THE BOLSHEVIK F.O. AND THE FOREIGN PRESS
THE curious position occupied by Russia _vis-à-vis_ of all foreign
Governments, not excluding even those Baltic Governments with which she
has made treaties, naturally leads to the existence of very anomalous
relations between the Soviet and the foreign journalists who find their
way now and then into Red Russia. As no country, save Poland, is formally
at war with Russia, journalists from the outer world can, if they are
very persistent, find their way to Moscow through Reval or Finland. All
they have got to do is to secure the _visa_ of some Bolshevik agent, and
there are now many recognized Bolshevik agents in Northern Europe and in
London. This _visa_ will not, of course, be given unless the Commissar is
sure of his man; but it is given: I have known it to be given to persons
whose own Governments had refused them passports to Russia. Indeed, there
is no way of keeping out of Russia any person who wants to go there,
and who is regarded by the Bolsheviks as sound. He has only to demand a
passport to Reval, which cannot as a rule be refused, and from Reval the
resident Bolshevik Mission will at once send him through to Moscow. Even
when his own Government will not allow him to go abroad, he may appeal
to subterranean agencies which will arrange his journey to the Mecca of
Communism. For there are now in every European country two Governmental
systems,—one visible, the other hidden—and both of them issue passports.
During the month I recently spent in Moscow I was astonished at the
number of foreigners who entered that city by the underground method, but
it is not of such people that I wish to speak here; it is rather of the
honest, adventurous, non-Bolshevik journalist whose curiosity is excited
by the mystery of Russia, and whose determination to probe that mystery
is only strengthened by the risks against which he is warned and the
obstacles which are placed in his way. Unfortunately it is not always his
editor who issues these warnings or interposes those obstacles; quite the
contrary. Instead of holding young journalists back, their own newspapers
sometimes excite them to go forward by cabling bitter taunts. “Are you
going to wait till cheap excursions are running to Moscow?” wired one
American paper to its representative on the Finnish frontier, with the
result that the young correspondent in question made a heartbreaking
appeal to the Commissars to let him pass. He was allowed to pass, but
he ever afterwards felt himself to be under an obligation to the Reds,
and consequently wrote very much in their favour. If the present system
persists, this sort of thing will occur frequently, and the publication
of a considerable amount of pro-Bolshevik material in the foreign Press
will be the natural result.
Even though most of the matter written about Russia in the outside world
will continue, as now, to be anti-Bolshevik, that matter will not have
the same news value as matter sent from inside Russia, especially as
conditions in that country are changing so rapidly that the Russian
expert of to-day will be hopelessly out of date to-morrow. And, if the
present anomalous state of affairs continues, it will leave the casual
correspondent and the Communists themselves the only sources or, rather,
the only source from which outer Governments can obtain information of
developments in Russia, where there are no longer any foreign consuls
or diplomatists. Even if there were, it would be difficult for them
to obtain much information, as the new ruling class in Russia is
very different from the old, being characterized by all the intense
suspiciousness and reticence which we should expect to find in men who
have been conceived in the womb of revolution, and have passed the
greater part of their lives outwitting the police and carrying on secret
machinations against the established order of things in every land.
In comparison with these hard-faced Puritans who deny themselves the
pleasures of the table, and whose only relaxation is work, conspiracy,
and murder, the old type of Tsarist official was incredibly simple,
gullible, and expansive.
Bolshevik Russia certainly possesses a terrible fascination for the
adventurous journalist, for the unscrupulous editor, and, I may add, for
a large section of the general public in every country. The Communists
are well aware of this fact, and are cleverly utilizing this fascination
for the purpose of their own Propaganda. They only allow into Russia,
as a rule, foreign correspondents who have written in favour of them or
against their enemies; and I have known perfectly honest men who tried
to qualify for admission by writing ferocious onslaughts on the White
Finns. No Foreign Office in the world keeps such a careful, voluminous,
and up-to-date record of newspaper writers as the Russian Commissariat
of Foreign Affairs. It is well qualified to do so, being itself composed
mainly of Russian Pressmen who have passed most of their life abroad,
generally in England, and who are convinced that, for their purpose,
journalists are far more important than diplomatists. The latter send
home dispatches which circulate among a small circle of officials and are
then permanently pigeon-holed; the former appeal to the large masses,
the very people whom the Bolsheviks want to reach. And they have so
contrived matters that the journalist who enters Russia will only be
able to send out Bolshevik Propaganda. He almost always tries to give an
impartial description and to send out both sides of the question, but as
the Bolsheviks invariably cut out all criticism of themselves, the outer
world only gets the pro-Bolshevik matter. Most correspondents try to
put matters right when they leave Russia, but it is then too late: the
impression has been made, and the man in the street has no desire and no
time to read intricate explanations of stale news. If we resume relations
with the Bolsheviks, the same system will continue, and the Soviet
Government will derive great advantage from it, for though conscientious
correspondents will from time to time consider it their duty to explain
the true state of affairs, they will only be expelled, lose their posts,
lose touch with Russia, and soon cease to be authorities on current
happenings here. It is fresh news from a country that newspaper readers
want, not commentaries written by people who lived there years before.
It may be maintained that the Bolshevik attitude towards news is
practically the same as that of most Continental Governments and of
Japan, that the present abnormal state of Russia justifies abnormal
measures, and that things were just as bad under the Tsar. It is
certainly true that the Soviet Government is justified in exercising
the utmost severity towards the foreign Press, but, on the other hand,
we are fools to let her use the foreign Press as she does; and it seems
to me certain that, even if we enter into relations with her, she will
continue the present system in its full rigour. This would not matter
so much if Russia were pursuing a policy which affected only herself,
but, on the contrary, she is pursuing a policy which has an extreme and
vital interest for every nation in the world; she is carrying out a great
social experiment in which all humanity is keenly interested. And her
system of mixed severity and blandishment _vis-à-vis_ of the foreign
Press is one which never existed before in any country and does not exist
in any other country now. When I lived in Russia during the revolutionary
movement of 1905-1906, I found that I could telegraph to England
practically whatever I liked. There was not a single English or American
correspondent in Russia at that time who did not oppose the unfortunate
policy of the Tsar’s Government, and some of those correspondents were
almost Bolshevik in their views, yet all of them were treated with the
same courtesy by the authorities and not one of them was ever expelled.
And in all other countries of the world, not excluding even Japan, there
are many foreign correspondents who habitually criticize the Government
under which they live, but who are nevertheless allowed to remain and
never discriminated against.
At present a correspondent is allowed into Russia for three weeks only,
and that fact is clearly stated in the permit he receives. If he does
not distinguish himself during those three weeks by writing something
favourable about the Bolsheviks, his permit will not be renewed, and, if
he writes nothing at all, he will have to leave even before the three
weeks have elapsed. No matter how long he stays, he is a compulsory,
non-paying guest of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, and
it is impossible for him to get hotel accommodation or lodging in the
ordinary way. That system alone places him in a false position, and
the great kindness which is shown him makes it very hard for him to be
impartial. The Foreign Office has half a dozen large houses in Moscow for
its foreign “guests”—the Hôtel Métropole, the Hôtel National, the Hôtel
Savoy, the palace of a Russian sugar king on the Sofieskaya Naberezhnaya,
and the beautiful villa of a German factory owner in Hartonovskaya
Street. Princely apartments in the Kremlin are sometimes placed at the
disposal of visitors whom the Bolsheviks regard as peculiarly sound in
their views, and some of these highly honoured guests have been foreign
journalists.
Along with this lavish hospitality there is a sleepless vigilance to
prevent the “guest” coming in contact with the wrong sort of people,
and the most meticulous care to keep him in the right atmosphere.
Any visitor who calls on him in his hotel must run the gauntlet of a
bureau downstairs to which he must submit his name, and under these
circumstances a Russian who is unfavourably disposed towards the present
régime will, for extremely good reasons, be unlikely to call and still
more unlikely, if he does call, to have his name sent up. Pasted on the
door of some of these palaces is a notice to the effect that nobody
may visit any guest without first obtaining a written permit from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and, by way of emphasizing it, there always
stands, alongside this notice, a sentry with a rifle. Each correspondent
has attached to him an interpreter, guide, and warder all in one—a
reliable Bolshevik in the service of the Foreign Office—who speaks the
language of the correspondent as well as Russian. This functionary
reports every movement of his charge, keeps undesirable people at
a distance, translates the right sort of matter from the Bolshevik
newspapers, gives the right sort of information, makes the proper
explanations, and keeps the correspondent in the proper circles. The
minuteness of the care taken by the Bolsheviks to create a favourable
impression is almost incredible. It is like the care of a scientist
conducting a delicate chemical experiment in a laboratory, or like the
care of a nurse for a patient hovering between life and death. It goes
even so far as to send tramcars flying past, while the foreign observer
is looking, and to galvanize into fictitious life factories which have
long been dead and will be dead again once the correspondent has left.
As Potemkin humbugged Catherine the Great “as to conditions in Russia
by conducting her through sham cities run up for the occasion by scenic
artists,” so the successors of Catherine humbug English Labour delegates
and foreign correspondents in the manner I have described. No strict
Christian mother is more careful about the books her little children read
and the conversations which they hear than the Bolshevik F.O. is about
the literature which their guests peruse and the words to which they
listen. I know of one English correspondent in Moscow who was forbidden
to attend service at the Anglican Church owing to fear, on the part of
the Bolshevik specialists who had him in hand, that the success of the
delicate experiment which they were conducting on his mind with elaborate
and patient skill might thereby be imperilled.
The foreign correspondents are not all kept together, for, if they
were, they might generate by discussion among themselves an independent
atmosphere of their own. They are therefore distributed very carefully
among the various guest-houses, in each of which they are outnumbered
by Russian and foreign Bolsheviks, so that the tone of conversation is
always predominantly Communist. Some of these Russians are ex-diplomats
and ex-officers, and are often of high intellectual attainments. In the
hotel where I lived there was a young ex-diplomat who had worked in
the Russian Embassy at Constantinople, and sometimes, after an evening
spent in talking to him about Near Eastern politics and about diplomatic
personages whom we both knew, I could hardly believe that, if such a
man believed in it and worked for it, Bolshevism could, after all, be
so very different from any other system of Government. A still more
remarkable companion was an ex-naval officer who had been everywhere in
the world, was a Futurist painter, had the most charming manners, and
knew very much more about Elizabethan dramatists than I do. He had made,
for example, a special study of Ben Jonson, some of whose plays are now
being performed in Moscow; and, when I left Russia, he entrusted me with
money to buy him, not cigarettes or clothing, but certain of Ben Jonson’s
works. I do not accuse him of diplomacy or duplicity or propaganda. We
had both been studied dispassionately and ultimately brought into contact
with one another by a keener intellect than either of us possessed.
Notwithstanding the fact that the foreigner makes allowance for all this
propaganda and laughs at it occasionally, he is nevertheless influenced
very considerably by it. I was never so much struck by this fact as
on one occasion when I disclosed my position and my military rank to
an honest English gentleman of what I may call Asquithian views in
politics, who had undergone for some weeks an intensive course of this
psychological treatment at the hands of the Bolsheviks, and was on the
point of leaving for England. He laughed at my fears, told me to declare
myself an officer and claim boldly the right to leave for England with
the other officers, and assured me that the Extraordinary Commission had
been deprived of the power to inflict capital punishment. If he knew all
that I knew he would have held very different language, but I saw that it
would take a long time to make him see things as they really were, and I
had only got him away for a few moments from his interpreter, whose ear
was probably glued, however, to the keyhole. Although he was very far
from being a Bolshevik and flattered himself that he saw through all the
little wiles of his hosts, it would be really as hard to make him alter
the opinion he had formed of their moderation as it would be to make him
change his religion. One’s views are formed from what one sees and hears,
and if the eyes and ears of an observer are carefully controlled his
opinions are, to some extent, forced on him; nevertheless, having formed
an opinion, he dislikes to change it, as his doing so would be equivalent
to a confession that he has been gulled.
This extraordinary system for influencing the Press—a system which may
have a profound effect on journalism all over the world—presupposes in
its author a profound knowledge of psychology and a keener appreciation
of the power exercised by newspapers over public opinion than any
government exhibited until the outbreak of the Great War. But when one
tries to ascertain who invented it, one finds that, like the tank, it
owes its origin to circumstances and to a variety of inventors. It may
even owe something to the great and elaborate system of dealing with
the Press of neutral and friendly countries which was gradually built
up in England during the war. Practically all the Bolshevik leaders
have been journalists for the greater part of their lives; and, unlike
the prominent English statesman who once said that he never read the
newspapers, they have made a close study of this remarkable force, which
was unknown to antiquity and which was ignored by most modern historians
before the time of Macaulay; they have investigated the secret of its
strength; and have sedulously sought out its weak points. Unfortunately,
however, this flattering attention will probably result in their doing
more harm to independent and honest journalism than has been done during
the last two hundred years by all the statesmen who ignored it, and
contemned it, and persecuted it, and knew nothing whatever about it.
Trotsky, himself a journalist to his finger-tips, is even credited with
the intention of making all Russian newspapermen wear a special uniform,
but that is another story and too long a one to be given here.
I fancy, however, that I can detect Trotsky’s hand in what I shall
hereafter describe simply as the System (with a big S). Litvinov has also
had something to do with it, for he takes an extremely keen interest
in foreign journalists, and has an accurate knowledge of even obscure
writers who specialize in Russia. He pays more attention, indeed, to
inferior but prolific journalists than he does to great writers, for
he knows that if the great writers influence tens of thousands of
middle-class people, the small writers influence millions of workmen, and
even contribute by their daily presentment of contemporary developments
in little-known countries to form the opinions of the masters.
And what I have said of Litvinov is equally true of the Bolshevik
Missions in Reval and London. The institution which is directly charged
with the administration of the System is not itself very imposing, and
the secret cannot be found there. Something must here be said, however,
about that institution, which is, of course, the People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs.
That ministry is lodged in a cramped and unimposing wing at the back of
the former Hôtel Métropole; and the entrance to it is through a door
formerly used by the hotel servants. Painted on a small square of wood
hung outside this door is the inscription: “People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs.” It is a rough, makeshift signboard, such as the poorest
provincial shopkeeper in this country would be ashamed of, but it accords
very well with the ostentatious poverty which prevails in the building
where Chicherin, in a dispatch to Mr. Francis, the American Ambassador,
proudly described the Soviet, of which he formed part, as “the Government
of the Poor and of the Oppressed.”
Inside the entrance an armed Red soldier is always on guard: at least, he
and his rifle are constantly in evidence, though very often he himself
is asleep on a dilapidated sofa. There is a lift to facilitate ascent
to the upper regions, but it has not been in working order since the
Reds came into power, and visitors have got to mount a flight of dark
stairs. On reaching the first-floor, a door on the left leads into the
suite of rooms devoted to the Censorate. The first apartment is an
anteroom where one sometimes finds English, American, Rumanian, and
Italian correspondents being enlightened by their various interpreters
and getting Bolshevik decrees and newspapers translated for them while
waiting to have their articles and telegrams censored. Further on, there
are three other rooms, the central one being the office in which the
censoring is done and in which a number of correspondents are also to
be found waiting, the nearest room being also a waiting-room to which
correspondents from the central room sometimes retire, while the censor
is arguing some delicate point with some one correspondent, and the
furthest room being the private office of Comrade Rosenberg. In all these
apartments Bolshevik women clerks, who generally speak some foreign
language, work spasmodically on a damaged Russian typewriter, which
seems to be shifted about from one room to another. There is also on the
premises a German Underwood with Latin characters, which is sometimes
used at a pinch by the correspondents. Passports are also attended to in
the central room and permits to leave the country granted to foreigners.
Two Bolshevik officials attend to the Press and to the passport business.
Their names are Rosenberg and Feinberger, and both of them are Jews with
a very good knowledge of English and a still better knowledge of German.
The chief of the department is Rosenberg, a good-natured and hard-working
but somewhat moody and neurasthenic man. Sometimes he is pleasant,
sometimes suspicious, morbidly touchy, and almost inaudible, but always
he is impossibly and ludicrously severe as a Press censor. He will only
pass whole-hearted and unstinted admiration for Lenin and all his works,
and has no use even for praise if it is faint. To give one example of
his methods out of thousands, a correspondent once commented in a purely
descriptive article, most of it very pro-Bolshevik, on the inconvenience
caused to pedestrians by the huge masses of half-melted snow which
had been allowed to accumulate last spring in the streets of Moscow,
where it constituted such a formidable and amazing obstacle that every
correspondent who visited the city at that period immediately started to
write about it before speaking about anything else. This comment annoyed
Rosenberg. “Why do you speak of this snow?” he asked petulantly. “There
are places where the snow has disappeared and where the streets are
clean. Why not describe those places?”
Feinberger lived so long in England that he knows English much better
than Russian; but though he wrote, I think, for English Labour papers
which, at all times of crisis, opposed the mildest and most necessary
Press censorship as an infringement of English liberty, he is now himself
the most merciless and unfair of censors. When he read the notes I
submitted to him about Yurovsky, the Tsar’s murderer, he objected to
my mentioning the fact that Yurovsky was a Jew, and made me strike out
the word “Jew” as if I should be likely to forget that fact, which,
moreover, he did not dispute. I once spoke of the “lugubrious” funeral
march which the Bolsheviks play in memory of their comrades who have
fallen, and he also objected to this word “lugubrious,” which was, he
maintained, a term of ridicule.
These, it must be remembered, are not exceptional cases; they are typical
cases. With such a censorship, the position of a foreign correspondent
in Moscow is such that no self-respecting journalist could tolerate
it for a moment, and that no decent British paper should send a
representative there until the system is altered. For if a correspondent
is made to eliminate from his dispatches all criticisms of Communism
and all reference to facts which tell against Communism, quite a wrong
impression will be made on his readers. I must admit that the Bolshevik
censors always make their deletions in the correspondent’s presence and
never tamper with dispatches; nevertheless, the position of the foreign
correspondent in Moscow is such that he is liable, without knowing it, to
become a danger to his own people. If he is a sincere and conscientious
man, very anxious to stay and study the intensely interesting problem
presented by this unique Socialist Government, he may be tempted to
let his dispatches go out mutilated without reflecting on what a false
picture of the country they will eventually form in the minds of his
readers. If he is simply an adventurous, jovial person without any great
feeling of responsibility towards the public, he will be rather amused
than otherwise by the thought that he is being maintained in a palace
entirely at the expense of the Soviet Government, with motor-cars placed
at his disposal, money advanced to him, his radios sent free, clothing
and furs given him almost for nothing; and will cheerfully allow the
Bolsheviks to cut anything they like out of his messages. Now there are
unscrupulous journalists in the world just as there are unscrupulous
Bishops, and even one such journalist in Moscow at the present moment
might do considerable harm. The mere fact of his being able to make a
“scoop” every week might possibly lead him to shut his eyes to many
things. And there are newspapers here and there throughout the world
which would not, I am afraid, object to having a correspondent in Moscow
able to send them occasionally exclusive news of the highest interest,
and costing them nothing at all for his expenses and his radios—that
is to say, nothing beyond his bare salary. If there is such a paper in
England and it finds such a correspondent in Moscow, I hope that the
public will be made to understand the position thoroughly; and I do
not ask them to rely on my statement only: the slightest investigation
will show them that 99 per cent. of the foreign journalists who have
visited Russia during the last two years will bear me out in what I have
said above. There are, I know, British journalists who are honestly
convinced that Bolshevism is a good thing for Russia, as there are
British newspapers honestly convinced that the Bolshevik side should
be given as well as the anti-Bolshevik side. But I maintain that such
newspapers should refrain from sending such correspondents until the
Soviet Government allows more conservative newspaper representatives to
send also their views from Moscow. This is not, however, a matter in
which official action should be taken: it is a matter for the newspapers
themselves and the public of this country. Governmental interference
would only make things worse.
To show how intolerant the Bolsheviks are, I may say that a very
pro-Bolshevik British journalist confessed to me once that he was almost
excluded from Russia altogether, because a book he had written about the
Soviets was regarded by the Commissars as hostile, though in England it
was considered to be pro-Bolshevik. He lamented the amazing “touchiness”
of the Commissars, but I should use a stronger word than “touchiness”; I
should call it the determination of the Reds to tolerate no criticism,
even of the mildest and most sympathetic kind. The existence of this
state of mind would merely amuse me if it concerned only Russia, but at
the present critical moment it concerns all mankind in a vital manner;
and if any one paper ever tries to steal a march on its rivals by
sacrificing its own honour and that of its representative in the manner
indicated, I think that the whole world should understand the infamy
of which that paper is guilty. If, after August, 1914, the Germans
had retained the British correspondents in Berlin and allowed them
to cable only pro-German propaganda, these correspondents would, for
obvious reasons, have done less harm than correspondents telegraphing
Bolshevik propaganda from Moscow at the present moment. As soon, of
course, as English correspondents of all shades of opinion are allowed
to send fairly impartial dispatches from Russia, the position will have
altered entirely, and it will not matter then whether some of those
correspondents are pro-Bolshevik or not. No one could object to Lenin’s
censorship being as severe in 1920 as the Tsar’s was in 1905; but, after
having had personal experience of both those censorships, I can affirm
that Lenin’s is incomparably the more drastic of the two. It is so
drastic that it converts all correspondence from Russia into Bolshevik
propaganda; and, as I have already pointed out, it involves unheard-of
interference with foreign journalists, the restriction of their
movements, their constant supervision by spy-interpreters, the selection
by the Soviet Government of the people to whom they are allowed to speak,
their absolute dependence on the Bolsheviks for food, housing, clothes,
and transport. With incredible audacity Lenin seeks to use against us
the very correspondents whom we send to ascertain the real position in
Russia, just as his Extraordinary Commission has, by the threat of death,
compelled several French agents in Petrograd to work secretly for it and
against their own Government, while apparently continuing to work against
it and for their own Government.
The one saving feature, however, of the System which the Reds have drawn
up for the manipulation of the foreign Press is that, like everything
else in Bolshevism, it is too extreme, and thus overreaches itself. For
instance, if the Reds allowed correspondents to send some criticism from
time to time, they would be far wiser and more dangerous. But I have no
fear that this warning will make them change, for they are incapable of
change. If they were crafty enough to simulate moderation, especially in
their dealings with the foreign Press and with foreign Labour, they would
be much more dangerous than they are.
To return now, for a moment, to Rosenberg and Feinberger: these
officials are not only censors; they are also managers and directors
of the foreign journalists. They find food and lodging for them. They
furnish them, if necessary, with clothes and motor-cars. They arrange
for interviews and for visits to factories. They let them see the most
secret correspondence of Royalty, and lift for them the veil which has
hidden, so far, the arcana of modern statecraft. They get them tickets
to meetings addressed by Lenin and Trotsky. And, of course, the more
Communist a correspondent is, the greater the facilities that will be
extended to him. But it will not be sufficient for him to say that he is
on the side of the Soviet. He must prove that he is by sending to his
paper the sort of messages they want him to send, and, as they file the
English papers, it is impossible to deceive them by mere promises.
Up to the year 1914 there was a growing disposition on the part of
foreign correspondents, especially those attending Peace Conferences
and little wars in which their own countries were not immediately
interested, to drop all attempt at impartiality and make themselves
mere mouthpieces of prominent and ambitious men who rewarded them by
“first news.” This did not matter so much in the old days when other
correspondents could do the same thing on the other side, and when
independent-minded journalists were admitted everywhere, but in the case
of Russia it will matter seriously, for, within its territories, the
Soviet Government tolerates no independence and no “other side.” I have
even known the Moscow correspondent of a London paper let Feinberger
send radios in his name for weeks at a time, while he himself was absent
in other parts of Russia. The readers of that paper, and perhaps the
editor, were under the impression that they were getting the views of
an impartial English gentleman on exceedingly important developments,
but what they were really receiving were the compositions of a Bolshevik
Government official who is also a member of the Third International,
and, as such, a fanatical worker in the cause of revolution in England.
And as Feinberger had access not only to all the latest news and all the
highest personages, but also to the messages of the other correspondents
which passed through his hands, there was, of course, no possibility of
competing with him.
It may seem incredible, but it is a fact, that Chicherin personally sees
every news telegram which leaves Moscow by radio. This involves his
sitting up all night, and certainly he is a demon for work. A single look
at his haggard face as he wanders about his Foreign Office, shabbily
dressed and with a muffler round his neck, and starting violently
whenever he is addressed, would be enough to convince anyone that he is
very much over-worked. He is invariably to be found in his office at
night, as he has found that at night he is less liable to interruption
than in the daytime, and also because radio messages are more easily
received at night-time. He generally receives newspaper correspondents
at 1.30 or 2 a.m., and the few foreign diplomatists who have visited
the country since his accession to office are always asked to call at a
similarly unearthly hour. A Rumanian Mission once objected to 2 a.m. as
rather late, whereupon he made it 1.30 a.m., and kept them waiting half
an hour.
Chicherin is a visionary and a fanatic who, before the Bolsheviks came
into power, divided up his ancestral acres among his tenantry, and is
at present penniless. He is one of those dangerous enthusiasts who do
not drink, and for whom the festive board has no attraction. His food is
sometimes brought in to him as he sits in his office, and it is never
either plentiful or appetizing. His assistants lead the same kind of life
as he does, and the usual time for a foreign correspondent to do business
with them is between 11 at night and 6 in the morning. I had dinner with
Rosenberg once, and found that he and his wife live principally on stale
black bread and cold imitation tea without milk or sugar. I satisfied
myself that the meal I then partook of had not been got up for dramatic
effect, and I know that the Foreign Minister himself fares no better.
All the Bolshevik chiefs who are really dangerous to the world lead a
simple life and work very hard. Consumed by ambition or fanaticism or a
combination of both, they are spurred on to perform prodigies of work
by the feeling that they sit in the throne of the Romanovs, rule nearly
a seventh of the land surface of the globe, hold like clay in their
hands over a hundred million of plastic, ignorant people, and are looked
up to with secret or undisguised admiration and hope by another hundred
million of foreign workers. On this latter point they are probably
mistaken, but that is what they believe, and it explains the frenzy
with which they work, the privations to which they subject themselves,
and the extraordinary lives which they lead. As was recently pointed
out in _The Times_, even Edmund Burke, who had no love for the French
Terrorists, admitted that, though the powers and politics by which those
Terrorists won success at the beginning of the Revolution were “not those
of great statesmen or great military commanders,” but the practices of
vulgar criminals, they displayed nevertheless an energy which enabled
them to supply their innumerable defects and made them “terrible even to
the firmest minds.” “They have one thing, and one thing only,” he says,
“but that one thing is worth a thousand; they have energy.” The strong
passions of such men “awake the faculties; they suffer not a particle
of the man to be lost.” They had the insight of hate. “They saw the
right thing from the beginning. They saw that in its spirit, and for its
objects, it was a civil war, and as such they pursued it.” All this might
be applied, without the change of a syllable, to the Terrorists who now
misgovern Russia.
Chicherin belongs to the gentry class, and served for some time as a
diplomatist under the old régime. Aristocratic in face and in manner,
he has a good knowledge of English, French, and German, and is very
accessible to journalists, much more so than the Foreign Minister of
any Great Power, for he regards correspondents, especially Labour
correspondents, as truer representatives of their people than accredited
diplomatists. The fact that they are not elected, and that their
influence is extra-Parliamentary, probably tells in their favour, for
Chicherin, like all the Bolsheviks, has Walt Whitman’s detestation
of “the insufferable insolence of elected persons.” He professes to
talk with absolute frankness, keeping back nothing; and to publish all
outgoing and incoming dispatches. All the correspondence which he
carried on with the diplomatists of the Entente at the time they left
Russia, in July, 1918, has already appeared in English and French,
and a copy of this publication was given to me. His last message to
Ambassador Francis was to wish him a safe voyage, and to send, through
him, greetings “to the descendants of Cromwell’s Ironsides settled beyond
the Atlantic,” for Chicherin never neglects an opportunity of introducing
Propaganda into his official messages any more than Cromwell ever
neglected an opportunity to introduce Biblical references into his. Next
to his fanaticism, his most prominent characteristic is his profound and
ineradicable distrust of foreign diplomatists and Governments—a distrust
which he bases on the policy of the Allies during the last three years
in all the States bordering on Russia, and also on the disclosures made
to him by Captain Sadul of the French Military Mission. As Chicherin
himself graduated in a diplomatic service which was never celebrated for
its scrupulousness, and belongs at present to a school of diplomacy which
recognizes no law, his distrust is incurable, and it is very unlikely,
therefore, that he and his colleagues will ever make an honest peace
with the West. If there is a truce, it will be a short one, and will be
followed by a greater and perhaps a final trial of strength.
Chicherin seems to work very harmoniously with the other Commissars, and
both Lenin and Trotsky place full confidence in him, for both of them
frequently refer to him in public utterances as a sound and trustworthy
spokesman of Soviet Russia. The routine work of the Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs is left entirely to Chicherin and his subordinates,
but on very important occasions Lenin, Trotsky, and the other two men,
who form the supreme committee of five, are consulted with regard to
important statements made to foreign Governments, with the natural result
that those statements have sometimes a patchwork character.
Chicherin’s office is easily the most original Foreign Office in Europe,
being more like a small Labour Club over a public-house during the
progress of a strike, than the headquarters of an important Government
department. Instead of the well-groomed young men whom one ordinarily
meets with in such places, one encounters roughly clad, unshaven persons
with heavy top-boots that have never been polished and without collars.
Conversations about politics are sometimes conducted by visitors with
a future Ambassador or a _Conseilleur d’Ambassade en disponibilité_,
who repairs the handle of a door while he is talking, or punctuates his
remarks with the blows of a hammer driving in nails to hang up a picture.
There is the same air of impermanence about the People’s Commissariat
of Foreign Affairs as there is about the Sublime Porte. In one case the
impression is that of Asiatics encamped in Europe; in the other case of
rioters occupying a palace. Several of the old diplomatists have, it is
true, come back; but, with the exception of one young man who has opened
a Far Eastern Department in a lumber-room over Rosenberg’s office, where
he is generally to be found cooking his own food or washing up after
meals, all these old-régime people are given employment outside. To one
of them has been allotted the interesting task of examining all the
secret papers of the late Emperor and of the old Foreign Office, on the
chance of finding some scandal which will compromise other monarchs and
their Governments.
The feeling of impermanence of which I have spoken is never stronger than
when one is waiting at night with the other correspondents for news by
radio of some important event in the outer world. At such moments the
air is tense with suppressed excitement. One feels as if one were in
Sydney Street with the desperadoes who were cornered there, or as if one
were one of a party of actors and critics assembled behind the scenes
and trying to produce a ghastly merriment, while, before the footlights
outside, a hopeless play is being produced to an infuriated audience
without the faintest prospect of its being allowed to reach the last act.
On the stage, the frenzied dialogue of actors uncertain if they will ever
manage to escape with their lives. Behind the scenes a sceptical Press,
wondering if, by any chance, _they_ will become involved in the final,
unrehearsed catastrophe which they see approaching. With the Press a
number of nervous actors still dressed for their parts, and awaiting
with ill-concealed anxiety the summons to “go on” again.
One discovers, not without alarm, that the officials one has been dealing
with, under the impression that they are the heads of a great State,
are merely part of a very small gang which has, by an amazing coup,
seized on the Government of a vast Empire, and which is far from sure
of its position. A combined attempt is made by the “diplomatists” and
journalists to boil some water for tea in a disused kitchen, which has
been discovered on the other side of the passage. Rosenberg contributes
black bread. An English correspondent who came to Moscow without the
permission of his own Government supplies butter, which he brought with
him from Esthonia. A plucky young American lady, the correspondent of
the Associated Press, produces a packet of tea. (That American lady was
arrested at 4 o’clock the same morning by the Extraordinary Commission.)
A Rumanian and an Italian Socialist, who was a naval officer during the
war, complete the party, which seems somehow like a gang of burglars
audaciously refreshing themselves in a mansion which they have plundered.
Outside, Moscow is profoundly dark and quiet, save when a solitary
rifle-shot at a great distance breaks the silence. Chicherin is alone in
his office waiting for the radio message which he expects. It is at such
a time that one best realizes the vital importance to the Bolsheviks of
their great wireless station at Moscow, for without it they would be lost
and isolated amid their snows, and Chicherin would have very little to do
from one year’s end to the other.
It is extraordinary what small things bring about these crises. I
remember two of these small things. The first was the seizure by the
Japanese of Nikolsk, an act which led the Soviet Government to believe
that Churchill had persuaded Japan to take active steps in Siberia, and
that, in return for vast territorial concessions, the Mikado was going to
march half a million of men to the Urals and to Moscow. The second was
Kapp’s abortive attempt at a _coup_ in Berlin. Judging by the excitement
which these trifling events produced in the People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Affairs, I should not like to be there when the real disasters
come.