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INSIDE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
INSIDE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Catherine Breshkovskaia, the “Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution.” INSIDE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION BY RHETA CHILDE DORR ILLUSTRATED New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1917 All rights reserved Copyright, 1917, By THE EVENING MAIL Copyright, 1917, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY ———— Set up and Electrotyped.
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CHAPTER I TOPSY-TURVY LAND
CHAPTER I TOPSY-TURVY LAND
Early in May, 1917, I went to Russia, eager to see again, in the hour of her deliverance, a country in whose struggle for freedom I had, for a dozen years, been deeply interested. I went to Russia a socialist by conviction, an ardent sympathizer with revolution, having known personally some of the brave men and women who suffered imprisonment and exile after the failure of the uprising in 1905-6. I returned from Russia with the very clear conviction that the world will have to wait awhile before
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CHAPTER II “ALL THE POWER TO THE SOVIET”
CHAPTER II “ALL THE POWER TO THE SOVIET”
About the first thing I saw on the morning of my arrival in Petrograd last spring was a group of young men, about twenty in number, I should think, marching through the street in front of my hotel, carrying a scarlet banner with an inscription in large white letters. “What does that banner say?” I asked the hotel commissionaire who stood beside me. “It says ‘All the Power to the Soviet,’” was the answer. “What is the soviet?” I asked, and he replied briefly: “It is the only government we have in
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CHAPTER III THE JULY REVOLUTION
CHAPTER III THE JULY REVOLUTION
Every one who has read the old “Arabian Nights” will remember the story of the fisherman who caught a black bottle in one of his nets. When the bottle was uncorked a thin smoke began to curl out of the neck. The smoke thickened into a dense cloud and became a huge genie who made a slave of the fisherman. By the exercise of his wits the fisherman finally succeeded in getting the genie back into the bottle, which he carefully corked and threw back into the sea. Kerensky tried desperately to get th
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CHAPTER IV AN HOUR OF HOPE
CHAPTER IV AN HOUR OF HOPE
There was an hour when the sunrise of hope seemed to be dawning for the Russian people, when the madness of the extreme socialists seemed to be curbed, the army situation in hand, and a real government established. This happened in late July, and was symbolized in the great public funeral given eight Cossack soldiers slain by the Bolsheviki in the July days of riot and bloodshed in Petrograd. I do not know how many Cossacks were killed. Only eight were publicly buried. It is entirely possible th
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CHAPTER V THE COMMITTEE MANIA
CHAPTER V THE COMMITTEE MANIA
In writing a plain statement of the condition of anarchy into which Russia has fallen, I am very far from wishing to create a prejudice against the Russian people. I don’t want anybody to distrust or scorn the Russians. I want the American people to understand their situation in order that, through sympathy, patience and common sense, they can find some way of helping them out of the blind morass that surrounds them. All the educated Russians I have met like Americans and trust them. They will n
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CHAPTER VI THE WOMAN WITH THE GUN
CHAPTER VI THE WOMAN WITH THE GUN
The women soldiers of Russia, the most amazing development of the revolution, if not of the world war itself, I am disposed to believe, will, with the Cossacks, prove to be the element needed to lead, if it can be led, the disorganized and demoralized Russian army back to its duty on the firing line. It was with the object, the hope, of leading them back that the women took up arms. Whatever else you may have heard about them this is the truth. I know those women soldiers very well. I know them
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CHAPTER VII TO THE FRONT WITH BOTCHKAREVA
CHAPTER VII TO THE FRONT WITH BOTCHKAREVA
Women of all ranks rushed to enlist in the Botchkareva battalion. There were many peasant women, factory workers, servants and also a number of women of education and social prominence. Six Red Cross nurses were among the number, one doctor, a lawyer, several clerks and stenographers and a few like Marie Skridlova who had never done any except war work. If the working women predominated I believe it was because they were the stronger physically. Botchkareva would accept only the sturdiest, and h
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CHAPTER VIII IN CAMP AND BATTLEFIELD
CHAPTER VIII IN CAMP AND BATTLEFIELD
The women’s regiment did not have to fight its brothers in arms, however. The woman commander took care of that. She just walked into that mob of waiting soldiers and barked out a command in a voice I had never before heard her use. It reminded me somewhat of that extra awful motor car siren that infuriates the pedestrian, but lifts him out of the road in one quick jump. Botchkareva’s command was spoken in Russian, and a liberal translation of it might read: “You get to hell out of here and let
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CHAPTER IX AMAZONS IN TRAINING
CHAPTER IX AMAZONS IN TRAINING
If the first battle of the first women soldiers in the world had been fought on American soil imagine what the newspapers would have made of the story. Especially if the women had gone into battle with the object of rallying a demoralized American army, and had succeeded in their object. And this is all the space Botchkareva’s victorious battalion was accorded in Novoe Vremya , one of the best newspapers in Russia. After describing briefly the engagement on the Smorgon-Krevo front, in which pris
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CHAPTER X THE HOMING EXILES—TWO KINDS
CHAPTER X THE HOMING EXILES—TWO KINDS
In a great, bare room, furnished with rows of narrow cots like a hospital, but with none of the crisp whiteness of the hospital, nor any of its promise of relief and restoration, a young man, propped with pillows, played on a concertina. He was white, emaciated, near the end of his young life. His eyes were like banked fires. He sat up in bed and in the intervals of coughing made the most wonderful music on that concertina, much more wonderful than I had ever dreamed the humble instrument could
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CHAPTER XI HOW RASPUTIN DIED
CHAPTER XI HOW RASPUTIN DIED
Looking at these exiles, these wrecks of humanity done to death in the name of the state, and reflecting that their number was so great that months had to elapse before they could all be located and brought back to life, it is not to be wondered at that most Russians believed the autocracy a thing too strong to be shaken. But the February revolution revealed that the autocracy was a tree rotten at the roots. At a touch it collapsed. The Russian autocracy went down like a house of cards, and with
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CHAPTER XII ANNA VIRUBOVA SPEAKS
CHAPTER XII ANNA VIRUBOVA SPEAKS
“Let any American mother imagine that her only son, who came into the world a weakling, and whose life had always hung on a thread, had been miraculously restored to health. Suppose also that the person who did this wonderful thing was not a doctor, but a monk of that mother’s church. Wouldn’t it be natural for that mother to regard the man with almost superstitious gratitude for the rest of her life? Wouldn’t it also be natural that she would want to keep the monk near her, at least until the c
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CHAPTER XIII MORE LEAVES IN THE CURRENT
CHAPTER XIII MORE LEAVES IN THE CURRENT
In an even, passionless voice Anna Virubova went on to tell me the story of the murder in the Yussupoff palace, as it had appeared to the slain man’s devotees in Tsarskoe Selo. “We knew that certain people were plotting to kill Rasputin. His life was attempted, you may know, at least three times. But it never entered our minds that Prince Yussupoff was in the plot. He was not a favorite with the Empress, who thought him a very dissolute young man. Still, he was in Tsarskoe once in a while, becau
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CHAPTER XIV THE PASSING OF THE ROMANOFFS
CHAPTER XIV THE PASSING OF THE ROMANOFFS
I asked Mme. Virubova to tell me what happened at the palace during the revolution and how the royal family received the news of its overthrow. “I can tell you only what I personally know,” she replied, “and I was very ill in bed when it happened. All the children had measles and, helping the empress nurse them, I was stricken too. The Empress was an angel. She went from one room to another caring for us, waiting on us, while all the time anxiety must have been tearing cruelly at her heartstring
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CHAPTER XV THE HOUSE OF MARY AND MARTHA
CHAPTER XV THE HOUSE OF MARY AND MARTHA
On the afternoon of the day when Nicholas II., deposed emperor and autocrat of all the Russias, with his wife and children left Tsarskoe Selo and began the long journey toward their place of exile in Siberia, I sat in a peaceful convent room in Moscow and talked with almost the last remaining member of the royal family left in complete freedom in the empire. This was Elisabeta Feodorovna, sister of the former empress and widow of the Grand Duke Serge, uncle of the emperor. The Grand Duke Serge w
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CHAPTER XVI THE TAVARISHI FACE FAMINE
CHAPTER XVI THE TAVARISHI FACE FAMINE
The Romanoffs gone, the soviets apparently yielding to Kerensky’s demand for a coalition government, and finally voting to give him almost supreme power, what then stood in the way of restoring order in the army and civil life? Readers of the despatches in the daily press last September and later must have puzzled over this question. The fact is that while there were indications that the last convention held in Petrograd by the Russian Socialists, the so-called Democratic Council, ended in a par
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CHAPTER XVII GENERAL JANUARY, THE CONQUEROR
CHAPTER XVII GENERAL JANUARY, THE CONQUEROR
After Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeated legions had fled from Russia to freeze and starve and die by thousands in a frenzied attempt to get back to France, the victorious commander of the Russian army said that his two greatest aides had been General January and General February. The relentless cold and storm of a Russian winter were foes too strong for Bonaparte to conquer. They sent him to St. Helena, and the same strong foes this winter are going to rout and banish the Bolsheviki. The Russian rev
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CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE WORKERS OWN THEIR TOOLS
CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE WORKERS OWN THEIR TOOLS
John Stevens, head of the railroad commission sent to Russia from the United States, has shown the Russian government how to increase its transportation facilities sixty per cent. In a report made public in mid-August Mr. Stevens said that the chief cause of the railroad crisis was bad management. Locomotives traveled 2,800 versts a month when they could be made to travel 5,000 versts. A verst is about three-quarters of a mile. Twice as much freight as was being hauled could be carried, said Mr.
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CHAPTER XIX WHY COTTON CLOTH IS SCARCE
CHAPTER XIX WHY COTTON CLOTH IS SCARCE
When I got on the train to leave Russia for the United States the first familiar face I saw was that of Mr. Daniel Cheshire, mill owner and operator of Petrograd. “I’m going home to England to enlist,” he said, as we shook hands. “What have you done with your mills?” I asked. “I have left them to the Tavarishi,” replied Mr. Cheshire, “I thought I might as well.” Daniel Cheshire is not the only large manufacturer who has abandoned his business after a vain struggle to cope with the situation crea
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CHAPTER XX MRS. PANKHURST IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER XX MRS. PANKHURST IN RUSSIA
Emmeline Pankhurst, the English militant suffrage leader, known to thousands in this country, went to Russia in late June of this year to organize the women of the country and help them to support the provisional government and to oppose the Bolsheviki or extremists. She succeeded in organizing a group of strong and influential women leaders, and she might have accomplished great good had not Kerensky frowned on the movement. Mrs. Pankhurst’s project, in my opinion, was one of Kerensky’s many lo
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CHAPTER XXI KERENSKY, THE MYSTERY MAN
CHAPTER XXI KERENSKY, THE MYSTERY MAN
It is unfortunate that nothing has ever been written about Kerensky except eulogies. However deserved they may be, eulogies have the fault of not being informative. Who is Kerensky? What kind of a man is he? Why hasn’t he restored order in Russia? If he cannot restore order, discipline the army and make it fight, why doesn’t he step aside and let somebody else try? These questions have been asked on all sides. I may not be able to answer all or any conclusively. But I was in Russia three months,
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CHAPTER XXII THE RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS
CHAPTER XXII THE RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS
One of the main contentions of the extremists of the Russian revolution concerns the self-governing rights of the states, large and small, which make up the empire. I met no one in Russia who did not agree that each one of the states had a right to local autonomy, but I met many who feared greatly lest the empire should be dismembered and should fall apart into a number of small, weak states. Especially disastrous would this be, both to Russia and to the Allies, if it happened during the war. Th
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CHAPTER XXIII WILL THE GERMANS TAKE PETROGRAD?
CHAPTER XXIII WILL THE GERMANS TAKE PETROGRAD?
Will the German army get to Petrograd and Moscow? The answer to this question is, they probably can if they want to, but it is hardly possible that they do. If they have that object, and if they succeed in taking Moscow it will simply add one more to the psychological blunders committed by the German government since the war began. The disorganized Russian army might not pull itself together and fight for Petrograd, but the army and the people would fight to the death for Moscow. It is their hol
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CHAPTER XXIV RUSSIA’S GREATEST NEEDS
CHAPTER XXIV RUSSIA’S GREATEST NEEDS
It would be a very terrible thing for democracy and the world’s peace if the Allies, observing the anarchy into which Russia has fallen, should relax any of their efforts to help her back to a sound military, economic and social foundation. The first impulse is to beseech the United States government to refuse to loan money to such an unstable government, and even to decline to send Red Cross relief to a people who will not try to help themselves. But second thought reveals the unwisdom of deser
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CHAPTER XXV WHAT NEXT?
CHAPTER XXV WHAT NEXT?
Man must hope. He must believe that his fight is a winning fight or he must give up in despair. That is why the Americans place credence in every despatch from Russia which seems to indicate that the disorganized fighting forces are being whipped into form again. That is why any hint that Kerensky had not succeeded in restoring order in the empire was for some time received with incredulity by the reading public. But why refuse to face the facts? We must face them some time. In late September I
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