The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 1, 1924, Page 6

Today’sInstallment of “A Week” | By IURY LIBEDINSKY Published by THE DAILY WORK- ER thru special arrangement with B. W. Huebsch, Inc., of New York City. Coyprighted, 1923, by B. W. Huebsch & Co. * * * a (WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE) The Russian Communist Party branch is governing this frontier eity. and fighting the counter- revolution. Earlier installments telt of the fuel shortage that pre- vents seed grain from being fetched on the railroad. The Party meeting decides to send the Red Army far away for fuel, at the risk of leaving the city open for bandits and counter-revolutionists. It also decides to conscript the local bourgeoisie for wood cutting in a near-by park. Varied types of party members are flashed cn the screen: Klimin, the efficient president of the branch, who still finds time to have a sweetheart; Robeiko, the consumptive, whose devotion is killing him; Gernuikh, the brilliant youth of 19 on the Cheka; Matusenko, the luxury- loving place-hunter and Stalmak- hoy, a practical workingman revo- lutionist. Last issue- brings the startling news that Serezha Suri- kov, a chekist had been buried alive by counter-revolutionists, far out on the Steppes. Klimin and Stalmakhov talk of their friend who was too sensitive and tender hearted for the stern work of the revolution. In this issue Klimin reads a farewell letter from Suri- kov, written before his capture by the enemy.— (NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY). * s * *€ CHAPTER VIII. Reser! finished reading and rested his head on his hands. “Tt is painful for me,” he said. “for I feel myself to blame for his death. I always valued him high- ly, and he was one of the best political workers in the Division. He went fearlessly into bayonet attacks with the Red Army men, and, in a moment of panic, kept people from running away, Thefe were few such Communists as_ he among the youth of the Party. But for a Chekist’s work he was al- together too nervous, and I dver- estimated him when I took him to work in the Cheka. Much in his letter I do not understand, and much is simply wrong. Take his attitude towards shooting: altho the bourgeoisie describe Klimin as a cannibal, every shooting leaves me with a feeling actually physi- cally unpleasant, like the feeling you have in childhood when some sort of evil impulse makes you squash and tease flies on the win- dow pane. . . . And I have always been conscious of the blood, the sufferings, the groans, and prob- ably always shall be conscious of them. But he worked like a man under a spell. And only sudden- ly, somehow, came to see the hor- rors of a shooting, shivered and was done for. Whereas I, if I do not fall ill, know that I ‘shall ep on shooting, without end, just so long as the revolution needs it. ... I’m sorry for that fellow.” “After all, he was an intellec- tual,” said Stalmakhov quietly. “I do not mean to say anything against him, for there are intel- lectuals of more than one kind, some like him, useful and neces- sary to the Party. But I do dis- ; like all that talk, Commdnism, for and against Communism. ek ae Communism some sort of philos- ophy? What is there in it to be talked about? You know, for me, it is a friendly word. “And in all my life there have been only two such friendly words, that and the word ‘nurse’; I nam- ed my sister so. My parents died early; I don’t remember them, but know only that my father was a shoemaker, and that I was left with a sister, a dozen years older than I. She loved me caressed me, and gave me the best bits. Her face was not beautiful, wrink- led and yellow, like an old wom- an’s, but for me it was the prettiest in the world. I was just fourteen - when she died during an epidemic of cholera, and from that time on -I had no friendly word, just as I had no friendly place or home, ce ate: | What Do You Think of The DAILY WORKER wants to know what its readers, \ think of the first serial novel it offers to its readers. “A Week” We have already published three installments of this gripping story. Another appears today. What do you think of the story, its. setting’, its characters, as far as we have gone? We want our readers to let us know. Write down your views and send them in to the DAILY WORKER, 1640 N. Halsted St., Chicago, Ill. We will publish as many of these letters as we can find space for: Don’t delay. Write today. ~~ ©Until the actual revolution, ten years later, I grew up in the streets. . Cleansed boots. Sold newspapers, ... Worked as a lad in a tailor’s, a bookbinder’s, and then in a printing shop. Wander- ed about all over Russia. How did I live thru it without dying of hunger? Why did I not turn into a drunken beggar? I don’t know. “But the moment the revolution started, it was as if some- one said to me, ‘Well, Stalmakhov, your life is just beginning. Take it.’ I was then working as a post- man in a little town in the South, and you know, going from one to another of those snug little houses, listening hGw fhose philistine swine rejoiced at the ‘bloodless’ revolu- tion, that had come by accident, I wanted to shout at them, ‘It’s not your revolution. . .. You waited for it with full stémachs, but it found me, Stalmakhov, hungry and cold in the road. It brings release to me, and not only release, but also the chance of emptying on some one all the hate piled up in me by my past life.’ How I hated at that time! .. . All the well-fed, the bourgeois, the merchants, teachers, doctors, offi- cers, and most of all that cursed ordinary middle class person. I did my hating in the revolution before ever I started to love. “And only later, after I had been beaten for Bolshevik agita- tion, after in Moscow in October I had taken part in the storming of the Kremlin and the shooting of the Junkers, when I was still not in the Party, and did not un- derstand anything of politics, then, in moments of weariness a prom- ise of rest began to glimmer be- fore me, far away. ... Like the Kingdom of Heaven for the peas- ant, far away, but promised abso- lutely, if not to me then to those who are to come, to my sons or grandsons. . .. And that will be Communism. “What it will be like, I don’t know. . .. Not long ago I took up a book by a man called Bellamy, about Communism, something in the way of a fairy story, and I disliked it so much that I did not read it to the end. Much too much like what things are now, and I feel that it will be so dif- ferent that it’s hard for us even to imagine it. But, when my head is muddied and tired, when work goes badly, when somebody ought to be shot and sometimes you don’t rightly know why, then in. my mind, I just think my friendly word, Communism .. . and it’s as if some one were went to me with a handkerchief. “There’s a fellow in ‘the Polit- dep ... Martuinov.. I heard him lecture. A clever chap, spoke al- ways to the point and so that one could understand. And about the Communist Society—just as if he’d been there! But I saw him work, in the house-to-house search and . .. even to talk of “it: is unpleasant. I saw that he and all his talk were not worth a farth- ing. Surikov, of course, was nat like that. He gave his life for the Revolution. And yet he could so easily £0 off inte philosophy like that. “Yes, a8 is true,” said Klimin. “We, workmen, somehow take the Revolution differently. +» « Not long ago I had a talk with a com- rade, also an intellectual, .°. . About the refectory for the re- sponsible workers. He was arguing that the refectory ought to be closed. And in his argument the line of his thinking was like this: the Revolution demands of us that we should keep within the general ration, if only of a skilled work- man. (The skilled workmen got more than the rest during the ra- tioning period.) I did not reason so: we are the ess re moa: we. i what we call at meetings the _ ward, the advanced guards. If ine one of us, who are carrying on a big work, is to hunger and weaken and break down, of course there will soon be an end of our advanced guards; it’s as simple as that! But then, for the intellec- tuals, the Revolution is something outside, a liftle God demanding sacrifices, but for me, for example . I can say something like what some king or other said, ‘The State . that’s me.’” " He laughed. By MAX BARTHEL (Berlin). _- Germany plunged with its laboring folk Down into the deepest hell, Men and women die, and old people, The asylums are full and the prisons le Tubercular and starved.are the Ger- ean children, : Infants moan in bare rooms! Intelligence stands with its knowledge before the naked Yoid. © Before starvation there are cruel tor- ments in Germany. The people can no longer cry from unger. The’ laboring masses are exhausted; They are defeated, in misery, in chains; : Every day brings new torments, new misfortune. We fl upon the comrades of other Whe work and know. what Need We at: po % women and mothers, too, and all those Whose heart still glows for wnde- served misery. We call to those who have worked all their life long; They have drudged with fists _and mind, 83 te have fought desperately for ex- JAN ps ve red stripes of defeat. Yesterday we helped Russia, Bul- garia, Japan; oday we carry our love into the heart of Germany. Do not a” you fr s of distant The bread is poisoned which uselessly decays, You oor ag comrades of England and ussia, Strong iron men in the United States, Miners of “Australia, of France, And you comrades all of other lands: Help! -" See, we want brother to hel brother, That all those who work — ¢ scige at last set up brotherhood upon Thats slaver: sha (Translated from the German.) - Res. Phone Crawford 0331 “Well, well, it’s getting dark, and I promised to. go somewhere, + + » Goodbye, Stalmakhov, I beg you, find Karauloy, or telephone to him... . I know you'll do your best to find him. Perhaps we shall really have to call the Communist Company to arms... . So you'll do it.” - ; “Tl do it.” They shook hands warmly and separated, And no sooner was Stalmakhov out of sight than Klimin was thinking, with intense, eager de- light, of how he was just going to see Aniuta. This delight pushed its way thru care and worry, like the Spring grass thru the last thin erust of ice and the cold black earth. It was sad that Surikov had been killed, and Gornuikh’s gloomy prognostications kept con- tinually floating into Klimin’s tired rain, Aniuta was waiting for him on the terrace. He walked thru the little garden. The sun was red- dening the west, mist was rising from the thawing black earth, and the trees were as if recovering from an illness. From far away she noticed the nervous twitching of his tired, thoughtful face. He came up to the terrace, and ten-, derly stroked her soft hair. She rose from her chair, took his hand and, giving him a firm handshake, asked gently, intimately, “What is the matter with you? What' has upset you? She walked after him into the room and sat on a chair opposite him while he, just as he was, without taking his coat off, threw himself on the sofa, and lay back with his hands behind — his head. “Nothing,” he abruptly replied. It was the first time that she had seen him upset. At work she had known him sometimes wor- ried and stern, sometimes very angry, but never gloomy. “He does not want to say,” she thought and she was unhappy. Hitherto she had not thought of her love for Klimin, and had never sought it, just as she did not seek luxurious life, delicate food or fine clothes, but accepted: everything just as it was. But now, seeing the suffering on the face of this man who was dear to her, and feel- ing her powerlessness to hel Ayo in® his suffering, she came conscious of her love any tha and at once his aloofness hurt her. Both were silent, and in that watchful silence he suddenly felt that she was hurt. (To Be Continued Monday) PHOTOGRAPHY 12” $15 BERTRAM DORIEN BASABE. 1009 N. STATE ST. PHONE. SUPERIOR 196! OPEN ON SUNDAY 12 TO 52M. Violin . 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