The wife of Zinoviev, Madame Lelina, is in charge of the social
institutions in the city of Petrograd. This does not include the
public schools, which are under another organization. Madame Lelina is
a short-haired woman, probably Jewish, of about 45. She has an
enormous amount of energy, and is commonly supposed to be doing at
least two things at the same time. The morning I met her she was
carrying on two interviews and trying to arrange to have me shown some
of the social work she is directing. There seemed to be little system
about her efforts. Her office was rather disorderly, and her method of
work seemed very wasteful of time and effort, and very much like the
usual Russian way of doing things. Bill Shatov, formerly organizer of
the I.W.W., who is commissar of police for Petrograd and also
commissar for one of the northern armies, introduced me to Madame
Lelina, and accompanied me the first day on our visits. We were guided
by a young woman by the name of Bachrath, who is a university graduate
and lawyer, and since the legal profession has fallen into disrepute,
has turned her efforts toward social work.
Under her guidance I spent three days visiting institutions. I saw a
boarding school for girls, a boarding home for younger children, an
institution for the feeble-minded, three of the new homes organized by
the Soviet Government, and two small hospitals for children.
The institutions which Madame Lelina is directing are in two groups:
First, those which she has taken over from the old Czar regime, and
second, those which have been founded in the last 18 months. The new
government has been so handicapped by the difficulties of securing
food and other supplies, by the sabotage of many of the intelligent
classes, and by the necessity of directing every energy toward
carrying on hostilities against the bourgeoisie and the Allies, that
there has been little opportunity to remodel the institutions
inherited from the previous régime, therefore neither the strength nor
the weakness of these institutions is to any great extent due to the
present régime. Two of the institutions I visited were of this type,
one happened to be very good and the other very bad, and in neither
case did I feel that Lelina's organization was responsible.
An aristocratic organization under the Czar maintained a boarding
school for girls. This has been taken over by the Soviet Government
with little change, and the 140 children in this institution are
enjoying all the opportunities which a directress trained in France
and Germany, with an exceptionally skillful corps of assistants, can
give them.
I inquired regarding the changes which the Soviet Government had made
in the organization of this school. Some of the girls who were there
have been kept, but vacant places have been filled by Madame Lelina's
committee, and the institution has been required to take boys into the
day school, a plan which is carried out in most of the soviet social
and educational work. Much more freedom has been introduced in the
management of the institution, and the girls at table talk and walk
about, much as though they were in their own homes. The Soviet
Government requires that certain girls be permitted membership in the
teachers' committee, and the two communists accompanying me pointed to
this as a great accomplishment. Privately, the teachers informed me
they regarded it as of little significance, and apparently they were
entirely out of sympathy with the innovations that the new government
has made. Now all the girls are required to work in the kitchen,
dining room, or m cleaning their own dormitories, and certain girls
are assigned to the kitchen to over-see the use of supplies by the
cooks. However, the whole institution, from the uniforms of the girls
to the required form in which even hand towels have to be hung,
indicates the iron will of the directress. In one class we visited the
girls sat at desks and listened to a traditional pedagogue pour out
quantities of information on Pushkin's Boris Gudonov. Occasionally the
girls were called upon to react, which they did with sentences
apparently only partially memorized. The spirit of the institution is
behind that of our better institutions in America, and the spirit of
the classroom is quite mediaeval.
The greatest objection which the teachers seem to have to soviet
activities is the question of sacred pictures and religious
observances. The chapel of the school has been closed, but in each
room from the corner still hangs the Ikon and at the heads of many of
the girls' beds there are still small pictures of the Virgin, much to
the disgust of the representatives of the Soviet Government, who in
many cases are Jewish, and in practically all cases have renounced any
religious connection. Recently the Soviet Party has announced the fact
that they as a party are not hostile to any religion, but intend to
remain neutral on the subject. The attitude of the commissars
apparently is that required religious observances should not be
permitted in public institutions, and doubtless some of the inspectors
have gone further than was necessary in prohibiting any symbol of the
religion which probably most of the children still nominally adhere
to.
The second institution I visited, which had been taken over from the
old government, was an orphan asylum with some 600 children mostly
under 10. It was frightfully crowded, in many places rather dirty,
with frequently bad odors from unclean toilets. In one little room
some 20 small boys were sleeping and eating, and I found one child of
2 who was not able to walk and was eating in the bed in which he
slept.
Ventilation was bad, linen not very clean, a general feeling of
repression present, slovenly employees, and, in general, an atmosphere
of inefficiency and failure to develop a home spirit which one still
finds in some of the worst institutions in America. The instructor who
showed me this home realized its horrors, and said that the Government
intended to move the children into more adequate quarters as soon as
conditions permitted. In summer the children are all taken to the
country. In this institution all the older children go out to public
schools and there have been no cases of smallpox or typhus in spite of
the epidemics the city has had this winter. Forty children were in the
hospital with minor complaints. About 10 per cent of the children are
usually ill.
The school for feeble-minded occupies a large apartment house and the
children are divided into groups of 10 under the direction of two
teachers, each group developing home life in one of the large
apartments. There is emphasis on handwork. Printing presses, a
bookbinding establishment, and woodworking tools are provided. Music
and art appreciation are given much time, and some of the work done is
very beautiful. This school is largely the result of the efforts of
the Soviet Government. Careful records are kept of the children and
simple test material has been devised to develop in the more backward
children elementary reactions regarding size, shape, form, and color.
The greatest difficulty is the impossibility of securing trained
workers either for the shops or for the special pedagogical problems
of the school. However, an energetic corps of young men and young
women are employed, and they are conscious of the size of their
problem and are already thinking of the difficulties of sending their
students back into industrial life. In many of the activities of the
Soviet Government, as well as in these institutions taken over from
the old regime, I was dismayed at the inefficiency and ignorance of
many of the subordinates. After talking to the leaders and getting
some understanding of their ideals, an American expects to see these
carried over into practice. One is liable to forget that the Russian
people have not greatly changed, and that the same easy-going,
inefficient attitude of decades of the previous regime still exists.
No one knows this obstacle better than the members of the present
regime. They realize that the character of the Russian people is their
greatest obstacle, and change in the Russian conception of Government
service is a slow process. Far from being discouraged, they point to
their accomplishments with pride.
During the last nine months Madame Lelina has taken 30,000 children
into Government homes and preparations are made to take 10,000 more
during the next three months. The three new institutions which I
visited are attractive suburban homes of wealthy emigrés. The
Government has taken these over and is putting groups of 40 children
in charge of specially selected and trained men and women. The older
children go out to school. For the younger children kindergarten
activities are provided and much time is spent out of doors. An
atmosphere of home life has been developed which is surprising
considering the short time the institutions have been organized and
the difficulties they have had to contend with. This plan, which I am
told is permanent, is a most encouraging feature of Madame Lelina's
work.
Requests to have children placed in the Government institutions are
turned over to a special corps of investigators. In each house there
is what is known as a poor committee which must also approve the
requests and the local soviet is required to pass upon the commitment
of the child to an institution. The large number of children taken
over by the city is due to the number of orphans and half orphans
caused by the war and to the impossibility of many poor families
providing their children with food during the recent famine. In cases
where several children of a family are taken they are placed in the
same home. Frequent opportunities for relatives to visit the homes are
provided. The amount of sickness has been surprisingly low considering
the great amount of disease in Petrograd during the last few months.
In one group of 300 children there have been no deaths within the past
nine months, and among all the children there have been very few cases
of contagious diseases.
The difficulties which Madame Lelina faces are numerous. First, Russia
has never had an adequate number of trained workers and many of those
who were trained have refused to cooperate with the present regime,
and, secondly, though the Soviet Government has adopted the policy of
turning over to the children's homes and the schools an adequate
supply of food, regardless of the suffering of the adult population,
still it has been impossible to get certain items of diet, as, for
instance, milk. It is true, however, that among these children one
sees few signs of undernourishment or famine, and in general
throughout the city the children seem much better nourished than the
adult population.
I had planned to visit other institutions but was unable to do so. I
was told of a large palace which has been taken over as a home for
mothers. Here all women who so desire are sent after childbirth with
their children for a period of two months.
The health department, which asserts that there are in addition to the
100,000 bedridden people in the city, another 100,000 who are ill
because of undernourishment though able to go to the food kitchens,
has been very successful in securing from the local soviets special
food supplies to be provided sick persons on doctors' orders. At each
food kitchen the board of health has a representative whose business
it is to give such special diet as may be possible to undernourished
individuals.
(Thereupon, at 12.50 o'clock p.m., the committee adjourned subject to
the call of the chairman.)