Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/293

Rh bronzed, tattered and foot-sore. But they came back victors. The working-class turned out to acclaim their fellow-proletarians in arms. There were flowers, speeches and a triumphal march thru the city. This victory put great elation in their hearts. But not in the hearts of the bourgeois and Allied onlookers. It was evident that in the military field the Soviet was growing stronger.

In the realm of culture the creative force of the Revolution succeeded in establishing a People's University, three workmen's theatres and two daily papers. The Peasant and Worker was the official Soviet organ. It featured an English department edited by Jerome Lifschiz, a young RussianAmerican. The Red Banner, the Communist Party organ, carried long academic articles. Neither was a masterpiece of journalism, but both were voices of the inarticulate masses, reaching out for the things of the mind and spirit.

While the Revolution was primarily a drive for land, and bread, and peace, it was more than that. I remember a session of the Vladivostok Soviet, when one of the Right was making a furious attack upon the Soviet, scoring the cutting down of food rations:

"The Bolsheviks promised you lots of things, but they didn't give them to you, did they? They promised you bread, but where is it? Where is the bread