I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  They began to speak at the same time, Messrs. Shatov and Kotpov, explaining that all could travel in the first class carriage if they wanted to do so.

  ‘But the point is,’ I said, ‘that they don’t do so, either because they can’t afford to do so, or because they would not feel at home, being used to certain conditions. In that manner I see that the possession of portfolios gives a certain class of Soviet citizens privileges and ambitions not enjoyed by the mass. That is the beginning of a . .

  But Shatov jumped to his feet and began to become offensive. He was calmed by Kotpov and induced to leave the compartment. Kotpov himself was none too friendly. We went to bed hardly on speaking terms. That did not worry me, for I had made a wonderful discovery, of a new class hitherto unknown (or at least uncatalogued) in human society, the Bearers of Portfolios.

  I admit that portfolios are carried in Western Europe, especially in France, by different classes of human beings, who do not become socially distinct by the act of carrying portfolios. But here in Russia, it seemed that the carriage of portfolios definitely meant that the bearer was a government official of some sort of other, a member of the superior class.

  As I lay on my bed, I meditated with morose satisfaction on the ingenuity of man, who is such a bitter enemy of equality that he is prepared to descend to the lowest depths and to the most base forms of cunning in order to establish class distinctions. So that here in Russia, where the greatest experiment in social equality ever made by man is in full force, the more intelligent of the citizens have chosen the portfolio as the heraldic sign of nobility. The possession of money would but bring the possessor under the suspicion of the secret police. The possession of a title of nobility would mean imprisonment, death or dishonour. Eminence in literature, science, art, or politics necessitates the cultivation of an exaggerated humility, in order to escape the jealousy of the mass, which is the custodian of the theory of equality. But even an equalitarian mass must have some form of government and government is always administered by a body of officials. So this body of officials, the civil service, chose an innocent-looking black satchel as the emblem of its aristocratic state.

  Then I realised that this satchel was strange and ridiculous merely because it was new. As a coat of arms it was no more ridiculous than a pair of lions rampant, or an eagle with outstretched wings, or a sword held by a mailed fist, or any of the other heraldic emblems of nobility. ‘Lord of the Satchel.’ In what way was that title more ridiculous than many titles current among us, for instance ‘the keeper of the match-box?’

  Indeed I was pleased by the existence of this new Communist aristocracy and by the degree of information and culture manifested by the aristocrats I had met. For I hate vacuum and monotony. A country where everybody is equal means that everybody is forced to be as barbarous and un-mannered as the most brutal. Whereas there is always hope for a group of human beings who set a standard of superiority for themselves.

  I also, as I lay in bed thinking, began to understand the structure of the new Russia, that society which I felt convinced was destined to conquer Europe and the world. I already knew of the position occupied in that country by the Communist Party and its feeder organisations, the Young Communists and the infant Pioneers. These organisations, so to speak, would be the Church of the new society, the Keepers of the Word, a Hierarchy entrusted with the definition of social morality and that spiritual ambition, which in former and less enlightened societies was given the name of religion. But the real power would lie with the Bearers of Portfolios, those worldly officials who pull the strings of government, the Keepers of the National Ledgers and Tasters of the National Luxuries. At one moment or another they might be subsidiary to the soldiers, the Keepers of the Sword, but inevitably soldiers get weary of war and disintegrate, whereas officials never get tired of their ledgers or portfolios.

  Russia, then, would definitely set a new fashion in government, not the vulgar conception of the Western European bourgeoisie of a country run by untrousered Bolsheviks, bearded, lousy and paidophagic; but an extraordinary human society run by civil servants, under the aegis of the Portfolio, that contraption which, among us, is associated at times with bohemianism, when used by artists to carry their drawing sheets.

  The only danger I foresaw, as I lay in bed thinking, was that the Bearers of Portfolios might allow themselves to be governed too long by the Keepers of the Word or of the Sword, as happened in Turkey, during the height of the Sublime Porte’s empire. I mean that in Turkey the Civil Service was looked upon as an inferior profession, which was fit only for Greeks and other Christians. But Russia’s ancient respect for officialdom did not point towards a similar error on the part of the Bolsheviks.

  ‘That is all to the good,’ I thought as I fell asleep. I have a high regard for the honesty and efficiency of Civil Servants. Now I feel more secure and resigned to the destruction of Europe. For, mark you, when they conquer London, these Bearers of Portfolios won’t omit to take note of the titles of my books in the British Museum. Civil Servants catalogue everything.’

  When I awoke, the first thing I thought of was the fact that I had only eight roubles in my pocket. I looked at Mr. Kotpov. He was already washed and shaved and busy powdering his face. He seemed to have lost all memory of the unpleasantness of the previous night.

  ‘Desolate country/ he said, pointing towards the window.

  I looked out. It was certainly desolate, my first view of the Russian countryside, bleak, dreary, monotonous, flat, savage, marshy.

  It is strange how alien the earth looks a long distance from one’s native country. It does not smell. One feels hostile to it, jealous of acknowledging its beauty.

  We were approaching the outskirts of Moscow. Instead of thatched villages, we were passing rather ornate wooden houses. They looked weather-beaten.

  ‘Are these buildings post-revolutionary?’ I asked my companion.

  He yawned. He was rather bored in the morning. He had become a typical Civil Servant, rather dull and tired.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They are pre-war. Now they are mostly used by city workers who live in the country to get away from the noise.’

  ‘So there is noise in Moscow,’ I said. ‘That’s rather cheerful.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There was no noise in Leningrad.’

  ‘Ah! Of course,’ said Mr. Kotpov. ‘A foreigner would find Leningrad rather passe and provincial. Indeed, I’m afraid it has no future. It is like Odessa and other towns important under the old regime. Out of date, of no special value for our new requirements. The tendency in a highly organised and efficient modern industrial state is for the important cities to spring up about the centres of industrial raw material. For that reason, Baku, Stalingrad and Rostov are growing at terrific speed, while Leningrad is moribund, or merely active because of the presence therein of a highly conscious proletariat, a legacy from the old regime. Our mineral wealth and the chief areas of our agricultural wealth are in the south. So Russia turns towards the south.’

  ‘Ha!’ I cried. I thought so. Through India, Persia, Bessarabia.’

  ‘Eh?’ he said.

  ‘What of Moscow?’ I countered.

  Mr. Kotpov smiled.

  ‘Moscow is the centre of government,’ he said. It has immense traditional interest for our peasants. It is worth preserving for that reason although it will cost a great deal to regularise it, to turn it, for instance, into a pattern city like Buenos Ayres.’

  ‘You mean to say that the government definitely stays in Moscow in order to show the peasants that there is no difference between the Bolshevik government and the traditional Russian governments of the Tsars, the Little Fathers?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mr. Kotpov, as he began to pare his nails. It is something quite sociological that I had in mind.’

  He yawned and said a little later:

  ‘The week-end habit is growing among us as in England. Everybody tries to have a cottage in the country. You’ll find hard
ly any peasant life in the neighbourhood of Moscow. The city is stretching. But unfortunately there is a great lack of tennis and golf clubs in the country. We are too centralised at present. One has to go into the city for all one’s amusements. It is tragic’

  ‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘His type is already perfectly standardised. He says “everybody tries to have a cottage in the country” with the same air that an English middle class person would say that “everybody is out of town in August.” There is no hope for the proletariat. Plus ga change, plus c’est la mime chose.’

  Just for fun I asked Mr. Kotpov what he thought of the possibility of a world revolution. He seemed to have lost all interest overnight in the Indian question and in the attitude of Irish intellectuals towards the Russian treatment of national minorities.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with a sigh of boredom. ‘The world crisis is becoming more acute abroad. However, our internal situation is so interesting at present, what with the Five Year Plan, especially the collectivisation of the peasants, that one has little time to speculate idly about foreign affairs.’

  Woe to the proletariat of Battersea and Alexandrplatz. I tried Mr. Kotpov on every conceivable subject, in the hope of getting some slight message of encouragement to bring back to my friends in Battersea and Ringsend, but I might as well have tried a Civil Servant in Whitehall for all the signs of revolutionary fervour I discovered in Mr. Kotpov. On the other hand, his manners were perfect, his information considerable and his general culture infinitely superior to that of his English replicas, who set off for London every morning from Coulsdon and other places, with copies of the Times.

  ‘Moscow!’ cried Mr. Kotpov suddenly, jumping to his feet and seizing his portfolio.

  ‘Good God!’ I cried. ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Mr. Kotpov.

  I mean to say that I have not prepared my mind to receive the proper impression of arrival in Moscow.’

  ‘Hm!’ said Mr. Kotpov, looking at me in a disdainful fashion.

  I could see that he had by now come to the conclusion that I was a disreputable character, one whose acquaintance it was not desirable to cultivate. I felt that he disapproved of my dress, my manners, my language and my general attitude towards life; that he was convinced I had not been to a proper school and that my relatives were under a cloud. Indeed, when he bowed coldly and took his portfolio and his suitcase out into the corridor among his friends and equals, I felt that I was arriving in Moscow as a proletarian and that I had no hope of being received in portfolio drawingrooms.

  ‘There you are, you fool,’ I said to myself. ‘You have come all this way for nothing. For you have arrived in Moscow without seeing that wonderful effect of golden domes in sunlight which all writers rave about on approaching this wonderful city. You besotted fellow, your eyes can only see the ruins of locomotives and goods waggons, three bearded peasants sitting on a ruined truck, two goats trying to eat a tin canister and a rich growth of grass between railway tracks. Nobody will ever believe that this is Moscow. A golden dome! My kingdom for a golden dome.’

  But I’m blowed if I could see anything more than I have related. It was less impressive than arriving at Mullingar or Wolverhampton.

  Chapter XI

  I Promise To Make War

  In Leningrad I had been advised that the Grand Hotel at Moscow was the best place for me to stay, so I set forth from the station to look for it. There were a number of cabs, but the doctor had terrified me to such an extent that I was loath to celebrate my arrival in Moscow by the counter-revolutionary conduct of riding in one. In any case, I was shrewdly aware that I had only eight roubles and it might cost that and more to go as far as the hotel in a cab. So I boarded the first tram I saw and told the conductor where I wanted to go. He put me down in a large square some distance away.

  ‘Grand Hotel?’ I asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders and the tram moved off. I walked over to the pavement, put down my suitcase, sighed and looked about me.

  ‘Certainly,’ I thought, ‘this city looks exciting. If Leningrad looked like a tomb, this looks like a bee-hive in a state of violent excitement. What crowds! What extraordinary buildings! What bizarre costumes! The very air is odd and charged with a form of neurasthenia which makes one forget everything, except the necessity to do something violent! Bo! Bo! How happy one could be here if one had a million roubles in one’s pocket and one knew the language. But I have only eight roubles and I don’t know the language. I have no friends. I don’t know why I’m here. What am I to do?’

  After some thought, I remembered that I had letters of introduction to various people, English and Russian, but a curious form of shyness which I have never been able to conquer prevents me from presenting a letter of introduction in order to make an acquaintance, especially under the peculiar circumstances in which I found myself. On the other hand, no writer suffers from feelings of delicacy about his publishers. I decided to throw myself on the protection of my publishers, after first getting rid of my suitcase, which bothered me.

  ‘That is the cause of my melancholy,’ I thought, ‘this suitcase. The possession of baggage is always responsible for the irritation felt by travellers. I shall get a room and leave my baggage there. I might even get a meal.’

  By continual questioning I reached the Grand Hotel. At the desk, an official looked at me and said in perfect English:

  ‘You want a room? Have you booked? I’m afraid, sir, it’s utterly impossible. Every room in Moscow is taken at this moment. You should have made arrangements beforehand at this time of the year.’

  ‘Well! Could I at least find a corner in your cloak room for my kit?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ he said.

  Having got rid of my suitcase and my overcoat I sallied forth to look for my publishers. I was so glad to get rid of my suitcase that I forgot to ask the official for the address of my publishers and I was gone a long way before I realised that I did not know the address. By that time I could not find my way back to the hotel. I was completely lost.

  ‘Never mind,’ I thought. ‘This is fun. Let’s see whether I can find the place without knowing the language.’

  I asked twenty-seven citizens without success. Then I wandered into a bookshop, where I found behind a counter a young man who spoke English. But it was difficult to get him to give me the information I desired. He asked me my nationality and then began to question me about the political situation in Ireland, about Irish revolutionaries whom he had met in Moscow and about the attitude of the Irish proletariat to the Five Year Plan. He shook hands with me five times, invited me to come to the theatre with him and treated me with a great deal of affectionate courtesy, even holding forth for ten minutes on the history of his life, describing in great detail the suffering of his family on arrival as immigrants in the United States of America, the corruption of officials in the American Federation of Labour, the possibility of organising Russian industry without the assistance of foreign capital, through the agency of skilled American workers of revolutionary integrity, detailing his conception of world civilisation one hundred years after the final disappearance of classes, and hinting that he had a scheme for the overthrow of world capitalism through the development of a certain branch of science, which at the moment was considered inopportune by the comrades with whom he had discussed the idea.

  There were now some ten citizens waiting to be served at his counter, but that did not prevent the young man from spending a further twenty-five minutes in an excited fashion telling me about his conception of the ‘social basis’ of literature. Trembling, I began to chew a slip of paper which I found on the counter and listened to an extraordinary theory that world literature from the earliest times has been inspired by the revolt of the masses against exploitation. While my new acquaintance was explaining to me that the philosophic idea in Hamlet was typical of the demoralizes sation of Western European intellectuals, principally in their attitude towards the re-organisation of the fam
ily, I became absorbed in the examination of the theory of insanity. Was I insane or was he insane? Was my chewing a slip of paper caused by my hunger or by the weakening of my senses, so that I was no longer able to establish the difference between nourishing food and paper? Did I really want to get to my publishers? Was I in Moscow or in London?

  However, he finally wrote down the required address on a slip of paper and was handing it to me, when he suddenly swore and said that he was doubtful if that was the address I required. But I grabbed it from him, shook his hand with violence and dashed from the shop. I showed it to three policemen whom I met as I hurried along. It made no impression on them. I was at last on the point of giving up the effort to find the place when I heard two men in front of me talking English. I seized one of them by the shoulder and begged him to help me. He was an American engineer and the man with him was his Russian guide.

  The American pointed to his guide and said to me:

  ‘Get hold of one of these birds and stick to him, otherwise you’re lost in this town. And say, when you have time come around and have a drink with me. Give this bird the address. Now lead on, Russky, at full speed to that address. Say, this bird knows the town. I don’t know how he does it, but he can get around. I’ve been here a month, but I can hardly find my room at the hotel. Whoever made this town must have been in the rats, it’s all so mixed up I can’t see the difference between one street and another. And as for finding the number of any particular house in a street, it’s certainly impossible. Say, look. He’s got it already. The man is a wonder. What did I tell you? Well! See you later.’

  Leaving me in front of a building, the American and his guide dashed off in a hurry that is typical of Moscow. I entered, walked up a stairway and interrogated a man whom I met on a landing. He shook his head after I had spoken for some ten minutes. Then he tried to escape, but I seized him by the arm and held him. He shook his head once more and brought me into a large room, where a number of people were seated at desks. A middle-aged lady came over and asked me what I wanted in French, which language she spoke almost as badly as myself. But as soon as I saw her I felt at home and much happier than I had done since my arrival in Russia.