9/XII Friday
We arrived in Nijni Novgorod at 9:30 in the morning. The station looked clean and lively. We sat down in the restaurant and I watched the people passing through the station while we ate sausage and bread and butter and tea with vodka. A tiny girl of four in a huge shuba touching the floor, her head enveloped in a shawl, went toddling about smiling genially at everyone. Outside, we took the street car which carried us a long distance to the House of the Unions. It was a bright, cold day. We stood on the platform of the street car and looked at the passing city. Nijni seemed to be a very attractive, up-to-date place, with broad clean streets, we passed the fair grounds, now deserted, very extensive wooden buildings, then crossed the River Oka which flows into the Volga. The other side of the river with its old buildings and beautiful churches and hills, with the wall of the Kremlin and the old towers, made a wonderful view from afar. Near a fine square called ‘Sovetskaya Ploschad’, with the wall and towers of the Kremlin on one side and a lovely white church with silver domes in the center, we found the hotel ‘New Russia’ and were given two musty, shabby rooms, mine especially imposing with its black upholstered chairs and couch, which gave it the look of a gambling hall. Devedovsky had gone to the local Soviet, where they were much excited at the news of our arrival and soon a representative came over to show us about the city. First we took a ride about the city in a little automobile, one of three which I saw during my stay in Nijni. We drove along the bank of the Volga, which looked a mighty river, the middle current still flowing although boats can no longer navigate. The more I saw of the city the better I liked it. There was a snappy, bright atmosphere about it along with the charm of old churches and other buildings. We stopped at a very handsome new building of flats for workers and went in. What a man’s work is persists in being the most important fact about him. On door leading into one flat was a sign which said that here were living railroad workers, including the master mechanic Vorosov and assistant mechanic Kraskov. The corridors and rooms were attractively finished, the floors highly polished and everything as yet spotless after one months habitation. The first was a family of 4 living in 2 rooms, and a family of three in 1 room with a common bath and kitchen for both families. The first family paid 15 roubles a month rent, out of a salary of 75 roubles. One four room apartment was almost up to American standards. It was occupied by a scientist and his wife and child; the rooms were large and attractive and there was a bath. They paid 40 roubles a month. We passed a large section of new workers houses built of logs and quite good looking, built in the factory district. We went into one and found it quite comfortable: a family of four living in two of the rooms and a soldier and his wife, who also worked in the factory, in the other room, with a common kitchen and no bath. They all claimed to be highly pleased with their new quarters and that living conditions have greatly improved.
We visited the textile factory, ‘Krasni October’ employing 3,700 workers. This is a very old factory with on the whole old equipment and machinery, which takes the raw flax and makes it into cloth of a coarse grade. As we entered, a shift which finished work at 2 p.m. was just filing out. There were many women, some with little tubs on their heads, as they go to the banya (steam bath) from work, and all looked very gray and tired. For of course this labor in the dust from the raw material is very unhealthful. The workers get a month’s vacation and a special ration of butter and milk, but tuberculosis is very prevalent. Inside, almost the first thing which was called to my attention was the new ventilating system, just installed this year at a cost of 400,000 roubles, and at the demand of the workers themselves through their union. As the ventilators are not all working yet, it cannot be said how much they will help the air, which seemed pretty thick with dust. But it seemed to me that the 400,000 might just as beneficially have been put into new machinery.
On the way back we visited the gubernia hospital, which seemed to be a very large institution, well managed, clean and orderly.
We had dinner in the hotel dining room, deserted but for us, a balcony overlooking the large billiard room. After dinner, we went to an evening school for workers. Here was a lively little world, boys and girls hurrying through corridors to classes, gymnastics, wall newspapers, boys anxious to show me the art room and to present me with any drawing I happened to like, physics room with instruments which the students made themselves. Here are trained factory school leaders; everybody tremendously in earnest and very enthusiastic.
It was a glorious night, the moon cast a radiance on the snow, on the white church in the square and on the Kremlin wall. It was so cold that the snow crunched underfoot.
We stopped at the great central workers club, formerly a club for the aristocracy, and while this also was a buzzing little world of working men and women, with tea room, lecture room, library, and all the other auxiliaries of workers’ clubs, we had to go on to the movies. I had tracked the picture ‘The Poet and the Czar’ from Moscow to Leningrad, Leningrad to Moscow, and now I found it in Nijni. It was an interesting picture, giving much historical data about Pushkin and his time, but there was nothing new in the production itself and no doubt some tampering with historical facts.
10/XII Saturday
We ate breakfast in the little buffet near our rooms; we ordered fried eggs and they brought us at least 13. I argued with my secretary and she talked back to me. I said to her, ‘If I ever get out of this country alive, I’ll run as fast as I can across the border, and looking back as I run, I’ll yell: ‘You’re nothing but a damned Bolshevik’.
Our faithful guide from the local Soviet came to go with us to a village, and also a lively young newspaper reporter who asked me for an interview. I dictated a statement about Nijni for him, then as we put on our things to go, I said to him (apropos of my earlier questions about pigs and other animals living with the Russians in their houses): ‘And now for the pigs!’ Pavel Pavlovich Schtatnov, the newspaperman, was so delighted at my remark that he wanted it written in English in Russian letters for his article which he said would bear this title. We started off in the auto in high spirits. It was intensely cold when we got out into the open spaces; my secretary suffered from the cold wind and got down under the blanket. But whenever I made a remark about the passing scenery, the vast stretches of snow, or a village in the distance, she wanted to put her head out and see too, because she was afraid she wasn’t earning her salary. A few miles outside the city stood a fine looking big red brick factory, which manufactures telephones. We stopped to look at it, and were taken around by one of the managers. The factory employs 830 workers and is one of four plants of the Soviet Telephone Trust. It was built so far out because it was started to fill war orders and had to be in a safe place. The factory produces telephones only on order for the whole of USSR, the output being 30,000 telephones, the same number of radio, and 5,000 loud speakers a year. The working conditions seemed to be very good. There were many women workers at machines, for instance, making bolts, or polishing mouth-pieces, and they as well as men doing the same work received 50 to 54 roubles a month on piece work. A skilled worker, for instance, a filer, received 150 roubles a month.
The village of Blizhne Borovskaya looked very attractive nestling down in the snow plains as we came in sight of it. Although only about 20 versts from Nijni Novgorod, it seemed quite isolated. We went into the office of the village Soviet located in a small log house. Here we talked with the head of the district Soviet (Selsoviet, or Agricultural Soviet) which includes 9 villages, and with the secretary of the local Soviet, both quite young fellows. A crowd of children, some old men and a few women had already heard of our arrival and crowded into the small room and stood watching us eagerly as we talked.
I asked the district representative what was the reconstruction program of the Selsoviet. He said that the aim is to unite small farms, or if necessary to subdivide into smaller, in the interests of the community. The tendency is to keep farms intact. In case three sons inherit a farm, the Soviet tries to see that the most capable has the management of the farm, or if one is entirely incompetent to deprive him of any control, although the land cannot be taken away from him. As to schools and clubs, the direction is in the hands of the higher (volost) Soviet which appoints teachers, etc.1 The chief work of the Selsoviet is to help the population in their problems and in the protection of their interests. They bring all their troubles to the Soviet: if a cow dies, they get insurance, the Soviet is the carrier of culture and enlightenment to the peasants, it fixes taxes, collects taxes, this money goes to the district soviet which finances the schools, etc. Two of the members of the Soviet are paid and three are volunteers.
------- If the peasants want tractors what do they do?
Artels are organised among the peasants for getting machinery on installment payments.2
------ What is this particular village now trying to do?
Two problems now, 1, to supply fuel as the woods here are not sufficient, and 2, to gave a rotation of crops every three years, 3. to organise peasants for communal work in production and distribution. We have already organised one artel for buying implements.
The fire apparatus you see here was bought by the Soviet. The water supply is not good here. This Soviet also gets good seed, good feed for stock, implements, organisation for buying and selling milk, but grain is handled by the cooperative. However, here we have only enough for local needs, and no white flour.
-------- Can the Selsoviet decide question of opening a factory?
This is already based on economic conditions, but this Soviet has power to decide whether they want a factory, but it must go to the higher organs for support. If an individual wants to start an industry, if it is a small business the local Soviet can give permission. We have telephones put in by the Soviet. (District). We can speak to Moscow, Leningrad. We have a radio here, the population is very much interested, the cooperatives have radio study circles. The trade unions got the radio for our village, but of course the local soviet manages all the affairs of the village.
------- Have you electricity?
No, but there is a great desire for it.
We then went out for a tour of the village, and an ever growing crowd trailed along behind us down the village street. The first log cottage we stopped at had one large room and a tiny kitchen, there was an entry and then a very low door leading into the living room. The floor was scrubbed clean, there was the big whitewashed brick stove, and in a corner the altar. 6 people lived here, I couldn’t make out where they slept. This family had 4.8 dessatin of land, made an income of 264 roubles a year and paid 7.60 in taxes. Besides they owned a horse with which he worked for others, they had no rent to pay, wood not enough, no home industry now and no cow. Their only complaint was that there was no cow, but they have a radio. This was the home of a poor peasant. A neighbour, a little man with a shaggy red beard and matted hair, which was damp because he just came from the banya (today is Saturday), stood against the stove and smiled at me as if he thought the whole thing was a joke. He invited us to his house. This was the home of a poor peasant also, 2 rooms, quite comfortable looking, 8 people. I looked in vain for pigs in the parlour and cockroaches. I began to feel that my trip to Russia had been for nothing.
Next we went to the home of a middle peasant, a very good looking log house with fancy wood carving on the window frames and a little verandah. Adjoining the house was a covered shed for the cow and horse and chickens. Inside were three very nice rooms, a large kitchen, a comfortable living room with upholstered furniture and a bedroom. Five people lived here, The peasant owned 4.72 dessatins and made 403 roubles income a year.
We looked in at the post office and telephone station which connects with 11 centrals, it costs 18 kopeks to telephone to Nijni, 3 min.
We trailed off to the house of the village pope. I was afraid that the whole procession would follow me into the house but the Soviet representative told them to stay out. Nevertheless there were three of us, the head of the district soviet, the secretary of the local soviet and the reporter, making 6 people. The cottage had 3 rooms, a large and cosy living room with some signs of culture about it and a bedroom or study. The priest, a slender man with a thin scholarly face and short beard, greeted us nervously. The interview began with difficulty. I asked him how many followers he had before the revolution and after. Devodovesky translated my question. The priest hesitated.
What nationality are you personally? he asked her. She said she was a Polish Jewess. He said that the translators usually were not Russians. Then he proceeded to answer slowly.
It is a difficult question. The church can exist only with not less than 50 members. I suppose we have about 300 now. How many more unbelievers there are now is difficult to say. The tendency to get away from religion is especially strong among the youth.
----- Do you think the condition of the village is better or worse social and economically since the revolution.
I cannot give my opinion. You must ask the local representatives of the government. But personally my condition is worse than before.
------- How does the church exist materially?
We live on the income from funerals, weddings etc. I have no income, house is the property of the church.
------- Is there danger that religion will die?
I refer you to Trotsky’s interview with the American labor delegation in Pravda for my answer.
We decided to discontinue the interview as gracefully as possible as it was evident that we were torturing the ‘Batushka’, who could not talk freely before so many people.3 As we went out, my secretary returned because she had forgotten her gloves. The priest said to her: Please explain to the gentleman that I would gladly have answered his questions, if we had been alone, but before a Jewess, and the government representatives and a newspaper correspondent! If I had given my opinions ———’ He drew his finger across his throat.
We then returned to the Soviet House and in the little room of the caretaker we were served tea from a samovar, bologne, black bread, boiled eggs, pickles, candy and wine. The guests sat down at the table, while the hosts and villagers stood behind us and watched us eat. I felt like a new Revizor.4 When we had finished eating, I asked them to sing. The young secretary of the local Soviet led the chorus. First they sang the Volga Song, and then many others, beautiful songs, all of them. And like all Russians they sang very well. It was delightful to listen to them.
It was already getting dark when we came out into the air again. We trailed across a ravine to the school house and entered the warm, clean school room. It was quite dark, but the teacher came out of her living quarters at the back carrying a lamp and showed us the pupils’ work on the walls, the wall newspaper, and drawings. As we got into the automobile to leave, quite a crowd saw us off. The children cheered: ‘Hurrah for the American delegate!’ The automobile set off across the pathless snow until we struck the main road to town.
We all had dinner in my room with beer. The newspaperman was very gay. He interviewed me again (Note of Sec.: I slept through this, so can’t report), danced with my secretary a Russian dance, then recited some of his own poems, and made himself generally entertaining.
They saw us off on the train which left at 9:30 in the evening.
11/XII Sunday.
We arrived in Moscow in the morning. I had dinner with Wood. There was a New York theatrical manager by the name of Beeberman there. I went with him to the Jewish Theater and saw ‘200,000’. He is planning to take this company to America.
12/XII Monday.
We went to the bank in the morning and I received the $1000 from Bye. When we returned to the hotel, Serge came and was with me the rest of the day. While my secretary was at VOKS making the final arrangements for our departure, I went with Serge to buy some things —
We hurried through our dinner because it was understood that the train left at eight o’clock. We stopped at the Lux and got our traveling companion, Devodovsky, and hurried in the taxi to the station. We were afraid we would be late, but D. said that the train would leave about 8:25. We said we thought eight, she said she wasn’t sure. The porter carried our baggage to the platform. We found the number of our car, but it was third class. Some inquiries disclosed the fact that this was not our train, that ours would leave at 11:25. We returned to the station restaurant, and decided to wait there. My Sec. was very, very angry (at herself) but Serge and I kept up our spirits. I suggested to Serge that he might make a lecture tour of the United States, which I could arrange for him. He was much pleased with the idea. I asked him to write out his numerous titles and positions. He set to work earnestly, while I remarked that he had better send the list by express, that I was afraid there wasn’t enough time before the train left for him to finish the list, etc. all of which sent me and my sec, into paroxysms of mirth, while Serge, pleased to see us so gay but not seeing the joke at all, continued to write with the greatest seriousness.
The time thus passed very quickly and at 11 p.m. we boarded the train, took leave of Serge and at last I had left Moscow for the last time.
My traveling companion in my coupe was a young Turk, who was very friendly with us.
13/XII
There was no diner on the train and we had not equipped ourselves as all good Russians do, with food, tea kettle, glasses, etc. The Turk insisted on feeding us. He had a can of peppers which he would open in spite of everything. He broke his knife on it, almost broke ours but finally his perseverance was rewarded. When I tasted the peppers stuffed with carrots, I understood why he had been so persistent. They were delicious, and we had a good meal of bread and cheese, vodka, wine and peppers.
I then proceeded (having got all his food out of him) to get all the information I could from the obliging Turk.
On the road from Moscow to Kharkov. Interview with my traveling companion, a Turk, on his way to Constantinople. Khalil Kasimovich (Memi Ogli).
Kamil Pasha is now in power.5 About the changes which have taken place since the revolution: the church is separated from the state. Education was put on a different basis. Before they had only church schools but now they have a good general school and compulsory education The percentage of illiteracy before the revolution was 10% less than in Russia. In regard to economic conditions. What Kamil Pasha has done for the country. Before the revolution, in the course of 300 years, there were only 2 sugar refineries built, but during the last four years of Kamil Pasha’s regime, Turkey has added 2 more. They have opened technical schools, formerly if a machine was broken only a foreigner could fix it.
------- How many large cities are there in Turkey?
Constantinople, Angora, Adrianople, Izmeer, Svas, and Mussel. In Mussel is an English concession which has a 25 year contract through the League of Nations.
-------- Does religion hinder the development of the country?
Yes.
-------- Is Turkey striving for industrialisation as in Russia?
No they are not yet up to that point.
------- About education?
The schools are better than in Russia because Turkey has compulsory education.
------ What was done for the peasantry?
The position of the peasant has improved now because of the fact that the big landowners were deprived of their political power which they used so strongly against the peasantry formerly.
------- In your opinion, which government has done more for its peasantry, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia or the bourgeois republic in Turkey?
The dictatorship of the proletariat has done more because in the first place Russia is richer, because Russia did not pay its pre-revolutionary debts, and Turkey as a member of the League of Nations is paying its war debts. But Russia refused to accept payment for Turkey’s debt to her of 17,000,000 roubles.(?) or lire?
------ Condition of women in Turkey?
Polygamy is abolished and the women have taken off their veils. Formerly the husband had the right to divorce a wife without her consent, but she did not have the same right. Formerly, a man could have as many as seven wives and none of them had any right to the property. If the husband died, all the wives were turned out and the property given to his parents. But now they have equal right to the property. Women have equal rights everywhere, there is coeducation and higher education and they are employed in business and everywhere on an equal basis. There is one woman in the representatives to the League of Nations.
------- Is the Mohammedan religion stronger or weaker than before?
I think weaker, the only people who follow the Mohamedan religion now are the peasants and officials, and the peasants are in the minority, 40%.
------- Did Turkey have literature, novelists, poets, sculptors, painters, newspapers, magazines etc. Before?
Before they had only newspapers, but nothing in art.
------- Do you know any groups of writers and artists now in Turkey?
Yes, there are such groups in Constantinople.
----- Are there any young poets?
Yes, there are. But I don’t know their names.
------ Are there any new publishing houses?
Yes, in the hands of the government.
------- Is the country developing now?
Yes.
------- What sources of income has Turkey, what has she for export?
Tobacco, fruit such as oranges, lemons, figs, dates, nuts, silk, cotton, rice, wool.
------ With whom do they deal?
We send wool, tobacco, etc to England: Russia takes tobacco and rice and in return receives sugar and kerosene. We also deal with North America. In former years we used to produce raw material, so our returns were so much less. Now, we are preparing to use the raw material in manufacture.
------ What has the Republic done for the peasant?
The peasantry is very poor, there is no industry, they have only their small plots of land, which is of worse quality than the Russian. There is an abundance of fruit but as there are no means of transporting it, it actually rots in many places. The first thing the government does is to build railroads, and this work is going on at full speed.
Angora is being built now by an America engineer on the plan of New York. It will be called ‘Second New York’. They are also building a new opera house. The population is 84,000.
------- Would Turkey be better off if she had a proletarian revolution than as a bourgeois republic?
Of course, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the thing we are aiming for, but at that time we could not have had a proletarian revolution because there was no proletariat, and religion had too much of a hold, and if religion had been taken away along with the sultan, so the bourgeois revolution was a necessary step to the proletarian revolution, and we could not have had it without the influence of the Russian Rev. Turkey will follow in the footsteps of Russia and in my opinion much more easily because our government apparatus works better than the Russian.
------ How old is Kemal Pasha?
48 years.
------- How did he come to power?
He was elected for four years.
Recently he made his report and was reelected.
------ What will happen after he dies?
Just as after Lenin died, his followers took his place, so it will be with him. He was a former general but he is a scientific man.
------ System of voting?
We have equal suffrage.
------ Are there any rich people as before?
Yes, there are, but they have no special political rights as they had before.
------ With what countries have they connection?
Mostly with North America. They get from there machines, textile fabrics, and metal products.
We arrived in Kharkov at 8:20 at last to get a good dinner, but we found that the train for Kiev left at 8:40. So in another quarter of an hour we found ourselves sitting in a coupe on the way to Kiev, hungry and with no prospect of food until morning. However, my two ladies in waiting did get off at an 8 minute stop and buy some Narzan, bread and cheese.6 There were very few passengers and we rode in comparative comfort to Kiev, arriving at about noon. We had dinner in the unimposing station, the usual borsch, meat and some vodka, while we kept close watch on our baggage. We found a wreck of an automobile outside which took us to the Continental Hotel’. It was a foggy, drizzly day, but from the first sight there was a charm about the city of Kiev, broad streets, fine old buildings, beautiful churches. The Continental Hotel was a handsome old building, the interior quite magnificent, reminding one of the East, broad stairway with soft red carpets and stained glass windows at the head of the stairs, the reception room decorated with elaborate wood carving which made it look like a cathedral. We were first given two rooms, 1 quite tastily furnished which D. pronounced a ‘ladies room’, and the other a huge thing furnished with fat upholstery of red leather which she thought just suitable for a gentleman. I found it not only ugly but terribly damp and cold. There was the usual wash stand of marble with a bowl and pitcher. The maid with reluctance answered the bell and I managed to get a towel and a glass of hot water for shaving. The room was unbearably cold; I sat in my fur coat. So we found two other rooms on the third floor, mine very warm with a bathroom.
While our D. went to look up the local Soviet, RK and I took a walk. The heavy fog still persisted, the sidewalks were frozen, it was bitterly cold, but there was a liveliness and an air of culture about the crowds on the streets which warmed the heart. The more I got to know of the city, the more it reminded me of Paris. The shop windows were attractive, the women well dressed and good looking. We turned up the main thoroughfare and came to a square “La International” and beyond that a steep slope leading up to a kind of park, all deep in snow, where the children were playing with their sleds. In the evening, a reporter came to interview me and during the interview D. ordered dinner, but the waiter brought only one schnitzel. Our guide from the Educational Dept. was a business like looking young fellow in a short black leather coat. In the evening he took us to the opera while RK stayed at home to write her notes. The opera was ‘Faust’ very badly done. We escaped as soon as possible. When we arrived home, the samovar was waiting for us and we enjoyed a supper of bread and cheese.
14/XII
As usual we were late getting started in the morning. Our guides always so blithely agree to come at nine o’clock and then show up about ten thirty. At ten we set out alone for the old monastery ‘Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra’, 600 years old, which stands up on the hills overlooking the Dnieper River. We took a car which ran along by the park we had before noticed, past many fine buildings and churches with various colored domes. As we got off the car, we could see the walls and golden domes of the monastery ahead up the hill. As we climbed up the road in the cold bright sunshine we passed many people walking on crutches, without legs or arms. In the monastery is a home for war invalids and also a factory for the manufacture of artificial limbs. As we entered the archway of the golden-domed tower which led into the monastery grounds, we saw before us one of the most magnificent cathedrals I have seen anywhere. It had the usual five golden domes, four points forming a square with a large dome in the center. The outside walls were painted with pictures. Inside the church an old priest in long black robes and a black hat and a gray-bearded face anything but saintly in expression sold us tapers at ten kopeks each and proceeded to conduct us through a very limited section of the church. Here was a rich altar, many golden ikons inlaid with jewels and the caskets of priests and princes who had been connected with the monastery. He led us through a trap door in the floor down into a dark, dank room, and by the light of our tapers we could see a tomb and the outlines of a figure under the gold embroidered cover. The old priest mumbled a prayer and kissed the cover, then he lifted several layers of velvet and gold cloth and disclosed what was supposed to be a withered hand. This was the most important thing he had to show us, the mummified figure of Metropolitan. We went outside and climbing up the highest part of the wall, got a wonderful view of the Dnieper and the city across the river. Around this monastery the city has been built. The priests of that time had the modest ambition to build the grandest mortal edifice to God. ‘Lavra is the highest institution of the Greek church on earth.’
As one of the crippled young men remarked as we leaned against the wall: ‘From here you get a direct train to heaven’. The monastery is extensive and contains within its walls several other churches and structures, the latter being now occupied by museums, etc. The Pechersky monastery was founded in the middle ages and is closely bound up with the history of Kiev, which is one of the oldest cities in Europe. During the Revolution there was much fighting around this fortress and much damage was done. On the outside walls of the cathedral are patches of new plaster where damage has been repaired, and they are outlined with red paint, to the superstitious suggesting blood of the martyrs. (See English Guide Book, p. 321).
Our guide now found us and took us to an anti-religious museum containing relics, emblems, symbols and treasures of the great religions of the world, the purpose no doubt being to show the similarities and weaknesses and superstitions of all religions. Among the exhibits are some very fine pieces.
In another building were a collection of church treasures, many rich clerical robes, crowns, marvelous Ukrainian embroidery. One began to get an idea of the culture and talents of the Ukrainian people. Outside we met many priests, all evidently having been to market, for they carried baskets of products; one thin old fellow with a wisp of hair falling below his black hat crossed the path on his way to one of the smaller buildings. He carried a tea kettle of hot water. We spoke to him and asked him about the bullet holes we noticed in the walls; yes, these were from the revolutionary fighting, but God had spared the ikons, not a one was touched.
We next went to the museum of Pototsky. Pototsky was an old Russian General who had collected many art treasures before the revolution. In order to keep them intact, he offered to preserve the collection as a public museum, himself in charge. He was a heavy set, not very interesting looking man with a gray clipped beard. He himself opened the door and he and his wife conducted us through the museum. The rooms were very cold, the collection not especially remarkable. There was a whole corridor of pictures of the various Russian wars, there were several very fine pieces of furniture, carved sideboards, chairs, a lovely fire screen embroidered with beads. There were some rare books, among them a history of Kiev in English written by an Englishman in 1850.
From the monastery we went in an automobile for a drive about the city. We followed a very bumpy road along the river’s edge past many wagons carrying lumber for construction, then around through the trading section of the city. We stopped at a manufacturing plant for planting machines made only for sugar plantations, which are numerous in this region. It was a small but up to date and efficient factory, the manager mentioned with pride the fact that of 200 workers, only 19 were employees. They turn out more than 2000 machines a year.
We visited a machine factory called the Bolshevik, an old factory with little new machinery, employing 1,400 workers.
(Note of Sec. As I almost froze to death on this trip, the memory is very painful to me. Hence, incomplete notes).
Toward evening, our guide still insisted on our seeing more— a tobacco factory, but it was already closed, well then, a bread factory—at least it would be warm there. It was comfortingly warm (Notes quite complete on this plant) and the technical director was very proud and enthusiastic about his work. Only two kinds of bread are baked, both a graham. The ovens are German and it was a pretty sight to see the golden brown loaves rolling out of the ovens. 3,500 tons of bread are baked a day, one and one half hours to bake, 7 hours to produce, making in all 20,000 loaves a day. There are 114 workers. Although the latest American methods are still unknown here, it is a very clean, modern plant.
We came home late, had dinner in the beautifully decorated restaurant of the hotel with our guide and chauffeur, had a samovar after and also another ride to the hill to look at the view, a visit to workers quarters (RK stayed home) and at 10 p.m. we left for Karkov.
J.H. Pierce in Pottsville Journal, Nov. 12, ’27.
‘Gives History of Czar’s Regime.
‘Fortunately I know much of the history of Russia under the Czar’s regime. Following the Napoleonic war in 1812 and continuously for over 100 years, plots were fomenting against the Imperial family, and frequently these flamed forth into fierce conflagrations and in 1905 swept to the very gates of the winter palace at Petrograd. Always these revolutions had been suppressed but in 1917 the ruling class of Russia had been gravely weakened by an unsuccessful war, and this time the opposition, although no better organized, was successful and the monarchy ceased to exist on Nov. 7, 1917.
‘Russia, half medieval and half Asiatic when the veneer of foreign culture was removed, always lived behind a veil of mystery, terrorism and romance. Its population consisting of 140 million people lived in a condition of ignorance and squalor with barely sufficient to keep them alive, while the ruling class lived in luxury and magnificence from the exploitation of these unfortunate people. Education and self determination were practically denied the laboring classes, and this was the fertile field in which the seeds of restlessness, envy, hatred and revolt were sown.
‘Russia, with the territory and natural resources of the United States and Canada combined, was practically undeveloped; its people through hundreds of years of repression had acquired an inferiority complex. The foreign capital of other nations was welcomed in to exploit the hidden wealth in Russia; her mines and factories were largely managed by foreign engineers and executives. Thus was the initiative spirit destroyed, and when it came time to reconstruct her factories, mines and railroads, the lack of long years of specialized training was not available to properly execute a problem so gigantic. Minds which had yearned for self expression for hundreds of years became over zealous to learn and grasped new thoughts with remarkable rapidity when the fetters were released.
‘We may pass over rapidly the sad story of revolution and counter revolution, of invasion by foreign armies, of famine and pestilence, but we should keep clearly in mind that prior to the revolution nearly 2, million men had been killed and 5, million injured in the world war, that railroads and factories had been destroyed, that mines were flooded, that morale was at its lowest ebb, and that 140 million people, mostly illiterate, had no credit or any medium of exchange and were suddenly thrust back hundreds of years to the days of barter and exchange. The peasants’ potatoes were traded for the merchant’s shoes, and crusts of bread were traded for a hard day’s labor . . . . . .
Currency on Gold Basis.
‘During this time she has rebuilt her railroads and factories, many new indusries have been started tremendous power plants have been built, mines de-watered and put in operating conditions and thousands of splendid homes for workers have been erected. Her currency has been established on a gold basis, her school system has been tremendously enlarged and education encouraged. They have less crime of all kinds than we have in New York or Chicago. They are spending 90 millions per year for social welfare.
How rapid the process of reconstruction has been may be judged by the fact that in 1924–25 the output of manufacture and mining showed a gain over the preceding year of 60%. In 1925–26 an increase over the previous year of 40%, and over the fiscal year just completed a gain over the prior year of 20%. The declining rate of production growth is naturally due to the gradual completion of the reconstruction program. . . At the end of 1926, there were 144 concessions operating, including over 40 industries, 25 mining and 36 commercial. The number of concessions is gradually growing, the largest of them are the Harriman manganese concessions, the Japanese coal and oil concessions, the Lena Gold Fields, an English syndicate, and the Krupp Agricultural concession. The total capital invested in concessions in Oct, 1, 1926 was 41, million dollars, of which foreign concerns supplied 51% and the Soviet organisations supplied the balance.
‘The figures I have given are sufficient to convince an impartial mind that there is economic progress. Here also are vast economic resources awaiting capital to exploit them. Where the capital is to come from is the important question. It is a well known fact that the large banks, trust companies and insurance companies of America are accumulating funds at an alarming rate. The bond issues of the United States cannot begin to absorb this money and the various financial institutions have agents throughout Europe striving to loan money, but the supply still exceeds the demand. This money must find an outlet or cease to be useful.
‘In the United States we have overproduction in nearly every line of business, and unless some additional markets are created we cannot hope to continue our present pace. Our money should be put to work to create these markets, and our bankers should insist that American credit should be used for purchases in America, if this is not done America will supply the world with the sinews of war to challenge her industrial supremacy.
‘In the face of the attitude of the American government it takes a good deal of courage on the part of the American business man to decide to loan money in Russia. Is this foreign policy sound? Is it helpful and sympathetic? Will it redound to our credit when the mists have cleared away and we look back in retrospect? Are we so close to the forest that we cannot see the trees? Is it good policy for us to help rehabilitate Belgium, France, Italy, Poland and Germany as we are doing and turn deaf ears to Russia? We have liquidated greater debts to our allies than the total of Russian indebtedness and we are pouring millions of dollars into Germany, which history records was the instigator, was the cause of the toll of human life and created these gigantic debts for future generations to pay.
‘Are we to be super-critical and assume that only we have a perfect government, or are we to be considerate and tolerant? Are we to forget that when this country was ten years old, we also had strange views which we now hold impossible? Do you recall that history records people being burned at the stake for expressing certain religious beliefs in our country’s early life, and when you feel especially superior, please recall that only 66 years ago this great nation, which was founded on the doctrine that all men are created equal, was torn asunder by our civil War, because a great part of our country believed in slavery for their fellowmen?
16/XII Friday
It was gray and cold when we arrived in Kharkov again at about noon. I had conceived a prejudice against Kharkov from rumours I had heard, and it seemed confirmed as we rode through the unattractive streets in a dilapidated automobile. At the Hotel Krasnaya (Red) we were given only one room temporarily, a long narrow room which looked like it was meant for a corridor. Evidently prices and service here were on a par with the Bolshaya Moskovskaya, for the room was 8 roubles and there seemed to be no conveniences. While Devedovsky went to look up the local Soviet, we took a walk down to the telegraph office. The streets were very lively and in the open square in front of the hotel stood a long row of izvozchiks, their sleds gay with bright colored carpets and red and green upholstering and little tinkling bells on the horses. Next door we found a branch of Donugol, the travelers’ bureau, and went in and got detailed information about the rest of the trip. The man there sent us to Donoogel (the Coal Trust of the Donetz Basin) to see about the journey into the Don Bas. We wandered about in this enormous, imposing looking gray stone building for some time looking for the right department, until we dropped in on the rooms of the American Commission. I knew at once that there were some Americans in the room, for their appearance was unmistakable—five American engineers who had been only a few months in Russia. They had many friendly suggestions to make about the trip to Don Bas, and one of them offered to use his influence in the hotel to get us a better room. We had cocoa and rolls in a bakery lunch room which was crowded with what were certainly business men, officials of industrial trusts, private traders, etc., a large proportion of whom were Jews.
We had dinner in the hotel dining room, with music, during which we tried to raise our spirits by talking about the beauties of Florida and the Black Sea. In Kharkov we seemed no nearer our dream of a warmer clime than in Moscow. After dinner, we were given a large room upstairs for 10 R., which we decided to share together. D. had stirred up the local officials by presenting her letter from VOKS and the article of Serge about me in the Evening Moscow. A very cultured young man came from the Educational Dept. and offered a practical program for seeing the city.
In the evening he took us to the leading Dramatic Theater which was giving in the Ukrainian language a dramatization of Rigoletto. It was a large theater built on the plan of the Bolshoi, with the three tiers of circular boxes above, but almost empty because of a sudden change of program. Later on, several hundred soldiers from the local base crowded in and filled up the seats. I was surprised at the excellence of the production and the playing. The Ukrainian people seem to have a wonderful amount of artistic talent, which, suppressed under the tsars, since the official language was Russian and the masses knew only Ukrainian, now under the new movement of authorizing local languages, seems to be blossoming forth. After two acts, I left with reluctance to go to the opera house. Here, strange to say, another foreign classic was holding forth, ‘Carmen’, also in the Ukrainian language. Here again, I liked the production very much, the voices were beautiful and Carmen was as good as any I have seen in the role. I was so tired that I wanted to go after the third act, but the director begged me to stay, assuring me that the last act was the best. However, the intermission was so long, more than half an hour, that I was quite out of patience when the curtain finally rose. We rode home in an izvozchik and my opinion of Kharkov was steadily rising.
17/XII Saturday.
In the morning our guide came and we set out in a very good car for the Electro-mechanical Plant on the edge of the city. There had been a change in the temperature and it was thawing and foggy. On the way, I got some idea of the city. There were several broad streets with fine houses and new structures going up. We passed a district of new workers’ houses made of red brick, one and two stories, which were very attractive looking. Kharkov like every other center has a housing problem, the city having grown in population from 200,000 to 450,000 in the last ten years. The plant which we visited is the biggest I have yet seen; it was before the revolution a German plant in Riga and was transferred here afterward and newly constructed. It has 4,000 workers and 1,000 employees and engineers, and 400 of the workers are women. Due to the fact that orders have come in faster than expected and they ran out of materials, at present only one shift is working, but none of the staff has been laid off. In state industries it is possible when it is slack in one concern to move workers to another, temporarily. The plant is now working at only one fourth of its capacity. It has a production of 15 million roubles a year with a plan for the future of 40 millions. The technical director, a Lithuanian engineer, took us about; he answered some of my questions, for instance, about the high cost of production in Russia. He said it was not more than 100% higher, and was due not only to the high compensation and social benefits given the workers but also to a lower tempo of work which conserves rather than wears out prematurely the workers. He counts that production when considered per person, costs 30% less than in America.
As we went along through the great building, noting the crane above, the new German instrument making machines, insulation materials, etc. a crowd of workers gathered about us and wanted to know about America. When they heard that wages and living conditions are so good there, they loyally explained that here the worker is better protected, gets free medical care, the children of women workers are kept in factory nurseries, etc. One worker stepped up and said to my secretary, we should not believe that the conditions of the workers are good, that they live very poorly, that they have not freedom at all, they can’t open their mouths to criticise and so on. The other workers were much annoyed, but the sec. answered that it looked as though he wasn’t afraid to open his mouth to criticise. As we passed on, two workers ran after us and explained that this worker was a little bit cracked, ‘You see,’ they said, ‘every family has its defective’.
There are 27 such plants in Russia, all a part of the Russian Government Electro Trust, ‘GET’. The wages of workers range from 100 to 150 for skilled workers, women at machines on piece work get about 55 roubles and the more highly skilled women get 70 to 80 roubles. Many of the workers, for instance, those in the foundry, get a month’s vacation, and the factory is closed 2 weeks of the year for the general vacation period.
I asked the Esthonian his personal opinion about the Soviet system, would it have to be modified in the course of time? He answered that he was sure it would not, it was a going concern, the workers supported it and he saw no reason why it would need to be changed. He said he was not a party member and stayed on simply because he was satisfied with his material conditions and working conditions. He said that he pays 40 roubles for his two room apartment, but a worker would pay perhaps 5 roubles for the same thing because his wages were that much lower.
From the plant itself we went to the day nursery for the children of the women workers, just adjoining. Here conditions for the infants and older children seemed quite as ideal as in the model nursery in Moscow. Nursing mothers come over during working hours to nurse their babies, working 6 instead of 8 hours. The idea is wonderful but I don’t want to look at any more nurseries.
Back in the hotel we found the samovar still standing as we had left it, and my sec. and I sat down to lukewarm tea and engaged in our endless argument on the subject of the intelligent fellow ruling the dub.
Our guide came and took us to an exhibit of Ukrainian art which was shown in the new building of the Trusts, where the offices of the big government industrial trusts will be located. We sped through the streets in sleighs, then along a wide boulevard and at the end in an almost open space we came upon a great new gray stone building of eight or ten stories, which looked as though it had been taken out of New York and set down here in the snow plains. It made a most tremendous psychological impression: it seemed to symbolise the industrialisation of Russia. Inside there was no heating as yet, and the white plaster walls glistened with frost. The stone steps were very slippery and my Sec. remarked that if she should fall and be hurt I would have to pay her employee’s compensation, in fact, she was reminded that I should be paying insurance dues into the government insurance department for her all along.
The exhibit itself was also unexpectedly thrilling. Here were some really fine paintings and sculpture, an art alive and young and strong. I liked very much a small painting of a woodland scene, done in rich bold colors of greens with a splash of red, the painter A. Simonov, the title ‘Reading the letter’, as the small red figure is sitting in an open place in the woods reading. I was given the price of 350 roubles for it and will receive definite information about it and about some bowls and vases which I wanted to buy by mail.
There were several rooms devoted to architectural plans and drawings of buildings now under construction in Kharkov and also projects for the future. Here is a city dreaming wonderful dreams; this new building is only the first of a number to be built about a court, one of which will be the headquarters of the government departments. The drawing of the whole project is certainly a beautiful picture. In ten years, it is easy to believe that there will be a Ukrainian Chicago here in Kharkov.
While we were eating dinner in the hotel, our guide, Boris Wolsky, who is himself an artist, came and brought me photographs of the pictures in the exhibit. I then gave him an interview which almost made us miss our train. We walked what seemed miles along the station platform on the slippery ice to our car, and got in just in time. The car was hot and full of people. I was feeling very tired and sick, there was no bedding and we spent a rather uncomfortable night, somewhat relieved by two bottles of Narzan which the conductor bought at a stop. In the four-berth coupe with us was an elderly man, an invalid, who at once entered into conversation with me in German and had a long tale of woe about his sufferings through the revolution. He was a merchant and lost everything and now he claims he and his family are watched by the secret police.
18/XII Sunday
At ten in the morning we arrived in Stalino, in the center of the Donet Basin, a mining city of 110,000. The city itself is 12 versts from the station, so we got into an old carriage, drawn by a big black and a little white horse, and on wheels, for there is a thaw going on and the roads are running rivulets of melting snow. As we rode along over the muddy roads in the chill, foggy air, my low spirits began to rise: this looked as though it would be interesting after all. On all sides rose steep hills of slag like pyramids, where the shafts were, and down the steep incline of one a coal car was moving. The houses about the station were hovels, but as we neared the city, they became better looking. What a desolate waste, and yet how alive. Soon we were on the streets of the town splashing through the mud; crowds were walking, the usual Sunday bazaar was in progress. The hotel proved to be perfectly new and as the porter at the door assured us: ‘charmingly clean’. The small rooms were light and comfortable. Here we paid 4 roubles a room, but as we insisted on an upper sheet for the beds, each cost an additional 50 k.
We ate breakfast in the cooperative restaurant next door, where an interesting lot of people were dining, women with gray woolen shawls over their heads, rough looking men, and now and then a well dressed man, and one ‘with a cane yet’. We had hot dogs and mashed potatoes with gravy, the first reminder of American cooking, while Devedovsky had her beloved ‘gefilte fish’.
While D. was telephoning to the town officials and getting them all stirred up over the arrival of a distinguished visitor, my Sec. and I took a walk through the muddy streets. It was raw and damp, and the town looked about as dreary and ugly as it was possible. Only the people seemed lively and well dressed. Spread out in the water and mud of a street were the wares of various peddlers, drygoods and notions, books, rusty articles of hardware, picks, bedding, beds, chinz covered couches, chairs, cradles —a wretched assortment. We came to what seemed to be a central pumping station (water is a problem here, and they are only just getting it piped to this section) and women came one after another to the little window, handed in a talon, a yellow slip of paper, put their two buckets under the pipe and the station master turned on the water. Then they hung their two buckets on a pole, balanced it on their shoulders and walked along the slippery streets toward home. One young woman had a great misfortune. She slipped on an icy incline and fell, all the water in her two buckets spilling on her. She rose with a stoical face, picked up the empty buckets and returned to the water station. On the hills in the distance, we could see some attractive white stone houses which we learned are workers quarters housing 12,000 workers and their families.
In the evening, our Stalin guide, a young man from the Education Dept., came and took us in an automobile to one of the workers’ clubs. Here was a fine exhibit prepared for the Tenth Anniversary; first the history of the Revolution, photos, placards, documents, the growth of the trade unions in ten years, charts without end—one showing the number of citizens not voting before the Russian Revolution as 95% and the number voting now 94%. A room of agriculture, with chart showing the growth of collectives of peasants in this district as 6 in 1921 and 113 in 1927. Ten thousand peasants are organised in these collectives and they use 3% of the land.
In 1916 there were 120,000 horses in this district, the war and revolution left only 22,000 and now the original number has almost been restored. This is true in like manner of the cows.
A large room was devoted to the mining industry. Here were models of new machinery, smelting ovens on the American plan, graphic charts of development and miniature coal cars of various sizes showing production from 1917 to 1927. In 1917 before the coal industry was destroyed the production was 1511 million poods a year, now it is 1400 million. There were several models of inventions of mine workers, a coal carrier, a coal car on a cable. The various special clothing furnished each worker, strong, high rubber boots, overalls, gloves, etc. In the protection of labor dept. were shown the various safety devices in mines, the electric mining lamp, oxygen pump, posters warning workmen of dangers.
In the Cultural Dept. exhibit were charts showing the liquidation of illiteracy from 1923 to date. Out of 41,727 who attended these evening schools in this district in 1923, 28,983 are now literate, that is, have finished the elementary courses. The school attendance of children up to 9 years is 100%, and from 9 years 82% in this district.
In the same building is the central library; a lively little fellow with an attractive dark skinned face and bright black eyes, who looked not over 20, seemed to be the librarian. The delivery room was crowded with patrons. My Sec. asked him if they had any of my books; he answered at once, no, but we have ordered all that are being published in Russian. She started to explain about Land and Factory and he interrupted quickly: ‘Oh yes, I know that Land and Factory was to have published his collected works, but now Gossizdat will publish them. I read about it in the bibliographical journal.’ The library has 20,000 books, 250 readers a day in the reading room and 47% of the borrowers are workers.
From the library we went to a club of the Soviet Commercial Employees trade union, which has 1,600 members. The building is old, there is a large auditorium, tea room, gymnasium, library of several thousand books (all libraries here have the American Dewey Decimal system of classification). Here as in the other building was a radio set up in a rest room where the members listen every evening to local stations, Moscow, Berlin, London.
I came home early as I was very tired from the night before on the train. My impression of Stalino was changing considerably for here, in this what seemed on the surface a desolate hole, I was finding lively cultural centers for the mass of the population.
19/XII Monday.
In the morning, our young man came to take us on the usual inspection tour. A nice car was waiting for us; it was suddenly very cold again and the melting snow had frozen, making a slippery surface everywhere. We drove to the Government Farm ‘in the name of Trotzky’ (Sovhoz), a distance of 12 versts from the city, past mine shafts standing on the flat treeless steppes, each with its little group of dwellings clustered about it. The chauffeur drove at reckless speed across the icy plains, while a bitter, damp wind blew in our faces. The car veered and skidded, bumping over the rough roads and sending us into the air now and then. We passed a carriage in which the manager of the Sovhoz was riding to town. The chief agronome of the district, a Latvian by name of l’Etienne, who was accompanying us, stopped the carriage and asked the manager to turn back. The Sovhoz stood on a slight hillock, a cluster of whitewashed brick buildings. Before the revolution, this farm was owned by an American, Hughes. The farm as it is now operated consists of 3,000 dessatins, 2,000 of which are under cultivation. In winter, there was little to see except the stables, live stock and dairy. We first went to the stables which house 200 working and 150 young horses including a few race horses and besides this number 60 draft horses. There was a special barn for brood mares. We asked if they also get the 2 months before and 2 months after birth given to all working women as leave of absence, and received the quite serious answer that this was true. They breed only in winter, have an extra warm place and special feed. Of course, adjoining, as in all industries, was the ‘Yasli’, nursery, for the colts, the males and females being kept separate. The agronom pointed out that there was a barrier between them and they could only look at one another at this age. I remarked that this was strict Red morality. We then went to see the cows who were very comfortably housed. When I remarked on their thinness, the agronom explained that these were a German breed who do not give so much milk if they are fat. They feed the cows chopped beets, 10 funts of beets producing 3 funts of milk.7 This dairy furnishes the neighboring industries with milk to feed their workers employed in injurious work.
I asked why this region is so treeless, and the agronom explained that few trees grow naturally here, not so much because of the soil as the atmosphere. However they are planting some forests. In every district (okrug) there are 10 sub-districts with 4 agronoms to each, and 6 at the center, our guide being one of the 6.
‘And now for the pigs!’ has become an historic expression which we introduced at this point, also. We slipped and crawled over the icy ground to the hog houses, where we found some fine hogs very comfortably housed and clean. Adjoining was a large space with a high wall about it where the young male pigs were running; the agronom remarked that this was a ‘pig monastery’. In the courtyard he showed us the pigs’ bath and said that the pigs walked in the big courtyard in summer.
Next we skated arm in arm with the big fat Scandanavian manager to the machine sheds where I was surprised to find so much machinery, plows, barrows, cultivators, mowers, mostly Deering manufacture. There is also a machine shop at the farm.
Although there were still the sheep to see, we were all so cold and miserable that we decided to return to the farmhouse. Inside the large, cosy living room I found a wood grate burning and in front of it a rocking chair which I gratefully sat down in. On the long table were large bunches of white chrysanthemums growing, which I mistook for the paper flowers so prevalent in Russia. I said I supposed the rocking chair must be a legacy from the American, Hughes, but they denied it. We had cereal, coffee, home-made white bread, head cheese, swiss cheese, pickles, wine and vodka. It was all very pleasant and soothing after the long trip out in the cold wind. When we had become melting and talkative from the food and drink, we got into a discussion about relations between U.S. and Soviet Russia and other kindred subjects. In the midst of the discussion, my Sec. burst forth into what seemed to be a tirade against me. When I reproached her with going against me in a foreign tongue, she was very indignant and said: ‘On the contrary, I was stirring them up by telling them how wonderful you are, what an important person you are in America and what a powerful influence you can exert for Russia. In other words, instead of deceiving you I was deceiving them.’
Before I left there was the usual book to write my impressions in, but my impression was not very good, because they had said that their profit last year above all expenses was only 3,000 roubles. There are about 200 permanent workers. They explained that they had to put most of the surplus back into the enterprise.
Our open car was full of snow when we came out. We took a broom and brushed it out of the seats. The agronom was wrapped in an enormous sheepskin shuba of curly black sheep’s wool.8 Besides, he had brought ‘just in case they might be needed’ a pair of felt boots. Our young guide who wore only a light overcoat now got into another similar black shuba and thus arrayed and looking like great shaggy bison, they sat in the seats in front of us and protected us somewhat from the bitter wind and sleet. Away we flew over the dreary steppes. On the way, we passed a ‘hooter’ (an isolated farm or farm building, so rare in Russia) and I noticed a herd of cattle standing out in a wooden fence enclosure in the bitter weather. It was explained that they were waiting to be taken to the slaughter house (so their welfare was no longer of any consequence). All covered with snow, we stopped at a photographers, and thus attired in our fur coats and hats, had our picture taken by an energetic little fellow who almost burst a blood vessel in an endeavour to show ‘American speed’. I also had a separate picture taken without my over coat. I autographed two mounting cards and at last, due to the insistence of my Sec. that I must at least see a mine in Don Bas, we were off to a shaft. The chauffeur had let down the top of the car, but our guide was very solicitous about my seeing the sights. He therefore opened one window to the right of me and himself sat down in the seat beside it. Arrayed in the great shuba whose voluminous black wool collar spread out a mile, he completely hid the whole side of the car from my view, so that I could see only one tiny corner of the window. But he seemed so happy at his little scheme for letting me look at the scenery, that I didn’t have the heart to disillusion him.
Dreiser and his traveling party at Stalino, Donetz Basin, 19 December 1927. Left to right: l’Etienne, a Latvian, chief district agronomist; Dr. Sophia Davidovskaya; Dreiser; Ruth Kennell; a local guide. (From Ruth Epperson Kennell, Theodore Dreiser and the Soviet Union [New York: International Publishers, 1969], p. 18)
We tore through the town up to the hills I had noticed from the mudhole below on my first day. Here were some fine new stone houses for workers and we stopped at a handsome stone building which had only recently been finished as the club house of the mine workers union. This fine structure contains 67 rooms, is modern throughout and well furnished, with a beautiful auditorium-theater with several thousand seating capacity. Besides there is a nice lecture hall with specially equipped desk-seats, large gymnasium with up to date equipment. The building cost 600,000 roubles; there is still another large metal workers club in the district being erected at a cost of two million.
Now we were off to the shaft. On the way we picked up a special guide who had brought our special clothing along. Now although only about four o’clock it was quite dark: the wind blew the sleet against the windows of the car; electric lights gleamed through the fog and now and then a plant whistle boomed forth. At the shaft, we went into a miners’ little banya to dress. It was deliciously warm inside. One of the mine superintendents came, a handsome young fellow with a straight nose which gave an arrogant look to his face. We got into the heavy oiled pants and coat and wide brimmed hats, were given carbon lamps, and thus looking quite like any of the miners we passed, we went out into the wild weather and across the slippery ground to the stairway leading up the shaft. Above in the coal car station were several women working on the tracks. The cage came up dripping the water, we got in and were dropped 140 meters through the earth. When the cage stopped we came out into a cavern electric lighted with tracks. But only this central place was lighted and when we got into the corridor it was lit only by our lanterns. Every few minutes a warning whistle would sound, our guide would call ‘to the right’, or if the car was coming in the opposite direction, ‘to the left’ and we would throw ourselves against the rocky wall in which the props were imbedded, and a horse would come running down the track drawing two or more mine cars loaded with coal, the driver sitting on top with his head lowered to avoid the ceiling. I noticed that the air seemed quite fresh, in fact now and then as we proceeded down the rocky corridor, I felt a breeze in my face. We passed through a door and at once the air seemed much warmer and the pungent smell of horses came to us. Here were the stables of the unfortunate horses who work in the depths of the earth. They stood in their narrow stalls in the darkness —after several years of this life they go blind. Three times more air must be pumped down for them than for men. I kept thinking of their wretched existence as the odor of them followed us down the corridor. We came out at last to where the coal was being mined. This shaft is thoroughly mechanised and no pick mining is done at all. I saw in action the invention for transporting the coal through the narrow workings to the cars, the model for which I had seen in the exhibit, invented by a miner. A few young miners gathered about and wanted to know about mining conditions in America. They said they were well satisfied with conditions—the actual diggers work six hours but the drivers of the cars work eight; however, they are looking forward to the seven hours promised all workers by the Government. On the way back a breeze was in our faces all the way, we passed scolding drivers and now and then a worker sitting by the wayside resting. Then into the bright electric lighted room, into the cage down which the water was pouring, and were taken above all safe and sound. Again out into the cold, again into the warm banya where we washed the coal dirt from our hands and faces.
On the way back we stopped at a group of new miners houses and knocked at the door of one little stone house with lighted windows. A shrill woman’s voice answered—she was afraid to open the door because her husband was not at home. We went on to the next house; here the dogs began barking and a man opened the door. He was quite civil, invited us inside, his wife was a young girl in bare feet. There was a little kitchen with large brick cook stove, a large living room and a bedroom, all fresh and attractive. He said he got the place free of rent, electricity and water because the plant for which he works had built the house. He earns 150 roubles a month as he is a skilled mechanic. There is no water in the house, it must be carried from the water station nearby.
When we reached the hotel, we went down to dinner in the cooperative restaurant next door. We had beet and schnitzel and enjoyed the playing of a Viennese violinist, his wife the pianist and a cellist. He first played, at the request of a young fellow, a lovely Jewish thing and seeing that we appreciated it, he played especially for us some American songs, including Yankee Doodle. While he is not prospering in this desolate place, I think he must be very much needed. Near the piano sat two prostitutes, heavily painted, and they precipitated an argument on the subject with Devodovsky.
The beer made us all sleepy, we were very tired, but nevertheless I got into another argument with my secretary. I had another fit of doubts about this Soviet thing, and she got very indignant at me. I said when I saw that most of these industries were not new but had been running years before under the czar, that some were not even up to pre-war production, that the Sovhoz had only 3000 roubles profit, that those tractors they were turning out in such great numbers in Leningrad were admitted by this agronom to be far inferior to the American and to cost more —then that merchant on the train and his complaints. I said this thing couldn’t work at that rate, the industries must show more profits. She answered that she was ashamed to have to repeat again the old story about the war and revolution destroying all the industries, so that they had to be rebuilt, and the explanation of Rykov’s statement about production being so high, that is, that so much went to the workers and the tempo of work was lower. How could I think, after all I had seen of the improved conditions of the masses and of the country, that the system wasn’t working? Why did I think they must show a cash profit? I thought she wasn’t much of an economist, but she didn’t think I was. Is the fundamental purpose of production to provide profits or to supply the people with the necessities and comforts of life? Wasn’t that what industry was accomplishing very rapidly in Soviet Russia? I was always saying that I knew the terrible conditions of life in Russia under the czar, but she didn’t think I knew after all, or I would realise where all the profits in industry were going, when I saw the great improvement in the standard of living of the masses throughout Russia. Look at the new houses for the workers, the beautiful clubs, the cultural works going on, even in this hole. Look at the new hospitals, the nurseries for the children in the factories (or perhaps I didn’t see enough of them)—and surely one couldn’t doubt that industry is running at a profit.
(Note of Sec. I didn’t say all this but I thought about it afterward).
Monday Dec 19 - 1927 - Stalin Russia
A blowy, sleety day. I am up at 8:30. Rereading the new Machiavelli.9 (English Socialism of the 1900 Period.) We are to do a Sovhoz (Agricultural Farm)—a mine, a miners club & some workers’ houses. The local Soviet is to provide an automobile. About 10:30 we start. The driver a chauffuer formerly connected with the Kreml in Moscow. A reckless driver. The Steppes. 15 Versts in a driving snow—over an icy plain. The French-German director Mr. Hughes farm. Blooded stallions, mares. Bulls & cows. Sows & boars. Ewes and 
. The main office. Mr. Hughes introduces comfort into Russia. Real flowers. The central house toilet. It makes me suggest a national toilet day for Russia. Another long argument although we are supposed to have no time. Cattle out in the snow. Why are they left so. Oh, they are going to be killed. A mine workers club. I remark about the local office workers club. Oh—they don’t need anything better. A mine. Horses that go blind after five years. 6 hours working for the actual miners (the diggers). 8 for others. We do it. A miners banya.
Russia
They seem to believe at times that classes are real and independent of their individuals. Statistics march by you with error and injustice and greed and foolish misapprehension reduced to quite manageable percentages.
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They want things more organized, completely correlated with government and a collective purpose and with endless government functionaries—but no other
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And they seem to understand—at last—as no other modern government does—that they must avail themselves more & more of the services of expert officials. They are not like us who still mix the starkly efficient—on the one hand—with ill instructed and rudderless heirs of the same. They tolerate no inefficient & wasteful heirs of Efficiency, insight and courage.
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We have not as yet suffused public education with public intention and they have. And they are developing—or trying to—a new or better living generation with a collectivist habit of thought. They desire to & do link hitherto chaotic activities in every human affair. Nothing escapes them for goverment is all.
In America our task is to catch and harness for the good of all that escaped, world-making world-ruining thing industrial & financial enterprise & bring it back to the service of the general good.
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Our multitude of functionless property owners.
One sees really a country with no abandoned—if as yet wretched poor. No foolish & meaningless rich thank God—flaunting their non sense before the eyes of want; a nation armed & determined, ordered, in part trained—in part in training and officially at least (and with an immense party behind that—purposeful. It’s emotions are in the main collective emotions; it’s purposes collective—not individual now what our [unreadable word] had.
They are communists because for them individualism means muddle. Their purpose appears to be to subdue the undisciplined worker, just as they have subdued & abolished undisciplined wealth. Order & devotion as in the early church are of the very essence of their meaning. In short, as Bukharin himself said to me, they project a splendid collective vigor & happiness. In short if I may [unreadable word] him he said
Tuesday, Dec. 20th - 1927 - Stalin, Russia
Gray & cold. Sleet & snow. We breakfast in the restaurant of this hotel— The Metalurgical. One impression I get from Russian life & hotels is that they mean well from a sanitary point of view but they do not quite grasp the processes. They put in toilets—but misuse them—neglecting for instance so simple a thing as to pull the chain. The realize that wash basins are necessary but provide one with so little water that a mere dabbing of the face & hands is possible. They will have a room with a bath—but hot water only on Saturday or Sunday-—according to their pre-bath tub customs.
With us, this morning there is a strained feeling. I called Danedosta down the day before for trying to make me travel Maxim Gorky (offered to pay her way back to Moscow) & her feelings are hurt. All of the special things near Stalin having been seen the day before there is seemingly nothing to do. I start re-read the New Machiavelli. A pig is killed just below my window by two men—presumably meat for the hotel Restaurant. I have my hair cut & a shave by the hotel barber. He proves to be a Jew who worked 11 years in Constantinople. Apparently no subscriber to communist principles he complains of life in Russia—but diplomatically. He first asks how Russia compares in comfort with America. When I say not very well he says things here are dreadful. One can make a hundred or two roubles but his rent costs so much—25 roubles. A razor which in former days cost 1 rouble now costs 13—Scissors, ditto. Soap & perfumes are very high. His shirt which quality for quality I could buy in N. Y. for $150 cost him 8 roubles $400. His suit—worth $3500 in America—not more—cost 170 roubles or about $8500. Food & other things were high. In Constantinople where he worked he made 100 francs a month—but could afford 12 suits. Here he has just 1. He would like to get out of Russia but the goverment will not issue a passport. If it does it costs 200 roubles & he has not so much. Worse, other countries will not recieve immigrants from Russia because they believe them to be communists. “I wish I could get out” he said.
Afterwards RK & I walk to the telegraph office. As usual there is a serious discussion of Russia & her reasons for being here. She is a little depressed—Russia does not look so good & yet she defends Communism—the new day based on the welfare of the lowest workers. We rag & wrangle. In the afternoon the representative of the local paper calls & gets an interview on Russia & America! These people are cracked on the subject of America. Afterwards the representative of the local Soviet calls. I am to see a steel plant at ? R.K. refuses to go. Davidosta & I go but I dread the drive behind the most reckless chauffeur I have met in years. We are thrown about, the car skids & spins & I complain but to no effect. The steel plant, once we are there, proves to be one built in the Czar time by French concessionaires. It is large but not immense—some twelve furnaces & smelters. However I learn that a concession for doubling the plant has just been granted to an American by the name of Farquhar. He advances $25,000,000 & builds the additions but all is to be recaptured by Russia in 20 years. A young Russian engineer who speaks English takes us around: he is very intelligent, definite and a little condescending but courteous. At 430 we start back for Stalin. Another wild ride. Afterwards (immediately) we pack & leave for Rastov.
20/XII - 21/XII Wednesday morning.
At five o’clock in the evening we left in the automobile for the station. Our reckless chauffeur was driving and he tore over the ice and bumped over the ruts until we landed quite breathless. In the station we found the buffet packed with people, the waiting room as well, a rare collection in sheepskins and a variety of old fur hats and caps. We took our tea standing, bread and bologne and nice French pastry. When the train rolled in there was a grand rush for the platform, and we waited a little. Outside a cold wind was blowing against us as we struggled along the icy platform beside the endless train of cars. At the steps of the Maxim Gorki cars a long line of people were standing waiting to get in; it didn’t seem possible that they could all get into the coaches, and I felt very sorry for them, standing as they must on the slippery platform with their assorted baggage and bedding in the bitter wind. But we had no sooner got settled in ‘soft’ (myaki) when the train started to move, and our conductor said that all the crowd had got on. We dozed during the three-hour ride to Konstantinov and arrived at about ten o’clock. What was our horror to learn that the train for Rostov was due at three in the morning. The station buffet was crowded and it seemed impossible to contemplate waiting there all those hours, when we had thought it would be only 20 minutes. I was filled with rage at everything Russian, such a lack of system, such inexcusable negligence on the part of the official in Stalin who didn’t know when the train left. But all misery passes, and we adapt ourselves to any hardships. First I drank Narzan and that cooled me off a little, then later I had tea, rolls and cheese, a little vodka of course in the tea to lift my spirits. Glory be, the time was passing. It was now 12:30 —only three hours to wait yet. Then my women folk came back from the station master’s with the news that the train would be late—how late no one knew yet—because of the snowstorms. This required some more adjustments. One well dressed young woman with very much rouged lips almost cried; she had received a telegram that her husband was ill in Rostov and she must get to him quickly. There was an impromptu conference of passengers about our table: suggestions were shouted in order to drown out other suggestions. There was a plan to wait in the station until five o’clock when we could get a workers train to a workers settlement and take the train from there when it came. There were rooms and hotels there, whereas here near the station was nothing. The young woman wanted to ride to another station early in the morning and get a train from there. At this point the chief of the station arrived and stunned us with the news that the train was ten hours late. We decided that there was nothing to do but sit in the station until it was light. People were already nodding and sleeping with their heads on the tables. In a corner, half a dozen or more homeless children lay on the floor. Now and then the guard came in and made the rounds, routing out the orphans and prodding the sleepers, telling them they couldn’t sleep here, they must go to third class to sleep. The G.P.U. man on duty at the station kindly offered me a nice hard bench in his little room to sleep on which I gratefully accepted. I made a pillow of my fur coat and slept there until morning. The air was thick with Russian odors; shortly after I lay down, the G.P.U. official put his head on the table and slept soundly; however, the guard looked in occasionally and evidently paraded up and down outside in the third class waiting room where a motley throng of bears and bandits were gathered. By the way, I have decided that the Russians are more like bears than anything else—they just about hibernate in the winter, and they look so big and shaggy in their sheepskins and padded clothes, or like walking mattresses, I think sometimes.
Thus the darkness passed and at seven in the morning R.K. came in and roused me from my luxurious couch and I went with her back to the buffet, where I found Devedovsky looking quite worn and gray. R.K. had adopted the native custom of sleeping on the table, but D. sat bolt upright all night.
Now that the izvozchiki were on the job outside, we decided to take a ride to clear our heads. A shrewd old fellow, whom the guard had tried to protect me from by telling him I was an American and didn’t know anything about the customs (whereupon he answered vehemently ‘What do you mean, doesn’t know?’) came into the buffet to ask us again. He had a gray beard, a rakish old fur hat and sheepskin coat. He agreed to take us to the town and back for two roubles, It proved to be a very interesting ride. In this town are no less than 12 big plants, coke, benzol, glass, steel, mirrors, ceramics, and the foggy air was heavy with the smoke from their chimneys. The whole town seemed to be newly built; we rode down a long street of new brick and white plaster cottages all built in very good taste, with attractive wooden fences about them, painted green and the wooden shutters of the houses were likewise green. About the steel plant were large, fine new stone houses for the workers. Our voluble driver took us to the bazaar: this is an ancient but dying institution in Russia (— open stalls on the streets or goods laid out on the ground and sold by petty merchants and peasants) for the cooperatives come along and build their big modern stores right along side and drive the private traders out of business. We looked into the new cooperative, a fine big store containing many departments. Surely enough, when we found another new bazaar, there along side was being built a new cooperative store. The people looked well dressed and satisfied.
When we returned to the station, we found D. sitting as we had left her. It was getting on toward nine o’clock. The women were busy cleaning up the buffet, scrubbing the tables, wiping the furniture, cleaning the plants and watering them and scrubbing the tiled floor. The women don’t get on their knees but stand up and bend over, pushing the twisted cloth vigorously back and forth. The floor looked very clean—in fact, it was difficult to realise that it had been the scene of such misery and dirt of massed humanity the night before.
Our old izvozchik wanted more than the two roubles, he said five was little enough for such conscientious work, so I gave him 25 kopeks more for his ‘conscientiousness’. But I was not through with him so easily. He followed me into the buffet and asked me to ‘warm him’ with a drink. Finally I agreed, he was given a glass of vodka which he drank at one quaff and I paid 60 kopeks more for his services.
We were the only passengers waiting now, we went into the ladies’ room and washed some of the dirt off and wiped off the rest on a towel; breakfast was ordered, and I began to feel at home: I puttered about arranging the chairs at the table. Davedovsky said: ‘He’s beginning already to take an interest in the place’.
And really the breakfast seemed quite homelike. We had fried eggs, hot milk, rolls, bologne, and quince jam, and afterward we told stories and I got off on my experiences when I was a collector in Chicago. The time passed, twelve o’clock, still no train . . . . . . .
Left Constantinovka at 12:30 noon. We at last found ourselves once again seated in the comfortable two place coupe of an International car. Just to sit in quiet and retirement and look out the broad window was restful enough after the long, weary way we had traveled from Moscow. The snow-covered steppes stretched as far as the eye could reach, broken now and then by villages and new industrial towns. As I have passed through these endless Russian steppes and thought about how they are to be developed, an idea has been forming: it seems to me that the government should undertake to cultivate the land just as it is running the industries, organise big farming units and hire the peasants at wages just as it hires the workers in the factories. This would eliminate many of the unsolvable problems which not only Russia but every country has had to face in regard to the farming class.
The darkness came all too soon and quickly blotted out the plains. There was nothing to do but lower the shades and rest until 7 p.m. when we arrived in Rostov. The Hotel San Remo. The first room we looked at was an enormous thing with a grand piano and a wierd collection of antique furniture including a great black settee. We chose another large room for the three of us, which had several windows looking out on the street and an elaborate marble fireplace—figures of cherubs holding garlands over the unused gate. We wanted to go to the public banya and have a bath but it was too late. We stopped at a ‘Bar’ in a basement and had dinner. There was a hard looking bunch of customers in the place, an orchestra was playing. We ordered the Caucasian dish shaschlik, which was appetizingly served with green onions and french fried potatoes.10 We went home and went to bed at 10 O’clock.
22/XII
A sunny morning. We slept until 8 a.m, in spite of going to bed so early. We went down to the post office and I got the answer to my telegram, also changed $100. at a cooperative bank, receiving 194 roubles. Rostov is a nice looking city of 220,000 population, well laid out in squares with wide streets, but it is not very lively, and has no distinctive atmosphere, such as Kiev and Kharkov. It is the chief city of the Northern Caucasus, a rich farming region. There seemed to be a lot of building going on. We had breakfast in one of a chain of restaurants, cooperative, ‘EPO’, which faintly reminded one of an American lunch room.
We walked to a tobacco factory, the largest in Russia, ‘The Don State Tobacco Factory in the name of Rosa Luxemburg’. It consisted of a number of red brick buildings, most of which were built 78 years ago when the factory was first started. Before the war, the factory worked only 3 or 4 days a week and produced 15 million cigarettes a day. There were 3,800 workers at that time. There are now 4,500 workers including employees, 3,400 of which are employed on cigarettes, the rest on the auxiliary factories, paper, boxes, etc. The output is now 35 million a day, the chief reason for the increase being the introduction of new machinery. One of their professors spent two years in America getting new methods.
All this information I got from the director, Michael Ivan Petrov, a fine looking young man of 29, by profession an electromechanic, elected to his post by the workers. He receives the Party maximum for this district of 210 roubles, pays 35 R. a month rent for a furnished apartment.
He claimed that as far as intensity of work is concerned, the factory could compare with America, but the equipment and buildings were old. Yes, he was acquainted with the new methods in New Salem of turning out in one process the boxed cigarettes, but they knew them through France. It would be difficult to introduce them here because it would necessitate the laying off of a great many workers, and in Soviet Russia this must be done carefully and gradually, also the buildings are not suitable. The tobacco is grown in this district, in Georgia and in the Crimea, the last the best. The 7-hour day has been in operation in this factory a long time (1922) and we find that the industry works better under it.
-------- Would you gain even more with the six hour day?
We are already considering this.
-------- And five hours?
We don’t consider fantastic dreams.
-------- I am not speaking fantastically. Bucharin included such a thing in his program for the future.
Yes, but we do not plan so far ahead.
-------- Do you export?
Yes, to all countries, but very little, 15 million a year. When we export, it is necessary to remove all Soviet labels and emblems from the boxes. The ‘Orient’ is our best brand for export.
Our workers receive one month’s vacation, special living quarters, a club, a nursery, a night sanatarium where those who have weak lungs stay for a period. 71% of the workers are women, and they receive 3 days a month vacation during their menstrual period, because the industry is especially injurious to the mucuous membrane. The babies of nursing mothers are brought to them in a special room at stated intervals from the day nursery adjoining.
-------- How much money do you spend for the welfare of the workers?
Since 1921 we have spent five million roubles on ventilation, sanitation, nursery, club. For the workers quarters we gave a certain sum to the city construction department, 300,000 roubles. 3,300,000 R. were spent by the city on on remodelling military barracks for workers quarters, and 9 million in building living quarters. 10% of the income of every institution and industry goes for building.
Before the revolution, the conditions in this tobacco factory were terrible, no ventilating system, the workers worked 12 and 14 hours.
------- Are your technical specialists foreign?
No, all are Russian and young men who graduated since the revolution. Foreign specialists are not needed as the industry is not complicated.
Rostov is a new city, whose development was stopped by the war. The czar always hampered its growth because Rostov on Don was always a city of revolutionary workers. So there have been great hardships in building it up.
------- What are the wages?
73.20 is the average, the lowest is 45 R and the highest 250. The worker on the lowest wage has about 19 roubles left after all expenses have been paid because not many are without families to support, but their benefits, free trips, medical care, schools, help. But of course at 45 roubles life is not easy, then they can get credit from the factory, but there is poverty here. Then there are the building cooperatives in which 450 of our workers participated this year, 150 individuals are building for themselves.
We then went through the plant. In the first room were the leaves which were being sorted. The ventilation system is new and the air is changed completely every hour. Among the women picking over the leaves of tobacco were several veterans, 1 who had worked in the factory for 54 years, another 37, and they looked quite hardy. They said that conditions were much better now. These workers received 72 roubles.
In the main department there was one shift, 6:30 to 2, in other departments 2 and 3 shifts. New machines for pressing and cutting do more than twice as much. A mechanic invented the appliance on old feeding machines which increased their output 50%.
In one of the rooms which had formerly been the club several mottoes were painted on the walls: ‘The Smoke of the Chimneys is the Breath of Soviet Russia’. ‘Intensity of Labor, faithfulness of every worker at his post will bring communism — the happiness of the workers’.
Here a pretty young girl of 20, with a fresh complexion, came up and addressed us in broken English. She said she was from Edinburgh Scotland and had been in Russia six years. Her father worked at Odessa, and she spoke English so seldom that she was forgetting it. She was an ardent Young Communist (Komsomolka) and asked me what I thought of the Opposition. When I said that I knew very little about it, she said: It is a shame for you’.
When we returned to the director’s office I asked a few more questions.
------- How much higher is the cost of production here than abroad?
In our factory it is one fourth cheaper. We sell this cigarette for 45 k. a box, 25 in a box, and if we take away all the government taxes, a box costs us 18 k. On 45k. brand we pay 27 k. taxes, on the 14 k., 8 k. taxes. Of course, the statement of Rykov is true of machine industry.
The director then wanted to ask me some questions. The first and last was about the Sacco-Vanzetti case. I tried to explain the attitude of the American public to foreigners who had not been naturalized, and asked him what would be the attitude of the Russians toward a foreigner suspected of crime here. He replied that in the case of foreigners they are always deported. I said that Sacco and Vanzetti did not want to be deported to Italy. He said that they could have been deported to Russia.
We had tea for the second time, I was presented with a wooden cigarette case and several packages of cigarettes. Our guide then took us to the night sanitarium adjoining where workers with weak lungs stay for two months at a time, continuing their work but under special care and observation. It was very attractive place, with nice sleeping rooms, dining room and tempting kitchen. I said I would like to stay here myself. From there we went into another brick building. As we went up the stairs I remarked that I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t trying to slip another nursery over on me, and sure enough it was. R.K. said that if I would come peacefully and look at the day nursery, she would find me a toilet afterwards. So I went through the same thing again, only I must say this nursery was especially fine—I think nicer than the model one in Moscow.
When we got outside again, it was foggy and snow was falling. We found an izvozchik who drove us to the Armenian section of the city, ‘Nahichivan’. It did not seem in the gathering twilight to have any very distinctive racial features, the streets were broad and attractive. We stopped at a large church and went in as I was under the impression that the Armenian church is Roman, but as far as I could see from the interior, it was the same as the other Greek. The picturesqueness of these churches is wearing off for me, and now I only feel a depression when I go into their cold, cheerless vaulted interiors, dimly lighted by candles, see the few worshippers crossing themselves and hear the priests chanting their nonsense.
We were quite chilled by our ride and decided to stop at the central banya. There was the problem of my money which I carried with me in two rolls. It was decided that since I had to go my way alone, it was best to give the money to R.K. who at least could speak the language. In the spacious entrance there was a crowd of beggars and hangers-on sitting and standing about the fountain, so we went to the doorway and there I handed over the money. After some fuss, I was permitted to go alone into the men’s first class. (Note of Sec.— Unfortunately I was not present so cannot report on this adventure).
We all finally met outside all scrubbed and shining, R.K.’s bosom bulging with my rolls of American bills. We had dinner at the main EPO restaurant, shaschlik again with green onions and french fried potatoes and beer. We went home and packed. The hotel porter was positive there would be International on the train, but when we got to the train we found that not only was there only second class, but also no bedding. I wanted to go back to the hotel, but as there wasn’t a fast train until Saturday, and it seems that only the fast trains have the special service, I got on board. At least, the conductor did not put a fourth person into our coupe, and gave me a little pillow. We went to bed in anything but a happy frame of mind.
Friday, Dec 23rd 1927-
En Route between Rostov and Kislovodsk
Snow. Cold. The same type of trains. Oil trains. A wrecked one. Canals.
130 Caucasians in their uniforms & foot [unreadable word].
The Jackdaw. An American looking soo big or Caucasian. Peasents on our car. Tea at 10 A.M. At Armavir.
Big battle with Denikeri here
A new town being laid out
Pigs chickens dogs all gathered round the door. A woman with bare legs & arms walking through the snow to a shed
Summer dresses & winter boots
Women & men going with buckets to a hole out in the ice of a stream for water. We buy a duck for 40 kopecks
The crow in this region replaces the Jackdaw
New Towns.
Caucausians driving home their cows in company
Fields of Jackdaws
Mts in the distance
The sun comes out
23/XII
Next morning, more steppes greeted my eyes. If Mineralni Vodi was to be warmer, there was as yet no sign of a change. Snowy steppes and still more snow without end. I felt that I was now leaving Russia proper, the great waste stretches which make up the greater part of it. Now we were drawing near the Caucasus. It was already dark at 3:30 p.m. when we arrived at Mineralniye, which is a terminal station for trains into the Caucasus. Although there was plenty of snow here, the air was decidedly milder. The train for Kislovodsk was to leave in an hour. We had tea in the buffet. Nearby sat a poor woman with two children, who directed her complaints to us when she saw that we were interested in her conversation with another poor woman who sat next. She was on her way to Grosni, toward Baku, and had waited three days in the station for her train, because they were so crowded she could not get place cards in third class. She had now spent all her money. We turned over our considerable accumulation of food to her—bread, butter, apples, cheese, bologne, granulted sugar that had been leaking out all along the way, and the children began eating everything in succession ravenously, while the old woman next sat stoically munching white bread.
The ride to Kislovodsk was more than two hours. We could see absolutely nothing in the darkness, but now and then it was plain that there was still snow along the tracks. Near us sat a man and wife, apparently well to do people with two young children. The older girl cried fretfully all the way, the father tried petting, threatening and pleading but all to no avail. As they got off at Pyatigorsk and he carried the kicking and screaming child in his arms, his patience gave out. ‘Svoloch!’ he shouted, ‘You’re nothing but a svoloch.11 Without conscience!’ They disappeared in the darkness of the station. Two young boys very badly dressed like bootblacks in the U.S. got on with heavy sacks on their backs and sat down in front of us. They were talking in a strange tongue. We asked them about themselves. They were Armenian students, attending higher school in Pyatigorsk and going home for the Christmas holidays which included Saturday, Sunday (25) and Monday. The sacks, if you please, were their baggage. They were black eyed, swarthy skinned, sturdy fellows, and they planned to go to Rostov and continue in technical school when they finished here. They got out an enormous loaf of white bread and as they talked they broke off huge hunks and stuffing them in their mouths, gulped them down without chewing. Then they wanted to know about us. They were much excited to find that we were from America. They at once wanted to know the condition of the working man in America! One thought Chamberlain was president but the other said no, he’s in England, but he couldn’t remember the name of our president, although he knew that the capital was Washington.
At 7 p.m. when we got off the train, it seemed that we were in a new world. Although there was snow on the ground, the air had a soft, fresh feel to it, and as we followed the porter, who explained that our hotel was so near he could carry our baggage there, we saw before us a winding street, at one side a high stone wall and above a magnificent building, evidently a sanitarium or pleasure palace connected with the railroad. At once, one sensed the soothing atmosphere of a rest resort, the tang of mountain air, a little cultivated beauty and comfort after the coldness and harshness of the working world we had left behind. The hotel was a government pension. We chose a nice large room on the second floor with many windows and a balcony over the street. The price was 6 roubles, in summer months, 12 roubles, but now it was the winter season and few visitors. We were so tired that it would have been comforting to have unpacked our bags for a prolonged stay. We went down to the dining room to supper. The cooking was the best I have encountered in Russia: we divided our portions and had a great variety— there were beets with smyetana, cabbage cutlets, veal with baked spaghetti, and wine and the total cost was 3 roubles. While we were eating, I noticed a distinguished looking man in a simple Russian costume come in and sit down—there was something familiar about that fair, bearded face with the fine, mild blue eyes. ‘It looks like that archbishop at Leningrad’, I said. R.K. turned and looked at him— ‘Of course, it is Platon’, she said, ‘there is no mistaking those eyes’. At this point, he met our eyes, we smiled and he bowed in recognition. As we went out we stopped and spoke to him. He said he was on vacation, taking the Narzan baths for his heart.
We decided to go to bed at once so that we could get up early and see the town in the daylight.
24/XII
We actually did get up at 7 o’clock. It was not hard, for the sun was already shining into our room. We soon got outside and were charmed by the cold, fresh air and the beauty of the town. On all sides streets ran up to the hills and above were beautiful sanitariums and cottages and rest houses, and a big white building with columns which was a Narzan bath. I was already reconciled to the continuation of winter, for the place looked so beautiful in the snow and the air was so invigorating. We wandered down the winding streets until we came to a busy market, where peasants as primitive as any you would find in a village were selling their wares. There were also permanent stalls selling materials and supplies. We bought some hot milk of a peasant woman. We passed the rest home of the Art Workers Union. Many stone steps led to the houses above, all of which were closed for the winter. We crossed a bridge and entered a charming park. We came to a clear stream ending in a little artificial waterfall. A slight steam rose from the surface and I thought it might be Narzan. R.K. knelt and took some up in the palm of her hand. ‘Tastes like perfume’, she said. She smelled it. ‘Smells like perfume!’ She held some in her hand for me to smell. Yes, it did smell like perfume. Great excitement. I also bent down to try it. A shout of laughter from R.K. She remembered she had put scented cold cream on her hands.
At the end of the park was the handsome Narzan Gallery, enclosed in glass with a flower conservatory, fountain of Narzan at which we drank freely the water we pay 40 k. a bottle for in Moscow. Then Davidovsky stopped at the tourist bureau to get information and we went on up to the Kurzal, the big amusement pavilion run by the railroad which we had noticed as we came in. Here was the great building containing theater, concert hall, billiard room, etc. beautiful gardens with concert pavilion and summer theater and along the edge of the hill a fine view of the city. Further, two very nice Russian bears in a cage, of a lovely honey color, and then some eagles, owls, foxes and peacocks. In the shelter of the large building one could sit on the benches in the warm sunshine and believe it was spring.
When we returned to the hotel we met our Davi- very indignant, for she had been looking for us. An izvozchik was waiting to take us to the sanitariums and she was armed with a type-written introduction. It was a beautiful droshky drawn by two horses — in fact, I was to see the last of the little Russian one-horse drosky or sled from now on.
The first sanitarium was for peasants from all over the Soviet Union. There were 65 patients at a time for a period of five weeks. It was all very clean and attractive, nice dining room and social hall, four beds to a room, the peasants dressed in white linen costumes. Their local health department sends them free of charge. There were eight women, one an old Communist, aged 60, Ivdanova Michaelova Borisova, who was at her studies when we looked in. She is a member of her local Soviet, is very active in speech making and is only now learning to read and write.
The second sanitarium we visited was formerly in the name of Trotzky, now is ‘October’, and is for responsible Party workers. It was a beautiful place, with single and double rooms attractively furnished, bright red blankets on the beds. I was told that Wells stayed here for six weeks when he was in Russia. In summer there are 70 patients, in winter 45. In a separate building were the Narzan baths, well equipped, also electric baths and various other treatments. In the corridor of the baths we met Kreps, head of the Press Bureau of the Comintern, here on vacation.
The third sanitarium we visited is in the name of Lenin, and is the largest institution in Kislovodsk. It is not only a sanatarium but also a scientific institute for the study of diseases of the heart. It is located on the hills and commands a wonderful view of the city and the surrounding hills. It accomodates 120 patients in summer and 110 in winter and takes not only members of trade unions sent by their local clinics but also individuals who pay 158 to 300 roubles a month. As this was the ‘dead hour’ (myertvi chas) when all patients must lie down, we saw only the rooms of the fat people who walk during this time. In the office of the manager we were told about the town before the revolution. Practically all the buildings were privately owned hotels and cottages before for instance, the present building was a hotel which rented rooms to patients who took private treatments. During the civil war, these buildings were used as quarters for white guards, and their horses were stabled in the bathroom. In the course of the discussion, it was mentioned that children’s sanitariums are gradually being eliminated, as it has been found that the children are apt to become confirmed invalids. Instead they are put in forest schools which give the children special treatment and at the same time permit them to follow their education. This is the principle on which the ‘night sanitariums’ in connection with industries are operated.
When we came out, our izvozchik was trotting his fine horses and equipage up and down the road to warm them. We stopped at the telegraph office where I wanted to send a Christmas telegram, but the usual argument about the 32 kopeck rate again consumed half an hour and put me in a bad humor about these ‘damn fools’ and their inefficiency, ‘dubs’, ‘What a lousy country, anyway!’, while R.K., also in a bad humor, told me I was a typical American who expected to find everything just like at home.
We got back to the hotel quite cold and tired, had dinner in the dining room and said goodbye to Platon, who told us he had never received the stenographic notes of our interview from VOKS. R.K. had an acquaintance here who was the wife of the manager of Kurzal, and we went to see them in the evening. They were in the big building where a concert and movie were going on. We listened to the music awhile and then went to their house, a pretty cottage in the park. Although he was the manager of this big concern which had put the place in repair after the revolution and last year netted a profit of 200,000 roubles, he had only three rooms in the cottage, and his wife’s mother, and I don’t know how many more relatives, occupied one of the rooms which we passed through to get to their rooms. They lived quite cosily, served us tea with jam, pastries, candy, apples while we engaged in a heated discussion of communism. Here was another religious fanatic, was a mechanic before the revolution, now received the Party maximum for this district of 190 roubles on which he had to support his wife and three children. He was enthusiastic about the development of the country, believed that in time the people would have everything, and that the population would not outgrow the productive power of the country as a more cultured people would practice birth control. About the war communism they had had, he said it was simply a measure of the government during a period of great want to commandeer all supplies and ration them equally. His wife was a silly woman, very talkative, heavily made up, who evidently has ambitions for better things, but says the workers are very critical of them if they try to fix up their home. They walked down to the hotel with us. The stars were shining, the air was clear and bracing, a wonderful winter resort. The government should divide the yearly vacations of the workers so there would not be such a rush in summer.
Dec. 25-1927-En route between Mineralni and & Baku. Sun on Mts— Birds flying against the flow of light—
Snow striped hills & snow peppered ground—a glory of grayness—rich & thrilling like a fine grey seal
Like children who believe in Santa Claus, we rose very early Christmas morning, at 4 o’clock, as we wanted to catch the fast train to Baku which was supposed to leave Mineralni at 7:25. It was still dark and chill as we rode to Mineralni, a time to think of home. We stopped so long at one station while the crew had breakfast that we were nervous about missing the train, but no danger, the train was late. We sat in the buffet and prepared ourselves for a siege. We drank tea, and then a little later milk and then still later, although I had been suffering severe pains in the solar plexus, I developed a craving for cold turkey. So I ordered a portion at one rouble, D. ordered an ancient looking smoked fish also and we had a Christmas breakfast. This experience has cured me once and for all of cold turkey. They also brought a half a pood of the mountains of white bread piled up in a corner of the restaurant. After breakfast, I played solitaire much to the interest of the spectators. In fact, I had already begun to feel at home in this station when the train arrived at 12:30.
Ruth Kennell’s sketch of Dreiser bundled against the cold. (From the Theodore Dreiser Collection, Special Collections Department, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
We were soon rolling out of Mineralni in an International car. I had thought we had said farewell to the steppes, but here they were again, snow covered, absolutely flat. There was a dining car on this train, the first I have experienced in Russia. We had dinner there; they are very spacious, much wider than an American. The dinner consisted of soup, cold fish with horse radish sauce, roast duck with pickles, apple with rice, coffee and cakes, (not real coffee of course), the cost 5 R.80. It was already dark at four and as we were very tired we went to bed. At about 8 p.m. we were awakened by the fact that the train was standing in one place a long time; this was Gudermas, the station after Grosni and Vladikavkaz. We could hear our neighbors talking about the wreck of a freight train ahead of us. A rail had split and the middle car turned over, the others piling on top, four killed.
26/XII
Slept intermittently until 8 a.m. At 8:30 the train pulled out. Now the country was changing, frozen marshes filled with tall brown grass, wild ducks flying, shrubs in the distance and small clumps of trees—now a range of snow covered mountains and little villages near the tracks—clay huts with thatched roofs and pigs and cows in the dooryard, at the door a woman in a red kerchief sat cross legged and sifted grain in a circular sieve; thatched little houses on poles. Then we came to the remains of the wreck: twisted and smashed freight cars lying along the siding, grain, paper, books, scattered all over and then soldiers guarding the bodies of the dead. A little later, and it might have been our train. . . R.K. imagined such a thrilling story in the American papers that she almost regretted our escape: ‘Theodore Dreiser dies in railroad accident on Christmas Day on the Caucasian steppes’.
By noon, all the snow on the prairies had disappeared and could be seen only on the mountains. There were sheep, cattle, herdsmen in the black sheeps wool Caucasian cloaks with broad straight shoulders as though a pole were stretched across inside from shoulder to shoulder, and big fur hats. Out of Petrovsk Port a cluster of dugouts near the tracks with mounds of earth on top.
In the same car was a crowd of responsible Party workers returning to Baku and Tiflis from the Conference in Moscow. There were Armenians, an old Georgian who had worked with Stalin, — Shamshe Lezhava—A White Russian, a Siberian, a Jew. One young Armenian, of the Tiflis Financial Dept., was most attentive, insisted upon my drinking Caucasian cognac, Tiflis champagne and vodka. We had dinner together in the diner and afterward he sat in the coupe and sang Armenian and Georgian songs, a wild, crazy young fellow. Elchebikov.
We arrived in Baku about 10 p.M. It struck one as a wild kind of station, crowds rushing to and fro, the porter running away from us, everyone jabbering in a strange tongue. Baku is the capital city of the Azerbeidjan Republic, has a population of 447,000 and the official language is Azerbeidjan although the equivalent in Russian is printed on signs. Outside, our porter rushed over to one of many swarthy Izvozchiki who were lined up. All of them knew very little Russian. The carriages in Baku were the finest yet, drawn by two horses, the costumes of the drivers long coats of a bright blue, tied about the waist with a red sash, and big fur hat on the head. We drove to the Novaya Evropa Otel (New Europe). This was a new hotel of seven stories, with the tiers of floors circling about the central pit, in which an open elevator ran up and down. We took a two room suite on the sixth floor for 8 roubles. As in all mild climates, it was badly heated and the windows were sealed tight with no fortochka (little window) to ventilate. The service seemed comparatively good, a great fuss was made about getting us to fill out forms, give documents, etc. but we were finally settled.
27/XII
We got up and had breakfast in the hotel dining room, which we found very expensive —1.60 for a pot of coffee, evidently real coffee. Then we went for a walk on the wharf. There was a fresh sea breeze and a pleasant reminder of San Francisco about the water front. The street along the wharf swarmed with carriers, in ragged clothes with their wooden shoulder pieces slung over the arm, or bent almost double with some load, like boxes or old iron. They were all native, swarthy, and husky looking. There were also strange little wagons on two high wheels, decorated in colored paint, the horse’s harness beaded or silver. Long planks could be carried so that half the length hung over the horse’s head. There were numerous old ships in the harbor and any number of the rusty remains of iron bodies of vessels. Facing the water was a large, new stone apartment house, which we looked into. In the court we found a young woman who told us that she lived there, that it was only for ship workers, her husband had been lost at sea two months ago and she was left with two young children. She had a room in a two room flat, with a kitchen for the two families and a toilet. She received a pension from the government shipping company of 26 roubles a month and paid 50 kopecks a month rent.
We took one of the beautiful izvozchiki back to the hotel. Davi had been to the Baku Soviet and was self-righteously waiting for us. The Baku authorities appeared not to appreciate me enough to furnish a guide. Davi said that the woman in the office with whom she had spoken had claimed to know all about me. ‘Oh yes, I have read all his works. He is my favorite poet’. I must add here at the same time about a man in the car from Rostov who asked if I were John Reed.
We went down to the Musselman Working Women’s Club in the name of Ali Bairomova. This was a very large building which had been the residence of a rich Armenian oil magnate. Here were the club rooms, reading room, theater, a Lenin corner built strangely like a mosque, with a bust of Lenin on one side and a picture of him on the other, and on either side of the dome the emblem of the hammer and sickle.
In 1924 the club had 550 members, in 1925 1300 and now there are many more. A large percentage of these women were illiterate, wore veils and had no training for any work. Here are classes in sewing, embroidery, rug weaving, midwifery, music, dancing and for the liquidation of illiteracy. I was dragged into the day nursery which keeps the children of the members of the club during the day. There was a parents meeting in progress. The children greeted us with ‘Salome malekov’ (How do you do). The little woman who led us around was herself a Mussleman, very tiny, with a dark, pretty face and large dark eyes. All these women are dark with straight black hair, swarthy skin and large dark brown eyes.
On the street leading up to the club house are many little stalls and here are merchants selling their wares; it is a narrow cobbled street crowded with people, most of the women walking with their veils or cotton shawls which envelope them, drawn over their faces, so that their figures might at first glance be picturesque til one noticed the cheap modern shoes and colored cotton stockings. Every other stall is a schashlika, where mutton on sticks is being turned over a fire in an iron pot, or over charcoal. We looked into one interesting looking little place, with steps leading up to it and a little garden at the side. At once the dark, evil looking proprietor called to us to come in, but we wanted to go farther up the hill to the great church which loomed up at the end of the narrow street. This street was full of life and color and the romance of the East, but the church itself when we went inside was like all the other Greek churches I have seen, except that the old priest was wailing the service rather than chanting. When we returned, the little restaurant had already sold out all its shaschlik so we sought out another on a tamer street. It was a typical beer hall, but the proprietor was most accomodating and suggested two portions of shachlik and one of a beaten mutton also cooked on a stick over the spit, also a lobster, beer with dried peas, green onions and radishes and the thin loaves of white bread which is baked in great slabs which look like washboards. As we came home we stopped at a bakery and bought some cakes to eat with our tea in the hotel. Near the hotel was an animal show, the entire front of the building covered with colored pictures of the animals; this not only served us as landmark but always enticed us, so we decided to see it. Inside it was very cold and dimly lighted, but the animals were interesting, wild cats, tigers, lions, bears, monkeys, snakes and birds. We were quite tired and chilled when we got up to the rooms and had our samovar.
28/XII Wednesday.
In the morning we started out to the oil fields by street car, changing twice and passing through several districts of the city where much new building was going on. At the sea, we went to the offices of the State Azerbaydzhanskaya Oil Industry. Fords were flying up and down the muddy streets and in fact, when Davi presented her documents, the management ordered a Ford to take us about the oil fields. It was a chill, foggy day, almost drizzling. Most the of the wells have been sunk in the water and great stretches drained. This group of wells, the nearest to the city, produces 2000 tons of oil a day. There is an eight hour day of three shifts and the average worker earns 70 roubles. The raw product is piped to the Chorni Gorod (Black City) for refinement. It is exported to Turkey, France, Italy and the refined oil to Germany. Only about 10 to 12% is exported because of the home demand. The methods, so our guide, a foreman, told us, compare with American. In this field are 520 workers whose new and old dwellings are in sight of the wells on the hills. Before, everything was sooty from the kerosene which the workers burned, now they burn natural gas. Their living quarters are free. An average family, say of four, receives two rooms and a kitchen. A worker who is discharged or quits working for the concern cannot be put out of his quarters without a decision of the courts, but he must then pay rent. If unemployed he pays 2 k. per cubic meter rent. If acceptable quarters are found elsewhere for him he must move. 9.75 k. is paid each worker who lives elsewhere, but only about 30 people are living here and not working in the industry, because when a man leaves, he usually finds work elsewhere and is provided quarters there.
I asked about the carriers who are so numerous on the streets of Baku. They belong to a trade union, but don’t work for wages, as members of the union they receive certain benefits and get find other employment through the union. Their earnings amount to about 90 roubles a month. I began to think that instead of pitying the carrier, he was to be envied for a good lot in life. He looked very healthy and happy and was his own boss.
Before the revolution, each private firm had its territory and kept from one another geological secrets. Therefore, many mistakes were made in exploitation and boring was done needlessly. Here thus far only the rich wells are worked, and small ones are as yet untouched, and this accounts for the large number of people employed to an area, in comparison with the U.S. They are now experimenting on pumping out water from the exploited territory instead of filling in, and constructing only roads. It would cost six million to fill in this area whereas to drain costs only two million. The cost of exploitation is more than in America, but the products cost less and we can therefore compete with other countries. Production in Russia costs so much more only in the mechanical industries where machinery must be imported. When the Soviet Government took over the oil fields they were in a terribly dilapadated condition; now conditions have been brought up to pre war level, but production is not yet up to that point. In 1902 the highest output was 520 million poods, and the plan for 1928 is 480 million poods.
--------- What are all those old iron ships doing out in the harbor?
All of them are more than 30 years old and belonged to individual capitalists. There are about 200 of them which could be used only by spending much money on repairs and it does not pay. The largest ships are 1000 tons but we are now building ships of 5 to 6 thousand tons. Our ships go to Astrakan and down the Volga; there is a small trade with Persia and Turkestan.
Drinking water is a serious problem here, it must be got from wells 140 km. deep or piped a long distance.
From here we took a street car which went along the wharf and we saw the many old ships lying in dock rusting away. We arrived at the Black City, which they claim is not black any more, since conditions have so improved. We picked our way along the muddy streets where much digging and building was going on, and received at the main office a permit to visit Plant No. 2. As we were waiting outside in the court of the plant, RK and I engaged in a discussion aroused by my remark that I was afraid the new order here would make for a drabness, due to the lack of class distinctions, and the leveling down of the standard of living to comprise all. RK claimed that the intellectual workers in Russia already were creating a higher level for themselves, that there would always be differences in individual tastes and temperaments. I said that if all the people must be equally provided for there could never be heights of beauty and luxury, because the increased population which would follow the better standard of living for the masses would consume the increased wealth. RK answered that the higher the culture of a society the more it practices birth control. I said that was the bunk, that the ordinary man wanted children when he could afford them, and besides the death rate would decrease as conditions improved.
A very courteous guide came along and explained the process of refining the oil. On the hills above were many reservoirs in which the oil piped from the fields is stored. From the reservoirs the oil is piped down to the batteries, where it is heated and kerosene, benzine and different grades of refined oil are extracted, passing through pipes out into troughs. In this plant are 350 workers, 3 shifts. In the whole Black City are 14,000 workers and in the whole oil industry in Baku including all the oil fields, there are 40,000 workers.
As it was already the end of a shift, 3 p.m., as we came out of the Black City, we took an old izvozchik who had just moved some furniture to this neighborhood, in order to avoid the crowded cars.
We had dinner in a very nice little family restaurant near the hotel. In the evening, I went with Davi to a movie, A Womans Victory’, which RK had told me was rotten. I quite agreed with her after seeing it. It was a story of feudal times in Russia, how a banditbaron carries off a girl and forces her to marry him, how she outwits him on her wedding night, and then when soldiers come and arrest him and he breaks down, she leads him out as her beloved husband and all ends happily.
29/XI Thursday
We got up bright and early; the sun was struggling through a fog and it promised to be a fine day. We got an izvozchik and I asked him to drive to a mosque which I had seen from my windows. It stood alone on a bleak hill and we had to drive through mud and filth to get to it. I had expected something finer—it was very plain and shabby, and falling to ruin. There were poor cottages in the neighborhood and peat piled up in high piles along the streets. We descended the hill and drove to another mosque whose dome and praying towers were visible. It was much larger and finer. We were leaving the courtyard when one of the boys asked us if we did not want to look inside. I had thought that no unbeliever could enter a Mohammedan church. However, he opened the door and we looked in. It was a great white interior with modern electric fixtures, on the floor many oriental rugs and a little carved stairway, otherwise quite bare, with a balcony where the women stood.
When we reached our neighborhood again, we decided to go into the fortified wall, which had looked so enchanting from a distance. Here was a new world, or rather an old world, like a page from the Arabian Nights. Narrow, winding streets through which streamed a procession of carriers with packs and boxes and bales of hay on their backs, donkeys likewise loaded, or carrying men who looked ridiculously large sitting on the tiny weather beaten beasts, women holding their shawls over their faces even while they carried buckets of water or babies, stalls of porcelain and chests, meat cooking over little charcoal fires, street peddlars buying their day’s stock of oranges from the merchants,—a hubbub of voices in a strange language, dark, friendly faces. A fragment of an ancient gray stone wall, strangely shaped, rising high above the old buildings. We were seeking the Chanski Dvoretz and wandered in and out of the maze of narrow streets inquiring here and there, but nobody seemed to know it by that name. Then a slender boy of 16 stepped out from a group and pointed and gesticulated in an effort to make us understand at the same time trying to speak, although he was tongue-tied. He decided to conduct us himself and went ahead, looking back whenever he turned a corner in a timid, questioning way, to be sure we were following. In and out we went, climbing up broken stone steps, through dirty courtyards, through narrow passages until we came to a high stone wall with parapets on top. But the wooden gates were closed, and we were told the castle would be open to visitors tomorrow. We said we were leaving today, but the aged keeper, who had a long nose and a beard, shook his head when our guide told him what we said and answered irritably in the native tongue. We looked through the crevices in the wall at the castle, a small, gray stone building which had been standing since the fifteenth century. It is said to have 68 small rooms and the throne room is still intact. Another boy had joined us and he asked us where we were from; when we told him America, the tongue-tied boy made a clicking sound expressing wonder and exclaimed: America!’ The other boy said if his friend were in America he would be cured of his impediment. To us his home was like finding the scenes of the Arabian Nights, while he thought of America as a wonder land.
A very strange phenomenon among these people is the sight now and then of a red-bearded man or a red haired woman, a red so dark and unnatural that it certainly must have been dye.
We went home, packed, went through the usual procedure of leaving the hotel, including tips for everybody, and taxes on our passports, and drove to the station to catch the 1:40 mail train for Tiflis. Davi went to get the places and after some time returned to announce that all places were taken on this train. We were sitting in the buffet among our extensive baggage; crowds filled the room, waiters were hurrying about with soup and meat dishes—even to see the food in a railway station buffet nauseated us —and I was overwhelmed with irritation and weariness. Nothing to do but return to the hotel—no, we couldn’t go through all those ceremonies again at the Novaya Evropa. There was the Hotel Bristol near the station. Davi was sure it was quite near the station. Ah, a chance to economize! She would get a carrier to carry the bags right to the hotel
The Hotel Bristol seemed to be much further than Davi thought. We, RK and I, stopped at the park because we were already tired of the chase. Davi ran on after him, around corners, down main thoroughfares, yelling at him not to go so quickly. He made some speed considering that he had my large suitcase and heavy leather bag and fur coat. She said that when they finally arrived at the hotel she was completely exhausted and so angry at him that she gave him only 50 k. which he, feeling guilty at his evident intention, took without comment. The weather had turned delightfully warm; we sat in the park in the bright sunshine in silence for some time, then went to the hotel. Davi had taken one small room in which the windows were sealed and no heat. I asked for a heated room and was told that one would be free later. I went for a walk along the water front, and the interesting sights and fine air lifted my spirits. We had dinner in a shabby cafe near the hotel which had very funny mural decorations on the walls, ladies and cavaliers walking in gardens. There was the usual borsch and beer. Returning to the hotel, on the road we stopped at a general cooperative store, packed with customers, a long line standing at the cashier’s cash register. There were placards on the walls about the value of cooperation.
We strolled down a narrow street and looked in the windows of little shops, jewelers where the large earrings worn by the women were displayed, musical instruments including the tara and a Caucasian drum on which they play with their fingers like on a piano, the instruments were inlaid with mother of pearl and tara or balalaika covered with silver. We came to a row of shops showing Caucasian silk stockings manufactured on a frame in the shops, for 3 roubles a pair.
Returning to the hotel, we moved into a larger room with an iron wall stove which they promised to heat. We had coffee served by a very human landlady who regretted that we were leaving so soon and could not sample her sister’s good cooking. We went to bed very early, and the clatter and talking in the buffet annoyed us; sometime in the night someone came and made a fire in our stove out in the corridor.
29/XII–30/XII
The wind was whistling madly around the corner and rattling the windows of our room and the doors of the balcony, but when we rose in the dark at 4 o’clock, the room was warm from the fire. As we had slept without undressing we were soon on the street. A chill, stiff wind still blew, the stars were gone, and it was snowing in scattered, wet snowflakes. Arriving at the station, we heard that the train was three hours late. Checking our remaining bags, we returned to the hotel and were permitted to occupy our room until seven a.m. During this time, we slept fitfully, rose again and went to the station. The corridors and waiting rooms were packed with people. We got our baggage and piling it in a free place in the corridor at the head of the main stairs, we sat down on the bags and waited, watching the ebb and flow of humanity. I have never in my life seen such wretched people, little boys in filthy rags, old men scratching themselves beneath their tatters, poor women sitting patiently on their blanket rolls with their children, a population which was previously almost entirely illiterate, and is still to a great extent. Now and then a little boy with a black face from grime, rags and tatters hanging from his bare arms and shoulders, perhaps half covered by an old straw mat, bare feet, matted hair, would come close to me and beg for money. This was a signal to watch my pockets more closely and hold on to my bags. After two or more hours of waiting, our porter who had a number and therefore could be trusted, led us along with the crowd out to the platform, at last we were seated in an international car again on our way to Tiflis. In the rush to the train, an orange was taken from RK’s pocket.
On the road to Tiflis the railroad followed the Caspian Sea to the south a few miles. On the other side of the tracks was a brown waste, with low brown hills near at hand. All along were herds of sheep and herdsmen’s villages of dugouts. ‘I’m afraid there’s no Lenin corner here’, said RK. Now we were coming to wider and more desolate stretches, camels were grazing, or caravans were moving across the plains, with faded striped coverings, and packs on their backs. Now we had left the sea behind and the railroad veered slightly to the north in the direction of Tiflis, through level grazing country, and villages somewhat less primitive—new clay houses with thatched roofs, a red tiled roofed building in the center which might be the local Soviet! Against a background of clay houses a woman’s figure stood motionless, watching the train —a gray veil enveloped her form and face so that she might have been a symbolic figure on a stage. Further on, a woman in bright red garments is walking carrying a tall earthen jug. The houses were built on high poles. Near the track a caravan of oxen drawing wagons moved along. One caught a flying glimpse of a tractor in the field. The aspect of the country gradually became more prosperous and civilized. There was much new building in the towns, a new bridge across the river and a new railroad track under construction.
We arrived in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, at 11 p.m. This station struck one also as a bit wild. Our porter had no number and raced like mad out into the street. The air was certainly not balmy, but there was no snow, at any rate. Conveyances were at a premium at this hour. Our porter found a wretched old automobile, the fat driver started the engine and we had to bargain with him above the deafening clatter. He asked five roubles to the Hotel Orient. We had to accept and rattled along the streets to the hotel. When it came to paying him he asked 7, saying that he charged two roubles for the baggage. We refused to pay it. He bellowed, although the engine was not going. We referred the case to the hotel man, and finally he accepted the fee five roubles. The hotel was quite attractive looking, with a charming Turkish hall, but our rooms were not very good. However, this proved to be at least a 2-sheet hotel.
31/XII
The window of my room looked out on the main street. In the morning, I was astonished at the beautiful view. Directly across the street stood a great stone church, in cream and brown, the brown stone running like stripes around the walls. It had a large central dome and four smaller domes, the whole a perfect and compact symetrical structure looming up against a background of mountains gardens and streets lined with tall cypress trees. On top of the mountain stood a white building and there was a railway running straight up to it. Automobiles were spinning by, the street swarmed with well dressed people; Tiflis seemed to be a modern and properous city. Wet snow was falling, and when we went out we found the streets slushy, the air damp and chill. We went to the post office, and found only a package of Soviet charts from Serge. When we returned to the hotel, Davi was waiting with a program from the local Soviet. The museums were near at hand—a collection of old Georgian paintings, copies of mural decorations in churches, etc. and some new pictures, then a natural history museum with beautiful settings of wild animal life in Georgia and the surrounding Caucasus: wolves, wild cats, birds, flamingoes, a great tiger killed near Tiflis, wild boars, mountain goats; a collection of lovely butterflies and bugs. We walked through the mire down the main shopping streets. It was the day before a holiday and the stores were crowded. We bought a couple of pieces of Caucasian silk just before the shops closed at three o’clock.
When we returned to the hotel, I felt very miserable; evidently the damp and fog had a bad effect on my chest. We had tickets to the opera, and I got up and went. The opera house was a fine looking building inside and out. The corridors and halls were far more beautiful than the interior of the theater itself. The walls were decorated in quaint designs like the old palace in the Moscow Kremlin. The piece was a new comic opera, ‘Life and Joy’, written by a Georgian, and was in the Georgian language. The music was good, the costumes quite colorful, but the plot was old: a gay young fellow is given a sleeping potion and when he awakes finds himself in royal clothes and being crowned czar. He falls in love with a charming lady but finds that a frightful looking czarina goes with the throne and runs away. It was a short performance over at 10:30. It was interesting to watch the people, for the Georgians have very strong characteristics: an energetic, virile, capable people, the men tall, handsome and dashing, (Tiflis seemed to me a city of Stalins)12 and the women well dressed in silk gowns and with quite an air about them, although the dark heavy features which make for masculine beauty are too hard in a woman.
Tiflis was meeting the New Year in cafes and in our hotel restaurant. When we went up to my room, the Armenian Communist whom we had met on the train to Baku came; he had been telephoning the hotel and asking for us for the last two days. Davi had blown herself on a bottle of wine; I went to bed and she and RK took the young fellow to the other room, where they must have had a gay time as RK’s head was still turning from at least two glasses of wine the next morning.
1/I/28
When I rose New Year’s morning, the city was beautiful in the bright sunshine, and the snow covered mountains were shining in the sun light. At quite an early hour for a native, our Armenian friend appeared to take us out. We went to the cafe Germania, a little German confectionery, again for breakfast. We had already given our orders when a policeman came and told the proprietor he must close his shop because it was a holiday. However we were permitted to finish our breakfast, although the whole police force seemed to be patrolling the shop to be sure no other customers got in, and the harrassed looking German proprietor went out several times to reassure them.
We went into the grounds of the headquarters of the Sovnarkom (Soviet of People’s Commissars of Tiflis). The garden was charming, formal beds of plants, cypress trees, old vines climbing over the buildings, red earth on the paths. Here many soldiers from the barracks nearby were strolling. There was a pond with one lone swan in it. Adjoining stood the church which I like so much. Our guide said it was now a Pioneer Club. In the courtyard are sport grounds, and when I remarked on the incongruity of such a use of this noble edifice, our Armenian said there had been a project to tear the church down and erect a new building on the site. I said I thought a better use would be to turn the church into a mausoleum for the country’s distinguished dead. We had now come to the government garage and were given a car to drive about the city. We drove first to the old section of the city; above on the hills stood an ancient fortress, only a wall and tower remaining. Here was the old Tartar section, many old buildings, narrower streets, markets. We crossed one of the eight bridges which span the River Kara. The churches were numerous but added nothing to the beauty of the city, for the Georgian style of church is ugly—a rectangular dome or three domes painted silver or made of inlaid silver, severe and plain in outline and of a dirty gray stone.
We began to climb the mountain road and at each higher curve the view became more wonderful. Tiflis lies in a valley and on all sides rise mountains. We climbed to a considerable height and looked down on the city. I could make out my church, there was a very large hospital, a macaroni factory of red brick, red roofed houses, gardens. Above, at a height of 1,500 m. was a colony of cottages for children who are delicate or tubercular. It is called the ‘children’s city’. Descending we stopped at a pretty central park and went into the picture gallery. Here was a fine small collection of Georgian paintings. Two large paintings of streets in Samarkand, in Asia, pleased me. Here were the street bazaars being held in the shadow of beautiful ruined mosques whose domes and towers reminded me of the blue mosaic work of the mosque in Leningrad. The artist was Gigo.
We had no dinner as all restaurants were closed. Our train was to leave at 10:40 p.m. for Batum. Our Armenian friend saw us off. There was only one ‘myaki vagon’ (soft car) on this train and it seemed from the crowds that about a thousand people were trying to get places. We had some arguments about our places, as someone else claimed one of them. However, the G.P.U. man who is always on the job at stations intervened and we settled down in a four place coupe with a young Red commander who tried to be very helpful to us. This was the worst car I have traveled in yet, with the exception of the Maxim Gorki.
2/I/28
In the morning, a real winter scene met our eyes — a landscape simply buried in snow, and a little stream running swiftly through the snowy banks; thick snowflakes were falling. RK in the berth above had taken out our guide book and was reading the description of Batum.
As we rode along the snow gradually disappeared, and a heavy fog or drizzle took its place. In another two hours no snow at all, but rain, marshes, strange foliage, crops hung on trees to preserve them from the damp, thus giving a very queer shape to trees, houses built on piles, fresh green grass. The custom of the country seemed to be turbans on the heads of the men. The villages were primitive looking, and the better houses were on brick piers evidently to raise them from the marshes. In the background were low mountains. I asked the Red commander some questions about the army. There are 450 men in his regiment. In battle, the commanders are at the very front; in private life they sleep and eat with the men. The eight hour day applies to soldiers also; in fact, they often work less than eight hours. Much of the time is given over to education. Before, under the czar, the soldier was very much restricted and abused. There were signs on the boulevards and street cars, ‘Soldiers and dogs not allowed’. The soldier gets a month’s vacation every year and everything is free to him. With his higher officers he claimed he was socially on equal terms, but on duty of course subordinate. The officers cannot discipline the men harshly, never scold or yell at them, discipline is attained more through instruction and training than through punishments which are now abolished. Before punishments were terribly severe. Illiteracy is being abolished through the army. He claimed that the living conditions of the soldiers are very good and they do not complain. If a relative comes to visit a soldier, he is given a room, and at all times relatives can come to entertainments in the camps of the army.
Our train was already three hours late, now we heard that there had been a wreck ahead, and we had to stand still one hour at a desolate station, waiting for a train to come back from Batum and take us on. Our train then moved on slowly for a few miles and stopped in a wild place. We got out, and as no one was allowed to pass along the tracks where the wreck lay, we had to make a circle about, along muddy roads with heavy baggage to the train standing on the
What wretched looking natives! Clad in ragged clothing, with cloths tied about their heads, turban fashion, they followed us begging for a job of carrying our baggage. We hired two of them and a girl besides. A couple of carts drawn by oxen (a very pretty girl with black curls under yellow kerchief driving) also carried some of the baggage. After wading for about a mile through the mud, we came to our train and got on. The wreck lay all over the tracks, overturned oil cars, a freak accident—the brakeman had slipped in the mud, his lantern had struck against an oil car and broken and the oil had caught fire. He was completely burned up. The chief conductor further back, seeing what had happened, uncoupled the other cars and saved 26 of them. The guard who related the story to us claimed that the conductor, who had black hair, had turned white with fright. The train was now traveling close to the Black Sea, black sand, tangled undergrowth along shore and mountain woods on other side of tracks. We passed the large botanical gardens outside Batum. We arrived in Batum about five o’clock in gray, chilly weather.
It seemed a provincial town. We took an izvozchik to the pier, and learned in the waiting room of the Sovtorgflot (Soviet Trading Fleet) that we could buy tickets only at nine o’clock, steamer leaving at midnight. So Davi went into town to get some money from the bank, while we sat and waited in the buffet. There was a wretched collection of humanity sitting about the metal stove. When Davi returned we went into town, first to the telegraph office, but no telegram from Serge. Then to the restaurant nearby. A cheerless dinner which cost 4.80. RK inquired about the possibility of getting her typewriter repaired. The waiter led us about trying to find the residence of the mechanic who runs a typewriter repair shop in town. He kept saying, just a little bit further and kept leading us on and on down lonely streets, around corners, asking occasionally for information. At last we tracked him down, the mechanic agreed to repair the machine and bring it to us at the steamer. Hours more waiting in the buffet, I felt very sick, my chest was paining. Crowds stood about in the room. At 11 we went on the steamer.
3/I/28
At about 3 in the morning of the 3rd, our steamer of the Soviet Trading Company, ‘Pestel’, named after a Decembrist admiral on the Black Sea, left Batum. I was so glad to be on the last lap, but my stateroom was a shabby affair with five beds. If this were summer I would have to room with four other men! The women’s and men’s cabins are entirely separate, the former being above and altogether more comfortable. This is a one-sheet boat, no bath, and only a blanket if requested. No water excect the usual small bowl with two gallon tank attached. I resigned myself to a week of face washing. The sea was very rough. The boat rolled and pitched and the waves dashed over my porthole.
At seven in the morning we reached a small port called Poti. This was a small dreary shipping station inside an artificial harbor. Snow, rain, a cold raw wind. I think only of Constantinople and the south. Eggs with wretched coffee and watered condensed milk in the dining room, which was a confortable type of ship dining room. The Baku officer whom we met on the train talked with me. He was on his way to Sochi. I made the best of the morning playing solitaire and looking out at the loading. It was a slow process. We did not get off before 1 p.m. By then the clouds were breaking to the north, revealing as we went west the line of mountains that edges the north shore of the Black Sea! The clouds of gulls as we go out— they flew high looking like silver specks in the golden light to the north. The sea was rough but obviously calming. I was interested by the group of sailors who are on their way to Sebastapol to attend naval school—their gayety in their heavy clothes. One of them, a tall, ungainly fellow with a typical fair Slavonic face, followed me about with his eyes, and asked RK for my books. A bookstand on the boat displayed ‘Sister Carrie’ and a volume of short stories called An Unusual History’!13 In the evening we arrived at Sukhumi, but remained some distance from the shore. It looked a very attractive place in the darkness with lights shining on the water. It was cloudy with a cool breeze but the air was mild.
4/I/28
The sea was calmer this morning and I walked on deck and watched the dolphins and sturgeons leaping out of the water as we steamed west. The sun broke through and lit the sea to the north. To the south and east it is somber and bleak. Wild ducks by the hundreds, also mud hens, and northern loons —I never saw more. It has grown warmer and still. At 12 noon we came to Gagra, considered the most beautfiul of the Caucasian resorts. It has the mountains behind it and consists of many large fine buildings, most of which no doubt are sanitariums, hotels and bath houses. We did not dock and the unloading took place in small boats. I noted the second and third class passengers, as Asiatic and dreadful as ever. The huddled masses of them gave me a sense of nausea. Russia is permanently spoiled for me by the cold and dirt. Bukharin talked of building a paradise. But when? In fifty or a hundred years. I will seek mine while I am still alive. Further down the coast lies the town of Adler, where the railway line which follows the sea shore to Tuapse begins. Today it is quite calm and sunny. We were still cruising at the base of these great mountains, which as we neared Sochi became higher, in the background rising two or three very high snow-covered peaks. All along the shore were scattered houses, some of them very large and beautiful, evidently sanitariums; near Sochi are the famous sulphur baths ‘Matsesta’. As our boat came into Sochi, it was already four o’clock and the sun was setting. Behind the front ranges of lower mountains rose the snowy summits of the higher peaks, turned rosy by the reflected glow from the sunset, their profiles purely cut like pink cameos. One did not know on which side to look for loveliness: on the shore side the beautiful city with its fine buildings and bath houses against the mountains and on the other the sun setting in streaks of red gold on the sea. But in a few minutes the radiance had all passed, the mountain peaks turned a cold pure white, and at once the moon, already for some time palely visible above the mountains, began to shine on the water.
5/I/28
Early in the morning we docked at Novorossiysk, a leading port city of 62,000 population. As we walked off the boat, near at hand stood a line of izvozchiki with a new style of drosky—flat on top with a mattress or carpet folded on it, on which you sit and hang your legs over the side, resting your feet on the dashboard. We rattled along. It was a bright, frosty day. The town was new and drab looking. At the center we got out and looked in vain for a restaurant, so we strolled up a slight hill past soldiers drilling (those same three soldiers I meet everywhere) to where the town ended in meadows. Nearby were two or three fine looking buildings. We had hoped to find a good restaurant in Novorossiysk, something that would be a relief from the ship food, but we looked in vain. We wandered through the bazaar where peasants were selling all sorts of foodstuffs; I wanted some hot milk and told RK to go and buy some plain cookies we had seen in a booth on the other side. She was cold and cross, and couldn’t see the sense of doing it, but after some time with reluctance bought a few cookies and we ate them with hot milk, standing up at the counter in the midst of melting snow and dirt. We went then to the main street again, and saw that the main dining room was now open, but when we went in the smell was nauseating. We escaped with a glass of tea, and my companion had to admit that the bazaar at least was in the open air. Along the main street, were people carrying pretty little fir trees, for it was the day before the old Russian Christmas, and the devout persistently celebrate the old date although the new (25th) is observed along with the new calendar in Russia. This really makes two separate Christmas holdiays and with New Year’s Day in between on which the modern Russian celebrates, so that the winter holidays are quite extended. We looked up a bank and changed some American dollars for roubles—-of course, they were tickled to death to get the dollars, but they paid me only 1:93. We walked back to the boat feeling disgusted with the city in general. I talked with RK about her leaving Russia; she rallied to the defense and spoke of the advantages of living in Moscow, the personal freedom, lack of strain of keeping up appearances, workers’ benefits, like free medical services, so that even if the standard of living is low, it is possible to live on a small income. I kept scratching myself all along the street. ‘Think I’ve got lice’, I said, feeling furious at the idea. Near the wharf, we met Davi and her cabin-mate and they took us to a restaurant nearby. Same old lay-out, buffet, potted plants and palms, dreary, pungent. Some returned Russians who had brought a ship from New York were sitting at the next table and talking in loud tones in execrable broken English, just to show off. We ordered fried chicken and bread and butter—chicken not so bad, but butter rank and those great platters of thick white bread! RK, even on land, never free from a feeling of seasickness, was very much depressed and I was in a worse mood. We returned to the boat and I went to bed early in the chill, dank cabin.
6/I When we once got started again, it was very rough. At seven a.m. we arrived in Feodosia on the shore of the Crimea. I did not go up for some time. Met Davi coming back from the town. ‘Oh why didn’t you go—wonderful place, I even saw the art gallery.’ RK and I walked off, got an izvozchik for a rouble and rode about town; the street facing the sea was beautiful —one beautiful home after another, formerly the residences of the rich and now clubs, rest homes, and sanitariums for workers. Greek architecture predominated, showing, it seemed to me, that the Greeks must have been here at one time and influenced the place, or that natural characteristics influence architecture. One especially beautiful palace, of grayish stone with mosaic work, and a pagoda in the garden had been built by a tobacco magnate and not quite finished when the revolution came. So he never lived in it, but fled abroad. It is now the sanitarium of the Soviet Commercial Employees Union. Turning up one of the side streets we came to an Art Gallery of the artist Aivazovsky, a collection of beautiful marine paintings, one enormous canvas of the sea occupying one whole side of a wall. This artist loved Feodosiya best of all; he had lived here as a boy, and used to go down on the wharf where trespassing was forbidden and sketch; he would be driven away, even arrested, or punished by his mother, but nothing could keep him from the seashore. There were also some new paintings by artists of the town. Altogether the gallery was very charming.
Of course, like a good izvozchik, ours must show us the bazaar; the streets were muddy, it had probably rained recently for the weather was mild and cloudy.
To the next stop, the sea was pretty heavy. Everybody took to their berths, but I did not feel a quaver. At 9 p.m. we arrived at Yalta, where the earthquakes have been most severe. At first I did not want to go ashore for nothing could be seen from the boat except the lights of the shops along the beach so RK and Davi went off without me. Later, I decided to go. I strolled along the dimly lighted street, noting the new frame houses evidently erected for the refugees. Not an inspiring street, but the streets leading up into the town past walled gardens, where cypress trees stood sentinel, looked attractive. I went up a dark street. Suddenly a large section of a brick wall crashed down to the sidewalk not twenty feet ahead of me. I jumped into the street; people came running and talked and gesticulated. So I experienced something of the earthquake. Here also the weather was mild, the roads very muddy. We left Yalta very late in the night, but I went to bed early.
7/I/28
At 8 a.m, Sebastapol, the famous port over which many battles have been fought. I again hoped to get some decent food. We hired an izvozchik to show us the town. We jogged along up the main street and down to the sea again—a mild looking place, with naval academies lying on the outskirts and many marines on the streets. At the pristin was a monument to an admiral who had saved the port from the Turks in 1853.14 ‘Drive on,’ we said, and our izvozchik turned back up the same way. ‘Why not another?’ we asked. ‘There are only two streets in town,’ he answered, ‘and we’ve already been on both’. Up at the corner, he began industriously to point out the places of interest: ‘There’s the street car that goes to the railroad station’, he volunteered. ‘Wonderful,’ said I,—‘and up there is the bazaar’, he went on hopefully. ‘Let’s get out here,’ I said, and we looked up a restaurant. We found a kind of dairy lunch, we hoped at least to find some wholesome food. Hot milk, eggs, butter, white bread. . . ‘I’m too far gone,’ said RK, looking very miserable, ‘for anything to help now’. We returned to the ship. The group of sailors were leaving here to go to the naval school. I bought copies of my books on the boat and gave them to the tall fellow who had looked at me so curiously all the way up. He was much surprised and grateful. ‘It will be a great memory’, he said.
At five p.m. we anchored some distance from the shore of a small shipping point. The sea was very high. I went on deck and watched a tug trying to come close enough to take passengers off. It bobbed about like a cork and any moment might have struck our side. Another boat which had already been loaded with cargo floated nearby waiting to be towed back. It was dark, the wind was blowing—a wild scene—but finally the passengers were off and after some time we were on the way again.
Our last night was the roughest yet. It was impossible to rise until we had almost reached Odessa, because it was too rough to pack. I remember saying as I lay looking at the five life belts hanging on the wall: ‘Probably all rotten. I’ll bet if a fellow put one on he’d sink right to the bottom.’
8/I/28
At about eight in the morning of Sunday we reached Odessa. It was cold and foggy, with slushy snow. There is a fine harbor. We took the Passage Hotel automobile. The Passage stood on the main square facing a great cathedral, a very old hotel, but my room was not bad, and I rather liked the old black upholstered furniture and the mahogany wardrobe. This was a no-sheet hotel. Guests either had to provide their own, as I understand is the custom, or you pay extra for the linen and blankets. The bed was hard with a straw mattress. But the view from my windows of the square and the church with the dome and steeple was interesting. We looked up a place to eat, a sort of family dining room in a court; the food was not so awful, but it was a stuffy place. We spent the afternoon riding to the end and back of various street car lines. Odessa is a very old city, the buildings have once been very fine, but are decaying and gray. The official language is Ukrainian, but the Russian words are always given also on all notices. It was a raw, foggy day. We came home in the evening and got Davi and went again to our family restaurant for dinner. Although the proprietor gave a home atmosphere to the place by playing the violin to a piano accompaniment, the food seemed just as bad as ever, same old borsch, same old schnitzel, cutlets, Hungarian gulash which would make Bela Kun start another revolution, same old perozhki —oh, my God! In the evening there was nothing to do but go to bed.
9/I
On Monday morning we went to Derutra to find out about the steamer. To my horror, I learned that there is no boat to Constantinople before the 18th, the Italian line, and the 19th the Russian. But as the Italian takes five days and the Russian only 36 hours, it would be better to take the latter. Then it occurred to us that it might be better to cancel the Constantinople trip and then I could go straight to Paris through Poland. I got all the information from Derutra, they examined my passport and said I would have to get a Polish visa, and also my Russian visa renewed. We went to the visa department and learned there that I had no exit visa at all and would have to make application and pay 21 roubles. We got very much excited, and protested, saying that I was a guest of VOKS and that they should have attended to the matter in Moscow, to which the visa man agreed.
I wrote a request to be granted an exit visa through Poland without charge, and the request was granted. Derutra said that they could get the Polish visa in two days after the Russian exit visa was ready. I sent a wire to Constantinople informing about my change of plan.15 My one desire is to get out of here as quickly as possible and back to America.
I took a long walk late in the afternoon down to the waterfront. It was a sunny day. I found the steps on which the firing took place in 1905 which is pictured in the film ‘Potemkin’. There are 200 steps which I walked up and down.
10/I
On Tuesday when we went down to Derutra we inquired about examination of baggage, and I learned that I could not take any printed matter or writing out of the country without special permission. I was very indignant. We then asked about money—also necessary to get special permission to take sums over 300 roubles, and as I had almost a thousand dollars which had been sent me in Moscow, they said it might be difficult to get permission. I came home and packed up all my papers, including these notes, all my English books, personal letters, etc. They quite filled my bag. At this point, a young reporter from the local paper came to see me. He wanted to know what I thought of Russia, spoke English, so I made him a long speech about what I thought of conditions, that it was an interesting experiment, but—they had a long way to go before they could try to put the system in other countries. I had no objection to their trying it out here, but they should not try to change other countries until they had proved the system here. I said also that before they send any more money abroad for strikers, etc. they should take the children off the streets. He said they had only a hundred left in Odessa, that most of them were in homes now. We hurried down to Derutra with the bag which they took possession of and began to examine, making a list of the contents. It made me boiling mad, and then the discussion about the money still madder.
I asked Davi for the papers from VOKS which she had been using for the trip, in which it is stated that I am the guest of the Soviet Government, as I thought it would be useful in getting over the border. She refused to give it to me. I then used some strong language about the lousy organisation and about her, and about the whole god damn business. I took the paper and went out on the street. RK had been making a list of the papers, and now she followed me and said that Derutra must have the VOKS paper to get the permission. I handed it over to them.
This was the final split with Davi. She went home and we had dinner in the Bristol Hotel restaurant, where we had eaten a fairly good breakfast of pancakes, ham and eggs, and cereal coffee. I was inveigled into trying ‘wild duck’ which we found on the menu, being reminded of all the ducks I had seen flying in this part of the world. Also some stuffed cabbage. The duck was awful, so was the cabbage, and we went away quite discouraged.
After the scene in Derutra, RK and I took a long walk down on the water front in another direction. We passed many fine old houses that had no doubt been the residences of the rich, and probably now were occupied by about 60 families. Some of them were very charming. Here again we met divisions of soldiers marching and singing— there seemed to be barracks nearby.
In the evening, without seeing Davi again, we went to the opera, at the great opera house: ‘Sadko’, one of the best known Russian operas by Rimski Korsoka.16 The first act was terrible, the setting bad, the voices bad, the chorus bad. RK was very much disappointed because she had seen it done so much better in Moscow. She persuaded me to stay for the second act in which there is the ‘Song of India’. The second act was so much better that I was glad we stayed. The deserted wife had a nice voice and the home scene was effective. Sadko himself was such a big bull with a bad voice that he spoiled every scene. In the market place at the wharf a crowd had gathered to see Sadko off on the boat—here were foreign visitors who stepped up and wished him luck on his journey to the kingdom below the sea. One of these was in Indian costume; he stepped quietly forward and with folded arms sang the ‘Song of India’. It was very effective. We went home at the end of the second act.
11/I
Today we filed permission for taking the money out of the country and were granted it, also received permission to take out the papers. Davi and I are in open warfare, with RK as mediator.
We had breakfast at the Bristol, pancakes, jam, smetana,17 cereal coffee and 8 eggs fried with ham although we asked for four—that was simple, they gave two portions, four each. It was a cold, sunny day. We came home. I had received a telegram saying that my telegram to Constantinople had not been delivered, so I telegraphed to Cook. Returned to hotel feeling rotten. It was cold in the room and I put on my fur hat, fur coat and fur gloves and lay down on the bed while I dictated the rest of my article to RK. Write-up in the morning Odessa Izvestiya about me today with picture. I didn’t have the heart to go out on the street again, we had tea in the room and I went to bed for want of anything better to do.
12/I/28
In the morning we went down to Derutra for further information. They were still waiting for the Polish visa which was expected next day. I sent through them a telegram to Constantinople to trace my niece.18 We then had breakfast at the Bristol and sat at the table next the goldfish who kept coming up to the top for water, as if the water in the tank must be very stale. RK said it looked as though they were saying ‘Bla-bla’ all the time. We got into a disagreeable argument on the old subject of communism and individualism, she defending the dubs and the ‘svines’ maintaining that it is better to lower general standards at the expense of the few if wretched poverty of the mass can be eliminated thereby. We were as usual passing compliments to one another; I said very well, she could have her communism, we would part good friends and each go his separate way. This hurt her feelings very much and she wanted to cry right there, so we decided it would be better to go home and do that. I suggested that a trip somewhere might raise her spirits and she very coldly assented. We went to the railroad station, a dreary place, and found out that we had missed the train to a village. We then took a street car to a summer resort called ‘Fontan’ some miles out of the city. It was dreary weather for our dreary mood. A thick fog hung over the city, so that only objects in the immediate foreground could be seen from the car windows. But such objects! Mile after mile of ruined buildings, only fragments of stone walls standing on the desolate plains. It was as if an army had battered everything down in its march on Odessa.
We arrived at Fontan on the seashore, no doubt a nice enough place in summer. Now it looked desolate in the chill fog. There were little summer cottages of cement and the ruins of fine homes standing up on the heights. Here stood the scrap of a wall and a stone gate and on the gate a rusty plate: ‘Datcha (cottage) of L. Kermachov’. A number of ferocious dogs came running into the road and a fellow struck at them with his whip and drove them back. We made our way down a slippery hill where the boys were coasting to the beach where a number of large fishing boats lay and nearby nets hung drying. A few nice houses were still standing, one the datcha of the Soviet Commercial Employees Union, another of the food workers, a pavilion now boarded up and a nice looking stone building, evidently a theater. We wandered down a gully. Down on the slope was a little white clay cottage with a brush fence about it and a little porch with dried weeds put up as a wind brace. A little old woman on the porch called to us: she said we could not get out that way and that she would show us the road to the car. We returned, and RK, scenting an opportunity for some local color, engaged her in conversation. She invited us to come in and warm ourselves. We went inside. The house had three tiny rooms in a row, the middle room just off the porch was evidently the living room. There was a brick stove, a table, two or three chairs and a shelf; straw on the stone floor, a lamp on the window sill. The panes of the small latticed window were composed of innumerable pieces of glass cemented together. The bowl of the lamp looked like an ink bottle and I said when I got home I would make a lamp out of an ink bottle. RK said that would certainly be a great economy. On the freshly whitewashed walls were one or two quaint religious pictures, in the room to the right were religious pictures and an altar and several milk cans. It was deadly chill, for here they kept the milk which they sold to the townspeople. In the room on the left was a wooden bed covered with some old rags and sheep-skins, and also unheated. We sat down in the living room and the little old woman began making up the fire which had gone out. She wore an old black skirt and a white woolen sweater, over which she had put a mans vest, giving a sort of quaint bodice effect. She had a sweet, refined face, and as she had been ill for some time, moved with heavy sighs, murmuring now and then: ‘Bozhi moi’ (My God). Her husband was a little old man of 68 with a pathetic comical face, out of which his little dark eyes peered shyly. He wore an old padded canvas coat and felt boots. He sat huddled down on a low stool next to the stove while she added peet to the fire and fanned it with her skirt, explaining that it was hard to make burn in the foggy weather. We asked her for hot milk and she put a saucepan on the stove. He had been a gardener before the revolution for the rich who lived in the fine houses, but now as they had all been destroyed, there was no work for him. He owned his little house, having built it himself years ago and was exempt from taxes because of his years. He was entitled to an old age pension of 15 roubles a month but said it was necessary to go throughso much red tape to get it, that he just didn’t bother. He also sighed everytime he stirred. The woman brought a loaf of white bread and cut a slice for the cat who devoured it as if it had been meat, uttering growls as she tried to swallow it. They had a cow and sold milk. In summer they moved out into the yard and rented their rooms for 150 roubles for the season. Yes, he supposed he could get land to farm from the government if he agitated enough, but most of the land had already been distributed by the local Soviet, and they would not want to give such an old man land. They were Polish, had come thirty or forty years ago to Odessa, had no children, and all through the war and famine had lived in this little gully unmolested. During the famine, he said, the cat would not have survived—yes, of course, they ate cats. We asked about the ruined buildings. These had not only been destroyed by the fighting, but also by the people themselves during the famine, when they actually tore down the deserted dwellings of the rich who had fled or been killed and sold the materials in Odessa for food. There anything could be bought for enough money. He had not fared so badly because he was working for the local Soviet and received a payok.19 When they found out we were from America, they asked how the people lived; she wanted to know, did we have the Soviet system there now?
When we had finished our hot milk, which was very good, we paid her, said goodbye and went on, looking back now and then at the little cottage, which somehow reminded one of a hut in a fairy tale, and they of the old couple in the legend ‘The Miraculous Pitcher’. We went down to the street car station and, quite unprepared for an hour’s wait, walked up and down the road feeling miserable and cold and unable to think of anything worth while talking about. In the window of a house on the street a woman was looking for lice on the head of a little girl, probing with a fine comb. Finally the car came and we rode home; the room was cold, we were cold, and so we ordered hot baths which at least would warm us up.
In the evening we had dinner at the Bolshaya Moskovskaya, came home to the room which was still cold as the heat had not yet come on, and I dictated an article for the Russian press on my general impressions of Russia. Davi left on the 5:40 and I felt at once a sense of relief. ‘Rebecca Kopeck’ was gone.
13/I/28
Telegram received from Constantinople, visa received, everything ready to go on 5:40. We walked down to the steps, and went into an archaeological museum where a large collection of remains from the Greek occupation along the Black Sea, several centuries before Christ. An artist who looked like a priest showed his special collection of paintings and pottery from this district, especially Bessarabia. His name was Chernyavski. He said he had a hard time now, not even money to buy paints, ‘We are not needed’ he said.
I thought his paintings of local scenery and of an old fortress near Odessa from which much of the pottery and stones in the exhibit had come, were charming. I liked his sense of color, his skies. And yet how wretched he looked—long scraggly hair falling from beneath an old fur hat about his sallow, thin face, a long shabby black robe. ‘There is a new form of art coming up’ he went on, ‘no one is interested in the old art, or in art at all. We artists simply exist.’
Another chill, foggy day. We returned to the hotel and longed for tea to warm us, but the maid announced severely that there was no kipyatok (boiling water) until after six. By telephone we learned that the Polish visa had come and we could leave today. The train would leave at 5:40 and on this same train RK could also go with me to a certain station where she would change for Moscow. Derutra had arranged for their agents to meet me at Shepatkova, on the border, then at the Polish border and at Warsaw. We seemed to have found some efficiency at last, now that the trip was ended. Of course, they charged me enough for the services. I came home in excellent spirits —at last I was going to leave, yes, literally crawl across the border. ‘I’d rather die in the United States than live here’ I told RK. She did not retort, evidently feeling that I was a hopeless case, anyhow (her defenses were pretty well battered down by this time. She said that my mission in coming to Russia was to win her back to her native land). For the first time on the trip, I came out twice on solitaire. ‘You see,’ said RK joyfully, ‘your luck is changing’. At five o’clock a Derutra man came and took us to the station. The manager was also there to see us off. The accomodations were pretty bad, half the car soft coupes and the other half hard, no electricity, only candle light. The stupid looking little conductor was made to feel by Derutra that I was very important, ‘personally conducted’, and he hung around looking at us stupidly out of bleary eyes, and asking if there wasn’t something we wanted. We knew what he wanted; these people think we are made of money. He brought us tea in a white coffee pot. RK said any Russian would proclaim it excellent ‘kipyatok’. I got out my cake, bread sticks, lemon and cheese and we had a feast. It was quite dark when the train pulled out and the flickering candle filled the coupe with soft shadows. Every minute our unctuous conductor pulled open the door, shuffled in and asked if we wanted something, were we ready to have the beds made up (he was afraid the gentleman would find the bedding very uncouth). We told him at least half a dozen times that we did not want the bedding yet. Then finally when I did want it, he was not to be found. Just ahead of our coach was an International coach bound for Moscow. RK decided to go straight onto it at five in the morning when it would be necessary to change cars, where she could pay there for her place card instead of buying at the station. But our conductor insisted that ‘soft’ was just as good and that he would buy her ticket himself at the station. We lay down, but had no peace. Every few minutes, that little rat scratched at the door—had she decided yet about the myakhky or international? Yes, she had decided to go International. A mistake, he thought. Then when did she want to change. Not until we reached the station where the train divided, she said. We slept, but woke in the early morning and looked out at the snowy world and the frosted woods. I said that already this was better than the mild cold of the south. We talked about the museum of old Greek remains that we had been to that day, about the enduring perfection of Greek civilisation, as yet unsurpassed. About the Greeks as traders on the Black Sea coast. Our little rat scratched again at the door. Did she want to go into the international car now? No, she did not. She would wait until we reached the junction. He had evidently been drinking too much. His eyes were still more bleary and he looked at us sleepily. We dozed, —again the door. Did she want to go in, now, he would take her. How long, she asked, before we reach the station? An hour and a half. Then she would wait. In another half an hour, he came again. Our candle had long ago spluttered out. The coupe was quite dark. RK decided to transfer, as there would be no peace until she did. I got up and went with her, because I did not trust the drunken conductor. With the baggage, we crossed a dangerous place between the two cars. Inside the international were bright electric lights, cleanliness and warmth. What a shame we could not have spent the night here! We said goodbye and I went on back. In a few minutes, a tapping again on the door. What, that fool again— then RK’s voice. I opened it. She explained that the conductor had just told her he must take the bedding at the next station because he had borrowed it from the International car. I told him to take it and get out and leave me in peace. RK told him not to come around again, that I wanted to sleep. If she had not come and explained to me I probably would have killed him when he came and tried to take the bedding. She stayed with me until the conductor came again and said that we were nearing the junction. Again farewell. . . .
1. A volost is a rural district.
2. An artel was a union of workers who shared the income of their collective labor.
3. Batushka in Russian means “little father”; it is a term of respect and endearment.
4. The reference here is to Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 comedy Revizor (The Inspector-General), in which a corrupt government bureaucrat holds court in a provincial Russian village and accepts “loans” and other gifts from the townspeople in return for favors. See p. 183, where Dreiser sees a production of this play.
5. Kennell has confused the names of two Turkish leaders. Mehmed Kamil Pasha was a Turkish army officer who served four times as Ottoman grand vizier but who died in 1913. The political leader of whom their traveling companion speaks was Mustafa Kemal, who organized a revolution to establish the modern state of Turkey and became its first president in October 1923. Kemal, also known as “Ataturk,” was an autocratic ruler whose policies emphasized republicanism, nationalism, populism, and secularism. He should not be confused with Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908), the Cairo lawyer and journalist who helped found the National Party in Egypt.
6. Narzan is bottled mineral water; Dreiser and his companions visit the springs from which it comes later in the journey.
7. A funt is a measure of weight equal to just under a pound.
8. A shuba is a bulky fur or woolen coat.
9. H. G. Wells’ The New Machiavelli (1911), a novel concerned with British political life before World War I.
10. Shaschlik is a popular lamb dish in the Caucasus.
11. Svoloch is an obscenity meaning scum, swine, bastard.
12. Joseph Stalin was born in Georgia.
13. Sestra Kerri, trans, unknown (Riga: Academia, 1927); Neobyknovennaia Istoriia Drugie Rasskazy [Free and Other Stories], trans. T. and V. Ravinskii (Leningrad: Mysl’, 1927).
14. A pristan is a dock.
15. This wire was probably to Helen Richardson, who, as planned, had gone to Constantinople to meet Dreiser.
16. Nicolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer and conductor who wrote operas, choral and orchestral works, and chamber music.
17. Smetana is heavy cream, often used as a topping or added to soups.
18. This is a reference to Helen Richardson, who was in fact distantly related to Dreiser. Kennell is preparing this entry; probably Dreiser did not wish her to know the nature of his relationship with Helen.
19. A payok is a ration.