Russians. (In fact, it’s considered seditious.) And there is a concerned citizenry standing here and there, sometimes wearing a red armband, but often just going ahead with working life. Part of that life is the satisfaction of informing on neighbors.
Still, as an anarchist, a believer in no state, I have felt like a patriot in several. In this way, I considered myself a Russian patriot. In fact, if the entire World Peace Congress had been spoken in Russian and remained untranslated into the English Marxese of the daily bulletins, I could have been bought and sold a dozen times, because Russian is the conversation of my childhood. My nose somewhat stuffed by sentimental remembrance of those dead speakers, I stood in the Moscow hotel hearing Russian orders given and carried out in regard to rooms and luggage. Later I took a bus up Kalinin Prospekt, and one lady, looking like my mother, said of another lady, who looked like my aunt, “Listen to that one, she knows nothing; still, she teaches…” Then despite the hour, which was often suppertime, I wanted to walk around the streets of the city of Moscow and cry out (with exclamation points to explode each phrase), Oh, Mother Russia! Oh, country of my mother’s and father’s childhood! Oh, beloved land of my uncle Russya killed in 1904 while carrying the workers’ flag! Oh, country my own of storytellers translated in my ear! of mystics and idealists who sharpened my English tongue. Three times a day in the dining room my bones nearly melted. “Please,” I said, starting the days listening and answering, “one egg only, but coffee now.” “Oh, of course, my darling, my little one, only wait.”
Day and night I received this tender, somehow ironic address, full of diminutives, of words hardened by fierce consonants, from which the restrained vowel always managed to escape. This Moscow speech, like all urban speech, like New York speech, is extended by out-of-towners and foreign émigrés, then toughened to defend itself against transients and enemies.
I need to make some observations that have probably been made time and again and with more distinction by traveling reporters. It isn’t that I don’t pay attention, but I don’t think the wide world is to be judged by America consuming or compared to its shopping crowds. I feel the witness’s obligation to say: Yes, the streets of Moscow were roaring with people moving at top speed through mush and slush during morning, lunch, and evening rush hours. Yes, they were all warmly dressed in heavy coats and boots or galoshes, the children in magnificent fur-lapped hats. No, there were not a lot of red or blazing blue scarves, those colors together with greens and yellows and marigold orange were scrolled around the domes and turrets of the churches. Yes, GUM, the department store, was crowded with buyers, looking mostly for more hats and galoshes. Inside the hotel the young girls were not sizzling in Western high style, but did tend to rosiness of countenance, and yes, late in the Moscow evening, 11:00 or 12:00 p.m., we saw people walking about, returning, arm in arm, from visits to friends and family. And as happens in Chicago, New York, Santiago, San Francisco, and Rome, the cabs go flying by even though their green “free” light is lit.
Maris Cakars and I were the War Resisters League delegates to the World Peace Congress. Father Paul Mayer was one of many delegates from PCPJ (People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice). He was a member of the preparatory committee, which had worked in Moscow in April organizing this enormous event. At a delegate meeting, the first or second day of the congress, though he was not present, he was elected co-chairman of the American delegation.
About this World Congress of Peace Forces, the press has been rather lazy; or perhaps it has edited itself too strictly. Most of its news stories were about the statement Paul Mayer read to the Human Rights Commission, which had been
Still, as an anarchist, a believer in no state, I have felt like a patriot in several. In this way, I considered myself a Russian patriot. In fact, if the entire World Peace Congress had been spoken in Russian and remained untranslated into the English Marxese of the daily bulletins, I could have been bought and sold a dozen times, because Russian is the conversation of my childhood. My nose somewhat stuffed by sentimental remembrance of those dead speakers, I stood in the Moscow hotel hearing Russian orders given and carried out in regard to rooms and luggage. Later I took a bus up Kalinin Prospekt, and one lady, looking like my mother, said of another lady, who looked like my aunt, “Listen to that one, she knows nothing; still, she teaches…” Then despite the hour, which was often suppertime, I wanted to walk around the streets of the city of Moscow and cry out (with exclamation points to explode each phrase), Oh, Mother Russia! Oh, country of my mother’s and father’s childhood! Oh, beloved land of my uncle Russya killed in 1904 while carrying the workers’ flag! Oh, country my own of storytellers translated in my ear! of mystics and idealists who sharpened my English tongue. Three times a day in the dining room my bones nearly melted. “Please,” I said, starting the days listening and answering, “one egg only, but coffee now.” “Oh, of course, my darling, my little one, only wait.”
Day and night I received this tender, somehow ironic address, full of diminutives, of words hardened by fierce consonants, from which the restrained vowel always managed to escape. This Moscow speech, like all urban speech, like New York speech, is extended by out-of-towners and foreign émigrés, then toughened to defend itself against transients and enemies.
I need to make some observations that have probably been made time and again and with more distinction by traveling reporters. It isn’t that I don’t pay attention, but I don’t think the wide world is to be judged by America consuming or compared to its shopping crowds. I feel the witness’s obligation to say: Yes, the streets of Moscow were roaring with people moving at top speed through mush and slush during morning, lunch, and evening rush hours. Yes, they were all warmly dressed in heavy coats and boots or galoshes, the children in magnificent fur-lapped hats. No, there were not a lot of red or blazing blue scarves, those colors together with greens and yellows and marigold orange were scrolled around the domes and turrets of the churches. Yes, GUM, the department store, was crowded with buyers, looking mostly for more hats and galoshes. Inside the hotel the young girls were not sizzling in Western high style, but did tend to rosiness of countenance, and yes, late in the Moscow evening, 11:00 or 12:00 p.m., we saw people walking about, returning, arm in arm, from visits to friends and family. And as happens in Chicago, New York, Santiago, San Francisco, and Rome, the cabs go flying by even though their green “free” light is lit.
Maris Cakars and I were the War Resisters League delegates to the World Peace Congress. Father Paul Mayer was one of many delegates from PCPJ (People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice). He was a member of the preparatory committee, which had worked in Moscow in April organizing this enormous event. At a delegate meeting, the first or second day of the congress, though he was not present, he was elected co-chairman of the American delegation.
About this World Congress of Peace Forces, the press has been rather lazy; or perhaps it has edited itself too strictly. Most of its news stories were about the statement Paul Mayer read to the Human Rights Commission, which had been
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