In the course of the conversation I learn that her eldest son was killed by Denikin men; the youngest, Volodya, a boy of twenty, was shot by the Bolsheviki. She could never find out the reason. “The terrible Cheka,” she sighs, with tears in her eyes. “But the predsedatel31 was a kind man,” she continues presently; “it was he who saved my little Nadya. She had also been doomed to die. Once they took her to the cellar, stark naked—may, God forgive them! They forced her to the floor, face downward. Then a shot was fired over her head. Oh, the horror of it! She was told to confess and her life would be saved. But what could the poor child confess? She had nothing to tell. Indeed, she wouldn’t if she could, for Nadenka is like steel. Then she was sent back to her cell, and every night she expected to be taken out and shot, and when she heard a footstep, she would think they were coming for her. What torture the child lived through! But it was always someone else they took, and those never returned. Then one day the predsedatel sent for her and told her he did not want her shot, and that she was free to go home. Before that the Cheka had assured me that my daughter had been sent to Moscow for trial. And there she stood before me—ah, so pale and wan, more like a ghost of herself. Glory to the Lord for His goodness,” she sobs quietly.
The door opens and a girl steps in, carrying a bag slung across her shoulders. She is young and attractive, not over twenty, with her face lit up by black, shining eyes.
She stops affrighted as her glance falls upon me. “A friend,” I hasten to reassure her, delivering the message entrusted to me in Moscow. She brightens at once, puts the bag on the table, and kisses her mother. “We’ll celebrate today, mamenka,” she announces; “I got my pyock.” She begins sorting the things, calling out cheerily, “Herrings, two pounds; half a pound of soap; one pound of vegetable butter; a quarter of a pound of tobacco. That’s from the Sobezh” (Department of Social Care), she explains, turning to me. “I am employed there, but the main ‘social care’ is given to the ration,” she says jestingly. “It’s better in quality and quantity than I receive at the other two places. You know, some of us have to hold three or even four, positions to make ends meet. Mother and I together receive one and three-quarter pounds of bread per day, and with this monthly pyock and what I get from my other positions, we manage to live. Isn’t it so, mamenka?” and she again embraces her mother affectionately.
“It would be sinful to complain, my child,” the old lady replies; “other people are worse off.”
Nadya has preserved her sense of humor, and her silvery laugh frequently punctuates the conversation. She is much concerned about the fate of her friends in the North, and is overjoyed to get direct news of Marusya, as she affectionately calls Maria Spiridonova. Eagerly she listens to the story of my repeated visits to the famous leader of the Left Social Revolutionists, who is now in hiding in Moscow. “I love and worship her,” she declares impetuously; “she has been the heroine of my life. And to think how the Bolsheviki hound her! Here in the South,” she continues more calmly, “our Party has been almost entirely liquidated. The persecution has forced the weaker ones to make peace with the Communists; some have even joined them. Those of us who have remained true keep ‘underground.’ The Red terror is such that activity now is out of the question. With paper, presses, and everything else nationalized, we cannot even print a handbill, as we used to do in the time of the Tsar. Besides, the workers are so cowed, their need so great, they will listen to you only if you can offer them bread. Moreover, their minds have been poisoned against the intelligentsia. The latter are actually dying of starvation. Here in Kharkov, for instance, they receive six to seven thousand roubles per month, while a pound of bread costs two to three thousand. Some wit figured out that the Soviet salary of twenty of the most noted Russian professors equals—according to the present purchasing power of the rouble—the amount allowed by the old regime budget for the support of the watchdog at the government institutions.”
By the aid of Nadya I am enabled to get in touch with several “irreconcilables” of the Left Social Revolutionists. The most interesting personality among them is N⸺, a former katorzhanin32 and later instructor in literature in the People’s University of Kharkov. Recently he has been discharged because the political commissar, a Communist youth, considered his lectures of an anti-Marxian tendency.
“The Bolsheviki complain that they lack teachers and educators,” N⸺ said, “but in reality they permit no one to work with them unless he be a Communist or ingratiate himself with the Communist ‘cell.’ It is the latter, the Party unit in every institution, that decides on the ‘reliability’ and fitness—even of professors and teachers.”
“The Bolsheviki have failed,” he remarked to me on another occasion, “chiefly because of their total intellectual barbarism. Social life, no less than individual, is impossible without certain ethical and human values. The Bolsheviki have abolished them, and in their place we have only the arbitrary will of the Soviet bureaucracy and irresponsible terror.”
N⸺ voices the sentiments of the Left Social Revolutionary group, his views fully shared by his comrades. The rule of a minority, they agree, is necessarily a despotism based on oppression and violence. Thus 10,000 Spartans governed 300,000 Helots, while in the French Revolution 300,000 Jacobins sought to control the 7,000,000
