The Secretary himself could give me little information about labor conditions in the city and province, as he had only recently assumed charge of his office. “I am not a local man,” he said; “I was sent from Moscow only a few weeks ago. You see, Comrade,” he explained, evidently assuming my membership in the Communist Party, “it became necessary to liquidate the whole management of the Soviet and of most of the unions. At their heads were Mensheviki. They conducted the organization on the principle of alleged protection of the workers’ interests. Protection against whom?” he raged. “You understand how counterrevolutionary such a conception is! Just a Menshevik cloak to further their opposition to us. Under capitalism, the union is destructive of bourgeois interests; but with us, it is constructive. The labor bodies must work hand in hand with the government; in fact, they are the actual government, or one of its vital parts. They must serve as schools of Communism and at the same time carry out in industry the will of the proletariat as expressed by the Soviet Government. This is our policy, and we shall eliminate every opposition.”
A dark, heavyset man of medium stature walked quickly into the office, casting a questioning look at me. “A comrade from the center,” the Secretary introduced me, “sent to collect data on the Revolution. This is our predsedatel,” he explained.
The Chairman of the Labor Soviet shook hands with me hastily: “You will excuse me,” he said, “we are just swamped with work. I had to leave the session of the wage commission before it closed, because I have been phoned to attend an important conference of our Party Committee. The Mensheviki have declared a hunger strike in prison, and we are to take action on the matter.”
As we stepped out of the office, the Chairman was beset by a clamoring crowd. “Dear tovarish, just a minute please,” an old worker pleaded; “my brother is down with typhus, and I can’t get any medicine for him.”
“When will we be paid? Three months is due us,” another urged.
“Go to your own union,” the predsedatel advised him.
“But I’ve just come from there.”
“I haven’t time, tovarish, I haven’t time now,” the chairman kept repeating to the right and left, gently forcing his way through the crowd.
“Oh, Little Father,” a woman screamed, grabbing him by the arm. It was the young peasant I had met in Petrovsky’s office. “Has my husband been shot?”
The Chairman looked bewildered. “Who is your husband?” he demanded.
“A Red Army man, tovarish. Taken in a street raid for a labor deserter.”
“A deserter! That’s bad.” Reaching the street, and waving his hand to me, the predsedatel jumped into his waiting automobile, and was driven away.
XXIV
Yossif the Emigrant
A short, slender man of thirty, with lustrous dark eyes set wide apart, and a face of peculiar sadness. The expression of his eyes still haunts me: now mournful, now irate, they reflect all the tragedy of his Jewish descent. His smile speaks the kindliness of a heart that has suffered and learned to understand. The thought kept running through my mind, as he was relating his experiences in the Revolution, that it was his patient, winsome smile which had conquered the brutality of his persecutors.
I had known him in America, him and his friend Lea, a sweet-faced girl of unusual self-control and determination. Both had for years been active in the radical movement in the United States, but the call of the Revolution brought them back to their native land in the hope of helping in the great task of liberation. They worked with the Bolsheviki against Kerensky and the Provisional Government, and cooperated with them in the stormy October days, which “gave so much promise of a rainbow,” as the Emigrant remarked sorrowfully. But soon the Communists began to suppress the other revolutionary parties, and Yossif went with Lea to the Ukraine, where they aided in organizing the Southern Confederation of Anarchist Groups under the name of the Nabat (Alarm).
As the “Emigrant,” his pen name in the Nabat, the organ of the Confederation, Yossif is widely known in the South and is much loved for his idealism and sunny disposition. Energetic and active, he is tireless in his labors among the Ukrainian peasantry, and everywhere he is the soul and inspiration of proletarian circles.
I have repeatedly visited him and his friends in the Anarchist bookstore Volnoye Bratstvo (Free Brotherhood). They have witnessed the numerous political changes in the Ukraine, have suffered imprisonment by the Whites, and have been maltreated by Denikin soldiers. “We are hounded no less by the Bolsheviki,” the Emigrant said; “we never know what they will do to us. One day they arrest us, and close our club and bookstore; at other times they leave us alone. We never feel safe; they keep us under constant surveillance. In this they have a great advantage over the Whites; under the latter we could work underground, but the Communists know almost everyone of us personally, for we always stood shoulder to shoulder with them against counterrevolution.”
The Emigrant, whom I had formerly known as a most peace-loving man, surprised me by his militant enthusiasm regarding Makhno, whom he familiarly calls Nestor. He spent much time with the latter, and he regards him as a thorough Anarchist, who is fighting reaction from the Left as well as from the Right. Yossif was active in Makhno’s camp as educator and teacher; he shared the daily life of the povstantsi, and accompanied them as a noncombatant on their campaigns. He is deeply convinced that the Bolsheviki have betrayed the people.
