Russian spectacle as that of a rather ramshackle modern civilisation
completely shattered and overthrown by misgovernment, under-education,
and finally six years of war strain. I have shown science and art
starving and the comforts and many of the decencies of life gone. In
Vienna the overthrow is just as bad; and there too such men of science
as the late Professor Margules starve to death. If London had had to
endure four more years of war, much the same sort of thing would be
happening in London. We should have now no coal in our grates and no
food for our food tickets, and the shops in Bond Street would be as
desolate as the shops in the Nevsky Prospect. Bolshevik government in
Russia is neither responsible for the causation nor for the continuance
of these miseries.
I have also tried to get the facts of Bolshevik rule into what I believe
is their proper proportions in the picture. The Bolsheviks, albeit
numbering less than five per cent of the population, have been able to
seize and retain power in Russia because they were and are the only body
of people in this vast spectacle of Russian ruin with a common faith and
a common spirit. I disbelieve in their faith, I ridicule Marx, their
prophet, but I understand and respect their spirit. They are—with all
their faults, and they have abundant faults—the only possible backbone
now to a renascent Russia. The recivilising of Russia must be done with
the Soviet Government as the starting phase. The great mass of the
Russian population is an entirely illiterate peasantry, grossly
materialistic and politically indifferent. They are superstitious, they
are for ever crossing themselves and kissing images,—in Moscow
particularly they were at it—but they are not religious. They have no
will in things political and social beyond their immediate
satisfactions. They are roughly content with Bolshevik rule. The
Orthodox priest is quite unlike the Catholic priest in Western Europe;
he is himself typically a dirty and illiterate peasant with no power
over the wills and consciences of his people. There is no constructive
quality in either peasant or Orthodoxy. For the rest there is a
confusion of more or less civilised Russians, in and out of Russia, with
no common political ideas and with no common will. They are incapable of
producing anything but adventures and disputes.
The Russian refugees in England are politically contemptible. They
rehearse endless stories of “Bolshevik outrages”: chateau burnings by
peasants, burglaries and murders by disbanded soldiers in the towns,
back street crimes—they tell them all as acts of the Bolshevik
Government. Ask them what government they want in its place, and you
will get rubbishy generalities—usually adapted to what the speaker
supposes to be your particular political obsession. Or they sicken you
with the praise of some current super-man, Deniken or Wrangel, who is to
put everything right—God knows how. They deserve nothing better than a
Tsar, and they are incapable even of deciding which Tsar they desire.
The better part of the educated people still in Russia are—for the sake
of Russia—slowly drifting into a reluctant but honest co-operation with
Bolshevik rule.
The Bolsheviks themselves are Marxists and Communists. They find
themselves in control of Russia, in complete contradiction, as I have
explained, to the theories of Karl Marx. A large part of their energies
have been occupied in an entirely patriotic struggle against the raids,
invasions, blockades, and persecutions of every sort that our insensate
Western Governments have rained upon their tragically shattered country.
What is left over goes in the attempt to keep Russia alive, and to
organise some sort of social order among the ruins. These Bolsheviks
are, as I have explained, extremely inexperienced men, intellectual
exiles from Geneva and Hampstead, or comparatively illiterate manual
workers from the United States. Never was there so amateurish a
government since the early Moslem found themselves in control of Cairo,
Damascus, and Mesopotamia.
I believe that in the minds of very many of them there is a considerable
element of dismay at the tremendous tasks they find before them. But one
thing has helped them and Russia enormously, and that is their training
in Communistic ideas. As the British found out during the submarine war,
so far as the urban and industrial population goes there is nothing for
it during a time of tragic scarcity but collapse or collective control.
We in England had to control and ration, we had to suppress profiteering
by stringent laws. These Communists came into power in Russia and began
to do at once, on principle, the first most necessary thing in that
chaos of social wreckage. Against all the habits and traditions of
Russia, they began to control and ration—exhaustively. They have now a
rationing system that is, on paper, admirable beyond cavil; and perhaps
it works as well as the temperament and circumstances of Russian
production and consumption permit. It is easy to note defects and
failures, but not nearly so easy to show how in this depleted and
demoralised Russia they could be avoided. And things are in such a state
in Russia now that even if we suppose the Bolsheviks overthrown and any
other Government in their place, it matters not what, that Government
would have to go on with the rationing the Bolsheviks have organised,
with the suppression of vague political experiments, and the punishment
and shooting of profiteers. The Bolsheviki in this state of siege and
famine have done upon principle what any other Government would have had
to do from necessity.
[Illustration:
PROLETARIANS OF ASIA À LA BAKU.
]
And in the face of gigantic difficulties they are trying to rebuild a
new Russia among the ruins. We may quarrel with their principles and
methods, we may call their schemes Utopian and so forth, we may sneer at
or we may dread what they are doing, but it is no good pretending that
there is no creative effort in Russia at the present time. A certain
section of the Bolsheviks are hard-minded, doctrinaire and unteachable
men, fanatics who believe that the mere destruction of capitalism, the
disuse of money and trading, the effacement of all social differences,
will in itself bring about a sort of bleak millennium. There are
Bolsheviki so stupid that they would stop the teaching of chemistry in
schools until they were assured it was “proletarian” chemistry, and who
would suppress every decorative design that was not an elaboration of
the letters R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic) as
reactionary art. I have told of the suppression of Hebrew studies
because they are “reactionary”; and while I was with Gorky I found him
in constant bitter disputes with extremist officials who would see no
good in any literature of the past except the literature of revolt. But
there were other more liberal minds in this new Russian world, minds
which, given an opportunity, will build and will probably build well.
Among men of such constructive force I would quote such names as Lenin
himself, who has developed wonderfully since the days of his exile, and
who has recently written powerfully against the extravagances of his own
extremists; Trotsky, who has never been an extremist, and who is a man
of very great organising ability; Lunacharsky, the Minister for
Education; Rikoff, the head of the Department of People’s Economy;
Madame Lilna of the Petersburg Child Welfare Department; and Krassin,
the head of the London Trade Delegation. These are names that occur to
me; it is by no means an exhaustive list of the statesmanlike elements
in the Bolshevik Government. Already they have achieved something, in
spite of blockade and civil and foreign war. It is not only that they
work to restore a country depleted of material to an extent almost
inconceivable to English and American readers, but they work with an
extraordinarily unhelpful personnel. Russia to-day stands more in need
of men of the foreman and works-manager class than she does of
medicaments or food. The ordinary work in the Government offices of
Russia is shockingly done; the slackness and inaccuracy are
indescribable. Everybody seems to be working in a muddle of unsorted
papers and cigarette ends. This again is a state of affairs no
counter-revolution could change. It is inherent in the present Russian
situation. If one of these military adventurers of the Yudenitch or
Deniken type were, by some disastrous accident, to get control of
Russia, his success would only add strong drink, embezzlement, and a
great squalour of kept mistresses to the general complication. For
whatever else we may say to the discredit of the Bolshevik leaders, it
is undeniable that the great majority lead not simply laborious but
puritanical lives.
I write of this general inefficiency in Russia with the more asperity
because it was the cause of my not meeting Lunacharsky. About eighty
hours of my life was consumed in travelling, telephoning, and waiting
about in order to talk for about an hour and a half with Lenin and for
the some time with Tchitcherin. At that rate, and in view of the
intermittent boat service from Reval to Stockholm, to see Lunacharsky
would have meant at least a week more in Russia. The whole of my visit
to Moscow was muddled in the most irritating fashion. A sailor-man
carrying a silver kettle who did not know his way about Moscow was put
in charge of my journey, and an American who did not know enough Russian
to telephone freely was set to make my appointments in the town.
Although I had heard Gorky arrange for my meeting with Lenin by
long-distance telephone days before, Moscow declared that it had had no
notice of my coming. Finally I was put into the wrong train back to
Petersburg, a train which took twenty-two hours instead of fourteen for
the journey. These may seem petty details to relate, but when it is
remembered that Russia was really doing its best to impress me with its
vigour and good order, they are extremely significant. In the train,
when I realised that it was a slow train and that the express had gone
three hours before while we had been pacing the hall of the guest house
with our luggage packed and nobody coming for us, the spirit came upon
me and my lips were unsealed. I spoke to my guide, as one mariner might
speak to another, and told him what I thought of Russian methods. He
listened with the profoundest respect to my rich incisive phrases. When
at last I paused, he replied—in words that are also significant of
certain weaknesses of the present Russian state of mind. “You see,” he
said, “the blockade——”
But if I saw nothing of Lunacharsky personally, I saw something of the
work he has organised. The primary material of the educationist is human
beings, and of these at least there is still no shortage in Russia, so
that in that respect Lunacharsky is better off than most of his
colleagues. And beginning with an initial prejudice and much distrust, I
am bound to confess that, in view of their enormous difficulties, the
educational work of the Bolsheviks impresses me as being astonishingly
good.
Things started badly. Directly I got to Petersburg I asked to see a
school, and on the second day of my visit I was taken to one that
impressed me very unfavourably. It was extremely well equipped, much
better than an ordinary English grammar school, and the children were
bright and intelligent; but our visit fell in the recess. I could
witness no teaching, and the behaviour of the youngsters I saw indicated
a low standard of discipline. I formed an opinion that I was probably
being shown a picked school specially prepared for me, and that this was
all that Petersburg had to offer. The special guide who was with us then
began to question these children upon the subject of English literature
and the writers they liked most. One name dominated all others. My own.
Such comparatively trivial figures as Milton, Dickens, Shakespeare ran
about intermittently between the feet of that literary colossus. Being
questioned further, these children produced the titles of perhaps a
dozen of my books. I said I was completely satisfied by what I had seen
and heard, that I wanted to see nothing more—for indeed what more could
I possibly require?—and I left that school smiling with difficulty and
thoroughly cross with my guides.
Three days later I suddenly scrapped my morning’s engagements and
insisted upon being taken at once to another school—any school close at
hand. I was convinced that I had been deceived about the former school,
and that now I should see a very bad school indeed. Instead I saw a much
better one than the first I had seen. The equipment and building were
better, the discipline of the children was better, and I saw some
excellent teaching in progress. Most of the teachers were women, very
competent-looking middle-aged women, and I chose elementary geometrical
teaching to observe because that on the blackboard is in the universal
language of the diagram. I saw also a heap of drawings and various
models the pupils had done, and they were very good. The school was
supplied with abundant pictures. I noted particularly a well-chosen
series of landscapes to assist the geographical teaching. There was
plenty of chemical and physical apparatus, and it was evidently put to a
proper use. I also saw the children’s next meal in preparation—for
children eat at school in Soviet Russia—and the food was excellent and
well cooked, far above the standard of the adult rations we had seen
served out. All this was much more satisfactory. Finally by a few
questions we tested the extraordinary vogue of H. G. Wells among the
young people of Russia. None of these children had ever heard of him.
The school library contained none of his books. This did much to
convince me that I was seeing a quite normal school. I had, I now begin
to realise, been taken to the previous one not, as I had supposed in my
wrath, with any elaborate intention of deceiving me about the state of
education in the country, but after certain kindly intrigues and
preparations by a literary friend, Mr. Chukovsky the critic,
affectionately anxious to make me feel myself beloved in Russia, and a
little oblivious of the real gravity of the business I had in hand.
Subsequent enquiries and comparison of my observations with those of
other visitors to Russia, and particularly those of Dr. Haden Guest, who
also made surprise visits to several schools in Moscow, have convinced
me that Soviet Russia, in the face of gigantic difficulties, has made
and is making very great educational efforts, and that in spite of the
difficulties of the general situation the quality and number of the
schools _in the towns_ has risen absolutely since the Tsarist _régime_.
(The peasant, as ever, except in a few “show” localities, remains
scarcely touched by these things.) The schools I saw would have been
good middle schools in England. They are open to all, and there is an
attempt to make education compulsory. Of course Russia has its peculiar
difficulties. Many of the schools are understaffed, and it is difficult
to secure the attendance of unwilling pupils. Numbers of children prefer
to keep out of the schools and trade upon the streets. A large part of
the illicit trading in Russia is done by bands of children. They are
harder to catch than adults, and the spirit of Russian Communism is
against punishing them. And the Russian child is, for a northern child,
remarkably precocious.
The common practice of co-educating youngsters up to fifteen or sixteen,
in a country as demoralised as Russia is now, has brought peculiar evils
in its train. My attention was called to this by the visit of Bokaiev,
the former head of the Petersburg Extraordinary Commission, and his
colleague Zalutsky to Gorky to consult him in the matter. They discussed
their business in front of me quite frankly, and the whole conversation
was translated to me as it went on. The Bolshevik authorities have
collected and published very startling, very shocking figures of the
moral condition of young people in Petersburg, which I have seen. How
far they would compare with the British figures—if there are any British
figures—of such bad districts for the young as are some parts of East
London or such towns of low type employment as Reading I do not know.
(The reader should compare the Fabian Society’s report on prostitution,
_Downward Paths_, upon this question.) Nor do I know how they would show
in comparison with preceding Tsarist conditions. Nor can I speculate how
far these phenomena in Russia are the mechanical consequence of
privation and overcrowding in a home atmosphere bordering on despair.
But there can be no doubt that in the Russian towns, concurrently with
increased educational effort and an enhanced intellectual stimulation of
the young, there is also an increased lawlessness on their part,
especially in sexual matters, and that this is going on in a phase of
unexampled sobriety and harsh puritanical decorum so far as adult life
is concerned. This hectic moral fever of the young is the dark side of
the educational spectacle in Russia. I think it is to be regarded mainly
as an aspect of the general social collapse; every European country has
noted a parallel moral relaxation of the young under the war strain; but
the revolution itself, in sweeping a number of the old experienced
teachers out of the schools and in making every moral standard a subject
of debate, has no doubt contributed also to an as yet incalculable
amount in the excessive disorder of these matters in present-day Russia.
Faced with this problem of starving and shattered homes and a social
chaos, the Bolshevik organisers are _institutionalising_ the town
children of Russia. They are making their schools residential. The
children of the Russian urban population are going, like the children of
the British upper class, into boarding schools. Close to this second
school I visited stood two big buildings which are the living places of
the boys and of the girls respectively. In these places they can be kept
under some sort of hygienic and moral discipline. This again happens to
be not only in accordance with Communist doctrine, but with the special
necessities of the Russian crisis. Entire towns are sinking down towards
slum conditions, and the Bolshevik Government has had to play the part
of a gigantic Dr. Barnardo.
We went over the organisation of a sort of reception home to which
children are brought by their parents who find it impossible to keep
them clean and decent and nourished under the terrible conditions
outside. This reception home is the old Hotel de l’Europe, the scene of
countless pleasant little dinner-parties under the old _régime_. On the
roof there is still the summertime roof garden, where the string
quartette used to play, and on the staircase we passed a frosted glass
window still bearing in gold letters the words _Coiffure des Dames_.
Slender gilded pointing hands directed us to the “Restaurant,” long
vanished from the grim Petersburg scheme of things. Into this place the
children come; they pass into a special quarantine section for
infectious diseases and for personal cleanliness—nine-tenths of the
newcomers harbour unpleasant parasites—and then into another section,
the moral quarantine, where for a time they are watched for bad habits
and undesirable tendencies. From this section some individuals may need
to be weeded out and sent to special schools for defectives. The rest
pass on into the general body of institutionalized children, and so on
to the boarding schools.
Here certainly we have the “break-up of the family” in full progress,
and the Bolshevik net is sweeping wide and taking in children of the
most miscellaneous origins. The parents have reasonably free access to
their children in the daytime, but little or no control over their
education, clothing, or the like. We went among the children in the
various stages of this educational process, and they seemed to us to be
quite healthy, happy, and contented children. But they get very good
people to look after them. Many men and women, politically suspects or
openly discontented with the existing political conditions, and yet with
a desire to serve Russia, have found in these places work that they can
do with a good heart and conscience. My interpreter and the lady who
took us round this place had often dined and supped in the Hotel de
l’Europe in its brilliant days, and they knew each other well. This lady
was now plainly clad, with short cut hair and a grave manner; her
husband was a White and serving with the Poles; she had two children of
her own in the institution, and she was mothering some scores of little
creatures. But she was evidently keenly proud of the work of her
organisation, and she said that she found life—in this city of want,
under the shadow of a coming famine—more interesting and satisfying than
it had ever been in the old days.
I have no space to tell of other educational work we saw going on in
Russia. I can give but a word or so to the Home of Rest for Workmen in
the Kamenni Ostrof. I thought that at once rather fine and not a little
absurd. To this place workers are sent to live a life of refined ease
for two or three weeks. It is a very beautiful country house with fine
gardens, an orangery, and subordinate buildings. The meals are served on
white cloths with flowers upon the table and so forth. And the worker
has to live up to these elegant surroundings. It is a part of his
education. If in a forgetful moment he clears his throat in the good old
resonant peasant manner and spits upon the floor, an attendant, I was
told, chalks a circle about his defilement and obliges him to clean the
offended parquetry. The avenue approaching this place has been adorned
with decoration in the futurist style, and there is a vast figure of a
“worker” at the gates resting on his hammer, done in gypsum, which was
obtained from the surgical reserves of the Petersburg hospitals.... But
after all, the idea of civilising your workpeople by dipping them into
pleasant surroundings is, in itself, rather a good one....
[Illustration:
GUESTS AT THE HOME OF REST FOR WORKMEN ON THE KAMENNI OSTROF.
]
I find it difficult to hold the scales of justice upon many of these
efforts of Bolshevism. Here are these creative and educational things
going on, varying between the admirable and the ridiculous, islands at
least of cleanly work and, I think, of hope, amidst the vast spectacle
of grisly want and wide decay. Who can weigh the power and possibility
of their thrust against the huge gravitation of this sinking system? Who
can guess what encouragement and enhancement they may get if Russia can
win through to a respite from civil and foreign warfare and from famine
and want? It was of this re-created Russia, this Russia that may be,
that I was most desirous of talking when I went to the Kremlin to meet
Lenin. Of that conversation I will tell in my sixth paper.
V
THE PETERSBURG SOVIET: A LEGISLATIVE MASS MEETING
On Thursday the 7th of October we attended a meeting of the Petersburg
Soviet. We were told that we should find this a very different
legislative body from the British House of Commons, and we did. Like
nearly everything else in the arrangements of Soviet Russia it struck us
as extraordinarily unpremeditated and improvised. Nothing could have
been less intelligently planned for the functions it had to perform or
the responsibilities it had to undertake.