Living My Life - Emma Goldman [241]
The Soukharevka15 made more flagrant the discrimination against smaller places of barter. The little market near the National was being constantly raided. Yet there were but the poorest of the poor desperately trying to keep alive: old women, children in tatters, derelict men, their wares as wretched as themselves. Ill-smelling tsbchi (vegetable soup), frozen potatoes, biscuits black and hard, or a few boxes of matches—they held them out to the passers-by with trembling hands, in trembling voices pleading: “Buy, barinya (lady), buy, for the love of Christ, buy!” In the raids their measly wares would be seized, their soup and kvass poured out on the square, and the unfortunates dragged off to prison as speculators. Those lucky enough to escape the raiders would soon crawl back, gather up the matches and cigarettes strewn about, and begin their wretched trade again.
The Bolsheviki, in common with other social rebels, had always stressed the potency of hunger as the cause of most of the evils in capitalist society. They never grew tired of condemning the system that punished the effects while leaving their sources intact. How could they now pursue the same stupid and incredible course, I wondered. True, the appalling hunger was not of their making. The blockade and the interventionists were chiefly responsible for that. More reason, then, it seemed to me, why the victims should not be hounded and punished. [... ]
The National, almost exclusively occupied by Communists, was manned by a large kitchen force that was wasting time and precious foodstuffs in preparing uneatable meals. Next to it was another kitchen with private servants cooking all day for their masters, prominent Soviet officials. They and their friends were permitted special privileges, often receiving three and even more rations, while the ordinary mortals were wearing out their depleted strength to attain their meagre due.
The housing arrangements disclosed similar favouritism and injustice. Large and well-furnished apartments were easily obtainable for a monetary consideration, but it required weeks of humiliation before petty officials to secure one room in a dismal flat without water, heat, or light. Lucky indeed the person if, after all his exhausting efforts, he did not find someone else occupying the same room. [ ... ]
The hideous sores on revolutionary Russia could not for long be ignored. The facts presented at the gathering of the Moscow anarchists, the analysis of the situation by leading Left Socialist Revolutionists, and my talks with simple people who claimed no political affiliations enabled me to look behind the scenes of the revolutionary drama and to behold the dictatorship without its stage make-up. Its role was somewhat different from the one proclaimed in public. It was forcible tax-collection at the point of guns, with its devastating effect on villages and towns. It was the elimination from responsible positions of everyone who dared think aloud, and the spiritual death of the most militant elements whose intelligence, faith, and courage had really enabled the Bolsheviki to achieve their power. The anarchists and Left Socialist Revolutionists had been used as pawns by Lenin in the October days and were now doomed to extinction