THE DOOMED CITY.

Auckland Star, Issue 123, 24 May 1919, Page 17

THE DOOMED CITY.

HUNGRY, ABANDONED PETROGRAD.

A TRAGIC PICTURE. IThe following account of conditions in Petrograd appeared on the 7tii February, IUIO, in the columns of the ■■bibavskoje Kutkoje Slovo," a Russian jj.iuer puUiittlied at Libau.l What is happening in Petrograd, and is life at Petrograd really as terrible as puop.e ?ay and as the newspapers describe if.' It is difficult for mc to answer this question. Tnoc-e who feast do not understand the hungry, and I, who have recovered on the fleshpota of Libau, find it difficult to return to the exciting and fantastic moods evoked by hungry, abandoned Petrograa. I will not dabble in the horrors ot Petrograd; I will not relate howeducated people beg for alms in the streets, hang round the public eatinghouses, gaze piteously into the eyee ot those who eat there and wait greedily in case anyone should leave some morsel behind. 1 will not relate how children rummage in the refuse pits and ravenously devour putrid heads of herrings, entrails of fish, and rotting onions—all the things despised even by the hungry, Petrog:ad housewife, who is so experimaking use of all kitchen offal,! all the things undiscovered even by the j Kan. enfeebled Petrograd cats. Nor will I tell of the terrible judicial proceedinas where ten-year-old, dehumanised boys admit with sullen cynicism; that they deliberately killed a little ] brother "or sister who embittered their lives and devoured all the bread rations. All these thinss made up the chronicle of daily happenings—for at that time we still had a Press. All these things are still mere events, mere occurrences,! mass-occurrences, that at least are hidden behind the scenes of every-day life and do not form its habitual background. How do they live who have not hecome wild beasts? How are those '•normal' , human beings who have not yet abandoned the front, who still continue to bear the burden of daily affairs and worries? _ I Indeed, these "normal" human beings] sti'.l tike such an interest in the problems connected with hunger and death by starvation that the leaders of medicinal science are able to give lectures at Petrosrad where exact and detailed de- j scriptions are given of the way in which | people die of starvation. It is shown, that the human organism can exist for, three or four weeks without taking anyi food. During this period from the first signs of an appetite to the final extinction of all life, the starving organism passes through a whole, series of entirely different stages, of which one ol the last i≤ characterised by the fact that the pans, of hunger disappear completely and are replaced by a strangely fantastic condition of hallucination. All that is left in my memory of the manners and of the every-day life ot Petrograd seems the product of such feverish imagination. If you carefully scan the faces of paeseirs-by you will observe that each one of them doe? not wear his own face, j so to speak—his own face with which he., used to associate his personality, his ego —but something different, something mute and cold and torpid. They are all hungry, and hunger tortures "them all. But each one knows that all the others are hungry, and that is why no one speaks of his hunger. Human suffering has lost its individuality. Who will pity mc if I nearly die of hunger when everyone is hungry himself? Everyone will turn away and say in a surly " voice: "I too am dying. Better show how much pity you feel for mc!" Men and women cease to complain. They learn to be silent about that which comforts them the most. Men and women drop in the streets through sheer starvation, but you seldom hear anyone complain about "his hunger, his own torturing enervating hunger. They all pretend to be busy with their wonted affairs, as though "they had come to an unspoken agreement, as though their customary existence were still going on, and nothing had altered. A schoolgirl is running along with her bundle of books to catch an electric tram. Her dress is hanging from her body, her litle face has drawn together so that it is now about the size of a fist. She is assuredly hungry —ie not a good appetite a sign of youth, is it not one of the privileges or even one of the virtues of youth? But she runs as she ■used to run in days long ago with her books to catch the electric tram. She even smiles at some acquaintance, and waves her hand, as thjugh some-one were chaeing and chasing Jier and whispering in her ear that she must run on and on, that life would cease to exist i: there were no more schoolgirls in the streets who run after electric trams and wave their hands and laugh. On a garden path a little boy is playing. His mother calls him and gives him a piece of bread made of some doubtful flour-substitute. He eats it very carefully, and collecte all the crumte. and then he goes back to his game. I.Cor does his mother groan or sigh, but hurriedly takes from her little basket a worn stocking, and, drawing it over a wooden spoon, she feverishly pulk one thread after another over the outstretched hole. Her face has become quite grey, and her skin hangs in folds from her throat. She has assuredly forgotten the very remembrance of food, but yet she hurries on with her work and plies her needle with careworn mien. If she were to let her work slip out of her hands, who then would preserve our whole life? You can feel a certain strain, a certain inhuman effort in the present daily life of Pett'ograd. You ran feel everything is only hold together by the power of imagination, by the power of hypnosis that may ceasp at any moment. And that is why all this visible existence seems so trh-ostly. so fruitless, as though at any moment it would be raised from thr ground and vanish into thin air. Pctrograd. the doomed city! It is Petrograd. and it is not Petrograd It is not the Petrograd of war■tim,_ of the home organisations and of positive work. It is not the ft. Petersburg of Pushkin and Dostoieveki, "the most prosaic and the most fantastic of all towns." Xot the St. Petersburg of gpomptrical symmetries, built up on the ghostly background of white powers, the St. Petersbxirg burdened by the mythical curse bestowed upon Peter, the tyrannical rationalist—"St. Petersburg shall be empty." Doomed city, city sick to death, a city that has taken upnn itself all the em? of our life, and will perhaps bring Hβ salvatiun through its own suffering.