Marooned in Moscow: the story of an American woman imprisoned in Russia

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Foreword

In the early part of February, 1920, I crossed into Russia through the Polish Front, as correspondent of the Baltimore Sim and the Associated Press, intending to remain for six weeks. I stayed for eighteen months, ten of which were spent in prison. This was due to the manner in which I entered the country, and my actions while there, which I shall describe fully in the following pages telling what happened to me as well as what I heard and saw in Russia. My treatment while in prison was no different from that accorded any other prisoners, native or foreign, and I can honestly say that I have come through it all with absolutely no personal bitterness and with what I believe to be a purely impartial view of conditions in the Soviet Republic.

My account of my experiences is written entirely from memory, as I was permitted to take no notes out of the country when I was released on July 28, upon the acceptance by the Soviet government of the terms of the American Relief Association for famine relief in Russia, which was made conditional on the release of all American prisoners.

Marguerite E, Harrison.

Contents

PAGB

Foreword .,.,,, v

CHAPTER

Chapter I Warsaw To No Man's Land

To get into any country by the back door, after having been refused permission to come in by the front way, does not sound like a simple thing to do, yet, as a matter of fact, I accomplished the feat without any great difficulty in February, 1920, when I entered Soviet Russia from Poland while a state of war existed between the two nations. My method was simplicity itself — I passed through the Polish lines into No Man's Land, and gave myself up to the first Red Army patrol. By this means I succeeded two weeks later in reaching Moscow, where I stayed for eighteen montjis, during which I was arrested twice by the Checka, living for six months under surveillance and for nearly ten in prison.

Under the circumstances I consider that I fared rather well. If, as an American citizen, I had tried to get into Germany through the front lines from France after diplomatic relations had been broken off between the United States and that country, I doubt if I would have been as lucky with either the French or the Boches, for I would have run a pretty good chance of being taken for a spy by both sides.

My decision to get into Russia by the underground route was reached only after I had tried and failed to get in by legitimate means. I had been in Germany as the correspondent of the Baltimore Sun during the six months of readjustment and revolution immediately following the Armistice, and there,

II through persons identified with the Socialist movement, I had heard many things, which made me reahze that we, in Western countries, knew little or nothing of what was actually happening in Soviet Russia. I wanted to see something at close range of the great social experiment of the Bolsheviks. Consequently on my return to America in the early autumn of 19 1 9 I applied at the Martens Bureau in New York for permission to enter Russia for the Baltimore Sun of which I was a staff correspondent, the New York Evening Post, which had given me credentials as occasional traveling correspondent, and Underwood & Underwood, for whom I had agreed to take pictures in Europe. I was told flatly that this would be impossible. The Soviet government at that time was not encouraging the entrance of bourgeois press correspondents. It was felt that the privileges accorded correspondents in Russia had been so often abused by deliberate misstatements intended to fvurther anti-Bolshevik propaganda that, with few exceptions, the Foreign Office was refusing permission to the representatives of non-Socialist papers. I was even warned that it would be extremely unwise for me to attempt to get into the country.

In spite of this fact I started for Europe in October determined to try my luck. In London I had a conversation, confirmed later in writing, with Mr. Collins, European manager of the Associated Press, who had agreed to accept my services as Moscow correspondent should I succeed in entering Russia. The refusal of the Martens Bureau closed the only legitimate routes through Esthonia, Finland and the Soviet courier service via Murmansk. It also barred me from applying to the only other agency which could have given me permission — Litvinov's bureau at Copenhagen.

There remained another possibility — entrance through one of the countries with which Soviet Russia was then at war, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland. I chose the last named route, not because it was the easiest, but because it promised the most interesting experiences, and laid my plans accordingly. I wish to emphasize these facts because they had an important bearing on what happened to me later. I was deliberately

WARSAW TO NO MAN'S LAND 18

taking a desperate risk, and I had no one but myself to blame for the consequences.

I arrived in Warsaw in December with no very definite plans except that somehow or other I was determined to get to Russia. At that time I spoke very little Russian, so the first thing that was absolutely essential was an interpreter. It was necessary to find someone who would be acceptable to the Bolsheviks and at the same time did not have too bad a standing with the Polish authorities. For some time I failed to find anyone meeting these requirements. Then by chance I met Doctor Anna Karlin. She was a Russian who had emigrated to the United States some ten years previously, had taken out American citizenship papers, and lived for some time in Chicago, where she was identified with Socialist activities. At the beginning of the revolution she had gone to Russia via Siberia and had worked for a year as a Red Army physician, being assigned to duty in Galicia. When the Poles occupied this territory in the Autumn of 1919 she was made a prisoner, but as she claimed American citizenship she was allowed to go unmolested to Warsaw. For some months she tried to obtain an American passport, but without success. I found her out of work, unable to return to the United States and practically destitute. She still retained her Red Army papers, and I felt that, once in Russia, she would be able to take care of herself. I suggested that she should accompany me to Russia as an interpreter. She agreed, and we left together for Minsk, then occupied by Polish troops in command of General Jelikovski.

My first difficulties were encountered when I applied for a permit for her to leave Warsaw. As a Jewess, and as a person who had formerly been in the service of the Red Army, the Polish authorities were naturally inclined to be suspicious of her, and it took me some time to obtain the necessary papers. On my arrival in Minsk I called on General Jelikovski, explained to him that I was anxious to get into Soviet Russia and asked for a safe conduct through the Polish lines on that sector of the Beresina front. I was met with a point-blank refusal. In the first place, the general told me, he would not be responsible for my personal safety. If I crossed the front in that manner I would certainly be shot as a spy by the Bolsheviks. In addition I would naturally learn much a]>out the disposition of the Polish troops, and either unwittingly, or under pressure, I might give valuable information to the Reds. As for taking with me a Jewish woman, who had been with the Red Army and afterwards lived in Warsaw, that was utterly preposterous I

After several interviews I realized that General Jelikovski knew his own mind and that it was impossible to do an3^hing with him. Meanwhile I had made many acquaintances in Minsk among the Jews who were bitterly antagonistic to the Polish occupation on account of the unjust persecutions to which they were subjected. While not Communists by conviction, most of them secretly sympathized with the Bolsheviks on account of the attitude of the Poles. As Minsk was formerly a Russian province, nearly all of them had ties connecting them with Soviet Russia. There was a flourishing trade in contraband between the Jews in Minsk and their co-religionists in Russia, and a well organized undergrounrl railroad of communication between the Russian and Polish branches of various Jewish benevolent organizations such as the **Oze*' and the "]3ko\io." Most of these people crossed the lines through the Beresina sector, because it was the least guarded of all the fronts and also because it was used for the repatriation of Germans, and for exchange of hostages between the Poles and Russians. For this purpose a sort of tacit armistice had been established. On all other sectors of the front while there was no actual fighting there were frequent skirmishes and to cross between the lines was much more difficult. I had determined that if I was unsuccessful in getting a safe conduct from the military authorities I would throw in my luck with the Jewish contrabanders, but if I had been caught this would have blocked all my future chances of getting into Russia through Poland.

I had heard that General Szeptitzki, who was in command of the Vilna sector, was a much more approachable person. I therefore determined to go to Vilna and try to get a permit

WARSAW TO NO MAN'S LAND 15

from him. So, leaving Dr. Karlin at Minsk I started for Vilna. At that time travel in eastern Poland was anything but luxurious. I made the trip from Minsk to Vilna in a fourth-class car, packed with Polish soldiers and a large convoy of Bolshevik prisoners. The trip, which in normal times is a matter of three hours or so, took us just twenty-two hours, owing to the sabotage of the railroad employees, all of whom were White Russians and bitterly antagonistic to the Polish occupation. At Moledechno, midway between Minsk and Vilna, the engine crew struck and we were held up for four or five hours while the Polish officers in command of the train tried in vain to secure another crew. Finally they collected a purse of two thousand marks and presented it to the strikers, upon which they condescended to take us to Vilna.

Some days after my arrival I had an interview with General Szeptitzki, and told him what I had in mind. At first he emphatically refused, but I finally succeeded in persuading him to give me a safe conduct through the Polish lines. Armed with this I returned to Minsk determined to give the slip to General Jelikovski and cross through his sector. The best route was from Minsk through Smolovichi to Borisov. There I had Jewish friends who were in constant communication with persons across the border and they would be able to give me letters of introduction which would help me considerably in Russia. I calculated that once on the front a permit from General Szeptitzki, who was well known and much loved throughout the entire army, would be sufficient to induce the officer in command of the front line troops to pass me through unless he received orders from Minsk to the contrary. So as a military permit was necessary to travel on the train to Borisov we left Minsk early one morning in a sleigh furnished us by Jewish contrabanders. We covered the one hundred and twenty versts to Borisov in a day, arriving late at night by a circuitous route, so that we would not be challenged by Polish sentries.

The next morning I interviewed the commanding officer, showed my permit from General Szeptitzki, carefully concealing the fact that I had come from Minsk and it was arranged that I should be conducted through the front lines on the following day.

Having accomplished this much, my only anxiety, as far as the Poles were concerned, was that I might be searched for letters before leaving the country. On the way to Poland I had received several letters of introduction for Moscow from Paul Birukov, a Russian, friend and biographer of Tolstoi, whom I had met in Geneva. One was to Brons Brouyevitch, who was associated with Lunacharsky, Commissioner of Education; another to Krupkaya, wife of Lenin. Besides I had a letter from a well known Polish Communist, and a number of personal letters from Jewish people in Poland to their relatives in Russia. The latter, for all I knew, might be a disadvantage to me with the Bolsheviks as well, for in most cases I had no idea of the politics of the people who had given them to me. I even had three thousand Kerensky roubles from a Doctor Szabad of Vilna, for his wife, who was living in Petrograd, and letters from members of Jewish benevolent associations to fellow members in Orscha, Vitebsk, Smolensk and Moscow. Much to my relief the subject was never brought up, and as a matter of fact I was not searched until my arrival in Moscow.

We left Borisov for the front in a sleigh early on the morning of February 8th, with a Polish soldier who acted as our escort during an exciting drive of seven versts, along a rough highway rutted by heavy motor lorries, through a winding track in a dense forest where we often had to stop and bridge the trenches with spruce boughs to permit the passage of our sleigh. We finally arrived at a dugout built of logs, camouflaged with evergreens where I found an officer who had been notified of our coming from staff headquarters at Borisov. He was none too cordial and evidently did not relish his task of conducting me to No Man's Land. We had coffee together and all the while he entertained me with accounts of Bolshevik atrocities, predicting that I would probably be shot within twenty-four hours and suggesting that perhaps I should like to change my mind and go back to Borisov. Finding me adamant, he started out leading the way

WARSAW TO NO MAN'S LAND 17

through a network of barbed wire entanglements with my carryall slung over his shoulder. I followed with my suitcase and knapsack, and the little doctor, who was very fat and short of breath, brought up the rear.

Finally we emerged from the woods and I found myself on the edge of No Man's Land, a wide open expanse of snow-covered fields dotted here and there with peasant villages. Apparently it was absolutely uninhabited. There were no signs of life, not even an occasional peasant or a village dog — dead silence brooded over everything. I knew that somewhere, just beyond, were detachments of the Red Army, but there was no evidence of their proximity. Some distance away was a small settlement of about six houses and the officer informed me that there we would be able to find a sleigh to take us to the nearest village. We covered the distance in a few minutes and knocked at the door of one of the houses, a rough board structure with a thatched roof. A bearded peasant with a sheepskin coat and astrakhan cap appeared at the door. He eyed my escort in a rather unfriendly manner and was decidedly disgruntled when ordered to bring out his sleigh and take us to the nearest village, where, I was told, I would probably meet the Red Army patrol in a few hours. Presently he brought up a moth-eaten horse and a broken down sleigh into which we piled our bags, following him on foot to the village which we reached after a half-hour tramp. We stopped in front of a schoolhouse, the only decent building in the place, where we were received by the teacher, a very pretty Russian girl who spoke Polish well, and seemed to be on excellent terms with my officer. They had a long conversation during which she evidently gave him a certain amount of important information for which he paid several pounds of chocolate and a package of tea. Then he said good-bye to me, wishing me luck, and Doctor Karlin and I were left to await the arrival of the Red Army patrol.

Chapter II A Red Army Billet

The room in which we were sitting served as the teacher's living and bedroom. It was large and cheerful, with geraniums in the windows, a comfortable drugget on the floor, and a big porcelain stove in the comer that made us forget the intense cold outside — in fact several degrees below zero. In a few minutes, with true Russian hospitality, the teacher brought in a bubbling samovar, some small oaten cakes with bacon fat instead of butter, and invited us to have a cup of real tea, which she had probably received on a previous visit from our officer. It was all very different from what I had imagined. I had thought that I would find No Man's Land a desolate waste, but here was no sign of war and destruction — even comparative comfort. To tell the truth, I never had the feeling that I was in the zone of military operations, either on the Polish or Russian front lines.

To anyone who was at all familiar with the Western Front in the great war, the Beresina front was like going back to the days of, say. Napoleon. The Poles had an irregular line of entrenchments and barbed wire entanglements, seven versts east of the Beresina, a few batteries of light artillery and machine guns. Their supplies were brought to within a few versts of the advanced posts by a small number of decrepit motor lorries, which had much difficulty in ploughing their way through the heavy snow. Then they were loaded on sleighs or carried in packs to the front line trenches. There were no narrow gauge lines, no funny little dummy engines, no strings of supply trains passing one another. Evei-)^hing was primitive and simple to a degree; there was none of the paraphernalia of modern war. The soldiers were poorly

i8

A RED ARMY BILLET 19

armed, poorly equipped, and lived in the rudest shelters imaginable.

The Bolsheviks did not even pretend to have a line of entrenchments. Between them and the Poles was a wide stretch of open territory, perhaps five versts across in the narrowest portion. Behind this debatable ground were the scattered villages, in which the Red Army detachments were billeted. On that sector of the Russian front I never saw a trench or a dugout. The entire army was like a flying squadron, ready to advance or retreat at a moment's notice. Of course the Russian climate makes a winter campaign practically impossible, and the Bolsheviks were quite safe as they were. Besides, both sides at that time confidently expected peace in the spring, and were simply maintaining an attitude of watchful waiting.

So far I had seen no evidences of the presence of the Red Army, but in about an hour the door opened and three n)*^n in rough khaki colored coats, high boots and astrakhan caps came in. Each wore on his cap a five-pointed star, and one had pinned to his coat the Communist insignia, a star surrounded by a silver wreath. He was a splendid looking fellow, of the peasant type, with clear blue eyes and a wholesome, ruddy skin, very young and very much impressed with the importance of his office, for he was a poHtical commissar. I explained to him in my very best Russian, that I had come from America to learn the truth about the Soviet Government, and that I wished to go on to Moscow.

"That is very good of you," he said simply, with the friendliest smile imaginable, "but I have no authority to let you go farther. I must telephone to the company commander in Lochnitza, the next village. Meanwhile we will do all we can to make you comfortable here."

,While we were waiting for a reply the teacher invited me to have a look at the schoolroom across the hall. School was over for the day, and I found a meeting of the village Soviet going on. There were women as well as men gathered around the chairman, who was reading a decree from Moscow ordering the mobilization of all men of the classes of 1883, 1884 and 1885 to cut and haul wood for the railroads and the army. This was followed by the announcement that all villagers who had not a sufficient supply of wood to last through the winter would be allotted a certain amount, and a list of names of those in need of wood was read. Instantly several hands were raised.

"My neighbor, Dmitri Pavlovitch, is not on the list," said one man. "He has not enough wood to last a month." Dmi'- tri*s name was promptly written down, as was that of a woman who claimed that she had been overlooked, and various other matters affecting the commune were taken up one by one. Few of the members could read or write, and yet they were governing themselves in an orderly and efficient manner.

"We are doing our best,*' said the young commissar, who had come back with the news that I was to be sent to the company command fifteen versts away, "but we are greatly handicapped because of the lack of cooperation of the intelligent classes. We want them to work with us,"

Our trip was made in two requisitioned sleighs, Doctor Karlin and I occupying the first, the second containing our baggage and two soldiers. The way led down the broad highroad that runs from Minsk to Moscow, which I had already traveled on the Polish side. It was built by Catherine the Great ; to this day it is bordered in many places by double rows of birch trees planted in her time, and the peasants still call it the "Ekaterina Chaussee." Our driver was a typical moujik, big, blond, gentle and childlike, with a certain underlying shrewdness. He was extremely talkative and the fact that I was a foreigner gave him an added degree of confidence. Indeed he was childishly eager to explain his perplexities and get my advice. "We are a dark people, Barina," he said; "we know little beyond our own villages. It was bad for us under our father, the Tsar, that much we know. Now we have a new government. Will it be better for us, do you think?"

I told him it would be hard for me, as a foreigner, to judge, and asked him how the people of his village had been treated by the Red Army.

According to his accounts, on the whole, they had fared

A RED ARMY BILLET 21

much better since the revolution. A commissar had taken charge, and had made a list of foodstuffs and live stock available. Each peasant had been allowed enough for his needs, and the surplus had been requisitioned for the army. There had been no robbery and no lawlessness. On certain days he was compelled to report for work with his horse and sleigh, but otherwise he was left free to attend to his own affairs. In his village, he told me, there was enough food, with the exception of salt, but salt was extremely expensive, and almost unobtainable. Parties constantly crossed the Polish lines to smuggle in supplies, but they were frequently arrested and shot by the Poles. As for the soldiers of the Red Army, they had as a rule been very good to the peasants, often sharing their supplies with them, or giving salt in return for eggs, milk and bacon.

Other peasants with whom I talked in the districts through which we passed, which are among the poorest agricultural regions in Russia, told the same story with variations. In some villages there was no surplus and often a shortage of food supply, and there requisitions had been made very sparingly. There was some dissatisfaction over the failure of the government to provide food, but no antagonism to the administration as such.

Among the few richer moujiks who owned good-sized tracts of land there was a strong sentiment against nationalization, but as a matter of fact the government had decided the previous year to leave the question of nationalization in abeyance. Actually, under the Soviet Gk)vemment there is less communism in the matter of land holdings than there was under the Tsar. Under the old system much land was owned in common by the villages and parcelled out among the peasants. At present the peasants are in posssesion of their farms. Many of them are dubious about this free gift from the government, and officials are often approached by the peasants with offers to pay for their newly acquired interests. The peasants may be dissatisfied with taxes or requisitions, they may complain of the lack of the government to supply them with seeds, farm implements and manufactured goods, but they will never rise en masse against any government which leaves them in possession of the land.

Meanwhile they are actually rich as far as money goes, and nearly every peasant has his hoard of ''Nikolai" roubles tucked in his boots or hidden under the family feather bed on the stove. At present, however, his money does him no good. Many of the village cooperatives are closed or are operating on a restricted basis on account of lack of supplies.

We arrived after dark in a driving snowstorm and stopped in front of an "izba" that served as company headquarters. It had two rooms. In the first a family of moujiks was living An enormous earthenware stove, on top of which the grandmother and children had already gone to bed, was the most prominent article of furniture in the room. The father and several grown up sons were sitting on a long wooden bench, smoking pipes, filled with a vile weed called "mahorka," the peasant substitute for tobacco. In front of the fire the mother was spinning flax on a spinning wheel that looked as if it might have been made in the seventeenth century. The other room served as living and sleeping quarters for the commandant and his political commissar.

The latter was at first inclined to be somewhat suspicious and put me through a rigid cross-examination, but as he showed no intention of having me shot on the spot, I began to feel slightly encouraged, especially as I knew something of army psychology. These Red Army men on the Beresina were very much like our own troops on the Western front — ^they were lonely and homesick ; they had news and mail only intermittently. Life was very dull between the intervals of hostilities and they were thirsty for news and amusement. I was the first person who had come to them from the outside world. Most of them had never seen a Western European, much less an American woman, before. It was curiosity and boredom, coupled, perhaps, with a certain admiration of my audacity, that carried me through the Red Army from this small village on the edge of No Man's Land to Division Headquarters at Vitebsk.

Having successfully passed through the ordeal of cross-

A RED ARMY BILLET 2a

examination we were received with simple unaffected friendliness, and deluged with questions with regard to happenings in the outside world. Why did the Entente wish to prevent Russia from settling her own affairs in her own way? What was the attitude of the American people with regard to their Russian comrades ? Who would be the next American president? When would the blockade be lifted? When would Russia have peace ?

While I was endeavoring to answer in my limited Russian, with the help of my interpreter, supper was brought in. There were no plates, and we shared a community dish of delicious country bacon with black bread, butter and hot tea with milk. After supper the commander himself took us to our billet in an "izba" across the way. It was quite a luxurious one, boasting three rooms. Ours was the best in the house, the principal articles of furniture being a wooden bed with big down pillows and an American sewing machine. The entire family assembled to greet us, and from that moment we were never left alone. They had never seen an American woman before and their curiosity was flattering if a bit overwhelming. Every piece of baggage was inspected and I undressed and went to bed before a breathlessly interested audience. The women of the family gathered in my room to watch the process, and the men, I felt sure, peeped through the cracks in the wooden partition. In the morning my sponge bath in a small tin basin was a source of untold entertainment. We had a breakfast of pancakes and tea, after which the commander appeared. It was ten o'clock and he had just gotten up. Nobody in Russia ever wants to go to bed or get up in the morning, and reveille is unknown in the Red Army. Soldiers and officers get up when they please.

He invited me to go out and inspect the schools and the hospital. "School!" I said. "Is it possible that you have a school here?" for we were only fifteen versts from No Man's Land.

"Yes, indeed," he answered, "and we have more pupils than before the Revolution."

I found that there had formerly been one primary school in

Lochnitza, with sixty-five pupils. At that time four hundred pupils were r^stered in the primary schcK)ls and the gymnasium or secondary school. The entire equipment for the gymnasium had been gotten together very hurriedly. There were three class rooms in each of which I found about thirty pupils hard at work. The benches had been knocked together from boards, with log supports. Similar benches, a little higher, served as desks. 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.