officer, married Fedore Dubenko, the picturesque leader of the
turbulent Kronstadt sailors. Dubenko is a handsome, daring young man,
some years her junior. Shortly after the wedding Dubenko was arrested.
He had entrusted certain ships under his command to officers of the old
régime who had pretended loyalty to the Soviets, but who had turned
the ships over to the Germans without a struggle. Certainly Dubenko
had no intention of betraying the revolution, he was merely trying to
make use of skilled officers, of whom there was a pressing dearth.
Nevertheless, he was held responsible.
While he was in prison awaiting trial, Kollontai made rather violent
and conspicuous protests both publicly and privately. As a result she
was removed from office. Revolutionists have no tolerance for romance
among their leaders during critical moments; they place the revolution
far above personal relationship. From the beginning they looked with
disapproving eyes upon Kollontai’s infatuation for Dubenko.
When Dubenko was released, Kollontai went abroad and spent some months
in Sweden. On her return she threw herself into a new work--that of
educating her own sex to take an active part in politics.
Rightly speaking, there never was a woman’s movement in Russia until
after the revolution. Equal suffrage came first and political education
afterwards. This condition appears particularly curious when one
recalls that, during some years before the revolution, even more
women than men were sent to Siberia for plots against the Tsar’s
government. Yet when the revolution came women sank mysteriously into
the background. Russians explain this by various theories. One was that
Russian women possess the fervor necessary to martyrs, but little of
the balance needed for practical reconstructive work. Personally, I
think it is entirely a matter of experience and education, for it is
evident that women enter politics everywhere with great hesitancy. Even
in America where equal suffrage has been a fact in some states for many
years, we have only one or two women to point to as having attained
political prominence.
Madame Kollontai possesses much charm. She is slim and pretty and
vivacious. With a little too much the manner of a public speaker she
talks so easily on any subject, even to reporters, that it almost gives
an impression of insincerity. Her open mind is in reality an evidence
of the kind of sincerity which has no fear of publicity. She likes
Americans and knows more about this country than most Russians. But she
has not always known. Some years ago, when lecturing here, she happened
to be in Paterson during the great strike there. When she saw the
workers marching through the streets, she rushed into a room full of
people and exclaimed: “A revolution has begun!” Last year, in speaking
of America, she said it was the country least agitated by revolutionary
thought.
Like all enthusiastic Communists, she follows Lenin’s lead in striving
to westernize Russia. One day she very greatly surprised me by saying,
“Why don’t you write a series of articles about America? Write for
Russia about America as you now write for America about Russia.”
“What good will it do?” I asked.
“A great deal,” she replied. “It is time Russia got acquainted with
America. Because of the old censorship we never learned the value of
reporters. And now that we are through forever with isolation, except
when it is forced upon us, we ought to acquaint ourselves thoroughly
with other countries. The women ought to know, for example, how
American women got suffrage and what part women take in public affairs.
We ought to know the status of the immigrants and of the Negroes, how
you solve your unemployment problems, the status of farmers, of city
workers, the percentage of wealth controlled by rich people. We ought
to know about your schools and colleges. It ought to be explained to
us just what the real difference is between the Republican and the
Democratic Party and how much influence the Socialist Party has. Yes,
there are a thousand things we ought to know.”
I did not write the articles, but in explaining American ideas and
institutions to Kollontai it somehow placed my country in a curious
new light in my own eyes. I began to realize that things which have
grown quite ordinary and familiar to us may appear entirely absurd
and unreasonable to foreigners. Kollontai said that she hoped Russia
would some day have reporters in America cabling home as busily as
our reporters do from Russia. Russians, she thought, have in so many
ways remained ridiculously provincial in spite of their ideas on
internationalism.
Her feminist heart was deeply touched when I told her about a group
of American women who had paraded on Fifth Avenue carrying signs of
protest against the blockade. Tears came to her eyes. “You can’t
imagine,” she said, “how much courage such a little act of sympathy
gives us. What a pity that the story of those women is not known in
Russia and not read by every peasant mother.”
She was openly indignant about the stories circulated abroad that
Russian women were “_nationalized_” When we first discussed this rumor
she refused to believe that anybody in America could have seriously
considered it, but when I explained about the Overman Committee and
other official and semi-official affairs, she flew into a rage against
the narrowness and prejudices of some of our statesmen. She claimed
that the simplest peasant would not believe such indecent lies against
American women. “Your senators,” she said, “could very well have
acquainted themselves with the real facts about our women, who have
always taken such a glorious part in every movement for emancipation.
“American men,” continued Madame Kollontai, “are known the world over
as kind and chivalrous. But chivalry can be a little old-fashioned in
this century. Certainly, there is much to criticize and much to improve
in our new struggling republic. But have you ever thought how absurd it
was that the very much pampered American woman was forced to picket the
White House as part of a campaign for equal suffrage? And that for such
acts she was sent to prison? It is more absurd also when you remember
that at that very moment a Southern gentleman sat at the White House
as President. Naturally, such things appear inconsistent to us but
we manage to see them in the right proportion. We know that in spite
of these inconsistencies, Americans are a generous people, at heart
friendly to Russia and the world.”
Another time she said, “When our revolution came we obtained equality
for everybody who was willing to work. Don’t fail to comprehend what a
stride that was! We didn’t have to have a civil war to free the Tartars
or the Turko-men as you did to free the Negro, and it certainly never
was in anybody’s mind, on any side, to disenfranchise Russian women,
much less to nationalize them.”
Nevertheless, Madame Kollontai finds even a revolutionary government
can be run too largely by men. If it does nothing worse it has a very
bad habit of overlooking women. But it cannot overlook them for long
while Madame Kollontai is about, for she never fails to appear at the
important congresses to remind the delegates of their sins; to goad
them into discussions of women and women’s problems.
“Women’s congresses,” she told me, “are absolutely necessary in the
present state of development. And these congresses are not confined
by any means to politics. I have been bringing peasant women to
Moscow from all over Russia and we have told them how to take care of
babies and how to prevent disease. We have also instructed them in
local, national and international politics. A woman who has gone to
Moscow from some remote village is more or less of a personality when
she returns and you can be sure that her journey is an event to the
whole village. She always goes back well supplied with literature and
educational posters. She, naturally, stimulates an interest in the
whole community in politics and hygiene, especially among the women.
Such congresses are the only ones I know that have a far-reaching
effect.”
“I have been laughed at,” she said, “because so far I have brought here
only a few women from the harems of Turkestan. These women have thrown
aside their veils. Everybody stares at them, they are a curiosity
which gives the congresses a theatrical atmosphere. Yet all pioneering
work is theatrical. It was distinctly theatrical when the audiences
used to throw eggs at your pioneer suffragists.... How else would we
get in touch with Mohammedan women except through women?” How else,
indeed? Other Russian educators have answered the question this way:
Through Mohammedan men. It was by educating the Tartar men that the
Tartar women became free. The Tartars are mostly all Mohammedans but
their women no longer wear veils. Whereas the brave women Kollontai has
induced to come to her congresses have been divorced by their husbands
and have lost their homes and children.
Madame Kollontai’s political judgment, even from the standpoint of an
orthodox Communist, is often very bad. She has unlimited courage and
on several occasions has openly opposed Lenin. As for Lenin, he has
crushed her with his usual unruffled frankness. Yet in spite of her
fiery enthusiasm she understands “party discipline” and takes defeat
like a good soldier. If she had left the revolution four months after
it began she could have rested forever on her laurels. She seized those
rosy first moments of elation, just after the masses had captured the
state, to incorporate into the Constitution laws for women which are
far-reaching and unprecedented. And the Soviets are very proud of these
laws which already have around them the halo of all things connected
with the Constitution. It is almost impossible that that institution
which came to life through her enthusiasm and determination will ever
cease to be. The laws I refer to are particularly those in regard to
expectant mothers, orphans, illegitimate children and the state care of
maternity hospitals, known as Palaces of Motherhood.
Madame Kollontai is about fifty years of age and appears much younger.
She has dark brown hair and blue eyes and could easily be taken for
an American. She is one of the few women Communists who cares about
her appearance. By that I do not mean that she enjoys any luxury. She
lives in one room in a Soviet hotel. But she is pretty and knows how to
wear her clothes. Once I complimented her on a smart little fur toque
she was wearing. She laughed and said, “Yes, one must learn tricks
in Russia, so I have made my hat out of the tail of my coat which is
already five years old.”
She comes from well-to-do middle-class parents and her first husband
while not rich was, as an officer of the old régime, able to afford
her a good deal of comfort. They had one child, a son. As a young
girl Kollontai went to the best schools and after her marriage never
ceased to study. She is an unusually gifted linguist, speaking eleven
languages and often acting as official interpreter at the Soviet, as
well as the International Congresses.
A curiously touching and disillusioning phase of the revolution was
the Soviet Government’s sincere attempt to wipe out prostitution from
the young republic. In this fight Kollontai took and still takes a
leading part. Way back in March, 1917, the infamous Yellow Tickets
were destroyed. On the surface it appeared then as if the whole idea
of traffic in women had forever ended. But even after the economic
pressure was removed the curse returned. Angelica Balabonova, one of
the most loved and honored of the women revolutionists as well as one
of the most intellectual, wrote a stinging denunciation of what she
called the “Soviet Barishnas.” (Translated, Soviet Ladies.) The term
soon came to be the most insulting phrase in the Russian language. It
came to mean a woman who, in spite of everything, insisted on a life of
shame.
So disgraceful do the Soviets regard this phase of Russian life that
indignant citizens formed committees and raids took place. Women were
arrested and thrown into concentration camps. And still the evil
continued. At last the Central Government took the problem in hand,
as did the Central Organ of the Communist Party. Kollontai, writing on
this matter, concludes: “The Women’s Sections show lively and active
interest in this matter since prostitution is a scourge which falls
chiefly upon the women of the working class. This is our task, the task
of the Women’s Sections, to begin a general propaganda concerned with
questions connected with prostitution, since it is in our interest to
develop the revolution in the domain of the family and to stabilize
relations between the sexes.”
The government report is illuminating and shows above all else that the
Soviet officials are not afraid to face facts, which is the first and
best weapon of defense.
The Inter-departmental Commission makes the statement that, in Soviet
Russia, prostitution appears in two forms:
1. In the form of professional prostitution.
2. In the form of secret earnings.
The first form is very slightly developed and is of slight extent.
In Petrograd, for example, where raids were undertaken against
prostitutes, this mode of combating prostitution practically
yielded no results. The second form, although highly developed in
other countries, also assumes a great variety of forms in Russia.
Prostitution is practised by Soviet employees, in order to obtain for
the sale of caresses, boots that go up to the knees; prostitution is
resorted to by mothers of families, working women, peasant women,
who are out after flour for their children and sell their bodies to
the manager of the rations division in order to obtain from him a
full bag of the precious flour. Sometimes the girls in the Offices
associate with their male superiors, not for manifestly material
gain, for rations, shoes, etc., but in the hope of advancement in
office. And there is an additional form of prostitution--“careerist
prostitution”--which is also based in the last analysis on material
gain.
The Commission made this recommendation after many hot debates: “All
persons wandering in the streets and deserting their work should be
assigned to the Commissariat of Social Welfare and thus sent out,
in accordance with general fundamental considerations, either to
the Sections for the Distribution of Labor Power of the People’s
Commissariat of Labor, or to courses, sanatoria, hospitals, and only
after a repeated desertion by a prostitute, in other words, after a
malicious effort to desert, should the individual be subjected to
forced labor. There is no special culpability attached to prostitutes.
They are in no way to be segregated from the other bodies of deserters
from work. This is a revolutionary and important step, worthy of the
first Workers’ Republic of the world.”
That such a liberal attitude is really effective is proven by the
fact that in Soviet Russia to-day there is less prostitution than
anywhere else in the world. Under the Tsar, Russia was known as the
most disgraceful country in this respect. And Kollontai says, “There is
no doubt that the poor, insufficient pay for female labor continues,
in Soviet Russia, to serve as a chief factor. Under the law the
earnings of men and women are equal, but the great majority of women
are unskilled laborers. It resolves itself into a question of how to
make female labor skilled labor. And the second case is the political
backwardness of women. It is not the woman who is inspired and carried
away by the idea of the revolution and the desire to aid reconstruction
who falls into this pool of degradation.”
In one of her pamphlets, Madame Kollontai declaims with pride: “By
virtue of the decree of December 18, 1917, divorce has ceased to be a
luxury accessible only to the rich.” It has been interesting to watch
the outcome of this decree through four years. Among the peasants
divorce was practically unknown and still remains so. The city workers
have not availed themselves of this “luxury” to any considerable
degree. Whether Kollontai likes it or not, the only people who will
continue to take advantage of such freedom will be the idle and the
intellectuals. Divorces have little attraction for simple workers.
Labor and poverty bring husband and wife closer to one another “for
better or for worse.”
Periodically, Kollontai attacks family life and claims that it is the
only institution that Communists are afraid to reform. One needs only
to look about at the leaders of the movement to wonder why they should
be concerned in reforming it. Lenin leads a distinctly normal family
life, as do Trotsky and Kalinin. The wives of these Commissars work
and are interesting, well-known personalities. Kollontai herself is
married. Her inconsistencies are her most feminine trait as well as one
of her most alluring characteristics.
LEON TROTSKY, SOVIET WAR LORD
[Illustration: TROTSKY]
LEON TROTSKY, SOVIET WAR LORD
Minister of War, Leon Trotsky, has no prototype in history. Therefore,
he cannot be compared, he can only be contrasted. He is without
question the most dramatic character produced during the whole sweep
of the Russian revolution and its only great organizer. No man will
overshadow his eminence in the history of the revolution except Lenin.
They will remain the two most distinguished personalities. They are
complementary figures. Lenin represents thought; Trotsky represents
action. Trotsky’s genius might have burned itself out in some wild
enthusiasm or some consuming rage if it had not been for the cooling
influence of Lenin. On the other hand, Lenin’s plans, no matter how
carefully thought out, could not have materialized without the solid
backing of Trotsky’s bayonets.
Outside of Russia we are always hearing rumors of the conflict of these
two personalities. We imagine Trotsky continually conspiring to usurp
the place of Lenin; nothing could be further from the truth. Trotsky
would consider the elimination of Lenin, through any cause, as the
greatest calamity. He would not only think Russia had lost her wisest
leader, but he would consider himself lost. He touched the very highest
peak of revolutionary fervor when he made his famous speech in Moscow
after Lenin had been shot and terribly wounded by an assassin and when
small hope of recovery was entertained. “We will him to live and he
will live!” he cried to an audience which rose to its feet in a wave of
irrepressible emotion.
It was this speech which lighted the torch of the Red Terror as a
back-fire against the White Terror, already so far under way that the
very life of the revolution was at stake. But it is well for Trotsky
and for the revolution that Trotsky did not direct this terror; he was
too passionate and too thorough a soul to have been entrusted with such
a conflagration.
Trotsky is not a diplomat. He was not successful as Foreign Minister.
Diplomacy is too cut and dried to be harmonious with his talents. To be
a good diplomat one must be contained and calculating and unemotional,
content with the material on hand; one cannot be an originator. Trotsky
is essentially an originator. It was not his destiny to accept the
ready-made. It was his destiny to tear Russia out of old ruts and send
her bleeding but inspired down new ways; it was his destiny to make war
on Russian inertia, which is the curse of Russia and the whole East.
In Trotsky we discern something distinctly elemental. He looks like a
fighter, with his burning eyes and sharp decisive way of speaking, his
gestures, his quick regular gait. When he is calm he does not appear
to be himself. But even in ordinary conversation he bestirs himself,
he throws himself headlong into every discussion, and the listener is
so carried away that he remembers it all afterward with astonishment.
The storm Trotsky started in Russia, while it did not rage without
wreckage, at least had the effect of waking up a nation out of its
medieval slumber. Wherever he goes he stirs people, either individually
or collectively. No one is neutral about him, Trotsky is either loved
or despised.
In the Red Army, he has all the energetic young men of the nation
assembled and under his influence. He has charge of their education.
The majority have learned to read and write in his army schools. The
way they express it is that he has given them “new eyes.”
Trotsky is the idol of the Red Army. His amazing physical vigor
combined with a very un-Russian orderliness, his personal bravery and
reckless defiance of custom, make their former leaders appear dull and
backward. He creates in his pupils a deep dissatisfaction for all that
is old and outworn. These young men come from the villages, from every
province in Russia. When they go back home they look at the village
with disapproval, they want to change everything. In a little while,
because of their superior knowledge they become men of importance,
leading their local Soviets and attending the Congresses in Moscow.
If Trotsky can not understand the little ridiculous points of
diplomatic etiquette, the cunning and sensitiveness which mark a good
diplomat, he thoroughly comprehends how to take advantage of every
modern appliance and every modern method of running the War Office.
No War Office under any Tsar could boast such order as Trotsky’s.
Everything goes like clock-work, you are aware of energy and
efficiency; it has the hum of a high-power engine.
The young aides in Trotsky’s office are as smart as in the French War
Office. He has a way of attracting venturesome youth from everywhere.
His pet school, which is the Military Academy in Moscow, where the
General Staff men are trained, is full of these soldiers-of-fortune.
I was invited to an entertainment there one evening by a young
Lieutenant-Colonel. This man was the son of a rich Swedish banker and
he was but twenty-six years old. He introduced me to a number of other
foreigners, young men like himself, who had risen to high ranks through
many desperate campaigns. “We have every nation represented here but
America,” said a Bulgarian. I do not know whether these men were
Communists or how loyal they felt to that cause, but they were willing
to follow Trotsky to their graves.
A visit to this academy gives one quite a clear idea of how the former
classes in Russian society are amalgamating under the new order. It
is full of the sons of the bourgeoisie. And the professors are almost
without exception the old professors who taught in these schools under
the Tsar. Men like Brusilov, who is a Russian patriot and would defend
his government under any régime against outsiders, have enormous
prestige. As the White Generals went down to defeat one after the
other, the young men even of conservative parents came to believe that
if they could not swallow the Communist formulas whole, they could,
at least, remain loyal Russians. And once in the military schools,
they fell under the influence of revolutionary soldiers. Being young
and full of Slavic idealism, they often capitulated and in such cases
were rapidly promoted. In the Kronstadt day the young men of this type
were more concerned than any of the others, perhaps because if the Red
Army were to be defeated, they would be the first to be killed by the
opposition. When General Brusilov’s only son was captured in Siberia
by the White Forces, he was executed simply because he was the son of
Brusilov.
Trotsky believes in peace. He has told me this almost every time I
talked with him, but he is, nevertheless, an apostle of force. “The
happiest moment of my life,” he said, “was when I thought I could turn
the Red Army into a Labor Army to reconstruct Russia.” Trotsky would
probably have been very successful with his Labor Army, provided he
could have kept it really an army, with army rules and discipline. An
army is Trotsky’s perfect medium for work. He likes a Labor Army better
than a fighting army because it makes him happier to build than to
destroy. But all his organizing genius goes for nothing if he cannot
have order and discipline.