Living My Life - Emma Goldman [255]
On this occasion a wink from Zinoviev and Mme Ravich had immediate effect upon Bakayev.23 He also lived at the Astoria and he phoned me to call on him. He would release the arrested anarchist girls, he informed me, provided we were willing to vouch for it that that would stop their “bandit activities.” [ ... ] I assured the Cheka chief that it would be grist to the American prison mills to learn that the jails in Soviet Russia were no better than those in the States. This seemed to reach Bakayev in the right spot. He would give the girls another chance, he declared, for, after all, they were proletarians even if they had not yet realized that they must not injure their own class by criticizing the dictatorship. He would also see what improvement the jails required, though conditions had been greatly exaggerated.
Getting people out of jail had been among our various activities in America. But we had never dreamed that we should find the same necessity in revolutionary Russia. [ ... ]
My long-awaited opportunity to visit factories and possibly to talk to the workers at the bench came when Mme Ravich requested me to act as guide to a certain American journalist who had suddenly appeared in Retrograde.24 [... ]
The function of an official cicerone was not exactly to my liking. But I did not care to refuse Ravich who had always been responsive to my intercession for unfortunates. Moreover, I felt that the Russian situation was too great and vital and that I had not yet grasped it fully, though I had reached a definite decision not to work within Bolshevik political confines. Most important to me was it not to be quoted by any American paper against Soviet Russia, not while the latter was still forced to fight for life itself on so many fronts. I was therefore in the predicament of not wanting Clayton to secure information by my aid and I did not cherish the prospect of having to tell him deliberate lies. I reasoned that Mme Ravich knew what she was about when she had given Clayton permission to visit factories. They were probably not so bad as had been reported to me. Or she may have thought that with me as guide things would be made to appear less harsh. Fortunately Sasha was accompanying us. That would give one of us a chance to lag behind and talk to the workers while the other would interpret to Clayton the official version of conditions.
The Putilov works proved to be in a forlorn state, most of the machines deserted, others out of repair, the place filthy and neglected. While Sasha was explaining to Clayton what the superintendent of the shop was relating, I lingered behind. I found the men very unwilling to talk until I mentioned that I was a tovarishtch from America and not a Bolshevik. That made a big difference. They could tell me a great deal, they said, but even the walls had ears. Not a day passed but what some of their fellows failed to return to work. Sick? No, but they had protested a little too loud. I urged that, as the authorities had informed me, the workers in the Putilovsky, being engaged in one of the vital industries, received considerably better rations than other toilers—two pounds of bread a day and special shares of other products. The men stared at me in amazement. I might try their bread, one of them suggested, holding out a black chunk to me. “Bite hard,” he said ironically. I tried, but knowing I could ill afford a dentist’s bill, I had to return the leathery piece, much to the amusement of the group clustered about me. I suggested that the