My sentry on that first day was a Pole. He walked beside me with loaded rifle and was talkative and not unfriendly. He informed me that he had frequently accompanied the Tsarist ex-Ministers on their walks and that few prisoners who entered the Kremlin came out alive. The betting among his comrades was two to one on that I would be shot.
On the whole, my sentries were decent, sensible fellows, who made no attempt to jeer at me. During my whole period of captivity I struck only one really nasty one—a sour-faced curmudgeon, who swore at England, cursed me as an assassin, and refused to allow me even to send a message to the Commandant. He was a Hungarian. The Letts were the best. Most of them were contemptuous of the Russians, whom they regarded as inferiors. One Lett informed me that, if Russia could have put a million non-Russian troops into the trenches, she could not have failed to win the war. Every time the Letts advanced, he said, they were let down by the Russians, who failed invariably to support them. He despised, too, the dirt and laziness of the Russian troops. On the other hand, he had a wholesome respect for the Bolshevik leaders, whom he regarded as super-men.
Not all my sentries were Bolsheviks. They were divided into three classes: first, the ardent Communists, who convinced one by their sincerity and by their devotion to their cause. Of these there were not many. Secondly, the sheep who went with the crowd—Bolshevik to-day, Menshevik to-morrow. And, thirdly—and these were the most numerous—the sceptical, who believed that in Russia anything was possible and everything bad. All, however, were convinced that the revolution had come to stay. Even those Letts, who were anxious to return to Latvia, laughed at the possibility of a successful counterrevolution. To them counter-revolution meant the restoration of the land to the land-owners.
These walks were a welcome relief to the monotony of my existence. They kept me from thinking about myself, and, although at first I could not refrain from indirect questions to my guards regarding my own fate, the answers I received soon discouraged further attempts to satisfy my morbid curiosity. Every day during my walk I paid a visit to a little church built in the wall of the Kremlin. It had a little garden round it and a famous ikon called “Our Lady of Unexpected Joy.” Before the war, inspired by the attractiveness of the title, I had written a short story about it, which was published in the Morning Post. Now it was to be for three weeks the shrine of my daily prayers.
After my first week in the Kremlin, Karachan came to see me. He was reticent about my own case. He, too, hinted that a public trial was inevitable. He also informed me that René Marchand, a member of the French Mission, had furnished the Bolsheviks with full proofs of an Allied meeting at the American Consulate-General. At this meeting the Allied representatives had discussed such measures as blowing up railway bridges and cutting off Moscow and St. Petersburg from their sources of food supplies. He had given, so Karachan said, a full list of the names of those who were present. I laughed. Most of my conversations with Karachan were conducted in a tone of airy persiflage. “That beats the Times,” I said. “Believe me or not, as you like, this is another invention of your Cheka.”
“It is true,” he replied. “We shall publish the letter in a day or two. Fortunately for you,” he added with a grin, “you do not seem to have been present.”
The story was more or less true. Marchand had thrown in his lot with the Bolsheviks. After the war he returned to France and joined the French Communist Party. He renounced his Communism in 1931.
Karachan also gave me news of the war and of the outside world. The neutral diplomatists had issued a violent protest against the Terror, from which I deduced that they were working to secure our release. The Allied forces were making no progress in Russia. The Bolsheviks had registered further successes against the Czechs and the Russian counter-revolutionary forces. On the other hand, the Allies were driving back the Germans in the West. Austria and Bulgaria were on the verge of collapse. He admitted that the Allies might now win the war.
This was good news indeed. It was further stressed by the disclosure of the real object of Karachan’s visit. He had come to ascertain my views regarding the terms on which England would be prepared to abandon her intervention and to make peace with Russia. The Bolsheviks were prepared to offer an amnesty to all counter-revolutionaries who would accept the régime, and a free exit out of Russia to the Czechs and to the Allies. Obviously, if the Bolsheviks were ready to discuss peace terms with the Allies, they were not going to shoot me. On the other hand, the Allies were not likely to listen to any proposals of this nature. On the whole, my hopes were raised by this visit. Lenin, Karachan informed me, was now able to sit up and to take nourishment.
The week from September 14th to 21st was wet and miserable, and on two days I was unable to have my daily walk. I still received my daily messages and my daily supply of luxuries from Moura. She sent me, too, a fountain-pen and several note-books, and I amused myself by writing bad verse and by keeping a strictly non-committal diary of my prison life. I had, however, no more Bolshevik visitors and no news, and, as I was sleeping badly, I underwent a fresh period of pessimism.
Spiridonova, who was imprisoned in the same corridor as myself, I saw often. We never spoke, although we greeted each other solemnly when we passed on our daily walks. She looked ill and nervous, with great dark lines under her eyes. She was clumsily and very carelessly dressed, but might have been quite pretty when young.
Another prisoner, whom I met occasionally on my walks, was General Brusiloff. He had had an accident to his leg and walked with difficulty with the aid of a stick. My diary states that “he looked ill, haggard, and very old, and that he had a sly, foxy face.” Yet another prisoner was Sablin, the former Soviet Commander, who had played a leading part in the Left Social-Revolutionary attempted coup d’état in July. Good-looking, with an attractive smile and blue eyes, he looked little more than a boy.
The eminence of their prisoners evidently caused some amusement to our guards. One day my sentry piloted me to the shrine where formerly had stood the statue of Alexander II and with pride pointed out to me a sentence roughly chiselled on the side of the huge pedestal. The words, carved by one of our sentries, ran as follows: “Here the Red Army soldiers of the 9th Lettish Rifles had the honour of walking with Brusiloff, Lockhart, Spiridonova and Sablin.” The word “honour” was in inverted commas. I reflected with grim morbidness that this was the only statue except a tombstone on which my name was likely to figure.
On September 21st Karachan came to see me again. He was in high fetde over the Bolshevik successes on the Volga. The Red Army had captured Simbirsk and Buinsk and was now full of confidence. He brought me copies of The Call—a Bolshevik news-sheet, printed in English, which was to be distributed by airplanes among the English troops on the Archangel and Murmansk fronts. It contained a lurid account of the so-called Allied Plot. My name figured largely in it, and to my other crimes was now added the charge of having concocted a false treaty between Germany and Russia as a means of inducing the Allied troops to fight against the Bolsheviks. The account, so the paper said, read “like a tale from the Arabian Nights.” I pointed this passage out to Karachan and congratulated him on the aptness of the simile. It was a fine example of imaginative fiction. Karachan, who knew the circumstances of my arrest in every detail, smiled blandly. “Your Government,” he said, “is supporting the war against the revolution. Every kind of irregularity has been committed by Allied agents in this country. You have become the symbol of these irregularities. In a clash between two world forces the individual has to suffer.”
The next day I received a surprise visit from Peters. He brought Moura with him. It was his birthday (he was thirty-two), and, as he preferred giving presents to receiving them, he had brought Moura as his birthday treat. In more senses than one this was the most thrilling moment of my captivity. Peters was in a reminiscent mood. He sat down opposite me at the small table near the back wall and began to talk of his life as a revolutionary. He had become a Socialist at the age of fiftee
n. He had suffered exile and persecution. I listened only fitfully. Moura, who was standing behind Peters and in front of me, was fiddling with my books, which stood on a small side table surmounted by a long hanging mirror. She caught my eyes, held up a note, and slipped it into a book. I was terrified. A slight turn of his head, and Peters could see everything in the mirror. I gave the tiniest of nods. Moura, however, seemed to think that I had not seen and repeated the performance. My heart stopped beating, and this time I nodded like an epileptic. Fortunately, Peters noticed nothing or else Moura’s shrift would have been short. Although he gave me no news about my own fate beyond saying that preparations were being made for my trial, he treated me in every other respect with great courtesy, questioned me several times about my treatment by my sentries, and asked me if I were receiving Moura’s letters regularly and if I had any complaints to make. Then, excusing himself on account of pressure of work for the shortness of his visit and promising to bring Moura again, he left me. Moura and I had hardly exchanged a word, but already I felt a new hope. It was as if I had left the world and come back to it again. As soon as they had gone, I rushed to the book—it was Carlyle’s “French Revolution”—and took out the note. It was very short—six words only: “Say nothing—all will be well.” That night I could not sleep.
The next day Peters came again. His second visit explained his first. This time he was accompanied, not by Moura, but by Asker, the Swedish Consul-General, a man of great charm and high ideals, who had laboured night and day to secure our release. Peters went straight to the point. The neutral diplomatists had expressed concern about my fate. They had been much perturbed by rumours that I had been shot, that I was being subjected to Chinese torture. He had, therefore, brought the Swedish Consul-General in order that he might persuade himself by the proof of his own eyes (1) that I was alive, and (2) that I was being well-treated. My conversation with Asker was restricted. We had to talk in Russian, and his knowledge of the language was limited. Moreover, he was not allowed to discuss my case with me. Having satisfied himself that I was not being starved or tortured, he managed to say that everything possible was being done on my behalf, and then he left.
On the following morning the Bolshevik Press broadcast a statement that, while the bourgeois Press throughout the world was spreading rumours of the terrible tortures to which I was being subjected, I myself had denied them and had admitted to the Swedish Consul-General that I was being treated with every courtesy.
My interview with Asker was not altogether satisfactory. The fact that he was not allowed to discuss my own case with me depressed me. If I was no longer afraid for my life, the probability of a public trial and of a long term of imprisonment impressed itself more strongly than ever on my mind. My apprehensions were increased by the publication in the Izvestia the next morning of the disclosures of Marchand, the French agent. It took the form of an open letter to Poincaré and denounced in strong terms the counter-revolutionary activities of the Allied agents in Russia. Although my name was not mentioned in the letter and although I had never had any connection with the activities, which had turned Marchand against his own country, the Bolshevik Press seized on this opportunity to rake up all the mud they could against me. Once again I was denounced as the instigator of everything true or untrue and as the arch-criminal of diplomacy. I suppose I should have felt flattered. I was by far the youngest of the Allied representatives. Yet I had been singled out for solitary confinement in the Kremlin, and my name had figured in every newspaper as the ringleader of the Allied representatives. Doubtless, the Bolshevik attitude, so different in public and in private towards myself, was determined solely by reasons of policy. I had known them more intimately than any other Allied representative. I had opposed intervention almost to the end. It was necessary that they should do their best to discredit in advance any evidence I might bring against them. The American officials, who were far more deeply implicated in Marchand’s disclosures than I was, escaped not only arrest but all abuse. The Bolsheviks knew that President Wilson, who was a historian and who, therefore, remembered Napoleon, was very lukewarm in his attitude towards the Russian policy of the Allies. They were determined to do nothing to prejudice that attitude.
The weather at this period was very trying. There were days when the sun shone and when the temperature was as high as in July. These were days of hope. There were other days when the wind blew and the rain beat down mercilessly on the Kremlin walls. Winter was already in the air, and the cold and the damp added to my depression. My diary tells me that my nerves, which hitherto had stood the strain of these strenuous months remarkably well, were beginning to suffer.
On September 26th Karachan came to see me again. He was, as always, courteous and affable. We had a further discussion about the Allied situation in Russia and the possibility of opening up negotiations for peace. He informed me that the question of my trial had now been settled. It was not to take place. He assumed that eventually I should be set free.
When he had gone, I sat down and translated into blank verse the Tell soliloquy from Schiller: “Through this deserted valley must he pass.”
Two days later Peters came in with Moura. It was six o’clock on a Saturday evening. He was dressed in a leather jacket and khaki trousers. An enormous Mauser pistol was strapped to his side. There was a broad grin on his face. He told me that I was to be set free on Tuesday. He would allow me to go home for two days to pack. I thanked him, and then he looked at me rather sheepishly, put his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a packet. “I have a favour to ask of you,” he said. “When you reach London, will you give this letter to my English wife?” At the same time he gave me a signed photograph of himself and showed me some snapshots of his wife. Almost before I could say “of course I will,” he drew back. “No,” he said, “I shan’t trouble you. As soon as you’re out of here you’ll blaspheme and curse me as your worst enemy.” He seemed incapable of crediting any bourgeois with feelings of humanity towards the proletariat.
I told him not to be a fool and to give me the letter. Politics apart, I bore him no grudge. I would remember his kindness to Moura all my life. I took the letter. Later, of course, I delivered it. Then he began to talk, first, about politics and the plot. He admitted openly in front of Moura that the Americans were as greatly compromised in this business as anyone else. (Since my arrest an American agent had been detected with plans, concealed in a hollow walking-stick, of the disposition of the Red Army.) He confessed that the evidence he had been able to collect against me was not very damaging. I was either a fool or very clever. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “Why are you going back to England? You have placed yourself in a false position. Your career is finished. Your Government will never forgive you. Why don’t you stay here? You can be happy and make your own life. We can give you work to do. Capitalism is doomed any way.”
I shook my head, and he went away, wondering. He could not understand how I could leave Moura. He left her alone with me.
The reaction was wonderful. Although, except during the first few days before it was clear that Lenin was going to recover, I was not really afraid that I should be shot, the strain had been severe, and I had never been sure that some little straw would not change everything against me. We laughed and cried alternately. Then we settled down to talk. There was so much to tell—a whole month’s gap during which I had heard nothing of the outside world, of my colleagues, of Moura herself.
It was an incoherent, disjointed conversation, interrupted by numerous digressions, but little by little I pieced together the whole story. Moura had been in the women’s prison. My colleagues and a goodly number of the French had been incarcerated in the “Butirky.” Wardwell, the American, had been heroic. He had wrung concessions from the Bolsheviks. Daily he had fed all the Allied prisoners and Moura as well with his own provisions. He had not lessened her alarm by telling her that I was to be shot. For ten days there had been great anxiety about my fate. My solitary confinemen
t had baffled the neutral diplomatists. There had been a terrible scene between the Dutch Minister and Chicherin, during which both men lost their tempers. The Dutch Minister was persuaded that I was going to be shot and had telegraphed his conviction to London. The British Government had replied with a menacing note to the Bolsheviks. The whole situation seemed hopeless until Lenin was able to take a hand in affairs. After he recovered consciousness, his first remark, it was said, was: “Stop the Terror.” Gradually the hot-heads on both sides cooled down, and out of chaos a scheme had been evolved whereby we were to be exchanged for Litvinoff and other Bolsheviks in England. There had been a long hitch before an agreement could be reached. The British Government, who had arrested Litvinoff, were not prepared to trust the Bolsheviks. They would not allow Litvinoff to leave English soil until I had crossed the Russian frontier. For days the negotiations were side-tracked in this cul-de-sac. I had foreseen this difficulty when I had first read of the proposal in the Izvestia. I knew that the Bolsheviks cared little about Litvinoff, but much about their own prestige. The only way to deal with them successfully in a matter like this was to take them at their word. They would act up to it. Treated like bandits, they would behave as bandits. I realised that the British Government would prefer the bandit treatment. This was precisely what had happened. Fortunately, Rex Leeper, who advised Mr. Balfour during the negotiations, understood Bolshevik psychology. He persuaded Mr. Balfour to agree to let Litvinoff leave London at the same time as I left Moscow, and Mr. Balfour, in face of the opposition of the majority of the Cabinet, took his advice. The Swedes and Norwegians had now taken charge of the negotiations. We were to be allowed to cross the Russian frontier as soon as Litvinoff and his party reached Bergen.
Memoirs of a British Agent Page 36