MOSCOW
I reached Moscow on Sunday afternoon and was taken at once by “Larkin”
to the Foreign Office at the Metropole hotel. As we drove through the
picturesque town of many churches we passed great numbers of people
enjoying the sunshine. The parks and squares were full of romping
children.
In the Foreign Office I was greeted by Litvinoff, who gave me
credentials which granted me freedom of action—freedom to go where I
pleased and without a guard as long as I remained in Soviet Russia; and
Communist life began for me.
The Metropole hotel, like all others in Soviet Russia, had been taken
over by the Government. The rooms not occupied by the Foreign Office
were used as living rooms by Government employees. The National hotel is
used entirely for Soviet workers, and the beautiful residence in which
Mirbach, the German ambassador, was assassinated is now the headquarters
of the Third International.
No one was allowed to have more than one meal a day. This consisted of
cabbage soup, a small piece of fish and black bread, and was served at
Soviet restaurants at any time between one o’clock in the afternoon and
seven at night. There were a few old cafés still in existence, run by
private speculators, where it was possible to purchase a piece of meat
at times, but the prices were exorbitant. In the Soviet restaurants ten
rubles was charged for the meal, while in the cafés the same kind of
meal would have cost from 100 to 150 rubles.
The Soviet restaurants had been established everywhere, in villages and
small towns as well as in cities. In the villages and railway stations
they were usually in the station building itself or near it. In the
cities they were scattered everywhere, so as to be easily accessible to
the workers. Some of them were run on the cafeteria plan; in others
women carried the food to the tables for the other workers. One entered,
showed his credentials to prove that he was a worker and was given a
meal check, for which he paid a fixed sum. Needless to say, there was no
tipping. I had not the courage to experiment by offering a tip to these
dignified, self-respecting women. I think they would have laughed at my
“stupid foreign ways” had I done so.
The old café life of Moscow was a thing of the past. If you wished
anything to eat at night you had to purchase bread and tea earlier in
the day and make tea in your room. This was very simple because the
kitchens in hotels were used exclusively for heating water. At breakfast
time and all through the evening a stream of people went to the kitchen
with pails and pitchers for hot water which they carried to their rooms
themselves where they made their tea and munched black bread. There were
no maids or bell boys to do these errands for you, and the only service
you got in a hotel was that of a maid who cleaned your room each
morning.
The working people would buy a pound or two of black bread in the
evening on their way home. They had their samovars on which they made
tea, and if they felt so inclined ate in the evening. For breakfast they
again had tea and black bread like every one else. As a result of this
diet hundreds of thousands of people were suffering from malnutrition.
The bulk of the people in the city were hungry all the time.
I found the tramway service,—reduced fifty percent because of the lack
of fuel,—miserably inadequate for the needs of the population which had
greatly increased since Moscow became the capital. The citizens in their
necessity have developed the most extraordinary propensities in
step-clinging. They swarm on the platforms and stand on one another’s
feet with the greatest good nature, and then, when there isn’t room to
wedge in another boot, the late-comers cling to the bodies of those who
have been lucky enough to get a foothold, and still others cling to
these, until the overhanging mass reaches half-way to the curb. I tried
it once myself—and walked thereafter. There were not many automobiles to
be seen. The Government had requisitioned all cars. The motors were run
by coal oil and alcohol, and the Government had very little of these.
During my second day in Moscow I met some English prisoners walking
quite freely in the streets. I went up to a group of three and told them
I was an American, and asked how they were getting on. They said they
wanted to go home because the food was scarce, but aside from the lack
of food they had nothing to complain of.
“Of course food is scarce,” said one, “but we get just as much as anyone
else. Nobody gets much. You see us walking about the streets. No one is
following us. We are free to go where we please. They send us to the
theatre three nights a week. We go to the opera and the ballet. That’s
what they do with all prisoners.”
Another broke in enthusiastically to say that if there were only food
enough he would be glad to stay in Russia. Several of their pals, they
told me, were working in Soviet offices.
They belonged to a detachment of ninety English who had been captured
six months before, on the Archangel front. Before they went into action,
they said, their commanding officer told each one to carry a hand
grenade in his pocket, and if taken prisoner to blow off his head.
“The Bolsheviki,” he told us, "would torture us—first they would cut off
a finger, then an ear, then the tip of the nose, and they would keep
stripping us and torturing us until we died twenty-one days later.
“Well, before we knew it the Bolsheviki had us surrounded. There was
nothing to do but surrender—and none of us used his bomb. The Bolsheviks
marched us back about ten miles to a barrack, where we were told to sit
down. Pretty soon they brought in a samovar and gave us tea and bread,
and when we were about half through eating they brought in bundles of
pamphlets. The pamphlets were all printed in English, mind you, and they
told us why we had been sent to Russia.”
I recognized in his description the thing I had seen myself on the
Western Front a few days before. I asked him if that was the usual way
of treating prisoners.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s the way they do it. They don’t kill you. They
just feed you with tea and bread, and this—what they call on the outside
‘propaganda’ and they say to you, ‘you read this stuff for a week,’ and
you do, and you believe it—you can’t help it.”
It was bitterly cold in Moscow, though the Bolshevists made light of the
September weather and laughed at my complaints. “Stay the winter with
us,” they said, “and you will learn what cold is.” The city was
practically without heat. The chill and damp entered my bones and
pursued me through the streets and into my bed at night. One can stand
prolonged exposure and cold if there is only the sustaining thought of a
glowing fire somewhere, and a warm bed. But in Moscow there was no
respite from the relentless chill. One was cold all day and all night.
The aching pinch of it tore at the nerves. I marvelled at the endurance
of the undernourished clerks and officials in the great damp Government
office buildings, where it was often colder than in the dry sunshine
outside.
All the large department stores and the clothing and shoe shops had been
taken over by the Government. Here and there, however, were small
private shops, selling goods without regard to Government prices.
The Soviet stores were arranged much like our large department stores.
One could go in and buy various commodities, shoes in one department,
clothing in another, and so on. Soviet employees had the right at all
times to purchase in these stores at Soviet prices. They carried
credentials showing they were giving useful service to the Government.
Without credentials one could buy nothing—not even food—except from the
privately-owned shops.
To these the peasant speculators would bring home-made bread in sacks
and sell it to the shop speculators, who in turn demanded as much as
eighty rubles a pound. This was the only way of getting bread without
credentials because the Government had taken control of the bakeries. In
a Soviet store a pound of bread could be bought for ten rubles.
All unnecessary labor in Soviet stores had been eliminated. Young girls
and women acted as clerks; very few men were employed in any capacity.
The manager, who usually was to be found on the first floor, was a man,
and he directed customers to the departments which sold the things they
wished to purchase. The elevators were running not only in the stores,
but in the office buildings.
White collars and white shirts could be bought in some stores, but they
were rationed so that it would have been impossible to buy three or four
shirts at one time. The windows in the stores were filled with articles,
but there was no attempt to display goods, and there was no advertising.
A shine, a shave and a hair-cut were obtainable at the Soviet barber
shops. They were not rationed; one could buy as many of these as
desired.
Theatres and operas were open and largely attended in Moscow, and the
actors and actresses, as well as the singers, did not seem to mind the
cold.
The streets were but dimly lighted, because of the fuel shortage, but I
saw and heard of no crimes being committed. I wandered about the city
through many of its darkest streets, at all hours of the night, and was
never molested. Now and then a policeman demanded my permit, which, when
I had shown it, was accepted without question. The city was well
policed, the streets fairly clean, and the government was doing
everything possible to prevent disease. Orders were issued that all
water must be boiled, but as all Russians drink tea this order was not
unusual or difficult to carry out.
The telephone and telegraph systems seemed to me unusually good.
Connections by telephone between Moscow and Petrograd were obtained in
two minutes. Local service was prompt and efficient, and connections
with wrong numbers were of rare occurrence.
Many newspapers were being published, the size of all being limited on
account of the shortage of paper. In addition to the Government
newspapers and the Bolshevist party papers there were papers of opposing
parties, notably publications controlled by the Menshevists and the
Social Revolutionists.
All of them were free from the advertising of business firms, since the
Government had nationalized all trade. Of course there was no “funny
page” or “Women’s Section.”
As soon as news came from the front great bulletins were distributed
through the city and posted on the walls of buildings where every one
could read them. These bulletins contained the news of both defeat and
victory. If prisoners had been taken or a retreat had been necessary,
the populace was informed of it frankly. There was no attempt to keep up
the “morale” of the civilian population by assuring it that all went
well and that victory was certain. Any one in Soviet Russia who accepted
the responsibilities of the new order did so knowing that it meant
hardship and defeat—for a time.
In Moscow many statues have been erected since the revolution. Skobileff
Square,—now called Soviet Square,—has a statue of Liberty which takes
the place of the old statue of Skobileff. I saw sculptors at work all
over the city, putting in medallions and bas-reliefs, on public
buildings. In Red Square, along the Kremlin wall, are the graves of many
who fell in the revolution. Sverdlov, formerly president of the
executive committee, and a close friend of Lenin, is buried here. I was
told that his death had been a great loss to the Soviet Government.
Moscow, like all the other Russian cities I saw, had schools everywhere,
art schools, musical conservatories, technical schools, in addition to
the regular schools for children.
On “Speculator’s Street” in Moscow all kinds of private trading went on
without interference. I found this street thronged with shoppers and
with members of the old bourgeoisie selling their belongings along the
curb; men and women unmistakably of the former privileged classes
offering, dress suits, opera cloaks, evening gowns, shoes, hats, and
jewelry to any one who would pay them the rubles that they, in turn,
must give to the exorbitant speculators for the very necessities of
life.
These irreconcilables of the old regime, unwilling to cooperate with the
new government and refusing to engage in useful work which would entitle
them to purchase their supplies at the Soviet shops, at Soviet prices,
were compelled to resort to the speculators and under pressure of the
constantly decreasing ruble and the wildly soaring prices, were driven
to sacrifice their valuables in order to avoid starvation. Any one who
desired and who had the money could buy from the speculators; but one
pays dearly for pride in Soviet Russia. The speculators charged
seventy-five rubles a pound for black bread that could be bought in the
Government shops for ten rubles. The right to buy at the Soviet shops
and to eat in the Soviet restaurants was to be had by the mere
demonstration of a sincere desire to do useful work of hand or brain.
Nevertheless these defenders of the old order still held out—fewer of
them every day, to be sure—and the speculators throve accordingly.
It seemed at first glance a strange anomaly. I could see through the
windows of the speculator’s shops canned goods and luxuries, and even
necessities, for which the majority of the population were suffering. I
asked why the Government did not put its principles into practice by
requisitioning all these stocks and ending the speculation. There were
many things in their program, the Bolshevists said, which could not be
carried out at once because the energy of the Government was consumed in
the mobilization of all available resources for national defence. There
were thousands of speculators all over Russia, and it would take a small
army to eliminate them entirely. Half measures would only drive them
underground where they would be a constant source of irritation and
anti-Government propaganda. It was better to let them operate in the
open, they said, where they could be kept under observation and
restrained within certain limits.
Meanwhile the speculators were eliminating themselves and dragging with
them the recalcitrant bourgeoisie on whom they preyed. Hoarded wealth
and old finery do not last forever. As the ruble falls and the
speculator’s prices rise their victims are compelled to sacrifice more
and more of their dwindling resources. The Government prices are a
standing temptation to reconciliation. Only the obdurate bourgeoisie and
the speculators suffer from the depreciation of the ruble. Every two
months wages are adjusted to meet depreciation, by a Government
commission which acts in conjunction with the Central Federation of All
Russian Professional Alliances, representing skilled and unskilled
labor. This serves to stabilize the purchasing power of the workers
earnings, although in the past unavoidable and absolute dearth of
necessities has tended to work against this stabilization.
In the meantime the falling ruble and the avaricious speculator between
them drive thousands of the stubborn into the category of useful
laborers. Every day brings numbers who have, either through a change of
heart, or by economic necessity, been driven to ask for work which will
entitle them to their bread and food cards. Thus the Communists, too
busy with the military defence of their country to attend to the last
measures of expropriation, make use of the irresistible economic forces
of the old order and allow the capitalists to expropriate themselves.
[Illustration: LENIN IN SWITZERLAND, MARCH, 1916]
I found no Red terror. There was serious restriction of personal liberty
and stern enforcement of law and order, as might be expected in a nation
threatened with foreign invasion, civil war, counter revolution, and an
actual blockade. While I was in Moscow sixty men and seven women were
shot for complicity in a counter revolutionary plot. They had arms
stored in secret places and had been found guilty of circularizing the
soldiers on the Denikin front, telling them that Petrograd and Moscow
had both fallen. They made no concealment of their purpose to overthrow
the Government and went bravely to their execution. Several days later
two bombs were exploded under a building in which a meeting of the
Executive Committee of the Communist party was being held. Eleven of the
Communists were killed and more than twenty wounded. The cadet counter
revolutionists, it was charged, committed this outrage as reprisal for
the execution of their comrades. But no terror or persecution followed.
Instead great mass meetings were held everywhere to protest against all
terrorist acts. Intrigue and propaganda were met with counter propaganda
and popular enthusiasm for the Soviet Government.
Before leaving Moscow for Petrograd I applied at the Foreign Office for
permission to go to the Kremlin and interview Lenin. I was told that
permission would be granted, and an appointment was made for me to meet
Lenin at his office at three o’clock on the following day.
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