YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of the Publishers

THE GROPING GIANT
REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA AS SEEN
BY AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT

PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION
ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF1
THEODORE L. GLASGOW

THE GROPING GIANT
REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA AS SEEN
BY AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT

BY
WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN, JR.

NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON ¦ HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXX

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

First published, 1920.

1>w253*o

THE THEODORE L. GLASGOW MEMORIAL
PUBLICATION FUND
The present volume is the third work published by
the Yale University Press on the Theodore L. Glasgow
Memorial Publication Fund. This Foundation was estab
lished September 17, 1918, by an anonymous gift to Yale
University in memory of Flight Sub-Lieutenant Theodore
L. Glasgow, R.N. He was born in Montreal, Canada,
May 25, 1898, the eldest son of Robert and Louise C.
Glasgow, and was educated at the University of Toronto
Schools and at the Royal Military College, Kingston.
In August, 191 6, he entered the Royal Naval Air Service
and in July, 191 7, went to France with the Tenth
Squadron attached to the Twenty-Second Wing of the
Royal Flying Corps. A month later, August 19, 191 7, he
was killed in action on the Ypres front.

TO MY FATHER

FOREWORD

IN the pages that follow I have made no attempt to
analyze the present political situation in Russia. It
has been my aim, through the medium of a varied
experience, to try to make clear what are the permanent
psychological factors in Russia today which will ulti
mately determine the course of her history, and which are
independent of rapidly changing political situations. It
has also been my aim to present in a sympathetic light
the point of view of the most important groups in Russian
life at the present time. The effort to make this psycho
logical analysis has led me inevitably into a threefold
classification of the elements that make up modern Rus
sia — the Masses, the Bolsheviki and the Intelligentzia. A
study, from the democratic, American point of view, of
these three great classes as they came within the range of
my experience through daily contact during and after the
Bolshevik revolution forms the substance of this book.
I feel a special debt to Mr. Malcolm W. Davis, with
whom I was associated for a year in Russia, in the work
of the American Committee on Public Information. In his
generous, sympathetic and understanding, but at the same
time objective, view of Russian people and Russian prob
lems, many of the ideas I have here set forth have their
source.

FOREWORD
Without the encouragement of my father, at whose sug
gestion I undertook to put this experience into writing,
and the constant help and interest of my wife, these im
pressions would never have been written.
New York, August 29, 1920.

T2

CONTENTS PAGE
Introduction  17
Russia as teacher and as warning. The writer's qualifica
tions as a reporter of things Russian. Changing conditions
and the unchanging Russian. Russia's problem and its in
fluence on other countries.
I. First Impressions  22
Arrival at Vladivostok. First impressions. At the railway
station. Across Siberia. First introduction to the tovarish. A
Russian landlady. Arrival at Moscow. The October revolution.
First view of the Kremlin. The morgue as leveler of classes.
Two funeral processions. The Ballet and the Art Theatre.
A chance meeting. "They won't touch you." Old Russia at
the Tretiakof Gallery. An evening service at the Cathedral
of the Redeemer. Threefold Russia.
II. The Masses  51
The dissolution hi a great army. Off for the front. The
tovarish as traveling companion. A Christmas celebration at
Minsk. "Children with the passions of men." A rabbit as
point of departure for social philosophy. "What does America
think of our revolution?" Russian boys and girls. The omni- _
present German. Across No Man's Land. Selling bread for
vodka. "Down with war." A glimpse of village life. Russian
peasant wisdom. A burning hut as object lesson. The Russian
as fatalist. The tovarish as farmer. What stopped the war?
Two fixed points in Russian peasant psychology : the yearn
ing for peace; the hunger for land. 13

CONTENTS PAGE
III. The Bolsheviki (I)  80
Incidents of readjustment. The fate of the loyal officer.
The Bolshevik appeal to the soldier. The peasant's attitude to
the Burjiii. The role of the Russian Jew. Petrograd in De
cember 1 91 7. Evidences of waste and of distress. "A search.''
The German again in evidence. Bolshevik economics. Factory
operatives as managers. Living on one's capital. The Red
Guard at home. A visit to the Dvorianski Sobranie (Nobles'
Club). Trotsky as orator. The pull of the land, and the re
bound to the city. The rise of the modern mercenary. Ameri
can anti-German propaganda in Petrograd. A visit to
Smolny. Bolshevik control of the press.
IV. The Bolsheviki (II)  105
Petrograd to Moscow. A convinced Bolshevik. Inside the
Kremlin. Good-bye to precedent. The All-Russian Congress.
A narrow escape from arrest. Impressions of an American
spectator. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Lenine appears and dis
appears. Danger of asking an accounting of the People's
Commissars. Emotional effect of the Congress. "We shall
judge." Off to Siberia with the Czecho-Slovaks. Different
conceptions of freedom. A visit to the Commissar at Omsk.
How an Englishman takes arrest. The Red. Guard as foragers.
Bolshevik philosophy in the bookstore at Krasnoyarsk. The
doctrine of the class war as barrier. A local election. Bolshevik
theory and Bolshevik practice. Irkutsk under the Bolsheviki.
Types of Bolshevik leader. A public review and a private
drill. Karl Marx as "Little Father." Who are the Bolsheviki?
V. The Intelligentzia (I)  134
Comprehensiveness of the term 'Intelligentzia.' Ladies of
the old school. The American flag as shelter and as protec
tion. A university degree as a sentence to death by starva
tion. Conditions in Moscow. Dance and song as a prelude to
politics. Types of monarchist, absolutist and constitutional.
"A house divided against itself." The intellectual as fatalist.
A fellow traveler who believed in free will. Selenga, refuge of
the Decembrists. Across the desert into China. A farewell
glimpse of old Russia at Urga. Impressions of life at Harbin.

CONTENTS PAGE
Refugees at the Railroad Club. Variety of costume. Preva
lence of uniform, military and civil. Inferences as to Russian
character. The Russian as individualist and as specialist. Dif
ficulty of editing an anti-Bolshevik paper under General
Horvath. Back to Vladivostok.
VI. The Intelligentzia (II)  163
Siberia revisited. Irkutsk under anti-Bolshevik rule. Gover
nor lakovlef. The revival of education at Irkutsk. Tragic
position of the intellectuals under Bolshevism. Their involun
tary isolation. The Russian cooperatives. Evidences of activity
at Omsk. Admiral Kolchak's headquarters at Ekaterinburg.
Good and evil in non-Bolshevik Russia. A recall to reality.
Into Perm on the heels of the victorious army. A dinner with
the Chief of Staff. The reactionary point-of-view. The office
of Free Perm. Elements of unity among the Intelligentzia.
Last days in Ekaterinburg. Awakening of social activity in
the Orthodox Church. A Christian layman on the future of
the church. Reaction of anti-Bolshevik Russia to the pro
posal of the Prinkipo Conference. Love of country as a unify
ing element in Russian character.
VII. Conclusions  186
Home again. The new viewpoint and its causes. What Rus
sia has to teach the world. Russia as a demonstration of the
power of the masses. Autocracy as the only alternative to
representative government. Class rule and its inevitable con
sequences in the destruction of freedom. Underlying scepti
cism of the Bolsheviki. Their impatience of delay. Their dis
trust of the people. Folly of imitating this example in
America. Russia as reminder of the need of social outlook
and cooperative spirit. Russia's trust in America, and desire
for American leadership. Conditions of such leadership. What
one American owes to Russia.

IS

INTRODUCTION

NOWHERE have the forces at work in all coun
tries which are bringing about the tremendous
revolution of thought and feeling about social
questions characteristic of the present age been operative
in more clear-cut and distinguishable form than in Russia.
And nowhere are the dangers that are inseparable from a
too rapid transition from an old and tested political and
economic system to a new and untried one more obvious
and more significant than in Russia. For these two rea
sons Russia has become for all other countries a subject
of absorbing interest.
The writer was in Russia during a time of momentous
change — a time when the bitterness, the passion and the
suffering of a transition period was at its height. It was
the period when the struggle of Russia as a nation for
political and economic power and prestige as expressed
by her alignment with the Allies against Germany in the
Great War was definitely superseded by the economic
struggle between different classes within the nation. -This
second warfare even before the Armistice was signed had
eclipsed the warfare waged in the name of Russia as a
whole. It continued without the slightest abatement after
the conclusion of the peace. It was not affected by the
i7

THE GROPING GIANT
temporary settlement of the questions involved in the
Great War which followed the military defeat of Ger
many. To such an extent had it overshadowed the Great
War in the minds of Russians that news of the conclusion
of the Armistice, hailed with unbounded joy throughout
the world, was received in Russia almost with indifference.
In Irkutsk, where the writer was living at the time, the
announcement that the war was over did not cause the
slightest ripple in the life of the city.
A year and a half spent in Russia at this most critical
period of her history gave the writer the opportunity to
study at first hand the beginnings of this desperate and
relentless open warfare between the classes. Going first
to Russia in September 191 7, as a secretary of the
Y. M. C. A., I was in Moscow during the early days of
the October revolution, when the Bolsheviki first came
into power. A journey to the various huts established by
the American Y. M. C. A. with the Tenth Army then took4
me to the front, where I saw the last remnants of Russia's
rapidly disintegrating army. Returning to Petrograd in
December 191 7, I joined in the work of the American
Committee on Public Information, which was carrying
on a vigorous pro-Ally and pro-American propaganda. In
connection with this work I spent several months in
Petrograd and Moscow, then under Bolshevik rule, and
more than a year traveling throughout Siberia in daily
touch with those who were engaged in the anti-Bplshevik
movement. When, on account of lack of support by Con
gress, the work of the Committee was discontinued, I
returned to America in March 1919.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since that
time. Failure on the part of the Allies to lend real and

INTRODUCTION
effective military aid to, the men fighting the Bolsheviki
in the summer of 1918 when it might have been decisive,
added to the lack of agreement among anti-Bolshevik
Russians themselves, made the military defeat of the
Bolsheviki impossible. The continuance of the blockade,
after the military defeat of the Bolsheviki ceased to be
within the range of probabilities, served only to intensify
hatred of the Allies and did not help the anti- Bolshevik
cause. The failure of America at any time adequately to
define her attitude towards the Bolsheviki added to the
uncertainty everywhere prevailing. The aggressions of
Japan in the Far East, and the attempt of Poland to
recover large areas of territory which had long been a
part of Russia gave to the Bolshevik leaders an im
mensely powerful weapon of propaganda, and greatly in
creased the number of those Russians who have assumed
the attitude, "We will deal with the foreign invader first,
and then settle our own troubles ourselves." Experience
in government has proved to the Bolsheviki that many of
their theories are impracticable, and has resulted in a
modification of doctrines once held as integral parts of
Bolshevik theory. It has also forced the Bolshevik leaders
to seek the aid of intelligent and capable Russians of the
bourgeois class. The rapid recovery of the war-worn coun
tries of Europe and the continued stability of their gov
ernments have relegated the attainment of world revo
lution, once regarded as an immediate prospect, to the
distant future, and have made the Bolshevik leaders
willing to come to an agreement with capitalistic coun
tries. On the other hand, the mere continuance of the
Bolshevik power over a period of years has left many of
the Intelligentzia who desire to take some part in the life
19

THE GROPING GIANT
of flie country no alternative but to do so within the Bol
shevik organization. As a consequence an increasing num
ber of men of moderate views and tolerant spirit have
little by little worked their way up through the Bolshevik
ranks. Yet, great as have been the changes since the events
referred to in the following pages took place, the class
tyranny of the present rulers of Russia still continues.
Russia is still at war within herself. The conditions under
which her people live have not essentially changed. More
fundamental still, the distinctive characteristics of the
Russian people remain unaltered. From an understanding
of these alone can come a fair judgment of the modern
history of Russia. The study of the actual events now
taking place in Russia is important for every forward-
looking man. But to interpret them justly one must have
knowledge of the peculiar conditions existing in that
country, and have insight into the kind of people who
live there, into their way of life, their psychology and
their character.
The problem that Russia has to face is in principle the
same as that before all other civilized nations — namely,
how to establish and maintain a government able to rule
in the interest of all classes, to secure a better distribution
of wealth, to keep abreast of the spirit of the age, and to
express the genius of her people. But the factors which
enter into Russia's problem are so different, the psy
chology of her people so foreign, and the events that have
rapidly succeeded one another in that distracted country
so strange and unfamiliar, so seemingly contradictory,
that it is hard for a foreigner to form a just appreciation
of their nature and meaning. To apply American stand-
20

INTRODUCTION
ards to Russia, and to judge what happens there without
keeping steadily in mind these great psychological differ
ences which divide our people from the Russian people,
must inevitably lead to mistaken and often dangerous
conclusions. And yet it remains true, though it seems a
paradox in view of what has just been said, that there is
probably more in common between Americans and Rus
sians than between Russians and any other non-Slavic
race. Russia today is a vast laboratory in which many kinds
of experiment in government and social organization are
being tried. The influence of revolutionary Russia reaches
to every country and every race. The forces at play in
Russia today are great forces. Directly or indirectly they
are influencing the course of affairs not only in Europe
but in Asia and the United States as well. To help fill in
the background against which events in Russia must be
projected in order to be fully understood, and to share
with others an experience which, to the writer at least,
has helped to make clear the nature of the forces operat
ing in Russia, and Russia's contribution to the new era
upon which we are entering, is the object of the following
chapters.

21

I.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS

IN September 191 7, the result of the Great War still
hung in the balance. The power of Germany seemed
still to grow more terrible and more relentless. The
inactivity of Russia, whose armies had in the years before
so often lightened the burden on the Western fronts,
added a heavy load to the anxieties of those who prayed
for the success of the Allied cause. For a time one name
seemed to bring light out of the darkness. Kerenski stood
forth in the eyes of the world as the saviour of Russia.
By his indomitable will and genius in inspiring the people,
he was to make Russia again one of the active partners
in our great enterprise. At the very least he could hold
masses of Germans on the Eastern front until America
was ready. It was under the glamour of Kerenski's name,
when the news of his waning fortunes had scarcely begun
to reach America, that I first came to Russia. The reasons
for his loss of strength and power had not been known in
America at all. Rumors, indeed, of' sinister import had
begun to reach, us from the interior of Russia. But these
could not dispel for a moment the impression left in the
22

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
mind by the great headlines and glowing eulogies which
had been spread before us for months in America, lauding
Kerenski to the skies. To help the Russian soldier at the
front, to make life easier for him and cheer him up, so
that he might fight the better, still seemed work that
could count in the Great War.
I landed late in September at Vladivostok, anxious
and ready to believe that the gloomy picture brought
from Russia by returning travelers must be an exaggera
tion, and still full of hope that Russia would fight. Only
a few days after my landing, at the house of a lady who
was guiding my faltering first steps in the mysteries of
the Russian language, this easy optimism began to be
shaken. After the lesson, at nine o'clock in the evening,
the family gathered about the samovar for tea — a delight
ful function, without which no Russian house, be it high
or low, can be truly Russian, or truly contented. In the
course of our talk about Russia and her problems, my
hostess expressed a sentiment which sounded strange to
my American ears, but which I afterwards came to under
stand only too clearly. It was wonder that Americans
should send men all the way to Russia to help and serve
the Russian soldiers and complete inability to understand
why they did it. "Do you not know," she said, "that they
are no longer soldiers in any sense? They are the 'tova-
rishi,' 'comrades,' whose very name, like the 'citoyen' of
the French Revolution, inspires fear. They are at this
very moment leaving the front unprotected against the
Germans. They are ruining the transportation of the
country, and are engaged in every kind of lawlessness
and crime, to such an extent that no one's life is safe,
and no one's property secure, be he patriot or traitor,
23

THE GROPING GIANT
good or bad, rich or poor. I most heartily appreciate and
admire the spirit in which the Americans come here, but
it is hard for us to understand why you should want to
help these men who wish to destroy us all and Russia
along with us. Is it possible that the Allies believe that
Russia is still in the war? We have known for months
that there never would be another winter campaign in
Russia. The Allies must reconcile themselves to the fact
that Russia can fight no longer. You do not and cannot
begin to understand the abysmal ignorance of the Russian
soldier, the sufferings he has had to endure. Only a Rus
sian can truly estimate the powerful forces of unrest set
free by the relaxing of the strong hold over him that has
enabled Russia up to the present to do her part against
Germany." I left with the feeling that American papers
and journals had still much to learn of Russia.
The mood of my teacher, I soon found, was typical of
nearly everyone I met. Vladivostok was nervous. For
the last few days the town had been filled with the
wildest and most conflicting rumors. Kerenski was no
longer a name to conjure with. People were recounting in
whispers the terrible deeds of the tovarishi. The army was
no longer a protection but had become a source of fear
and terror. There was no reliable news, no rate of ex
change. Travelers escaping from Central Russia brought
tales of terrible journeys and great deprivations. In no
place was the anxiety and restlessness of the people more
evident than at the railroad station at the time of the
departure of the Petrograd express. Here people whose
interests brought them most intimately into contact with
the strange events occurring in Central Russia, were
forced to congregate and here one evening I came to say
24

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
good-bye to some members of our party who left for
Petrograd on the first express after our arrival. Standing
on the balcony of the station, overlooking the railroad
tracks, I could watch the crowd below surging about the
train. It was a crowd full of new types, new faces and
costumes, which suggested vividly the variety and pictur-
esqueness of the life of Russia, so different from all I had
known before. In the shouting, fighting crowd struggling
to get places on the train, there were peasants in leather
coats and felt boots, with huge bundles over their shoul
ders, voluble bright-eyed Jews in black astrakhan wool
hats, soldiers wearing huge round white hats tipped over
one ear, and many ladies and gentlemen of the better
class fighting for places with the rest. Among them the
porters, or 'nossilschiki,'1 wearing white aprons as their
official badge of office, moved about calm and uncon
cerned, bringing order out of chaos. In the throng, one
figure stood out with startling conspicuousness. He was a
Don Cossack, lithe and active, with sharp features, a small
black moustache and a lock of curly black hair showing
under the officer's round high hat of grey wool with a
green and gold top. His national costume of bright red,
decorated by two rows of cartridges forming a V over
his chest, with its tight waist, and long skirt reaching
nearly to the ankles, made him at once an outstanding
figure. The presence of a tiny gilt dagger in his waist,
with the handle slanted so as to be instantly within reach
of the right hand, symbolized the warrior, and the de-
1The 'nossilschik' in Russia is a functionary of much greater im
portance than a mere porter. Upbn him, even in stormy times, the
harassed traveler can rely for efficient help and, more valuable still,
accurate information amid the perplexities and difficulties of transporta
tion in Russia. 25

THE GROPING GIANT
scendant of a long line of warriors. He was waving a fare
well to a girl of seventeen or eighteen standing beside me
on the balcony, dressed smartly in black, who tried hard
to conceal her evident anxiety and emotion under an ap
pearance of gaiety until the train finally pulled out. There
was something feverish and exciting in the air and every
one seemed to be trying to appear unconcerned, and
failing in the attempt. The travelers were embarking upon
a journey to a place of danger and terror. Yet no one
could tell just what the danger was. The very fact that
it was mysterious and undefined added a peculiar poign
ancy and pathos to the parting of friends and relatives.
Not one of all the people who started on that train knew
to what they were going or what they would find of their
business, their homes and their families. For the first
time I felt the uncertainty, the nervous tension, the ap
prehension and fear of the future that form the very
atmosphere of the daily life of revolutionary Russia.
It was with the thrill of the explorer venturing into
the unknown that I, in my turn, found myself riding day
after day across the endless expanse of Siberia and
drawing nearer and nearer to the centre where Rumor
was born, and to which all the warring world was looking
in an agony of hope or fear. At every station of any con
siderable size, those who had run out to form the long
line of passengers waiting their turn to fill their kettles
with boiling water for tea, brought in new stories of
-happenings in Petrograd and Moscow. The name of Le
nine was heard more and more on men's lips, and that of
Trotsky, spoken almost in a whisper, generally followed.
Russians on the train became more tense, more nervous.
These thirteen days of not knowing what was happening
26

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
to their families and to their country were days of suffer
ing for them. But the Americans, traveling as they were
in comfort in an International Car, were light-hearted
and gay. They enjoyed immensely the kindness of their
Russian fellow travelers, and liked to think things were
perhaps really not as bad as they were pictured. The
slight discomforts to which they were subjected and the
uncertainty which surrounded the jdurney added a spice
of pleasurable excitement. That there was only candle
light and that they were two days late they put down with
a shrug of their shoulders to "Russian inefficiency." It
was only afterwards that they found out that the absence
of electric light was due to the fact that the porters were
smuggling food in the place where the batteries should
have been, in order to profit by the starvation in the
interior. But the cars were well heated, and the food
plentiful. The Americans felt comfortable, cozy and safe.
From this false sense of security, which I shared with
the others, I was rudely awakened one day on our arrival
at a small station where a train of freight cars with stoves,
commonly known as tepliishkas, was standing on a siding.
It was a troop train carrying part of the Russian Army
out into Siberia to their homes. The express stood for
a while with locked doors waiting for the engine to re
plenish its supply of wood. Soldiers from the troop train
began to gather about it, and before long were pounding
at the doors and throwing things at the windows. Self-
complacency was distinctly jarred by the sight of the
crowd of angry, shouting, gesticulating soldiers attacking
the train and demanding that all the passengers get out
and exchange places with them. The naked point of a
bayonet, making its way through a slightly opened win-
27

THE GROPING GIANT
dow, added force to their argument. The red face of a
huge peasant soldier looking furiously at me as he shook
his fist at the train indicated that I was not merely a
spectator of this little scene, but a participant in it. That
big red-faced peasant was furiously angry at me per
sonally for riding in that train while he had to ride in a
freight car. Why should these people ride in luxury while
he, who had fought" for Russia through the long winters
in the trenches, ill-fed, ill-armed and ill-clothed, must ride
in a slow freight train, packed in without room to move?
It was difficult to formulate a convincing answer on the
spur of the moment, but my American mind had imme
diate recourse to a principle so well established in America
that to hear it questioned and brushed aside as if it were
not was an unexpected and very illuminating experience.
"I paid the price asked of me for the privilege of riding
on this train to Petrograd, and, therefore, I have a per
fect right to ride on this train till we get to Petrograd,
if it takes a thousand years." The turmoil outside and
the ever more and more insistent pounding at the vesti
bule doors conveyed this answer: "Why should you have
money and we none? Aren't we as good men as you?
Haven't we suffered a thousand times more than you ? If
we are simple and dirty and ignorant, isn't it because you
and men like you have taken all the good things for a
thousand years and given us none? That you are a
foreigner makes it worse. Why should a foreigner travel
in such luxury here in Russia, while we, Russian men,
have to go in that tepliishka train over there?"- And for
the first time I heard the sinister word 'Burjui'1 applied
1 There is no exact English equivalent for the Russian word 'Burjui.'
It is more inclusive than bourgeois, for it embraces aristocrats as well as
28

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
to me personally. I found myself branded as one of a
definite group, separated from those men outside, not
¦merely by differences of language, race and inheritance,
but by a seemingly unbridgeable gulf called class. When
the express hastily moved out, in time to avoid real
trouble, leaving the tovarishi still shaking their fists at us,
I felt that I had had my first real indication of the terms
of the Russian problem. I had begun to realize the pri
mary importance in Russian life of those class antago
nisms, which, though undoubtedly existing in America, are
at least not daily thrust upon one's attention. I had begun
to feel the mass force that made revolutionary Russia so
terrible, and yet, in its own way,. so inspiring.
Instructions wired to us en route to go to Moscow
instead of to Petrograd made a change of train neces
sary at Vologda. So far as the passengers were concerned,
this offered no insuperable difficulties, but to -change the
baggage was a different matter. The baggage was checked
to Petrograd, and three hours of unexampled and impas
sioned oratory on the part of all the Russians on the
express to whom we could communicate our difficulties
failed utterly to shake the devotion to duty of one entirely
illiterate peasant acting as baggageman, who insisted that
it should not go to Moscow with its owners, but should
continue to Petrograd alone. The best that could finally
be done was to get it unloaded on the platform. When the
train for Moscow pulled out with the rest of the party
members of the middle class. It is the all-inclusive term to designate the
possessing classes — those who live on interest or rent. It is therefore the
name of the enemy in the class-war propaganda of the Bolsheviki. It
carries with it a note of menace which cannot be translated, and there
fore, in speaking of modern Russia, it is necessary to use the Russian
word itself. 29

THE GROPING GIANT
at one in the morning, it left me on the platform still
arguing the point with a porter with a one-track mind.
A glance at the station dining-room, with its three long
tables covered with worn-out oilcloth, its dingy buffet at
one end and wet and muddy tile floor, determined me to
venture into the town to find a room rather than form one
of the multitude spending the night in the steaming at
mosphere of the station. And this led to a second step in
the process of introducing an already somewhat discon
certed American to contemporary Russia. Outside the
station I found a surly-looking isvoschik whose droshki
sagged very much to one side and seemed on the point of
complete dissolution. I started out with him, however,
and for an hour we rode in pitchy darkness over a cobble
stone road covered with a liberal top layer of mud.
Finally we reached the centre of the town and drew up in
front of the main hotel. Much pounding at the door
aroused a dishevelled individual within sufficiently to in
form us that there were no rooms left. It proved the same
with the remaining three hotels in descending order of
respectability. Finally, after much weary wandering be
tween rows of low white houses looking like ghosts in the
blackness, and past several white Russian churches whose
five onion-shaped domes seemed to tower over us im
mensely high, the droshki suddenly stopped. I alighted to
ask for lodging at a small and very respectable-looking
house. Repeated summons brought to the door a young,
good-looking peasant woman with the usual brown shawl
over her head, and as solidly constructed as the rock of
Gibraltar. She peered out of a crack in the door and re
luctantly admitted that she had a room. I demanded to see
it before saying I would take it, such being the custom in
30

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
similar cases in America. Instantly the door slammed
closed and we heard the woman going back up the stairs.
The isvoschik now began insistently demanding three
times the fare agreed upon, but we postponed that ques
tion until the matter of the room was settled. Redoubled
hammering and banging on our part brought the woman
back, but this time the conversation was carried on
through the door, the upper half of which was glass. I
endeavored to explain that I was an American and wished
to see the room before taking it, a request that was only
acceded to after another flight up the stairs. When the
door was finally opened, the expression of suspicion and
terror on the face of the woman was startling. As I
entered, the isvoschik pushed in behind me against her
voluble protests, which she backed up by physical force
without avail. He ensconced himself inside while I looked
at the room. On my return to pay the man he demanded
four times the fare. I endeavored not to be bullied, but
the woman seized hold of me and implored me to pay and
to pay quickly. The isvoschik stepped out on the stoop.
As I followed the door slammed behind me and I saw
her terrified face peeping out through the glass. I heard
a whistle and on looking down the street saw three or four
figures stealing out from apparently nowhere and ap
proaching us silently. The isvoschik addressed a remark to
me in Russian, which I gathered to mean, "Now will you
pay?" and the force of his argument seeming to me un
answerable, I paid up, and slipped back through the door
which was held open just far enough for me to squeeze in.
I rather expected, now that there was no danger from
the outside, to find my hostess more easy in her mind and
willing to talk a little and get me the few things I needed
31

THE GROPING GIANT
in my room. But she remained as distant and aloof as
before, with the one idea apparently of getting out of my
company as soon as possible. It was the same the next
morning. She let me out early, still looking at me with
the utmost distrust and even hostility, and was evidently
greatly relieved to get rid of so undesirable a guest as
myself. The fear written on the face of my landlady had been
fear of the isvoschik and his proletarian friends, who were
obviously the real masters of the city of Vologda. But
entirely apart from this in her whole attitude and bearing
towards me, there had been a settled antagonism and sus
picion which did not relax in the slightest degree up to
the last moment I spent in her house. It was the first
evidence I had met of the strong tendency of Russians to
dislike strangers and to question their motives and dis
believe their words. It gave me a clue to a quality which
permeates Russian life, a quality common to all classes
of Russian society, in which lies much of the tragedy of
Russia — the inrooted inability of the people to trust one
another, the instinct to assume the worst about all with
whom they come in contact.
To be in a crowd and yet alone is the worst kind of
loneliness. After waiting about in the throng at the station
all the following mornifig, I endeavored, with the aid of
a little red dictionary, to extract the news of the day
from a nervous little gentleman, with a short brown
beard and a rusty-looking great-coat. When he learned
that I was bound for Moscow, he became at once exceed
ingly excited and voluble. Seizing my dictionary he began
frantically turning over the pages. Finally he pointed to
the word "massacre," and said, nodding his head ener-
32

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
getically, "Moscow," and in the same manner conveyed
to me the following information — "Fire-Moscow. Famine-
Moscow. Slaughter-Moscow." Acting, however, on a car
dinal principle of travel in Russia, namely, that things
in the next town are never so bad as they are painted, I
soon found myself, with a German colonist and a young
artillery officer for company, in a train due to start in
five or six hours. The baggage had completely and mys
teriously disappeared so there was nothing for it but to go
on without it. The next morning I alighted in Moscow.
Everything looked very calm at the station, and I was
beginning to put down my Vologda friend as an alarmist,
when I ran across some of the other Americans who had
preceded me by some days. I learned to my surprise that
they had been trying to get into the city for twenty-four
hours without success. Their first words were hearty con
gratulations on my extraordinary skill in getting the
baggage to Moscow, and a request for my assistance in
reclaiming it from a bodyguard of two soldiers who had
accompanied it from Vologda and would not give it up
till my arrival with the check! Hardly had this matter
been attended to before a sharp volley of rifle fire indi
cated that the social revolution was indeed upon us.
A few hours later four Americans were receiving in a
most unusual manner their first impressions of the ancient
city which, for so many generations, had been the heart
and soul of all things Russian; the Moscow where the
deeds of Ivan the Terrible and the menace of Napoleon,
to us mere far-away legends, had been stern realities, and
where the pageant of the coronation of the last of the
Romanofs had been held not so many years before.
Our destination was the palatial residence of a wealthy
33

THE GROPING GIANT
oil magnate on Smolenski Boulevard, which had been put
at the disposal of the American Y. M. C. A. as head
quarters for its work with Russian soldiers. With a great
bulwark of baggage so disposed as to afford the best
possible protection, with the American flag displayed on
one side of the droshki and the Red Cross flag on the
other and the isvoschik himself proudly wearing the
Stars and Stripes on his robe, the circuitous drive around
the city began. Every few feet this curious vehicle was
stopped by members of the Red Guard, slovenly looking
workmen of menacing appearance, armed with rifles.
After a few words of explanation as to our character and
purpose, however, our droshki was always allowed to pass
on. There was nothing very impressive about the appear
ance of the Red Guard. They were just such men as one
would expect to see taking part in an insurrectionary up
rising against established government, sure to be put down
in a few hours, or at most in a few days, like the draft
riots in our own Civil War. Many of them were mere
boys. The idea that these men were to wield the real
power in Russia for a long time to come had not even oc
curred to us. That was an idea which needed only to
present itself to be immediately rejected as absurd and
impossible — as it would have been in America.
On arriving on a side street at one of the main
thoroughfares of the city the isvoschik suddenly stopped.
A machine gun was firing down the thoroughfare at a
group of anti-Bolshevik soldiers in a square at the other
end, who were replying by rifle fire. Our isvoschik reason
ably hesitated to interpose himself and us between the
two fires in order to cross the street. We waited a few
minutes in doubt. A crowd of citizens — men, women and
34

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
children were huddled at the corner of our street and
along the sides of the houses. On seeing the American flag,
they waved to us most cheerily and made the most good-
humored and friendly comments on our peculiar appear
ance. When the men operating the machine gun saw our
predicament they obligingly ceased firing for a moment
and we passed on our way. I began to wonder whether
this was a real battle or some sort of strange theatrical
demonstration. I had a feeling of unreality w«hich came
back to me more than once during the ensuing week of
enforced seclusion in a great house on Smolenski Boule
vard between the lines of the two factions. From the
windows of this stately mansion one could watch curious
crowds stealing forth after every volley to see what had
happened and loitering about the street corners until a
new volley sent them scurrying for shelter. Surely it was
a peculiar kind of war that permitted a deputation from
the Americans in this conspicuous and strategically lo
cated, solidly built building, to go out and expostulate
with the sentry on the corner for sending bullets through
the window, and receive his apology for his inconsiderate
act when he learned that the house was occupied by
Americans, who said that there was no machine gun on
the roof! But the stern reality of the October revolution
was brought home by the sight of stretcher bearers going
by with the dead and dying.
During the seven days of fighting we had struggled
against the idea that the forces of violence could win, that
intelligence, order, culture, law, tradition, patriotism were
not strong enough in that great city to preserve them
selves, and that expected reinforcements from without
would not come. It was only after days and days of con-
35

THE GROPING GIANT
tinued bombardment and continued bad news from the
side with which an American college man's natural sym
pathies lay, that we had at last to reverse our judgment
and accept the unwelcome fact. When the story of Korni-
lof's cavalry, which was to save the city from the south,
proved a myth — when news trickled through that Keren
ski was absolutely alone and deserted in Petrograd —
when all hope of loyal troops being brought from the
front was. lost — when finally the Military Academy held
by the cadets surrendered — then indeed came a time for
sober and anxious thought. The cold and relentless logic
of the facts at last left no alternative but to face the new
situation honestly — to have done with self-deception.
What had seemed to almost every Anglo-Saxon mind in
that building utterly impossible, unnatural and prepos
terous, was now to become the actual and the real. What
would it really mean if the force represented by that
angry, red-faced peasant, and that slouching, dark-com
plexioned, shifty^looking workman of the Red Guard
became all-powerful in the land? Standing one night,
looking in the direction I supposed the Kremlin to be, I
saw the sky lit up with the red glare of fire. Was it to be
another burning of Moscow — another different kind of
Napoleon to destroy and to oppress ? Was I to have lived
almost under the shadow of the Kremlin, and never to see
it? How much of the marvelous old Russia it represented'
was to survive? The red glare of the fire presaging the
Red Terror, brought once more into the heart and mind
the feeling of anxiety, uncertainty and fear that had
already begun to weaken by familiarity with new sur-.
roundings and the habit of seeing strange events.
After a week a truce brought about by the uncondi-
36

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
tional surrender of the Burjui opened the portals of our
palatial prison. At last the long-awaited opportunity came
to see the city and begin to study its people, to meet and
talk with them and try to understand why these things
were, and what sort of people were the victors and the
vanquished. With a sense of great relief I approached the Kremlin
for the first time to find no outward signs of harm done
to it by bombardment. The narrow red stone bridge lead
ing over the Alexander Gardens to the magnificent Red
Gate, which breaks the monotony of one side of the
Kremlin wall seemed to invite the passer-by to enter, and
to hold out a promise of wonderful things within. But on
reaching the gate itself I was denied admittance by a
heavily armed soldier, who was examining the permits^of
all who wished to enter. Within the shadow of the gate
other soldiers stood or sat around a wood fire carelessly.
Having no permit I could go no farther. As I turned to
go a big automobile came rolling up to the gate. All
sprang instantly to rigid attention. Here were discipline
and order at least, and I became acutely conscious that
there was a strong central authority which had great
power and demanded unquestioning obedience in the city
of Moscow that day; an unfamiliar, ruthless, wicked,
tyrannous power it might be, but still a power that could
not be disregarded, and which rested on something very
fundamental in Russian character and Russian con
ditions. Turning away from the Red Gate, I wandered through
the streets of Moscow, passing here and there hastily im
provised trenches and barricades, and every now and then
a pool of blood. On all sides were signs of the recent
37

THE GROPING GIANT
conflict. The streets and sidewalks were covered with
glass from thousands of broken windows. Countless white
bullet holes defaced the walls of buildings on street after
street; trolley wires were down everywhere. In the centre
of the city there was the greater ruin of heavy artillery
work. Crowds of people were already moving, delighted
to have regained their freedom, though the news of the
truce had not reached all parts of the city and inter
mittent firing was still going on.
A few days after the overturn in a small street not far
from the massive buildings of the Moscow University, I
found a long queue of people waiting with the extraor
dinary patience characteristic of Russian crowds. The
head of the line was in the modest courtyard of a small
red storehouse, and the end of it fully ten blocks away.
Idle curiosity prompted me to stop for a moment, but on
looking closely at the people I felt ashamed and passed
on. The crowd was no ordinary crowd, like one of the
many daily growing larger and larger throughout the city,
waiting for alcohol or bread. It was composed of every
sort of person; stolid peasants in valenki and ragged
leather coats, officers with boot and spur wearing the St.
George's cross, well-groomed intellectuals with nervous
hands, black-bearded, keen-eyed Jews, and long-haired
priests with untrimmed beards and awkwardly hanging
robes. On the faces of all was the same expression —
anxiety and sorrow; except where here and there was a
look of beastly morbid curiosity. This was the morgue,
the last resort of those unhappy ones who had waited in
vain for the return of some friend or relative from, the
fighting. ,
Not many days after the victory of the Bolsheviki
38

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
over the Burjui in Moscow a vast crowd gathered in
the Red Square. For there in that historic place, under
the shadow of the Kremlin and but a few steps from the
barbaric Pokrovski Cathedral, around which the sinister
spirit of Ivan the Terrible seems still to linger, were to be
buried the "heroes of the proletariat," fallen during the
week's fighting. Huge red banners were draped over the
Kremlin wall, displaying in big white letters the legends
"Long live the Soviet Republic," "Long live the Third In
ternational," "The Brotherhood of Peoples." The crowd
was quiet and orderly, composed mostly' of the poorer
classes, with officers and well-dressed people conspicu
ously absent. It filled every corner of the square. Before
ten in the morning processions bringing in the dead had
begun to pour into the square, converging from all quar
ters of the city. Hour after hour they passed steadily by.
Each procession had its quota of red banners inscribed
with Bolshevik battle cries and maxims. The heavy,
roughly made coffins, carried high on the shoulders of both
men and women, swayed and rocked to and fro. They
were carried open, the covers preceding them, carried in
the same manner. They seemed countless in number. They
were followed by marching crowds of people, walking
fifteen or twenty abreast singing, sometimes the solemn
chants of the Orthodox Church, so Oriental in character
and spirit, sometimes the "International," the great song
of the proletarian revolutionists, and sometimes the Mar
seillaise with appropriate Russian words. The various
columns were policed by mounted Bolshevik soldiers and
were composed not only of the standard bearers, the
coffins and the people, but also of many detachments of
victorious Red Guards, and uniformed Bolshevik soldiers.
39

THE GROPING GIANT
The people were quiet, respectful and very self-con
scious. This was their day. They were anxious to make it
as dignified a ceremony as they could.
Lost in this great sea of men and women, so eager
and so intent on paying honor to the dead, I, too, felt a
sense of exaltation. There was power there, and there was
idealism. Reason said it was all wrong — it could not, it
must not be more than a temporary phase, a strange trick
of fate, a momentary interruption in the regular course of
historical development, a warning, a lesson — but not per
manent, not lasting. But the contagious emotion in that
vast crowd also carried the unmistakable message —
"There is something vital here, something human, funda
mental — not only for Russia, but for Europe and for
America. Study it, understand it, if you would be in the
spirit of the age."
Wearied by many hours of walking and standing, I
tried to make my way out of the throng. In one of the
side streets I found myself hopelessly jammed between a
column of Bolshevik soldiers and a row of coffins pro
ceeding slowly toward the Red Square. The procession
stopped a moment and put down the open coffins in the
street. I walked by them, one after another, and looked in.
The faces, cold in death, of women, old men and children
stared up at me — innocent victims of a struggle in which
they were only pawns. What a strange fate had carried
these simple people on the shoulders of the proletariat
to a temporary grave under the walls of the Kremlin!
These were not soldiers, members of the Red Guard,
fighters for liberty, heroes dead in a great cause, to whom
this honor was being given. They were chance victims of
events being used as part of a great political demonstra-
40

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
tion — in a way, as properties in a theatrical spectacle. A
brief moment only the coffins rested in the street, and
then were again moving slowly on their journey to the
singing of the "International." I stood looking after them
with no trace left in my heart of the exhilaration and
exaltation that I had felt a few hours before when I
seemed to be one participating in a solemn expression of
the people's triumph, but rather troubled, baffled and
confused. Chance brought me a day or so later on a cold, drizzly
day, very slippery underfoot, to the open space in front
of the Strastnoi Monastery on the Tverskaya where I en
countered another procession, a companion piece to the
one on the Red Square — this time the last obsequies of
the vanquished. Again the streets were lined with inter
ested and respectful crowds, but there was a hush, a
tenseness and a solemnity that had been absent from the
last rites of the victors. A large proportion of the crowd
were of the middle and upper classes. The uniforms and
caps of civil engineers, railway officials and students
were in evidence, and well-dressed women were occasion
ally to be seen. A movement of the crowd threw me into
the front row of spectators as the expected procession
approached. The chants of the Church were the only
sounds to be heard, for the crowd was silent. At the head
of the procession walked a row of men and women, arm
in arm, making a way among the crowds for those that
followed. Though there were some of middle age, most
of them were young. I glanced at their drawn and haggard
faces and saw there a look of such boundless sorrow,
such anguish and grief as I had never seen before. As
they passed, my whole heart went out to them with in-
41

THE GROPING GIANT
stinctive recognition that they were my own kind of
people and that theirs was a sorrow before which I must
bow in silence. Following this first line came a few priests
in chasuble and stole, carrying the ikons and incense pots
and leading in the singing. There had been no priests at
the Red Square. Then followed the coffins, most of them
borne on the shoulders of friends and relatives, both girls
and older women carrying their share. But one or two of
the dead were drawn in the white hearses common in
Russia, with a canopy supported by four white pillars
over the coffin, and horses decorated with white coverings
and white plumes. As the solemn procession moved slowly
by, the student cap on the top of many a coffin showed
that one or another of these young boys had fallen in
this losing battle to save his country from ruin and chaos.
There was in the funeral procession of the cadets a spirit
ual elevation, a purity and nobility of emotion, an abso
lute sincerity and humanity, which the demonstration on
the Red Square lacked because of its political character.
Even a crowd in which there were many men filled with
bitter hatred and scorn of the Intelligentzia and the
Burjui, watched with bared heads and sympathetic faces
till the last coffin had passed. It then broke up silently
and quietly without the least hostile demonstration.
Although the change wrought by the October revolu
tion had been enormous — so great in fact that it could
not be grasped all at once, but only little by little — still
on the surface life did go on much as before. The read
justments in daily life were not great. Americans, doubt
fully at first, began to continue the . tasks which had
brought them to Russia. In a few days most of the
wreckage had been cleared from the streets. The ballet
42

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
resumed its interrupted performances at the 'Bolshoi
Teatre.' It had been delayed a week because of the tova-
rishi had stolen the costumes of the dancers, for what
purpose it has not to this day been revealed. But when it
was given again, it was given beautifully before large and
appreciative audiences. I attended one of the first per
formances under the new regime. There were no evening
clothes, no fine uniforms, no display of wealth as there
had been under the Czar — but the audience was cheerful,
intelligent, and many of the faces in it distinguished. I
was fresh from scenes that marked the final overthrow
of the social order which had made the ballet possible,
scenes which signalized the submission of the educated
and cultivated classes to the organized mob, and was a
little inclined to feel contempt for their weak resistance.
Yet the ballet served greatly to strengthen my admiration
and respect and friendly feeling for Russian people of
the better classes, first awakened by their personal hos
pitality and deepened tremendously by the memory of
the faces at the cadet funeral. For the ballet, as I saw it
there in its own home, was so thoroughly and completely
Russian, represented so long a period of development,
such rigid and continuous training in the performers, and
was in itself such a world of artistic achievement, creative
force and distinctive beauty as to make upon me a deep
and unforgetable impression. It was the expression of a
national culture, worthy and able to live and develop in
spite of revolutionary changes, no matter how far-
reaching. One circumstance, however, kept the consciousness of
the tremendous happenings of the day ever awake, even
in that house of enchantment where the power and
43

THE GROPING GIANT
genius of Russian art held one spellbound in wonder and
admiration. The Czar's box was empty. The evening
before some Bolshevik officials and common soldiers had
entered the box, which is situated at the centre of the
first balcony. But the outraged audience had arisen and
had shown so unmistakably dangerous a resentment as to
cause even these sturdy proletarians to withdraw. This
could not have been interpreted as a demonstration in
favor of monarchy. It could hardly have been called a
political demonstration. It was the instinctive revulsion
of national pride against the desecration of a place of
honor long associated with the head of the Russian state,
the official symbol and personification of Russian power,
Russian sovereignty, Russian nationalism.
Another glimpse of a group of Russian better class
people was afforded in the audiences at the Art Theatre
where one beheld the most perfect expression of Russian
dramatic art. A company of actors trained from child
hood to work together presented in the most charming
and finished manner the great plays of Gorky, Turgeniev,
Tchekof, each ideally cast and flawlessly staged. The
diction was beautiful, the enunciation perfect, giving the
fullest expression to the marvelous richness of the Rus
sian language. At these performances for the first time it
became possible for me to understand the love of Rus
sians for their language and their pleasure in hearing the
words of the masters of Russian style in the mouths of
actors trained and competent to give all the shades and
niceties of meaning intended by the writers, and lose
none. The audience was half the play, sitting in rapt at
tention while the familiar scenes unfolded before them
once more with all their striking and sometimes bitter
44

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
realism, the vagaries and contradictions, the strength, aspi
rations and weaknesses, the kindness and cruelty, the en
thusiasm and the fatalism of Russian character. How
bitter was the moral of Tchekof's "Cherry Garden" to
that audience at that time, and how perfectly that audi
ence exemplified what the author was trying to teach
them! Between the acts everyone walked around and
around in one direction in the foyer, engaging in lively
and animated conversation, making a social function of
the intermission, up to the moment when the third bell
announced the beginning of the next act. The women were
mostly plainly dressed, few of them were pretty, but all
animated and intelligent in appearance. It was the men
who made the audience look so different from a similar
gathering in America. Uniforms, civilian and military,
were almost the rule, and high boots, broad belts with big
buckles and Russian coats buttoning tightly around the
neck were more common than the conventional dress of
the American or European man. The fact that the ma
jority of men wore beards was an added source of differ
ence in the general appearance of the gathering. Audience,
play and players were all distinctively Russian, owing
little to any foreign influence in their art.
It was hard to picture this audience as representative
of the class of oppressors of the people, from which the
proletariat had just freed itself, and harder still when a
later and closer acquaintance with them gave the oppor
tunity for making a true estimate of their motives, their
qualities and their defects. Something of the shadow
under which they were now living, in spite of their brave
show of cheerfulness and confidence, was revealed by a
small incident which befell me on my way home one
45

THE GROPING GIANT
evening to Smolenski Boulevard. Walking along one of
the great boulevards which encircle Moscow, making its
plan look like a spider web, I overtook a well-dressed
woman going in the same direction. There was nothing
in her appearance to denote particular wealth or standing,
but she was evidently a lady, and reasonably well off.
As I passed she looked at me doubtfully and then asked
to walk along with me as I was going her way. After a
few words, my unmistakable Russian showed her that I
was an American. She hesitated a moment and then said
in a peculiar tone, half of envy, half of sadness — "Ah!
that is fortunate for you; you are an American, they
won't touch you." No, of course not, they wouldn't touch
me, yet if I had been a Russian, I too would have been a
hated Burjui, and for me also the terror would have
been real, the threat ever present. For her, whatever had
been her way of life and whatever her feelings toward the
people, there was no appeal from the terrible word. To
understand this fear of what "they" might do, and would
do if they got the chance, and to appreciate who "they"
were was to begin to understand one side of what the
October revolution meant in a personal and human way.
The Kremlin remained closed for some time, but at
least one great monument of the past was open even
under the new regime, the wonderful gallery where
Tretiakof, the Russian Maecenas, had gathered the best
of Russian painting. Where, outside of Italy, in all the
world, could any nation show a wealth of paintings so
truly national in spirit, so wonderful in quality? Their
magnificent portrayal of Russian history and of the
varied phases of Russian life and character, from the
earliest times when the fierce Cossacks warred against
46

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
the Turks down to our own day, disclosed a national
tradition that could not be destroyed by any dogma of
internationalism, and which must, in part at least, sur
vive any cataclysm no matter how tremendous. The Czar,
personifying as he did an outworn system based on un
speakable injustice and cruelty, had indeed been swept
away. But other results of centuries of national develop
ment could not be so easily brushed aside. After the fall
of the Czar, men had been fired with enthusiasm and hope
that a free government could immediately be established,
under which the national genius would have free and unre
stricted development. But in place of a common enthusi
asm in the task of establishing a new Russia on the ruins
of the old had come bitter dissension and hatred. When
it fell to my lot to touch the forces of modern Russia, men
had come into power who were seeking to break down the
orderly sequence of historical development and destroy
every vestige of the social order which had emerged as
the result of that wonderfully rich and varied history so
vividly portrayed in the pictures of the Tretiakof Gallery.
The blind struggle of that social order, weakened and
undermined by the titanic struggle against Germany, to
continue its normal life and growth, and preserve itself
against its enemies, had resulted in such turmoil and con
fusion, such passion and prejudice and nervous tension,
that no man could predict what the next day would bring
forth. No man could justly interpret the events of the
day until by the passage of time he could see them in a
right perspective.
The first few short weeks of experience had shown me
two groups of men, seemingly worlds apart, with no ap
parent point of contact. What had the lady on Smolenski
47

THE GROPING GIANT
Boulevard, the audiences at the Ballet and the Art
Theatre, the cultivated and the intelligent, the Burjui,
in a word, in common with the red-faced peasant soldier
at the small Siberian station, my unwilling hostess in Vo
logda, and the thousands who marched in the Red Square?
Was there nothing to bind them together? Was it possible
that class war was normal and natural in Russia, that
Russian history had produced two kinds of men instead
of one, that it was not enough to say of a man that he
was a Russian, but that one must add either Burjui or
proletarian? To answer these questions in the affirma
tive was to deny every American instinct, to say that
democracy was possible only in some favored spots in
the world and could not be applied universally, to con
done the inevitable horrors of class war. It was, in fine,
to become a theoretical if not a practical Bolshevik, or
else to accept the old Russian absolutist theory in its
baldest form. To answer in the negative was to defy the
apparent logic of the facts.
Perplexed by these problems I entered one Saturday
evening the great Cathedral of the Redeemer, whose
gilded dome towers high over the Moscow River, not far
from the Kremlin, and whose beautiful proportions and
dignified lines belie its really tremendous bulk. It was
Lent. The priests, clad in black to mark the solemn nature
of the time, were intoning the evening service in wonder
fully deep and rich voices. The whole church was filled
to overflowing with people, following the service with
great attention, bowing and making the sign of the cross
as demanded by the ritual with the deepest reverence and
earnestness. The evening light, shining through the high
stained glass windows of the western transept, shed a
48

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
soft and quiet glow upon the rich red marble of the round
arches opposite and on the gentle colors of the four great
paintings surrounding the central space where part of
the ritual was performed. The people were of every sort.
Many of them were just like those who had taken part
in the burial of the cadets. But the majority were like the
crowd that had thronged the Red Square in honor of the
victors. Here all were assembled together. Here there was
a bond of unity. They were all believers in the Orthodox
Faith, they were all Russians, and at that moment I saw
that the bonds of religion and of race were stronger than
differences of class, that there was and always would be
a Russian church and a Russian nation, that unity,
though more difficult of attainment here than anywhere
in the world, was possible and would come to Russia
though no one could tell how or at what cost of suffering.
There had been no priests at the funeral at the Red
Square, but it was not the plain people and the peasants
who had kept them away. It was another force in which
the majority of the people then believed. It was some
thing different, something that used, but was not of the
people. It was the force, active, dominating, purposeful,
which had maintained discipline and order in Moscow
after the Burjui had been defeated. It was the force that
had made the soldiers at the Red Gate spring so promptly
to attention. It was the force whose domination and direc
tion at the funeral in the Red Square had made of it the
political and theatrical demonstration that it was. It was
the force of which the lady in Smolenski Boulevard stood
in terror and called "they."
And so the problem no longer seemed to present itself
as the struggle between two entirely different kinds of
49

THE GROPING GIANT
men, each growing out of Russian history and having
deep roots in Russian life and tradition, but as a struggle
between three great forces, each very complex, each an
unequal combination of bad and good, each demanding
the closest study before any reasonable judgment could
be made. In its broadest and necessarily most general
terms, for it is madness to try to reduce modern Russia
to any formula, it became the task of an American ob
server to understand and interpret as far as his experi
ence permitted him to do so, three great distinctive ele
ments in modern Russia — the Masses, the Bolsheviki and
the Intelligentzia.

So

II.
THE MASSES

IN the weeks following the October revolution, during
the period of Armistice at the front when the Peace
Delegates of old Germany and new Russia were en
gaged in the most remarkable diplomatic contest of
history at Brest-Litovsk, there poured through the streets
of Moscow a very unusually interesting throng of men.
It was the Russian Army going home. The soldiers
simply took their small possessions and went home indi
vidually. Standing on the Arbat, a main artery between
the Alexandrofski and the Nikolaevski stations, it was
my fortune to watch day after day the endless procession
of soldiers trudging the long miles between the trains that
brought them from the front to those that might take
them back to the villages from which a rude hand had
dragged them years before. Trudging along doggedly,
tired from great hardships of travel, loaded down with
sacks and bags in which were their every possession, ham
pered by a rifle and generally by a large tea-kettle, and
looking very awkward in their heavy felt boots or valenki,
they presented to me my first real picture of the masses
5i

THE GROPING GIANT
of Russia. The army passing there before me was no
longer an army as such, but an army broken up into its
component parts, each man once more an individual,
acting for and by himself. Two types at least were clearly
distinguishable to a casual observer. The grizzled, weather-
beaten peasant, powerful of body and showing on his
bearded face the signs of long years of tremendous phys
ical hardship, and a second, more unsuspected type,
younger, clean shaven, pale, with lack-luster eye, open
mouth and stupid and empty expression. Looking neither
to the right nor to the left they pressed on tlieir way,
intent only on one thing — to get home. They were silent
for the most part until the station was reached, when a
fierce scramble for a foothold on the train gave ample
occasion for that forceful and picturesque eloquence of
which every Russian is capable. These endless throngs
of men, all animated by one overwhelming desire, and
determined at whatever cost to attain it, gave by their
conceritration of purpose, as well as by the force of their
numbers, the impression of a tremendous, an irresistible
power. I watched them again in Petrograd and other
cities many times. In the indescribable confusion of the
Warsaw station in Petrograd, I once called out to a
group of soldiers shouldering their way out to the street,
"Where are you bound?" They all answered, waving
their hands and grinning from ear to ear, "Home," and
there was such a ring of joy and hope in that one word
that the sound of it will remain always in my memory.
Everything else was swallowed up in that one burning
desire. Who could now turn back this tide to fight the
Germans or anyone else? Who would explain to these men
the international significance of what they were doing?
52

THE MASSES
They were going "home" — what was the hope of Con
stantinople, the danger to Paris, the threat of German
militarism, the Freedom of the Seas to them? They were
going "home," back to the villages from which they came,
back to the heart of Russia, back to the land they loved
and the life they understood and the families they had
left long since, for what reason they knew not. To watch
them day after day as they passed by in endless proces
sion was to know that the Great War for Russia was over.
It was to know more than that. It was to feel that the war
was over because of the inexpressible weariness of the
people. The driving power which had held them together
for so long and against so many hardships had relaxed
its hold. Organization and morale had disappeared. It
was not demobilization, it was disintegration — it was a
melting away like frost before the sun. As I watched
these men, I knew that what I saw before me meant that
thousands, and it then seemed in all probability hundreds
of thousands, of my own fellow countrymen must die in
France, and that the cause that at that dark moment
seemed more than ever just and holy was imperiled. Yet
I could feel no anger and no desire to judge, only a desire,
if possible, to understand. But to understand what was
going on about me, it was necessary in some small meas
ure at least to know these men, for they and those like
them formed the masses — the material out of which
Russian power was built, the foundation on which rested
all the complex, structure of Russian life. They were at
once the result and the explanation of that age-long
tragedy which Russian history unfolds, and at the same
time the sure and glorious hope for the future day when
Russia shall come into her own. 53

THE GROPING GIANT
Just before the Russian Christmas Day an opportunity
did come to meet these men in a human and natural way.
It came for the first time, as it often did thereafter,
through travel. I set out, with another American, on a trip
to visit the soldier huts run by our countrymen at the
front with the Tenth Army. Three hours of struggle at
the, railroad station in Moscow 'had apparently been in
vain. The chances of getting within shouting distance of
the train to Minsk seemed to have been reduced to a
minimum, until an enterprising nossilschik — such as can
always be found even under the most impossible condi
tions — came to our assistance. He led us by a circuitous
route around the station yard, and through and under an
imposing number of trains to the last car of our train. As
we emerged in sight of the crowds penned behind a fence
at the end of the platform because the train was full, I
heard once more the angry murmur against the Burjui
and special privilege. Why should we not wait our turn
as others did? But this time I was one among a group of
fighting soldiers, making common cause with tbem against
those inside the train for a foothold, and had conceived
a warmer sympathy for the red-faced peasant on the
Siberian siding than I had thought possible. A perilous
lodgment on the rear platform was the reward of our
persistence. After hours of waiting, the third bell rang at
last, and the passengers called out that word of comfort
and relief which will ever be remembered with affection
by every traveler in modern Russia — "Poiekhali," "We
have started."
Twelve hours of intermittent effort brought us from
the rear platform to the compartment for which, in our
exceeding great innocence, we had bought reserved
54

THE MASSES
tickets. It was occupied by thirteen, but it was a satis
faction to Americans to "have attained the objective."
Hitherto the soldiers over whose bundles and bodies we
had crawled, on whose shoulders we had slept, and whose
slumber we had disturbed from time to time, had looked
upon us with quite natural unconcern and indifference.
But as we took up our places humbly before the door of
the compartment for which our foolish-looking reserved
tickets called, and surveyed its thirteen inhabitants in
the grey light of the December morning, the ice was at
last broken. An officer, who, with three other intelligent-
looking men and one lady, formed the non-proletarian
part of the delegation, was pouring out some weak-look
ing tea from his kettle into a dirty enamel cup. Some kind
fate brought to the lips of my companion a Russian
proverb learned with untold pain on the steamer, "to
drink tea is not to saw wood." Such of the soldiers as
were awake burst into laughter and soon tea, sugar, bread
and even butter were produced. When it developed that
we had not lain down all night, the three soldiers slumber
ing in one of the upper berths were routed out and we
ensconced in their stead. When it further developed that
we were bound on a mission to help the soldiers at the
front, we found ourselves the centre of a curious but
friendly circle. We were addressed as 'tovarish' or
'comrade,' and I wondered what my Vladivostok friend
would think to see me thus, as it were, admitted to the
number of those whose very name struck terror to her
heart. The soldiers began to tell how they were coming
home, just in time for Christmas, having heard nothing
for from two to four years of their villages and families.
They told about what fine houses they had, of their
55

THE GROPING GIANT
children, Misha and Vasa, and of their wives and sweet
hearts. And then they told about how they had fared at
the front, and how their winter uniforms had come in
summer, and about the terrors of the field hospitals, and
their own exploits, and how, when they had half a chance,
they tore up the German lines. And they wondered
whether peace would really come, but some said it made
little difference to them for they would never go back.
Some said they were on leave, and others told how all
their regiment had gone on leave and how few had gone
back. One soldier said that there would always be soldiers
on the front as long as there was no fighting and food was
supplied. But mostly they talked about their villages and
their animals and their soil. They had many miles to go
with horses after their stations were reached, but were
very cheerful. At each station some left, and it seemed
as if I were watching Russia reach out and absorb her
own again — each seemed to be drawn irresistibly as by
a magnet to his own appointed place, his own piece of
Russian soil.
Could these men be the terrible tovarishi of whom I
had heard? Surely the tovarish must be-a man like other
men, in whom kindliness and human sympathy are found
as much as in other men, even though often hidden deep
and hard to reach. But still I could not forget what I had
already seen, and it was with mixed feelings that I came
to the next step leading toward a comprehension of the
character of the Russian masses.
On the outskirts of the city of Minsk, whose mixed
population of Russians, Poles and Jews gives it a curi
ously un-Russian appearance, a hut was built by Ameri
can generosity and American devotion for the use of the
56

THE MASSES
Russian soldiers. It was just such a hut as those of whose
work on the great Western front so much has been
written. Its construction was beset by difficulties of which
a man of American traditions and experience has little
comprehension. But at last, in spite of delays, objections,
fault-finding and obstruction of every sort, added to great
physical obstacles, it stood complete at the close of
December 1917. The cheery light of its windows shining
out on the deep snow under which everything lay buried
was a welcome and an invitation in itself. Within, every
evening, crowded the soldiers from the barracks around
Minsk. It had been hard to get them there at first, but
little by little they came to use this place more and more.
Although they were no longer really soldiers, for they had
no thought of fighting, and discipline was gone, yet they
were men sorely in need of some place to gather, some
healthy occupation to pursue. Classes were held in read
ing and writing. Some soldiers were pitifully eager and
grateful for the chance to mount at least the first steps
of the ladder of education, so hopelessly out of the reach
of their fathers, and their fathers' fathers. But so far as
the majority were concerned, the effort seemed only to
show the crushing power of that inertia against which
only the exceptional man can struggle successfully in
Russia. It was in this hut that, a few days after my trip from
Moscow, a real and vital content was given to a phrase
that I had often heard applied to the peasants, but had
never fully understood — "children with the passions of
men." As part of the Christmas festivities a play was to
be given, and for this play a piano was absolutely neces
sary. At the appointed time the hall was crowded with
57

THE GROPING GIANT
soldiers waiting with remarkable patience for the curtain
to go up. But the essential piano was lacking. The only
available instrument was unfortunately in the possession
of Poles, between whom and the Russians there was no
love lost. We had with difficulty persuaded them to allow
the Russians tp use it on this occasion, but when the
crucial moment arrived it was not forthcoming. Racial
prejudice had proved too strong. This seemed to me
rather discouraging, but by no means a threat of disaster,
and I took it as a matter of course that the play would
proceed without the music, as the soldiers had already
been kept waiting long. But the composer of the music
and the play vigorously seconded by all the actors re
fused point-blank to have any play at all unless they
could have the piano, and, although they had every
opportunity of knowing the facts, they poured out upon
the Americans long-sustained and vehement abuse. So it
was finally decided to abandon the plan and one of the
Americans stepped on the stage to announce that the
play could not be given and to request the men to with
draw, announcing that there would be movies the next
day. No one moved. The request was repeated. A man
called out: "We won't go." "They told us this was our
club, and now they try to drive us out." "We want the
play." "It's a lie about the piano." "We won't be driven
out." "Let's burn the club — down with it." "Burn it." It
was evident that the least sign of temper or impatience
or lack of tact would be the spark needed to set off the
conflagration. It was nip and tuck whether there was to
be a serious outbreak or whether the men could be ap
peased. Happily better counsel prevailed, and the men
left, though grumblingly, and the next night seemed to
58

THE MASSES
have entirely forgotten that they had so lately vowed
vengeance and threatened to burn the hut. The anxiety
on the faces of the Russians who were assisting at the
hut had clearly shown me that they perfectly understood
that the mujiks, especially in crowds, do not reason and
when once they are roused to fury will stop at nothing,
that in many respects they are children, but that their
passions are the passions of men.
I walked home that cold winter night thinking over
what had happened. The words: "They do not think,
they do not think at all," were running through my head,
and I tried to imagine what it must mean to a country
in the greatest crisis in its history to have three-quarters
of its people men who do not think. I was prepared for
ignorance. It did not surprise me when a young man on
a train asked me if South America lay near Archangel.
It did not surprise me to find that a bright-looking peas
ant woman had never heard of the ocean and had no
idea where Moscow and Petrograd were. It did not sur
prise me to find that most of the peasants would scoff at
the idea that the earth was round. It is not the Russian
peasant's fault that he does not know these things. They
lie wholly outside his life. He has lived thousands of
years under a rule that wanted him to be ignorant and
forced him to be ignorant. But that winter night at Minsk
was the first time that I began to realize what these cen
turies of oppression and darkness had done in keeping
the peasant from thinking, and how many years must
pass before this great mass of men can be raised to a
position worthy of the wonderful richness of their soil
and their own splendid though undeveloped manhood.
A few days after the incident of the hut had awakened
59

THE GROPING GIANT
in me a sense of the unreasoning mass-force that lies in
every crowd of Russian peasants, waiting for a leader to
turn it this way or that, I was riding in a small freight
car with thirty or more soldiers, slowly trundling out
toward the front. I had taken up my post at the door,
which was open just enough to get a glimpse of the dreary
snow-covered country through which we went. Suddenly
a young soldier next to me called out excitedly and
pointed at a moving Object in a field near the train. He
flung the door wide open so that all could see, and instead
of being alone and the object of curious and silent scru
tiny, I became one of the crowd, interested in a common
and absorbing outside interest — a rabbit. I was grateful to
this rabbit. He made a splendid starting point for talk
with the soldiers, and it was not long before I knew from
what government and volost each one came, and they
knew I came from America. America — it seemed almost
a magic word. They wished to go there. There all was
better than here. Some of the soldiers had friends there
and were eager to hear if the glowing reports they had
heard about it were true. They asked me for the first
time a question which was put to me hundreds of times
afterwards, "What does America think of our revolu
tion?" It was asked in a very self-conscious, eager sort
of tone. The men seemed hardly sure of themselves, but
underneath one perceived their deep feeling of pride in
the fact that they had made themselves free men. They
seemed to have heard of America as a land of free democ
racy, and they seemed to look instinctively and with a
touching trustfulness to an American for app'roval of
what Russia, youngest of democracies, was trying to do.
And so I tried to say that America welcomed freedom
60

THE MASSES
everywhere and was immensely happy when the Czar was
overthrown, but that America thought that it was a mis-.
take to make a social revolution by violence and take
other people's things away from them by force, because
she had found another and a better way of changing
things, although it took her many years to do so. And I
told how we too had had a long struggle to set up a real
free government, but that there was no need for a revo
lutionary class in America, because its people had the right
to change their rulers and their government without blood
shed. And so the talk ran on. The faces of the men
showed at first doubt and suspicion, but later they nodded
their heads in approval and before long I seemed to feel
that they were all on my side, and that after all I had
done them wrong in judging them from those few
shouters at the hut. But just when the greatest cordiality
that an imperfect knowledge of the language permitted,
seemed established and those who were talking with me
seemed to have at least in part understood what I wanted
to say, a man from the back of the car stepped forward
and began to harangue and inveigh against me as a
Burjui trying to corrupt the peasants, and against
America as a land of capitalists and oppressors. Now all
the soldiers turned away from me, assented with equal
readiness to all he said, and all nodded their heads in
approval as point by point he expounded the diametrical
opposites of the ideas that I had been innocent enough to
think I had just implanted in the minds of four or five
Russian peasants. Of course they were not accustomed
to think at all about such things, and perhaps the impres
sion of what he said remained with them no longer than
the impression of what I said. But still, in spite of the
61

THE GROPING GIANT
disillusionment it brought, that conversation left me the
certainty that there was deep down in the souls of these
men a blind groping about for something better than they
had known before, a love of freedom, which, however it
might be warped by passion and greed and twisted into
hatred of everything that could be made to seem to repre
sent the old oppression, was nevertheless in its essence a
good thing, a noble thing.
Near the front Americans had built another hut a little
apart from one of those countless villages, as like each
other as two peas, which are the most characteristic and
important thing in Russia. There I first became ac
quainted with Russian children. It was Christmas. Out
side the dry, steady cold of a Russian winter night held
everything in its grip and cut one to the bone. The moon
rising behind one of the scattered clumps of trees that
dotted the countryside here and there shed its soft light
on the untouched snow mantle that covered all, and
showed in clearest outline the scattered thatched houses
of the peasants with their hayricks' and fences around
them. There was quiet and peace inexpressible, and all
the anger and discouragement and fear and hope that
racks the heart and brain of a man struggling to live and
work in revolutionary Russia seemed to give way to a
sense of the vastness and the power of that great country
whose hundred thousand villages lay all around as far as
the imagination could reach, sunk in the same quiet,
bathed in the same calm moonlight — silent and unseen,
but yet speaking unmistakably, thrillingly, to the imagina
tion and the heart. It may be that a man from foreign
lands can come closer to an understanding of the soul of
Russia as he stands alone on a winter night looking across
62

THE MASSES
her snowy acres, letting her speak to\him in her own
wonderful way, than at any other time op place.
Inside preparations were under way for a jolly eve
ning. A Christmas tree decked in gayest tinsel and spar
kling with candles spread good cheer around. The children
of the surrounding villages were coming to celebrate the
Christmas festival. Soon they began to arrive, bringing in
with them as they passed the door the wintry outdoor air
which rolled in like a cloud of steam. They were sturdy
children with strong bodies and lusty lungs — a fact dis
closed after the briefest of intervals. The little girls with
shawls neatly wound over their heads and wrapped
around their necks, and thick woolen dresses and felt boots,
looked like miniature reproductions of their mothers,
and some of the little fellows with leather fur-lined hats
three times too big, with great awkward earcaps, seemed
quite lost in their great valenki, which came up almost to
their chins like seven-league boots. All eyes were at once
directed in joy and admiration to the tree, and at first,
especially before all had arrived, there seemed a most
uneasy feeling of shyness and embarrassment, especially
among the girls. Under the command of a Russian
master of ceremonies, however, the children soon were
singing their own country songs and the walls shook to
the stamping of feet, and the very unmelodious but en
thusiastic chorus of children's voices. Dance followed
song, everyone itching to take part, and then there came
a lot of games which corresponded to our own "Ring
around a Rosy." The girls were carefully separated from
the boys and their games were milder and less in the
nature of a contest. It was a delight to watch them. Their
bright, eager faces were lit up with happiness, though,
63

HE GROPING GIANT
if they caught yr^ur eye, they were instantly crimson with
confusion. They were marshalled by what I took to be a
most genial fat boy in high black boots and uniform, but
who actually turned out to be one of Bochkareva's Bat
talion of Death. Even in their games they were docile and
disciplined. The boys on the other side of the Christmas
tree were having an hilarious time and the confusion was
too great to make it possible for me really to understand
the games, but it took no great capacity to understand
their bright eyes and flushed faces and appreciate their
quickness and alertness. The awarding of prizes and such
a repast as the resources of the place allowed ended a
happy evening. When the excitement of the game was
over, the shyness I had noticed at first returned in full
force, and all were reluctant to move till someone else
took the lead.
During the evening I asked about the schools and
learned that the schools, such as they were, were closed,
because of unsettled conditions and because we were so
near the front. My heart sank as I looked at those bright
faces and thought of all the other children like them who
were denied what had been so generously bestowed on me
and my country, the right to learn and grow in mind as
well as in body. What a terrible policy had been that of
the Czars to crush and keep down and starve this most
glorious of all the assets of Russia, its bright and active
children. And now I knew, as I had not known before in
a sense so real and vital, that the fundamental need of
Russia lay, not in this or that form of political organiza
tion, not in armies or assemblies, but in schools. Schools
alone could save each new generation in its struggle to
preserve the freshness of youth and the enthusiasm and
64

THE MASSES
interest with which it met the world against the crushing
inertia and darkness and ignorance and deadly sameness
of its inheritance. Many times, as I traveled throughout
Russia and watched the Russian boy doing a man's work,
hewing wood and carrying water, driving his father's
sleigh to market, or in the cities about the market place,
or even as a soldier, I found a brightness and ingenuity,
a spring and alertness that seemed so supremely worth
saving that it was heartbreaking to see that it could not
last in the conditions that surrounded it. After a certain
age youth seemed utterly quenched and the boy so full of
hope and promise became the stolid mujik that his father
was before him.
This stolidity of the Russian mujik and his patience
and endurance had from the first struck me forcibly. I
had wondered at the uncomplaining men and women,
with their numbers in line marked in chalk on their
backs, who stood for hours in the city streets waiting for
their turn to buy alcohol or bread. But custom soon
makes strange things seem natural, and it was with a
shock that I was recalled by two striking contrasts to a
vivid sense of the dullness and lifelessness of the faces
around me all the time. I was in a crowded railroad sta
tion near the front and was looking idly at the bearded
peasants around me, listening to their endless talk about
their villages and their gossip about this family and that
and the price of oats and hay and their complaints about
the lack of order now prevailing, when a man in a Rus
sian subaltern's uniform, standing with his back to me,
turned around and looked at me. I was startled to see two
bright blue eyes, pink cheeks and a face of great intelli
gence and vivacity. It was a face that anywhere but there
65

THE GROPING GIANT
I would have thought pleasant but by no means remark
able. But against that background among Russian peas
ants it stood out like' a thing apart so distinctly that I
shall never forget it. The man glanced at me and then
his eyes twinkled and his face broke into a smile of
amusement. Of course it was amusing for a German in a
Russian uniform, behind the Russian lines, to recognize
an American in a crowd and know the recognition was
mutual and yet that the American could do nothing about
it. It was painful evidence that Germany had won the
Great War in Russia, a victory that then seemed terribly
ominous for the Allied cause. But it was not the fact that
the man was a German that seemed important to me
then. It was simply the contrast between an intelligent
European face and the peasant face that was the im
portant thing. To an observer of Russia, looking for
something tangible on which to base the hope and faith
in a great free Russian nation which somehow had grown
strong within him, the striking difference was a stern
reminder of the long process of development that must
precede any change in the great mass of Russian people
now so deeply sunk in ignorance and so untouched by
the active influences that were bringing about change and
progress in the outside world.
This contrast was only the more forcible when seen
on a grander scale at the front itself. I stood in the front
line Russian trenches during this period of truce, looking
across first at the well-kept German lines, where constant
activity was evident and where there rested a well-oiled
fighting machine, and then back at the Russian trenches,
filled with snow except for a little burrow every thirty or
forty yards or so big enough for three or four men, and
66

THE MASSES
gradually becoming a mere useless incoherent tangle be
hind broken and rotting barbed wire defenses. This was
the end of the Great War in Russia. On the Russian side
the unifying force which had made of the Russian peas
ants the glorious armies that had fought so gallantly and
so long had ceased to exist and here was the result.
Perhaps this strangest of all military fronts was of no
significance in forming a judgment about the masses of
Russia, but it did form a very significant setting for
another little scene which, like the meeting with the Ger
man in the railroad station, deepened my sense of. the
primitiveness and simplicity of the Russian peasant.
With a party of Russians and some other Americans I
passed through the now meaningless and pitiful Russian
defenses, over a well-trodden path across No-Man's Land
to the German trenches. Just outside the ten rows of
electrically charged barbed wire entanglements before the
German lines and at the end of a communication trench
stood the German store for which we were bound. Its
door faced the German lines so that every Russian who
entered must pass in view of the armed sentinel posted
in the communication trench. We entered and watched
the Russian soldiers one after another come in to trade
their bread for vodka, watches, knives and other German
ware. The precise, active motions of the Germans in the
store, their clear-cut tones, their military bearing and air
of authority contrasted strongly with the shuffling gait of
the Russian peasants, and their coarse voices, lusty
laughter and slipshod appearance. It was easy to believe
the story that one company had sold a machine gun to
the Germans, for they were exchanging bread for vodka
67

THE GROPING GIANT
before my eyes, when bread was so hard to find and so
many were hungry.
On retracing our steps back to the Russian side I saw
a sign-board half fallen over to one side. I went up and
read the words already made familiar to me in the Red
Square in Moscow, and destined to have a meaning
stranger and more sinister as time went on — "Down with
War!" "Long live the Brotherhood of Peoples!" But
here this little sagging sign-post, placed over the remnants
of the abandoned Russian outworks, making a piteous
appeal to the invader and conqueror opposite, did in truth
speak the heart of the Russian masses. They longed for
peace. War had been terrible and meaningless for them.
They had no stake in it. Whatever power placed that sign
there on the edge of No-Man's Land and made those
words the first rallying cry to bring the people under its
banners was a power that understood the heart of the
people. That it used its knowledge skilfully for its own
purposes and its own advantage did not mean that the
masses were not simple and honest in their desire for
peace, and it was surely not without significance that the
"Brotherhood of Peoples" should seem to the Russian
peasant a simple and a natural thing.
The impression of utter disorganization and demorali
zation left by the front itself was modified somewhat
when we returned to a small village some miles back to
arrange for sledges to take us further on our way. The vil
lage was typical of many I was to see later on. The main
street was wide and straggling with here and there a
little store and a few houses which boasted a gable roof
and whose white- window frames and well-kept fences
showed some degree of prosperity. Most of the houses
68

THE MASSES
were the ordinary one-story log cottages ingeniously put
together without the use of nails or mortar and covered
with heavy mud or thatched roofs, many of which were
green with moss growing on top. In the centre of the vil
lage stood a brick church, looking very bare and dreary
in its commanding position, but showing that this was a
place of some importance. Its double cross, indicating
the sect of Old Believers, seemed to mark it as part and
parcel of an earlier time, and was a constant reminder of
a great and almost forgotten struggle that once shook
Russia to her foundations. Half hidden in a clump of trees,
a little apart from the village, stood the home of the barin,
a charming brick house with green blinds and white pillars
supporting the porch up to which a driveway led. It was,
deserted but it spoke of that delightful country life which
had made Russia one of the chosen spots in all the world
for those who knew and loved it, but which had ceased to
exist within the past few months. The barin's house, apart
from the village, yet dominating it and ruling it, now
stood empty — not only here near the front but all over
Russia. The village seemed dormant. Yet a little life was
stirring here and there. An occasional train of sledges,
low and broad with wooden runners, slid by drawn by
shaggy horses with huge Russian yokes and covered with
frost. The peasants drove generally standing up and kept
their balance with quite extraordinary skill as they went
bumping over the rough road, sledge, horse and driver
seeming integral parts of one whole. Sturdy young peasant
women with pink cheeks and round cheerful faces, carry
ing two buckets of water by means of a wooden bar across
the shoulders, trudged by occasionally, keeping up a lively
and voluble chatter all the time. Children were playing
69

THE GROPING GIANT
about here and there, and pigs, apparently a privileged
class, were rubbing up against the houses or going in and
out of the courtyards and getting generally in the way.
But on \ the whole there was quiet and dullness inexpres
sible. Everything in the village seemed to get as close to
the ground as possible and from a little distance it looked
like just a part of nature rather than a.Jiabitation of men.
It was not my fortune to see or understand this Rus
sian village life. I could only scratch the surface. Once
or twice I entered a Russian peasant cottage to warm
myself at the great whitewashed brick oven, which
seemed to fill the whole house. The interiors were all very
much alike. In one corner there always hung an ikon,
before which the peasants respectfully uncovered and
crossed themselves on entering. A chest, in which were
stored the fine wedding and festival garments, products
of many hours of painstaking labor, was usually one of
the main features of the room. I stayed only long enough
to drink a glass of tea from the merrily singing samovar,
to exchange a few friendly words with the matron of the
house, or to strike a bargain with some cheery old 'uncle'
to carry us further on our way early the next morning.
In the street of one of the villages near the front, I met
a funeral coming from the church — and again the lugu
brious chanting of those two great Moscow funerals rang
in my ears. Two priests, intoning as they went, came first,
their robes dragging in the mire, and they were followed
by the usual white open hearse and by four or five rela
tives of the dead. I was to see this many times, but it
always left a weird impression, for there was in it some
thing of the non-European, of the Oriental, so marked in
Russian character. Once, I met a crowd of peasants stand-
70

THE MASSES
ing in a ring around a young man with an accordion, who
was supplying the music for a jolly peasant dance. A
small open circle was left in the middle of the crowd, and
one after another the men and girls, and sometimes amid
wild applause even the old women, would step forth to
dance with an enthusiasm and a lightness of step that
made one forget all about the heavy boots and valenki
they had on. There were never more than three or four
dancing at once, but when one dropped out another
stepped in. The onlookers all kept time with clapping of
hands and stamping of feet and applauded every particu
larly agile dancer with the greatest heartiness. The danc
ing of some of the young men reminded me of the Cossack
dances in the ballet, and I had more than one occasion to
call out "Well done" and join in the applause. The dance
seemed to have some of the elements of the barn dance,
combined with all the vigor and strenuousness of an old-
fashioned breakdown, but after all we should not try to
put English names to a thing that has no parallel with us.
Such contacts as these with the peasant life, slight as
they were, were still enough to let me understand the
reality of what the great Russian masters have written.
The Russian peasant lives again in literature, and, as I
stood in one of those desolate village streets in winter
time, I could understand the sombre pictures of Nekra-
sof's poem, "Who can be Happy and Free in Russia?" in
which the individual tragedy of each separate type of
man and woman that make up the village life is so un
sparingly portrayed. I could imagine also the awakening
of the village in the spring, the plowing and the sowing
and finally the harvest time. For it was in just such a
village that Tolstoi's magic word painted Levine living.
7i

THE GROPING GIANT
From such a settlement as this the peasants sallied forth
to the meadows with their scythes to mow field after field
with a tireless power and rhythm that thrilled him more
than anything Paris or Petrograd could Offer.
Often during the months which followed my first visit
to a Russian village, I heard, especially from the older
peasants, the hale and hearty 'stariki' or elders, the
quaint and homely wisdom that had sprung from their
own experience, and that of' many other generations be
fore them. There was a quality of shrewdness and humor,
though not unmixed with curious superstition, in the say
ings of the old peasants that made a strong appeal to the
affection. Sometimes, in talk with these old 'uncles' or
'grandfathers,' as everyone called them, I caught an ex
pression on their faces of wistfulness and childlike sim
plicity that seemed strange in these sturdy old fellows
with flowing white beards who had ploughed the fields
and gathered in the harvests for fifty years or more.
They could not understand the new ideas the returning
soldiers brought back from the front, and, in the turmoil
of the new regime, they forgot the terrors of the old, and
many a time I heard them say, shaking their heads, "We
need a master! We need order," and sometimes, "We
need the Czar." Nor was it alone the old man who hated
change. I often heard younger peasants say, "What was
good enough for our fathers is good enough for us."
Before I had been long in the region of the front, I had
felt the weight of the inertia of the masses, and it had
been borne in upon me that the thing that shattered hope
and made the future dark was the fact that, even if
stirred to action and inspired by a new idea, it was almost
inevitable that the peasant should fall back once more to
72

THE MASSES
the general level of hopelessness, of stupidity and in
difference, from which he had been aroused. At once an
illustration and an explanation of this came to me quite
unexpectedly in an incident that occurred during our tour
of the front of the Tenth Army. After a long day's ride
in a peasant's sledge, lying on the hay at the bottom
and trying to keep warm, we arrived at a half-destroyed
railway station, not far from the hut for which we were
bound. It was already dark, and I looked with wonder at
our two drivers as they prepared to return all the way
back to their own village that night in the bitter cold and
with nothing warm to eat. But they started back as a
matter of course, and we set out along the railroad track
on foot in the direction of the German lines. Three miles
were covered cheerfully in the expectation of good cheer
at the end, and at last some lights in the woods indicated
that we had arrived. Making our own way through the
snow, we pushed forward among the trees, whose trunks
were lit up mysteriously by the lights from the windows
of the underground dugouts, which rose about six inches
from the ground. The long-expected hut was at last dis
cernible, and we knocked at the door, expecting that the
next moment we would be warm and comfortable. A
cordial American welcome awaited us, but the inside of
the hut was as cold as ice, even colder it seemed than
outside. All the windows were broken and there was a hole
in the roof. The explanation was simply this. In the midst
of preparations for an entertainment for the soldiers that
afternoon, the roof of the hut had caught fire. Almost
immediately a crowd of soldiers surrounded it. The Ameri
can in charge asked for volunteers to help put out the
flames, but was astonished when no one moved. All stood
73

THE GROPING GIANT
around staring at the fire and gloomily shrugging their
shoulders and hopelessly calling out: "Too bad — there
isn't going to be any more club; the hut is burning up,
that's bad. It was a fine place and now it's all burning up,
there won't be any more club." Surprised, but not dis
heartened, the American, with the aid of a small boy,
himself put out the flames, but not until, for reasons un
known, all the windows had been broken and all the china
carefully carried out into the snow. Why did these men
act in this way ? It was their club. They had helped build
it. They used it. They were delighted with it. Their joy
was overwhelming when it was saved. But they had not
moved a finger to save it. As I lay snugly on my board bed
in an artillery dugout thinking it over that night, it seemed
very clear to me. I caught myself repeating over and over
again, "They are fatalists; they are all fatalists." With
their inheritance and surroundings, they could not very
well be anything else. To change anything by their own
wills had been impossible, ' and would be impossible. It
was fated that the hut should burn, and it would burn in
spite of all they could do to the contrary. It was, after all,
a survival of the old slave psychology, for they had been
slaves, in both fact and form, for centuries, and until
recent days slaves in fact still. It was not only on the
masses, but on other classes in Russian life as well, that
this wretched fatalism, though perhaps in a less simple
and obvious form, had set its stamp. The old dictum of
Stolypin, "It was so and it will be so," that so cynically
and brutally summed up the prevailing belief that change
is impossible, and that a relentless and irresistible fate
rules all men, seemed to have sunk deep into the char-
74

THE MASSES
acter of the Russian.1 Its deadening influence, seen in
every class of Russian life, was almost universal in the
peasantry. They had not felt as widely or as deeply as
other classes of men that magnificent spirit of protest
against the denial of man's freedom and power to shape
his own destiny that had marked the February revolution
or the fierce burning spirit of revolt against all existing
institutions of the October revolution. They stood there
helplessly watching something that was theirs, and that
they needed and wanted, burn down without a movement
to prevent it, because they had always accepted the blows
of a cruel fate, blows infinitely more hard and bitter to
them than this small misfortune, as something beyond
their power to change. They were trained, it seemed even
created, solely to endure.
In the course of our journey in the region of the front
I had seen mostly soldiers, and soldiers living under very
abnormal conditions. I had often felt some doubt as to
whether it was right to generalize from them about the
Russian masses. Towards the end of the trip, when we
were already thinking of turning our steps back to Mos
cow, this doubt at least was set at rest. In the city of
Dvinsk, an American professor was giving a demon
strated lecture to an audience of about fifteen hundred
soldiers to gain their initial interest in a new soldiers' hut
that was being opened in the city. I stood on the stage
with him, and had every chance to watch the audience.
The American was a commanding figure. He was a big
1 A striking indication of the new hopes released by the successive
revolutions in Russia was the appearance in many store windows of
placards bearing the following inscription in red letters, "It was so, but
it will not be so." 75

THE GROPING GIANT
strong Westerner, a missionary, whose life of whole
hearted sacrificial devotion to his work and his cause
seerned reflected in his face in characters not even a mujik
could mistake. In the first words he said he proved to me
that I was right in feeling that these soldiers and the
mujiks in the fields and villages were one and the same —
that it was right and just to feel that, in touching them,
one touched the greatest, though the most slow-moving
and most silent of all the forces of Russian life. Stepping
to the front of the stage, the American said: "How many
of you are farmers? Raise your hands." Every hand in
the room went up, every face was wreathed in a broad
grin. They were at once all attention and interest. The
expression on their rough, embruted faces changed into a
sort of open-mouthed uncomprehending wonder as he
went on to say, "I was a farmer too — and know what it is
to long for an education and knowledge and have it out
of my reach, and when finally I did have the chance to
learn, I never forgot the farm, and dedicated my life to
telling the men from the farm some of the things I learned
that they had not the chance to learn." As he went on
with his lecture, I was again struck by a certain childlike-
ness in the faces of the men before me, an extraordinary
simplicity in their expressions of astonishment and amuse
ment at what went on before them. I wondered if there
really was something there to appeal to — for they seemed
for the moment shaken out of their stolidity and indiffer
ence. When at the end questions were sent up on little
bits of paper, to be read out and answered, they brought
me a real conviction that there was in these men fine
material for a free people. There were questions about
everything under the sun — some showing a belief that the
76

THE MASSES
American who had spoken was some sort of a magician
or strange prophet. One read, "When will I die?" But
most were simple expressions of thanks to the American
professor who had come all that way to tell them what
wonderful things there were to be learned, and encourage
them in the desire to learn. They said the Russian man
was not to blame that he was dark because he had no
chance; that they wanted schools and wanted their chil
dren to have these things that they could not have; they
knew what a mess things would be in in Russia as long
as they were so dark — but what could they do? There
were many questions about America, especially about
freedom and democracy there, and some about the prog
ress of the class war in America. Most of the little notes
sent up to us were nearly illegible, but we could make out
enough to show us that at least a momentary impression
had been made, that way down underneath the crushing
inertia and fatalism of the masses there does lie a wonder
fully rich mine of aspiration, of hope and of capacity as
well. Wonder, pity, amusement, affection, fear — all had been
stirred in me by my short pilgrimage among the Russian
peasants. More perhaps than by any other one thing, I
had been impressed by the aloofness and separateness of
their life from the life of the outside world. It must indeed
be a compelling motive that can arouse the mujik, and
one that comes close to his own personal life and concerns
him and his village intimately. He cares not for abstrac
tions, for general principles, even for his country as a
whole. What are the plans of statesmen to him? How
could he have interest beyond his village and his district
when that village is his life, that district his world ? I had
77

THE GROPING GIANT
already seen one such motive at work — the overwhelming
desire for peace. And another motive, equally strong,
equally immediate at the time of the October revolution
was the hunger for land. He who has sat hour by hour
through long nights in crowded freight cars listening to
the talk of the peasants, or stood in the market places as
the babi1 traded and quarreled and laughed together, can
truly feel how close to the land they are. All their life is
bound up in the changing of the seasons. Once, far off in
the eastern part of Siberia, looking down from a little
hill at an inexpressibly dreary village, I asked a peasant
almost in despair at the thought of the sameness and dull
ness of the life that must be lived there — "What do you
do?" "Do? Why — bread, of course," he said, wondering
at the stupidity of such a question. Of course, bread was
the life of that village, — ploughing, sowing, reaping,
threshing, grinding, baking, — every year the same, and
nothing else besides. Land for the Russian peasant is the
first, the dearest of all things. How the peasant from the
South will extol for hours the virtues of his wonderful
black earth! How the peasant from Tver or Vologda will
complain equally long about his bitter struggle with his
niggardly soil! How the argument will rage about the
relative merits of Petrof's field and Ivan's! It was easy
to understand the longing of Nekrasof's peasants as they
looked across at the smiling hayfields of the barin. How
easily could this longing be translated into fierce ven
geance and triumph when the chance came to seize them.
In these two great desires of this vast mass of men,
there lay an instrument, which, skilfully and fearlessly
!Baba is the word universally used in Russia to designate the
peasant woman. 78

THE MASSES
used by any political group, could make that group all-
powerful in Russia. Peace and land— these were the
things promised by the Bolsheviki and it was this promise
and its partial realization that moved the masses. It was
because it appealed to these two primary desires that the
Bolshevik power gained such instant and widespread ad
herence among the peasants. It used them and it said it
spoke in their name. But the more I saw of the peasants
the less it seemed to me did the Bolsheviki truly represent
them, however widely they might make their influence
felt among them. When, at the close of my visit to the
front, my own personal acquaintanceship with and practi
cal study of the Bolsheviki began, I already had some
thing of the background of the Russian masses in my
heart and mind. The familiarity that I had gained with the
general character of the Russian peasant and the condi
tions of his life was of incalculable value in the effort to
understand the real sources of the Bolshevik power.

79

III.
THE BOLSHEVIKI PART I

THE peace, so profound and so strange, which
hung over the front was not merely the relaxa
tion and quietness following the end of the
tremendous effort of the war against Germany, but also
marked the end of a grim tragedy within the Russian
lines. The great Russian fighting machine had not gone
to pieces without a struggle. Story after story was told
us, as we moved from one place to another, of the bravery
of the officers who, rather than desert their posts even
when nothing more was to be hoped, had met death at
the hands of the men whom they had so often led into
battle, or had remained as prisoners of their own soldiers.
In Moledechno, near Minsk, the commanding officer of
that section of the front lived technically at liberty but in
every practical respect a prisoner, and in constant danger
of his life. I once passed the little house, somewhat apart
from the village, where he was quartered. I wondered
80

THE BOLSHEVIKI
what must be the feelings of that man who had fought
and worked and lived through so much for the glory of
Russia, as he sat there day after day watching his great
organization go to pieces and his country left defenseless
to the foe. The power he once wielded was exercised now
by soldier committees, controlled and organized from
Moscow. There was uncertainty at the front with regard
to the events in the capital cities and little detailed in
formation about the organization and real aim of the
Bolsheviki, and the extent and permanence of their
political domination. This only increased the sense of
their ever present threatening power. There was abroad,
even in that extraordinary peacefulness, a feeling of
unrest and fear. Many reports of Bolshevik excesses
reached our ears. It seemed like some ill-timed joke when
we heard that they had entrusted all the communications
of the Tenth Army to an escaped convict and murderer
from Siberia. To me, whose mission was not to those in
power and whose purpose was not the study of politics,
these things seemed more like stories out of story books
than real events and people. The men who played the
dramatic roles were not those with whom I came in con
tact. It was the peasant whom I could meet at the front
man to man and try to understand. But yet, before I
returned to the central cities, where the great game of
chance was being played, I was given three clues which,
though perhaps slight in themselves, served as a starting
point for further and better informed thinking about the
Bolsheviki and especially about their relation to the
masses. The first clue was an incident which showed how
directly and powerfully the Bolsheviki were appealing to

THE GROPING GIANT
and using the two burning desires that mastered so com
pletely the thoughts and actions of the peasant soldiers.
Just before I arrived at the hut whose threatened de
struction by fire had so startlingly demonstrated the
fatalism Of the peasants, a delegation of commissars had
arrived there, from Moscow. They were an embassy from
the Bolsheviki to the army, and like the ancient embassies
of old, they came laden heavily with gifts. Their mission
was to persuade some of the soldiers to remain in the
trenches to preserve the semblance of an armed trucg.
They gathered the soldiers together in the American hut
and besought them to return to their places, but on a
basis that has perhaps never in the world's history been
the burden of an appeal to any army defending its in
vaded country. "Go to the trenches and sit there and
wait. You don't have to fight under any circumstances.
It won't even be necessary for you to take arms if you
don't want to. If the Germans move, don't make any
resistance. We just want you to stay out there to make a
show while our delegates at Brest-Litovsk make the best
peace they can and to give us a chance to kill off all the
Burjui without being disturbed, so that when you do come
home there won't be any Burjui and you — the Russian
proletariat — will have all the land. In the meanwhile we
have brought you these presents as a token of the high
esteem in which the People's Commissars hold the gallant
— th regiment." Such was the nature of the appeal as
declaimed under the roof of the American non-political
hut, and related to us by the astonished American who
heard it. Startling in its simplicity, it went straight to the
heart of the question, but differed a good deal from ap
peals I subsequently heard made in the same cause in

THE BOLSHEVIKI
places distant from the actuality of revolutionary Russia.
Forceful as it was, it was barely sufficient to hold the
soldiers in place, for their suspicions led them instantly
to revert to an argument much used by some earlier
Bolshevik agents when it served their purpose so well:
"What are we doing here at the front when the others in
the rear are dividing up the land? Let us see that we are
not cheated out of our share." And so the desertions con
tinued. Things like this sowed in my mind an initial
scepticism as to the degree in which the Bolsheviki spoke
the real heart of the Russian masses.
The second clue came while I was sitting one day at a
greasy oilcloth-covered table in a buffet with a group of
soldiers. As usual I fell into talk with them about how
cold it was outside, and how little room there was inside
and how full the tepliishkas were. I had ordered some tea
and bread. There was no sugar and the bread was black
and sour. To my surprise, as soon as the soldiers saw
that I had nothing of my own, they produced sugar, grey
bread and butter and insisted that I share with them. At
first there seemed to be no particular hostility to me, but
on the contrary a very friendly feeling. After we had been
talking together for some time, however, I suddenly dis
covered that I was the object of a vociferous discourse by
a medium-sized civilian with a brown moustache and
curly hair, dressed like a prosperous workman. I could
understand but little, but caught at once the word
'Burjyi' and soon discovered that the man was trying to
arrest me. I produced my documents from high Bolshevik
sources and established my right to be at the front, but
this did not placate the man very much. My face was my
crime, and my white collar my badge of infamy. He
83

THE GROPING GIANT
picked me out instantly as a natural enemy, and his open
hostility was in marked contrast to the friendliness of the
soldiers who had been sharing their scanty store of lux
uries with me. It had not occurred to them particularly
that I was a Burjui and that they were proletarians. They
had been curious about me as an American. But when the
newcomer began to discuss me, many of them looked sus
picious and angry. My identity being fully substantiated
that evening, I was surprised to have my accuser come to
shake me by the hand and call me "svoi cheloviek," "one
of ours," by way of apology. But I had learned one thing;
unless there is some definite personal reason, the peasant
does not hate the Burjui. He has to be told about it,
have it dinned into his ears, that here is a man whom he
must hate and fight against. But to the man in whom
class feeling is paramount, who is a real proletarian, as
the peasants are not, one glance is sufficient to recognize
a member of the enemy class. The first feeling aroused in
the heart of the proletarian in the buffet at the sight of
me sharing with the soldiers their bread and salt was hot
indignation at the impudence of a Burjui in tampering
with the peasants.
Not long after my white collar had betrayed me into
this slight unpleasantness, I got a third clue to the Bol
shevik riddle which gave me a concrete conception of
another very important element in the situation. After
leaving Dvinsk my way led to the old Hanseatic League
City of Pskoff. An ancient white cathedral, standing on
a high rock at the junction of two rivers, dominates the
town. It is square in form, its walls very plain and sur
mounted by the universal onion-shaped domes of the
Greek churches. It has a wonderful grandeur and dignity,
84

THE BOLSHEVIKI
and a grace that has been added to it by the passing of
the years. Near it stands a weather-beaten bell tower,
from whose top one looks down at the oldest Orthodox
church in Russia, a little low white structure standing on
an island in one of the rivers. Throughout the city are
many quaint monasteries and churches. The town seems
to be filled with the spirit of the Orthodox faith. My first
days there had imbued me with this spirit and filled my
imagination with pictures of the dramatic and vivid past
of the place. It was a rude shock to be brought back to
an appreciation of the fact that in the events of the day
and in the new power which was ruling Russia, there
was feverishly and aggressively at work an influence
bitterly antagonistic to the tradition and spirit that these
wonderful old buildings represented, — the influence of men
who hated, despised and scorned them, — the influence of
the Russian Jew. Returning from a long hour on the bell
tower I met, not far from the cathedral, a Russian officer,
a friend of mine. In the course of our talk he told me a
simple story of his own experience at the front, which
contained in it an explanation of much that I was to see
later in my wanderings. He had been in command of a
company all of whom were Russian peasants except one,
who was a Jew. Many complaints of the man had reached
him, and he noticed that he was constantly abused and
persecuted and thoroughly despised by the rest of the
company. One day, as the officer came out of his dugout
in the morning, his sentry refused to salute. There was
something about the man's manner which made him sup
press his impulse to have him instantly disciplined and
warned him that something very strange had happened.
He simply asked the sentry why he did not salute. The
85

THE GROPING GIANT
soldier replied in a surly voice that it wasn't necessary
any more. There was no more discipline and there were
no more officers. Kerenski's famous and fatal order No. i
had reached the front. My friend kept his temper and
asked wnat authority there was, then, if the officers were
deposed. "Oh, a committee runs things now." "And whom
have you chosen as head of your committee?" my friend
asked. He was astonished to hear that the only Jew of the
company had been elected chairman. "But," he expostu
lated in, wonder, "I thought you hated this man, despised
and distrusted him." "Yes," said the soldier, "we do hate
him and we don't trust him at all, but you see he can talk
and we can't. He understands the new order and we
don't. We need a man who can talk, so we elected him."
Everything I had learned about the peasants told me
that this must be the way the thing worked out. Czarism
had created conditions that kept the peasant in such a
degree of ignorance and on a mental plane so low that he
would entrust his interests to the hands of a man he hated
and despised, simply because that man was persuasive,
agile of mind and quick to seize the chance for leadership.
It had made the Russian Jew a man without a country, an
outcast in his own land, but it had not broken his spirit.
It had made him the natural advocate of internationalism
and revolution, and had increased his subtlety, wariness
and cunning. In embruting the peasant, embittering the
Jew and laying its blighting hand on the Orthodox faith,
that wonderful mystical religion, Czarism had indeed
created a condition which not only aided powerfully in its
own destruction, but seemed for many dark months to
threaten the utter destruction of the free Russia that men
hoped and still hope to see growing out of the ruin's. I
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THE BOLSHEVIKI
had been surprised at the sweeping way in which Russians
had accused the Jews of being responsible for all the
terrors of the October revolution. I had discounted most
of it as race prejudice. But what I had seen of the peasant
character, which made possible such incidents as those
described in the story of the Russian officer, and the
prominence of the Jews in the local Soviets in the towns
I had visited, made it seem reasonable to suppose that the
Jews were to play a part in the Bolshevik movement out
of all proportion to their numbers. The dominance of the
Jew in the affairs of Russia where he had so long been an
outcast, which a year ago would have seemed a fantastic
dream, now bade fair to become an accomplished fact.
It constituted a formidable challenge to the Orthodox
Church. The faith of whicli the fine old cathedral in
Pskoff was an extraordinary embodiment did indeed hold
sway over the masses. It was the essence of all that was
Russian, but it was passive and not active; it did not lead.
I wondered, as my friend told that significant story of his,
how it would stand the terrible blow that had fallen upon
it, a blow it was so ill prepared to meet. ,
When it came time for me to turn my steps toward
Petrograd from the towns and villages of White Russia,
there lay in my mind half formulated three concepts
about the Bolsheviki. That they were men who, though
they came from the cities and were not sprung from the
masses of Russia, still understood and took advantage of
the fundamental longings of the peasants, namely, the
desire for land and for peace; that they were men whose
first and only allegiance was to class; and that they were
men in whose councils the influence of the Jew would be
a strong if not a determining one.
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THE GROPING GIANT
Petrograd, at the close of December 191 7, was a city
wrought up to the highest pitch of nervous tension. The
Constituent Assembly had been convened and dissolved
by force of arms at the first sign of independent action.
Smolny Institute, formerly the most aristocratic girls'
school in Russia, was the seat of government. It would be
difficult to describe the hushed tones and frightened whis
pers in which that word was spoken. For a long time it
had no particular meaning for me, except as the name of
something ominous, oppressive, ruthless and hostile. I
walked through the streets conscious that there was a
great yet rather indefinable difference between the Petro
grad I then saw and the Petrograd I had caught a fleeting
glimpse of on a short visit two months before. The people
looked driven and harried and underfed. There was a
sense of unnaturalness and impending disaster hanging
over all. It seemed incongruous to see Austrians every
where in fine uniforms walking about entirely free, to rub
shoulders with them on the crowded street cars, and see
them salute their officers with military precision. In walk
ing up and down the Nevski my way was often blocked
by anxious crowds standing before the banks, which were
closed. It was distressing to pass a beautiful and obviously
cultivated young girl standing on a street corner selling
papers in rude competition with the professional newsboys
who resented her interference with their trade, and to see
a dignified old gentleman feeding logs into the fire of a
great snow-melter and shivering from cold. I grew to
expect empty shelves and fabulous prices in all the stores.
It was appalling to see young animals, suckling pigs and
veal, everywhere on sale in the markets, for this meant
famine next year and a recklessness of consequences that
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THE BOLSHEVIKI
boded ill for the people of Russia. I began to notice how
many sailors there were around, — great swaggering, arro
gant fellows, men on whom had fallen heaviest the cruel
hand of the old discipline, and from whose faces had been
driven every vestige of human sympathy and whose
hearts knew no pity. It seemed strange indeed, passing
along the Neva at night, to see the great watchfires in
front of the unlighted pile of the Winter Palace around
which the Red soldiers were warming themselves. And it
was stranger still to look across at the shadowy outline of
Petropavlosk, now filled with a new dole of prisoners who
languished and suffered there, many of them for no crime
except thinking and feeling about things in the same way
I did. I went over to the church in Petropavlosk to see the
sepulchres of the Romanofs and read over the names of
Peter, Ivan, Catherine and Alexander, with the feeling
that here was indeed a tomb, the grave of a once all-
powerful tradition, of an outworn philosophy. It did not
seem out of keeping with the spirit of the times that on
the grave of Paul alone, the mad monarch and unnatural
son, incense was kept burning and the flowers fresh. The
normal life of the city seemed to have been throttled and
diverted into an unnatural feverishness, a nervous ten
sion for which we found a name, calling it Petrograditis.
The Hermitage and the Alexander the Third galleries
were closed and barred, but every place where distraction
and amusement could be found was thronged. On every
corner soldiers and sailors were doing a thriving trade in
cigarettes and small articles, obtained, it seemed fair to
assume, by the very practical and convincing argument
of the bayonet. Over all hung the dread that the Germans
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THE GROPING GIANT
might at any moment advance to take the city. Trotsky
had left the front, crying, "Peace is not signed but the
war is over." No one knew what to prophesy and what
to believe. The days were the shortest of the year. At four
o'clock it was already dark and I often sat in my dingy
hotel dining-room at nine in the morning eating a meagre
breakfast of tea and bread and cheese by the light of a
candle which dispelled but a minute portion of the sur
rounding darkness, and looked out across the square,
only barely able to distinguish the dim outline of St.
Isaac's Cathedral opposite.
As I was leaving my hotel one morning after one of
those gloomy breakfasts, I noticed fully armed soldiers
on guard in the lobby and at various points about the
hotel. Near the dining-room door I met a subaltern with
five or six soldiers coming down the passage with a
civilian in their midst, obsequiously attended by the hotel
keeper. Everybody seemed to shrink from them. In a
moment they were gone, — a search, an arrest, nothing
more. And yet this little incident spoke volumes to me.
The word 'search' had been on everybody's lips. A search
was a daily occurrence. No one was safe from it. No
warning was given, no rights respected, no justification
attempted except that Smolny ordered and must be
obeyed. Many a time I saw curious crowds gathered
about some store or house guarded by soldiers and heard
the whisper running from mouth to mouth, "A search";
and I heard many a story of those whose houses and
homes were thus brutally broken into. My little glimpse
of a search iri my own hotel that morning impressed me
deeply with the consciousness of a power able to pre
serve order and prevent violence, but from whose own
90

THE BOLSHEVIKI
violence and aggression there was no protection. It was
a gloomy and forbidding stage on which was set the scene
for the further development of the Bolshevik drama, in
whose early acts the Germans played so skilful and im
portant a part.
I was sitting one evening in my hotel room when there
was a knock at the door. A Russian, apparently of the
shopkeeping class, entered and approached me hat in
hand with every sign of respect. I was surprised to have
him address me in German, but my surprise was as
nothing to his on discovering that I did not understand
that language. He finally communicated to me in some
way or other that he wanted me to give him a pass
through the German lines to Revel, and on my assuring
him that that was a matter beyond my control he asked
me incredulously whether I was not a member of the Aus
trian Mission. He had come to the wrong number. Next
door to me were living members of an Austrian economic
mission to Russia. At the very moment when the Austro-
Germans were dictating terms of peace to the Russians
at Brest-Litovsk, so brutal and shameful as to become a
password for dishonor all over the world and to be almost
impossible of acceptance even to the most hardy inter
nationalists, the Bolsheviki were busy searching for
means of strengthening their economic position by strik
ing a bargain with other representatives of the same
powers. On my way out of the hotel that afternoon I saw the
unmistakable Teuton sitting in the hotel reception room.
One man particularly impressed me, — fat, awkward, with
hanging cheeks and a very full face, a small black
moustache, curly hair and gold spectacles, but yet clearly
91

THE GROPING GIANT
a man of intellect and power. I had not been long in the
street with his picture in my mind when I met two dapper
British naval officers, and later some of our own American
officers. The presence, of representatives of both sides in
the titanic struggle still raging in full force on the
Western front, as if seeking the favor of some neutral
party, was for me more striking proof than any amount
of assertion by different kinds of Russians that the Ger
mans and Allies were exactly on a par as far as the Bol
sheviki were concerned. It was only too palpable that the
nearness of the German Army, equipped and ready to
move instantly as I well knew, and the prospect of eco
nomic help, inclined the scale to the former. It was hard
for me to believe that any Russian government could
utterly ignore the fact that Russia and the Allies had
made common cause together against one common enemy,
and could, with a cool and even-handed hatred of both its
former friends and enemies, play off one against the
other. And yet the physical presence next to me of the
enemy leaders at such a time proved that this was true
of the Smolny Government. What I had seen at the front
showed only too clearly the hopelessness of reviving the
old status of comrades in arms, and the still vivid recollec
tions of my first days in Moscow and the demonstrations
of the Red Square reminded me that for the Bolsheviki
the issues of the old war were dead and were replaced by
those of the class war between the proletariat and the
Burjui, to them vastly more important.
One evening, not long after my arrival in Petrograd, I
was riding through the streets in a beautifully uphol
stered, luxurious limousine. I was accompanying the
American professor whose audience at Dvinsk had con*
92

THE BOLSHEVIKI
vinced me that a general distinction between soldiers and
peasants in Russia was a false one, to a factory where he
was about to lecture. We were escorted by a voluble and
friendly Russian workman. The latter said to us, with
some pride, that the automobile had been the property of
the former mayor of Petrograd and head of the factory
to which he was now taking us. I had the most unpleasant
feeling of being the recipient of stolen goods, but made
no comment about the possible feelings of the Burjui
owner. Our host was chairman of the workmen's "cul
tural-educational" committee at the Petrogradski Zavod,
as the factory where we were going was called, and we
confined ourselves to purely cultural-educational topics.
It was not long before I was among a crowd of Russian
workmen in a light, airy room used as a workmen's dining-
room and rest-room in a great factory in the heart of the
Viborg section. The factory, formerly active day and
night, was lying idle. The men were in complete pos
session, had voted themselves several months' salary in
advance and were living on it. We were courteously
treated, but I was at once impressed with an independ
ence of manner and a reserve on the part of the men that
I had not seen in the peasants. It was harder to get into
talk with them, and every time I tried to approach the
question as to why the factory wasn't working I either
got no response or a surly "We don't have to work; we've
got money, why should we work?" But usually any feelers
or hints about things uppermost in my mind met with so
expressive a silence that I concluded there were things
a Burjui like myself didn't speak about in Petrogradski
Zavod. In his lecture the American professor stayed on neutral
93

THE GROPING GIANT
ground, and got a fairly good reception, ending in our
being forced to have a picture takenr surrounded by the
real Russian proletariat. The faces of the men were more
intelligent and less good-humored than the peasants I
had seen, and there was none of the simplicity and naivete
of the mujik. Just the slight contact of that one evening
made me feel that this was a place where the words 'pro
letariat,' 'International,' 'capitalist,' 'social revolution,'
had some meaning. As far as these words had a personal
or emotional significance they were here understood to
the full. But their economic implications were not yet at
all clear to the men. When I sat among the proletariat
for my picture that evening, I gathered from the conver
sation of our host that now that the men had the fac
tory they didn't exactly know what to do with it. I later
visited it by daylight, walking in and out among its
almost deserted buildings, its smokeless smokestacks and
fireless furnaces and watching the men wandering about
more or less aimlessly and without purpose. The men
knew perfectly that their well-being depended on that
factory's production and yet they made no effort to set
it going. On the way home the night before, our talkative
guide had told a great deal about all the different kinds
of committees the workers had, and how they had voted
themselves enormous increases in wages, and how, as
production had ceased, prices had risen, and how the
righteous indignation of the workmen had been aroused
against the Burjui, who must be responsible for these
bad conditions, because they had always been responsible
for the bad condition of the workers. I had pointed out
that it was bad economics to live on one's capital and he
had replied: "Oh, yes. But what are you going to do
94

THE BOLSHEVIKI
about it? The whole country is living on its capital."
What wonder that, after years of severe oppression, the
sudden acquisition by the workmen of full power over
the means of production should result in the reckless
squandering of capital, the nature of which they could
not understand, and make of them the most promising
material for the Red Guard.
It was not long before I had a first-hand and quite
informal view of the Red Guard in one of its own head
quarters. One murky winter evening I turned off from the
Nevski and, leaving its great, slowly moving crowds and
confusion of sleighs and street cars, and passing by the
brightly lighted entrance of the Europe Hotel, came out
on the comparative calm of Mikhailovski Ploshad. The
great pile of the Alexander the Third Gallery loomed up
opposite, unlighted and deserted, a perpetual reminder
of the parlous nature of the times. My errand led me to a
large, handsome stone building on a corner facing the
gallery. I felt a thrill of excitement, ¦for1 I was about to
enter the Dvorianski Sobranie, the Nobles' Club. It was
in this building that the great and brilliant social events
of the Russian aristocracy had taken place. Not more
than a year ago it had been honored by the presence of
the Czar himself. Here had been displayed all the gran
deur of the old regime. But now what a transformation
had taken place ! At the door lounged a number of senti
nels. I passed by them into the entrance hall. Its stone
floor was wet and tracked with mud and the stairs leading
up from it were slippery and dirty. Soldiers constantly
passing to and fro crowded the stone stairs that led up
from the entrance. I went up and saw before me a great
hall, noble in outline and proportion. From the landing
95

THE GROPING GIANT
of the stairway three or four steps led down to the main
floor, and a broad loggia extended completely around the
hall. Above this was a gallery supported by handsome
white pillars, which formed the chief architectural feature
of the room. In the centre hung three magnificent glass
chandeliers reminiscent of former glories. But it was a
dreary scene of confusion upon which I looked. Every
trace of furniture had been removed. On the main floor
were only a few wooden benches and one or two rough
wooden tables piled in a corner, some stacks of arms and
a few boxes. The gallery and the loggia beneath it were
filled with cots on which were reposing members of
Trotsky's own regiment. Dirt was everywhere. The at
mosphere was stifling, almost fetid, and the place smelled
so it was hard to keep from running to the door for air.
I walked around among the crowded beds and stacked
arms and watched the soldiers. Perhaps it was the striking
contrast between them and their surroundings and an
instinctive angry revolt against the desecration and de
filing of a building that had once been beautiful and the
home of beauty that made them seem more stupid and
brutish than other soldiers I had seen and talked to. They
had been promised a palace to live in when they were
brought from the front, and insisted on having a palace.
I learned from them that when it was proposed to use
the building for other purposes they had indignantly re
fused to move, although they were discontented there,
for the Dvorianski Sobranie was most unsuitable for a
barracks. Some slept, others smoked, cooked, or played
cards with cards so black it was an art to read the num
bers, and one was playing the accordion. There was con
stant moving about and talking. As I walked around the
96

THE BOLSHEVIKI
gallery, a detachment was called out on some duty in the
city. The calling of the roll, shouting of orders, clattering
of arms and equipment, and stamping of feet added to the
turmoil. But amid all the noise the sleepers slept on
undisturbed. What a life of confusion and squalor was
going on here in the very place where the beauties of
Petrograd had sat looking down at the splendors of their
exalted caste!
As I came down into the hall, I noticed that the soldiers
were gathering on the main floor for some sort of meeting.
I had heard some of them complaining about their bad
food and the lack of bread, and was not very much sur
prised to find that the soldiers' committee, which had
taken the place of the officers, was announcing the names
of those who were to start off to far-away Siberia to buy
bread for the regiment. But the men were evidently wait
ing for something more, for they did not disperse when
this business was finished. I sat down on the steps by one
of the pillars, unnoticed, and waited. Soon there was a
stir at the door; a body of men entered, walked briskly
halfway down one side of the room, and then a small,
black-haired man, with a little black moustache, wearing
a Prince Albert coat, stepped out on a platform that ex
tended a few feet into the main floor and began to address
the soldiers. He spoke vehemently, in short, quick sen
tences, gesticulating violently to drive home his points.
He was exhorting the men to stand fast in the cause, to
be true to their sacred duty as the bulwark and defense
of the proletariat, to remember that the people looked to
them for protection of their new-won liberties, to con
tinue the battle against their enemies, the absolutists and
the Burjui, faithfully to support the Soviet and the
97

THE GROPING GIANT
People's Commissars. He also told them about the history
and growth of the Soviet system, of their struggle against
overwhelming odds, of their final triumph. One phrase
that I heard often in the course of his speech kept ringing
in my ears long after: "Ours — ours is the Russian land —
ours are the Russian mines, ours the Russian factories,
ours all the incalculable Russian riches." Truly it seemed
as if I were in some strange new world as I sat there in
the Hall of the Nobles, listening to Trotsky himself ha
ranguing his own soldiers, teaching them, inspiring them,
moulding them into an implement by which to carry out
his will and establish his mastery over confused and
leaderless Russia.
When Trotsky had done speaking, a member of the
soldiers' committee stepped up to the platform, saluted
and replied in the name of the soldiers. Pledging the un
dying constancy of the men to their leader and the cause,
he swore before God that to one man they would all shed
their last drop of blood before they would cease to fight
for Trotsky, for the Soviet and for the proletariat. I, had
never seen a man throw himself into the words he was
saying so much as this Bolshevik soldier, whose flushed
face and flashing eyes as he finished his short speech were
something to remember. All the men listened with strained
attention to both but there was no great enthusiasm, for
it was for them but one of a hundred such speeches. Yet
some of them surely had drunk deeply of the doctrine of
the proletarian rule.
I became quite a regular visitor at the Dvorianski
Sobranie after that, and on a subsequent visit learned, to
my great surprise, that within three weeks after Trotsky's
speech nearly two-thirds of the men who had listened to
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THE BOLSHEVIKI
it had deserted and gone to their villages. Even the words
of the great leader himself did not appear to have left
much trace on their minds. But I was more surprised still
to learn that a certain proportion of those who had re
turned to the villages had come back again. They had
found that life in the villages was hard, that there was
no longer a place for them, that the older peasants viewed
them and their new ideas with suspicion, that they must
toil hard and long to wring from the earth a poor
subsistence, that their sweethearts had married, their
families broken up. They were restless and came back
to the life of alternate inactivity and adventure, of spoils
and license .and hardships, which awaited them in the
Red Guard, a life which appealed both to their vanity
and their greed. In the villages they had lost their place
and were as nothing, disliked as trouble makers. But in
the Red Guard they were masters and the rulers of
Russia. I had no means of knowing, even of wildly guess
ing, how many of all the soldiers who started joyfully
from the front — "Home" — had found that they no longer
fitted into the village life and became men like the old
class of professional ' soldiers of the Middle Ages, who
made it easy to recruit armies for any cause. It was
sobering to think that if the four years of the Great War
had made only one out of every hundred peasants mobi
lized in Russia's armies of ten million men, a wanderer and
a homeless, bitter, degraded man, what a great reservoir
there would be from which to draw the Red Army. It-
no longer seemed strange that the Red Army should be
strong when I thought of the fanatical devotion of those
soldiers who spoke in the voice of that man I had heard
reply to Trotsky, of the new class of professional soldier
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THE GROPING GIANT
and adventurer the war had made, of the true proletariat
of which I had caught a glimpse at the Petrogradski
Zavod. With these men as a nucleus, the leaders of the
Red Army could still draw on the great masses of the
peasants throughout Russia, who were thinking now in
simple terms of peace and of land, but who, when the
time came, could be made to fight in any cause and for
any purpose by a strong dominating power, because they
had always been used and made to fight, and because
these things seemed to them to be decreed by a stern fate
that they could not change and from which they could
not escape. Leadership alone was needed to weld together
these forces into one great machine. Everything I saw
around me, every detail of life in Petrograd in those
early days showed me that there was such leadership.
In the nervous weeks subsequent to the peace parleys
at Brest-Litovsk, there were so many anxieties and un
certainties of every kind, so many rumors set afoot one
day and denied the next, so many unforeseen emergencies
to be met, so many readjustments to be made that the
real significance of what was taking place was obscured
and distorted. An American could not help still thinking
in terms of Germany and the Allies and of Russia as one
of the Allies in spite of all that had happened. Trotsky
had left Brest-Litovsk, refusing to sign the shameless
thing the Germans had submitted and making the whole
conference futile and abortive. The Germans were there
fore advancing. Only a pretense of defending the city was
being made. Anxiety reached a feverish intensity. Foreign
embassies and legations fled. The question on all lips was
— "When will the Germans take the city?"
Under these conditions there remained in Petrograd
ioo

THE BOLSHEVIKI
only a few open advocates of the Allied cause. Among
these were representatives of the American Committee on
Public Information, who stayed in Petrograd to continue
their work of speaking for their country and their
country's cause in the war by any means they could with
out being driven out by the Bolshevik Government. As
work for the Russian soldier no longer offered a chance
for practical service, I took the proffered opportunity to
join in their work. It had become increasingly difficult to
speak for America through the press, because, one by one,
papers advocating points of view different from that of
the People's Commissars had ceased to appear. But the
official words of the head of our nation could still be cir
culated in printed form, pamphlets could be distributed
and a certain amount of American news and American
articles printed in such papers as survived. The gradual
encroachment of Smolny on the right of free speech had
long been evident. The creation of a state monopoly in
advertising had peacefully spelled the death knell of real
discussion by making it impossible to finance any paper
without the stamp of Smolny approval. Nevertheless,
enough leeway was given to such papers as did come out
to permit them to make at least a show of independence.
The most powerful weapon of all those used by the Bol
sheviki, absolute control of the printed word, was per
fected only gradually but with extraordinary skill. Step
by step freedom of speech was restricted until it was
finally denied altogether. During the days of the greatest
stress in Petrograd, I came to my first intense personal
realization that the regime under which I was living
governed on the same principles and in the same manner
as the Czars in this most vital essential. When it seemed

IOI

THE GROPING GIANT
certain1 that the Germans would take Petrograd, the
Americans decided before withdrawing to leave on all
the walls of the city an open reminder to the people that
the Germans came not as friends, not as liberators, not
as bringers of order, but as enemies and haters of all the
ideals of the revolution. A cartoon was prepared showing
the boot of a German officer in the lower left-hand corner,
and his fist and cuff in the upper left-hand corner. The
fist held the sword of German militarism, its point driven
down through the hand of a Russian workingman from
whose grasp had just fallen the blood-red banner of the
revolution with "Liberty" written on it. But no one
would print this poster, for it appeared that the printer
was held personally responsible for everything that he
printed. Everyone we approached refused, with evident
signs of fear, to touch the poster. They had been consti
tuted, on pain of the loss of their liberties and their lives,
involuntary censors. They said it was madness to try to
print such a poster and referred us to Smolny, to the
Commissar of the Press. When it was suggested that this
poster was directed against the Germans, and that Smolny
was even then exhausting every effort to get means for a
last minute defense, a moody silence was the answer. To
carry this matter to its logical conclusion one of the
Americans in charge of the propaganda work decided to
go himself to Smolny, where I accompanied him.
Smolny had come to be so much a symbol of evil and
of hostility to all I held dear that I approached the great
unadorned bare-looking building with a distinct feeling
of revulsion. The first thing I saw after our sleigh entered
the gates at the end of the driveway and approached the
building, was a battered old armored car. On the steps of
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THE BOLSHEVIKI
Smolny itself were two artillery pieces and a heavily
armed guard. The place appeared to be in a state of siege.
The gloomy entrance seemed perfectly to symbolize a
rude power constantly in fear of its life, protecting itself
against its victims. After a reasonable delay we received
permission to mount to the first floor and began walking
up and down the long corridors in search of the proper
official. The rooms which opened out on these corridors
had once been lived in by princesses, grand duchesses and
the noblest of Russian ladies. Now all was bare and
empty. There was no furniture in many of the rooms, in
most of them only plain deal tables spread with papers in
indescribable confusion. We had just a transient glimpse
of part of the building, but it made one wonder how any
orderly government could function in such a place.
Finally we found the man for whom we were in search
and presented him with our request for permission to
distribute the anti-German poster. He looked at it in
surprise and then looked up at us and said sullenly, "No,
of course not." Pressed for a reason, he said, with a
cynical smile, "If you can't see for yourselves why you.
can't do this, I can't tell you." My companion offered the
observation, "But this is directed against the Germans,
and you are fighting the Germans, aren't you?" This
met with no reply, so, having found out what we wanted
to know, we made our way from the confusion of Smolny
into the clear air outside.
The visit to Smolny Institute, showing, as it did, the
impossibility of carrying on any propaganda against the
Germans and the completeness of the Bolshevik censor
ship, was made on the last day of my stay in Petrograd.
The experience of these months, in spite of the confusion
103

THE GROPING GIANT
and uncertainty of the time and the complexity of the in
fluences at work in the city, had shown me clearly the
nature of the two main instruments on which the Bol
sheviki depended for the maintenance of their power — the
Red Army and complete control over all printed matter.
In Moscow, some weeks later, I gained my first clear con
ception of the purpose and plan for the accomplishment
of which the Bolshevik leaders were using these instru
ments, and of their underlying philosophy.

104

IV:
THE BOLSHEVIKI
PART II

MY journey from Petrograd to Moscow was
marked by several of those small incidents that
tell so much about Russia, and yet seem so
slight as hardly to warrant more than passing attention.
Unable to get within twenty-five feet of the train on
which I was supposed to leave, on account of the crowds
which besieged it, I stood one cold night in the Petrograd
station looking at the people jammed on the platforms
and sitting on the roofs of the cars. I noticed one slim,
intelligent-looking young girl without gloves, standing on
the platform of one of the freight cars, and thought of the
very frequent stories of people found frozen to death at
the other end of the journey. When I had about given up
hope of being able to leave Petrograd that night, an
empty train of box cars came rolling in a few tracks
away. In a moment I was safely in a corner of one of
them and soon so jammed in by a crowd of peasants with
105

THE GROPING GIANT
all their baggage that I could not move a foot. Twenty
hours later I was still in the same corner, trundling along
only halfway to Moscow, when a particularly loud con
versation started up. A small, sturdy soldier, looking well
fed and cheerful, was regaling a few listeners with tales
of the hardships and magnificent deeds of himself and
his tovarishi in Finland. Around him the low, steady talk
of the peasants, such as I had listened to many a night,
went on oblivious of this heroic tale. But after a more
than usually heavy jolt there was a silence for a moment.
The little soldier heaved a great sigh and, shaking his
head, said mournfully, "Now what will the poor Finnish
proletariat do without us?" The idea of anyone longing
for the presence of the Red Guard seemed to strike most
of the peasants as funny and drew a general laugh. But
it was said with such evident sincerity and with such a
ludicrous pompousness that it quite warmed the heart of a
cold and hungry non-proletarian American who sat un
noticed and unable to move in his own corner. Here was
one who had caught the crusader's spirit and had gone
forth as an apostle of his true faith to propagate the doc
trine of the Brotherhood of Peoples by fire and sword.
He was a real Bolshevik. Most of the others in the box
car were plain Russian peasants in whom his enthusiasm
for international proletarian rule stirred only a mild sur
prise and amusement. Thirty-seven hours after we left
Petrograd our box car was standing still, seven versts
from Moscow. It had stood in the same spot for seven
hours. I had at last reached the point where I thought I
could completely appreciate the point of view of the
red-faced peasant who had seemed so unreasonably hos
tile to me as I sat in my comfortable International Car
1 06

THE BOLSHEVIKI
on my way into Russia five months before. It was without
any protest from my corner that some of the passengers
on that train sallied forth on foot to the next station
threatening a violent end to the station master unless an
engine was provided forthwith. Fifteen minutes later we
began to move and were soon in Moscow.
Moscow had apparently undergone no change since I
had left it. Compared to the terrific tension to which we
had become accustomed in Petrograd it seemed fairly
normal. Yet it was far from that, for one day when I
was walking through the Red Square with another Ameri
can, we were passed by a huge army truck loaded with
fully armed hoodlums, men and boys, calling out noisily
and waving their rifles. Neither of us turned our head to
look at it, but a little later my friend said, "It's queer we
shouldn't have thought that truck worthy of remark.
Supposing we had met it going down Fifth Avenue!"
But at least the haunting anxiety of Petrograd was gone.
Moscow was preparing for the reception of the Bol
shevik Government which was to make its capital there,
and for the coming session of the All-Russian Workmen's,
Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, — the highest legislative
authority of Soviet Russia. Just before this congress met
I made an effort to get cards of admission, and this errand
led me for the first time into the Kremlin. Armed this
time with a permit, I went through the Red Gate, past
the campfire of the soldiers still guarding the entrance
as they had been the first time I had tried in vain to enter.
Once within the walls no one asked me why I was there
or questioned me in any way, so I mounted the famous
Kolokolnik or bell tower, and drank in the magnificent
view of Moscow I had so long desired to see. Then I came
107

THE GROPING GIANT
down and wandered into the wonderful Uspenski Sobor
where the Czars were crowned. Having thus surrepti
tiously stolen a glimpse of the beauties that have drawn
visitors from all the world over and have become familiar
to men everywhere through story and painting, and whose
every detail is pregnant with memories of the great mo
ments of Russian history, I stepped back into the realities
of the Russia of my own day. I entered the white court
house that stands in the corner of the Kremlin enclosure
to search for someone to give me a pass to the coming
Soviet Congress. I did not find anyone, but as I passed
through the long halls between the former courtrooms
and offices of the judges and lawyers now being prepared
for new masters, I saw something that gave me an entirely
new feeling of the completeness with which all relations
with the past were now broken. Piled high in hopeless
confusion in the halls were masses of papers and folders
and files of all sorts. They were the records of the courts
thrown out here as waste paper to be swept contemptu
ously away. It was the physical side of the rejection and
destruction of the former system of Russian law. How
many people's interests and hopes and fears, how many
years of study, how many precedents established, how
many guarantees of justice, how many injustices in the
name of law — how complex and many-sided a system lay
there in that great confused pile of papers. What would
be found to take its place by the new rulers of Russia to
whom the whole system of courts and jurisprudence, built
up in the course of centuries, was but a mockery and a
travesty? Later I did succeed in gaining admittance to the great
All-Russian Congress of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peas-
108

THE BOLSHEVIKI
ants' Deputies. The manner in which I was first intro
duced into this historic gathering was a somewhat pe
culiar one. Just before the opening of the Congress, when
the delegates and guests were already crowding into the
doors of the assembly hall, some sleighs drove up loaded
high with heavy paper packages. Three Americans, of
whom I was one,- — an exceedingly nervous one, it might be
added, — were there to meet them, and began to unload
and carry the packages into the crowded ante-chambers
and then on past rows of delegates waiting for their cre
dentials to be looked over, into the great meeting hall
itself. This was done under the supervision of a minor
official, and it was not long before the contents of the
packages, American propaganda, were being placed on
every chair of the Congress, which was that afternoon to
ratify the peace of Brest-Litovsk. We did not long con
tinue the even tenor of our way in thus seeking to speak
a good word for America where it was most heeded, with
out interruption. In recognition of the services of the
official who had enabled us to distribute our literature,
one of my companions very reasonably handed him a
gratuity, but made the unpardonable mistake of letting
it be seen. As if from nowhere a strange figure approached
my friend in a fury of righteous indignation, and, laying
a large and bony hand upon his shoulder, called out: "I
arrest you for the crime of trying to bribe one of the
delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Workmen's,
Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies," and he continued to
express his sentiments about the impudence of this at
tempt to sully the honor of the Congress in no uncertain
terms. The indignant individual who thus disturbed the
orderly progress of American propaganda in the Soviet
109

THE GROPING GIANT
Congress, was a young man dressed in a 'manner strongly
reminiscent of the Latin Quarter and in general sugges
tive of la vie de Boheme. His face was pale, his features
sharp, but the most distinctive thing about him was his
long, thick, reddish brown hair which fell to his shoulders
and must have been the envy of many an Orthodox Rus
sian priest. It was at length explained to him that the
offer had been made to the official under the erroneous
impression that he was one of the porters, and was but
remuneration for his physical labors in carrying the pack
ages. This explanation proving adequate to cover the
situation, the long-haired young man shook us all warmly
by the hand, was profuse in his apologies, and pitched
into the work of distribution with enthusiasm.
Having shaken hands cordially with the opportunist
who had aided us and the idealist who had arrested us,
we retired to the galleries to listen to and watch an as
semblage full of significance for an observer to whom
Revolutionary Russia was just beginning to be to some
degree comprehensible. The young man with the long hair
was of the type of visionary fanatic whose ready pen,
eloquent and fiery speech, one-sided but still unquestion
ably lofty idealism, and whole-souled devotion to the Bol
shevik cause was of no mean importance in that move
ment. There was in his manner something characteristic
of the Congress as a whole. It was a very obvious self-
consciousness common to the general run of delegates, a
desire to act in a way to conform to the dignity of the
body which was to introduce a new era of liberty for the
ordinary Russian man and for all the world. Whenever a
tumult arose in the course of the proceedings, which was
often, the leaders appealed to this motive. It was fre-
110

THE BOLSHEVIKI
quently necessary to cry out, "Remember that you are
not in your village, but in the All-Russian Congress of
Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, the sover
eign power of all Russia," but this appeal was never with
out immediate response. It was a fine sentiment of
self-respect, manhood and independence, with a strong
admixture of vanity, to which the leaders appealed. Yet
from the very beginning it was as obvious as anything
could be that the mass of the delegates were deceived,
their ignorance imposed upon, their simplicity abused.
Never was there a congress in which the many were so
patently the tools of the few.
This was first strongly impressed upon my mind in the
hurry and bustle of the lobbies when the delegates were
going and coming out of party caucuses, and all was con
fusion just before the formal opening of the Congress and
during the several recesses in the proceedings. At these
times we stood behind a table in the lobby taking sub
scriptions from the delegates for a small American weekly
paper published in Moscow. As I watched the delegates
pass to and fro my heart was warmed to see the simple
and kindly faces of the peasant deputies who came up and
gathered about my table in the most eager and friendly
manner and were enthusiastic to hear about "Democratic
America." Among them the professional Bolshevik organ
izers and leaders, many of them unmistakable Jews, many
of them of the type of my long-haired friend, and nearly
all intelligent and active, could be as clearly picked out
as if they belonged to another race. They, of course,
looked upon us with cold and hostile suspicion and often
enough with a rather annoying scornful amusement. I
felt sure they looked upon the peasant delegates merely

hi

THE GROPING GIANT
as pawns to be used in carrying out their carefully pre
pared program of action. Ample confirmation of this was
furnished by the proceedings on the floor of the Congress.
The first question to be decided was the ratification of
the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Full opportunity was given to
representatives of the Socialist Anti-Bolshevik parties to
give at length their reasons against the ratification of the
shameful treaty. Eloquent, cogent and patriotic speeches
were made. Any attempts to shout down the speaker were
silenced by the Bolshevik presiding officer who appealed
to the sense of dignity of the delegates as representatives
of all Russia. There was every show of fair play. When
the opposition had said its say, a burly, red-headed peas
ant arose and said: "Comrades, we fought four years;
we're exhausted. We have no army. We have no supplies.
The Germans have an army. It is only a few miles away
from Moscow and Petrograd. It is ready to advance. We
are helpless. Do you want war or do you want peace?"
After the vociferous applause had died down, a Bolshevik
orator arose and spoke at length, carefully, skilfully. He
answered every argument of the opposition from the point
of view of Bolshevik theory. He made an able speech.
But the mass of the delegates paid no attention to him.
He was not speaking to them but to the whole revolu
tionary world. When the overwhelming vote to ratify was
taken it was because of the red-headed peasant who spoke
two minutes. It was splendid psychology even in a con
gress whose members were chosen by a hand-picked elec
torate. I thought of this scene at a later time in my own
country when I heard the defense of Bolshevism placed
on the grounds on which the Bolshevik orator put it that
day, and wondered how much power that theoretical Bol-
112

THE BOLSHEVIKI
shevism would have had in Russia without arguments
such as those put forth in the two-minute speech of the
peasant delegate and those so cogently urged in the
American hut at the front by the Bolshevik emissaries.
After the triumphant ratification of the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty, the Congress turned its attention to some routine
matters, in which the delegates displayed little or no
interest. Suddenly there was a general stir. Everyone's
attention was fixed on a man who had quietly entered the
hall back of the speakers' table. My companion nudged
me and whispered, "That's he — Lenine." He stepped
forward to speak a few words to the presiding officer, and
then was gone. The Bolshevik autocrat was anything but
an impressive figure with his bald head and cold, unemo
tional features, yet his personality was felt through all
the proceedings of the Congress. I was curiously reminded
of the momentary but dramatic appearance of Ivan the
Terrible in Rimski-Korsakof's opera, "The Czar's Bride,"
who passes but once across the stage, yet is the one char
acter whose personality determines the whole action of
the play.
The following day the Congress met to elect the ad
ministrative authorities of Soviet Russia for the coming
year. Its first task was to elect an Executive Committee.
This Executive Committee was in turn to elect a smaller
committee or Presidium, which in turn was to elect the
People's Commissars to carry on the government. The re
election of the Executive Committee and consequently of
Lenine and Trotsky, and the other People's Commissars
was of course arranged beforehand and not open to
doubt. But even after living under the power of Smolny
for five months and hearing and reading floods of Bol-
"3

THE GROPING GIANT
shevik oratory, American tradition had been so strong in
my mind that I had not yet grasped the fundamental
theory of Bolshevism that would unify and rationalize all
that these men did. It therefore seemed to me so eminently
reasonable and right that no one could possibly object
when Mar to f arose for the Mensheviki and said in effect:
"As has often been pointed out this congress is the supreme
governmental authority in all Russia; therefore, it should,
in fulfilling its trust, exercise some control over its ad
ministrative organization. The People's Commissars have
been spending every month millions of rubles for which
no accounting has been made. Is it not reasonable that
they should render an accounting monthly to the Execu
tive Committee of this Congress?" He could not finish.
As if at a signal a tumult of hostile cries arose from the
Bolshevik majority. Delegates stood up and shook their
fists at the speaker, crying out, "Throw him out — counter
revolutionary." And then the Congress proceeded to give
the People's Commissars one of the greatest votes of con
fidence ever given any government, an absolutely un
limited blank check to draw on all the resources of Rus
sia unhindered by any vestige of responsibility. As long
as nothing had been at stake a show of fairness had been
maintained, but when a subject so vital to the unham
pered control of Smolny was even so moderately ap
proached as Martof approached the question of financial
responsibility, the full force of the, machine that had been
created to execute the leaders' will was turned mercilessly
upon the offender to crush him.
Having thus finished the work for which it was called,
the Congress closed its three days' session by singing the
'Internationale.' Standing respectfully in their places,
114

THE BOLSHEVIKI
their faces lighted with enthusiasm as if conscious of
having performed a momentous task in the process of the
liberation of mankind and the establishment of a new
•ideal of human society, the delegates joined in that
famous revolutionary hymn with all their heart and soul.
I, too, was powerfully caught by the contagion of the
moment, and felt absolutely certain that among this
group of men, the majority of whom had just been tricked
and duped into doing things of whose logical conse
quences they had little conception, there was a fund of
noble enthusiasm and idealism that gave infinite promise
for the future of Russia. I left the gallery where I had
been standing with those final words still ringing in my
ears: "This shall be the final and decisive battle
For with the International is reborn the human race."
How could men bearing the name of Russians be found,
first to hand over their country to the enemy and then to
work on the great needs and unformed desires of their
people to build up in the name of liberty an absolutism
and autocracy, the machinery of which I had just seen
confirmed and approved by those who were only in less
degree than the Intelligentzia to be its victims — the
peasants? A few minutes later, standing in one of the lobbies, I
fell into talk with a man who answered this question. He
was not a Bolshevik, for he disapproved of their violent
methods, but did agree with their theory of government.
I pointed out to him that what had just happened was
the very negation of democracy, that the vast majority
of the delegates were led like sheep, not knowing whither
"5

THE GROPING GIANT
they went. He looked at me in a friendly, rather con
descending manner. He admitted that what I said was
quite true and must necessarily be true if the proletariat
were really to rule at all. The Russian masses, he told
me, were not sufficiently advanced to know what was good
for them, and therefore must be led by men who did know
what was good for them, and had the force and ability to
lead them. The motive power behind the whole movement .,
was a small but devoted minority who were justified in
arrogating every power to themselves because they knew
what was good for the people. American ideas came surg
ing into my head, principles of democracy and representa
tive government that I had never questioned, and did not
then question, but there seemed nothing in this complex of
ideas that would have any influence on that man's mind.
I suggested that there were other men in Russia who
also were wiser and abler than the masses and wanted
to help them and understand them as well as the Bol
shevik minority, and that they had a right to be heard
and that it was unjust and tyrannous that they should be
swept aside. He smiled again and in a friendly tone
replied: "Of course, it is tyranny from their point of
view. But they cannot escape from their class. They are
not of the proletariat, and until they prove by yielding
to the Bolshevik idea that they are friends of the people
they must expect all the rigors of class war, which is
merciless, gives and asks no quarter, and which must
continue until the proletariat destroys or absorbs its
enemies." "Do you mean to say," I asked, "that, if for
instance I, being a Burjui, give all my life to a study of
the needs of the people, and arrive at a conclusion differ
ent from that of this militant minority, I am not even to
116

THE BOLSHEVIKI
be heard or considered in any way?" "No," he replied,
"for you cannot escape from the fact of class and you
are not a real 'friend of the people.' " "Who is to judge,"
I asked, "whether or not I am a true friend of the
people ?" His reply came with firmness and absolute con
viction. "We shall judge."
I parted from this man, intelligent, forceful, even
widely read in certain lines, and evidently capable, active
and energetic, as one might part from an enemy after a
truce, with a friendly shake of the hand, but with the
consciousness of an unbridgeable gulf between him and
me. The little pile of American literature on the table
near which we were standing seemed quite overwhelm
ingly submerged amid the mass of Bolshevik pamphlets
that surrounded it. I, too, felt overwhelmed among that
great crowd of men who were acting, some consciously,
others unknowingly, under the influence of the new dis
pensation to which I had just been given this key — "We
shall judge." Of course, a number of men of great power
and energy, thoroughly convinced that to them it was
given in special measure to see and to know what was
good for the masses of Russia, and also thoroughly con
vinced that the needs of the proletariat demanded, above
all things, the successful prosecution of the class war,
would, when confronted by the ignorance and degradation
of the masses, act exactly as I had seen them act. The
dictatorship of the proletariat was not the dictatorship
of all the proletariat, but of the small, self-appointed
minority acting for and in the name of the proletariat.
"We shall judge" who is the friend of the people and what
is good for the people. What an appeal to the devoted,
narrow and fanatical idealist! What an appeal also to the
117

THE GROPING GIANT
adventurer and to him who loved power ! What a weapon
and tool for the subtlety and aggressiveness of the Jew
to seize upon! What a strange new form of the doctrine
of divine right to rule others because they are not fit to
rule themselves!
It was, therefore, with less confusion of mind but with
greater anxiety for the future that I set forth some time
later on a journey to Siberia, where it would be possible
to see how the Bolshevik regime worked out in the
smaller cities. As far as Samara the ordinary train was
running, but it could not go further because of warlike
operations between the Ural Cossacks and the Bolsheviki.
I was befriended by some Czecho-Slovak officers, how
ever, and given a place in one of their own troop trains.
I rode with them four days listening to their stories and
getting to know the spirit of these indomitable men. Their
talk was always of their country, just emerging from
bondage into the status of a free and independent nation,
of their pride in their great leader Massaryk, of their own
great devotion and services to the realization of the ideal
of freedom and liberty in their land. I felt as if I had
indeed come in contact here in this strange and distant
laud with the spirit of Lexington and Concord. Poor,
badly equipped, in a hostile country, worn by years of
prison and battle, bound on a seemingly endless and
extremely hazardous journey, they were held together
and sustained by the glorious idea of an independent
Bohemia. While we were standing at a small station a day or so
out from Samara, I was attracted by an argument be
tween a few peasants and some of the Czech soldiers. The
peasants were saying, "Why do you continue to fight as
118

THE BOLSHEVIKI
hirelings of the French and British imperialists and
capitalists? Why don't you stop being tools of the capi
talists and join the proletariat?" One of the soldiers asked
what they meant by capitalist. But this was not in the
lesson they had learned quite obviously to repeat like
parrots, and the spokesman of the peasants simply looked
foolish, and then after sputtering for a few minutes con
tinued as before. One of the Czechs vigorously asserted
that they were free men fighting for a free country, but
the peasant, infinitely his intellectual inferior, had the
answer ready, for it was part of his lesson. "The capitalists
are using you without your even knowing it; they have
deceived you." From the peasant's whole manner of talk
ing it was so evident that he did not understand what he
was saying that the Czech soldiers simply laughed and
continued on their way.
The words the peasant had used had a tremendously
familiar ring. I had read them in many a Bolshevik paper.
As I had gone from place to place the very same words
that I had read in the papers in the great central cities
came back to me from the most unexpected sources among
the people. But the ideas conveyed in these words never
came to me from the people in any other form. The
masses talked about land and markets and tea and the
"order" there used to be in Russia, and about the Burjui.
Burjui — that was a word that had a clear enough mean
ing. But 'capitalist,' 'proletariat,' 'communist,' 'im
perialist,' 'brotherhood of peoples,' 'Federated Socialist
Soviet Republic,' these were" words that came to the lips
of the. people only because of a wonderful propaganda.
The conversation between the Czechs and the peasants on
that little desolate railway station platform told me, as
119

THE GROPING GIANT
did all my previous and subsequent experience, that that
propaganda was not argument at all, but unqualified
assertion and unremitting repetition to such an extent
that the words and phrases of the Bolshevik vocabulary
became fixed in the minds of the people in much the same
way as the names of products otherwise unknown to me
had been fixed in my mind by American advertising..
On the fourth day I set foot in the Siberian capital,
Omsk, where I hoped to continue the work of propaganda
with another American who was already on the ground.
One of the first things we did was to call upon the City
Commissar to explain our presence in Omsk. He received
us very kindly and was evidently a man whose greatest
desire was to serve the people and lead them to better
things. He was striving to bring order out of chaos. His
office was orderly and businesslike, but thronged with
petitioners, soldiers and peasants mostly, who presented
to him one difficult question after another. At the moment
he was deeply concerned over the problem of caring for
the refugees who were pouring into Siberia, fleeing from
the unendurable conditions in Russia. Thirty thousand
of them had passed through Omsk in two weeks. I had
had to pick my way over their wretched huddled bodies
which covered every inch of the station floor. The man
to whom I was talking was the representative of the
power upon whom the responsibility for this pitiful emi
gration rested, yet his personality at once overcame the
growing suspicion and resentment that I was inclined to
feel against him on this account. We asked him frankly
for advice and counsel as to what method we could best
use in spreading through the press a feeling of under
standing and friendliness toward America among Rus-
120

THE BOLSHEVIKI
sians. His reply was simply an added confirmation of
the fact that Russia, and particularly provincial Russia,
was thinking in terms absolutely disconnected from any
of the issues of the Great War. "We are not interested in
the war — that is over as far as we are concerned. Tell us
about any plans you have, for economic relations with us.
Tell us about your socialist and radical movements. We
still regard America as a freer country than any of the
other countries and are interested in your social ques
tions." That was the burden of his counsel. As we visited
one after another of the editors of the Omsk papers, we
came to know personally how much they feared to print
anything that might lead men to think in any other chan
nels than those already made familiar by the great prop
aganda machine in Moscow. The America to which the
City Commissar was looking was not the America I knew
and loved, for I had found, through reading the papers
published under his jurisdiction and by speaking with the
men who edited them, that the ideas on which that
America was founded and for which she had fought were
here considered treasonable and counter-revolutionary.
On returning to my room one evening in Omsk, I dis
covered my hostess in distress because her husband, an
Englishman, had been arrested. A squad of soldiers had
marched into the house and carried him off without stat
ing the charge. After some hours he returned to explain
this little incident as follows: The wholesale confiscation
of the goods of the Burjui having proved insufficient to
finance the needs of the Akmolinsk Provincial Soviet, he,
along with a dozen Russians, had been arrested on the
charge of having more than ten thousand rubles in the
bank. They were haled before the governor of the prov-

THE GROPING GIANT
ince, an energetic Jew who, in spite of an exaggeratedly
curt and businesslike manner, had left a favorable impres
sion on me when I called on him. They had been suddenly
offered the alternative of paying over a certain sum in
cash or going to jail. Not having been informed of the
purpose for which they were arrested, no one had brought
cash and so they accepted, willy-nilly, the alternative of
jail. But the British lion was aroused in even the mild
heart of my host, who protested that his rights as a
British citizen rendered him immune from the necessity
of replenishing the Soviet treasury with the savings of
a lifetime of struggle and labor. This argument was evi
dently having some effect among the soldiers and on
lookers who crowded the room, but the Commissar was
equal to the occasion. He announced that he would release
the Englishman if he would give him a check and that
"as for getting the money back, you have a lot of our
Russian Burjui in England, your government can get it
out of them." This sentiment met with enthusiastic ap
proval. The Commissar was far too intelligent a man to
attach any meaning to what he said. It simply showed his
contempt for the intelligence of the soldiers and his cer
tainty that any argument, no matter how absurd, would
serve as long as it contained the word 'Burjui' or 'pro
letariat' or 'counter-revolutionary' and was in general
consonance with the fixed ideas created among its fol
lowers by the Bolshevik propaganda. It was indeed a
mighty weapon that that propaganda had forged for him
and placed in his hands by working incessantly on the
passions and the vanity of ignorant men.
The day after the happy return of my host from his
122

THE BOLSHEVIKI
visit to the governor, I was preparing to leave Omsk to
go farther into Siberia when my hostess, returning from
market, recounted how she had found there perhaps the
greatest hubbub and confusion that had ever been wit
nessed. Inquiring into its cause, she found that the Red
Guard were taking away the chickens the peasants had
brought for sale, paying them the official price, far below
the natural price they could easily obtain. I wondered
what sort of reception the soldiers I had seen chosen to
go to Siberia to get bread for their comrades in the
Nobles' Assembly had met with from the peasants. The
small incident of the chickens was but one of the many
things that kept reminding me all the time that the inter
ests of the peasants and the Bolsheviki were seldom
identical, and were often directly opposed.
That night, while waiting for my train in the station at
Omsk, I heard once more, especially from small trades
men and railway workers, bitter complaints against the
autocratic oppression of the Bolsheviki, generally ac
companied by that all too familiar stolid acceptance of
the inevitable "What can we do? They have all the arms."
The eight hours spent there in conversation with the rail
way workers proved time well spent. For it was but
another illustration of the fact that wherever the cardinal
doctrine of Bolshevism was not dominant in a man's
mind, an American was accepted as an honest man and a
friend, and found among the people a welcome and re
sponse that gladdened his heart. It was confirmation of
the fact that only where the doctrine of my friendly
enemy at the All-Russian Congress was accepted from
conviction or swallowed as propaganda, was an almost in-
123

THE GROPING GIANT
surmountable barrier erected between American and
Russian. The nature of this barrier was made more clear to me
in the small city of Krasnoyarsk, where our way next
led. We talked with a very earnest editor of one of the
Bolshevik papers in that city, and it was obvious that he
regarded us as special pleaders for the capitalist class.
He showed the greatest interest in all we could tell him
about the actual living conditions of workmen in America,
but seemed always to be trying to get at something'
beyond, something he evidently felt we were concealing
about America. He at length inquired about the I. W. W.
and said that if we could give him something to print
about that he would be delighted to do so, for there
spoke the real voice of America. My companion had said
he had been a member of the American Socialist party
and explained some of the reasons why it was not one of
the great parties in America as it was in Russia, but the
editor was not satisfied and, when we arose to go, he said,
in a thoroughly sincere and somewhat tired and dis
couraged voice: "You must appreciate the difficulties
under which we editors of the workmen's papers struggle.
All the best journalistic brains have been and are with
the other side. We are struggling against great odds. We
can only do our best for the people."
In a later conversation the same day we discovered why
this man could not believe we spoke the truth about
America. We were standing in the bookstore of one of the
cooperative societies in the centre of a knot of employees
talking in a very jolly spirit about America and Russia.
One of the employees was a convinced Bolshevik and de
fended his position most eloquently both against us and
124

THE BOLSHEVIKI
against the other non-Bolshevik employees. He admitted
that democracy was a good thing — a very good thing. It
had filled a very important place in the development of
human affairs, but it was only a transitional stage from
monarchy to something better still. Russia, he said with
enthusiasm, had simply jumped over the transitional stage
into that much higher and better form — the dictatorship
of the proletariat. He was insistent in his questions about
the revolutionary class in America. Why were they so
slow in acting? Who were their leaders? When would they
take things into their own hands? We explained that there
was no great revolutionary class in America because in
America there was a government which could be con
trolled and altered in conformity with the will of the
people. He laughed at this and told us as a fact that there
was a great revolutionary class in America of which Rus
sia never heard because it was suppressed by the capi
talists, who held it down pitilessly. Neither this man nor
the editor of the workmen's paper could conceive of any
capitalistic country existing without a large and active
revolutionary class. Their whole range of thought was so
permeated by the doctrine of class war and class hate
that the American who presented to them the traditional
American point of view, must, in their eyes, be either a
tool of the aggressive capitalistic power or a man ignorant
of the real forces in his own country.
The Bolshevik clerk in the cooperative bookstore, with
whom we were on friendly personal terms, took us the
next day to witness the election of delegates to the local
Soviet. It was now for the first time that my attention was
drawn forcibly to the theory of occupational franchise.
125

THE GROPING GIANT
This phase in the life and organization of the Soviet State,
which I later found bulked largest' of all its phases in the
minds of men in my own country who wished to study it,
had thus far, in spite of my five months in Bolshevik
Russia, made little impression on me. Interesting and im
portant as it was, it was not one of the burning issues
involved in the October revolution. Enthusiasm for a
system of election by economic groups hadn't stirred the
peasants, hadn't recruited the Red Army, hadn't de
stroyed the Constituent Assembly, hadn't persecuted the
Burjui, hadn't been the motive that fired men's souls and
strengthened their arms in battle. During these five
months I had seen far deeper forces at work than a
desire to establish and maintain this type of suffrage.
The election in Krasnoyarsk was for twelve members of
the city Soviet, to be chosen by the clerks and office
workers. The Bolshevik faction was clearly outnumbered
and sure to be defeated in a vote, although not one mem
ber of the Burjui or Intelligentzia classes was present.
They had been automatically disenfranchised. The first
vote that was taken was on a question of credentials. The
Bolsheviki were voted down two to one. As soon as the
result was announced, their leader jumped to the platform
and called upon all 'lovers of the rule of the proletariat to
leave the hall. Deserted by the Bolshevik faction, the re
maining two-thirds, finding a quorum remained, elected
by due process of Soviet law twelve delegates pledged to
urge a Constituent Assembly. True to their philosophy
and their principles, the Bolsheviki refused to seat these
delegates in the Soviet, held another meeting and elected
twelve Bolshevik delegates to represent the clerks and
office workers in the Soviet. Thus did we see the principle
126

THE BOLSHEVIKI
of rule by the military minority proclaimed in Petrograd
and Moscow and preached and printed all over Russia,
work itself out relentlessly in practice.
We remained only a few days in Krasnoyarsk and then
continued our journey to Irkutsk. Many marks still re
mained on the walls of that city of the terrible battle
fought at Christmas time in a temperature of forty de
grees below zero, when the Bolsheviki came into power
for the first time. The bridge over the Angara, which was
destroyed during the fighting, had not been repaired, and
all the traffic was forced to ferry across the swift stream
in the most uncomfortable possible manner. The Bol
sheviki were not very secure in the saddle and all eyes
were turned to possible foreign intervention and the
operations of General Semionof who had established a
front against the Bolsheviki on the Manchurian border.
There was a feeling of nervousness in Bolshevik circles.
When we called upon Yanson, the nominal head of the
government who occupied the ill-gained position of min
ister of foreign affairs for Siberia, we found in his whole
manner and attitude a reflection of this nervousness. He
was a tall,* thin man who moved about in a peculiarly
quiet, stealthy sort of way. He never looked anyone in the
eye, never answered any question directly, or made more
than a half promise. Our definite object in paying him a
visit was to get the necessary permission to distribute
such of our President's famous speeches as had a peculiar
bearing on Russia. In closing a conversation that had led
nowhere, I asked him frankly, "Do you recognize any
difference of any kind between the Imperial Government
of Germany and the Government of the United States?"
127

THE GROPING GIANT
"None whatever," he replied languidly, shaking my hand
for good-bye, "they are both imperialistic and capital
istic; we are fighting them both." This interview left a
most uncomfortable impression of hypocrisy and insin
cerity that I had not previously felt when talking with
Bolshevik officials. There was here no trace of the force
and conviction of a man acting on a principle, even a
hopelessly wrong principle. All that we heard even from
Bolsheviki themselves confirmed the impression of that
interview, that Yanson was one of the hangers-on, the
adventurers, who seized his one chance to lift his name
above the crowd and enjoy the exercise of power, if only
for a short time. In striking contrast to this man was
another adventurer with whom it became necessary for us
to deal. A look of steady malignity not easily forgotten
flashed from under the bushy eyebrows of Geitzman, a
New York Jew, whom some trick of fortune had thrown
into a position of power here in the middle of Siberia, as
we sat opposite to him in his bare little office discussing os
tensibly a question of passports, but really wondering how
long the game he was playing would last, and what would
be the outcome. His was a face in which cruelty and evil
were written large, with no compensating force of char
acter. It was no great surprise to hear that one of his
henchmen had said to the American consul that they knew
their power was insecure and that like sensible men they
were making hay while the sun shone, ready to get away
when the time came. These two men of the adventurer
type, for whom the peculiar character of the Bolshevik
movement, the darkness of the masses and the demoraliza
tion of the Intelligentzia at that period had thrown wide
128

THE BOLSHEVIKI
open the doors of opportunity, were almost the last repre
sentatives of the Bolshevik regime whom I met.
On the first day of May 1918, the holiday of the Inter
national was celebrated in Irkutsk. I found a point of
vantage among the spectators who thronged the main
street of the town to watch the parade which was in
tended to mark the solidarity of the proletariat of all
countries. As the Red Army filed by to martial music,
although somewhat out of step at times, the peaked cap
of the Austrian and the round cap with red band of the
German occupied a prominent place of honor. All wore
the red badge of common allegiance to the International
and formed a gay and brightly colored spectacle. Their
faces were drawn and furrowed, and hardened by priva
tion and suffering. But it was not this First of May
parade — interesting and to some degree pitiful as it was —
that made the greatest impression on me that day.
Another and stranger military review, the most fantastic
I had ever seen, soon claimed my attention. I had been
searching for a certain official and after much delay was
finally directed to a' large building in the centre of the
city. At the entrance of the interior court of this building,
I made inquiry from one soldier or another, and received
the same answer, "He is here, but he is busying himself."
I made a careful search and inquiry at all the entrances
to the building which opened into the open central court
yard, without avail. Finally it occurred to me to look
in the middle of the court itself where a company of
people were drilling to whom I had not paid any par
ticular attention. Among them was the man I sought.
My astonishment at seeing him there was increased ten
fold when I saw that the company of which he was one
129

THE GROPING GIANT
was not a company of soldiers at all. Indeed, several
women were among their number. The lean figure of
Yanson was discernible and also the piercing black eyes
of the adventurer Geitzman. Among the others were very
familiar types. The long hair and thin face characteristic
of the young man at the All-Russian Congress could be
discerned under a soldier's hat, the bespectacled, bearded
and shabbily dressed figures that had become familiar to
me in Bolshevik offices, the boyish face of a young officer
of the Red Guard, the clean-shaven, determined counte
nance, such as I had seen in the great cities, all were there
and many more besides. It was a sort of Bolshevik pano
rama — indeed, it was the entire Irkutsk Executive Com
mittee undergoing military training, in order to be ready
to lead their men if it came to a last stand. They went
through their exercises awkwardly enough, using sticks
for guns, but on their faces there was a serious and
anxious look that choked off the laughter that was rising
to my lips. There was something Quixotic about this little
scene; something that enforced a sort of a puzzled re
spect, where contempt seemed natural. But there was
nothing Quixotic about the drill-master, whose Russian
uniform was Russian indeed, but whose sharp and de
cisive orders, commanding bearing, clear voice and ener
getic manner, were suggestive of another race. Was it
possible, making every allowance for peculiar local cir
cumstances that men who took part in such a scene could
be men who really represented the Russian people, and
whose organization and philosophy had its roots in
Russian needs and Russian character? The only sug
gestion of power which prevented the entire performance
from taking on the character of farce and burlesque, was
130

THE BOLSHEVIKI
furnished by the drill-master, whose bearing once more
suggested that German militarism was active and power
ful, even in the far corners of the earth.
It was with these thoughts in mind that I read an
announcement posted throughout the city of an evening
entertainment to be given by some Bolshevik organiza
tions. It was almost the last thing I saw in Bolshevik
Russia, for it was only a few hours after that I started
on another journey, this time to breathe once more the
free air of the outside world. But it lingered long in my
memory. Written in big letters, I read, "Apotheosis of
Karl Marx — Tableau of Marx surrounded by his Russian
Children." What a picture that would be of the great
German revolutionary philosopher, author of the Bol
shevik Bible, the Communist Manifesto, seated among
the simple Russian people, the tovarishi, such as I had
come to know to some degree. With what adoration,
amounting almost to worship, they would look up into his
face, not understanding his teachings except as reflected
through the mirror of the Bolshevik propaganda, but
needing the inspiration of a great name and a great
leader. "We need a master," the peasants had said to me,
their thoughts turning from the disorders of the present
to the 'order' of the past, and the day when they looked
upon the Czar as the Little Father. This same need of
a master, in whose superior wisdom they could trust and
who would do their thinking for them, was filled for the
rank and file of the Bolsheviki, first by Lenine and
Trotsky, but behind them and above them, not to be ques
tioned or doubted, by an apotheosized Karl Marx.
And so the picture of the Bolshevik power in the first
I31

THE GROPING GIANT
months of its ascendancy became clear and definite at
last. A virile, active minority, passionately believing that
the supreme importance of class war and the rule of the.
proletariat justified any means that would bring them,
who were the real friends of the people, into power and
keep them there, ruled through the medium of the Soviet
machinery, the Red Army and unremitting vigorous prop
aganda. To this minority were attracted, in ever increas
ing numbers, the Russian Jew and the adventurer, ready
to act with the convinced theoretical Bolsheviki, either
from conviction or for advantage, in using the passions
and desires of the people for the furtherance of their own
ends and the destruction of the capitalist class. Surely it
was not purely bitterness that caused Sverdlof, brother of
the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council
of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies in Mos
cow, to say to some American friends in the early days
of the October revolution: "I have sat with them day and
night. I have been with them in all their discussions and
debates. I cannot go with them, though my brother is
among their leaders. They are all of four types — fanatics,
who make a religion of their theory; adventurers, who are
in it for gain; ambitious men, who are in it for fame and
power; and fools, who do not really understand what they
are doing or why they do it." But among those he thus
characterized as fanatics had been found men of extraor
dinary executive ability; able to build up a great political
machine; quick to play off one enemy against another;
able to understand and use to the utmost the needs and
the weaknesses of the Russian people. It was a word full
of wisdom that Kerenski said in exile: "Bolshevism is
more dangerous to Russia than Czarism, for Czarism
132

THE BOLSHEVIKI
the people know and understand, but they will be slow
to discern that Bolshevism is the same thing under
another form."

i33

V.
THE INTELLIGENTZIA PART I

I HAD found in both the masses and the Bolsheviki,
a great deal, not of uniformity, but of unity and
cohesion. As all the peasants were bound together
by their common closeness to the soil and love of the
'Russian Land,' which was their world and their life, so
the Bolsheviki were bound together by their common alle
giance to the ideal of the social revolution and the rule of
the proletariat, and by their common enthusiasm for the
class war, exalted almost into an end in itself. Among the
Intelligentzia, on the contrary, there was apparently
neither uniformity nor unity. The term 'Intelligentzia'
was applied to many totally different kinds of people
separated by fundamental differences of training and out
look. It was generally used among the common people
interchangeably with Burjui and with a much broader
meaning than its technical one whose English equivalent
is 'Intellectual.' But yet the word 'Intelligentzia' evi-
i34

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
dently represented a very definite and concrete concept
in the minds of the peasants as well as of the Bolsheviki.
If that were so, there must be some' reason for it, some
common characteristic shared by all the people who were
neither peasant nor Bolshevik, general enough and im
portant enough to justify their being grouped together
under one class name. My first personal contacts with
the Intelligentzia class, however, seemed only to intensify
the impression of the immense differences that existed
among the people who composed it.
Shortly after returning from the front, I met two ladies
whose schooldays had been passed in Smolny and whose
girlhood memories included many a brilliant ball in the
Nobles' Assembly before it became the home of Trotsky's
regiment. They were interested in the work for Russian
girls begun in Petrograd by some American women,
several of whom had been traveling companions of mine
all the way from Vladivostok. To recall the details of
that first journey in Russia and exchange impressions of
the events and people among whom we had been thrown,
I went one evening to the apartment on the Fontanka
Canal, where these American ladies were living. I found
sitting with them at tea a Russian countess, whose
manner and bearing were vividly suggestive of the old
regime. Her features were straight and clear-cut, almost
classic, and she spoke surprisingly pure English in a very
cultivated and well-modulated voice with just a trace of
foreign intonation, which added a distinct charm. There
was so much sympathy and kindness in her voice that it
would have seemed absurd to attribute coldness or formal
ity to her. Yet there was a reserve and aloofness about
her that made our simple meeting very different from a
i35

THE GROPING GIANT
similar discussion among Americans alone. It was the
poise and habit of command, coupled with an instinctive
good breeding and cultivation, that was the natural result
of her special training and inheritance — the training and
inheritance of that brilliant Russian aristocracy which
had sinned so deeply and had now to suffer so much, but
whose representatives could boast a refinement of civiliza
tion unsurpassed anywhere.
After some time, another Russian lady, Madame
B  , came to join us. The countess anxiously asked for
the news, for every meeting between these people was
sure to mean the exchange of news of ruin and death
fallen upon their own families and their friends. And this
occasion was no exception to the rule, for word had come
of more acquaintances sent to Petropavlosk and of the
sacking of the estate of a mutual friend, and his own
terrible maltreatment at the hands of the peasants. "Only
to think that they came with axes and chopped up the
beautiful piano on which Rubinstein played!" How tragic
was the destruction of those intangible values which
meant so much in the lives of cultivated people ! And yet
as these two ladies talked of the violence of the peasants,
there was no bitterness in their tones. They told us how
in their own experience the peasants, after despoiling them
of their estates and pillaging their homes, had been fright
ened at what they had done and had run to them for
forgiveness and advice. "They simply do not know what
they are doing. We cannot blame them who are like chil
dren." But when the Bolsheviki were mentioned it needed
no psychologist to feel the full force of pride and anger
that flowed behind the dignified reserve of these Russian
noblewomen. The news was still fresh of the mock trial
136

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
of Countess Panin before a revolutionary tribunal. This
persecution of a well-loved, generous and honorable
woman, whose life had been given to helping the people,
and whose great People's House stands in Petrograd as a
monument to. her name, was but an added sorrow and
grief to a cup already running over. Whatever may have
been the sins of the social order into which these ladies
had been born and of which they were in many respects
truly representative, I felt as I took leave of them that I
had come in contact with a quality and a fineness that
represented a magnificent tradition. If, in the great
cataclysm through which we were living, the good that
grew out of that tradition must totally perish along with
its great evils, Russia would lose much that had in the
past enriched her national history, and which could never
be replaced.
Our home in Petrograd was in the house of a prominent
manufacturer on the Ligovka. Over the entrance hung the
American flag, and on the door itself there was posted a
document to show that the house was inhabited by Ameri
cans and was under American protection. Every time I
entered I tried to conceive of a situation in America
where I would have to flee to the protection of a foreign
flag against my own people, and rely on the presence of
foreigners in my home for the protection of my property.
And yet it was taken as a matter of course in Petrograd
in those dark days.
The great house, that had once harbored a gay and
cheerful life, was now like an empty shell. It could not
be heated properly, and the chill of its big halls and
formal rooms seemed to have fallen on the family itself.
They lived there passively, accepting the inexorable prog-
i37

THE GROPING GIANT
ress of events outside, but with feelings of resentment and
injury never more than half concealed. An ancient butler
who had spent his life with the family still ministered to
their wants, obtaining flour now and then from the coun
try and acting as a living reminder of better days. To us
as guests was extended the fullest measure of hospitality.
Friends came and went and on Sunday evenings they
gathered to play games and dance and try to forget their
many misfortunes. As the sound of light-headed laughter
reached us from these Sunday evening parties, which
somehow we had not the heart to attend, the thought
would rise in our minds: "How can they do it? How can
they have time or heart for it when their country is falling
to pieces around them — when even we foreigners have no
spirit for anything beyond the day's work?" Yet I could
not plan out in my own mind a concrete alternative of
what they ought to do. Every avenue of positive action
seemed closed to them. An American recently arrived in
Russia, knowing very imperfectly the situation and the
people, had no right to criticise or blame. I was living in
a house where there was much suffering which commanded
my respect and sympathy. But still, in spite of the brave
and vigorous personality of one of the girls of the family,
there was a general atmosphere of impotence and futility
that greatly increased the feeling of nervous depression
and exasperation which was the common possession of
everyone in Petrograd at the close of 191 7.
In this house it became my duty to see, every other
evening, two young men. They had been students in
Petrograd University and had served throughout the war
at the front. Both wore the St. George's cross. They were
of very simple antecedents, very plain and unassuming
138

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
in appearance, awkward in manner, and dressed in rather
worn and nondescript' military clothes. They had come to
ask for work, and as it had been found necessary to sup
plement the irregular and totally unreliable newspaper
news of the advance of the Germans on Petrograd, they
were asked by the Americans to go out to the so-called
front, and mingle with returning soldiers and officers to
get first-hand information. As I met them each night for
their reports, I came to appreciate the ghastly situation
in which these two quiet, unknown young Russians were
placed. Each had a wife and baby in Petrograd and their
daily struggle was to get enough to feed them and warm
them. Often they went without food themselves to save a
few of the rubles they earned from the Americans. They
were faced with a terrible future, for with the departure
of the Americans their last hope of earning money was
gone. They had been to every conceivable place to get
work — had even applied at all the Bolshevik offices and
-chancelleries. Here the first question had always been,
"Do you believe in the Soviet regime?" They had
answered, "Yes." "Will you do everything you can to
support it?" They had answered, "Yes." "Have you an
education?" "Yes, we are graduates of Petrograd Uni
versity." "Ah, we don't want that sort of clever fellow
around here." It was heartbreaking to think that, after
their four years' service at the front, the mere fact that
they were university men should condemn them to ruin
and despair. But it was true. "What will you do when we ¦
go?"T asked, almost holding my breath. The answer was
simple and spoken almost without a tremor, "Death from
hunger." And so, without even knowing or greatly caring at first
i39

THE GROPING GIANT
about the political opinions of these people, I came to see
how much was included in the word 'Burjui,' and to
appreciate the tragedy of the Intelligentzia class. The
noble ladies I had met on the Fontanka, the family of the
successful manufacturer and business man with whom I
lived, the two student officers, whose very insignificance
did not protect them from persecution, were all im
mensely different from each other. They all moved in dif
ferent worlds and there was no unity, no cohesion to
make them work together. Yet, for the purposes of the
Bolshevik propaganda, they were lumped into one great
class, — "Burjui — Intelligentzia — enemies of the people,"
and all suffered persecution alike, deprived by their in
heritance and training of the possibility of acting to
gether to defend themselves or their country.
Such glimpses as these, caught here and there in the
confusion of life in Petrograd, gave me my first personal
contact with the Intelligentzia. Later in Moscow more
opportunities were opened to me, and I found an ever
increasing charm in meeting Russian gentlefolk in an
atmosphere free from the terrible nervous intensity of
Petrograd. The recollection of a visit to a Russian artist,
whose dining-room was a charming copy of the interior
of a peasant izba, and whose pictures showed much of the
extraordinary vitality and nationalism of Russian art,
lives in my memory. So also does the memory of an
evening call at the small apartment of a pomieschik's or
landowner's family. The whole family gathered around
the samovar, and exchanged reminiscences of the com-
, fortable, free and active life they used to lead in their
country estate in the heart of Russia among their peas
ants. One of the girls sang some old Russian ballads,
140

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
giving full expression to all they held of the sadness and
the gaiety and the mysticism of Russian character. And
then the two girls put on the Russian peasant dresses,
with white caps and aprons and red and blue skirts and
heavy beads and bracelets, which they wore on their
estate in the summer, and danced the peasant dances to
their own vocal accompaniment. It suggested a life so
pleasant, so natural and so fitting in Russia that even the
cold realities of the time could not make me believe it
was gone forever. The whole evening was so jolly and
friendly that it was easy to forget that these people were
living with the sword of Damocles hanging over their
heads. Yet the floor below and the floor above had been
requisitioned by the Bolsheviki. Their turn might come at
any moment, when they would find themselves homeless
in the street or their home invaded by Bolshevik soldiers
or by some insolent commissar.
Some days later I went to a large girls' school in
Moscow to see a company of peasants, gathered from all
over Russia by a lover of their simple art, give their
dances, sing their songs and tell the stories handed down
from generation to generation. The halls and corridors
were thronged with students, dressed in the extremely
simple black and brown uniform of the Russian school
girl. They were the children of the 'enemies of the
people,' according to the philosophy of the then rulers
. of Russia, but their bright, intelligent faces, their grace
and poise of bearing, showing even at a glance good breed
ing and good blood, gave infinite promise that they might
prove that philosophy false and take an important part
in the leadership of a future Russia — really free at last.
For they were growing up in the discipline of stormy
141

THE GROPING GIANT
times in which the inheritance their fathers struggled
against could not bind and limit them.
The performance I had come to see was all I had ex
pected and more. After the dances were over, a professor
in the Moscow University arose to express the apprecia
tion of the audience. A few sentences about the value and
importance of encouraging and keeping alive the ancient
customs and manners of the peasants, dear to all true
Russians, was followed by a very long political discourse.
The speaker rambled on from one thing to another,
speaking sometimes in a solemn tone, sometimes trem
blingly, sometimes in anger. I could not then understand
enough to follow, but felt that we had come there to see
peasant dances, nqt to hear a political oration. As we
went out, I said to one of my friends: "Why do you Rus
sians mix your politics so much with other things? Wasn't
a long political speech rather out of place here today?"
The look of reproach that met this careless! remark of
mine was more than enough to dispel the feeling of op
timism into which the outward calm and composure of
my friends had led me. "You must remember that this is
the agony of Russia. We cannot meet together without
thinking of Russia's suffering and of how we can help her,
no matter what it is that calls us together." I felt ashamed
and began to realize more deeply what it cost them to
keep up the courage to "carry on," when their whole life,
their customs and traditions, their country's honor, their
own happiness — all were being trampled in the dust by a
power they were not competent to cope with and with
which they felt in their whole being there could be no
agreement nor compromise.
Most of the Intelligentzia whom I had met had taken
142

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
part in the February revolution which overthrew the
Czar, had felt the thrill and exaltation of the first days
of freedom, but had now seen their hopes dashed to the
ground, and their vision of a new Russia shattered by the
Bolshevik revolution. It had become almost a matter of
course for me to assume that this was true of the In
telligentzia in general. It was, therefore, with no little
interest that I began to see something of the point of view
of those to whom, not the October revolution only, but
the February revolution as well, was a nightmare and a
calamity. This genuinely aristocratic point of view, which
Americans have been prone to associate with nearly all
Russians of the upper class, was reflected unmistakably
in the entire attitude of one of. the young women who
worked in the office of the American Committee on Public
Information in Moscow. Once, in conversation with her,
one of the American staff said, "I haven't met many
monarchists in Moscow yet." There was fiery indignation
and open incredulity in her response. "Whom can you
have been associating with not to have met many mon
archists? We are all monarchists." It was evident that
my charming Moscow friends could not by any possibility
be included in that term "we." "We" meant the limited
circle whose life centred about the court. The readjust
ment that this girl had to make was indeed a great one.
Hating her work, feeling humiliated at having to work
for pay to support herself, and anxiously waiting for the
moment when she could return to her own proper position
in life and be free of this sordid necessity, she neverthe
less worked well and conscientiously. Sometimes during
the day she would stop to talk with us Americans. As
was natural, American views of life and American condi-
i43

THE GROPING GIANT
tions came under discussion. To her they seemed so
utterly wrong, sd destructive, so blasphemous, I had
almost said, that she could only shake her head and repeat
the time-honored arguments for class and rank, aristoc
racy and absolute monarchy. For her it was not a ques
tion of arguments but of feeling, and all her instinctive
feelings compelled her to defend the court of Nicholas.
She did not conceive of Nicholas as responsible to the
people whom he ruled, but judged the people by their
loyalty to him. She was shocked to hear the opinion ex
pressed that the suffering and even the death of the Czar
and the Czarevitch might be balanced by a greater gain
to all the people. Her heart was filled with pity for
Nicholas as a man, her loyalty to his person seemed to
have something almost religious in it. A particularly out
rageous story to the effect that one of the Czar's ministers
had been kept in office solely because he could jump out
from behind a curtain and make a noise like a tiger to
amuse the Czarevitch was mentioned. She blushed deeply
and said: "Yes, it is true. I did not know you knew it.
We never speak of those things. I wish we had a better
Czar. But without a Czar there can be no Russia."
This attitude on the part of Miss A  was entirely
personal and unreasoned. She was willing to excuse and
overlook all the faults of the old regime, even when
shamed and angered by them — if only the court and the
Czar were preserved. On her own showing she was one of
'The Black Hundred,' as I had heard them pictured at the
front. Between her and Americans there could be no
common meeting place, except the human one of sym
pathy for one whose future holds no hope. For her dream,
144

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
unlike the dream of the greater part of the Intelligentzia,
could never be realized. The Russia of her love and
loyalty would never be, and ought never to be restored.
She must lose everything she held dear — forever — if
Russia was to find her real freedom and again hold up
her head in the family of nations.
But the sweeping condemnation of all monarchists, to
which Miss A  's earnest defense of Czarism inclined
me was considerably modified by the reasonable and de
fensible ground taken by another Russian aristocrat in
defense of monarchy. He was a man of unquestioned
integrity, sympathetic to American ideas, anxious to
further understanding and friendship between America
and Russia. His attitude was that of a constitutional
monarchist, repudiating the old absolutism and the old
regime, but insisting that Russia was not yet ripe for an
extremely democratic form of government. "Russia," he
said, "has not had the training, the self-discipline needed
for a democracy — the most difficult of all forms of gov
ernment. Her people are hopelessly ignorant. Time must
elapse to get them gradually ready for more and more
freedom. For each country the government suited to its
needs. Russia needs a constitutional monarchy." I met
him one day, after returning from the Congress of All-
Russian Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies,
and began to talk with him of the deception of the peas
ant delegates that had taken place there, and of the un
compromising class-war philosophy which my chance
radical acquaintance had expounded to me in the lobby.
He replied that precisely because the Bolsheviki practiced
those methods and adhered to that philosophy he did not
fear them, for their tactics were so violent, their economics
M5

THE GROPING GIANT
so weird, and -their oppression would soon be so obvious
that they could never rule Russia long. "They will kill
themselves," he said, waving his hand toward Bolshevik
headquarters opposite the wonderful Sovelevski monu
ment past which we were going. "The people we fear are
the social revolutionaries. They are the ones who are
really dangerous for Russia."
"Divide and conquer" has been a time-honored mili
tary policy. The question that had been lying half
answered in my mind ever since I had begun my pil
grimage in Russia, "Why don't the Intelligentzia put up
a better fight? How can it be possible for the Bolsheviki
to work their will with Russia without arousing a storm
of universal opposition?" had been answered in part by
the strength of the positive forces with which they
worked, and in part by the nervelessness of such people
as my hosts on the Ligovka. The attitude of my monarch
ist friend now suggested a further answer. If the con
stitutional monarchists believed the social revolutionists
were their real enemies, then, for the Bolsheviki, the
enemy was already divided, and divided so widely that
there was little hope of united action on their part.
After leaving Moscow behind and traveling into
Siberia in the early part of 191 8, there came to me still
another explanation of the lack of effective opposition
to the Bolsheviki. It came as the cumulative result of
continued intimate association with men and women of
the Intelligentzia class. In Irkutsk, I was received into
the hospitable house of Mr. R  , one of the leading
citizens of that attractive Siberian city. He was a scien
tist and student. He had been a man of wealth, but
successive Bolshevik requisitions had reduced him to
146

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
comparative poverty. His house, a large, low, two-story
building of wood, painted white with green blinds, stood
within a large open court which was surrounded by a
high, white wall. Its windows looked out on a lovely
garden. It was a house expressive of dignity, repose and
refinement, and the life that had gone on within it had
been a happy and dignified one. Every evening, as we sat
according to Russian custom at the long table where a
dear old lady, enduring with forbearance and gentleness
great physical infirmity, presided over the samovar, one
friend after another dropped in to talk over old times and
present troubles. The burden of much of the conversation
was the expectant question, never to be answered in the
way they hoped: "When will America help us out of our
unendurable suffering? Why does America not come to
drive out the Bolsheviki?" The significant, the disheart
ening note that lay beneath this question and gave to it
an almost distrustful plaintiveness was that struck so
often by the -simple statement: "Of ourselves we can do
nothing. They have all the arms. Russia can never pull
herself through alone. Oh, if we could only have some
help — if our Allies would not desert us in our hour of
need!" When they spoke of the past, it was as if they
were recalling memories of some old order, of things
already irretrievably lost, which they were impotent to
restore. There was something about these evening conversa
tions in this friendly and comfortable home into which
I had been so cordially received, that was already familiar
to me, something that recalled the peasant soldiers stand
ing about the hut at the front, lamenting that fire was
destroying it, and that they would enjoy its benefits
i47

THE GROPING GIANT
no more. It was a common Russian trait, an accept
ance of the inevitable, a yielding to the overwhelming
pressure of events, stoical, passive, inexpressibly sad,
which peasants and Intelligentzia snared alike. Who
would be the leader who would carry on his shoulders
the burden of this terrible inertia, around whom could
gather those Russian men who would not yield to the
fatalism that lays so heavy a blight on every effort toward
progress in Russia? My host and his friends were looking
for such a man on horseback. "If some hero, like the
great men of old, could but arise! But, alas, we do not
see him." Words of hope and optimism for the future,
spoken in the belief that Russia must arise triumphant
from her terrible trial, were indeed assented to. But what
answer could an American, secure in his foreign citizen
ship and in his certainty of home and comfort in his own
prosperous land, find to the added phrase, "But for us,
who must live through it, what hope is there?"
The Czar's regime had forced educated people who
were not of the bureaucratic hierarchy to live in a world
of theory, without political responsibility, lacking the
necessity of getting along with men of other opinions in
practical affairs of government, and free to form abstract
and dogmatic political theories without the correctives
of practical politics. It had forced them to act secretly
and to suspect everyone. But it had preserved a social
equilibrium under which their rights and privileges were
to a certain extent safeguarded. When the old regime was
replaced by a new one that did not respect these rights
and privileges, they, along with the bureaucrats who had
ruled over them, simply submitted to the rule of force.
There were moments when one was tempted to accept as
148

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
true the unqualified assertion made oftentimes by men
who knew Russia, "Russia can be ruled only by the
knout." The apparent impossibility of concerted action
on the part of the Intelligentzia against the Bolsheviki
seemed to add new meaning to the ancient Russian say
ing, handed down from the earliest days of Russian his
tory: "Our land is rich and fertile, but there is no order
in it. Come and rule over us."
But there were some men among the Intelligentzia who
were not crushed by the completeness of the Bolshevik
victory, and who were still alert and ready to seize any
opportunity and follow any method by which they might
give practical expression to the ardor and idealism of
which the first revolution had been the finest expression.
In May 191 8, not long after leaving Irkutsk, as I then
believed to leave Russia forever, I met a man who re
kindled faith and reestablished hope that those who by
position, instinct, education and training should be the
leaders of Russia, would reassert their leadership and re
establish their country. Special conditions had made a
continuance of propaganda work in Siberia impossible.
As the best way out of Siberia, my companion and I had
chosen to strike south from the Trans-Siberian Railway
by river to Mongolia and continue by automobile to
Kalgan. With a feeling of great relief at being at last
free of Russian trains, we found ourselves on board the
little paddle-wheel steamboat Rabotnik, making its way
painfully upstream on the Selenga River, bound from
Verkhniudinsk to Troitskosavsk on the Russian-Mon
golian boundary line, leaving the Trans-Siberian Railway
farther and farther behind to the northeast. In addition
to ourselves and a number of Russians, there were numer-
149

THE GROPING GIANT
ous Chinese, Buriats and picturesque Mongols dressed in
brilliant colors among its passengers. One of the Rus
sians was a man apparently about thirty-odd years of
age, who made a strong impression on me from the mo
ment I saw him. He Was strong, athletic, with erect and
vigorous carriage, short in speech and decisive in action.
He wore high black boots and a plain blue coat of
military cut. This was Mr. K  , to whom we had
letters of introduction. He had, we had heard in Irkutsk,
been condemned by order of the Bolsheviki to hard labor
in the Cheremkhova mines, a place which had a black
tradition of cruelty and suffering under the Czar's
regime, and which was now used in the same evil manner
by the Bolsheviki. He had somehow been released and
was returning to his home in Troitskosavsk. There
seemed to be a reserve of power, a decision of character
about this man that went far to lighten the burden of
depression into which the past six months had cast me.
He too had suffered, and suffered perhaps more than my
friends in Irkutsk, but his spirit was unbroken, his reso
lution unshaken. He was biding his time, and, from the
little that the circumstances permitted us to gather from
him, was ready with an intelligent and practical plan of
action when the time should come. In assisting us,
planning for our further journey through Mongolia to
Pekin, Mr. K  was very kind, very definite and very
efficient. Kindness from Russians we had grown to ex
pect, and I was grateful for it. But more than that, it was
tremendously reassuring to meet a man with both feet on
the ground, with well-balanced judgment and great pres-
ent-mindedness, who must, after all, have been only one
of thousands and thousands of the same type whose prac-
150

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
tical energy had built up the mighty Empire of Russia,
and who could be depended on to carry through the
immense work of reconstruction of the next fifteen or
twenty years.
In the course of- her two days' journey, the Rabotnik
touched at the small town of Selenga. It was here that a
number of the Decembrists had been sent into exile
after the failure of their desperate and dramatic revolt.
The Decembrists, called so from the date on which their
famous exploit was attempted, were leaders of various
secret societies which had sprung up under the reign of
Alexander I when the growth of liberalism among the
officer and intellectual class had taken such notable
strides. On the death of Alexander I, Constantine, the heir
apparent, refused the throne, but his formal abdication
was kept secret from the people. When, therefore, on
December 14, 1826, Alexander's younger brother, Nicho
las, proclaimed his accession, and asked the troops to
take the oath of allegiance to his person, there was a
moment of hesitation on the part of the people, who de
manded Constantine and a constitution. This was the
moment chosen by the Decembrists for a decisive military
coup in favor of a constitution. But the attempt was ruth
lessly suppressed and only increased the severity of the
rule of the martinet Nicholas I.
Sitting about the small table in the cabin of the
Rabotnik, one or two of the Russians who lived at Se
lenga recalled the local traditions of how the exiled
Decembrists lived out their days as respected, useful
citizens of the settlement, keeping ever in touch with the
revolutionary movements throughout Russia. How in
finitely distant this quiet settlement on the outskirts of
151

THE GROPING GIANT
Mongol civilization seemed from the square before the
Winter Palace in Petrograd, where these bold men had
struck their first blow for freedom in the face of almost
certain death and exile. How full of ' inspiration for the
Russian of our own day should be the thought of how
they kept alive the spark of liberty, even in this far
corner of the earth. They were young Russian officers
— members of the class of all classes against which the
hatred of the new tyranny was directed. And yet their
names live in Russian history as apostles of freedom and
liberty. Nicholas I sent the Decembrists to the limit of
his empire in disgrace, but their spirit lived on to over
whelm his dynasty. Lenine had scattered the lovers of
liberty of my own day to the four winds, but, as I passed
by that place where these old pioneers of a hundred years
ago had found a refuge and lived undaunted and constant
in spirit, I had abundant faith to believe that he could
never prevent the eventual triumph of their ideal of
liberty. Quite unexpectedly this journey, which led farther and
farther away from the turmoil of revolutionary Russia,
brought us into contact with something of the old Russia
that was no more — a remnant that from its very isolation
had remained untouched by the all-pervading changes
which were taking place throughout the empire. We spent
our last night on Russian soil in Troitskosavsk, and early
the next morning passed over that extraordinary open
space between Troitskosavsk and Maimachen which
marks dramatically the boundary between Siberia and
the Orient. Looking back toward Russia, we saw the
familiar row of low, solidly built, white wooden buildings
of a Russian small town street, and the domes of an
152

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
Orthodox church rising behind, with Russian soldiers and
peasants moving about here and there. Looking ahead
we saw the wall of a Chinese city, over which appeared
the graceful lines of tiled roofs. Through the main gate we
could catch a glimpse of the thriving life of an Oriental
city, the coolies with their burdens, the sellers of food and
money changers in the street, the gay paper and wooden
signs outside the stores, the brightly decorated gates of
blue and gold and green, leading to the interior courts,
paper latticed windows, and the entrance of a temple.
Nothing remained of Russia. And yet, after a wonderful
three days' drive through the Mongolian hills, we did meet
Russia again in Urga, capital of Inner Mongolia. Coming
to the top of a long ascent through barren and inhos
pitable hills, there burst upon us one day a view of a
great wide valley spread out below. At our feet lay
the Mongol city. We entered its main street, passing by
the shining new temple, with square white base and
gilded roof, feeling as if we were in a new world. Mongols
in red and yellow, married women with huge headdresses
to mark their condition, camels leaning picturesquely
against the stucco walls of the Chinese houses, a caravan
being unloaded in the main square, a train of oxcarts
and yaks moving infinitely slowly, a glimpse of the en
trance to street after street of plain wooden barricades,
behind which we could see the round tops of the Mongol
urtas1 — all made an impression of indescribable confusion
and immense interest. Some miles beyond lay the Chinese
town — for China here was the nominal suzerain and the
commercial ruler. In between on a rising bit of ground
1 Native Mongolian houses, usually so constructed as to be readily
moveable. 153

THE GROPING GIANT
stood — old Russia. A great barren-looking red brick
building, inhospitable, threatening, towered there like a
symbol of military power and mastery. It was the Russian
consulate. Near by were some pleasant, comfortable-look
ing Russian houses, white with green blinds, and, peeping
out behind one of them, the tiny domes of a Russian
chapel attached to one of the buildings. We were not long
in finding out from Chinese and Mongols how the power
which that grim and dreary pile represented had been
feared, and how they had rejoiced when the revolution
relaxed its grip and freed them from fear of Russia.
A day or so after our arrival, we went to this great red
Russian consulate to dine. We were received with a
friendly formality. The consul appeared in his official
uniform. Members of the staff and of the Russian colony
arrived. Dinner was sumptuous and dignified. Talk fell
naturally upon the life and character of the Mongols
over whom these men had recently ruled, and whom they
regarded as the rightful and natural property of Russia.
On this subject they were indeed qualified to speak with
authority, for they knew Mongolia as no other foreigners
knew it, and their pride in Russian enterprise and Rus
sian initiative in opening up this ancient land had a solid
foundation. No reference was made to what had happened
in Russia. Life here seemed to flow in the old channels.
The lifelong habit of command, the consciousness, of
official dignity and position could not be thrown off, and
lent force and charm to their speech and manner. It
seemed curious to think that the Russia they represented
was no more, that they could not technically be said to
represent anyone — and yet, sitting at their table in that
far-away corner of the earth, one could not but realize
i54

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
the greatness of the past that lay behind them, that had
pushed the Slav and his civilization. even to the distant
corners of the earth as a dominating and imperial race.
It was but a momentary glimpse of old Russia that I
caught at Urga. At Pekin orders reached us to return to
Harbin, and in a few weeks I was once more thrown into
the whirlpool of contemporary events — this time in non-
Bolshevik Russia. Coming north from Pekin, I entered
the uncertain life of Harbin at a time when that city was
isolated from Russia, ignorant of the great events being
brought to pass in Siberia by the Czechs, and very nervous
as to the attitude of the Allies. There was much in that
particular community, filled as it was with refugees from
every quarter of Russia, to dishearten a foreigner whose
first contact with Russian people should happen to be
made in that least representative city of the empire.
Harbin is a railroad city, surrounded by an Oriental
civilization. Composed of three distinct towns, official
Russian, Jewish and Chinese, acted on by the most con
flicting and selfish currents of world politics, it could
never seem truly Russian. To judge of Russia by the way
men acted in Harbin would be unfriendly — it would be
unjust. And yet, disregarding entirely the peculiar political
conditions that prevailed in the summer of 1918, it was
full of unusual opportunity for observation of all the types
that make up the great Intelligentzia class.
In the effort to escape the heat and dust of a scorching
summer, I dined many an evening on the porch of the
Railroad Club. From here one could watch the people
passing in review in the open space in a park where there
was music at nine o'clock and in and out among its paths
and walks. The extraordinary variety in dress on the
i55

THE GROPING GIANT
part of the men which had first arrested my attention in
the foyer of the Art Theatre in Moscow, was very notice
able here. Uniforms, both military and civil, coats and
trousers of different colors and materials and of every con
ceivable cut, which, if worn together in my own conven
tion-bound New York, would have created a riot, gave full
expression to the individual personality of the wearers.
I had several times remarked upon this difference be
tween our own custom and the Russian, and my Russian
friends had raised their hands in horror at the thought
of everyone dressing alike. What an unmistakable evi
dence of the unimaginative character of our people! The
freedom from conventionality in dress Universal in Russia
must surely have some significance. Perhaps it was an
outward sign of the striking individualism of the Russian
Intelligentzia of which every conversation with educated
Russians gave evidence. It was their intellectual refusal to
be bound by conventions that led to that extraordinarily
exact definition of political faith that I had gradually
come to expect from Russians. No one seemed to be a
simple Social Revolutionary or a Menshevik, but was
either a Social Democrat of the right, or a Menshevik of
the left, or fell in a category between the two, too refined
for American comprehension. But, after all, a practical
American ought to pause and reflect before smiling at
clothes that appeared to him absurd, and being angered
at refinements of classification and analysis that seemed
an immense hindrance to political action. It may well
be that they are in some degree a manifestation in the
common ordinary affairs of life of the subjective, artistic,
creative nature of the Russian national character which
has left her behind us in practical matters, but which has
156

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
produced other values in art and literature for which
America can point to no equivalent.
The civil uniforms also suggested another character
istic of the Russian Intelligentzia that I had felt before
I came to Harbin and was increasingly conscious of after
ward. Half of the people before me fell at once into defi
nite classes — students, civil engineers, railroad engineers,
nachalniks (officials) of one sort or another. There was
no question as to exactly what position in life a large pro
portion of the civilians in the park of the Railroad Club
occupied. And it seemed to me that each civil uniform I
saw before me carried with it certain very definite pre
rogatives, not in the sense of special privileges, as the
term is generally understood, — although doubtless they
were there too, — but a particular sort of mental, intel
lectual special privilege. To an American who had been
accustomed to meet his fellow citizens just as fellow
citizens, without very great concern as to their exact posi
tion and classification in the social group, it had often
come as a surprise arid as a slight annoyance to be ad
dressed by a Russian acquaintance 'in his capacity as a
Russian writer, or a Russian engineer, or a Russian publi
cist, or a Russian of those who think in terms of the public
interest.' I often longed to talk to my Russian friends
just as Russians, and not in any particular capacity. For
they seemed to mark off for themselves a certain province
of knowledge and thought where they were supreme, and
within which no suggestion or observation from an out
sider who was not a 'writer,' or an 'engineer,' or a 'pub
licist,' etc., could be really seriously considered. Perhaps
the two lines of thought that the dress of the better class
of people of Harbin gave rise to, as I watched them in the
i57

THE GROPING GIANT
pleasant surroundings of the park of the Railroad Club,
led to a paradox. On the one hand a refusal to be bound
by convention in dress argued an individualism that was
contradicted by the presence of the civil uniform on the
other, for there is nothing more hostile to individualism
than uniform. To reconcile the apparent paradoxes in
Russian life could not lie within the province of an
American observer, for Russia is the land of paradoxes,
and they must be accepted rather than explained away.
Yet to me, the civil uniform was an outward sign of the
way in which the Intelligentzia class was broken up into
a large number of small, sharply defined, highly special
ized groups, a condition which gave infinite opportunity
for misunderstanding and friction at a time when the crisis
of the country demanded that every distinction be sunk in
the common brotherhood of Russian culture and Russian
nationality. Among the newspapers published in Harbin was a
radical paper called Labor, a small struggling sheet,
which seldom appeared in New Town, the official railroad
section of the city. In the course of the propaganda work
in which I was engaged, I had occasion to call upon the
editor of this paper. A more unpretentious office than his
it would be difficult to imagine. One came to it through
an alley way and several empty rooms. I was welcomed
there by a young man with an open smile and fair curly
hair. He called in a sharp-featured, rather pale and
tense, but very intelligent young woman, his fellow editor,
and we sat down to talk. Labor had been three times
suppressed for printing criticisms of the existing regime
of General Horvath. I read the articles, which were ill-
judged to be sure, but certainly no stronger than many
158

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
criticisms of the government that appear daily in my own
country. Three times the paper had to change quarters and
reappear under a new name; and each time the capital at
the editor's command was dangerously eaten into, and
now another repetition of the misfortune — certain to
bring on financial ruin — was impending. The genuine in
terest in, and sympathy with, America shown by the two
editors of Labor was an immense contrast to the atti
tude pf the editors of the Bolshevik newspapers I had met,
who had been unwilling to conceive of an America with
out a great repressed revolutionary class. From America,
and plans and hopes for a better understanding between
America and Russia, we drifted to the subject uppermost
in their minds — the denial by the Horvath Government
of the right of free speech. Hating the Bolsheviki, they
yet feared reaction to the old regime more, and told me
that most of the things that should be said and known
about the way in which their people^— the working people
— were being treated, they dared not print. They were
convinced that the Horvath Government was absolutely
monarchist, and, although they were weak and without any
powerful support, they were sure that they could feel the
pulse of the people better than men who bore the stigma
of close association with the old regime, and that the ulti
mate triumph would be with them. I should have con
sidered them very radical and visionary socialists had I
met them in America, and should not have agreed at all
with their political philosophy, but, as they spoke with
earnest, carefully chosen words about the longing of Rus
sia to be free to develop some workable democratic form
of government, and to express the will of her people
through a Constituent Assembly, and to be free from the
i59

THE GROPING GIANT
tyranny of the Bolsheviki and the 'Black Hundred'
alike, I knew that they spoke the truth. Many small indi
cations that I had seen of the yearning of the Russian
people after their own proper form of free institutions —
each one too small perhaps for particular notice, but in
the aggregate leaving a powerful impression on the mind
— came back to me to confirm their words and to justify
their faith.
Not long after talking with these two young people
who were carrying on a fight for a principle in this humble
and limited way, I set out from Harbin for Vladivostok
on the first train to leave after communication was re
stored with that city. It was a special train, which was
taking Madame Horvath, the wife of General Horvath,
head of the Chinese Eastern Railway and dictator of
Manchuria, to join her husband. We traveled in a big
dining car which had been partitioned off to provide
sleeping quarters for Madame Horvath. The General him
self was at Grodekova where he had issued a proclama
tion declaring himself supreme ruler of all Russia. This
pilgrimage of his in a special train to a point just within
the Russian boundary, so that he might be on the soil of
Russia when he declared himself her ruler, seemed
grotesque, in view of the general situation in that vast
distracted country. The fact that Madame Horvath's
journey was made without his knowledge and as a sur
prise added an element of comedy. And yet, on first
meeting and talking with this lady, the same feeling ot
respect and admiration came to me that I had felt when
I first met the two ladies of the old regime on the Fon
tanka in Petrograd. There was the same perfect poise, the
same dignity of bearing, the same pleasing reserve and
1 60

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
formality, the same well-modulated voice and grace of
expression. She spoke as one long accustomed to com
mand, but in what she said about the Russian people and
their problems there was much kindness and gentleness.
This was particularly true when she spoke of the peas
ants. The point of view she expressed was already familiar
to me — Russia was unready for democratic government
—her people ignorant, unaccustomed to political thought
and action, a fertile soil for the demagogue, needing to
be carefully led and only gradually given the privileges
of democracy when ready for them. Much that I had
already seen, both of the peasant and of the Intelligentzia,
made this point of view appear eminently reasonable, es
pecially when expressed by one whose antecedents and
whose whole life gave her the right to speak with author
ity, and of whose honesty of purpose and love for Russia
I could entertain no doubts. But, somehow, I felt that
this gracious and intellectual woman was following a line
of thought which, judged by reason alone in the cold light
of the facts, political, psychological and economic, could
not be denied or shaken, but which was spiritually wrong.
I felt instinctively that the humble editors of Labor,
with whose political and social philosophy I had scant
sympathy, had more correctly weighed the desires of the
people, and had more truly grasped the spiritual values of
the times than she. Memories of the exaltation of spirit
of the mass of the delegates in the Moscow Congress of
All-Russian Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Depu
ties, of the earnestness of the majority of the Soviet elec
tion in Krasnoyarsk that stood for a Constituent Assembly
and had been overridden by force, of the thousand and
one manifestations of eager sympathy and desire to know
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THE GROPING GIANT
about American democracy that I had met from all kinds
of men — all these crowded into my mind as evidence that
the Russia of my day was a Russia groping blindly about
for. some way to realize an ideal of freedom for which
she was in almost every sense unprepared, but for which
she would accept no permanent substitute.

162

VI.
THE INTELLIGENTZIA PART II

IN September 191 8, the Czechs, who had been fight
ing their way eastward toward the sea against over
whelming odds in their effort to join the Allies on the
Western front, at last joined forces with Semionof at
Manchuria Station. Semionof's army was of a very non
descript character, being composed largely of Buriats,
and volunteer Cossacks, with an intermingling of Chinese
mercenaries and some old Russian soldiers. But with this
force he had held the Siberian-Manchurian frontier for
months against the Bolsheviki in spite of lack of support
from Harbin, and the hostility which the violence of his
irregular soldiers awakened among those they were pro
tecting. As soon as this junction was made and the railway
into Siberia was again open, I started once more over the
same journey on which I had set out with a light heart
and a care-free spirit a year before. It had been a year of
awakening to the terrible realities of the life of the men
163

THE GROPING GIANT
and women of Russia who existed'under such a strain of
alternating hope and fear, crushing sorrow, disillusion
ment and passion. During these twelve months I had been
caught up in a maelstrom of conflicting ideas, philoso
phies and theories and had felt, not only an immense
human sympathy, but also a challenge to analyze and to
justify American ideas of life and theories of government
in the fierce light of other men's fundamentally different
convictions. A week's journey over familiar ground brought me to
Irkutsk once more. The city had an appearance of tran
quillity. The bridge which the Bolsheviki had left unre
paired so many months now gave free access from the
railroad station to the main section of the city across the
Angara. The marks of artillery fire were gradually being
obliterated. Newspapers of various political faiths were
being published. The city government established after
the liberation of Irkutsk by the Czechs now functioned
through the normal Russian agencies of local government
— the Zemstvos and City Councils.
It was with the greatest interest that I went to call
upon the new governor of Irkutsk Province — Iakovlef,
who had taken over the reins of power from Yanson,
Geitzman and the other Bolshevik commissars. In the
anteroom I noticed that no preference was given to rank
or station, but that each petitioner for an interview with
the governor was received in the order of arrival. After
a short wait, I, in my turn, was ushered into the gover
nor's office. In the middle of the comfortably furnished,
formal room at one end of which his desk stood, I found
a man of middle stature, dressed in a black Russian blouse
and black 'boots reaching up to his knees, without any
164

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
indication in his dress of rank or position. He wore a full
brown beard, curly and carefully combed, and moved
with great natural dignity. He was a man close to the
heart of the peasant, a fitting representative of the true
Russia which still remained beneath all the turmoil and
trouble of the times. I had not talked with him long be
fore this became very clear, for his face lit up with
warmth and kindliness and interest as soon as we began
to talk of peasant problems. It was the peasant interests
he had at heart — his whole life had been given to work
ing for their betterment. He was a man who used his
power chiefly as a means toward the solution of the fun
damental agricultural problems that are the most difficult
and the most important in Russia, and which are in
separable from the problem of the Russian mujik — how
to take care of him and how to drum some sense into his
head. He stood between the two extremes of anti-Bol
shevik Russia. He seemed to personify the spirit of the
Zemstvo — that peculiarly Russian organ of self-govern
ment. The cordiality of my reception by Iakovlef was
tempered somewhat by his doubt as to whether or not
America really did intend to help him in his struggle for
freedom against the Bolsheviki. But his genial, open-
minded attitude, his vision and his practical ability con
firmed the truth of what Russian friends had assured me
— "Once free from the military tyranny of Lenine, men
will not be lacking to guide and steady the Russian
people." Under the leadership of men like Iakovlef, Irkutsk was
fast resuming its many-sided activities interrupted by the
Bolsheviki. As an educational centre, it was second only
to Tomsk in prestige and influence. Among the first events
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THE GROPING GIANT
of importance to take place after the freeing of the city
by the Czechs was the opening of a new Irkutsk Univer
sity and the establishment of a People's College. The
number of teachers and scholars living in the city was
greatly augmented by refugees from the large cities of
European Russia. I had a long talk one evening with one
of the professors interested in the formation of the new
university, a man who seemed to me at first very stolid
and very phlegmatic. As always, our talk led to the Rus
sian political situation. "I suppose," he said, "you Ameri
cans condemn us as traitors in the Great War because of
the way we deserted the cause, and despise us because of
the situation we find ourselves in now. And with reason, I
cannot blame you. Russia, whom we love, has indeed
given reason to the world for scorn and mockery." I was
touched bv an altered tone in his voice, and I told him
ml /
what an American who knew his country's history could
tell him of comfort and encouragement. "We cannot judge
you," I said. "When the first revolution came, our land
was filled with rejoicing from end to end — we felt we
could now fight with the Allies without any doubt about
our fighting for democracy. We now see Russia struggling
to build up, out of the ruins, a free country. With all the
previous training in self-government in our colonies, it
took us twenty years to set up a really stable government.
We cannot and do not expect Russia to take her ignorant
masses, her long-continued traditions, and do it in six
months after four terrible years of war." I stopped after
a few words of this character, for my stolid friend had
turned away, and I saw that he was in tears. It was a
little embarrassing, but it brought home to me very
keenly the degree of shame and humiliation felt by many
166

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
of the men who loved Russia, and showed how deep a
chord could be struck by sympathetic words, where criti
cism or careless trivialities would bring instant resentment
and a dignified defense.
No class of men felt this humiliation more keenly than
the younger intellectuals and students whose past record
in the struggle for liberty in Russia all the world knows.
My assistant in our propaganda work was a young Rus
sian — a naval lieutenant through the exigencies of war,
but by nature and inclination a mathematician and as
tronomer. He lived, as so many refugees were forced to
do, in a railroad car at the station in Irkutsk. One day,
not long after my conversation with the professor, he told
me of an incident which had greatly distressed him. Some
window-panes in his car had been broken, and two work
men had come to repair them. He had stood and talked
with them in a friendly way, hearing the gossip of the
town and the usual complaints of the hardness of life in
general, and their life in particular. Though he held an
officer's commission, his uniform was that of a sailor, as
it was impossible to procure materials for officers' dress
in all Siberia. The two glaziers at first took him for a
common sailor, but from a chance remark learned that
he was an officer. The attitude of the men changed imme
diately. They looked at each other, muttered "Burjui"
and lapsed into silence. No further effort on the part of
my friend to talk with them met with the slightest re
sponse. He was cut off from intercourse with these men.
Nothing in him had changed, and yet now that he had
been, revealed as a Burjui, everything he did met with
suspicion, nothing he said could be believed. There was
no point of contact left. "You see," he said very seriously
167

THE GROPING GIANT
and very sadly, "we are ostracized by our own people.
What can I do to help them, to serve them? I have never
harmed them — I have always been against the Czar, but
they will have none of me or those like me. It is that
which drives me to despair, for there seems to be no place
left for me in Russia." This small incident was an indica
tion of the peculiarly desperate and tragic mental suffer
ing of the fearless fair-minded liberal group of young men
and students whose hands and spirit had wrought the
overthrow of the Czar, but who had achieved their life's
ambition only to have it turn thus to ashes in their
mouths. Men like the professor and my young naval lieutenant
were representative of that part of the Intelligentzia
which had been overwhelmed by the October revolution
and was now rather impotent and helpless. The institu
tions and interests they represented had not been strong
and rugged enough to hold together and weather the first
impact of the Bolshevik wave. But the great Cooperative
Societies and the People's Bank, their financial organ,
strong in their relations with the peasant and intrenched
in the confidence of the people, had been able to with
stand the shock which swept away so many of the old
institutions. When, after my short stay in Irkutsk was
over, I went on to Omsk for the second time, I found the
same men who had been able to serve us under the Bol
sheviki still carrying on their work of trying to render
some practical business help to the people under the new
conservative regime. Going to call upon one of the great
Siberian Cooperatives, on the third floor of a large
building, flooded with light and humming with activity, I
was received by the managing director and his assistant
1 68

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
with extreme cordiality, and was offered the inevitable
glass of tea with bread and caviar. My hosts were dressed
in the conventional European way, but were extremely
Russian in their volubility, their cleverness of phrase and
their tendency to stray from the point. It was almost im
possible to keep strictly to the subject matter of my visit,
which was to gather definite information as to the urgent
needs of the people in Omsk for certain commodities
which it was then vainly projected by our authorities to
supply. Maps and books were brought out, and the rami
fications of this great organization, reaching to the most
distant villages, were spread before me. With every allow
ance scepticism could make, it was a stirring, thing to
think of the service such an organization could render
the mujik — furnishing a market for his produce, giving
him the small credit he needed, bringing to him machinery
and all the necessary articles of manufacture he required,
and, beyond that, bringing almost the only reading mat
ter he ever saw — the cooperative magazine and simple
paper pamphlets of Russian history, of agriculture, of
literature, even. As I went from one Cooperative Society
to another in Omsk, even with the terribly depressing
conditions under which that city, with its 250,000 refu
gees, was laboring, there impressed me more than any
thing else a certain sturdy independence of manner
among their people which I had not seen elsewhere in
Russia. Some of them were evidently men sprung from
the soil from the peasant class, and some were of the
Intelligentzia in its strictest sense. The workers in the
Russian Cooperative movement were in themselves proof
that the gap between the peasant and the intellectual
that had seemed so overwhelmingly great could actually
169

THE GROPING GIANT
be spanned. The ostracism from the mass of Russian men
so bitterly felt by my young naval friend and many more
like him was so general and had left so vivid an impres
sion on my mind that I could not disregard it as of no
importance in a study of the Intelligentzia, but it was
clearly not the universal lot of educated men in Russia.
Omsk, the political capital of Siberia, was the centre
of political hatreds and quarrels. With its crowds of
refugees and soldiers going to and from the front and
representatives of one organization or another from all
over Siberia, it was a city of immense confusion. Nearer
the Ural front, where the Siberian Army organized by
the All-Russian Provisional Government in Omsk was
gradually taking over the line against the Bolsheviki from
the battle-worn Czech Army, the issues were clearer and
simpler. Shortly after the overthrow of the All-Russian
Government and the coming into power of Admiral Kol-
chak in November 191 8, I was stationed by the Com
mittee on Public Information in Ekaterinburg. This city,
the finest in the Urals, was one of the main objectives of
the Red Army at that time. With the nearness of the
common enemy making some sort of unity among the In
telligentzia imperative, it was easier to take stock of them
than it had been before. I had met the conscientious, high-
spirited, sincere monarchist men and women, and had
felt that they were but the best representatives of an
outworn tradition, a hopeless cause. Now and again I had
come across devoted, thoroughly sincere revolutionists,
who felt that the Bolsheviki were destroying their coun
try, but who feared equally all whom they felt were
tainted with reaction, and hardly knew where to turn, or
how to adjust themselves in the whirlpool of events that
170

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
engulfed them. I had met many cultured people like my
host in Irkutsk who seemed merely passive and feeble bits
of human wreckage tossed hither and thither in the storm,
which they could not weather, and from which they suf
fered cruelly. On them the fatalism of the Russian na
tional character seemed to have taken a peculiar hold, but
yet they never quite gave up the struggle against circum
stances. It is very difficult for the average American fully
to understand the Slav, and yet one became convinced
that, though they might fight to the last, it would be with
the hopeless conviction that circumstances would be too
much for- them, and that the utmost they could do was to
fail with an heroic gesture. I had met many people of
much the same stamp who yet seemed stronger and more
stable. For me Iakovlef in Irkutsk had become a type of
such men, and the City Councils and the Zemstvos the
organized expression of their spirit — the spirit of Russian
self-government and liberty working itself out in a
natural Russian way. The great social revolutionary
party contained many men of both these general types.
And I had also met in the Cooperatives men whose pecu
liar economic position and whose connection with the
peasants seemed to set them apart as a distinct class — a
very self-conscious class — forming a hopeful connecting
link between the masses and the Intelligentzia.
Such a classification as this must of necessity be rudi
mentary and incomplete, but any attempt to define the
elements that made up anti-Bolshevik Russia could
hardly be more when made against the background of the
suffering and extraordinary confusion of Siberia. There
was much evil mixed in with the good, and one who had
not begun or at least tried in some measure to see with
171

THE GROPING GIANT
Russian eyes, and feel with Russian feelings, could easily
see only the evil. In all towns back of the front I had
seen money, so sorely needed by the army, spent like
water. Everywhere young officers in uniforms, grotesque
to Western eyes in their display and garishness, were
swaggering about. Obstinacy, carelessness, self-assertion
appeared on every hand. The restaurants were crowded
with speculators, both Jew and Gentile, who reaped an
evil harvest from the agony of the people. In Chita,
Semionof, who had once fought bravely against the' Bol
sheviki, set up a bandit's arbitrary power — mingling in
his rule the cruel, the farcical, the mock-heroic and the
tragic, and adding to the physical discomfort and confu
sion of mind of the people. All these things only empha
sized the crushing magnitude of the problem which Rus
sians who loved liberty and hated Bolshevism had to
struggle with in that vast frontier country — Siberia.
Living day in and day out with Russians, I could not
but be impressed by their extraordinary subjectivity and
their love of self-analysis. Evening after evening I sat
with my hosts till the early morning hours, and the talk ran
on endlessly until I thought that every emotion of which
the human animal was capable had been analyzed into
its component parts and ticketed for all time. One eve
ning, I asked impatiently: "Well, when all is said and
done, what result have we achieved from all this talk?
Has it changed the opinion of any one of us? Will any
action result from it tomorrow?" The answer was one
which rather surprised me: "No, no opinion is changed.
You Americans talk and then it leads to some practical
action. We Russians talk because it affords us intellectual
pleasure. Two Russians can discuss for five hours and get
172

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
up the next morning entirely with views unchanged in any
particular." The tone implied a natural, objective recog
nition of a certain psychological fact — no desire to change
it, no suggestion that it needed change. To me it seemed
full of significance, and sad — for I had seen enough of
Russia to feel that the well-constructed theories, the logi
cal deductions, the ingenious plans and schemes that had
been worked out by wits sharpened in such endless dis
cussions at countless Russian tables had done harm to
Russia. Precisely because so clever, so logical, so com
plete, so perfect, those theories had often blinded their
makers to the sterner logic of external facts.
If the feeling that I was living among people inclined
by nature to abstractions and to theories was strength
ened daily by life in Ekaterinburg, so also was the appre
ciation of the terrible discipline they were undergoing
intensified and deepened. One beautiful sunny winter
afternoon I was walking along the main street of Eka
terinburg at the point where it overlooks the lake that
gives to that city so much of its originality and charm.
On two sides were substantial buildings with a park
before them along the lake shore and on the other side
of the lake an evergreen forest, with low hills beyond.
The isvoschiks had made a track across the frozen surface
which they used in winter as a short cut to the station.
One or two of them were crossing, little black specks
against the shining white background of the lake. I had
fallen into a mood of contentment and peacefulness that
came seldom to me during my stay in Russia. There was
much beauty and restfulness in the scene. Once more, as
in Pskoff, I felt as if the spirit of the Greek churches, the
domes of three of which were visible from the place where
i73

THE GROPING GIANT
I was walking, were all around me. I hardly noticed a
small, mild, elderly lady approaching me from the oppo
site direction. She stopped before me, evidently hesitating
to speak. She was plainly nervous, and, as she looked up
at me, I was astonished at the imploring eagerness of her
look and a curious sort of trustfulness and hopefulness
that seemed almost childlike. She said: "Please tell me
what fate has befallen the hostages. Have you heard any
thing of them? Are they alive? Tell me, are they still
alive?" When the Bolsheviki had evacuated Ekaterinburg
some months before they had carried off thirty of the
best citizens as hostages to Perm, which had just been
recaptured by the Siberian Army. What would be their
lot now that Perm had fallen ? Among them there must
be someone very dear to this little woman before me —
husband or son — I did not dare to ask, for I could give
her no reassurance. What overwhelming anxiety, what
torturing doubt there must be in her heart to ask the
casual passer-by for some word, some chance gossip that
might give comfort and hope!
The next day I myself set out for Perm with the
American consul, who was going there to take winter
socks and sweaters to the army which stood between us
and the Bolshevik power. A three days' journey over a
circuitous route was necessary before reaching Perm, as
the main line was still held by the Soviet troops. Tem
porary trestles over rivers, freight cars strewn on either
side of the line at frequent intervals on their sides and
upside down, and burned railway stations gave ample
evidence of the fighting that had been going on only a
few days before in the bitterest cold of all the long, hard
Siberian winter. As we entered the outskirts of Perm,
i74

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
our train passed a huge locomotive,, painted entirely
brown, including the tender, and covered with Bolshevik
mottoes and battle cries. Right in the centre of the front
of the engine was a portrait of Trotsky, and on the side
of the cab appeared the unmistakable features of Lenine.
This prize was among the many that had fallen into the
hands of the Siberian Army because of the daring exploit
of one of their detachments. A small company had crossed
the Kama River one night when the Bolsheviki thought it
was too cold for any troops to leave their trains and had
cut the fuses which had been laid to blow up the bridge
over the Kama, thereby precipitating the evacuation of
the Bolsheviki which had already been more methodically
begun. After distributing the sweaters and the socks so sorely
needed by the badly clothed and underfed boys who
fought in Kolchak's Army, the American consul and his
party were asked to break bread with the Chief of Staff
of the army. This courtesy was, of course, gladly ac
cepted, and at half past four in the afternoon we left
our railroad car, and climbed over the four or five inter
vening trains until we reached the train of the Chief of
Staff. His huge private car, just captured from the Bol
sheviki, was gaily decorated with evergreens and bunting
in token of victory. We passed by the two heavily armed
sentinels at the door, and were ushered into the commo
dious dining-room at one end of the car where only a few
days before the Bolshevik command had planned and
directed the battles of the Soviet armies. Our host, a
small, lithe, energetic man, with a black moustache,
dressed in a general's uniform covered with decorations,
received us cordially. Our meal was plain and modest
i75

THE GROPING GIANT
perforce — but to eat at a table with a white tablecloth and
not have to fight to get one's meal was in itself a treat.
The chief of staff was in high spirits, for it had been an
extraordinary feat to capture Perm under the conditions
that existed. Before our talk had gone far, he began to
hold forth about the Russia that was to be after this
success had been followed up by the military defeat of
the Bolsheviki. He was a good example of what so many
of my Russian friends had spoken of with scorn and
hatred as 'black reactionary.' His was the type of mind
that looked backward, not forward, that seemed to have
gained no new vision, no real sense of the spirit of the
times from the events that had shaken Russia to its
foundation, and in which he himself was playing an active
part. I had always felt that the Bolshevik propaganda,
about the 'self-determination of nations and the evils of
imperialism,' that had been dinned into my ears, could
have no effect on me but a negative one since the Bol
sheviki themselves were the first to deny it in their prac
tice. But I now found myself listening with an open
hostility and increasing surprise to this man as he began
to talk about his vision for the future. He wanted Finland
back- — he wanted Poland back — he wanted every farthest
frontier to which the empire had aspired restored, and
not only restored but advanced. He wanted, and still
believed possible, the realization of the old dream of a
Russian Constantinople. For himself and his own people
he wanted every privilege, every power, every advantage
they had enjoyed before — and yet he did not defend the
Czar. I felt sure he did not want a Czar in Russia again,
but he did want the old conditions of life that existed
under the Czar. Not a word about schools, about the
176

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
great needs, economic, political, spiritual, of the mass of
Russian people. It was not a vision of a future Russia he
was unfolding to us, but a picture of past Russia seen at
a far distance from which only its pleasant side was clear.
I left the car of the Chief of Staff depressed in spirit,
for it was only too clear that he represented an important
element in the forces that were so imperfectly joined
together in the anti-Bolshevik cause. Between him and
Iakovlef in Irkutsk, how wide a chasm, how fundamental
a difference of political philosophy, of vision and hope
for the future! Yet both were hated and fought by the
Bolsheviki; both were Burjui; both were joined together
by their common enmity against Bolshevism. Where was
a traveler among the confusion of disorganized Siberia to
find some thread to reconcile these contradictions — some
common principle that bound together these different
kinds of people in hostility to the one common enemy?
It was only three days after Perm had been freed from
the Bolshevik rule that I walked up its desolate empty
streets with all the stores closed and bolted, and on past
the huge red sign of the Central Executive Committee of
the Soviet of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Depu
ties. The melancholy remains of the decorations hung out
to celebrate the completion of one year of Bolshevik rule
had not yet been removed. I entered the office of the
paper, Free Perm, which was just preparing to begin
publication. I had a curious sensation in that office, talk
ing with four or five of the men, mostly young men, who
were planning to bring the little sheet to light, as if I
were witnessing the very first stirring of free intellectual
life in that city after a long winter in which everything
had been dead and frozen. It was like the sap just be-
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THE GROPING GIANT
ginning to run in the trees in the spring. I was received
with an affection and a heartiness that was very pleasant.
I brought news, such as it was, from the outside world,
news of the terms of the Armistice, of the work of the
Red Cross, of the great varied non-Bolshevik world. For
this they were grateful— for they were intellectually
starved, just as their thin bodies and drawn, pale faces
showed that they had been physically starved. But this
was not in itself the reason, the deep-down fundamental
reason, why they were so glad to see me. As I was walk
ing down to the station with one of them after an hour's
talk, he burst out: "It is such a wonderful relief to talk
with someone who does not abuse, despise and scorn the
things that we honor and hold sacred — to. talk with some
one who is moderate in speech and talks to you like a
reasonable man, to get away from the constant, the vio
lent, the maddening repetition over and over again of
the few fixed ideas of Bolshevik doctrine, couched in the
same phrases, without change or variation, that make up
the Bolshevik vocabulary."
There was here an expression of something that bound
together all anti-Bolshevik Russia. It was their absolute
break with the past that marked off the Bolsheviki so
conspicuously from the noh-Bolsheviki. The men I met
in Perm, and the Chief of Staff in the railroad car down
at the station, and the editor of Labor back in Harbin, and
all the other thousand and one types of men and women
whom an arbitrary classification called Burjui shared a
common respect for the past, honored and gave weight
and consideration to the experience and the teaching of
their fathers. They represented the continuous growth
and development of Russian life out of the past into the
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THE INTELLIGENTZIA
future, the Social Revolutionaries perhaps more than the
others. Whether radical or reactionary, they resented and
fought against the sudden imposition of a foreign ready-
made doctrine which denied the validity of the past ex
perience of the race, and declared that all who failed to
subscribe to it and the, methods by which it was imposed
were enemies of the people.
And further than this, amqng non-Bolshevik Russians
there was a natural implicit recognition of certain general
standards of honor and decency among men which form
the basis of ordinary intercourse among educated people
and upon which I, as an American, had always instinc
tively relied without ever giving the matter particular
thought. Respect for another man's opinion, recognition
that his religious beliefs are to him sacred and as such
command tolerance at least, some moderation of speech,
breadth of view enough to conceive that another may
indeed have grasped some portion of the truth, however
opposed his views may be to your own, a rudimentary
sense of fair play toward one's fellow man, respect for
his family and his home, some slight willingness to trust
his motives, and honesty of intention in carrying out
pledges and understandings reached with him — these
things at least civilized intercourse among men demands
of everyone. But these things the higher law of class
struggle and class war always over-ruled in Bolshevik
Russia whenever the -two came into conflict, utterly de
stroying confidence between man and man. And the
peculiar nature of the Bolshevik philosophy made it
inevitable that they should constantly come into conflict.
The very fact that non-Bolshevik Russians of the most
diverse types denied that class interest was superior to
179

THE GROPING GIANT
every moral or ethical consideration was in itself a bond
of union between them in the face of Bolshevik doctrine.
Less fundamental perhaps, but not without its own sig
nificance and meaning was the last phrase of my friend,
spoken so sincerely and with such an accent of heartfelt
joy in his sudden intellectual liberation. Not only did he
rejoice to be free from the constant abuse of 'all we honor
and hold sacred,' but also to escape 'the repetition over
and over again of the same words and the same ideas.'
A free and varied intellectual life, the give and take of
ideas of every sort and drawn from all times and all lands,
enjoyment of the wealth and richness of Russia's own
marvelous literature, an appreciation of all sorts of
spiritual, artistic and intellectual values that man's genius
has created, these things also formed a bond between
anti-Bolshevik Russians — for men of every type of mind
revolted against the narrowness and the tyranny of Bol
shevik thought which clung so tenaciously to one well-
defined inflexible complex of ideas and denied and fought
against so much that most intelligent men held dear and
valued. My time in Russia was fast drawing to a close and I
returned to Ekaterinburg from Perm for only one more
month of American propaganda work among people
whose general sympathy for American ideals of freedom
and democracy rendered that work easy. During this
month I came to appreciate more and more the work of
enlightenment and education which the cooperators
carried on among the people, and ihe national character
and useful work of the Zemstvo. Not least among the
influences strong in Russian life that held much in store
for the future was the influence of the Orthodox Church.
1 80

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
It was a sign of the times which no friend of Russia
could fail to see without encouragement and hopefulness
that the individualistic, mystical Orthodox Church, whieh
had its roots so deep in the life of Russia and reached out
to all the thousands of villages of that widespread land,
was beginning a new kind of active social community
work. I had talked with priests who were struggling with
the crushing problem of adapting the Church to the
changed world of today. In spite of great obstacles — not
the least of which was a priesthood whose attitude still
reflected the attitude of a great state church, a church
deeply influenced by the relationship it had borne to the
old Czarist regime, they kept faith in the vision of a
better leadership to be won by the Church in the future
than she had enjoyed in the past. But I even was more im
pressed by talking with an elderly layman editor of an
able paper published in Ekaterinburg. He had been editor
of the influential Ruskie Viedomosti in Moscow, and had
fled to Siberia with one companion, helped and hidden
by the peasants, to take up the fight for honest, patriotic,
clean government in Russia in that distant corner of his
country. A profoundly religious man and a devout mem
ber of the Orthodox Church, he was struggling with the
problem of how to make the Church take the place it
should in preparing the Russian people for free govern
ment, and more enlightened Christian national life. As
representing a- country where the church had striven to
reach out into the community life, and whose experiments
of the type of the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. had been
tried on a large scale, he earnestly sought from me and
other Americans information about the methods and the
ideals behind such work. His purpose was, with other
** 181

THE GROPING GIANT
laymen and priests of his city, to work out some Russian
form that would answer in a more complete way than the
old leadership of the Orthodox Church had done the prac
tical and spiritual needs of the Russian people. And he
was but one of many priests and laymen whose thought
and hopes centred in a renewed and vitalized leadership
0>n the part of the Church. Before I left Moscow on my
first visit to the front, now many months ago, I had felt
in the beautiful service at the Cathedral of the Redeemer
at which all types of men had seemed to be united in a
common race and a common faith, that the Greek Ortho
dox faith was one of the strongest ties binding Russians
together. Against this faith the Bolsheviki had fought —
upon its priests they had heaped indignity, its teachings
they had laughed to scorn. The revulsion of Russian
people of all classes against those who had thus denied
and outraged a faith precious and dear to the heart of
Russia was by no means a negligible factor in unifying
men, differing in almost every conceivable respect, in
common hostility to the Bolsheviki.
One more striking evidence that there was a basis of
unity binding together the Burjui came to me, during
the last days of my stay in Ekaterinburg. To a greater
extent than I was conscious- of, my thought had been con
centrated for many months entirely on Russian problems,
and my heart moved by Russian feelings. I had gotten out
of touch with the great and more general currents of
world affairs. So, when the news came that the Allies,
among them my own country, had proposed that all Rus
sian factions meet together at Prinkipo for conference
with regard to peace, there came over me a burning sense
of indignation and of shame. Later news brought con-
182

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
firmation of the fact that by 'factions' were meant both
the Bolsheviki and their enemies. So thoroughly had I
been convinced that, with all their diversity of character
and opinion, all their varied failings and shortcomings,
those who were fighting against Bolshevism were the true,
the real representatives of Russia, that it was with diffi
culty that I could believe the cold meaning of the words
of the cables before me. If a foreigner could feel in this
way, how must these men feel, monarchist and radical
alike, from whom I had so often heard the words, 'the
freeing of Russia,' 'the rebirth, the regeneration of Rus
sia,' spoken with infinite sincerity. They could not con
ceive that their friends could consider them otherwise
than as Russia, and the Bolsheviki otherwise than as
enemies of Russia. Instinctively, I shrank from meeting
Russian friends. When finally I went once more into
the office of the editor whose plans and hopes for the
future of the Greek Church had so interested me, we met
with friendliness, but with a sadness neither he nor I
tried to conceal. No words were really necessary to show
that he felt as if a blow in -the back had been struck
patriotic Russians by their best friends when America
declared she saw no difference between them and the op
pressors and ravagers of their country, and that to her
they were both 'Russian factions.' It was so with every
one I met — cooperators, intellectuals, editors of every
paper. Though he was unjust, I could not blame the man
who, proposing a scornful toast to Prinkipo at a dinner,
asked why I did not drink with him as my own President
had proposed the conference. It seemed as if an electric
shock had passed through the whole people. At that mo
ment, if at no other, every conflict seemed buried among
183

THE GROPING GIANT
non-Bolshevik Russians in a common feeling of national
pride and dignity. How tragic it has seemed in the light of
after events that the one plan which might have led ulti
mately to the attainment of what they strove for, should
have been one which it was a psychological impossibility
for them to regard as other than a gross and studied insult
on the part of the nations who professed to be the friends
of Russia.
With all the sadness and anger and revolt that stirred
me in the days after the news of Prinkipo reached us in
Ekaterinburg, I could not but marvel at the strength of
the national feeling that it evoked. I could not but recog
nize that one of the great things that marked off the anti-
Bolsheviki from the Bolsheviki was patriotism in its best
sense. It will ever remain one of the strangest paradoxes
in history that, in the peculiar sequence of events which
followed/ because of the halting and contradictory atti
tude of the Allies towards Russia and because of certain
inherent weaknesses in the Russian character, this na
tional spirit, of which I saw so wonderful an example in
Siberia, instead of crushing the power of the Bolsheviki
should have come instead to strengthen and uphold it.
Only in Russia could a party whose fundamental philos
ophy rested solidly on internationalism and on the dicta
torship of one class become the national party.
Ignorant of what the future held in store, I left Eka
terinburg to turn my steps once more to America, strong
in the conviction that the people I had learned in Soviet
Russia to call Burjui, however diverse in their philosophy,
however subjective and theoretic in their attitude, how
ever scattered, weakened, perhaps even despairing, still
were in very truth the people on whom the future leader-
184

THE INTELLIGENTZIA
ship of Russia must rest, because they represented the
historical orderly development of Russia's life, because
they were bound together in one great faith, because they
represented that many-sided intellectual life which is the
life-breath of every vigorous nation, and because, in their
hearts, there lived that patriotism and love of country
without which there can be no permanent national leader
ship.

185

VII.
CONCLUSIONS

THE first feeling of almost everyone leaving revo
lutionary Russia after a protracted stay in that
unhappy country is an exhilarating sense of
liberation and release. It is as if one breathed the outside
air once more after passing through the gates of a prison
to be free of the restraint and the tension from which no
one in Russia can escape. When my service in Russia was
over and I reached Japan on the way home to America,
I shared this feeling to the full. How delightful to return
home, to have peace of mind once more in a well-ordered
country where liberty and democracy were understood,
and had long since found orderly expression in a stable
government. But the very relaxation from the strain and
uncertainty of the past year made it possible for the first
time to appraise the contribution of the year's experience
in its proper perspective. Pleasant as was the prospect of
enjoying once more the unquestioned established order of
things in America and living once more among people
whose lives flowed, in settled and familiar channels, it was
clearly impossible for one who had lived through the cata-
186

CONCLUSIONS
clysm that had taken place in Russia to fall back again
into the groove of placid contentment so common in the
quiet years before the war. France had spoken to others
during these stirring years, but Russia had spoken to me,
and had brought about a fundamental change of attitude
without any conscious effort on my part.
A chance conversation overheard in one of the com
fortable hotels in Japan revealed to me for the first time
that this was so. As I sat one afternoon in the sitting-
room of the hotel, an indignant voice made itself heard —
the voice of an American lady pitched in a key calculated
to carry the burden of her complaint to every corner of
the room. "Labor is getting so insolent in California that
it is almost impossible to live there. You can't get any
servants and the commonest workman seems to think he
ought to have everything as good as we have." The rising
inflection toward the end showed wherein lay the real
point of the grievance. Two years before such a remark
would not have attracted my particular attention, but,
fresh from revolutionary Russia, it filled me with amaze
ment. "Where have you been living during all these tre
mendous years ?" I wanted to ask the indignant lady who
was thus bemoaning her hard lot. "Who are you that
certain good things should come to you as a matter of
course which the mass of men may not strive for and
desire without presumption and insolence?" After a year
and a half in Russia, I was myself asking in substance the
same question that the red-faced peasant soldier had
hurled at me on my way into Russia, "Why should you
ride in comfort while I, who have fought and suffered,
stand outside?"
Of the many factors that had contributed to the change
187

THE GROPING GIANT
in attitude which this reaction implied, not the least was
the open and persistent denial by the Bolshevik propa
ganda of the justice of the capitalistic system and the
constant assertion that, from the human point of view, it
was absolutely indefensible. The necessity of being con
stantly on the defensive on behalf of the established eco
nomic system of production and distribution, while not
weakening my belief in its fundamental economic sound
ness and rightfulness, had yet forced me to realize its
many abuses, and fostered an attitude of protest against
its great and manifest evils. Furthermore, the critical and
searching inquiry of the theoretical social-revolution
aries and intellectuals into American institutions and
American democracy, an inquiry all the more instructive
because of its keenness and ability to perceive the incon
sistencies and weaknesses of both, made an attitude of
complacency toward the established order extremely
difficult to maintain. The particularly odious forms in
which special privilege had existed and still existed to
some degree in Russia gave rise to a very strong reaction
against them, which resulted in a more hostile and critical
attitude toward great inequalities between men the world
over. Finally, the passionate nature of the times made it
no longer possible, in discussing and thinking about social
problems, to take refuge behind comfortable but vague
generalities. For I had been living under conditions which
had broken down conventions, shown up shams and given
to such general terms as 'proletariat,' 'bourgeoisie,' 'capi
talist' intensely human and personal content.
The nature of the change of attitude produced by the
cumulative effect of these various influences was twofold.
In the first place, it was a refusal further to take for

CONCLUSIONS
granted as valid for the present day inherited social stan
dards and political formulas, without weighing each care
fully in the balance. In the second place, it was a keener
appreciation than could have been possible in the orderly
times of peace of how immensely more important are
human rights than property rights. If these were its effects
upon an individual American who had come to Russia
with no thought of political philosophizing, it is not un
reasonable to expect that on a larger scale the proletarian
revolution in Russia may have similar effects upon men in
other countries. It is fair to assume that the result of
Russia's experience will be, first, to take from contem
porary institutions much of the prestige which is due to
the mere fact of their having the sanction of precedent
and respectability, and to lead liberal people to judge them
solely on their own merits with regard to needs of the
present day; and second, to increase the power and the
numbers of those who earnestly believe that every man, no
matter how humble, has the right to be respected, to be
independent, and to share in as large a measure as is pos
sible, without definite harm to the general interests of the
community, in tlie good things of the world, not as a con
cession from those holding economic power, but as a
human right.
Russia had thus demanded of an American a new atti
tude of mind toward the problems of the day. She had
also shown in dramatic manner the latent power in the
masses which makes them the ultimate and controlling
factor in national life. Nowhere in the world were the
masses of the people more passive and more disconnected
from government and politics than in Russia. And yet,
when a leadership had been found that appealed to their
189

THE GROPING GIANT
real desires and fundamental interests, they had swept all
before them. After these desires had been in part satisfied
by the taking of the land by the peasants, and the leader
ship of the Bolsheviki ceased to express the people's will,
I had seen the new leaders forced to resort fo the old
precarious methods of government by bayonets and
violence. This development of the Bolshevik Government
into a more and more autocratic and arbitrary power, in
proportion as it became less and less a reflection of the
collective judgment and feeling of the Russian people,
was an extraordinarily clear demonstration of the fact
that free government is inconsistent with the application
of any social theory which represents the thought of a
single individual or a single group in the community. The
failure of the Intelligentzia to set up a stable government
in the regions under their control was added evidence of
this fact. For they, too, like the Bolsheviki, insisted on
exercising power according to preconceived ideas, without
regard to the wishes of the mass of the people. In a
greater degree than either of the others, the monarchists
were unresponsive to the will of the people. In the face of
the first tremendous demonstration of mass power in the
October revolution, the blindness and weakness of those
who, learning nothing from the revolution, still looked
upon the people as chattels and hoped to restore Czarism,
was strikingly revealed.
For Russia the future was full of darkness and shadows,
but two things were certain — the Bolshevik Government,
though it might live long, could not be permanent, because
it no longer expressed any broad aspiration of the people,
and monarchy could never permanently prevail, because
it would have to rest entirely on the hated methods of
190

CONCLUSIONS
suppression and coercion. The stable government of Rus
sia, for which we are all longing, must have its roots in
the consent of the masses, and must look upon their needs
with understanding and sympathy. For any government
which does not fulfil these two conditions will be at best
a makeshift which the masses will look upon with indif
ference and which they will passively resist. But the task
of establishing such a government in Russia is one that
will require the painstaking labor of a generation, rather
than the leadership, however brilliant, of any one man, for
its successful accomplishment depends upon a certain
degree of real progress on the part of the peasant himself.
Before liberal Russia can attain her ideal, time and edu
cation must bear their needed fruit in a fairly intelligent
peasantry and a substantial middle class. To hold fast to
the belief that the Russian people will in time develop
such a stable and well-ordered government is the greatest
test of the faith, patience and constancy of the real friends
of Russia.
The Czar had entirely disregarded the homely, crude
expressions by simple people of their hopes and desires.
The first revolutionary government had spoken a lan
guage more in accord with democratic parliamentary
ideas, but not a language the Russian masses understood.
The Bolsheviki, to whom was left an open field to organ
ize and give expression to the desires of the great mass
of the common people, used this opportunity to strengthen
their own power and to establish a new autocracy. They
had shown the extraordinary power that may be exer
cised by a unified, purposeful minority, but they had
erected a magnificent edifice on a quicksand. All alike
failed because they did not keep step with the develop-
191

THE GROPING GIANT
ment of the country, because no one of them was compre
hensive enough or broad enough to express the national
will. Thus the whole experience of Russia was a warning
against political panaceas of all sorts. It was a warning
that in America, as well as in Russia, it is not safe, it is
not just, it is not wise to resent and disregard expressions
of feeling crudely and sometimes violently voiced by men
who feel that injustice and oppression exist widely in
our land. It was a lesson rather to seek the causes of such
discontent than to stifle its expression, and this all the
more because, in view of the great difference in the condi
tions of the two countries, the experience of Russia could
never be the experience of America. If the masses of
Russia are the ultimate controlling power of that land,
how much more is this true of America where the general
level of intelligence is so much higher, and how much
more important and worthy of honest and sympathetic
consideration are what a practical politician once referred
to in my hearing as "the rudimentary, impractical, stupid
opinions" of the rank and file of plain people.
Bolshevik Russia, by forcing me to think definitely in
terms of class, gave an entirely new value to the Ameri
can conception of freedom from class barriers. The Bol
shevik regime offered abundant proof that to place the
interests of one class above the interests of the whole
inevitably leads to the baldest and most flagrant injustice.
The first and most obvious example of this was the exclu
sion of men of patriotism, honesty and culture from the
councils of the nation simply because of their class. As
time passed, and the initial impetus under which the Bol
sheviki came into power gradually died away, the in
justice and narrowness inseparable from the Bolshevik
192

CONCLUSIONS
theory increased. Having willingly and of its own choice
closed the door to cooperation and compromise upon a
large and influential part of the nation, the Bolshevik
Government, in order to render itself safe and to preserve
its power, had to resort to ever greater centralization and
a well-organized military dictatorship. Since it openly
professed to govern in the interests of one class only it
could not do otherwise, and so little by little began to
make enemies of those who otherwise might have been
its friends. The more enemies it made the severer became
its military rule, the stricter its censorship, the more
active and the more one-sided its propaganda. One by one
every avenue of free expression of opinion was closed.
The oppressive and disheartening feeling that the govern
ment was using every ounce of its great power to effect
a complete separation between men of different inherit
ance and opportunities, and to stifle every effort at co
operation and understanding between them grew ever
more intense. Bolshevism showed the reverse side of the
medal of which Czarism had been the face. Czarism had
been a government of one class, and in proportion as
under the Bolsheviki it became more and more difficult
and dangerous to advocate views in which I passionately
believed, it became easier to appreciate the way liberal-
minded men had felt when denied freedom of thought
under the old regime. Suppression of free speech had
fanned the flame of revolution in Russia. I myself had
felt enough of the bitterness of one who is denied the
right to speak his mind openly to realize, as I could never
have realized in America, that suppression of ideas by
force can accomplish no permanent result; that it can
i93

THE GROPING GIANT
only create a state of angry discontent, and strengthen
the hold of the ideas against which it is directed.
The hatred and bitterness felt in Russia against the
Bolsheviki had many roots. It sprang from their cruelty,
their fanaticism, their egoism, their abuse of power, their
betrayal of Russian interests, their dishonoring of Russia's
name. But these things were effects rather, than causes,
for they in turn really grew out of the fact that, in their
theory of government, the Bolsheviki had deliberately
chosen a low ideal instead of a high one. As suggested by
one of the younger Scotch philosophers,1 they had in effect
said: "It is no use trying to have government in the
interests of all the people in the state. It takes too long
tO develop the necessary unity of mind and will. Let us
choose something easier to attain. Let us create a govern
ment of one class only; that, at least, we can and we will
do." From this initial choice of a class ideal flowed the
peculiar evils of the Bolshevik regime. And this faint
hearted choice of the easier and more attainable ideal was
based upon a frank and open disbelief in the ability of
the people to govern themselves.
It was therefore with great surprise that in March 19 19,
I returned to America to find sweeping over the country
a wave of hysteria against every form of radicalism. It
seemed for the moment as if America also were losing con
fidence in the strength of her own institutions, and veering
toward the Bolshevik and Czarist view that all men must
be made to conform to the dominant point of view. By
repressing the ideas which it hated, Czarism had lived
long, but had made its own destruction inevitable; by re
pressing the ideas which it hated, Bolshevism was laying
1 J. W. Scott in "Syndicalism and Philosophical Realism."
194

CONCLUSIONS
the foundation for its own ruin; by repressing ideas repug
nant to it, American democracy might create a situation
dangerous to its vigorous and orderly development and
imperil its best service to mankind. Intimate acquaint
anceship, both theoretical and practical, with economic
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat had so
impressed me with their inadequacy to meet the needs of
a great people that I was perfectly certain that America
had nothing to fear from those who preached them. To
find men suggesting that the preachers of the Bolshevik
gospel and doctrines of a similar nature should be dealt
with by violence seemed to argue a surprising lack of
faith in American democracy. No American returning
from Russia could fail to have absolute faith that, if
only the issue were squarely joined, the American ideal of
democracy would prevail overwhelmingly over the ideals
of the revolutionary leaders of Russia. For, as the funda
mental weakness of the Bolshevik power was due to the
deliberate choice of the ideal of class government and the
denial of the competence of the people to know what was
best for them, so the fundamental strength of American
democracy lay in its choice of a government designed to
permit the greatest possible measure of human liberty,
and based upon confidence in the righteousness and
soundness of the collective judgment of all the people.
The Intelligentzia of Russia, even in their hour of fail
ure and tragedy, had preserved that distinguishing refine
ment and culture which has won for them the admiration
of the world. I had been charmed by the brilliance and
facility of their conversation, the quickness and subtlety
of their minds. I was struck by the almost universal pos
session on the part of educated people of extraordinary
i95

THE GROPING GIANT
gifts of appreciation of art, of music and of literature,
which made these things a vital factor in everyday life to
a far greater degree than in my own matter-of-fact,
America. But as I lived longer with them it seemed to me
as if the disproportionate emphasis placed upon these
very qualities tended to deprive the Intelligentzia of their
proper place in their country's life by making of them a
race separate and apart from the mass of the people. Still
further, there was much in the life of the Russian Intelli
gentzia to make an American living among them prize
more highly than ever the optimistic, frank and generous
spirit so common among men of his own country. For
through all Russian life, among the peasants, and among
the Intelligentzia as well, there runs a strain of suspicion,
a distrust of one another's motives, so pronounced and so
universal as fundamentally to affect the nation's life.
"Whom shall we believe?" — this is the tragic question
which comes down to Russians of the present day from
the terrible inheritance of the old regime when every
neighbor might be a spy, every chance word a betrayal.
In addition to this undermining lack of faith in one
another, I found among the Intelligentzia a fatalism and
a habit of introspection and subjectivity which added
greatly to the handicaps under which they labored in
their hour of crisis. The evils which the attitude of dis
trust ori the part of anti-Bolshevik Russians brought upon
that part of Russia which was under their control were
the best and most convincing proof of the need of a social
point of view on the part of those who would lead a
nation's life. What anti-Bolshevik Russia needed most,
what anti-Bolshevik Russia had still to gain, was a willing
ness among the educated and cultivated people to put the
196

CONCLUSIONS
general welfare above private considerations, a large-
mindedness that would yield personal convictions to Sie
best collective judgment of the people, and a spirit of
cooperation and confidence among men of different views.
The absence of this spirit had rendered futile many well-
intentioned efforts at reconstruction in Russia. It had
caused suffering, division and failure. My life in Russia,
especially my contacts with the Intelligentzia class, had
taught me in the most vivid and striking manner the
primary importance of strengthening and encouraging in
all phases of the nation's life the spirit of social service
and social responsibility which finds, not by any means
its only, but its best and most general expression in
America among the rank and file of the men and women
of the Christian Church.
To a degree altogether unexpected on my part, the year
and a half spent in revolutionary Russia had shown how
great is the responsibility, how wonderful the opportunity
of America for leadership among men the world over who
love and strive for intellectual and political freedom.
i Among the peasants and soldiers at the front, America
lad seemed to stand for a wonderful land where freedom
vsls a fact, and all things were arranged as in some fairy
land of legend. The small dealers, railroad workers and
clerks who make up what we should call the middle class
rere always ready to talk for hours about democratic
/ America. The Bolsheviki themselves looked upon America
as less to be feared than other nations, as a country where
at least an experiment in freedom had been tried, and
from which sympathy for their own great experiment
could be expected. But it was particularly among the
Intelligentzia — always excepting the extreme monarchists
197

THE GROPING GIANT
— that America was looked to for example and guidance.
The men from whose ranks I had become convinced must
come the future leadership of Russia looked across the
Atlantic for help. But they did not look blindly. The fail
ures of America and her shortcomings were perhaps
clearer to them than a patriotic American might wish.
Whether or not America should retain the moral leader
ship which Russia seemed to be offering her freely and
hopefully depended on two things, first, that she should
continue to stand for the things which make for freedom,
justice and social progress within her own borders; and
second, that she should be willing to take her place in the
family of nations as a responsible and active champion
of honesty and fair dealing among all the people of the
world. As I lived among the educated people of Russia
and saw their looks turned toward my country, now in
hope, now in the bitterness of disappointment, it seemed
incredible that America should turn aside from the leader
ship that it lay in her choice to take or leave. An America
resisting all social change, satisfied with her progress thus
far and willing to stand still, taking the best thought of
two centuries ago as the ideal to follow blindly in the new
age, an America turning away from all risk and respon
sibility connected with world affairs — such an America
could do much to dash the hopes and break the spirit of
men whose hearts were set upon the creation of a free
Russia. In her hour of darkest tragedy, when the deceiving and
dazzling romance of a strange land, and the conventional
reserve between men of different races had been swept
aside, Russia had spoken, to me. She had given me the
ability to see social questions, to a considerable degree at
198

CONCLUSIONS
least, from the point of view of the men and women whom
the phraseology of the age that was ending had called
the 'lower' classes. She had given me the certain and
absolute conviction that class rule, whether in the sole
interest of the proletariat or of capital, can only be
tyranny, and that the spirit of the age is moving against
it with a force that must ultimately destroy it. She had
given me a deepened appreciation of the value and vital
importance of free speech, not merely for those who con
form and are called 'respectable,' but for all men who
have honest beliefs and convictions to express. She had
increased my faith in the fundamental soundness of the
American theory of democratic government, and my love
for her institutions without blindness to their defects and
to the need of growth and change. She had instilled a new
respect for the practical energy, the openness of heart,
the give-and-take spirit so characteristic of America. She
had demonstrated the greatness of the opportunity and
responsibility of America in the life of all the nations. By
tearing away shams and showing me realities, she had
deepened my love for the best things America stands for,
had opened a vision of what she might become, had trans
formed American democracy from something to be ac
cepted as an inheritance from the past, into something
to be fought for in the present and in the future. Russia
had been a tragedy, Russia had been a warning. But
Russia had also been an inspiration and a source of re
newed faith in the worthiness and the adequacy of the
ideal of free government for which America at her best
should stand.

199

INDEX

Akmolinsk Provincial Soviet, 121
Alexander I, 151
Alexander Gardens, 37
Alexander the Third Gallery, 89,
95
Alexandrofski Station, 51
All-Russian Congress of Work
men's, Soldiers' and Peasants'
Deputies, 107, 108, 109, in, 123,
14S, 161
All-Russian Provisional Govern
ment, 170
America, 18, 19, 22, 23, 28, 29, 31,
34, 45, 60, 61, 77, 109, in, 121,
124, 125, 137, 147, 157, iS9, 183,
186, 192, 194, 197, 198
American Committee on Public In
formation, 18, 101, 143, 170
American Socialist Party, 124
Angara, 127
Arbat, 51
Archangel, 59
Art Theatre, 44, 48, 156
Austrian Mission, 91
Black Hundred, 144, 160
Bochkareva's Battalion of Death,
. 64
Bohemia, 118

Bolsheviki, 19, 28, 50, 78, 79, 81,
82, 83, 87, 91, 92, 101, 118, 123,
126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134, 135,
136, 141, 14s, 146, 147, 149, 150,
159, 160, 163, 168, 170, 172, 174,
i75, 170, 177, 182, 183, 184, 189,
191, 193, 194, 197
Bolshoi Teatre, 43
Brest-Litovsk, 51, 82, 91, 100, 109
Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 112, 113
Buriats, 150, 163
Burjui, 28, 37, 39, 42, 46, 48, 49,
54, 61, 82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 94, 97,
116, 119, 121, 122, 126, 134, 140,
167, 177, 178, I«2, 184
Cathedral of the Redeemer, 48, 182
Catherine the Great, 89
Central Executive Committee of
the Soviet of Workmen's, Sol
diers' and Peasants' Deputies, 177
Cheremkhova mines, 150
Chinese Eastern Railway, 160
Chinese mercenaries, 163
Chita, 172
City Council, 164, 171
Commissar of the Press, 102
Constantine, 151
Constantinople, S3, 176

201

INDEX

Constituent Assembly, 88, 126, 159,
161
Cooperative Societies, 124, 168, 169,
171, 180
Cossacks, 47, 71, 163
Czar, 43, 44, 47, 60, 64, 72, 95, 101,
106, 131, 144, 148, 150, 168, 176,
191
Czarevitch, 144
Czechs, 119, 155, 163, 164, 166
Czech Army, 170
Decembrists, 151, 152
Dvinsk, 7s, 84, 92
Dvorianski Sobranie, 95, 96, 98
Ekaterinburg, 170, 172, 173, 174,
180, 181, 182, 184
Europe Hotel, 95
February Revolution, 75, 143
Federated Socialist Soviet Republic,
119
Finland, 106, 176
Foritanka, 13s, 140, 160
France, 53, 186
Geitzman, 128, 130, 164
Germans, 52, 82, 89, 91, 92, 102,
103, 139
Germany, 22, 24, 47, 51, 66, 80,
100, 127
Gorky, 44
Grod£kova, 160
Harbin, 155, 157, 158, 160, 163, 178
Hermitage, 89
Horvath, 158, 159, 160
Horvath, Madame, 160
fakovlef, 164, 171, 177
Inner Mongolia, 153

Intelligentzia, 42, 50, ns, 126, 128,
134, 140, 142, 143, 14s, 146, 148,
149, i5S, iS7, 158, 161, 169, 170,
171, 190, 19S, 196, 197
International, 39, 41, 114, 129
Irkutsk, 18, 127, 129, 146, 149, 150,
164, 165, 167, 168, 171, 177
Irkutsk Executive Committee, 130
Irkutsk University, 166
Ivan the Terrible, 33, 39, 89, 113
I. W. W., 124
Japan, 19, 186, 187
Jews, 25, 38, S6, 85, 86, 87, in,
122, 128, 132, 172
Kalgan, 149
Kama River, 175
Kerenski, 22, 23, 24, 36, 86, 132
Kolchak, Admiral, 170, 175
Kornilof, 36
Krasnoyarsk, 124, 126, 127, 161
Kremlin, 36, 37, 39, 40, 46, 48, 107,
108
Lenine, 26, 113, 131, 132, 165, 175
Levine, 72
Ligovka, 137, 146
Maimachen, 152
Manchuria, 160
Manchuria Station, 163
Martof, 114
Marx, Karl, 131
Massaryk, 118
Mensheviki, 114, 156
Mikhailovski Ploshad, 95
Minsk, 54, S6, 57. 59, 80
Moledechno, 80
Mongolia, 149, 150, 1S4
Mongols, 150, 1 54
Mongol Urtas, 153

202

INDEX
Moscow, 18, 26, 28, 32, 33, 36, 37,
38, 39, 46, 49, 51, 54, 57, 59, 68,
70, 75, 81, 82, 92, 104, 105, 106,
107, 111, 121, 127, 132, 140, 141,
143, 146, 156, 181, 182
Moscow River, 48
Moscow University, 38, 142

Neva, 89
Nevski, 88, 95
Nicholas I, 151, IS2
Nikolaevski Station, 51
Nobles' Assembly, 9S, 96, 98, 13s
October Revolution, 35, 42, 51, 75,
77, 87, 126, 132, 143, 168, 190
Old Believers, 69
Omsk, 120, 121, 123, 168, 169, 170 ,
Orthodox Church, 39, 87, 180, 181,
182
Panin, Countess, 137
People's Bank, 168
People's College, 168
People's Commissars, 82, 98, 101,
"3, 114
People's House, 137
Perm, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180
Petrograd, 18, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29,
36, 52, 59, 72, 87, 88, 92, 93, 97,
100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107,
127, 135, i37, 138, 139, 140, 152,
160
Petrograd University, 138, 139
Petrogradski Zavod, 93, 100
Petropavlosk, 89, 136
Pokrovski Cathedral, 39
Poland, 19, 176
Presidium, 113
Prinkipo, 182, 183, 184
Pskoff, 84, 87, 173

Red Gate, 37, 49, 107
Red Guard, 34, 36, 40, 95, 99, 104,
106, 123, 130
Red Square, 38, 40, 41, 42, 48, 49,
68, 92, 107
Revel, 91
Rimski-Korsakof, 113
Ruskie Viedomosti, 181

Samara, 118
Selenga, 151
Selenga River, 149
Semionof, 127, 163, 172
Siberia, 18, 26, 27, 54, 78, 81, 97,
118, 126, 123, 128, 146, 149, 132,
iSS, 163, i67, 169, 172, 177, 181,
184
Siberian Army, 174
Siberian Cooperatives, 168
Smolenski Boulevard, 34, 35, 46,
48,49
Smolny, 88, 90, 92, 101, 102, 103,
113, 114, 13S
Social Revolutionaries, 156, 171,
179
Sovelevski monument, 146
Soviet, 87, 97, 98, 109, 122, 125,
126, 139, 161, 17s
St. Isaac's Cathedral, 90
Stolypin, 74
Strastnoi Monastery, 41
Sverdlof, 132
Tchekof, 44, 45
Third International, 39
Tolstoi, 71
Tomsk, 16S
Tretiakof, 46
Tretiakof Gallery, 47
Troitskosavsk, 149, 150, 152

203

INDEX

Trotsky, 26, 90, 96, 98, 99, 100,
"3, 131, 135, 175
Turgeniev, 44
Tver, 78
Tverskaya, 41
Ural Cossacks, 118
Urals, 170
Urga, 1 53, iSS
Uspenski Sobor, 108
Verkhniudinsk, 149

Vladivostok, 23, 24, 55, 135, 160
Vologda, 29, 32, 33, 48, 78
1
Warsaw station, 52
White Russia, 87
Winter Palace, 89, 152
Yanson, 127, 128, 130, 164
Y. M. C. A., 18, 34, 181
Y. W. C. A., 181
Zemstvo, 164, 165, 171, 180

204

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