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Russia in 1919

A >> Arthur Ransome >> Russia in 1919






March 6th.


The conference in the Kremlin ended with the usual singing
and a photograph. Some time before the end, when
Trotsky had just finished speaking and had left the tribune,
there was a squeal of protest from the photographer who
had just trained his apparatus. Some one remarked "The
Dictatorship of the Photographer," and, amid general
laughter, Trotsky had to return to the tribune and stand
silent while the unabashed photographer took two pictures.
The founding of the Third International had been
proclaimed in the morning papers, and an extraordinary
meeting in the Great Theatre announced for the evening. I
got to the theatre at about five, and had difficulty in getting
in, though I had a special ticket as a correspondent. There
were queues outside all the doors. The Moscow Soviet was
there, the Executive Committee, representatives of the
Trades Unions and the Factory Committees, etc. The huge
theatre and the platform were crammed, people standing in
the aisles and even packed close together in the wings of
the stage. Kamenev opened the meeting by a solemn
announcement of the founding of the Third
International in the Kremlin. There was a roar of applause
from the audience, which rose and sang the "International"
in a way that I have never heard it sung since the
All-Russian Assembly when the news came of the strikes in
Germany during the Brest negotiations. Kamenev then
spoke of those who had died on the way, mentioning
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, and the whole theatre
stood again while the orchestra played, "You fell as
victims." Then Lenin spoke. If I had ever thought that
Lenin was losing his personal popularity, I got my answer
now. It was a long time before he could speak at all,
everybody standing and drowning his attempts to speak
with roar after roar of applause. It was an extraordinary,
overwhelming scene, tier after tier crammed with workmen,
the parterre filled, the whole platform and the wings. A
knot of workwomen were close to me, and they almost
fought to see him, and shouted as if each one were
determined that he should hear her in particular. He spoke
as usual, in the simplest way, emphasizing the fact that the
revolutionary struggle everywhere was forced to use the
Soviet forms. "We declare our solidarity with
the aims of the Sovietists," he read from an Italian
paper, and added, "and that was when they did not
know what our aims were, and before we had an
established programme ourselves." Albrecht made
a very long reasoned speech for Spartacus, which
was translated by Trotsky. Guilbeau, seemingly a mere
child, spoke of the socialist movement in France. Steklov
was translating him when I left. You must remember that I
had had nearly two years of such meetings, and am not a
Russian. When I got outside the theatre, I found at each
door a disappointed crowd that had been unable to get in.


The proceedings finished up next day with a review in the
Red Square and a general holiday.


If the Berne delegates had come, as they were expected,
they would have been told by the Communists that they
were welcome visitors, but that they were not regarded as
representing the International. There would then have
ensued a lively battle over each one of the delegates, the
Mensheviks urging him to stick to Berne, and the
Communists urging him to express allegiance to the
Kremlin. There would have been demonstrations and
counter-demonstrations, and altogether I am very sorry
that it did not happen and that I was not there to see.




LAST TALK WITH LENIN



I went to see Lenin the day after the Review in the Red
Square, and the general holiday in honour of the Third
International. The first thing he said was: "I am afraid that
the Jingoes in England and France will make use of
yesterday's doings as an excuse for further action against
us. They will say 'How can we leave them in peace when
they set about setting the world on fire?' To that I would
answer, 'We are at war, Messieurs! And just as during
your war you tried to make revolution in Germany, and
Germany did make trouble in Ireland and India, so we,
while we are at war with you, adopt the measures that are
open to us. We have told you we are willing to make
peace.'"


He spoke of Chicherin's last note, and said they based all
their hopes on it. Balfour had said somewhere, "Let the fire
burn itself out." That it would not do. But the quickest
way of restoring good conditions in Russia was, of course,
peace and agreement with the Allies. "I am sure we could
come to terms, if they want to come to terms at all.
England and America would be willing, perhaps, if their
hands were not tied by France. But intervention in the
large sense can now hardly be. They must have learnt that
Russia could never be governed as India is governed, and
that sending troops here is the same thing as sending them
to a Communist University."


I said something about the general hostility to their
propaganda noticeable in foreign countries.


Lenin. "Tell them to build a Chinese wall round each of
their countries. They have their customs-officers, their
frontiers, their coast-guards. They can expel any
Bolsheviks they wish. Revolution does not depend on
propaganda. If the conditions of revolution are not there no
sort of propaganda will either hasten or impede it. The war
has brought about those conditions in all countries, and I
am convinced that if Russia today were to be swallowed up
by the sea, were to cease to exist altogether, the revolution
in the rest of Europe would go on. Put Russia under
water for twenty years, and you would not affect by a
shilling or an hour a week the demand, of the
shop-stewards in England."


I told him, what I have told most of them many times, that I
did not believe there would be a revolution in England.


Lenin. "We have a saying that a man may have typhoid
while still on his legs. Twenty, maybe thirty years ago I had
abortive typhoid, and was going about with it,
had had it some days before it knocked me over. Well,
England and France and Italy have caught the disease
already. England may seem to you to be untouched, but the
microbe is already there."


I said that just as his typhoid was abortive typhoid, so the
disturbances in England to which he alluded might well be
abortive revolution, and come to nothing. I told him the
vague, disconnected character of the strikes and the
generally liberal as opposed to socialist character of the
movement, so far as it was political at all, reminded me of
what I had heard of 1905 in Russia and not at all of
1917, and that I was sure it would settle down.


Lenin. "Yes, that is possible. It is, perhaps, an educative
period, in which the English workmen will come to realize
their political needs, and turn from liberalism to Socialism.
Socialism is certainly weak in England. Your socialist
movements, your socialist parties . . . when I was in
England I zealously attended everything I could, and for a
country with so large an industrial population they were
pitiable, pitiable . . . a handful at a street corner . . . a
meeting in a drawing room . . . a school class . . . pitiable.
But you must remember one great difference between
Russia of 1905 and England of to-day. Our first Soviet in
Russia was made during the revolution. Your
shop-stewards committees have been in existence
long before. They are without programme, without
direction, but the opposition they will meet will force
a programme upon them."


Speaking of the expected visit of the Berne delegation, he
asked me if I knew MacDonald, whose name had been
substituted for that of Henderson in later telegrams
announcing their coming. He ,said: "I am very glad
MacDonald is coming instead of Henderson. Of course
MacDonald is not a Marxist in any sense of the word, but
he is at least interested in theory, and can therefore be
trusted to do his best to understand what is happening here.
More than that we do not ask."


We then talked a little on a subject that interests me very
much, namely, the way in which insensibly, quite apart
from war, the Communist theories are being modified in the
difficult process of their translation into practice. We
talked of the changes in "workers' control," which is now a
very different thing from the wild committee business that
at first made work almost impossible. We talked then of
the antipathy of the peasants to compulsory communism,
and how that idea also had been considerably whittled
away. I asked him what were going to be the relations
between the Communists of the towns and the
property-loving peasants, and whether there was
not great danger of antipathy between them, and said
I regretted leaving too soon to see the elasticity of
the Communist theories tested by the inevitable
pressure of the peasantry.


Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty sharp
distinction between the rich peasants and the poor. "The
only opposition we have here in Russia is directly or
indirectly due to the rich peasants. The poor, as soon as
they are liberated from the political domination of the rich,
are on our side and are in an enormous majority."


I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, where property
among the peasants is much more equally distributed.


Lenin. "No. And there, in the Ukraine, you will certainly
see our policy modified. Civil war, whatever happens, is
likely to be more bitter in the Ukraine than elsewhere,
because there the instinct of property has been further
developed in the peasantry, and the minority and majority
will be more equal."


He asked me if I meant to return, saying that I could go
down to Kiev to watch the revolution there as I had
watched it in Moscow. I said I should be very sorry to
think that this was my last visit to the country which I
love only second to my own. He laughed, and paid me the
compliment of saying that, "although English," I had more
or less succeeded in understanding what they were at, and
that he should be pleased to see me again.




THE JOURNEY OUT



March 15th.


There is nothing to record about the last few days of my
visit, fully occupied as they were with the collection and
packing of printed material and preparations for departure.
I left with the two Americans, Messrs. Bullitt and Steffens,
who had come to Moscow some days previously, and
travelled up in the train with Bill Shatov, the Commandant
of Petrograd, who is not a Bolshevik but a fervent admirer
of Prince Kropotkin, for the distribution of whose works in
Russia he has probably done as much as any man. Shatov
was an emigr=82 in New York, returned to Russia, brought
law and order into the chaos of the Petrograd-Moscow
railway, never lost a chance of doing a good turn to an
American, and with his level-headedness and practical
sense became one of the hardest worked servants of the
Soviet, although, as he said, the moment people
stopped attacking them he would be the first to pull down
the Bolsheviks. He went into the occupied provinces
during the German evacuation of them, to buy arms and
ammunition from the German soldiers. Prices, he said, ran
low. You could buy rifles for a mark each, field guns for
150 marks, and a field wireless station for 500. He had
then been made Commandant of Petrograd, although there
had been some talk of setting him to reorganize transport.
Asked how long he thought the Soviet Government could
hold but, he replied, "We can afford to starve another year
for the sake of the Revolution."

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