Comrade Alexandre came to see me at 9 p.m., to tell me that he could not
arrange with Trotsky for sittings. I gathered that Trotsky had been
emphatic and brusque in his refusal, but after all, I have done Lenin,
and he is the one who counts most. I can go back to England without the
head of Trotsky, but I could not have gone without the head of Lenin. I
_have_ accomplished what I came for, and so to hell with Trotsky!
Alexandre said he could only stay ten minutes, but he left at midnight.
He talked Communism the whole time. Now Borodin unfurled his Communist
spirit to me slowly, because he knew me, and to what I belonged, and he
realised that the thing hurled at me in a crude mass would stagger me.
He led me up to it with great caution. Alexandre, on the other hand,
with no understanding or sympathy, took all my inborn prejudices and
just broke them, stamped on them, metaphorically spat on them, and gave
me a big feed of unadulterated Communism. He is a fanatic, and left me
breathless and wondering. All was well until we got to the children
part: he said that his wife had to work, so their baby, who is six weeks
old, has to go by day to the Crèche.
“Are you satisfied with the care it gets at the Crèche?” I asked him. He
shrugged his shoulders, said that collectively they could not receive
the same attention as they would if they were cared for individually. He
then volunteered the information that of course the baby was more liable
to get ill and even die if it was in the Crèche, but that it was a
chance, and after all his wife’s life was not going to be reduced to
feeding, washing, and dressing a baby. That was no sort of existence,
and so, what alternative was there except the Crèche?
It was the cold, dispassionate way in which he said it that gave me the
creeps.
“What is your wife’s work?” I said.
“Politics, same as mine,” he said.
“Are you fond of your baby?”
“Yes.”
“Is your wife fond of it?”
“Yes.”
I thought to myself that she has not had to pray for a baby, and weep
because the months went by. She has not had to wait, and wait--it is not
infinitely precious to her, her baby.
He then counter-questioned me:
“What did you do with your children when you became a widow and had no
home?”
“My parents took them.”
“And if you had had no parents who could take them? How could you have
worked?”
It is true that there must be thousands of women who earn their living
and have no family in the background on whom to plant the baby. What
happens in a country where there is no paternal State? In Russia the
State will clothe, feed and educate them from birth until fourteen years
of age. They may go to the Crèche for the day or permanently. Children
may go to the State school for the half day, whole day, or to board.
Their parents may see them, or give them up for ever, as they choose,
and there is no difference made between the legitimate and
[Illustration: TROTSKY, FROM A DRAWING.
_p. 129._]
the illegitimate child. Moreover, according to the labour laws, no woman
may work for eight weeks before the baby is born, nor for eight weeks
after birth. She is sent away to a resthouse in the country, always of
course at the State’s expense. On application she is given the necessary
layette for the new born. It is difficult to preserve one’s maternal
sentimentality in the face of this Communistic generosity.