Russia in 1919(1919的俄国)

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RUSSIA IN 1919

ARTHUR RANSOME

RUSSIA IN 1919

INTRODUCTION

I am well aware that there is material in this book which will be

misused by fools both white and red. That is not my fault. My object

has been narrowly limited. I have tried by means of a bald record of

conversations and things seen, to provide material for those who wish to

know what is being done and thought in Moscow at the present time, and

demand something more to go upon than secondhand reports of wholly

irrelevant atrocities committed by either one side or the other, and often by

neither one side nor the other, but by irresponsible scoundrels who, in the

natural turmoil of the greatest convulsion in the history of our civilization,

escape temporarily here and there from any kind of control.

The book is in no sense of the word propaganda. For propaganda,

for the defence or attack of the Communist position, is needed a

knowledge of economics, both from the capitalist and socialist standpoints,

to which I cannot pretend. Very many times during the revolution it has

seemed to me a tragedy that no Englishman properly equipped in this way

was in Russia studying the gigantic experiment which, as a country, we are

allowing to pass abused but not examined. I did my best. I got, I think

I may say, as near as any foreigner who was not a Communist could get to

what was going on. But I never lost the bitter feeling that the

opportunities of study which I made for myself were wasted, because I

could not hand them on to some other Englishman, whose education and

training would have enabled him to make a better, a fuller use of them.

Nor would it have been difficult for such a man to get the opportunities

which were given to me when, by sheer persistence in enquiry, I had

overcome the hostility which I at first encountered as the correspondent of

a "bourgeois" newspaper. Such a man could be in Russia now, for the

Communists do not regard war as we regard it. The Germans would

hardly have allowed an Allied Commission to come to Berlin a year ago to

investigate the nature and working of the Autocracy. The Russians, on

the other hand, immediatelya greed to the suggestion of the Berne

Conference that they should admit a party of socialists, the majority of

RUSSIA IN 1919

whom, as they well knew, had already expressed condemnation of them.

Further, in agreeing to this, they added that they would as willingly admit

a committee of enquiry sent by any of the "bourgeois" governments

actually at war with them.

I am sure that there will be many in England who will understand

much better than I the drudgery of the revolution which is in this book

very imperfectly suggested. I repeat that it is not my fault that they must

make do with the eyes and ears of an ignorant observer. No doubt I have

not asked the questions they would have asked, and have thought

interesting and novel much which they would have taken for granted.

The book has no particular form, other than that given it by a more or

less accurate adherence to chronology in setting down things seen and

heard. It is far too incomplete to allow me to call it a Journal. I think I

could have made it twice as long without repetitions, and I am not at all

sure that in choosing in a hurry between this and that I did not omit much

which could with advantage be substituted for what is here set down.

There is nothing here of my talk with the English soldier prisoners and

nothing of my visit to the officers confined in the Butyrka Gaol. There is

nothing of the plagues of typhus and influenza, or of the desperate

situation of a people thus visited and unable to procure from abroad the

simplest drugs which they cannot manufacture at home or even the

anaesthetics necessary for their wounded on every frontier of their country.

I forgot to describe the ballet which I saw a few days before leaving. I

have said nothing of the talk I had with Eliava concerning the Russian

plans for the future of Turkestan. I could think of a score of other

omissions. Judging from what I have read since my return from Russia, I

imagine people will find my book very poor in the matter of Terrors.

There is nothing here of the Red Terror, or of any of the Terrors on the

other side. But for its poverty in atrocities my book will be blamed only

by fanatics, since they alone desire proofs of past Terrors as justification

for new ones.

On reading my manuscript through, I find it quite surprisingly dull.

The one thing that I should have liked to transmit through it seems

somehow to have slipped away. I should have liked to explain what was

RUSSIA IN 1919

the appeal of the revolution to men like Colonel Robins and myself, both

of us men far removed in origin and upbringing from the revolutionary

and socialist movements in our own countries. Of course no one who was

able, as we were able, to watch the men of the revolution at close quarters

could believe for a moment that they were the mere paid agents of the very

power which more than all others represented the stronghold they had set

out to destroy. We had the knowledge of the injustice being done to these

men to urge us in their defence. But there was more in it than that. There

was the feeling, from which we could never escape, of the creative effort

of the revolution. There was the thing that distinguishes the creative

from other artists, the living, vivifying expression of something hitherto

hidden in the consciousness of humanity. If this book were to be an

accurate record of my own impressions, all the drudgery, gossip, quarrels,

arguments, events and experiences it contains would have to be set against

a background of that extraordinary vitality which obstinately persists in

Moscow even in these dark days of discomfort, disillusion, pestilence,

starvation and unwanted war.

ARTHUR RANSOME.

RUSSIA IN 1919

TO PETROGRAD

On January 30 a party of four newspaper correspondents, two

Norwegians, a Swede and myself, left Stockholm to go into Russia. We

travelled with the members of the Soviet Government's Legation, headed

by Vorovsky and Litvinov, who were going home after the breaking off of

official relations by Sweden. Some months earlier I had got leave from

the Bolsheviks to go into Russia to get further material for my history of

the revolution, but at the last moment there was opposition and it seemed

likely that I should be refused permission. Fortunately, however, a copy

of the Morning Post reached Stockholm, containing a report of a lecture

by Mr. Lockhart in which he had said that as I had been out of Russia for

six months I had no right to speak of conditions there. Armed with this I

argued that it would be very unfair if I were not allowed to come and see

things for myself. I had no further difficulties.

We crossed by boat to Abo, grinding our way through the ice, and

then travelled by rail to the Russian frontier, taking several days over the

journey owing to delays variously explained by the Finnish authorities.

We were told that the Russian White Guards had planned an attack on the

train. Litvinov, half-smiling, wondered if they were purposely giving time

to the White Guards to organize such an attack. Several nervous folk

inclined to that opinion. But at Viborg we were told that there were

grave disorders in Petrograd and that the Finns did not wish to fling us into

the middle of a scrimmage. Then someone obtained a newspaper and we

read a detailed account of what was happening. This account was, as I

learnt on my return, duly telegraphed to England like much other news of

a similar character. There had been a serious revolt in Petrograd. The

Semenovsky regiment had gone over to the mutineers, who had seized the

town. The Government, however, had escaped to Kronstadt, whence

they were bombarding Petrograd with naval guns.

This sounded fairly lively, but there was nothing to be done, so we

finished up the chess tournament we had begun on the boat. An

Esthonian won it, and I was second, by reason of a lucky win over

RUSSIA IN 1919

Litvinov, who is really a better player. By Sunday night we reached

Terijoki and on Monday moved slowly to the frontier of Finland close to

Bieloostrov. A squad of Finnish soldiers was waiting, excluding

everybody from the station and seeing that no dangerous revolutionary

should break away on Finnish territory. There were no horses, but three

hand sledges were brought, and we piled the luggage on them, and then set

off to walk to the frontier duly convoyed by the Finns. A Finnish

lieutenant walked at the head of the procession, chatting good-humouredly

in Swedish and German, much as a man might think it worth while to be

kind to a crowd of unfortunates just about to be flung into a boiling

cauldron. We walked a few hundred yards along the line and then turned

into a road deep in snow through a little bare wood, and so down to the

little wooden bridge over the narrow frozen stream that separates Finland

from Russia. The bridge, not twenty yards across, has a toll bar at each

end, two sentry boxes and two sentries. On the Russian side the bar was

the familiar black and white of the old Russian Empire, with a sentry box

to match. The Finns seemingly had not yet had time to paint their bar

and box.

The Finns lifted their toll bar, and the Finnish officers leading our

escort walked solemnly to the middle of the bridge. Then the luggage

was dumped there, while we stood watching the trembling of the rickety

little bridge under the weight of our belongings, for we were all taking in

with us as much food as we decently could. We were none of us allowed

on the bridge until an officer and a few men had come down to meet us on

the Russian side. Only little Nina, Vorovskv's daughter, about ten years

old, chattering Swedish with the Finns, got leave from them, and shyly,

step by step, went down the other side of the bridge and struck up

acquaintance with the soldier of the Red Army who stood there, gun in

hand, and obligingly bent to show her the sign, set in his hat, of the

crossed sickle and hammer of the Peasants' and Workmen's Republic. At

last the Finnish lieutenant took the list of his prisoners and called out the

names "Vorovsky, wife and one bairn," looking laughingly over his

shoulder at Nina flirting with the sentry. Then "Litvinov," and so on

through all the Russians, about thirty of them. We four visitors,

RUSSIA IN 1919

Grimlund the Swede, Puntervald and Stang, the Norwegians, and I, came

last. At last, after a general shout of farewell, and "Helse Finland" from

Nina, the Finns turned and went back into their civilization, and we went

forward into the new struggling civilization of Russia. Crossing that

bridge we passed from one philosophy to another, from one extreme of the

class struggle to the other, from a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to a

dictatorship of the proletariat.

The contrast was noticeable at once. On the Finnish side of the

frontier we had seen the grandiose new frontier station, much larger than

could possibly be needed, but quite a good expression of the spirit of the

new Finland. On the Russian side we came to the same grey old wooden

station known to all passengers to and from Russia for polyglot profanity

and passport difficulties. There were no porters, which was not

surprising because there is barbed wire and an extremely hostile sort of

neutrality along the frontier and traffic across has practically ceased. In

the buffet, which was very cold, no food could be bought. The long

tables once laden with caviare and other zakuski were bare. There was,

however, a samovar, and we bought tea at sixty kopecks a glass and lumps

of sugar at two roubles fifty each. We took our tea into the inner passport

room, where I think a stove must have been burning the day before, and

there made some sort of a meal off some of Puntervald's Swedish hard-

bread. It is difficult to me to express the curious mixture of depression

and exhilaration that was given to the party by this derelict starving station

combined with the feeling that we were no longer under guard but could

do more or less as we liked. It split the party into two factions, of which

one wept while the other sang. Madame Vorovsky, who had not been in

Russia since the first revolution, frankly wept, but she wept still more in

Moscow where she found that even as the wife of a high official of the

Government she enjoyed no privileges which would save her from the

hardships of the population. But the younger members of the party,

together with Litvinov, found their spirits irrepressibly rising in spite of

having no dinner. They walked about the village, played with the

children, and sang, not revolutionary songs, but just jolly songs, any songs

that came into their heads. When at last the train came to take us into

RUSSIA IN 1919

Petrograd, and we found that the carriages were unheated, somebody got

out a mandoline and we kept ourselves warm by dancing. At the same

time I was sorry for the five children who were with us, knowing that a

country simultaneously suffering war, blockade and revolution is not a

good place for childhood. But they had caught the mood of their parents,

revolutionaries going home to their revolution, and trotted excitedly up

and down the carriage or anchored themselves momentarily, first on one

person's knee and then on another's.

It was dusk when we reached Petrograd. The Finland Station, of

course, was nearly deserted, but here there were four porters, who charged

two hundred and fifty roubles for shifting the luggage of the party from

one end of the platform to the other. We ourselves loaded it into the

motor lorry sent to meet us, as at Bieloostrov we had loaded it into the van.

There was a long time to wait while rooms were being allotted to us in

various hotels, and with several others I walked outside the station to

question people about the mutiny and the bombardment of which we had

heard in Finland. Nobody knew anything about it. As soon as the

rooms were allotted and I knew that I had been lucky enough to get one in

the Astoria, I drove off across the frozen river by the Liteini Bridge. The

trams were running. The town seemed absolutely quiet, and away down

the river I saw once again in the dark, which is never quite dark because of

the snow, the dim shape of the fortress, and passed one by one the

landmarks I had come to know so well during the last six years-the

Summer Garden, the British Embassy, and the great Palace Square where I

had seen armoured cars flaunting about during the July rising, soldiers

camping during the hysterical days of the Kornilov affair and, earlier,

Kornilov himself reviewing the Junkers. My mind went further back to

the March revolution, and saw once more the picket fire of the

revolutionaries at the corner that night when the remains of the Tzar's

Government were still frantically printing proclamations ordering the

people to go home, at the very moment while they themselves were being

besieged in the Admiralty. Then it flung itself further back still, to the

day of the declaration of war, when I saw this same square filled with

people, while the Tzar came out for a moment on the Palace balcony. By

RUSSIA IN 1919

that time we were pulling up at the Astoria and I had to turn my mind to

something else.

The Astoria is now a bare barrack of a place, but comparatively clean.

During the war and the first part of the revolution it was tenanted chiefly

by officers, and owing to the idiocy of a few of these at the time of the

first revolution in shooting at a perfectly friendly crowd of soldiers and

sailors, who came there at first with no other object than to invite the

officers to join them, the place was badly smashed up in the resulting

scrimmage. I remember with Major Scale fixing up a paper announcing

the fall of Bagdad either the night this happened or perhaps the night

before. People rushed up to it, thinking it some news about the

revolution, and turned impatiently away. All the damage has been

repaired, but the red carpets have gone, perhaps to make banners, and

many of the electric lights were not burning, probably because of the

shortage in electricity. I got my luggage upstairs to a very pleasant room

on the fourth floor. Every floor of that hotel had its memories for me. In

this room lived that brave reactionary officer who boasted that he had

made a raid on the Bolsheviks and showed little Madame Kollontai's hat

as a trophy. In this I used to listen to Perceval Gibbon when he was

talking about how to write short stories and having influenza. There was

the room where Miss Beatty used to give tea to tired revolutionaries and to

still more tired enquirers into the nature of revolution while she wrote the

only book that has so far appeared which gives anything like a true

impresionist picture of those unforgettable days.* [(*)"The Red Heart of

Russia."] Close by was the room where poor Denis Garstin used to talk

of the hunting he would have when the war should come to an end.

I enquired for a meal, and found that no food was to be had in the

hotel, but they could supply hot water. Then, to get an appetite for sleep,

I went out for a short walk, though I did not much like doing so with

nothing but an English passport, and with no papers to show that I had any

right to be there. I had, like the other foreigners, been promised such

papers but had not yet received them. I went round to the Regina, which

used to be one of the best hotels in the town, but those of us who had

rooms there were complaining so bitterly that I did not stay with them, but

RUSSIA IN 1919

went off along the Moika to the Nevsky and so back to my own hotel.

The streets, like the hotel, were only half lit, and hardly any of the houses

had a lighted window. In the old sheepskin coat I had worn on the front

and in my high fur hat, I felt like some ghost of the old regime visiting a

town long dead. The silence and emptiness of the streets contributed to

this effect. Still, the few people I met or passed were talking cheerfully

together and the rare sledges and motors had comparatively good roads,

the streets being certainly better swept and cleaned than they have been

since the last winter of the Russian Empire.

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RUSSIAIN1919RUSSIAIN1919ARTHURRANSOMERUSSIAIN1919INTRODUCTIONIamwellawarethatthereismaterialinthisbookwhichwillbemisusedbyfoolsbothwhiteandred.Thatisnotmyfault.Myobjecthasbeennarrowlylimited.Ihavetriedbymeansofabaldrecordofconversationsandthingsseen,toprovidematerialforthosewhowishtoknowwhatisbeingd...

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Russia in 1919(1919的俄国)

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