KOLLONTAI
KOLLONTAI
MADAME ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI
AND THE
WOMAN’S MOVEMENT
Madame Alexandra Kollontai believes that everything which exalts is good; being a feminist, she exalts women. She tells women that they are capable of a new freedom, beautiful and unexampled. She is so carried away by her enthusiasm that she is unmindful of how easily wings are broken in this age of steel. But if her inspiration, which aims to lift women to the skies, lifts them only from their knees to their feet, there will be nothing to regret. Civilization, in its snail-like progress, is only stirred to move its occasional inch by the burning desire of those who will to move it a mile. And when faith is pure enough it does not demand realization.
Kollontai is like a sculptor working on some heroic figure of woman and always wondering a little why the slim, inspired, unmaternal figure of her dreams is forever melting back into a heavy, earthy figure of Eve.
It often happens that a character is best portrayed by conversations which show the manner of mind. In this chapter I have quoted Madame Kollontai at some length because she is the only articulate voice of the new order for women which has been so greatly misunderstood outside of Russia; that order which claims that by consecrating oneself to the state one lives truer to oneself and to others.
As champion of her sex, she cries to the women of Russia: “Cast off your chains! Do not be slaves to religion, to marriage, to children. Break these old ties, the state is your home, the world is your country!â€
And who are the women she thus extolls? They are the women of the factories and the fields; the women who sweep the streets, who scrub, who carry heavy burdens, who plow and weave and drudge. Will they be able to follow her to such heights? By our logic, no, but Kollontai preaches a new logic for Russia.
Besides, we must consider just what she means by “casting off chains.†I have heard her say all this another way and it did not sound so lofty or impossible. To an individualist, it did not even sound attractive. Last summer she admonished awomen’s congress in this manner: “We must build a new society in which women are not expected to drudge all day in kitchens. We must have, in Russia, community restaurants, central kitchens, central laundries—institutions which leave the working woman free to devote her evenings to instructive reading or recreation. Only by breaking the domestic yoke will we give women a chance to live a richer, happier and more complete life.â€
The material which Kollontai is so passionately attempting to mould is the peasant mind. It seems to me that peasant women are naturally slow-moving and stolidly honest and will accept only as much of Kollontai’s philosophy as they find compatible with or necessary to the immediate situation; not because they are lacking in spirituality, for they are capable of deep religious fervor, but simply because much of it would be inharmonious and artificial to their normal development. At present her mission is to awaken them so that they may build a truth of their own which need by no means be a lesser truth than Kollontai’s. If she attempts to make them swallow her formula intact she will certainly fail. If she compromises as Lenin compromises and as Kalinin does, she will perform for Russia a never-to-be-forgotten task.To-day everything has been melted down in the crucible of the revolution. The only banner-bearer who counts is the one who will give to the great mass of those emerging into the new day the broad fundamental things of life.
Madame Kollontai is the only woman who has ever been a member of the Russian Cabinet. She puts forth the argument that women have more conscience than men and therefore do not attempt to obtain offices which they are not fitted for by previous training, and that this is the reason woman’s influence is so slight in Russia to-day. But her history refutes her theory. She herself was particularly fitted for the position of Minister of Welfare. Her record was splendid. She lost her post because she was a woman and allowed her love for her husband to interfere with her political judgment.
Early in 1918, Madame Kollontai, who was the widow of a Tsarist officer, married Fedore Dubenko, the picturesque leader of the turbulent Kronstadt sailors. Dubenko is a handsome, daring young man, some years her junior. Shortly after the wedding Dubenko was arrested. He had entrusted certain ships under his command to officers of the old régime who had pretended loyaltyto the Soviets, but who had turned the ships over to the Germans without a struggle. Certainly Dubenko had no intention of betraying the revolution, he was merely trying to make use of skilled officers, of whom there was a pressing dearth. Nevertheless, he was held responsible.
While he was in prison awaiting trial, Kollontai made rather violent and conspicuous protests both publicly and privately. As a result she was removed from office. Revolutionists have no tolerance for romance among their leaders during critical moments; they place the revolution far above personal relationship. From the beginning they looked with disapproving eyes upon Kollontai’s infatuation for Dubenko.
When Dubenko was released, Kollontai went abroad and spent some months in Sweden. On her return she threw herself into a new work—that of educating her own sex to take an active part in politics.
Rightly speaking, there never was a woman’s movement in Russia until after the revolution. Equal suffrage came first and political education afterwards. This condition appears particularly curious when one recalls that, during some years before the revolution, even more women than menwere sent to Siberia for plots against the Tsar’s government. Yet when the revolution came women sank mysteriously into the background. Russians explain this by various theories. One was that Russian women possess the fervor necessary to martyrs, but little of the balance needed for practical reconstructive work. Personally, I think it is entirely a matter of experience and education, for it is evident that women enter politics everywhere with great hesitancy. Even in America where equal suffrage has been a fact in some states for many years, we have only one or two women to point to as having attained political prominence.
Madame Kollontai possesses much charm. She is slim and pretty and vivacious. With a little too much the manner of a public speaker she talks so easily on any subject, even to reporters, that it almost gives an impression of insincerity. Her open mind is in reality an evidence of the kind of sincerity which has no fear of publicity. She likes Americans and knows more about this country than most Russians. But she has not always known. Some years ago, when lecturing here, she happened to be in Paterson during the great strike there. When she saw the workers marching through the streets, she rushed into a room full ofpeople and exclaimed: “A revolution has begun!†Last year, in speaking of America, she said it was the country least agitated by revolutionary thought.
Like all enthusiastic Communists, she follows Lenin’s lead in striving to westernize Russia. One day she very greatly surprised me by saying, “Why don’t you write a series of articles about America? Write for Russia about America as you now write for America about Russia.â€
“What good will it do?†I asked.
“A great deal,†she replied. “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. We ought to know about your schools and colleges. It ought to be explained to us just what the real difference is between the Republican andthe Democratic Party and how much influence the Socialist Party has. Yes, there are a thousand things we ought to know.â€
I did not write the articles, but in explaining American ideas and institutions to Kollontai it somehow placed my country in a curious new light in my own eyes. I began to realize that things which have grown quite ordinary and familiar to us may appear entirely absurd and unreasonable to foreigners. Kollontai said that she hoped Russia would some day have reporters in America cabling home as busily as our reporters do from Russia. Russians, she thought, have in so many ways remained ridiculously provincial in spite of their ideas on internationalism.
Her feminist heart was deeply touched when I told her about a group of American women who had paraded on Fifth Avenue carrying signs of protest against the blockade. Tears came to her eyes. “You can’t imagine,†she said, “how much courage such a little act of sympathy gives us. What a pity that the story of those women is not known in Russia and not read by every peasant mother.â€
She was openly indignant about the stories circulated abroad that Russian women were “nationalizedâ€When we first discussed this rumor she refused to believe that anybody in America could have seriously considered it, but when I explained about the Overman Committee and other official and semi-official affairs, she flew into a rage against the narrowness and prejudices of some of our statesmen. She claimed that the simplest peasant would not believe such indecent lies against American women. “Your senators,†she said, “could very well have acquainted themselves with the real facts about our women, who have always taken such a glorious part in every movement for emancipation.
“American men,†continued Madame Kollontai, “are known the world over as kind and chivalrous. But chivalry can be a little old-fashioned in this century. Certainly, there is much to criticize and much to improve in our new struggling republic. But have you ever thought how absurd it was that the very much pampered American woman was forced to picket the White House as part of a campaign for equal suffrage? And that for such acts she was sent to prison? It is more absurd also when you remember that at that very moment a Southern gentleman sat at the White House as President.Naturally, such things appear inconsistent to us but we manage to see them in the right proportion. We know that in spite of these inconsistencies, Americans are a generous people, at heart friendly to Russia and the world.â€
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.â€
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. But it cannot overlook them for long while Madame Kollontai is about, for she never fails to appear at the important congresses to remind the delegates of their sins; to goad them into discussions of women and women’s problems.
“Women’s congresses,†she told me, “are absolutely necessary in the present state of development. And these congresses are not confined by any means to politics. I have been bringingpeasant women to Moscow from all over Russia and we have told them how to take care of babies and how to prevent disease. We have also instructed them in local, national and international politics. A woman who has gone to Moscow from some remote village is more or less of a personality when she returns and you can be sure that her journey is an event to the whole village. She always goes back well supplied with literature and educational posters. She, naturally, stimulates an interest in the whole community in politics and hygiene, especially among the women. Such congresses are the only ones I know that have a far-reaching effect.â€
“I have been laughed at,†she said, “because so far I have brought here only a few women from the harems of Turkestan. These women have thrown aside their veils. Everybody stares at them, they are a curiosity which gives the congresses a theatrical atmosphere. Yet all pioneering work is theatrical. It was distinctly theatrical when the audiences used to throw eggs at your pioneer suffragists.... How else would we get in touch with Mohammedan women except through women?†How else, indeed? Other Russian educators have answered the questionthis way: Through Mohammedan men. It was by educating the Tartar men that the Tartar women became free. The Tartars are mostly all Mohammedans but their women no longer wear veils. Whereas the brave women Kollontai has induced to come to her congresses have been divorced by their husbands and have lost their homes and children.
Madame Kollontai’s political judgment, even from the standpoint of an orthodox Communist, is often very bad. She has unlimited courage and on several occasions has openly opposed Lenin. As for Lenin, he has crushed her with his usual unruffled frankness. Yet in spite of her fiery enthusiasm she understands “party discipline†and takes defeat like a good soldier. If she had left the revolution four months after it began she could have rested forever on her laurels. She seized those rosy first moments of elation, just after the masses had captured the state, to incorporate into the Constitution laws for women which are far-reaching and unprecedented. And the Soviets are very proud of these laws which already have around them the halo of all things connected with the Constitution. It is almost impossible that that institution which came to lifethrough her enthusiasm and determination will ever cease to be. The laws I refer to are particularly those in regard to expectant mothers, orphans, illegitimate children and the state care of maternity hospitals, known as Palaces of Motherhood.
Madame Kollontai is about fifty years of age and appears much younger. She has dark brown hair and blue eyes and could easily be taken for an American. She is one of the few women Communists who cares about her appearance. By that I do not mean that she enjoys any luxury. She lives in one room in a Soviet hotel. But she is pretty and knows how to wear her clothes. Once I complimented her on a smart little fur toque she was wearing. She laughed and said, “Yes, one must learn tricks in Russia, so I have made my hat out of the tail of my coat which is already five years old.â€
She comes from well-to-do middle-class parents and her first husband while not rich was, as an officer of the old régime, able to afford her a good deal of comfort. They had one child, a son. As a young girl Kollontai went to the best schools and after her marriage never ceased to study. She is an unusually gifted linguist, speakingeleven languages and often acting as official interpreter at the Soviet, as well as the International Congresses.
A curiously touching and disillusioning phase of the revolution was the Soviet Government’s sincere attempt to wipe out prostitution from the young republic. In this fight Kollontai took and still takes a leading part. Way back in March, 1917, the infamous Yellow Tickets were destroyed. On the surface it appeared then as if the whole idea of traffic in women had forever ended. But even after the economic pressure was removed the curse returned. Angelica Balabonova, one of the most loved and honored of the women revolutionists as well as one of the most intellectual, wrote a stinging denunciation of what she called the “Soviet Barishnas.†(Translated, Soviet Ladies.) The term soon came to be the most insulting phrase in the Russian language. It came to mean a woman who, in spite of everything, insisted on a life of shame.
So disgraceful do the Soviets regard this phase of Russian life that indignant citizens formed committees and raids took place. Women were arrested and thrown into concentration camps. And still the evil continued. At last the CentralGovernment took the problem in hand, as did the Central Organ of the Communist Party. Kollontai, writing on this matter, concludes: “The Women’s Sections show lively and active interest in this matter since prostitution is a scourge which falls chiefly upon the women of the working class. This is our task, the task of the Women’s Sections, to begin a general propaganda concerned with questions connected with prostitution, since it is in our interest to develop the revolution in the domain of the family and to stabilize relations between the sexes.â€
The government report is illuminating and shows above all else that the Soviet officials are not afraid to face facts, which is the first and best weapon of defense.
The Inter-departmental Commission makes the statement that, in Soviet Russia, prostitution appears in two forms:
1. In the form of professional prostitution.
2. In the form of secret earnings.
The first form is very slightly developed and is of slight extent. In Petrograd, for example, where raids were undertaken against prostitutes, this mode of combating prostitution practically yielded no results. The second form, although highlydeveloped in other countries, also assumes a great variety of forms in Russia. Prostitution is practised by Soviet employees, in order to obtain for the sale of caresses, boots that go up to the knees; prostitution is resorted to by mothers of families, working women, peasant women, who are out after flour for their children and sell their bodies to the manager of the rations division in order to obtain from him a full bag of the precious flour. Sometimes the girls in the Offices associate with their male superiors, not for manifestly material gain, for rations, shoes, etc., but in the hope of advancement in office. And there is an additional form of prostitution—“careerist prostitutionâ€â€”which is also based in the last analysis on material gain.
The Commission made this recommendation after many hot debates: “All persons wandering in the streets and deserting their work should be assigned to the Commissariat of Social Welfare and thus sent out, in accordance with general fundamental considerations, either to the Sections for the Distribution of Labor Power of the People’s Commissariat of Labor, or to courses, sanatoria, hospitals, and only after a repeated desertion by a prostitute, in other words, after a malicious effort to desert, should the individual be subjectedto forced labor. There is no special culpability attached to prostitutes. They are in no way to be segregated from the other bodies of deserters from work. This is a revolutionary and important step, worthy of the first Workers’ Republic of the world.â€
That such a liberal attitude is really effective is proven by the fact that in Soviet Russia to-day there is less prostitution than anywhere else in the world. Under the Tsar, Russia was known as the most disgraceful country in this respect. 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.â€
In one of her pamphlets, Madame Kollontai declaims with pride: “By virtue of the decree of December 18, 1917, divorce has ceased to be aluxury accessible only to the rich.†It has been interesting to watch the outcome of this decree through four years. Among the peasants divorce was practically unknown and still remains so. The city workers have not availed themselves of this “luxury†to any considerable degree. Whether Kollontai likes it or not, the only people who will continue to take advantage of such freedom will be the idle and the intellectuals. Divorces have little attraction for simple workers. Labor and poverty bring husband and wife closer to one another “for better or for worse.â€
Periodically, Kollontai attacks family life and claims that it is the only institution that Communists are afraid to reform. One needs only to look about at the leaders of the movement to wonder why they should be concerned in reforming it. Lenin leads a distinctly normal family life, as do Trotsky and Kalinin. The wives of these Commissars work and are interesting, well-known personalities. Kollontai herself is married. Her inconsistencies are her most feminine trait as well as one of her most alluring characteristics.
TROTSKY
TROTSKY
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. Trotsky’s genius might have burned itself out in some wild enthusiasm or some consuming rage if it had not been for the cooling influence of Lenin. On the other hand, Lenin’s plans, no matter how carefully thought out, could not have materialized without the solid backing of Trotsky’s bayonets.
Outside of Russia we are always hearing rumors of the conflict of these two personalities. We imagine Trotsky continually conspiring to usurp the place of Lenin; nothing could be furtherfrom the truth. Trotsky would consider the elimination of Lenin, through any cause, as the greatest calamity. He would not only think Russia had lost her wisest leader, but he would consider himself lost. He touched the very highest peak of revolutionary fervor when he made his famous speech in Moscow after Lenin had been shot and terribly wounded by an assassin and when small hope of recovery was entertained. “We will him to live and he will live!†he cried to an audience which rose to its feet in a wave of irrepressible emotion.
It was this speech which lighted the torch of the Red Terror as a back-fire against the White Terror, already so far under way that the very life of the revolution was at stake. But it is well for Trotsky and for the revolution that Trotsky did not direct this terror; he was too passionate and too thorough a soul to have been entrusted with such a conflagration.
Trotsky is not a diplomat. He was not successful as Foreign Minister. Diplomacy is too cut and dried to be harmonious with his talents. To be a good diplomat one must be contained and calculating and unemotional, content with the material on hand; one cannot be an originator. Trotsky is essentially an originator. It was nothis destiny to accept the ready-made. It was his destiny to tear Russia out of old ruts and send her bleeding but inspired down new ways; it was his destiny to make war on Russian inertia, which is the curse of Russia and the whole East.
In Trotsky we discern something distinctly elemental. He looks like a fighter, with his burning eyes and sharp decisive way of speaking, his gestures, his quick regular gait. When he is calm he does not appear to be himself. But even in ordinary conversation he bestirs himself, he throws himself headlong into every discussion, and the listener is so carried away that he remembers it all afterward with astonishment. The storm Trotsky started in Russia, while it did not rage without wreckage, at least had the effect of waking up a nation out of its medieval slumber. Wherever he goes he stirs people, either individually or collectively. No one is neutral about him, Trotsky is either loved or despised.
In the Red Army, he has all the energetic young men of the nation assembled and under his influence. He has charge of their education. The majority have learned to read and write in his army schools. The way they express it is that he has given them “new eyes.â€
Trotsky is the idol of the Red Army. His amazing physical vigor combined with a very un-Russian orderliness, his personal bravery and reckless defiance of custom, make their former leaders appear dull and backward. He creates in his pupils a deep dissatisfaction for all that is old and outworn. These young men come from the villages, from every province in Russia. When they go back home they look at the village with disapproval, they want to change everything. 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.
The young aides in Trotsky’s office are as smart as in the French War Office. He has a way ofattracting venturesome youth from everywhere. His pet school, which is the Military Academy in Moscow, where the General Staff men are trained, is full of these soldiers-of-fortune. I was invited to an entertainment there one evening by a young Lieutenant-Colonel. This man was the son of a rich Swedish banker and he was but twenty-six years old. He introduced me to a number of other foreigners, young men like himself, who had risen to high ranks through many desperate campaigns. “We have every nation represented here but America,†said a Bulgarian. I do not know whether these men were Communists or how loyal they felt to that cause, but they were willing to follow Trotsky to their graves.
A visit to this academy gives one quite a clear idea of how the former classes in Russian society are amalgamating under the new order. It is full of the sons of the bourgeoisie. And the professors are almost without exception the old professors who taught in these schools under the Tsar. Men like Brusilov, who is a Russian patriot and would defend his government under any régime against outsiders, have enormous prestige. As the White Generals went down to defeat one after the other, the young men even of conservative parents cameto believe that if they could not swallow the Communist formulas whole, they could, at least, remain loyal Russians. And once in the military schools, they fell under the influence of revolutionary soldiers. Being young and full of Slavic idealism, they often capitulated and in such cases were rapidly promoted. In the Kronstadt day the young men of this type were more concerned than any of the others, perhaps because if the Red Army were to be defeated, they would be the first to be killed by the opposition. When General Brusilov’s only son was captured in Siberia by the White Forces, he was executed simply because he was the son of Brusilov.
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.But all his organizing genius goes for nothing if he cannot have order and discipline.
About three years ago Lenin appointed Trotsky Minister of Railways in addition to his post as War Minister. Trotsky took a trip over the country and found transportation generally smashed and the railway employees as lacking in morale as he had once found the Russian soldiers. He immediately began to re-build transportation with every atom of his strength. If a train was not on time, there had to be a reason given, which had ceased to be done in those days. In fact, no one was ever deeply concerned about exact arrivals and departures of trains under any régime. The Trans-Siberian Railway was the only efficient road which ever operated in Russia. But Trotsky began to make such an everlasting row about these matters that the railway men were aghast. There had always been graft and laziness and indifference, they had no doubt that there always would be, even under government control. Trotsky hauled them up, threatened them with imprisonment and even with death. The result was that the unions were so roused that they threatened a general strike. The situation grew worse and worse. Finally Lenin, to avert anational crisis, dismissed Trotsky and wrote an open letter to the unions about it and Trotsky showed his real fineness of character by accepting his defeat in silence. And yet if he had been in charge of the roads they would certainly not be in the condition that they now are and many thousands of lives in the famine area would have been saved.
Trotsky cannot bear Russian slothfulness and he is constantly irritated by Russian indifference to sanitation. He insists on the utmost fastidiousness and neatness for all who work with him. An amusing scandal took place in Moscow at the time of one of the International Conventions. Trotsky had instructed a Red Army physician to inspect the hotel in which the foreign delegates were to stay and report if it was in order. The physician merely went down to the building and finding a fine grand piano there, whiled his time away playing and let the inspection go. In due course of time the delegates arrived and the first night they were all routed out of bed by insects. This came to the ears of Trotsky and he was so furiously angry that he had the doctor arrested and announced that he would have him shot. The delegates flew around in a fine state of excitement with a petition which they all signed beggingTrotsky to spare the physician’s life. As a matter of fact Trotsky would not have shot him, but his threats are reminiscent of the day of Tsar Peter who found it necessary to shoot a number of nobles before the others would shorten their long coats as he had ordered by royal decree.
Trotsky is a student of the French Revolution. He lived a long time in France and he loves France, in spite of its hostility to Soviet Russia. Some of his closest friends are Frenchmen who knew him in Paris and who followed him to Russia and work with him there. He never forgets his friends and has a real capacity for permanent friendships. Russians are, as a rule, very changeable in their personal relationships but one can depend on Trotsky.
As an orator he reminds one much more of the French revolutionary orators. Russians speak more slowly and more logically and with less fire. Trotsky stirs his audiences by his own force and by striking phrases. There were times when these splendid literary phrases infuriated Lenin; from the public platform he once called Trotsky a “phrase-maker.†But this was way back in the Smolny days when Trotsky was more untamedthan he is now, and before Lenin realized that Trotsky would be his most able assistant.
While Trotsky was in America he was the editor of a Russian newspaper and apparently caught the American feeling for on-the-minute news. He is the easiest official to interview in Moscow and entirely the most satisfactory, because he is free from the general reticence and distrust of the press which most of the Commissars have. I once wrote him a note saying that I was writing a story about the Red Army and would like some material. The very same day he sent me down a great sack of copy. There were many Red Army magazines and newspapers that I had never heard of. There were handbooks and statistics and maps and, besides all that, there was a permission to go to any of the fronts and to attend any of the lectures at the various schools.
One of the most important departments of the Red Army is that known as the Political-Cultural. A report is made daily by this Department concerning the morale of the soldiers and the relation between the army and the civilian population. This Department conducts the classes in reading and writing and elementary technical trainingand vocational training; the work is carried on even in fighting days and right up to the front.
The soldiers are also taught to be interested in physical culture and have been learning games like Rugby. There was a good deal of excitement in the Red Army when a Russian team beat a team composed of foreign delegates to the Third Congress of the International in Moscow.
Soldiers are urged to attend the Art Galleries and the theatres. Art exhibitions and lectures on art take place in the soldiers’ clubs. Here also they often build and act their own plays; most of these are about the revolution and will no doubt gradually settle down into national patriotic epics.
It is hard to know whether Trotsky will ever have another chance to experiment as he would like with his Labor Army, but that is his ambition. Lenin’s opinion is that it is absolutely an experiment which can work out only if the men themselves are willing to submit to this plan for the good of Russia. Men never do efficient work if they do not want to, Lenin believes. Trotsky answers this argument by saying, “But we have the advantage over the rest of the world in that respect; we can try any schemes we please andif they do not work, we can change our minds.â€
His plan for a Labor Army I have taken from notes and I quote Trotsky’s exact words:
“Russia is an industrially undeveloped country; and our economic apparatus is ruined by six years of war and revolution. We must be able to concentrate labor upon certain emergency tasks—where it is most necessary. For example, the Ural mining district needs fifty thousand skilled workers, two hundred thousand semi-skilled and two hundred thousand laborers. We should be able to send these workers where they are most needed; of course, this would be done in co-operation and after consultation with the Unions and Shop Committees.â€
His idea of maintaining the regular fighting force is to have it on a very much smaller scale. “Russia is now being redistricted. The new districts will be ordered according to their economic character, as economic units. Each district will be the headquarters of a division whose task is to mobilize the population not only for the army but for the work.
“The army divisions on the frontiers are to be constantly renewed. Each will remain on duty for three or four months, and then be sent hometo work. In this way the whole male population will be trained to arms, each knowing his place in his regiment, and also his proper work.â€
In the brief period before the Polish offensive, the Labor Army had been started full blast and at that time it had the approval of the army and the unions. Perhaps in another half year it will again be working. It is interesting to know how they managed. I will give one example. In six weeks the Labor Army built the great steel bridge over the Kam River, blown up by Kolchak. Thus the direct route to Siberia was restored. They restored the railway at Yamburg. They cut millions of feet of fire-wood for the cities. They were making such progress that if the Polish offensive had never taken place, the cities would actually have been provisioned and provided with wood before the first snow of that year.
One can make vast speculation about Trotsky. He is the sort of man who, if he is given full power in a great plan of this kind, will work miracles, but if he is hampered by petty labor disputes and a thousand petty jealousies, will fail utterly. I always have believed that if he had been interested in finance instead of social revolution he would now be our greatest banker. If hehad been interested in the war from the Allied standpoint he would have been a great military hero.
Trotsky was born in 1877. He is the son of a colonist of Jewish faith from the government of Kherson near Elizabethgrad. He was indicted in a judicial investigation of the Workman’s Syndicate of South Russia in 1898 and sentenced to Siberia for four years. He settled in the city of Verkholensk and later escaped. He became president of the Soviet of Workmen’s Deputies in Petrograd in 1905. For activities in that organization he was sent again into exile to Tobolsk and again escaped. After that he lived in Paris and Vienna and later in the United States. He returned to Russia after the beginning of the revolution. Trotsky has a wife and two children. His wife is young and excessively good looking and is interested in revolutionary activities. Trotsky, like Lenin, is very proud of his wife.
Trotsky might never have written his name as indelibly as he has on the page of history if it had not been for the peculiar circumstances of the war. His heroic strivings might have been spent aimlessly, if chance had not thrust into his hands the task of rebuilding an army. And no man canbuild a great army out of a rabble and not be famous. Many points were in his favor beside circumstance. He might not have found even his genius or his vitality enough to meet world opposition without the use of trained officers, men who were willing to submerge their own opinions for the moment in order to save Russia. A day will come perhaps when General Brusilov’s words will be known to all Russian school children as the words of Patrick Henry are known to American children. This was his advice to all classes of Russians during intervention and the blockade:
“When a steamer on the boundless ocean is in danger, it is not a time for starting quarrels as to this principle or that, or to seek the numerous causes for the fact that our ship of state may have merged into an unfavorable sea, but it is our duty to exert immediately all our thoughts and forces to save the vessel from destruction and bring her back to port with the smallest possible loss.â€
I saw Trotsky again this summer (the summer of 1922) and asked him what he had done about reducing the army. Of course, because of the new economic policy, a Labor Army was out of the question. He told me that he had reduced the army from 5,300,000 to 800,000, including the navy. Agreater reduction than that, he said, was impossible.
“We stand always ready to reduce our army,†said Trotsky, “even to liquidating it fully, whenever our closest and our farthest neighbors accept a program of disarmament. In January we offered disarmament. Europe refused even the suggestion. Later we asked our close neighbors, with the same result. If America would only take the initiative in this respect,†he shrugged and smiled, “well, we would support her with our whole heart.â€
AND THE
MOHAMMEDANS
ENVER PASHA
ENVER PASHA
ENVER PASHA
AND THE
MOHAMMEDANS
No man I ever met lives so completely in the immediate moment as Enver Pasha; the past he puts behind him, the future he leaves to Allah. His only hero is Napoleon. In Moscow he was theavant coureurof 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. Interested in himself above all things, he is a curious contrast to those men who are trying to blot out individualism and make the state all-important.
As far as there was any social life in Moscow,Enver was, for the nonce, the social lion. Some future historian will probably call him the Don Juan of the revolution, though it is only fair to say that he resisted this alluring doom with an uncomplimentary coldness; he was too absorbed in politics to be interested in social conquest. The real reason for the shower of attention bestowed on him by the ladies of Moscow was the natural reaction of those ladies to a life almost unendurably monotonous and difficult.
There was something very pitiful about the way actresses smiled at Enver across the footlights and unearthed old pictures of him in his elaborate War Minister regalia, when he still wore the “Kaiser†moustache, the gold braid and numerous medals. One evening we went to the dressing room of a prima donna where we were invited for tea during an intermission. Enver sat stiffly in his chair, refusing to talk, but his uncle, Halil Pasha, the former Commander of the Mesopotamian and Caucasian fronts, caused much merriment by fighting a sham duel with wooden swords. His opponent was a singer dressed as a medieval knight.
Besides the actresses several of the old aristocracy were gracious to Enver and even the prettywife of a Commissar attached to the Foreign Office wrote him what would have been considered an intriguing note, in another time and place. She offered to teach him Russian if he would teach her French and he replied curtly that he was not a “professor.â€
But Enver was not always over-serious and unbending. In a certain small circle of friends he was quite otherwise. And circumstances, which so largely decide our destinies, gave me an opportunity to know him as well as one alien to his religion could know him. He was allotted by the Foreign Office quarters in the little palace where I was living. For half a year I saw him every day, sat next to him at table and occasionally we went to the theatres and the Turkish Embassy. During that time Enver told me a great deal about his life and his ambitions.
He had known my husband in Constantinople, and was away from Moscow at the time of my husband’s death. As soon as he returned he called on me, bringing Halil and the Turkish Ambassador, Ali Fued Pasha, with him. All three were extremely kind and sympathetic. From that moment until I left Moscow the Turks did everything possible to make life less tragic for me, and Igained 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. The only way to cope with his conceit is to be brutally frank. I discovered early in our acquaintance that frankness by no means offends him. One of Enver’s nicest qualities is that he likes to discover his faults as well as his virtues; he is eager to improve himself.
He has a passion for making pencil sketches of people he meets and always goes about with a pencil and a pad of paper in his pocket. In the house where we lived he made sketches of all the guests and all the servants. He made, in all, six very uninteresting portraits of me. One morning when the tea was more tasteless than ever and the bread especially sour and muddy so that I felt I could not manage to eat a single bite, I could not help feeling unpleasantly resentful to see Enver busywith his sketches and full of enthusiasm. And while I sat staring at the terrible meal, he proceeded to make a life-size portrait of me which was incredibly bad. I remember that I wondered where on earth he ever got such a large piece of paper in Russia. When he had finished the sketch he signed his name with a flourish and presented it to me. I took it but said nothing. Enver has the curiosity of a child, and, after a long silence, he asked me if it was possible that I did not really like it. I said that I thought he had no talent for drawing. He became suddenly quite angry and said in a low voice, “But do you realize I have signed my name to it?â€
“Your name doesn’t mean anything on a picture,†I explained. “If it was an order for an execution or an advance it would be another matter. You can’t make a good drawing just by signing your name to itâ€
He frowned and then grew cordial as suddenly as he had grown angry. He rose and bowed to me in a most courtly way. “You can’t imagine,†he said, “how pleasing arrogance is to me.†His three dominating characteristics being bravery, hauteur and recklessness, he imagined that these motives also guided the actions of his friends.
Enver never seemed to be able to loaf in the easy manner of most Orientals. His mental and physical vitality is more like that of an enthusiastic and healthy American. Every morning he rose early to go for a long walk, he read a great deal, took at least three lessons in some foreign language every week and was constantly writing articles for Turkish papers which he printed on a hand press in his own room, and he held almost daily conferences either with the Russians or the Mohammedans. He does not drink or smoke and is devoutly religious.
He likes any discussion which reveals another person’s deepest emotions. If he cannot rouse one any other way he does so by some antagonistic remark which often he does not mean at all. For example, he is extremely liberal in his opinions about women and does not think they should be excluded from political life. Nevertheless, he said to a young actress at tea one afternoon in my apartment, when they were talking about woman suffrage, that she would be better off in a harem. Being an ardent feminist, she rose and fairly shouted at him: “Enver Pasha, you may be a great man in the East, but just listen to me! I am one of the first actresses of my profession. In myworld it is every bit as great and important for me to remain an actress as it is for you in your world to remain a warrior or a diplomat.â€
Enver took his scolding in very good humor. Afterwards he told me that he had never liked this actress before. “Independence is a great thing in women. Our women lack it and many of them are just puppets on this account.â€
He was always extremely interested in American ideas and American opinions. He said he could never understand why Americans were so sentimental about Armenians. “Do they imagine that Armenians never kill Turks? That is indeed irony.â€
At the table he used to ask Mr. Vanderlip questions about his proposed Kamchatka concessions. Vanderlip, like many Californians, is rather violently anti-Japanese. His idea of having a naval base at Kamchatka amused Enver. He said Vanderlip was killing two birds with one stone, that he wished to manÅ“uver the American Government into a war with Japan, prove himself a patriot, and at the same time protect his own interests and grow rich. “So that,†said Enver, “if it really came about—the next war would befor Vanderlip and should be known as ‘Vanderlip’s War.’â€
When I asked, “Would you be sorry to see America and Japan at war?†he replied, “Not if England was involved. Anything which tends to draw England’s attention away from us or which weakens the great powers, naturally gives Turkey a better chance for reconstruction. You understand that I’m not saying I want to see another war; I am simply saying that if those nations interested in destroying Turkey are occupied elsewhere it relieves us of war burdens and gives us a chance to carry out our own destinies.â€
He tried to get Mr. Vanderlip’s reaction on women by the same tactics he employed with the actress. One day he said, “I have three wives and I’m looking for another.†This was not true, but Mr. Vanderlip proved entirely gullible. “Good heavens,†he said, regarding Enver in shocked surprise, “we Anglo-Saxons consider one wife enough tyranny....â€
“Naturally,†Enver conceded, suavely, “with one there must be tyranny but with three or four or a hundred.... Ah, you must agree that is quite a different matter.â€
His sudden appearance in Moscow during theblackest days of the blockade as well as the blackest days for the Central Powers proves him an incomparable soldier-of-fortune. With two suits of clothes, a pair of boots, a good revolver and a young German mechanician whom he could trust, he started by aeroplane from Berlin to Moscow. The story of how they had to land because of engine trouble near Riga, of how he was captured and spent two months in the Riga jail just at the moment when the whole Allied world was calling loudest for his blood, will remain a story which will have scanty advertisement from those British Secret Service men who like so well to turn journalists and write their own brave autobiographies.
Enver sat in the Riga jail as plain “Mr. Altman†who could not speak anything but German. He was scrutinized by every Secret Service man in the vicinity and pronounced unanimously a Jewish German Communist of no importance. By appearing humble, inoffensive and pleasant, he soon worked his way into the confidence of the warden, was released and escaped to Moscow. He arrived just in time to rush off for the dramatic Baku conference.
The Communists understood perfectly well thatEnver Pasha was not at the Oriental Conference as a sudden and sincere convert to Internationalism, and he knew that they knew. Both Zinoviev and Enver were actors taking the leading rôles in a significant historical pageant. The results are really all that matter, since the motives will soon be forgotten.
When Enver turned to Moscow he had no other place to turn to and when Zinoviev took him to Baku, Zinoviev knew no other means of effectively threatening the English in order to change their attitude on the blockade. Zinoviev could not complain about Enver’s shallow attitude towards Socialism since there was hardly anything Socialistic about Zinoviev’s appeal for a “holy war.†Enver summed up his feelings about the new alliance thus: “For the future of Turkey and the future of the East a friendship with Russia is worth more to the Turks than any number of military victories. And we have to build that friendship while we have the opportunity.â€
His way of living without any regrets and as if there were no to-morrows is rather startling at times. I remember when Talaat Pasha, his lifelong friend, was murdered by an Armenian in Berlin, he read the message with no show of emotionand his only comment was: “His time had come!†But against an excessive temptation on the part of fate to record Enver’s death prematurely, in his own words, he “sleeps with one eye open,†carries a dagger and a loaded automatic. Once when we talked about the possibility of his being assassinated he said, “I have been near death so many times that these days I live now seem to be a sort of present to me.â€
Enver is no open sesame to those who do not know him well. He really has the traditional Oriental inscrutability. The first two or three times I talked with him, we stumbled along rather lamely in French. Someone suggested to me that he probably spoke several languages which, for some unknown reason, he would not admit. So one day I said abruptly, “Oh, let’s speak English.†He looked at me with one of his sudden, rare smiles and answered in my own language, “Very well, if you prefer it.â€
When I asked him how he learned English he told me he had learned it from an English spy. “He came to me as a valet and professed deep love for Turkey. For several months we studied diligently. One day I thought I would test his lovefor Turkey so I ordered him to the front. He was killed. Later, we found his papers.â€
“Were you surprised?†I asked him.
“Why, not at all,†said Enver. “He really showed a great deal of pluck. The only thing I had against him was that he taught me a lot of expressions not used at court.â€
“Like what?â€
“Like ‘don’t mention it,’†said Enver, laughing. “And the terrible thing about learning such an expression,†he said, “is that it is so sharp and so definite and often fits an occasion so aptly that it flashes in one’s mind and can’t be forgotten. American slang is extremely picturesque and expressive, but it is not dignified enough to be used by diplomats.â€
Everyone is familiar with Enver’s “direct action†method of playing politics. One of the ways he was wont to remove troublesome rivals in the days of the Young Turk Revolution was to go out and shoot them with his own hand. This “impulsiveness†got him into grave trouble with the Soviets in spite of all his sensible utterances to the contrary. When he was “shifted†to Bokhara so that he would not be in the way of either Kemal or the Russians, he got bored and started a warof his own. One night he fled into the hills of Afghanistan and soon began to gather recruits around him. A few nights after that one of the principal officials of the Bokharan Republic also fled to join Enver. This performance was repeated until over half the Bokharan cabinet had fled. Then fighting began and we got vague rumors of battles, but only through the Soviet press.
In August, 1922, we heard that Enver had been killed, that his body had been found on the field of battle. There was even romance surrounding him and his supposed death. Stories were circulated that when the body was picked up and examined, the letters of an American girl were found next his heart. I went to see Jacob Peters, who has charge now of all the Eastern Territory and who was then in Moscow. He laughed heartily and said he would show me the “information.†It consisted of three very hazy telegrams which had been three weeks on the way. The men who sent the telegrams and discovered the body had never seen Enver. There was no mention of letters. And Peter’s opinion of the whole affair was that there was nothing at all authentic in the story or else it was “a trick of Enver’s to sham being dead.â€Peters’ theory proved true. Within a few days fighting began again and Enver began to win.
He had conceived the notion of uniting all Turkestan and Bokhara and Keiva to the Angora government. It places the Soviets in a strange position. They may have to give in to him, though he will not actually be an “enemy,†because neither the Turks nor the Russians can afford to break their treaty. Therefore, his private war in the south embarrasses the Soviets much more than it does Kemal, who needs only to disavow any connection with it, as do all the Turkish officials. If Enver wins he will add a nice slice to Turkish territory; if he loses, Turkey will be in the same position as before.
Enver, while he will always maintain a great prestige in the Mussulman world, will never oust Kemal. Mustapha Kemal Pasha is the great popular hero of a victorious Turkey, which but for him might never have even survived. There were times in the past when Enver was more important than Kemal, but that can never happen again in Kemal’s life. Both men rose from the ranks and both are the sons of peasants. And Kemal at this moment is more important than theSultan. Greater than that no man can be under the banners of Mohammed.
One can hardly over-estimate the importance of the new Mohammedan unity, that new patriotic energy which has taken the place of the former lethargy and which already reaches out far beyond the borderland of the Faithful. The Mussulman world is reviving after a long sleep. And not only Mohammedans are uniting but the entire East and Middle East. Aside from Japan, a significant harmony is rapidly taking place, a harmony which evolves itself into a tremendous power. This power may decide the world’s destiny before another generation.
Enver and Kemal Pasha, being aware of the purport of beginning that great concord by interwoven treaties with Russia, read the stars well. There must come a day also when that great sleeping giant, China, will be part of this alliance. And the seeds of that friendship have also been planted. The Chinese official delegations which came to Moscow were not only well received by the Russians, but they hob-nobbed with the Mohammedans like brothers.
TIKON AND THE RUSSIAN CHURCH
There are two points of importance in regard to the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian revolution. First, that the church has maintained itself and second, that it has issued no frantic appeals for outside help. While certain priests have allied themselves with counter-revolutionists, officially the church has never taken sides. Even at the present moment when a bitter conflict is on, the quarrel remains a family quarrel.
Tikon, the Patriarch, by remaining unruffled through the barricade and blockade days, proved himself a strong leader in a time when only strong leaders could survive. If he had been frightened or hostile in the Denikin or Kolchak days he might have shared the fate of the Romanoffs; if he had taken part in counter-revolutions, the church itself might have been badly shattered. But until recently, Tikon has been as placid as his ikons and as interested in the great change going on about him as a scientist. And therein lay his strength.“Don’t let any one pity me,†he said last winter when I talked to him, “I am having the most interesting time of my life.â€
Much nonsense has been written about anti-church propaganda in Soviet Russia. Dozens of writers have discussed a certain rather obscure sign in Moscow which reads: “Religion is the opiate of the people.†This sign, about three feet across, is painted high up on the north side of the Historical Museum building near the entrance to the Red Square. No one in Russia seems to be much interested in it and certainly it attracts less attention than any one of our million billboard advertisements. I tried for a year to find out who had put it up and what group it represented, but could never discover. It was a cab driver who said the wisest thing concerning it. “If somebody took it down,†he said dryly, when I asked him what he thought of it, “no one would notice.â€
The anti-clerical posters gotten out at the beginning of the revolution, however, had a much more far-reaching influence. They were usually to the effect that the priests were hoarding the church lands and at the same time expecting the peasants to support them. Any idea which sanctions giving the land to the peasants is popular in Russia. Itwas not long before the peasants had seized the church lands and divided them through their land committees. But this did not make them atheists.
I remember meeting an old peasant leader from Siberia who had led a successful revolt against Kolchak. He was received as a hero when he arrived at Moscow for an All Russian Congress of Soviets. He told me a story about a priest in his community who was a counter-revolutionist. He said, “It usually is this way with me and with many of the peasants, we love God and we are religious but we hate the priests.†I asked him if it was not possible to find good priests, and he began to tell me about one priest who had been very noble and self-sacrificing. But this was the only one he could think of. “The others disgrace God,†he said.
And that is just what one must understand in order to comprehend the Russian church and its present position. The Soviets did not destroy the church or ruin it in any way—no outside pressure could do that. It was Rasputin and other “disgracers†who at last outraged even the credulous and easy-going peasants.
A revolution had to take place in the church as well as outside of it to save it at all. Thechurch, at the time of the revolution, was as corrupt as the Tsardom. Nothing is better evidence of this than the way it was deserted by hundreds of priests as soon as the life in the monasteries ceased to be easy. Long before the upheaval the priesthood had grown dissolute. All that the revolution did was to give the church a pruning which saved its soul. By shearing it of its old luxuries it cut off the parasitic priests and by severing it from the state it took the church out of politics. It was forced to stand or fall by its own merits.
And when the wealth of the church was reduced to a certain point it became necessary for a priest to be such a good priest and so well loved and appreciated by his flock that his flock was willing to support him, in spite of the hard life and the terrible conditions. Thus a new and better clergy came into being.
The final test of the priesthood, however, came with the famine. All that was left of the church wealth, outside of the churches themselves, were the jewels in the ikons and the silver and gold ornaments which glitter in the shrines throughout Russia. The government decided to requisition these treasures. The priests who had been shrivenin the revolutionary fire were glad and willing to part with these things, but there were many who resisted. The outcome was a split in the church ranks, as well as riots, intrigue, and bad feeling. There probably was a good deal of mismanagement on the part of a few arbitrary Soviet officials like Zinoviev, who do not seem to comprehend the sensitiveness of religious people and how easily outraged they are by outside intrusion. There is little doubt that this heightened a delicate and unfortunate situation. If a Church Committee had been allowed to select and turn over the jewels and precious metal, Tikon and other churchmen would probably never have been brought to trial.
However, the trials themselves are intensely interesting and mark an epoch in the life of the revolution. They actually mark the real beginning of public opinion in Russia and that, in any case, is a healthy development. It is like letting fresh air into a long-closed room. Discussions of the government and the church have for five years been going on in whispers behind closed doors. It now comes down to this: if the government is wrong and is unjustly stripping the church of wealth, the government will suffer by lack of support or even open hostility on the part of thepeasants, who have so much power now that they can no longer be ignored on any question; and if the priests are wrong and prove themselves selfish in this time of need, the priests will be deposed. But the church itself will go on because the peasants are religious; they will continue to “love God†in the traditional manner.
About a week ago I met a Russian priest in New York and I asked him at once how he felt about the requisitioning of the jewels. He raised his hands devoutly. “What man could pray to God and hoard jewels at such a time?†he exclaimed. Then he showed me a very old and precious carved wooden cross. “There was a ruby in this cross,†he said. “It was the only valuable thing I possessed. I can’t tell you how happy I was when it was sold and the money used for relief. This is not a stone you see in it now; it is a piece of red glass, but it is somehow more precious to me than the ruby.†Here is the expression of a really devout man and the only sort of priest that people will follow in such a crisis.
It is perfectly true that the leaders of the Communist movement are not religious. All students, in fact the entire “intelligentsia†or educated classes of Russia, were never religious. Before therevolution all groups of revolutionaries and literary folk prided themselves on their lack of religion. So anti-religion is not confined strictly to the leaders of the Communist movement. Any other party except the Monarchist Party would be equally devoid of interest in religion.
The Monarchists necessarily support the church because the Tsar was really head of the church. This has been true since the time of Peter the Great, who while not actually abolishing the office of Patriarch, never allowed another Patriarch to be elected. One of the curious and interesting sidelights of the revolution was that a few weeks after the church was separated from the state, a Patriarch was elected for the first time in two hundred years, so that while in one way the church lost its power, in another way it really came into its own.
Freedom of religion, as we know it in the United States, was a surprise and a shock to the members of the Russian church, for up until 1917 no other sects but the Greek Orthodox were permitted by law in Russia. Naturally, when other religious orders began to send in missionaries the old church protested, and when the Soviets answered that freedom of religion was now anestablished fact they did not understand it as “freedom†and called it discrimination. And it seemed like discrimination, because, while the Orthodox Church was losing its former possessions, other religions were gaining concessions.
Tikon, whose official title is Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias, and who is called, with a sharp flavor of French revolutionary days, by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, “Citizen Basil Ivanovitch Baliavin,†was born in Pskoff in 1860. He was educated in Petrograd Theological Academy and became a monk upon the completion of his studies. He later held several important posts as a professor in theological institutions. He was consecrated Bishop of the Aleutian Isles and North America in 1897 and then came to America. In 1905 he was made Archbishop and moved the cathedral residence from San Francisco to New York. He returned to Russia in February, 1907, having been appointed Archbishop of Jaroslav. In 1913 he became Archbishop of Vilna. Early in 1917 he was elected Metropolitan of Moscow and in November of that same year, just when the Bolsheviks came into power, he became Patriarch.
Just what influenced Tikon and made him somuch more democratic than most of his colleagues, I do not know. My own opinion, after a conversation with him, is that he is somewhat of a student of history and a philosopher, as well as a priest. It is the opinion of many people, inside and outside of Russia, that it was his long residence in America which made him so liberal. Of one thing I feel sure. He would have resisted the Soviet Government if he had believed that it was better for the future of the church. I do not think he refrained because of any personal fears, but because he actually saw a real revival of religion in the fire through which the church was passing.
No one could have expected the church to embrace the revolution. The nobility and the clergy had walked too many centuries hand in hand. The nobility perished in the course of events and the church survived, as it did in France. And the church will continue to survive—merely the poorer by a few jewels or a few thousand acres of land. But it will never wield the same power that it once did or that it could wield if there was a return to Tsardom. It cannot be as strong, for example, as the Church of Rome is in Italy.