XVI FAMINE IN CHITA

There had been much discussion at home in the newspapers about famine in Siberia, and in Vladivostok this fear of famine was uppermost in the minds of diplomats, military chiefs, and civilian relief agencies. In fact, there was every evidence in Vladivostok that the inland cities of Siberia were already suffering from hunger, and with a severe winter ahead, there was much apprehension for the country people.

The refugees pouring into Vladivostok, clamoring for food, depicted a state of starvation in the towns from which they had come. And data on food-prices gleaned from refugees and the inland press, as well as reports by travellers, all combined to strengthen the belief that famine faced the whole country.

And my first meals in Chita made me suspect that there was much truth in the reports that Mother Hubbardsky’s cupboard was bare. I went to dinner with my chief the first evening in the city. We sought the best restaurant and scanned its menu with care; and after considerable pains we were able to order a meal—a modest one—at a cost of about twelve rubles each. Our rubles had cost us a dollar for eight in Vladivostok. So our dinner amounted to a dollar and a half each. Then we spied four scrawny, spotted little apples pyramided on a plate on the counter. We ordered them, ate them, and asked for our bill. The apples alone had cost us thirty-six rubles—or a dollar and twelve cents each!

An officer has to pay for his own food. In Vladivostok at the officers’ mess, three meals a day cost a dollar and a quarter. In Chita, six dollars a day, without apples, was the prospect ahead. My orderly was allowed a dollar and a quarter a day for his subsistence. With that, he could buy exactly one poor meal. The situation was rapidly losing its humorous aspect. After all, was Vladivostok right about that famine? Yet all along the line I had seen an abundance of food for people who seemed to be eating all the time. Evidently there was a wrench in the machinery somewhere. It was a case of “Who’s looney now?”

We stocked up immediately with rye bread, cheese and dried fish—all purchased, the orderly said, from peasant women near the station. The faithful Werkstein had brought with him a little sugar, some tea, chocolate in bars, and a few cans of army beef. He turned my wardrobe in the hotel room into a pantry; and with a samovar from the kitchen, prepared my meals. It was well below freezing in the room, and I usually wore my furs. There were forests all around the city. But no one could be hired to cut wood. Was not everybody free? (How I wished that our Congress would ship me a consignment of those parlor Bolshevists who were in the United States preaching the beauties of Bolshevism!)

One evening, some of Semenoff’s officers asked me to go to their garrison mess. “A little Russian supper,” they explained rather apologetically. The supper began at nine. We sat down at a tremendous table covered with dishes, and glasses in groups. There was a startling array of bottles. Presently a delicious soup was served. Then came soldier-servants bearing great salvers on which were fishes the size of young whales—decorated with fantastically carved vegetables. Next arrived coveys of quail and partridge. Viands strange and barbaric followed—dishes that suggested China and Arabia, others of Cossack origin. O shade of Lucullus! O Herbert Hoover!

The Cossack band in an adjoining room played national airs. The different kinds of glasses were emptied in as many toasts. And to my great relief, the speeches began. I say relief, because naturally, I thought the meal was over. Not so. Still the heaped salvers came. By now, I had reached the point where I could only weakly pretend to eat. My hosts watched me like hawks, insisting that I rally my appetite. They showed irritation when I demurred faintly. They demanded that I eat and drink to prove the unlimited friendship of the United States for Russia. And I wondered how our diplomats had ever survived the hospitality of such a country.

At last I saw that my only hopes lay in a limit to the Cossack capacity. Again and again, I told myself, “They have reached it!”—only to realize that what I had suffered was but a prelude to the feast.

At about three in the morning, the vodka and wines having been exhausted, champagne was served—in large, stein-like glasses. And a British officer who had just come to observe conditions, was startled when Irish porter showed up in stone jars. “Why!” he exclaimed, “We don’t have this at home any more! In England it’s a fond memory. And here they have it by the case!”

A little supper! And there was one such about every night. I had come looking for famine: I began to fear I would die of over eating. One could be forgiven a chuckle. The staff in Vladivostok had expressed some remorse over having to send me away from a mess which boasted three courses and a choice of two canned fruits for dessert!

But what about the proletariat of Chita? These officers were eating, but were the poor starving to death in cold weather? I visited the open-air free market in a square of the city. The peasants were selling cabbage, dried salmon, salmon-roe, spheres of cheese, rye and white bread in tremendous loaves, quail, partridge, pheasant, beef, pork, sausage, frozen milk and frozen soup—precisely the things I had eaten at the “little supper.”

The prices ran high. But—the people had plenty of Bolshevist money. However, this money was greatly depreciated in value. Nevertheless, the vendors at the market expected as many of my Imperial rubles for any purchase as they asked the residents of the city, who, of course, had local currency. So now I understood that the apple which I had bought in the restaurant at a dollar and twelve cents (or nine Imperial roubles), would, at nine roubles Bolshevist money, have cost a resident of Chita, only about ten cents. What had happened to me, can best be expressed in this wise: A man takes silver dollars to a city where disks have been stamped “One dollar,” and where the merchants do not care whether he gives them tin or silver—the price is the same! So the apples were not high; the explanation is that money was plentiful and cheap. And now I understood why Vladivostok was worrying over interior statistics. The department heads mistook high costs reported in Bolshevist rubles, for lack of food.

But those statistics related mainly to sugar, tea, salt, candles and other staples, commonly regarded as necessities, but turned by the speculators into luxuries. Most of the Siberian speculators are of the pack-peddler variety, because freight shipments are costly, and the goods liable to loss. One Chita shipper paid seventy-five thousand rubles for a car in Harbin to move sugar to the Trans-Baikal. The engineer got one thousand rubles to haul it; the conductor of the train got one thousand rubles to insure the car’s being cut off at Chita; and I heard that the side-track was rented to the shipper while the car was being unloaded. He assured me that he had doubled his money in spite of paying so much “grease.” But the railroad men, who are opposed to “Exploitation of the masses,” thought they were making the capitalistic speculator pay the “grease!” Those railroad men had not been paid for six months, and some of us Allied officers worried about it, and gave the crews credit for staunch loyalty to the Russian cause by sticking to their jobs. Also, a large Red Cross train went up the line and presented these poor, starving magnates who ran the trains, with new clothing!

Captain B——, a Russian serving Semenoff, invited me to his room in the hotel for tea. His wife brought from the wardrobe baskets of cookies and candies. Trunks disgorged tinned fish, bar chocolate and tinned milk. In one corner of the room was a sack of sugar; in another were sacks of flour. Those living quarters resembled a corner in the warehouse of a wholesale grocer. And everybody was stocked up like that. Moreover, they all had orders with the local dealers to send them more provisions whenever more arrived. It was a case of everybody his own grocer. I had found the Chita stores bare. No wonder.

I never saw any famine in Siberia. In fact, the only place that I heard it discussed was in Vladivostok. There, the flocks of refugees, seeking free food and shelter, were responsible for the belief in it. No doubt many of them did need aid—especially the women and children. And in the handling of those needy, our Red Cross did gallant service. But among the refugees were hundreds of able-bodied men who found it pleasant to be refugees. These men were not likely to report that the districts from which they came were plentifully supplied with food. And as these men kept pouring in from all parts of the country, a consolidation of their reports presented a false picture of conditions.

What I looked for in the interior of Siberia, contrasted with what I found, was happily, if ridiculously, disappointing. But in 1920 a similar hunt might result less humorously. To feed men stops their work; to stop work stops production. And lack of production spells future need. So next year,—who knows?—it may be possible to find famine in Siberia—if meanwhile the people of that country consume their total reserves on the strength of our promise of generous aid. In my humble opinion, the United States should avoid, in Siberia, all Christmas-Tree talk.