February 13th.
I drank tea with an old acquaintance from the provinces, a
Russian who, before the revolution, owned a leather-bag
factory which worked in close connection with his uncle's
tannery. He gave me a short history of events at home. The
uncle had started with small capital, and during the war had
made enough to buy outright the tannery in which he had
had shares. The story of his adventures since the October
revolution is a very good illustration of the rough and ready
way in which theory gets translated into practice. I am
writing it, as nearly as possible, as it was told by the nephew.
During the first revolution, that is from March till October
1917, he fought hard against the workmen, and was one
of the founders of a Soviet of factory owners, the object of
which was to defeat the efforts of the workers' Soviets.*
[(*)By agreeing upon lock-outs,etc.] This, of course,
was smashed by the October Revolution, and "Uncle, after
being forced, as a property owner, to pay considerable
contributions, watched the newspapers closely, realized that
after the nationalization of the banks resistance was
hopeless, and resigned himself to do what he could, not to
lose his factory altogether."
He called together all the workmen, and proposed that they
should form an artel or co-operative society
and take the factory into their own hands, each man
contributing a thousand roubles towards the capital with
which to run it. Of course the workmen had
not got a thousand roubles apiece, "so uncle offered to pay it
in for them, on the understanding that they would eventually
pay him back." This was illegal, but the little town was a
long way from the centre of things, and it seemed a good
way out of the difficulty. He did not expect to get it back,
but he hoped in this way to keep control of the tannery,
which he wished to develop, having a paternal interest in it.
Things worked very well. They elected a committee of
control. "Uncle was elected president, I was elected
vice-president, and there were three workmen. We are
working on those lines to this day. They give uncle 1,500
roubles a month, me a thousand, and the bookkeeper a
thousand. The only difficulty is that the men will treat uncle
as the owner, and this may mean trouble if things go wrong.
Uncle is for ever telling them, It's your factory, don't call
me Master,' and they reply, 'Yes, it's our factory all right, but
you are still Master, and that must be.'"
Trouble came fast enough, with the tax levied on the
propertied classes. "Uncle," very wisely, had ceased to be a
property owner. He had given up his house to the factory,
and been allotted rooms in it, as president of the factory
Soviet. He was therefore really unable to pay when the
people from the District Soviet came to tell him that he had
been assessed to pay a tax of sixty thousand roubles. He
explained the position. The nephew was also present and
joined in the argument, whereupon the tax-collectors
consulted a bit of paper and retorted, "A tax of twenty
thousand has been assessed on you too. Be so good as to
put your coat on."
That meant arrest, and the nephew said he had five
thousand roubles and would pay that, but could pay no
more. Would that do?
"Very well," said the tax-collector, "fetch it."
The nephew fetched it.
"And now put your coat on."
"But you said it would be all right if I paid the five
thousand!"
"That's the only way to deal with people like you. We
recognize that your case is hard, and we dare say that you
will get off. But the Soviet has told us to collect the whole
tax or the people who refuse to pay it, and they have
decreed that if we came back without one or the other, we
shall go to prison ourselves. You can hardly expect us to go
and sit in prison out of pity for you. So on with your coat
and come along."
They went, and at the militia headquarters were shut into a
room with barred windows where they were presently joined
by most of the other rich men of the town, all in a rare state
of indignation, and some of them very angry with "Uncle,"
for taking things so quietly. "Uncle was worrying about
nothing in the world but the tannery and the
leather-works which he was afraid might get into
difficulties now that both he and I were under lock and key."
The plutocracy of the town being thus gathered in the little
room at the militia-house, their wives came, timorously at first, and
chattered through the windows. My informant, being
unmarried, sent word to two or three of his friends, in order
that he might not be the only one without some one to talk
with outside. The noise was something prodigious, and the
head of the militia finally ran out into the street and arrested
one of the women, but was so discomfited when she
removed her shawl and he recognized her as his hostess at a
house where he had been billeted as a soldier that he
hurriedly let her go. The extraordinary parliament between
the rich men of the town and their wives and friends, like a
crowd of hoodie crows, chattering outside the window,
continued until dark.
Next day the workmen from the tannery came to the
militia-house and explained that "Uncle" had really
ceased to be a member of the propertied classes,
that he was necessary to them as president of their soviet,
and that they were willing to secure his release by
paying half of the tax demanded from him out
of the factory funds. Uncle got together thirty
thousand, the factory contributed another thirty, and he was
freed, being given a certificate that he had ceased to be an
exploiter or a property owner, and would in future be
subject only to such taxes as might be levied on the working
population. The nephew was also freed, on the grounds that
he was wanted at the leather-works.
I asked him how things were going on. He said, "Fairly
well, only uncle keeps worrying because the men still call
him 'Master.' Otherwise, he is very happy because he has
persuaded the workmen to set aside a large proportion of the
profits for developing the business and building a new wing
to the tannery."
"Do the men work?"
"Well," he said, "we thought that when the factory was in
their own hands they would work better, but we do not think
they do so, not noticeably, anyhow."
"Do they work worse?"
"No, that is not noticeable either."
I tried to get at his political views. Last summer he had
told me that the Soviet Government could not last more than
another two or three months. He was then looking forward
to its downfall. Now he did not like it any better, but he was
very much afraid of war being brought into Russia, or rather
of the further disorders which war would cause. He took a
queer sort of pride in the way in which the territory of the
Russian republic was gradually resuming its old frontiers.
"In the old days no one ever thought the Red Army would
come to anything," he said. "You can't expect much from
the Government, but it does keep order, and I can do my
work and rub along all right." It was quite funny to hear him
in one breath grumbling at the revolution and in the next
anxiously asking whether I did not think they had weathered
the storm, so that there would be no more disorders.
Knowing that in some country places there had been
appalling excesses, I asked him how the Red Terror that
followed the attempt on the life of Lenin had shown itself in
their district. He laughed.
"We got off very cheaply," he said. "This is what
happened. A certain rich merchant's widow had a fine
house, with enormous stores of all kinds of things, fine
knives and forks, and too many of everything. For instance,
she had twenty-two samovars of all sizes and sorts. Typical
merchant's house, so many tablecloths that they could not
use them all if they lived to be a hundred. Well, one fine
day, early last summer, she was told that her house was
wanted and that she must clear out. For two days she ran
hither and thither trying to get out of giving it up. Then she
saw it was no good, and piled all those things, samovars and
knives and forks and dinner services and tablecloths and
overcoats (there were over a dozen fur overcoats) in the
garrets which she closed and sealed, and got the president of
the Soviet to come and put his seal also. In the end things
were so friendly that he even put a sentinel there to see that
the seal should not be broken. Then came the news from
Petrograd and Moscow about the Red terror, and the Soviet,
after holding a meeting and deciding that it ought to do
something, and being on too good terms with all of us to do
anything very bad, suddenly remembered poor Maria
Nicolaevna's garrets. They broke the seals and tumbled out
all the kitchen things, knives, forks, plates, furniture, the
twenty-two samovars and the overcoats, took them in carts
to the Soviet and declared them national property. National
property! And a week or two later there was a wedding of a
daughter of one of the members of the Soviet, and somehow
or other the knives and forks were on the table, and as for
samovars, there were enough to make tea for a hundreds."