Chapter VI

We will start in looking the towns over. This is the town they used to call St. Petersburg. Then when the war come along with Germany and they got afraid Germany would capture it, they changed its name to Petrograd so it would fool the Germans and they wouldent know what town they were capturing. Well, that worked fine. Germany couldent find it, and just when the Czar and all his board of strategy was gloating over their clever ruse, why, a fellow named Lenin found out where it was, and he had never had a town named after him; in fact, they had always kept him moving so fast that he couldent tell whether the town was named after him or before him.

Well, he said, “If I take this town, will you name it after me?”

They replied in the affirmative. So he found it and took it, and now it is named Leningrad. I found it; so if you hear of it being called Rogerskofsxzy, why, that will be partly in my honor.

From what I could gather from the old-time residents there, it used to be quite a place; kind of a cross between Hollywood, California, St. Louis and Chicago. It had the drab night life of Hollywood, the color, dash and brilliance of St. Louis and the pistol and rifle fire of Chicago. It is situated at the mouth of the Neva River; and when I say the mouth of the Neva I am wrong. I mean the mouths of the Neva. It’s plural, and it’s also singular that it should have so many mouths, but it has. It just can’t make up its mind how to get out of Russia and empty in the Gulf of Finland. Nurmi is the capital of Finland.

The ground is very low under Leningrad; in fact, it’s the only town in the world whose altitude is just exactly 0. There is towns that are above sea level, and there is towns that are below sea level; but Leningrad couldent make up her mind which she wanted to be, so she just split the difference.

You have to move twice a day in Leningrad--at low tide you live downstairs and at high tide you move back upstairs. It’s built on poles driven into the mud and clams. Peter the Great settled it, but that is not why he was called Peter the Great. He lost an election bet--the other side spent too much money--and he either had to build a town in some odd place or roll a wheelbarrow around the living room, so he decided on the former. He got even with all the other Czars, for he put a Joker in the 19th Amendment of their Constitution, so they would have to live there. Like our old-time Presidents used to have to live in Washington in the Summertime. Winter starts the first week in July and ends the last week in June. Spring, Summer and Fall are not what you would call long, but they are comfortable--all three days are very pleasant. But with all its flatness, it’s much the most beautiful City in Russia. The streets are all laid out straight and cross at right angles. It has some wonderful buildings and marvelous Churches.

It was the Capital of the Country when the Bolshevikis got it, but was so close to the Gulf that they got afraid somebody would come up there with a big Battleship and drop a few shots among the assembled Senators. You know, Communists like to throw things themselves at various Governments and prominent people, but they don’t like the idea of being on the receiving end of anything in the nature of a bomb.

The city is much more modern and European than Moscow. Moscow has more of the Far East in its appearance, with all of its Mosque-like domes to all the Churches. It’s really ancient, while Leningrad has been made to order. The main street is the Nevskii Prospekt. The Soviets have changed the name to the 25th of October. That’s the date of a Revolution. They changed the old names on everything that was connected with the Czar’s régime.

Now when these people took everything over and run everybody out that had anything, they took most of the Palaces and big places that belonged to the rich and made Museums and Schools and Clubs and Public buildings. Of course, they have not been able to keep them up in very good shape, but you can see what they must have been when the old Gang were going good. ’Course the main one most everybody is interested in is the Czar’s Palace, or the Winter Palace. It fronts out on a great big square, composed of big old worn Cobblestones.

It was formerly called Palace Square, and is the one you have seen in most pictures showing the Czar’s Armies and Revolutionary scenes; in fact, just about everything of any importance that wanted to happen in Russia for hundreds of years back had to wait for their turn to happen on this square. And it was in it that the present Government captured it from the Royal régime. It’s now called Uritzsky Square. He was a Socialist that was killed here. They, as I say, always name things after the last man killed there on their side. If you get killed on the side that don’t win, you don’t get the place named after you; but if you do win, why, you can die knowing you had a square named after you, provided you are the last one killed. You must always be careful about that--pick your time to get shot. Get these names: The Garden of the Toilers another square is called; then there is the Square of the Victims of the Revolution. One of their bridges is called the Bridge of Equality.

This Palace was practically the constant home of the Czars. It is now a Museum. Part of it is given over to what is called the Revolutionary Museum--more about that later. The Palace has seven hundred rooms. If a young Czar ever forgot the number of his room, he would be an old Czar before he found it. The Apartments of Nicholas I, Alexander the II and Nicholas II are shown as they were as historical memorials, including all the big rooms of State.

Then you come to the Apartments of the late Czar and Family. It almost looks as if they had left it that morning. All their personal photographs of people we are familiar with in these times, with personal writing on them, are there--a great many photos taken with King Edward, and enlargements from what must have been snapshots of various groups of the family. The whole thing looked like the rooms in any wealthy man’s home with a family--that is, one that has always been wealthy. Everything was modern and up-to-date. No big Gold furniture; all things that you could use in a home today and not attract any attention.

They had a Telephone connection, with a little switch thing on it that they could connect with the Opera and hear everything.

They had even the Children’s colored Easter eggs, and dozens of pictures of them on their Ponies and in sleighs. Pictures in all kinds of little silver and some just ordinary cheap frames.

In the Czarina’s bedroom the ceiling and the Tapestries are covered with some sort of blue floral design. Her devoutly religious nature shows very plainly by the fact that the rooms are full of Icons and many images of Saints. There were lots of little personal keepsakes that had been given by friends. In the drawing-room is some Louie the 14th furniture given them as a wedding present by King Edward. The Czar’s rooms is just about what you would see in a Gentleman’s Apartment today only a great many Japanese things--gifts received on a visit of his to the Far Fast.

It looked like these folks, when they got away from the pomp and parade of appearing in public, tried to live like human beings. It was so simple and modest that I doubt if any Oil millionaire or a Moving Picture Star would have lived in it without having it redone.

There is one thing that this Soviet outfit has certainly done, and that is go in strong for Museums. I think there is some 700 museums in the various Cities and towns. They are trying to develop Art, and they have some of the most wonderful art treasures in the world. You see, they not only have the State but all the private collections of all the rich nobility that have had it handed down in families for dozens of generations.

Now I don’t know just how far that Art thing is going to get them. I am not so strong on art myself as a commodity. I think most countries have kinder overestimated the importance of our Artists and underestimated the importance of people that did something to help provide Corn Bread and Bacon and cheapen the things we had to have. Athens, Greece, was mangy with Art. Now they ain’t eating regular. Rome had nothing to recommend it but art and broken columns till Mussolini come along and made ’em all throw their paintbrushes in the Tiber and go to work at something productive.

So, after looking over Russia, I believe there is a hundred things I could think of to improve them with besides Art. Russians need meat right now worse than they do naked Statues. The thing about all these Museums is, when you have gone through one of them you have gone through all of them. You take the Hermitage in Leningrad--which, by the way, is one of the most famous museums in the World; it’s right next to the Czar’s Palace and had an entrance from the Palace. You take it and the Louvre and the Metropolitan in New York, and the big ones in Rome and London--they give the ordinary man just about all the art he can digest in one lifetime.

Russia don’t need to develop so many men who can paint or sculpture a beautiful, well-rounded human body. What they need is somebody that can provide the wherewith to fill out that well-rounded body. Los Angeles got the right idea. Instead of having seven hundred Museums, they got seven thousand filling stations. If you got a big family, art is all right for one son to indulge in; but you want to have the other 12 to bring home some revenue and feed him and humor him. It should only be indulged in by every 13th member of a family, and then only after unanimous consent and sacrifice of the other 12.

Now we go into the Red Museum, which is part of the Palace. Oh, Baby, talk about a Chamber of Horrors! Huber’s Museum and Madam Tussaud’s waxworks would be children’s nurseries in comparison to this blood-and-thunder outfit. It was founded in 1921 and everything in it is connected with revolutions; not only Russian Revolutions but anybody else that happened to have had a good bloody Revolution and had any old Guns or Bombs or skulls or anything that would make particular decorative atmosphere.

On account of its short life, they make apologies for the small amount of material. But I couldent see any need too. It looked to me like they had done pretty well, and the only way they could get any more horrors in there would be to get some more people killed. So I think in the Revolutionary Museum line they can well report Progress. They can just load up the old Bombs they got there now and blow up half of Europe.

As you enter, there will be a wax-size figure of an old boy with a Bomb drawn back just ready to shy it at a Czar out on a Balcony. Then there are big loud-colored paintings all over the walls that look like Movie Lithographs, showing Cossacks charging Women and Children and cutting them down. There are dozens of photographs and oil paintings of any Red that ever got his man; court-room trials; every Pistol or saber that ever dropped a Czar or a Capitalist in his tracks. One sees all the episodes of the Dekabrists’ trial. They were the ones to originate the idea of not letting the Czars sleep too well. It contains all the scenery and props in connection with the murder of Alexander II. Rows of special show cases contain bombs to fit any hand.

Rooms were made up to represent cells where revolutionists have been confined; room after room of somebody either being killed or somebody getting ready to kill somebody else. One room is devoted to Lenin, called Lenin’s Corner, where all kinds of material in his private and political life is exhibited.

Now we went through there on a Sunday morning, and we couldent hardly wedge our way through. The man with us was an Englishman, but spoke good Russian, and he described to us what was going on. It was Teachers taking young children through and stopping and lecturing to them: “Here is Kzolxsvlozxusz. He had the best record of any of the late bomb heavers. It’s through him you are enjoying this wonderful liberty that you are having today.”

Of all the Museums, this Revolutionary one was the one that they were centering the attention of the smaller ones on. You did not see nearly as many looking at the beautiful paintings by the old masters as you did looking at the old guns that had their notches in the handles.

It seems the whole idea of Communism, or whatever they want to call it, is based on propaganda and blood. Their whole life and thought is to convince somebody else. It looks to me like if a thing is so good and is working so fine for you, you would kind of want to keep it to yourself. I would be afraid to let anybody in on it, and that generally seems to be about the usual brand of human nature everywhere. But the Communist has so many good things he just wants you to join in and help him use some of them.

They start at the cradle with them in Russia. They have a great many schools in Russia, which seem intended not so much to eliminate illiteracy as they are to teach propaganda. Political propaganda starts with their A B C’s. Their statistics prove that they are now operating many more schools than in prewar days. There is no such thing as a private school allowed in Russia. They have agricultural schools for the peasant children in some places. They have craft schools which give professional education in different branches to over one hundred thousand people annually. There are 24 universities. The number of High School students is given as 160,000.

They are trying to foster art and culture, but all of it is of the Revolutionary type. If it is a painting, the main character has one foot on a capitalist’s neck and is punching another capitalist in the jaw. But the main thing that dominates this whole thing is to spread propaganda. Talk about some of our states guarding what their school-books contain--these children never get a chance to read anything only about how terrible everything is but Communism.

You can’t go to a bookstore and buy any book you want. Every book that is sold in Russia has to be O. K.’d by the Soviet party. You can’t buy outside newspapers, and every paper printed in Russia is under the supervision of the government. So you have got to learn their angle or you don’t learn anything--there is nothing else for you to form an opinion about.

They have quite a few community playgrounds and there is bunches of them out there practicing all kinds of games. But they don’t allow competition between different teams in Athaletic events. They don’t have big intersectional games between different clubs or schools; they claim that is against true communism; that if you defeat your fellow man it might make him think he was not as good as you, and they don’t want to leave that impression. If that was the way we looked at it over home, imagine how poor Harvard would feel. They would be so low down socially that they would be practically vacant.