Chapter 5 of 7 · 3978 words · ~20 min read

Part 5

Of the other leaders, Saxs, a nervous, highly strung little Jew, who had spent many years in prison during the Czar’s regime for political offenses, I found to be a very decent fellow. Despite the fact that his mind has become politically unbalanced, he had remained human and there is more than a little of the milk of human kindness in his make-up.

Waxhoff, who, despite his youth (he was about twenty-three), occupied a position of importance as the head of a Government department, was the source of unfailing interest to me. He was the son of a rich manufacturer in South Russia and had commenced his career by organizing strikes in his father’s factories. He was a youngster of natural ability, but his head unfortunately was crammed full of half-digested revolutionary theories. I found him even a lovable companion, warm-hearted, honest to a degree and incapable of harming a fly. He travelled to Moscow with me.

_Reduces the Town to Penury._

Taking then all in all, the men who held the reins in Irkutsk were moderate men, but none the less in carrying out the orders of Moscow they reduced that once prosperous and well-fed town to penury and semistarvation within a few months.

The market was officially decreed closed, but the peasants still continued to bring in foodstuffs until the “Chika” (the Extraordinary Commission) commenced raiding it and arresting sellers and buyers, confiscating their goods and imprisoning them. When I left Irkutsk only a small number of peasants were bringing food into the town.

Siberia, even allowing for the land which has been allowed to go out of cultivation in recent years, still produces, or did during the Kolchak regime, enough to feed the whole of its population and still permit her to export a considerable surplus to European Russia. Notwithstanding this fact, which is incontrovertible, there is not a town of any size in Soviet Siberia which is not suffering from a shortage of food. The Entente blockade is certainly not responsible for this state of affairs: it is the Communist system which is at fault.

I found in those Government departments which I visited a superabundance of staff, occupied mostly in doing nothing. The people in these departments had been forced to work for the Soviet, but they took good care to do as little work as possible and that as badly as they dared. Outside the spy service there is little or no real organization in Bolshevik institutions.

FOOD IS SCARCE IN OMSK, AND MOSCOW IS NO BETTER OFF

_By Hector Boon._

Thanks to Jansen, I was able to live in an apartment of six rooms, quite an extraordinary privilege, bearing in mind that people were being crowded four and five in a room. When I took possession of it my drawing room was occupied by an engineer and his family and four other people, making in all nine persons. This engineer, a well-known member of Irkutsk society, had been turned out of his house to make room for a Commissar. His presence in my house led to an unpleasant incident which gave me a glimpse of the methods of the “Chika.”

I was awakened one morning at 2 A. M. by my servant with the news that the house was being searched. On going out to investigate I found half a dozen soldiers and a Commissar busily engaged in searching the effects of the engineer and his family. I formally protested to the Commissar, but as he most politely informed me that my personal rooms would not be disturbed, I was left with no alternative but to go back to bed. I took the precaution, however, of leaving my servant on guard, and he reported to me at breakfast that the search party had left at 6 A. M. with the engineer under arrest.

I inquired into the charges against this man and found that he had been arrested primarily because he was supposed to be rich and also because he had been associated with an organization for sending comforts to the troops during Kolchak’s regime. He was still in prison when I left Irkutsk.

Lack of Food in Omsk Due Solely to Soviet’s System

After two months’ negotiation with the Revolutionary Committee it was found impossible to arrive at any definite arrangement in respect to trading, and I received a telegraphic invitation from the Siberian Revolutionary Committee to go to Omsk and discuss the matter with them, which I accepted. Jansen placed a compartment at my disposal in a private car which was attached to the post train, and I left for Omsk with my two assistants and my servant on the 22d of May.

The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.

The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.

_Method Embitters Peasants._

In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia, and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it was intended.

We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer, however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions and they were terrified of the “Chika.”

I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika” would make short work of him.

I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.

Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.

On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep their mouths shut.

The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of British general service wagons and other British stores which had been captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.

_Only Commissars Dine Well._

Waxoff offered to take me to the Moscow Soviet to inquire for rooms. We took a cab outside the Jaroslavski Station. The driver at first demanded 10,000 roubles—i. e., $5, but after some bargaining agreed to take us to the house of the Soviet, which was formerly the residence of the Military Governor of Moscow, for half that sum. The pre-war fare was 15 cents. At the Soviet we saw a Commissar, who gave me a letter to the Foreign Office, which, it appeared, arranged all accommodation for foreigners. As this man interviewed us he partook of his dinner, which I was interested to notice consisted of very good cabbage soup with a large piece of meat in it, followed by a large plate of meat and vegetables, good black bread and tea with sugar. This certainly did not look like starvation. I later discovered to my cost that only Commissars were fed thus well.

At the Foreign Office we met a Jew named Contorovitch, who spoke English fluently. He furnished me with rooms at the Foreign Office Guest House at No. 10 Mala Haritonofskaya, which formerly was the home of a wealthy German merchant. At this house the first person I met was Mrs. Harrison, the correspondent of the Associated Press.

The other people living in the house were Bobroff, a naturalized American Jew (former Russian subject), who was soliciting orders from the Bolsheviki; an Esthonian representative, two tame Bolsheviki from Siberia, two red, or seemingly red, delegates from Corea, and Axionoff.

This man, formerly Colonel of the Imperial Guard, scion of a noble Russian family, was ostensibly working in the Foreign Office, but was in fact a spy for the Extraordinary Commission. He was specially planted in the house to watch the movements of foreigners and report their conversations to Mogilevski, the Chief Commissar of the Foreign Department of the Vetchika (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission).

During my stay in Moscow I saw a great deal of this mustache-twirling, beard-combing, smirking, Iscariotic apology for a man, and the more I saw of the cowardly renegade the more repulsive I found him. Axionoff, however, was not the only member of the aristocracy I met who had sold his honor and purchased a modicum of comfort and a degree of safety by spying on and betraying his friends. By far the most dangerous spies in Moscow were those recruited from the upper classes.

_Potatoes a Delicacy._

The meals at No. 10, which is one of the best guest houses in the city, consisted of tea and black bread and butter or cheese for breakfast; water soup, decorated with particles of vegetables and kasha, or occasionally rice, for dinner, and black bread and again kasha for supper. On rare occasions we were given as a special delicacy boiled potatoes sprinkled with minute portions of meat. As the meat had invariably been a long time dead we found it advisable to remove it before eating the potatoes.

As at all the Soviet guest houses there were two soldiers always on guard at the door, who carefully noted one’s comings and goings. Visitors were only allowed to enter on production of their documents, particulars of which, together with the name of the person visited, were entered in a book which was periodically sent to the Vetchika. In addition to the guard we had a rat-faced commandant who padded about the house in noiseless boots, probably relics of his former occupation.

On calling at the Department for Foreign Trade, which had been presided over by Krassin before he left for Scandinavia and England, I met a Commissar of the name of Voronatzki, who expressed himself as most anxious to trade with us. He proved to be a very decent fellow, but possessed of little or no knowledge of the matters he was handling. The proposition I made him was the same as that which I had advanced in Irkutsk, namely, to supply the Irkutsk district with goods forwarded via Mongolia and the Jakutsk district, in the fur-bearing region northeast of Irkutsk, via Olan, a port on the Pacific, provided the Soviet power agreed to return to us the furs they had seized in Eastern Siberia; payment for the goods to be supplied by us to be made in furs.

These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no political interest.

AMERICANS JAILED BY MOSCOW REDS ON MERE PRETEXT

_By Hector Boon._

The negotiations I have just described had taken about ten days, and during this time there had been several fresh arrivals at No. 10, notably Boni, the correspondent of the New York Sun, who was later thrown into jail because it was alleged he evinced too much interest in the affairs of the Third Internationale. He attended the opening of the conference in Petrograd as the guest of Radek, the Bolshevik editor.

Shortly before the advent of Boni, Mrs. Harding, an Englishwoman, the correspondent of The New York World, arrived. She was in the house exactly four hours, during which time Rozinzki, formerly a tailor in the East End of London and now a spy for the Vetchika, never left her side. On the pretext that she was to be lodged in another guest house, she was taken off in a motor car, accompanied by Mogilevski, and driven straight to the Vetchika and placed in solitary confinement.

Others Thrown Into Prison.

The same treatment was later meted out to two American correspondents, Estes and Flick, who on their arrival in Moscow were driven direct from the station to the Vetchika, where they were thrown into prison and were still there, in a semistarving condition, when I left Moscow. As in the case of Mrs. Harding, they obtained the Soviet power’s permission to enter Russia before they left Reval.

The Italian correspondent, Pennuncio, who stayed while in Moscow at No. 10, also had a dose of prison. It seems that an article appeared in his newspaper which dealt with the morale of the Red Army. Without troubling to inquire whether this had been written by him, they threw Pennuncio into prison and kept him there for ten days.

In arranging for my passport to be visaed for England I came into close contact with the Foreign Office, and in particular with one Rosenberg, a Jew, who had spent several years in London as a master tailor in an East End sweatshop. In 1917 he was secretary to Raymond Robins of the American Red Cross in Petrograd. When I arrived in Moscow he was in charge of the Western Section of the Foreign Office, and as the agent of the Vetchika had the handling of all foreigners in Russia.

This man is without exception the most unpleasant individual I met during my stay in Soviet Russia. He was invariably rude to every one, ofttimes insolent, consumed with his own importance, and violently anti-English, the country which for years had given him an asylum.

When some American friends of mine were arrested on an absurd charge and thrown into prison I ventured to address a letter of protest to Chicherin, the Commissary for Foreign Affairs. This letter came into the hands of Rosenberg, who threatened me with imprisonment for insulting the Soviet Government. I reminded him that I was in Moscow under the protection of his Government’s safe conduct, to which he was pleased to reply that that would not keep me out of prison.

This Threat Effective.

The situation appeared to call for bluff, so I invited him to put me in prison and assured him that within twenty-four hours of my arrest Comrade Krassin (the Soviet’s representative in England) would find himself in prison in London. The threat was effective, for during the whole of my enforced stay of three months in Moscow I retained my liberty. I need hardly say that I do not believe that the English Government would have arrested Krassin or that they would have done anything for me if I had been arrested.

Once upon a time the British Government was a by-word among the nations of the earth for the promptness with which it protected its nationals. To-day the British Government has so little regard for its own dignity that it carries on negotiations with a gang of marauders while its nationals are being ill treated by them, and even appears anxious to elevate that gang to the dignity of a de facto Government. At any rate this is the feeling of those unfortunates who were allowed to starve in prison in Moscow while Krassin was enjoying the comfort of his office on the “Bondski Prospect” and revelling in the luxury of his quarters in Curzon Street, Mayfair.

Repulsed by Krassin.

Just as I was preparing to leave for London Krassin returned to Moscow and I postponed my departure in order to see him. Two days after his arrival I interviewed him in his office at the Foreign Trade Department. He was very full of his supposed success in London, assured me that the trading agreement would be signed and speedily followed by complete recognition of the Soviet Government and went on to tell me that he would have no dealings, direct or indirect, with American merchants until the United States Government fully recognized the Soviet.

He remained adamant on this point but suggested that I should see him again on my return to London. Krassin impressed me as a very shrewd business man, quite unscrupulous and ready to adopt any means to an end. His personal conceit is colossal and he demonstrated it in many ways at this interview.

When he attended a meeting of the Supreme Economic Council, which was held during his stay in Moscow, he was questioned by an ardent Communist as to why he proposed to give away Russia’s riches to British concessionaires. His repay was typical of the man.

“Never mind,” he said. “Don’t fear; we shall give away nothing. We shall get the concessionaires to put in their money, experience and machinery, and when they have done that we will hang them.” This illuminating incident was related to me by a man who was present at the meeting, a man whose reputation is beyond question.

Lived in Commissar’s House.

Almost immediately after this interview with Krassin, and when the Bolsheviks realized that they had nothing to gain from me, I was ordered to vacate my room at “The House of Spies,” viz: No. 10, at two hours’ notice. This was the work of Rosenberg, but he cut off his nose to spite his face, for during the rest of my stay in Moscow I lived in places where there were no guards on the doors or aristocratic spies to entice me into making counter-revolutionary statements.

As the Bolsheviks made no effort to provide me with other quarters I was forced to live in a friendly Commissar’s car at the railway station, which was then waiting to take him back to Siberia. I remained in the car for a week and then found a room in an apartment house on the Kuznetzki Most, the Bond Street of Moscow. The house, which was tenanted chiefly by Soviet employees, was indescribably dirty and verminous.

It was only when, after having been forced to leave No. 10, I had to provide my own meals that I realized what it cost to feed oneself even in the most frugal manner. Taking the exchange current at that time, viz.: 2,500 roubles to the dollar, and converting the rouble prices into their American equivalent, black bread cost 25 cents a pound, white bread $1, butter $2.50, rice $1, meat 50 cents, sugar $2.50, tea $6 and potatoes, which were comparatively cheap, 4 cents a pound.

The foregoing are so-called speculative prices for foodstuffs which are purchasable on the market, whereas the Soviet prices for food obtainable with cards are only a fraction of these.

Buying and selling, except by and to the State, is illegal and the market itself is an illegal institution. As, however, it provides a source of large illicit income to the Commissars of the Emchika (Moscow Extraordinary Commission) it is allowed to operate. The only sellers on the market who are not subject to sudden arrest are those who have an understanding with the Commissars and pay them a regular fixed sum per month for their protection.

The market is raided by the soldiers of the Emchika daily. The arrests per raid average about 60 persons, buyers and sellers. The arrested are herded from the market to the point of preliminary inspection, which is in close proximity to the market place. Here those who are able to make it worth the while of the examining Commissars are set at liberty after their goods have been confiscated; those less fortunate are thrown into prison where they remain sometimes for months without ever being brought before the semblance of a court.

HUNGER AFFLICTS ALL MOSCOW UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE

_By Hector Boon._

The saddest sight in the Muscovite city is the place I named the Lane of Tears. It is an alleyway between two rows of permanent stalls on the Sukarefka, where women and men, old and young, almost entirely of the educated classes, with the exception of a few professionals who occasionally compete with them, foregather and sell their personal effects in order to keep body and soul together.

For three months I went to the market daily and never failed to visit the Lane of Tears. I have seen gently nurtured women selling their silken underclothing to the vulgar wives and mistresses of Commissars, who, all unmindful of the feelings of the seller, held up the garments for all to behold amid the ribald laughter and lewd jokes of the soldiers standing near. I have seen a young widow selling an officer’s tunic and strive to gulp down the tears as, with the proceeds, she hurried off to the bread pitch. If I read the story right, that tunic had been dear to her as the last remaining remembrance of the young husband the firing squad had taken from her.

_Begs Money for Bread._