The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Part 31

The "H" Company boys could tell you stories of the Chinese outfit of S.

B. A. L. under the British officer, the likable Capt. Card, who later lost his life in the forlorn hope drive on Karpogora in March. One day he was approached by a Chinese soldier who begged the loan of a machine gun for a little while. It seems that the Chinese had gotten into argument with a company of Russian S. B. A. L. men as to the relative staying qualities of Russians and Chinese under fire. And they had agreed upon a machine gun duel as a fair test. The writer one night at four in the morning woke when his Russian sleigh stopped in a village and rubbed his sleepy eyes open to find himself looking up into the questioning face of a burly sentry of the Chinese race. And he obeyed the sentry's directions with alacrity. He was not taking any chances on a misunderstanding that might arise out of an attempted explanation in a three-cornered Russo-Chino-English conversation.

Captain Odjard's men might tell stories about the redoubtable Russian Colonel Deliktorsky, who was in the push up the rivers in September.

Impetuous to a fault he flung himself and his men into the offensive movement. "In twelve minutes we take Toulgas," was his simple battle order to the Americans. No matter to him that ammunition reserves were not ordered up. Sufficient to him that he showed his men the place to be battled for. And he was a favorite.

On the railroad in the fall a young Bolshevik officer surrendered his men to the French. Next time the American officer saw him he was reporting in American headquarters at Pinega that he had conducted his men to safety and dug in. Afterwards Bolshevik a.s.sa.s.sins or spies shot him in ambush and succeeded only in angering him and he went into battle two days later with a bandage covering three wounds in his neck and scalp. "G" and "M" Company men will remember this fiery Mozalevski.

Then there was the studious Capt. Akutin, a three-year veteran of a Russian machine gun battalion, a graduate student of science in a Russian university, a man of new army and political ideals in keeping with the principles of the Russian Revolution. His great success with the Pinega Valley volunteers and drafted men was due quite largely to his strength of character, his adherence to his principles. The people did not fear the restoration of the old monarchist regime even though he was an officer of the Czar's old army. American soldiers in Pinega gained a genuine respect and admiration for this Russian officer, Capt.

Akutin, and he once expressed great pleasure in the fact that they exchanged salutes with him cordially.

x.x.xII

FELCHERS, PRIESTS AND ICONS

Felcher Is Student Of Medicine--Or Pill Pa.s.ser Of Army Experience --Sanitation And Ventilation--Priests Strange Looking To Soldiers --Duties And Responsibilities--Effect Of Bolshevism On Peasant's Religious Devotions--The Icons--Interesting Stories--Doughboys Buried By Russian Priests--Respect For Russian Religion.

During the fall of 1918 when the influenza epidemic was wreaking such great havoc among the soldiers and natives in the Archangel Province, our medical corps as heretofore explained were put to almost superhuman efforts in combating the spread of this terrible disease. There were very few native doctors in the region, and it was, therefore, well nigh impossible to enlist outside aid. In some of the villages we received word that there were men called felchers who could possibly be of some a.s.sistance. We were at once curious to ascertain just what kind of persons these individuals were and upon investigation found that the Russian Company located in our sector had a young officer who was also a felcher and who was giving certain medical attention to his troops. We immediately sent for him and in answer to our inquiries he explained as nearly as possible just what a felcher was.

It seems that in Russia, outside the large cities and communities, there is a great scarcity of regularly licensed medical pract.i.tioners, many of these latter upon graduation enter the army where the pay is fairly good and the work comparatively easy, the rest of them enter the cities where, of course, practice is larger and the remuneration much better than would be possible in a small community. These facts developed in the smaller communities the use of certain second-rate students of medicine or anyone having a smattering of medical knowledge, called felchers.

In many cases the felcher is an old soldier who has traveled around the world a bit; and from his a.s.sociation in the army hospitals with doctors and students has picked up the technique of dressing wounds, setting broken bones and administering physic. Very often they are, of course, unable to properly diagnose the ailments or conditions of their patients. They, however, are shrewd enough to follow out the customary army method of treating patients and regardless of the disease promptly administer vile doses of medicine, usually a physic, knowing full well that to the average patient, the stronger the medicine and the more of it he gets, the better the treatment is, and a large percentage of the recoveries effected by these felchers is more or less a matter of faith rather than physic or medicine.

The regularly licensed pract.i.tioners as a rule have great contempt for these felchers, but the fact remains that in the small communities where they practice the felcher accomplishes a great amount of good, for having traveled considerably and devoted some time to the study of medicine he is at least superior in intelligence to the average peasant, and, therefore, better qualified to meet such emergencies as may arise.

This lack of medical pract.i.tioners, coupled with the apathy of the peasants regarding sanitary precautions and their unsanitary methods of living accounts to some extent for the violence and spread of plagues, so common throughout Russia.

Regarding the spread of disease and plagues through Russia caused as above stated by lack of sanitary conditions, a word or two further would not be amiss. In the province of Archangel, for example, a great majority of houses are entirely of log construction, built and modelled throughout by the owner, and perhaps some of his good neighbors. They are really a remarkable example of what may be done in the way of construction without the use of nails and of the modern improved methods of house construction. It is an actual fact that these simple peasants, equipped only with their short hand axes, with the use of which they are adepts, can cut down trees, hew the logs and build their homes practically without the use of any nails whatever. The logs, of course, are first well seasoned before they are put into the house itself and when they are joined together they are practically air tight, but to make sure of this fact the cracks are sealed tight with moss hammered into the c.h.i.n.ks. Next the windows of these houses are always double, that is, there is one window on the outside of the frame and another window on the inside. Needless to say, during the winter these windows are practically never opened.

During the winter months the entire family--and families in this country are always large--eat, sleep, and live in one room of the house in which the huge brick home-made stove is located. In addition to the human beings living in the room there are often a half dozen or more chickens concealed beneath the stove, sometimes several sheep, and outside the door may be located the stable for the cattle. Nevertheless, the peasants are remarkably healthy, and in this region of the world epidemics are rather uncommon which may perhaps be explained by the fact that the peasants are out of doors a large part of the time and in addition thereto the air is very pure and healthful. Sewerage systems and such means of drainage are entirely unknown, even in the city of Archangel, which at the time we were there, contained some hundred thousand inhabitants. The only sewerage there was an open sewer that ran through the streets of the city. Small wonder it is under such conditions that when an epidemic does break out that it spreads so far and so rapidly.

One of the most familiar characters seen in every town, large or small, was the Batushka. This character is usually attired in a long, black or gray smock and his hair reaches in long curls to his shoulders. At first sight to the Yankee soldiers he resembled very much the members of the House of David or so-called "Holy Roller" sect in this country. This mysterious individual, commonly called Batushka, as we later discovered, was the village priest. The priest of course belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church and whose head in the old days was the Czar. The priests differ very greatly from the ministers of the gospel and priests in the English-speaking world. They have certain religious functions to perform in certain set ways, outside of which they never venture to stray. The Russian priest is merely expected to conform to certain observances and to perform the rites and ceremonies prescribed by the Church. He rarely preaches or exhorts, and neither has nor seeks to have a moral control over his flock. Marriage among the priests is not prohibited but is limited, that is to say, the priest is allowed to marry but once, and consequently, in choosing the wife he usually picks one of the strongest and healthiest women in the community. This selection is in all seriousness an important matter in the priest's life because he draws practically no salary from his position and must own a share of the community land, till and cultivate the same in exactly the same manner as the rest of the community, consequently his wife must be strong and healthy in order to a.s.sist him in the many details of managing his small holdings. In case she were such a strong and healthy person, the loss of the wife would be a calamity in more ways than one to the priest as is apparent by the above statements.

While the religious beliefs and doctrines of the average peasant is only used by him as a practical means toward an end, yet it must be admitted that the Russian people are in a certain sense religious. They regularly go to church on Sundays and Holy Days, of which there are countless numbers, cross themselves repeatedly when they pa.s.s a church or Icon, take the holy communion at stated seasons, rigorously abstain from animal food, not only on Wednesdays and Fridays but also during Lent and the other long fasts, make occasional pilgrimages to the holy shrines and in a word fulfill carefully the ceremonial observance which they suppose necessary for their salvation.

Of theology in its deeper sense the peasant has no intelligent comprehension. For him the ceremonial part of religion suffices and he has the most unbounded childlike confidence in the saving efficacy of the rites which he practices.

Men of education and of great influence among the people were these sad-faced priests, until the Bolsheviks came to undermine their power; for the Bolsheviks have spared not the old Imperial government. The church had been a potent organization for the Czar to strengthen his sway throughout his far-reaching dominions and every priest was an enlisted crusader of the Little Father. So the Bolsheviki, sweeping over the country, have seized, first of all, upon these priests of Romanoff, torturing them to death with hideous cruelty, if there be any truth in stories, and finding vindictive delight in deriding sacred things and violating holy places.

The moujik, ever susceptible to influence, has been quick to become infected with this bacillus of agnosticism, and while he still professes the faith and observes many of the forms as by habit, his fervor is cooling and already is grown luke-warm. Now on Sundays, despite all of the execrations of the priest, and the terrible threats of eternal d.a.m.nation, he often dozes the Sabbath away unperturbed on the stove; and lets the women attend to the church going. Under Bolshevik rule Holy Russia will be Agnostic Russia; and it is a pity, for religious teaching was the guiding star of these poor people, and religious precepts, hard, gloomy and dismal though they were, the foundation of the best in their character.

Icons are pictorial, usually half length representations of the Saviour or the Madonna or some patron saint, finished in a very archaic Byzantine style on a yellow or gold background, and vary in size from a square inch to several square feet. Very often the whole picture is covered with various ornaments, ofttimes with precious stones. In respect to their religious significance icons are of two cla.s.ses, simple or miracle-working. The former are manufactured in enormous quant.i.ties and are to be found in every Russian house, from the lowest peasant to the highest official. They are generally placed high up in a corner of the living room facing the door, and every good Orthodox peasant on entering the door bows in the direction of the icon and crosses himself repeatedly. Before and after meals the same ceremony is always performed and on holiday or fete days a small taper or candle is kept burning before the icon throughout the day.

An amusing incident is related which took place in the allied hospital in Shenkursk. A young medical officer had just arrived from Archangel and was sitting in the living room or entrance-way of the hospital directly underneath one of these icons. One of the village ladies, having occasion to call at the hospital, entered the front door and as usual stepped toward the center of the room facing the icon, bowed very low and started crossing herself. The young officer who was unacquainted with the Russian custom, believing that she was saluting him, quickly stepped forward and stretched forth his hand to shake hands with her while she was still in the act of crossing herself. Great was his consternation when he was later informed by his interpreter of the significance of this operation.

Doughboys on the Railroad front at Obozerskaya will recall the fact that when the first three Americans killed in action in North Russia were buried, it was impossible to get one of our chaplains from Archangel to come to Obozerskaya to bury them. The American officer in command engaged the local Russian priest to perform the religious service. By some trick of fate it had happened that these first Americans who fell in action were of Slavic blood, so the strange funeral which the doughboys witnessed was not so incongruous after all.

With the long-haired, wonderfully-robed priest came his choir and many villagers, who occupied one side of the square made by the soldiers standing there in the dusk to do last honors to their dead comrades.

With chantings and doleful chorus the choir answered his solemn oratory and devotional intercessions. He swung his sacred censer pot over each body and though we understood no word we knew he was doing reverence to the spirit of sacrifice shown by our fallen comrades. There in the darkness by the edge of the forest, the priest and his ceremony, the firing squad's volley, and the bugler's last call, all united to make that an allied funeral. The American soldier and the priest and his pitiful people had really begun to spin out threads of sympathy which were to be woven later into a fabric of friendliness. The doughboy always respected the honest peasant's religious customs.

x.x.xIII

BOLSHEVISM

Why Chapter Is Written--Venerable Kropotkin's Message Direct From Central Russia--Official Report Of United States Department Of State --Conclusions Of Study Prepared For National Chamber Of Commerce --Authoritative Comment By Men Who Are In Position To Know--A Cartoon And Comment Which Speak For Veterans.

The writers have an idea that the veterans of the North Russian Expedition would like a short, up-to-date chapter on Bolshevism. We used to wonder why it was that John Bolo was so willing to fight us and the White Guards. We would not wish to emphasize the word willing for we remember the fact that many a time when he was beaten back from our defenses we knew by the sound that he was being welcomed back to his camp by machine guns. And the prisoners and wounded whom we captured were not always enthusiastic about the Bolshevism under whose banner they fought. To be fair, however, we must remark that we captured some men and officers who were sure enough believers in their cause.

And the general reader will probably like a chapter presented by men who were over in that civil war-torn north country and who might be expected to gather the very best materials available on the subject of Bolshevism. And what we have gathered we present with not much comment except that we ourselves are trying to keep a tolerant but wary eye upon those who profess to believe in Bolshevism. We say candidly that we think Bolshevism is a failure. But we do not condemn everyone else who differs with us. Let there be fair play and justice to all, freedom of thought and speech, with decent respect for the rights of all.

The first article is adapted from an article in The New York Times of recent date, according to which Margaret Bondfield, a member of the British Labor Delegation which recently visited Russia, went to see Peter Kropotkin, the celebrated Russian economist and anarchist, at his home at Dimitroff, near Moscow. The old man gave her a message to the workers of Great Britain and the western world:

"In the first place, the workers of the civilized world and their friends among other cla.s.ses should persuade their governments to give up completely the policy of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia, whether that intervention is open or disguised, military, or under the form of subventions by different nations.

"Russia is pa.s.sing through a revolution of the same significance and of equal importance that England pa.s.sed through in 1639-1648 and France in 1789-1794. The nations of today should refuse to play the shameful role to which England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia sank during the French Revolution.

"Moreover, it is necessary to consider that the Russian Revolution--which seeks to erect a society in which the full production of the combined efforts of labor, technical skill and scientific knowledge shall go to the community itself--is not a mere accident in the struggle of parties. The revolution has been in preparation for nearly a century by Socialist and Communist propaganda, since the times of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier. And although the attempt to introduce the new society by the dictatorship of a party apparently seems condemned to defeat, it must be admitted that the revolution has already introduced into our life new conceptions of the rights of labor, its true position in society, and the duties of each citizen.

Not only the workers, but all progressive elements in the civilized nations should bring to an end the support so far given to the adversaries of the revolution. This does not mean that there is nothing to oppose in the methods of the Bolshevist government. Far from it! But all armed intervention by a foreign power necessarily results in an increase of the dictatorial tendencies of the rulers and paralyzes the efforts of those Russians who are ready to aid Russia, independent of her government, in the restoration of her life.

"The evils inherent in the party dictatorship have grown because of the war conditions in which this party has maintained itself. The state of war has been the pretext for increasing the dictatorial methods of the party as well as the reason for the tendency to centralize each detail of life in the hands of the government, which has resulted in the cessation of many branches of the nation's usual activities. The natural evils of state Communism have been multiplied tenfold under the pretext that the distress of our existence is due to the intervention of foreigners.

"It is my firm opinion that if the military intervention of the Allies is continued it will certainly develop in Russia a bitter sentiment with respect to the western nations, a sentiment that will be utilized some day in future conflicts. This bitter feeling is already growing.

"So far as our present economic and political situation is concerned, the Russian revolution, being the continuation of the two great revolutions in England and France, undertakes to progress beyond the point where France stopped when she perceived that actual equality consists in economic equality.

"Unfortunately, this attempt has been made in Russia under the strongly centralized dictatorship of a party, the Maximalist Social Democrats.

The Baboeuf conspiracy, extremely centralized and jacobinistic, tried to apply a similar policy. I am compelled frankly to admit that, in my opinion, this attempt to construct a communist republic with a strongly centralized state communism as its base, under the iron law of the dictatorship of a party, is bound to end in a fiasco. We are learning in Russia how communism should not be introduced, even by a people weary of the ancient regime and making no active resistance to the experimental projects of the new rulers.

"The Soviet idea--that is to say, councils of workers and peasants, first developed during the revolutionary uprisings of 1905 and definitely realized during the revolution of February, 1917--the idea of these councils controlling the economic and political life of the country, is a great conception. Especially so because it necessarily implies that the councils should be composed of all those who take a real part in the production of national wealth by their own personal efforts.

"But as long as a country is governed by the dictatorship of a party, the workers' and peasants' councils evidently lose all significance.

They are reduced to the pa.s.sive role formerly performed by the states generals and the parliaments when they were convened by the king and had to combat an all-powerful royal council.

"A labor council ceases to be a free council when there is no liberty of the press in the country, and we have been in this situation for nearly two years--under the pretext that we are in a state of war. But that is not all. The workers' and peasants' councils lose all their significance unless the elections are preceded by a free electoral campaign and when the elections are conducted under the pressure of the dictatorship of a party. Naturally, the stock excuse is that the dictatorship is inevitable as a method to fight the ancient regime. But such a dictatorship evidently becomes a barrier from the moment when the revolution undertakes the construction of a new society on a new economic basis. The dictatorship condemns the new structure to death.

"The methods resorted to in overthrowing governments already tottering are well known to history, ancient and modern. But when it is necessary to create new forms of life--especially new forms of production and exchange--without examples to follow, when everything must be constructed from the ground up, when a government that undertakes to supply even lamp chimneys to every inhabitant demonstrates that it is absolutely unable to perform this function with all its employees, however limitless their number may be, when this condition is reached such a government becomes a nuisance. It develops a bureaucracy so formidable that the French bureaucratic system, which imposes the intervention of 40 functionaries to sell a tree blown across a national road by a storm, becomes a bagatelle in comparison. This is what you, the workers in the occidental countries, should and must avoid by all possible means since you have at heart the success of a social reconstruction. Send your delegates here to see how a social revolution works in actual life.

"The prodigious amount of constructive labor necessary under a social revolution cannot be accomplished by a central government, even though it may be guided by something more substantial than a collection of Socialist and anarchistic manuals. It requires all the brain power available and the voluntary collaboration of specialized and local forces, which alone can attack with success the diversity of the economic problems in their local aspects. To reject this collaboration and to rely on the genius of a party dictatorship is to destroy the independent nucleus, such as the trade unions and the local co-operative societies by changing them into party bureaucratic organs, as is actually the case at present. It is the method not to accomplish the revolution. It is the method to make the realization of the revolution impossible. And this is the reason why I consider it my duty to warn you against adopting such methods.

It must be evident to the reader that Russia is at present being ruled by a system of pyramided majorities, many of which are doubtful popular majorities. In the name of the Red Party Lenin and Trotsky rule. They themselves admit it. The dictatorship of the proletariat, and similar terms are used by them in referring to their highly centralized control.

We Americans are in the habit of overturning state and national administrations when we think one party has ruled long enough. Even a popular war president at the pinnacle of his power found the American people resenting, so it has been positively affirmed, his plea for the return of his party to continued control in 1918. Can we as a self-governing people look with anything but wonder at the occasional American who fails to see that the perpetual rule of one party year after year which we as Americans have always doubted the wisdom of, is the very thing that Lenin and Trotsky have fastened upon Russia. Russia, that wanted to be freed from the Romanoff rule and its bureaucratic system of fraud, waste, and cruelty, today groans under a system of despotism which is just as, if not more, wasteful, fraudulent and cruel.

There are sincere people who might think that because the Bolsheviks have kept themselves in power, that they must be right. We can not agree with the reasoning. Even if we knew nothing about the bayonets and machine guns and firing squads and prisons, we would not agree to the reasoning that the Bolshevik government is right just because it is in power. We prefer the reasoning of the greatest man whom America has produced, Abraham Lincoln, whose words, which we quote, seem to us to exactly fit the present Russian situation:

"A majority held in restraint by const.i.tutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only free sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."--Abraham Lincoln.