31

p Really Moscow. Really Russia. The landscape did not change as we crossed the border. The stars didn’t sing nor the little hills skip. The country was just the same beautiful, open, rolling land with thickets of sedate young pine and birch, and great stretches of cultivated fields that we had left on the other side of the arch that spans the railway frontier. We had been transferred to a very hard, bare and not very clean third-class car. in the morning, but they put on an extra second-class for our party in Russia, —not that we were of any importance, but they wanted to be accommodating, and we were willing to pay the extra fare. We got boiling water at the great kipyatok in the corner of our car, and had our first sip of tea on Russian soil. Some of the “boys” decided to remain in third, and had a sorry tale to tell in the morning, of bruised bones and sleepless hours, though each declared the others had snored straight through the night. They had gallantly given most of their blankets to a little peasant bride who had been put into their compartment after parting in tears with her young husband. At the border we saw our first Red soldiers. They didn’t look as smart as some soldiers, but they looked efficient, and I felt like saluting " Zdravstvuitya, Tavarishchi!"—and did. There was no shirking 32 at the customs,—they went to the bottom of our bags. The young Russian cellist said naively, "You may leave your things and go to lunch. These are good people.” And I felt that they were. Everywhere else we had kept guard over the baggage.

p Little thatched cabins along the route, many of logs, amid carefully cultivated fields. Men and women working among the vegetables, some striding along to work, through the cool pleasant morning, with the sacred sickle over the shoulder. - Mowed grain, standing grain, yellow stubble. One lone man ploughing a narrow strip with one lone horse. No grasp of communistic cultivating there. Our horticulturist pronounced favorably upon the condition of the crops and the quality of cultivation both here and about Moscow. Pageantesque crowds at all the stations, many in white, the men with white blouses, the women with white kerchiefs about the head, or red ones. High-heeled American shoes, or maybe French, ruining the free carriage of the girls, flat felt slippers of red or green. Everywhere the emblem of the hammer-and-sickle, quite worn and shabby and authentic, just as if it had always been. Arrived at the Moscow station, we were immediately investigated by the police,—espionage! One of the party had indiscreetly photographed a pretty peasant girl at a way village, the information was there before us, and the whole party was under suspicion. But our credentials are unimpeachable. We were not detained.

p At the Savoy, the big Nep tourist hotel, our scouts found the prices so high that they tried the Passage, and we were given accommodations there, only to be told later that it was by mistake of an assistant. This hotel had been taken 33 over by the Government for the "Profintern.” In other words, the delegates to the Red International of Labor Unions were housed there at nominal rates by the Government. We also discovered that we had been mistaken for a circus troup expected in town; but whose appearance gave rise to this fantastic mistake, and whether it was for this reason we were let in or threatened with putting out, we never learned. We hope it was our collective luggage which arrived before us on a dray, with one of us sitting on top as guard. But there were the rooms, so out came our various credentials again, so many certified visitors on legitimate constructive missions—and we held our rooms. Next day the hotel emptied, for the last of the many Congresses has closed.

p The Passage, takes its name from one of the characteristic shopping passages, or arcades, of Moscow, one that is abandoned. Through its shattered glass roof, the voices of the few passers, after echoing back and forth about its emptiness, come up to us like the sounds of revolution. Across the glass vaulting, the late sun is thrown back from the symmetrically modeled gold domes of the great modern Cathedral of the Saviour,—the St. Saviour, as our informant insists on translating it. The hotel stands in a side street off the busy Tverskaya. Below my window, across the narrow street, is a great empty lot, with mountainous piles of old bricks, beside a large half-built structure begun before the war. There in the amphitheater of rubble, the boys play at football until the long twilight fails. There in the morning, is an encampment of vendors, loafing in the thin sunshine until eight o’clock calls them to their stands. These they have with them, some carrying them in front 34 by straps about the neck; some unfold legs and set them at the street corner with a folding stool beside them. Women with starched, white, labeled- caps indicate State control and good food,—sausage they have, and caviar sandwiches made of huge rolls, all sorts of manageable substantiate, and fruit, cake and candy. Such alluring cakes, topped with fluffy cream. All down the street you see them disappearing into the cavernous mouths of young workers, young vandals destroying works of culinary art. Bolsheviki! Huge bottles, too, and jugs, of koumiss and of kvass, a sort of cider made of fruit, or of black bread half fermented with raisins. On the rubble-field, a few idlers are left, lying as if they had slept there. They pull their collars up to their caps as the sun grows hotter on their faces, and turn over for a final snooze when the busy ones leave. A Russian fellow-passenger, returning after two years, finds fewer unemployed. Everyone, he says, is working. A woman living here says at the present moment unemployment is increasing. So slow must be the readjustment and advance in the face of world opposition, —always a step back to two steps forward, but still an advance.

p Food seems to be high except for those who have their workers’ cards and factory or co-operative eating places. I have not yet investigated far for myself. But if you have to pay at these shabby restaurants, 50 to 75 cents (a rouble or a rouble and a half), for a plate of soup, and no napkin thrown in, it is borshch with plenty of vegetables and a big hunk of meat, not forgetting the spoonful of whipped sour cream on top, and you need ngthing else for a substantial and well-balanced dinner, with white and all shades 35 and qualities of brown bread on the side. And a delicious dinner, too. I could eat borshch three times a day. As Mrs. Carlyle said of the “bacon-ham” presented by a friend, "there is no bottom to my appetite for it.” I bought a melon the other day in the street, not such a very big melon, of the Persian type, and when I had done the arithmetic of it, I found I had paid 75 cents. But it is the beginning of the season, and the melons are brought up from the South,—from the lower Volga, the Causasus and the Crimea. For breakfast at our little hotel, a glass of coffee, a large crisp roll with butter, and an egg,—still without a napkin,—is a rouble and twenty kopeks, 55 cents, but the rouble is stable and practically at par, something that no other European country can boast of. Moreover these are Nep prices, which the workers do not have to pay. My first impression, for it is a new impression after eleven years, as we came up from the station in the electric, hanging on to straps, was "How oriental!"—not an original exclamation by any means,—the colorful bare-headed crowds against pink plaster houses, and the aimless way they seemed to mill about. I think the oriental aspect must always be the first impression, strengthening that made by the Byzantine domes viewed first from afar. One recalls Mme. de Stael’s characterization, "C’est Rome Tartare!" Then the Kitai-gorod, mis-translated Chinese-wall, and the Kremlin mass, glimpsed down the short street-end where the Tverskaya meets the Red Square, assure us this is Moscow. There is but one Moscow. Further on, I was struck by the number of book-stores, and my astonishment increases at the big orderly displays, mostly in 36 paper bindings, and all apparently worth-while books on all possible subjects. Pictures suggest also much propaganda in these shops—of a simple sort, much of it connected with Lenin and his work.

We had an early tea and jam with our Professor who had arrived the day before us, and a late tea and currant pie with Anna Louise. Her few plates, glasses and cups were impartially distributed. One doesn’t keep house on a large scale in these apartments. If you drew a plate, you were lucky with your pie, and if you drew a glass, you were lucky with your tea, and she had a fork or two and several spoons, so we picnicked merrily. Fortunately and unfortunately, she is off to the Caucasus, to one of the bath resorts of the lower range, one of those many beautiful places which the workers never saw unless they worked in them, and which now are workers’ rest homes under the Government. Fortunately—for I shall fall heir to her apartment, with the very bourgeois attachment of a little maid for some hours a day. The apartment is a large room, high up in a shabby hotel, with a bath I haven’t the confidence to investigate, and an elevator that doesn’t run. They must cut down the overhead to keep down the rents. But the wide double window looks out on sunset clouds across the spacious Theater Square, and around the corner is the Kremlin. As a registered worker, her rent is very small, but more than a family would pay, as a penalty for occupying alone a room larger than is usually allotted to one person. Space can’t always be adjusted. The rent is scaled to the wages one receives in the month, even when the wages are nothing. Fortunately I may have this room 37 for the month, but unfortunately, with my party off to the Ukraine, I shall feel without her deaf and dumb and blind.

p How else should I have known last night that all over Moscow—and Russia—they were celebrating the anniversary of the outbreak of the war, with protest meetings against the capitalist preparations for the next outbreak. We could not get tickets for the meeting at which Trotski spoke, but perhaps there was no more interesting one than that we did attend, a meeting of women delegates, each representing a group of twenty, and accredited to a permanent body, formed for the purpose of encouraging solidarity. These women filled the great white marble, or nearmarble, pillared hall of the Moscow Central Labor Council, formerly a nobleman’s club. Above the building, shone out an electric Army star. Massed chandelier crystals gave splendor to the interior. Every chair was filled, and the long walls lined with patient listeners. With the exception of one, all the speakers were women, among them a Chinese delegate to the Red International of Labor Unions. She spoke with the hardly suppressed violence of voice and gesture of the woman still in subjection, while it seemed to me that the others, however impassioned, expressed a sense of liberation—liberation of their class rather than their sex, for the one implies the other. The economic freedom gained by the Revolution, brought automatically equality of sex. After each address, the band played a few strains of the 38 “International,” all rising and in the change of attitude relaxing and resting for the next address.

p Suddenly the roll of drums was heard without the door, and way was made for a company of Young Pioneers, boys and girls, with their gorgeous red and gold banners, and red neckerchiefs. Down the aisle they marched to the roll of their own drums, and up to the stage, forming in two long lines across it, in front of a giant red-draped and green-garlanded portrait of their great chief, Lenin, whose name their organization also bears. Since his death they have been rechristened "Young Leninists,” to indicate that his aims are their aims. One of their number stepped forward and spoke for them. Great enthusiasm was shown for the little band, for these young people, like our Scouts, are the Government pillars of the future. Hundreds of thousands of them there are, enrolled throughout the country, with a large membership in Moscow, and they understand very intelligently just what their task is, not abstractly patriotism, kindness, courage, honesty, but definitely defence of their class against the threat of the armed world without. Again the "International,” this time sung by the whole audience through three long stanzas. I have never heard it so triumphantly sung, with no hint in the tone of the dismal and rebellious wail so often heard in other countries,—rather a suggestion of victorious fulfillment.

p After a short intermission, the stage was cleared for a children’s performance. A mixed group of boys and girls from home and trade-union schools gave in song and dance a very beautiful interpretation of the Carmagnole, which had to be repeated.

p A little play in dance and song was put on by the Young 39 Pioneers, called "The Pioneer’s Dream.” The preliminary acting was spontaneous and spirited, and the dancing of flowers, butterflies, frogs, fish, etc., pretty and amusing, but this part might just as well have been anywhere in America. Most of the text was no doubt propaganda for the Pioneers, and provoked laughter and applause. Then came an effective industrial drill; the bare-legged girls in white blouses and short skirts, carried sickles at their hips, or large Army stars held high, the boys, stripped to the waist, swung huge hammers over their shoulders, and all went to work with an energetic rhythm. The whole little company then gave a marching drill in army fashion with a great deal of snap. Finally a group of young people from the famine districts, from all sorts of alien races, gave songs in chorus from Russian and alien music. Two young boys sang together a strange barbaric thing with plaintive unfamiliar intervals. They were in charge of a very unassuming leader, who led them out and simply indicated when they should begin, and then effaced himself. I should have mentioned that the children opened their program with an artistically sung memorial song for Lenin grouped in front of his portrait. Everywhere Leninism is the conspicuous inspiration and it should be emphasized that this is not a static conception,—its very essence is flexibility, adaptation to conditions as they arise in the revolutionary struggle, the facing of realities.

About midnight, the “International” again, and when we came out keyed up with the inspiration of it all, we found ourselves faced with an American movie, thrown upon a canvas on the roof of a building across the Square, the home of the Labor paper, "Rabodchaya Gazetta.” A 40 beautiful girl on horseback in a wild country was being rescued from a low-browed villain by a handsome young officer. It seems to be a permanent free show, and not having paid for it, you can go on when you please without a sense of extravagance. Perhaps the workers sit at the windows of their noblemen’s club, and view it at ease. Probably these worthless things are given as necessary relaxation from the equally necessary propaganda, for lack, at present, of something better, for Russia has not yet had time to build up a cinema repertoire, with its demand for constant change. But probably, too, we may look to Russia for the development of films, if not technically better, at least with finer content than our popular pictures, for there is not here the profit motive that makes it necessary in other countries to pander to the worst tastes and instincts, and the inane ignorance of the movie audience. These were run at a much slower tempo than our films. Tonight as I passed at twilight, the Army star again blazed above the Dom Soyusov, and the electric hammer and sickle above its door, framed in scarlet bunting, and on the film canvas they were throwing anti-war propaganda in cartoon and text, while the great cobble-paved ploshchad was filled with thousands, standing or sitting cross-legged on the cobbles in silent interest. And it is no pacifist propaganda, this anti-war protest, for the watchword of this Workers’ Government, like that of the Young Leninists,—and incidentally like that of every government,—is "Be prepared!" But not, they will explain to you, for foreign conquest or trade competition, but for mere defense of their workers’ country, and their Communist idea.

41

p Today I was shown about the Kremlin, which is now difficult of access, by Comrade Fischer of the Children’s Improvement Committee, whose office is there in a fine old sixteenth century palace, and who sacrificed her valuable time to go about with me in the hot sun, and through the old state rooms of the palace. But alas, I could not enter the group of old churches whose somberly beautiful interiors I remember of old. Leaving the Kremlin gate, I met again with peace demonstrations—long lines of marching citizens with scarlet banners and buntings, with portraits of Lenin and Marx, with texts and slogans, pouring in from all directions, and massing for a great parade. My way lay with theirs, so I paralelled them on the sidewalk. Companies of workers, companies of soldiers, of women, of students, of Communist Youth, and of Young Pioneers, school and gymnasium groups down to the smallest tots, who marched as valiantly as their elders through the hot sun and the long hours. In front of the Comintern, headquarters of the Communist International, where an official group was gathered on a high balcony, each company halted for salutes and "yells,” for like your own youth, each group has its yell. I dropped out for a while, and had lunch at a small cafe nearby, and when I came back, they were still passing. On they went, past the Moscow Sovyet, a square red building facing an open ploshchad, where an architectural gateway and a terraced garden have been built from the ruined structures cleared away, and where, directly opposite the Sovyet house, an impressive revolutionary statue has been placed. Here the shouting and saluting were repeated, while the bands played continuously the " International.” Long ranks of mounted troops passed, blocks 42 and blocks of them. Each time I thought the end had come, more swung into sight around the bend of the street. Finally I gave up in exhaustion and went home to rest, while they seemed to go endlessly on—and I hope this is symbolic—in their great demonstration against Capitalist war.

p This morning in an aimless ramble, I skirted the walls of the Kremlin by the little terraced paths of the park that surrounds them. The park-strip was full of people, but most of them were occupied in a leisurely way. Children played about under the trees. The long grass and weeds had just been cut with the traditional sickle, their fragrance was in the air, and students and young intellectuals lay about reading or discussing with open books. It had a restful withdrawn atmosphere, here in the city’s heart, in pleasant contrast with the confusion of the streets. For everywhere I go, in the streets, the shops, the offices and bureaus, I feel that everything is out of order, and that everyone is working hard to get it in order again. The streets are kept clean, nothing is really disordered, I find plan and system everywhere, but there is the feeling you have at home when the rugs are up and the furniture moved into useless corners and you sit on the chair-arms. You know it is getting into order and you don’t mind for a while. There is a sense of impermanence and transition with a clear objective. Moscow is getting into order,—Russia is getting into order,—and one feels this everywhere, in spite of what seems to be—and is—confusion.

A company of Red soldiers in dust-colored uniforms and peaked caps with the Army star in front, and with rolled blankets slung across their shoulders, have just 43 passed by singing lustily, and in their wake a clearing thunder shower is sweeping through the street.

p Yesterday I went to see Ilyich. In his Mausoleum in the Red Square he lies, and every day from five until dusk, an unceasing stream passes through the iron gate, and at other hours, especially on Sunday, there are continuous processions of organized groups with their bands and banners trooping across the cobbles of the Red Square. Sometimes a mounted guard is necessary outside in the street to keep the way open through the crowds that gather as the organizations march by, and this he manages goodnaturedly with the wave of a casual cigarette, though a large and efficient-looking gun is strapped across his back.

p Some have criticized this lying in state as barbaric,—why more so in Russia than in other countries I do not know,—and we all realize that the simple man Lenin would have been the most reluctant to consent to it. And yet I feel that for the inspiration it gives, and for the sentiment and faith and hope it helps to keep alive, that even he would concur, recognizing the spirit of the homage, and its relation to the work his successors must carry on.

p I stood in line a half-hour for my permit,—a mere formality, but it is necessary for safety that credentials should be shown. I presented my passport, the young fellow in front of me his worker’s card with his photograph in the corner, that open sesame in Russia, and we were given 44 entrance slips. Behind us, quickly formed a line as long again. We crossed the ploshchad to the Mausoleum where a quiet and orderly double line was already in motion. Two guards on horseback controlled the gate of the enclosure, and when an organization of children was given the right of way, and our line, at a signal from the mounted police or soldiers, fell back, stumbling over each other’s toes, I thought how easily a reactionary correspondent might describe this as the trampling of the people by mounted kossacks. But no damage was done, and all seemed to have a good-natured understanding of the order of admission.

p The Mausoleum is a temporary structure of wood—later to be replaced by stone—rising in pyramidal square tiers, which can be used as speakers’ stand and guestgallery. This building is surrounded by grass and flowers, and the whole enclosed by an iron fence, with gates for ingress and egress. All parcels and sticks are laid down within the gate on the grass, and the owners run over and pick them up again when they come out. Behind the enclosure rise the high Kremlin walls, and at their base runs the fenced-in strip of parking with the graves and monuments of the Revolutionary martyrs, conspicuous among them the huge rough stone, bearing the name of John Reed in Russian lettering.

p Within the Mausoleum, we enter the corridor which surrounds the inner tomb-chamber. On its wall, facing us, is a large and beautifully designed medallion with the Soviet emblem. The narrow corridor follows the square of the structure, dropping down a few steps across the back, and rising again to the other side. This passage-way is hung with Communist red, with a black ceiling, giving a 45 very strange and striking effect, windowless, with dim lighting. I must confess to a feeling of awe, amounting almost to fear, as I entered this narrow and impressive corridor. The torch-lighted catacombs of the far past did not wake this feeling in me, nor any royal “grafts” that I have visited, nor the very Pharaohs in their glass museum cases. I have been about Moscow at all hours, often alone at midnight, losing myself in dark blind alleys, but the first time I have felt fear, was when I entered this red-lined corridor, and knew that in the inner chamber I was to look upon the very face of the great man whose memory is the inspiration of his people.

p From the lower level of the corridor, across the back of the tomb, we entered the central vault, and passed entirely around the bier on which the Comrade lay, calm and fine and beautiful, so life-like and yet so peaceful, this leader of the World Revolution. Clad in a khaki coat, with a cover drawn across at the waist-line, he lies with one hand closed, the other relaxed upon the cover. The crowd passed slowly around, and out the other side, and through the egress-gate of the enclosure, without comment or sound. Outside a company of Red soldiers had gathered, and in front of the Mausoleum their band had paused to play the Revolutionary Funeral March, as a long line of young workers and boy and girl Pioneers joined them, marching in through the architectural gateway of the Red Square.

Outside the Ploshchad, high on the stone wall, challengingly conspicuous, is that oft-quoted warning, "Religion is opium for the people.” It seems to speak directly to the Iberian Mother in her shrine, beside the gateway, the sacred

46 icon guarded by the gilded archangel atop of its sky-blue, gold-starred dome, where a handful of forlorn-looking people straggle in and out of the swinging doors, bringing worship to their jeweled virgin. Within the Square, the young thousands throng, paying homage to their great dead leader.

It is not empty words, the legend that confronts us on remote railway station walls, and other central places where the people may be constantly reminded,—the legend in large letters, "Lenin is dead, but his ideas are eternal.” Propaganda? Yes. Mass psychology? Yes. Goose-step? Even that. These marching thousands are under the same controlling influence that the young thousands are under in the Western countries. Their minds and thoughts are being formed consciously by the "State.” Let the anarchist shudaer! Let the Liberal mourn "freedom.” No one will care to deny the policy. But for what a different purpose, —in a workers’ state, temporarily, for the defence of the new experiment, which will end in a social order under which the mind can be freed to think for itself. And by what a different intellectual method,—and this is the essential difference,—the ideas which are being propagated are not stereotyped statements and abstract phrases, they are living ideas which stimulate the thought of the young instead of deadening it, and prove their truth to the awakened minds. Comrade Lenin is dead, but Leninism lives on in the Republic of the People.

47

p An interesting episode of the week was a chat over a glass of coffee with a prominent Tolstoian pacifist, having a personal as well as hereditary record as an absolutist, who was able to explain to us with a broad understanding the attitude of all groups of conscientious objectors, as well as the attitude of the Government toward them.

p At the beginning of the civil war, that is, the period of counter-revolution, all conscientious objectors were exempt from military service in the Red Army, if they were affiliated with sects whose pacifist principle was established. This led to an obvious abuse of the leniency, as many joined these sects merely to gain exemption. On the other hand, numbers were unjustly excluded from exemption who were sincere pacifists, but who did not believe in organization,—as the Tolstoians. Even among the ignorant peasants, there has long been an instinctive recognition of Tolstoian philosophy, or rather a spontaneous philosophy allied to the Tolstoian idea, and sooner or later most of these people become consciously allied with the Tolstoian movement, which is on principle unorganized.

p This situation as it developed brought about a change in the Government policy, and to all those who had protested under the Czar, either individually, or as members of pacifist organizations, and to those who could prove their sincerity by responsible witnesses, exemption was extended. Those who could not establish their sincerity were turned over to a military court as cowards and deserters, and these, during the most critical days of the civil war, were shot, being given always to the last a chance to serve. It was inevitable that still some injustice should be done, especially in the remote provinces, and there is at least one 48 case established of a sincere objector who was executed. This man, given permission to speak to the soldiers, told them he was sorry for them,—they could kill only his body, but they were killing their own souls. They, apparently convinced where the court had not been, refused to fire, and the officer in charge as was his military duty, shot the prisoner. Afterward a letter of the prisoner to his mother came to light, which would have established the genuineness of his protest.

p Lenin was always for great leniency in the case of conscientious objectors, but after his retirement from active political life, a great deal of severity crept in. Those who in old days were themselves opposed to righting, but on quite other grounds, recognizing that the workers of the world were fighting each other in the interest of their exploiters, those old objectors themselves were the hardest to convince that there could be sincere objection to defending by arms the only Workers’ Republic against an exploiters’ world. Since the thirteenth session of the Communist Congress, however, the policy again has been broadened very much, and also making for leniency in effect, is the fact that even when the courts reject the sincerity plea, and the prisoner is turned over to the military courts, these tribunals, anxious to preserve the morale of the army, are very much disinclined to admit such objector into the ranks. This position is in harmony, I am told, with the new Communist International attitude toward service in the Capitalist armies. Learning from experience in the World War the futility of objection, they are openly discussing now the tactics of going into the army and " boring from within,"—demoralizing the ranks by propaganda. 49 How the. Capitalist armies will meet this policy is a problem, for while in the case of religious objectors, they are rid of such disturbers of morale, their course with Communists must be to take the initiative by rejecting their service, or to take the risks of their aggressive tactics.

p The foregoing analysis of the development of the Sovyet policy is the more reliable in its liberal interpretation, as coming from one who is not himself a Communist, but who is an absolute Tolstoian pacifist, and who also is an enlightened student of the conflicting philosophies. I entertained myself by putting my usual question to non-resistants:—Putting yourself out of the question as a victim, what would you do if you saw a brute torturing or killing a helpless child? He gave the usual inadequate answer,—I would try to persuade him. But he was frank enough to admit, when challenged, that this was dodging the issue. Then he tried,—How can you say whether if the child were spared, he might not develop into an even greater criminal than the man? Again he admitted that such an attitude must logically stop all effort at social guidance. His third attempt to justify his non-resistance in this was, —To me the man’s life is as sacred as the child’s. Challenged again,—Even when the man is criminally taking away the sacred life of the child?—he would not quite stand by this article of his creed. Finally I said, "Please answer me directly,—if the man were about to jab a knife into the child’s eye, would you stop to persuade, or would you use force to prevent it?" Then he answered with some spirit,—even a little testily, and who can blame him?—"My temper would probably get the better of my 50 principie, but I stand by the principle.”—And that was standing by in word only.

p There you have the fundamental unsoundness of the pacifist philosophy, an absolute principle that an instinctive humanity would compel them to abandon in face of a flagrant concrete wrong. For I would trust most of these ethical pacifists of the courageous type, who are more or less abstract fanatics,—and the others do not count—to act in concrete emergencies as this Tolstoian absolutist thinks be would act. Their trouble seems to lie in a limited imagination, which prevents their applying to distant problems the method that most of them would apply to a flagrant case before their eyes. And if they admit a single violation of pacifiism to be permissible, they have abandoned the principle itself, for the only justification any one offers for violence is the moral end it serves.

p All of these groups, obliged of course to live under a militarist regime, must as everywhere co-operate to a certain extent. They would not call it opportunism! They refuse to teach in schools where the militarist  [50•*  idea is taught, but they will help in any effort at relief of suffering. In fact, the Government is frank in admitting that its most valuable help, in certain circumstances, comes from these people, and that they are among its finest types of citizen.

p Most of them have a protesting attitude also, toward what they regard as “dictatorship,” and the Tolstoian interviewed, though most enlightened and liberal in his interpretation and understanding of the Sovyet policies, and in 51 sympathy with the ultimate Communist ideal, said with some heat, "I don’t want to be anybody’s slave.” "But,” I argued, "you must believe in some central co-operation, some delegated authority,—all the people cannot decide on every detail of Government.” "Yes,” he said, "that is true, provided it is real representation of all minority groups.” Now, under the Sovyets, all workers are represented as organized, groups, and thus the pacifists are represented as workers. As the Tolstoians do not on principle organize as a philosophic group, it appears a little unreasonable to argue that they are not represented. Even were it possible to arrange for representation on an ethical or other basis for philosophical and religious organizations, the Tolstoian numbers would make their influence through delegation negligible. They are free to propagate their ideals outside the schools, as are religious organizations.

p This brought us to the subject of religious persecution, which as such does not exist. The imprisonment and execution of church officials, have been only for direct counterrevolutionary activity, even so flagrant as conspiring with foreign powers for armed intervention. There are sects who feel themselves persecuted because they are not allowed to teach their children in sectarian schools, but must send them to the Government schools, and also because as non-conformists to Sovyet principles, their members are not eligible to certain Government positions. Concerning education, every child must now be sent to the public schools, while formerly, under the Czar, the limited education was in the control of the Church. With the disestablishment of the Church by the Sovyets, and transference of the schools to government control, direct anti-religious 52 teaching was at first given, but this caused so much antagonism that the policy has been modified, and now the religious superstitions are combatted only by scientific teaching, which implicitly discredits such beliefs. Indeed the youngest generations largely know of these beliefs only historically as myths. Meanwhile, as many churches are open as their adherents can support since Government funds and contributions of the former wealthy are withdrawn.

Theoretically, yes, public school attendance is compulsory, but actually there are whole villages where the religious feeling is still so strong in opposition to the Government, that no children are sent to the schools, and no compulsion in such cases is used. It would be tactically a fatal move. One man, on being asked why he refused to send his children to school, replied, "On account of the dancing,” which to him was immoral. The dancing he referred to was the gymnastics they make such a point of in all the schools. "Against stupidity, the gods themselves battle in vain.” But even this the new gods must conquer, with the conquering of ignorance. It is a great battle that is on, and the Sovyet Government is magnificently generaled, and armed with that greatest weapon, Science. Disagreeing on most points with our Tolstoian informant, we yet drained our cups in friendliness, and parted with cordial assurances.

p Established in my new quarters, I decided to make some ventures in housekeeping. The young girl who cares for my room, lives on the floor below with her family, and twice a week, according to tradition, she scrubs the inlaid 53 floor, moving all the furniture into the middle of the room, and operating in bare feet and stringing hair, her peasant good looks quite obliterated by her sloppy clothes. I have reduced the process to once a week both for her sake and mine. She brings me every morning a large tea-kettle of boiling water, for bath and tea, and I was curious to visit the source of this supply.

p I finally tracked some peripatetic kettles and saucepans to the floor below, through a small passageway and a dark inner wash-room, to a splendid spacious kitchen. There in the corner stood the enormous kipyatok, with two faucets and an unceasing flow, at certain hours; of boiling water, with a double line of kettles and soup-pots awaiting their turn. My initial community act was merely to fill my own kipyatok and get my bearings. Standing free in the middle of the floor, was an oblong stove, possibly six by ten feet, the enormous surface covered with pots and frying-pans, from under whose covers issued most enticing whiffs of savory dishes. One woman was frying bitochki, flat meat fritters, another peeping into a bubbling soup kettle. Potatoes were boiling and frying, fish stewing in cabbage, meat turning over on sizzling pans. Squatting women were basting things in the crackling ovens, little hunks of tender mutton and potatoes in baking pans, and sometimes a fat goose.

p Every day at five, a furnace-like fire is built under one end of the stove, and roars through to the other end, over the ovens, under the giant plate. Down and up from all floors swarm the denizens with their pots and pans. Watching them, I could hardly bide my time to push through the surrounding circle, gathered one or two deep around the 54 stove and thrusting their arms through like the gambling throng around a Monte Carlo table. This Community kitchen is the halfway station between our individual stoves, and the true co-operatives of the future. Each family has its supply of utensils in its own apartment where the food is prepared, and you constantly meet them on the stairway, gingerly carrying their steaming pots from community kitchen to private room. This was the busiest moment, but I could come before or after for my tentative effort with mushrooms,—for it was mushrooms I had decided on for my experiment.

p I had been introduced to Russian mushrooms at a small party at the Restaurant “Bar” a few days before. This is a run-down relic of pre-war Moscow, large, pillared, shabby, but with a pretense still of cabaret gayety in the late evening, even since patrons as well as landlords are being jailed for bootleg indulgences. Beer and wine are legal, even the heavy sweet wines, but brandy, vodka, etc., are tabu.  [54•*  I am told, however, that here one may still get “something” to drink if one knows how. We all took up our menus and played the game of Find-the-vegetables. This is a serious game if you omit the soup. Finally by calling a conference with the head waiter, and agreeing to give him time, we managed to get a highly successful 55 combination salad, called "olive,” presumably because of the olive-oil dressing,—preceded by a divided order of beef Strogonov and most delectable sliced mushrooms gratin, everything as perfect as could be conceived. We finished with the marvelous little cakes that tempt one along the streets, and a fearsome beverage called coffee, which only I could drink, because it is called that. Coffee is dear and bad, cocoa and chocolate almost prohibitive. One falls back on tchai. But it was those smooth firm mushrooms that lingered in my memory.

p Early in an afternoon, I started out to get supplies, only to be reminded that from one to three the shops are closed. Not willing to climb my four flights again, I walked up and down the Kuznetzki Most, or "Bridge,” so-called from the fact that below it once ran, perhaps still runs, a stream or canal of the river, and the present street was then a bridge. Almost every other shop here sells books or music, and crossing it are streets where attractive shops display beautiful wares from the Provinces, and staples also, and from street to street cut shopping " passages,” apparently just filling again after long abandonment. I mazed in and out of these, killing time. In front of many of the “Cos” or State stores, lines of women waited for the doors to open for cheap specials of the day. This, I believe, is one of the transitional devices for balancing the supply and demand. At three, I cross back to my own neighborhood, close by. Along the broad street, cutting through the Theater Square, a crowded thoroughfare where the vendors are thickest, is a long row of tiny shops with food specialties, fish and caviare, bread and cake, groceries, vegetables and fruit, beer and wine. Beyond, 56 at the corner of the Tverskaya, is the big Gos-shop where you can get all these things of the best, and here I went. I felt a little extravagant about the mushrooms, remembering our bill at the "Bar."—a portion, I think, was three roubles,—so I looked hastily at my purchase-slip and found my half-pound had registered 15c American-. It is quite a process ordering. You select what you want, the price is given you on a slip of paper, you take that to the cashier’s desk, stand in line till you can pay and get a new slip, then return to the first place or to a special wrapping counter, and receive your parcel. If you haven’t practical sense, you repeat this at each purchase, standing in line each time until your afternoon is gone. Otherwise, collecting all your slips, you give them in together, and then make the round for your parcels, putting them into a basket bought for a rouble and for that purpose, a beautiful straw peasant-made market basket, sold along the sidewalk. I filled mine with prohibitive cocoa and canned milk, reasonable eggs, and caviare spatuled out of a tub on a piece of parafine paper,—the large pink half the price of the cheapest black,—a white roll for 10 kopeks and black bread at 6 kopeks a pound. An amusing feature of the shops is the way they add your purchases on the beaded harps such as the Chinese also use. It is funny to see your own race doing it seriously and quite as a matter of course,-^ an intellectual looking person with a Trotzki beard in a book-store.

It was not long before my mushrooms were bubbling in my one small handleless saucepan, covered with a small tin plate, a dash of canned cream added to emulate the Restaurant "Bar,” and a slice of bread toasting beside the 57 saucepan on the top of the roaring stove, while little Katya giggled and gurgled and gleamed at my clumsy unequipped efforts, as she efficiently flitted in and out with her whole family dinner. Nevertheless, by Zinaida, who happened in, it was pronounced a success from caviare to bad coffee, and I shall try it again some day.