C

EYES ON RUSSIA
THE WORLD'S LARGEST DAM
MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE

EYES ON
RUSSIA
WITH A PREFACE BY
MAURICE HINDUS

NEW YORK: SIMON AND SCHUSTER

1931
COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
386 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
TYPOGRAPHY BY ROBERT S. JOSEPHY
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER,

WHO INVENTED MACHINES

INSTEAD OF PHOTOGRAPHING THEM

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE by Maurice Hindus 13

1. "HOW ARE THEY GETTING ALONG OVER THERE'?" 19
2. WHY I WENT 22
3. VISES, BALDHEADS, AND NIGHT CL UBS 27
4. COTTON STOCKINGS AND A THOUSAND FILMS 31
5. OVER THE BORDER 34
6. KHALATOFF 39
7. PORTRAIT OF A COMMISSAR 43
8. SOME RED TAPE 47
9. A SOVIET TEXTILE MILL 52
10. FIVE PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE 60
11. SOME IDEAS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY 63
12. A DANCER, A DIRECTOR, AND A CZAR 67
13. WE'RE OFF 73
14. DNIEPERSTROI 76
15. THE BRASS BRACELET 89
16. VERBLUD 95
17. THE RED ARMY CONSENTS 98
18. CEMENT 100
19. TOWARD STALINGRAD 107
20. RED OCTOBER ROLLING MILLS 112
21. TRACTORSTROI 118
22. 36 HOURS WITHOUT SLEEP 128
23. DOSVIDANIYE ! 133
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Dnieperstroi: THE WORLD'S LARGEST DAM frontispiece

THE RUSSIAN LAND 34

A WORKERS' CLUB IN MOSCOW 39

A SOVIET OFFICIAL 44

A Moscow Textile Factory: WATCHING ORE THREADS

FOR BREAKS. TENDING THE AUTOMATIC MULE. CALEN-

DER ROLLS. PHOTOGRAPHED WITH A BROKEN GROUND-

GLASS following 52
THE WOMAN WHO WEPT FOR JOY 56

THE TOWERS OF ST. BASIL'S 70

Dnieperstroi: THE BRIDGE. THE DAM. A GENERATOR SHELL.

ASSEMBLING A TURBINE. THE DAM IN CONSTRUCTION.

CRANE AND CROSSBEAMS. LOCOMOTIVE CRANES

following 88

A GIRL CONDUCTOR ON A RUSSIAN TRAIN 89

Verblud: 272,000 ACRES. AN AMERICAN DISC-HARROW. A

STOREHOUSE. STATE FARM NO. 2 following 96

A PEASANT 100

N ovorossisk Cement works: IN THE STOREHOUSE. AT THE

WINCHES. IN THE QUARRY. LOADING CRUSHED ROCK.

THE KILN TENDER following 100

CEMENT BRICKS. CEMENT WORKERS following 104

Red October Rolling Mills: AN IRON PUDDLER. SHAKING

DOWN SLAG. STEEL WORKER. POURING THE HEAT

following 112

Tractorstroi: A NEW TRACTOR. A RUSSIAN WORKER. FROM

THE BALTIC FLEET TO THE TRACTOR PLANT. ON THE

ASSEMBLY LINE following 120

A FOREMAN 125
 AUTHOR'S NOTE

This book records, partly in words, partly in photographs, my

experiences in the Soviet Union during the summer of I930.
I went to photograph the vast new industry which is being built
under the Five Year Plan. I spent five weeks in Russia. During
that time the splendid cooperation of the authorities enabled
me to travel more than five thousand miles and to take eight
hundred exposures of mills, quarries, factories and farms, forty
of which are reproduced here. The written record I submit not
as a general survey of the new Russia but as the personal im-
pressions of one who was busy traveling about the country try-
ing to catch as much as possible through the eye of the camera.
MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
New York City
August, I9JI
 PREFACE

T
HIS is a remarkable book. Viewed merely as an
example of photography raised to the level of a great
art, it has to my knowledge no equal. Here are photo-
graphs that are more than camera reproductions of the physical
appearance of things. They have the breath of life and drama
in them. Tolstoy and Ghandi may damn the machine as a
devourer of spiritual virtues, as a sort of modern Antichrist,
laying waste the soul of man. But to Miss Bourke-White the
machine is a noble and wondrous creation, an object of beauty
and grandeur.
It is because of her love of the machine that her Russian
photographs are so impressive, for the Russians too love the
machine and venerate it even more. They differ from Miss
Bourke-White in their approach. They love the machine more
for what it does than for what it is. They view it as a social
benefaction, as an instrument of a great deliverance, and they
espouse it with a faith and a zeal with which in an earlier day
men espoused their religion. To Miss Bourke-White the ma-
chine is first and foremost an artistic creation.
Yet however much she may differ from the Russians in her
approach, she like them has endowed the machine with a qual-
ity all its own. She has personalized and glorified it. To her as
to the Russians it is the great hero of our time. For this reason
she has recorded in her photographs not only the physical proc-
esses of the five-year plan but also its romantic appeal. In this
13
she reminds the writer of Ilin, the author of the well-known
Russian Primer. Unlike Ilin, however, she does not rhapsodize
over the political and social virtues of the plan. She is hardly
aware of these virtues. But like the Russian she has caught the
romance of this gigantic effort to transform Russia from a semi-
patriarchal and feudal land into a modernized nation. Through
her eyes cranes, ladles, turbines, lathes, drills, looms, scaffold-
ing and all the other mechanical paraphernalia that symbolize
the new age, become a sturdy and superb adventure. In Stalin-
grad, in Dnieperstroi, in Novorossisk, in Moscow, in the
Northern Caucasus, wherever she went she recorded her obser-
vations with a charm and a warmth that impart to her book the
virtue of a docu:q:ient and a poem.
It is well that l\1iss Bourke-White has included a set of
agricultural photographs. Readers who wish to know the reason
for Russia's seeming agricultural rejuvenation which has
enabled her within less than two years to become once more a
leading :figure in the grain mart of the world, will do well to
ponder over these pictures. They tell so effectively of the new
power that has made its appearance on the immense Russian
plains-the tractors and the disks that are churning up sod and
stubble as these have never been churned in all Russian his-
tory, and that have caused the earth to yield a bounty which
the peasant with his wooden tools and his ancient ways never
had been able to conjure forth.
The tractor is, indeed, the arbiter of the peasant's destiny,
and Miss Bourke-White in her photographs has caught the full
meaning of its place on the Russian scene. She exhibits to us
not a mechanical monster, but a heroic conqueror, as sublime
14
and as alive as the horses in the adjacent fields. More than
any Soviet poster that I have seen do these photographs drama-
tize the importance of the tractor on the Russian land. I can
well imagine the Soviets reprinting them in millions and send-
ing them all over the country to adorn the offices of collective
farms and village Soviets.
Miss Bourke-White's narrative adds to the enjoyment of the
book. She writes with a clarity, a vigor, a warmth which stamp
her as a literary artist of real distinction. She poses neither as a
social theorist nor as a political prophet. She speaks of officials,
laborers, food, travel, work, factories-the things that were a
part of her daily life while in the Soviet Union. Artist that she
is, her testimony is all the more valuable because it is so free
from glib pronouncements either in praise or condemnation.

Maurice Hindus
June 5, 1931.
EYES ON RUSSIA
 CHAPTER I: "HOW ARE THEY
GETTING ALONG OVER THERE'?"

I
SHALL have to return to Russia if I am to have any rest
from answering questions about it. These questions follow
a form that is as regular as a square. "Will it succeed'?" is
usually the first query, asked with an intonation suggesting
that the answer to this complicated problem can be summed up
by a mere yes or no.
A banker walked i~to my studio, and in the midst of his
greeting hastened to ask, characteristically:
"Well, how are they getting along over there'?"
"Shall I answer in five words or five chapters'?"
"I'll give you ten words."
I replied:
"Little food,
No shoes,
Terrible inefficiency,
Steady progress,
Great hope."

A week later my old high-school paper sent me a request

from my former English teacher to write a two hundred and
fifty word article for the Oracle, telling the boys and girls
whether the Five Year Plan will succeed.
I replied that I would be pleased to write an article for the
Oracle, but that I might have difficulty telling in two hundred
19
 and fifty words whether the Five Year Plan will succeed when
some of my friends were writing whole books on the subject
and finding it not an easy task.
"Yes, I was unreasonable," came the reply, "to ask you to
describe in two hundred and fifty words the success of the Five
Year Plan. You may have four hundred."
Questions about Russia have poured in on me from all
classes of people. Shortly after I returned to this country I went
to the coal mines, where I had been commissioned to make a
series of photographs of the anthracite region. A thousand feet
below the earth, the miners questioned me about Russia. We
sat crouched up in coal pockets, talking over the affairs of the
world, while preparations were being made for me to take
photographs. The fire boss went ahead to test for gas. The elec-
trician insulated hundreds of feet of wire to make it safe for
me to throw in my floodlights, and all this time the miners kept
asking me questions about Russia.
The miners, like the bankers, asked: "Well, how are they
getting along over there'?" And as I answered I watched their
faces in the faint light thrown from the lamp on my miner's cap,
trying to catch some glint of the proletarian brotherhood which
the Russian worker assumes exists among the workers of the
world.
Not an understanding glimmer of Soviet aims and purposes
made its feeble way into their words. In our country sympathy
for Soviet Russia exists among the intellectuals rather than
among the proletarians, who are under the influence of the con-
servative trade unions. To these miners Russia was an ill-
clothed, barefoot land, where no one could have a home of his
20
own because "what is mine is yours"; where people do not have
enough to eat; where a man's earnings were likely to be taken
away from him. This country of the Bolsheviks was to them no
land of promise, but a place wh<;re fear of the Government
stalked the streets. Russia was a land with a firing squad just
around the corner. This sounded very much like the talk I heard
before I arrived in Russia-from many people who had never
been there but who had read their favorite newspaper much too
credulously.
We sat there stooped over in our low-roofed coal pocket
waiting for the fire boss to come back and say the road was
safe. The miners had taken the conversation away from me, and
I listened as they built up their picture of that terrible land.
"So everybody lives on black bread, hey'? Well, I guess it's
a good country to stay out of."

21
 CHAPTER II: WHY I WENT

I
WENT to Russia out of curiosity. I wanted to find out for
myself why there was so much talk about that country. My
work as a photographer of industries constantly brought me
into contact with American business men and industrialists,
and I could not help being affected by the widespread interest
in the Five Year Plan, by that time well under way in the
Soviet Union.
In this industrial age, if one understands the industry of a
people, one comes close to the heart of that people. Russia
is trying to do an astonishing thing. It is struggling to trans-
mute an agricultural country into an industrial country, almos.t
over night; to do in a few short years what took half a century
in the West. I did not go to the U. S. S. R. to study it as a
political and social experiment. I knew very little about its
politics and sociology. Russia to me was a land of embryo
industry.
Through the American factories beats the pulse of the
people. There is a power and vitality in these industries that
is a direct expression of the power and vitality of our industrial
nation. In the factories is evolved an unconscious beauty. The
machine was never designed to be beautiful. It has symmetry
and force because it has no decoration. Not a line is wasted.
Every curve of the machine, every attitude of the worker has
an eloquent simplicity, a vital beauty.
The industries of America are rounded out by order and
22
efficiency. There is a certain finish to our factories. I wanted to
go to Russia where all these industries would be new. I was
eager to see what a factory would be like that had been plunged
suddenly into being. I wanted to watch the Soviet workers put
their new machinery together. But more than that I wanted to
observe these agricultural people who were striving to become
industrialists. Men who had left the plow for the punch press-
how did they behave'?
These Bolshevik factory hands, I sensed, would not be like
the American worker who takes his machinery as he takes his
daily bread. There would be a consciousness of the physical
appearance of the machine. There would undoubtedly be
clumsy, fumbling, pitiful attempts to use it. But their ma-
chinery, so hard won, would have meaning, would carry the
symbolism of power. There would be a consciousness of its
shining surface, the rhythm of its gear wheels, its structural
pattern. The machine would have form in their eyes.
Things are happening in Russia, and happening with stag-
gering speed. I could not afford to miss any of it. I wanted to
make pictures of this astonishing development, because, what-
ever the outcome, whether success or failure, the effort of 150,-
000,000 people is so gigantic, so unprecedented in all history,
that I felt that these photographic records might have some his-
torical value. I saw the Five Year Plan as a great drama being
unrolled before the eyes of the world.
I knew I wanted to go to Russia, but I had no definite idea
of how to do it. As often happens, the solution came from an
apparently irrelevant source. For the past two years, I had been
an associate editor of Fortune, supplying that magazine regu-
23
larly with industrial photographs. Early in 1930 the managing
editors asked me whether I would be able to leave my other
work long enough to spend the summer in Germany photo-
graphing leading industries in that country. I was to begin
with the North German Lloyd shipping docks and go on through
the Ruhr Valley, the A. E.G. (Germany's electrical trust), the
movie lots of UFA at Babblesberg-the German Hollywood,
and so on to Leuna, where I was to be one of the very few
women ever permitted inside the secret walls of the I. G. Farben
Industrie-the German Chemical Trust. I accepted the offer,
and hastened to clean up a great deal of work I was doing for
private American firms. The reason for my hurry was that I not
only wanted to travel through Germany, but suddenly saw an
opportunity of using Germany as a stepping stone to Russia.
Russia interested my editors, but they doubted whether the
Soviet authorities would permit me to photograph industries.
I therefore decided to go to Russia at my own risk. At that time
the great exodus of American tourists to Russia had not yet
begun, and I did not know how to go about it. I sought out
people who had been in Russia and asked their advice regard-
ing my plans to take industrial photographs there. Never have
I heard more conflicting opinions on any subject. The young
directing editorial genius of a world wide news service, who had
been to Russia, discouraged me. "You are crazy, little girl," he
said. "What do you think you can accomplish there'? You won't
get anything done."
On the other hand, another driving power in that same news
service, who had also been to Russia, said:
"By all means! Go! Russia is the most interesting country
24
in the world just now. Every year it is different. You will be
well received. The Russians love photographers. You will like
the Russian people. They are cordial to foreigners, and they
will be very cordial to you because of your industrial work.
In fact, they will, perhaps, receive you like a second Messiah
because you are glorifying the machine."
Reaching for the telephone, he called Washington, talked
with the head of the Soviet Union Information Bureau, and
made an appointment fo:r:me the next morning. I took the train
for Washington that same night. The next morning I was in
the offices of the Soviet Union Information Bureau. The head
of the Bureau said to me:
"It is a :fine thing you are going to Russia. They will prob-
ably use your pictures in their own magazines. In fact, I shall
write suggesting it. Your photographs will appeal to the Rus-
sians; they have the Russian style. Eisenstein, the great Russian
movie director, should see them. He is in New York now, on his
way to Hollywood. Perhaps we can still catch him."
He reached for the telephone and talked to Eisenstein in
New York.
"He is leaving for Hollywood tomorrow, but he will see
you-if you can reach New York in time." It was a crowded
day for me; before evening I had met President Hoover, who
received me immediately after signing the Smoot-Hawley tariff
law, and President William Green of the American Federation
of Labor, for which I had taken occasional industrial photo-
graphs. I caught the midnight train for New York.
The next day I had a talk with the shock-headed, brilliant
Soviet cinema director. He spoke fluent English, accentuated
25
 by vivid gestures. Before our talk was over, he had given me a
number of letters of introduction to artists in Berlin, Paris and
Moscow, which he wrote out in his own hand in German,
French, and Russian.
As sailing time came closer, I heard more and more conflict-
ing reports about Russia. People were divided into two camps:
those who were enthusiastic about my trip, and those who threw
up their hands in horror. Closer relations between the United
States and Russia, and the increased number of tourists, have
now given us a more realistic picture of the Soviet Union; but
even as short a time ago as last year the most fantastic stories
about that country were still current.
Opinions about Russia were so varied and so conflicting that
I asked myself: was it possible that everybody was talking
about the same country'?

26
 CHAPTER III: VISES, BALD HEADS,
AND NIGHT CLUBS

N
O, there is no word of your vise," said the Soviet Consul
in Berlin. "When did you put in your application from
America~"
"Six months ago."
"What is your purpose for wanting to visit the Soviet
Union~"
"To take industrial photographs."
"Well," said the Consul discouragingly, "there has been no
communication from Moscow about you."
This was an obstacle that I had never imagined. I had made
a special trip to Washington expressly to make sure the ap-
plication for my vise was put through in proper form. I knew
that the Soviet representative there had not only put through
the formal request, but had written enthusiastically to the
Russian Publishing House, suggesting that, in addition to
being allowed to take pictures for American magazines, I be re-
tained to work for Soviet publications as well.
"A courier is due from Moscow tomorrow morning," sug-
gested the Consul. "Perhaps he will have your vise."
He did not have my vise. Nor did the next courier. Nor the
next. But still I did not worry. Waiting for the vise seemed to
be a very common matter. An American engineer, who had been
specifically engaged by the Government, was also waiting. So
was a young agricultural expert. Two Jewish rabbis, who were
27
planning to go in with a large party, had received no news of
their vises. Tourists are usually admitted without any delay,
although they are permitted to stay only a short specified time.
But business people are often subjected to delays that are a
complete mystery. No one outside of Russia knows whether
these people are being investigated long and carefully, or
whether it is only carelessness that causes the delay.
"I will write to Moscow for you," offered the Soviet Consul.
"I will recommend strongly that you be not only admitted, but
that the Government engage you to take pictures for them."
I left the Soviet Embassy light-hearted. The thing I cared
most about in the world at that time was to get the first indus-
trial pictures that had ever been brought out of Russia, and I
knew that if the Soviet Government found me useful, they
would smooth out some of the obstacles in my path.
The next days went by happily. I photographed the German
electrical industries and was delighted with the earnest, bald-
headed workmen. Their shaved egg-shaped skulls took the high-
lights from my thousand watt floodlights beautifully, and the
huge oscillators and generator shells made magnificent photo-
graphic material.
The nights went by gaily also, while I explored the intri-
cacies of Berlin's remarkable night clubs. The table-to-table
telephones, the private mail chutes, for which Berlin's night
clubs are famous, the elaborately mirrored dance floors, helped
for a time to keep my mind off the ever-gnawing fear that I
might not be admitted into Russia. I danced with the American
engineer until he received his vise, then I tangoed with the agri-
cultural expert until he was admitted. And finally, hearing that
28
the two rabbis, who had been detained so long, were preparing
to leave for Moscow, I grew seriously alarmed.
Perhaps it seemed a very formidable thing to the Moscovites
to be an industrial photographer. Why should they not be sus-
picious of me, I thought. Even in Germany, only a few weeks
ago, while taking pictures of factories in the Ruhr Valley, I
had been arrested on suspicion of being a French spy. For nine
hours I had sat in a small German jail, while my nationality,
and the motives for my peculiar activities were investigated. I
had been released as soon as my innocence had been established,
but if I could be locked up in a German prison simply because
photographing industries seemed such a suspicious occupation,
how much more would the Russians be apt to regard an indus-
trial photographer as another Mata Hari.
Daily visits to the Soviet Embassy. Everybody puzzled and
courteous, but no word from Moscow. Daily consultations with
an American newspaper correspondent in Berlin, who was guid-
ing my activities in connection with my vise.
"I will cable a friend of mine who is an American news-
paper man in Moscow," suggested the Berlin correspondent.
"He is in good standing with the officials."
We sent the following cable to Moscow:
MARGARET BOURKE WHITE YOUNG INDUSTRIAL PHOTOGRA-
PHER UNCONDITIONALLY RECOMMENDED BY WASHINGTON
SOVIET UNION INFORMATION BUREAU WAITING FIVE WEEKS
BERLIN CAN YOU STIR UP HER VISE

Three anxious days, and a cable came back from Moscow.

IS SHE MISS YOUNG OR MISS BOURKE AND WHITE AND YOUNG

29
 After our reply to this query the days of waiting began
again. The days of photographing bald workers and arranging
compositions with light and shadow on the turbines, were filled
with worry. The evenings spent tangoing in the mirrored Casa-
nova or telephoning hilarious messages from table to table at
the Femina, lost their flavor. Would I ever get into Russia'?
I could not spend much longer in Europe. I had a business wait-
ing for me in America, and a certain number of steel furnaces,
automobile factories, and stone quarries which must be photo-
graphed from time to time to keep up the sequence of my ac-
counts. But I could not bear the thought of returning to the
United States without the first industrial series of photographs
to come out of Russia.
Then came a night when I could not sleep. Before daylight
I slipped out of the Adlon and walked up a still and deserted
Unter den Linden. The old palaces frowned down dark and
forbidding. The sky began to lighten behind huge stone horses
and riders. I wandered among the statues in a fog of suspense
and doubt.
Finally it grew light and I walked back slowly, as uninter-
ested in the world and as discouraged as I have ever been. I
passed under the window of the Soviet Embassy, and I heard
a whistle over my head. I looked up and there framed by the
window stood the Soviet Consul. A telegram lay open on the
window sill before him. It was my admittance.

30
 CHAPTER IV: COTTON STOCKINGS
AND A THOUSAND FILMS

B
UY a sausage, but not a Christian sausage," said Gretchen,
"because Jewish sausages keep better than Christian sau-
sages." My friend, the little German hausfrau, was help-
ing me buy enough cheese, chocolate, tinned fruit, and canned
baked beans to keep me in health and spirits during my entire
stay in Russia.
Meanwhile, terrible tales were coming across the border.
Exaggerated tales, no doubt. The stolid porters at the Hotel
Adlon trembled when they found me packing suitcases to go to
Moscow. Even the beauty shop attendant, an ·ex-countess, one
of the many exiled Russian nobility who are to be found danc-
ing or shampooing or manicuring their way through Europe,
tried during the whole time that she rubbed my hair under the
dryer, to dissuade me from entering what to her was a country
of horror. An American journalist had just returned with news
of how he had slept ten consecutive nights on a park bench for
lack of a room. But the food situation was really serious. Many
Americans who had to travel to outlying provinces fell sick for
a few weeks until they became adjusted to the poor food. I
could not spare the time to get sick. I had too much to do.
"You must buy a cheap trunk and fill it with canned food,"
said the American correspondent. "That is not advice. It is an
order!"
When my trunk was filled with everything I could dream
31
of using, including some staunch cakes of laundry soap, we
added a can-opener and considered our selection complete.
What a can-opener it was! Some talented German, who had
perhaps spent a thwarted life on perpetual motion machines
and rockets to the moon, had concentrated all his inventive
genius on this small tool. It was not until I attacked the first
can of beans on my first Russian train that I discovered what
an ingenious and mysterious instrument it was. An apparently
simple-looking hinge, but surprisingly placed in relation to the
blade, turned out to be double-jointed. Throughout Russia I
opened cans by sheer force of will. My respect for German
metaphysics increased when I saw it applied to can opening.
I wanted to be treated as a "comrade" rather than as a
"bourgeois." I could not, therefore, risk going silk-stockinged
through Russia, so I purchased cotton stockings and left my
bourgeois silk ones behind.
Days in advance I had notified the K. photographic supply
store that the minute I received my vise I would order one hun-
dred dozen Portrait Panchromatic cut film, 5 x 7 inches. Did
they have it in stock'? Would it be ready on short notice'? They
had, and it would.
A few hours before I was planning to leave, the supply store
telephoned me the discovery that the Continental size, 13 x
16 cm. was just a fraction larger than the corresponding Ameri-
can size in inches.
"Then I must buy or rent German filmholders. How many
have you'?"
It took an hour to look this iip.
"We have six old ones."
32
 "I need no less than thirty. I absolutely must have them."
I became excited. "In the whole city of Berlin," I protested over
the telephone, "there must be enough photographers using my
size to supply me with thirty filmholders. Look up your cus-
tomers."
No, it was an odd size. They did not think anybody-Ah
yes. They did have one customer who used 13 x 16 cm. film-
holders. He had bought his equipment some years ago.
Upon investigation the one Berlin photographer who could
have been of some assistance to me proved to be away in the
Alps.
The next day was spent in telephone calls to Paris, to Lon-
don, to Munich, to Vienna, to find out if any supply store in
Europe had either films to fit my holders or holders to fit their
films. The entire continent of Europe failed me. I had to solve
my problem in Berlin. I finally persuaded the K. people to keep
their factory open one entire night, and slice the edges off a
thousand sheets of film to fit my camera.
Wearily the next morning they delivered the packages,
neatly wrapped again in their red and silver paper. With relief
they bade me goodbye, and that day I left for Moscow.

33
 CHAPTER V: OVER THE BORDER

F
ROM Berlin to Moscow I traveled on the famous trans-
Siberian. A pleasant little English girl shared my com-
partment. "I'm a mission'ry. I'm going to China for an-
other five years. Are you going all the way across'?"
"No, I'm leaving you in Russia."
"Russia!" she exclaimed, "what an odd place to go."
I thought: "Another five years in China. What an odd place
to go."
The next morning we reached the Polish-Russian border and
the personal possessions of helpless English and American pas-
sengers were strewn about the customs office. All the blueprints
and drawings of some engineers standing near me were exam-
ined sheet by sheet, page by page.
My certificate from the Soviet Embassy in Berlin secured
me against any inspection, or I should be standing there yet,
so various and interesting were the equipment and books I was
bringing in.
An engineer next to me carried a movie magazine which
fascinated the customs inspector. Page by page he exam-
ined it, entranced by the :figures of the bathing beauties he
saw there. Reaching the middle of the magazine, he paused,
unable to tear his eyes away from the lovely head of Norma
Shearer. A few pages on and he turned back to Norma. A little
farther, and he was back again. At last, page by page, :finishing
the magazine, he returned for one last glance at the star who
34
enchanted him so, and regretfully handed the magazine back
to the engineer.
We piled into the train again and found ourselves all re-
divided. The Russians, of course, believe in the equality of the
sexes, consequently my English missionary found herself put in
the same compartment with a dapper little gentleman from
Japan. If she must share her compartment on the ten-day train
trip with a man, she would, no doubt, have preferred the
Chinese who was with us, since she spoke his language. Further-
more, the Chinese, who occupied a compartment by himself,
courteously offered to take the Japanese in with him, but the
Japanese declined this offer, and ascribed his refusal to political
reasons.
At dusk we stopped at our first station over the border. A
group of young boys and girls came out to the train singing. We
stood on the platform to listen as they greeted us with the
rousing melody of the Internationale.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall !
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all!
'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place,
The Internationale
Shall be the human race.
35
 The next morning we were slipping through grassy marshes.
Until noon I worked on the forty Russian words which my
friends in Berlin had given me to memorize. By the time the
train pulled in at Moscow, I had learned all the phrases in the
collection for "hurry up." I had been advised that I would have
frequent need of these phrases.
At the station I said goodbye to the little missionary, good-
bye to the American ladies who were on their way to join their
consular husbands in the Far East, and began looking around
the bleak station for help with my extensive baggage. At last
two gloriously bewhiskered porters ambled up, chatting, and
trundled my bags off to the platform of the station.
There we stood, with my cameras, my f9od supplies, my
films piled around us, while my porters laughed and gossiped.
My friends in Berlin had told me that I must not take the
first taxi that presented itself. They instructed me to say
"slishcum mnogo" (too much,) for in Russia one must bargain
or overpay. But before I had a chance to try my slishcum mnogo,
an hour had passed. There were no taxis in sight yet. An occa-
sional nondescript car drove up. A few people got out, a few
others climbed in again. The crowd around the station thinned
out and I remained surveying Moscow from the station plat-
form, waiting for the line of taxis which I expected eventually
to put in an appearance.
The conversation of my merry porters ran on and on. From
time to time I broke in with "Taxi! Taxi!" They glanced at me,
lighted cigarettes, and went on talking as if I did not exist.
Finally I ran up to a battered automobile that had been
standing parked for some time beside the station. A man with a
36
shaved head and an embroidered blouse sat there, looking
dreamily ahead. "Taxi'?" I said inquiringly. He gazed at me
mournfully, shook his head in the negative, and I hurried away.
I was puzzled.
I had still to learn that most of Russia's automobiles have
fallen into the dust heap, and that the few unrecognizable cars
that remain have become so valuable that they must be engaged
days ahead.
At last an ancient droshka drew up, drawn by a still more
ancient horse. Wondering whether its feeble frame would sup-
port even a portion of my luggage, I plunged into a most diffi-
cult and unintelligible conversation with its bearded driver.
Slishcum mnogo, I found out, is quite ·powerless by itself.
Slishcum mnogo without other Russian arguments to back it up
is a mere whisper against the flood of Russian eloquence that
follows.
In the midst of the most futile conversation I have ever held
with anybody, a voice behind me said, "Parlez-VO\I.Zfran\ais '?"
A little bare-legged Russian girl stood there, looking me
over admiringly and taking in every detail of my very plain
black traveling suit.
I, like many other earnest college students who have dodged
their way through French for three or four years, found that
language only a shade more useful than my slishcum mnogo had
been. But we managed by signs and smiles and holding up of
fingers to make ourselves understood. The porters were inter-
rupted in their never-ending discussion. The baggage was
heaped over every visible portion of not one but two droshkas.
I was placed in one, perilously swaying, my little Samaritan in
37
the other, and to the tune of twenty rubles our procession went
1urching through the streets.
Arriving at the Grand Hotel, I was shown up into a high
narrow room, which reverberated with the loud sounds of ham-
mering, coming through the window. The porter deposited my
bags and addressed himself to the newspaper correspondent,
who for the moment was acting as my interpreter.
"Tell the young lady," he said, taking in one broad gesture
the whole responsibility for his struggling, working, aspiring
nation, "Tell the Amerikanka that things are not very good
now. Tell her that we are sorry things are so poor, but if she
will come back in five years everything will be better."
- - . -- .
- .
-
'),._•

A WORKERS' CLUB IN MOSCOW

 CHAPTER VI: KHALATOFF

K
HALATOFF must see your pictures. You can be of
great service to the Soviet Union. They are just what
Russia needs."
Leonid Petrovich Serebriako:ff leaned over his high, narrow
desk. He held my letter of introduction and a portfolio of my
American industrial pictures before him. How fortunate I was
to have something as tangible as pictures to pave my way.
Foreign business men coming to Moscow fritter away weeks
and sometimes months before they see these officials. But my
pictures had acted like a magic wand. On my second day in
Moscow I was in the office of the Vice Commissar of all the rail-
roads of the whole of Russia. We were waiting for Khalato:ff,
President of the All Russian Publishing House, who was on his
way to Serebriako:ff's office to see me.
Gosizdat is the leading publishing house in the Soviet
Union and the biggest publishing house in the world. Its activi-
ties were extended by a government decree issued in 1930 which
centralized all Russian publishing companies in Gosizdat. The
extent of Russian literary activities may be gauged from the
fact that in 1930 about 450,000,000 copies of books were pub-
lished in the Soviet Union with 40,000 titles. About eighty per
cent of these books were in Russian, and the rest in the lan-
guages of fifty national minorities. Gosizdat publishes every
conceivable kind of literature from children's primers to scien-
tific works, :fiction, maps, and music. Through its Moscow offices
39
there passes a constant stream of writers and scientists, foreign
as well as Russian, whose work Gosizdat publishes. This house
has a monopoly on publication of the Russian classics; and it
issues works prepared by such scientific institutions as the Com-
munist Academy, the Lenin Institute, the Marx-Engels Insti-
tute, the Association for Scientific Investigation, and the Insti-
tute of Red Professors.
But the heart of the world's largest publishing concern
is its publication of what they call "mass literature," for which
there is a tremendous demand in the Soviet Union. As part of
the great educational machine which is trying to raise the cul-
tural level of the mass of the population-excluded from all
culture under the Czars-Gosizdat publishes and distributes
cheap books and pamphlets among the workers and peasants.
In 1930 alone, for example, Gosizdat sold three and one-half
million copies of Lenin's pamphlet on "Socialist Competition."
Popular pamphlets on the Five Year Plan and other important
questions sell in the millions. Pamphlets of special interest to
peasants-known the world over as the "dark people" under the
Czarist regime because of their illiteracy-now reach a circula-
tion as high as five hundred thousand. Over twenty millions of
copies of textbooks have been published for the special schools
which exist to abolish illiteracy.
The new Russian is an omnivorous reader, and to meet the
popular demand for foreign literature Gosizdat is publishing
large cheap editions of the translated works of foreign authors,
classic and modem. Americans like Theodore Dreiser, Upton
Sinclair, Jack London, Sherwood Anderson, and Floyd Dell
have been translated and are widely read.
40
 The All Russian Publishing House distributes books
through its own chain of a thousand units, including local
branches, stores, kiosks connected with factories, educational
and other institutions. In the village books are distributed
through the network of consumers' co-operative stores. Artem
Bagatianovitch Khalatoff heads this tremendous publishing
machine.
"Do not be afraid of Comrade Khalatoff," warned Sere-
briakoff. "He is a big, strong fellow with a great, black beard."
The door opened and Khalatoff strode into the room. He
was one of the most striking and magnificent men I had ever
seen. He walked with the spring of a black panther. There was
something animal about him, strong, quick, direct, unconquer-
able. Half gypsy, his skin had a yellow bronze coloring, his hair
the texture of steel wool. His black beard flowed over his black
leather jacket. The ring of his voice, the position of his hands,
the swing of his stride, all spoke of power. Such, in appearance,
was the president of the largest publishing house in the world.
My photographs of American blast furnaces, oil derricks,
locomotives, and coal freighters were soon spread around the
room with Serebriakoff and Khalatoff going over them care-
fully, and talking of Soviet blast furnaces, Soviet derricks,
Soviet machinery, and Soviet construction which I could photo-
graph.
To the American business man, photography or art-work of
any kind is simply an instrument that crosses his consciousness
once a month when his advertising manager comes around with
layouts for him to 0.K. But the Russians are an innately artis-
tic people. They consider the artist an important factor in the
41
Five Year Plan, and the photographer the artist of the machine
age. It is for the artist to stir the imagination of the people with
the grandeur of the industrial program.
Thus I had come to a country where an industrial photog-
rapher is accorded the rank of artist and prophet.
It was Serebriakoff who suggested that I be made the guest
of the Government with all my expenses paid, and that the
Government help me in every possible way to accomplish my
purpose. "
"Sdielena," (It is accomplished) Khalato:ff agreed. "Your
pictures are incomparable. Come back the day after tomorrow
and everything will be arranged."
A strange country; here, after wasting five precious weeks
in Berlin waiting for my vise, after two days in Moscow I was
to be made the guest of the Government.
"And let there be no bureaucracy," said Serebriako:ff.
"Sdielena," repeated Khalato:ff.
On my way home I turned into the telegraph office and
wired to my friend the Berlin correspondent:
MARVELLOUS RECEPTION ENTHUSIASM EVERYWHERE WILL
PHOTOGRAPH MAIN INDUSTRIAL CENTERS AM GUEST OF GOVERN-
MENT SEREBRIAKOFF AND KHALATOFF PERSONALLY PLANNING
TRIP.

And the reply came back:

DISAPPOINTED LEARN YOU NOT YET DECORATED WITH ORDER
OF RED FLAG.

42
 CHAPTER VII:
PORTRAIT OF A COMMISSAR

S
EREBRIAKOFF'S apartment was almost barren. It con•
tained little more than chairs on which to sit and a bed in
which to sleep. The apartment of this Soviet official, who
had charge of the largest unified railway system in the world,
differed from that of any other "comrade" in only one respect.
Serebriakoff had the privacy of two rooms to himself instead of
only one or part of one room, which crowded conditions in
Moscow make necessary for most people.
It is impossible not to be impressed by the Spartan sim-
plicity in the lives of the Bolshevik leaders. Personal aggran-
disement is almost impossible under the Soviet system of inter-
locking control that runs through all departments of the State.
It is considered a great social crime, on which the last commen-
tary is the firing squad. These people are true believers, work-
ing with an inspired unity of purpose toward a common goal.
One evening we sat around Serebriako:ff's round table drink-
ing tea from glasses. Railway officials working under him were
there as guests. In the midst of this roomful of bloused,
bearded comrades I sat, listening to their Russian words and
watching their faces as they talked. Out of the window I could
see the towers of the Kremlin, and the sun flashing brightly on
the gold domes of the Church of the Redeemer.
In the center of the table was a jar of strawberry jam twelve
inches high, and from time to time the officials leaned forward
43
 and scooped out great spoonfuls and stirred them into their tea.
I followed their example.
Tea finished, Serebriakoff rose from the table and placing
before me a box of slender Russian cigarettes, said proudly
"Present." Serebriakoff had been to America three times since
1926 and had acquired a few American expressions. America
seemed very confusing to him, and New York the most difficult
of cities in which to live. But he had a great admiration for our
American railroads, and had made close friends among our rail-
way presidents.
At last the guests rose and courteously bade me goodbye. I
was left with one English-speaking Russian to act as interpre-
ter for Serebriakoff. A little more tea and a lot more jam, and
Serebriakoff began to tell me the story of his life.
"I won this medal," he began simply and unaffectedly, "for
building a thousand locomotives." He wove his way through his
story of railroad building, of revolution, of civil war, of exile.
He told me about his life in Siberia, as a political exile under
the Czars, about his work as a Soviet administrator.
Serebriakoff's history is typically Bolshevik. He began life
as a worker, first as a boilermaker, then as a smith. He entered
the revolutionary movement early, and while still in his
twenties knew police persecution, arrest, and exile. Once-in
1909-he escaped from hard labor in exile to attend a congress
of the Bolshevik party in Prague. There he met Lenin, who
said: "If we had a lot of workers like Serebriakoff, it would all
be settled." Serebriakoff went back to Russia; he continued his
revolutionary activities but was arrested and sent to Siberia in
191o. There he did hard labor chained to a wheelbarrow for
44
 A SOVIET OFFICIAL
DAVID PETROVITCH SEREBRIAKOFF, VICE COMMISSAR OF RAILWAYS
seven years. The revolution freed him and he at once assumed
high and responsible posts in the Soviet Government. For a
brief period-three months, if I remember correctly-he was
Secretary-General of the Communist Party; that is, he held the
post now occupied by Stalin; but he did not especially like the
work and resigned to enter the railway commissariat where he
has been ever since.
"How old do you think I am'?" he asked me in the course of
his story.
"Thirty-eight," I ventured.
"Is it possible," he turned to my interpreter, smiling, "that
these years of hardship and suffering do not show in my face'?
I am forty-four."
He is a little bullet-headed man. His face is scarred with
fighting and exile but his blue eyes hold a gay and youthful
light.
It was charming to have this great railroad builder reveal
his life with the simplicity and directness of a child. American
executives had told me stories of their lives, but the emphasis
had been placed always on the development of business, the
steps by which they had climbed to fortune and power. This
was the story of an executive who had risen to influence under
an entirely different social order, who had been through a dif-
ferent set of experiences than any American railroad president
could ever know, whose motivation had not been the rolling up
of dollars-but who had grown up in harmony with a tre-
mendous social movement.
I had with me a copy of Fortune, the magazine for which
some of my Russian pictures were destined. It happened to be
45
an issue containing a portrait of the president of the Penn-
sylvania Railroad, one of Serebriakoff's American friends.
"Present," I said, placing it before him, and in the midst of
his profuse thanks, I took my leave.
 CHAPTER VIII: SOME RED TAPE

S
DIELENA," Khalatoff had said. "Come back the day
after tomorrow and everything will be arranged." The
day after tomorrow I returned. I was eager to begin. I
saw pictures on all sides of me as I walked through the streets.
In Khalatoff's office I was received by his assistants and
secretaries. They were very cordial and interested in my indus-
trial photographs and they asked my interpreter many ques-
tions about me. We sat in a circle in the big, bleak room of
Gosizdat as they passed my pictures from hand to hand and
discussed them. In the midst of this increasing flow of Russian
talk, whenever an occasional question was addressed to me, I
slipped into my answer something to the effect that I must get
started quickly. ·
"Da Da," they would agree, and the conversation would
begin again to ripple on around me.
At the· next question, what the American factories are like,
I slipped in a reminder that there were many beautiful pictures
to be taken in Russia; that I must get started quickly, because
sooner or later I would have to go back to America.
"Da Da Da," they shouted in chorus, "the young lady is
right. The great Lenin said 'Time is our most valuable posses-
. ' ''
SIOn.
Again the conversation closed around me, a solid block of
Russian that I could not penetrate. I strained forward watching
the expressions on their faces and at the next wedge that I was
47
able to insert, I managed to start the officials talking about fac-
tories and industries and particular places I might go. Now we
were getting somewhere. We began to look at maps. The whole
assembly worked up to a pitch of the greatest enthusiasm about
the Amerikanka photographing steel mills, wheat, tractors,
power plants, textiles.
"Our railroad experts will get together and help you plan
your trip. The schedules of trains will be ascertained, maps will
be studied to aid you in laying out your itinerary. Come back
the day after tomorrow and everything will be arranged."
I came back the day after tomorrow. Again the Russian
language flowed unceasingly around me. Again the railroad
experts were consulted. Again the industries were discussed.
Again we looked at maps. Again I spoke of the length of art and
the fleeting quality of time, and again the words of the great
Lenin were quoted.
From that day began a siege. The strain of accomplishing
anything in Russia is great. Every detail must be attended to
personally. Yet once out of Russia one wonders why it should
have been so difficult.
The convenience of the outside world is relatively so great
that it becomes hard to recall vividly the inescapable difficul-
ties. The constant exasperations seem afterward to have been a
dream.
I began by becoming very well acquainted with the system
of the "day of rest," which prevailed at that time. Everyone
took his day of rest every five days. Different people took their
rest on different days. So in theory business went on all the time.
Under this system, there is no Sunday in Soviet Russia, and
48
soon one forgot what day of the week it is. Russian calendars
have the figures in red or blue or green numerals to indicate
the time span. I found the day of rest system rather confusing.
No one ever seemed to know when anyone else's day of rest
came due, and often when I went to keep an appointment I
would find that the man I went to see was away on his day of
rest. I would return the next day. The official was there, smiling
and gracious, but he could not decide the matter until he had
talked it over with another official. But now that other official
was away on his day of rest. When these two gentlemen got
together conferences had to be held, and committee meetings
called.
Day after day I followed up my advantages point by point,
so as to make Khalatoff's "Sdielena" a reality. I knew I must
take every possible advantage of official help if I was to travel
throughout Russia and take pictures unhampered in the out-
lying cities and factories. I was not sorry to let the Government
pay for my trip because traveling in Russia is expensive, but it
was more important still to have the official sanction that such
Government patronage implied. I had only five weeks to accom-
plish a great deal that I had set out to do, and I could not risk
having my way blocked by unnecessary red tape.
Getting around Moscow to make arrangements for my trip
was not an easy matter. Taxis are as rare in Moscow as hansoms
in New York. A taxi driver who is engaged days ahead often
is fickle to the applicant and goes off with someone else when
he is expected. A vacant taxi is such a rare sight in Moscow that
when one passes through the streets twenty people put down
whatever is in their arms and run after it.
49
 Failing to get a taxi, we attempted the street car. Often the
street cars were so crowded that it was impossible for two more
passengers to get on them. Next we resorted to a droshky.
The droshky is a picturesque little open cab so worn it seems
that a breath would blow it to pieces. The driver's box is sur-
mounted by an elderly man in nondescript clothes, wearing one
of the most magnificent beards in Russia. The fare is high on
droshkys. My interpreter, Lida Ivanovna, would bargain up
and down the line with the drivers, while I hid around the cor-
ner so they could not see that the price was being set for an
Amerikanka.
At last we started off, bumping expensively over the cobble-
stones. On one occasion, half-way to our destination, the
droshky driver decided that his horse was tired, and we were
dropped out to walk.
Hurrying through the streets we went, trying to reach the
official before his short office hours were over. When we reached
the office, it was closed and we had to begin again the next day.
In the midst of all these difficulties, I determined to get
some pictures taken in Moscow while all this planning and dis-
cussion for my big trip was going on. If all official business was
transacted the day after tomorrow, I would use the days in be-
tween to take photographs. So on the alternating days we
visited bread factories, workers' clubs, textile mills, carrying
my cameras and floodlights back and forth in droshkas or street
cars.
On one such street car trip I learned the meaning of the sil-
ver shortage. Peasants have been accused of hoarding the silver,
and the shortage of change makes money transactions difficult.
50
One day we managed to squeeze our way into a street car and
the conductor held out her hand for our fare.
"Ten kopeks."
"We have no change," said my interpreter. "Take a ruble."
"T en kope ks."
"But we don't have ten kopeks. Keep the ruble."
"I can not keep the ruble. I may not take tips. It is against
the law!"
"But what shall we do'? We have no change."
"Get off the car."
So the conductor stopped the car, and in true Russian
fashion all the passengers talked this over. Should we be made
to get off the car or should we be allowed to stay'? True, we had
no kopeks, but we had rubles. On the other hand, responsible
citizens did not accept tips. Tipping was forbidden by law. The
conductor could not accept our tip without doing injury to the
state, and thus proving herself an irresponsible citizen. While
the discussion raged, several street cars were compelled to halt
behind ours. Traffic was blocked while those passengers decided
whether my _interpreter and I could stay on the car for the lack
of a ten kopek piece.
At last the passengers rose, united in our defense. It was
decided that we should keep our ruble. Our car started, and the
traffic on the street flowed into circulation again.
 CHAPTER IX:
A SOVIET TEXTILE MILL

I
SAT in an old carved chair, a relic of Czarism, in the other-
wise extremely simple office of George Melnichanski, head
of the All-Union':'Textile Syndicate.
"How are things in America 1" he asked. "We hear that
the unemployment situation is terrible and that there are food
lines in the New York streets. Is it true1 In the Soviet Union
there is no unemployment. Everybody has a job. It is only in a
capitalist country that such industrial disasters can befall."
Melnichanski was especially interested in hearing about
America. As a young man he had come as an immigrant to the
United States. For several years he worked as a watchmaker,
and as time went on he became more and more active in the
socialist and trade union movement. In 1917 when the revolu-
tion broke out he hurried back to Russia. He worked actively
in the building up of the new regime, and eventually was made
secretary of the Soviet Trade Union Federation. He has great
natural intelligence, and, combined with this innate ability, he
brought back from America the germs of organization and man-
agement. Now he is head of all the textile industries in Russia.
Melnichanski was all courtesy and friendliness. If I wanted
to photograph textiles he would give me a paper at once that
would admit me to textile factories in any part of the Soviet
Union. He said he was sorry he could not provide me with a car.
Two of the three cars belonging to the textile trust were
52
WATCHING ORE THREADS FOR BREAKS
TENDING THE AUTOMATIC MULE
CALENDER ROLLS
PHOTOGRAPHED WITH A BROKEN GROUND-GLASS
"broken." But my paper would entitle me to any help I asked
for in any textile plant in the country.
Lida I vanovna and I hired a droshky and traveled through
the winding streets until we reached a textile factory on the
I

outskirts of Moscow, which manufactures cotton lace, chiefly

for export.
The guard stood at the gate of the textile mill chewing sun-
flower seeds and spitting the hulls reflectively into the street.
My paper from Melnichansky was examined and we were ad-
mitted.
The factory consisted of many wooden buildings sprawling
up the side of a hill. We climbed up a wooden staircase to the
dark main office and waited while a directors' conference drew
to a close. Through the open door we could see the earnest faces
of the directors as they bent over a round table, discussing the
affairs of the mills.
The meeting finished, the mill superintendent came out to
take us through the mills. She was a chunky little woman who
had grown up with the revolution. Her straw-colored hair was
combed back bruskly over her ears; her coarse linen smock
reached to the calves of her bare sturdy legs. She had a strong,
intelligent, pock-marked face. As a small girl she had been a
back-wash tender, had risen to ring-spinner, and finally to in-
spector, and when the revolution had thrown the old manage-
ment of the factory overboard, had risen to her present high
post. She led us into the factory. The textile machinery was
humming along merrily.
We went through the warping departments, where threads
traveled delicately through the air in a fine gossamer pattel'.n,
53
as though thousands of in visible spiders carried them on aerial
bridges from the bobbins to the beam. From there we went
through rooms full of Jacquard looms where threads from hun-
dreds of spools travel their intricate way through the harnesses,
cross and recross, and are rolled out as lace. We worked our way
to the upper floors of the factory where girls sat on the floor,
cutting selvages, surrounded by piles of snowy lace.
A woman stooped beside the frame of bobbins, examining
the threads for breaks as they passed through the riders to the
warper. The position of her head and arms was beautiful, and
I unstrapped my equipment cases and began to work. I took out
my 1000 watt floodlights and with some anxiety exhibited my
cords and plugs to the electrician. On the ease with which I
could make electrical connections for lighting would depend
much of the success with which I could work in Russia. I ex-
plained to my interpreter that my 1000 watt bulbs connected to
110 voltage, but that if the factory was equipped with 220 volt-
age they could be connected in series. "In series" bothered him
a good deal, until finally his face broke into a smile. "Oh," he
said, "you mean I must put one behind the other."
I set up my tripods, mounted the lamps, adjusted the
camera, and we threw on the current. All the workers on the
floor left their machines and came running in astonishment to
look at the great blaze of light. It was with difficulty that I got
these people back to their jobs again. I wanted to be able to
study them doing their work and not watching mine.
With my head under the camera cloth I examined the
ground glass. The warp threads spun their way in an opening
fan across the field, and I moved the lights carefully so as to
54
leave the background in darkness and light up each separate
thread as it passed through its rider.
I returned to my chosen model and placed her in the posi-
tion in which I had watched her work. She was trembling with
excitement.
"Are those tears in her eyes'?" I asked my interpreter in-
credulously.
"Yes, she is crying with happiness because you chose her
for a picture instead of any of the pretty young girls on the
floor."
I worked with her, taking exposure after exposure, chang-
ing the angle of her head, shifting the position of the arm, and
as I worked the tears rolled down her cheeks.
The picture finished, we walked through other parts of the
factory, until, entering another warping department, I stopped
to choose a second viewpoint.
Like the wires across the board of a grand piano, the threads
ran parallel along the mule, lengthening and shortening regu-
larly as the self-actor moved to and fro.
A young boy in an embroidered cap tended the mule. I
searched the department for a partner for him whose features
would suit his, and not finding the type of face I was seeking I
climbed from floor to floor, trying to locate a girl in some other
department of the same factory. At last I saw a little girl in a
white kerchief who had the cast of features I wanted for my
picture. Unable to talk with her I led her by the hand. Puzzled,
she followed me down five flights of stairs. When we reached
the self-actor and she caught sight of the camera she smiled
happily. Without being directed she took her place beside the
ss
boy, assumed a sober expression, and held her position until the
photograph was taken.
Posing American workmen for photographs is often very
difficult. Usually I go many times through the factory, studying
their attitudes as they work and memorizing every detail of the
position, so that I will be able to reconstruct it correctly when
I come to take my picure. The minute an American worker sees
a camera he becomes self-conscious. Often I have to work over
every detail of his posture, changing the slope of his back, the
attitude of his head, the position of every finger, until move-
ment will be suggested by his attitude in the photograph, even
though he must be photographed standing still.
If he becomes too difficult to work with, I tell him to go on
working while I visit another part of the factory. When he has
limbered up I return, and begin over again.
But in Russia, every worker that I chose for a model acted
as though he had been trained behind footlights. The Russians
are a naturally dramatic people. My ignorance of Russian was
no hindrance, for at a mere gesture from me they fell naturally
into dramatic and expressive attitudes.
In the same way the electricians were a joy to work with.
In America it usually puzzles the factory electrician when I
say: Move this light an inch. No, that is too far; bring it back
a little. Close the wing of that lamp a trifle. Shade this high-
light with your hand. Such minuteness is not usually under~
stood here, but the Russians seemed to understand instinctively
that I was composing a picture. With a natural eye to pictorial
effect they seemed to comprehend that every detail was impor-
tant in the building up of an artistic whole.
56
THE WOMAN WHO "WEPT FOR .JOY
 We left the self-actor and traveled through the factory,
photographing roving machines, with their snowy balls of rov-
ing, lighting up the towers of spools mounted on a creel, setting
the focus for a sheaf of threads traveling like the tail of a comet
from the bobbins to the beam.
At last my filmholders were exhausted, and I had to search
for a light-tight place where I could reload. Through the factory
I went with the electrician, trying rooms, closets, passageways,
but always a ray of light sifted through the ceiling, under the
bottom of the door, between cracks in the wall, enough to
threaten light-fog.
"The electrician says that only in the basement," explained
my interpreter, "will we find a place that is absolutely dark,
but the basement is full of water."
We made our way to the cellar and the electrician con-
structed a little island of boxes. He threw off the lights and we
waited while our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness to make
sure that no ray of light penetrated anywhere. When I was sure
of absolute darkness, I began my task. Seated crosslegged on
my little raft I unloaded my exposed films, packed them care-
fully in boxes, and reloaded with fresh films.
Next we went to the top floor of the factory, where I wanted
to photograph the finishing departments. Creamy lace wound
its way down the calender rolls. Clouds of steam moistened the
ever-traveling fabric. A round-cheeked, white-hooded girl
stooped over the tentering machine, slipping the selvage on
pins as it traveled steadily beneath her fingers. Off the tentering
hooks, the lace was hung on racks for inspection. Women pulled
the lace in piles of foam over the racks, burling and inspecting,
57
cutting out little knots and slubs. Two of these :figures seemed
especially beautiful to me, and I set my camera to compose a
picture.
The camera I use for most of my work is of the view type,
having a horizontal bellows, fitted at the back with a sheet of
frosted glass. This "ground glass" reflects the image, giving the
exact limits of the field which will be included in the photo-
graph.
The two women whom I was photographing continued to
slip their lace over the racks as I set up my lights, and when I
was ready to take the picture, I stopped them in position. The
woman in the rear stood partly in the shadow, echoing the posi-
tion of the nearer figure, creating a rhythm upon which I wanted
to build my composition.
I was studying the lines of the hanging lace carefully. Just
as I was hurrying forward to make some changes in its position,
the ground glass slipped out of its frame and crashed into frag-
ments on the floor. Those who have taken photographs will real-
ize my dilemma. I picked up a splinter of glass and moved it
about the gaping back of the camera, catching here a foot, here
the image of part of a head, memorizing the limits of the com-
position, and estimating the contents of the field. I measured
off imaginary squares with my hands in space in order to ap-
proximate the boundaries of the composition. Over the vacant
field I moved my chip of glass, setting the focus by guess. The
adjustments made at last, I called to my interpreter to direct
my models to hold still, reached for the trigger, and found that
my shutter did not work. The spaces between the lenses had
filled with steam and thrown my shutter out of order.
58
 "Keep those women in position," I directed my interpreter,
fearful that they would move out of the picture, and I would
have to begin composing with splinters of glass again. Carefully
I loosened the clinging leaves of the diaphragm, and with
match sticks coaxed my shutter into spasmodic operation, and
so snapped my picture.
When I left the factory I complimented the electrician on
how efficiently he had worked with me. "Yes," he said, smiling
happily, "it was just like the Amerikanski tempo, wasn't it'?"

59
 CHAPTER X:
FIVE PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE

K
OSTIA and Alinka lived together in unwed blessedness.
Their one-room apartment had a warm, well-lived look,
magically achieved with two old lampshades, a few
overstuffed chairs, saved somehow out of the Revolution, and
much gayety everywhere. Tonight, their guests sat on the floor,
on the window sills, on the heavy carved table, and the victrola _
jingled retrospectively through the American theme songs of
three years ago.
"There is an American girl here," Kostia was saying over
the telephone. "No truly, a real American girl. Come over and
have a dance with her."
The victrola ran on through Ain't She Sweet and She's
Funny That Way and by the time the inevitable She's My
Baby had been reached, the corridor outside of Kostia's room
was filled up with a long line of comrades who had never seen
an American girl and were waiting to find out what it was like
to dance with one.
These boys were good! The Russian instinct for music and
rhythm is so strong that they danced these foxtrots as though
they had learned them in American universities. Conversation
with my partners was impossible, but my feet followed the same
familiar pattern that they had many times before at fraternity
dances. Persistent and unique is our American culture. Ameri-
can engineering spreads over Russia, and close upon its foot-
steps follows our American jazz.
60
 Kostia's room would not accommodate an additional guest
without stealing from the dancing space, so, impartially, one
at a time, a comrade from without was allowed to enter, lead me
through the complications of one foxtrot, and then give way to
the next in line. I was the object of a famous Soviet institution
-the "ocheri~"-the long queue which forms for bread, sugar,
milk,-and now for dancing with an Amerikanka.
Few of these young people would have risked being seen
dancing in public. Dancing is considered bourgeois and fox-
trots are frowned upon by the State. Although the Russian
ballet is supported in all its glory, social dancing as we know it
is regarded as a wasteful occupation. Young people must be
. responsible citizens. They should spend their evenings at poli-
tical meetings or in the discussion of cultural affairs, endeavor-
ing in every way to prove themselves "socially constructive."
We went on being socially unconstructive until Kostia and
Alinka produced a precious bit of wine, a still more precious
portion of vodka, a few crackers that had been hoarded for a
festivity like this, and the inevitable Russian cucumbers. I was
moved when my host and hostess insisted on my eating the
crackers myself. A few crackers meant nothing to me, but to
Kostia and Alinka, they were the very essence of a "party."
We sat on the floor drinking little thimblefuls of vodka,
while Kostia played some old Russian folksongs on the victrola.
One was very beautiful:
Driver, Oh lash not your steed
I've no place to which I must speed,
I've no love, whose call I must heed;
Driver, Oh lash not your steed.
I was enchanted with the soft slow harmony, and Kostia
61
made me a present of the record. It was a quaint record, with a
little cupid in the center of the disk, made before the revolu-
tion, and I value it very highly.
A young Russian engineer and I discovered that between
us we could carry on a limping guesswork conversation in
French. I learned that his name was Grisha Mitlinoff; that he
would love to come to America but there was no way of ex-
changing his Russian wages for foreign currency. We chatted
on, I gathering the meaning from his French as well as my lim-
ited vocabulary would allow. Whenever his conversation
was unintelligible to me, I continued to nod and smile politely,
until I was startled by seeing a joyous expression leap into his
face, and heard him say something which I understood perfectly
well: "Depuis je serai Mr. Mitlinoff, and vous seriez Mrs.
Mitlinoff."
This really was "so sudden." In such French as I could mus-
ter at the moment I gently declined Grisha Mitlinoff's pro-
posal and left him, hoping that I had made myself clear. But
this was only one example of the impulsive Russian heart that
evening. Some two weeks later I learned from an English-speak-
ing friend of Kostia's that what I was innocently nodding
and smiling to in the case of the young men who spoke Russian
was no less than four additional proposals of marriage. Since I
did not know what they were saying I failed to decline these
proposals and one of the more hopeful suitors rushed off to the
Marriage and Divorce Bureau the following morning and
divorced his wife·. Divorce in Russia is simple, the request of
either party being sufficient. My suitor's wife, who was away on
a vacation in the Caucasus, was simply informed of the divorce
by the proper authorities through the mails.
62
 CHAPTER XI:
SOME IDEAS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

T
HE editor of a popular illustrated weekly which circu-
lates throughout Russia, said to me:
"You must address our young people. You must
talk to them about art and photography. We will gather them
together, the editors, the artists, the photographers, and you will
talk to them about the art of photographing the machine."
"But how can I address a meeting when I don't know the
language~"
"We will have interpreters. It will all be arranged."
There was an extraordinary dignity about the meeting
which the young magazine editor arranged for me. I addressed
the comrades in English, they asked me questions in Russian,
and the interpreters interpreted. In response to their questions,
I tried to explain my ideas on photography.
"You must not make a picture unusual just because you
decide arbitrarily to make it unusual," I said. "You must not
strain for an effect. The effect must be a natural result of your
manner of expression. The thing that I like about your Russian
moving pictures is that the most striking of your effects seem
so inevitable. They come from the fact that the director is try-
ing to express an idea that he finds overwhelming. He is trying
to express it in the simplest, most direct way. He wants to be
understood, hence the result has force.
"If a photographer has something to say the chances are in
his favor that he will produce a good picture. The picture will
63
 probably have unity. Unity is not wholly a matter of composi-
tion, not entirely a question of forms that are spaced in a geo-
metrically pleasing fashion, of lines that lead to the center of
interest. All these are important, but largely as they emphasize
the idea.
"A picture refreshes us insofar as it gives us a chance to
see the world in a new way. If the artist has an interesting mind,
we are stimulated by his pictures. If he has a dull mind, his
pictures bore us. I abhor the kind of photography that blurs over
the subject with a lot of soft focus tricks, and calls itself artis-
tic. There is no reason for photography to imitate any other art.
A photograph should not look like a painting. It should look
like itself. It is a direct and expressive medium and it should be
used for what it is.
"It is a magnificent world and there is no need to dress it up.
It is a world of wonderful materials. Careless workmanship
loses the quality, and the photographer should get the feeling
of the material.
"A photograph should never look as though the subjects are
made of cardboard and pasted into place. Wood should look
like wood. Concrete should have the texture of concrete. Earth
should be real living earth, and steel should possess the very
essence of steel.
"How is this done'? By careful attention to lighting so the
quality of the material is brought out. If the work is done in-
doors the lighting is under the photographer's control. He can
place his lights so as to best bring out the texture, and throw
his highlights so as to center emphasis on the most important
details. If he is working out-of-doors, he can study the subject
64
at all times of day, waiting until the sunlight best reveals the
surface, and the shadows most significantly outline the form.
"It is the very blackness and whiteness of photography that
makes it so suitable for industrial subjects. It is honest and re-
vealing and cleancut. Photography is a new artistic medium,
still in its infancy. It is an outstanding means of expression and
the best, I believe, for portraying the power and force of in-
dustry.
"This is a wonderful age we live in, with locomotives and
steel mills and power plants. We have subjects that are alive
and vital and rich with the breath of doing. A dynamo is as
beautiful as a vase, but it was never meant to be beautiful. In
the very economy of its form lies its artistic value.
"Some artists bemoan the days of Greece and Rome. Those
early artists had subjects that were close to their lives. But all
around us we have new shapes, new forms. We need only to
open our eyes and see. What artist of the past had the chance
to paint a derrick against the sky, the black wall of a generator,
the rush of molten metal in a steel mill'? Their subjects were
alive for them, and ours have flesh and blood for us. Any great
art, I believe, that may come out of this industrial age, will rise
from industrial subjects which are powerful and sincere and
close to the heart of life."
I arose to go, but still the questions continued. "What were
American photographers doing'? Did the workers form photo-
graphic clubs'?, Did their photographs portray the class
struggle'?, Did their clubs further the victorious uprooting of
capitalism'?," And many other questions equally difficult for me
to answer.
 Just as difficult were their technical questions about photog-
raphy. "What were the latest developments in the photographic
industry'? What were the newest chemical formulas'? What
were the latest film emulsions; of what ingredients were they
composed'?" And many other matters which our photographers
could not find out from the secret experimental laboratories if
they wanted to, and which they are quite content to leave to
Eastman and Agfa.
At last I managed to leave, but at the door they stopped my
interpreter, with still a new, lively barrage of inquiries.
"What did they ask you'?" I said, when we reached the
street.
"They wanted to know what you are like in the factories,
how you work.
"And I explained," Lida Ivanovna went on, "that when she
works, then she is the lightning."
"But the other questions that they asked you as we went
down the steps'?"
"Oh," she replied, "they wanted to know, how old is she'?
How does she spend her evenings'? Does she have any ad-
mirers'?"
"And what did you tell them'?"
"That Miss Bourke-White loves nothing but her camera."

66
 A SOVIET ARTIST
SEM!ONOVA, LEADING BALLERINA OF THE MOSCOW OPERA HOUSE
 CHAPTER XII:
A D AN CER , A DIRECTOR, AND A CZAR

S
EMIONOVA flashed across the stage, dancing like a but-
terfly, a whirlwind , a comet. The audience of workers in
the high red-hung opera house leaned forward and
watched her breathlessly. The curtain rang down on the un-
paralleled Russian ballet , and the audience :filed out between
the acts to drink their glasses of tea.
These intermissions are sociable times. The lobbies are full
of workers, whose proletarian costumes contrast strangely with
the red velvet hangings and gilded Czarist grandeur. Here and
there a belted blouse; now and then a road builder, his clothes
splashed after his day of mixing cement; never a full dress suit,
unless worn by some foreign visitor.
The Russian Opera begins at seven-thirty, and continues in
half-hour acts until toward midnight, and between the acts tea
drinking is carried on like a ritual.
There is no dancing in the world to compare with the Rus-
sian ballet. The Czars fell, and with them many products of the
old imperial splendor, but the art-loving Bolsheviks preserved
the ballet. Since the death of Pavlova, it is generally conceded
that Semionova is the world's greatest living ballerina. She is
Russia's idol. Someday she will dance outside of her own coun-
try, and then her reputation will spread over the world.
After the ballet I had supper with a small group of people
connected with the Opera, and with two officials of Sovkino,
67
the Soviet motion picture organization. Semionova sat smiling
beside her husband, a compact, hard-bodied little man, with
quick eyes and a smoothly shaven head. He is a dancer himself,
and was one of Semionova's early instructors. My halting
French came to my aid again, and Semionova and I talked
about dancing and about photography. She mentioned that all
her photographs had been taken in stage costumes, and I
promised to take a portrait of her in street clothes. Slievkin, the
Sovkino director, said he would be delighted to be able to offer
me the use of the new sound studio, which had been completed
within the last few days.
The next morning I waited for Semionova in the newly
finished, bare moving picture studio. The door opened, and in
came a tiny figure, in an ill-fitting yellow raincoat and unbe-
coming rubberized hat, cotton stockings, and heavy, flat-heeled
shoes. This young person in the awkward clothes, could this be
last night's dancer-that creature of light'?
Semionova threw off the ugly hat and shook her blond curls
free, laughed her greeting, and came toward me across the room.
What a step she had! It conquered even her awkward shoes.
Such grace can not be taught; once in a century someone is
born with it.
The cinema electricians moved up their towers of lights and
I began to work. Before I could compose my lighting effects, I
had to quell their eager enthusiasm tactfully. Proud of their
new equipment, they wanted me to use every light in the studio.

The rest of the day was spent in taking care of details for
my trip, so that we could be ready to leave at a moment's notice
68
just as soon as the official arrangements were all completed.
"Do you have a teapot'?" asked Lida Ivanovna. "I will have
to make you tea when we travel on the trains."
I had films and reflectors and floodlights and tripods, but
no teapot.
"I will bring my mother's," said Lida I vanovna.
Our planning had lasted until midnight and she rose to go.
Just as she was closing away the carefully penciled lists she
had been checking in her briefcase, a knock sounded on the door.
It was Pudovkin, famous director of the moving picture, Storm
Over Asia. He said he had heard I was in Moscow and wanted
to see my pictures.
Vsevolod Pudovkin is a lithe, active man of about thirty-
seven, with an exceptional charm of manner. His face is scarred,
but mobile and expressive, and as he talks, his eager gestures
make one feel that there is dramatic blood flowing through his
vems.
Pudovkin had a good working knowledge of English, but
our conversation led us through so many technical channels
that Lida I vanovna was kept busy filling in the gaps.
He had come direct from his studio where he was working
night and day on a new film. He believes that the sound film
has a tremendous future, but this development will only come
as sound is used in a new manner. He said that most of the
talkies which are turned out today by the score are in effect
nothing more than a photographic reproduction of stage plays.
But the sound film is a new medium which can be used in en-
tirely new ways. Sounds and human speech should be used by
the director not as a literal accompaniment, but to amplify and
69
enrich the visual image on the screen. Under such conditions
could the sound film become a new form of art whose future
development has no predictable limits.
He sat on the edge of my bed and talked about his experi-
ments. He was eager to hear about America and questioned me
minutely about my work in the factories. Picture by picture we
went through the collections of my American industrial photo-
graphs which I had brought, discussing the problems of focus,
of lighting, the means the photographer uses, either with the
still or moving film, in order to get the feeling of the material.
At the bottom of my pile of industrials, I had a head of a
Great Dane, his nose on his paws.
"Did you place that dog before that stone wall because his
hide is the color and almost the texture of stone'?" asked Pudov-
kin.
"No, but I was delighted to find him sleeping there," I ex-
plained. "I sat on my knees in front of him with my camera for
an hour before I could get him to open his eyes. He didn't want
to be bothered with photographers. I whistled and coaxed and
pleaded, but he was a big, lazy fell ow and slept on. Finally I
began rolling little pebbles at him, and he blinked his eyes just
long enough for me to snap the picture."
I was so accustomed to see Russians grow enthusiastic over
industrial photographs, that I was surprised when Pudovkin
asked .for a copy of the Great Dane picture. I was, of course,
glad to give it to him.
He sat on my bed talking until dawn. When he and Lida
Ivanovna took their departure, the sky had grown light.
I was too stimulated by my talk with Pudovkin to want to
70
THE TOWERS OF ST. BASIL'S
sleep. Walking out of the Grand Hotel, I started across the Red
Square. Dawn was brightening behind the dark brick wall of
the Kremlin, and the grotesque towers of St. Basil stood out in
silhouette as if they had been cut out of black paper and pasted
against the sky. As I walked toward it, my attention was
arrested by the sudden and unexpected changes in the con-
tours of the cathedral; every few steps I took threw the cupolas
into new relations with each other, and the church assumed en-
tirely new outlines.
I paused on the platform of Ivan the Terrible's historic exe-
cution block, and looked up, thinking: "Am I really seeing this
church or is it a dream'?" The fantastic variety in the shapes of
the cupolas made it seem as though the architect, like an imagi-
native child building with blocks, had fallen in love with all
his designs, and unable to part with any of them, had combined
them all into one incredible creation.
But the Russians have their own explanation for this vari-
egated collection of domes. It seems that in the old days each
noble family had its own cupola beneath which was the family
tomb. According to one legend, Ivan the Terrible, in his drive
to subjugate the nobles, gathered together the cupolas from the
leading families and had them built into the Cathedral of St.
Basil. This cathedral was then placed, not within the Kremlin,
but just outside the Kremlin wall as though the Czar wished
to proclaim to the world that he had the nobles under his
thumb. This legend explains the architectural orgy of the many-
colored domes.
A still more famous Russian legend tells that I van was so
enchanted with this cathedral that he summoned the architect,
71
who was about to return to his home in Western Europe, and
asked him whether he would ever be able to design a better one.
Like all artists, who believe that each of their creations will be
better than the last, the architect assured the emperor that his
next cathedral would be even better than St. Basil. Ivan ex-
pressed his highest praise in his own characteristic way: he put
out the architect's eyes so that he would never be able to design
another church.
As I stood gazing at the fantastic outline of the cathedral,
the sky lightened and I could see that every tower had not only
a different shape but a different color combination as well.
Various shadings of reds and yellows were blended into the
cupolas, one of which was fluted, another spiked like a pine-
apple, a third with parallel ridges like an Indian blanket, while
a fourth twisted upward in a whorl.

72
 CHAPTER XIII: WE'RE OFF

A
T last the "day after tomorrow" arrived. Everything
was arranged. Long distance calls passed between
Khalatoff, who was in Leningrad, and his assistants in
Moscow. The treasurer of the Gosizdat handed me the fat roll
of ruble notes which was to pay the expenses of my interpreter
and myself during our 5000-mile trip. The officials filed into
the dark oval office to shake hands and offer me their congratu-
lations.
I was to visit Dnieperstroi, where Colonel Cooper, the
American engineer who built the Roosevelt Dam and Muscle
Shoals, was superintending the construction of the world's lar-
gest dam over the Dnieper River. From there I would go to
Rostov, where the largest collective farms were being devel-
oped. After that I would start South for Novorossisk, a seaport
on the Black Sea, where the largest cement factory in Russia
was located. Thence a long trip to Stalingrad, on the Volga.
/
Before the revolution, when it was only an overgrown village,
it was called Tsaritzin, but since its expansion into an indus-
trial center it had been named after Stalin. There I would visit
the steel plant that was being enlarged to supply metal for the
new tractor factory, but chiefly I would photograph Tractor-
stroi. This last factory, I knew, would be especially interest-
ing because it would give me a chance to observe how the Rus-
sians behaved in a thoroughly Americanized industry, operated
along American lines and supervised by American engineers. I
73
had visited similar industries in the United States and this
would give me a chance to make comparisons.
I returned triumphantly to Lida Ivanovna, but found that
I had forgotten the most important thing. When I had received
the roll of rubles, I thought I had done everything necessary for
my trip. Any Russian would have known better.
"You have money," cried my interpreter, "but no papers.
In Russia you can manage without money, but not without
papers."
I had had enough of touring offices, but Lida Ivanovna led
me forth on another campaign. Ou~ pursuit of papers was a
good deal like our tour of the conferences and the maps, but it
was a little shorter. We ended up with a sheaf of documents
with enough red stamps, purple seals, and red ink signatures to
impress any Russian in any province. Very exotic they were,
with their strange characters. I could pick out my name BypR-
YaiiT, in the Russian letters, and never got over my surprise
on hearing it read aloud, "Bourke-White."
The papers conferred the most astounding privileges. In-
asmuch as I was commissioned by the Soviet Government to
take these industrial photographs, all Soviet citizens that I
called upon were requested to help me with my work.
Our most important paper, the one from the railroad Com-
missariat, which made it possible for us to get any train accom-
modations we needed throughout Russia, was to come by mes-
senger. Early in the morning Serebriakoff's secretary tele-
phoned to say that it was on its way. All day long we waited.
When the train we planned to take left, our paper had not yet
arrived and we had to postpone our departure a day. Late at
74
night it came, intact, but a little worn. It evidently had been
read with interest by everyone through whose hands it had
passed during the day.
As I placed the last articles in my bags, my friends brought
me offerings of soap. Albert Rhys Williams, the author of The
Russian Land, inscribed his cake with his initials, reminding me
of an artist friend of mine in Cleveland who used to draw
sketches on the backs of his checks, hoping that his creditors
would frame the sketch instead of cashing the check.
On my way to the station I dispatched one last cable to the
American correspondent in Berlin:
OFF AT LAST AND DEPARTING IN CLOUD OF GLORY

75
 CHAPTER XIV: DNIEPERSTROI

I
N the chill midnight we were deposited on the platform of
Dnieperpetrovsk. Lida Ivanovna left me sitting on my
trunks, and shortly afterwards came back with the good
news that we had been met by a truck from the Dam. She was
accompanied by another woman, the English-speaking secretary
of the chief engineer who had been waiting for our train for
hours.
In the truck, and placed once more upon my trunks, we
jogged along on our way to Dnieperstroi. The engineer's secre-
tary was a big, motherly person. I was glad to discover she had
been to America. Russians who have been to America are a dif-
ferent race. I do not know what it is that the Western World
does to a Russian. It gives him something more than an enlarged
viewpoint. It makes a difference in the way his mind works.
We bumped along on our trunks and cases while the thick
Russian voice of the Americanized secretary related how much
better things were in Dnieperstroi than in Moscow. She told me
how Dnieperstroi had a new "mechanical" kitchen, how some-
times the Americans brought her presents, once some dress
goods, once even a pair of silk stockings. She recalled the terror
which swept the Dnieperstroi region during the Civil War and
famine.
"In those days we lived like animals, like beasts. People be-
came cannibals. But now everything is changed. And there is
food."
 She told me something: of the region's history. For hundreds
of years, battles raged on the banks of the Dnieper. The Zapo-
rozhie Cossacks, warriors whose exploits fill Russian song and
legend, directed their campaigns from an island fortress whose
ruins can still be seen from the towers of the vast hydroelectric
station now being built under the direction of American engi-
neers. Their proud reply, full of rough humor, addressed to the
Sultan of Turkey against whom they carried on incessant war-
fare, is a classic in Russian painting and literature. During the
Civil War, following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the
Dnieper region was the scene of severe battles. As late as 1923
bandits and counter-revolutionaries, organized in the so-called
Green Army, ravaged the countryside until they were crushed
by the Soviet forces.
We swerved around a curve in the road and there were the
lights of Dnieperstroi, twinkling like a path of stars across the
great river. I saw in these lights the symbol of Russia working,
Russia hoping, Russia making sacrifices and struggling. Here
at last was the reality.,Now I could begin.
Piers ablaze with searchlights rose into the air. High above
the piers hung a green beacon. It had been a good day-
4200 cubic meters of cement had been deposited in the last
twenty-four hours. A red light would have indicated 5000, and
a white signal 3500. Eagerly each evening the workers watch
for the lighting of the beacon. Uppermost in their minds is
always the peak set by the Five Year Plan, and each ton of
concrete brings them so much closer to their goal.
The American House was full but we could have a room in
the Russian Workers' hotel. If I could wait until the water was
77
 heated I might even have a bath. I waited, struggling with my-
self to keep awake. When the water tank was heated, no one
could find the stopper to the tub. There are ways of making
stoppers out of wads of cloth, even when you are dead for want
of sleep. Finally the bath was achieved and I went to bed, but
I was not to sleep for long. I began having dazed dreams of
camping beside marshes. As I roused myself in to half conscious-
ness, I began to wonder why the mosquitos were so bad. Sud-
denly I sat up wide awake, with the realization that far huskier
creatures than mosquitos were conducting this attack. I fled
from my bed and retired to the stopperless bathtub. It is hard
to sleep in a bathtub. I read detective stories until dawn.
When daylight came at last I started out with my camera. I
was driven about in one of the precious Dnieper Chevrolets by
a bewhiskered and bloused gentleman with a head like a hay-
stack. My driver's name was Vsevolod Manasevich Ignatiakoff,
but the Americans called him Bill. It was necessary for me to
curry the favor of Bill because he was one of the prima donnas
of Dnieperstroi. If there are any Czars left in Communist Rus-
sia today they are the chauffeurs of Russia's rare, hence ex-
tremely valuable cars, who can indulge in all the temperament
of a Ganna W alska.
Bill had a fine flow of American slang which he had picked
up from the American engineers on the job. He sprinkled his
conversation liberally with okay and attaboy and it-won't-be-
long-now, which raced their way through luxuriant whiskers.
Bill also had a genuine American love of speeding, a frequent
addiction of Russians who are given automobiles for the first
time to play with. I hugged my camera between my knees and
78
grasped my seat with both hands as Bill tore over the hilltops
and circled madly around the edges of the cliffs that overhang
Dnieperstroi.
When we left the perilous car to climb steel beams and
scaffolding I felt much fonder of Bill as a porter than as a
driver. Climbing scaffolding and traveling cranes is my busi-
ness, and here were great towers of structural work that were
indeed worthy of being climbed. Below me flowed the white-
churned Dnieper River and in the distance beyond the rapids
the delicate arches of the half completed Dnieper bridge lined
the sky. All about me and below me was the most astonishing
activity; from bank to bank one solid mile of human effort as
16,000 Russians labored to complete the world's largest dam.
Here, on the spot where two centuries ago Catherine the Great
directed her engineers to draw up plans for a series of naviga-
tion canals, American engineers are now directing the creation
of a flight of navigation locks which will enable the northern
Ukraine to ship wheat down the Dnieper River to the ports of
the Black Sea. I surveyed a scene which would have delighted
the energetic Empress. Figures like gnats raising structural
work, welding beams, riveting water turbines, pouring cement,
and always on the horizon the ceaseless motion of cranes weav-
ing restlessly back and forth like antennre of beetle hordes
marching upon their prey.
I climbed to the edge of my structural pier, lay flat, face
downward, across a footing of beams, and with Bill kneeling
across the legs of my horizontally placed tripod I began to
photograph a huge generator shell that was being constructed
below. A bare-backed, tow-headed boy scrambled up the side of
79
the mammoth snailshell and I worked my way down on ladders
to photograph him tightening up a bolt on the turbine.
In a row there stood three partially completed snails, which
were soon to take up their task of distributing water to the
largest hydro-turbines in the world. The pieces of these gener-
ators had come from Virginia, packed like jigsaw puzzles by
the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. They were fitted
together by many barefoot, bare-backed workers, under the
competent direction of four soft-voiced Virginia engineers.
Standing on a plank, thrown from pier to pier, low above
the water, I had my first mishap. There was no room on the
plank for Bill. I had to manage my camera on this narrow foot-
ing alone. A sudden gust of wind carried my focusing cloth off
my shoulders and down into the river. I could not stop it be-
cause my hands were busy with the camera, but all the nearby
Russians leaped to my aid. They hurried into little boats and
went rowing down the rapids to rescue my camera cloth. Before
they could reach it, it had disappeared from sight.
From then on throughout Russia I tried to buy a piece of
cloth. That little incident brought the shortage of goods sharply
home to me. In every city we visited, my interpreter took me to
the stores and we made fresh attempts. Nowhere could I buy a
square yard of black cloth. For the rest of my stay, I took pic-
tures under borrowed coats and blouses until I left the country.
On the Dnieperstroi project, as everywhere else in Russia,
women work along with the men, but that day there was an
extra feminine contingent. One operation had to be speeded up
and the secretaries had been borrowed from the offices to do
manual labor. It was an extraordinary sight. In their flimsy pink
80
and green and pale blue dresses, these girls hurried back and
forth, with shovels over their shoulders. They worked gravely
and happily. In Russia it is much more important to be a
cement-pourer than to be a secretary.
The work is stimulated by what the Russians call "Socialist
competition." Contests rage between the right bank and the left
bank of the river to see who can make the greatest progress each
day. Workers spoke to me sometimes, thinking I was Russian,
and explained to me with many gestures how fast their side
was gaining over their rivals.
The American engineering firm headed by Colonel Hugh L.
Cooper has technical supervision of Dnieperstroi. It was
through the efforts of this firm that piece rates and bonus re-
wards for increased labor production were introduced on this
project. The Soviet authorities quickly recognized the value of
this method of stimulating production and have since intro-
duced it into other industries.
The scaffolding was growing like a forest. (In fact, the Rus-
sians actually call it "lyess," which means forest.) It is notorious
that the Russians build twice as much scaffolding as any con-
struction needs. Like pagodas the tall piers rose into the air,
with nets stretched high above the rapids to catch such workers
as might fall off the structural work. Colonel Cooper, however,
has declared that there have been relatively few accidents on
the Dnieperstroi project.
All day long we climbed ladders, planks, and cross beams.
Hanging on to scaffolding, with one arm curved around a beam
to steady myself, I photographed the shifting scene. A traveling
crane lowered a bucket of cement, and while Bill held my deli-
81
cately poised camera, I rushed up to the crane operator. Ges-
ticulating wildly and talking rapidly in incomprehensible
English, I succeeded in indicating that I wanted the bucket
suspended in space while I took my picture. The Russians love
photography and they would have stopped the heavens if they
had been able. But I did not need their co-operation with the
firmament because nature was good to me that day. Great bil-
lowy clouds floated over the dam, rising up over the steep wall
of structural work, and racing onward in twisting, varying
shapes. It was the kind of day I loved.
Crouched under a coat borrowed from a worker, the only
focusing cloth I could get, I watched these clouds in miniature
float across the ground glass. Usually in taking photographs
one must walk around the object until it presents its best aspect
and the composition is satisfactory. Where the composition is
dependent on clouds, sometimes it is possible to have the camera
perfectly still, watching the ground glass as the clouds chase
across it. Sometimes a clear sky is a better background for the
picture. But where clouds will add to the effect, they must build
up the composition and not conflict with it.
The diagonals of my ever-moving cranes, sometimes echoed,
sometimes crossed the diagonals of my torn cloud edges. I was
able to study the ever-changing effect as clouds bundled them-
selves into greater and lesser shapes. New designs succeeded the
old. The wind constructed new patterns from which I might
compose my picture. Waving along the border of my working
surface, the skyline of cranes formed ever new alignments, and
I waited until clouds harmonized with cranes and then snapped
the shutter.
82
 All day Bill and I climbed like steeplejacks, until at twi-
light, the signal was given for blasting, and we hurried for
cover. Tucked under a low roof of temporary planks I huddled
together with six black-bearded Russians, as the solid rock near
us was blasted out with dynamite and stones fell about us like
hail.
The name "Dnieperstroi" is one of those contractions which
the Russians, with the love of speed generated by the revolu-
tion, love to compound; it is made up of the name of the river
on which the project is being built and the first syllable of the
word "stroyitelstvo," which means construction.
The Dnieper River hydroelectric power plant is located at
Kitchkas, near Zaporozhye in the Ukraine. When completed it
will be the world's largest hydroelectric station, generating
over 75,000 horse-power, and will serve an area of 70,000
square miles (a territory greater than all the New England
states combined) with a population of 16,000,000 people. The
total cost will be about $110,000,000.00. It was originally
planned to complete Dnieperstroi in 1934, but at the present
rate of construction it is expected to be completed earlier.
The Russians-and the American engineers on the project
-are proud of the immense size of the plant and of the ma-
chinery involved. They boast of the fact that the turbines and
generators used are the largest ever constructed. These are of
American make, the turbines being built and installed by the
Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company and the
generators by the General Electric Company.
The American engineers at Dnieperstroi live in separate six-
room brick houses which the Soviet authorities have provided.
83
The comparative comfort which the American engineers on this
project enjoy is due, to a large extent, to the energy and fore-
sight of Colonel Cooper, whom the engineers fondly call the
"Old Man." One has the feeling on visiting Dnieperstroi, even
while the Colonel is away, that he is taking care of his Amer-
ican flock. He is popular not only with the Americans but with
the Russians, too. He spares no pains to make his men as com-
fortable as possible in the pioneering conditions under which
they work. Every year he comes bearing canned grapefruit and
canned butter and canned tennis balls over the border like a
benevolent Santa Claus.
The brick houses occupied by the American enginters are
not luxurious but they are comfortable. Several of the engineers
have brought their wives and in some cases also their children
to live with them throughout the duration of their contracts.
The wives have made these little homes gay places with cre-
tonne curtains and chair covers from materials brought over the
border. The most ordinary household utensils, frying pans,
meat-choppers, or paring knives, take on a new significance
since they are so hard to get in Russia.
While the engineers struggle with a few Russian words
that will make their communication with the Russians easier,
their children, even those who have just begun to speak, have
picked up fluent Russian vocabularies. Their parents overhear
them chatter in Russian with their little Soviet playmates, but
once inside the house the children ref use to speak anything but
English.
The American colony at Dnieperstroi has a collection of
stories centering in the battle to subjugate the Dnieper River.
84
One of these stories-an epic of American pioneering in Russia
-was about the search for sand which the engineers had to
make when Dnieperstroi was :first started. A certain quality of
sand is needed in mixing concrete. None was obtainable near
the project itself; to import it would have been tremendously
expensive; without it construction could not go on. Two Amer-
ican engineers volunteered to go in search of this sand. Each
took his Chevrolet and started out across the open country.
Russia is not yet an automobile country, and these men had to
drive hundreds of miles along roads without :filling stations,
mechanics, or service garages. Of ten they had to drive for miles
along :fields that had no roads at all. At last they got down as
far as the Crimean peninsula, where the shell-torn roads still
bore traces of the recent Civil War. There, on a small estuary
near the Black Sea, they located the kind of sand they were
looking for. To the engineers at Dnieperstroi, this was an
achievement comparable to flying across the Atlantic; the dis-
covery was wirelessed to New York as a signal event; thou-
sands of rubles had been saved in the cost of constructing
Dnieperstroi.
The American engineers have accomplished a great victory
over floods in that region. The granite banks of the Dnieper are
the scene of a mighty struggle between man and the majestic
river which seeks an unobstructed passage to the sea. Even in the
low-water period the angry turbulence of the river is prophetic
of the raging torrents which burst out in time of flood, and a
constant warning to the engineers who seek to harness the
gigantic force of the waters to "build fast and build well."
Projected work must be completed according to seasonal sched-
85
ule; failure to do so is more serious than mere interference with
Soviet statistics; the schedules are drawn up with special regard
for the violence of the Dnieper at flood-time. Failure to com-
plete the summer schedule would mean that the following
spring the work of many months would be ruthlessly destroyed
by the raging floods and man's ultimate victory over the river
would be delayed. The importance of completing each piece of
work on schedule was illustrated by the flood which broke out
after I left Dnieperstroi. This flood was fifty per cent greater
than any flood which had ever passed any similar construction
anywhere in the world. When it came it left little damage in its
wake, due to the ability of the engineers to complete work on
schedule and thus be fully prepared to meet such an onslaught.
The American engineers at Dnieperstroi are proud of hav-
ing taught the Russian workers to operate heavy machinery. As
one watches the Russian workers skillfully manoeuvering giant
American cranes, it is hard to believe the stories about their
early experiences with these steel monsters. It seems t_hatat first
the Russians believed that cranes could lift anything and every-
thing: According to one story, the workers at Dnieperstroi tried
to pull down a thousand-ton boulder with a locomotive crane;
according to another, half the cranes brought over during the
first six months of their use were busy lifting up the other half
which had been overturned by naive workers seeking to achieve
miracles. Eventually, the Russian workers were willing to ad-
mit that cranes, like other things, have their limits; they have
become experts in manipulating them in hazardous high places
on the dam.
Speed is an important slogan at Dnieperstroi; quality is
86
equally important. Under the direction of American experts, a
trained force of Russian inspectors passes on every bucket of
concrete that enters into the permanent structures . Any bucket
which fails to meet the standards set up by the American super-
visors is unhesitatingly-and sometimes even enthusiastically
-dumped into the river.
My last evening at Dnieperstroi I was the guest of two of
the American engineers : They were both young, just out of
college. At supper we talked about the States. They missed
New York. Our talk wandered to dancing at the Casino, dining
at Forty East and Twenty-One, the latest shows on Broadway,
and about dropping in afterwards at Tony's and wandering on
to Belle Livingstone's. We wondered what the engineers in
America would say if they could step out for one day from their
orderly well-regulated factories and direct for eight hours the
meeting-holding, conference-loving "Russkies," as the Amer-
ican engineers call the Russians. It was a gay evening. Colonel
Cooper had just returned from America with chocolate and
shoes and wool socks and victrola records. We had after-dinner
mints and plenty of American cigarettes. The whole camp took
on new life because the "Old Man" had arrived. Later in the
evening I had the pleasure of meeting the great dam-builder.
As we shook hands he said :
"So this is the young lady who is climbing every locomotive
crane in Russia!"
Colonel Cooper's imports interested the Russians as much
as the Americans. That night a number of houses in the Amer•
ican colony were robbed. My end of the house was untouched,
fortunately for me, because if I had lost one little piece of
87
equipment the rest of my trip through Russia would have been
impossible, as far as photography went.
The end of the house where my two American hosts were
sleeping was combed by experts. How the room where these two
boys slept could be ransacked without waking them, I can not
imagine. Five suits of clothes were taken, all their bathrobes,
their slippers, all their shoes. Losing one's shoes in America is
not such a tragedy because one can always buy more, but losing
shoes in Russia is a disaster because there are no shoes to buy.
I was taking a seven o'clock train out of Dnieperstroi and
the truck which was carrying my extensive baggage and me to
the station was to be outside the door at :five in the morning. At
:fivemy hosts put their heads out of their bedroom door and ex-
plained that they could not come out because they did not have
a thing to put on. The thieves had taken the front door key and
left the door locked from the outside, so I had to leave Dnieper-
stroi through a window and have my baggage pushed out after
me.

88
THE BRIDGE
A GENERATOR SHELL
1
THE DAM IN CONSTRUCTION
CRANE AND CROSSBEAMS
LOCOMOTIVE CRANES
A GIRL CONDUCTOR ON A RUSSIAN TRAIN
 CHAPTER XV: THE BRASS BRACELET

T
HE card players were not very comfortable. There was
just too little room for them to sit upright without
bumping their heads on the tier of berths above. Above
this second tier was still a third tier all laden with passengers
leaning over eagerly watching the game.
The legs of the upper berth people dangled over the shoul-
ders of the players, and the passengers on the uppermost shelf
had just room enough to lie under the ceiling of the car and prop
up their heads with their elbows.
There is no :first or second class in the Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics. "Soft" and "hard" take their place. Soft has
the privacy of separate compartments, although not much soft-
ness. Hard has no privacy, but it is very hard.
"See how haughty he is," said Lida I vanovna. "He is a
Georgian. The Georgians are a handsome race, and they are all
silent and proud."
With the air of a barbarian chieftain bestowing conquered
lands he dealt out the cards. His strong torso was clothed in a
black blouse, embroidered in emerald green, and his head was
bound in red and yellow cloth.
The knot of people around the players grew tighter. The
heads from above drew closer together. Two boys with knee
length trousers and bare chests balanced themselves in the cor-
ridor, sitting on their heels so as to have a good vantagepoint
on the game.
89
 Louder grow the voices over the cards. A sharp exclamation
from one shock-headed player. Noisy protests from the others.
More gestures. More exclamations. The thick rumbling sound
of many Russian words being spoken together. A high-pitched
voice. A woman carrying a baby has leaned into the circle, and
is expressing her opinion eloquently with the help of one free
hand. Vehement gestures, eager nodding of heads, sharp dis-
sens10n.
The Georgian presides like a dictator, breaking his silence
with an occasional condescending word. The representatives of
the more talkative provinces overflow with an abundance of
excited pronouncements. The woman makes one parting remark
and carries her baby back down the car. The conversation drops.
The cards are resumed.
The card-playing gives way to singing. The Georgian brings
out an accordion from a rough sack at his feet, and the hard
train, with its three tiers of humanity-laden shelves, becomes a
gay and sociable place.
Outside the window the plains slip endlessly into the dis-
tance. The whole world seems level, and covered with an even
growth of grasses. Sometimes on the horizon are dots of cattle,
black specks that the eye can just perceive.
And always tossing, changing, growing, breaking, the great
clouds in the high arched Russian sky hold my attention for
hours. Sometimes we pass little villages, the white plaster huts
gleaming brilliantly in the sunlight. I exclaim in admiration
over the thatched roofs.
"Is it possible," inquires Lida Ivanovna, "that you have no
thatched roofs in America'?"
90
 "Yes, we have a few," I tell her, "but only the very richest
people can afford them."
Once we pass a Ford car laboring across the steppes, a tiny
dot of American mechanism on the endless Russian plains.
Often we pass wooden crosses planted by the railroad bed.
"From the Civil War," explains Lida I vanovna, "and oh, the
Civil War, it was terrible. There was so much hatred. And then
the famine came."
"What did you do during the famine'?" I asked her.
"I was a secretary in a government office, but there was not
much time for work. All our time was spent in getting food.
We traded our furs, our furniture, our clothes, anything for a
little flour. I lost most of my furs, and in winter it is very cold.
But I have been more fortunate than most, because I managed
to save out materials and dress goods. My dresses are easy, be-
cause I can always make them up from materials that my mother
and I have saved, or make them over when they begin to wear
in places. I can even manage about hats. But it is shoes that are
my greatest worry. My allowance from the Government permits
me to buy two pairs of shoes a year, but sometimes there are no
shoes to buy. Your American shoes are so well made. What do
they cost'? What do you pay for dresses'?"
And when I have explained the range between Gimbel
prices and Bergdorff-Goodman prices, our conversation turns to
talk of food.
"I hav~ heard of something they eat in America called apple
pie. What is apple pie'?" Lida I vanovna asked.
I make a sketch to explain this, and descriptions of apple pie
lead to descriptions of eskimo pie, the thought of which thrills
91
 both of us. Due to the shortage of sugar and cream, ice cream in
Russia is rare, and of a very poor quality. Chocolate exists but
it is food for the gods. A few days in Russia and one's ideas of
food change completely. Under a normal diet I dislike chocolate
and sweet foods, but in Russia the all too little chocolate I had
brought in with me became as precious as gold nuggets. I would
have done anything to get it when my supply ran low, and
when it gave out completely I found that a lump of sugar had
developed a taste and flavor for me that now seems incredible.
For days we had very little but baked beans out of a can.
The variety of canned food that I had brought from Berlin
was soon exhausted, and the great reserve of beans that I had
brought in more to leave behind me as gifts to my Russian
friends than to use myself, sustained us. It would have been
possible to get fresh food of some sort at the public markets,
even in the smaller cities where food was scarce, but I could not
spare my interpreter. Buying any kind of food is a full day's
job, and my time in the factories was too precious for me not to
spend every possible hour taking pictures. As a result, we had
cold baked beans out of a can for breakfast, I put a can in the
camera case for lunch, and another tin of beans was opened up
for supper. I kept healthy and well, but I shall never look
kindly on a baked bean again.
"Why do American women diet'?" Lida I vanovna once
asked me. "What do they eat when they are dieting'?" Several
years of climbing scaffolds on skyscrapers under construction,
of swinging down cranes in steel mills, and scrambling up piers
of bridges had turned my thoughts to other subjects than that
92
of dieting, and I was therefore unable to give her very full
information.
"But it is true, is it not, that all American women are thin'?"
Lida I vanovna insisted.
She wanted to know what food costs, what an American eats
in a typical day, what time he has his meals.
"What time do you eat in Russia'?" I asked.
"When we have food," Lida Ivanovna replied.
Talking in that Russian train it was hard to believe that I
had ever sat down in a restaurant and had my lunch brought to
me without invoking the aid of the Government; that, too busy
for lunch, I had ever rushed into a corner drugstore, and been
nourished almost as quickly as I could ask for it; that, thirsty,
I had ever pushed a plunger in a wall and had a sanitary cup
and pure water appear as if by magic; that I had ever sent tele-
grams with the certainty that they would be delivered; that I
had ever dispatched a messenger with the confidence that he
would execute an errand without supervision.
We drew up at a station and Lida Ivanovna hurried out to
fill the teapot with hot water. Drinking tea takes on a signifi-
cance and a joy in Russia that is only possible in a country
where all water, the boiling of which you have not supervised
personally, must be regarded with suspicion. We arranged our
glasses, our teapot, our rations, on the seat between us and
drank our tea strong and very sweet. We opened a can of beans
and spread them on slices of black bread. Seriously we discussed
whether to open the last jar of potted cheese. We did open it,
and when the last crumb had vanished, Lida I vanovna wiped
93
out the glass jar carefully, and with many exclamations of ad-
miration, packed it in her suitcase to take it home as tableware.
As we cleaned up after lunch, I was touched to see her put on
her wrist the brass ring which had held the cap on the jar. All
through the rest of the trip she wore it as a bracelet.

94
 CHAPTER XVI: VERBLUD

W
HAT do you desire for breakfast'?" Lida Ivanovna
asked me. "Would it please you to have a portion
of pork and a helping of mashed potatoes'?"
She disappeared into the farther end of the long clapboard
dining-room provided for the State Farm workers, and returned
with one of the largest helpings of rich roast pork ever seen
bounded by the circumference of a single plate.
We were at Verblud, which means Camel, the most success-
fully run State Farm in Russia. Verblud is the second largest
sovkhoz in the Soviet Union, exceeded in size only by its next-
door neighbor, Gigant. Verblud is managed by a young English-
speaking Russian named Margolin who is the acme of courtesy
and intelligence. This great farm, of 272,000 flat, rich acres,
grows chiefly wheat.
Verblud has an experimental station and agricultural school,
attended by about 500 students. The experimental station uses
all types of agricultural machinery from almost every country
for purposes of experimentation and instruction. One of the
organizers of this great industrial farm was George McDowell,
an American farmer from Kansas, who recently received the
"Order of Lenin," the highest Soviet award. McDowell is the
first American to receive this honor.
Our table filled up gradually with workers in the red em-
broidered blouses characteristic of Southern Russia. They
looked very healthy and satisfied, leaning over and swallowing
95
 their pork with unconscious dramatic effect. The long board
breakfast table was rather theatrical, set against a wall which
consisted of almost a solid background of Soviet posters. A
huge 5, on one, with . smokestacks and turbines threading their
way down the figure, symbolized the Piatiletka, as the Five
Year Plan is called. The inevitable tractor covered another
poster looming against a calico-patterned wheatfield. Another
was the First Aid poster, illustrating resuscitation and the bind-
ing of tourniquets. And then there was that curious poster which
appears, it seems irrelevantly, among many such displays, show-
ing the various methods of_putting on gas masks. Against this
varied educational background, the consumption of pork went
on almost in silence.
When my own pork had vanished, I murmured that I was
still hungry, and Lida I vanovna disappeared for a few moments
to return with two soft boiled eggs. One doesn't forget a diet of
cold baked beans very easily. Were those the sounds of egg-
shells cracking gently open, or cherubim and seraphim singing
in the distance'? The speed with which egg and pork can be
turned into zeal and energy was something I had not noticed in
my own country where the cafeteria and lunchroom lurk around
every corner. .
We started off in the Verblud Ford toward a field where
there was harrowing, and 1 was in a mood to pace Gargantuan
furrows.
Great skies piled high with clouds, torn into swirling shapes
like whipped cream under the egg beater. A silver radiance over
the gray stubble in the early morning light; a delicious contrast
with strips of fresh harrowed earth running neatly beside it.
96
272,000 ACRES
.~
STATE FARM NO. 2
Silhouetted against the sky, majestic in the morning, was that
new god of Russia, the Tractor.
Evenly and regally it traveled along the horizon. The black
earth turned beneath its disks. A procession of tiny clouds fol-
lowed it overhead. It seemed that the tractor drew the whole
firmament after it, earth and sky giving reverence to this new
divinity.
Until the sun was high in the heavens at noon I followed
the tractor, studying it against various cloud forms, working
with filters on panchromatic film, to preserve the deep tones of
the sky. At last, love of tractors yielding to affection for food,
we were about to return, when a herd of horses dashed by me.
No more thoughts of lunch that day. From noon until twi-
light I tore over the fields after those horses, catching them in
the camera now as dots on the horizon, now as hot bodies rush-
ing by me. A strange procession we were; I first, after the horses,
my camera over my shoulder, my interpreter running after me
with filmholders in her outstretched hands, and the little Ford
car bumping over the fields after us bringing up a reserve of
film in the rear. I set up my camera-and the horses have
moved. I center the horses and the clouds have moved. Are the
horses socialized too, and the clouds'? All day long trying to
catch the proper horses under the proper clouds, I make picture
after picture until my reserve of holders is exhausted, the herd
has disappeared into the twilight, and evening has come.

97
 CHAPTER XVII: THE RED ARMY CONSENTS

N
O, there are no trains," said the wiry, little black-haired
official.
"But we were told in Moscow," argued my inter-
preter, "that there were good trains with soft cars from Rostov
to Novorossisk."
"No, there are no trains. None today, and none tomorrow."
We had to wait until he had left us at our hotel, with the
announcement that he would return later to take us to dinner,
before we had a chance to do our own investigating. There were
plenty of trains, and it was not until we had our bags in two
droshkas, and were bound for the station, that Lida I vanovna
revealed to me that the bustling little official had decided that
I was to become his wife.
The black-haired official did not interest me, even as a sub-
ject to photograph, but a white-haired old peasant we passed in
the streets later did.
"I must photograph that beard," I called to Lida Ivanovna.
"Oh, we can't stop," she cried, "we will miss our train."
I had an unshaken faith in the lateness of Russian trains,
but I would have missed twenty trains rather than let that
beard go by. The droshkas were halted, my equipment cases
lowered to the ground, and my camera unpacked.
Cameras act like a lodestone in Russia, and soon we were
surrounded by a crowd. A little bewildered, a little astonished,
the old man let me place him against a slate-colored wall, where
98
I would have a dull, neutral background. Once under a camera
cloth, I have no thoughts for anything but pictures. The out-
side world is closed away as effectively as if the genie of the
lamp had clapped his hands and dissolved the earth, leaving me
with my camera and my subject.
I shifted the viewpoint slightly, arranged the spacing of the
head on the ground glass, studied the effect of each silver hair,
etched against its dark background.
But at last the authoritative voice of Lida Ivanovna pene-
trated my consciousness. I glanced up and saw she was sur-
rounded by a detachment of Red soldiers. She stood there
bristling with my official papers, and I could see her emphatic
gestures, as she pointed out first one clause and then another.
After a few minutes of eloquence she seemed to have conveyed
the conviction that I was all right, because the soldiers eyed me
up and down respectfully, and quietly went on their way.
Carefully I worked with the beautiful head on the ground
glass. The peasant patiently allowed me to turn him first this
way and that way. His full face was like a battered mask set
within a continuous rim of shining silver hair, and his profile
was age personified.
More Red soldiers came. Again Lida I vanovna flourished
the documents, officially declaring that the American photo-cor-
respondent was permitted to take pictures anywhere in the
Soviet Union, and that all Soviet citizens were requested to
help her in her work.
When the portrait was finished, the Red soldiers helped us
to replace the cases in the droshkas, and in the midst of much
official dignity, we rumbled toward the train.
99
 CHAPTER XVIII: CEMENT

R
USSIAN trains are proverbially late. Our train was
nearly a day late and we were dropped out at the station
of Novorossisk at three o'clock in the morning.
Lida Ivanovna, who was a great organizer, seated me firmly
on three of my suitcases, so that they could not be stolen from
under me, and went off to marshal sleeping porters and bargain
with strong-minded droshka drivers. It took her two hours to
synchronize our porters and our baggage and to come to peace-
ful terms with the drivers, during which time I sat quietly on
the suitcases and read, as I always did during these long periods
of waiting.
I had nearly finished War and Peace, and dawn was
breaking when Lida I vanovna came with the porters to pile me
among my trunks of food and film on the top of one of the flat
little wagons that have formed Novorossisk's chief method of
conveyance for centuries.
We bumped through the streets in our minor caravan and
suddenly around a corner we came upon the Black Sea. I had
seen it on maps and here it simmered in the clear, pale light
before my eyes. A living blue it was, with frosty mists vibrating
delicately across its glistening surface.
Looming above an arm .o-fthe sea was a strange mountain-
a great bare mountain, the color of lead. Its body ~as curved
like a sleeping giant and in the dim morning light I would not
have been surprised to see it rear itself on great nubian legs,
100
A PEASANT
IN THE STOREHOUSE
AT THE WINCHES
IN THE QUARRY
LOADING CRUSHED ROCK
THE KILN TENDER
stretch huge arms sleepily before the rays of the rising sun, and
stalk darkly away.
Life was stirring in the misty waters, drowsy little boats
paddled here and there, and farther from the shore the shapes
of large freighters began to outline themselves, dark gray
against lighter gray.
We clattered up the sloping streets of the cracked plaster
town, set crazily on the side of a hill. The hotel had received
our telegrams. There was no room, but someone would be made
to give up a room for us.
We were warned not to eat any food in Novorossisk. The
food was very bad. I was reckless, I would risk anything for a
hot dish after all those days of cold canned food. But wisdom
prevailed and we would get a kettle and use a little gas burner
to heat our breakfast. It was a refreshing variation to have hot
baked beans instead of cold baked beans and I went forth from
my breakfast restored.
The hotel manager became a good friend of ours and I gave
him salted peanuts liberally at intervals to keep .up the friend-
ship.
Our greatest need was sugar. We employed our usual
method, followed in all towns where we came upon a food short-
age, of going straight to the offices of the G. P. U. At the head-
quarters of the G. P. U. my interpreter flashed all my official
papers, explained with much eloquence what an important per-
son I was, and we would go marching down the street with a
squad of uniformed G. P. U. men on each side of us. Straight
to the food shops we would go, and if there was half a pound of
sugar in the town I got it. One day we got granulated sugar
101
which we carried away in a little brown cone, instead of the
rocky lumps of unbreakable sugar we had been using. We were
doled out a little butter as well, and elaborate certificates with
many stamps and signatures were made out for us so that in the
evening we could get bread hot from the bakery.
One of the enchanting things about traveling in Russia is
that the country is so large and is composed of so many races
that one sleeps on the train at night and wakes up the next
morning in the midst of entirely new faces. The people around
the Black Sea have a strong Oriental cast, and entering the
cement works was like walking into the Near East. Beautiful
dark wistful faces peered at me everywhere. The men at work
wore white hoods over their heads, their eyebrows were filled
with dust from the stone crushers. Great dark eyes followed my
movements wherever I went.
In the black cave-like storehouses, little tracks wound in
and out among mountains of crushed rock and gravel. Beauti-
ful-bodied half-naked men slipped by me into the light and
back into the darkness again.
The cement plant I photographed at Novorossisk 1s the
oldest and largest in Russia. It was built before the war, and,
when the revolution came, was named "Proletarian." At present
it produces four to five million barrels of high quality Portland
cement. For raw material the plant uses marl, found in that
region in vast quantities, estimated at hundreds of millions of
tons. The equipment inherited by the plant from pre-revolu-
tionary days is such that its total production consists of only
one-third artificial cement and two-thirds natural cement. The
discrepancy between the plant's equipment and the kind of raw
102
material found in that region results in considerable waste since
a large part of the raw material is thrown back on the dump
heap. The authorities are seeking to remedy this situation and
have appropriated more than three million dollars for recon-
struction of the plant. New kilns have already been installed
for the production of quick-setting cement; the equipment of
the plant is being steadily improved. This plant produces most
of the cement which Russia exports to other countries. There
are two reasons for this: one is that N ovorossisk is far from the
domestic market and the other is its situation as a leading Black
Sea port.
As I entered the factory, a merry looking worker stopped to
question me about America. He was tending the cement kiln,
and he beamed with pleasure as I set up my camera to photo-
graph him. He was proud of the modern kiln, which had been
purchased from Holland. "This is the biggest cement factory in
Russia," he told me. "It is the biggest in the world. You have
large cement factories in America but none quite as big as this."
I had photographed cement factories in America, but I did not
dispute the matter with him.
Climbing the mountain toward the quarries I stopped to
take a picture of a man and a boy winding a winch. All the sad-
ness of this great troubled people was in those faces, and with
my hand on the shutter I hesitated to photograph so many cen-
turies of suffering.
The quarries were a jazz of striped stone running slantwise
like the diagonals in an American advertisement. Women quar-
ried with the men and little cars of rock stone rattled down the
hillsides racing toward waiting jaws of crushers far below.
103
 The factory seemed infinitely tiny. The cracked houses of
Novorossisk gleamed whitely across the bay, and between the
dark lead mountains the age-old sea swept into the distance.
In Novorossisk the newspapers had heard of our arrival. It
is perfectly proper in Russia for men to call on women in hotel
rooms any hour of the day or night. I was always jumping up
to put on something over my pajamas throughout the whole
trip. I had fallen into the kind of a sleep one falls into after
climbing around quarries for a day, when the editors of the local
papers came in a delegation to call. Again I covered the pajamas
and the serious-faced delegation entered.
Lida I vanovna presided over this meeting. I might as well
have stayed in bed. First the editors examined my official
papers. Wonderful papers. They could hardly tear their eyes
away from the stamps and signatures. Then they went ~hrough
my portfolio of American pictures one by one, the steel mills,
the oil fields, the photographs I had made in the factory of that
great Amerikanski, Henry Ford. Once more they turned to my
official papers, reading them word by word, document by docu-
ment. ''With such papers," they said, "the young lady could
travel to the moon."
At last I entered actively into this meeting. Lida I vanovna
turned to me. The editors would like to address some questions
to the American photo-correspondent.
"Who achieves the highest rate of production, the American
factory or the Russian factory'?"
I was frightened. My replies were important. They would
undoubtedly appear at great length in print.
104
CEMENT BRICKS
CEMENT WORKERS
 "Both the American factory and the Russian factory achieve
a high rate of production," I answered warily.
Lida Ivanovna expanded this reply for twenty minutes.
Next. "Is the American worker as efficient as the Russian
worker'?"
"Both the Russian worker and the American worker are very
effi.cient."
My interpreter talked for three-quarters of an hour.
"Which does the American photo-correspondent prefer to
photograph, the American worker or the Russian worker'?"
"The American worker and the Russian worker both have
very interesting faces."
And with this scant material my interpreter developed my
reply endlessly until at last, approving and satisfied, my inter-
viewers rose to go home.
"Well, what were the opinions that the American photo-
correspondent expressed for the papers'?" I asked my guide,
counselor, and friend, when the door had closed on the last
bowing editor.
"I told the representatives of the newspapers," said Lida
Ivanovna, "that Miss Bourke-White loved to photograph the
Russian workers; that she found great character in these ener-
getic faces, that she preferred to photograph the Russian worker
because his face had such individuality. I told the editors that
Miss Bourke-White much prefers the Soviet worker to the
American worker because the American worker has no indi-
viduality. In America the workman performs one operation
always. In America the workman is chained to mass production.
105
In America the workman is a puppet, an automaton. Miss
Bourke-White loves much better to photograph the Russian
worker because in America the workman is nothing but a
machine."

106
 CHAPTER XIX: TOWARD STALINGRAD

I
SEEMED to be standing in a house of death. Bodies lay
everywhere on the floor of the railroad station, bodies of
young boys, of old men, bodies of women nearly covered
with bodies of children propped up against them. The train had
been delayed for seven hours and the entire station had fallen
asleep.
My interpreter came toward me, stepping down the length
of the long station over sacks and sleeping comrades. A sad
little station agent followed her, his beard cut into a neat spade,
and his collarless shirt a desperate attempt at Americanism,
although it looked a little odd with the shirt-tails outside the
trousers and a leather belt around the waist.
"I am told there are no soft seats except one in a compart-
ment with men," Lida I vanovna said. "I have explained to this
agent that you are a guest in our country and you must have a
soft compartment. But still he continues to insist that there are
no soft seats except the one with the men. For me this would not
matter. I am an interpreter-a sexless person. But for you it is
different."
The agent pulled at his spade beard, as my interpreter con-
tinued: "Give me all our documents and I shall take them to the
director of the station. I will not show them to this agent. He
does not realize what an important person you are."
And gathering up our stamped, sealed, signed, and counter-
signed papers, she went stepping over the bodies again in search
107
of the director of the station, the little American-shirted agent
drooping behind her.
A child stirred uneasily, whimpered a little. A boy pillowed
his head on a round loaf of bread. A girl tucked her bare feet
under her skirt, and drew herself tighter into a little sleeping
ball. At my feet a long gray beard flowed over a rough gray
sack, one pale eye opened, stared at me curiously, then fell shut
agam.
"It is all arranged," said Lida I vanovna, returning, "the
comrade director of the station says we shall have soft seats
without men."
At this moment the train rolled down the tracks. A ripple
passed over the station floor. Heads were raised; bodies drew
themselves upright, sacks were lifted to shoulders, babies gath-
ered into crooks of arms, and the whole station stirred into life.
We climbed into our soft compartment only to find it al-
ready partly occupied. The flickering light from a candle in a
tin wall bracket lighted up the forms of a sleeping woman and
child.
It was good to be able to sit down and eat. The conductor
burst in with our teapot steaming with hot water, and my in-
terpreter brewed our cherished tea. I struggled with the un-
fathomable can opener in the uncertain light and managed to
get the can of beans into a condition where we could eat them.
It did not seem strange to be sitting there, hunched over in
our berth, bracing ourselves as the train pulled out of the sta-
tion, eating our beans in the half darkness, and sipping our hot,
sweet tea.
Our shadows thrown from the candle in the tin wall bracket
108
soared above us as we ate, and shivered on the ceiling of the
cab. Outside all was blackness. Not a light and not a star. Inside
the woman and child slept heavily as we cleared away the
empty can, wiped ouF forks clean with pieces of newspaper, and
shook the wet tea leaves out of the pot.
It grew very cold that night. Lida I vanovna, who had more
uses for my official papers than she could have had if they had
been thousand ruble notes, pattered down the corridor on a mys-
terious errand with my documents in her hand. When she re-
turned, her arms were full of blankets. She had so impressed the
conductor with my official importance that he had offered up his
bedding. I would be less appreciative if I were proffered the
conductor's bedding in America. But on that cold Russian night,
it was the greatest of luxuries.
The next morning we were slipping through :flat, monoto-
nous plains. At the stations women sat cross-legged before
baskets of bright red crayfish, but these my interpreter would
not let me eat. My appetite waned, and for the first time the
beans which for three weeks I had devoured almost uncon-
sciously, clogged in my throat and became unendurable.
Nothing tasted good but our tea, and in the afternoon even
hot water was unavailable and we had no tea. At station after
station my interpreter came back with an empty teapot. "The
water has not been boiled. It is not safe for you to drink it."
Dust blew in at the windows and settled thick upon everything.
Our newspapers, which we had treasured to use for table nap-
kins, had to be utilized to cover our clothes.
The next morning I could not eat. Nothing but red crayfish
outside the train and baked beans within.
109
 "Only a few years ago," said Lida I vanovna, "there used to
be food everywhere. Peasants came to the stations selling but-
ter and chickens."
"and chickens" ... we rolled into a depot and there, as
though her words had conjured her out of the ea.rth, stood a
peasant woman selling them. Broiled tender fowls, two rubles
each. We handed four paper rubles through the window, and
before the train had left the station, each of us had eaten a
complete chicken for breakfast.
No more hot water that day, and we grew very thirsty. Stop-
ping at' one of the stations, I noticed swift curving arcs soaring
from the window next to me. I leaned out to look, and there was
a stout-faced comrade devouring a watermelon and spitting out
the seeds. I watched the pits attentively as they curved through
the air, until he caught my eye, smiled, broke the melon in two
and handed me half.
"Spassibo," I thanked him, using one of my forty words of
Russian proudly. My interpreter and I divided the melon, and
were comforted for the lack of tea.
Stations were amusing places. Sometimes a camel drew up
to the depot, pulling a cart with an air of hauteur as though it
were too good for its task. People clustered under the surround-
ing trees, watching the trains come in, travelers running back
and forth with teapots, the platform milling with life. First my
interpreter would watch the baggage while I took a little walk,
and then I would keep guard while she exercised a bit. Guard-
ing the baggage was no passive business. Thieves poke their
heads in the door of the compartment, glance around quickly
to see if there is anything close enough to seize, and seeing you
110
watch them, close the door and pass on. Always we moved our
bags at stations as far from the entrance as possible. If you catch
a Russian stealing, he hands back your property and laughs.
Another day of traveling, over the level step.pes, through
marshes, through fields of grain, over a flat world endlessly.
Late at night we reached Stalingrad, and came out into a rain-
storm. The factory automobile had met us, and we drove toward
Tractorstroi. And there, in that strange land, of strange cus-
toms, strange races, strange purposes, I saw a rare meteorologi-
cal phenomenon. Arched over the Volga River was a rainbow
thrown by the moon.

Ill
 CHAPTER XX:
RED OCTOBER ROLLING MILLS

A
HANDSOME, chunky-bodied girl pattered into the
office on brown bare feet. "This is your porter," said
the superintendent. "She will carry the cameras of the
American photo-correspondent." We were in the Red October
Rolling Mills in Stalingrad, which formerly manufactured mu-
nitions and now turns out steel intended for Tractorstroi.
Swinging the largest of my equipment cases to her shoulder,
she made her graceful way over the gravel and rough earth of
the outside court, and led us into the rolling mill.
Red snakes of metal glided through the rollers. The floor
trembled beneath us. Each time the ever-elongating steel bar
dashed through its rolling-mold, sending sparks in all direc-
tions, I drew back alarmed for the bare legs of my guide. She
walked as carelessly on the hot floor as a woman who slips from
bed in the morning and trips into the shower bath.
Further in the mill ingots swung from cranes overhead-
blocks of flowing reddish gold-on their way to the rollers.
Instead of the mechanical mules, so common in steel mills every-
where, the ingot trains were pulled by horses. Hauling and
hoisting machinery is replacing these more primitive methods,
but in the meantime the horses act quite as much at home amidst
the heat and glare as did my little barefoot guide.
I prowled through the several mill buildings, selecting my
viewpoints, standing on tiptoe here, stooping there, peering
112
AN IRON PUDDLER
SHAKING DOWN SLAG
STEEL WORKER
POURING THE HEAT
between my hands to divide the scene into squares. Up a stair-
way, to glimpse the work from the side, up a ladder to view the
scene from above, studying the shapes of deep black masses
divided into patterns by strips of darting fire.
I worked my way along the cross-beams close to the roof
and descended another ladder, watching constantly to store up
pictures which I would return and photograph when my com-
plete survey was made. A spurt of sparks where a saw rips the
hot bar, the glint of light across the floor plates as the metal
rushes forward through the rollers, the curve of a worker's back
as he leans forward guiding with a rod the swiftly shooting rail.
We threaded our way out into the open and past the blast
furnaces. At the mouth of one were three men in sunbonnets,
shaking down slag. On closer inspection the sunbonnets proved
to be improvised eyeshades which the men make out of wire
netting, but the effect achieved is a freak of folklore, a blend of
Santa Claus and Little Bo-Peep.
An amusing little figure stooped over some pig molds. An
iron puddler dressed for a Greenwich Village ball. He squinted
at me sideways, and winked when I set up the camera.
His glasses were splashed with the mud of countless pour-
ings. His clothes were encrusted with years of living. He had
slept in these clothes, eaten in them, worked in them until they
had achieved the consistency of cork. "That is not a leg," said
Will Durant, looking at this picture upon my return to America.
"That is a museum."
It is thousands of workmen such as these who are making
steel for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. In America
many steel hands are black, with gleaming chests and faces,
113
Negroes who have been trained in the sun of the cotton fields
for the heat of the blast furnaces. In Russia, this little co-
median, with a whimsical charm of his own, helps to prepare
steel for the largest of the Soviet Tractor factories.
But the American Negro mill-hand and the bearded Soviet
worker have in common this one quality: they both love to have
their pictures taken. My little cork man smiled at me sideways,
while I set my focus, and peered at me knowingly over his
opaque spectacles, as I reached for the shutter. The picture
taken, he smiled graciously, exclaimed "Spassibo" (thank you)
and tottered off.
As we made our way to the open hearth a column of smoke
rose into the sky. A furnace had just been tapped, and 100 tons
of gleaming metal were flowing into the ladle. Sparks streaking
through the air, dancing on the floor, smoke in orange gusts
bursting above the liquid steel.
The next heat would be poured in twenty minutes. There
was no time to lose. I snatched the straps off of my equipment
cases, drew out my thousand watt bulbs, screwed them into
their mogul sockets, and set the reflectors on pedestals. Two of
the factory electricians raced away with my c~bles to make con-
nections while I set up my tripod. I scanned the jumbled floor,
littered with slag lumps and castaway ingot molds, for vantage-
points for the lamps. A shout from the electricians. "They want
you to throw on the switch," called my .interpreter. The in-
stant's worry for fear the circuit might be overloaded and the
fuses give way. On with the switch. A flood of light. The fuses
hold. That hurdle taken.
From the dark recesses of the factory a crane swings into
114
 sight, bringing the ladle to set it for the next heat. The crane
clatters into position above us. The suspending ropes lengthen
and the huge ladle is lowered gradually into place.
The lighting of a steel picture is crucial, because the ex-
tremes of light are so tremendous between the brilliant metal
and the heavy shadows that it is very difficult to approximate
the light scale on a photographic plate. Even the human eye can
scarcely grasp the long light range. Much less capacity has the
photographic film, and the lamps must be placed with precision
so as to bring out the significant detail in the shadows. The job
is one of funneling down the light values until the range be-
comes something that the photographic film can handle.
I had four minutes to decide where to place my floodlights
. to the best advantage, and what viewpoint to choose for my
camera. The open hearth had been constructed in a curious way
with only half a roof. Counting on the daylight which streamed
from the open end, I studied the heaviest shadows, and placed
my lights as close to the black side of the ladle as I dared, allow-
ing leeway for probable splashes of metal which would blow
out my bulbs if it reached them. I spared a few precious seconds
to step back on a lump of slag and survey the black side of the
ladle through half-closed eyes, making sure that my lights
would pick out the heavy bolts, which would give the photo-
graphed ladle form and structure.
The work on the floor accomplished I glanced at the furnace
above me. Workmen were pummeling at the mouth of the
furnace, and at the correct instant when the steel reached the
right heat for pouring, they would draw out the plug. Not a
minute to lose. I snatched an armful of holders, threw my
115
camera over my shoulder , and star t ed up the nearest ladder to
the roof.
A cross-beam, wide enough for me to walk on but just too
narrow to place a camera steadily. A spurt of smoke from the
furnace. Soon it would be beginning. I waved and shouted to
the crane operator. He understood me and shot his crane down
to a point within reach. I handed him my instrument gingerly,
followed it with the filmholders, reached for the greasy sus-
pension ropes with both hands, and slipped into the crane cab.
Just time enough to set up the camera in my cramped space, be-
fore hell rushed forth beneath my feet.
A drunken orgy of metal, a living whiteness welling up-
ward, flames dancing across its surface, sparks driven out like
bullets. I ducked beneath my camera cloth and took my focus,
placed my filmholder, and with my hand upon the shutter was
just about to take the picture when the smoke condensed be-
neath us, hiding the whole scene as the earth is hidden from an
aviator by a cloud. The smoke thinned away. I began to shoot.
Placing filmholders, removing slides, pushing the trigger, count-
ing the seconds, watching the camera for steadiness, studying
the flow of the metal, placing more holders, counting more
seconds. Until at last the difficulty that I dreaded set in. The
crane cab began trembling as though with palsy. Every move-
ment now must be a supreme economy. The length of my
exposure must depend, not upon my judgment as a photogra-
pher, but upon the brief respite allowed me when the crane
quieted for a moment and the camera became steady. Exposure
after exposure, in an agony of fear that the camera was not still.
A hundred plates, in the hope that one would be perfect.
116
 The heavy stream slowed down, dwindling from the thick-
ness of a tree trunk to the thickness of a man's arm; a last pin-
wheel of sparks; the metal rose to the edge of the ladle like
turgid soup, white heat became red heat, and the slag crept to
the top of the flowing crater, mottling the surface, orange
against gold.

117
 CHAPTER XXI: TRACTORSTROI

E
VERY Russian admires the conveyor. The conveyor is the
symbol of the Amerikanski tempo. But the Russians have
no more idea how to use the conveyor than a group of
school children. Our familiar American scene of the production
line with rows of men on each side popping nuts and bolts and
sprocket-wheels and camshafts into their respective places along
a steadily moving conveyor belt is something that the Russians
as a body have never experienced or imagined. Instead the pro-
duction line usually stands perfectly still. Half-way down the
factory is a partly completed tractor. One Russian is screwing
in a tiny little bolt and twenty other Russians are standing
around him watching, talking it over, smoking cigarettes,
argumg.
The factories themselves are infinitely more bright and shin-
ing than most American factories. The Stalingrad group has
been designed by Albert Kahn of Detroit and is a perfection
of arrangement. All the machinery has come new and glistening
from Germany and America. The foundry floor is ablaze in the
whiteness of its sand. Our factories are largely a product of
gradual growth, and renovation. But these Russian factories
have sprung full-blown from the plans of the Supreme Eco-
nomic Council plus American skill.
Into these finished products of twentieth century engineer-
ing, there have come peasants, theorists, young political en-
thusiasts. They are like children marveling over new toys. More
118
than that, they are religious fanatics worshiping before a new
shrine. They idolize the machine in a sense that no American
ever could or would.
They do not even know how to take directions to use it.
Instead they make long speeches about the power of the machine
and write eloquent articles about the glory of industry. In alf
this there is a flaming religious fervor. For the new ikon is a
drill press.
The young American engineers who go to Russia have their
difficulties. For the first few weeks they are full of energy ex-
pecting to accomplish great things in organizing and directing.
Finally they realize that there is no use trying to work faster
than the inexperienced Russian. They are a little amused at
first, perhaps, when a group of non-technical Russian orators
must hold committee meetings to decide whether a new tool is
to be used or a new process approved. Later they are irritated,
and finally indifferent. There is nothing to do about it. They
decide it is Russian, that is all.
And on the walls of the American dining-room, above the
tables of cabbage soup, above the carafes of water that must
always be boiled, above the 450 American mechanics who have
their own complaints, the Russian, in his faith that all countries
of the globe are ready to unite in his great brotherhood, has
hung a large red-lettered banner:
WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
HAIL THE WORLD REVOLUTION!

Stalingrad is pulling itself together gradually but there is

much that is harsh in the muddy clapboard town. I arrived there
ll9
during the week that two American mechanics died from
typhoid. Into the offices of the American superintendent filed a
line of panic-stricken Americans, asking to go home. It was a
dreary day. The muddy streets were even more muddy than
usual, and the second of the two Americans was to be buried at
four. At four it was found that the head of the coffin committee
had gone away on his day of rest. Exhaustive searches were
made before the whereabouts of the coffin were discovered and
it was ten o'clock at night before the funeral could take place.
That evening I had dinner with the family of the American
superintendent of the plant. His supper was interrupted con-
stantly by a file of his American flock. One young man had a
roommate who was sick. Five weeks ago they had promised to
take him to the hospital. No one came in to take care of him.
Another had a wife who was coming from America. She was due
tomorrow. Where would she be put'? Two months ago when
he heard she was coming he had been promised a room by him-
self. He was living in an apartment, crowded into three rooms
with five other fellows. The nearest place for her was a hotel
in the next village, but she had come all the way from America
to stay with him.
After supper two Russian doctors came in to talk to the
superintendent. As they talked with grave faces at the far end
of the room, the superintendent's wife, a jolly girl from Mil-
waukee, told me how the doctors had prescribed medicines for
her baby which she could not get because of the shortage of
medicines, how diplomatic she had to be to keep up a steady
supply of ice, how precious their canned goods were to them.
Yet this must be said: if the Americans are suffering hard-
120
A NEW TRACTOR
FROM THE BALTIC FLEET TO THE TRACTOR PLANT
ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE
 ships, the Russians are suffering worse hardships. If the Amer-
icans are going through difficulties, they are going through
these difficulties because their salaries in America were doubled
as an inducement to bring them to Russia; but if the Russians
are going through want and suffering and sacrifice, they are
making those sacrifices because of a tremendous faith in the
program of the Government, because they expect that things
will get better, and because they believe in what their govern.!
men t is doing.
The Russian is exporting his butter, his eggs, his caviar, in
a frantic effort to get capital to buy machinery. But he gives
the visiting American the best of what he has. The American
has occasional white bread, whereas the Russian chiefly has only
black bread. The American can count on butter, wher~as the
Russian seldom sees butter. If the American lacks the con-
veniences he was promised, it is more through inefficiency than
intention.
At breakfast the next morning I sat with a group of me-
chanics who had come from Detroit. We struck up a friendship
at once, because I had photographed the Ford Plant, Chrysler
Motors, Webber and Wells, and other factories where they had
worked. "Why did you come out here'?" I asked.
"Oh, it seemed like an adventure," one of them said, "and
we get twice the dough. Half of it they pay in rubles for us to
Ii ve on, and the other half piles up in an American bank. We'd
get along all right if they'd let us alone. But the crazy way
these Russkies get ideas of their own. If we bring in a new
tool, they have to have a meeting to decide whether we'll
use it."
121
 "And we don't have half enough tools as it is," broke in
another. ''We put in orders, and the stuff is delayed, and the
work held up. This factory looks pretty good, conveyor lines
and a raft of machinery and all that. But just watch the picnic
when anything breaks down. In America you have fifty servic-
ing companies at the other end of the telephone, and here, when-
ever we need a replacement part, it's pretty sure to be on the
other side of the ocean."
"Did you hear about that earth dam in Central Russia'?"
threw in another. "They brought some high-powered guy from
Austria. He was an expert, and he laid it all out and was sent
somewhere else on consultations. When he came back the earth
dam was built all right. But what a job! He says it will be
washed out by the first flood."
"Yea, those Russkies get ideas of their own, all right."
"Well, you see, they have their designers,-their big de-
signing organizations. What those Russkies don't know about
designing would fill the New York Public Library. But I guess
they measure their drawings by the square feet they put out."
"And the generator one of the Americans is putting in! The
Russkies think that throwing a generator into operation is just
like turning on an electric fan. He says the Russkies are ex-
pecting to throw it into operation at once. A generator is a
watch make job. It has to be coddled along for a while, studied,
and tested, and adjusted. He says they'll blow it through the
roof."
"I heard a good one about a diamond drill in the Caucasus.
The diamonds will stand enough hard work and pressure if they
keep their pumps in order so the cooling system works. A dia-
122
mond drill isn't bought for a song. It has diamonds from Brazil,
two rows of them, and it is a very delicate piece of mechanism.
Well, a drill, you know, should make from ten to twenty feet
a day. The engineer in charge sets up the drill, and starts
them out with several reserve pumps. When he comes back all
the pumps but one are on the blink, the Russkies are making
only two feet a day, and they've practically burned up all their
diamonds.''
"The worst of it is that the poor fellows are working away
like a lot of beavers. They mean well enough, but you can't
expect an unskilled workman to run a diamond drill first crack
out of the box."
From other sources, I discovered other aspects of Tractor-
stroi: Tractorstroi holds the construction record in the Soviet
Union. It was built in one year. The original plan was to have
the plant completed in 1931 or 1932, but it was finished in 1930
and in June of that year the first tractor came off the conveyor.
The construction of this plant illustrates the role played by
American firms having technical assistance contracts in the
Soviet Union. On May 8, 1929, a Russian commission from
Tractorstroi visited the Detroit offices of Albert Kahn, Inc.,
and outlined the first instructions regarding the design of the
plant. The firm of Albert Kahn started to make the architectural
and engineering plans for the construction on May 10th; the
preliminary studies were approved on May 20th, and the con-
struction drawings were started the following day. Because the
Russians were anxious to complete the plant as soon as possible,
Albert Kahn put a large force of experts on these construction
drawings and completed them by July first. The firm then sent
123
six American specialists to Stalingrad to supervise the erection
of the plant.
Actual construction was started on July 16th, 1929. All the
structural steel for the plant was purchased in the United
States. The speed with which 5700 tons of steel were erected
into a framework constitutes a record in Russia, all the more re-
markable in view of the fact that the work was done by Rus-
sian laborers with little previous experience in this kind of con-
struction. The entire plant was substantially completed on
February 28th, 1930, about seven and one-half months after
starting, a record, which, in view of the magnitude of the proj-
ect, would have been good even in the United States. The total
cost of the plant was about $36,000,000, which does not include
the cost of the apartment houses, stores, schools, theaters, and
other buildings in Stalingrad constructed around the plant for
the convenience of the workers.
About 6200 workers were engaged in the construction of the
plant, which consists of ten principal buildings and a half-dozen
auxiliary buildings. All the buildings are single-story struc-
tures, designed to embody the latest American ideas of factory
construction. The mechanical equipment of the buildings is also
principally American. The Russians, as well as the firm of
Albert Kahn, are proud of the fact that only one year after
construction was started the first tractor was delivered, despite
the fact that a large part of the building materials and practi-
cally all the mechanical equipment had to be obtained abroad,
and that the workers employed in the manufacture of tractors
were untrained and all had to be broken into their various
duties.
124
A FOREMAN
 After the plant started actual operations, many very serious
manufacturing difficulties presented themselves, as indicated
by the workers in our breakfast conversation; but I have been
told by representatives of Albert Kahn that such difficulties-
called in America "growing pains"-are to be expected at the
beginning even in American plan ts and they believe the Rus-
sians will overcome them.
When I entered Tractorstroi, the whir of machinery sounded
on all sides and earnest Russian faces bent over lathes and drill
presses. These people were not working just for the pay en-
velope, not waiting for the factory whistle. Their very attitudes
showed that they were enthusiasts-possessed of new ideas.
Yet everywhere the conference system was evident. The
comrades stood about in groups watching the work, talking ex-
citedly. Here a cylinder block is set on the line. Too many
people on one job. There a radiator shell is lowered into place.
A veritable army guides it into the assembly. A boy in a striped
shirt wearing a sailor hat, a worker with a cigarette, a comrade
in an embroidered blouse, an old man with side-whiskers, a
serious-faced girl, all hurry forward, anxious to give a helping
hand.
Always, in America or any other country, I go through a
factory for the most interesting faces. Here I had a great variety
to choose from. People from various provinces of Russia had
come together to work in this tractor factory. Young people
working with the old. A few skilled, and many unskilled. Tall
boys from Georgia, Ukrainians, Tartars, Uzbeks. I selected a
black-haired maiden from the Caucasus, triumphantly revolu-
tionary in a red head kerchief.
125
 Next a man with embroidered cuffs and a Latvian face, who
stooped over a punch press.
Then a neat-bearded foreman of the older generation, who
inspected a borer through two pairs of glasses. As I set up my
camera, he took off one pair of spectacles quickly. I waved my
arms and shouted and he, understanding, resumed his pic-
turesque aspect by putting them again on his nose.
A nearly assembled tractor, toward the end of the produc-
tion line, is a dramatic subject for the workers. People scramble
up to the seat and sit there triumphantly. I must choose a cen-
tral figure for this exultant picture. I searched through the far
corners of the factory and in the forge shop found my man. A
long body, tough boots, full handsome features, and a Sto-
kowskian shock of hair. I led him to my camera, and he fell into
the central role almost without instruction, with a natural sense
of drama.
The few Russians who have been to America have learned
a surprising amount. They have more than the mere ambition
for the Americanski tempo. They have the feeling for it. My
interpreter had never been out of the boundaries of Russia.
But she had worked with American business men and she had
attained a good deal of this same thing. Other Russians who
have worked with Americans, not in the disassociated way that
the workmen in the factories contact with the American con-
sultants, but closely, as interpreters, secretaries, assistants, have
absorbed the feel of the outside world, and it colors their very
thinking.
To my mind the greatest hope of the new Russia is the
capacity of Russians to learn quickly. If individual Russians
126
are so impressionable, so quick to learn, through the great mass
of the people will gradually seep the new industrial spirit. It
will not be done in five years. Any casual observer knows that
so great a transformation can not be accomplished in five years.
Any visitor to Russia can see that the greatest drawback to the
success of the industrial plan is the inexperience of the Russian
people. Foreign engineering talent can be bought. Machinery
can be purchased. It is purchased through sacrifice and struggle,
but still it can be obtained. Factories can be set up and started
in operation but whether the rolling wheels which are set in
motion will keep turning, whether the lathes will keep running,
whether the production lines will continue to assemble, all this
depends on how effectively these agricultural people can absorb
industrialization.

127
 CHAPTER XXII: 36 HOURS WITHOUT SLEEP

B
ACK in Moscow, with eight hundred films to get past the
censor. I thought the hardest part of my work was done
and that I would soon be ready to return to America. My
first step was to go to the censor and ask his permission to take
out my films uninspected and undeveloped. I explained, when
I saw the shade of disapproval crossing his face, that I could do
much better work in my own studio. I might ruin the films if I
tried to do them in Russia.
To let me leave the country with my films uninspected by
the government was something the censor would not allow.
The next three days were spent in searching, quietly and
unobtrusively, for a place in which to develop the films. I could
have had any amount of official help but I was afraid to ask for
it. Usually one can manage to get things done somehow by
oneself, but if my Russian friends arranged the developing of
my eight hundred films, past experience with red tape made
me feel that it would be months before I could finish and leave
the country.
I tried to get a private place to work through friends I had
made here and there who were photographers. No one could
give me facilities. Of course, no one would have a private place
to work in Soviet Russia, but thinking in terms of our country,
where every camera enthusiast has a little dark-room in his
cellar, it came as a surprise that even those who were recognized
throughout Russia as the greatest of Soviet camera artists did
128
not have a corner that was enough their own so that they could
lend it to me.
As the days went on my anxiety increased. I could picture
so vividly the number of conferences there would be, the num-
ber of postponements, the number of discussions over eight
hundred films, if the developing went through official circles.
At last I managed to obtain the use of a small moving pic-
ture studio on the very outskirts of Moscow. Had Lida Ivan-
ovna been a little less clever, we never would have gotten
anywhere.
"The American photo-correspondent has just a little work
to do," she said, "just a few films to develop. It will not take
us very long."
The studio assigned one comrade to help us, and my in-
terpreter kept everyone else in conversation so they would not
see what a great quantity of films there was. At last closing
time came, and all but our one assistant left the studio.
I watched the man carefully as he mixed the chemicals and
prepared the trays. I could tell by the way he moved his hands
that he was an excellent workman. This was a good omen. Per-
haps we would succeed in completing this immense task.
How fortunate that I had brought a piece of green glass
from Berlin! Panchromatic film must be developed by green
light, and I was told that green glass was practically unobtain-
able in Moscow.
As the studio man gummed my green glass safelight into
place, Lida I vanovna and I decided that in one way or another
we must get the full collection of films developed and out of
the place by daybreak. In America, working in my own studio
129
and surrounded by the best conditions, I would never dare to
develop eight hundred films in one night. But if the comrades
returned in the morning and caught a glimpse of the amount of
work we were trying to do, I was sure there would be still
further delays.
We brought out the first box of films and began. Side by
side I worked with the comrade. He handed me the films one at
a time, and I swayed them gently in the pan of developing
solution. My eyes grew accustomed to the dim green light, and
as I watched the films darken in the developer, I was swept with
the eagerness that all photographers feel to see their work, in-
visibly preserved on a piece of blank emulsion, at last take form.
Faintly the criss-cross lines of structural work appeared.
The image deepened. This must be Dnieperstroi. And what was
this film, with the vague outlines of clouds, black on the nega-
tive, and threaded with a delicate tracery'? These must be the
Dnieperstroi derricks, that I had photographed from the scaf-
folding. Then the strong bolts of a generator rose into visi-
bility; the image deepened on the back of the film, and the nega-
tives were "cooked."
Quickly my technician slipped them into the hypo, and
we stood there in the ghostly light, waiting for the films to
clear. When it was safe to throw on the toplight we examined
them carefully. My Russian comrade was filled with enthu-
siasm. He had been to Dnieperstroi. He knew what the diffi-
culties we.re of taking pictures, of climbing on cross-beams,
of balancing cameras on scaffolding, and the still greater
difficulties of finding dark places to load holders; to work in
spots that were never meant for photographers, where leaks
130
of light creep in dangerously at all the cracks. He poured him-
self out in voluble Russian praise and I knew I had an ally.
I cemented this alliance by presenting him with that rare and
marvelous thing in Russia, a piece of chocolate.
Back again with the next box. Here we had wheels, lathes,
tractors. A face peered out of the tray, squinting up through two
sets of glasses, and I recognized Stalingrad. Slipping the films
in the hypo, we waited for the whites in the gelatin to clear, and
again put on the light.
During this interval my offering was an Amerikanski
cigarette.
Back to the trays again, where we produced textiles, brought
into view a harrow, conjured up a steel mill. Recognizing in the
tones of my assistant's voice complete enthusiasm for the work,
I threw prudence to the winds, and produced the films by the
hundreds.
We organized our movements like a factory. The three of
us stood in a row, the comrade placed the films in the develop-
ing solution, I passed judgment when they had reached their
development, and Lida I vanovna shifted them into the hypo.
We did not pause even for a moment to examine our results.
All night long we worked, slipping films into the developer,
passing them out again.
At dawn we finished. Nothing had been rinsed. The films lay
black in traysful of hypo, spread over the entire floor.
One of my American friends came for us in an automobile.
We piled the films in pails of hypo, placed them in the bottom
of the car, and drove back to the hotel.
There I could have no thought of going to bed. The films
131
must be rinsed, and in their much softened state must be
handled very carefully. All the next day I spent on my knees
in front of the bathtub. I did not stop to eat. I did not even
remove my hands from the tub. My friends fed me sandwiches
while I worked all day with my arms in cold water up to my
elbows.
Having no such devices as photographers' racks and clips,
I had to invent some means of drying the films. After the long
day of soaking and rinsing, the emulsion was so soft that the
least mis-handling would make the gelatin curl up in blisters.
I gathered up all the cord I could find in the hotel and strung
it back and forth across my room, in a network close to the ceil-
ing. At this point a simple box of American dressmakers' pins
would have saved me twelve hours. But Ru.ssian pins are like
tacks. Their points were so blunt that it required the most deli-
cate handling to put a pin through the corner of a negative
without peeling off the emulsion.
The night dragged on like an endless nightmare. Dazed with
lack of sleep, I stood on a chair, put pins through films and films
on cords, pins through films and films on cords, until dawn
broke. Morning found my ceiling black with the fluttering
images of cement kilns, dams, state farms, socialized horses,
spectacled iron puddlers, tractors, and textiles. Exhausted and
triumphant, I threw myself on the bed, and, under the gentle
rain of films dripping from the ceiling, I at once fell asleep.
 CHAPTER XXIII: DOSVIDANIYE!

I
LEFT my developed films with the proper authorities who
were to examine them and forward them to Paris by diplo-
matic courier, where the Soviet Embassy would then send
them on to me in America. I made the rounds, saying goodbye,
and gave away all my clothes and such scraps of soap and food
as I had left, distributing these impartially, and saving nothing
except enough clothing to last me until I reached Berlin. At this
time the shortage of goods was so acute that even my well-worn
cotton stockings made a welcome gift.
Before leaving Russia I wanted to get an ikon. This meant
searching through many little private shops where sharp dealers
tried to sell me spurious ikons especially manufactured for
tourists. At last, however, in the back of a cluttered antique
shop I found a sweetfaced sixteenth century Madonna. Ameri-
can friends warned me that ikons bought in Moscow are some-
times confiscated at the border. I therefore wrapped mine in a
sweater at the bottom of my suitcase and carried it out of the
country.
On the Russian train which took me to Berlin I tasted for
the first time in many weeks the luxury of four scrambled eggs
for breakfast. I was still hungry, however, and when a polite
fellow-traveler who was eating breakfast at the same table
offered me a second helping, I amazed him by eating four more
eggs, which I followed up with a large helping of cheese. While
my fellow-traveler ascribed my voracious appetite to the food
133
 shortage in Russia, I was not sure but that my immense break-
fast on the train was not due to the last two hungry and hurried
days I had spent developing my films.
It was with a shock of surprise that I saw a well-stocked
delicatessen store in Warsaw; I looked through the window
eagerly, :finding it hard to accustom myself to a display of so
much food. Here, if I wished, I could walk into the store and
buy anything. No government papers would be needed. There
would be no waiting in a queue.
Berlin was equally surprising after Moscow. The streets
seemed incredibly clean and full of well-dressed p~ople. It was
with some misgiving that I placed my shoes outside the door
of my hotel room at night to be cleaned according to the Ger-
man custom. Yet in the morning I found the shoes there, safe
and neatly shined. It was hard to believe that things could be
left out of sight and not be stolen.
My feeling of unfamiliarity continued in Paris, where taxis
could be seen everywhere, where porters, costumers, couturiers,
concierges were ready to do everything to accommodate visitors.
It was a long time before I could take such service for granted,
and repeatedly I had to check myself, when a maid cleaned up
the room or a porter brought a parcel, from saying, "Thank you,
comrade!"
New York still found me a little unaccustomed to Western
civilization. I began to acclimate myself to the city by walking
through the department stores for the fun of it, reveling in
their rich variety of wares. When I heard that a friend was go-
ing to Russia, I went shopping on a "collective" scale: sport
sweaters for my five suitors, victrola records for Kostia, kid
134
gloves and silk stockings for Semionova, and for my interpreter
as many articles of warm clothing as my friend could carry.
And, remembering the brass ring from the German cheese jar
which she had wistfully slipped over her wrist, I added to Lida
Ivanovna's package a little gold bracelet.

135