SENTRY OUTSIDE THE GUEST-HOUSE 158 LITVINOFF AT MOSCOW 181 STATUE OF DOSTOIEVSKY 182 STATUE, “THE THINKER” 183 THE SUKHAREFSKI MARKET 184 FOREWORD _It is with deep apology that I venture to swell the ranks of those people who write their little books after their little visits to Russia._ _In defence I can only say that this was not written for publication. I have always kept a diary, in monotonous as in eventful days. In publishing a record of my stay in Moscow I am submitting to pressure without which I would not venture upon such a line. Mine is not the business of writing, nor are politics my concern: I went to Moscow where some portrait work was offered me._ _There are people in England who are indignant at my doing Lenin and Trotsky. There were people in Moscow who were horrified because I had done Churchill, and expressed a desire to do d’Annunzio, but as a portraitist I have nothing to do with politics; it is humanity that interests me, humanity with its force and its weakness, its ambitions and fears, its honesty and lack of scruples, its perfection and deformities._ _There are of course people who are pleasanter to work for than others, people in whose environment one feels happier and more at ease._ _In this diary are written freely the impressions of a guest among people who have been much talked about._ _From this point of view, and without any political pretentions, I offer it to whomsoever it may interest._ RUSSIAN PORTRAITS AUGUST 14TH, 1920. _London._ According to Mr. Fisher’s instructions, I called on Mr. M--at his office at 10.30 and introduced myself. He took me in a taxi to Bond Street to the office of Messrs. Kameneff and Krassin. We waited for about twenty minutes in an anti-chamber, and I had a certain melodramatic feeling. Here was I, at all events, in the outer den of these wild beasts who have been represented as ready to spring upon us and devour us! This movement that has caused consternation to the world, and these people so utterly removed from my environment, these myths of what seemed almost a great legend, I was now quite close to. Meanwhile the clerks in the office occupied my attention, they interested me as types, and I wondered about them, about exactly _what_ in their lives had made them into Bolsheviks, and what sort of mentality it was, and whether the scheme which they upheld was a workable concern. At the same time Mr. M--put me straight on a few points, and all the inaccuracies about Bolshevism that people like myself have gleaned, so that I was fairly prepared and protected against appearing too ignorant and foolish.