Page:My Further Disillusionment In Russia.djvu/144

 a document the Museum Expedition had discovered in Vologda. It was a "very confidential, secret" order issued in 1920 and signed by Ulyanova, the sister of Lenin and chief of the Central Educational Department. It directed the libraries throughout Russia to "eliminate all non-Communist literature, except the Bible, the Koran, and the classics—including even Communistic writings dealing with problems which were being "solved in a different way" by the existing régime. The condemned literature was to be sent to paper mills "because of the scarcity of paper."

Such edicts and the State monopoly of all material, printing machinery, and mediums of circulation exclude every possibility of the birth of creative work. The editor of a little coöperative paper published a brilliant poem, unsigned, It was the cry of a tortured poet's soul in protest against the continued terror. The editor was promptly arrested and his little shop closed. The author would probably have been shot had his whereabouts been known. No doubt there are many agonized cries in Russia, but they are muffled cries. No one may hear them or interpret their meaning. The future alone has the key to the cultural and artistic treasures now