G61m
Goldman *
fly further disillusionment In
Russia
947.08 661m 64-21122
Goldman $1*50
My further disillusionment in
Russia
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
IN RUSSIA
y
Further Disillusiosiment
By
Emma Goldman
Being a Continuation of Miss Goldman's
Experiences in Russia as given in "My
Disillusionment in Russia"
'C" r T"" 4l| fi
$ If ^M
I 3
'^'- ^"I,*^
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1924
y&ITE IN THE UNiria STATE!
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE ?&$*, CARDEK CITV, *. Y.
Hr st Edition
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
SOME years ago Emma Goldman was de-
ported from this country and went to
Russia to investigate personally what she
believed to be the nearest approach to a Utopia
which the world had yet produced.
Her experiences so thoroughly disillusioned her
that she conceived it to be her duty to set forth
these experiences and her conclusions, which she
did in a book entitled "My Disillusionment in
Russia/* The rights in this material she sold
to an American newspaper syndicate from whom
we purchased the book rights, and by whom we
were furnished with the copy for the book. We
published the book under date of October 26,
1923, and not until it was in circulation did we
learn that it was minus the last twelve chapters
which had never been turned over to us by the
newspaper syndicate, nor had any intimation
been given us that the copy turned over to us
was incomplete. While the conclusion of the
book as we published it was abrupt it was not
64521122
vi PUBLISHERS 5 NOTE
more so than is frequently the case; and, there-
fore, there was no internal evidence to indicate
its incompleteness.
We are now rectifying this serious error by the
publication in a separate volume of the twelve
missing chapters under the title, "My Further
Disillusionment in Russia." This material is
even more important in its revelations and of
even greater interest than that already pub-
lished.
PREFACE
THE annals of literature tell of books
expurgated, of whole chapters eliminated
or changed beyond recognition. But I
believe it has rarely happened that a work
should be published with more than a third of
it left out and without the reviewers being
aware of the fact. This doubtful distinction has
fallen to the lot of my work on Russia.
The story of that painful experience might
well make another chapter, but for the present it
is sufficient to give the bare facts of the case.
My manuscript was sent to the original pur-
chaser in two parts, at different times. Subse-
quently the publishing house of Doubleday,
Page & Co. bought the rights to my work, but
when the first printed copies reached me I dis-
covered to my dismay that not only had my
original title, "My Two Years in Russia/' been
changed to "My Disillusionment in Russia,"
but that the last twelve chapters were entirely
missing, including my Afterword which is, at
least to myself, the most vital part.
vii
viii PREFACE
There followed an exchange of cables and
letters, which gradually elicited the fact that
Doubleday, Page & Co. had secured my MSS.
from a literary agency in the good faith that it
was complete. By some conspiracy of circum-
stances the second instalment of my work either
failed to reach the original purchaser or was lost
in his office. At any rate, the book was pub-
lished without any one's suspecting its incom-
pleteness.
The present volume contains the chapters
missing from the first edition, and I deeply ap-
preciate the devotion of my friends who have
made the appearance of this additional issue pos-
sible in justice to myself and to my readers.
The adventures of my MSS. are not without
their humorous side, which throws a peculiar
light on the critics. Of almost a hundred Amer-
ican reviewers of my work only two sensed
its incompleteness. And, incidentally, one of
them is not a " regular " critic but a librarian.
Rather a reflection on professional acumen or
conscientiousness.
It were a waste of time to notice the " criti-
cism" of those who have either not read the book
or lacked the wit to realize that it was unfin-
ished. Of all the alleged "reviews' 1 only two
PREFACE ix
deserve consideration as written by earnest and
able men: those of Henry Alsberg and H. L.
Mencken.
Mr. Alsberg believes that the present title of
my book is more appropriate to its contents than
the name I had chosen. My disillusionment, he
asserts, is not only with the BolshevikI but with
the Revolution itself. In support of this con-
tention he cites Bukharin's remark to the effect
that " a revolution cannot be accomplished with-
out terror, disorganization, and even wanton
destruction, any more than an omelette can be
made without breaking the eggs/' But it seems
not to have occurred to Mr. Alsberg that, though
the breaking of the eggs is necessary, no omelette
can be made if the yolk be thrown away. And
that is precisely what the Communist Party did
to the Russian Revolution. For the yolk they
substituted Bolshevism, more specifically Lenin-
ism, with the result as shown in my book a
result that is gradually being realized as an en-
tire failure by the world at large.
Mr. Alsberg also believes that it was "grim
necessity, the driving need to preserve not the
Revolution but the remnants of civilization,
which forced the Bolsheviki to lay hands on
every available weapon, the Terror, the Tcheka*
>x PREFACE
suppression of free speech and press, censorship,
military conscription, conscription of labour,
requisitioning of peasants * crops, even bribery
and corruption/' Mr. Alsberg evidently agrees
with me that the Communists employed all
these methods; and that, as he himself states,
"the 'means' largely determines the 'end 5 " a
conclusion the proof and demonstration of
which are contained in my book. The only
mistake in this viewpoint, however a most vital
one is the assumption that the Bolsheviki
were forced to resort to the methods referred to
in order to *' preserve the remnants of civiliza-
tion/* Such a view is based on an entire mis-
conception of the philosophy and practice of
Bolshevism. Nothing can be further from the
desire or intention of Leninism than the u preser-
vation of the remnants of civilization/* Had
Mr, Alsberg said instead "the preservation of
the Communist dictatorship, of the political
absolutism of the Party", he would have come
nearer the truth, and we should have no quarrel
on the matter. We must not fail to consider
that the Bolsheviki continue to employ exactly
the same methods to-day as they did in what
Mr. Alsberg calls "the moments of grim neces-
sity, in 1919, 1920, and 1921."
PREFACE xi
We are in 1924. The military fronts have
long ago been liquidated; internal counter-
revolution is suppressed; the old bourgeoisie is
eliminated; the "moments of grim necessity"
are past. In fact, Russia is being politically
recognized by various governments of Europe
and Asia, and the Bolsheviki are inviting inter-
national capital to come to their country whose
natural wealth, as Tchicherin assures the world
capitalists, is "waiting to be exploited." The
"moments of grim necessity' 5 are gone, but the
Terror, the Tcheka, suppression of free speech
and press, and all the other Communist methods
enumerated by Mr. Alsberg still remain in force.
Indeed, they are being applied even more bru-
tally and barbarously since the death of Lenin.
Is it to "preserve the remnants of civilization/*
as Mr. Alsberg claims, or to strengthen the
weakening Party dictatorship?
Mr. Alsberg charges me with believing that
"had the Russians made the Revolution a la
Bakunin instead of a la Marx" the result would
have been different and more satisfactory. I
plead guilty to the charge. In truth, I not only
believe so; I am certain of it. The Russian
Revolution more correctly, Bolshevik methods
- conclusively demonstrated how a revolution
xii PREFACE
should not be made. The Russian experiment has
proven the fatality of a political party usurping
the functions of the revolutionary people, of an
omnipotent State seeking to impose its will upon
the country, of a dictatorship attempting to
"organize" the new life. But I need not repeat
here the reflections summed up in my concluding
chapter. Unfortunately they did not appear
In the first edition of my work. Otherwise Mr.
Alsberg might perhaps have written differently.
Mr. Mencken in his review believes me a
" prejudiced witness," because I an Anarchist
am opposed to government, whatever its form.
Yet the whole first part of rny book entirely
disproves the assumption of my prejudice, I
defended the Bolsheviki while still in America,
and for long months in Russia I sought every
opportunity to cooperate with them and to aid
in the great task of revolutionary upbuilding.
Though an Anarchist and an anti-governmen-
talist, I had not come to Russia expecting to
find my ideal realized. I saw in the Bolsheviki
the symbol of the Revolution and I was eager
to work with them in spite of our differ-
ences. However, if lack of aloofness from
the actualities of life means that one cannot
judge things fairly, then Mr. Mencken is right*
PREFACE xiii
One could not have lived through two years of
Communist terror, of a regime involving the
enslavement of the whole people, the annihila-
tion of the most fundamental values, human and
revolutionary, of corruption and mismanage-
ment, and yet have remained aloof or " impar-
tial" in Mr, Mencken's sense. I doubt whether
Mr. Mencken, though not an Anarchist, would
have done so. Could he, being human?
In conclusion, the present publication of the
chapters missing in the first edition comes at a
very significant period in the life of Russia.
When the "Nep," Lenin's new economic policy,
was introduced, there rose the hope of a better
day, of a gradual abolition of the policies of terror
and persecution. The Communist dictatorship
seemed inclined to relax its stranglehold upon
the thoughts and lives of the people. But the
hope was short-lived. Since the death of Lenin
the Bolsheviki have returned to the terror of
the worst days of their regime. Despotism,
fearing for its power, seeks safety in bloodshed.
More timely even than in 1922 is my book
to-day.
When the first series of my articles on Russia
appeared, in 1922, and later when my book was
published, I was bitterly attacked and de-
xiv PREFACE
Bounced by American radicals of almost every
camp. But I felt confident that the time would
come when the mask would be torn from the
false face of Bolshevism and the great delusion
exposed. The time has come even sooner than
I anticipated. In most civilized lands in
France, England, Germany, in the Scandinavian
and Latin countries, even in America the fog of
blind faith is gradually lifting. The reactionary
character of the Bolshevik regime is being real-
ized by the masses, its terrorism and persecution
of non-Communist opinion condemned. The
torture of the political victims of the dictator-
ship in the prisons of Russia, in the concentra-
tion camps of the frozen North and in Siberian
exile, is rousing the conscience of the more pro-
gressive elements the world over. In almost
every country societies for the defense and aid
of the politicals imprisoned in Russia have been
formed, with the object of securing their libera-
tion and the establishment of freedom of opinion
and expression in Russia.
If my work will help in these efforts to throw
light upon the real situation in Russia and to
awaken the world to the true character of Bol-
shevism and the fatality of dictatorship be it
Fascist or Communist I shall bear with equa-
PREFACE xv
nimity the misunderstanding and misrepresenta-
tion of foe or friend. And I shall not regret
the travail and struggle of spirit that produced
this work, which now, after many vicissitudes, is
at last complete in print.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
Berlin, June, 1924.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE , vii
CHAPTER
I. ODESSA ........ i
II. RETURNING TO Moscow ... 13
III. BACK IN PETROGRAD .... 27
IV. ARCHANGEL AND RETURN ... 41
V. DEATH AND FUNERAL OF PETER
KROPOTKIN ...... 54
VI. KRONSTADT 65
VII. PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS. . 78
VIII. TRAVELLING SALESMEN OF THE
REVOLUTION 95
IX. EDUCATION AND CULTURE . .no
X. EXPLOITING THE FAMINE . . . 130
XL THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC RESORTS
TO DEPORTATION .... 136
XIL AFTERWORD 144
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
IN RUSSIA
MY FURTHER
DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER I
ODESSA
AT THE numerous stations between Kiev
A\ and Odessa we frequently had to wait
for days before we managed to make con-
nections with trains going south. We employed
our leisure in visiting the small towns and vil-
lages, and formed many acquaintances. The
markets were especially of interest to us.
In the Kiev province by far the greater part
of the population is Jewish. They had suffered
many pogroms and were now living in constant
terror of their repetition. But the will to live
is indestructible, particularly in the Jew; other-
wise centuries of persecution and slaughter would
long since have destroyed the race. Its peculiar
perseverance was manifest everywhere: the Jews
continued to trade as if nothing had happened.
The news that Americans were in town would
2 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
quickly gather about us crowds of people anx-
ious to hear of the New World. To them it
was still a "new" world, of which they were as
ignorant as they had been fifty years before.
But not only America Russia itself was a
sealed book to them. They knew that it was a
country of pogroms, that some incomprehensible
thing called revolution had happened, and that
the Bolsheviki would not let them ply their
trade. Even the younger element in the more
distant villages was not much better informed.
The difference between a famished population
and one having access to food supplies was very
noticeable. Between Kiev and Odessa products
were extremely cheap as compared with northern
Russia. Butter, for instance, was 250 rubles a
pound as against 3,000 in Petrograd; sugar 350
rubles, while in Moscow it was 5,000. White
flour, almost impossible to obtain in the capitals,
was here sold at 80 rubles a pound. Yet all
along the journey we were besieged at the sta-
tions by hungry people, begging for food. The
country possessed plenty of supplies, but evi-
dently the average person had no means of
purchase. Especially terrible was the sight of
the emaciated and ragged children, pleading for
a crust of bread at the car windows.
ODESSA 3
While in the neighbourhood of Zhmerenka we
received the appalling news of the retreat of the
Twelfth Army and the quick advance of the
Polish forces. It was a veritable rout in which
the Bolsheviki lost great stores of food and medi-
cal supplies, of which Russia stood so much in
need. The Polish operations and the Wrangel
attacks from the Crimea threatened to cut our
journey short. It had been our original purpose
to visit the Caucasus but the new developments
made travel farther than Odessa impracticable,
We still hoped, however, to continue our trip
provided we could secure an extension of time
for our car permit, which was to expire on
October ist.
We reached Odessa just after a fire had com-
pletely destroyed the main telegraph and electric
stations, putting the city in total darkness. As
it would require considerable time to make re-
pairs, the situation increased the nervousness
of the city, for darkness favoured counter-
revolutionary plots. Rumours were afloat of
Kiev having been taken by the Poles and of the
approach of Wrangel.
It was our custom to pay our first official visit
to the Ispolkom (Executive Committee) in order
to familiarize ourselves with the situation and
4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
the general work scheme of the local institutions.
In Odessa there was a Revkom instead, indicating
that the affairs of the city had not yet been suffi-
ciently organized to establish a Soviet and its
Executive Committee. The Chairman of the
Revkom was a young man, not over thirty, with
a hard face. After scrutinizing our documents
carefully and learning the objects of our mission
he stated that he could not be of any assistance
to us. The situation in Odessa was precarious,
and as he was busy with many pressing matters,
the Expedition would have to look out for itself.
He gave us permission, however, to visit the
Soviet institutions and to collect whatever we
might be able to procure. He did not consider
the Petrogfad Museum and its work of much
importance. He was an ordinary worker ap-
pointed to a high government position, not
over-intelligent and apparently antagonistic to
everything "intellectual/'
The prospects did not look promising, but, of
course, we could not leave Odessa without mak-
ing a serious effort to collect the rich historical
material which we knew to be in the city. Re-
turning from the Revkom we happened to meet
a group of young people who recognized us, they
having lived in America before* They assured
ODESSA 5
us that we could expect no aid from the Chair-
man who was known as a narrow fanatic em-
bittered against the intelligentsia. Several of
the group offered to introduce us to other officials
who would be able and willing to assist us in our
efforts. We learned that the Chairman of Pub-
lic Economy in Odessa was an Anarchist, and
that the head of the Metal Trade Unions was
also an Anarchist. The information held out
hope that we might accomplish something in
Odessa, after all.
We lost no time in visiting the two men, but
the result was not encouraging. Both were
willing to do everything in their power, but
warned us to expect no returns because Odessa,
as they phrased it, was The City of Sabotage.
It must unfortunately be admitted that our
experience justified that characterization. I had
seen a great deal of sabotage in various Soviet
institutions in every city I had visited. Every-
where the numerous employees deliberately
wasted their time while thousands of applicants
spent days and weeks in the corridors and offices
without receiving the least attention. The
greater part of Russia did nothing else but stand
in line, waiting for the bureaucrats, big and little,
to admit them to their sanctums. But bad as
6 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
conditions were in other cities, nowhere did I
find such systematic sabotage as in Odessa.
From the highest to the lowest Soviet worker
everyone was busy with something other than
the work entrusted to him. Office hours were
supposed to begin at ten, but as a rule no official
could be found in any of the departments till
noon or even later. At three in the afternoon
the institutions closed, and therefore very little
work was accomplished.
We remained in Odessa two weeks, but so far
as material collected through official channels was
concerned, we got practically nothing. What-
ever we accomplished was due to the aid of pri-
vate persons and members of outlawed political
parties. From them we received valuable ma-
terial concerning the persecution of the Menshe-
viki and the labour organizations where the
influence of the former was strongest* The man-
agement of several unions had been entirely sus-
pended at the time we arrived in Odessa, and
there began a complete reorganization of them
by the Communists, for the purpose of eliminat-
ing all opposing elements.
Among the interesting people we met in
Odessa were the Zionists, including some well-
known literary and professional men. It was at
ODESSA 7
Doctor N *s house that we met them. The
Doctor himself was the owner of a sanatorium
located on a beautiful spot overlooking the Black
Sea and considered the best in the South. The
institution had been nationalized by the Bol-
sheviki, but Doctor N was left in charge and
was even permitted to take in private patients.
In return for that privilege he had to board and
give medical attention to Soviet patients for one
third of the established price.
Late into the night we discussed the Russian
situation with the guests at the Doctor's house.
Most of them were antagonistic to the Bolshevik
regime. "Lenin let loose the motto c Rob the
robbers/ and at least here in the Ukraina his
followers have carried out the order to the
letter," said the Doctor. It was the general
opinion of the gathering that the confusion and
ruin which resulted were due to that policy.
It robbed the old bourgeoisie but did not benefit
the workers. The Doctor cited his sanatorium
as an illustration. When the Bolsheviki took
it over they declared that the proletariat was
to own and enjoy the place, but not a single
worker had since been received as patient, not
even a proletarian Communist. The people the
Soviet sent to the sanatorium were members of
8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
the new bureaucracy, usually the high officials*
The Chairman of the Tcheka, for instance, who
suffered from nervous breakdown, had been in
the institution several times. "He works six-
teen hours a day sending people to their death/*
the Doctor commented. "You can easily imag-
ine how it feels to take care of such a man/'
One of the Bundist writers present held that
the Bolsheviki were trying to imitate the French
Revolution. Corruption was rampant; it put
in the shade the worst crimes of the Jacobins.
Not a day passed but that people were arrested
for trading in Tsarist or Kerensky money; yet
it was an open secret that the Chairman of the
Tcheka himself speculated in valuta. The de-
pravity of the Tcheka was a matter of common
knowledge. People were shot for slight offences,
while those who could afford to give bribes were
freed even after they had been sentenced to
death. It repeatedly happened that the rich
relatives of an arrested man would be notified
by the Tcheka of his execution. A few weeks
later, after they had somewhat recovered from
their shock and grief, they would be informed
that the report of the man's death was erroneous,
that he was alive and could be liberated by pay-
ing a fine, usually a very high one. Of course,
ODESSA 9
the relatives would strain every effort to raise
the money. Then they would suddenly be ar-
rested for attempted bribery, their money con-
fiscated and the prisoner shot.
One of the Doctor's guests, who lived in the
"Tcheka Street " told of the refinements of
terrorism practised to awe the population. Al-
most daily he witnessed the same sights: early in
the morning mounted Tchekists would dash by,
shooting into the air a warning that all windows
must be closed. Then came motor trucks loaded
with the doomed. They lay in rows, faces
downward, their hands tied, soldiers standing
over them with rifles. They were being carried
to execution outside the city. A few hours later
the trucks would return empty save for a few
soldiers. Blood dripped from the wagons, leav-
ing a crimson streak on the pavement all the
way to the Tcheka headquarters.
It was not possible that Moscow did not know
about these things, the Zionists asserted. The
fear of the central power was too great to permit
of the local Tcheka doing anything not approved
by Moscow. But it was no wonder that the
Bolsheviki had to resort to such methods. A
small political party trying to control a popula-
tion of 150,000,000, which bitterly hated the
io MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Communists, could not hope to maintain itself
without such an institution as the Tcheka.
The latter was characteristic of the basic prin-
ciples of Bolshevik conception: the country
must be forced to be saved by the Communist
Party. The pretext that the Bolsheviki were
defending the Revolution was a hollow mockery.
As a matter of fact, they had entirely destroyed
it.
It had grown so late that the members of our
expedition could not return to the car, fearing
difficulty in locating it, because of the dark night.
We therefore remained at the home of our host,
to meet next day a group of men of national
reputation, including Bialeck, the greatest living
Jewish poet, known to Jews the world over.
There was also present a literary investigator,
who had made a special study of the question of
pogroms. He had visited seventy-two cities,
collecting the richest material to be had on the
subject. It was his opinion that, contrary to
accepted notion, the pogrom wave during the
civil war period, between the years 1918 and
1921, under the various Ukrainian governments,
was even worse than the most terrible Jewish
massacres under the Tsars. There had taken
place no pogroms during the Bolshevik regime*
ODESSA n
but he believed that the atmosphere created by
them intensified the anti- Jewish spirit and would
some day break out in the wholesale slaughter of
the Jews. He did not think that the Bolsheviki
were particularly concerned in defending his
race. In certain localities of the South the
Jews, constantly exposed to assault and pillage
by robber bands and occasionally by individual
Red soldiers, had appealed to the Soviet Govern-
ment for permission to organize themselves for
self-defence, requesting that arms be given them.
But in all such cases the Government refused.
It was the general sentiment of the Zionists
that the continuation of the Bolsheviki in power
meant the destruction of the Jews. The Russian
Jews, as a rule, were not workers. From time
immemorial they had engaged in trade; but
business had been destroyed by the Communists,
and before the Jew could be turned into a worker
he would deteriorate, as a race, and become ex-
tinct. Specific Jewish culture, the most priceless
thing to the Zionists, was frowned upon by the
Bolsheviki. That phase of the situation seemed
to affect them even more deeply than pogroms.
These intellectual Jews were not of the prole*
tarian class. They were bourgeois without any
revolutionary spirit. Their criticism of the Bol-
12 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT 4
sheviki did not appeal to me for it was a criticism
from the Right. If I had still believed in the
Communists as the true champions of the Revo-
lution I could have defended them against the
Zionist complaints. But I myself had lost faith
in the revolutionary integrity of the Bolshevikl
CHAPTER II
RETURNING TO MOSCOW
IN A country where speech and press are so
completely suppressed as in Russia it is not
surprising that the human mind should feed
on fancy and out of it weave the most incredible
stories. Already, during my first months in
Petrograd, I was amazed at the wild rumours that
circulated in the city and were believed even by
intelligent people. The Soviet press was inac-
cessible to the population at large and there was
no other news medium. Every morning Bolshe-
vik bulletins and papers were pasted on the
street corners, but in the bitter cold few people
cared to pause to read them. Besides, there
was little faith in the Communist press. Petro-
grad was therefore completely cut off, not only
from the Western world but even from the rest
of Russia. An old revolutionist once said to me :
" We not only don't know what is going on in the
world or in Moscow; we are not even aware of
what is happening in the next street." How-
is
i 4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
ever, the human mind will not be bottled up all
the time. It must have and generally finds an
outlet. Rumours of attempted raids on Petro-
grad, stories that Zinoviev had been ducked in
"Sovietsky soup" by some factory workers and
that Moscow was captured by the Whites were
afloat.
Of Odessa it was related that enemy ships had
been sighted off the coast, and there was much
talk of an impending attack. Yet when we
arrived we found the city quiet and leading its
ordinary life. Except for the large markets,
Odessa impressed me as a complete picture of
Soviet rule. But we had not been gone a day
from the city when, on our return to Moscow,
we again met the same rumours. The success
of the Polish forces and the hasty retreat of the
Red Army furnished fuel to the over-excited
imagination of the people. Everywhere the
roads were blocked with military trains and the
stations filled with soldiers spreading the panic
of the rout.
At several points the Soviet authorities were
getting ready to evacuate at the first approach
of danger. The population, however, could not
do that. At the railroad stations along the
route groups of people stood about discussing the
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 15
impending attack. Fighting in Rostov, other
cities already in the hands of Wrangel, bandits
holding up trains and blowing up bridges, and
similar stories kept everybody in a panic. It was
of course impossible to verify the rumours.
But we were informed that we could not continue
to Rostov~on~the-Don, that city being already
within the military zone. We were advised to
start for Kiev and thence return to Moscow. It
was hard to give up our plan of reaching Baku,
but we had no choice. We could not venture
too far, especially as our car permit was to expire
within a short time. We decided to return to
Moscow via Kiev.
When we left Petrograd, we had promised to
bring back from the South some sugar, white
flour, and cereals for our starved friends who
had lacked these necessities for three years.
On the way to Kiev and Odessa we found provi-
sions comparatively cheap; but now the prices
had risen several hundred per cent. From an
Odessa friend we learned of a place twenty versts
[about thirteen miles] from Rakhno, a small vil-
lage near Zhmerenka, where sugar, honey, and
apple jelly could be had at small cost. We were
not supposed to transport provisions to Petro-
grad, though our car was immune from the usual
16 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Inspection by the Tcheka. But as we had no
intention of selling anything, we felt justified in
bringing some food for people who had been
starving for years. We had our car detached
at Zhmerenka, and two men of the expedition
and myself went to Rakhno.
It was no easy matter to induce the Zhmerenka
peasants to take us to the next village. Would
we give them salt, nails, or some other merchan-
dise? Otherwise they would not go. We lost
the best part of a day in a vain search, but at last
we found a man who consented to drive us to
the place in return for Kerensky rubles. The
journey reminded me of the rocky road of good
intentions: we were heaved up and down, jerked
back and forth, like so many dice. After a
seemingly endless trip, aching in every limb, we
reached the village. It was poor and squalid*
Jews constituting the main population. The
peasants lived along the Rakhno road and visited
the place only on market days. The Soviet
officials were Gentiles.
We carried a letter of introduction to a woman
physician, the sister of our Odessa Bundist friend.
She was to direct us how to go about procuring
the provisions. Arriving at the Doctor's house
we found her living in two small rooms, ill kept
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 17
and unclean, with a dirty baby crawling about.
The woman was busy making apple jelly. She
was of the type of disillusioned intellectual now
so frequently met in Russia. From her con-
versation I learned that she and her husband,
also a physician, had been detailed to that
desolate spot. They were completely isolated
from all intellectual life, having neither papers,
books, nor associates. Her husband would begin
his rounds early in the morning and return late
at night, while she had to attend to her baby
and household, besides taking care of her own
patients. She had only recently recovered from
typhus and it was hard for her to chop wood,
carry water, wash and cook and look after her
sick. But what made their life unbearable was
the general antagonism to the intelligentsia.
They had it constantly thrown up to them that
they were bourgeois and counter-revolutionists,
and they were charged with sabotage. It was
only for the sake of her child that she continued
the sordid life, the woman said; "otherwise it
were better to be dead/'
A young woman, poorly clad, but clean and
neat, came to the house and was introduced as
a school teacher. She at once got into conversa-
tion with me. She was a Communist, she an-
i8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
nounced, who was " doing her own thinking/'
''Moscow may be autocratic/ 5 she said, "but.
the authorities in the towns and villages here
beat Moscow* They do as they please/' The
provincial officials were flotsam washed ashore
by the great storm. They had no revolutionary-
past they had known no suffering for their
Ideals. They were just slaves in positions of
power. If she had not been a Communist herself,
she would have been eliminated long ago, but
she was determined to make a fight against the
abuses in her district. As to the schools, they
were doing as best they could under the circum-
stances, but that was very little. They lacked
everything. It was not so bad in the summer,
but in the winter the children had to stay home
because the class rooms were not heated. Was
it true that Moscow was publishing glowing ac-
counts of the great reduction in illiteracy ? Well,
it was certainly exaggerated. In her village the
progress was very slow. She had often wondered
whether there was really much to so-called edu-**
cation. Supposing the peasants should learn to
read and write. Would that make them better
and kinder men? If so, why is there so much
cruelty, injustice, and strife in countries where
people are not illiterate? The Russian peasant
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 19
cannot read or write, but he has an innate sense
of right and beauty. He can do wonderful
things with his hands and he is no more brutal
than the rest of the world.
I was interested to find such an unusual view-
point in one so young and in such an out-of-the-
way place. The little teacher could not have been
more than twenty-five. I encouraged her to speak
of her reactions to the general policies and methods
of her party. Did she approve of them, did she
think them dictated by the revolutionary proc-
ess? She was not a politician, she said; she did
not know. She could judge only by the results
and they were far from satisfactory. But she
had faith in the Revolution. It had uprooted
the very soil, it had given life a new meaning.
Even the peasants were not the same no one
was the same. Something great must come of
all the confusion.
The arrival of the Doctor turned the conver-
sation into other channels. When informed of
our errand he went in search of some tradesmen,
but presently he returned to say that nothing
could be done: it was the eve of Yom Kippur,
and every Jew was in the synagogue. Heathen
that I am, I did not know that I had come on
the eve of that most solemn fast day. As we
20 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
could not remain another day, we decided to
return without having accomplished our pur-
pose.
Here a new difficulty arose. Our driver would
not budge unless we got an armed guard to
accompany us. He was afraid of bandits: two
nights previously, he said, they had attacked
travellers in the forest. It became necessary
to apply to the Chairman of the Militia. The
latter was willing to help us, but all his men
were in the synagogue, praying. Would we wait
until the services were over?
At last the people filed out from the synagogue
and we were given two armed militiamen. It
was rather hard on those Jewish boys, for it was
a sin to ride on Yom Kippur. But no induce-
ment could persuade the peasant to venture
through the woods without military protection.
Life is indeed a crazy quilt made of patches.
The peasant, a true Ukrainian, would not have
hesitated a moment to beat and rob Jews in a
pogrom; yet he felt secure in the protection of
Jews against the possible attack of his own co-
religionists.
We rode into the bright fall night, the sky
dotted with stars. It was soothingly still, with
all nature asleep. The driver and our escort
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 21
discussed the bandits, competing in blood-
curdling stories of the outrages committed by
them. As we reached the dark forest 1 reflected
that their loud voices would be the signal of
our approach for any highwaymen who might
be lying in wait. The soldiers stood up in the
wagon, their rifles ready for action; the peasant
crossed himself and lashed the horses into a mad
gallop, keeping up the pace till we reached the
open road again. It was all very exciting but
we met no bandits. They must have been sabo-
taging that night.
We reached the station too late to make con-
nections and had to wait until the morning. I
, spent the n^ight in the company of a girl in soldier
uniform, a Communist. She had been at every
front, she declared, and had fought many ban-
dits. She was a sort of Playboy of the Eastern
World, romancing by the hour. Her favourite
stories were of shooting. "A bunch of counter-
revolutionists, White Guards and speculators,"
she would say; "they should all be shot." I
thought of the little school teacher, the lovely
spirit in the village, giving of herself in hard and
painful service to the children, to beauty in life;
and here, her comrade, also a young woman, but
hardened and cruel, lacking all sense of revolu-
22 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tionary values both children of the same school,
yet so unlike each other.
In the morning we rejoined the Expedition in
Zhmerenka and proceeded to Kiev, where we ar-
rived by the end of September, to find the city
completely changed. The panic of the Twelfth
Army was in the air; the enemy was supposed
to be only 150 versts [about ninety-nine miles]
away and many Soviet Departments were be-
ing evacuated, adding to the general uneasiness
and fright, I visited Wetoshkin, the Chairman
of the Revkom, and his secretary. The latter
inquired about Odessa, anxious to know how
they were doing there, whether they had sup-
pressed trade, and how the Soviet Departments
were working. I told him of the general sabo-
tage, of the speculation and the horrors of the
Tcheka. As to trade, the stores were closed and
all signs were down, but the markets were doing
big business. "Indeed? Well, you must tell
this to Comrade Wetoshkin/* the Secretary cried
gleefully* "What do you suppose Rakovsky
was here and told us perfect wonders about the
accomplishments of Odessa. He put us on the
rack because we had not done as much. You
must tell Wetoshkin all about Odessa; he will
enjoy the joke on Rakovsky."
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 23
I met Wetoshkin on the stairs as I was leaving
the office. He looked thinner than when I had
last seen him, and very worried. When asked
about the impending danger, he made light of it.
"We are not going to evacuate/* he said, "we
remain right here. It is the only way to reas-
sure the public." He, too, inquired about Odessa.
I promised to call again later, as I had no time
just then, but I did not have the chance to see
Wetoshkin again to furnish that joke on Rakov-
sky. We left Kiev within two days.
At Bryansk, an industrial centre not far away
from Moscow, we came upon large posters an-
nouncing that Makhno was again with the Bol-
sheviki, and that he was distinguishing himself
by daring exploits against Wrangel. It was
startling news, in view of the fact that the Soviet
papers had constantly painted Makhno as
a bandit, counter-revolutionary, and traitor.
What had happened to bring about this change
of attitude and tone ? The thrilling adventure of
having our car held up and ourselves carried off
as prisoners by the Makhnovtsi did not come off.
By the time we reached the district where
Makhno had been operating in September, he
was cut off from us. It would have been very
interesting to meet the peasant leader face to
24 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
i
face and hear at first hand what he was about.
He was undoubtedly the most picturesque and
vital figure brought to the fore by the Revolu-
tion in the South and now he was again with
the Bolsheviki. What had happened? There
was no way of knowing until we should reach
Moscow.
From a copy of the Izvestia that fell into our
hands en route, we learned the sad news of the
death of John Reed. It was a great blow to
those of us who had known Jack. The last time
I saw him was at the guest house, the Hotel
International, in Petrograd. He had just re-
turned from Finland, after his imprisonment
there, and was ill in bed. I was informed that
Jack was alone and without proper care, and I
went up to nurse him. He was in a bad state, all
swollen and with a nasty rash on his arms, the
result of malnutrition. In Finland he had been
fed almost exclusively on dried fish and had been
otherwise wretchedly treated. He was a very
sick man, but his spirit remained the same. No
matter how radically one disagreed with Jack,
one could not help loving his big, generous spirit,
and now he was dead, his life laid down in the
service of the Revolution, as he believed.
Arriving in Moscow I immediately went to the
RETURNING TO MOSCOW 25
guest house, the Delovol Dvor, where stayed
Louise Bryant, Jack's wife. I found her terribly
1 distraught and glad to see one who had known
Jack so well. We talked of him, of his illness,
his suffering and his untimely death. She was
much embittered because, she claimed, Jack had
been ordered to Baku to attend the Congress
of the Eastern peoples when he was already very
ill. He returned a dying man. But even then
he could have been saved had he been given
competent medical attention. He lay in his
room for a week without the doctors making up
their mind as to the nature of his illness. Then
it was too late. I could well understand Louise's
feelings, though I was convinced that everything
humanly possible had been done for Reed. I
knew that whatever else might be said against
the Bolsheviki, it could not be charged that they
neglect those who serve them. On the contrary,
they are generous masters. But Louise had lost
what was most precious to her.
During the conversation she asked me about
my experiences and I told her of the conflict
within me, of the desperate effort I had been
making to find my way out of the chaos, and
that now the fog was lifting, and I was beginning
to differentiate between the Bolsheviki and the
z6 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Revolution, Ever since I had come to Russia
I had begun to sense that all was not well with
the Bolshevik regime, and I felt as if caught
in a trap. "How uncanny!" Louise suddenly
gripped my arm and stared at me with wild eyes.
"* Caught in a trap' were the very words Jack
repeated in his delirium." I realized that poor
Jack had also begun to see beneath the surface.
His was the free, unfettered spirit striving for
the real values of life. It would be chafed when
bound by a dogma which proclaimed itself im-
mutable. Had Jack lived he would no doubt
have clung valiantly to the thing which had
caught him in the trap. But in the face of death
the mind of man sometimes becomes luminous;
it sees in a flash what in man's normal condition
is obscure and hidden from him. It was not at
all strange to me that Jack should have felt as I
did, as everyone who is not a zealot must feel in
Russia caught in a trap.
CHAPTER III
BACK IN PETROGRAD
THE Expedition was to proceed to Petro-
grad the next day, but Louise begged me
to remain for the funeral. Sunday, Oc-
tober 23rd, several friends rode with her to the
Trade Union House where Reed's body lay in
state. I accompanied Louise when the proces-
sion started for the Red Square. There were
speeches much cold stereotyped declamation
about the value of Jack Reed to the Revolution
and to the Communist Party. It all sounded
mechanical, far removed from the spirit of the
dead man in the fresh grave. One speaker only
dwelt on the real Jack Reed Alexandra Kollon-
tay. She had caught the artist's soul, infinitely
greater in its depth and beauty than any dogma.
She used the occasion to admonish her comrades.
"We call ourselves Communists/* she said,
" but are we really that ? Do we not rather draw
the life essence from those who come to us,
and when they are no longer of use, we let them
27
28 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
fall by the wayside, neglected and forgotten?
Our Communism and our comradeship are dead
letters if we do not give out of ourselves to those
who need us. Let us beware of such Commun-
ism. It slays the best in our ranks. Jack Reed
was among the best."
The sincere words of Kollontay displeased the
high Party members. Bukharin knitted his
brows, Reinstein fidgeted about, others grum-
bled. But I was glad of what Kollontay had
said. Not only because what she said expresssed
Jack Reed better than anything else said that
day, but also because it brought her nearer to me.
In America we had repeatedly tried to meet but
never succeeded. When I reached Moscow, in
March, 1920, Kollontay was ill. I saw her only
for a little while before I returned to Petrograd.
We spoke of the things that were troubling me.
During the conversation Kollontay remarked:
"Yes, we have many dull sides in Russia/*
"Dull," I queried; "nothing more?" I was
unpleasantly affected by what seemed to me a
rather superficial view. But I reassured myself
that Kollontay's inadequate English caused her
to characterize as "dull" what to me was a com-
plete collapse of all idealism.
Among other things Kollontay had then said
BACK IN PETROGRAD 29
was that I could find a great field for work
among the women as very little had been at-
tempted up to that time to enlighten and broaden
them. We parted in a friendly manner, but I
did not sense in her the same feeling of warmth
and depth that I had found in Angelica Bala-
banova. Now at the open grave of Reed her
words brought her closer to me. She, too, felt
deeply, I thought.
Louise Bryant had fallen in a dead faint and
was lying face downward on the damp earth.
After considerable effort we got her to her feet.
Hysterical, she was taken in the waiting auto to
her hotel and put to bed. Outside, the sky was
clothed in gray and was weeping upon the fresh
grave of Jack Reed. And all of Russia seemed
a fresh grave.
While in Moscow we found the explanation of
the sudden change of tone of the Communist
press toward Makhno. The Bolsheviki, hard
pressed by Wrangel, sought * the aid of the
Ukrainian povstantsi army. A politico-military
agreement was about to be entered into between
the Soviet Government and Nestor Makhno.
The latter was to cooperate fully with the Red
Army in the campaign against the counter-
revolutionary enemy. On their side, the Bol-
30 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
sheviki accepted the following conditions of
Makhno:
(1) The immediate liberation and termination of per-
secution of all Makhnovtsi and Anarchists, excepting cases
of armed rebellion against the Soviet Government.
(2) Fullest liberty of speech, press and propaganda for
Makhnovtsi and Anarchists, without, however, the right
of calling for armed uprisings against the Soviet Govern-
ment, and subject to military censorship.
(3) Free participation in Soviet elections; the right of
Makhnovtsi and Anarchists to be candidates, and to hold
the fifth All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets.
The agreement also included the right of the
Anarchists to call a congress in Kharkov, and
preparations were being made to hold it in the
month of October. Many Anarchists were get-
ting ready to attend it and were elated over the
outlook. But my faith in the Bolshevik! had
received too many shocks. Not only did I be-
lieve that the Congress would not take place,
but I saw in it a Bolshevik ruse to gather all the
Anarchists in one place in order to destroy them.
Yet the fact was that several Anarchists, among
them the well-known writer and lecturer Volin,
had already been released and were now free in
Moscow.
BACK IN PETROGRAD 31
We left for Petrograd to deliver to the Museum
the carload of precious material we had gathered
in the South. More valuable still was the ex-
perience the members of the Expedition had been
enriched with through personal contact with
people of various shades of opinion, or of no
opinion, and the impressions of the social pan-
orama as it was being unrolled day by day.
That was a treasure of far greater worth than
any paper documents. But better insight into
the situation intensified my inner struggle. I
longed to close my eyes and ears not to see the
accusing hand which pointed to the blind errors
and conscious crimes that were stifling the Revo-
lution. I wanted not to hear the compelling
voice of facts, which no personal attachments
could silence any longer. I knew that the
Revolution and the Bolsheviki, proclaimed as
one and the same, were opposites, antagonistic
in aim and purpose. The Revolution had its
roots deep down in the life of the people. The
Communist State was based on a scheme forcibly
applied by a political party. In the contest the
Revolution was being slain, but the slayer also
was gasping for breath. I had known in America
that the Interventionists, the blockade and the
conspiracy of the Imperialists were wrecking the
3 3 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Revolution. But what I had not known then
was the part the Bolshevik! were playing in the
process. Now I realized that they were the
grave-diggers.
I was oppressively conscious of the great debt
I owed to the workers of Europe and America:
I should tell them the truth about Russia. But
how could I speak out when the country was still
besieged on several fronts? It would mean
working into the hands of Poland and WrangeL
For the first time in my life I refrained from
exposing grave social evils. I felt as if I were
betraying the trust of the masses, particularly
of the American workers, whose faith I dearly
cherished.
Arrived in Petrograd, I went to live tempora-
rily in the Hotel International. I intended to
find a room somewhere else, determined to accept
no privileges at the hands of the Government.
The International was filled with foreign visitors.
Many had no idea of why or wherefore they had
come. They had simply flocked to the land they
believed to be the paradise of the workers. I
remember my experience with a certain L W. W.
chap. He had brought to Russia a small supply
of provisions, needles, thread, and other similar
necessities. He insisted that I let him share
BACK IN PETROGRAD 33
with me. "But you will need every bit of it
yourself/' I told him. Of course, he knew there
was great scarcity in Russia. But the proleta-
riat was in control and as a worker he would re-
ceive everything he needed. Or he would "get
a piece of land and build a homestead/* He had
been fifteen years in the Wobbly movement and
he " didn't mind settling down." What was there
to say to such an, innocent ? I had not the cour-
age to disillusion him. I knew he would learn
soon enough. It was pathetic, though, to see
such people flood starving Russia. Yet they
could not do her the harm the other kind was
doing creatures from the four corners of the
earth to whom the Revolution represented a gold
mine. There were many of them in the Inter-
national. They all came with legends of the
wonderful growth of Communism in America,
Ireland, China, Palestine. Such stories were
balm to the hungry souls of the men in power.
They welcomed them as an old maid welcomes
the flattery of her first suitor. They sent these
impostors back home well provided financially
and equipped to sing the praises of the Workers*
and Peasants' Republic. It was both tragic and
comic to observe the breed all inflated with
"important conspiratory missions/'
34 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
I received many visitors in my room, among
them my little neighbour from the Astoria with
her two children, a Communist from the French
Section, and several of the foreigners. My neigh-
bour looked sick and worn since I had seen her
last in June, 1920. "Are you ill ?" I inquired on
one occasion. "Not exactly/* she said; "I am
hungry most of the time and exhausted. The
summer has been hard: as inspectress of chil-
dren's homes I have to do much walking. I
return home completely exhausted. My nine-
year-old girl goes to a children's colony, but I
would not risk sendinglny baby boy there be-
cause of his experience last year, when he was
so neglected that he nearly died. I had to
keep him in the city all summer, which made it
doubly hard for me. Still, it would not have
been so bad had it not been for the subotniki and
voskresniki (Communist Saturday and Sunday
voluntary work-days). They drain my energies
completely. You know how they began like a
picnic, with trumpets and singing, marching and
festivities. We all felt inspired, especially when
we saw our leading comrades take pick and shovel
and pitch in. But that is all a matter of the
past. The subotniki have become gray and spirit-
less,beneath anobligation imposed without regard
BACK IN PETROGRAD 35
to inclination, physical fitness, or the amount of
other work one has to do. Nothing ever succeeds
in our poor Russia. If I could only get out to
Sweden, Germany, anywhere, far away from it
all/' Poor little woman, she was not the only
one who wanted to forsake the country. It was
their love for Russia and their bitter disappoint-
ment which made most people anxious to run
away.
Several other Communists I knew in Petro-
grad were even more embittered. Whenever
they called on me they would repeat their deter-
mination to get out of the Party. They were
suffocating they said in the atmosphere of
Intrigue, blind hatred, and senseless persecu-
tion. But it requires considerable will power
to leave the Party which absolutely controls the
destiny of more than a hundred million people,
and my Communist visitors lacked the strength.
But that did not lessen their misery, which af-
fected even their physical condition, although
they received the best rations and they had their
meals at the exclusive Smolny dining room. I
remember my surprise on first finding that there
were two separate restaurants in Smolny, one
where wholesome and sufficient food was served
to the important members of the Petrograd
36 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Soviet and of the Third International, while the
other was for the ordinary employees of the
Party. At one time there had even been three
restaurants. Somehow the Kronstadt sailors
learned of it. They came down in a body and
closed two of the eating places. " We made the
Revolution that all should share alike/' they
said. Only one restaurant functioned for a time
but later the second was opened. But even in
the latter the meals were far superior to the So-
vietsky dining rooms for the "common people/'
Some of the Communists objected to the dis-
crimination. They saw the blunders, the in-
trigues, the destruction of life practised in the
name of Communism, but they had not the
strength and courage to protest or to disassociate
themselves from the Party responsible for the
injustice and brutality. They would often un-
burden themselves to me of the matters they
dared not discuss in their own circles. Thus
I came to know many things about the inner
workings of the Party and the Third Interna-
tional that were carefully hidden from the
outside world. Among them was the story of
the alleged Finnish White conspiracy, which re-
sulted in the killing in Petrograd of seven lead-
ing Finnish Communists, I had read about it
BACK IN PETROGRAD 37
in the Soviet papers while I was in the Ukraina.
I remember my feeling of renewed impatience
with myself that I should be critical of the Bol-
shevik regime at a time when counter-revolution-
ary conspiracies were still so active. But from
my Communist visitors I learned that the pub-
lished report was false from beginning to end.
It was no White conspiracy but a fight between
two groups of Bolsheviki: the moderate Finnish
Communists in control of the propaganda car-
ried on from Petrograd, and the Left Wing work-
ing in Finland. The Moderates were Zinoviev
adherents and had been put in charge of the
work by him. The Lefts had repeatedly com-
plained to the Third International about the
conservatism and compromises of their com-
rades in Petrograd and the harm they were doing
to the movement in Finland. They asked that
these men be removed. They were ignored.
On the 3 ist of August, 1920, the Lefts came to
Petrograd and proceeded to the headquarters of
the Moderates. At the session of the latter they
demanded that the Executive Committee resign
and turn over all books and accounts to them.
Their demand refused, the young Finnish Com-
munists opened fire, killing seven of their com-
rades. The affair was heralded to the world as
3 8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT,
a counter-revolutionary conspiracy of White
Finns.
The third anniversary of the October Revolu-
tion was celebrated November yth (October 25th
old style), on the Uritsky Square. I had seen
so many official demonstrations that they had
lost interest for me. Still I went to the Square
hoping that a new note might be sounded. It
proved a rehash of the thing I had heard over
and over again. The pageant especially was a
demonstration of Communist poverty in ideas.
Kerensky and his cabinet, Tchernov and the
Constituent Assembly, and the storming of the
Winter Palace again served as puppets to bring
out in strong relief the role of the Bolsheviki as
"saviours of the Revolution/* It was badly
played and poorly staged, and fell flat. To me
the celebration was more like the funeral than
the birth of the Revolution.
There was much excitement in Petrograd all
through the month of November. Numerous
rumours were afloat about strikes, arrests, and
clashes between workers and soldiery. It was
difficult to get at the facts. But the extraordi-
nary session called by the Party in the First
House of the Soviet indicated a serious situation.
In the early part of the afternoon the whole
BACK IN PETROGRAD 39
square in front of the Astoria was lined with
autos of the influential Communists who had
been summoned to attend the special conference.
The following morning we learned that in obedi-
ence to the Moscow decree the Petrograd session
had decided to mobilize a number of important
Bolshevik workers for the factories and shops.
Three hundred Party members, some of them
high government officials and others holding
responsible positions in the Petro-Soviet, were
immediately ordered to work, to prove to the
proletariat that Russia was indeed a Workers'
Government. The plan was expected to allay
the growing discontent of the proletarians and
to counteract the influence of the other political
parties among them. Zorin was one of the
three hundred.
However, the toilers would not be deceived by
this move. They knew that most of the mobil-
ized men continued to live in the Astoria and
came to work in their autos. They saw them
warmly dressed and well shod, while they them-
selves were almost naked and living in squalid
quarters without light or heat. The workers
resented the pretense. The matter became a
subject of discussion in the shops, and many
unpleasant scenes followed. One woman, a prom-
40 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
inent Communist, was so tormented in the fac-
tory that she went into hysterics and had to be
taken away. Some of the mobilized Bolsheviki,
among them Zorin and others, were sincere
enough, but they had grown away from the
toilers and could not stand the hardships of
factory life. After a few weeks Zorin collapsed
and had to be removed to a place of rest.
Though he was generally liked, his collapse was
interpreted by the workers as a ruse to get away
from the misery of the proletarian's existence.
The breach between the masses and the new
Bolshevik bureaucracy had grown too wide. It
could not be bridged.
CHAPTER IV
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN
ON NOVEMBER 28th the Expedition
again got under way, this time with three
members only: Alexander Berkman, the
Secretary, and myself. We travelled by way of
Moscow to Archangel, with stops in Vologda and
Yaroslavl. Vologda liad been the seat of various
foreign embassies, unofficially engaged in aiding
the enemies of the Revolution: We expected to
find historic material there, but we were in-
formed that most of it had been destroyed or
otherwise wasted. The Soviet institutions were
uninteresting: it was a plodding, sleepy provin-
cial town. In Yaroslavl, where the so-called
Savinkov uprising had taken place two years
previously, no significant data were found.
We continued to Archangel. The stories we had
heard of the frozen North made us rather appre-
hensive. But, much to our relief, we found that
city no colder than Petrograd, and much drier.
The Chairman of the Archangel Ispolkom was
41
42 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
a pleasant type of Communist, not at all officious
or stern. As soon as we had stated our mission
he set the telephone going. Every time he
reached some official on the wire he would ad-
dress him as "dear tovarishtch" and inform him
that "dear tovarishtchi from the Centre" had
arrived and must be given every assistance.
He thought that our stay would be profitable be-
cause many important documents had remained
after the Allies had withdrawn. There were
files of old newspapers published by the Tchai-
kovsky Government and photographs of the
brutalities perpetrated upon the Communists by
the Whites. The Chairman himself had lost his
whole family, including his twelve-year-old sister.
As he had to leave the next day to attend the
Conference of Soviets in Moscow, he promised to
issue an order giving us access to the archives.
Leaving the Ispolkom to begin our rounds, we
were surprised by three sleighs waiting for us,
thanks to the thoughtfulness of the Chairman.
Tucked up under fur covers and with bells
tinkling, each member of the Expedition started
in a different direction to cover the departments
assigned to him. The Archangel Soviet officials
appeared to have great respect for the "Centre 5 ";
the word acted like magic, opening every door*
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 43
The head of the Department of Education was
a hospitable and kindly man. After explaining
to me in detail the work done in his institution
he called to his office a number of employees,
informed them of the purpose of the Expedition
and asked them to prepare the material they
could gather for the Museum. Among those
Soviet workers was a nun, a pleasant-faced
young woman. What a strange thing, I thought,
to find a nun in a Soviet office! The Chairman
noticed my surprise. He had quite a number of
nuns in his department, he said. When the
monasteries had been nationalized the poor
women had no place to go. He conceived the
idea of giving them a chance to do useful work
in the new world. He had found no cause to
regret his action: he did not convert the nuns to
Communism, but they became very faithful and
industrious workers, and the younger ones had
even expanded a little. He invited me to visit
the little art studio where several nuns were
employed.
The studio was a rather unusual place not
so much because of its artistic value as on ac-
count of the people who worked there; two old
nuns who had spent forty and twenty-five years,
respectively, in monasteries; a young White
44 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
officer, and an elderly workinginan. The last
two had been arrested as counter-revolutionists
and were condemned to death, but the Chairman
rescued them in order to put them to useful work.
He wanted to give an opportunity to those who
through ignorance or accident were the enemies
of the Revolution. A revolutionary period, he
remarked, necessitated stern measures, even
violence; but other methods should be tried
first. He had many in his department who had
been considered counter-revolutionary, but now
they were all doing good work. It was the most
extraordinary thing I had heard from a Com-
munist. "Aren't you considered a sentimental
bourgeois? 5 ' I asked. "Yes, indeed/' he replied
smilingly, "but that is nothing. The main thing
is that I have been able to prove that my senti-
mentalism works, as you can see for yourself/'
The carpenter was the artist of the studiol
He had never been taught, but he did beautiful
carving and was a master in every kind of wood
work. The nuns made colour drawings of flowers
and vegetables, which were used for demonstra-
tion by lecturers in the villages. They also
painted posters, mainly for the children's fes-
tivals.
I visited the studio several times alone so that I
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 45
might speak freely to the carpenter and the nuns.
They had little understanding of the elemental
facts that had pulled them out of their moorings.
The carpenter lamented that times were hard
because he was not permitted to sell his handi-
work, "I used to earn a good bit of money,
but now I hardly get enough to eat/* he would
say. The sisters did not complain; they ac-
cepted their fate as the will of God. Yet there
was a change even in them. Instead of being
shut away in a nunnery they were brought in
touch with real life, and they had become more
human. Their expression was less forbidding,
their work showed signs of kinship with the
world around them. I noticed it particularly in
their drawings of children and children's games.
There was a tenderness about them that spoke
of the long-suppressed mother instinct struggling
for expression. The former White officer was
the most intelligent of the four he had gone
through Life's crucible. He had learned the
folly and crime of intervention, he said, and
would never lend his aid to it again. What
had convinced him ? The interventionists them-
selves. They had been in Archangel and they
carried on as if they owned the city. The Allies
had promised much, but they had done nothing
46 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
except enrich a few persons who speculated in
the supplies intended to benefit the population.
Everyone gradually turned against the inter-
ventionists. I wondered how many of the
countless ones shot as counter-revolutionists
would have been won over to the new regime and
would now be doing useful work if somebody had
saved their lives.
I had seen so many show schools that I decided
to say nothing about visiting educational insti-
tutions until some unexpected moment when one
could take them by surprise. For our first Satur-
day in Archangel a special performance of
Leonid Andreyev's play, "Sawa," had been
arranged. For a provincial theatre, considering
also the lack of preparation, the drama was fairly
well done.
After the performance I told the Chairman of
the Department, X , that I would like to visit
his schools early next morning. Without hesita-
tion he consented and even offered to call for the
other members of the Expedition. We visited
several schools and in point of cleanliness, com-
fort, and general cheerfulness, I found them a
revelation. It was also beautiful to see the fond
relationship that existed between the children and
X . Their joy was spontaneous and frank
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 47
at the sight of him. The moment he appeared
they would throw themselves upon him, shouting
with delight; they climbed on him and clung to
his neck. And he ? Never once did I see such
a picture in any school in Petrograd or Moscow.
He threw himself on the floor, the children about
him, and played and frolicked with them as if
they were his own. He was one of them; they
knew it, and they felt at home with him.
Similar beautiful relationships I found in every
school and children's home we visited. The
children were radiant when X appeared.
They were the first happy children I had seen in
Russia. It strengthened my conviction of the
significance of personality and the importance
of mutual confidence and love between teacher
and pupil. We visited a number of schools that
day. Nowhere did I find any discrimination;
everywhere the children had spacious dormi-
tories, spotlessly clean rooms and beds, good food
and clothes. The atmosphere of the schools
was warm and intimate.
We found in Archangel many historic docu-
ments, including the correspondence between
Tchaikovsky, of the Provisional Government,
and General Miller, the representative of the
Allies. It was pathetic to read the pleading, al-
48 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT *
most cringing words of the old pioneer of the rev-
olutionary movement in Russia, the founder of
the Tchaikovsky circles, the man I had known for
years, by whom I had been inspired. The letters
exposed the weakness of the Tchaikovsky regime
and the arbitrary rule of the Allied troops.
Particularly significant was the farewell message
of a sailor about to be executed by the Whites.
He described his arrest and cross-examination
and the fiendish third degree applied by an
English army officer at the point of a gun.
Among the material collected by us were also
copies of various revolutionary and Anarchist
publications issued sub rosa. From the Depart-
ment of Education we received many interesting
posters and drawings, as well as pamphlets and
books, and a collection of specimens of the chil-
dren's work. Among them was a velvet table
cover painted by the nuns and portraying Arch-
angel children in gay colours, presented as their
greeting to the children of America.
The schools and the splendid man at their
head were not the only noteworthy features of
Archangel. The other Soviet institutions also
proved efficient. There was no sabotage, the
various bureaus worked in good order, and the
general spirit was sincere and progressive.
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 49
The food distribution was especially well or-
ganized. Unlike most other places, there was
no loss of time or waste of energy connected
with procuring one's rations. Yet Archangel
was not particularly well supplied with provi-
sions. One could not help thinking of the great
contrast In this regard between that city and
Moscow. Archangel probably learned a lesson
in organization from contact with Americans
the last thing the Allies intended.
The Archangel visit was so interesting and
profitable that the Expedition delayed its de-
parture, and we remained much longer than
originally planned. * Before leaving, I called on
X . If anything could be sent him from
" the Centre/' what would he like most, I asked.
"Paints and canvas for our little studio/* he
replied. "See Lunacharsky and get him to send
us some." Splendid, gracious personality!
We left Archangel for Murmansk, but we had
not gone far when we were overtaken by a
heavy snowstorm. We were informed that we
could not reach Murmansk In less than a fort-
night, a journey which under normal conditions
required three days. There was also danger of
not being able to return to Petrograd on time,
' S o MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
the snow often blocking the roads for weeks.
We therefore decided to turn back to Petrograd.
When we came within seventy-five versts [about
fifty miles] of that city we ran into a blizzard:
It would take days before the track would be
cleared sufficiently to enable us to proceed.
Not cheerful news, but fortunately we were sup-
plied with fuel and enough provisions for some
time.
It was the end of December, and we celebrated
Christmas Eve in our car. The night was glo-
rious, the sky brilliant with stars, the earth clad
in white. A small pine tree, artfully decorated
by the Secretary and enthroned in our diner,
graced the occasion. The glow of the little wax
candles lent a touch of romance to the scene.
Gifts for our fellow travellers came all the way
from America; they had been given us by friends
in December, 1919, when we were on Ellis Island
awaiting deportation. A year had passed since
then, an excruciating year.
Arriving in Petrograd we found the city agi-
tated by the heated discussion of the role of the
trade unions. Conditions in the latter had re-
sulted in so much discontent among the rank
and file that the Communist Party was at last
forced to take up the issue. Already in October
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 51
the trade union question had been brought up
at the sessions of the Communist Party. The
discussions continued all through November and
December, reaching their climax at the Eighth
All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. All the
leading Communists participated in the great
verbal contest which was to decide the fate of
the labour organizations. The theses discussed
disclosed four different views. First, that of the
Lenin-Zinoviev faction, which held that the main
"function of the trade unions under the prole-
tarian dictatorship is to serve as schools of Com-
munism/* Second, the group represented by the
old Communist Ryasanov, which insisted that the
trade unions must function as the forum of the
workers and their economic protector. Trotsky
led the third faction. He believed that the trade
unions would in the course of time become the
managers and controllers of the industries, but for
the present the unions must be subject to strict
military discipline and be made entirely sub-
servient to the needs of the State. The fourth
and most important tendency was that of the
Labour Opposition, headed by Madame Kollon-
tay and Schliapnikov, who expressed the senti-
ment of the workers themselves and had their
support. This opposition argued that the gov-
52 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
ernmental attitude toward the trade unions
had destroyed the interest of the toilers in the
economic reconstruction of the country and para-
lysed their productive capacity. They empha-
sized that the October Revolution had been
fought to put the proletariat in control of the in-
dustrial life of the country. They demanded the
liberation of the masses from the yoke of the
bureaucratic State and its corrupt officialdom
and opportunity for the exercise of the creative
energies of the workers. The Labour Opposition
voiced the discontent and aspirations of the rank
and file.
It was a battle royal, with Trotsky and Zino-
viev chasing each other over the country in
separate special trains, to disprove each other's
contentions. In Petrograd, for instance, Zino*
viev's influence was so powerful that it required
a big struggle before Trotsky received permission
to address the Communist Local on his views in
the controversy. The latter engendered intense
feeling and for a time threatened to disrupt the
Party.
At the Congress, Lenin denounced the Labour
Opposition as "anarcho-syndicalist, middle-class
ideology" and advocated its entire suppression.
Schliapnikov, one of the most influential leaders
ARCHANGEL AND RETURN 53
of the Opposition, was referred to by Lenin as a
"peeved Commissar" and was subsequently si-
lenced by being made a member of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party. Madame
Kollontay was told to hold her tongue or get out
of the Party; her pamphlet setting forth the
views of the Opposition was suppressed. Some
of the lesser lights of the Labour Opposition were
given a vacation in the Tcheka, and even Ryasa-
nov, an old and tried Communist, was suppressed
for six months from all union activities.
Soon after our arrival in Petrograd we were
' informed by the Secretary of the Museum that
a new institution known as the Ispart had been
formed in Moscow to collect material about the
history of the Communist Party. This organiza-
tion also proposed to supervise all future expedi-
tions of the Museum of the Revolution and to
place them under the direction of a political
Commissar. It became necessary to go to Mos-
cow to ascertain the facts in the case. We had
seen too many evils resulting from the dictator-
ship of the political Commissar, the ever-present
espionage and curtailment of independent effort.
We could not consent to the change which was
about to be made in the character of our expe-
dition.
f CHAPTER V
DEATH ANI> FUNERAL OF PETER KROPOTKIN
WHEN I reached Moscow in January,
1921, I learned that Peter Kropotkin
had been stricken with pneumonia. I
immediately offered to nurse him, but as one
nurse was already in attendance and the Kro-
potkin cottage was too small to accommodate
extra visitors, it was agreed that Sasha Kropot-
kin, who was then in Moscow, should go to
Dmitrov to find out whether I was needed. I
had previously arranged to leave for Petrograd
the next day. Till the moment of departure I
waited for a call from the village; none coming,
I concluded that Kropotkin was improving.
Two days later, in Petrograd, I was informed by
Ravitch that Kropotkin had grown worse and
that I was asked to come to Moscow at once. I
left immediately, but unfortunately my train
was ten hours overdue, so that I reached Moscow
too late to connect with Dmitrov. There were
at the time no morning trains to the village and
54
DEATH OF PETER KROPOTKIN 55
it was not till the eve of February 7th that I was
at last seated in a train bound for the place.
Then the engine went off for fuel and did not
return until i A. M. of the next day. When I
finally arrived at the Kropotkin cottage, on
February 8th, I learned the terrible news that
Peter had died about an hour before. He had
repeatedly called for me, but I was not there to
render the last service to my beloved teacher and
comrade, one of the world's greatest and noblest
spirits. It had not been given to me to be near
him in his last hours. I would at least remain
until he was carried to his final resting place.
Two things had particularly impressed me on
my two previous visits to Kropotkin: his lack of
bitterness toward the Bolskeviki, and the fact
that he never once alluded to his own hardships
and privations. It was only now, while the fam-
ily was preparing for the funeral, that I learned
some details of his life under the Bolshevik
regime. In the early part of 1918 Kropotkin
had grouped around him some of the ablest
specialists in political economy. His purpose
was to make a careful study of the resources of
Russia, to compile these in monographs and to
turn them to practical account in the industrial
reconstruction of the country. Kropotkin was
$6 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
the editor-in-chief of the undertaking. One vol-
ume was prepared, but never published. The
Federalist League, as this scientific group was
known, was dissolved by the Government and
all the material confiscated.
On two occasions were the Kropotkin apart-
ments in Moscow requisitioned and the family
forced to seek other quarters. It was after these
experiences that the Kropotkins moved to Dmi-
trov, where old Peter became an involuntary
exile. Kropotkin, in whose home in the past
had gathered from every land all that was best
in thought and ideas, was now forced to lead the
life of a recluse. His only visitors were peasants
and workers of the village and some members of
the intelligentsia, whose wont it was to come
to him with their troubles and misfortunes. He
had always kept in touch with the world through
numerous publications, but in Dmitrov he had
no access to these sources. His only channels of
information now were the two government pa-
pers, Pravda and Izvestia. He was also greatly
handicapped in his work on the new Ethics
while he lived in the village. He was mentally
starved, which to him was greater torture than
physical malnutrition. It is true that he was
given a better payck than the average person,
DEATH OF PETER KROPOTKIN 57
but even that was insufficient to sustain his
waning strength. Fortunately he occasionally
received from various sources assistance in the
form of provisions. His comrades from abroad,
as well as the Anarchists of the Ukraina, often
sent him food packages. Once he received some
gifts from Makhno, at that time heralded by the
Bolsheviki as the terror of counter-revolution
in Southern Russia. Especially did the Kro-
potkins feel the lack of light. When I visited
them in 1920 they were considering themselves
fortunate to be able to have even one room lit.
Most of the time Kropotkin worked by the
flicker of a tiny oil lamp that nearly drove him
blind. During the short hours of the day he
would transcribe his notes on a typewriter, slowly
and painfully pounding out every letter.
However, it was not his own discomfort which
sapped his strength. It was the thought of the
Revolution that had failed, the hardships of Rus-
sia, the persecutions, the endless raztrels, which
made the last two years of his life a deep tragedy.
On two occasions he attempted to bring the rulers
of Russia to their senses : once in protest against
the suppression of all non-Communist publica-
tions; the other time against the barbaric prac-
tice of taking hostages. Ever since the Tcheka
S 8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
had begun its activities, the Bolshevik Govern-
ment had sanctioned the taking of hostages. Old
and young, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,
even children, were kept as hostages for the
alleged offence of one of their kin, of which they
often knew nothing. Kropotkin regarded such
methods as inexcusable under any circumstances.
In the fall of 1920, members of the Social
Revolutionist Party that had succeeded in get-
ting abroad threatened retaliation if Communist
persecution of their comrades continued. The
Bolshevik Government announced in its official
press that for every Communist victim it would
execute ten Social Revolutionists. It was then
that the famous revolutionist Vera Figner and
Peter Kropotkin sent their protest to the powers
that be in Russia. They pointed out that such
practices were the worst blot on the Russian
Revolution and an evil that had already brought
terrible results in its wake: history would never
forgive such methods.
The other protest was made in reply to the
plan of the Government to "liquidate" all pri-
vate publishing establishments, including even
those of the cooperatives. The protest was
addressed to the Presidium of the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets, then in session. It is in-
DEATH OF PETER KROPOTKIN 59
teresting to note that Gorki, himself an official
of the Commissariat of Education, had sent a
similar protest. In this statement Kropotkin
called attention to the danger of such a policy to
all progress, in fact, to all thought, and empha-
sized that such State monopoly would make
creative work utterly impossible. But the pro-
tests had no effect. Thereafter Kropotkin felt
that it was useless to appeal to a government
gone mad with power.
During the two days I spent in the Kropotkin
household I learned more of his personal life than
during all the years that I had known him.
Even his closest friends were not aware that
Peter Kropotkin was an artist and a musician of
much talent. Among his effects I discovered a
collection of drawings of great merit. He loved
music passionately and was himself a musician
of unusual ability. Much of his leisure he spent
at the piano.
And now he lay on his couch, in the little work-
room, as if peacefully asleep, his face as kindly
in death as it had been in life. Thousands of
people made pilgrimages to the Kropotkin cot-
tage to pay homage to this great son of Russia.
When his remains were carried to the station to
be taken to Moscow, the whole population of the
60 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
village attended the impressive funeral procession
to express their last affectionate greeting to the
man who had lived among them as their friend
and comrade.
The friends and comrades of Kropotkin de-
cided that the Anarchist organizations should
have exclusive charge of the funeral, and a Peter
Kropotkin Funeral Commission was formed in
Moscow, consisting of representatives of the
various Anarchist groups. The Committee wired
Lenin, asking him to order the release of all
Anarchists imprisoned in the capital in order to
give them the opportunity to participate in the
funeral
Owing to the nationalization of all public con-
veyances, printing establishments, etc., the
Anarchist Funeral Commission was compelled
to ask the Moscow Soviet to enable it to carry
out successfully the funeral programme. The
Anarchists being deprived of their own press,
the Commission had to apply to the authorities
for the publication of the matter necessary in
connection with the funeral arrangements. After
considerable discussion permission was secured
to print two leaflets and to issue a four-page bul-
letin in commemoration of Peter Kropotkin. The
Commission requested that the paper be issued
DEATH OF PETER KROPOTKIN 61
without censorship and stated that the reading
matter would consist of appreciations of our dead
comrade, exclusive of all polemical questions.
This request was categorically refused. Having
no choice, the Commission was forced to submit
and the manuscripts were sent in for censorship.
To forestall the possibility of remaining without
any memorial issue because of the delaying tac-
tics of the Government, the Funeral Commission
resolved to open, on its own responsibility, a
certain Anarchist printing office that had been
sealed by the Government. The bulletin and
the two leaflets were printed in that establish-
ment.
In answer to the wire sent to Lenin the Central
Committee of the All-Russian Executive of the
Soviets resolved "to propose to the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission (Veh-Tcheka) to re-
lease, according to its judgment, the imprisoned
Anarchists for participation in the funeral of
Peter A. Kropotkin." The delegates sent to the
Tcheka were asked whether the Funeral Com-
mission would guarantee the return of the pris-
oners. They replied that the question had not
been discussed. The Tcheka thereupon refused
to release the Anarchists. The Funeral Com-
mission, informed of the new development in the
62 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
situation, immediately guaranteed the return of
the prisoners after the funeral. Thereupon the
Tcheka replied that " there are no Anarchists in
prison who, in the judgment of the Chairman of
the Extraordinary Commission, could be released
for the funeral/'
The remains of the dead lay in state in the
Hall of Columns in the Moscow Labour Temple.
On the morning of the funeral the Kropotkin
Funeral Commission decided to inform the as-
sembled people of the breach of faith on the part
of the authorities and demonstratively to with-
draw from the Temple all the wreaths presented
by official Communist bodies. Fearing public
exposure, the representatives of the Moscow
Soviet definitely promised that all the Anarch-
ists imprisoned in Moscow would immediately
be released to attend the funeral. But this
promise was also broken, only seven of the
Anarchists being released from the "inner jail"
of the Extraordinary Commission. None of
the Anarchists imprisoned in the Butyrki at-
tended the funeral. The official explanation was
that the twenty Anarchists incarcerated in that
prison refused to accept the offer of the author-
ities. Later I visited the prisoners to ascertain
the facts in the case. They informed me that a
DEATH OF PETER KROPOTKIN 63
representative of the Extraordinary Commission
insisted on individual attendance, making ex-
ceptions in some cases. The Anarchists, aware
that the promise of temporary release was
collective, demanded that the stipulations be kept.
The Tcheka representative went to the telephone
to consult the higher authorities, so he said.
He did not return.
The funeral was a most impressive sight. It
was a unique demonstration never witnessed in
any other country. Long lines of members of
Anarchist organizations, labour unions, scientific
and literary societies and student bodies marched
for over two hours from the Labour Temple to
the burial place, seven versts [nearly five miles]
distant. The procession was headed by students
and children carrying wreaths presented by
various organizations. Anarchist banners of
black and scarlet Socialist emblems floated
above the multitude. The mile-long procession
entirely dispensed with the services of the official
guardians of the peace. Perfect order was kept
by the multitude itself spontaneously forming in
several rows, while students and workers organ-
ized a live chain on both sides of the marchers.
Passing the Tolstoi Museum the cortege paused,
and the banners were lowered in honour of the
64 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
memory of another great son of Russia. A
group of Tolstoians on the steps of the Museum
rendered Chopin's Funeral March as an expres-
sion of their love and reverence for Kropotkin.
The brilliant winter sun was sinking behind
the horizon when the remains of Kropotkin were
lowered into the grave, after speakers of many
political tendencies had paid the last tribute to
their great teacher and comrade.
CHAPTER VI
KRONSTADT
TFN FEBRUARY, 1921, the workers of several
I Petrograd factories went on strike. The
winter was an exceptionally hard one, and
the people of the capital suffered intensely from
cold, hunger, and exhaustion. They asked an
increase of their food rations, some fuel and
clothing. The complaints of the strikers, ignored
by the authorities, presently assumed a political
character. Here and there was also voiced a
demand for the Constituent Assembly and free
trade. The attempted street demonstration of
the strikers was suppressed, the Government
having ordered out the military kursanti. Lisa
Zorin, who of all the Communists I had met
remained closest to the people, was present at
the breaking up of the demonstration. One
woman became so enraged over the brutality of
the military that she attacked Lisa. The latter,
true to her proletarian instincts, saved the
woman from arrest and accompanied, her home.
6s
66 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
There she found the most appalling conditions.
In a dark and damp room there lived a worker's
family with its six children, half-naked in the
bitter cold. Subsequently Lisa said to me:
" I felt sick to think that I was in the Astoria/*
Later she moved out.
When the Kronstadt sailors learned what was
happening in Petrograd they expressed their soli-
darity with the strikers in their economic and
revolutionary demands, but refused to support
any call for the Constituent Assembly. On
March ist, the sailors organized a mass meeting
in Kronstadt, which was attended also by the
Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee, Kalinin (the presiding officer of the
Republic of Russia), the Commander of the
Kronstadt Fortress, Kuzmin, and the Chairman
of the Kronstadt Soviet, Vassiliev. The meeting,
held with the knowledge of the Executive Com-
mittee of the Kronstadt Soviet, passed a resolu-
tion approved by the sailors, the garrison, and
the citizens* meeting of 16,000 persons. Kalinin,
Kuzmin, and Vassiliev spoke against the resolu-
tion, which later became the basis of the conflict
between Kronstadt and the Government. It
voiced the popular demand for Soviets elected
by the free choice of the people. It is worth
KRONSTADT 67
reproducing that document in full, that the
reader may be enabled to judge the true charac-
ter of the Kronstadt demands. The Resolution
read:
Having heard the Report of the Representatives sent by
the General Meeting of Ship Crews to Petrograd to investi-
gate the situation there, Resolved:
(1) In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not
express the will of the workers and the peasants, immedi-
ately to hold new elections by secret ballot, the pre-
election campaign to have full freedom of agitation among
the workers and peasants;
(2) To establish freedom of speech and press for work-
ers and peasants, for Anarchists and left Socialist parties;
(3) To secure freedom of assembly for labour unions
and peasant organizations;
(4) To call a non-partisan Conference of the workers,
Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt,
and of Petrograd Province, no later than March 10, 1921;
(5) To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties,
as well as all workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors im-
prisoned in connection with the labour and peasant move-
ments;
(6) To elect a Commission to review the cases of those
held in prisons and concentration camps;
(7) To abolish all politotdeli 1 because no party should
be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas
or receive the financial support of the Government for
such purposes. Instead there should be established edu-
cational and cultural commissions, locally elected and
financed by the Government.
Political bureaus.
68 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
(8) To abolish immediately all zagryaditelniye otryadi 1 ;
(9) To equalize the rations of all who work, with the
exception of those employed in trades detrimental to
health;
(10) To abolish the Communist fighting detachments
in all branches of the Army, as well as the Communist
guards kept on duty in mills and factories. Should such
guards or military detachments be found necessary, they
are to be appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in
the factories according to the judgment of the workers;
(n) To give the peasants full freedom of action in re-
gard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on
condition that the peasants manage with their own means;
that is, without employing hired labour;
(12) To request all branches of the Army, as well as our
comrades the military kursanti, to concur in our resolu-
tions;
(13) To demand that the press give the fullest public-
ity to our resolutions;
(14) To appoint a Travelling Commission of Control;
(15) To permit free kustarnoye* production by one's
own efforts.
On March 4th the Petrograd Soviet was to
meet and it was generally felt that the fate of
Kronstadt would be decided then. Trotsky
was to address the gathering, and as I had not
yet had an opportunity to hear him in Russia,
I was anxious to attend. My attitude in the
1 Armed units organized by the Bolsheviki for the purpose of suppressing
traffic and confiscating foodstuffs.
^Individual small-scale.
KRONSTADT 69
matter of Kronstadt was still undecided. I
could not believe that the Bolsheviki would de-
liberately fabricate the story about General
Kozlovsky as the leader of the sailors. The
Soviet meeting, I expected, would clarify the
matter.
Tauride Palace was crowded and a special
body of kursanti surrounded the platform. The
atmosphere was very tense. All waited for
Trotsky. But when at 10 o* clock he had not
arrived, Zinoviev opened the meeting. Before
he had spoken fifteen minutes I was convinced
that he himself did not believe in the story of
Kozlovsky. "Of course Kozlovsky is old and
can do nothing," he said, "but the White officers
are back of him and are misleading the sailors/*
Yet for days the Soviet papers had heralded
General Kozlovsky as the moving spirit in the
"uprising/" Kalinin, whom the sailors had per-
mitted to leave Kronstadt unmolested, raved
like a fishmonger. He denounced the sailors as
counter-revolutionists and called for their im-
mediate subjugation. Several other Commun-
ists followed suit. When the meeting was
opened for discussion, a workingman from the
Petrograd Arsenal demanded to be heard. He
spoke with deep emotion and, ignoring the con-
70 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
stant interruptions, he fearlessly declared that
the workers had been driven to strike because of
the Government's indifference to their com-
plaints; the Kronstadt sailors, far from being
counter-revolutionists, were devoted to the Revo-
lution. Facing Zinoviev he reminded him that
the Bolshevik authorities were now acting to-
ward the workers and sailors just as the Kerensky
Government had acted toward the BolshevikL
"Then you were denounced as counter-revolu-
tionists and German agents," he said; "we, the
workers and sailors, protected you and helped
you to power. Now you denounce us and are
ready to attack us with arms. Remember, you
are playing with fire/'
Then a sailor spoke. He referred to the glo-
rious revolutionary past of Kronstadt, appealed
to the Communists not to engage in fratricide,
and read the Kronstadt resolution to prove the
peaceful attitude of the sailors. But the voice
of these sons of the people fell on deaf ears.
The Petro-Soviet, its passions roused by Bolshe-
vik demagoguery, passed the Zinoviev resolu-
tion ordering Kronstadt to surrender on pain of
extermination.
The Kronstadt sailors were ever the first to
serve the Revolution. They had played an
KRONSTADT 71
important part in the revolution of 1905; they
were in the front ranks in 1917. Under Keren-
sky's regime they proclaimed the Commune of
Kronstadt and opposed the Constituent Assem-
bly. They were the advance guard in the Oc-
tober Revolution. In the great struggle against
Yudenitch the sailors offered the strongest de-
fense of Petrograd, and Trotsky praised them
as the "pride and glory of the Revolution."
Now, however, they had dared to raise their
voice in protest against the new rulers of Russia.
That was high treason from the Bolshevik view-
point. The Kronstadt sailors were doomed.
Petrograd was aroused over the decision of the
Soviet; some of the Communists even, especially
those of the French Section, were filled with in-
dignation. But none of them had the courage
to protest, even in the Party circles, against the
proposed slaughter. As soon as the Petro-
Soviet resolution became known, a group of
well-known literary men of Petrograd gathered
to confer as to whether something could not be
done to prevent the planned crime. Someone
suggested that Gorki be approached to head a
committee of protest to the Soviet authorities.
It was hoped that he would emulate the example
of his illustrious countryman Tolstoi, who in his
72 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
famous letter to the Tsar had raised his voice
against the terrible slaughter of workers. Now
also such a voice was needed, and Gorki was
considered the right man to call on the present
Tsars to bethink themselves. But most of
those present at the gathering scouted the idea.
Gorki was of the Bolsheviki, they said; he would
not do anything. On several previous occasions
he had been appealed to, but refused to inter-
cede. The conference brought no results. Still,
there were some persons in Petrograd who could
not remain silent. They sent the following
letter to the Soviet of Defense:
To THE PETROGRAD SOVIET OF LABOUR AND DEFENSE,
CHAIRMAN ZINOVIEV:
To remain silent now is impossible, even criminal.
Recent events impel us Anarchists to speak out and to de-
clare our attitude in the present situation.
The spirit of ferment and dissatisfaction manifest among
the workers and sailors is the result of causes that demand
our serious attention. Cold and hunger have produced
dissatisfaction, and the absence of any opportunity for
discussion and criticism is forcing the workers and sailors
to air their grievances in the open.
White-guardist bands wish and may try to exploit this
dissatisfaction in their own class interests. Hiding be-
hind the workers and sailors they throw out slogans of
the Constituent Assembly, of free trade, and similar de-
mands.
We Anarchists have long since exposed the fiction of
KRONSTADT 73
these slogans, and we declare to the whole world that we
will fight with arms against any counter-revolutionary
attempt, in cooperation with all friends of the Social
Revolution and hand in hand with the Bolsheviki.
, Concerning the conflict between the Soviet Government
and the workers and sailors, we hold that it must be
settled not by force of arms but by means of comradely,
fraternal revolutionary agreement. Resort to bloodshed
on the part of the Soviet Government will not in the
given situation intimidate or quiet the workers. On
the contrary, it will serve only to aggravate matters and
will strengthen the hands of the Entente and of internal
counter-revolution.
More important still, the use of force by the Workers*
and Peasants' Government against workers and sailors
will have a reactionary effect upon the international revo-
lutionary movement and will everywhere result in incal-
culable harm to the Social Revolution.
Comrades Bolsheviki, bethink yourselves before it is too
late. Do not play with fire : you are about to make a most
serious and decisive step.
We hereby submit to you the following proposition:
Let a Commission be selected to consist of five persons,
inclusive of two Anarchists. The Commission is to go
to Kronstadt to settle the dispute by peaceful means,
In the given situation this is the most radical method.
It will be of international revolutionary significance.
Petrograd, ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
March 5, 1921. EMMA GOLDMAN.
PERKUS.
PETROVSKY.
But this protest was ignored.
On March yth Trotsky began the bombard-
74 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tnent of Kronstadt, and on the lyth the fortress
and city were taken, after numerous assaults in- '
volving terrific human sacrifice. Thus Kron-
stadt was " liquidated " and the "counter*
revolutionary plot" quenched in blood. The
"conquest" of the city was characterized by
ruthless savagery, although not a single one of
the Communists arrested by the Kronstadt sail-
ors had been injured or killed by them. Even
before the storming of the fortress the Bolsheviki
summarily executed numerous soldiers of the
Red Army whose revolutionary spirit and soli-
darity caused them to refuse to participate in the
bloodbath.
Several days after the "glorious victory" over
Kronstadt Lenin said at the Tenth Congress of
the Communist Party of Russia: "The sailors
did not want the counter-revolutionists, but they
did not want us, either." And irony of Bol-
shevism! at that very Congress Lenin advo*
cated free trade a more reactionary step than
any charged to the Kronstadt sailors.
Between the 1st and the I7th of March several
regiments of the Petrograd garrison and all the
sailors of the port were disarmed and ordered
to the Ukraina and the Caucasus. The Bol-
sheviki feared to trust them in the Kronstadt
KRONSTADT 75
situation : at the first psychological moment they
might make common cause with Kronstadt. In
fact, many Red soldiers of the Krasnaya Gorka
and the surrounding garrisons were also in
sympathy with Kronstadt and were forced at
the point of guns to attack the sailors.
On March iyth the Communist Government
completed its "victory" over the Kronstadt pro-
letariat and on the i8th of March it commemo-
rated the martyrs of the Paris Commune. It
was apparent to all who were mute witnesses to
the outrage committed by the Bolsheviki that
the crime against Kronstadt was far more enor-
mous than the slaughter of the Communards in
1871, for it was done in the name of the Social
Revolution, in the name of the Socialist Repub-
lic. History will not be deceived. In the an-
nals of the Russian Revolution the names of
Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Dibenko will be added
to those of Thiers and Gallifet.
Seventeen dreadful days, more dreadful than
anything I had known in Russia. Agonizing
days, because of my utter helplessness in the
face of the terrible things enacted before my
eyes. It was just at that time that I happened
to visit a friend who had been a patient in a
hospital for months. I found him much dis-
76 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tressed. Many of those wounded in the attack
on Kronstadt had been brought to the same
hospital, mostly kursanti. I had opportunity
to speak to one of them. His physical suffering,
he said, was nothing as compared with his mental
agony. Too late he had realized that he had
been duped by the cry of " counter-re volution/'
There were no Tsarist generals in Kronstadt, no
White Guardists he found only his own com-
rades, sailors and soldiers who had heroically
fought for the Revolution.
The rations of the ordinary patients in the
hospitals were far from satisfactory, but the
wounded kursanti received the best of every-
thing, and a select committee of Communist
members was assigned to look after their com-
fort. Some of the kursanti, among them the
man I had spoken to, refused to accept the
special privileges. "They want to pay us for
murder," they said. Fearing that the whole
institution would be influenced by these awak-
ened victims, the management ordered them
removed to a separate ward, the "Communist
ward/' as the patients called it.
Kronstadt broke the last thread that held me
to the Bolsheviki. The wanton slaughter they
had instigated spoke more eloquently against
KRONSTADT 77
them than aught else. Whatever their pre-
tences in the past, the Bolsheviki now proved
themselves the most pernicious enemies of the
Revolution. I could have nothing further to do
with them.
CHAPTER VII
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS
IN A country State-owned and controlled as
completely as Russia it is almost Impossible
to live without the " grace " of the Govern-
ment. However, I was determined to make the
attempt. I would accept nothing, not even
bread rations, from the hands stained with the
blood of the brave Kronstadt sailors. Fortu-
nately, I had some clothing left me by an Amer-
ican friend; it could be exchanged for provisions.
I had also received some money from my own
people in the United States. That would enable
me to live for some time,
In Moscow I procured a small room formerly
occupied by the daughter of Peter Kropotkku
From that day on I lived like thousands of other
Russians, carrying water, chopping wood, wash-
Ing and cooking, all in my little room. But I
felt freer and better for it.
The new economic policy turned Moscow into
a vast market place. Trade became the new
78
"PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 79
religion. Shops and stores sprang up over-
night, mysteriously stacked with delicacies Rus-
sia had not seen for years. Large quantities of
butter, cheese, and meat were displayed for sale;
pastry, rare fruit, and sweets of every variety
were to be purchased. In the building of the
First House of the Soviet one of the biggest
pastry shops had been opened. Men, women,
and children with pinched faces and hungry eyes
stood about gazing into the windows and discuss-
ing the great miracle: what was but yesterday
considered a heinous offence was now flaunted
before them in an open and legal manner. I
overheard a Red soldier say: "Is this what we
made the Revolution for? For this our com-
rades had to die?" The slogan, "Rob the
robbers/' was now turned into "Respect the
robbers/* and again was proclaimed the sanctity
of private property.
Russia was thus gradually resurrecting the
social conditions that the great Revolution had
come to destroy. But the return to capitalism
in no way changed the Bolshevik attitude toward
the Left elements. Bourgeois ideas and practices
were to be encouraged to develop the industrial
life of Russia, but revolutionary tendencies were
to be suppressed as before.
8o MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
i
In connection with Kronstadt a general raid
on Anarchists took place in Petrograd and Mos-
cow. The prisons were filled with these victims.
Almost every known Anarchist had been arrested,
and the Anarchist book stores and printing
offices of "Golos Truda" in both cities were
sealed by the Tcheka. The Ukrainian Anarch-
ists who had been arrested on the eve of the
Kharkov Conference (though guaranteed im-
munity by the Bolsheviki under the Makhno
agreement) were brought to Moscow and placed
in the Butyrki; that Romanov dungeon was again
serving its old purpose even holding some of the
revolutionists incarcerated there before. Pres-
ently it became known that the politicals in the
Butyrki had been brutally assaulted by the
Tcheka and secretly deported to unknown parts.
Moscow was much agitated by this resurrection
of the worst prison methods of Tsarism. Inter-
pellation on the subject was made in the Moscow
Soviet, the indignation of the deputies being so
great that the Tcheka representative was shouted
off the platform. Several Moscow Anarchist
groups sent a vigorous protest to the authorities,
which document I quote in part:
The undersigned Anarcho-syndicalist organizations,
after having carefully considered the situation that has
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS Si
developed lately in connection with the persecution of
Anarchists in Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov, and other
cities of Russia and the Ukraina, including the forcible
suppression of Anarchist organizations, clubs, publications,
etc., hereby express their decisive and energetic protest
against this despotic crushing of not only every agitational
and propagandistic activity, but even of all purely cultural
work by Anarchist organizations.
The systematic man-hunt of Anarchists in general, and
of Anarcho-syndicalists in particular, with the result that
every prison and jail in Soviet Russia is filled with our
comrades, fully coincided in time and spirit with Lenin's
speech at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist
Party. On that occasion Lenin announced that the most
merciless war must be declared against what he termed
" petty bourgeois Anarchist elements" which, according
to him, are developing even within the Communist Party
itself owing to the " anarcho-syndicalist tendencies of the
Labour Opposition." On that very day that Lenin made
the above statements numbers of Anarchists were arrested
all over the country, without the least cause or explanation,
No charges have been preferred against any one of the
imprisoned comrades, though some of them have already
been condemned to long terms without hearing or trial,
and in their absence. The conditions of their imprison-
ment are exceptionally vile and brutal. Thus one of the
arrested, Comrade Maximov, after numerous vain pro-
tests against the incredibly unhygienic conditions in which
he was forced to exist, was driven to the only means of
protest left him a hunger strike. Another comrade,
Yarchuk, released after an imprisonment of six days, was
soon rearrested without any charges being preferred against
him on either occasion.
According to reliable information received by us, some
82""" MY FURTHER] DISILLUSIONMENT
of the arrested Anarchists are being sent to the prisons of
Samara, far away from home and friends, and thus de-
prived of what little comradely assistance they might
have been able to receive nearer home. A number of
other comrades have been forced by the terrible conditions
of their imprisonment to declare a hunger strike. One of
them, after hungering twelve days, became dangerously ill.
Even physical violence is practised upon our comrades
in prison. The statement of the Anarchists in the Butyrki
prison in Moscow, signed by thirty-eight comrades, and
sent to the Executive Committee of the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission on March i6th, contains, 1
among other things, the following statement: "On March
I5th Comrade T. Kashirin was brutally attacked and
beaten in the prison of the Special Department of the
Extraordinary Commission by your agent Mago and as-
sistants, in the presence of the prison warden Dookiss."
Besides the wholesale arrests of and the physical violence
toward our comrades, the Government is waging systema-
tic war against our educational work. It has closed a
number of our clubs, as well as the Moscow office of the
publishing establishment of the Anarcho-syndicalist or-
ganization Golos Truda. A similar man-hunt took place
in Petrograd on March isth. Numbers of Anarchists
were arrested, without cause, the printing house of Golos
Truda was closed, and its workers imprisoned. No
charges have been preferred against the arrested comrades,
all of whom are still in prison.
These unbearably autocratic tactics of the Government
towards the Anarchists are unquestionably the result of the
general policy of the Bolshevik State in the exclusive con-
trol of the Communist Party in regard to Anarchism,
Syndicalism, and their adherents.
This state of affairs is forcing us to raise our voices in
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS , 83
loud protest against the panicky and brutal suppression of
the Anarchist movement by the Bolshevik Government.
Here in Russia our voice is weak. It is stifled. The
policy of the ruling Communist Party is designed to de-
stroy absolutely every possibility or effort of Anarchist
activity or propaganda. The Anarchists of Russia are
thus forced into the condition of a complete moral hunger
strike, for the Government is depriving us of the possibility
to carry out even those plans and projects which it itself
only recently promised to aid.
Realizing more clearly than ever before the truth of our
Anarchist ideal and the imperative need of its application
to life we are convinced that the revolutionary proletariat
of the world is with us.
After the February Revolution Russian
Anarchists returned from every land to Russia
to devote themselves to revolutionary activity.
The Bolsheviki had adopted the Anarchist slo-
gan, "The factories to the workers, the land to
the peasants/' and thereby won the sympathies
of the Anarchists. The latter saw in the Bol-
sheviki the spokesmen of social and economic
emancipation, and joined forces with them.
Through the October period the Anarchists
worked hand in hand with the Communists and
fought with them side by side in the defense of
the Revolution. Then came the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty, which many Anarchists considered a
84' " MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT /
betrayal of the Revolution. It was the first
warning for them that all was not well with the
Bolsheviki. But Russia was still exposed to
foreign intervention, and the Anarchists felt that
they must continue together to fight the common
enemy.
In April, 1918, came another blow. By order of
Trotsky the Anarchist headquarters in Moscow
were attacked with artillery, some Anarchists
wounded, a large number arrested, and all
Anarchist activities "liquidated/* This entirely
unexpected outrage served further to alienate the
Anarchists from the ruling Party. Still the
majority of them remained with the Bolsheviki:
they felt that, in spite of internal persecution,
to turn against the existing regime was to work
into the hands of the counter-revolutionary
forces. The Anarchists participated in every
social, educational, and economic effort; they
worked even in the military departments to aid
Russia. In the Red Guards, in the volunteer
regiments, and later in the Red Army; as or-
ganizers and managers of factories and shops;
as chiefs of the fuel bureaus; as teachers
everywhere the Anarchists held difficult and
responsible positions. Out of their ranks came
some of the ablest men who worked in the foreign
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 85
office with Tchicherin and Kharakan, In the
various press bureaus, as Bolshevik diplomatic
representatives in Turkestan, Bokhara, and the
Far Eastern Republic. Throughout Russia the
Anarchists worked with and for the Bolsheviki
in the belief th,at they were advancing the cause
of the Revolution. But the devotion and zeal
of the Anarchists in no way deterred the Com-
munists from relentlessly persecuting the Anar-
chist movement.
The peculiar general situation and the con-
fusion of ideas created in all revolutionary circles
by the Bolshevik experiment divided the Anarch-
ist forces in Russia into several factions, thereby
weakening their effect upon the course of the
Revolution. There were a number of groups,
each striving separately and striving vainly
against the formidable machine which they
themselves had helped to create. In the dense
political fog many lost their sense of direction:
they could not distinguish between the Bolshe-
viki and the Revolution. In desperation some
Anarchists were driven to underground activi-
ties, even as they had been during the regime of
the Tsars. But such work was more difficult
and perilous under the new rulers and it also
opened the door to the sinister machinations of
86 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
provocators. The more mature Anarchist or-
ganizations, such as the Nabat, in the Ukraina,
Golos Truda in Petrograd and Moscow, and the
Foylni Trud group the last two of Anarcho-
syndicalist tendency continued their work
openly, as best they could.
Unfortunately ? as was unavoidable under the
circumstances, some evil spirits had found entry
into the Anarchist ranks debris washed ashore
by the Revolutionary tide. They were types to
whom the Revolution meant only destruction,
occasionally even for personal advantage. They
engaged in shady pursuits and, when arrested
and their lives threatened, they often turned
traitors and joined the Tcheka. Particularly in
Kharkov and Odessa thrived this poisonous
weed. The Anarchists at large were the first to
take a stand against this element. The Bolshe-
viki, always anxious to secure the services of the
jAnarchist derelicts, systematically perverted the
facts. They maligned, persecuted, and hounded
the Anarchist movement as such. It was this
Communist treachery and despotism which re-
sulted in a bomb's being thrown during the session
of the Moscow Section of the Communist Party
in September, 1919. It was an act of protest,
members of the various political tendencies
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 87
cooperating in it. The Anarchist organizations
Golos Truda and Foylm Trud in Moscow pub-
licly expressed their condemnation of such meth-
ods, but the Government replied with reprisals
against all Anarchists. Yet, in spite of their
bitter experiences and martyrdom under the Bol-
shevik regime, most of the Anarchists clung tena-
ciously to the hand that smote them. It needed
the outrage upon Kronstadt to rouse them from
the hypnotic spell of the Bolshevik superstition.
Power is corrupting, and Anarchists are no
exception. It must in truth be admitted that a
certain Anarchist element became demoralized
by it; by far the largest majority retained their
integrity. Neither Bolshevik persecution nor
oft-attempted bribery of good position with all
its special privileges succeeded in alienating the
great bulk of Anarchists from their ideals. As a
result they were constantly harassed and in-
carcerated. Their existence in the prisons was
a continuous torture: in most of them still ob-
tained the old regime and only the collective
struggle of the politicals occasionally succeeded
in compelling reforms and improvements. Thus
it required repeated "obstructions*' and hunger
strikes in the Butyrki before the authorities
were forced to make concessions. The politicals
88 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
succeeded in establishing a sort of university,
organized lectures, and received visits and food
parcels. But the Tcheka frowned upon such
"liberties/ 5 Suddenly, without warning, an end
was put to decent treatment; the Butyrki was
raided and the prisoners, numbering more than
400, and belonging to various revolutionary
wings, were forcibly taken from their cells and
transferred to other penal institutions. A mes-
sage received at the time from one of the victims,
dated April 2yth, reads :
Concentration Camp, Ryazan.
On the night of April 25th we were attacked by Red
soldiers and armed Tchekists and ordered to dress and get
ready to leave the Butyrki. Some of the politicals, fear-
ing that they were to be taken to execution, refused to go
and were terribly beaten. The women especially were
maltreated, some of them being dragged down the stairs
by their hair. Many have suffered serious injury. I
myself was so badly beaten that my whole body feels like
one big sore. We were taken out by force in our night-
clothes and thrown into wagons. The comrades in our
group knew nothing of the whereabouts of the rest of the
politicals, including Mensheviks, Social Revolutionists,
Anarchists, and Anarcho-syndicalists.
Ten of us, among them Fanya Baron, have been brought
here. Conditions in this prison are unbearable. No exer-
cise, no fresh air; food is scarce and filthy; everywhere
awful dirt, bedbugs, and lice. We mean to declare a
hunger strike for better treatment. We have just been
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 89
told to get ready with our things. They are going to send
us away again. We do not know where to.
[Signed] X*
Upon the circumstances of the Butyrki raid
becoming known the students of the Moscow
University held a protest meeting and passed
resolutions condemnatory of the outrage. There-
upon the student leaders were arrested and the
University closed. The non-resident students
were ordered to leave Moscow within three days
on the pretext of lack of rations. The students
volunteered to give up their payok, but the
Government insisted on their quitting the
capital. Later, when the University was re-
opened, Preobrazhensky, the Dean, admonished
the students to refrain from any political ex-
pressions on pain of being expelled from the
University. Some of the arrested students were
exiled, among them several girl students, for the
sole crime of being members of a circle whose aim
was to study the works of Kropotkin and other
Anarchist authors. The methods of the Tsar
were resurrected by his heirs to the throne in Bol-
shevik Russia.
* # *
After the death of Peter Kropotkin his friends
and comrades decided to found a Kropotkin
90 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Museum in commemoration of the great Anarch-
ist teacher and in furtherance of his ideas and
ideals. I removed to Moscow to aid In the
organization of the proposed memorial, but be-
fore long the Museum Committee concluded that
for the time being the project could not be real-
ized. Everything being under State monopoly,
nothing could be done without application to the
authorities. To accept Government aid would
have been a deliberate betrayal of the spirit of
Kropotkin who throughout his life consistently
refused State assistance* Once when Kropotkin
was ill and in need, the Bolshevik Government
offered him a large sum for the right to publish
his works. Kropotkin refused. He was com-
pelled to accept rations and medical assistance
when sick, but he would neither consent to his
works being published by the State nor accept
any other aid from it. The Kropotkin Museum
Committee took the same attitude. It accepted
from the Moscow Soviet the house Kropotkin
had been bora in, and which was to be turned
into a Kropotkin Museum; but it would ask the
Government for nothing more. The house at the
time was occupied by a military organization; it
would require months to get it vacated and then
no means would be at hand to have it renovated*
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 91
Some of the Committee members felt that a
Kropotkin Museum was out of place in Bolshe-
vik Russia as long as despotism was rampant
and the prisons filled with political dissenters.
While I was in Petrograd on a short visit, the
Moscow apartment in which I had a room was
raided by the Tcheka. I learned that the cus-
tomary trap had been set and everyone arrested
who called at the place during the zassada. I
visited Ravitch to protest against such proceed-
ings, telling her that if the object was to take me
into custody I was prepared for it. Ravitch had
heard nothing of the matter, but promised to
get in touch with Moscow. A few days later I
was informed that the Tchekists had been with-
drawn from the apartment and that the arrested
friends were about to be released. When I re-
turned to my room some time later most of
them had been freed. At the same time a num-
ber of Anarchists were arrested in various parts
of the capital and no news of their fate or of the
cause of their arrest could be learned. Several
weeks later, on August 3Oth, the Moscow Iwestia
published the official report of the Veh-Tcheka
concerning "Anarchist banditism," announcing
that ten Anarchists had been shot as "bandits'*
without hearing or trial.
92 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
It had become the established policy of the
Bolshevik Government to mask its barbaric pro-
cedure against Anarchists with the uniform
charge of banditism. This accusation was made
practically against all arrested Anarchists and
frequently even against sympathizers with the
movement. A very convenient method of get-
ting rid of an undesirable person: by it any one
could be secretly executed and buried.
Among the ten victims were two of the best
known Russian Anarchists, whose idealism and
life-long devotion to the cause of humanity had
stood the test of Tsarist dungeons and exile, and
persecution and suffering in other countries.
They were Fanya Baron, who several months
before had escaped from the Ryazan prison, and
Lev Tcherny who had spent many years of his
life in katorga and exile, under the old regime.
The Bolsheviki did not have the courage to say
that they had shot Lev Tcherny; in the list of
the executed he appeared as "Turchaninoff,"
which though his real name was unfamiliar
to some even of his closest friends. Tcherny
was known throughout Russia as a gifted poet
and writer. In 1907 he had published an original
work on "Associational Anarchism/ 5 and since
his return from Siberia in 1917 he had enjoyed
PERSECUTION OF ANARCHISTS 93
wide popularity among the workers of Moscow
as a lecturer and founder of the " Federation of
Brain Workers." He was a man of great gifts,
tender and sympathetic in all his relationships.
No person could be further from banditism.
The mother of Tcherny had repeatedly called
at the Ossoby Otdel (Special Department of the
Tcheka) to learn the fate of her son. Every
time she was told to come next day; she would
then be permitted to see him. As established
later, Tcherny had already been shot when these
promises were being made. After his death the
authorities refused to turn his body over to his
relatives or friends for burial. There were per-
sistent rumours that the Tcheka had not in-
tended to execute Tcherny, but that he died
under torture.
Fanya Baron was of the type of Russian
woman completely consecrated to the cause of
humanity. While in America she gave all her
spare time and a goodly part of her meagre
earnings in a factory to further Anarchist
propaganda. Years afterward, when I met her
in Kharkov, her zeal and devotion had become
intensified by the persecution she and her com-
rades had endured since their return to Russia.
She possessed unbounded courage and a generous
94 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
spirit. She could perform the most difficult task
and deprive herself of the last piece of bread
with grace and utter selflessness. Under har-
rowing conditions of travel, Fanya went up and
down the Ukraina to spread the Nabat, organize
the workers and peasants, or bring help and
succour to her imprisoned comrades. She was
one of the victims of the Butyrki raid, when she
had been dragged by her hair and badly beaten.
After her escape from the Ryazan prison she
tramped on foot to Moscow, where she arrived in
tatters and penniless. It was her desperate
condition which drove her to seek shelter with
her husband's brother, at whose house she was
discovered by the Tcheka. This big-hearted
woman, who had served the Social Revolution all
her life, was done to death by the people who
pretended to be the advance guard of revolution.
Not content with the crime of killing Fanya
Baron, the Soviet Government put the stigma
of banditism on the memory of their dead victim-
CHAPTER VIII
TRAVELLING SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
GREAT preparations were being made by
the Communists for the Third Congress
of the Third International and the First
Congress of the Red Trade Union International.
A preliminary committee had been organized in
the summer of 1920, while delegates from various
countries were in Moscow. How much the
Bolsheviki depended upon the First Congress of
the Red Trade Union International was apparent
from a remark of an old Communist. "We
haven't the workers in the Third International/'
he said; " unless we succeed in welding together
the proletariat of the world into the R. T. U. L,
the Third International cannot last very long/'
The Hotel de Luxe, renovated the previous
year, became the foreign guest house of the Third
International and was put in festive attire. The
delegates began to arrive in Moscow.
During my stay in Russia I came across three
classes of visitors who came to "study the
95
96 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Revolution/' The first category consisted of
earnest idealists to whom the Bolsheviki were the
symbol of the Revolution. Among them were
many emigrants from America who had given
up everything they possessed to return to the
promised land. Most of these became bitterly
disappointed after the first few months and
sought to get out of Russia. Others, who did
not come as Communists, joined the Communist
Party for selfish reasons and did in Rome as the
Romans do. There were also the Anarchist
deportees who came not of their own choice.
Most of them strained every effort to leave
Russia after they realized the stupendous de-
ception that had been imposed on the world.
In the second class were journalists, news-
papermen, and some adventurers. They spent
from two weeks to two months in Russia, usually
in Petrograd or Moscow, as the guests of the
Government and in charge of Bolshevik guides.
Hardly any of them knew the language and they
never got further than the surface of things.
Yet many of them have presumed to write and
lecture authoritatively about the Russian situa-
tion. I remember my astonishment when I read
in a certain London daily that the teachings of
Jesus were "being realized in Russia/* A pre-
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 97
posterous falsehood of which none but a charla-
tan could be guilty. Other writers were not
much nearer the truth. If they were at all criti-
cal of the Bolsheviki they were so at the expense
of the whole Russian people, whom they charged
with being "crude, primitive savages, too illit-
erate to grasp the meaning of the Revolution/'
According to these writers it was the Russian
people who imposed upon the Bolsheviki their
despotic and cruel methods. It did not occur
to those so-called investigators that the Revolu-
tion was made by those primitive and illiterate
people, and not by the present rulers in the
Kremlin. Surely they must have possessed
some quality which enabled them to rise to
revolutionary heights a quality which, if prop-
erly directed, would have prevented the wreck
and ruin of Russia. But that quality has per-
sistently been overlooked by Bolshevik apologists
who sacrifice all truth in their determination to
find extenuating circumstances for the mess made
by the Bolsheviki. A few wrote with under-
standing of the complex problems and with
sympathy for the Russian people. But their
voice was ineffectual in the popular craze that
Bolshevism had become.
The third category the majority of the vis-
98 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT'
v
itors, delegates, and members of various com*
missions infested Russia to become the agents
of the ruling Party. These people had every
opportunity to see things as they were, to get
close to the Russian people, and to learn from
them the whole terrible truth. But they pre-
ferred to side with the Government, to listen to
its interpretation of causes and effects. Then
they went forth to misrepresent and to lie delib-
erately in behalf of the Bolsheviki, as the En-
tente agents had lied and misrepresented the
Russian Revolution.
Nor did the sincere Communists realize the
disgrace of the situation not even Angelica
Balabanova. Yet she had good judgment of
character and knew how to appraise the people
who flocked to Russia. Her experience with
Mrs. Clare Sheridan was characteristic. The
lady had been smuggled into Russia before Mos-
cow realized that she was the cousin of Winston
Churchill She was obsessed by the desire "to
sculp" prominent Communists. She had also
begged Angelica to sit for her. " Lenin, Trotsky,
and other leaders are going to; aren't you?" she
pleaded. Angelica, who hated sensationalism
in any form, resented the presence in Russia of
these superficial visitors. "I asked her," she
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 99
afterward related, "if she would have thought of
* sculping* Lenin three years ago when the
English Government denounced him as a Ger-
man spy. Lenin did not make the Revolution.
The Russian people made it. I told this Mrs.
Sheridan that she would do better to "sculp*
Russian workingmen and women who were the
real heroes of the Revolution. I know she did
not like what I said. But I don't care. I can't
stand people to whom the Russian struggle is
mere copy for poor imitations or cheap display/*
Now the new delegates were beginning to
arrive. They were royally welcomed and feted.
They were taken to show schools, children's
homes, colonies, and model factories. It was the
traditional Potemkin villages 1 that were shown
the visitors. They were graciously received and
"talked to" by Lenin and Trotsky, treated to
theatres, concerts, ballets, excursions, and mili-
tary parades. In short, nothing was left undone
to put the delegates into a frame of mind favour-
able to the great plan that was to be revealed to
them at the Red Trade Union and the Third
International Congresses. There were also con-
1 Happy > villagers and their model homes, specially prepared and shown
to Catherine the Great by her Prime Minister Potemkin to deceive her
about the true condition of the peasantry.
ioo MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tinuous private conferences where the delegates
were subjected to a regular third degree, Lozov-
sky prominent Bolshevik labour leader and
his retinue seeking to ascertain their attitude to
the Third International, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, and similar subjects. Here and
there was a delegate who refused to divulge the
instructions of his organization on the ground
that he was pledged to report only to the Con-
gress. But such naive people reckoned without
their host. They soon found themselves ostra-
cized and at the Congress they were given no
opportunity to make themselves heard effec-
tively.
The majority of the delegates were more
pliable. They learned quickly that pledges and
responsibilities were considered bourgeois super-
stitions. To show their ultra-radicalism they
quickly divested themselves of them. They be-
came the echoes of Zinoviev, Lozovsky, and
other leaders.
The American delegates to the Red Trade
Union International were most conspicuous by
their lack of personality. They accepted with-
out question every proposition and suggestion of
the Chair. The most flagrant intrigues and
political machinations and brazen suppression of
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 101
those who would not be cajoled or bullied into
blind adherence found ready support by the
American Communist crew and the aides they
had brought with them.
The Bolsheviki know how to set the stage to
produce an impression. In the staging of the
two Congresses held in July, 1921, they outdid
themselves. The background for the Congress
of the Third International was the Kremlin.
In the royal halls where once the all-powerful
Romanovs had sat, the awed delegates hung
with bated breath upon every word uttered by
their pope, Lenin, and the other Grand Seigneurs
of the Communist Church. On the eve of the
Congress a great meeting was held in the big
theatre to which only those whose passports had
been approved by the All-Russian Tcheka were
admitted. The streets leading to the theatre
were turned into a veritable military camp.
Tchekists and soldiers on foot and on horseback
created the proper atmosphere for the Commun-
ist conclave. At the meeting resolutions were
passed extending fraternal greetings to "the
revolutionists in capitalist prisons/' At that
very moment every Russian prison was filled
with revolutionists but no greetings were sent
to them. So all-pervading was Moscow hypno-
*io2 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tism that not a single voice was raised to point
out the farce of Bolshevik sympathy for political
prisoners.
The Red Trade Union Congress was set on a
less pretentious scale in the House of the Trade
Unions. But no details were overlooked to get
the proper effects. "Delegates" from Palestine
and Korea men who had not been out of Russia
for years delegates from the great industrial
centres of Bokhara, Turkestan, and Adzerbeyd-
zhan, packed the Congress to swell the Com-
munist vote and help carry every Communist
proposition. They were there to teach the work-
ers of Europe and America how to reconstruct
their respective countries and to establish Com-
munism after the world revolution.
The plan perfected by Moscow during the
year 1920-21, and which was a complete reversal
of Communist principles and tactics, was very
skilfully and subtly unrolled by slow degrees
before the credulous delegates. The Red
Trade Union International was to embrace all
revolutionary and syndicalist organizations of
the world, with Moscow as its Mecca and the
Third International as its Prophet. All minor
revolutionary labour organizations were to be
dissolved and Communist units formed instead
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 103
within the existing conservative trade union
bodies. The very people who a year ago had
issued the famous Bull of twenty-one points, they
who had excommunicated every heretic unwilling
to submit to the orders of the Holy See the
Third International and who had applied every
invective to labour in the 2nd and the 2| In-
ternationals, were now making overtures to
the most reactionary labour organizations and
"resoluting" against the best efforts of the rev-
olutionary pioneers in the Trade Union move-
ment of every country.
Here again the American delegates proved
themselves worthy of their hire. Most of them
had sprung from the Industrial Workers of the
World; had indeed arisen to "fame and glory'*
on the shoulders of that militant American la-
bour body. Some of the delegates had valiantly
escaped to safety, unselfishly preferring the
Hotel de Luxe to Leavenworth Penitentiary,
leaving their comrades behind in American pris-
ons and their friends to refund the bonds they
had heroically forfeited. While Industrial Work-
ers continued to suffer persecution in capitalistic
America, the renegade I. W. W/s living in
comfort and safety in Moscow maligned and
attacked their former comrades and schemed to
104 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
destroy their organization. Together with the
Bolsheviki they were going to carry out the job
begun by the American Vigilantes and the Ku
Klux Klan to exterminate the I. W. W. Les
extremes ce touchent.
While the Communists were passing eloquent
resolutions of protest against the imprisonment
of revolutionaries in foreign countries, the
Anarchists in the Bolshevik prisons of Russia
were being driven to desperation by their long
imprisonment without opportunity for a hear-
ing or trial. To force the hand of the Gov-
ernment the Anarchists incarcerated in the
Taganka (Moscow) decided on a hunger strike to
the death. The French, Spanish, and Italian
Anarcho-syndicalists, when informed of the
situation, promised to raise the question at an
early session of the Labour Congress. Some,
however, suggested that the Government be
first approached on the matter. Thereupon a
Delegate Committee was chosen, including the
well-known English labour leader, Tom Mann,
to call upon the Little Father in the Kremlin.
The Committee visited Lenin. The latter re-
fused to have the Anarchists released on the
ground that "they were too dangerous/' but the
final result of the interview was a promise that
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 105
they would be permitted to leave Russia; should
they, however, return without permission, they
would be shot. The next day Lenin's promise
was substantiated by a letter of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party, signed by
Trotsky, reiterating what Lenin had said. Nat-
urally the threat of shooting was omitted in the
official letter.
The hunger strikers in the Taganka accepted
the conditions of deportation. They had for
years fought and bled for the Revolution and
now they were compelled to become Ahasueruses
in foreign lands or suffer slow mental and
physical death in Bolshevik dungeons. The
Moscow Anarchist groups chose Alexander Berk-
man and A. Shapiro as their representatives on
the Delegates' Committee to arrange with the
Government the conditions of the release and
deportation of the imprisoned Anarchists.
In view of this settlement of the matter the
intention of a public protest at the Congress was
abandoned by the delegates. Great was their
amazement when, just before the close of the
Congress, Bukharin in the name of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party launched
into a scurrilous attack on the Anarchists.
Some of the foreign delegates, outraged by the
io6 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
dishonourable proceeding, demanded an oppor-
tunity to reply- That demand was finally
granted to a representative of the French delega-
tion after Chairman Lozovsky had exhausted
every demagogic trick in a vain attempt to si-
lence the dissenters.
At no time during the protracted negotiations
on behalf of the imprisoned Anarchists and the
last disgraceful proceedings at the Red Trade
Union Congress did the American Communist
delegates make a protest. Loudly they had
shouted for political amnesty in America, but
not a word had they to say in favour of the
liberation of the politicals in Russia. One of the
group, approached on behalf of the hunger
strikers, exclaimed: "What are a few lives or
even a few hundred of them as against the
Revolution V 9 To such Communist minds the
Revolution had no bearing on justice and hu-
manity.
In the face of abject want, with men, women,
and children hungrily watching the white
bread baked for the Luxe Hotel in its adjoining
bakery, one of the American fraternal delegates
wrote to a publication at home that "the workers
In Russia control the industries and are directing
the affairs of the country; they get everything
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 107
free and need no money." This noble delegate
lived in the palatial home of the former Sugar
King of Russia and enjoyed also the hospitality
of the Luxe. He indeed needed no money.
But he knew that the workers lacked even the
basic necessities and that without money they
were as helpless in Russia as in any other coun-
try, the week's payok not being sufficient for two
days' existence. Another delegate published
glowing accounts dwelling on the absence of
prostitution and crime in Moscow- At the
same time the Tcheka was daily executing hold-
up-rnen, and on the Tverskaya and the Pushkin
Boulevard, near the Luxe Hotel, street women
mobbed the delegates with their attentions.
Their best customers were the very delegates
who waxed so enthusiastic about the wonders of
the Bolshevik regime.
The Bolsheviki realized the value of such
champions and appreciated their services. They
sent them forth into the world generously
equipped in every sense, to perpetuate the mon-
strous delusion that the Bolsheviki and the
Revolution are identical and that the workers
have come into their own "under the proletarian
dictatorship/' Woe to those who dare to tear
the mask from the lying face. In Russia they
io8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
are put against the wall, exiled to slow death in
famine districts, or banished from the country.
In Europe and America such heretics are dragged
through the mire and morally lynched. Every-
where the unscrupulous tools of the great
disintegrator, the Third International, spread
distrust and hatred in labour and radical ranks*
Formerly ideals and integrity were the impulse
to revolutionary activity. Social movements
were founded upon the inner needs of each
country. They were maintained and supported
by the interest and zeal of the workers them-
selves. Now all this is condemned as worthless.
Instead the golden rain of Moscow is depended
onto produce a rich crop of Communist organiza-
tions and publications. Even uprisings may be
organized to deceive and mislead the people as
to the quality and strength of the Communist
Party. In reality, everything is built on a foun-
dation that crumbles to pieces the moment Mos-
cow withdraws its financial support.
During the two Congresses held in July, 1921,
the friends and comrades of Maria Spiridonova
circulated a manifesto which had been sent by
them to the Central Committee of the Commun-
ist Party and to the main representatives of the
Government, calling attention to the condition
SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION 109
of Spirldonova and demanding her release for
the purpose of adequate medical treatment and
care.
A prominent foreign woman delegate to the
Third Congress of the Communist International
was approached. She promised to see Trotsky,
and later it was reported that he had said that
Spiridonova was " still too dangerous to be liber-
ated." It was only after accounts of her condi-
tion had appeared in the European Socialist press
that she was released, on condition that she
return to prison on her recovery. Her friends
in whose care she is at present face the alternative
of letting Spiridonova die or turning her over to
the Tcheka.
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION AND CULTURE
THE proudest claims of the Bolsheviki are
education, art, and culture. Communist
propaganda literature and Bolshevik
agents at home and abroad constantly sing the
praises of these great achievements.
To the casual observer it may indeed appear
that the Bolsheviki have accomplished wonders
in this field. They have organized more schools
than existed under the Tsar, and they have
made them accessible to the masses. This is
true of the larger cities. But in the provinces
the existing schools met the opposition of the
local Bolsheviki, who closed most of them on the
alleged ground of counter-revolutionary activ-
ities, or because of lack of Communist teachers.
While, then, in the large centres the percentage
of children attending schools and the number of
higher educational institutions is greater than
in the past, the same does not apply to the rest
of Russia. Still, so far as quantity is concerned,
no
EDUCATION AND CULTURE in
the Bolsheviki deserve credit for their educa-
tional work and the general diffusion of educa-
tion.
; In the case of the theatres no reservations have
been made. All were permitted to continue
their performances when factories were shut
down for want of fuel. The opera, ballet, and
; Lunacharsky's plays were elaborately staged,
and the Proletcult organized to advance prole-
tarian culture was generously subsidized even
when the famine was at its height. It is also
true that the Government printing presses were
kept busy day and night manufacturing propa-
ganda literature and issuing the old classics. At
the same time the imagists and futurists gathered
unmolested in Cafe Domino and other places.
The palaces and museums were kept up in ad-
mirable condition. In any other starved, block-
aded, and attacked country all this would have
been a very commendable showing.
In Russia, however, two revolutions had taken
place. To be sure, the February Revolution
was not far-reaching. Still, it brought about
political changes without which there might not
have been an October. It also released great
cultural forces from the prisons and Siberia
a valuable element without which the educa-
ii2 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tlonal work of the Bolsheviki could not have
been undertaken.
It was the October Revolution which struck
deepest into the vitals of Russia. It uprooted
the old values and cleared the ground for new
conceptions and forms of life. Inasmuch as the
Bolsheviki became the sole medium of articulat-
ing and interpreting the promise of the Revolu-
tion, the earnest student will not be content
merely with the increase of schools, the continua-
tion of the ballet, or the good condition of the
museums. He will want to know whether edu-
cation, culture, and art in Bolshevik Russia sym-
bolize the spirit of the Revolution, whether they
serve to quicken the imagination and broaden
the horizon; above all, whether they have re-
leased and helped to apply the latent qualities of
the masses.
Critical inquiry in Russia is a dangerous thing.
No wonder so many newcomers avoided looking
beneath the surface. To them it was enough
that the Montessori system, the educational
ideas of Professor Dewey, and dancing by the
Dalcroze method have been "adopted" by
Russia. I do not contend against these innova-
tions. But I insist that they have no bearing
whatever on the Revolution; they do not prove
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 113
that the Bolshevik educational experiment is
superior to similar efforts in other countries,
where they have been achieved without a revolu-
tion and the terrible price it involves.
State monopoly of thought is everywhere in-
terpreting education to suit its own purpose.
Similarly the Bolsheviki, to whom the State is
supreme, use education to further their own
ends. But while the monopoly of thought in
other countries has not succeeded in entirely
checking the spirit of free inquiry and critical
analysis, the "proletarian dictatorship" has
completely paralysed every attempt at indepen-
dent investigation. The Communist criterion
is dominant. The least divergence from official
dogma and opinion on the part of teachers, edu-
cators, or pupils exposes them to the general
charge of counter-revolution, resulting in dis-
charge and expulsion, if nothing more drastic.
In a previous chapter I have mentioned the
case of the Moscow University students expelled
and exiled for protesting against Tcheka violence
toward the political prisoners in the Butyrki.
But it was not only such "political" offences
that were punished. Offences of a purely aca-
demic nature were treated in the same manner.
Thus the objection of some professors to Com-
ii 4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
mnnist interference in the methods of instruction
was sternly suppressed. Teachers and students
who supported the professors were severely pun-
ished. I know a professor of sociology and liter-
ature, a brilliant scholar and a Revolutionist, who
was discharged from the Moscow University
because, as an Anarchist, he encouraged the
critical faculty of his pupils. He is but one in-
stance of the numerous cases of non-Communist
intellectuals who, under one pretext or another,
are systematically hounded and finally elimi-
nated from Bolshevik institutions. The Com-
munist " cells " in control of every classroom have
created an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion
in which real education cannot thrive.
It is true that the Bolsheviki have striven to
carry education and culture into the Red Army
and the villages. But here again the same con-
ditions prevail. Communism is the State reli-
gion and, like all religions, it discourages the
critical attitude and frowns upon independent
inquiry. Yet without the capacity for parallel-
ism and opportunity for verification education is
valueless.
The Proletcult is the pet child of the Bolshe-
viki. Like most parents, they claim for their
offspring extraordinary talents. They hold it
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 115
up as the great genius who is destined to enrich
the world with new values. Henceforth the
masses shall no longer drink from the poisonous
well of bourgeois culture. Out of their own
creative impulse and through their own efforts
the proletariat shall bring forth great treasures in
literature, art, and music. But like most child
prodigies, the Proletcult did not live up to its
early promise. Before long it proved itself
below the average, incapable of innovation, lack-
ing originality, and without sustaining power.
Already in 1920 I was told by two of the fore-
most foster-fathers of the Proletcult, Gorki and
Lunacharsky, that it was a failure.
In Petrograd, Moscow, and throughout my
travels I had occasion to study the efforts of the
Proletcult. Whether expressed in printed form,
on the stage, in clay or colour, they were barren
of ideas or vision, and showed not a trace of the
inner urge which impels creative art. They were
hopelessly commonplace. I do not doubt that
the masses will some day create a new culture,
new art values, new forms of beauty. But these
will come to life from the inner necessity of the
people themselves, and not through an arbitrary
will imposed upon them.
The mechanistic approach to art and culture
n6 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
I
and the idee fixe that nothing must express itself
outside of the channels of the State have stulti-
fied the cultural and artistic expression of the
Russian people. In poetry and literature, in
drama, painting, and music not a single epic of
the Revolution has been produced during five
years. This is the more remarkable when one
bears in mind how rich Russia was in works of
art and how close her writers and poets were to
the soul of the Russian people. Yet in the great-
est upheaval in the world's history no one has
come forward with pen or brush or lyre to give
artistic expression to the miracle or to set to
music the storm that carried the Russian people
forward. Works of art, like new-born man, come
in pain and travail. Verily the five years of Revo-
lution should have proved very rich spiritually
and creatively. For in those years the soul of
Russia has gone through a thousand crucifixions.
Yet in this regard Russia was never before so
poor and desolate.
The Bolsheviki claim that a revolutionary
period is not conducive to creative art. That
contention is not borne out by the French
Revolution. To mention only the Marseillaise,
the great music of which lives and will live.
The French Revolution was rich in spiritual
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 117
effort, in poetry, painting, science, and in its
great literature and letters. But, then, the
French Revolution was never so completely in
the bondage of one dogmatic idea as has been
the case with Russia. The Jacobins indeed
strove hard to fetter the spirit of the French
Revolution and they paid dearly for it. The
Bolsheviki have been copying the destructive
phases of the French Revolution. But they
have done nothing that can compare with the
constructive achievements of that period.
I have said that nothing outstanding has been
created in Russia. To be exact, I must except
the great revolutionary poem, "Twelve," by
Alexander Blok. But even that gifted genius,
deeply inspired by the Revolution, and imbued
with the fire that had come to purify all life,
soon ceased to create. His experience with the
Tcheka (he was arrested in 1919), the terrorism
all about him, the senseless waste of life and
energy, the suffering and hopelessness of it all
depressed his spirit and broke his health. Soon
Alexander Blok was no more.
Even a Blok could not create with an iron
band compressing his brain the iron band of
Bolshevik distrust, persecution, and censorship.
How far-reaching the latter was I realized from
ii8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
a document the Museum Expedition had dis-
covered in Vologda. It was a "very confiden-
tial, secret" order issued in 1920 and signed by
Ulyanova, the sister of Lenin and chief of the
Central Educational Department. It directed
the libraries throughout Russia to " eliminate all
non-Communist literature, except the Bible, the
Koran, and the classics including even Com-
munistic writings dealing with problems which
were being " solved in a different way" by the
existing regime. The condemned literature was
to be sent to paper mills " because of the scarcity
of paper."
Such edicts and the State monopoly of all
material, printing machinery, and mediums of
circulation exclude every possibility of the birth
of creative work. The editor of a little coopera-
tive paper published a brilliant poem, unsigned,
It was the cry of a tortured poet's soul in protest
against the continued terror. The editor was
promptly arrested and his little shop closed.
The author would probably have been shot had
his whereabouts been known. No doubt there
are many agonized cries in Russia, but they are
muffled cries. No one may hear them or inter-
pret their meaning. The future alone has the
key to the cultural and artistic treasures now
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 119
hidden from the Argus eyes of the Department
of Education and the numerous other censorial
institutions.
Russia is now the dumping ground for medi-
ocrities in art and culture. They fit into the
narrow groove, they dance attendance on the all-
powerful political commissars. They live in the
Kremlin and skim the cream of life, while the
real poets like Blok and others die of want
and despair.
The void in literature, poetry, and art is felt
most in the theatres, the State theatres espe-
cially. I once sat through five hours of acting
in the Alexandrovsky Theatre in Petrograd when
"Othello" was staged, with Andreyeva, Gorki's
wife, as Desdemona. It is hard to imagine a
play more atrociously presented. I saw most of
the other plays in the State theatre and not one
of them gave any hint of the earthquake that
had shaken Russia. There was no new note in
interpretation, scenery, or method. It was all
commonplace and inadequate, innocent even of
the advancement made in dramatic art in bour-
geois countries, and utterly inconsequential in
the light of the Revolution.
The only exception was the Moscow Art
Theatre. Its performance of Gorki's "Night's
120 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Lodging" was especially powerful. Real art
was also presented in the Stanislavsky Studio.
These were the only oases in the art desert of
Russia. But even the Art Theatre showed no
trace of the great revolutionary events Russia
was living through. The repertoire which had
made the Art Theatre famous a quarter of a
century before still continued night after night.
There were no new Ibsens, Tolstois, or Tchekovs
to thunder their protest against the new evils,
and if there had been, no theatre could have
staged them. It was safer to interpret the past
than to voice the present. Yet, though the Art
Theatre kept strictly within the past, Stanis-
lavsky was often in difficulties with the author-
ities. He had suffered arrest and was once
evicted from his studio. He had just moved
into a new place when I visited him with Louise
Bryant who had asked me to act as her inter-
preter. Stanislavsky looked forlorn and dis-
couraged among his still unpacked boxes of stage
property. I saw him also on several other occa-
sions and found him almost hopeless about the
future of the theatre in Russia. "The theatre
can grow only through inspiration from new
works of art/' he would say; "without it the
interpretive artist must stagnate and the theatre
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 121
deteriorate/* But Stanislavsky himself was
too much the creative artist to stagnate. He
sought other forms of interpretation. His newest
venture was an attempt to bring singing and
dramatic acting into cooperative harmony. I
attended a dress rehearsal of such a performance
and found it very impressive. The effect of
the voice was greatly enhanced by the realistic
finesse which Stanislavsky achieved in dramatic
art. But these efforts were entirely the work of
himself and his little circle of art students; they
had nothing to do with the Bolsheviki of the
Proletcult.
There are some other innovations, begun long
before the advent of the Bolsheviki and per-
mitted by them to continue because they have
no bearing on the Russian actuality. The
Kamerney Theatre registers its revolt against
the imposition of the play upon the acting,
against the limitation of expression involved in
the orthodox interpretation of dramatic art.
It achieves noteworthy results by the new mode
of acting, complemented by original scenery and
music, but mostly in plays of a lighter genre.
Another unique attempt is essayed by the
Semperante Theatre. It is based on the con-
ception that the written drama checks the
122 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
growth and diversity of the interpretive artist.
Plays should therefore be improvised, thereby
affording greater scope to spontaneity, inspira-
tion, and mood of the artist. It is a novel ex-
periment, but as the improvised plays must also
keep within the limits of the State censorship, the
work of the Semperantists suffers from a lack of
ideas.
The most interesting cultural endeavour I met
in Kiev was the work of the Jewish Kulturliga.
Its nucleus was organized in 1918 to minister to
the needs of pogrom victims. They had to be
provided for, sheltered, fed, and clothed. Young
Jewish literary men and an able organizer
brought the Kulturliga to life. They did not
content themselves with ministering only to the
physical needs of the unfortunates. They or-
ganized children's homes, public schools, high
schools, evening classes; later a seminary and
art school were added. When we visited Kiev
the Kulturliga owned a printing plant and a
studio, besides its other educational institutions,
and had succeeded in organizing 230 branches
in the Ukraina. At a literary evening and a
special performance arranged in honour of the
Expedition we were able to witness the extraor-
dinary achievements of the Kulturliga, >
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 123
At the literary evening Perez's poem "The
Four Seasons" was rendered by recitative group
singing. The effect was striking. Nature at the
birth of spring, birds sending forth their joyous
song of love, the mystery and romance of mat-
ing, the ecstasy of renewing and becoming, the
rumbling of the approaching storm, the crash of
the mighty giants struck by lightning, rain
softly falling, the leaves fluttering to earth, the
somberness and pathos of autumn, the last
desperate resistance of Nature against death, the
trees shrouded in white all were made vivid
and alive by the new form of collective recita-
tive. Every nuance of Nature was brought out
by the group of artists on the improvised little
stage of the Kulturliga.
The next day we visited the art school. The
children's classes were the more interesting.
There was no discipline, no rigid rules, no mech-
anistic control of their art impulses. The
children did drawing, painting, and modelling
mostly Jewish motifs: a pogromed city, by a
boy of fourteen; a devout Jew in his tales pray-
ing in the synagogue, mortal fear of the pogrom
savages written in his every feature; an old
Jewish woman, the tragic remnant of a whole
family slaughtered; and similar scenes from the
i2 4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
life of the Russian Jew. The efforts were often
crude, but there was about them nothing of the
stilted manner characteristic of the Proletcult.
There was no attempt to impose a definite
formula on art expression.
Later we attended the studio. In a bare
room, without scenery, lighting, costumes, or
make-up, the artists of the Kulturliga gave sev-
eral one-act plays and presented also an un-
published work found among the effects of a
playwright. The performance had an artistic
touch and finish I had rarely seen before.
The play is called "The End of the World/ 1
The wrath of God rolls like thunder across the
world, commanding man to prepare for the end.
Yet man heeds not. Then all the elements are
let loose, pursuing one another in wild fury; the
storm rages and shrieks, and man's groans are
drowned in the terrific hour of judgment. The
world goes under, and all is dead.
Then something begins to move again. Black
shadows symbolizing half beast, half man, with
distorted faces and hesitating movements, crouch
out of their caves. In awe and fear they stretch
their trembling hands toward one another. Halt-
ingly at first, then with growing confidence, man
attempts in common effort with his fellows to lift
EDUCATION AND CULTURE - 125
himself out of the black void. Light begins to
break. Again a thunderous voice rolls over the
earth. It is the voice of fulfilment.
It was a stirring artistic achievement.
When the Liga was first organized the Bolshe-
viki subsidized its work. Later, when they re-
turned to Kiev after its evacuation by Denikin,
they gave very scanty support to the educational
institutions of the Kulturliga. This unfriendly
attitude was due to the Yevkom, the Jewish
Communist Section, which intrigues against
every independent Jewish cultural endeavour.
When we left Kiev the ardent workers of the
Liga were much worried about the future of the
organization. I am not in a position to say at
this writing whether the Liga was able to con-
tinue its work or was closed altogether. How-
ever, laudable as were the innovations of the
Kulturliga and the attempts of the Kamerney
and Semperante at new modes of expression,
they could not be considered as having any
bearing on the Revolution.
State support to so-called art is given mostly
to Lunacharsky's dramatic ventures and other
Communist interpretations of culture. Whea I
first met Lunacharsky I thought him much less
the politician than the artist. I heard him lee-
126 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
ture at the Sverdlov University before a large
audience of workingmen and women, populariz-
ing the origin and development of art. It was
done splendidly. When I met him again he
was so thoroughly in the meshes of Party disci-
pline and so completely shorn of his power that
every effort of his was frustrated. Then he began
to write plays. That was his undoing. He
could not employ the material of the actual
reality, and the February Revolution, Kerensky,
and the Constituent Assembly had already been
caricatured to a thread. Lunacharsky turned
to the German Revolution. He wrote "The
Smith and the Councillor/' a sort of burlesque.
The play is so amateurish and commonplace that
no theatre outside of Russia would have cared
to present it. But Lunacharsky was in con-
trol of the theatres why not exploit them for his
own works ? The play was staged at great cost,
at a time when millions on the Volga were starv-
ing. But even that could have been forgiven
if the play had any meaning or contained
anything suggestive of the tragedy of Russia.
Instead, it lacked all life and was rich only in
vulgar scenes portraying Ludendorff, the rene-
gade Social Democratic President, a degenerate
aristocrat, and a princess of the demimonde.
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 127
The drunken men frantically scramble for the
possession of the woman, literally tearing her
clothing off her back. A revolting scene, yet in
the whole audience of teachers and members of
the Department of Education not a single pro-
test was voiced against the affront to the taste
and intelligence of revolutionary Russia. On
the contrary, they applauded the playwright, for
those sycophants depended on Lunacharsky for
their rations. They could not afford to be critical.
Vanity and power break the strongest char-
acter, and Lunacharsky is not strong. It is his
lack of will which makes him submit, against his
better judgment, to the galling discipline and
espionage placed over him. Perhaps he avenges
himself by forcing upon the public at large and
the actors under his charge his dramatic works*
After a careful analysis of the educational and
cultural efforts of the Bolsheviki the earnest
student will come to the following conclusions:
first, there is quantity rather than substance
in the education of Russia to-day; secondly, the
theatres, the ballet, and the museums receive
generous support from the Government, but the
reason for it is not so much love of art as the
necessity of finding some outlet for the checked
and stifled aspirations of the people.
128 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
The political dictatorship of the BolshevikI
with one stroke suppressed the social phase of
life in Russia. There was no forum even for
the most inoffensive social intercourse, no clubs,
no meeting places, no restaurants, not even a
dance hall. I remember the shocked expression
of Zorin when I asked him if the young people
could not occasionally meet for a dance free from
Communist supervision. " Dance halls are gath-
ering places for counter-revolutionists; we closed
them/ 5 he informed me. The emotional and
human needs of the people were considered
dangerous to the regime.
On the other hand, the dreadful existence
hunger, cold, and darkness was sapping the life
of the people. Gloom and despair by day,
congestion, lack of light and heat at night, and
no escape from it all. There was, of course, the
political life of the Communist Party a life
stern and forbidding, a life without colour or
warmth. The masses had no contact with or in-
terest in that life, and they were not permitted to
have anything of their own. A people bottled up
is a menace. Some outlet had to be provided,
some relief from the black despair. The theatre,
the opera, and the museum were that relief.
What if the theatres gave nothing new ? What
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 129
if the opera had bad singing? And the ballet
continued to move in the old toe circles ? The
places were warm; they had light. They fur-
nished the opportunity for human association
and one could forget the misery and loneliness
one might even forget the Tcheka. The
theatre, the opera, the ballet, and the museum
became the safety valve of the Bolshevik regime.
And as the theatres gave nothing of protest,
nothing new or vital, they were permitted to
continue. They solved a great and difficult
problem and furnished excellent copy for foreign
propaganda.
CHAPTER X
EXPLOITING THE FAMINE
ETE in the summer of 1921 there came the
harrowing news of the famine. To
those who had kept in touch with inner
affairs the information was not quite unexpected.
We had learned during the early part of the
summer that a large proportion of the population
was doomed to death from starvation. At that
time a group of scientific agriculturists had as-
sembled in Moscow. Their report showed that,
owing to bureaucratic centralization, and cor-
ruption and delay in seed distribution, timely
and sufficient sowing had been prevented. The
Soviet press kept the report of the agricultural
conference from the public. But in July items
began to appear in the Pravda and the Izvestia
telling of the terrible drought in the Volga region
and the fearful conditions in the famine-stricken
districts.
Immediately various groups and individuals
came forward ready to cooperate with the Gov-
130
EXPLOITING THE FAMINE 131
ernment in coping with the calamity. The
Left Wing elements Anarchists, Social Revo-
lutionists, and Maximalists offered to organize
relief work and to collect funds. But they re-
ceived no encouragement from the Soviet au-
thorities. On the other hand, elements of the
Right, the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats),
were received with open arms. Kishkin, Min-
ister of Finance under Kerensky, Mme. Kuskova,
Prokopovitch, and other prominent Conserv-
atives, who had bitterly fought the Revolution,
were accepted by the BolshevikL These people
had been denounced as counter-revolutionists
and repeatedly arrested and imprisoned, yet
they were given preference and permitted to
organize the group known as the Citizens*
Committee. When the latter refused to work
under the guardianship of the Moscow Soviet,
insisting upon complete autonomy and the right
to publish its own paper, the Government con-
sented. Such discrimination in favour of re-
actionaries as against those who had faithfully
stood by the Revolution could be explained only
in two ways. First, the Bolsheviki considered
it dangerous to grant the Left elements free
access to the peasantry; secondly, it was neces-
sary to make an impression on Europe, which
132 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
could be effectively done by means of the most
conservative group. This became clear even
before the Citizens' Committee began its relief
work.
In the beginning the Committee received the
entire support of the Government. A special
building was assigned for its headquarters and it
was granted the right to issue its own paper, '
called Pomoshtch (Succour). Members of the
Committee were also promised permission to go to
Western Europe for the purpose of arousing inter-
est and getting support for the famine stricken.
Two numbers of the paper were issued. Its ap-
pearance caused significant comment: it was an
exact reproduction, in size, type, and general
form, of the old Fyedomosti, the most reaction-
ary sheet under the former regime. The publica-
tion was, of course, very guarded in its tone.'
But between the lines one could read its antago-
nism to the ruling Party. Its first issue contained
a letter from the Metropolitan Tikhon, wherein
he commanded the faithful to send their contri-
butions to him. He assured his flock that he was
to have complete control of the distribution of
the donations. The Citizens' Committee was*
given carte blanche in carrying on its work, and<
the fact was heralded by the Bolsheviki as proof
EXPLOITING THE FAMINE 133
of their liberality and willingness to cooperate
with all elements in famine relief.
Presently the Soviet Government entered into
an agreement with the American Relief Admin-
istration and other European organizations re-
garding aid for the Volga sufferers, and then
the headquarters of the Citizens* Committee
were raided, the paper suppressed, and the
leading members of the Committee thrown into
the Tcheka on the usual charge of counter-
revolution. Now it was reasonably certain that
Mme. Kuskova and her co-workers were no
more counter-revolutionary when they were
permitted to organize Volga relief than they had
been at any time since 1917. Why, then, did the
Communist State accept them while rejecting
the assistance of true revolutionists? For no
other reason than propaganda purposes. When
the Citizens' Committee had served that purpose
it was kicked overboard in true Bolshevik fash-
ion. Only one person the Tcheka dared not
touch Vera Nikolayevna Figner, the venerable
revolutionist. Great humanitarian that she is,
she joined the Citizens* Committee and devoted
herself to its work with the same zeal that had
made her so effective as one of the leading spirits
of the Narodnaya Folya. Twenty-two years of
i 3 4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
living death in Schliisselburg had failed to
destroy her ardour. When the Citizens 5 Com-
mittee was arrested, Vera Nikolayevna de-
manded to share the same fate, but the Tcheka
knew the spiritual influence of this woman in
Russia and abroad, and she was left in peace.
The other members of the Citizens' Committee
were kept in prison for a long time, then exiled
to remote parts of Russia and finally deported.
Except for the foreign organizations doing re-
lief work in Russia, the Soviet Government could
now stand before the world as the sole dispenser
of support to the starving in the famine district.
Kalinin, the marionette President of the Socialist
Republic, equipped with much propaganda liter-
ature and surrounded by a large staff of Soviet
officials and foreign correspondents, made his
triumphal march through the stricken territory.
It was widely heralded throughout the world,
and the desired effect was achieved* But the
real work in the famine region was carried on
not so much by the official machine as by the
great host of unknown men and women from
the ranks of the proletariat and the intelligentsia.
Most devotedly and with utter consecration they
gave of their own depleted energies. Many of
them perished from typhus, exposure, and ex-
EXPLOITING THE FAMINE 135
haustion; some were slain by the power of dark-
ness which now, even more than in Tolstoi's time,
holds many sections of Russia in its grip. Doc-
tors, nurses, and relief workers were often killed
by the unfortunates they had come to aid, as evil
spirits who had willed the famine and the mis-
fortunes of Russia. These were the real heroes
and martyrs, unknown and unsung.
CHAPTER XI
THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC RESORTS TO
' DEPORTATION
THE Tcheka had succeeded In terrorizing
the whole people. The only exceptions
were the politicals, whose courage and de-
votion to their ideals defied the Bolsheviki as it
had the Romanovs. I knew many of those
brave spirits, and I saw in them the only hope to
sustain one amid the general wreckage. They
were the living proof of the powerlessness of
terror against an Ideal.
Typical of this class was a certain Anarchist
who had long been sought for by the Tcheka as
an important Makhnovetz. He was a member
of the military staff of the revolutionary pov~
stantsi of the Ukraina and the close friend and
counsellor of Makhno. He had already known
him intimately when they were together in
katorga in the days of the Tsar. He had shared
all the hardships and danger of the povstantsi life
and participated in their campaigns against the
136
DEPORTATION 137
enemies of the Revolution. After the defeat of
Wrangel and the last treachery of the Bolsheviki
toward Makhno, when the latter's army had be-
come scattered and many of its members killed,
this man succeeded in escaping the Bolshevik
net. He determined to come to Moscow, there
to write a history of Makhnovstchina. It was
a perilous journey, made under most difficult
conditions, with death constantly treading his
footsteps. Under an assumed name he secured
a tiny room in the environs of the capital. He
lived in most abject poverty, always in dan-
ger of his life, visiting his wife in the city only
under cover of darkness. Once in every twenty-
four hours he would come to the appointed place
for a little respite and his sole meal of the day,
consisting of potatoes, herring, and tea. Every
moment he risked being recognized, for he was well
known in Moscow, and recognition meant sum-
mary execution. His wife also, if discovered,
would have met the same fate the devoted
woman who, though with child at the time, had
followed him to Moscow. After a desperate
hunt for employment she found a position in a
creche, but as pregnant women were not accepted
in such institutions, she had to disguise her con-
dition. All day long she had to be on her feet,
'i 3 8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
attending to her duties,, and living in constant
fear for the safety of her husband.
When the baby was born the situation became
more aggravated. The woman was harassed by
her superiors because she had obtained the
position without their knowledge of her condi-
tion. Petty officialdom and hard work ex-
hausted her energies and the daily anxiety about
the man she loved nearly drove her frantic.
Yet never a sign of all that troubled her when
the man would visit her.
Many evenings I spent with this couple.
They were entirely cut off from the outside world
and former friends, all alone save for the fear of
discovery and death which was their constant
companion. In the dreary, damp room, the baby
asleep, we passed many hours talking in subdued
voices about the Ukrainian peasantry and the
Makhno movement. My friend was familiar
with every phase of it from personal experience,
which he was now incorporating into his book on
Makhno. He was absorbed in that work, which
was for the first time to give to the world the
truth about Makhno and the povstantsi. Deeply
concerned about his wife and child, he was en-
tirely oblivious to his own safety, though know-
ing that every day the Tcheka net was drawn
DEPORTATION 139
closer about him. With great difficulty he was
finally prevailed upon to leave his beloved
Russia, as the .only way of saving his family.
What a commentary on the Socialist Republic,
whose bravest and truest sons must keep in
hiding or forsake their native soil !
* * *
Life in Russia had become to me a constant
torture; the need of breaking my two years 5
silence was imperative. During all the summer
I was in the throes of a bitter conflict between
the necessity of leaving and my inability to tear
myself away from what had been an ideal to me.
It was like the tragic end of a great love to which
one clings long after it is no more.
In the midst of my struggle there happened
an event which further served to demonstrate
the complete collapse of the Bolsheviki as revolu-
tionists. It was the announcement of the return
to Russia of the Tsarist General Slastchev, one
of the most reactionary and brutal militarists
of the old regime. He had fought against the
Revolution from its very beginning and had led
some of the Wrangel forces in the Crimea. He
was guilty of fiendish barbarities to war prisoners
and infamous as a maker of pogroms. Now
Slastchev recanted and was returning to "his
i 4 o MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Fatherland." This arch counter-revolutionist
and Jew-baiter, together with several other
Tsarist generals and White guardists, was re-
ceived by the Bolsheviki with military honours.
No doubt it was just retribution that the anti-
Semite had to salute the Jew Trotsky, his mili-
tary superior. But to the Revolution and the
Russian people the triumphal return of the
imperialists was an outrage.
The old general had changed his colours but
not his nature. In his letter to the officers and
men of the Wrangel Army he delivered himself of
the following:
I, Slastchev Krimsky, command you to return to your
Fatherland and into the fold of the Red Army. Our
country needs our defense against her enemies. I com-
mand you to return.
As a reward for his newly fledged love of the
Socialist Fatherland Slastchev " Krimsky" was
commissioned to quell the Karelian peasants
who demanded self-determination, and Slastchev
had the opportunity of giving full play to the
autocratic powers he was vested with.
Military receptions and honours for the man
who had been foremost in the attempt to crush
the Revolution, and imprisonment or death for
DEPORTATION. 141
the lovers of liberty! At the same time the
true sons of Russia, who, 'had defended the Revo-
lution against every attack and had aided the
Bolsheviki to political power, were made home-
less by deportation to foreign lands. A more
tragic debacle history has never before witnessed.
The first to be deported by the " revolutionary"
Government were ten Anarchists, most of them
known in the international revolutionary move-
ment as tried idealists and martyrs for their
cause. Among them was Volin, a highly cul-
tured man, a gifted writer and lecturer, who had
been editor of various Anarchist publications in
Europe and America. In Russia, where he re-
turned in 1917, he helped to organize the Ukrain-
ian Confederation of Nabat and, was for a time
lecturer for the Soviet Department of Education
in Kharkov. Volin had been a member of an
Anarchist partisan military unit that fought
against Austro-German occupation, and for a
considerable time he also conducted educational
and cultural work in the Makhno Army. During
the year 1921 he was imprisoned by the Bolshe-
viki and deported after the hunger strike of the
Taganka Anarchists which lasted ten and a half
days.
In the same group was G, Maximoff, an
142 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
Anarchist of many years 5 standing. Before the
Revolution he had been active among the stu-
dents of the Petrograd University and also among
the peasants. He participated in all the revolu-
tionary struggles beginning with the February
Revolution, was one of the editors of Golos Truda
and member of the All-Russian Secretariat of
Anarcho-syndicalists. He is an able and popular
writer and lecturer,
Mark Mratchny, another of the deported, has
been an Anarchist since 1907. At the time when
Hetnian Skoropadsky ruled Ukraina with the
help of German bayonets, Mratchny was a mem-
ber of the Revolutionary Bureau of the students
of Kharkov. He held the position of instructor
in the Soviet School Department of Kharkov,
and later in Siberia. He edited the Nabat dur-
ing the period of agreement between Makhno
and the Bolsheviki, and was later arrested
together with the other Anarchists who had come
to Kharkov for the Anarchist Conference.
Among the deported was also Yartchuk,
famous as one of the leaders of the Kronstadt
sailors in the uprising of July, 1917, a man who
enjoyed exceptional influence among the sailors
and workers and whose idealism and devotion
are matters of historic record. In the group
DEPORTATION 143
there were also several students mere youths
who had participated in the Anarchist hunger-
strike in the Taganka prison*
# * *
To remain longer in Bolshevik Russia had
become unbearable. I was compelled to speak
out, and decided to leave the country. Friends
were making arrangements to open a sub rasa
passage abroad, but just as all preparations were
completed we were informed of new develop-
ments. Berlin Anarchists had made a demand
upon the Soviet Government that passports be
issued for Alexander Berkman, A. Shapiro, and
myself, to enable us to attend the International
Anarchist Congress which was to convene in Berlin
in December, 1921 . Whether due to that demand
or for other reasons, the Soviet Government
finally issued the required papers and on De-
cember i, 1921, I left Russia in the company of
Alexander Berkman and A. Shapiro. It was
just one year and eleven months since I had set
foot on what I believed to be the promised land.
My heart was heavy with the tragedy of Russia.
One thought stood out in bold relief: I must raise
my voice against the crimes committed in the
name of the Revolution. I would be heard re-
gardless of friend or foe.
CHAPTER XII
AFTERWORD
NON-BOLSHEVIK Socialist critics of the
Russian failure contend that the Revolu-
tion could not have succeeded in Russia
because industrial conditions had not reached
the necessary climax in that country. They
point to Marx, who taught that a social revolu-
tion is possible only in countries with a highly
developed industrial system and its attendant
social antagonisms. They therefore claim that
the Russian Revolution could not be a social
revolution, and that historically it had to evolve
along constitutional, democratic lines, comple-
mented by a growing industry, in order to ripen
the country economically for the basic change.
This orthodox Marxian view leaves an impor-
tant factor out of consideration a factor per-
haps more vital to the possibility and success of
a social revolution than even the industrial ele-
ment. That is the psychology of the masses at
a given period. Why is there, for Instance, no
144
AFTERWORD 145
social revolution in the United States, France,
or even in Germany? Surely these countries
have reached the industrial development set by
Marx as the culminating stage. The truth is
that industrial development and sharp social
contrasts are of themselves by no means suffi-
cient to give birth to a new society or to call
forth a social revolution. The necessary social
consciousness, the required mass psychology is
missing in such countries as the United States
and the others mentioned. That explains why
no social revolution has taken place there.
In this regard Russia had the advantage of
other more industrialized and "civilized" lands.
It is true that Russia was not as advanced in-
dustrially as her Western neighbours. But the
Russian mass psychology, inspired and intensi-
fied by the February Revolution, was ripening
at so fast a pace that within a few months the
people were ready for such ultra-revolutionary slo-
gans as "All power to the Soviets " and "The land
to the peasants, the factories to the workers/'
The significance of these slogans should not be
under-estimated. Expressing in a large degree
the instinctive and semi-conscious will of the
people, they yet signified the complete social, eco-
nomic, and industrial reorganization of Russia.
146 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
What country in Europe or America is prepared
to interpret such revolutionary mottoes into life ?
Yet in Russia, in the months of June and July,
1917, these slogans became popular and were en-
thusiastically and actively taken up, in the form
of direct action, by the bulk of the industrial and
agrarian population of more than 150 millions.
That was sufficient proof of the " ripeness 5 ' of
the Russian people for the social revolution.
As to economic " preparedness" in the] Marx-
ian sense, it must not be forgotten that Russia is
preeminently an agrarian country. Marx's dic-
tum presupposes the industrialization of the
peasant and farmer population in every highly
developed society, as a step toward social fitness
for revolution. But events in Russia, in 1917,
demonstrated that revolution does not await this
process of industrialization and what is more
important cannot be made to wait. The Rus-
sian peasants began to expropriate the landlords
and the workers took possession of the factories
without taking cognizance of Marxian dicta.
This popular action, by virtue of its own logic,
ushered in the social revolution in Russia, up-
setting all Marxian calculations. The psychol-
ogy of the Slav proved stronger than social-
democratic theories.
AFTERWORD 147
That psychology involved the passionate
yearning for liberty nurtured by a century of
revolutionary agitation among all classes of
society. The Russian people had fortunately
remained politically unsophisticated and un-
touched by the corruption and confusion created
among the proletariat of other countries by
" democratic " liberty and self-government. The
Russian remained, in this sense, natural and
simple, unfamiliar with the subtleties of politics,
of parliamentary trickery, and legal makeshifts.
On the other hand, his primitive sense of justice
and right was strong and vital, without the dis-
integrating finesse of pseudo-civilization. He
knew what he wanted and he did not wait for
"historic inevitability " to bring it to him: he
employed direct action. The Revolution to him
was a fact of life, not a mere theory for discussion.
Thus the social revolution took place in Russia
in spite of the industrial backwardness of the
country. But to make the Revolution was not
enough. It was necessary for it to advance and
broaden, to develop into economic and social
reconstruction. That phase of the Revolution
necessitated fullest play of personal initiative
and collective effort. The development and
success of the Revolution depended on the broad-
i 4 8 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
est exercise of the creative genius of the people,
on the cooperation of the intellectual and manual
proletariat. Common interest is the kit motif
of all revolutionary endeavour, especially on its
constructive side. This spirit of mutual purpose
and solidarity swept Russia with a mighty wave
in the first days of the October-November
Revolution. Inherent in that enthusiasm were
forces that could have moved mountains if intel-
ligently guided by exclusive consideration for the
well-being of the whole people. The medium for
such effective guidance was on hand : the labour
organizations and the cooperatives with which
Russia was covered as with a network of bridges
combining the city with the country; the Soviets
which sprang into being responsive to the needs of
the Russian people; and, finally, the intelligentsia
whose traditions for a century expressed heroic
devotion to the cause of Russia's emancipation.
But such a development was by no means
within the programme of the Bolsheviki. For
several months following October they suffered
the popular forces to manifest themselves, the
people carrying the Revolution into ever-widen-
ing channels. But as soon as the Communist
Party felt itself sufficiently strong in the govern-
ment saddle, it began to limit the scope of popu-
AFTERWORD 149
lar activity. All the succeeding acts of the
Bolsheviki, all their following policies, changes
of policies, their compromises and retreats, their
methods of suppression and persecution, their
terrorism and extermination of all other political
views all were but the means to an end: the
retaining of the State power in the hands of the
Communist Party. Indeed, the Bolsheviki
themselves (in Russia) made no secret of it.
The Communist Party, they contended, is
the advance guard of the proletariat, and the
dictatorship must rest in its hands. Alas, the
Bolsheviki reckoned without their host without
the peasantry, whom neither the razvyortska, the
Tcheka, nor the wholesale shooting could per-
suade to support the Bolshevik regime. The
peasantry became the rock upon which the best-
laid plans and schemes of Lenin were wrecked.
But Lenin, a nimble acrobat, was skilled in per-
forming within the narrowest margin. The new
economic policy was introduced just in time to
ward off the disaster which was slowly but surely
overtaking the whole Communist edifice.
n
The "new economic policy" came as a surprise
and a shock to most Communists. They saw in
i 5 o MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
it a reversal of everything that their Party had
been proclaiming a reversal of Communism it-
self. In protest some of the oldest members of
the Party, men who had faced danger and perse-
cution under the old regime while Lenin and
Trotsky lived abroad in safety, left the Commu-
nist Party embittered and disappointed. The
leaders then declared a lockout. They ordered
the clearing of the Party ranks of all "doubtful"
elements. Everybody suspected of an indepen-
dent attitude and those who did not accept the
new economic policy as the last word in revolu-
tionary wisdom were expelled. Among them
were Communists who for years had rendered
most devoted service. Some of them, hurt to
the quick by the unjust and brutal procedure,
and shaken to their depths by the collapse of
what they held most high, even resorted to sui-
cide. But the smooth sailing of Lenin's new
gospel had to be assured, the gospel of the sanc-
tity of private property and the freedom of cut-
throat competition erected upon the ruins of four
years of revolution.
However, Communist indignation over the
new economic policy merely indicated the con-
fusion of mind on the part of Lenin's opponents.
What else but mental confusion could approve
AFTERWORD 151
of the numerous acrobatic political stunts of
Lenin and yet grow indignant at the final somer-
sault, its logical culmination? The trouble
with the devout Communists was that they
clung to the Immaculate Conception of the
Communist State which by the aid of the Revo-
lution was to redeem the world. But most of the
leading Communists never entertained such a
delusion. Least of all Lenin.
During my first interview I received the
impression that he was a shrewd politician
who knew exactly what he was about and
that he would stop at nothing to achieve
his ends. After hearing him speak on sev-
eral occasions and reading his works I be-
came convinced that Lenin had very" little con-
cern in the Revolution and that Communism to
him was a very remote thing. The centralized
political State was Lenin's deity, to which
everything else was to be sacrificed. Someone
said that Lenin would sacrifice the Revolution
to save Russia. Lenin's policies, however, have
proven that he was willing to sacrifice both the
Revolution and the country, or at least part of
the latter, in order to realize his political scheme
with what was left of Russia.
Lenin was the most pliable politician in his-
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tory. He could be an ultra-revolutionary, a
compromiser and conservative at the same time.
When like a mighty wave the cry swept over
Russia, "All power to the Soviets!" Lenin swam
with the tide. When the peasants took posses-
sion of the land and the workers of the factories,
Lenin not only approved of those direct methods
but went further. He issued the famous motto,
"Rob the robbers/ 5 a slogan which served to
confuse the minds of the people and caused un-
told injury to revolutionary idealism. Never
before did any real revolutionist interpret social
expropriation as the transfer of wealth from one
set of individuals to another. Yet that was
exactly what Lenin's slogan meant. The indis-
criminate and irresponsible raids, the accumula-
tion of the wealth of the former bourgeoisie by
the new Soviet bureaucracy, the chicanery prac-
tised toward those whose only crime was their
former status, were all the results of Lenin's
"Rob the robbers" policy. The whole subse-
quent history of the Revolution is a kaleidoscope
of Lenin's compromises and betrayal of his own
slogans.
Bolshevik acts and methods since the October
days may seem to contradict the new economic
policy. But in reality they are links in the chain
AFTERWORD 153
which was to forge the all-powerful, centralized
Government with State Capitalism as its eco-
nomic expression. Lenin possessed clarity of
vision and an iron will. He knew how to make
his comrades in Russia and outside of it believe
that his scheme was true Socialism and his
methods the revolution. No wonder that Lenin
felt such contempt for his flock, which he never
hesitated to fling into their faces. "Only fools
can believe that Communism is possible in
Russia now/' was Lenin's reply to the opponents
of the new economic policy.
As a matter of fact, Lenin was right. True
Communism was never attempted in Russia,
unless one considers thirty-three categories of
pay, different food rations, privileges to some and
indifference to the great mass as Communism.
In the early period of the Revolution it was
comparatively easy for the Communist Party to
possess itself of power. All the revolutionary
elements, carried away by the ultra-revolutionary
promises of the Bolsheviki, helped the latter to
power. Once in possession of the State the
Communists began their process of elimination.
All the political parties and groups which refused
to submit to the new dictatorship had to go.
First the Anarchists and Left Social Revolution-
iS4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
ists, then the Menshevlki and other opponents
from the Right, and finally everybody who dared
aspire to an opinion of his own. Similar was the
fate of all independent organizations. They
were either subordinated to the needs of the
new State or destroyed altogether, as were the
Soviets, the trade unions and the cooper-
atives three great factors for the realization of
the hopes of the Revolution.
The Soviets first manifested themselves in
the revolution of 1905* They played an impor-
tant part during that brief but significant period.
Though the revolution was crushed, the Soviet
idea remained rooted in the minds and hearts of
the Russian masses. At the first dawn which
Illuminated Russia in February, 1917, the So-
viets revived again and came into bloom in a
very short time. To the people the Soviets by
no means represented a curtailment of the spirit
of the Revolution. On the contrary, the Revolu-
tion was to find its highest, freest practical ex-
pression through the Soviets. That was why
the Soviets so spontaneously and rapidly spread
throughout Russia. The Bolsheviki realized the
significance of the popular trend and joined the
cry. But once in control of the Government the
Communists saw that the Soviets threatened
AFTERWORD 155
the supremacy of the State. At the same time
they could not destroy them arbitrarily without
undermining their own prestige at home and
abroad as the sponsors of the Soviet system.
They began to shear them gradually of their
powers and finally to subordinate them to their
own needs.
The Russian trade unions were much more
amenable to emasculation. Numerically and
in point of revolutionary fibre they were still in
their childhood. By declaring adherence to the
trade unions obligatory the Russian labour
organizations gained in physical stature, but
mentally they remained in the infant stage.
The Communist State became the wet nurse of
the trade unions. In return, the organizations
served as the flunkeys of the State. "A school
for Communism," said Lenin in the famous con-
troversy on the functions of the trade unions.
Quite right. But an antiquated school where
the spirit of the child is fettered and crushed.
Nowhere in the world are labour organizations
as subservient to the will and the dictates of the
State as they are in Bolshevik Russia.
The fate of the cooperatives is too well known
to require elucidation. The cooperatives were
the most essential link between the city and the
156 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
country. Their value to the Revolution as a
popular and successful medium of exchange and
distribution and to the reconstruction of Russia
was incalculable. The Bolsheviki transformed
them into cogs of the Government machine and
thereby destroyed their usefulness and efficiency.
in
It is now clear why the Russian Revolution,
as conducted by the Communist Party, was a
failure. The political power of the Party, or-
ganized and centralized in the State, sought to
maintain itself by all means at hand. The cen-
tral authorities attempted to force the activities
of the people into forms corresponding with the
purposes of the Party.^ The sole aim of the
latter was to strengthen the State and monopo-
lize all economical, political, and social acitivities
even all cultural manifestations. The Revolu-
tion had an entirely different object, and in its
very character it was the negation of authority
and centralization. It strove to open ever-
larger fields for proletarian expression and to
multiply the phases of individual and collective
effort. The aims and tendencies of the Revolu-
tion were diametrically opposed to those of the
ruling political party.
AFTERWORD 157
Just as diametrically opposed were the methods
of the Revolution and of the State. Those of
the former were inspired by the spirit of the
Revolution itself: that is to say, by emancipation
from all oppressive and limiting forces; in short,
by libertarian principles. The methods of .the
State, on the contrary of the Bolshevik State
as of every government were based on coercion,
which in the course of things necessarily devel-
oped into systematic violence, oppression, and
terrorism. Thus two opposing tendencies strug-
gled for supremacy: the Bolshevik State against
the Revolution. That struggle was a life-and-
death struggle. The two tendencies, contradic-
tory in aims and methods, could not work
harmoniously: the triumph of the State meant
the defeat of the Revolution.
It would be an error to assume that the failure
of the Revolution was due entirely to the charac-
ter of the Bolsheviki. Fundamentally, it was the
result of the principles and methods of Bolshe-
vism. It was the authoritarian spirit and prin-
ciples of the State which stifled the libertarian
and liberating aspirations. Were any other
political party in control of the government in
Russia the result would have been essentially
the same. It is not so much the Bolsheviki who
158 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
killed the Russian Revolution as the Bolshevik
idea. It was Marxism, however modified; in
short, fanatical governmentalism. Only this
understanding of the underlying forces that
crushed the Revolution can present the true
lesson of that world-stirring event. The Russian
Revolution reflects on a small scale the century-
old struggle of the libertarian principle against
the authoritarian. For what is progress if not
the more general acceptance of the principles
of liberty as against those of coercion? The
Russian Revolution was a libertarian step de-
feated by the Bolshevik State, by the temporary
victory of the reactionary, the governmental
idea.
That victory was due to a number of causes*
Most of them have already been dealt with in
the preceding chapters. The main cause, how-
ever, was not the industrial backwardness of
Russia, as claimed by many writers on the sub-
ject. That cause was cultural which, though
giving the Russian people certain advantages
over their more sophisticated neighbours, also
had some fatal disadvantages. The Russian
Was " culturally backward" in the sense of being
unspoiled by political and parliamentary corrup-
tion. On the other hand, that very condition
AFTERWORD 159
involved inexperience in the political game and
a naive faith in the miraculous power of the party
that talked the loudest and made the most
promises. This faith in the power of government
served to enslave the Russian people to the Com-
munist Party even before the great masses
realized that the yoke had been put around their
necks.
The libertarian principle was strong in the ini-
tial days of the Revolution, the need for free
expression all-absorbing. But when the first
wave of enthusiasm receded into the ebb of every-
day prosaic life, a firm conviction was needed to
keep the fires of liberty burning. There was
only a comparative handful in the great vastness
of Russia to keep those fires lit the Anarchists,
whose number was small and whose efforts,
absolutely suppressed under the Tsar, had had
no time to bear fruit- The Russian people, to
some extent instinctive Anarchists, were yet
too unfamiliar with true libertarian principles
and methods to apply them effectively to life.
Most of the Russian Anarchists themselves were
unfortunately still in the meshes of limited
group activities and of individualistic endeavour
as against the more important social and collec-
tive efforts. The Anarchists, the future unbiased
160 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
historian will admit, have played a very impor-
tant role in the Russian Revolution a role far
more significant and fruitful than their compara-
tively small number would have led one to ex-
pect. Yet honesty and sincerity compel me to
state that their work would have been of in-
finitely greater practical value had they been
better organized and equipped to guide the re-
leased energies of the people toward the reorgan-
ization of life on a libertarian foundation.
But the failure of the Anarchists in the
Russian Revolution in the sense just indicated
does by no means argue the defeat of the lib-
ertarian idea. On the contrary, the Russian
Revolution has demonstrated beyond doubt that
the State idea, State Socialism, in all its mani-
festations (economic, political, social, educational)
is entirely and hopelessly bankrupt. Never
before in all history has authority, government,
the State, proved so inherently static, reactionary,
and even counter-revolutionary in effect. In
short, the very antithesis of revolution.
It remains true, as it has through all prog-
ress, that only the libertarian spirit and method
can bring man a step further in his eternal
striving for the better, finer, and freer life.
Applied to the great social upheavals known as
AFTERWORD 161
revolutions, this tendency is as potent as in the
ordinary evolutionary process. The authori-
tarian method has been a failure all through
history and now it has again failed in the Russian
Revolution. So far human ingenuity has dis-
covered no other principle except the libertarian,
for man has indeed uttered the highest wisdom
when he said that liberty is the mother of order,
not its daughter. All political tenets and parties
notwithstanding, no revolution can be truly and
permanently successful unless it puts its em-
phatic veto upon all tyranny and centraliza-
tion, and determinedly strives to make the
revolution a real revaluation of all economic,
social, and cultural values. Not mere substi-
tution of one political party for another in the
control of the Government, not the masking of
autocracy by proletarian slogans, not the dictator-
ship of a new class over an old one, not political
scene shifting of any kind, but the complete
reversal of all these authoritarian principles will
alone serve the revolution.
In the economic field this transformation must
be in the hands of the industrial masses: the
latter have the choice between an industrial
State and anarcho-syndicalism. In the case of
the former the menace to the constructive devel-
i6z MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
opment of the new social structure would be as
great as from the political State, It would be-
come a dead weight upon the growth of the new
forms of life. For that very reason syndicalism
(or industrialism) alone is not, as its exponents
claim, sufficient unto itself. It is only when the
libertarian spirit permeates the economic organi-
zations of the workers that the manifold creative
energies of the people can manifest themselves,
and the revolution be safeguarded and defended.
Only free initiative and popular participation
in the affairs of the revolution can prevent
the terrible blunders committed in Russia.
For instance, with fuel only a hundred versts
[about sixty-six miles] fromPetrograd there would
have been no necessity for that city to suffer
from cold had the workers' economic organiza-
tions of Petrograd been free to exercise their
initiative for the common good. The peasants
of the Ukraina would not have been hampered
in the cultivation of their land had they had
access to the farm implements stacked up in the
warehouses of Kharkov and other industrial
centres awaiting orders from Moscow for their
distribution. These are characteristic examples
of Bolshevik governmentalism and centraliza-
tion, which should serve as a warning to the
AFTERWORD 163
workers of Europe and America of the destruc-
tive effects of Statisrn.
The industrial power of the masses, expressed
through their libertarian associations Anarcho-
syndicalism is alone able to organize success-
fully the economic life and carry on production.
On the other hand, the cooperatives, working
in harmony with the industrial bodies, serve as
the distributing and exchange media between
city and country, and at the same time link in
fraternal bond the industrial and agrarian masses.
A common tie of mutual service and aid is created
which is the strongest bulwark of the revolu-
tion far more effective then compulsory labour,
the Red Army, or terrorism. In that way alone
can revolution act as a leaven to quicken the
development of new social forms and inspire
the masses to greater achievements.
But libertarian industrial organizations and
the cooperatives are not the only media in the
interplay of the complex phases of social life,
There are the cultural forces which, though
closely related to the economic activities, have
yet their own functions to perform. In Russia
the Communist State became the sole arbiter
of all the needs of the social body. The result, as
already described, was complete cultural stag-
164 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
nation and the paralysis of all creative endeavour.
If such a debacle is to be avoided in the future,
the cultural forces, while remaining rooted in
the economic soil, must yet retain independent
scope and freedom of expression. Not adher-
ence to the dominant political party but devotion
to the revolution, knowledge, ability, and above
all the creative impulse should be the criterion'
of fitness for cultural work. In Russia this was
made impossible almost from the beginning of
the October Revolution, by the violent separa-
tion of the intelligentsia and the masses. It
is true that the original offender in this case
was the intelligentsia, especially the technical
intelligentsia, which in Russia tenaciously clung
< as it does in other countries to the coat-tails
of the bourgeoisie. This element, unable to
comprehend the significance of revolutionary
events, strove to stem the tide by wholesale
sabotage. But in Russia there was also another
kind of intelligentsia one with a glorious rev-
olutionary past of a hundred years. That part
of the intelligentsia kept faith with the people,
though it could not unreservedly accept the new
dictatorship. The fatal error of the Bolsheviki
was that they made no distinction between the
two elements. They met sabotage with whole-.
AFTERWORD 165
sale terror against the intelligentsia as a class,
and inaugurated a campaign of hatred more in-
tensive than the persecution of the bourgeoisie
itself a method which created an abyss between
the intelligentsia and the proletariat and reared
a barrier against constructive work.
Lenin was the first to realize that criminal
blunder. He pointed out that it was a grave
error to lead the workers to believe that they
could build up the industries and engage in cul-
tural work without the aid and cooperation of
the intelligentsia. The proletariat had neither
the knowledge nor the training for the task,
and the intelligentsia had to be restored in the
direction of the industrial life. But the rec-
ognition of one error never safeguarded Lenin
and his Party from immediately committing
another. The technical intelligentsia was called
back on terms which added disintegration to the
antagonism against the regime.
While the workers continued to starve, en-
gineers, industrial experts, and technicians re-
ceived high salaries, special privileges, and the
best rations. They became the pampered em-
ployees of the State and the new slave drivers
of the masses. The latter, fed for years on the
fallacious teachings that muscle alone is neces-
166 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
sary for a successful revolution and that only
physical labour is productive, and incited by the
campaign of hatred which stamped every intel-
lectual a counter-revolutionist and speculator,
could not make peace with those they had been
taught to scorn and distrust.
Unfortunately Russia is not the only country
where this proletarian attitude against the intel-
ligentsia prevails. Everywhere political dema-
gogues play upon the ignorance of the masses,
teach them that education and culture are
bourgeois prejudices, that the workers can do
without them, and that they alone are able to
rebuild society. The Russian Revolution has
made it very clear that both brain and muscle
are indispensable to the work of social regenera-
tion. Intellectual and physical labour are as
closely related in the social body as brain and
hand in the human organism. One cannot
function without the other.
It is true that most intellectuals consider them-
selves a class apart from and superior to the
workers, but social conditions everywhere are
fast demolishing the high pedestal of the intelli-
gentsia. They are made to see that they, too,
ar6 proletarians, even more dependent upon the
economic master than the manual worker.
AFTERWORD ' 167
Unlike the physicial proletarian, who can pick
up his tools and tramp the world in search of a
change from a galling situation, the intellectual
proletarians have their roots more firmly in their
particular social environment and cannot so
easily change their occupation or mode of living*
It is therefore of utmost importance to bring
home to the workers the rapid proletarization
of the intellectuals and the common tie thus
created between them. If the Western world is
to profit by the lessons of Russia, the demagogic
flattery of the masses and blind antagonism
toward the intelligentsia must cease. That
does not mean, however, that the toilers should
depend entirely upon the intellectual element.
On the contrary, the masses must begin right
now to prepare and equip themselves for the
great task the revolution will put upon them.
They should acquire the knowledge and technical
skill necessary for managing and directing the
intricate mechanism of the industrial and social
structure of their respective countries. But
even at best the workers will need the coopera-
tion of the professional and cultural elements.
Similarly the latter must realize that their true
interests are identical with those of the masses.
Once the two social forces learn to blend into one
168 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
harmonious whole, the tragic aspects of the
Russian Revolution would to a great extent be
eliminated. No one would be shot because he
"once acquired an education." The scientist,
the engineer, the specialist, the investigator, the
educator, and the creative artist, as well as the
carpenter, machinist, and the rest, are all part
and parcel of the collective force which is to shape
the revolution into the great architect of the new
social edifice. Not hatred, but unity; not
antagonism, but fellowship; not shooting, but
sympathy that is the lesson of the great Rus-
sian debacle for the intelligentsia as well as the
workers. All must learn the value of mutual
aid and libertarian cooperation. Yet each must
be able to remain independent in his own sphere
and in harmony with the best he can yield to
society. Only in that way will productive labour
and educational and cultural endeavour express
themselves in ever newer and richer forms.
That is to me the all-embracing and vital moral
taught by the Russian Revolution.
IV
In the previous pages I have tried to point
out why Bolshevik principles, methods, and
tactics failed, and that similar principles and
AFTERWORD 169
methods applied in any other country, even of the
highest industrial development, must also fail.
I have further shown that it is not only Bolshe-
vism that failed, but Marxism itself. That is to
say, the STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle,
has been proven bankrupt by the experience of
the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my
whole argument in one sentence I should say:
The inherent tendency of the State is to concen-
trate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activi-
ties; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary,
to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in
ever-wider circles. In other words, the State
is institutional and static; revolution is fluent,
dynamic. These two tendencies are incom-
patible and mutually destructive. The State
idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must
have the same result in all other revolutions,
unless the libertarian idea prevail.
Yet I go much further. It is not only Bol-
shevism, Marxism, and Governmentalism which
are fatal to revolution as well as to all vital
human progress. The main cause of the defeat
of the Russian Revolution lies much deeper.
It is to be found in the whole Socialist conception
of revolution itself.
The dominant, almost general, idea of revolu-
i7o MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
tion particularly the Socialist idea is that rev-
olution is a violent change of social conditions
through which one social class, the working
class, becomes dominant over another class, the
capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely
physical change, and as such it involves only
political scene shifting and institutional rear-
rangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced
by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or by
that of its "advance guard/* the Communist
Party; Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs,
the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of
People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed
Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the
Military Governor General of Moscow. That
is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revo-
lution, as translated into actual practice. And
with a few minor alterations it is also the idea of
revolution held by all other Socialist parties.
This conception is inherently and fatally
false. Revolution is indeed a violent process.
But if it is to result only in a change of dictator-
ship, in a shifting of names and political per-
sonalities, then it is hardly worth while. It is
surely not worth all the struggle and sacrifice,
the stupendous loss in human life and cultural
values that result from every revolution. If
AFTERWORD 171
such a revolution were even to bring greater
social well being (which has not been the case in
Russia) then it would also not be worth the
terrific price paid: mere improvement can be
brought about without bloody revolution. It is
not palliatives or reforms that are the real aim
and purpose of revolution, as I conceive it.
In my opinion a thousandfold strengthened
by the Russian experience the great mission
of revolution, of the SOCIAL REVOLUTION, is a
fundamental transvaluation of values. A trans-
valuation not only of social, but also of human
values. The latter are even preeminent, for
they are the basis of all social values. Our in-
stitutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated
ideas. To change those conditions and at the
same time leave the underlying ideas and values
intact means only a superficial transformation,'
one that cannot be permanent or bring real
betterment. It is a change of form only, not of
substance, as so tragically proven by Russia,
It is at once the great failure and the great
tragedy of the Russian Revolution that it at-
tempted (in the leadership of the ruling political
party) to change only institutions and conditions
while ignoring entirely the human and social
values involved in the Revolution. Worse yet,
172 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
in its mad passion for power, the Communist
State even sought to strengthen and deepen the
very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution
had come to destroy. It supported and encour-
aged all the worst anti-social qualities and sys-
tematically destroyed the already awakened
conception of the new revolutionary values.
The sense of justice and equality, the love of
liberty and of human brotherhood these funda-
mentals of the real regeneration of society the
Communist State suppressed to the point of ex-
termination. Man's instinctive sense of equity
was branded as weak sentimentality; human
dignity and liberty became a bourgeois super-
stition; the sanctity of life, which is the very
essence of social reconstruction, was condemned
as an-revolutionary, almost counter-revolution-
ary. This fearful perversion of fundamental
values bore within itself the seed of destruction.
With the conception that the Revolution was
only a means of securing political power, it was
inevitable that all revolutionary values should
be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist
State; indeed, exploited to further the security
of the newly acquired governmental power.
"Reasons of State/' masked as the t interests
of the Revolution and of the People/' became
AFTERWORD 173
the sole criterion of action, even of feeling.
Violence, the tragic inevitability of revolution-
ary upheavals, became an established custom, a
habit, and was presently enthroned as the most
powerful and "ideal" institution. Did not
Zinoviev himself canonize Dzerzhinsky, the head
of the bloody Tcheka, as the "saint of the Revo-
lution"? Were not the greatest public honours
paid by the State to Uritsky, the founder and
sadistic chief of the Petrograd Tcheka?
This perversion of the ethical values soon
crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the
Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL
MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition
and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subor-
dinated to it all morality. It avenged itself
upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Rev-
olution. In the wake of this slogan followed
lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder,
open and secret. It should be of utmost in-
terest to students of social psychology that two
movements as widely separated in time and
ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached ex-
actly similar results in the evolution of the
principle that the end justifies all means. The
historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far,
contains a most important lesson for all coming
i 7 4 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.
There is no greater fallacy than the belief
that aims and purposes are one thing, while
methods and tactics are another. This con-
ception is a potent menace to social regeneration.
All human experience teaches that methods and
means cannot be separated from the ultimate
aim. The means employed become, through
individual habit and social practice, part and
parcel of the final purpose; they influence it,
modify it, and presently the aims and means
become identical From the day of my arrival
in Russia I felt it, at first vaguely, then ever
more consciously and clearly. The great and
inspiring aims of the Revolution became so
clouded with and obscured by the methods used
by the ruling political power that it was hard
to distinguish what was temporary means and
what final purpose. Psychologically and so-
cially the means necessarily influence and alter
the aims. The whole history of man is continu-
ous proof of the maxim that to divest one's meth-
ods of ethical concepts means to sink into the
depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the
real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as
applied to the Russian Revolution. May this
lesson not be in vain.
AFTERWORD 175
No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of
liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be
identical in spirit and tendency with the PUR-
POSES to be achieved. Revolution is the nega-
tion of the existing, a violent protest against
man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand
and one slaveries it involves* It is the destroyer
of dominant values upon which a complex sys-
tem of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been
built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the
herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transforma-
tion of the basic relations of man to man, and of
man to society. It is not a mere reformer,
patching up some social evils; not a mere changer
of forms and institutions; not only a re-distribu-
tor of social well-being. It is all that, yet
more, much more. It is, first and foremost, the
TRANSVALUATOR, the bearer of new values. It
is the great TEACHER of the NEW ETHICS, inspir-
ing mail with a new concept of life and its
manifestations in social relationships. It is the
mental and spiritual regenerator.
Its first ethical precept is the identity of means
used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all
revolutionary social change is to establish the
sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the
right of every human being to liberty and well-
176 MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
being. Unless this be the essential aim of revo-
lution, violent social changes would have no
justification. For external social alterations can
be, and have been, accomplished by the normal
processes of evolution. Revolution, on the
contrary, signifies not mere external change, but
internal, basic, fundamental change. That in-
ternal change of concepts and ideas, permeating
ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the
violent upheaval known as revolution. Shall
that climax reverse the process of transvalua-
tion, turn against it, betray it? That is what
happened in Russia. On the contrary, the
revolution itself must quicken and further the
process of which it is the cumulative expres-
sion; its main mission is to inspire it, to carry
it to greater heights, give it fullest scope for
expression. Only thus is revolution true to
itself.
Applied in practice it means that the period
of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory
stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to
the new social conditions. It is the threshold
to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND
HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of
the new life, harmonious with the construction
of the new edifice.
AFTERWORD 177
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The
present casts its shadow far into the future.
That is the law of life, individual and social.
Revolution that divests itself of ethical values
thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit,
and oppression for the future society. The
means used to prepare the future become its
cornerstone. Witness the tragic condition of
Russia. The methods of State centralization
have paralysed individual initiative and effort;
the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the
people into slavish submission and all but ex-
tinguished the fires of liberty; organized terror-
ism has depraved and brutalized the masses
and stifled every idealistic aspiration; insti-
tutionalized murder has cheapened human life,
and all sense of the dignity of man and the value
of life has been eliminated; coercion at every
step has made effort bitter, labour a punish-
ment, has turned the whole of existence into a
scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the
lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A
sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and
brotherhood.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that rev-
olution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate
ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune
178." MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT
with revolutionary aims. The means used to
further the revolution must harmonize with its
purposes. In short, the ethical values which
the revolution is to establish in the new society
must be initiated with the revolutionary ac-
tivities of the so-called transitional period.
The latter can serve as a real and dependable
bridge to the better life only if built of the same
material as the life to be achieved. Revolution
is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child
that is to be the Man of To-morrow.
THE END
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