THE STATE OF MOSCOW
On the morning of Saturday, December 9th, the day after I had arrived
in Moscow, I happened to be passing the unfinished buildings of the
empty University. Minute snow was lashing through the air before a
bitter wind, but it thawed as it fell, and people in goloshes went
slopping about among the filthy puddles of the street.
Trailing in disorder through the dirt and wind, mixed up with the
market people and the little open cabs like sledges that were always
dashing up and down with men and women in furs, came a loose string
of soldiers, slowly making their way westward. They had just passed
the canvas booths where butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers and other
loyalists set upon the students with knives the month before; they had
reached the point where the soldiers from behind walls fired blindly
into the thick of the unarmed procession which accompanied the funeral
of the student Baumann. There they halted, because the cross road which
passes the great Riding School Barrack and cuts the University in half
was blocked with traffic, and then a few passers-by began to look at
them curiously.
They were not to be called a column, nor were they organized as an
advanced party. They were not organized at all; but a few cavalry came
first, their hairy little horses throwing up a steam into the wind;
then a few straggling infantry--not more than half a battalion--covered
with filth, their uniforms torn and patched, some in low, flat caps
like our own men, some in high, furry caps, matted with mud and snow.
And under the caps were faces yellow, thin, and as though bemused with
wonder. Behind the infantry followed a rambling line of various kinds
of cart, and inside the carts were stretched muffled and pallid forms,
their heads or arms or feet bound up with dirty and blood-stained
bandages.
These were the soldiers returning from the war, the van and first
instalment of that great and ruined army coming home. At last they had
completed the 5000 or 6000 miles of their journey from the starving
East, across the frozen lake, and through the long Siberian plains, and
were alive in the heart of their own country again. And this was how
they were received. Certainly, the Moscow municipality had intended to
arrange some sort of festivities at the station. They had intended to
give little presents to the men--something in the shape of chocolates
and cigarettes that comfort the hearts of heroes. They had prepared
little decorations for the officers, with the inscription, “To the
defenders of the country.” But whether these festivities were ever held
and these little presents given, no one could tell me. The papers had
announced that the army from the Far East would begin to arrive on the
Sunday. The paternal Government took care that they should arrive on
the Saturday.
Probably the town officials retained for themselves their little
offerings to patriotism, and will wear the war decorations with pride
at family parties. So little interest was taken in the whole thing that
the evening papers continued to announce that the army would begin to
arrive on the morrow. The market people and cabdrivers stopped for a
moment to look at them before hurrying on through the snow, and no
further notice of any kind was taken of the defenders of the country.
So they drifted westward, down the dirty streets, and disappeared. On
reaching the barracks, the Reservists among them were discharged, and
the crowds of beggars who, with threats and curses, violently demanded
the milk of human kindness at every corner, were increased by many
tattered figures. They limped about in traces of departed uniforms,
and as they passed, people said, “A soldier from the war.” One night
I saw two or three of them seated on a curb-stone beside a fire which
had been lighted in a street. One was swaying gently backwards and
forwards and continually repeating, “At home and alive! at home and
alive!” The others took no notice, but stared like imbeciles into the
flames.
Some were drafted back by rail to their villages, and the terror
of comfortable people was that they would there spread the tale of
mismanagement, corruption, and misery till all the peasants would rise
in fury and sweep upon the cities in ravenous and overwhelming hordes.
Sometimes a dim rumour reached us from the Far East of a distracted
army, mutinous and starving; maddened with hardship and the longing for
home, but unable to crowd into the worn-out trains that crept along
those thousands of miles of single line, choked with stores and blocked
by continual accidents and strikes. If they should all come home--all
the 500,000 or 600,000 of them at once? The comfortable citizens--and
even in Moscow there were such people--shuddered in their furs and
thanked Heaven for the difficulties of that narrow road.
On the other hand, a big manufacturer told me he was delighted to see
the army returning. “For now,” he said, “the Reservists on garrison
duty here will be dismissed, and we can always trust the Line to obey
their officers and shoot in defence of law and order.” At the time I
hoped he was over-sanguine. In Russia there is no caste of soldiers
as with us. All come from the people, and in a year or two will
return to the people. The Line are exactly the same kind of men as
the Reservists, only younger. Of course, it might happen that, being
younger, they would more likely obey, for to most people obedience is
the easiest thing to do, and a young man in uniform is almost sure to
fall into it. But for the moment that was to me just the one question
of the future; would the Line obey their officers and shoot in defence
of law and order?
There were rumours about the disaffection of a good many battalions.
The Rostoff regiment got up a little mutiny on its own account one
day, and planted guns at the corners of their barracks, but they were
soon won back by promises of bodily comfort. For the rest, the troops
patrolled the streets in mounted and unmounted parties day and night,
but no one knew whether they represented a Government or not. Their
chief duties were concentrated round the great block of Post Office
buildings. For all day long large groups of postal clerks and officials
on strike were gathered upon the pavements there, like working bees
around a ruined hive, and in the neighbouring boulevard gardens, where
girls and children skated, they assembled in eager controversy.
On the Monday morning (December 11th), I saw there a feeble little
attempt to rush a mail-cart starting for the provinces, or for the St.
Petersburg station, under mounted escort. In a moment two Cossack
patrols wheeled round and dashed at full gallop into the crowd,
striking blindly at the nearest heads with the terrible nagaikas
or loaded whips which I described before. Where the patrols had
passed, men, women, and little girls, lay felled to the ground or
stood screaming with pain while blood ran down their faces. Pushing,
stumbling, and scrambling for life, the crowd fled in panic before
the stroke of the hoofs and the whirling whips. Then I knew that
until they could face violence with some sort of organized front, the
revolutionists had better stay at home. Against twenty men in uniform,
five hundred had no chance. As a gigantic Caucasian cried in scorn the
night before to a meeting of peaceful and scientific Social Democrats,
“The party that commands force is the Government.” Who would command
force was at that time the most important question in Russia, and no
one was certain how it should be answered from day to day.
In the ordinary affairs of life we enjoyed liberty tempered by
assassination. The advance from tyranny supported by execution was
immeasurable, and it had all been accomplished in about six weeks. In
that old city, the natural centre of Russian life both by position and
trade, were gathered some 1,100,000 souls who had never known liberty
before, either in politics, economics, or thought. It was very natural
that they should not know exactly what to make of the change at
first. The surprising thing was to see how rapidly their instinct for
organization and self-government developed, especially in the working
classes. Whether one ought to trace this faculty to the old habit of
the village community among the peasants, I am not sure. But I think it
certain that the feeling for association and common action--the feeling
of “mutual aid” as Kropotkin calls it--is very widely extended among
Russians.
Every one was then waiting for the next step in history, and the
wildest rumours flew. At every corner and in every restaurant stood
prophets foretelling the fates, and winning the momentary applause of
delight or terror. But, except for such rewards, the time of prophets
was not more valuable than usual, and for ordinary people, whose
perceptions are blind to futurity, the real points of interest were
still the postal strike and the rapid formation of unions. The loss
to friendship and business owing to the cessation of letters was so
severe, that the leaders of finance and commerce in Moscow drew up
a petition to Witte and Durnavo, urging them to grant the economic
demands, especially the right of union, even if no political demands
were considered. The Government replied with a manifesto dismissing one
thousand of the postal strikers offhand, and making all strikes among
Government servants a criminal offence.
The hardship was great. Many of the strikers had served fifteen years
or more, and were entitled to pensions, which they now lost. Many
lived in Government quarters, from which they were now evicted. The
Progressives certainly did all that they could to assist them. At all
lectures and meetings, such as were held in various parts of the city
every night, the bag was sent round for aid to the strikers. At one
lecture I counted seven bags--chiefly students’ caps--going round for
various righteous causes. In one of the most moderate of all Liberal
papers--the _Russian News_--a strike fund was organized for the
women and children, and it reached about £5000 before the Government
clutched it and put it in its own pocket. In all Progressive papers you
read advertisements that Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So would undertake to feed
so many strikers for so many days, or to house the children. I knew
three Socialist families of quite poor people who took in one or two
children of strikers every day to share their dinner. The noticeable
thing was that the children were fed, no matter what party of Socialism
their parents belonged to. All the workers knew that the strike so far
had been the people’s only weapon. The Government had two--hunger and
the rifle.
Nearly every night meetings were held for the new unions which were
springing up on every side. The whole of Moscow, which is built in
concentric circles round the Kremlin or eminent citadel overhanging
the little river, had been divided off into wedges, or “rays,” as
they were called, and each ray sent so many delegates to the central
committee--corresponding to the Council of Labour Delegates in St.
Petersburg--which superintended the whole labour question, and had to
decide the moment for strikes. But besides the central organizations,
almost every trade was forming its own union of defence.
First came the great Railway Union, which controlled the powerful
instrument of the railway strikes, and had its headquarters in Moscow,
because the city is the obvious centre of all Russian railways. Perhaps
next in size, though hardly in importance, came the peculiar union of
Floor Polishers--a class of workers unknown in England, because we
are not clean enough to have parquetted floors. But in Moscow they
were said to number thirty thousand in the union. There were other
large unions besides--the tailors’, the metal-workers’, the waiters’,
the jewellers’, and a very strong printers’ union called “The Society
of the Printed Word,” said to be the oldest in Russia, and rising
almost to the dignity of a knightly order by its title. The Union of
Bathmen and Bathwomen, a very large class of labour in Russia, is also
old, and in those weeks they came to the very satisfactory decision
of declaring a boycott against the editor of Katkoff’s famous old
clerical and reactionary paper, the _Moscow News_ (_Moskovskaya
Viedomosti_). No minister of the union would wash the editor of the
_Moscow News_ at any price.
One evening I was present at the formation of two new unions in very
different classes of labour. First I went to an immense meeting of
tea-packers in a summer theatre, attached to the Aumont, a music
hall of easy virtue. But the theatre had now been boarded up into a
meeting-house as more suitable for the times. Packers of the Chinese
tea that comes overland are naturally a large class in Moscow, for the
tea is still the Russian national drink, in spite of the deadly blend
from Ceylon which is slowly being introduced. The packers are said
to number about six thousand, and forty companies sent deputies to
the meeting, though some of the companies employed only eight or ten
hands. It is an unhealthy trade, the dust leading to consumption; and
of all the many meetings I attended it was only here that I found the
voices feeble and toneless. Wages run from half a crown a week for boys
and girls up £1 a week for the best men. But in the trade there is an
ancient peculiarity that the wife of the owner or manager has to supply
a free midday dinner for the hands, and, as one of the delegates said,
“Apparently she cooks it in hell.”
The other new union was formed at a meeting of shop assistants,
conducted with that suavity and grandeur of manner which one always
notices at meetings of this class. It comes from watching the grace of
the shopwalkers, who alone carry the dignified and charming traditions
of the old noblesse into modern life. The meeting was occupied for
many hours in discussing whether the union should attend only to the
assistants’ interests, or should enter into wider life as a political
force. The Social Democrats urged them to be bold, and, as usual,
they had their way. They were far the most strongly organized party;
they had their speakers ready at every meeting, and they played their
“minimum programme” of quietly progressive measures with great effect.
Their opponents were unprepared, and on this occasion were almost too
polite to argue. I came away soon after midnight, but it was obvious
that the Shop Assistants’ Union would be a Social Democratic force
before dawn.
Mid-winter is the height of the season for learning, art, and pleasure,
but Moscow was neither gay nor learned. Reading and fiddling seemed
equally irrelevant. So were painting, poetry, love-making, and all
the other pleasant arts. In the big restaurant of the Métropole, it
is true, an orchestra still maintained a pretence of joy, and poured
out its vapid tunes to the rare guests who sat like shipwrecked
sailors scattered on a vasty deep, and struggled to be gay. But, like
a middle-aged picnic on the Thames, the thing was too deliberate a
happiness, and too conscious of its failure. “We must keep our spirits
up, you know,” I heard a youth say to an elderly gentleman as he poured
out the champagne. But it was no good. The elderly gentleman had
obviously dined well daily for many years, and was overwhelmed at the
solemn thought that at any moment dinners might end for ever. Day and
night he was living in “the haggard element of fear.”
The University was closed. Her seven thousand students were scattered,
some to their homes, some to their lodgings in the city, where for
the most part they swelled the army of the Social Democrats, and
spent their time discussing maximum and minimum programmes and the
socialization of productivity. They were also collecting arms.
“It was impossible to keep open. The students would insist on turning
the quadrangle into a Fort Chabrol,” said Professor Manioukoff, the new
Rector of the University, a learned economist and advanced politician,
who, being prohibited from studying grievances nearer home, had won
fame by specializing on the Irish land question. So the University was
closed, the professors were compelled to pursue research without the
due endowment of fees, and their wives and babies had to manage upon
half the family income.
Many of them took to lecturing, not for pay, but because it was the
only thing they could do for the Movement. One night I listened to
one who lectured for nearly two hours on the comparative history of
amnesties during the last few centuries, with a very close application
to the present time. He still called himself a Professor, though he had
been exiled from his Chair for so many years that his name had long
been forgotten, and, like most of the exiles, he came back to a world
which regarded him with a considerate but uneasy pity, as we should all
regard the dead if they returned. For nearly thirty years he had lived
in Bulgaria, surely not too far away to be remembered, and now he was
lecturing again in Moscow, an old man, lame and blind, dressed in a
frock-coat and worsted slippers. His nice little granddaughter guided
his steps, kept his water-glass full, reminded him every half-hour
of the flight of time (which he bore patiently), and put him right
about his dates, which made the audience smile. Otherwise, the large
lecture hall, packed with the intellectual, listened intently, but
showed no sign of approval until the end. The portrait of the Tsar had
been carefully removed from behind the chair, and only the gaunt iron
staples showed where it had hung.
Another evening, in one of those dubious theatres which had just
been converted to decent use, I heard a Professor deliver an immense
discourse upon the first principles of Social Democracy before an
audience half composed of working people. They also listened patiently,
but the moment of real excitement came when the lecturer ceased, and
three young soldiers sprang upon the stage and shouted that, on the
highest economic principles, they too had struck, and would Cossack
it no more. “I have flung away the uniform!” shouted one, who was
apparelled in a long dressing-gown. “No more fools of officers over
me!” shouted another. “And they fed us like swine!” shouted the third,
who was just economically drunk. The applause that rocked the audience
was one of the grandest noises I have ever heard. If only all the army
would follow the example of those three gallant musketeers! But that
night they vanished from the blaze of glory, and I heard of them no
more.
Vanished too were the Zemstvoists, the men who, in July, had impeached
the Government in an overwhelming series of accusations. Since the
death of their hero, Prince Sergius Troubetskoy, their heart had failed
them, and in November, when they met again in congress and their chance
had come, they wasted the precious days in discussions upon Witte’s
character, just like a suburban essay society discussing Hamlet. But
time was going fast just then, and before they had settled Witte’s
psychology to their satisfaction they were forgotten. They had meant
so well by their counsels of moderation and attempts to imitate the
British Constitution, but rushing time had left them lonely. Yet
Moscow was rather strong in Liberal papers, which the bourgeoisie were
glad to accept as protests against the extremes of socialism. The
_Russian News_, for instance, edited by white-haired Sobolevski,
with a grey-haired staff, was a strictly moderate paper, as I have
said, though its writers had become so inspired by the youthfulness
of the time that their articles would have sent them a year before to
meditate in prison or exile upon the license of governments.
Then again, the first Sunday I was in Moscow, Professor Miliukoff
brought out his new paper called _Life_ (_Zhisn_) on simple
and moderate lines. He began with a long and earnest appeal for the
unity of Progressive parties against the common enemy of Absolutism.
“Let us all combine,” he cried, “into a bloc, and present a solid front
to the ancient tyranny and new reaction. When Absolutism is overthrown,
there will be time enough to discuss the divergent lines of our own
programmes.” Every one respected Professor Miliukoff, and was cheered
by his eternal hopefulness. The advice was obviously sensible. Its
only fault was that it was sensible to commonplace--just too obviously
sensible for times of high exhilaration, when the position of the
moderate man is always painful and usually neglected. Neither workmen
nor Social Democrats cared in the least for a Liberal alliance. They
knew that, in any case, the Liberals would join them in the fight
against Absolutism, and to the truly revolutionary spirit Liberalism is
always suspect. A significant cartoon came out that week, called “The
Hare at the Hunt.” The lion of the proletariat has sprung upon the Bear
of tyranny; but in the foreground the Hare of the bourgeoisie is seen
hastening up and delicately nibbling at one of the dead Bear’s ears, as
much as to say, “Please, give me a little bit too!” A little bit might
be given to the Moderates, but the proletariat were determined to keep
the lion’s share.
One day, for the sake of comparison with the proletariat of St.
Petersburg, I went over a large and very rich factory, which almost
holds a monopoly in candles, and the darkness of Northern Russia for
six months in the year makes a candle monopoly valuable. At the end of
October a serious riot had occurred there, and the front of the mill
was still a wreck of bricks and broken glass. The strikers had then
demanded a 50 per cent. rise in wages, an eight-hour day, a lodging
allowance of 6_s._ to 10_s._ a month, pensions of half wages
after fifteen years’ work, and pensions of full wages after twenty-five
years. When I was there, they had just begun work again on a rise of 16
per cent., an eight-hour day in three shifts, and a lodging allowance
of 4_s._ 6_d._ a month. That lodging allowance arises from
the general old custom of living-in. Hitherto all the single men and
single women had lived in barrack dormitories inside the mill, with
a room for meals, gas, heating, and washing-troughs provided. These
blocks of lodgings--“spalnya,” as they are called--dismal and crowded
as life in them must be, were perhaps as comfortable and much cheaper
than the accommodation to be had outside. But they lacked the one
great charm in life--the charm of liberty. At the time of the strike,
the hands demanded the right of receiving friends and relations from
outside into the premises. The managers complied, and that evening
the whole place was crammed with enthusiastic advocates of family
affection. A mass meeting, eloquent of revolution, was held in the
mill yard, and the devotees of friendship paraded their red flags in
front of the managers’ quarters with trumpet and drum. Next day the
managers withdrew their amiable concession, cleared the dormitories
of men and women, and turned them neck and crop out into the road to
fend for themselves. The lodging allowance was given to prevent further
riots and to soothe the conscience. In the matter of money, it is no
compensation for what the workmen lose, but liberty is thrown in, and
liberty counts so high that I think the workers had the best of it in
the end, and probably the old barracks will gradually disappear.
In the last twenty years the rate of pay has gone up fourfold, while
the cost of living has only doubled. A good workman in this mill now
received from 24_s._ to 30_s._ a week, which appeared to
be the maximum wage, and since the strike a woman’s wage had risen
to 8_s._ a week, with the same lodging allowance as the men, or
about 9_s._ 2_d._ a week in all. The standard of food was
perhaps a little higher than in St. Petersburg, for, except during
fasts, the family expected some sort of meat or stew every day. But
this was a particularly rich mill; it prided itself on its high wages,
and the Englishmen of its management delighted to display a paternal
benevolence to the innocent unfortunates of a lower race. It was
certainly remarkable that all the hands had gone back, except those who
could not be summoned from their villages owing to the breakdown of the
post.
Of course, the prolonged post strike, which had continued for nearly
three weeks then, was inconvenient for everybody. Revolutions are
generally inconvenient, especially for business people. But it was
rather too much when that ancient champion of tyranny, the _Novoe
Vremya_, took this opportunity for working itself up into such a
glow of righteous indignation because the strikers were depriving
mankind of humanity’s glorious right--the right of communication and
speech--the right of corresponding with fellow-men afar off, and
calling on others to associate in their joys and griefs. What had the
_Novoe Vremya_ cared about that glorious right a few months
before? What protest had it ever raised against a censorship that pried
into letters, and chuckled over lovers’ secrets, and tracked men down
to death through the words of their friends? Or what communication with
their fellow-men had been allowed to exiles and prisoners--exiles and
prisoners who had been wiped out from human existence for exercising
that glorious right of speech? In reading leading articles like that I
have sometimes detected limits beyond which even hypocrisy ceases to be
decent.
But in times of revolution we must expect and tolerate much wild
absurdity among people who are afraid of losing their money, and among
the startled cowards who have suddenly realized what revolution is. In
a letter to his own paper, the _New Life_, about this time, Maxim
Gorky said that people had been writing to him from all over Russia to
ask why it was that the patient workman and the dear, gentle peasant,
whom the advanced thinkers used to worship as a saint, had suddenly
shown themselves so very disagreeable and dangerous. There was a
crudity and innocence about the question which takes us back more than
half a century in Western social history, and Gorky’s own answer sounds
to us almost as much a truism as a chapter of Charles Kingsley seems
now. He merely repeated the weary old truth that in ordinary times the
rich and governing classes have never taken the smallest notice of the
worker and the peasant. When have they ever turned from their games of
ambition or pleasure to consider the poor? In what way have they shared
their life, except in the distribution of doles, which are given for
their own comfort? If a bad time had now come for them, and if a worse
was coming, that was only the natural turning of a wheel which had been
slow to turn.
In our country we have long been familiar with such statements. We have
long known that the rich man’s charity is but a ransom for himself, so
that he may follow enjoyment with undisturbed content. We have long
known that the sympathies of comfortable people are limited by their
own comfort. We have also learnt how vain it is to preach such truths,
if preaching is to end in words. But what to us has become true to
satiety may still be a bewildering paradox to less experienced and less
sophisticated nations, and the extraordinary influence of writers like
Gorky in Russia seems to arise from the simple-hearted earnestness
with which thoughtful Russians have received their doctrine. What to
us appears so painfully true that we had almost forgotten it, may dawn
upon them as a fine paradox of revelation.
The teaching in Gorky’s new play, _The Children of the Sun_ would
be rather less familiar to us, for it strikes at the intellectual
classes, who generally regard themselves as above criticism, whereas
the rich have become case-hardened to sermons and abuse. It was then
being performed in his own theatre--the best theatre in the world,
airy, admirably planned for hearing, entirely free from the curse of
decoration, and provided with a large hall where the audience could
discuss revolution during the welcome pauses which extend Russian
entertainments through the night. The drama is Ibsenite--a humorous
tragedy, with plenty of ironic laughter, though it fades away into a
paltry German suicide. But the political point is that the central
figure--an excellent man of science, simple, sweet tempered, and
devoted with all his heart to the creation of life by chemical
means--declares that intellectual people like himself are in reality
toiling for the poor, no matter how indifferent they may appear to the
poverty of others. They are the children of the sun--the almost divine
beings who shed light in the darkness of the world. The simple-hearted
chemist is himself a true saint of intellect. When, with the consent
of his wife, a rich and lovely lady flings herself round his neck and
offers him all her love and a complete laboratory, he accepts the
laboratory with rapture, but asks if the love is not superfluous.
Nevertheless all his innocence, his devotion, and his real kindliness
of heart do not help him in the least when the peasants, infuriated for
liberty, come storming down the village and almost choke the life out
of that Child of the Sun in his own back garden.
That was likely to be the fate of many excellent people, who were
pursuing culture without extravagance. Many who deserved no worse than
the rest of us poor intellectual and decently clothed men were caught
up in the whirling skirts of revolution and carried shrieking they knew
not where. From every side came rumours of burnings and slaughters.
The country was spoken of as a wilderness of destruction, into which
none dared penetrate. For many days in vain I sought for a guide and
interpreter to accompany me among the peasants. To enter a village was
sudden death, and not for three pounds a day would a townsman go with
me, till at last I found one whose poverty consented.
In Moscow itself we were still revelling in liberty. We lived under an
anarchy almost fit for the angels, who by their divine nature are a law
unto themselves. But, unhappily, as I said, our liberty was tempered
by assassination. For some weeks the average of street murders was one
a day. Barefooted, long-haired beggars, the very heroes of Gorky’s
tales, the ragged supermen of misery, sprang out from dark corners, and
I always thanked them heartily for their mistake in regarding my money
as more valuable than my life. People walked warily, and kept one eye
behind them, turning sharply round if they heard even the padding sound
of goloshes in the snow. Often at night, as I went up and down the
rampart of the Kremlin, and watched those ancient white temples with
their brazen domes glittering under the moon, I noticed that the few
passers-by skirted round me in a kind of arc, and if they came upon me
suddenly they ran. My intentions were far from murderous, but all were
living in that haggard element of fear. They had not yet realized that
the only decent way to live is to take life in one hand and possessions
in the other, and both hands open.