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On 1 May 1917 he wrote:
'Immediately below my window in the great square two processions are meeting. One of them includes a detachment from one of the regiments which first threw out the red flag in the days of the revolution. The other procession, noticing this, breaks into wild cheering which spreads over the whole sea of people far away into the distance under the gold domes and cupolas of the old Russian Church. The soldiers wave their caps and shout in reply. In all directions as far as one can see red flags are waving above the dense crowd which leaves only just enough room for the perpetually passing processions.
Ransome had also noted the role of the Soviets- as he wrote on 1st April: "it should never be forgotten that the Council of Soldiers and Workers Deputies enjoys practically decisive power in all questions which depend on the working class". As the months passed he noted the heated differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. He also became aware of the increasing support for the Bolsheviks amongst the people.
October 1917
The historian Hugh Brogan in his biography of Ransome referred to the upheavals in July 1917 and remarked that "it was becoming habitual with him, Arthur blamed the "Cadets" (bourgeois politicians) for provoking this crisis" revealing the emerging awareness of Ransome.
Ill health demanded a holiday, and Ransome left the country on 9th October. When the Bolshevik revolution erupted in November, Ransome was in Britain. He immediately attempted to return by way of Sweden.
He eventually was given a pass to visit Russia and on S0 December visited the 'Peoples' Commissar for Foreign Affairs' at the Smolny Institute in Petrograd. He arrived outside the office:
"Beside it stood a sentinel, who was a workman from the Red Guard in ordinary clothes, with a rifle and bandolier over his overcoat. In the anteroom one of Trotsky's secretaries, a young officer, told me that Trotsky was expecting me...I got an impression of extreme efficiency and detinite purpose. In spite of all that is said against him by his enemies, I do not think he is a man to do anything except from the conviction that it is the best thing to be done for the revolutionary cause which he has at heart."
Ransome visited the Smolny Institute (headquarters of the Bolsheviks) frequently. And in his visits he met and fell in love with Evgenia Shelepina. She was twenty
three years old. She had gone to work as a typist at the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs before the Bolshevik revolution. She was one of the few who stayed at their jobs at the Commissariat after the revolution. She had become Trotsky's personal secretary. During the events of 1917 Evgenia in her own words was "convinced that the Bolsheviks were the only party which had a chance to extricate Russia from the chaos into which the war, entered into so irresponsibly by tne I'sarist government, plunged the country" . Evgenia came to marry Ransome in later years.
The worst aspect of Brogan's biography of Ransome is the author's clear dislike for Bolshevism and the revolution. Time after time Brogan refers disparagingly to Ransome's support for Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks. Brogan remarks typically "His view of the revolution was still somewhat romantic" • Ransome, however, saw things differently. Having met and heard Lenin speak on a number of occasions, he observed that:
"He was the most Russian of them. Time and again after listening to speeches which might have been made in any country by men of any nationality I have been suddenly, as it were, brought back to Russia when this little urgent figure stepped to the tribune, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and mingled jest and argument in language that tasted of Russian tobacco and the life of the Russian peasantry. It was natural to him to talk of the principles of his international revolution in the language of the Volga peasants, and in his mouth political theory seemed in no way out of tune with the peasant proverbs that were characteristic of his speeches. At the Assembly which ratified the peace, for example, he suppressed Steinberg, who was asking questions, by remarking to the general delight, 'one fool can ask more questions than ten wise men can answer'"
Ransome became a friend of Radek-immediately after the revolution he was in charge of the Press Bureau of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Radek-in 1918—wrote a preface to Ransome's first pamphlet on the revolution, "The Truth about Russia". . Radek wrote of Ransome: "he is a man with his eyes open, with a warm heart, without any prejudices, a man whose deep love for the masses and for all who were hurled into this war and its hellish misery enabled him to understand Russia."
In his pamphlet published in 1921, The Crisis in Russia, Ransome showed much foresight in quoting the comments of Rykov who warned that 'There is a possibility of so constructing a state that in it there will be a
Ransome as an old man. Tragicaliy. "editorial restrictions" meant that even his autobiography gives only a pale reflection of his views.
ruling caste consisting chiefly of administrative engineers, technicians etc. that is, we should get a form of state economy based on a small group of a ruling caste whose privilege in this case would be the management of the workers and peasants."
The revolution clearly had an enormous impact on Ransome who saw at first hand the developments of industry and experienced the democratic control of society through the soviets.
Ransome left Russia before Stalin and the bureaucracy had usurped power. But he returned-with Evgenia-to England to write more adventure stories. He fished and sailed in the peace of the Lake District. His Autobiography written between 1949 and 1961 was his only further piece of political writing. Why he abandoned politics has never really been explained.
Tragically even Ransome's Autobiography only gives us a pale reflection of his views. Editor Rupert Hart-Davies tells us in his introduction that:
"For many years after 1917 Ransome planned to write a history of the Russian Revolution and he amassed a large quantity of notes and memoranda, apart from his memories. Time and again in the autobiography he was tempted to devote several pages to discussion of Russian political parties, contemporary theories of the future, and a great deal of other material Itrelevant to his own story. There have been many histories of those days, and I have restricted Ransome's narrative to events in which he was involved as actor or eyewitness."!
Nevertheless Ransome's books, and those about his life, make interesting reading if only to give us a glimpse of the explosion of life in the years immediately following the Russian revolution. And his accounts of the revolution are fascinating reading for all socialists.
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