CHAPTER XIII
FRIENDS OF RUSSIAN FREEDOM
If spiritual force implies the power to lift the individual out of the contemplation of his own interests into something great and of ultimate value to the men and women of this and the generations to come, and if, so lifted, sacrifices are freely offered on the altar of the cause, it may truly be said that the Russian Revolution is a spiritual force on the East Side of New York.
People who all through the day are immersed in mundane affairs, the earning of money to provide food and shelter, are transfigured at its appeal. Back of the Russian Jew’s ardor for the liberation of a people from the absolutism that provoked terrorism lies also the memory of pogroms and massacres.
Though I had agonized with my neighbors over the tales that crossed the water and the pitiful human drift that came to our shores, I did not know how far I was from realizing the depths of horror until I saw at Ellis Island little children with saber-cuts on their heads and bodies, mutilated and orphaned at the Kishineff massacre. Rescued by compassionate people, they had been sent here to be taken into American homes.
The procession of mourners marching with black-draped flags after the news of the Bialystok massacre, the mass-meetings called to give expression to sorrow at the failure of Father Gapon’s attempt to obtain a hearing for the workingmen on that “Bloody Sunday”[10] when, it will be remembered, the priest led hosts of men, women, and children carrying icons and the Emperor’s picture to his palace, only to be fired upon by his order, are some of the events that keep the Russian revolutionary movement a stirring propaganda in our quarter of New York, at least.
Our contact with the members of the Russian revolutionary committee in New York is close enough to enable us to be of occasional service to them, and some report of our trustworthiness must have penetrated into the prisons, as the letters we receive and the exiles who come to us indicate.
A volume might be written of these visitors. The share they have taken in the revolutionary movement is known, and their coming is often merely an assurance that hope still lives. The young women, intrepid figures, are significant not only of the long-continued struggle for political deliverance, but of the historical progress of womenkind toward intellectual and social freedom.
When Dr. W⸺ called upon me he was on his way to Sakhalin to join his wife after nearly twenty years’ separation. For participation in an act of violence against an official notorious for his brutality and disregard even of Russian justice she had been sentenced to death, but the sentence had been commuted to imprisonment in the Schlüsselburg fortress, whither she was conducted in heavy chains, and where she remained thirteen years. Later she was rearrested and sentenced to exile for life. She had been for five years in the frozen Siberian village of Sakhalin, when, in 1898, her husband, having seen their only son established in life and settled his own affairs, obtained permission from the government to join his wife in her exile.
In imagination I followed this cultured, impressive-looking man on his long journey with a hope that was almost a prayer that the reunited husband and wife would find recompense in their comradeship for all that had been given up and that the woman’s fine spirit would make up for whatever she might have lost through deprivation of stimulating contact with her own circle in the world.
My interest caused me to follow their subsequent history. A few years after Dr. W⸺ had joined his wife they were permitted to remove to Vladivostok. In 1906, after the October manifesto, there was a military revolutionary movement in Vladivostok. The governor gave the order to fire and Madame W⸺, who, with her husband, was watching the crowd, was killed by a stray bullet. Her son is now a lawyer in Petrograd. Although separated from his mother nearly all his life he shows his devotion to her memory and his sympathy with the cause by defending the “politicals” who come to him.
The settlement from time to time affords occasions for conference on Russian affairs between influential Americans and visiting Russians who entertain hopes of reform by other than active revolutionary methods and it has also given a hearing and found sympathetic friends for other unhappy subjects of the Czar.
Echoes came to us of the persecution of the Doukhobors, a Russian religious communistic sect, whose creed bears resemblance to that of the Friends. Like the active revolutionists, these people had suffered flogging, imprisonment, and exile, but in their case for espousing the doctrine of non-resistance.
In 1897, upon their refusal to take up arms, persecution again became active. The Russian press was forbidden to allude to the subject, but a petition was said to have been thrown into the carriage of the Empress when she was traveling in the Caucasus, where the Doukhobors had been banished, and her interest was aroused. By 1900 Tolstoi had succeeded in fixing attention upon their plight, and arrangements were finally made, chiefly through the efforts of Friends in England and America and the devotion of Aylmer Maude, for their settlement in Canada.
In order to raise funds for the emigration of these peasants to Canada, Tolstoi was persuaded to depart from his established principle and accept copyright for “Resurrection,” but the Doukhobors refused to benefit by the sale of a book which they did not consider “good.”
During the first years of their life in Manitoba things did not go well with them, and the House on Henry Street became the headquarters for some of their friends as they came and went from England. A young man who, under the influence of Tolstoi, had given up his commission in the army spent a winter in Canada helping them to lay out their farm lands.
When he visited us he paid full tribute to the sincerity of their religious convictions, but somewhat ruefully lamented the fanatical extremes to which they carried them. The Doukhobors, who believed that all work should be shared, voted against one person milking their single cow. “But the cow,” said the young ex-captain, “was not a communist, and went dry.”
Fraternal Greetings P Kropotkin
My association with the fortunes of the Doukhobors ended with a slight incident some time later. A peasant, unable to speak any language or dialect that we could command in the house or neighborhood, presented a card at our door on which were written these three words, “Kropotkin, Crosby, Wald.” When an interpreter was secured from Ellis Island we learned that, hearing of the pilgrimage of the Doukhobors to Canada, he had decided to follow them, and for clews had only the remote connection of Kropotkin’s sympathy with Russian peasants, Ernest Crosby’s devotion to Tolstoi, and some rumor of his and my interest in these people. That he should have succeeded in finding me seemed quite remarkable. He was sent to Canada, and subsequent letters from him gave evidence of his contentment with the odd sect to which he had been attracted.
After rather serious conflict between their religious practices and the Canadian regulations, the Doukhobors are reported to have settled their differences and to have established flourishing communistic colonies where thousands of acres have been brought under cultivation.
The Friends of Russian Freedom, a national association with headquarters in New York, is composed of well-known American sympathizers, and, like the society of the same name in England, recognizes the spirit that animates Russians engaged in the struggle for political freedom, and is watchful to show sympathy and give aid.
An occasion for this arose about eight years ago, when the Russian Government demanded the extradition of one Jan Pouren as a common criminal. The Commissioner before whom the case was brought acceded to Russia’s demands and Pouren was held in the Tombs prison to await extradition. Then this insignificant Lettish peasant became a center of protest. Pouren, it was known, had been involved in the Baltic uprisings, and acquiescence in Russia’s demands for his extradition would imperil thousands who, like him, had sought a refuge here, and would take heart out of the people who still clung to the party of protest throughout Russia. A great mass-meeting held in Cooper Union bore testimony to the tenacity with which high-minded Americans clung to the cherished traditions of their country. Able counsel generously offered their services, and it was hoped that this and other expressions of public protest would induce the Secretary of State to order the case reopened.
My own participation came about because of a request from the members of the Russian Revolutionary Committee in New York that I present to President Roosevelt personally the arguments for the reopening of the case. An hour preceding the weekly Cabinet meeting was appointed for my visit. I took to the White House an extraordinary letter sent by Lettish peasants, now hard-working and law-abiding residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It read: “We hear Jan Pouren is in prison, that he is called a criminal. We called him ‘brother’ and ‘comrade.’ Do not let him fall into the hands of the bloodthirsty vampire.” To this letter were appended the signatures and addresses of men who had been in the struggle in Russia and who, by identifying themselves with Pouren, placed themselves in equal jeopardy should the case go against him. They offered to give sworn affidavits, or to come in person to testify for the accused. With the letter had come a considerable sum of money which the signers had collected from their scanty wages for Pouren’s defense. I also had with me a translation of the report to the second Duma on the Baltic uprisings wherein this testimony, in reference to the attempt of the Government to locate those involved in the disturbances, was recorded: “They beat the eight-year-old Anna Pouren, demanding of her that she should tell the whereabouts of her father.”
The President and the Secretaries concerned discussed the matter, and I left with the assurance that the new evidence offered would justify the reopening of the case. At the second hearing the Commissioner’s decision was reversed and Russia’s demands refused, on the ground that the alleged offenses were shown to be political and “not in any one instance for personal grievance or for personal gain.”[11]
George Kennan, who first focused the attention of Americans upon the political exiles through his dramatic portrayal of their condition in the Siberian prisons, is still the eager champion of their cause. Prince Kropotkin, who thrilled the readers of the Atlantic Monthly with his “Autobiography of a Revolutionist”;[12] Tschaikowsky, Gershuni, Marie Sukloff[13]—a long procession of saints and martyrs, sympathizers, and supporters—have crossed the threshold of the House on Henry Street and stirred deep feeling there. Katharine Breshkovsky (Babuschka, little grandmother)[14], most beloved of all who have suffered for the great cause, is to many a symbol of the Russian revolution.
Who of those that sat around the fire with her in the sitting-room of the Henry Street house can ever forget the experience? We knew vaguely the story of the young noblewoman’s attempt to teach the newly freed serfs on her father’s estate in the early sixties; how her religious zeal to give all that she had to the poor was regarded as dangerous by the Czar’s government, and how one suppression and persecution after another finally drove her into the circle of active revolutionists. Her long incarceration in the Russian prison and final sentence to the Kara mines and hard labor was known to us, and we identified her as the woman whose exalted spirit had stirred Mr. Kennan when he met her in the little Buriat hamlet on the frontier of China so many years ago.
And then, after two decades of prison and Siberian exile, she sat with us and thrilled us with glimpses of the courage of those who answered the call. Lightly touching on her own share in the tragic drama, she carried us with her on the long road to Siberia among the politicals and the convicts who were their companions, through the perils of an almost successful escape with three students to the Pacific, a thousand miles away. She told of her recapture and return to hard labor in the Kara mines; of the unspeakable outrages, and the heroic measures her companions there took to draw attention to the prisoners’ plight, and how, despite these things, she looked back upon that time as wonderful because of the beautiful and valiant souls who were her fellow-prisoners and companions, young women who had given up more than life itself for the great cause of liberty.
Her visit to America in 1905 was made at a time when the long-cherished hopes of the revolutionists had some promise of realization. It was deemed necessary to gain the utmost sympathy and support from the comrades here, and she did indeed reawaken in the hearts of our neighbors their most passionate desire for the political emancipation of a country so well beloved from a government so well hated.
I accompanied Madame Breshkovsky to a reception given in her honor by her fellow-countrymen, and her approach was the signal for a great demonstration. They lifted her from the floor and carried her, high above the heads of the people, to her chair. They sang “The Marseillaise,” and the men wept with the women. Love and deference equally were accorded to her noble character and fine perceptions. In addition to her clear and far-sighted vision, her gift of quick and accurate decision and her extraordinary ability as an organizer gave her, I was told, remarkable authority in the councils of her party.
When I last saw her, at the close of her stay in this country, she implored me never to forget Russia and the struggle there, and said, as we separated after a lingering embrace: “Should you ever grow cold, bring before your mind the procession of men and women who for years have gone in the early dawn of their lives to execution, and gladly, that others might be free.”
Upon returning to Russia she was arrested, and after almost three years’ imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, “that huge stone coffin,” was sent to Siberia “na poselenie,” as a forced colonist. The first letters that came to her friends from Siberia told of the journey to the place of her exile in the Trans-Baikal, two or three hundred miles northeast of Irkutsk. They traveled by train, on foot, in primitive carts, or “crowded like herrings in a barrel” in boats that floated with the current, having no other means of propulsion, and, finally, after nearly three months spent on the way, reached the little island town of Kirensk, surrounded by two rivers, “the immense and cold Lena and the less majestic Kyrenga.”
A letter from a fellow-exile, written in August, 1910, tells of her passing through his village in a company of two hundred and fifty political exiles and criminals, surrounded by a numerous guard. “Among the crowd in gray coats, under gray skies and rain, her imposing figure struck everyone.” He notes how her first thought, after days of travel through the pouring rain in a miserable cart, and nights spent in barracks or around a bonfire in the open air, was for others, “our unfortunate comrades.” “Their sufferings,” he adds, “do a terrible sore at her heart.... She formed the center of the party and the object of general attention, not only of her political comrades, but also of the criminals and the soldiers of the convoy. When I had traveled under escort to our exile some months before everywhere we heard ‘Babuschka is coming. God grant us to see her!’ The prisoners and the exiles in Siberia waited with reverence to see the miracle woman. She kissed us all and cheered us all.”
Her attempted escape from Kirensk, recapture, and sentence to the Irkutsk prison in the winter of 1913 are known to all the world. Her letters to American friends from her Siberian exile revealed the heroic soul. Her physical sufferings were only incidentally alluded to, as in one letter where, in the quaint English acquired in America and by study during her last imprisonment, she said: “My gait is not yet sure enough, and it will take some time before my forces and my celerity rejoin me to the point as to let me exercise my feet without the aid of anyone.” Nevertheless, she continues quite undaunted, “I hope to restore my health and to live till the day I see you again.”
“BABUSCHKA, LITTLE GRANDMOTHER”
The sufferings and deprivations of the young political exiles caused her the greatest sorrow. It was, indeed, the only suffering she acknowledged, although she deplored that reasonable conversation was impossible, with the spies always within sight and hearing, and expressed her “disgust” that they accompanied her whenever she went out.
In Kirensk there are over a thousand exiles forced to live on their earnings and the small stipend received from the government. There is little work to be had, and that little is rendered more uncertain by the fact that the police shift the exiles about, seldom allowing them to remain in one place for more than six months. Most of them are thus kept in a state of semi-starvation. The magazines, books, and picture post cards which Madame Breshkovsky received were used by her to extraordinary advantage. Of some periodicals that I had caused to be sent her she wrote: “They make a great parade in Siberia, going as far as Irkutsk and Yakutsk, and some of them find resting-place in the libraries and museums.” She taught English to the young “politicals” and reading and writing to the illiterate native Siberians. “You understand my situation,” she wrote: “an old mother who would serve every one of them. I aid, I grumble, I sustain, I hear confessions like a priest, I give counsel and admonition, but this is a drop in the ocean of misery.” And of herself again: “How happy I am; persecuted, banished, and yet beloved.”
From the letters that have come to America and are shared by the circle of her friends here I select one, written in answer to a request that she send a message of her philosophy to the students of a women’s college who had asked me to tell the story of the Russian revolution as personified in her:
“October 20, 1913, Kirensk.
“Very dear and well-beloved Lillian:—
“Your letter, as well as the postal cards which you were good enough to send me, were received by me several days ago, and perhaps it is with the last mail that I send you this reply. Snow already covers the mountainous borders of the superb Lena, and frost will soon fill the waters with masses of ice, which will interrupt all communications for two or three weeks, leaving us isolated on our little island, entirely engulfed by cold, badly treated by the north wind. I hasten, therefore, to thank you for your indefatigable attention towards the old recluse who, habituated as she is to pass her days now and again imprisoned or exiled, rejoices, nevertheless, to find herself loved—to feel that the most noble hearts beat in unison with hers.
“It is strange! Every time that I am asked to speak about myself I am always confused and find nothing to say. It is very likely that if I paid more attention to the exterior circumstances of my life there would be enough to talk about that would fill more than a book. But ever since my childhood I have had the habit of creating a spiritual life, an interior world, which responded better to my spiritual taste. This imaginary world has had the upper hand over the real world in its details, over all that is transient.
“The aim of our existence, the perfecting of human nature, was always present to my vision, in my mind. The route, the direction that we ought to take in order to approach our ideal, was for me a problem, the solution of which absorbed the efforts of my entire life. I was implacable for myself, for my weaknesses, knowing that to serve a divine cause we must sincerely love the object of our devotion, that is to say, in this case, humanity.
“These meditations, and a vigorous imagination, which always carried me far beyond the present, permitting me to inhabit the most longed-for regions, combined to attract very little of my attention to daily circumstances.
“Without doubt, I have had suffering in my life, as I have had moments of joy, of happiness even. It is also true that the struggle with my failings, with the habits engrafted by a worldly education, have cost me more or less dearly. The misery of those near to me tore my heart to the extreme. In a word, life has passed in the same way as a bark thrown upon the mercy of a sea often stormy. But as the ideal was always there, present in my heart and in my mind, it guided me in my course, it absorbed me to such a degree that I did not feel in all their integrity the influences of passing events. The duty to serve the divine cause of humanity in its entirety, that of my people in particular, was the law of my life,—the supreme law, whose voice stilled my passions, my desires, in short, my weaknesses....
“Since I live in my thoughts more than by emotion, it is my thoughts that I have to confess more than the facts of my life. These facts, to tell the truth, are sufficiently confused in my memory, and often I would not be able to relate them in all their details. Also, in conversing with those who care to listen to me, I feel that I am monotonous, for it is always my ideas and my abstract observations that I want to communicate to my listeners. I have studied a great deal in order to understand even ever so little of the origin of the human soul, in order to understand more or less its complexity of to-day. There lies my only strength, so to speak, and I continue my study, knowing how complex my object of study is, and what an innumerable quantity of different combinations, of types, of low types, have been formed during the long history of the laboratory where is prepared the supreme fusion called the human soul.
“The esteem for the individual of the human species, and the adoration of the intellectual treasure of this individual, ought to form the center of all religion, of all knowledge, of all ideal. It is only in venerating the human being as the most beautiful creation of the world, it is only in understanding the beauty and the indestructible grandeur of an intelligence illuminated by love and knowledge, that the education of the young generations will bring the desired fruits....
“Lillian, my friend, I hope to be understood by you ... I embrace you. I kiss your two hands and thank you for your noble and dear existence. To your entire settlement I send greetings.
“Your
“Katharine Breshkovsky.”
Madame Breshkovsky’s friends are to be found in every civilized nation, and her influence, from an exile’s hut in an isolated village in the Arctic Circle, has radiated to remote quarters of the globe. From her prison at Irkutsk this woman, nearing her seventieth birthday, sends messages of hope and cheer, proclaiming her unquenchable faith that the cause is just, and therefore must prevail.
I would not have our profound interest in the Russian revolution entirely explained by the fellowship we have had with those who have participated in it, by the literature which has stirred hearts and minds everywhere, or by our actual experience with innocent victims of outrages. The continuance of a policy of suppression of freedom infiltrates the social order everywhere, destroys the germination of new forms of social life, and he who has not sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart, and who does not revolt against injustice anywhere in the world, who does not see in the gigantic struggle in Russia a world movement for freedom and progress that is our struggle too, will not comprehend the significance of the sympathy of the many Americans who are friends of Russian freedom.