Living My Life - Emma Goldman [251]
Sasha and Ethel22 had in the meantime taken charge of the welcome to be given the deportees on the Latvian border. They were awaiting them there, with two trains held in readiness to bring the expected thousand refugees to Petrograd. They spent two weeks in vain waiting, only to find out that another blunder had been added to the chaos and confusion of the Soviet situation. The wireless announcing returning war prisoners had been misread by the Foreign Office to mean American deportees. [... ]
We proposed to use the buildings we had prepared for the benefit of the war prisoners, and Mme Ravich favoured the suggestion. But the men were under the jurisdiction of the War Department, and she felt she must first get permission. Nothing further was heard of the matter. The quarters renovated with so much effort and time were sealed up and three able-bodied militiamen stationed on guard. All our labour was wasted, and Sasha’s plan of organizing the deportees or the war prisoners for useful work was allowed to go by the board.
The same disheartening results met our other attempts to do practical work outside of the State machine. We would not be daunted, however.
The palatial residences of the former rich in the part of Petrograd known as Kammenny Ostrov (Island) were to be turned into rest-homes for toilers. “Marvellous idea, isn’t it?” Zorin remarked to us; “we must complete it within six weeks.” Only American speed and efficiency could accomplish the job on time. Would we help? We took the work in hand and became absorbed in it, until again we struck the impassable wall of Soviet bureaucracy.
From the start we had insisted that at least one warm meal a day should be provided for the workers employed in the preparation of rest-homes for their brothers. I had undertaken to supervise the cooking and the equitable distribution of the rations. For a while all went well; the men were satisfied with the arrangements, and their labours were making unusual progress—unusual for Russians, at any rate. But presently the Bolshevik staffs and their favourites began to increase and the rations of the workers to diminish. The latter were not long in perceiving that they were being robbed of their share for the sake of unnecessary office-holders and hangers-on. Their interest in the work showed signs of waning and presently the effects became apparent. We protested to Zorin against the farce of ill-treating one set of workers to enable another set to enjoy leisure and a rest. Equally we objected to the peremptory eviction from their homes of people whose only offence was a university degree. Old teachers and professors had been occupying some houses on the island ever since October, and no one had troubled them in any way. Now they and their families were to be deprived of home without any possibility of securing another roof over their heads. Zorin had requested Sasha to have the eviction orders carried out. But Sasha emphatically refused to act as the bully of the Communist State.
Zorin felt indignant at our “rank sentimentality.” A man with Berkman’s revolutionary record, he said, should not shrink from any task; it made no difference whether the bourgeois parasites ended in the gutter or threw themselves into the Neva. [ ... ] Before long, however, we found others in our places, persons more pliable in the hands of the political machine. We understood.
The rest-homes were inaugurated with much éclat. To us the rows of rusty iron bedsteads in the vast salons, with their furniture of faded silk and plush, looked tawdry, cold, and uninviting. No worker with any self-respect could feel at ease or enjoy a rest in such surroundings. Many shared our views, and some even felt convinced that none but those within the party or hanging on to its coat-tails would ever see the inside of the Rest Homes for Workers on the Kammenny Ostrov. [... ]
The Sovietsky soup-kitchens were an abomination,