I entered Soviet Russia on April 6, and left it on Oct. 12, when I
crossed the Russian-Latvian line at Sebesh. I arrived in London on Oct.
19, spent some time there recuperating from the effects of months of
semistarvation in Moscow, and reached New York Dec. 23.
During my stay in London I read the diary of Mrs. Clare Sheridan, the
sculptress; Mr. H. G. Wells’s articles on Russia which were published in
the London Sunday Express, and Mr. Winston Churchill’s reply to that
modest gentleman who permitted the newspaper in which his articles
appeared to describe him as “the world’s greatest living author.”
As these articles have doubtless also appeared in American journals, I
venture to believe that the American public will be interested to read
the experiences of a New York business man in Russia (notwithstanding
that he is an Englishman) and compare them with those of Mrs. Sheridan
and Mr. Wells.
I have no aptitude for “sculping”; I lay no claim to literary ability; I
am not endowed with the sweet womanly nature which would render me sad
at the thought that I should never see again that foul, blood-drenched
scoundrel Dzherjinsky; I am simply a business man, and at that have had
no experience of life behind a draper’s counter. Had I had, I should
probably, like Mr. Wells, be able to tell England and the world how to
trade with Russia.
Mrs. Sheridan’s diary, piled with sympathy for the butchers and precious
little for their victims, can be dismissed as a breach of good taste on
the part of a notoriety seeking female, but we cannot thus lightly
dismiss the articles of Mr. Wells. Whereas Mr. Wells’s experience of the
Bolsheviks, according to his own admission, was gained as the result of
a two weeks’ stay in Russia, mine dates from the time of Lenine’s first
attempt, in July, 1917, to overthrow the Kerensky Government.
I regard Mr. Wells’s articles as the most skilful piece of propaganda
which the Bolsheviks have so far put forth. Mr. Wells makes no attempt
to cloak the appalling conditions of life which to-day obtain in
Petrograd and Moscow. In fact he has drawn a very faithful picture of
them. Having done so he proceeds to tell the world that these conditions
were brought about not by Bolshevism but by the imperialism and
capitalism of the Czar’s regime. Nothing could be further from the
truth, and I propose, in the course of this series, to show that the
Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks alone, are responsible for the deplorable
condition in which Russia finds herself to-day. In order to do this I
shall take the reader with me on my journey through Russia.
In June, 1917, I travelled from Vladivostok to Petrograd over the
Trans-Siberian Railroad. On that occasion the journey took ten and a
half days, all stops included; this year our actual running time (all
stops excluded) was twenty-eight days.
In 1917 I remained in Russia until September, when I went to New York,
returning to Petrograd in December, where I remained until April, 1918,
when, with my assistants, I was forced to escape on sledges through
Karelia into Finland. In October, 1918, I arrived in Vladivostok and
remained in Siberia, a close observer of the Kolchak regime, until I
crossed the Urals in June this year on my way to Moscow.
In June, 1919, the Ataman Chief Semionov stole from my firm some 5,000
white fox skins at the Station Manchuria, and in July I proceeded to his
headquarters at Chita to negotiate for the return of them. I was
unsuccessful and went to Omsk, where I spent two-and-a-half fruitless
months endeavoring to secure compensation from the Kolchak Government.
_Dictator in Name Only._
During my stay in Omsk, where I came into contact with the leading
members of the Government, I had an opportunity of studying the methods
of Kolchak and his Cabinet. Kolchak, admittedly a man of great personal
courage, was a dictator in name only; he possessed none of the qualities
fitting him for such an onerous position; his Cabinet consisted
principally of unscrupulous adventurers who neglected no opportunity to
enrich themselves at the expense of the cause, which they ultimately, by
their corruption and treachery, destroyed.
In October, realizing that the fall of Omsk was imminent, I left and
went to Chita and reopened negotiations with the bandit of the
Trans-Baikal. My stay in Chita was somewhat unpleasantly disturbed by a
ten days’ sojourn in the Ataman’s jail which was brought about by my
calling him a thief to his face. On my release from prison, which was
secured by the British Military Mission, I remained in Chita until the
first week in December when, having secured a promise from the Ataman
that he would pay for the stolen foxes upon presentation of certain
certified statements, I went to Vladivostok to get them.
I left Vladivostok on the return journey toward the end of January. On
my arrival in Harbin, however, I was called to Tientsin for a conference
with my principals. At this conference they requested me to make an
effort to get to Irkutsk from Chita and endeavor to secure the return of
a large quantity of furs which we then had in Irkutsk and the
surrounding district.
On my return from Tientsin to Harbin I found my friend, Capt. H. S.
Walker, the British Military Mission’s representative in China, who had
recently left there under the impression that Semionov’s days were
numbered. My chances of getting through to Chita looked decidedly small,
and when Consul Gen. Harris with the consular staff, and Col. McMorrow
with the 27th United States Infantry from Verkni-Udinsk blew into the
town with much the same story as Walker’s, they looked even smaller.
However, I decided to try and break through and left on the post train
on the 22d of February for the Station Manchuria, although I was assured
in Harbin that it was impossible to get past that point as the Baikal
Railroad was blocked on both lines with the Czech evacuation. At
Manchuria, by great good fortune, I found Lieut. Lee of the American
Railroad Corps, with a train of flour destined for the coal miners west
of Chita who were supplying coal for the Czechs, and he very kindly
agreed to take me through in his private car. We made the journey in 32
hours, a remarkable performance considering that it had taken evacuating
Americans ten days.
_Saw Remnants of Army._
We got to Chita just in time to witness the arrival of Gen. Voitzikofsky
with the remnants of the Kolchak Army, which had retreated from west of
Omsk, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, partly on sledges and partly on
foot, in the depth of winter, through a semi-hostile country—a
magnificent feat of courage and endurance.
Those of us who were anti-Semionov had great hopes of Voitzikofsky. We
looked to him to oust the bandit and his pillaging, murdering
associates, and set up a democratic form of government in the
Trans-Baikal. When E. B. Thomas, the American Vice Consul and myself
interviewed Voitzikofsky, a few days after his arrival, he indirectly
led us to believe that he intended to depose the Ataman.
However, he delayed action and his army diminished daily as the result
of wholesale desertions. He was credited with having 27,000 officers and
men when he arrived. Three weeks later this force had dwindled to 7,000
and Semionov, who had been quaking in his shoes, gradually began to
assert himself. When the Japanese finally decided not to evacuate the
Trans-Baikal, which had been their intention as soon as the Czechs had
passed through, Semionov was once more in the saddle and Voitzikofsky
dropped into comparative obscurity.
My negotiations with Semionov came to nothing. It is true he signed an
order on the Finance Department to pay the claim in gold (of which he
had plenty, having stolen it from a Kolchak echelon some months
previously), but when the order was presented the Finance Department
declined to honor it and referred us back to Semionov. The Ataman, who
obviously had no intention of paying, then impudently referred us to the
Czechs for payment, stating that as they had been entrusted with the
safe conveyance of the Russian gold reserve to Vladivostok, they were
the people to apply to. This, of course, had reference to the action of
the Czechs at Irkutsk when, in order to insure the unhampered evacuation
of their forces, they traded Kolchak and the gold in return for
noninterference with their movement eastward.
I applied to the Japanese Military Mission for assistance, but although
the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokio had pledged us, through the
American Embassy, the active assistance of their mission in Chita, the
Military Mission not only declined to intervene but disclosed to the
Ataman private and confidential documents belonging to me, which caused
me great embarrassment and undoubtedly endangered my position in the
town.
_Troops Permitted Thefts._
The Japanese, throughout their occupancy of the Trans-Baikal, acted in a
manner prejudicial to the real interests of the White cause. Their
troops were engaged in guarding the railway, but they never on any
occasion intervened to prevent Semionov from levying on supplies en
route to the front or stealing goods belonging to Russian and Allied
merchants.
The seizure of goods by Semionov reached such proportions during the
summer of 1919 that merchants in Eastern Siberia refused to forward
goods through the Trans-Baikal, and in consequence Western Siberia was
deprived of the supplies which, if they had been forthcoming, would have
done much to win the support of the peasantry and townspeople for the
White cause.
Capt. Walker and his assistant, Capt. R. C. Carthew, returned to Chita
after I had been there a few days, and at once commenced, with the
assistance of the American Railroad Corps, who had a direct wire to
Verkni-Udinsk, to make inquiries in respect to the officers and men of
the British Railway Mission who had been captured by the Bolsheviks at
Krasnoyarsk.
When Capt. Carthew induced the Bolsheviks, through Krassnochokoff, the
Commissar at Verkni, to have these prisoners brought to Irkutsk, he
obtained a safe conduct to proceed there with food, clothing and medical
supplies and kindly offered me a place on his car provided I was able to
procure a similar safe conduct.
I then telegraphed Krassnochokoff intimating that I wished to go to
Irkutsk for the purpose of discussing trading possibilities with the
authorities there, and requested a safe conduct. He telegraphed me back
the Russian Socialistic Federated Soviet Republic’s full safe conduct to
travel to Irkutsk, guaranteeing my liberty of movement while there, and
the right to leave the territory of his Government at my will.
Armed with these documents we said goodby to “Johnny” Walker and Thomas
on a bitterly cold afternoon in April and proceeded with a special train
consisting of our private car and a goods wagon for our interpreters and
servants. We flew a large Union Jack from our observation platform which
created a great deal of attention at the stations at which we stopped.
We met the last Czech echelon east of Moxon and felt that we had then
said goodby to civilization, Carthew for a couple of weeks and
I—indefinitely.