Dreiser's Russian Diary

Theodore Dreiser, Thomas P. Riggio, James L. W. West, III, Thomas P. Riggio, James L. W. West III

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780812292381
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Theodore Dreiser's Russian Diary is an extended record of the American writer's travels throughout the Soviet Union in 1927-28. Dreiser was initially invited to Moscow for a week-long observance of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. He asked, and was granted, permission to make an extended tour of the country.This previously unpublished diary is a firsthand record of life in the USSR during the 1920s as seen by a leading American cultural figure. It is a valuable primary source, surely among the last from this period of modern history.

MOSCOW

Friday. Nov 4-1927 In Russia

6 AM It is snowing out. The north seems addicted to a small guttered or shallow wagon and a single horse. As in Norway they protect the railroad tracks from snow in winter by growing hedges or placing fences on either side. In so far as I can see, these are the true people of Russias great writers—Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoievsky & Saltykov.¹ One sees their types everywhere—the heavy & yet shrewd peasents; the self-concerned and even now, under communism, rather authoritative petty officials (Railroad conductors, station masters, etc.) I see a peasent in a ragged coat & cap go by & he lifts his cap to a depot official I see them—working classes deliberately & rather stodgily doing this or that. That quick, nervous energy which one often sees even in the commonest of American laborers is wanting here.

It is 2³⁰ and we are to arrive at 3. Some French communists in the next compartment are obviously preparing an address to the fellow-internationals in Moscow and have borrowed my fountain pen where with to do it. I hear “confreres” with the peculiarly French intonation. Also “Vive la Commune”—and “capital” accented in a purely French way. They are going to have a grand time when they get there. And then Moscow itself. Not very impressive. On a distant road—as seen from the train—a bus. And outside the town some small new dwellings. As the train stops, a band playing what I learn is the red—or international song.² And a most uninspired thing it is. Next addresses—perhaps among them—the one I heard being composed. But special agents (two jews by the way) find me & lead me off to an automobile and the Grand Hotel near the Red Square.³ But the wretched collection of autos in front of this station. The shabbiest Georgia or Wyoming town would outclass them. And the people! This mixture of Europeans & Asiatics! International Asiatic life mixed with some Europeans. One gets a sense of strangeness and delapidation, — old—and not so pleasingly constructed stores mingled with exotic theatres, halls & most of all churches. An aged Luna Park.⁴

I settle in room 112—on the second floor: rococo and shabby grand. But said to be high in price. Almost instantly Mr. Dinamov of the government publishing house & what I take to be his young mistress arrive.⁵ They are over alive with a sense of obligation. I am exotically important in their eyes. Ah, will I have this and will I have that. Whom will I see? Whom meet? And I am wondering who will meet me. But a list is made. As we talk the representative of the Chicago Daily News arrives. He comes to offer the use of his stenographer, his papers & books. He has a room in the same hotel. Some ten minutes later Scott Nearing, who has crossed Asia & the Pacific, walks in.⁶ He wishes to be of service—to “wise me up” on Russia & promises to be on my right hand. And then Messrs Biedenkapp and Kreat—the one the representative of the International Workers Aid of America—the other the same of France. They wish to be of service in laying out a plan for me. And after them the representative of the Associated Press. He wishes to send off a cable and invite me to a party. I decide to accept for this coming week. At 10—roughly I am done—call for food & eat while the telephone bell rings in vain. Later I frame questions which might be asked of Stalin. Write three letters, among them one to Helen—and turn in. I have seen nothing resembling red slippers in Moscow as yet.

Saturday, Nov. 5-1927 - Hotel Grand, Moscow

Positively the Russians are a strange and wonderful people. I have spent a half day in their principal and severest prison. It was Biendenkapp who arranged this for me—a small, aggressive, self-opinionated & almost pushing person—but well meaning (I think) and rather pro-communist, or imagines that he is. He comes at 9¹⁵ AM. to tell me that I must not miss this. It will illustrate the communistic idea of crime, punishment and reformation. And truly it did . . . . . . . In a taxi with three others and an interpreter I rode to the

prison.⁷ Laid out like the letter K with five tiers of cells—one above the other. The smell. The cells. Yet all a great improvement on what was in the days of the Czar. All underground cells abandoned & turned into work rooms with textile machinery. The old central chapel with sealed booths, through a small slot in which a prisoner could only peek at the priest & the services, turned into a public hall for prisoners where cinema and other entertainments are given. No more solitary comfinement in the old sense. Only five grades of punishment—as follows:

—The barber was a murderer here for ten years. The head chef—also a murderer. One of the interesting prisoners was an old & rather simple looking and yet perhaps crafty Russian who in the Czars day had been an “Agent Provacture”. On the one hand he had joined the Nihilists and helped on a plot to blow up the Czars train which failed—but in which attempt he took part—or was supposed to. On the other hand after the Czar was slain & the secret records of the police opened by the Reds, it appeared that this man had been in the pay of the police and had helped to egg on the Nihilists for cash. All this he told in answer to questions put by our guide at the prompting of various sightseers. And he told it all quite simply and directly. Was he sorry? he was asked. Yes. He had been mistaken. Had the Soviet treated him fairly, since the discovery of his crime? Yes. Was the prison life here fair—humane? Very. When would he be free? In six years. “They should have shot the bloody bastard” said an Englishman behind me.

There was another interesting prisoner, a Russian small village priest. With another man he plotted the murder of a man and carried it out. He was sentenced to 10 years—the maximum sentence under the new law. But him! A character out of Opera Bouffé. A Cambodian! A Korean with a high straw hat—the size & shape of a silk dicer—& this set on top of some kind of a yellow silk head band. And a long, dirty ragged & yet swathing coat—but on the order of a linen duster. And the pale, weak eyes. A strangely Chinese-like face & figure.—and yet what—lunatic, zealot, neurotic dreamer? Possibly & possibly not. Russian jurists today are extremely careful students of neuroses of all kinds & their relations to crime . . . . . . Through the interpreter I talk to him. His voice & gestures indicated a chemical cosmos so remote from my own that it was as though I were talking to a being from another. Dostoievsky in his most erratic psychologic divagations never evolved a more unbelievable figure or temperament than this. Yes—he had been a priest in a village 300 miles away. It was true he was accused of murder—he and another citizen. But his accusers were mistaken. And for how long had he been sentenced? Ten years. And would be shortened by labor or good behavior? Yes—to six years. And was he, too, permitted to leave the prison annually on a vacation? Yes. And would be, after he was released, return to the region from which he was convicted? Yes. Why? It was where he was born! And would he be able to resume a normal life? He hoped so. . . . . . . I left him strangely dreaming in one of the halls of the prison—leaning one of his thin, almost emaciated shoulders against the stone wall.

One of the oddities of this prison was that in this prison kitchen— and on account of the 10^th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, they were baking each of the prisoners a one pound loaf of white bread— their ordinary bread year in & year out being a very dark brown, soggy & sour loaf—the taste of which I could not endure.

The guards carry no guns. Are not allowed to kill in case of attempted escape. A basket ball net in the main court. . . . . . . . . We return to the hotel and find Dinamov. We take dinner in the hotel and he has a plan for a walk, after which I am to visit Bill Heywood.⁸ After dinner Biedenkapp comes & suggests that I take a front room viewing the gate to the Red Square. I decide to move—but sleep first. Dorothy Thompson calls but I pretend to be asleep. At five we move to the new room (302) and order supper. I write letters and afterwards we start walking but it is raining & instead we take a taxi to the Hotel Lux.⁹ I am called upon to show my passport—(all visitors to this building are) and afterwards go with Dinamov to Ruth Cornells room.¹⁰ I see plainly that they have a sex relation of some kind; after a talk we visit Heywood in his room below. It is crowded with dubious radicals. He himself has aged dreadfully. I would not have believed that one so forceful could have sagged & become so flaccid and buttery. But life has beaten him as it beats us all. He said he had been sick—very, two years before. Also that he had married a Russian woman 1 year before. She came in later—a kind of Slav slave. Also he had been writing his memoirs & now exhibited a childish pride in what he had achieved.¹¹ But he admitted that he was through—this was his last shot—(He of the Colorado Mine Strike—of Lawrence, Lowell, Patterson, of the I.W.W. & the Chicago Trial). I could not believe it. Would I not come & read a few chapters of his book & tell him what I thought. I told him that I would. . . . . . . Then up with Ruth Cornell & Dinamov—and I leave. But she follows out into the hall & I announce that I am going to walk back. She suggests walking herself—and we do—viewing the decorations for the Red celebration as we go. When we get to the hotel she suggests a walk into the Red Square and I agree—whereupon Dinamov leaves—whether peeved or not I cannot say. And we view the Soviet General Store,¹² Lenins tomb, and she tells me that already to the superstitious Russian temperament Lenin has become a saint. Actually—as yet—the Central Soviet does not dare to bury or burn the body. It has become a shrine. And with it, in the Russian mind—has risen the idea that so long as it is there—and maybe no longer—that communistic principles will prevail in Russia! And then I see Jack Reeds grave and so to the hotel.¹³ I complain of loneliness & she comes up. We finally reach an understanding and she stays until two. Before going she fusses with me for not protecting her. But she promises to come again tomorrow or Monday.

Big Bill Haywood, International Workers of the World labor leader. (From Joseph R. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement [Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1969])

Ruth Kennell in Red Square during Dreiser’s visit. (From Ruth Epperson Kennell, Theodore Dreiser and the Soviet Union [New York: International Publishers, 1969], p. 208)

Sunday. Nov. 6 - 1927- Moscow-Hotel Grand

Still grey & rainy. I write most of the day. In the morning Vox

, that takes care of such visitors as myself here, sends a guide and interpreter who is to be with me all day.¹⁴ But I send him away, telling him to return at one. Meanwhile various visitors,—Prof. H. W. L. Dana of the New School for Social Research in N.Y.,¹⁵ Scott Nearing, the representative of the Chicago Daily News, the head of

and others who tell me different things about Russia & what is in store for me. After the celebration I am to be permitted to see some of leaders & directors of the Communist Party—who rule in Russia, and after that given a guide & my transportation to and lodging in such points in Russia as I wish to visit. Nearing suggests Ruth Cornell, since she talks both Russian & English— and since we are already so close it strikes me as almost an ideal choice. At 4³⁰ in the afternoon is to be the opening—of the ten days celebration as well as the welcoming of foreign communists & visitors. I am brought a box ticket and go—for the opening at least . . . . . Very impressive—especially the memorial song for the dead played by a competent orchestra & listened to, standing, by the huge assembly. This opera house within & without is more impressive than quite any in Europe¹⁶ . . . . . . . . At five thirty I leave & return to find Ruth Cornell & Dinamov here. She is to take me to see a Russian folk play at one of the little theatre art schools which proves to a fascinating picture of village life at the time of the overthrow of the Tzar and the inauguration of the Soviet. It is too long, but if cut would prove successful in America. I am sure. After the show I leave her at box & return to write . . . . . . . . . . .

The Russians are surely an easy going people—practical in some things, indifferent or impractical in others. This hotel for instance. Architecturally in the inside all its features are semi-palatial—great halls, great chambers—extravagant, Grand Louis furniture, and yet here & there with torn rugs, indifferent bedding, the plumbing out of order, two minute elevators carrying only two persons at a time, locks that dont work; often no hot water after 9 at night, indifferent room service at night. Yet such service as you get always courteous—except in the main office where one can stand for hours unless one can make oneself understood in the language of the particular clerk on guard. And it is assumed to be an international hotel under direct charge of the Soviet Central Government. . . . . . . . . . . . Again the theatre we visited tonight had but one entrance and no exit for as many as 800 or 900 people. And because all wraps & over shoes must be left at the door an almost disgraceful crush or fight to get ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Editorial Principles
• Dreiser’s Russian Diary
• Map and Itinerary
• En Route
• Moscow
• Leningrad
• Return to Moscow
• Through Russia
• Farewell
• Dreiser’s Farewell Statement
• Emendations
• Index