Foreign News: Mirrors of Moscow

Lunacharsky Fights Disease While Tchitcherin Sharpens His Pencils and Trotsky Makes Phrases The Mirrors of Moscow* is something more than a collection of character sketches. It is also an outline of conditions in Russia under the Soviet Government. To be sure the Bolshevik oligarchs are shown in a most favorable light and the environment in which they live savors of crude satisfaction. Each chapter holds a mirror to one attitude of Soviet Government and reflects the image of one leader. Future generations will talk of the founders of the new Russia; not merely of Lenin and Trotsky, but also of Kalinin, king of peasants; of Lenin’s five subordinates, who as his adoring disciples worked with him for 20 years; of Rykov, the most popular man in Russia; of Alexandra Kallontai, only woman member of the Cabinet; of Father Tikon, “clinging to the splendor of gold and jewels”; of Lunacharsky, who reëstablished art and education ” out of nothing”; of Tchitcherin. Brief notes and excerpts: Of Anatol Vassilievitch Lunacharsky, Minister of Education: ” ‘ Illiteracy,’ he told me once, ‘is the great curse of Russia; we must fight illiteracy like the plague.’ . . . Has left off composing sonnets to fight ignorance, superstition, drunkenness, prejudice, disease, dirt.” Bitterly attacked. Saved Tsarist statues from the mob. Heated art galleries during fuel famines. Assisted by wives of Soviet leaders. Sans peur et sans reproche, the “gentleman” of the Revolution. Of Gregory Vassilievitch Tchitcherin, Foreign Minister, aristocrat: “Living alone in a barren room on the top floor of the Foreign Office, he is as far removed socially and physically from the lower as from the upper crust. . . . Outside of politics, the telephone and the cable, all up-to-dateness offends him. He abhors new clothes, does not like to ride in automobiles. . . . Does every little task for himself like sharpening his own pencils. . . . Here is Mr. Tchitcherin, member of one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in Russia, for four years now guiding with such delicate hands and careful brain the affairs of state, in order that all that once was, which gave his family their wealth and power, might never be again.”

Of Leon Trotsky: “No one is neutral about him. Trotsky is either loved or despised.” Hero of the army. His aides are as smart as any in the French War Office. Un-Russian passion for orderliness. A “phrase-maker,” orator. Regarded by his “comrades” as a mixed blessing.

Of Kalinin, second President of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic: Represents the peasants, who reëstablished private property. “Lenin gazed at Russia through Kalinin’s eyes as one gazes in a crystal.” Tolerates religion. His old, religious mother is violently anti-Bolshevik. No one thinks of assassinating him because he is one of the “folks.”

Of Nikolai Lenin, Premier: Son of a noble, i.e., small hereditary landowner. Irreproachable morals. Strong character supplemented by feminine influence, particularly by his secretary, Fotiva, tall, dark, efficient woman of forty. He appears as the generous autocrat of Moscow. Amazing aptitude for detail. Behind a cold and calculating political mask, he hides a kind and gentle disposition. Every Soviet leader has “lost his head” at least once, except Lenin. Strives to westernize Russia.

“He is more interested in America than in any other country.” Reads American papers. Hates flattery. Determined to fight the Tsar when the Tsar executed his brother. Since taking office has never had a serious political rival.

The Author. Louise Bryant is a beautiful girl still in her twenties, with large brown eyes, chestnut hair, and an impudent air of self-assurance that disarms diplomats, statesmen, detectives and editors. As the wife of the late John Reed, ” Playboy of the Revolution,” she has had more adventures in five years than ten ordinary women have in a lifetime. She first met the Communist leaders sketched in her book in 1917 during the Bolshevik coup d’etat which her husband described in what is still the most graphic and authentic picture of the revolution, as “Ten Days That Shook the World.” When Reed went to Moscow in 1920 in disguise (being under indictment as one of the founders of the American Communist Labor Party), Louise Bryant followed him. Reed was stricken with typhus “at his revolutionary post” and died in October, 1921, in his wife’s arms.

* Mirrors of Moscow—Louise Bryant— Seltzer ($2.50).