I Went to Russia

by Liam O'Flaherty

  Never have I seen, not even in New York, such a frenzy of work, all rendered more apparent by the unity of control and the absence of the anarchy caused by senseless competition in our countries.

  Wandering through the streets I felt happy and enthusiastic because of the labour I saw about me, glad that at last an attempt was being made to organise modern society on a rational basis: just as I had been irritated by the attempt to organise the writers at the House of Hertzen. This activity was real and positive, whereas the other activity was childish and negative. This activity was manifestly necessary, an attempt to create order out of chaos. The other useless, an attempt to reach heaven by building a Tower of Babel. Looking at these thin, ill-clad, half-starved workers, going eagerly to their duties, I understood all that was real and beautiful in the Russian revolution, a glorious attempt by a people to save themselves from barbarism, tyranny and the continual recurrence of famine. On the other hand, the foolish pranks of the intellectuals made manifest the fact that every crank in the world has made the Soviet Union his happy hunting ground, bringing schemes impossible of realisation and living on the backs of these workers, who are doing their utmost to perform an almost impossible task.

  As a little boy I remember how delighted I was watching the basket makers and how I stared in amazement as the baskets assumed shape from the wilderness of willow rods that were twisted to and fro in their supple fingers. And the tailors, sitting cross-legged on their tables, equally excited me and I thought it a deep mystery how they managed to make a garment quickly and without error from a piece of cloth, with their scissors and their tape and their piece of chalk and their needle and their thread. So did the sowers in the fields in spring fill me with awe, how they spread their seeds on the grass that had faded under the manure and then tore up the earth with spades and covered the earth and in some mysterious manner the seeds reproduced themselves and in late summer, when that place was again opened with a spade, there was fruit hanging to the roots of the stalks that grew.

  But again, work in our cities has become tarnished and dull by the suffering it causes, by the hordes of slaves it has brought into existence and by the immoral ends to which it is generally put. Nobody gets excited over a new building because there are already too many buildings. Nobody cheers when a new factory is built because there are already too many and because the goods produced are generally without social value. Even the growing of corn and of other necessary foodstuff has ceased to have a meaning, for its immediate and beautiful significance is lost in the fact that it is generally grown for unknown stomachs and is gambled with on strange markets by malicious men whose greed has turned into insanity.

  In Moscow, on the other hand, I regained the joy of childhood in watching the people work. Here it was just as glorious and beautiful and exciting as at home. For I felt that the people knew why they were working and that the result of their work was an addition to their comfort and to their pride of life.

  After four hours’ wandering around the streets in this manner I returned to my hotel, for a bath and some breakfast. My enthusiasm and happiness vanished at once. The food was dreadful in the hotel restaurant. One could only get a glass of tea, two slices of black bread that was exceedingly unappetising and either cheese or cold fish. I drank the tea and went to look for a bath. A very charming old woman managed to understand what I wanted and she sent me a very charming young man who set about preparing the bath. However he was not as efficient as he was charming; neither was the bath-room equipment very efficient. Together we managed to light a fire of wood in the little oven under the boiler and by stoking the wood fire for an hour or so, the water got slightly warm. Then the difficulty arose of getting the hot water to run into the bath. The conducting pipes would not work properly. It took us another hour to fill the tub. Then I had no soap and I had to bribe one of the old women to fetch a small piece. At last, to my extreme delight, I stripped and dived into the bath.

  I had scarcely dressed when my friend Levit knocked at my door. No sooner was he in the room than he announced:

  ‘Comrade, the situation is such. Having considered the problem from all angles I have come to such a conclusion. The strain of overwork on Comrade Mayakovsky was such that his brain began to function in an improper fashion, which caused him to be unable to endure a sudden depression. Therefore, he performed the unsocial act of killing himself. So it must have been. But he was a great man and he re-organised poetry. It shall be therefore forgiven to him, this unsocial act and the proletariat of Moscow manifested this forgiveness, by thousands following him to his grave.’

  He took off his glasses, held them in his right hand, leaned forward, blinked at me for several moments and then said:

  It is impossible to organise women on a rational basis. I have already told you that I marry one night in the week. Last night was the night in question for this week. Now I must explain that my girl is very talented and of great social disposition. She is a student of architecture. This summer she proposes to go to a Siberian city to work as a stone mason for one month and as a bricklayer for another month, in order to study these two crafts. Therefore, she is practical and entirely free from nonsense associated with her sex. And yet, she was jealous last night because it was after one o’clock when I reached my room. I explained to her about you, but she only becomes more jealous and says I am a homo-sexual. What nonsense! So I think, even the most intelligent women are anarchists and nothing can be done with them. Now we must go as there is a great programme for to-day. Already this morning I have worked to organise three days.’

  On the way he explained to me that we were going at first to the fiction publishing department of the government.

  ‘The situation is such,’ he said. ‘You have told me that you have a book about to be published in London. Therefore we shall sell that to the publisher and receive money. Then you shall telegraph for the manuscript. It happens so. It is impossible for us to send money abroad to writers for their work, owing to the difficulty of getting foreign valuta. The bloody bourgeoisie does not recognise Soviet currency. It is part of their war on our Union. Therefore it is difficult for us to get foreign money except in exchange for our exported goods. Also, every kopeck is needed for the Five Year Plan, all the foreign money, as we have to buy machinery with it. But when a foreign writer comes to Russia then he can receive payment in Soviet currency. The situation is such.’

  We entered a large house, which was about ten times as large as the largest publishing house in London. There was a horde of clerks and offices that seemed innumerable and we wandered along corridors and up stairways for some time until we came to the palatial office of the manager. A most excellent and extremely efficient and charming man. I shook hands with him at twelve o’clock exactly. At fifteen minutes past twelve I had signed his contract for the book in question. At thirty-five minutes past twelve I had received five hundred roubles in advance royalties at the cash desk downstairs.

  He had served his apprenticeship to publishing in the United States, which may have explained his efficiency. Even so, he must have been a man of great ability to make Russians as efficient as himself. I was told that he had received various decorations from the government as a reward for his good work. He was, of course, like everybody, practically, connected with publishing, journalism and letters in Moscow, a Jew; a large man with a pale face and a hare lip, bright, eager eyes and a habit of always smiling.

  Armed with these roubles, Levit and myself went forth into the city to beard the passport people. We had first to visit the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, in order to get a ratification of my bona fides. This sounds odd, but everything in Russia is arranged in this odd fashion. It is just as if James Joyce had to go before the Academie Frangaise before going to the Prefecture de Police for permission to live in Paris.

  This society occupied a large house, which had formerly, in all probability, been the town house of some aristocrat. As far as I could gather it was
directly under the control of the police; at least in so far as the surveillance of foreigners resident in Moscow is concerned. It provided very charming girl guides and instructors in the Russian language, together with inviting important foreigners to visit the Soviet Union and publishing a journal which is widely distributed abroad to keep the world in touch with the developments in Russia.

  That such organisations, influenced by the police, exist among us in Western Europe goes without saying. But espionage is managed in a much more subtle manner. In England, especially, foreigners and people of doubtful patriotism are rarely conscious of police supervision; yet the English espionage system is probably the most efficient in the world. That it failed in Ireland during the revolutionary troubles in that country is no proof of its inefficiency; for the reason that the Irish are still more clever at the business and provide a large percentage of the Imperial spies. At least they did so in former times.

  But the Russians carry espionage and police surveillance to such an extent as to make it ridiculous. They certainly succeed in antagonising foreigners who might otherwise be sympathetic. Nobody likes to be followed about and watched continually.

  In the office of this society I was presented to a gentleman who announced that he was in charge of the English and American section. He had been in America and spoke English moderately well. He produced an unpleasant effect on me, for some reason; especially by his fixed habit of never looking me straight in the face and speaking as if I had done him some injury.

  I am very interested to find out,’ he said, ‘whether you could help us in setting up a branch of the Friends of Soviet Russia in Ireland.’

  I’m afraid that I am not very good at organising things,’ I said. I imagine that the Trade Unions are the best means of doing that.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, rubbing his hands together slowly, ‘but that has nothing to do with us. We are not connected with the Trade Union movement. We are interested solely in cultural relations. We would like to get in touch with people like Mr. George Russell and Mr. W. B. Yeats and other people of consequence, who are also prominent in the world of letters in Ireland.’

  ‘But in what way could they help you?’ I said. ‘Mr. Yeats is interested in Fascism rather than in Communism and Mr. Russell is interested almost solely in the religions of the Far East.’

  ‘Yes, but they might help to propagate the ideas of the new Russian culture. It is not necessary for people to be Communist or even Socialist in order to be of assistance. They might help to counteract the campaign of lies that is being directed against us.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. I’m not very brilliant as a politician or as a judge of political tendencies, but I feel sure that your efforts to make use of intellectuals who earn their living under capitalism, who are better off under capitalism than they could possibly be in Soviet Russia, is hopeless. The Soviet theory of politics is based on the assumption that there are in society only two classes, the working class and the capitalist class and that there is perpetual war between these two classes and that the Soviet Union is the champion of the working class against the capitalist class. All these intellectuals know that. They are all, more or less, adherents of the capitalist class, even ones like Mr. Shaw, who amuse themselves by claiming an alliance with socialist ideas. You are wasting your time by trying to do anything with them. Build up your cultural societies among the workers. It will pay you better. It is sheer folly to imagine that any favourable publicity on the part of European intellectuals will prevent Europe from going to war with the Soviet Union. Look at history. After the French revolution, various English intellectuals became Jacobins. But they became English at once when Napoleon began to look with greedy eyes at England.!

  ‘But the situation is different,’ he cried. ‘We have no Napoleon here.’

  ‘Worse luck for you,’ I thought, but I kept silent.

  I was astonished at the difference in psychology between this gentleman and the comrades I had met at the Bureau of Revolutionary Literature. They had to deal with writers who were of revolutionary tendency. This gentleman had as a rule to deal with writers who were of liberal tendency, with business men and with ‘important people’ from the capitalist world. Not a word did he speak about the revolution, or about the liberation of the world proletariat. He was concerned solely with the aggrandisement of his country, Russia. I marvelled at the existence of two such societies, side by side, in Moscow. And then I thought of the headquarters of the Communist Party, outside the walls of the Kremlin and of the Executive Power, within the walls of the Kremlin. I began to see a meaning in the whole thing. There were two forces, operating concurrently, meeting at the head, as there was only one head, but almost diametrically opposed at the base. One was nationalist and imperialist. The other was communist, proletarian, whatever you wish to call it, out to impose the idea of equality on the whole world. It was significant that this man was not a Jew, but a pukka Russian.

  ‘Ho! Ho!’ I said to myself. I’m beginning to see where I am.’

  When we got out of the office, my friend Levit said to me:

  ‘The situation is such. This organisation is somewhat bourgeois. But it is also necessary. It deals with bourgeois people. Therefore bourgeois types must be found to deal with these bourgeois people. But it is all to the same end. For the world revolution.’

  I felt depressed, in spite of his explanation. I hated that man at the Society’s office. He looked so cunning and insincere.

  ‘So it must go on and on like this,’ I thought, ‘to the end of the world, all this plotting by mean people, in Soviet Russia as well as in England and France and Germany and America, all that filthy plotting that drove my generation into the shambles of the World War. How horrible! That dream of liberation from the nightmare of plotting and intrigue which was inherent in the Russian Revolution seems to have vanished like all dreams, and there is left only individuals like this man, with sly ways, exactly like the individuals who plotted the World War. Fellows like him will plot and plan for another war and it’s going to go on for ever like that.’

  The beauty of the morning, when I saw the masses of workers building and singing as they built, with their triumphant little red flags fluttering now vanished. For I saw it would only lead in one direction. When they had built their houses and their roads, sly fellows like this office hack would send them out to the shambles of war; for sly fellows like this office hack live on war. Christ! What stupidity, all this spying and plotting! It makes one want to spew out one’s human soul and revert to the clean savagery of the forest beast of prey; an animal that springs boldly upon his prey and sleeps when sated. But they are never satisfied, these little plotting adders and even when glutted they love to sting.

  Even the giant officers whom I had seen, spurred and with swords at their hips, marching proudly, lordly beings, into the Kremlin fortress, also lost their beauty. They were but pawns to be used by these little plotters. Their beautiful human bodies would grow black and verminous in death upon some battlefield, as I have seen fine men like them lie black upon the shell-holed fields of France. And the little fellows would still be crouching over their desks, plotting.

  Plotting for what? The object of their plotting does not affect the result, which is war, horrible and loathsome war that devours beauty. And if it were a war really to end war, perhaps the sacrifice would be worth making; perhaps mankind would be justified in staining its soul with this final sin. War is like an accession of lust, which satisfaction but accentuates.

  But the inexhaustible enthusiasm of my scholarly friend Levit soon dispelled my gloom, and as I hastened along by his side he cheered me by an oration, which might well have been made by one of the cakemakers of Lerne.

  ‘Comrade,’ he said, ‘the situation is such. The whole of the Soviet Union is at this present time an armed camp. That must be understood. We are at war, although war is not yet declared. And all these societies and organisations are therefore necessary. Night and day we are bein
g attacked by the plotters and spies of the bourgeoisie. They hire men to burn our factories and to destroy our railways and to disorganise our food supplies. So we all have to watch. On our frontiers there is Poland and Roumania hired to jump on us when the proper moment comes. But we are ready. We are all ready to fight.’

  He halted in the street, turned towards me and put his two hands on his slender breast.

  ‘Look at me,’ he cried. I am not such a man, a big fellow with a fierce nature. I love books, so to speak. But I also shall take a gun in my hands and stab these fellows who come to attack us. Oh! Yes. I shall stab them like a Siberian or a Tatar that cannot read or write.’

  A few yards farther on, he saw a little bookstall on the pavement and immediately forgot the war for liberating the world proletariat. He pounced on the books, uttering excited cries and at last found something, a novel by an obscure French writer of the early nineteenth century. He haggled fiercely with the seller and finally bought the book for a few kopecks. Then he began to tell me about the author and about early nineteenth century French literature in general.

  I have many such obscure books in my possession,’ he explained as we entered by a large gate into the courtyard of the police office. I hope to write a thesis some time on this question, the effect of the Napoleonic wars on the French novel in the early nineteenth century.’

  An amazing sight, the office where I had to register. In an enormous room, there was a crowd of people, representative of one hundred or more Eastern peoples, all babbling excitedly. There were even Esquimos, as far as I could gather. There were certainly Chinese, Japanese, Kurds, Afghans, Hindoos, Pathans, Tibetans, Tatars, Gipsies, Turks, Persians, Siberians and scores of other species unknown to me. Hardly any two people were dressed alike. The disorder was terrible, as the people could not read or write for the most part and crowds of guides and interpreters kept running to and fro with forms, shouting into the ears and mouths of the illiterates, who also seemed to be as foolish as they were illiterate. My friend managed somehow or other to get hold of a clerk, who got my business done. Had I waited my turn I should still be there. We were fortunate to get away after three hours.