Adventures in Bolshevism

I

ONE of the latest popular songs in Paris is called 'Tout Tombe’ — ‘Everything Falls.’ They were whistling it and singing it and playing it in all the restaurants when I came back to Paris from Budapest. I had gone to Hungary to get a good look at Bolshevism. And I had had it.. Ten days of living in a formerly fashionable hotel, renamed the ‘Soviet House,’ Bela Kun on the next floor down, the entrance guarded by machine-guns, the Red Army patrolling the streets. Rather a rare experience even in these days of revolution! But back again in gay, worldly-wise Paris, the latest song hit came as an augury. Sure enough, in a few days the Bela Kun régime fell.

What was Bela Kun trying to do anyway? What is this communistic talk all about? How will five months of Bolshevism affect the future of Hungary? What is its significance for the rest of the world? These are much-discussed questions in official circles. In considering them, the testimony of one who saw the Bela Kun régime in full swing may be valuable.

The scrap of paper for which I had endured all the hardships and exasperations incident to obtaining passports nowadays stated that ‘Frau Klara Savage’ might proceed from Vienna to Budapest and back again.

‘If you can get back!’ remarked one of the Austrian officials. ‘You had better not stay too long or you may never get out. It’s about time for a counter revolution in Hungary. I’d advise you not to get caught in it.’

I had visions of being strung up by the Red Army, and the young Hungarian business man we met on the train encouraged the belief. Through him we got a rather incoherent impression of the capital’s reaction to Bolshevism.

‘You see before you a ruined man,’ he said sadly. ‘I was formerly a member of a large business firm; but my shares have been taken over by the government. I am not permitted to draw more than a small sum from my bank account per month; I must work for almost nothing.’

In a pause of the conversation he drew me aside and whispered, ‘Would you do me a great favor?’

I saw myself involved in a plot to bring about a counter-revolution.

‘Would you put sister’s silk stockings in your suitcase?’

Here was our first hint of some of the practical difficulties involved in Bolshevism. He explained that such necessities as silk stockings were not to be obtained in Budapest; that he had bought a pair in Vienna, but that unless I, an American, would get them through the customs for him, he was afraid the Red Guard would confiscate them for their own sisters. I took them.

Leaving the train at the frontier, you must walk about a quarter of a mile till you come to a bridge that is the connecting link between Austria and Hungary. No one can pass here without a permit. Was it not Carlyle who said that one of the first signs of evolution was man’s acceptance of standing in line, instead of knocking his neighbor down with a club and getting there first? Hours and hours of standing in line for official visés make one wish, however, for more club and less evolution. It was some time before the official in the hut at the side of the bridge stamped our passes. Then we forward-faced out of Austria straight into a line of Red Guards standing, guns in hand, on the Hungarian side of the bridge.

I confess to being nervous. Their red cap-bands, red sleeve-bands, red buttons and rosettes, and their guns gave them a decidedly ferocious appearance. But, as usually happens when you have been dreading things, they are n’t so bad as they look. For all their red bands and guns and general fierceness, they seemed, when you talked to them, surprisingly like any boys in uniform.

There were three of us, and as many Red Guards escorted us to a special train guaranteed to arrive in Budapest at two in the morning. They even stopped and refreshed us along the way with coffee at their barracks. Why?

’Because you are Americans.’

‘American’ is a magic word that opens every door. What is it that makes them like us so much? I began to ask myself after traveling through Switzerland, Austria, and Hungary. Perhaps it is because we live so far away! But, seriously, I believe it is because, in spite of all our mistakes, they believe in us.

We rode through the fertile country lands of Hungary. The fields promised a plenteous harvest. In the rolling meadows great herds of cattle browsed. Wheat rippled in the breeze. Men and women trudged home after the day’s work. Hungary is a lush country, fertile and self-supporting as far as agricultural products are concerned.

Late afternoon deepened into night. I was tired and sleepy, and when one of the Red Guard invited me to stretch out on one seat in his compartment, while he occupied the other, I forgot that he was what is commonly called a bloodthirsty Bolshevist, and accepted. As a matter of fact, he was a mild-looking Bolshevist, wearing eyeglasses, and he insisted that I have his overcoat for a cover. Beneath it I slept an untroubled sleep till I felt him shaking me. It was two in the morning, and we had arrived at Budapest.

II

We stumbled out into the darkness. The Red Guards found a coachman driving a bedraggled horse hitched to a musty hack, and in we piled. How still the streets were! How deserted! No late revelers returning home at this hour in the morning. Did no one revel in a communistic state? The slow hoofs of the old horse reëchoed on the asphalt with a ghostly rhythm. Then, turning a corner, we were suddenly halted by a Red Guard with a gun. He inquired in Hungarian who we were and where we were going. Not knowing any Hungarian, and having very little idea where we were going, we answered as best we could. We flourished beneath the light of his pocket-lamp our voluminous American passports. We learned afterward that one of the unwritten laws of Hungary — Bolshevist or not Bolshevist — is unerring politeness to the stranger within their gates. In no country does one meet with such courtesy.

The Red Guard saluted, and we rode on. One after another, we stopped at the hotels. They were all full. At last, we decided to try the stronghold of Bolshevism itself, the Soviet House, where Bela Kun and almost all the other government officials lived. It was a good deal like walking up to the White House in Washington and demanding bed and board; but with the usual American audacity we did it.

Here again the word American opened the door to us. We were given the best rooms in the house. Hot tea came up at three in the morning. We tumbled into bed and slept an untroubled sleep in this very hotbed of Bolshevism.

Waking up in communistic Budapest was like waking up in a strange new world, where most of the ideas with which you had been brought up, concerning government, society, life in general, did n’t fit. The result was that you did one of two things — became immediately disgusted with this whole new state of affairs and went home to condemn it, or decided to try to be as open-minded as possible, to look it over carefully and dispassionately, and then decide what you thought of it.

Unless you were unalterably convinced that the particular form of government, of social life, of industry, to which you were accustomed was the right one for all times and places, you found it absorbingly interesting to watch this experiment along totally different lines. At times one would feel irritated, at times enthusiastic, at times homesick, because one was n’t used to this new state of affairs, and found it difficult to adapt one’s self to it.

At times, I went up to my room to laugh, for Bolshevism certainly has its humorous aspects. At other times, I felt strongly the sincerity, the groping after truth which actuate the real Communist, and was stirred, as any human being must be stirred, to see men struggling after an ideal. And all the time I found myself more awake mentally, more keenly concerned with fundamental questions affecting society, than ever before. You may not sympathize with this attempt at a communistic state in Hungary, you may eventually condemn it, but you’ve got to think about it. Russia lighted the red fire of Bolshevism, and the flames are spreading. Signs of unrest and Bolshevist tendencies are expressing themselves in strikes and labor demonstrations all over the world. You can’t really be alive to-day unless you realize the seriousness of this fact and try to understand it.

The fundamental idea in the communistic state of Hungary was that every adult person, man or woman, should earn his own living. Imagine living in a place where they take that story about Jesus Christ declaring that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, literally, and begin to take away his riches from the poor rich man! Imagine a place where no one can earn more than forty to fifty dollars a week, and no one less than fifteen!

That was the kind of a place communistic Budapest was trying to be. To understand it you have to understand the scheme of things — the plan of government. Briefly, it is like this.

The governing body of the state was the National Soviet or Workingman’s Council (Múnkástanacs they call it in Hungarian), which is composed of representatives elected from the local Soviets of the various cities, towns, and counties. The local Soviets are made up of workers representing the various trades or professions, and are elected by their fellow workers. You would find artists, ditch-diggers, bank presidents, dressmakers, and other widely varying professions represented in the Soviet. The National Soviet elected the heads of the government departments, called commissars. There were twenty-six commissars acting as heads of the twelve departments. There were, for instance, the commissary of education, of hygiene, of production, of transportation and railroads, of justice, and so on, corresponding to the administrative departments of our government.

I attended a big meeting of the Budapest Soviet, at which the chief question discussed was the distribution of food. It was a burning question. There was plenty of food in the country, but to organize the distribution of it and relieve the shortage in the cities was a difficult task, complicated by the shortage of coal resulting in poor railroad service. The National Commissar of Food addressed the meeting. Men and women delegates listened to what he had to say, interrupting him, from time to time, with shouts of approval or disapproval, with questions or suggestions. There was no doubt that this man was directly responsible to the people. He talked over with them his difficulties and his plans for overcoming them; he listened to their suggestions and complaints. There was no feeling that the speaker was removed from his audience because he held an official position. He was one of them. If he had better ideas than the rest, all right; if not, they said so and suggested others.

Hungary under Bela Kun, who was nominally the Commissar of Foreign Affairs, but actually the leader of this communistic state, patterned its government after that of Russia. Bela Kun is a former co-worker and close friend of Lenin. They were in communication every day by wireless. But Hungary avoided some of the mistakes made by the Russian Bolshevists. For instance, in Russia one of the first steps was the confiscation by the government of all land privately owned. Now Hungary, as an agricultural country, has a large peasant population. Peasants, in the main, are a peaceful, conservative class. They live far removed from the seething unrest of cities, and when crops are plenteous and prices good, grow rich and contented. If you own your own farm, have plenty to eat and wear, and money saved, you are not apt to be the stuff of which Bolshevists are made. You are apt to think that the world as it is is a very good place and wonder why anyone tries to change it.

So it was with the peasants of Hungary. If when the Communists came into power they had followed the example of Russia and confiscated all land, including the peasants’ holdings, they would at once have alienated the strongest class. Bela Kun was wise. Peasants were allowed to keep their land up to a limit of two hundred acres.

On the other hand, the estate of the squire, who was the landlord in many rural districts of Hungary, was ‘ socialized.’ The squire had formerly held much the position of a feudal lord owning a great estate worked by vassals. Under communism the estate was divided among peasants, who worked it on a coöperative basis. In the main, the peasants of Hungary were left unmolested by communism, and, as a class, were rather indifferent to what form of government existed, so long as crops were abundant and prices good.

When I was in Hungary the wagescale for workers had not been entirely worked out, but three thousand kronen (about $120 in American money, as exchange went then, but with a value of not quite twice that amount to Hungarians) was fixed as the largest salary per month that anyone could earn. Society was divided into groups, according to professions and trades, by a government committee. Highly skilled manual workers, professional men, and artists earned the same pay in some cases. Every adult who was able to work was compelled to do so, but special provision was made for the sick and the old.

One morning we were admitted to the Military Tribunal, which is the court of justice in a communist state. As a rule, it was not open to the public, and it was with some difficulty that we were admitted. A man who had been the trustee of a great munitions factory before the days of communism was being tried on the charge that he had kept his workingmen from organizing in trade-unions and had in other ways interfered with what they believed to be the rights of the workers. The accused was a tall, iron-gray man, with a lantern jaw and sharp eyes. He stood stiffly erect in his military uniform and faced his three judges with an arrogant dignity. There was no jury. The man stated his case. Without understanding Hungarian, one could see that he was making a straight-to-the-point, dignified statement. When translated, we found he had said that, as his factory was a munitions plant, it was operated under military law; that he was, first of all, a soldier, and had simply obeyed the commands of those above him.

His statement finished, four witnesses appeared, three for and one against him. They were workingmen from his own factory. Three of them declared that he was right: he had been the tool of powerful military authorities; that he meant no harm, but had not been strong enough to withstand pressure brought to bear by those higher up. I watched the face of the prisoner. It must have been hard for him to listen to these workmen over whom he had formerly tyrannized declare that he meant well, but was weak! The fourth witness attacked him bitterly, but his questioning brought out the fact that he had an irrelevant personal grievance.

The entire trial was conducted with the utmost calm, dignity, and fairness. There was no bullying by the judges, no attempt at tricky cross-questioning, no sharp practices. We heard, the next day, that the man was acquitted.

This trial seems to me fairly representative and important. Here was a man of the hated bourgeois class, who had been ruthless in attempting to curtail the rights of the workingmen. He was brought to trial by the workingmen, before workingmen judges, and they said he was not to blame, that he was merely the tool of an old system, and acquitted him. After all the tales of bloodshed and public execution for offenses, which have been attributed to Bolshevism, I was glad to see an actual trial by the Military Tribunal.

That same day I went out to one of the big prisons on the outskirts of the city, for the purpose of seeing political prisoners. (As an aside, I must remark that Hungarian prisons are models which put ours to shame. They are light, airy, spotlessly clean. They are surrounded by lawns and gardens, where the prisoners take daily recreation.) A young college man, the son of a wealthy banker, took us to visit this prison. I have my suspicions that he was no Communist, although he did n’t say so. It was about as risky to go about in Budapest declaring that you were n’t a Communist and a believer in Bolshevism as it is in other countries to declare that you are a Bolshevist! Many of this young man’s friends were political prisoners. It made visiting prison with him seem much like attending a delightful official reception.

’Oh, how do you do ? ’ he exclaimed, seeing a distinguished-looking gentleman sitting under a tree, reading, in the yard. ‘Let me introduce you to our former minister of war,’ he said to me.

The minister laughed and shook hands. He showed us the book he was reading. ‘Light stuff,’ he remarked, ’light stuff. I never had time enough to read before. I was always too busy, but now I’m enjoying myself.’

We walked on and were introduced to several counts, barons, former state officials, and a bishop. They admitted that they were treated with the utmost courtesy in prison, that their rooms were comfortable and clean, that their friends were allowed to come each day, and might bring them food to supplement the plain prison fare. They could read and write whenever they wished, and were free to stroll about the prison lawn and talk together. They were gradually being freed. Many of them were going back to government positions. One of the astonishing points about this Communist government in Budapest was its absorption of all elements. They were willing to have as government workers men who had not been Communists, who had actually been political prisoners because of their antipathy to this form of government, if they professed a change of heart and gave pledges of good behavior.

On the whole, I would describe these political prisoners as fundamentally rebellious and thoroughly frightened at the state of affairs in Hungary. They were afraid that a new order had come, and that they of the aristocracy would never find a place in it.

We had another glimpse of this side of things in Hungary, when we dined with a family which had formerly been wealthy. Now they had no more money, no more food than anyone else; their retinue of servants had been reduced to one maid, and on the next day their large apartment was to be divided so that another family would occupy a part of it. They were utterly rebellious. After a simple, but very good dinner, for which the mother apologized profusely, we went to the reception-room for coffee and were joined by a girl cousin, who was a perfect specimen of this type of family, delicately bred, sensitive, with a fragile blonde loveliness. She had been used to having everything she wanted. She was an artist, had studied in Italy.

‘I want to go back to Italy,’she said, ‘ but I can’t leave this abominable country. All our money is confiscated. They have taken away several rooms of our apartment, though I managed to keep an extra one by calling it my studio. And they have seized our summer home on the Danube, and filled it full of dirty little proletariat children.’ I asked her what her work was under the new government.

‘Oh, they classify me as a “young artist!” I’m allotted 2500 kronen [$100.00] a month, because my work has won some recognition. It’s about enough to pay for one of my hats! ’

By way of contrast, I visited one of the former slum districts of Budapest. Many of the families had moved to better quarters, but we found one family of thirteen living in two rooms. The father was then earning 2000 kronen a month as a skilled workman, and they were about to move to a better house.

‘We’re getting our chance,’ said the father of the family. ‘We’re going to live like decent folks and take care of the children and have some comfort.’

There you have the two sides of the picture—the rebellious bourgeoisie, resentful at having their big houses, their servants, their limousines, their bankaccounts taken from them, forced to live simply and to work, and the proletariat, who believed they were getting a chance they had never had to live comfortably and bring up their children decently.

III

But, to get right down to it, howdoes communism affect the welfare of children? About the most important question you can ask of any government is what it is doing for the next generation. I had come to Hungary from Austria, where children were starving to death by the hundreds. Four years of food-blockade is having its effect. I saw hospitals filled with children slowly dying from hunger—‘Angel Factories,’ they call them. You could n’t see this in communistic Hungary. When the Bolshevist government tackled the food-problem, it decreed, first of all, that children should have milk, that they should he well fed. The children in Hungary are plump and well.

Forms of government are interesting enough, but the thing that came nearest to making me a Bolshevist was a visit to the big baths in Budapest where all the school-children are bathed once a week. Just before the Bolshevists came into control, a magnificent new hotel had been built on the shore of the Danube, with all the elaborate perfection necessary to satisfy the most exacting, sophisticated taste. Then along came the Bolshevists. They took it over and decreed that its famous mud baths and sulphur baths should be open to everyone for a nominal sum. Certain days a week are reserved for the children.

If you could have seen them! Five hundred small boys, with straight, supple little bodies, standing in line to march in front of the doctor and be examined before being allowed in the bath. Children with weak hearts, any form of skin-disease, or contagion, must be bathed separately. Once pronounced fit, off they scampered to scrub themselves earnestly with soap and water in the showers, and then rush out and into the big pool. The bathing-rooms were of white marble, the great pools lined with turquoise-blue tiles and filled with crystal-clear water. Into them splashed the small boys. You can’t imagine a happier sight, unless it was the five hundred little girls in the next room bathing in another great turquoiseblue pool, their softly curved, beautiful little bodies flushed pink from splashing and swimming. Such perfect joy as that one hour a week was to those children! And then to see them coming away, hand in hand, with damp curls or pigtails and shining, scrubbed little faces. You had to stop and think for a moment to know whether you had stepped into the Kingdom of Heaven or into a Bolshevist state.

‘But,’ says someone, ‘public baths for children are perfectly possible without Bolshevism.’

Yes, it seems as if they ought to be. I do not claim that the world should go Bolshevist so that children may have a weekly bath; but I would like to point out that any form of government that puts food for babies and the health of its children first is a form of government worth consideration.

The housing problem was one which was creating a good deal of difficulty in Budapest. The Communist government had decreed that no family should be entitled to more than three rooms, in addition to the kitchen, bathroom, and rooms set apart for definite work. Stories have been current that in Hungary millionaires and street-sweepers had been forced to share the same apartment; but although some curious combinations resulted as a rule, families with similar tastes and professions were encouraged to live together.

One Sunday afternoon a young woman invited us to tea. She and her husband were living in a delightful apartment which they shared with two other families. She was an ardent Communist, but even she admitted it was inconvenient to ’socialize ’ the one bathroom and the one kitchen to such an extent that all three families used them. She hastened to explain, however, that she believed the embarrassment would be only temporary, since extensive plans for building new model apartments, better fitted to communist ideas, were under way.

We had some difficulty in getting away from Hungary. Budapest was almost surrounded by its enemies, the Roumanians, Serbs, and Czechs. We took the train one evening, rode for ten minutes, and woke next morning exactly where we had gone to sleep the night before. The advance of the enemy had made further travel unsafe.

The next night we repeated the experiment. This time we rode until an early hour of the morning, when those of us who had had war experiences heard a familiar sound — bombardment. The Czechs were bombarding Komoron, and, carelessly enough, our train had steamed in the direction of the bombardment. It backed out. Trains armed with machine-guns passed us. How we finally got out of Hungary after three days and three nights travel is a story not without its picturesque details, but its main importance lay in the fact that it gave us time to get a perspective on this communistic state.

My main criticism of Bolshevism, as I saw it in Hungary, is that it did not seem to be a spontaneous movement on the part of the majority of the people. Rather, it was something imposed on them from without. As a result it had to be enforced with all the rigor possible. Bolshevism is a synonym for anarchy and chaos to many people. Instead of anarchy and chaos in Hungary, there was the other extreme — overorganization, over-control. Talk about freedom and personal liberty! There was n’t any in Budapest. You could not walk down certain streets, or eat, or buy a pocket-handkerchief without a permit ; you could n’t do this, and you could n’t do that. The newspapers — all government-owned — printed long columns every day of rules to govern your daily life. And you could n’t get away from it all. You could n’t leave town without a government permit, and you could n’t go home and be alone, for there were other families living in your apartment, sharing your bath. It’s a terrible thing to be so utterly government-regulated !

And Bela Kun? Bela Kun was an absolute dictator. He could not very well help being, because there was n’t another man among the Bolshevist group in Hungary who could compare with him from the point of view of personality, intellect, and executive ability. When I first shook hands with him, I saw a dark, squat, thick-set man, with great rolling lips and a thick nose in a broad face. An ugly little man, more muscular than intellectual in appearance. Then I sat near him on a platform, while he addressed an immense audience of men and women. He put one foot up on the edge of his chair and leaned toward them, the perspiration pouring from his forehead, his right arm driving his words home with hammer-strokes in rhythm with his short sentences. Then you saw his real self — the self of a man who is absolutely sincere, pledged to what he believes is a great ideal, fired with a great faith, and willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of his cause. Ask even his enemies, and they will tell you that Bela Kun is all that I have said.

But is an absolute dictatorship at the head of an over-organized form of government a step forward? Or is the present situation in Hungary merely temporary? Will the communist ideals be able to emerge from the red tape of regulations and prove themselves to the rest of the world? These were some of the questions I asked myself as I came away from Hungary.

The answer is postponed. At present, Hungary has swung back to the old form of government by the aristocracy, with an archduke on the throne. The French keep right on singing 'Tout Tombe.’ And it is a well-known fact that a pendulum is apt to swing far in one direction and then in the other, before it hits the happy medium.¹