The Bamberg herald. (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, June 29, 1922, Page 6, Image 6
Woman Journalist
Back From Russia
When in July, 1921, certain American
prisoners were released from the
Soviet prisons as a Hoover sine qua
non of American relief measures,
there stepped forth from the Xovenski
prison in Moscow the curious figure
of a woman?her sex scarcely
discernable at first ,glance. She was
clad In an exceedingly dirty KnaKi
suit, in a man's pongee shirt, a cap
made from the tail of the same shirt,
and a pair of men's shoes retrieved
from a Bted Cross contribution. It
was Mrs. Marguerite E. Harrison,
American newspaper woman and Representative
of the Associated Press,
\
who had grape-vined her way across
the Polish frontier into the heart of
Russia some eighteen months previously
for the purpose of studying
first hand the workings of the Soviet
government and its social order, and
to try to find out and tell the world
the truth about conditions there as
they might be disclosed to the eyes
of a trained journalist with no axes
?
1 to grind and no political or sentimental
propaganda to peddle:
It was a remarkable undertaking
for a woman to venture upon, in the
middle of a Russian winter, alone,
and without official protection from
:
her own country?though the latter
perhaps would have availed her litt.7<?
Rut. she accomDlished her pur
pose?woman't wit and American audacity
carrying her through. . Officially,
she had been repeatedly admonished
that the thing couldn't be done,
so she did it. She saw the machine
r v .
and gods of the machine. She saw
where the wheels were going around
and where they stopped. Ten months
she spent in Soviet prisons, where she
. had rare opportunities of studying
the social fabric from beneath as
well as its superstructure. She suffered
unimaginable contacts and privations,
but came out of it all with
*
no resentments, no personal bitterness,
no apostolic obsessions. Her
job was to see things and she saw
what was to be seen and she brought
to 'her day's work wherever she was,
an observation that was wide and
ecute and femininely intuitive. Her
story told in a volume recently published
by George Hv Doran company,
New York, under the title "Marooned
in Moscow," is merely as a record of
human experience, intensely dramatic.
and as a record of sociological
><?v studies, impartially and penetratively
made, unusally informative and of
fascinating interest.
In her book Mrs. Harrison makes
no defense of anyone or anything?
neither does she attack either man
or institutions. She tells merely
what she saw in that kaleidoscopic
blur of social and political elements
through which 'Republican people
are struggling towards 'still
Ibiazy ideals of representative government.
After her experiences, "I be,
lieve," she writes, "that I know the
heart of Russia, and no one in these
troublous times of transition can
ever know it unless he lives with
it-; the Russian people both in and out of
ST
prison. I had gained a just perspective
and I felt that I understood all
/ that is good and all that is bad and
all that is historically inevitable in
the great upheaval which is in spite
of everything, modernizing Russia."
At the ?nd of her story sh^ adds a
chapter of her own conclusions, j
w<hich she leaves up to the reader
to accept or reject in the light of her
narrative.
In "By the Back Door."
Her mode of entry into Russia was
simple in its boldness. She went in, as
she says, "by the back door." Reaching
Warsaw in midwinter, at a time
when a state of war was existing between
Poland and Russia, she was refused
a permit to cross the border,
talked a tentative permit out of another
division officer who warned her
of the great risks she was taking, and
then?"here is the way she tells it?"I
passed through the Polish lines into
No Man's Land and gave myself up to
the first Red Army patrol. By this
means T succeeded two weeks later in
reaching Moscow, where I stayed for
eighteen months, during which I was
twice arrested by the Cbecka, living
for six months under surveillance and
ior neany ten montns in prison.
Even in this border war zone she
encountered the efforts of the Soviet
government to function, in a school
and hospital. In the school there
were three class rooms with about
thirty pupils. The benches had been
knocked together from boards, with
log supports. The blackboards were
home-made and the pupils were doing
their exercises on sheets of
wrapping paper, cut the required
size, with pencils that had been divided
into three to make them go
around. In the hospital, a well arranged
building .with light, airy
wards, each containing twenty beds,
"there was not a piece of linen, a
yard of surgical dressing, a pound of
soap, or disinfectant, nor an ounce
of rnod'eine. The physician in charge
said it was impossible to receive pa
tients, although the number of typhus
patients averaged twenty a
week."
The last link of her journey between
Vitebsk and Moscow?a 36
hour ride?.Mrs. Harrison made in a
box car in charge of a red guard. A
very vivid idea of the Soviet description
of the accommodations. "Our
quarters in the staff car," she writes,
"were close, to say the least, but we
were lucky, it seemed, to have those.
A compartment for two was reserved
for four of us, and there, with the exception
of*a few venturesome visits
to the toilet, we spent the next thirtysix
'hours. I occupied the lower
berth, the doctor (a Jewish woman)
and the commissioner's wife the upper
berth, and the soldier slept on
the floor. Standing in the corridor
was impossible, because it was filled
with a solid mass of soldiers, wTio insisted
in defiance of discipline on occupying
it. They made it almost impossible
for us to open the door and
' nnr <acr?nrt had tn ficrht his wav Ollt to
get hot water to make our tea from
the samover machines that are in
operation at each station. , The rest
of the train, which was entirely composed
of box cars, was packed, people
even, sitting on the roofs and bumpers,
and there were fights at every
station between persons trying to get
on and off." ^
Shadowed by the "Checka*"
Arrived in Moscow, an unwelcome
guest, she went through the usual
forms of search and inquisitorial investigation
and was finally allowed by
Checherin, head of the foreign office,
to remain, at first for a few weeks in
apparently unchecked freedom, later
to become conscious of the fact that
wherever she wentjthe lurking shadows
of the checka?the secret police
bureau of the Soviet?were dogging
her footsteps and watching her every
action. Her first glimpses, of Lenine,
and Trotsky were obtained at an open
soviet meeting at xne opera nouse,
arranged with dramatic offects?garlanded
portraits of Lenine, Trotsky
and Marx were everywhere. Red flags
draped from the galleries and around
the stage, multitudes of banners in
evidence displaying the matter of the
red republic, "Poiietriat of the
World, Unite." Lenine delivered an
address on the .government's policy
of reconstruction..
"When I saw'him come out on the
stage," writes Mrs. Harrison, "my
first feeling was one of disappointment.
He* is a short, thick set, unimposing
looking little man, with
colorless hair and complexion, a
small pointed beard, piercing grayblue
eyes, and a quiet, unemotional,
almost monotonous manner of delivery.
After a few words, however, I,
like every one else, began to listen attentively.
It was not magnetic eloquence
that held me, it was the impression
of tremendous sincerity, utter
self confidence and quiet power.
He is absolutely sure of
himself and his idea and
when he speaks to the people
he has a talent for picking out the
simplest possible words to express
his meaning. Trotsky, while Lenine
was speaking, sat with his head bent
scribbling industriously on a pad?a
broad shouldered man of middle
height slightly inclined to stoutness,
but erect and military in his bearing.
The line of his mouth was hard, cynical,
almost forbidding, until he began
to speak, and then I suddenly realized
that there was something compelling
about the man's personality. There
was something almost exultant in his
expression as his eyes swept the enormous
crowd in front of him and it
seemed to me that subconsciously it
was mingling with a certain radical
pride. I could almost imagine him as
saying, 'For the first time since the
days of the Maccabees, I, a Jew, am
the head of a great army.' "
Naturally interested from a woman's
standpoint in the position of
women in the Soviet scheme and the
much mooted question of sex relations,
Mrs. Harrison called upon
Kolontai, "the only great woman publicist
among the Communists," and
found her a Bolshevik de luxe, living
in luxury at the National hotel. "She
was wearing an exquisite boudoir
gown of green velvet, trimmed with
sable, her little feet were encased in
velvet slippers of the same shade and
she was altogether chic and charming.
Evidently she !has great regard
for her personal appearance, and although
not young, she is an extremely
pretty woman of the fragile blond
type. She is the daughter of an imperial
general and a lady to her finger
tips. We talked principally about the
education of children, which is her
chief hobby. She told me that she
considered family life absolutely subversive
to the interests of the ComI
mune. that children born should be
regarded as the property of the state,
that they would develop a much more
genuine sense of social responsibility
in the atmosphere of the institution
reproducing the Commune than in the
home, which is under the influence of
patriarchial system. As regards the
relationship of the sexes she felt that
it should exist merely for the purpose
of reproducing the race without re%
straints except those imposed by the
observance of the law of eugenics. la;
A Woman of Many Husbands. the
f \
Kolontai herself, by the way, has
had "any number of husbands," the
last a young soldier many years her ?
junior. A widespread looseness of sexual
relations is found everywhere,
- - . . n
much of it. however, the correspondvac
ent says, an inheritance from the old qo1
regime. The number of "kept women"' stu
in the Soviet offices is enormous. Coi
Trotsky is notorious for his open lia- ** a
tha
isons. "In prison," says Mrs. Harri- gcj]
son, "I met a young Ukranian girl of l
great beauty and charm, who had mal
been his mistress for a few weeks, ?xa
> 1110
'Trotsky told me once,' she said, 'that
I was the only woman with whom he wri
had had an affair who never asked the
him for food supplies.' " Among the exa
lower classes, however, old-fashioned ?re"J
ideas still prevail?as a matter of ope
fact people get married and divorced fur
by Soviet decrees in Russia very much
as they do in other countries, but ir
regular relationships "are not looked
upon askance" and there are no legal Kj'
disabilities attached to illegitimate
children. There are thousands of of- "IJ
ficially orphaned children in the pub- -H
lie homes, hundreds of them wander- ^8
ing the streets, speculating and steal
ing while their parents are at worK M
and the amount of juvenile immorality
among children of this class ap- 9
palling. 0
Even bathing suits, it seems have Wij
become part of the Bolshevist scrap !
heap, as this refreshing incident told 9
by this venturesome American corre* H
spondent will confirm. With some Bu
American acquaintances she made a 9
provincial trip to a neighboring vil- flrj
lage. "The sun was blazing mot and Kfl
we were tired and dirty when we ar- 9
rived at our destination on Saturday 9
afternoon. We had walked at least ten 0
versts from the station and the vil- fltt
lage was situated near the Moskwa U
river, whicn looKea very cooi ana i
tempting. 'Let's go in bathing,' said |
my companions. 'I'd like to,' I ans- jB
-wered, 'but I have no bathing suit.' R
'That makes no difference,' they an- Kgj
swered. 'Nobody wears a bathing fg|
suit in Russia. Come down to the M
river and see for yourself.' When I H
got there I saw the most startling A
sight I have ever witnessed. At this 0
point the river made a sharp turn,
throwing up a bank of fine white sand fA
which made an ideal beach. On the 5H
beach and in the water beyond were R
hundreds of naked people, men, wo- M
men, boys and girls, all indiscrimi- A
nately mingled. Some of them were
standing knee deep in the water chat- JSl
ting with their neighbors, others tak- ??
'1 -Si _A 1 J . J. _ IB
ing a sun Darn, quue unaisiurueu, uu ?
one seemed in the least self-conscious *
or concerned." *
Gorman Dominance an Eventuality. *
Long before the Russo-German en
tente coup that so disturbed the Ge- %
noa parleyers, Mrs. Harrison found ^
the trend in that direction plainly *
evident in Bolshevist circles. In an *
A
interview with Karl Radek, the
"Peck's Bad Boy" of the Soviet gov- ||
ernment, she was frankly told that
"if the German communist revolution
did not come off he believed that a
profitable deal could be made with *
the German junkers to join with Rus- *
sia against the entente." And it is *
one of her conclusions, upon things *
she heard in bureaucratic circles in *
A
Russia, that the coalition between the *
two countries may have far reaching J
objectives. "We ijay as well recog- *
nize the fact," she sums up in her *
afterword, "that the Germans will *
eventually dominate Russia commer- *
cially. At present, in their desperate *
financial situation German business ?
men are willing to take chances and ?
V
embark on enterprises whioh the >
I*
large interests in other countries are ?;
unwilling to undertake. They have %
nothing to lose and everything to *
gain from the exploitation of Russia >
and they can afford to wait for re- *
turns. But there is also a political *
side to the situation. Things may not *
remain as they are in Germany. If ?
the country ever swings to the right %
. ?ill ? w/NwosnAnnn nf milifor.
L'UertJ Will UC a icuaovgutc jLxxxi.xi.ux h
ism, the desire for revenge on Eng- <g>
land, the old Berlin-to-Bagdad dream,
I have told how I saw in Russia more *>
V
than a year ago evidence that many >
Germans have not altogether aband- %
oned it. There will be an attempt at *
political domination with a view to >
utilizing the vast man power and >
natural resources of Russia to bring %
about the 'Day,' which many Germans f
??
regard as only postponed for a mat- >
ter of ten years or so."
Others. *
>
Mrs. Crabshaw: I think this radio *
broadcasting is just wonderful.
Crabshaw: Umph! I know a whole *>
bunch of you women in this neigh- B*
borhood who've been in the broad- H*
casting business for years."?Water- *
bury American.
mm ? ? ^ *
"Standing?Sitting?Lying.'*
Vet. Xo. 1?"That politician has a ?
pose for every occasion." *
Vet. Xo. 2?"Just how?" *
Vet. Xo. 1?"Well, he stood for %
adjusted compensation, sat in the ?
senate, and then laid down oa the
job." j|
\
Colds Cause Grip and Influenza i
JCATIVE BROMO QUININE Tablets remove : I
cause. There is only one' Bromo Quinine." ^
V. GROVE'S signature on box. 30c.
W,Lnthrop College
SCHOLARSHIP AND ENTRANCE
EXAMINATION.
VI
?he examination for the award of I Si
ant Scholarships in Winthrop j
lege and for almission of new' 0
dents will be held at the County | irt
House on Friday, July 7, at:
. m. Applicants must not be less j
n sixteen years of age. When j
lolarships are vacant after July j
they will be awarded to those j
king the highest average at this j
mination, provided they meet!
conditions governing the award, j
plicants for Scholarships should!
te to President Johnson before j
examination for scholarship j
mination blanks.
Scholarships are worth $100 and!
v in 111V* a n Avf n Anoi r* rt?ill I
; luniuu. xiia ucAi ocaaiuu win
n September 20, 1922. For
ther information and catalogue,
Iress Pres. D. B. Johnson, Rock
I. S. C.
Tired | _
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