Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

  The British Labour delegation reached Petrograd on 11 May for their six-week trip.8 Off the train stepped Margaret Bondfield, H. Skinner and A. A. Purcell for the TUC; Ben Turner, Mrs Philip Snowden and Robert Williams for the Labour Party; and Clifford Allen and R. C. Wallhead for the Independent Labour Party. Dr Leslie Haden Guest and C. Roden Buxton travelled as secretaries and interpreters.9 Bertrand Russell joined them later after undergoing a special interview by British officials in London and overcoming Litvinov’s initial reluctance to issue him a visa in Stockholm.10 The delegates felt they were breaking through to a different world. As Ethel Snowden put it: ‘We were behind the “iron curtain” at last!’11 It is widely assumed that this phrase was coined by Winston Churchill, in his speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946, as the Cold War started between the USSR and the USA. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels had in fact used it a year earlier as the Red Army swept into Romania.12 But though it was she who had coined it, Mrs Snowden’s meaning was quite different from Churchill’s. She believed that a curtain of ignorance separated the countries of the West from Soviet Russia. She denied that the Russian communists were a threat to Britain’s security — and she opposed any project to renew British armed intervention or giving material assistance to the enemies of Bolshevism.13

  She and her companions were alert to the risk of being treated like a ‘royal family’ and manipulated for Bolshevik purposes.14Chicherin made a prediction at a banquet of welcome: ‘We instructed ourselves whilst the process of creating a new Russia was going on. When you return to England you also will have to learn while building, and then, in the near future, you will be able to greet us as we greet you tonight.’15 Mrs Snowden tartly noted: ‘As propagandists there is surely no race and no class to surpass the Russian Communists.’16 The repeated singing of the Internationale at the banquet got on her nerves.17 She also disliked the pomposity of official gatherings. Propaganda was unconvincing on the lips of ill-fed youngsters and she found it ‘unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the delivery of explosive perorations’.18

  John Clarke, travelling with fellow Scot Willie Gallacher in July 1920 to the Comintern Congress, recorded a conversation on the slow train journey south from Murmansk to Petrograd. It was a time when the Red Army and the Polish Army were fighting for supremacy in Ukraine and Poland:

  Gallacher: ‘Poles, Poles, are they defeated?’

  Red Army soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’ (I don’t understand.)

  Gallacher: ‘Poles — defeated?’

  Soldier: ‘Ne upony mio!’

  Gallacher: ‘Poles — beaten — defeated — beaten?’ (A little fisticuff display.)

  Soldier (stoically): ‘Ne upony mio!’

  Gallacher: ‘Poles beaten! y’ken, beaten — washed oot — up the pole?’

  Soldier (with loud guffaw): ‘Ne upony mio!’

  And so on, ad infinitum.19

  Clarke was known for his humour, but he could see that his efforts were lost on an audience of four hundred peasants near Kandalaksha. His political minder had to interpret for them. Although Clarke spoke hardly any Russian, he astutely noticed that the Kandalaksha peasants spoke a dialect so distant from standard Russian that they probably could not understand even the minder.20 Gallacher and Clarke took over for themselves and simply used ‘prehistoric gesture-language’.21

  Generally the Soviet leadership was keen to keep visiting foreigners away from any Western resident who might puncture their warm illusions about Soviet Russia. Associated Press correspondent Marguerite Harrison, for example, was told to stay away from H. G. Wells.22 But Bolshevik connivances were erratic, and Harrison was allowed to consort with Bertrand Russell.23 She tagged along on the Labour delegation’s trip to the Volga region:

  Our tour was a most luxurious one throughout, giving no idea of the ordinary hardships of travel in Russia at the present time. We had a special sleeper, with all the former comforts including spotless linen, and electric lights, a dining car where we had three good meals a day, service and appointments being very nearly up to peace time standards.24

  The cosseting of body and mind worked with Robert Williams, who declared that the experiences of the delegates would encourage them to argue for the removal of the economic blockade of Russia.25 In Samara, he stated that the British working class was pleased by every Red military triumph.26 The delegation’s interim report claimed that the ills of Soviet Russia — malnutrition and disease — were all the product of external factors. Policies of blockade or intervention should be put aside and official recognition granted.

  Most of the other Britons resisted the blandishments and manipulation. Tom Shaw MP and Ben Turner bridled at the suggestion that the government of the United Kingdom was actively supporting the Polish invasion;27 and when Mrs Snowden disparaged the Soviet order, the Russian hosts downgraded her from ‘Comrade’ to ‘Madame’.28 The disappointment of the British delegation was summed up by one of its members who composed an irreverent new stanza for ‘The Red Flag’ as an antidote to Soviet boastfulness:

  The people’s flag is palest pink,

  It’s not so red as you may think;

  We’ve been to see, and now we know

  They been and changed its colour so.29

  Lenin gave up an hour and a half of his time to some of the visitors despite his long-felt contempt for the leaders of British labour. While living in London, he said that George Bernard Shaw was ‘a good man fallen among Fabians’.30 About Sidney Webb he offered the opinion that he had ‘more industry than brains’.31 Lenin predicted that when British workers set up soviets, Ramsay MacDonald would do his utmost to halt the revolution in its tracks.32 His attitude to Bertrand Russell is unlikely to have been any different. For his part Russell was repelled by Lenin’s passion for violence while Ethel Snowden was shocked by his ignorance about Britain; she explained to him that communism in England was constituted by ‘only a handful of extremists’ who had abandoned the older socialist organizations.33 Trotsky was too busy with his military duties for the delegates to be granted an interview with him, but he was present when the delegates were treated to a performance of an opera by Borodin. Russell managed a brief chat with him in the interval and formed a poor impression. He never explained the reason for this. But Mrs Snowden revealed that one of the delegates was introduced to Trotsky as a conscientious objector who had spent the Great War in prison. Trotsky commented: ‘We can have nobody here who preaches peace and wants to stop the war.’34 He can only have been talking about Russell. Until that moment Mrs Snowden had envisaged Trotsky as ‘the greatest of pacifists’ in the Great War. She now knew better.35

  Yet she, too, stood up and applauded when he resumed his seat in the old Imperial box for the next act of the opera. Conquering her distaste for the Internationale, she sang along with everyone else.36 But the mood passed, and she was glad to leave Russia with the rest of the delegation at the end of their lengthy trip. Their departure was not uniformly easy. According to H. V. Keeling, some of them were compelled to sign a form promising not to attack the Soviet communists or else they would not be allowed to leave the country.37 Clifford Allen’s case was still more serious since he had fallen ill with pneumonia, exacerbated by the fact that he already suffered from TB, but his exit visa request was refused. Russell and Haden Guest pleaded with Chicherin. There was then a furious row because Chicherin insisted on Allen being examined by two Soviet doctors who would not be available for a couple more days. Russell recalled: ‘At the height of the quarrel, on a staircase, I indulged in a shouting match because Chicherin had been a friend of my Uncle Rollo and I had hopes of him. I shouted that I should denounce him as a murderer.’ Russell fancifully suspected that the Soviet authorities believed that the anti-Bolsheviks among the delegates wanted Allen to die en route to Britain so that he could not deliver a favourable report on Bolshevik rule.

  The dispute resolved, the entire delegation made its way b
ack to Britain where a meeting of welcome was held at the Albert Hall in London and Margaret Bondfield spoke of being impressed by ‘the stupendous nature of the drama’ of the communist revolution.38A brisk discussion ensued over the next few weeks. The Social-Democratic Federation announced disapproval of Soviet tyranny: ‘[The] realization of Socialism is only possible on the basis of democracy. Every other path leads to ruin.’ Mrs Snowden added: ‘When you get down to the bottom the dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of about six men aided by an extraordinary commission.’39 She rushed a booklet into print:

  Do not, gentle visitor, when you meet the great man, fall victim to this twinkling eye and make the mistake of thinking it betokens a tender spirit. I am sure Lenin is the kindest and gentlest of men in private relationships; but when he mentioned his solution of the peasant problem the merry twinkle had a cruel glint which horrified.40

  On the other side stood Messrs Purcell, Skinner, Turner, Wallhead and Williams, who appealed to trade unionists to refuse to produce anything for use against Soviet Russia.41 Purcell called on skilled workers to volunteer for work there.42 John Clarke declared that Mrs Snowden was too middle class to understand the October Revolution and its greatness; he likened her to an ‘abandoned strumpet, harlot, and prostitute of the streets [who] sells her voluptuous merchandise to the very beings who disease her’.43

  The dispute intrigued H. G. Wells, who made his own journey of exploration in September 1920. As a friend of Maxim Gorki he could count on a warm reception and Gorki lent him his assistant Moura Benckendorff — Lockhart’s lover in 1918 — as an interpreter. He was fed and watered to his satisfaction;44 and his speech to the Petrograd Soviet was reported in Pravda, presumably because he called for Russia to be left without foreign interference.45 When Wells interviewed Lenin, they talked about the future of Russian towns, Russian electricity and a little about Russian peasants.46 Such topics did not unduly threaten the intellectual defences of the ‘dreamer in the Kremlin’. Whereas Wells would snipe at Russell for over-dramatizing his account, he himself missed a chance to put Lenin under serious scrutiny.

  Another Briton, the sculptor Clare Sheridan, was more perceptive when meeting Soviet leaders. She had long felt a penchant for Russia: ‘I was insatiably interested, I loved Slavs, Slav music, Slav literature, Slav art and decoration, and had always, since childhood, been drawn to Russia.’ She regarded Russians as ‘the most mystic, the most barbarous and the most romantic’ people in the entire universe. In August 1920, she made the acquaintance of Lev Kamenev in London. Unencumbered by his wife’s company on his British trip and amiably fluent in French, he offered to sit for her and they hit it off splendidly.47 An adventurous widow, she showed him the sights of the capital, taking him to the Tate Gallery and Hampstead Heath. With plenty of free time, Sheridan also escorted him to Hampton Court where they spent the evening on the river. Kamenev invited her to the Café Royal and to the Ritz before suggesting:

  ‘Why don’t you come to Russia?’

  ‘How can I?’ I asked. And he made the wondrous reply:

  ‘I will take you with me when I go, and I will get Lenin and Trotzki [sic] to sit to you.’48

  The fact that it would be a paid assignment was an additional attraction for Sheridan, who had debts at the time. She readily agreed, needing only to work out where to deposit her children before departure.49

  The one person she had to keep this secret from was her cousin Winston Churchill. At a recent lunch with her, he had exclaimed that Bolshevism was a crocodile and that ‘either you must shoot it, or else make a detour round it so as not to rouse it’.50 Sheridan quietly used her personal contacts in the Foreign Office to get visas for Norway and Sweden. Kamenev and the Soviet group — accompanied by Sheridan — made their way by train to the Newcastle ferry.51 In Norway, Maxim Litvinov held things up, suspecting that she was a spy.52 Not only was she a close relative of the West’s great Red-baiter but she also had no record of involvement in radical politics. But Kamenev would not be put off and when Ivy Litvinov made friends with her and chatted about common friends, Maxim relented.53

  In Moscow, Sheridan was given rooms in the sumptuous mansion built by the Kharitonenko family on Sophia Embankment on the opposite side of the River Moskva from the Kremlin.54 (It became the British Embassy in 1931.) It had been sequestrated by the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, and among the other foreigners staying there at the time were H. G. Wells, Washington B. Vanderlip and Theodore Rothstein.55 Sheridan finished several fine busts — those of Lenin, Zinoviev and Dzerzhinski were outstanding; but it was Trotsky who most appealed to her. She was not the first British woman to succumb to his charisma; even Ethel Snowden had been won over: ‘Physically he was a remarkably fine-looking man; a Jew, dark and keen, with penetrating eyes, and a quiet manner suggestive of enormous reserves of strength. He was in an officer’s uniform which fitted him extremely well.’56 At first, though, Trotsky was standoffish toward Sheridan until Litvinov secured his co-operation.57 Sheridan had got accustomed to things being cancelled or delayed in Moscow and was consequently surprised when Trotsky’s official car arrived to pick her up at the appointed time. She later heard an apocryphal story that Trotsky had shot an unpunctual chauffeur with his own revolver. She was delayed by a punctilious sentry at the entrance to the building, which made her late through no fault of her own. This did not save her from being rebuked, albeit not executed, by the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs.

  He soon became charm incarnate and obviously liked being sculpted. The fact that the artist was a glamorous, uninhibited woman was a further stimulus:

  He looked up suddenly and stared back, a steady unabashed stare. After a few seconds I said I hoped he did not mind. His galanterie was almost French!

  ‘I do not mind. I have my revanche in looking at you et c’est moi qui gagne!’

  He then pointed out that he was quite asymmetrical, and snapped his teeth to show that his underjaw was crooked. He had a cleft in his chin, nose and brow, as if his face had been moulded and the two halves had not been accurately joined. Full face he was Mephisto, his eyebrows slanted upwards, and the lower part of his face tapered into a pointed and defiant beard. His eyes were much talked of; they had a curious way of lighting up and flashing like an electric spark; he was alert, active, observant, moqueur, with a magnetism to which he must have owed his unique position.58

  And so it went on. ‘ “Vous me caressez avec des instruments d’acier!” he said as I measured him with the callipers.’59 At the start of the next sitting, on a cold evening, he ‘kissed my frozen hands and placed two chairs for me by the fire, one for me and one for my feet’.60 When she asked him to loosen his collar, he ‘unbuttoned his tunic and the shirt underneath, and laid bare his neck and chest.’61

  Despite rarely offering a smile, he flirted with her more and more: ‘Even when your teeth are clenched and you are fighting with your work, vous êtes encore femme.’62 She replied: ‘I had expected you to be most unamiable, and I am surprised to find you otherwise. I wonder how I will describe you to people in England who think you are a monster.’ He said: ‘Tell them… tell them that “lorsque Trotzki embrasse, il ne mord pas!” ’ But he added: ‘Much as I like you and admire you as a woman, I assure you that if I knew you were an enemy, or a danger to our revolutionary cause, I would not hesitate to shoot you down with my own hand.’ Sheridan ‘found this vaunted ruthlessness most attractive’.63 When she showed him pictures of her work, he expressed admiration for her bust of Asquith: ‘You have given me an idea — if Asquith comes back into office soon (there is a rumour that he might bring in a coalition with labour and recognise Russia) I will hold you as a hostage until England makes peace with us.’ Sheridan responded that her cousin Winston was more likely to form any new government; she also told him: ‘But if you said you would shoot me, Winston would only say “shoot”… Winston is the only man in England who is made of the stuff that the Bolsheviks are made of. He
has fight, force, and fanaticism.’64

  Clare Sheridan attracted a lot of attention on her return to Britain, when she published the first of several memoirs of her time in Russia, and during her subsequent book tour of the USA; but she was not taken very seriously, except by the Hands Off Russia people.65 This was partly her own fault; she had always claimed to be apolitical. But what did irk her was the icy attitude of Cousin Winston, who refused to speak to her. She called him heartless and disloyal, saying that she had been on the same kind of adventure he would have once undertaken. Churchill assured her of his friendship but still reproved her for her dalliance with ‘these fiends in human form’.66 This was conciliatory enough for her to ask him to put in a good word for her to become the UK ambassador to Moscow — she reminded him that he had once said he would vote for her if ever she stood for parliament.67 Nothing, of course, came of this overture.

  Whereas Sheridan’s gushing recollections had little impact, the report of the Labour delegation received attentive scrutiny in both Britain and America. But being the product of collective authorship, it was somewhat insipid; and being focused on economic and social policies, it touched on communist politics only indirectly:

  Whether, under such conditions, Russia could be governed in a different way — whether, in particular, the ordinary processes of democracy could be expected to work — is a question on which we do not feel ourselves competent to pronounce. All we know is that no practical alternative, except a virtual return to autocracy, has been suggested to us; that a ‘strong’ Government is the only type of Government which Russia has yet known; that the opponents of the Soviet Government when they were in power in 1917, exercised repression against the Communists.68