Chapter VI: Part FOUR: The Magic Pilgrimage (1)

XIV

The Dominant Urge

I went to Russia. Some thought I was invited by the Soviet government; others, that I was sent by the Communist Party. But it was not so easy to have the honor of an invitation or the privilege of being sent. For I was not one of the radicals abroad, important to the Soviet government; and I was not a member of the Communist Party. All I had was the dominant urge to go, and that discovered the way. Millions of ordinary human beings and thousands of writers were stirred by the Russian thunder rolling round the world. And as a social-minded being and a poet, I too was moved.

But money was necessary so that I could go to Russia. I had none. I mentioned my object to James Weldon Johnson, then secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He suggested I might raise some money by selling special copies of my book of poems with signed photographs. And very kindly he placed at my disposal a select list of persons connected with the N.A.A.C.P. In that way a small number of copies of _Harlem Shadows_ was sold. The price asked was five dollars. I remember that about six persons sent checks for ten dollars. One check was signed by Mrs. Henry Villard. Eugen Boissevain sent me one hundred dollars. Crystal Eastman gave me a letter as one of the editors of _The Liberator_, asking any radical who could to facilitate my getting to Russia. Just before I sailed James Weldon Johnson gave me a little farewell party at his residence in Harlem. A few of Harlem's élite came: Dr. DuBois, Walter White, Jessie Fauset, Rosamond Johnson, and from among downtown liberal intellectuals, Heywood Broun and F.P.A. of the New York _World_, John Farrar, who was then editor of _The Bookman_, and Ruth Hale. It was a pleasant evening and the first of the bohemian-élite interracial parties in Harlem which became so popular during the highly propagandized Negro renaissance period.

I signed on as a stoker on a slow freighter going to Liverpool. Just as that time, Crystal Eastman also had booked passage on another boat to go with her children to London to join her husband. We had arranged to have a last meal together on the eve of my sailing. But I waited until near midnight and she didn't appear. So I went out alone in Harlem, visiting the speakeasies and cabarets and drinking a farewell to the illegal bars.

In one joint I met Hubert Harrison and we had together a casual drink. But I did not inform him or any of my few familiars that I was sailing for Europe the next day. Sentimental adieux embarrass me. I took a look in at Sanina's for a brief moment. Late that night, when I got home with just enough liquor to fill me with a mellow mood for my next adventure, I found a tiny scrap of paper thrust into my keyhole:

Claude dear:

I just dashed in to give you a hug and say goodbye--Bon Voyage, dear child!

Crystal

I tucked the little note in a corner of my pocket book and have carried it with me all these years, through many countries, transferring it, when one pocket book was worn out, to another.

Six years later, when I was in Spain, I received a copy of _The Nation_ containing the announcement of beautiful Crystal Eastman's death. It was sudden and shocking to me. I took her farewell note out of my pocket book and read it and cried. Crystal Eastman was a great-hearted woman whose life was big with primitive and exceptional gestures. She never wrote that Book of Woman which was imprinted on her mind. She was poor, and fettered with a family. She had a grand idea for a group of us to go off to write in some quiet corner of the world, where living was cheap and easy. But it couldn't be realized. And so life was cheated of one contribution about women that no other woman could write.

* * * * *

At Liverpool I left the freighter and went straight to London. There was a reunion with a few intimates of the International Socialist Club. Many of the members had left for Russia the year before to live there permanently. Also a number of British Communists were preparing to travel to Russia for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International.

Arthur McManus, one of the Left labor men from the Clyde, was one of them. I asked if he could assist me to go to Russia. He was not enthusiastic, especially since I was once connected with the Pankhurst group, which was now out of favor at Moscow. McManus said that I should have been recommended by the American Communist Party. The more difficult it seemed, the more determined I was to make my way to Russia. One evening in a barroom, I heard a group of English comrades facetiously discussing Edgar Whitehead, the former secretary to the Pankhurst Group, saying that he was always landing something good in the movement. I heard them mention that Whitehead was in Berlin. He was liaison agent and interpreter for the English-speaking radicals who were traveling to Russia. Whitehead had studied German in Berlin when he was a schoolmaster. He had been a leader of conscientious objectors during the last war. He was also my friend, and I thought I'd take a chance on his helping.

The next day I took the channel boat to Ostend. Arriving in Berlin, I made inquiries and found Whitehead. He promised to get me through to Russia. That I was not indorsed by any Communist party did not matter to him. He was not a fanatic or dogmatist. In the days of our association together in London we often waxed satirical about Communist orthodoxy and we had often discussed the idea of a neo-radical magazine in which nothing in the universe would be held sacred.

Whitehead started working for me. The intervening time I spent visiting the theaters. Expressionism was setting the pace. I saw the revolving stage for the first time and admired it. Also I visited many of the cabarets, which had sprung up like mushrooms under the Socialist-Republican régime, some of which seemed to express the ultimate in erotomania. The youngsters of both sexes, the hectic pleasure-chasers of the Berlin of that epoch (before Poincaré grabbed the Ruhr), were methodically exploiting the nudist colony indoors, which was perhaps more exciting than the outdoor experiments.

One evening Whitehead announced that all was ready. The next day we drove in a taxicab to a rendezvous. We entered a house and passed into a large room in which there was a group of men. Four of them I identified as Russians. Whitehead introduced me as a _kamarad und neger dichter_. One sitting at a table spoke with a kindly smile. He asked a few questions in effortful English which I promptly answered. I said that I was not a member of the American Communist Party, but that I was in sympathy with the purpose of the great Russian revolution. I said that it was primarily as a writer that I was interested in Soviet Russia and that I intended to write about it for the Negro press.

I received back my passport and Crystal Eastman's recommendation, which I had consigned to Whitehead. A visa for Russia was attached to the passport. I was told to prepare to travel at once. The next day I traveled with an English-speaking German to Stettin. There I slept that night at a hotel. The following morning I was taken to a pier, whence I embarked for Leningrad.

* * * * *

Petrograd! Leningrad! When I think of that great city like a mighty tree shaken to its roots by a hurricane, yet still standing erect, and when I think of the proud equestrian statue of Peter the Great, proclaiming that dictator's mighty achievement, I feel that the world has lost the poetry and the color rising like a rainbow out of a beautiful name since Petrograd was changed to Leningrad.

Lenin is mightier than Peter the Great. But there is no magic in the name of Leningrad. There is magic in the name of Lenin, as there is splendor in the word Moscow. And perhaps Lenin himself, whose life was devoted to the idea of creating a glorious new world, might have, in appreciation of the will of Peter the Great to remake a nation, preferred Petrograd to remain Petrograd. Perhaps the spirit of Lenin might have been more adequately expressed in the erection of a brand-new city, rising out of that system to which he dedicated his life. Lenin without any suffix--like a perfect ball of pure gold--a city called Lenin.

* * * * *

I saw Petrograd! Like a great tree, shaken to its roots by a hurricane and struck by lightning and somehow still standing. Petrograd, half empty of its population and somewhat sad in the autumn. I saw the monuments of czars and nobles tumbled in the dirt by the proletarian masses. But intact and untouched they had left the beautifully proud monument of Peter the Great, a mighty symbol of individual will and majesty.

_MOSCOW_

_Moscow for many loving her was dead ... And yet I saw a bright Byzantine fair, Of jewelled buildings, pillars, domes and spires Of hues prismatic dazzling to the sight; A glory painted on the Eastern air, Of amorous sounding tones like passionate lyres; All colors laughing richly their delight And reigning over all the color red._

_My memory bears engraved the strange Kremlin, Of halls symbolic of the tiger will, Of Czarist instruments of mindless law ... And often now my nerves throb with the thrill When, in that gilded place, I felt and saw The simple voice and presence of Lenin._

I felt almost ashamed in those lean hungry years of 1922, when Russia was just emerging from a great famine, that Moscow should have stirred me in the way I have expressed it in this sonnet. Yes, I will admit that my senses were stirred by the semi-oriental splendor and movement of Moscow even before my intellect was touched by the forces of the revolution.

After the war, the revolution and the famine, one's mind had created a picture of a grim, harsh melancholy atmosphere. But it was all like a miracle, all that Byzantine conglomeration of form and color, shedding down its radiance upon the proletarian masses. It was like an _Arabian Nights_ dream transforming the bleak white face of an Arctic waste.

And the crowds tramping and sleighing through the deep snow spreading over all the land were really happier and friendlier than the crowds of New York and London and Berlin. Yet the people in Moscow were generally so poorly clad. There was so much of that Oriental raggedness that one does not see in New York and London and Berlin--at least not on the surface. The scenes were so unexpected and strange that I even doubted at first whether they were not created by Communist discipline and Bolshevik propaganda. But when I mingled with the people I soon perceived that many did not even comprehend the true nature of Communism. Some of them could understand only that Lenin was in the place of the Czar and that he was a greater Little Father.

I was soon brought down out of the romantic feeling of the atmosphere to face the hard reality of the American Communist delegation. Brazenly and bravely I had journeyed to Russia with some members of the British group. But now the American delegation had arrived with a Negroid delegate, a light mulatto. My presence was resented. The American delegation did not want me there. The delegation represented America, and as I had been passed with other Communists as a visitor to the Fourth Communist Congress, it was necessary that I should be indorsed by the delegation as an unofficial visitor. This the chairman refused to do. Instead, he desired that I should be sent out of Russia, back home.

A fight was raging inside of the American delegation. A minority led by James Cannon wanted a legal American Communist party, to carry on open propaganda among all the American workers. The majority, led by the chairman, was fighting to keep the American party illegal and underground.

Rose Pastor Stokes was the main prop of the chairman. When she arrived in Moscow, still pretty and purring and sly as a puss, she immediately engaged me in conversation and casually asked if I did not think that an illegal Communist party was the best suited for America. I answered no, emphatically. At the time I did not know that the difference in the ranks of the American group was serious. Not being a party member, I was unaware of what was going on inside of the organization.

Rose Pastor Stokes was one of the delegates who had just escaped from Bridgman, Michigan, during the police raid of August, 1922, when the illegal Communist Party held its convention in the open there in a beautiful romantic valley. Some of us of _The Liberator_ thought that the Communists, being tired of staying underground, were feeling so pastoral and poetic that they couldn't do better than hold their secret convention in the open air of the lovely Michigan country.

Rose Pastor Stokes had said to me that it was necessary for Communists to take to the woods in summer to escape the iron heel of the capitalists. She was the wife of a millionaire, and perhaps knew more about the iron heel than poor proletarians. She admired that romantic novel of Jack London's, _The Iron Heel_, and once told me that radicals could use it as a textbook of revolutionary organization in America. She was shocked and hurt that a few of us regarded the convention and the raid in Michigan as something like a comic opera.

I remembered Mrs. Stokes's spy mania, when I was on _The Liberator_. She was doing secret radical work. She used to tell me stories of being followed by detectives, and of how she fooled them by taking refuge in the Hotel Plaza and the Hotel Astor; because the dicks wouldn't imagine that a guest of such places was red. She was also working with a radical Negro group, and thought she was followed by Negro detectives in Harlem. One night I was at the apartment of my friend, Grace Campbell, when Mrs. Stokes came in to attend a meeting. She was breathless, and sank into a chair, exhausted. She asked for water, and Comrade Campbell hurried to get a glassful. Then Mrs. Stokes explained that a colored man had been watching her suspiciously while she was riding up on the subway, and when she got off the train he had attempted to follow her. She had hurried and dodged through the insouciant Harlem crowd and gone round many blocks to evade the spy.

Said Comrade Campbell, "But Comrade Stokes, there aren't any Negroes spying on radicals in Harlem. That colored man, maybe he was attempting--kind of--to get friendly with you."

Mrs. Stokes jumped right up out of her exhaustion: "What, Comrade? You _shock_ me!" In her voice, and her manner, was the most perfect bourgeois expression of the superior person. Comrade Campbell said: "Why Comrade Stokes, I didn't mean to insinuate anything, but any person is likely to be mistaken for something else."

So now in Moscow, before I was fixed in place as an unofficial observer, Rose Pastor Stokes had got it from me that I was opposed to the majority of the American delegation, and that was bad. Mrs. Stokes really believed that we were living through the period of the new Inquisition against radicals in America, and that those who did not believe that were traitors to the cause. She hinted even that there was something suspicious about my use of my real name in Moscow. For all the American delegates had secret names. Mrs. Stokes's own was Sasha. But some of us unorthodox comrade sympathizers preferred to identify her as The Red Red Rose.

Meanwhile, the committee appointed to seat all delegates to the Fourth Congress was sifting credentials. It was headed by a repulsive type of strutting Prussian whose name is now forgotten, lost in the radical scramble for place and the shuffling and cutting of Communist cards--and Leninist purges. Greater Red names than his have gone like the melted snows of yesterday.

I was soon aware that the Prussian person had his severe blue eye fixed on me, as if I had been specially pointed out to him. I pretended that I had not seen that evil eye, but soon I was being bedeviled. I was thrown out of the Lux Hotel and found myself in a dilapidated house in a sinister _pereulok_. My room was bare excepting for an army cot, and cold like the steppes because of a broken window pane through which poured a Siberian draught. My first thought was to protect myself against pneumonia, and so I hurried to a store and purchased two blankets and a pair of the cheap warm and comfortable felt boots that reach to the thighs--the kind the Russian peasants wear.

In the room next to mine there was a Russian couple. The man spoke a little English. I complained about the state of my room and he agreed that the window should be fixed; but, said he, "Thousands of Russians are living in worse places." It was a quiet, gentle, perhaps unintentional, rebuke, but immediately I felt confused and altogether ashamed. I became aware of the implications of my grievance, so petty in the eyes of the "thousands in worse places" who had just come through an eight-year siege of war, revolution, counter-revolution and famine, with fields and farms devastated, factories wrecked, houses in ruins, no time and few funds for repairs.

I remembered breakfasting on the train in Germany a few weeks previously. The countryside, misty brown in the early morning, was peaceful and beautiful; the train ran precisely on time; the coaches and dining car were in elegant shape, the passengers well dressed, the waiters in neat uniform. The breakfast was fine, but the cream that came with the coffee was barely whitened water. I had just come from America, where cream with coffee is a commonplace. And so, without thinking, I asked the waiter for cream. I said I would pay extra for it.

The waiter said: "But Mister, we have no cream at all. They have taken away all our cows from us, and what little milk we have we must give to our babies." Then I remembered that I had read somewhere that under the Treaty of Versailles the Germans had had to give up thousands of heads of cattle to the Allies. But I had never fully grasped the significance of that until I asked for cream with my coffee in Germany. (We are, the majority of us, merely sentimental about the suffering of others. Only when direct experience twists our own guts out of place are we really able to understand. I remember once hearing a nice comfortable bohemian noblewoman ecstatically exclaim: "_J'aime la souffrance! J'aime la souffrance!_" Yes! She loved vicariously the suffering of others.)

" ... Thousands in worse places." A good room was as much of a luxury in Moscow in 1922 as a car is in America. A good room was the chief non-political topic of conversation. People greeted one another and said: "Do you have a good room?" in the same way we say, "How is your health?" One of the tidbits of those times was the joke that Mrs. Trotsky and Mrs. Zinoviev were at odds because one had a better apartment in the Kremlin than the other.

* * * * *

Now my position was precarious. I wanted by all means to stay in Moscow and to attend the meetings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. But would-be delegates and visitors who were unwanted and undesirable were being ruthlessly dealt with. Some were accused as spies and counter-revolutionists. To the Russians, spying was a real menace. It meant sabotage of revolutionary property, attempted assassination of officials, and working to overthrow the Soviets. They could not understand that when an English or an American Communist accused certain persons of being spies, his idea of spying was romantic and akin to eavesdropping.

Aware of the way in which things were going against radical dissidents, I acted quickly. I had a friend high up in Bolshevik circles in the person of Sen Katayama. Sen Katayama was _the_ Japanese revolutionist. He had been a member of the Second International and knew all the big men of the conservative British and continental labor movement. He was an old friend of Lenin, Zinoviev, Bukharin and Radek, and had gone over to the Third International at its inception.

Sen Katayama had been a student at Fisk University, the southern Negro school. He was small, dark-brown, with intensely purposeful features which were nevertheless kindly. I met him when I was working on _The Liberator_. He dropped in one day and introduced himself. He took me to lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and at another time to a Chinese, and introduced me to the Indian rendezvous restaurant in the theatrical district. His personality was friendly but abounding in curiosity--a sort of minute methodical curiosity. He made me think of a fearless and faithful little hunting dog. When he came up to my office, his little eyes, like brilliant beads, darted rapidly over everything. And like a permanent surprise he invaded my rooms at all hours and talked in his squeaky grandmotherly voice about Negro problems. He demonstrated a vast interest and sympathy for the Negro racialists and their organizations. I liked Sen Katayama immensely. I was fascinated by his friendly ferreting curiosity. I had associated with many Chinese at home in the West Indies and in London, but Sen Katayama was my first Japanese friend. It was exciting to contrast Chinese and Japanese by the types I had known. Sen Katayama was eager and extrovert, almost too much so, while the Chinese, however friendly, seemed aloof and secret.

Sen Katayama was in his glory in Red Russia. He was an honorary colonel of the Red army and always appeared at mass meetings in his uniform. The crowds adored him and applauded frantically. He appeared to me somewhat like a harbinger, a symbol of the far eastern element in the new heart of Russia.

Sen Katayama warmly welcomed me in Moscow and invited me to tea in his nice room in the Lux Hotel. He held an important post in the Eastern Department of the Communist International and because of his extensive traveling and his education and contact with American Negroes he was regarded as an authority on all colored peoples' affairs. He had more real inside and sympathetic knowledge and understanding of American Negroes than many of the white American Communists who were camping in Moscow.

When I explained to Sen Katayama how and why I had come to Russia and of the difficulties I was encountering because of the opposition of the American delegation, he said: "You leave everything to me and we'll see if they can get you out of here and prevent your attending the Congress. I'll talk to the Big Four[2] about you."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Radek.]

XV

An Individual Triumph

Meanwhile, all the Russian folk unwittingly were doing their part for me. Whenever I appeared in the street I was greeted by all of the people with enthusiasm. At first I thought that this was merely because of the curiosity which any strange and distinctive type creates in any foreign environment, such as I had experienced in Holland and Belgium and Germany. But no! I soon apprehended that this Russian demonstration was a different thing. Just a spontaneous upsurging of folk feeling.

The Bolsheviks had nothing at all to do with it. The public manifestation for me took them unawares. But the Bolsheviks have nerves subtly attuned to the currents of opinion and a sense of propaganda values in which they are matched only by French officialdom. So, as soon as they perceived the trend of the general enthusiasm for me, they decided to use it. And I was not averse to that. Never before had I experienced such an instinctive sentiment of affectionate feeling compelling me to the bosom of any people, white or colored. And I am certain I never will again. My response was as sincere as the mass feeling was spontaneous. That miraculous experience was so extraordinary that I have never been able to understand it.

Even the Russian comrades, who have a perfect pat social-economic explanation for all phenomena, were amazed. The comrade who conducted me around (when I hadn't wandered off by myself, which was often) was as intelligent as a fox and as keen and cold as an icicle. Although a mere youth, he held important positions, open and secret, and today, still young, he holds a most important position in the Soviet government and in the Russian Communist Party. This comrade said: "I don't quite understand. Some of the Indian delegates are darker than you--quite black--yet the people don't carry on about them that way. But there is something very different in your features and that is what the people see."

Never in my life did I feel prouder of being an African, a black, and no mistake about it. Unforgettable that first occasion upon which I was physically uplifted. I had not yet seen it done to anybody, nor did I know that it was a Russian custom. The Moscow streets were filled with eager crowds before the Congress started. As I tried to get through along the Tverskaya I was suddenly surrounded by a crowd, tossed into the air, and caught a number of times and carried a block on their friendly shoulders. The civilians started it The soldiers imitated them. And the sailors followed the soldiers, tossing me higher than ever.

From Moscow to Petrograd and from Petrograd to Moscow I went triumphantly from surprise to surprise, extravagantly fêted on every side. I was carried along on a crest of sweet excitement. I was like a black ikon in the flesh. The famine had ended, the Nep was flourishing, the people were simply happy. I was the first Negro to arrive in Russia since the revolution, and perhaps I was generally regarded as an omen of good luck! Yes, that was exactly what it was. I was like a black ikon.

The attitude of the non-Bolshevist population was even more interesting. I had been told to be careful about going places alone. But bourgeois persons on the street implored me just to enter their homes for a glass of tea. I went. I had no fear of even the "whitest" Russians in Russia, although in Paris and Berlin I would not have trusted them. The only persons that made me afraid in Russia were the American Communists. Curiously, even Russian bourgeois persons trusted me. They knew that I was in sympathy with the Communists--was their guest. Yet some of them told me frankly and naïvely that they did not like the Bolsheviks and didn't think their régime would last. The women chattered like parrots, happy that the shops were opened. They wanted to hear about the shops in New York and London and Berlin. When I visited a college with an interpreter, who was certainly a member of the O.G.P.U., one of the language teachers explained the difficulties of working under the new régime. She said she ought to travel abroad to keep up with the languages she taught, and that was impossible now. She said the proletarian students were dull and kept the brighter bourgeois students back. She said that one of her brightest students was the son of a former governor, and that she would not reveal his identity, for if it were known, he could not stay in the college. She said, "I can't let even you know who he is, for you might tell about him." But before I left she introduced me to the lad, explaining that he had specially asked for an introduction. In Petrograd, Chorny Chukovsky, the popular author, introduced me to a princess and a countess who were his friends, and to the intellectual élite, who were mainly anti-Bolsheviks. But they crowded a hall to hear me read my poems. One of the professors, who had studied in England and France, was so excited that he invited me to the national library the next day. And what did he do? There was a rare Pushkin book with a photograph of him as a boy which clearly showed his Negroid strain. (The Negroid strain is not so evident in the adult pictures of Pushkin.) I coveted the book, and told the Professor so. He said he was sorry that he could not make me a present of the volume. But he actually extracted that photograph of Pushkin and gave it to me. Mark you, that professor was no Bolshevik, contemptuous of bourgeois literature. He was an old classic scholar who worshipped his books and was worried about the future of literature and art under the Bolshevik régime. Yet he committed that sacrilege for me: "To show my appreciation of you as a poet," he said. "Our Pushkin was also a revolutionist." Like Crystal Eastman's farewell note, that photograph of Pushkin is one of the few treasures I have.

* * * * *

Oh, I remember that magnificent cartoon in colors, picturing me sailing on a magic carpet over the African jungles to Moscow. The artist made me a gift of the original. An imp swiped it. It was the perfect interpretation of my adventure in Russia. An _Arabian Nights_ fantasy transformed into reality. I had been the despised brother, unwelcome at the gorgeous fête in the palace of the great. In the lonely night I went to bed in a cold bare room. But I awoke in the morning to find myself the center of pageantry in the grand Byzantine city. The photograph of my black face was everywhere among the most highest Soviet rulers, in the principal streets, adorning the walls of the city. I was whisked out of my unpleasant abode and installed in one of the most comfortable and best-heated hotels in Moscow. I was informed: "You may have wine and anything extra you require, and at no cost to you." But what could I want for, when I needed a thousand extra mouths and bellies for the importunate invitations to feast? Wherever I wanted to go, there was a car at my disposal. Whatever I wanted to do I did. And anything I felt like saying I said. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be a highly privileged personage. And in the Fatherland of Communism!

Didn't I enjoy it! The American comrades were just too funny with envy and chagrin. The mulatto delegate who had previously high-hatted me now began to cultivate my company. It was only by sticking close to me that he could be identified as a Negroid.

I was photographed with the popular leaders of international Communism: Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, Clara Zetkin, Sen Katayama, Roy; with officers of the Soviet fleet, the army and the air forces; with the Red cadets and the rank and file; with professors of the academies; with the children of Moscow and of Petrograd; with delegates from Egypt, India, Japan, China, Algeria.

XVI

The Pride and Pomp of Proletarian Power

The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow presented a pageantry of simple proletarian pride and power on the night of the opening of the Congress of the Communist International. The absence of the primitive appeal of gilded pomp made the manifestation even more sublime and awe-inspiring.

I had received a pass to attend the great opening of the Congress. When I succeeded in getting into the vast Bolshoi auditorium, Martin Anderson Nexö, the author of _Pelle, the Conqueror_, waved to me to come and sit beside him. He was seated in the center front of the hall. But an usher grabbed me, and before I could realize where I was going, I was being handed from usher to usher like an object that was consigned to a special place. At first I thought I was going to be conducted to the balcony, but instead I was ushered onto the platform to a seat beside Max Eastman and just behind Zinoviev. It seems as if the curious interest of the crowd focused upon me had prompted Zinoviev to hoist me up there on the platform.

Zinoviev asked me to speak and I refused. Max Eastman pleaded: "Do speak! See how the people are looking at you; they want to hear you." I said that if they had given me notice beforehand I might have prepared a few phrases, although speaking was not my specialty. But I wouldn't stand up before the Bolshevik élite and that vast eager crowd, without having something prepared to say. Eastman said: "Just tell them you bring greetings from the Negro workers of America."

"But," said I, "I have no mandate from any American Negro workers to say that. There is an official mulatto delegate; perhaps he has a message from the Negro workers."

I said to Eastman, "Why don't you speak?" He said he would like to if they would ask him. Certainly the American Communists had in Max Eastman the finest platform personality to present. Unlike me, he was as pure a Marxist as any of them there and had given the best of his intellect to serve the cause of Communism and extoll the Soviets in America. But because of petty jealousy they cold-shouldered Eastman in Moscow. Perhaps if they had been a little diplomatic about him, he probably would be one of them instead of a Trotskyist today.

I told Zinoviev that I came to Russia as a writer and not as an agitator. When his messenger interpreted what I said, Zinoviev's preacher face turned mean. He was most angry. But I did not mind. My personal triumph had made me aware that the Russians wanted a typical Negro at the Congress as much as I wanted to attend the Congress. The mulatto delegate was a washout. He was too yellow. I had mobilized my African features and won the masses of the people. The Bolshevik leaders, to satisfy the desires of the people, were using me for entertainment. So why should I worry about Zinoviev's frown? Even though he was president of the great Third International, I knew that there was no special gift I could get from Zinoviev after the entertainment was over and ended. I could never be a radical agitator. For that I was temperamentally unfit. And I could never be a disciplined member of any Communist party, for I was born to be a poet.

And now I was demanded everywhere. Sometimes I had to participate in three different meetings in one day: factory meetings, meetings of soviets, youth meetings, educational conferences in colleges and schools, the meetings of poets and writers, and theatrical performances. I was introduced to interesting sections of the new social and cultural life of Moscow and Petrograd.

I was always asked to speak, and so I prepared a few phrases. The Russians adore long speeches, which it did not interest me to make. And so they lengthened mine by asking a lot of questions. I had listened to the American delegates deliberately telling lies about conditions in America, and I was disgusted. Not only the Communist delegates, but radical American intellectuals really thought it was right to buoy up the Russians with false pictures of the American situation. All the speeches of the American delegates, the tall rhetoric, the purple phrases, conveyed fundamentally a common message, thus: "Greetings from America. The workers of America are groaning under the capitalist terror. The revolutionary organizations have been driven underground. But the American Communist Party is secretly organizing the masses. In a few years we will overthrow American capitalism and join our forces with the Russian Communists. Long live the Revolution...." I heard the chairman of the American delegation say: "In five years we will have the American revolution."

The Russians from these speeches pictured the workers of America as denied the right to organize and the rights of free assembly and free speech, as denied representation in Congress, as ridden down by American cossacks, banished in droves from their homes to the Siberias of the Far West, with their imprisoned and exiled leaders escaping to Canada and Mexico and working underground to overthrow the capitalist system. Briefly, the American situation, as they understood it, was similar to that of Russia under the Czarist régime just before the revolution.

The police raid on the illegal Communist party meeting in the beautiful woods of Michigan had been spread all over the Russian newspapers. Everything about that funny raid was so Czarist-Russian-like that the Russians really believed that it was typical of American conditions.

Truly, I could not speak such lies. I knew that the American workers in 1922 were generally better off than at the beginning of the World War in 1914. I was aware, of course, that labor organization in this country was far below the standard of labor organization in England, Germany and France, that American labor was not organized as a political weapon, that in some sections of the country and in certain industries labor was even denied the right to organize, and that radicals were always baited. But Leavenworth was not Siberia. And by no stretch of the imagination could the United States be compared to Czarist Russia.

How, then, could I stand before the gigantic achievement of the Russian revolution and lie? What right had I to tell these people, who had gone through a long death struggle to conquer their country for themselves, that the American revolution was also in travail? What could _I_ presume to tell them? I told them that it was a great honor for me to be there to behold the triumph of their great revolution. I told them that I felt very insignificant and dumb before that wonderful thing. I said that I had come to Russia to learn something, to see with my own eyes and try to write a little of what I had seen.

Invariably I was questioned: "And what about the American revolution?" When I replied I think it was a long way off, the audiences did not like me to say that. I must admit that the Russians in those days were eager to be deceived. I remember that I was asked to attend a large and important meeting of Young Communists. When I had finished talking the president got up and said: "Comrade, we appreciate what you feel about our revolution, but we want you to tell us about the American revolution. When will there be the American revolution?"

It was a direct question and I answered directly. I said that I could not prophesy about an American revolution; but that perhaps if the American ruling class started a wholesale suppression of labor organizations, if the people had to read radical literature in secret, if the radicals had to hold all their meetings in secret, if the liberals and radicals who agitated for more civil liberties and the rights of the working class were deported to the Philippines, then possibly in ten or fifteen years America might develop a situation similar to that in Russia in 1905.

The interpreter, a comrade commander in the navy, asked if he should translate me literally. I said "Word for word." And when he had finished there was no sound of applause. That was the first time that I was not applauded when I spoke, but I preferred that.

The young president of the Young Communists took the platform: "Comrade," he said, "you are a defeatist. The American revolution cannot be so far away. But if that is your opinion, we command you at once to do your part and help make the revolution." I said to the interpreter: "Tell the young comrade that I am a poet."

After the meeting my friend Comrade Venko said to me: "You should have told them the American revolution is right around the corner. That's what they want to hear." (He had lived many years in England and had acquired some Anglicisms.) I said, "You know I read somewhere that Lenin said that it is necessary to face facts and tell the truth always."

"Yes, Comrade," said Venko, "but Lenin is Lenin and we are just ordinary mortals."

Yet in spite of my obstinacy I was still everywhere demanded. When the American Negro delegate was invited to attend meetings and my mulatto colleague went, the people asked: "But where is the _chorny_ (the black)?" The mulatto delegate said: "Say, fellow, you're all right for propaganda. It's a pity you'll never make a disciplined party member."

"Bigger shots than you have said the same thing," I replied. Zinoviev had referred to me as a non-partisan. "My destiny is to travel a different road."

We were sitting in on the discussions as to whether there should be an illegal or legal Communist party in America, and on the Negro in American life. I was there not only as a writer, but I was given the privileges of a special delegate. One thing sticks in my memory about that American delegation in Moscow. It had the full support of the Finnish Federation and the Russian Federation of America. The representatives of these organizations voted _en bloc_, rallying to the support of an illegal party. The argument of the Yankee representatives of the legal group was unanswerable, but they were outvoted every time by the foreign federations. The Finnish and the Russian federations were not only the most highly organized units of the American party, but, so I was informed, they contributed more than any other to the party chest. They controlled because they had the proper organization and the cash.

I said to the mulatto delegate: "That's what Negroes need in American politics--a highly organized all-Negro group. When you have that--a Negro group voting together like these Finns and Russians--you will be getting somewhere. We may feel inflated as _individual_ Negroes sitting in on the councils of the whites, but it means very little if our people are not organized. Otherwise the whites will want to tell us what is right for our people even against our better thinking. The Republicans and the Democrats do the same thing. They give a few plum places to leading Negroes as representatives of the race and our people applaud vicariously. But we remain politically unorganized. What we need is our own group, organized and officered entirely by Negroes, something similar to the Finnish Federation. Then when you have your own group, your own voting strength, you can make demands on the whites; they will have more respect for your united strength than for your potential strength. Every other racial group in America is organized as a group, except Negroes. I am not an organizer or an agitator, but I can see what is lacking in the Negro group."

* * * * *

I listened to James Cannon's fighting speeches for a legal Communist party in America. Cannon's manner was different from Bill Haywood's or Foster's. He had all the magnetism, the shrewdness, the punch, the bag of tricks of the typical American politician, but here he used them in a radical way. I wondered about him. If he had entered Democratic or Republican politics, there was no barrier I could see that could stop him from punching his way straight through to the front ranks.

I think Trotsky was the first of the big Russians to be convinced that there should be a legal Communist party in America, then Rakovsky and finally Zinoviev, a little reluctantly. Bukharin was for the illegal group. He said: "Remember what Jack London has told us about the terror and secret organization in America in his _Iron Heel_." That was so rare that I had to smile. While Cannon was informing the Russians about actual conditions in America, Bukharin was visualizing the America of Jack London's _Iron Heel_. Bukharin always did make me think of that line about some men having greatness thrust upon them. I believe that Lenin said of Bukharin, as Frank Harris said of H.G. Wells, that he could not think. Yet Bukharin was the author of the A B C of Communism, which once had a big vogue among the radicals.

At last even I was asked my opinion of an illegal Communist party in America. I tried to get excused, saying that as I was not an official delegate or a politician, but merely a poet, I didn't think my opinion was worth while. But as my colleague the mulatto was for the illegal party, I suppose they needed a foil. So then I said that although I had no experience of the actual conditions of social life in Czarist Russia, I believed there was no comparison between them and American conditions today. There were certain democratic privileges such as a limited freedom of the press and a limited right of free speech that our governing classes had had to concede because they were the necessary ingredients of their own system of society. And American radicals could generally carry on open propaganda under those democratic privileges. Our Upton Sinclairs, Eugene Debs's, Max Eastmans and Mother Jones's might be prosecuted and imprisoned for a specific offense against the law, but they were not banished for their radical ideas to an American Siberia. And I said I thought that the only place where illegal and secret radical propaganda was necessary was among the Negroes of the South.

What I said about the Negroes of the South was more important than I imagined, and precipitated the Negro question. The Negro question came under the division of the Eastern Bureau, of which Sen Katayama was an active official. Because of his American experience and his education among Negroes, Sen Katayama was important as a kind of arbiter between black and white on the Negro question. It was an unforgettable experience to watch Katayama in conference. He was like a little brown bulldog with his jaws clamped on an object that he wouldn't let go. He apparently forgot all about nice human relationships in conference. Sen Katayama had no regard for the feelings of the white American comrades, when the Negro question came up, and boldly told them so. He said that though they called themselves Communists, many of them were unconsciously prejudiced against Negroes because of their background. He told them that really to understand Negroes they needed to be educated about and among Negroes as he had been.

Think not that it was just a revolutionary picnic and love feast in Moscow in the fifth year of Lenin! One of the American delegates was a southerner or of southern extraction. An important Bolshevik facetiously suggested to him that to untangle the Negro problem, black and white should intermarry. "Good God!" said the American, "if Jesus Christ came down from Heaven and said that in the South, he would be lynched." The Bolshevik said: "Jesus Christ wouldn't dare, but Lenin would."

Also I remember Walton Newbold who was the first Communist candidate elected to the British House of Commons. Saklatvala, the Indian Parsee, had announced himself a Communist only after he had been elected as an independent, but Walton Newbold was the first candidate of the British Communist Party. Just after his election to Parliament Newbold came to Moscow, while the Fourth Congress of International Communism was in session. For any reader who might not understand why a Communist member of the British Parliament should go to Moscow, I may explain that by the parallel of a cardinal going to Rome after receiving his hat. It was a big day for the little insignificant delegation of British Communists when Newbold arrived in Moscow. Of that triumphant arrival, one incident sticks more in my memory. I was informed that a member of the Chinese Young Communists, who was attending the Congress, met Newbold in the lobby of the Lux Hotel. He went up to Comrade Newbold to congratulate him and began: "Comrade Newbold--"

"Hello, Chink," Newbold cut in.

"But Comrade Newbold, I am not a Chink."

"Who told you that you weren't?" said Comrade Newbold as he turned away.

In a little while the incident had flashed like an arrow through Communist circles in Moscow. The young Chinese was a member of an old Chinese clan and had been educated in America. At that time Bolshevik eyes were fixed on China. Chinese soldiers made up some of the crack units of the Red army when Great Britain was supporting the White war against the Reds and tightening the blockade against Russia. I remember Radek's saying to me: "We are pinning our hopes on China more than any other country. If we can make China Red, we will conquer the world."

I don't know if that incident of the young Chinese and the first Communist member of the British Parliament ever reached the ears of the big Bolsheviks. I do know, however--I got it from a good source--that the big Bolsheviks gave Newbold a hell of a skating over the Communist ice of Moscow. Newbold returned to the Parliament of British gentlemen and finally drifted over to the capitalist side.

I was asked to write a series of articles on the Negro group for _Izvestia_, the Moscow organ of the Soviets. Thus I came to meet Steklov, the editor-in-chief. Steklov was a huge man with a leonine head, more picturesque than intelligent. He told me that he was interested in Negroes being won over to the cause of Communism because they were a young and fresh people and ought to make splendid soldiers. I didn't relish that remark out of the mouth of a Communist. So many other whites had said the same thing--that Negroes make good cannon fodder when they were properly led--led by whites to the black slaughter. That filled me with resentment. The head of the French General Staff had proclaimed to the world the same thing, that France with its African empire had an army of a hundred millions. When Trotsky, the chief of all the Bolshevik fighting forces talked to me about Negroes he spoke wisely. Trotsky was human and universal in his outlook. He thought of Negroes as people like any other people who were unfortunately behind in the march of civilization.

Karl Radek was one of the Big Five of the Politbureau, which decided Bolshevik policy in those days. He invited me to dinner at his apartment in the Kremlin along with the Negro delegate of the American C.P. Radek wanted to know if I had a practical policy for the organization of American Negroes. I said that I had no policy other than the suggestion of a Negro _Bund_, that I was not an organizer or an agitator and could not undertake or guarantee any practical work of organization.

The Negro delegate said that I was a poet and a romantic. I said I was not as romantic as he and his illegal party with their secret names and their convention in the wilds of Michigan. Radek laughed, and as I looked at his face set in a thick circle of hair I thought how much he resembled a red spider. Radek said that the Communists should adopt a friendly attitude to all writers who were in sympathy with the soviets. For example, Upton Sinclair, he thought, would be a valuable asset to the revolution if the Communists knew how to handle and use him. The mulatto said that Upton Sinclair was a bourgeois Socialist.