I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  However, the traveller in Russia, if he is precious about his entertainments, will find considerable delight in this game of tipping untippable Bolsheviks. It is like making a teetotaller drunk.

  The pleasure I found in it at that time vanished as soon as I examined my wallet. It was in a wretched state. Making the crew drunk on board the ship and in Norway had been more expensive than I could afford. I was arriving in Russia practically without resources. I remembered the two peasants in the opening paragraph of Gogol’s Dead Souls. Looking at the wheel of Tchicikoff’s carriage, they wondered how far it would carry him and they were inclined to believe it would not carry him very far. So now I wondered would my funds carry me to Moscow and even if they did, I wondered how on earth I was going to get back.

  As I packed my kit for going ashore, I became inspired with the admirable determination never again to leave my own country. Then we docked. The customs officers came aboard and I became excited and terrified once more. I decided to leave the major portion of my luggage on the ship and travel solely with a small suitcase. So I quickly got through the formalities of inspection. Indeed they were exceedingly polite.

  Yet there were armed men everywhere on the ship, immediately after our arrival. Although they were gentle and polite fellows, who joked with the crew as with brothers, they gave me the impression that I had entered by the gate of an armed camp and was being examined by the sergeant of the guard. I had the curious feeling that I had arrived under escort, that I was part of the loot brought by the ship from Europe.

  Then I went ashore with the doctor.

  Chapter VII

  The Corpse Of Tsarism

  The deserted and ruined appearance of Kronstadt should have prepared me for the greater horror of Leningrad. But in the interval between passing Kronstadt and arriving at Leningrad, the old Irish proverb about far off cows having lpng horns caused a delusion as to the prosperity of the latter city to take possession of me. In the distance it appeared to be as real a city as Liverpool, a great, low-lying mass of smoking chimneys, great docks, shipyards, teeming with life. But as I came nearer this illusion of prosperity vanished. The docks, shipyards and great stretches of shore, covered with enormous piles of timber for export, showed no great signs of human activity. Hardly a hammer resounded. The stray men I saw seemed more concerned with keeping themselves warm by slogging their armpits than by working. Was it their meal hour or their rest hour or were they holding a general meeting of their Soviet or were they just contemplating the Materialistic Conception of History? I cannot answer the question.

  But I can offer an alternative explanation of their inactivity. The weather was so cold and bleak that sensitive people like the Russians found it difficult or even impossible to work. Indeed my first view of the main Russian shore explained to me, in a great measure, the cause of Russian melancholy and of those queer outbursts of apparently senseless activity which have characterised Russian history. It looked so large and unkempt, so infested with the most desolate humours of nature, that wretched man, condemned to labour under such conditions, must perforce resort to the delightful extravagances of insanity. Taken as a whole, from horizon to horizon, the scene was not devoid of beauty. It had the grandeur of immensity. But immensity has a curious and nihilistic effect on the human mind. Gazing at it, feeling it about, the human mind resorts to dreaming. It becomes inspired with mystical ideas and ambitions philosophies, about the universe and its own relation to the universe. But what can man DO with immensity? As soon as he tries to move it or to fashion it according to any of the designs which man’s restless energy contrives to satisfy his genius, he is made aware of his helplessness, confronted with such an enormous mass of material. So he shrugs himself, forgets to wash and becomes melancholy. Then he becomes mischievous and finds pleasure in destruction, in order to revenge himself on immensity.

  This immensity is also, in my opinion, responsible for the Russian worship of the mass; the mass being the human counterpart of the immensity of nature. The Russian likes to work in a mass and to think in a mass. In pursuance of these likes, he has invented mass action and mass consciousness.

  As we travelled up the river, I noticed a number of ships, mostly foreign, moored to the quays. Here there was the same inactivity, the same state of lethargy, due apparently to the reigning conviction that the gross humours of the weather and the immensity of the surrounding earth made labour of a trivial kind impossible. Why unload a ship to bring matter into Russia when there was already such an incredible amount of matter in Russia? Why load a ship with Russian matter for export when there was so much matter in Russia as to make it quite impossible ever to get rid of it? It was obvious (to the contemplating Russians on the quays) that it was necessary to organise masses of human beings, as enormous as the masses of matter to be moved, before the least particle of matter could be touched. Otherwise the theory of mass action would be sinned against. The whole power of all the available human masses must be properly organised and marshalled for mass action before a single individual took off his sheepskin.

  While waiting for this mass action of organised millions, the populations waiting aboard the Russian ships as crews and the populations waiting on the quays as potential dock labourers were exceedingly merry, firm in the conviction that some day the combined masses would burst into activity and move all the matter in Russia to hell or to Europe. Massed on their decks and on their quays, they gave us a mass welcome. They waved kerchiefs, sheepskins and such pieces of metal as they found handy. They uttered cries which I took to be revolutionary slogans. It was very impressive and revolutionary.

  The pier to which our ship was moored was deserted. I was a trifle piqued at not finding a mass of dockers, with hooks at belt, ready to board us. Neither were there any cranes with tremendous teeth, ready to drag the masses of zinc for the Five Year Plan from the bellies of our ship. In fact, I saw nothing on the pier but a solitary soldier. On inspection, this soldier proved more interesting than the greatest possible mass.

  He was standing on the very edge of the pier, looking very melancholy, owing to his being cut off by the exigencies of military routine from the mass of his comrades. Although I examined him for fully twenty minutes, the wretch never moved a muscle during the whole of that period. His weapon lay within his folded arms, just as if it were a baby some shyster truff had given him to hold and then decamped, leaving the fellow with something of which he did not know how to dispose without getting into trouble. By the gloomy aspect of his countenance and the forlorn state of his dress, it was certainly obvious that the possession of his weapon did not inspire him with any sense of military pride. He wore a stocking cap, which had ear flaps and a chin strap and a pinnacle and the Soviet arms on the forehead. His greatcoat was at least six sizes too large for him. An enemy could easily bind him securely with the unnecessary ends of the sleeves, which reached at least a foot beyond the tips of his outstretched fingers. The skirts of the coat touched the ground, giving the impression that he had built a tent about himself, with his head sticking through the roof, like a periscope.

  The fact that he had pitched his tent on the edge of the pier, on the verge of enormous Russia and that he was looking into the sea gloomily, convinced me that if his greatcoat were a balloon instead of being a tent and the wind favourable, he would float off at once, fondling his weapon, to the conquest of Europe, without waiting for the mass of his comrades. For he DID look tired of enormous Russia.

  As I watched, I pondered on the possible military use of this individual. I could find none. His overcoat made movement practically impossible. The sheer stupidity depicted in his countenance made it impossible for me to believe that he knew how to use his weapon should he be attacked. Indeed, had somebody tried to persuade me that the man was a comic monument, wrought in the new grotesque style of Soviet sculpture, as a satire on Standing armies, he would have had no difficulty in persuading me.

  Carrying my suitcase and my typewriter and accompanied by th
e doctor, I landed on the pier and set out for the city on foot. The doctor had invited me to meet his family before going to an hotel.

  The docks were enormous. There were hardly any human beings about, but we had to make wide detours in order to avoid long trains that lay everywhere, ready to shift masses of matter sometime, somewhere. God only knows when or where. Wandering over this enormous and empty place, over ground that was as uneven and battered as the battlefields of France during the world war, a horrible melancholy took possession of me, such melancholy as I have not experienced since I read Dostoievsky’s House of The Dead. But the doctor’s enthusiasm was proof against any form of melancholy. He waved the parcels in which he carried his shore rations and cried:

  ‘Very big. Powerful. Gigantic.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s certainly gigantic but nobody seems to be working.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  He halted for a few moments, looked about him, shook his head, frowned and then smiled in his usual ecstatic manner, when contemplating the progress of the Soviet Union, with special emphasis on the Five Year Plan.

  ‘At present,’ he said, ‘the situation is such. The activity is underground. At the end of Five Year Plan it shall be overground. Let us go.’

  A little farther on we halted to take a rest. The doctor enlarged on his idea of underground and overground activity in relation to the docks.

  ‘In bourgeois countries,’ he said, ‘the situation is such. Very much dock activity contributes nothing to positive social results. Indeed very much negative social results. For example, potatoes are brought to England from France and then same potatoes are brought to Argentine from England and then to Cape Town and back again to Marseilles where the French put them in their soup. Here there is no such activity with potatoes or other commodities. There is only such movement of commodities as is socially necessary. Potatoes are moved to nearest stomachs. So for present, instead of making socially unnecessary movements of socially necessary commodities, we concentrate on Five Year Plan and afterwards we export large masses of commodities by means of this dock.’

  ‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘as a special favour, what IS the Five Year Plan?’

  ‘For building up industries of Soviet Union.’

  I thought of suggesting that while the dockers were waiting to move the masses of commodities to be produced by the Five Year Plan they might amuse themselves by repairing the docks, but I refrained on realising that the suggestion might be indelicate.

  Having undergone another customs’ examination at the dock gates, we debouched into the city. Then indeed I fell into a fever of excitement. Everybody has read accounts of the Paris mobs that thronged the streets after the French Revolution, with red bonnets and without trousers (or at least poorly trousered), but it is impossible to realise the redness of these mobs without seeing a similar mob in Russia in the full flush of red bonnetry and untrouseredness. When I saw the revolutionary hordes of men, women and children moving excitedly back and forth in the streets that lay beyond the waste place surrounding the dock gates, I very nearly went into an ecstasy.

  And the dramatic instincts of the Russian people had provided a striking contrast to the excited mob in order to intensify their revolutionary excitedness. For a great number of sleeping cab horses and sleeping cab drivers lay between me and the mob, relics of the old, pre-revolutionary regime, somnolent, decadent, in opposition to the fervent enthusiasm of the beings of the new era.

  For the first few moments I did not notice the cabmen. I wanted to embrace the red-capped women and thank them for their courtesy, since they had stuck to the outer show of revolution for thirteen years after the outbreak of revolution, presumably for my benefit. Then, when the first stage of my ecstasy passed, I took notice of the cabmen.

  Astonishing! They were the famous Ish.. v.. xz .. ki (utterly impossible to spell) that figure in books written by foreigners about Russia. Their cabs resembled slightly the chair carriage of the eighteenth century. They were incredibly dirty and old. The harness was of crude design, the most amazing part of it being a huge yoke that towered above the horse’s head. The horses were equally disreputable, shaggy nags, not far from death. The drivers were more odd than anything the most imaginative child could dream of seeing in the zoological gardens, which Uncle James said he had seen in Bangkok. Both the horses and the drivers were in that state which is neither sleep nor wake, but a kind of idle trance from which a sudden shout or a flea bite might send them flying at furious speed, lashing, prancing, neighing, cursing.

  ‘Hurrah!’ I cried to the doctor. ‘This is marvellous. This is a scene which an American film producer might buy lock, stock and barrel as a studio. I refuse to move from here except in one of those cabs.’

  But the man was impossible.

  ‘Please understand,’ he said. ‘The situation is such. These cabs are relics of Tsarism. It is our proletarian duty to liquidate them. We shall use instead taxis of a modern plan. These drivers are all counter-revolutionaries. They are drunkards and immoral. They charge very great prices. It is impossible for any friend of Soviet Russia to encourage them by being carried to any destination in such a manner. Instead, we shall go in a tramway, which is a scientific method of movement, commonly used by the proletariat.’

  Thereupon he urged me forward and I followed him, half dazed, gaping. In spite of the crowds, there was an atmosphere of utter misery all round. The houses, the streets, the stray vehicles that passed, the human beings, all had the same air of poverty, hunger and desolation. I looked around and smelt, fancying that there must be decaying corpses in the streets. I listened, fancying that I must surely hear the wailing of ghosts.

  Death! Death! Death! Or a state midway between life and death, as when a maimed animal waits with sad eyes for delivery from his torture.

  What silence! Nobody smiled. Nobody laughed or cried out or made a joyous gesture. Each face wore a pinched expression, caused by fear, hunger and nervous exhaustion. It was exciting, yet it rent the heart and caused a desire for instant flight. Now I understood why the melancholy soldier stood enveloped in his greatcoat, as within a tent, on the verge of Russia, ready to fly into Europe. Now I understood why these Russian hordes were massing for the conquest of Europe. In order to escape the desolation of their own country. Under the strain of life in that city I felt that I should go mad, contemplating the corpse of something that had once been beautiful.

  ‘You like it?’ said the doctor in an enthusiastic though rather nervous voice.

  ‘I think it is the most wonderful sight I have ever seen,’ I answered with Jesuitical candour.

  Our tramcar arrived. We dashed into the road from the pavement with the intention of getting aboard. Unfortunately, the greater part of a multitude dashed into the roadway at the same time. I found myself wedged among a crowd of people that smelt. They all tried to board the car at the same time, shouting what were very probably curses. Some got on board by plunging prone on to the platform, whence they were dragged by their friends or pushed by their rivals into the body of the vehicle. But the main body remained hanging on to the doorway, when the car, full to bursting point, continued its journey. Utterly exhausted, with my overcoat about my neck, I returned to the pavement. Again I suggested to the doctor that we should take a cab. But he remained adamant.

  Another car came along. This time the doctor and myself got away smartly and reached the door of the tram well up with the leaders. Then, going all out, we managed to get on board, just as the conductor was pushing off the less lucky ones. The car moved on. I sighed with relief and prepared to stay where I was until I recovered breath. But no such respite was allowed me. A violent female citizen, wearing a red bonnet and a uniform that resembled that of a London policewoman, demanded our fares with small ceremony. I had no Russian money. The doctor had to perform acrobatic tricks with his body in order to get at his pocket,
tricks similar to those performed by actors who pass doubled up through a barrel or stick a head, an arm and a leg through a hoop. While he was doing so, he received several upper cuts and hooks to the ribs from others who were performing similar tricks.

  ‘This is what he calls scientific travel,’ I thought maliciously.

  Then I myself received a straight left to the jaw and as I turned around to retaliate, an enormous woman fell prone upon me, so that I was nearly smothered and had to give up all idea of defending myself. While I lay thus the tram came to a halt. Another mob attacked it, for the purpose of getting some scientific travel on it.

  ‘Move up,’ cried the doctor.

  Had I any breath I would have told him what I thought of scientific travel, the Five Year Plan and the whole of his blasted country. But I was overwhelmed by the immensity of Russian womanhood which lay heavily on me and I could not speak.

  Everything is organised in Russia except common sense. The rule on Soviet tram cars is that passengers must enter at the conductor’s end and emerge at the driver’s end. In theory that saves time. In practice it wastes time, together with subjecting the passengers to excruciating tortures under present conditions. The trams being overcrowded, the passages are blocked and many-passengers are forced to travel miles beyond their destination, owing to their being unable to descend. So to speak, it is generally necessary for a passenger, once he gets aboard, to begin to descend, by hacking his way through the press of human beings in the vehicle.

  The doctor and myself began to hack our way. Those directly in front of us, being in the vehicle and not wishing to descend for some time, were unwilling to budge. Indeed, they could not move if they tried. Yet we had to move, as a multitude pressed us from behind.

  ‘Preastiti,’ cried the doctor.