THE JOURNEY TO EKATERINBURG
The railway engineers in whose company I travelled to Ekaterinburg
were all, save three, experts whom Kolchak had formerly employed on
the railway. They had been captured, like myself, at Krasnoyarsk, but
Sverdlov, the Vice-Minister of Railways, had offered work to them all.
“I don’t insist on your becoming Communists,” he said. “You can hold
whatever political opinions you like, but I do want you to help us to run
our railways. Your past will not count against you. I don’t care how much
you assisted Kolchak. Assist the Soviet republic now: that’s all we want
of you.”
This was a wise and statesmanlike line to take, and it led on this
occasion to the Bolsheviks obtaining the assistance of some very able
railway engineers. I afterwards discovered that Sverdlov had even
appointed, as his right-hand man, Colonel Klementovich, who had been
second in command to Supranovitch, Kolchak’s Director of Military
Communications. If all the Bolshevik leaders have the same breadth of
mind as Sverdlov, there is some chance that their system of government
will become modified and therefore stand a chance of being permanently
established in Russia.
The head of our mission, or “expedition” as it was called, was a
Ukrainian called Dovgolevsky, who, though not quite a Communist, was
so very nearly one that he had, since the October revolution, been a
prominent technical official of the Soviet republic. On account of his
political opinions he had had to leave Russia at an early age. He had
studied at Liège and worked as an electrical engineer in various parts of
Belgium and France, finally settling down in a good position in Paris as
one of the heads of a great French electrical company. He had returned
to Russia in 1905 and been promptly sent as a convict to Siberia, so
that the last time he had seen Krasnoyarsk was through the bars of a
prison-van. Sverdlov had also been imprisoned at the same time, and, in
fact, all the prominent Bolsheviks whom I met in Siberia had been in
jail under the Tsar or under Kolchak. The Chief of Police in Krasnoyarsk
had occupied that position under the Czechs, but the “Supreme Ruler”
had put him in jail for expressing liberal sentiments. When the Reds
came they thought that the mere fact of his being in jail was the best
recommendation he could show, and accordingly made him Chief of Police
again, or, to use the Bolshevik title, head of the National Militia.
Dovgolevsky was a tireless worker, a good organizer, and a strong
Socialist. I need not give his political views: the reader will find
them in any Socialist publication; but what struck me very much was the
extraordinarily wide range of his reading in French and Russian, and the
serious study he had evidently made of social questions.
I cannot understand how it comes to pass that people who have got a wrong
but attractive theory often preach it with more energy than people who
have got a right theory. Perhaps it is because the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The Bolsheviks
teach their theory of non-religion, of economics, and of government
with tireless energy by means of posters, cinemas, newspapers, and free
public lectures; and they drive it home not only to students leading the
sheltered life of universities, but also to the man in the street. Our
newspapers are full of murder cases and reports from the divorce courts.
Theirs are weighed down with expositions of Marxian economics. We teach
our children reading and writing, and let them “pick up” as best they can
something about religion, about the mighty economic system which is to
play such a large part in their lives, and about the actual working of
the great constitutional machine in the manipulation of which they must
now take a hand. The Communists say, “These things are kept hidden from
you because, if you understood them, you would make a clean sweep of
them all,” just as the Reformers said, “The Church withholds the Bible
from you because if you knew its teaching you would soon put an end to
Rome.” It is certainly unfortunate that our future workmen get all their
knowledge of economics from the _Daily Herald_, and that our future
Generals get all their knowledge of English constitutional history from
the _Morning Post_. Might it not be possible to give our future fitter,
as well as our future Field-Marshal some inkling of the truth in early
life? Could we not take a leaf from the Bolsheviks’ book and boldly teach
the young all about supply and demand, labour, trade unions and wages?
This, however, is somewhat of a digression. All I meant to say was that
Dovgolevsky and Bolsheviks of his type take an interest in literature, in
social and religious questions, and in problems of government which the
average English engineer of the same standing does not, as a rule, take.
In the average engineers’ mess with us the conversation runs chiefly on
women, horses, and drink. There is a good deal of obscenity, and, though
religion and the established order of society are never attacked, those
subjects have evidently not been studied, and it is “bad form” to discuss
them. In the corresponding Bolshevik messes there is never any obscenity,
so far as I have seen, and though religion, capitalism, kings, and war
are violently attacked, they are generally attacked by men who have
studied these subjects. We have, I think, got the right point of view,
but it is a thousand pities that we do not stock our minds with literary
and controversial ammunition for the great battle which is coming, nay,
which has already begun.
The educated Bolsheviks are well aware of all that has been published
about them in foreign newspapers, and I must own that they made me feel
foolish when they asked me point-blank if, from what I had seen of
Bolshevism in action, there was any truth in the reports that Bolsheviks
always killed prisoners taken in war, and that they had nationalized all
women.
“Not that we object to these lies being told about us,” quoth
Dovgolevsky, “for they only do us good in the long run. They convince our
own people that the capitalists will employ every mendacity against us,
and they will excite sympathy for us among the British workmen who are
naturally prone to take the side of people who have been traduced.”
I had to admit that, if the Bolsheviks showed great moderation, a
reaction in their favour was not impossible; but, during all my stay with
the Reds, I never professed to agree with them, though I was always able
to follow their train of thought and to enter into their frame of mind.
To this gift, which I owe to my journalistic training, I attribute my
success in carrying on long conversations with fanatical Bolsheviks and
invariably escaping with my life.
In the carriages occupied by this railway mission there were no ladies,
and there was only one woman on the train—a clerk who lived in a distant
waggon and was always extremely busy with her typewriter. Nobody was
allowed to ride in our cars under any circumstances. Visitors offered to
sleep on the floor, to stand in the passage, or even to remain in the
vestibule between the outer and inner doors, but they were always told
politely but very decisively that this was impossible. Even Red soldiers
were turned off like everybody else. Our Commissar was like adamant.
At every large station telephone connection was made with the town—at one
time we had three telephones in the dining-car—and a tremendous amount
of work was done, though the task of evolving some sort of order out of
the chaos left by the retreat was appallingly great. As for food, we
always got imitation coffee and a little black bread in the morning. At
4 we were supposed to get our next meal, which consisted of a kind of
porridge and more imitation coffee, but, owing to pressure of work, we
seldom got it before 6 or 7. Supper—_ersatz_ coffee and black bread—was
fixed for 10 o’clock; but the tables were sometimes covered with papers
and the dining-car full of local railwaymen till 2 in the morning, so
that occasionally we did not get any supper till that unearthly hour.
The Russian is a glutton for work once he gets really started, but I had
never seen such work as this in my life before. It cannot go on for long
at such high pressure and with such insufficient food. It is against
human nature, like so many other things in Bolshevism, and involves
such a strain on the chiefs, as well as on the subordinates, that both
must sooner or later break down. Moreover, in so far as the railway is
concerned, it is hopeless, owing to the lack of locomotives, of spare
parts, and of a trained personnel.
Dovgolevsky, after all, is only an electrician, not a railwayman; and
99 per cent. of the genuine railway experts whom I met on this journey
and in Ekaterinburg and Moscow and who are not Bolsheviks, or indeed
members of any political party, are profoundly dissatisfied with the
conditions under which they work and are only anxious to leave Russia
altogether. So great is their longing to get away and so extreme are
the precautions taken by the Bolsheviks to prevent them getting away,
that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one of these engineers to pass over the frontier, unless he
formed part of an official Bolshevik delegation like the Krassin Mission.
Even then his wife and children would be kept behind as hostages, so
as to prevent him repudiating the republic and all its works once he
got abroad. This was done in the case of all the members of the Krassin
Mission, with the exception of Krassin himself, and the necessity for
it, from the Bolshevik point of view, is evident to all who have, like
the present writer, lived among the technical experts employed by the
Soviet. Practically all these experts are so anxious to leave that one
man whom I met in Moscow—he was not a railwayman—discussed with me a plan
for getting across the Pamirs into India. It is not putting the case too
strongly to say that they are as anxious to leave Russia as people are
anxious to leave a powder-magazine which has caught fire. England and the
English colonies attract them all; and I think that when the gates are
opened and the rush begins, we should relax our passport and immigration
regulations with the object of allowing Russian technicians and
well-disposed Russians generally to enter our territories and to settle
there. A period of political quarantine must be enforced in our own
interests, but surely the skill of these engineers could be made use of
in the development of East Africa, Mesopotamia, or, better still, those
parts of Northern Canada where the climatic conditions are somewhat
similar to Russia. The scheme which I adumbrate need not necessarily be
a burden on the British taxpayer. The Boxer indemnity payable, and still
being paid, to the Russian Legation in Peking, the revenue of the Chinese
Eastern Railway, and various credits which the Tsarist and Kerensky
Governments opened in Washington and other capitals might be used for the
purpose, in connection with a similar scheme which I have outlined at the
end of Chapter IV.; and, in return, we could let all the British subjects
who want to go to Red Russia go there freely and stay there permanently.
What the engineers most object to is their insufficient pay and their
impossible position. They all exist on sufferance, are generally
described as _bourgeois_ specialists, and are constantly the object of
fierce attacks in the Socialist newspapers. Lenin, it is true, came
to their rescue on one occasion, and said that, though they had been
willing slaves and tools of the capitalists, and were undoubtedly
_bourgeois_, they should be tolerated and even paid highly until such
time as the proletariat had produced technical experts of its own; but
even this is hardly good enough. There is not sufficient inducement or
an attractive enough future to make these highly skilled experts go on
working. The elimination from their lives of all professional ambition,
all possibility of legitimate recompense and rewards, all expectation of
being able to give their children a good start in life, and to ensure
for themselves an honoured and comfortable old age—all this makes the
technical experts profoundly discontented, and will inevitably tell on
the quality of their work. It will also prevent young men of ability from
making themselves fit to succeed them, for why should a young man scorn
delights and live laborious days with the object of fitting himself for
a lower position than that which he would otherwise occupy? By burning
the midnight oil and spending years in hard study, he only qualifies for
a place among the submerged, suspected, and temporarily tolerated tenth,
whereas, if he made no special exertions, he would remain among the
ruling class, the workmen.
There are now, and there will probably continue to be in the future,
among the technical experts, enthusiasts who will despise all these
difficulties for the sake of the Socialist Soviet Republic, but will
their number be large enough to meet the requirements of a vast modern
State?
A minor point which caused me more concern at the time, and indeed until
I had left Russia, than all these abstruse speculations was the fact that
one of the carriages in our train was car No. 1,167, in which I and my
comrades had travelled from Omsk to Krasnoyarsk. I now remembered that
during that journey I had deposited in a cavity underneath my bunk in
that car a number of letters which one of Kolchak’s officials had asked
me to transmit to England. In order to pass them through our post office
and our censorship I had written my name and rank on the outside of each
envelope; and if these letters were now discovered my position would be
rather awkward. But, luckily, the car had been requisitioned in such
a hurry, and was kept so full of people and baggage until we reached
Moscow, and even for a month afterwards, that this secret receptacle was
never opened.
My passport I kept until I reached Moscow, but it was nearly two
months before I had destroyed all the other clues which pointed to my
connection with the British Army. Again and again, after I thought that
I had destroyed everything suspicious, I came across letters and bank
receipts in which my military rank was given, British Army forms, and
official documents regarding my travelling expenses, and my voyage in
1918 from Liverpool to Vladivostock via America. My identity disc and the
inscription on my kit-bag came near to hanging me, when I was afterwards
arrested in Moscow by the Extraordinary Commission, as I shall relate in
a subsequent chapter.
There were many abandoned White trains all the way between Krasnoyarsk
and Omsk. One deserted carriage was labelled “French Military Mission,”
and one captured armoured train, which was full of shells, bore the
inscription H.M.S. _Suffolk_. It had been manned by a detachment of
bluejackets from that vessel, had done excellent work at the Front, but
had been in charge of Russians when captured. All the Bolshevik Red
Cross trains had been fitted out by various Grand Duchesses, and bore
their names, which had been painted over but were still legible through
the paint. Those Grand Duchesses had been thrown alive into a disused
mine-shaft at Alapaievsk, near Ekaterinburg, and then overwhelmed by a
mass of earth cast on top of them. I still have photographs of their
swollen and unsightly corpses. On top of those names were painted the
words “Sanitary Train, R.S.F.S.R.” (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic).
[Illustration: CORPSE OF THE GRAND DUKE JOHN.]
[Illustration: CORPSE OF THE GRAND DUCHESS ELIZABETH. _To face p. 82._]
Few good locomotives had been captured, but a great many “cold” and rusty
ones, so that the spoils of war taken by the Bolsheviks in the shape of
utilizable railway material were not as great as might have been expected
from the completeness of their victory. This failure to capture railway
locomotives was a great disappointment to the Reds, for their need of
engines was acute. Even on the train in which I travelled, and which,
as it belonged to the Assistant Minister of Railways, must have had the
best engines procurable, there were very bad locomotives, which had to be
changed several times during the course of the journey.
West of Novo-Nikolaevsk an engine and about a dozen carriages had been
deliberately smashed by the Whites. The engine had been run off the line
and lay topsy-turvy, completely ruined, while, on a siding, two echelons
had been more or less wrecked. Trucks which had been jettisoned by the
retreating troops and thrown off the rails were to be seen lying wheels
upward at intervals along the line. The merciful snow had covered the
bodies of the dead, and had partially buried abandoned guns, carts, and
miscellaneous railway material.
The only bridge injured was at Omsk, where the eastern span had been
blown up, with the result that a new line had to be laid across the ice,
and the passage of the river took a whole day. Trotsky turned about a
thousand men belonging to his new Labour Army on to the work of repairing
this bridge, which has probably been completed now. The Perm bridge,
which was blown up by the Czechs in July, 1919, had been replaced by
February, 1920, when I passed over it. There was no damage done to the
line at all, and the damage done to the bridges might have been very much
greater.
At Taiga I made enquiries after Colonel Johnston and his companions
who were reported to have been killed there, and, as a result of my
enquiries, I was able to inform the British Government and the relatives
of the officers in question that Colonel Johnston was certainly alive,
and that the other officers were probably alive too.
At Novo-Nikolaevsk I visited the town, and was struck by the rise in the
price of provisions, especially bread and butter, since I had been there
last. This was due to the fact that while formerly the farmers brought
their produce to market very few of them did so now. And why should they?
The Soviet paper money which they received in exchange for it could buy
them nothing, for there was nothing to be bought. At one stall in the
market-place I saw a shabby, genteel old lady bargaining for a few of
those hard, circular biscuits which the Russians are so fond of, but a
corporal came along, produced a large sheaf of notes from his pocket, and
promptly bought everything on the stall.
I was somewhat alarmed to find that Novo-Nikolaevsk was under the rule
of a Bolshevik General, called von Blücher, who had been a Rittmeister
in the German Army and a prisoner of war. He had fought against Kolchak
for over a year in command of a Division, and had been noted for his
severity and his military talent. Now he was in command of an Army and of
the garrison at Novo-Nikolaevsk. His name was affixed to proclamations
ordering all citizens to be indoors by 10 o’clock, and, as I had no
desire to make his acquaintance, I always took particular care to be back
in my train by that time.
Omsk I found to be paralyzed by a double terror—terror of typhus and
terror of the Extraordinary Commission. The typhus had claimed so many
victims that a pile of dead bodies had accumulated in the market-place
and that many of the abandoned houses were, on being broken into, found
to be filled from cellar to attic with corpses. The Extraordinary
Commission, in revenge probably for the slaughter by Kolchak’s troops of
sixteen workmen, had put to death twenty-seven of Kolchak’s supporters,
whose names and crimes were all given in the local Communist paper, the
_Sovietsky Sibir_, No. 27, February 6, 1920, a copy of which I saw. The
crimes for which they had been executed did not seem to be very great.
Some were employers of labour who had been “oppressive” towards their
workmen, but most of them were editors and journalists who had assisted
in Kolchak’s propaganda. The date of these executions was the day before
the power of inflicting death had been taken from the Extraordinary
Commission by a decree of Derzhinsky. That decree meant nothing, however,
as the law which it summarized contained a clause to the effect that
the Cheka (the usual abbreviation for “Extraordinary Commission”) could
still hand over “dangerous criminals” to the Army, which had the right
to execute them. It was rather like the case of the Spanish Inquisition,
which never put people to death but only surrendered them to the “civil
arm”; and in April, 1920, I knew personally of one case where the Moscow
Cheka threatened to hand over a suspect to the Army in the certain
knowledge that the Army would execute him.
I wandered about Omsk a good deal despite the fact that I ran a great
risk of discovery, for I had lived there some six months in all. I saw
Kolchak’s former War Office, now the H.Q. of a Red Division, but not
the G.H.Q. of the Red Armies in Siberia. The Red G.H.Q. is in Tomsk, a
much better town. I also met in the street a Chinese officer in Russian
uniform, but saw no Chinese soldiers. Government eating-houses had been
opened for the troops and the inhabitants, but I did not dare to visit
any of them, as a ticket was necessary.
The Red flag flew over Kolchak’s former headquarters; but over the
building occupied three months before by the British Military Mission
there flew a Red Cross flag, for the place had been converted into a
hospital. The town railway station had formerly been occupied by the
trains of General Knox, General Janin, General Graves, General Sirovi,
the G.O.C., the Poles, and many of the Russian military leaders, as well
as by Sir Charles Eliot and the other High Commissioners, not to mention
the heads of the foreign railway missions. Now it was filled with
comparatively dingy-looking Red Cross trains. Some of the buildings in
town had been turned into Government Schools for the children of working
men, and there, as well as in Ekaterinburg and elsewhere, I saw these
children studying.
Walking back to the main railway station, I saw some cigarettes for
sale at an extremely high price on a stall, and was meditating the
purchase of a few when suddenly a small boy, who had been observing me
intently for some time, said to his companions the one word “Anglichanin”
(Englishman). Heartily cursing the intense objectivity and curiosity
which makes small boys so dangerous to people in my position, I beat a
hasty retreat to my carriage, for Dovgolevsky would have been powerless
to protect me, if once the puissant and vindictive Cheka of Omsk had got
hold of me. In fact, the Assistant Minister of Railways had as good as
admitted, when he sent me off, that he was powerless to protect me in
case certain other departments of the Red Government thought fit to stop
me, and his instructions to Dovgolevsky were, “Take him as far as you
can.” He had never had much hope that I would get as far as Moscow, and
I began to lose hope myself when I was told that the Cheka was going to
search our train, and when I noticed the alarm that this intelligence
caused among my Socialist companions. The searchers consisted of three
youngish men, one of them a workman from Petrograd and a virulent
Communist who had, I was told, been sent specially from Russia to show
the Siberian workmen how the _bourgeois_ and all those with _bourgeois_
tendencies were to be kept down. The others were local men. I was
somewhat reassured when I learned that the object of their visit was not
to search for foreign agents, but to prevent us bringing any food out of
Siberia for speculative purposes, and to see that we took with us only as
much as would bring us to Moscow. There was in the conversation and in
the actions of these men a good deal of that austere republican justice
which I had noticed at Krasnoyarsk, but it occurred to me later that if a
Transport Minister’s train can thus be held up by these fanatics, there
will be very little chance of corn being ever exported from Siberia for
the use of persons whom the Reds politely describe as “bloated English
capitalists.”
When the searchers came to me, their leader was favourably impressed by
my evident poverty, my scanty kit, and the fact that I had with me no
food or tobacco whatever. He simply said, half interrogatively, “You are
a foreign comrade,” and passed on.
I was glad when we left Omsk.