It was a rare cold day when I struggled through the crowd
out of the station in Moscow, and began fighting with the
sledge-drivers who asked a hundred roubles to take me to
the Metropole. I remembered coming here a year ago with
Colonel Robins, when we made ten roubles a limit for the
journey and often travelled for eight. To-day, after heated
bargaining, I got carried with no luggage but a typewriter for
fifty roubles. The streets were white with deep snow, less
well cleaned than the Petrograd streets of this year but better
cleaned than the Moscow streets of last year. The tramways
were running. There seemed to be at least as many sledges
as usual, and the horses were in slightly better condition than
last summer when they were scarcely able to drag
themselves along. I asked the reason of the improvement,
and the driver told me the horses]26]were now rationed like
human beings, and all got a small allowance of oats. There
were crowds of people about, but the numbers of closed
shops were very depressing. I did not then know that this
was due to the nationalization of trade and a sort of general
stock-taking, the object of which was to prevent
profiteering in manufactured goods, etc., of which there
were not enough to go round. Before I left many shops
were being reopened as national concerns, like our own
National Kitchens. Thus, one would see over a shop the
inscription, "The 5th Boot Store of the Moscow Soviet" or
"The 3rd Clothing Store of the Moscow Soviet" or "The
11th Book Shop." It had been found that speculators
bought, for example, half a dozen overcoats, and sold them
to the highest bidders, thus giving the rich an advantage over
the poor. Now if a man needs a new suit he has to go in his
rags to his House Committee, and satisfy them that he really
needs a new suit for himself. He is then given the right to
buy a suit. In this way an attempt is made to prevent
speculation and to ensure a more or less equitable
distribution of the inadequate stocks. My greatest surprise
was given me by the Metropole itself, because the old
wounds of the revolution, which were left unhealed all last
summer, the shell-holes and bullet splashes which marked it
when I was here before, have been repaired.
Litvinov had given me a letter to Karakhan of the
Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, asking him to help me in
getting a room. I found him at the Metropole, still smoking
as it were the cigar of six months ago. Karakhan, a
handsome Armenian, elegantly bearded and moustached,
once irreverently described by Radek as "a donkey of
classical beauty," who has consistently used such influence
as he has in favour of moderation and agreement with the
Allies, greeted me very cordially, and told me that the
foreign visitors were to be housed in the Kremlin. I told him
I should much prefer to live in an hotel in the ordinary way,
and he at once set about getting a room for me. This was no
easy business, though he obtained an authorization from
Sverdlov, president of the executive committee, for me to
live where I wished, in the Metropole or the National, which
are mostly reserved for Soviet delegates, officials and
members of the Executive Committee. Both were full, and
he finally got me a room in the old Loskutnaya Hotel, now
the Red Fleet, partially reserved for sailor delegates and
members of the Naval College.
Rooms are distributed on much the same plan as clothes.
Housing is considered a State monopoly, and a general
census of housing accommodation has taken place. In every
district there are housing committees to whom people
wanting rooms apply. They work on the rough and ready
theory that until every man has one room no one has a right
to two. An Englishman acting as manager of works near
Moscow told me that part of his house had been allotted to
workers in his factory, who, however, were living with him
amicably, and had, I think, allowed him to choose which
rooms he should concede. This plan has, of course, proved
very hard on house-owners, and in some cases the new
tenants have made a horrible mess of the houses, as might,
indeed, have been expected, seeing that they had previously
been of those who had suffered directly from the
decivilizing influences of overcrowding. After talking for
some time we went round the corner to the Commissariat
for Foreign Affairs, where we found Chicherin who, I
thought, had aged a good deal and was (though this was
perhaps his manner) less cordial than Karakhan. He asked
about England, and I told him Litvinov knew more about
that than I, since he had been there more recently. He asked
what I thought would be the effect of his Note with detailed
terms published that day. I told him that Litvinov, in an
interview which I had telegraphed, had mentioned somewhat
similar terms some time before, and that personally I
doubted whether the Allies would at present come to any
agreement with the Soviet Government, but that, if the
Soviet Government lasted, my personal opinion was that the
commercial isolation of so vast a country as Russia could
hardly be prolonged indefinitely on that account alone. (For
the general attitude to that Note, see page 44.)
I then met Voznesensky (Left Social Revolutionary), of the
Oriental Department, bursting with criticism of the
Bolshevik attitude towards his party. He secured a ticket for
me to get dinner in the Metropole. This ticket I had to
surrender when I got a room in the National. The dinner
consisted of a plate of soup, and a very small portion of
something else. There are National Kitchens in different
parts of the town supplying similar meals. Glasses of weak
tea were sold at 30 kopecks each, without sugar. My sister
had sent me a small bottle of saccharine just before I left
Stockholm, and it was pathetic to see the childish delight
with which some of my friends drank glasses of sweetened
tea.
>From the Metropole I went to the Red Fleet to get my room
fixed up. Six months ago there were comparatively clean
rooms here, but the sailors have demoralized the hotel and
its filth is indescribable. There was no heating and very little
light. A samovar left after the departure of the last visitor
was standing on the table, together with some dirty
curl-papers and other rubbish. I got the waiter to clean up
more or less, and ordered a new samovar. He could not
supply spoon, knife, or fork, and only with great difficulty
was persuaded to lend me glasses.
The telephone, however, was working, and after tea I got
into touch with Madame Radek, who had moved from the
Metropole into the Kremlin. I had not yet got a pass to the
Kremlin, so she arranged to meet me and get a pass for me
from the Commandant. I walked through the snow to the
white gate at the end of the bridge which leads over the
garden up a steep incline to the Kremlin. Here a fire of logs
was burning, and three soldiers were sitting around it.
Madame Radek was waiting for me, warming her hands at
the fire, and we went together into the citadel of the
republic.
A meeting of the People's Commissars was going on in the
Kremlin, and on an open space under the ancient churches
were a number of motors black on the snow. We turned to
the right down the Dvortzovaya street, between the old
Cavalier House and the Potyeshny Palace, and went in
through a door under the archway that crosses the road, and
up some dark flights of stairs to a part of the building that
used, I think, to be called the Pleasure Palace. Here, in a
wonderful old room, hung with Gobelins tapestries
absolutely undamaged by the revolution, and furnished with
carved chairs, we found the most incongruous figure of
the old Swiss internationalist, Karl Moor, who talked with
affection of Keir Hardie and of Hyndman, "in the days
when he was a socialist," and was disappointed to find that I
knew so little about them. Madame Radek asked, of course,
for the latest news of Radek, and I told her that I had read in
the Stockholm papers that he had gone to Brunswick, and
was said to be living in the palace there.* [(*)It was not
till later that we learned he had returned to Berlin, been
arrested, and put in prison.] She feared he might have been
in Bremen when that town was taken by the Government
troops, and did not believe he would ever get back to Russia.
She asked me, did I not feel already (as indeed I did) the
enormous difference which the last six months had made in
strengthening the revolution. I asked after old
acquaintances, and learnt that Pyatakov, who, when I last
saw him, was praying that the Allies should give him
machine rifles to use against the Germans in the Ukraine,
had been the first President of the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic, but had since been replaced by Rakovsky. It had
been found that the views of the Pyatakov government
were further left than those of its supporters, and so
Pyatakov had given way to Rakovsky who was better able to
conduct a more moderate policy. The Republic had been
proclaimed in Kharkov, but at that time Kiev was still in the
hands of the Directorate.
That night my room in the Red Fleet was so cold that I went
to bed in a sheepskin coat under rugs and all possible
bedclothes with a mattress on the top. Even so I slept very
badly.
The next day I spent in vain wrestlings to get a better room.
Walking about the town I found it dotted with revolutionary
sculptures, some very bad, others interesting, all done in
some haste and set up for the celebrations of the anniversary
of the revolution last November. The painters also had been
turned loose to do what they could with the hoardings, and
though the weather had damaged many of their pictures,
enough was left to show what an extraordinary carnival that
had been. Where a hoarding ran along the front of a house
being repaired the painters had used the whole of it as a vast
canvas on which they had painted huge symbolic pictures
of the revolution. A whole block in the Tverskaya was so
decorated. Best, I think, were the row of wooden booths
almost opposite the Hotel National in the Okhotnia Ryadi.
These had been painted by the futurists or kindred artists,
and made a really delightful effect, their bright colours and
naif patterns seeming so natural to Moscow that I found
myself wondering how it was that they had never been so
painted before. They used to be a uniform dull yellow.
Now, in clear primary colours, blue, red, yellow, with rough
flower designs, on white and chequered back-grounds, with
the masses of snow in the road before them, and
bright-kerchiefed women and peasants in ruddy sheepskin coats
passing by, they seemed less like futurist paintings than like
some traditional survival, linking new Moscow with the
Middle Ages. It is perhaps interesting to note that certain
staid purists in the Moscow Soviet raised a protest while I
was there against the license given to the futurists to spread
themselves about the town, and demanded that the art of the
revolution should be more comprehensible and less violent.
These criticisms, however, did not apply to the row of
booths which were a pleasure to me every time I passed
them.
In the evening I went to see Reinstein in the National.
Reinstein is a little old grandfather, a member of the
American Socialist Labour Party, who was tireless in helping
the Americans last year, and is a prodigy of knowledge
about the revolution. He must be nearly seventy, never
misses a meeting of the Moscow Soviet or the Executive
Committee, gets up at seven in the morning, and goes from
one end of Moscow to the other to lecture to the young men
in training as officers for the Soviet Army, more or less
controls the English soldier war prisoners, about whose
Bolshevism he is extremely pessimistic, and enjoys an
official position as head of the quite futile department which
prints hundred-weight upon hundred-weight of
propaganda in English, none of which by any chance ever
reaches these shores. He was terribly disappointed that I had
brought no American papers with me. He complained of
the lack of transport, a complaint which I think I must have
heard at least three times a day from different people the
whole time I was in Moscow. Politically, he thought, the
position could not be better, though economically it was very
bad. When they had corn, as it were, in sight, they could
not get it to the towns for lack of locomotives. These
economic difficulties were bound to react sooner or later on
the political position.
He talked about the English prisoners. The men are brought
to Moscow, where they are given special passports and are
allowed to go anywhere they like about the town without
convoy of any kind. I asked about the officers, and he said
that they were in prison but given everything possible, a
member of the International Red Cross, who worked with
the Americans when they were here, visiting them regularly
and taking in parcels for them. He told me that on hearing
in Moscow that some sort of fraternization was going on on
the Archangel front, he had hurried off there with two
prisoners, one English and one American. With some
difficulty a meeting was arranged. Two officers and a
sergeant from the Allied side and Reinstein and these two
prisoners from the Russian, met on a bridge midway
between the opposing lines. The conversation seemed
to have been mostly an argument about working-class
conditions in America, together with reasons why the Allies
should go home and leave Russia alone. Finally the Allied
representatives (I fancy Americans) asked Reinstein to come
with them to Archangel and state his case, promising him
safe conduct there and back. By this time two Russians had
joined the group, and one of them offered his back as a
desk, on which a safe-conduct for Reinstein was written.
Reinstein, who showed me the safe-conduct, doubted its
validity, and said that anyhow he could not have used it
without instructions from Moscow. When it grew dusk they
prepared to separate. The officers said to the prisoners,
"What? Aren't you coming back with us?" The two shook
their heads decidedly, and said, "No, thank you."
I learnt that some one was leaving the National next day to
go to Kharkov, so that I should probably be able to get a
room. After drinking tea with Reinstein till pretty late, I
went home, burrowed into a mountain of all sorts of clothes,
and slept a little.
In the morning I succeeded in making out my claim to
the room at the National, which turned out to be a very
pleasant one, next door to the kitchen and therefore quite
decently warm. I wasted a lot of time getting my stuff
across. Transport from one hotel to the other, though the
distance is not a hundred yards, cost forty roubles. I got
things straightened out, bought some books, and prepared a
list of the material needed and the people I wanted to see.
The room was perfectly clean. The chamber-maid
who came in to tidy up quite evidently took
a pride in doing her work properly, and protested against
my throwing matches on the floor. She said she had been in
the hotel since it was opened. I asked her how she liked the
new regime. She replied that there was not enough to eat,
but that she felt freer.
In the afternoon I went downstairs to the main kitchens of
the hotel, where there is a permanent supply of hot water.
One enormous kitchen is set apart for the use of people
living in the hotel. Here I found a crowd of people, all using
different parts of the huge stove. There was an old
grey-haired Cossack, with a scarlet tunic under his black,
wide-skirted, narrow-waisted coat, decorated in the
Cossack fashion with ornamental cartridges. He was
warming his soup, side by side with a little Jewess making
potato-cakes. A spectacled elderly member of the
Executive Committee was busy doing something with a little
bit of meat. Two little girls were boiling potatoes in old tin
cans. In another room set apart for washing a sturdy little
long-haired revolutionary was cleaning a shirt. A woman
with her hair done up in a blue handkerchief was very
carefully ironing a blouse. Another was busy stewing sheets,
or something of that kind, in a big cauldron. And all the
time people from all parts of the hotel were coming with
their pitchers and pans, from fine copper kettles to
disreputable empty meat tins, to fetch hot water for tea. At
the other side of the corridor was a sort of counter in front
of a long window opening into yet another kitchen. Here
there was a row of people waiting with their own saucepans
and plates, getting their dinner allowances of soup and meat
in exchange for tickets. I was told that people thought they
got slightly more if they took their food in this way
straight from the kitchen to their own rooms instead of being
served in the restaurant. But I watched closely, and decided
it was only superstition. Besides, I had not got a saucepan.
On paying for my room at the beginning of the week I was
given a card with the days of the week printed along its
edge. This card gave me the right to buy one dinner daily,
and when I bought it that day of the week was snipped off
the card so that I could not buy another. The meal consisted
of a plate of very good soup, together with a second course
of a scrap of meat or fish. The price of the meal varied
between five and seven roubles.
One could obtain this meal any time between two and seven.
Living hungrily through the morning, at two o'clock I used to
experience definite relief in the knowledge that now at any
moment I could have my meal. Feeling in this way less
hungry, I used then to postpone it hour by hour, and actually
dined about five or six o'clock. Thinking that I might indeed
have been specially favoured I made investigations, and
found that the dinners supplied at the public feeding
houses (the equivalent of our national kitchens) were of
precisely the same size and character, any difference
between the meals depending not on the food but on the
cook.
A kind of rough and ready co-operative system also
obtained. One day there was a notice on the stairs that those
who wanted could get one pot of jam apiece by applying to
the provisioning committee of the hotel. I got a pot of jam
in this way, and on a later occasion a small quantity of
Ukrainian sausage.
Besides the food obtainable on cards it was possible to buy,
at ruinous prices, food from speculators, and an idea of the
difference in the prices may be obtained from the following
examples: Bread is one rouble 20 kopecks per pound by
card and 15 to 20 roubles per pound from the speculators.
Sugar is 12 roubles per pound by card, and never less than
50 roubles per pound in the open market. It is obvious that
abolition of the card system would mean that the rich would
have enough and the poor nothing. Various methods have
been tried in the effort to get rid of speculators whose
high profits naturally decrease the willingness of the villages
to sell bread at less abnormal rates. But as a Communist
said to me, "There is only one way to get rid of speculation,
and that is to supply enough on the card system. When
People can buy all they want at 1 rouble 20 they are not
going to pay an extra 14 roubles for the encouragement of
speculators." "And when will you be able to do that?" I
asked. "As soon as the war ends, and we can use our
transport for peaceful purposes."
There can be no question about the starvation of Moscow.
On the third day after my arrival in Moscow I saw a man
driving a sledge laden with, I think, horseflesh, mostly
bones, probably dead sledge horses. As he drove a black
crowd of crows followed the sledge and perched on it,
tearing greedily at the meat. He beat at them continually
with his whip, but they were so famished that they took no
notice whatever. The starving crows used even to force
their way through the small ventilators of the windows in my
hotel to pick up any scraps they could find inside. The
pigeons, which formerly crowded the streets,
utterly undismayed by the traffic, confident in the
security given by their supposed connection with religion,
have completely disappeared.
Nor can there be any question about the cold. I resented my
own sufferings less when I found that the State Departments
were no better off than other folk. Even in the Kremlin I
found the Keeper of the Archives sitting at work in an old
sheepskin coat and felt boots, rising now and then to beat
vitality into his freezing hands like a London cabman of old
times.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ON THE REPLY
TO THE PRINKIPO PROPOSAL
February 10th.
It will be remembered that a proposal was made by the
Peace Conference that the various de facto governments of
Russia should meet on an island in the Bosphorus to discuss
matters, an armistice being arranged meanwhile. No direct
invitation was sent to the Soviet Government. After
attempting to obtain particulars through the editor of a
French socialist paper, Chicherin on February 4th sent a
long note to the Allies. The note was not at first considered
with great favour in Russia, although it was approved by the
opposition parties on the right, the Mensheviks even going
so far as to say that in sending such a note, the Bolsheviks
were acting in the interest of the whole of the Russian
people. The opposition on the left complained
that it was a betrayal of the revolution into the
hands of the Entente, and there were many Bolsheviks
who said openly that they thought it went a little
too far in the way of concession. On February 10th, the
Executive Committee met to consider the international
position.
Before proceeding to an account of that meeting, it will be
well to make a short summary of the note in question.
Chicherin, after referring to the fact that no invitation had
been addressed to them and that the absence of a reply from
them was being treated as the rejection of a proposal they
had never received, said that in spite of its more and more
favourable position, the Russian Soviet Government
considered a cessation of hostilities so desirable that it was
ready immediately to begin negotiations, and, as it had more
than once declared, to secure agreement "even at the cost of
serious concessions in so far as these should not threaten the
development of the Republic." "Taking into consideration
that the enemies against whom it has to struggle borrow their
strength of resistance exclusively from the help shown them
by the powers of the Entente, and that therefore these
powers are the only actual enemy of the Russian Soviet
Government, the latter addresses itself precisely to the
powers of the Entente, setting out the points on which it
considers such concessions possible with a view to the
ending of every kind of conflict with the aforesaid powers."
There follows a list of the concessions they are prepared to
make. The first of these is recognition of their debts, the
interest on which, "in view of Russia's difficult financial
position and her unsatisfactory credit," they propose to
guarantee in raw materials. Then, "in view of the interest
continually expressed by foreign capital in the question of
the exploitation for its advantage of the natural resources of
Russia, the Soviet Government is ready to give to subjects of
the powers of the Entente mineral, timber and other
concessions, to be defined in detail, on condition that the
economic and social structure of Soviet Russia shall not be
touched by the internal arrangements of these concessions."
The last point is that which roused most opposition. It
expresses a willingness to negotiate even concerning such
annexations, hidden or open, as the Allies may have in
mind. The words used are "The Russian Soviet
Government has not the intention of excluding at all costs
consideration of the question of annexations, etc. . . ." Then,
"by annexations must be understood the retention on this or
that part of the territory of what was the Russian Empire,
not including Poland and Finland, of armed forces of the
Entente or of such forces as are maintained by the
governments of the Entente or enjoy their financial, military,
technical or other support." There follows a statement that
the extent of the concessions will depend on the military
position. Chicherin proceeds to give a rather optimistic
account of the external and internal situation. Finally he
touches on the question of propaganda. "The Russian
Soviet Government, while pointing out that it cannot limit
the freedom of the revolutionary press, declares its
readiness, in case of necessity to include in the general
agreement with the powers of the Entente the obligation not
to interfere in their internal affairs." The note ends thus:
"On the foregoing bases the Russian Soviet Government is ready
immediately to begin negotiations either on Prinkipo island
or in any other place whatsoever with all the powers of the
Entente together or with separate powers of their number,
or with any Russian political groupings whatsoever,
according to the wishes of the powers of the Entente.
The Russian Soviet Government begs the powers of the
Entente immediately to inform it whither to send
its representatives, and precisely when and by what route."
This note was dated February 4th, and was sent out by wireless.
>From the moment when the note appeared in the
newspapers of February 5th, it had been the main subject of
conversation. Every point in it was criticized and
counter-criticized, but even its critics, though anxious to preserve
their criticism as a basis for political action afterwards, were
desperately anxious that it should meet with a reply. No one
in Moscow at that time could have the slightest misgiving
about the warlike tendencies of the revolution. The
overwhelming mass of the people and of the revolutionary
leaders want peace, and only continued warfare forced upon
them could turn their desire for peace into desperate,
resentful aggression. Everywhere I heard the same story:
"We cannot get things straight while we have to fight all the
time." They would not admit it, I am sure, but few of the
Soviet leaders who have now for eighteen months been
wrestling with the difficulties of European Russia have not
acquired, as it were in spite of themselves, a national,
domestic point of view. They are thinking less about world
revolution than about getting bread to Moscow, or
increasing the output of textiles, or building river
power-stations to free the northern industrial district from
its dependence on the distant coal-fields. I was
consequently anxious to hear what the Executive Committee
would have to say, knowing that there I should listen to
some expression of the theoretical standpoint from which
my hard-working friends had been drawn away by interests
nearer home.
The Executive Committee met as usual in the big hall of the
Hotel Metropole, and it met as usual very late. The sitting
was to begin at seven, and, foolishly thinking that Russians
might have changed their nature in the last six months, I was
punctual and found the hall nearly empty, because a
party meeting of the Communists in the room next door was
not finished. The hall looked just as it used to look, with a
red banner over the presidium and another at the opposite
end, both inscribed "The All Russian Executive Committee,"
"Proletariat of all lands, unite," and so on. As the room
gradually filled, I met many acquaintances.
Old Professor Pokrovsky came in, blinking through his
spectacles, bent a little, in a very old coat, with a small black
fur hat, his hands clasped together, just as, so I have been
told, he walked unhappily to and fro in the fortress at Brest
during the second period of the negotiations. I did not think
he would recognize me, but he came up at once, and
reminded me of the packing of the archives at the time when
it seemed likely that the Germans would take Petrograd. He
told me of a mass of material they are publishing about the
origin of the war. He said that England came out of it best
of anybody, but that France and Russia showed in a very
bad light.
Just then, Demian Bledny rolled in, fatter than he used to be
(admirers from the country send him food) with a round
face, shrewd laughing eyes, and cynical mouth, a typical
peasant, and the poet of the revolution. He was passably
shaved, his little yellow moustache was trimmed, he was
wearing new leather breeches, and seemed altogether a more
prosperous poet than the untidy ruffian I first met about a
year or more ago before his satirical poems in Pravda and
other revolutionary papers had reached the heights of
popularity to which they have since attained. In the old days
before the revolution in Petrograd he used to send his poems
to the revolutionary papers. A few were published and
scandalized the more austere and serious-minded
revolutionaries, who held a meeting to decide
whether any more were to be printed. Since the
revolution, he has rapidly come into his own, and is now a
sort of licensed jester, flagellating Communists and
non-Communists alike. Even in this assembly
he had about him a little of the manner of
Robert Burns in Edinburgh society. He told me
with expansive glee that they had printed two
hundred and fifty thousand of his last book, that the whole
edition was sold in two weeks, and that he had had his
portrait painted by a real artist. It is actually true that of his
eighteen different works, only two are obtainable today.
Madame Radek, who last year showed a genius for the
making of sandwiches with chopped leeks, and did good
work for Russia as head of the Committee for dealing with
Russian war prisoners, came and sat down beside me, and
complained bitterly that the authorities wanted to turn her
out of the grand ducal apartments in the Kremlin and make
them into a historical museum to illustrate the manner of life
of the Romanovs. She said she was sure that was simply an
excuse and that the real reason was that Madame Trotsky
did not like her having a better furnished room than her
own. It seems that the Trotskys, when they moved into the
Kremlin, chose a lodging extremely modest in comparison
with the gorgeous place where I had found Madame Radek.
All this time the room was filling, as the party meeting ended
and the members of the Executive Committee came in to
take their places. I was asking Litvinov whether he was
going to speak, when a little hairy energetic man came up
and with great delight showed us the new matches
invented in the Soviet laboratories. Russia is short of
match-wood, and without paraffin. Besides which I think I am
right in saying that the bulk of the matches used in the north
came from factories in Finland. In these new Bolshevik
matches neither wood nor paraffin is used. Waste paper is a
substitute for one, and the grease that is left after cleaning
wool is a substitute for the other. The little man, Berg,
secretary of the Presidium of the Council of Public
Economy, gave me a packet of his matches. They are like
the matches in a folding cover that used to be common in
Paris. You break off a match before striking it. They strike
and burn better than any matches I have ever bought in
Russia, and I do not see why they should not be made in
England, where we have to import all the materials of which
ordinary matches are made. I told Berg I should try to
patent them and so turn myself into a capitalist. Another
Communist, who was listening, laughed, and said that most
fortunes were founded in just such a fraudulent way.
Then there was Steklov of the Izvestia, Madame
Kollontai, and a lot of other people whose
names I do not remember. Little Bucharin, the editor of
Pravda and one of the most interesting talkers in Moscow,
who is ready to discuss any philosophy you like, from
Berkeley and Locke down to Bergson and William James,
trotted up and shook hands. Suddenly a most unexpected
figure limped through the door. This was the lame Eliava of
the Vologda Soviet, who came up in great surprise at seeing
me again, and reminded me how Radek and I, hungry from
Moscow, astonished the hotel of the Golden Anchor by
eating fifteen eggs apiece, when we came to Vologda last
summer (I acted as translator during Radek's conversations
with the American Ambassador and Mr. Lindley). Eliava is
a fine, honest fellow, and had a very difficult time in
Vologda where the large colony of foreign embassies and
missions naturally became the centre of disaffection in a
district which at the time was full of inflammable material. I
remember when we parted from him, Radek said to me that
he hardly thought he would see him alive again. He told me
he had left Vologda some three months ago and was now
going to Turkestan. He did not disguise the resentment
he felt towards M. Noulens (the French Ambassador) who,
he thought, had stood in the way of agreement last year, but
said that he had nothing whatever to say against Lindley.
At last there was a little stir in the raised presidium, and the
meeting began. When I saw the lean, long-haired Avanesov
take his place as secretary, and Sverdlov, the president, lean
forward a little, ring his bell, and announce that the meeting
was open and that "Comrade Chicherin has the word," I
could hardly believe that I had been away six months.
Chicherin's speech took the form of a general report on the
international situation. He spoke a little more clearly than he
was used to do, but even so I had to walk round to a place
close under the tribune before I could hear him. He
sketched the history of the various steps the Soviet
Government has taken in trying to secure peace, even
including such minor "peace offensives" as Litvinov's
personal telegram to President Wilson. He then weighed, in
no very hopeful spirit, the possibilities of this last Note to all
the Allies having any serious result. He estimated the
opposing tendencies for and against war with Russia in each
of the principal countries concerned. The growth of
revolutionary feeling abroad made imperialistic governments
even more aggressive towards the Workers' and Peasants'
Republic than they would otherwise be. It was now making
their intervention difficult, but no more. It was impossible to
say that the collapse of Imperialism had gone so far that it
had lost its teeth. Chicherin speaks as if he were a dead man
or a ventriloquist's lay figure. And indeed he is half-dead.
He has never learnt the art of releasing himself from
drudgery by handing it over to his subordinates. He is
permanently tired out. You feel it is almost cruel to say
"Good morning" to him when you meet him, because of the
appeal to be left alone that comes unconsciously into his
eyes. Partly in order to avoid people, partly because he is
himself accustomed to work at night, his section of the
foreign office keeps extraordinary hours, is not to be found
till about five in the afternoon and works till four in the
morning. The actual material of his report was interesting,
but there was nothing in its manner to rouse enthusiasm
of any kind. The audience listened with attention, but only
woke into real animation when with a shout of laughter it
heard an address sent to Cl=82menceau by the emigr=82
financiers, aristocrats and bankrupt politicians of the Russian
colony in Stockholm, protesting against any sort of
agreement with the Bolsheviks.
Bucharin followed Chicherin. A little eager figure in his
neat brown clothes (bought, I think, while visiting Berlin as a
member of the Economic Commission), he at least makes
himself clearly heard, though his voice has a funny tendency
to breaking. He compared the present situation with the
situation before Brest. He had himself (as I well remember)
been with Radek, one of the most violent opponents of the
Brest peace, and he now admitted that at that time Lenin had
been right and he wrong. The position was now different,
because whereas then imperialism was split into two camps
fighting each other, it now showed signs of uniting its forces.
He regarded the League of Nations as a sort of capitalist
syndicate, and said that the difference in the French and
American attitude towards the League depended upon
the position of French and American capital. Capital in
France was so weak, that she could at best be only a small
shareholder. Capital in America was in a very advantageous
position. America therefore wanted a huge All-European
syndicate in which each state would have a certain number
of shares. America, having the greatest number of shares,
would be able to exploit all the other nations. This is a fixed
idea of Bucharin's, and he has lost no opportunity of putting
out this theory of the League of Nations since the middle of
last summer. As for Chicherin's Note, he said it had at least
great historical interest on account of the language it used,
which was very different from the hypocritical language of
ordinary diplomacy. Here were no phrases about noble
motives, but a plain recognition of the facts of the case.
"Tell us what you want," it says, "and we are ready to buy
you off, in order to avoid armed conflict." Even if the Allies
gave no answer the Note would still have served a useful
purpose and would be a landmark in history.
Litvinov followed Bucharin. A solid, jolly, round man, with
his peaked grey fur hat on his head, rounder than ever in
fur-collared, thick coat, his eye-glasses slipping from his
nose as he got up, his grey muffler hanging from his neck,
he hurried to the tribune. Taking off his things and leaving
them on a chair below, he stepped up into the tribune with
his hair all rumpled, a look of extreme seriousness on his
face, and spoke with a voice whose capacity and strength
astonished me who had not heard him speak in public
before. He spoke very well, with more sequence than
Bucharin, and much vitality, and gave his summary of the
position abroad. He said (and Lenin expressed the same
view to me afterwards) that the hostility of different
countries to Soviet Russia varied in direct proportion to their
fear of revolution at home. Thus France, whose capital had
suffered most in the war and was weakest, was the most
uncompromising, while America, whose capital was in a
good position, was ready for agreement. England, with
rather less confidence, he thought was ready to follow
America. Need of raw material was the motive tending
towards agreement with Russia. Fear that the mere
existence of a Labour Government anywhere in the
world strengthens the revolutionary movement elsewhere,
was the motive for the desire to wipe out the Soviet at all
cost. Chicherin's note, he thought, would emphasize the
difference between these opposing views and would tend to
make impossible an alliance of the capitalists against Russia.
Finally, Kamenev, now President of the Moscow Soviet,
spoke, objecting to Bucharin's comparison of the peace now
sought with that of Brest Litovsk. Then everything was in a
state of experiment and untried. Now it was clear to the
world that the unity of Russia could be achieved only under
the Soviets. The powers opposed to them could not but
recognize this fact. Some parts of Russia (Ukraine) had
during the last fifteen months experienced every kind of
government, from the Soviets, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, to the dictatorship of foreign invaders and the
dictatorship of a General of the old regime, and they had
after all returned to the Soviets. Western European
imperialists must realize that the only Government in Russia
which rested on the popular masses was the Government
of the Soviets and no other. Even the paper of the
Mensheviks, commenting on Chicherin's note, had declared
that by this step the Soviet Government had shown that it
was actually a national Government acting in the interests of
the nation. He further read a statement by Right Social
Revolutionaries (delegates of that group, members of the
Constituent Assembly, were in the gallery) to the effect that
they were prepared to help the Soviet Government as the
only Government in Russia that was fighting against a
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Finally, the Committee unanimously passed a resolution
approving every step taken in trying to obtain peace, and at
the same time "sending a fraternal greeting to the Red Army
of workers and peasants engaged in ensuring the
independence of Soviet Russia." The meeting then turned to
talk of other things.
I left, rather miserable to think how little I had foreseen
when Soviet Russia was compelled last year to sign an
oppressive peace with Germany, that the time would
come when they would be trying to buy peace from
ourselves. As I went out I saw another unhappy figure,
unhappy for quite different reasons. Angelica Balabanova,
after dreaming all her life of socialism in the most fervent
Utopian spirit, had come at last to Russia to find that a
socialist state was faced with difficulties at least as real as
those which confront other states, that in the battle there was
little sentiment and much cynicism, and that dreams worked
out in terms of humanity in the face of the opposition of the
whole of the rest of the world are not easily recognized by
their dreamers. Poor little Balabanova, less than five feet
high, in a black coat that reached to her feet but did not
make her look any taller, was wandering about like a lost and
dejected spirit. Not so, she was thinking, should socialists
deal with their enemies. Somehow, but not so. Had the
silver trumpets blown seven times in vain, and was it really
necessary to set to work and, stone by stone, with bleeding
hands, level the walls of Jericho?
There was snow falling as I walked home. Two workmen,
arguing, were walking in front of me. "If only it were not
for the hunger," said one. "But will that ever change?" said
the other.