# Life in Russia To-day

LIFE IN RUSSIA TO-DAY.
BY
WILFRED. R. HUMPHRIES.
Reported by Amy Oliver in
"The One Big Union Monthly."
Price: One Penny.
Published by THE WORKERS' SOCIALIST FEDERATION, 400, OLD FORD ROAD, LONDON, E.3.
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LIFE IN RUSSIA TO-DAY.
"I SAW more opera in Petrograd during the months it was supposed to be running knee deep in blood, than I ever did in all the rest of my life," said Wilfred R. Humphries, worker for the American Y.M.C.A. and later for the Americar Red Cross in Russia during its reddest months. Humphries, young, unaffected, eager-eyed, of the college organisation worker type, was giving his first lecture on Russia at the People's Institute, 1256 Market St., San Francisco, Thursday evening April 10, and in the course of it showing slides of Bolshevik scenes that he brought with him when he left Russia four months ago. "Besides the opera, there were Ibsen, Shaw, Tolstoy, Shakespeare's plays and vaudeville. In two weeks that Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" ran, I never succeeded in getting in line early enough to get a ticket.
"In Moscow I went to night school three evenings a week to learn Russian, and other evenings attended political meetings at Smolny Institute and other places. And every evening I saw women coming out of theatres in twos and threes unattended by men, Starting out across the city, street-carless and dark, with no fear whatever.
"At this time schools were being organised all over Russia, I remember in Petrograd seeing a poster announcing the opening of a kindergarten that said the children would be served with a hot lunch. This was the chaos and anarchy you read about.
"I heard stories of chaos and anarchy in Russia too. From the time I landed in Vladivostok—where then the red flag was flying—through the seven thousand miles of the journey to Moscow, we were met by the fleeing bourgeoisie and regaled with stories of terror and atrocity, hunger, typhus and murder. Typhus was killing a thousand a day, said the fugitives. Three-fourths of Moscow was burned to the ​ground. The Kremlin was destroyed. First we heard that Kerensky had thoroughly defeated the Bolsheviki. As we came nearer, the story was that the issue of the battle was still in doubt. Nearer—the Bolsheviki seemed to have the advantage, temporarily. When we got there, the six days of fighting was over and Kerensky was fleeing.
"I saw the 'destroyed' Kremlin—with a piece of statuary at the gate broken and holes through two of the churches—otherwise intact. I found the origin of 'three-fourths of Moscow burned.' Five buildings had really been destroyed.
"Outrages—of a sort—I did see. On one of my departures from Petrograd, at the Nicolieff station, I saw three Russian officers, epaulettes off of course, carrying passenger baggage to the train. For the standard fee, since no tips were allowed, they duly carried my luggage for me. I saw a portly Russian gentleman in an expensive fur coat selling a bourgeois newspaper. After a particularly heavy snowfall, the Petrograd Soviet ordered everybody out to shovel snow, with the order that no one physically able to shovel might hire anyone else to do it for him. And house committees enforced the ruling.
"One more outrage I saw. Soon after the Soviets came into power, the bank clerks and civil servants, encouraged and supported by the bourgeoisie, went on strike. Lenin countered suddenly and cruelly by seizing all the banks and ruling that no matter if a man had millions deposited, he could withdraw no more than one hundred and fifty roubles (£3) a month for each member of his family. This meant that the bourgeoisie could get no money to support the strikers and the result was that the strike was broken. But the touch that added insult to injury was the order that each depositor must stand in line to draw his monthly allowance. He could not send anyone for it. I saw in that line a plump, deeply-furred, bediamonded woman with genuine tears coursing down her cheeks at the indignity she was suffering.
"What impressed most impartial observers in Russia was, I think, the tolerance, the considerateness, I had almost said the gentleness of the Soviets and their policies. You ​have heard much about their suppression of bourgeois newspapers. The only ones suppressed, however, were those that were printing absolute and outrageous lies about the Bolsheviki. If a Russian newspaper said in glaring headlines that the Bolsheviki had massacred all the prisoners and cut them in small pieces, that paper would be closed down. But newspapers might print all the arguments against the Soviet system that they pleased. I saw a perfectly orderly and unmolested procession of priests, marching through the streets with banners of protest against the division of church and state.
"The Social Revolutionists had planned a great demonstration in protest against the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, to be held on January 5. The Soviets did all in their power to persuade the Bolsheviki to keep away from the streets where the procession was to pass, so as to avoid any chance of disturbances. There was danger of an uprising, so the Soviets arranged that all public buildings be well-guarded. The manner of this was to ask all the people in the building, including the janitor, to aid in defending it. Besides this, the Soviets had emergency armored cars with Red Guard groups, placed at strategic points about the city.
"Another evidence of this large tolerance is the fact that nothing was done about the dastardly attempt to assassinate Lenin, who was shot at by a member of the Social Revolutionist Party. At one time when the Social Revolutionists seemed bent on starting a reign of terror, the warning was sent out to them: 'For every Bolshevik leader killed, we shall kill one hundred of the Social Revolutionists. That was enough. There was no more trouble except one attempt by an Anarchist girl.
"Trouble between the Anarchists and Bolshevists never came to any more than battles in a few cities just at first. In the early days of Soviet rule, many Monarchists who wanted to oppose the new Government and also wanted to make a living without working, announced themselves as Anarchists and seized houses and goods. But of course the real Anarchists denounced them and now the majority of the Anarchists are supporting the Soviets.
​"Now there are about ninety per cent of the population participating in the Government—and I do not believe that percentage of people vote in America. And those who do useful work with hand or brain—and that means now about ninety per cent of the population—have representation in the Soviets. The teachers send delegates, as do the medical associations composed of doctors and nurses. What was in the beginning a dictatorship of the proletariat—with action begun as it always must be begun, by a militant minority—is now a true democracy.
"Those sabotaging against the Bolsheviki in the early days when they thought that the Government would not last six weeks, are giving up their opposition as they realize that this is a Government which has come to stay. I was in Samara when the teachers' association met, split into a left and right wing: the majority reorganizing the association and electing delegates to the Soviets, the minority going out of the association altogether.
"A considerable section of the Intelligentsia were with the Bolsheviki from the first. A glance at the Bolsheviki Cabinet wiil prove that. I think one might say that it is the most cultured Cabinet in Europe, Many of the rest of the Intelligentsia have been houestly converted since then.
"A minority objects to the centralization of industry—says there is not democracy enough and that the industries should be immediately and completely handed over to the workers.
"But remember that the Bolsheviki do not claim that Russia is wholly Socialistic. They say that the Co-operative Commonwealth is not immediately possible, especially in a country as industrially backward as Russia. They say that Russia will have to develop the stage known as State Capitalism, with concentration of industries and formation of trusts. Mme. Kollontai said: 'We cannot fully socialise Russia all at once. You other nations have a much better chance to socialise your countries, as industry is already partly socialised with you. You can begin where we leave off.'
"But centralisation of industry under proletariat rule is a very different thing from centralisation under bourgeois ​rule, Russia has not nationalised all her industries. Some are still under private ownership. modified by Workers' Control. Committees of workers audit the books of the industry, seeing that there is no watered stock; limit the profits to five or six per cent; require the owner to re-invest in the industry a good portion of his receipts; and regulate hours and wages.
"Lenin says the policy of the Bolsheviki is to take over those industries that have reached the monopolistic stage, and then the others as fast as the new government can swallow them. It may be said that the industries not now owed by the workers are controlled by the workers.
"Under Workers' Control the number of stores and shops has largely decreased, naturally enough with the vanishing of competition.
"Another result of control by the workers, combined with the peasants' ownership of the land and the taking up of work by the parasitical element, has been the 'back to the land' movement. Petrograd and Moscow have materially decreased in population, chiefly as a result of the agitation to go out and take up land, agitation that arose because Petrograd and Moscow were the two places where it was hardest to get food on account of the crippled railroads. But even in those cities during the worst of the railroad demoralization it cost no more than to live in San Francisco. In Moscow I got dinners of soup, meat, vegetables, coffee and sometimes dessert for from five to ten roubles, that is fifty cents to a dollar—and of course conditions have improved since then. Through the darkest days, from the time the Bolsheviki got control, I am sure there was not one starving person in Moscow.
"They had begun to organise the distribution of food in a most fair and thorough manner from the time I arrived in Russia. when the great army of twelve million was still demobilising itself. Even while happy groups of soldiers with their gas masks and tea kettles hung on their backs were trooping home, I saw armed guards handing out leaflets that announced a moratorium on house rents. 'Rentals under one hundred and fifty roubles a month are not payable for three months,' the leaflets said. 'Rentals above this amount ​are payable as usual.' This and the rationing of food was a godsend to the poorer people.
"Of course this was in the early days of Bolsheviki rule. Later it could not be said that the working people were poor people. Their wages were more than adequate—that is, they could live well and save too. When the White Guard overthrew the Bolsheviki in Siberia and re-established capitalism there, the Guard complained during the first few weeks that they could not force workingmen back to work because they had too much money saved up.
"Whenever there was a shortage of anything, sugar, bread, whatever it was, the Bolshevik government monopolized it and rationed it out, issuing food cards to make sure that no one could buy more than his share. Sugar was scarce all over Europe. The Soviets set the price at fifteen cents a pound and allowed each person a monthly allowance of from a half-pound to a pound, depending on the locality. At first for a short time there was a little sugar for sale in isolated markets and the rich people were buying at the rate of $1.50 a pound.
"I had a capital opportunity to see the efficient working of Soviet food control, for in taking twelve hundred Serbian refugees across Siberia for the American Red Cross I had normal business relations with more than one hundred Soviets over three thousand miles of territory. These were refugees who had fled to Roumania, the to South Germany, then to Samara in Russia. Raymond Robbins got an appropriation of a quarter of a million dollars with which to take them out and colonize them until there should be a chance to take them back to Serbia, and I was loaned to the Red Cross to take care of the job.
"I found how ready the Soviets everywhere were to help the refugees. They sold us food at the same rate as it was sold to the Russian people. prices that might interest you particularly, as they were little more than half what would be charged in America. Butter was from two to four roubles a pound, that is twenty to forty cents; eggs were two to two and a half cents apiece; bread three cents a pound; and.at one place we got whole roasted chickens for thirty to sixty cents apiece.
​"We were as generously treated in other respects. At Omsk we asked for a monastery for the housing of the refugees, and would have received it except that it was already full of other refugees, as was the whole city. But the Omsk Soviet sent a celebrated man of the city, a doctor, along with us to help us get settled in the next city. He accompanied us and helped us for ten days, and when I offered him reimbursements for his work and time, he refused it. Afterwards, when the White Guard had overthrown the Bolsheviki at Omsk, I saw him under quite different circumstances, a pitiable figure being taken to prison to be hanged, and I was glad to be able to effect his release by telling his captors how he had aided the American Red Cross.
"Another proof of the remarkable efficiency of the Soviets was the tremendous campaign of propaganda carried on up to the German revolution. Boris Rheinstein, the Socialist Labor Party delegate from America to the proposed Stockholm Conference, was and still is the head of the English-speaking Department of Foreign Propaganda. Petroff, one of the two men released from English jails on the demand of the Soviet Government, which ruled that no Englishman could go into of out of Russia until they were freed, is the right hand man of the chief of all the propaganda. Two dailies in German with a half-million circulation were printed and shipped to the German frout, some by airplane, some by hand, through Russians who had become acquainted with Germans during the fraternization period. An illustrated paper for the benefit of the uneducated Germans was also got out. One of these showed the photograph I am showing you here of the German Embassy building, with an inscription something like this beneath it: 'See the building of the German Embassy, with a banner above it bearing the words of a great German. Is it Bismarck? No. Is it the Kaiser? No. It is the immortal Karl Marx, and his words are: 'Workers of the World, Unite!' Now we throw back to you the words of your great countryman and ask you to unite. We Russians have taken the words seriously and all power is now in the hands of the workers. How ​long will it be before a German Socialist will come as Germany's ambassador?' Besides these, pamphlets were got out in English, French, Swedish, Turkish, Musselman and Chinese. I came in close contact with these propaganda workers while I was working for the American Y.M.C.A., getting out and distributing copies of President Wilson's Fourteen Point speech. The Russians liked that speech and agreed with most of its fourteen points, but were a little sceptical as to whether the Allies would stand by it.
"I got up to Petrograd in time to spend six interesting weeks seeing big things happen there, with John Reed, Louise Bryant and Albert Rhys Williams. I was at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee when it decided to let the Constituent Assembly meet for one day as a demonstration of class line-up. And I saw the Assembly dissolved early one morning by a sailor who did it simply by telling them that the Red Guard was tired and wanted to go home.
"I saw one whole Sunday of bourgeois protest meetings in Moscow. These were carried on in a very sensible way. Two hundred or more groups of two or three bourgeois men and women formed about the city, each group engaging a few soldiers in an argument. There was no disorder, the Russians are so amazingly reasonable. But no one succeeded in convincing the soldiers that they had done wrong in taking the power away from the 'natural rulers,' as the bourgeois put it.
"'Why don't you trust the educated people to lead you, instead of putting faith in this Lenin, this German agent?' some bourgeois men asked one soldier.
"'We are dark and ignorant, I know,' the soldier replied, 'but there is one thing we do know, and that is that the educated people have always deceived us.'
"I saw some of the 'dark and ignorant' Russian people at their work of governing. In one place I saw the village Soviet meeting, half a dozen stolid-faced earnest workingmen and peasants discussing ways and means of forming a farmers' school and using a calculating board with bobbins on a wire to help them with their adding and subtracting.
​"And I saw everywhere the village and city schools the Soviets opened—rows of earnest children presided over by an eager-faced womanly teacher or two.
"The Soviets seem to be guided by common sense and the spirit of co-operation. There is no truth at all in the constant rumors of splits between Lenin and Trotzky, for instance.
"The Bolsheviki have, as you have heard, turned many of their munition factories into factories for the manufacture of agricultural machines. But not all of them, They knew that they must aid the first nation that had a revolution, so they kept a necessary number of the munition plants going.
"I saw in Samara the poster announcing the socialization of women, and making it appear that this plan was given out by an Anarchist society there. Enemies of the Soviets knew that they couldn't make people believe that the Soviets would authorize the socialization of women, so evidently their idea was to imply that the Anarchists would soon overthrow the Bolsheviki and put such practices into effect so that on the whole it would be better to go back to Czarism. The Anarchists came out with a vigorous denial, of course. I have a copy of the posters of the denial they put up, reading something like this:
"'From the Samara Federated Anarchists: Enemies, you are defeated and you show that you are getting desperate when you employ such methods. Anarchists all over the world have fought and are fighting for freedom. Is it likely that we would now use our freedom to enslave women?'
"And I heard friends and enemies of the Bolsheviki express their opinion frankly enough. An American in Moscow said, when he heard the Germans had opened a bank at Riga, 'Better German banks here than banks managed by them damn Bolsheviki!' And an American who was in Russia as a representative of the International Harvester Company and later was made an American Consul, said to me, 'Yes, I hope the end of the war is near, so that Germany and the Allies can come in here together and put down the Bolsheviki.'"
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