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By Root 2576 0

had been laid up with a severe cold and was too ill to attend the conference of the anarchist group. But I had kept him informed, and now I burst into his room in great mental turmoil to tell him of this last dreadful day. He dismissed the charges as the irresponsible prattle of ineffective and disgruntled men. The Petrograd anarchists were like so many in our ranks in America who used to do least and criticize most, he said. Perhaps they had been naive enough to expect anarchism to emerge overnight from the ruins of autocracy, from the war and blunders of the Provisional Government. It was absurd to denounce the Bolsheviki for the drastic measures they were using, Sasha urged. How else were they to free Russia from the strangle-hold of counter-revolution and sabotage? [ ... ]

Sasha’s illness had driven back the phantoms of my sleepless nights. Physicians were few, medicine scarce, and disease rampant in Petrograd. Zorin had immediately sent out for a doctor, but the patient’s fever was too alarming for a long wait. My old professional experience never served a better purpose. With the help of my small, well-equipped medicine chest which the kindly doctor of the Buford had given me, I succeeded in breaking Sasha’s fever. Two weeks of careful nursing brought him out of bed, looking thin and pale, but on the road to complete recovery. About this time two men were sent up to see us: George Lansbury,8 editor of the London Daily Herald, and Mr. Barry, an American correspondent. They had not been expected and no provision had been made for an English-speaking person to meet them. They did not understand a word of Russian and they wanted to get to Moscow. We communicated their plight to Mme Ravich, head of the Interior Department and chief of the Foreign Office in Petrograd. She requested Sasha to accompany the English visitors to Moscow, and he consented.

His departure left me free to go about again. The Zorins were always willing to take me to places of interest, but I was beginning to pick up my Russian and I preferred to go alone. The anarchist conference having been held under cover, I had not been in a position to talk to the Zorins about it, much less tell them what I had heard. It made me feel somewhat guilty in their presence. Added to it was my impression that Zorin was purposely keeping me away from certain things. I had asked him whether I could visit some factories. He had promised to secure a propusk for me, but he had failed to do so. He had also shown impatience with Liza [Zorin] when she had asked me to address the girls of a shop-collective. Not that I had consented; my Russian was still too halting. Moreover, I had come to Russia to learn and not to teach. Zorin seemed greatly relieved at my refusal. I had paid no attention to his peculiar attitude at the time, but when he also broke his promise to take me to the mills, I began to wonder whether there was not something wrong there. I did not believe that conditions were as bad as described at the conference; why, then, should Zorin refuse to let me see them? However, my relations with the Zorins continued very friendly. [ ... ]

One thing Bill Shatoff had told us about was certainly not overdrawn: the matter of propusks. They played a greater role in Soviet Russia than passports had under the tsars. One could not even get in or out of our hotel without a permit, not to speak of visiting any Soviet institution or important official. Almost everyone carried portfolios stocked with propusks and oodostoverenyas (identification papers). Zorin had told me that they constituted a necessary precaution against counter-revolutionary plotters, but the longer I stayed in Russia, the less I saw their value. Paper was at a high premium, yet reams upon reams of it were used for “permits,” and much time was wasted in securing them. On the other hand, the very quantity of them defeated any real control. What sane counter-revolutionist, I argued, would expose himself to discovery by standing for hours in line waiting for a propusk? He could more easily secure it in other