I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  I WENT TO RUSSIA

  by

  LIAM O’FLAHERTY

  Contents

  I The Soviet Ship

  II I Make Friends With The Grew

  III The Bolshevik Skipper

  IV Jews And Vikings

  V A Discourse On Various Subjects

  VI I Reach The Promised Land

  VII The Corpse Of Tsarism

  VIII The Doctor’s Wife

  IX She Could Not Convert Me

  X The Keepers Of The Satchel

  XI I Promise To Make War

  XII I State My Position

  XIII I Think Things Over

  XIV Mingling With The Masses

  XV Mr. Duranty Explains

  XVI Back To London

  Chapter I

  The Soviet Ship

  On the evening of April 23rd, 1930, I set out for Moscow on a Soviet ship, in order to collect material for a book on Bolshevism. It pains me to admit it, but it is the truth. I set out to join the great horde of scoundrels, duffers and liars who have been flooding the book markets of the world for the past ten years with books about the Bolsheviks. I had already travelled in an honest fashion to various parts of the world, for the sole purpose of breathing, walking, lying, sitting, eating, drinking, loving; never for the purpose of squinting at strange buildings or at odd people, or to scavenge information for newspapers and learned societies about customs that are different from our own. Indeed, I might have died honourably without having become such a scavenger had not poverty and the peculiar nature of my profession forced me to become one.

  Nowadays, owing to the growth of democracy and the machine, the profession of literature has ceased to be an art. It is an industry. Literary men, if they must eat by their work, are forced to watch the market and pander to the tastes of the public, just like any other class of manufacturers. Just as clothiers make green cloth, or blue cloth, or red cloth in accordance with the change of fashion, so must novelists write about sex or adventure or the Yellow Peril or psycho-analysis. At the moment, two kinds of books are in fashion, autobiographies and books about the Bolsheviks.

  I refrained from writing an autobiography as long as I could. At last I was forced by hunger to do so. Immediately afterwards I realised that I had to scavenge among the Bolsheviks or starve a little later. So I set out for Moscow with black anger in my heart against the whole of human society, which has become so corrupt and democratic and indifferent to art.

  Thank Heaven! Bolshevism means no more to me than Lord Beaverbrook’s Empire Crusade or the Roman Catholic Religion. I loathe all political beliefs. I brand as a perverted scoundrel any man with an itch for changing the world and the habits of mankind. For the purpose of my work, the British Empire is no whit better than the Republic of Liberia. I am more interested in the well-being of horse-racing than I am in the abolition of slums, or the universal cure of prostitution. I consider that a good game of Rugby football is more important than all the speeches ever made by Mr. Lloyd George. It is my business to observe human beings and to dig beneath the labels, under which they hide their beauty or their infamy. For that reason, I am more qualified to write this book than most people. I write it honestly, for the sole purpose of making some money; neither to convert the British proletariat to Communism, nor to incite old parsons, butlers and maiden aunts into a war for the preservation of their virtue against the oncoming Soviet hordes.

  I had no difficulty in getting a visa for my passport. Against such a callous writer as myself, their embassies and consulates were helpless. If they refused a visa I could write a book in any case without ever going to Russia. Many have done so and the fact that their books have had no great success is rather a proof of the lack of talent of the authors than an indictment of the method. So the Bolshevik envoys, considering that courtesy was their best policy, covered a page of my passport with words and figures that were Hebrew to me and told me I could visit the Soviet Union for a period of one month, taking with me a maximum luggage of three suits of clothes, six pairs of socks, four shirts, two pairs of pyjamas, six collars, two towels, three pairs of shoes, soap, a packet of Gillette razor blades with razor, and a marine compass for finding my way in the streets of the more Asiatic cities of the Soviet Union. Being still in a state of violent anger while I applied and waited for my visa I was unable to observe properly those with whom I came in contact, but I have a vague memory that most of them were Jews of the polite kind.

  Indeed I conducted myself with such arrogance that I was given a berth on a ship that was taking no passengers for that trip; for instead of going direct to Leningrad, she was stopping at Norway for cargo.

  ‘The ordinary trip is five days,’ said the clerk at the Soviet shipping agency. ’This trip will take twelve days. Surely you prefer to wait for another ship or go by train?’

  ‘I must go at once and by ship’, I cried, striking the fellow’s counter with such force that he understood at once I was a dangerous man.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘It can be arranged.’

  So he telephoned to the ship a few hours before it sailed and I set out for the docks almost at once. When I arrived, they were already preparing to put to sea. Nobody expected me and no preparations whatever had been made for my accommodation. I make a point of this, because it is the common belief that the Bolsheviks make special provision for writers, showing them everything that is good and preventing them from seeing whatever is bad in the Communist Commonwealth. I, on the contrary, caught the ruffians in the very act of leading their abnormal lives.

  At first sight, I could see nothing abnormal about them. I must admit there was a lot of litter on the decks that might have been used for wrapping up corpses and some fellows were hauling ropes that might have once been used for hanging innocent people, and from the dress of the seamen one might easily deduce that they were pirates on an American film ship. But the chief officer, who met me at the entrance to the companion way on the lower deck, was a most charming North Russian, with the large, pale, smiling face of the pure Slav. I gave him my papers and asked him could I have a drink at once.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I go tell steward. Follow please.’

  He brought me into the officers’ mess, which was the first room on the left. Then he bowed politely and left me in order to fetch the steward. The room was brand new, fitted out very creditably. There was nothing unnecessary. Every inch of space was compactly organised. There was no hint of luxury. At once it reminded me of the mess room in a monastery. I also noticed that everything possible bore the Soviet Arms in red. That increased the monastic impression, for people with religions love to carve their symbols, not only on their furniture but even on their underwear.

  The chief officer returned and beckoned to me a trifle furtively. His furtiveness cheered me, since there was a question of having a drink. It reminded me of my own country. In Ireland there is always something secret about drinking which makes it an adventure. Recognised topers in country villages, where the slightest and most secret sins are common knowledge, have a habit of leaning over the bar counter and whispering their order into the ear of the barmaid, who assumes the proper air of taking part in a conspiracy. Even at dinners in private houses, the host secretly invites his guests into the kitchen or the cubby-hole, with many a ‘hush’ and a finger to the lip, for fear ‘she’ might see him uncork the jar of old whisky. I mistook the mate’s furtiveness for this admirable Irish attitude towards the beautiful ritual of drinking. But as I followed him out into the corridor, he whispered:

  ‘In my cabin better. There nobody see you.’

  There was no joy in his voice. I could detect, on the contrary, a horrid fear, which made me feel sorry I had set foot on the ship. Here, I understood at once, d
rinking was regarded as a crime and drinkers were criminals. Yo ho ! And a bottle of mineral waters.

  ‘Hell!’ I thought. ‘What sort of a ship is this?’

  In his cabin, which was opposite the mess room, the mate was the essence of courtesy. But he was so kind that he made me feel uncomfortable. There is an art in kindness. There is a certain limit, which, overstepped, turns kindness into cruelty. This man was so affable, so enthusiastic and so obviously cheered by my arrival and my company that I understood he had very little in his own life or in his own nature to give him happiness. His pale, blue eyes, surrounded by a flabby, white face and his mouth, that was not beautiful, repelled me, because they inspired pity. He looked unhappy and at the same time greedy of happiness. He was obviously in surroundings that were uncongenial and yet he had not the courage to leave them. He was like those priests and monks that one encounters in religious societies, fellows who donned the cassock of celibacy on the impulse of a moment, or through some gross necessity, and have not the strength of character to leave, but go on being priests and monks and at the same time sinners beneath the unseemly folds of their smocks. Yet, just as those unwilling monks are more human than the genuine fanatics and are, in general, good fellows, so was this mate charming. I pitied him and liked him and despised him. I could see at once that he disapproved of Bolshevism and wished to show me that he dis-approved of it and wished to curry favour with me, because he thought I was a ‘bourgeois’ and an enemy of Bolshevism.

  When the steward had brought a bottle of brandy and we had filled our glasses, I said:

  ‘Here’s to Soviet Russia.’

  ‘Here’s to fair women and fair weather,’ said the mate.

  We drank.

  ‘Are you not a Bolshevik?’ I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about being a working-man. Then he skinned an orange which he offered to me. He offered chocolates and cigarettes. In fact he offered me his whole cabin and if his wife were present, I feel sure that he would have offered her also, such was his eagerness to oblige and to immolate himself in a fanaticism of generosity.

  ‘Life is hard,’ he said. ‘I am now chief mate. I was once a captain. I once had wife with me on ship. Now I see wife, two days, maybe six days one month. Before, good house Archangel. Now, one room Leningrad. I have forty-four years. One time I make business, what you call ship chandler. Very good. I go Black Sea also. Very good. Oh! Very nice. Greece also with wife. Other women maybe. This ship ... I think maybe this ship different. Communist personnel. Maybe politics no good for sailor men. I think sailor men all the same all the world. They like women, drink, good weather. You think too?’

  ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘I never give voice to my thoughts.’

  He looked at me suspiciously and changed his attitude. He became more serious and dignified. Then I liked him better. But I could see that he was of no use to me. After all, my business was to write a book about Bolsheviks, not about people with slave minds whom the Bolsheviks could not mould to their fanatical purpose of imposing the idea of proletarian equality on the whole of mankind. He noticed that I did not think much of him and ceased to drink. Presently he went out and returned with the steward. The steward brought me to my cabin, fetching also the remainder of my brandy. When he had installed me, he turned to leave, but I recalled him.

  ‘Sir,’ he cried in German, with the same force and the same servility that a corporal would use on being addressed by his company officer.

  At the same time he bowed from the waist, with his heels together, so low and with such a straight back, that his body was perfectly horizontal from neck to rump. In appearance he was a Jew. His face was that of a serf. I was convinced by the look of him that he had often been whipped. He offended me.

  ‘Drink’ I said to this ruffian.

  He looked behind him furtively, bowed several times and cried:

  ‘Danke. Danke sehr. Danke’

  I filled him a tumbler with brandy. ‘Prosit!’ he cried and tossed it off at incredible speed. I straightway filled him another tumbler. He protested feebly, but having taken the fellow’s measure and wishing to amuse myself by making him drunk, I seized him by the poll and practically forced the contents of the tumbler down his throat. He writhed and shook his head like a dog that has been doused. His long nose became very red and daubs of colour stood out on his sallow face. The alcohol had gone to his head, changing his fawning servility, as is invariably the case, into a false arrogance. He treated himself to a chair, seized an orange, skinned it, began to eat it and lit a cigarette, talking excitedly in German. I understood nothing of what he said, for German is a language I have never felt impelled to acquire. But language, whereas it may be necessary for the exchange of ideas, commodities and services, is rarely of use for the study of human character. For this, conduct, voice and gestures are much more enlightening.

  A traveller, when studying the manners and character of a strange people, should begin with their servants. Hotel porters, waiters, chambermaids, policemen, cab-drivers and petty officials of all sorts are much more likely to give a correct estimate of the people’s culture and civilisation than any amount of reading, or intercourse with chance acquaintances, or official convoys through museums, theatres and public displays. Servants always develop a dual personality, their individual character, which is used in their intercourse with their wives, their friends and their families, and their social character, which is forced upon them by their duties. It is this social character which is of interest to the traveller. When the servants of a community are corrupt, indolent, inefficient, unstable and without polite dignity, it is inevitable that the community at large is guilty of these vices to a major degree. On the other hand, when such servants are in all manner pleasing to the traveller, it is inevitable that the community which employs them has reached a high degree of civilisation and culture. To my mind, the English are nearest to perfection in this respect, although they are far from perfect in other respects. If I were to judge by the steward, the Russians wallowed at the opposite extreme. But such judgment would be ridiculous. He was proof of nothing, except of the vanity of human idealism. For he remained a slave, in spite of thirteen years of proletarian equality. The Bolsheviks had willed him to be a free man, as free in spirit as the great Lenin. Yet he remained a slave. They had given him the Marxian theory of value, the sickle and hammer of the Soviets, a Red army and navy to protect him, the title of Comrade, the Five Year Plan, all their schemes for the liquidation of everything from God to drunkenness, yet he remained a slave. He even grovelled before a citizen of the bourgeois British Empire.

  ‘Yes!’ I thought. ‘One cannot turn a slave into a free man by an edict. The free man is born not made.’

  I suddenly shouted at him:

  ‘For God’s sake, leave my sight. You offend me.’

  He did not understand what I said. He gibbered something and ran out of my cabin. In a short while he returned with a companion, a tall fellow who wore the uniform of an officer. The newcomer astonished me, for he was not only powdered but painted slightly. He belonged to a type that is never seen on one of our merchant ships, a sort of heavy and effeminate dandy, with the languorous expression of a film actor who plays amorous parts. His hair was false and he wore patent leather shoes and he spoke French.

  ‘I am the fifth mate,’ said this worthy, who had obviously read the novels of Turgenev and wished to become a European gentleman. ‘You require something, which the steward was unable to decipher.’

  ‘No more’ said I, ‘than I am able to decipher the reason for your exalted rank. Surely three mates are enough for a ship of three thousand tons. But I am glad to see that a Bolshevik ship carries more officers than a British ship. Making everybody an officer is one way of establishing social equality. Have a drink.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will taste your drink without swallowing it. It is not my custom to drink on board ship. Please understand also that I am an apprentice officer.’


  ‘It doesn’t matter a damn what you are, my boy,’ I answered. ‘The great thing in this world is to be a Man. Understand that and you are all right with me.’

  But the painted lad, with the patent leather shoes and the wig, did not feel inclined to become a man, even though he was nearly twice my size. He had the same bee in his bonnet as the mate. He was afraid of something. After a few tiresome remarks he left my cabin. So did the steward, after he had fetched me another bottle of brandy. I was drinking rather freely through sheer boredom and irritation. I got to my feet and seized my bottle.

  ‘Armed with this bottle,’ I cried, TU make a tour of the ship, in the hope of finding somewhere a free man who is willing to drink or to talk with me, somebody who is neither a grovelling slave nor oppressed by a vague fear of something I cannot understand. I am beginning to get afraid of this ship.’

  I sallied forth into the corridor. We were going down the river, but I felt sure that we were already in the open sea under heavy weather, by the way the walls of the corridor and the deck seemed to sway and threaten me. Undoubtedly the brandy was not to be trifled with. I reached the mess room, entered and tottered to a seat, in a way that was not at all impressive. Four or five officers were already sitting there.

  ‘Have a drink,’ I cried.

  One of them pointed to a samovar that lay on the centre of the table.

  ‘We have already got a drink’ he said laughingly. ‘There is tea.’

  ‘Have some brandy instead,’ I cried. ‘Tea is for women.’

  ‘So?’ he said, still laughing. ‘On your ships it is the custom for crew to drink at sea? Yes? With us, no. Crew drink. Then maybe ship sinks and passenger is drowned. You drink. We sail ship. Very good. Good luck.’

  I could just barely see his laughing, boyish face, but I could hear that he was a good fellow and a man. And I was properly put to shame. So I rose and bowed and said:

  ‘Thanks comrade. Good night.’