I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  ‘How?’ I said.

  It is a Russian method,’ he said, but refused to disclose the method.

  From other sources, I learned this method, which is an ingenious one. It was the case of a writer called Boris Pilniak which disclosed the method. Pilniak was an efficient and popular writer who prospered exceedingly. He bought himself a house and stocked it with choice furniture, which he found in the antique shops of Moscow. He took holidays abroad where he lived comfortably on his foreign royalties, as his books were also popular in central Europe. He brought from abroad choice raiment and other amenities, which his Soviet brothers were unable to procure. In a word, Comrade Pilniak began to lead a life which resembled remarkably that of a rich bourgeois writer in England, America or France. He thus aroused the jealousy of his brother writers and of the government, who were forced by law to starve on three hundred roubles a month. Becoming conceited by too much prosperity, he wrote a novel which was a trifle too daring. The government officials, seeing their chance of putting him in his proper place, refused to publish the manuscript in Russia, but allowed it to be exported to Germany, where it was received with enthusiasm by the Russian counter-revolutionary groups and published broadcast in serial form in their newspapers. These newspapers being imported into Russia were used by the government as a proof that Pilniak was a counter-revolutionary in tendency. The man was disgraced. His popularity disappeared and he is again a struggling Soviet writer.

  ‘Tell me,’ said comrade Levit suddenly, ‘the exact meaning of the word piobrach and whether it is an Irish or a Scotch word?’

  It means piping,’ I said, ‘from piob, meaning pipe, a musical instrument popular among the Irish Gaels. It is an Irish word and not a Scotch word, as there is no such thing as a Scotch word properly speaking, except such local corruptions of the Irish and English languages as have come to be regarded as a Scottish dialect. Northern Scotland was conquered and colonised by the Irish Gaels and given the Irish language. The difference between Irish and Scotch is merely the difference between proper English, as spoken in England and American English, as spoken by Americans. Even though the difference between proper English and American is large, it is not yet sufficiently great to allow the Americans the honour of having created a new language. And in any case, English must always remain the property of the English. It could never become the property of the Americans. Neither could Irish become the property of the Scotch.’

  I shall take that down,’ said comrade Levit, excitedly. It is an extremely important statement. For the situation is such. I am now engaged in a violent struggle with another comrade, a great scoundrel, who also specialises in English literature. He is such a man. A great fool. He makes such mistakes. He claims that Peacock was a greater novelist than Defoe. This I will admit. Peacock is greater than the Defoe of Robinson Crusoe. But the Defoe of Moll Flanders is a writer of monstrous size, while Peacock is only, so to speak, entertaining and on a level with such men as Meredith. And he also makes such mistakes. He translates the name Gertrude Atherton into Russian as if the a in Atherton were pronounced short as in bad, instead of long as in the exclamation eh. It is a foolish error and shows great ignorance. I shall at once write an article on the word piobrach.’

  During the remainder of the evening, I was unable to get as much information from him about Russian intellectuals and their position in the new society as I wished, for I had unfortunately stirred into activity the chief enthusiasm of his life. But he amazed me by his knowledge of books, writers, and in fact of everything to be found in museums, libraries, art galleries all over the world. Although he had never set foot in England, indeed he had never left Russia, he knew the British Museum almost as well as Richard GarneIt must have known its library. The most obscure English writers were familiar to him. At one moment he discoursed on the origin of the Limerick. At the next he became enthusiastic over the researches of Dr. McNeill into ancient Irish sagas. Now and again, he pulled himself together and tried to relate his enthusiasm for scholarship to the Five Year Plan and the industrialisation of the Soviet Union, but he soon relapsed.

  It is terrible,’ he cried once, waving his arms in despair, ‘the housing crisis. Now I can hardly enter my room because of my books and it is impossible to get a second room. Because of my books I have to lead the life of a bachelor, being married only one night every week. At first I was a married man, but three wives, one after the other, all refused to share my love for these invaluable possessions, which are books. Therefore, I now am a bachelor except one night every week, I marry in order to liquidate these congestions of the human body.’

  In the intervals of discoursing on his pet subjects, he showed me the Press Club and later The House of Hertzen, which has been given by the government to writers as a club. This is the house that figured in War and Peace, as the home of Count Rostov. It was, in fact, the residence of a Polish nobleman, living in Russia, and the man’s coat-of-arms still stands over the door. It has been largely rebuilt, but the exterior still remains exactly what it was in Tolstoy’s time, with the difference that the stables are in ruins and the great courtyard in a state of great disorder. I was also amused to see the old stairway. It would be impossible to find as mean a staircase in a London tenement house. I could only come to the conclusion, from looking at it and mounting it, that the Russian aristocracy in the nineteenth century was much more primitive than Russian writers cared to admit.

  But the present proprietors of the house struck me as even more peculiar in their habits and ideas than the most insane Russian aristocrats of the old regime. There are in England and America (especially in the latter country) ridiculous institutions for the manufacture of writers, schools of journalism and courses in dramatic art and such things. But even the wildest insanities born of the American love of mass production and of standardisation could not equal the Russian insanity as explained to me proudly by comrade Levit.

  As we went from one room to another, he explained the purpose of each room in a few words, interrupting for a moment his more important remarks on Western European culture.

  ‘This room,’ he would say, ‘is such a place. Here there is always silence or only whispers. You see it is arranged in such a way. It is large. The colours sombre. The woodwork is smooth and not adorned. All is straight lines and there are no curves, which leads to romanticism and mysticism. Straight lines produce realism. Through the windows may be seen various tall buildings, also in straight lines, factories and such useful social structures, to give the impression of social creative energy. Indeed from this room one may see many buildings of the Five Year Plan. Therefore in this room writing is done by young writers who are learning to write. Older writers who are already qualified as Soviet writers give them assistance and instruction in the proper social attitude and the art of writing. The situation is such. At present there are no writers at work, because this is the scheduled time for social recreation. In another room I shall show you this.’

  In another room he showed me a large chart on the wall and explained its meaning. There were statistics of the number of writers in the Soviet Union, divided into males and females and further divided into various categories, poets, novelists, dramatists and journalists. But a much more interesting item was the schedule for the daily-routine of a writer at work. The writer must arise at seven-thirty. He must spend twenty-five minutes at physical exercises. Then he must meditate for half an hour on his work for the day. Then he has breakfast, which takes half an hour. Then he lounges for an hour over a cigarette or two, making further reflections. Then he works for two hours. Then he walks or takes some other exercise for an hour. Afterwards there were three hours spent in conversation, a further three hours spent in working and some time for social duties. I cannot remember the whole routine correctly, but it aroused horror in me.

  ‘This,’ cried comrade Levit, cis part of the scheme for the liquidation of anarchy in literary production. It is a war on bohemianism and individualism. The situation is such wi
thin the Soviet Union and it is much better than in Western Europe. When one thinks how such a great writer as Baudelaire was ruined by the lack of such discipline it is sad.’

  ‘But is it a success?’ I asked. ‘Do all writers submit to this discipline?’

  He paused for a moment and then said:

  I hope so. Indeed I hope so. But the situation is such. Our generation is still infected with the poison of our bourgeois upbringing. The next generation shall be organised in such a manner. Then individualism shall finally disappear.’

  ‘But where did this idea come from? Did it originate with the writers themselves or did the government impose it on the writers?’

  ‘Comrade,’ he cried, ‘please understand that such a situation cannot exist that the government interferes with the freedom of writers. The writers themselves govern this building and all it contains through the Federation of Writers, which is a trade union and a member of the Russian Federation of Trade Unions, like all other worker organisations. Of course, members of the Party are on the committee, but then members of the Party are on all such committees.’

  ‘Well then,’ I said, ‘how do you explain the suicide of Mayakovsky, if such discipline exists?’

  ‘We shall go,’ he said suddenly. ‘That is a question which must be discussed to-morrow. I shall think of it. Because the suicide of Mayakovsky is a serious question which I have not for myself analysed. Indeed, as I mentioned Baudelaire just now, so also is the case of Mayakovsky something which it is difficult to analyse. The situation is such. Poetry, like romantic love, is a strange disease and perhaps it is a form of insanity which cannot be organised. But in any case, we shall discuss it to-morrow, while on our way to the police office about your passport. At this moment, I should prefer to have your view as to the effect of the rise of the proletariat in England on the poetry of Shelley. Here in Russia, at this moment, we are attempting a scientific examination of world literature, with special emphasis on the role played by social movements in creating the genius of writers. I myself have written a thesis on Defoe in that relation. Now the case of Shelley is beginning to arouse my interest.’

  Finally, he left me at one o’clock in the morning and I got into bed, where I fell asleep at once.

  Chapter XIII

  I Think things Over

  There was hardly any night. And although I was very tired as the result of my long voyage and the exciting events of the day, a few hours sleep seemed to be sufficient for my body. For I awoke fresh at about four o’clock in the morning. It was broad daylight. I went to the window and looked out. The dawn was wonderful and strange, because of the city that lay before me, gleaming in the morning light, with its golden domes all shimmering. The hotel was on a height and my room was on the sixth floor, so that I could see that quarter of the city right to the very outskirts and into the flat country that lay beyond. When I leaned out and turned to the right, I could see the walls of the Kremlin and leaning a little farther I could see the Tsar’s golden eagle gleaming at the very highest point of the Kremlin buildings, surrounded by the red flags of Communism.

  By virtue of its own beauty, Moscow was a magnificent sight in the dawnlight, with the sun fresh upon it. But the mind added fresh interest, by the consciousness of all the mystery and all the violent passion that lay concealed beneath those golden domes and especially within that Kremlin, where the red flags and the golden eagle stood side by side, the eagle surrounded by red flags, as by an army that had captured and caged it. And I peered at it around the corner of a window, from a height, like a scout from that Europe which, I felt sure, this mysterious power was going to destroy.

  So I stood, looking out the window, brooding. Then the events of the previous day came to my mind, in a hurricane of confused impressions, in which I could find no meaning. They knew nothing, those individuals whom I had met. They knew nothing at least of the inner significance of this stupendous drama in which they were taking part; being merely camp sweepers in this great headquarters of the world revolution; or, if one would prefer to call it, this head-quarters of the most ambitious attempt at world conquest ever dreamed by man. Nay! Even those people within the Kremlin, that mass of buildings on a height, surrounded by hoary walls, with its golden eagle and its red flags and its glittering domes, truly like a city from the Bible, even they did not probably understand whither they went, or the purpose of their furious planning, working within that fortress day and night without rest. Rather were they like people under the power of a lasting drug; and that drug the blood-lust, the lust of conquest of a vast horde that came singing, shouting, dancing, moaning from the steppes, driving their leaders before them, to some goal, of which no one, neither leaders nor followers, had any definite idea. Again I heard the wailing noise of myriads as I had heard on board the ship, when the choir of children were singing at Leningrad and their voices were carried out over the sea by the electric waves.

  In this strange silence of the dawn this impression assumed the qualities of magic, as of the mental state which is caused by presence in an old ruined fortress dating from unknown times, or by the ruins of an ancient city peeping through the tangled growth of forests that have sprung up among the ruins. I grew afraid and thought of the strange faces I had seen in the hotel on the previous evening, Chinese and Kurds and Tatars and Siberians from the far East, strange flat faces with dark skins and slanting eyes and hooked noses and curious ears, all utterly alien, all cut off by an immense barrier from my own consciousness. Such must have been the Mongolian hordes that swept down upon Europe with the fall of Rome.

  Now the northern Russians whom I had seen in Leningrad were like blood brothers compared to these people whom I sensed about me. And yet Moscow was but the outpost of the East. All the great breeding grounds lay beyond to the East.

  It is impossible to reproduce in words the strange effect produced in me by this sight, Moscow in the silence of dawn, in the fresh sunlight, with its shimmering golden domes and the Kremlin, where the golden eagle of the Tsars shone proudly within the circle of red flags.

  Then I stole quietly down the stairs and into the hall where the night porter stared at me in silence, a dark-faced man who stood with folded arms, his sallow face golden in the morning light. I went out into the street. How fresh and pure the air was! I just wandered away, heedless of where I was going, up a narrow street which was cobbled and had no pavement, where there were heaps of earth and large slabs of cut granite leaning against the house walls. I moved into another street and suddenly came across a soldier, who had a rifle slung across his shoulder. He stared at me with curiosity as I went past. Wondering why he stared at me in such a manner, I heard the rattle of typewriters in a large building that occupied all one side of the street. I looked up. It was the headquarters of the Russian Communist Party. At that hour of the morning, these people were working at full speed and the armed soldier stood guard outside lest anybody might peer too closely to find out the nature of the work. I hurried away instinctively and suddenly found myself in the Red Square in front of the Kremlin. There Lenin’s Mausoleum was surrounded by a great wooden barricade and a little farther on I saw the gate of the Kremlin fortress, guarded by a soldier who slouched with his weapon in his arms, exactly like the man I had seen on the pier at Leningrad. But suddenly I saw three giant officers cross the square towards the Kremlin gate. One must have been seven feet in height and the smallest was at least six feet and a half. They wore black top boots and their swords clung close to their sides, held by their left hands. They took little short steps, hardly moving their hips or their shoulders and their heads were like the heads of Prussian officers and their faces were bronzed almost dark brown. Their immense size, their curious gait and the clanking of their spurs excited me and when they passed, as stiff as iron posts, by the sentry, who barely moved to salute them, in through the gate into the Kremlin fortress, I started as if I had seen something which it might be dangerous for me to have seen.

  ‘Good God!’ I though
t, as I hurried past the Red Square, as far from the gate of the fortress as possible. ‘Suppose one of these giants had seen me and picked me up on the tip of his sword. Oh! My poor butlers and effeminate dandies of Western Europe! What ARE they to do when these giants pounce on them?’

  I reached the Moscow river and stood on a bridge and looked up at the towers and churches of the Kremlin.

  ‘Odd!’ I thought. Very odd, indeed, that this structure should become the central point of a revolutionary movement, aiming to free the proletariat of the world from the chains of capitalism. Nothing could be more odd. Nothing could have less in common with the machine age and the cold materialism of the machine age. Nothing could be less like America, which is the product of the machine age. These hoary walls, with their ridiculous towers and the barbaric churches they enclose, smell of ancient times, of mysticism and of the East as we have come to know it, the land of strange Gods and of horrifying superstitions and of occult governments, most cruel tyrannies, savage laws and strange vices. How can these people live within these walls and still bear homage to the philosophic principles of dull, sentimental German sociologists and irascible Jews, who are always so enamoured of change and destruction? Surely residence within those walls must turn the most cold-blooded materialists into mystics. So, they have kept the Tsar’s golden eagle flying above the red flags and the flags themselves bear a mystic emblem, the sickle and hammer, something akin to the mystic symbols of the Egyptians and the Hindoos and the other races of the East.’

  As I pondered, dawn passed and already there were crowds in the streets hurrying to their work. The gangs that had worked all night tearing up the streets and laying down new roadways were now going home. Other gangs were taking their places. On every side there was a great clanking and hammering and the rumbling of traffic. New buildings, surrounded with great wooden cages, lay here and there and the workmen were already mounted on the scaffoldings, beginning their work, some of them singing, women with red bonnets among them and at the four corners of each building little red flags fluttered, similar to those that fluttered about the golden eagle over the Kremlin, mystical symbols, signifying that all work, both the building of houses and the night-long conferences in the Communist Party headquarters, was for the glory of the new god.