The Bullitt Mission to Russia Part 18

The wife of Zinoviev, Madame Lelina, is in charge of the social inst.i.tutions in the city of Petrograd. This does not include the public schools, which are under another organization. Madame Lelina is a short-haired woman, probably Jewish, of about 45. She has an enormous amount of energy, and is commonly supposed to be doing at least two things at the same time. The morning I met her she was carrying on two interviews and trying to arrange to have me shown some of the social work she is directing. There seemed to be little system about her efforts. Her office was rather disorderly, and her method of work seemed very wasteful of time and effort, and very much like the usual Russian way of doing things. Bill Shatov, formerly organizer of the I.W.W., who is commissar of police for Petrograd and also commissar for one of the northern armies, introduced me to Madame Lelina, and accompanied me the first day on our visits. We were guided by a young woman by the name of Bachrath, who is a university graduate and lawyer, and since the legal profession has fallen into disrepute, has turned her efforts toward social work.

Under her guidance I spent three days visiting inst.i.tutions. I saw a boarding school for girls, a boarding home for younger children, an inst.i.tution for the feeble-minded, three of the new homes organized by the Soviet Government, and two small hospitals for children.

The inst.i.tutions which Madame Lelina is directing are in two groups: First, those which she has taken over from the old Czar regime, and second, those which have been founded in the last 18 months. The new government has been so handicapped by the difficulties of securing food and other supplies, by the sabotage of many of the intelligent cla.s.ses, and by the necessity of directing every energy toward carrying on hostilities against the bourgeoisie and the Allies, that there has been little opportunity to remodel the inst.i.tutions inherited from the previous regime, therefore neither the strength nor the weakness of these inst.i.tutions is to any great extent due to the present regime. Two of the inst.i.tutions I visited were of this type, one happened to be very good and the other very bad, and in neither case did I feel that Lelina's organization was responsible.

An aristocratic organization under the Czar maintained a boarding school for girls. This has been taken over by the Soviet Government with little change, and the 140 children in this inst.i.tution are enjoying all the opportunities which a directress trained in France and Germany, with an exceptionally skillful corps of a.s.sistants, can give them.

I inquired regarding the changes which the Soviet Government had made in the organization of this school. Some of the girls who were there have been kept, but vacant places have been filled by Madame Lelina's committee, and the inst.i.tution has been required to take boys into the day school, a plan which is carried out in most of the soviet social and educational work. Much more freedom has been introduced in the management of the inst.i.tution, and the girls at table talk and walk about, much as though they were in their own homes. The Soviet Government requires that certain girls be permitted members.h.i.+p in the teachers' committee, and the two communists accompanying me pointed to this as a great accomplishment. Privately, the teachers informed me they regarded it as of little significance, and apparently they were entirely out of sympathy with the innovations that the new government has made. Now all the girls are required to work in the kitchen, dining room, or m cleaning their own dormitories, and certain girls are a.s.signed to the kitchen to over-see the use of supplies by the cooks. However, the whole inst.i.tution, from the uniforms of the girls to the required form in which even hand towels have to be hung, indicates the iron will of the directress. In one cla.s.s we visited the girls sat at desks and listened to a traditional pedagogue pour out quant.i.ties of information on Pushkin's Boris Gudonov. Occasionally the girls were called upon to react, which they did with sentences apparently only partially memorized. The spirit of the inst.i.tution is behind that of our better inst.i.tutions in America, and the spirit of the cla.s.sroom is quite mediaeval.

The greatest objection which the teachers seem to have to soviet activities is the question of sacred pictures and religious observances. The chapel of the school has been closed, but in each room from the corner still hangs the Ikon and at the heads of many of the girls' beds there are still small pictures of the Virgin, much to the disgust of the representatives of the Soviet Government, who in many cases are Jewish, and in practically all cases have renounced any religious connection. Recently the Soviet Party has announced the fact that they as a party are not hostile to any religion, but intend to remain neutral on the subject. The att.i.tude of the commissars apparently is that required religious observances should not be permitted in public inst.i.tutions, and doubtless some of the inspectors have gone further than was necessary in prohibiting any symbol of the religion which probably most of the children still nominally adhere to.

The second inst.i.tution I visited, which had been taken over from the old government, was an orphan asylum with some 600 children mostly under 10. It was frightfully crowded, in many places rather dirty, with frequently bad odors from unclean toilets. In one little room some 20 small boys were sleeping and eating, and I found one child of 2 who was not able to walk and was eating in the bed in which he slept.

Ventilation was bad, linen not very clean, a general feeling of repression present, slovenly employees, and, in general, an atmosphere of inefficiency and failure to develop a home spirit which one still finds in some of the worst inst.i.tutions in America. The instructor who showed me this home realized its horrors, and said that the Government intended to move the children into more adequate quarters as soon as conditions permitted. In summer the children are all taken to the country. In this inst.i.tution all the older children go out to public schools and there have been no cases of smallpox or typhus in spite of the epidemics the city has had this winter. Forty children were in the hospital with minor complaints. About 10 per cent of the children are usually ill.

The school for feeble-minded occupies a large apartment house and the children are divided into groups of 10 under the direction of two teachers, each group developing home life in one of the large apartments. There is emphasis on handwork. Printing presses, a bookbinding establishment, and woodworking tools are provided. Music and art appreciation are given much time, and some of the work done is very beautiful. This school is largely the result of the efforts of the Soviet Government. Careful records are kept of the children and simple test material has been devised to develop in the more backward children elementary reactions regarding size, shape, form, and color.

The greatest difficulty is the impossibility of securing trained workers either for the shops or for the special pedagogical problems of the school. However, an energetic corps of young men and young women are employed, and they are conscious of the size of their problem and are already thinking of the difficulties of sending their students back into industrial life. In many of the activities of the Soviet Government, as well as in these inst.i.tutions taken over from the old regime, I was dismayed at the inefficiency and ignorance of many of the subordinates. After talking to the leaders and getting some understanding of their ideals, an American expects to see these carried over into practice. One is liable to forget that the Russian people have not greatly changed, and that the same easy-going, inefficient att.i.tude of decades of the previous regime still exists.

No one knows this obstacle better than the members of the present regime. They realize that the character of the Russian people is their greatest obstacle, and change in the Russian conception of Government service is a slow process. Far from being discouraged, they point to their accomplishments with pride.

During the last nine months Madame Lelina has taken 30,000 children into Government homes and preparations are made to take 10,000 more during the next three months. The three new inst.i.tutions which I visited are attractive suburban homes of wealthy emigres. The Government has taken these over and is putting groups of 40 children in charge of specially selected and trained men and women. The older children go out to school. For the younger children kindergarten activities are provided and much time is spent out of doors. An atmosphere of home life has been developed which is surprising considering the short time the inst.i.tutions have been organized and the difficulties they have had to contend with. This plan, which I am told is permanent, is a most encouraging feature of Madame Lelina's work.

Requests to have children placed in the Government inst.i.tutions are turned over to a special corps of investigators. In each house there is what is known as a poor committee which must also approve the requests and the local soviet is required to pa.s.s upon the commitment of the child to an inst.i.tution. The large number of children taken over by the city is due to the number of orphans and half orphans caused by the war and to the impossibility of many poor families providing their children with food during the recent famine. In cases where several children of a family are taken they are placed in the same home. Frequent opportunities for relatives to visit the homes are provided. The amount of sickness has been surprisingly low considering the great amount of disease in Petrograd during the last few months.

In one group of 300 children there have been no deaths within the past nine months, and among all the children there have been very few cases of contagious diseases.

The difficulties which Madame Lelina faces are numerous. First, Russia has never had an adequate number of trained workers and many of those who were trained have refused to cooperate with the present regime, and, secondly, though the Soviet Government has adopted the policy of turning over to the children's homes and the schools an adequate supply of food, regardless of the suffering of the adult population, still it has been impossible to get certain items of diet, as, for instance, milk. It is true, however, that among these children one sees few signs of undernourishment or famine, and in general throughout the city the children seem much better nourished than the adult population.

I had planned to visit other inst.i.tutions but was unable to do so. I was told of a large palace which has been taken over as a home for mothers. Here all women who so desire are sent after childbirth with their children for a period of two months.

The health department, which a.s.serts that there are in addition to the 100,000 bedridden people in the city, another 100,000 who are ill because of undernourishment though able to go to the food kitchens, has been very successful in securing from the local soviets special food supplies to be provided sick persons on doctors' orders. At each food kitchen the board of health has a representative whose business it is to give such special diet as may be possible to undernourished individuals.

(Thereupon, at 12.50 o'clock p.m., the committee adjourned subject to the call of the chairman.)