Albert Rhys Williams traveled across the expanse of Russia during the Revolution. Here, he sees the new order four thousand miles from Petrograd before its overthrow and occupation by imperialist troops.

‘The Vladivostok Soviet and Its Leaders’ by Albert Rhys Williams from Through the Russian Revolution. Boni and Liveright Publishers, New York. 1921.

THE limits of the Revolution—what were they? We had seen this Revolution, loosed by the city-workers, drive deeper and deeper down, taking ever lower and lower strata of the people within its grip. When it laid hold of the convicts of Cherm it reached bottom. It could go no further vertically. How far could it reach horizontally? Would it prove the same power here in these far-flung outposts on the Pacific that it was back there upon the Atlantic? Would the Revolution show the same strong pulse beat in these extremities as it did in the heart of Russia?

In a world of Soviets we had moved across the great, slow, north-flowing rivers, the Urals, the taiga forests, and the steppes. Trainmen and miners had spoken of their Soviets, peasants and fishermen had greeted us with red banners in the name of theirs. We had conferred with the Soviet of Central Siberia and the Far East Soviet. This whole Amur district was dotted with Soviets. Now, as we stepped from the train at Vladivostok, we were to find a replica of the Soviet we had left at Petrograd, seven thousand miles away.

In six months the Soviet had struck its roots deep into the Russian soil, crowded out all rivals, resisted the shock of every attack, and now held undisputed sway from the Arctic Ocean on the north to the Black Sea on the south, from Narva looking upon the Atlantic all the way to Vladivostok here on its promontory looking into the Pacific.

Vladivostok is a city built on hills, with streets as steep as Alpine paths. But with an extra horse attached to the droshky’s shafts, we rattled over the cobbles as swiftly as we did along the level wood-paved prospekts of Petrograd. The main highway, Svetlanskaya, lies folded up and down across the hills, flanked by the commercial houses of the French and English, the International Harvester, and the buildings of the new rulers of Russia—the Red Fleet, and the Soviet of Workmen’s Deputies.

Massive fortresses frowned from all the hills around, but they were harmless as dove-cotes. In the first days of the war they had been dismantled, and the great guns shipped to the Eastern front. A defenseless city, into which extends a peculiar tongue of water called the Golden Horn. Here the Allied battleships, uninvited, rode at anchor. Their flags were a welcome sight to the fleeing émigrés at the end of the long Siberian journey. With a sigh of relief here they settled down. Soon, they believed, the Revolution would be over. Then they would return and take up their old life again in Russia.

A City of Refuge for the Émigrés.

The city was thronged with evicted landowners, dreaming of their estates, their retinue of servants and the idle feasting of bygone days; officers telling of the former discipline, when soldiers jumped into the gutter at their presence and stood rigid in salute while beaten in the face; speculators longing for the return of the good old times of war profiteering and patrioteering, to the tune of 50, 100 and 500 per cent. Gone are all those gilded fabulous fortunes. The Revolution wrecked them along with the arbitrary power of the officers and the dreams of the landowners.

As a port of exit, Vladivostok was full of Russian émigrés coming out. As a port of entry, it was full of Allied capitalists going in. It was a key to the El Dorado beyond. With its vast unexploited natural riches and labor power, Siberia was a loadstone drawing the agents of capital from around the world. From London and Tokio, from the Paris Bourse and Wall Street, they came flocking hither, lured by dazzling prospects.

But between them and the fisheries, gold-mines, and forests they found a big barrier. They found, the Soviet. The Russian workingman refused to be exploited by the Russian capitalist. At the same time he refused to allow his blood and sweat to be minted into bonanza dividends for the benefit of foreign bankers. The Soviet was the instrument of this refusal to all exploiters.

Meeting the same obstacles as the Russian bourgeoisie, the Allied exploiters had the same reaction. They lent a ready ear to the cursings and ravings of their Russian brethren, who saw the Soviet and its members as the very spawn of hell.

It was in this circle that the Allied consuls, officers, Y.M.C.A. and Intelligence men largely lived, moved and had their being. They rarely got outside of it. They were in revolutionary Russia, but out of touch with the Revolution. And quite naturally. Peasants and workers knew little French or English or how to dress well or order dinner.

Not that Allied society was without “information.” Their Russian bourgeois friends and their own prejudices gave it to them. Very direct and dogmatic, it passed current in phrases like:

“The Soviet is made up mainly of ex-criminals.”

“Four-fifths of the Bolsheviks are Jews.”

“These Revolutionists are just ordinary robbers.”

“The Red Armies are mercenary and will run at the first shot of a gun.”

“The dark, ignorant masses are swayed by their leaders, and their leaders are corrupt.”

“The Czar may have had his faults, but Russia needs an iron hand.”

“The Soviet is tottering, and will not last longer than two weeks at the outside.”

The most cursory investigation would reveal the falsehood of these phrases. One needed but to parrot them, however, to be acclaimed a man of deep insight.

The man who could add, “I don’t give a damn what others say about Lenin and Trotzky, I know they are German agents,” was hailed as a fellow of spirit, a true soldier of democracy.

There were some honest seekers after light. The genial commander of the Asiatic Squadron was indiscreet enough to invite me to dinner on his flagship the Brooklyn. The American Consul also tried hard to break thru the circle of lies. Awaiting word from Washington, however, he withheld visé to my passport. So I was marooned for seven weeks in Vladivostok.

As I grew more and more outspoken in my sympathies with the workers and peasants, the bourgeoisie grew ever more hostile towards me. Thrown now into close contact with the Soviet I had opportunity to observe and sharp its work, and to count many of its members as my friends.

A Few Students Aid the Soviets.

First among these was Constantin Sukhanov. When the March Revolution broke out, he was a student of Natural History in the University of Petrograd. He hastened back to Vladivostok, a Menshevik. After the Kornilov adventure he became a Bolshevik, and an ardent one. He was small in stature, but great in energy. Night and day he toiled, snatching an occasional wink of sleep in a small room above the Soviet, ready at a moment’s notice to spring to the saddle or the typewriter.

While his face was habitually drawn tight in lines of thought, he would often explode in a contagious burst of laughter. His speech was terse, on occasion flaming. But a bare fire-brand would never have done in such a powder-magazine as Vladivostok. By skill and tact he pulled the Soviet out of many ugly positions, into which its enemies had jockeyed it.

Respected by everybody, even by his bitter political opponents, Sukhanov was chosen President of the Soviet. He was thus the tip of the spearhead that the Bolshevik movement thrust out into the Pacific and the eastern world. He found himself, at 24, facing tasks that would have taxed the resources of a veteran diplomat.

But statecraft was in his blood. His father was a functionary of the old régime, charged with the arrest of Revolutionists. Among those he had found plotting against the Czar were his own daughter, and this son Constantin. Constantin was arrested. Bitter and cynical, the father had faced his son across the table of the tribunal.

It was by grace of his Imperial Majesty, Czar Nicholas II, that the elder Sukhanov had sat in the magistrate’s place, with the white, blue and red flag of the autocracy behind the dais. When we arrived in Vladivostok the red flag of the Revolution had replaced it. Yet we found a Sukhanov sitting in the judgment seat. This time it was the son, Constantin, now President of the Vladivostok Soviet by grace of their Republican Majesties, the worker, peasant, and sailor citizens of the Russian Soviet Republic.

Curious reversal of the Revolution! just as the younger Sukhanov had been caught conspiring against the rule of the Czar, now Sukhanov, the elder, was found plotting against the rule of the Soviet. Once more across the tribunal the two men faced each other: father against son, Counter-Revolutionist against Revolutionist, Monarchist against Socialist. But this time the son was the judge, the father the culprit. Once only was Constantin Sukhanov derelict in his revolutionary duties. He refused to imprison his father!

Sukhanov’s constant aide was the student Sebertsev. There were also three girl-students (kursists), Zoya, Tanya and Zoya, respectively, secretaries of the Bolshevik Party, the Finance Department, and the Soviet organ, “The Peasant and Worker”; and respectively daughters of an officer, a priest and a merchant. Their bourgeois life they entirely renounced. They became one with the proletarians. With proletarian incomes they thought in proletarian terms. They lived like proletarians. Their home now was two bare rooms which they called “the Commune.” For beds they bad soldier-cots, straw-pallets laid on planks instead of springs.

These students fitted the picture of the Russian student of tradition. One night, when the strain of trying to talk in the Russian language was tying my tongue and brain into knots, Sebertsev said: “We have all been to the university, we can talk in Latin!” But how many American college graduates can read even the Latin on their diplomas? These Russian students not only talked Latin, but submitted Latin verses for my approval. I made a strategic retreat upon Russian!

Leaders Out of the Rank and File.

Outside of these students the members of the Vladivostok Soviet were workingmen—mechanics, longshoremen, railwaymen, etc. But they were Russian workingmen; while using the hammer, the sickle and axe, they had used their brains. For this the heavy hand of the Czar had fallen on them. Some had been jailed, others driven out as wanderers over the earth.

From exile they returned at the call of the Revolution. Utkin and Jordan came back from Australia, speaking English; Antonov from Naples, speaking Italian. Melnikov, Nikeferov and Preminsky emerged from their prison-cells speaking French. This trio had turned their jail into a university. They had specialized in mathematics, and now were experts in calculus, plotting graphs as well as they had plotted revolution.

Seven years they were bound together in jail. Now they were free, each to go his own way. But the long hard years had forged around their hearts ties more binding than the iron chains around their limbs. They were together in death, and now in life they could not be divided. In mind, however, they were much divided, expounding their rival creeds to each other with terrific energy. Yet, however wide afield they went in theory, in action they were a unit. Melnikov’s party did not then support the Soviet, but his two comrades did. So he followed them into the service of the Soviet, as Commissar of Post and Telegraph.

In the soul of Melnikov had been waged some big battle, which put furrows deep in his face, and left deep in his eyes the marks of pain. But in that face victory and a great serenity were written. His eyes sparkled, and a smile always flickered on his lips. When things grew blacker he smiled the more.

Little help the Soviet got from the intelligentsia. They declared a boycott against the Soviet until the workingmen should completely change their program. In open meeting they proclaimed a policy of sabotage.

Bitter and sarcastic was the retort shot back by a miner: “You pride yourselves on your knowledge and skill! But where did you get it? From us. At the price of our sweat and blood. In school and university you sat at your desks while we slaved in the dark of the mines and the smoke of the mills. Now we ask you to help us. And you say to us: ‘Give up your program and take our program: then we will help you.’ And we say to you: ‘We will not give up our program. We shall get along without you.'”

Supreme audacity in these workingmen, tyros in government, taking over the administration of a territory large as France and rich as India, beset by hordes of scheming imperialists, challenged by a thousand tasks!

PDF of full book: https://archive.org/download/throughrussianre00will/throughrussianre00will.pdf