How can I convey a just idea of what present-day Moscow looks like to an Englishman who has never been there? It is a town of mystery and misery; of secret executions and a lawless Government; of freedom to wave red flags and preach free love, and use language which would ensure one’s instant arrest even in Hyde Park, but at the same time of an iron tyranny which will not allow a word to be said against itself. It is an inconceivable topsy-turvydom. You can do almost everything which would get you arrested in England, but if you do almost anything which we should consider praiseworthy, the Extraordinary Commission will at once get hold of you. You may stand on the altar of the Cathedral and deny that there is a God. You may advocate the murder of Kings, Dukes, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, foreign officers and officials of every kind, mill-managers, bankers, merchants, and Bishops, but if you dare to suggest on the contrary that murderers of these different classes should be arrested and tried, you are sure to get into trouble with the police. If you try to start a purely religious revival, you will certainly be arrested as Mr. Plekhanov was in Petrograd. If you advocate the principle of private property, the right of trial by jury, the claims of the middle classes, you will soon be hauled before a revolutionary tribunal.

In London we have doubled the postage rate. In Moscow they have abolished it, and you can drop letters into a postal box without any stamp at all, but also unfortunately without much chance of ever getting an answer, for half the letters are never collected or delivered. In London they have increased the tramway fares. In Moscow they have abolished them, but unfortunately the trams do not run any longer. In England the railway fares have been raised. In Russia they have been abolished and you can travel free, if you are able to discover an ordinary passenger train running, a discovery which I was never able to make. In England the price of newspapers has been raised. In Moscow newspapers are given away or posted up on the walls for everybody to read. In London the well-to-do resort to great and exclusive Clubs. In Moscow such Clubs have been converted into Children’s Orphanages and Workmen’s “Palaces,” while the upper classes have fled or live miserably in the slums.

Some of the most whimsical things that have been written by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, the most mysterious situations that have been invented by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or Mr. John Buchan, might have been founded on fact in Moscow. In one of Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s romances we are introduced to an Anarchists’ den, and one of the masked conspirators betrays by his gait the fact that he is a shop-walker. Now one of Chicherin’s principal assistants has exactly the same walk, and I should say that he was employed in a large drapery establishment in London. But he is not a person to laugh at, for he is deep in the secrets of the Third International; and when he puts his head on one side, rubs his hands gently together, and asks “What can I do for you?” you may be sure that he can “do” for you if he wants to. He certainly held my life in his hands for some time.

Another assistant of Chicherin had been a tailor in London, where he might perhaps be described as a devil among the tailors, while now he is a tailor among the devils. In the East End he would press your clothes “while you wait” and “make them look as good as new”; now he will sign you a death-warrant while you wait. He is a dangerous, able, and fanatical man; he has charge of Bolshevik propaganda in England, and he also is not a person to laugh at. The Russian Communist has posed for fifty years as the injured innocent, the poor down-trodden victim of the Tsardom. Though he now rules one-eighth of the earth’s surface, he still keeps up that pose, partly out of habit, partly out of policy. And, unfortunately, it is a pose that makes a profound impression on the British working-classes with their traditional sympathy for the oppressed, though, as a matter of fact, the Bolshevik is now the oppressor.

A curious feature of Red Moscow is the number of people who have got lost in it. Members of good families are scattered in different parts of the city, and do not know each other’s address. It is the same all over the vast extent of Russia. Cabinet Ministers, Generals, great landowners, able editors, girls of noble birth, are scattered throughout the country in isolated villages and remote farmhouses, without any of their relatives knowing of their whereabouts. When Kolchak’s troops advanced in the spring of 1919, they discovered important personages hidden in the most out-of-the-way places. Among them were Prince Lvov, formerly President of the Russian Republic; Mr. Lvov, formerly Procurator of the Most Holy Synod; and several ladies of the Imperial suite, all of them marooned, far apart from one another, on sequestered islets in the great Bolshevik sea, as, in pictures of the Deluge, naked figures are represented as clinging to rocky peaks jutting up above the Flood. In the British Isles, with their small area and their excellent train and postal service, it is hard for one to realize the extent to which those unfortunate castaways were cut off from the world.

Little Princes are living to-day in woodmen’s huts surrounded by forests large as England, and are playing with plebeian boys and girls as ragged as themselves. Strapping young Duchesses are earning their living as dairymaids; and, if all comes right with Russia during the next few years, the real love romances of these terrible days will supply story-tellers with material enough to last them for the next half-century. Unhappily there is much more of squalor and of tragedy than of romance, as probably was the case during those “old, unhappy, far-off days” which historical novelists make so desirable and picturesque. Emaciated young men in the tattered uniform of Guards officers sell matches in the streets. One distinguished General keeps a small fried-fish shop. A bank director is doorkeeper at a Bolshevik Club. Sometimes the first announcement one gets regarding the whereabouts of old Russian friends is a brief note in the Pravda to say that they have been shot in some distant village “for counter-revolutionary activity.” In most cases this accusation is probably false, but there always is counter-revolutionary activity in Russia. At Cheliabinsk, in 1918, the Czechs maintained a regular messenger service through Red Russia to Warsaw and Prague, and the messengers got in touch with anti-Bolshevik organizations in all the towns through which they passed, while, later on, Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich, communicated regularly with their supporters in Lenin-land; though I must candidly say that few of those supporters were sufficiently secretive to qualify for membership in the Carbonari, or Black Hand, or Freemasons, or Sinn Fein, or Ancient Order of Elks, or any other society which makes the faintest pretence to secrecy. To put it quite bluntly, Duchesses, rural deans, squires, and romantic young ladies make distinctly bad conspirators, especially when they are conspiring against professional revolutionaries whose brains, very keen as a rule to start with, have been sharpened to an amazing degree of acuteness by a stern apprenticeship in subterranean intrigue and by the severe mental training undergone in the long duel of wits between them and the sharpest police of the Tsar, a duel which ended with the revolutionary on top.

I consequently kept aloof from White conspirators during my stay in Red Russia, but on one occasion a lady of distinguished appearance brought me on a large tray two pieces of confetti, one white and the other red, and asked me with a mysterious look to choose one of them. Much to her disgust I chose the red: had I chosen the white I should probably have discovered that she was engaged in some fantastic monarchist adventure. These plots have extended to England, but I would not advise my countrymen to have anything to do with them, for they are all silly and will only lead to useless loss of life. For that reason, indeed, they should be suppressed by Scotland Yard as relentlessly as Red plots. The salvation of Russia will not be accomplished by foolish conspiracies like these. It will be rather a turning of the tables, however, if Scotland Yard puts its hand on the shoulder of some Grand Duke plotting in a West End drawing-room against the red-capped Ishmael of the Kremlin.

In Tverskaya Street, the Strand of Moscow, there are two large Anarchist bookshops, and the books sold there denounce all Governments and all religions, and advocate anarchy as the cure for every human ill. I was surprised to find, however, that the Anarchists do not advocate complete individualism. They approve of little groups of persons engaged in the same business joining together for purposes of trade and work, but unfortunately their doctrine leads to little groups of men joining together for purposes of crime. In Petrograd, for example, five anarchists formed themselves into an association which they called “The Union of Five Oppressed,” and seized a house which took their fancy by simply pointing their revolvers at the owner and advising him to go elsewhere. In the early days of Bolshevik rule there were many similar cases in Moscow, where an acquaintance of mine, an official of the Soviet, was turned out of his house one day by four youths, armed with revolvers, who said that they were Anarchists.

The Moscow Anarchists have also on the Tverskaya a large Club where, if introduced by a member, one can get food. Lectures on anarchism are given daily in their Club and are open to the public. It is somewhat strange that while political parties like the Mensheviks, who are almost the same as the Bolsheviks, are prohibited from holding political meetings or maintaining any sort of political organization, the Anarchists, whose doctrine is the very antithesis of Communism, are allowed a certain amount of latitude, being indeed the only political party which Lenin will tolerate. As a matter of fact, Lenin has a soft spot in his heart for the Anarchists, owing to the way they have been hunted and harried, like himself, by the police of “capitalist” countries. Recently, however, the growth of the Anarchist party has alarmed the Soviet Government, and a good many arrests of Anarchist agitators have been made, especially in Saratov. The Bolshevik propaganda was also directed towards proving that Anarchism was an unsound political theory; and that an Anarchist Government could never resist Kolchak and Denikin as the Soviet Government had done.

There is in Petrograd a number of American Anarchists whom the United States Government dumped down in Russia, evidently on the assumption that Lenin was an Anarchist. These people, of whom the leaders are Emma Goldmann and John Birkmanns, have now formed an association called “Russian Friends of American Freedom,” of which I speak elsewhere.

Undoubtedly a great many Bolsheviks who want to go abroad are urged by a fanatical desire to preach the Gospel of Lenin to foreign countries. Mikhailov, the war correspondent of the Pravda, who writes in that paper under the name of Sergiev, is particularly anxious to come to England in order to evangelize the English workmen. Many of the literary men and journalists of the Rosta (Russian Socialist Telegraph Agency) are also anxious to represent that agency in foreign parts, generally in England. They consider this country to be the crux of the whole situation, and many of them are learning English in order that their missionary labours here may be fruitful. Employees of this great news agency speak every language in Europe, having lived abroad most of their life; and as they will be very well paid, will enjoy an official status, and will represent a greater and wealthier agency than Reuter, the American Associated Press, and Havas put together, they will probably exercise more influence on the foreign Press and therefore on the foreign public than the official representatives of the Soviet Government. Newspaper men who can afford to keep a Rolls-Royce and a suite of rooms in the Ritz will impress even their most hostile English colleagues.

Other Bolsheviks want to get to England because they are doubtful of the stability of things in Russia, and one Bolshevik of quite high position asked me once how long he would have to live in England in order to get naturalized. Another Bolshevik in an important military position confided to me his desire to flee to one of the British Colonies. His wife and family are the obstacle, however. The Soviet Government seldom allow even their highest officials to take their families with them when they go abroad, the families being almost invariably detained as hostages. Technical experts, engineers, literary men, doctors, etc., are also busy learning English, in the hope of getting away from Bolshevism, which they detest; and if the Soviet Government ever relaxes its embargo on emigration, there will be a rush out of the country, comparable only to a rush out of a burning house. One man, who could not even speak English, talked to me about crossing the Pamirs into India. I expressed no opinion on the subject, but I am afraid that he would not be exactly welcomed by the British authorities in India. If this book happens to fall into the hands of British officials who find themselves in a position to succour any of these really honest and anti-Bolshevik refugees, I hope that those officials will make proper investigations before turning the fugitives back.

Of course there are fanatics who want to leave Russia for the purpose of preaching violence and revolution abroad; and in this connection there is a curious tendency amongst the Russian revolutionists, especially amongst the Jews from England and America, to get tired of the success which they have achieved in Russia, and to look out with intense eagerness and impatience for fresh worlds to conquer and fresh Governments to overthrow. Now that they have succeeded in establishing the ideal Socialist State of which they have so long dreamed, they are in a desperate hurry to get away from it. This craving, which I have often studied at close quarters and which seems to me almost a disease, is one of the most striking characteristics of the Bolshevik movement at the present moment. The Communists itch for propaganda, and their desire for the destruction of sure-established social formation is intense. That itch can no longer be satisfied in Russia, so they want to get out and do some demolition work outside. Up to two years ago their thoughts always ran on destruction and conspiracy, until they could not look on any Government or Creed without experiencing an irresistible longing to sap and overthrow it, a longing which they could only restrain at the cost of great mental suffering. They are still like infants who have grown accustomed to smashing things, and who are most unhappy when prevented from doing so. Emma Goldmann, Birkmanns, Balabanova, and all the other exiles are most anxious to get out of Russia again. To give one instance of this disillusionment, Dr. Karlin, a Russian Jewess, who worked in the state of Detroit, came to Russia without a passport, with the hope of working in it after the Bolshevik revolution; three weeks in Russia sufficed to cool her enthusiasm, and though she had lost her American nationality, she still claimed to be treated as a foreigner and neglected to throw in her lot with the Bolsheviks. Three weeks before I left Russia she was suddenly seized by the Extraordinary Commission, and was in solitary confinement when I left Moscow.