OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES
Leon Trotzky, Bolshevist leader, was secure in jail. Nicolai Lenin
was in hiding. Those who believed he was in the employ of the German
government declared he had escaped to Berlin. Those who still held to
the belief that you can kill a movement by putting its leaders behind
bars, or driving them underground, proudly boasted that the Bolsheviki
were crushed.
One night several of us were having dinner in a little Italian
restaurant. The argument of the evening--there was always an argument
in Russia--was about the origin of the Bolshevist movement. One man
declared that the thing was a German plot. There was a new member of
the American colony at dinner that night. Williams was his name--Albert
Rhys Williams. He was decidedly an American type, tall, with a
pleasant, frank face and a delightfully inclusive smile. He had been
in Belgium at the time of the German advance, and had written a book
on his experiences in the claws of the German eagle. He had come to
Russia some time before, but had been away from Petrograd, meeting the
peasants and workers. He took no part in the discussions for some time.
Finally he said:
“I wonder how many Bolsheviki you know?”
We looked from one to another, and had to admit that our acquaintance
in that quarter was rather limited.
“You know, it makes such a difference when we know people,” he said.
“There is Peters, now;” and he told the story of Peters, and of half a
dozen others whom he had met.
“I think it would be ridiculous to suppose there is no German money
in the Bolshevist movement,” he said, “because there is German money
everywhere. But the movement itself is far more fundamental. Remember,
Trotzky and Lenin are preaching to-day the doctrine they were preaching
fifteen years ago. It seems to me short-sighted and dangerous to
dismiss the Bolsheviki without more knowledge of him and his ideas.”
Mr. Williams’s story of Peters had interested me especially. I said
I would like to meet him, and Mr. Williams promised to bring him to
dinner the next night. They came. It was the first of many times, and
they opened many windows on the Revolution to me that would otherwise
have been closed.
Jacob Peters was thirty-two years old, and looked even younger. He was
a Lett--an intense, quick, nervous little chap with a shock of curly
black hair brushed back from his forehead, an upturned nose that gave
to his face the suggestion of a question-mark, and a pair of blue eyes
full of human tenderness. He spoke English with a London accent, and
referred to his English wife as the “missis,” and to his little girl in
the language of all adoring fathers.
“Why are you a Bolshevik?” I asked him.
“Well,” said he seriously, “I’ve lived in London, and I’ve seen them on
the West Side living in luxury, in silks and satins, with gold plate
and extravagant food; I’ve seen them on the East Side, sleeping out
under the bridges at night. I don’t know much about your America, but I
know that you too have an East Side and a West Side. We in Russia have
fought too long and sacrificed too much to be content with that. We
must find a better way, or our freedom will not be worth while.”
“What is your way?” I asked him.
“The Bolshevik believes in the shortest cut to socialism,” he answered.
“We believe that the people who till the land and the workers who
run the industries should control them; and that the masses of the
people should rise up and put a stop to capitalistic and imperialistic
exploitation, which is responsible for war.”
Not then, but on other occasions, I learned something of Peters’ life.
His story is the story of most revolutionists of the Baltic provinces,
where, in spite of German control,--or perhaps because of German
oppression,--the revolutionists were more radical and more intense than
in any other part of Russia. The richer landowners are known as “black
barons,” the lesser landowners as “gray barons.” Peters was the son of
a “gray baron.” He began to question life as a very small boy.
“I worked in the fields,” he told me, “and when the thunderstorm came
up I prayed God to save me. Then, when the thunderstorm was over,
I began asking is there a God. When the thunderstorm came again, I
prayed. One day I was sent to see my grandmother. On the way I met a
stranger. We walked together, and it was a long journey. I asked him
about all the things that were troubling me. He gave me two pamphlets.
One was called ‘The Tenth Man.’ I had wondered why father, who was not
nearly so clever as the workers, should have a whole vote for himself,
while the workers had only one vote for ten men. I read the pamphlets,
and at school I told my comrades about them. We published a paper about
it; but the teacher confiscated it and sent for my parents. My father
beat me, and I hated him. From that moment I became a revolutionist.”
[Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman A typical street scene in the Volga
river towns]
[Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman Barges of wood on the Neva]
At the age of fifteen Peters left home and went to work in a shop.
He joined a revolutionary organization, and was four times thrown
into prison. He and his comrades were stood up against a wall while
they counted out every tenth man and killed him. He saw his best
friend shot down in this fashion, and dozens of other comrades. Every
act of oppression and repression only made him a more determined
revolutionist. He escaped from prison, and lived in France,
Switzerland, and England, helping as best he could his companions
still in Russia. At the time of the Revolution in March he was holding
an excellent position as manager of the import department of a large
English mercantile company. He wore a frock-coat on Sundays, and walked
out with his English “missis” and his little girl in the height of
order and respectability.
But the call of free Russia, the call of the Revolution, was too strong
for him. He came back to rejoice and fight. He became the leader of the
Lettish Socialists, and worked day and night for the cause in which he
believed. He made flying trips to Petrograd, and usually managed to
drop in for a few minutes while he was there. One night he drew a slip
of paper from his pocket and asked me if I recognized the signature. I
gasped.
“Why, it’s Lenin,” I said. “Then he’s here?”
Peters nodded.
“I’ve seen him to-day,” he said. “This is the candidate’s ticket for
the Constituent Assembly. They have given him to me, because our
district is the most radical and we can elect him there.”
“And you are absolutely sure that Lenin is an honest revolutionist and
not a pro-German?” I asked.
He raised his head with a toss of defiance and his blue eyes flashed
fire.
“If I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have this,” he said.
We had bitter arguments, but he did not resent my disagreement. He knew
that I was trying honestly and sympathetically to understand all of the
forces at work in the Revolution, and he respected that effort. Through
him I met many other Bolsheviki, and they talked frankly of their
dreams and their schemes.
One day a man showed me a letter from Trotzky, written in prison. It
was a call to his followers--not for himself, but for his ideas. They
told me that he was in constant touch with the men of his party, and
was doing quite as effective work in prison as he could have done out.
Jacob Peters told me much of the methods by which prisoners
communicated with each other and the outside world. Occasionally a
newspaper was smuggled in, and the man who received it read it hidden
half under a blanket, with one eye on the spy-hole in the door,
watching for the guard, and then tapped its contents on the wall to the
prisoner in the next cell. By a system of dots placed according to a
prearranged code under the letters in a book, the men inside the prison
were kept informed of what their comrades outside were doing.
The most elaborate scheme Peters concocted was carried out with the
aid of a girl revolutionist. He was trying to escape, but he was deep
in the black books of the prison officials and was allowed no reading
matter. He took a piece of black bread, chewed it until it was in a
sticky paste, and spread it on his arm to dry. Once dry it was as tough
as a piece of parchment. He put his message on one side and rolled the
parchment into a small ball. Just as the girl was leaving, he asked
permission of the guard to kiss her good-by through the bars. The
guard, seeing no harm in an innocent kiss, consented. The girl was
immediately on the alert for a message. Peters slipped the ball into
his mouth, and in the kiss transferred it to hers. She carried out his
directions, and he succeeded in escaping.
As July wore into August, there was little going on in Petrograd, and
I decided to take a journey to see if I could find out how the new
doctrines were being received in some of the older and more remote
parts of Russia. Various stories of the dangers of travel came to us.
Russian acquaintances and old residents in the foreign colony
discouraged attempting travel; but an American friend, Helen Smith, a
kindred spirit in eagerness for the trail, agreed to go with me. Miss
Smith, who is an expert on the subject of peasant art, had traveled
to Russia four times since the war. She spoke the language, and had
a genuine understanding and a very real appreciation of the people.
The pictured dangers had very little reality for either of us. We
determined to go to Moscow, and from there to Nizhni Novgorod by rail,
then up the Volga in a river steamer.
There has always been a strange lure for me in names. “Mother Volga,”
as the Russians call the largest and most romantic river in Europe, was
one of the places in which I believed as one believes in fairies one
never expects to see. The Russians speak its name with a caress. No
other river in the world, unless it be the Nile, has been surrounded
by so much story.
The Volga is the great highway of Russia from Petrograd to the Caspian
Sea. To Nizhni Novgorod, where the Volga and Oka rivers meet, the
commerce of the world comes flowing. Here they hold the most famous of
Russia’s sixteen hundred annual fairs.
The fair lasts for forty days; and for ninety-nine summers rug
merchants from Persia, trappers from Siberia, silk dealers from China,
wool kings from Manchuria, Turks and Arabs, Gypsies and Caucasians,
Eastern and Continental tradesmen of all kinds, have come as regularly
as the hot breezes that blow off the lazy, sleepy Old Volga. The exotic
color, the weird customs, the strange play of the children of this
patch-quilt earth all gathered under the same piece of sky, have made
it a prolonged fête day and night from beginning to end.
Here, on the hundredth anniversary, we found the fair pathetically
trying to pretend itself open. We drove through streets, miles and
miles of streets, whose sides were packed solidly with bazaars. They
were yellow-painted and green-roofed, as always, but padlocked doors
told the story. The 200,000,000-ruble fair on the banks of the ancient
river was virtually closed. In one of the main buildings a band tried
hopelessly to rouse the spirits of the crowd; but the result was
more gruesome than laughter at a funeral. There was little for sale:
a sordid mass of tawdry trinkets made in Germany and Japan, a few
sugarless sweetmeats--that was all.
Our boat sailed at eight o’clock at night, picking its way between
the twinkling red and green lights gathered at the meeting of the
rivers. Before we went, we took an elevator to the top of the bluff to
dine in an out-of-doors café. Food seemed quite as scarce here as in
Petrograd, and even more expensive. We ordered some beef cutlets (the
Russian equivalent of hamburg steak). We waited and we waited; they did
not come. We enlisted the efforts of the head waiter, who poured an
avalanche of words upon his assistants. Still they did not come. The
hour of sailing drew nearer and nearer. We watched the clock, and, when
there was not another second to spare, prepared to leave. The cutlets
arrived. We wrapped them in paper napkins and took them with us.
It was well we did; for war and revolution, whatever else it had done,
had certainly robbed the Volga chefs of all their far-famed talents. I
tried from six o’clock to eleven one night to persuade the cabin-boy to
get me something to eat.
I wondered, as I looked at the fertile fields along the Volga, how
much they knew of the part they would play in the coming course of
revolution. Even the gods seemed cruel to the cities of the north; for
on the Volga, where transportation facilities were adequate, the spring
rains had been so light that the crops were far below normal; and down
in the south, where weather conditions had proved ideal, the railways
were too disorganized to move the grain.
The boat stopped at every little town along the way, and the landings
were a series of Rapine pictures. Now it was a gang of stevedores in
full cotton trousers with inch-wide stripes of gay color, and crude
straw sandals upon their unstockinged feet. They dragged their heavy
cargoes down to the boat’s edge with ropes held over their shoulders,
singing a weird rhythmical tune of the Volga to time their movements.
Again, it was a group of gypsies on the dock’s edge, camped for the
night--the naked brown babies swarming under the feet of the Volga
giants, who dodged them uncomplainingly.
Everywhere we found the people talking revolution, and the phrases that
sounded through the streets of Petrograd were familiar here. We bought
the newspapers. Several of them were trying desperately to rouse the
people to the great Germanic danger. Miss Smith read them to me. Many
of the appeals were from the Zemstvo Unions. One from the Kineshna
Revolutionary Committee said:
“We are facing a great disaster for free Russia. Absolute ruin
threatens us, and the triumph of the armed fist of William, if we
are not bold enough to oppose to him a steel-like strength of the
revolutionary army. Famine and its results threaten us, and the
counter-revolution is making use of this. We must at once be bold
enough to rectify our food question, to exert great efforts over this
and other dangers. Anarchy and counter-revolution threaten to
restore the old régime under William.
[Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman The Volga--the great highway of
Russia from Petrograd to the Caspian Sea]
[Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman “To Nizhni-Novgorod, where the Oka
and the Volga rivers meet, the commerce of the world comes flowing”]
“A despicable peace, giving us into the claws of our enemy, threatens
us unless we take immediate steps. All who can must be ready to go to
the front to take the place of the worn and exhausted warriors--ready
to hurl back the enemy or die in the attempt. It is a question of
saving the land and the Revolution. The army is in need of ammunition,
food, clothing, and uninterrupted transfer. The workmen must place the
interests of the land and the Revolution above all else and raise their
standard of work to the maximum. The peasants must give all the bread
they can spare. All to work, to work! The danger is great!”
There was no doubt that the new doctrines had found their way to
the banks of the old rivers. Petrograd was not the only place
where revolution interfered with work, and proclamations and
counter-proclamations kept the populace in a turmoil of doubt and
desire.