The deserted and ruined appearance of Kronstadt should have prepared me for the greater horror of Leningrad. But in the interval between passing Kronstadt and arriving at Leningrad, the old Irish proverb about far off cows having lpng horns caused a delusion as to the prosperity of the latter city to take possession of me. In the distance it appeared to be as real a city as Liverpool, a great, low-lying mass of smoking chimneys, great docks, shipyards, teeming with life. But as I came nearer this illusion of prosperity vanished. The docks, shipyards and great stretches of shore, covered with enormous piles of timber for export, showed no great signs of human activity. Hardly a hammer resounded. The stray men I saw seemed more concerned with keeping themselves warm by slogging their armpits than by working. Was it their meal hour or their rest hour or were they holding a general meeting of their Soviet or were they just contemplating the Materialistic Conception of History? I cannot answer the question.
But I can offer an alternative explanation of their inactivity. The weather was so cold and bleak that sensitive people like the Russians found it difficult or even impossible to work. Indeed my first view of the main Russian shore explained to me, in a great measure, the cause of Russian melancholy and of those queer outbursts of apparently senseless activity which have characterised Russian history. It looked so large and unkempt, so infested with the most desolate humours of nature, that wretched man, condemned to labour under such conditions, must perforce resort to the delightful extravagances of insanity. Taken as a whole, from horizon to horizon, the scene was not devoid of beauty. It had the grandeur of immensity. But immensity has a curious and nihilistic effect on the human mind. Gazing at it, feeling it about, the human mind resorts to dreaming. It becomes inspired with mystical ideas and ambitions philosophies, about the universe and its own relation to the universe. But what can man DO with immensity? As soon as he tries to move it or to fashion it according to any of the designs which man’s restless energy contrives to satisfy his genius, he is made aware of his helplessness, confronted with such an enormous mass of material. So he shrugs himself, forgets to wash and becomes melancholy. Then he becomes mischievous and finds pleasure in destruction, in order to revenge himself on immensity.
This immensity is also, in my opinion, responsible for the Russian worship of the mass; the mass being the human counterpart of the immensity of nature. The Russian likes to work in a mass and to think in a mass. In pursuance of these likes, he has invented mass action and mass consciousness.
As we travelled up the river, I noticed a number of ships, mostly foreign, moored to the quays. Here there was the same inactivity, the same state of lethargy, due apparently to the reigning conviction that the gross humours of the weather and the immensity of the surrounding earth made labour of a trivial kind impossible. Why unload a ship to bring matter into Russia when there was already such an incredible amount of matter in Russia? Why load a ship with Russian matter for export when there was so much matter in Russia as to make it quite impossible ever to get rid of it? It was obvious (to the contemplating Russians on the quays) that it was necessary to organise masses of human beings, as enormous as the masses of matter to be moved, before the least particle of matter could be touched. Otherwise the theory of mass action would be sinned against. The whole power of all the available human masses must be properly organised and marshalled for mass action before a single individual took off his sheepskin.
While waiting for this mass action of organised millions, the populations waiting aboard the Russian ships as crews and the populations waiting on the quays as potential dock labourers were exceedingly merry, firm in the conviction that some day the combined masses would burst into activity and move all the matter in Russia to hell or to Europe. Massed on their decks and on their quays, they gave us a mass welcome. They waved kerchiefs, sheepskins and such pieces of metal as they found handy. They uttered cries which I took to be revolutionary slogans. It was very impressive and revolutionary.
The pier to which our ship was moored was deserted. I was a trifle piqued at not finding a mass of dockers, with hooks at belt, ready to board us. Neither were there any cranes with tremendous teeth, ready to drag the masses of zinc for the Five Year Plan from the bellies of our ship. In fact, I saw nothing on the pier but a solitary soldier. On inspection, this soldier proved more interesting than the greatest possible mass.
He was standing on the very edge of the pier, looking very melancholy, owing to his being cut off by the exigencies of military routine from the mass of his comrades. Although I examined him for fully twenty minutes, the wretch never moved a muscle during the whole of that period. His weapon lay within his folded arms, just as if it were a baby some shyster truff had given him to hold and then decamped, leaving the fellow with something of which he did not know how to dispose without getting into trouble. By the gloomy aspect of his countenance and the forlorn state of his dress, it was certainly obvious that the possession of his weapon did not inspire him with any sense of military pride. He wore a stocking cap, which had ear flaps and a chin strap and a pinnacle and the Soviet arms on the forehead. His greatcoat was at least six sizes too large for him. An enemy could easily bind him securely with the unnecessary ends of the sleeves, which reached at least a foot beyond the tips of his outstretched fingers. The skirts of the coat touched the ground, giving the impression that he had built a tent about himself, with his head sticking through the roof, like a periscope.
The fact that he had pitched his tent on the edge of the pier, on the verge of enormous Russia and that he was looking into the sea gloomily, convinced me that if his greatcoat were a balloon instead of being a tent and the wind favourable, he would float off at once, fondling his weapon, to the conquest of Europe, without waiting for the mass of his comrades. For he DID look tired of enormous Russia.
As I watched, I pondered on the possible military use of this individual. I could find none. His overcoat made movement practically impossible. The sheer stupidity depicted in his countenance made it impossible for me to believe that he knew how to use his weapon should he be attacked. Indeed, had somebody tried to persuade me that the man was a comic monument, wrought in the new grotesque style of Soviet sculpture, as a satire on Standing armies, he would have had no difficulty in persuading me.
Carrying my suitcase and my typewriter and accompanied by the doctor, I landed on the pier and set out for the city on foot. The doctor had invited me to meet his family before going to an hotel.
The docks were enormous. There were hardly any human beings about, but we had to make wide detours in order to avoid long trains that lay everywhere, ready to shift masses of matter sometime, somewhere. God only knows when or where. Wandering over this enormous and empty place, over ground that was as uneven and battered as the battlefields of France during the world war, a horrible melancholy took possession of me, such melancholy as I have not experienced since I read Dostoievsky’s House of The Dead. But the doctor’s enthusiasm was proof against any form of melancholy. He waved the parcels in which he carried his shore rations and cried:
‘Very big. Powerful. Gigantic.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But what are you going to do about it?’
‘How?’
‘It’s certainly gigantic but nobody seems to be working.’
‘Yes?’ he said.
He halted for a few moments, looked about him, shook his head, frowned and then smiled in his usual ecstatic manner, when contemplating the progress of the Soviet Union, with special emphasis on the Five Year Plan.
‘At present,’ he said, ‘the situation is such. The activity is underground. At the end of Five Year Plan it shall be overground. Let us go.’
A little farther on we halted to take a rest. The doctor enlarged on his idea of underground and overground activity in relation to the docks.
‘In bourgeois countries,’ he said, ‘the situation is such. Very much dock activity contributes nothing to positive social results. Indeed very much negative social results. For example, potatoes are brought to England from France and then same potatoes are brought to Argentine from England and then to Cape Town and back again to Marseilles where the French put them in their soup. Here there is no such activity with potatoes or other commodities. There is only such movement of commodities as is socially necessary. Potatoes are moved to nearest stomachs. So for present, instead of making socially unnecessary movements of socially necessary commodities, we concentrate on Five Year Plan and afterwards we export large masses of commodities by means of this dock.’
‘But tell me,’ I said, ‘as a special favour, what IS the Five Year Plan?’
‘For building up industries of Soviet Union.’
I thought of suggesting that while the dockers were waiting to move the masses of commodities to be produced by the Five Year Plan they might amuse themselves by repairing the docks, but I refrained on realising that the suggestion might be indelicate.
Having undergone another customs’ examination at the dock gates, we debouched into the city. Then indeed I fell into a fever of excitement. Everybody has read accounts of the Paris mobs that thronged the streets after the French Revolution, with red bonnets and without trousers (or at least poorly trousered), but it is impossible to realise the redness of these mobs without seeing a similar mob in Russia in the full flush of red bonnetry and untrouseredness. When I saw the revolutionary hordes of men, women and children moving excitedly back and forth in the streets that lay beyond the waste place surrounding the dock gates, I very nearly went into an ecstasy.
And the dramatic instincts of the Russian people had provided a striking contrast to the excited mob in order to intensify their revolutionary excitedness. For a great number of sleeping cab horses and sleeping cab drivers lay between me and the mob, relics of the old, pre-revolutionary regime, somnolent, decadent, in opposition to the fervent enthusiasm of the beings of the new era.
For the first few moments I did not notice the cabmen. I wanted to embrace the red-capped women and thank them for their courtesy, since they had stuck to the outer show of revolution for thirteen years after the outbreak of revolution, presumably for my benefit. Then, when the first stage of my ecstasy passed, I took notice of the cabmen.
Astonishing! They were the famous Ish.. v.. xz .. ki (utterly impossible to spell) that figure in books written by foreigners about Russia. Their cabs resembled slightly the chair carriage of the eighteenth century. They were incredibly dirty and old. The harness was of crude design, the most amazing part of it being a huge yoke that towered above the horse’s head. The horses were equally disreputable, shaggy nags, not far from death. The drivers were more odd than anything the most imaginative child could dream of seeing in the zoological gardens, which Uncle James said he had seen in Bangkok. Both the horses and the drivers were in that state which is neither sleep nor wake, but a kind of idle trance from which a sudden shout or a flea bite might send them flying at furious speed, lashing, prancing, neighing, cursing.
‘Hurrah!’ I cried to the doctor. ‘This is marvellous. This is a scene which an American film producer might buy lock, stock and barrel as a studio. I refuse to move from here except in one of those cabs.’
But the man was impossible.
‘Please understand,’ he said. ‘The situation is such. These cabs are relics of Tsarism. It is our proletarian duty to liquidate them. We shall use instead taxis of a modern plan. These drivers are all counter-revolutionaries. They are drunkards and immoral. They charge very great prices. It is impossible for any friend of Soviet Russia to encourage them by being carried to any destination in such a manner. Instead, we shall go in a tramway, which is a scientific method of movement, commonly used by the proletariat.’
Thereupon he urged me forward and I followed him, half dazed, gaping. In spite of the crowds, there was an atmosphere of utter misery all round. The houses, the streets, the stray vehicles that passed, the human beings, all had the same air of poverty, hunger and desolation. I looked around and smelt, fancying that there must be decaying corpses in the streets. I listened, fancying that I must surely hear the wailing of ghosts.
Death! Death! Death! Or a state midway between life and death, as when a maimed animal waits with sad eyes for delivery from his torture.
What silence! Nobody smiled. Nobody laughed or cried out or made a joyous gesture. Each face wore a pinched expression, caused by fear, hunger and nervous exhaustion. It was exciting, yet it rent the heart and caused a desire for instant flight. Now I understood why the melancholy soldier stood enveloped in his greatcoat, as within a tent, on the verge of Russia, ready to fly into Europe. Now I understood why these Russian hordes were massing for the conquest of Europe. In order to escape the desolation of their own country. Under the strain of life in that city I felt that I should go mad, contemplating the corpse of something that had once been beautiful.
‘You like it?’ said the doctor in an enthusiastic though rather nervous voice.
‘I think it is the most wonderful sight I have ever seen,’ I answered with Jesuitical candour.
Our tramcar arrived. We dashed into the road from the pavement with the intention of getting aboard. Unfortunately, the greater part of a multitude dashed into the roadway at the same time. I found myself wedged among a crowd of people that smelt. They all tried to board the car at the same time, shouting what were very probably curses. Some got on board by plunging prone on to the platform, whence they were dragged by their friends or pushed by their rivals into the body of the vehicle. But the main body remained hanging on to the doorway, when the car, full to bursting point, continued its journey. Utterly exhausted, with my overcoat about my neck, I returned to the pavement. Again I suggested to the doctor that we should take a cab. But he remained adamant.
Another car came along. This time the doctor and myself got away smartly and reached the door of the tram well up with the leaders. Then, going all out, we managed to get on board, just as the conductor was pushing off the less lucky ones. The car moved on. I sighed with relief and prepared to stay where I was until I recovered breath. But no such respite was allowed me. A violent female citizen, wearing a red bonnet and a uniform that resembled that of a London policewoman, demanded our fares with small ceremony. I had no Russian money. The doctor had to perform acrobatic tricks with his body in order to get at his pocket, tricks similar to those performed by actors who pass doubled up through a barrel or stick a head, an arm and a leg through a hoop. While he was doing so, he received several upper cuts and hooks to the ribs from others who were performing similar tricks.
‘This is what he calls scientific travel,’ I thought maliciously.
Then I myself received a straight left to the jaw and as I turned around to retaliate, an enormous woman fell prone upon me, so that I was nearly smothered and had to give up all idea of defending myself. While I lay thus the tram came to a halt. Another mob attacked it, for the purpose of getting some scientific travel on it.
‘Move up,’ cried the doctor.
Had I any breath I would have told him what I thought of scientific travel, the Five Year Plan and the whole of his blasted country. But I was overwhelmed by the immensity of Russian womanhood which lay heavily on me and I could not speak.
Everything is organised in Russia except common sense. The rule on Soviet tram cars is that passengers must enter at the conductor’s end and emerge at the driver’s end. In theory that saves time. In practice it wastes time, together with subjecting the passengers to excruciating tortures under present conditions. The trams being overcrowded, the passages are blocked and many-passengers are forced to travel miles beyond their destination, owing to their being unable to descend. So to speak, it is generally necessary for a passenger, once he gets aboard, to begin to descend, by hacking his way through the press of human beings in the vehicle.
The doctor and myself began to hack our way. Those directly in front of us, being in the vehicle and not wishing to descend for some time, were unwilling to budge. Indeed, they could not move if they tried. Yet we had to move, as a multitude pressed us from behind.
‘Preastiti,’ cried the doctor.
He might as well have asked for a pint of bitter for all the chance he had of getting room to pass. Half the passengers were yelling praestiti and the other half were yelling to the shouters to stop yelling.
Nevertheless we made progress until we reached the centre of the car. There we were pushed into a side current. I was by that time so exhausted that I would have signed on for three years in the French Foreign Legion on condition that I be removed at once from the hellish place. But the doctor had lost not an atom of his revolutionary enthusiasm.
‘The situation is such,’ he began.
Losing my temper at last, I interrupted him and yelled:
‘Yes. The situation is such and a bloody awful situation it is.’
‘It is a crisis of transport,’ he yelled, either not understanding what I had said owing to the general tumult, or else indifferent to what I had said. ‘This crisis faces all the great cities of the Union. In Leningrad it is very severe especially. Now Leningrad great industrial city. Many more factories than before revolution. At dinner time and knock-off great pressure on transport.’
‘Why not organise the crowds?’ I yelled.
‘No understand crowd organisation,’ he shouted. ‘What means it?’
‘Why not make the people take their turns and not overcrowd the trams?’
‘Not enough trams,’ he yelled.
‘Make more,’ I shouted in fury.
‘No time,’ he cried.
‘Utter rot,’ I screamed. ‘Time is wasted here by the mile.’
‘No materials,’ he screamed in reply.
‘Then you had better go bankrupt,’ I whispered, as my voice had broken.
He also was exhausted, so we remained silent until the end of our tram journey. In some un-explainable manner we managed to get off, only two stations farther .than we wished. I crawled over to the pavement and almost shed tears with exhaustion and irritation. A Rugby player feels just like that when he has gone down to a forward rush and then crawls out of the loose scrum with his body squashed, as if it had been over-run by a herd of cattle.
‘Where are we now?’ I gasped
‘This street,’ he said, ‘was formerly called the Nevsky Prospeckt.’
‘Astonishing!’ I cried, as I looked up and down the magnificent thoroughfare. ‘It is hardly recognisable from the Overcoat.’
‘What overcoat?’
‘Gogol’s.’
‘Oh! You mean XcVzPL’
He mentioned the name of the story in Russian.
‘Yes. It looked so magnificent in literature. In reality I must tell you that it looks drab and devoid of romance.’
‘But now,’ he said, ‘you must understand it is changed. It is October Street.’
I said no more. But as I looked I thought it would have been more kind to change its name into December Street, that dead month smelling of the tomb. In its prime it must have been magnificent. Even yet, in its degradation, the domed churches, that are scattered here and there along its length, thrill the imagination. Wide, with gorgeous shops that were stocked with all the luxuries of the world, it was a fitting parade ground for all the grandeur of Tsarism, that most sensual and voluptuous of aristocracies.
Although the thoroughfare of the Nevsky was visible for a mile, I could not see a single motor car. A child could play with safety in the very middle of the street. A blind man could feel his way across without a stick. What desolation! It was painful for me to remember that this great street acted as a centre for my imagination, when forming a picture of the life portrayed in Russian literature, as environment for the splendid personages of Tolstoy, as contrast for the starved idiots of Dostoievsky. And now it was merely an empty roadway, full of holes, flanked by pavements that were rotting away and lined with houses that looked like tenements of the worst quality.
‘This street,’ said the doctor, ‘is now uninteresting. More interesting from the social point of view are the new workers’ quarters where the new socialist life is being built. Formerly this street was interesting, because of the bourgeois parasites who enjoyed themselves here, by satisfying the lusts of their bodies. Now there is no bourgeoisie. This street is dead. Formerly in workers’ quarters there was only despair and darkness. Now there is great life and positive social activities. The situation is such as I say.’
Then he added:
‘It is like a clock. The pendulum swings.’
‘Quite true,’ I said. ‘Rome is now inhabited by Italians. Alexandria is rather like a dunghill. Carthage is extinct. Explorers dig for the great Aztec cities.’
‘Please explain,’ he said uncomfortably.
‘I mean,’ I said, ‘that Gibbon spoke truly when he said that all things that have in them a beginning have in them the elements of decay.’
‘Who is Gibbon?’
‘A famous English historian.’
‘He is a bourgeois,’ said the doctor curtly. ‘Here it is not decay but growth.’
‘It looks to me,’ I said, ‘more like the growth of an ulcer as far as this street is concerned.’
‘You no understand,’ he said. ‘The situation is such. In New York when they wish build skyscraper, not only they knock down old house, but they dig very deep for foundation of new very tall house. So here, it was not only necessary knock down Tsar, but also sweep away all sign of Tsar life. Then build Socialism.’
‘Then you admit Leningrad is going to decay.’
‘No. It shall become not as formerly pleasure city like Paris, but great industrial city, like Manchester.’
‘I doubt it. You cannot put life into a corpse. This city is the corpse of Tsarism. Even as a museum it would not be of sufficient world interest to maintain. After all Tsarism was not a civilisation. It was merely a temporary experiment in government by an awakening national consciousness.’
‘Yes?’ said the doctor. ‘Foreigners observe our Union in such a manner. You look for one minute and then you judge. Perhaps it would be better to see all city first and then judge.’
‘Ridiculous,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t take a year to examine a horse’s mouth. I am not an economist or a sociologist or a politician. It is no use showing me the city in detail and giving me figures and facts. I could see nothing and learn nothing. I know merely by intuition. I feel essences. I do not see surfaces. I comprehend the whole, in my own manner, for my own purpose, without knowing the composition of the various parts. Your ship, Kronstadt, the Soviet navy at exercise, the docks, this street, as well as the history of Russia from the time this city was built on land conquered from the Swedes, through the Japanese war, which meant Russia’s failure to expand through the Pacific, through the Great War, which meant Russia’s failure to expand along the Baltic coast into Europe, on to the Revolution, when Russia retired on Moscow in order to weave a new plan of expansion, all tell me that this city of Leningrad is doomed. So why should I look at the houses in order to convince myself of the truth of a conviction with which I left home. It would even be dangerous for me to do so. I might prove myself to be wrong. Dreadful thought, because I am never wrong. Russia’s road is not this way. It has merely been an observation post, a . . .’
‘You are mad,’ said the doctor. ‘Or, perhaps you are joking. Yes?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ’I was just giving you an example of what a scoundrel could write, if he set out to make a book called, let us say, Lies About Russia’
‘Of course,’ said the doctor. ‘That is a joke.’
‘I hope an excellent one,’ I replied.
We arrived at the doctor’s house. It was a large building divided into flats. Formerly it had been elegant but it had fallen into disrepair and also, I fear, into disrepute. Its former elegance was still manifest but it had begun to resemble a finely-built man of quality who has taken to drink and forgets to shave, or to take a bath or to keep his clothes in order. Like the rest of Leningrad, the house was also a relic of Tsarism. It once had inhabitants, vague people whose existence I could barely imagine as I climbed the gorgeous staircase. They had gone away, to the grave, to the cabarets and brothels of Western Europe. Strange beings had taken their place. And these new things were not really inhabitants of the house. They were merely billeted therein; a rather savage and undisciplined soldiery who did not keep their billets clean. Those that I met on the stairs were ragged, haggard and melancholy.
When we reached our floor, we entered by a magnificent doorway into a large room where there was nothing whatsoever. It was a beautiful room and it seemed to look at us with contempt and anger. Empty rooms always give one that impression of contempt and hostility. We passed through it into another room which was also empty, except for some piles of rubbish. This astonished me, as I had heard there was a housing crisis in Leningrad. But apparently these rooms had formerly been used as drawing and reception rooms. Nobody now wanted such rooms. They were left empty as unsuitable for the needs of the masses.
We then entered a corridor which was very long and dark. We entered the doctor’s room. That room was also of considerable beauty, furnished in a manner that gave an impression of elegance, but of a certain kind. The furniture must have been extremely expensive at one time, but it now looked out of place, since the room was used as a bedroom. It was heavy and rather like the musty, ornate stuff found in French antique shops.
I looked out through the window on to a courtyard that was surrounded by great barracks of tenement houses. On this flagged space there were children at play. A lane opened off the court at one end. And opposite the mouth of the lane there was an arch cut into the wall of the tenements. People kept crossing the courtyard, back and forth from the lane to the arch, appearing and disappearing. Other people emerged from the sides, through dark doors and moved towards the lane or towards the arch, appearing and disappearing; or coming from the lane or the arch, they entered by the dark doors, moving at angles to the route of the others, who were moving straight across, disappearing and appearing. It was exactly like a scene in a macabre Russian film, where the people, photographed from a height, look like ants and move in a curious manner, brooding, their arms hidden in their sleeves or held rigid by their sides, performing mass movements that are apparently without purpose. In life it was even more impressive and terrifying than on the screen.
It reminded me also of the delightfully romantic places inhabited by the desolate characters in Dostoievsky’s work. And I was delighted that Dostoievsky worked from reality and had not distorted life as his enemies have claimed. For this court and all I had seen of Russia since my arrival was exactly as Dostoievsky had depicted it in his magnificent writings, all the slovenliness, the insanity, the poverty, the melancholy, the wild passions that goaded people, forcing them to rise up and escape from the tortures of incomprehensible immensity by the performance of some wild feat.
But it is always so. When a writer of supreme genius imprisons, within the confines of his art, the body and soul of his people, shabby intellects accuse him of having distorted reality. Of course, there existed also the artificial civilisation depicted by the polite and clever Tchehov and by Turgenev. It lived in this heavy room and looked down into this courtyard on Dostoievsky’s brooding maniacs. But it held aloof. It did not belong. It deplored life and begged for death. The brooding maniacs granted its wish and destroyed it. It has gone, wringing its delicate hands and uttering gentle platitudes in a sad voice about culture. But Dostoievsky’s people remain. To do what? What wild feat of genius shall their future disclose, could they but issue from that flagged dungeon where they march to and fro?
I was held by that gloomy courtyard as by a magnet. Intellectually, it was the most exciting thing I had seen for a long time. And my fixed idea about the conquest of Europe by the Russians was fed by this gloomy place until it assumed the intensity of accomplished fact. It seemed that they were already massing for that descent on Europe, as they marched back and forth, in and out, gloomy, with downcast heads, shabby, in need of loot, massing for that conquest of the world which Dostoievsky foretold in The Idiot.
The war of the idiots?
A policeman strolled into the courtyard, stood, watched, swung his baton and walked out again.
The doctor was a trifle irritated when I told him that I loved the court and that I was excited by its sordid romance.
‘We shall change all that,’ he said. ‘New workers’ houses are being built. But now we shall go. My wife is not at home. Later we shall come back, when we get room for you at hotel.’
As we were leaving, his sister-in-law came in. She blushed deeply on being introduced. She was a young Jewess, not pretty, but with great charm. Although she spoke English very well, she bolted through shyness after saying a few words.
‘My wife belongs to a bourgeois family,’ said the doctor as we went downstairs.