Living My Life - Emma Goldman [293]
Two other Americans came to see us, Agnes Smedley and her Hindu friend Chato.44 I had heard a good deal about Agnes in the States in connexion with her Hindu activities, but I had never met her personally. She was a striking girl, an earnest and true rebel, who seemed to have no other interest in life except the cause of the oppressed people in India. Chato was intellectual and witty, but he impressed me as a somewhat crafty individual. He called himself an anarchist, though it was evident that it was Hindu nationalism to which he had devoted himself entirely. [...]
The other delegates kept aloof from us, including my erstwhile devoted Ella Reeves Bloor. Bill Haywood also did not return. They had all been warded off by their “interpreters.” [...] The Latin delegates had also been given a gentle hint in regard to us, we learned. But they were of different mettle from the Anglo-Saxons. They informed their “guides” that they did not propose to deny their comrades or to be dictated to about whom they should associate with. The French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Scandinavian Anarcho-Syndicalists lost no time in seeking us out. In fact, they made our place their headquarters. They spent with us every free hour they had, eager to know our impressions and views. They had heard of the alleged persecution of the Left-wing elements by the Communists, but they had taken it as a capitalist fabrication. Their French Communist friends, who had made the journey with them, were also sincerely desirous to learn the facts. Among them Boris Souvarine was the most intelligent and alert inquirer. [...]
The Communists in France were co-operating on many occasions with their anarchist comrades, Souvarine argued. Why could not the same conditions be brought about in Russia? The reason was not far to see, we explained. The French Communists had not yet attained political power in their country. They had not yet achieved a dictatorship there, but when that hour arrived, their comradeship with the French anarchists would be at an end, we assured Souvarine. He thought it impossible and he insisted that he should discuss the subject with the leading Bolsheviki. He wanted to bring about an amicable relationship between his Russian comrades and ours.
Just at that moment Olya Maximova called. Pale and trembling, she told us that Maximov and twelve other comrades in the Taganka prison had declared a hunger-strike to the death. They had repeatedly demanded the reason for their imprisonment since March. Information was refused them, nor had any charges been brought against them. Having failed to receive a reply to their protests, they had decided to call the attention of the foreign delegates to their intolerable situation by means of a desperate hunger-strike.
The syndicalists present jumped to their feet in great excitement. They would have never believed such a state of affairs possible in Soviet Russia, they declared, and they would immediately demand an accounting. They would raise the question at the opening of the Red Trade Union Congress the following morning. Souvarine implored them to wait and first to see the trade-union leaders, among them Tomsky, the labour head, Losovsky, and others.45 An open discussion at the public sessions would be working into the enemy’s hand, he argued; the capitalist press and the bourgeoisie in France and other countries would make the most of it. The matter must be settled quietly and in a friendly way, Souvarine pleaded. The delegates left, assuring us that they would not rest until justice was done to our suffering comrades.