MARIA SPIRIDONOVA
The Commissariat of Education also included the Department of Museums.
The Petrograd Museum of the Revolution had two chairmen; Lunacharsky
being one of them, it was necessary to secure his signature to our
credentials which had already been signed by Zinoviev, the second
chairman of the Museum. I was commissioned to see Lunacharsky.
I felt rather guilty before him. I left Moscow in March promising
to return within a week to join him in his work. Now, four months
later, I came to ask his coöperation in an entirely different field.
I went to the Kremlin determined to tell Lunacharsky how I felt about
the situation in Russia. But I was relieved of the necessity by the
presence of a number of people in his office; there was no time to
take the matter up. I could merely inform Lunacharsky of the purpose
of the expedition and request his aid in the work. It met with his
approval. He signed our credentials and also supplied me with letters
of introduction and recommendation to facilitate our efforts in behalf
of the Museum.
While our Commission was making the necessary preparations for the trip
to the Ukraine, I found time to visit various institutions in Moscow
and to meet some interesting people. Among them were certain well-known
Left Social Revolutionists whom I had met on my previous visit. I
had told them then that I was eager to visit Maria Spiridonova, of
whose condition I had heard many conflicting stories. But at that
time no meeting could be arranged: it might have exposed Spiridonova
to danger, for she was living illegally, as a peasant woman. History
indeed repeats itself. Under the Tsar Spiridonova, also disguised as
a country girl, had shadowed Lukhanovsky, the Governor of Tamboy, of
peasant-flogging fame. Having shot him, she was arrested, tortured,
and later sentenced to death. The western world became aroused, and it
was due to its protests that the sentence of Spiridonova was changed
to Siberian exile for life. She spent eleven years there; the February
Revolution brought her freedom and back to Russia. Maria Spiridonova
immediately threw herself into revolutionary activity. Now, in the
Socialist Republic, Maria was again living in disguise after having
escaped from the prison in the Kremlin.
Arrangements were finally made to enable me to visit Spiridonova, and
I was cautioned to make sure that I was not followed by Tcheka men.
We agreed with Maria's friends upon a meeting place and from there we
zigzagged a number of streets till we at last reached the top floor of
a house in the back of a yard. I was led into a small room containing
a bed, small desk, bookcase, and several chairs. Before the desk,
piled high with letters and papers, sat a frail little woman, Maria
Spiridonova. This, then, was one of Russia's great martyrs, this woman
who had so unflinchingly suffered the tortures inflicted upon her
by the Tsar's henchmen. I had been told by Zorin and Jack Reed that
Spiridonova had suffered a breakdown, and was kept in a sanatorium.
Her malady, they said, was acute neurasthenia and hysteria. When I
came face to face with Maria, I immediately realized that both men
had deceived me. I was no longer surprised at Zorin: much of what he
had told me I gradually discovered to be utterly false. As to Reed,
unfamiliar with the language and completely under the sway of the new
faith, he took too much for granted. Thus, on his return from Moscow
he came to inform me that the story of the shooting of prisoners _en
masse_ on the eve of the abolition of capital punishment was really
true; but, he assured me, it was all the fault of a certain official of
the Tcheka who had already paid with his life for it. I had opportunity
to investigate the matter. I found that Jack had again been misled. It
was not that a certain man was responsible for the wholesale killing
on that occasion. The act was conditioned in the whole system and
character of the Tcheka.
I spent two days with Maria Spiridonova, listening to her recital of
events since October, 1917. She spoke at length about the enthusiasm
and zeal of the masses and the hopes held out by the Bolsheviki; of
their ascendancy to power and gradual turn to the right. She explained
the Brest-Litovsk peace which she considered as the first link in
the chain that has since fettered the Revolution. She dwelt on the
_razverstka_, the system of forcible requisition, which was devastating
Russia and discrediting everything the Revolution had been fought for;
she referred to the terrorism practised by the Bolsheviki against
every revolutionary criticism, to the new Communist bureaucracy and
inefficiency, and the hopelessness of the whole situation. It was a
crushing indictment against the Bolsheviki, their theories and methods.
If Spiridonova had really suffered a breakdown, as I had been
assured, and was hysterical and mentally unbalanced, she must have
had extraordinary control of herself. She was calm, self-contained,
and clear on every point. She had the fullest command of her material
and information. On several occasions during her narrative, when she
detected doubt in my face, she remarked: "I fear you don't quite
believe me. Well, here is what some of the peasants write me," and
she would reach over to a pile of letters on her desk and read to me
passages heart-rending with misery and bitter against the Bolsheviki.
In stilted handwriting, sometimes almost illegible, the peasants of the
Ukraine and Siberia wrote of the horrors of the _razverstka_ and what
it had done to them and their land. "They have taken away everything,
even the last seeds for the next sowing." "The Commissars have robbed
us of everything." Thus ran the letters. Frequently peasants wanted to
know whether Spiridonova had gone over to the Bolsheviki. "If you also
forsake us, _matushka_, we have no one to turn to," one peasant wrote.
The enormity of her accusations challenged credence. After all, the
Bolsheviki were revolutionists. How could they be guilty of the
terrible things charged against them? Perhaps they were not responsible
for the situation as it had developed; they had the whole world
against them. There was the Brest peace, for instance. When the news
of it first reached America I happened to be in prison. I reflected
long and carefully whether Soviet Russia was justified in negotiating
with German imperialism. But I could see no way out of the situation.
I was in favour of the Brest peace. Since I came to Russia I heard
conflicting versions of it. Nearly everyone, excepting the Communists,
considered the Brest agreement as much a betrayal of the Revolution as
the rôle of the German Socialists in the war--a betrayal of the spirit
of internationalism. The Communists, on the other hand, were unanimous
in defending the peace and denouncing as counter-revolutionist
everybody who questioned the wisdom and the revolutionary justification
of that agreement. "We could do nothing else," argued the Communists.
"Germany had a mighty army, while we had none. Had we refused to sign
the Brest treaty we should have sealed the fate of the Revolution. We
realized that Brest meant a compromise, but we knew that the workers
of Russia and the rest of the world would understand that we had been
forced to it. Our compromise was similar to that of workers when
they are forced to accept the conditions of their masters after an
unsuccessful strike."
But Spiridonova was not convinced. "There is not one word of truth in
the argument advanced by the Bolsheviki," she said. It is true that
Russia had no disciplined army to meet the German advance, but it had
something infinitely more effective: it had a conscious revolutionary
people who would have fought back the invaders to the last drop of
blood. As a matter of fact, it was the people who had checked all
the counter-revolutionary military attempts against Russia. Who else
but the people, the peasants and the workers, made it impossible for
the German and Austrian army to remain in the Ukraine? Who defeated
Denikin and the other counter-revolutionary generals? Who triumphed
over Koltchak and Yudenitch? Lenin and Trotsky claim that it was the
Red Army. But the historic truth was that the voluntary military
units of the workers and peasants--the _povstantsi_--in Siberia as
well as in the south of Russia--had borne the brunt of the fighting
on every front, the Red Army usually only completing the victories of
the former. Trotsky would have it now that the Brest treaty had to be
accepted, but he himself had at one time refused to sign the treaty and
Radek, Joffe, and other leading Communists had also been opposed to it.
It is claimed now that they submitted to the shameful terms because
they realized the hopelessness of their expectation that the German
workers would prevent the Junkers from marching against revolutionary
Russia. But that was not the true reason. It was the whip of the party
discipline which lashed Trotsky and others into submission.
"The trouble with the Bolsheviki," continued Spiridonova, "is that
they have no faith in the masses. They proclaimed themselves a
proletarian party, but they refused to trust the workers." It was
this lack of faith, Maria emphasized, which made the Communists bow
to German imperialism. And as concerns the Revolution itself, it was
precisely the Brest peace which struck it a fatal blow. Aside from
the betrayal of Finland, White Russia, Latvia, and the Ukraine--which
were turned over to the mercy of the German Junkers by the Brest
peace--the peasants saw thousands of their brothers slain, and had
to submit to being robbed and plundered. The simple peasant mind
could not understand the complete reversal of the former Bolshevik
slogans of "no indemnity and no annexations." But even the simplest
peasant could understand that his toil and his blood were to pay the
indemnities imposed by the Brest conditions. The peasants grew bitter
and antagonistic to the Soviet régime. Disheartened and discouraged
they turned from the Revolution. As to the effect of the Brest peace
upon the German workers, how could they continue in their faith in the
Russian Revolution in view of the fact that the Bolsheviki negotiated
and accepted the peace terms with the German masters over the heads of
the German proletariat? The historic fact remains that the Brest peace
was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution. No doubt other
factors contributed to the debacle, but Brest was the most fatal of
them.
Spiridonova asserted that the Left Socialist Revolutionary elements had
warned the Bolsheviki against that peace and fought it desperately.
They refused to accept it even after it had been signed. The presence
of Mirbach in Revolutionary Russia they considered an outrage against
the Revolution, a crying injustice to the heroic Russian people who had
sacrificed and suffered so much in their struggle against imperialism
and capitalism. Spiridonova's party decided that Mirbach could not
be tolerated in Russia: Mirbach had to go. Wholesale arrests and
persecutions followed upon the execution of Mirbach, the Bolsheviki
rendering service to the German Kaiser. They filled the prisons with
the Russian revolutionists.
In the course of our conversation I suggested that the method of
_razverstka_ was probably forced upon the Bolsheviki by the refusal of
the peasants to feed the city. In the beginning of the revolutionary
period, Spiridonova explained, so long as the peasant Soviets existed,
the peasants gave willingly and generously. But when the Bolshevik
Government began to dissolve these Soviets and arrested 500 peasant
delegates, the peasantry became antagonistic. Moreover, they daily
witnessed the inefficiency of the Communist régime: they saw their
products lying at side stations and rotting away, or in possession of
speculators on the market. Naturally under such conditions they would
not continue to give. The fact that the peasants had never refused to
contribute supplies to the Red Army proved that other methods than
those used by the Bolsheviki could have been employed. The _razverstka_
served only to widen the breach between the village and the city. The
Bolsheviki resorted to punitive expeditions which became the terror of
the country. They left death and ruin wherever they came. The peasants,
at last driven to desperation, began to rebel against the Communist
régime. In various parts of Russia, in the south, on the Ural, and in
Siberia, peasants' insurrections have taken place, and everywhere they
were being put down by force of arms and with an iron hand.
Spiridonova did not speak of her own sufferings since she had parted
ways with the Bolsheviki. But I learned from others that she had been
arrested twice and imprisoned for a considerable length of time. Even
when free she was kept under surveillance, as she had been in the time
of the Tsar. On several occasions she was tortured by being taken
out at night and informed that she was to be shot--a favoured Tcheka
method. I mentioned the subject to Spiridonova. She did not deny the
facts, though she was loath to speak of herself. She was entirely
absorbed in the fate of the Revolution and of her beloved peasantry.
She gave no thought to herself, but she was eager to have the world and
the international proletariat learn the true condition of affairs in
Bolshevik Russia.
Of all the opponents of the Bolsheviki I had met Maria Spiridonova
impressed me as one of the most sincere, well-poised, and convincing.
Her heroic past and her refusal to compromise her revolutionary ideas
under Tsarism as well as under Bolshevism were sufficient guarantee of
her revolutionary integrity.