Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West (48 page)

She and her companions were alert to the risk of being treated like a ‘royal family’ and manipulated for Bolshevik purposes.
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Chicherin made a prediction at a banquet of welcome: ‘We instructed ourselves whilst the process of creating a new Russia was going on. When you return to England you also will have to learn while building, and then, in the near future, you will be able to greet us as we greet you tonight.’
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Mrs Snowden tartly noted: ‘As propagandists there is surely no race and no class to surpass the Russian Communists.’
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The repeated singing of the Internationale at the banquet got on her nerves.
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She also disliked the pomposity of official gatherings. Propaganda was unconvincing on the lips of ill-fed youngsters and she found it ‘unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the delivery of explosive perorations’.
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John Clarke, travelling with fellow Scot Willie Gallacher in July 1920 to the Comintern Congress, recorded a conversation on the slow train journey south from Murmansk to Petrograd. It was a time when the Red Army and the Polish Army were fighting for supremacy in Ukraine and Poland:

Gallacher: ‘Poles, Poles, are they defeated?’

Red Army soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’ (I don’t understand.)

Gallacher: ‘Poles – defeated?’

Soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’

Gallacher: ‘Poles – beaten – defeated – beaten?’ (A little fisticuff display.)

Soldier (stoically): ‘Ne upony mio!’

Gallacher: ‘Poles beaten! y’ken, beaten – washed oot – up the pole?’

Soldier (with loud guffaw): ‘Ne upony mio!’

And so on, ad infinitum.
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Clarke was known for his humour, but he could see that his efforts were lost on an audience of four hundred peasants near Kandalaksha. His political minder had to interpret for them. Although Clarke spoke hardly any Russian, he astutely noticed that the Kandalaksha peasants spoke a dialect so distant from standard Russian that they probably could not understand even the minder.
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Gallacher and Clarke took over for themselves and simply used ‘prehistoric gesture-language’.
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Generally the Soviet leadership was keen to keep visiting foreigners away from any Western resident who might puncture their warm illusions about Soviet Russia. Associated Press correspondent Marguerite Harrison, for example, was told to stay away from
H. G. Wells.
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But Bolshevik connivances were erratic, and Harrison was allowed to consort with Bertrand Russell.
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She tagged along on the Labour delegation’s trip to the Volga region:

Our tour was a most luxurious one throughout, giving no idea of the ordinary hardships of travel in Russia at the present time. We had a special sleeper, with all the former comforts including spotless linen, and electric lights, a dining car where we had three good meals a day, service and appointments being very nearly up to peace time standards.
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The cosseting of body and mind worked with Robert Williams, who declared that the experiences of the delegates would encourage them to argue for the removal of the economic blockade of Russia.
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In Samara, he stated that the British working class was pleased by every Red military triumph.
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The delegation’s interim report claimed that the ills of Soviet Russia – malnutrition and disease – were all the product of external factors. Policies of blockade or intervention should be put aside and official recognition granted.

Most of the other Britons resisted the blandishments and manipulation. Tom Shaw MP and Ben Turner bridled at the suggestion that the government of the United Kingdom was actively supporting the Polish invasion;
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and when Mrs Snowden disparaged the Soviet order, the Russian hosts downgraded her from ‘Comrade’ to ‘Madame’.
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The disappointment of the British delegation was summed up by one of its members who composed an irreverent new stanza for ‘The Red Flag’ as an antidote to Soviet boastfulness:

The people’s flag is palest pink,

It’s not so red as you may think;

We’ve been to see, and now we know

They been and changed its colour so.
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Lenin gave up an hour and a half of his time to some of the visitors despite his long-felt contempt for the leaders of British labour. While living in London, he said that George Bernard Shaw was ‘a good man fallen among Fabians’.
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About Sidney Webb he offered the opinion that he had ‘more industry than brains’.
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Lenin predicted that when British workers set up soviets, Ramsay MacDonald would do his utmost to halt the revolution in its tracks.
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His attitude to Bertrand Russell is unlikely to have been any different. For his part Russell was repelled by Lenin’s passion for violence while Ethel
Snowden was shocked by his ignorance about Britain; she explained to him that communism in England was constituted by ‘only a handful of extremists’ who had abandoned the older socialist organizations.
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Trotsky was too busy with his military duties for the delegates to be granted an interview with him, but he was present when the delegates were treated to a performance of an opera by Borodin. Russell managed a brief chat with him in the interval and formed a poor impression. He never explained the reason for this. But Mrs Snowden revealed that one of the delegates was introduced to Trotsky as a conscientious objector who had spent the Great War in prison. Trotsky commented: ‘We can have nobody here who preaches peace and wants to stop the war.’
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He can only have been talking about Russell. Until that moment Mrs Snowden had envisaged Trotsky as ‘the greatest of pacifists’ in the Great War. She now knew better.
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Yet she, too, stood up and applauded when he resumed his seat in the old Imperial box for the next act of the opera. Conquering her distaste for the Internationale, she sang along with everyone else.
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But the mood passed, and she was glad to leave Russia with the rest of the delegation at the end of their lengthy trip. Their departure was not uniformly easy. According to H. V. Keeling, some of them were compelled to sign a form promising not to attack the Soviet communists or else they would not be allowed to leave the country.
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Clifford Allen’s case was still more serious since he had fallen ill with pneumonia, exacerbated by the fact that he already suffered from TB, but his exit visa request was refused. Russell and Haden Guest pleaded with Chicherin. There was then a furious row because Chicherin insisted on Allen being examined by two Soviet doctors who would not be available for a couple more days. Russell recalled: ‘At the height of the quarrel, on a staircase, I indulged in a shouting match because Chicherin had been a friend of my Uncle Rollo and I had hopes of him. I shouted that I should denounce him as a murderer.’ Russell fancifully suspected that the Soviet authorities believed that the anti-Bolsheviks among the delegates wanted Allen to die en route to Britain so that he could not deliver a favourable report on Bolshevik rule.

The dispute resolved, the entire delegation made its way back to Britain where a meeting of welcome was held at the Albert Hall in London and Margaret Bondfield spoke of being impressed by ‘the stupendous nature of the drama’ of the communist revolution.
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A brisk discussion ensued over the next few weeks. The Social-Democratic Federation announced disapproval of Soviet tyranny: ‘[The] realization of Socialism is only possible on the basis of democracy. Every other path leads to ruin.’ Mrs Snowden added: ‘When you get down to the bottom the dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of about six men aided by an extraordinary commission.’
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She rushed a booklet into print:

Do not, gentle visitor, when you meet the great man, fall victim to this twinkling eye and make the mistake of thinking it betokens a tender spirit. I am sure Lenin is the kindest and gentlest of men in private relationships; but when he mentioned his solution of the peasant problem the merry twinkle had a cruel glint which horrified.
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On the other side stood Messrs Purcell, Skinner, Turner, Wallhead and Williams, who appealed to trade unionists to refuse to produce anything for use against Soviet Russia.
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Purcell called on skilled workers to volunteer for work there.
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John Clarke declared that Mrs Snowden was too middle class to understand the October Revolution and its greatness; he likened her to an ‘abandoned strumpet, harlot, and prostitute of the streets [who] sells her voluptuous merchandise to the very beings who disease her’.
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The dispute intrigued H. G. Wells, who made his own journey of exploration in September 1920. As a friend of Maxim Gorki he could count on a warm reception and Gorki lent him his assistant Moura Benckendorff – Lockhart’s lover in 1918 – as an interpreter. He was fed and watered to his satisfaction;
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and his speech to the Petrograd Soviet was reported in
Pravda
, presumably because he called for Russia to be left without foreign interference.
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When Wells interviewed Lenin, they talked about the future of Russian towns, Russian electricity and a little about Russian peasants.
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Such topics did not unduly threaten the intellectual defences of the ‘dreamer in the Kremlin’. Whereas Wells would snipe at Russell for over-dramatizing his account, he himself missed a chance to put Lenin under serious scrutiny.

Another Briton, the sculptor Clare Sheridan, was more perceptive when meeting Soviet leaders. She had long felt a penchant for Russia: ‘I was insatiably interested, I loved Slavs, Slav music, Slav literature, Slav art and decoration, and had always, since childhood, been drawn to Russia.’ She regarded Russians as ‘the most mystic, the most
barbarous and the most romantic’ people in the entire universe. In August 1920, she made the acquaintance of Lev Kamenev in London. Unencumbered by his wife’s company on his British trip and amiably fluent in French, he offered to sit for her and they hit it off splendidly.
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An adventurous widow, she showed him the sights of the capital, taking him to the Tate Gallery and Hampstead Heath. With plenty of free time, Sheridan also escorted him to Hampton Court where they spent the evening on the river. Kamenev invited her to the Café Royal and to the Ritz before suggesting:

‘Why don’t you come to Russia?’

‘How can I?’ I asked. And he made the wondrous reply:

‘I will take you with me when I go, and I will get Lenin and Trotzki [
sic
] to sit to you.’
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The fact that it would be a paid assignment was an additional attraction for Sheridan, who had debts at the time. She readily agreed, needing only to work out where to deposit her children before departure.
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