I felt rather guilty before him. I left Moscow in March promising2 to return within a week to join him in his work. Now, four months later, I came to ask his co?peration in an entirely3 different field. I went to the Kremlin determined4 to tell Lunacharsky how I felt about the situation in Russia. But I was relieved of the necessity by the presence of a number of people in his office; there was no time to take the matter up. I could merely inform Lunacharsky of the purpose of the expedition and request his aid in the work. It met with his approval. He signed[Pg 142] our credentials and also supplied me with letters of introduction and recommendation to facilitate our efforts in behalf of the Museum.
While our Commission was making the necessary preparations for the trip to the Ukraine, I found time to visit various institutions in Moscow and to meet some interesting people. Among them were certain well-known Left Social Revolutionists whom I had met on my previous visit. I had told them then that I was eager to visit Maria Spiridonova, of whose condition I had heard many conflicting stories. But at that time no meeting could be arranged: it might have exposed Spiridonova to danger, for she was living illegally, as a peasant woman. History indeed repeats itself. Under the Tsar Spiridonova, also disguised as a country girl, had shadowed Lukhanovsky, the Governor of Tamboy, of peasant-flogging fame. Having shot him, she was arrested, tortured, and later sentenced to death. The western world became aroused, and it was due to its protests that the sentence of Spiridonova was changed to Siberian exile for life. She spent eleven years there; the February Revolution brought her freedom and back to Russia. Maria Spiridonova immediately threw herself into revolutionary activity. Now, in[Pg 143] the Socialist5 Republic, Maria was again living in disguise after having escaped from the prison in the Kremlin.
Arrangements were finally made to enable me to visit Spiridonova, and I was cautioned to make sure that I was not followed by Tcheka men. We agreed with Maria's friends upon a meeting place and from there we zigzagged6 a number of streets till we at last reached the top floor of a house in the back of a yard. I was led into a small room containing a bed, small desk, bookcase, and several chairs. Before the desk, piled high with letters and papers, sat a frail7 little woman, Maria Spiridonova. This, then, was one of Russia's great martyrs8, this woman who had so unflinchingly suffered the tortures inflicted9 upon her by the Tsar's henchmen. I had been told by Zorin and Jack10 Reed that Spiridonova had suffered a breakdown11, and was kept in a sanatorium. Her malady12, they said, was acute neurasthenia and hysteria. When I came face to face with Maria, I immediately realized that both men had deceived me. I was no longer surprised at Zorin: much of what he had told me I gradually discovered to be utterly13 false. As to Reed, unfamiliar14 with the language and completely under the sway of the new faith,[Pg 144] he took too much for granted. Thus, on his return from Moscow he came to inform me that the story of the shooting of prisoners en masse on the eve of the abolition15 of capital punishment was really true; but, he assured me, it was all the fault of a certain official of the Tcheka who had already paid with his life for it. I had opportunity to investigate the matter. I found that Jack had again been misled. It was not that a certain man was responsible for the wholesale16 killing17 on that occasion. The act was conditioned in the whole system and character of the Tcheka.
I spent two days with Maria Spiridonova, listening to her recital18 of events since October, 1917. She spoke19 at length about the enthusiasm and zeal20 of the masses and the hopes held out by the Bolsheviki; of their ascendancy21 to power and gradual turn to the right. She explained the Brest-Litovsk peace which she considered as the first link in the chain that has since fettered22 the Revolution. She dwelt on the razverstka, the system of forcible requisition, which was devastating23 Russia and discrediting24 everything the Revolution had been fought for; she referred to the terrorism practised by the Bolsheviki against every revolutionary [Pg 145]criticism, to the new Communist bureaucracy and inefficiency25, and the hopelessness of the whole situation. It was a crushing indictment26 against the Bolsheviki, their theories and methods.
If Spiridonova had really suffered a breakdown, as I had been assured, and was hysterical27 and mentally unbalanced, she must have had extraordinary control of herself. She was calm, self-contained, and clear on every point. She had the fullest command of her material and information. On several occasions during her narrative28, when she detected doubt in my face, she remarked: "I fear you don't quite believe me. Well, here is what some of the peasants write me," and she would reach over to a pile of letters on her desk and read to me passages heart-rending with misery29 and bitter against the Bolsheviki. In stilted30 handwriting, sometimes almost illegible31, the peasants of the Ukraine and Siberia wrote of the horrors of the razverstka and what it had done to them and their land. "They have taken away everything, even the last seeds for the next sowing." "The Commissars have robbed us of everything." Thus ran the letters. Frequently peasants wanted to know whether Spiridonova had gone over to the Bolsheviki. "If you also forsake32 us, matushka,[Pg 146] we have no one to turn to," one peasant wrote.
The enormity of her accusations33 challenged credence34. After all, the Bolsheviki were revolutionists. How could they be guilty of the terrible things charged against them? Perhaps they were not responsible for the situation as it had developed; they had the whole world against them. There was the Brest peace, for instance. When the news of it first reached America I happened to be in prison. I reflected long and carefully whether Soviet35 Russia was justified36 in negotiating with German imperialism37. But I could see no way out of the situation. I was in favour of the Brest peace. Since I came to Russia I heard conflicting versions of it. Nearly everyone, excepting the Communists, considered the Brest agreement as much a betrayal of the Revolution as the r?le of the German Socialists38 in the war—a betrayal of the spirit of internationalism. The Communists, on the other hand, were unanimous in defending the peace and denouncing as counter-revolutionist everybody who questioned the wisdom and the revolutionary justification39 of that agreement. "We could do nothing else," argued the Communists. "Germany had a mighty40 army, while we had[Pg 147] none. Had we refused to sign the Brest treaty we should have sealed the fate of the Revolution. We realized that Brest meant a compromise, but we knew that the workers of Russia and the rest of the world would understand that we had been forced to it. Our compromise was similar to that of workers when they are forced to accept the conditions of their masters after an unsuccessful strike."
But Spiridonova was not convinced. "There is not one word of truth in the argument advanced by the Bolsheviki," she said. It is true that Russia had no disciplined army to meet the German advance, but it had something infinitely41 more effective: it had a conscious revolutionary people who would have fought back the invaders42 to the last drop of blood. As a matter of fact, it was the people who had checked all the counter-revolutionary military attempts against Russia. Who else but the people, the peasants and the workers, made it impossible for the German and Austrian army to remain in the Ukraine? Who defeated Denikin and the other counter-revolutionary generals? Who triumphed over Koltchak and Yudenitch? Lenin and Trotsky claim that it was the Red Army. But the historic truth was[Pg 148] that the voluntary military units of the workers and peasants—the povstantsi—in Siberia as well as in the south of Russia—had borne the brunt of the fighting on every front, the Red Army usually only completing the victories of the former. Trotsky would have it now that the Brest treaty had to be accepted, but he himself had at one time refused to sign the treaty and Radek, Joffe, and other leading Communists had also been opposed to it. It is claimed now that they submitted to the shameful43 terms because they realized the hopelessness of their expectation that the German workers would prevent the Junkers from marching against revolutionary Russia. But that was not the true reason. It was the whip of the party discipline which lashed44 Trotsky and others into submission45.
"The trouble with the Bolsheviki," continued Spiridonova, "is that they have no faith in the masses. They proclaimed themselves a proletarian party, but they refused to trust the workers." It was this lack of faith, Maria emphasized, which made the Communists bow to German imperialism. And as concerns the Revolution itself, it was precisely46 the Brest peace which struck it a fatal blow. Aside from[Pg 149] the betrayal of Finland, White Russia, Latvia, and the Ukraine—which were turned over to the mercy of the German Junkers by the Brest peace—the peasants saw thousands of their brothers slain47, and had to submit to being robbed and plundered48. The simple peasant mind could not understand the complete reversal of the former Bolshevik slogans of "no indemnity49 and no annexations50." But even the simplest peasant could understand that his toil51 and his blood were to pay the indemnities52 imposed by the Brest conditions. The peasants grew bitter and antagonistic53 to the Soviet régime. Disheartened and discouraged they turned from the Revolution. As to the effect of the Brest peace upon the German workers, how could they continue in their faith in the Russian Revolution in view of the fact that the Bolsheviki negotiated and accepted the peace terms with the German masters over the heads of the German proletariat? The historic fact remains54 that the Brest peace was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution. No doubt other factors contributed to the debacle, but Brest was the most fatal of them.
Spiridonova asserted that the Left Socialist Revolutionary elements had warned the [Pg 150]Bolsheviki against that peace and fought it desperately55. They refused to accept it even after it had been signed. The presence of Mirbach in Revolutionary Russia they considered an outrage56 against the Revolution, a crying injustice57 to the heroic Russian people who had sacrificed and suffered so much in their struggle against imperialism and capitalism58. Spiridonova's party decided59 that Mirbach could not be tolerated in Russia: Mirbach had to go. Wholesale arrests and persecutions followed upon the execution of Mirbach, the Bolsheviki rendering60 service to the German Kaiser. They filled the prisons with the Russian revolutionists.
In the course of our conversation I suggested that the method of razverstka was probably forced upon the Bolsheviki by the refusal of the peasants to feed the city. In the beginning of the revolutionary period, Spiridonova explained, so long as the peasant Soviets61 existed, the peasants gave willingly and generously. But when the Bolshevik Government began to dissolve these Soviets and arrested 500 peasant delegates, the peasantry became antagonistic. Moreover, they daily witnessed the inefficiency of the Communist régime: they saw their products lying at side stations and rotting away,[Pg 151] or in possession of speculators on the market. Naturally under such conditions they would not continue to give. The fact that the peasants had never refused to contribute supplies to the Red Army proved that other methods than those used by the Bolsheviki could have been employed. The razverstka served only to widen the breach62 between the village and the city. The Bolsheviki resorted to punitive63 expeditions which became the terror of the country. They left death and ruin wherever they came. The peasants, at last driven to desperation, began to rebel against the Communist régime. In various parts of Russia, in the south, on the Ural, and in Siberia, peasants' insurrections have taken place, and everywhere they were being put down by force of arms and with an iron hand.
Spiridonova did not speak of her own sufferings since she had parted ways with the Bolsheviki. But I learned from others that she had been arrested twice and imprisoned64 for a considerable length of time. Even when free she was kept under surveillance, as she had been in the time of the Tsar. On several occasions she was tortured by being taken out at night and informed that she was to be shot—a favoured Tcheka method. I mentioned the subject to[Pg 152] Spiridonova. She did not deny the facts, though she was loath65 to speak of herself. She was entirely absorbed in the fate of the Revolution and of her beloved peasantry. She gave no thought to herself, but she was eager to have the world and the international proletariat learn the true condition of affairs in Bolshevik Russia.
Of all the opponents of the Bolsheviki I had met Maria Spiridonova impressed me as one of the most sincere, well-poised, and convincing. Her heroic past and her refusal to compromise her revolutionary ideas under Tsarism as well as under Bolshevism were sufficient guarantee of her revolutionary integrity.
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1
credentials
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| n.证明，资格，证明书，证件 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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zigzagged
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| adj.呈之字形移动的v.弯弯曲曲地走路，曲折地前进( zigzag的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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9
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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ascendancy
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| n.统治权，支配力量 | |
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fettered
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| v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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discrediting
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| 使不相信( discredit的现在分词 )； 使怀疑； 败坏…的名声； 拒绝相信 | |
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inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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stilted
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| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
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illegible
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| adj.难以辨认的，字迹模糊的 | |
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32
forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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credence
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| n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证 | |
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Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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38
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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39
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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40
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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41
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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42
invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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43
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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44
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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45
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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46
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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47
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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48
plundered
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
indemnity
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| n.赔偿，赔款，补偿金 | |
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50
annexations
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| n.并吞，附加，附加物( annexation的名词复数 ) | |
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51
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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52
indemnities
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| n.保障( indemnity的名词复数 )；赔偿；赔款；补偿金 | |
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53
antagonistic
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| adj.敌对的 | |
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54
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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55
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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56
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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57
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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58
capitalism
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| n.资本主义 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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61
soviets
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| 苏维埃（Soviet的复数形式） | |
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62
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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63
punitive
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| adj.惩罚的，刑罚的 | |
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64
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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