Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Yet she, too, stood up and applauded when he resumed his seat in the old Imperial box for the next act of the opera. Conquering her distaste for the Internationale, she sang along with everyone else. 36But the mood passed, and she was glad to leave Russia with the rest of the delegation at the end of their lengthy trip. Their departure was not uniformly easy. According to H. V. Keeling, some of them were compelled to sign a form promising not to attack the Soviet communists or else they would not be allowed to leave the country. 37Clifford Allen’s case was still more serious since he had fallen ill with pneumonia, exacerbated by the fact that he already suffered from TB, but his exit visa request was refused. Russell and Haden Guest pleaded with Chicherin. There was then a furious row because Chicherin insisted on Allen being examined by two Soviet doctors who would not be available for a couple more days. Russell recalled: ‘At the height of the quarrel, on a staircase, I indulged in a shouting match because Chicherin had been a friend of my Uncle Rollo and I had hopes of him. I shouted that I should denounce him as a murderer.’ Russell fancifully suspected that the Soviet authorities believed that the anti-Bolsheviks among the delegates wanted Allen to die en route to Britain so that he could not deliver a favourable report on Bolshevik rule.

The dispute resolved, the entire delegation made its way back to Britain where a meeting of welcome was held at the Albert Hall in London and Margaret Bondfield spoke of being impressed by ‘the stupendous nature of the drama’ of the communist revolution. 38A brisk discussion ensued over the next few weeks. The Social-Democratic Federation announced disapproval of Soviet tyranny: ‘[The] realization of Socialism is only possible on the basis of democracy. Every other path leads to ruin.’ Mrs Snowden added: ‘When you get down to the bottom the dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of about six men aided by an extraordinary commission.’ 39She rushed a booklet into print:

Do not, gentle visitor, when you meet the great man, fall victim to this twinkling eye and make the mistake of thinking it betokens a tender spirit. I am sure Lenin is the kindest and gentlest of men in private relationships; but when he mentioned his solution of the peasant problem the merry twinkle had a cruel glint which horrified. 40

On the other side stood Messrs Purcell, Skinner, Turner, Wallhead and Williams, who appealed to trade unionists to refuse to produce anything for use against Soviet Russia. 41Purcell called on skilled workers to volunteer for work there. 42John Clarke declared that Mrs Snowden was too middle class to understand the October Revolution and its greatness; he likened her to an ‘abandoned strumpet, harlot, and prostitute of the streets [who] sells her voluptuous merchandise to the very beings who disease her’. 43

The dispute intrigued H. G. Wells, who made his own journey of exploration in September 1920. As a friend of Maxim Gorki he could count on a warm reception and Gorki lent him his assistant Moura Benckendorff — Lockhart’s lover in 1918 — as an interpreter. He was fed and watered to his satisfaction; 44and his speech to the Petrograd Soviet was reported in Pravda , presumably because he called for Russia to be left without foreign interference. 45When Wells interviewed Lenin, they talked about the future of Russian towns, Russian electricity and a little about Russian peasants. 46Such topics did not unduly threaten the intellectual defences of the ‘dreamer in the Kremlin’. Whereas Wells would snipe at Russell for over-dramatizing his account, he himself missed a chance to put Lenin under serious scrutiny.

Another Briton, the sculptor Clare Sheridan, was more perceptive when meeting Soviet leaders. She had long felt a penchant for Russia: ‘I was insatiably interested, I loved Slavs, Slav music, Slav literature, Slav art and decoration, and had always, since childhood, been drawn to Russia.’ She regarded Russians as ‘the most mystic, the most barbarous and the most romantic’ people in the entire universe. In August 1920, she made the acquaintance of Lev Kamenev in London. Unencumbered by his wife’s company on his British trip and amiably fluent in French, he offered to sit for her and they hit it off splendidly. 47An adventurous widow, she showed him the sights of the capital, taking him to the Tate Gallery and Hampstead Heath. With plenty of free time, Sheridan also escorted him to Hampton Court where they spent the evening on the river. Kamenev invited her to the Café Royal and to the Ritz before suggesting:

‘Why don’t you come to Russia?’

‘How can I?’ I asked. And he made the wondrous reply:

‘I will take you with me when I go, and I will get Lenin and Trotzki [ sic ] to sit to you.’ 48

The fact that it would be a paid assignment was an additional attraction for Sheridan, who had debts at the time. She readily agreed, needing only to work out where to deposit her children before departure. 49

The one person she had to keep this secret from was her cousin Winston Churchill. At a recent lunch with her, he had exclaimed that Bolshevism was a crocodile and that ‘either you must shoot it, or else make a detour round it so as not to rouse it’. 50Sheridan quietly used her personal contacts in the Foreign Office to get visas for Norway and Sweden. Kamenev and the Soviet group — accompanied by Sheridan — made their way by train to the Newcastle ferry. 51In Norway, Maxim Litvinov held things up, suspecting that she was a spy. 52Not only was she a close relative of the West’s great Red-baiter but she also had no record of involvement in radical politics. But Kamenev would not be put off and when Ivy Litvinov made friends with her and chatted about common friends, Maxim relented. 53

In Moscow, Sheridan was given rooms in the sumptuous mansion built by the Kharitonenko family on Sophia Embankment on the opposite side of the River Moskva from the Kremlin. 54(It became the British Embassy in 1931.) It had been sequestrated by the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, and among the other foreigners staying there at the time were H. G. Wells, Washington B. Vanderlip and Theodore Rothstein. 55Sheridan finished several fine busts — those of Lenin, Zinoviev and Dzerzhinski were outstanding; but it was Trotsky who most appealed to her. She was not the first British woman to succumb to his charisma; even Ethel Snowden had been won over: ‘Physically he was a remarkably fine-looking man; a Jew, dark and keen, with penetrating eyes, and a quiet manner suggestive of enormous reserves of strength. He was in an officer’s uniform which fitted him extremely well.’ 56At first, though, Trotsky was standoffish toward Sheridan until Litvinov secured his co-operation. 57Sheridan had got accustomed to things being cancelled or delayed in Moscow and was consequently surprised when Trotsky’s official car arrived to pick her up at the appointed time. She later heard an apocryphal story that Trotsky had shot an unpunctual chauffeur with his own revolver. She was delayed by a punctilious sentry at the entrance to the building, which made her late through no fault of her own. This did not save her from being rebuked, albeit not executed, by the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs.

He soon became charm incarnate and obviously liked being sculpted. The fact that the artist was a glamorous, uninhibited woman was a further stimulus:

He looked up suddenly and stared back, a steady unabashed stare. After a few seconds I said I hoped he did not mind. His galanterie was almost French!

‘I do not mind. I have my revanche in looking at you et c’est moi qui gagne! ’

He then pointed out that he was quite asymmetrical, and snapped his teeth to show that his underjaw was crooked. He had a cleft in his chin, nose and brow, as if his face had been moulded and the two halves had not been accurately joined. Full face he was Mephisto, his eyebrows slanted upwards, and the lower part of his face tapered into a pointed and defiant beard. His eyes were much talked of; they had a curious way of lighting up and flashing like an electric spark; he was alert, active, observant, moqueur , with a magnetism to which he must have owed his unique position. 58