THROUGH
BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA
BY
MRS. PHILIP SNOWDEN
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1920
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 7
CHAPTER
1. A STARVING PEOPLE 13
2. MAKING OUR PLANS 23
3. GHOSTS 33
4. INVESTIGATION OR PROPAGANDA? 45
5. THE COMMUNISTS 58
6. THE ARTISTIC LIFE OF RUSSIA 70
7. THE MILITARY POWER OF RUSSIA 81
8. EDUCATION AND RELIGION 93
9. OFF TO MOSCOW 105
10. AN INTERVIEW WITH LENIN 115
11. TALKS WITH COMMUNISTS AND OTHERS 128
12. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNISTS 140
13. THE SUPPRESSION OF LIBERTY 154
14. DOWN THE VOLGA 164
15. THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA 178
INTRODUCTION
I have written these impressions of Bolshevik Russia with the object of
promoting peace with that great country, by adding the evidence to that
already given in numerous articles and books of one more eye-witness of
the terrible sufferings of the Russian people.
I paid a six weeks’ visit to Russia as a member of the Delegation
chosen by the Executive Committee of the Labour party and of the Trades
Union Congress, in fulfilment of a resolution passed by a special Trade
Union Congress held on December 10th, 1919, which demanded of the
British Government “the right to an independent and impartial enquiry
into the industrial, economic and political conditions of Russia.”
So much about Russia that was contradictory had appeared in the
newspaper press, with the balance of statement on the side of evil
report, that it was increasingly felt by the organised workers of
Great Britain the truth must at all costs be discovered, if that were
possible, by investigators selected by themselves.
In addition, it was thought right and wise to discover if there
existed anything in the behaviour of the Russian Government and
people so menacing to ourselves as to warrant the attacks upon Russia
of foreign Governments, including our own. We did not believe that
any possible conduct of the Government of Russia could justify the
supply of British men, arms and money to Russia’s enemies; and we have
returned unanimously confirmed in that judgment, convinced that Russian
internal affairs are her own business and not ours.
The Delegation left Newcastle on April 27th, and travelled by
Christiania, Stockholm and Reval. We returned to England on June 30th.
Wherever we went we discovered the greatest interest in our mission.
We came in contact with representatives of the Socialist and Labour
movement in all the towns through which we passed. In Christiania
we found that the Labour party had so far expressed its approval of
the doings in Moscow as to have applied for membership of the Third
International, that great symbol of Communism, and the international
organ through which the Communists propose to work for world-revolution.
In applying for this membership, the Norwegian party made two important
reservations: It wished to leave its members free on the point of armed
revolution, and it insisted on equality of voting power for peasant
and artisan. No reply had been received from Moscow at the time of our
visit. I afterwards discovered in Moscow a sternly unrelenting attitude
on the question of revolution by violence.
In Stockholm the great bulk of the Labour movement is against
Bolshevism, although a small section approves it. We behaved with
strict impartiality to both kinds, and received and gave hospitality
indiscriminately.
The same story was repeated at Reval. And in common fairness to the
Bolsheviki it must be admitted that they have a grievance against the
Moderates of Reval as great as any grievance the Moderates may have
against them. They appear to attack each other with equal ferocity.
I have not attempted in these pages to argue right down to the last
syllable any one of the great questions which are pivotal to modern
political controversies. Other writers have done that, or will do it.
Russian Communist literature circulates abundantly in this country for
all those whose interest in the Russian experiment lies deep. I have
sought only to give a series of pen-pictures of Russian life under the
Bolsheviki, and to state interesting facts about that small piece of
mighty Russia which it was my great privilege to see. In choosing to do
this I shall have satisfied neither of the two sorts of extremist, who
will, without doubt, quote my sentences in defence of the Red and the
White.
A friend said to me in discussing the question that there was an
explosive quality in the word _Bolshevism_ which caused it to be
popular with those who wished to destroy some hated thing. Such a word
as _aneurism_ could not be employed with one-tenth of the effect; but
Bolshevism! The word is a veritable bomb when exploded in the ears of
the timid and conventional.
The simple fact of the matter is, that in regard to Bolshevism, as in
other matters, the truth lies between the two extremes of statement.
What is being said and done in Russia is neither perfectly good nor
wholly bad. The same with the men and women themselves. They are
creatures very much like ourselves, who are called upon to deal with
a situation which is extremely difficult, and who are dealing with it
in the way which to them seems best. They have made mistakes, some of
these very big mistakes. But Lenin and some of the others have had
the courage to admit this. There is abundant hope for a country whose
rulers know when they are mistaken and are willing to adapt themselves
and to try again. If this sensible type of governor has less power than
the other at the moment, it will not always be so. Much depends upon
the conduct of the outer world.
If Russia be speedily restored to the family of nations and real
intercourse with her be again established, the result will be, in all
human probability, a surprising approximation of Russian methods to
those of the rest of Europe. Let us hope it may also mean a quicker
stride of European democracies outside Russia in the path of social
progress and economic salvation along which Russia has attempted,
perhaps too rapidly for success, to advance.
For myself, the result of our investigations is summed up in this: I am
not hostile to the Russian Revolution which the tyrannous regime of the
Czars made necessary and inevitable; but I am utterly opposed to the
_coup d’état_ of the Bolsheviki, as I should be to the seizing of power
by any small minority of the people; for out of this action has sprung
a large part of the misery the unhappy people of Russia endure.
THROUGH BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
A Starving People
In every country in the world oceans of eloquence and torrents of
passion are being poured out in the attempt to prove that Bolshevist
Russia is a heaven or a hell. The friendships of a lifetime are being
broken in fruitless efforts to prove either the faultlessness or the
folly of the theory of Communism. The doctrines of Karl Marx and
the philosophy of Bakounin are the twin rocks upon which the Labour
movement in every land threatens to split. Without in the remotest
degree intending or desiring it, Lenin has drawn to his head a halo
of some magnificence, and an odour of sanctity, notwithstanding the
inscription upon its walls, envelops that part of the Kremlin where the
little, great man sits and issues his decrees.
All this discussion of the attempt of a handful of sincere and
brilliant men and women to build upon the ruins of war, famine and
pestilence a new and better social system in one gigantic effort is
inevitable; and in common fairness it must be said that the experiment
in Russia might have been of the greatest possible value to the
rest of the world had its purity not been sullied by civil wars and
unpardonable alien aggression. As it is, much may be learnt from the
mistakes which the Bolsheviki have made and which they themselves
admit. It is not the frank critic of Bolshevism who is doing harm to
the Bolshevik cause. It is those supporters of Lenin in this, and
other countries, who maintain that no compromise with the old has been
made by the new in Russia, and who, if they could be made to admit
that their Russian comrades had modified their decrees to meet the
necessities of the hour, would regard this conduct as traitorous, and
would denounce with equal extravagance of language the men they had
before incontinently adored.
But through all the noise of argument and heat of propaganda about
the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolution by violence and
the programme of the Third International, comes the low wailing of
the suffering and the dying, an appeal for help to the pitying heart
of mankind which should take precedence of the claim on the world’s
attention of all political and economic theories, however promising
those may be.
For this reason the members of the British Labour Delegation took
speedy and unanimous action towards bringing to an end the war between
Russia and Poland, and with equal unanimity protested to their own
Government against the blockade, which is supposed to be abolished in
theory but which is as effective in practice as ever. The cruel effects
of the blockade upon Russia’s hapless people became obvious through
the evidence of our own eyes in the first twenty-four hours of our
investigation. So unmistakable was that evidence that a telegram was
despatched to Great Britain, urging the folly of helping the war and
maintaining in effect the blockade, and requesting that the British
people might no longer continue to be implicated in either.
The number of Russian people is variously estimated at one hundred and
twenty-five to one hundred and eighty millions. In a country where the
fortunes of war add twenty millions of inhabitants to the country’s
population in one lucky day or take fifty millions away as the result
of a disastrous encounter with the enemy, this statistical looseness
has a reasonable explanation.
But to take the lower number, one hundred and twenty-five millions.
Leaving out of account the army, which is very well fed, and the
majority of the children, who undoubtedly receive special care and
attention, most of the people are either terribly ill-clad or hungry,
probably both. Most of them are suffering from dirt and disease;
many of them are actually ill or dying. Millions have already died.
Many millions more are fore-doomed to death from cold this coming
winter unless help of the right kind and in sufficient quantities
comes speedily. Of what immediate concern to these unfortunate masses
of unhappy people is the materialist conception of history, the
proletarian dictatorship, or even the Third International? Eighty-five
per cent of the population is composed of peasants, most of whom I am
convinced never heard of such things. To these, Lenin is no more than a
name, a devil to the rich peasant, a name with which to conjure out of
both rich and poor peasant the stocks of food they are believed to be
hiding. Of such a sort was the late Czar to these poor, ignorant folk.
But the old Czar was their “little father” and crept closer and more
warmly to their imagination than the new ruler.
Poor, unhappy, lovable people of Russia! The hardening, educating,
organising process which is going on in your midst may one day prove
a boon to you, though it adds unspeakably to your present misery. The
discipline of the West, if taken with its civilisation, may add to
the fullness of your future life. But what you want at the moment is
very much less and very much simpler than the ardent theorists have
conceived you need, and that you ought to want and must be made to have.
The people of Russia want peace and bread, peace that will last and
bread that they can eat. I am convinced without the shadow of a
doubt, that they are everywhere sick to the very soul of bloodshed.
They dislike even the talk about war and revolutions. They sing “The
Internationalé” whenever the orchestra strikes up, but it is with the
mechanical tones of a musical-box or a street-organ. They long for rest
and quiet. They want to marry and have children and be able to feed and
house them properly. The peasants want to till their farms undisturbed,
and in the quiet evenings to sing their quaint and mournful songs to
one another or in happy chorus in the village club. The town workers
want to do their day’s work in the factory or the shop and to spend
glad, talkative hours in the cafés as in those days before the misery
of war came upon them.
Petrograd has all the appearance of a dying city. Before the war it was
reputed to have a population of two and a half millions; now it numbers
between eight and nine hundred thousand souls. Where have all these
people gone? I asked a Communist the question.
A relatively tiny number of the rich are in exile. Many have died in
the war. Some have fled to the country, where living is more abundant.
But hundreds of thousands have died of hunger and disease. Besides the
lack of food there is an almost entire lack of medicines, anæsthetics,
linen for bandages, disinfectants and soap. These things have been kept
out by the blockade. Disease has been epidemic and carried off hosts of
people in face of the heroic but helpless doctors and nurses, very many
of whom gave their own lives in a noble attempt to succour and save. A
striking feature in Petrograd was the enormous number of short-haired
girls and women.
“Is this a Russian custom?” I asked. “Not more than in any other
country,” was the reply. “In all probability all these women and girls
have had typhus quite recently and lost their hair through it.”
Those who have never seen the hunger-look in human eyes cannot even
faintly imagine the pain of walking about the streets of a Russian
town. I had experienced it first in Vienna, that once supremely gay
and still very beautiful city. The knowledge of what the privations
of the unhappy Austrians were (and still are) first came to me in a
cheap restaurant, where I had gone to dine simply because the expensive
meals at the hotel were so disgusting in their extravagance. I raised
my eyes from my plate for a second. At least a dozen pairs of eyes
were glued hungrily to the simple food I was eating, and as hastily
withdrawn when detected in the act. I found it almost impossible to eat
in public after that, except when some hungry Austrian would consent to
share the meal.
I have seen in Vienna old and young officers in uniform creep into
hotels after dusk in the hope of getting scraps of food for their
hungry children. I have seen a woman of refinement, with three small
children clinging to her skirts, drop the red roses she was trying
to sell as she reeled with fatigue against a wall. I have tasted the
coloured water and imitation coffee in the cafés of the Ringstrasse.
I have seen the skeleton babes and consumptive wives of the Austrian
workmen and soldiers in their own homes. And because I had seen these
things in Vienna I knew, without asking any questions in Petrograd,
that the two cities share with most of the cities of Eastern and
Central Europe the bonds of a common suffering.
This much must be said for the Communist Government: It is doing its
best to secure an equal distribution amongst all sections of the
working community of the very limited supplies of everything. The
passport to food and clothing is work. St. Paul’s dictum is taken
literally in Russia. If the workers go short it is probably because
the food is not to be had. Either it is not procurable, because
non-existent; or transport difficulties prevent it reaching the people.
Of course the speculator enters into the question, the adventurous
private trader who, defiant of the law and at the risk of his life,
buys from the peasant at a much higher price than the Government fixed
price, and sells to the people privately or even in the open market.
The Extraordinary Commission has a special department to deal with this
man, and is very hard on him when caught; but he flourishes all the
same, and will continue to do so just as long as it continues to be
impossible for the citizen to live on the Government ration.
The loathsome black bread which is the people’s daily diet is four
hundred roubles[1] a pound when bought in the open market. White bread,
which is really a light brown, is one thousand roubles a pound. Only
children and sick persons are permitted white bread. Black bread can be
bought more cheaply at the Soviet stores, but is often not procurable
there for the last comers. Long queues of tired women are everywhere to
be seen waiting their turn outside the Government bread shops.
[1] The pre-war value of the rouble was about 2s.
And then the clothing! From Petrograd to Astrakhan I am quite sure
that not a hundred people were seen in clothing that was not shabby
and worn to a degree. Most of the British delegates wore their oldest
clothes, garments which had been cast off and suddenly restored to use
in contemplation of the trip to Russia. But those dear Russian people
thought we were attired like princes. They turned us round to admire
us. They patted and stroked our dresses and over-coats. They turned
longing eyes upon our boots, and took great pleasure in handling the
soft leather. One plutocrat offered fifty thousand roubles for a very
ordinary pair of British shoes. Eighty thousand roubles was the price
placed upon my own stout walking boots. When, out of gratitude to
her for repeated little acts of kindness, I gave the girl who looked
after my room a warm woollen jacket she fell on her knees and covered
my hands with kisses. When, by way of thanks, I gave a dress and coat
to the good woman who helped to nurse a sick friend, she sobbed on my
shoulder from sheer overwhelming gratitude!
University professors came to see us, dressed like English tramps!
A great singer sang to us with the toes sticking through his boots!
Women of gentle birth and upbringing walked the hard pavement with
their feet bound in strips of felt. Many had naked feet. Poor women
were seen frequently who, judging by their outlines, had no shred of
underclothing under their thin, cotton dresses. Socks for big girls
and grown women were a common sight and excited the curiosity of one
Delegate who enquired if that were the latest fashion amongst the women
in Russia.
“No” came the quick reply in the perfect English to which we were
becoming accustomed, “it is not the latest fashion but the last
economy. Socks use up less wool than stockings. It is considered good
fortune to have either socks or stockings. Most people have neither.”
This form of economy, welcome during the hot summer weather, is
frightful to contemplate for the hard Russian winter.
When one thinks of the passionate joy excited by the gift of a pair of
stockings to each of a few gentle, self-respecting Russian girls; of
what a reel of thread meant to the mother of a young family; of how
much comfort an old flannel nightdress gave to a sick woman, since dead
of debility due to lack of nourishment; of the amount of happiness
a present of a tablet of soap conferred, the wrangling of political
theorists, particularly in those countries where such sufferings have
not been dreamt of, much less experienced, appear monstrous and cruel
to the extent that these divert the public mind from the immediate
problem of succour and relief.