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
“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.
Madame Kaminev, Trotsky’s sister, is the head of Prolocult, a movement
which aims at a new culture, especially in the theatre, which is free
from Greek or other influences. It is Madame Kaminev’s theory that such
a culture, springing from the workers and peasants and unspoiled by the
imperfections and influences of former civilizations, will do much
to stimulate and renew art in general, which she believes has become
decadent
Marie Andreeva (Madame Gorky), who is herself an actress of note and
was at one time a star in the famous Art Theatre in Moscow, had charge
of Narodny Dom, a people’s theatre, which was started under the Tsar
and is continued under the Soviets. Marie Andreeva recently made a tour
of Europe to study the theatres.
But it is Stanislavsky, the director of the Moscow Art Theatre, who has
rendered Lunacharsky the greatest assistance. Stanislavsky is conceded
to be the greatest stage director in the world. Under his guidance, all
the great Russian playwrights for the last generation have blossomed.
It was Stanislavsky’s firm conviction that the Russian people must
maintain the theatres, hundreds of theatres, during the revolution, in
order that they might not find a life of hunger and cold too monotonous
for a desire to live. With his brave little company he has managed
to keep his theatre in the capital at the very highest pitch. He
established and kept under his direction three other theatres in Moscow
and he has put on a number of new operas. Absolutely nothing seems to
discourage him. The loss of his personal fortune, which had been very
great, and even the loss of his beloved workshop which was turned into
a Chauffeurs’ Club, did not destroy his calm. “It is never Lenin or
Lunacharsky, big men, who are to blame for these mistakes of the Soviet
Government,” he told me. “It is always the little foolish, frantic
men. When they took my workshop I wrote to Lenin. He did everything he
could and when he was outvoted by Kaminev and the Moscow Soviet, he
managed to get me another place, really just as good but lacking the
old atmosphere.”
Many tales could be told about Lunacharsky. The most typical, I think,
and the one that shows his persistency is the story of the Hermitage
museum, which Catherine the Great founded in Petrograd.
When the Germans were knocking at the gates of Petrograd in 1917 the
historic tapestries in the Winter Palace and the entire Hermitage
collection were sent by dead of night to Moscow and stored in the
Kremlin. One day in the winter of 1921 I called at Lunacharsky’s
office. He was in a fine state of happiness. “I have great news for
you,” he exclaimed. “To-day we sent the Hermitage collection back
to Petrograd--intact! I wonder if you can realize what that means? I
wonder if the world will know how nearly those precious things came to
destruction? How wonderful it is, after all, that in another month one
can go to Petrograd and behold everything arranged as it has been for
centuries.
“Yes, there have been times when I did not think it possible to save
the collection, not because there were reckless revolutionists who
always brought up movements to sell one part or another, but by a much
worse destruction. Can you imagine my anxiety when fighting, actual
fighting, was going on in palaces where the old porcelains were stored?
We had put the Rembrandts and other canvasses in the Kremlin cellars,
and I was in constant terror that rats would gnaw them. Sometimes I
was afraid to go down and look. But I feel that the worst days of such
struggles are over for us. I am happy that Russia has demonstrated to
the world that Russians are not barbarians. We have saved our art in
spite of hunger and disease and death.”
Lunacharsky has a rare grace of spirit and while he is himself a
modernist and wants to bring art as close to the people as bread, he
never allows his own feelings to intrude on the feelings of his fellow
artists. Himself a writer of note, he has sacrificed his own writing to
save art and the creators of art. A devout revolutionist, he can allow
the intricate designs of the Tsardom, the great black eagles, insolent
against the sky over the turrets of the Kremlin, to remain, because
they are part of the original designs of the old palaces. He can bring
himself to regild the church roofs from his scanty funds although he is
not at all religious, and he could faithfully gather old ikons and make
of them a marvelous little collection in one of the new museums. Only
such a man could have held together the temperamental army composed of
the artists of Russia. Such men as Lunacharsky give the revolution the
balance which prevents its collapse.
Periods of transition are always bitter and more than bitter for
delicate creative souls. Once I mentioned Lunacharsky’s tact in
handling artists to Helena Soochachova, the young and beautiful star
at the Moscow Art Theatre. She smiled and thus characterized him: “Ah,
Lunacharsky,” she said, “he is a great gentleman, he is, no doubt,
_the_ great gentleman of the revolution. That is the secret of his
success and the reason his political enemies cannot defeat him and we
artists cannot desert him--because he struggles so magnificently and is
a man _sans peur et sans reproche_.”
MICHAEL IVANOVITCH KALININ
AND THE
PEASANTS
[Illustration: KALININ]
MICHAEL IVANOVITCH KALININ
AND THE
PEASANTS
There have been two presidents of the Russian Socialist Federated
Soviet Republic; only recently we have become vaguely aware of one of
them. Ever since the Bolshevik _coup d’ état_ America has spoken of the
Soviet Government as “the government of Lenin and Trotsky.” America was
right in so far as these men enjoy immense power, and wrong in so far
as she imagined it would have been possible at any time, and less so
now, for either of these men or both of them to have abruptly changed
the government’s policy from right to left or left to right without
first receiving indisputable orders from the masses.
Relatively, Lenin has more power than Lloyd George and Trotsky
considerably less; while President Kalinin, who began his office as
little more than a figure-head, has been saved from the emptiness of
such a position because he is so symbolic of the growing power of the
peasants. Already more power has been bestowed upon him through the
course of events than perhaps he himself realizes. Surely when he set
out in his painted train on his first journey through the provinces
three years ago, he could hardly have foreseen his place in history as
one of the greatest influences in molding the new state.
Kalinin’s growing influence is a true barometer of public opinion
or, to be more exact, of the reassertion of public opinion. And it
is interesting to note that while many of the stars in the Communist
sky are considerably dimmed by the ascendancy of Kalinin, Premier
Lenin’s position is only made stronger. This is because the new
pressure from below is for compromise, and public men go down under
retreat much faster than when their banners are flying triumphantly in
advance. Lenin is practical enough to understand the advantages of a
well-ordered retreat above those of a rout; he will save all he can of
the Socialist state instead of abandoning it on the fields of battle.
It was the question of private property which became the vital issue in
1920 inside and outside of Russia. The abolition of private property
was made possible by a determined, conscious minority. It was
re-established by the pressure of a slow-moving, solid, unconscious
majority; that majority was the peasants. I do not mean that the
peasants are now actually in control of the state. I merely wish to
point out that they already hold the balance of power and that they
move towards control with the crushing surety of a glacier. They
hold, strategically, the same position that the Bolsheviks did under
Kerensky, but they will never pursue the same tactics; they will assume
power gradually just because they are the majority; it is only a
minority which must act with dramatic haste, counting on brains, daring
and psychological moments.
It was logical that the first President should have been a man who
represented the city workers and the second President, a peasant; for
in such wise did the revolution settle itself.
Most of the Communists did not approve of Kalinin’s election. Lenin
alone sensed the proper time to place a peasant as nominal head of the
Soviets; a peasant who should begin as Master of Ceremonies and who, in
his peasant’s garb and with his peasant’s tongue, should bring Lenin’s
ideas to the people; a peasant who would never cease being a peasant
and who would come back to Lenin and say, “This and this they will
have, here they cannot follow and there they will lead.” Lenin gazed at
Russia through Kalinin’s eyes as one gazes in a crystal.
In 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized control of the state, a delicate
little man called Jacob Michaelovitch Sverdlov, a chemist by profession
and a revolutionist by conviction, was Chairman of the Central
Executive Committee of the Workers and Soldiers Deputies; this meant
that he controlled the Red Guards, the conscious workers and the
revolting soldiers; it meant he held a position of such tremendous
authority that he could not be ignored by anybody. So when the first
Council of the People’s Commissars was formed, which is really no other
than the cabinet of the Russian Government, Sverdlov was the first
person taken into consideration by them. And in order to find a place
for him they created the office of President. When he accepted that
office he gave up his direct control and became but one voice in a
group. Nevertheless, all through the barricade days he continued to act
as the spokesman in the cabinet for the Petrograd workers who were, for
at least the first year, a power above the cabinet.
In the winter of 1918 Sverdlov died of typhus and was buried on the Red
Square in Moscow.
During the time Sverdlov was president the government was in continual
difficulty with the peasants. They resisted the government’s
requisitioning expeditions, retreated within themselves and almost
ignored the central power until the provinces were in a continual state
of guerilla warfare. They managed their local Soviets with little or
no thought of the Moscow Government. Civil war continued and, with the
aid of France and England, grew apace; hard dark days settled over
Russia. Sverdlov looked about for an entering wedge which would somehow
pierce the way to an eventual understanding and co-operation with the
local and central Soviets. In this search Sverdlov discovered Kalinin.
Kalinin was already immensely popular with the peasants; he had been
on every Land Committee of importance since the beginning of the first
revolution, under both Miliukov and Kerensky. During his term of office
Sverdlov used Kalinin as a mediator in many difficult situations and
Lenin watched his work with interest. An old Communist explained
Kalinin’s election in these words: “He was a ‘find’ of Sverdlov’s, but
it was Lenin alone who realized that days might come when he would be
invaluable in holding Russia together.” Those days have come; they came
with the tightening of the blockade and continued with the famine.