Louise Stevens Bryant

“ When Kalinin called her she went forward but one could see that she had already given up hope and would not fight any further; perhaps for the first time the real significance of the revolution had become clear to her.
It is hard for Americans, where a peasant population has never existed, to realize the position of the peasants in a revolution. They are the rock in the whirlpool. They are the great levellers, the great destroyers as well as the great builders. In Russia they pulled down everything about them and they were not always gentle in their wrath. ”

“ What would it profit enemies of Soviet Russia to kill a peasant like Kalinin? Are there not a million Kalinins? To sweep the Kalinins out of Russian political life would be like sweeping back the sea. To destroy the Soviets would be to destroy Russia. Even Sir Paul Dukes, of the British Secret Service, agrees that Soviets are the natural offspring of the revolution, conceived years ago under the Tsardom. Michael Ivanovitch Kalinin reflects the new Russia more faithfully than any other Government official. ”

“ Diplomacy is an inseparable part of Mr. Tchicherin’s existence. He eats, drinks and sleeps with the affairs of state, looks at life as a chess game and is continually checkmating, even in ordinary conversation. Lenin approves of him and feels for him a warm personal affection in spite of the fact that the Premier so dislikes eccentricities. He knows that Tchicherin can be trusted, that he has an invaluable knowledge of international affairs and more important than all that, that he will never make any real decision without consulting Lenin. ”

“ LEON TROTSKY, SOVIET WAR LORD
Minister of War, Leon Trotsky, has no prototype in history. Therefore, he cannot be compared, he can only be contrasted. He is without question the most dramatic character produced during the whole sweep of the Russian revolution and its only great organizer. No man will overshadow his eminence in the history of the revolution except Lenin. They will remain the two most distinguished personalities. They are complementary figures. Lenin represents thought; Trotsky represents action. ”

“ It is time Russia got acquainted with America. Because of the old censorship we never learned the value of reporters. And now that we are through forever with isolation, except when it is forced upon us, we ought to acquaint ourselves thoroughly with other countries. The women ought to know, for example, how American women got suffrage and what part women take in public affairs. We ought to know the status of the immigrants and of the Negroes, how you solve your unemployment problems, the status of farmers, of city workers, the percentage of wealth controlled by rich people. ”

“ Dzerzhinsky adores Lenin and serves him with the abject faithfulness of a slave; in his eyes Lenin can do no wrong. In the first days of the terror, he brought his doubts before Lenin, doubts which had only to do with the effect of such measures on the national and international political situation and not with his own soul. Lenin, when all is said, is the only man who cannot afford to be swayed by doubts. ”

“ From that moment until I left Moscow the Turks did everything possible to make life less tragic for me, and I [Pg 152] gained an insight into the Turkish character which I had never imagined. The Turks have a peculiar capacity for friendship. And friendship, once given, has no bournes; a friend is a friend through everything—sorrow, dishonor, poverty, as well as wealth and success. An enemy, on the other hand, is beyond all consideration; he is spared nothing, forgiven nothing.
Enver has the personal vanity of the enthusiast and he imagines that everything he does he does well. ”

“ And Kollontai says, “There is no doubt that the poor, insufficient pay for female labor continues, in Soviet Russia, to serve as a chief factor. Under the law the earnings of men and women are equal, but the great majority of women are unskilled laborers. It resolves itself into a question of how to make female labor skilled labor. And the second case is the political backwardness of women. It is not the woman who is inspired and carried away by the idea of the revolution and the desire to aid reconstruction who falls into this pool of degradation.” ”

“ The air is filled with flames and fumes. The shapes of men, seen through the smoke, become distorted and unreal. Promethean supermen, they seem, giants in sin or virtue, Satans or saviours. But, in truth, behind the screen of smoke and flame they are like other men: no larger and no smaller, no better and no worse: all creatures of the same incessant passions, hungers, vanities and fears.
So it is in Russia. And in this book I have tried to show the leaders of the revolution as they really are, as I know them in their homes, where the red glare does not penetrate and they live as other men. ”

“ Trotsky believes in peace. He has told me this almost every time I talked with him, but he is, nevertheless, an apostle of force. “The happiest moment of my life,” he said, “was when I thought I could turn the Red Army into a Labor Army to reconstruct Russia.” Trotsky would probably have been very successful with his Labor Army, provided he could have kept it really an army, with army rules and discipline. An army is Trotsky’s perfect medium for work. He likes a Labor Army better than a fighting army because it makes him happier to build than to destroy. ”

“ In a little while, because of their superior knowledge they become men of importance, leading their local Soviets and attending the Congresses in Moscow.
If Trotsky can not understand the little ridiculous points of diplomatic etiquette, the cunning and sensitiveness which mark a good diplomat, he thoroughly comprehends how to take advantage of every modern appliance and every modern method of running the War Office. No War Office under any Tsar could boast such order as Trotsky’s. Everything goes like clock-work, you are aware of energy and efficiency; it has the hum of a high-power engine. ”

“ In Moscow he was the avant coureur of the new understanding between Russia and the Mohammedan world, which means Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, Bokhara and enough of India to shake the British Empire.
Any man who has brains and gives all his being to the task in hand is bound to possess personality and power and, very likely, charm. Enver Pasha certainly has charm, in spite of his very obvious opportunism, and the cruelty and lack of conscience which a fatalistic belief inspires. ”

“ And it is like him to admire Secretary of State Hughes, and call him a “fine, high-minded man” without realizing that Hughes’ high-mindedness is that of a stern, religious brother who refuses to admit again into the family of nations the erring and prodigal Soviet Republic; that it was Hughes who stood out alone against the Genoa conference until he stampeded other members of the Cabinet and even overpowered the President. Hughes regards Communism as immoral as Tchicherin regards capitalism. ”

“ It was the peasants, and not the Communists, who most stubbornly opposed recognition of the foreign debts. It was the peasants who demanded from every government since the Tsar’s, schools, hospitals and protection from invasion, but who always resented the most ordinary and reasonable tax put upon them by the central authorities. Until Kalinin had educated them they were wont to ask like children, “Aren’t we free now? Can’t we be left alone?” ”

“ As Lenin grew stronger, after his operation, Rykov went to the country about once a fortnight to consult him on vital matters of state. It is his opinion that Lenin will soon be back in the Kremlin. But if Rykov’s prediction does not prove true, Rykov himself will be able to guide, with a steady hand, the shifting fortunes of war-torn and famine-ridden Russia. I do not think he will go down in history as a great figure; he will probably be overlooked by history as has many another such unselfish and solid builder of empire, who worked always in the shadow of a greater man. ”

“ Another time she said, “When our revolution came we obtained equality for everybody who was willing to work. Don’t fail to comprehend what a stride that was! We didn’t have to have a civil war to free the Tartars or the Turko-men as you did to free the Negro, and it certainly never was in anybody’s mind, on any side, to disenfranchise Russian women, much less to nationalize them.”
Nevertheless, Madame Kollontai finds even a revolutionary government can be run too largely by men. If it does nothing worse it has a very bad habit of overlooking women. ”

“ The same intolerable breakdown of economic life, which alone makes revolution possible, also predestines revolution to almost certain failure. That dull beast, the public, will move to revolution only when life has become unbearable, only when the established order has broken down so completely that ruins alone remain. Revolution does not come before ruin. And to build on ruins a new and fairer life is a task almost beyond the powers of men. ”

“ Thus wrote the Soviet Minister of Education, Anatol Lunacharsky, in those remote days when a revolution was only a vague goal and when he could not believe that in his own lifetime a day would come when he would be torn from his quiet study and forced to put his dreams into practice, or as near into practice as dreams ever reach. ”

“ If Nikolai Lenin had been a mediocrity, he would never have appointed Lunacharsky guardian of the art of Russia, and Russian art would now be scattered to the four winds, swallowed up in private collections or enriching the pockets of speculators. A mediocrity will not admit his [Pg 74] limitations even if he is aware of them, but Lenin somehow understands that a man cannot spend his life studying political economy and carrying on revolutionary propaganda, and at the same time be an art connoisseur. ”

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

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

“ His heart and his mind wished to direct it toward the crimson portals of socialism. Russia, however, in its stampede seems to have slowed up dangerously near the old, familiar gates of capitalism. Nevertheless, she will never be the same; Lenin is responsible for it that Russia has forever gained the larger fruits of the revolution.
Legends spring up around every famous man, manufactured largely by his enemies, who spread tales of his lavish extravagance, his vices, his affairs with women. ”

“ The Cheka objected, the Foreign Office objected and the Moscow Soviet objected, but Lenin’s will, as usual, prevailed. This generosity toward his enemies costs Lenin nothing and helps him to maintain his astonishing equilibrium.
Every man in Lenin’s cabinet, with the exception of Trotsky and Tchicherin, has been working with him for over twenty years; they really are his disciples. He knows their characteristics as well as if they were his own children. He knows just how much brains and ability each one has. ”