Chapter VII: Part FOUR: The Magic Pilgrimage (2)

"Oh, no, no," said Radek, "I insist that is not the attitude to take. Upton Sinclair is a powerful writer with an enormous influence, and the American Communists should make use of his influence, even though Sinclair is not a Communist. Now with our Gorky--" At this point an infant wailed and Radek said, "My baby comes first." He left the room, to return a few minutes later with the maid, who brought in the baby. Radek and Mrs. Radek kissed and fondled the child. The maid then brought the child to the mulatto, who touched its hand and patted its hair. From the mulatto she brought the child to me, but it shrank away, hid its face, and began to cry. Radek was interested and told the maid to take the child to the mulatto again. The mulatto took the child in his arms and it stopped crying, but when the maid tried me again, the child hid its face and cried. The maid retired with the child, and Radek said: "Now I understand the heart of the difference between white and black in America. It is fear. The Americans are like children, afraid of black complexion, and that is why they lynch and burn the Negro." I told Radek that his deduction was wrong; that in the South, where Negroes were lynched and burned, the black complexion was not a strange thing to the whites, and that the majority of the children of the better classes of the South were nursed from their birth by black women, and that those children were extremely fond of their black foster mothers. Radek said that that was a strange thing.

XVII

Literary Interest

The Congress ended and with a happy relief I turned from political meetings to social and literary affairs. The majority of the delegates had left, but I remained in Moscow writing. I was magnificently paid for poems and articles and became a front-page feature. Sometimes what I received in rubles for an article amounted when I figured it out to fifty American dollars. I had plenty of money to spend for food and cigarettes and even to frequent the cabarets. And besides, I was saving my fare to return to America.

I had no idea that I was being paid as a literary celebrity until one afternoon when I went to a newspaper office to receive my check. There I met an interesting Russian journalist. He was a titled person, a Count Something. After the revolution he had discarded his title, but since the Nep he had resumed it and signed himself Count. He remarked to me facetiously that perhaps his title of the old economic policy might help him to a better place under the New Economic Policy.

When I drew my check he looked at it and said: "Why, if they paid me one-tenth of what they pay you I would be rich. I could go to the casino and gamble and the cabarets to dance and wine."

"Why," I said, "I thought you got as much as I got."

"No," he said, "I couldn't, for you are a guest writer, a big writer--_bolshoi! bolshoi! bolshoi!_" The interpreter who accompanied me was annoyed and he said something to the Count, who immediately clamped up. That, _bolshoi! bolshoi! bolshoi!_ (big! big! big!) was sweet music in my ears and an inspiration. But it also stirred up a hell of discontent within me. Why should I be "big" translated into Russian? It was because I was a special guest of the Soviets, a good subject for propaganda effect, but inflated beyond my actual literary achievement. That was not enough for me. I felt that if I were to be _bolshoi_ as a literary artist in a foreign language, I should first make a signal achievement in my native adopted language, English.

I met some of the notable Russian writers: Chukovsky, Boris Pilnyak, Eugene Zamiatin, Mayakovsky. I was invited to read at literary gatherings. My audiences were always enthusiastic and applauding, and also sometimes critical. "_Tovarish_," I was often told, "your poems are not proletarian." I replied, "My poetry expresses my feelings." I shocked the pure proletarian intellectuals and I was proud that I was a privileged person in Russia, and in a position to shock them. One night I was invited to the Arbat to hear the proletarian poets read and discuss their compositions. Without understanding the language I was able to appreciate certain poems from their swing and movement and the voice of the reciter. And I had a good interpreter who rendered some into English for me. After each poem was delivered there was a general discussion of it. I was particularly pleased with the poem of a slim young man in a coarse peasant smock buttoned up to his chin, and with a worried, unhappy expression in his sensitive features. I knew at once that he was a peasant become proletarian like myself. He gave a charming poem. Even before translation I knew from its communicative color tone and the soft threne running through it like a silver chord that it expressed an individual longing for the life of the country, perhaps the ways that nevermore would be.

As soon as the poet had done I clapped my hands heartily. His poem and personality had unusually excited me, because I rarely applaud. I liked that poet with the intellectual anxiety of his face showing clearly that he was a little bewildered by that world-moving social shake-up. That expression was real, more real to me than the automatic enthusiasm of his fellow poets which seemed to me less sincere. They all jumped on him. "Alexis, you are not a proletarian poet!" And they criticized his subject matter. So I asked my interpreter to let me say a word. I said I thought it was natural for a man who had lived in the country to express his longing for it, whether he was a bourgeois or a proletarian.

Mayakovsky was then the premier proletarian poet. Chukovsky, the popular author of _Crocodile_ and other children's books, did not have the highest opinion of Mayakovsky. He told me that before the revolution Mayakovsky had been a futurist and that he used to wear fantastic clothes and had proclaimed his poems at the court of the Czar. Now Mayakovsky was a thundering proletarian poet. He recited one of his poems for me. It sounded like the prolonged bellow of a bull. He very kindly presented me with a signed copy of his latest book. Also he presented me to his wife, and said that she desired to dance a jazz with me. She was a handsome woman of an Arctic whiteness and appeared as if she had just stepped proudly out of a Dostoyevsky novel. We went to a gypsy cabaret and danced a little, but I am afraid that I did not measure up to the standard of Aframerican choreography. Mayakovsky told me that his great ambition was to visit America. I said I thought he would be a big success there in Russian costume, declaiming his poems in his trumpet voice.

The contemporary Russian poetry of the period which I liked best was that of the peasant poet Yessenin. His intimate friend, Zonov, translated some of his poems, and I was enchanted by their lyric simplicity and profundity. Zonov was always hoping that Yessenin and I would meet, but we never did. Just about the time when I disembarked at Petrograd, Yessenin and Isadora Duncan were landing in New York. And Yessenin did not return to Russia until after I had left in June of 1923.

Zonov held a place either executive or artistic at the Meyerhold Theater, which I visited frequently, for there was a congenial gang there. He often invited me to a private little feast in his den, where he served sweet Caucasian wine and caviar and sometimes champagne. Always with him was a little actress whom he fancied, but who did not seem to love him too much. Zonov looked like a tired professor, and he was always bewailing the absence of Yessenin. He exhibited a snapshot of Yessenin that he carried in his pocket book, and I was startled by its resemblance to the strange dancer I had known in New York. Zonov said unlovely things of Isadora Duncan, because she had married Yessenin and taken him from his friends. He said that Yessenin had proclaimed to them all that he did not love Isadora. But he had married her to get out of Russia, to see Europe and America. I said I did not consider love as always necessary, and that sometimes it might be expedient for a woman to save a man from his male friends. Zonov translated what I said to the actress and she screamed with laughter.

Meyerhold's was the revolutionary constructivist theater, which did the most daring things in dramatic production. There were no curtains. The audience saw clear through to backstage and watched the actors waiting to take their parts and come up to and retire from the front of the stage. The plan was novel. Meyerhold himself was a fanatic crusader in his ardor to make a great revolutionary theater express the revolutionary social system. All the symbols of the machine system were assembled on the stage: dynamos, cranes, scaffolding and turbines, until it resembled a regular workshop. Meyerhold said to me: "We need now great revolutionary plays and playwrights to make my theater the unique dramatic expression of the revolution." I had to talk to Meyerhold through an interpreter, but he impressed me as being more romantic than practical with his idea of making the stage the unique expression of the factory. I felt that after all the worker's life is not limited to the factory and should never be.

I was interested in the Moscow workers' attitude to the Meyerhold Theater. Whole blocks of seats were given to the factories and the barracks, but the theater, which was not very large, was never full. Yet the plays which Meyerhold put on were technically highly interesting. Vastly exciting to me was the presentation of _The Inspector General_, by Gogol. And unforgettable was one realistic scene of another play, in which the Czar was sitting on his chamber pot, with the imperial crown painted big upon it. But the workers and soldiers really preferred the ballet of the Bolshoi theater, the Moscow art theaters, the expressionist theater and the ordinary vulgar theaters. Whenever the workers received free tickets for the above-named theaters they never missed; workers and soldiers always filled them. But the audience of the Meyerhold Theater was of the intelligentsia--students and professional people. While the workers and soldiers showed a distinct preference for the straight familiar entertainment, it was the intelligentsia that was avid of revolutionary drama. The situation made me think of a Frenchman's saying that most of the work of the experimental artists was not intended to enlighten the working class, but to "_épater la bourgeoisie_."

I was invited to dinner by Lunarcharsky, the Commissar of Education and of Arts. He was one of the most flamboyant orators of the Soviet Union and also a talented playwright. I told him a little of the little I knew about education in general in America and Negro education in particular, and I seized the opportunity to mention the Russian theater and the theater of Meyerhold. I remarked that it was interesting that the workers and soldiers seemed to prefer the old ballet to the new experimental theater. Lunarcharsky said that in the early days of the revolution some had desired to suppress the ballet, but he had held out against it. He considered the ballet a great form of art and what he did was to give the workers and peasants and soldiers the chance to enjoy it, which they hadn't had under the old régime. He had conserved and subsidized the best of the classical theaters for the entertainment of the people. But also he had granted subsidies to the experimental theaters to give them their chance to experiment in creating their best. Lunarcharsky was a wise mediator. It is related that when the Moscow masses, excited to high resentment against the Russian Orthodox Church, attempted to destroy the wonderful Cathedral of Vasilly Blazhenny, they were stopped by the intervention of Lunarcharsky. There was not a day of my stay in Moscow that my eyes failed to be glad in contemplation of Ivan the Terrible's super-byzantine burnt offering to humanity. And Lunarcharsky in Moscow appeared like a guardian angel to me because he had made it possible for my eyes to see that glory.

XVIII

Social Interest

My constant companion and interpreter was Venko, a big, strong, gloriously boisterous and comparatively young Russian. He had lived for years in an English Midland town and had left an English wife and children there to come to Russia after the revolution. The only sentimental thing in his mind was his family in England. Sometimes he was perplexed thinking about them. He said he was sure they wouldn't like living in Russia and he had no desire to return to England. He was not sentimental about his substitute Russian wife. He said she had married him only to get good food and a good apartment to live in. He was of peasant origin and she seemed to be from the poor professional class. Their living room constantly reminded me of that of the poor officer in _The Brothers Karamozov_. It was like a seamstress's place, with a sewing machine installed and scraps of cloth lying carelessly about, from which one's clothes picked up bits of thread, and it had a peculiar odor like that of clothes being washed with brown soap. But she was a good wife. Sometimes I stayed at Venko's house, after we had finished at a meeting and resorted to a café to drink vodka. And however late we got there, his wife would get up to serve food.

Venko was an interpreter in the O.G.P.U. He was not connected with the intelligence work. He didn't like office work. He preferred to agitate crowds. He was a marvelously gesticulating, noisy and frothy agitator, but there was not much substance in his phrases. And if you don't give Russians some meat to chew on when you talk to them, they soon tire of you, however brilliant your fireworks may be. If you have something to say they will listen for long hours upon hours, as patient as sheep, even if you are speaking in a strange language. And afterward they will ruminate on it with satisfaction through more long hours of interpreting. Venko was a good enough interpreter. My stay in Moscow was a vacation for him, of which we made a picnic. He was unorthodox about life, whether it was old or new, even as I, and he made the most unguarded and biting criticisms of things and personalities in his profane and boisterous Russian way.

The Moscow Soviet made me an honorary member at one of its meetings. A few days later Venko accompanied me to the office of the Soviet, where I was to receive the little red book that would make me even a more privileged personage than I was. The card was made out by a comrade clerk and my photograph was affixed. Then Venko and I were ushered into the presence of Commissar Kamenev, the president of the Moscow Soviet, for him to affix his signature.

Kamenev was extremely dignified and perfectly attired in black, with white collar and black tie, the best-dressed Bolshevik official (according to the smart European standard) that I had met. He welcomed me with a courteous smile, signed my card, shook my hand, and said he was proud to deliver it to me in the name of the Moscow Soviet. Venko translated. The simplicity of Kamenev's official dignity moved me very much, for in his fine-fitting conventional clothes, I might have mistaken him for a responsible banker, or a Protestant clergyman, or a high-ranking continental diplomat, anything but what Venko startled me by suggesting.

For as we got outside Venko exploded: "Good God, Comrade! I have seen the Czar!"

"What do you mean, the Czar?" I said.

"Kamenev in the place of the Czar. The same clothes, the same manner of wearing his beard! Good God, Comrade, a Jew in the place of the Czar!" Kamenev's features were indeed remarkably like the Czar's.

"Why, don't you like Jews?" I asked in astonishment. It was the first anti-Jewish sentiment I had heard from a Russian Communist.

"No, Comrade, I won't lie to you; I don't like Jews."

"Are you a pogromist?" I asked.

"Good God, Comrade, no. I fought the White-guard pogromists in the Ukraine and was wounded. The White guards started pogroms against the Jews. I fought them and fought the pogroms too, for pogroms are a crime against our Communist party. But I don't like the Jews, Comrade. All the Nep men are Jews."

"All?" I exclaimed.

"Well, if not all, nearly all. And all the money changers of the Black Bourse are Jews."

I record this conversation because it was one of the impressive and unforgettable things I heard from a Communist in Russia. I was particularly impressed because, as a member of a minority group in America that was the victim of blind and bitter prejudice, I was interested to know if the prejudice against the Jews had been automatically swept away with the Czarist régime.

I was interested, because I did not hold to the sentimental idea that the deep-rooted prejudices of a people could be eradicated overnight. What the Bolsheviks had accomplished was to put a stop to the vicious political exploitation of group and race prejudice. I don't think the saintliest human being could ask more. Individual prejudice is one of the most natural sentiments. It is easy enough for an individual prejudice to become a family prejudice, for family ties are real. And it is also easy for such prejudice to spread to a group, for groups exist and the majority of human beings are fundamentally tribal.

I was not at all shocked by Venko's revelation. I was merely enlightened. If he were an intellectual Communist, he could not have spoken to me as he did. I preferred to go around with him, because I could learn more.

One evening Zonov invited me to a party which he did not want Venko to know about, for it was a bourgeois party. The guests were celebrating a holiday of the old régime which had been abolished by the Bolsheviks.

The party of that little remnant of the Russian bourgeoisie was something not to be missed. It was even more Russian, noisy, and elastic than the proletarian parties, for these people did not have to bother about correct Communist conduct. Maybe there was a flickering note of futility, of despair, which made them more reckless, because, unlike the Communists, they had no future. The limited luxury of the Nep for the moment was theirs to enjoy. And they were giving themselves to the moment unforgettably, as you might give yourself to a page of Chekhov.

Russian life seems to blow through space like a big breeze, and this remnant of a bourgeois society was no less a part of that big breeze. How they ate and danced and chattered in loud harmony! Two huge fruit cakes reared themselves like wedding cakes on a sideboard, and there were platters of caviar, sturgeon, salads, cheeses, every delicious food to tickle the palate, and gallons of Caucasian wine and vodka to wash it down.

I was introduced all round as a guest of Russia. They all knew that I was a guest of the Soviets, and if they wanted to make it a guest of Russia instead, I had no objection to the added distinction. One very beautiful and proud-looking young woman got the back of her hand up to my lips with one of those exquisite gestures that only people who are born to them can make, I guess.

I made the best bow that was natural to me for that honor. But the young woman was not satisfied with my bow. She stamped her foot petulantly, though not unkindly, and rubbed my nose with the perfumed back of her hand. I was convinced that something more was expected of me, so I reached up my hand and took hers.

She led me to a seat and said rapidly in a voice that sounded like fine tinkling glass: "Why did you refuse to kiss my hand? Do you think it is degrading for a Communist to kiss a lady's hand?" She spoke lovely English.

"No, _Tovarish_--"

"Please don't call me by that disgusting name," she interrupted. "I am a _barishna_."

"Well, _Barishna_, then, if that is your preference, I did not kiss your hand simply because I don't know how to do it well. Nobody I know kisses hands in America."

The _Barishna_ conceded an indulgent smile. "Tell me," she said, "do you like our Russia--Moscow and Petrograd?" I said that I did.

"As much as London and Paris and Berlin?" she asked.

I said, "More than London and Berlin. But I do not know Paris."

"I believe you," she said. "I know London and Paris and Berlin, but I love Petrograd more. Now there is no Petrograd." "But you have Moscow. Moscow is more beautiful," I said. "Oh, but Petrograd was magnificent before the revolution." I could never imagine Petrograd being more beautiful than Moscow, but so many Russians said it was.

Said the _barishna_, "I tell you, I don't like the foreign Communists. You come here to gaze at us as if we were strange animals in a zoo, to mock at and insult us in our distress. That is hateful."

"_Barishna_," I said, "I don't understand. What do you mean? The foreign Communists come here bringing greetings from the workers abroad to the workers of Russia. They do not come here to mock and insult, but to praise and learn about the revolution."

"Oh, they do mock at us," she insisted. "My young brother works in one of the important departments and he heard a foreign Communist boasting that he had slept all night with a lady of title for ten cents. Now isn't that a mean and despicable thing to say? If a real man could buy a lady of quality for ten cents, shouldn't he be ashamed to mention it?"

"I guess so, _Barishna_," I said. "I don't care anything about the difference between titled and untitled loving."

"But you do think it was an unspeakable thing for a _civilized_ man to say, don't you?" She stressed the word _civilized_ as if I were a savage in her sight and she was eager to hear the opinion of a savage upon a civilized person.

"But, _Barishna_," I said, "the men of your class used to do worse things than that to the women of the class of the man who said he possessed a titled lady for ten cents. They did it to weak and ignorant girls and often didn't even pay the price of ten cents."

"Oh no," said the _barishna_, "no _gentleman_ does that."

"But they do, _Barishna_. Many of your gentlemen still exercise even the medieval _droits de seigneur_ in a different way. That's what Tolstoy's _Resurrection_ is all about."

"So you read our Tolstoy? You like our Russian literature? Oh, I am glad that you do. They have destroyed everything, but they cannot destroy our Russian literature."

I was very embarrassed. Most of the bourgeois people I had met had refrained from saying anything against the Communists, even though they did not praise them. Suddenly the _barishna_ said, "I want to leave Russia; I have friends in England. Would you marry me so that I could leave the country with you--just a formal arrangement?" I hesitated and said that I didn't know that I could.

"But many of the foreigners have married Russian girls and got them through to Berlin," she said.

"Communists too?" I asked.

"Yes, Communists too."

"_Barishna_," I said, "I am sorry. I couldn't shoulder even the formal responsibility. And besides, I am not a Communist. I don't even know yet how I am going to get out of Russia myself."

In my rare contacts with members of the expropriated classes I felt the weirdest sensations, as if pages out of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, Dostoyevsky, Artzybashev and Chekhov were suddenly patterned and peopled with actual life.

* * * * *

Many of the people I knew from the International Club in London were in Russia, some as visiting delegates, while others were permanently settled. Arthur McManus was one of the English-speaking delegates whose company I found congenial, and we were often together, although I found it difficult to keep up with his gargantuan boozing, which perhaps finally knocked him out dead. Both of us were guests of the Soviet fleet at Kronstadt and were photographed together. McManus and I had our points of difference, and sometimes when we were vodka-heated, our tongues flew sharply at each other.

McManus was one of the men who had gunned the hardest after Sylvia Pankhurst. He still felt venomous about her. "Intellectually dishonest," was his pet phrase for describing her. I said I thought Sylvia Pankhurst was as honest as any imperial Briton could be. And I really preferred Pankhurst to persons like Lansbury, and perhaps even to McManus himself. McManus shot up like a rabbit (he was a tiny man) and demanded in his remarkably beautiful Glasgow brogue if I meant to "insinuate" (that was the word he used) that he was an imperialist. I said that I had not said "imperialist," but "imperial," and that all Britons were imperial by birth and circumstances because of the nature of the political set-up of Britain. McManus asked if I did not believe that there were really radical Britons. I said that no man can be more radical than his system can stand. McManus said I was a bloody bigoted black nationalist, and his _b_'s had such a wonderful ring (he stammered a little) that it made me laugh and laugh until both of us fell into a prolonged fit of black-and-white laughter. It was a good satisfying feeling to see McManus laugh aloud, for there was a perpetually crucified expression on his countenance that all the Scotch whisky and Russian vodka in the world could not dispel.

McManus did not appear to like my O.G.P.U. friend and companion, Venko. It was well known among us that Venko was an interpreter and translator for the O.G.P.U., but had nothing to do with the department of investigations and arrests. Anyone with a little knowledge of police organization knows that a police clerk has nothing to do with the actual duties of policing. If Venko had been a secret agent of the O.G.P.U. we would never have known that he worked in that department. And I think I can nose out a secret agent whether he is red or white. I spent a year of my early youth in a police department in a position where I was in constant contact with all the branches of the department. For my part I liked to have Venko along whenever I was invited to a carousel among Communists. For Venko could beat anybody carousing and I thought that if any issue were raised about the affair afterward, Venko would be an excellent asset to have. Whenever I went on a drinking bout with comrades I always saw that they got drunker than myself.

It was necessary to do a little thinking while drinking and laughing. For sometimes funny things happened. Some of the foreign comrades seemed to enjoy playing at political intrigue, apparently without fully realizing that political intrigue, to the Russians, was a serious and dangerous thing. For instance, one of the youthful Indian delegates occupied a room next to mine, and we often went down to our meals and also over to the Comintern offices together. One morning when I called for him his room was locked and there was a seal on the door. The O.G.P.U. had arrested him during the night. Months later I met him in Berlin under the most unusual circumstances, which I shall relate in another place. There was also the young Whitechapel Jew whom I used to know slightly at the International Club in London. He had come to Russia as a youth delegate. But he wasn't functioning as anything when I saw him. He told me fretfully that he had been denounced. One evening he and I were on our way to a motion picture when a group of armed police dramatically pounced upon him. They said something in Russian and he must have answered satisfactorily, for they did not take him. But he was scared, and said, "I am always scared." Shortly after that incident he was gone too, and I never saw him again. When I reached Berlin the following spring I met William Gallacher (now Communist Member of Parliament) and asked him what had become of the boy. "He was a spy," Gallacher said, "and he was fixed."

I said angrily, "But what have you in the little British Communist Party for anybody to spy on?"

"More than you think," said Gallacher, with a mysterious nod of his friendly head.

One night in Moscow I was invited to a celebration given by a minor Communist official. The address had been written down for me and I had to take somebody along to find it, as I did not know my way around Moscow. So I asked Venko; but first we had to attend a meeting of women workers at which he interpreted for me and we did not get to the entertainment until very late. The large apartment was full of comrades when we got there. I think the man who was throwing the treat was a Finn and there were many Baltic types there, blonde and heavy of movement and impassive of spirit. There was plenty of hard drinking, but it was a dull atmosphere, nothing of the stimulating renascent effervescence of the _barishna's_ evening. Venko stepped upon the scene with a burst of boisterous enthusiasm, and drinking a big glass of vodka, he took the center of the room and started speechifying, saying there was a time for good comrades to fight, a time to work, and that now was the time to be festive.

Venko was applauded, and from somewhere McManus came swaying like a tipsy little imp, and pointing at Venko cried in a chanting voice: "O.G.P.U.! O.G.P.U.! O.G.P.U.!" Venko laughed, and all of us. For he and the others thought that McManus was merely putting over a joke about his working for the O.G.P.U. But then McManus shouted in English, "Spy! Spy! I am not going to stay here, I am going home. Spy!"

"What do you mean, Comrade?" Venko asked in amazement. "Did I ever spy on you? Do you want to say that I am here spying on my comrades?" Venko said something in Russian and everybody looked serious. But McManus repeated "O.G.P.U. spy! O.G.P.U. spy!" A murderous look took possession of Venko's face. "Comrade," he cried in a terrible voice, "if you don't stop, I'll kill you; you hear? You're not drunk and irresponsible. If you don't stop, I'll hit you, as little as you are." But McManus shouted again: "O.G.P.U. spy! O.G.P.U.--"

Venko knocked McManus down with one blow and kicked him straight across the room, where he lay curled up like a half-dead snake. "You dirty little Englishman!" cried Venko. "Go back home and make your own revolution and don't stay in Russia to insult a real Communist." McManus picked himself up and began shouting: "I am not a Communist, I am an Anarchist! Anarchist! Anarchist!" A comrade clapped his hand over McManus' mouth, and lifting him up like a kid, carried him out of the room.

I couldn't understand the meaning of McManus' outburst, except perhaps that he, like some of the other visiting comrades, was afflicted with spy mania. The company settled down again to drinking and toasting and the singing of revolutionary songs.

The carousel ended with me again uplifted in glory. Venko had shed every vestige of the murderous brutality of a moment before and was acting like a commanding master of ceremonies. With strong exuberant gestures he toasted me to the company. Always a poet in action, he became a poet in words: "Comrade McKay, you must stay in Russia. We want you. All Russia loves you, not we Communists only, but even the damned bourgeoisie. Tell us, Comrade McKay, why is it you have bewitched us? Tell us, Comrade McKay, what is it? Is it the black magic we have heard about? Comrade McKay, we are bewitched, men, women and children. We all love you, we all want you. Oh, do stay with us forever! Comrade McKay, you must leave Moscow and see Russia. We want you everywhere.... Comrade McKay, my heart is bold"--here Venko brutally beat his breast with his enormous fist--"and my back is broad and strong"--Venko bent himself over. "Get up on my back and I will carry you all over Russia: from Moscow to Kazan, from Kazan to Samara and all the way down the Volga we will go until we reach the Caspian Sea...."

With a great shout I was hoisted up into the air. And McManus, awaking from his drunken anarcho-communist nightmare, came zigzagging into the room just as I was being carried out upon the shoulders of that gloriously tipsy crew down the stairs and into the street and put into a _droshky_ and conveyed to my hotel. My mind was too stimulated and excited to go to sleep, with Venko's picturesque phrases burning in my brain and creating a tumult of thought. I also had under consideration an invitation to join a caravan of comrades from different countries who were planning a tour of Russia with the Caucasus as the ultimate destination. Should I go? Although I had been only in Moscow and Petrograd, I had traveled already so extensively from triumph to triumph. Should I go further and risk anti-climax, or should I make my exit in éclat, cherishing always the richness of my golden souvenir? The thought of leaving seemed to be the most logical. I knew myself enough to know that I was not of the stuff of a practical pioneer, who could become a link in that mighty chain of the upbuilding of the great Russian revolution. And also I reflected like a stoic poet that it was best not to be too popular. When I contemplated the overwhelming snow of Russia, it appeared not like snow anywhere else, but like a thing everlasting, petrified like an ocean of ivory. Yet soon even it would disappear when the season changed. And somewhere from far away beyond the cold Russian nights, glorious like fields of white lilies, another season was coming.

Soon after that, Sen Katayama sent me an invitation to visit the Eastern University. I spoke to a group of students, and then proceeded to visit the dormitories. The rooms, in which the students prepared light meals, appeared somewhat like those of Moslem students in the _medersas_ of Morocco. Imagine my surprise, as I was passing through a dormitory, to hear a familiar voice call my name. I looked back and it was Mrs. Slova, reclining on a cot. Mrs. Slova had been charming to me when I was in London, frequently inviting me to her house for high tea. She was a seamstress and she and her three pretty daughters were always smartly dressed. Some of the captious comrades styled her the bourgeois lady. At that time she was wildly enthusiastic about Russia and just biding her time to get there.

"But what are you doing here?" I asked.

"Don't you know? I am a student going to school again," she said. Mrs. Slova had gone to Russia with her daughters immediately following my return to New York from London. She was glad once more to be in the land of her birth, where formerly she was ostracized because she belonged to the Jewish group. But her three daughters, who were born and reared in comparative comfort in London, were frightened of the confusion of the new burgeoning society. Mrs. Slova quickly and expertly arranged a _mariage de convenance_ for each of her daughters with English comrades visiting Russia and sent them back to London. But she remained in Moscow.

I asked if she did not miss her children. "I raised them right, until now they are of age to act for themselves," she said. "They couldn't fit into the new conditions here. Young people are not like us older heads." I said I thought the Communist movement was primarily the movement of youth, and if she in middle age could adapt herself to the changed life, it should have been easier for her daughters.

"Pooh!" Mrs. Slova exclaimed. "Youth is all right when guided and led by older heads. They act more from enthusiasm than from thinking and will rush headlong into anything when they are excited, for youth is the time of excitement. That is why they are preferred as soldiers. But they soon get sulky when there is no more excitement to feed on. All the great statesmen are middle-aged experienced men, even in Red Russia." I was amazed at Mrs. Slova. I never considered her bourgeois because she dressed well, but I always thought that she was oversentimental and romantic. But after all she was a wise person.

She had no desire to return to England. Communally living in a dormitory, sleeping on a cot with her belongings in a locker, she did not hanker after her comfortable middle-class home in London. She was studying languages in the Eastern University, with the intention of entering the eastern diplomatic service. She didn't think any revolution was going to take place in Western Europe for a long time, she said. The Bolshevik leaders would at last wake up to that fact. She believed in the East, the future of Russia in the East, and that was why she had become a student at the Eastern University.

XIX

A Great Celebration

Of all the big Bolshevik leaders, I had desired most to have a personal word from Lenin. I had been amazed in 1920, when I received in London a message from John Reed informing me that Lenin had brought the Negro question before the Communist Congress and inviting me to visit Moscow.

I had not gone to Moscow then because I did not consider myself qualified to do what John Reed had asked, which was to represent the American Negro group. But now that I was there, I was anxious to get Lenin's opinion out of his own mouth. But Lenin apparently had become very ill again after his couple of speeches at the Communist and Soviet Congresses in the late fall of 1922. At one of the sessions of the Communist Congress I was seated directly behind Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, and I was introduced to her by Clara Zetkin (the first woman member of the Reichstag), who was very friendly and affectionate to me. I seized the chance to ask Krupskaya if it were possible to have an interview with Lenin. She said she would see. But nothing came of that. Some time after I visited the office of _Pravda_ with a Communist sympathizer. He was acquainted with Lenin's sister, who held a position on the staff, and he introduced me to her. I told her that I would like to have a word from Lenin himself and she said frankly that it was impossible, for Lenin was very sick.

Krupskaya was an extremely plain woman, really ugly. Max Eastman was so appalled when he saw her that he said, "Lenin would probably get well if he had a pretty girl!" So I said, "Like the Shunamite virgin, who warmed up King David of Israel in his old age, eh?" But we did not think that Lenin was that type of warrior.

I tried to reach some of the other leaders whom I had not yet met. One day as I was passing through the grounds of the Kremlin with Andreyev, one of the young officials of the Foreign Office, he pointed out to me a strikingly big man wearing high black boots. That, he said, was Stalin, who was chairman of the Committee on National Minorities. It was the first time I heard the name of Stalin, and the information was extremely important. I asked Andreyev if I could meet Stalin. Andreyev said that that was difficult, for Stalin was one of the big Bolsheviks and it was not easy to meet him. But he promised to approach Karakhan about it. Perhaps Andreyev was tardy or unsuccessful in his _démarche_; at any rate I heard no more of it, and my request vanished from my thoughts when I came in contact with the magnetic personality of Trotsky.

Trotsky, although apparently so formidable a character, was, with Bukharin, the most approachable of the big Bolsheviks. I was told that any message sent to Trotsky would be certain to receive his personal attention. So I sent in a request to meet the Commissar of War. In a couple of days I got an answer making an appointment and saying that an aide would call to convey me to the Commissary of War.

Exactly at the appointed hour the following day, as I descended the stairs of the hotel, an official automobile drove up with a military aide and I was escorted to the war department. I passed through a guard of Red sentries and was ushered immediately into Trotsky's office. Trotsky was wearing a commander's uniform and he appeared very handsome, genial and gracious sitting at his desk. He said he was learning English and would try to talk to me in that language.

Trotsky asked me some straight and sharp questions about American Negroes, their group organizations, their political position, their schooling, their religion, their grievances and social aspirations and, finally, what kind of sentiment existed between American and African Negroes. I replied with the best knowledge and information at my command. Then Trotsky expressed his own opinion about Negroes, which was more intelligent than that of any of the other Russian leaders. He did not, like Steklov, the editor of _Izvestia_, imagine Negroes as a great army for cannon fodder. And unlike Radek, he was not quick to make deductions about the causes of white prejudice against black. Indeed, he made no conclusions at all, and, happily, expressed no mawkish sentimentality about black-and-white brotherhood. What he said was very practical and might sound reformist in the ears of radical American Negroes.

Trotsky said in effect that the Negro people constituted a backward group, socially, politically and economically, in modern civilization. I remember distinctly that he used the word "backward." And he stressed the point that Negroes should be educated, should receive not merely academic education, but a broad spreading-out education in all phases of modern industrial life to lift themselves up as a group to a level of equality with the whites. I remember again that he used the word "lift" or "uplift." And he urged that Negroes should be educated about the labor movement. Finally, he said he would like to set a practical example in his own department and proposed the training of a group of Negroes as officers in the Red army.

Before I left, Trotsky asked me to make a summary of my ideas, in writing, for him. This I did, and he wrote out a commentary on it and published both either in _Izvestia_ or in _Pravda_. Unfortunately I lost the original article and its English translation among other effects somewhere in France. But the gist of it all is given above.

Also, Trotsky gave me a permit to visit some of the training schools of the Soviet forces. I had not the slightest idea that that meant a passport to a series of inspections and elaborate receptions. I thought I was going to make perhaps a couple of quiet and unobtrusive visits to the military schools. What transpired was amazing, but also embarrassing, for, except for the martial music, I have never been vastly thrilled by military demonstrations.

For about a month I was fêted by the military forces. I was introduced to military and naval officers and experts. I was shown the mechanism of little guns and big guns. I did a little target practice. I passed through reviews, receptions and banquets, a glamorous parade of militant Red from Moscow to Petrograd.

It started in Moscow. First I was taken on a visit to the crack Kremlin military schools; then to an ordinary soldiers' barracks where the men were resting or on fatigue duty, and also to an extraordinary one where everything and everybody was shipshape as if for an inspection by the highest authorities. Next I visited the tactics school, the infantry school, the cavalry school, the artillery school. It was almost three weeks before I got through my Moscow military itinerary. There were intervals of days between the various visits, of course. And there was a continuous big feeding, until I thought my belly would burst. I ate in the soldiers' mess. I ate in the officers' mess. I ate with the military professors. I asked for _kasha_ and was grandly served, with officers and Communist controllers, an elaborate and most appetizing dish comparable to _arroz Valenciana_ or Moroccan _cous-cous_. While I was eating it I remembered a long sentimental poem by Rose Pastor Stokes which we had published in _The Liberator_, in which she sang of her desire to share the Russian peasant's bowl of _kasha_. Yet as I remember, her first picturesque gesture in Moscow was the buying of a marvelous mink coat and cap, and she was the smartest woman in the Congress.... Thus I learned something new about _kasha_: that it wasn't only the peasant's staple food, but a national food, eaten by all kinds of people, and one which, like rice, may be served in many different and appetizing ways.

The experience of my military induction ended in a mighty students' celebration of the anniversary of the Red army. The vast audience flamed to the occasion as if it were charged through and lit up by one great electric current. Many notables appeared before the illuminated demonstration. And at last I was called to the stage. I made a brief martial speech and was applauded for more. But I hadn't the Russian genius for improvising great appropriate phrases. Someone demanded a poem, and I gave, "If We Must Die." I gave it in the same spirit in which I wrote it, I think. I was not acting, trying to repeat the sublime thrill of a supreme experience. I was transformed into a rare instrument and electrified by the great current running through the world, and the poem popped out of me like a ball of light and blazed.

Now, thought I, the amazing military sensation is ended. It was an enjoyable excitement, but it was also a pleasurable relief to be over and done with it. But this audacious adventurer had reckoned without the Red fleet. From Petrograd came an invitation from the Red fleet, which apparently meant to rival the Red army in its reception. And so I entrained for Petrograd, accompanied by a military cadet. That was my third going to Petrograd. And each time the city appeared better, revealing more of its grandeur. For, unlike Moscow, Petrograd does not start immediately with color and mazy movement and life compact with a suggestion of Oriental lavishness rioting and ringing upon the senses like the music of golden bells.

Petrograd is poised and proud, with a hard striking strength like the monument of Peter the Great, and a spaciousness like the Neva. In its somber might it appeared brooding and a little frowning of aspect at first. Many streets were desert stretches, and massive buildings still bore the gaping wounds of the revolution. But when one became a little more acquainted with the city, the great half-empty spaces became impressive with a lonely dignity and beauty. And the Petrograd people were splendid, too, in that setting, outlined more clearly than the Moscow folk. They were like clumps of trees growing together for protection at intervals in a vast plain.

We arrived in Petrograd on the eve of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Communist Party. That night I went to the Marinsky Theater to see _Prince Igor_ for the first time, and the thumping performance of the ballet stirred me like strokes of lightning with great claps of thunder. It was so much more wildly extravagant than the Eugen Onegin one I saw in Moscow. In New York I had attended two performances of the Pavlova ballet (I think in 1916), and now I compared them with this Petrograd magnificence. The Pavlova ballet was like birds flying with clipped wings, but the Petrograd _Prince Igor_ was like free birds in full flight. Although I did admire immensely the dainty precious Pavlova herself, her company appeared so restrained. I never could work up any enthusiasm for the modernistic contempt of the Russian ballet. The technical excellencies alone thrum on the emotional strings of anyone who has a feeling for geometric patterns.

Isadora Duncan and I argued and disagreed on this subject for a whole evening at her studio in Nice. She said the Russian Revolution should have abolished the ballet and established the free-limbed dance. I said I preferred to see both schools of dancing have the same freedom for expression. Isadora was even more severe on Negro dancing and its imitations and derivations. She had no real appreciation of primitive folk dancing, either from an esthetic or an ethnic point of view. For her every movement of the dance should soar upward. She spoke beautifully about that uplifted upward movement, although it was all wrong. But when she danced for me it was all right. I had never seen her in her great glory and couldn't imagine that she could still be wonderful when she was so fat and flabby. But what she did that night was stupendous. I was the only audience besides the pianist. And she danced from Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Beethoven. Her face was a series of different masks. And her self was the embodiment of Greek tragedy, _un être_ endowed with divinity.

The day following the performance of _Prince Igor_, I paid my respects to the commander of the Baltic fleet. He was a kindly man, and presented me with his photograph. He took me around to the naval preparatory school, the naval gymnasium and the naval academy. The young cadets demanded that I say something. So I told them briefly that I felt singularly honored and happy that my first contact with any fleet should be with the first Red fleet of the world. And that although it was a strange life of which I was entirely ignorant, I thought that, if I had to be a fighter, I would rather enlist in the navy than in the army.

The applause I received was astounding, since what I said was so brief and simple. But quite unwittingly I had stirred the traditional rivalry between army and navy, which may be a little different but no whit less even though they may be Red. But my military escort from Moscow (the only soldier among that fine body of proud and eager young sailors) was not enthusiastic about my quip. I suppose I should have been a little more tactful about the army, since it had first celebrated me as a guest.

That night started the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Communist Party. The opening meeting was held in the Marinsky Theater. Zinoviev presided. The place was packed. As soon as I appeared in the entrance a group of young cadets bore down on me and, hoisting me upon their shoulders, carried me down the length of the aisle and onto the platform, while great waves of cheers rolled down from the jammed balconies and up from the pit. Zinoviev made a great show, greeting me demonstratively on the stage. The Russians are master showmen.

From then on the days of my official visit to Petrograd were a progress of processions and speeches and applause and reviews and banquets. The next day marked my visit to the naval base at Kronstadt. Early in the morning an aviator's fur-lined leather coat and cap and gloves--fit to protect one against the bitterest Siberian blizzard--were brought to my hotel. I breakfasted and togged myself out. Soon afterward a young Red commander called for me in an automobile and we drove to the Petrograd air field. Besides the naval and air officials and photographers, there was quite a crowd gathered to see me take off. I posed for the photographers with some of the officers and sailors, with the pilot, and also with McManus, of the British Communist Party, who had come to Petrograd for the anniversary.