The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 23, 1924, Page 7

On My Way to Soviet Russia | | By ANNA PORTER. HREE days out toward Russia, and things are livening up a little. The sea, which was so quiescent that it seemed a camouflaged’ affair, on which, after a few placid rounds, we should tie up again under the statute of Liberty, is now showing itself in the character of a “mighty monster, tossing us about drunkenly and drenching the decks with sudden un- expected swashes. But we have our sea-legs on, Our sailing seemed problematical for awhile. Harold Ware, who is tak- ing his group out to the Ukraine, for his most interesting agricultural pro- ject; and who is experienced in threading red-tape labyrinths, was in- defatigable and more than humanly good-natured in pursuing vises back and forth and around, thru and over and under, between Chicago, Montreal and New York and da capo. And fi- nally the last photograph was pasted and the last seal set, and our entry into the promised land assured. My own experience would suggest to other applicants that if they wish to go next year, they must begin last year at latest to make applications. It was mere chance that I made con- nections which gave me_ entrance with this group, after three years’ ef- fort to ebtain an individual permit. This is an unpretentious little boat and by no means crowded. At our first step at Copenhagen, we lose our Danish passengers; next, at Danzig, the Germans and Poles disembark: and there the rest of us_must trans- fer for Libau to take train for Riga and Moscow, with probably some days’ delay at each place. In New York, at the party bookstore, the Comrade in charge said to me, “You are the third today to come in and tell me you are sailing for Russia Saturday,” and so today I, looked up Esther Mar in the unit for Kusbas, in order to send greetings to our California group out there. I did not exactly look her up either, for a few of us had been mys- teriously beckoned and led by devious decks and gangways to the deserted second cabin, where we held a meet- ing, called and chairmaned by one of the Kusbas group, whd wished to unite the three “strata” on board, in the interest of raising money by a concert for some penniless deportees being sent back in our boat,—a woman with two small children, who was not allowed to join her husband, and an old couple whose son had sent for them . good faith. It is no use go- ing into the reasons, which as in most cases, seem to be quite unjustifiable. Committees were appointed, and we closed the meeting with the “Interna- tional” and the “Red Flag,” while one Comrade waved a red bandana with the hammer and sickle imprint. It was a most interesting group who met there, Russians going home and those visiting for the first time the country they were born in and had left as children. The most eminent, a Russian professor, Dr. Tutyshkyn, who has been lecturing in America for ten months in the interest of international science, is a scientist of the highest standing. With his family, he lived thru the Revolution in Moscow, and seems to be one of those rare intel- lectuals whose poise was undisturbed by the shifting of foundations, and who has continued, “above the bat- tle,” to pursue his constructive way in the midst of change and destruction. Whatever his original reaction may have been, he now evidently under- stands and sympathizes with the So- viet aspirations, as it would seem every scientist must if he has intellec- tual independence and integrity. He is of our group since his introduction on the wharf, and he and the Hilco- vits brothers make a brilliant trio. The Professor and Dr. Hilcovitz have volunteered to teach us Russian, but as both are very positive and dominat- ing personalities, and as they disagree with good-natured determination as to method, one is to have us at 10 a.m. and the other at five. The Professor wishes it to be competitive with the same classes, The Doctor contends that this is no test. When you experiment with guinea-pigs, he says, you divide them into groups, for you cannot make both tests with the game guinea-pigs. But the guinea-pigs in this case, not being interested in professorial experi- ments, decided the question by insist- ing on being innoculated with both methods, hoping one or the other »{may “take.” These first evenings on a Summer sea, we have been entertained—or not —by movies on deck. Last night we had a fine labor play. Wicked Corpo- ration ptosecuted and wickedness ex- tracted. Strikes—with foreign agita- tors. bombs and bootleggers. Agitator's boomerang returns in form of ruined his fascinating personal ‘story. After a year and a half in this country, where he has met with success as a musician, he has found nevertheless that he does not fit into our American life, and is returning to his own ideal- Listie society. His father was killed in the 1905 revolution, leaving in the South Ukraine, the mother with 14 young children. He was put into an orphan home where he had a chance to study the ’cello. Tis mother took all the children she could manage, to New York, leaving him at 12 years to support two younger ones by his mu- sic. Then came the*war and the Revo- lution. He joined the Red Army and was kept in Moscow, living with Lun- NEGRO AT COMMUNIST CONGRESS Comrade Leunion, representative of French Colonial Negroes, at Fifth Congress of the Communist International, is shown here resting on the ancient throne of the Moscow Czars in the Kremlin. sister. The noble son of the Corpora- tion persuades the strikers, with much arm-flinging, that votes are bet- ter than violence, and they return to work, while he keeps his promise to— it is not clear just what,—but his re- ward is a beautiffl wife, a “Rolls- Royec” and a terraced garden with fountains, while the reformed agitator grins benevolently his blessing. We also had Charlie Chaplin in “The Im- migrant” and perhaps the deportees were among the privileged to enjoy the “comedy.” It was funny yes— and sentimental, but I hope they all found something besides, even tho in this film as in the other, the problem seemed satisfactorily solved by the lucky fortune of the one and silence concerning the many at Ellis Island. A Few Days Later. The mighty monster is still rampant. and sea-legs do not avail. Most of us are up and down. Carrying a cup of tea to my cabin, companion feels ex- actly like Charlie Chaplin in his un- steadiest farce. Today we have the encouraging word that we are in the midst of a storm, “and going fa the same direction and with the same ve- locity.” Several Party members have introduced themselves to me, some in the Kusbas group, and I have met ané talked with other passengers for Rus- sia, going over for individual reasons, and these individual reasons are what interest me most. I have spent ‘the morning withayoung Rusian ’cellist, forgetting my physical discomfort in acharsky and teaching for two years in kindergarten. When he returned to the Ukraine, himself but 18, his two young brothers had been killed fight- ing in the Revolutionary Army. Later he helped organize and became first *cellist and soloist in the Moscow Sym- phony Orchestra, playing also for opera and ballet, and tells with pleas- ure of playing in the Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony for Isadora Duncan’s dance interpretation. This type of dancing is to him far_more interesting than the classic Russian ballet, but he feels disappointment at the limited progress of this school in the direction of modern revolutionary interpreta- tion. This young fellow from the most oppressed class of any country, has a face of real classic beauty of the Jewish type, regular and finely cut, with fresh coloring and a high- bred, intellectual spirited expression. His wife was first dancer in the bal- let corps, and with his lithe slimness, one wonders that he too was not lured into that art. A useful member of our American Communist Party’is going over to see if he can find a place of usefulness there, when he will sen for his wife and children and settle down. An- other, unattached, and not officially a Communist, but who answers _gladly to the title of Comrade, is going for the same purpose, having brother and sister there who have urged him to come and see for himself what the Soviets are doing. He is more inter- ested than informed, and as he is an indefatigable helpinthe Russian lan- guage, and several of us are indefag- itable propagandists, and as Russis itself is the best confirmation of our assertions, it is hoped he will come home—or stay—as entirely won over as Harold Ware's first contingent. One of his group of youn Dakota farmers, who went over hopelessly ignorant and seemingly incorrigible, came back an ardent convert, and gave a most convincing practical talk before a large committee, of varied sympathies, at St. Paul. That is the double ao complishment of many of these indus- trial projects,—they help the Russians and they educate us. Most of all he appreciated the education given the workers of Russia, and regretted his own inadequate command of language in trying to give an idea of his experi- ence over there. To return to our pas- sengers, both these young Russians are fine, energetic, wide-awake and well-educated“feHows, able to give ef- ficient service to Russia, and as both are Jews, it is natural that they should feel an enthusiasm for the only coun- try in which the Jew is accepted on his merits, and hardly with a consci- ousness as to whether he is Jew or Gentile. Another passenger, a band-master of fifty or more, is returning to his fam- ily after eleven years in America, dat- ing from the year before the war. His wife, it seems, has well-off connec- tions and “Nep” inclinations, but he has told her not a cent that he sends her is to be used in making more money. From Germany, he will take musical instruments as a gift to Rus- sia. His young daughter, tho able to go to a “Nep” school, scorns to do so, and his son writes him that there are millions of youths like himself ready to die for the Russian idea. And so it seems that both the young and the older are rapidly coming under the new influence, some in the midst of the marvel of reconstruction—some in- spired from abroad, in spite of all dis- couraging propaganda. July 16th. . Mail goes off tonight from Copen- hagen, where we merely anchor and send off the Danish passengers. Our concert was a great success both ar- tistically and financially. Our young ‘cellist and a forcer counter-revolu- tionary Russian violinist playing amic- ably together. This artist fought in the White Army in Russia, and was twice “stood up against a wall,” but now he thanks the Bolsheviks aboard for a complete conversion, and says that if Russia would pardon him and invite him as an artist, he would rejoice in giving his art for a mere living, and_renounce hope of further Ameri- can profits. Indeed, it is remarkable what this small group—lI include all radicals aboard the boat—has acom- plished in winning sympathy and in- terest for Russia. The concert was preceded by the traditional “Captain’s dinner” and followed by dancing and punch into the small hours. Inciden- tally, we collected a good sum to send the heart-sick deportees “back where they came from,” to use the hospit- able phrase so popular in the U.S.A. The guinea-pigs were not in- noculated after all, by either method, for with so many brilliant minds on board—not least in debate, Comrade Coleman’s,—a series of discussions de- veloped in a broad range of subjects, and raged daily in the bar-room. In the course of these, a reactionary American lawyer expounded ably capitalist law, tho he did not call it that, and barred the word “economic” from the discussion; and it took some ingenuity for a radical to avoid the word and “get over” his points. Some of us inferior people—this is not the mock-humility ft may sound— feel as if we have been having a lib- eral Summer University course. And it is a new and pleasurable sensation for radicals to be in a numerically equal position, where the other side is inclined to listen with more or less respect, not being in a position to sup- press us, and not afraid to let us talk. Later, I want to write something of the Ware project.