YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
ofthe
WILLIAM C. EGLESTON FUND

THROUGH THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
BY
ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS

Author of
In the Claims of the German Eagle
Lenin, the Man and His Work
76 Questions and Answers

Illustrated with photographs
and Russian posters in colors

BONI and LIVERIGHT
Publishers New York
1921

8v/27.4-lkw

THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Copyright, 1921, By
Boni and Liveright, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

The life of an illiterate is temV
He lives in u. dark forest. EoerM
frightens him. An owl hoots al nim
the illiterate thinks it is the were-wolj ha
he believes in devils and witches.
lightning strikes his hut, he says God isM
ishing him for his sins; he does not knovU
to catch the lightning with a rod! Thi at
will pray to God: but if he knew how beiei

Earth, his harvest would h

is cruel to aiunndt

Soviet Educational Poster. — Children of Darkness and Su

the friends of man. He does not know how
to lend them or utilize them. But when the
illiterate goes thru school — he, a blind man,
immediately has his eyes opened. He begins to
understand everything; all things become clear to him.
He sees what he did not see before. It is as if he had *.!>...,»..
J J -MA
acquired a hundred eyes; life for him begins to be a joy. All
matters begin to take a good turn. And if he is in trouble, he will take
advice from his friend, the book — who will not deceive him — and he will
learn how to get out of his trouble.

'assing into a School: then Emerging into Light and Knowledge

To
THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS OF RUSSLV
WHO FELL IN DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTION

"Against riches, power and knowl
edge for the few you began a
war, and with glory you died in
order that riches, power and knowl
edge should become universal."

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction  i
PART I
THE MAKERS OF THE REVOLUTION
WITH THE WORKERS, PEASANTS AND FIGHTERS
CHAPTER
1. The Bolsheviks and the City . . 1 1
II. Petrograd Demonstrates ... 25
III. A Peasant Interlude .... 41
IV. The Man on Horseback .... 65
V. Comrades of the Sea .... 75
PART II
THE REVOLUTION AND THE DAYS AFTER
AMONG THE WHITES AND THE REDS

VI. "All Power to the Soviets"
VII. November 7 — A New Date in His
TORY 
VIII. Looting the Winter Palace .
IX. Red Guards, White Guards, and
Blackguards 
X. Mercy or Death to the Whites?
XI. The War of the Classes
XII. Building the New Order .

8998
105
119 i34 156176

vi CONTENTS PART III
THE OUTREACH OF THE REVOLUTION
ACROSS SIBERIA ON THE EXPRESS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIII. The Steppes Rise Up .... 193
XIV. The Red Convicts of Cherm . . 207
XV. The Vladivostok Soviet . . . 218
XVI. The Local Soviet at Work . . . 228
PART IV.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION
THE SOVIETS AGAINST THE CAPITALIST WORLD
XVII. The Allies Crush the Soviet . 243
XVIII. The Red Funeral  257
XIX. Exit  268
XX. Retrospect  275

appendix I. The Death of a Red Regiment
II. The Death Train of Siberia .
III. The Burial of Yanishev
IV. A Circular for British Soldiers
V. Yesterday and Today, By Gorky
VI. Declaration of the Rights of the
Toiling and Exploited Peoples
VII. Posters and Placards

287288292 29329S 297
301

PHOTOGRAPHS AND POSTERS
Children of Darkness and Light (color) Frontispiece PACING PAGE
One of the Ten Thousand Soviets .... 14
Lenin Speaks  15
The Red Horseman (color)  18
A Cathedral of Communist Faith .... 24
"The River of Red"  25
The Sailors Enter Petrograd  30
Lying Down to Escape Death  31
Peasant Paradoxes  50
The Woodchoppers — The Harvesters ... 51
Forward to the Light (color)  64
Obliterating the Past  76
The Bronze Czar Beheaded  77
The Illiterate is a Blind Man (color) . . 84
Cossack, with Whom are You? (color) . . 97
A Crack Fighting Regiment  104
Red Guards Before the Winter Palace . . 105
The Trojan Horse of the Bolsheviks . . . 134
vii

viii PHOTOGRAPHS AND POSTERS PACING PAGE
The Sentinel  r3S
Antonov, Head of the Red Guards ... 142
Bolsheviks at Study  r5°
Bolsheviks under Arms — At Work . . . 151
The Sickle and the Book (color) .... 168
Palace Passes to the Children  184
At Play— Bolshevik Milk Maids .... 184
Clay Modelling— The Children's Theatre . 185
Trotzky Salutes  185
The Czar's Surprise Party  202
A Siberian Mother Mourns her Dead . . 203
Ivan Finds a True Friend (color) . . . 218
The Steel Ring of Bayonets  234
A Defender of Land and Liberty . . . . 235
Intervention Begins  256
The Red Funeral  257
Comrades! Fight Typhus (color) . . . 283
A Communist Pays the Price  288
On the Death Train  289
The Kremlin in Moscow (color) .... 300

INTRODUCTION
In Moscow I saw two peasant soldiers gazing
at a poster being stuck up on a kiosk.
"We can't read a word of it," they cried, indignant
tears in their eyes. "The Czar only wanted us to
plough and fight and pay taxes. He didn't want us
to read. He put out our eyes."
"To put out the eyes" of the masses, to put out
their minds and consciences, was the deliberate
policy of the Russian autocracy. For centuries the
people were steeped in ignorance, narcotized by the
church, terrorized by the Black Hundreds, dragooned
by the Cossacks. The protesters were thrown into
dungeons, exiled to hard labor in Siberian mines,
and hung up on gibbets.
In 191 7 the social and economic fabric of the
land was shot to pieces. Ten million peasants
dragged from their ploughs were dying in the
trenches. Millions more were perishing of cold and
hunger in the cities while the corrupt ministers
intrigued with the Germans and the court held
bacchanalian revels with the notorious monk,
Rasputin. Even the Cadet, Milyukov, was forced
to say: "History does not know of another govern
ment so stupid, so dishonest, so cowardly, so
treacherous." All governments rest upon the patience of the
poor. It seems everlasting, but there comes an end
to it. It came in Russia in March, 191 7.
The masses felt that more vicious even than the

i INTRODUCTION
Kaiser in Berlin was their own Czar in Petrograd.
Their cup of bitterness was full. They marched
forth against the palaces to end it all. First, out of
the Viborg district, came the working women crying
for bread. Then long lines of workingmen. The
police turned the bridges to prevent them entering
the city, but they crossed on the ice. Looking at
the red-flagged throngs from his window, Milyukov
exclaimed: "There goes the Russian Revolution —
and it will be crushed in fifteen minutes!"
But the workingmen came on in spite of Cossack
patrols on the Nevsky. They came on in face of
wilting fire from machine gun nests. They came
on until the streets were littered with their bodies.
Still they came on, singing and pleading until soldiers
and Cossacks came over to the people's side, and on
March 12 the Romanov dynasty, which had mis
ruled Russia for 300 years, went crashing to its
doom. Russia went mad with joy while the whole
world rose up to applaud the downfall of the Czar.
It was mainly the workers and soldiers who made
the Revolution. They had shed their blood for it.
Now it was assumed that they would retire in the
orthodox manner leaving affairs in the hands of
their superiors. The people had taken the power
away from the Czarists. Now appeared on the
scene the bankers and lawyers, the professors and
politicians, to take the power away from the people.
They said:
"People, you have won a glorious victory. The
next duty is the formation of a new state. It is a
most difficult task, but fortunately, we, the educated,
understand this business of governing. We shall set
up a Provisional Government. Our responsibility
is heavy, but as true patriots we will shoulder it.

INTRODUCTION 3
Noble soldiers, go back to the trenches. Brave
workingmen, go back to the machines. And
peasants, you go back to the land."
Now the Russian masses were tractable and rea
sonable. So they let these bourgeois gentlemen
form their "Provisional Government." But the
Russian masses were intelligent, even if they were
not literate. Most of them could not read or
write. But they could think. So, before they went
back to the trenches, the shops and the land, they
set up little organizations of their own. In each
munition factory the workers selected one of their
number whom they trusted. In the shoe and cotton
factories the men did likewise. So in the brick
yards, the glass-Works and other industries. These
representatives elected directly from their jobs were
called a Soviet (Council) of Workmen Deputies.
In like manner the armies formed Soviets of Sol
diers' Deputies, the villages Soviets of Peasant
Deputies. These deputies were elected by trades and occupa
tions, not by districts. The Soviets consequently
were filled, not with glibly talking politicians, but
with men who knew their business; miners who
understood mining, machinists who understood ma
chinery, peasants who understood land, soldiers
who understood war, teachers who understood
children. The Soviets sprang up in every city, town, hamlet
and regiment throughout Russia. Within a few
weeks after the old state-apparatus of Czardom
went to pieces, one-sixth the surface of the earth
was dotted over with these new social organizations
— no more striking phenomenon in all history.
The commander of the Russian battleship

4 INTRODUCTION
Peresvet told me his story: "My ship was off the
coast of Italy when the news arrived. As I an
nounced the Czar's fall some sailors shouted, 'Long
live the Soviet.' That very day on board ship a
Soviet was formed, in all aspects like the one in
Petrograd. I regard the Soviet as the natural
organization of the Russian people, finding its root
in the mir (commune) of the village and the artel
(co-operative syndicate) of the city."
Others find the Soviet idea in the old New Eng
land town-meetings or the city assemblies of ancient
Greece. But the Russian workingman's contact
with the Soviet was much more direct than that.
He had tried out the Soviet in the abortive Revolu
tion of 1905. He had found it a good instrument
then. He was using it now.
After the Czar's overthrow there Was a short
season of good will amongst all classes known as
the "honeymoon of the Revolution." Then the big
fight began — a battle royal between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat for the mastery of state power
in Russia. On the one side the capitalists, land
lords and finally the intelligentsia lining up behind
the Provisional Government. On the other side the
workmen, soldiers and peasants rallying to the
Soviets. I was set down in the midst of this colossal con
flict. For fourteen months I lived in the villages
with the peasants, in the trenches with the soldiers,
and in the factories with the workers. I saw the
Revolution thru their eyes and took part in most
of the dramatic episodes.
I have used the names Communist and Bolshevik
interchangeably, tho the party did not officially
change its name to Communist until 1918.

INTRODUCTION 5
In the French Revolution the great word was
"Citizen." In the Russian Revolution the great
word is "Comrade!" — tovarishtch. I have written
it more simply tovarish.
For the right to use here some of my articles I
am indebted to the editors of Asia, the Yale Review,
the Dial, the Nation, the New Republic, and the
New York Evening Post.
The visitor to Soviet Russia is struck by the
multitudes of posters — in factories and barracks,
on walls and railway-cars, on telephone-poles —
everywhere. Whatever the Soviet does, it strives
to make the people understand the reason for it.
If there is a new call to arms, if rations must be
cut down, if new schools or courses of instruction
are opened, a poster, promptly appears telling why,
and how the people can co-operate. Some of these
posters are crude and hurried, others are works of
art. Ten of them are reproduced in this book in
almost the exact colors of the originals. The cost
has been borne by friends of Russia, and the reader
is particularly indebted to Mrs. Jessie Y. Kimball
and Mr. Aaron Berkman.
On the next page is reproduced the first issue of
the first revolutionary newspaper — the official Soviet
News (Izvestia). It was published on the day of
the Czar's fall and every day since then.

M3BMTIH

Wa 1—28 (benpann 1917 rofla.

Ml

Kt» HaceneHlw IfeTpor paga h Poccls.
Orb CostTa PaOowYb AenyraTOB'b.
Crapon B/iocTb AOBe*a CTpaHy ao noimaro pajsa-ia, a Hopoj-b ao ronoAOHla. Tep>
ClfcTb Ashbwe crane HeaajMOwna Hflce.ieHle rieTpor pa.io Bbiiuno Ha y/inuy, MT06bl ?09BHTb
O CBoeM'b HeAOBOJlbCTBb. tro R-'TrfTmiriiWHTT}ffrT> 'Il I if "r TVif—1 — T—T'lT-iriTmgi
Aa/io napoAy cBHHeu-b.
Ho cojiaotm He jaxoTfci it mtth npoTHB'b ttapoaa m eoicto i h npoTHB'b npa BHTtibtTBS.
BMtCTb Cb HOpOflOM-b OHI1 jaXBBTHJIH OpyAle, BOeHHbie CKJIOAbl H p!U"b BOXvHblXb (ipOBH.
TeilbCTBeHHblX'b yMpeJKAeHlft.
Eopb6a <u;e npoAonxiaera; OHa nonwH? 6bm> noatneHa no kohio. Crapa* Bnacn
BoniKHa 6biTb OKOHHarenbHO wraBeprHyra h ycrynxTb Micro Hap'onKOMy npasneHiio. B>
btomi cnaceHie PocciH.
flnji ycniuiHaro saBepuieHlsi 6oph6bi bt> HHTepecax* nemoRpa-riH HapoA* noiwwb
cosnaTb cbok> co6cTQ^Hnyio BnacrHyio opraHMaajio.
Bqepa 27 cpeBpa ,\n btj cmo.umrj o6pa30Bo.\cn CoB^nn> Po60MHX*b AenymamoB'b—
113% BbitSopHbix'b npeAcmaBumeAeii 3Qboaob1> h (paopulfb, B03cmaB1irwx'b BOHnckHXk
Hocmeii, a maloke Aemokpamimeckiucb n comaAHcmHueckHX'b nopmiii '>i-rpynn>.
CoBtnTb PafioiHxij. AenymamoB'b aactAaiomiMB-bfocYAapcmBejiHOfl Ay»A crna»
Bimrb cBoeft ochobhoii 3aA0Heii opranioauiia tiopoAnbix* chat> h 6opbCy sa bkoMSj
lenwioe ynponeHie nonwuHecKOR CBofioflu h HapoflHaro npaB/ieHia bij PocciH.
CoBtrb Ha3HaHwn> paflOHHbixi> KOWAHecapofb una yaantlsKma HapowoH B/iacTH si paRo-
Han. (leiporpaAa. npHrnaiuaeMT. Bee Hacenente ctomuu HweaneHHO crmoTHTbot BOnpyn> CoBtTa, o6pa30B<n»
wtoHbie KOMHTeibi bi paflOHaja h mm bt> cboh pyKM ynpaaneHie bcUh MfcciHbiMH atnawt.
Bet BMtcrt, o6uih«h CM/iann 6yflem> (SopoTbca 3a no/moe ycrpaHeHie aapanj npaBxrenbOBa 1
co3tmi ytpcHHTe.TbHaro co6panlfl, nafipaanaro ua ocnoat BccoCmaro- panHaro, np*
Moro ¦ TaAuaro uauupaTeaidiaro upaaa.

Cosirx PaCo
«

JXenyraTox*.

NEWS OF THE

of Workmen Deputies.
N» 1 -March 13,1917 N?1

To the population of Petrograd and Russia
From the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies.
The old authorities brought the country to ruin and the people to starvation-
It became impossible to endure it longer. *The population of Petrograd came out
in the streets to express its discontent. 'It was met with guns. Instead of bread,
the government of the Czar gave the people bullets.
But the soldiers have refused to go against the people and have revolted
against the government. Together with the civilians they have seized the armories
the military stores and many important government institutions.
The struggle is still going on; it must be brought to an end. The old power
must be deposed and replaced by a people's government. This is the salvation
of Russia. To secure a victorious end of this struggle in the interests of democracy, the
people must create an organization of its own power.
Yesterday, March the 12th, a Soviet of Workmen Deputies was formed in
the Capital. It consists of representatives elected from the shops and factories,
the revolting military detachments and also from democratic and socialistic parties
and groups. The Soviet of Workmen Deputies now in session at the Imperial Duma faces
as its basic problem, the organization of the people's forces in the battle for per
manent political freedom and self-government in Russia.
The Soviet has appointed district commissars to execute the people's authority
in the districts of Petrograd.
We call upon the inhabitants of the capital to rally around the Soviet, to
form district committees and to take the administration of local affairs in their
own hands.
All together, we unite our forces to fight for the complete destruction of the
old government, and for the calling of a Constituent Assembly, elected on the
basis of a universal, equal, direct and secret ballot.
The Soviet of Workers' Deputies.
[This is a reproduction in English of the Russian text on the opposite
page.]

PART I
THE MAKERS OF THE REVOLUTION
WITH THE PEASANTS, WORKERS AND FIGHTERS

CHAPTER I
THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY
/"\N a white night of early June, 191 7, I first '
^^ entered Petrograd, the city that lies almost
within the Arctic Circle. Tho it was midnight, the
wide squares and prospekts bathed in the soft spec
tral light of this northern night were all alluring.
Past blue-domed barbaric churches and the silver
rippling Catherine Canal we drove along the Neva,
while across the river the slender spire of Peter and
Paul rose like a golden needle. Then by the Winter
Palace, the burnished dome of Saint Isaac's and
countless shafts and statues to the memory of Czars
who had gone.
But all these were monuments to rulers of the past.
They had no hold on me for I was interested in
the rulers of the present. I wanted to hear the
great Kerensky then at the zenith of his spell-bind
ing powers. I wanted to meet the ministers of the
Provisional Government. I met many of them,
heard them and talked with them. They were able,
amiable and eloquent. But I felt they were not real
representatives of the masses, that they were
"Caliphs of the passing hour." h

12 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
' Instinctively I sought out the rulers of the future,
the men in the Soviets elected directly out of the
Irenches, factories and farms. These Soviets had
sprung up in almost every army city and village of
Russia, over one-sixth of the surface of the earth.
These local Soviets were now sending their delegates
to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petro
grad. I found the Soviet in session in
The First All-Russian the Military Academy. A tab-
Congress of Soviets. let recording the fact that "His
Imperial Majesty, Nicholas II,
made this place happy by his presence January 28,
1916," still hung on its walls, the one relic of the
glittering past.
The gold-braided officers, the smiling courtiers,
and lackeys had been swept from the halls. His
Imperial Majesty, the Czar, was gone. His Repub
lican Majesty, the Revolution, ruled here now,
acclaimed by hundreds of black-bloused, khaki-clad
delegates. Here were men coming up from the ends of the
earth. From the frozen Arctic and burning Tur
kestan they hailed, slant-eyed Tartars and fair-
haired Cossacks, Russians, Big and Little, Poles,
Letts and Lithuanians — all tribes and tongues and
costumes. Here were toil-scarred delegates from
the mines, the forge and the farm, battle-scarred
soldiers from the trenches and sea-bronzed sailors

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 13
from the five fleets of Russia. Here were the
"March" revolutionists, colorless and quiet before
the March storm blew the Czar from his throne,
but now daubed with red revolutionary paint and
calling themselves Socialists. Here were veterans
of the Revolution, loyal to the cause thru long years
of hunger, exile and Siberia, tried and tested by
suffering. Cheidze, the President of the Soviet Congress,
asked me why I came to Russia. "Ostensibly as a
journalist," I told him. "But the real reason is the
Revolution. It was irresistible. It drew me here like
a magnet. I am here because I could not stay away."
He asked me to address the Congress. The
"Soviet News" (Izvestia) of July 8, reports my
words thus:
Comrades: I bring you greetings from the Socialists of America.
We do not venture to tell you here how to run a Revolution.
Rather we come here to learn its lesson and to express our ap
preciation for your great achievements.
A dark cloud of despair and violence was hanging over man
kind threatening to extinguish the torch of civilization in streams
of blood. But you arose, comrades, and the torch flamed up
anew. You have resurrected in all hearts everywhere a new
faith in freedom.
Equality, Brotherhood, Democracy, are great and beautiful
words. But to the unemployed millions they are merely words. To
the 160,000 hungry children of New York they are hollow words.
To the exploited classes of France and England they are mock
ing words. Your duty is to change these words into reality.
You have made the Political Revolution. Freed from the
threat of German militarism your next task is the Social Revo
lution. Then the workers of the world will no longer look to

14 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the West, but to the East— toward great Russia, to the Field
of Mars here, in Petrograd, where lie the first martyrs of your
Revolution. "Long live free Russia!" "Long live the Revolution!" "Long
live Peace to the World!"
In his reply Cheidze made a plea for the workers
of all nations to bring pressure to bear on their gov
ernments to stop "the horrible butchery which is
disgracing humanity and beclouding the great days
of the birth of Russian freedom."
A storm of cheers, and the Congress took up the
order of the day — the Ukraine, Education, War-
Widows and Orphans, Provisioning the Front, Re
pairing the Railways, etc. This should have been
the business of the Provisional Government. But
that Government was flimsy and incompetent. Its
ministers were orating, wrangling, scheming against
one another and entertaining diplomats. But some
body must do the hard work. By default it was
already passing into the hands of these Soviets of
the people. This First Congress of Soviets was domi-
Enter the nated by the intelligentsia — doctors, en-
Bolsheviks. gineers, journalists. They belonged to
political parties known as Menshevik and
Socialist-Revolutionary. At the extreme left sat
107 delegates of a decided proletarian cast — plain
soldiers and workingmen. They were aggressive,
united and spoke with great earnestness. They were
often laughed and hooted down — always voted down.

One of the 10,000 city and village Soviets in which, as a peasant said, "we are teaching ourselves how to rule our
selves.1' This is the Petrograd Soviet to which 20,000 workers have been elected in four years.

The masses hearing Lenin express their demands. " Under the pitiless pelting of facts I have been driven to the conclu
sion that if Lenin and 18 other Bolsheviks (leaders) had perished, events in Russia would have taken much the same course.
The robbed and oppressed masses — a hundred miUions of men and women — moved toward the goal of their long unful
filled desires like a flow of molten lava that no human force can dam or turn aside." — Professor E. A". Ross.

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 15
"Those are the Bolsheviks," my bourgeois guide
informed me, venomously. "Mostly fools, fanatics
and German agents." That was all. And no more
than that could one learn in hotel lobbies, salons, or
diplomatic circles.
Happily, I went elsewhere for information. I
went into the factory districts. In Nijni I met Sar-
tov, a mechanic who invited me to his home. A long
rifle stood in the corner of the main room.
"Every workingman has a gun now," Sartov ex
plained. "Once we used it to fight for the Czar —
now we fight for ourselves."
In another corner hung an ikon of Saint Nicholas,
a tiny flame burning before it.
"My wife is still religious," Sartov apologized.
"She believes in the Saint — thinks he will fetch me
safely thru the Revolution. As tho a saint would
help a Bolshevik!" he laughed. "Yehl Bogul
There's no harm in it. Saints are queer devils. No
telling what one of them may do."
The family slept on the floor, insisting that I take
the bed, because I was an American. In this room
I found another American. In the soft gleam of
the ikon-light his face looked down at me from
the wall, the great, homely, rugged face of Abraham
Lincoln. From that pioneer's hut in the woods of
Illinois he had made his way to this workingman's
hut here upon the Volga. Across half a century,
and half a world, the fire in Lincoln's heart had

1 6 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
leaped to touch the heart of a Russian workman
groping for the light.
As his wife paid her devotion to Saint Nicholas,
the great Wonder-Worker, so he paid his devotion
to Lincoln, the great Emancipator. He had given
Lincoln's picture the place of honor in his home.
And l^ien he had done a startling thing. On the
lapel of Lincoln's coat he had fixed a button, a
large red button bearing on it the word, B-o-1-
s-h-e-v-i-k. Of Lincoln's life Sartov knew little. He knew
only that he strove against injustice, freed the
slaves, that he was reviled and persecuted. To
Sartov, that was the earnest of his kinship with the
Bolsheviks. As an act of highest tribute he had
decorated Lincoln with this emblem of red.
I found that factories and boulevards were differ
ent worlds. A world of difference, too, in the way they
said the word "Bolshevik." Spoken on the boule
vards with a sneer and a curse, on the lips of the
workers it was becoming a term of praise and honor.
The Bolsheviks did not mind the bourgeoisie.
They were busy expounding their program to the
workers. This program I got first hand from dele
gates coming up to the Soviet Congress from the
Russian Army in France.
"Our demand is, not to continue the war, but to
continue the Revolution," these Bolsheviks blurted
out. "Why are you talking about Revolution?" I asked,

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 17
taking the role of Devil's Advocate. "You have had
your Revolution, haven't you? The Czar and his
crowd are gone. That was what you were aiming
at for the last hundred years, wasn't it?"
"Yes," they replied. "The Czar is gone, but the
Revolution is just begun. The overthrow of the
Czar is only an incident. The workers didn't take
the government out of the hands of one ruling class,
the monarchists, in order to put it into the hands
of another ruling class, the bourgeoisie. No matter
what name you give it, slavery is the same."
I said the world at large held that Russia's task
now was to create a republic, like France or Amer
ica; to establish in Russia the institutions of the
West. "But that is precisely what we don't want to do,"
they responded. "We don't cherish much admira
tion for your institutions or governments. We know
that you have poverty, unemployment and oppres
sion. Slums on one hand, palaces on the other. On
the one side, capitalists fighting workmen with lock
outs, blacklists, lying press, and thugs. Workmen
on the other side, fighting back with strikes, boy
cotts, bombs. We want to put an end to this war Qf
the classes. We want to put an end to poverty. Only
the workers can do this, only a communistic system.
That is what we are going to have in Russia."
"In other words," I said, "you want to escape the
laws of evolution. By some magic you expect sud
denly to transfer Russia from a backward agri-

18 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
cultural state into a highly organized co-operative
commonwealth. You are going to jump out of the
eighteenth century into the twenty-second."
"We are going to have a new social order," they
replied, "but we don't depend on jumping or magic.
We depend upon the massed power of the workmen
and peasants."
"But where are the brains to do this?" I inter
rupted. "Think of the colossal ignorance of the
masses." "Brains!" they exclaimed hotly. "Do you think
we bow down before the brains of our 'betters'?
What could be more brainless and stupid and crimi
nal than this war? And who are guilty of it? Not
the working classes, but the governing classes in
every country. Surely the ignorance and inexpert--
ence of workmen and peasants could not make a
worse mess than generals and statesmen with all
their brains and culture. We believe in the masses.
We believe in their creative force. And we must
make the Social Revolution anyhow."
"And why?" I asked.
"Because it is the next step in the evolution of
the race. Once we had slavery. It gave way to
feudalism. That in turn gave way to capitalism.
Now capitalism must leave the stage. It has served
its purpose. It has made possible large scale pro
duction, world-wide industrialism. But now it must
make its exit. It is the breeder of imperialism and
war, the strangler of labor, the destroyer of civiliza-

Bolshevik Poster in Russian and Arabic Characters for the Peoples
of the East: "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!"

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 19
tion. It must in its turn give place to the next phase
— the system of Communism. It is the historic mis
sion of the working-class to usher in this new social
order. Tho Russia is a primitive backward land it
is for us to begin the Social Revolution. It is for the
working-class of other countries to carry it on."
A daring program — to build the world anew. —
No wonder the ideas of James Duncan of the
Root Mission seemed trivial as he came with tedious
talk of craft unions, the union label, and the eight-
hour day. His hearers were amused or bored. Next
day a newspaper reported the two-hour speech thus:
"Last night the Vice-President of the American
Federation of Labor addressed the Soviets. Coming
over the Pacific he evidently prepared two speeches,
one for the Russian people and the other for the
ignorant Eskimos — obviously last night he thought
he was addressing the Eskimos."
For the Bolsheviks to put' forward a big revolu
tionary program was one thing; to get it accepted by
a nation of 160,000,000 was quite another — espe
cially as the Bolshevik Party counted then not more
than 150,000. Many factors, however, were
Bolsheviks Trained conspiring to give Bolshevik
in America. ideas prestige with the people.
In the first place the Bolsheviks
understood the people. They were strong among
the more literate strata, like the sailors, and com-

20 THROUGH THE. RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
prised largely the artisans and laborers of the cities.
Sprung directly from the people's loins they spoke
the people's language, shared their sorrows and
thought their thoughts.
It is not quite correct to say that the Bolsheviks
understood the people. They were the people. So
they were trusted. The Russian workingman, be
trayed so long by the classes above him, puts faith
only in his own.
This was brought home to a friend of mine in a
grotesque manner. Krasnoschekov is his name, now
President of the Far East Republic. Coming from
the Workers' Institute in Chicago, he entered the
lists as a champion of the workers. An able, elo
quent man, he was elected President of the City
Council of Nikolaievsk. The bourgeois paper
promptly appeared with an assault upon him as an
"immigrant roustabout."
"Citizens of great Russia," it asked, "do you not
feel the shame of being ruled by a porter, a window
cleaner from Chicago?"
Krasnoschekov wrote out a hot reply, pointing
out his distinction in America as lawyer and edu
cator. On the way to the newspaper with his article
he turned in at the Soviet, wondering how much this
assault had hurt him in the eyes of the workers.
"Tovarish Krasnoschekov!" someone shouted as
he opened the door. With a cheer the men rose to
their feet. "Nashl Nash!" (Ours! Ours!) they
cried, grasping his hand. "We just read the paper,

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 21
comrade. It made us all glad. We always liked
you, tho we thought you were a bourgeois. Now
we find out you are one of us, a real workingman,
and we love you. We'll do anythmg for you."
Ninety-six per cent of the Bolshevik Party were
workingmen. Of course the Party had its intelli
gentsia, not sprung directly from the soil. But
Lenin and Trotzky lived close enough to the hunger
line to know the thoughts of the poor.
The Bolsheviks were mostly young men not afraid
of responsibility, not afraid to die,* and, in sharp
contrast to the upper-classes, not afraid to work.
Many of them became my friends, particularly the
exiles returning on the immigrant tide now flowing
back from America.
There was Yanishev, who was literally a workman
of the world. Ten years earlier he had been driven
out of Russia for inciting his fellow-peasants against
the Czar. He had lived like a water-rat on the docks
of Hamburg: he had dug coal in the pits of Austria
and had poured steel in the foundries of France.
In America he had been tanned in leather-vats,
bleached in textile mills and clubbed in strike-lines.
His travels had given him a knowledge of four
languages and an ardent faith in Bolshevism. The
peasant had become now an industrial proletarian.
Some satirist has defined a proletarian as a "talk
ing workingman." Yanishev was not a talker by
nature. But now he had to talk. The cry of millions
?Appendix I. The Death of a Red Regiment.

22 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
of his fellow-workers for the light drew the words
to his lips and in mills and mines he spoke as no
intellectual could speak. Night and day he toiled
until midsummer came and he took me on a memo
rable trip to the villages.
Another comrade was Woskov, formerly agent
of New York Carpenters' Union No. 1008, now in
the Workers' Committee that ran the rifle factory at
Sestroretsk. Another was Volodarsky, virtually a
galley-slave of the Soviet and deliriously happy in it.
Once he exclaimed to me: "I have had more real
joy in these few weeks than any fifty men ought to
have in all their lives!" There was Neibut, with his
pack of books and with eyes glowing over the English
in Brailsford's The War of Steel and Gold! To
Bolshevik propaganda these immigrants brought
Western speed and method. In Russian there is no
word "efficient." These young zealots were prodi
gies of efficiency and energy.
The center of Bolshevik action was Petrograd.
In this there is the fine irony of history. This city
was the pride and glory of the great Czar Peter.
He found a swamp here and left a brilliant capital.
To make a foundation he sunk into these marshes
forests of trees and quarries of stone. It is a colossal
monument to Peter's iron will. At the same time
it is a monument of colossal cruelty, for it is built
not only on millions of wooden piles, but on millions
of human bones.
Like cattle the workmen were herded in these

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE CITY 23
swamps to perish of cold and hunger and scurvy.
As fast as they were swallowed up more serfs were
driven in. They dug the soil with bare hands and
sticks, carrying it off in caps and aprons. With
thudding hammers, cracking whips, and groans of
the dying, Petrograd rose like the Pyramids, in the
tears and anguish of slaves.
Now the descendants of these slaves were in
revolt. Petrograd had become the Head of the
Revolution. Every day it started out missionaries
on long crusading tours. Every day it poured out
bales and carloads of Bolshevik gospel in print. In
June, Petrograd was publishing Pravda (Truth)*
The Soldier, The Village Poor, in millions of copies.
"All done on German money," said the Allied
observers,- as ostrich-like, they sat with heads buried
in the boulevard cafes, believing what they preferred '
to believe. Had they turned the corner they would
have seen a long line of men filing past a desk, each
laying on it a contribution, ten copecks, ten rubles,
maybe a hundred. These were workers, soldiers,
even peasants, doing their bit for the Bolshevik
press. The greater the success of the Bolsheviks, the
louder the hue and cry against them. While the
bourgeois press praised the sense, and moderation
of the other parties, it called for an iron fist for the
Bolsheviks. While "Babushka" and Kerensky were
?Reproduction of this newspaper on pages 306-7.

24 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
given regal quarters in the Winter Palace, the Bol
sheviks were thrown into jail.
In the past all parties suffered for their principles.
Now it was chiefly the Bolsheviks who suffered.
They were the martyrs of today. This gave them
prestige. Persecution lifted them into prominence.
The masses, now giving heed to Bolshevik doctrine,
found it strangely akin to their own desires.
But it was not the sacrifice and enthusiasm of the
Bolsheviks that was finally to bring the masses under
their banner. More powerful allies were working
with them. Hunger was their chief ally — a three
fold hunger: a mass hunger for bread, and peace,
and land.
In the rural Soviets rose again the ancient cry
of the peasants, "The land belongs to God and the
people." The city-workers left out God and cried,
"The factories belong to the workers." At the
front the soldiers proclaimed, "The war belongs to
the devil. We want nothing to do with it. We want
peace." A great ferment was workmg in the masses. It
set them organizing Land Committees, Factory Com
mittees, Committees of the Front. It set them talk
ing, so that Russia became a nation of a hundred
million orators. It sent them into the streets in tre
mendous mass demonstrations.

One of the great Cathedrals of the Communist Faith— the Putilov Factory in Petrograd.
proclaim the International unity of all races and peoples.

Banners and speakers

Petrograd Demonstrates —The river of red flowing by the Admiralty. To the left is the Street of Grand Noblemen
now called the Street of VUlage Poverty to remind men forever whence came the splendrous buildings.

CHAPTER II
PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES
HP HE spring and summer of 191 7 was a series of
¦*• demonstrations. In this Russia always excelled.
Now the processions were longer, led not by priests
but by the people, with red banners instead of ikons,
and instead of church hymns, songs of revolution.
Who can forget Petrograd of July first! Soldiers
in drab and olive, horsemen in blue and gold, white-
bloused sailors from the fleet, black-bloused
workmen from the mills, girls in vari-colored waists,
surging thru the main arteries of the city. On each
marcher a streamer, a flower, a riband of red; scar
let kerchiefs around the women's heads, red rubash-
kas on the men. Above, like crimson foam, sparkled
and tossed a thousand banners of red.
As this human river flowed it sang.
Three years before I had seen the German war
machine rolling down the valley of the Meuse on
its drive towards Paris. The cliffs resounded then
to ten thousand lusty German voices singing
"Deutschland iiber Alles," while ten thousand boots
struck the pavement in unison. It was powerful but
mechanical, and, like every act of those grey columns,
ordered from above. 25

26 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
But the singing of these red columns was the spon
taneous outpouring of a people's soul. Some one
would strike up a revolutionary hymn; the deep
resonant voices of the soldiers would lift the refrain,
joined by the plaintive voices of the working-women;
the hymn would rise, and fall, and die away; then,
down the line, it would burst forth again — the whole
street singing in harmony.
Past the golden dome of Saint Isaac's, past the
minarets of the Mohammedan Mosque, marched
forty creeds and races, welded into one by the fire of
the Revolution. The mines, the mills, the slums and
trenches were blotted from their minds. This was
the day the people had made. They would rejoice
and be glad in it.
But in their joy they did not forget those who, to
bring this day, had marched bound and bleeding to
exile and death on the plains of Siberia. Close at
hand, too, were the martyrs of the March Revolu
tion; a thousand of them lying in their red coffins on
the Field of Mars. Here the militant strains of the
Marseillaise gave way to the solemn measures of
Chopin's Funeral March. With muffled drums and
lowered banners, with bowed heads, they passed
the long grave, weeping or in silence.
One incident, trivial in itself, but significant,
marred the peace of the day. It was on Sadovaya
where I was standing with Alex Gumberg, the little
Russian-American, friend and pilot to so many
Americans in the days of the Revolution. The

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 27
wrath of the sailors and workingmen was roused by
a red banner with the inscription "Long live the
Provisional Government." They started to tear it
down and in the melee some one shouted "The Cos
sacks are coming."
The very name of these ancient enemies of the
people struck terror into the crowds. White-faced,
they stampeded like a herd, trampling the fallen and
yelling like madmen. Happily it was a false alarm.
The ranks re-formed and with songs and cheers took
up the march again.
But this procession was more than an outburst
of emotion. It was sternly prophetic, its banners
proclaiming: "Factories to the Workers! Land
to the Peasants! Peace to All the World! Down
with the War! Down with the Secret Treaties!
Down with the Capitalist Ministers!"
This was the Bolshevik program crystallized into
slogans for the masses. There were thousands of
banners, so many that even the Bolsheviks were
surprised. Those banners were signals indicating
a big storm brewing. Everybody could see that,
and everybody did see it, except those sent to Russia
specifically commissioned to see it — the Root Mis
sion for example. While these gentlemen were in
revolutionary Russia they were absolutely isolated
from the Revolution. As the Russian proverb goes:
"they went to the circus, but they did not see the
elephant." On this July ist the Americans were invited

28 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
to a special service in the Cathedral of Kazan. In
the church they knelt to receive the kisses and bless
ings of the priests, while the streets outside rang
with songs and cheers from the vast procession of
exalted people. Blind men! They did not see that
faith that day was not in the mass within those
musty walls, but in the masses without.
Yet they were no blinder than the rest of the
diplomats cheering the first glowing reports of
Kerensky's drive on the Eastern Front. The drive,
like its leader, a dazzling success at first, turned into
a tragic fiasco. It slaughtered 30,000 Russians,
shattered the morale of the army, enraged the people,
forced a cabinet crisis, and brought the disastrous
repercussion in Petrograd, the armed upheaval of
July sixteenth. July ist gave warning of the coming
The Armed storm. July 16th saw it break in fury.
Demonstration. First long files of older peasant soldiers
with placards: "Let the 40-year-old
men go home and harvest the crops." Then barrack,
slum and factory belching out torrents of men in
arms who converged on the Tauride Palace, and,
for two nights and a day, roared through its gates.
Armored cars, with sirens screaming and red flags
flying from the turrets, raced up and down the
streets. Motor trucks, crammed with soldiers, bayo
nets jutting out on every side, dashed by like
giant porcupines on a rampage. Stretched full

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 29
length on the car fenders lay sharpshooters, rifles
projecting beyond the lamps, eyes on the watch for
provocators. This outpouring was much bigger than the river
that ran thru these streets on July first, and more
sinister, for it glittered with steel and hissed with
curses — a long grey line of wrath. It was the spon
taneous outburst of men against their rulers — ugly,
reckless, furious.
Under a black banner marched a band of Anar
chists, with Yarchuk the tailor at the head. On
him was the stamp of the sweat-shop. Long bend
ing over the needle had left him undersized. Now,
in place of a needle, he was wielding a gun — the sym
bol of his deliverance from slavery to the needle.
Gumberg asked him, "What are your political
demands?" "Our political demands?" hesitated Yarchuk.
"To hell with the capitalists!" interjected a big
sailor. "And our other political demands," he added,
"are — to hell with the war and to hell with the whole
damn Cabinet."
Backed up in an alley was a taxi-cab, the nozzles
of two machine-guns poking thru the windows. In
answer to our query, the driver pointed to a banner
reading, "Down with the Capitalist Ministers."
"We are tired of begging them not to starve and
kill the people," he explained. "When we talk they
won't listen; but wait till these two pups (sobachki)

30 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
speak!" He patted the guns affectionately. "They
will listen then all right."
A mob with nerves at trigger-tension, with such
weapons in its hands, and such temper in its soul, did
not need much provocation. And provocators were
everywhere. Agents of the Black Hundred plied
their trade of dissension among the crowds, inciting
to riot and pogroms. They turned loose two hundred
criminals from Kresty to pillage and loot. In the
ensuing ruin they hoped to see the Revolution killed
and the Czar restored. In some places they did bring
on frightful slaughter.
At a tense moment, in the tight-packed concourse
of the Tauride, a provocatory shot was fired. From
that shot sprang a hundred. From every quarter
rifles blazed, comrades firing point blank into com
rades. The crowd screamed, crashed up against the
pillars, surged back again, and then fell flat upon the
ground. When the firing ceased, sixteen could not
rise. During this massacre a military band two
blocks away was playing the Marseillaise.
Fighting in the streets is panicky business. At
night, with bullets spitting from hidden loopholes,
from roofs above and cellar-ways below, with the
enemy invisible and friends pouring volleys into
friends, the crowds stampeded, back and forth, flee
ing from a hail of bullets in one street only to plunge
into leaden gusts sweeping thru the next.
Three times that night our feet slipped in blood
on the pavement. Down the Nevsky was blazed a

The storm petrels of the Revolution — the sailors — first to" raise the red flag in the fleet, always first to hurry to the
rescue of the Soviets.

Escaping the bullets in the July Uprising by lying flat on the pavement. This picture is a hardy perennial. Any
disturbance in Russia is Hable to bring it forth again as the authentic photograph of the event.

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 31
trail of shattered windows and looted shops. The
fighting ranged from little skirmishes, with nests of
provocators, to the battle on Liteiny, which left
twelve horses of the Cossacks stretched upon the
cobbles. [Over these horses stood a big izvoschik
(cabman), tears in his eyes. In time of Revolution
the killing of 56 and wounding of 650 men might
be endured, but the loss of 12 good horses was too
much for an izvoschik' s heart to bear.]
Only Petrograd's long experience
The Bolsheviks Con- in barricade and street fighting,
trol the Rising. and the native good sense of the
people, prevented the shambles
from being more bloody than they were. Upon
the chaotic insurgent masses was brought to bear
a stabilizing force in tens of thousands of work
ingmen, backed by the directing mind of the Bol
shevik Party. The Bolsheviks saw clearly that this
uprising was a spontaneous elemental thing. They
saw these masses striking out powerfully but rather
blindly. They determined that they should strike
to some purpose. They determined to let the full
force of this demonstration reach the Soviet Central ,
Executive Committee. This was a committee of
200 selected by the First All-Russian Congress of
Soviets before it adjourned. It was in permanent
session in the Tauride Palace, and upon it the masses
were converging.
The Bolsheviks alone had influence over these

32 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
masses. All parties implored them to use it. Plac
ing their speakers upon the central portico, they met
each regiment and delegation with a short address.
From our vantage point we could view the whole
concourse crammed with people, with here and there
a man lifted upon his artillery horse, while many
banners marked out a red current thru the solid
mass. Below us was a sea of upturned faces, the fears,
and hopes, and angers written on them but half
legible in the twilight of the Russian night. From
down the street could be heard the roar of march
ing hosts, cheering the armored cars. The auto
mobile searchlights focusing on the speaker, silhou
etted him against the walls of the Palace, a gigantic
figure in black. Every gesture, ten times magnified,
cut a sweeping shadow across the white facade.
"Comrades," said this giant Bolshevik, "you want
revolutionary action. The only way to get it is thru
a revolutionary government. The Kerensky Gov
ernment is revolutionary in name only. They prom
ise land, but the landlords still have it. They
promise bread, but the speculators still hold it.
They promise to get from the Allies a declaration of
the objects of the war, but the Allies simply tell us to
go on fighting.
"In the cabinet a fundamental conflict rages be
tween the Socialist and the bourgeois ministers. The
result is a deadlock and nothing at all is done.
"You men of Petrograd come here to the Soviet

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 33
Executive Committee saying, 'Take the Government.
Here are the bayonets to back you!' You want the
Soviets to be the government. So do we Bolshe
viks. But we remember that Petrograd is not all
of Russia. So we are demanding that the Central
Executive Committee call delegates from all over
Russia. It is for this new congress to declare the
Soviets the government of Russia."
Each crowd met this declaration with cheers and
loud cries, "Down with Kerensky"; "Down with
the Bourgeois Government"; "All Power to the
Soviets." "Avoid all violence and bloodshed," was the part
ing admonition to each contingent. "Do not listen
to provocators. Do not delight your enemies by
killing each other. You have amply shown your
power. Now go home quietly. When the occasion
for force arises we will call you."
In the swirling flood were cross currents made
by the Anarchists, the Black Hundreds, German
agents, hoodlums, and those volatile elements which
always join the side with the most machine-guns.
One thing was now clear to the Bolsheviks: the
revolutionary workmen and soldiers around Petro
grad were overwhelmingly against the Provisional
Government and for the Soviet. They wanted the
Soviet to be the government. But the Bolsheviks
were afraid this would be a premature step. As they
said, "Petrograd is not Russia. The other cities and
the army at the front may not be ripe for such

34 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
drastic action. Only delegates from the Soviets of
all Russia can decide that."
Inside the Tauride the Bolsheviks were using
every argument to persuade the members of the
Soviet Executive Committee to call another All-Rus
sian Congress. Outside the Tauride, they were using
every exhortation to quiet and appease the clamoring
masses. This was a task that taxed all their wits
and resources. Some contingents came to
The Sailors Demand the Tauride very belliger-
"AU Power to the Soviets." ent. The Cronstadt sailors
arrived in a particularly
ugly temper. In barges they came up the river,
eight thousand strong. Two of their number had
been killed along the way. It had been no holiday
excursion, and they had no intention of gazing at
the walls of the Palace, filling the courtyard with
futile clamor, then turning around and going home.
They sent in a demand that the Soviet produce a
Socialist Minister, and produce him at once.
Chernov, Minister of Agriculture, came out. He
took for his rostrum the top of a cab.
"I come to tell you that three bourgeois Ministers
have resigned. We now look to the future with great
hope. Here are the laws which give the land to the
peasant." "Good," cried the hearers. "Will these laws be
put into operation at once?"

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 35
"As soon as possible," Chernov answered.
"Soon as possible!" they mocked him. "No, no!
We want it now, now. All the land for the peasant
now! What have you been doing all these weeks
anyhow?" "I am not answerable to you for my deeds,"
Chernov replied, white with rage. "It is not you
that put me in my office. It was the Peasants'
Soviet. To them alone I make my reckoning."
At this rebuff a howl of derision went up from the
sailors. With it went the cry: "Arrest Chernov!
Arrest him! " A dozen hands stretched out to clutch
the Minister and drag him off. Others sought to
drag him back. In a vortex of fighting friends and
foes, his clothes torn, the Minister was being borne
away. But Trotzky, coming up, secured his release.
Meanwhile, Saakian scrambled up on the cab. He
struck an attitude of stern command.
"Listen!" he cried. "Do you know who is now
addressing you?"
"No," a voice called out. "And we don't give
a damn." "The man who is now addressing you," resumed
Saakian, "is the Vice-President of the Central Execu
tive Committee of the First All-Russian Congress
of Soviets of Soldiers' and Workmen's Deputies."
This prodigious title instead of serving to impress
and quiet the crowd, was greeted by laughter and
cries of "Down with him!" (doloi, doloi). But he

36 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
had come out to tame this mob, and with great vim
he fired into it a fusillade of short abrupt sentences.
"My name — Saakian!" (The mob: "Down with
him!") "My party— Socialist Revolutionary!" ("Down
with him!")
"My official religion — according to the passport—
Armenian-Gregorian!" ("Down with him!")
"My real religion — Socialism!" ("Down with
him!") "My relation to the war — two brothers killed."
A voice: "There should have been a third."
"My advice to you — trust us, your leaders and
best friends. Stop this foolish demonstration. You
are disgracing yourself, disgracing the Revolution,
bringing disaster to Russia."
These sailors were already enraged. To slap
them in the face thus was an idiotic act. Pande
monium broke loose. Again Trotzky to the rescue.
He steps upon the platform, the hero and idol of
the Cronstadt sailors. He knows the temper of his
hearers. He knows, today, they have no ears for
censure. "Revolutionary sailors, pride and flower of the
revolutionary forces of Russia!" he began. "In this
battle for the Social Revolution we fight together.
Together, comrades, our fists beat upon the doors
of this Palace until the ideals for which our blood
has flowed shall at last be incarnated in the consti
tution of this country. Hard and long has been the

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 37
heroic struggle! But out of it will come a free life
for free men in a great free land. Am I not right?"
"Right you are, Trotzky," yells the crowd.
Trotzky moves away.
"But you haven't told us anything," they cry.
"What are you going to do about the Cabinet?"
They may be a mob, with an appetite for flattery,
but they are not so unthinking as to be pacified by
phrases, even from Trotzky.
"I am too hoarse to talk more," he pleads.
"Riazanov will tell you."
"No, you tell us!" Trotzky again mounts the cab.
"Only the All-Russian Congress can assume full
power of government. The Labor Section has
agreed to call this congress. The Military Section
will without doubt follow. In two weeks the dele
gates can be here."
"Two weeks!" they cry in astonishment. "Two
weeks is too long. We want it now!"
But Trotzky prevails. The sailors acquiesce,
cheering the Soviets and the coming Revolution.
They move peacefully away, convinced that the
Second All-Russian Congress will be called.
This is precisely what the
Downing the Demonstra- leaders in the Soviet Execu-
tion, then the Bolsheviks, tive Committee do not want.
They are dead set against
the Soviet becoming the government. They .have
many reasons to give. But the real reason is fear

38 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
of these very masses by whom they have been lifted
to their exalted stations. The intelligentsia distrust
the masses below them. At the same time they ex
aggerate the abilities and good intentions of the
grand bourgeoisie above them.
They do not want the Soviets to take the power.
They have no intention of calling a Second All-
Russian Congress in two weeks, two months, or at
all. But they are frightened by these turbulent
crowds crashing into the courtyard, hammering at
the doors. Their tactics are to placate the mob,
and they seek help from the Bolsheviks. At the
same time these intelligentsia play another game.
They join the Provisional Government in calling
regiments from the front "to quell the mutiny and
restore order in the city."
On the third day the troops arrive. Bicycle bat
talions, the reserve regiments, and then long grim
lines of horsemen, the sun glancing on the tips of .
their lances. They are the Cossacks, ancient foes
of the revolutionists, bringing dread to the workers
and joy to the bourgeoisie. The avenues are filled
now with well-dressed throngs cheering the Cos
sacks, crying "Shoot the rabble." "String up the
Bolsheviks." A wave of reaction runs thru the city. Insurgent
regiments are disarmed. The death penalty is re
stored. The Bolshevik papers are suppressed.
Forged documents attesting the Bolsheviks as Ger
man agents are handed to the press. Alexandrov,

PETROGRAD DEMONSTRATES 39
the Czar's prosecutor, hales them before the bar,
indicted for high treason under section 108 of the
Penal Code. Leaders like Trotzky and Kollontai
are thrown into prison. Lenin and Zinoviev are
driven into hiding. In all quarters sudden seizures,
assaults and murder of workingmen.
In the early morning of July 18th I am suddenly
wakened by piercing cries from the Nevsky. With
the clattering of horses' hoofs are mingled shouts,
desperate pleas for mercy, curses — one terrible
blood-curdling scream. Then, the thud of a falling
body, the groans of a man dying, and silence. An
officer coming in explains that some workingmen
had been caught pasting up Bolshevik posters along
the Nevsky. A squad of Cossacks had ridden them
down, lashing out with whips and sabres, cleaving
one man open, and leaving him dead on the pave
ment. At this new turn of events the bourgeoisie are
elated. Ill-based elation! They do not know that
the screams of this murdered workman will pene
trate the furthermost corners of Russia, rousing his
comrades to wrath and arms. This July day they
cheer the Volynsk regiment, as with band playing it
enters the city to suppress this uprising, whose pur
pose is to offer all power to the Soviets. Ill-starred
cheers ! They do not know that on a coming Novem
ber night they will see this regiment in the forefront
of the rising that triumphantly delivers all power to
the Soviets.

40 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The troops are called in to conquer Petrograd;
but in the end Petrograd conquers them. The in
fection of this Bolshevik stronghold is irresistible.
It is a huge blast furnace of the Revolution, burn
ing away all dross and indifference. No matter
how cold and sluggish they may enter the city, out
of it they go fired by the spirit of the Revolution.
The city rose in tears and blood, in hunger and
cold, in the forced labor of myriads of the starved
and beaten. Their bones lie buried deep in the
mud below. But their outraged spirits seem to live
again in the Petrograd workingmen of today —
spirits powerful and avenging. The serfs of Peter
built the city; presently their descendants will be
coming into their own.
It does not appear thus in midsummer 1917. The
black shadow of reaction hovers over them. But
the Bolsheviks bide their time. History, they feel,
is on their side. Their ideas are working out in
the villages, in the fleet and at the front.
To these places I now make my way.

CHAPTER III

A PEASANT INTERLUDE

•O out among the forests and the people,"
said Bakunin.
"In the capitals the orators thunder and rage
But in the village is the silence of centuries."
We craved a taste of this silence. Three months
we had heard the roar of Revolution. I was
saturated with it: Yanishev was exhausted by it. His
voice had failed thru incessant speaking and he had
been ordered by the Bolshevik Party to take a ten
days' respite. So we started out for the Volga basin
bound for the little village of Spasskoye (Salvation),
from which Yanishev had been driven out in 1907.
It was high noon one August day when we left
the Moscow train and set out on the road leading
across the fields. Sun-drenched in these last weeks
of summer, the fields had turned into wide rolling
seas of yellow grain, dotted here and there with
islands of green. These were the tree-shaded peasant
villages of the province of Vladimir. From a rise
in the road we could count sixteen of them, each
with its great white church capped with glistening
domes. It was a holiday and the distant belfries were
41

42 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
flooding the fields with music as the sun had flooded
them with color.
After the cities this was to me a land of peace
and quiet. But to Yanishev it was a land of poig
nant memories. After ten years of wandering the
exile was returning home.
"In that village over there," he said, pointing to
the west, "my father was a teacher. The people
Uked his teaching, but one day the gendarmes came,
closed the school, and led him off. In that next
village Vera lived. She was very pretty and very
kind and she was my sweetheart. I was too bashful
to tell her then, and now it is too late. She is in
Siberia. In the woods yonder a few of us used to
meet to talk about the revolution. One night the
Cossacks came riding down on us. That bridge is
where they killed Yegor, the bravest of our com
rades." It was not a happy home-coming for the exile.
Every turn in the road started up some recollection.
Handkerchief in hand Yanishev walked along, pre
tending that it was only perspiration he was wiping
from his face.
As we came across the village green of Spass-
koye we saw an old peasant in a bright blue smock.
sitting on a bench before his hut. He shaded his
eyes, puzzled by the appearance of these two dust-
stained foreigners. Then in joyful recognition he
cried "Mikhail Petrovich!" and throwing his arms
around Yanishev, kissed him on both cheeks. Then

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 43
he turned to me. I told him that my name was
Albert. "And your father's name?" he inquired gravely.
"David," I replied.
"Albert Davidovich (Albert, son of David), wel
come to the home of Ivan Ivanov. We are poor,
but may God give you his richest blessing."
Ivan Ivanov stood straight as an arrow, long-
bearded, clear-eyed, hard-muscled. But it was
not his strength of body, nor his warmth of feeling,
nor his quaint formality of speech that struck me. It
was his quiet dignity. It was the dignity of a natural
object, a tree whose roots run deep into the soil.
And it was indeed out of the soil of this mir that
Ivan Ivanov for sixty years had drawn his suste
nance, as had his fathers for generations. His
Uttie izba was made of logs, its deep thatched roof
now green with weeds, its garden gay with flowers.
Ivan's wife, Tatyana, and daughter, Avdotia,
having saluted us, brought a table from the house.
On it they set a samovar, and lifting its top, placed
eggs along the steaming sides. Ivan and his house
hold made the sign of the cross and we sat down
at the table.
"Of what we are rich in, we gladly give you," said
Ivan, (Chem bogaty, iy ee rady).
The women brought in a big bowl of cabbage-
soup (shtchee), and for each person a wooden spoon.
Every one was supposed to dip his soup from the
common bowl. Seeing this, I stood not upon the

44 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
order of the dipping, but dipped at once. When
the first bowl was empty, they brought a second,
full of porridge (kasha). It was followed by a bowl
of boiled raisins. Ivan presided at the samovar, dis
pensing tea, black bread and cucumbers. It was a
special feast, for this was a special holiday in
Spasskoye. Even the crows seemed to be aware of it. Great
flocks wheeling overhead threw swift cloud-shadows
across the ground, or alighted on the church roof and
covered it completely. The domes, all green or
glistening gold, would in a minute be blackest jet.
I told Ivan that in America farmers killed crows
because they ate the grain.
"Yes," said Ivan, "our crows eat the grain. But
they eat the field-mice, too. And even if they are
crows, they are like us and want to Uve."
Tatyana held a like attitude toward the flies that
swarmed around the table. Descending on a piece
of sugar they would turn it as black as the crow-
covered church.
"Never mind the flies," said Tatyana. "Poor
things, in a month or two they'll be dead, anyhow."
It was the Feast of Transfigura-
The Village Takes tion, and from all the countryside
a Holiday. around came the poor, the crippled
and the aged. Again and again
we heard the tapping of a cane and a plaintive voice
asking alms radi Christa, for the Christ's sake.

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 43
Yanishev and I dropped a few copecks into the
bags they thrust before them. The women fol
lowed with large pieces cut fromthe big black loaves,
while Ivan solemnly deposited in each sack a great
green cucumber. Cucumbers were scarce this year,
so it was truly a gift of love. But whether we gave
cucumbers or bread or copecks, back to each of us
came the plaintive sing-song blessing of the beggar.
Even the roughest, poorest Russian peasant is
moved to profound pity by the spectacle of human
misery. His own life teaches him the meaning of
pain and privation. But this does not dull his sym
pathy; it makes him the more sensitive to the suf
ferings of others.
To Ivan the city workingmen cooped up in their
hot dusty streets were "poor fellows" (bedniakee) ;
the criminals locked up in jails were "unfortunates"
(neschastnenkie) ; while a group of war-prisoners
in Austrian uniforms cut him deepest of all. They
seemed jolly enough as they came rollicking by, and
I said so.
"But they are so far away from home," said Ivan.
"How can they be happy?"
"Well," I said, "here am I, farther from home
than they are, and I am happy."
"Yes," assented the others, "that is right."
"No," said Ivan Ivanov, "that is wrong. Albert
Davidovich is here because he wanted to come.
The prisoners are here because we made them come."
Naturally two foreigners sitting at the table of

46 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Ivan Ivanov made a sensation among the natives
of Spasskoye. But the elders did not let their curi
osity overcome their sense of the proprieties. Only
a few children came down, and fixed their gaze upon
us. I smiled at the children and they looked thun
derstruck. Again I smiled, and three of them almost
fell backwards. This seemed a peculiar reaction to
my friendly overtures. At the third smile they cried,
"Zolotiyeh zoobyi" and clasping hands they ran
away. Before I could grasp the meaning of this
behavior they came rushing back with a score of
recruits. In semi-circle they stood around the table
with all their wistful eyes converged on me. There
was nothing for me to do but smile again. "Yes,
yes ! " they cried. "Zolotiyeh zooby! He is the man
with golden teeth!" This was why my smile had
startled them. And what could be more marvelous
than the arrival of a foreigner whose mouth grew
golden teeth? Had I arrived in Spasskoye with a
golden crown upon my head I could not have more
deeply stirred the community than by wearing a
golden crown upon my tooth. But this I learned on
the morrow.
Now from the farther end of the village came
the strains of music. There was a chorus of young
voices accompanied by the thrumming of the bala
laika, the clanging of cymbals and the throbbing
of a kind of tambourine (bouben). Clearer and
nearer came the music, until suddenly around the
corner of the church emerged the procession of

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 47
players and singers. The girls were in the gay rich
costumes of the peasants; the boys wore smocks of
green and orange and brightest hue, belted by cords
with tasseled ends. The boys played the instru
ments, while the girls sang in response to the pre
centor, a clean-looking, tousle-haired lad of seven
teen, one of the last to be drafted to the front. In
clear lusty voice, with abandon of emotion he sang
an old folk-song, adding new verses of his own as he
strode along. Later he wrote them down for me.
At the window a birch tree stands
The golden days are gone
Pity us, fair maidens all,
We are now recruits!
Why have they taken me as a soldier?
I, my father's only son?
The reason probably is this,
I've courted the maidens all too long.
From the trenches a lad steps out
Crying, "Oh, my fathers!
All my comrades have been killed!
Soon my turn will come."
Why, my darling, don't you meet me
In the midst of fields?
Don't you feel some pain or sorrow
That a soldier boy am I?
Father, mother, dig a grave,
Bury me deep below.
For my courting, for my freedom,
Bury my naughty head.
Three times they circled the village green. Then
gathering on the grass before the church, they sang

48 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
and danced till morning. The rush and joyous fling
of the dancers, the colors of their costumes Ut by the
pine-torches, the laughter and snatches of song rising
out of the dark, the young lovers with their caresses
frank and unashamed, the church bell at intervals
crashing like a great temple gong and the startled
birds wheeling overhead, all combined to create an
impression of primitive energy and beauty. It car
ried me back across the centuries to the days when
the race was young, and men drew Ufe and inspira
tion directly from the soil.
It was a dream world, an idylUc com-
Yanishev Tells mune, bound together in a fellowship
of America. of toil and play and feasting. With
its spell upon me I made my way to
the izba, opened the door, and came suddenly face
to face with the twentieth century again. It was in
the person and words of Yanishev, Yanishev the arti
san, the Socialist and the Internationalist. To the
peasants ringed around him he was describing the
America of today. It was not the usual story of the
bitter experiences of the Russian in America, the
story of slums and strikes and poverty that thousands
of returning exiles have spread over Russia. Yani
shev, with husky voice but face aglow, was telling the
wonders of America. To peasants with houses one
story high he pictured the houses of New York,
forty, fifty and sixty stories high. To men who had
never seen a shop larger than the blacksmith's, he

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 49
told of great plants where a hundred trip hammers
pounded night and day. From their serene Mus
covite plain he took them to great cities with sub
way trains tearing up the night, Great White Ways
flooded with pleasure-seekers, and clanging factories
where millions surged in and out.
The villagers listened attentively. They were
not overawed or wonderstruck. Yet we could not
complain of any lack of appreciation.
"The Americans do wonderful things," said one
old mujik, shaking our hands.
"Yes," agreed his companion, "they do things
more wonderful than even the leshey (the wood
spirit)." But in their kindly comments we felt a certain
reserve, as if they were trying to be polite to stran
gers. Next morning a conversation overheard by
chance gave us their real opinion.
Ivan was speaking. "No wonder Albert and
Mikhail are white-faced and tired. Think of being
brought up in a country like that." And Tatyana
said, "It's a hard life we live, but God knows it
looks harder over there."
I glimpsed for the first time a truth that grew
clearer as the months went by. The peasant has a
mind of his own, which he uses to make judgments
of his own. This is startling to the foreigner, to
whom the Russian peasant is a shambling creature
of the earth, immersed in the night of mediaevalism,
chained by superstition, steeped in poverty. It is

So THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
startling to discover that this peasant, unable to read
or write, is able to think.
His thought is primal, elemental, with the stamp
of the soil on it. It reflects the centuries of living
on the far-stretching plains and steppes under the
wide Russian sky and through the long winter. He
brings a fresh untutored mind to bear upon all ques
tions in a manner penetrating and often disconcert
ing. He challenges our long-held convictions. He
revises our estimate of western civilization. It is
not at all obvious to him that it is worth the price
we pay for it. He is not mesmerized by machinery,
efficiency, production. He asks, "What is it for?
Does it make men happier? Does it make them
more friendly?"
His conclusions are not always profound. Some
times they are only naive and curious. When the
mir assembled on Monday morning the village Elder
(starosta) politely extended to me the greetings of
the village. He said apologeticaUy that the children
had brought home a report about my golden teeth,
but that it did not seem reasonable, and they didn't
know whether to believe it or not. There was •
nothing to do but demonstrate.- I opened my mouth
while the Elder peered long and intently into it and
then gravely confirmed the report. Thereupon the
seventy bearded patriarchs formed in Une while I
stood with mouth agape. Each gazed his fill and
then moved along to give place to the next man

The paradoxes of Russia — the peasants, shrewd and superstitious, cruel and
kind, communistic and individualistic, baffling to Tolstoy, irritating to Gorky.
What will they make of the new Russia?

Author with the wood-choppers starting for the forests.

Across the fields with the children gleaning the oats and rye.

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 51
untU all the members of the mir had filed past
my open mouth.
I had to explain that it is the custom of Americans
to put cement and gold and silver in their crumbling
teeth. One old man of eighty, whose fine clean teeth
showed not the slightest need of dentistry, gave
his opinion that Americans must eat food very
strange and strong to work such havoc. Several said
it might be all right for Americans to have golden
teeth, but that it would never do for Russians, who
were always drinking so much tea and such very
hot tea that it would surely melt the gold. At this
point Ivan Ivanov, who had been enjoying the pres
tige of harboring the unusual visitors, spoke up. He
insisted that his tea was as hot as any in the village,
and testified that he had drawn at least ten glasses
for me, yet there had been no melting.
Abroad the term "American" is almost synony
mous with "man of wealth." Gold on my eye-glasses
and on my fountain pen convinced them that I must
be a man of super-wealth. Yet I came to marvel
at their lavish display of gold quite as much as they
at mine. For this peasant village had gold in
abundance, only it was not on the persons of the vil
lagers. It was in their church. As one stepped thru
the church doors there loomed up a beautiful reredos
twenty or thirty feet high, covered with a glistening
sheen of gold. At one time the villagers had raised
ten thousand rubles to decorate this temple.
While this little village was far removed from the

$i THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
currents of Europe and America, still there were
marks of culture and civilization advancing from the
West. There were cigarettes and Singer sewing-
machines, men whose limbs had been shot off by
machine-guns, and two boys from the factory-
towns with store-clothes and celluloid collars — ugly
contrasts to the smocks and kaftans of the village.
One night standing before a neighbor's hut we
were startled to hear thru the curtains a soft and
modulated voice asking "Parlez-vous Frangais?" It
was a pretty peasant girl raised in the village but
with all the airs and graces which belong to a girl
raised in a court. She had served in a French house
hold in Petrograd and had come home to give birth
to her child.
Thus in varied ways the outside world was filter
ing into the village stirring it from the slumber of
centuries. Stories of big cities and of lands across
the seas came by way of prisoners and soldiers, trad
ers and zemstvo men. It resulted in a strange mis
cellany of ideas about foreign lands — a curious com
pound of facts and fancies. One time a grotesque
half-fact about America was brought home to me
pointedly and in an embarrassing manner.
We were at the supper table and I was explain
ing that in my note-book I was writing down aU the
customs and habits of the Russians that struck me
as strange and peculiar.
"For example," I said, "instead of having indi
vidual dishes you eat out of one great common bowl.

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 53
That is a curious custom." "Yes," said Ivan. "I
suppose we are a curious people."
"And that big stove! It takes up a third of the
room. You bake bread in it. You sleep on top of
it. You get inside and take a steam bath in it. You
do everything with it and in a most peculiar man
ner." "Yes," nodded Ivan again, "I suppose we
are a peculiar people."
I felt something step on my foot. I thought it
was a dog but it proved to be a pig. "There!" I
exclaimed. "That is the most peculiar custom of all.
You let pigs and chickens walk right into your din
ing-room." At this moment the baby in Avdotia's arms began
kicking its feet up and down upon the table
in baby fashion. Addressing the child, slie said,
"Here, baby! Take your feet off the table. Remem
ber you are not in America." And turning to me
she added courteously, "What peculiar customs you
have there in America."
It was the day after the holiday, and the
We Harvest visitors from neighboring towns still tar-
the Crops. ried. There were games and dancing on
the village green; and a band of children,
having come into possession of an accordion, pa
raded solemnly about, singing the songs of yes
terday, quaint little understudies of their elder
brothers and sisters. An after-the-holiday lethargy
Ungered over most of the village. But not over the

S4 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
household of Ivan Ivanov. Everybody was busy
there. Avdotia was twisting straw into bands to
bind the sheaves. Tatyana was plaiting strips of
bark and shaping them into sandals. Olga, Avdo-
tia's elder child, was forcibly teaching the cat to
drink tea. Ivan sharpened the scythes, and we all
set out for the fields.
At this move the young people came out of the
izbas. "Please don't go to the fields. Stay at
home," they teased. As we proceeded they became
quite serious. I asked why we should not go.
"If one family starts for the fields all the others
follow," they said. "Then our hoUday fun wfll be
over. Please don't go!"
But the ripened harvest was calling. The sun
was shining, and there was no telling how soon the
rains would fall. So Ivan marched along, and when,
fifteen minutes later, we reached a rise of ground,
we looked back to see the paths dotted with black
figures making for the fields. Like a beehive the
village was sending out its workers to garner its
food-stores for the oncoming winter. As we reached
the rye-field Yanishev quoted from Nekrassov's
national epic, Who Can Be Happy and Free in

Russia?

"You full yellow cornfields!
To look at you now
One would never imagine
How sorely God's people
Had toiled to array you.
'Tis not by warm dewdrops

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 55
That you have been moistened;
The sweat of the peasant
Has fallen on you.
"The peasants are gladdened
At sight of the oats,
And the rye and the barley,
But not by the wheat,
For it feeds but the chosen.
'We love you not, Wheat!
But the rye and the barley
We love — they are kind,
They feed all men alike.' "
As each one turned to his task I joined in the
work, fetching water, tying sheaves, swinging a
scythe, watching the light-brown stalks come tum
bling down. The scythe demands skill and practice.
So the figure I cut and the swathe I cut were not
heroic, nor did I add to the prestige of American
reapers. Ivan was too polite to criticize my tech
nique but I could see that it was inciting him to sup
pressed merriment. In his comment to Avdotia I
picked up the Russian word for camel. I was
indeed hunched over like a camel while Ivan Ivanov
stood erect, handling his scythe like a master-
craftsman. I turned upon Ivan and accused him of
likening me to a camel. He was embarrassed. But
when he saw that I was amused, and admitted my
likeness to that humped creature, he laughed and
laughed. "Tatyana! Mikhail! " he roared. "Albert Davido-
vich says that when he cuts the grain he looks like
a camel. Ho! ho! ho!" Two or three times after

56 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
that he broke into sudden laughter. The camel
must have helped him thru many weary wastes in
the long winter.
Writers dwell upon the laziness of the Russian
peasant. Watching the mujik lounging around mar
ket places and vodka-shops gives one that impression.
But trying to keep up with the mujik in the fields
very quickly takes it away. With the sun beating
down on their heads and the dust rising from under
their feet they mowed and raked and bound and
stacked until the last straw had been gleaned from
the field. Then they tramped back into the viUage.
Since our arrival the villagers had
The Peasants been asking Yanishev to make a
Wary of Bolshevism, speech. In the early evening there
arrived a delegation beseeching
him. "Think of it," said Yanishev. "Ten years ago if
these peasants had suspected that I was a SociaUst
they would have come to kill me. Now, knowing
that I am a Bolshevik, they come begging me to talk.
Things have gone a long, long way since then."
Yanishev was not a gifted man unless it be a gift
to be deeply sensitive to the sorrows of the world.
Tormented by the sufferings of others, he had chosen
privation for himself. As an artisan in America he
earned six dollars a day. Out of this he took enough
for a cheap room and meals. With the rest he
bought "literature" and carried it from door to door.

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 57
In the poor quarters of Boston, Detroit, Moscow
and Marseilles, they still speak of Yanishev as the
comrade who gave everything to the cause.
In Tokio a fellow-exile once found an excited
cooUe trying to drag Yanishev, protesting, into a
rickshaw. "I just got in his rickshaw," Yanishev
explained, "and he began pulling and sweating like
a horse. I may be a fool, but I can't let a man work
Uke a beast for me. So I paid him and got out.
I'U never get into a rickshaw again."
Since his return to Russia he had travelled night
and day addressing enormous crowds until his voice
failed him and he could only whisper and gesture
He had come to his home village to recuperate. But
even here the Revolution would not let him rest.
"Will Mikhail Petrovich give us a Uttie speech?"
the peasants pleaded. "Only a little speech."
Yanishev could not deny them. The committee
drew a wagon out upon the village green and when
the throng was thick around it, Yanishev mounted
this rostrum and began telling the Bolshevik story
of. the Revolution, the War, and the Land.
They stood Ustening while evening darkened into
night. Then they brought torches, and Yanishev
talked on. His voice grew husky. They brought
him water, tea and kvass. His voice failed, and
they waited patiently till it came back again. These
peasants who had labored all day in the fields stood
there late into the night, more eager to gather stores
for their mind than they had been to gather food for

58 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
their bodies. It was a symbolic sight, this torch of
knowledge' flaming in the darkness of the village —
one of tens of thousands scattered over the Ukrain
ian steppes, the plains of Muscovy and the far
stretches of Siberia. In hundreds of them that night
torches were flaming and other Yanishevs were tell
ing the story of the Revolution.
So much reverence and age-old longings in those
eager faces pressing around the speaker. So much
hunger in these questions rising out of the dark.
Yanishev toiled on until he was utterly exhausted.
Only when he could go no further did they reluc
tantly disperse. I listened to their comments. Were
these "ignorant illiterate mujiks" ready to swaUow
this new doctrine, to be swayed by the passion of a
propagandist? "Mikhail Petrovich is a good man," they were
saying. "We know that he has gone far and seen
many things. What he believes may be good for
some people, but we do not know whether it is good
for us." Yanishev had poured out his soul, explain
ing, expounding the creed of Bolshevism — and not a
single convert. Yanishev himself said so, as he
dragged himself up into the hayloft where we had
gone to escape from the stuffy cabin. One young
peasant, Fedossiev, seemed to divine the loneliness
and spiritual emptiness of a preacher who gives his
best and seemingly is rejected.
"It is all so new, Mikhail Petrovich," he said.
"We are a slow people. We must have time to

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 59
think it over and talk it over. Only today we
reaped the grain in the fields; it was months and
months ago that we sowed it in the ground."
I tried to add a reassuring word. "Never mind,"
whispered Yanishev, with the zealot's confidence
in the ultimate triumph of his faith. "Of course,
they will believe." He lay in collapse on the hay,
his body trembling and coughing, but with serenity
in his face.
I doubted. But Yanishev was right. Eight
months later he made another speech on the village
green. It was on invitation of the Communist Party
of the village of Spasskoye. Fedossiev was chair
man of the meeting. Morning brought many peasants to the
Yanishev Talks door with questions. Above all was
of the Land. the problem of the land. The Bolshevik
solution at that time was, "Leave it
to the local land committees. Let them take over
the great estates and put them into the hands of the
people." The peasants pointed out that this did
not solve the land problem of Spasskoye, for here
there were no crown or church or private domains.
"All the land around here already belongs to us,"
said the Elder. "It is too little, for God gives us
many children. The Bolsheviks may be as good as
MikhaU Petrovich says they are, but if they take
the government, can they make more land? No.
Only God can do that. We want a government

60 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
with money enough to send us to Siberia or to any
place where there is land in plenty. Will the Bol
sheviks do that?"
Yanishev explained the colonizing scheme, and
then turned to the agricultural commune which the
Bolsheviks were projecting for Russia. It was
ultimately to change the mir into a cooperative
large-scale farming enterprise. He pointed out the
wastage of the present system in Spasskoye. Here, as
usual, the land was divided into four sections. One
was held for common pasturage. To make sure of a
fair division of the good, the bad and the medium
ground, each peasant was allotted a field in each
of these respective sections. Yanishev pointed out
the time lost in going from field to field. He showed
the gain that would come if the fields, instead of
being cut into checkerboards, were worked as a unit
on a grand scale. He pictured the gang-plow and
the harvester at work. Two of the peasants had
seen their magic performances in another province
and testified that for working they were regular
"devils" (tcherti).
"And will America send them to us?" the peas
ants asked.
"For a while," Yanishev replied. "Then we shall
build great shops and make them right here in Rus
sia." Again he took his hearers out of their quiet rural
haunts into the roar and clamor of a great modern
plant. And again there was that same uneasy re-

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 61
action to his tale. They were more afraid than
enamoured of modern industrialism. They wanted
our wonderful machinery. But they thought it
would be a dubious blessing if they must pay the
price of seeing chimneys belching black smoke-clouds
over their land of green and white. The peasants
dread the idea of "being cooked in a factory boiler."
Necessity goaded some of them into mines and
mills, but since the Revolution they have gone flock
ing back to the land.
Besides their social questions, there were many
personal problems that confronted Yanishev.
Should he recommend his political creed by com
promising his personal convictions? For example,
should he who had left the Greek Church, make the
sign of the cross before and after meals. Yanishev
decided against it and prepared himself for ques
tions from Ivan Ivanov. But though the old peasant
looked perplexed and his wife grieved when Yanishev
omitted the ceremony, they never asked for explana
tions. In Russia the customary salutation to the toiler
in the fields is "God's help to you." (Bog v pomo-
shch). Yanishev decided to use that greeting in
stead of the formal "Good morning." He also stood
thru the long service for Fedossiev's baby. In Rus
sian villages bells toll often for the death of a child.
"Many children God gives us," said the Elder.
"And to keep bread in the mouths of those that live
we must not neglect the fields." So the others went

62 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
to their work while the priest and the parents,
Yanishev and I, went to the church. Beside the
mother stood her nine children. Each year she had
borne a child and, ranged according to age, they
formed a flight of steps with here and there a gap.
That year the child had died. And now this year's
child was dead. It was a tiny thing, no larger than
the lily beside it, so small and fragile in its Uttie
blue coffin, with the massive walls and pillars of
the church rising around it.
This village of Spasskoye was fortunate in its
priest. He was a kind and sympathetic man, Uked
and trusted by the people. Tho called so often
to say the children's mass, he was trying not to
make it a thing of routine. Gently he lit the
candles on the coffin, laid the cross on the baby's
breast, and began the mass, filling the church with
his resonant voice. Priest and deacon chanted the
service, while father, mother and children crossed
themselves and knelt and touched their foreheads
to the floor. Opposite the priest Yanishev stood
stolidly with half-bowed head.
They faced each other with the mystery of life
and death between them; the one a priest of the
Holy Orthodox church, the other a prophet of the
Social Revolution; the one consecrating himself
to making children happy and secure in the paradise
beyond, the other devoting his life to making the
earth secure and happy for living children.

A PEASANT INTERLUDE 63
I went with Yanishev upon many of his mission
ary journeys thru the Russian towns and cities.
From the skilled artisans in the textile-center of
Ivanovo, we ranged thru all ranks of the proletarians
down to the slum of the thieves in Moscow, im
mortalized in Maxim Gorky's The Night Asylum.
But always the thoughts of Yanishev were going
back to the villages.
Six months later I said good-bye to him at the
Fourth Soviet Congress in Moscow. Clinging to his
arm was a woman of seventy, very withered and
bent. Yanishev introduced her reverently as his
"teacher." Beyond the confines of Russia or out
side the working-classes her name was quite un
known. But to the young rebels among the workers
and peasants her name was everything. With them
she had shared hardship, pain and prison. The long
years of toil and hunger had left her white and
feeble, an object inspiring pity until one saw her
eyes. In them were still the fires which had kindled
the spirits of scores of young men like Yanishev
and sent them out as flaming apostles of the Social
Revolution. For the Revolution she had given her
Ufe, but had hardly dared dream that she would
see it.
Now it had come and she was sitting among her
own, with hands clasped in the hand of her young
disciple. True, industry was in ruin, the Germans
were at the gates, and hunger and cold walked
thru the city, yet as she sat in the ancient Hall of

64 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Nobles, listening to Lenin, she was seeing the new
day coming, bringing peace to all people and to
her a chance to live on the land.
"We both came from the land and we both love
it," she whispered to me. "And when the Revolu
tion is complete Mikhail and I are going back to
live in the villages." *
* Appendix III. The Burial of Yanishev.

Some father has driven
His daughter," disheveled,
Into the street,
Without cause or mercy.

The snow cuts her face,
The wind's breath is icy,
But the heart of the father
Is colder than these.

Is ihe father to blame
For mistreating his daughter?
He was taught by the priest
That woman is sin.

Now the Soviet teaches
A new vision of women,
As comrades of men,
Old woes are forgotten.

The lot of Russian peasant women under the old regime was not all so happy
as depicted in the foregoing chapter. Their social position was distinctly
inferior to men and they were often treated as drudges and menials.

Two old women lament
Old days of sorrow,
When prayers went unheard
And the grave was relief.

But no more does the stick
Fall upon women's shoulders.
Free and equal they march,
Comrades of menl

"Dry your tears. Women!
A new day is here,
When old superstitions
Bring no ignorant fear.

Shake off slavish bonds.
Discover your wings,
Fly from ancient darkness
To the light of new days."

When the Soviet later came into power it sought to make women conscious
of their new rights and privileges. To this end the Soviet Government
issued posters like this one: FORWARD TO THE LIGHT.

CHAPTER IV
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
TN the summer of 191 7 I travelled far and wide
A thru Russia. From all sides rose the lamentation
of a stricken people. I heard it in the textile mills of
Ivanovo, the Fair grounds of Nijni and the market-
squares of Kiev. It came to me from the holds of
steamers on the Volga and at night from rafts and
barges drifting down the Dnieper. The burden of
the people's sorrow was the war, "The cursed war!"
Everywhere I saw the blight and wreckage of
war. In the Ukraine I drove out over those rolling
lands which made Gogol exclaim: "You steppes! O
God! How lovely you are! " We stopped at a little
village folded in the hills and about three hundred
women, forty old men and boys and a score of crip
pled soldiers gathered round our zemstvo wagon.
When I stood up to address them I asked: "How
many ever heard of Washington?" One lad .raised
his hand. "How many have heard of Lincoln?"
Three hands. "Kerensky?" About ninety.
"Lenin?" Ninety again. "Tolstoi?" One hundred
and fifty hands.
They enjoyed this, laughing together at the for-
65

66 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
eigner and his funny accent. Then a foolish blunder.
I asked, "Who of you have lost someone in the war?"
Nearly every hand went up, and a wail swept thru
that laughing throng, Uke a winter wind moaning in
the trees. Two old peasants fell against the wagon-
'wheels sobbing, and shaking my platform. A lad
ran out of the crowd, crying: "My brother — they
killed my brother!" And the women, drawing their
platoks to their eyes, or clasped in each other's
arms, wept and wept, until I wondered where all the
tears could come from. Who would have dreamed
that behind those placid faces lay so much grief?
This was but one of the thousands of Russian vil
lages which the war had stripped of every able-
bodied man. It was one of countless villages to
which the wounded came crawling back, crippled,
eyeless, or armless. Millions never returned at all.
They lay in that great grave, 1500 miles long
stretching from the Black Sea to the Baltic — the
Russian front against the Germans. There peasants
with only clubs in their hands, driven up against the
machine guns of the Germans, were mowed down
en masse.
There were plenty of guns in Archangel. They
had even been loaded on cars, and started for the
front. But merchants who wanted those cars for
their wares, slipped a few thousand rubles to the offi
cials; so, ten miles out of Archangel, the munitions
were dumped and the cars shunted back to be re-

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK 67
loaded with champagnes, automobiles, and Parisian
dresses. Life was gay and dazzling in Petrograd and the
big cities — big profits in this war business — but it
was cold and bloody business for 12,000,000 soldiers
driven into the trenches by order of the Czar.
And now under Kerensky there were still 12,000,-
000 under arms. They were conscripts, dragged
from ploughs and workshops to have guns thrust in
their hands. The ruling-class used every device to
keep those weapons in the soldiers' hands. It waved
the flag and screamed "Victory and glory." It
organized Women's Battalions of Death crying
"Shame on you men to let girls do your fighting."
It placed machine-guns in the rear of rebelling regi
ments declaring certain death to those who re
treated. But all to no avail.
In thousands the soldiers were throwing
The Soldiers down their guns and streaming from the
in Revolt. front. Like plagues of locusts they came,
clogging railways, highways and water
ways. They swarmed down on trains, packing roofs
and platforms, cUnging to car-steps like clusters of
grapes, sometimes evicting passengers from their
berths. A Y. M. C. A. man swears he saw this sign:
"Tovarish Soldiers: Please do not throw passengers
out of the window after the train is in motion."
Perhaps an exaggeration. But they did throw our
suitcases out of the window.

68 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
It happened on a trip I made to Moscow with
Alex Gumberg. Our compartment was crowded, and
the Russians, having almost hermetically sealed door
and window against the night air, went blissfully to
sleep. The place, soon steaming Uke a Turkish
bath, became unbearable. To let in a breath of
air, I slid the door open, then joined the sleepers.
In the morning I woke to a harsh surprise. Our
suitcases were gone.
"Some tovarish robbers in uniform threw them
out of the window and then jumped off the train,"
explained the old conductor. His consolation for our
grief was that they had Ukewise stolen the baggage
of an officer in the next compartment. We grieved
not so much for the loss of our clothes as for the in
valuable passports, notebooks and letters of intro
duction our bags contained.
Two weeks later we got another surprise — a sum
mons from the station-master in Moscow. There
was one of our suitcases forwarded to us by the
robbers. It contained none of our clothes but aU
our documents and the officers' papers — not a single
one was missing.
After all, considering the plight of the hordes of
deserting soldiers that swept across the land, one
wonders not at the number of thefts and excesses
they committed but at the fewness of them. And if
the tales of awful conditions in the trenches were
true, the wonder is not that so many soldiers de
serted but that so many stiU remained at the front.

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK 69
I wanted to see conditions for myself. Many
times I tried to get a pass to the front. At last in
September I succeeded. With John Reed and Boris
Reinstein, I started for the Riga Sector.
With us was a Russian priest, a big bearded
fellow, gentle and amiable, but with a terrible thirst
for tea and conversation. On the door of our com
partment the guard slapped up a sign that said:
"American Mission." Under this aegis we slept and
ate as the train crept thru the autumn drizzle and the
priest talked endlessly on about his soldiers.
"In the old text of the church prayers," he said,
"God is called Czar of Heaven and the Virgin,
Czarina. We've had to leave that out. The people
won't have God insulted, they say. The priest prays
for peace to all nations. Whereupon the soldiers cry
out, 'Add "without annexations and indemnities" '.
Then we pray for travellers, for the sick and the
suffering. And the soldiers cry 'Pray also for the
deserters'. The Revolution has made havoc with
the Faith, yet the masses of soldiers are religious.
Much can still be done in the name of the cross.
"But the Imperialists tried to do too much with
it. 'On with the war!' they cried. 'On with the
war, until we plant the cross glittering over the dome
of Saint Sophia's in Constantinople.' And the sol
diers replied: 'Yes! But before we plant the cross
on Saint Sophia's, thousands of crosses will be
planted on our graves. We don't want Constanti
nople. We want to go home. We don't want other

70 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
people to take our land away from us. Neither wiU
we fight to take other people's land away from
them.' "
But even if they had the will to fight, what could
they fight with? At Wenden, the old city of the
Teutonic Knights, we were set down in the midst of
an army in ruins. Out of a gray sky the rain poured
down, turning roads into rivers, and the soldiers'
hearts into lead. Out of the trenches gaunt skele
tons rose up to stare at us. We saw famine-stricken
men falling on fields of turnips to devour them raw.
We saw men walking barefoot in the stubbled
fields, summer uniforms arriving at the beginning
of winter, horses dropping dead in mud up to their
bellies. Above the lines brazenly hovered the
armored planes of the enemy watching every move.
There were no air-craft guns, no food, no clothes.
And to crown all, no faith in their superiors.
Because their officers and government would or
could do nothing for them the soldiers were doing
things for themselves. On all sides, even in trenches
and gun-positions, new Soviets were springing up.
Here in Wenden there were three — (Is-ko-sol, Is-
ko-lat, I s-ko-strel) .
We were guests of the last, the Soviet of Lettish
Sharp-Shooters, the most literate, the most valiant,
the most revolutionary of all. For protection against
the German planes, they convened in a tree-screened
valley, ten thousand brown uniforms blending with
the autumn tinted leaves. Even with the threat

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK 71
above them, every mention of Kerensky's name drew
gales of laughter, every mention of peace thunders
of applause.
"We are not cowards or traitors," declared the
spokesmen. "But we refuse to fight until we know
what we are fighting for. We are told this is a war
for democracy. We do not believe it. We beUeve
the Allies are land-grabbers like the Germans. Let
them show that they are not. Let them declare their
peace terms. Let them publish the secret-treaties.
Let the Provisional Government show it is not hand
in glove with the Imperialists. Then we will lay
down our lives in battle to the last man."
This was the root of the debacle of the great Rus
sian armies. Not primarily that they had nothing
to fight with but that they felt they had nothing to
fight for.
Backed by the workingmen the soldiers were de
termined that the war should stop.
The bourgeoisie backed by the Al-
Fate of the lies and the General Staff were
Man on Horseback, equally determined that the war
should go on. Continuing the war
would give three things to the bourgeoisie: (1) It
would continue to give them enormous profits out of
army contracts., (2) In case of victory it would
give them, as their share in the loot, the Straits and
Constantinople. (3) It would give them a chance

72 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
of staving off the ever more insistent demands of the
masses for land and factories.
They were following the wisdom of Cath
erine the Great who said: "The way to save our
empire from the encroachment of the people is to
engage in war and thus substitute national passions
for social aspirations." Now the social aspirations
of the Russian masses were endangering the bour
geois empires of land and capital. But if the war
could go on, the day of reckoning with the masses
would be postponed. The energies absorbed in
carrying on the war could not be used in carrying
on the Revolution. "On with the war to a vic
torious end!" became the rallying cry of the bour
geoisie. But the Kerensky government no longer could
control the soldiers. They no longer responded to
the eloquence of this romantic man of words. The
bourgeoisie set out to find a Man of the Sword. . . .
"Russia must have a strong man who will tolerate
no revolutionary nonsense, but who will rule with an
iron hand," they said. "Let us have a Dictator."
For their Man on Horseback they picked the
Cossack General, Kornilov. At the conference in
Moscow he had won the hearts of the bourgeoisie
by calling for a policy of blood and iron. On his
own initiative he had introduced capital punishment
in the army. With machine guns he had destroyed
battalions of refractory soldiers and placed their
stiffened corpses in rows along the fences. He de-

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK 73
dared that only drastic medicine of this kind could
cure the ills of Russia.
On September 9, Kornilov issued a proclamation
dedaring: "Our great country is dying. Under
pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviet, the
Kerensky government is acting in complete accord
with the plans of the German General Staff. Let all
who beUeve in God and the temples pray to the
Lord to manifest the miracle of saving our native
land." He drew 70,000 picked troops from the front.
Many of them were Mohammedans — his Turkoman
bodyguard, his Tartar horsemen and Circassian
mountaineers. On the hilts of their swords the offi
cers swore that when Petrograd was taken, the
atheist Socialists would be forced to finish building
the great mosque or be shot. With aeroplanes, Brit
ish armored cars and the blood-thirsty Savage Di
vision, he advanced on Petrograd in the name of
God and Allah.
But he did not take it.
In the name of the Soviets and the Revolution the
masses rose as one man to the defense of the capital.
Kornilov was declared a traitor and an outlaw.
Arsenals were opened and guns put in the hands of
the workingmen. Red Guards patrolled the streets,
trenches were dug, barricades hastily erected.
Moslem Socialists rode into the Savage Division and
in the name of Marx and Mohammed exhorted the
mountaineers not to advance against the Revolution.

74 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Their pleas and arguments prevailed. The forces
of Kornilov melted away and the "Dictator" was
captured without firing a single shot. The bour
geoisie were depressed as the White Hope of the
Counter-Revolution went down so easily before the
blows of the Revolution.
The proletarians were correspondingly elated.
They saw the strength and unity of their forces.
They felt anew the solidarity binding together all
sections of the toiling masses. Trench and factory
acclaimed one another. Soldiers and workingmen
paid special tribute to the sailors for the big part
they played in this affair.

CHAPTER V
COMRADES OF THE SEA
"1X7" HEN the news of Kornilov's advance on Petro-
* " grad was flashed to Kronstadt and the Baltic
fleet, it aroused the sailors like a thunderbolt. From
their ships and island citadel they came pouring out
in tens of thousands and bivouacked on the Field
of Mars. They stood guard at all the nerve centres
of the city, the railways and the Winter Palace.
With the big sailor Dybenko leading, they drove
headlong into the midst of Kornilov's soldiers ex
horting them not to advance. They put the fear of
the Revolution into the hearts of the Whites and
the fire and zest of the Revolution into the blood
of their fellow Reds.
In July Trotzky had hailed them as "Pride and
Flower of the Revolutionary Forces!" When they
had been damned on all sides for some brash deeds
at Kronstadt he had said: "Yes, but when a
counter-revolutionary general tries to throw a noose
around the neck of the Revolution, the Cadets will
grease the rope with soap, while the sailors will
come to fight and die with us together!"
So it proved in this adventure of Kornilov. And
it was always so. All over Russia I had met these
blue-bloused men with the roll of the sea in their
75

76 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
carriage and the tang of the salt winds in their
blood. Everywhere they went expounding the doc
trines of Socialism. I had heard them in forum and
market-places stirring the sluggish to action. I had
seen them in remote villages starting the flow of
food to the cities. Later when the Yunkers rose
against the Soviets I was to see these sailors heading
the storming party that rushed the telephone-sta
tion and dug the Yunkers from their nests. Always
they were first to sense danger to the Revolution,
always first to hurry to its rescue.
The Revolution was precious to the Russian sailor
because it meant deliverance from the past. That
past was a nightmare. The old Russian naval offi
cers came exclusively from the privileged caste.
The count against them was that they imposed, not
a rigid discipline, but one that was arbitrary and
personal. The weal of a sailor was at the mercy
of the whims, jealousies and insane rage of petty
officers whom he despised. He was treated like a
dog and humiliated by signs that read: "For Dogs
and Sailors."
Like the soldier's, the sailor's replies to his su
perior were limited to the three phrases: "Quite
so" (tak tochno) "No indeed" (nekak niet) "Glad
to try my best" (rad staratsa), with the salutation,
"Your nobility." Any added remark might bring
him a blow in the face. The most trivial offense
met with the most severe penalty. In four years
2527 men were executed, sent to the penitentiary or

Obliterating the Past. Colossal statue cf Czar Alexander III being dis
mantled after the Soviet came into power. Note the workman at extreme
top fixing rope on the crown. (See next page.)

J.
'How are the mighty fallen!" Children gazing into the bronze head from the dismantled statue ot Czar Alexander III.

COMRADES OF THE SEA 77
to hard labor. AU done in the name of the Czar.
Now the Czars were gone; their very names were
being blotted out. The ships were being re-chris
tened with names fitting the new republican order.
By this ceremony the Emperor Paul the First be
came The Republic. The Emperor Alexander II
emerged from its baptism of paint as the Dawn of
Liberty. Here was revolution enough to make these
ancient autocrats turn in their graves. But it was
even harder on the living Czar and his son. The
Czarevitch was renamed the Citizen, while Nicholas
II came forth as the good ship Comrade. Comrade!
This ex-Czar, now living in exile in Tobolsk, knew
that the meanest coal-heaver was now a "Comrade."
The new names appeared in gold on the jaunty
ribboned caps of the sailors. And the sailors ap
peared everywhere as missionaries of Liberty, Com
radeship and the Republic.
To make these changes in the names of the ships
was very easy. Yet they were not mere surface
changes, but symbolized a change in reality. They
were the outward and visible signs of an inward and
spiritual fact — the democratization of a great fleet.
In September I had my first contact
The Sailors Rule with the sailor at home. It was at
the Navy. Helsingfors where the Baltic fleet
stood as a barricade on the water-
road to Petrograd. Tied up to the dock was the
Polar Star, the yacht of the former Czar. Our guide,

78 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
an old ex-officer, pointed out a strip of yellow wood
that ran around the ship.
"That moulding is of best mahogany," he whis
pered to us. "It cost twenty-five thousand rubles,
but these damned Bolsheviks are too lazy now to
keep it polished, so they painted it yellow. In my
day a sailor was a sailor; he knew that his job was
to scrub and polish, and he tended to his job. If he
didn't we knocked him down. But the devU is loose
among them now. Think of it! On this very
yacht belonging to the Czar himself, ordinary sea
men sit about making laws for managing the ships,
the fleet and the country. And they don't stop
there. They talk about managing the world. In
ternationalism and democracy they call it, but I
call it downright treason and insanity."
There in brief was the issue between the old
regime and the new. In the old order, discipline
and control were superimposed from above; in the
new, they proceeded from the men themselves. The
old was a fleet of officers, the new a fleet of sailors.
In the change a new set of values had been created.
Now the polishing of the sailor's wits upon democ
racy and internationalism had higher rating than
polishing the brass and mahogany.
The second index of the temper of the new fleet
came to us as we climbed the gangway of the Polar
Star, where Rasputin and his assodates once had
their fling. Here Bessie Beatty, the American cor
respondent, was gravely informed that the presence

COMRADES OF THE SEA 79
of her sex upon the ships was taboo — it was one of
the new rules of the Soviet of Sailors. The captain
was polite, much adorned with gold braid, but very
helpless. "I can do nothing at all," he explained dole
fully. "Everything is in the hands of the 'Com
mittee'." "But she has come ten thousand versts to see the
fleet." "Well, we can see what the Committee says," he
answered. The messenger came back with a special dis
pensation from the Committee and we were on our
way again. Everywhere members of the crew would
challenge the presence of a woman in our party,
politely capitulating, however, as the captain ex
plained, "By special permit of the Committee."
This Central Committee of the Baltic Sea, or, as
it was familiarly known, the Centrobalt, sat in the
great cabin de luxe. It was simply a Soviet of the
ships. Each contingent of 1,000 sailors had a repre
sentative in the committee, which consisted of 65
members, 45 of whom were Bolsheviks. There were
four general departments: Administrative, Political,
War and Marine, transacting all the affairs of the
fleet. The captain had one of the former princes'
suites, but from the great cabin he was debarred.
Happily my credentials were an open sesame to the
committee and the cabin.
The irony of history! Here in these chairs a

80 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
few months ago lolled a mediaeval autocrat with his
ladies and his lackeys. Now big bronzed seamen sat
in them, hammering out problems of the most ad
vanced Socialism. The cabin had been cleared for
action. The piano and many decorations had been
placed in a museum. The tables and lounges were
covered with brown canvas burlap. The grand
salon was now a workshop. Here hard at work were
ordinary seamen suddenly turned legislators, di
rectors and clerks. They were a bit awkward in
their new role, but they clung to it with desperate
earnestness, sixteen hours a day. For they were
dreamers gripped by an idea, the drive and scope
of which appear in the following address:
To the Representative of the American Social
Democracy, Albert Williams, in Reply to his
Greetings.
The Russian democracy in the person of the representatives of
the Baltic Fleet sends warm greetings to the proletariat of all
countries and hearty thanks for the greetings from our brothers
in America.
Comrade Williams is the first swallow come flying across to
us on the cold waves of the Baltic Sea, which now for over three
years has been dyed by the blood of the sons of one family, the
International. The Russian proletariat will strive, up to its last breath, to
unite everybody under the red banner of the International. When
starting the Revolution, we did not have in view a Political
Revolution alone. The task of all true fighters for freedom is
the making of a Social Revolution. For this the advance guard
of the Revolution, in the person of the sailors of the Russian
Fleet, and the workmen, will fight to the end.

COMRADES OF THE SEA 81
The flame of the Russian Revolution, we are sure, will spread
over the world and light a fire in the hearts of the workers of all
lands, and we shall obtain support in our struggle for a speedy
general peace.
The free Baltic Fleet impatiently awaits the moment when it
can go to America and relate there all that Russia suffered under
the yoke of Czarism, and what it is feeling now when the
banner of the struggle for the freedom of peoples is unfurled.
LONG LIFE TO THE AMERICAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY.
LONG LIVE THE PROLETARIAT OF ALL LANDS.
LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL.
LONG LIVE GENERAL PEACE.
The Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet, Fourth Convention.
On this table where in good will and amity they
had written this address to me, these sailors dipped
their pens in vitriol and wrote another. It was
addressed to their Commander-in-Chief, Kerensky.
He was unable to explain his part in the Kornilov
mix-up and had just made an offensive reference to
the sailors. They returned the compliment in this
wise: We demand the immediate removal from the Government of
the "Socialist" political adventurer, Kerensky, who is ruining the
great Revolution by his shameless political blackmail in behalf of
the bourgeoisie.
To you, Kerensky, traitor to the Revolution, we send our
curses. When our comrades are drowning in the Gulf of Riga,
and when all of us, as one man, stand ready to lay down our hves
for freedom, ready to die in open fight on the sea or on the bar
ricades, you strive to destroy the forces of the fleet. To you we
send our maledictions. . . .
This day, however, the men were in festive mood.
They were happy over a big fund just raised for

82 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
their soldier comrades on the Riga front, and now
were playing host to their first foreign comrade. The
Secretary of the Committee escorted me on the pilot-
boat to his battleship, the Republic. The entire crew
was on deck cheering our approach across the waters.
After an official welcome there were loud demands
for a speech. My knowledge of Russian was very
meagre then, and my interpreter knew but Uttie
English. I had to fall back on the current revolu
tionary phrases. But the mere reiteration of the
new battle cries had power to charm these new disd-
ples of Socialism. The sounding of these slogans
in my foreign accent drew an outburst of applause
that echoed like a salvo from all the ship's batteries.
It was in these waters that the historic meeting
between the Kaiser and the Czar had been staged.
The applause could not have been more thunderous
(certainly not so spontaneous) than when, as an
American Internationalist, I shook hands with Ave-
rishkin, the Russian Internationalist, on the bridge
of this battleship off the coast of Finland.
After our love-feast on deck we
A Ship's Menu, retired to the quarters of the
a Club and a College, ship's committee. I was pUed
with innumerable questions about
the American navy, ranging from "Do American
navy officers reflect solely the viewpoint of the upper
classes?" to "Are American battleships kept as dean
as this one of ours?" As we talked, eggs and steak

COMRADES OF THE SEA 83
were brought to me, while each member of the com
mittee was served with a large plate of potatoes. I
commenced on the difference in the dishes.
"Yours is officer's fare, ours is sailor's," they ex
plained. "Then why did you make a revolution?" I asked
banteringly. They laughed and said, "The Revolution has
given us what we wanted most — freedom. We are
masters of our ships. We are masters of our own
lives. We have our own courts. We can have shore-
leave when not on duty. Off duty we have the right
to wear civilian clothes. We do not demand every
thing of the Revolution."
The world-wide rise of the workers, however, is
based on their desire, not solely for the first neces
sities of life, but for a larger part in its amenities.
Driving through Helsiiigfors one night we missed the
usual bands of sailors rolling down the streets. Sud
denly we were brought sharply up before a building
with facade and dimensions of a great modern hotel.
We entered and were guided by the music to the
dining-hall. There, in a room set with palms and
glistening with mirrors and silver, sat the diners,
listening to Chopin and Tchaikovsky, interspersed
with occasional ragtime from the American conduc
tor. It was a hotel of the first class, but instead of
the usual clientele of a big hotel — bankers, specula
tors, politidans, adventurers and ornate ladies — it
was crowded with bronzed seamen of the war fleet

84 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
of the Russian Repubhc, who had commandeered
the entire buUding. Thru its curtained halls now
streamed a procession of laughmg, jesting, arguing
saUors in their suits of blue.
Outside in big letters was the sign "Sailors' Club"
with its motto, "A welcome to aU the saUors of the
world." It opened with ten thousand dues-paying
members, ninety per cent of whom were Uterate.
The club boasted a much-used magazine room, the
nucleus of a Ubrary, and an exceUent illustrated
weekly, The Seaman (M or yak).
They had founded, too, a "University," with
courses ranging from the most elementary to the
most advanced. In the committee on curriculum I
blunderingly asked the chairman from what uni
versity he came.
"No university, no school," he repUed regretfully.
"I come from the dark people, but I am a revolution
ist. We did away with the Czar, but a worse enemy
is ignorance. We shaU do away with that. That is
the only way to get a democratic fleet. Now we
have a democratic machine, but most of our officers
have not the democratic spirit. We must train our
officers out of the ranks." In his courses he had
enUsted professors from the university, men from
the sdentific sodeties and some officers.
How did aU this new disdpUne and comfort affect
the fleet? Opinions differed. Many officers said
that in destroying the old disdpUne the technical
effidency was lowered. Others said that consider-

HErPAMOTHblHT<rr*E CAEHOH
BCrOAY EfO >KAVT HEYAAMW H HECHACTbfl •

"THE ILLITERATE IS A BLIND MAN: Everywhere Pitfalls and
Misfortunes Await Him." — Soviet Poster to Encourage Education.

COMRADES OF THE SEA 85
ing its ordeal by war and revolution the fleet was in
good trim. As the test of its moral efficiency, they
pointed to the battle of the Monsund Isles. Out
numbered by the Germans, and out-distanced in
speed and gun-range, these revolutionary sailors had
fought a brilliant engagement with the enemy. All
admitted that their fighting morale was superb.
There was no doubt of the enthusiasm of the
sailors for their fleet. They had a feeling of com
munal ownership in it. When the pilot-boat carried
me away from the Republic, Averishkin with a ges
ture that took in all the gray ships riding in the bay,
exclaimed, "Our fleet! Our fleet! We shall make
it the best fleet in the world. May it always fight
for justice!" Then, as if looking thru the gray
mists which hung above the water and beyond the
red mists of the world war, he added, "Until we make
the Social Revolution and the end of all wars."
In Russia this Social Revolution was coming on
apace and these men of the fleet were shortly to be
in the vortex of it.

:V. \;-\ V

PART II
THE REVOLUTION AND THE DAYS
AFTER

AMONG THE WHITES AND THE REDS \

CHAPTER VI
"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIET"
A NOTHER winter is bearing down upon hungry,
•*• *¦ heartsick Russia. The last October leaves are
falhng from the trees, and the last bit of confidence
in the government is falling with them.
Everywhere recklessness and orgies of specula
tion. Food trains are looted. Floods of paper
money pour from the presses. In the newspapers
endless columns of hold-ups, murders and suicides.
Night life and gambUng-halls run full blast with
enormous stakes won and lost.
Reaction is open and arrogant. Kornilov, in
stead of being tried for high treason, is lauded as
the Great Patriot by the bourgeoisie. But with
them patriotism is tawdry talk and a sham. They
pray for the Germans to come and cut off Petrograd,
the Head of the Revolution.
Rodzianko, ex-President of the Duma, brazenly
writes: "Let the Germans take the city. Tho they
destroy the fleet they will throttle the Soviets."
The big insurance companies announce one-third off
in rates after the German occupation. "Winter
89

90 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
always was Russia's best friend," say the bourgeoisie.
"It may rid us of this cursed Revolution."
Winter, sweeping down out of the
Despair Foments North, hailed by the privUeged,
Rebellion. brings terror to the suffering masses.
As the mercury drops toward zero,
the prices of food and fuel go soaring up. The
bread ration grows shorter. The queues of shiv
ering women standing all night in the icy streets
grow longer. Lockouts and strikes add to the
millions of workless. The rancor in the hearts of the
masses flares out in bitter speeches Uke this from a
Viborg workingman:
"Patience, patience, they are always counselling
us. But what have they done to make us patient?
Has Kerensky given us more to eat than the Czar?
More words and promises — yes ! But not more food.
All night long we wait in the lines for shoes and
bread and meat, while, like fools, we write 'Liberty'
on our banners. The only liberty we have is the
same old liberty to slave and starve."
It is a sorry showing after eight months of plead
ing and parading thru the streets. All they have
got are lame feet, aching arms, and the privilege
of starving and freezing in the presence of mocking
red banners: "Land to the Peasants!" "Factories
to the Workers!" "Peace to all the World!"
But no longer do they carry their red banners
thru the streets. They are done with appeaUng and

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIET" 91
beseeching. In a mood born of despair and disillu
sion they are acting now — reckless, violent, icono
clastic, but — acting.
In the cities revolting employees are driving mill-
owners out of their offices. Managers try to stop it,
and are thrown into wheel-barrows and ridden out
of the plant. Machinery is put out of gear, mate
rials spoiled, industry brought to a standstill.
In the army soldiers are throwing down their
guns and deserting the front in hundreds of thou
sands. Emissaries try to stop them with frantic
appeals. They may as well appeal to a landslide.
"If no decisive steps for peace are taken by Novem
ber first," the soldiers say, "all the trenches will
be emptied. The entire army will rush to the rear."
In the fleet is open insubordination.
In the country, peasants are overrunning the
estates. I ask Baron Nolde, "What is it that the
peasants want on your estate?"
"My estate," he answers.
"How are they going to get it?"
"They've got it."
In some places these seizures are accompanied by
wanton spoliation. The skies around Tambov are
reddened with flames from the burning hay-ricks and
manor-houses. Landlords flee for their lives. The
infuriated peasants laugh at the orators trying to
quiet them. Troops sent down to suppress the out
bursts go over to the side of the peasants.
Russia is plunging headlong towards the abyss.

92 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Over this spectacle of misery and ruin presides a
handful of talkers called the Provisional Govern
ment. It is almost a corpse, treated to hypodermic
injections of threats and promises from the Allies.
Before tasks calling for the strength of a giant it is
weak as a baby. To all demands of the people it
has just one reply, "Wait." First, it was "Wait
till the end of the war." Now, "Wait till the Con
stituent Assembly."
, But the people will wait no longer. Their last
shred of faith in the government is gone. They
have faith in themselves; faith that they alone can
save Russia from going over the precipice to ruin and
night; faith alone in the institutions of their own
making. They look now to the new authority cre
ated out of their own midst. They look to the
Soviets. Summer and fall have seen the
"Let the Soviets Be steady growth of the Soviets.
the Government." They have drawn to themselves
the vital forces in each commu
nity. They have been schools for the training of the
people, giving them confidence. The net-work of
local Soviets has been wrought into a wide firmly
built organization, a new structure which has risen
within the shell of the old. As the old apparatus was
going to pieces, the new one was taking over its func
tions. The Soviets in many ways were already
acting as a government. It was necessary only to

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIET" 93
proclaim them the government. Then the Soviets
would be in name what they were already in reality.
From the depths now lifted up a mighty cry:
"All power to the Soviets." The demand of the
capital in July became the demand of the country.
Like wildfire it swept thru the land. Sailors on the
Baltic Fleet flung it out to their comrades on the
Black and White and Yellow seas, and from them
it came echoing back. Farm and factory, barracks
and battlefront joined in the cry, swelling louder,
more insistent every hour.
Petrograd came thundering into the chorus on
Sunday, November 4th, in sixty enormous mass
meetings. Trotzky having read the Reply of the
Baltic Fleet to my Greetings asked me to speak
at the People's House.
Here great waves of human beings dashed against
the doors, swirled inside and sluiced along the cor
ridors. They poured into the halls, filling them
full, splashing hundreds up on the girders where
they hung like garlands of foam. Out of the eddy
ing throngs, a mighty voice rose and fell and broke
Uke surf, thundering on the shore — hundreds of
thousands of throats roaring "Down with the Pro
visional Government." "All Power to the Soviets."
Hundreds of thousands of hands were raised in a
pledge to fight and die for the Soviets.
The patience of the poor at an end; the pawns and
cannon-fodder in revolt! The dark masses, long
inert, but roused at last, refusing longer to be brow-

94 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
beaten or hypnotized by the word-juggUng of states
men, scorning their threats, laughing at their prom
ises, take the initiative into their own hands, de
manding of their "leaders" to move forward into
revolution or resign. For the first time the slaves
and the exploited, consciously choosing the time of
their deliverance, vote for insurrection, investing
themselves with the government of one-sixtji of the
world. A big venture for men unschooled in state
affairs. Are they equal to these tasks? Can they
control the currents now being loosed in the dty?
At any rate these masses show complete control of
themselves. From these blood-stirring revolutionary
meetings they pour forth in orderly fashion.
The poor frightened bourgeoisie are reassured.
They see no houses looted, no shops wrecked, no
white-collared gentry shot down in the streets. To
their minds, therefore, all is well; there will be no
insurrection. The true import of this restraint quite
escapes them. The people indulge in no sporadic
outbursts because they have better use for their
energies. They have a Revolution to make, not a
riot. And a Revolution requires order, plan, labor —
much hard intensive labor. These insurgent masses go
The Masses Conducting home to organize committees,
their Revolution. draw up lists, form Red Cross
units, collect rifles. Hands
lifted in a vote for Revolution now are holding guns.

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIET" 95
They get ready for the forces of the Counter-Revo-
lution now mobilizing against them. In Smolny
sits the Military Revolutionary Committee from
which these masses take orders. There is another
committee, the Committee of a Hundred Thousand;
that is, the masses themselves. There are no by
streets, no barracks, no buildings where this com
mittee does not penetrate. It reaches into the coun
cils of the Black Hundred, the Kerensky Govern
ment, the intelligentsia. With porters, waiters, cab
men, conductors, soldiers and sailors, it covers the
city like a net. They see everything, hear every
thing, report everything to headquarters. Thus,
forewarned, they can checkmate every move of the
enemy. Every attempt to strangle or sidetrack the
Revolution they paralyze at once.
Attempt is made to break the faith of the masses
in their leaders by furious assault upon them. Ker
ensky cries from the tribunal "Lenin, the state crimi
nal, inciting to pillage . . . and the most terrible
massacres which will cover with eternal shame the
name of free Russia." Immediately the masses
reply by bringing Lenin out of hiding with a tre
mendous ovation and turning Smolny into an arsenal
to guard him.
Attempt is made to drown the Revolution in
blood and disorder. The Dark Forces keep calling
the people to rise up and slaughter Jews and Socialist
leaders. Forthwith the workmen placard the city

96 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
with posters saying "Citizens! We call upon you
to maintain complete quiet and self-possession. The
cause of order is in strong hands. At the first
instance of robbery and shooting, the criminals will
be wiped off the face of the earth."
Attempts are made to isolate the different sections
of the revolutionists. Telephones are cut off be
tween Soviets and barracks; immediately communi
cations are established by setting up telephono-
graph apparatus. The Yunkers turn the bridges,
cutting off the working-class districts; the Kronstadt
sailors close them again. The offices of the Com
munist papers are locked and sealed, cutting off
the flow of news; the Red Guards break the seals
and set the presses running again.
Attempt is made to suppress the Revolution by
force of arms. Kerensky begins calling "depend
able" troops into the city; that is, troops that may
be depended upon to shoot down the rising workers.
Among these are the Zenith Battery and the CycUsts'
Battalion. Along the highroads on which these
units are advancing into the city the Revolution
posts its forces. They attack the enemy, not with
guns but with ideas. They subject these troops to
a withering fire of arguments and pleas. Result:
these troops that are being rushed to the city to
crush the Revolution enter instead to aid and abet it.
To these zealots of the Communist faith, aU sol
diers succumb, even the Cossacks. "Brother Cos-

tu c kem:
( h\mh,uhG hhmm:

The Red Peasant, Soldier and Workingman (on the left) to the
Cossack (center): Cossack, with whom are you? With us or with
them?— (The Landlords, Generals and Capitalists).

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIET" 97
sacks!" reads the appeal to them, "you are being
incited against us by grafters, parasites, landlords
and by our own Cossack generals who wish to crush
our Revolution. Comrade Cossacks! Do not fall
in with this plan of Cain." And the Cossacks like
wise Une up under the banner of the Revolution.

CHAPTER VH
NOVEMBER 7TH — A NEW DATE IN HISTORY
TXT" HILE Petrograd is in a tumult of clashing pa-
* » trois and contending voices, men from all over
Russia come pouring into the city. They are dele
gates to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets
convening at Smolny. All eyes are turned towards
Smolny. Formerly a school for the daughters of the no1
bility, Smolny is now the center of the Soviets. It
stands on the Neva, a huge stately structure, cold
and grey by day. But by night, glowing with a
hundred lamp-lit windows, it looms up like a great
temple — a temple of Revolution. The two watch
fires before its porticos, tended by long-coated
soldiers, flame like altar-fires. Here are centered the
hopes and prayers of untold millions of the poor
and disinherited. Here they look for release from
age-long suffering and tyranny. Here are wrought
out for them issues of life and death.
That night I saw a laborer, gaunt, shabbily-dad,
plodding down a dark street. Lifting his head sud
denly he saw the massive facade of Smolny, glowing
golden thru the falling snow. Pulling off his cap,
he stood a moment with bared head and outstretched

A NEW DATE IN HISTORY 99
arms. Then crying out, "The Commune! The
People! The Revolution!" he ran forward and
merged with the throng streaming thru the gates.
Out of war, exile, dungeons, Siberia, come these
delegates to Smolny. For years no news of old
comrades. Suddenly, cries of recognition, a rush
into one another's arms, a few words, a moment's
embrace, then a hastening on to conferences, cau
cuses, endless meetings.
Smolny is now one big forum, roaring Uke a gigan
tic smithy with orators calling to arms, audiences
whistling or stamping, the gavel pounding for order.,
the sentries grounding arms, machine-guns rumbling
across the cement floors, crashing choruses of revo
lutionary hymns, thundering-ovations for Lenin and
Zinoviev as they emerge from underground.
Everything at high speed, tense and growing
tenser every minute. The leading workers are dyna
mos of energy; sleepless, tireless, nerveless miracles
of men, facing momentous questions of Revolution.
At ten-forty on this night of November 7th, opens
the historic meeting so big with consequences for the
future of Russia and the whole world. From their
party caucuses the delegates file into the great
assembly-hall. Dan, the anti-Bolshevik chairman,
is on the platform ringing the bell for order and
declares, "The first session of the Second Congress
of Soviets is now open."
First comes the election of the governing body of
the congress (the presidium). The Bolsheviks get

ioo THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
14 members. All other parties get ii. The old
governing body steps down and the Bolshevik lead
ers, recently the outcasts and outlaws of Russia, take
their places. The Right parties, composed largely
of intelligentsia, open with an attack on credentials
and orders of the day. Discussion is their forte.
They delight in academic issues. They raise fine
points of principle and procedure.
Then, suddenly out of the night, a rumbling shock
brings the delegates to their feet, wondering. It is
the boom of cannon, the cruiser Aurora firing over
the Winter Palace. Dull and muffled out of the
distance it comes with steady, regular rhythm, a
requiem tolling the death of the old order, a saluta
tion to the new. It is the voice of the masses thun
dering to the delegates the demand for "All Power
to the Soviets." So the question is acutely put to
the Congress: "WUl you now declare the Soviets
the government of Russia, and give legal basis to the
new authority?" Now comes one of the startling para
lyse Intelligentsia doxes of history, and one of its co-
Desert. lossal tragedies — the refusal of the
intelUgentsia. Among the delegates
were scores of these intellectuals. They had made
the "dark people" the object of their devotion.
"Going to the people" was a religion. For them they
had suffered poverty, prison and exile. They had
stirred the quiescent masses with revolutionary

A NEW DATE IN HISTORY 101
ideas, indting them to revolt. The character and
nobihty of the masses had been ceaselessly extolled.
In short, the intelUgentsia had made a god of the
people. Now the people were rising with the wrath
and thunder of a god, imperious and arbitrary.
They were acting like a god.
But the intelligentsia reject a god who will not
listen to them and over whom they have lost control.
Straightway the intelligentsia became atheists. They
disavow all faith in their former god, the people.
They deny their right to rebellion.
Like Frankenstein before this monster of their
own creation, the intelligentsia quail, trembling with
fear, trembling with rage. It is a bastard thing, a
devil, a terrible calamity, plunging Russia into chaos,
"a criminal rebeUion against authority." They hurl
themselves against it, storming, cursing, beseeching,
raving. As delegates they refuse to recognize this
Revolution. They refuse to allow this Congress to
declare the Soviets the government of Russia.
So futUe ! So impotent ! They may as well refuse
to recognize a tidal wave, or an erupting volcano as
to refuse to recognize this Revolution. This Revo
lution is elemental, inexorable. It is everywhere, in
the barracks, in the trenches, in the factories, in the
streets. It is here in this congress, officially, in hun
dreds of workmen, soldier and peasant delegates.
It is here unofficially in the masses crowding every
inch of space, climbing up on pillars and window-
sills, making the assembly hall white with fog from

102 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
their close-packed steaming bodies, electric with the
intensity of their feelings.
The people are here to see that their revolutionary
wiU is done; that the congress declares the Soviets
the government of Russia. On this point they are
inflexible. Every attempt to becloud the issue, every
effort to paralyze or evade their wiU evokes blasts of
angry protest.
The parties of the Right have long resolutions
to offer. The crowd is impatient. "No more reso
lutions! No more words! We want deeds! We
want the Soviet!"
The intelligentsia, as usual, wish to compromise
the issue by a coalition of aU parties. "Only one
coalition possible," is the retort. "The coalition of
workers, soldiers and peasants."
Martov calls out for "a peaceful solution of the
impending civil war." "Victory! Victory! — the
only possible solution," is the answering cry.
The officer Kutchin tries to terrify them with the
idea that the Soviets are isolated, and that the whole
army is against them. "Liar! Staff!" yeU the
soldiers. "You speak for the staff — not the men in
the trenches. We soldiers demand 'AU Power to the
Soviets!' "
Their will is steel. No entreaties or threats avaU
to break or bend it. Nothing can deflect them from
their goal.
Finally stung to fury, Abramovich cries out, "We
cannot remain here and be responsible for these

A NEW DATE IN HISTORY 103
crimes. We invite all delegates to leave this con
gress." With a dramatic gesture he steps from the
platform and stalks towards the door. About eighty
delegates rise from their seats and push their way
after him.
"Let them go," cries Trotzky, "let them go!
They are just so much refuse that will be swept into
the garbage-heap of history."
In a storm of hoots, jeers and taunts of "Rene
gades! Traitors!" from the proletarians, the in
telligentsia pass out of the hall and out of the
Revolution. A supreme tragedy! The intelligentsia
rejecting the Revolution they had helped to create,
deserting the masses in the crisis of their struggle.
Supreme folly, too. They do not isolate the Soviets,
they only isolate themselves. Behind the Soviets
are rolling up solid battalions of support.
Every minute brings news of
The Soviets Proclaimed fresh conquests of the Revo
ke Government. lution — the arrest of ministers,
the seizure of the State Bank,
telegraph station, telephone station, the staff head
quarters. One by one the centers of power are
passing into the hands of the people. The spectral
authority of the old government is crumbling be
fore the hammer strokes of the insurgents.
A commissar, breathless and mud-spattered from
riding, climbs the platform to announce: "The
garrison of Tsarskoye Selo for the Soviets. It stands

104 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
guard at the gates of Petrograd." From another:
"The Cyclists' Battalion for the Soviets. Not a
single man found willing to shed the blood of bis
brothers." Then Krylenko, staggering up, telegram
in hand: "Greetings to the Soviet from the Twelfth
Army! The Soldiers' Committee is taking over
the command of the Northern Front."
And finally at the end of this tumultuous night, out
of this strife of tongues and clash of wills, the
simple declaration : "The Provisional Government is
deposed. Based upon the will of the great majority
of workers, soldiers and peasants, the Congress of
Soviets assumes the power. The Soviet authority
will at once propose an immediate democratic peace
to all nations, an immediate truce on all fronts. It
will assure the free transfer of lands . . . etc."
Pandemonium! Men weeping in one another's
arms. Couriers jumping up and racing away. Tele
graph and telephone buzzing and humming. Autos
starting off to the battle- front; aeroplanes speeding
away across rivers and plains. Wireless flashing
across the seas. All messengers of the great news!
The will of the revolutionary masses has tri
umphed. The Soviets are the government.
This historic session ends at six o'clock in the
morning. The delegates, reeling from the toxin of
fatigue, hollow-eyed from sleeplessness, but exultant,
stumble down the stone stairs and thru the gates of
Smolny. Outside it is still dark and chUl, but a red
dawn is breaking in the east.

One of the crack Bolshevik regiments marching to Smolny under banners emblazoned with AU Power to the Soviets,
Long Live the Revolution.

On the night of November 7 we saw the Winter Palace (left) stormed by the Red Guards.
before the base of the Alexander column (right).

Here they are massed

CHAPTER VIII
LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE
*HE Russian poet, Tyutchev, writes:
"Blessed is he who visited this world
In moments of its fateful deeds:
The highest Gods invited him to come,
A guest, with them to sit at feast
And be a witness of their mighty spectacle."
Twice blessed were five Americans: Louise
Bryant, John Reed, Bessie Beatty, Gumberg and
myself. We were spectators of the great drama
enacted in the halls of Smolny: we also saw the other
big event of the night of November 7th — the taking
of the Winter Palace.
We had been sitting in Smolny, gripped by the
pleas of the speakers, when out of the night that
other voice crashed into the lighted hall — the cannon
of the cruiser Aurora, firing at the Winter Palace.
Steady, insistent, came the ominous beat of the
cannon, breaking the spell of the speakers upon
us. We could not resist its caU and hurried away.
Outside, a big motor-truck with engines throbbing
was starting for the city. We climbed aboard
and tore thru the night, a plunging comet, flying a
tail of white posters in our wake. From alleys and
doorways dim figures darted out to snatch them
up and read: 105

ffift Boemio - PeBon»moHHiiro Romhtbtii mm iferperpMMi (am
Mmm h Cojuiiiickhxb flenyTnioB*.

Kt» roa)KAaHaMi» Pocciu
Bpeme njunuiicno mmm. Focyaap-
mm wm npon si pyra oprisa Heipo-
rjapiroOoibPatainCoBjaTiMiJeip'
m Boeaao-P enpimaro bmm, cnaqani
bd msi HeTporjaparo iperapiaTa h rapanoosa.
Jib sa kotow fiopora Hapom: peinem ioo open-
inie poKpawnaro upa, orata domwI
(io5cTBOHicTHHa36!iiapaWraeTpo]iLeajiipiiiii-cram. co3pe Mn npaeeTBUMToa - arm
irtooHiEwo. HA3flPABmmiPEBfliraPAHIWb.C!)Jn,b
tmsam BoeBBO-PeBOjrsonioBBMB Kombtot*
npm HcrporpajicicoiiFt, CobAtb
2t> OKwSpa W r. IO >l yrpa. 106

From the War-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd
Soviet of Workmen and Soldiers Deputies. '

To the Citizens of Russia:
le Provisional Government is deposed. Die State
power has passed into ihe hands ofthe organ ofthe
Petrograd Soviet ofWorkers*andSoIdiersDeputies,the
Ilitarglkfoticranj Committee, which stands at the
head ofthe Petrograd proletariat and garrison.
lo aims Men thepeoplewere flgliUiig— Immediate pnqiosai
of a democraOc peace. abollQoR of landloid propeibf-rigltts Is tbe
M.lorcontrolora'plction.crBatioriOfaSrai Govraenl,
-teaistoetenacMmi LONG LIVETHEMQIUTION OF W0HKMEH.S0IBIER5flllD
PEASANTS! Military'Revolutionary Committee
of the Petrograd Soviet of.
Workers and Soldier's 'Deputies.
November 7. 1917
[Reproduction in English of the Russian text on opposite page.]
107

108 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
This announcement is a trifle previous. The min
isters of the Provisional Government, minus Ker
ensky, still sit at council in the Winter Palace. That
is why the guns of the Aurora are in action. They
are thundering into the ears of the ministers the
summons to surrender. True, only blank shells are
firing now, but they set the air shivering, shaking
the building and the nerves of the ministers within.
As we come into the Palace Square the booming
of the guns dies away. The rifles no longer crackle
thru the dark. The Red Guards are crawling out
to carry off their dead and dying. Out of the night
a voice cries, "The Yunkers surrender." But mind
ful of their losses, the besieging sailors and soldiers
cling to cpver. New throngs gather on the Nevsky.
The Mob Enters Forming a column, they pour thru the
the Palace. Red Arch and creep forward, silent.
Near the barricade they emerge into
the light blazing from within the Palace. They
scale the rampart of logs, and storm thru the iron
gateway into the open doors of the east wing — the
mob swarming in behind them.
From cold and darkness, these proletarians come
suddenly into warmth and light. From huts and
barracks they pass into glittering salons and gilded
chambers. This is indeed Revolution — the builders
entering into the Palace they built.
And such a building ! Ornate with statues of gold

LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE 109
and bronze, and carpeted with Oriental rugs, its
rooms hung with tapestries and paintings, and
flooded with a million lights from the twinkling crys
tal chandeliers, its cellars crammed with rare wines
and liquors of ancient vintage. Riches beyond their
dreams are within their grasp. Why not grasp
them? A terrible lust lays hold of the mob — the lust that
ravishing beauty incites in the long starved and long
denied — the lust of loot. Even we, as spectators,
are not immune to it. It burns up the last vestige
of restraint and leaves one passion flaming in the
veins — the passion to sack and pillage. Their eyes
fall upon this treasure-trove, and their hands follow.
Along the walls of the vaulted chamber we enter
there runs a row of huge packing-cases. With the
butts of their rifles, the soldiers batter open the
boxes, spilling out streams of curtains, linen, clocks,
vases and plates.
Scorning such petty booty, the throngs swirl past
to richer hunting-grounds. The vanguard presses
forward thru gorgeous chambers opening into ever
more gorgeous ones, lined with cabinets and ward
robes. They fall upon them with shouts of expectant
joy. Then cries of anger and chagrin. They find
mirrors shattered, panels kicked in, drawers rifled —
everywhere the trail of vandals who have gone
before. The Yunkers have taken the cream of the
plunder. So much is gone! So much intenser, then, the

no THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
struggle for what remains. Who shall gainsay them
the right to this Palace and its contents? All of it
came out of their sweat and the sweat of their
fathers. It is theirs by right of creation. It is theirs,
too, by right of conquest. By the smoking guns in
their hands and the courage in their hearts they have
taken it. But how long can they keep it? For a
century it was the Czar's. Yesterday it was Ker
ensky's. Today it is theirs. Tomorrow it shall be
— whose? No one can tell. This day the Revolu
tion gives. Next day the Counter-Revolution may
snatch away. Now while the prize is theirs shall
they not make the most of it? Here where cour
tiers wantoned for a century shall they not revel for
a night? Their outraged past, the feverish present,
the uncertain future — everything urges them to grasp
what they can now.
Pandemonium breaks loose in the Palace. It
rolls and echoes with myriad sounds. Tearing of
cloth and wood, clatter of glass from splintered win
dows, clumping of heavy boots upon the parquet
floor, the crashing of a thousand voices against the
ceiling. Voices jubilant, then jangling over division
of the spoils. Voices hoarse, high-pitched, mutter
ing, cursing.
Then another voice breaks into this babel — the
clear, compelling voice of the Revolution. It speaks
thru the tongues of its ardent votaries, the Petro
grad workingmen. There is just a handful of them,
weazened and undersized, but into the ranks of

LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE in
these big peasant soldiers they plunge, crying out —
"Take nothing. The Revolution forbids it. No
looting. This is the property of the people."
Children piping against a cyclone, dwarfs attack
ing an army of giants. So seem these protesters, try
ing to stem with words the onslaught of soldiers
flushed with conquest, pillage-bent. The mob goes
on pillaging. Why should it heed the protest of a
handful of workmen? But these workmen will be
The Restraining Hand heeded. Back of their words
of Revolution. they feel the will of the Revo
lution. It makes them fearless
and aggressive. They turn upon the big soldiers
with fury, hurl epithets into their faces, wrest the
booty out of their hands. In a short time they have
them on the defensive.
A big peasant making off with a heavy woolen
blanket is waylaid by a little workingman. He
grabs hold of the blanket, tugs away at one end of
it, scolding the big fellow like a child.
"Let go the blanket," growls the peasant, his
face convulsed with rage. "It's mine."
"No, no," the workingman cries, "it's not yours.
It belongs to all the people. Nothing goes out of
the Palace tonight."
"Well, this blanket goes out tonight. It's cold in
the barracks!"
"I'm sorry you're cold, tovarish. Better for you

112 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
to suffer cold than the Revolution to suffer disgrace
by your looting."
"Devil take you," exclaims the peasant. "What
did we make the Revolution for, anyhow? Wasn't
it to give clothes and food to the people?"
"Yes, tovarish, the Revolution will give every
thing you need in due time, but not tonight. If any
thing goes out of here we will be called hooligans and
robbers — not true Socialists. Our enemies will say
that we came here not for revolution, but for loot.
So we must take nothing. For this is the property
of the people. Let us guard it for the honor of the
Revolution." "Socialism! The Revolution! Property of the
People!" With this formula the peasant saw his
blanket taken away from him. Always these ab
stract ideas adorned with capital letters taking
things away from him. Once it was done with
"Czardom, The Glory of God." Now it was being
done with "Socialism, Revolution, Property of the
People." Still there was something in this last concept that
the peasant could grasp. It was in line with his
communal training. As it took hold of his brain his
hold on the blanket relaxed, and with a last tragic
look at his precious treasure he shambled away.
Later I saw him expounding to another soldier. He
was talking about the "Property of the People."
Relentlessly the workingmen press home their
advantage, using every tactic, pleading, explaining,

LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE 113
threatening. In an alcove is a Bolshevik working-
man, furiously shaking one hand at three soldiers,
the other hand on his revolver.
"I hold you responsible, if you touch that desk,"
he cries.
"Hold us responsible!" jeer the soldiers. "Who
are you? You broke into the Palace just as we
did. We are responsible to no one but ourselves."
"You are responsible to the Revolution," retorts
the workingman sternly. So deadly earnest is he
that these men feel in him the authority of the Revo
lution. They hear and obey.
The Revolution loosed the daring and ardor in
these masses. It used them to storm the Palace.
Now it leashes them in. Out of bedlam it brings
forth a controlling power — quieting, imposing order,
posting sentries.
"All out! Clear the Palace!" sounds thru the
corridors, and the throng begins to flow toward the
doors. At each exit stands a self-appointed Com
mittee of Search and Inspection. They lay hold of
each man as he comes along, exploring his pockets,
shirt and even his boots, gathering in a varied line of
souvenirs; statuettes, candles, clothes-hangers, dam
ask, vases. The owners plead like children for their
trophies, but the committee is adamant repeating
constantly, "Nothing goes out of the Palace tonight."
And nothing does go out that night on the persons
of the Red Guards, tho prowlers and vandals later
on make off with many valuables.

n4 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The commissars now turn to the Provisional Gov
ernment and their defenders. They are rounded up
and escorted to the exit. First, come the ministers,
seized in session around the green baize table in the
Hall of State. They file down in silence. From the
crowd inside not a word or a jeer. But from the
mob outside rises a blast of denunciation when a
sailor calls for an automobile. "Make them walk,
they have ridden long enough," the mob yells,
making a lunge at the frightened ministers. The
Red Sailors, with fixed bayonets, close around their
captives and lead them out across the bridges of the
Neva. Towering above all the convoy is Tere-
schenko, the Ukrainian capitalist, bound now from
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Prison of
Peter-Paul, reversing the journey of the Bolshevik,
Trotzky, from the Prison of Peter-Paul to the office
of Foreign Affairs.
The Yunkers were led out to cries of "Provoca
tors! Traitors! Murderers!" — a sorry crestfallen
lot. That morning each Yunker had vowed to us
that he would fight until just one bullet was left.
This last one, he would put thru his own brain
rather than surrender to the Bolsheviks. Now he
was giving up his arms to these Bolsheviks, solemnly
promising never to take weapons against them again.
(Unhappy fellows! They were to break their
promise.) Last of the captives to leave the Palace were the
members of the Women's Battalion. Most of them

LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE 115
were of proletarian birth. "Shame! Shame!" cried
the Red Guards, "Working-women fighting against
workingmen." To drive home the indignation they
felt, some grabbed the girls by the arms, shaking
and scolding them.
This was about the sum total of the casualties
among the soldier girls, tho later one of them com
mitted suicide. Next day the hostile press spread
tales of gruesome atrocities against the Women's
Battalion, alongside of stories of sack and pillage of
the Palace by the Red Guards.
Yet nothing is more alien to the essential nature
of the working-class than destructiveness. Were it
not so, history might have a different story to tell of
the morning of November eighth. It might have to
record that the magnificent edifice of the Czars was
left a heap of crumbling stones and smoking embers
by the vengeance of a long-suffering people.
For a century it had stood there upon the Neva,
a cold and heartless thing. The people had looked
to it for light, and it had brought forth darkness.
They had cried to it for compassion, and it had
answered with the lash, the knout, the burning of
villages, exile in Siberia. One winter morning in
1905 thousands of them had come here, defenseless,
petitioning the Little Father for redress of wrongs.
The Palace had answered with rifle and cannon,
reddening the snow with their blood. To the masses
the building was a monument of cruelty and oppres
sion. Had they razed it to the ground, it would

116 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
have been but one more instance of the wrath of an
outraged people, removing from their eyes forever
the hated symbol of their suffering.
Instead they proceeded to remove the historic
landmark from all likelihood of damage.
Kerensky had done the opposite. He had reck
lessly put the Winter Palace in the arena of conflict
by making it the center of his cabinet and his own
sleeping quarters. But the representatives of these
storming masses who had captured the Palace, de
clared that it was not theirs nor the Soviets', but
the heritage of all. By Soviet decree it was made
the Museum of the People. The custody of it was
formally placed in the hands of a committee of
artists. So events gave the lie to another
A New Attitude dire prophecy. Kerensky, Dan and
Towards Property, other of the intelligentsia had
shrieked against the Revolution,
predicting a hideous orgy of crime and plunder, the
loosing of the basest passions of the mob. Once
the hungry and embittered masses got in motion,
they said, like a maddened herd they would go
trampling down, wrecking, and destroying every
thing. "Even Gorky was prophesying the end of
the world" (Trotzky).
And now the Revolution has come. There are,
indeed, isolated acts of vandalism; rich-clad bour
geois still return home minus their great fur coats;

LOOTING THE WINTER PALACE 117
mobs work havoc before the Revolution can rein
them in.
But there is one outstanding fact. The first fruits
of the Revolution are law and order. Never was
Petrograd safer than after passing into the hands of
the masses. Unprecedented quiet reigns in the
streets. Hold-ups and robberies drop almost to zer;o.
Robbers and thugs quail before the iron hand of the
proletariat. It is not merely negative restraint — order rising
out of fear. The Revolution begets a singular re
spect for the rights of property. In the shattered
windows of the shops, within hands' reach of passing
men in desperate need, are foodstuffs and clothing.
They remain untouched. There is something pa
thetic in the sight of hungry men having food within
their grasp and not grasping it, something awesome
in the constraint engendered by the Revolution. It
exerts its subtle influence everywhere. Into the far-
off villages it reaches. No longer are the peasants
burning the great estates.
Yet it is the upper classes who assert that in them
lies true respect of the sanctity of property. A
curious claim at the end of the World War for
which the governing classes are responsible. By
their fiat, cities were given to the torch, the face of
the land covered with ashes, the bottom of the sea
strewn with ships, the structure of civilization shot
to pieces, and even now still more terrible instru
ments of destruction are being prepared.

n8 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
What basis is there for true respect of property
in the bourgeoisie? Actually they produce little or
nothing. To the privileged, property is something
that comes by cleverness, by chance inheritance, by
stroke of fortune. With them it is largely a matter
of titles, deeds and papers.
But to the working classes, property is a thing
of tears and blood. It is an exhausting act of crea
tion. They know its cost in aching muscles and
breaking backs.
"With shoulders back and breast astrain,
And bathed in sweat that falls like rain,
Thru midday heat with gasping song,
He drags the heavy barge along."
goes the song of the Volga boatmen.
What men have brought forth in pain and labor
they cannot wantonly annihilate, any more than a
mother can destroy her child. They, out of whose
thews and muscles the thing has issued, will best
guard and cherish it. Knowing its cost, they feel its
sacredness. Even before works of art the rude, un
taught masses stand with reverence. Only vaguely
do they glimpse their meaning. But they see in
them the incarnation of effort. And all labor is holy.
The Social Revolution is in truth the apotheosis
of the rights of property. It invests it with a new
sanctity. By transferring property into the hands
of the producers it gives the keeping of wealth into
the hands of its natural and zealous guardians — the
makers of it. The creators are the best conservators.

CHAPTER IX
RED GUARDS, WHITE GUARDS AND BLACKGUARDS
npHE Soviets declared themselves the government
-¦- on November 7. But it was one thing to take
power; another thing to keep it. It was one thing to
write out decrees; another to back them with bayo
nets. The Soviets soon found a big fight on their hands.
They found, too, a crippled military-apparatus to
fight with. It was all out of gear, sabotaged by
officers. The Revolutionary General Staff could not
straighten out the tangle from above. It appealed
directly to the workers.
They uncovered stores of benzine and motors,
whipping the transport into shape. They assembled
guns, gun-carriages, and horses, to form artillery-
units. They requisitioned provisions, forage, and
Red Cross supplies, rushing them to the front.
They seized 10,000 rifles being shipped to Kaledin
and distributed them among the factories.
The stamp of hammers in the factories gives
way to the tramp of marching feet. The fore
man's orders give way to the commands of sailors
drilling awkward squads. Thru the streets hurry
the motor cars spreading this call to arms:
119

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I^BflcsfistBa EseHflo-PeBCJiKmioHaaro KoBnrreTa
rnaBHOHCEiSMfflj/rcmUi GOflBOfiCKEH.

TO THE DISTRICT
Soviets of Worker's Deputies and
Shop-Factory Committees
ORDER
The Kornilov bands of Kerensky are
threatening the outskirts of our cap-
ITAL. All necessary orders have been
GIVEN TO CRUSH MERCILESSLY EVERY
COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY ATTEMPT
AGAINST THE PEOPLE AND ITS CONQUESTS.
THE ARMY AND THE RED GUARD OF THE^REV-
OLUTION ARE IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE SUPPORT OF
THE WORKERS.
THE DISTRICT SOVIETS AND SHOP-FACTORY
COMMITTEES ARE ORDERED:
1) To bring forward the largest possible number of workers to dig trenches,
erect barricades and set up wire defenses;
2) Wherever necessary for this purpose to SUSPEND WORK in shops
and factories, it must be done IMMEDIATELY.
3) To collect all available plain and barbed wire, as well as all tools FOR
DIGGING TRENCHES AND ERECTING BARRICADES ;
4) ALL AVAILABLE ARMS TO BE CARRIED ON PERSONS ;
5) Strictest discipline must be preserved and all must be
ready to support the Army of the Revolution to the utmost
President of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers & Soldiers Deputies
People's Commissar LEV TROTSKY.
President oi the Military-Revolutionary Committee
Chief Commander PODVOISKY.
[Reproduction in English of the Russian text on opposite page.]
121

122 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
In answer, everywhere appear workmen with cart
ridge belts outside of overcoats, blankets strapped
on their backs, spades, tea-kettles and revolvers
tied on with strings. Long, irregular lines of slant
ing bayonets winding thru the dark.
Red Petrograd rises in arms to repel the Counter-
Revolutionary forces marching up out of the south.
Over the roofs, now hoarse, now shrill, comes the
sound of factory-whistles blowing the tocsin to war.
On all roads leading out of the city pours a torrent
of men, women and boys, carrying kit-bags, picks,
rifles and bombs. A drab and motley throng. No
banners, no drums to cheer them on. Plunging
trucks splash them with mud, freezing slush oozes
thru their shoes, winds from the Baltic chill to the
bone. But they push on to the front, unresting, as
the grey day turns to sullen night. Behind them
the city flings its lights into the sky, and still they
press forward into the dark. Fields and forests are
swarming now with dim shapes, pitching tents, build
ing camp-fires, cutting trenches, stretching wire. One
brief day, and tens of thousands have moved out
twenty miles from Petrograd, and stand, a bulwark
of living flesh against the forces of the Counter-
Revolution. To military experts it is a rag-tag army, a rabble.
But in this "rabble" there is a drive and power not
reckoned with in the books of strategy. These dark
masses are exalted with visions of a new world.
Their veins burn with a crusading fire. They fight

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 123
with reckless abandon, often with skill. They plunge
forward into the black copse against hidden foes.
They stand up to the charging Cossacks and tear
them from their horses. They lie fiat before the
machine gun fire. Bursting shells send them flee
ing but they rally again. They carry back the
stricken, binding their wounds. Into the ears of
their dying comrades they whisper, "The Revolu
tion! The People!" They die, gasping out "Long
live the Soviet! Peace is coming!"
Disorder, confusion, panic, of course, in these
raw levies of the shops and slums. But the ardor
of these hungry, work-scarred men and women,
fighting for their faith, is more effective than the
organized battalions of their foes. It destroys these
battalions. It shatters their morale. Hardened
Cossacks come, see and are conquered by it.
"Loyal" divisions, ordered to the front, flatly refuse
to shoot down these workmen-soldiers. The whole
opposition crumples up or melts away. Kerensky
flees from the front in disguise. The commander of
the grand armies that were to crush the Bolsheviks
cannot find a corporal's guard to fly with him. The
proletarians are victors all along the line.
While the Soviet masses are bat-
The Whites take tling on the plains outside Petro-
the Telephone Station, grad, the Counter-Revolution
rises suddenly in the rear. It
sets out to paralyze the Soviet power at its base in
the city.

124 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The Yunkers, who were paroled after their cap
ture at the Winter Palace, break their parole to join
this White Guard uprising. They are detailed to
seize the telephone station.
The telephone station is one of the vital centers
of the city; from it run a million wires, which like
a million nerves, help make the city a unit. In
Petrograd the telephone station is housed in a mas
sive stone citadel on the Morskaya. Here some
Soviet sentries are posted. Thru the tedium of the
day they have one thing to look forward to — the
change of sentries at night.
Night comes and with it twenty men marching
down the street. The sentries think it is the relief-
squad bringing them liberty. But it is not. It is a
squad of officers and Yunkers disguised as Reds.
Their guns are slung slant-wise in orthodox Red
Guard fashion. They give the Red Guard pass-word
to the sentries. In good faith the sentries stack guns
and turn to go. In a flash twenty revolvers are
pointed at their heads.
"Tovarishe!" (Comrades!) exclaim the astounded
Reds. "You damned swine!" shout the officers. "Get
into that hall there, and keep your mouths shut or
we will blow your heads open."
The doors slam behind the bewildered sentries,
who find, not release and freedom, but imprisonment
at the hands of the Whites. The telephone station
is in the hands of the Counter-Revolution.

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 125
In the morning the new masters finished fortifying
the place under the supervision of a French officer.
Suddenly the officer turned on me with a stern,
"What are you doing here?"
"Correspondent— American," I replied. "Dropped
in to see what was up."
"Your passport," he demanded. I produced it.
He was impressed and apologized. "Of course, this
is none of my business. Like you, I just glanced
in to see what was happening." But he went on
directing the work.
On both sides of the archway the Yunkers ran out
barricades of boxes, automobiles and piles of logs.
They levied toll on passing autos, bringing in sup
plies and weapons, and corralled all passers-by who
might possibly serve as soldiers of the Soviet.
A great prize came their way in the person of
Antonov, the Soviet Commissar of War. Driving
by in his auto, he was suddenly yanked from the
seat; and before he could recover from the shock,
he was behind barred doors. With the fate of the
Revolution hanging in the balance, he found himself
a prisoner of the Counter-Revolutionists. His
anguish at being jailed was only exceeded by their
joy at jailing him. They were jubilant. For among
the unorganized masses of revolutionary Petrograd,
leaders were as yet desperately few. They knew —
according to all the laws of military science — that
the masses, leaderless, could not move effectively

126 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
against their citadel; and the master military brain
of the Reds was now in their hands.
Some things these officers did not
The Revolution know. They did not know that the
Rallies its Forces. Revolution was not dependent
upon any single brain, or set of
brains, but upon the collective brains of the Russian
masses. They did not know how deeply the Rev
olution had roused the brain, the initiative, and the
resources of these masses, and wrought them into
a living unit. They did not know that the Rev
olution was a living organism, self-sustaining, self-
directing, rallying at the danger-call all its latent
powers for self-preservation.
When an evil germ enters the blood of the human
organism the whole body' senses the danger, as if
an alarm had been sent out. Along a hundred arter
ies the special corpuscles or phagocytes come hurry
ing to attack the poison-centre. Fastening on the
intruder, they attempt to expel it. This is not the
conscious act of the brain. It is the unconscious
intelligence inherent in the human organism.
Now into the body of Red Petrograd, threatening
its very life, enters the malignant poison of the
Counter-Revolution. The reaction is immediate.
Spontaneously along a hundred streets and arteries,
the corpuscles (in this case red ones) come hurrying
to the contagion centre — the telephone station.
Ping! Crash! A bullet splintering a log an-

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 127
nounces the arrival of the first Red corpuscle carry
ing a gun. Ping! Ping! Crash! Crash! A gust of
lead, biting stone-chips from the wall, heralds the
advent of more attacking units.
Peering thru the -barricades, the Counter-Revolu
tionists already see swarms of Red Guards at the
ends of the street. The sight of them arouses an old
Czarist officer to savagery. "Turn on the guns!"
he shouts. "Kill the rabble!" Up and down the
streets they let loose a storm of rifle and machine-
gun fire. Like a canyon the street is filled with
noise and ricochetting bullets. But there are no
Red corpses. The revolutionary masses have no ap
petite for martyrdom. Provokingly they refuse to
be killed.
It is different from former days. Then the mobs
obligingly put themselves in the way of the guns.
In hundreds they were spattered over the Winter
Palace Square, blown to pieces by the artillery,
trampled under the hoofs of the Cossacks, massacred
by machine guns. It was so easy! How easy now,
too, to annihilate them, if they would but rush the
barricades. But the Revolution is careful of its material. It
has made these masses cautious. It has taught them
the first lesson in strategy: find out what your enemy
wants you to do, and then don't do it. The bar
ricades, the Reds see, are intended to destroy them;
they intend to destroy the barricades.
They inspect them and decide the tactics of as-

128 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
sault. They pick out every vantage-point. They
hide behind stone pillars. They scale walls. They
crawl along the copings. They he flat upon the
roofs. They ambuscade themselves in windows and
chimney-pots. From every angle they train their
guns upon the barricades. Then suddenly they open
fire, raking the barricades with hails of lead. As
precipitately as they began, they stop, and steal
up into new positions. Another outburst and an
other silence. The officers begin to feel like trapped
animals, around whom invisible hunters are drawing
a circle of fire.
New units are constantly arriving, filling the gaps
in the circle. The ring draws tighter and tighter
and seals up the Counter-Revolution in the centre.
Then, having isolated its plague-spot the Revolution
prepares to eradicate it.
A gale of bullets forces the Whites to abandon
the barricade and find refuge under the archway.
Behind stone ramparts, now, they pause for counsel.
The first plan is to make a sortie, break thru the
Red cordon and escape. But this they see is suicide.
A scout crawls out on the roof and is driven back, a
ball thru his shoulder. They play for time, begging
a peace parley, but the besiegers reply:
"Three days ago we captured you in the Winter
Palace; we paroled you then. You broke your pa
role. You shot down our comrades. We do not
trust you."
They sue for amnesty, offering to give up Antonov.

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 129
"Antonov! We'll take him ourselves," the Reds
reply. "Harm him and we'll kill you — every one of
you."
Desperate situations induce des-
Red Guards Tricked perate ventures.
by the Red Cross Car. "Oh, for a Red Cross car,"
sighed an officer. "The Reds
might let that thru their lines."
"Well, if we haven't the car, we've got the crosses,"
said another officer, producing four big Red Cross
labels. He pasted them on front, sides and back of
an auto. At once it looked like a Red Cross car.
Two officers took the front seat. One at the
wheel, the other with his hand on the auto pocket
and a revolver in his hand. A haggard man, half
crazed with fear, the father of one of the Yunkers
climbed into the rear.
"Jump in and come along," said the officers to me.
The Whites always took it for granted that anyone
in bourgeois dress was on the bourgeois side. Even
many who knew of the revolutionary activity of men
like John Reed, for example, and myself, assumed
it was only a ruse to get the confidence of the Bol
sheviks. I climbed into the car and the hood was pushed
thru the archway. At sight of the Red Cross the
firing of the Red Guard ceased. Slowly and anx
iously we drove up to the Red lines. The soldiers,
sailors and workmen received us, guns in hand.

i3o THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
"Well, what do you want?" they glowered.
"Many of our men are badly wounded. No band
ages, no medicines," the officer at the wheel ex
plained. "We want to go to Red Cross quarters
and get supplies. Our men are suffering terribly."
"Let 'em suffer," growled one of the sailors with
an oath. "Haven't they made our men suffer? And
we had just paroled them — the damned liars."
To this, one of the other sailors cried, "No,
tovarish." To us in the car they said, "All right.
Pass thru. Hurry."
We swept on up the street, while behind us the
fusillade against the telephone station began again.
"Not bad fellows after all, those Red Guards," I
interjected. "Fools! (Doorake). What you call in English
'damn fools', eh?" They laughed hysterically again.
We ran down the French Quay at terrific speed,
making a wide detour in order to throw possible
pursuers off our track. A sharp turn brought us
up before the Engineers' Castle. The big gates
opened to let us in and a minute later we were in a
salon filled with officers — Russian, French and Brit
ish. The staff heard the report on the crisis at the
telephone station and ordered the immediate dis
patch of an armored car and reinforcements. There
were a few other details, some words with a Czarist
general, and we turned to go.
"Wait a minute," interrupted the general, "let
me give you something useful to take back with

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 131
you." He sat down at a table and laid out some
papers, in size and shape like credentials of the
Soviet. Picking up a stamp he brought it down
sharply on the first credential. There were the
magic words "War Revolutionary Committee" in
form and letter just like the seal of the Soviet. If
that was not a stolen Soviet stamp it was an exact
replica. No one could detect the imitation. In
Russia this sort of forgery is a fine art.
"Trotzky himself couldn't give you a better cre
dential than that," the general remarked, handing it
over. "In uncertain times like these, one always
carries the proper kind of papers," he continued
facetiously, imprinting the Soviet seal on two more
credentials. "There you are! Ready for any
emergency. Fill it out with bad writing and mis
spelled words and you have a first-class Bolshevik
pass for any place you want to go. And by the
way," he added, passing over some black iron
globes about the size of baseballs, "a few of these
will come in handy."
"Hand grenades?" I queried.
"No," the general answered. "They are pills.
Capsules. Medicine for Reds. Give a Red Guard
one of these in the right place and it's a sure cure
for Bolshevism, Revolution, Socialism and every
thing else that ails him. What, eh?" he cried, tre
mendously pleased with his wit. "A Red Cross car
full of pills!"
Again our car was headed back to the telephone

132 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
station. But in the last half hour the streets had
changed. Red sentries were posted on nearly every
corner. They were largely peasants whom fate
had torn from the country quiet and thrown down
into this city, all agog with Revolutionists and Coun
ter-Revolutionists and no mark to tell the two apart.
They were puzzled as we bore down on them
waving our papers, pointing to the Red Cross sign on
our car and yelling out, "Aid to the wounded
tovarishe." While they were trying to collect their
wits we went sweeping past. One after another
was rushed off his feet, until we came to a big peas
ant standing guard in the center of tbe Millionaya.
With rifle raised he barred the way and brought us
up with a sudden halt.
"Idiot! " shouted the officers. "Don't you see that
this is a Red Cross car? Don't waste time while
the tovarishe are dying."
"Are you tovarishe too?" asked the peasant, eye
ing the officers' uniforms suspiciously.
"Of course we are. Too long have the bour
geoisie drunk the people's blood! Down with the
traitor Counter-Revolutionists," said the officers,
mouthing shibboleths of the Revolution.
"And do I live to see the day when officers come
over to the help of the dark people?" said the old
peasant half to himself. It was too much. He
couldn't quite believe it and asked for our papers.
With his finger tracing the lines he painfully
spelled out each word. As the peasant read the offi-

RED GUARDS AND WHITE GUARDS 133
cer's paper the officer, hand on pistol, read the
peasant's face. That peasant never knew how close
he stood to death. If he had said "No. You can
not pass," the officer would have blown out his
brains. His permit to let us go was his own permit
to live. He didn't know the seal on our paper was
forged. He only saw it was like his own, so he said,
"Yes!" and we were off again.
Once more we came to the Red cordon around the
telephone station. It was a nervous moment for
the officers. Under pretence of bringing life and
succor to wounded Whites they were bringing death
and wounds to the Reds. These Reds did not know
that. Tho they had had a taste of the treachery
of the Counter-Revolution, they did not suspect that
it would flout all moral laws and violate its own
codes. So when these officers begged quick passage
for their car in the name of humanity, the Red
Guards answered, "All right, Red Cross. Hurry
thru." The lines opened and a minute later our car with
its load of hand-grenades slipped under the arch
way of the station, hailed by shouts of joy from the
imprisoned Whites. They were glad for the hand-
grenades and for the latest military information.
But they were gladdest of all to learn of the armored
car coming to their relief.

CHAPTER X
MERCY OB DEATH TO THE WHITES?
IT was a black outlook for the White Guards
hemmed inside the telephone station. But now
comes this jubilant news that an armored car is
hurrying to their rescue. They gaze intently down
the street for the first glimpse of it.
As it comes swinging in from the Nevsky, they
hail it with cheers. Like a great iron steed it lum
bers along and stops before the barricades. Cheers
again from the Whites. Ill-starred cheers! They
do not know that they are cheering their end. They
do not know that this is not their car; it has passed
into the hands of the Reds. It is a Trojan horse,
within whose armored belly are concealed the sol
diers of the Revolution. It slews about until its
muzzle is pointed thru the archway. Then sud
denly it spouts a stream of lead as a garden hose
spouts water. Screams now instead of cheers!
Tumbling over boxes and one another, the officers,
in one shrieking, tangled mass, go crashing thru the
hallway and up the stairs.
Poetic justice! Here where a few hours earlier
these Counter-Revolutionists pressed their revolvers
134

Bolsheviks with one of the armored cars that quelled the White uprising. The cars were christened Proletariat,
International, The Red Commune, Lenin, etc.

Fighting from doors and windows in the War of the Reds and Whites. Despite the rat-tat-tat of the machine-guns,
the theatres and market-places were crowded.

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 135
against the temples of the Revolution, the Revolu
tion presses its machine guns against their temples.
At the top of the stairway the
The White Guards Whites disentangle themselves, not
in a Funk. to make a stand, but to run better.
Ten resolute men could have held
this stairway against a thousand. But there are not
ten men to do it. There is not one. There is only
a panic-stricken pack, in the clutch of a fear that
drains the blood from their faces, the reason from
their brains. All courage gone. All prudence gone.
Gone even the herd-instinct of unity in the face of
common peril.
"Sauve qui peut," (let him save himself who
can) becomes the cry of the older officers.
They fling away caps, belts and swords; insignia
of honor now become badges of shame and death.
They rip off shoulder straps, gold-braid and buttons.
They plead for a workman's costume, a cloak, an
overcoat — "nything to disguise their rank. An
officer coming upon a greasy blouse hanging on a peg
becomes a maniac with joy. A captain finding the
apron of a cook puts it on, plunges his arms in
flour and already white from terror becomes the
whitest White Guard in all Russia.
But for most of them there is no cover save the
darkness of closets, booths and attic corners. Into
these they crawl like hunted animals in collapse. To

136 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
treachery against their enemies these officers now
add treason to their allies. They had led the
Yunkers into this trap. Now the trap is closing,
and the officers abandon them.
First to rally their wits, the Yunkers begin to
cry out, "Our officers! Where are our officers?"
No answer to their cries. "Damn the cowards!"
they shout. "They have deserted us."
Rage at this betrayal fuses the Yunkers together.
Their best tactics would be to hold the stairway,
but they shrink away from it. Red vengeance
crouching at the foot fills them with dread. It will
not let them move forward. They fall back into a
thick walled room with a narrow entrance. There,
like rats clustering in a hole, they wait the onrush
of the Red tide that may come rising up the stair
way, flooding the corridors, drowning them out.
To some of these young fellows, sprung from
the middle-class, this is a doubly tragic ending.
Death at the hands of peasants and workers with
whom they have no quarrel! But, caught in this
camp of the Counter-Revolution, they must share
its doom. They know how richly they deserve it.
This sense of guilt unnerves them. Their guns
fall from their hands. They slink down on chairs
and tables, moaning, their eyes fixed on the entrance
thru which the Red tide is to come crashing in.
They listen for the swirl of the first wave flinging
itself on the stairway; hammering on the door.

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 137
Save their own hammering pulses there is not a
sound.

There is another chamber of
Reds, Whites and Girls torture in this building. It
Petrified by Fear. holds Antonov, the Red sen
tries, and all captives bagged
by the Whites during the day. They sit helpless,
locked in their prison, while outside rages the battle
sealing the fate of their Revolution, and their own
fate. No one comes to tell them how the battle goes.
Only thru the thick walls comes the muffled crackle
of rifles, the crash of falling glass.
Now all these noises abruptly cease. What does
it mean? The triumph of the Counter-Revolution?
The Whites victorious? What next? The opening
of the door? The firing-squad lining them up before
a wall? Bandages tied round their eyes? The re
port of rifles? Their own death? The death of the
Revolution? So they muse, heads sunk in hands,
while the clock above the door pitilessly tells off the
seconds. Each stroke may be the last. Awaiting
that last, they sit straining to hear the tread of the
firing-squad, coming down the corridor. But save
for the ticking clock, not a sound.
Still another torture chamber, this one filled with
women. It is the top floor, with hundreds of tele
phone girls huddled around the switch-boards. The
eight-hour bombardment, the stampede of the offi
cers, their frenzied cries for help, have shattered the

138 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
nerves of these girls and their minds run wild. They
run to wild stories of Bolshevik atrocities, the rape
of the Women's Battalion, crimes imputed to these
Red hordes swarming into the court-yard below.
In their fevered imagination they are already vic
tims of a like brutality, writhing in the arms of these
monsters. They break into tears. They write
frantic little last farewells. They cling together in
white-faced groups, listening for the first yells of
the ruffians, the thumping of their boots along the
hall. But there are no thumping boots — only their
own thumping hearts.
The building becomes quiet as a tomb. It is not
the quiet of the dead, but tense and vibrant, the
silence of hundreds of living beings paralyzed with
terror. The silence is contagious. It passes thru
the walls and lays hold of the Red throngs outside.
They in turn become still, stricken by the same
paralysis of fear. They shrink away from the stair
way lest it belch out clouds of gas, a fusillade of
bombs. Hundreds outside in terror of the Whites
within! Hundreds inside in terror of the Reds
without! Thousands of human beings torturing
each other.
Inside the building this ordeal by silence becomes
unendurable. I, at least, can endure it no longer.
For relief I run forward, not knowing where; any
where to get away from the silence. Opening a side-
door by accident I catapult into the chamber filled

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 139
with Yunkers. They jump as tho it is the crack of
doom. "American correspondent," they gasp. "O! Help
us! Help us!"
"How can I?" I falter. "What shall I do?"
"Something — anything!" they implore. "Only
save us."
Some one says, "Antonov." The others catch
up the name, repeating it Hke an incantation. "An
tonov. Yes, Antonov. Go to Antonov. Down
stairs — Antonov. Quick, before it is too late — An
tonov!" They point the way.
In a minute I make another headlong entrance
before another astounded audience — the captive
Reds and Antonov.
"You are all free. The officers have fled. The
Yunkers surrender. They beg you to save them.
Any terms. All they ask is their lives. Only hurry,
hurry." In a moment this prisoner Antonov awaiting death
becomes the arbiter of death. The condemned is
asked to be the judge. A startling change! But
the face of this little, tired overworked Revolution
ist did not change. If the thought of revenge flashed
into his mind, it as quickly flashed out again. "So
I am not to be a corpse but a commander," he said
wanly. "Next thing is to see the Yunkers is it?
Very well." He put on his hat and walked upstairs
to the Yunkers.
"Antonov! Gospadeen Antonov! Commander

140 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Antonov!" they wailed. "Spare our lives. We
know we are guilty. But we throw ourselves on the
mercy of the. Revolution."
Sorry ending to a gay adventure! In the morning
sallying out to kill Bolsheviks and in the evening
begging Bolsheviks for their own lives. Saying
"Tovarish" as one might say "swine," then breath
ing it reverently as a term of honor.
"Tovarish Antonov," they implored, "give us your
word as a Bolshevik, a true Bolshevik. Give us your
word for our safety."
"My word," said Antonov. "I give it."
"They may not take your word, Tovarish An
tonov," muttered one poor wretch. "They may kill
us anyhow."
"If they kill you," assured Antonov, "they must
first kill me."
"But we don't want to be killed," whimpered the
poor fellow. Antonov could not conceal his
The Mob Decrees Death contempt. Turning into the
to the White Guards. hall, he started down the
stairs. To the taut nerves
every step sounded like the detonation of a gun.
The Red throng outside heard the steps and raised
their rifles expecting a fusillade. And then this sur
prise! Antonov, their own leader!
"Nash! Nash!" (Ours! Ours!) acclaimed a hun
dred voices. "Antonov! Long live Antonov!" rose

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 141
from another hundred throats. The shout raised in
the courtyard was caught up in the street and the
crowd surged forward crying, "The officers, An
tonov? Where are the officers and the Yunkers?"
"Done for," announced Antonov. "Their arms
are down."
Like the bursting of a dam came the roar from a
thousand throats. Yells of triumph and howls of
rage proclaiming "Death to the officers! Death to
the Yunkers!"
Good reason for the Whites to tremble! At the
mercy of those to whom they had forfeited all claims
for mercy. Not by fighting, but by fighting foully
they had roused this volcano of wrath. In the eyes
of these soldiers and workmen the Whites were mur
derers of the Red comrades, assassinators of the
Revolution, miscreants to be exterminated like ver
min. Fear only had kept the Reds from plunging up
the stairway. Now all cause for caution was gone.
The infuriated men stormed forward filling the
night with their cries, "Wipe out the butchers! Kill
the White Devils! Kill every one of them!"
A torch here and there in the blackness lit up the
bearded faces of peasants, soldier-faces, the faces of
city artisans grimed and thin, and in the front rank
the open, alert countenances of the big sailors from
the Baltic fleet. On all of them, in flashing eyes,
and clenched jaws vengeance was written, the terrible
vengeance of the long-suffering. Pressed from the
rear, the mass lunged forward against the stairway

i42 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
where Antonov stood, calm and impassive, but look
ing so frail and helpless before this avalanche of
men. Raising his hand and voice, Antonov cried out,
"Tovarishe, you cannot kill them. The Yunkers
have surrendered. They are our prisoners."
The throng was stunned. Then in a hoarse cry
of resentment it found its voice. "No! No! They
are not our prisoners," it protested. "They are
dead men."
"They have given up their arms," continued An
tonov. "I have given them their lives."
"You may give them their lives. We don't. We
give them the bayonet!" bawled a big peasant turn
ing to the crowd for approval.
"The bayonet! Yes, we give them the bayonet!"
they howled in a blast of approbation.
Antonev faced the tornado. Drawing a big re
volver, he waved it aloft, crying out, "I have given
the Yunkers my word for their safety. You under
stand! I will back my word with this."
The crowd gasped. This was incredible.
"What's this? What do you mean?" they de
manded. Clutching his revolver, finger on the trigger, An
tonov repeated his warning: "I promised them their
lives. I will back that promise with this."
"Traitor! Renegade!" a hundred voices thun
dered at him. "Defender of the White Guards!" a

Antonov, Commander of the Red Guards, who held back the revolutionary
mob until it came to its senses.

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 143
big sailor flung in his face. "You want to save the
rascals. But you can't. We'll kill them."
"The first man who lays his hands on a prisoner —
/ will kill him on the spot!" Antonov spoke slowly,
with emphasis on each word. "You understand! I
will shoot him dead!"
"Shoot us?" queried the affronted sailors.
"Shoot us! Shoot us!" bellowed the whole in
dignant mob.
For it was just that — a mob, with all the vehe
ment passions of the mob. A mob with every primi
tive instinct inflamed and ascendant: cruel, brutal,
lusting for blood, In it flamed the savagery of the
wolf, the ferocity of the tiger. A huge beast drawn
out of the jungles of the city, stirred up by these
White hunters, wounded, and bleeding from its
wounds, all day exasperated and tormented, at last,
in a paroxysm of joy and rage it was about to
pounce upon its tormentors and tear them to pieces.
At this moment this little man stepped between it
and its prey! To me the most emotional thing in
the whole revolution is this little man standing in
that stairway, so unemotionally looking that mob in
the eye; rather, in its thousand glaring eyes. There
was pallor in his face, but no tremor in his limbs.
And no quaver in his voice, as he said again slowly
and solemnly, "The first man who tries to kill a
Yunker, I will kill him."
The sheer audacity, the impudence of it took
their breath away.

144 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
"What do you mean?" they yelled. "To save
these officers, Counter-Revolutionists, you kill us
workmen — Revolutionists ? "
"Revolutionists!" retorted Antonov, derisively.
"Revolutionists! Where do I see Revolutionists
here? You dare call yourselves Revolutionists?
You, who think of killing helpless men and pris
oners!" His taunt went home. The crowd winced
as tho struck by a whip.
"Listen!" he went on. "Do you know what you
are doing? Do you realize where this madness
leads? When you kill a captive White Guard you
are not killing the Counter-Revolution, you are kill
ing the Revolution. For this Revolution I gave
twenty years of my life in exile and in prison. Do
you think that I, a Revolutionist, will stand by and
watch Revolutionists crucify the Revolution?"
"But if they had us there would be no quarter,"
bellowed a peasant, "they would kill us."
"True, they would kill us," answered Antonov.
"What of that? They are not Revolutionists. They
belong to the old order, to the Czar and the knout,
to murder and death. But we belong to the Revolu
tion. And the Revolution means something better.
It means liberty and life for all. That's why you
give it your life and blood. But you must give it
more. You must give it your reason. Above the
satisfaction of your passions you must put service
to the Revolution. For the triumph of the Revolu-

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 145
tion you have been brave. Now, for the honor of
the Revolution be merciful. You love the Revolu
tion. I only ask you not to kill the thing you love."
He was aflame, his face incandescent, his arms
and voice imploring. His whole being, focussing
itself in that last appeal, left him exhausted.
"Speak to them, comrade!" he entreated.
Four weeks earlier I had spoken to these sailors
from the turret of their battleship The Republic.
As I stepped to the front they recognized me.
"The American tovarish," they shouted.
Loudly and fervently I spoke about the Revolu
tion, about the battle waged thruout Russia for
land and freedom, about their own betrayal by the
White Guards and the justice in their wrath. But
the eyes of the world turned to them as the fighting
vanguard of the Social Revolution. Would they take
the old bloody path of retaliation or blaze the way to
a nobler code? They had shown themselves daring
for the preservation of the Revolution. Would they
show themselves magnanimous for its glory?
It was an effective speech at the outset. But not
because of its content. The recitation of the Lord's
Prayer or Webster's Oration would have been almost
as effective. Not one in a hundred understood what
I was saying. For I spoke in English.
But these words — strange and foreign — crackling
out in the dark held them and made them pause —
precisely what Antonov was working for — that this

146 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
hurricane of passion might subside a little, to gain
time for another impulse to get the upper hand.
For while this was a mob, it
The Mob Disciplined was a revolutionary mob. Deep
ly the Revolution. rooted in the hearts of at least
half this workman-soldier crowd
was one powerful abiding loyalty — the Revolution.
The word was a fetich. Their dreams and hopes and
longings were all woven around "The Revolution."
They were its servants. It was their master.
True, at this moment another master held them,
displacing every idea of the Revolution. Revenge
was in the saddle, recklessly lashing the mob along.
But this was temporary. The permanent allegiance
of their lives was to the Revolution. Given the
chance it would rise up, expel the usurper, assert its
authority, and again control its followers. Antonov
did not stand alone agamst a multitude. In that
mob, there were a thousand Antonovs, sharing with
him the same high zeal for the Revolution. Antonov
was just one unit of that mob, flesh of its flesh, spirit
of its spirit, sharing its antagonism to the Yunkers
and officers, aflame with its same hot passions.
Antonov happened to be first of this mob to rein
in his passions, the first in whose consciousness the
Revolution replaced revenge. The change made in
his heart by concept of the Revolution would like
wise be wrought in the hearts of the soldiers and

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 147
workers. This Antonov knew. By repeating the
magic word "Revolution" he sought to bring them to
their revolutionary selves; he sought to evoke revo
lutionary order out of chaos. And he did.
Before our eyes we saw again the ancient miracle
of the Word — the stilling of the tempest. The howl
ing and the raging died away, save for here and there
an angry voice still persisting. But as Woskov inter
preted my words, and Antonov spoke again, these
centres of dissent subsided. Chastened and in a
receptive mood, these soldiers and sailors were sub
stituting for their own will to revenge the will of
the Revolution. Only let them understand that
will. "What is it, Antonov?" they cried. "What do
you want us to do?"
"To treat the Yunkers as prisoners of war," said
Antonov. "To carry out the terms of surrender. I
have pledged these Yunkers their lives. I ask you
to back my pledge with yours."
The mob became a Soviet. A sailor spoke; then
two soldiers and a workingman. The vote was
taken by show of hands. A hundred battle-stained
hands went up, and another hundred until nearly a
thousand hands were lifted. A thousand clenched
fists threatening death to the officers now raised in
an open handed promise of life.
At this juncture arrived a delegation from the
Petrograd Duma commissioned "to liquidate the

148 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
civil strife with the shedding of as little blood as
possible." But the Revolution was liquidating its
own affairs without the shedding of any blood at all.
It ignored these gentlemen, and detailed a squad to
enter the building and bring the White Guards down.
First came the Yunkers, and then the officers, fer
reted out of their hiding places, one of them dragged
out by his heels. Hustled out upon the elevated
stone steps, they stood blinking in the torch-light,
facing the muzzles of a thousand guns, the scorn of a
thousand hearts, the grilling of a thousand pairs of
eyes. There were a few jeers, cries of "Assassins of the
Revolution!" and then silence — the solemn silence
of a court. For this was a court — the tribunal of the
disinherited. The oppressed sitting in judgment on
their oppressors. The new order passing sentence
upon the old. The grand assizes of the Revolu
tion. "Guilty! All guilty! " was the verdict. Guilty as
enemies of the Revolution. Guilty as retainers of
the Czar and the exploiting classes. Guilty as viola
tors of the Red Cross and the laws of war. Guilty
on all counts as traitors to the workers of Russia,
and to the workers of the world.
The wretched prisoners in the dock shrank before
the blast and bowed their heads. Some of them
would have found it easier to stand up to a volley

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 149
from the guns. But the guns were there to guard
them.
Five sailors shouldering rifles took their stand at
the foot of the steps. Antonov seized the hand of
an officer and placed it in the hand of a sailor.
"Number one," he said. "A helpless, disarmed
prisoner. His life is in your hands. Guard it for
the honor of the Revolution." The squad encircled
the prisoner and marched thru the archway.
With a like formula the next prisoner was handed
over, and the next, and the next; each one entrusted
to a detachment of four or five. "The end of the
rubbish," muttered an old peasant as the last officer
was delivered to his escort, and the procession filed
out into the Morskaya.
Near the Winter Palace infuriated mobs fell upon
the Yunkers and tore them from the hands of their
convoys. But the revolutionary sailors, charging the
mobs, rescued the prisoners and brought them safely
to the prison Fortress of Peter and Paul.
The Revolution was not everywhere powerful
enough to check the savage passions of the mobs.
Not always was it on time to allay the primitive
blood-lusts. Unoffending citizens were assaulted by
hooligans. In out-of-the-way places half-savages,
calling themselves Red Guards, committed heinous
crimes. At the front General Dukhonin was dragged
from his carriage and torn to pieces despite the pro
testing commissars. Even in Petrograd some Yun-

ISO THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
kers were clubbed to death by the storming crowds;
x others were pitched headlong into the Neva.
The attitude of the revolu-
The Workers' Respect tionary working-classes toward
for Life. human life, however, is not re
flected in these mad, sporadic
deeds of the hot-blooded and the irresponsible, but
in one of the first laws the Soviet made as it entered
into power.
As the ruling-class the workers were now in a
position to take vengeance on their former exploiters
and executioners. When I saw them rise up and
take the government in their own hands, and at the
same time take in their grasp those who had lashed
them, jailed them and betrayed them, I feared a
savage outburst of revenge. >
I knew that thousands of the workmen now in
authority had been sent with clanking chains across
the snows of Siberia. I had seen them pallid and
tottering from long years in those coffins for the
living — the stone sacks of Schlusselburg. I had
seen the deep scars cut in their backs by the Cos
sacks' nagaika and I recalled the words oi Lincoln:
"If for every drop of blood drawn by the lash
another shall be drawn by the sword, the judgments
of the Lord are pure and righteous altogether."
But there was no dreadful blood-bath. On the
contrary, the idea of reprisals seemed to have no
hold on the minds of the workers. On November

A course of instruction in history and economics for those seeking admission into the Communist (Bolshevik) .Party.
(See next page.)

After joining the Communist Party every member must take regular military
exercises. Also all —

Communists are expected to do emergency work without pay — called
' ' Saturdayings. ' '

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 151
30 the Soviet passed the decree declaring the Aboli
tion of Capital Punishment. This was not merely
a humanitarian gesture. The workers turned to
their enemies not only to guarantee their lives but
in many cases to grant them freedom.
Many sinister figures of the old regime had been
incarcerated by Kerensky in the bastion of the
Peter-Paul Fortress, There we met Biletzky, the
chief of the Czar's Secret Service who in his day had
railroaded countless victims into these dungeons.
Now the old grizzled rat was getting a taste of his
own medicine. Here also was the ex- War Minister
Sukhomlinov, whose intrigue with the Germans had
sent tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to death
in the trenches. These two arch-villains received us
with the most engaging manners, proclaiming their
innocence and protesting against their "inhuman
persecution." "But the Bolsheviks are more human than Keren
sky," they said. "They give us the newspapers."
We visited also the ministers of the fallen Provis
ional Government in their cells and found them tak
ing their misfortunes with good grace. Tereschenko,
handsome as ever, received us sitting cross-legged on
his cot, smoking a cigarette.
"This is not the life de luxe," he said in faultless
English. "But the commandant is not to blame.
Suddenly he had to provide for hundreds of extra
prisoners and no extra rations. So we are hungry.

i S2 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
But we get the same as the Red Guards; tho they
scowl at us they share their bread with us."
The young Yunkers we found recounting their
telephone-station adventures, opening packages from
friends or stretched out on mattresses playing cards.
A few days later these Yunkers were released. A
second time they were paroled and a second time
they broke faith with their liberators — they went
South and joined the White Guard armies mobilizing
against the Bolsheviks.
With like acts of treachery thousands of Whites
repaid the Bolsheviks for their clemency. Over his
own signature General Krasnov solemnly promised
not to raise his hand against the Bolsheviks, and
was released. Promptly he appeared in the Urals at
the head of a Cossack army destroying the Soviets.
Burtsev was liberated from Peter-Paul prison by
order of the Bolsheviks. Straightway he joined the
Counter-Revolutionists in Paris and became editor
of a scurrilous anti-Bolshevik sheet. Thousands,
who thus went forth to freedom by mercy of the
Bolsheviks, were to come back later with invading
armies to kill their liberators without ruth or mercy.
Surveying battalions of comrades slaughtered by
the very men whom the Bolsheviks had freed,
Trotzky said: "The chief crime of which we were
guilty in those first days of the Revolution was ex
cessive kindliness."
Sardonic words! But the verdict of history will
be that the Russian Revolution — vastly more funda-

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 153
mental than the great upheaval in France in 1789 —
was no saturnalia of revenge. It was to all intents a
"bloodless revolution."
Take the most exaggerated estimates of the shoot
ings in Petrograd, the three days' battle in Moscow,
the street-fighting in Kiev and Irkutsk, and the
peasants' outbreaks in the provinces. Add up the
casualties and divide it into Russia's population —
not the 3,000,000 involved in the American Revolu
tion, nor the 23,000,000 of the French Revolution,
but the 160,000,000 of the Russian Revolution. The
figures will show that in the four months it took
the Soviet to establish and consolidate its power —
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the White Sea
on the north to the Black Sea on the south — less
than one in 3,000 Russians were killed.
Sanguinary enough to be sure!
But look at it in the perspective of history.
Rightly or wrongly, when the fulfillment of the na
tional destiny of America demanded that we cut out
the cancer of slavery, vast property rights were con
fiscated, and in doing this we did not stop until we
had killed one in every 300 people. Rightly or
wrongly, the peasants and workers feel it essential
to cut out of Russia the cancer of Czarism, land
lordism, and capitalism. Such a deep-seated and
malign disease called for a major surgical operation.
Yet it was performed with comparatively little let
ting of blood. For, like children, the nature of a

154 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
great folk is to forgive and forget — not to retaliate.
And vindictiveness is alien to the spirit of working-
people. In those early days they strove hard to
conduct a civil war in a civil manner.
In a large measure they succeeded. The death-
toll of both Whites and Reds together was not equal
to the casualties in a single big battle of the World
War. "But the Red Terror!" someone interjects. That
was to come later when the Allied armies were to
come to Russia, and under their protecting wing the
Czarists and Black Hundreds were to loose upon
peasants and workers the White Terror of the Coun
ter-Revolution — a hideous orgy of butchery and lust
in which helpless women and children were to be
massacred in droves.
Then in defense the workers, goaded to despera
tion, were to strike back with the Red Terror of the
Revolution. Then capital punishment was to be
restored and the White conspirators were to feel
the swift chastising hand of the Revolution.
There are furious charges and counter charges
about Red and White Terrors. Out of the contro
versy four facts emerge and may be stated here.
The Red Terror was a distinctly later phase of the
Revolution. It was a defensive measure, a direct
reply to the White Terror of the Counter-Revolu
tion. Both in number and fiendishness the outrages
of the Reds pale before the atrocities committed by

MERCY OR DEATH TO THE WHITES? 155
the Whites.* Had not the Allies intervened in Rus
sia and again stirred up civil war against the Soviets,
in all probability there would have been no Red
Terror and the Revolution would have continued as
it began — practically a "bloodless revolution."
* Appendix II. "The Train of Death" from the American Red
Cross Magazine.

CHAPTER XI
THE WAR OF THE CLASSES
UPSTARTS, adventurers, impostors!"
Thus the bourgeoisie stigmatized the Bolshe
viks, or sneered with Shatsky, "How can such dogs,
such canaille run a government!"
The idea that the Red regime would last longer
than a few hours or a few days was a joke. Again
and again we were told, "The hangings will begin
tomorrow." But many tomorrows passed and no
Bolsheviks dangled from the lamp-posts. The
bourgeoisie became alarmed as the Soviet showed
no sign of falling. "It is necessary to do battle and
pull it down," read the appeal of the Council of the
Republic. "It is the enemy of the people and the
Revolution." The City Duma became the center for all forces
mobilizing against the Soviets. It was swarming
with generals, priests, intelligentsia, chinovniks, spec
ulators, Knights of Saint George, Boy Scouts,
French and British officers, White Guards and
Cadets. Out of these elements was organized the
"Committee of Salvation" — the General Staff of the
Counter-Revolution. 156

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 157
"All of Russia is represented here," boasted the
old Mayor Schreider. And so it was. "All Russia"
— all except her peasants and workers, her soldiers
and sailors. Coming here from proletarian Smolny
was like entering another world, the world of the
well-fed and well-dressed. From here the ancient
order of privilege and power struck against the new
order set up by the working class. From here the
bourgeoisie engineered its campaign against the
Soviet, using every means to discredit, cripple and
destroy it. By one stroke the bourgeoisie
The Bourgeois Strike sought to bring the Soviet to. its
and Sabotage. knees. It proclaimed a general
strike in all departments of the
new government. In some ministries the white-
collared workers walked out in a body. In the For
eign Office 600 officials listened to Trotzky's appeal
for translators of the Peace Decree, then resigned.
A big strike-chest collected from the banks and busi
ness houses corrupted the minor officials and even
part of the working-class. For a time postmen re
fused to deliver Soviet mail, the telegraph would not
despatch Soviet messages, railways would not carry
troops, the telephone girls left the switchboards,
huge buildings were deserted — no one was left to
light the fires.*
The reply of the Bolsheviks to this general strike
was to declare the positions and pension rights of all
?Appendix, p. 304.

158 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
strikers forfeit if they did not return at once. At
the same time they set to work recruiting new staffs
out of their own ranks. Men in smocks and over
alls occupied the vacated offices. Soldiers pored over
books and figures, tongues sticking out of their
mouths from the unaccustomed mental strain. Big
sailors laboriously picked out keys on the type
writer with one finger. Workingmen at the switch
boards in the telephone station clumsily plugged in
and out while irate subscribers screamed curses and
threats at them over the wires. They were pitifully
heavy-handed and slow. But they were in dead
earnest, and day by day their speed was increasing.
Day by day the old employes came drifting back,
and in the end the strike of the bourgeoisie was
broken. Sabotage was the second weapon used against the
Soviets. In factories managers hid vital parts of ma
chinery, falsified accounts, destroyed plans and
formulas and, under cover of night, shipped away
lead and flour to Germany. Officials misdirected
freight, destroyed good food under the pretext of
its being unfit for use, tied everything up in loops
of red tape.
The Bolsheviks answered with a "Warning to
all Saboteurs and Provocateurs, who have wormed
their way into Soviet Institutions." At the same
time the walls of the city were placarded with this
poster addressed To all HONEST CITIZENS:

BCBfVb HECTHblM-b
rPAWAAHAMV.
iwiiiiiii mm sniia
Xanpra, napojiepH, cneKjjiHHTBi oteMOTca Bparaus HapoAa.
Sss^ BHHOBHbiH bi aim TamHinm npecpjieHlro. fiyAjn. ee*
wmm apecTOBHBaTtca no cneQjasBHim opAepaMt Boeneo-PeBOJiioiL
KouHTeia b ompaBJiaiBca bi KpoHurxa^TCKlfl tiopbmli supejib ^o npeAaaia
m BoeHHo-PfiBOJnonioHEOHy.cy^.Beta odrnecTBeHHWMi. oprasH3aHi»(BCtomHMMirpasjpaib
BoeHHo-PeBOJUou. Komhtbti npefljiaraen: 060 Bcto MBicmixi cjpiaxt
mph Mapo^epcTBa, cneKyjmuto HeMe/peHHo aoboahtb ao CBfytBHla
BoeHHo-PeBoniou. Konm
Boptoa ci STMT) 3JioffL— o6mee aIsjio bcMi qecTHtixi) m0. Bochho-
PeBOJDon KoMHTert men noflAepiKH ott> Tte, KOMy Aopora HHTepecw

BinpecnBpaitiB cneKyjiaHTOBi a uapoAepi BoeHHO-PeBQMiIOHHMf
Roraerb 6yAen> 6e3nomaAeHi>.
7$oeHxo~pe6o/rt6tiio>tHu8 TCoMumem*.
Ilraporpan.
10 loaOju 1917 t.
[This poster is reproduced in English on following page.]
159

TOflLLHOnEST CITIZEnS!
THE UJfiRREVQLUTronARY COIUmiTTEE DECREES:
Hooligans, profiteers and speculators are de-
cured TO be enemies of the people.
Persons guilty of these grave crimes will be
immediately arrested by special order of the War-
Revolutionary Committee and will be sent to the
Kronstadt prisons to remain there until brought
before the war-revolutionary court.
The War-Revolutionary Committee urges all
public organizations and all honest citizens imme
diately to inform the war-revolutionary commit-
tee, of all cases of theh robbery and speculation.
The fight against these evils is the task of all
honest people. the war-revolutionary committee
expects the support of all those who have the
interests of the people at heart.
in the prosecution of speculators and profi-
teers the war-revolutionary committee will be
relentless. War- Revolutionary Committee.
Petrograd.
November 23, 1917.
[This is a reproduction in English of the Russian poster on the
preceding page.] 1 60

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 161
Under this threat, those speculating in the hunger
of the masses took to cover. Later on, the Extraor
dinary Commission (Cheka) was created to deal
with these offenders, and other enemies of the new
Soviet order.
In classes where there was no enmity against the
Soviet, the bourgeoisie fomented it. The sufferings
of millions of cripples, orphans and wounded was
made acute by closing down the Department of
Public Welfare. Hospitals and asylums became
foodless and fireless. Delegations on crutches and
starving mothers, babies in arms, besieged the new
Commissar, Madame Kollontai. But she was help
less. The safes were locked, and the officials had
made off with the keys. The former Minister,
Countess Panina, had made off with the funds.
The Bolshevik reply to this and similar acts was
not the guillotine but the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Behind a long semi-circular table in the music room
of the Palace of the Grand Duke Nicholas sat the
seven judges — two soldiers, two workmen, two
peasants and the President, Jukov.
The first prisoner was the Countess Panina. The
defense recited at length her golden deeds and char
ities. The young workman prosecutor Naumov re
plied: "Comrades: All this is true. The woman has a
good heart. But she is all' wrong. She has helped

1 62 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the people out of her riches. But where did her
riches come from? Out of the exploited people.
She tried to do good with her schools, her nurses and
her soup-kitchens. But if the people had the money
she received out of their blood and sweat, we could
have our own schools, our own nurses and our own
soup-kitchens. And we could have them the way
we want them, not the way she thinks we ought to
have them. Her good deeds can not excuse her
taking funds from the Ministry."
The verdict was guilty. She was sent to prison
until the money was returned, then liberated to
public censure! In the beginning light sentences
like this were the order of the day. But as the
class conflict grew more and more bitter the penal
ties imposed by the Revolutionary Tribunal grew
more severe.
Money is the life-blood of all governments, and
all financial institutions were in the hands of the
bourgeoisie. To the City Duma and the "Committee
of Salvation" the banks privately paid over fifty
million rubles — to the Soviets not a single ruble.
All their pleas and papers were unavailing. The
bourgeoisie found great mirth in the spectacle of the
Government of All-Russia going to the banks cap
in hand begging for funds and not getting any.
Then one morning the Bolsheviks came to the
banks guns in hand. They took the funds. Then
they took the banks. By the decree for Nationaliza-

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES . 163
tion of Banks, these centres of financial power passed
into the hands of the working-class. In their efforts to befuddle
Alcohol, Press and Church the brains of the masses the
versus the Soviets. bourgeoisie saw an ally in
alcohol. The city was mined
with wine cellars more dangerous than powder mag
azines. This alcohol in the veins of the populace
meant chaos in the life of the city. With this aim
the cellars were opened and the mob invited in to
help themselves. Bottles in hand the drunks would
emerge from the cellars to fall sprawling on the
snow, or rove thru the streets, shooting and looting.
To these pogroms the Bolsheviks replied with
machine-guns, pouring lead into the bottles — there
was no time to break them all by hand. They de
stroyed three million rubles' worth of vintage in the
vaults of the Winter Palace, some of it there for a
century. The liquor passed out of the cellars, not
thru the throats of the Czar and his retainers, but
thru a hose attached to a fire-engine pumping into
the canals. A frightful loss. The Bolsheviks deeply
regretted it, for they needed funds. But they needed
order more.
"Citizens," they declared, "no violation of revolu
tionary order! No thefts nor brigandage! Follow
ing the example of the Paris Commune, we will de
stroy any looter or instigator of disorder." To
meet this crisis this placard was posted:

» fmvh nwwn mmm m msm

2) Bcoidfl coCpaHto, MwniHrn, c6opmua n
T.n. Ha y/muaxb h n/iomaAax-b Bocnpeluaeroi.
3) flonbiTKM pa3rpoMOB-b BHHHbixi> norpe-
6oB"b, CKnaAPBi^, 3aBOAOB"b, naBOK"b, Mara3H-
HOBT3, qaCTHblXTs KBapTHp-b h npon. htj. 6y-
flyrb npekpamaeivibi ny/ieMeTHbiM-b pmeivrb
6e3i> BcaKaro npeflynpe>KfleHm.
4] AomoBiiinrb R0BDBT8TBBTb, Ereeiuanararth naopsffiaiffb
B lOHnHQla BtatHneixfl b* 6e3yuiGBHyio otiaaaRHQCTs nojutep-
HtHBaTb cantbift CTpoi&aftnila~ nopnfloaii Kb Romam>, jjaopax*
B Ha yjiBQani), npsraso'b bopots a nonvb3flbi aomaa-b sojijhhm
3anBpaTbCJi bi> B qac seiepa a OTHpbisaTbCti b* 7 «hc yrpa.
Doutb 91 lac. seqepa BbinycHaTb tojuho JBimbiios'b noffb eoh*
vpojienrb aomoBbun» EomaTBTOVb.
5) BBHOBHbie trb paanaTfi. cposamfe sna np!o6ptTeHbi
EsaauK* cnapTUburb HassaraoBTs, a Tamse Ub HapyuiesdH nya«
btob% 2-ro h 4-ro Cyajrrb HemcaseiiHo apccTOBaaMB DOAsep*
nytbi camomy TflfflROBiy BaaaaaHuc.
fleTporpaffb 6-ro ftei<a6pn, 3 naca Homt
EoHHTen. no ^opbS-i a norposiam npa HcnojmirrejiL&on
UteffntTu Gtmin Pafforarc. i Cojustckesi AenyTaioai.

164

DThe city or Petrograd is declared to be
in a state of siege.
2) All assemblies, meetings and
congregations on the streets and
squares are prohibited.
3) Attempts to loot wine-cellars,
warehouses, factories, stores, business
premises, private dwellings, etc., etc.,
will be stopped by machine-gun fire
without warning. "~ ~~""~
4) House Committees, doormen, janitors and militia
men ARE CHARGED WITH THE DUTY OF KEEPING STRICT ORDER
in all houses, courtyards and in the streets; and houses,
doors and carriage-entrances must be locked at 9
o'clock in the evening, and opened at 7 o'clock in the
morning. after 9 o'clock in the evening only tenants
may leave the house, under strict control of the house
committees. 5) Those guilty of the distribution, sale or purchase
of any kind of alcoholic uquor, and also those guilty of
the violations of sections 2 and 4, will be immediately
arrested and subjected to the most severe punishment.
Petrograd, 19th of December, 3 o'clock in the night.
Committee to Fight against Pogroms, attached to the Executive
Committee of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies.
[This is a reproduction in English of the Russian poster on
opposite page.] 165

1 66 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
If liquor might not poison the minds of the peo
ple, there was the press. The lie-factories ground
out their daily grist of papers and posters telling of
the imminent fall of the Bolsheviks; of Lenin's flight
to Finland with thirty millions of gold and platinum
stolen from the State Bank; of the massacres of
women and children by the Reds; of German officers
in command at Smolny.
The Bolsheviks replied to this by the suspension
of all organs "appealing to open revolt or inciting to
crime." "The wealthy classes," they declared, "holding the
lion's share of the public press seek to befuddle the
brains and consciences of the people with a stream
of slander and lies. ... If the first Revolution,
which overthrew the monarchy, had the right to sup
press the monarchist press, then this Revolution,
which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, has the right
to suppress the bourgeois press."
The opposition press, however, was not wholly
suppressed. Papers suspended one day came out
the next under a new name. Speech became Free
Speech. The Day appeared as Night, then In The
Dark Night, Midnight, Two AM. and so on. In
picture and verse Satire went on merrily and merci
lessly lampooning the Bolsheviks. The American
Committee on Public Information carried on its
propaganda unhindered, publishing the words of
Samuel Gompers under the headline "Socialists Sup-

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 167
port the War." But the Bolshevik measures were
effective enough to prevent wholesale lying to the
masses. The Czar had used the priests of the Greek Ortho
dox Church as his spiritual police making "Religion
the opiate of the people." With threats of hell and
promises of heaven the masses had been bludgeoned
into submission to autocracy. Now the church was
called to perform the same function for the bour
geoisie. By solemn proclamation the Bolsheviks
were excommunicated from all its rites and services.
The Bolsheviks made no direct assault upon
religion, but separated Church from State. The
flow of government funds into the ecclesiastical
coffers was stopped. Marriage was declared a
civil institution. The monastic lands were confis
cated. Parts of monasteries were turned into
hospitals. The Patriarch thundered his protests against these
sacrileges but with little effect. The devotion of the
masses to the Holy Church proved to be almost as
mythical as their devotion to the Czar. They looked
at the Church Decree giving them hell if they sided
with the Bolsheviks. Then they looked at the
Bolshevik Decree giving them land and factories.
"If we must choose," some said, "we choose the
Bolsheviks." Others chose the Church. Many
merely muttered "Neechevo" (it doesn't matter

1 68 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
much), and walked in the church procession on one
day and in the Bolshevik parade on the next.
The cities were the stronghold
Peasants, Anarchists and of the Bolsheviks. The bour-
Germans Pitted against geoisie sought to play the
the Soviets. country against them.
"Look!" they said to the
peasants, "The cities work but eight hours a day,
why should you work sixteen? Why deliver your
grain to the cities when you get nothing in return?" *
The old Executive Committee of the Peasants' So
viet flatly refused to recognize the new government
at Smolny.
Over their heads, however, the Bolsheviks called
a new congress of peasants. Here the old guard
with Chernov made furious assaults upon the Bol
sheviks. But two stubborn facts could not be
downed. First: The Bolsheviks had given the peas
ants land — not promises. Second: The Bolsheviks
were now inviting the peasants to participate in the
new government.
After days of stormy debate an agreement was
concluded. The peasants streamed out into the
night lit with torches, the band of the Pavlovsky
Regiment crashed into the Marseillaise, workmen
rushed in upon the peasants clasping them in their
arms and kissing them. Behind the huge peasant
Soviet banner with its inscription: "Long Live the
?Appendix, p. 310. Soviet appeal to Peasants: "Dear Brothers."

HToBbI BoAbUIE HMETb -
HAA° B°AbUJE nPoM3B°AHTb

"In Order to Have More, it is Necessary to Produce Mors. In
Order to Produce More, it is Necessary to Know More."

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 169
Union of the Toiling Masses," the procession passed
thru the snow-covered streets to Smolny. Here the
formal "wedding" of the peasants with the soldiers
and workers was consummated. In exaltation an
old mujik cried out, "I came here not walking on
the ground but flying thru the air." The new gov
ernment became in reality a Soviet of Workmen,
Soldier and Peasant Deputies.
In their efforts to break the Soviets the bour
geoisie struck out right and left — as far left as the
Anarchists. Hundreds of officers and monarchists
filtered into the anarchist organizations and under
the black flag became anarchists of deed.
They entered hotels and at revolver-point "re
quisitioned" the pocket-books of the guests. In Mos
cow they "nationalized" thirty-four palaces by
dumping the inmates into the streets. They found
the American Red Cross automobile of Colonel Rob-
bins standing by a curb and "socialized" it by jump
ing in and driving off. They justified everything by
saying: "We are the real revolutionists — more radi
cal than the Bolsheviks."
The Bolsheviks delivered an ultimatum to the
genuine Anarchists to clean house. At the same
time they raided the "Anarchist" centers and found
great stores of provisions, jewelry and machine-guns
fresh from Germany. They restored the stolen
property to the owners and arrested all reactionaries
masquerading as ultra-revolutionists.

1 70 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
For help the bourgeoisie turned to their former
enemies— the Germans. Again and again they told
us that next week we would see the German armies
marching into Moscow.
The Bolsheviks had then no Red Armies to op
pose the Germans, no batteries of guns. But they
had batteries of linotypes and printing-presses, which
sprayed the German ranks with the deadly shrapnel
of propaganda. In the Torch and the People's
Peace, in all languages, flamed the appeal to the
German soldiers to use their guns — not to destroy
the workingmen's republic in Russia, but to set up
a workingmen's republic in Germany.
In the Soviet offices John Reed and I made up an
illustrated sheet. Picture No. i showed the German
Embassy in Petrograd, a big banner on its front.
Underneath this picture these sentences:
See the great banner. It is the word of a famous German.
Was it Bismarck? Was it Hindenburg? No. It is the call of
the immortal Karl Marx to international brotherhood — "Prole
tarians of all lands, unite!"
This is not merrly a pretty decoration of the German Em
bassy. In all seriousness the Russians have raised this banner,
and to you Germans they hurl back the same words that your
Karl Marx gave to the whole world seventy years ago.
At last a real proletarian republic has been founded. But
this republic cannot be secure until the workers of all lands
conquer the power of government.
The Russian peasants, workers and soldiers will soon send a
socialist as ambassador to Berlin. When will Germany send an
internationalist Socialist to this building of the German embassy
in Petrograd?

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 171
Picture No. 3 showed a soldier prying the Rus
sian Imperial eagles off a palace, the crowd below
burning them. Underneath these words:
On the roof of a palace, a soldier is tearing down the hateful
emblem of autocracy. Below the crowd is burning the eagles.
The soldier in the crowd is explaining that the overthrow of au
tocracy is only the first step in the march of social revolution.
It is easy to overthrow autocracy. Autocracy rests on nothing
but the blind submission of soldiers. The Russian soldiers merely
opened their eyes and autocracy disappeared.
These pictures, papers and leaflets were flung up
into the air to be blown by favorable winds into the
German trenches. They were dropped from aero
planes and smuggled across in shoes and boxes and
on prisoners returning to Germany.
All this disintegrated the German armies and
made for revolution. General Hoffman said: "It
was Lenin and the Bolsheviks that broke our morale
and gave us defeat and the revolution you now see
ruining us." Probably the propaganda was not so
effective as this. But it did prevent the German
troops from coming to overwhelm the Soviet. The
Russian bourgeoisie began scheming for intervention
by the Allies. On January 18, 1018, at the
The Debacle of the height of the struggle between
Constituent Assembly. the classes the Constituent
Assembly convened. It re
flected an earlier phase of the Revolution — a view
point now discarded. It was elected from antiquated

172 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
lists — lists in which one Soviet Party — the Left So
cialist Revolutionists, did not appear as a party at
all. The masses were indifferent to this institution
coming like a ghost out of the past. But the bour
geoisie loudly acclaimed it. In reality the bourgeoisie
had no zeal for the Constituent Assembly and for
months had done everything to postpone or kill it.
How often had I heard them say: "The Constituent
Assembly — we spit upon it." Now it was their last
hope, the last screen behind which they could oper
ate, they became its ardent champions.
For the opening day a big demonstration was or
ganized. About 15,000 officers, chinovniks and in
telligentsia paraded thru the streets. Fur-clad ladies
of leisure arrayed in scarlet colors, old monarchists
carrying banners of red, large-bellied landlords
lustily singing "We starved and bled in the people's
cause" all tried their best to look like a revolutionary
procession. But only the songs and banners were
red. The marchers were largely White Guards and
Black Hundreds — scarcely a peasant or worker. The
masses stood aside and greeted the paraders with
jeers or contemptuous silence.
The Constituent Assembly came too late. It was
still-born. In the swift pace of Revolution the al
legiance of the revolutionary masses had passed
wholly to the Soviet. For the Soviet they had
marched 500,000 strong and they were ready, not
only to march for it, but to fight and die for it. The
Soviet was precious to the working-classes because it

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 173
was their own institution, born in their own class and
admirably fitted to realize their own ends.
Every dominant class fashions the kind of state-
apparatus that will best secure its power, thru which
it can govern in its own interests. When kings and
nobles were in power the state-apparatus thru which
they functioned was the Autocracy, the Bureaucracy.
When the bourgeois-capitalist classes rose to power
in the 18th century they scrapped this old state-
apparatus and created a new one adapted to their
purposes — the Parliament, Congress.
In like manner the working-classes rising to power
in Russia brought with them their own state-appara
tus — the Soviet. They had tried and tested it in
thousands of local Soviets. They were familiar with
its workings. It was part of their daily experience.
Thru it they had achieved the desires of their hearts
— land, factories, and the proffers of peace. They
had marched to victory with it. They had made it
the government of Russia.
And now this belated Constituent Assembly re
fused to recognise the Soviet as the government of
Russia. It refused to accept the Soviets' Declara
tion of the Rights of the Working and Exploited
Peoples — "the Magna Charta of the Russian Rev
olution." * It was as if the French Revolution re
fused to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Accordingly it was dissolved. In the morning of
January 19, 1918, the sailor guards said they were
* Appendix VI, p. 297.

174 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
sleepy and that the remaining delegates must stop
talking and go home. Thus after one session the
Constituent Assembly expired, making a great furor
in the Western world, but in the life of Russia hardly
a ripple. It had no hold on the people. By the
manner of its dying it showed that it had no right to
live. The chief mourners for the Constituent Assembly
were the bourgeoisie. It was their last hope. Now
it was gone their rage against the Revolution and all
its works was implacable. This was quite natural.
The Revolution was a catastrophe to them. It de
clared: "If a man does not work, neither shall he
eat." "No one shall have cake until everybody has
bread." It dynamited the whole basis of their lives.
It took the great estates away from the landlords, the
gilt-edged jobs away from the office-holders, the con
trol of banks and factories away from the capitalists.
Nobody likes to have things taken away from him.
No leisure class gracefully steps down from the roof-
garden and goes to work. No •privileged class vol
untarily resigns any of its privileges. No class
steeped in tradition discards the old and gladly em
braces the new.
There are of course exceptions to this rule — in
Russia some striking ones. The old Czarist general,
Nikolayev, declared himself a Bolshevik and took
command in the Red Army. Later captured by the
Whites at Yamburg he was called upon to deny his
faith. He refused. He was tortured — a red star

THE WAR OF THE CLASSES 175
burned upon his breast. Still he refused to recant.
He was led to the scaffold and a noose placed around
his neck.
"I die a Bolshevik. Long live the Soviet," he
cried as he was swung out into space.
There were others like him — men whose hearts
had been touched by the teachings of Tolstoy and
the long line of Russian humanitarians, men who
saw the iniquity of the old order and the justice of
the new.
But these were exceptions. As a class the Russian
bourgeoisie looked at the Revolution with horror
and hate. Their only thought was to kill it. Blinded
with vengeance they cast aside all codes of honor,
chivalry and patriotism. They cried for foreign
bayonets to strike it down. Every weapon was sanc
tified — even assassination. The civilized veneer
dropped away. The primitive fang and claw ap
peared. Men of parts and culture became savages.

CHAPTER XII
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER
THE conduct of the Russian upper-classes in their
efforts to regain the power of the State shows
nothing new or unusual in history. The unprece
dented thing is the determination of the Russian
working-class to hold that power. They clung to
their course with dogged tenacity, meeting thrust
with counter-thrust, striking back blow for blow,
steel for iron. They developed unexampled disci
pline and solidarity.*
It is said that the rank and file were held in line
by the iron will of their leaders, that their resolu
tion was just the reflex of the resolution of the men
above. The opposite is nearer the truth.
1 It was the leaders who were irresolute. Three
Bolshevik Commissars left their posts at a critical
moment. Five others (Zinoviev, Kamanev, Milyu-
tin, Nogin, Rykov) tendered their resignation to the
Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Lun-
acharsky, believing all the tales of Moscow's de
struction, cried out, "My cup is full. I am unable
to endure this horror. It is impossible to work
under the pressure of thoughts that drive me mad.
I can bear no more. I resign."
?Appendix, p. 302: "To All Workers of Petrograd."
176

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 177
"Shame upon these men of little faith, who hesi
tate and doubt, capitulating to the cries of the bour
geoisie," cried Lenin. "Look at the masses. In
them there is not a shadow of hesitation." The
names of the deserters were pilloried thru Russia.
Before the blast of indignation from the proletarians,
the commissars scurried back to their posts never to
waver again.
But they could never quite shake off the haunting
fear of defeat. Even Lenin was not immune. "Ten
days more and we shall have lived seventy days —
as long as the Paris Commune," he exclaimed, sur
prised at so far escaping disaster. At times the lead
ers saw their venture ending in certain death.
"We did our best," said Peters dolefully one day,
"but it is all over for us shortly."
"Perhaps tomorrow," said Pokrovsky, "we shall
get a sleep — a long one."
These forebodings never assailed the minds of
the Bolshevik rank and file. They drove ahead in
full confidence and assurance, infusing their leaders
above with fresh courage and determination, and in
spiring the broad masses below with the will to
victory. To what extent did these masses
How Many Bolsheviks support the new government set
in Russia? up by the Bolsheviks? How
wide a following did the Revolu
tion find in the people? The People's Business
(Dielo Narodo) said: "A revolution is a rising of

178 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
all the people. But what have we here? A hand
ful of poor fools deceived by Lenin and Trotzky."
True, the membership of the Bolshevik Party was
a "handful" among the great populations of Russia
— not more than one or two per cent. If that was
all, the new government might well be stigmatized as
"the tyranny of an infinitesimal fraction over the
great majority." But one fact must be borne in
mind, viz.: Bolshevik sentiment is not to be gauged
by the Bolshevik Party. For every Bolshevik in the
official Bolshevik Party there were 30 to 50 Bolshe
viks in the general population.
The high standard of admission, the hard duties
and drastic discipline of the Bolshevik Party, made
the masses unwilling to join it. But they voted for
it.* In the elections to the Constituent Assembly in
Northern and Central Russia, Bolsheviks got 55 per
cent, of the vote — not 1 or 2 per cent. In Petrograd
the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist-
Revolutionists, received 576,000 votes — more than
the 17 other parties combined.
?Socialist voters are always io to so times as numerous as
Socialist Party members. New York in 1920 had 12,000 Socialist
Party members. This election showed 176,000 Socialist Party
voters. In Vladivostok in 1018, the Bolshevik Party members
were 300. In the June election there were 12,000 Bolshevik
Party voters. This election was held under Allied auspices with
the Bolshevik papers suppressed and their leaders imprisoned,
yet more citizens voted for the Bolsheviks than for the other
16 parties combined. Yet propagandists for the Czarists Kolchak
and Denikin — like John Spargo — tried to focus all attention on
the membership, which is utterly misleading.

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 179
It is said that there are three grades of lies:
"Lies, damned lies and statistics." Revolutionary
statistics are particularly unreliable. For in time of
revolution public opinion moves like a tidal wave.
The people vote one way today. A few weeks hence
they will vote quite differently.
When the Constituent Assembly was elected in
November, 191 7, about one-third were for the Bol
sheviks (including their allies, the Left Socialist-
Revolutionists). When the Constituent Assembly
convened in January, 191 8, possibly two-thirds were
for the Bolsheviks. In the few weeks' interim the
Bolshevik ideas swept from the cities into the
villages, and out into the provinces. The peasants,
finding that the Soviet Land Decree had actually
given them the land, rallied behind the Bolshevik
banners in millions.
A fair estimate of the growth of Bolshevik ad
herents in the adult population would go like this:
March 1017 — at the fall of the Czar  1,000,000
July 1917 — after the armed demonstration  5,000,000
November 191 7 — Constituent Assembly election (official
returns)  9,000,000
January 1918 — 3rd Congress of Soviets representing. . . .13,000,000
The Bolsheviks had not merely numbers but all
the strategic positions. The big cities were Bol
shevik — so were the railwaymen, the miners, the
workers in basic industries. And the bayonets were
overwhelmingly on their side. The Bolsheviks had

180 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the mandate of the essential forces of Russia to
carry on the Revolution in the Bolshevik way.
It is a grave error to minimize the fol-
Apathy of lowing the Bolsheviks had in the masses.
the Masses. It is an equally grave error to say that
these masses were all zealots of the Revo
lution, all filled with a high and holy enthusiasm.
On the contrary great numbers were quite indifferent.
The Revolution was only "skin-deep."
One winter morning I set out in a sleigh with
Charles Kuntz, a New Jersey farmer and philos
opher, who had come to Russia for a scientific study
of the Revolution. On finding that we were Ameri
cans, our driver, a lad of fifteen, was all excitement.
"Oh, Americans!" he exclaimed. "Tell me did
Buffalobill and Jessejams really live?"
We said, "Yes" and at once leaped to glory in
the eyes of our driver. The exploits of these West
ern daredevils he knew by heart. Now this great
joy — he was driving two countrymen of his heroes.
He gazed long at us in big blue-eyed admiration
while we tried hard to look like Buffalo Bill and
Jesse James themselves.
"Oh! Ho!" he shouted. "I'll show you how
to drive." He loosed the reins, cried "B-r-r" to
his horse and with a jerk struck out into a break-neck
gallop, the sleigh bounding over the ice-hummocks
like a stage-coach on a Rocky Mountain road.
Shouting with delight, he stood up in his box, crack-

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 181
ing his whip, the sleigh slewing fearfully from side
to side while Kuntz and I clung desperately to our
seats and begged him to stop.
We told him that Buffalo Bill at his best never
did better — but not to do it again. He plied us
with incessant questions about the West while we
tried to get him to talk about Russia. But in vain.
The Russian Revolution was in eclipse. The deeds
done in his books with glaring paper covers were so
much more blood-stirring and important than those
done in the streets of Petrograd.
Not all indifference to the Revolution was so
picturesque. The energies of multitudes were ab
sorbed by routine, and the sheer details of finding
food and clothes. Others sordidly saw in the Revo
lution their chance for loot and laziness. They had
toiled like slaves, now they would loaf like lords.
The Revolution meant to them not freedom for work
but freedom from work. They lounged all day on
the corners, their sole contribution to the new order
being to spit the husks of sun-flower seeds on the
pavement. Soldiers became "State boarders," doing
nothing in return for the food, clothes and lodging
they got from the government. The nights they
spent in card playing, their days in sleeping. Instead
of drilling they became hawkers peddling rubbers,
cigarettes and gew-gaws in the streets.
There was venal criminal indifference, too, to the
interests of the Revolution. In positions deserted
by the intelligentsia, adventurers and careerists saw

182 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
their chance for plunder and glory. When John
Reed and I visited the Petrograd Prefect of Police
he flung his arms around us, crying: "Welcome, dear
comrades. I will commandeer for you the best
apartments in the city. We must sing the Marseil
laise together. Ah! Our Magnificent Revolution,"
he exclaimed ecstatically. There was no doubt about
his inspiration. The sources of it stood in a dozen
bottles on the table. Under their influence he grew
eloquent: "Danton and Marat ruled Paris in the French
Revolution. Their names have gone down in his
tory. I rule Petrograd today. My name shall go
down in history." Short-lived glory! Next day he
was jailed for accepting a bribe.
Another romantic buccaneer in some way received
an appointment as military commissar. His self-
importance mounted with every verst that took him
away from Moscow. He sent word to a local Soviet
that his coming would be announced by the booming
of a cannon and the delegates were forthwith to
assemble. Revolver in hand he strode upon the
platform and in stentorian voice read his commission
to the astounded auditors, punctuating each sentence
by firing a bullet into the ceiling. There was short
shrift for such adventurers.
But for the broad masses the Bolsheviks had
infinite tolerance. They knew that the state had
stupefied their brains, the church had deformed their
consciences, famine had racked their bodies, alcohol

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 183
had soddened their spirits. They had been ex
hausted by years of war and perverted by cen
turies of cruelty and deceit. For these masses the
Bolsheviks had patience — and education.
"Whatever other expenses are cut
A New Creative down," the Bolsheviks declared, "the
Spirit. expenditures on public instruction
must stay high. A generous budget
for education is the honor and glory of every peo
ple. Our first aim must be the struggle against
ignorance." Everywhere schools were opened — even in palaces,
barracks and factories. Over them was blazoned
the legend "Children are the hope of the world"
(Detye nadezhde meera). Into them marched mil
lions of children, some of them forty and sixty years
of age — old babas and grey-bearded peasants. A
whole nation was learning to read and write.
Alongside the revolutionary proclamations and
bills for the opera, appeared on the boardings biog
raphies of great men, screeds on health and art and
science. Workmen's theatres, libraries and lec
ture-courses sprang up on all sides. Doors to cul
ture hitherto tight-closed to the masses were un
locked. Peasants and workers flocked into the
museums and galleries.
The Bolsheviks aimed not only at better brains
but better bodies. To this end many decrees were
issued, such as the eight-hour law. The right of

184 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
every child to be well-born was proclaimed. The
stigma of illegitimacy was removed. Each industry
was to provide one maternity bed for each two hun
dred workwomen. For eight weeks before and eight
weeks after childbirth the mother was exempted
from work. A Palace of Motherhood was estab
lished in different centers. The children instead of
the wealthy were given the first claim upon such
"luxuries" as milk and fruit. By the housing law
the rich man lost his right to ten or twenty rooms or
as many dwellings. On the other hand a dozen
families gained for the first time the right to fresh
air, light and decent dwellings. Not only was their
health better, but they gained in self-respect and
dignity. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, bas
ing itself on the multitudes, sought to nourish multi
tudes of sound, clean bodies, brains and consciences.
The Bolsheviks were working for the future.
Having destroyed the main foundations of the old
bourgeois order, they now faced the infinitely more
trying task — the construction of a new order. They
had to build it anew in every department, to build it
from the bottom up, to build it out of the ruins of
the past, to build it while beset and bedevilled on
every side.
No one can exaggerate the magnitude of the task
of reorganizing a new society. Some of the obstacles
I glimpsed in one department — the military.
Trotzky had just flung into the face of General von
Hoffman his: "You are writing with the sword on

Under the Czar this Royal Palace was for a few nobles and their lackeys;
now under the Soviet it shelters hundreds of crippled and orphaned children.
The former name, Czar's Village (Tsarskoye Selo) is changed to Children's
Village (Dyetskoye Selo). (See next page.)

Play and exercise in the former Palace Park, now the Children's Colony.

Girls at work learning how a Bolshevik cow gives milk.

Boys modelling in clay. Heads are shaved to guard against the typhus louse.
'I I w

The Moscow Children's Theatre. Child-actors and audience enjoying Barrie's
Peter Pan.

'Chaos is necessary to the birth of a star," said Nietzsche. Out of Russian chaos rose the powerful Red Army-
its emblem the ..five-pointed star, its commander Trotzky,

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 185
the bodies of living nations" and had refused to
sign the First Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Ger
mans then started a sudden drive on Petrograd. I
joined the Red Guards for the defense of the city.
Hearing this, Lenin suggested that I form a foreign
detachment. Pravda printed our "call" in such
English type as they could muster. (See repro
duction of this on next page.)
About sixty men joined the detachment.
Amongst them was Charles Kuntz, heretofore a Tol-
stoyan with scruples against killing even a chicken.
Now that the Revolution was in peril, he threw over
his pacifism and took up a gun. A tremendous
change, to convert a fifty year old philosopher into
a soldier. In target practise his rifle would get
tangled in his beard, but once his bullet hit the
bull's-eye and his eyes glistened with joy.
We were a motley crowd and our fighting-strength
really amounted to little. But the spirit of it had a
good moral effect upon the Russians. It gave them
the feeling that they were not utterly alone. And
on a tiny scale it gave us an insight into the diffi
culties the Bolsheviks must struggle with on a colos
sal scale. We saw the thousand obstacles that must
be overcome before any organization could function.
British and French agents on the one hand, and
German agents on the other, tried to worm their way
into our detachment. The Whites tried to get hold
of it for counter-revolutionary purposes. Provo
cators stirred up jealousy and dissent. After we got

24(11) $6Bpaja 1313 r.

THa 1 rsf fcTnrtrnrl MiM.il
of tia Bel Army.
The Section for tbe formation, slid
drilling f troops af the 'All-Ross''- n
Colli-ge f f tlie OrganizJtion nd Ad-
mmisiraion ol ihe R d Army not fes
herewith that au horiss itfon t;is been
obu n d by i; for-.ihe formation ot a
Fjrsi Internaticn-J Det chmerit of the
Red Army to be i tt ched • to one of
the militry units uf Petio-.rad. This
detachmerr wi 1 cons st of t reignfTs
the g nerd language to be English
1 lie members are to be enrolled _as
votLnte. rs The conditions of life; of
he, volunteers t j b th same as th 'se
tf $he menVrers of the Red Ar y The
l^ersons wish.ng to. enroll are. to pre
sent themselves ..t th-* M ri'ns'-y Pa
lace 3 rd fioi.r entrance V znesensky
p.rospec, where a Bareiu for the en-
r-Hment of f rVigners of nil nationali
ses has been or.ansei. It ss propo
ses! to --tucn the detachment to tbe
Gn-ffdjer Guard Regi:nent (PetrQ-
grndsk ia Sioron i, . B j.shoi Wu iovU
str*i t)
The Section geves herewith a trans
lation of h? Cill of ih-- nltators of
the format on of-'ih- d< tachment Cora-
ruiis Ai.er.Cin Soc ali te Alben wil
K ms and Sam ;il Agurs y, who are
at th ¦ head .uf t>. e . Bureau for the
enri Hi g ot'vol nteprs
Me'mb iV of Co lege <-f the Section
fv4r the F*nn.itso:i an Drilling.
ii * i
CALL.
In this terrible world vnr demrcra
cy has beeflt threatened; the in e_.-na-
to ni force -h.ve Leeit split aja.der,
-id 'he working" classed ¦ Jiave'^been
riden into -the sham ites by the. .imp";-
r list of. all c*un' Hes-. Iriilie d.rkie«S
ihcr- rose llw. Rnssja» ReWikion.

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B0T-3BA1TIB!
Bi 3Ty CTpaarayio Kipnnp*. nnfcy, K»8
jtcsoKparia yrpoaaaa .orSMreTifc sarppiaiui)-
raJMOLi cbhj faMR.paapaasenu.i. pa&nia
Macca DopeBay^ tE0Bsm> -ainc,pfeffl,CTas8
BflaiNiTpaiTb. ,^k eceofiaifill-TbilH hhwrsbo

lS6

Citizens! Comrades! Internationalists!
Jtmssta b in prlrion. Krcn sn, nlwve fto oling.ir of the world — Vu tar toIc* ctIm out lofcdeir/or JasHea and •ttinb>
|Ity — for fhe poor and tbe OpproBseA.
Btt&iU ban enoinlits Inner and outer, slrong and eimnlng- And fossTa neerli not your Voids and pious winhw. Sh*
IH*as worki discipline, organisation and
guns In ihe hands off fearless fighters.
Do fm beltcre Ir flic SerolnUoo, la tlie International, In the Soviet power? Than join the. international Legion ol CbvRfttf
Army. It ii formed fer those sptaklng foreign knguug«B and tn u uo coming tbd figMi,ng HvolallontHti) from nrotaul Uib ireful
Are yon a free man? Then enlM st ohm.
.\ro yea irorldag in Hhop or office? Thru give four noun time to drill, rifle practice anil- tbe military cotvonav
Headquarter*: 3 Hijrti Leasnoy Peraootuk - pear toe Temple of tbe Bavjonr.
larger! ^enoffen! §«fetttafionafiffett!
fll#nrt 'ip Im (BrfBugnlTfe. 3rbotf) fiber oil ten ftlangen be* 3Sefrhi<gffi *rfrf)aUt ftfne bunntfnbt (Stiminc um fE«e^(l()teH
|tnb iamanlldt -fflr ble tarfflen unb Unterbnidten. fflujjloitb fft oon mfldvtlfltn fjctnben btloijcrt, llintrcn ant flu|ierm. 9Ui&lanb btamftt irjdjt
ture flBorfe imb fiominc 9DQnf4c ; CO braudjt tot, liejujitiii, Prgoiiifniloii, «rf<fjfllj bl tctt (fine* N line drfjr.'druer ft BmMcv. StfU *&».
(¦fttfl ©laubtn an Me Weooluttfln, an ble ^nttmotfonaft unb bk SotDjet-OTadjt? tionn' [djlkljt tuS) bei
^nfottafiottaten Jfflioit ber stolen <JUm«e
fli, tttftlb* »lrt *far NtJenTsrn otoHbet, ble frernbe ©pwdjen [predjeii, uflb an .fie wiben |1<& Me itooluflonaren Rrfifte bet amnion SDtfl
Btft bu e(n(re!er331ann? Xtann Td&Hefte Wet) loajeldj an.- Sdjoffji bn (n aUerlliaitert obcr ftontof? Donn olbmebclae frtle <5tuiib«t btm Drltfert,
bet Q^ltiiflbuiig utlb bun XRMjftuMum.
*iiu»tflti«Hcrj ftlMnl'Clel not Vwulor *r, 2 — Hf$e beni lempeT bee fielTatfto.
¦iwn  m999ti»m9mmm*t0**m*99»9i*™i9t*men**9Wv&i+vrm>F99r&9^^
CRoyens! Camerades! Intemaitonafistes!
Is*BgnIe /$t ¦«-eaptiVit& sats'tn'mo nrpflTo ello AomtJle In grDDilcmc&t fie Is KDerro moninale et on octeiUl an vols
<rln3 le pins hunt pour (a Justice «t I'humanitfi pour los pauvrea ot los- opprimes. J,u Rosdie n'a pun seulement do
*raohiifl cstMenrvetfe' on mitral au Aodaivi 'ilu &'.i |t,»fj ijni ^,]( forbrA't rrt lu iiuK-rie n'a ^ U^tn fr vos jmrolM nl A*
TM bouIiUIb, olio tt boBoin dn travail, de rorganJentioQ Ot Acs conjliallituld Ran a pear. Hi vnns five*. do )u conflnncfl duim lo HoTD>
lation, .llatarnsUonal et dans It pDlBMncli Aa Soviet enfolfaz vouz'dansia Legion IntemaUonale de I'Armee Rouge.
Oellc-d eat fbrmAe pour cenx qui parkiit dos lengncs Utrengoros, et do toatea ports da moado nnircnl den comunlUnt^
tBTol^tfoBDBlrs pour lit ronforccr. Etcs-vouH Ubre? Enrollti-voas alors tout de suite. SI TODS Iravnjlkz dons 1'iisino oa Aaitf >-- tmraa*
nc^ficz-Totre tempo Ubto' ana oxorclccs mjljtalrfl, an tir, % la.diwlplluc raUiluii>
\ fldre«a«*Voiis au Quartier; Mijni Lesnoy Per«ulD|( 2 •— anpvCs An -Temple An Jinan Clirt?t
fpaHCAaHe! ToeapHSMHi MHTepnai|30HanHCTiiil
fesDi if aeox'n ei moo,' shwyawa myje afyonoft boDbi,, Trpmajiaor -uejiatHertw a npama d cupaMjum«£nj k» Mwrkjtiha^
7, lyclH mom vup«Mil BMTT|«uirBX u HuCmmiii, aur.m-is fi loupmn. <kfi ™ nyBW>ejcu B cjofln b irycmx uuiitjauii^. EA HyWHaj
paSota, micunn^Hfla,,opraHM3amn a flaacTpauiHMe BoAau.
Btpnre a op », pcatannjiD, i naTepuanlaiiU, s CoBfinfrrlb B-mcri.? Ecju jib, to ntjiwi'/mo D]iK»AinirB»v a HHTflpHauroHaflb-
attny JlorloHy KpacHOft ApvllL 9tot Ser(o» fopvKpyerco na iQimpnm.eB, naopsnoU as BDoci$flDiua icuiku; s boh uGepyrca Ooyiuc peao-'
OKki^u eo atm can.
% t» »»«umnJB tMnSs, npicw^ifHanci (>30aaraTMiiSO. EiriW to jmSorecm. Bt tBBOXI m a tosropB; to om-b^tb cdoc nn^iaco.
upoBjt ¦ (srpXnia. t
¦trSfwafricji jub Bairacn n n (arj,iw:aiir JlnnOfn X%cmH orp^ x' ft 2, «b *— <"*» konai Xpxora Cimrjirciii.
Iftan, IB (3) «ii|UJ Ulfl-t
Cftfadlnf! Compagnll Interhazidnalisti!
PBuitli 9 in prlglono,, Nuluia] ffldno sopra. 11 clamoro dilU gnerrft unlvontnlo In mia Toce pToclama 11 phi alto gtlutiza.ot
IDtUttt pel'PQTari e eopptmal. La."BnB9ia ba nemlcl, tnterioil ei. eaterlorl, fortl e cautl. E la Russia non na' biaogno delle jestro
ele e M VoBtrl buonl augnrt. £a«t ha felaogno dojle voalra adono disclplinata, della nostra orgauizzejione^e dl fu vlli -uelle maul
InttaoraillblH lottatl. Crelote vel nella ilvolartone, neUlnteinizienale, nella lorza dal'Sorletl? Alloro. unltovl alio Legious
IntoroazloDal djlllaflrolto Rosso. 'Eeso A foimnto per ^nelUelte yarlnio le-llngne eBtere e vengono eon Inl l-riTnldElenazit
Utlajltt dl (alio 11 mgnde. Blote liierl?. Allen nnlteri aU'latantd. teTonte nelle iabtelena eppnre negll DIM? AlleU dtdlvile 0
ruff tem^o librtj »ll'eiw*;l», alia pratica del fnvllo ed II coni mllltorir
'<i»rti«» OeneriiW Ml»nil't<«p>»l tanimir*:ewTkWat'» «» 6»l»t»
[This is the Moscow appeal of the International Legion as it
appeared in five languages.) 187

188 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the men, it was almost impossible to get the equip
ment. Military stores were in a hopeless tangle.
Rifles in one place, bullets in another; telephones,
barbed-wire and sappers' tools in one vast jumble;
and officers trying their best to make it more
jumbled. When the sabotagers were removed, raw
incompetent men took their places. We entrained
two miles below Petrograd and, after a horrible
ordeal in a box-car, we got up to find ourselves four
miles on the other side of the city. We had lost
six miles during the night and were stalled in a yard
full of cursing troops, trains, broken-down engines.
Exasperated commissars were shoving papers and
fists into the faces of railway officers, who were
frantically protesting they could do nothing.
This was a reflex of the chaos that prevailed all
over Russia. To bring order out of it seemed a sheer
impossibility. Yet the impossibility was being ac
complished. In the welter of confusion was rising
the great Red Army destined to amaze the world by
its organization, discipline and effectiveness. And
not only in the realm of war but in the cultural and
economic fields were appearing the results of the
powerful directing spirit begotten of the Revolution.
Always there were tremendous latent energies in
the Russian masses. But they had never found ex
pression. They had been locked up by the grim
jailer — Autocracy. The Revolution came as their
releaser, and with the pent-up fury of centuries they

BUILDING THE NEW ORDER 189
burst forth and smashed the old bourgeois order to
pieces. We had seen the Revolution unloose the tre
mendous powers of the people for destructive ends.
Now we were seeing the Revolution evoke their
creative powers and direct them to constructive ends.
"Order. Work. Discipline." are the new watch
words of the Revolution.
But is this new spirit being born only in these
great centres? Or is a like process at work out in
the provinces and the vast populations of Russia.
Presently we are to find out for ourselves. After
nearly a year in the midst of the Revolution Kuntz
and I are going home. Our eyes are turned to the
East — toward America. Our journey is to take us
thru the two continents over which Russia spreads
herself, across 6,000 miles of Trans-Siberian Rail
way to the Pacific.

PART III
THE OUTREACH OF THE REVOLU
TION

ACROSS SIBERIA ON THE EXPRESS

CHAPTER XIII
THE STEPPES RISE UP
TT is the end of April, 191 8. Kuntz and I are say-
ing good-bye to the Red Commune of Petrograd.
The snow-flakes are falling, the night descending.
Stormy, hungry old city, but dear to us, with its
thousand lights and shadows of the Revolution, for
nearly every street and prospekt has staged some
act in the colossal revolutionary drama.
The square we gaze upon from the steps of the
Nicholas Station, has been sprinkled red by the first
sacrifices of the Revolution, and we have helped to
sprinkle it white with a shower of Soviet posters,
flung from a plunging truck at midnight. It has
rumbled beneath the tread of marching columns
chanting their funeral hymn, bearing away their
dead; and we have heard it ring with triumphant
shouts proclaiming: "All Power to the Soviets." It
has witnessed the rush of Cossack horses thru the
ranks of workingmen, felling them to the cobbles.
And it has seen the return of these workers, welded
together in the iron battalions of the proletariat —
the invincible Red Army of Russia.
A multitude of memories bind us to the city. But
193

194 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
steam is up in the engine of the Trans-Siberian Ex
press, and it does not wait on sentiment. Every
week it starts on its 6,000 mile journey to the Pacific,
heeding only the clanging signal-bell, whether rung
by order of the Czar or by order of the Bolsheviks.
On the third stroke we climb aboard and are off on
our long journey to the distant East.
What will this East unfold to us? Shall we find
that the spirit of the revolutionary centres carries
out far toward the circumference or not?
Already our fellow passengers are
The Emigre's' View stretched out in theiri compart-
of the Revolution. ments, sipping tea and smoking
cigarettes. In our car are about
twenty landowners, speculators, war-profiteers, ex-
officers in mufti, evicted officials, and three over-
painted ladies — all members or retainers of the old
privileged class.
Their ancient privileges are gone. But life still
has its glamor. Even now, are they not engaged
in the thrilling adventure known amongst their fel
low-emigres as "Escaping out of the bloody clutches
of the Bolsheviks"? And before them, a few weeks
hence, lies another thrilling adventure in the salons
of Paris, London and Washington, recounting the
terrors and perils of their escape.
That it was an escape de luxe in an International
sleeper, with excellent beds, dining-car and porter
inclusive, will be omitted from their tales. Other

THE STEPPES RISE UP 195
details will be inserted however — little figments
about Bolshevik murders, rapes and robberies.
Every emigre must have his atrocity. At all costs
his escape must be harrowing and dramatic. Other
wise no thrill for the jaded palates of the western
democracies. Supplied with Bolshevik passports, stamped with
a Bolshevik seal, these emigres were driven to the
station by Bolshevik cabmen; aided by Bolshevik
porters they boarded this train, whose conductor,
brakeman and engineer belonged to the Bolshevik
faith. Riding now over a track tended by Bolshevik
laborers, guarded by Bolshevik soldiers, guided by
Bolshevik switchmen, and fed by Bolshevik waiters,
they while away their hours in cursing these self
same Bolsheviks as bandits and cutthroats. A curi
ous spectacle! Damning, reviling, execrating the
very ones upon whom they depend for food, shelter,
travel — for the very breath they draw. For every
member of this train-crew is a Bolshevik — all except
the porter (provodnik).
He had the soul of a flunkey, and the creed of a
monarchist. Tho of peasant origin, he was more
Czaristic than the Czar himself. All the emigres he
still addressed as "my lords!" (barin).
"You see, my lords! " he said, "we dark people are
a lazy, shiftless lot. Give us a bottle of vodka and
we are happy. We don't need more freedom. We
need a club over us to keep us at work. We need
a Czar."

io6 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The emigres were delighted with him. He was to
them a perpetual source of comfort — a flaming light
in the Bolshevik darkness.
"In this honest mujik," they declared, "you see
the soul of the millions of Russian peasants, content
to serve their master, to obey the church and love
the Czar. True, a few have been misled by Bolshe
vik fantasies, but only a few. What have these mil
lions of patient, plodding folks to do with that mad
ness festering back there in Moscow and Petrograd?"
This seemed plausible. For out here it is hard
even for us to sustain our interest in the Revolution
at high pitch. Great concerns, political and per
sonal, are dwarfed by the vastness of the panorama
unfolding before our eyes on this, the longest rail
way journey in the world.
We pass over the wide stretching grain-fields of
Central Russia, across the vast bridges spanning
the broad rivers flowing north to the Arctic, thru
the winding passes of the Urals, into the shadows of
the giant virgin forest (taiga), almost unblazed by
man, then out again upon the steppelands of Si
beria. Thru the day we watch on the horizon the peasant
huts, huddled together for protection against wolves,
and winds blowing from the frozen tundras; or take
our places in the long lines that obtain hot water for
tea from the tanks, buying bread and eggs and fish
from the peasant women. At evening we watch the
wood-burning locomotive flinging spark showers

THE STEPPES RISE UP 197
from its stack like a comet. Night after night we
go to sleep with the wheels grinding beneath our
car, and every morning we wake to see the track in
two glistening ribbons of steel, still unrolling itself
before the eastward plunging engine.
Slowly these immensities steal over us with mes
meric influence, creating the feeling the Russians call
prostor, a sense of space and vastness. Under its spell
things once mighty and imperative, become trivial
and unimportant. Even the Revolution relaxes its
grip upon us. May it not after all be a ferment
confined to railwaymen and the industrial workers
of the cities?
Back there the Revolution was an insistent fact,
assailing us in eye and ear with banners and battle-
cries, parades and assemblages. Out here on the
Siberian steppes we see no evidence of it. We see
woodsmen with axes, drivers with horses, women
with baskets, a few soldiers with guns; but beyond
a few tattered remnants of red flags flapping on
poles there are no marks of the Revolution.
"Is the revolutionary spirit as frayed out as those
faded flags?" we ask. "Are the emigres right in
summing up the aspirations of the Russian peasant
as love and service to his master, his church and the
Little Father? Is this after all 'Holy Russia'?"
In the midst of our ruminations — Crash! Bang!
The brakes clutch the wheels, grinding and grating,
sending a shiver thru the car and hurling us out of
our seats. The train comes abruptly to a standstill.

198 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Everybody stares out of the window, asking ex
citedly: "Washout? Cave-in? Bridge gone?"
But nothing appears save the same sere, level steppe-
land with drifts of snow, relics of the winter.
A R J k 'k Suddenly from behind a snow-bank a fig-
tt ? j j. i ure shoots up, waves a signal behind him,
Hold-up! , *' . . , , , ,
and comes running violently towards the
train. From behind a copse another form
darts out and follows after. From other snow-piles
and bushes and from the far horizon, more and more
figures keep emerging, until the whole plain is dotted
with men racing headlong toward the train. Like
the ground sown with dragon-teeth, in a trice these
dead waste-lands spring to life, and teem with men
in arms.
"My God! Look! Look!" exclaimed one of the
painted ladies. "Guns! They carry guns!" The
phantasies of her imagination have materialized.
Here in flesh and blood are the Bolsheviks of her
tales. They have become realities, carrying in their
hands guns and grenades, and on their faces a most
unpleasant look. The foremost runner checks his
steps, cups his hands to his mouth and bellows out
to us, "Windows down."
No one argues the point. Along the whole train
the windows go banging down. So do the spirits of
the emigres, finding little cheer in the faces of these
oncoming men. They are a harsh, determined lot.
Many of them are grimy, nearly black. All of them

THE STEPPES RISE UP 199
have black looks for the train. By mien and gesture
they clearly indicate that their weapons have a dis
tinct bearing upon our case.
We have no inkling of our offense. We only
know that some thunderbolt has stopped our train,
and on all sides we face a cordon of violent-talking
men. We catch wild words about "killing the bloody
tyrant" and, as the face of the florid lady appears
at the window, jeering crys of "Hey! Mrs. Ras
putin!" She is certain that the ruffians are debating
whether to take us out and murder us one by one,
or destroy us en masse by burning or blowing up
the train.
The suspense is racking. I volunteer to investi
gate the situation, and start to raise a window.
When half way open, I gaze into the muzzle of a
gun thrust up into my face. A big peasant at the
other end of the gun growls, "Put the window down
quick or I'll shoot." He looks as tho he would
shoot, but my year in Russia has taught me that he
won't; that the peasant is uncivilized enough to
retain an aversion to killing a human being. So I
do not shut my window, but thrust my head out and
address the big peasant as "Tovarish."
"Don't you tovarish me, you Counter-Revolution
ist! " he snorted back. "You drinker of the people's
blood ! You monarchist, you Czarist ! "
Such were the usual epithets bestowed upon the
enemies of the Revolution. But I had never heard
them rolled into one broadside and shot forth with

200 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
such malice. Hastily I produced a Soviet credential
vouching for me and bearing the signature of Chi-
cherin. But reading was not this peasant's forte.
The next man, a heavy set, scowling fellow, took it
and scanned it critically.
"Forged!" was his instant verdict.
I passed out a credential signed by Trotzky.
"Forged!" he repeated. I followed up with a docu
ment issued by the Bolshevik Railway Commissar.
The same laconic comment "Forged!" Still obdu
rate, was he? As a climax I would play my trump
card. I produced a letter signed by Nikolai Lenin.
Not only his signature, but all the letter was written
out in full by Lenin's own hand. My inquisitor
scrutinized it intently, while I watched to see the
magic name of Lenin transform the thunder-cloud
on his face into a smile. I was certain that this
would settle the matter. And it did. Not in my
favor, however, but against me, as I discerned by
the set of his jaw. I had overplayed myself in this
matter of credentials.
In his mind my case was clear. Here is a plotter
up to some deviltry against the Revolution. To in
gratiate himself with the Bolsheviks, he displays a
grand array of Soviet documents pretending to come
from even Lenin himself. This marks him as no
ordinary spy. We must act at once !
He carried my sheaf of papers over to a tall man
dismounting from his horse. "That's Audrey Petro
vich. He will know all about these papers," declared

THE STEPPES RISE UP 201
the big peasant who had run the muzzle of his gun
into my face. "He just got back from Moscow.
He knows all the Bolsheviks and how they write
their names. He knows the Counter-Revolutionists,
and all their tricks. Those devils can't fool Andrey
Petrovich." Kuntz and I sincerely prayed that Andrey Petro
vich would prove as wise as his reputation. And
happily for us he did. He did know the leaders of
the Bolsheviks. He knew their signatures. In a
few questions he tested our knowledge. Satisfied,
he shook hands with us heartily, greeted us as tovar
ishe, invited us to come outside where he would
ask us a hundred questions.
"But we have a hundred questions to ask you,"
we rejoined, opening up on him forthwith. "Where
did all these men suddenly spring from? Why is
this train held up? What do you mean by this dis
play of arms?"
"One question at a time," he replied, laughing.
"First: These men are miners from the great coal
mines less than half a mile away, and peasants from
the villages. Thousands more will be along directly.
Second: We grabbed up these guns and grenades
fifteen minutes ago, not for display but for immedi
ate use. Third: We held up this Trans-Siberian
Express to take off of it the Czar and "the Royal
Family." "Czar and Royal Family! On this train? Here?"
we shouted.

202 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
"We don't know that for sure," replied Andrey
Petrovich, "all we know is that about twenty minutes
ago came a telegram from Omsk saying: Release
of Nicholas just effected by clique of officers. Prob
ably escaping with staff on Express. Plan to set up
Czardom at Irkutsk. Stop him dead or alive."
(So it was the Czar whom the crowd meant by
"bloody tyrant" and the Czarina whom they were
calling "Mrs. Rasputin!") "We sent two men running to the
The Czar's Surprise- villages and two to the mines,
Party Disappointed. shouting the telegram," continued
Andrey Petrovich. "Every man
dropped his tools, snatched up his gun, and rushed
for the train. A thousand here now, and they won't
stop coming till night. You see how deeply we feel
for our Czar! Only twenty minutes advance
notice and we got this nice big reception party ready
for him. He likes military displays. Well, here it
is. Not in regulation style, but quite impressive, is
it not?" It was! Never have I seen such a beweaponed
set of men. They were like moving arsenals. In
their hands were missiles enough to blow a thousand
Czars into eternity, and in their hearts and eyes
vengeance enough to annihilate ten thousand.
But there seemed to be no Czar to annihilate.
"Just as I thought," Andrey Petrovich went on,
"another ruse of the Counter-Revolution. That tele-

The Kivqiliun CniumilU'e which liclil np nur tram rxpivlniK In lake nil the. Czar, ivoivrrniK frum their
i-lisappniiitiucnL

A Siberian mother standing by the dead body of her Bolshevik son, killed fighting against the Restoration of the Czar

THE STEPPES RISE UP 203
gram is an act of provocators against the Soviet.
They want it to demoralize the workings of the
mines. And it will. Our men are too excited now
to do anything more 'today. There will be other
telegrams like this in the days to come. By crying
out: 'The Czar is escaping, the Czar is escaping,'
they think the men will get disgusted with false
alarms. Then, when we have become careless they
will try to slip the Czar through. But they don't
know our men here. For a chance to get a pot-shot
at the Czar they will turn out every day in the year."
The zest with which the searching party went thru
the cars left no doubt as to their attitude towards
the Little Father. They combed the train from end
to end, opening trunks, ransacking beds, even shift
ing the logs on the engine tender to see if by chance
Hit. Imperial Majesty might be hidden in the wood
pile. There were two white-bearded old peasants who
did a little investigating on their own account. They
would run their guns up under a sleeper, ram their
bayonets around and then withdraw them, shaking
their heads sadly. The Czar of all the Russias they
hoped to find riding the bumpers. Each time disap
pointed, they would hope for better luck at the next
car and repeat the prodding. But there was no Czar,
and so their bayonets did not puncture him.
But something else they did puncture — the hoary
old tradition about the deep love and devotion of

204 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the Russian mujik to the Little Father. That pleas
ant myth could not survive the spectacle of these two
devout, benign old peasants, plunging their bayonets
into dark corners, and drawing them out again,
aggrieved that on them were no fatal signs of the
Little Father. Andrey Petrovich was a man of re-
We Substitute sources. Having no Czar for his men,
for the Czar. he used Kuntz and me as substitutes.
"It is a strange world, tovarishe, full
of strange surprises," he said, addressing his com
rades. "We came down here to get the greatest
criminal in history. Not a man here but has known
pain or misery thru the Czar. But instead of finding
our worst enemy, we find here our best friends.
This train, instead of carrying the ideas of our au
tocracy, is carrying the ideas of our Revolution —
and carrying them to America. Long Uve the Revo
lution! Long live our American comrades!"
There was a riot of cheer-giving, hand-shaking
and picture-taking and we were off again. But not
for long. Again we were halted by a storming mass.
And again and again. It was in vain to protest that
the Czar was not aboard. Even the documents
attesting this, they waved aside as counter-revolu
tionary forgeries. Each crowd must reassure itself
thru its own search. Thus the fastest express upon
the Trans-Siberian, became the slowest.

THE STEPPES RISE UP 205
At Marinsk, the Commissar of Transport gave a
new turn to events, by despatching this telegram:
"To all Soviets: '
Kuntz and Williams, General Organizers of the.
Red Army, are on Train Two. I ask that represent
tatives of the Soviets meet with them for consulta
tion. Sadovnikov."
The telegram was read to the crowds assembling
at every station to meet the express. With their ap
petites and implements whetted for a Czar, suddenly
two comrades were handed them. It called for a
swift reversal of their emotions, but they did nobly.
We rode into each station in a storm of greetings.
The new detachments of the Red Army saluted, the
commissars solemnly laid before us their problems,
the throngs pushed forward to gaze upon us as
military geniuses.
It was embarrassing, but illuminating. We got a
glimpse of a new civilization in the making, the fu
ture in the act of being born. In one town the foun
dations had just been laid — the peasants marching
over had joined the workers in one central Soviet. In
another they had scarcely got to the foundations —
the intelligentsia were all on strike. In many centres
the new structure was well along, the Soviet schools
were filled, the peasants were bringing the grain to
market, the factories were turning out goods, as well
as oratory. The exhibits, tho often crude and in-

206 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
complete, testified to the release of real creative
forces in the masses.
We pointed this out to the emigres, but they were
busy weaving fictions for the western democracies,
and the facts irritated them. Some became sullen
and suspicious, treating us as apostates and traitors
to our class. Others fatuously returned to their usual
themes: The golden days of Czardom, the "dark
ness" of the Russian masses, the sheer idiocy of the
Bolsheviks.

CHAPTER XIV
THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM
'"PHE emigres on our train had many points of con-
¦*¦ flict. But on one point they agreed: the grave
danger lying ahead of us in Cherm, the great penal
colony of Siberia.
"Fifteen thousand convicts in Cherm," they said.
"Criminals of the worst stripe — thugs, thieves and
murderers. The only way to deal with them is to
put them in the mines and keep them there at the
point of the gun. Even so, it is too much liberty
for them. Every week there are scores of thefts and
stabbings. Now most of these devils have been
turned loose, and they have turned Bolshevik. It
always was a hell-hole. What it is now God only
knows." It was a raw bleak morning on the first of May,
when we rode into Cherm (Chermkhovo). A curtain
of dust, blown up by a wind from the north, hung
over the place. Curled up in our compartment
half asleep, we woke to the cry, "They're coming!
They're coming!" We peered thru the window.
Far as we could see nothing was coming but a
whirling cloud of dust. Then thru the dust we made
207

208 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
out a glint of red, the gray of glittering steel, and
vague, black masses moving forward.
Behind drawn curtains, the emigres went franti
cally hiding jewels and money, or sat paralyzed with
terror. Outside, the cinders crunched under the
tread of the hob-nailed boots. In what mood "they"
were coming, with what lust in their blood, what
weapons in their hands, no one knew. We knew only
that these were the dread convicts of Cherm, "mur
derers, thugs and thieves" — and they were heading
for the parlor-cars.
Slowly they lurched along, the wind filling their
eyes with dust and soot, and wrestling with a huge
blood-red banner they carried. Then came a lull
in the wind, dropping the dust screen and bringing
to view a motley crew.
Their clothes were black from the mines and tied
up with strings, their faces grim and grimy. Some
were ox-like hulks of men. Some were gnarled and
knotted, warped by a thousand gales. Here were
the cannibal-convicts of Tolstoy, slant-browed and
brutal-jawed. Here was Dostoievsky's "House of
the Dead." With limping steps, cheeks slashed and
eyes gouged out they came, marked by bullet, knife
and mine disaster, some cursed by an evil birth.
But few, if any, were weaklings.
By a long, gruelling process the weak had been
killed off. These thousands were the survivors of
tens of thousands, driven out on the gray highroad
to Cherm. Thru sleet and snow, winter blast and

THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM 209
summer blaze they had staggered along. Torture-
chambers had racked their limbs. Gendarmes'
sabers had cracked their skulls. Iron fetters had cut
their flesh. Cossacks' whips had gashed their backs,
and Cossacks' hoofs had pounded them to earth.
Like their bodies their souls, too, had been
knouted. Like a blood-hound the law had hung
on their trail, driving them into dungeons, driving
them to this dismal outpost of Siberia, driving them
off the face of the earth into its caverns, to strain
like beasts, digging the coal in the dark, and handing
it up to those who live in the light.
Now out of the mines they come marching up into
the light. Guns in hand, flying red flags of revolt,
they are loose in the highways, moving forward like
a great herd, the incarnation of brute strength. In
their path lie the warm, luxurious parlor-cars —
another universe, a million miles removed. Now it
is just a few inches away, within their grasp. Three
minutes, and they could leave this train sacked
from end to end as tho gutted by a cyclone. How
sweet for once to glut themselves! And how easy!
One swift lunge forward. One furious onset.
But their actions show neither haste nor frenzy.
Stretching their banners on the ground they range
themselves in a crescent, massed in the center, facing
the train. Now we can scan those faces. Sullen,
defiant, lined deep with hate, brutalized by toil. On
all of them the ravages of vice and terror. In all

210 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
of them an infinitude of pain and torment, the
poignant sorrow of the world.
But in their eyes is a strange light — a look of
exaltation. Or is it the glitter of revenge? A blow
for* a blow. The law has given them a thousand
blows. Is it their turn now? Will they avenge
the long years of bitterness?
A hand touches our shoulder. We turn
The Comrade to look into the faces of two burly
Convicts. miners. They tell us that they are the
Commissars of Cherm. At the same time
they signal the banner-bearers, and the red stand
ards rise up before our eyes. On one in large letters
is the old familiar slogan: Proletarians, arise! You
have nothing to lose but your chains. On another:
We stretch out our hands to the miners in all lands.
Greetings to our comrades throughout the world.
"Hats off!" shouts the commissar. Awkwardly
they bare their heads and stand, caps in hand. Then
slowly begins the hymn of the International:
"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth.
No more tradition's chains shall bind you;
Arise, ye slaves! No more in thrall.
The world shall rise on new foundations.
You have been naught: you shall be all."
I have heard the streets of cities around the world,
ringing to the "International," rising from massed

THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM 211
columns of the marchers. I have heard rebel stu
dents send it floating thru college halls. I have
heard the "International" on the voices of 2,000
Soviet delegates, blending with four military bands,
go rolling thru the pillars of the Tauride Palace.
But none of these singers looked the "wretched of
the earth." They were the sympathizers or repre
sentatives of the wretched. These miner-convicts of
Cherm were the wretched themselves, most wretched
of all. Wretched in garments and looks, and even
in voice.
With broken voices, and out of tune they sang,
but in their singing one felt the pain and protest
of the broken of all ages: the sigh of the captive,
the moan of the galley-slave lashed to the oar, the
groan of the serf stretched on the wheel, the cries
from the cross, the stake and the gibbet, the anguish
of myriads of the condemned, welling up out of the
long reaches of the past.
These convicts were in apostolic succession to
the suffering of the centuries. They were the ex
communicate of society, mangled, crushed by its
heavy hand, and hurled down into the darkness of
this pit.
Now out of the pit rises this victory-hymn of the
vanquished. Long bludgeoned into silence, they
break into song — a song not of complaint, but of
conquest. No longer are they social outcasts, but
citizens. More than that — Makers of a New
Society I

212 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Their limbs are numb with cold. But their hearts
are on fire. Harsh and rugged faces are touched
with a sunrise glow. Dull eyes grow bright. De
fiant ones grow soft. In them lies the transfiguring
vision of the toilers of all nations bound together in
one big fraternity — The International.
"Long live the International! Long live the
American workers!" they shout. Then opening
their ranks, they thrust forward one of their number.
He is of giant stature, a veritable Jean Valjean of a
man, with a Jean Valjean of a heart.
"In the name of the miners of Cherm," he says,
"we greet the comrades on this train! In the old
days how different it was! Day after day, trains
rolled thru here, but we dared not come near them.
Some of us did wrong, we know. But many of us
were brutally wronged. Had there been justice,
some of us would be on this train and some on this
train would be in the mines.
"But most of the passengers didn't know there
were any mines. In their warm beds, they didn't
know that way down below were thousands of moles,
digging coal to put heat in the cars and steam in
the engine. They didn't know that hundreds of us
were starved to death, flogged to death or killed by
falling rock. If they did know, they didn't care.
To them we were dregs and outcasts. To them
we were nothing at all.
"Now we are everything! We have joined the In
ternational. We fall in today with the armies of

THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM 213
labor in all lands. We are in the vanguard of them
all. We, who were slaves, have been made freest
of all.
"Not our freedom alone we want, comrades, but
freedom for the workers thruout the world. Unless
they, too, are free, we cannot keep the freedom
we have to own the mines and run them ourselves.
"Already the greedy hands of the Imperialists of
the world are reaching out across the seas. Only
the hands of the workers of the world can tear those
clutches from our throats."
The range and insight of the man's mind was
amazing. So amazed was Kuntz that his own speech
in reply faltered. My hold on Russian quite col
lapsed. Our part in this affair, we felt, was wan
and pallid. But these miners did not feel so. They
came into the breach with a cheer for the Interna
tional, and another for the International Orchestra.
The "Orchestra" comprised four violins played by
four prisoners of war; a Czech, a Hungarian, a
German and an Austrian. Captured on the eastern
front, from camp to camp they had been relayed
along to these convict-mines in Siberia. Thousands
of miles from home! Still farther in race and breed
ing from these Russian masses drawn from the soil.
But caste and creed and race had fallen before
the Revolution. To their convict miner comrades
here in this dark hole they played, as in happier
days they might have played at a music festival
under the garden lights of Berlin or Budapest. The

214 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
flaming passion in their veins crept into the strings
of their violins and out into the heart-strings of their
hearers. The whole conclave — miners, musicians and
visitors, Teutons, Slavs and Americans — became one.
All barriers were down as the commissars came
pressing up to greet us. One huge hulking fellow,
with fists like pile-drivers, took our hands into his.
Twice he tried to speak and twice he choked. Un
able to put his sentiments of brotherhood into words
he put it into a sudden terrific grip of his hands. I
can feel that grip yet.
For the honor of Cherm he was anxious that its
first public function should be conducted in proper
fashion. Out of the past must have flashed the
memory of some occasion where the program of the
day included gifts as well as speeches. Disappear
ing for a time, he came running back with two sticks
of dynamite — the gifts of Cherm to the two Ameri
cans. We demurred. He insisted. We pointed out
that a chance collision and delegates might disappear
together with dynamite — a total loss to the Inter
nationale. The crowd laughed. Like a giant child
he was hurt and puzzled. Then he laughed, too.
The second violinst, a blue-eyed lad from Vienna,
was always laughing. Exile had not quenched his
love of fun. In honor of the American visitors he
insisted upon a Jazze-Americane. So he called it,
but never before or since have I heard so weird a
melody. He played with legs and arms as well as

THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM 215
bow, dancing round, up and down to the great de
light of the crowd.
Our love-feast at last was broken in upon by the
clanging signal-bell. One more round of hand
clasps and we climbed aboard the train as the orches
tra caught up the refrain:
It is the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place;
The Internationale —
Shall be the human race.
There was no grace or outward splendor in this
meeting. It was ugliness unrelieved — except for
one thing: the presence of a tremendous vitality.
It was a revelation of the drive of the Revolution.
Even into this sub-cellar of civilization it had pene
trated — into these regions of the damned it had come
like a trumpet-blast, bringing down the walls of their
charnel-house. Out of it they had rushed, not with
bloodshot eyes, slavering mouths and daggers
drawn, but crying for truth and justice, with songs
of solidarity upon their lips,* and on their banners
the watchwords of a new world.
All this was lost upon the emigres. Not
The Emigris one ray of wonder did they let penetrate
Unmoved. the armor of their class-interest. Their
former fears gave way to sneers:
"There is Bolshevism for you! It makes states
men out of jail-birds. Great sight, isn't it? Con-

216 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
victs parading the streets instead of digging in the
mines. That's what we get out of Revolution."
We pointed to other things that came out of Revo
lution — order, restraint and good-will. But the
emigres could not see. They would not see.
"That is for the moment," they laughed. "When
the excitement is over they'll go back to stealing,
drinking and killing." To these emigres it was at
best a passing ecstasy that would disappear with
our disappearing train.
Leaning out from the car steps we waved farewell
to the hundreds of huge grimy hands waving fare
well to us. Our eyes long clung to the scene. In
the last glimpse we saw the men of Cherm with
heads still bared to the cutting wind, the rhythmic
rise and fall of the arms of "Jean Valjean," the red
banner with "Greetings to our Comrades thruout
the World," and a score of hands still stretched out
towards the train. Then the scene faded away in
the dust and distance.
Two years later Jo Redding came back to Detroit
after working in Cherm and watching the Revolu
tion working there. He reports its permanent effects.
Thefts and murders were reduced almost to zero.
Snarling animals became men. Tho just released
from irons, they put themselves under the iron disci
pline of the Soviet armies. Lawless under the old
law, they became the writers and defenders of a new
law. Men who had so many wrongs of their own

THE RED CONVICTS OF CHERM 217
to brood over, now assumed the wrongs of the world.
They had vast programs to release their energies
upon, vast visions to light their minds.
To the rich and the privileged, to those who sit
on roof-gardens or ride in parlor-cars, the Revolu
tion is a thing of terror and horror. It is the Anti-
Christ. But to the despised and disinherited, the
Revolution is like the Messiah coming to "preach
good tidings to the poor; to proclaim release of the
captives and to set at hberty them that are bruised."
No longer can Dostoievsky's convict mutter, "We
are not ahve, though we are living. We are not in
our graves, though we are dead." In the House of
the Dead, Revolution is Resurrection.

CHAPTER XV
THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVIET AND ITS LEADERS
/T,HE limits of the Revolution — what were they?
-*- We had seen) this Revolution, loosed by the
city-workers, drive deeper and deeper down, taking
ever lower and lower strata of the people within its
grip. When it laid hold of the convicts of Cherm it
reached bottom. It could go no further vertically.
How far could it reach horizontally? Would it prove
the same power here in these far-flung outposts on
the Pacific that it was back there upon the Atlantic?
Would the Revolution show the same strong pulse-
beat in these extremities as it did in the heart of
Russia? In a world of Soviets we had moved across the
great, slow, north-flowing rivers, the Urals, the
taiga forests, and the steppes. Trainmen and miners
had spoken of their Soviets, peasants and fishermen
had greeted us with red banners in the name of
theirs. We had conferred with the Soviet of Central
Siberia and the Far East Soviet. This whole Amur
district was dotted with Soviets. Now, as we stepped
218

Ivan was Idling, reading no books, taking to no occupation. Life was a bore to him: the days dragged on
«SlMsW- he didn't know what to do with himself! But then he met his friend Paul to whom he complamed
that life was a bore. Paul said: "If you like. I shall introduce you to a friend of
a iov and you will be a new man : a whole day will p:

to him,"

"Good! come to see me on Sunday

Then life will become
th the swiftness of a single minute." 'Introduce me

On Sunday Ivan went to see Paul. "Here is my friend," said Paul, "a book. It will acquaint you wi
everything ; it will tell you what people are living on the earth, as well as what people lived here millions of
years ago ; you will learn what is taking place on the surface of the earth, as well as under the surface and in the
sky. Your friend the book will teach you how you may live fully and be helpful to others. You will never be
bored again. It will change you so that you will no longer know yourself. It will give you a hundred eyes,
the strength of a giant, the wisdom of a sage I And you will never find a friend better able to advise you in the
critical times of your life."

A True Friend!— Soviet Propaganda Poster for Education

THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVIET 2I9
from the train at Vladivostok, we were to find a re
plica of the Soviet we had left at Petrograd, seven
thousand miles away.
In six months the Soviet had struck its roots deep
into the Russian soil, crowded out all rivals, resisted
the shock of every attack, and now held undisputed
sway from the Arctic Ocean on the north to the
Black Sea on the south, from Narva looking upon
the Atlantic all the way to Vladivostok here on its
promontory looking into the Pacific.
Vladivostok is a city built on hills, with streets as
steep as Alpine paths. But with an extra horse
attached to the droshky's shafts, we rattled over the
cobbles as swiftly as we did along the level wood-
paved prospekts of Petrograd. The main highway,
Svetlanskaya, lies folded up and down across the
hills, flanked by the commercial houses of the French
and English, the International Harvester, and the
buildings of the new rulers of Russia — the Red Fleet,
and the Soviet of Workmen's Deputies.
Massive fortresses frowned from all the hills
around, but they were harmless as dove-cotes. In
the first days of the war they had been dismantled,
and the great guns shipped to the Eastern front. A
defenseless city, into which extends a peculiar tongue
of water called the Golden Horn. Here the Allied
battleships, uninvited, rode at anchor. Their flags
were a welcome sight to the fleeing emigres at the
end of the long Siberian journey. With a sigh of
relief here they settled down. Soon, they believed,

220 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the Revolution would be over. Then they would
return and take up their old Ufe again in Russia.
The city was thronged with evicted
A City of Refuge landowners, dreaming of their estates,
for the Emigre's, their retinue of servants and the idle
feasting of bygone days; officers tell
ing of the former discipline, when soldiers jumped
into the gutter at their presence and stood rigid in
salute while beaten in the face; speculators longing
for the return of the good old times of war
profiteering and patrioteering, to the tune of 50, 100
and 500 per cent. Gone are all those gilded fabu
lous fortunes. The Revolution wrecked them along
with the arbitrary power of the officers and the
dreams of the landowners.
As a port of exit, Vladivostok was full of Rus
sian emigres coming out. As a port of entry, it
was full of Allied capitalists going in. It was a
key to the El Dorado beyond. With its vast unex-
ploited natural riches and labor power, Siberia was
a loadstone drawing the agents of capital from
around the world. From London and Tokio, from
the Paris Bourse and Wall Street, they came flock
ing hither, lured by dazzling prospects.
But between them and the fisheries, gold-mines,
and forests they found a big barrier. They found
the Soviet. The Russian workingman refused to be
exploited by the Russian capitalist. At the same
time he refused to allow his blood and sweat to be

THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVD2T 221
minted into bonanza dividends for the benefit of
foreign bankers. The Soviet was the instrument of
this refusal to all exploiters.
Meeting the same obstacles as the Russian bour
geoisie, the Allied exploiters had the same reaction.
They lent a ready ear to the cursings and ravings
of their Russian brethren, who saw the Soviet and
its members as the very spawn of hell.
It was in this circle that the Allied consuls, offi
cers, Y. M. C. A. and Intelligence men largely Uved,
moved and had their being. They rarely got outside
of it. They were in revolutionary Russia, but out
of touch with the Revolution. And quite naturally.
Peasants and workers knew little French or EngUsh
or how to dress well or order dinner.
Not that AUied society was without "information."
Their Russian bourgeois friends and their own preju
dices gave it to them. Very direct and dogmatic, it
passed current in phrases like:
"The Soviet is made up mainly of ex-criminals."
"Four-fifths of the Bolsheviks are Jews."
"These Revolutionists are just ordinary robbers."
"The Red Armies are mercenary and will run at
the first shot of a gun."
"The dark, ignorant masses are swayed by their
leaders, and their leaders are corrupt."
"The Czar may have had his faults, but Russia
needs an iron hand."
"The Soviet is tottering, and will not last longer
than two weeks at the outside."

222 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The most cursory investigation would reveal the
falsehood of these phrases. One needed but to par
rot them, however, to be acclaimed a man of deep
insight. The man who could add, "I don't give a damn
what others say about Lenin and Trotzky, I know
they are German agents," was hailed as a feUow of
spirit, a true soldier of democracy.
There were some honest seekers after Ught. The
genial commander of the Asiatic Squadron was in
discreet enough to invite me to dinner on his flag
ship the Brooklyn. The American Consul also tried
hard to break thru the circle of Ues. Awaiting word
from Washington, however, he withheld vise to my
passport. So I was marooned for seven weeks in
Vladivostok. As I grew more and more outspoken in my sympa
thies with the workers and peasants, the bourgeoisie
grew ever more hostile towards me. Thrown now
into close contact with the Soviet I had opportunity
to observe and share its work, and to count many of
its members as my friends.
First among these was Constantin
A Few Students Sukhanov. When the March Revolu-
Aid the Soviets. tion broke out, he was a student of
Natural History in the University of
Petrograd. He hastened back to Vladivostok, a Men-
shevik. After the Kornilov adventure he became
a Bolshevik, and an ardent one. He was smaU

THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVIET 223
in stature, but great in energy. Night and day he
toiled, snatching an occasional wink of sleep in a
small room above the Soviet, ready at a moment's
notice to spring to the saddle or the typewriter.
While his face was habitually drawn tight in lines
of thought, he would often explode in a contagious
burst of laughter. His speech was terse, on occa
sion flaming. But a bare fire-brand would never
have done in such a powder-magazine as Vladi
vostok. By skill and tact he pulled the Soviet out
of many ugly positions, into which its enemies had
jockeyed it.
Respected by everybody, even by his bitter politi
cal opponents, Sukhanov was chosen President of
the Soviet. He was thus the tip of the spearhead
that the Bolshevik movement thrust out into the
Pacific and the eastern world. He found himself,
at 24, facing tasks that would have taxed the re
sources of a veteran diplomat.
But statecraft was in his blood. His father was
a functionary of the old regime, charged with the
arrest of Revolutionists. Among those he had found
plotting against the Czar were his own daughter,
and this son Constantin. Constantin was arrested.
Bitter and cynical, the father had faced his son
across the table of the tribunal.
It was by grace of his Imperial Majesty, Czar
Nicholas II, that the elder Sukhanov had sat in the
magistrate's place, with the white, blue and red
flag of the autocracy behind the dais. When we

224 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
arrived in Vladivostok the red flag of the Revolu
tion had replaced it. Yet we found a Sukhanov sit
ting in the judgment seat. This time it was the
son, Constantin, now President of the Vladivostok
Soviet by grace of their Republican Majesties, the
worker, peasant, and sailor citizens of the Russian
Soviet Republic.
Curious reversal of the Revolution! Just as
the younger Sukhanov had been caught conspiring
against the rule of the Czar, now Sukhanov, the
elder, was found plotting against the rule of the
Soviet. Once more across the tribunal the two
men faced each other: father against son, Counter-
Revolutionist against Revolutionist, Monarchist
against Socialist. But this time the son was the
judge, the father the culprit. Once only was Con
stantin Sukhanov derelict in his revolutionary duties.
He refused to imprison his father!
Sukhanov's constant aide was the student Sebert-
sev. There were also three girl-students (kursists),
Zoya, Tanya and Zoya, respectively, secretaries of
the Bolshevik Party, the Finance Department, and
the Soviet organ, "The Peasant and Worker"; and
respectively daughters of an officer, a priest and a
merchant. Their bourgeois life they entirely re
nounced. They became one with the proletarians.
With proletarian incomes they thought in prole
tarian terms. They lived like proletarians. Their
home now was two bare rooms which they called

THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVIET 225
"the Commune." For beds they had soldier-cots,
straw-pallets laid on planks instead of springs.
These students fitted the picture of the Russian
student of tradition. One night, when the strain of
trying to talk in the Russian language was tying
my tongue and brain into knots, Sebertsev said:
"We have all been to the university, we can talk in
Latin!" But how many American college graduates
can read even the Latin on their diplomas? These
Russian students not only talked Latin, but sub
mitted Latin verses for my approval. I made a
strategic retreat upon Russian!
Outside of these students the mem-
Leaders Out of bers of the Vladivostok Soviet were
the Rank and File, workingmen — mechanics, longshore
men, railwaymen, etc. But they
were Russian workingmen; while using the hammer,
the sickle and axe, they had used their brains. For
this the heavy hand of the Czar had fallen on them.
Some had been jailed, others driven out as wanderers
over the earth.
From exile they returned at the call of the Revo
lution. Utkin and Jordan came back from Aus
tralia, speaking English; Antonov from Naples,
speaking Italian.
Melnikov, Nikeferov and Preminsky emerged
from their prison-cells speaking French. This trio
had turned their jail into a university. They had
specialized in mathematics, and now were experts

226 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
in calculus, plotting graphs as well as they had
plotted revolution.
Seven years they were bound together in jail.
Now they were free, each to go his own way. But
the long hard years had forged around their hearts
ties more binding than the iron chains around their
limbs. They were together in death, and now in
life they could not be divided. In mind, however,
they were much divided, expounding their rival
creeds to each other with terrific energy. Yet, how
ever wide afield they went in theory, in action they
were a unit. Melnikov's party did not then support
the Soviet, but his two comrades did. So he followed
them into the service of the Soviet, as Commissar of
Post and Telegraph.
In the soul of Melnikov had been waged some
big battle, which put furrows deep in his face, and
left deep in his eyes the marks of pain. But in that
face victory and a great serenity were written. His
eyes sparkled, and a smile always flickered on his
lips. When things grew blacker he smiled the more.
Little help the Soviet got from the intelligentsia.
They declared a boycott against the Soviet until the)
workingmen should completely change their pro
gram. In open meeting they proclaimed a policy of
sabotage. Bitter and sarcastic was the retort shot back by
a miner: "You pride yourselves on your knowledge
and skill! But where did you get it? From us.
At the price of our sweat and blood. In school and

THE VLADIVOSTOK SOVIET 227
university you sat at your desks while we slaved in
the dark of the mines and the smoke of the mills.
Now we ask you to help us. And you say to us:
'Give up your program and take our program: then
we will help you.' And we say to you: 'We will
not give up our program. We shall get along with
out you.' "
Supreme audacity in these workingmen, tyros in
government, taking over the administration of a ter
ritory large as France and rich as India, beset by
hordes of scheming imperialists, challenged by a
thousand tasks 1

CHAPTER XVI
THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK
THE Vladivostok Soviet had taken power without
shedding a drop of blood. That was easy. But
the task now facing it was hard — terribly hard and
complex. The first problem to grapple with was the eco
nomic. The dislocation of industry thru war and
Revolution, the homecoming of the soldiers, and
the employers' lockouts, filled the streets with the
workless. The Soviet saw the menace of these idle
hands and started to open the factories. The man
agement was placed in the hands of the working-
men themselves, and credit was furnished by the
Soviet. The leaders voluntarily limited their own wages.
By decree of the Central Russian Soviet the maxi
mum salary of any Soviet official was fixed at 500
rubles a month. The Vladivostok commissars, point
ing out the lower cost of living in the Far East,
scaled theirs down to 300 rubles a month. After this,
when anyone felt the itching desire for a fatter pay-
envelope, he was liable to be asked: "Do you want
228

THE LOCAL SOVD2T AT WORK 229
more pay than Lenin or Sukhanov?" This was un
answerable.

As soon as the workmen found the
Soviet Organizes factories in their hands there came a
Industry. change in their morale. Under Ke
rensky the tendency was to elect
lenient foremen. Under their own government, the
Soviet, they elected foremen who put discipline into
the shop and raised production. The first time I
met Krasnoschekov, the head of the Far East
Soviet, he was pessimistic.
"For every word I say to the bourgeoisie agamst
their sabotage," he said, "I say ten to the working-
men against their slackness. But I believe a change
is coming."
When I saw him the end of June, 191 8, he was in
happy mood. The change had come. Six factories,
he said, were producing more than ever before.
In the so-caUed "American Works," the wheels,
frames and brakes of cars, shipped from the United
States, were assembled, and the cars sent out over
the Trans-Siberian Railway. These shops had been
hotbeds of trouble, one disturbance following on
the heels of another. The 6,000 workmen on the
payroU had been turning out but 18 cars a day.
The Soviet Committee closed the plant and reor
ganized the shops, reducing the force to 1,800 men.
In the underframe section, instead of 1,400 there
were now 350; but by means of short-cuts intro-

230 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
duced by the workers themselves, the output of
that department was increased. Altogether, the
i, 800 men on the new payroll were now turning
out 12 cars a day — an efficiency increase of more
than 100 per cent per man.
One day I was standing with Sukhanov on the
hills overlooking the shops. He was listening to the
clank of cranes, and the stamp of trip-hammers ring
ing up from the valley.
"That seems to be sweet music to your ears,"
I said. "Yes," he replied, "the old Revolutionists used to
make a noise with bombs. This is the noise of the
new Revolutionists, hammering out the new social
order." The strongest ally of the Soviet was the Union
of Miners. It organized the unemployed into Uttie
Soviets of 50 and 100, equipped them, and sent them
out to the mines along the great Amur. These enter
prises were highly successful. Each man was pan
ning out from 50 to 100 rubles of gold a day. The
question of pay arose. One of the miners unearthed
the slogan: "To every man the full product of his
labors." It at once achieved tremendous popularity
with the miners, who declared their loyalty to this
basic Socialist principle. Nothing, they said, could
induce them to depart from it.
The Soviet held a different view. There was a
deadlock. Instead of using the historic method of

THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK 231
settling the dispute by bombs and troops, the work
ingmen fought it out on the floor of the Soviet. The
miners capitulated to the logic of the Soviet. Their
wages were fixed at 15 rubles per day, with a bonus
for extra production. In a short time twenty-six
poods (there are 36 pounds in a pood) of gold were
accumulated at headquarters. Against this reserve
the Soviet issued paper money. The seal was a sickle
and a hammer, and the design showed a peasant and
a worker clasping hands, with the riches of the Far
East streaming out over the world.
The Soviet fell heir to a white elephant in the
shape of the "Military Port." This was a huge plant
built for military and naval purposes — a monu
ment to the inefficiency of the old regime. It had
carried on its payroll as fine a line of grafting offi
cials and favorites as ever decorated an establish
ment of the Czar. The barnacles on the ships of
the Volunteer Fleet were a consequence of those on
the payroll. The Soviet immediately scraped off
these eminent barnacles, but retained the old man
ager as chief technician. The proletarians recog
nized the necessity of experts and not finding them
in their own ranks, they were ready to pay big sal
aries for them. The working-class set out to buy
brains just as the capitalists had always done.
The Committee shifted the production of the
Military Port to implements of peace. They intro
duced a system of strict accounting. This showed

232 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
that the new plows and rakes were being produced at
higher cost than the same articles could be imported
from abroad. They then set to work to change the
machinery and speed it up. Machines and ships
were brought in for repairs. When a contract was
not completed at the end of the eight-hour day, the
foreman would state the condition of the work and
the extra hours required. The men, taking new
pride in fast work, often voted to stick by the job,
even if it took all night. With this went a vote of
increase of pay to the foreman.
Under the old administration most of the workers
lived from one to three hours' journey from the fac
tory. The Committee started the building of new
workers' quarters. Numerous devices were intro
duced to save time and energy. The long line of
employes, waiting in turn to receive their pay envel
opes, was abolished by appointing one man to receive
the pay for every two hundred.
Unfortunately among the men elected was one
who could resist everything but temptation. Having
received the two hundred pay envelopes, he started.
out to distribute them. Then he thought better of it.
No one knows how it happened. Some of the men
said that some bourgeois devil must have whispered
into the ears of this weak comrade, and driven from
his mind all thought of his family, his shop, and the
Revolution. At any rate he was found later beside
some empty vodka bottles with his pockets empty,

THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK 233
too. When he recovered from his happiness he was
brought before the Shop Committee and charged
with breach of revolutionary honor and treason to
the Military Port.
The Grand Session of the Revolutionary Tribunal
was held in the main shop, with 1 50 men on the jury.
The verdict was "Guilty!" The jury was asked to
vote on one of the three following sentences: (1)
Summary dismissal. (2) Dismissal, with wages to
his wife and children continued. (3) Pardon and
reinstatement. Proposition number two was carried, thus attach
ing a definite stigma to the culprit's dereliction, but
at the same time saving his family from hardship.
This did not bring back the money to the unfortu
nate two hundred, so the fifteen hundred voted to
divide among themselves the loss of the two
hundred. In their new experiments the workingmen made
many costly blunders. But their verdict upon the
Soviet as a whole was that it had made good.
Toward the mistakes of the Soviet they took the
same attitude a man takes toward his own mis
takes — a very lenient one.
Out of their experience the workers gained confi
dence. They found that they could organize in
dustry; they found they could increase production,
and with the Soviet daily entrenching itself in the
economic field they began to fell a sense of elation.
They would have been still more elated had it not

234 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
been for their enemies, constantly launching fresh
attacks against the Soviet.
As soon as the shops were nmning
Soviet Organizes well, the men would have to drop tools
an Army. and take up rifles; the railroads, in
stead of carrying food and imple
ments, had to carry ammunition and troops. The
workmen, instead of strengthening the new institu
tions, had to rally to defend the ground on which
they stood.
Raids were continually directed against the fron
tiers of the workingmen's republic. As soon as the'
enemy broke thru the cry went up "The Socialist
Fatherland is in danger!" Into every village and
factory hurried the call to arms. Each formed its
little detachment, and along the roads and trails
they marched up into the Manchurian Mountains,
singing revolutionary hymns, and folk songs of the
village. Poorly equipped and poorly fed, they
advanced to pit themselves against a merciless, weU-
equipped foe. Just as Americans today cherish the
memory of the tattered barefoot troops of Washing
ton, who left their blood-stained prints on the snows
of Valley Forge, so in the future Russians will
thrill to the story of those first ragged groups of
Red Guards who, at the call of danger, grasped their
guns and went forth to the defense of the Soviet
Republic. Beside the Red Guards were rising the units of the

White troops moving forward in Siberia. In the attempt to strangle the Soviets a steel ring of bayonets, thousands
of versts long, was thrown around Russia.

One of the terrible Red Guards. I spent several days with this band of 700
peasants fighting against the Whites " For Land and Freedom."

THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK 235
new Red Army. It was an International Army. All
peoples were represented, including platoons of
Czechs and Koreans. Around the camp-fire the
Koreans would say: "We will fight for you now,
for your liberty: some day you will fight with us
against Japan for our liberty." Among the officers
were the Czech Captain Murovsky, Lenin's nephew
Popov, and Abramov, who had served two years with
the British.
In discipline the Red troops were inferior to the
regular national armies. But tliey had an elan which
the others lacked. I talked much with these peasants
and workers, who for weeks had been lying out on
the rain-drenched hillsides.
"Who made you come, and what keeps you here?"
I asked. "Well — millions of us dark people had to go out
and die for the government of the Czar in the old
days," they replied. "Surely we should be cowards
if we didn't go out and fight for a government that
is aU our own!"
There were certain gentlemen who didn't have
this view of the Soviet. Quite the opposite. They
wanted the Russian peasants and workers to have
a very different sort of government. In fact they
themselves claimed to be the one true and only
government of Russia.
In grandiose. phraseology they laid claim to sov
ereignty over the territory extending from the Golden
Horn of the Far East to the Finnish Bay in the

236 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
West, and from the White Sea in the north to the
Black Sea on the south. While these gentlemen were
not very modest, they were most discreet. They
did not set foot upon any of their vast domains.
Had they ventured to do so they would have been
locked up as common criminals, by the government
reaUy functioning — the Soviet.
From the safe confines of Manchuria they issued
their glowing manifestos. There aU the conspiracies
against the Soviet were hatched. After the defeat of
Kaledin, the Counter-Revolutionists, egged on by
foreign capital, put their hopes in the Cossack
Semyonov. Under him were organized regiments
of Hun-Huz bandits, Japanese mercenaries, and
monarchists rounded up from ports down along the
Chinese coast.
Semyonov declared that with an iron fist he was
going to drive decency and common sense into the
Bolsheviks. He announced his objective as the
Urals, 4,000 miles away, then a descent upon the
Muscovite plain, with Petrograd opening its gates,
and the whole countryside rising up to welcome him.
Raising his standards amid great plaudits from
the bourgeoisie, he crossed over into the Siberian
border twice, and twice came hurtling back again.
The people did rise up to meet him. Not with
flowers, however, but with guns and axes and pitch
forks. The Vladivostok workers helped in this defeat of
Semyonov. After five weeks they came back

THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK 237
bronzed, tattered and foot-sore. But they came back
victors. The working-class turned out to acclaim
their fellow-proletarians in arms. There were flow
ers, speeches and a triumphal march thru the city.
This victory put great elation in their hearts. But
not in the hearts of the bourgeois and Allied on
lookers. It was evident that in the military field
the Soviet was growing stronger.
In the realm of culture the creative
Soviet Educates force of the Revolution succeeded in
the People. establishing a People's University,
three workmen's theatres and two
daily papers. The Peasant and Worker was the offi
cial Soviet organ. It featured an English depart
ment edited by Jerome Lifschiz, a young Russian-
American. The Red Banner, the Communist Party
organ, carried long academic articles. Neither was
a masterpiece of journalism, but both were voices of
the inarticulate masses, reaching out for the things
of the mind and spirit.
While the Revolution was primarily a drive for
land, and bread, and peace, it was more than that.
I remember a session of the Vladivostok Soviet,
when one of the Right was making a furious attack
upon the Soviet, scoring the cutting down of food
rations: "The Bolsheviks promised you lots of things, but
they didn't give them to you, did they? They prom
ised you bread, but where is it? Where is the bread

238 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
that . . . ?" The words of the speaker were
drowned in a storm of whistles and hisses.
Man does not live by bread alone. Neither does
the Soviet live by satisfying merely the hunger of the
stomach, but the hunger of the spirit.
All men crave fellowship. "For fellowship is
heaven, and lack of it is hell," said John Ball to the
English peasants in the fourteenth century. The
Soviet was Uke a great family in which the lowest
man was made to feel his human worth.
All men crave power. In the Soviet, workingmen
felt the joy of being arbiters of their own destiny,
masters over a vast domain. A workingman is like
any other human being. Having tasted power he is
loth to let it go.
All men crave adventure. In the Soviet men em
barked upon a supreme adventure — the quest for a
new society based on justice, the building of the
world anew.
All men have a spiritual passion. It needs only to
be aroused. The Revolution stirred up even the duU,
complacent peasant. It gave him the impulse to read
and write. One day an old mujik appeared in the
Children's School.
"Children, these hands cannot write," he said,
holding them up, toilworn and calloused, "they can
not write because the only thing the Czar wanted
them for was to plough." As the tears flowed down
his cheeks he said, "But you, the children of a new

THE LOCAL SOVIET AT WORK 239
Russia, you can learn to write. Oh, that I might
begin again as a child in our new Russia! "
The workingmen had captured the ship
Workingmen as of state. Now they had to steer it
Diplomats. along a labyrinthine channel, thru un
charted waters, the Allies constantly
striving to sink it on the rocks.
Rebuffed by the Allied consuls, the Soviet turned
to China with overtures of friendship. The Chinese
had been so atrociously treated by the Czar that
they could not understand any Russian government
addressing them in a kindly manner. They thought
it was a new species of trickery. But the Soviet
backed its fair words with fair deeds. Chinese citi
zens were placed upon the same footing as
other foreigners. Chinese boats were allowed to
ply upon the rivers. The Chinese began to feel
that a Russian government looked upon them not
as an inferior race, to be cursed and bled, but as
human beings. They sent their emissaries to the
Red Army, saying:
"We know that we have no right to allow the
cut-throats and adventurers of Semyonov to mobilize
upon our territory. We know that the Allies have
no right to make us put an embargo against you.
We want our foodstuffs to go to Russian workmen
and peasants."
A general conference was held in June at the
frontier in Grodekovo. The Chinese were greeted

240 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
in their own language by Tunganogi, a daring bril
liant lad of 21, the incarnation of the spirit of young,
revolutionary Russia. The delegates of these two
races, representing one-third of the population of
the globe, sat down together to work out the prob
lem of living together in peace and co-operation.
It was not a Versailles Conference of old men
cooped up in a gilded chamber: crafty, suspicious,
duelling with words and phrases. These were young
men, open-minded and open-hearted, meeting under
the open sky in brotherhood. Yet it was'not a welter
of emotion in which reaUty was lost. They faced
the issues squarely: the danger of swamping Russia
with a yellow tide, the lower standard of cooUe labor,
etc. But it was all done frankly, generously, fra
ternally. As Krasnoschekov, chairman of the Rus
sian delegation, said:
"The Chinese and Russian masses are true chU
dren of Nature, uncorrupted by the vices of West
ern civilization, unversed in diplomatic deceit and
intrigue." Yet, on this very day, while delegates from these
two great child races were reaching out to one
another in an effort for mutual understanding, the
foreign diplomats — behind their backs — in Harbin
and Vladivostok, were plotting to hurl these two
peoples at each other's throats. They were plan
ning to use Chinese troops in a raid upon Siberia,
and to smash the Soviets.

PART IV
THE TRIUMPH OF THE
REVOLUTION

THE SOVIETS AGAINST THE CAPITALIST
WORLD

CHAPTER XVII
THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET
TI7"HY this animus of the Allies against the So-
"' viets? Why not regard Russia as a vast lab
oratory experiment?" someone once asked an Ameri
can banker. "Why not let these visionaries try out
their socialistic schemes? When their dream be
comes a nightmare, when their Utopia collapses, you
can point to it always as an example of the horrible
failure of Socialism."
"Very good," was the reply, "but supposing it isn't
a failure? Then where are we?"
Failure is what the Allies prayed for, and eager-
eyed, they watched for Soviet collapse. But it did
not come. It was precisely this that enraged the
Allies. The Soviet was showing signs of success.
It was creating not disorder, but order — not chaos,
but organization. It was entrenching itself in the
economic and military fields. In the cultural and
diplomatic fields it was pressing forward. Every
where it was consolidating its gains.
The Soviet stood straight across the pathway of
the Imperialists. If it continued to grow in power
their plans would be completely shattered. They
243

244 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
could no longer hope for a free hand in the exploita
tion of the immense resources of Russia.*
So the crushing of the Soviet was decreed. Now,
before it should become too strong and lusty, it must
be smashed. The Czecho-Slovaks were the in-
Counter-Revolution strument chosen to administer the
Uses the Czechs. death-blow. Unwittingly they
were being groomed by their
French officers for this job. Regiments of these
seasoned troops were strategically strung out along
the Trans-Siberian line. Vladivostok held 17,000 of
them armed, fed, and transported hither by grace
of the Soviets.
The French said that transports were coming to
take them to the Western battle-front. Week after
week it was announced that the boats were on the
way. But no ships came. The French had never
intended to ship the Czechs away. They intended to
use them here in Siberia to smash the Soviet.
The Czechs were already restless, fretting with
inaction. They had a deep hereditary hatred of the
Austro-Germans. The French told them that there
* "What we are witnessing now in Russia is the opening of a
great struggle for her immeasurable raw materials." — Russia, the
magazine of Anglo-Russian finance, May, 1018.
"In the city events are shaping more and more towards an
international suzerainty over Russia modelled on the British plan
in Egypt. Such an event would transform Russian bonds into
the cream of the international market." — London Financial News,
November, 1918.

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 245
were tens of thousands of Austro-Germans in the
Red Army. Adroitly playing upon their patriotism,
the French pictured the Soviets as friends of the
Austro-Germans, and enemies of the Czechs. So
they engineered friction, and got them ready for
the assault upon the Soviets. The methods of attack
were adapted to the place.
Here in Vladivostok surprise was deemed essential.
The plan was to get the Soviet off guard, and then
spring a sudden coup. To do this the Soviets must
be hoodwinked with a show of friendship. This
business was delegated to the British. Dropping
their hostile front, they assumed toward the Bol
sheviks an attitude of amiabiUty.
With frank, engaging air the Consul confessed
to a former antagonism to the Soviets, and the back
ing of Semyonov. Now that the Soviet had proved
its right to live, the British would lend their aid.
To begin with, they would cooperate in the importa
tion of machinery. Following this, on Friday after
noon, June 28th, 1918, two genial officials called
to present their respects to Sukhanov, bringing the
information that wireless messages received on
H. M. S. Suffolk would be daily handed to the So
viet for publication in its papers.
The editors, particularly Jerome, were jubilant.
They came down to Russian Island, urging me to
come up and celebrate the capitulation of the Allies.
Good reason for their rapture! It had been a hard-
up-hill pull, plodding thru the murk and the night.

246 -THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Now suddenly the clouds break, and the sky shines
blue. Next morning at eight-thirty a thunderbolt comes
out of the blue! It strikes Sukhanov, sitting in his
Soviet office. It is an ultimatum in the name of the
Czechs. It calls for the unconditional surrender of
the Soviet. All offices are to be evacuated. All sol
diers are to proceed to the High School field, and
lay down their arms. The time limit is thirty
minutes. Sukhanov, rushing to Czech headquarters, begs
for permission to call the Soviet together.
"Certainly, if you can do it in half an hour,"
coolly replies the Czech commander.
As Sukhanov turns to leave, he is placed under
arrest. All this goes on behind the scenes. The city re
mains in the dark. One or two commissars only
have a hint of the tragedy now so imminent. On
Svetlanskaya, near the Red Fleet Building, I meet
Preminsky having his shoes blacked.
"Getting all shined up early in the morning," I
say. "Yes," he replies casually, lighting a cigarette.
"In a few minutes I may be dangling from a lamp
post, and I want to be as nice looking a corpse as
possible." I stare at him wondering, quizzical.
"Our days are done for," he explained, still non
chalant and smiling, "The Czechs are taking over
the city."

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 247
Even as he speaks the end of the street is fining
with troops. So are the side-streets. In aU quar
ters soldiers are moving, in boats from across the
bay, in launches from the battleships. Down from
the hill above and up from the piers below, like a
dense fog the army of Interventionists roUs in upon
the city. The open spaces are seething with sol
diery, heavily armed, loaded with grenades, huge
ominous-looking things. Enough explosives to pul
verize the whole city!
The occupation proceeds swiftly, Uke clock-work,
according to plan.
The Japanese seize the powder-magazine, the
British the railroad station. The Americans throw
a cordon around the consulate. The Chinese and
others take up lesser points. The Czechs converge
upon the Soviet building. They encircle it from all
sides. With a loud "Hurrah," — they rush forward,
and go crashing thru the doors. The Red Flag of
the SociaUst RepubUc is pulled down, and the red,
white and blue flag of autocracy is run up. Vladi
vostok passes into the hands of the Imperialists.
"The Soviet has fallen," a hoarse shout goes up
in the street, and runs like wildfire thru the city.
The patrons of the Olympia Cafe, rushing out into
the street, burst into yells, flinging up their hats,
cheering the Czechs. The Soviet and aU its works
is a cursed thing to them. It is fallen. But that
is not enough. They would obliterate every trace
of it.

248 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Before them, wrought out in flower-beds edged
with stone, is the design which spells soviet of
workmen's deputies. Vaulting the iron fence, they
kick away the stones, stamp thru the flowers, plung
ing their hands deep into the soil in order to ex
tirpate the last root and vestige of the odious symbol.
Their blood is up now. Their appetites are
whetted. They want something animate to vent
their rage upon. Spying me in the throng, they
The Bourgeois Cry raise a great hue and cry:
for Reprisals. "Immigrant! Swine!" (Ameri-
kanskaya Svoloch) they yeU.
"Kill him! Choke him! Hang him!" The mob
of speculators converges on me, brandishing fists
and cursing.
But the ring of men forming next to me makes no
attempt to lay hands on me. Why, I wonder? They
are partisans of the Soviet. Seeing my perU, they
have wormed their way in between me and these
would-be lynchers, forming a kind of protective
pocket. A low voice whispers, "Head for the Red Fleet
Building. Walk, don't run." Pushed and jostled
by the crowd behind, I steer my course toward the
Red Fleet Building. Opposite its portal I hear
the word "Run!" I slip thru the door, and escape
in its labyrinths, leaving my pursuers disputing with
the Czechs below.

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 249
In the front of the building I find a third story
window that overlooks the city. From this vantage-
point I can see and still be unseen. Up and down be
low me stretches Svetlanskaya, boiling now like a
cauldron. This street, which twenty minutes earlier
had been so placid in the shining morning sun, is
now a riot of people and color and sound. Blue-
jacketed Japs in white puttees, English marines with
the Union Jack, khaki-clad Czechs, with green and
white, marching and counter-marching, cut currents
thru the eddying throng, each moment growing
greater. Thru the bourgeois quarters the glad tiding "The
Soviet has fallen" spreads with magic swiftness.
From boudoir, cafe, and parlor, in silks and smiles,
they hasten forth to celebrate. Svetlanskaya be
comes a grand promenade, brightly splashed with
gay plumes and petticoats and parasols.
Some of the toilettes are elaborate. Fortunate
ladies! Tipped off in advance they had time to
adorn themselves. The officers, too, blossom out in
full regalia — gold braid and epaulets, jangling spurs
— and much saluting. They make escorts for the
ladies, or form into marching squads. There are
hundreds of them. One wonders how Vladivostok
could have held so many.
And so many bourgeois! Well-kept, rotund
gentlemen with avoirdupois enough to quaUfy as
cartoons of themselves. They hail each other, faces
beaming, clasping one another's hands, embracing

2 so THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
and kissing, exclaiming "The Soviet is fallen" as tho
it were an Easter greeting. Two big fat chinovniks,
almost apoplectic with joy, try to faU upon one
another's bosom, but their expansive abdomens are
in the way. In their efforts to embrace, clutching
at one another, they bid fair to burst themselves.
With incredible swiftness a complete change
passes over this city of the proletarians. It be
comes a city of the weU-fed and well-groomed, their
shining faces exultant, congratulating one another,
praising God and the AlUes, and cheering the
Czechs, Poor Czechs! These cheers embarrass and
mortify them. Their heads hang in shame, meet
ing a Russian workingman. Some indeed refuse
point-blank to go into this garroting of a work-
ingman's government. None of them relish the job
of crucifying other workmen to make a carnival
for the bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie want more
than a holiday with bands and streamers. They want
a Roman holiday with blood and victims. They want
vengeance and retribution on these workmen who
have forgotten their station in life.
"Now, we will put them in their proper places,"
they exclaim. "We will put them on the lamp-posts.
It's red these birds admire, is it? Very well, we
shall give them all they want of their favorite color.
We'll draw it from their veins ! "
They urge the Czechs to violence. They want a
part in it themselves. They point out the foremost

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 251
workmen and denounce them. They know where
the commissars are to be found, and lead the way
into office and workshop.
Very busy also is a crew of rat-faced, swart-faced
creatures — spies, provocators and pogromists of the
old regime. Swarming out of their holes and now
come into their own again, they seek by excesses
against the Bolsheviks to ingratiate themselves with
the bourgeoisie. Like weasels they penetrate every
where, even into the building where I am.
Suddenly screams, curses, and the sound of pound
ing feet break out on the stairs above. Four men
invading the party-offices on the top-floor have laid
hold of Zoya. Single-handed she resists them, fight
ing back every inch of the way. By twisting her
arms, pummeling and pushing her, they drag her
down into the street and march her off to prison.
Such scenes are repeated thruout the city. Com
missars and workmen are busy at their tasks in
office, shop and bank. The doors are flung open.
They are pounced upon, and dragged out into the
highway. Thru the center of the highway a narrow lane is
opened. Thru this channel, the captives, manacled
or gripped by their captors, are prodded along by
revolver-butt, and bayonet-point. Hoots, jeers and
catcalls ring in their ears. Clenched fists are thrust
in their faces. Some are spat upon and beaten by
the mob which surges into the passageway blocking
their progress.

252 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
An extra outburst of rage breaks on the head of
the Commissar of Banks. He has touched them
directly in their vital center — their pocket-nerve.
They yell, and hoot, and would tear him limb from
limb. A white flannelled gentleman, red-faced with
fury, breaks thru the Czech guards, brandishing a
revolver, grabs the commissar by his arms, and
stalks on beside him, howling Uke an Indian.
One by one the commissars are shoved along this
corridor of scowling faces, derisive and hate-con
torted. Their own faces by contrast are strangely
serene and calm. Some are pallid, but on the whole
they are dauntless, almost debonair. They are alert,
terribly interested in everything. These men have
tasted life. They have run its gamut, from prison-
dungeons to high affairs of state. So many ad
ventures have been theirs. What new surprise Ues
before them around the turning? The most thrilling
of all, perhaps the final one. If so, let it come.
Death has little terror for them. Long ago when
they gave themselves to the Revolution, that matter
was disposed of. Then they put all they had, their
lives included, into its keeping.
They were conscripts of the Revolution. When it
called — they came. Where it sent them — they went.
What it exacted — they performed, obedient, unques
tioning. Under the Czar, the Revolution had called
them to the task of agitators. Under the Soviet it
drafted them to the post of commissars. At the call
of the Revolution they had yielded up leisure, com-

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 253
fort, health, and found joy therein. Now they were
being summoned to yield up their lives. In the
supreme sacrifice might they not find the suprenle
joy? All this was certainly written upon the face of
Melnikov. Thru this thunderstorm of foes — hiss
ing, roaring, and howling — he came smiling thru
like a shaft of sunshine. Svetlanskaya means "The
Lighted Way." Always for me it will be lit with the
countenance of this workingman. About him there
was something celestial, transcendent. Climbing up
the hill, buffeted, jeered and spat upon, he was
strangely like the figure of another Workingman,
toiling thru another hostile multitude, up another hill
— long ago.
Only this was no "Via Dolorosa." It was a "Way
of Triumph," with Melnikov coming up like a con
queror. His face was wreathed in smiles. His
sparkling eyes were still more sparkling, his features
more radiant than ever. A hoarse voice shouted
"Scoundrel! Hang him!" Melnikov only smiled.
A heavy fist struck him in the cheek. He smiled
again. It was the smile of one lifted above the base
passions of the mob, far beyond reach of its blows
and jeers. It was a smile of pity for the haters.
Could Melnikov have been aware of the power in
that smile? The silent conquests it made that day
in the hearts of his beholders? It was a magnet
drawing the hesitant and wavering, into the camp of
the Revolution. At the same time it was a sword,

254 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
wreaking havoc in the camp of the Counter-Revolu
tionists. They could not abide this smile of Melnikov and
the laugh of Sukhanov. They were irritated and
haunted by them. The bourgeoisie would have liked
to strike these young men dead in the streets. But
they did not dare do it — yet. The commissars were
not killed but jailed.
The Allies for the present are against any
The Soviet Is wholesale massacre of the workers. They
Submerged. are anxious to make intervention appear
in the guise of a crusade for democracy,
welcomed by all the people. Not yet has it un
masked itself as stark Czaristic reaction. Vladi
vostok, in the Allied plan, is to be the foothold for
the spring upon Siberia. They do not want that
foothold too slippery with blood. In the hinterland,
in the back regions of Siberia, peasants' and workers'
blood may flow in torrents. But not in this seaport
town, exposed before the eyes of the world. A few
Red Guards and workers are shot down in their
tracks. But there is no general blood-spUUng. The
suddenness of the onslaught, the overwhelming
masses of troops, have smothered the Soviet.
At one point only did the Soviet forces have a
chance to rally. That was near the water-front,
the rendezvous of the gruzchiki, longshoremen,
stevedores, coal-heavers, loaders of ships. They
were of peasant origin, huge shaggy feUows, heavy-

THE ALLIES CRUSH THE SOVIET 255
muscled for their heavy work. The intricate prob
lems of state and politics they did not comprehend.
But one simple fact they did comprehend. Whereas
once they were slaves, now they were free! From
the status of beasts they had been raised to the
status of men. And they knew that the Soviet had
done this.
Now they see the Soviet in peril. Rushing into
the nearby Red Staff Building, they bolt and bar
the doors, and barricade the windows, taking their
posts, rifles in hand, ready for the assault. At all
costs they will hold this ground for the Soviet.
The odds against them are one hundred to one.
Two hundred freight-handlers pitted against twenty
thousand seasoned troops. Revolvers against ma
chine-guns. Rifles against cannon. But on the side
of this garrison of gruzchiki is the flame of the
Revolution. It has fired the spirits of these coal-
heavers, outwardly so gross and sluggish. They grow
fearless, swift, and daring. All afternoon the ring
of steel and flame around them grows denser and
closer. They watch it undaunted, refusing every
call to capitulate. And as night begins to fall, their
guns are still blazing from the windows.
In the shadows a Czech crawls close up, and
hurls an incendiary bomb thru a window of the
building, setting it afire. The citadel of the long
shoremen threatens now to become a funeral-pyre.
Enveloped in flame and smoke they grope and
Stumble into the street, hands raised in surrender.

256 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Some are slaughtered, some are clubbed into insen-
sibiUty. The rest are marched away to prison.
Resistance is crushed. The Soviet is annihilated.
The Allies congratulate themselves upon the success
of the coup. The bourgeoisie are in transports of
delight. Lights flame from the windows of the great
houses and restaurants. From the cafes come
snatches of song, and the throb of the orchestra.
The merrymakers are laughing, dancing, cheering
the Allied uniforms. From the churches breaks
forth the clanging, chiming, pealing, booming music
of the bells — the priests within offering up prayers
for the Czar. From the decks of the battleships the
bugles call across the waters of the bay. The city
gives itself up to revelry and rejoicing.
But not in the workingmen's quarters. There is
silence, broken only by the sobbing cf women. Be
hind drawn curtains they are laying out their slain.
From a nearby shed comes the sound of hammering.
The men are joining rough planks together, making
coffins for their comrade dead.

Intervention in Russia begins— the Allied armies crush the Vladivostok Soviet. The Stars and Stripes, the French
Tricolor, the Union Jack, and the Rising Sun flag of Japan flying from the Czech Building.

i,:':" '%¦ n.'j

,.

WBsiwt

£

- « lmJ§89
[
• 'ifflWi&l
The i?ed Funeral — the protest of the unarmed masses against Intervention. Coffins of the longshoremen slain in
defense of the Soviet carried through the streets on the way to the American Consulate.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RED FUNERAL
TT was the Fourth of July. I was standing on the
Kitaiskaya looking down upon the holiday flags
on the Brooklyn, the American battleship in Vladi
vostok Bay. Suddenly I heard a faraway sound.
Listening, I caught the strains of the Revolutionary
Hymn:
"With hearts heavy and sad we bring our dead,
Who shed their blood in the fight for freedom."
Looking up, I saw on the crest of the hill the
first lines of some vast procession. It was the
funeral of the gruzchiki (longshoremen) killed four
days before in the siege of the Red Staff Building.
To-day the people, rising out of their grief and
terror, were coming for^h to bury these defenders
of the fallen Soviet. Out of the workmen's quar
ters they streamed, jamming the street, not from
curb to curb, but from wall to wall. They came
biUowing over the hilltop by thousands until the
whole long slope was choked with the dense, slow-
moving throng, keeping time to the funeral march
of the revolutionists. 257

258 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Up thru the gray and black mass of men and
women ran two Unes of white-bloused sailors of
the Bolshevik fleet. Above their heads tossed a
cloud of crimson standards with silvered cords and
tassels. In the vanguard, four men carried a huge
red banner with the words: "Long Live the Soviet of
Workmen's and Peasants' Deputies! Hail to the
International Brotherhood of the Toilers!"
A hundred girls in white, carrying green wreaths
from forty-four unions of the city, formed a guard
of honor for the dead gruzchiki. The coffins with
the red paint still wet upon them, were borne upon
the shoulders of their comrades. The music crashed
out by the Red Fleet Band was lost in the volume of
song that rose from the seventeen thousand singers.
Here was color and sound and motion. But there
was something else, a something which compeUed
fear and awe. I had seen a score of the great pro
cessions of Petrograd and Moscow, peace and vic
tory and protest and memorial parades, miUtary and
civilian, impressive as only Russians could make
them. But this was different.
From these defenseless poor, stripped of their
arms, and with sorrowing songs bearing off their
dead, there came a threat more menacing than that
from the twelve-inch guns of the AUied Fleet, riding
in the harbor below. It was impossible not to feel it.
It was so simple, so spontaneous and so elemental.
It came straight out of the heart of the people. It

THE RED FUNERAL 259
was the people, leaderless, isolated, beaten to earth,
thrown upon its own resources, and yet, out of its
grief, rising magnificently to take command of itself.
The dissolution of the Soviet, instead of plung
ing the people into inactive grief and dissipating
their forces, begot a strange, unifying spirit. Seven
teen thousand separate souls were welded into one.
Seventeen thousand people, singing in unison,
found themselves thinking in unison. With a com
mon mass will and mass consciousness, they formu
lated their decisions from their class standpoint —
the determined standpoint of the revolutionary
proletariat. The Czechs came, offering a guard of honor. "Ne
noozhno!" (It is not necessary! ) the people replied.
"You killed our comrades. Forty to one you fought
against them. They died for the Soviet and we are
proud of them. We thank you, but we cannot let
the guns which shot them down guard them in their
death!" "But there may be danger for you in this city,"
said the authorities.
"Never mind," they answered. "We, too, are not
afraid of death. And what better way to die than
beside the bodies of our comrades!"
Some bourgeois societies came, presenting me
morial wreaths.
"Ne noozhno," (it is not necessary), the people
answered. "Our comrades died in a struggle against
the bourgeoisie. They died fighting cleanly. We

260 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
must keep their memory clean. We thank you, but
we dare not lay your wreaths upon their coffins."
The procession poured down the Aleutskaya HiU,
filled the large open space at the bottom, and faced
up toward the British Consulate. Nearby, on the
left, was a work car with a tower for repairing
electric wires. Whether it was there by design or
accident I do not know. Presently it was to serve
as a speaker's rostrum.
The band played a solemn dirge. The men bared
their heads. The women bowed. The music ceased
and there was a silence. The band played a second
time. Again there was the bowing and baring of
heads and again the long silence. And yet there was
no speaker. It was like a huge Quaker meeting in the
open air. And just as a sermon has no place in
Russian public worship, so here a speech was not
essential to this act of public devotion. But should
some one from the people feel the impulse to speak
there was the platform awaiting him. It was as if
in the pause the people were generating a voice.
At last out of the crowd one came and cUmbed
upon the high platform. He had not the gift of
oratory but his frequent iteration, "They died for
us. They died for us," touched others to utterance.
First came a peasant, bronzed and bearded and
in peasant costume. He said: "All my Ufe has
been one of toil and fear. . . . Pain and torture and
killing without end we had in the dark days of the
Czar. Then the morning of the Revolution came and

THE RED FUNERAL 261
these terrors passed away. Workingmen and peas
ants were very happy and I was happy too. But
suddenly in the midst of our rejoicing came this
blow. Once more all is night around us. We can
not believe it; but here before our eyes, dead and
cold, lie our brothers and comrades who fought for
the Soviet. And in the north other comrades are
falling before the guns. We listen and strain to
hear the sound of the peasants and workers of other
lands coming to the rescue. But it is in vain. All
we can hear is the sound of the guns in the north."
As he finished, against the blue sky appeared a
figure in white. A woman had climbed upon the
platform. At the behest of the crowd she began to
speak: "All thru the past we women have seen our men
led off to the wars while we wept at home. Those
who ruled told us that it was right and for our
glory. Those wars were far away and we did not
understand. But our men here were killed before
our eyes. This we can understand. And we under
stand that in it there was neither right nor glory.
No, it was a cruel, heartless wrong and every child
born of the mothers of the working-class shall hear
the story of this wrong."
Most eloquent of all was a lad of seventeen, the
secretary of a league of young Socialists. "We were
students and artists and such kind of people. We
held ourselves aloof from the Soviet," he said. "It
seemed to us foolish for workmen to govern without

262 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
the wisdom of the wise. But now we know that you
were right and we were wrong. From now on we
shall stand with you. What you do we will do. We
pledge our tongues and pens to make known the
wrongs that you have suffered the length and breadth
of Russia and thruout the world."
Suddenly the word went thru the throng that
Constantin Sukhanov had been paroled until five
o'clock and that he was coming with counsels of
peace and moderation.
While some were affirming his coming and others
were denying it, he himself appeared. He was
quickly passed along upon the shoulders of the
sailors. In a storm of cheers he cUmbed the ladder
and came out upon the platform-top, smiUng. . . .
Twice his eyes swept across that field of upturned
faces filled with trust and love, awaiting the words
of their young leader.
As if to avert the flood of tragedy and pathos that
beat suddenly upon him from every side, he turned
his head away. His eyes fell for the first time upon
the red coffins of the men who had been slain in
defense of his Soviet. That was too much. A
shudder passed thru his frame, he threw up his
hands, staggered, and would have fallen headlong
into the crowd, but a friend caught him. With both
hands pressed to his face, Sukhanov, in the arms of
his comrades, sobbed like a child. We could see his
breath come and go and the tears raining down his
cheeks. The Russians are Uttie given to tears. But

THE RED FUNERAL 263
that day seventeen thousand Russians sobbed with
their young leader on the public square of Vladi
vostok. Sukhanov knew that many tears were an
A Pledge to indulgence, and that he had a big and seri
ne Dead. ous task to perform. Fifty feet behind
him was the British Consulate, and fifty
rods before him were the waters of the Golden Horn
with the frowning guns of the Allied Fleet. He
wrenched himself away from his grief and gather
ing himself together began his message. With an
ever mounting passion of earnestness he spoke, clos
ing with words destined to become the rallying cry
for the workers in Vladivostok and the Far East: —
"Here, before the Red Staff Building where our
comrade gruzchiki were slain, we swear by these
red coffins that hold them, by their wives and chil
dren that weep for them, by the red banners which
float over them, that the Soviet for which they died
shall be the thing for which we live, or, if need be,
Uke them die. Henceforth the return of the Soviet
shall be the goal of all our sacrifice and devotion.
To that end we shall fight with every means. The
bayonets have been wrested from our hands, but
when the day comes and we have no guns, we shall
fight with sticks and clubs, and when these are gone,
then with our bare fists and bodies. Now it is for
us to fight only with our minds and spirits. Let us

264 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
make them hard and strong and unyielding. The
Soviet is dead. Long live the Soviet!"
The crowd caught up the closing words in a tre
mendous demonstration, mingled with the strains of
the "International." Then that haunting "Funeral
Hymn of the Revolution" at once so plaintive and
triumphant: "You fell in the fatal fight
For the liberty of the people, for the honor of the people.
You gave up your lives and everything dear to you.
The time will come when your surrendered life will count.
The time is near: when tyranny falls, the people arise, great
and free.
Farewell, brothers, you chose a noble path,
At your grave we swear to fight, for freedom and the people's
happiness."
A resolution was read proclaiming the restoration
of the Soviet, the objective of all the future struggles
of the revolutionary proletariat and peasants of the
Far East. At the call for the vote seventeen thou
sand hands shot into the air. They were the hands
which had built the cars and paved the streets,
forged the iron, held the plough, and swung the ham
mer. All kinds of hands they were: the big, rough
hands of the old gruzchiki, the artisans', deft and
sinewy, the knotted hands of the peasants, thick with
callouses, and thousands of the frailer, whiter hands
of the working women. By these hands the riches
of the Far East had been wrought. They were no
different from the scarred, stained hands of labor
anywhere in all the world. Except in this regard:

THE RED FUNERAL 265
for a time they had held the power. The Govern
ment had been within their grasp. Four days ago
it had been wrested from their grasp, but the feel
of it was still within their hands — these hands raised
now in solemn pledge to take that power again.
A sailor striding down from the hiU-
"The Americans top pushed thru the crowd and cUmbed
Understand." upon the platform.
"Comrades!" he cried joyously, "we
are not alone. I ask you to look away to the flags
flying over there on the American battleship. You
cannot see them down there where you stand. But
they are there. No, comrades, we are not alone to
day in our grief. The Americans understand and
they are with us!"
It was a mistake, of course. This was July the
Fourth. Those flags had been hung out in celebra
tion of our Day of Independence. But the crowd
did not know that. To them it was Uke the sudden
touch of a friend's hand upon a lonely traveler in a
foreign land.
With enthusiasm they caught up the cry of the
sailor: "The Americans are with us!" And the vast
conclave of workers Ufting up their coffins, wreaths
and banners were once more in motion. They were
going to the cemetery, but not directly. Tired as
they were from long standing in the sun, they made
a wide detour to reach the street that runs up the
steep hiU to the American Consulate. Then

266 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
straight up the sharp slope they toiled in a cloud of
dust, still singing as they marched, until they
came before the Stars and Stripes floating from the
flagstaff. And there they stopped and laid the coffins
of their dead beneath the flag of America.
They stretched out their hands, crying, "Speak to
us a word!" They sent delegates within to implore
that word. On the day the great Republic of the
West celebrated its independence, the poor and dis
inherited of Russia came asking sympathy and un
derstanding in the struggle for their independence.
Afterward, I heard a Bolshevik leader bitterly
resentful at this "compromise with revolutionary
honor and integrity."
"How stupid of them," he said. "How inane of
them! Have we not told them that all countries are
aUke — all imperialists? Was this not repeated to
them over and over again by their leaders?"
Truly it had been. But with this demonstration
of the Fourth of July the leaders had little to do.
They were in prison. The affair was in the hands of,
the people themselves. And, however cynical many
leaders were about the professions of America, the
people were not so. In the hour of their affliction,
these simple trusting folk, makers of the new Social
Democracy of the East, came stretching forth their
hands to the old Political Democracy of the West.
They knew that President WUson had given his
assurance of help and loyalty to the "people of Rus
sia." They reasoned: "We, the workers and peas-

THE RED FUNERAL 267
ants, the great majority here in Vladivostok, are we
not the people? Today in our trouble we come to
claim the promised help. Our enemies have taken
away our Soviet. They have killed our comrades.
We are alone and in distress and you alone of all the
nations of the earth can understand." No finer
tribute could they offer than to come thus, bringing
their dead, with the faith that out of America would
come compassion and understanding. America, their
only friend and refuge.
But America did not understand. The American
people did not even hear a word about it. These
Russian folk do not know that the American people
never heard about it. All they know is that a few
weeks after that appeal came the landing of the
American troops. They united with Japanese troops,
marching into Siberia, shooting down peasants and
workers. And now these Russian folk say to one another:
"How stupid we were to stand there in the heat and
the dust stretching out our hands like beggars!"

CHAPTER XIX

EXIT

'"pHE Bolsheviks will be crushed like egg shells,1'
¦¦- said the wisemen as the Allies started into Si
beria. The idea of serious Soviet resistance was ridi
culed. The Czar's government, then Kerensky's, had
tumbled like a house of cards. Why should not the
Soviet government go the same way?
The American Major Thacher has pointed out,
why not: The Czar's power was based on his armies;
it was only necessary to disintegrate these armies
and the Czar fell. The Kerensky government rested
in the cabinet; it was only necessary to surround
his ministers in the Winter Palace and Kerensky
fell. The Soviet government, however, was rooted
in thousands of local Soviets — an organism made up
of countless cells; to destroy the Soviet government,
every one of these separate organizations must be
destroyed. And they did not relish destruction.
As the alarm was sounded thru the Far East the
peasants and workers rallied against the invaders.
They fought fiercely, yielding ground only inch by
inch. In the two cities north of Vladivostok the
Soviets had been established without the kUling of
268

EXIT 269
a single person. In overthrowing these Soviets
thousands were now killed, and not only the hos
pitals, but sheds and warehouses were filled with the
wounded. Instead of an easy "military promenade
thru Siberia" the Interventionists faced a hard
bloody conflict.
The Vladivostok bourgeoisie were amazed at the
stubborn resistance. Then enraged they turned on
all partisans of the Soviet in fury.
I had no hankering for martyrdom. So I
/ Get avoided the main street and went out in dis-
Arrested guise or under cover of night. I was an
a Little. outcast. But that did not grieve me. I was
concerned for the manuscript of my book on
Russia. It was in the Soviet building — now head
quarters of the new White government.
I decided that the only way to get it was to walk
brazenly into the enemy's camp and ask for it. I
did so and fell straight into the hands of the new
Secret Service Chief.
"I've been looking for you. Thank you for com
ing," he said with mock politeness. "You will stay
with us." I was a prisoner of the Counter-Revolu
tion. Fortunately among the Americans was an old
classmate of mine, Fred Goodsell. He negotiated in
my behalf and secured my release — but not my
manuscript. Now I ventured to return to my lodgings. Some

270 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
spy observing my arrival must have telephoned
the Whites. I was busy arranging my papers when
an automobile whirled up. Six White Guards
jumped out, rushed into the room, and shoving
their revolvers into my face, began yelling, "We've
got you now, we've got you."
"But I've already been arrested and released,"
I protested. "We're not going to arrest you, you damned
swine. We're going to kiU you," they shouted.
Sudden noise outside again. Another motor-car
dashed up. Bang! Another crash at the door! A
captain and four more men with rifles careened
into the room. They were Czechs declaring they
had orders for my arrest.
"But we have already arrested him," said the
Whites. "No," insisted the Czechs. "We're going to take
him." "But we've got him," persisted the Whites.
It was quite thrilling to find myself a person of
such sinister importance. My gratification over it
was tempered a bit by the sight of the bayonets.
There were too many of them — too much readiness
to use them. Instead of a captive I might soon be
a corpse. Happily the Czech captain had a sense
of humor.
"Your wishes in the matter?" he said turning to
me with a deep bow. "Whose prisoner do you
prefer to be?"

EXIT 271
"Your prisoner — the Czechs," I repUed.
With magnificent noblesse oblige he turned to the
Whites. "Gentlemen, he is yours," he declared
magnanimously. He appeased his own soldiers by letting them
loose on my papers (they were afterwards delivered
to the American Consul).
The Whites hustled me into their automobUe and
thru the city where a few days earlier I had ridden
as a guest of the Soviet, I rode now ringed with
bayonets and with two revolvers pressed against my
ribs — a prisoner of the Whites.
White headquarters was surrounded byan excited
bourgeois mob watching the round up of Reds and
haUing each victim with catcalls and cries of "give
him the rope." I was pushed thru the jeering crowd
into the buUding and by great good luck straight into
the arms of Squersky, a former acquaintance. He
motioned me not to recognize him and in due time
secured my release. This time I came out with a
document which read: "Citizens — You are re
quested not to arrest the American Williams."
But there was Uttie protection in this pa-
Homeward per, for black hatred against the Soviet
Bound. grew from day to day. I had the feeling
of a hunted animal and in ten days lost
as many pounds. "At any moment you may lose
your life," said the American Vice-Consul. "Two
parties have sworn to shoot you down at sight."

272 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
"I am anxious to leave but I have no money to
leave with," I told him. He could see my per
plexity, but he could not see that it was any con
cern of his.
The workingmen heard of my plight and came to
my rescue. They were in hard straits but they
raised a thousand rubles. The men in jail smuggled
out another thousand. Now I was ready to go.
But the Japanese Consul refused to vise my pass
port. He confronted me with a list of my crimes,
chief among which were articles against intervention
that I had published in the Soviet papers. The
Tokio Foreign Office did not like these articles. It
had cabled that in no circumstances was my pres
ence to be allowed to pollute the sacred soil of Japan.
The Chinese, however, gave me a vise and I booked
on a coasting-steamer bound for Shanghai.
My last night was spent with tovarishe in a hiding-
place in the hills. The Soviet had not been de
stroyed. It had gone underground. In the secret
retreat the leaders yet uncaptured, gathered to plan
and organize. In farewell they sang for me the
hymn of the English Transport Workers, taught
them by Jerome: "Hold the fort for we are coming t
Union men be strong;
Side by side we battle onward,
Victory will come."
With these words ringing in my ears on July n,
I sailed past the AUied battleships and out into the

EXIT 273
Pacific. I stewed in Shanghai a month before I
could get passage for America. At last I got
it and eight weeks after I left the Golden Horn
of the Far East I sighted the Golden Gate of
California. As our steamer swung to anchor in San Fran
cisco harbor a launch ran alongside and officers in
naval uniform climbed aboard. They were mem
bers of the American Naval Intelligence sent out to
welcome me to the homeland. No prodigal, return
ing from long rioting in a far country, could have
had a warmer reception. Their solicitude for
my welfare was most embarrassing. They over
whelmed me with attention, insisted on escorting me
to their quarters and tending to all details of my
baggage. They assured me of their profound in
terest in aU Soviet affairs and to prove it relieved me
of every pamphlet, document and note-book. Their
appetite for Russian literature was insatiable. Lest
one scrap of it should escape them they looked into
my wallet, shoes, hat-band, even the lining of my
coat. Likewise they looked into my pedigree, my
past and my future. Then they passed me on to
other authorities who looked into my ideas.
"Now you are a Socialist, Mr. Williams," said
one of my inquisitors. "You are also an Anarchist,
aren't you?"
I denied the charge.
"Well, what other beliefs do you hold?"
"Altruism, optimism and pragmatism," I told him.

274 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
He duly recorded them in his note-book. More
strange and dangerous Russian doctrines being im
ported into America!
After three days of pleasant camaraderie, I was
sent on to Washington.

CHAPTER XX
RETROSPECT
TT was not the revolutionists who made the Rus-
*• sian Revolution. This in spite of hosts of revo
lutionists who tried their best to make it. For a
century gifted men and women of Russia had been
agitated over the cruel oppression of the people. So
they became agitators. Into the villages, the shops
and the slums they went crying:
"Shake to earth your chains like dew,
Which in sleep have fallen on you.
Ye are many, they are few."
But the people did not rise. They did not even
seem to hear. Then came that supreme agitator —
Hunger. Hunger, rising out of economic collapse
and war, goaded the sluggish masses into action.
Moving out against the old worm-eaten structure
they brought it down. Elemental impersonal forces
did what human agencies found impossible.
The revolutionists, however, had their part. They
did not make the Revolution. But they made the
Revolution a success. By their efforts they had
prepared a body of men and women with minds
trained to see facts, with a program to fit the facts
and with fighting energy to drive it thru. There
275

276 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
were a million of them — perhaps more, possibly less.
The important thing is not their number, but the
fact that they were organized to act as receivers
of the bankrupt, old order, as a salvage-corps of the
Revolution. At the core of this were the Communists. H. G.
Wells says, "In the vast disorganization an emer
gency government supported by a disciplined party
of perhaps 150,000 adherents — the Communist
Party — took control. ... It suppressed brigand
age, established a sort of order and security in the
exhausted towns and set up a crude rationing system,
the only possible government . . . the only idea, the
only solidarity."
For four years the Communists have had con
trol of Russia. What are the fruits of their steward
ship? "Repressions, tyranny, violence," cry the enemies.
"They have abolished free speech, free press, free'
assembly. They have imposed drastic miUtary con
scription and compulsory labor. They have been
incompetent in government, inefficient in industry.
They have subordinated the Soviets to the Com
munist Party. They have lowered their Communist
ideals, changed and shifted their program and com
promised with the capitalists."
Some of these charges are exaggerated. Many
can be explained. But they cannot all be explained
away. Friends of the Soviet grieve over them.

RETROSPECT 277
Their enemies have summoned the world to shudder
and protest against them.
When I am tempted to join the wailers and the
mud-slingers my mind goes back to a conversation
on the docks of Vladivostok in June, 1918. Colonel
Robins, of the American Red Cross, was talking to
Constantin Sukhanov, President of the Soviet.
"If no help comes from the Allies, how long can
the Soviet last?"
Sukhanov shook his head ruefully.
"Six weeks?" queried Robins.
"It will be hard to hold on longer," said Sukhanov.
Robins turned to me with the same question. I,
too, was dubious about the outlook.
We were sympathizers. We knew the might and
the vitality of the Soviet. But we saw also the tre
mendous obstacles it confronted. And the odds
seemed against it.
In the first place the Soviet faced the
Forces Ranged same conditions that had overwhelmed
Against the the Czar and Kerensky governments,
Bolsheviks. i. e., the dislocation of industry, the
paralysis of transport, the hunger and
misery of the masses.
In the second place the Soviet had to cope with
a hundred new obstacles — desertion of the intelU-
gentsia, strike of the old officials, sabotage of the
technicians, excommunication by the church, the
blockade by the Allies. It was cut off from the grain

278 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
fields of the Ukraine, the oil fields of Baku, the coal
mines of the Don, the cotton of Turkestan — fuel and
food reserves were gone. "Now," said their enemies,
"the bony hand of hunger will clutch the people
by their throat and bring them to their senses." To
prevent supply trains reaching the cities, agents of
the imperialists dynamited the railway bridges and
put emery into the locomotive bearings.
Here were troubles enough to break the strongest
souls. But still more were coming. The capitalist
press of the world was mobiUzed against the Bol
sheviks. They were pictured as "hireUngs of the
Kaiser," "red-eyed fanatics," "cold-blooded assas
sins," "long bearded ruffians running amuck by day,
carousing in the Kremlin at night," "profaners of
art and culture," "despoilers of women." As a
crowning infamy the "Decree for the Nationalization
of Women," was forged and broadcasted thru the
world. The pubUc was called upon to transfer their
hate from the Huns to the Bolsheviks.
While abroad hatred against the Bolsheviks as
the new "enemies of civilization" mounted from day
to day, these selfsame Bolsheviks were straining
brains and sinews to rescue civilization in Russia
from total collapse. Watching them at their heart
breaking, back-breaking tasks, Ransome wrote:
"No one contends that the Bolsheviks are angels.
I only ask that men shall look thru the fog of Ubel
that surrounds them and see the ideal for which
these young men are struggling in the only way in

RETROSPECT 279
which they can struggle. If they fail they will fail
with clean shields and clean hearts, having striven
for an ideal which will live beyond them. Even if
they fail, they will none the less have written a page
more daring than any other I can remember in the
story of the human race. . . . When in after years
men read that page they will judge your country and
my country by the help or hindrance they gave to
the writing of it."
This appeal was in vain.
As the monarchists of Europe combined to crush
the idea loosed on the world by the French Revolu
tion, so the capitalists of Europe and America com
bined to crush the idea loosed on the world by the
Russian Revolution. To these famished, frozen,
typhus-stricken Russians sailed no ships of good will
laden with books, tools, teachers and engineers but
grim ships of war and transports laden with troops
and officers, guns and poison-gas. Landings were
made at strategic points on the coast of Russia.
Monarchists, landlords and Black Hundreds flocked
to these rallying centers. New White armies were
conscripted, drilled and equipped with hundreds of
milUons of dollars of suppUes. The Interventionists
started their drive on Moscow, seeking to plunge
the sword into the heart of the Revolution.
Out of the East rolled the hordes of Kolchak
following the trail of the Czechs across Siberia. Out
of the West struck the armies of Finland, the Letts
and Lithuanians. Down from the forests and snow-

280 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
fields of the North moved the British, French and
Americans. Up from the seaports of the South
plunged the tanks, aeroplanes and Death BattaUons
of Denikin. From all points of the compass they
came. Out of the Esthonian marshes — Yudenich.
Out of Poland — the veteran legions of Peltura. Out
of Crimea — the cavalry of Baron Wrangel.
A million-bayonetted ring of steel closed in upon
the Revolution. The Revolution staggered under
the blows rained upon it, but its heart was un
daunted. If it must die — it would die fighting.
Once more in the war weary vUlages
The Revolution and destitute towns throbbed the
Fights for Life. drums beating the caU to arms. Once
more the worn-out lathes and looms
were ordered to produce uniforms and rifles. Once
more the crippled railways were freighted with sol
diers and cannon. Out of the almost exhausted re
sources of Russia the Revolution armed, uniformed
and officered 5,000,000 men and the Red Armies
took the field.
Only 400 miles from Moscow they hurled them
selves against Kolchak and pushed his panic-stricken
forces back the 4,000 miles they had advanced across
Siberia. In the pine forests of the North, clad in
uniforms of white, sliding thru the snow on skis, they
met the Allies and pushed them back on Archangel,
forcing them to ship for home across the waters of
the White Sea. They stopped the headlong rush

RETROSPECT 281
of Denikin at Tula, the smithy of Russia, "in
whose red fires the red steel is welded into the
bayonets of the invincible Red Army." Driven
back to the Black Sea shores he escaped on a British
cruiser. Budenny's Cavalry racing day and night across
the Ukrainian steppes flung themselves suddenly on
the Polish flanks, turned the victorious advance of
the legionaries into a disastrous retreat and harried
them up to the gates of Warsaw. Wrangel was
beaten and bottled up in the Crimea, and while the
shock troops of the Soviet hurled themselves against
his concrete forts, the main Red Army hurried across
the frozen Sea of Azov and the Baron fled to Turkey.
In the outskirts of Petrograd, under its very domes,
Yudenich was cut to pieces, the armies of the Baltic
States were beaten back behind their borders, and
the Whites annihilated in Siberia. The Revolution
triumphed all around the circle.
The Counter-Revolutionists were broken not only
by the heavy battalions of the Soviet, but by the Idea
incarnated in these armies of the Revolution.
They were armies with banners, red banners em
blazoned with the watchwords of a new world. They
advanced into battle singing the songs of justice
and fraternity. They treated their captured enemies
as misguided brothers. They fed them, bound up
their wounds and sent them back to tell in their
own ranks stories of Bolshevik hospitality. They
bombarded the Allied Camp with questions:

282 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
"Why did you come to Russia, Allied Soldiers?"
"Why should workmen of France and England mur
der their fellow-workers of Russia?" "Do you want
to destroy our Workmen's Republic?" "Do you want
to restore the Czar?" "You are fighting for the
bond holders of France, the land grabbers of Eng
land, the imperialists of America. Why shed blood
for them?" "Why don't you go home?" *
Red soldiers rose up to shout these questions
across the trenches. Red sentries with hands up
lifted rushed forward crying them out. Red aero
planes dropped them circUng down from the skies.
The allied troops pondered over these queries and
were shaken. Their morale broke down. They
fought half heartedly. They mutinied. The Whites
) in tens of thousands — whole battaUons and ambu
lance corps — came over to the Revolution. One
after another the armies of the Counter-Revolution
crumpled up or melted away like snow in a Russian
spring. The great steel cordon tightening around
the Revolution was smashed to bits.
The Revolution was triumphant. The Soviets
were saved. But with what appalling sacrifices!
"For three years," says Lenin, "our
Havoc Wrought whole energy was devoted to the tasks
by Intervention, of war." The wealth of the nation
was poured into the army. Fields
were untilled, machines untended. Lack of fuel shut
down the factories. Green wood under the boilers
* Appendix IV. A Bolshevik Circular for British Soldiers.

POCCHiiCHAfi COlWAJlKCTrVHECHAS *«EPATHBHAII COBETCHAfl PECn.6/lr.HA wo.st.phk »cex CTPAH.C0M.w-rn,,
KPACHA* AP/iHfl PA34ABH/I4
E€A©rfiAfA€HCKKX> IIArASllTOB-
EOACHHHA. ACHHKHHA ,K0/IHAK4,

TOR4ffll4M!BOPHTeCL C 3AE*30tt!
yHHHlTO)KAliT€ BOUIfc!
"The Red Army has Crushed the White Guard Parasites — Yudenich,
Denikin, Kolchak. — Comrades ! Fight now against Infection ! Annihi
late the Typhus-bearing Louse!" — Soviet Health Poster.

RETROSPECT 283
ruined the locomotives. The retreating armies tore
up railway tracks, blew up bridges and depots and
fired the grain fields and the villages. The Poles
not only destroyed the water-works and electric-sta
tion of Kiev, but in sheer maUce dynamited the
Cathedral of St. Vladimir.
The Counter-Revolutionists turned their retreat
into an orgy of destruction. With torch and dyna
mite they laid waste the land leaving behind a black
wake of ruins and ashes.
A host of other evils came out of the war —
drastic Censorship, arbitrary arrests, drum-head
court-martials. The high handed measures charged
against the Communists were to a large extent meas
ures of war — none the less they were casualties to
the ideals of the Revolution.
Then the human casualties! The death toll at
the front was large. The death lists from the hos
pitals were appalling. Medicines, gauze and surgi
cal instruments could not come thru the blockade.
So limbs were amputated without anesthetics.
Wounds were bandaged with newspapers. Gangrene
and blood poisoning, typhus and cholera swept thru
the armies unchecked.
The Revolution could have sustained the further
loss in man-power — for Russia is vast. But it could
not afford the loss in brain-power and soul-power,
the wholesale massacre of its directing energizing
spirits — the Communists. It was these Communists
who bore the brunt of the fighting. They were

284 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
formed into shock battalions. They were rushed
into gaps to stiffen the wavering lines. Captured
they were always killed. In the three years' war
half the young Communists of Russia were slaugh
tered. A mere recital of casualties means nothing, for
statistics are only unemotional symbols. Let the
reader recall the young men he has met in the pages
of this book. They were at once dreamers and hard
workers, idealists and stern reaUsts — the flower of
the Revolution, the incarnation of its dynamic spirit.
It seems incredible for the Revolution to go on
without them. But it does go on. For they are
dead. Nearly everyone in this book is now in his
grave. Here is the way some of them died:
Volodarsky — assassinated in the general plot to
kill all Soviet leaders.
Neibut — executed on the Kolchak Front.
Yanishev — bayonetted by a White Guard on the
Wrangel Front.
Woskov — died of typhus on the Denikin Front.
Tunganogi — shot at his desk by White Guards.
Utkin — dragged from motor car and shot.
Sukhanov — led into the woods in the early morn
ing and clubbed to death with rifle butts.
Melnikov — taken out of prison, shot and blud
geoned. "They were tortured, they were stoned, they were
sawn asunder, they were set wandering in deserts

RETROSPECT 285
and in mountains, in caves and in dens of the earth."
It was a cold selective killing of the keymen of
the revolution, a massacre of its future builders. An
incalculable loss to Russia — for these were men who
could withstand the corruption of office and the
poison of power. Men who could live as valorously
as they died.
They went to their death in order that the Revolu
tion might live. And it does live. Tho crippled and
compromised, out of the long ordeal of famine, pesti
lence, blockade and war, the Russian Revolution
emerges victorious.
Is the Revolution worth these sacrifices? These
are its assured results:
One. It has destroyed root and branch the State
apparatus of Czarism.
Two. It has transferred the great estates of the
crown, the landlords and the monastic orders into
the hands of the people.
Three. It has nationalized the basic industries
and begun the electrification of Russia. It has fenced
off Russia from the unlimited exploitation of free-
booting capitalists.
Four. It has brought into the Soviets 1,000,000
workers and peasants and given them direct experi
ence in government. It has organized 8,000,000
workers into trade unions. It has taught 40,000,000
peasants to read and write. It has opened the doors
of tens of thousands of new schools, Ubraries and

286 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
theatres and roused the masses to the wonders of
science and art.
Five. It has broken the spell of the past over
a great people. Their potential forces have become
kinetic. Their fatalistic: "It was so, and it will be
so," is changed to "It was so, but it wiU not be so."
Six. It has assured self-determination to a score
of subject races formerly held in vassalage to the
Russian Empire. It has given them free hand to
develop their own language, literature and institu
tions. Persia, China, Afghanistan and other back
ward countries — that is "countries with great nat
ural resources and small navies" — it has treated as
equals. Seven. It has not paid Up-service to "open diplo
macy," but has made it a reality. "It has swept the
secret treaties into the ash-barrel of history."
Eight. It has pioneered the way to a new society
and made invaluable laboratory experiments in So
cialism on a colossal scale. It has quickened the
faith and increased the morale of the working-classes
of the world in their battle for the new social order.
The wise men rise up to point out that these results
might have been obtained in a better way. Likewise
the Reformation, the Independence of America, the
Abolition of Slavery might have been achieved in a
more gracious, less violent manner. But history did
not move that way. And only the foolish quarrel
with history.

APPENDLX I
THE DEATH OF A RED REGIMENT
Interview of Mr. N. Shiffrin with the editor of a military
paper of the Counter-Revolutionary army of the North. Pub
lished in the anti-Bolshevik daily Der Tag, September 7, 1010:
"As you know the Bolsheviks changed the names of the old
regiments. The Moscow troops have 'K.L.' on their shoulder
straps — the initials of Karl Liebknecht. We captured one of
these regiments and they were tried. The trial at the White front
is brief. Every soldier is examined, and if he admits that he is
a Communist he is immediately sentenced to death by hanging
or shooting. The Reds are well aware of this.
"Lieutenant K. approached the captured regiment and said:
'Those of you who are true Communists show yourselves courage
ous and step forward.' A painfully oppressive interval. . . .
Slowly in closed ranks over half of the regiment steps forward.
They are sentenced to be shot. But before being shot they
must dig their own graves.
"It is twilight. The air is full of the odor of fragrant northern
flowers. The green dome of the village church is seen, sur
rounded by sleepy poplars. Peasants, women, children and sol
diers crowd on the field, huddling together like sheep in a storm.
"The condemned are told to take off their clothes. The front
is poor and their uniforms are needed by the Whites. In order
to save the clothes from being soiled with blood or tom by
bullets the prisoners are ordered to undress before they are shot.
Slowly the Communists take off their shirts, and tying their
clothes together in a bundle, they put them aside.
"They stand there in the field, freezing, and in the moonlight
287

288 APPENDIX
their skin appears extremely white, almost transparent. Each of
them is given a pick-axe and they begin digging large common
graves. The dew is falling like a mild drizzle and there is a tear
in every eye. The naked Communists keep on digging. It is get
ting darker and darker. There is a chaos of restlessly moving
limbs. It is hard to distinguish the naked from the dressed.
"At last the graves have the necessary depth. The condemned
sigh from weariness. Many throw themselves on the soft wet
ground and rest. It is their last repose. Only now I notice that
many have bandages around their feet. They have already
been wounded in the struggle.
"Lieutenant K. asks them to state their last wish. Two take
thin rings off their fingers and give them to the Lieutenant.
The others have no wishes to make, altho every one of them
has a home, a wife, children, relatives. I ask one of them 'What
made a Communist of you?'
"He replies: 'The accursed life! The world needs happiness.'
"The firing squads are holding their rifles ready to shoot. The
naked Communists take their positions close to one another,
forming a white wall in the moonlight. . . . There is a com
mand, a flash and the sound of rifles. . . . The Communists are
still standing erect. A second volley rings out. The bullets strike
home in their hearts, thick blood streams leap into space. Some
are only slightly wounded. And in the fraction of a second
before the soldiers shoot again, I hear deep sickening groans.
Volley follows volley. Now those who are still alive cry out:
'Ho there, take better aim!' One points to his heart, crying, 'Aim
here!' "Finally, all are dead. Some are lying near the edge of the
graves, others have fallen into them. It is all over. Nothing
disturbs the quiet." II
THE TRAIN OF DEATH
This is part of the diary of Mr. Rudolph Bukely, a Red Cross
worker, formerly a banker in Honolulu. It reveals the conditions

A soldier of the Red Army captured by the Whites. He confesses he is a
Communist and is bound to a stake to be shot.

Some of the Bolshevik prisoners on the Train of Death, 2,000 of whom were
shot, starved, or frozen to death.

APPENDIX 289
following Allied Intervention in Siberia, and shows the atrocities
of White Terrorists against Bolsheviks and even innocent people.
It is abbreviated from the American Red Cross Magazine of
April 1919 which says: "Propriety has demanded the exclusion of
much that is unprintable."
fit is the eighteenth day of November, 1918. I am at Nikolsk-
Ussurisk in Siberia. In the past two days I have seen enough
misery to fill a life-time. I will try to set down in my own
manner what I have seen.
"I have seen, through the windows of box-cars forty animals
who once were human men, women and children; faces glared
at me which I could not recognize as human beings. They were
like beasts' faces, of a species unknown to man. Stark mad
ness and terror stared from their eyes, and over all the un
mistakable signs of death.
"I have seen the dead lying along the roadside, and fifty or
sixty men fighting like dogs for pieces of bread thrown to them
by the sympathetic poor people of Nikolsk. . . .
"This 'train of death,' for by that name all Eastern Siberia
now knows it, left Samara about six weeks ago in charge of
Russian officers. It had on board at that time 2,100 prisoners
of all sorts.
"Since that day 800 pf these wretches have died from starva
tion, filth, and disease. There were, as near as we could count,
1,325 men, women, and children penned up in these awful cars
yesterday. "It seems a wicked thing to say, but the thought has surely
come to me that to kill these people painlessly would require
perhaps three dollars' worth of poison or ten dollars' worth of
ammunition; and yet for weeks this train of fifty cars has been
wandering, driven on from station to station, every day a few
more corpses being dragged out. Many of these people have
been in box-cars for five weeks in their original clothing. There
are from 35 to 40 in a box-car, measuring say 25 by 11 feet, and
the doors have seldom been open save to drag out the bodies of

290 APPENDLX
the dead, or some woman who might better be. I have climbed
into these cars at night with my flashlight. I have seen men
with the death rattle in their throat, half naked, with lice and
vermin visible on them; others just lying in a semi-un
conscious stupor; and others with the whining grin of im
beciles, holding out their hands for a few cigarettes or kopecks,
chuckling with glee Uke apes upon being given them.
"The Russian officer in charge of the train has made incon
sistent statements about the reasons why these people have been
subjected to such awful deprivation and abuse. He tries to make
the best story of it possible. . . . Often for days at a time there
has been no one to give them even bread. Were it not for the
kindness of the poor villagers who, with tears running down their
cheeks, give them what Uttie they can afford, they would be
absolutely without nourishment.
"It is impossible to tell in print the story of the unfortunate
women imprisoned here. They are treated better than the men.
You all know why. In one car are ii women. On the inside
of the car hangs a piece of string. On it are four pairs of stock
ings owned by these n women. The floor is covered with refuse
and filth. There are no means of cleaning it, neither brooms nor
buckets. They have not taken off their clothing for weeks. AU
around the sides of the cars run two rows of planks, on which
the inmates sleep at night and sit hunched up by day. If there
ever is any official food for the prisoners, these women get the
first pick and their physical condition is much better.
"Since we arrived a cooking car has been put on the train, with
a large iron kettle, and yesterday the guards claim to have
given the prisoners a little soup. One kettle for 1,325 people,
and soup passed through a window a foot by a foot and a half,
by means of an old rusty can ! Yesterday one of the women was
taken out by a Russian officer. He will return her when the
train pulls out. ... As we walked past the train, a man hailed
us from one of the cars and the guards were told that there
were dead inside. We insisted on the door being opened and this
is what we saw:

APPENDLX 291
"Lying right across the threshold was the body of a boy. No
coat, merely a thin shirt, in such tatters that his whole chest
and arms were exposed; for trousers a piece of jute bag pinned
around him, and no shoes or stockings. What agony that boy
must have suffered in the Siberian cold before he died of filth,
starvation, and exposure!
"And yet 'diplomacy' prevents us from taking charge and giving
aid. But we are holding the train!
"We climbed into the car and found two other dead lying on
the second tier of bunks amongst the Uving. Nearly every man
was sunken-eyed, gaunt, and half clad. They were racked by
terrible coughing. They had the stamp of death on them. If
aid does not come quickly they will die. We looked into a few
cars only, but at one window we saw a little girl perhaps eleven
years old. Her father, she said, had been mobilized into the
Red Guard. So now father, mother, and child are on that train
and wiU die there. Dr. Rosett is one of the most beautiful char
acters that I have ever known. When I saw him in the car
talking to these poor wretches and trying to comfort them, I
could not help thinking of the Good Physician and how He,
too, labored among the maimed, the halt and the blind.
". ... It is a strange thing that they aU look at you with an
expression sorrowful in the extreme, but never with a trace of
bitterness. Suffering seems to have destroyed in them the power
to express anger. I have visited the train at least ten times and
I have never as yet seen any expression of any kind pass over
the faces of these poor, tortured, dumb creatures.
"I went into the hospital last night. Fourteen were lying on
the filthiest straw imaginable. Three of them turned their duU
eyes on me, recognized the Red Cross uniform and got upon
their poor worn knees. One of them, an old man of sixty, had
a silver crucifix hanging around his neck. They sobbed soundless,
body-racking sobs, and said in Russian, 'May God and Jesus
Christ bless you and keep you for what you have done for us.'
We felt absolutely repaid for aU our work of these days, during
which time I have not bathed or shaved, nor had my clothes off,

292 APPENDLX
for I have dropped exhausted on my bed when I have finished
transcribing my notes, and it was time to sleep. . . .
"There is no use disguising the fact that these people are nearly
aU going to die, for as soon as the train shaU have pulled out
the old conditions will return and there win be once more the
corpses thrown out day by day."
Mr. Bukely's prophecy that the death train would still be a
death train was fulfiUed. It went on over the Trans-Siberian,
first west then east, back and forth, driven from town to town,
the authorities at each place refusing to aUow the prisoners to be
taken out of the train or the train to remain within its jurisdic
tion. On and on, days and nights, weeks running into months, the
wretched company ever dwindling as death takes its cruel and
incessant toll. [This was but one of many trains of death run by
the anti-Bolshevist governments^ III
THE BURIAL OF YANISHEV
The Moscow Izvestia of July 15, 1920, says:
"On July 13 the Moscow proletariat buried Comrade Mikhail
Petrovich Yanishev under the Kremlin waU. The first speaker,
the Chairman of the Moscow Soviet, L. B. Kamanev said:
" 'Of the many men who gave aU to the cause of the working-
class, Comrade Yanishev was one of the truest. Wherever there
was call for an honest, brave and energetic man, Yanishev was
sent. Recently he was appointed Chairman of the Moscow
Revolutionary Tribunal. He was ordered to leave that respon
sible post and sent to the front against Denikin. On the way to
the Western front he was ordered to the defense of South Russia
from the bands of Wrangel. Tho wounded in the shoulder he did
not leave his place in the front lines, but continued leading his
division forward until the treacherous hand of a White Guard
brought him down with a bayonet. He is dead. But the cause

APPENDIX 293
for which Comrade Yanishev gave his Ufe will not die. Hi*
blood was not spilt in vain. Many others will carry on the
struggle and bring it to a victorious finish.'
"Comrade Likhachev spoke and the ceremony ended with a
salute of three guns."
IV
A BOLSHEVIK CIRCULAR FOR BRITISH SOLDIERS
Why have you volunteered to come to Russia?
Why? Is it that you like war so much? Do you enjoy this
rolling in mud and blood? Do you get satisfaction from seeing
mangled bodies, and wrecked towns and villages? You claim
to be the representatives of a civUized race! Is this how you
propose to bring civilization into Russia?
Or is it that you feared being out of work and came to Russia
as a form of employment? Were you tempted by the increased
pay and extra rations? If that is so, it is strange employment
for men who have just finished a war for "lasting peace."
Does it not strike you that what you are getting for your
work is sheer Blood Money? It is the kind of work that cut
throats, blackguards, thieves and hooligans undertake to do for
money. If these are the reasons for which you came, it is not
much use appealing to your reason and humanity. The only
argument that we can effectively use against you is the bullet
and bayonet, and you will find that the Red Army will give you
all you want of that. You will find your job "soft" enough when
you find yourself sucked in the mud, in the marshes and forests of
Northern Russia.
We cannot believe, however, that the majority of you vol
unteered for these reasons. Probably you were induced by the
lies circulated by the capitaUst press about the anarchy and
terror prevaUing in Russia. Probably you have been induced to
beUeve that Bolsheviks are devils, who must be destroyed in
order that the peace of the world may be secured. If that is so,
we are convinced that when you learn the truth about Russia,

294 APPENDIX
you too wUl refuse to be the executioners of the Russian people,
just Uke the British troops you replaced in the Caucasus, and
the French and foreign troops in other parts who have refused.
There is no anarchy in Russia except that which the capitaUst
governments of the AUies are creating by invading Russia. You
are not allaying anarchy, you are creating it. You are not
bringing order in a country which is accused of disturbing the
peace of the world, you are commencing a new war.
You are simply the tools of the capitalists and landlords in
your countries who have sent you here to "punish" the Russian
workers and peasants for having dared to revolt against their
oppressors. The Russian Soviet Republic is a Workers' and
Peasants' RepubUc. The land and the wealth of Russia now
belong to the working-people of Russia. You have been brought
here to overthrow the power of the workers and restore Czarism,
landlordism and capitalism. Your governments are officially
supporting the Czarist officers, Kolchak and Denikin, with arms
and money for the avowed purpose of restoring the old regime.
And you are not merely helping, you are doing this.
Without your aid, the counter-revolution in Russia would have
been suppressed long ago, the civU-war would have been ended
and order restored. And the Russian people would have long
ago had the opportunity of developing their agriculture and in
dustry. Volunteers! You are workingmen too. What interests have
you in fighting for the gang of Russian counter-revolutionaries
and international capitalists? As workingmen, your business
should be to support your fellow-workers in those places where
they succeed in taking power, for the victory of the workers in
one country is a step toward the emancipation of the workers
in all countries.
In fighting the Russian workers, you are Scabbing; your fel
low-workers at home, knowing the real reason of your being
sent here, are preparing for a general strike against intervention
in Russia. In continuing to do the work of your government,
you are Scabbing on your fellow workers at home.

APPENDIX 295
Comrades ! It is dirty work you are doing. Have the courage
to pitch it. Do not let it be said that English workingmen were
so mean and contemptible as to suppress their own feUow-workers
for the sake of a Uttie extra money and food.
Comrades ! Do not be scabs. Stand by your class in the great
world movement for the emancipation of labor.
V
YESTERDAY AND TODAY
By Maxim Gorky
Yesterday was the day of the Great Falsehood — the last day
of its power.
For ages, man has, spider-like, thread by thread, dUigently
woven the strong cobweb of a cautious phiUstine life, impreg
nating it more and more with falsehood and greed. Man fed
on the flesh and blood of his fellow men. The means of pro
duction were used to oppress men, — this cynical falsehood was
regarded as immutable truth.
And yesterday this road brought mankind to the madness
of the great World War. In the red glow of this nightmare
the ugly nakedness of this old falsehood was brought to Ught.
Now we see the old world shaken to its foundations. Its hidden
secrets are exposed, and today even the blind have opened their
eyes and see the utter ugliness of the past.
Today is the day of reckoning for the falsehood which reigned
yesterday. The violent explosion of the people's patience has destroyed
the outworn order of life, and it cannot again be re-established
in its old forms. Not all of the outworn past is annihilated, but
it will be — tomorrow.
Today there is a great deal of horror, but it is all natural and
comprehensible. Is it not natural that people infected by the
strong poisons of the old order — alcohol and syphihs — should not
be generous? Is it not natural for people to steal, — if theft was

296 APPENDIX
the fundamental law of yesterday? Is it not natural, that tens,
hundreds, thousands of men should be killed, after being accus
tomed for years to kUI them by miUions? The seed of yester
day brings the fruit of today.
We should understand that in the midst of the dust and mud
and chaos of today, there has already begun the great work of
liberating mankind from the strong, iron cobweb of the past.
It is as painful and difiicult as the pangs of a new birth; but it
is the death of the evU of yesterday, going through its last hours
together with the man of yesterday.
It has so happened ' that the peoples marching to the decisive
battle for the triumph of justice are led by the least experienced
and weakest fighters, — by the Russians, a people of a backward
land, a people worn out by its past more than any other people.
Only yesterday the whole world looked upon them as semi-bar
barians, and today, almost dying from hunger, they are marching
toward victory or death with the ardor and courage of veterans.
Everyone who sincerely beUeves that the irresistible aspira
tion of mankind toward freedom, beauty, and a sensible Ufe is
not a vain dream, but that it is a real force which alone can
create new forms of Ufe, the lever which can move the world, —
every honest man must recognize the universal significance of the
activity now carried on by the earnest revolutionists of Russia.
The Revolution should be interpreted as a gigantic attempt to
incorporate in Ufe, the great ideas and watchwords created and
enunciated by the teachers of mankind. Yesterday the Socialist
thought of Europe pointed the way to the Russian people; today
the Russian worker is striving for the triumph of European
thought. If the honest Russian revolutionists, few in number, sur
rounded by enemies and exhausted by starvation, shaU be con
quered, the consequences of this 'terrible calamity wiU fall heavUy
on the shoulders of all the working class of Europe.
The Russian worker is confident that his brothers in spirit
will not permit the strangling of the revolution in Russia, that
they will not permit the resuscitation of the order, which is ex-

APPENDIX 297
piring and which wul disappear,— if the revolutionary thought of
Europe will comprehend the great tasks of today.
Come and go with us towards the new Ufe, whose creation
we work for without sparing ourselves and without sparing any
body or anything. Erring and suffering, in the great joy of labor
and in the burning hope of progress, we leave to the honest
judgment of history all our deeds. Come with us to battle against
the ancient order and to labor for the new. Forth to life's free
dom and beauty!
VI
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE WORKING AND
EXPLOITED PEOPLES
(Rejected by the Constituent Assembly, January 18, 1918.
Accepted by the great Third Congress of Soviets, January 27,
1918.) I. RUSSIA is declared a Republic of Workmen's, Soldiers'
and Peasants' councils. The whole central and local authority
rests with the Councils (Soviets). The Russian Soviet Republic
is declared a free aUiance of free nations and a federation of
national repubUcs.
n. With the object of removing the exploitation of man by
man, of preventing the division of society into classes, of merci
lessly suppressing all exploiters, of establishing a socialist organi
zation of society and of securing the victory of Socialism in all
lands, the Great Convention (Third All-Russian Congress) makes
the foUowing declarations:
1 (a) With the object of reaUzing the socialization of
land, all private property in the land is abol
ished, and the whole territory of the RepubUc is
declared the property of the people and is with
out compensation handed over to the working
population on the basis equal rights of utiliza
tion for aU. All forests, natural wealth and
water power of pubUc value, all live and dead
stock, model farms and agricultural stations, are
declared national property.

298 APPENDIX
(b) As a first step towards the complete transference
of factories, mines, raUways, and of the means
of production and distribution to the possession
of the Workers' and Peasants' RepubUc, the de
crees concerning Workmen's Control and con
cerning the Supreme Council of PubUc Economy
are hereby confirmed.
(c) As one of the conditions for the emancipation of
the working masses from the yoke of capitalism,
the transference of all banks to the possession
of the Workers' and Peasants' Soviet RepubUc is
confirmed.
(d) With the object of removing parasitical elements
of society and of securing industrial organiza
tion on a public basis, the obUgation of every
citizen to work is recognized.
(e) In the interests of securing the fuU authority of
the toUing masses and of removing aU possibili
ties of a re-establishment of the power of the
exploiters, the arming of the workers, the forma
tion of a Red Army out of workmen and
peasants, and the complete disarming of the
propertied classes is hereby decreed.
III. With the firm intention of rescuing mankind from the
claws of finance-capital and of imperiaUsm, which have flooded
the earth with blood in the most criminal of all wars, the Great
Convention endorses and confirms the following acts of the Soviet
Commissars: (a) The annulling of the Secret Treaties, the organiza
tion of fraternization between the workmen and
peasants of the armies now opposing each other
in the field, the conclusion at all costs of a
democratic peace by the workers themselves,
without annexations or indemnities, on the basis
of the self-determination of nations through
revolutionary means.

APPENDIX 299
(b) The complete break with the barbarous policy of
capitaUst civUization, which establishes the
power of the exploiters in a few select nations at
the cost of the enslavement of hundreds of mil
Uons of the toiling masses in Asia, in the Colo
nies and in all small countries.
(c) The recognition of the complete independence of
Finland, the withdrawal of the Russian armies
from Persia, and the right of self-determination
for Armenia.
(d) The annulling of the loans which were concluded
by the Government of the Tsar, the foreign
banks and the Russian bourgeoisie, as the first
blow against international bank and finance-
capital.
TV. The Great Convention beUeves that the time is at hand for
the decisive struggle with the exploiters, for whom there is now
no place in the organs of government. Power must be now wholly
and exclusively in the hands of the toiling masses and of their
representative organs — the Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers' and
Peasants' Deputies.

Dr. Wm. A. Wovschin collection
The President of the Soviet Republic is Kalinin— not Lenin. Kalinin is here
seated in front of a villag-e hut conferring with the peasants. (See next page).

Moscow, Oct. 26th, 1921 — The humblest peasant may come to
ask the help or advice of Kalinin, the President of the Soviet Republic
with none to bar his way.
Around him come pressing two or three score of men dressed in
rough untanned sheepskin or dun-colored cloth, that hall-mark of the
Russian villagers. Some are carrying a sack of food or a bed-roll,
token of the long journey they made to lay their case before Kalinin.
He greets his visitors simply and talks to one after another in the
same peasant dialect as theirs.
It is hard to realize that here before one's eyes is the secret of the
no small Bolshevist hold on the Russian people. More than any of
his colleagues, more even than Lenin/Kalinin knows what the peas
ants think, what they love or hate and what they want.
However impossible it is for him to appease their grievance or
satisfy their requests, he contrives somehow to send them away com
forted and almost contented. For the man streams magnetism in
every word and gesture.
"See, now, little mother," he says persuasively to an old woman
who has traveled a thousand miles to ask Kalinin that her village be
let off the food tax because the harvest is only half what was estimated,
"your crop is only 500 poods instead of 1,000. Then you will pay
only 25 poods instead of 55 on each hundred — that is your tax.
"More than that we cannot do, for we must feed our hungry bro
thers on the Volga, who have no crop at all — you would not have
them starve."
The old woman shakes her head strongly and backs away with the
evident feeling that somehow she has got the tax reduced 50 per cent,
which will be good news for her fellow-villagers.
Next comes a young soldier who claims that as a veteran of the
Polish war he should not pay a tax at all.
"But you are a man ofTula," says Kalinin, "and Tula folks, farm
as well as they fight. Why, I hear Tula has the best crop in Russia.
Surely you won't grudge help to hungry brothers. not so clever or
lucky as you ? "
The soldier looks sheepish but sticks stubbornly to his point.
"This is the first year I have been able to sow or reap my own
harvest for seven years, Comrade Kalenin. Others reaped while
I was fighting to defend them. Now let them pay the tax for me."
The President takes him up like a flash.
"What!" he cries, "Others worked to feed you while you were
winning glory ? " — he bends forward and touches the red star medal
on the youngster's army overcoat — ."well, now you, too, must give
something to help those who need it."
This time he has struck home. The soldier flushes with pride,
and, as he shakes the President's hand with a firm grip, he mutters:
"That's only fair, comrade. I will tell the rest of the soldiers of
our village what you say, and all will help."
And so it goes. An old man from Tambov and a widow from a
village near Moscow get part of their tax remitted because the former
is supporting a war-broken son, and the latter, five fatherless little
children. And the peasants go back to Russia's myriad villages with
a message of good tidings from Kalinin, the new Little Father of
the people. Walter Durantv, correspondent,
in the New York Times, Oct. 29th, 1921

Poster Reproduction of the Famous Kremlin. The Russians Say: "Above Moscow is the Kremlin, and
above the Kremlin are only the Stars." Inscribed on the Walls is the Slogan, "Long Live The
Third International."

VII

PLACARDS AND POSTERS
Machine-guns played their part in the Revolution. But \
bigger part was played by the printing-presses. The Soviet
waged a mighty battle with ink as well as lead. Every crisis,
every important event, produced its corresponding placard or
poster. They were pasted on walls and kiosks — one on top , of
the other — in some places 20 and 30 deep. Arranged in order,
they would tell a complete story: The History of the Revolu
tion in Posters from the Walls of Petrograd and Moscow.
Six of these posters appear in the foregoing text. Five more
are printed in the following pages. (On the left hand page, a
facsimile of the original Russian; on the right hand page, in
EngUsh.) 1. To all Workers or Petrograd (page 303). An appeal
to celebrate the success of the November Revolution — not by
strikes and demonstrations, but by quietness and work.
2. The Commission on Public Education (page 303). The
Bolsheviks had the majority in the newly elected Petrograd Duma.
They sought to arouse public sentiment in protest against the
teachers' strike.
3. Pravda (Truth) (page 307). Two half-pages of the of
ficial Bolshevik newspaper, calling the people to arms against the
Germans and Japanese. In issue No. 33, February 23, the price is
25 kopecks. In issue No. 4$, two weeks later, the price is 30
kopecks. The two issues show likewise the change of name in
the Party. Note also the double number in the date line,
"23 (10) February." By Soviet decree the old Julian calendar —
13 days behind the rest of the world — was replaced by the
Gregorian calendar.
4. From the Samara Federation of Anarchists (page 309).
In order to blacken the Anarchists, it was said that they had
declared for the Nationalization of Women. Infuriated at this
slander, they put out this hot repudiation. The so-called "Decree
for the Nationalization of Women," of course, had no existence
anywhere in Russia. Even the most extreme groups never con
sidered the idea. It was a monstrous canard invented by the
enemies of the Revolution.
5. The Cry for Bread (page 311). This is an appeal of the
cities to the peasants of the Ukraine and the Volga in 1918. Now
it is this Volga region that is stricken with drouth — the worst
since 1873. These peasants in turn are appealing for bread.
301

Ko m&mb paSowmi
nETPorpAo&i

Tenapama! PeBomonlfl flgStauaeTb pgBOJDOPjJi ffoStpins,
Eca BnacTb nepemna m» aamaorb CoB&ranrb. IlepBbifl Hegtrca ca-
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Jlyqjnee cpencrao noaaepacaTb HOBoe DpaBHrenbcx^o Cobetobt. Si sra jpm—
BCDOJnuia CBoe nfcjio.
Ha 3jipeibctb!?;?i mm wmm nuiuieTBPiara! Aa sjpKiBym

Ue-rporpa^cxiA CoBirr. X>. n C. J%.
JXeTporpa-nacia CoaAn Ilpocpeccloi
i-srsri. Coio3os3>.
Xj(eii<Tpa.jii.B*s& CojSti ^>aff,praro-3MO/(-
CJTKX2» -KoarjJTOTOF*.

302

To All Workers
OF PETROGRAD!
Comrades ! The Revolution is winning, the Revolution
has won. All the power has passed over to our Soviets.
The first weeks are the most difficult ones. The broken
reaction must be finally crushed, a full triumph must be
secured for our endeavors. The working-class ought to
—must— show in these days
THE GREATEST FIRMNESS AND ENDURANCE
in order to facilitate the execution of all the aims of the
new People's Government of Soviets. In the next few
days, decrees on the Labor question will be issued.
Among the very first will be the decree on Worker's
Control over the production and regulation of industry.
Strikes and demonstrations of the worker
masses in Petrograd now can only do harm.
We ask you to stop immediately all economic and political strikes, to take
up your work, and do it in perfect order. The work in factories and all in
dustries is necessary for the new Government of Soviets, because any inter
ruption of this work will only create new difficulties, and we have enough as
it is. All to your places.
The best way to support the new Government of Soviets in these days— is
by doing your job.
LONG LIVE THE IRON TENACITY OF THE PROLETARIAT!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!
Petrograd Soviet of W. & S. D.
Petrograd Council of Trade Unions.
Central Council of Factory- Shop Committee:
(This is the translation ofthe Russian text on opposite page.)
3°3

Oro EoMHecifl no HapopMj 06pa30BaHiio p
B[eHTpajEbHoa ropopoi jfyitfc
ToBapHiuH pa6oH.e h pa6oTHHHjbd
3a BicEOJibKO sbcb na npa3pmta taa ofoHweaa
sallacTOBEa yianprara roposcKaxi yrasEm'b. yiaEoa osa-
suicb Ea cTopoai fiypstyasia np'oTm palloiaro b
BBflCtbBECEara HpaBBTejibCTBa.
ToBapamB, opraEE3yMTe poasrejibCHie EOiDrreni s
BUBocETe pesejnoEJE npoTHBi aadacTOBRB yiaqflxv
OopaaiaETecb vb pa&OHBbie CobIth Padow* b Coj-
laTCHETb AenyTaTOBi, irpof eccioBajn>Ebie tmsu. $a-
jpi«iHfj-3aB0flCBie b EapTiiEue BOMBTeTu ct upewo-
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cpoEi, EOTopbitt yBamm HeEipaibflaa Sysia.
ToaapBmE, yEpinnsiTe cbob bossbjb Vb xisfc sapoi-
saro ogpaaoBama, EacTaEBaite sa EOBipojri npojiOTap<
CEBXb opraBBaaBul aaa* ideojioe.
XomuccIe no JCapodxoMy 05pa3o8axho
npn 1|exB)painxoD Topodckofi tyiri
304

From the Commission on Public Education
of the Central City
Comrade workingmen and uiorkingoiomen!
A few days before the holidays, a strike has been
declared by the teachers of the public schools. The
teachers are siding with the burgeoisie against the
Workers' and Peasants' Government.
Comrades, organize Parents' Committees and pass
resolutions against the strike of the teachers. Pro
pose to the District Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies, the Trade Unions, the Factory-Shop and Party
Committees, to organize protest meetings. Arrange
with your own resources Christmas trees and entertain
ments for the children, and demand the opening of
the schools, after the holidays at the date which will
be set by the Central Duma.
Comrades, strengthen your position in public edu
cation, insist on the control of the proletarian organ
izations over the schools.
Commission on Public Education
of the Central City Duma.
{This it the translation of ths Rnssian text on apposite page.)
305

PoeejflCKafl Corjajrt- flemrepaittWecKaa Paftma napTffl. H*Ha 26 iron,
JlpoAemctpfu Seixt emptrm, cotdutaBnrmf

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EIHEAHEBHAB fA3ETA.

HtmeuKle renepaqij OproHHaoBcuiH yahpmje 6aTanfcOHu h spacrmoxb, 6e3i> npe*
A$npep^ieHl9, nana.™ Ha flaim? ap/wiio, mhpho npncT<JnnBmv)ro kt> .ae.w06n.m3au.in.
Ho yme canpoTMBjieHie oprsHtsyeTCfl. Oho pocTei-b n Gynerb
poem o HamflbiH-i. (HHenn>. Be* uauin gmjim ot nanHM-b ha OTnc;rb
repwMHCKimn. CHuiorBapo^MijaMrbl
MBo ohm NnyT-b, •h-oGM eepHy rt. noarBUUHtaNrb OToSpauMbin Kpe=
OTbHHamH aeautM. Ohm Mflfrb, HToBt, aoaeraHOEMTb xoaaacKJa npagg
m xosHHCHtM npoasaojcb na cdaBpKKan. n aaaap.ax-b.. Ohm Kfiy^b,
mtoBi. BepiiyTb 6biBuiH«|-b HoMrfcinwwiwb n xasneaaarb Pceaaiia.
Bbiirb — TpoH-bf senna m jawKniapAbb
Pa6owie, HpecTbme, 6onAaTfc.il Ha: 3amnTy _coBtTCHort pecny&iMHMl Bob, ho
Meonn, bt> pfutu KpacnoA apwM,coaian*3Hal
¦ ¦¦ 1. 1 ¦ ¦> 1 1' im. 1 1

Poccmaast KoMntyHHCTiwecteag fTapTia (CojitmeBHyom.)

U*aa30aon"

-L.^yCCKl° MDHIP"b-P«Bo«OMioHepw, C-bKHH3eMl> JlbBO.
SSalTeSb"™*' C03fla,," * «aflbHe"«' B°°™* "OBOC
HTa^f SaSKSa-S CO,Ca" *-¦—"-- "-nepianHcxaMa,
—nlI?^B,!I!!H" " HBn"Ta"'«eTbl M3T..3B BOSCTaHOBJieHbl CBOeft BJiaCTM
Haw*, pacinian... M KpecTbaaaaiM iipoaaarrb anoxia AaJibHm Boctoh™
K-b opymiio, pa6onie m KpecTbHHe! BcTaBaftre act.
II»^TH|l!fl,,HT, Hej,OB*K"b' Ha BopbBy sa BeiiHKyio pesoJ
Be* Ha sauiRTy coitiaiMcTHHecitaro oTeiccTea!
HI OP V HI I 10!

306

tnwian Social- Democratic Labor Party.

TRUTH
(central organ of the r. s.-d. l p.

Price 25 kopecks.
w railroad atatfoaa 30 kop.
Worker* of afl Countries Unite !

•vaiuvafcaya Ho. l4 **"M>

Caller* on business
with tbe editor tm.
ceived dally. «x»pc holU
days from II to I P. M
and rron 7 to B P. M
Teleph'.M > "M"
Editorial OOcm i ifl3

No. 33 <259» Saturday

DAILY PAPER

I.1 Ifc* **. ODeB •W-V except
holiday™ from 10 A.M. to4F.il.
Bubae r iptionm:
Prom March lat (new calendar)
0 roubles c«r month.
10 per cent, discount on bond te
oi<ief,ufnoif«*Blha«10eoo**«.75- kop chance of change of
adiins* SuhacriptiitDR ore accepted
from Um i-tbtbtht of the
ralluwins- month.
Telephone 437-SS
iiihmh > • I M 1 > 1 1 ( 1 1 11 1 < 1 1 1 1 1 1 u ¦ ( 1 1 1 1 1 > 1 1 1 1 u > t ¦ t

23 (10) February, I9IS
German generals organized shock battalions and without warning attacked
[•our army which was peacefully beginning to demobilize.
But resistance Is already being organized. It grows and will
£ «£ Ve^rw^eGu^dsr "^ a" °Ur •** * «~
For they come to restore to the landlords the peasants' land.
They come to restore the employers' rights and the employers'
arbitrary rule over the mills and the factories. They come to1
restore the Romanovs who are both landlords and employers-
their throne, their estates and their billions.
Workers. Peasants and Soldiers ! To the Defense of the Soviet Republic !
Ail, .to the ranks of the_ Bed Army of Socialists I
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik). Price30 kopecks.
— — ^  1 al railroad italioiu 35 kop.

TRUTH
CENTRAL ORGAN OF THE COMMUNIST
PARTY (BOLSHEVIK).

Workers of all Countries Unite t
lUIUniHJIII.IIIIIIUUIIIIKIrifllllllMlllllllKlllllllllllllllltUUiMtllllU ~ . Editorial and Main Oflicas. Petrograd.
Ivanovskaya No. 14
S Offlffa Ib ..pen dally, except
= holitlay« from IU A.M lotf.H
%ii".'*r.sz"r" i •*»• »%$£%£*«««*>
With th. .dltor t.- | 6 rouble „r moVu,.
Mlv.fld«lv.eXG.pt bali. = lOporoont. (liMount on bond!.
J-iy* trum 12 to I p u = ordoriofnAtltiitittnaniaoopiM.
«nd from 7 tw » V M =75 kop cb.rtru of chanao ot
= urt.tr. a.
Tijenk-.n- J,',; J3 = ,„m tk. |st I,. th« Kt ot lb.
Ltlluriul ntflM. J (.^.531 foll-winr month.
= Telephone t.17-53

No. 45 < 271) Saturday

DAILY PAPER

March 9 (Feb. 24' 1918

Russian counter-revolutionists, with prince Lvov
at the head, have formed a new government m the
Far East.
The Traitors have allied themselves with Japanese Imperialists
in order to enslave the country.
The landlords and capitalists In order to restore their rule
over the workers and peasants are selling the Far East to Japan.
To arms, workers and peasants! Arise ail as one
man and fight for the great revolution !
All to the defense of the socialist fatherland !
-"-  TO ARMS!
(.This it th* translation ef the Russian tint »n opposite page.)
3°7

01 oiiuoioi mmm
xsmam

no noBojiy ..aekpeta1.
Bpar firaciuail. H|>nr muarT llli;r.i' li mntr. II H rimra na.i< nun
BomyntTHj>T. II n ciw* ua.-riimi n-.n'Wiiurr. II mnsarTra Ma nmiJM
OTapaTiiTC.ibUMa iipononauuiimmMa arpu.
Bpar ynitTriwux — on iisaMU'f iwouirrna. u rrpntroiif wt-s 4.1a
HiM'O annpxilCTIil. 110 lliaiimin' Kljr.tiiu ih;imh cuufm---.
II npar pacupocTpaiineT a.iacnit*> iMenr-Ty. <n» rnafnxa -fa apn-
cnipaerca .to uactuiin Hiriimmi. Or nann-rp ini-uii pacn|>«ci|«imiii mi
ciioiuh rpasmiau pyi;a*n «. l>r.jn'T o cou11a.1n3an.a11 atrnuiuip.
Kaisaa rpyrtaa, Helenas npoaoicumta!
Uouaaa, eoaio 11 iiuhcr>ay anapxinrra 6<>piotcii co ncaiirian jtitpt-
nan 11 aaaoRaxu bcbkbh wacTtftt,- ran jrorjT .111 ouii cam BMoycuaTb
floapoTuV Bparn Bcanaroriacn.'iirB.— aoryT .m aimpxiiiTU TpoOonarb n.ia jaaw
flonycuaTb BpunyAHTe.ibBaro OTfyaueaun aswratmi?
Caoaaao ate uaRjeTcn tskhx OypBjaiiouux octob. mto ironepnT vrofl
apoBoaauHH, *ao Bauparyr ccOa B ctsh atux rajwa niuaamiij:'
Her u Berl Orpeaacb uaTpaaBTb na sac oescoaHaraibnua aaccra.
spar Be pascwraa a ooBamaa to.ubo cbow rpasnyio ayuienay.
Vbh!— ch eme ne yaHM BceB ocTpom namero opyaraa— tjk yjnaet!
Caepn opoBoaaTopaal BoanouwAuaa caepn! Ha aecie— 6ea sole-
oaBBfl— eceiB cpeacTBaaH 8 Bcaaaa opynHea!
H Bcaanfl, bto-t&Rho bir *bbo — flyjeT nojctepams&Tb ary Riene-
17, npHKHAUBaacb OATpaieHiiua anieHaoa,— 6yAex o6*aa~en coyiacr-
BHBoa btob TeanoB oatuu, oyiei 06'aBJeu apoaoiMTopoa. II doctut-
an bx yiaoTb cahb.
H bcbbbb, 8io— c aaaa bib bb obbbb— hoto-tho whbbt a Coper*
ca, oyaer uoaoran ebb a pacDpaae, ojaei caa aciusb bibb aaoBBTua
laxaa noxBaavmeflea peamuja.
ftaa aacopaBH ofbb xbstbt y uacl
B bob cpeaciBa oyAyi soponml Ganopmi* tfedgaia*
308

FROM THE SiOTA FEDERATION
OF MRCHISTS
IN VIEW OF THE' DECREE"
The enemy is impotent. The enemy is sinking ever lower
and lower. And in his fall he blasphemes. In his fall he slings
mud at us. He stoops to the most hideous pro vocatory measures.
The enemy of the oppressed— he thirsts for domination. He
fears the Anarchists who have raised high the banner of freedom.
The enemy is spreading malicious calumny, insinuating that
our freedom includes violence and rape. In our name he is
spreading with his own soiled hands the "Decree about the
Nationalization of Women."
What crude, absurd provocation!
For ages, everywhere, the Anarchists have fought against
all kinds of decrees and laws no matter by what authorities
these were set ap. How then can they themselves issue decrees?
Enemies of all violence, how can the Anarchists demand or
even allow force in the treatment of women?
How many such asses will be found who will be ready to
believe the provocateurs and who will appear in the camp of
these serpents?
No, never! In his attempt to set against us the ignorant
masses, the enemy did not calculate correctly and only exposed
his own filthy soul.
Alas! he does not yet know the power of our weapon — but
he will know it!
Death to the provocateurs! No mercy for them! On the
spot — without hesitation — by all means, with any weapon!
And everyone, who — secretly or openly — supports this cal
umny, by pretending that he is an innocent lamb who has been
duped by someone, will be considered an accomplice of this
black band, as a provocateur. And they will meet the same fate.
Everyone — whether he be with us or not— but who lives
honestly and struggles for his living, will help us dispense jus
tice, and will himself mete out vengeance to these venomous
reptiles of reaction.
We have enough fire for this purpose!
And all means will be fair! Samara Federation oj Anarchists.
(Thitie the translation ofthe Russian text on opposite page.)
309

Xjit6a!
3aUlHTHHK<IM 3enilH,
BJSTOH KpeCTbSHa-
mh y nontuviKOB.

fljifl ycntnmofl OoptObi c HapHraioiipca onaceomio

Beck clBep PocciH HEMEAJIEHHO otam xjt&Gom!

Xjit6a!
6opuan 3a R/iacrb
KpecTbSH, patiomqc
h conAaT.

Ko Bceidj KpecnsiicTBj xiWopopix o6aacTefl i ryGepaia
BFATbfl KPECTBHHE!

o

' ^ .i,nUUi, hjuih iu, fioeeue peBOjpooepu ofipaiaoiei k Ban e stum npesuii
oJ iTMBiftti Bi-er DoaiABiA iac aanjefl ptuiHTMbBofi fiBTBH. OKOHiaTeibBO ptmaeTca oonpoc:
o 3aKpinjieaiH nepe«-a<m Tpyjumpucfl 3ei«jra de3 Bbnyna, dmSpiuc, ssjobob i fiaiKOB.
Dure aaa xjtoa, <rr66bi au He ou.ia Ba&ypeau iumiaom b airtjni ou BoaaoiKBOcrb Kptni;o AepsaTi b cbobx pyaax aaaiOBEy npo-
TBB pasfoBBBKOE Mipa. COmAJmCTHHEGKOE OTPIECTBO B 0HACH0CTH1
Xnt6a! Snt6a!
CcwnafiTe xnbfi Bb nycTyioiuje aneBaropw, a aM6apu a ccbiimbie nymnM 6bh3 CTamtiH mefl»3Hbix aopor h npHCTaHefl cy-
MMCM*. Bjj"jLt.,.„ nono,.,, DaaovmcnS ESmmb a^aoAHinHa aa bbx HeBTpuaTBtiM b onaaoiBbiu 6c5iTBp!SKSH. "I'pyt-Er.
"apSH ^pBibI,7aTHHyBPmBP Va Ikii . ™«a?CKia buhbo. mat wart Ba cnuntfu aartnuix Aopor « ocraaaBiHBa.* up*
™n,??e *™?^!L ."Sua neBOjuonia conani. KpecaaBe, a pa6oiiel Mu npn3HBaea rac, oaaaiiBaTb coAtflcTBie _ Beta rta. kto oxpa*
eae^™XH»^ riJmn ao »%»..» paoBogw. ax. Paapymeaiea aieriaBnx Aopor

XntSal

art ata OTopoe" MfcTTJPf niBIaJ JOIITMf ¦¦!-?¦«*¦" "W81" " """""J uu"-"» *»«•
Xnt6a! Xnt6a! Xnt6al Xn*6a!

Bread!
For the defenders
ofthe peasants' land
taken from the landlord.

Towinthe fight against the threatening danger j Bread! j
ofGermanslaveiyandboiffgeoisserfdomitisnecessaiyi^
to supply IMMEDIATELY all northern Russia with bread, j worker and soldier, j
iminnmitMlHUUllil
To the peasants of all the bread-producing districts and provinces
BROTHER PEASANTS!
Dear brothers'. From the depths of our souls we, fighting revolutionists, appeal to vou.
ANSWER THE CAU! The last hour of the decisive battle strikes. This is the question at stake.
LAND TO THE TOILERS WITHOUT COMPENSATION, THE FACTORIES, SHOPS AND BANKS.
Send us bread, that we may not be broken by hunger and that we may be able to
hold up our bayonets against the cut- throats of the world.
THE SOCIALISTS FATHERLAND IS IN DANGER!
Bread! Bread! Bread!.
Bring your bread to the empty elevators and granaries, to the shipping-points
on railways and the wharves of navigable rivers.
Our railroads have broken down on account of unprecedented disorders. Cowards, marauders and speculators haying put
on soldiers' uniforms are doing violence at the railway stations and are thus hindering the regular movement of trains.
True and class-conscious soldiers, peasants and workers of the Revolution! We appeal to you to aid those K«"*|g™r
railways, and to stop the hooligans from further violence. AU these destroyers of the raUways are helping OUT bitter
enemy— the German bourgeoise, and are therefore— without the law. •
Bread! Bread! Bread! Bread!
(This ti the translation of the .Russian text on opposite page.)

3 9002 01453 2098