SPECIAL ARTICLE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 11 December 1924, Page 5

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

IN DARKEST RUSSIA. (By Launcelot Lawson.) No. IV—IN THE RED SQUARE. Everyone who goes to Moscow at once visits the Red Square; this I also did immediately on my arrival there. The Red Square, so named because of Ivan the Terrible’s bloody deeds, is the culminating point of Moscow’s history; it is also Hily Ground for the Revolution. Here to Lenin’s tomb come processions of pilgrims, just as in the old days they went to the tombs of the saints; here, just below the walls of the Kremlin, in a pleasantly cultivated space set apart, rest the bodies of noted leaders who succumbed during the Revolution; and here, in the presence of these spirits of the past, are held all great meetings and demonstrations. From behind the embattled walls of the Kremlin rises the expansive low dome of the former Senate House or Court of Justice, now used as a meet-ing-place for the Central Executive Committee or Supreme Authority of the Souviet Republic. From the dome the Red Flag is always flying. All the gates to the Kremlin are guarded by heavily-armed sentries. Commissars are constantly passing to and fro; some of them occupy apartments in the palaces inside, where their domestic comfort is that of the ordinary bourgeoisie; but the fear of assassination is always present. Hence no ordinary mortal can pass the gates without a special permit. Inside the Kremlin, too, are stored many of the precious treasures confiscated during the Revolution, including the Crown jewels, which, contrary to ill report, are safe and intact. Here also tne work of restoring sacred icons is in progress, work which is one of the greatest accomplishments cf the revolution, and which is revealing paintings so exquisitely beautiful, so unlike anything yet seen, that one day they will take the world’s breath away. . . Mrs Trot sly supervises this work; and she is a Jewess. The little wooden, structure in which Lenin’s body lay as I saw it on my first visit was railed off. In the space within were ahqut a dozen sentries, several mounted. The men on foot were dressed in heavy sheepskins and had no pretence to smartness.. They lounged idly about, gossiping with the ■spectators on the other side of th? railings. No striding up and down after the manner of sentries in the West. . One or two policemen mingled with th'? rcldiers. They had their hands stuffed in .their pockets! Leaning up against a bit of wood was a portrait of Lenin in a red and black frame, the glass of which was obscured with snow. The sentry at the entrance examined the permit and stood aside; there was a little staircase to be ascended, a short corridor to be crossed; and then another little staircase, all blazing with red carpet, led directly to the death chamber. But what an unusual death chamber 1 The moment one entered one’s sight was almost blinded with <olcr; the walls were draped in red and black; at one end were two banners, one red and gold, the other black and gold; at the other end, propped against the wall, was the. lid of the coffin itself covered with pleated red cloth. In a pit or depression resting on a long block of wood rested the coffin; it, too. was covered with red pleated material, and from each corner was suspended large black and gold tassels. On the ceiling above the emblem of the hammer and the sick’e had been worked out in red, and powerful electric fights were burning at either side. Around the little pdt in which the coffin lay ran a small platform; the visitor entered at one side and made his exit at the other.

The. upper part of the coffin was covered with a glass lid. . . Lenin was dressed in a simple light khaki-colored tunic. The features were waxen, the face horribly shrunken. The guard would not allow us to remain more than an instant. . . . “Hurry, hurry,” hsaid, or the temperature will change.” There were two thermometers suspended on the wall. When I got outsidb it was already dusk, and the sky above was black with flocks of moving crows. It began to snow; all the passers-by were muffled up to keep the cold out. Lenin’s tomb was closed for a while. It was said that it had been found necessary to re-embalm the body. When I heard this I was reminded of the incident of Father Zossima’s death in Dostoevsky’s “ Brothers Karamazov.” Father Zossima was a saint, and the peasants have a superstition that the bodies of saints do not decay. When, therefore, Father Zossima’s body went the way of all flesh there was a sensation. Lenin’s body now rests in a more elaborate mausoleum. It is a square brown-varnished woodden structure of no particular style, but on classis temple lines, plain to austerity (someone has maliciously said to Jewish temple austerity), consisting of squared columns and stairways ascending to a culminating little platform. On the front above the entrance the name Lenin is inscribed in big black letters; and from the flat roofing on either side meetings are addressed. In the railed-off space around the mausoleum flower beds have been arranged; when I left Moscow rose trees were blooming there. . . . The structure and its surroundings reminded one of a garden suburb; perhaps it was because the structure was of wood and so new, and the flower beds so younglooking. At night white electric lamps burnt in the topmost colonnade; the entrance, too. is lit up, showing as a background the eternal emblem of the hammer and the sickle in red. And the whole square is brilliantly illuminated with electric arc lamps; the rest of the city is plunged in darkness. A few days later I visited an exhi bition of social hygiene in the Petrovka. one of Moscow’s main thoroughfar e.

There I saw lying exposed in glass cases the skeletons of saints; of Feodosy, Tchernogovsky, Innocantie of Siberia, and of Seraphim Sarovsky, all celebrated in Russia’s calendar of holy men.

In pre-revolutionary days the bodies of saints, wrapped up in cloths and covered with velvets and silks, were exhibited in open coffins and in the monasteries an,d churches, and the devout prayed over them and kissed them. Among the simple peasants the belief prevailed that the bodies never decayed. Bolshevik oommissions visited all the monasteries and churches, stripped off the wrappings from the remains arid exposed the fleshless skeletons. in many instances they found the real limbs were missing, and that artificial ones of rags had been substituted. The exhibition on the Petrovka was for the purpose of showing that saints after death decayed i.ke ordinary mortals; and, to add a point, the skeleton of a counterfeit coiinr was put alongside those of the holy men. Two counterfeit coiners quarrelled; one killed the other and kept the body in his room, where, owing to the combined action of heat and ventlation, it became mummified and shrivelled. Peasant women visiting the exhibition went down on their knees before the skeletons of the saints, crossed themselves and prayed; several even begged for some of the dust of the bones wherewith to rub their eyes. They said that God was testing the saints, that theywere being subjected to new trials; or that they had fled, leaving behind them their skeletons. The institute is now organising a great propaganda campaign in favor of creation. At the end of the Red Square the famous cathedral of St. Basil (where JSapoleon stabbed his horses), with its bulbular domes, twisted into extraordinary shapes and painted in all colors of the rainbow, has been converted into a museum, and in its dingy chapels sacred paintings of true Byzantine austerity are exhibited; close by, and not far away from the spot where Lenin lies is a round stone platform known as the Place of the Skulls, where executions used to take place in ancient times ;and from the Kremlin wall behind rises a little tower, from which Ivan the Terrible watched these executions. Neap by, toe, is the Spassky Gate, or Gate of the Redeemer, leading into the Kremlin, and above it still remains the picture of the Sariour, wrought in gold. Below a Red soldier paces up and down. And on the oposite side of the Sqtlate is the series of magnificent arcades three storcr) high; and containing a thotissnd shops and offices. To-day only the gl'ottnd floor is in full use; here a Govornnicilt trust occupies nearly all the s'.r‘s. Thus, within sight of Lenin’s Tomb one gets pictures of his State Sapitalist policy. Almost anything is procurable ip the Government Arcade— Paris dresses, fashion hooks and plate, diamonds, pearls, precious stones —all the paraphernalia of luxurious life. It is difficult for us to realise in this country, situated so remote from Russia, the enormous reverence in which Lenin is held by the Communists. It is a reverence of a kind which »i the past has only been bestowed upon the founders of great religions; it is more than canonisation, it is an attempt at deification. 1 have read numerous addresses byCommunist leaders, but not a single one that did not contain quotations from Lenin’s speeches. “What Lenin said” —by this the' Revolution lives and’ gropes its way. His words a e the Bible of the Bolsheviks.

An institute is to be built in memory of him; here all his writings will be accumulated. At present these writings are scattered all over the world —in London, New York, Berlin, Vienna, and Switzerland. An eager s.arch is being made for them everywhere; the least scrap of paper on which the dead leader pencilled a few hasty notes is seized upon and treasured as a relic. Recently it was announced that some of his most valuable pipers had been recover d from the Polish General Staff; how recovered it is not said; 13 volumes of his works have already been published; when completed the issue will number 50 volumes. Portraits of Lenin arc to be seen everywhere. No icon in the Holy Russia of the old days has been more w-idely spread. I left the Red Square by the Voskresenskivn Gat . iust outside of which is the little Uerini chapel, with its dome of blue. sprinkM with gold ■ 1 stars. Here always car>-e the Tsars before entering the Xr p i n ; here, too, is deposited the cebbrated Mount Athos Virgin, which is reputed to have worked more miracles than any other image in Russia, and which was formerly carried in great state in a carriage drawn by six horses to wlierever its services were needed. Beggars with bowed heads and outstretched hands line the path to the entrance—picturesque beggars in rags and tatters. The interior, which is onfythe size of a small room, was crowded; several Soviet officials were there—l recognised them by the badge of the hammer and the sickle—and they, too, were crossing themselves and devoutly praying.