Living My Life - Emma Goldman [257]
The mission at last arrived, most of its members of the usual Anglo-Saxon better-than-thou attitude. They were against intervention, of course, and they boasted of having repudiated the attacks on Soviet Russia, but as to revolution or communism, no, thank you, none of that for them. Their reception was calculated to speak to the larger audience of the British labouring masses and to the workers of the entire world. No effort was to be spared to make the occasion propagandistically effective. The grand military display on the square of the Uritsky Palace was but the initial part of the program. Other functions were to prove even more persuasive. The dinners at the Narishkin Palace, its tables laden with the best starving Russia could command, the personally conducted tours through the model schools, selected factories, and rest-homes, theatrical performances, ballets, concerts, and opera, with the members of the mission in the former Tsar’s loge, composed some of the festivities. British reserve could not resist such hospitality. Most members of the mission fell for the show and became the more pliable the longer they stayed.
Some of them exerted their best logic to persuade me that the dictatorship and the Cheka were inevitable in a country as backward as Russia, with her people for centuries used to despotic rule. [... ]
I walked away to the rear of the box to watch the rest of the ballet undisturbed by British complacent superiority. Presently the door opened and a man in military uniform entered. When the lights went on again, I recognized him as Leon Trotsky. What a change in his appearance and bearing within three years! He was no longer the pale, lean, and narrow-chested exile I had seen in New York in the spring of 1917. The man in the box seemed to have grown in breadth and height, though he showed no superfluous flesh. His pale face was bronze now, his reddish hair and beard considerably streaked with grey. He had tasted power and he looked conscious of his authority. He carried himself with proud mien, and there was disdain in his eyes, even contempt, as he glanced at the British guests. He spoke to no one and soon left. He did not recognize me, nor did I make myself known to him. The gulf between our worlds had widened too far to be reached across.
There were certain members of the British Mission, however, not entirely inclined to look in open-mouthed wonder at the things about them, with their mental eyes shut. These were not of the labouring element. One of them was Mr. Bertrand RusSell. 25 Very politely but decisively he had from the very first refused to be officially chaperoned. He preferred to go about himself. He also showed no elation over the honour of being quartered in a palace and fed on special morsels. Suspicious person, that Russell, the Bolsheviki whispered. But then, what can you expect of a bourgeois? [ ... ]
Sasha had in the meantime succeeded in securing a car for the Museum Expedition. It was an old dilapidated Pullman containing six compartments, but soon he had it cleaned up, painted, and disinfected for our use. Having proved so successful where others had failed, the museum appointed Sasha general manager of the expedition. Shakol was nominated secretary, while I was entrusted with three jobs, besides the work of collecting historical material, in which we all shared. I was chosen treasurer, housekeeper, and cook. A Russian couple on our staff were supposed to be experts on revolutionary documents. The sixth in our group was a young Jewish Communist, whose special work was to visit local party institutions. As the only Communist in our circle he felt at first quite lost, being among three anarchists and two non-partisans.
Our car needed mattresses, blankets, dishes, and similar utensils, for which I received