, Roumania, and even Poland, have just as elaborately developed Chekas, searching just as diligently for Bolshevik plotters as Russia does for anti-Bolshevik plotters. Finland, for example, has a much more cruel revolutionary record. The division of the Red and White forces there was more equal; therefore, the struggle was intensified and the terror magnified accordingly. Only, in this case, it was White Terror instead of Red.

Even we ourselves have a Cheka, but we call it a Department of Justice, and we have a thousand little independent Chekas known as private detective agencies. And now that America is in a happier state of mind we like to forget how our “intelligence” departments grew into formidable institutions during the short period of our participation in the war. Very soon after the declaration of war we began to suspect one another on a wholesale scale, all sorts of innocent persons were “trailed” and otherwise humiliated. If we remember those days, we can better understand what happens when the very life of a nation is at stake. Ours never has been.

No one claims that the state electrician who pushes the button for the electric chair at Sing Sing is a criminal, or that his private life need necessarily be immoral. Yet the Sing Sing executioner is paid something like three hundred dollars for each life taken and one might almost imagine him having more than a routine interest in a good crop of homicides. If Peters and Dzerzhinsky were dismissed from office to-morrow, they would have nothing but the clothes on their backs and broken health with which to begin new careers. I give this example for the sake of comparison or contemplation, not as a justification for either the American or the Russian official conscience.

The temptations of St. Anthony pale beside those of Peters and Dzerzhinsky. They have been flattered and offered every sort of bribe. I know of a single instance where Peters was offered what amounted to a cool million dollars. He did not refuse it, however, until he had all his tempters enmeshed beyond retreat.

The most romantic revolutionary story I know is the one Peters told me himself about his return to Russia, bound up as it was with Sir Roger Casement’s execution. Up until the day of that unhappy event he was immersed in the life of London and almost untouched by the struggle in Russia. He had a comfortable post in an export house, an English wife and a baby whom he adored. Quite naturally thoughts of revolution had grown vague and alien to his mind. So it was that, wrapped in British complacency, on a gray morning he started happily to work and encountered unexpectedly a little company of Irish folk bound for the Tower of London. At first he must have looked at them as he would have regarded any other procession. But he noticed, to his surprise, how emotional they were. Tears ran down their faces of which they were unashamed. He remembered then that this was the day when Sir Roger Casement was to die. Something, he said, made him follow that crowd, although they were going in an opposite direction from his office. Can you imagine the punctilious Mr. Peters, so highly efficient, never a minute late, for a reason unexplainable to himself, following a little group of Irish mourners? Perhaps he had even grown English enough to be a little embarrassed at his impulsiveness.

He described how he stood when the others knelt down outside the prison and began to pray. He would never forget, he said, how he suddenly realized what a vast, irreconcilable temperamental barrier lay between the English and the Irish people.

By the time the bugler announced the execution, Jacob Peters was another man. Something called conscience or national pride or revolutionary honor awoke in him and with it came a deep homesickness for Mother Russia. He felt himself burning with shame. It was as if Sir Roger Casement were pointing a finger at him and saying, “See how I am able to die, you who once called yourself a revolutionist.” Those devout people reminded him of the Russian peasants; they had the potency of an old tune. We have all seen men weep over some dear, familiar melody.

Peters never went back to work. He walked the London streets all day, wandered along the docks, watched the great ships and thought about Russia. All the dreams of his youth returned. At night he went home and told his wife he was going to Petrograd.

It seems almost regrettable that Sir Roger Casement could not have known that in that multitude come to mourn his death, was a little London clerk who, by the power of association, was somehow transformed into one of the characters that now make Russian history.

Neither Peters nor Dzerzhinsky bear much resemblance to their revolutionary predecessor, Marat, the venomous public prosecutor of the French revolutionary days. Dzerzhinsky is far too reserved to be an orator and I doubt if he understands the meaning of revenge. He must have known all too well the horror of prison life ages before he became head of the prisons. He spent eleven years in a Warsaw prison, an experience which permanently wrecked his health.

Early in his confinement a spirit of religious fervor, manifested in self-sacrifice and humbleness, was evident. He wished to abase himself in the same way a priest does penance before God. He took upon himself the most repulsive tasks in the prison in order to save his fellow prisoners, such as washing floors and emptying refuse pails. His only reply when questioned was, “It is necessary that someone should perform the lowest tasks in order that the others may be relieved of them.” And it was this man whose fate it was to perform the lowest and hardest tasks for the young republic. The meek can be truly terrible in positions of authority, as can the virtuous, since ordinary souls feel no defense against them.

In appearance Dzerzhinsky is tall and noticeably delicate, with white slender hands, long straight nose, a pale countenance and the drooping eyelids of the over-bred and super-refined. I never knew anyone who was a close friend of Dzerzhinsky’s; he has, perhaps, too secluded a nature to permit of warm and intimate companionship. He is as distinctly aristocratic as Peters is distinctly a man of the people.

Peters is short, snub-nosed and almost stocky in build, with bristling, short, brown hair. He has read a good deal but is by no means a littérateur. He is a workman risen above the mass, risen just high enough to be an excellent interpreter. He has played in these years since March, 1917, other important rôles than that of executioner. As Governor of Turkestan he has shown that he can create as well as destroy.

When Peters returned from England he went almost immediately to the front and joined a Lettish regiment. Because of his superior knowledge or his fervor he soon became a figure of importance among the soldiers. He was the favorite spokesman at the soldier meetings, which at that time were of great importance, since the soldiers were deciding very largely for themselves whether or not they would remain in the trenches. Even Kerensky found it necessary to take fortnightly trips to the front to argue and plead with them.

To certain men who once served in Peters’ regiment, was some months later entrusted the keeping of the Royal Family. Every man in that guard was a Lett. As in other instances, had they been Russians, they might have shown more leniency or outright sentimentalism in a crisis. The Letts were instructed never to allow their royal prisoners to be rescued alive and the Letts are soldiers who understand the iron rules of military discipline.

Lenin has long put great trust in Peters. When he was in hiding during the first two months of 1917, Peters was in charge of that seclusion. Lenin’s famous “Letters to the Comrades,” which were sent out and printed broadcast, and caused so much havoc with the Provisional Government, were entrusted to Peters and his subordinates. Peters was very proud of this trust. Once he said to me when I was living on a little street just off Nevsky Prospect, “Lenin is not far from this house.” Little did I comprehend what an important confidence that was!

Peters speaks English fluently. In 1917 he translated a life of Kerensky for me and over tea cups he told me many things about the revolution which I did not understand. I should never have believed, in those days, that this mild-mannered and almost inspired youth would soon have such sinister work to do.

The last time I met Peters he was living in Tashkent which is the capital of the Province of Turkestan. He had even more sweeping powers than an ordinary governor, since he was the most important revolutionary official in a community not yet settled down to normal life.

I also met the new Madame Peters. The English wife divorced him at the time of the terror. The second Madame Peters was a very pretty, redheaded Russian who had been a teacher and who still worked at her profession. They lived in a single room, shared a dining room with twenty others and were poorly dressed. When we discussed this point, Peters bitterly denounced several Soviet officials who, he said, were “living soft.” “A revolutionist cannot expect to force privations on other people if he is not willing to be an example of self-sacrifice,” he declared.

He had become known almost as a conservative among the Left-Communists because he had refused to close the Mohammedan bazaars, saying these people were not ready for Communism. His public trials were attended by large crowds and proved of great educational value in a very unenlightened community.

I found him much older. He seemed to have lived thirty years in three. He never mentioned the terror, nor did his wife, and I could not bring myself to. Only once did he indirectly refer to it. The three of us were starting to a local Soviet meeting. He picked up a revolver from his table and, for a moment, stood regarding it. Then he turned to me and said, “Have you ever used one of these?” I said, “Of course, I know how, but I’ve never had to.” And then he exclaimed, “I wish to God I never had!” After all, what a story can be condensed into a single sentence!

The Cheka was really the beginning of law and order; it marked the beginning of the first government which showed real strength and purpose. There was no doubt something very definitely nationalistic about the growth of the Cheka, in spite of the fact that it was established by Communists. It had all the hardness of purpose and the narrowness possessed by the maximum of patriotism. Any student of history will remember what Carlyle said of those terror-ridden days when the guillotine ruled France. “Tigress nationale! Meddle not with a whisker of her! Swift rending is her stroke; look what a paw she spreads—pity has not entered her heart.” Such acts Carlyle claimed would some day be known as the “Crimes of the Revolution,” when they should rightly be recorded as the birth pains of the republic. Very naturally, conduct of open and avowed suppression will always be hated and condemned by liberals the world over, and used as campaign ammunition by political opponents.

One of the highest officials of the Cheka said to me, “Most foreign correspondents write about the Extraordinary Commission as if we had no right on our side. Now I will give you two examples of the sort of problems continually confronting us, and if you would submit them to any American police official, he would tell you very promptly that the Cheka had no other course than the one which it pursued.

“First, there is the case of Marie Spirodonova. She is a woman with an honored revolutionary past. Naturally, we don’t want to have her behind bars. But she was for years a terrorist, she killed the Governor of Tambov and she still believes that individual acts of terror are justified. As you know, the Communists were always against such a policy. We believe in mass action and not individual violence.

“Marie Spirodonova is a highly-strung, sensitive person. She makes a splendid agitator but we have gotten to the point of reconstruction, of building, not tearing down. Russia was forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty. You may agree with me that that was a bad thing to do or you may disagree with me, but as an American, understanding and believing in government, you will certainly agree that we had to protect the representatives of Germany after the peace was signed.

“When Mirbach came to Moscow, it was very bitter for any of us to receive him. But it is another matter to go to his house and kill him with a bomb. This was the plan of Marie Spirodonova. Now what could we do? Were we to allow her and her associates to kill any foreign representative who came here? How could we ever hope for relations with other nations if we could offer their representatives no protection? Then why are we criticized because we put Spirodonova in a sanatorium? And we allowed her to escape. I confess that we have kept a watch over her. The woman in whose house she stayed used to report to us. That was merely to prevent any repetition of the Mirbach affair.

“One thing I wish the world could understand, one thing that my experience in the Cheka has taught me, that a person capable of starting a revolution is not necessarily capable of finishing one or even carrying one on after it is started.”

Another time the same official gave me his version of the Anarchist problem. “We had Bill Shatov as Chief of Police in Petrograd. He was formerly an Anarchist but had come over to work with us. He had quarreled with the Anarchists and he claimed that a lot of loafers and thieves had joined their organizations just to have an excuse not to do any work.

“Some time later there were a lot of robberies in Petrograd. One night Bill Shatov arrested every so-called Anarchist in town. He held them two weeks without trial. In those two weeks not a single robbery took place in Petrograd!

“When the trial came up, Bill had a novel way of trying cases. He put each man through a sort of Anarchist’s catechism. All those who knew their litany he released—the others he held.

“Anarchists are the most difficult of all groups during a revolution. They not only lack balance and refuse to co-operate but they are really dangerous. There is hardly a Soviet official whose life has not been threatened by Anarchists. Twice, you know, they nearly finished Lenin.

“What does the outside world really expect us to do? We have to be especially vigilant now because these are harassing times. Later we will be no more formidable than your own police.”

The Soviet Government has a passion for exhibits. The Labor Temple in Moscow almost all year round has about half its space devoted to educational displays. In a little room here I once saw a most curious and gruesome show. On the walls hung photographs of people executed for high treason, robbery and murder, with little cards attached giving the history of each case. In a corner were rifles of the type used in executing. There were also pictures of the victims of some of the criminals—pictures of Jews murdered in pogroms, for example, and of houses blown up. Any person from the street was allowed to go there quite freely, without any special pass, and acquaint himself with the workings of the committee.

There is always something appalling when one comes face to face with such a display of law and order. It reminds me of a very eccentric Russian doctor of my acquaintance. This man had a habit of killing flies. If he saw one on a window pane or hovering about the table he would somehow manage, with great deftness, to capture it. Thereupon he would solemnly take out his pocket knife and behead the insect. Once I protested, saying that such a performance was disgusting. With great seriousness he admonished me. “So, you do not believe in killing.... Well, nevertheless, we are all forced to kill. Flies annoy you, they poison your food, endanger your life and the lives of your children. In some desperate moment you strike out in a furious and chaotic manner. What is the result? Ugh, an ugly smash. Is there anything fine about that? You condemn me, but what do I do? I simply execute flies in a sanitary way—I am a true symbol of civilization.”

ANATOL VASSILIEVITCH LUNACHARSKY
AND RUSSIAN CULTURE

ANATOL VASSILIEVITCH LUNACHARSKY
AND RUSSIAN CULTURE

“Oh, happy earth! Out of the blood of generations

Life yet will blossom, innocent and wise,

And thou, my planet, shall be cleansed of lamentations,

A jade-green star in the moon-silvered skies.”

Thus wrote the Soviet Minister of Education, Anatol Lunacharsky, in those remote days when a revolution was only a vague goal and when he could not believe that in his own lifetime a day would come when he would be torn from his quiet study and forced to put his dreams into practice, or as near into practice as dreams ever reach.

Reality is revolting and disappointing to any artist, but Lunacharsky possesses enough recuperative powers to overcome his artistic sensitiveness. If he had not had enough also of that saving grace of fanaticism which marks all leaders, he would have lacked the enthusiasm which has carried him through every battle for culture which he has had to wage since the dramatic crash of the Tsardom. Only once did he actually lose heart and Lenin overcame that attack of panic by showering responsibility upon him. Given responsibility he showed more courage than men of coarser grain.

Lunacharsky’s battles in the five years he has been in office have not been concerned with bullets. “Illiteracy,” he told me once, “is the great curse of Russia; we must fight illiteracy like the plague.” And he fought it like the plague. This delicate poet, who in appearance is more like a scholarly Frenchman than a Russian, who has the manners and elegance of another age, has left off composing sonnets to fight ignorance, superstition, drunkenness, prejudice, disease, dirt.... And he has been more bitterly attacked than any other official of the new Russian Government.

With practically nothing at his disposal he had to plan and execute a vast educational campaign. That is why his achievements are so extraordinary. When Fedore Chaliapin was here last winter, winning the heart of America by his sweet and wonderful voice, he and I talked a good deal about Lunacharsky and the difficulties which confronted him. “Remember,” said Chaliapin, “if you have no pens and no paper and no ink, you cannot write; if you have no wood you cannot make a fire—in Russia all these things were literally true. Under such circumstances, no matter how willing the government might be, art and education must suffer with the rest.”

I will not go into figures here, but one can get an idea of what Lunacharsky has done. He has practically eliminated adult illiteracy from the cities, he has established thousands of schools. Only a very few of them, to be sure, are up to the required mark, but every school opened is an achievement. And there is not a single part of Russia, however remote or however dark, where a school has not been started.

But establishing and maintaining schools and universities was only a part of the work allotted to Lunacharsky. He had to build new theatres, keep up the standard of the old and show himself worthy of that great responsibility Lenin bestowed upon him when he made him guardian of all the art treasures of Russia.

If Nikolai Lenin had been a mediocrity, he would never have appointed Lunacharsky guardian of the art of Russia, and Russian art would now be scattered to the four winds, swallowed up in private collections or enriching the pockets of speculators. A mediocrity will not admit his limitations even if he is aware of them, but Lenin somehow understands that a man cannot spend his life studying political economy and carrying on revolutionary propaganda, and at the same time be an art connoisseur. What is more remarkable is that he allowed Lunacharsky to tell him so. The story of Lunacharsky’s appointment is interesting and characteristic of the Russian Premier’s method of political generalship.

When the Red and White forces were struggling for the possession of the Kremlin in Moscow in 1917, a wire to Petrograd announced that the beautiful and fantastic church of Vassili Blazhanie on the Red Square had been razed to the ground. Lunacharsky, poet, scholar, playwright and revolutionist, as well as friend and follower of Lenin, wrote an open letter to the press in which he gave vent to his horror. He stated: “What is taking place in Moscow is a horrible and irreparable misfortune!” He wrote another letter to Lenin, renouncing all connection with the revolution. And he took to his bed, ill with shock and disappointment.

Lenin did not accept his resignation. Lenin never accepts resignations from men who are valuable to the state. Instead, he went to call on Lunacharsky, and an amazing conversation took place which was repeated to me by a friend of both men.

Lenin, with his usual directness, said to Lunacharsky, “Do not be overcome by this calamity. If this church is destroyed, let us build a bigger and a better one.”

Lunacharsky, in tears of anguish, explained to Lenin that such a thing was not possible; such a lovely, imaginative piece of architecture might never again be created. Lenin listened and went thoughtfully away. A few days later Lunacharsky was given charge of the entire art of Russia.

Up to that time, the valuable collections, as well as the buildings, had been in the hands of a revolutionary committee which also might very well have been of the opinion that art could be replaced by “bigger and better” things.

Lunacharsky did not take his task lightly. He issued another public declaration asking for the solemn co-operation of all loyal Russians. “Upon me rests the responsibility of protecting the entire artistic wealth of the people,” he said, “and I cannot fulfill my duty without your help.”

It will not be known for a long time against what strong and subtle forces he had to battle to guard that trust. There was movement after movement to sell such treasures as the Rembrandt Collection in the Hermitage at Petrograd or the historic paintings and tapestries in Moscow. But Lunacharsky, ever on the alert, defeated every one of these attempts. He often fought bitter battles in his own party. Every possible sort of intrigue was manufactured against him. I remember times when he had to appear in public and defend himself against atrocious slander. Yet up to the present day he has saved absolutely everything except the pearls and diamonds of the royal family which, after all, were never of any particular artistic value. He saved even the Tsarist statues from the mobs that would have destroyed them, and stored them away in buildings for a calmer moment. He never lost his artistic perspective, art was always art and he “could look with a just regard upon the shattered corpse of a shattered king” provided that the monument was executed by a talented artist.

Nikolai Lenin has the genius to read men well; he recognized instantly that a man who could be so affected by the rumored loss of a single historic building that he could scarcely bear to face life, would be the very man to defend passionately the art of the nation. And Lenin has continued to defend Lunacharsky against every charge brought by his enemies. These charges have often been serious because they were brought by revolutionists who claimed that Lunacharsky was partial to the bourgeoisie in his efforts to get extra rates for scientists and artists; that he was not a real Communist because he put art before political propaganda. There was a terrible period when the loyalty of all men was questioned whose allegiance was not wholly given to the defense from military attack at whatever cost to art or personal life. It was through that period that Lunacharsky had to guide Russian culture.

“Think what vitality the theatre had to possess,” said Chaliapin, “to maintain itself through the revolution.” “Think what hunger the Russian masses had for learning,” said Madame Lenin, “that they could grasp even this hard moment to learn to read and study.” Both these assertions are true, but in spite of that hunger and that vitality both forces might have gone down for some years, had it not been for the splendid leadership of Lunacharsky.

Even those ardent revolutionists who could see no further than the immediate moment are beginning to realize that the very fact that the Soviets have kept intact their national art gives them a prestige which money could never buy; it is an indisputable evidence of their faith in civilization. And it is Lunacharsky who has managed to save for them this evidence of faith when hotheads would have cast it aside.

It always seems a pity that we are aware now of only the prominent political figures in Russia. If we can think back on the French guillotine days and the burning of libraries, the mad destruction of art, the sacking of palaces by angry mobs, we can understand that if there had been men in France in those days who could have held those mobs in check and made them want to read the books they were burning, made them turn the palaces into museums, Napoleon might never have worn a crown. In Russia the influence of the men who hold the political reins would be so much slighter and so much less significant if they were not backed up by men like Lunacharsky.

He had the art galleries heated in the most bitter of the fuel famine days and the immense crowds going in partly to keep warm strolled all day under historical canvases and came to know all the great pictures of Russia. The Winter Palace became a Revolutionary Museum, one of the most unique museums in the whole world, the Palace of Nicholas II at Tsarskoe Selo became a Children’s Home, as did every great estate in the provinces threatened with destruction by quarreling peasants.

It is interesting to note that the wives of three prominent revolutionists rendered Lunacharsky valuable aid in his difficult work, the wife of Trotsky, the wife of Gorky, and the wife of Leo Kaminev.

Madame Trotsky has under her direction all private art collections and all the small palaces; she hands a monthly inventory of these places over to Lunacharsky. In the last three years she has been very gradually and systematically removing the most valuable objects in the collections to the museums.