Moscow

Friday. Nov 4-1927 In Russia

6 AM It is snowing out. The north seems addicted to a small guttered or shallow wagon and a single horse. As in Norway they protect the railroad tracks from snow in winter by growing hedges or placing fences on either side. In so far as I can see, these are the true people of Russias great writers—Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoievsky & Saltykov.¹ One sees their types everywhere—the heavy & yet shrewd peasents; the self-concerned and even now, under communism, rather authoritative petty officials (Railroad conductors, station masters, etc.) I see a peasent in a ragged coat & cap go by & he lifts his cap to a depot official I see them—working classes deliberately & rather stodgily doing this or that. That quick, nervous energy which one often sees even in the commonest of American laborers is wanting here.

It is 2³⁰ and we are to arrive at 3. Some French communists in the next compartment are obviously preparing an address to the fellow-internationals in Moscow and have borrowed my fountain pen where with to do it. I hear “confreres” with the peculiarly French intonation. Also “Vive la Commune”—and “capital” accented in a purely French way. They are going to have a grand time when they get there. And then Moscow itself. Not very impressive. On a distant road—as seen from the train—a bus. And outside the town some small new dwellings. As the train stops, a band playing what I learn is the red—or international song.² And a most uninspired thing it is. Next addresses—perhaps among them—the one I heard being composed. But special agents (two jews by the way) find me & lead me off to an automobile and the Grand Hotel near the Red Square.³ But the wretched collection of autos in front of this station. The shabbiest Georgia or Wyoming town would outclass them. And the people! This mixture of Europeans & Asiatics! International Asiatic life mixed with some Europeans. One gets a sense of strangeness and delapidation, — old—and not so pleasingly constructed stores mingled with exotic theatres, halls & most of all churches. An aged Luna Park.⁴

I settle in room 112—on the second floor: rococo and shabby grand. But said to be high in price. Almost instantly Mr. Dinamov of the government publishing house & what I take to be his young mistress arrive.⁵ They are over alive with a sense of obligation. I am exotically important in their eyes. Ah, will I have this and will I have that. Whom will I see? Whom meet? And I am wondering who will meet me. But a list is made. As we talk the representative of the Chicago Daily News arrives. He comes to offer the use of his stenographer, his papers & books. He has a room in the same hotel. Some ten minutes later Scott Nearing, who has crossed Asia & the Pacific, walks in.⁶ He wishes to be of service—to “wise me up” on Russia & promises to be on my right hand. And then Messrs Biedenkapp and Kreat—the one the representative of the International Workers Aid of America—the other the same of France. They wish to be of service in laying out a plan for me. And after them the representative of the Associated Press. He wishes to send off a cable and invite me to a party. I decide to accept for this coming week. At 10—roughly I am done—call for food & eat while the telephone bell rings in vain. Later I frame questions which might be asked of Stalin. Write three letters, among them one to Helen—and turn in. I have seen nothing resembling red slippers in Moscow as yet.

Saturday, Nov. 5-1927 - Hotel Grand, Moscow

Positively the Russians are a strange and wonderful people. I have spent a half day in their principal and severest prison. It was Biendenkapp who arranged this for me—a small, aggressive, self-opinionated & almost pushing person—but well meaning (I think) and rather pro-communist, or imagines that he is. He comes at 9¹⁵ AM. to tell me that I must not miss this. It will illustrate the communistic idea of crime, punishment and reformation. And truly it did . . . . . . . In a taxi with three others and an interpreter I rode to the prison.⁷ Laid out like the letter K with five tiers of cells—one above the other. The smell. The cells. Yet all a great improvement on what was in the days of the Czar. All underground cells abandoned & turned into work rooms with textile machinery. The old central chapel with sealed booths, through a small slot in which a prisoner could only peek at the priest & the services, turned into a public hall for prisoners where cinema and other entertainments are given. No more solitary comfinement in the old sense. Only five grades of punishment—as follows:

—The barber was a murderer here for ten years. The head chef—also a murderer. One of the interesting prisoners was an old & rather simple looking and yet perhaps crafty Russian who in the Czars day had been an “Agent Provacture”. On the one hand he had joined the Nihilists and helped on a plot to blow up the Czars train which failed—but in which attempt he took part—or was supposed to. On the other hand after the Czar was slain & the secret records of the police opened by the Reds, it appeared that this man had been in the pay of the police and had helped to egg on the Nihilists for cash. All this he told in answer to questions put by our guide at the prompting of various sightseers. And he told it all quite simply and directly. Was he sorry? he was asked. Yes. He had been mistaken. Had the Soviet treated him fairly, since the discovery of his crime? Yes. Was the prison life here fair—humane? Very. When would he be free? In six years. “They should have shot the bloody bastard” said an Englishman behind me.

There was another interesting prisoner, a Russian small village priest. With another man he plotted the murder of a man and carried it out. He was sentenced to 10 years—the maximum sentence under the new law. But him! A character out of Opera Bouffé. A Cambodian! A Korean with a high straw hat—the size & shape of a silk dicer—& this set on top of some kind of a yellow silk head band. And a long, dirty ragged & yet swathing coat—but on the order of a linen duster. And the pale, weak eyes. A strangely Chinese-like face & figure.—and yet what—lunatic, zealot, neurotic dreamer? Possibly & possibly not. Russian jurists today are extremely careful students of neuroses of all kinds & their relations to crime . . . . . . Through the interpreter I talk to him. His voice & gestures indicated a chemical cosmos so remote from my own that it was as though I were talking to a being from another. Dostoievsky in his most erratic psychologic divagations never evolved a more unbelievable figure or temperament than this. Yes—he had been a priest in a village 300 miles away. It was true he was accused of murder—he and another citizen. But his accusers were mistaken. And for how long had he been sentenced? Ten years. And would be shortened by labor or good behavior? Yes—to six years. And was he, too, permitted to leave the prison annually on a vacation? Yes. And would be, after he was released, return to the region from which he was convicted? Yes. Why? It was where he was born! And would he be able to resume a normal life? He hoped so. . . . . . . I left him strangely dreaming in one of the halls of the prison—leaning one of his thin, almost emaciated shoulders against the stone wall.

One of the oddities of this prison was that in this prison kitchen— and on account of the 10^th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, they were baking each of the prisoners a one pound loaf of white bread— their ordinary bread year in & year out being a very dark brown, soggy & sour loaf—the taste of which I could not endure.

The guards carry no guns. Are not allowed to kill in case of attempted escape. A basket ball net in the main court. . . . . . . . . We return to the hotel and find Dinamov. We take dinner in the hotel and he has a plan for a walk, after which I am to visit Bill Heywood.⁸ After dinner Biedenkapp comes & suggests that I take a front room viewing the gate to the Red Square. I decide to move—but sleep first. Dorothy Thompson calls but I pretend to be asleep. At five we move to the new room (302) and order supper. I write letters and afterwards we start walking but it is raining & instead we take a taxi to the Hotel Lux.⁹ I am called upon to show my passport—(all visitors to this building are) and afterwards go with Dinamov to Ruth Cornells room.¹⁰ I see plainly that they have a sex relation of some kind; after a talk we visit Heywood in his room below. It is crowded with dubious radicals. He himself has aged dreadfully. I would not have believed that one so forceful could have sagged & become so flaccid and buttery. But life has beaten him as it beats us all. He said he had been sick—very, two years before. Also that he had married a Russian woman 1 year before. She came in later—a kind of Slav slave. Also he had been writing his memoirs & now exhibited a childish pride in what he had achieved.¹¹ But he admitted that he was through—this was his last shot—(He of the Colorado Mine Strike—of Lawrence, Lowell, Patterson, of the I.W.W. & the Chicago Trial). I could not believe it. Would I not come & read a few chapters of his book & tell him what I thought. I told him that I would. . . . . . . Then up with Ruth Cornell & Dinamov—and I leave. But she follows out into the hall & I announce that I am going to walk back. She suggests walking herself—and we do—viewing the decorations for the Red celebration as we go. When we get to the hotel she suggests a walk into the Red Square and I agree—whereupon Dinamov leaves—whether peeved or not I cannot say. And we view the Soviet General Store,¹² Lenins tomb, and she tells me that already to the superstitious Russian temperament Lenin has become a saint. Actually—as yet—the Central Soviet does not dare to bury or burn the body. It has become a shrine. And with it, in the Russian mind—has risen the idea that so long as it is there—and maybe no longer—that communistic principles will prevail in Russia! And then I see Jack Reeds grave and so to the hotel.¹³ I complain of loneliness & she comes up. We finally reach an understanding and she stays until two. Before going she fusses with me for not protecting her. But she promises to come again tomorrow or Monday.

Big Bill Haywood, International Workers of the World labor leader. (From Joseph R. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement [Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1969])

Ruth Kennell in Red Square during Dreiser’s visit. (From Ruth Epperson Kennell, Theodore Dreiser and the Soviet Union [New York: International Publishers, 1969], p. 208)

Sunday. Nov. 6 - 1927- Moscow-Hotel Grand

Still grey & rainy. I write most of the day. In the morning Vox , that takes care of such visitors as myself here, sends a guide and interpreter who is to be with me all day.¹⁴ But I send him away, telling him to return at one. Meanwhile various visitors,—Prof. H. W. L. Dana of the New School for Social Research in N.Y.,¹⁵ Scott Nearing, the representative of the Chicago Daily News, the head of and others who tell me different things about Russia & what is in store for me. After the celebration I am to be permitted to see some of leaders & directors of the Communist Party—who rule in Russia, and after that given a guide & my transportation to and lodging in such points in Russia as I wish to visit. Nearing suggests Ruth Cornell, since she talks both Russian & English— and since we are already so close it strikes me as almost an ideal choice. At 4³⁰ in the afternoon is to be the opening—of the ten days celebration as well as the welcoming of foreign communists & visitors. I am brought a box ticket and go—for the opening at least . . . . . Very impressive—especially the memorial song for the dead played by a competent orchestra & listened to, standing, by the huge assembly. This opera house within & without is more impressive than quite any in Europe¹⁶ . . . . . . . . At five thirty I leave & return to find Ruth Cornell & Dinamov here. She is to take me to see a Russian folk play at one of the little theatre art schools which proves to a fascinating picture of village life at the time of the overthrow of the Tzar and the inauguration of the Soviet. It is too long, but if cut would prove successful in America. I am sure. After the show I leave her at box & return to write . . . . . . . . . . .

The Russians are surely an easy going people—practical in some things, indifferent or impractical in others. This hotel for instance. Architecturally in the inside all its features are semi-palatial—great halls, great chambers—extravagant, Grand Louis furniture, and yet here & there with torn rugs, indifferent bedding, the plumbing out of order, two minute elevators carrying only two persons at a time, locks that dont work; often no hot water after 9 at night, indifferent room service at night. Yet such service as you get always courteous—except in the main office where one can stand for hours unless one can make oneself understood in the language of the particular clerk on guard. And it is assumed to be an international hotel under direct charge of the Soviet Central Government. . . . . . . . . . . . Again the theatre we visited tonight had but one entrance and no exit for as many as 800 or 900 people. And because all wraps & over shoes must be left at the door an almost disgraceful crush or fight to get in and again to get out! The theatre itself—the building, was formerly a really gorgeous private residence taken from one of the rich bourgeois families by the Soviet. “And where are its members”, I asked. “Does anyone know?” “Dead or working in New York or Paris as waiters”.

Monday. Nov. 7-1927- Grand Hotel Moscow

I am awakened by the music of a band and the tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers entering the Red Square. It is the beginning of the 10 days celebration of the 10^th anniversary. And although it is only 8³⁰, here they come—long lines of marching troops—The Red Guard—Kurds from Kurdistan. The Den Cossacks in long flying coats, boots, spurs & fur caps and riding small but apparently strong & swift horses. And a few companies of Siberian rifles. And now the railroad gaurds in long great over coats and some special design of caps—and all shoulders slung with rifles: and so the frontier gaurds; and a troop of revolutionists from far Georgia with grey beards & heavy furs & riding smart black horses. It is said that they fought bitterly against the white imperialists and are all that are left of a large division of fighting men: And now Caucasus Mountain artillery with light mountain wagons fitted with small cannon & machine guns. And so on—file after file until 11 AM. And the workers appear—first arrived trades unionists—machinists, wood carvers, glass makers, shoe machine men, furniture men, stone cutters—a hundred lines—and all armed. And after them the great parade of communist sympathizers—thousends & thousends of men & women, boys & girls in all lines of work—some in white; some in blue—some wearing white caps, some red—and after the Russian temperament all rather vivid & gay. They approach the entrances to the Red Square—which is directly in front of my room in four converging lines— twelve abreast. And the marching continuous from 11 until night. They are marching to show the world how great is their faith in red Russia. And here, where so recently was only poverty, ignorance & blind faith are now more or less educated & trained men & women, boys & girls. One sees all sorts of intelligent, illustrative floats, visually demonstrating what Russia is now achieving commercially—reapers, binders, tractors, hay balers, engines, cars, steel building bars—commercial wares of all kinds and the whole interspersed with banners, banners, banners telling the world, I suppose, that Soviet Russia will never again endure capitalist tyranny—or words to that effect. And these bands and hurrahs. One gathers that at last Mother Asia—which is mostly Russia today, is at last awake & alive to modern conditions. This enormous giant is at last rousing itself from the sleep of centuries—equipping itself—entering (for it) upon a strange new day and mission. I never expected to see so strange a thing—the marching asiatics of all casts of countenance—from Chinese to European, and singing hymns of brotherhood—and saluting reverently as they pass the mausoleum of the master of them all—Lenin. No Priests, no banners; just symbols of human determination to make life more bearable for all. I think—if only human nature can rise to the opourtunity—here is one for the genuine betterment of man. But, mayhap, the program is too beautiful to succeed;—an ideal of existence to which frail & selfish humanity can never rise. Yet I earnestly hope that this is not true—that this is truly the beginning of a better—or brighter, day for all. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diary leaf 110, an entry handwritten by Dreiser. (From the Theodore Dreiser Collection, Special Collections Department, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Marchers in Red Square during the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. (From the Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents, Moscow)

9³⁰ A.M. I go to Red Square and witness the parade from the grand stand. Meet Scott Nearing & some fellow collectivist who has just returned from 9 years of life in Peking. He tells how the economic & social advance of the last ten or twenty years has been almost completely checked by the fighting between the Communists & the non-communists. England & Japan—aided—as usual by American high finance—have joined to check the communistic advance of South China. In the melee, hospitals_y laboratories, universities, business and social enterprises of all kinds have gone by the board—the work of years undone. And the outlook, according to him, even worse. Like Nearing he also had crossed Siberia to Moscow. Saw the country & cities enroute. The poor clothes of all the population—and especially the peasents_y had depressed him—but physically—he thought—they looked hale enough. But there would have to come much in clothing & building & supplies in stores, before the nation would look anything but strained . . . . . . . . .

View of the Trade Union Building during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. (From the Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents, Moscow)

At 11³⁰ I leave here and watch the files still parading before my windows. The big engine (life size) and the thrasher & reaper. They stand in front of the hotel for hours before they join a procession of floats. Later after writing letters I follow one of the approaching lines to its end. Studying thousends of Russians so, I conclude that as yet the women—and many of the men, are physically too heavy & stodgy to be attractive. And just now their clothes are too sombre. But here & there one sees a boy or a girl—or a man or woman, who is attractive and semi-smart. But the semi-orientalism of it all weighs on me. So much is needed to modernize the city. . . . . At the end of the line—and as I turn off to go back by another, I encounter Ruth (Kennell). She has done her bit in the procession & dropped out. We walk back to the hotel together, visiting a church or two. At the hotel she comes & we play about until dinner which I order in the room. Then Dorothy Thompson and arrive—and also stay, and there is a long discussion of communism as opposed to capitalism. Miss Thompson makes some severe comments on the general communistic assumption that capitalism, particularly in America, has no advantages. She is not wholly for individualism but feels that communism—as expressed thus far in Russia, is a drab affair—more a matter of mental or idealistic enthusiasm on the part of its members than of actual material improvement. The Moscow decorations. I say they remind me of a 14^th St. Fire Sale. At 7³⁰ Scott Nearing & Prof. Dana arrive. We are supposed to go and see the young dancers of the Irina Duncan School dance.¹⁷ We walk there—but the dancers having marched all day are too tired to dance & the invitation is put over until Thursday. Then—with Dorothy Thompson, Nearing & Dana I visit the Cathedral of Our Savior—on the Moscow River—said to be the largest in Russia.¹⁸ It is fascinating in the moonlight outside & the gloom—broken by a few candles on the inside. I gather en route that D. T ______ is making overtures to me. Afterwards Nearing leads us to the Chinese Eastern “University”—really a Red School for Chinese Communists, 200 of whom are sent here annually by the Koumintang—the Communist Central Organization in China.¹⁹ I hear—from young Chinese—and in English—the state of Communism in China. It is shot through with proletarian unrest, fired by Russia. 20,000 Communists have been killed by conservatives. A northern white or capitalistic army—engineered & backed by England, Japan & the United States is fighting & killing communists but not seriously affecting the Red Revolution. To be caught reading communistic literature or venture the Soviet idea in any form means death. And the Communists are replying with death to those who kill their comrades. The 200 students of this class—the entire 400 in the school (the total “university” course is for two years!) expect to return in China & fight—and also to die inside of 3½ years. Their young minds have been set on fire by Communist leaders in Russia . . . . . The Chinese Wall newspaper! The poems translated & then beautifully recited in Chinese. The young movie queen—Chinese girl student. Hollywood would prize her. And it is obvious from what source her beauty technique has been derived—the American movies in China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We go to Scott Nearings room in the Hotel Passage. D _____ T ______ & I continue our flirtation. After a supper with the American delegation she comes to my room with me to discuss communism & we find we agree on many of its present lacks as well as its hopeful possibilities. I ask her to stay but she will not—tonight.

Tuesday Nov. 8-1927- Moscow. Hotel Grand

Very bright & fairly warm—like an April day in America. I decide—since it is a holiday, to do the churches. Ruth Kennell—who is now my secretary, arrives & we hire a Droschy²⁰ for 2 roubles an hour (7⁰⁰). Then we set forth and visit the following churches.

But after visiting Vassile Blagenoi²¹ we cross the stone or bridge of the Moscow River & I get out to look at the Kremlin (Kreml)— quite the loveliest imperial enclosure I have ever seen. The towers! The spires! The pinapple domes. And so gloriously colored—red, gold, blue, green, brown, white. And really sparkling in the sun. Baghdad! The fabled cities of Aladdins world! and yet real! Here before my eyes. As we stand here Ruth tells me the story of Tzar Theodore—now being given at the Bolshoi Theatre, and the scenes of which were laid in this very Kreml.²² But I dream of still older days—of fantastic gayeties & delights & splendors that never were—things of my own creating. And all the while the muddy water of the Moscow River running under my feet—this quaint— the oriental droschy is clattering here & there; the suns rays being refracted by the glorious pinnacles before me. . . . . And then once more the Church of Our Savior—by day. And Ruth tells me how she—born a Lutheran, married a Methodist Minister and really wrecked his life. It would make a novel. And she describes how, on Easter night, this Cathedral is lighted with 10,000 candles, how the faithful gather by thousends in the square outside, each bearing a lighted candle. And to be fortunate—or blessed— one must take ones candle home with the light unextinguished. How the priests go in procession about the church praying before each tower, and how—as they pray—red fire bursts from the belfry of each. And then the bells of the city—thousends; the admixture of reverence—holiday. I see it all as she tells it. ... . And then

We buy candy—and I dream over little churches & big—the brass work—the altars, ikons, vestments, lettering, prayers—architecture,—the world of handicraft and devotion that has gone to make these 484 treasure troves of the city. I do not [unreadable word]. I cannot. None of the refined Russians in successful neighborhoods or the grosser or duller ones in poorer neighborhoods. The church takes in whose single room no more than 10 x 12—lived 7 people. And the Russian cats on fences & in doors, the charming grass grown courtyards here & there. The exotic looking Russian priests with their long silky hair & beards, their strange caps & long girdled velvet coats. I am never weary of looking. —It is all so new to me & so different. Asia—and the west . . . . . . At 4³⁰ we go for chocolate. These Russian shops are so poor. Shabby really. And then to the hotel. There are calls. I am to do this & that. Come to see such & such. We decide to dine in the hotel At dinner I am told by one Schwarz, the correspondent of the New York World, that because I asked the American Embassy at Berlin what to do about my passport a rumor was abroad that I was being detained against my will by the Soviet and that a cable had come from London, asking about it. I immediately wire Berlin that my passport has been found. Next one Durante of the London Post calls to ask me.²³ On his invitation Ruth, Schwarz & myself go to his rooms—the best I have seen here, for tea & to sit before an open fire—the only one I have seen here. More discussion of Russia. How does one pay ones rent! How does one hire a servant? How buy food, clothing & the like.

*Moscow, Tuesday, Nov. 8th, 1927.

We hired a very seedy looking izvozchik²⁴ at two roubles an hour and set off through the Red Square to the section which lies on the other side of the Moscow River. We stopped at the church facing the Red Square, the many-domed ‘Pamyat Vasiliya Blazhenova.’ The upper part of the building, now a museum, was closed but the small chapel below where services were still held was open and we looked into the dim, chill place, lighted by tapers.

On the Moscow River bridge, we stood looking at the wonderful view of the Kremlin, which opens out across the river. Crossing the bridge, we drove along the bank to the next bridge, crossed over on the other side again and went up to the great cathedral of the five enormous golden domes, ‘Krama Christa Spacitelya’, (Church of the Saviour). There was no service today but admission was being charged to go inside. This magnificent edifice was built only about 25 years ago and is the richest of the Moscow churches.

Re-crossing the bridge we went along a street leading across the canal to the very old section of the city. Enroute on Bolshaya Polyanka Street we stopped at a chapel, a kind of hole in the wall set among shabby shops and factories. Further was a very interesting looking brick colored church whose blue domes were studded with golden stars.

Circling the Konydeum Square we struck off into a side street and stopped at a very large church with a courtyard. It was closed but the watch-woman offered to open it for us; but it threatened to be a long performance and we contented ourselves with looking into her dwelling by the gate, a one-room hut with an entry and woodshed. She told us that she and her mother, her husband, two sisters and two children all live in this very small room. It had a brick stove and one bed, a table, chairs and an alter. Our isvozchik, jealously noting our interest in these living conditions, volunteered the information that he lives much worse. At the next church, when D. jumped out and started into the courtyard, he admiringly exclaimed: ‘Molodetz, vash barin!’ ‘A good sport, your lord!’

On the Bolshaya Ordinka we found the most beautiful church. Built about 15 years ago the Pokrova Boshey Materi is graceful and harmonious in every detail. It is of gray stone, with very full rounded domes of black metal, and black metal porticoes hang over the heavy carved doors and the white glass windows. Even the rain pipes are harmoniously constructed of a greenish metal. Inside, the mural decorations are quite perfect in form and color, much more modern in style than in any other Moscow church. The artist is Nesterov, a well known painter. Rich blues predominate against light gray walls and low rounded ceilings.

Returning by side streets to the river, we passed any number of interesting churches, white with blue domes, yellow with white domes, each entirely different from all the others. Keeping to the bank of the canal, we rode some distance in the opposite direction from the Kremlin. We came upon a very extensive monastery, with walls and a tower falling into decay and a beautiful ruined church and graveyard. It seemed that here was a factory, a box factory which occupied one of the stone buildings in the court. Receiving permission from the gateman to enter, we were shown about by a militia man after I had explained that the visitor was an American delegate. The factory was closed, as it was a holiday, but he insisted on showing us the factory school for the liquidation of illiteracy and the club and library. About 500 workers are employed here and live in the low building, which no doubt was the dwelling of the monks formerly. In the basement of the church, construction work was in full swing, as living quarters are being made there. The great old church itself was locked, the keys being in the hands of the Chief Scientific Department. The tombstones were broken and lying about, and it seemed on the whole a very depressing atmosphere for workers to work and live in.

We turned toward the center of town again and passing through the Chinese Wall into the old street Nikolskaya, we passed at the gates to Lubyanskaya Ploschad (Square) a little church with blue domes whose spikes were painted with gold; this quaint church is 500 years old.

Moscow, Nov. 8th, Evening.

Decided to go to Prince Igor at the Bolshoi Opera House, but found that all tickets for theaters had been distributed to trade unions free of charge for these performances.²⁵ Hearing from Louis Fischer that there was a rumour that D. was being held virtually a prisoner by the Soviet Government, we went with Fischer to see Duranti of the Associated Press. Duranti lives in quite palatial quarters for Moscow, three or four large rooms, one room with a small fireplace in which a wood fire was burning, the first grate I have ever seen in Moscow. The discussion turned to the Housing Department. Duranti explained that each dwelling house has its House Committee, which is responsible to the Central Housing Dept, of the city. In 1921 Duranti was given a three years’ lease on the place on condition that he would repair it. He made extensive repairs but at the end of the three years the apartment reverted to the Housing Dept, to which through the House Comm, he pays 125 dollars a month rent. The tenants elect the House Committee and two or three times a year meetings are held to hear the committee’s report and check accounts. This makes grafting difficult. Besides, there is the Workers and Peasants Inspection which can at any moment drop in and look at the books. This Inspection is a check on every department of the government, and can clean out a whole office force if it finds graft or inefficiency and has full powers at all times.

Duranti claimed that the graft system in America makes for cheaper production, citing the price of canned meat in America, 10 cents, as compared with 30 cents in Russia. Fischer maintained that this was due to rationalisation of industry and not to the graft system.

On the subject of bureaucracy, it was shown that although still very much in evidence in Russian institutions, it is being very rapidly decreased. In 1922 it took 45 minutes to get money from the bank, now 3 minutes. While in Germany there are 3 paper records in railroad reports, in Russia there were 48, but this number has been reduced considerably. The fact that there is so much unemployment makes it difficult to decrease office forces which make for greater bureaucratic methods.

In regard to unemployment, it was said that in fact more people are now comparatively speaking being employed, but that more peasants are coming to the cities. The people are land hungry because there is no money to develop the land and build roads.

The Soviet experiment will be a success if 1) there will not be a civil war or 2) a foreign war and 3) get American help.

As to foreign debts, Russia says she is ready to pay but does not recognise the debts. Russia cannot get loans because while she has never failed to meet an obligation, she cannot give security, and this record of her reliability is the only guarantee she can offer. She does not want to pay debts but aspires to renew them. Although the International Harvester Co. lost through the revolution on account of being nationalised, nevertheless, it is giving more credits to Soviet Russia than any other country.

Earlier in the evening, the servant problem was touched on. Servants are hired through the trade unions, an agreement is drawn up, eight hour day, special clothing, holidays, and month’s notice of discharge, and social insurance must be paid monthly.

Moscow, Nov. 9th-1927 - Wednesday) Grand Hotel

Nothing much. I write in the morning. In the afternoon visit the peasent museum & buy a green silk muffler. Afterwards to a vegetarian restaurant. These restaurants in Russia (Moscow I mean) are very poor. There is nothing smart—no night life—unless it is private. The reason for this is— I am told—that officials, tradesman and even workers, if they have any spare cash, are afraid to be seen spending it any where because if they are it means that their incomes will be looked into and their taxes increased. So about all that is left of night life is family visiting, the theatres, movies, opera and private relations with women. At Kennells I have dessert—and a long discussion of the import of this Soviet movement. It results in a headache for her. At 8³⁰ I return here, clip items about Russia, post the notes. To bed at about midnight.

Moscow - Thursday. Nov 10-1927 - Grand Hotel

THE CENTRAL GUEST HOUSE OF THE PEASANTS. This is a five story brick building covering half a block and located in the center of Moscow. It is one of 380 peasant guest houses in Russia. The director, Grinuk, explained the purpose of these houses. Before the Revolution, the peasant coming to the city, was always a victim of all sorts of exploitation and plundering, he got drunk, lost his money, etc. Now the Government operates these guest houses for the general comfort and education of the peasant visiting the city. The director himself was a teacher in a village before the revolution; being a Communist he became local Commissar of Production after the Revolution, then manager of a large Government Grain Trust. Then the Party said to him: ‘We have more important work for you to do, and turned over to him the management of the Central Guest House of the Peasants.

Any peasant has a right to come to a guest house and live during his stay in the city. The average length of time is ten days, but if his business keeps him longer, he can stay longer in the guest house. There are three to six beds in a room and his bed costs him 25 kopecks a day, breakfast 25 k. and dinner 30 k. If a peasant is very poor, he can either stay free of charge or at reduced rates. The rooms are large, light and clean, the beds have clean linen and blankets and look comfortable. The guests can also have tea in their rooms. At one o’clock all guests must be in bed and lights out. The peasants can receive court service free of charge. A staff of expert attorneys are at the service of the peasants and a long line of peasants was waiting for consultation with attorneys. There are also free clinics with 84 doctors in attendance. There are exhibits in charge of agronomes, lectures, moving pictures and plays in the large auditorium, excursions to museums, etc. The peasent—and righdy—is requested to take a bath in the “banya” or steam bath house on his arrival.²⁶ If only he could be persuaded daily to do the same.

There is a reading room and a ‘Lenin Corner’ with many posters propagandizing the peasant in the meaning and organisation of his government, union of peasants and workers, the Communist party, anti-religion, etc. The library has 12,000 books and 80 visitors daily. There is also a large museum containing posters and diagrams about agricultural methods and statistics, exhibits of products, the latest agricultural machinery, especially electric motors and power machinery, sanitation and hygiene for stock and people, diseases of live stock, etc. etc.

The Central Guest House accomodates 400 peasants.

In the interview with Grinuk, the following questions were answered:

About the size of the land holdings of peasants? The average size is 40 to 60 acres.

About the rich peasant, a ‘kulak’?²⁷ The maximum size of his land is 1000 acres. His income is not more than 5,000 roubles a year and there is a progressive tax on this income running from 2 k. on the first 20 roubles to 22 k. on 60 roubles.

Why does the Government fear the rich peasant? Before the Revolution the “kulak” was practically ruler of the villages. The poor and middle peasants usually needed money in the winter and had to work for the rich peasant and thus come into his power. But now, although his income is sometimes much higher than the other peasants, he is not only heavily taxed but if he hires labor he is disfranchised. There are three forms of power which his wealth takes, machinery, labor and speculation. The Government encourages the first because this lessens the need for hiring labor and increases the general production and standard of agriculture, and machines are not taxed; the second is discouraged and regulated; the third is an evil—for instance, in the fall when grain is cheap the rich peasant will buy it up and then sell it at a high price in the spring.

What is the difference in the standard of living between rich peasants and other peasants? The middle peasant has an income of on the average 500 roubles, the poor peasant, 200 roubles a year as compared with 2000 to 5000 for the “kulak.” The difference in standard of living is a difference only of more comfortable home and better food and clothing, and the contrast is not excessive. The children of rich peasants of course can be better fed and clothed than the other children, but must go to the same schools and have the same social advantages as the rest, since there are not private schools in the villages. The Government encourages collectives of peasants as much as possible, perhaps only in the ownership of a tractor, or further in cultivation of the land or in a pure commune where all labor and social life are shared. From a long conversation in and investigation of the first peasents guest house we went to a second.

THE MOSCOW GUBERNIA HOUSE OF THE PEASANTS. This was formerly the beautiful Hermitage Hotel and restaurant. It is now a guest house for the peasants of the Moscow Gubernia, or state which is about the size of the state of Ohio. Here also is a beautiful auditorium, museum, posters and maps, etc., reading room, Lenin Corner, and the sleeping rooms are very elegantly decorated and furnished. The same rates are charged and the same free services given.

At the door as we went out we saw a remarkable group of guests arriving from Izbekistan, or Turkestan. They wore enormous shaggy fur hats and bright colored robes tied at the waist with sashes. They were busy piling their baggage, which consisted of numerous bags made of Turkish rugs and rolls of blankets, on the sidewalk in front of the door, and they were talking in a strange tongue. From here we went to a Moscow department store. It—like many others, is run directly by the Government and I question Ruth as to whether the spirit of indifference which characterizes it is not due to government control—officialdom. She thinks not. The Russian temperament is slow. Patient, lackadaiscal. It wants to buy but it can take its time. Here—as yet—there is no least smartness in the new controlling classes and no money. Later when they have money as well as leisure from the seven hour day we shall see.

Next we visit the Novo Denechi Monastery built in 1594 and where the wife of Tzar Theodore became Prioress after his death, or when she was divorced rather.²⁸ We took an izvoszschik—The evening was cloudy & chilly. “The melancholy days have come—the saddest of the year”. And how I felt that mood here. It is an old white and gray affair with a church or two topped with gold domes of course and is strongly fortified with a high wall and embattled towers running around it. Napoleon in his march on Moscow tried to seize the monastery but failed. He placed a mine in the basement of the main church, but one of the nuns discovered it in time. There is one very beautiful main church, of a light gray with five round golden domes, and another old red church. These are now museums but services are still held in a smaller building where many beautiful ikons and paintings, etc. are still kept. There is a large grave yard with many elaborate tomb stones.²⁹ One is in the form of a lovely little white temple with golden roof, and was built in memory of a rich merchant before the 1917 Revolution. Chekov’s gravestone is one of the most artistic, but is crowded in among many other long forgotten graves. Someone had lit the candle in a lantern over one of the graves, and we wondered if the dead would still be so remembered in five years. It was a new grave, only a year old.

At six in the evening we attended the opening session of the Congress of the Friends of Soviet Russia, or rather for the organisation of such a body. Krupskaya, the wife of Lenin, Clara Zetkin, the German Communist, Rykov and Henri Barbusse participated in the meeting.³⁰

After this was over—or in spite of it I was supposed to attend an exhibition of the dancers of Irina Duncan, the sister of Isadora—who has a school here. Russian fashion those who were supposed to get and conduct me failed to appear—and since I did not know how to make my way about here I stuck, writing notes, reading up on the Soviet and its achievements in the past ten years and brooding on America. At midnight some one taps on the door. I fear it is some girl & since I do not feel up to more excitement do not open it. But I guess who.

Friday, Nov. 11 – 1927-Moscow-Grand Hotel

Rainy in the morning; cold and dry at night. My bronchitis seems to be reducing its grip a little here. Last night I had an odd dream. I have been feeling rather heavy & lethargic of late. The first symtoms of age as I take it. But in my dream I was delightfully vigorous & gay—not changed in years or strength. It seemed as though I were in an enclosed court where were paths & grass—and that along one of the paths I was dancing—quite naked—a double-barrel club in my hand & swinging the same high above my head—the while I threw myself joyfully here & there—now in one leaping or dancing position—and in another. Yet soon I saw coming toward me—or going and by another path, an elderly man in dark clothes—one of the conservative and learned types. And suddenly—I found myself slightly afraid—as though he might be able to do some thing to me. Yet as I felt this I also felt—how can he & what can he really do. And in the same instant I awoke.

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Chekov’s grave in the Novo Denechi Monastery Yard. I wish they would either creamate all great men & throw their ashes to the winds or bury them apart from there fellows in some singular place where one could go and meditate on each his special significence—(charm or peace). But this way—crowded wretchedly among so many—like Chopin in Pere la Chaise.³¹. I do not like it. It would be better the other way. . . . . . . . . . . .

Lenin. A new world hero I presume. If the world goes over to the dictatorship of the proletariat, as I assume it will, how great will he not be. Another Washington. Another Cromwell. Already Russia is thick with his fame. His statues & pictures are so numerous as to constitute an atmosphere. In Moscow alone there are so many busts & statues of him that they seem to constitute an addition to the population. Thus: Population of Moscow—without statues of Lenin—2,000,000, with statues of Lenin,— 3,000,000. . . .

After wasting the whole morning in planning what to do, since Smidovich could not receive us, but arranged for us to go to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, we finally at 11:30 a.m. arrived at the headquarters. This is an enormous gray stone building covering a square block. We circled the building to get our propusks,³² and went to the sixth floor where the Women’s Section is located. A stout woman who was sitting at a desk surrounded by exceedingly occupied women, received us. I did not know where to begin in the conversation, so she brought forward two large colored posters addressed to Eastern women which showed the old and the new condition of women in Turkestan, the harem, the ill treatment of the wives, veils, isolation and then today monogamy, economic independence, no veils, and participation in the soviets. In answer to my question, Kachilina (who is assistant director of the Women’s Section and a peasant) answered that monogamy is the recognised family relationship in the Soviet Union and polygamy is not recognised. In answer to my question as to the difference between sex regulations in America and in Russia, she answered that before the revolution in Russia as well as now in America, only registered marriages were recognised, whereas now in Soviet Russia if a man and a woman live together, the woman has the same rights as a registered wife, her children are protected by law—the father must be jointly responsible for them—and if either the woman or man should be ill or in need, the other is under obligation to care for her or him. Divorce is very simple. Only the wish of one or the other or of both being sufficient to have the marriage annulled. In case of separation or of death of one parent, the joint property is divided equally among the parent and children; the children are usually given into the custody of the mother but if there is an appeal, the court decides on the grounds of the competency of the parents to care for the children. The other parent must give a certain percentage of his or her income to the support of the children.

What rights have the parents over the children? No right at all beyond the welfare of the child. If it can be proved that a parent is harmful to the child, it can be taken from him by the state. If children are willful and wild, run away from home or otherwise are so unruly with their parents as to be dangerous, they can be taken away by the district section of the Dept, of Education and placed in an institution for defective children.

As to moral education of the child, there is of course no religious instruction whatever. In its place there is the study of science. In the elementary schools nature, political economy and moral instruction is all confined to the children’s movement represented by the Young Pioneers, an organisation composed of boys and girls from 7–14 and the Young Communists, from 14–21. In these groups which work in connection with the schools, and in close contact with the teachers, questions of sex hygiene, of the dangers to health of early or promiscuous sex relations, duties as citizens, duties at home, truthfulness, honesty, the evil of smoking and drinking, etc. In the beginning, (1918–21) sex relations were too free but now this freedom has been modified.³³

What difference is there between the unmarried girl today in her position and attitude to life and the former times? Formerly, the girl had no choice whatever in the matter of marriage. Her parents arranged the union without consulting her wishes and she was a wife and mother and nothing else. Now the girl is absolutely free to choose whom she wishes and to live with him only as long as she wishes. There is no social compulsion to remain with a husband, if she does not want to do so.

Furthermore, the married woman is encouraged to maintain economic independence, continue her work, and if there are children, place them in the day nurseries and kindergartens. When the working woman has a baby, she receives two months before the birth and two months after vacation on pay, a sum of money for milk and clothing, free medical care, and two hours off during her working day to nurse the baby the first year.

The interview came to an abrupt end as we had to hurry off to an interview with Kogan, director of the State Academy of Artistic Science.

My attention was called to the name of this institution and as we went in I questioned the possibility of art being a science. The discussion began with this question and ended with the question being tabled until another time. Kogan maintained that the Academy was for the purpose of scientific study of art. I maintained that science has nothing to do with art. He explained that art has three phases: 1. the materials of the artist (clay, paints, canvas, stone, etc.), 2. Technique of the artist, and creative ideas, and 3: History and influence on society of the works of artists. I said that the materials and technique could be left to mechanics and the only thing of importance was the creative idea of the artist and science could not study that. There could not be more than research and criticism for the student. Kogan said that in the Academy were not students but scholars making scientific research into art and the interview was cut short with a sort of compromise statement on my part that the Academy could turn out research workers and critics of art, but not scientists. (Note of Sec.: you behaved like a steam roller in a china store.)

From the Academy we walked to the Tolstoy Museum nearby. The Tolstoy Society maintains this museum which contains an enormous collection of photographs of Tolstoy and his family, busts and statues of Tolstoy, editions of his works, relics, illustrations from his works, death mask, etc. One large oil painting appealed to me. Tolstoy, already an old man, is sitting on the rocks contemplating the Black Sea. ‘Nothing left’, was my comment.

I wanted next to take an izvozchik and ride down to the Moscow River Bridge to see again the beautiful view of the Kremlin from the river. Dinamov made some arrangement with the driver and went on. We rode past the great church, across Kameni Most (the Stone Bridge) and following the river bank on the other side came to the second bridge. Here we alighted and asked the izvozchik, a young fellow, the charge. He said two roubles, we protested and he said we had agreed to pay one and a half to the Stone Bridge. We said we had neglected to make any agreement with him, and would pay no more than one rouble. He demanded one and a half. We gave him a three rouble note and he gave back only one and a half. Both of us demanded 50 kopeks more. A crowd had begun to gather about us and a policeman appeared. He asked what was the matter and the driver explained that we had agreed to pay one and a half to the Stone Bridge, he had taken us to the second bridge and we offered only a rouble. The policeman asked where we had come from and on being told from the Big Church he said a rouble was enough and the crowd echoed his verdict ‘Dovolno!’, ‘Taking advantage of a foreigner’ while the driver muttered something about robbing a poor man. The driver with reluctance reached under his long coat and extracted 25 kopeks which he gave me. We demanded the remaining 25 k. ‘Give them the rest’, the policeman ordered and the driver with greater alacrity again extracted two 15 kopek pieces and handed them over without even asking for the 5 k. change. The crowd after some discussion among themselves and with curious glances at me, dispersed. I stood on the bridge in the cold wind a long time looking at the wonderful little walled city across the river and thought it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The crows were circling about the towers and golden domes; historic memory seemed to hang over the scene, a fragment of the long ago, a breath of the East.

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I had dinner with my secretary in the Lux, and listened to the story of her life.³⁴

Moscow, Sat Nov. 12-1927 - Grand Hotel

In the morning we went to an exhibit of the Department of Mother and Child Protection of the Department of Health. I thought it a beautiful display. The very attractive colored posters, photographs and still life exhibits, charts, etc. simply and clearly set forth all the latest ideas and systems of child care, feeding, sanitation, infection, diseases and general hygiene. From there we went out into a court carrying white aprons on our arms and walked in a little procession of a dozen foreign delegates across endless courts and open spaces to the Institute for Research in Child’s Diseases. Here was space for 300 children, all ill, and kept here free of charge for treatment and observation. If the mother still nurses the child, she also stays, or wet nurses are hired to feed them. The babies are kept in small rooms, and the first few weeks are kept in isolation to prevent contagious diseases. Then we went to a day nursery for children of working mothers. Here was space for 40 children with all the best and latest equipment in playthings, furniture and other equipment. There are many such nurseries in Moscow, and the mother can bring her baby here and leave it for 8 hours. The nurses in charge are especially trained for their work, and certainly the child is much better off here than playing alone in a home not built for him.

We next went to the Soviet Exhibit in the Petrovsky Passage, a very large exhibit covering the whole range of the work of the Soviet Union in innumerable graphic charts, machinery, maps, products, etc. Statistics on every conceivable phase of the life of the country can be found in graphic charts.

In the evening we went to another session of the Congress of the Friends of Russia in the Hall of the Columns. It was inspiring. Different individuals noted in the international movement were given medals of honor by the Red Army officers and kissed on both cheeks, among them Sadoul, BelaKun and Marty (now imprisoned in France). Then followed speeches by several representatives from different countries, including the presentation of a flag to the Russian Trade Unions from the Chinese workers, accompanied by the speech of a spirited Chinese girl who spoke in her own language. Then a husky peasant woman from the village got up and made the most of her opportunity to speak on such an occasion. The trouble with these people is that they seemed convinced that in changing a form of government they are changing humanity. But right here in Moscow—and among themselves as well as the Russians, I see sufficient to convince me that in no way has humanity changed. It is dreaming a new dream. Yet governments can be improved—and will be.

At 11 p.m. I put on my evening suit and went to the reception of the Foreign Department to foreign press men. This was held in the magnificent palace of the former sugar king, Kereshnikov, facing the Kremlin on the opposite bank of the river. It was a gala affair participated in by the leading lights of official circles and foreign guests. Here I met Doletsky and Umansky of TASS, Madame Kollantay, author of Red.³⁵ Litvinova, Goldschmidt. Among the guests was Lunacharsky, Kogan, and the Mexican artist. We sat in the dining room and partook of an endless succession of dainty food, coffee and wines. I had an interesting talk with Gorkin of Izvestia on the freedom of the press and other topics. He claimed that there is more freedom of the press here because the newspapers openly criticise when they find faults, telling the truth because it is necessary, not to criticise for destructive but for constructive purposes. Madame Kollantay came and sat next to me on the divan and I asked her to tell me something. We began talking about the progress here. She said in answer to my remark that Russia not necessarily will follow the auto development of U.S. but might go straight to aeroplanes. About the penetration of the Soviet idea, Anna Louise Strong gave a long story about the Soviet power in an Arctic village.^35a Kollantay thought that the most striking thing about the new society here is the change in mentality-—the point of view of the people. The new generation thinks and acts socially, cooperatively, and its paramount idea is its social responsibility. In answer to the question of the reaction of the 14-year old to the new environment, she said that the Party is the guiding spirit in his life, not a religion, but in place of religion. Duty to the Soviet idea is paramount. The Party is his spiritual guide. But the other striking thing in the new society is the position of women, their determination not to be parasites, the social stigma on the parasite and even the housewife, the numbers of women who come to her department begging for work, to have a part in the building of the new society.

When we came out of the palace at 2 a.m., a wet snow was falling, the ground was covered with soft snow and a cold wind from the river swept the snow into our faces. When we at last found an izvozchik we accepted his terms without question and gratefully rode the rest of the way home. At the hotel I found a jazz dance in full swing—and an American jazz tune—A Night of Love. And Russian men in evening dress—and Russian girls, the smartest of course, in short skirts, and bobbed hair dancing the latest steps. But since the costs here are high and each is limited under the laws to a low rate of income I wondered about this. After all, the world in Soviet Russia is not so different—and that only 10 years after the street fighting here. Beggars in the streets; and pretentious men & women who know no more of equality or “comrade” than ever the world has known since ever it began.

Moscowy Sunday, Nov. 13-1927. Grand Hotel

Because of last night I slept late and at 11 Ruth arrived with data for the day & Monday. Dinamov was to come at 11 & take us to his home & there to the homes of some workers in new workers apartments in his vicinity—and he kept his word—but rather late—arriving at 12:³⁰. Then we took a street car in order to see a Peoples Sunday market somewhere out in his direction. Every country has its specialties & here were many that I had never seen, —the “gristle” of figs turned into a kind of dried jelly or glue—which is pressed into thin leaves or sheets—pink or white & done up in small bundles, sour cream in great tubs—at 50 kopecks the pound; Sugar in blocks 2 inches square, sunflower seeds at 20 kopecks the pound, and some grains that I never saw sold before. Also black bread & kvas. After a half hour of this we continued our trip on to Dinamovs which is in an old working class, factory district of the city. He has three small rooms in a shabby frame building, and there are four members of his family. He lived in one of the small rooms with his mother 14 years ago when they both worked in a factory (textile), he ten and one half hours at 14 roubles a month. His mother worked 30 years in a textile factory and received 25 roubles a month. Now she would receive 70 roubles and the free services. Serge had invited three workers to come and talk with me.

One worker was a welder in an auto factory and received 18 roubles a week, the second a stoker in a textile factory, the third a clerk in a branch bank. I talked to them all about their lives, trying to get the new attitude of the young Russian worker brought up under communism. And I gathered that they were thoroughly seized with all the doctrines of Marxism—as much as is any Catholic with the doctrines of Catholicism. Only in the case of communism—I assumed—the doctrines worked out more to their material advantage—or promised to. The worker in the auto factory: he had a wife and two children, although only 24 years old, and said that he was able to live on this amount. As to money for clothing and extraordinary expenditures, he was able to receive advances from a factory fund and also buy on credit. He lived in one room and was satisfied with his living conditions. The second worker was also only 24, a nice looking brown-eyed fellow, with a nervous twitch to his face. He was a less skilled worker than the first, a stoker in a textile factory, and with overtime one day a week made about 18 roubles per week. He also has two children, and a good room for which he paid a nominal rent of two and one half roubles a month. He had joined with another family in taking over a flat, making an agreement for free rent for the first three years, and taking over responsibility for the upkeep and repairs on the flat, and then the above sum per month after three years. He had, he said, a harder struggle to make ends meet because conditions were not so good in his factory. Loan and credit funds had not as yet been established because most of the workers were highly skilled and did not demand them. As to the question of recreation, both replied that they went to their factory clubs often, to unions meetings, lectures, political circles, moving pictures, entertainments with living newspapers and Blue Blouses, and sometimes received free tickets through the union to the theater and kino.³⁶ (But the second worker said that for a man with a family, there really wasnt much time for recreation and reading.) They also participated in sports in their clubs, boating in summer or skating and skeeing in winter, equipment being furnished free to members. As to the children, the second worker had no particular plans for them, beyond simple moral instruction, some anti-religious propaganda to counteract the teachings of the grand mother such as singing revolutionary and Pioneer songs instead of religious, elementary school education, and, if they wished, higher, or a trade or profession according to their desires. In answer to the question as to his ambitions for them to occupy a high position in life, like that of a government official for instance, he replied that it was all the same to him; that they would get what they deserved and as for material compensation, a government official might get 225 roubles or more, and a factory worker, skilled, could also make as much. Besides the income of the children did not concern the father. As to the daughter, no, he had no ambition to see her grow up and be married and be a respectable wife and mother. What she did with her life was her business. If she wanted to marry and live with one man all right. If she wanted to divorce him and take another all right; that was all her choice. The important thing was that she should be an independent individual, able to make her own living. The first worker made similar answers. The bank clerk was 27, made 130 roubles a month and expected a baby soon. He was a worker 14 years before he became a clerk, first a shepherd boy of ten years and then an unskilled worker. He studied and learned office work and for two years had worked as an ‘intellectual worker.’ No, his new job did not give him a superior social position and he felt much nearer to the workers than to the ‘sluzhishchi’.³⁷ In reply to a general question as to the difficulties of living on a small income, the second worker smiled and replied: “If we have less we spend less and if we have more we spend more, and always we manage to live somehow.”

Some questions were asked about conditions in America, and I described the high standard of living there, the high state of industrialisation and the debt the world owes to the capitalists who developed the industrial power of the country.

The quarters of Dinamov are very simple, there is no sanitary toilet and no bath in the house. We went to visit the new workers flats in the neighbourhood.

About this time Dinamov suggested that we visit a group of new workers tenements or apartments—model tenements, as we would call them, in America. They were only a short walk from his house and consisted of six or seven buildings, each fifty by a hundred and four stories high. They were of red brick, not at all dismal, but set down in an unpaved square or court which, for want of walks or paving of any kind, was muddy & even sloppy—planks being laid here & there to permit one to walk. Inside the walls of halls & rooms were very bare, no particular painting of anything save the iron hand rails of stairs and the wooden baseboards & doors. Each floor contained 8 apartments of 3 rooms each—no bath—one toilet of 1 seat, one hand or wash bowl in the kitchen & one gas stove for all occupants in the same kitchen. Also 1 wash tub. But in each room dwell from two to seven people—making for each apartment (of three rooms) an average of 10 to 15 people. And all of these were supposed—and I presume did use the same toilet in turn, the same wash tubs, hand bowl & single gas stove to cook on. No privacy of any kind. Two married couples with say a child a peice—and others expected living, dressing & undressing & having their various sexual relations in the same room—and with the children present. In another room might be one or two men and one or two women. And the wretched taste of most of them. Despite new walls & floors and a comparatively sanitary arrangement the rooms gave one the mood of a slum—or a Pennsylvania mining village under the rankest tyranny of capitalism. Ah—for taste in furniture, bedding, chairs, knick-knacks. Even a sense of order would have helped. But disorder. And yet with it all geniality and social helpfulness. The will to do cheerfully & well by one another! A strange & interesting people.

Each such group of workers apartments has a club room—this group in a basement of one of the buildings. And the walls, as usual, covered with communist propaganda—a haughty Croesus sitting on a throne—one foot on a chained worker slave! And slogans. “The interest of each is the interest of all.” “Comrades remember you are building the state for yourselves.” And red flags & banners. And a gun & its workings shown ideographically. As well as instructions in connection with the workers duty to the state; physical and technical preparedness. All are led to believe that Europe is ready to pounce on them. Also that it is their duty, once they are strong, to free the worker the world over. In one sense—from the point of view of aggressive as well as defensive thought, Russia is an armed camp.

About this time we returned to Dynamovs and a young tailor in business for himself dropped in and invited us to a christening at his house. We also heard that there was a christening at the neighborhood church at five and took a droshky there first. But we arrived too late. The ceremonies were over. But the magnificent interior of the church, lit dimly by candles which cast a soft light here and there on the gleaming golden altars, ikons and lofty ceilings, repaid me. Obviously the Russian people formerly poured all of their wealth into their churches, while they themselves lived in wretched poverty. This property still belongs to the religious societies.

From here we went to the tailors house, but since the christening was not to be until 9³⁰ or 10 and it was then only 6—I gave up. In slush & snow we returned via a droshky—my favorite conveyance, to the hotel and later this same night I went with Dynamov to a Russian movie of the middle class. It was not much—might have been called Red Love—since it concerned a love affair under the fighting between the Whites (Kolchak) and the Reds—sometime during 1919-20-21. An English Gold mining company has a concession (from the Whites of course) for mining in Siberia. The English manager (capitalist) has a lovely English daughter played by a solid, rotund Russian girl. The red army threatens. The English concessionaires have to flee, leaving lovely daughter & a young manager to shift for themselves. (They are lost in the escape.) And so in good old Siberian snow they come—accidently—upon the lone camp of a Red Engineer—very handsome—and snowed in for the winter. Result rivalry between the Red Engineer and the capitalistic English employe for the hand of the girl. And who should win in Soviet Russia—but the Red Engineer. But justly. The capitalistic employe—to whom by the way the girl was engaged, was a bounder. He could not trap or hunt or fish. He tried to kill the handsome fair minded red—(and secretly), while at the same time the gallantry of the Red in every way was winning the girls heart. Finally in a fight—a threatened fight, between the two men she shuts her old lover out in the snow to die—and he does die. Meantime spring. And innocent relations all this while—between the Russian-English girl & the Red. She even dreams of marriage with him in a formal English way all winter long. Luxury stuff shown in dreams.

But along come the Whites (Kolchakers).³⁸ They have been sent from England to rescue the girl. Only meantime—we learn, the Reds have defeated the whites and are coming—by another route, to inform the Red engineer—who was here hiding from the whites. The girl is found & is told she can come home. She wants to take the Red Engineer. He will not go. She must stay here & join the revolution. They argue. She pleads. Meantime her rescuers learn that her lover is a Red & decide to kill him. He thinks that she has connived with them & flees, seizing the auto boat on which her rescuers come. And with her white friends she is left weeping at the deserted camp at the opening of spring . . . . . Not quite as bad as Hollywood but almost.

N. B. These Russian movie houses are built on a better plan than the American. Instead of the crowds waiting in the street & blockading traffic as well as suffering in cold or rain, all are permitted to enter & wait in a great enclosed lobby where, during the waiting, an orchestra plays American jazz & sentimental songs. When the first show crowd is out, the second is admitted from this lobby. . ... I know these words, chi = tea; molokai = milk; Saccha-sugar; Pschallister = please; auchin or ochin = very; Narrasho = good, (as we say “good, good”; Tovarisch = Comrade; Kascha = cat; = dog; “wool, wool, wool”—said to a dog or cat means hyuh—or come here.

Moscow

Monday, Nov. 14th, 1927.

In the morning, I went to the candy factory Krasni Oktyabr (Red October), a very large plant lying on the opposite bank of the river from the Kremlin. We were first taken to the factory committee rooms where I talked with one of the members of the ‘Fab-kom’. He explained that as in every factory, there is a committee elected by the workers through their trade union local to look after their interests on the job. This committee consists of 15 members, including eight candidates, and three of these devote all their time to the work and receive salaries from the factory. This committee makes a collective agreement between the workers and the management which is agreed upon point by point at the local trade union meeting. The chief duties of the committee are to see that this agreement is carried out, and in general to look after the interests of the workers individually and collectively. In case of disputes between employer and worker, there is a Conflict Commission on which are equally represented the management and the workers to settle them. The committee also investigates the productive ability of the worker, and if he falls below a certain norm supports the employer in his complaint. The trade union local, ‘Mestkom’, also elects a representative to the Moscow Soviets and this representative each day during the dinner hour sits in the Fabkom office to interview individual workers. The workers eat their dinner in the dining room of the factory. The union has a club in the factory also. Red October has 2,600 workers and employees.

In reply to the question as to raw materials, the comm. member explained that the Food Dept. of the government supplies all materials to food product factories through its ware houses. As to the possibility of graft here, the workers in the Fabkom who had gathered about us, were unanimous in thinking that it was practically impossible, because of the strict control and the Workers and Peasants Inspection.

This same committee, by the way, is one of the high executive bodys of the government sitting in Moscow. It can, of its own volition or on complaint, enter any factory, office, bureau or what you will, examine the books, question employes, discharge or hire whom it pleases—even abolish the work or department in its entirety and lay indictments against any whom it deems to have offended against the law. It is not responsible to any higher ups. How it really functions I do not know as yet.

In the same rooms with the Fabkom factory committee of union workers are the headquarters of the factory nucleus of the Communist Party, which is the directing influence in the whole factory apparatus.

We then went to the nursery of the factory, which is used by 88% of the women workers. Young children and infants can be brought and left here for ten hours of the day. Nursing mothers are given two hours freedom from their working time (on pay) to come to the nursery and nurse their babies. I was much impressed by the idea of the day nursery and also by the modern equipment and attractiveness of the nursery. There were rooms for infants with cribs with trained nurses in attendance, play rooms for the older children, and beds in which they take their mid-day sleep, dining rooms where they are fed and a glass enclosed promenade in process of construction. The head nurse said the death rate in these nurseries was very low compared with former times.

We then went through the factory itself, where various kinds of candy, chocolate and sweet biscuits are made. The machinery was fairly up to date, the rooms clean and orderly, the workers in white aprons, but the wrapping of the many assorted candies is done by hand.

Moscow, Tuesday. Nov. 15, 1927- Grand Hotel

We took an izvozchik to the porcelain museum; the air was frosty and exhilarating. The collection is in the fine old mansion of a textile manufacturer. The outside as usual with Russian houses is unimposing and drab, but inside the rooms are rich and harmonious in furnishings and color. In the den was a magnificent fireplace and beautiful wood carving. Three rooms are given over to Russian porcelains which are by far the loveliest in the collection. The figures in native costumes in bright colors are the most charming articles, but there are many unusual plates and vases. There is a large exhibition from the factory of Popov, and the majority of the porcelain is from the Imperial Factory. The German things are stodgy, the English collection very small and uninteresting, but the French has a few fine pieces. It is the best collection of its kind I have seen anywhere.

From here we hurried over to keep an appointment with Biedenkapp at the Passage at one o’clock. My secretary finally left me in Gropper’s room and went to attend a meeting at VOKS of Americans as my representative. B. telephoned that he would not be able to come until two. After waiting until almost three I came home.

The meeting at VOKS was to discuss its branch organisation in America and was participated in by most of the American guests now in Moscow. Madam Kameneva gave a long report on the work of the central organisation, and suggestions for the work in the U.S.

In the evening I attended the banquet of the Presidium of the Moscow Soviets, at which perhaps a thousand foreign guests were present. (This invitation was extended by the Central Committee of the Moscow Soviets. Here I met Biedenkapp who was the original mover in my trip to Russia. Since coming here I had become dissatisfied with the complete indifference of the Society of Cultural Relations (which extended the invitation for the Soviet Government) to my presence here. Many affairs had occurred to which I was not invited—and worse—because of some quarrel between the Society and Madame Kameneva, its head, and Biendenkapp—and his International Workers Aid—also a Soviet Agency, I was being ignored. Even the promised tour of Russia—agreed upon between me & Biedenkapp, was in question. And all that had previously been fully explained to me by my local secretary—Ruth Kennell. And made angry by this development I had—late Sunday night—stated to Merwich of the Associated Press, who had dropped into my room, that unless things were straightened out very quickly I was going to return to New York. This caused him, on his own initiative, to warn the foreign office that I was about so to do and that the effect on public sentiment might not be of the best. He had told me—over the telephone—and just before my coming to this dinner —that he had so done, and he was satisfied from what he heard there that the foreign office would take action at once and that Vox (Russian condensation of the words which mean Society for Cultural Relations—Madame Kameneva, Komissar) would be frightened into immediate action. And so it proved. For no sooner was I seated in the hall then first a Miss Brannan —American Secretary of the American or New York office of this Soviet department came over to my table and inquired if I would be the guest of Kameneva at some function for foreign writers. I told her I would not & then proceeded in no uncertain terms to say why. She became so nervous as I talked that her voice trembled as she talked. But, oh, she was so sorry. She was so sure that Madame Kameneva had not understood. The mistake had been that I had first been invited by Biedenkamp, but she was sure that it all could & would be straightened out if only I would accept Madame Kamenevas attentions from now on. “Listen—I said. “I am under no obligations to anyone here. I was invited by the Soviet Government. Cables exchanged between the Amalgamated Bank of New York and Kameneva & the Soviet Foreign Office prove that. Yet I have been treated vilely. Now Madame Kameneva and the Soviet Government can go to hell. I have employed a secretary of my own, although I was offered one from New York & back, & I have spent my own money for what I have seen. What I desire is the cash return of my expenditures and that is all. Then I shall go”. But evidently the foreign office had already spoken, for now came hurrying Madame Kameneva herself. And with an interpreter. There was singing and Caucasian folk dances going on at the time. Ah, she would like to speak with me. There had been a mistake. She had not understood clearly. She had assumed that I was being taken care of. Of course, of course. I had a reason for anger. But tomorrow early her secretary would wait on me. Any trip I planned, any thing I wish to see; and people—Soviet executives or leaders I wished to meet, were at my disposal. All would be arranged—my expenses—my least wishes. I merely looked at her meaningfully & let it go. And although she requested me to wait & meet Rykov, Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissaries of USSR—I left at 11⁰⁰.

After in the lobby of the hotel I met Rezkov. (Associated Press). He was waiting to repeat what he had said over the telephone. I said that evidently the foreign office had acted & explained why. He agreed & told me that they had assured him that all my wishes from now on would be respected.

Moscow-Wednesday, Nov. 16- 1927 - Grand Hotel

At 10 a.m. the secretary of VOKS, Mr. Karenets, with an interpreter to go over my plans for a tour of Russia. Everything seems to be moving at last He was effusively polite and apolgetic. There had been a mistake. Now what did I wish. I explained very succinctly. Arrangements at once—tickets, hotels, local advisers for my travels and stops in various parts of Russia—Leningrad, Novgorod, Sverdlovsk, Ansk, Novorechinsk, Saratov, The Caucasus, Tiflis, Baku, Batumi, The Crimea, Odessa, Kiev, Kharkoff & Vicu. Either Odessa—or Moscow—with full passage—first class—to New York. He agreed. Why of course, of course. And now as to things here in Moscow. Whom did I wish to meet. I gave him a list—Stalin.

Done. And now sights, museums. The Kremlin. Yes, the Kremlin. He left saying all would begin tomorrow. Oh yes. And my 550 expenses so far. Yes yes. These too.

Afterwards a visit to an elementary school which Nearing had recommended. I met him there. The art instructor in the school has his studio in the building and showed us some of his paintings, one of which (a peasant religious procession in the woods) I purchased for 50 roubles. There is a large art class of boys and girls from ten to 15 all working industriously in a small room, drawing pictures of the October celebrations. We looked into a class room where boys and girls of 8 and 9 yrs (2nd grade) were busy at their work. I noticed at once a difference in this classroom. There was a loud buzz of noise, the children moving about and talking freely and the teacher here and there helping them. They were weaving baskets out of straw twine.

At the same time, as I learned then, they were discussing the chemical & physical basis of such a product—texture, methods of growth and existence—and its economic & cultural uses in life—in so far as such things could be even touched on by children of that age. At the same time I learned that there are no courses of study in the old sense of the word. The children learn through daily observation and experience. They have four themes in the year; life in spring, life in summer, life in fall and in winter. The teacher’s textbook directs their observations with questions and problems, for instance, the birds of spring, to be answered after excursions and examination of the birds. The daily routine is first general conversation on the theme of the period, then letter writing on this theme, then physical culture, reading and discussion. This school has self-management, a school committee of five students with various departments such as cultural, sanitation, etc. with other committee members. Always one member is on duty to attend to the carrying out of the routine, discipline, etc. As in every Soviet organisation, whether factory, office or school, the Communist Party exercises a directing influence. Here the Young Pioneers have their club and organisation which because of its united numbers can elect its representative on the Managing Committee. It in turn is directed by the older Party members in the Young Communist organisation into which the Pioneers eventually graduate.

The general impression I took was that the children were being kept tremendously busy with interesting and responsible work and had little time for mischief

Nevertheless I was dubious as to the sexual effect of this early contact. In some of these rooms these boys and girls—9 and 10—or 13 & 14 years of age were alone. And most of them attractive. In two places I saw a boy and a girl flirting—the usual tense approach of youth to youth. And without supervision. I tried to learn by inquiry the general moral condition in these schools but gathered none-too-informed opinions from people not intimately connected with the work. I have yet to learn.

From here to one of the general museums but it was just closing.

Before returning to the hotel, I looked in at the altar on the Red Square, ‘The Mother of God’ chapel, formerly the ‘holiest spot in Russia.’³⁹ On the wall above have been written the words ‘Religion is the Opiate of the People’. The people were taking their opiate in great numbers, picturesque beggars stood in two lines before the door. Inside the tiny place the candles were lighted, and innumerable golden pictures and ikons gleamed. A priest with a long black beard was reading the service and an assistant, dirty & long bearded, moved through the crowd contributing to the service at regular intervals with a ‘Lord have mercy!’ but like an automaton. The worshippers entered, paid for tapers, lighted and placed them on the central altar. The priest took the Bible and, touching the bowed head of each person, repeated phrases such as ‘God bless you’, ‘Love one another’, etc. And possibly such an opiate is worth some thing although for me the soviet idea is better.

At 6 p.m. I went to keep an appointment with Sergei Eisenstein, one of the Sovekino movie directors, also the author and director of ‘Potemkin’.⁴⁰ His room, one of a flat of six rooms occupied by six families, was very small for New York but spacious for Moscow. He had decorated the walls himself with a fantastic bulls eye in a series of convolutions in color on the ceiling, a placard advertising a new cream separator above his desk, and kino photos on the walls. He has a very wide bed, the largest I have seen in Russia, and when I remarked that I had seen only very narrow beds thus far, he replied that he had bought this magnificent bed from an American farming commune near Moscow where he was taking pictures. He is a young fellow of 29 years, short, a little stout, with a fair, boyish face and blue eyes, and a mass of thick, curly hair.

Diary leaf 164, with Dreiser’s autograph insert. (From the Theodore Dreiser Collection, Special Collections Department, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Sergei Eisenstein around 1927. (From the Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents, Moscow)

I began with a question about the general organisation of the movie industry in Russia. He said that it is all government and comes under the Department of Education (Lunacharsky), as a separate branch with manager, etc. There is strict control as in America, only here it is political whereas in the U.S. it is moral. About kino production, he said that there had been only three or four great pictures produced during the past three years: Potemkin, his own by the way, Pudovkin’s Mother (from Gorki).⁴¹ The Soviet picture follows three general lines: His own—or the naturalistic—as he modestly announced; the Western type—meaning those which imitate the American product in all its ramifications and the out and out chronicle of some life or movement. (His own, by the way are not much more than that.) Also, of course—the educational or scientific—and intended for educational and scientific purposes. The theory of Eisenstein as to what is best & greatest in the movies—and as outlined by himself, is first, no plot, no dramatic stories, but pictures which are more nearly poems; second, no actors, but people direct from the streets or places where the pictures are taken; this is possible because he has no big dramatic scenes, but makes of daily life itself a drama, a natural drama. For instance, his new picture, not yet shown, ‘The General Line’, is as he sees it a demonstration of how a poor village is through cooperation developed.⁴²

He considers the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the wrong method in moving pictures, that expressionism is not adaptable to the kino art!⁴³ He is interested in individual stories only if they are on very broad lines, illustrating general human principles. He is now working on the idea of filming Marx’s Capital, like a speech.

I remarked that he was another propagater of the Soviet system, and asked him what he would do with his ideas in South Africa, for instance. He said he would adapt them to suit local conditions, perhaps concentrate on the colonial question. If in America, he would try to do only liberal things, perhaps in the negro question. I told him then that he is an ‘uplifter’.

About the financial cost of production, October cost 500,000 roubles; Eisenstein received 600 roubles for his scenario ‘The General Line’, which will cost about 75,000 to produce. Potemkin cost 54,000. The heroine of The General Line received a salary of 150 roubles a month. Of course an old artist of the Art Theater like Leonidov receives 100 roubles a day. He says he has a very bad, little studio, but a new modern studio is under construction.

I remarked in general about Russia that the Russian temperament is such that in 30 yrs. Russia will lead the world. As in America the wilderness is a great impetus,—also the vast and as yet unpopulated spaces. As yet here is a federation of 167 separate races or nationalities, many of them as yet not speaking the same language or indulging in the same customs, yet all fired & joined by the Soviet idea—and what might not come out of that. Also because of the enormous favor with which the Soviet program is viewed—i.e. —the making over of Russia into a modern economic state, all—apparently without exception, were working for Russia and the achievement of this ideal. Hence it was but natural that writers, artists, poets, playwrights, kino-directors and what you will should be swept into the movie and should see only the uplift as the proper field of drama, poetry, literature, art. As for myself I still considered that the drama of the individual came first, his private trials, terrors & delights, since only through the individual could the mass & its dreams be served and interpreted. He would not agree. Nor was he aware apparently that pictures as good as Potemkin—and in the same field, had been done in America. Dimly he thought he had heard of “Grass”—but not of “Nanook”, not of “Chang”; not of “The Iron Horse” or “The Covered Wagon’—yet to me (I did not say so to him) they are just as good.⁴⁴ We had tea & cakes (as usual) and I left. And Ruth Kennell and myself had dinner at the hotel. About nine oclock Karl Rodek, a Polish Jew and an international communist who, at the beginning of the Russian revolution, espoused the cause of Lenin and Trotsky, and during the last three years of his life was very close to Lenin—(a personal friend and private as well as official adviser) came to see me. He reminded me in size and tempo of Peter McCord—quite all of the same intellectual fire and much of the same genial human response.⁴⁵ He told me much of the Russians, the Revolution and Trotzkys personal life & predilections—a most intimate and fascinating picture. Among other things that he said of Lenin was that he was a tireless worker, fearless, unselfish and generous to a fault. He knew nothing thoroughly of the details of any science or philosophy and yet was thoroughly capable of sensing the drift and meaning of every science and theory and most brilliant in seizing upon any idea in any field which might be of any advantage to Russia. One of the things he said that Lenin said was that electricity and and education should go hand in hand in Russia. Another that Russia, because of its generous and almost sacrificial spirit, was the best country in the world in which to try communism. He described him as short and homely—and unbelievably fascinating—the Socratic temperament. Also he stated that no bust or picture of Lenin as yet resembled him—that there was some thing in his temperament; the mental and emotional feel of him that transcended characterization. He did not read much—only practical books on electricity, economics and industrialization. All other matters including newspapers & magazines had to be read by others & reported to him in a condensed form. When he was very tired physically & mentally he loved to relax and read Conan Doyle—(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . . . . . After an hour or so of this, the conversation veered to literature and art—the new communistic literature and art of which he did not think so much; although he believed it might develop. Next we took up the quarrel between Trotzky & Stalin and he explained that—the temperament of the Peasent, the leaning of Stalin toward the Peasent & the faith of Trotzky in the mechanic or industrial worker—who was more malleable, more enthusiastic more receptive to communistic ideals and would be trusted to support the new rule, whereas the peasant could not. At midnight he left & I went to bed.

Because of an introduction to him I had tried to call on him in the Kremlin at four, but the guard at the propusk office said he did not answer the telephone. On arriving home, I telephoned at once to his apartment in the Kremlin and he answered, explaining that no individual foreigners are now being admitted to the Kremlin and that he would come to me. When he did come he explained to me that the reason no messages were conveyed to him in the Kremlin was that, since the quarrel between Trotzky & Stalin, all friends of Trotzky & especially those living in the Kremlin were being watched, the suspicion being that Trotzky & his followers might attempt to organize a new party. As for himself he said he had lived through the most glorious page in Russian history & was now going to retire and write a history of Lenin. He left at midnight.

Moscow, Thursday, Nov. 17th, 1927.

In the morning, I went in response to Eisenstein’s invitation to a special showing of parts of his pictures ‘October’ and ‘The General Line’.

October is a series of scenes from the October Revolution in Petrograd, the storming of the Winter Palace, etc. It moves swiftly and is exciting but not so moving, to me.

The General Line is a series of realistic village scenes, for instance, a peasent religious procession taken from life, a model government dairy, an incident showing a poor peasant woman coming to a rich peasant and asking for the loan of a horse to help harvest a crop. The rich peasant and his wife are simply rolling in fat, and so are their live stock, but their luxury reminds one of the feudal barons in its primitiveness. Following the appearance of the fat wife on the screen, there is shown a wax figure of a pig whirling coquettishly, and the resemblance to the woman is comical.

At one I had an appointment with the manager of Gossizdat, the State publishing house of Russia & the one that is about to bring out all my books, and in the course of fifty minutes we managed to conclude an agreement. The chief Executive of this concern offered me 750 roubles for the two books already published, ‘Color of a Great City’ and three stories from ‘Twelve Men’. I refused to accept it and said they could have it as a gift. The manager said he did not wish to accept a gift from me, but wished to make a satisfactory agreement, to clear up past debts in order to have —good relations in the future. After some explanations why the books were cut (to make them accessible to the workers) and why they offered so little, they asked what I would take; I said 1000 dollars, and we made an agreement on this basis, that I should further agree to give them exclusive publishing rights in Russia and send manuscripts to be published not earlier than one month after American and English pub. to be paid for at the rate of 600 dollars to 1000 for each book (Gallery of Women, 1000) and advertising campaign for the books and for ethical publishing rights between America and Russia.⁴⁶ We then returned to the hotel, and because I was tired I went to bed and rested until evening. At six oclock Harold Ware, director of the Government Farm in the Ukraine Sovhoz No. 4, had dinner with me and told me about the work of the American group in introducing American machinery and methods into Russian agriculture. He and some other American enthusiasts came here some few years ago and secured from the Russian Government a tract of about 70,000 acres in the Caucasus onto which they introduced the very latest American farming machinery—tractors, combination reaper-threshers, 22 blade plows and the like. With this and a permit to work laborers twelve hours at a stretch instead of six (with the next day off) they managed to use the machinery to the limit—and so opened the eyes of the natives and even the Russian Government that representatives of other Russian Agricultural stations came from long distances to see what they were doing. And all this with peasents in the adjoining fields ploughing with single bladed plows—the same hauled by oxen or camels—and the tradition of of hundreds of years. He also told how one day a peasent who had broken his small scythe came to borrow one. They had none to lend him and were about to turn him away when one of the men suggested that, since they had a welding plant, they could fix it. Accordingly they took it & joined it quite as good as new. But when they returned it the peasent would not believe it was his. How could a broken scythe be made whole. He seemed to suspect a miracle, but, since the handle was the same, took it. Soon thereafter a long procession of peasents with broken or injured tools, most of which could be fixed—and which in order to establish cultural relations with them they did fix, finally enlightening and improving technically most of the district in which the great farm lay.

Diary leaf 171, with Dreiser’s additions. (From the Theodore Dreiser Collection, Special Collections Department, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Another interesting point was this. I asked about the proverbial laziness & slowness of the peasent. Would not this interfere with the proper industrialization of Russia—its dream of keeping step with the world? He seemed to think not. In the first place he said that he was sure that their slowness & laziness was in most part due to undernourishment—due to a not sufficiently varied diet. Mostly their diet was a soup, black bread and potatoes—never meat. And because of this lack of meat they were weak and had to rest a great deal. In the case of this experiment station, and to overcome this, he gave orders—without word to any peasent, to put meat in all soups twice a day. The result was a highly increased working capacity, less sleep—or lying about, and much more vivacity. Also he thought that the Russians’ present leisurely temperament might & no doubt would be affected & speeded by the machine, which must be worked at its own speed—not at that of the operative.

I was especially interested in his account of the locust plagues which were such a terrible thing in Russia formerly. Two years ago, there was a terrible plague, they swept down from the sandy lowlands where they had hatched in great armies several miles long and wide, and not only laid waste the fields but laid their eggs which hatched out this summer. The local government quickly organised a chemical warfare which was remarkably successful. Every peasant was compelled to serve three days on pay in the work of spraying the fields and was fined if he did not report, and was paid 1.50 a day if he did. In a few days the whole area was completely sprayed and the hatching locusts and their eggs killed. The plague was completely stopped in its beginnings, and it was a wonderful demonstration of united effort.

Another phase of this was as follows: In a certain district twenty or thirty miles wide and forty miles long an enormous cloud of locusts appeared. The sun was darkened. They were flying some where to lay their eggs and eating as they went. An appeal was at once sent to the central Soviet of the region. This in turn, by wire, applied to the Central Soviet Agricultural bureau for advice. The reply was aero-planes with distructive gases. These descended on the cloud from various directions and spraying them distroyed them all. Their eggs were never laid & they did not eat.

In the evening I went to the opera Prince Igor, at the Bolshoi Opera House, with Anna Louise Strong. This is an opera of no particular dramatic value but much local color. Scenically & musically it was beautifully presented. During the intervals Anna & I talked of Russia. Like so many American intellectuals she is enormously fascinated by the Russian temperament. She had traveled from China to Leningrad—spent several years, in fact, wandering here & there. Like so many others, her conclusions are that the Russians are strong, practical, artistic, sensitive, idealistic, brotherly and need only the persistence of such a government as they now have to develop one of the leading governments. True, in Moscow their tends to develop a bureaucratic group which is likely to develop auto-cratic and self-sustaining notions—but so far the check exercised by the workers & peasents is too strong. She told also of rivalries & bitternesses, as in other forms of goverment, but in the main the development of the mass is rapidly being forwarded

Moscow, Friday, Nov. 18-1927-Grand

The feel of Russia is peculiar—restful to me—and is, I gather, to many. For instance Madame Litvinov, the wife of the foreign minister, told me that when she was out of Russia she was always restless & running here & there, competing with whosoever was competing for anything—clothes, contacts, what not. But once here, all these things seemed to fall away; nothing mattered much. Clothes were poor; social advance all but impossible; wealth impossible—only agreeable personal contacts available, where one could find them. “And yet I am happier” she said. “I dont care. Like everybody else I work—part time for my husband as a typist & translator; part time for one of the government bureaus as a translator. I get 200 roubles a month. You see how I dress. And I have no social life. There is no such thing here—no social doings among the bureaucrats. Once a month my husband and I give a reception to 150. It is dull—official. Yet I am happy here—happier than anywhere I think (and I am English) and often wonder why?” I could not answer her at the time—but now—10 days later, I think I can. It is due to the absence of national worry over ones future, — or the means of subsistence. Here ones future and ones subsistence is really bound up with that of the nation itself. If it prospers you are certain to prosper; if it fails you fail. But so long as it has any prosperity or even a bare living, you have. Each one is allotted so much for what he can do—but no more than 250 roubles a month—and a room or a part of one. There is no graft. His old age, his passing illnesses, his need of rest & fair share of pleasure are all looked after by the state. If he cannot find work at least he gets fifteen roubles a month, treatment when he is ill. Medicine—at last, if necessary, care for himself in a home for the defeated or the incompetent. There are no longer any sly religionists to bedevil him; no preying upon him by police or officials. If he cannot afford fine raiment, neither can anyone else. If his quarters are small or poor, so are those of quite all others. His true station—as yet, is fixed by his mind or his skill or both—and such pleasures as there are are open to all on the same terms. The restaurants and hotels are poor, but there are no better ones to which any can slyly run. And as you walk the streets, at least, you are not made miserable by extremes of poverty and wealth. If there are beggars you know that more or less they are grafters. If their are distinguished people, it is because of their very real present or past achievements and their mental qualities. Family, wealth, titles, even security—other than state security, are all gone.

Another thought which has come to me in connection with the operation of this form of government is this. Considering all the checks and balances—and the apparently graftless phase of all administrative functions, it looks to me as though the destructive evil of adulteration had been cured. Why adulteration of foods, drugs, clothing, “jerry” built houses, machinery, furniture, articles of virtue if there is no private concern competing with another private concern for success in a given field—or for money or position as between individuals? All goods appear to be, and I think they are, real—and well worth—(much more so as capitalistic standards go) all that is asked for them and more. The thought, when it first comes to one, as I went in a land in which graft and fraud and adulteration on every hand is rampant, is thrilling. It gives one an idea of a possible fairness in nature, which judging of life as it has been—seems impossible—as though at last—and first time, the sun of mind has fenestrated and dissolved a miasma of not-mind. So it is that in Russia now, life takes on not only a more secure but even friendly look. It is easier to live because all are agreed apparently to let live—and to work & so help make that possible.

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At 10:30 this morning, by pre-arrangement of course I had an interview with Novokshonov, president of the local trade union of writers and also of the All-Russian Federation of Writers. I was interested to know what a trade union of writers might be like. It was in a charming old building in the part of Moscow, which I very much like. When I entered, Barbusse was sitting in his office signing papers, it seems for membership in the Federation of Writers. These different organisations of writers, including one called ‘Proletarian Writers’, have their headquarters in this large building set back in a courtyard, formerly the home of Gertzen, the Russian writer.⁴⁷

In answer to my questions regarding the trade union of writers, he explained that the chief function of the union is to protect the interests of their members, for instance in concluding agreements with publishers, in the carrying out of the agreements, fixing of norms of payment for work. Payment is fixed as follows:

125 roubles min. for 40,000 typographical signs, or 10 pages

1,500 roubles for the first edition (5,000) and 50% of the original sum for all editions thereafter. An agreement can be entered into for only three years, after which a new agreement must be drawn up.

In connection with the union, is a consultation of attorneys who protect, free of charge, and give advice to the members. The union sends a representative to the Moscow Soviet and to the People’s Court, which consists of three members, for instance, 1 a worker, 1 a writer, and the third a permanent member. As an example of the work of the union in defending members, I was given a copy of the case of a libretto writer who wrote the Russian text for Madame Butterfly, against the Bolshoi Opera House, which did not pay him 750 roubles for it. This was an old debt contracted before the revolution. Nevertheless, the decision was to pay the money.

In Moscow there are 1,100 writers, including newspaper men but not workers correspondents, and in all of the Soviet Union, 9,500 writers, all members of the trade union. Asked if there were any writers who did not wish to belong to the union, Novokshonov replied that of course not, as they have everything to gain and nothing to lose by membership. They paid 2 1/2% union dues and received all the usual benefits of members of trade unions in Soviet Russia: free medical treatment, vacations in rest homes in the south, social life in the union clubs, etc.

We then discussed the possibility of my joining the Federation of Russian Writers, which I have decided to do.

I was shown an exhibit of Russian literature in the rooms below, rooms devoted to Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dosteovsky, revolutionary writers, new writers, etc. Everywhere you go you see charts and diagrams giving information in every conceivable form, and here such charts were not missing: analysis of the books about Tolstoy in colors, book production. It was also to be remarked that there were more books being published about authors than by them. There is also a dining room where the writers and dramatists dine very cheaply (40 kopeks for dinner for members), a jolly looking place, no doubt very lively and picturesque when full of literary people.

I went over to VOKS and had a session with Kameneva, Karenets, Trivas and secretary about my programme while in Moscow and about my trip about Russia. There it was agreed that VOKS (the Government Society For Cultural relations) would undertake to introduce me to principal ministers and members of the Communist party here, also to provide me with two secretaries and all of my needs & introductions for my trip around Russia. A list of all the persons I wished to meet was made. Also I was repaid in cash the $550 expended by me between New York & Moscow (my expenses) and promised every facility for inquiry on the long trip.

At 5 p.m. I went to have dinner with Miyakovsky, Russia’s strongest writer, who belong to the group ‘Left’—a young giant, the image of an American prize fighter. Breek, a literary critic and his charming wife, ‘Lilichka’, Tretyakov, author of the play produced at the Mierhold Theater ‘Roar, China’, and his wife, Tretyakova, also an editor, were there.⁴⁸ These are the center of the Left group and direct its policies. There was also a very friendly bull terrier. We began eating a variety of things, caviar in a huge bowl, several kinds of fish, Russian meat rolls, vodka, wine, and making light jokes which became merrier as time went on. I had already satisfied myself on the first course when the actual dinner, soup, goose with apples, and many other dishes, appeared. Then there were prunes with whipped cream—I added vodka to the cream and made a wonderful discovery, which they said would be known after my departure as ‘Dreiser’s cream’. Miyakovsky gave me one of his books of—poetry.

They went along on the street car with us, and we parted with them to keep an appointment with Tairov, director of the Kamerni (chamber) theater. Tairov outlined the policies of the theater, which is well known in Europe as well as in Russia.

The theater conducts a theatrical school for actors, 70 students, not a usual school, either, for the student must learn a mixture of arts: opera, drama, comedy, pantomime, tragedy, for the repertoire is thus varied. The stage settings play an important role and follow special principles, rhythmic, dynamic, plastic, architectural. There is no naturalism, and so the player can to the maximum show his art. The settings must serve the actor, and be as an instrument for the actors to play on.

In the answer to my inquiry as to their treatment of Macbeth, Tairov answered that he would make a large space for the actors and little scenery, one level for the leaders and another for fantasy.

Light plays an important part in production.

The Kamerni makes a specialty of foreign plays. On what principle are they selected? 1. Scenic composition, dynamic possibilities of play, new architecture. 2. Present day problems and spirit.

Why do they present so many foreign plays? They also present many Russian, but modern Russian plays are scarce. The Soviet drama is still young.

In his opinion, the most vital plays today are produced by 1st, America, 2nd, England, and recently France.

We looked in on the second act of the operetta ‘Day and Night’. It seemed to be a light piece with a somewhat futuristic setting. At the end of the act, when the chorus came on, they threw little paper aeroplanes into the audience.

From the Kamerni, we went to the House of the Scientists where Gossizdat was giving a banquet to foreign writers. Miyakovsky was sitting in a conspicuous place at the table and made himself heard during the evening. More food: ten kinds of fish and caviar, and roast pigeons, and more vodka and wine. I think the Russians do nothing but eat, and I am getting the habit. There were toasts to the various foreign writers, among the Americans were Anna Louise Strong, Prof. Dana, Albert Rhys Williams, Mary Reed. I said a few words, and Miyakovsky remarked that I was the first American who admitted, after a short stay in Russia, that he did not have definite impressions and conclusions; he said that usually after a few days in Moscow, they write whole books about the country, and seem to have learned everything.

Opposite me sat the President of Gossizdat, Hallaten, an amazing figure: very dark, with large, brilliant, childlike black eyes, a flowing black beard, a little Caucasian cap on his long waving black hair, black leather short coat, dark shirt with rolling collar, full red lips, and an inscrutable expression, half innocent, half cunning, and amused. I could not keep my eyes off him and began asking him questions: finally he consented to sit down by me and speak about himself. He is an Armenian, and only 33 years old, and before the revolution led a very active agitator’s life. I could not seem to get at the man; when I asked him a penetrating question he added another responsible post to his innumerable positions—head of production during the war, now member of the Central Soviets, member of the Scientific Commission, each question about his life was the signal for another voluminous title. I gave up and went with him to another room, where a flashlight photo was taken.

It was two o’clock when we road home through driving snow in an izvozchik.

Moscow Nov. 19th, 1927. Grand Hotel

At 4 p.m. I went to interview the Commissary of Trade, Mikhayan, whose spacious offices are in the large building of Narkomtorg (People’s Commissariat of Commerce) in the Chinese Wall. I sat down in a very large deep leather chair facing the Commissar, who was very imposing and military in his khaki uniform and black mustaches. On either side of his desk sat a very meek looking little man and a pretty, innocent looking girl, both of whom knew some English and took turns helping out on translation. The girls voice trembled as she translated.

First I asked what were the functions of his department.

1. Interior trade

2. Foreign trade

Importation is small because it has to keep pace with the export. He buys for all Russia, first supplying the government and cooperatives, and then, if there is anything left, private business can have it. Private business can buy goods only from the government. Concessionaires are allowed to import in accordance with their agreement with the Government. Private business is permitted to buy abroad if the materials are for use in plants and not for selling. No privileges are shown in transporting foreign goods after it enters the country. For instance, if the concessionaire has a license to import goods he can transport in Russia freely.

In importing, what class of goods i.e., necessities, luxuries, are given first place? There is a definite plan of importation on a quarterly basis. There is not enough money to buy all they need (in accordance with our export) and so they buy first for productive enterprises, second, the necessities of the people, —and luxuries not at all.

Do you never use the policy of stimulating buying by selling luxuries?

No, we cannot supply the necessities as yet, but the people use luxuries. We produce ourselves many more luxuries than before the war. However, Russia will never be a luxury consuming country.

Do Soviet agents abroad buy with the same shrewdness as private? Yes, more so, because they have the interests of the Russian people as a whole to consider. All foreign agents are under the Commissar of Trade, They buy under specifications from our consumers, the factories, mass demand, etc.

About complaints of consumers? Very few, because buying must be done according to specifications

Interior Trade.

The Government buys grain products from the peasants, food products, industrial materials. There are two or three great organisations which buy special articles, like cotton, or grain. Prices are fixed to a maximum or a minimum. There is a price plan which is strictly adhered to. Such prices as in America are impossible. A certain level must be maintained, not too high, which would be hard on the worker, not too low for it would ruin the peasant. In America, prices fluctuated greatly during the last year; in Russia, they have remained stationary for two years.

Does the Government demand a profit above wages and upkeep?

Yes, the government takes a minimum profit.

In the grain trade there was last year an income of 700 millions and only 8 million profit. The Government takes only amortisation from the profits of industry and 40% from the profits of state organisations, which it uses for the national operations of the country.

From here in a droschky—(which same I delight in). I went direct to the Moscow Art Theater to meet Stanislavsky.⁴⁹ I found a tall, magnificent looking old man with white hair, brilliant dark eyes, and in general a face striking for its large strong features. His secretary, a small, dark woman, speaks some English. I am told he is 80. He looks & acts about 65.

My first question was in regard to the conditions of his work under the new order. He said that of course it had not been easy to adjust themselves, there had been difficult days, but already they were entering upon easier times. The line of art is eternal, and passing conditions do not fundamentally change it. There have been deviations, especially to surface forms, but now the role of art is again on the right path. From the revolution, we must take the good and use it.

Konstantin Stanislavsky around 1931. (From the Russian State Archives of Film and Photo Documents, Moscow)

As a parable, to illustrate this thought: a group of children stray from the main road into the woods to gather mushrooms or flowers and return with their treasures to the road again. And of their findings there is finally left one small crystal for the immortal urn. During the revolution we strayed far off to look for the new, and that of value which we found becomes a part of immortal art.

What of the old have you discarded, and what of the new have you adopted?

The chief role of the Art Theater has been to maintain the tradition of the art of the actor. Decorations and settings are only important as a background for the actor’s art. This is the theory of inner as opposed to surface art. The Art Theater in Russia is the only theater which has worked in the province of inner creative art; the rest have occupied themselves with decorations, settings and other surface forms. The revolution brought much that is new in these surface forms and also in new contents of plays. The aesthetic character of the old play has given place to political in the new. For old hymns and new, we must have different voices, and all this is now adjusting itself and goes forward at normal tempo. But, said Stanislavsky, I do not understand and cannot feel that the old plays of Shakespeare can be done according to the present manner. True, I do not say that the new youth does not see Shakespeare through other eyes. And they should produce as they feel. But to tamper with Shakespeare, do the plays over—this is complete lack of understanding of creative art. Art consciousness is a living thing. A person cannot cut off his hand and put it in place of his foot. But still we profit by all this experimentation. The worst condition for art is when it stands still; it is better for it to move, even in the wrong direction, than to stand still

The union of the new with the old stands out in greatest relief in this theater. When we returned from America we found that the young people looked upon us as aged. But last year, and especially this year, they have begun to understand how much they do not know and how much they could learn from the old. They have come to me from all the theaters, asking me to tell them my secrets. For this reason I have decided that it will be most practical for me to give a series of popular lectures on the art of the actor. I notice, said Stanislavsky, a tendency everywhere to revert to the inner forms of art; people seem to be tired of the surface forms. They are not necessarily bad, some of them are very good: cubism, futurism, impressionism, and a lot of nonsense and stupidity. So we must throw away the bad and keep what is good. For instance, decorations and settings have been much enriched since the revolution, but to the inner art of the actor, the revolution has brought nothing. To the surface actors art has been added,—movement, gymnastics, dancing, singing, all very valuable.

Surface forms arose out of painting and has gone further than the culture of the actor. The actor stands still. He cannot convey more than the painting. Futurism, etc. cannot be expressed. Therefore many surface form theaters have gone ahead of the actor’s art. When we learn to use paintings in our technique, they will be of great value. But so far in other theaters the decorations are very advanced, premature, and the actor tries to act according to the new settings but is not able to and only spoils the effect. Either the actor plays in the oldest style and the decorations are the newest or vise versa, and therefore there is no harmony. Our theater uses only such decorations as support the art of the actor: for the futurist actor we use futurist decorations.

“Has communism produced any really good plays?” I asked.

“No, but as chronicles The Days of the Turbines and ‘The Armoured Train’ are good, and a new play in preparation in our theater by Leonov, is really of the best.⁵⁰ How soon I would be able to do it I cannot say.

And then he added:

“Art itself is organic and therefore slow to change, but the revolution brought many changes in content. Art will play, and is already playing, a big role politically and educationally in Russia. In every factory there is a theater, in every workers club a theatrical circle. All Russia now plays.

After the conversation we went to look at the museum of the Art Theater. Here are valuable collections of manuscripts of plays, old portraits and photographs of actors, costumes, miniature stage settings, props, etc., gathered during the life of Stanislavsky. As far as I could gather Chekhov was one of his intimate and admired friends and worked with him for years, writing plays for him and aiding him in their staging. He also knew Tolstoy.

Sunday Nov. 20th, 1927. Moscow-to Yasnaya Polyana

At 12:45 we attempted to board the train to Yasnaya Polyana but found that every car was packed. We had tickets in a ‘Maxim Gorki’ car, with no place cards. My interpreter went to see the G.P.U. man at the station, and by telling him that an American writer was on his way to Tolstoy’s home, a delegate, etc., he arranged for us to be given places in the first car, which happened to be for employees of the railroad. But by the time he had made these arrangements, the train began to pull out. We ran and climbed on the second coach, which was full to overflowing with the real Russian masses. There were three tiers of them lying and sitting on the shelves in the dimly lighted, smelly car, and looking up I could see rows of Russian boots hanging from the three shelves; one fellow had taken his boots off and his bare feet were in close proximity to my face. We stood jammed in the aisle for almost an hour, waiting for a stop; when one came, we jumped off and ran to the first coach where the conductor had already prepared places for us. This was a third class coach, a little cleaner and with definite sleeping places. We lay down on the wooden benches and I slept intermittently, lulled by the slow motion of the train and by the chorus of snores in various keys. At seven in the morning we arrived at the little station of Yasnaya Polyana.

Here was a real winter scene: everything covered with snow and all about thick woods of pine and birch trees. We went into a little house near the station for tea. This house had two rooms and a kitchen between. A family lived in each room, and on either side of the walls were large brick stoves on which the two families cooked, and which warmed their respective rooms. Our host was a young fellow who lay sleeping on a bare wooden bed, fully dressed and with his felt boots on. The four children were playing about the bed; presently he aroused himself and took the children up on the bed and gazed drowsily but fondly at them. The young wife heated the samovar and cleaned the table on which she had just made a batch of rye bread.

When we had finished our breakfast, we took a sled filled with straw to Tolstoi’s home. We bumped over the road through a good sized village and down an avenue of trees to a two story white house. An old watery eyed caretaker opened the door and agreed to show us the museum—certain rooms left as Tolstoy had lived in them— These rooms were unheated and had a very dreary aspect. They had all the plainness and ugliness of an ordinary American farmhouse: a large living room and dining room with long table and a grand piano, family portraits by Rapine on the walls, his stuffy little study and, adjoining, his bedroom with simple narrow bed, an old washstand, his shabby old dressing gown still hanging on the wall.⁵¹ How frugally he must have lived.

It so happened that today was the 17th anniversary of Tolstoy’s death. We followed a path with signposts pointing the way to his grave. It was beautifully situated in a grove of birch and pine trees with no tombstone, according to his wish. But the villagers had already covered the mound with evergreen branches. We struggled back through the soft snow, now thoroughly chilled, for the temperature was 10 degrees below. In the village was a big white cement building, a ‘Sovkhoz’ (government farm), and here we inquired about a place to stop. As soon as they found out that an American writer had come, they made a fuss over us. We were conducted back to the Tolstoy home on the order of Tolstoy’s youngest daughter, Olga, who had come from Moscow to attend the anniversary. The living quarters of the house presented a more cheerful appearance; in the living room were dining tables, shelves of books, plants and in the corner a tiled stove with a low chair against it which made a very cosy seat. A niece of Tolstoys, an elderly woman, received us most kindly and gave us tea and bread and cheese. Then a sled was called to take us back once more to the grave to attend the memorial services. As our sled came down the path, we followed a procession in single file moving through the snow to the grave, perhaps two hundred peasants of the village and children from the school in Tolstoy’s name. They gathered about the grave and decorated it with autumn flowers. The children sang beautifully the old Russian dirge: ‘Everlasting Remembrance’ (Vechnaya pamyat). Milukov, a friend of Tolstoy, spoke; his daughter spoke, and a quaint little peasant with a shaggy beard and kindly smiling face recited thoughts after Tolstoy’s death. Again the children sang the same refrain, and the procession filed quietly back again through the woods.

Returning to the house, we were put to bed upstairs, since we had scarcely slept the night before, and after more than two hours I came downstairs to dinner. There were a number of guests, among them Milukov. The niece speaks English, but is out of practice, the daughter speaks quite well. The niece lost all her wealth in the Revolution, was put in prison for two months, came out with only one dress, but seems philosophical about the new order. She is content to be permitted to live in one room in the house for the rest of her days.

I entered into a lively discussion with Milukov, who seemed to know much about the Russian peasants, on the question of the incompetent peasant, but could get no satisfactory answer from him. He wanted me to deliver a letter to Pres. Coolidge from the peasants of the village, asking him to prevent interference with Russia.

In the evening, the villagers all came to a memorial program in the living room where Tolstoy had always dined and received guests. The old niece was very active in the program. Records of Tolstoy’s voice in English, German, French, and Russian were played. The niece played Chopin’s Funeral March, the school choir sang a song on his death; a woman read extracts from biographies and reminiscences of Tolstoy’s life at Yasnaya Polyana, including one from Stanislavsky’s Memoirs. His favorite piece, Beethoven’s Pathetique, was played by his niece. The gentle Tolstoyan peasent who had recited in the woods now came forward and shyly recited his own poem about Tolstoy. He was a janitor in the school, his coat was shabby and dirty, a little knapsack was slung over his back, he had huge felt boots, and on his simple face was a childlike smile. He was practically illiterate, it seems, only learned to read & write seven years before. One of Tolstoy’s unpublished stories about his little nieces was read, and every body laughed. There was more music and singing, and the guests went downstairs for tea and sandwiches.

I had a wonderful conversation with the daughter, who told me all about her work.

To avoid the ‘Maxim Gorki’ train, we rode in sleds to Tula, a large city only about 20 versts from Yasnaya Polyana, leaving at ten o’clock in the night. We were given huge sheepskin shubas, which completely enveloped us from head to foot, and thus arrayed we keep warm in spite of a cold wind in our faces. The horses jogged along slowly toward the light of the city, which was reflected on the sky above the snow fields. On the outskirts of Tula, a city of 200,000, we took a brand new street car, which only recently has come, and rode to the station. There we were able to buy tickets in the International coach and ride in comparative luxury to Moscow, arriving at 6 in the morning.

Ruth Kennell’s sketch of the Russian janitor. (From the Theodore Dreiser Collection, Special Collections Department, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Monday. Nov. 21st 1927-Grand Hotel, Moscow

Because of lateness of arrival RK staid. I did not get up until eleven. At that time I was notified by VOX that Klimokon, Vice President of the All Russian Co-operatives, would recieve me for an interview. These cooperatives do 50% of all the buying and distributing of goods in Russia, and goods means everything from food & shoes & clothing to ornaments et cetera. They buy for as little as possible in enormous quantities and sell to the people as cheaply as possibly. There is no profit for anyone save the State, which takes expenses of course and something more for necessary but non productive departments such as administrative, corrective, judicial, educational, etc. The interview was at two P.M. R. K and Trevis accompanied me as stenographer (RK) and interpreter (Trevis). Trevis in this instance was unnecessary for Klimokon is a young man, of quiet, rather commonplace appearance, who speaks excellent English. He answered my questions intelligently and understandingly.

How much private trade is there in R.?

Private trade	22%
State trade	28%
Cooperation	50%

The cooperatives being nothing more than groups of consumers who seek no profit. The state encourages them to take over all collective buying for small stores & the retailing of all purchases. The state does all wholesale buying & selling as well as all manufactures. But it seeks to place distribution in the hands of the people organized into co-operatives. Naturally the trade of the State as a retailer diminishes as the cooperatives increase their power to handle it. The cooperatives consist mostly of small shops. Private shops get their goods from the State, because the government has a monopoly on foreign purchase. The cooperatives also buy through the state, and are a consumers’ group.

What is your controlling principle in trying to sell to people? Do you try to stimulate trade? Do you want the cooperatives to be profitable? Answer: No we only want them to buy their way. We are working on a small margin, so that we cannot be very prosperous. We do not trade for profit but to supply people with the necessities of life.

Would you prefer to restrain demand for luxuries?

No, if people can afford them, but at present imported luxuries are heavily taxed because the necessaries of life are now so important & so short.

I have heard the the private shops use more initiative and are more popular with the people.

No, they are decreasing:

	1922–23	1927
State	31	34
Private	40	22

Does the government try as hard as private concerns to get cheaper prices and sell cheaper?

Yes, and we are able to do it because big organisations can buy cheaper. For instance, the government, cooperatives and private concerns buy grain from the peasant, but the government, because it can buy in larger quantities, can get the best terms.

Does this private buying produce private capitalists?

Yes, but they are on the decrease.

The agricultural cooperatives organise wheat pools. If the private dealer buys, he pays more, but he can sometimes make a profit by selling in local places. However, such speculation is on a small scale because all transport, etc., is in the hands of the government.

You think there is any real danger from the private trader? Answer: not now. Once, they might have seized trade with one blow; for instance, during the war, when the cooperatives were weak & private traders were strong. But Goverment financial pressure deprived them of their capital, and foreign private capital can now come in with difficulty.

Capital in the cooperative societies was accumulated during the first period after the revolution. The government told the cooperatives they must compete with private trade and beat it with lower prices.

Do the cooperatives satisfy the needs of the people?

You should go to the stores and see for yourself. The prices are standard, and while perhaps high, the private stores ask still more. If you compare with European countries you will find that the standard of living of the Russian worker is higher. But the prices of goods are higher than in other countries. For instance, the price of bread — 8 kopecks a kilo, and white bread 22 k. Rye bread is 4 k. a pound. The cooperative societies baking rye bread lose on it but make up on fancy goods, so that the bakeries are working without a margin of profit, so you see we try not to starve the people. The Moscow cooperatives have sold meat below cost in order to oust private traders.

But must not all government departments be operated with a small profit for overhead?

Yes, and for that reason we are now selling meat higher. The best sells for 84 k. per kilo.

Manufactured goods are dearer here, especially in Siberia, because of cost of transportation. However, the Soviet Union is divided into regions, and in each there is a certain fixed basis for wages and prices according to budget.

Are costs of production excessive?

Yes, especially shoes and clothing,

High boots	$6.00
Womens shoes	8.50
’ ’ before	5.00
war

There is too much handicraft work, and we must import much of the raw material.

When Soviet Russia is rich will you people wear cheap clothing, eat cheap food, etc.?

No, only now we are poor: for instance in the cooperative shops there is always a mass of people buying cotton because they know that if they come late, none will be left. We are supplying only 75% or 80% of the people’s needs. So of course if a man has money he can go to a private store and pay more and get the material.

But the government hopes to supply this remaining 20% in five years.

As for the present standard of living in Russia, the demand for white bread has increased 250% since the war. Butter also. This figure is of workers—the bourgeoisie doesnt count.

Don’t you think that too much red tape is a cause of high costs and of delay in production?

Yes, there is still much red tape, much bureaucracy, but far less than before.

What about private initiative?

That is a question of competition. We must compete with 22% of private trade and also with the state.

The government is removing special privileges to cooperatives, i.e., less rent, less taxes, —except for small cooperatives in villages.

Do you feel that in the course of time these cooperative officials will try just as hard to please customers as private traders? Yes.

Will not absence of advertising and other stimulants to buy take away spirit and color of life?

We do not need these commercial stimulants here. But as to the question of how employees are stimulated to sell to customers premiums for sales above average, competition among stores, different methods. The store which gives the best service, has the least complaints gets a reward, and the employees also get rewards. Most of the state industries work on this basis, a system of compensation based on production power of the average worker, plus work over norm.

How fast do your cooperatives meet new demands?

The manager of a store knows what the local demand is & how much goods he sells, and every day he writes a report to the central office of his district, and every day he receives new supplies on the basis of his needs.

Could not stores be used to suggest new ways of living to public? Yes. Are they? No.

Does not the Soviet Govt, try to educate the children to be adherents of the Soviet Govt? just as the Catholic Church educates the children to be Catholics? Yes, but the Catholic Church educates the children for the sake of the church, whereas communism educates them for the sake of themselves—their own later prosperity and happiness.

Tuesday. Nov. 22nd 1927-Moscow-Grand Hotel

The Jack-daws of Moscow interest me.⁵² They are everywhere. I am told that to Russians they have a semi-sacred nature. This morning, lying in bed, I observed them through the window flying in clouds above this central heart of Moscow—-above the Kremlin. And all flying in the same direction—away from the city toward the northwest. A lymphatic bird—they seem to fly with an easy, lethargic social motion. They are always playing about with one another as they fly. One single one yesterday came & sat on the ledge of one of my windows, and I took it as a friendly omen. But these birds hanging over this half-asiatic city give it a more friendly look than otherwise it might wear. Circling above the Kremlin in thick, widespread spirals & circles, they give that ancient pile a some what detached, lovely & decidedly medieaval look. They seem somehow an ancient and baronial part of that old & drastic & gloomy world. Seeing them there I see Tzar Theodore, on the steps of his church, asking of his God “Why did you make me Tzar”? And below their darkling wings I can see Ivan killing his son or being slain by his courtiers.⁵³ It is a sad, drastic, tyrannical world that is below—but above, these wings seem free—and indifferent—; accidental, age old—detached. Below misery, dogma, mysticism—a pathetic slavery to an age old fallacy, and above birds that are pagan, social, genial and gay. How casual and accidental nature can be—freedom, ease, content may be side by side with enslavement & misery—and the one having no meaning for—holding no light toward the other. Under their wings before this scene (the Kremlin) one might well exclaim “Nature! Nature! What can you mean? What is the secret of your will?”

I had breakfast in my room. At 10 Ruth Kennell came and at 10³⁰ Trevis, my new interpreter. These two have been assigned me, as I understand, for the rest of my trip. At 11 —as Trevis explained I was at the office of LUBOVITCH, People’s Commissariat for Post and Telegraph, for an interview, and at 10⁴⁵ we left & met him.

Lubovitch is a rather stout man with a pleasant, almost jolly countenance, round and smooth shaven. He was as I learned the son of a carpenter, finished elementary schools and became a telegraph operator, after trying many professions including that of teacher. His present career began when, as a Communist officer in 1917, he seized the Petrograd telegraph by force.

What is your plan for Russia for the next 25 years? I asked.

We have a five-year plan, but as technique, fortunately, does not stand still, it is difficult to keep to it, and we find it necessary to change the technical details every year.

Plan of Postal Dept. 60% of the regions have been covered by the postal service whereas before the revolution it was only 3%.

Was all this under your direction?

Yes, I was the originator. I studied systems in Europe and installed the best here. First was the method of the truck car moving between villages. In 1925 we installed the European plan of postal distribution. At first, the postman made the rounds only 2 or 3 times a week, he traveled about 25 kilo a day on foot. Today, 60% of the postmen travel on horses. There are still few automobiles used in the provinces, with the exception of the Crimea. In certain places where the roads are better, autos are obtained from a society called Auto Industrial Trading Co., beside using their own post autos.

How long before the remaining 40% of the country will be connected with postal service?

Now those regions have a 3rd line of communication not belonging directly to the Postal Dept. But in the next five years these will also be connected by radio, telephone, telegraph, & radio telegraph.

Is there one telegraph rate?

We have reduced the special rates per kilo to one flat rate. Long distance telephone is by distance, but in the provinces the rates are 2 times cheaper.

Since the revolution the postal service has absolutely changed. The postman is a walking Soviet encyclopaedia, and incorporates every kind of social service in himself. If he cannot answer questions, he goes to the local Soviet and brings the answer next time. He also takes orders for goods, literature, sells books, takes money orders, telegrams, registered letters.

How is he paid?

By kilo and also a percentage on orders for periodical subscriptions and sales. The average earnings are 60 to 75 roubles a month, but he works only 15 days in the month. This is for the postman with his own horse, those on foot earn less.

Is there civil service?

There are special schools and courses, technical and trade schools at which the postman trains.

Telephone service.

In Siberia there is only one line, in upper Siberia none at all, but we want very much to thoroughly connect up lower Siberia. Our first problem is to connect up a good telephone line in European Russia. Since the revolution, we have finished a main Leningrad-Rostov-Tiflis line. Also The wireless telephone is very useful for us and we are now making connections to Tashkent, Turkestan.

Is the wireless as good as the telephone? I don’t know, but it has a great future.

How much is the telephone used?

Very much, especially in industrial organisations and 35% private conversations. There are no telephones in peasant homes, but each village, Soviet and cooperative, has a telephone. Out of 5,000 villages there are telephones in 3,000. But we are not satisfied, even though before the revolution there was nothing.

Does the peasant want the telephone? They are not only interested in the telephones but in many villages, cooperatives are organised for constructing telephones and supplying materials for construction to peasents.

Does the government use these means of communications for education and propaganda?

Of course we serve first the commercial needs. We are stabilising the telephone, which is replacing the telegraph and joining telephone and telegraph to go over the same lines. In the radio telephone we have a great opportunity. In Siberia a big wireless station is being built. There are 50 large wireless stations in Russia. They are supplementing telephone service not only in provinces but also in cities with the wireless. Newspapers use all the telephone-telegraph service at minimum rates.

What per cent of service is private?

60% of the service is to private individual and concerns, 10% newspapers, 30% government. In telegraph, 55% is government and cooperative and 45% private.

Foreign business is less than before the revolution, but inner business is three times greater. Telephone service between cities is 62% state organisations and the rest private.

In the city telephone service, 30% is to state organisations and the rest private telephones.

Big wireless stations are sometimes in the hands of other Soviet organisations like the cooperatives, but the majority are under the Postal Telegraph Dept.

In the sphere of the radio, the majority of the service is international. The technique of the radio is under the control of the Postal Telegraph Dept. but the social use is not.

Does the government use these means of communication for propaganda?

No, we give the techinical apparatus and social organisations use it as they see fit. We have nothing to do with the ideology, only the technique.

Wages of telegraph operators and mechanics?

The average wage of mechanics is 66 R. in Moscow, and technicians 132–150 R.

Telegraph operators, 89–120 R.

Are all expenses covered by this department?

Yes, we have our own budget. Last year we gave nothing to the state and the state gave nothing to us, but for capital construction we receive 4 to 8 millions a year from the government.

Do you expect to give any surplus to the government in the future?

Yes, If it were not for the capital construction.

Perhaps you would like to ask me some questions?

Why didn’t the Congress on Telegraph now being held in Washington invite us to participate? We could help them.

Because those in control fear the Soviet influence on the workers.

If the American people wanted culture they have the most complete apparatus in the world for it, but they use it only for luxurious material living.

The average American loves his government and if anyone speaks against it, he yells Bolshevik and wants him arrested. Why? Because he gets good wages, auto, wonderful roads, every farmer has telephone and radio, every farm girl silk stockings.

The Commissar remarked: Democracy exists but under the pressure of the financial rulers.

The Commissar said that he has a brother in America who worked in Ford’s plant. He was ashamed of his brother in Russia and after long controversy they ceased to correspond. Sometime after, another brother in Odessa received a letter from him in which he wrote that he had been out of work for 1 year and that he needed $200 for an operation. His brother in Odessa answered that he also needed an operation which was done free of charge, not as in democratic America. The capital inherited from the old govt. post was 214 million.

Now the capital is 300 million

After this interview I dismissed Trevis and Ruth Kennell & myself proceeded to a new type of institute for Education called the Institute for Labor Education which Scott Nearing had recommended to me. Physically it proved to be a very large brick building, up to date and orderly. The principal of the school, a youngish, sandy complexioned man with a kindly careworn face, took us into his office. In the large corridor a number of boys and girls were taking gymnastic exercises, and the office was full of boys and girls who wanted to consult with the principal. I asked the principal if this was a school for the homeless?

He replied that he did not wish to speak before the pupils. When they had all gone out, he was ready to answer my questions.

This is a special institute for the teaching of wayward children, who have committed actual crimes all the way from petty thievery to murder. One of the 100 boys from 10 to 16 years at present in the school had killed his mother. These criminal children are sent here by a special commission. An interesting feature of the school is the fact that normal children are also sent here by their parents and study along with the criminal element, with remarkably successful results. For instance, the principal’s own children attend this school. There are in all 203 students from 7 - 16. There are the usual courses with special emphasis on technology, and science. There is a special department for the psychological study of the child which uses the American tests.

Do you find it necessary to punish the boys?

Yes, but we never use corporal punishment. They are deprived, for instance, of their daily walk, or their holiday excursion outside the grounds, or participation in the children’s organisations.

Do you have self-management in the school? Yes we have the same student committee which functions in every school, wall newspaper, etc.

From where do you get your funds?

From the Moscow Soviet and not from the Educational Dept. We have 450 R. per each boy. This is too little, and so the food is not adequate. We have 12 roubles a month per child, 1 lb. of meat a day, 1 lb. of bread, milk not every day, tea with sugar, mush, potatoes.

What do they do when they finish here? Either they go into higher schools or into industry, no student is permitted to return to the streets.

We then watched the gymnastics in the corridor and the principal told us that we would find it hard to pick out the boys who live in the institution as against those normal children who attend by the day.

The walls were covered with their drawings, and wall newspapers.

I went away with a fresh impression of the tremendous amount of disinterested labor which is going into the building up of this new society.

In the evening RK & I went to the Stanislavsky Theatre to see The Armored Train—a fair but somewhat melo-dramatic Red-White War drama. Obviously Stanislavsky put it on to curry favor with the Soviet regime. Every element in Russia must now propagandize for the Soviet idea. Afterwards Stanislasky’s secretary wanted to know if I would not give them a play. I suggested the American Tragedy (N.Y. Play form) and promised to submit a script.

Wed. Nov. 23rd 1927 - Moscow - Grand Hotel

Another gray day. Certainly bright days are rare here. As usual I have the cold Russian meats & cocoa for breakfast. R.K. comes at 9—-Trevis at 10³⁰ There is an interview.

Interview with Svidersky, Assistant Commissar of Land at eleven. He proved to be a shrewd looking man of middle age. His father he said was a rich land owner. During the revolution he was vice commissar of nutrition and traveled from village to village to commandeer flour. He said that now after six years he could not recognise the villages so greatly had they improved.

What is the present peasant population of Russia? 100 millions.

How is the land distributed among them? It depends upon the district. In a central industrial gubernia each eater has 1.8 dessat. In the Volga district 5 dessatins, in Siberia 15.⁵⁴

Does the government expect from each peasant a certain return in production? No. Only the agricultural products which the government buys, but no fixed amount as he is free.

Why not from peasant if from worker? Because we pay the worker definite wages and can expect a certain amount of labor from him. The peasant does not have the land free of charge. There is an agricultural tax amounting to 400 millions a year.

On what is the principal tax?

There was a proposition to tax only income and not land, but it was rejected. The inspector comes to the peasant and decides what his taxes are to be. The taxes are according to the number in the family, if a large family then a larger tax. It is considered that the larger the family the richer is the peasant. The peasant receives say, 1 1/2 dessatins for each member of his family, 5 people, but if only the husband and wife can work, the tax is less. For instance, if he has 8 acres of land and only 2 persons are able to work, he is poor.

Why do you not take the land away if he cannot work it?

Because after the revolution, every member of the family had a right to a piece of land. The government helps the poor peasant with credits, etc. because it cannot take away the land even if he is not able to work it. And if we did take it away, he would get poorer and poorer but if he has it, he can at least rent the land he does not cultivate. But if he rents it more than 3 yrs. the government seizes it.

Would it not be better to use Henry George’s theory for the state to own the land and lease as much as the peasant can use for a certain return to the state.⁵⁵ If he took more than he could give a return on, he would have to give it back and if he worked very badly, he would have to go into some other work.? Answer No, such a system could not exist here. The peasant would become a worker and sell his power. But For this factories are needed. And as yet there are no others—not factories to employ such free labor as there is. There is an adage in Russia that the peasant is jealous of the worker, and it is true

If we followed Henry George, the peasant would own land according to his ability. George also believes in nationalisation, but according to his system, there would not be equality among the peasants. Those who could farm such land would get it & those who could not would have little—and we would have what we are trying to avoid here—rich & poor more. In Russia we feel that the land belongs to all the peasants. There are some families who are very strong and can work well. So we try to help the poorer peasant by giving him the possibility to work with other peasants and so maintain his stature after a fashion. To this end the cooperatives give credits to the poor peasants to buy equipment. But if in the instance we find that we cannot help the poor peasant, then your theory is right. But as yet we are testing the system. That is the difference between a capitalist and socialist system. If we will help the peasant to develop, we can build up our industry, and if not—the bourgeois power will come again.

Before the war the condition of the peasant was worse. His standard of living has improved, his consuming power has increased. But the peasant is not satisfied with his standard of living, especially his clothing, although it is much better than before the war. But we must improve his condition. It is on this question that there is all the trouble in our Party.

Is his general equipment better?

In some regions worse, in others better. For instance, in Volga region worse, principally because of the famine.

What do you do about the incompetent peasant? For instance, a man not fitted for farming, but born on a farm.

He must take the initative to get out. But in the villages the peasant youth is anxious to leave the farms and go to the factories. The Young Communist organisation is taking care of them.

If a peasant is competent, does the government help to keep him on the land, and on the other hand, if the factory worker would do better on the land, does it try to send him there?

The individual is never guided. In the first days, the policy permitted everyone individually to go to the Land Dept. with his personal problems, but now the Young Communist organisation handles such problems. The Dept. of Education has peasant schools for the young peasants who are trained to be social workers in the villages. There are factory schools to train the industrial worker and he can, if he wishes, be transferred to the agricultural schools.

How does the Russian peasant compare with the peasant of western Europe?

Whom we call a peasant and whom western Europe calls a peasant are two entirely different types. On a trip to Germany, I became acquainted with the peasant school in Konigsberg and saw young men in uniform. I asked who they were and were told that they were peasants. They pay 100 marks a year tuition and live in private homes costing 300 marks. Even in our richest condition, we could not have so much money. Here were altogether different values. Our peasant is small, his enterprise is small. But we are lifting up the poor peasant in great measure. The peasant who comes to me now from my district had in my time no boots, no samovar, no manufactured goods, no schools, no hospital, no cooperative organisation. Now he has all of these things.

Are you reaching all the peasants with the new education and equipment, including all nationalities?

Yes, everyone, even the smallest nationalities whose culture is very low are being reached through the Party, trade union organs, cooperatives, radio. For example, this morning this incident occurred: There is a wild people from the Kazakstan Republic who sent a delegation of 15 to me. These people are like nomads and travel with their herds from place to place. Now they are gradually coming back to the land and they came to me asking for tractors—not horses, but straight away tractors! And not one tractor but many. They had to talk to me through an interpreter because they don’t even know Russian.

Does your department actually sustain itself out of the revenue from the peasants or does it, like all other departments as far as I have seen, borrow from the government.

Answer. We are not self-sustaining and borrow from the government. But the income of the government is used for cultural work, education, health, literature. The state’s budget is derived from taxes, forests, mines, etc. and from this income it gives to the different departments like agriculture. Besides this, each local department or state has its own budget. It receives money from its people or pays the central government a certain sum to help in this farm work. This is called autonomy.

How much Central Govt, budget money does the Land Department receive?

6% of the national budget but this is supplemented by local budgets for local work in the different Republics.

How long do you think it will be before the peasant will have a decent standard of living?

The peasant himself during the war met foreigners and became acquainted with their customs and standards. This tended to increase his own demands. Now he wants the American tempo.

We in the Central Soviet Government have a five year plan for his general improvement but it contains too many details to be entered upon here—his education, good roads, good machinery—I cannot tell you what all but is a vast scheme. Personally I think the process of development will take 10 years.

What factors would stimulate development?

Of course, different factors, but first of all industrialisation, especially electric stations, good roads, automobiles, farming machinery. We have so little money to buy farming machinery with.

Is it not better to build roads for auto buses and automobiles than railroads.

No, not for us, as yet. We need long haul transportation so much now—the long haul railroad is cheaper. But There is a special commission on auto roads and construction will begin in March.

What do you think of autos in place of street cars?

For us it is not practical, because we must buy the autos abroad and we can & do build the short cars & rails here.

What about the tempo of the Russian peasant being naturally slow in comparison with that of the American?

There is no fundamental difference. It is only an old fable. There are many legends about the Russian peasant, but it is plain that he had enough energy to kick out the czar and put in the Soviet power. He has acquired 30,000 tractors in 3 yr. We were afraid that the peasant could not run the tractor, but our fears had no foundation. He has brains in plenty to operate machinery.

Has birth control any place in your program?

No, it is a capitalist problem. For instance, in France, they try to reduce the birth rate so that the inheritances will fall into fewer hands. Here followed a long argument between R.K. and M. Siverdosky in which I took little part although I believe in Birth Control.

In the evening I saw my first Russian Ballet at the Bolshoi (Grand Opera). It was beautiful—Pantomimic interpretation of Hugo’s Notre Dame, with music by some Russian composer whose name I have forgotten—but the music was not good. But with suitable words & music this pantomime would make a rare Grand Opera. And yet as I saw it I thought how strange. In perhaps only here & in England would this opera be permitted. For in America, France, Italy & perhaps Germany—the Catholic Church would have sufficient influence to prevent a truthful presentation—most of all in America—the Land of the Free. The leading role was played by Geltse—a charming ballerina said to be 58 years old, —but as active & graceful as a girl of 20.⁵⁶ Many of the other dancers were marvellous.

During the pantomime—Resnich, the representative of the Associated Press here in Moscow, told me how the Associated handled the story of Lenin’s death & of the fight between the various correspondents for place at the telegraph desk once the foreign office permitted the news to go. It was held up from midnight when he died until 2 p.m. the following day. He wanted me to see Otto Kahn & get him to take the Russian ballet to America.⁵⁷ After the show we went to the Gypsy Restaurant & I saw the most beautiful flower girl I have seen in years. Incidentally he told me the story of his recent life—a love affair with a Lesbian who almost wrecked him. It was sad and in a way beautiful. From here we went to the writers club restaurant where it was crowded. And here I told him of Leopold & Loeb—the psychology of that case.⁵⁸ He wished me to make a novel of it. At 2³⁰ hired a droshky & returned to the Grand Hotel.

Thursday. Nov. 24-1927- Hotel Grand-Moscow

I got very little done today, as no interviews were arranged. I went in the afternoon—to the large sculpture museum on Volhonka. This is an enormous, magnificent building. One section is devoted to old foreign paintings, among them many of the Dutch paintings which I consider have never been equalled. The remainder of the great structure is filled with reproductions of classic sculpture, some in heroic size. Here again, I remarked that nothing so perfect as the Greek sculptures has ever been thought of. This is pure beauty unmarred by grossness or material conceptions.

In the evening, Serge Sergeivitch Dinamov came to draw up the agreement with Gossizdat, but as I had meantime learned that the majority of my works are being published by Land and Factory, I considered that a contract with the State Publishing House as my official exclusive publishers would be meaningless. So unless Gossizdat can publish these books, I shall not be interested in making a contract with them.

I got into an argument with Dinamov about individualism, or rather, intellectual aristocracy, as opposed to mass rule. The little brain & the big brain came in for their customary share in the argument—how to place them—and where. As opposed to Communism and its enforced equality I offered international, benevolent capitalism as very likely to achieve the same results. He did not agree but could not dissolve all of the difficulties of communism as practised here in Russia. In weariness we finally desisted.

Friday-Nov. 25-1927- Moscow-Grand Hotel

Grey & very dusky. I am irritated by delays in obtaining important interviews here & decide to go to Leningrad—allowing Vox—in the lapse of time, to arrange the interviews I want (Stalin, Buhkarin,⁵⁹ [unreadable]. Pending my departure at midnight I visit the Tretyakovsky Gallery, the largest Russian gallery in Moscow and get an idea of Russian art.⁶⁰ There were two rooms of Rapine’s paintings, including the large picture of Ivan the Terrible after he has killed his son. This last was really powerful. Most the pictures assembled here are very good & lightly interpretive of Russian life & manners during the past 200 years. A sombre world up to now—forrests, poor roads, meagre equipment, snow—heat. But highly individualistic & colorful. No attempt made to interpret any of the Russian names into English so that I was at a loss as to who painted what. But the art itself—Russia as expressed here—remains with me.

Afterwards I walked back to the hotel. Enroute I found a horse-shoe. I rested until 6—then packed—wrote letters. At 9³⁰ R.K. came. At 10 Trevis. At 10³⁰ we took a taxi to the station & at 11 boarded the sleeper. Trevis desire for R.K. caused him to hang around her until 12—but evidently he lost out for he returned & silently bestowed himself in the upper berth.

Before leaving the hotel I had a talk with Ole Svensen—a rich trader of Seattle. His business—furs—is centered in Kamchatka.⁶¹ He told of customs & conditions there—food, clothing, housing. Most houses made of snow. An inner tent—very small—can be heated with so little as an oil lamp. Fish, reindeer meat, sugar & blubber principal foods. Fats & sugar absolutely necessary. Husbands & wives—kill each other on request—when physical suffering becomes too great. Life easy, food plenty. Men, especially Americans, become addicted to it. Cannot endure states because freedom & ease here too great. Natives admire & make life comfortable for Americans. An American then is a sort of king among them. They buy all sort of American goods. Best clothing is made of double reindeer skins—for inside (next skin) & out side. Boots & cap too. Easily cleaned by freezing & beating when all ice is shaken out and dirt with it. Very warm country very healthy—People fatalists.

1. Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov (1826–89), poet and satirist who wrote under the pen name N. Shchedrin. Saltykov was a member with Dostoevsky of the Petrashevsky circle and was exiled to Vyatka in eastern Russia for his early writings. His best-known work is the multivolume novel Gospoda (1872–76).

2. The Internationale was a revolutionary song first sung in France in 1871 and afterward popular as an anthem for communist workers and sympathizers.

3. The Grand Hotel de Paris, an establishment in Moscow frequented by western visitors.

4. Lluna Park, in the Grünwald area outside Berlin, was a popular location for public amusements.

5. Sergei Dinamov (1901–39), Dreiser’s chief advocate in Soviet literary circles and the editor of the first Soviet edition of Dreiser’s collected works. Dinamov, a Bolshevik, served in the Red Army during the Revolution. Before his early death, he had become Director of the Institute of Red Professors.

6. Scott Nearing (1883–1983), American socialist and radical activist. He was fired from teaching positions at both the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Toledo for his political views and his pacifism. His best-known book is The Making of a Radical (1972).

7. Probably the Butyrka Prison, built in 1879 near Butyrka Gate in Moscow.

8. William D. “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928), a famous union organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW). Haywood was known for his ability to unite workers of different ethnic and religious groups in common cause. Dreiser had known him earlier in Chicago and had used the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike, in which Haywood was active, as the background for his one-act play “The Girl in the Coffin” (1917). See Keith Newlin, “Dreiser’s ‘The Girl in the Coffin’ in the Little Theatre,” Dreiser Studies 25 (Spring 1994):31—50. Imprisoned for his labor activities, Haywood jumped bail in 1920 and escaped to the Soviet Union, where he became the first manager of the American Autonomous Industrial Colony Kuzbas, a coal-mining operation. Forced to retire because of diabetes, he became a pensioner of the Soviet government and lived in a room on the second floor of the Lux Hotel. He died on 18 May 1928; his ashes were divided and interred partly in the Kremlin Wall and partly in the Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago.

9. The Hotel Lux, renamed the Tsentralnaya in 1953, was completed in 1911. When the Bolshevik government moved to Moscow from Petrograd, it reserved the hotel for party functionaries. In 1920 it was closed to the public and used exclusively thereafter by the Comintern. Foreign guests and European communists were put up here by the Soviets, and security was very tight, as Dreiser’s need to show a passport for entry indicates. Its restaurant, shops, and even an outpatient clinic made it similar to a small city within a city.

10. Dreiser means Ruth Kennell.

11. Haywood’s memoirs were published as Bill Haywood’s Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (New York: International Publishers, 1929).

12. Dreiser is referring to the GUM Department Store, the facade of which stretches for more than 800 feet and bounds the east side of Red Square. Completed in 1893, it was called the Upper Trading Arcade, and its numerous shops were rented to merchants by the czar. After the revolution, it was taken over by the government and became famous as the largest store in the Soviet Union. GUM stands for Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin, or “Universal State Department Store.”

13. John Reed (1887–1920), American labor leader, author, and publicist. Reed came to Russia in August 1917 to cover the Revolution, during which he sided enthusiastically with the Bolsheviks. Back in the United States in 1918 he helped to organize various socialist and communist groups and lectured and wrote extensively. His best-known work is Ten Days That Shook the World (1919). Reed returned to Russia shortly after publication of the book and became an associate of Lenin and a member of the executive committee of the Communist International. He died of typhus the following year and is buried in Red Square at the Kremlin Wall. John Reed Clubs, for writers of leftist tendencies, were founded in the United States beginning in 1929.

14. VOX (the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreigners) functioned as, among other things, the government’s official tourist agency.

15. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, teacher at the New School and author of Handbook on Soviet Drama (1938) and Drama in Wartime Russia (1943).

16. Dreiser is referring to the famous Bolshoi Theater, which dates in its present form from the remodeling by the architect Cavos after a fire in 1853 destroyed the interior.

17. Dreiser means the dance school begun by Isadora Duncan in Moscow in 1921. Irina Duncan was her sister; see entry for 10 November.

18. Dreiser is mistaken here. The cathedral lies on the Yauza River, a large tributary of the Moscow. Built between 1410 and 1427 of white stone, it lies within the Spasso-Andronikovsky Monestary, a famous Russian center of culture.

19. For references to this university, see Dorothy Thompson, The New Russia (New York: Henry Holt, 1928), 173, 237, 254.

20. A droshka is typically a one-horse peasant wagon with small wheels.

21. Vasili Blazhenni Cathedral, or the Cathedral of St. Basil, is one of the most singular structures in Moscow. Begun by Ivan the Terrible in 1554 and completed in 1679, it consists of eleven small chapels arranged in two stories and is surmounted by variously shaped domes and spires painted in many colors.

22. Dreiser might be referring to Moussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov, in which Czar Boris’s son, the Czarevitch Feodor (Theodore), is a character.

23. Walter Duranty was associated with both the New York Times and the London Post; he was regarded as the dean of American correspondents in Moscow. See Duranty Reports Russia (New York: Viking, 1934).

24. An izvozchik is a cabman or drayman, typically a peasant in a heavy sheepskin coat.

*Here begins Ruth KennelPs typescript. Her typographical errors, like Dreiser’s slips of the pen, are left uncorrected.

25. Prince Igor is the only opera of the composer Aleksandr Borodin; it tells the story of the defeat of Prince Igor Sviatoslavich at the hands of the Polovtsky tribe in 1185.

26. A banya is a bath, typically a steam bath in a separate building.

27. The term kulak was applied before 1917 to miserly tradesmen or to village usurers. After the Revolution it was used to designate prosperous peasants, many of whom were disfranchised and taxed heavily. Some were deported to corrective labor camps.

28. The Novodevichy Monastery (New Maiden’s Convent) was one of a ring of fortified monasteries, which from the sixteenth century onward were constructed outside the center of Moscow. Novodevichy was built to celebrate the liberation of the city of Smolensk from Polish-Lithuanian occupation in 1524. Dreiser’s reference is to Czar Theodore I’s widow, who was the sister of Boris Godunov. In 1598, Godunov sought sanctuary at the convent with his sister and waited there for the nobles and boyars to ask him to become the czar.

29. The Novodevichy Cemetery lies next to the southern wall of the convent. This is the cemetery that in the nineteenth century became the burial ground for Russia’s famous men and women. Philosophers, artists, writers, musicians, scientists, politicians, and others who had gained a place in Russian history were the only persons allowed space here. Dreiser’s reference in the next entry to Chekhov’s gravestone is his way of describing a white stone with a metal roof that looks like a simple village house. Dreiser seems not to have understood the character of the cemetery, believing that the Russian writer was laid to rest among “long forgotten graves.”

30. Lenin’s wife was Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (b. 1869); she married Lenin in 1894 and was sent with him to exile in Siberia in 1896. After the Revolution she devoted her efforts to public education and the fight against illiteracy. Clara Zetkin was a socialist active in women’s movements of the time; she organized the first International Woman’s Day in 1909. Aleksey Ivanovich Rykov (1881–1938), a Bolshevik leader, was one of Stalin’s major opponents at this time; he would be executed in the purges of 1938. Henri Barbusse (1873?— 1935) was a French journalist and author.

31. Chopin is buried in the crowded and much-visited Cemetery of Père-Lachaise in Paris; a monument of a weeping muse with a broken lyre marks his grave.

32. A propusk is a pass or an identity card that will admit one to a building.

33. The dates and the words “this freedom has been modified” are in Ruth Kennells hand.

34. Dreiser later wrote a sketch, “Emita,” based on the story Kennell told him. It was published in A Gallery of Women (New York: Horace Liveright, 1929).

35. Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontay (1872–1952), Russian revolutionary and social reformer who served as Commisar for Public Welfare in the first Bolshevik government. Dreiser refers to her book Red Love (1927), which treats free love and sexual emancipation.

35a. Anna Louise Strong, journalist and friend of Sinclair Lewis.

36. A kino in Europe and Russia is a motion picture theater.

37. The sluzhishchi literally were “service people,” that is, officials and bureaucrats.

38. So called after one of their leaders, Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kolchak (1874–1920), a Russian counterrevolutionary and admiral.

39. Dreiser is referring to the chapel of the famous Icon of Kazan in Kazan Cathedral. Considered a holy place, it was the object of religious pilgrimages and therefore a special target of the new government. It was destroyed by Stalin in the 1930s; a new cathedral was built in its place in the early 1990s.

40. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898–1948), the most famous Russian movie director of his time. His films include Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925), and October (1927). His relations with the Soviet government were troubled, especially regarding the two-part film Ivan the Terrible (1944–45), an allegory of Stalin. In 1930 Eisenstein, then in Hollywood, collaborated with Ivor Montagu on a script for An American Tragedy. Clyde Griffiths was absolved of guilt in this script (the blame was placed on society); Paramount declined to produce the film. See Richard Lingeman, Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908–1945 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990), 340–43; also Keith Cohen, “Eisenstein’s Subversive Adaptation.” In The Classic American Novel and the Movies, ed. Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin (New York: Ungar, 1977).

41. Mother (Mat), directed by V. I. Pudovkin (1926), from the novel by Maxim Gorky.

42. The General Line, Eisenstein’s movie project treating agricultural collectives, had been suspended on government orders in 1926. It was remade as Old and New (1929).

43. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, famous German expressionist film directed by Robert Wiene (1919).

44. Dreiser mentions five American films here: Grass: A Nations Battle for Life, a documentary film about a tribe of nomads in Iran, produced and directed by Merian Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Marguerite Harrison (1925); Nanook of the North, a film about Eskimos, directed by Robert J. Flaherty (1922); Chang, a documentary shot in Magnascope in the jungles of northern Siam, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack (1927); The Iron Horse, John Fords first major Western (1924); The Covered Wagon, one of the earliest and most influential Westerns, directed by James Cruze (1923).

45. Peter McCord, illustrator and friend of Dreiser’s during his early days as a journalist. McCord is the “Peter” of Twelve Men.

46. N’iu Iork [The Color of a Great City], trans. P. Okhrimenko (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdate’stvo, 1927); Gallereia Zhenshchin [A Gallery of Women], trans. V. Stanevich and V. Barbashovaia; intro. S. S. Dinamov (Moscow: Gosudar stvennoe Izdatel’stvo Kudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1933).

47. More recently Gertzen’s name has been rendered as Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812–70), novelist, writer, philosopher, and after 1847 a revolutionary exile in Western Europe; his theory of socialism, influential in Soviet thinking, was based on the peasant commune. In London he began the Russian Press and published the journal Kolokol (The Bell) from 1857 to 1861.

48. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893–1930), Russian futurist poet, whose best-known revolutionary poems are Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1924) and Khorosho! (1927). Sergey Mikhaylovich Tret’yakov (1892–1939), Russian futurist poet and playwright, whose works include the collection Itog (1923) and the play Rychi, Kitay (Roar, China), which is mentioned here. Both men were associated with the “LEF” literary group, named after its journal Lewy Front.

49. Konstantin Stanislavsky (1865–1938), famous Russian actor and director, cofounder of the Moscow Art Theatre. Stanislavsky is remembered for his theories on acting, presented in such books as An Actor Prepares (1926) and Building a Character (1950). His approaches are known as the Stanislavsky system or as “method acting.”

50. Leonid Maksimovich Leonov (1899–1994), Russian playwright.

51. Ilya Repin (1844–1930), considered the leading realist of his generation. A friend of Tolstoy, he painted many portraits of the novelist and his family.

52. Related to the common crow, which it resembles in everything but color, this gray and black bird still can be seen in great numbers throughout Moscow.

53. Dreiser is referring to Ivan IV (“The Terrible”), who in 1581 reportedly killed his son in a fit of rage. Ivan was not killed by his courtiers, so the reference is probably to a variant of the story that has the son being killed by courtiers, not Ivan. Or Dreiser may be confusing the story with that of Ivan’s second son, Theodore. After Ivan’s death, Theodore became czar, but the pious and mentally defective boy spent much of his time in prayer while Boris Godunov ruled as regent. Theodore died in 1598 in unexplained circumstances, leading many to suspect Godunov and his court followers were responsible.

54. A dessatin of land is equal to about 2.7 acres.

55. Henry George (1839–97), American economist who argued that land could be leased to the people and that a tax should be imposed on land owned by monopolies and speculators. Industry, in turn, would give back to the community its share of the land value it helped create, thus alleviating the poverty that George felt was caused by the accumulation of great wealth by the few.

56. Yekaterina Geltser was a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi ballet; she is remembered today for her loyalty to the new Soviet regime and for remaining in Moscow to dance when many of her Russian contemporaries left to dance elsewhere in Europe.

57. Otto Kahn was an American financier and art impresario, much involved with the Metropolitan Opera during this period.

58. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, college students from well-to-do American families, kidnapped and murdered the adolescent Bobby Franks on 21 May 1924. The crime was without apparent motive, undertaken as an intellectual exercise. Leopold and Loeb were defended in a widely reported trial by Clarence Darrow, who argued that they were mentally diseased. Darrow helped them avoid the death penalty; they were imprisoned for life.

59. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888–1939), Bolshevik leader and coeditor of Pravda. Bukharin headed the Third International (1926–29); later he was expelled from the Communist party but subsequently was reinstated. He was suspected of being a Trotsky supporter during the mid-1930s, was brought to trial during the purges of 1938, and was executed in 1939.

60. The Tretyakov, a famous art gallery in Moscow, was founded by P. U. Tretyakov and donated by him to the city in 1892.

61. Kamchatka is a region in Siberia on the Bering Sea, known for its severe climate.