After two months’ negotiation with the Revolutionary Committee it was
found impossible to arrive at any definite arrangement in respect to
trading, and I received a telegraphic invitation from the Siberian
Revolutionary Committee to go to Omsk and discuss the matter with them,
which I accepted. Jansen placed a compartment at my disposal in a
private car which was attached to the post train, and I left for Omsk
with my two assistants and my servant on the 22d of May.
The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of
Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity
of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great
agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the
Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter
into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the
insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers,
and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures
in order to coerce them.
The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so
under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will
have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed
in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if
they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.
_Method Embitters Peasants._
In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in
Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the
railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity
demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms
were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite
blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of
requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia,
and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain
obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it
was intended.
We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a
peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that
time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer,
however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the
landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and
small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the
Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions
and they were terrified of the “Chika.”
I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian
Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a
man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent
Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for
the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika”
would make short work of him.
I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that
no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and
when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.
Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the
Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their
wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in
six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running
hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a
stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the
morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These
precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends
had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which
they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.
On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our
master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station
in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search
party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our
commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man
called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order
to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to
commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took
place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep
their mouths shut.
The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we
arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to
have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we
pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of
British general service wagons and other British stores which had been
captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.
_Only Commissars Dine Well._
Waxoff offered to take me to the Moscow Soviet to inquire for rooms. We
took a cab outside the Jaroslavski Station. The driver at first demanded
10,000 roubles—i. e., $5, but after some bargaining agreed to take us to
the house of the Soviet, which was formerly the residence of the
Military Governor of Moscow, for half that sum. The pre-war fare was 15
cents. At the Soviet we saw a Commissar, who gave me a letter to the
Foreign Office, which, it appeared, arranged all accommodation for
foreigners. As this man interviewed us he partook of his dinner, which I
was interested to notice consisted of very good cabbage soup with a
large piece of meat in it, followed by a large plate of meat and
vegetables, good black bread and tea with sugar. This certainly did not
look like starvation. I later discovered to my cost that only Commissars
were fed thus well.
At the Foreign Office we met a Jew named Contorovitch, who spoke English
fluently. He furnished me with rooms at the Foreign Office Guest House
at No. 10 Mala Haritonofskaya, which formerly was the home of a wealthy
German merchant. At this house the first person I met was Mrs. Harrison,
the correspondent of the Associated Press.
The other people living in the house were Bobroff, a naturalized
American Jew (former Russian subject), who was soliciting orders from
the Bolsheviki; an Esthonian representative, two tame Bolsheviki from
Siberia, two red, or seemingly red, delegates from Corea, and Axionoff.
This man, formerly Colonel of the Imperial Guard, scion of a noble
Russian family, was ostensibly working in the Foreign Office, but was in
fact a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. He was specially planted in
the house to watch the movements of foreigners and report their
conversations to Mogilevski, the Chief Commissar of the Foreign
Department of the Vetchika (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).
During my stay in Moscow I saw a great deal of this mustache-twirling,
beard-combing, smirking, Iscariotic apology for a man, and the more I
saw of the cowardly renegade the more repulsive I found him. Axionoff,
however, was not the only member of the aristocracy I met who had sold
his honor and purchased a modicum of comfort and a degree of safety by
spying on and betraying his friends. By far the most dangerous spies in
Moscow were those recruited from the upper classes.
_Potatoes a Delicacy._
The meals at No. 10, which is one of the best guest houses in the city,
consisted of tea and black bread and butter or cheese for breakfast;
water soup, decorated with particles of vegetables and kasha, or
occasionally rice, for dinner, and black bread and again kasha for
supper. On rare occasions we were given as a special delicacy boiled
potatoes sprinkled with minute portions of meat. As the meat had
invariably been a long time dead we found it advisable to remove it
before eating the potatoes.
As at all the Soviet guest houses there were two soldiers always on
guard at the door, who carefully noted one’s comings and goings.
Visitors were only allowed to enter on production of their documents,
particulars of which, together with the name of the person visited, were
entered in a book which was periodically sent to the Vetchika. In
addition to the guard we had a rat-faced commandant who padded about the
house in noiseless boots, probably relics of his former occupation.
On calling at the Department for Foreign Trade, which had been presided
over by Krassin before he left for Scandinavia and England, I met a
Commissar of the name of Voronatzki, who expressed himself as most
anxious to trade with us. He proved to be a very decent fellow, but
possessed of little or no knowledge of the matters he was handling. The
proposition I made him was the same as that which I had advanced in
Irkutsk, namely, to supply the Irkutsk district with goods forwarded via
Mongolia and the Jakutsk district, in the fur-bearing region northeast
of Irkutsk, via Olan, a port on the Pacific, provided the Soviet power
agreed to return to us the furs they had seized in Eastern Siberia;
payment for the goods to be supplied by us to be made in furs.
These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the
Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no
political interest.