Six Weeks in Russia, 1919

by Arthur Ransome

  There was snow falling as I walked home. Two workmen, arguing, were walking in front of me. ‘If only it were not for the hunger,’ said one. ‘But will that ever change?’ said the other.

  Six / Kamenev and the Moscow Soviet

  FEBRUARY 11

  Litvinov has been unlucky in his room in the Metropole. It is small, dark and dirty, and colder than mine. He was feeling ill and his chest was hurting him, perhaps because of his speech last night; but while I was there Kamenev rang him up on the telephone, told him he had a car below, and would he come at once to the Moscow Soviet to speak on the international situation? Litvinov tried to excuse himself, but it was no use, and he said to me that if I wanted to see Kamenev I had better come along. We found Kamenev in the hall, and after a few minutes in a little Ford car we were at the Moscow Soviet. The soviet meets in the small lecture theatre of the old Polytechnic. When we arrived, a party meeting was going on, and Kamenev, Litvinov, and I went behind the stage to a little empty room, where we were joined by a member of the soviet whose name I forget.

  It was Kamenev’s first talk with Litvinov after his return, and I think they forgot that I was there. Kamenev asked Litvinov what he meant to do, and Litvinov told him he wished to establish a special department of control to receive all complaints, to examine into the efficiency of different commissariats, to get rid of parallelism, etc., and, in fact, to be the most unpopular department in Moscow. Kamenev laughed. ‘You need not think you are the first to have that idea. Every returning envoy without exception has the same. Coming back from abroad they notice more than we do the inefficiencies here, and at once think they will set everything right. Rakovsky sat here for months dreaming of nothing else. Joffe was the same when he came back from that tidy Berlin. Now you; and when Vorovsky comes (Vorovsky was still in Petrograd) I am ready to wager that he too has a scheme for general control waiting in his pocket. The thing cannot be done. The only way is, when something obviously needs doing, to put in someone we can trust to get it done. Soap is hard to get. Good. Establish a commission and soap instantly disappears. But put in one man to see that soap is forthcoming, and somehow or other we get it.’

  ‘Where is the soap industry concentrated?’

  ‘There are good factories, well equipped, here, but they are not working, partly for lack of material and partly, perhaps, because some crazy fool imagined that to take an inventory you must bring everything to a standstill.’

  Litvinov asked him what he thought of the position as a whole. He said good, if only transport could be improved; but before the public of Moscow could feel an appreciable improvement it would be necessary that a hundred wagons of foodstuffs should be coming in daily. At present there are seldom more than 20. I asked Kamenev about the schools, and he explained that one of their‧ difficulties was due to the militarism forced upon them by external attacks. He explained that the new Red Army soldiers, being mostly workmen, are accustomed to a higher standard of comfort than the old army soldiers, who were mostly peasants. They objected to the planks which served as beds in the old, abominable, over crowded and unhealthy barracks. Trotsky, looking everywhere for places to put his darlings, found nothing more suitable than the schools; and, in Kamenev’s words, ‘We have to fight hard for every school.’ Another difficulty, he said, was the lack of school books. Histories, for example, written under the censorship and in accordance with the principles of the old regime, were now useless, and new ones were not ready, apart from the difficulty of getting paper and of printing. A lot, however, was being done. There was no need for a single child in Moscow to go hungry; 150,000 to 180,000 children got free meals daily in the schools. Over 10,000 pairs of felt boots had been given to children who needed them. The number of libraries had enormously increased. Physically workmen lived in far worse conditions than in 1912, but as far as their spiritual welfare was concerned there could be no comparison. Places like the famous Yar restaurant, where once the rich went to amuse themselves with orgies of feeding and drinking and flirting with gypsies, were now made into working men’s clubs and theatres, where every working man had a right to go. As for the demand for literature from the provinces, it was far beyond the utmost efforts of the presses and the paper stores to supply.

  When the party meeting ended, we went back to the lecture room where the members of the soviet had already settled themselves in their places. I was struck at once by the absence of the general public which in the old days used to crowd the galleries to overflowing. The political excitement of the revolution has passed, and today there were no more spectators than are usually to be found in the gallery of the House of Commons. The character of the soviet itself had not changed. Practically every man sitting on the benches was obviously a workman and keenly intent on what was being said. Litvinov practically repeated his speech of last night, making it, however, a little more demagogic in character, pointing out that after the Allied victory, the only corner of the world not dominated by Allied capital was Soviet Russia.

  The soviet passed a resolution expressing ‘firm confidence that the Soviet government will succeed in getting peace and so in opening a wide road to the construction of a proletarian state.’ A note was passed up to Kamenev who, glancing at it, announced that the newly elected representative of the Chinese workmen in Moscow wished to speak. This was Chitaya Kuni, a solid little Chinaman with a big head, in black leather coat and breeches. I had often seen him before, and wondered who he was. He was received with great cordiality and made a quiet, rather shy speech in which he told them he was learning from them how to introduce socialism in China, and more compliments of the same sort. Reinstein replied, telling how at an American labour congress some years back the Americans shut the door in the face of a representative of a union of foreign workmen. ‘Such,’ he said, ‘was the feeling in America at the time when Gompers was supreme, but that time has passed.’ Still, as I listened to Reinstein, I wondered in how many other countries besides Russia, a representative of foreign labour would be thus welcomed. The reason has probably little to do with the goodheartedness of the Russians. Owing to the general unification of wages Mr Kuni could not represent the competition of cheap labour. I talked to the Chinaman afterwards. He is president of the Chinese Soviet. He told me they had just about a thousand Chinese workmen in Moscow, and therefore had a right to representation in the government of the town. I asked about the Chinese in the Red Army, and he said there were two or three thousand, not more.

  Seven / An ex-capitalist

  FEBRUARY 13

  I drank tea with an old acquaintance from the provinces, a Russian who, before the revolution, owned a leather-bag factory which worked in close connection with his uncle’s tannery. He gave me a short history of events at home. The uncle had started with small capital, and during the war had made enough to buy outright the tannery in which he had had shares. The story of his adventures since the October revolution is a very good illustration of the rough and ready way in which theory gets translated into practice. I am writing it, as nearly as possible, as it was told by the nephew.

  During the first revolution, that is from March till October 1917, he fought hard against the workmen, and was one of the founders of a soviet of factory owners, the object of which was to defeat the efforts of the workers’ soviets.* This, of course, was smashed by the October Revolution, and ‘Uncle, after being forced, as a property owner, to pay considerable contributions, watched the newspapers closely, realised that after the nationalisation of the banks resistance was hopeless, and resigned himself to do what he could, not to lose his factory altogether.’

  He called together all the workmen, and proposed that they should form an artel or co-operative society and take the factory into their own hands, each man contributing a thousand roubles towards the capital with which to run it. Of course the workmen had not got a thousand roubles apiece, ‘so uncle offered to pay it in for them, on the understanding that they would eventually pay him back.’ This was illegal, but the
little town was a long way from the centre of things, and it seemed a good way out of the difficulty. He did not expect to get it back, but he hoped in this way to keep control of the tannery, which he wished to develop, having a paternal interest in it.

  Things worked very well. They elected a committee of control. ‘Uncle was elected president, I was elected vice-president, and there were three workmen. We are working on those lines to this day. They give uncle 1,500 roubles a month, me a thousand and the bookkeeper a thousand. The only difficulty is that the men will treat uncle as the owner, and this may mean trouble if things go wrong; Uncle is for ever telling them, ‘It’s your factory, don’t call me Master,’ and they reply, ‘Yes, it’s our factory all right, but you are still Master, and that must be.”

  Trouble came fast enough, with the tax levied on the propertied classes. ‘Uncle’, very wisely, had ceased to be a property owner. He had given up his house to the factory, and been allotted rooms in it, as president of the factory soviet. He was therefore really unable to pay when the people from the district soviet came to tell him that he had been assessed to pay a tax of 60,000 roubles. He explained the position. The nephew was also present and joined in the argument, whereupon the tax collectors consulted a bit of paper and retorted, ‘A tax of 20,000 has been assessed on you too. Be so good as to put your coat on.’

  That meant arrest, and the nephew said he had 5,000 roubles and would pay that, but could pay no more. Would that do?

  ‘Very well,’ said the tax-collector, ‘fetch it.’

  The nephew fetched it.

  ‘And now put your coat on.’

  ‘But you said it would be all right if I paid the 5,000!’

  ‘That’s the only way to deal with people like you. We recognise that your case is hard, and we dare say that you will get off. But the soviet has told us to collect the whole tax or the people who refuse to pay it, and they have decreed that if we came back without one or the other, we shall go to prison ourselves. You can hardly expect us to go and sit in prison out of pity for you. So on with your coat and come along.’

  They went, and at the militia headquarters were shut into a room with barred windows where they were presently joined by most of the other rich men of the town, all in a rare state of indignation, and some of them very angry with ‘Uncle’, for taking things so quietly. ‘Uncle was worrying about nothing in the world but the tannery and the leather works which he was afraid might get into difficulties now that both he and I were under lock and key.’

  The plutocracy of the town being thus gathered in the little room at the militia house, their wives came, timorously at first, and chattered through the windows. My informant, being unmarried, sent word to two or three of his friends, in order that he might not be the only one without some one to talk with outside. The noise was something prodigious, and the head of the militia finally ran out into the street and arrested one of the women, but was so discomfited when she removed her shawl and he recognised her as his hostess at a house where he had been billeted as a soldier that he hurriedly let her go. The extraordinary parliament between the rich men of the town and their wives and friends, like a crowd of hoodie crows, chattering outside the window, continued until dark.

  Next day the workmen from the tannery came to the militia house and explained that ‘Uncle’ had really ceased to be a member of the propertied classes, that he was necessary to them as president of their soviet, and that they were willing to secure his release by paying half of the tax demanded from him out of the factory funds. Uncle got together 30,000, the factory contributed another 30, and he was freed, being given a certificate that he had ceased to be an exploiter or a property owner, and would in future be subject only to such taxes as might be levied on the working population. The nephew was also freed, on the grounds that he was wanted at the leather works.

  I asked him how things were going on. He said, ‘Fairly well, only uncle keeps worrying because the men still call him “Master”. Otherwise, he is very happy because he has persuaded the workmen to set aside a large proportion of the profits for developing the business and building a new wing to the tannery.’

  ‘Do the men work?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we thought that when the factory was in their own hands they would work better, but we do not think they do so, not noticeably, anyhow.’

  ‘Do they work worse?’

  ‘No, that is not noticeable either.’

  I tried to get at his political views. Last summer he had told me that the Soviet government could not last more than another two or three months. He was then looking forward to its downfall. Now he did not like it any better, but he was very much afraid of war being brought into Russia, or rather of the further disorders which war would cause. He took a queer sort of pride in the way in which the territory of the Russian republic was gradually resuming its old frontiers. ‘In the old days no one ever thought the Red Army would come to anything,’ he said. ‘You can’t expect much from the government, but it does keep order, and I can do my work and rub along all right.’ It was quite funny to hear him in one breath grumbling at the revolution and in the next anxiously asking whether I did not think they had weathered the storm, so that there would be no more disorders.

  Knowing that in some country places there had been appalling excesses, I asked him how the Red Terror that followed the attempt on the life of Lenin had shown itself in their district. He laughed.

  ‘We got off very cheaply,’ he said. ‘This is what happened. A certain rich merchant’s widow had a fine house, with enormous stores of all kinds of things, fine knives and forks, and too many of everything. For instance, she had 22 samovars of all sizes and sorts. Typical merchant’s house, so many tablecloths that they could not use them all if they lived to be a hundred. Well, one fine day, early last summer, she was told that her house was wanted and that she must clear out. For two days she ran hither and thither trying to get out of giving it up. Then she saw it was no good, and piled all those things, samovars and knives and forks and dinner services and table cloths and overcoats (there were over a dozen fur overcoats) in the garrets which she closed and sealed, and got the president of the soviet to come and put his seal also. In the end things were so friendly that he even put a sentinel there to see that the seal should not be broken. Then came the news from Petrograd and Moscow about the Red Terror, and the soviet, after holding a meeting and deciding that it ought to do something, and being on too good terms with all of us to do any thing very bad, suddenly remembered poor Maria Nicolaevna’s garrets. They broke the seals and tumbled out all the kitchen things, knives, forks, plates, furniture, the 22 samovars and the overcoats, took them in carts to the soviet and declared them national property. National property! And a week or two later there was a wedding of a daughter of one of the members of the soviet, and somehow or other the knives and forks were on the table, and as for samovars, there were enough to make tea for a hundred.’

  * By agreeing upon lock-outs, etc.

  Eight / A theorist of revolution

  FEBRUARY 13

  After yesterday’s talk with a capitalist victim of the revolution, I am glad for the sake of contrast to set beside it a talk with one of the revolution’s chief theorists. The leather worker illustrated the revolution as it affects an individual. The revolutionary theorist was quite incapable of even considering his own or any other individual interests and thought only in terms of enormous movements in which the experiences of an individual had only the significance of the adventures of one ant among a myriad. Bukharin, member of the old economic mission to Berlin, violent opponent of the Brest peace, editor of Pravda, author of many books on economics and revolution, indefatigable theorist, found me drinking tea at a table in the Metropole.

  I had just bought a copy of a magazine which contained a map of the world, in which most of Europe was coloured red or pink for actual or potential revolution. I showed it to Bukharin and said, ‘You cannot be surprised that people abroad talk of you
as of the new imperialists.’

  Bukharin took the map and looked at it.

  ‘Idiotism, rank idiotism!’ he said. ‘At the same time,’ he added, ‘I do think we have entered upon a period of revolution which may last 50 years before the revolution is at last victorious in all Europe and finally in all the world.’

  Now, I have a stock theory which I am used to set before revolutionaries of all kinds, nearly always with interesting results. (See Chapter Thirteen)

  I tried it on Bukharin. I said:

  ‘You people are always saying that there will be revolution in England. Has it not occurred to you that England is a factory and not a granary, so that in the event of revolution we should be immediately cut off from all food supplies. According to your own theories, English capital would unite with American in ensuring that within six weeks the revolution had nothing to eat. England is not a country like Russia where you can feed yourselves somehow or other by simply walking to where there is food. Six weeks would see starvation and reaction in England. I am inclined to think that a revolution in England would do Russia more harm than good.’

  Bukharin laughed. ‘You old counter-revolutionary!’ he said. ‘That would be all true, but you must look further. You are right in one thing. If the revolution spreads in Europe, America will cut off food supplies. But by that time we shall be getting food from Siberia.’