I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  I saw the Bolshevik god as a wooden dummy like the rest, of no nobler quality than the fetishes which the Chinese and the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the Greeks and the Aztecs and the Romans carried into the strong places of their enemies. Born in the hungry bellies of the Bolshevik masses, he would die when those bellies were full to repletion, just as Odin and Thor died when the Norse conquerors were glutted with loot. Loot! Loot! Man appeared no whit more divine than the foraging ants, which gnaw their way across continents, leaving desolation in their trail.

  But I grew lonely as I reasoned thus, sitting on an old stone by a mountain torrent. For he who detaches himself from the herd of his human brothers and regards their movements as insanity is more insane than they. It is good at times to retire unto the heights and look down with sorrow on the futility of man’s activity. But it is folly to stay on the heights. The scoffer and the sceptic are sour and useless citizens, esteemed only by decadents and invalids. For they who effect a harmony between their reason and their actions lose the power to create beauty. All things appear equally futile when examined by reason. But the young and vigorous wisely sneer at reason.

  On the mountain it became manifest to me that the realisation of the Bolshevik idea was impossible, that it was impossible to organise all mankind in one society where all should be equal, free from care, famine, disease, vice, personal ambition, war. It appeared as childish as the attempt to realise the ideal of Christianity. But it also became manifest to me that all the beauty which man has created in his career had been the outcome of attempts to achieve similar impossible ideals. And although Christianity has been a failure, although its ideal of peace and brotherly love has brought war and hatred and although it has ended in hypocrisy, disillusion and decadence, no man but an unthinking boor will refuse to admit that magnificent achievements have resulted from the attempt to realise it.

  In the same manner the Bolshevik god may scatter lavish beauties in the path of his conquest.

  Chapter V

  A Discourse On Various Subjects

  The first evening that we were in port, the crew behaved in a human fashion. They prowled about the town looking for drink and women. But the Norwegian women were unappetising. The solitary local harlot did not trouble to offer herself to the Bolsheviks, possibly because she knew they had little money to purchase her wares and because she had a professional hatred of Bolshevism. It has always struck me as curious that stock-brokers, clergymen and harlots, the most naked tribes of parasites within our social organism, are the most bitter enemies of Bolshevism and the most ardent supporters of Christian morality.

  The supply of drink was less than the supply of women. There was local prohibition at Odda. The wretched natives were subjected to that form of puritanism which has made certain regions of the United States of America the laughing stock of the civilised world. The result of this puritanism was that numbers of the citizens of Odda got most foully drunk every evening on methylated spirits and other dangerous liquors. There were hordes of touts going about, trying to sell these poisons to the poor. As in the United States, the rich could drink as formerly in the security of their homes. It was only the poor who were poisoned.

  But the healthy stomachs of the Bolsheviks turned from these poisons, just as their healthy lusts failed to be roused by the Norwegian women. They all came aboard the ship cursing Norway and blaming capitalism for the lack of recreation in Odda.

  This helped the captain in his fanatical ambition to make the ship’s stay in port a means of ‘liquidating’ the Norwegian bourgeoisie. I doubt if his men would have consented to go on excursions of observation and propaganda so readily had the town offered facilities for sensual pleasures, or even if they had the money to purchase such pleasures as existed. Indeed, the rage of these people against bourgeois pleasures was largely the result of envy and not a desire to restore man to his aboriginal innocence. They used to tell me how they longed to turn a machine-gun on the crowds issuing from and entering the Savoy Hotel in London. Why? Simply because they themselves could not enter.

  So they went like schoolboys in charge of a master on the following day to inspect an electrical plant in the vicinity. The doctor invited me to accompany them but I refused. In common with most civilised people I hate being taken on a tour of inspection with a crowd. But the Russians love such things. They fear solitude. They love being in a mass.

  That Sunday I found life on board the ship exceedingly interesting. I met a Norwegian customs officer walking along the deck and we began to talk. He had been a sailor and spoke English very well indeed. He was of fine physique, intelligent above the ordinary, of kindly disposition, a sturdy, trustworthy fellow. We became intimate almost at once, after the manner of men who are accustomed to wander about the world. I was rather astonished when he told me that he was a member of the Norwegian Communist Party. I expressed my astonishment and he asked me the reason.

  ‘It is hard to explain,’ I said. ‘I suppose it is the difference between you and the Russian Communists aboard this ship that I find odd. I doubt if any of us Western Europeans take Communism really seriously as a religion. Among us a man is either a Conservative, or a Liberal, or a Social Democrat, or a Communist. He is not either a Christian or a Communist.’

  He did not understand me and said so in his slow, polite, Norwegian manner.

  ‘Well!’ I said. ‘My opinion is that Communism is a religion rather than a political belief. It is even a particular form of religious belief as Jesuitism is a particular form of Christianity. A Jesuit may even be a Social Democrat. I have met such people. But Jesuitical Social Democrats would run Social Democratic States on the same autocratic principle as they run their own Society and such governments as they have controlled. They have a particular philosophy of life, bound in dogma, which they insist on imposing on human beings. They will impose that philosophy, irrespective of what outward mask it wears. So with the Bolsheviks. They are a very limited oligarchy, with a philosophy of life that appeals in its entirety only to very few people. The masses controlled by them have very little to do with . . . Yes. I quite understand I am not making myself very plain. But to put it quite baldly, I believe the Russian Bolsheviks are fanatics, with a dogma they want to impose on the world. You don’t look like a fanatic. You rather look like a Liberal, a Social Democrat.’

  Straightway, the man became furious.

  ‘I a Social Democrat!’ he cried. ‘I hate them, the Social traitors.’

  Then he began to mouth about topical quarrels among the various parties that espouse the cause of the proletariat. Nothing is so dreary as these quarrels. They rival in intensity and bitterness the quarrels among the early followers of Jesus Christ. In common with nearly all European Communists and Socialists, he had no comprehension of his objective, being almost solely concerned with proving that all factions except his own were wrong in their tactics and their beliefs. His Communism was something similar to a hobby that occupied his spare time and the fact that he may have been willing to go to jail for it was no proof that it was more than a hobby. Among us, irascible characters are quite willing to go to jail in defence of their theories about the cuckoo’s egg. I grant that there are Communists and Socialists among us who are inspired by the ambition to achieve fame or political success within our societies; but there are hardly any who have the ambition definitely to overthrow capitalism and ruthlessly organise Socialism on its ruins.

  ‘You are a Communist,’ I said, ‘simply because you believe the Social Democrats are wrong and not because you want to create a Communist system of society in Norway.’

  He gaped at me and said:

  ‘Communism must replace capitalism or else Europe will revert to barbarism.’

  ‘That is possible,’ I said. ‘But I feel that you don’t really believe communism is going to replace capitalism in Norway.’

  ‘It is difficult to say,’ he answered. ‘It is hard to move the Norwegian people. Conditions are too good for the workers. When
conditions are better in Soviet Russia than in Norway, then perhaps there will be a revolution here.’

  ‘Then your idea of a Norwegian revolution is not of a dynamic force, a spiritual renaissance, but a cold, mercenary exchange by calculating mobs of one system of economy for another; just as a man changes a barren cow for a fertile heifer.’

  ‘You are a bourgeois intellectual’ he said. ‘It is easy to argue but there are only two classes and between them there is . . .’

  ‘War to the extermination of one,’ I said. ‘I know all that, just as I know about the Immaculate Conception and the Infallibility of the Pope and other honoured dogmas. But tell me honestly. Do you really believe you are a Communist like these Russians?’

  ‘I am a Norwegian Communist,’ he said after some thought. ‘The Russians are big children. They make many mistakes. On this ship things are not done well.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘You admit a difference, if only a difference in degree of civilisation. But the truth is that you are not a Communist but a Social Reformer. You want to improve Norwegian life not to uproot it. The Russians on the contrary are trying to create a new order of society and to give a new philosophy of life to the world. You are as remote as the poles, you and the Russians. Your attitude towards them is a purely selfish one. I am not talking of you personally but of European Communists in general. You are content to watch the Russians expending their energies, fighting, starving, struggling against great odds? to make a revolution in the organisation of human society, knowing that you will gain immensely if they succeed and yet lose little of your present status if they fail. You are a Communist because you are more intelligent and ambitious than the other workers and you want to be a favourite of the Russians in their hour of triumph. Instead of attempting revolution yourself you wait for the Russians to do the job for you. I am amazed at the folly of the Russians in expecting any help from you; unless, indeed, they are subtle enough to regard their foreign Communist organisations as espionage groups and as means of demoralising European economy while their own economy is being organised. But I have an idea that when the Russians are strong enough they are going to get tired of maintaining you. They are going to treat you in the same way as they’ll treat the Social Democrats and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat too; by planting a Russian empire on your backs.’

  ‘You are a reactionary,’ he cried. ‘You are a bloody fool.’

  ‘More than likely,’I said, walking away from him.

  A little later he approached me once more, wishing to continue the discussion, but I insisted on believing that he was a Social Democrat. So he finally sighed and agreed with me.

  ‘However,’ he said, ‘if you come to the entertainment given this evening by our local party to the Russian comrades you will see that we are really Communists in Norway.’

  After I had finished lunch, the chief officer approached me and said:

  ‘Foreign engineers having lunch on ship. They say, please bring Irish writer to take coffee and liqueur with us.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ I said.

  He was already drunk and looked rather unpleasant. I went with him to the dining room. There was a large company of foreigners there. They had finished lunch and were nearly all rather the worse for drink. They were engineers, customs officials and managers of factories, with their wives and sisters. At first they regarded me with suspicion. It is the customary attitude of middle class people towards strangers. They are never sure of themselves and therefore they are afraid of strangers. They are afraid of mixing with people beneath themselves in social standing. They are shy of mixing with people who are their social superiors. They are afraid that the former may borrow money from them or put them to shame. The latter might also put them to shame by superior manners and education.

  I found it odd that their gluttony and drunkenness aroused in me feelings that were almost puritanical. Intelligent people alone can afford excess of the appetites. Stupid people become bestial when beyond the control of the strict rules of conduct that give them a veneer of culture. I could not help comparing their coarse delight in the pleasures of the table with the simple abstemiousness of the Russians. They ate and drank immoderately. Their conversation was idiotic. Their manners were barbarous. I had the unpleasant feeling that they were typical of our bourgeoisie, typically European, even though some of them were American. They made me sad. In their company I felt myself becoming a fanatical Bolshevik. I remembered, as I sat with them, how gross all our bourgeois life is, that wretched middle class life which is without grace or vitality or exuberance, where everybody says the same stupid things, plays the same stupid games, wears the same stupid clothes, makes love according to the same stupid formulas, has the same stupid ideas and reads the same stupid books.

  Why is it so? It is not money or position that makes them stupid and gross and objectionable. The ‘oppressed masses’ are equally coarse, gross and stupid. They have the same ideals. They are really of the same class. They move in a mass, act in a mass, think in a mass. It seems that this is so because our civilisation has reached its climax. It is degenerating. Its force is spent. There are no fresh hordes within it to be trained, no fresh human resources to be exploited.

  The Russian mate was the most gross and objectionable person there. He had detached himself from the Bolshevik herd and was trying to curry favour with the foreign herd by being more drunken and more gluttonous. Yet he had a vitality that the others lacked. His barbaric laughter and the brutal candour with which he admired the women compelled attention. He still possessed some of the earth’s electric force. The others had none.

  They went into the lounge to dance. I danced with the sister of a Swedish engineer. She was pretty, quite sober and gently refined in manner. But she was lifeless. There was no energy in her body. She was irrevocably virginal. If she were the mother of ten children she would still remain a virgin. Life born in her womb would be half dead at birth and go through life supine, without vitality. She was obviously incapable of love and fiercely desirous of it, instinctively knowing that she was incapable of it. How different she was from Dunya and from the stewardesses and from the third mate Tatyana! In their eyes I could see the brooding consciousness that their bodies were the vehicles of procreation, the nesting places of human life, the generators of beautiful beings. They were aware of their electric energy and shrank from male contact, as from a flame that would surely ignite their passions. But the Swedish girl clung to me, lax, as a perished cat drapes its body about a fire, shuddering.

  I shuddered at the thought that perhaps all European women were becoming like this Swedish girl, at least all the educated European women, the best types. Woe to Europe! When the women of a community fail to inspire lust in their men the community is doomed. When wine, gluttony and perverse practice are necessary to fan the flames of concupiscence, death is near.

  While the dance was in progress the doctor looked into the room.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We go ashore to Communist house.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is very boring.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘The situation is such. No longer is real amusement possible for the bourgeoisie and for this reason. Real amusement comes first from the consciousness that creative work has been done. Perhaps it is peasant who sows crops or man build house or artist make picture. But bourgeois believe nothing. So he create nothing for outside of himself. He work just so, that he may get drunk and fornicate. He has no social wish. Now we shall perform social act, so to speak, to spread proletarian revolution. Much better.’

  Four boat loads of us went ashore to perform our social act. As our boat left the ship’s side I saw the chief engineer rowing furiously around the ship in a little boat, singing a Cossack song, utterly uninterested in the performance of social acts, dreaming of untamed horses. I also saw the captain standing on his bridge, sombre like a Sphinx, watching his disciples go forth to perform their social act. The chief mate, a sinner, was leaning over the ship�
��s side with the wife of a Swedish engineer, a drunken woman whom he desired.

  We were received at the pier by a deputation from the Communist Party of Odda and conveyed to their headquarters. They had prepared a feast for us, coffee and cakes. It was a typical socialist gathering. There were old men with red ties and awkward bodies, old women who had always been ugly and young people who were insipid and identical. There was an orchestra in an ante room and we were forced to listen to its howling for a considerable time. Then revolutionary songs were sung. I got terribly bored. When they sang the Internationale in Russian and Norwegian simultaneously, I chimed in with ‘The Boys of the Fifth North Lanes.’ Nobody noticed the sacrilege. They resembled two tribes of Salvation Army people having a powwow. In the dining room, twenty-seven speeches were delivered. Afterwards the room was cleared and we had a dance. That was still more desolate. There was an entire absence of spontaneous gaiety. I was glad when the meeting broke up with further singing and ten final speeches.

  When we got aboard the ship, two young sailors came into my cabin for a drink. They drank very rapidly, becoming intoxicated almost immediately. Then they began to tell me about the difficulties of life in Russia, the shortage of clothes, the shortage of food, the danger of breaking the laws in order to procure food and clothing. One of them asked me to give him two English pounds in exchange for roubles on our arrival in Leningrad. I agreed, thinking it was a very ordinary transaction. But he pointed out to me, mostly by gestures and the continual mention of the G.P.U., that it was extremely dangerous for him. He just wanted the English money in order to buy a suit of clothes in London. I could not see the harm in that. But he encircled his throat with his hand and then pointed to the ceiling, suggesting that he would be killed if the G.P.U. found out. So he begged me on his knees to keep his secret. He gave me his address. I tore it up when he had left my cabin.