XX THE SOBRANIA

The city of Chita being in an unsettled condition as the result of the Bolshevist troubles passed, and not knowing when more similar troubles might occur, the people never gave up for a single night their amusements. High schools produced amateur plays, there were masque balls, banquets, benefits, motion pictures, and theatres. The empire lay shattered, and foreign flags flew over their public buildings, marking the garrisons of foreigners doing police duty for the Siberians—they gave themselves up to making merry.

And when the Siberian goes out for an evening’s entertainment, he does not return home till the small hours of morning. The result is that little work or business is done the following day before noon, and there is not much activity in business after two o’clock.

No matter what came up, I could not expect to find anyone at the staff headquarters of Semenoff before eleven o’clock. There might be a report at daylight that a train had been attacked by Bolshevists twenty miles away; it could not be verified before noon. If I got a message in cipher from Vladivostok at nine o’clock in the morning that Russians had attacked Japanese troops near Chita, and asking me to get the details, in fifteen minutes I could have the Japanese version of the affair, but it would take forty-eight hours to get the Russian statement of what had happened.

If my telegram came over the regular Russian wire, it might be delivered to the hotel proprietor, who would call my attention to it the following week. In the meantime, messages for the Czecho-Slovak commandant, or a French correspondent of whom I had never heard, or some British officer, would be brought to my room at all hours of the night. My room was a receiving station for all telegrams which the Russian operators did not know where to deliver—and when one came for me, it was mis-delivered, generally.

My cipher messages were transmitted as numbers, and when Russian operators received them, they always left out thirty or forty numerals in the middle of the message so that when it was being deciphered, the last half of it did not decipher at all, but when transformed into letters looked like an alphabet that had run amok. I generally asked for it to be repeated to my own signal corps operator over our private wire, but that wire was open for us but an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon. So if I got a defective message over the Russian wire five minutes after my wire was closed in the morning, I had to wait until afternoon before I could with any surety of getting the message through tell Vladivostok to repeat. And the repeated message would not reach me till the next morning.

I suspect that there was a system of sabotage being practiced on us. There was every evidence that Semenoff’s officers in charge of the commercial telegraph office had held up our cipher messages until they had made an effort to decipher them. Or knowing that they had done something which they did not want reported or contemplated doing something, they held up the message as long as possible. For instance, if Semenoff had his armored train in the station and the engines with steam up ready to move up the line for some purpose, any message I sent through at that time was suspected to contain the information that his armored train was about to move in a certain direction. So the message was not put on the wire till the movement was completed.

Yet what appeared to be sabotage, or a blockade system on information, might well be the result of stupidity induced by late hours and too much vodka. It was noon before the population appeared to have a lucid interval in their existence, and having acquired a clear head again, the chief ambition in life immediately was to become befuddled with all possible speed.

I discovered the old “Imperial” vodka being sold on the streets, the vendors setting up in business with an old box and a dozen bottles of the liquor. I refer to it as Imperial because it was vodka made under the old régime as revealed by the paper seals over the corks, and the payment of imperial taxes, vodka having been a government monopoly. A pint bottle could be purchased for about twelve rubles on the streets, the same costing forty rubles in the restaurants.

It was said that there were millions of rubles worth of this vodka in storage in Chita, which had been taken over by Semenoff, and which aided his finances to an appreciable extent. No doubt somebody collected a fee to allow it to be sold, and no doubt it was sold to the dealers by the agents of Semenoff, who had acquired it by simply taking it. Siberians using the whole of the wide street below my windows in order to walk past, could be seen any minute of daylight.

The Russian calendar is full of holidays. One holiday in a week, ruins the week—and the Russian for a week. He generally starts celebrating the day before the holiday, and uses the day after the holiday to extend the merriment. And most weeks while I was in Chita contained two holidays.

I subscribed for the local newspapers on arrival. There were three dailies. I got about one of each every week. Out of curiosity I made inquiries, but there was always a good excuse—the printers had been drunk, there had been a holiday, there was going to be a holiday, the press was broken, or Semenoff had confiscated the whole edition and arrested the editor. I would not care to be a publisher or journalist in Siberia.

Whether a paper came out on a certain day or not, however, the newsboys every night cried the “Nash Put” (Our Way), or the “Za Baikalsky” (Trans-Baikalist) every night. The date of the paper might be three days old. Nitchyvo. The buyer could not stop in the excessive cold to hunt for a mere date, but bought his paper while going ahead at a jog-trot. I never saw a native protest. Either he had not read the paper of that date, or he did not care. Perhaps he could not read. A Siberian acquires a certain social standing by being seen purchasing a paper. Anyhow, he is probably on his way somewhere to drink vodka and will forget all about the paper when he reaches his destination. There was something about the Siberian buyer of newspapers which reminded me of the young police reporter in San Francisco who wore mauve gloves, had a gold-headed cane and carried with him everywhere a copy of the Atlantic Monthly. He never read it. When he wore out one copy carrying it, he bought another. It gave him a reputation with the public and the staff of the newspaper for being a bright young man with considerable erudition.

These general statements on private and public entertainment may make it appear that amusement is, after all, rather haphazard in Siberia, and breaks out in sporadic sprees. It would be misleading to convey this idea. For amusement and entertainment is systematized by the Siberian, in what they call a sobrania. As near as I can define it, this institution is a sort of “circle,” or club, and the idea might well be copied with some modifications in cities, or more especially, small towns in the United States.

There was a first sobrania and a second sobrania in Chita. I knew only the second. Probably the numerical designation came from precedence in organization. I suspect that the first one had degenerated somewhat in its clientele or membership or whatever they call it, but that may be only snobbishness on my part—all the best people went to the second sobrania, even including the chief of police who was a comfortable person for the Siberians to have present early in the morning drinking wine or vodka after the hour when the sale of liquors was supposed to cease. At least, my friends assured me that so long as the chief was present, they felt perfectly safe from police interference on the score of making merry.

After midnight I felt the environment rather boring and got away unless my departure might be construed as a reflection on the habits of my Cossack friends who had invited me for the evening. In such cases, the evenings last till daylight, and in Siberia in winter, daylight is scarce.

The first night I went to the sobrania I was amazed. It was a large stone building of four stories and basement. The basement contained billiard and coat-rooms. On the floor above was a ball-room and a theater. The next upper floor held a splendid restaurant, decorated by the inevitable and luxurious rubber plants. A German war-prisoner orchestra served for balls, theater, and after-theater supper.

The plays were acted by a fairly good stock company, and it was said, written by the wife of a local general. If the latter were true she was an accomplished dramatist, though I doubt if the police would have allowed her plays to run on Broadway.

It is probable that the general’s wife did write some of them, but more likely that such as I saw she had adapted from French farces. They were grossly nasty, to such an extent that it was evident that they had been coarsened. Infidelity, of course, was the basis of each one, the wife always being the fool. And one case of infidelity was not enough for a single play—all the characters were involved in some way or another, to the uproarious delight of the audience. And incidentally, I saw high school children put on a play built around a button missing from the most vital part of a man’s trousers.

No further comment needs to be made upon the public morals of the Siberians. Yet curiously enough, in all the dancing I observed, there was not a hint of anything approaching the suggestive. In fact, the dances were most pretty, and most decorous. This might be explained by the fact that the officers of Semenoff’s little army were always armed, and are as quick with a pistol as the old-style Westerner of our own country. Discretion in such cases is not always a matter of morals.

And while I am discussing the morals of the Siberians, I wish to say that before sailing from San Francisco I went to a noted restaurant for dinner, where the prominent people of the city dine. There I saw a woman dance in a state so close to nudity that it was disgusting, and she did not dance upon a stage, but among the tables. She was on the program as a foreigner, a gipsy, I think. Thus as a nation we are willing to be Orientalized. And our best people go farther in permitting offense in dancing than do the Siberians, judging from what I saw in that country.

After the play in the sobrania, the dancing begins, the seats being taken up to make extra room. But between the acts a sort of promenade begins, in which the whole audience goes out and walks around in couples in the adjoining room. This promenade is characteristic of all public gatherings, and leads one to believe that the people are most gentle toward each other in all relations—the men link arms, and walk together, smoking and chatting; men and women walk together and talk animatedly; there is much bowing, and exchange of polite salutations between friends. And this promenade once begun, continues through all the time of dancing, so that but about half those present at any particular time are on the dancing floor.

While I was in Chita Cossack officers were there from the Don, the Urals, the Ussuri, the Crimea. There were handsome Georgians in flowing capes lined with red and thrown over the shoulders to expose the inner colorings. They wore rifle cartridges sewn into the breasts of their tunics in regulation Cossack style, and sabers and scimitars with jeweled hilts and scabbards of silver with exquisite filigree work.

When some of these men reached a point of exhilaration which prevented them from remaining quiet, they improvised dances of their native heaths as exhibitions, consisting of queer gesturings, much leaping and clicking of heels in air, and intricate dance steps, all being done with great skill to the accompaniment of barbaric cries in keeping with the performance. Such exhibitions were popular and frequent, and at times the general dancing stopped entirely in order that all hands might enjoy the spectacle.

And while this merry-making was going on inside, Semenoff’s men outside in the bitter cold were doing double guard to protect the building from Bolshevist raids or uprisings. Many a night going to the sobrania with British officers and Captain and Mrs. B——, we were challenged and halted by patrols, and on our way back to the hotel our drosky was frequently held up by a group of men about a bon-fire in the street and not permitted to go on till we had identified ourselves.

I suspected that this excessive caution was due more to Semenoff’s desire to impress the city with the protection he afforded, than a necessity for vigilance. By this method Semenoff demonstrated his worth to the bankers and merchants of the city, so that he found it easier to “borrow” money for his military and other necessities.

But to go out every evening to theaters and dinners, knowing that venturing forth into the cold night means to be challenged by none-too-careful sentries (some of them more or less under the influence of vodka and likely to shoot first and challenge afterward) revealed some traits of the Siberian character. They will have their amusement despite all odds; they do not worry overmuch about the condition of their government; they curse certain foreigners for coming in and protecting them and yet are suspicious of every native who sets himself up as a military leader; they talk of their great love of Russia but if they have their choice between going to a salacious play or to a public gathering to discuss the affairs of their stricken country, they choose the play. There they know they will enjoy themselves and can go through the forms of excessive politeness with their friends and even with officers belonging to the armies of Cossack and Russian leaders who are mistrusted.

But if they all gathered to discuss the welfare of Russia they know the meeting would probably end in a near-riot, if not open warfare. So they find it easier to be charmingly hospitable to possible enemies, and presently whispering behind the backs of the possible enemies about their treason to Holy Russia.

In the meantime the reactionary forces grow stronger, the general disorder gradually converts the people to a belief that it would be better for a monarchy to be restored, and certain imperial personages lurk in Harbin or other hiding places, waiting for the time when the population will tire of revolutionary conditions and demand a restoration of the throne.

These monarchists speak vaguely of a “proper time” in the future. Most of them have plenty of money, and enjoy themselves waiting for this “proper time.” The poorer peoples are steadily consuming food surpluses, raising less each year; they are wearing out their clothes and gradually approaching beggary while they keep up a sort of continual celebration over their freedom, as they call it.

The monarchists can afford to bide their time. Our diplomats wait and wait for “things to settle down.” They predict that Bolshevism will burn itself out, when as a matter of fact the fuse is burning closer to more destruction all the time. And Russian and Germany money is being spent in various countries of the world for the purpose of spreading Bolshevist ideas, in order that other countries will have troubles of their own and be compelled to leave Russia alone. These ideas are nothing but class hatred worked out subtly and made to appeal to people whose reasoning powers are most primitive—or to educated “idealists” who either have addled brains in their heads or Bolshevist money in their pockets.

Tell me how people amuse themselves and I will tell you what they are; tell me that they seek only amusement when their country is in ruins, and they cannot tell me that the patriotism they prate about is genuine patriotism. It struck me that the Siberians were more concerned with what went down their gullets than with a decent government and a decent future for themselves and their children.

People get the government they deserve. People are responsible for their governments. If they assert that their rulers led them into war, it is not the fault of their rulers, but their own, for their rulers know them well enough to know what they could be led into. If people whine that they are oppressed by an autocracy, they confess that there is something lacking in themselves. If they howl against capitalism, when all the things they have could only be produced for them by a system of capital invested to good purpose, they lack brains; and if they cannot devise a government which protects them from exploitation they deserve to be exploited.

I do not believe that all capitalists combine power with justice, any more than I believe that all working men understand the laws of economics and would create a régime of justice if they had all power in their hands. They mistake the machine which has been created to produce jobs for them, as the machine by which they themselves create, when as a matter of fact they themselves are only a part of the machine. That they happen to be part of that machine is not the fault of the inventor of the machine or its owner, but their own.

Of course, the necessity for labor, on their part may be due to a lack of opportunity due to bad government, lack of education, misfortune or the thousand and one elements of which an individual’s history may be composed. A man running a loom might have been a scientist if he had been educated, but he cannot turn himself into a scientist by burning the factory in which he works.

This relation to work and play in connection with Siberia I believe to be vital both in Siberia and in other parts of the world. And I feel it necessary to become personal in order to make clear what I mean in a chapter dealing primarily with Siberian love of amusement.

As a boy I worked in a woolen mill as a weaver. In order to study while my loom was running, I fastened books to the top of the frame and in moments when the loom did not need my attention, I would read a page or two out of a book. By this method I often got through a book a day in addition to producing the regular quantity of cloth. The odd moments I gave to my books were spent by my fellow-weavers in friendly conversation or in skylarking.

I was laughed at for trying to acquire an education. I lost caste with young chaps of my own age for “trying to be better than a weaver.” And right then I learned this truth: People write or talk about autocracy of capital, or autocracy of government, or autocracy of class, but—the greatest autocrat in the world is the ignorant person—he resents everybody who is not as ignorant as himself, and he seeks to pull down to his level those who would surpass him in ability, manual or mental.

I mention this because I found exactly the same attitude of mind on the part of the “workers” in Siberia, as I found among my former loom-mates. It was that no one works unless he wears old clothes and appears at a certain place at a certain time to labor for a certain period.

The Siberian has much more reason for having that attitude than the American, for the former has been prevented from gaining an education, or thinks he has, and has been told repeatedly that only such labor as he understands, produces anything.

Just as many a laborer resents a white shirt, a collar and cuffs, a well-tailored suit worn by a man who apparently does no hard work, the laborer sometimes resents good grammar and good manners from any man who is thrown in contact with him.

It is said that Trotsky goes about unshaven, and in an old suit of clothes, when he wishes to speak to his adherents on terms of familiarity. Having taught the proletariat to destroy the upper classes, he is consistent enough outwardly to pull himself down to the level of his dupes. This is merely the trick of the sly demagogue, who, when he goes among working men seeking votes, puts off the frock coat and silk hat and gets into a cap and overalls. The inference is that he must be honest and is sincerely seeking to represent the working man because he appears in the habiliments of labor.

This spirit of class hatred has been developed to the ultimate degree in Siberia, and the man with a clean collar, a shave, and clean hands must be an enemy of the proletariat, as the proletarian sees him, simply by having those things.

I heard the provodnik of my fourth-class car refer to me insolently as an aristocrat because he observed me trying to shave and wash my face. Two days later, having allowed myself to become unshaven and otherwise unkempt, he became most friendly, and instead of regarding me as an aristocrat, began to address me as “comrade.” I had evidently won his good regard by being dirty.

So amusement is closely identified with the condition of a people, both in their material and spiritual welfare, as well as in the evils of a bad government. When people insist upon having amusement which they cannot afford, they are ripe for the tyrant, and their government goes to pot. Prosperity has done more damage to the human race than adversity—prosperity which is used only for an excess of amusement.

With the sobranias of Chita filled to overflowing every night, with wealthy and poor seeking to be diverted with vodka, dancing and eating all night, and sleeping most of the day, where is it possible to begin aiding them in the forming of a government of their own? If they are willing to allow various self-seeking usurpers of government to set up military establishments and gradually become local princelings waiting for the time that their power can be sold out to some imperial personage who wishes to restore a throne, why should we quarrel with these princelings or about them—the Semenoffs, the Kalmikoffs and others who are of the same stripe?

That is what the monarchists mean when they talk about the “proper time,” to restore the monarchy—the time when the local chiefs find it convenient to sell out, and there is a buyer handy who knows how to wear a crown—and swing a saber over the heads of the multitude.

Then there will be people in Russia and in that part of the Empire of old known as Siberia, who will rise and assert that the Allies, or the United States, or somebody, betrayed them. They will say that our “watchful waiting,” and our assurances of friendship and our efforts to aid with Red Cross supplies, and our “we don’t know what to do” policy, was merely our waiting for a “proper time” to hand them over to a new Czar.

That is why I say the sobranias with their dirty plays, filled with audiences roaring gleefully over indecency, should have been filled nightly with Siberians threshing out the problems which confronted them. No. They were concerned chiefly with consuming the supply of vodka, with the women who sifted through the port of Vladivostok or came up from Harbin, and with cursing discreetly behind their hands the gentlemanly Japanese officer who went to see the fun. I wonder if some of these Japanese, accused by the Siberians of secretly desiring to capture Siberia, did not realize with Japanese astuteness that the Siberians were conquering themselves. There is no necessity for the Japanese fighting with the Siberians for Siberia, when the Siberians seem to be bent upon eliminating themselves.

Of course the Siberians are friendly to the United States—remember that the American officer whom I relieved in Chita had been threatened with assassination. This officer was a foreigner, who by faithful service in our old regular army, had acquired a commission in our native forces of the Philippines, known as the Philippine Scouts. I am not sure what his nationality was—a Pole or a Ukranian. I think the chief objection to him was the belief in certain quarters in Chita that he was a Jew.

The United States makes a mistake when it sends a Jewish official to represent it in any foreign country which is anti-Jewish, not because the Jew is incapable in any way, but because the nation he represents is forgotten, and only the fact that he is a Jew, is remembered. We of the United States who have no racial or religious prejudices against the Jew find it hard to realize the hatred that is held for them in a country like Russia.

Since my stay in Siberia I am convinced that the hatred of the Jew is neither racial nor religious at bottom. It is based on a resentment of any person or race which is ambitious, which has foresight, which attends to business, and so gets ahead. The Chinese in Siberia are hated as much as the Jews, though not so badly persecuted. This is because, as I understand it, the Chinese attend to their business while the native is sleeping off the effects of liquor or late hours. The Siberian dislikes anybody who represents “unfair competition”—the doing a full day’s work. I believe the Japanese are hated chiefly for the same reason—being up and doing, looking ahead, preparing for the cold winter during the warm summer. All lazy persons resent the man or woman who works. The Siberian was born lazy.

The general Russian workman in a factory will not work a minute more than he is compelled to. I read an article by a Russian woman in this country who ascribes this laziness of her countrymen to an artistic temperament—they need a certain amount of dreaming, and their spiritual condition is better than that of the American, who is always too busy to enjoy life and understand the inner meanings of life. That may be so, but I believe that the average American working man who arrives at his work punctually and quits with the whistle, gets as much of the “inner meanings of life” as the Russian who reaches the factory an hour late, and then wants to assassinate the owner of the factory because the boss scolds the Russian for being late. Maybe this yearning for assassination is indicative of understanding the inner meaning of life.

To disagree in Siberia means to desire to kill. That is one reason why the sobranias were full of rollickers every night in Chita. To sit in a theater beside a man who is laughing at a play while you yourself laugh at the same things he does, prevents anything in the nature of a disagreement. Two men can get drunk together with a certain degree of safety, but in Siberia if they should meet sober and begin to talk about government, they might fight a duel. Perhaps they would rather remain alive than to attempt to agree on how the nation should be conducted.

While I was in Siberia I read in an American newspaper that an American member of Congress demanded information as to why the United States was not coöperating with the Russian Zemstvos in organizing a nucleus for a representative Russian government. If he had been with me the day I read of his demand, I could have taken him and shown him a zemstvo so drunk that its members did not know their first names. The only way in which anybody might have coöperated with them, would have been to buy them a bottle of vodka. This was their way of killing time while waiting for our government to make up its mind on Siberia.

In answer to my suggestion that the Siberians of Chita should have gathered to discuss government in their sobranias, they might well state that if they attempted to discuss government in any way than to pass resolutions in favor of Semenoff’s government, they stood a good chance of being executed with dispatch. It would be a fairly good answer. Especially, as the United States merely showed mild interest when Semenoff executed a batch of people. If the United States as represented by the Siberian expedition, the commander being so instructed and properly backed up, had told Semenoff that he had not yet acquired the right to execute anybody and that he would not be allowed to usurp that right, that would have been coöperation with the people of Siberia. But coöperation of that kind might be interpreted as interference, and we were pledged by somebody not to interfere with the Siberians.

So the Siberians took good care, and wisely, not to interfere with Semenoff. But we remained in Siberia with our forces, and proved ourselves to be so gentle and considerate of others, that certain Siberians have dared to interfere with us to the extent of killing some of our officers and soldiers.

The Semenoffs and the Kalmikoffs did not love us any more because we did not interfere with them; the Siberians did not love us because we did not interfere with these petty tyrants; but we would have won the love of all hands if we had done something—that is, all hands but the Bolshevists, and since we have probed into their works at home, I doubt if we seek their love. At least the Bolshevists would have learned to respect us if we had done something beside invite them to the Prinkipo conference, an invitation which they greeted with loud laughter and other demonstrations of their scorn for our good intentions.

So the sobranias of Chita, and other cities in Siberia, served to while away the time for the populace, while they waited for the United States to make up its mind about what to do in Siberia. If we had taken a definite stand, and demanded that the Siberians show us what they could do while we protected them from themselves and the Cossacks, the sobranias might have been filled with committees, and delegates, and people learning something about what they must do to have a government, instead of being filled with revelers.

If we think we can wait till these people meet our ideas of what government is, we are making a great mistake. We must show them. They have been kept ignorant for centuries, in order that they might be kept in subjection. They have not been educated, because the ruling class wanted cheap labor. Cheap labor becomes very expensive labor when it destroys the employer, the factory and the government. Cheap labor that listens to such arguments as the Bolshevists give it, is a mighty costly commodity to any nation, whether that labor is native or imported.