In dealing with the Russian Revolution I shall leave on one side those
aspects that have already been treated by other writers. Not much
has been written on Siberia yet, and what has been given to us is
mostly the product of scared journalists, flying for their lives, and
generally in far too much of a hurry to verify their facts.
I shall always count myself fortunate that I was let out of my cage in
time to see the Revolution before it had grown old. To experience that
wonderful burst of joy, which followed the breaking of age-old chains,
was the crowning event of my life. The whole nation was feverishly
happy, and suddenly alive with hope and confidence for the future.
All the mistakes that had crippled Russia’s conduct of the war were
attributed to the Czar’s _régime_, and now that that had passed away,
it seemed simple to go straight ahead and win. The soldiers for the
first time in the war were full of enthusiasm. They were well paid,
the control of their circumstances was largely in their own hands,
and, whenever anything displeased them, they were free to complain
or remove it. There was a moral earnestness, a self-reliance, and a
pathetic eagerness to justify the freedom that they had won, which
all combined to give to the Russian soldier for the time being a new
character. Inevitably, in writing of these events, my mind goes back to
those three wonderful chapters of the “Excursion,” in which Wordsworth
describes his experiences in the early days of the French Revolution.
“A people from the depth
Of shameful imbecility arisen,
Fresh as the morning star!...
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
And to be young was very Heaven!”
And if our sympathies have been alienated by the later horrors of the
Revolution, the same excuse holds good for Russia that Wordsworth in
his hour of blackest despair found for France. These calamities are not
due to particular persons, they have been caused by
“a terrific reservoir of guilt
And ignorance filled up from age to age,
That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,
But burst and spread in deluge through the land.”
[SN: JOY OF REVOLUTION]
Just about the time of my arrival at Irkutsk there took place the
first great manifestation of the popular will after the Revolution.
It was the demonstration in favour of the Len strikers. About five
years before, the goldminers on the River Len had struck against
their miserable rate of pay. They had assembled and marched through
the streets, but without arms in their hands and with neither the
intention nor the means of doing violence. The governor refused to
listen to them and simply ordered the soldiers to fire upon the
defenceless crowd. Two hundred were killed outright. This needless
butchery sent a thrill of horror throughout Russia. A question was
asked about it in the Duma, but the minister responsible merely
answered with cynical insolence, “Tak bylo tak budet” (“So it was,
so it will be”). This phrase became proverbial in Russia; it fixed
irretrievably the attitude of the Government towards all pleas for
justice and reform. The fifth anniversary of the affair came round just
after the Revolution had established itself, and the new Government
decided to celebrate it by a great procession in honour of the fallen.
All Irkutsk took part, including even a deputation of Chinese coolies.
It was the climax of the Revolution. For the last time all the forces
working for liberty combined to show a united front. It is impossible
to describe the joy and eagerness of the population, the feeling not
only of freedom but also that the old bad things were done away with
for ever. No one dreamed that within a few months slaughters more
terrible than those of the Len were to redden the streets of Irkutsk
itself. I went to see the procession and was bitterly disappointed.
The soldiers who took part were supposed to be celebrating a high
and solemn occasion, and yet they shuffled and slouched through
the streets as no good soldier does, even when he is off duty. The
heartiest enthusiasm was shown by the Anarchists and extreme groups,
men whose wild, undisciplined faces were livid with rage and hate, but
showed no signs of any higher emotion. With characteristic brutality
they ruthlessly shoved aside any woman or child who got in their way
or tried to join their part of the procession. Only the small group
from the Officers’ Training Schools showed themselves worthy of the
occasion. They marched with fine soldierly bearing and dignity, but
behind their restraint it was obvious that they felt the greatness of
the cause they were celebrating. In fact, the procession exhibited in
little all the weaknesses of the Revolution. Despite the joy of the
crowds, it did not exalt me, it only left me profoundly depressed.
[SN: OUTRAGES]
From this point onwards there came a gradual worsening in the
situation. The criminals in Siberia were released on a promise that
they would join the army--a double folly. It not only set them free,
but it also provided them with arms. At one time there were said to be
ten thousand criminals in and around Irkutsk. Robbery and murder were
rampant. Men were killed in broad daylight in the open streets. Whole
families were slaughtered at once. Most of the crimes were committed
by men in soldiers’ uniforms (I cannot bring myself to call them
soldiers). The Anarchists joined in the merry game by organized attacks
on barracks and Government buildings where they suspected money was to
be found. As winter came on and the days drew in, the fun became fast
and furious. In our direction things were very lively, and we could
hear the shooting going on all night long. We lived just on the edge
of a lonely common studded with low bushes. On the one side of us were
the barracks; on the other, about a quarter of a mile off, the first
straggling houses of the town. The regiment supplied the thieves, who
used to lie in wait behind the bushes for any one coming home after
dark. I shall not easily forget an evening when I took my little
pupil to a cinematograph show in the town. As it did not end till
late, I thought it would be best to take a “droschke” home. My pupil
implored me not to; he swore we should be murdered if we did. Finally
I persuaded him it was best to ride, if possible; but now the question
was to find a “droschke.” Not a man would come. They all said it was as
much as their lives were worth to go near our regiment, and in the end
we were forced to walk. Not far from our house there was a bridge over
a stream, where people were murdered every night, and where, a few days
before, a peasant woman had been killed for the sake of her boots. As I
took my pupil’s hand and we threaded our way in the dark night between
the mysterious bushes, it seemed as if all the thrills in the old
nursery stories had come true. I knew now how Jack felt in the house of
the Giant, and what it was to be hunted by the Bogey-man. Inmates of
our house drove into the town every evening. When the firing was too
intense, we used to telephone down and warn them to stay in the town.
They always insisted on having the carriage sent to fetch them. The
coachman used to set off, an old fowling-piece between his knees. If
it came to a scrap in the dark, he preferred shooting with a cartridge
to a bullet. They never stopped us, but one night a wounded officer
just managed to crawl to our doorstep and lay there, groaning in the
moonlight. The sight of his agony made me think I should always hate
the moonlight afterwards. The officer had met four soldiers who had
asked him for a light, and as he stopped to hand them a matchbox, one
of them had drawn a revolver and had fired at him point blank. Soldiers
would lie on the ground pretending to be wounded, and when any one
came to bend over them and help them, they would knife their rescuer,
take all his money, and make off. No help was to be expected from
passers-by. A lady of our acquaintance was knocked down in a crowded
thoroughfare and robbed of some valuable furs that she was wearing, but
no one lifted a finger to protect her. When she went to the police,
they looked very wise and said, “Well, if you will tell us who took
your furs, we will get them back for you.”
Not that Kerenski’s Government did nothing. On the contrary, they did
all they could to keep crime down; but the difficulties in their way
were enormous. The old professional police had been disbanded after
the Revolution and sent into the army. The safety of the town was
entrusted to militia, who, whatever their zeal and bravery may have
been, were at the best only amateurs. They could not cope with the
professional criminal. With each fresh development of crime the militia
system was extended, pickets of two or three men, heavily armed, were
stationed at certain points all night long, and more dangerous areas
were patrolled by soldiers. Just as the Provisional Government fell,
it was elaborating a scheme for employing some hundreds of soldiers
as extra police in the town. But nothing would really have improved
matters except sending all the professional criminals back to prison,
and hanging all those Anarchist and Bolshevist agitators, who were
never tired of telling the soldiers that it was right for them to take
whatever they liked, wherever they found it.
I need scarcely dwell on the economic difficulties of Russia. These
have been treated by so many pens. The fall in the value of the rouble,
the closing of the frontier to the importation of foreign manufactures,
the destruction of Russian factories, and the gradual disintegration
of the railway system owing to strikes fomented by the Germans and
the Bolsheviks, the consequent scarcity in all the shops of things to
buy--all this is known. But one noticeable effect of it in Irkutsk has
not been recorded--and that is the growth of the “yellow influence.”
When I went to Irkutsk, Chinamen were market-gardeners, laundrymen,
coolies, and small shopkeepers, and the Japanese had a few unimportant
businesses. But with the growing anarchy of the Russian business
world, shop after shop went bankrupt, and the place of the Russian
tradesman was immediately taken by a Chinaman or a Japanese. When I
left Irkutsk, the yellow men had the largest shops and were doing the
biggest trade. The Russian merchant can get in no supplies from Russia,
while the Japanese are continually renewing their stores from home.
The Bolsheviks, when they came in, did all in their power to make it
impossible for the Russian tradesman to exist. What will happen when a
stable Government comes I do not know, but the changes here described
must have an important bearing on the future of Siberia.
[SN: ENGLAND POPULAR]
There was, however, another political change still more significant.
For some time after the Revolution, England was trumps. Wherever an
Englishman went, he was treated with especial consideration. It seemed
as if people felt that England guaranteed the Revolution, and that,
with England behind them, their liberties were safe. It is difficult
for people in England to realize how important an advantage this was.
The educated Russian is drenched in German influence. He learns German
at school, and at the technical institutes he is forced to take a
course of it every year. German universities are flooded with Russian
students. The engineering, electrical, and chemical experts all speak
German fluently and read German technical journals. With a knowledge
of German I would undertake to sell any goods in Russia, even if I did
not know a word of Russian. The Russians have a ridiculous habit of
attributing everything foreign that is good to Germany. I once had the
greatest difficulty in convincing a Russian lady that “King Lear” was
not by Schiller. She thought something so good must be German. German
art, German music, the German theatres, German scholarship and science,
German trade dominate in Russia, and to a large extent educated Russia
looks at Europe through German spectacles. Now, all this strongly
entrenched position of inveterate prejudice and age-old tradition
seemed to have been won by us at a blow. England was the hero of the
hour. German was banished from schools and universities and its place
taken by English. If England had been able to make proper use of her
opportunity, she might still hold in Russia the commanding position
she has held for centuries in Portugal.
I should like to allow myself a brief digression on the commercial
importance of Siberia. One can only speak of it in superlatives. In
the Government of Irkutsk alone, besides the forests, fisheries, and
agricultural produce, there are coal, iron, molybdenite, copper, lead,
silver, gold, immense beds of salt, marble, naphtha. The Americans and
Japanese know all about these things, but very few English do. Our most
common English book of reference contains these sentences: “In Siberia,
Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Ekaterinburg have each about 50,000 inhabitants.
Nijni-Novgorod, though small, is a station on the trans-Siberian
railway” (“Whitaker’s Almanack”). The fact is that Tomsk, Omsk,
and Irkutsk have well over 100,000 inhabitants, Vladivostok over
90,000, Novonikolaievsk, Chita, Blagoviestchensk well over 50,000.
Nijni-Novgorod is not on the trans-Siberian railway at all, but is the
terminus of a short branch-line. Ekaterinburg is in European Russia.
If our chief English book of reference is so hopelessly inaccurate and
inadequate, no wonder that English merchants have failed to realize the
importance of Siberia.
[SN: BOLSHEVIK AGITATION]
For a brief space, then, England held a commanding position in the
future granary, mine, and workshop of the world. She was ousted from it
by the joint German and Bolshevik propaganda. Unscrupulous propaganda
is the chief and practically the only weapon of Bolshevism, and through
it they mean to conquer the whole civilized world. They do not rely so
much on newspapers as on rumours. These are whispered from ear to ear,
half in secret, their origin is not always apparent, and so they gain
an authority which nothing in print could ever hope for. When Brusiloff
made his effort in 1917, the Bolsheviks spread the report that he was
a bad general, and that it was a great strategical error to advance as
he did, he ought to have gone and retaken Warsaw. This criticism was
heard all over the town, and when the news of his failure came through,
everybody was ready with his “I told you so.”
I was able to watch the propaganda in the 12th Regiment from near at
hand. After the abortive July rising in Petrograd, an emissary came
to the regiment direct from Lenin. His antecedents were interesting.
He said he had been a schoolmaster, a prisoner of war in Germany, and
had been put to work on the land near the Dutch border. He had escaped
over to Holland and got back to Russia just in time to take part in
the rising at Petrograd. After its failure he was sent to Irkutsk to
prepare the ground for a similar rising. How much of his story was
true I do not know, but at any rate he came from Germany and spoke
German. He never made any secret of the Bolshevik plans--they were to
bring the Government to its knees by spreading ruin and devastation.
If nothing else would do, they would cut the railway line between
Russia and Siberia, and so starve Russia out. If one told him tales
of Russia’s miserable condition, he used to snap his fingers for joy
and say, “You wait. It is going to be worse yet.” He used to murmur
terrible prophecies of the catastrophes to come--every time with a
Satanic glee at the prospect he was unrolling before us. Don’t let
any of my readers imagine that this is a bygone tale of some old
unhappy far-off thing. The Bolsheviks are at this moment applying the
same methods wherever they can get a chance to work. The organization
of disaster--that is their aim. They want to stir up such a fury of
discontent as shall make the masses rise and sweep the capitalists off
the face of the earth. Why these fires in London, destroying so much
food? These strikes in the great grain-ports--New York, Buenos Ayres,
Monte Video? Just as they were prepared to starve Russia out, so also
they want to bring the whole world to its knees by famine.
[SN: BOLSHEVIK METHODS]
Our Bolshevik at Irkutsk was often in danger of arrest, but the
soldiers plainly told their officers that they would be shot if
anything happened to the agitator. To the rank and file he preached
friendship with Germany and peace--a separate peace, of course. He used
to magnify Germany’s power, and say the failures at the front arose,
not from Bolshevik cowardice, but from Germany’s immense technical
superiority. He used to frighten them with tales of German scientists
and what they could invent. If the soldiers said a separate peace was
dangerous because of Japan, he used to answer, “No, that didn’t matter,
Germany would not let Japan take Siberia.” In time two parties in the
regiment were clearly marked--the real soldiers and the Bolsheviks. The
real soldiers remained very anti-German, and were unfriendly to the
prisoners of war. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, used to creep up
to the prisoners and say, “You are our friends, you won’t let anything
happen to us, will you?” When the Battalions of Death were formed, they
were laughed at as fools. And when the other soldiers were ordered to
the front, they had their explanation ready. “You are going to die,”
they said, “because Kerenski has been bought by the English. He has
received millions of pounds to continue the war. You will shed your
blood not for Russia but to fill his pockets.” And the soldiers used to
march away, their hearts filled with anger and disgust against England
and Kerenski. I have never seen a more miserable sight than the Russian
troops marching off to the front in 1917. They dragged themselves
along, sullen, gloomy, almost abject in their despair, obviously torn
between craven fear of the battlefield and rage at the men who were
sending them there.
At the same time other means were used to bring them definitely over
to the Bolsheviks. Everything the Russian peasant held dear was
represented as in danger from Kerenski. They were told that, once the
Bolsheviks were in power, they could take whatever they had a fancy
to. Only those who know the dense stupidity and ignorance of the
Russian peasant can imagine how quickly this propaganda took effect.
The soldiers had no idea of the issues involved in the war; they were
fighting simply because they had to. When the news of Korniloff’s
advance on Petrograd came, a soldier said to me, “Where is this
Petrograd that everybody is talking about? Is it in England or in
Germany?” He was from the Manchurian frontier, and the very vastness of
his country prevented him from forming any idea of it.
[SN: AMERICA Y.M.C.A.]
Propaganda was conducted among educated people along much the same
lines. Numbers of pamphlets appeared attacking England’s colonial
policy--England in Egypt, England in Ireland, and so on. These were
invariably based on German sources, and were no doubt paid for by
German money. The attacks on Capitalism and Imperialism were directed
against the English or American varieties, never against the German.
The most absurd lies were spread about the price America was demanding
for the help she was willing to give Russia. The Y.M.C.A. suffered
especially from these agitators. I shall never forget hearing a Russian
gentleman tell his wife some details of the Y.M.C.A. work in Irkutsk.
“But, my dear,” said his wife, “why do you allow them to work among the
soldiers? They only come to sell their goods.” The husband tried to
explain, but his wife would not listen. “You are much too simple and
trusting,” she insisted. “Anybody could make a fool of you. Every one
knows that the Y.M.C.A. is a big American firm, and that its agents
are simply commercial travellers here to push their goods.” Some
Bolshevik papers were served by German correspondents, and articles,
word for word the same, appeared simultaneously in German and Russian
newspapers. That the Bolsheviks were in receipt of German money they
themselves never denied. A member of the Petrograd Soviet acknowledged
it to a friend of mine. “Well, then,” said my friend, “you are a spy.”
“No,” said the Bolshevik; “we would take money from the devil, if we
could get it.” It was especially curious to watch the attitude of
the Bolshevik press towards Henderson. So long as he was in Russia
they could not find words bad enough for him. Only his quarrel with
Lloyd George made him a hero. Then he became a stick to beat the
English with. And even so his appearance was against him. I showed
some Bolsheviks a portrait of Henderson, which had just appeared in
an English magazine. He was smiling, dapper, and neat, and as fresh
as a rose. Everything about him was fresh, his linen spotless, his
clothes well brushed, his boots polished to a bright shine, and he
had evidently washed and shaved that day--all things abhorred of your
Bolshevik. “Why,” they said, “he’s not a Socialist, he’s a Bourgeois!”
And in their eyes Henderson was done for. I think if we send any more
Socialist delegates to Russia, it would be well to let their hair and
nails grow first, and also to take their razors and soap away from
them. Then they might have some chance. When Lenin wanted a disguise to
secure him from Kerenski’s men, he used to have a shave.
[SN: FIRST BOLSHEVIK ATTEMPT]
All the propaganda that was going on was sure to take effect, and in
September the Bolsheviks tried their first revolution. Their plan
was simple. The two infantry regiments which lay outside the town
were to march into the town and unite with the regiments there in
overturning the Government. After that the rule of the Soviets was to
be proclaimed. All this could not be arranged so secretly that the
authorities should not hear of it. The General Commanding-in-Chief
came up in his car in order personally to see the men and hear their
complaints. He was promptly arrested. The soldiers then held a meeting
to consider the situation. I was present and recognized on the
platform certain officers of the regiment. It was decided to march off
into the town, and I thought that, as a matter of course, the officers
would go with them and march at their head. But not a bit of it.
The resolutions having been confirmed with a blood-curdling yell,
the officers disappeared. Just as the soldiers were on the point of
starting, there came on the scene two hundred and fifty Younkers
(Officers’ Training Corps). They took up a position barring the way
to the town, and proceeded to demand the release of the general, the
surrender of all arms, and that the ringleaders should be named to
them. The left wing of the Younkers rested for a time on our garden,
and it was a pleasure to see the smartness of their evolutions. They
were real soldiers confronting sham ones. For though this small handful
of troops had in front of them a regiment some thousands strong, and on
their right flank another regiment, they won the day. It is true that
they had two field guns, but these could easily have been rushed by
determined soldiers. After some hours’ parleying (extremely anxious for
us, who would have been in the thick of any fighting) the Bolsheviks
gave in entirely. As I have said before, their officers had disappeared
at the very beginning, and most of their other ringleaders ran away
when they saw things were getting serious. Of those who were caught,
one had his pockets stuffed with pornographic literature and he was
wearing women’s underclothing; another had thousands of pounds on him,
a remarkable thing in a common soldier; while a third was a notorious
criminal who had the murder of two whole families on his conscience.
I had always regarded as a stupid libel the favourite Conservative
assertion that the Socialist leaders incite their followers to revolt
and then keep out of harm’s way themselves, but here was evidence too
damning. With my own eyes I saw the officers stir the men up to revolt,
I saw the officers walk off before the trouble began, and next day, not
knowing what I had seen, these same men told me that the whole affair
had been got up by a few misguided fanatics and cowards, and that it
was very much to be deplored.