Red Heart of Russia

tin
THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA
mam
Every wave
of revolution in Petrograd broke over the cobbles of the great Wintc
"
Palace Square
The Dvortsovaya
'
;

BY
BESSIE BEATTY
War
Correspondent of San Francisco Bulletin
ILLUSTRATED BY
PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO.

1918
Copyright, 1918, by
THE CENTUBY
Co.
Published, October, 1918
TO
FOUR WHO SAW THE SUNRISE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

DIPLOMATS
OFFICIAL AND
....
OTHERWISE
PAGE
II
III
IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS
SPECKS ON THE HORIZON
...
. .
26
46
65
IV VI
VII
VIII
V THE
BATTALION OF DEATH
....
HAND
.
.
90
115
IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR
OLD RIVERS
AND NEW
DOCTRINES
146 THE MAN ON HORSEBACK IX THE CENTRABALT MAKES AN EXCEPTION 164 X THE RISE OF THE PROLETARIAT 178 201 XI THE FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE XII THE DAY OF SHAME 225 244 XIII THE GRAVE OF HOPE XIV MOTHER Moscow WEEPS 259
. . .
....
. .
132
....
. .
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
BLASTING AT THE ESTABLISHED ORDER

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE
.
271
292
312 335 357
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

TSARS AND PEASANTS
XIX WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION
....
. .
. .
XX
XXII
REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY
386
407
430
XXI ON
THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

.
THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS XXIII THE GREAT BETRAYAL
446 475
A MESSAGE TO MARS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Every wave of revolution
in
Petrograd broke over
the cobbles of the great Winter Palace Square
The Dvortsovaya
Around
....
Soldiers'
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
the statue of Alexander III, symbol of old

.
.
Russia, the talking multitudes surged

First Soviet of
ties
32 32
Workmen's and
in the
and Depu.
Alexander Kerensky
The great stucco Winter Palace American guests were housed
. study of the Tzar in which the
33 33
80
Bessie Beatty in the "dark forests at the front"
soldiers' shrine
behind the lines
80
Lake Narach
left
a part of No Man's Land Captured barbed wire entanglement Peter at the
...
80 80
81 81
Blessing of the banners of the Battalion of Death The Woman's Regiment on review before its de-
parture for the trenches

Lining up
for soup
and kasha
between
drills
.
112
.
.
Women
soldiers at rest
.112
The crowd hugs the Nevsky
to get out of range of the machine guns in the July riots .113
.
The Cossacks bury
their dead
.
113
typical street scene in the Volga river towns
136
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Barges of wood on the Neva
137
The Volga the great highway of Russia from Pet144 rograd to the Caspian Sea To Zizhni Novgorod, where the Oka and the Volga rivers meet, the commerce of the world comes
flowing
Korniloff, his staff
145
and Cossack bodyguard from 172 "Wild Division" 172 to the rescue of Kerensky Bicycle troops Baltic sailors' bayonets speak for the Soviet 173
the
.
.
.
.
dining room in the Matrosski Klub (Sailors'
Club), Helsingfors
173
The proclamation
of the Military Revolutionary Committee announcing the fall of the Keren-
208 sky government IVomen soldiers in their last stand before the Winter Palace 209
The pass which permitted the author

through the Bolshevist lines
safe conduct
209
. .
.
240 The Winter Palace from the Red Arch Russian soldiers at home in the Palace of a Grand 240 Duke
Soldiers
and factory workers took the place

.
of
striking telephone operators
241
.
Red Guards on duty before Trotzky's door

The Minister
Paul
of
241
Rumania and
his staff just before
his incarceration in the Fortress of Peter
and 256
Old Ivan Veliki high up in the heavens faithfully thundered the hours above the citadel of 257 church and state
...
...
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Mother Moscow
churches
sat serene arnid the
domes of her
272
battle
After the
Moscow
.
273
The Grave
of the Brotherhood beside the old
Krem273
288 288
lin wall
Marie Spiridonova
Lunarcharsky Leon Trotzky

Nikolai Lenin
288
288
288
.
Krylenko
Alexandria Kolontai
288
Kamineff
288
Yesterday and to-day on the Marsovaya Pola. Priests with lifted ikons and gorgeous robes and Red Guards with bayonets and crimson banners 289
peasant milkman and his customers. Milk was sold only on card to mothers with babies and
for invalids
320
In open-air bazars where there is little to sell but 321 many to buy, Russia does her marketing
. .
Under the thatched roofs in villages like this, one hundred and twenty million Russian peasants make their home 352
Katherine Breshkovskaya and her two aged comrades, Lazareff and Nicholas Tchaikowsky with her American friends, Col. Wm. B. 353 Thompson and Col. Raymond Robins
. .
Soldiers' wives
on the Nevsky demonstrating for

,
in.
creased allowance
353
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGB
It
was a dangerous partnership, for when the state fell the church tottered also 400
.
New
Russia votes for the Constituent Assembly 401 Russia makes revolutionary demonstration Young at school 401
Meeting in the library of the Tauride Palace December 11 where in defiance of the People's Commissaries the Constituent Assembly was 448 declared open
The Constituent Assembly

the Tauride Palace
as
it finally
January 18
....
convened in
448
The Russian
delegation arrives at Brest-Litovsk
449
The photographs copyrighted by Orrin S. Wightman are published through the courtesy of Colonel W. B. Thompson of the Red Cross Mission to Russia.

CHAPTER
PETROGRAD!
I
Out
there in the silver twilight of the white
night she lay, a forest of flaming church steeples
and giant factory chimneys,

the marshes.
rising vaguely
from
I pressed
my
face closer to the

flying
dust-crusted
landscape.
windowpane and searched the
There on the edge of the East she waited for

us, strange, mysterious, inscrutable,
compelling
a candle drawing us on from the ends of the

earth like so
many
fluttering moths.
days the Trans-Siberian Express had been crawling toward her, crawling like a snake across flower-strewn steppe
hot, dusty
Twelve long,
and velvet
this
forest,
the one unclean thing
upon
new-born world of spring.
I glanced at
my
wrist-watch
it
was twenty

minutes past two on a morning in early June of
the year 1917.
Here we were,
despite
war and
only
revolution, peeping into Peter's
"Window"
four hours behind schedule.

Involuntarily I breathed a tiny sigh of disap-
pointment.
Even
Nothing, nothing, had happened. the dreary, desolate Siberian wastes had
failed to live
up
to their promise.
Six thousand
versts of emerald
meadows, cut with shimmering

Six
china-blue waterways, stretched behind us.
thousand versts of meadows, covered with a mist

of wild flowers pink, mauve, and flaming yel-
low
and broken frequently with deep woods,

silver birches
where
played
like sunshine against
the shadowed background of dusky pines
that
was
Siberia.
every log station, with its red flags and its row of poplars, a crowd of front -bound soldiers,
in
At
worn, dun-colored uniforms, tried to board the
train, only to settle peacefully
back to more
in-
terminable hours of waiting

of
when
the Committee
Workmen's and
Soldiers' Deputies, traveling
with us, had explained the necessity.

Occasionally in the night we were suddenly awakened, when the door of our compartment was
4

thrown open by a guard searching for an escaped Austrian prisoner. Otherwise, the monotony of
our journey had remained unbroken. Well, it was done. Ten minutes more, and
Petrograd would open the door of a new world to

us.
I glanced
down
the car at a
row of passion-
ate faces flattened against the windows, while
hungry eyes drank deep of once familiar scenes. They were home-bound exiles, these companions
of mine, going back to a land whose door
had long
click
been closed in their
faces.
Home!
Every
of the wheels carried
me farther and farther away

side of the
from that scrap of earth on the other

world which I called home.
mind wandered back to that sunny day, two months before, when through a mist of tears
My
I had watched the
hills
of California disappear
behind the Golden Gate.

!
How
blithely I
had
come away Blithely, because I knew that mine was a land where the latch-string was always out,
and I could go back again at a moment's choosing. I tried to think what it must be to be coming
home
to the land of the bolted door, to the land
of the black scowl
the land that had suddenly
thrown down
its
bars and turned a friendly, smil5

ing face and open arms toward the lonely outcasts.
My
eyes wandered to the vestibule, where a
Siberian soldier sat
upon
his kit-bag, a tin
can
with a bunch of dead lilies-of-the-valley held For ten days and ten tightly in his two hards.
nights he had sat there, his big, round, brown eyes looking out across the great spaces, resignation and the infinite patience of these people of the
East and the North

for
reflected in his face.

in that little
Home
lilies-
him was done up
bunch of
of-the-valley, long since dead.
Every day I had
passed him on my way to the dining-car, and my body ached with vicarious weariness as I saw him
uncomplainingly sitting and dreaming over the faded lilies. He and I, of all the passengers,
were the only ones who were not going home. My musings were suddenly cut short. The
Trans-Siberian Express, train de luxe of the
longest railroad in the world, was slipping quietly to its place beside a deserted platform. clean-
cut
young Englishman, on
and patted
his
way
to be married
in Petrograd, adjusted his coat collar the final
time,
his hat to see that
at the
proper angle.
was placed Then he put his head out

it

of the window to receive the
of the sweetheart he
first
welcoming smile
had not seen for a year.
He
drew
head in again, surprise, pain, embarrassment mingled on his fine, boyish face. She was
his
not there.
Count Tolstoy, son of the great Tolstoy, returning from America, lifted his window and searched the vacant platform for
aisle,
Farther down the
He, too, turned back disappointed. Petrograd was as unaware of us as though we had been so many ghosts flitting invisibly through the air. Petrograd was entirely
the face of his wife.
engrossed in
its
own very important
affairs.
Even
ers,
the station-master had failed to take cog-
nizance of our coming.
In the absence of portwe trucked our own baggage and we had to

;
wake up
through.
the guard to unlock the door
and
let
us
Outside, the big circle was flooded with the light

of the white night.
My
eyes focused for a mo-
ment on Trubetskoy's squat, heavy, powerful granite man on horseback, Alexander III,
symbol of departed Romanoffs, symbol of dead Russia, then wandered about in dazed bewilderment. 7

The
cobblestones were dotted with
men and
and arms
women
gathered in groups and talking in high-
pitched, excited voices, eyes blazing
waving: students, peasants, soldiers, workmen, pouring a torrent of words into the night.
"What
is
the matter?
Is
it
another revolu-
tion?" I asked breathlessly.
"No," some one answered, "nothing

pening.
is
hap-
They
it 's
are just talking.
It has been
like this ever since
March."
"But
"It
's
the middle of the night," I said.
nearly
morning.
Something must
all night, all
be
wrong."
"They
talk all
day and
the time,"
my
"In the old days, you know, they were not allowed to talk, and now
informant continued.
that the
dam
is
broken, the flood of language
never stops."
One
lone and dilapidated carriage,
drawn by a
bored and weary looking horse, with head framed in a high wooden collar, stood at the curb.
Russian came through the door, and shouted, apparently into the air, a single magic word: "Izvostchik !"
perambulating feather-bed in voluminous

8

folds of blue broadcloth detached itself
from the
nearest crowd, swept

tically
its
broadcloth train majes-
over the sidewalk, and mounted the box.

rattled
away, the linguistically accomplished Russian and all his bags stowed neatly within. I watched this achievement with
carriage
The
undisguised admiration and envy, blankly wondering what I should do next.
fellow traveler, a Swedish girl on her

to be married to
way
home from Japan

officer,
joined me.
an English Behind her waddled the stout
and pleasing person of the Finnish missionary who with her "many luggages" had shared my
compartment from Harbin.
We
held a consultation.
Here we were,
in the
all
morning, in this great, strange city which talked on and on without even a glance in our direction. Our
telegrams to friends were probably traveling in
the mail-bags on the same train or coming along
utterly alone at half -past
two
on next week's express. young Russian officer came gallantly to the
rescue.
"I telegraphed for a room you ladies can have "If you will that," he said; and, turning to me:
9

stay and
mind
the luggage,
we
will
go uptown
and
see about it."
The last thing in the world I wanted to do at that moment was to stay and mind the luggage. The station was hot, close, and dirty. Soldiersweary brown men in worn uniforms, unwashed and unshaven asleep on their kit-bags or curled
up on the floor in their overcoats, lay you had to pick your way carefully.
of places that were close and dirty.
so thick that
was
tired
I longed to
be out in those strange, wide streets, so full of people with so many things to say that the days were not long enough. Politeness set a seal
upon
desire.
My friends promised to be back in
twenty minutes, so I returned to the stuffy waiting-room, and the odd assortment of bags and
bundles for which I was to be responsible. There was a clock on the wall, and the minute-
hand slowly made its way around the hour passed it was half-past three.
sign of the Russian gallant.
dial.
An
no
Still
The minute-hand
began another journey. Once for a few seconds I forgot the minutehand. The waiter from the dining-car, who had
grown more and more stepmotherly

10
in the dis-

tribution of portions as the journey progressed,
entered the room.
He
walked to the corner

soiled table linen
where half a dozen bundles of
were stacked, and, glancing about to see that no one was looking, he swiftly untied them. From
the center of each he took a fifty-pound sack of
white flour.
was no longer difficult to explain the sparkling stones from the Ural Mountains appearing on the hands of the dining-car crew as
It
the train pulled out of Vyatka, or difficult to believe the stories of the five-hundred-ruble
game
Flour
in progress in the dining-car of evenings.
in
Petrograd was scarcer than Ural and far more highly priced.
brilliants
a quarter to five my friends returned. There was not a room to be had in Petrograd, they said. The Hotel Europe was crowded.
At
At
the France they were sleeping in the sitting-
rooms.
The
Astoria, which had been the best

military,
hotel in town,
no
civilians
was occupied by the were allowed.

that
and
The Russian suggested

about ten o'clock,
consuls.
we
stay where
we
were until the populace began
to
wake up,
then consult our respective Nothing on earth could have induced

11

me
at that
moment
to spend five seconds longer
atmosphere of that station. Five hours was a prospect I refused even to contemin the fetid
plate.
The guard was once more asleep and the door I made my way through a labyrinth of locked.
baggage-rooms to an opening on a side street. The same groups of men were still excitedly talking,
and here and there along the curb a peasant

a market-basket of hard-boiled eggs,
woman, with
her wares.
cucumbers, lemons, or sunflower seeds, offered

I paused at the corner
and speculated
as to
which road to take.
The Nevsky
knew
it
Prospect, fa-
mous
the
as the
Champs
Elysees, the Strand,
and
Fifth Avenue, though I
not for
itself at
moment, stretched wide before me in one diTo my left was another street only rection.
slightly narrower,
and flanked on
either side
by
towering buildings, large enough

of
little
to house a
world
people like myself. Surely, in all those great masses of wood and stucco and stone, there was some little corner where I could put my
weary head.
I walked in a daze, peering
up
at
the strange painted signs.
If
it
had been an

overcoat, a cheese, or a pair of boots for which I
had been searching,

ple; for the
little
would have been quite simshops were profusely covered

it
with frightful paintings of

read.
all
these things, de-
signed for people who, like myself, could not
Three blocks from the station I came upon a huge ornate gray building, rambling around three
sides of a court.
There was an
air of elegance
about the place, and on one of the doors was a small brass sign, which looked as though it might
be designed for people who could read. I picked out the letters one by one, trying frantically to
remember whether the English
was the Russian
or vice versa.
It
The
building had the look of
a hotel.
might as
easily
have been a theater,

all
or a palace, or the police-station, for

telligence those strange letters
the in-
conveyed to me.
I was just screwing

of entering
door,
out.
up
my courage to the point

up
to the
when an
izvostchik drove
and Count Tolstoy and the lost wife stepped He came quickly to the rescue.
"Yes, yes, this is the Select Hotel," he said. "If you will step inside I will ask if there is a room for you, and perhaps you would like to take
13

my
izvostchik back to the station for your bag-
gage.
But
first
the passportist must have your
passport."
Five minutes later I was back at the depot, announcing the news to the astounded group,
and gathering the weary women and the "many

luggages" into the ramshackle old carriage. At six o'clock the wild pigeons in the courtyard sang
me am
to sleep.
later.
I awoke with a start six hours

I?" I asked.
"Where
myself
lution."
"In Petrograd," I answered "in Petrograd, in the heart of the Revo-
The midday
of
sun, creeping through the
window
my
tiny room,
made
all its
imperfec-
tions pitifully plain.
I was grateful to that
room
as to a stranger
who had found me homeless and
opened her door, but I wanted to be quickly away,

out into the exciting promise of the blue-and-gold day. I dressed hurriedly and ran through a
stack of letters of introduction, but discarded
them
dress,
all.
On
"Moika
a slip of paper I found an adIt was the home of a news64."

fellow
paper
friend.
man
On
correspondent, an old I this day I needed an old friend. 14

a

would find Moika
It
64,
stop for breakfast at
and on the way I would the Hotel Europe.
was
all
quite simple,
you
see.
Where were
those threatening dangers poured like poison into
my
Petrograd was like any other place. The clerk at the desk answered my simple English request for directions with a shake of his head
ears?
and a volley of Russian, from which I

laughing despair.
fled in
Once
was an
outside, I
made my way
it,
to that wide
street rejected earlier in the

air of
morning.
There
importance about
it
made me
feel
something that led to that nebulous locality
which in every city we call "uptown." dozen street-cars passed me. They were crowded with soldiers who filled seats, aisles, and
platforms, and overflowed on to the steps.

hailed one,
and squirmed
my way
faded uniforms to the
woman
through the conductor in blue
broadcloth and gold buttons.

"Pazhal'sta,
Hotel Europe?" I
said,
exhaust-
ing in one breath half of

cabulary.
my
entire Russian vo-
She shook her head, a simple gesture that I

15

understood perfectly, then followed it with a volShe looked ley of language which left me dazed.
at
my
blank and bewildered face.

said.
"American," I
head.
Again
da!"
she shook her
Then
a great light broke into her face.

da,
"Amerikanka,
laughed
I handed her
it.
da,
she
said,
and
in pleased delight at her discovery.
paper with Moika 64 upon It was written in English and conveyed noth-
my
ing to her.
By
ested.
this
time the entire car had become inter-
simple-looking woman, with a platok on her head, took the paper, and she and two com-
panions consulted long and earnestly over it. They motioned me to wait. The car moved
slowly
up the wide wood-paved Nevsky; past faded brick and yellow stucco palaces, whose
proud sides were pasted with revolutionary posters and proclamations; past the great Gostinny
Dvor (Court
of the Strangers), where the
little
shops were shuttered now in Sabbath seclusion behind the hedge of linden trees.
Like the muddy water

street.
in a stream, the endless
procession of khaki-clad soldiers flowed along the
The
feather-bed izvostchiks, calling en16

couragement to
their horses,
rattled over the
wooden
cobbles.
Under the columns
of the great
Kazan Cathedral, the little people, dwarfed by the mighty proportions of this pile of masonry,
passed back and forth, crossing themselves and dropping alms into the hands of beggars on the wide steps. On the gravel-covered paths in the
formal garden the children played hop -scotch, while their parents sat on the benches, contentedly watching them.
On
every corner, and in between streets, the
groups of people were talking, talking, talking!

wagons, decorated with red flags and green boughs, and filled with crippled soldiers and Red Cross nurses, darted in
field hospital
Ambulances and
from
side streets
and
all
hurried off in the same
direction.
Quite abruptly we turned a corner and skirted the edges of a pleasant park, with trees in full
leaf,
and a multitude of birds
noisily chattering
young spring green. Ivan in khaki, with Vera beside him in her best spring clothes, strolled
in the
along the winding paths, or sat contentedly munching sunflower seeds, and talking as volubly
as the noisy sparrows
up above.
17

Peace, joy, exultation, was upon that springclad city.
Freedom was young

on the
butterfly
then, like the
spring, like the leaves
trees, like
Vera and
upon a high bush, the sheen still upon her wings; and Vera and Ivan looked, rejoiced, and feared to touch
Ivan.
so new, so beautiful, so fragile.
Freedom was a
Poor Ivan!
Poor Vera!
their
They could not

I,
guess that afternoon, any more than
what the
treasure.
months would do to
butterfly
They could not know
that they themselves would
soon lay violent hands upon it, and the day would come when the broken wings would lie crushed
like a blade of grass
could not
know
beneath a heavy boot. They that Freedom must return in
many
other guises before she would be strong
enough for Russia's need. Eyes and ears hungrily drinking in strange ights and sounds, and thoughts darting back and
forth
from the land of Tolstoy, Turgenieff and

,
Dostoievsky to the Russia of Ivan's dreaming,

I almost forgot that I had a destination, and a
rapidly increasing appetite. Suddenly one of the three
women who had
18

taken
me
under
their
wings touched
me on
She
the
left
shoulder and motioned
me
to follow.
her friends, and together we walked blocks and blocks, while she searched silently for street numbers,
and I
tried to look the gratitude I could not
Finally she stopped, smiling happily, and pointed to a sign that read "64." Then,
speak.
with a cheery, friendly "Dosvidanya !"

bye!), she left me.
(Good-
I knocked on the
first
door.
The dvornik
I bat-
shook his head.
Then
I tried the second.
tered at a dozen before I realized that in Russia

the entire building has the same number.
last,
At
up
five flights of stairs,
I found a gleam of
recognition in the eyes of the servant.

it
She made
by means of the sign language that there was no one at home. But at sight of my crestclear
fallen face she invited
tried vainly to reach
me in, and
for half an hour
my
friend
by telephone.
She wept with exasperation at her inability to help me, and to make herself understood.
was half-past three when I found myself again on the tree-bordered canal. I was still
It
without breakfast or luncheon, and heaven and

19

the Russians only
Hotel Europe.
knew what had become of the Both seemed to be involved in
a conspiracy of silence on the subject.

I wandered up the canal, stopping every likely and unlikely person to ask if they spoke English.
Always I got the same headshake and
the
same
kindly "Nyet, nyet, barishna!" I came out upon a huge square, crowded with
ambulances and field-wagons, automobiles, and trucks, filled with crippled soldiers and sailors,
men from
the ranks
who had already paid
the
heavy toll of war, armless men and legless men, and men with eyes to which sight would never
come back,
sion.
all
were pleading with their able-
bodied brothers to fight to a victorious conclu-
It
was a war demonstration, a
pitiful, futile
attempt of the broken men to rally their brothers For to a standard they were rapidly deserting.
the
to
first
time,
my eyes were
seeing what
war does
human flesh.
I stood there, watching the faces
of these men, listening to the unintelligible torrent of eloquence that poured from their lips, and thought sorrowfully of another country half way
across the world
making ready
20
for this.

Finally I recalled my quest. Surely in all that vast throng there must be some one who
spoke English.
I walked in and out, trying one
and another; meeting always with that same bewildered headshake, and that same sympathetic
glance of true regret which every Russian, be he prince or peasant, gives you when he is unable to
do the thing you ask.
I crossed the square, walking aimlessly I knew not where. On the corner was a huge building
with high, boarded windows and bullet-holes in

the plastered walls.
man was
sitting in the
doorway, and I asked if he spoke English. He shook his head. I did not know which way to turn. For some strange reason that I shall never
fathom, I walked through the doorway and into
the building.
I found myself in a huge,
empty marble
lobby,
opening
into a series of large
rooms stripped bare
of everything but a broken plate-glass cabinet of

silver inlay,
and a bloodstained but once bright
I stood wondering where I was, and what I should do next, when

rose-colored velvet carpet.
down
the broad stairs
came a Russian
officer in
the splendid full-skirted wine-colored coat of the 21

Caucasians.
His dark
olive face
and black hair
were topped with a high military hat, and a sword of inlaid silver jangled on each marble step as
he walked.
"Pardon, do you speak English?" I asked in a faint and by this time rather despairing voice.
He
clicked his spurs together,
and bowed low
before me.
"A leetle, madame,"

of service to you?"
he answered.
"Can
I be
Never again will the sound of my native tongue be such blissful music. I told him of my recent
arrival,
and of
my
search for friends, and ended
with:
"I want to go somewhere where I can get something to eat." He looked at
me
out of smiling and kindly
brown
tel.
eyes.
is
"This
a hotel," he said.
"The Astoria Ho-
But
it is
now
the headquarters of the mili-
tary, the
Voina Gostinnitsa (War Hotel), and

not allowed.
civilians are
At
as
the time of the
Revolution
you can see; so the dining-room has been closed since, and meals are served only in one's room. If you had a room
it
affe
was sacked,

you might have luncheon here. Are you the wife of a military man, or something of that sort?" I shook my head, told him I was nothing "of that sort," and offered my card and credentials.
He
The
brightened.
"Ah!" he
yet be a way. correspondents are under the control of the

said.
"There
may
military now,
might make
here.
just possible the General an exception and permit you to stay

it is
and
Shall I take you to him?"
I glanced at him for a single searching second, then nodded. climbed the marble stairs, and
We
at the
end of a long corridor we came upon the General, white-haired and white-whiskered, and
that a Russian General should be.
flat-top
all
He
arose
from behind a
low, kissed
mahogany
desk,
bowed
seat.
my hand,
and invited me to a
My new-found Caucasian friend explained me

in Russian,
and the General nodded.
Fifteen minutes later, comfortably established
my own little blue-andwhite room on the sixth floor of the War Hotel, amid all the conveniences
in
of a first-class American hotel, I sat

platter of cold
down
to a
meat and a
a
service of steaming
Russian
tea.
Another hour found
me
collecting

typewriter and passports and preparing to establish a base of operations from which to explore that vast
new
Russia.
on the roof-garden of the Europe, overlooking the glistening domes and spires of the
That
night,
City of Peter, I dined with friends. I had stumbled upon them when I had ceased to look.
"Where are you stopping?" one of them "At the War Hotel," I answered. Mouths and eyes opened in chorus.
"But
it
is
asked.
impossible!" they said.
"That
is
for the military,
and they are most
strict that
no
civilian be admitted."
I told them the story of the three Good Samaritans of the little woman with the shawl over her
head,
who
left the car,
her friends, and her
own
walk blocks through the scorching sun with a total stranger of the maid who almost
pleasure, to
;
wept in her distress because she could not help me; and, last, of the dark-haired knight of the
Caucasus,
who made
in
Cinderella's
fairy
god-
mother seem a mere stepmother by comparison.
Back
wrapped
sat
the
little
blue-and-white
room,
in the
warm glow
ftl
of their kindliness, I
it
down
in a bewildered
heap to think
over.

My
mind wandered
far that night, into the
black past of Russia, and into the vague unknown but never did it even remotely suspect future,
the stirring times that
room and I would share
together in the year to come.
CHAPTER
DIPLOMATS
IT was
less
II
OFFICIAL
AND OTHERWISE
than a week after
my
early
morn-
ing advent in Petrograd when I once more passed

before the candle-lighted ikons in the Nicolaiski This time the Station and out to the platform.
station
diers,
was far from deserted.
line of sol-
a picked escort of stalwart
men
in
dundark,
colored coats, stood at attention.
The
tall,
handsome young
Foreign Minister, Tereshchenko, towered above the genial white-vested

person of the American Ambassador Francis. The American colony was out in force.
The
crises
Provisional
Government of Russia,
suc-
cessor of
Tsar and bureaucracy, between Cabinet and food problems, had found time to prethe special diplomatic mission to
pare to entertain.
Root and
sia
Ambassador-Extraordinary Rus-
were due to arrive at any moment. Earlier in the day I had wandered curiously
26
through the great corridors of the rambling old
DIPLOMATS
Winter Palace and watched the servants putting the finishing touches upon the mansion of the
Czars.
With
the true
Russian sense of the
dramatic, the
chosen to be
new hosts of all the Russias had at home to their republican brothers
seas in the very premises
from over the
where
royal heads were once held highest and lackeys' backs once bent lowest.
The huge red

of
it
stucco building
acres
and acres
until
had been swept and dusted and polished Nicholas himself could have found no spot
at which to point the imperial finger of disap-
proval.
The
big
mahogany bath-tub
in the
am-
bassador's suite had been scrubbed for the last

time.
The nudity of
the tiny ultra-modern brass
bed, cowering behind the crushed-mulberry curtains,
had been only partly covered with fresh The huge linen and a new silk eiderdown quilt. oval-topped mahogany table from which Peter
the Great had taken his caviar and vodka
was
prepared to serve
ham and
eggs American
style.
As
I looked from behind the pink silk curtains
out on the blue waters of the Neva, sparkling in the spring sunshine, I wondered what the coming
of these Americans would
27
mean
to Russia.

While
come
official
my
Russia was getting ready to welcountrymen, I had been trying to find
out what unofficial Russia was thinking about. With the help of an interpreter, I had been
listening to the babble of voices that
sounded
through the golden days and white nights. Already I had learned that revolution is a term as
variable as truth,
and newly mined by every
man who
speaks it. r I discovered that the Revolution that over-
(threw the
Tsar and absolutism was a simple thing,
^beautifully logical, gloriously unanimous.
Every one wanted it; every one was glad when it came. The monarchy that had brought such
desperate misery to the millions crumbled to dust with the first vigorous blow of the rising peoples
long since dead. The heavy heart of Russia lifted in a mighty shout of joy "Svolike a thing
:
boda
Freedom. )
We are free 1"

this
For
the
moment
its
was enough.
That
sin-
gle word, with
age-old power of placing
man
on the mountain-tops, made Russia happy. Soon her people began to be specific.
"Freedom
for the peasant," they said.
"Free-
dom
for the worker."
"Freedom
28
for the sol-
DIPLOMATS
"Freedom women."
dier."
for the Jew."
"Freedom
for
Russia
still
rejoiced, but with certain
vague
mental reservations faintly disturbed by

versity.
this di-
Then
came
definition.
Each
man
own
translated revolution into the terms of his

life.
Nicolai Voronoff,
whom
met
at dinner one
night, voiced the conservative intellectuals' idea
of freedom.
"Things could not go on as they were," he said. "We had to have freedom. Freedom of
speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly,
inviolability of
person
freedom as you Ameri*

it."
cans and English
know
Old Chekmar, the peasant delegate from a remote south Russian village, spoke of freedom in
terms of land.
"Freedom
yes, land
for the peasant," he said.

shall
"Yes,
we
it
have land.
The Tsar AlexMother earth
ander gave
to us
when he
it
freed the serfs, but
the landlords have kept

it is
away.
God's and the people's." Chekmar tossed his fine old head in a gesture
ours at last!
it,
of pride and exaltation as he said
and
his dull
29

blue eyes were
The
with the fervor of young ideals. same light was in the eyes of Andrey
lit
Krugloff, from the great Putiloff works, when he said: "Freedom for the worker. The day
of the proletariat has come.
The men who use

will
will
the tools shall control them, the fruits of labor

shall
belong to labor.
We
we
capitalistic exploitation;
put an end to do away with
poverty; the workers of the world shall unite." Ivan Borovsky, who had come from the front
to attend the all-Russian convention of
Work-
men's and Soldiers' Deputies, saw freedom in terms of the soldiers. "Peace, peace," he said.
"We
What
dig our graves and call them trenches. is the use of freedom to a man in his grave?
slaughter.
We will stop this bloody

our war.
of
all
This
is
not
This
is
the Tsar's war.
The
done.
soldiers
the world shall rise as

off the
we have
They
and
will
throw
yokes of kings and kaisers,

peace.
we
will all
make
There
shall be
no more
court-martial,
will
no more capital punishment.
We
have honest, democratic peace. Then we can go back to our farms and our factories and
put an end to
all
wars."
Little curly blond-haired Petroff,
who brought
30
DIPLOMATS
me my morning
chei
(tea), with a smile that
sparkled like the sunshine on the Neva, defined revolution in his own way when he refused to accept
my
first tip.
"We
are free now," he ex-
plained.
"We
went.
will get
our regular per cent of
the
bill
it
for service."
Revolution was to every man the sum of his desires. Yet above and beneath and
So
beyond each man's interpretation was the deeper

thing that old Chekmar voiced when he spoke of land as "God's and the people's." It was not
only of himself that

said,
Chekmar thought when he

Personal greed could never
"It
is
ours!"
have brought that light into his dull blue eyes. Something more than his own hours and wages
sounded through the words of Andrey Krugloff Hours and wages alone were not enough to lift
his
heavy face out of the mold of common clay. It was the knowledge that they were one with the
great living, breathing
human mass
the people
that filled their eyes with visions.
The honeymoon
sion
of Revolution
was already
waning on that day when the American commis-
came
to Petrograd; but the consciousness of

still
"the people" as an entity
remained.
Slowly
31

the years of political and economic slavery, land
hunger, and hideous physical poverty imposed upon the many by the few had brought about a
mass consciousness that was the most

in revolutionary Russia.
vital force
I discovered with surprise that the Tsar's name was seldom mentioned. He ceased to count for
anything.
attack, he
A month after the first revolutionary
was as completely forgotten as if he had never lived. When Vera and Ivan tore the
double-headed eagles from the great wrought-
Winter Palace, and ripped the imperial coat-of-arms from the buildings to make bonfires in the streets, all that there was of
iron fence around the
Nicholas, even his
memory, was burned.

first
With
control
the tragic failure of the
Revolution
of 1905 and 1906,
when the Workers tried to take
and
lost everything, still fresh in their
memory, they were trying desperately to cooperate, to give and take, to use the power of the intellectuals
and
at the
same time
theorists
direct revolution
into the channels through which they
wanted
it
to flow.
They were
who had always
been denied the right of action. Never having been allowed to try to put any of their theories
Around the statue
of
Alexander
III,
symbol
surged
of old Russia, the talking multitudes
First Soviet of
Workmen's and
Soldiers'
Deputies
Alexander Kerensky in the study of the Tzar
Orrin 8.
The
Wightman housed great stucco Winter Palace in which the American guests were
DIPLOMATS
into practice, they
had never learned how to comwilling to die for

its
promise.
Each group was
own
particular definition of revolution, but
no
group was able

crises.
to yield to the theory of another.
Consequently, Cabinet crises followed Cabinet
Prince Lvoff and the scholarly Miliukoff had already been retired to private life before the
Root Commission reached Russia.
Miliukoff,
student of English institutions, saw freedom for
Russia in the terms of a constitutional monarchy.
To
him, and to the liberals
who gathered around
him, this was a sufficiently radical step for a country that had only yesterday crawled out from
under the iron boot of absolutism.
He
and
his
followers were a hopeless minority, and, in spite
of their past struggles for Russian freedom, were
soon discarded, with the monarchial idea.
They
into
were
the
liberals
and could not follow Russia
new social realms she was so eager to explore. The demand of the people for a republic was The republican idea satisfied some, insistent.
but not enough.

ist
social
democracy
a social-
state
became the
loudest..cry of the articu-
late proletariat.
33

I heard
it
on the
street corners
and
in the
crowded trams, along the wide paths of the parks, and in the assembly rooms of palaces whose ancient walls
might well have shuddered at the
strangeness of such sentiments.
Much
of the time they talked of war, and I
heard unkempt soldiers in dilapidated uniforms and workmen in shoddy suits demanding "an interbelligerent conference," "statement of Allied
war aims," "publication of the secret treaties," as glibly as workingmen at home discuss hours and wages. Here and there a group talked of the coming of the American Commission. Usually the
spokesman was an unofficial diplomat returned from the United States and bringing his own decided idea of us and our faults.
There were
many
June.
of these in Petrograd in the days of early
them hailed from Hester Street; and Hester Street and New York's East Side
of
Some
became formidable factors

international situation.
in complicating the
They had
seen
all
of the
worst and none of the best of America.

sat at the tables in the tea-room
They
where the memSoldiers'
bers of the Soviet of
Workmen's and
34
DIPLOMATS
Deputies gathered around the samovar, and told
stories of
poverty and suffering on the East Side.

is
"Root
tion.
coming to make you

n't care
's
fight," they said.
"Root does
He
anything about the Revolua capitalist, a corporation attorney,
a hide-bound reactionary. In the United States he 's against the workers."
Most of
these
men were
honest revolutionists,
by nothing more than hatred of the capitalistic system and a distrust of

soap-boxers,
actuated
things bearing a government stamp. There were other unofficial diplomats in Petrograd
all
whose words had a different
origin.
They were
under orders from Berlin, and their business was to discredit America and the Allies and make the
Russian masses believe the German people were the true friends of Revolution. They conducted
a telling and profitable propaganda.
with, they
To
begin
had
linguistic
and geographical advan-f
tages that the Allies could not overcome.
Many
Germans speak Russian, still more Russians speak German. Being next-door neighbors, the Germans understood the Russian psychology. They knew that nothing in the world meant
anything to the mass of the Russians but saving
35

their Revolution,
and they simulated a sympathy for revolution that they were temperamentally incapable of possessing.
They
pictured
Germany
Allies
as huftgry for democratic peace,

as imperialists
and the
who would not stop fighting until they had crushed the German masses and divided the German territory. They accused the Allies of trying to continue the war for the purpose of
destroying the Revolution.
sion to turn
They took
the pastried
and idealism of the Russian mass and

it
to their
own
ends.
had something to say about the coming of the American Commission, and they said it where it would take effect.
They
also
For
the most part, unofficial Russia

its
was too
engrossed in
own very important
business to
pay much attention to the tall, gray-haired, distinguished American who was coming to town. Unofficial Russia was concerned chiefly with defining revolution, and each individual group was
possessed of a passionate necessity for the other groups accept its definition.
making
All together, it was not a happy situation into which the imperial train was bringing the Ameri-
can diplomats that June afternoon.

36
The
train,
DIPLOMATS
looking almost as
it
did
when the royal family
last
journeyed forth from Petrograd, slipped into view on the appointed second.
At ten o'clock next morning Ambassador Root

sat in a corner of the
suite at the
light.
huge drawing-room
his
in his
Winter Palace with
back to the
Half a dozen of us foreign correspondents
upon the edges of flower-brocaded chairs drawn in a circle around him, while he introduced the Washington Code into Petrograd.
sat
stiffly
The Washington Code

It
is
is
Maxim
silencer.
a gentleman's agreement to which an occasional lady is reluctantly admitted. great man
with his back to the light and announces that he would like to be able to discuss
sits in
a corner
quite openly everything that happens
and even
course,
all
to have the benefit of your advice.

if
Of
he
is
to
do
so,
he must be assured that
he
says will be held in strictest confidence. You perhaps because you are flattered by the great
man's confidence, perhaps because of your curiSometimes you consent osity joyfully consent.
only because you
know
the folly of cutting off

lips are sealed.
your ears merely because your
The Washington Code was

37
the only check to

speech in all that great land flood of words.
swamped beneath a
Those morning conferences became a regular We did most of the talking while institution.
Mr. Root
sat silently listening.
Occasionally he
made one
of those simple, pat, nut-shell com-
ments for which he has such an amazing talent, and we regretted the "made in America" rules
for correspondents.
From time to time,

trips out of
special missions took flying
Petrograd to study some particular
phase of the complex situation. The military men went to the front; the naval representatives took in a mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet the bank;
ers investigated Russia's depleted treasury;
and
the religiously inclined went to
Moscow
to dis-
cover the future status of the Russian Church.
There was no
the
official life
its
of
any kind.
When
Commission donned
its
Prince Alberts and
they found the Foreign Minister in a sack-suit and tan shoes and the members of the Council dressed like workingpaid
first
two formal
visits,
men.
The young men
of the Provisional Gov-
ernment were growing old overnight with the burden of the task upon them. And the mem-
DIPLOMATS
bers of the Soviet were groping endlessly for
that hidden road which idealism
travelJn equity.
and
reality
may
Every man, from the young Minister President, Alexander Kerensky whose health was
already giving
way under
the frightful strain of
trying to
inherited
make
the dilapidated economic machine
from the Tsar's regime supply the exhaustive demands of war and revolution to the
most
insignificant little delegate in the Soviet,
his sleeves rolled
was working with mold Russia nearer
up
to re-
to his heart's desire.
As
the Soviet moved, so Russia moved.
It
was the mouth-piece of the awakened masses. Already it was the government behind the government.
Charles
Edward
Russell was the only
member
and
of the Commission
who was
able to get
the least bit close to the Council of

Soldiers' Deputies.
Workmen's
him with
foreign
as
They
treated
more courtesy than any other

a renegade
socialist.
official
representative, though they looked
upon him
I went with him to the Soviet one day when he was to speak. His buttonhole flaunted the reddest red ribbon in Petrograd,
and
his white linen
39

collar, the
only one in the huge assembly, was

scarlet tie.
encircled
by a flaming
it
They
listened
to his message, but
had no meaning for them.
had come to Russia to help make Russia fight, and the dream of the Russian revolutionist
He
was not only to stop Russia from fighting, but to put an end to all wars. Separate peace was
no part of the revolutionary scheme. Even the most radical members of the Soviet were playing for larger stakes. Internationalism was at
the bottom of their creed, and
it
was not
until
ten months after the fall of the Romanoffs that

I heard a revolutionist admit the possibility of
separate peace.
It
was at a meeting
in
the
Duma, when Leon
Trotzky, after the armistice
negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, said:
have given the Allies a month to come into the peace negotiations. Perhaps we can
give them a
"We
they need it, but we can't go on forever. Russia is bleeding to death, and to save her we have to get back to the
little
more time
if
mills
and the farms and the
factories."
They
ism
in
believed that the failure of international-
1914 did not necessarily mean the failure
of internationalism in 1917, for

40
now
the interna-
DIPLOMATS
tionalists of the
world had before their eyes the example of Russia and the Russian Revolution. The revolutionists had no hope from the German
they could but speak loud enough, the masses of the
autocracy, but they were confident that
if
German
people would rise and overthrow their

soldiers,
government, as the Russian workers,
and peasants had done. few men believed, with the elder Liebknecht,
that the
the
German people could never be free until German military power was defeated at arms,
tried frantically to continue the war.
and these
"Peace, but not separate peace,"
was the
and
re-
phrase on every Russian tongue.
The Root Commission
realized this,
it
alized also that the question
was not whether the
government had the will to go on fighting, but whether it had the power. The mission was interested in helping to give Russia that power.
Perhaps what
sia's
it
failed to realize
was that Rus-
spiritual needs
were as great or greater
than her material needs.
The thing above
every-
thing else that Russia needed to keep her in the war was a cause. Root, "battered old campaigner," as he styled himself, was not
unmoved

by the sincerity and immensity of the movement in which Russia was engrossed. It was not his
day
it
was the day of the diplomats from Hes-
ter Street.
He might not agree with their judgtheir methods, but I think
ments or approve
felt
he
himself in the presence of something big,

three years, Ivan had fought desperately
something epochal.
For
in the trenches, simply because the Little
Father
had told him
to.
Sometimes
it
was
for love of
the Little Father that he fought.

it
More
often
was for fear of him and

still it
his generals.
More
often
was only
in response to that blind

instils in
obedience to orders which absolutism

those
whom it enslaves.
Sometimes Ivan did not

Petrograd was that he must
Russia was
know
until he reached the big city of

it
what enemy of Holy Russia

fight.
Manpower was cheap
in Russia.
correspondingly careless as to how she wasted it. Ivan fought as no other soldier in the world is
asked to fight fought with bare hands, fought with pitchforks, fought with guns that he took from the hands of comrades as they fell in battle.
One day Ivan
discovered that the Tsar, in
DIPLOMATS
whom he had believed, was just a little man whom
he was able quite easily to put aside.
eral, the colonel,
The gen-
the captain of the regiment
they too were little men. He need not salute them he need not respect them he need not obey
; ;
them.
The
great
driving
force
fear
was gone.
That greater driving force of war a cause Ivan had never known. No one had bothered
one had cared enough. Suddenly the facts were changed. The old gods were swept away in a single hour. Tsar
to give
him
one.
No
and church and country crumbled together. Revolution took their place. Russia had a cause.
"Save the Revolution!" became the rallying cry. To save the Revolution, and what it meant to
each,
became the common
faith.
However men
differed in their definition of terms, they were all
agreed as to the slogan.
Russia would follow
no other
flag.
Ivan was tired of war
tired to death.
Being
Russian, he had no relish either for killing or for dying; but when the occasion demanded, he did
both with a degree of resignation and despatch that is almost Oriental. Living always in the

shadow of danger, he acquired an indifference
it
to
as sublime as
it is
tragic.
Essentially a fatal-
he accepted the facts of life as they came to him, and contented himself with thinking occaist,
day of the people off there in the vague future when all would be different. He was n't interested in other men's territory. Consionally of that
stantinople had no
meaning
for him.
He
was
not naturally imperialistic or militaristic. He wanted to govern himself and let other people
govern themselves. Freedom had come, and he wanted desperately to enjoy

it,
to use
it
to
its
limit
and
still
to save
it.
Diplomatically,
point.
Germany was
in the strategic
She pressed her advantage. She asked Ivan to do what he wanted to do to stop fight-
ing.
The
Allies asked
to
Ivan to do what he did

un-
not want to do
go on fighting. The Root Commission made it plain
that,
derlying the whole question of aid to Russia, was the fundamental question of whether Russia was
going to continue in the war.
The July
offensive
was the answer of Kerenwas a blunder from

44
its in--
sky to the Allies.
It
DIPLOMATS
ception
a forced offensive for which Ivan was
not psychologically prepared. He invested no part of his faith in it, and he chose to be shot as a
coward and
traitor rather than continue
it.
few picked men went into battle and put up a brilliant and courageous fight; but the rank and
file
of the Russian soldiers were not behind them.
Ivan could no longer be driven to battle by the whip of fear, and he had not yet come to know
Germany
the Tsar.
as a greater
enemy
to himself than to
The Root Commission waited

fensive well started before
it
to see the of-
left
Petrograd, but
did not remain to see the tragic end.
CHAPTER
WAR
fellows.
III
and revolution are
irreconcilable bed-
Mars
is
a jealous god, demanding more
and ever more
sacrifice.
Revolution
cries inces-
santly for larger freedom.

land,
all
Out
in that nebulous
beyond the edges of

close,
civilization, for
which
nations have a
common name
"the front "-
I came
ality of war.
very close, to the staggering reI came to know how revolution
wars on war, and war on revolution, and both on freedom and democracy. Conflict is the characteristic
element
of
revolution,
as
of
war.
in
Democracy
languishes,
and freedom sickens
the midst of conflict.
On that dismal gray day when I
slipped quietly
away from Petrograd, the capital was celebrating in a mild, half-hearted fashion the offensive on
the southwestern front.
With me went Peter Bukowski, carrying

his pockets
in
two of those most coveted of

46
all
docu-
ments to the war-time correspondent
the pass
that entitles the bearer to safe-conduct into that
forbidden territory where visitors are discouraged at the point of the bayonet. Only slightly less
important than the permits was Peter himself; for he was my voice, my ears, and my bodyguard though in this last capacity he proved
entirely superfluous.
Polish grandparents bequeathed to Peter a
foreign
name and an
it
Somebody
one
aptitude for languages. must have been a fairy, for every
else disclaimed all responsibility
put a
result
map
of Ireland on his face.
Two
generations of Chi-
cago,
U.
S. A., did the rest.
The
was a
typical
American,
one hundred and
seventy
pounds of bounding vitality, irrepressible good

nature, and plain boy.
Peter
won
the heart of
every one from Johanna Ivanovna to the Division Chief,
and paved
my way
from the
lazaret
to the trenches.
Peter,
upon the night of our

to honor the
departure, was torn with conflicting emotions.
The American colony was going
Fourth of July by consuming quantities of whitebread sandwiches from the Ambassador's pantry.
Peter wanted desperately to see the 'Russian
47

front.
The
vision
of stacks of
sandwiches
white-bread sandwiches
appeared before him,
but Peter would not be there.
went early to the station, in the hope of claiming two upper berths. There were no
longer any sleeping-car reservations in Russia, but there was an unwritten law that the person
We
who
was
first
put
his belongings into the
upper berth
entitled to sleep there, while the other oc-
cupants huddled together on the seat below or stood in the aisles. poked inquiring heads
We
into one
earlier
compartment after another, but the birds, to make assurance doubly sure, had
their
thrown not only
baggage but
their persons
in the coveted places.
dozed off to sleep, a girl who had fled from Riga at the German advance was sitting
beside me.
When I
I awoke an hour later, and she was
gone.
In her place was a round-faced, blue-
eyed boy drawing shiny black cavalry boots over

blue breeches with a golden stripe
down each
bulging side. He looked too young for war, but five red stripes on his sleeve proclaimed as many
wounds.
All night long the stream of
48
life
flowed in and
out.
All night long a changing procession
filed
through the compartment. Men stayed for an hour or two, and dropped off at wayside stations.
Some, just out of the hospital, were home on sick Some were returning to their positions at leave.
the front.
sleep
All were tired
tired to death; yet
was out of the question.
Each man un-
folded his
own
scrap of story, expressed his
opinion about the war, and dropped out to room for another.
make
Peter
relat-
The boy stayed longer than

offered
the others.
him a
cigarette,
and soon he was

tale.
ing a round, unvarnished

loff
Smirnoff Brusi-
age eighteen. He was in school at Petrograd when the war broke out, and he made up his mind to enlist. His father,
was
his
name, and
his
a Russian general, promptly ordered him to stick

to his books.
He
as
promptly rejected parental

to join
the
commands and ran away
army.
From his pocket he drew a handful of medals. They were the four Orders of St. George. Each
marked some daredevil adventure and hairbreadth escape. The last, the Gold Cross,
of them
highest
award
in the gift of the Tsar,
was given
by the
for blowing
up a
railroad bridge used
49

Germans
plies.
for transport of provisions
and war sup-
him, war was a great game. The abstract ideas of revolution meant nothing. The theories that
To
were keeping
his
peasant brothers in
the trenches
tirely.
awake
is
at night passed
him by enwith
"There
no sport
left in fighting
the Russian army," he said.
"I
am
going to cut
down
lines."
south and try to break into the English
He
left
and toward morning there
sat in his
place a simple fellow with a strange look in his vacant eyes. He unwrapped a big hunk of black
bread, and with a pocket-knife pared off scraps
and ate them.

fast,
When he
had
finished his break-
The soldier beside him drew the wabbling head down to his shoulder, as he might have done to a tired child. "The war,"
he nodded to sleep. he
said, laying a gentle
is
hand on the boy's hair

compartment
with soldiers
over one
"he
not right here."

I opened the door of the
When
in the
morning, the aisle
was
filled
asleep on the floor.
I picked
my way
human bundle
after another to the platform, to
negotiate the purchase of wild strawberries, bot50
of fresh milk, and prim little round bouquets of wild flowers which the barefoot peasant chilties
dren were offering for sale. Late that afternoon we moved into the com-
partment of a kindly colonel, with whom Peter had made friends. We were all bound for the
and the only other occupant of the compartment was Corporal Kuzma, of the proud age of fourteen. Already he had
section of the front,
same
seen two and a half years of service, and had been

twice wounded.
He had
a wonderful red pencil,
which he fingered affectionately as he took us into his confidence. This pencil had been given
him by a nurse in the hospital where he had been convalescing from his last injury.
The
corporal's father, according to his story,
was a captain of staff, and his mother a first-aid nurse. Both had been killed at the beginning of
the war.
An
older brother, an officer in the
army, had been killed in action; and a sister, seventeen years old, who was a nurse, was
drowned while swimming the Niemen River to get away from the Germans. The corporal, lone
survivor
of
his family,
naturally
joined
the
army.
Two
promotions were the reward for

51

valor under
story.
fire.
His uniform confirmed

that he
his
The corporal did not say

ured
red
it
was pressed
Peter
again.
for funds, but he offered to dispose of his treas-
pencil
for
consideration.
it
bought
for a ruble,
and presented
it
Then
the Colonel bought
for a ruble,
and he
too followed the rest of Peter's example.
"But," added the Colonel,
"if I
ever hear of
it
you
selling
it
again, I will not only take
away,
but I will have you dismissed from the army in

disgrace."
I wanted to see more of this astounding child; but when we changed trains at the next station,
he too dropped into the stream of the procession
and disappeared.
The next part of the journey we made sitting upon a wooden bench in a fourth-class carriage. That night we picked up a sleeper again, and the
Colonel insisted on stowing me away in the upper berth, with a tiny pillow that his daughter
had made for him tucked under

confided to Peter that I was the
my
head.
He
first
American
woman
he had ever met.

father
"My
was
in the
army before me, and
52
my grandfather before him," he said, 'but I am going to send my boy to
4
with a sigh
America
to
be educated for some other profession." He understood the revolutionary soldier no
more than young Brusiloff did. This lusty new thing that had come crashing into the ordered
ways of
his military life,
and snapped
its
fingers
in the face of all the traditions
world was founded,
left
fell
upon which his him hurt and helpless

still
and bewildered.
his voice.
light,
asleep
listening to
it
The next thing
I knew,
was dayoff
and he and Peter were hurrying me

a note of
the train.
Not
scape.
war jarred the quiet of this landNothing in the wooded slopes or in the
deep meadows remotely suggested war.
The
Colonel sniffed the morning air. "It smells like the front," he said, with a sense of real satisfaction.
We parted. He was to continue on the main

line for
another station, while
we
shot off in a
different direction.
The
rest of the
journey we
made
squatting on the floor of a box-car.
The
only other passengers were two soldiers and a tiny pansy-faced girl of six with great gray eyes,
53
THE RED HEART OP RUSSIA

shy and wistful. She sat upon the edge of my skirt, spread out for ithat purpose, and seriously
crunched sunflower seeds.
Our way
led through fields of rye, yellowing
in the sunshine,
and potato patches, green and
promising. On the edge of the distant clearing a herd of cattle grazed, and along the road-bed women, barefooted and in calico dresses, worked
with picks and wooden shovels. An army motortruck, driven by a woman, chugged across our
path.
At
into a
ten o'clock the branch line came to an end
in a cleared space in the forest,
and we stepped
huge tent canteen with a Red Cross sign above the door. Soldiers, a hundred or more,
slouched over the tables, slicing off hunks of black bread with their pocket-knives, and washing the
bread down with tea drunk from tin cans.
They
were of the earth, these men.
Their dun clothes
were heavy with the brown mud of the trenches, their faces weathered to the color of the soil,
their
tawny
hair sun-bleached.
sky-blue or shining black, lifted
Only their eyes, them out of the
monotone.
One
of
them brought us
54
tin
cups of steaming
tea,
and explained that he and

to direct us to the lazaret,
his
comrades were
Peter asked
just out of the first-line trenches.
him
which was to pro-
vide us with sleeping quarters.
He
pointed to-
ward
the forest, where a thin wisp of gray
smoke
curled slowly
up
It
into the blue sky,
and volun-
teered to take us there.

fields
We
crisp
started across the
on
foot.
was a
and
clear morning.
recent rain had washed and polished every little wind stirred gently the blade of grass.
feathery tops of the distant pines, and rippled the field of blue corn-flowers, white buckwheat,
yellow mustard, and purple clover-bloom. Surely this could not be war these painted
fields,
those dark, peaceful woods!
The thought
had barely registered, when a dull boom! boom! boom! came suddenly to my ears. Peter looked
at the soldier
and
at me.
"It
's
war,
all right,"
first
he
said.
Beyond
the
row
of trees
we came abruptly
upon a cluster of low frame buildings, log cabins, and brush-covered dugouts. From the top of a
tiny log bungalow, with blue curtains at the win-
dows, an American flag was flying. frisking colt kicked up its heels on the edge of the clear55

ing,
and a
flock of friendly geese
came waddling
to
meet
us.
stopped in front of a large building, and a "Sister of Mercy in the Russian Red Cross uni-
We
form opened the door. She led the way to the dining-room, and ordered coffee with warm milk from the
lazaret's
own
dairy.
Suddenly we heard a whirr above our heads. The nurse ran to the door, excitedly motioning An aeroplane, a German to me to follow.
aeroplane
sky.
was outlined against the cloudless

fire to
battery opened
to the left.
the right of us,
and another
The
shots
came
in quick
succession, like the beating of a
drum.
tiny
cloud of smoke appeared in the wake of the flyer. third and a Another broke just above him.
fourth shell exploded below.

missed.
The gunners had

on
his de-
The German
sailed safely
structive way.
"You had better get inside," said a Russian "There will be a doctor, who joined the group.
shower of shrapnel fragments in a minute." "We have been rather expecting an aeroplane
raid to-day," he continued, lighting a cigarette.
"Our
fellows celebrated the victory
on the other
56
front yesterday by peppering the
artillery fire,
Germans with
retali-
and we thought they might
ate with bombs."
We spent the day exploring the hospital, built

upon ground once occupied by the Germans, and from trees felled there in the forest and sawed
on the premises with a primitive two-man-power Russian saw.
With
the exception of one hospital captured
from the Austrians, there was not a more complete plant along the entire length of the great
front and the flag flying over the tiny

;
had a real
significance
bungalow an American was respon-
sible for that hospital.
Dr. Eugene Samuelevitch Hurd, the Russians called him, and, though he was already on his
way
had
to
left
France to help
a record that
his
own countrymen, he
realize
made me
what one
unofficial
American can do
in the matter of diplo-
macy.
Peter and I in the days to follow had cause to be profoundly grateful; for on this sec-
tor of the front one needed only to be

to have all
American
ways opened unto him.
At
dinner
we
sat
down
57
to excellent Russian
fare: shchee (sour
cabbage soup), kasha (boiled

buckwheat), stewed meat, potatoes, and bread at least three shades lighter than any we had seen in
Petrograd.
After dinner, Johanna Ivanovna, head nurse for the military hospital next door, took me for a
walk through the woods. Johanna Ivanovna was young, fresh, and softly, sadly pretty in her
Sister's garb.
She was lonesome out there on
the edge of the forest.
She spoke a little English, rusty from long disuse. She was the only person in all those fields and forests who understood
even a stray word of my native language. As we turned back toward the lazaret, a Russian rocket flashed into the western sky.
It
was
followed by another, and another.

scouting party had been sighted outside the barbed-wire entanglements," Johanna
"A German
Ivanovna explained from long experience

front.
at the
"The
rockets are torches to help trace
their
movements."
I slept that night on a narrow army cot in a typical camp room, the only unfamiliar feature of
which was a strange contraption
hanging on the wall. mask, and bore the warning:

58
knapsack It proved to be a gas-
like a
"Keep your
gas-
mask always with you it will save your life." I put the mask back on its nail, and turned down the gray army blankets, to find white sheets. My clothes had not been off for two nights, and
those sheets were alluring.
My last
recollection
artillery
was the sound of the low grumble of

the firing line to the west.
on
Division Staff Headquarters was our immediate objective next morning.
breechka, with
one horse in the shafts and another to run alongside in the strange Russian fashion, was at the
door of the lazaret when
we
finished our coffee.
The road
led over a hillside

:
Russian village a cluster

flax.
and through a typical of wooden houses hudhomes, weather-
dled together in the center of fields of grain and
They were
pitiful little
grayed, straw-thatched, and dilapidated. The main street was thronged with soldiers, who had
buy picture post-cards, cigarettes, and candy from the meager store. Beyond the vilto
come
lage
we headed
into the forest,
bumping our way
over a military corduroy road of rough logs laid together like the boards in a floor.
The wagon path
bristled
on both
sides with
barbed-wire entanglements, and the woods were 59

honeycombed with trenches. They were timbered with logs, and the roofs were covered with
moss and
delicate wild flowers.
sentries
at me. glanced curiously Women, even Red Cross nurses, seldom penetrated this far into their domain. But they al-
The
lowed
stopped in front of an old-fashioned farm-house with a pas-
me
to pass unchallenged.
We
growing over the veranda, and a rustic summer-house built around an aged tree in the
sion-vine
front yard.
The
General's aide came out to meet us.
He
took us to the commanding officer, and we drank tea while plans and permits were being made and
horses saddled.
visit
Once permission was granted
to
the Russian front the military host left noth-
ing to be desired.
The General
and
he,
offered
me
his aide as a guide;

,
Lieutenant Gusaroff mounted
me on
his
beautiful black "Arabka."
The pony and
I cov-
ered eighteen miles through the dark forests that day, and before I left we were thoroughly familiar with that sector of the front.
Every mile
there
of the
way was bounded by

60
trenches running off
into the depths of the woods.
Here and
we passed a pine snapped
in the
middle as
if it
had been a match, and great cavities in the earth marked the havoc of enemy artillery fire.
lunched with the Colonel and a group of young officers in a log-lined dugout, with flowers
We
and an elaborate hanging lamp made from pine cones suspended above it. In one corner of the living-room was a tiny wire pen
upon
the table
in which three
baby chickens were being carefully
reared.
Table conversation turned to the question of Most the offensive on the southwestern front.
might once more mean active participation of all the Russian Some were dubious. It was evident troops.
of the
men were
hopeful that
it
that none of
them
liked the
new committee
It
sys-
was hardly to be managing expected that they would, for it meant a com-
tem
of
the army.
plete overturn of all their training.
were sympathetic with the Revolution; a few were revolutionists: but most of them
Many
wanted revolution to behave according to their own well ordered plan and not according to the
nature of revolution.
The
quiet
of
the
morning departed.
61
The

rumble of the guns seemed quite close now. When luncheon was over, we all mounted horses
and rode
off in the direction they called.
We
came
to a halt
on the shores of another and much

lashed
larger lake, a great inland sea nearly fifteen miles

long.
The wind had
its
surface
into
whitecaps, and waves
came beating noisily against
the barbed-wire entanglements that poked their
heads formidably above the water.
Here we dismounted, and they
led
me
to an
observation station cleverly screened by trees.
Gusaroff adjusted the glasses and turned them over to me; then "Bvistra, Miss Beatty,
Young
bvistra!" he shouted.
I looked, and at the opposite side of the lake a great cloud of sand rose suddenly into the air.
A section of a German trench blew up in a puff

of smoke.
Stretched out before me, beyond that powerful lens, were the Russian and German trenches.
Above
the
ground the barbed -wire entanglements
zigzagged across the gray hillsides. Under the surface, facing each other with watchful eyes and
ears
lines
and ready trigger-fingers, were two long of silent men.

62
In the reserve trenches beyond were more men
thousands of them, talking, sleeping, playing
cards,
ants
brewing tea, living their lives like so many who were of the earth and knew no other
world.
A flotilla of tiny armored water-craft guarded

the Russian end of the lake, and between
the
little
it
and
German
lake-craft
was a
stretch of
mined water, which either would hesitate to cross. It was hard to realize, looking through those
glasses at the clouds of dust
side of the line,
now on
the
German
now on
the Russian, that every
time the slim young lieutenant called "Bvistra!" the reaper of battlefields was shouting a more
final
command
to
some one or more of the dwell-
ers
under the earth.

at staff headquarters again,
Back
we
sat
down
line
at a table with military
maps spread
before us.
Gusaroff was an engineer, and loved every

of the complicated maps.
"If
we had had enough ammunition in 1915 you
would not have to be fighting to-day," he said. "Here" pointing to a spot in Poland now in
the possession of the
Germans
"sixteen thoufive
sand of us went into battle in 1915, and only 63

hundred of us returned.
The artillery retreated, not because it did not want to go on fighting not because it was beaten but because it had
only two rounds of ammunition left." He moved his finger to another point on the
map.
"There
is
hill
here," he said, "which our
men
charged forty-eight times. On the fortyninth attack there were only four survivors out of
three thousand,
and they shot themselves rather than surrender to the Germans. Reserves arrived in time to rescue the situation, but too late
to save the
men."
officer; "if
"Yes," said another
we had had
the
ammunition
in 1915, 1
would be back with Mother
Moscow, practising law, and all this business would be over. What will happen now I don't
know.
It
is
very bad.
revolution do not get on well torealize that revolu-
"War and
gether; yet
tion
we younger men
had to come.
Things could not go on as
they were."
64
CHAPTER
SPECKS ON
IV
THE HORIZON
it,
WAR as Russia has known

it
war
as they
know
on the western
front,
war as I saw it made Yet war as it came to me

terrible
a different thing from in the dark forests in July.

is
in flashes
was
real
and
enough to
fix itself everlastingly.
afternoon I sat in a bomb-proof observation station and looked through a tiny round hole
across a
One
narrow
strip of
sand-dunes to a tangle
lay like a bone
of barbed wire.
No Man's Land
between two hungry dogs. Less than two hundred feet away, beyond that last strand of vicious
metal, were the Germans.
I sat there, trying to believe it trying to realize that here, a few steps distant, so close that
I could almost reach out
my
hands and touch
them, were the fighting forces of the
man who
stands to most of the civilized world as the arch-
enemy of
liberty
and peace.
65

Suddenly
my
wandering mind stopped
short.
black specks appeared for a moment above that metal line. On the instant two rifles cracked
short, sharp,
Two
and
final.
specks were gone. I caught my breath. It could not be true I had imagined it.
!
The
The
officer beside
me was
his
speaking.
I had
not heard.
I begged and he repeated:
pardon abstractedly,
couple of Germans put their heads over the trench bad thing to do." When I returned to the Colonel's headquarters a
"A
few minutes
later, I
found him surrounded
by soldiers beaming with pleasure and being beamed upon in return. The Colonel, a stocky
man, brisk and alert, introduced me to his men, and pointed to a section of barbed-wire entanglement that they had just brought in. It
little
was not the crude Russian entanglement fashioned from crossed logs sawed from the forest,
but the made-in-Germany kind with slender portable metal standards, easy to fold and easy to
carry.
Under
cover of the darkness of the night
before, they
this
had brazenly helped themselves to sample of German efficiency, and before the
66

enemy awoke
trenches.
to
the
situation
the
successful
raiders were chuckling happily in safety in their
When darkness came again, the scouting party

once more ventured forth; and this time, after a short sharp fight, they came back bringing a
German with
rades to die.
a shattered hip
left
by
his
com-
The
prisoner, a lad of eighteen,
was from
Dresden, and he told
me
it
was
his first night in
the front-line trenches.
I saw him on a cot in
the Siberian Hospital the next day.
At
the foot
plying him with questions and filling long sheets of foolscap with the answers. Occasionally the boy turned his
of his bed sat a Russian
officer,
head to the pillow and sobbed with pain and exhaustion.

sionately.
The nurse looked
at
him compas-
"Heaven knows, I
boy.
don't like the Germans/'
she said, "but I can't help feeling sorry for that
He is suffering terribly."
can stand no more," she
said.
A woman doctor stepped up to the officer.

"He
I stooped to brush the flies from his feet tuck the sheets around them. He looked
67

me and managed
a feeble and a grateful English
"Thank you." The next night a deserter was brought

was from Alsace.
in the trenches
in.
He
He told us that the Alsatians

In addition, a German
officer
were alternated with Germans or-
dered to watch them.
officer continually patrolled the rear of the line.
It
was
raining,
less vigilant.
was apparently The man watched his chance, and and the
fre-
slipped
away under cover of the storm. Johanna Ivanovna, Peter, and I went
quently in the evenings to a near-by village where a young Cossack captain, Vasaili Pestrakoff and
,
command
of a hundred
aircraft battery. nial of all
operated an antiThe Captain was a living deserious
men
my
preconceived ideas of Cossacks.
He was
in his
and almost puritanical denunciation of the moral code preached

quiet
and
and practised by some of his brother officers. One evening we found the regimental band
drawn up outside the entrance to the village. It was St. John's Day, and the occupants of the straw-thatched huts were out in the brightest and
best calico clothes their
meager wardrobes perdis-
mitted.
All of the soldiers within walking

68

tance of the battery were there.
When they saw
us coming, the band proudly played an American march "in-honor of the Amerikanka," ex-
plained Johanna Ivanovna.
Russian waltz
followed, then a lively peasant tune.
Russia has danced
little
since the war, but the
music was a real temptation. soldier grabbed a barefoot woman and whirled her into the circle.
Another followed
another.
example, then another, and The women danced with flying feet
his
and
Three years of living in constant apprehension, fleeing from home in terror

tragic faces.
and straggling back again to take up life within sound of enemy guns, had painted fear and resignation into their great, soft eyes.
The
children
huddled together in a group on the edge of the ring, peeping shyly up at me from under their
kerchiefs
ity.
when
curiosity got the better of timid-
tion
The telephone had tinkled out the informathat three enemy aeroplanes were headed
and while the crowd danced the Cos-
that way,
sack Captain's observers searched the heavens
with powerful glasses. The band struck up the Russian Mazurka, and
Captain Pestrakoff, at the urging of

69
his soldiers,

whirled
me
into the circle.
One and another
of
the dancers dropped out

side-lines.
and marked time on the

steps were as strange to
The Russian
my
feet as the language
was strange
to
my
ears,
but the music was
irresistible.
What
relation
there was between what

sian
Mazurka I
we danced and the Rusdo not know; but we danced and
the crowd cheered.
Suddenly the Captain became conscious that we were alone in the circle.
He colored and abruptly stopped.

him
in the air again
Half a dozen
men grabbed him up on their shoulders and tossed

soldier
and again. dashing little from the Ural Mountains caught me and
whirled
me
through a succession of spirited steps
to the end of the music.
As
I left the crowd, another soldier saluted and
slipped something into

alasta (please).
hand with a shy posh' I looked down and found two
my
tiny emblems, the crossed wings and propellers

of the aviation corps, cleverly fashioned from the
aluminum cap of a German
shell.
news that the enemy aeroplanes were avoiding the battery, and had passed far to the south. From the dance we went
tinkled the
The telephone
to the Captain's
brown canvas palaika

70
(tent),

where a tiny brass samovar bubbled. There was candy from Moscow, an almost unheard-of lux-
ury
in those days,
by the
villagers
and wild blueberries gathered and presented in gratitude for
the security that the Captain was bringing. I noticed a balalika in one corner, and at our urg-
ing our host clicked off the favorite folk-songs of the Don Cossacks.
following night we were again drinking tea in the little palatka. The hour was late.
The
The sky was hung with

sible
clouds.
drizzle patlast poscaller.
tered on the canvas roof.
It
was the
time and place to expect an aerial

a visitor," he said.
Peter.
in the vicinity,"
The Captain jumped suddenly from
his chair.
"We have
"There
is
"What?" asked
an aeroplane
he
said.
We
listened,
but our untrained ears distin-
guished nothing but the rain on the roof. followed the Captain to the square. Deserted a
We
moment
barefoot
before,
it
was now
filling
quickly with
men
in various stages of night-dress.

all lights in
The Captain ordered

and sent the men
white night-clothes
the village out,
who were
71
targets in their
back to dress.
He
gave

the
guns and stand ready. In low tones the men speculated as to whether
to load the
command
they were in for a bomb attack on the battery or a Zeppelin raid on the railway junction. By this time the purr of the motor was audible even to
Peter and to me.

in whispers.
Alternatives were discussed
shot; but
if
The Captain might fire a random it were a bomb attack, this would
merely disclose the position of the battery. He waited and said nothing. deathly hush fell upon the square. For an
interminable half-hour
we
listened to the
hum-
ming of the motor, momentarily expecting a message from the bird-man and quite oblivious of
the
softly
falling
rain.
Then gradually
the
sound diminished in volume, and

altogether.
finally ceased
The
rat-tat-tat of the
machine-gun
of the adjoining battery announced that the fate

of the visitor had passed beyond the possible control of
our Captain.
We went back to the samoThe

crisp, clear
var and fresh glasses of tea. Fair weather had departed.
days of blue and gold were gone.
Rain came
ut-
down
in torrents,
and dry boots and I became

first
ter strangers.
The
wet day I spent in the
72

hospital.
In the morning I slipped on a nurse's smock and went to the surgery.

It was not
war out
there in the moonlight.
The
tinkling telephones, the captured Austrian
machine-gun, the cellar full of American ammunieven the whirring of the motors and the tion,
boom
seem
of the guns to the west,

real.
could not
make
it
But here
in the surgery
were shat-
tered bones and tortured flesh, the agonized faces

of patient men,
and the
terrible stench of
gan-
grene.
This was war.

first
The
sent
anguished cry of "Gaspadin docteur"

It
me
to the operating-table.
was impossiI put
ble to stay in that
room and do nothing.
my
knowledge timidly to work, and before the morning was over two or three patients were calling me "Sestra" and taxing my meager
first-aid
knowledge of Russian and my intuition to its Once the doctor beckoned me to look at a limit.
horrible
leg.
mass of decayed
flesh that
had been a
"Dum-dum bullet," he told me. At luncheon Peter was in high

had taken hold of
a great game.
73
his imagination.
spirits.
War
it
He
saw
as

"You
'd better see the surgery," I suggested.
He
refused, but he spent the afternoon with
me in the hospital wards, to which we took
a sup-
ply of cigarettes and matches. All of Russia was gathered under that roof.
There were Little Russians, merry-souled chaps, blue-eyed and fair-haired, who came from a land
where the sun shines much and the earth yields There were Veliko'rus, or Big Rusplentifully.
sians,
inured to hardship, their sterner struggle

soil
with the
faces.
photographed upon
their
determined
fair-haired
Scattered
among them were
Cossacks from the
Don and
dark-skinned Cos-
sacks from the Urals with a strain of Tartar
marked
in the slant of their eyes
and the
color of
their skin.
Sometimes
it
was an Esthonian who
looked up from the pillow, a Pole, a Lett, a Lithuanian, or a member of one of the numerous
Caucasian or Siberian
tribes.
:
There were three

Vasilli,
who stood above the
others
Hamid Galli,
and Ivan Markovitch.
Hamid Galli had a great joke on himself.

day long he lay on
his
All
laughed with his jet beads, and with his mouth, spread wide across 74
He
back and laughed about it. eyes, black and shining like

a row of gleaming white
teeth.
He
was a Cos-
sack from the Urals, small, brown, and wiry. He and his pony from the Urals, wiry, dark, and
spirited like the
master himself, had been at the
front for three years.
Time
after time they
had
both gone into that mad rush of man and horse and steel called a cavalry charge, and come out
Three weeks before, the pony had climbed up on his hind legs and toppled his master off. For a Cossack to be thrown from
without a scratch.
any horse
ter.
is
either a swearing or a laughing
mat-
Hamid
Galli swore, then he tried to pick
himself up.
move.
pony.
amazement, he could not His leg was broken broken by his own To Hamid Galli that was a hundred-perhis
To
cent, joke.
He
began to laugh.
He
was
still
laughing when the stretcher-bearers carried him
away.
it.
He
And
laughed while the doctor was setting the nurse told me that even in the night,
it
when
the ache of
kept him awake, he laughed

in the next bed, smiled also;
effort of blood-
quietly to himself.
Vasilli,
who was
but
Vasilli's smile
was the feeble

eyes,
less lips
and trusting blue

75
deep sunken from
long suffering.
Vasilli's smile
was the courage-

ous effort of the
spirit,
and there was no mirth

white hand rested on
serviceable
behind
the
leg.
it.
Vasilli's deathly
bandaged stump of a once
young
they wheeled him in to the operatingtable, where the doctor was coming to dress his
One day
wounds.
Vasilli
had had one previous experi-
ence with operating-tables.
came
into his eyes.
He
frightened look said nothing until the
doctor left the room; then in a whisper to the nurse

:
"Seestra,
is
he going to cut off
my
other leg?"
"No, no; he is going to dress your leg to make you feel more comfortable," she answered.
The
feeble, patient smile crept into Vasilli's
blue eyes.
"Is n't he good to
me?" he
in the
said.
Ivan Markovitch,
smiled nor laughed.
face ghastly gray
ward beyond,
neither
his
Ivan lay on the pillow,

his breath
and
quick gasps. rettes, he shook his head, and
When
coming in Peter offered him
short,
ciga-
we had to stoop low
over the bed to catch the faint words that came in
whispers from his
lips.
In the whole wide world Ivan could

76
find
no

cause for laughing. He had tuberculosis; and the pity in the eyes of the sister, when she looked
at him, confirmed
my worst fears.
Ivan was twenty, and the only boy in a large family of girls. His people were peasant farmers, and until he was drafted for a soldier, he
spent
all his
days in the
fields,
cultivating the
hemp and
flax
and planting potatoes.
ter before in the trenches he took cold.
The winHis
lungs began to pain, and he applied several times to be allowed to see the doctor.
"It was before the Revolution," he whispered.
"They would n't
listen to
me.
The
officers told
me
to
Now
go back to my regiment where I belonged. look at me."
Peter said something intended to be cheering; but there was a note in the voice of the American
boy of the bubbling

there before.
spirits that
I had not heard
Two days later I met Ivan's nurse coming from

the field with her arms full of white daisies.
wet with raindrops, and made a wreath and a long garland, and when we had
finished
We took them,
we went
to the crude
little
chapel on the
edge of the wood.

77

Leaning against the wall was a wooden cross, sawed that morning from a freshly cut pine. Infrom a tiny altar lamp fell across a white pine coffin and upon the face of Ivan. We arranged the garland upon the coffin, and
side, the light
tied a
bow
of white gauze on the wreath.
Then
we
stood back and looked silently a minute at
the peasant boy
from the distant country who

either the joys or the limi-
had not
lived to
know
tations of freedom.
Two other nurses slipped through the door

stood beside us.
and
Tears came into the eyes of
one and another, and they gave me a strip of white gauze because I had forgotten my handkerchief.
was a common language that we spoke the only one we had in common. Ivan was Ivan, to us a peasant boy who died in the years of his strength and youth, alone and
It
:
far
from home.
Ivan was
us,
all
the boys of the
world to each of
and a
special
boy or two
in
some particular corner of the world.

I doubt
if
I could have danced that night,
however tempting the music or importune the The sun and the partner. Yet one must dance
!
78

moon
dying.
rise
and the current of
life
flows
on,
lies
heedless of tortured flesh, unmindful
who
For two days I stayed away from the trenches. The rain oozed through the cracks in the rough pine boards in my room and spread in puddles
over the
floor.
It showed no signs of ceasing.
One morning,
very
regardless of Peter's protest,
we
set out to cover the three miles to the staff.
A
at
much
astonished
young Russian met us
the door.
"How
did you get here?" he asked.
we had come with much ease and some exhilaration on our own feet, and were
I explained that
none the worse for the walk.
"But surely you don't want to go to the You will be up to trenches on a day like this your knees in mud. You can't imagine what it
!
is
like,"
he
said.
first
"I have a very strong desire to find out at hand," I answered.
He consulted two
brother
officers,
who
in turn
consulted the telephone.
Finally they decided:

foolish."
"It
is
possible,
but
79

but frowning indulgently upon me, they put me in the General's big gray moStill smiling,
tor-car,
and we started for the
forest.
Twice the heavy car stuck in the mud, and

Lieutenant Gustaroff told
me
to tell
my
governpost.
ment
to send
some American Fords parcels
Just as we reached headquarters the sun came

slashing through the heavy clouds,
and for three
hours the downpour ceased.
were waiting for us, curious to see these strange Americans who did n't stay indoors when it rained. made our way through
officers
The
We
sandy trench roads, untimbered ditches bordered with shaggy lavender poppies, green oats, and
blue cornflowers clinging close to their sloping
sides.
Then we went
into the trenches.
There
were miles and miles of them, zigzagging back and forth like the Greek border on a guest towel.
At
intervals big metal plates
were placed near
the top,
flanked on each side by sand-bags. Through the observation holes I peeped out on
No Man's Land
with the barbed-wire entangle-
ments of the Germans beyond. Once they told me we were within a hundred and sixty feet of
the enemy's first-line trench.
80
Blessing of the banners of the Battalion of
Death
The Woman's Regiment on review
before
its
departure for the trenches

Our
the
friends at the staff
mud.
The
first
had not exaggerated time we came to a puddle,
one of the
carried
officers lifted
me up
in his
arms and
me over. I protested that I was prepared for mud and did not mind it. Not understanding, he paid no attention.
While I con-
tinued to protest, he carried

puddles.
me
across three other
Soon puddles disappeared the trench became a continuous river of red mud. I escaped, and plunged in
boots.
up
to the top of
my
high
Twice we
lost
our
way
in communication-
trenches and had to retrace our steps.
Intermit-
tent artillery fire punctuated the journey,
and
an
to
officer
who spoke a
little
English taught
me
distinguish
"flutes,"
between "Baba-yaga" and the the "trunks" and the "suit-cases."

twelve-inch shells that carried whole-
The big
sale destruction to the soldier
and
his carefully
evil old
built trenches
were named after the
Rus-
sian witch.
the air
ninecases.
The two-inch shell, whizzing through with a shrill whistle, was the flute. The
shells
and ten-inch
one point
were trunks and
suit-
At
we
discovered that a "suit-case"

81

had preceded us and caved
in the timbers.
Once,
when
the lay of the land permitted, I
was
al-
lowed to put my head over the trench to see the remains of a Russian village. All that was left
were the skeletons of two Russian brick stoves and their chimneys.
Electric light
and kindred comforts such
as
they have in the enemy trenches were utterly lacking here. Mud! Mud! Here was noth-
ing but
mud
In one small trench-house
a bur-
row
ground in the back- wall of the trench three soldiers were playing cards another was
;
in the
washing
his
shirt.
Here and
there
we found
men
polishing their guns, and others brewing tea in aluminum pails over tiny fires. More of them
were snatching a
little
sleep in order to be vigi-
lant for the night.
Though none
seemed
the
little
of
them saluted the
officers,
there
to indicate disorganization here ; but
commanding Colonel told me that some of his men had deserted, and more were sick. Scurvy was making frightful inroads in the Russian
ranks on every front, and to the north, in the
vicinity of Riga, the
men were
in a pathetic con-
dition as a result of poor food.

The
dirt,
the
flies,
the vermin, the monotonous
round, the endless soup and kasha, the waiting these are the things that take the last ounce of a
man's courage and
faith.
The Russian,
like the
Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Belgian, had had three years of it. The others knew for
what they fought.
Each had a
cause; each
had
a country standing behind him and trying to send some fragment of comfort into his meager life.
The Russian went
to the front
simply because he was told to. he should be leaving his trenches, but
derstandable.
and stayed there It was tragic that

it
was un-
The danger
on
of warfare
made
little
impression
me that afternoon, but I came out knowing that men who have stood three years of trench
life,
whether they be English, French, Italian, Russian, or any other, can not be dismissed as
"cowards" by those who stay at home. An hour later eight of us were gathered at dinner in the
officers'
mess.
The Colonel had
just asked for
a second helping. Suddenly, as one man, we dropped our forks and listened. Boom! Boom!
Boom!
big guns crashed in our ears. Baba-yaga, the flutes, the trunks, the suit-cases 83
The

all
of
them
at once.
The sounds
of the after-
noon were
rose
like silence in
comparison.
Two men
left his
and hurried away.
The Colonel
plate untouched.
One
of the officers hurried back and said someofficer.
thing in Russian to his commanding turned to me.
He
"You
were."
got out just in time," he
are bombarding the trenches
"They down where you
said.
And
this
was war!
I had seen the trenches-
walked safely through them with men whose chief concern was that I, a woman, should not
Hardly an hour later, the guns of the enemy were crashing them to pieces. Always the German was there, waiting, playing the diabolical game of war just as effectively in the silence as when the guns were pounding
get
my
feet wet.
death into the trenches.
Sometimes
it
was a
newspaper printed in Russian that found its way down from Berlin and into the Russian trenches
;
sometimes
it
was a proclamation signed by Ger-
man
soldiers.
The newspaper
84
contained
ac-
counts of British and French defeats and Ger-

man
victories,
with
its
profuse
proffers
of
aid
sprinkled through
news
item.
"You
are finished, Russia, but
we
will try to
help you," one of them read. "It will be good for you and good for us to make a separate peace.
We
save
are not your enemies.
spoil
your Revolution.
it."
We do not want to We want to help you

sit-
One
afternoon, while a crowd of us were

officers'
ting at tea in the
dug-out not far from
the front-line trenches, a soldier appeared at the
door and called the commanding Colonel out. When the Colonel returned he had a sheet of
yellowish paper covered on both sides with neat
Russian
script.
scouting party outside the
barbed-wire entanglement had suddenly come
upon a group of Germans hiding in a hole in the sand. The Russians expected to be fired upon, but instead the Germans ran up a white flag and
motioned them to come forward.
"This," said the Colonel, "is what they gave
them."
It
was a German proclamation, compiled with

85
thorough knowledge of the psychology of the

Russian
soldier.
The Colonel read
it
aloud,
pausing between sentences to permit Peter to

translate.
"Russian soldiers!" [he began]. "The chief comthe Western Army tells you that the army of the southwest front has broken our lines and achieved a great victory, and that we are defeated. This victory is called the beginning of a fight upon the outcome of which depends the freedom of the Russian people.
mander of
Asking you not to be traitors, he tells you that you must defend the freedom, the fortune, and the honor of
the Russian nation.
"All this
is
not true.
Our
lines
were not broken.
They are very strong, and the divisions were forced to retreat with losses greater than ever before.
"It
is
known that
the Russian soldier
is
always ready
to shed his blood, but it is also known that your commanders shed your blood for causes that are not worth
it
life
on the
for ideals that can never compensate for loss of field of battle.
"We presume that you have not forgotten the place of the people's sacrifice The order of the commander of the western front is interesting because it does not correspond with what is printed in your papers.
!
the
"Have you forgotten what was said on the day of Holy Easter? That represented the holy ideal
It seems that peace, a gen-
of the Russian Revolution.
eral honorable peace, without war and indemnities, is the ideal of the Russian people and was the cause of
fall of Nicholas. This advance, these horrors, seem the only result of the sacrifice of those who sleep
the
in the brothers' sepulcher.
86

hear the cry of the suffering workmen? Does the cry of the blood of the soldiers this appear to be your wish for peace ? "Has the blood of the Revolution been spilt for nothing? The sacrfice of blood was little to what will
?'
"Do you Do you hear
now
be spilt.
"Freed from the old regime, you have fallen into the hands of the English, French, and Americans. Remember, we welcomed your freedom, did not interfere with your internal affairs, and offered you a brother's hand. We offered you peace and asked you to send representatives from your government to talk over Swindled and bought by English gold, you repeace. fused to believe us, but in numberless instances your brothers have proved the historical fact: We are not your enemies. We do not wish you to perish, or your
freedom.
"Those who fear separate peace furnish you with money and all kinds of material, and all this is a proof of your unbelief in us, which will bring you to your We stand firm and quiet, and await your adruin. The advance of English and French has been vance. defeated, and we will also defeat you.
"THE GERMAN
SOLDIERS."
"How shall
you answer
it?" I asked,
when
the
Colonel had finished.
lieutenant
from Moscow,
whom we had
christened enfant terrible because of his bound-
ing spirits and irrepressible pranks, raised his
arms to imitate an aimed gun.

87

"Boom!
them," he
Boom!
said.
Boom! we
easily
shall
answer
But
it
was not so
done as
said.
Those
verbal gas-bombs, falling
upon the
simple, trust-
ing mind of the Russian soldier, worked more havoc than heavy artillery and hand-grenade.
"My men
would
erals told
are behaving pretty well, but I
n't dare order
an offensive," one of the gen-
me, just before I left the front. The hereditary distrust between the officer class
and the private was growing continually. Old and ancient grievances were unforgotten, and,
^many of the innocent paid the price of the guilty. There were all kinds of Russian
as always,
officers,
just as there were all kinds of
common
day of
soldiers.
The
soldiers
were sometimes undis-
criminating, even as the officers in their
absolutism had been undiscriminating. The memory of punitive expeditions that fol-
lowed the Revolution of 1905, when thousands upon thousands of revolutionists were shot and
sometimes brutally tortured by order of Russian officers without even the pretense of a trial, still
lingered.
The
soldiers generally looked
upon
their officers as the natural enemies of revolution,
88

and regarded orders with suspicion. Tragedy followed tragedy on the Russian front, and entreachery and pitiful misunderstanding on all sides were chiefly to blame.
emy
Militarism was a product of autocracy, and the
Russian front, at terrible cost, demonstrated that the larger freedom and the militaristic ideal can
not live in the same world.
tionist
knew
this.
He
The Russian revoluknew in the summer of
1917 that freedoms, large or small, were not safe, in Russia or elsewhere, as long as one militaristic
power lived to menace the others. He knew that the sword of militarism must be broken beneath
the feet of the peace-hungry multitudes of the
world before even the most limited of the free-
doms are
safe.
What
the Russian did not
know was
that his
brothers in
Germany
to
are themselves enslaved to
the military ideal,
freedom
is
and that the only way to win defeat them and the power that
keeps them in bondage.

the only
He
did not realize that
way
to give constructive
is
Germany back
Germany.
to the world
to destroy destructive
89
CHAPTER V
THE BATTALION OF DEATH
NEWS
sia.
even bad news
travels slowly in
Rus-
Sidor Petroff pushed open the door of Bachkarova's forlorn little meat-shop one frosty
When
March morning
in 1915, Bachkaroff
had already
been dead three months.
Marie Bachkarova was
slicing off a
hunk
of
sausage for the boy Vashka, whose father was killed in the first clash of Russian flesh and Ger-
man
She looked up and saw Petroff standing there, leaning on his crutches. Something colder than the chill wind from the
arms.
snow-covered street crept into the heart of Marie Bachkarova. The knife fell from her hand and
clattered heavily to the meat-block.
Her gray
eyes opened wide in one flash of horror. They closed and opened again, dull and dumb with
misery.
90

The boy Vashka, who had
seen news come to
the village before on crutches, slipped quietly out of the shop without his sausage.
Sidor Petroff hobbled away a few minutes later to show his old friends the Cross of St.
When
George glistening on his trench-grimed soldier blouse, he was unaware that Destiny had walked
a bit of the
way with him
that morning.
Destiny, marshaling her forces for a campaign against another group of ancient fetishes and
cherished ideals, had allotted
nificant part in her project.
him a small but
sig-
Destiny, out in that
desolate village of weather-grayed log houses,
was preparing a shock that would be felt beyond the birch-wood forests and the Siberian steppes.
Destiny was preparing the most amazing
gle
sin-
phenomenon of the war the woman soldier. Not the isolated individual woman who has
buckled on a sword and shouldered a gun through the pages of history, but the woman soldier
banded and fighting en masse
machine-gun
companies of her, battalions of her, scouting parties of her, whole regiments of her.
From
the anti-suffragist Destiny
was going
to
take forever his ancient and overworked formula:

91

"Women
From
can not bear arms!
Therefore they
should not vote."
the feminist she was about to take her
:
most triumphant retort "Women don't need to bear arms they bear soldiers."
Against the fervid
life will
faith of the Pacifist
that
"women, who pay such a
terrible price to give

it
away" she was preparing to drive her saddest and bitterest blow. Destiny, in short, was about to bring confunever be able to take
sion
upon the
tidy pigeonholes in which

all
we keep
our firm convictions ready for
emergencies.
Marie Bachkarova, the crude, illiterate peasant woman whom Destiny had chosen for the big
part,
was
as ignorant as Sidor Petroff of the im-
portance of the moment. She could barely write; but that night laboriously she penned a letter.
The
her
desolation of her
life
must have crept
into
crude appeal. Somebody answered with permission to join a regiment of men forming in
the vicinity of
Tomsk.
Marie Bachkarova became
her long brown braids
From
that day,
simply "Bachkarova."
Her woman's name and

92

went
first.
the ruffle
She changed her on the bottom for
trailing skirt with

soldier's breeches
tucked into the tops of high black boots.
A
full-
vizored cap daringly replaced her folded kerchief,
and the transformation was complete. The strength and breadth, and the deep,
street,
toned voice of a man, were hers.
Passing her
on the
you had to look three times to make After the first few days sure she was not a man.
she
of grumbling protest, her comrades seldom re-
membered
was a woman.
In the two years that followed, Bachkarova was three times wounded, still Destiny kept her
deeper purposes concealed.
spring day in 1917, when Bachkarova was lying on a cot in a military hospital, a shrapnel bullet-hole as big as a man's fist in her back, some
One
one brought news of desertions in the army. "The men won't fight," said the Red Cross
nurse,
gauze upon the wound. "They are a pack of cowards. They are drunk with freedom."
laying
fresh
was not altogether the truth for every deed of ignorance and cowardice, the Russian front
It
:
has registered one of heroism.
But Destiny does

not stop for anything so complex as absolute She lingered at Bachkarova's bedside truth.
that afternoon long
enough to do her work. "The men won't fight," said Bachkarova to
herself.
"The men won't
fight!" she repeated.

in her back,
Then, suddenly forgetful of the hole
she raised herself quickly from the pillow.
"Women women
Exhausted, she
fell
will
fight!"
she
said.
had her big idea. one of the most pathetic and most dramatic
of the Russian
back on her pillow. She It was the idea that produced

facts
summer
of 1917.
On
three
an afternoon
in early June,
two years and
months from the day that Sidor Petroff hobbled on crutches into the meat- shop to tell
Marie Bachkarova that her husband was dead, Bachkarova, illiterate peasant woman from an
obscure Siberian village, knelt in the great square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Petrograd,
while the priests sprinkled holy water, and thousands of necks craned for a glimpse of her. On
that
day she became a
full-fledged officer of the
Russian
world.
Army
the
first
woman
officer in the
Her command, two hundred and

94
fifty
young

soldier
women, stood at
attention while three gen-
erals of high
rank buckled on her sword, and,
after their fashion with brother officers, kissed
her on both cheeks.
Into the keeping of Orlova they gave a proud gold-andwhite banner. It was a gift from
Kerensky, and from

sleeve
its
standards fluttered the
colors of the Battalion of Death.
On
each
girl's
were the same distinguishing marks red "for the Revolution that must not die," and black
"for a death that
is
preferable to dishonor for
Russia."
Everything in Russia begins with a proclamation.
The women The
soldiers fired three verbal vol-
leys before they even
saw
their first
round of am-
munition.
first
was an appeal to Russian
women.
"Come
with us in the
roes," they said.
name of your fallen he"Come with us to dry the tears

Protect her with
and heal the wounds of Russia.

your
lives."
To
hope.
the soldier they said:
"Our
hearts are about to give
up
their last
We
weak women
95
are turning into very
tigresses to protect
our children from a shameful

yoke
to protect the
freedom of our country.

shall look
Woe unto you when we

contempt!"
upon you with
To the deserters they said: "Wake up and see clear, you who
are selling
the bread of your children to the Germans. Soon, very soon, you will prefer to face ten Ger-
man
is
bayonets to one tigress.
We
pour out our

of words!
It
maledictions
upon you.
the
Enough
time to take to arms.
Only with a storm
of
enemy off Russian soil. Only with bayonets will we obtain a permanent We go to peace. Forward against the enemy
fire will
!
we sweep
die with you!"
Equipped
blanket-coats
first
as
infantry,
fully
armed, rolled
Petro-
swung
across their shoulders, the

in the
woman's regiment
their
world
left
grad.
head was Bachkarova, the peasant. Beside her marched Marya Skridlova, the aristocrat, aide-de-camp, tall
At
and
patrician, daughter
of a famous Russian admiral
and Minister of
Marine.
Bearing the banner of white and gold came Orlova, big and stron'g, head erect, and deep,
96

gray eyes looking straight ahead at a vision in which the cheering multitudes in the
serious
Petrograd played no part. Orlova's She wanted to die for eyes were fixed on death. Holy Russia. She had her wish. Three weeks
streets of
later she carried her colors into battle,
and
fell
before the
first shell
that broke across the Ger-
man
line.
Destiny permitted that for the better part of a week I might share the wooden boards and soup and kasha of these soldier women. Late on a dreary, rainy night, I dropped off a
troop-train
at
the
military
station
of
Malo-
detchna, and prepared to wait for
me
the
way
to the
dawn to show headquarters of the Women's
Battalion.
had that day plowed through miles
oozing over my shoe-tops, and I was taking into barracks with me some recently acquired and very definite impressions of the horrors of war.
of trenches, with the red
mud
Many
came
times in the days that followed, as I
to terms of friendship with

girls,
one and another
of these soldier
I thought of the line of
barbed wire bounding

the
No
Man's Land, and of

itself
German
steel
waiting behind to sink 97

into the soft,
warm
still,
flesh
of
my
clear
companions'.
More
often
I shuddered at the idea that
these girls with big eyes
and
open hearts
were going out to kill; for I was among those whose pigeonholes held a fond faith in the coming of the day when women would bear neither arms nor soldiers, but a race of human beings gifted with the fine art of living together in peace
and amity. Here were women
two hundred and
fifty of
them
of the
way to battle, and women's army soon to be.

their
on
just a fraction
Destiny, dawn, and an occasional inquiry led me at six o'clock in the morning to their door.
They were housed
in
two pine-board
full of
sheds, sand-
wiched between a dug-out
Austrian prisoners and the barracks of a battalion of Cossack

cavalry.
I found myself in a building a hundred or more feet long, with steep roofs sloping to the floor,
and just enough width to allow for two shelves The eight feet deep and an aisle between.
shelves at the
moment were covered with brown
bundles, and as I followed the sentry a hundred
close-cropped heads emerged from them. 98

Above my
head, hanging from the rafters, was
a jungle of gas-masks and wet laundry, boots, Beside each girl water-bottles, and kit-bags.
lay her
rifle.
At
the far end of the barracks
we
stopped before one of the brown bundles, and the sentry announced, "Gaspadin Nachalnik." The
man's head and man's shoulders of Bachkarova

arose
from the blanket.

stirred,
Next
to her, another
and Marya Skridlova, aide-decamp, moved over and invited me to come up. In that spot, between the social poles of Rusbundle
Rheta Childe Dorr and I spent all the nights and most of the days in the week that followed.
sia,
Without delay I changed my too feminine dress for "overettes," and established myself as
unobtrusively as possible in the
racks.
life
of the bar-
Soon the brown bundles were
all
up and shed-
ding unbleached muslin pajamas for their soldier uniforms. Once dressed, they tumbled out into
the rain, and lined
up with
their brother soldiers

fill
from the other barracks to

hot water from the
their pails with
common
kitchen.
We
ate our breakfast sitting
bunk, slicing off
on the edge of a hunks of black bread, asid wash99

ing
it
down with
tea
from
tin cups.
Bachkarova
me, eating sardines from a can and wiping her greasy fingers on the front of her blouse. Orlova spent most of her time washing
sat next to
these blouses, in a vain attempt to keep the
Com-
mander clean. The routine

of the
of the day began with the reading
army
regulations.
The women
soldiers
had chosen to submit

the Russian
tion.
to the stern discipline of
army
in the days before the
Revolu-
The
ceaseless rain
made
drilling in the
field impossible,
but within the narrow limits of
the barracks they marched back and forth, count-
ing "Ras, dva, tri, chetiri; ras, dva, tri, chetiri," for several hours a day. Very soon one soldier girl after another detached herself from the mass and became to
me
an individual
a warm, personal
human
being.
Bit by bit I gathered their stories. Little by little I discovered some of the forces that had
pushed them out of their individual ruts into the mad maelstrom of war.
There were stenographers and dressmakers among them, servants and factory hands, university students
and peasants, and a few who

100
in

the days before the
sites.
war had been merely paraSeveral were Red Cross nurses, and one,
the oldest
member
of the regiment, a
woman
of
forty-eight whose closely cropped hair
was turn-
ing gray, had exchanged a lucrative medical practice for a soldier's uniform.
Many had
joined the regiment because they
sincerely believed that the honor
and even the

and nothing
existence of Russia were at stake,
but a great
human
sacrifice
could save her.
Bachkarova, in the days of the Siberian village had simply come to the point where
Some,
like
anything was better than the dreary drudgery
and the drearier waiting of life as they lived it. Personal sorrow had driven some of them out
of their
girl,
homes and on
to the battle-line.
One
a Japanese, said tragically, when I asked her reason for joining: "My reasons are so
many that
would rather not

girl
tell
them."
There was a Cossack
from the Ural Moun-
brown, questioning eyes, and deep, rich color tinting her dark cheeks. Her father and two brothers had been
killed early in the war.
tains, fifteen years old, with soft,
Soon
101
after, her
mother,
who was a
nurse,
had died from the
effects of a

German bomb thrown upon the hospital where The girl was absolutely alone she was working.
in the world.
"What
else is left for
me?" she asked, with a
pathetic droop to her strong
Two
girls,
young shoulders. Red Cross nurses, who had already

five times for service to
been decorated four or

their country, said they
had seen too many brave

the Kaiser's altar.
men
suffer
and
die for Russia to be willing to
see her sacrificed
now on
There was a lonesome
little girl,
named Leana,
whose big brown eyes, wide and questioning, will always come back to me when I think of women
She was a Pole, and had fled from Warsaw before the advancing Germans. She
and war.
was
sixteen years old,
love than for killing.

child, and,
and far more hungry for She had the ways of a
though we had no common language but that of the heart, we became fast friends.
arm around me, and we would walk up and down the barracks, never
She used to
slip
her
speaking, but understanding quite as well as if we had many words. Sometimes, when I looked
at her
and
realized that all her potentialities
108

would be wasted out there on the
eyes
filled
battlefield,
my
with tears.
for
They had come

soldiers,
many
reasons, these
women
to
but
all
of
them were walking out
meet
death with grim confidence t*hat it awaited them there in the dark forests a few miles distant.
If there seemed to be any fear of them forget-
ting
it,
if girlish spirits
ran too high in the bar-
racks,
Bachkarova quickly recalled it. "You may all be dead in three days," she
say.
would
Volga boatsong or the rollicking peasant tune they were singing would change to a deep, melancholy mass,
with
all
And soon afterward the
the tragedy of the
moment and
into
it.
of mil-
lions of other
moments packed
girl's
In a cord around each

tion of sacred medals,
neck was a
cloth
collec-
pouch whose contents I speculated upon. "What will you do if you are made prisoner?"
I asked Skridlova one day.
and a tiny
"No
one of us will ever be taken alive," she an-
"It swered, and pulled out the little gray pouch. is the strongest and surest kind there is," she said.
Orlova seldom
spoke. 103
From morning
till

night she went about the barracks, doing something for some one. I had no soldier coat to
wrap about me
at night,
and Orlova spread a
couple of tents over the hard boards.
When the
black bread came from the commissary, Orlova saw to it that we had our soldier ration two
pounds and a half a day, more than any of us could eat; and just at the moment when I was most nearly
petrified with cold, she
tea.
was sure
to
at
appear with a pail of hot

night,
At noon and
when two ragged little children from a near-by village came to beg the "leavings," Orlova always
managed
to have
an extra lump of
sugar for each of them. She was born for service, for mothering, for doing; but her solemn face, almost grim in its
crude strength, remained fixed on her vision of death, and her thoughts were all for Holy Russia.
comedy member of the Battalion. She would have been an invaluable find for the
Nina was
the
"movies."
gussets in
the hips.
She was so big that she had to put her soldier blouse to make it fit around
She had a wide mouth, an upturned nose, and blue eyes, alternately full of fun and tears. She kept the Battalion laughing all of
104

the time that
was not busy putting comforting arms around her and drying her tears.
it
A bundle of strange incongruities was Nina

utterly
unfathomable to an American.
Ever
since the
war began she had been jeopardizing
her ample neck in the service of her country. The bars of an Austrian prison held her in check
for six months,
and she was considered such an
important catch that her captors demanded no less a person than a famous Austrian general
when terms
cussed.
of exchange of prisoners were dis-
She spoke a very little English, much French, and a smattering of half a dozen other languages.
One day
in
I looked
up and found her
kissing her
rifle ecstatically.
She caught the bewilderment
my
eyes.
"I love
my
gun," she said almost defensively.

to inquire into
"But why?" I asked, trying

that strange back-country of her
tions.
mind and emo-
"Because
too.
it
carries death.
all
I love
all
my
bayonet,
I love
arms.
I love
things that
carry death to the enemies of
my
country."
One night I
sat
on the edge of the bunk, brush105

ing
it.
my hair.
Then
She put her hand out and touched
"Do
close-cropped head. you like short hair?" I asked her.

no.
she felt her
own
"For a woman,
answered.
It
ion.
For a
soldier, yes," she
was a key-note. Nina spoke for the BattalSoldiers and women were, for them, things
they cut off their long braids and soft curls, and pledged themselves to fight and
apart.
die for their country, they
ficial femininities.
When
put aside
all
the super-
Powder-puffs and cosmetics had remained at home. Just once I saw a tiny mirror emerge
from a kit-bag long enough to permit its owner to examine critically a small red spot on the end
of her nose.
But
the essential womanliness in
them cropped
out in a thousand ways.

night the rain pounded upon the low roof, and all that week our feet and boots were
Day and
soaked beyond
all
drying.
It
was
bitterly cold
in the barracks,
and the odors of cheese and
sausage purchased at the soldiers' store mingled with the smell of wet clothes and greased
boots.
106

Skridlova acquired a severe cough, and her cheeks were flushed with fever.
Marya
"I
am
afraid I will never
make a
soldier," she
said one day, with a
wry
little
smile; "I
am
too
demoiselle."
I recalled the
first
time I saw her.
It
was
in
the barracks at Petrograd, the day she joined the regiment. She still wore her Red Cross nurse's
uniform, and the lovely oval of her face was framed with braids of soft brown hair. She was
twenty-five years old, spoke five languages, was
pretty, accomplished,
and popular.
she had everything to live for,

certain that her hours
Apparently but she was quite
on earth were numbered, and briefly. Every girl in the barracks was devoted to her, and they were continually coax-
ing her to eat just another spoonful of the soup and kasha, which she loathed.
"Why
"What
the
did you come?" I asked her. "Because I felt I had to," she answered.
else is there for
is
us to do?
The
it.
soul of
army
sick,
and we must heal
I have
come, and I shall stay until they give me a cross a metal one or a wooden one," she added.
Every night Bachkarova announced

107
that to-

morrow they would
leave for the trenches,
and and
were
every night the announcement brought a cheer.
In the morning they packed

rolled
still
their kit-bags
up
their blanket-coats; at night they
in the
same
there
boots.
place.
it
Always was the
was something lacking. First The army shoemaker was not
used to providing for such small feet, and the commissariat was sorely taxed. When the boots
arrived,
the
medical
supplies
were
missing.
When
the big metal soup kitchen on wheels had

it.
come, there were no horses to pull went by, but gradually the entire
week
camp
equip-
ment was
collected.
Late one Sunday afternoon Bachkarova and Skridlova were summoned to staff headquarters.
they returned, they brought the news for which every girl in the barracks was longing. The Battalion was ordered to march at three
o'clock next morning.
When
Neither the hardness of the plank beds nor the cold kept any one awake that night. There
was far too much excitement to think of

108
sleep.
Gas-masks and wet laundry, water-bottles and

boots, trench shovels
and
kit-bags,
came down
from the
rafters in one
mad
scramble.
Before the dawn had come everything was in

place,
and they trudged away through the rain

of Malodetchana, singing a Cossack
their
and
mud
marching song to lighten

spirits.
packs and their

into bat-
All the world knows

tle
how they went
shouting a challenge to the deserting RusAll the world knows that six of sian troops.
in the forest, with
them stayed behind

crosses to
wooden
mark
their soldier graves.
Ten were
decorated for bravery in action with the Order of St. George, and twenty others received med-
Twenty-one were seriously wounded, and many more than that received contusions. Only
als.
fifty
remained to take their places with the
men
the
in the trenches
when
the battle
was
over.
The
battle lasted for
two days.
Among
pines and the birches of the dusky forests they
fought.
With
forty loyal
men
soldiers,
they be-
came separated from the main body of the troops, and took four rows of trenches before they were
obliged to retreat for lack of reinforcements.
109

I heard the story from the lips of twenty of the wounded women. No one of them can tell
exactly what happened. "We were carried away in the madness of the
moment," one of them said. "It was all so strange and exciting, we had no time to think
about being afraid."
"No," said Marya Skridlova; "I was not None of us were afraid. We expected afraid. to die, so we had nothing to fear."
Then
the demoiselle
came
to the surface again.
"It was hard, though. I have a cousin he is Russian in his heart, but his father is a German
citizen.
He
was drafted he had

:
to go.
When
I saw the Germans, I thought of him.
pose I should
kill
him?
Yes,
it
is
Suphard for a
woman
to fight."
Skridlova got her Cross of St. George, and she came back to Petrograd walking with a
Marya
limp as a result of shell shock. "There were wounded Germans in a hut," she
said.
were ordered to take them prisoners. They refused to be taken. We had to throw hand-grenades in and destroy them. No;
"We
war
is
not easy for a woman."

110

I asked about Leana.
"She was one of the

Skridlova answered.
six to stay behind,"
Marya
in six-
"She was wounded
teen places, and died in the hospital after hours

of frightful suffering."
a stool beside a hospital cot in which one of the wounded girls lay was a German helmet.
On
She pointed to it with pride. "He was wounded," she said. "He was sort of half kneeling, and I hit him over the head with
the butt of
my
rifle
and took the helmet away."

Then,
For a moment I could not speak.
reaching for a straw to save my tottering world, I said: "He was still shooting, of course?"
"No, no. He was wounded." She had blue eyes, soft, kind blue
lips
eyes,
and
that curled
up
at the corners.
She was
twenty-five years old, and had been a village
dressmaker before she became a
soldier.
"But Russian women are

they
der.
different," they say

still
who have
all their
cubby-holes
in or-
But they
are not.
I have talked with them,
slept with them, played with them,
danced with
them, wept with them.
They
111
are like
women
THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA more melanlike humans everywhere. A

little
choly, perhaps, but in all their potentialities essentially the same.

well.
Destiny has done her work

five
There were nearly

1917.
thousand
women
sol-
diers in Russia at the beginning of the fall of
All over the country in Moscow, in Kieff, in Odessa they were learning to load,
aim, and
fire.
Bachkarova's
little
band
in its first
mad
charge
was but the advance-guard. The making of women soldiers became a business. People no
longer followed the uniformed
streets of Petrograd.
woman
about the
of
They became a matter
course.
In Moscow I saw a thousand of them, representing all spheres of life from the peasant to the
princess.
In the
officers'
school,
twenty
girls
were being trained to take their command. They were sleeping on boards, and getting used
and kasha, and all believed the trenches was close at hand.
to soup
their
day
in
Soon
after the fall of Riga,
Bachkarova
left
the hospital in Petrograd, where she had been slowly recovering, and went to Moscow to lead 112
Lining up for soup and kasha
Orrin S.
Wightman
Women
soldiers at rest
between
drills
The crowd hugs
the
Nevsky
to get out of range of the machine-guns in the July

riots
The Cossacks bury
their
dead

a fresh battalion of girls to the defense of the
new front. Out on the Finland

in training in barracks,
road, not far
from Petrostiff
grad, eleven hundred of them, after a
course
life
had a month of camp
to
harden them for service in the trenches.

girls
were to see their only fighting in the defense of the Winter Palace in the Bolshevik
Revolution, and none was killed.
These
When the Cossack troops of General Korniloff

prepared to march on Petrograd, the Provisional Government took stock of the forces at its com-
mand.
Prince Kudasheff,
who had been
drilling the
women
soldiers,
reported there was not a better
disciplined or
more thoroughly prepared unit
in the Russian army.
Bachkarova's adventurous battalion took no
thought of age or physical condition; but these later soldiers submitted to a rigid examination, conformed to all of the requirements of the men
of the army,
and were asked to adhere to a rigid

their
moral code.
They had
service,
own
transport and medical
signal
corps,
machine-gun
113
company,

and a scouting detachment of twenty Cossack women. Such was the woman
mitrailleuses,
soldier as
Destiny delivered her into a startled

^
world.
Her movement was
a failure, not because of
any shortcomings on the part of the women, but because it was based upon a false premise. It
assumed that the Russian
because he was a coward.
soldier left the trenches
He
was not: he was

lost all his
merely a disillusioned
old gods,
man who had
and had not yet found new ones worthy

can
of his faith.
Women
fight.
Women have
that,
the courage,
the endurance, even the strength, for fighting.
Vera has demonstrated

the other
it.
and
if
necessary
all
women
is
of the world can demonstrate
The
issue
Vera can
She
she must.
fight,
no longer a question of whether but whether Vera should fight.

feels
is
will fight
whenever and wherever she
She
a potential soldier, and will

is
continue to be until the muddled old world
re-
made upon a
basis of
human freedom and
safety.
CHAPTER
IN THE
VI
HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

Nevsky Prospect was
like
TURNING
into the
opening a telegram. I could never be quite certain what I would find there, but the first glance
always told the whole story.
Nevsky was
the revolutionary thermometer.
When
the City of Peter pursued the calm
and
normal way, the wood-paved avenue indicated the fact. When the hectic passions of revolt ran
high, the
temper of the populace was as plainly
registered.
was on the Nevsky Prospect, in the early days of March, that the first courageous crowd of men and women dared Cossack whips and saIt
amazed glances at the soldiers who gave them smiles and words of encouragement when they had expected the stinging lash and the
bers
and
cast
deadly blade.
It
was here that the multitudes
gathered for rejoicing when the victory was won, and here also they came, tragic and proud, bear115

ing their martyred dead upon their shoulders. Each succeeding moment of joy or grief or protest
was recorded
here,
and I quickly learned
to
read the signs. At ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning in July, I stepped out of the Nicolaievski Station into the
circle, to find
the mercury rising and the
of the hour strangely different
Nevsky from that with

Alexander III
which I had parted.

sat alone
The
talking crowds in the
Znamensky Square were gone.
on the bronze horse, undisputed monarch once more of all he surveyed. There
was
n't a street-car in sight.
The only
visible
izvostchik
wanted double his former price
to carry
me
to the
War
Hotel.
It
was the hour when shutters should be com-
ing down from shops. Instead they were fastened tight, and in front of the Gostinny Dvor
men were
out with hammers, nailing boards
across the plate-glass windows.
something already happened, or was something about to

I could not be sure.
Had
happen?
The
izvostchik
kept up a rapid-fire conversation, pointing an

excited finger occasionally toward a freshly
bullet-hole in the glass fronts.
made
116
IN
THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

the
moment I was interested in nothing in the world so much as my clean little blue-andwhite room and a hot bath. My trench khaki
was caked with
from the
At
mud and
reeked of the odors of
barracks and stuffy trains.

front, I
On
the
way back
had spent two
sleepless nights
sandwiched with fourteen other people into a compartment intended to accommodate four.
The
to
first
night I shared the upper berth with

It
another woman.
lie
was
so
narrow that we had
head to
foot.
There were no pillows or
bedding, and I
am
sure that neither of us closed
night I insisted on her sleeping alone, and I sat below, listening to the crowd
our eyes.
talk.
The next
Toward morning a pathetic-looking little peasant woman, nodding uncomfortably back

and
forth,
bumped
It
against me.
in
I glanced at
her hair.
poo.
was hopelessly
need of a shamdid n't really
I decided that, after
all, dirt
matter, and settled her head on
my
shoulder.
She went peacefully to
sleep.
This morning all that was past. With soap and water so close at hand, dirt mattered more
even than probable revolution. At the hotel I hastened upstairs without stopping to ask ques117

tions.
An
hour later I emerged, remade and
ready for anything.
Nevsky. Again the scene was changed, and there was no mistaking The Bolsheviki were taking possesthe signs.
uprising that Petrograd had been expecting hourly for weeks had come. The Bolsheviki, radical minority in the Soviet of
sion of the city.
I hurried toward the
The
Workmen and
geoisie.
Soldiers' Deputies,
were making
a demonstration against coalition with the bour-
Trotzky, workers from the factory districts and of sailors from the naval station at Kronstadt, had come
out to
Led by Nicolai Lenine and Leon the Red Guard, composed of armed
demand
banners
"all
power
to the Soviet,"
and
to
with
of
flaming
red
were
1"
crying:
"Down with the capitalist ministers

the
"Land
peasants!" "Control of industry by the workers!" and "Immediate general peace!"
The night before, thousands upon thousands of armed workers had marched through the
streets singing the "Marseillaise."
This morn-
ing they were continuing the demonstration in
more menacing terms. The deserted Nevsky was suddenly

118
filled
with
IN

Down
the street
came a huge motortruck, a vicious-looking machine-gun mounted behind and another on each side. It was filled
people.
with
Red Guardsmen and

rifle,
sailors.
its
Each man
was armed with a was pointed
and
threatening nose
in the direction of the crowd.
I stood there watching, wide-eyed and wondering, recalling that whispered prophecy that
had been sounding perpetually through the "The streets of Petrograd will run spring days
:
rivers of blood."
Could
it
be that these words were about to
come true there before

believe
it.
my
eyes?
I could not
looked as
Unreality was in the air. The truck if it had been wheeled on to the stage
from the property-room.
The guns might have been of papier-mache. The occupants themseemed like boys playing a new selves
game, rather than and to die.
like
men going
out to
kill
automobile driven by a civilian whirled from a side street. Three sailors and a couple
of armed factory workers ordered the chauffeur
to halt.
An
They backed
their
command by
point-
ing their guns at his head, and he promptly 119

obeyed.
One
of
them took the front
seat.
Two
stretched themselves flat on the
mud-guards and
pointed their rifles in front of them. The others climbed into the tonneau. The car whizzed
away out of sight. The crowds on the sidewalk kept one eye on the guns, and one eye on a convenient exit in
case of trouble.
I walked in the direction of the

I had gone a distance of three
the sound of a shot brought
Hotel Europe.
or four blocks
all to
when
a sudden stop.
The crowd turned
as a
single
man and
fled in the opposite direction.
The crowd was

than
I.
quicker and more earnest in flight
Before I had time to realize what had
happened, I had been knocked to my knees. I found myself jammed against the iron grating
of a basement door, with what seemed like half
of Petrograd pushing
A
off
through the bars. moment later some one in the rear shouted,
I picked myself
me
"Kharasho!" (All right), and the crowd climbed
my
back.
up unhurt.
soldier standing near
plate-glass
had been shoved through a window, and his face and hands were
covered with ugly cuts splashing blood liberally
on the sidewalk.
120
IN
I

waited while
a formidable armored car
passed, then crossed the street
and turned the
corner leading to the hotel.
Just as I reached the
entrance, I heard the rush of running footsteps
behind me, and turned to see a crowd of men,
women, and children tumbling out of the Nevsky

as fast as willing legs could carry them.
Off in the direction of the Gostinny Dvor the staccato rat-a-tat-tat of machine-guns sounded
a snare-drum, interrupted at intervals by the sharp, quick crack of rifles. However much those men with guns had
like the beat of
seemed
boys playing at being dangerous, there was no doubt that the sounds were omAll that day Petrograd lay terrified and trembling in the hollow of the Bolsheviki hand. Most
of the time the
like small
inous enough.
armored cars rode peacefully up and down the Nevsky. Now and then some-
thing,
nobody knows what, would start The guns rattled and the crowds ran.
things.
"Somebody shot from the window," one of the Bolsheviki would venture furiously. "Provokator! Provokator!" some one in the
crowd would
cry.

Occasionally the
moan
of a
wounded man
toll
rose
above the clatter of hurrying feet, but the guns
were mercifully inaccurate and the death

believably small.
un-
What the night might have brought

weather had been
in the evening
it
forth
if
the
fine,
no one can know.
began to rain, more dampening effect on the ardor of Russians than any amount of armed force. The populace stayed indoors.
Early and rain has a
There was no one on the armored cars rush up and
Nevsky
to see the
down, so they stopped rushing. The sailors sailed back to Kronstadt again in the boats that had brought them, and the Red
Guard
retired to the opposite side of the
Neva.
Before they left they encountered a group of Cossacks on the Liteiny, and turned the machine-
guns on them. The Cossacks wheeled their horses about and fled, but not before half a dozen
of them had gone
horses were
still
down
before the guns.
The
there next
tured out into the rain.

curious circle of
morning when I venAround them stood a

little
men and women and

who looked
boys
in red peasant blouses,
as though
they expected the beautiful ponies to rise up
IN

tell
again and
about.
them what
crisis
all this
trouble
was
The government
ministers
was
acute.
Most
of the
had resigned. The majority of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers had refused
to take all the power.
thankless task.
Taking power was a The Council was already the
government behind the government, and to become the government would be to become the
scapegoat for
all
the various brands of a discon-
tent growing daily
more rampant
difficult.
in Russia,
and
for all those that were to follow as food

scarcer
became
and
living
more
Also, the majority of the Deputies, in spite of the general demand for peace, had voted against an immediate and independent termination of the
war.
between the majority made up of Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists and the
split
The
Bolshevist minority was of ancient origin.
It
had
its
inception in the Socialist Conference in
Switzerland in 1903,
when
the Bolsheviki re-
jected the Menshevist proposal to
work with the
Russian
spread of democracy in Russia, and advocated armed revolution. Nicolai
liberals for the
Lenin, the leader then, as he
is
now. called the

Mensheviki "opportunists," and declared that the masses of the Russian people could never free
themselves from economic as well as political slavery, except by means of a class war.
When
Kerensky determined
to bring troops
from the front
to defend the government, the
executive council of the Soviet sanctioned the decision.
By
ment, or so
that day, a
noon on Wednesday, the governmuch of it as was still in office, began

its
to get things into
own hands.
On the Nevsky,
few of the food shops were open, but most of the shutters remained down and the doors
barred.
all
There were no
street-cars running,
and
the bridges except one were

city
swung open.
That part of the Neva, and is known

practically isolated.
as
beyond the the Petrograd side, was

that
lay
mained
to
closed,
Only the palace bridge reand guards from the troops loyal
Kerensky were stationed at the entrance and examined all who crossed over.
The rain came down in torrents, and the

were a
desert.
streets
In the afternoon I walked
to the
Dvortsovy Square, where the War Department and the General Staff were housed in a great
crescent-shaped building fronting the Winter
IN
The square had suddenly become an armed camp. Armored cars and Red Cross amPalace.
bulances, motor-trucks for transporting soldiers,
and
all
the paraphernalia that the Bolsheviki
had
similarly flaunted
on the Nevsky the day before,
was drawn up
in front of the Staff office, await-
ing signs of further disturbance. All day Thursday and Friday the troops came in from the front. Thursday morning a bicycle
regiment arrived, cycled through the city and That evening from across the Field of Mars. the War Hotel I watched an endless procession
through St. Isaac's Square. They came riding on gray horses, the descending sun flashing on the tips of their lances. Blankets
file
of Cossacks
and
tents, kit-bags
to their saddles.
were strapped The regimental band headed

balalakis
and
the procession, and the regimental priest and four
bullocks brought
up
the rear.
Sandwiched
in
between the soldiers and the priest were the soup kitchens on wheels, and the wagons filled with hay
for the horses.
cobbles,
They came
clattering across the
making such a din
that
it
hushed the
cheers of the bystanders to a whisper.
At midnight I heard a band outside the window

125

playing the "Marseillaise." I hurried into the square, to find another procession of soldiers arriving
from the
front.
When
the band passed
out of hearing, the soldiers tramped to a marching tune of their own making.
Thursday morning the Bolsheviki were still in control of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and
were directing their operations from the palace of a famous ballet-dancer who had been a favorite
of the Tsar.
Friday morning the Neva was swarming with Most of the shops opened, and the people.
street-cars
schedule.
were running on their usual uncertain The trouble seemed to be over, yet
Petrograd's nerves were not quite relaxed. At twelve that night I was lying in bed reading,
when suddenly again came
the unmistakable
sputterings of the machine-guns and the crack of rifles. I slipped into a dressing-gown and out
into the hall.
It
was rapidly
filling
with
officers
and
their wives, all in a similar state of undress.

lights
tell
The
could
were quickly extinguished. Nobody where the firing was, but it seemed to
be directly below us. I leaned out of the window on the sixth floor
126
IN

at the square.
and looked
Nothing was
visible
gray light of that darkest hour of the white night. There were no shouts, no cries,
in the strange
no single sound but the rattle of the machine-gun and the bark of the rifles.
The women
body
this
said.
is
stood about in frightened groups,
talking in hushed tones.
"It
's
civil
war," some-
"The
over."
streets will
run blood before
thing
An
them.
officer arriving at that
moment
reassured
"You have nothing

"They
to fear here," he said.
are fighting on the palace bridge across Some troops just landed from the the Neva.
front have been attacked by the Bolsheviki."
At one o'clock we crept back to our beds.

firing
The
had stopped as suddenly as it had commenced. At two the silence was broken by a few stray rifle shots on the Morskaya in front
of the telephone exchange two blocks After that there was quiet for the night.
away.
By Sunday fear had lifted from the heavy heart

of Petrograd.
Her
people were being happy
while they could.
St. Isaac's
Square was flooded

deep resound-
with sunshine.
The church
137
bells,

ing bases and tinkling sopranos, called the faithful to worship.
The nerves
laxed.
of Petrograd were completely re-
This sunny, smiling summer afternoon had been bought and paid for. But for the evidence of mangled bodies in the hospital morgues,
we might have dreamed

for the boarded
sentries
still
the
week just past.
But
windows
in the
Nevsky, and the
guarding the telephone exchange
and encamped before the Winter Palace, the sound of the machine-guns and the sight of the
frightened crowd fleeing in terror might have been only a nightmare. There were no rivers of blood
;
There was only a handful of victims where we had feared there

might be hundreds.
the gutters did not run red.
The
cess.
Bolsheviki proclaimed the uprising a sucThey said they had no desire for blood-
and wished only to make a demonstration of power. They had done that, and were satisshed,
fied.
The
riots
were
significant chiefly because
they introduced the Bolsheviki to a world that was soon to know much more of them, and because they foreshadowed events to come.
The Cossacks were
hailed as deliverers.
The
128
IN

The moderate
Socialist press
conservative and reactionary papers wrote pseans
of praise of them.
was
silent.
Though they had been
in favor of
the suppression of the Bolshevik uprising, their

traditional hatred of the system of force for
which
the Cossacks stood

to rejoice.
made
it
impossible for
them
Some
of the Cossacks refused to ac-
cept the role of hero, and passed a resolution declaring that they did not wish to be praised by
They made it clear that they were revolutionists who were with the workingthe bourgeoisie.
people and that they could not be counted upon to defend bourgeois law and order against the
masses.
was the beginning of the breach in the Cossack ranks a breach that was to be a
It
vital factor in revolutionary
movements of the
future.
Late one afternoon the

dead in
of St. Isaac's Cathedral,
soldiers carried their
silver coffins into the
great cool recesses

laid
and
them
in state
before the "holy gate," with the towering columns of lapis lazuli and malachite to keep watch
through the night. The next morning the soldiers gathered in the
square, black
mourning
flags fluttering
from the

tops of their lances.
There were thousands and
thousands of them
a military spectacle such as Petrograd had not seen since the days of the Tsars. The cavalry lined up on both sides of
infantry stacked their rifles and squatted on the cobblestones during the long
the square, their horses standing at perfect attention.
The
mass.
The
and
silver,
mourning robes of black carried ecclesiastical banners and the

priests, in
;
caskets were borne on ornate canopied hearses
drawn by black
wreaths of
horses.
There were Red Cross nurses carrying huge

artificial flowers.
Foreign diplomats
and members of the Allied military missions came
pay their respects. And, just as the last coffin was carried from the church, a limousine drove
to
up.
Alexander Kerensky stepped out and fell into line, and a mighty cheer broke from the
crowd.
The
funeral procession lasted most of the day.
Scouts rode along the line of march, ordering all windows to be closed against the stray shots of provokators. There were no carriages, no automobiles.
their
In Russia they follow graves on foot, and the tragic

130
their
dead to
strains of the
IN
Russian funeral music sob their way into your

very soul.
The
casual observer in Petrograd would have
said that revolutionary disturbances were a thing
of the past; that order had come to stay. But the casual observer would have failed to under-
stand the breadth and depth of the movements stirring beneath the surface.
As
past,
I stood watching the funeral procession
file
an acquaintance, opposed to the new Rus-
sian order, joined
me
it
for a minute.
"This
is
the
end of Socialism," he
said triumphantly.
On
the contrary,
was only the beginning of
the class struggle in the Revolution.
131
CHAPTER
OLD RIVERS AND
VII
DOCTRINES
NEW
LEON TROTZKY,
in jail.
Bolshevist leader, was secure
Nicolai Lenin was in hiding.
Those
employ of the German government declared he had escaped to Berlin. Those who still held to the belief that you can kill
who
believed he
was
in the
movement by putting its leaders behind bars, or driving them underground, proudly boasted
that the Bolsheviki were crushed.
One
a
little
night several of us were having dinner in Italian restaurant. The argument of the
there
evening
sia
was always an argument
in
Rus-
was about the origin of the Bolshevist movement. One man declared that the thing was a
German
was
his
plot.
There was a new member of the

at dinner that night.
American colony
Williams
Albert Rhys Williams. He was decidedly an American type, tall, with a pleasant, frank face and a delightfully inclusive smile.
name
He had
been in Belgium at the time of the Ger-
OLD RIVERS AND

man
NEW DOCTRINES
German
eagle.
advance, and had written a book on his ex-
periences in the claws of the
He
had come to Russia some time before, but had been away from Petrograd, meeting the peasants and workers.
for
He took no part in the discussions

Finally he said:
Bolsheviki you
some
time.
"I wonder
how many
We
looked from one to another,
know?" and had to
admit that our acquaintance in that quarter was

rather limited.
"You know, it makes such a difference when we know people," he said. "There is Peters,
now;" and he told the story of Peters, and of half a dozen others whom he had met.
would be ridiculous to suppose there is no German money in the Bolshevist move"I think
it
ment," he
said,
"because there
the
is
German money
itself is
everywhere.
But
movement
far
more
fundamental.
are
Remember, Trotzky and Lenin
preaching to-day the doctrine they were preaching fifteen years ago. It seems to me
short-sighted
sheviki
ideas."
and dangerous to dismiss the Bolwithout more knowledge of him and his
story of Peters
Mr. Williams's
had interested

me
especially.
I said I would like to meet him,
and Mr. Williams promised to bring him to dinner the next night. They came. It was the
first
and they opened many windows on the Revolution to me that would otherof
many
times,
wise have been closed.
Jacob Peters was thirty-two years old, and looked even younger. He was a Lett an intense, quick, nervous little
chap with a shock of curly black hair brushed back from his forehead, an upturned nose that gave to his face the suggestion of a question-mark, and a pair of blue
eyes full of
lish
with a
human tenderness. He spoke EngLondon accent, and referred to his

his little girl
English wife as the "missis," and to
in the language of all adoring fathers.
"Why
are you a Bolshevik?" I asked him.
"Well," said he seriously, "I Ve lived in London, and I
Ve
seen them on the
West
Side living
in luxury, in silks
and
satins,
with gold plate and
extravagant food; I Ve seen them on the East I Side, sleeping out under the bridges at night.
know much about your America, but I know that you too have an East Side and a West
don't
Side.
We
in Russia have fought too long
and
OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES sacrificed too much to be content with that. We
must
find a better
way, or our freedom
will not
be worth while."
"What
is
your way?" I asked him.

believes in the shortest cut to
"The Bolshevik
socialism," he answered.
"We
believe that the
people
who
till
the land
and the workers who
run the industries should control them; and that the masses of the people should rise up and put
a stop to capitalistic and imperialistic exploitation, which is responsible for war."
on other occasions, I learned something of Peters' life. His story is the story of most revolutionists of the Baltic provinces,
then, but
Not
where, in spite of German control, or perhaps because of German oppression, the revolutionists
were more radical and more intense than in
any other part of Russia.

ers are
The
richer
landown-
known
as "black barons," the lesser land-
owners as "gray barons." Peters was the son of a "gray baron." He began to question life as a
very small boy. "I worked in the
the thunderstorm
fields,"
he told me, "and when
me.
came up I prayed God to save Then, when the thunderstorm was over,
135

I began asking is there a God. derstorm came again, I prayed.
sent to see
When the
thunI
my grandmother.
One day On the way

all
was
met
a
a stranger.
that
We
walked together, and
it "was
long journey.
I asked him about
the things
were troubling me.
pamphlets. I had wondered
gave me two One was called 'The Tenth Man.'
He
why
father,
who was not
nearly
so clever as the workers, should have a whole
vote for himself, while the workers had only one

vote for ten men.
school I told
lished a
my
I read the pamphlets, and at comrades about them. pub-
We
paper about
it;
but the teacher confisparents.
cated
it
and sent for
my
My
that
father
beat me, and I hated him.
From
left
moment
I became a revolutionist."
At the age of fifteen Peters

to
home and went
work in a shop. He joined a revolutionary organization, and was four times thrown into
comrades were stood up against a wall while they counted out every tenth man and killed him. He saw his best friend shot
prison.
He
and
his
down
rades.
in this fashion,
and dozens of other com-
Every act of oppression and repression only made him a more determined revolutionist.
136
Orrin S.
Wightman
typical street scene in the Volga river
towns
OLD RIVERS AND

He
NEW DOCTRINES
escaped from prison, and lived in France, Switzerland, and England, helping as best he
could his companions still in Russia. At the time of the Revolution in March he was holding an ex-
manager of the import department of a large English mercantile company. He wore a frock-coat on Sundays, and walked
cellent position as
out with his English "missis" and his

in the height of order
little girl
and
respectability.
But the call of

lution,
free Russia, the call of the
Revo-
to
was too strong for him. He came back He became the leader of rejoice and fight.
the Lettish Socialists,
and worked day and night
for the cause in which he believed.
He made
flying trips to Petrograd,

to
drop in
and usually managed for a few minutes while he was there.

a slip of paper from his pocket I recognized the signature. I
One night he drew

and asked me
gasped.
if
"Why,
"I
it 's
Lenin," I
said.
"Then he
said.
's
here ?"
Peters nodded.
've seen
him to-day," he
"This
is
the
candidate's ticket for the Constituent Assembly.
They have given him to me, because our district is the most radical and w^can elect him there."
137

"And you
asked.
are absolutely sure that Lenin
is
an
honest revolutionist and not a pro-German?" I
He
raised his head with a toss of defiance
and
his blue eyes flashed fire.
"If I wasn't sure I wouldn't have this," he

said.
We
sent
had
bitter
arguments, but he did not reI was try-
my disagreement. He knew that
ing honestly and sympathetically to understand all of the forces at work in the Revolution, and he
respected that effort.
Through him I met many
other Bolsheviki, and they talked frankly of their
dreams and
their schemes.
One day
man showed me
a letter from
Trotzky, written in prison. It was a call to his followers not for himself, but for his ideas.
They
the
told
me
that he
was
in constant touch with
men
of his party,
and was doing quite
as ef-
fective
work
in prison as he could have done out.
Jacob Peters told
me much
of the methods by
which prisoners communicated with each other and the outside world. Occasionally a news-
paper was smuggled in, and the man who received it read it hidden half u/ider a blanket, with one
138
OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

eye on the spy-hole in the door, watching, for the guard, and then tapped its contents on the wall
to the prisoner in the next
cell.
By
a system of
dots placed according to a prearranged code un-
der the letters in a book, the
men inside
the prison
were kept informed of what their comrades outside were doing.
The most
ist.
elaborate scheme Peters concocted

girl revolution-
was carried out with the aid of a
was deep in the black books of the prison officials and was allowed no reading matter. He took a piece of was trying
to escape, but he
He
black bread, chewed

paste,
it
until
his
it
was
in a sticky
dry
it
and spread was as tough
it
on
arm
to dry.
Once
as a piece of parchment.
He
message on one side and rolled the parchment into a small ball. Just as the girl was leavput
his
ing, he
asked permission of the guard to kiss her
good-by through the bars. The guard, seeing no harm in an innocent kiss, consented. The girl
was immediately on the
alert
for a message.
Peters slipped the ball into his mouth, and in the She carried out his kiss transferred it to hers.
directions,
and he succeeded
into
in escaping.
little
As July wore
August, there was

139
go-

ing on in Petrograd, and I decided to take a journey to see if I could find out how the new
doctrines were being received in
some of the
older and
stories of
more remote parts of Russia. Various the dangers of travel came to us.
Russian acquaintances and old residents in the

foreign colony discouraged attempting travel; but an American friend, Helen Smith, a kindred
spirit in
eagerness for the
trail,
agreed to go with
me.
Miss Smith, who is an expert on the subject of peasant art, had traveled to Russia four times
since the war.
She spoke the language, and had a genuine understanding and a very real appreciation of the
little
people.
The
pictured dangers
had very dereality for either of us. to Moscow, and from there to termined to go
Nizhni Novgorod by
river steamer.
rail,
We
then up the Volga in a
There has always been a strange lure for me "Mother Volga," as the Russians call in names.
the largest and most romantic river in Europe, was one of the places in which I believed as one
believes in fairies one never expects to see.
The
Russians speak
its
name with a caress.

140
No other
OLD RIVERS AND

river in the world, unless
NEW DOCTRINES
it
be the Nile, has been
surrounded by so much story.

the great highway of Russia from Petrograd to the Caspian Sea. To Nizhni
is
The Volga
Novgorod, where the Volga and Oka rivers meet, the commerce of the world comes flowing. Here
they hold the most famous of Russia's sixteen
hundred annual
fairs.
and for ninetynine summers rug merchants from Persia, trappers from Siberia, silk dealers from China, wool
fair lasts for forty days;
The
kings from Manchuria, Turks and Arabs,

sies
Gyp-
and Caucasians, Eastern and Continental tradesmen of all kinds, have come as regularly as
the hot breezes that blow off the lazy, sleepy Old
Volga.
The
exotic color, the weird customs, the
strange play of the children of this patch-quilt earth all gathered under the same piece of sky,
have made
it
a prolonged fete day and night from
beginning to end. Here, on the hundredth anniversary,
we found
the fair pathetically trying to pretend itself open.
We
drove through
streets, miles
and miles of
solidly with
streets,
whose
sides
were packed
141

bazaars.
They were yellow-painted and greenThe

200,000,000-ruble fair on the banks
roofed, as always, but padlocked doors told the

story.
of the ancient river of the
was
virtually closed.
In one
main buildings a band tried hopelessly to rouse the spirits of the crowd but the result was
;
more gruesome than laughter at a funeral. There was little for sale a sordid mass of tawdry
:
trinkets
made
in
Germany and Japan,

that
a few
sugarless sweetmeats
was
all.
Our
ing
its
boat sailed at eight o'clock at night, pick-
and green Belights gathered at the meeting of the rivers. fore we went, we took an elevator to the top of the bluff to dine in an out-of-doors cafe. Food
way between
the twinkling red
seemed quite as scarce here as in Petrograd, and even more expensive. We ordered some beef
cutlets
(the
.
steak)
come.
We We enlisted the efforts of the head waiter,

of words
Russian equivalent of hamburg waited and we waited; they did not

his as-
who poured an avalanche

sistants.
Still
upon
they did not come.
The hour
of
sailing
drew nearer and nearer.
We
The
watched
sec-
the clock, and,
when
there
was not another
ond to spare, prepared
to leave.
cutlets ar-
OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES We wrapped them in paper napkins and rived.
took them with us.
was well we did; for war and revolution, whatever else it had done, had certainly robbed
It
the Volga chefs of
all their
far-famed talents.
I tried from six o'clock to eleven one night to
persuade the cabin-boy to get

eat.
me
something to
I wondered, as I looked at the fertile fields
along the Volga,

tion.
how much they knew
of the part
they would play in the coming course of revolu-
Even
the gods seemed cruel to the cities of
the north; for on the Volga, where transportation
were adequate, the spring rains had been so light that the crops were far below normal; and down in the south, where weather conditions
facilities
had proved
ized to
ideal, the railways
were too disorgan-
move
the grain.
at every little
The boat stopped
town along the
way, and the landings were a series of Rapine Now it was a gang of stevedores in pictures.
with inch-wide stripes of gay color, and crude straw sandals upon their unfull cotton trousers
stockinged feet.
They dragged
143
their
heavy car-
goes
down
to the boat's edge with ropes held over

their shoulders, singing a weird rhythmical tune
movements. Again, was a group of gypsies on the dock's edge, camped for the night the naked brown babies
of the
it
Volga to time
their
swarming under the feet of the Volga dodged them uncomplainingly.
giants,
who
Everywhere we found the people talking revolution, and the phrases that sounded through the
streets of
Petrograd were familiar here.
We
bought the newspapers.
Several of them were
trying desperately to rouse the people to the great
Germanic danger.
me.
Unions.
Miss Smith read them to

the Kineshna Revolutionary
Many of the appeals were from the Zemstvo

One from
said:
Committee
"We
sia.
are facing a great disaster for free Rusus,
Absolute ruin threatens

of the
and the
if
tri-
umph
armed
fist
of William,
we
are not
bold enough to oppose to him a steel-like strength of the revolutionary army. Famine and its results threaten us,
and the counter-revolution
is
making use of
enough to
this.
We
must
at once be bold
rectify
our food question, to exert
great efforts over this and other dangers. 144
An-
OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

archy and counter-revolution threaten to restore the old regime under William.
"A
despicable peace, giving us into the claws
of our enemy, threatens us unless

diate steps.
we
take imme-
the front to
who can must be ready to go to take the place of the worn and exAll
hausted warriors
ready to hurl back the enemy or die in the attempt. It is a question of saving
the land
and the Revolution.
The army
is
in
need of ammunition, food, clothing, and uninterrupted transfer. The workmen must place the interests of the land and the Revolution above all
else
and
raise their standard of
work
to the maxi-
mum.
is
The peasants must give all the bread they can spare. All to work, to work! The danger
great!"
There was no doubt that the new doctrines had

found
their
way
to the banks of the old rivers.
Petrograd was not the only place where revolution interfered with work, and proclamations and
counter-proclamations kept the populace in a turmoil of doubt and desire.
145
CHAPTER
VIII
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

SEPTEMBER came. The padlocked doors of Nizhni Novgorod and the quiet waters of the
Volga seemed
far, far
away.
Farther
still
were
the hectic days of early
June when the
recalci-
trant machine-guns sputtered
Nevsky.
dier lovers
up and down The white nights were gone. The

and
the
sol-
their sweethearts strolled beside
the
Neva now only
at the invitation of the infre-
quent moon.
The War Hotel had undergone a transformation. After living for a whole summer each unto
himself alone, breakfasting, lunching, teaing, and
dining in our
of hiding
own rooms, we suddenly came

over.
out
and looked one another
The
bloodstains of the Revolution had been
scoured from the rose-colored carpet in the drawing-room. The boards had come down from the
broken windows, and new glass and gorgeous

146

crushed mulberry curtains had taken their place. The dining-room, a few weeks ago the repository
of armless chairs
and
of the vengeance of
dumb victims an angry mob, now fronted

legless tables,
the world arrayed in white napery.

It
was a
setting for luxury, but there
was none.
Feodor served luncheon, the first course was often chopped meat and kasha stuffed into
cabbage leaves, and the second the same chopped meat and kasha inadequately hidden by the half
of a cucumber.
When
There was no
third.
We
had
the best the market offered, and the cook

sorely tested to disguise
its
was
limitations.
A new
had
spirit
was abroad
in the streets.
The
ghost of Peter walked with firmer tread. Many of the predicted calamities of the foregoing weeks
failed to materialize.
Finland had not
re-
volted.
Ukraine was
still
a part of Russia.
The railroad strike continued only a threat. The breach between Kerensky and Korniloff, scheduled for the Moscow conference, had been
averted.
The
reactionaries
dictator.
still
clamored for the strong

Bolsheviki
still
hand of a
The
147
cried,
"Down
with the bourgeosie."
Kerensky strove

desperately to follow a middle course satisfactory to both. He knew his people well enough to realize that the first
attempt to use force, even

his
if
he had
it
to use,
would
result in a reaction that
would ultimately mean the downfall of

ernment.
gov-
In the hours I had spent at the Soviet, in the Peasants' Convention, and talking with soldiers
and workmen everywhere, I had become convinced there was no power in Russia that Kerensky or any other
man
could use; that the masses
would regard any attempt to instal a dictator as an attack on their Revolution and would desert
the
man responsible
for
it.
I ventured this opinion one night at dinner. Mrs. Pankhurst, the English suffragist, was
there,
and four or
five others.
They laughed
at
the idea; said Russia

called
must have a strong hand; Kerensky a weakling, and declared that
only Korniloff could save the situation. would rule with an iron hand.
He
One group
of foreigners in Petrograd saw
clearly the hopelessness of trying to
impose a
man on
horseback upon the Russian workers.

the
They were
members
148
of the
American Red

Cross Mission to Russia.
into
They came
quietly
August, with seventy tons of surgical supplies in their kit-bags, a large amount of common sense in their heads, and a
in
town one afternoon
wealth of
human sympathy
in their hearts.
I
ar-
was
at the Nicolaievski Station
when they
rived, twenty-nine of them, all in
uniform of the
American Red Cross.

to myself:
will
I looked at them and said
"I wonder what sort of a dent you
make
in Russia."
In one of the uniforms was the ample girth and the smiling round face of Colonel William B.
Thompson, who was financing the mission. To the left of him, towering like an iron-gray mountain above the crowd,
was Dr. Frank Billings of
Chicago.
On
the other side,
Raymond
Robins,
dark and determined, with a ready-for-anything look about him. There was something big about
and they went to work on the Russian job in the best American spirit with their sleeves
this trio,
rolled up.
They met
ple.
the Russian aristocrat and the Rus-
sian bourgeois.
Then they met
the Russian peo-
Breshkovskaya and Tchaikovski, grandmother and grandfather of the Russian Revolu149

opened for them a door through which they looked down a long vista of hard years at the stution,
pendous struggle of a brave crowd. They saw that the old altars had been broken
to bits,
and the one
vital,
hopeful thing remaining
was the devotion of the masses to their Revolution. They had no faith in the altruistic intention of the
German, and believed for Russia to stop fighting would be suicidal. Kerensky and Breshkovskaya held the same belief, but they
also that the
knew
war-weary multitudes were

to discredit
possessed of a consuming longing for peace; that
German propaganda was working

German people sympathized
tion
the Allies and to convince the Russians that the
with their Revolu-
and shared
their
longing for democratic
peace.
their
Almost daily they were supplementing
propaganda by blowing up munition plants and laying whole towns in ruins.
Raymond
Robins,
who brought
to his study of
the situation valuable experience in the American

labor movement, said to me, in one of the
first
conversations
we had:
that will hold
"The only binder

together
is
New
Russia
to
the Revolution.
The only way
150

help Russia
is
to help her
make a
success of thatf
Revolution."
The Provisional Government was At its head was Alexander Kerensky,

man.
old, old
in power.
the
young
He
and Katherine Breshkovskaya, the

in spite of the fact that the forced
woman,
offensive
on the southwest front in July had weakthis
ened both, were at

of the majority.
time
still
the mouth-pieces
ment
cult
there was.
They were The Mission
the only govern-
invested
in
its
ener-
gies in trying to help the
government
its diffi-
problems of administration. Unfortunately, most of the other Allied representatives

failed to share their opinion, or the results
might
actual
have been different.
Suddenly Riga
fell.
The news
of
its
occupation surprised no one. It had long been conceded in Petrograd that the Germans could
whenever they chose. From the military It was standpoint, it had little significance.
take
it
chiefly useful to the
German militarists
as a scalp
to dangle before the
own
populace.
war-weary section of their The Russian advocates of a dicit
tator seized
upon
as a
weapon with which
to
attack Kerensky.
They blamed
151
the leniency of

Kerensky policy and the breakdown of the army for the fall of Riga. There were charges and counter-charges. The soldiers vehemently
the
denounced
their officers, accusing
them of
be-
traying the city to the Germans.

of Lettish troops dered,
had refused to
One regiment retreat when or-
and fought until they were wiped out almost to a man. Most of them were Bolsheviki,
and they asserted that
their officers
were selling
Riga
to defeat their Revolution.
The Germans were reported marching on

Petrograd.
where.
Refugees fleeing from Riga poured into the city. There was not a spare room any-
AJmost
as
many
people were trying to
get out of the city as were trying to get in. They stood in queues before the railway offices
day and all night, trying to buy tickets that would take them anywhere beyond the reach of the Germans.
all
The anniversary of the

freedom was at hand.
sixth
month of Russian
all
Petrograd, ready at
times to expect the worst, believed there would be some tragic celebration of the day. Part of
it
trembled in
its
boots for fear of a Bolshevik

it
uprising;
more of
predicted a 152
German air raid;

some of
it
longingly scanned the horizon for a
Russian Napoleon. Nobody was prepared for what happened, and everybody was still more amazed by what did not happen. When the of-
announcement was made, "the Korniloff adventure has been liquidated," the populace was
ficial
still
gasping.
Every man, woman, and child in Petrograd believed the city was about to become the battleground of the bloodiest conflict the world had
ever
seen.
What
the
else
was there to
of
believe?
Were
not
troops
General Korniloff,
counted the strongest man in the Russian army, marching on Petrograd to capture the capital and
proclaim their leader military dictator? Was not the advancing horde headed by the "savage" division wildest of the wild Cossacks? Were
not the government soldiers, charged with protecting the country against counter-revolution at
any
marching out to meet them in bloody combat? Korniloff had announced his dictatorcost,
ship,
ister
and offered Kerensky the portfolio of Minof Justice. Kerensky had declined.
In the
center,
War
sat
Hotel, storm center of the storm
we
and awaited the

153
inevitable.

dined that night with a Polish doctor who talked in low, mysterious tones. All around us were
with various degrees of political belief, ranging from princes suspected of monarchistic
officers
tendencies to the most radical of the radicals.
All were talking in low, mysterious tones.
We
spoke of Korniloff. "He is a very desperate man; a very courageous man," he said. "I was in the battle of
Mukden
mined.
with him, and he remained when
al]
the
others of the staff
had gone. I do not know what

is
very deterwill happen, but I

is
He
know he
a determined man."
This fact no one questioned. Whatever the political slant of the speaker, it never occurred to
any one to suggest that the man whose military

exploits are almost legendary
might have started

is
something he could not finish. "He is determined but Kerensky

;
also a de-
termined man," one Russian told
me
that night.
"So
it
will be a fight to the finish."
During the evening Arno Dosch Flurot, an American correspondent, came in to advise me to leave the hotel and go somewhere else for the
night.
154

"The
but
it
hotel
may
be here in the morning, not, and there is no use in taking
may
still
chances," he said.
Rumor had promised me

she had cried
that I
many tragic ends "Wolf, wolf!" so many times

so
skeptical.
had become
The lobby was swarming with excited officers. Messengers from the staff and the various embassies dashed in
and out
all
evening.
A
and
few
their
of the officers were loyal to Kerensky,

faces
were grim and troubled. Most of the others were waiting with open arms to welcome
and they made no attempt to hide the joy they felt. For them it was all settled. Kerensky would be overthrown Korniloff would
the Dictator,
capture the
city.
The death penalty would be

Soviet would be
restored; the leaders of the
hanged. Russia's troubles would be over. I could not see Russia in such simple terms. I did not believe that the Russian Revolution
could be understood in the terms of the French
I felt very small and alone when, at midnight, I left the chattering groups and went up to my little room. I was too engrossed Revolution.
in
what was going to happen to Russia to care the

155

least bit
about what happened to me. I sat down before my typewriter and wrote until three, and
then went to bed.
At
sleep
five o'clock I
was awakened from a sound

I
by a loud knocking.
jumped
filled
quickly
up
sea
and opened the door.

of cutlasses.
sailors,
I looked out
upon a
The
hall
was
with Russian
perhaps a couple hundred of them, husky chaps with rifles in their hands, and every rifle topped with the most bloodthirsty-looking blade
I had ever seen.
for the
Life holds no further terrors

has faced two hun-
man
or
woman who
dred such weapons all gathered in one spot. An Atlantic Ocean submarine would seem like a
friendly neighbor
Still
come
to call.
dazed with sleep, I looked at them un-
comprehendingly.
What had happened? Were
they Bolsheviki from Kronstadt who had captured the hotel? Was the city already in the
possession of Korniloff?
Was
the battle going
on downstairs
at that very
moment?
There was no one to answer

said something in English.
my
questions.
A smile passed over
the faces of the half dozen sailors nearest me.
"Nechevo," they said in chorus.

156

It
is
the most reassuring
word
in the
Russian
I shall
language
forget.
the
It
first
I learned,
and the
last
means "Never mind," "Don't worry,"
and other things of a kindred nature. "Kharasho?" I asked.

"Kharasho nechevo," came back the double
assurance.
re-
I had learned that, so far as I was concerned

at least, everything
was
all right.
I closed the
door and dressed.

Fifteen minutes later there was a great clatter of guns and marching feet, and when I went out
had gone. On all the landings, women, pale and terrified, were thousand huddled in small groups, talking.
into the hall again our visitors
sailors
had taken possession of the

searched rooms,
officers.
hotel,
exam-
ined passports,
and arrested
fourteen
They were not from Kornilof?

the Soviet.
or Kerensky, but from the government behind

the government
The Workmen's
Deputies had decided to take things into their own hands and arrest all officers whom
and
Soldiers'
they suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies.
I stopped to talk with some of the women. 157

them spoke to me in English beautiful English. Her husband had been arrested but
One
of
released immediately.
"This hotel
is
a terrible place," she said.
"We
Russians are mad, quite mad, all of us. you stay here when you do not have to?
Why do
I would
go away
America."
far,
far away, to
England or your
She was a Russian princess, and from that morning on I saw much of her. She was exquisitely pretty
and completely
of
helpless, a typical
flower of Russian culture.

she reminded
I told her once that
me
an orchid.
"I like that; they Then, nodding her head with
said.
"Ah, orchidee" she

are so beautiful."
a wise
little smile,
she said.
"But I know what
you mean.
You mean
that I
am
a parasite."
Always after that I called her "Orchidee." The pathos of her helplessness appealed to me,
and
also a certain loyalty that kept her in Petro-
grad with her husband, when most of her friends had fled to the Caucasus or the Crimea or gone
abroad.
"I love
my husband,"
she told me.
"It
is
very
bourgeois of me, I know, but I can't help 158
it."

Her husband was an
officer in
the Guard, and
she lived in hourly terror of his arrest.
This
day he had escaped, but there were others who were not so fortunate. At lunch-time several
familiar figures were absent
from the diningwith troubled
room, and here and there a

eyes sat alone.
woman
In the following days we

been in America.
lived as
affairs
dark as to the actual state of
much in the as if we had
Kerensky declared Korniloff counter-revolutionist and traitor. The Workmen and Soldiers
in Petrograd, convinced that their Revolution
their throats
and
were both
in danger,
and night
in the
munition plants,
worked day and prepared

city.
to throw a trench
around the great
An-
other part of the populace looked

as a deliverer,
upon Korniloff
for his
and waited impatiently
coming. All over Russia the people, unable to get the Down in the Caucasus truth, traded in rumor.
the newspapers
battles in the
came out with
lurid details of
Nevsky and thousands of dead

still
bodies strewing the streets.
While we were
in the
dark as to what was
159

happening, I went one morning to the Winter Palace, and climbed the stairs to Katherine
Breshkovskaya's little room. Through all the troubled days of the last six months, she had been
the right-hand lieutenant of Kerensky.
I found her, slipping her cloak over her calico wrapper and starting out to rally the soldiers to
the support of the government.
ty-three years old.
She was seven-
I had formed the habit of
dropping in on the Babushka, who loved Americans and always had a radiant welcome. I climbed the marble stairs as one would climb a
mountain, to get away from the tangle of petty things below, to look out over a distant vista, to
Always I came away with the sense of having been on the heights, close to something big and fine, with a grandmotherly
see a broad view.
kiss
upon my cheek and
the
memory
of a friendly
Once, knowing well the burden of her answer, but curious to know how she would
hand-clasp.
phrase
it,
I asked:
"What do you
think of Kerensky?" She lifted her chin high and, with the ring of
sincere faith in her voice, spoke in her quaint
English:
160

"Very well I think of him. He is a square man, and, what is better, he is not selfish. He needs no glory. He works only for the welfare
of the people, and not only his people but for all the Allies, too. is all around a good man.
He
not strange to have a good man; but to have a man who is good and brave and clever is unIt
is
usual.
soul."
I esteem him from the profound of

the
my
During
Korniloff rebellion
she
amply
proved her faith; for day and night she went from barracks to barracks, urging the soldiers to
stand by Kerensky.
From Babushka
group.
I went to
Red
Cross Head-
quarters at the Hotel Europe, to find a dismal
Some suave and kindly gentleman had

Thompson, quite pleasthat the hangings would begin at three
just confided to Colonel

antly,
o'clock that afternoon.
"If the old crowd comes back to Russia, I 'm

through.
I don't
want to
stay," said the Colonel
and Raymond Robins nodded a gloomy second. If the weight of Russia and of the world had
been upon our shoulders, we could have been no more serious about it. wept for the Petro-
We
161

grad
front.
We wept that only a few miles disWe
tant Russians were killing Russians, and noth-
ing could be done to stop it. might have saved our tears. The "savage" forces of Gen-
and the troops of Kerensky had taken things into their own hands and were settling them in their own way. They were using
eral Korniloff
new Russian method of liquidation they were fraternizing. The only shot fired was that
the
with which one of Korniloff s

self.
officers killed
him-
The
soldiers
into a fiasco.
turned the bloody civil war The "wild" Cossacks refused to

Korniloff was captured and
kill their fellows.
placed under arrest, and the government announced that the Korniloff adventure had been
liquidated.
The
ture
serious consequences
were of another nadeclared
than
bloodshed.
The workers
all
themselves through with

ate with the bourgeoisie.
attempts to cooperKorniloff 's friends ac-
cused Kerensky of double dealing. He was unable to explain himself to the satisfaction of his
followers,
nearly as
and they began to distrust him. As I can gather from the investigation of
many
stories,
Kerensky became possessed of

knowledge that Korniloff, probably without his own knowledge, was being used by counter-revoKerenlutionists to overthrow the government.
sky made overtures to trap Korniloff into admissions that would condemn him. By the time he
had gained
far that
it
his object,
he had involved himself so

to explain.
was impossible
His
in-
tentions were unquestionably of the highest, but

his
methods were not those that a popular hero can use and remain on the high pedestal that his
followers demand.
The
first
attempt to
instal
man on
horseback
resulted in driving the radical forces further
and
further to the left and creating a mass solidarity

that
was ultimately to prove
fatal to the existing
order.
The Korniloff adventure paved

the Bolsheviki Revolution.
the
way
for
163
CHAPTER IX
THE CENTEABALT MAKES AN EXCEPTION
SINCE the days of the March Revolution, women have not been permitted aboard the Russian fleet.
The
sailors,
with the
memory
of Ras-
putin still fresh in their minds, settled this as soon as they took command.
"Women
in the past,
have played so much
hell in politics
we
better not take
any chances
in the
future," one of
them suggested. For seven months the rule was

afternoon in October,
I, all
rigidly kept.
One
unmindful of
the prohibition, walked up the gang-plank of the Polar Star as she lay on the gray waters of the
Gulf of Finland.
heavy gray autumn mist were the battleships of the Baltic Fleet, decked There in their proud new names of revolution.
Half hidden
in the
was the one time Nicholas II, now the Tavarisch (Comrade). There, also, were the Grazhdanin
164
AN EXCEPTION
(Citizen)
,
formerly the Tsarevitch; and, most imall,
Republic )> Not far away lay a wounded cruiser recently returned from battle with the Germans in their attack on
portant of
the Respublica
(
the islands at the entrance to the

British submarine,
fighting, rode safe
Gulf.
come unscathed through the and snug in the tidy little

that afternoon,
harbor.
Mr. Williams was with me
and
an English friend of the Polar Star's captain.
The captain gave me

look as he saw
me
a puzzled, almost frightened stepping aboard. The Eng-
lishman introduced us, and explained our desire

to see the
famous yacht.
"I 'm very sorry," the captain said politely, "but women are not allowed aboard the fleet. It
is
a rule of the committee." I must have looked
disappointment. The captain glanced sympathetically at me, then at a closed door at the end of a long passage.
my
"The committee
Tsar's quarter.
ception.
meeting in there in the Perhaps they will make an exis
I will ask," he said.
If a Russian naval officer had been told, a year

before, that the
day would come when he would

165

have to ask permission of the sailors to bring a guest aboard his own command, he would have
sent for the ship's doctor
cell
and ordered a padded
prepared for his informant. I thanked him, and he disappeared.
few
minutes later he returned.
The
permission had
officers'
been granted.
He
led the
saloon and from there to
way into the his own cabin.
All of the sacred precincts of the old days were closed to us. They were still sacred, but
sacred to the
new owners
fleet,
of the Russian navy

the Russian sailors.
the delegates of the
The
captain was speaking: "They used to cover this with velvet
when
the
Tsar was on board," he said, with a sweep of his hand. "I 'm sorry I can not show you the Tsar's You would be interested. They have quarters.
left the
grand piano and some of the most valucuri-
able things in Petrograd."
He led us to a point where we could peep

ously
down a long
passage, lined on either side
with the cabins de luxe of the Tsarevitch, the
Grand Duchess
Titania,
and other members of
the Imperial family, to a closed door at the end.
166
AN EXCEPTION
Behind that closed door was the organization
of
"common"
sailors ruling the
Russian waters
one of the most characteristically

all
new
things in
new
Russia.
While the captain turned to speak to a soldier who had come up, we held a hurried consultation,
mustered our various credentials, and appealed to the ship's officer once more to act in the capacity
of go-between and ask the committee to receive us.
and we waited anxiously for the closed door to open. few minutes later, in the
Again he
left,
great saloon where Nicholas II once dispensed

hospitality
and
favors, sixty Russian sailors,
sit-
ting in daily session in their regular headquarters,
gallantly offered
me
the freedom of the
Baltic Fleet.
The president arose, shook hands with us, and made a brief speech of welcome to the Americans, asking the captain to interpret it to us. Then
the secretary arose,
and on behalf of the com-
mittee invited us to dine at the Sailors' Club in
Helsingfors that night. "We sent some one to telephone for our bandmaster who is an American," he said. "Until he
167

comes we
meeting,
if
will
go on with the business of our

will permit."
you
The
business before the Baltic Fleet concerned
soldiers
on the Riga
front.
News
of the distress
army had reached them, and they were collecting money and buying warm clothing to send to the men who were hungry and
of the northern
cold in the trenches.
With
ered so
the help of the captain,
we had
discov-
much when
the band-master arrived.
In that committee meeting were eight Mensheviki, three
Anarchist communists, nine Social
Revolutionists,
and
forty-five Bolsheviki.
significant I
Those
in all
figures were the
most
found
of Russia.
Before the Korniloff rebellion there
had been only eighteen Bolsheviki in the comThe men were mittee, and no Anarchists.
and they reflected the complete swing to the left that was taking place in Russia from Vladivostok to the
chosen by the vote of the entire
fleet,
Black Sea.
The
of land
ers.
sailors,
almost to a man, believe in the
principles of internationalism, in the socialization
and the control of industry by the workTo them the Revolution meant the ultimate
168
AN EXCEPTION
realization of all these dreams.
Up
to the time
of the Korniloff rebellion, they were inclined to
adopt the Mensheviki methods and to be patient. The Korniloff affair, regarded by them as an
attack on the Revolution, swept
away patience
and shoved them
into the ranks of the extremists.
Patriotism, in the old sense, was absolutely
was among the workmen; but there was a more burning form
lacking
among
the sailors, as
it
of patriotism aboard the fleet in October than
any inspired in the past by the thought of the Tsar or the greatness of all the Russias patriotism for the Revolution.
The
sailor,
partly
more adventurous and daring spirit, partly because he has more education and has drunk more deeply from the fountain of radbecause he
is
of a
ical books,
naturally took a
more extreme
posi-
tion than the soldier.
per cent,
illiteracy
There was only fifteen in the Russian navy, while
seventy-five per cent, of the soldiers were un-
able to read or write.
The committee governing

posed of
six sub-committees.
the fleet
was com-
Food
for officers
and men was controlled by the supply commitThe sailors gave tee, which decided the menus.
169

themselves tea and bread and butter at eight
o'clock;
soup and meat at twelve; potatoes, or kasha at six; and tea again at eleven.
rice,
On
Sundays fruit compote was added. The officers' fare was much more varied and more extensive.
komplectatsea, or "make-up committee," decided all problems relating to the crews.
"selection committee" studied the
men
to find
promising material to make officers. The judiciary committee was the new disciplinarian.
Disputes between officers and men were submitted to it, and when the offenses were serious
civil
lawyers were employed to defend the men. Discipline in the old days was entirely in the
officers,
hands of the
appeal.
from whom there was no
If an officer was naturally an amiable
fellow, fortunate
were the
men who
served under
him.
If his good nature was dependent upon his luck at cards, the quality of his wine, or the
condition of his department of the
momentary
one.
interior, the lot of the sailor
might not be a happy

the average of
it
Fortunately for the
sailors,
humanity
is
fairly decent,
else,
whether
be Russian
in the
or anything
and there were men

170
Rus-
AN EXCEPTION
navy who did not abuse their power. But there were enough of the other kind to stir a deep and intense bitterness in the breast of the Russian
sian
sailor,
when The Englishman who was with us had been aboard one of the ships during the March Revolution.
hatred found tragic utterance the Revolution came.

this
and
"In the passion of the moment, they killed some of the good ones and left some of the bad
ones," he said.
"Just one
man was
killed
on our
was a high-handed, hot-headed chap, ship. and when they told him of the Revolution he
scoffed
at
He
them
said there
regime
in Petrograd,
wasn't any new and never would be. His
servant whipped out a gun. 'We '11 show you whether there is a new regime,' he said, and shot
him."
Many
cers,
of the crews simply arrested their
offi-
and some asked them to sign a paper deAs claring they would support the Revolution.
nearly as I can learn, sixty-five men were killed on the Baltic Sea Fleet, and a hundred on the
Black Sea Fleet.

tion, the sailors
day of the Revolurevenged themselves on the whole

first
The
171

order of discipline, and
it
was hot blood that
determined
tee
life
and death.
killing
When
the commit-
was formed, the
was stopped.
At
the time of the Korniloff rebellion, four
officers
belonging to one of the ships were taken
out and killed, against the protest of the Central Committee. Once more the sailors, mad-
dened by what they believed to be an attack on

the Revolution, took things into their
own hands.
They put
three questions to their officers:
"Do you
belong to the Soviet and Kerensky,
or Korniloff?
"If Korniloff takes Petrograd, will you go to take it from him?
"If Korniloff
fight
you to go to Petrograd and the Provisional Government, will you go?"

tells
Their answers to these questions saved or cost
them
their lives.
The
sailors
formed
their
own
committee and pronounced the death sentence. The lot of the naval officer in Russia was no
more enviable than that of the army officer; but it was a direct and logical result of the regime
that
made masters
of the few and slaves of the
many.
At Viborg and
at
some of the other

178
points, the
Korniloff, his staff
and Cossack bodyguard from the
"
Wild Division'
Bicycle troops to the rescue of Kerensky
Baltic sailors' bayonets speak for the Soviet
dining-room in the Matrosski Klub
(Sailors' Club), Helsingfors
AN EXCEPTION
fate of the officers
singfors,
was far worse than
at
Hel-
and the
stories told
about the deaths
they died are not pretty ones. The training and tradition of a naval officer unfitted him for faith
in the
new order,
contradicted the belief of a
life-
time and the heritage of generations. The chasm that yawned between officers and men was too
wide to be bridged in a day.

honest effort to cross over
it,
few made an
and the men seemed

Others took or-
pathetically grateful to them.
ders from the sailors for the same reason that
the sailors had once taken orders from
them
they were afraid to do otherwise. Some were merely biding their time, convinced that the
topsy-turvy order would change and they would come into their "own" again. But one thing was evident here as elsewhere in Russia: that,
whatever happens, nobody's "own" will ever again be quite what it has been in the past.
Admiral Verderevsky, the Minister of Marine, said that discipline was destroyed at its
root not at the
long before; should have been created long ago; and that it could never be restored by the lash or the guillo173
moment of the Revolution, but that new and democratic forms

tine.
War
navy.
Verderevsky blamed former Minister of Goutchkoff for lack of discipline in the
"He called me a pessimist," said Verderevsky. "He told me the fleet was bad, but the army magnificent.
pessimism had been interpreted differently then, we should have had a new discipline this autumn."
If
my
Before the committee adjourned, on the afternoon of our visit, they puzzled their heads over
many problems
retary,
of discipline
and the young
sec-
Theodore Averitchkin, who took us to the Sailors' Club, shook his head seriously as he
unfolded the
difficulties.
is
"Instruction
what we need," he
said, as
we
drove through the spick-and-span streets of tidy

little
Helsingfors.
"When
the people got free-
dom, they forgot that they had not learned for three hundred years, and the masses who did n't
know anything understood freedom in their own way. The people who should educate us sit
back and
it is
call
us traitors.
We are not traitors-
bourgeois lying that is spread all over Europe about us. Tolstoy said that calumny was
like
a snowball, gathering snow as

174
it rolls,
and
AN EXCEPTION
becoming bigger and bigger. Only those who are without honor can say that we are traitors.
They
not,
forget the hundreds of our comrades
who
are in the grave of the Baltic Sea.
There are
and there never
will be, traitors in the Baltic
Fleet.
Why
don't the people
who
talk so
much
about traitors come and give us some instruction? They don't want to part with their fine automobiles
and beautiful women.
for palaces
and
We are not automobiles. We are
asking asking
only that all shall have a chance to learn
and
enough
to eat."
Averitchkin spoke with the burning ardor of a convinced propagandist, and there was no doubt
of his sincerity.
The
Sailors'
Club was a
distinct surprise.
expected to see the usual Russian meeting-place: a big, stuffy, barnlike hall with a litter of dirt
and
cigarette
stubs
underfoot.
Instead,
we
six
drew up before a
five-story building,
and
husky, clear-eyed sailor boys opened the door and welcomed us into the lobby of a first-class hotel.
There were velvet carpets underfoot, cut-glass chandeliers overhead, palms and bay trees stationed at correct intervals, and not even the ghost 175

of a cigarette stub in sight. The easy-chairs were filled with men in sailors' uniforms, talking
In the diningrooms others were gathered around little tables with snowy linen and shining silver.
comfortably in small groups.
The head commissariat

with pride over
my
way, beaming compliments. As we went
led the
from place
that
to place, he explained that the club

all
belonged to
the sailors of the world, and
any man would find a welcome there. There were ten thousand active members, and
the
men on
shore leave spent most of their time

at cost,
there.
Meals were served
and the
or-
ganization was run like any millionaires' club to cater to the comforts of its members. In
the days before the Revolution no sailor would
have been allowed in such a building.
Now
the
place was swarming with them, and they graced it as to the manner born.
The bourgeois
most of
all
feared and hated the sailor
the revolutionists; but he was the
cleanest, staunchest, finest-looking
man
I found
in revolutionary Russia.
here.
There was
real stamina
He knew
termined to
what he wanted, and was deget it. War-weariness played little

176
AN EXCEPTION
part in his psychology. Germans, if he believed
was willing to fight Germans to be the ene-
He
mies of revolution.
Six hundred of him formed
a volunteer battalion of death and went to the
Riga front to fight with the soldiers trenches, and the battalion was practically
lated.
in the
annihi-
If the majority of the Russian sailors could
have been convinced that to save Free Russia
they must fight Germany, they would have
fought.
sels
When
the actual existence of their vesas

it
was threatened,
was
in the
Gulf of Riga
September, they did fight. Patriotism for their Revolution and pride in ownership of their
in
fleet
were uppermost. The first question the sailors on the Respublica asked Mr. Williams
was:
"Are the American
ships as clean as this?"
177
CHAPTER X
THE
RISE OF
THE PROLETARIAT
came
to Russia
WINTER and
new
world.
the Bolsheviki
on
the same chill breeze, and each brought a strange
Late one afternoon
in
early
November, I
walked through the gray streets of Petrograd, and shivered. It was not cold as the thermometer speaks, but cold as a
room where death

desolate, ugly, for-
awaits a tardy undertaker

bidding.
Autumn was
already dead, and the
burial long overdue.
had been stripped from the trees and trampled in the dust some days since. The gray trunks of the birches were
last copper-colored leaf
The
nude, and conscious of
it.
The
city
was wrapped
naked-
in a futile cloak of fog, too thin to hide its

ness,
and every barren shrub and battered cornice
pleaded with delayed winter to cover its shame. I turned my face away from the Summer Garden, and walked quickly past.
A million years
178
THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

had passed since that spring day,
fore,
six
months be-
when
the sparrows occupied themselves with
house-building in the green leaves, and Vera and
Ivan on the benches below devoted themselves

castle-building.
to
Death was
in the air.
At that moment
and
I hated
the city, which I had
come
to love as one loves a

virtues, its
naughty
the
child for all its faults
hopes, passions, potentialities, and failures
for
sum
of
its
stormy, troubled
self.
I hurried back to
my
blue-and-white room,
drew the
curled
curtains, turned
on
all
the lights,
in a
and
book
up on the couch to bury myself of verse and shut it out.
The next afternoon

consul.
at three o'clock I reached

call
for the desk telephone to
the
American
There was no answer.
I pushed the
hook up and down, tempting fate in the shape of an irate operator; but it produced no response.
"Has
at
come?" I asked myself, and laughed the question. It had been the current one in
it
Petrograd for weeks. Every time the electric light failed, the water was turned off, or some one
banged a door or dropped a block of wood, Petro179

grad jumped automatically to the same conclusion: it has come!
I put
down
the receiver, straightened the pa-
pers on
office.
my
desk,
and started for the
censor's
A new
sentry was pacing
up and down
outside the hotel.
On the Morskaya, in the block

moved nearer
the sideat the
below, the armored car in the courtyard of the
telephone exchange had

walk, and was flaunting
its
guns ominously
passing throng. I hurried on, bent upon getting
my
letters
ready for the weekly express.

the kindly censor,
Mr. Novometzky,
his
who
softened one's heart to the
whole tribe of blue-pencilers, shook

spairingly
head de-
when
it
I entered.
"Well,
has
come,"
he
said.
"There
is
trouble again.
These are bad times for poor
Russia."
I left him, and walked briskly toward the Nev-
sky on the trail of a possible courier who would carry my mail across the world to San Francisco.
At
the
Moika
a crowd had gathered around a big

soldiers held a brief parley
limousine.
Three
with the chauffeur, then one of them climbed into

the vacant seat beside him.
Farther down the
180

street another car
was stopped, then another, and
another.
I dined that night with a French aviator, and afterward we stood in the lobby and watched a
through the whirling door and encamp on the marble floor.

file
Battalion of Death
At
ten o'clock
we wandered
into the black
streets.
The Nevsky was
quiet.
The Palace
square was almost deserted. Along the Neva, at the entrance to each of the bridges, a group of Here and soldiers crowded around a log fire.
there in the center of the circle
thrilling as small
was a small boy,

companfew
boys do the world over at the
lateness of the hour, the bigness of his

ions, and the adventure of the
moment.
away from each of these groups was a wagon filled with ammunition. Back in the hotel, I met Baron B., whose title, estates, and sympathies were all bound up in the
steps
hope of a return of the monarchy. "Well, we have got them on the run
he
said.
this time,"
Only a week before I had

dinner where,
before
sat next to
him
at a
they toasted the Tsar and sang the old tabooed naeyes,
my
amazed
181

an Englishman, had introduced the baron as a great officer and an abtional anthem.
host,
Our
solutely fearless
human
being.
"He
helped to stop the retreat
from Tarnopol
on the southwestern front after the July offen"You ought to have seen him linsive," he said.
ing up those deserters before the firing squad. He made quick work of the bloody cowards."
I urged the baron to tell me of his experiences, and shuddered as I listened. He had nothing
but contempt for Kerensky, his commander-inchief,
and was eager for his downfall. His only fear was that the Soviet would not take over the
government. "Two weeks of the Bolsheviki, and we will be able to lick these people into shape," he said.
"The worse
Russians."
things get, the sooner they will be
willing to listen to reason.
You
don't
know
the
"We 've got them on the run this time" could it mean? No good to Kerensky,
sure
what
I was
no ultimate good to the masses of the Russian people, if Baron B. could have his way.
There was nothing
in the situation that night
that augured well for
Kerensky 's government.

182

poised on a tight-rope. The cry, "All power to the Soviet!" grew louder and more insistent with every passing hour. The
He was
like
man
Russian workers, the youngest proletarian group in the world, were the most class-conscious and
determined, and
they had guns.

I
The
that.
fleet
was Bolshevist
had no doubt of
garrison was Bolshevist. Every report from the front indicated that the men in the trenches had swung farther and
farther to the left.
The Petrograd
The land and peace hunger

like the true
clamored for immediate satisfaction.
Kerensky, trying
democrat he was
to please every one, succeeded in pleasing
no one.
He
had
lost
touch with the masses.
Attacked
from above and below, from within and without, Those who there seemed little hope for him.
should have been behind him, with every energy
and influence they possessed, were secretly willing his downfall, and some of them were plotting
to bring
it
about.
Individual members of the

still
Allied military missions,

belief that
clinging to the old
Russia could be saved by a
man on
dis-
horseback, in spite of the Korniloff fiasco, were
meeting behind closed doors, where they

183

cussed, not the
to
way to save Kerensky, but the way put a dictator in his place. The names of
Savinkoff were again bandied
Korniloff and
about where ever two or three military

gathered together.
men were
Kerensky! Too big, and not big enough. Any one of his problems was a manHe was packing the load of a broken sized job.
Poor
and economic machine, inherited from the regime of the Tsar, a corrupt, inefficient, and
industrial
disloyal bureaucracy,
and a betrayed and
disillu-
His uncomprehending military partners, the Allies, were urging the impossible, and refusing to grant the demand of the Russian
sioned army.
masses for a statement of war aims and a publication of the secret treaties, without which Keren-
sky could no longer hold the faith of

ers.
his follow-
Dark forces of the old order were working with German intriguers to augment the chaos, and
above and beyond and beneath everything was the honest cry of the people for "Peace to the
world!" and
"Land
to the peasants!"
promised peace and land. They promised more: they promised that the
Bolsheviki
184
The

workers of the world should "arise and put a stop
to
war and
capitalistic exploitation forever."
They were dreaming big dreams

night; scheming big schemes;
in Russia that
and they were not unaware that the dreams and schemes would be
used in the future by the rest of the world, perhaps as patterns by which to model, perhaps only
as horrible examples
and tragic warnings.

which one needed
all
It
was an hour
in
of
is
one's faith to believe that the
human march
forward, no matter
how many members
of the
family are lost on the way. At daybreak a company of

the Viborg factory district
itary
Red Guards from men whose only mil-
equipment was a rifle slung over the shoulder, and a conviction that the hour of the proletariat had come, and that they were the defenders of the cause of the workers of the
world
came
to a halt
on the north bank of the Neva.
bridges were guarded by cadets from the Engineers' School, placed there the night before,
The
when Kerensky had ordered them opened.

dered the
officers to close
At
engi-
the point of their guns, the factory workers or-
them
again.
The
neers obeyed, and the street-cars started blithely 185

on
their
way back and
forth across the river, just
had happened. At the same moment, two detachments of Bolshevist soldiers and sailors, acting under orders
as if nothing
from the Military Revolutionary Committee, took possession of the telephone exchange and the
General Staff.
It
was
all
done so swiftly and so
quietly that the Bolshevik battle
was half won
before Petrograd awoke to the knowledge that

civil
war was
on.
o'clock
It tea
was nine
when Petroff brought me

PetrorFs as-
and word that the Bolsheviki had that min-
ute taken possession of the hotel.
tounding news sent
me
hurriedly into the hall,

soldiers.
and
into the
arms of a squad of
The
young officer in command detained me. "Amerikanka Korrespondent," I explained,

and indicated a and motioning
desire to
go downstairs.
"Pazhal'sta, pazhal'sta!" he said,

his
bowing low,
men to
let
me pass.
At
the head of the winding staircase groups of
frightened
women were
gathered, searching the
marble lobby below with troubled eyes. Nobody seemed to know what had happened. The Battalion of
Death had walked out

186
in the night, with-

out firing so
much
as a single shot.
soldiers
Each
floor
was crowded with

and arresting
sympathies.
tries,
and Red Guardsmen,

searching for arms,
who went from room to room,

officers
suspected of anti-Bolshevik
senin
The landings were guarded by
and the lobby was swarming with men
faded uniforms.
husky, bearded peasant soldiers were stationed behind the counter, and
Two
one in the cashier's

safe.
Two
was
kept watch over the machine-guns poked their ominous

office
muzzles through the entry-way.

credit
inside the safe,
My
letter of
and the only other
money
I had was an uncashed check for eight

rubles.
hundred
I started for the National City Bank on the slender chance of finding it open. I was just in
Within the hour the Bolsheviki captured the State Bank, and all the others promptly
time.
closed their doors.
back I walked through the Dvortsovy Square. Four armored cars were drawn up under the shadow of the mighty granite shaft
in front of the
On my way
Winter Palace,
ing significantly at the palace

187
guns pointwindows. Flam-
their
ing red flags were freshly painted on their gray

sides,
and on one
in large letters
was the word
"Proletariat."
A crowd of perhaps twenty melooked up from the nut he was
and chauffeurs tinkered with guns and engines, making ready for instant action. Occhanics
casionally a
man
tightening to offer some

tion.
comment on
the situa-
The whereabouts
of Kerensky was the

said one of them, point-
chief topic of the
moment.
"He is not there now,"
ing with his wrench in the direction of the palace. "He ran away to Finland in the night."
"He
fully.
is
not in Finland," said another scornto get troops.
"He went away

to fight us."
He
is
coming back
a
"They say he escaped
to the front disguised as
Red
Cross nurse," said a third, with a sneer that

his
produced a loud burst of laughter from

panions.
com-
Inside the palace, seated around the

table in the great council chamber,
mahogany
where the
Tsar of
that
all
the Russias had spoken
made an empire
tremble, fifteen
commands members of
In
the Provisional
Government grimly waited.
the hall outside the door ten military school cadets kept watch. These, the women's regi-
188

ment, and a company of cadets encamped on the lower floor, were all that stood between them and
the rising
army
of the workers.
To them
the
whereabouts of Kerensky was no
secret.
He had
rise to
gone
in search of loyal troops
who would
the protection of the Provisional Government,
and upon
or
fall.
his success or failure they
must stand
It
was noon when I returned
to St. Isaac's
Square. The Marinsky Palace, where the Counonce the home cil of the Republic was meeting, of the Council of the Empire, mouth-piece of
absolutism in old Russia,
sailors,
soldiers,
was surrounded by and Red Guardsmen. The
palace guards offered no resistance when a crowd of sailors demanded admission. They swarmed
through the entrances, and appeared simultanesailor, a ously in various parts of the hall. tam-o'-shanter on the back of his head and long
ribbon streamers flying out behind, stepped to President Avksentieff.
up
is
"Stop talking. Go home," he no Council of the Republic!"
said.
"There
Avksentieff and his followers demurred for a
moment;
then, looking around the
room
at the
189

men
in blue, they adjourned,
and
filed into the
square.
The Council
of the Republic, hope of
Tseretelli, Cheidze,
cialists
and those other moderate So-
trying so desperately to stave off the final break, was at an end.
who were
The more
Smolney
radical Socialist
members went
to
where the delegates from all parts of Russia were flocking to the second
Institute,
All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
At
three o'clock I started for Smolney, a
little
old revolutionist
whom we Americans
all called
"Daddy R.," trotting beside me. We walked down the Morskaya toward the telephone exchange. Just opposite we halted. Coming toward
marching formation, was a company of military cadets, strapping, handsome Before they fellows from the officers' school.
us, in regular
reached the
building,
the
commander
halted
them.
Half of
the
number walked
deliberately
past the armored car, turned, and approached
from the other
side.
A volley of
A
rifle fire
broke
the stillness, and the
crowd scurried
to the cover
of doorways and side streets.
gray-bearded, benevolent-looking dvornik dragged me inside a courtyard, where a dozen other people sought
190

shelter,
and clanged the great iron door shut be-
hind us.
beggar, with legs cut off at the
knees, hobbled beside me.
"Crack!
a
Crack!" went the
rifles
moment
of breathless silence.
again then The dvornik
cautiously opened the door a few inches, put my head out. The street was deserted.
and I
The
cadets were crouched in kneeling positions on the
sidewalks against the wall, guns pointing at the
telephone
office.
The dvorwk pushed

this
the door shut again,
and
time he locked
it
and motioned us
to follow.
We crossed a courtyard, and turned into a dark,

narrow tunnel, through which we picked our way over piles of debris and up and down stone steps
till
we came
By
open a block below. another route Daddy R. and I made our

into the
to the
way back
M orskaya.
I stepped to the
middle of the street to see what was happening, but a Russian officer motioned me away.
"They will fire again "They are trying to take

from the Bolsheviki."
in a minute," he said.
the telephone exchange
He
had no sooner finished speaking than the

191
front of the building began to belch lead in a

shower that sent the cadets hurrying in search of shelter. An armored car hove in sight from the
opposite direction, opened fire, and completed the rout of the attacking force.
toward the Nevsky. The bridge across the Moika was bristling with guns. Four armored cars barred the way, and a crowd of
soldiers
We hurried
and
sailors
worked
rapidly, throwing
up
a barricade across the street.

stretched flat
to fire
One man was
on the wooden pavement, prepared a machine-gun from the protection of a
telegraph-pole.
The Red Guards waved
the
passengers back from the bridge, but the tracks
were
left
open, and the cars went back and forth
unhindered.
We tried to make our way through

all
the old France Hotel, which wanders
over the
block between the Morskaya and the Moika, and
out on to the canal by another entrance.
we were turned
shop.
Again Another volley of gunshot sent us scurrying to the shelter of a basement

back.
It was nearly five
trance of Smolney.
when we reached the enThe great building, until a
few months before a private seminary where the feminine flower of Russian aristocracy was culti192

vated in seclusion, had suddenly become an arsenal, bristling with guns and swarming with
armed men.
Upstairs the
ties
Workmen's and
Soldiers'
Depu-
were gathering for the Congress of Soviets. They were coming together to decide whether the
Bolshevik
demand
of "All
should be granted.
power to the Soviets" It was a question already
being answered by the voice of the guns.
The meeting was

room was
still
to open at five.
At
nine
the crowd in the great, chaste white assembly
waiting for action.
Outside, in
the dimly lighted corridors, hundreds of
men with
a dele-
muddy
boots tramped back and forth, in and out
of committee rooms.
Soon
after nine,
gate from the Menshevik group announced that his party was still in caucus, unable to come to an
agreement, and asked for another hour's delay. murmur of disapproval ran through the room.
Nerves were at trigger-tension. For once, Russian patience seemed to be about to reach its
limit.
Another hour passed. Suddenly through the windows opening on the Neva came a steady
boom! boom! boom!
193

"What's
man.
that?
What's
and the
that?"
asked the
sailor of the soldier,
soldier of the
work-
A man with pale face and blazing eyes fought

his
way through
cruiser
the crowd on to the platform.

is
"The
in the
Aurora
shelling our comrades
Winter Palace.
We
demand
that this
bloodshed shall be stopped instantly!" he shouted. "It 's a lie!" said one of them.
"It
's
just another trick of the bourgeois to
divide our forces !" said a second.
A
that
few men hurried from the

to be
hall;
but the
crowd had received too many
startling
rumors
day
much
disturbed by another one.
Again came
question.
the boom! boom! boom! from the
direction of the
Neva.
Again
the
murmur
of
a motor-lorry cranking up in the courtyard below," some one ventured.

"It
's
"The people
upstairs
are
moving
tables
around," another suggested.
That moment the attention of the crowd was

diverted by the arrival of a
man of medium height,

his black hair
square-shouldered, lean, dark, and tense-looking.
His face was
white,
and
194*
brushed

back from a wide forehead, black mustache, and
small black beard, his black jacket and flowing black tie, still further emphasized the alabaster
whiteness of his skin.

feet of
He
stood within a few
me, one hand in his pocket, and with sharp, quick glances took the measure of that
strange sea of faces.
"Here
me.
Trotzky!" whispered the man beside "Come, I want you to meet him."
's
Before I had time to acquiesce or protest, I found a lean hand grasping mine in a strong,
characteristic handshake.
We
stood there for a
few moments, talking of inconsequential things,

but
all
of us charged with the tensity of the hour.

cer-
There was keen intelligence here, nerve, a

tain
uncompromising streak of
iron,
a sense of
power; yet I little suspected I was talking to the man whose name within a few brief weeks
would be a familiar word on every tongue the most-talked-of human being in an age of spectacular figures.
At twenty
minutes to eleven our conversation
was abruptly cut short by the appearance of Dan, who opened the meeting. It was Dan's swan-song. Only a few weeks before, in this
195

gathering, his voice would have been law; but with the swing of the workers to the left his power
was gone. The mass had broken with its leaders, and every comment from the crowd indicated
more
definitely the irrevocability of that break.*/?
Dan
announced that he would not make a
speech, declaring that the hour in which his com-
rades were being shelled in the Winter Palace,
and
self-sacrificingly sticking to their posts,
was
not the hour for oratory.
He said that five hunmembers would
dred and thirteen delegates had been seated, and

the
new presidium
of twenty-five
contain fourteen Bolsheviki.
The spokesmen
Leaders of the
of the various parties then antheir
nounced the names of
representatives.
social patriotic groups,
of the
Mensheviki, and Socialist Revolutionists refused

to take their place in the presidium,
and the Men-
she vik Internationalists declared they
would de-
lay joining the presidium until certain questions
were
settled.
The
Bolsheviki, with Nicolai
Lenin and Zeno-
vieff at their head,
climbed to the platform. great cheer went up from the Bolshevik supporters. Lenin and Zenovieff , who had been in hid196

ing since the July riots, had that day come out of their holes to take a historic part in this new
Revolution.
When
the ovation had died down,
Dan
briefly
stated the object of the meeting before relin-
quishing his place to Trotzky. "The business of the Convention," said he,
"divides itself into three heads: a governmental
crisis,
the question of
war and
peace, and the
Constituent Assembly." "Take up the question of peace a soldier in the crowd.

It
first,"
shouted
was
all
that
was needed
to set the indigna-
tion of the Mensheviki flaming.
"Tavarischi, forty minutes have passed since
we announced
shelled in the
that our comrades were being
Aurora
is
Winter Palace, and the cruiser still firing. We demand that this
bloodshed be stopped immediately." "A committee has already been sent out," some one else declared.
Martoff, perhaps the ablest of the Menshevik Internationalists, took the platform, and in a voice ringing with indignation demanded immediate settlement of the governmental crisis.
197

"If
this
convention wants to be the voice of

it
revolutionary democracy,
must not
sit
idly
by
before the rapidly developing civil war that may result in a disastrous explosion of the counterrevolution," he said.
"When the
question of the
is
organization of the government
being settled
by the conspiracy of a
single one of the revolu-
tionary parties, we are challenged by only one problem; the immediate warding off of this im-
pending
civil
war."
proposed the appointment of a committee for negotiating with other Socialist parties and
organizations to
clash.
He
stop
the
rapidly
developing
The
resolution
was passed
but, instead of im-
mediately appointing a committee, Trotzky permitted the convention to listen to the opinions of
delegate after delegate on a
number of
subjects
not pertaining to the question. It was a critical moment in the history of the
Russian Revolution.
memory
of insults
Perhaps it was some bitter he had suffered at the hands

it
of these other leaders, perhaps
was simply the
natural inability of the Russian to compromise, or a combination of these and other motives, that
198

made Trotzky delay action, and thereby toss away his opportunity for compromise. Probably even he himself could not say.
Meanwhile the guns on the Neva continued their eloquent "boom! boom! boom!
Kharash, a delegate from the Twelfth Army,
got the
floor.
is
"While a proposition for peaceful settlement being introduced here, a battle goes on in the
Petrograd," he
said.
"The Winter Palace is being shelled. The specter of civil war is rising. The Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionists repudiate all that is going on here, and
streets of
stubbornly resist
all
attempts to seize the gov-
ernment."
does not represent the Twelfth Army!" cried a soldier from the ranks. "The army de-
"He
mands
stant:
power to the Soviets." Twenty others were on their feet the same
all
in-
"Staff!
Staff!
He
comes from the Staff!
He
is
not a soldier!" they shouted angrily, shakfists
ing their
the
at the delegate
from the Twelfth.
Pandemonium broke
loose.
The
shouts
of
men
inside the building
drowned the boom
199

of the guns outside. In the midst of demanded and got the floor.
it
man
"We are leaving the convention," he said. "We can stand no more! We are going unarmed
to die with our comrades in the
Winter
Palace."
hush
fell
over the crowd.
It was broken
only by the sound of shuffling feet as the speaker led the way to the door, followed by a hundred or
more of the conservative

quietly out.
revolutionists,
who
filed
At midnight, with three fellow correspondents,

I left the atmosphere of that memorable meeting, gray with smoke and charged with battle, and
went
in search of passes that
would permit
me to
go to the Winter Palace.
200
CHAPTER XI
THE FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE
HOWEVER much
that night, there
city
the rest of Petrograd talked
was one spot in the storm-tossed where no words were wasted. This was the
of the Voina Revoliutsiony Komitiet (Military Revolutionary Committee), sprung sudoffice
denly and quietly into an existence shrouded in
deep mystery.
Alex Gomberg, Russian product of New York's East Side, with an American habit of
providing against emergencies, suggested that it would be useless to attempt to get through the Bolshevik lines without a pass from this committee.
Gomberg, odd
little
bundle of material-
ism and idealism, who had a deep love for the country of his adoption which his scoffing cynicism could not hide, never lost a chance to do a
good turn to America or Americans.

he could not
resist the
Though
home
call of revolution,
he said he would rather be a messenger-boy in

201

New York
than President of Russia.
As
friend of Trotzky,
known
to the
members
of the
all-powerful committee, he undertook to arrange
the necessary permits. He led the way down the dimly lighted corridor to the farther end. young fair-haired boy met
us in an outer
took our names and request, and disappeared into the next room, shutting the door behind him. stared curiously after
office,
We
him.
Beyond
it
that door were the
men who were
directing the siege
and capture of Petrograd
directing
so efficiently that in the days that
followed, the enemies of the Bolsheviki insisted
the committee was composed of Germans, be-
cause Russians were incapable of such perfect

organization.
When
the inside door opened again the fair-
haired boy reappeared with the passes in his hand. Mine was typewritten on a bit of paper
torn from a scratch-pad, numbered "Five," and

stated simply:
"The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies allows
Miss Bessie Beatty free passage

202
all
over the city."
FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

That scrap of paper was
sesame to
to prove the
open
many
closed doors before the gray
dawn
of morning.
It bore the blue seal of the
committee, the only signature capable of commanding the slightest sign of respect from a Russian bayonet that night.
The Smolney
Institute
is
excellently located to
provide seclusion for a young women's seminary, but in the middle of a cold night it seemed a long dark way from anywhere. Walking down the
stairs,
we
speculated upon the improbability of
finding an izvostchik abroad at such an hour.
Down in the courtyard a huge motor-truck was

cranking up for departure.
Its only occupants
young Cossack soldier with a cape of shaggy black fur that hung to his heels, and a Red Guardsman. We hailed them, and Mr. Gomberg shouted a request to be taken to
sailors,
were three
town.
gine.
It
was drowned by the sound of the en-
repeated it in louder tones. The sailor looked dubiously at me and at Louise
He
Bryant, the other woman member of the party. "It 's a dangerous trip," he said. "We are
going out to distribute proclamations, and we are almost certain to be shot at."
03

We looked at one another for a moment, conwas probably our only chance to reach the Winter Palace, and asked to be allowed
sidered that
it
to take the risk.
Two
strong hands came over
the side to pull
up, and two sailors sitting on a board across the body of the truck arose to give
me
us their seats.
They held a hurried consultation, then asked us to stand again. They had decided that this exposed position would be too
dangerous for women.

floor of the car.
The Cossack
lad in the
shaggy cape spread some proclamations on the

"Sit here," he said, "and
gins
when the shooting
be-
you can
lie flat
on your backs and keep your

lay on the floor under
heads low."
bundle of
as
rifles
my
knees, and
we
started off over the cobbles I
grabbed a chain and held fast to keep from being bumped out. The streets were like black canons.
Apparently there was not a human being abroad

leaflets into the air,
yet every time the sailor tossed a handful of white
men came
darting mysteri-
ously from doorways and courtyards to catch
them.
The Cossack towered above me,

204
rifle
in hand,

with eyes searching the dark for signs of danger. At the street intersections we slowed up, and
groups of soldiers gathered around the bonfires crowded close to the truck for news from Smolney.
They peered with curious and
startled eyes
into our unexpected faces, then hurried back to
the circle of light around the blazing birch-wood

logs.
During one of
these pauses
Mr. Gomberg
to us :
grabbed a proclamation and read
it
"TO RUSSIAN CITIZENS
"The power has gone over to the organ of the Petrograd Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, the
War
Revolutionary Committee, which
is
at the head of
the Petrograd proletariat and garrison. "The cause for which the people strive
immediate
democratic peace, abolition of pomieschik property on land, workmen's control, the creation of a Soviet government this business is done. "Long live the Revolution of workmen, soldiers, and
peasants.
"WAR REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE. ,,

in the steeple of the into the
,,
It
was one by the clock
Nicolaievski Station
when we turned
great circle was deserted. Earlier in the day there had been fighting here, but no trace of it was visible now.
Nevsky.
The
"Put your heads down!" the Cossack ordered,

205

catching sight of a group of unidentified
ahead.
men
We
obeyed; but
when they proved
to be Bol-
shevist soldiers
and Red Guardsmen, we peeped
cautiously out again.
At
the bridge across the

the barri-
Moika Canal we were turned back by
cade erected early in the afternoon, and by the
command
of the guard,
who
said there
was
firing
just ahead and no one could pass. From the direction of the Winter Palace came the occasional
boom! of a big gun, followed by the

rifles.
short,
sharp crack of the
Reluctantly we retraced our way. In front of the Kazan Cathedral the guards again ordered
us to
street,
halt.
In the darkness
across the wide
we saw
a crowd of black figures lined
up
in
marching order against the curb. come suddenly upon that little band of
We
had
men and
their
women who
left
Smolney
to
make
and
a demonstra-
tion of passive resistance
die with
They had been joined by the Mayor of Petrograd, members of the City Duma, and the Jewish Bund. There
comrades at the Winter Palace.
were four or
five
hundred of them
206
in
all,
and

here, within a
few blocks of their destination, they
had been stopped. In that crowd were many of the men and women who had been the firebrands of Russia,
the Socialist revolutionists, the terrorists,
who
were quietly walking forth to oppose themselves
unarmed
to the force of these
new
revolutionists
who, to their way of thinking, were murdering the cause of Russian freedom for which most of
them had suffered years of imprisonment and the

unspeakable hardships of exile in Siberia.
Here
and there
cluster
crowd was a young officer or a of students; but more of them were vetin the
in the service of revoset.
erans
who had grown gray

and
their faces
lution,
were grim and
Standing a few feet away was a squad of soldiers. The commissaire in command of them
raised his hand.
have orders from the Military Revolutionary Committee to let you go no farther," he
said.
"We
A murmur ran through the crowd.

207
The gray-
haired veterans of the old days began to argue, and students and officers joined their entreaties.

The soldiers remained obdurate. "What will you do if we go anyway?" asked Mayor Schreider of Petrograd. "Will you
shoot us?"
"No," replied the commissaire.

orders not to shoot you.
to let
"We
have
But we have
orders not
you pass."
He
fell
gave a quick command to his men, who back a distance of fifty feet and lined up
across the Nevsky.
They formed
a solid
human
wall, stretching across the
wide street from curb
to curb.
block below there was another and
yet more formidable wall composed of Red Guardsmen. The demonstrators looked at those
husky young
soldiers,
and turned away
in dis-
may.
"If
ist,
we go forward,"
said a gray-haired terror-
once expert in the use of dynamite, "some one will be killed, and they will blame it on the switch-
man.
orders,
will
They
will say
it
was a case of mistaken
and no good will come to any one. We go back, and try to persuade them to stop
the slaughter."
In regular marching order they departed as they had come a sad and solemn procession,
208
On
BOCHHO
PeBOJiNHloHHuro
RoMHrera
Coetrt
PaOowi
Ki
PocciH.
n A MM A ii A P AMI PA n JIDSEB Ilu* IWIWUVH I
Jf
ri
HGTOflEH
COBT*
2D oTfl6pa W17
r.
10
yrpa.
he proclamation of the Military Revolutionary Committee announcing the fall of the Kerensky government, distributed in Petrograd while the guns of the cruiser Aurora were hammering the Winter Palace
Women
soldiers in their last stand before the
Winter Palace
The
pass which permitted the author safe conduct through the Bolshevist lines

helpless in the face of this new, strange thing up-
setting all their preconceived ideas of revolution.
We
on,
watched them go; then, anxious to press
we presented our passes to the commissaire of forward with a soldiers, who motioned us "Pazhal'sta!" The wall broke, and we passed through without a word. The blue seal of the
Military Revolutionary Committee had done for us what eloquence and argument could not do
for the old revolutionists.
Moika the Red Guard halted us. Our passes made no appeal here. We looked suspiciously like bourgeois on the way to the Winter
the
At
Palace, and must not be allowed to pass.
We
argued, and they discussed the advisability of The idea did not especially aparresting us.
peal, so
we
retraced our steps to the
Kazan
Cathedral and the friendly commissaire. He detailed a man with special orders to take us through
the lines to the
Winter Palace.
slung over their shoulders regarded us with suspicion; but they took the word of the soldier and finally per-
Again
the factory
men
with
rifles
mitted us to pass.
It
was quarter of three when we halted

209
in the

shadow of the great red arch and peered cauThere was a tiously out into the dark square.
moment
of silence then three

;
rifle
shots shattered
stood speechless, awaiting a return volley but the only sound was the crunching
the quiet.
;
We
of broken glass spread like a carpet over the cobblestones.
The windows
into bits.
sailor
of the
Winter Palace
black.
had been broken

Suddenly a
"It
's
emerged from the
all
over!" he said.
"They have
surren-
dered."
picked our way across the glass-strewn square, climbed the barricade erected that after-
We'
noon by the defenders of the Winter Palace, and followed the conquering sailors and Red Guards-
men
into the
mammoth
the
building of dingy red

of
stucco.
On
strength
our
blue-sealed
passes, they permitted us to enter unquestioned.
A commissaire of sailors motioned us to a bench beside the wall. A squad of sailors mounted the
stairs to
the council chamber, and placed the
Provisional
Government under
arrest.
Above
us
could hear the sound of doors being broken open, while a searching squad went from room to room looking for hidden prisoners.
210
we

The
rifles
taken from the military cadets were
stacked in a heap in the hall, and a solid line of victorious sailors filed in and out of the palace.
The
desire for souvenirs, trophies of the hour,

;
seemed to have seized them but the palace apparently offered

little choice.
One
sailor
came down
and an-
the stairs with a coat-hanger in his hand,
other carried a sofa cushion.
could
find
was a candle.
The best a third The commissaire
stopped them at the door. "No, no, tavarisch!" he said, holding out his hand. "Pazhal'sta, pazhal'sta, you must take
nothing from here."
He talked to them in a patient, reasonable tone,

as one
would speak
to a child,
and
like children
they gave
up
their plunder.
One man, a
soldier
who had taken a blanket, protested. "But I am cold," he said.

"I can't help
they will say
it,
tavarisch.
If you take that,
we came to loot. And we did not come for loot: we came for revolution." At that moment there was a clatter on the stairs, and I turned to see the members of the Provisional Government file slowly down. Konovaloff, rice-president of the
Cabinet and Minis-
211

Trade and Industry, came first. Tretiakoff of Moscow, president of the Economic CounBehind him was the tall, dark, cil, followed.
ter of
slender,
handsome figure of the young Foreign Minister, Tereshchenko, who cast an amazed
glance in
line
my
direction as he passed.
little, frail,
Next
in
gray figure of Kishkin, Minister of Public Welfare, and after him two
military
came the
General Manikovsky, Acting Minister of War, and General Borisoff. Among the others were practically all the remainin uniform,
men
ing members of the Kerensky Cabinet. Some of them walked with defiant step and heads held high. Some were pale, worn, and
anxious.
broken.
ing,
One or two seemed utterly crushed and The strain of that day of anxious wait-
and that night under the capricious guns of the cruiser Aurora, coupled with the weeks when Cabinet crisis had followed Cabinet crisis, had
proved too much for them.
They marched
silently off across the square,
and headed for the Fortress of Peter and Paul,

rising grimly out of the darkness
beyond the
Neva.
I sat there silently watching them go, and won-

dering what this night's work would mean in the future of Russia and the world. The corn-mis-
who had motioned us to the seat indicated that we might now go upstairs, and we passed quickly to the council chamber. We made our way through the shattered rooms, blazing now
scare
with a million lights from the twinkling crystal

chandeliers.
The
silk curtains
hung
in shreds,
and here and there on the walls was the ugly

scar of a recent bullet.
On
the whole, the de-
struction
was much
less
than
we had expected
to find
its
attacking force had gone about work, determined to take the palace, but to
it.
The
take
it
with as
in the lulls
bloodshed as possible, and between storms they had made frelittle
quent attempts to break the resistance by fraternization. None of the defenders had been killed,
but six of the
open had paid with their lives for their revolusquare tionary ardor, and many others had been wounded.
passed the door of Kerensky's office, formerly the study of the last of the Romanoffs, one of the palace care-takers spoke to the two
soldiers standing
sailors
who had fought
in the
As we
guard
outside.

"Take good care of
library
is
this,"
he said.
"The
very valuable." Later, Mr. Gomberg, anxious to test the guard, presented a pass and asked for admission.
"I
pass
am sorry," said one of the soldiers,

is
"but
this this
not good here.
No
one can enter
room
to-night."
Nicholas II,
who only a few months
before had
in exile
sat behind the sealed door,
was sleeping
on the edge of a Siberiah swamp. Kerensky, his successor, was spending the night hours in a
desperate effort to reach the front and rally the
troops to prevent the very thing that had just
happened.
I recalled, with a
little
sigh of re-
gret, that this
day
in this very spot I
was
to
have
lunched with the Minister-President of Russia.
In one of the rooms where we lingered for a few moments, looking curiously about us, a crowd of soldiers had gathered, and they were talking
together excitedly.
I noticed them, and once I
caught the proletarian word of scorn, "BourBut it never occurred to me that we geoisie!"
could be the object of their discussion. a young commissaire came up to us.
Suddenly
said,
"These men can not understand," he

214
"who

you
and why you are here. They are quite excited and angry about it. They think perhaps you may have come to rob. I told them I would
are,
if
question you, and
you had no
right to be here
we would
arrest you."
We presented our passes. He examined them,

and turned to the men, who were by
direction.
this
time
quite obviously casting unfriendly glances in our
"Tavarischi,"
he
said,
"these
passes
are
stamped, just as my own is, with the blue seal. See it! You may be sure that if they had not the right they would not be here with this."
The men examined

nodded.
subject,
the paper quizzically,
and
They took an informal vote upon the and it was agreed that we should be al-
lowed to go free. few minutes later we followed them down
the stairs
and out of the palace, the
last
people to
detailed
leave except for the guards

to
who were
remain on duty.
The next day a
decree was
passed making the

ple's
mammoth red
it
building a peo-
museum, that
might be preserved from
ever again becoming a point of dispute in political conflicts.
215

I did not see the
in another
women
soldiers.
wing of the palace. morning the city rang with stories of their abuse but in the investigation that was made by
;
They were The following
Madame Torkova, one of the leaders of the Petrograd Duma, whose inclinations were decidedly
anti-Bolshevik,
most of these
of the
tales
were
dis-
proved.
Some
women were
taken to the
headquarters of the Pavlovsky Regiment, and held there until relatives could bring them feminine wearing apparel.
A few others, who had no

their
way
to obtain this,
were allowed to go in
soldiers'
uniforms.
a number of the girls I heard the story of that night. It seems that class feeling had
for the
From
moment wiped
out every other instinct.
As
they marched them away in the dark, some of the men, in their excitement, took them by the
arms and shook them, shouting: "Why do you fight us? Why do you go
against your
own
women.
So
Why
workingdo you fight with the bourgeoisie

their
class?
You
are
and the counter-revolutionists?"

effective
was
for the first time, a class
propaganda that then, breach was made in the
216

ranks of the
women
soldiers,
and some of them
went over to the radicals as completely as any of the men had done.
Winter Palace, the The victory of the Bolsheviki was complete. dictatorship of the proletariat had become a fact.
the surrender of the
With
The only power in Petrograd
at
dawn that morn-
ing was the power of the People's Commissaries,
headed by Nicolai Lenin and Leon Trotzky, and backed by the Russian fleet, the bayonets of the
Petrograd garrison, and the Red Guard rifles. Petrograd was stunned. No one had the remotest idea what was going to happen.
is
"Where
"Where is Korniloff ? Where is Savinkoff? Where are the Cossacks?" Last, and worst of all, "Where are the GerKerensky ?" they asked.
mans?"
Rumor was
riding a
mad
steed.
All sorts of
wild reports swept through the city, but no word of verified fact came from the outside world.
That morning the storm center
shifted to the city
Duma, which
refused to acknowledge the victory of the Bolsheviki or accede to their demands.
Committee for the Salvation of the Country and the Revolution was quickly formed, and all
211

the anti-Bolshevik groups gathered around
it.
Early
in the day, a Bolshevist representative
called at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and de-
manded
the secret treaties, declaring that he
wished to inform the Russian people as to the aims of the war. He was told that ten thousand
dossiers were to be found in the archives of the
ministry,
and he was
thanked
at liberty to
his
examine
all
of
them.
He
informant and
left.
At
the same hour Lenin called at the office of

official
organ of the executive committee of the. Council of Workmen and Soldiers,

the Izvestia.,
and announced that

editors to continue
it
would hereafter be
in the
hands of the Bolsheviki.
He
proposed to the
work under the new leaderThey refused, and Zenovieff, who only a ship. few hours before had been a fugitive, was elevated
to the position of chief.
Absolute quiet reigned in the city that day and the next, and such order as Russia had not
known March
since the days immediately following the
Revolution,
when
the entire populace was

selfish
lifted into
a state of exaltation in which
desires played
told that the
Every soldier had been honor of the new Revolution was in

part.
no

his hands.
Every member of the Red Guard had been warned that provocation in all the timetried Russian forms would be used by monarchists,
counter-revolutionists,
to discredit
and German agents the cause of the workers. They were
admonished to refrain from violence themselves,
and
to prevent looting wherever the slightest init
dication of
was found.
Placards were posted
upon the buildings urging precautions against disorder, and soldiers were on patrol duty at
every street corner.
By
Friday night the Committee of Salvation

in spreading the strikes in the vari-
had succeeded
ous ministries until the Bolsheviki were almost
completely isolated from the rest of the Russian They made the city ring with intelligentzia.
stories of outrages
stories that later
be a fine fabric of falsification,

imagination.
proved to worthy of Russian
The
leaders of the Council of the
Republic, the Peasants' Council, and even the Centroflot, Executive Committee of the Russian
fleet,
called
upon the people to refuse
to recog-
nize the Soviet government,
and announced that
before long they would be able to establish a

stable
government themselves.
219

It
was a
call the
people did not heed.
The
masses had swung away from their leaders.
own very definite ideas as to what they wanted. The sailors were protesting
They had
their
violently that the Centrabalt did not represent
the rank
dissolved
and
file
of the navy, and
it
was
finally
by order of the Military Revolutionary Committee. Soldiers from the ranks were
charging their committees with counter-revolution, and shouting with fire in their eyes that
their executives
were putting off the army

faith of the reelected.
elec-
tions
week
after
week because they knew they
no longer had the and could not be
men in the trenches

The same
split
had
come between the peasants and their executives, and every rumor from the remote corners of
Russia indicated that
cities
little villages,
towns, and
were following the lead of Petrograd, and rising in massed revolt.
The
Bolsheviki had achieved a degree of suc-
cess greater than they suspected.
The
leaders,
exhausted by lack of sleep, depressed by the rejection of the Intelligentzia, and conscious of their
inadequacy for the mere physical task of bringing

bread to keep Petrograd
realize their strength.
alive, failed utterly to
A heavy pall of discourcitadel of the
agement
settled
on Smolney.
that the Cossacks were march-
Word had come

ing on the
ers
city,
and that the
work-
would be attacked the following morning.
Petrograd poured out to fight. The factory gates opened wide, and that amazing army of the Red Guard, ununiformed, untrained, and cer-
unequipped for battle with the traditional backbone of the Russian military, marched away
tainly to defend the "revolutionary capital"
and the
victory of the proletariat.
walked by the side of men, and small boys tagged along on the fringes of the procesSome of the factory girls wore red crosses sion.
Women
upon the
sleeves of their thin jackets,
and packed
a meager kit-bag of bandages and first-aid acMore of them carried shovels with cessories.
which to dig trenches.
The
fire
of the Crusaders
was
in their eyes,
and the
faith of the Christian
martyrs in their
souls, as
they marched
down
the
Nevsky, singing as they went, oblivious to the bitter cold that blew in from the Baltic waters,

and unafraid for the
very
tions of beaten,
first
time of that foe whose
name had been a
terror to countless genera-
broken
human
beings.
At ten o'clock Friday night my telephone rang,

and a weary voice came over the wire. Lettish friend, Jacob Peters.
"I
"It
is
It
was
my
am
trying to translate something," he said. very important, and I do not know enough
English.
Could you find time to help me?"

I asked him.
"When?"
"Now," he said. Half an hour later he knocked His face was gray with fatigue.
my door. He had not

at
been in bed for three days, and he looked utterly crushed and discouraged.
the decree of peace to the warring nations of the world," he said. are going to
is
"It
"We
send
it
out on the wireless in every language.
They have given me the English translation. We have nobody to help us. It is terriblethere are so few of us who can do this sort of
thing."
We
sat
down
with
at
my
typewriter, and Peters
struggled
the
difficult
Russian
his
words.
Though he could speak Russian,

222
knowledge of

the fine points of the language
He
had
to translate
it first
was none too good. in his own mind into

and
his poor,
Lettish,
and then
into English,
tired brain nearly
went mad with the
task.
Slowly I took down the words. At the end of an hour the sum of our labors covered half a page
of typewriting. the title:
We
started glibly
enough with
THE DECREE
and continued:
OF PEACE
of Soviets of Workmen's, and Peasants' Deputies unanimously passed the following decree of peace, October 26-November 8. The Workmen's and Peasants' Government, made by the Revolution of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of October (old style), and sanctioned by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, asks the warring peoples and governments to start negotiations immediately for rightful and democratic peace for rightful and democratic
Soldiers',
;
The Ail-Russian Congress
peace for which the majority of the worn-out, suffering, and war-weary workers are longing in all warring countries ; peace for which the peasants and workers of Russia have been persistently asking since they overthrew the monarchy of the Tsar, that is, peace without annexations and contributions and self-definition of
nations.
It was only the
first
paragraph. 88
Peters looked

despairingly at the long document in front of
him, and rubbed his tired eyes. "I guess it 's no use," he said.
finish
it if
"We
could n't
is
we worked
If
all night.
My
Russian
not good enough.

lators!
we
only had some trans-
we only had some stenographers!" Here was this new government of the People's
If
Commissaries preparing a document that they

confidently hoped
would revolutionize the
status
of the struggling world, and there was no one to

translate
it
but a Lett
who had not been
to
bed
for three days,
and an American war
corre-
spondent.
When
hand.
Peters got up to leave, he held out his
"This
said.
may
we
be the
fail
last
time I will see you," he

is
"If
now, everything
is all
lost.
in
my
country the business

first
in
my name
if
Up my
fail
throat will be the
one cut."
"Well, we have
I
tried,
anyway, and
we
know
the day will
come when the world
will
say that dark Russia did her best to bring peace

to all the war-weary peoples!"
CHAPTER
SUNDAY, November
11,
XII
THE DAY OF SHAME

must go down on the
calendar of the red Russian year as a day of shame. On that day there was a sacrifice of the
innocents as needless as
it
was
useless,
and those
responsible were not the military school cadets,
nor the soldiers and workmen

but a
little
whom they fought,
group of older men who stayed safely beyond the reach of guns and sent mere boys to do their fighting for them.
was not much greater was due to an American, whose part may still be remembered in Petrograd when the fallen city is
That the
toll
of victims
risen again.
Shortly before noon Sunday, I was sitting in my room in the War Hotel, wondering at the
quiet,
bells,
broken only by the ringing of the church
when two
silence.
They
abruptly shattered the were followed by the noise of exshots

cited voices,
halls.
and the
clatter of
many
feet in the
I hurried out to the
stairs,
but an
officer
turned
me
back at the
first
landing.
"They
are fighting downstairs

said.
you had better

floor
keep to your room," he

I retraced
my
steps,
and on the
above
caught the elevator and dropped swiftly down. The lobby was swarming. Soldiers were run-
ning about everywhere,

shouting, and
men and
officers
were
pening.
nobody could tell what was hapI walked to the door in time to see an
armored car turn the corner and make for the

Several other people saw it at the same moment, and there was a rush for the stairs. The
hotel.
car
came
to a halt at the entrance.
Suddenly a boy officer, a cigarette hanging nonchalantly from the corner of his mouth and
a revolver in his hand, lined the Bolshevik guards up against the wall and disarmed them. He had
come with the pass-word of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and the paper he carried in his pocket was stamped with the blue seal. It
did not occur to any one at that moment that either the pass-word or the seal could have been
THE DAY OF SHAME

obeyed every command of the Military Revolutionary Committee without Not until they were prisoners and had question.
stolen.
The
soldiers
heard the lock on the basement door turn behind
them did they
realize that they
had been
tricked.
"Who
are they?"
everybody asked.
"Has
Kerensky come?
Is Korniloff here?"
I put the question to a Russian admiral standing near me. He shook his head in despair.
"God knows, madame.

The boy
officer
I don't."
his
squad departed as suddenly as they had come, carrying most of the rifles with them. Quiet settled on the hotel.
and
The old guard was in prison, and there was no new one. Two small boys picked up a couple of
rifles left
behind, and slung them across their
shoulders in imitation of the armed workmen.
"Krasnia Gvardia!" (Red Guard!), one
said,
hunching down into

hysterically.
his coat.
A woman laughed
officer
I
the
left the hotel,
and followed the
down
Morskaya
to the telephone
building two
Motor-trucks and a couple of touring cars had been placed across the street as a barricade to traffic; and the crowd, warned
blocks below.

back by uniformed men with kept at a safe distance.
rifles in their
hands,
Albert Williams was standing in the doorway, talking to a group of soldiers. They were very
evidently not Bolsheviki, and I crossed the street
to find out
what had happened
there.
He
drew
me
quickly into the shelter of the courtyard and
began to explain.
The telephone exchange was
once more in the hands of the military school cadets, and they were momentarily expecting a
counter-attack by the
Red Guard and
the sailors.
dark-eyed boy, one of the ten who had stood guard over the Provisional Government in
tall,
the
Winter Palace,
related in perfect English
the events of the morning.
At daybreak an
door,
automobile drove up to the
and two
officers
stepped out.
his
They
said
that Kerensky
Petrograd and would arrive in a short time with two regiments.
was on
way
to
They provided
the boys with the seal of the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee and the proper

pass-words, told them to go to the first cluster of guards gathered around one of the street-cor-
ner
fires,
surprise them, overpower

their
them by numTheir orders
bers,
and take
guns away.
THE DAY OF SHAME

then were to take the telephone exchange and the War Hotel by means of the pass-word, and hold
them
until
Kerensky
arrived.
The boys
started blithely forth, convinced that
they were preparing the way for the restoration of the Provisional Government and it was merely
a matter of an hour or two before the victorious

troops of Kerensky would come to relieve them. "I don't see why he does not come," he ended
plaintively.
"We can't hold
out long alone."
At this time there was only an occasional volley,

but at two o'clock the firing began in earnest from both ends of the street. The cadets, mere chil-
dren in
this business
of war, built barricades of
boxes and boards across the sidewalks, and when

the supply of these
logs
was exhausted they carried
from a wood-pile.
They took up
and
positions
behind these
frail protections
fired at the
attacking forces, which came at them from two

directions.
Some
hid behind the motor-trucks,
upon the engines. Some lay flat in the mud upon the wooden cobbles, and fired
resting their guns
from underneath the

I watched the
cars.
fight, first
from behind the
barri-
cade in the courtyard, then went upstairs to a 229

front
window where
I could look
down upon
the
street.
In a room on the second

of the
floor,
Antonoff, head
Red Guard and member
of the Bolshevik
Commissary, was a prisoner. The crowd outside the building, led by a factory worker and reinforced by sailors, learned
that Antonoff
War
was
in the building,
and were mad
to be at the throats of the

their leader.
men who were

still
They had
against the cadets.
Many
holding another grievance of these same boys
had been captured once in the Winter Palace, and allowed to go free. They had broken their parole, and the sailors especially were bitter to
think they had to sacrifice
to re-arrest them.
more of
their
comrades
In the middle of the afternoon the cadets suggested a peace parley, offering to surrender Antonoff if they were allowed to go free.
"We
last
'11
take Antonoff ourselves, and
kill
every
one of you," came back the answer.

desperate.
The boys grew
come? Why Kerensky doesn't Kerensky come?" they asked again and
doesn't
again.
"Why
330
THE DAY OF SHAME

There was no one
cers,
to answer.
The
older
offi-
who had been directing them, completely disappeared. The stock of ammunition dimin-
Cross automobile dashed up to the building at half -past two, left a box of handished.
Red
grenades, and departed again.
A machine-gun had been

box
in the street,
set
up on a wooden
and
in the courtyard a
woman
with a shawl over her head loaded and reloaded

the tape.
closer
The
closer
attacking forces were pressing
and
upon the
and
building.
The
street
barricades were abandoned.
A few of the cadets

my
place at
poured up the
stairs
into the front rooms.
At
four o'clock I was
moved from
the window.
"We
With
want
to shoot
from here," one of the
cadets explained.
that they smashed the glass with the
rifles,
butts of their
and took
their places behind
the yellow silk curtains.
I walked across to a
court.
window overlooking the

comrade,
ers.
Two
cadets
passed into the building bearing a wounded
who
lay limp in the arms of his bear-
"Come away from
here.
They
're
down
in the

courtyard at the foot of the stairs!" somebody
shouted.
With
that the hall
was deserted.
Men
and
girls fled to the
back of the building.

officer
In a pantry
with a huge breadknife, trying to cut the buttons from his coat with hands that trembled so they made a long job of it.
I found a
boy
Still
lets.
another was tearing frantically at his epauIn an ante-room behind the switchboard
three
more discovered the
street clothes of
some
mechanics, and were quickly stripping themselves.
Suddenly the thing for which these boys had striven the coveted gold braid and brass buttons of an
superiority
officer's
uniform, symbol of their

their curse.
had become
Any
one
of them would have given the last thing he possessed on earth for the suit of a common working-
man.
Stripped bare of every scrap of 'the pride and tradition of their class, they were caught in
blood from their faces and every bit of courage
the grip of a fear that drained every drop of
from
their hearts.
Wandering about from room
to room, stopping
here and there to say "Kharasho!" or "Nichevo!"
THE DAY OF SHAME

to
some poor girl dissolved in tears upon a bench, I came out finally in a corridor where Mr. Wil-
liams was standing with his interpreter.

officer
A cadet
and
let
had hold of the
lapels of his overcoat,
was pleading with him

escape.
fear,
to take
it
off
and
him
The
his
boy's bronze face
was gray with
and
words tumbled over each other in
jumbled incoherence. I glanced from him to the American, and saw a pair of eyes full of pain
and
a
indecision.
A tense, silent moment followed

which I held
moment
in
my
breath and
waited.
The
shooting outside had stopped.
Dark was
closing in around us.

obliterated but the one
Everything for
me was
man
that might save his
life,
asking for something and the other to whom it
was second nature

viction
soul.
to give, torn
between con-
and
desire.
knew
the tumult in his
The
coat of rough
brown
cloth
and American
cut was strikingly different from any other in
had become a familiar garment in revolutionary Petrograd. Its owner was an excellent speaker, and he had talked to the men at
it
Russia, and
the front, on the
fleet,
and
in the factories,
and

wrapped
in the
brown
coat he had slept in peas.
Moscow to Kieff The Russian workmen loved him and trusted him, and he had come to know them and to believe
ant huts from
in the integrity of their idealism.
for these frightened fellows,

as bitter as a
had pity but he was almost

at the breaking of illegitimate
He
Red Guardsman
Cross car.
parole, the stealing of passes,
and the
use of the
Red
"If I give him my coat they will recognize and think me a traitor," he said.
I did not answer.
it
I felt I had no right to
plead with him against his principles. His RusHe turned to sian had completely deserted him.
his interpreter:
"Tell him I can't give him my coat, but perhaps I can help in some other way," he said. The interpreter obeyed, and the officer walked
away with a
head.
hopeless, despairing shake of the
looking after him, both of us possessed of a frantic consciousness that something must be done to save these boys
We
stood for a
moment
doing the bidding of the in a trap.
men who had
left
them
234
THE DAY OF SHAME

"Oh,
said, in
if
I could only speak this language!" I
a futile explosion of protest against
my
helplessness.
"What would you do?" my companion asked. "I don't know what I 'd do, but I 'd do something!" I answered, and started down the hall,
deserted a few minutes earlier.
Mr. Williams
followed me.
"Find him," he
coat,
said.
it
but I will leave

it."
"I can't give him my here, and he can come and
take
I hurried past the stairway, with one swift

glance toward the dark courtyard, where from the street were crowding thicker
thicker.
men
and
I went from corridor to corridor, josof
tling groups
frightened
men and women,

where
and stumbled
at last into a back room,
most of the cadets had gathered. They had thrown down their guns and were waiting for the
end.
I searched the faces.
The
officer
was not
among
them.
Mr. Williams, by this time possessed of a passion to find him, had been hunting in another part
of the building. At the moment, for both of us, the whole tragic situation was done up in the

human being trying to save his life. Every second we expected to hear the rush of men on the stairway.
plight of this one feeble
"Perhaps I can do something with Antonoff," Mr. Williams suggested. "Where are the
boys?" I led him back to the room where I had found
them, and he offered to go to the imprisoned Minister of War and try to make terms of sur-
render that would guarantee their safety. "Pazhal'sta, barin! Please help us! Please
save us !" they cried in chorus.
With two
two minutes.
ated
little
cadets to guide
him and unlock the

waited a breathless
door, he disappeared.
We
When he returned, a queer, emacistoop -shouldered and pale,
fellow,
walked beside him.
very long nose and a fringe of long pale hair were almost all of him visible below the wide brim of his soft felt hat.
Surely the
War
Minister had none of the tradi-
tional appearance of a'Russian military
man.
"Tavarisch Antonoff, save our lives!" cried the

cadets in unison.
lutionist that
"On the word of the good revowe know you are, save our lives!"
236
"Where
are your officers?" Antonoff asked.
THE DAY OF SHAME

"They have all left us," they answered. The terms of surrender were quickly made, and Antonoff and Williams started downstairs to face The men of the Red Guard recogthe crowd.
nized their leader.
"Antonoff! Antonoff!" they shouted. "Nash, "Where are the junknash!" (Ours, ours!)
ers?"
With
stairs.
this the
men
in the lead
made
for the
Antonoff stopped them. "I have given my word of honor as a revolu-
tionist that these
men
in there shall not be killed,
and
you must keep that word." Some of the Baltic fleet sailors, who had come
as revolutionists
down from the Respublica, recognized

ican.
the
Amer-
"Americanski tavarisch !" one of them shouted.
Mr. Williams began speaking to them. "I know the temptation you have," he
if
said,
"but the ideals of your Revolution will be sullied
you
yield to
you
kill
If you insist on fighting till the last junker, it will be a useless masit.
sacre,
and I
will
make
it
known around
the
world."
He
explained the case of the boys and their 237

desertion
by
their officers,
and when he
finished a
vote was taken.
All the
sailors lifted their hands.
A few of the Red

"I have
Guard murmured
dissent.
Antonoff turned to them.
made my terms
of surrender," he said,
first
"and I
will
myself shoot the
man who harms

The
one of the junkers." There was a ring of
finality in his tone.
men
looked at him in astonishment.
"Shoot us?" they cried incredulously. "Yes," he answered. "I would rather that we
should
all
die than that this
American should
say that revolutionists of Russia were base and

revengeful 1" This time all the hands went up.
committee from the city

the leader took the
it
Duma
arrived at
that moment, and

stairs,
as the cadets filed
down
first
the
hand of the
sailor.
one
and placed
"This
life into
is
in the
hand of a
prisoner
number
said.
one,
it
and I trust
his
your hands. the Revolution," he
Guard
for the honor of
When
the last
man was
delivered, the sailor
who brought him downstairs

238
tossed a contemptu-
ous glance in his direction and said:
"The
last
THE DAY OF SHAME

of the trash!"
his
He was
quickly hushed by one of
companions. Outside in the Morskaya an occasional shot sounded above the shuffle of feet in the court-
yard.
"Provokator!
Provokator!" the
sailors cried,
and cautioned each other against being aroused

to response.
Meanwhile the frightened telephone operators

slipped quietly
terrors they
away
in the dark.
None
all
of the
had feared
in the long hours of the
afternoon had materialized.

strike,
They
went on
exchange
and the next time I
called at the
the switchboards were
manned by
sailors, soldiers,
and a few factory workers, whose poor bewildered brains and clumsy fingers struggled desperately to master the intricate science of plugging in and
plugging out.
The telephone exchange and

Sunday.
battle,
the
War
Hotel
were not the only spots where trouble raged that
At
the Vladimirsky Military School,
Bolshevik forces and cadets fought a desperate
and many were killed.
Some of the cadets
were reported to be frightfully mutilated by bayonet thrusts. On the Gogol, not far from St.
239

Isaac's Cathedral, there
were a few hideous mo-
ments of slaughter.
the street.
feur.
An armored car came down

in the street hurried into a
Inside were three cadets and a chauf-
The people
doorway for shelter. In the group were civilian men, women, and children, and six sailors. The car came to an abrupt stop just opposite the doorway, and the guns, opening into that cluster of humans.
fire,
sprayed death
workman was
the
first
to fall,
and a
little
newsboy crumpled on the pavement beside him. The sailors darted toward the car, and jabbed
their bayonets
plates.
through the holes in the

of the
steel
The
shrieks
men
inside
told
plainly that the
weapons had struck home. The When firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
the shrieks suddenly died away, they dragged
three dead
cobbles.
men
out and stretched them on the
They were covered with blood and bayonet wounds until they were unrecognizable. The chauffeur, who was uninjured, begged for
mercy, and a Bolshevik in the crowd said "For God's sake, let him go. Let 's not
:
kill
any more of them than we have to !" It was midnight when I again returned to the
240
Orrin S.
Wightman
The Winter Palace from the Red Arch
Russian soldiers at home in the Palace of a Grand
Duke
Soldiers
and factory workers took the place
of striking telephone operators
Red Guards on duty
before Trotzky's door
THE DAY OF SHAME

hotel,
which had
in the
meantime been recapThis time they were

the upper
tured by the Bolsheviki.
taking no chances. floors swarmed with
The lobby and

sailors.
There were hun-
dreds of guards where the day before there had been twenty. They had commandeered the entire
second
floor,
and with machine-guns had

in
taken
positions
the
front
windows.
The
servants
had
fled.
The beds were unmade.

all
There had been no food in the hotel
day.
Most
of the residents
had departed.
Nearly a week had passed since the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution, and we were still
in utter darkness as to
rest of the world. side
what was going on in the The last news from the out-
was the joyous word that woman suffrage had carried New York State by 100,000 majority. It seemed incredible, as wild as the wild rumors
that were pouring in
casus;
from Siberia and the Cauit.
we
did not dare believe
Kerensky's
movements
I found
just outside the city continued to rein mystery.
main shrouded
desk covered with messages from kindly members of the American colony, bent on rescuing me from the storm-center of Revolution.
my

I read them over with a sense of pleasure that pleasure which always comes with the knowledge
that
warm, friendly human guardian angels are standing in the offing; but I had not the slightest
intention in the world of obeying
any of the
well-
meant advice or accepting any of the gracious Here under this very roof was the hospitality.
theater in which the tremendous revolutionary
drama, involving the destiny of nearly two hundred million Russians and no one could say how
many
sia.
others of the peoples of the world, It
was be-
ing played.
was for
it
this I
had come to Rus-
By
the side of
personal security seemed
trivial thing.
I put the notes

talk with
tion
away and went downstairs

sailors.
to
some of the
night
Their conversaof
provocation.
!
that
was
chiefly
Again and again I heard the words, "Provokator Provokator!" My Western mind had come reluctantly to the admission that provocation
and
Black Hundred plots were an actuality and not a nightmare of some dark age-long dead. I listened with interest to their charges against the
monarchists, and wondered
how much
truth there
might be in them.
THE DAY OF SHAME

Coming down in the elevator next morning, I met Baron B. I had not seen him for several
days, and frequently I had wondered what he
was doing
in the
new
crisis.
I looked
up
at
him
as he entered the
in his face that
lift,
and there was something

inside.
made me shudder
"Where were you yesterday?" I asked, with as much self-control as I could muster. "We did not see you around, and we thought perhaps you
had been arrested."
He laughed
a mirthless, cruel laugh that was

arrest me.
more nearly a sneer. "No," he said; "they won't

out with a them.
rifle
I was
over
my
shoulder.
I was one of
I was a
Red Guard!"
CHAPTER
MYSTERY shrouded
XIII
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

the Petrograd front.
In
the days that followed the battles of Gatchina
and Tsarskoe Selo only a few meager
facts
came
out of the background of wildly conflicting rumors.
We
knew
in
that Kerensky, with that dazzling
gift of his for
had driven
momentarily overpowering men, an automobile into the midst of a

soldiers,
detachment of rebel
and disarmed them.
We
Guard,
knew
fired
that the ragtag
army
of the
Red
by
faith in their cause,

it
had taught
more than a military reputation to make a fighting man. We knew that the sailor Dydenko had gone
the Cossacks that
takes
alone across
No
Man's Land
to plead the cause
of the proletarian revolt, and had
come back with
the surrender of the opposing forces.
We knew that
it
was
all over.
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

heart the Cossacks were no more eager for killing their brothers than the rest of the Rus-
At
They were the policemen of the Tsar because they had known no other calling, seen no other vision. The Revolution had broken their traditions, given them a new faith. They were
sians.
no longer a unit ready to do the bidding of a master. Many of the younger Cossacks had already
embraced the Bolshevist
to follow
faith,
and
in the
months
more and more of them were
to desert
the
ways of their fathers. There is something poignantly
tragic in the
Kerensky out there alone beyond the edge of the city, where for an hour he was an uncrowned king. Like most of the Russian leadpicture of
ers of the revolutionary year, he
came out of
the world's
nowhere, flashed for a

screen,
moment on
into
nowhere again. If some day he should emerge from that land of silence into which so many Russians are exiled
and disappeared
by the changing fortunes of revolution, we may learn what really happened to him at Gatchina.
The
diers
sailor
Dybenko,
in his report to the Soviet,
declared that Kerensky,
when he learned
the sol:
had deserted him,
said to
General Krasnoff
245

"Your Cossacks have betrayed me.
drive a bullet into
I shall
my
brain."
story,
According
to
Dybenko's
General Kras-
noff suggested that the only courageous thing for
the Minister-President of Russia to do was to
go
to Petrograd,
and offered to give him an
es-
cort of eight
men.
To
this
Kerensky consented,
but, while the escort
was being formed, he asked to be allowed to clean himself up, and succeeded
in changing to the
uniform of a
sailor
and escap-
ing in an izvostchik.
Leon Trotzky,
in a
telegram from the village
of Pulkovo to his followers in Petrograd, said:
"On
lay
the evening of
November 12 Kerensky
sent a proclamation to the revolutionary troops to
The Kerensky troops had opened artillery fire. Our artillery replied and The Cossacks started an ofsilenced the enemy.
down
their arms.
fensive attack but the withering fire of the sailors,
Red Guards, and

back.
the
ing.
We
compelled them to turn have cut into the ranks of the enemy
soldiers
is
enemy
running.
Our
troops are pursu-
Lettish sharpshooters are arriving from the
front and approaching Kerensky's rear.
An or-
der for his arrest has been issued." 246
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

Kerensky's associates in Petrograd tried to keep in touch with him to the last minute, but
the scraps of information they received were unil-
luminating, for he himself could not
tell
how long
their
he would be able to hold his men.

for killing each other
Their distaste
was far greater than
loyalty to
any individual or institution. Meanwhile the city shuddered at the
tales of
frightfulness centered around the ancient Fortress of
Peter and Paul, where the ministers of
the Kerensky Cabinet and the military school
cadets were imprisoned.
Mothers, driven nearly
mad by
the stories of starvation, cruelties,
and
atrocities,
appealed frantically to the city Duma and the American Red Cross Mission to investi-
gate these reports. At the request of the

to visit the prison
Duma
and the American
Mission, I became one of a committee of four
and interview the inmates.
R. and M. Mikhailoff, of the London Telegraph were Russians. We walked in awed silence through the arched
gate in the massive outer wall, each busy with his own thoughts. To the two Russians this was a
Two of us Daddy
day never to be forgotten.

47
Both of them had

been old revolutionists, and Mikhailoff had been
a prisoner in this very fortress not many years before. For me the place was full of ghosts.
They walked
before
me
in a strange procession.
who stalks the city by day and by night, killed his own son. I saw Catherine bury alive the critics who found her marital I saw the Decempractices not to their liking. brists they who first fought to free the serfsI watched while Peter,
martyred before
fortress gate
my eyes.
Last of
all,
I saw the
swing wide on that glad March day

with blinking eyes
when
and
the revolutionists took possession of Petro-
grad, and
men and women,
tears of joy streaming

into the free world.
down
their faces,
marched
Mikhailoff brought me back to the moment. "Listen! The bells it 's the Gospodi pomilui
[Lord save me]," he
said.
"It was the chimes
that almost drove us mad.
The monotony
of
them
the terrible regularity!"
We
stood
still till
the sound died away, then
passed indoors to a crowded waiting-room.

place was dirty, and the air foul.
littered
The
was
The
floor
with cigarette stubs, and heaped on a 248
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

table in one corner
was a strangely assorted
pile
of paper bundles of food, brought by relatives

for the prisoners.
Through a door
ceaselessly in
at one side of the
room un-
shaven soldiers, in mud-colored uniforms, passed
and
out.
Most
of the occupants
were women, poor women with platoks tied over their heads, and prosperous, well dressed women
with diamonds in their ears.
edly against the wall, waiting.
pitched, nervous voices,
Some
sat deject-
Some, in highto see their

re-
demanded
sons and brothers immediately.

plied wearily but patiently.
The guards
Daddy R. was
the
for quietly sitting in
down with
waiting
ones,
Russian
fashion.
We
prodded him into action, and made our way past two sentries to an inner office. At the desk sat
a soldier commissaire.
His eyes were heavy
with sleep and his young face gray with fatigue. In a corner of the office two exhausted comrades
lay asleep on the floor.
By
sheer effort of will,
the commissaire kept on answering questions fired

at
him from a dozen tongues.
In time our turn

seals,
came.
He read
our passes, glanced at the

49

gave a hurried order to a guard, and bowed us
out.
We
fices,
passed through a succession of dingy ofup a dark stairway, and down a long cor-
ridor.
"It's the Troubetskoy bastion," Mikhailoff
whispered in an awed undertone. Our guide motioned us to wait.
At
the other
end of the
talking.
hall
some
sailors
and
soldiers
were
them looked up, saw me, and, detaching himself from his comrades, brought a
of
chair,
One
which he offered with a pleasant "Pazh-
al'sta."
A
hand.
few minutes
later the
commandant
of the
bastion appeared, a bunch of keys jangling in his
He
wore the uniform of an

English.
officer,
and
spoke a
fided to
five
little
Like the
others, he
was
pale and haggard, and later in the day he con-
me that he could not live through

like those just past.
another
days
"Up
to the time of the last Revolution," he
were only three or four members of the old regime in the entire prison. We were not
said, "there
prepared with food or fuel to take care of many more. Suddenly, in a single day, we had to find
250
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

quarters and provisions for nearly three hundred. Then, there were the mobs. I have not felt se-
cure for a single second." He took us first to a tier of cells in which the
military school cadets were imprisoned.
At
the
door of the
first cell
he asked
if
we
preferred to
talk to the boys alone.
"They might
and withdrew.
feel freer," I said,
and he nodded
They
all told virtually
the same story.
They
had been
terribly frightened on their way to the prison, for the crowds had tried to take them from the convoy.
"They have killed our comrades!" the mobs shouted. "They are trying to destroy our Revolution.
Throw
them!"
time to stop their cake-eating. them in the river! Put a bullet through
It
is
Once a group of them were

the
first
lined
up
against a
wall; but the convoy fought off the crowd.
In
twenty- four hours ia prison, things had been bad because the cells were damp and cold
and there was no food but the boys explained the conditions as the commandant had done, and
;
blamed no one.
251

In another part of the bastion we found the members of the Kerensky Cabinet. Tereshchenko, the late Foreign Minister, sat crosslegged on his cot, a cigarette in his mouth. He
greeted us pleasantly, and in the softest, most musical English I ever heard inquired for news of
the French front and of
Moscow.
an ordinary American
The
cell
was
as large as
bedroom, and was equipped with modern sanitary conveniences and provided with an iron cot
and table.
He said he had everything he wanted,

his release
and believed
days.
merely a matter of a few
If he could have foreseen the long months
of imprisonment, I doubt whether he would have presented such a cheerful front that afternoon.
Just before I
Petrograd I heard of him again. The dark-haired, debonair boy statesman had disappeared. His shoulders had begun to droop,
left
and a gray beard hung from his chin. The Minister of Rumania, during the day that he spent in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, met him in the
exercise-yard.
"I see you now," Tereshchenko said to the Rumanian, "but I shall not see you again. My
shame that
my country has
252
imprisoned the diplo-
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

matic representative of another country
great."
is
too
In
similar cells
we found
Kishkin, Bourtzeff,
Rutenberg, Paltchinsky, and other

after the fall of the
men
arrested
Winter Palace.
The top
of
Rutenberg' s head had been grazed by a bullet on the night of his arrest. The ministers were
marched from the Winter Palace
to the fortress.
prison guard, discovering a crowd in the darkness, thought it was a mob attacking the
The
and opened machine-gun fire them away. Ministers and convoy

fortress,
to frighten
alike
folfell
lowed the Russian custom in such

flat
cases,
and
on
their faces in the
middle of the
street.
Rutenberg was a little slower than the others. He was rebellious against imprisonment, and
complained of the quality of the food. "We live hourly in fear of our lives," he
It
said.
they did. It was quite plain that their position was a precarious one, because they
was true
were
and any violence done to the Bolshevik leaders would very quickly have
in a sense hostages,
met with
retaliation
from the Bolshevik follow-
ers in the prison garrison.
The
stories of out-
rages circulated so freely outside the prison were

more of a menace
else could
to the
men inside than
anything
have been, because they helped to keep alive the bitterness and hatred that made their
position so critical.
Vladimir Bourtzeff and

friends,
Daddy R. were
old
and when the guard unlocked the door

cell,
of Bourtzeff s
they threw themselves into each other's arms and kissed on both cheeks.
Bourtzeff,
who uncovered
the ring of spies

,
and
provokators headed by the infamous Azeff had many times suffered imprisonment and exile at
the hands of the Tsar.
Now, with
the turn of
Revolution, he was proclaimed a reactionary.
His paper was suppressed by Kerensky, and

General Verkhovsky, the young Minister of
War, sued him
for
libel.
With
the overturn of
attack
the government, he
made a bitter
upon the
Bolsheviki, accusing Lenin of being a German agent and a traitor to Russia.
From
isters
the cells occupied
by the Kerensky minyear,
we went
to those in which the prisoners of
the old regime
had spent the revolutionary
ignorant of the seething life beyond their prison walls. As we entered the cell of Soukhomlinoff,
Minister of
War
under the Tsar, the two Rus-
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

members of the party led the way. Soukhomlinoff arose and stepped forward to meet us.
sian
As
ists
if
with a single impulse, the two revolutionput their hands behind their backs and bowed
low before him.
They were
ancient enemies
they could not shake hands.
Soukhomlinoff started, recovered himself, and bowed low in return. He turned to me, inviting
me
to a seat
on
his cot,
had nothing better to able lounging robe, and there was a certain
and apologized that he offer. He wore a comfortair of
ancient elegance about him, despite his position
and
of
it
his prison cell.
His
hair
what there was
was quite white, and there were pouches under his faded old blue eyes, and deep lines in
his face.
The
table beside
him was
as shipshape
as a sailor's kit-box.
and opened it. the string and revealed a

"It
is
picked up a portfolio His old hand shook as he untied

pile of foolscap closely
He
written in a small, fine hand.

here," he said
"my
case.
It
is all
here.
I have written this to prove that I
am
innocent."
fingered the paper tenderly. It was the work of many dreary hours. We let him talk about it for a few minutes, then asked how he
He
255

fared there in prison under the Bolshevist regime.
is
"I have no complaint," he said. "Perhaps it better than before, because they give us the
newspapers.
prison.
That means much
to a
man
in
To-day I
am
very happy because
my
wife has just been to see me. She is very good to me, and comes as often as they will permit her.
Those are great days the days of her visits." It was for this wife, young and considered a
very beautiful
standard,
that
his
woman
according to the Russian

is
Soukhomlinoff
supposed to
in
have sold
country in those days when the

fell like
Russian troops
dead leaves
an Oc-
tober wind because they had nothing but naked
hands with which to meet the mighty cannon of the advancing Germans.
Our last visit that day was

police.
to the arch villain of
the old regime, Biletsky, chief of the Tsar's secret
Biletsky has
against his name.
many sins written large Few men within the length

lives,
and breadth of
ble for
all
the Russias have been responsi-
more broken hopes, more crushed
more human
wrecks, than the master detective.
was a big fellow with iron-gray hair and beard, and a pair of sharp brown eyes, quick256
He
() Orrin S. Wightman
"Old Ivan
Veliki high
up
in the
heavens faithfully thundered the hours citadel of church and state"
above the
THE GRAVE OF HOPE

shifting
and penetrating.
He
was
able, shrewd,
and
as
hard as
his reputation implied.
was glad to talk grateful, I think, for a chance. He welcomed the Bolshevik regime.
Possibly
the
it
He
was because he
believed, with
most of
men
of the old order, that the quickest
way
to restore the
a loose line
order
monarchy was to give the radicals and help them to create all the dis-
Perhaps it was because he thought new names on the prison roster, new hates in the revolutionary heart, would detract
possible.
attention
from the
old.
Perhaps
it
was only bePer-
cause he believed any change might hold the possibility
of greater leniency for himself.
haps
it
was, as he said, because the Bolsheviki
had given him newspapers and put him once more in touch with the world from which he had been
so long isolated.
It
was quite dark when we

cells in
left the prison.
As
I passed one of the
which the cadets were
being held, I peered through the peep-hole in the door, and saw a group of boys with a pack of
cards spread out on the mattress before them.
The
city
was saving
electric light,
and the cur-
rent had not yet been turned on for the night.
257
A stub of candle
them
intent
lit
up
their faces,
and revealed
upon
their
game.
it.
If they were in
danger they had forgotten

ever might
We came away, agreed upon one thing: whatcome of chaos and disorder in this new regime, the Peter and Paul of to-day would never be a match for that Peter and Paul of the old days when violence and cruelty was an organized
and deliberate
policy.
258
CHAPTER XIV
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS
IT was midsummer when I went were
first to
Mos-
cow, and the trees against the old Kremlin wall
deep in haughty then
green.
Mother Moscow was

She
sat serene
aloof, superior.
amid the golden domes of her churches that are "forty times forty," an old, old lady, remote and
inscrutable like the East, the mystery of the ages
in her smile.
"Petrograd is not Russia," she said. "Float it out to sea. Let the Germans take it. It is a
plague-spot.
It
is
of the West.
We
shall be
well rid of it!"
Sometimes, in a mellower mood, she spoke of Petrograd as one might speak of a naughty child.
"Petrograd is behaving very badly, but it matters little. She is really of small consequence.
Some day I may come to the limit of my patience, and then Well, we shall see!" Poor Mother Moscow! How little she knew
259

of that which was seething within her
walls.
own ancient
Old Ivan
church and
Valiki, high
up
in the heavens, faith-
fully thundered the hours above the citadel of

state,
and the music of the

revel,
lesser bells,
sometimes a mad, barbaric

faint, wistful obbligato,
sometimes a
accompanied him.
On
the wide paths of the
summer gardens
the
blind beggars chanted their prayers, as usual.
Old Marya
sat in the shade of the Sokolniki,
crossing herself,
and the
little
one beside her rat-
tled a tin can for kopecks with one
hand and made
mounds
in the sand with the other.
In the Thieves' Market, on Sunday mornings, the Muscovites bartered for boots and baby-carriages,
and women from the country sold pickled cucumbers and home-made sausage. Under the
family parties gathered around the brass samovars, and drank tea
trellised arbors in the parks,
in the
Moscow
fashion, with a bit of sugar be-
tween
Their laughter and their song lacked neither merriment nor music, and Mother
their teeth.
Moscow was
satisfied
with both.
Before the sacred shrine on the Iberian Gate

a tiny lamp burned brightly, and an occasional
260
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

soldier, strolling by,
stopped to cross himself, and
slowly to decipher the inscription that told how, by special provision of the Almighty, the ikon
had been preserved from destruction throughout

the raid of Napoleon.
Inside the Kremlin the conquered cannons of

the Frenchmen, Liberte, Egalite,
still
and Fraternite
newly
mottoed on
their iron sides, jostled the
packed boxes of ammunition awaiting shipment

to the front.
From Sparrow
Hills at sunset the bulbous
domes of star-spangled green and blue, the fluted golden cupolas, and gleaming crosses shone as
they must have done on that day, so long ago, when Napoleon looked down upon the mystic
city
and demanded that the keys be brought. To Mother Moscow all was as it had been
all
was
well.
of the past,
the future.
Mother Moscow's eyes were full dimmed to the present, and blind to
city soon
She could not dream of that scarred

to
lie
beneath the snows of winter.

I wandered around the Kremlin, and
its
As
mystery and barbaric beauty laid a spell upon me, battle and bloodshed and the wild ways of
261

revolution seemed as remote as the days of the
Boyars.
But
there were other hours
hours outside the
Kremlin
when I saw a
different picture
and
felt
another impulse stirring beneath the ancient city's calm.
There was the Governor-General's palace, where, half the day and more than half the night,
workmen and
lutions.
soldiers discussed the
fundamental
differences between political
and economic revo-
That
cry, already so familiar in Petro-
grew louder and louder with each passing day, and I heard the hectic speeches punctuated with the same "Bourgeoisie!"
grad, "All power to the Soviet!"
"Counter-Revolution!"
"Capitalists!"
There was a room, up near the top of a dingy hotel, where stacks of literature were piled ceiling-high,
and returned
exiles
wrote revolution-
addressed envelops, formed committees, and passed resolutions, while Mother Mos-
ary
articles,
cow dozed.
Behind a desk
in this
room
sat a dark -haired
woman
ple,
with deep, sad eyes. There was a cashdrawer in front of her, and all day long the peo-
from factory and trench and farm,
filed
past
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

kopecks and their rubles. The money was to buy a press to print more and more Bolshevist leaflets, and a newspaper that
that desk
and
left their
should call the people to revolution. The seeds of their propaganda fell on ready
soil.
On the sides of the palaces
of stone and stucco,
huge posters announced the opening of the opera season of 1917 and 1918 under the direction of
the
Workmen's and
Soldiers'
Committee.
This
famous Balshoi Theater, where imperial eyes had viewed the triumph of the greatest singin the
ers in all
Europe! Besides, if Mother Moscow had turned her
face for a day toward the Iberian Virgin, she would have seen that the number of those who
paused to cross themselves before the sacred ikon grew less and less, and the number of those who
went by without even a glance

continually increased.
in that direction
Even when Mother Moscow invited Kerensky to her for that famous Moscow conference, her
invitation
spirit
was a summons, and she gave
it
in the
it
of a mother telling her child that
was
time to come and be spanked.

263
That meeting was

pregnant with prophecy; but Mother Moscow
did not heed.
There were men among the merchants and maufacturers in Moscow who saw the handwriting on the wall, but they did not read it entirely aright. They knew that all was not well in the
stronghold of capitalism and ancient conservatism, but they thought all that was needed was a little more time and trouble to make the people
ready to accept their will. Here and there one remembered with misgiving the days of 1905, when Moscow became a
storm-center of revolt, while Petrograd
knew
comparative quiet. Perhaps also here and there was one who remembered a prophecy of the Tsar.
At that time the mighty men

titions to
of
Moscow
sent pe-
Petrograd, urging the government to

replied, rather wisely, that nothing
grant a constitution and other political reforms.
The Tsar
people, and
short of economic reforms
would ever
satisfy the
recommended that the manufacturers grant these. Each group was willing to please the people, but it must be at the expense of the
other.
Neither was willing to sacrifice

264
its
own
power.
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

had come, the first pseans of rejoicing had hardly sounded before the economic demands found voice. Strikes in Mosthat political equality
Now
cow grew more and more frequent.

steadily decreased.
their factories
Production
Many
of the owners closed
on the ground that they could not be run upon the terms of the workers except at
a
loss.
Some
shut
down because they thought
it
would the more quickly bring the workers to their senses. Industry was completely disorganized.
It
was not
until four days after the .Bolshevist
uprising in Petrograd that
Mother Moscow sud-
denly became aware that she was to be the battleground of a class conflict quite as determined
and far more

It
first
bitter
than any that had torn the
scorned City of Peter.
was Friday
coming
night,
stray shots near the

trouble.
November 9, when the Moscow Duma signaled

three
the
the
At
following
morning the populace awoke

heavy
fusillade.
to the
alarm of a
For seven days
the firing con-
tinued almost ceaselessly.
There were pickets
on every corner, and on Tuesday heavy artillery sent the guests of the Metropole and National
265

hotels to the cellars in search of safety.
The
head-
American Red Cross Mission turned

station.
its
quarters in the National Hotel into a first-aid
The
military school cadets, reinforced
by some
of the older officers, were intrenched in the city
Duma, the Riding Academy, and the Kremlin. The Bolsheviki conducted their military operaAs tions from the Governor-General's palace.
the attack gained strength, the cadets were forced
back into the Kremlin.
army was made up largely of The Moscow garrison, as a factory workers.
The
Bolshevist
whole, had agreed to remain neutral; but twenty thousand soldiers offered to fight with the Bolsheviki,
and
it
was estimated that about
five
thou-
sand took part.

the arrival of a
The
critical
moment came
sailors
with
company of
and Red
Guards, sent from Petrograd to reinforce the Kaledin was supposed to be marching Soviet.
to the rescue of
Mother Moscow
at the
head of
the
Don Cossacks, but his coming was as mythical
a performance as that of Kerensky's at Petrograd.
When
the surrender finally came, the cadets
266
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

had been driven
into a corner of the Kremlin.
Telegraph and telephone wires had been broken by bullets, and Mother Moscow was cut off from
all
contact with the outside world.
Street-car
tracks were torn up,
windows were smashed, the
stucco sides of the quaint old houses were pep-
pered with bullet-holes, and here and there the front of a building had been crashed in or the
entire top story swept away.
The damage done
to the
Kremlin was
slight
what we had feared; and nothing compared if anything could dry Mother Moscow's tears
to
and restore her ancient
self-respect,
it
was
this
crumb of comfort.
Here, as in Petrograd, the defense of the Provisional Government centered around the Duma,
and both bodies were dissolved by the Bolsheviki.
Mayor Rudineff
held
up
his
hands when I asked
him what he intended
to do.
"We
would
like to issue
an appeal warning
the people against the ruinous policy of the

Bolsheviki," he said; "but, unfortunately, the
liberty of the press being suppressed,
it is
im-
possible."
While only a handful of people were

267
killed in

the Bolshevik Revolution in Petrograd,
Mos-
cow's death
toll is
estimated at from seven hun-
dred and
fifty
persons to twice that number.

is
Probably the former figure

rect.
more nearly
cor-
Close beside the Kremlin wall, in the holiest of
holy places, the workmen and soldiers of Moscow dug the great trench that was to receive the bodies
All day they dug, and when night came they continued their work by
of their fallen comrades.
the light of torches.
The
ghostly linden trees
have stood watch over
many
strange scenes there
on the edge of the Red Square, but none stranger than this crowd of silent men, speechlessly turning the earth through the long,
chill,
dark hours.
By
daybreak they had finished. It was the day of the proletariat.
All others
stayed indoors.
The
in
streets,
but for the mourn-
ers of the proletarian dead,
were deserted.
At
eight
o'clock
the
morning the procession
day long the people filed past a vast, endless throng of them, men, women, and little children. There were no priests, no
started,
all
and
prayers.
Strong young
soldiers in
mud-colored
coats carried the red coffins
on
their shoulders,
268
MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

and above the heads of the crowd the crimson
banners flowed like a river of blood.
A
tragic
sobbing, singing mass of
human
beings,
and triumphant,
filled
the vast square.
Cavalry troops rode by at attention, and girls with platoks on their heads carried great oval
bandboxed wreaths of
artificial flowers.
Some-
times a military band went by, playing a funeral
march, and sometimes the voices of the marchers

lifted
in the
deep, rhythmical strains of the
"Hymn of Eternal Memory." Men and women,

old
and young, wept
as they
saw the
coffins
low-
ered into that yawning trench. If Mother Moscow wept that night, her tears fell quietly. She was in the presence of some-
thing big, something terrible, something magnificent something unlike anything her old eyes
had ever seen before.
There was another day, another funeral, another crowd of broken-hearted men and women.
Their crumbs of comfort were more meager, for theirs was the bitterness of defeat; but they also
hugged the
ideal.
faith that the stalwart
boys who lay
stretched in their coffins
had died defending an
269

Worlds of space lay between those two groups of mourners they had no single thing in com-
mon but their grief.
Their dead lay in the dark-
ened recesses of great churches, and priests in funeral robes of black and silver said many
masses for the repose of their souls. There were no red coffins, no crimson banners, no singing multitudes only prayers and silent tears.
When it was all over

ing
the killing
and the bury-
and there was nothing left but the joy of victory and the rancor of defeat, some one suddenly discovered that the light before the shrine of the Virgin on the Iberian Gate had gone out.
All that was left of the sacred ikon was one
bullet-wounded angel.
the shrine halted.
Two
soldiers passing
by
"Look!" said one of them.

holy. It
"They
said
it
was
they
was just another of the d
lies
have been telling us 1"
270
CHAPTER XV
BLASTING AT
THE ESTABLISHED ORDER

unconstitutional and illegal.
fall
REVOLUTION
is
In the scramble that follows the

ernment that ensues
of tsar or
kaiser, the spoils are to the nimblest.

is
Any
child.
govIt
an illegitimate
first
can have no lawful parentage. After the March Revolution, the
hurriedly
organized ministry took its power from the Duma; but the Duma itself had lost its legality
with the overthrow of the Tsar
who
created
it.
Each
successive ministry
gal basis. No election taken place.
was equally without legiving them validity had
There were, however, certain democratic movements in the army and navy and among the workers
and peasants. The soldiers and sailors assumed power and immediately elected commit-
tees.
The
workers
organized
Soviets.
The
peasants, constituting approximately one hun-
dred and twenty-five million of Russia's hundred

271

and eighty million organized committees.
bodies that functioned nationally.
There
were all-Russian conventions of each of these
In
its
inception the government of Lenin and

in the eyes of the law,
Trotzky was not sacrosanct
but the largest democratic forces in the country voted to support it.
The
1905.
Soviet had
its
origin in the Revolution of
At
in
Early
was composed of workers. the Revolution of 1917 it was joined by

that time
it
the Soldiers' Deputies, and became a Soviet of
Workmen and
Soldiers.
Soon
after the acces-
sion of the Bolsheviki to power, the peasants' del-
egates combined with the others, and the Ail-
Russian Soviet was the
result.
The
munity
local Soviet
was simply a
village or
com-
council, like the old
New England
town
meeting.
The
will of the
majority prevailed.
community problems and elected delegates, who met in what is known as the Second All-Russian Congress of
Soviets of
The
local councils considered
Workmen's,
this
Soldiers',
and Peasants'
Deputies.
It
was
Congress that was in session at
Smolney on that November night when the
Orrin S.
Wightman
Orrin S.
Wightman "
Mother Moscow
sat serene
amid the domes
of her churches'
After the
Moscow
battle
The Grave
of the
Brotherhood beside the old Kremlin wall
BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

Bolshevist guns on the cruiser
Aurora were
de-
ciding the fate of the Kerensky Cabinet. It was this Congress that created the Council of People's
Commissaries
to
that
astounding
governstill
ment which was

in its
make
the old world stop
path and gasp with amazement. Night after night in the white hall at Smolney
it
I watched
order,
hurling decrees at the established
smashing every "sacred" rule and precedent of diplomatic procedure, and tossing verbal
bombs with equal dexterity at enemies and allies. Not until some quiet hour of the future, when
the sociologists have had time to analyze those de-
bewildered spectators looking on at those "madmen," with theories in their heads

crees, will the
and bayonets
constructive
in their hands,
know how much
work along the

making.
lines of their idealism
went into
their
Even
a superficial study will show the fallacy
of the popular fusion in
Western conception that the conRussia was due to the absence of a for-
mal government. The chaos existed in spite of the government, and continued because of lack of
material
power
to enforce the decrees.
That government amazed foreign diplomats.

The longest span of life allotted to
three weeks.
it
by them was
its
Hourly they awaited
demise.
No
diplomatic group the American Red Cross Mission, realized the
in Russia, excepting only
depth of
its
its
roots, the strength of its
power, or
probable longevity. Even the Bolsheviki themselves were surprised

its
at
growing power.
can't succeed
"We
Russia
is
too dark, too the
backward.
But we have shown

Other countries
said.
way
the
world can follow.
will succeed
where we
fail,"
they
The
first
decree of the Second Ail-Russian
Congress of Soviets defined the form of what has

generally
come
to be
known
as the Soviet
Gov-
ernment.
It provided that, until the convocation
of a constituent assembly, "the direction of the

individual branches of the state's life will be in-
trusted to certain committees.'*
"The govern-
mental power belongs to a collegium of the presidents of these committees, called Council of People's
Commissaries."
decree of the
The
new democracy
of Russia
adopted a principle of recall declaring:

control of the activities of the People's
"The
Commis-
274

saries,
and the right of removing them, belongs

Congress of Soviets of Work-
Fp
to the All-Russian
men's, Soldiers', and Peasants' Delegates, and to its Central Executive Committee."
This Central Executive Committee functioned
permanent parliament. The executive power was vested in the Council of People's Comas
missaries,
tions.
who also exercised legislative funcThe decree named as temporary president
of the Council of People's Commissaries, or as
Commissary of Commissaries, Vladimir Oulianoff (Lenin), and as Commissary of Foreign AfL. D. Bronstein (Trotzky) Commissaries of other departments were chosen and governfairs
much as they are in the Western democracies. The decree mentioned the commissaries by their own names and the names by which they have come to be known in
mental
activities allotted
the revolutionary movement.
Several subsequent
decrees
defined
further
governmental powers and
limitations.
Decree
So-
number nine vested

viets,
all local
power
in local
automatically abolishing all previously existing governing bodies and a later decree con;
firmed the right of the Soviet to levy taxes for 275

local
needs.
to
what
my
The eighteenth decree provided Western mind, looking for differ-
ences from and similarities to other governments, seemed to be either a veto or a referendum. It
declared that
all
regulations or laws passed by
the commissaries could be "postponed, changed,
or removed" by the Central Executive Committee or the Soviet.
From
the outset, the sessions of the Central
Executive Committee were stormy ones. There were few objections to the passage of any de-
we who looked on could have offered which were not made by some one of those solcree that
diers, workers, or peasants of Russia, nightly
groping along strange paths for a way to peace
and happiness. In a bill of rights they declared for equality and sovereignty of peoples. It was in accordance with the second clause of
Soviets
later
this bill that the
permit Finland and Ukraine to secede from Russia and establish invoted
to
dependent
states.
The
up
bill
declared:
"The
right of the peoples of Russia for a free

to partition
self -organization
and the organi-
zation of an independent nation."
276

"The
abolition of all national
and
religious
privileges
and
limitations."
"A
free
development of national minorities

territory of
and ethnic groups populating the

Russia."
The
last
two clauses
all sects,
in effect
granted religious
freedom to
"old believers"
and affected particularly the and the Jews, who had always
creation of the
been the object of pogroms and persecution.
The first decree passed after the

cree the
government was the decree of peace.
By this de-
government proposed at once to begin negotiations for a "just and democratic peace."
It defined such a peace to be one "without an-
nexations and indemnities, and with the right of self-determination." The decree abolished secret diplomacy,
and the government declared
its
intention to publish the secret treaties.
It ap-
pealed to the
workingmen and Germany for aid, and after adverting to the Chartists Movement in England and the revoluFrench
proletariat, said
:
of France, England,
tions of the
"All those examples of proletarian terrorism and historical creative genius are giving us a
guaranty that the workmen of the above-men277

tioned countries will understand that the liberation of
mankind from the horrors and conse-
quences of this war depends on them. They give us a guaranty that those workmen, with their
resolute
and unlimited energy, will help us to bring successfully to an end the question of peace, and the liberation of all the working and exploited masses
exploitation."
from any kind of slavery and
The day
after Krylenko, the chief of the army,
started negotiations for
an armistice conference,
I heard Trotzky begin his speech about the
men
with
whom he was
to negotiate in a fashion quite
new
diplomacy. he said, "the bloody Kaiser and "Comrades," his generals have entered into negotiations with
in the annals of foreign
our comrade Krylenko, but not out of feelings of deep sympathy for Russia and the Russian revolution.
If
Germany could have had her own way

more than once
to seize
she would have attempted
revolutionary Russia by the throat. "If the Kaiser and his generals, gritting their teeth, are now expressing willingness to enter
into negotiations with a
mere praporschik [nonthey do that,

it is
commissioned
officer]
if
only
278

because the Russian Revolution has cried to the
people of the world of slaughter, famine, and

disease in the trenches.
"The German Kaiser
is
now
talking to us as
an equal with equals because he knows that the uprising of the German workmen and soldiers
would be
fatal to
him
if
he should make a
differ-
ent answer."
Sometimes, when a
critical situation
developed,
Lenin himself came
to the meetings.
"We
Lenin.
have to
act,
when
action
is
due," said
"We have the right to function as a govnight,
ernment because we are a government."
when one of Lenin's decrees was under discussion, Trotzky came to speak for him. The Soviet government knew that the peasant
would
tolerate
One
no further delay
in the settlement
of the land question.
The land
decree was passed, not by the People's
Commissaries, but by the whole Russian Soviet. It abolished the landlords' property in land and
confiscated all landed estates with their movable
and immovable property, excepting the small holdings of peasants and Cossacks.
The
decree vested the administration of the
279

land in district land committees or district Soviets,
and declared that "any damage to the confiscated property, which from now on belongs to all the
people, will be declared a heinous crime, punishable
by the revolutionary court."

regulations for the administration of land
The
were based upon instructions formulated by peasants in two hundred and forty-two districts. These instructions
call
or regulations, as
collected
we would
them
had been
and published three
months before the Soviet government took power.
The
peasants, impatient of the delays of the
Kerensky government in solving the land problems, had taken the matter in their own hands.
quantity of land to be distributed to the laborer was determined by the needs and conditions of the
The
community.
Such land could not

was pubof those working on
It
all citi-
be alienated, leased, or mortgaged.

lic
it.
property for the benefit The right to use land was granted to
zens (without regard to sex) capable of cultivat-
ing
it
by personal or family
labor.
Hired labor
was not allowed.

accident to a
In case of incapacity due to

of a rural community, the
cultivate his land for
member
community must
two
years.
280

Farmers who, due
to old age or inability, lose
forever the possibilities of cultivating the land
they
of property. Instead, personally, lose the right from the state. The receive pensional help
decree provided relief for those who suffered disSuch relief tress due to the confiscation of land.
was
difficult
to give because
of the poverty-
stricken condition of the country,

ers
and
to the
ownrelief
from
whom
the land was taken
any
short of actual
payment
for the land (which the
peasants would not even consider) seemed inadequate.
All mineral wealth of the lands, the forests,
and the waterways became the property of the

state.
Estates
in
intensive
culture,
such
as
nurseries, greenhouses, breeding farms,
were not
subject for distribution, but were to be used for

exhibitional
and educational purposes.
The
nearest thing to a property interest in
"quitting land fund, "the right of preference for receiving the estate of the retiring members belongs to the
nearest relative, or to persons indicated by the
retiring
land was the provision that, while the land of a member" must be turned back to the
member."
281

The form
of the cultivation of the land of the village.
was
left to the decision
The land could
be cultivated by the community, by the individual, or by the banding together of any number of
farmers.
In case of land shortage, the decree provided

for re-distribution of the population
by induced
emigration.
A later land decree created a body known as a

Conciliatory
Chamber
to deal with all disputes,

in detail rules
and
also
enumerated
the conservation of natural resources.
governing Personal
property on the estates was not subject to distribution, but the land committees were ordered
to inventory
and hold
it
for the benefit of the
com-
munity.
Three weeks after the Soviet government took the power, it completed its second most important step in
its
monwealth.
attempt to create a socialist comWhat the land decree was to the
peasant, the labor control decree was to the
worker.
labor,
It applied to all industries
employing
and provided for control by committees, representing laborers and employers, called
"organs of labor control."
The
control
was not

confined to a regulation of hours and wages, but extended to all branches of the industry, includ-
ing the financial phase.
"The commercial secret is abolished," the decree declared. "The proprietors are obliged to
furnish to the organs of labor control
all their
books and accounts and business correspondence, under penalty of law."
The
decisions of the organs of labor control
were binding alike on laborer and proprietor; but the decree provided for an appeal to a higher
organ of labor control
sitting in
Petrograd and
right of ap-
made up
chiefly of technicians.
The
peal was granted to both employer and employee. An all-Russian Soviet of labor control was
created to coordinate all industries and direct the
quantity of production was to be determined by the needs of the community, and the price fixed by the cost of production as
economic
life.
The
determined by the organs of labor control.

(
The
Soviet realized the impossibility of imme-
any such radical overturn of the competitive system, and the decree stated that the labor control must be effected by
diately putting into effect
gradual steps and regulation.

Just as the peasants frequently bad taken the land >vithout waiting for decrees, the workers also took the factories.
disorganized,
The
industry of Russia was

factories
and the control of
had
practically passed to the
workmen
early in the
Kerensky regime.
labor decree merely legalized an existing condition and attempted to regulate that control.
[The
The
members of
the factory committee, sobered
by responsibility and a growing knowledge of what was possible of accomplishment, found

themselves frequently in opposition to the workThe demands of the ers who had elected them.
workers were naturally out of
proportion to the earnings of the industry, and the chief task of the committee was to educate the workers to
all
understand
this.
The head of the shop committee at Sestroretzk, a young Socialist named Woscup, told me that
his
committee was frequently forced to resign rather than grant the impossible demands of the
men.
Sestroretzk
is
the oldest arsenal in Russia.
It
was founded by Peter the Great, and in 1917 employed sixty-five hundred men. The first strike
284

of the
March Revolution started there, and the first company of Red Guard was organized there.
Five thousand of
its
members were
also
Bolsheviki.
The men demanded an

was granted, but they
increase of wages, which
demanded back pay beginning with May. The committee refused The committee rethis, and a quarrel followed. "This is our government, and our govsigned.
ernment can not pay," Woscup explained. The men, on second sober thought, saw the justice of
the refusal,
and voted to reinstate the committee.

is
"The majority
plained the
usually reasonable,"
ex-
young committeeman.
five
decree fixing the salaries of the People's
Commissaries at
hundred rubles a month

in controlling the
proved an effective measure
demands of the workers.
"The Commissary of Commissaries gets only

five
hundred rubles a month," one committee told some workmen who were demanding an increase.
"Surely you do not want to take more from your government than Lenin takes." This argument
won.
The
salary decree provided that an additional
hundred rubles a month should be paid to each

285

commissary for each dependent member of his Under these terms, Lenin received only family.
five
hundred
rubles, while Trotzky,
who had a
dependent wife and two children, received eight hundred. Five hundred rubles was equivalent in
January
to about fifty dollars gold, but its purless.
chasing power was even
The workers
in
government-owned
industries,
such as posts, telegraphs, and railroads, were given the same right of control as the workers in
privately
owned
industries.
Organs of the press "appealing

sistance to the
to
open
re-
government, or sowing disturbance
by means of slander or distortion of facts," or inciting to criminal action, were decreed subject
to suspension.
This prohibitive legislation was so contrary to

revolutionary ideas that the Soviet, in passing the decree, apologized in the following terms
:
"The Workmen's and Peasants' Government

asks the population to turn
the fact that in our
classes,
its
attention
upon
modern
society the wealthy
hiding behind liberal screens, have the possibility of seizing in their hands the lion's share
of the public press, and by means of
it
freely
286

poison the brains and consciences of the masses. To leave it in enemy hands at such a time, when
it is
not
is
less
dangerous than bombs and machine-
out of the question. That is the reason those temporary but necessary measures of stopguns,
ping the stream of dirt and slander were taken. The yellow and green press would drown with pleasure our young victory in this stream. As
the
new
order will become consolidated, every
administrative oppression of the press will be
suspended."
became more and more vituperative against the Soviet government, and published, in
press
The
addition to the accounts of existing chaos, countless
rumors of outrages that never happened.

retaliation, the
In
ing to
government decreed advertisbe a public monopoly, and permitted pubgovernment organs In America such a provision would mean
;
lication of advertisements in
only.
the annihilation of the press but in Russia, where

circulation
rather
than
its
advertisement
is
the
source of revenue,
effect
was
less drastic,
and
opposition papers continued to be published.
Suppressed one day, they came out the next under a new name. paper called the Day was
287

published as the Night, the Midnight, the Two A. M., and took various other liberties with the
clock.
The
decree on education,
drawn by Lunarcharfirst
sky, a writer
and
scholar, set forth the Soviet's
ideas of instruction.
Since the
Revolution,
at
an educational committee had been
work
in-
vestigating Russia's needs and formulating a
Contrary to the spirit of most of the ministries, this committee reached an

legislative
program.
agreement with the People's Commissaries, and

continued
its
work
in conjunction with them.
Local self-government in education was the fundamental principle of the program. Each
locality
it
had the right to determine for itself what would learn, and when and where and how.
business of the governmental commission
The
created by the decree was "to serve as a junction
and helper, to organize sources of material, and moral support of the local bodies."
ideas,
The
Soviet declared that, whatever other govactivities
ernmental
were curtailed, "the expendi-
ture on public instruction must stay high.
generous budget for public instruction is the honor and glory of every people. Every truly
288
Mario
Spiridonova
Leon Trotzky
Nikolai Lenin
Alexandria Kolontai
Lunarcharskv
Krvlenko
Kamineff
Yesterday and today on the Marsovaya Tola Priests with lifted ikons and gorgeous robes and Red Guards with bayonets and crimson banners

democratic power in the domain of instruction of
the country where ignorance
reigning,
and
illiteracy are
must take
as its first
aim the struggle

in the shortest
against darkness.
It
must obtain
time a popular literation by means of an organization of a system of schools answering the first
contemporary pedagogy, and it must introduce a general, obligatory, and gratuprinciples of

itous education."
All decrees regulating the individual lives of people inclined toward wide freedom. The night
the marriage and divorce decree
there
was passed,
was a long discussion as to whether there
should be any limit to the
number
of divorces that
any individual should be granted. The decree, as it was finally passed, declared
church marriages to be personal and private matters,
and prescribed that the government recogMarriage consisted
nize only civil marriages.
merely in the registration of intention made by two people, with a department provided for that
were prohibited from marrying under the age of eighteen, and girls under sixteen, except in the trans-Caucasian district, where
purpose.
child
Men
marriages
are
the
established
custom.
289

Here
the age
was fixed
at sixteen for
men and
thirteen for girls.
Polygamy was
prohibited, as
was marriage between half brothers and sisters, and between the insane. The contracting parties were given the right to choose the name of either
husband or wife, or a combination of both names. Divorce could be granted on the mere request of either one or both. The law provided for the
care of the children in case parents could not
to an amicable decision,
come
and declared
all
children
born out of wedlock legitimate and equal in rights
and
obligations.
There were various measures for the protection

of children.
the
The
child-labor decree prohibited
employment of children under fourteen years of age, and while it was under discussion the Commissary of Labor proposed that the year following the age limit be raised to fifteen and eventually
twenty. This suggestion was not adopted, but it fitted in with the general program of education, which aimed to keep all the
to
children of Russia in school until they
had been
given the opportunities that only a few of the

aristocrats in the past
had enjoyed. Women, and children under sixteen, were pro290

from night work; and there was an eighthour law for workers, and a decree limiting the
hibited
number of hours of employment a week to fortyeight. Among the social measures was decree
thirty-four,
which transferred the control of
pri-
vate hospitals to the government and obliged each
industry to provide one hospital bed for each
hundred workmen, and one maternity bed for each two hundred workwomen.
Social insurance against injuries, sickness, and
non-employment was also provided ately worked out decree.
in
an elabor-
was a national grant of power to municipalities to commandeer all empty premises suitable for lodgings, and to
early measures
billet in
One of the
uncrowded apartments the residents of

the Soviet
overcrowded dwellings.
When
abolished,
had
completed
in
decree
thirty-one, the five classes in civil life
had been
Russia
and only one title was left "Citizen of the Russian Republic."
291
CHAPTER XVI
IN PLACE OF
THE GUILLOTINE
ABOVE
the gray mist of Petrograd in winter,
the "terror" and the "guillotine"
hung like
threat-
ening swords.
Organized punishment was no part of the revolutionary scheme, but every group of revolutionists
who took power

it
discovered, to their distress,
that
was
easier to .will people into a line of con-
duct than to
make them
follow
it.
The People's Commissaries were

enemies on every
mies without.
of
side.
beset
by
There were
traitors
within the ranks, and honest and dishonest ene-
There were the usual number
weak or unscrupulous men in uniform who find their way into every army and navy. All
were engaged, one way or another, in trying to keep the poor, battered social machine from running.
All the courts that refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet were promptly closed.
IN PLACE OF
THE GUILLOTINE
to operate
The few remaining open were required
according to the decree of the People's CommisThe decree provided that the court saries.
should decide
all cases, in
the
name
of the Rus-
sian Republic.
It permitted the judges to be
guided
in their decisions
by the old laws "to the
extent in which they did not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary conception of right."
When
came the
Smolney
the decree abolishing the old courts
was
passed, a Military Revolutionary Tribunal bechief judicial body.
I was present at
its
Institute to witness
birth in one of
the stormiest of the stormy sittings of the Central
Executive Committee.
cree,
it
In the words of the de-
was organized "to conduct a campaign against counter-revolutionary forces, and in order to settle cases emanating from campaigns against
marauders, speculators, sabotagers, and other such merchants, officials, etc."
Petrograd greeted the day of

ginning of the terror."
populace discussed
It
little
its first
it
sitting
with apprehension, and pronounced
"the be-
On
that day press
and
besides the guillotine.
was a
crisp, cold
winter Sunday, and as I 293

crossed the great Dvortsovaya Bridge that spans
the Neva,
and crunched through the heavy snow
to the palace of the

laievitch, I
Grand Duke
Nicolai Nico-
kept telling myself again and again that there could be no guillotine that the world
;
must have moved forward a
little bit
in that cen-
tury and more which stretched between this Revolution and that of France.
Countess Panina was the

bar.
first
prisoner at the
As
Minister of Public Welfare in the

first
Kerensky Cabinet, she was the

lifted
woman
to be
to a place of official honor in Russia.
When
the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the
government, Countess Panina had in her possession about ninety thousand rubles belonging to
the Ministry of Education.
Being a
liberal
and
not a radical Socialist, she refused to recognize the authority of the People's Commissaries, and
declined to turn the
representatives.
money over
to Bolshevist
of the liberal group was so highly esteemed as she. For years she had devoted her
life
No woman
to the
improvement of
social conditions for
the workers.
The Narodny Dom,

294
the People's
House
at Petrograd,
where many of the revolu-
IN PLACE OF
labor.
THE GUILLOTINE
tionary meetings were held, was the result of her
The people were tern with conflicting emotions when she was brought to trial. The music-room in the Grand Duke's palace,
where the favorites of other days entertained their royal patrons, had been chosen as the scene
of the
trial.
It
was a
big, square auditorium,
paneled in rarest wood and roofed with delicately tinted glass all simple, beautiful, and subdued.
Into this setting the revolutionists had introduced a semicircular table covered with shiny red
leather and skirted with a flouncing of turkey red
cloth.
The
lit
electric lights
had gone
out,
and the
room was
by two garish red glass lamps with

consisted
green shades.
The
tribunal
of seven
men
two
peasants,
two
soldiers,
president, Jukoff.
two workmen, and the Most of them sat stiffly on
the edges of green-brocaded silk chairs, and looked as thoroughly uncomfortable as if they
were prisoners instead of the judges. They were taking the job with desperate
ousness.
seri-
Jukoff alone seemed undisturbed by
the surroundings.
telligent-looking
He was
295
a lean, clean-cut, inset
man.
His eyes were deep

beneath the roof of a high forehead. neat sack-suit and a white collar.
He wore
The room was packed with

Panina's friends.
a crowd of Countess
They
cast hostile glances in
the direction of the tribunal, and the atmosphere
was charged with the tensity of their feeling. A red-headed camera-man with a journalistic sense
had established himself
at a point of vantage.
On
a bench against the wall sat the prisoner, a soldier, looking very uncomfortable in a new and
shiny uniform of padded khaki and high hat of sheepskin, standing on each side of her. The
Countess might have been a social worker in any
American
bred face,
She had a pleasant, round, well 1 and a pair of kindty eyes. She wore a
city.
severe black tailored suit
and a small
close-fitting
turban.
Jukoff opened the proceedings with a reference

to the part played by military revolutionary courts during the French Revolution, and declared that in Russia also the tribunals would
"defend with severity the rights and traditions of

the revolutionary peoples."
The charge was
briefly stated.
The
prisoner
evi-
pleaded "not guilty."
The documentary
296
IN PLACE OF
duced.
THE GUILLOTINE
was
intro-
dence, a letter of Countess Panina's,
There were no lawyers. Prosecutors and defenders both came from the crowd. An
intellectual, J. Gurevitch,
made
a statement de-
nying the guilt of the prisoner.

ished, a
When
he
fin-
young workman,
Ivanoff, took his place
before the judges.

factory.
He
was from the
artillery
straw-colored Russian
side,
shirt,
but-
toned on one
his
was as much a part of him as He spoke simply and fair hair and blue eyes.
:
earnestly
"If I have seen some light in my life, it is only because she came into it," he said. "She has given me the possibility of thinking. her Narodny Dom I learned to read.
a countess here.
It
was
is
in
She
not
This
is
no time for
distinctions.
only a citizen who has given so much to her people. I ask you to give her freedom, because I would not want the world to hear that the Rus-
She
is
sian people are without gratitude."
he walked to his chair, a professional man, one of Countess Panina's friends, stepped for-
As
ward and shook
his
hand, and the crowd arose to
pay him tribute. Naumoff, the prosecutor,

297
arose.
He
was a

boy
younger than the other, and a factory worker also. His dark brown hair was closely cropped, and he wore a brown sateen
too, slightly
matching a pair of snapping brown eyes. As he began his attack, a murmur of dissent ran
shirt
through the crowd, and an old

peasant's blouse rose
man
in a
gray
from
his chair.
His face
head flaming scarlet, his long white beard shaking, both his hands waving "I can't stand it I can't in the air, he shouted:
and the top of
his bald
stand
incial
it !"
He was an old j ournalist from a provwhom the Countess had long been Two gray-haired women caught his
paper to
an
idol.
arms and led him from the court-room, protesting

violently as he went.
Naumoff continued:
"We should not look at it from the sentimental

point of view," he said.
"I admit that citizeness
Panina
is
a noble woman, but the time has come
to struggle for the things that are the rights of
the people.
cause
The people must learn to read, bethey have the right to know how to read,
not through the kindness of any one person." So I had come from ordered America, not to
see the trial of the sweet-faced
woman
against the
298
IN PLACE OF
wall.
THE GUILLOTINE
the sure basis
It was the trial of an idea
of human right against dependence on the benevolent
whim
of the individual.
It
was the order of

of the liberal.
the radical against the
order
Charity and justice, privilege and right, were
having their day in court.
Two
other speakers from the crowd followed
the factory boys.
Then
the Countess Panina
was asked
and
fell.
to
make
a statement.
Her
breast rose
Finally she spoke, her words coming

first.
faintly at
"I had taken the post, and I could not relinquish it except on order of the Master,' she said.
"The Constituent Assembly is the only power that I shall recognize. The money is in an institution of credit, and I will turn it over when
the Master speaks."
She choked, stood down.
silent
a moment, and sat

'
The court went out to deliberate. In a moment the room was in an uproar. Every one was talking at once. Half an hour later, the
judges
filed
back to
their seats, looking as un-
comfortable as when they had filed out. Russian-American, a man named Krameroff, who
299

had been the head of the Russian branch of the
Socialist party in
test.
San Francisco,
arose to proto
The president of the court motioned
him
to be seated.
He
paid no attention.
Jukoff
ordered two soldier guards to place him under Krameroff still protested, then locked arrest.
arms with the

between them.
soldiers
and walked smilingly out
A sudden hush fell upon the court-room.

friends of
The
Panina held their breath
in expectation
of the verdict.
Jukoff did not keep them long waiting.

arose and began reading
:
He
"The Military Revolutionary Tribunal, in the name of the revolutionary nation, having examined the case with regard to the removal by Citizeness Panina of a sum of about 93,000 rubles
from the funds of the Ministry of Popular Education, decides (1) that Citizeness Panina shall
remain under arrest until she returns to
the.
Com-
missary of Popular Education the national money taken by her and (2) the Revolutionary Tribunal regards Citizeness Panina as guilty of
acting in opposition to the national authority, but,
in
view of the accused's past, confines

300
itself to
IN PLACE OF
of society."
THE GUILLOTINE
holding Citizeness Panina up to the reprehension
The reprehension
the people
!
of society!
The
scorn of
ary decision,
sun.
was a typical Russian revolutionprobable in no other land under the

It sigh of relief.
it.
The crowd breathed a one quite knew how to take
No
The Countess
Panina's status remained practically the same. Here and there some one started to clap. Others
quickly hissed
them
into
silence.
Again the
threatened "terror" had passed. It was a far cry from this exhibition of revolutionary justice to the guillotine
as
it
almost as far
injustice
was from that system of organized
of the Tsars that kept the endless procession of
men and women marching toward exile and death.
A few days after the trial, friends of Countess

Panina paid the money to the Department of Education, and the prisoner was allowed to go
free.
She held no grudge against the Bolsheviki for, though she differed from them, she understood
;
their philosophy
and the
sincerity of their belief.
She had
ciling
felt,
from the
first,
the difficulty of recon-
war and
revolution, but believed, what-
301

ever the price Russia must pay, she
must never
go back again
to the old order.
The
intricacies of
law played no part in sub-
sequent sittings of the Military Revolutionary Tribunal. There were no convenient technicalities either for
Every case was judged simply on its merits as workmen, soldiers, and peasants interpreted right and
wrong. There were thirty-six members of the
full
the innocent or the guilty.
tribune, divided into

sitting for a
groups of
tried
six,
each group
week
at a time.
Commercial and
political offenders
by separate groups, and the cases ranged from that of a boy who had
stolen a bundle of papers, to that of Puriskavitch,
were
who was taken with a machine-gun and other

counter-revolutionary paraphernalia in his possession.
Both were handled with equal seriousness. The boy's peculations amounted to something
like a ruble
and sixty kopecs, and

sold papers
his victim
was
an old
woman who
on the
street.
have anything, and that people who sold papers were really property-owners, and when their papers were gone
insisted that he didn't
all
He
302
IN PLACE OF
old
THE GUILLOTINE
At
this,
they could always get more papers.
the
very indignant, denied that she had anything to do with the bourgeoisie, and
woman became
insisted that she
was just a poor workingwoman. The court asked the boy what he did with the
money.
He gave an accounting. The most im-
portant item was fifty kopecs for a ticket to the
opera at the Narodny Dom. He explained that he was miserable and depressed, and he thought if he could go to the theater the world might not
seem such a gloomy place. The judges listened with sympathy, and one of them asked gravely:
"Did you
theater?"'
feel better after
you went to the
The boy nodded.

There was nothing incongruous to the jury about the need for music. The Russian accepts
it
an extenuating circumstance quite as he would physical hunger.

as
as readily
The
loss of
tribunal offered no censure, but decided
that the old
woman must
be reimbursed for the
her papers. The boy had no money, so the court ordered that he sell something. He
had nothing to sell. They looked him over, and decided that his rubbers were the only
said he
303

things with which he could part.
Rubbers,
in
Petrograd, were precious possessions.
The
lad
gave them up reluctantly.

the
Narodny Dom,
his
Then, remembering face broke into a satisfied
smile.
"It was worth
it,"
he
said.
The most
severe sentence I heard
was that
passed upon General Boldireff, commander of the fifth army, who was sentenced to three years'
imprisonment. General Boldireff had refused to answer the summons of the Bolsheviki commander-in-chief of the army, Krylenko, to attend a council. When he was arrested, he said
he was acting in accordance with the resolution of the Army Committee not to recognize the authority of
any party.
The Army Committee

and resolved
to obey
;
later reversed its decision,
the orders of Krylenko but the General claimed
not to have
diers of his
known
army. he would have behaved toward Krylenko if he had known that the Army Committee had recognized him as supreme commander-in-chief.
by solJukoff asked the General how
this until his arrest
"At
the present time," said the General, "I
am
a citizen of free Russia, and obey only the will 304
IN PLACE OF
of the nation as
stituent
it
THE GUILLOTINE
by the Con-
will be expressed
Assembly.
"I wished to preserve the army under my command from the struggle of parties, which would "I am myself a son of disorganize it," he said.
and honorably guarded the interests of the sons of the nation that had been intrusted
the people,
to me.
Those
soldiers with
whom
I have shared
hunger and
tory, will
cold, the
mud and dirt of the trenches,

and the inspiration of
I stood at
vic-
the bitterness of defeat
admit
this.
my
it
post like a
sentinel, until I
was removed from
by
force."
The
soldiers
who had
arrested Boldireff ac-
cused him of sabotage tending to disorganize the army, and called on the tribunal to punish him
severely.
Other
soldiers
under
his
command
protested against the trial and pleaded in his

defense.
In pronouncing
said
:
sentence,
President Jukoif
"In the name of the revolutionary people, the Revolutionary Tribunal finds General Boldireff
guilty of disobedience to the chief,
in
Krylenko but, view of the circumstance that he was not aware

;
that the
Army Committee
305
had altered
its
former

resolution
as
and had decided to recognize Krylenko commander-in-chief, resolves to sentence Gen-
eral Boldireff to three years' imprisonment."
In a second the place was in an uproar. Cries of "Shame! Shame!" "Despots!" swept the
court.
Jukoff ordered the room cleared, and the next
day warned the spectators against a recurrence

of any such protests.
Charykoff, was put on trial for accusing one of the members of the Inquiry Committee of belonging to the Black Hundred. The
offender apologized, and the punishment
A lawyer,
was
again nothing worse than "public reprehension." Despite the mildness of the revolutionary judgments, the talk of the guillotine continued.
afternoon,
One
when
it
was
at its height, I
if
dropped
in to the office of
Jacob Peters
one could de-
scribe as
"dropping in" the intricate process of

labyrinth of corthat lay between
finding one's
ridors
way through the and up the many steps
him and the sidewalk.
He
of the old police station
was on the top floor on the Corokhovaya,
where the Anti-Counter-Revolutionary Committee, successor to
the Military Revolutionary
Com-
306
IN PLACE OF
tion,
THE GUILLOTINE
mittee that had organized the Bolshevist Revolu-
had
its
headquarters.
Peters was pale, tired, and disillusioned. Human nature, viewed from the dubious vantage of
the police station, left
much
to be desired.
passed through the outer

sitting there.
office
I noticed a
As I woman
and
Her
plain face
was
pale,
an occasional tear trickled from her frightened

eyes.
Peters
sighed
when
asked
about
her.
"She
the secretary of the cadet party," he said. "I have to question her to find out what she
's
knows about Counter-Revolutionary

I hate to do
it.
plots,
and
I wasn't
made
for this work:
I detest jails so that I can't bear to put any one into them."
"What
to that.
about
the
guillotine?"
asked.
"Surely the Russian Revolution will never resort

It 's been over a hundred years since the French Revolution, and I would like to think
the world had
moved a
little
since then."
Peters shook his head.
"No," he
said;
"we
will never restore the death sentence in Russia
not unless"
he hesitated a
it
we have
to use
for
moment "not men who are traitors

307
unless
in
our

own who
ranks.
What
else
can you do with a
man
betrays his
own
cause.
"There are so few of us to do the work," said "We have to take every one who offers, Peters.
and
it is
impossible to
know who
foes.
are our true

is
friends
and who are our
It
physically
impossible for
paper that I have to trust to

I do not
me even to read thoroughly every am asked to sign during the day. I

others,
and
it is
getting so that
know who
to believe."
With that, he opened the top drawer of his desk

and pulled out a
revolver.
He laid it down, then
took out three sealed packages of paper money. The first one contained a thousand rubles. It
was a bribe demanded by

this
Peters's predecessor in
a handsome, debonair young person who rattled off French as rapidly as he did
very
office,
Russian.
I had met him only a few days before,
when he proudly announced that his name would go down in history. Now he was reposing in
jail,
and waiting for the Military Revolutionary Tribunal to get around to his case. The chance
become
rich as well as
to
famous had proved too
much
ville
for him.
He
called one night at a vaude-
theater which produced clever satires on cur-
308
IN PLACE OF
THE GUILLOTINE
rent politics, and ordered the place closed on the ground that one of the playlets was counter-revolutionary.
known
open.
Later, through an agent, he made it to the manager that the payment of a

suffice to
thousand rubles would
keep the place The Bolsheviki discovered what he was
doing, dismissed
him from
office,
and placed him

fifteen
under
arrest.
The second envelop contained

rubles which
thousand
had been taken the night before
from a food speculator, caught in the act of trying to ship a large consignment of flour through Finland to Germany. He offered a bribe of a
thousand rubles to a soldier at the Finlyansky Station. The soldier hurried to Smolney with
the
money and the news. He could not write, so he made his mark upon the complaint to which
he swore.
A detail of half a dozen soldiers

sent to help him.
and
Red Guardsmen was

was
arrested,
The man
and evidence secured that unearthed
a whole nest of speculators.
There was no longer a secret police in Russia. The Okhranka had gone with the Tsar into oblivion.
But
the people themselves were on the
watch for evidences of anything that might 309

threaten the power of the Commissaries.
There
was
little
that
went on
in the city that did not
soon reach the ears of Jacob Peters's Committee.
servant girl was sent to the Fortress of
Peter and Paul with a cake for her master imprisoned there. Wrapped in a parcel, lying on the table near the cake, was a bundle of papers
that had been carefully collected to be put out of
the
way
of prying Bolshevist eyes.
The
servant
apparently inadvertently took the wrong package to the prison, where it fell into the hands of
the prison authorities.
as inadvertent as
That the servant was not she seemed was indicated a few
would
days
later,
when
she reported that Stephenovitch,
whom
the Bolsheviki were trying to find,
sleep that night in such a place, at such
an hour.
it
When
as she
the
Red Guard was
sent to search,
was
had predicted.
the Military Revolutionary Tribunal
sittings,
When
began
lators
its
more than a hundred specuwere waiting to be put on trial. Peters

that one
told
car,
day he was riding on a streetwhen the man sitting beside him engaged him
me
in conversation.
He
offered to sell
him twelve
fifty
hundred bags of flour at two hundred and

310
IN PLACE OF
some
butter.
THE GUILLOTINE
and
rubles each, six thousand pounds of sugar,
name
Peters got him to write down his and address, and within the hour he had
his supplies
been arrested and
had been
seized.
One
large consignment of flour was found hidlogs in a barge on the
Hen beneath the birch-wood
Moika Canal supposed

wood.
Despite
the many.
all efforts
to contain nothing but
to unearth the offenders, a
few men waxed hideously rich upon the hunger of

All provocation notwithstanding, the Wherever guillotine remained simply a name. the death penalty was inflicted, it was done by
mobs having no
by mobs aroused to an uncontrolled fury, and momentarily conscious of no other passion than that of reofficial
sanction
Considering the unsettled condition of government, such instances of violence were not
prisal.
so frequent as to change the character of the
Revolution into that of a Reign of Terror.
311
CHAPTER XVII
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF
THE great gray
wolf has always been howling only a vague dream
at the Russian door.
When revolution was
still
of the future, an American traveler, finding his way into a peasant's hut in a remote Siberian village, discovered
an American flour-sack hanging beside the ikon on the wall. The peasant's wife
pointed to
it,
and with tears
in her eyes explained
that
it
was her most treasured
possession.
It
came
in the midst
of the great famine, and
brought the wheat that saved her babies' lives. The March Revolution began with cries of
"Bread
Bread
Give us bread !"

place in the bread line at
Vera,
who took her
three o'clock in the morning, saw the wolf skulk-
ing in the shadowy dawn. Ivan, who went without his lunch because, even at the cheap workingman's restaurant in the Vyborg district, he must
pay three rubles fifty hears him growling.
for an insufficient meal,
312
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

From February
yet
to February, the wolf howled;
somehow each succeeding group of Russian administrators managed to keep him at bay.
Always next week he was coming; but, somehow, miracles do happen in Russia, and he never quite
arrived.
It
was not
until he
made an
alliance
with the
human enemy
of Russia that he finally
broke through and brought death to the hungry

people.
Three days after the Bolshevik Revolution, a fatherly American official advised me to buy some
sardines
and
retire for the
next two weeks to the
home of a woman friend. "The people will be dying of

streets within a
starvation
on the
week," he
said,
"and there won't
be any izvostchiks to carry you around, because the horses will all starve to death."
How
little
we knew
the Russians!
It was six
months before that prophecy began to be true. Long after the allotted two weeks, Roger Treadreturning from a visit to a sick countryman, raced the length of the great white Nevsky in a sleigh drawn by a
well, the
American
consul,
and
I,
wonderful black horse groomed and fed to the pink of condition, while the driver, a peacock
313

feather rakishly nodding in his cap, shouted a
challenge to another izvostchik.
The Russian seems
to be always equal to the
emergency of the moment. It is in organizing the daily round of living that he seems to fail.
As
soon as the Bolsheviki took command, they
sent commissaries to the grain districts to per-
suade the peasants to send supplies to Petrograd. They pleaded the need of the Revolution, and
were more successful in getting a response than

their predecessors
had been.
They
discovered
in the first days that carloads of cabbages
and
potatoes were rotting in the warehouses for lack
of people to unload and distribute them.
They
put soldiers and Red Guardsmen to work, and when bread was scarce the multitudes were appeased with an extra ration of vegetables. It was impossible at any time during the year to buy any of the necessities of life without stand-
There were queues for bread, sugar, kerosene, tobacco, goloshes, and sweets. If cheap cloth was received in any one of the
ing in a queue.
shops, a line of
women
outside the door in quest of a bargain.
immediately appeared After the
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

fall
of Riga,
when
the
kept what they called "queue maids," who had no other occupation than to wait in line for provisions. In one of the
it
queues formed in front families who could afford
Germans were expected, of the trunk shops. The
"want ads" I found a request for a servant, statIt became a reguing, "For queue work only."
lar source of livelihood for
many
people.
Chil-
dren
left school to
it.
they liked
stand in the queues. At first It was exciting to go out so early
in the mornings,
ple,
and stand with many new peolittle
but as the days grew colder their

feet, ill-clad,
hands
and
do
made
the waiting torture.

cities
The
great mass of Russians in the
had
to
their
own queue duty, and they came with
their
babies and baskets in their arms, their heads done

in shawls or kerchiefs,
and stood for endless

them
hours, waiting to present a ticket entitling

to
buy a pound
and a half of sugar or the day's

were
cre-
ration of bread.
The
rules of behavior in the queues
ated by the people themselves. At first women who came with babies were allowed to go in with-
out waiting.
Then a woman who had no

315
chil-

dren hired her neighbor's child for ten or twenty kopecs. The trick was soon discovered, and the
real mothers lost their privilege.
I frequently stopped to listen to the people in the queues, and to get a better idea of their atti-
tude toward the various governments I sent Marya, my interpreter, to stand in the lines.
Marya was a Russian
student
who
at eighteen
had more knowledge stored away in her little black head than the Western woman of forty. She told me that the character of the queues changed with the goods the people were buying;
but the people themselves were always in opposition to the government. Each time a new gov-
ernment came
they would say, "Maybe they will abolish the queues"; but a few days later,
in,
when the lines remained the new Cabinet was no

"There
"that
it is
is
the same, they declared

better than the old.
a Turkish saying," said Marya, no good for the world to be wide if my
shoes are too narrow; and the

is
women
"
say:
lt
no good for the government to be
Socialist if
the queues
grow longer every day.' The bread queues were made up of workingwomen, servants, a few students, and school-chil316
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

dren.
The
school-children brought their books

their lessons.
and studied
cold, the
When
it
^as not too

or crochet.
women brought needlework
A few read newspapers for the first time in their

lives,
having had no time at home.
The high
cost
of living
politics
was the
little
chief topic of discussion,
and
had
place here.
As Marya
wisely
said:
"Mothers who are worrying about their babies left at home alone, and who are afraid to get no
bread for them, don't care for politics." The tobacco queues were made up largely of
who were buying to sell again. They expected to make money, so their mood was betsoldiers
ter,
and they laughed and joked as they stood
waiting.
The chocolate queues were composed of men and women of the bourgeoisie who could afford to
buy sweets.
soldiers, their
Conversation here was about the
disorganization of the army, the roughness of the
want of good manners, the Socialism that would ruin Russia, the impossibility of
living in Petrograd now,
and frequently a regret for the days of the regime, "when, at least, we had some order."
317

The kerosene queues were like the bread queues. They were made up of poor people letting rooms without electricity. The conversaperhaps of a grandmother who "eats much, but is not even able to
tion
was of hard times
stand in a queue."
The
theater-ticket
queues,
which
became
smaller as the bread lines grew larger, were composed of students and re-sellers. The students
chatted gaily of the soprano of Z., or the feet of

the ballerina
all,
X.
The
speculators did not talk at

dis-
and the students treated them rather

the strangest of
dainfully.
The trunk queues were Marya described them as

ness."
all.
"respectable people
whom fear has obliged to forget their respectableShe said

fear.
it
was
universal, direct, equal,

lost their
and open
wits.
ists,
They had completely

afraid of
They were
Germans, of
Social-
of peasants, of soldiers.
They
feared to lose
their peace, their comforts,
and
their lives.
They
feared to stay in Petrograd, and they feared

equally to leave.
Marya was even more critical of the people who

318
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

stood in queues waiting for the street-cars.
said that all civilization,
She
deli-
good manners, and
when a Petrograd inhabitant wants to get into a car. The street-car queues were made up chiefly of teachers, clerks, business men, students, and small officials. They were
cacy comes off
cold,
fearful of being late,

in
They buried themselves

seldom spoke.
and preoccupied. their newspapers and
help Vera and Ivan if their shoes followed in the footsteps of most shoes and wore
out.
Heaven
Ivan had to stay away from the factory for a whole day. In the evenget a
pair,
To
new
ing,
when
the factory closed, he took his place in
a long
line
on the Morskaya, and
settled
down
to
twenty-four hours of waiting.
He
borrowed a
few wooden paving-blocks from the
pile that
was
always waiting to patch up the holes in the street, and made himself as comfortable as the weather
permitted.
direction
For
the length of a block in either

like
were hundreds just

sit there,
him.
All
night he would
chattering with his neigh-,
bor or dozing off to sleep. Sometime the next day he would be rewarded with no, indeed;
819

not a pair of shiny new boots, but simply a
numbered
to
boots.
ticket that entitled
him a month
later
take his place in line again and get his
It
was estimated that Russia's grain crops were
only fifty to sixty per cent, of normal. At the time of the downfall of the Tsar forty per cent,
of her locomotives and rolling stock was out of
commission.
her
For
three years fifteen million of
out of production. Russia's front had been mobilized without regard to her
rear.
men had been
The burden
fallen
of feeding the fifteen million

children,
had
upon women, old men, the young men who were not fit for
ice.
and
military serv-
To overcome
it
of man-power,
even partially this great loss would have been necessary to
apply every possible kind of modern labor-saving device and obtain from the remaining workers the
maximum
these
of efficiency.
Russia did neither of
two
things.
Labor-saving machinery was not used to any

great extent in the old days, because there was so little value put upon labor. Man-power was
the cheapest thing to be had in Russia.
sian worker
The Rusand was as
had no stake
320
in his job,
Orrin S.
Wightman
is little
In open-air bazaars where there
to
sell
but
many
to buy, Russia does he*
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

careless of time as the ruling class
was
careless
of man-power.
The
cause
Russian's attitude toward his job was the
attitude of the slave laborer

it
something done begreatest flaw in his

it
had to be done.
The
revolutionary teaching was that
had not given
him a knowledge of the interdependence of peoHe had not learned that the only way he ple. could get his share of grain from the peasant was
to
make
the cloth or the plow that
was
as neces-
sary to the peasant and his wife as bread was necessary to him.
Nothing
scheme and
in the
Russian system had helped to
teach the worker his importance in the social

his social responsibility as a producer.
That was a thing he had to discover for himself. The leaders realized this, and the shop committees
tried to
make
the
men
realize it;
but
it
was the
through
sort of thing that could be learned only

bitter experience.
Time was of
so little value in Russia that noit.
body ever bothered to learn how to save
Pro-
duction naturally decreased steadily in the first three years of the war, and kept on decreasing after the Revolution. The shop committees did

not
make
the confusion, but, like the committees
in the
army and in the fleet, they were outgrowths
of the confusion that followed the fall of the
Tsar, and the economic revolution that deposed the owner from his control over his factory.
They were
establish
the effort of the
men
themselves to
something that would bring order out of That they failed was due to lack of confusion.
experience and not to lack of good intentions. The gray wolf cared not how his hour came,
only that
it
came.
Even
the foreign colony, whose
members were
gray
far better off than the Russians, heard the
wolf howling.
We were a hungry lot from mornWe
ing until night. Most of us developed an appetite such as we had never known. scraped the plates clean. The first time I dined with a
man who put

gasped.
It
the left-over sugar in his pocket, I

until I
was not
had drunk many
glasses of sugarless tea

less
and eaten many bread-
meals that I was able to overcome sufficiently the inhibitions of my early training to permit me
to follow his example.
Even
to the end, I
had a
guilty sense of committing a horrible crime every
time I whisked the last piece of black bread sur-
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

reptitiously into
my hand-bag.
I
Usually, by dint
to keep a small
of
much scheming,
managed
quantity of food on hand for the hungry mortals who drifted through my little blue room each
day.
The
its
original supply
came with me
it
in cans
across Siberia
from China, and
seemed to par-
take in
stretching quality of the nature of the
widow's cruse.
On
the mornings
when
there
was breakfast, I
ordered two portions, to have bread for afternoon tea and late suppers. Stewart P. Elliott, a fel-
low San Franciscan, was an American whom the colony will never forget. He was always turning up with life-savers in the shape of boxes of biscuits or cans of condensed milk. In December,
when my
supplies of sugar
and tea were just
about exhausted, Charles Smith, the new Associated Press correspondent, arrived
from Peking
of priceless
with tea and crackers and

possessions, including
all sorts
two cakes of soap and a box
of talcum powder.
So precious a
is
gift I
had
never received before.
In Russia,
one's
room
one's castle.
Visitors
are never announced, and one must be prepared at all times for unexpected callers. The first
323

time the hotel clerk sent an early-morning visitor up to discover me with an unmade bed, my prudish
American
instincts drove
me
in search of a
screen.
Once
so camouflaged, I could ignore its
presence in perfect calm. Life was naked in Russia
bare as the arms
of the silver birches before winter came to cover
them up. All that was real, all the best and the worst of men,
surface.
that
was
vital,
lay close to the

;
Heroes have never appealed to me but the amazing number of simple, unobtrusive virtues that the ordinary mortal can carry about his
human person
thrill
is
a miracle that never ceases to

is
me.
There
a bond between those of us
who searched for values beneath the turmoil of the

revolutionary year that would be hard to break.
A broader base of friendship, a deeper comradeship, is building for
men and women
the world
over in the stress of these days of living under the shadow of death and disaster. Perhaps it is one
of the best things of the war.
we
shall save out of the
wreck
We
were a strange
divided naturally into
we Americans. two camps. Some

lot,
We
of us
were uncompromising
idealists,
and some prag-
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

matists,
and more were the usual complex mixture of both. Most of us took away from Russia
bia School of
what we brought.
One of us brought the ColumJournalism, and, no matter how
revolution raged or food prices soared, Columbia's star
remained undimmed.
A few men whose lives had been cast in entirely

different places
saw a new
vision,
and they
will
never be the same again. Colonel Thompson was one of these. The real test of his interest in Russia
came one day soon
after the fall of the Kerenall
sky government, upon which he had banked

his hopes.
"I
've
been out walking around the streets tofaces of the
day and looking into the

he
said.
Red Guard,"
They
're real
"They
've
got fine faces.
they
It
're sincere.
Perhaps these people need us
now more than

lionaire.
ever."
was a long journey for a Wall Street mil-
There was another American, a New York banker, as fine a type as I have ever met. The
Russian struggle
ever done.
thrilled
him as nothing
else
had
"I never wanted anything so much in

325
my
life

want to help Russia," he said. "If I were thirty years old and had no family, nothing on
as I
earth would take
me away from here."
I did not
ica just
know until I had returned to Amerhow deeply the Russian Revolution had
gone with him. He went to his firm and told them he was no longer of any use to them. "I 'm
not interested in the same things," he said. Soon afterward he went to France to do a piece of
humanitarian work for the government.
Everywhere, day and night, we fought the endless battle of revolution.
"You do
not
know
the Russians," said the old
residents, shaking their heads at those of us
who
professed to find something more vital than German money at work among the masses. "If you
had lived here

here too long.
Russia's past.
as long as
it,"
we have
"
"That's just
we replied; "you have lived Your roots are buried too deep in
You
see the Russians as slaves.
You can not see them as human beings."

It raged across tea-tables in the charming
apartment of the naval attache, where we gathered occasionally to eat the tiny hot white rolls which, wolf or no wolf, found their way to Mrs.
326
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

Crosley's tea-tray every
Thursday afternoon.
It
stormed around General Judson's dinner-table.
We
carried
it
into the Turkish
Room, where we
curled
up on the great wide Russian divan for coffee, and upstairs to the shiny ball-room, where we one-stepped and waltzed to an American
prophets the old residents were hopeless failures. They were always backing a "man on
phonograph.
As
horseback," or setting a date for the restoration of the monarchy, then moving it up a week or two
as time
found
their predictions unfulfilled.
If Petrograd offered no sensation for a day,

there
was always Captain Harry Brown's com-
munique to give us a real thrill. Captain Brown was an oldtime New York newspaper man attached to the
Red
Cross Mission, and he wrote
for an exclusive circulation a daily

all
summary
all
of
the rumors that
came
in
from
parts of
Russia.
Neither truth nor fiction could ever
rival those
documents for
interest.
They were
little
an amazing combination of both. There was much good talk in

room.
my
blue
All kinds of people found their way there. Every shade of political opinion was expressed.
327

Most
times often
it
was of Russia we
far, far
talked, but some-
we wandered
away.
The
fight
we
fought so good-naturedly was the same that is being fought on the battlefield of the world the
struggle of the old and the new.
night the Baltic states was the topic, and there was a Czech whose burning spirit would
One
have withered the Kaiser
if
we
could only have
produced him at that moment. "No matter who makes peace, the CzechoSlavs will go on fighting until they give us back our country," he said. "We are attacking from
four directions, and

lin.
we
are going straight to Ber;
going to get the Kaiser and when we get him, we '11 feed him on pigs' liver raw
half a
We 're
pound a day." Another night we
listened
to
a handsome
young Serb who was trying

radicals
to help the Russian
make
Socialists of the
Austrian prisoners
and organize them to resist German attacks on Russia. There had been a meeting of the Austrian prisoners that
day in the Cirque Modern, and two thousand of them had pledged themdefend the Russian Revolution against
selves to
a German attack, and to work to get revolution-
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

ary propaganda to the
trenches.
German and Austrian
Sometimes
our attention,
it
was Raymond Robins who held and no one saw better than Ray-
mond Robins
lem.
the significance of Russia's place
in the future settlement of the international prob-
He
knew
that,
from a
practical as well as
an
ethical viewpoint, the Allies
must not abandon

the talk
Russia to the Germans.
Most often
turned to the necessity for making the people at home understand the complex and difficult situation as
it
really
it
is.
Sometimes
lish writer,
was Arthur Ransom, the Engwho said things that any of us would
fine, true, penetrating things, a flashlight in dark places. He had lived a long time in Russia, and had wandered over the
like to
like
have said
country in a cart, learning the stories of the land from Cossacks with whom he camped on the
roadside,
and
from
peasants
who
lit
their
samovars for him.

Frequently there came a knock that brought us promptly back to the moment. Late one
night John
Reed came
in
were shooting
announce that they the Winter Palace Square.

in to
329

The
wine-cellars of the
Tsar had been broken

facing the Soviet
open, and a
new danger was
government.
Another menace had come to Petrograd, for the moment more threatening even than the gray
wolf.
Unknown
to all of us, a sleeping serpent
had been lying beneath the city's surface, waiting for the hour to stir and strike. The city was
mined with
to prevent
wine-cellars,
and the
forces
working
any
government of the people from
succeeding in the restoration of order took advantage of them.
The Revolutionary Committee discovered eight

hundred such
places.
In one wine vault alone

In
there were twelve hundred thousand bottles.
the Tsar's cellar the
champagne had lain undisturbed for three hundred years. The wine in the cellars at the Winter Palace was valued at thirty
million rubles.
The government
of
People's
Commissaries, desperately in need of foreign

credits,
thought first of trying to sell it to England and America. Some of the members opposed this. Just after the trouble began, I went to the office of Jacob Peters, and found him and the
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

Military Revolutionary Committee frantically trying to devise some way to meet the crisis.
They
realized that all that
was needed
to bring a
real reign of terror to the city

soldiers with drink.
was to madden the
While I talked to Peters, the telephone bell on his desk kept interrupting. Each time he
took
down
the receiver,
it
was
to discover that
trouble had broken out in
some new and unex-
pected part of the

worried.
city.
He
was pale and

"I was
"I don't
know what
to do," he said.
afraid of this,
;
and I voted to put the wine in the Neva but we needed money so badly, some of the
it
others thought
sailors
was a shame
to destroy
it.
The
take
it
it
were going to load it on the barges and to Kronstadt to keep until we could send
away. But provokators told the soldiers the sailors were taking it to drink. Now we are going to break the bottles, and pump out the cellars,
and
It
finish
with
it all."
was harder to do than to
say.
afterward they kept discovering

wine-cellars.
For weeks more and more

to have started
The wine pogroms seem always

331

in the
same way.
Some unknown person would
telephone to a hospital where there were convalescing soldiers, or to a barracks in the neighborhood, and announce that there was free wine
to be
had
at such
and such an address.
As
the
crowd began to gather, there was usually some one in the street with a few bottles of wine to get
Before long the soldiers were demanding wine and more wine. Some one conveniently broke in the door, or perhaps an irate
things started.
proprietor in opposition to the Soviet govern-
ment
invited
them
in to help themselves.
Fre-
quently, before the disturbance
was
quelled, there
was shooting.
The
cally to
People's Commissaries went systemati-
work
to find all the cellars.
Wherever
revo-
they discovered one, they sent in a group of

trusted soldiers and
Red Guardsmen whose
lutionary spirit was sufficiently strong to with-
stand the temptation of the liquor, to smash the

bottles.
afternoon I was motoring over on the Petrograd side of the Neva, when I passed a big public garden. guard of soldiers had been
One
placed around the entrance to warn
all
passers-by
to
THE GREAT GRAY WOLF walk in the street. A fire-engine was
busily
pumping. At first I thought it was a fire, but I saw neither smoke nor flames. I got out of the car, and asked one of the guards what was happening.
He
told
me
they were smashing three
hundred thousand
bottles
and pumping
the wine
out with the fire-engine.
From
a back entrance two soldiers came with
a third whose steps were suspiciously unsteady.
His companions, leading him

in picturesque
off to arrest,
were
pouring a volley of abuse upon him, accusing him

language of being a traitor to the
Revolution and several kinds of good-for-nothing with which only the Russians are familiar. The
man had
slipped in through the back gate
when
no one was looking. The young soldier in command of the crowd ordered that an extra guard
be placed at the gate and no one allowed to pass. They did their work in the same way all over
the city.
But new
was
wine-cellars
came
to light
faster than they could destroy them,
and before
the dragon
finally slain several
poor deluded
fellows lost their lives.
Palace cellars
The night the Winter were broken into, we thought the

killed;
whole populace was going to be

333
but
it

later developed that the sounds
we had taken
for
were nothing more fatal than popping corks, and the soldiers who lay on the white snow were not dead, but merely dead drunk.
shots
This method of provocation was not new in Russia. It had been used in the old days by the
Black Hundred, and in the retreat from the

southwestern front the Germans resorted to
it.
They captured a town, stocked

liquor,
the houses with
and retreated again. When they had gone, the Russian soldiers drank the wine, and
the horror of outrages committed in the debauch
that followed
in those
was one of the most
tragic things
havoc was unhappy July days. complete, the Germans came with cameras and
sent back to Berlin for
When
made photographs, which were

propaganda purposes.
334
CHAPTER XVIII
TSARS
AND PEASANTS
Rus-
WHEN
the peasants in a remote South
sian village received
that the "Little
word from the great city Father" had been put off his
were
throne,
and that
they, the Russian people,
now the
rulers of the land, they shook their heads
skeptically.
The message
them
that brought the
news invited
workmen, and peasants in the far-away capital. soldiers, Some were for doing it; others counseled differFinally they hit upon a plan that satis-
to send delegates to a congress of
ently.
fied
every one. They elected the most disreputable of the village characters to go to Petrograd.
"But why
the big estate
"
mon
is
a thief, and
asked the bewildered squire of "why did you choose these? Se"
us," explained the
"Once before they fooled

peasant spokesman.
"It
may
be true that the

it
Tsar
is
no longer the ruler of Russia, but

335
may

be just another trick. In 1905 they told us to send delegates to Petrograd, and what did they
do?
is
They put our people

trick,
in prison.
If this
we we can send others to take their places." Out on the banks of the ice-bound Yenesei, up on the northern edge of Archangel, down on
the Bessarabian plain
all
they will put the thieves in jail and will be well rid of them. If it is the truth,
over the great white
land
little
handfuls of peasants, bundled up in
their fur-lined shubas,
were putting
thing that
their
canny
caution to
work on
this
was
said to
have happened in the City of Peter. It was a caution born of years
filled
with
slaughtered hopes and broken promises. All over Russia men and women eager to believe in
the
dawn
of freedom were fortifying themselves,
in one
way
or another, against a recurrence of
the disappointments of the past.
To the peasant, revolution means land, freedom means land. He knows land. He wants land. He thinks in terms of land. Land means
food for his children, warmer shubas for himself,
and education for the next generation. means life.

336
Land
TSARS AND PEASANTS

No revolutionary party that did not make land
to the peasants the first
plank in
its
platform
could hope to survive in Russia. Ever since Alexander freed the serfs, the peasant has believed himself the rightful owner of the land.
Under serfdom
tire
the land-owners dictated the en-
terms of living of the peasants.
They were
flogged, sent to military service,

into
and even forced
unwelcome marriages,
trivial offenses.
punishment for Even when they were exemas
plary in the eyes of their owners, their right to marry as they chose was subject to the whim or
the economic advantage of their owner.
In
re-
turn for their services upon the estate of the land-owner, the serfs were allowed a certain
amount of land from which

living.
to take their
own
lords
was to the advantage of the landto feed his serfs sufficient to keep them in
It
good condition for their service to him. After the serfs were freed, the situation
changed. The peasants, instead of receiving the land from which they were used to making their
living, frequently received inferior
land and a
free,
smaller quantity.
Their bodies were
but
they found themselves economically more com337

pletely
enslaved than they had been
before.
Their bitterness grew.
In the early
seventies
there were agrarian uprisings in which bands of peasants burned the estates of the landlords.
The
landlord became the hereditary enemy, and
the burning of his estate, which they regarded as their own, their habitual form of protest.
soon as the peasants were convinced that a real revolution had taken place in Petrograd,
they began demanding their land; and, since distribution was delayed, they began to take
its
it.
As
Many
involved schemes of distribution were
advocated by various groups.
minority be-
lieved in compensating the landlords, but the ma"What is the use to pay for that jority asked:
which belongs to us?
Why
all
should
we reward
from our
them for keeping us own?"
these years
The land program
of the social revolutionists
was the one that best met the demand of the mass of peasants, and they flocked to support it.
After the success of the Bolshevist Revolution
the right Social Revolutionists accused the Bolsheviki of having stolen their land program.
Lenin and Trotzky replied that the plan of the
TSARS AND PEASANTS

Bolshevik! was to apply everything that was good, regardless of its origin.
How
to capture
and hold the support of the
problem of every revolutionary leader in Russia. The story of Nicholas Tchaikovsky, called the Grandfather of the
Russian Revolution, who formed the
ants' council,
is
peasant was the
chief
first
peas-
typical of the struggle.
Tchaifirst
kovsky
is
one of the three survivors of the
revolutionary group.
lution,
Before the March Revo-
Tchaikovsky,
who had
spent most of his
or in prison, had made temporary peace with the government for the purpose of
life in exile
helping to win the war.
He was working behind
the lines along the front, establishing agricultural committees to sow the deserted land.
When
Rodzianko's proclamation declaring the abdication of the Tsar reached him, he started
immediately for Petrograd. He joined the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies,
but found himself entirely out of place there. He shook his fine old white head as he told me
about
it.
"I believed," he
said, "as I
do now, that the

first
defense of the country was the
consideration.

Whenever
only ones
that the
I mentioned the war, they answered
that the English
and French bankers were the

the
who wanted
war
to continue,
and
French and English people were
as eager
Having lived in England for twenty-eight years, I knew better. I could not sleep. I lost my temper. They
laughed at me.
for peace as they were.
an
imperialist.
it
I found myself a reactionary, After three weeks I decided I
could stand
no longer, and asked them to send
a more patient delegate to take my place. "I started to work to create a council of peasants to bring in a more sensible current. Delegates from twenty-seven provinces came, and on
May
4 the council was held.
There were
thir-
teen hundred and sixty delegates, and a Central Executive Committee of two hundred and fifty
members remained in Petrograd to carry on the work. About a hundred of these kept going
back and forth to the provinces; but every time they came back they reported that the Bolshevist
influence
councils,
had swept through the local peasant and they found themselves entirely out
of the trend.
Some
of
them became Bolsheviki.
The
others could not stem the tide, and soon
we
340
TSARS AND PEASANTS

found that the peasants had a great distrust of the Central Executive Committee. What are
we
to
do now?" he
said.
"I don't know."
Tchaikovsky was utterly at sea. Fine, brilliant old idealist that he was, he could neither
control nor understand the course of the Russian
His executive committee was completely repudiated, and all he could do was to shake his
mass.
head.
hope was the Council of the Republic; and when that was disbanded by order of the Bolsheviki he was in despair. He came
His
last
one day to a meeting of the railroad workers, where he made a speech of protest against the
Council of People's Commissaries, and threatened them with terroristic methods. His long beard
shaking,
his
fists
kind eyes
aflame,
he
lifted
his
clenched
and shouted:
to use the terror against tyit
"We know how

rants.
We have used
again."
in the past,
and we
will
use
it
I went to three national peasants' conventions

in Petrograd, another in
Moscow.
They
started
peacefully enough, but before they were over, the bearded men from the far-away places were shak-
ing their
fists
in one another's faces,
and gen-

erally
it
the left
ended with the majority going over to and the minority starting another conall its
vention
was
left
Old Nicholas Tchaikovsky behind early in the struggle, and the

own.
contest for control of the peasants rested with
Chernoff and Marie Spiridonova.
Soon
ants
after the Bolshevist Revolution, the peasin national convention,
met
and there were
stormy days and nights before the majority

finally recognized the
government of the People's
Commissaries and elected delegates to the Xational Council of the All-Russian Soviet. The
peasants stated the terms upon which they would enter the Soviet. Trotzky and Lenin at first
fought compromise on those terms. The peasants said they would enter the convention if they
were given a representation of a hundred and eight members, but would accept nothing less than this, which was a number equal to that of
the
Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils. The agreement on the peasants' terms was
reached one morning at three o'clock, and the next day a great celebration took place. The
Pavlovski regiment was chosen as honorary escort to the incoming delegates,
and marched
to
342
TSARS AXD PEASANTS

the headquarters of the Executive Committee of the Peasants' Soviets.
They were joined by
a great crowd of
sailors,
Red Guardsmen, and

banners, sing-
women.
They marched with red
ing and cheering as they went.

they crowded into the great auditorium, and packed the halls. They overflowed
into the courtyard,
At Smolney
and hundreds of them who
could not get in held an impromptu meeting out-
They called it the Marriage Day of Revolution, and one patriarchal peasant well over his threescore and ten, with snowy hair and ruddy cheeks, a typical villager whose language was
side.
the crudely picturesque dialect of his gubernia,

said:
"I was not walking to Smolney to-day.

carried through the air on the wings of
I was
my
en-
thusiasm."
His name was Stackhoff, and there were
still
stranger days in store for him; for they were to put him on a train and whisk him away into the
land of the
Germans
all
to take part in the armistice
negotiations at Brest-Litovsk.
"We
are
used to seeing young

843
men
fight-
ing," said a factor}- worker, thrilled
by the words

of the aged peasant; "but
when we
see such spirit
and determination
ish."
in the old, Russia can not per-
"Who
will dare
our Revolution,
ters of the land
now to raise a threat against when it is defended by the masand the masters of the arms?"
the peasants
asked another.
Through the summer and winter
kept flocking to Petrograd. Sometimes they were sent as delegates to a convention. Quite
came from some far-away province, sent by their fellow villagers to find out what was really going on in Russia.
as often they
The case of Mikhail Ivanovitch was typical. The gubernia where Mikhail lived was hundreds
of versts from Petrograd.
Mikhail had never
been farther away from his little thatched hut than the distance of a fair day's drive, there and
back, for his sturdy Siberian pony.
It
was seven
days after the overthrow of the Tsar before Mikhail knew there had been a revolution in Petrograd.
The
crisis
new
Korniloff fiasco had been replaced by in the surging capitol before Mikhail
and
his friends
put
tangled mystery.
work on the Eight months passed, and he

their heads to
344
TSARS AND PEASANTS

and
his
dark.
did n't
groping about in the They wanted to play their part, but they know what to do. When news of the Bolstill
neighbors were
sheviki Revolution finally arrived, they

their
made up
minds that Mikhail must go to Petrograd and find some one who would come back and tell
all
them
about
it.
There came a day when Mikhail stood up
in
the great white hall in Smolney, his voice trem-
bling with excitement and his blue eyes, under
the sun-bleached bangs of
brown
hair,
wide with
wonder.
"I came from far away," he said. "We are want to do the right dark there very dark.
We
thing, but
we
don't understand.
tell us.
You must
pay
the
send
some one to
We
will
money
does not matter.
The
revolution came, and they
told us the 'Little Father'
They
told
was no longer here. us we would have land and peace and
implements for our farms. The same officials were still in the same offices, but instead of being
and brutal to us they were polite to us now yet they refused what we wanted just the same, and things did not get done any better than becross
;
fore.
We
were
still
poor, and they kept our
345

land.
cials
Then you made a revolution. The offiwere a little more polite, but that was all
the difference."
Mikhail hesitated for a moment, hunting for words.

"I
cause
know
it
things have changed," he said, "be-
used to be that one could hardly even look at a palace, and now I may look at all the
palaces as long as I
like.
may go
inside,
and
they
tell
me
that I
may
even see Tsar Lenin
himself."
Mikhail was the

called
first
of the peasants
his
who had
Lenin "Tsar," and
audience roared with
delight.
They appointed
a committee to take
him
to see the chief of the People's Commissaries, to his gubernia there
and when they sent him back
was
little
he did not
know about
is
the wild
ways
of revolution.
The Russian peasant
locally
minded, and
tied all his life to his one little patch of earth.
He has thought little

triotism, as the
of Russia as a whole.
Pa-
foreign in
French peasant knows it, is quite Russia. It was as easy for the Rus-
sian peasant to accept the doctrine of internaThe Bolshevist tionalism as that of nationalism.
346
TSARS AND PEASANTS

idea of a
community
Soviet, electing delegates to
a national Soviet, which could in turn elect delegates to an international

Soviet forming the
brotherhood of the peoples of all the world, appealed to his need for local self-government, and gave him at the same time a large ideal. It took
little
more
effort to conceive oneself as belonging

it
to a world than
took to imagine oneself part of an empire as vast as Russia. Even the city workers have a strong pull back
to the
soil.
Many
of
them work
in the factories villages to help
in the winter,
and return to the
harvest the crops in summer.
A friend of mine
asked an izvostchik where he came from.

"I
am
one of Count CherimesofFs peasants,"

long have you been in Petrograd?"
he
said.
"How
my
friend questioned.
"Thirty-five years," he answered.
After
self,
thirty-five years
he
still
thought of him-
not only as a peasant, but as the property
of a particular estate.
I once said to a peasant from the government

of Pskoff
:
"Are you a Russian?"

347

"No; we
are Pskovians."
A hungry student, who went to Pskoff during

the holidays for the purpose of getting enough
to eat, visited the local Peasants' Council.
The
business before the meeting
had to do with a
drunken member.
av
He had been drinking hunja,

and was capit
home-made
substitute for vodka,
tured with a bottle of
in his possession.
The
to to
to
council discussed his case,
send to
and wrote a paper the committee whose business it was

It takes
handle such offenders.
much time
write a paper at a peasants' meeting, and while

it
was being compiled the
bottle,
which was to
its
have been offered as evidence, was emptied of

contents.
was made, and it was found that one of the peasants had drunk The council debated some minutes, then it.
investigation
An
wrote at the bottom of the paper: "The hunja being taken by Stepanoff, he
is
added to above-mentioned
sent to the committee."
bottle
and man, and
The
local Peasants' Soviets
were not always

;
as expeditious as
an
efficiency
age might demand
but usually there was a crude, simple justice in

their decisions that
was unknown
348
in the days
TSARS AND PEASANTS

when
their destinies
officers of the
were decided by the highTsar.
handed
Most
of the land-owners insisted that the peas-
ant was at heart bourgeois, and that his interest in revolution would cease as soon as he got his land. Not long after the Bolshevik Revolution,
I talked one day with one of the former secretaries in the
Foreign
Office.
He
was managing
the strike of the

tries
employees of the various minis-
against the Soviet government, and ex-
plained an elaborate scheme by which he and his

associates expected to cut off the grain districts
of the south and starve the revolutionary masses

of the cities into submission.
"The
mies.
cialists
it is
Bolsheviki," he said, "are our real ene-
We
don't care about the theoretical So-
they just talk. But with the Bolsheviki a fight to a finish, and of course in the long
run
it
can result only one way.
When
and
the sol-
dier peasant returns to his earth
his family,
he will become bourgeois.
The peasant does not
own land, as the Socialists want it. He wants his own private property. Eventually he
want
to
will be
on our
side."
Many of the revolutionists

349
shared the same be-

about the peasants; but thus far they had proved as Nicholas Tchaikovsky said as radilief
cal as the city workers.
The
greatest difficulty that each succeeding
government experienced was that of making the peasants give up their grain. They wanted
plows, cotton for their looms, shoes for themselves
and
their children;
and the rubles they
had depreciated so greatly in value that they had no purchasing power. The peasreceived
ants looked
upon them
as so
many
scraps of
worthless paper.
A
He
Russian who had two estates down in the
south told
me
of an excursion that he
made
to
the government of
Chernigoff in September. went there to try to induce the peasants to

grain to the army.
village," said he,
sell their
"There was one
"where there
were two thousand inhabitants.

heart of the rich grain country.
vious
It
was
in the
December no official enter the village. The people had isolated themselves from the rest of Russia, and officials re-
Since the prehad been allowed to
mained away under threat of being killed. I went alone on horseback, with a rifle and some
350
TSARS AND PEASANTS

ammunition.
villagers
As
I neared the place I saw the
coming out to meet me. I told them they must give bread to the army, which was in danger of starving at the front. I made what
I thought was a forcible plea. an old gray-haired peasant,
When
I finished,
to be
who seemed
the spokesman of the crowd, said: " 'That 's all very clever talk, but
now
listen to
what we have
to say.
You want our bread. You

pood (forty pounds) We want to buy shoes.
.
offer to give us five rubles a
What is five rubles to us ?

For
will "
shoes
we must pay
a hundred rubles.
We
keep our grain.'

'All right,' I answered.
'If
you want to keep
your grain you can keep it; but you need petrol, and sugar for your tea, and iron for your plows. If you do not give us grain we will not give you
these.'
"The
old peasant smiled
and beckoned
me
to
follow him.
He
led
me
to a
window where a
couple of crude pine torches cut from a near-by
wood had been

"
placed.
'Those were the lights our grandfathers used,'

said.
he
'They are good enough for

petrol.'
us.
You
can keep your
351

"
tea.'
'But sugar
you must have sugar for your
"
tea.
'Our grandfathers needed no sugar for their They got along without tea, and they had
as
as
much bread
"
we have/
iron for your plows?' I asked.
'What about
led
Sure, here at any rate I had him stumped.
me to a shed at the back of his house, and showed me a small, primitive, old-fashioned
"He
sochar plow, in use
now
only in the most back-
ward
"
sections.
'Do you see that blade?' he asked. thers used those, and they had bread.
'Our fa-
There
's
enough
steel
on the old plows
in the village to
make new plows
to last four years.
You
can
keep your petrol and your sugar and your he said triumphantly.
"
iron,'
playing my trump card, 'we can bring troops down here and force you to give up your grain for the good of your counsaid,
try.'
'You know,' I
"
'Yes, of course,' he said.

if
'We
are only two
thousand, and
you brought a whole regiment
you could beat us. But we will recall our own do peasants from the front, and when they come,
Orrin S.
Wightman
nder the thatched roofs in villages like this one hundred and twenty million Russian peasants make their home
Katherine Breshkovskaya and her two aged comrades, Lazareff (center) and Nicholas Tchaikowsky, with her American friends, Col. William B. Thompson (lower left) and Col. Raymond Robins
\
Soldiers' wives
on the Nevsky demonstrating
for increased allowance
TSARS AND PEASANTS

you suppose they
will fight for us.'
will fight for
you?
failed.
No, they
I tried
"It was no use

persuasion.
all
threats
had
'But please, please/ I said. 'Your brothers are starving please give us some grain for the
army.'
'Yes,' he said; 'we will give
will give
'
you bread.
We
for
you two thousand poods of bread

'
our brothers at the front.'
'We will be glad "He interrupted.

'
"
to
pay you
I began.
'No,' he said;
'it
sell
you bread.
We
a present we will not have no use for your rubles.

is
'
They are scraps of paper.' The same official told me
that he
had
visited
the village of Radouel, and found the people
without bread, while two kilometers
away
the
sell-
peasants were feeding bread to the pigs and
ing the pigs for lard. "Why should we sell bread for five rubles a
pood, when
rubles a
we can get a hundred and twenty
pood for pork fat?" the peasants asked. Price-fixing on grain in Russia had no good
results.
The peasant who could
neither read nor

write
knew enough
its
to realize that
is
money
when
purchasing power gone. could be transmuted into farm implements, of less value to him than his grain.
paper Unless it
it
is
was
The dream of the Soviets was communally owned modern farm machinery that would lift
Russian agriculture out of
lessen the dreary
its
primitive state
and
drudgery of the peasant's des-
perate struggle for life. No one who has not seen those peasant homes
can know the sordidness of that struggle. Often the live stock, which was the peasants' entire for-
same roof with the family. In one peasant hut I found the cow occupying the most comfortable corner of the room. I picked
tune, shared the
my way
to the door through a barn-yard full of
flock of chickoozing black mud and refuse. ens ran in and out, leaving the marks of their feet
and the barefoot peasant's wife, on her frequent excursions to and fro, tracked
on the
floor;
the vile-smelling slush in with her. there was none. Except in the big
is
Plumbing
cities,
there
none worthy of the name in Russia. The peasant's weekly steam bath is his one debauch of
cleanliness.
354
TSARS AND PEASANTS

Every village has
primitive ones, a
its
public bath.
In the more
fire is built in
a Russian stove.
When
forth.
the stones are thoroughly heated, tubs of
water are thrown over them, and the steam pours
The
up on
bathers,
after
a good scrubbing,
climb
tiers
the
wooden
fires
shelves that are built in
along the walls, and enjoy a thorough
steaming.
The
are kept burning, and occa-
sionally one of the bathers throws a fresh dipper
of water on the stones.
The samovar was
frequently the one luxury.
In the days before the vodka prohibition, the white liquor was the peasant's only escape from
the sordidness of
life.
It
his
cause
it
meant that
was a poor escape, bewife and children paid
momentary relief. The unhappy peasant, harassed by political and economic oppression, did what miserable people do the world over tried to make some one else
miserable.
his
with greater misery for his
Usually the peasant took it out on wife, who in turn took it out on the children.
least opportunity, the
Given the
Russian
is
the
Il-
kindest, simplest, happiest soul in the world.

literate as
he
is,
he frequently reveals a deeper
wisdom than
his
more fortunate brothers over355

can teach him plumbing and tilling and business management. can help him to
seas.
We
We
a knowledge of things that grow between the covers of books. But we can learn from him
also
those truths that are minted in misery, those
truths that
come out of the depths of the

man.
forest
and
off the vast silent spaces of the steppe, into
the soul of a
356
CHAPTER XIX
WOMEN
THERE was no
IN
THE REVOLUTION
movement
in Russia.
re-
feminist
People usually become class-conscious in
sponse to class oppression. In the old days in Russia the rights of women were slightly fewer
than those of men, but the difference was so small

as to be negligible.
Their separate grievance as a class was swallowed up in the greater grievance of the mass.
struggle of
Russia's struggle
was the
human beings as human beings, rather than human beings as males or females.
In the days of the terrorists, women claimed It was the right to throw bombs as well as men.
granted them. With equal generosity, the government rewarded them with hard labor, exile in
and even hanging. They spent their strength and their blood as lavishly, as recklessly,
Siberia,
as courageously, as
When
any of their brother Nihilists. freedom came to Russia, no one ques-
tioned the right of
women
857
to share
it.
Instead

of becoming feminists, they became Cadets, Social
Revolutionists,
Mensheviki,
Maximalists,
Bolsheviki, Internationalists, or attached themselves to
one or another of the parties and shad-
ows of
parties.
Here, as elsewhere, governmental honors were largely to the male but the mundane business of
;
making the world left to women.
of
meat and drink was largely Women in Russia do what

do.
women
of the
Western world
in
At
the big
democratic
convention
the
Alexandrinski
Theater, I counted the
number
of seats occupied
by women. There were sixteen hundred delegates, and twenty-three of them were women. Many other women were in evidence, but they
were behind the samovars, serving tea and caviar and sausage sandwiches. Some wore red armbands, ushered the
men
to their seats, took steno-
graphic reports of proceedings, and counted ballots. It was so natural that it almost made me
homesick.
Revolution did not lessen the burden that war
had placed upon the back of the mass of Russian women. Increased disorganization of the country necessitated increased effort on the part of 358
WOMEN
women
They
swept the
IN
THE REVOLUTION
from starvation.
cattle;
to keep their families
tilled the fields
and tended the
they
streets
and mended the railway
tracks,
and stood for endless hours
in front of the food-
shops to get bread and milk for their babies. Their hopes were invested in the success of the Revolution just as firmly as those of their men,
but they had less time for talking. They poured out of the factories to march, and once they were
prepared even to
fight.
They were
cause, they
the silent
heroines of revolution, as they had been of war;
and, though they had
much
had
little
time for weeping.
Only
high
five
women
of
climbed out of the mass to
seats
honor.
They were Katherine
Breshkovskaya, Marie Spiridonova, Countess Panina, Alexandria Kolontai, and Madame Bitsenko.
any land than that of the wonderful old Babushka

(Grandmother) of the Revolution. The heights of joy and the depths of disappointment have
been hers during the year; but she has remained,
in spite of everything, the big, strong, steady
The age has produced no
finer spirit in
soul
who survived half a century and more

359
of per-

long with every conrevolutionary ceivable kind of suffering, but she never for a moment lost faith in the ultimate success of the
life
secution that Russia might be free.
Her
has been
filled
cause to which she dedicated herself.
When the
Siberia,
Revolution came, she was in exile in
and they brought her home and gave her a reception such as no queen has ever known.
They took her

and
est little
protesting to the Winter Palace,
installed her there.
She
insisted
on the
tini-
room
to be
found in the great building,
and asked
to be allowed to live in the simplicity
she had always known.
Her
it
door swung always

in this room, sit-
on a friendly hinge, and
was
ting behind a big flat-topped mahogany desk, that I first met her. She was seventy-three years old; but by the light in her eyes, the ring in her
voice,
appeared to me to be the youngest, the strongest, and perhaps the sanest person I had found in Petrograd. An odd procession tramped up and down the
and the courage
in her soul, she
marble staircase to place

kind old heart.
hopes and fears in the crucible of her wise old head and her stout,
its
Once I found her with
a comto her
rade of the old Siberian days, 360
who came
WOMEN
to
IN
THE REVOLUTION
He
had fought and
to find
mend
his
broken dream.
suffered for free Russia,
and returned
himself exiled
anew
to that saddest of all exiles.
The young radicals spoke of him as "an
old fogy,"
and said, with a meaningful smile, of the man who had clanged his chains across the prison floor
through many dreary years: "He calls himself a Socialist." He came to the Babushka for a
new faith
in himself
and tolerance of
his accusers.
She nodded, put a pair of motherly arms around him, and kissed him on both cheeks.
"Babushka knows.
she was
is
all
they not said that very well for her day, but her day
Have
done?"
When
tiny sigh.
he had gone, she turned to

a friend of mine," she said
in prison.
me
with a
"It
is
"a
man who
is
was twenty years

but
Yet he
strong,
men
I think they are not so strong as I think they can not suffer so much.
stout hearts.
women.
They have not such
They get
dis-
couraged." Once a messenger from Kerensky interrupted us with news of a mutiny in one of the regi-
ments.
361

"I must go immediately," she
to these naughty boys
said,
"and talk
listening
who have been
again to
bad advice."
invitation
Another time an
from the American

dear Americans,"
if
Red
Cross came.
will
"Of course I
want me."
go
to
my
she said, "and spend the whole afternoon
they
We had no better friend in all of Russia.
She
loved America and Americans, and never tired

of talking of her experiences in our country.
She asked about Jane Addams, and Alice Stone Blackwell, Ernest Poole, and Arthur Bullard.
"They were
"While I was and
is
all
so
good
to me,"
she
said.
in Siberia they sent
me
papers
letters.
how
Not once did they forget me. That I learned to speak the English. I do not
speak it very well." I asked what America could do to help Russia.
"Never
let
us alone," she answered.
"We
need you. All that you do now, do more. We need you much. Our dangers are from ourselves only.
difficult.
Our
interior construction
is
very
will
When
the
war
362
is
over, our
hands
WOMEN
be quite
free.
IN
THE REVOLUTION
But that is difficult too, for our soldiers are tired, and very, very dark. They do not understand the danger to Russia. The
is
country
large, rich
very
rich,
civilize-ed," she said.
"We
but not enough need aid we need

is
teachers.
How to do it
that
the question."
We talked of
"They
she said.
will
Russian women.
are very good, our
women.
But they
what
act
are not active enough; they are not energetic,"
"Before
it
be permitted.
was always waiting We had no liberty to
by
ourselves.
not the
nothing.
Now, when we have liberty, we have I can work because I fear experience.
I fear-ed nothing all
my
life.
I have
always worked. The initiative is a great thing. You have much of it, but the Russian women
the instinct
and the moral forces are

not the will to do."
all right,
but there
is
Every big and little problem of Russia lay heavily on the grandmother's heart; but she refused to permit her vision of the future to be blurred by the tragedies of the present. From
the days of her childhood as the daughter of a
wealthy land-owner, through solitary confinement in the dungeon of the Fortress of Peter and

Paul, and dreary years of hard labor on the Siberian steppes, her life has always been touched
with consciousness of the sorrow of others.
upon my past life, I can not remember a time when my child soul did not suffer at the contradiction between reality and
I look back
"When
the teachings of Christ," she said.

girl of
five,
"As a
driver,
tiny
my
heart was always breaking for
some one
for
else.
Now
it
was for the
now
the
chamber-maid,
it
now
for
the
laborer.
was those poor oppressed serfs. Always I have known that I would go safely through everything and see the bright days of
Sometimes
Always I was listening for the ringing of the bells, and wondering that they kept
freedom.
me
waiting."
the opening meeting of the Council of the
At
Republic, I saw Kerensky place the gavel in her hands and ask her to be the first presiding officer.
It
was
as gracious
and beautiful a tribute as has
ever been paid to
woman anywhere; and
the old
grandmother, a white kerchief over her snowy curls and another around her neck, graced her
position.
364
WOMEN
IN
THE REVOLUTION
Imme-
I saw Babushka for the last time just before

the fall of the Kerensky government.
diately
afterward
she
went
into
retirement.
were spread broadcast over The young the world, but they were not true. revolutionists, though they differed from her poStories of her arrest
litically,
had far too profound a feeling of respect She for her down in their hearts to harm her.
Petrograd for a time, on the of an apartment-house. Later she
lived quietly in
fifth
floor
went to Moscow.
I left Russia without seeing Babushka, but I
learned that she was safe, and I

spite of disappointments, she
self to
knew
that, in
was adjusting herthe changed conditions and holding the
faith that her country
can not be permanently enslaved by a kaiser any more than it could be
by a
tsar.
Except for their courage and their revolutionary faith, no two women could be much more
unlike than Breshkovskaya and
little
Marie Spi-
ridonova. If the annals of the Bolshevist government are

truly written, they will record
many
a night
when
Marie Spiridonova and Nicolai Lenin matched

365

wits
and followers
in the great
game
of revolu-
tionary politics.
Less than
five
feet tall
and
considerably under ninety pounds, she was the smallest and frailest but one of the most powerful persons in that vast country eral of peasant Russia.
the Little
Gen-
I see her always as I
saw her many times dur-
ing this great red Russian year against a background of masses upon masses of burly figures
in dun-colored coats, her tiny hands
tically in the air while she shouted,
waving franwith
all
the
force
and
fire
of a spirit of flame
"Tavarischi!
Tavarischi!
Tiche,
tiche!"
(Comrades! Comrades! Hush, hush!) She rattled a futile little bell occasionally; but, in the midst of that clatter of dumb men who had
suddenly found their tongues, the bleat of a lamb.
its
voice
was
like
She was as incongruous
in those great
crowds
of hairy, horny sons of field and trench as the

tinkling bell; yet she handled herself
and her
followers with the skill of a trained politician
and the
tact of a mother.
By
all
the laws of
human
limitations,
she
should be dead.
She was sentenced to death by

366
WOMEN
IN
THE REVOLUTION
when
she
the order of the Tsar's government,
was
a girl only just barely awakened to a knowledge of the tragedy of life in her native Russia.
twenty-four hours in prison she died a hundred deaths at the hands of the Cosfirst
In her
charged with the pleasant duty of Still she lived on, and her tortorturing her. mentors paid quietly, swiftly, and unofficially
sack
officers
with their
what they had done to her. Marie Spiridonova's companions had sworn that
lives for
it
should be
so,
and
it
was.
During ten years at hard labor in Siberia, death should have come to relieve her, but it did
not.
When
the news that Russia
was
free flashed
si-
across the steppes
and
into the vast white

it
lences of northeastern Siberia,
found Marie
Spiridonova alive and waiting. Two bright red spots flamed on her thin
cheek-bones, and her narrow chest was racked
by a wicked cough. They brought her home to Petrograd and put her tenderly to bed in a
refuge prepared for home-coming exiles her to bed to die.
put
Through the turbulent spring and summer she

367

played her part in revolution from that narrow
refugee cot.
By
fall she
had become the central

Petrograd from
figure at every meeting of the peasants' delegates,
who were pouring ceaselessly

all
into
parts of Russia.
story begins thirty years ago, in the gov-
Her
ernment of Tamboof.
There, in a
little
house
not far from the prison where she was afterward incarcerated, Marie lived with her mother and
two
she
sisters.
She received unusual educational

so engrossed in the
advantages, and planned to be a doctor; but as
grew older she became
sorrows of the Russian people that she gave up all thought of everything but revolution.
Tamboof was
torious even
in the grip of a governor nohis
beyond the borders of
gubernia
lived
for his frightful cruelties.

in hourly terror that he
The peasants
set the
or,
would
Cossacks
still,
on them, order them flogged,

their homes.
worse
burn
The
stories of his cruelties
mounted one upon

this
the other; and to Marie Spiridonova, brooding
over them,
it
seemed that she and
man
could
no longer breathe the air of the same earth. They both chanced to be in a certain small
368
vil-
WOMEN
lage
IN
THE REVOLUTION
girl
was captured, submitted to frightful outrage by a band of Cossacks, and finally thrown into a lake.
when a peasant
The governor knew.
He neither hindered nor
punished. It was too much. There was one pair of violet eyes in the village that night that
Marie Spiridonova lay awake until morning, and by morning she knew what she must do. She obtained a revolver. She found
did not close.
the governor of
Tamboof
at the railway station,
with his Cossack guard. She fired five fatal shots before the Cossacks, with drawn swords,
closed in
tried
She saw them coming, and to take her own life, but they were too quick.
on
her.
They hurled her

other
to
to the sidewalk, calling to each
"Strike
her!
Slash
her!"
They
dragged her down the steps, her head bumping as she went, and lifted her by her long brown
braids into an izvostchik.
In the
jail she
was stripped and flogged end
taunted with shouts of "Now, then, deliver us a

thrilling speech!"
They burned her body with

and stamped on her
little
lighted cigarettes,
feet
with their heavy boots. When other forms of torture bored them, they kicked her back and
369

forth across the cell from one to another like a
football, shouting:
"Now,
then, tell us then,
who your
comrades are!"
if
or,
"Cry out
you wretch,
you Marie Spiridonova did not cry out. She delivered no thrilling speeches. She spoke no comrade's name. That is not the stuff of which the
Russian Revolution was made.
don't like it!"
The next night they took her back

boof.
to
Tam-
Much
of the time
she
was mercifully
series of
senseless,
and remembers vaguely as a
horrible nightmares her brief intervals of consciousness.
to death,
They tried her, and sentenced her and when they asked her on the day of
if
judgment
"I
she had anything to say Jor herself,
she replied:
am
kill
about to be sent from
this life.
You
most
to
may
me
over and over again, as you have
already done.
You may
subject
me
to the
horrible penalties.
But you can add nothing

kill
what I have already endured.

death.
I do not fear
You may
destroy
my
body, but you can not belief that the hour of the people's
my
freedom and happiness is coming." The story of Marie Spiridonova rang from one
370
WOMEN
IN
THE REVOLUTION
part of the world to the other. It made little difference what the governor or the Tsar did to
her, for in that
hour the Russian people en-
throned her in their hearts.
Her
youth, the
depth of her passion, her tiny, frail, girlish form, even her name itself, became a pledge-
word by which men swore that Russia should

be
free.
In France they formed a league to save her, and England and America were quickly aroused
to pity
Perhaps because of the storm of protest at home and abroad, the death sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siaction.
and to
beria.
herself.
Marie Spiridonova asked no mercy for She rejected personal pity.

tell
"If the people of America are interested in

the fate of this Russian girl,
them they must
rather interest themselves in the fatherland of
"I want nothing personally, because for a long time I have not existed perthis girl," she said.
sonally.
My heart
and
my
soul are given to the
cause of the people." It is so with all the Russian revolutionists.
Theirs
is
movement
of ideas rather than of in-
dividuals.
They
shrink from discussing them-
371

selves as individuals,
and prefer always to dwell
upon the cause for which they fight. In spite of this, the life of a revolutionist goes on in much the same channels as that of other
people.
They have
and
their
their personal joys

little
and
sor-
rows, their great loves and

piness
breaks.
this rule.
hates, their hap-
own
small individual heart-
Marie Spiridonova was no exception to While she was in exile she met Alexlike herself,
fire.
ander Dekonsky, a revolutionist from south Russia.
He was
young
as full of revolutionary
and apparently They had their

life
cause in common, and youth and

ness.
and
loneli-
They
fell in love.
In the prison where Marie Spiridonova was incarcerated there were nine other women politicals.
When
the news came that Russia was
free, the
order of release contained the names of
only eight of them.
The jailer read them The
slowly,
and the women looked from one

faces of joyful unbelief.
fact.
to another with
impossible was a
The
thing for which they had dreamed

suffered,
and worked and

of their
and for which many comrades had already died, had hapjailer
pened.
The
came
to the
end of the
list.
WOMEN
Two
IN
THE REVOLUTION
With trembling
lips
sharp streaks of pain appeared in the eyes
of the two neglected ones.
they spoke. "What about us?" they asked forlornly. The jailer shook his head. He was going to
take no chances.
The Revolution might not be

it
such a success as
for other advices.
appeared.
He
would wait
"You
stay/' he answered.
will
"Then none of us
characteristic of her.
go!" said Marie Spi-
ridonova, with one of those impulsive decisions
They
settled
back to more waiting; but the
prison walls that day could not keep down their bounding spirits or shadow their joy.
The next day a second telegram
arrived, or-
dering the release of the two neglected ones, and the ten started joyfully on their pilgrimage to
Petrograd. Their journey was a triumphal procession through the length of Siberia. No other but Ba-
bushka received such a welcome as that which

the people gave to this slip of a girl
who had won

and
the distinction of being the most famous
most loved of
all
the "Terrorists" of Russia.
373

She needed
sia
all
the love
could give her,
and sympathy that Rusfor she was soon to bear a
greater torture than any that gendarmes or Cossack officers had been able to invent for her.
When
police)
the records of the
Okhranka
(the secret
were captured, they contained the names of the spies and provokators who for years had
been masquerading as revolutionists only that they might betray their comrades to the agents
of the Tsar.
The name
of Alexander
Dekonsky
According was documentary evidence to prove that he was the chief provokator of all the great South Rus-
was on the
list.
to the records, there
and that many revolutionists had paid with their lives on the gallows for their faith and friendship for him. Marie Spiridosian district,
bed when they told her the news. Dekonsky had been arrested by the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies at Odessa,
nova was
sick in
and was imprisoned there. Once again death crept close to the frail form of Marie Spiridonova, and once again death refused to release her.
She
lived
through
all
this as
she lived through other tragedies.
For
three
weeks she hid herself away from

374*
her old
WOMEN
friends.
IN
THE REVOLUTION
this
During
by
his
from
prison.
Many
time Dekonsky escaped Russians believe that he was

his sweet-
released
guards at the request of
heart of Siberian days.
When
Marie Spirido-
nova once more appeared in Petrograd, she gave out a public statement in which she declared De-
konsky innocent; then she threw herself more

intensely than ever into the Revolutionary struggle.
I met her
in the
first at
the Democratic Convention
Alexandrinsky Theater.
She sat
in the
front row, surrounded, as always,
by men whose
huge bulk emphasized her smallness. Her hair was done in two braids, wrapped around her face,
and pulled rather low on her forehead to hide She the scars the Cossack officers had left there.
wore, as always, a severe blue serge dress with a turnover collar of white lawn, and the severity
of her clothes accentuated the
Quaker look
of her.
The red
spots burned brighter than ever on her
cheek-bones that night, and her violet eyes were She was like tiny candles set in deep shadows.
the spokesman of her party, the radical
wing
of the Social Revolutionists, and occasionally

she walked to the platform and delivered a brief 375

but intense appeal on behalf of her group.
The
political situation
was
critical.
Kerensky
was already balancing on a

of "All
tight-rope.
The
cry
Power to the Soviets," was growing louder and more insistent. Marie Spiridonova,
though she was not a Bolshevik, inclined toward the Bolshevist program. She knew that the
land-hunger of the peasants could not long go unsatisfied, and that no government that did not
recognize this immediate
survive.
To
those of
demand could us who believed

was
to stand
possibly
that the
wisest policy for Russia
by Alex-
ander Kerensky, the intense little bundle of enthusiasms that was Marie Spiridonova seemed a
real fire-brand.
In the tea-room where,
in intermissions,
we
worshiped at the shrine of the bubbling samovar, or lined up at the counters for black bread
and butter sandwiches, I had the first of many talks with her. She seemed pathetically frail and exhausted, and told me that she was sleeping only about two hours a night. All day long,
in
and out of convention, the peasants came flocking to see her, and would talk to no one else.
When she was n't in convention,

376
or party caucus,
WOMEN
bution
IN
THE REVOLUTION
or meeting delegations from the front and the villages, she was editing a newspaper for distri-
among the peasants. When the November Revolution overthrew
the
coalition
in
government and placed the Bolsheviki power, it was the voice of Marie Spiridonova
more than any other that brought about the combination of the left Social Revolutionists and the
Bolsheviki.
from the government of the People's Commissaries was to put oneself, in effect, on the side of the counter-revoto stay aloof
lutionists.
inet,
She argued that
She was offered a place
in the
Cab-
but refused, believing she could do better

as a leader of the peasants.
work simply
Many
in the
times in the year I have seen her and Chernoff

contest for the control of the bearded
men
faded brown coats, and in the end
little
Marie
Cab-
Spiridonova always came away with the honors.
The
inet
first
woman
to accept a place in the
was Countess Panina, who became Assistant Minister of Public Welfare in one of the early
Kerensky governments, and was
to the
later transferred
Department of Education. Countess Panina was perhaps the best representative of a

377

small group of big- spirited, high-thinking
of the aristocracy
women
in
who were
in protest against
the oppression of the Tsar.
She was a rebel
the days of autocracy, but the ever-increasing
radicalism of the revolutionists
made
her seem
more and more the conservative as the months went on. She did a big job as well as the facilities
permitted, until her arrest following the
downfall of Kerensky.
Her
successor
Bolshevik.
was Alexandria Kolontai, the I had imagined Kolontai as a large
woman
ner
with short black hair and a defiant man-
a picture conjured unconsciously from all Inthe wild stories about her that were afloat.
stead, she
large soft
was a mild-looking little person, with blue eyes, and wavy brown hair tinged
with gray, caught in a simple knot behind her She had been arrested following the July head.
riots,
was made to prove Lenin and Trotzky pro-German; but she was released
when an
effort
because of lack of evidence to hold her.
Smolney Institute, immediately after the Soviet had taken over the government. The Bolsheviki were trying to form the
I met her
first at
378
WOMEN
first
IN
THE REVOLUTION
Council of the People's Commissaries. Kolontai had beon mentioned as Commissary of
Welfare.
friend introduced
me
to her,
and
She proved to be a simple, cultured, gracious person, and the author of an extensive and authoritative volume on the subject
tea together.
we had
of maternity compensation.
"Are you going
to be a minister?" I asked her.
"No, indeed," she answered, with a laugh. "If I were to be a minister, I should become as
stupid as
all
ministers."
Notwithstanding her denial, she was installed a few days later in the Ministry of Welfare.
Several months afterwards I went to see her, to
ask about
facilities
for the distribution of the
condensed milk that the

ceived from America.
of that other day.
Cross had just reI wickedly reminded her
Red
"And
am
getting stupid," she said.
"But
what are we to do?

do the work."
There are
so
few of us to
Kolontai was a product of the upper class. She was married to a Russian engineer, and, according to the story she told me, had never even 379

thought of social conditions until 1889, when she went with her husband to spend a week in a factory town.
"I was given permission to spend my days in the factory, and it made such a profound impression on
me
that
it
changed
my
whole
life.
I went
away
feeling I could not live unless I
did something to help change the condition of the
Russian workers.
knew no
Socialists,
but I
began to read, and found my way to Socialism through books. Later I went to Zurich and
took a course in economics, became a revolutionist,
and spent nine years
in exile."
Kolontai shares the general Bolshevist feeling of the hopelessness of their cause, but she said:
"Even
things.
if
we
are conquered,
we have done great

of lifting the cul-
We
are breaking the way, abolishing

creative
old ideas.
The
work
ture of the world will

tries."
come
first to
other coun-
She changed the name of the Ministry from Social Welfare to Social Security, to make it more in keeping with the Soviet idea of benefits
as a right rather than a gift.
The revenue
for
the department
was raised largely by a monopoly

380
WOMEN
bles a dozen.
IN
THE REVOLUTION
They were
life
on playing cards.
sold at thirty ru-
Kolontai, on the theory that cards
were not a necessity of
and therefore should
be heavily taxed, raised the price to three hundred and sixty roubles a dozen. The purchasers complained, but ordered as many as three hun-
dred to
five
hundred decks.
Kolontai took charge, the officials went on a strike and took the key from the treasury. For two weeks the whereabouts of the key re-
When
mained a mystery. Then Kolontai sent for a band of Red Guard and sailors, and her order,
backed by their bayonets, was obeyed. She reorganized the department from below,
but installed democratic management, giving every employee a vote. There were four thou-
sand minor employees drawing very miserable salaries, while a few figureheads received as
much
as
twenty-five thousand rubles a year.
She readjusted the scale so that six hundred rubles a month became the highest salary paid any one. There are two and a half million maimed
diers in Russia,
sol-
and
in
million others
who were
sick or
January there were four wounded. These,
381

and nearly a half a million dependent children, came under the care of the department.
Russia's infant mortality rate
is
the highest of
any
so-called civilized country.
Kolontai, in an
opened a Palace of Motherhood, with a maternity exhibition and training classes to prepare a mother for the coming of
effort to correct this,
her child.
ilar
She planned
this as a
all
model for simIt
houses to be established
over Russia.
was arranged that mothers could come there for eight weeks prior to the birth of the child, and
remain for eight weeks afterward, while substitute mothers went into the homes to take care of
the other children.
Several measures were passed by the Council

of People's Commissaries to protect maternity,
and these were under the

tai's
jurisdiction of Kolan-
department. The work-day for nursing mothers was reduced to four hours, and a compulsory rest period before and after the birth of the child was established.
"Little republics" were established in all the
homes for older children and for the aged, and self-government was introduced. The social
WOMEN
whom
IN
THE REVOLUTION
scale of
program included an adequate
compen-
sation for the disabled victims of the war,
many of
were forced to beg on the streets. This entailed a tremendous expenditure, and I asked
Madame
raise so
Kolontai
how
it
would be
possible to
much money. "We found money for war," "We shall find money for this."
She asserted that graft
in
she answered.
the department
reached into millions of rubles, and that the elimination of this alone would go far toward realizing some of her schemes. She proposed also requisitioning the monasteries
and convents, which
were the repositories of untold wealth in lands and jewels, and turning them into children's
homes and asylums.
Madame
Bitsenko, the fifth
member
of the
group, was the only woman on the peace delegation to Brest-Litovsk. The peace delegation had been gone from Petrograd several days before I
even learned there was a

voys.
woman among
the en-
Daddy R. spoke
of her quite casually one
morning.
"What, a woman on the peace board!" I

383
said

in
amazement.
"Why
didn't you
tell
me?"
"I don't know," he answered.

anything of
It
it."
"I did n't think
was rather typical of the Russian
attitude.
It didn't occur to
find a
any one
to be surprised to
woman
in a position of power.
There
was no more sex-consciousness on the part of the men than on the part of the women.
A few other women were flashed upon the revolutionary screen, in one capacity or another.
Vera Figner did a notable piece of work for the

home-coming exiles. Madame Sheskina Javien's name was associated with the suffrage fight, and
there were several
women
doctors
who played
an unspectacular but very necessary role. Russian women are handicapped, like Russian
men, by lack of experience. Up to the time of the Revolution, women were allowed to study
law, but not to practise
ied
it.
Many women
stud-
law for the sheer joy of putting their brains to work on solid food; but when they had digested the theory, there was no practice upon which to
test
it.
oped
in
Well rounded human beings are develcombined thought and action. The inRussian
telligent
woman
384
has a larger fund of
WOMEN
IN
THE REVOLUTION
general cultural knowledge than the average educated American, but she has been denied the op-
portunity for applying her knowledge as she acquires

it.
Russian
women
talk brilliantly
upon many
subjects, but most of them jump quickly about from one subject to another, and frequently,
after
an hour of conversation with one, I found
myself groping frantically about, trying to reduce what had been said to a few simple facts
capable of application.
385
CHAPTER XX
NICHOLAS and two able-bodied

sistants could
as-
have conducted a successful coun-
ter-revolution
on December
25, 1917.
But
the
Tsar, whatever else
may
be said of him, was a
Russian, so he was otherwise engaged.
On a holiday no Russian, high or low, orthodox,

old believer or unbeliever,
Jew
or Gentile, has
cal-
time for anything but

endar,
f)lay.
The Russian
lagging nearly two weeks behind the schedule of western Europe, provided the foreigners with a double portion of festivity. In
the midst of
war and
revolution,
we not only
it
celebrated Christmas, but
we
celebrated
twice.
To my
sunshine-fed
California
soul,
that
Christmas stepped ready-made from a fairy tale. The lazy lie-abed sun does n't get up until nearly
noon, and before the afternoon
gone it has brushed the snow with streaks of coral and

is
half
386

rose,
and departed, leaving a glowing memory
painted upon the horizon. Petrograd, before she puts on her white cloak
of winter,
is
just a bit shabby.
low stucco palaces Here and there the plaster is badly in paint. need of patching, and the ornate scroll-saw ruffles
The red and yelcould do with a new coat of
around the buildings are pathetically like cheap lace. When the beauty of winter comes
toppling out of the heavens, she stretches her arms
and catches
it all.
The snow
and the
piles in billows
icicles
on
roofs and chimneys,

crystal fringes
hang
like
from the woodwork.
Against
the background of the white snow, the faded yel-
lows and the bricky reds become

ing.
warm and glow-
The
little trees in
the palace courtyards,
stripped of leaves and clothed in swan's feathers,

are like ghosts or shadows of trees, so vague and
frail
they are.
Christmas against such a background must have elements of beauty, however empty the
shops or troubled the people. Vera and Ivan take their play-time seriously. Because they
wept yesterday and die to-morrow, they play the more lustily to-day. Though revolution raged,
387

machine-guns
rattled,
and cabinets
fell,
the ballet
pursued
season.
its
uninterrupted course to the end of the

the Marinsky Theater, Karsavina
At
and Smirnova fought to hold the honors of the dance against all new comers, and Shalyapin sang
the parts that
made him famous

all his
in the
days of
Nicholas with
accustomed gusto.
When
the proper time arrived, the winter slides for the children were put in their usual places in the parks, and until the snows
came the "American

in
mountain"
(roller-coaster)
the
Russian
busi-
Coney Island had done a record-smashing

ness.
Of
to
course they would celebrate Christmas

It never occurred
revolution or no revolution!
any one that
As
might be otherwise. the date of our holiday drew near,

it
my
Rusthe
sian friends plied
me
with questions.
To
chef of the Hotel Europe, an

pie
American mince
was a
riddle without
an answer.
The Red
Cross Mission gave a luncheon for the American correspondents Christmas Day, and Major Allen
Wardwell and I were commissioned

Colonel
to
go
shopping.
Robins
suggested
turkey,
mince
pie,
and
a Christmas tree as desirable trim-
388

mings, and
we had
great fun and
many
adven^
tures achieving them.
The luncheon table was ceilinged room with red

crackling
fire
set in
a large, high-
velvet hangings.
blazed on the hearth, and in the
center of the table a gleaming tree stepped from
a mossy bed of crimson tulips. pulled down the blinds and shut out war and revolution, while
We
we laughed
merrily over the Russian conception of mince pie, and wondered secretly, each in his
terms, what they were doing off there across
own
the world at home.
Major Thatcher and Major Webster had the bad judgment to choose that day upon which to go to bed with colds, so we had a second celebration in their rooms.
On
the
way back
to the
hotel, I stopped at the old police station to leave
a book and a "Merry Christmas" for Jacob Peters.
"It
's
a Christmas box," he said, a wistful smile
lighting his tired face.
was weary and disillusioned and hungry for an open fireplace, his little girl, and his British "missis." "There is
He
nothing in the world like an English Christmas," he said.

389

We
talked for a few minutes, then I hurried
dress.
back to the hotel to
In the National City Bank Building, that night, the whole American colony came out to celebrate Christmas. That
party was a triumph, taxing all the ingenuity of a clever woman and half a dozen resourceful
men.
was a supper dance, and the miracle of providing food for two hundred people with
It
Petrograd's cupboard stripped almost bare was a real achievement. The presiding genius was
Mrs. Mildred Farwell, an American who quietly

did any
number
of nice things not only for, the
Americans, but for
many poor
stranded Russians
whose
lives
had unfitted them to meet the topsy-
turvy order. All Russia contributed to load the buffet with

eatables of the "kind that mother used to make,"
and many a Russian cook was a wiser person before the party was over. They brought baking powder from Vladivostok, six thousand versts away, to make American layer cakes. The eggs
came from Pskoff, up near the Russian front. The Ambassador's pantry was robbed of its white
flour.
And the turkeys came from heaven knows

390
where.

In the days before the war the National City Bank Building was the Turkish Embassy, and The for a night it took on all its former glory. huge mirrors
reflected a whirling
company
of
women in shimmering
frocks and
men whose
eve-
ning clothes had not been out of their creases for many a day. There was a balalika band, and
between one-steps and waltzes couples chattered in palm-secluded corners. Not a speech was
made that night. Mrs. Farwell was determined that we should play, and play we did. December 25 on the Russian calendar fell on Monday. Sunday morning I crossed the Neva
with a friend, and drove to the quiet woods out
on the
islands.
It
was a
favorite haunt of
mine
for here winter, whose mysteries I
was discover-
ing for the first time, was at its best. The boughbent pines and spruces groaned beneath the white
weight upon their outstretched arms, and the deserted forests were big, silent,
and untroubled.
To-day the woods came marching toward me.
Along
the sidewalk a procession of shabby
men
and worn-looking women hurried homeward, and over the shoulder of each was a tiny tree. In
the
forest
we found
the
391
scars
lovely
pines

clipped off at the top, baby spruces cut off at
the roots, familiar families broken up.
"It
's
a shame," said
my
companion warmly.
"It
's
At
vandalism, nothing first I too could see only the scars there in
else."
the great whiteness.
Then
it
was
night,
and
through the windows of Petrograd I saw the trees. They were candle-lighted, and the shining eyes of
delight.
little
children looked
upon them with
"It
's
the price," I said.
"A different destiny,
but
who knows
it is
haps
perhaps a happier one. Perbetter to make the gift of a glorious
hour, to find immortality in the

child,
memory
of a
than to
live
on to a green old age."
"Perhaps," he
said.
That afternoon, along the Sadovaya, where peasant women and crippled soldiers sold herrings and candles, apples and sausages, crude
toys and painted cradles, sugarless candy and ugly dolls, I found the mothers of Petrograd pathetically
trying to
contribute
to
that
hour.
They paid
thirty rubles a dozen for tiny apples,
and twelve rubles a pound for candy.

392
It was a

lean Christmas, but
less.
it
was Christmas neverthefor three days; war,
The world stopped
revolution, hunger, mattered not.
All of them
must make way for Christmas. The restaurants and the hotel dining-rooms were closed, and, unless
we had taken
the precaution to lay in a sup-
ply of sardines beforehand, or had friends with a farther vision than our own, we might have gone
hungry.
At midnight Christmas Eve
I crossed the
square to St. Isaac's for the Christmas service. The church was deserted. I stood alone in the
dark under the towering columns, waiting; but nobody came. Back in the hotel, I discovered
that the service
was to be
some
at four in the morning.
At
four, with
friends, I returned.
This
time the church was lighted, and the priests were there in their gold robes. There was a table
where communion bread and candles were for

sale.
We bought the bread and the candles, and

In other days that This morning it was
girls,
listened while the rich, deep voices of the priests
sang the holiday mass. church had been packed.

practically empty.
few servant
393
a few

soldiers, here
and there a
that
tired
all.
mother with four
or five children
was
They were
cele-
brating, but not in the cathedrals.
We went back to the hotel to make tea and to

fight the battles of the
ics,
world
religion,
it
economseven
the
wars, and
all
the rest of
until
o'clock.
tree,
At
sat
the
Europe
that night
fire,
we
relit
and
around the
talking of home.
of Petrograd went
During the holiday week

of amusement within
its
all
to the ballet, or the opera, or some other place
means.
There were
morning matinees and afternoon matinees and

festival
One
performances of all sorts. afternoon we had a box at the Marinsky
Theater.
Horse."
The ballet was "The Hunchback The old Russian fairy tale, in its wonit is
derful Bakst setting, was done as
done
in
it
Petrograd and nowhere
else.
Another night
was a
festival
performance of Glinka's opera,

its initial
"Russian and Ludmilla," celebrating the seventyfifth
anniversary of
production.
Shal-
yapin sang, and there was a gorgeous ballet with costumes that must have come from the treasurechests of ancient nobles.
Another afternoon I was going with Edgar

394

Sisson,
Arthur Bullard, and some other Ameri-
cans to hear "Boris

theater,
Gudonof ."
sole
I arrived at the
and found myself
occupant of the
I sat there, wondering what had happened to every one else and turning possible revolutions
box.
mind, when a messenger arrived with word that a message from President Wilson was
over in
my
coming over the wires. It was the thing for which we
in
Petrograd
had hoped above everything else in the world. Russia in that hour seemed utterly alone. She
had been pleading with the other powers to state their war aims and to come to a peace conference,
but they had remained
silent.
At
last
America
was speaking. The message came in fragments, a bit here and a bit there. It was two days before
first
we had
the full text
but we knew from the
paragraph that President Wilson was sounding Russia's right to the friendship and the protection of our country.
There
is,
tions of principle
moreover, a voice calling for these definiand of purpose which is, it seems to
me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of
the world
ple.
is filled.
It
is
the voice of the Russian peoall
They
are prostrate and
but helpless,
it
would
395

seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power,
is not subnot yield either in principle or in They action. The conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which
apparently,
servient.
is
shattered, and yet their soul

will
must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideas
They
from
or desert others that they themselves may be safe. call to us to say what it is that we desire, in
if in
what,
theirs
anything, our purpose and our spirit differs ; and I believe that the people of the United
States would wish
and frankness.
it
me to respond with utter simplicity Whether their present leaders believe
or not,
it is
our heartfelt desire and hope that some
way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope
of liberty and ordered peace.
All that week Russia celebrated busily and On New Year's Eve I found myself at gaily.
the
peasants'
Canal.
headquarters on the Fontanka There were about a hundred of us
crowded together in a small room to watch the New Year come to Petrograd. Marie Spiridonova was our hostess.
We sat on benches at long tables, and ate soup,

roast pig,
meat
cutlets,
and Russian pasties made

396

of light bread and and chopped meat.
filled
with chopped cabbage
The room was
lit
with candles planted in the
necks of bottles or poised upon the pointed spears In one corner was a Christmas of desk-files.
paper ornaments and anemic-looking candles. Outside the door, lighting the hall, where from time to
tree,
a sad
little
tree with crude red crape
time
we adjourned
to dance the Russian waltz
or the mazurka, was a single kerosene lamp. Beside me sat a pale-faced girl with short hair,
deep circles beneath her eyes, and that look of utter exhaustion which characterized all the revolutionists in those disappointing
days
full of the
weary work of trying

dreams.
to
make
reality
match
At the end of the table was a typical great Russian peasant, his gray belted blouse buttoned be-
neath a shaggy growth of blond beard, his round blue eyes wide with questions. The toast-master
was a Russian Jew with the face of a poet or a musician. The year before he would not have
been allowed to
live in certain parts of
Petrograd
for overhis.
unless he paid a bribe to some
official
looking the fact of his race. 397
This hour was

Whatever the new year might
a free
hold, he
had been
man among men.
year since he had
been an exile in a strange land, and "free Russia" a shadowy dream. No one year hence
could say; no one could think that far.
They
took the moment, conscious of
all its possibilities,
and gloried in it. It was a strange evening's entertainment an odd but typical Russian mixture of comedy and
and parodied the eloquence of the day by talking a strange and
tragedy.
speeches,
They made
meaningless jumble of words, switching with lightning rapidity from one topic to another,
while the crowd rocked with laughter at the
strange effects they produced. Just at the merriest moment, when the Minister of Posts and
Telegraphs had been tried and found guilty of a number of amusing offenses against the Revolution,
and the company had voted to deprive him of his sladky (dessert), some one proposed that
they sing the hymn of eternal memory to the comrades who had fallen in the Revolution. Silently they stood, and, while the church bells outside chimed a requiem to the great red year of
398

tragedy and glory, they sang the solemn tribute
to their dead.
Marie Spiridonova went from table to

trying to
table,
make
the strange ones feel at home.
She was
a sudden
sitting beside
murmur
doorway
me, quietly talking, when ran through the crowd and a

ceiling.
flare of light
touched the
filled
We looked up
to find the
with flames.
had caught fire. The little bound toward it, and threw a coat over the burnpanic had run like flames through the room, and at least half of the occupants were on their feet, rushing for the door.
The lamp revolutionist made a
ing mass.
The
spirit of
Spiridonova lifted her tiny hands and waved them as I have seen her do so many times in the
peasants' conventions.
"Tavarischi! Tavarischi! Tiche! Tiche!" she

cried,
and they
settled quietly
back
in their places.
Year's night the first volunteer army of the Revolution left Petrograd for the front.
On New
They gathered
which has seen
lutionary year.
in
the
Mikhailovsky Menage,
many strange meetings in the revo-
In the old days the aristocracy came here to watch "officers and gentlemen" take
399

part in riding competitions. Since the war it has been used as a garage for armored motor-cars,
and many a sharp contest between revolutionary The meeting was called leaders took place here.
for
two
o'clock,
and Nicolai Lenin was

usual,
it
to review
the forces.
As
was seven before the

armored
cars, deco-
ceremonies started.
Two
rated with evergreens and red banners, stood
watch at the entrance.
Inside a third armored
car had been trimmed for use as a tribunal.

either side of the
On
huge building were rows of
formidable mud-colored motors.
The
place was swarming with men.

lot,
They
were a tatterdemalion
who made up
in spirit
what they lacked in equipment. There were a few soldiers among them, but most of them were
factory workers.
blankets;
They had no uniforms, no
some of them wore short jackets and some of them long coats. They were going they
to fight the foes of
knew not where, but going

revolution.
Their tin pails and meager packs were strapped to their backs or tied on with rope
or string, and each man's most precious possession was his rifle. They were bound for the
trenches, to
fill
up
the gaps left
by deserting
sol-
400
New
Russia votes for the Constituent Assemblv
Young Russia makes
revolutionary demonstration at school

diers.
Most
of
them were undersized; some were

all
mere boys; but

cause.
were
fired
with faith in their
upon the big garage. By four o'clock it was quite black. For a while we stood there, unable to distinguish one face from Then candles another, listening to them sing. One man came with a balalika, were brought.
settled early
Dark
another with a tambourine, a third with an accordion.
They
struck
up a
lively village tune,

still
and a couple of
soldiers,
packs and guns
on
the
their backs, began to dance.
A ring was quickly

men from
formed, and, one after another, the
various provinces clicked off the favorite dances of their villages.
Three times the word came that
Lenin had
him.
and the men lined up to salute Each time it was a false alarm, and they
arrived, to their dancing.
went back
he came, and a mighty cheer went up. His brown eyes were shining, and the chill winter
last
At
evening had painted two bright spots upon his cheeks. He wore a black fur cap and a black
overcoat,
and there was a
brisk, pleasant cheeri-
ness about of
him that the rogues'-gallery pictures

401
him do not suggest.

"He
looks like a prosperous
French bourgeois
banker," said an Englishman standing beside me. "Xo," I answered; "more like a contented
Irishman behind a freshly
filled
pipe."
I was standing beside the tribunal, and he stopped to shake hands with me before he climbed
to the improvised platform.
telling the
He
spoke
briefly,
men that the fate of the Revolution was
in their
foes.
hands and they must guard it against all He spoke well, but without the eloquence
with which I had seen Trotzky sweep so crowds.
many
When
he had finished, the chairman asked
Albert Williams to speak. He had been studying Russian strenuously, and decided to try to
to talk to the
men
in their
own language.
They
and
were as delighted as children over
his effort,
when he began groping
frantically for a word,
Lenin laughingly supplied it. When he finished they cheered him until the building rocked. He had stolen the honors from the Commissary of
Commissaries, and none was more pleased than
Lenin
himself.
He
talked with us for a few minutes, then
drove away in a closed limousine with two or three

402

other men.
a bullet
his
He had hardly got out of sight when
came crashing through the windows of car and whizzed over his head. A man sitting
him was
It
slightly injured, but
first
beside
Lenin was
unhurt.
his life.
was the
of
many
attempts upon
No
one ever knew who had fired the
shot.
holiday date on the Russian calendar was January 8. That was the day of
The next
Except for the great Easter, there was formerly no holier day in
All over the Empire the people, from the Tsar in the Winter Palace to the simplest peasant in the most remote village,
all
the "Blessing of the Waters."
of
Holy
Russia.
always turned out in festival processions. The priests, in splendid robes, with painted ikons and
silken banners held aloft,
marched
to the banks
of the frozen rivers, followed by the singing multitudes.
This year the great day pasased un-
noticed.
At
the
the appointed hour for the ceremony I left
War Hotel and crossed the square to the huge

I looked through the door I
St. Isaac's Cathedral.
into a vast
empty cavern.
made my way
to-
ward the Neva.

sight.
There was no procession in Not a living thing was abroad on the

403

Instead of the usual mighty gathering, a handful of people, perhaps a dozen
river.
banks of the
at most,
had started
out,
grown discouraged, and

time in the
turned back.
For
the
first
memory
of the oldest peasant in Russia, the waters went

unblessed.
It was a significant fact.
When
the Tsar
crashed
ried
down from
his
throne in March, he car-
more with him than the rest of the world dreamed at that moment. His picture shared a
place on the wall beside the sacred ikon.
He
;
represented on earth that which God represented in heaven. It was a dangerous partnership for when the state fell, the Church tottered also.
The Russian Church of the past was on the side of the established order. It was as much a tool of absolutism as the secret police. The priests
were used to help intrench the Tsar, enforce the will of the bureaucracy, and carry out the orders
of the gendarme.
The deep
religious craving of
the Russian nature

ple in
was perverted to keep the peoThe Church was not of the subjection.
people, nor for the people.

crisis
When
it.
the great
all at*
came, they repudiated
Despite
tempts at democratization, the people drifted fur404?

and further away. The lamps before the sacred shrines on the street-corners went out, and
ther
number of the passers-by who stopped to The cross themselves grew smaller and smaller.
the
great power of the Russian Church, around which so much of the life of the past clustered, was gone.
No one could predict what the future would hold. On that day there was some discussion about it.
Some
said that reaction
would come and a
disil-
lusioned people would return to their old gods.
"Some day,"
I heard one Russian say, "the
peasant will awake in the midst of his misfortunes, and recall that on January 8, 1918, the waters
were not blessed.

his troubles."
To
this
he will attribute
all
The Russian
person that he
peasant, mystic, simple, childlike

is,
accepts or rejects the whole.
In
his past the
his life.
Church pervaded every aspect of It was one of the few streaks of color
that pierced the drabness of existence.

disillusionment came,
it
When his
to
Some
said
was complete. that the Russian would attempt
upon the ruins of the picturesque orthodox church; some that he will
substitute a
construct an ethical religion
new
faith for his saints of other days.
405

Some hope
istence
that the freed priests, whose very extheir submission to the
depended upon
evils of the old order,
may become new
leaders
and
helpers.
No one can tell.
In the meantime, the candleempty.
sticks before the ikons are
406
CHAPTER XXI
ON THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE
Constituent Assembly met under the Bolshevik guns of Smolney Institute. Although
it
it
THE
was the hope and fear of the Russian Republic, came and went in the space of twelve hours. was born
it
It
in bloodshed,
and died
in bloodshed,
and with
died the last hope of the moderate Socialist and the bourgeoisie.
Its brief
moment
of existence began at four

18,
o'clock
on the afternoon of January

at four o'clock the next
and
it
was dispersed
the
morning by
"Do
svidanya!" of a Russian sailor,

it
who
sleepily
informed the members
was time to go
first
home.
Eleven months had passed since the

shout of free Russia had
streets with
filled the
joyous
Petrograd
"Long
live the
Constituent Assem-
bly!"
First one faction had carried this banner aloft,
and discarded
it;
and then another.

407
The group

in
power always feared
it.
During
the days of
the various coalition cabinets, the radicals clam-
ored for immediate convocation.

that Trotzky uttered,
The last phrase

his followers
when he and
bolted from the Council of the Republic at the

first
stormy
sitting of that body, was,
"Long
Constituent Assembly!" When the Bolshevist Revolution gave all power to the Soviet, the opposition Socialists, the Cadets
live the
(Constitutional Democrats), and even such

archists
mon-
ventured an opinion, rallied around the standard of the Constituent Assembly,

as
still
and marked and delayed
its
date for the
fall of
the People's
Commissaries.
Many
its
people
It
who had opposed

its
meeting suddenly -became
staunchest supporters.
test of strength.
was to be the
final
The
Bolsheviki had announced that
it
could not
meet until four hundred members had convened, and placed armed guards at the palace entrances
to see their decree
was carried
out.
The Assembly was scheduled to meet Tuesday, December 11, and the day was declared a national holiday. The shops and banks closed, and
thousands
of
municipal employees, 408
students,

cadets,
government and bank employees, and a few workmen and peasants, marched with banas they went.
ners to the palace, singing revolutionary songs
At
three o'clock in the afternoon, the thirty-
already arrived gathered around a great mahogany table in the library, and resolved to declare the Constituent Assembly open.
five delegates
Mayor Shreider, of the dissolved city Duma, oldest member present, was chosen to speak
words.
the
the
Saroken, one of the delegates, reported that Shingareff, Kokoshkin, and Prince Dolgorukoff
had been
arrested,
and proposed a thoroughly
Russian method of meeting the situation.
"We
their
must refrain from protesting against arrest, and refrain from demanding their
freedom," he said.
"We
nize that they are free.

test,
have simply to recogOnly the weak can pro-
and only those who have no power need to demand. We are powerful. We have not to
demand nor
protest.
Members
of the Constitu-
ent Assembly can not be arrested.
Therefore
they are free."

Roditcheff,
who had been a member

409
of three

Dumas under
by
this logic,
the Tsar, remained unconvinced
and demanded a
protest.
It
was
written.
Chernoff accused the Bolsheviki of being like

the
Mahommedans, who wanted
to
burn
all
the
books but the Koran, on the ground that all things necessary to be said were said in the Koran,
and
all
other books
must
either say something dif-
which case they should be burned, or must say the same thing, which would be a waste
ferent, in
of words.
"The Constituent Assembly,

Bolshevik,
if it is
it
if it is
against the
would not represent the people,

it
for the Bolsheviki,
will
merely repeat
declar-
what they have already done," he said. Trotzky and Lenin had no hesitancy in
ing that, unless the Constituent Assembly was Bolshevik, it would not represent the people, and
therefore
must be
dissolved.
They
said, quite truthfully, that the
Assembly
was chosen according
to election laws
made by
the coalition government, and conducted by officials representative of that group, and of the
political rather
than of the economic
ideal.
The Revolution
that overthrew Tsarism
was
410

basically a political revolution.
That which
es-
tablished the dictatorship of the proletariat
was
fundamentally economic. Between the political and the economic revolutions, the demands of the
masses had undergone a sweeping change. The Constituent Assembly, in spite of its socialistic
membership, and
claim of being the only elective group in Russia, was a bequest of the political Revolution.
its
More than
a month elapsed between the time
of that abortive meeting of thirty-five members, and the date of the actual opening of the national gathering.
Petrograd awaited the hour with faint hope
and much misgiving.
On January
16, the
"Extraordinary Commis-
sion for the Protection of Petrograd" declared
the city in a state of siege, and issued the follow-
ing proclamation:
TO THE POPULATION OF PETROGRAD!
The Extraordinary Commission

of Petrograd
is
for the Protection
in possession of
information that coun-
ter-revolutionists of all shades, united in the struggle against the Soviet authorities, have scheduled their
demonstraton for January 18 of the Constituent Assembly. 411
the day of the opening

It has also
become known that the leaders of these

in
counter-revolutionary plots are Filonenko, Savinkoff,
and Kerensky, who arrived the Don from Kaledin.
Petrograd, coming from

is
The organization
of the counter-revolutionists
be-
ing supported through considerable funds by the
Mos-
cow and Petrograd bankers and speculators. The Extraordinary Commission has taken appropriate measures for the maintenance of strict revolutionary order in the capital.
Making
following
:
this public to all citizens of
Petrograd, the
Extraordinary Commission
calls their attention to the
(1) Petrograd is in a state of siege, and all attempts of pogroms will be suppressed by armed force.
(2) Any insubordination to the orders of the representatives of people's authorities will entail stringent measures of reprisal.
(3) Any attempt of groups of counter-revolutionto penetrate into the district of the Tauridian Palace or the Smolney, beginning with January 18> will be energetically stopped by armed force.
ists
(4) Comrades and Citizens, loyal to the authority of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Soviets, are called upon
to retain complete calm, to support the maintenance of strictest order everywhere, and not to participate in demonstrations, meetings, and street crowdings, in or-
der not to suffer accidentally should

to apply
it
prove necessary
armed force against the counter-revolutionists.
EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION FOE THE PROTECTION OF PETROGRAD.

January 16, 1918, 11
p.
M.

Despite
stration
trouble.
this
proclamation, plans for a demonall
went on, and we were
prepared for
A box in the Tauride Palace had been placed

at the disposal of Colonel
Raymond
Robins, and
he asked
It
me to
left
join his party.
was ten
o'clock
when we
on the morning of the 18th the War Hotel. With us were
Edgar T. Sisson of the United States Department of Public Information, and the Russian,
Alex Gomberg.
Office,
We
drove
first to
the Foreign
where Trotzky's secretary, who was to be the fifth of the group, awaited us.
On the
snow-covered stones a crowd of
officers
with red banners formed in marching order. Across the Winter Palace Square came a Cossack of the "Wild" Division, in flying cape of shaggy fur. He was astride a tiny black pony,
and rode with the perfect ease of men of the Urals. A Red Guard, who sat an uneasy and unaccustomed seat upon a fractious horse, tried
vainly to overtake him.
They were a
striking
pair of black silhouettes against the snow-clad
world that morning. drove back to the Nevsky.
We
At
the
Mik-
413

another group of demonstrators, preparing to march to the Grave of the Brotherhood on Marsovo Pola, where the victims
hailovskaya
of the
first
we met
Revolution were buried.
Most
of
them were
striking
bank employees, and,
as they
stood there waiting to go forward, they argued with the soldiers who lined the sidewalks, urging
them
snow.
to
march
for the Constituent Assembly.
The
street-cars
Forty
were stopped on account of the or fifty conductors, men and
women,
cloth,
in gold-braided uniforms of blue broad-
were clearing the tracks with wooden

Deliberately
or
unconsciously,
shovels.
they
formed an
officer
effective block to the paraders.
An
asked them to move.

final :
Their answer was
short
and
"We
oisie !"
won't get out of the
way
for the bourge-
We
Pola.
turned in the direction of the Marsovo
As we came
within sight of
it,
we heard
a volley of machine-gun fire in the direction of The white field was deserted. the Liteiny.
Garlands of green were looped around the huge mound, and the red wreaths were like splotches
of blood against the white snow.
A parade mar-

shal,
with a red band around his arm, stood at
one corner, the center of a small and excited

group.
"Where
him.
are the people?" Colonel Robins asked
"They won't let them come," he said. are shooting them down in the streets."
the firing.
"They
We drove along the Liteiny in the direction of

At
the Kirotchnia,
we came
sud-
denly upon a group of
Red Guards and
sailors,
brandishing ominous guns. They rushed about, tossing orders at one another, their faces flushed
with excitement.
"Murderers!
Murderers!" shouted a woman,

a
shaking her fist in their direction. "Murderers! Murderers!" echoed

other
dozen
women, who turned blazing eyes upon them. Scattered all over the snow were broken and
wooden poles
all
splintered
that remained of
the
proud banners that a few minutes before had proclaimed "All Power to the Constituent Assembly" and "Long Live the Boss of Russian
Land!"
We
did not need to ask what had happened.

poles told the story.
The broken
415
THE RED* HEART OF RUSSIA

Down
our
little
the Liteiny and into the Furstadtskaya

Siberian
pony pulled the sleigh across the bloodstained snow. Men and women huddled in doorways.
white,
Their coats were dusted with
and
as they brushed one another off they
talked in frightened voices.
Some
of
them were
the wincarried up-
ghastly pale, in spite of the biting

ter morning.
stairs to a
chill of
The wounded had been
Red
Cross hospital, and the deadtoll,
fifteen
was the day's
ports next morning
according to official rehad also been removed.
The paraders had penetrated within the forbidden zone. They had refused to heed the orders of the guard to stop.
followed.
A hand-to-hand fight
There was
Some one
fired a shot.
another and another, and in a
was complete.
had
moment the havoc Fifteen human beings had died

Perhaps
fifteen others
to save the Revolution.
killed to save the Revolution.
were fighting for the same thing,

It
Both groups but the word
spelled a different set of meanings to each.
was noon when we pulled up before the
a century ago the great yellow building was flung there by the wave of Catherine's hand or the scratch of her quill
Tauride Palace.
More than
416

pen, and dedicated to the needs of the favorite of the hour. It lay across three or four city
blocks, shining in a
new
coat of yellow calcium.

like
White snow covered roofs and cornices frosting, and spilled over the edge in a
lacy
icicles.
deep
fringe of
Behind the upper windows, hidden from public gaze, were six machine-guns, with tapes loaded
for use.
Within a moment's
call,
the gunners
fences,
waited for action.
Behind the ornate iron
Red Guards
and
forth.
arid sailors
paced ceaselessly back
made our way through a procession of sentries into the Palace, up the broad staircases,
across a wide lobby,
We
and
Great
circles of light
huge ball-room. were reflected on the pol-
into a
from the mammoth candelabra hung on the frescoed ceiling somewhere up near the
ished floor
sky.
There were guards and more guards, stairs and more stairs, until at last a sailor politely
forced us into a box overlooking the Assembly.
The auditorium was
a great square
room
sur-
rounded by balconies and roofed with glass. The seats were arranged like a fan in widening circles.
They were cushioned with red

417
leather,
and
strips

of red carpet ran like ribs toward the tribunal,
where slender bay trees stretched arms against the white columns.
leather-cushioned
their
green
red-
Here
couches
marked the
places
where the many mighty men of Russaia's past had sat. Here, in due time, came the People's Commissaries.
Trotzky was away at Brest-Litovsk.

tai,
Kolon-
Commissary of Public Welfare, was the first to take her place. She came in with a large
brief-case
under her arm, and paused for a moment to search the crowd for comrade faces.
Krylenko, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was just behind her, hurrying in with that quick,
nervous stride so familiar to
all
of us
who
fre-
quented the corridors at Smolney. Krylenko was always going somewhere in a great rush, and
we never saw much of him except

fleeting picture of his long,
little
a grotesque and
narrow back, and the

it.
short legs that carried
Lunarcharsky, the Commissary of Education, came next. Volodarsky whom one Russian
called
"The
little
bell
that
always
echoes
Trotzky"
and half a dozen

418
lesser lights slipped

all
quietly into their seats.
Last of
came Lenin,

his
merry brown eyes bright and his face serene. The hours went on. We punctuated them
with
many
glasses of tea.
Three o'clock came.

cony, and looked
Nothing happened. I wandered out on the balthe ball-room, where
down upon
men and women paced back and forth across the inlaid floor. They seemed like pygmy people beside the massive columns.
The
bigness of the
in
North and the splendor of departed ages was

that room.
tic
The
largeness of a great materialis-
dream was
there,
and the work of countless

building at the
little
little
men tossed into the

woman.
command
the big
of a single
The
men and
woman had
long since crumbled to dust.
To-
day other little men the inheritors of the builders, the masons and carpenters, peasants and
factory workers
were here.
They were
the one
tremendous fact of the moment.
Back
seats
last seen
in the assembly
filled.
room, more and more

I had
were
Chernoff was there.
him
sitting dejectedly in a corner at the
Peasants' Convention, shaking his head, while his

tiny arch-enemy, Marie Spiridonova, swayed the
meeting to her will. In a few minutes these two were again to be pitted against each other. Tse419

whose dark, sad face and tragic eyes had not been seen in public places since the dissolution
retelli,
of the Council of the Republic, had also come.
At
four o'clock a bell rang, and a

the conservative
member
of
the "Right S. R."
wing of the
Socialist Revolutionists
asked that the oldest
man
in the convention be chosen to
sembly.
The
right side
open the Asof the house arose and
vigorously applauded the suggestion. The members of the left sat stolidly in their
seats
loff
!
and hammered their desks, shouting, "SverdSverdloff!"
For
fully five minutes they
pounded without ceasing, their closed fists making a din that drowned every other sound. The
white-haired, white-whiskered old
man who had

left
taken
his place
on the rostrum looked from
to right in a bewildered way,
and
finally yielded
the gavel to Sverdloff.
The
fight.
Bolsheviki had
won
the
first
round
in the
The Assembly was
to be officially
opened
by the government.
Sverdloff was the chairman of the Executive
Committee of the All-Russian
Soviet.
He was a
that, as in
small, pale, dark little chap, quick

fiery spirited.
moving and
He
began by saying
420

their time the
French bourgeois
this
revolutionists
made a
their
declaration of the rights of man, so the
Socialist
members of
new time must make

and the
own
declaration, fitting the hour
new demand.
the Bolshevik control
He
followed with a statement of
program of land to the peasants, of industry by the workers, government
by the Soviets, recognition of the People's Commissaries by the Constituent Assembly, and immediate general democratic peace.
Bolsheviki punctuated his speech with vigorous applause. The right Socialists ex-
The
pressed themselves equally emphatically by stolid

silence.
When
the
he finished, a delegate proposed that
Assembly sing the "International." It was a challenge no Socialist could refuse. They arose
to a
man.
This was the
first
and
last time, in
that stormy twelve hours' session, that they were
united upon any single point.
The Cadet members had all remained away. Every man in the room was a Socialist. But
worlds of unbridgable distance kept them apart. Combination and compromise were utterly impossible.
The
Bolsheviki had
421
all
the powers of

by the unanimous backing The conservatives had of the Russian bayonets. a feeble and helpless majority.
possession, reinforced
The
right S. R.'s proposed Chernoff as chairSquertsoff, an old
man
of the Assembly,
Mos-
cow schoolmaster, nominated Marie Spiridonova

in a brief challenge of
"Everything
is
uncompromise. ended between us," he
said.
"You
are with the Cadets
and the bourgeoisie.

were
We
are with the workers!"

their choice of leaders, both parties
In
flinging
wide to catch the Russian peasant. They were reaching into the thatched huts of White Russia and the log cabins of Siberia, and
they were using the two human beings who could be counted upon to make the greatest appeal to
the
men who
gather round the Russian stoves at

politics in simple
night,
and talk
peasant fashion.
Some one
suggested, as a compromise, that

It
there be two chairmen.
was voted down.
Krylenko proposed that Kerensky be elected. Some one else indignantly declared it was no time
to joke.
The
vote
was counted.
tellers
From
the
box I
watched the
dropping the tiny marbles

from one bowl
open upon
into another.
lap.
My note-book was
Every time a marble dropped I made a mark. When the last vote was
counted, I turned to Colonel Robins
:
my
"It
's
Chernoff 1" I
said.
"He has
244 votes to
Marie Spiridonova's 151." The others had not noticed what I was doing, and they looked up, wondering whether I had
suddenly become clairvoyant or merely gone mad.
I showed them
my
pen-scratchings.
From
the
platform, the chairman confirmed my figures. After the election the flood-gates of speech
were opened.
tion.
Denunciation followed denuncia-
The evening hours ran on to midnight, and
with each passing hour the possibility of compromise seemed farther and farther away.
Chernoff's opening speech was greeted with
cries
(Down! Down!) "Deloy! Deloy!" The empty space in the back of our box was filled up with men. A dark, swarthy-skinned factory
worker, with sullen eyes, that flamed red and went black by turns, sat just behind me. Poised
of
on the
railing
was a Bolshevik
sailor,
who
inter-
"Korniloff! rupted frequently with shouts Kaledin Counter-revolutionist !" Kerensky

of
!
!

In the adjoining box Trotzky's
Kameneff,
sat,
sister,
Madame
surrounded by soldiers with new

S. R.'s held their
revolvers in shining cases strapped at their hips.
In the room where the Right
meetings, a machine-gun spoke a silent but none the less ominous warning.
Every one
a
of those four hundred delegates

to explode at
was
human bomb, ready
any second.
Lenin alone seemed unperturbed. He stretched himself out on one of the red-carpeted steps of
the tribunal, and, hidden
from the eyes of the

the radical
crowd, went calmly to sleep.
The only speaker
to
whom
mem-
bers paid the slightest attention
was
Tseretelli.
he was the heroic figure of the day. He pleaded a lost cause, but he made a brave last
To me
stand.
His
issue,
position
was uncompromising on the
main
that
and therefore impossible; but he talked with a sincerity and straightforwardness
commanded the respect,
if
not the agreement,
of his opponents.
After his speech, the Bolsheviki demanded from

the Constituent Assembly confirmation of the
decrees already passed regarding peace, land, and control of industry. Most of all, they de-
4*4

manded
recognition of the Soviet government as the supreme power. They asked that the question of the
government be
settled first.
The conservative majority voted to consider war and peace first, the land question next, and
finally a federative republic, thus
postponing the
fatal issue.
With
this,
the Bolsheviki
demanded
It
the right of intermission for party caucus.
was granted.
Two
hours passed.
Nothing happened.
members of the Right grew impatient. Chairman reopened the meeting, and Skobeleff, former Minister of Labor, demanded the ap-
The The
pointment of a commission to investigate the bloodshed of the day.

Representatives of the Left filed back to their Bolshevik member read a statement seats.
declaring that the majority of the Constituent Assembly had refused to accept the demands of
the People's Commissaries, which were the de-
mands
of the toiling masses and the economic
revolution,
and
in so
doing had become a counter-
revolutionary body.
With
Left S.
that the Bolsheviki left the hall.

R.'s,
The
headed by Marie Spiridonova and

425

a handsome young revolutionist named Komkoff, remained to offer a resolution that the Constituent
Assembly recognize the peace steps of the
People's. Commissaries.
The
delegates refused.
Instead, they passed a resolution asking, in the
name
of the Constituent Assembly, that
all
coun-
tries at
war come
to
an agreement for a general

arose.
democratic peace.
A
on
sudden commotion
Two men
were
their feet, hurling
One
ugly names at each other. drew a revolver. Some one grabbed him
and pressed him quickly into his seat. The difference of opinion was a personal one. For a
terrible
minute the crowd
sat breathless.
The
guards in the balcony, thinking a real fight was about to begin, loaded their guns. Quiet returned in a
flash,
and the chairman went on with
the meeting; but the incident had not helped to loosen the taut nerves.
quietly from
their seats,
The Left
S. R.'s
got up
convention as
and departed from the the Bolsheviki had done.
an hour the meeting continued. resolution proclaiming the Federated Republic

half
For
of Russia was passed.
The
426
question of nationin-
alization of land without
compensation was

troduced.
far,
Before the discussion had progressed the guard ordered the meeting closed.
"I was appointed to defend the Constituent
Assembly," said the commissary of the palace. "This meeting has now become simply a party
and we suggest that you headquarters of the Right S. R."

caucus,
retire to the
The guard yawned. President Chernoff demurred. The guns once more began to assume
ominous positions.
"Why
should
kill
we
wait?
We should arrest all!
We
off !"
should
the counter-revolutionist Chern-
came
in
angry murmurs from factory workto another.

to
ers
and
soldiers.
The delegates looked from one Some one moved a resolution

until
five
that
afternoon.
It
adjourn was promptly
adopted.
The
murmurs
of
louder.
"Counter -revolutionist!"
grew louder and

ors flocked
The
soldiers
and
sail-
the
down the stairs, and crowded around Some of the Bolshevik members delegates.
in the ball-room
who had remained

hostile
surrounded
Chernoff, and took him in safety through the
throng to the gate.

427

Every man who walked out in the gray morning knew that the Constituent Assembly was at
an end.
It
was foredoomed to just
this fate.
Its exist-
ence
hung upon one point
the acceptance or re-
jection of a
government of people's commissaries. For the moderate Socialists to have accepted the
Bolsheviki, whose leaders they
had denounced
as
usurpers and traitors and whose work they had
been sabotaging, would from their standpoint have been impossible.
For
the People's Commissaries to have per-
mitted themselves to be rejected would have been to acknowledge themselves a body of adventurers,
and
all
of their decrees
mere scraps of worth-
less
paper.
any country any group of men possessed of such power as theirs who would
in
I have never
met
have acted otherwise.
The Constituent Assembly contained
the seeds
of a great governmental experiment, but they were scattered upon the rocks of uncompromise,
and there could be no
harvest.
At midnight Albert Williams was Madame Kolontai.

4*8
talking to

long do you think the Constituent Assembly will last?" he asked. "Comrade, don't you think it has lasted too long already?" she answered.
"How
CHAPTER XXII
THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS
THE
At
Constituent Assembly never met again.
the hour
when
the delegates were supposed
to reassemble, the Tauride Palace
was dark.
In
the white hall at
Smolney the members of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Rusits
sian Soviet were gathered to discuss

tion.
dissolu-
For
all practical
purposes, this had been
accomplished that morning when the guard told the members to go home. The Central Executive
Committee was merely planning

chair
to place
its
rubber stamp upon the proceedings.
In the
was Sverdloff
the very same
who
the day before had presided at the historic gath-
The meeting opened in a storm. Half a dozen speakers demanded an investigation of the
ering.
bloodshed.
Rosanoff,
the
head of the labor

protested against
unions, and several other
men
the dissolution of the Assembly.

arrived.
Then Lenin
aisle,
As
he walked down the
Kramer-

off,
the good-natured but irrepressible protestor
at all meetings, arose to the full height of his six

feet five
and shouted:
live the dictator!"
"Long
In a minute there was a mob of angry men upon their feet, angry at Krameroff and shouting violently: "Put him out
!
Put him out !"
When
the chairman had calmed them, Lenin
took his place.
He
stood quietly for a moment,
surveying his audience, with his hands in his

pockets and an appraising expression in his brown He knew what was expected of him. He eyes.
must win the wavering members of his own flock. He must reach out to the larger audience spread
over the vast areas of Russia.
so that he
his
He
must speak
would be heard beyond the confines of country, in that world whose attention was
focused for the time on this group of strange

actors in the international drama.
new
Lenin began
a critical an-
quietly tracing the historical developments of the
Soviet as an institution.
alysis of the
He made
workings of various parliaments, de-
claring that they had
become merely a sparring-
place for the verbal contests of socialists. 431

"In Russia," he
said,
"the workers have de-
veloped organizations, which give them power to execute their aspirations. You are told that we
ask you to jump a hundred years. do not ask you to do anything. did not organize the Soviets. They were not organized in 1917:
We
We
they were created in the revolution of 1905. people organized the Soviets.
that the
The
you
When
is it is
tell
government of the Soviets
superior to
the Constituent Assembly, that
more funda-
mentally representative of the will of the mass, I do not tell you anything new. As long ago
as April 4, 1 told
you that the Soviets were more

to organize."
representative of the people than this Constitu-
ent
Assembly which you wanted
He
explained in detail the political break in

the people voted for delegates of the
the Social Revolutionary Party, and said:
"When
Constituent Assembly, they did not

did not
know
the
difference between the Right S. R.'s
and the
Left.
They
know
that
when they voted

for the Left
for the Right Social Revolutionists they voted for the bourgeoisie, and
when they voted
they voted for Socialism." At first he spoke quietly, but before long his 432

hands had come out of
his
his pockets.
These, and
brown eyes alternately snapping and smiling, and his eyebrows humorously expressive, all vig-
orously emphasized his phrases. It was evident from the faces of the
fore
men
be-
him that he was justifying himself and them
to their satisfaction.
"The February Revolution was a
political
bourgeois revolution overthrowing Tsarism. In November a social revolution occurred, and the
working masses became the sovereign authority. The Workmen's and Soldiers' delegates are not
bound by any
all the
rules
or traditions to the old
bourgeois society.
Their government has taken

rights into
is
power and
its
own
hands.
The
Constituent Assembly
the highest expression
of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which

are no longer necessary in a Socialist state.
The
Constituent Assembly will be dissolved. "If the Constituent Assembly represented the
will of the people,
we would
shout:
'Long
live
the Constituent Assembly!'
Instead
we
"
shout:
'Down with
ished.
the Constituent Assembly!'
he
fin-
In the
seat next to
me was
483
little
Bessarabian

soldier with black
mustache.
He
beady eyes and a short, bristling had a merry face that crinkled
Every now and then he gave his head a queer little shake of amazed admiration and whispered:
when he
smiled.
"He
a wise man.
He 's
a wise man."
Lenin was saying for the simple Bessarabian just what he would like to have been able to say
for himself.
A few of the most conservative men remained

unconvinced.
shouted:
The
irrepressible
Krameroff
(Shame.)
"Stydno, Lenin, stydno!"
But
the vote proved that Lenin
was voicing the
will of all but a small minority.
Soukhonoff, of the Novia Jizn group, whose

leader
was Maxim Gorky, gained the
floor,
and
protested against the suppression of the press. "The people even in Petrograd don't know
what transpired in the walls of Tauride. It more than a crime; it is a blunder," he said.
Soukhonoff voiced the attitude of the
gentzia.
typical,
is
Intelli-
The
case of
Maxim Gorky
is
rather
though Gorky is of a more extreme nature and expresses himself more violently than
most of the
literati.
They were
434
all theoretical

advocates of revolution, but they shrank from the The logic of events found them practice of it.
out of sympathy with revolution in the very stage

of development that they had prayed and fought
for.
During the Kerensky regime, Gorky, through his paper, blasted at the government, and his voice was the loudest, urging the crowd to more extreme measures.
When
the
crowd moved, as
crowds always move, in its own way, Gorky could not follow. Ever since the March Revolution he
had been had
most of the time, and thus shut off from contact with facts. His opinions necessaill
rily
to be based
The woman
on reports carried in to him. who has been his companion for

of his
many
her,
years was a Cadet, and bitter against the
Bolsheviki.
Much
news
sifted in
through
and naturally he has been influenced by her. Gorky has made his great contribution to Russian revolution
can deny. It is a pity that in his old age he should find himself out of step with his comrades.
& contribution no
man
The
happy
revolutionists of the literary

in the present situation.
group are not
Through the
years they fought for free speech, free press, and 435

free ballot.
lutionists,
Suddenly they found the new revo-
pragmatists to the last degree, being forced by the exigencies of the situation to use the very same weapons as those of monarchical
invention.
In order
to accept the
new gods
set
up
in the
economic temple by the proletariat lead-
ers,
the literati
had
gods.
to deny, for the
least, their old
Few
of
moment at them could make

They found
the necessary mental somersault.
themselves, by virtue of denouncing something in
which they did not believe, forced into a defense of something in which they also did not
believe.
They published one

in
issue of
"Paper Protest,"
Korolenko,
which they expressed their
ideas.
Sologub, Kiryakoff,
Mijoueff,
Mereshkovsky,
and several others of the Russian writers who

played so vigorous a part in revolutionary educaOn the tion in Russia, wrote brief articles.
whole
a feeble thing, hardly worthy of the subject or the authors, but indicative of the state of
the paper was
mind
the
of the Intelligentzia.
The
strike
of
Intelligentzia
continued
through January.
few of the
436
strikers in the
various ministries went back to work, but most

of
them were
still
sabotaging.
It
was
this sabo-
tage that led to restrictions upon the amounts of money which might be drawn from the banks.
The
bourgeoisie,
by paying the
unlimited
salaries of the
officials,
was making the continuation of the
strike
possible.
With
money
at their
com-
mand, the Soviets were powerless to make them

go back to work.
never stop sabotaging till we hit them in the pocket-book," said one of the speakers at a meeting of the Central Executive Comrnittee,
"They
'11
when a proposed
It
decree was under discussion.
was decided that the gold hoarded in safedeposit vaults should be seized, and the amounts
found deposited to the credit of the owners. It was announced that the interests of small depositors
would be protected, and investigation made

if
of the accounts of large depositors.
Even
all
the Bolsheviki
had been able
to rally
the Intelligentzia to their support, the task of
feeding, warming,
and clothing Russia would
have been an almost impossible one.

vation forever at their heels, they
it
With
star-
somehow staved
from day to day. The black bread grew blacker and more uneatable, and sometimes we
off
437

wondered what strange ingredients besides straw and chaff could have gone into its making.
Since the factories closed for lack of raw material
with which to manufacture, the
workmen
were organized and armed as Red Guardsmen. Even if every factory in Russia had continued to
operate,
it
would not have been
possible to sup-
ply the needs of the peasants and the army. as Germany is one huge factory, Russia
Just
is
one
great granary. Even in peace times, she manufactured but a small part of her necessities. With imports and manufactures both stopped,
her condition became desperate. As stocks in the shops dwindled, prices soared correspondingly.
Snow
piled
the streets,
mountains and valleys on and driving an izvostchik down the
up
in
Nevsky was
Sometimes the
like
riding
on a
roller-coaster.
street-cars ran, but
more often the

were im-
snow was heaped

passable.
so high that the tracks
Sometimes, when they were cleared for action, there was not sufficient coal to operate
the electric plants.
About
half of the cars in
Moscow and Petrograd were

for lack of repairs,
freight-cars
out of commission
and thousands of engines and

in the
were piled upon the sidings

438

railroad yards.
But
for the faithfulness of the
railroad employees, Russia's condition
must have
been even worse.
Repeatedly they put off their demands for higher wages because they were persuaded by each group of changing powers that The switchmen's the Revolution would suffer.
families
were without the barest
necessities as the
price of food
went up and the value of the ruble
went down.
strikes,
Many
times the
men
threatened
won
but always their loyalty to the Revolution the day and the strike would be postponed.
bleak.
Petrograd, in the closing days of January, be-
came more and more

officers filing
The clanging swords and
the clicking spurs of
back and forth across the marble
lobby in the War Hotel were gone. The hotel had been take over by the People's Commissaries. In the dining-room I sat down to frugal meals
with peasants, workmen, soldiers, agitators, and
poets.
Food was
daily less plentiful.
Cabbage soup,
black bread, and rabchik, a wild bird for which
we
acquired a deathless hatred, made up the Only the glasses of steaming tea daily menu. saved us from gastronomic despair. The supply
all
439

of knives, forks, and spoons, dwindling ever since
the beginning of the war, was
now
almost ex-
hausted.
Frequently a single knife served inOften stead of a teaspoon for an entire table.
for tea until the people across the
we waited
Most
room
finished with their glasses.
of the time
we were
in total darkness.
There were no lamps or candles in the halls, and we groped our way up the dark staircases, bumping blindly into one another's arms.
There was
an unhappy
affinity
between the
electric light,
the elevator, and the water system.
They
all
stopped together.
Frequently my face remained

tea.
unwashed
to
until the late afternoon,
the
Hotel Europe for

its
when I went The Europe

and
it
proudly boasted
still
own
electric plant,
was
possible to live there in comparative comfort
and even luxury.
The
waiters in the
War Hotel complained that

food.
there was no
money to buy
fall
A few of them,
used to the generous tips of pre-revolutionary

days,
bemoaned the
of the monarchy and
prayed for the coming of the Germans. They were not the only ones who awaited Prussian deliverance.
Most of the
upper-class Russians no 440

longer made any attempt to hide their willingness to have the Germans come to Petrograd.
Even my
little
princess friend, Orchidee,
who
had been educated in France and whose natural

sympathies were
all
with the Allies, admitted to

soon.
me that she hoped the Germans would come
We were
lunching together.
officer
an English
In the party were and a Russian who before the
Revolution was in charge of the Grand Duchesses' hospital train.
"You
lish,
don't really
mean it,"
I said.
"Yes, I do," she answered.
"I like the
Eng-
and I should
like to
have them come and

If the Germans come,
rule us ; but they will not.
we can keep our titles and our estates. Why shouldn't we want them?" "And you?" I asked, turning to the other Russian.
"Do you
The
feel the
same?"
"It
is
"Yes," he answered.
us.
the only hope for
Eolsheviki will take
all."
They were demonstrating

that one's conduct
desires.
is
the
Marxian theory
one's economic
dictated
by
They were being forced by the new order to give up their privileges, and to ask them For some to like it was to expect the impossible.
441

of them the situation was tragic. They were products of the system, just as were the unedu-
cated Russian peasant and the class-conscious

revolutionary workers.
One man
saying:
characterized his country for
me by
"Russia
It
is
is
like
a badly baked loaf of bread.

side
raw on one
and burned on the

is
other.
ignorance and poverty, while the upper class has nothing but
left in
The
great peasant mass
luxury and useless culture."
The luxury was

culture" did
disappearing.
The
"useless
them little good
in a state that recog-
nized no value but that of production.
The
land-
owner, suddenly bereft of his estates, like the mildeprived of his epaulets and his salary, was frequently a pathetic figure. The life of the
itary
man
dying
class
is
not easy.
On
the streets of
Mos-
cow and Petrograd,
officers
were shoveling snow,
or selling newspapers, or trucking baggage to buy the barest necessities. In some cases, the
women, proving less unfit than the men of the The old family, had become the bread-winners.
picture
money of the
Tsar's day disappeared, and
the post-revolutionary issues of currency, prac442

tically the
only exchange in the market, were accepted with a single sneering word "Kerensky."
The Anarchists grew more daring

stituent
in the days
immediately following the dissolution of the Con-
Assembly.
is
"What
chists
the use of government?" the
Anar-
asked.
"The Bolsheviki promised you

your All governments
bread, and promised you peace.
Where
is
bread ?
are alike
others
!
Where is your peace ?
the Bolsheviki just the
same
!
as the
You must take the
factories
Take
the
land!
do you wait?" The army had become a hungry horde of illshod and ill-clothed men with but a single desire
to get back to whatever corner of
Why
upon earth
that vast land they called home.
They had
Their
recitals
stayed in the trenches for nearly a year after they
had made
their first
demand
for peace.
committee meetings had become pathetic
by the delegates of the conditions of their men. The horses were dying from lack of feed. The
men were
suffering
hideously
in
the
frozen
trenches because of lack of boots and clothing.
Again and again the delegates declared:

443

"They say they
and that
's
'11
stand
it
just one
more week
all."
When the week was up,
in spite of the tortures

still
of cold and hunger, most of them
stayed on.
The committees were unequal

visioning the army.
to the task of pro-
Given the same conditions,
any group of officials, any dictator, any Tsar, would have failed equally; but the unthinking
critics
of Russia persisted in placing all the blame
for the disorganization of the
army and navy
upon the committees. disorganization came

afterward.
As
first,
a matter of fact, the
and the committees

of the chaos
They were an outgrowth

the attempt of the
that immediately followed the fall of the Tsar.
They were
men
themselves to
bring some sort of order out of the confusion that naturally resulted when the governor of the Russian engine
was suddenly removed.
In July General Denikine,

licia
during the disastrous port to the War Council in which he described

:
command in Gaoffensive, made a rein
conditions existing as early as June, saying
"We no longer have any infantry.

the statement stronger, and say
I will
make
we no
longer
have any army.
The army
444
is
in ruins."

February was almost here. Nothing had happened to improve the army everything had happened to complete its disorConsidering the condition of that army, the miracle was not that they left the trenches so soon, but that they stayed so long.
ganization.
Considering the frightful conditions in Russia, the amazing thing was not that there was so much
violence, but that there
was not more.
445
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GREAT BETRAYAL
LOOKING
On
much is clear! gray November evening out on

back, so
the Rus-
sian front not far
from Dvinsk, the gunners, de-
livering a daily salute to the
German
trenches,
heard a muttered
turned to face a
command to
stop firing.
line of soldiers in coarse
They mud-
colored coats, their trench-tanned faces grimly

set
beneath shaggy hats of sheepskin.

theft
The gunners shrugged

turned to the battery.
the
shoulders and
"Stop
firing,"
again came
command.
said so?" asked one of the gunners.
"Who
"We say so," a soldier

our brothers over there.
answered.
"Those are
It
The war is finished.
was the Tsar's war.
peasants like us. we don't want to fight them.
They are workingmen and They don't want to fight us;

Stop
firing."
The gunner laughed.

"If you don't stop shooting, 446
we
'11
shoot you.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

I
tell
you, you
're killing
our brothers," said the

quiet, final tone.
soldier again, in the
same
the
From
Through
that
hour
battery
was
silent.
the Russian trenches the
was coming. An arranged in a few days, and Germany and Austria and all of Russia's Allies were to be asked to
that peace
word had gone armistice was to be
take part.
It
was
still
November.
The
The
armistice nego-
tiations
were on.
The
great parley at BrestAllies
Litovsk had commenced.
had not
come, but a special train had pulled out of Petrograd with the strangest collection of envoys that
ever went
upon a foreign
mission.
There were
twenty-eight members, headed by Adolph Joffe, a Russian Jew, and including a soldier, a sailor,
a
workman, a peasant, and one woman.
There
were others in the delegation not so glad to go as these. They were military experts, obeying or-
from Smolney expressed in terms that permitted no other alternative. They were officers
ders
of the Russian army, thoroughly out of sympa-
thy with the undertaking and the men who were making it every tenet of their codes, every fiber
of their poor, bewildered, uncomprehending be-
447

ings outraged by this
new topsy-turvy world The

efficient
in
which they had been plunged.
The
had
train
had
arrived.
Germans
built a special track across that strip of
No
Man's Land which divided

that of the Russians.
their territory
from
was provided with

dier
his
Each member of the party own servant, a German solShoes and clothes were
who spoke Russian.

and no
cleaned,
detail of preparation
had been
neglected.
In the rooms
to which the visitors
were taken there was
letter
paper and eau de
cologne, for which the Russian has a special fondness.
The Russians proposed their terms of armistice. They demanded that no troops be transferred from the eastern front to the fronts of the
Allies during the period of the armistice,
and that
fraternization take place.
General Hoffman de-
clared that the armistice conditions were only such

as could be proposed to a defeated nation.
delegates asked for instructions

missaries,
from the
The Com-
and were told to stand firm on these

Trotzky was talking.
448
conditions.
Back
in Petrograd,
"In our negotiations with our present Allies
Meeting
in the library of the Tauride Palace December 11 where in defiance of the declared open People's Commissaries the Constituent Assembly was
The Constituent Assembly
as
it
finally
convened
in the
Tauride Palace January 18
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

and enemies, we
he
said.
will be constantly
on our guard/'
will
"Under no circumstances
we allow
them
to distort the principles of general peace
proclaimed by the Russian Revolution.
We will
propound to them most categorical questions, and every word pronounced by them or by us will be
transmitted by wireless to
world,
tions."
all
the nations of the
who
will be the
judges of our negotia-
Petrograd waited, one ear turned in the direction of Brest-Litovsk, and the other pressed
against the world's key-hole, listening for rumblings of revolutions in other lands.
Night after night,
in the white hall at
Smolney,
at the Peasants' headquarters, in the
Dom and the

"We
Narodny Cirque Modern, the men in the mudit.
colored uniforms talked about

soldiers,
we
trench inhabitants,
we must
have something to say," I heard one of them declare; and another:

can not conduct peace negotiations by going up to the German generals with a copy of Karl Marx in our hands."
"We
And
a third:
"We
must be
able to speak loudly in revolu-
449

tionary language, and back our language
up by
cannon
poses
Allies."
necessary, but for revolutionary purnot for the commercial interests of the
if
"Slava, Slava, Slava" (Words, words, words), said another.
The
discussion centered largely on the question
of the removal of troops.
"Prohibition of removal of troops to the front
should cover reserves in the rear as well, and
cannon," said a delegate named Lapin"It is necessary for us to guard against all sky. these things in order that the Allied troops and
also
masses should know that the Russian Revolution

has no intention of permitting them to be crushed are not concerned with by the Germans.
ourselves only.
We We must
remember that the

terms.
Germans have not accepted our peace We must deal with the facts as they are.
They
have accepted our formulae applying the princinot to the German ples to the Russian camp,
camp,
to the Poles
and others
whom
they have
subjugated. Austria and
We
must
see that imperialism in
Germany
does not triumph."

still.
The guns on
the Russian front were
450
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

echo across to us in Petrograd was that with which the Russian General Skaloon
last shot to
The
at Brest-Litovsk dramatically ended his life in a
room adjoining
that in which the armistice con-
ference was being held.
General Hoffman had accepted the terms "such

as could be proposed only to a defeated nation."
The
fact that he
he might trick end, was not evident.
was humoring the Russians, that them the more thoroughly in the
The
Bolsheviki, disap-
pointed that the Allies had refused to consider
coming
into their conference,
found crumbs of
comfort in the concessions of Germany.

"It must mean," they argued, "that the Kaiser fears the German masses. They will make him
accept our honest, democratic peace." December 15 saw the armistice signed, and by
noon of the 17th
it
had gone
into effect.
The night
before, at a
Peasants' Deputies, I his report of the proceedings at Brest.
rump convention of the heard Leon Trotzky make
He
talked for three hours, answering the questions

of his soldier peasant audience.
The meeting began
in a fashion typical of
those days in Russia, where night after night in
451

every available hall in Petrograd men were shaking their fists in one another's faces.
The Peasants' Convention had

titude
split in its at-
toward the People's Commissaries. The Bolshevist members and the Left Social Revolu-
tionists anticipated
welcoming Trotzky as Com-
missary of Foreign Affairs. The center faction, led by Chernoff refused to acknowledge him in any capacity but that of private citizen.
,
In the midst of the

rived.
discussion,
Trotzky
ar-
The
Bolsheviki
jumped
to their feet
and
started a rousing demonstration in which the

jority joined.
chairs,
ma-
The
others sat stolidly in their
and some whistled
the Russian equiva-
lent of a hiss.
reigned.
For ten minutes pandemonium Trotzky stood silent, head up and eyes
Finally he crossed
flashing behind his glasses.
the
room
to the adjoining hall,

in.
and walked
opened the door, I followed him. The room was
dark, except for a green-shaded student-lamp
upon a table near the rostrum. Trotzky sat down at the table. Soon a crowd of soldiers came pouring through the door. More and more followed, until every seat in the council chamber 452
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

and every inch of space was packed.
in aisles
and stairways
re-
They
elected a
temporary chairman, and
solved to hear the report of the
Commissary of Foreign Affairs. Trotzky arose to speak, and this time the demonstration met no opposing
voice.
He
tion,
reviewed the general international situathen analyzed the armistice terms.

will ask the
"We
Germans
first if
they accept
our terms of peace

contributions,
peace without annexation,

will
and
self -definition of nations," said
Trotzky.
"Then we
ask what
Germany
we
will
means by those terms
how does
she apply them?

fully,
When we
understand each other
have a week's interruption to let the people of want the world know what we are doing.
We
general peace.
We
have given the Allies a
month
which to make peace. If they want more time, I suppose we can give them a little
in
more, but we can not continue the slaughter for want general peace, but we their sakes.
We
can not
let
Russia bleed to death.
We
can not
go on
forever.
We must get back to

453
our farms

and our
tion,
factories.
The Kaiser
all
hates the Revolu-
and most of
the Soviet government, but
he recognizes the demand of the masses. not send any diplomats to Brest-Litovsk,
true.
We did
it is
spent more time in Siberian prisons than in diplomatic offices, but our
is
Our people have

right,
die.
program
and
so long as
we
fight for that
we can not
do not go before the governments of the world as a defeated nation, but

as a victorious one.
We
Our
position
is
the stronger
we have no secret desires and can be quite The Allies have refused to send delehonest. gates to the peace conference, but we must look
because
out for the interests of the masses of the Allied
countries,
and we
will
do
so.
We
must have a
peace, because
we must
save the cultural posses-
sions of the age
and preserve the revolutionary
energy of the proletariat." Down from Berlin to No Man's Land came a

supply of tobacco, accordions,
flashlights,
bad
whisky, and Hindenburg schneights
(knives).
Behind the German

set
lines the soldier
merchants
up their wares, and the Russians

to trade with them.
in
worn boots
and faded coats walked out across
No Man's
Land
The Germans asked
454
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

for soap, bread, and clothing; also they
would
sell
for
rubles
old
picture
rubles
of the
Tsar's
regime.
They turned up
their noses at
"Keren-
sky" money, and would have none of the Bolshevist issue.
The Russian
them
they had
less clothing.
ers,
soldiers
all
had
little
bread to give
too
little
for themselves
their
and
But they told
with shining, thankful eyes,
German brothhow glad they
were that peace was coming that they would no longer have to kill each other. They advised
go home and make a revolution, as they had done, and promised that in this new world of
them
to
brothers there should be an end to wars.
Inside the council chamber at Brest-Litovsk,

the
German Foreign
is
Minister reminded delegates
of the season of the year.
an auspicious circumstance that the negotiations open within sight of that festival which
"It
for centuries past has promised peace
on
earth,
good
will to
men," he
said.
"Our
negotiations
will be
guided by the
spirit of
peaceable humanity
and of mutual esteem." It was Saturday, December

pold of Bavaria was there.
455
22.
Prince Leo-
The Austrian For-

eign Minister, Count Czernin, with a delegation
of eight Austrians,
garia,
was there; and from BulMinister Popoff and four assistants, Ne-
simy Bey, former Minister of Foreign Affairs from Turkey, Ambassador Hakki, General
Zekki, and under foreign secretary
Hemit Bey.
Powers
General
The
plenipotentiaries of the Central

seriously.
were taking the delegation
Hoffman paid
gallant compliments to
Madame
Bitzenko, and laughingly suggested that they
have their photographs taken together. Von Kuhlmann asked the chief of the Russian delegation to state the
main
principles of the Russian
peace proposal. The Russian demands numbered fifteen, applying the now famous formula to the world situation. On Christmas the Ger-
mans submitted their counter-proposals. In Petrograd we listened day and night

Litovsk.
arrived,
for
the ticking of a wireless message from Brest-
German and Austrian
delegation
and took up headquarters at the Hotel Angletaire and at the Grand just around the
corner.
Little blond Petroff
came
in,
loudly
protesting that he had no platters on which to
bring
me my
dinner, because they
had
all
been
456
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

taken to feed the Germans.
some
of
my
American
Occasionally, with friends, I sat at dinner
at a table adjoining that at which the
were dining.
We
Germans regarded them curiously, and
they looked upon us with equal suspicion. I spent much of my time at Smolney those
days, anxious for the
first
word
that
would
indi-
cate the Russian attitude toward the
German
peace terms. One day there was a rumor abroad that Russia would reject the counter-proposal.
At Smolney
that night the Executive
Com-
mittee listened to a report, and voted for its reThe resolution declared that the domijection.
nant parties in Germany, compelled by a popular demand to grant concessions to the principles of a
democratic peace, were nevertheless trying to distort the idea to aid their own annexationist policy.
Already Germany was showing her hand. She contended that the will of the people of Poland, Lithuania, arid
Courland had already been

declared this allega-
manifested.
The Russians
tion to be devoid of all foundation.
"Under martial law and under
the yoke of a
military censorship, the peoples of the occupied

countries could not express their will," they said.
457

"The documents upon which the German government bases its allegation at Brest prove the manifestation of the will of a
few privileged groups

in those
only,
and
in
no way the will of the masses
territories.
"We now
declare that the Russian Revolution
remains faithful to the policy of internationalism. defend the right of Poland, Lithuania, and
We
Courland to dispose of their own destiny, acNever will we recognize the tually and freely.
justice of imposing the will of a foreign nation
on any other nation." The Russian Soviet appealed to the people of Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria in these
words
:
"Under your
pressure, your governments have
been obliged to accept the motto of no annexations and no indemnities, but recently they have been trying to carry on their old policy of evasion. Remember that the conclusion of an immediate democratic peace will depend actually and above all on you. All the people of Europe look to you, exhausted and bled by such a war as
there never
was
before, that
you
will not
permit
458
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the
Austro-German
imperialists to
make war
and Ar-
against Revolutionary Russia for the subjugation of Poland, Lithuania, Courland,
menia."
The
Soviet
bombed the German trenches with
propaganda.
On
January 2 they circulated a

lines declaring that the
pamphlet
in the
German
peace conditions submitted by the Central Powers showed the German promises of a democratic
peace to be unconscionable
lies.
The pamphlet
asserted that
Germany wanted
to free the peoples
on Russia's western frontier
from the sphere of revolution, in order to subjugate them to the German will, that they might
impose an Austrian monarchy on Poland and make Lithuania and Courland German duchies.
The Russians asked
for transfer of
any
fur-
ther negotiations to Stockholm.
In Germany
this
the military party declared that the break be-
tween Russia and Germany was caused by
demand, keeping their people in ignorance for some time of the fact that the break had come
from Germany's refusal

ritory.
to evacute Russian ter-
459

Trotzky himself went to the second conference, protesting that his government would not
yield.
"We
German
did not overthrow the Tsar to

imperialism/' he said.
practically delivered
bow
to
Germany
an ultimatum:
head of
"Parleys at Brest-Litovsk or none."
"Our government placed program a world's peace, but

Trotzky
said.
at the
it
its
promised the peo-
ple to sign only a democratic
and just peace,"

the Russian
people are classes of Germany."
"The sympathies of with her Allies and with
the working
He
site
declared that the refusal of the Central

to transfer the conference to a neutral
Powers
could be explained only by the determination of the government and the annexationist groups
to base their dealings, not
on reconciliations of
peoples, but on the
war map.
re-
"But war maps disappear while peoples

main," said Trotzky.
are trying to persuade the
"Annexationist agitators
German people
that
behind the open and frank policy of Russia is a British or other stage-manager. Therefore we have decided to remain at Brest-Litovsk, so that
460
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the slightest possibility of peace
so that
it
may
not be lost;
be established whether peace is possible with the Central Powers without vio-
may
lence to the Poles, Letts, Armenians,
and
all
other nationalities to which the Russian Revolution assures full right of development, without
reservation or restriction."
At
this
session
General Hoffman protested
against wireless messages containing abuse of
German
military institutions
and revolutionary
appeals to the
German
troops.
He
declared
they transgressed the spirit of the armistice by attempting to introduce civil war into the Central
Powers.
Trotzky replied that all German newspapers were freely admitted into Russia. General
Hoffman
but to
said he
was not referring

non-interference
to the press,
official
government utterances.
in
Kiihl-
mann
affairs
said
that
Russian
was the fixed principle of 'the German government, and that his government had the
right to
demand
reciprocity.
criti-
Trotzky responded with an invitation to

cism:
"The Russians
will recognize
it
as a step for-
461

ward
their
and frankly express views regarding internal conditions in Rusif
the
Germans
freely
sia so far as
they think
it
necessary."
Trotzky demanded, on behalf of the Russians, the immediate repatriation of deported Poles and
Lithuanians, and the liberation of Bohemians,
Czechs, and others arrested for participation in
propaganda, declaring the return of refugees to Poland and Lithuania of the utmost impacifist
portance in the question of self-determination, and insisting that the Russians would not aban-
don
their
demands.
agreement.
The session ended in disGeneral Hoffman charged the Rusif
sian delegation with speaking as

victorious in our countries
ditions."
"it
stood
and could
dictate con-
Kiihlmann announced that
it
would be neces-
sary to hold a consultation between the Teutonic Allies before any further statement could be
made.
Meanwhile, the anti-Bolshevist Rada from
the Ukraine was holding separate peace parleys with the Central Powers, and, unlike the
Soviet
secret.
government,
its
negotiations
were
462
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

All sorts of rumors found their
Petrograd.
way
to us in
German
soldiers arriving
from the
front said they had deserted the

several thousand others,
army and, with were encamped in a wood
where, equipped with machine-guns, they were defying a German advance on Russia. Strikes were breaking out in
lines,
behind the
German
Austria and Germany. In Petrograd the third congress of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Deputies met on January 23.

his report.
last the
On the 27th
Leon Trotzky made

It
Germans, convinced that resistance upon the part of the Russians was impossible, were unmasking their real aims.
"Practically,"
showed that at
he
said,
"the
German terms
and Gerthe destiny of
mean
that the governments of Austria
many
take into their
own hands
the Poles, the Letts, the Lithuanians, and the
Esthonians."
Trotzky drew a comparison between the present peace aims, and the peace terms of the Reichstag resolution of July supporting a peace without indemnities and annexations, and the peace terms of the Germany of December 25, which
lured the Russians to trust the democratic utter-
468

ances of the enemy.
frontiers
He
showed that the new

to subjugate all
were planned not only
the people within the conquered territories, but

to
make further German aggression easy. "The whole German argument was based on
silent
the assumption that the Russian government
would understand, but be

the
and grateful to
Germans
for saving their faces
by giving a
mock-democratic character to their peace," said Trotzky. "The bourgeois governments can sign
any kind of a peace; the governments of the Soviet
can not."
declared that the Ukrainian
He
that
Rada was
at
moment
trying to
make a
separate peace,
whatever happened, he would not sign a "non-democratic peace."
and
insisted that,
Trotzky sparred for time. He knew that his government could not live surrounded by countries
practising a
different
social
creed.
He
counted on the spread of revolt simultaneously in the Ukraine, in Finland, in Austria, and in Ger-
many.
He
did not foresee the German-inspired
invitation to
troops to put down revolution in Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic prov-
German
inces.
464
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

February the Ukraine, upon which France had banked to keep Russia from
the ninth of
On
making a peace, concluded a separate peace The following day the Soviet governherself.
ment announced its withdrawal from the war, and also its determination not to sign an annexationist treaty, declaring its firm belief that the
workers of Germany and Austria would not permit any new offensive against the workers of
Russia.
Five days later Germany announced her intention to resume military operations against
Russia.
On
the 18th, to the
amazement of the
line,
populace behind the Russian
the
German
It
troops along the entire front advanced. They took Dvinsk with little opposition.
was
the
late afternoon in a snow-clad village
beyond
not far from the point at which, in November, the infantry had ordered the Rus-
Dvinsk
lines
sian gunners to stop firing.
Word had come
that the
Germans were advancing.
shudder
passed through the village.

ried gathering.
There was a hurfleeing, others
Some suggested
counseled waiting.
"It
's
a mistake," said a white-bearded peas465

ant.
"We are not at war. They are
our broth-
ers
we must go and tell them." They appointed a committee, improvised a
white flag, and set out on their errand.

distance
A short
to
from the
village they
met the advancing

ex-
Germans.
aloft,
They held
soldier
their white flag bravely
and a
:
spokesman began
Russia
is
plain
"It
is all
a mistake
not at war.
brothers
We
"
do not want to
fight our
German
The
ing
sentence was never finished.
The com-
mittee did not come back.
Instead, to the wait-
with frightened children clinging to their wide calico skirts, and with a terrible fear
in their eyes, there
women
came the Germans.
over the prostrate and bewildered form of the country she had tricked
Germany was marching
Uncomprehension and despair settled upon Petrograd. The People's Commissaries met in all-night session. Trotzky wanted and betrayed.
to fight, even though effective resistance
possible.
was im-
Lenin
opposed
him.
There
was
nothing to fight with.
The army had reached

Economic chaos
466
the limit of disorganization.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

reigned behind the lines. There was neither an army at the front nor a nation behind capable of
supporting an army. All night the Commissaries debated.
Toward
dawn
Lenin's will finally prevailed.
procla-
mation was issued protesting against the German advance, but stating:
"The Council of People's Commissaries

gards
itself as
re-
forced formally to declare
its will-
ingness to sign a peace
upon the
conditions dic-
tated by the delegates of the Quadruple Alliance

at Brest-Litovsk."
The information was sent by wireless to Germany. The Germans demanded written confirmation.
was despatched to Dvinsk by special messenger. Still the Germans' advance continIt
ued.
raine,
They occupied Esthonia, overran

and created a Turkish offensive
the
UkCau-
in the
casus.
They made no answer
to the People's
Commissaries, and on February 22 the Bolsheviki called on the people to organize guerrilla
warfare and
resist the invaders.
Again
working
the Bolsheviki appealed to the

classes.
German
467

"Once more the German working class in this threatened hour has shown itself insufficiently
determined to stay the criminal hand of its own militarism. had no other choice but to ac-
We
imperialism until a revolution changes or cancels them. The German government is not hastening to reply to us,
evidently aiming to seize as
sitions in
cept the conditions of
German
many important poour territory as possible. The enemy
has occupied Dvinsk, Werder, and Lutsk, and is continuing to strangle by hunger the most im-
even portant centers of the Revolution. now are convinced firmly that the German working classes will
rise against the
stifle
We
ruling classes to
attempts of the the Revolution, but we

this
can not predict with certainty when

occur.
will
The German
imperialists
may
hesitate
at nothing for the purpose of destroying the au-
thority of the councils
and taking the land from

on
all loyal
the peasants."
The Commissaries
create the army.
called
councils
and army organizations
to use all efforts to re-
The next day Kiihlmann submitted

of peace, imposing yet
new offer
upon
more
468
drastic terms
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the broken country, and
demanded
that
it
be ac-
cepted within forty-eight hours.
Again Lenin
insisted that
it
must be accepted.
"Their knees are on our chests and our position is hopeless," he said. "This peace must be
accepted as a respite enabling us to prepare a decisive resistance to the bourgeoisie
ists.
The
to
come
and imperialproletariat of the whole world will our aid. Then we shall renew the fight.
is
All the bourgeoisie in Russia
jubilant at the
approach of the Germans.

or
Only a blind man,
infatuated by phrases, can fail to see that the policy of a revolutionary war without an
men
army
is
water in the bourgeois
mill.
In the
bourgeois papers there is already exaltation in view of the impending overthrow of the Soviet
government by the Germans.
We are compelled
to submit to a distressing peace."
Trotzky was absent from this meeting, and the Central Executive Committee, by a vote of a hundred and twelve against eighty-four, accepted
Lenin's view; and the decision was telegraphed
to the
German government. "Surely now hostilities would

469
cease!" thought
the Russians.

new peace deputation was elected. Trotzky, who favored fighting, was displaced as Foreign Minister. The German government did not reply to the Russian acceptance. The German troops kept marching on. The Soviet government called upon the people: "Resistance becomes the principal task of the
Revolution."
The workers filled the ranks of the volunteer "Red Army," led by officers of the bourgeoise.
There was hardly a factory worker
soldiers because they
left in
Petro-
grad, and, untrained as they were, they were
had a
at
cause.
advance
was
checked
Guards recaptured Orsha. an uncomprehending horde of bewildered and
The German Pskoff. The Red The regular troops,

di-
lapidated soldiers, fled in panic before their "Ger-
man
went.
It
brothers," looting
and pillaging
as they
was a hopeless
situation.
The Red Guards
had not only
to fight the highly organized Ger-
man
had to disarm the panicIn the rear they were stricken Russian soldiers. fighting Kaledin, Korniloff, and the troops of
legions, but they
the Ukrainian Rada.
None
470
of these were fight-
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

ing the Germans. In action they had alined themselves with German absolutism, and were
seeking to overthrow the Russian democracy
the Soviet government.
The diplomats had been so busy hunting for German money in the camp of the Bolsheviki
had overlooked entirely the Ukraine, the Baltic provinces, and Finland. The Ukraine
that they
situation has been shot through with Austrian
and
German money
lution.
since the beginning of the
Revo-
It
had been a hot-bed of intrigue.
More
potent than the power of
money was
the natural
economic desire of the upper classes in each of these places. It was not the Ukrainian worker
and peasant who made a separate peace with Germany. It was not the Finnish Red Guard
who
invited the
Germans
It
in to subjugate their
fellow countrymen.
was not the
class-con-
scious masses of the Baltic provinces, crushed
beneath the boot of the German-bred Black Barons,
who
cried to the Kaiser for deliverance.
Something more dangerous to the peace of the world than a government of workers, peasants, and soldiers had been carefully builded by
the
German
agents.
471

When
Prince Leopold of Bavaria told his ad-
vancing troops they were going upon a mission of altruism and humanity, he neglected to tell
them that the people whom they were going
to
save were not the masses of the Russians, trying to work out their own salvation against desperate
odds, but the land barons
and monarchists of the
old order
whom
the Revolution overthrew.
The Russians were blind to the true character of the men who came to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate
a kaiser's peace; but the blindness of those
Russian dreamers was lucid vision as compared with the blindness of the enlightened democratic
world as to the real significance of the various forces at work upon the Russian tragedy.
will
We
pay
for that blindness,

is
democracy
is
pay, for not safe in the world while Russia
we must
enslaved.
No
settlement of the international
situation will be lasting that does not leave the
peoples of Russia free to work out their democratic salvation.
own
diplomacy in Russia was due to the undemocratic nature of the existing

failure of Allied
The
diplomatic system.
It
is
not enough to
know
472
the movements of
THE GREAT BETRAYAL

kings and kaisers, the pleasure of military leadIn a fight for ers, of the will of the aristocracy.
democracy, the people, in the

the important factor.
cratic
last analysis, are
The
true study of demo-
diplomacy is the study of the movements of the masses undisturbed by our own beliefs,
preconceptions, or prejudices.
They were
as
difficult
those Russians; difficult
dreamers and children always are. They lashed us with their scorn. They impugned our
motives.
They "swept
imperialists.
into the ash-barrel of his-
tory" our secret treaties and dismissed us as capitalists
and
The German
autocracy, arch-enemy of
all
de-
mocracy, had succeeded in its gigantic scheme to drive a wedge between Russia and her Allies
had trapped Russia into the belief that the German people wanted nothing but an honest demoand that only the Allies stood between them and their desire. In their minds,
cratic peace,
our aloofness gave color to the declaration of

their leaders:
"Our Revolution
will be crushed
by the im-
perialism of the western democracies." Germany proposed new peace terms.
The
473

Russian delegates did not even stop to examine them. They said they knew they must sign
whatever the terms might be. They signed a peace that was not a peace a peace that Ger-
many
hour
"It
disregarded more flagrantly each passing a, peace that will never be a peace.
is
our peace of Tilsit [1810]," Lenin said; "but we will finally attain our peace of 1814.
Probably we
cause history
shall not
is
have to wait so long, befaster in these days."
moving
Truly, the Commissary of Commissaries was right: "their knees are upon our chests."
474
A MESSAGE TO MARS
WE were five in the little blue room in the War
Hotel that night.
rograd.
It
was one of
my
last in
Pet-
The
electric lights, fickle at best,
had
failed entirely.
The
tiny sputtering flame of the olive-green
candle disclosed distant vistas in the eyes of
Zamiatin.
Zamiatin was one of the younger of the Russian writers a deep, quiet, imaginative chap,
who
talked in fables, with long spaces of silence between.
The
cussion.
Bolsheviki were the subject of our dis-
argued breathlessly, with flushed faces and shining eyes, as one always argued in
Russia during the hectic nights and days of the red Russian year.
We
Zamiatin put down

his forefinger
his glass of tea,
and with
began to trace the crimson pattern on the Bokhara table-cover.
"When
I was a boy," he said, "a

475
little
fellow

about thirteen or fourteen, I read a book
forgotten the
I have
thing like
name a Russian version of some'A Romance of Two Worlds.' It set
strange imaginings whirling in
my brain.
I told
my
1
comrades about
it,
and they became as ex-
cited as I.
'Off there in the big black sky above the silver
birches
was a planet
called
Mars, peopled
like
ours with
human
into
beings.
We
made up our
plans.
minds to get
people.
communication with those other
We
thought of
many
Finally
we
'A'
conceived the idea of building a great letter
and setting it on fire. We believed Mars would see and answer us, and in a very short time
we would arrange an
conversations.
alphabet and carry on long

it
Perhaps
would revolutionize
the whole universe

fire
who knew?
We
were on
with the idea.

told our parents about
it,
"We
but somehow
they did not seem to realize its importance. There was a famine in the village that year, and
they were busy trying to get food to the people. They had no time for us and our great scheme.
"But
this did
not discourage us.
We went on
in the forest,
just the same.
We cut down logs

476
A MESSAGE TO MARS
and
on
built a
it.
monster
'A,'
bigger even than our
dreams of
fire,
The
great night came.
We set
it
and then, standing in breathless silence, eyes fastened on the velvet blackness, we waited. We waited and we waited. Nothing happened.
Mars
spot
did not answer."

lifted his finger
Zamiatin
from the crimson

and
settled
upon
the
Bokhara
cover,
back
in his chair.
For a moment we
sat there, tense
and quiet
as that
group of small boys on the edge
of the forest a score of years ago.
They
built a letter
fall
"A"
there in the City of
Peter in the
of 1917.
They
set
it
afire.
Then
they
simple,
trusting,
are
they
hoping children that waited and waited. There

letter
was nothing wrong with the

did not answer.
"A," but Mars
Blinded by schemes of conquest and dreams of Empire, Mars could not see.
"Universal peace; brotherhood; no annexations
or contributions ; and self -definition of nations
It "
was an alphabet Mars could not comprehend, born of a blind faith the glory and beauty
of which
Mars can not know, and

477
the rest of us
only half suspect.

Zamiatin was not a Bolshevik.
the Russian intelligentzia.
He belongs to
others, he
spirit
Like the
had preached theoretical revolution, but his shrank from the hard, accomplished fact.
But Zamiatin, with

his artist's visioning,
felt the
his boy's experience

letter 'A,'
and
had seen the
and
wonder and the tragedy of the dream of those men drawn back from exile to flash flaming
signals at the universe.
The
train that carried
me away from
Petro-
grad was almost the

war-torn
Finland.
last to
pass in safety through

full
Troubled days were
upon her, but the frozen face of her was as calm and peaceful as a sleeping child. The City of Peter lay behind me, wrapped in
the gray morning mist.
Tragedy was
in the air.
That vague, frightful thing the Terror was on every man's tongue. Apprehension was in
every man's eye.
Lurking there
in the black
^L
shadows of every human brain were the words: "The Germans!" To a few they were a secret
hope
restored
titles,
estates returned.
To
the
478
A MESSAGE TO MARS
mass
death
and
destruction
and
shattered
dreams.
I looked through the mist
down
a long vista of
coming
years,
scrutable city
and asked of the mysterious, inwhat would be left of the hour and
to have his
the place for another age.
Time seems
values.
save.
own
peculiar sense of
He sifts out most of the things we would

For every time
the world of to-day thinks
speaks a hundred times of the French Revolution. Out of the deof the Franco-Prussian
feat of
War it
France there came that great
historic
milestone marking the struggle of the mass to climb from under.
Out
tion.
of the success of Prussia there

its
came Prus-
sian militarism, to breed
own
ultimate destruc-
Time may
reject the battle of the
Somme
and the Gallipoli campaign, and dismiss the blockade and the submarine with a word; possibly he will have forgotten entirely the names
of Cabinet ministers and great generals: but I
doubt whether he will discard the Russian Revolution.
Revolution
against their
is
the blind protest of the
mass
own
ignorant state. 479
It
is
as impor-

tant to
Time
as the first
awkward
the act of
struggle of
the amoeba.
self.
It
is
man in
making him-
Time
will be able to overlook the pathetic, the
tragic, the cruel, the silly
forms of expression that

see only the magnifi-
revolt frequently takes,
and
cent urge behind those expressions.
Time
will
have
all
the advantage over us.
He
emotions from getting tangled up in the situation. He will be able to put the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki, the Cadets
will be able to
keep
his
and the Social Revolutionists,

pigeonholes.
in their
proper
Time
values.
will give to the
world war, the
political
revolution,
and the
social revolution their true

it.
We can not do
We are too close to

hope in the Russian
the facts to see the truth.
To have
Revolution
sunrise.
failed to see the

is
to be as a blind
man
looking at a
Mingled with my sorrow, the morning I left Petrograd, was a certain exultant, tragic joy. I
had been
it
alive at a great
moment, and knew that
was great.
THE END
480
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tin

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO.

Published, October, 1918

FOUR WHO SAW THE SUNRISE

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR

BLASTING AT THE ESTABLISHED ORDER

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

XIX WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS XXIII THE GREAT BETRAYAL

Petrograd broke over

the cobbles of the great Winter Palace Square

the statue of Alexander III, symbol of old

Russia, the talking multitudes surged

The great stucco Winter Palace American guests were housed

. study of the Tzar in which the

Bessie Beatty in the "dark forests at the front"

behind the lines

a part of No Man's Land Captured barbed wire entanglement Peter at the

parture for the trenches

The crowd hugs the Nevsky

The Cossacks bury

typical street scene in the Volga river towns

Barges of wood on the Neva

dining room in the Matrosski Klub (Sailors'

of the Military Revolutionary Committee announcing the fall of the Keren-

The pass which permitted the author

and factory workers took the place

striking telephone operators

Red Guards on duty before Trotzky's door

his staff just before

his incarceration in the Fortress of Peter

sat serene arnid the

of the Brotherhood beside the old

Lunarcharsky Leon Trotzky

on the Nevsky demonstrating for

The Constituent Assembly

delegation arrives at Brest-Litovsk

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

there in the silver twilight of the white

night she lay, a forest of flaming church steeples

and giant factory chimneys,

face closer to the

windowpane and searched the

There on the edge of the East she waited for

a candle drawing us on from the ends of the

the one unclean thing

new-born world of spring.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

revolution, peeping into Peter's

four hours behind schedule.

meadows, cut with shimmering

china-blue waterways, stretched behind us.