Leaves from a Russian Diary—and Thirty Years After [Enlarged Edition]

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Text originally published in 1950 under the same title.

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LEAVES FROM A RUSSIAN DIARY—AND THIRTY YEARS AFTER

BY

PITIRIM A. SOROKIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD TO THE EDITION OF 1950 5

PART I—1917 7

PRELUDE 7

CHAPTER I—FIRST DAY 9

CHAPTER II—NEXT DAY 14

CHAPTER III—SINCE FREEDOM EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED 20

CHAPTER IV—LIGHT AND SHADOWS 27

CHAPTER V—AGONY 31

CHAPTER VI—THE EXPLOSION 38

CHAPTER VII—NEW CRISES 46

CHAPTER VIII—THE ABYSS 57

PART II—1918 65

CHAPTER IX—IN THE BASTILLE OF PETROGRAD. 65

CHAPTER X—THE CAT AND THE MICE 73

CHAPTER XI—WANDERING 82

CHAPTER XII—IN THE BOSOM OF NATURE 87

CHAPTER XIII—LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH’ ENTRATE 91

CHAPTER XIV—THE RED MASS 95

CHAPTER XV—RESURRECTION 106

CHAPTER XVI—FIRST STEPS IN THE COMMUNISTIC PARADISE 109

PART III—1919-1920 112

CHAPTER XVII—IN THE BOSOM OF COMMUNISTIC CULTURE 112

CHAPTER XVIII—MEMENTO MORI 117

CHAPTER XIX—IN THE HOME OF THE CZARS 120

CHAPTER XX—RED SCHOLARSHIP 124

PART IV—1921-1922 128

CHAPTER XXI—THE AVENGERS 128

CHAPTER XXII—EXPIATION 132

CHAPTER XXIII—NEW BUTCHERY 136

CHAPTER XXIV—S. O. S. 142

CHAPTER XXV—NEW PLAYS 147

CHAPTER XXVI—BANISHMENT 150

PART V—THIRTY YEARS AFTER 156

CHAPTER XXVII—THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AS A GIGANTIC SUCCESS AND A COLOSSAL FAILURE 156

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 171

FOREWORD TO THE EDITION OF 1950

At the time of the first publication of this book in 1924, several Don Quixotes of the Revolution accused the author of distorting the beautiful Dulcinea of the Revolution into a bloody slut of Toboso. At present there are few, if any, such naive Don Quixotes, except, of course, the Communists. Being panders of the Revolution, it is their métier to glorify it. The events have proved my close-up of the Revolution to be correct. Millions of victims of the Revolution, its unsatiable bloodthirstiness, its overcrowded prisons and concentration or labor camps—all this has become too obvious during the past thirty years not to dispel all quixotic illusions about the Revolution’s beauty, humaneness, virtue, and generosity.

If anything, public opinion in the West suffers now from the opposite one-sidedness, ascribing to the Revolution many sins it does not have and denying some of its actual virtues. This opinion suffers also from two other errors: it views the Russian Revolution as a self-sufficient phenomenon, dangerous to an otherwise sound Western culture; and it regards it as an especially vicious type of revolution, quite different from other revolutions, of which the reactionary posterity of our own revolutionary forefathers—the Sons and Daughters of This or That Revolution—are proud. The naked truth is that the horrors of the Russian Revolution are not peculiar to it, but are typical of practically all violent revolutions, regardless of time, place, race, creed, or nationality. Likewise, the Russian Revolution is not an isolated disease, miraculously produced by the evil genius of Lenin, but is one of the four clearest manifestations of the disintegration of our Western sensate socio-cultural order, the others being the two World Wars and the Fascist-Nazi revolutions. It is not the Russian Revolution that produced the endless calamities of humanity after 1914, but it is this basic process of decay of our sensate order that produced the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Fascist-Nazi revolutions, the Second World War, and the numerous revolts and anarchy in the Orient and the Occident. As long as this disintegration of the Western sensate order continues, all attempts to prevent revolutionary and war processes are bound to fail.

It is futile to try to stop these processes by building a cordon sanitaire around the Soviet bloc: since the germs of the disintegration are as virulent and numerous in the West as in the East, a cordon sanitaire will not eliminate them. An even greater folly is to attempt to cure the disease by mutual aggressiveness, toughness, cold war, and preparations for an apocalyptic new war. All such policies are but twin brothers of the Revolution—of its destructiveness, its bloodiness, its tyranny, its totalitarianism. All such crusades, no matter how conservative their names and how highfalutin their mottoes, merely reinforce, multiply, and spread the germs of the disease. Only a basic reintegration of our culture can stop the diffusion and growth of these destructive processes. This reintegration can be achieved neither by the methods of the Revolution nor by the essentially similar techniques of the vociferous Crusaders against the Revolution, The techniques of love instead of hate, of creative construction rather than destruction, of reverence for life in place of serving death, of real freedom instead of coercion and pseudo-freedom—such are the techniques needed for rebuilding the house of humanity. The essay, Thirty Years After, somewhat substantiates the main propositions of this foreword—the propositions distasteful equally to the proponents and to the opponents of the Russian Revolution. The only excuse I have for being disagreeable to both parties is the old maxim: Amico Plato sed veritas amicissima.

Winchester, Mass., 1950.

PART I—1917

PRELUDE

January-February, 1917—

KEEPING a diary is a childish habit, but this childish habit may now be worthwhile even to a serious man. It is clear that we are now entering the storm of the Revolution. The authority of the Czar, the Czarina, and all of Government has terribly broken down. Defeat of Russian arms, poverty and wide discontent of the people inevitably call forth anew revolutionary clamor. The speeches of Shulgin, Milyukoff, and Kerensky in the Duma, and especially Milyukoff’s denunciation of the stupidity and treason of the Government, have awakened a dangerous echo throughout the country.

At a meeting yesterday of deputies, politicians, scholars, and writers at the house of Shubin-Posdeef, even the most conservative men talked about the coming Revolution as a certainty. Counts and barons, landlords and business men all applauded scathing criticisms of the Government and acclaimed the approaching Revolution. These men, weary, effeminized, accustomed to lives of comfort, calling for revolution, presented a curious spectacle. Like heedless children, they manifested a curiosity and a joy in meeting such an interesting development. I had a vision of the French ruling classes before the eighteenth-century Revolution. Like these Russians, their emasculated aristocracy, too, greeted the storm with laughter, not reflecting that it might rob them of their property and even of their lives.

In my lecture rooms it was the same. Those parts of my lectures in which I scored the defects of aristocratic societies were met by the students with ardent applause. University life tends to become more and more disorderly. On the walls of lavatories one reads such sentences as: Down with the Czar! Death to the Czarina of Rasputin! Long life to the Revolution! These have been erased by the police, but immediately they reappear. The newspapers have become audacious in attacking the Government.

Do you think that the guillotine will be necessary for us also in the near future? asked one of my students in the Workers’ University of the Viborg district of Petrograd.

I do not know, I replied. But I am certain that if you contemplate the guillotine for your enemies, the same guillotine will cut off your head a little later. The guillotine always kills first the well-fed, but later on it gets the poor also. Do not forget this. It may be useful to you if revolution really comes.

Prices are rising frightfully. Bread lines before the shops are longer and longer. Bitter complaints from poor people waiting hours in these lines, or as they are called, "khwosts (queues"), becomes more and more rebellious. Today I met three soldiers, friends of mine, just returned from the front. One of them spoke with such hatred against the Government, the expressions of the others of indignation and discontent in the army were so extreme that they shocked me. The army then may precipitate the Revolution. I should prefer not to have it so...But perhaps I am wrong.

Street demonstrations by poor women and children demanding Bread and herrings, eternal voice of all revolutions, have previously led to the looting of one or two Shops, and today the demonstration became larger and noisier. The rioters today stopped tram cars, turning over some of them, plundering a good many shops, and even attacking policemen. Many workmen have joined the women and a general strike and great excitement resulted. After the wrecking of the trams, something more important may next be overthrown,—the Czar’s throne, for instance. Things are drifting that way.

If future historians look for the group that began the Russian Revolution, let him not create any involved theory. The Russian Revolution was begun by hungry women and children demanding bread and herrings. They started by wrecking tram cars and looting a few small shops. Only later did they, together with workmen and politicians, become ambitious to wreck that mighty edifice the Russian Autocracy.

It goes steadily on. Yesterday three men and one woman were killed. Today more. The orderly routine of life is broken. Shops and offices are dosed. In the University, instead of lectures political meetings are held. Newspapers appear irregularly. Revolution has pushed one foot over the threshold of my country.

Today the same. Crowds on the Nevsky Prospekt are larger. The police are idle and irresolute. One hears that even the Cossacks have refused to disperse the crowds. This means that the Government is helpless and their machine broken. Rioters have begun to kill policemen.

The Pavlovsky Regiment is in revolt. We are told that Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, is recruiting special squads of police and is equipping them with machine guns to be placed on rooftops or merciless suppression of demonstrations. This half-mad Paralytic can do nothing much however, end is very near...or is it only the beginning?

CHAPTER I—FIRST DAY

IT has come at last. At two o’clock in the morning, just now returned from the Duma, I hasten to set down the stirring events of this day. In the morning being not quite well, and lectures at the University being virtually stopped, I decided to stay at home and read the new work of V. Pareto, Tratatto di Sociologia Generale. From time to time I was interrupted by telephone, friends asking me for news and in turn giving their own to me.

Crowds on the Nevsky are bigger than ever today.

Workmen of the Putylovsky factory and of the Viborg side have gone out into the streets.

Heavy firing is heard from different quarters of the town.

They say that the Duma has been dissolved.

At noon telephone service was discontinued, and undisturbed I resumed my studies until about three o’clock when one of my students rushed in with the news that two regiments, armed and carrying red flags, had left their barrack and were marching on the Duma, there to unite with workmen.

Is this true? I exclaimed incredulously.

I saw them myself.

Hastily leaving the house, we hurried to the Troizky Bridge. Here we found a large but orderly crowd listening to the firing and greedily drinking in every bit of news. Nobody knew anything positively. Cavalry police kept the crowds in check and allowed nobody to cross the Neva.

Boom! Rat-a-tat, tat-tat-tat-tat...

Who’s firing? On whom?

Let’s go to the central part of town, I suggested. We may learn something there.

But the bridges are ripped to pieces.

We have the ice of the Neva, I urged.

Well, I’m game.

Not without difficulty did we cross the river and reach the Economic Committee of the Union of Cities and Zemstvos (County Councils) where I hoped to get authentic information, but here they knew no more than we. Somehow or other we had to find out what was happening. Also it occurred to me that if the regiments did reach the Duma they would probably have to be fed. So I said to my friends—the members of Committee: You try to get some food together, and at a message from me send it to the Duma. An old acquaintance, Mr. Kusmin, at this moment joined us and we started. Nevsky Prospekt near the Ekaterina Canal was still quiet, but as we turned into the Liteiny the crowd grew larger and much louder grew the sound of the guns. The frantic efforts of the police to disperse the crowds were utterly without effect.

Ah-h! Pharaohs! Your end is coming! howled the mob.

From where we stood we could see the red glow of a fire near the Nicolaevsky Station. At last! At last! cried a man pointing to the ominous reflection.

What is burning?

The police station, he exulted.

But there is a fire station in the same building.

That won’t help. We are going to destroy all Government offices, burn, smash, kill all police, all tyrants, all despots! he cried in frenzy.

Advancing cautiously along the Liteiny, we came upon fresh bloodstains and saw on the pavement two dead bodies. Before our horrified eyes a man, trying to cross the street, fell mortally wounded by a flying bullet. Skilfully manoeuvering, we finally reached the Tauride Palace, finding around the building vast crowds of people, soldiers and workmen. No attempt had yet been made to enter the Russian Parliament, but cannon and machine guns were everywhere in evidence.

Revolutionists are prepared to defend their Duma, said my friend Kusmin{1} with approval.

On the contrary, I replied. A crazy mob is forcing the Duma into a revolution which it does not want. You will soon behold the real object of this demonstration.

The hall of the Duma presented a striking contrast to the tumult without. Here was comfort, dignity, order. Only here and there in corners could be seen small groups of deputies discussing the situation. At the door I met the Social Democrat Skobeleff.

Hurrah! It has come at last, he greeted us with out-stretched hand.

Have the soldiers had any food? I asked.

Little enough. Can you do anything about this?

I am going to try to do something, I assured him.

The Duma, the deputy Rjevsky told me, had actually been dissolved, but an executive committee had been appointed as a temporary Government.

Does this mean that you have allied yourself with the Revolution? I asked.

No...However, perhaps I have, he replied nervously.

This same confusion and uncertainty I observed in utterances of other deputies. The captains who were steering the Ship of State into the teeth of hurricane were not sure of their own course. A bad symptom, I thought to myself. But perhaps I do them injustice.

I next made an attempt to call various friends by telephone, but the service by this time was impossible, so I went back to the court of the Duma and explained to a group of soldiers that I was trying to get provisions brought for them. They found an automobile, with a red flag flying from it, and we drove off through the crowd.

This is enough to hang us all in case the Revolution is put down, I said to my guards jestingly.

Don’t worry. All will be right, they answered.

Near the Duma lived the lawyer Grusenberg. His telephone was working and I got in touch with friends who promised that food for the troops would soon be forthcoming. Returning to the Duma I found the crowds massed closer than ever. In the courtyard and in all adjacent streets were excited groups surrounding orators, members of the Duma, soldiers, and workmen, all holding forth on the significance of the day’s events, hailing the Revolution and the fall of Czarist despotism. All exalted the rising power of the people and called on all citizens to support the Revolution. These incendiary speeches aroused immense enthusiasm. At the doors of the Palace the crowd were calling for one and another of the more popular deputies, and compelled to appear, they all mounted the rostrum and spoke.

These feather-headed politicians are enjoying themselves now, said a skeptical friend who stood at my side. Let us see what they will think about things a few days from now.

But I myself, having caught some of the spirit of the hour, exclaimed confidently: Ah, pessimist! You do not know the people. Today they are satisfied with speeches from their leaders. Tomorrow they will demand action.

To the devil with it all, he retorted. Let us go in.

Hall and corridors of the Duma were packed with people. Soldiers behind rifles and machine guns were there. But still order prevailed. The street had not yet broken in.

Ah, comrade Sorokin, at last, Revolution! At last the day of glory has arrived! cried one of the workers—my student; others with him approaching me joyfully. In their faces was the light of hope and exaltation.

What are you doing here, boys? I asked.

We were told to come here to help organize the Soviet of Workmen, as in the Revolution of 1905, they chorused.

Why is a soviet necessary?

To defend the Revolution and the interests of the workers, to control the Government, and to proclaim our dictatorship, they replied. You’ll join us, won’t you?

I haven’t been elected, thank you, I returned dryly.

Neither have we been elected, but that doesn’t matter. In such times such formalities are needless.

I don’t agree with you, I said, and I added: It may be, for the defense of the Revolution, a workmen’s committee will have to be formed, but be careful about any dictatorship.

Entering a committee room I found several Social Democratic deputies and about twelve workmen, the nucleus of the future Soviet. From them I received an urgent invitation to become a member, but I felt no call just then to join a soviet, so I left them for a meeting of writers who were organizing an official press committee of the Revolution. Among these men were Stekloff-Nakhamkes, Sukhanoff-Gimmer, Ermansky, and two or three other Social Democrats discussing the situation and wrangling over positions in the committee.

Who elected these men as representatives of the press? again I asked myself. Here they were, self-appointed censors, assuming power to suppress whatever in their judgment seemed undesirable newspapers, preparing to stifle liberty of speech and the press. Suddenly there came into my mind the words of Flaubert: In every revolutionist is hidden a gendarme. But I told myself that it was not fair to generalize from the actions of a few hotheads. Meanwhile the rooms and corridors of the Duma became more densely thronged.

What’s the latest? I asked of a deputy shouldering his way through the mass.

Rodzianko is trying to get into communication by telegraph with the Czar. The Executive Committee is discussing the organization of a new Ministry responsible jointly to the Czar and to the Duma.

Is anybody in control and regulation of this Revolution?

Nobody. It is developing spontaneously.

How about the monarchy and the Czar?

I know absolutely nothing.

Too bad if even you don’t know about these things, I remarked sarcastically.

Food was being brought in, a buffet was set up, and girl students began to feed the soldiers. This produced a sudden lull. But outside, I learned, things were going badly. Fires continued to break out. The people were growing hysterical with excitement, and as for the police they had retreated. Again I sought the courtyard of the Palace. The fever of liberty had by this time fairly intoxicated the multitude. Wild speeches and shrieks of applause filled the air. Excited in spite of myself I too listened and applauded, and it was midnight before I could tear myself from the place.

As no trams or cabs were to be had, I walked to the Petrogradksaia, a long distance from the Duma. It was very dark and no street lamps burned. Incessant firing reached my ears, and sometimes the firing seemed so near that all pedestrians stopped, looking around for shelter. Groups of citizens huddled against the walls of houses to avoid flying bullets. On the Liteiny blazed a very fierce fire, the magnificent building of the Okroujny Soud (the High Court) being in flames.

Who started that fire? someone exclaimed. Is it not necessary to have a court building for New Russia? The question went unanswered. We could see that other Government buildings were also burning, among them police stations, and that no efforts were being made to extinguish the fires. On the faces of many spectators of this destruction were expressions of intense satisfaction. Their countenances, in the red blaze, looked demoniac as they shouted, laughed, and danced. Here and there were heaped wooden carvings of the Russian double eagle, and these emblems of Empire, torn from shops and from Government buildings were being thrown on the fires, to the cheers of the crowd. The old regime was disappearing in ashes and no one regretted them. No one cared even when the fires spread to private houses. Let them go, one man said defiantly. When wood is chopped chips fly.

Twice I came on groups of soldiers and street loafers looting wine-shops with no one to stop them. But the farther we went from the Duma the more nearly normal things appeared. Here a few policemen remained at their posts. The firing was fainter. But when we crossed the Neva there came such a burst of rifle firing that everybody dropped flat on the ice until it ceased. As we reached the opposite shore we saw corpses lying on the snow.

At two o’clock I reached home and sat down to write these hurried notes. Am I glad or am I sorry? I can hardly tell, but certainly in my mind are persistent apprehensions. Tonight only a part of the city is in the hands of Revolutionists, but what will happen tomorrow? How long will this disorder continue? How many lives will be taken? Will these events weaken, or perhaps even destroy the army? Is it possible that they may result in the invasion of Russia by the Germans? It seems a terribly dangerous time to launch a revolution. But perhaps my premonitions are foolish. So many rejoicing and patriotic people cannot be wrong. Who was it said: Individuals may be mistaken, but a whole nation never? Very well, long live the Revolution! The Autocracy had to be destroyed some time. Therefore, away with doubts and premonitions.

I looked at my books and manuscripts. I suppose they will have to be put aside for a time, I reflected. This is no time for study. Action is the thing. Goodbye, beloved friends.

The firing begins again...

CHAPTER II—NEXT DAY

February 28, 1917—

THIS morning, with two friends, I started on foot for the Duma. The streets were full of excited people. All shops were closed, all business suspended. The sound of firing was heard from several directions. Motor cars full of soldiers and young men with rifles and machine guns rushed up and down. They were searching for police and counter-revolutionaries said to be concealed in private houses ready to sally forth and suppress the revolt. From time men and soldiers surrounded a house firing into the windows. Dangerous as they were, they made me think of nothing so much as a gang of boys in a spirit of malicious mischief bent on destruction. I saw no hidden police taken by them, but I did see many dwellers in these unhappy houses, some of them wounded. I also perceived that incendiary fires were more numerous than they had been the night before.

On the corner of Barmalieva Street and the Bolshoy Prospekt we came upon