THE SPHINX
A detailed narrative of my experiences during the following six months
would surpass the dimensions to which I must limit this book. Some of
them I hope to make the subject of a future story. For I met other
“Stepanovnas,” “Marias” and “Journalists,” in whom I came to trust
as implicitly as in the old and who were a very present help in time
of trouble. I also inevitably met with scoundrels, but though _No. 2
Goróhovaya_ again got close upon my track--even closer than through
Zorinsky--and one or two squeaks were very narrow indeed, still I have
survived to tell the tale.
This is partly because the precautions I took to avoid detection became
habitual. Only on one occasion was I obliged to destroy documents of
value, while of the couriers who, at grave risk, carried communications
back and forth from Finland, only two failed to arrive and, I presume,
were caught and shot. But the messages they bore (as indeed any notes I
ever made) were composed in such a manner that they could not possibly
be traced to any individual or address.
I wrote mostly at night, in minute handwriting on tracing-paper, with
a small india-rubber bag about four inches in length, weighted with
lead, ready at my side. In case of alarm all my papers could be slipped
into this bag and within thirty seconds be transferred to the bottom
of a tub of washing or the cistern of the water-closet. In efforts
to discover arms or incriminating documents, I have seen pictures,
carpets, and bookshelves removed and everything turned topsy-turvy by
diligent searchers, but it never occurred to anybody to search through
a pail of washing or thrust his hand into the water-closet cistern.
Through the agency of friends I secured a post as draftsman at a
small factory on the outskirts of the city. A relative of one of the
officials of this place, whose signature was attached to my papers and
who is well known to the Bolsheviks, called on me recently in New York.
I showed him some notes I had made on the subject, but he protested
that, camouflaged though my references were, they might still be traced
to individuals concerned, most of whom, with their families, are still
in Russia. I therefore suppressed them. For similar reasons I am still
reticent in details concerning the regiment of the Red army to which I
was finally attached.
Learning through military channels at my disposal that men of my age
and industrial status were shortly to be mobilized and despatched to
the eastern front, where the advance of Kolchak was growing to be a
serious menace, I forestalled the mobilization order by about a week
and applied for admission as a volunteer in the regiment of an officer
acquaintance, stationed a short distance outside Petrograd. There was
some not unnatural hesitation before I received an answer, due to the
necessity of considering the personality of the regimental commissar--a
strong Communist who wished to have the regiment despatched to perform
its revolutionary duty against Kolchak’s armies. But at the critical
moment this individual was promoted to a higher divisional post,
and the commander succeeded in getting nominated to his regiment a
commissar of shaky communistic principles, who ultimately developed
anti-Bolshevist sympathies almost as strong as his own. How my
commander, a Tsarist officer, who detested and feared the Communists,
was forced to serve in the Red army I will explain later.
Despite his ill-concealed sympathies, however, this gentleman won
Trotzky’s favour in an unexpected and remarkable manner. Being
instructed to impede an advance of the forces of the “White” general,
Yudenitch, by the destruction of strategic bridges, he resolved to blow
up the wrong bridge, and, if possible, cut off the Red retreat and
assist the White advance. By sheer mistake, however, the company he
despatched to perform the task blew up the right bridge, thus covering
a precipitate Red retreat and effectually checking the White advance.
For days my commander secretly tore his hair and wept, his
mortification rendered the more acute by the commendations he was
obliged for the sake of appearances to shower upon his men, whose
judgment had apparently been so superior to his own. His chagrin
reached its height when he received an official communication from army
headquarters applauding the timely exploit, while through the Communist
organization he was formally invited to join the privileged ranks of
the Communist Party! In the view of my commander no affront could
have been more offensive than this unsought Bolshevist honour. He was
utterly at a loss to grasp my point of view when I told him what to me
was obvious, namely, that no offer could have been more providential
and that he ought to jump at it. Though inside Russia the approaching
White armies were often imagined to be a band of noble and chivalrous
crusaders, certain information I had received as to the disorganization
prevailing amongst them aroused my misgivings, and I was very doubtful
whether my commander’s error had materially altered the course of
events. The commissar, who did not care one way or the other, saw the
humour of the situation. He, too, urged the commander to smother his
feelings and see the joke, with the result that the would-be traitor
to the pseudo-proletarian cause became a Communist, and combining his
persuasions with those of the commissar, succeeded in keeping the
regiment out of further action for several weeks. The confidence they
had won made it easy to convince army headquarters that the regiment
was urgently required to suppress uprisings which were feared in the
capital. When disturbances did break out, however, the quelling of them
was entrusted to troops drafted from the far south or east, for it was
well known that no troops indigenous to Petrograd or Moscow could be
relied upon to fire on their fellow-townspeople.
I had hitherto evaded military service as long as possible, fearing
that it might impede the conduct of my intelligence work. The contrary
proved to be the case, and for many reasons I regretted I had not
enlisted earlier. Apart from greater freedom of movement and preference
over civilians when applying for lodging, amusement, or travelling
tickets, the Red soldier received rations greatly superior both in
quantity and quality to those of the civilian population. Previous
to this time I had received only half a pound of bread daily and had
had to take my scanty dinner at a filthy communal eating-house, but
as a Red soldier I received, besides a dinner and other odds and ends
not worth mentioning, a pound and sometimes a pound and a half of
tolerably good black bread, which alone was sufficient, accustomed as I
am to a scanty diet, to subsist on with relative comfort.
The commander was a good fellow, nervous and sadly out of place in “the
party,” but he soon got used to it and enjoyed its many privileges.
He stood me in good stead. Repeatedly detailing me off to any place
I wished to go to, on missions he knew were lengthy (such as the
purchase of automobile tyres, which were unobtainable, or literature of
various kinds), I was able to devote my main attention as before to the
political and economic situation.
As a Red soldier, I was sent to Moscow and there consulted with the
National Centre, the most promising of the political organizations
whose object was to work out a programme acceptable to the Russian
people as a whole. On account of its democratic character this
organization was pursued by the Bolshevist Government with peculiar
zeal, and was finally unearthed, and its members, of whom many were
Socialists, shot.[3] From Moscow also I received regularly copies of
the summaries on the general situation that were submitted to the
Soviet of People’s Commissars. The questions I was instructed in
messages from abroad to investigate covered the entire field of soviet
administration, but I do not propose to deal with that huge subject
here. It is the present and the inscrutable future that fascinate me
rather than the past. I will speak only of the peasantry, the army, and
“the party.” For it is on the ability or inability of the Communists
to control the army that the stability of the Bolshevist régime in a
considerable measure depends, while the future lies in the lap of that
vast inarticulate mass of simple peasant toilers, so justly termed the
Russian Sphinx.