The Soviet institutions present the familiar picture of Moscow pattern: gatherings of worn, tired people, looking hungry and apathetic. Typical and sad. The corridors and offices are crowded with applicants seeking permission to do or to be exempt from doing this or that. The labyrinth of new decrees is so intricate, the officials prefer the easier way of solving perplexing problems by “revolutionary method,” on their “conscience,” generally to the dissatisfaction of the petitioners.
Long lines are everywhere, and much writing and handling of “papers” and documents by Sovietsky barishni (young ladies), in high-heeled shoes, that swarm in every office. They puff at cigarettes and animatedly discuss the advantages of certain bureaus as measured by the quantity of the pyock issued, the symbol of Soviet existence. Workers and peasants, their heads bared, approach the long tables. Respectfully, even servilely, they seek information, plead for an “order” for clothing, or a “ticket” for boots. “I don’t know,” “In the next office,” “Come tomorrow,” is the usual reply. There are protests and lamentations, and begging for attention and advice. Occasionally someone in the line, after days of fruitless effort, loses his temper, and a string of true Russian curses fills the room, rising above the noise and the smoke. But when the commissar hastily enters, belated from the conference of the Party Committee, the hubbub subsides, and the barishni appear busy at their tasks. He has a worn and worried look: his desk is piled with papers awaiting his attention, and within an hour he is expected at another session. Lucky applicant that gets a hearing; happy if action is taken on his case.
The industries are at low ebb, mainly because of the lack of raw material and coal. The decree militarizing labor is being applied with great severity; the toilers in the shops and factories are rigidly bound to their places of employment. But the machinery has been neglected, most of it is out of repair, and there is a scarcity of artisans capable of putting it in order. The men are at their posts, pretending to work, but in reality idling or engaged in the stealthy manufacture of cigarette lighters, keys, locks, and other objects for personal use or private sale.
Many of the factories are entirely closed; others are operating with a minimum output. The sugar refineries, the most important industry of the Southeast, are working at a great deficit. Because of the total devaluation of Soviet money the State is compelled to pay its employees with products, chiefly with sugar from the old reserves. In search of documents for the Museum, I gather official statistics showing that to produce one pood (about 40 lbs.) of sugar, the government expends thirty-five, often even fifty-five pounds of the old sugar. The officials realize the extreme seriousness of the situation, but feel themselves helpless. Some skeptically, others with characteristic racial fatality, trudge on in the treadmill.
In the civil and military departments there is feverish activity, but sadly unorganized. Almost every branch is working independently, without relation to other Soviet institutions, frequently in entire ignorance and even in opposition to the policies and measures of the other executive bodies. Curious incidents result. Thus the Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Executive Committee has sent a telegraphic request to all Soviet institutions to aid the work of our Expedition, while the Secretary of the Party has at the same time issued an order against us, condemning our Mission as an attempt to deprive Ukraine of its historic documents, and threatening to confiscate the material we have collected.
The Soviet of Labor Unions occupies the huge building on the Krestchatik which was formerly the Hotel Savoy. In 1918 and 1919 that body played a most important role, its work covering the whole field of proletarian interests and its authority based on the expressed will of the industrial masses. But gradually the Soviet has been deprived of power, the government taking over its essential functions, and turning the unions into executive and administrative branches of the State machinery. The elective principle has been abolished and replaced by Communist appointment.
The labor headquarters are in great confusion. As in Kharkov, the entire Soviet and most of the managing boards of the locals have been recently “liquidated” as Menshevik or unsympathetic to the Communists, and new officials appointed by Moscow. The same atmosphere of suppressed nervousness is sensed in the unions as in the other government institutions. The Bolsheviki do not feel secure in the city, and there are stubborn rumors of Communist reverses on the Polish front, of Wrangel advancing from the Crimea, of Odessa being taken by the Whites, and of Makhno activity in the Kiev province.
In the course of my work I come in touch with T⸺, the Ukrainian Communist, whom I had met last winter in the Kharitonensky as a member of the delegation that had come to Moscow to plead for greater independence and self-determination for the Ukraine. He is of middle age, a university graduate and revolutionist repeatedly imprisoned under the Romanov regime. An active borodbist (Left Social Revolutionist of the Ukraine), he submitted to discipline when his party joined the Communists.
But he has “private opinions” which, long suppressed, seek relief. “I don’t mind discussing these questions with you,” he remarks, with an emphasis on the pronoun, “though I know that you are not a Communist—”
“But I am,” I interrupt; “not indeed a Bolshevik; nor a Governmentalist, but a free, Anarchist Communist.”
“Not our kind of Communist. Still, you are an old revolutionist. I heard a good deal about you in Moscow, and I can call you comrade. I disagree with you, of course, but I also disagree with the policies of my Party. The Ukraine is not Russia—it’s a great mistake for ‘the center’ to treat us as if we were. We could win the people to our side by having greater
