Part 2

From this low ebb he built his power solidly, never forgetting to reckon on the peasants. Now face to face at last with Mr. Lloyd George, Lenin is backed by a strong Red Army and a loyal staff.

From the moment he took office Lenin never had a serious political rival. And the blockade bestowed on him a peculiar legendary significance which will remain with him as long as he does not leave Russia.

Nikolai Lenin has been a conscious revolutionist since he was sixteen, but he has never been a “terrorist.” A terrorist, in revolutionary vernacular, is one who believes in individual acts of violence. His mind is too ordered and his plans too wide for such incoherent emotionalism.

His father was a small landed (hereditary) noble, holding the office of State Councillor, having an estate in Simbirsk. Vladimir Illyitch Ulianov, which is Lenin’s real name, was born there on April 10, 1870. There were in all five children, three boys and two girls.

It was a closely-knit family. One of Lenin’s best friends and advisers even now is his sister Anna. She spends most of her time in Moscow. He has a brother living in the provinces, who comes to see him occasionally, a quiet, studious man, not interested in politics, and, perhaps, even a little repelled by the strenuousness of them, especially in Russia.

There is no doubt that Lenin’s determination to fight the Tsar’s government crystallized at the time of his brother’s death. His eldest brother, Alexander, was away at the University of Petrograd. All that they heard from him at home was about the winning of gold medals and honors of all sorts until one day came the terrible news that he had been arrested for a plot against the Czar.

Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, rushed away to Petrograd. When she reached her son’s side he burst into tears and immediately confessed everything to her. He begged her to forgive him for bringing sorrow to his beloved family. At the trial he made no defense and asked no mercy. He was executed in the courtyard of Schlüsselberg fortress on May 20, 1886.

And back home in the little preparatory school called the “gymnasium” were two youths profoundly touched by this tragedy. One was the present Premier and the other was Alexander Kerensky, whose father was master of the school; evolution works in strange ways.

The Lenins have no children. They have devoted their lives to the revolution. Madame Lenin is a pale, scholarly woman, usually in very poor health. It was she who devised the new scheme for adult education in Russia which Lunacharsky told me has proved highly efficient.

Lenin adores his wife and speaks of her with enthusiasm. The first time I told him that I wanted to meet her, he said:

“Yes, you must do that because you will like her, she is so intelligent.”

I found her both intelligent and sympathetic.

She invited me to take tea with her in her apartment and I was very glad to go, since I wanted to see for myself how the Lenins lived.

They have two small rooms, which is the regulation in overcrowded Moscow. Everything was spotlessly clean, though, as she explained, she had no servant. There were quantities of books, plants in the windows, a few chairs, a table, beds and no pictures on the walls.

I found her to have the same charm which Lenin has and the same way of focusing all her attention on what her visitor is saying.

When you go to Lenin’s office he always jumps up and comes forward smiling, shakes hands warmly and pushes forward a comfortable chair. When you are seated he draws up another chair, leans forward and begins to talk as if there was nothing else to do in the world but visit.

He likes harmless gossip and will laugh mightily over some story about how Mr. Vanderlip fought with a Hungarian over a few sticks of wood on a cold day, or an incident which occurred on a train, or in the street. He himself loves to tell stories, and tells them very well. But no conversation runs on lightly for long with Lenin. He will stop suddenly in his laughter and say:

“What sort of a man is Mr. Harding, and what is his background?”

It does not matter how determined one is to ply him with questions, one always goes away astonished because one has talked so much and answered so many questions instead of asking them. He has an extraordinary way of drawing one out and of putting one in an expansive mood.

This capacity for personal contact must be a big influence with the men with whom he comes constantly in touch.

No wonder he dominates his Cabinet! When he narrows his small Tartar eyes, looks at one with such understanding and intimacy, one feels he is the best friend in the world; it would be impossible to oppose him.

We are wont to think of Lenin as a destroyer, but he is more of a builder.

When he could not build a Communist State he did not throw up his hands. He built the best State he could in its place and now he is saying that Russia is the safest country in Europe; that it has reached its lowest level and is climbing up, while other countries in Europe are still declining.

It is just possible that he is right!

CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY

The world, which now very generally concedes to Lenin great political adroitness, is not fully aware of the extent of his talent. What other man could have managed, under the stress of the hour, to have kept control of the politics of great Russia, the Ukraine, the Far Eastern Republic and even of China? And not only does he guide the destinies of these Republics, he subordinates the men at the head of them. Thus he is consolidating Russia. In Moscow, people believe that Lenin will some day bring the Baltic States back into the Soviet federation.

Christian Rakovsky, President of the Ukraine, never reaches any important decision without consulting Lenin. Rakovsky is an interesting personality and a man whose star is ascending. He is undoubtedly one of the strongest men in Russia, and since Lenin backs him, he ought to go far.

Rakovsky was born in the little Bulgarian town of Kotel. His family is one of the best known in all the Balkans. The name Rakovsky is woven through Balkan history and revolutionary struggles.

Expelled from college for revolutionary activities, young Rakovsky went to Geneva in 1890 and joined the Russian Social Democratic Party. In 1892 he was arrested in Geneva for an encounter with an agent-provocateur; he was expelled from Berlin the same year for participation in the German labor movement.

After some difficulty he was permitted to remain in France, where he carried on his studies. He was graduated from a French medical college in 1897 and returned to Bulgaria.

Two years later he published a large historical volume called “Russian Policy in the East.” He also wrote what was considered a brilliant dissertation on criminology and degeneracy.

Rakovsky went to Russia in 1900, but was immediately arrested and expelled by the Tsar’s police. He returned to Germany and there he wrote his best known book, “Present Day France,” which was published under the pen-name of Insarov.

A short time after completing this book he entered the judicial faculty of the University of Paris, but was so interested in the Russian revolution that he gave up his post after a year and went again to Russia, only to be expelled promptly.

He organized the Socialist Party in Roumania in 1904 and in 1907 was arrested following some peasant uprising. He was deprived of all political rights, exiled and forbidden ever to return to Roumania. But he had such a large and staunch following and so many serious riots took place that the Government was too embarrassed to carry out its decision. In a riot in Bucharest more than fifty persons were killed. In 1912 he was re-enfranchised, which was considered a great victory for the Roumanian labor leader.

Rakovsky is an habitual publicist; in the course of his career he has founded ten newspapers.

During the war he was so active in his anti-war propaganda that he was imprisoned in Roumania, but the first days of the 1917 revolution gave him back his freedom when the Russian garrison in Jassy decided of its own initiative to release all political prisoners.

He was not popular with the Provisional Government and, fearing his influence, Burstev requested his arrest in a note to Tereschenko and in a telegram to Kerensky. Learning of this order, he went to Sweden and was in Stockholm at the time of the Bolshevik _coup d’état_.

In 1919 he was elected head of the Ukraine by the action of the Third Congress of Ukrainian Soviets. I say “head” because he is at present Premier, President and Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Third International in Moscow.

While I was in Moscow Rakovsky and his wife spent several weeks in the house in which I lived. Madame Rakovsky is the sort of woman who adds interesting and insuppressible variety to the leveling influence of the revolution. She is a princess, speaks French in preference to Russian after the manner of the old Russian aristocracy, and still uses a lorgnette. She is an enthusiastic Communist. Everything about her is charming, distinguished and--eminently exclusive! She always accompanies her husband wherever he goes, is present at all interviews, and one can tell by the way he listens to her opinions that he places particular value on her advice.

Rakovsky himself is in manner and appearance more like an Old World diplomat than a revolutionist. But in spite of his suavity he has Lenin’s ability to face situations squarely. He once gave me such a frank statement about conditions in the Ukraine that instead of going over the cables to my paper it was officially chucked into the waste basket by Tchicherin.

ABRAHAM KRASNICHAKOV

Out in Chicago Abraham Moiseyevitch Krasnichakov was plain Mr. Tobinson, but for three years he has enjoyed great authority under his own name as head of the Far Eastern Republic.

There is nothing lacking in either romance or adventure in the story of A. Stroller Tobinson. He was born in the city of Chernobyl, in the province of Kiev, in Russia, and fled to the United States about the time his brother was executed in Odessa for some connection with revolutionary activities. This was in 1904.

Tobinson was a Russian law student of unusual ability, but when he arrived in America a poor immigrant he found his Russian education of little use; he first had to learn the English language.

In Chicago he went to work as a house painter and attended night school. In 1912 he was admitted to the bar, but never was a great success as a lawyer. And while he took only a passive interest in the radical movement, yet he continually gave his services in all sorts of labor cases.

Not until he, somehow, became interested in organizing a preparatory school for workers who wanted to go to college did he seem to hit his medium. From that time on he rapidly developed into an organizer and leader, and soon assumed charge of all the educational work connected with the Workers’ Institute.

He started with a broad program which shut out all petty, political and group influences. He was a born teacher, and nothing is more rare than a good teacher.

His intense interest in the education of the masses was really what carried him back to Siberia in 1917. And there one of those curious historical situations arose which suddenly thrust him unexpectedly and unprepared into power.

He was one of the numerous candidates for President up before the Constitutional Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic. He certainly never expected to be elected. It was the stupidity of his political rivals which gave him this position.

A day or two before the election some one wrote a vicious attack upon him in one of the papers, asking the people of Siberia if they wanted a “porter,” a common house painter, to guide the affairs of the republic.

When Tobinson read this he was furious to think that his hard struggles in America as an emigrant were thrown at him as if they were a disgrace. He sat down and wrote a letter explaining that he had had a good education, both in Russia and America, that he was not actually a workman, but a lawyer. When he had finished writing this explanation, he put it in his pocket and started toward the office of the same paper. On the street he was met by a delegation of workingmen, who threw their arms around him and called him “Comrade.”

One of them said: “We were against you until we read what the bourgeois are saying, but now we are all on your side; we want a man who is one of us.” This was the beginning of Tobinson’s popularity and this is the story of how he became President of the Far Eastern Republic.

Tobinson was not a Communist. His connections had been more with groups who simply revolted against the medieval tyranny which had existed in Russia. But he admired Lenin above all the revolutionists, and was of the opinion that Lenin was the only revolutionary leader who could hold Russia together. Therefore he secretly allied himself with the Communist government at Moscow.

He had two strong convictions. One was that Siberia wasn’t ready for Communism, and that even if it was it would be destroyed by the Japanese or by the Allies. Therefore, the only thing to do was to keep it a buffer state between Japan and the Soviets. To do this and placate all sides took infinite tact.

Tobinson proved equal to the task. His record in the last three years is a record of extraordinary achievement. He has established schools with the most modern methods; and against the most terrific odds he has slowly but surely made the life of the Far Eastern Republic one of steady, national reconstruction. I don’t think he believed for a minute that it should be permanently separated from Russia.

LEO KAMINEV AND GREGORY ZINOVIEV

Toward the end of the first week of the Bolshevik uprising, Zinoviev and Kaminev lost heart. With Mylutin, Nogin and Rykov, they handed in resignations to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. Lenin read the letters at a great meeting in Smolny and cried: “Shame upon these men of little faith, who hesitate and doubt!”

Lenin has long since conquered their opposition, but he has not changed their souls. Kaminev and Zinoviev are in his cabinet, as satellites, however, not as leaders; they are the weakest members.

Kaminev is President of the Moscow Soviet and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets. He is on the national famine committee and probably makes a very good impression on the American Relief people with whom he comes in contact. They ought to feel quite at home with him; he has the genial manners of an American small-town politician.

He has certainly retained a middle class consciousness in spite of five years of actual revolutionary experience, in spite of what is known in Russia as a steady revolutionary past. I don’t think his idea of Communist discipline can be very well defined. He likes to be magnanimous and promises everything to everybody. He is generous, and since it is hard to be generous in a Socialist State where one owns nothing to be generous with, his only recourse is to be generous with the property of the State.

In a glow of hospitality he once gave a sable coat worth thousands of dollars to a lady he admired and was genuinely astonished and grieved, I think, by the bitter criticisms then hurled at him. Had there been enough “trusted and trained” men to go round (which there never are in any government), this particular attack of giving might have cost him his career, though in any other society his actions would have been quite normal.

Kaminev is an excellent subordinate and capable of making a fortune in a capitalist society. He cannot be accused of having no ideals; he can be accused only of having the average politician’s moral stamina.

Bela Kun is the only other Soviet official who parallels Kaminev’s distrust of the press. I once went to Bela Kun’s office to get a statement. After ten promises and ten delays, I was in a small rage myself and asked him why he had not said in the first instance that he had no intention of giving a statement. He looked up from his desk, ran his chubby fingers through his hair, and said in a bewildered way, “Well, you see, I have just taken aspirin.” A young Russian officer sitting nearby smiled at me and said dryly, in English, “No wonder the Hungarian Soviets fell!”

Kaminev will probably remain in office many years for no better or no worse reason than the reason for which many of our Senators are returned to Washington term after term.

Zinoviev’s position is much more important and much harder to define. Aside from being in the Cabinet, he is President of the Petrograd Commune and President of the Third International. He really has great power and he is known to be wilful and arbitrary. His party opponents claim that his capriciousness has split the German Communist party into six factions and confused and alienated most of the parties in the other countries.

A Russian professor, who was interested in political movements merely as an observer, explained Zinoviev’s curious tenacity in office in this way: “The Communists,” he said, “insist so strongly upon party discipline and party loyalty that they have never been able to face the fact that Zinoviev is not a leader.”

Zinoviev’s appearance is against him. He is short, heavily built, flabby. Yet he is not devoid of vanity; he is the most photographed man in Russia. And while he has little imagination, he has real dramatic sense, he has a way of staging everything.

At Baku, at one moment he had the Easterners unsheathing their swords and declaring a holy war; at another moment he had a group of Mohammedan women in the gallery tearing off their veils. All this was distinctly impressive and dramatic, but the real drawback was that the effect of the second act almost ruined the effect of the first.

I often wonder if a man can be a great leader, and be utterly devoid of humor. When Zinoviev says anything clever he is not even aware of it and invariably spoils it by a second act.

During the Kronstadt uprising the Esthonian government, with its wish father to its thought, sent a wire to Petrograd which read: “What sort of government have you in Petrograd?” And Zinoviev replied: “The same government that has been here since 1917.”

If he could only have stopped at that one sentence he might have been able to lead a world revolution, or at least catch the imagination of the workers. Instead he insisted upon being didactic. He wired page after page, delivering an orthodox Marxian lecture! But the International is not without men of talent and daring. There are men under Zinoviev--Italians, Frenchmen, Germans, Bulgarians, Americans, with real fire and ability.

Bucharin, editor of _Pravda_, is by far the most brilliant of the Russians. No matter how much one may disagree with Bucharin, one must concede his brilliancy. The Letts have an exceptionally able group in the International. Some of these men were actually in power during the brief time that Latvia was “red.” The leader of the group is a stately old man called Stootchka. For four months he was President of Latvia.

PETER STOOTCHKA

Peter Stootchka is one of those advisers and assistants of Lenin that the world has not yet discovered. He is a man of capacious mind and one of Lenin’s closest friends. He is a lawyer by profession and for many years was the editor of a Lettish progressive paper in Riga. He was exiled to Siberia for some criticism of the Tsar’s government.

He was the first Commissioner of Justice under the Soviets and only resigned his post to accept one as President of Latvia. When Riga fell he went back to Moscow, took up quarters near Lenin in the Kremlin, and there he remains.

It was Stootchka who wrote the Soviet constitution, as well as most of the present laws. Evidently he did not always find writing laws an easy task. He often confessed his inability to judge just how the personal and family life would grow up around the great economic change which had taken place. Stootchka is nearly seventy and he felt that he might be a little old-fashioned in regard to some matters, especially concerning marriage and divorce. In the end he left it for those most concerned to decide.

One afternoon he called into his office five young Russian women, all typical revolutionists, and said to them: “For centuries women have been oppressed, they have been the victims of prejudice, superstition and the selfish desires of men. In writing the marriage laws I don’t mind if women have even a slight advantage over men. What I am concerned with most is to see that they get full justice. So I have asked you here as representatives of the new order. Think these matters over and give me your conclusions.”

Naturally, these conclusions had to be voted on by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, but since they were passed and written, it is now an historical fact that five young women are the real authors of the new and rather free marriage laws.

ALIEXIEV IVANOVITCH RYKOV

No other Russian enjoys the solid political and popular backing of Aliexiev Rykov; he is the logical successor to Lenin.

Rykov is one of those “unknown-quantity” men which are in every government and every political party and who are on the “inside” of every government decision, men who silently assume more and more power but remain unknown to the press until some event brings them to the public attention. Rykov, although he has held for several years four of the most important posts in Russia, was never heard of in England or France or America until Lenin’s illness brought to everyone’s lips the question of who would be the next Premier. Rumor suggested Kaminev and Trotsky and numerous other Commissars. As Rykov himself explained to me, “none of these men could take Lenin’s place for the very logical reason that they had held government posts which had nothing to do with the Premiership. It was like expecting one of your Secretaries of War or Navy to take your President’s place in case your President died or fell ill.” Rykov, happening to be vice-Premier, automatically became acting-Premier. (Under the Soviets this office is called Chairman of the People’s Council of Commissars.)

Rykov’s background is interesting and worth knowing, since he will be a figure of importance in Russia for a long time to come. He is forty-one years old and, aside from being Premier, he is vice-Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense, Member of the Presidium of the All Russian Congress of Soviets and Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party.

He was born of a peasant family living in the province of Vatka. His education was paid for by an elder sister who had married well. Because of revolutionary activities he was sentenced to Siberia and served seven years in _solitary confinement_. When he told me this, I was so astonished that I asked him to repeat it. It is a trial which would have broken almost any man; yet I think I never met a man with less “nerves” than Rykov has. By his manner and his good humor and his serenity, he resembles Lenin to a startling degree. It is rather amazing that Russia produced two men of the same type during the same period. That is one reason why the government machinery ran along so smoothly after Lenin stepped out.