of the revolution. A whole block in the Tverskaya was so
decorated. Best, I think, were the row of wooden booths
almost opposite the Hotel National in the Okhotnia Ryadi.
These had been painted by the futurists or kindred artists,
and made a really delightful effect, their bright colours and
naif patterns seeming so natural to Moscow that I found
myself wondering how it was that they had never been so
painted before. They used to be a uniform dull yellow.
Now, in clear primary colours, blue, red, yellow, with rough
flower designs, on white and chequered back-grounds, with
the masses of snow in the road before them, and
bright-kerchiefed women and peasants in ruddy sheepskin coats
passing by, they seemed less like futurist paintings than like
some traditional survival, linking new Moscow with the
Middle Ages. It is perhaps interesting to note that certain
staid purists in the Moscow Soviet raised a protest while I
was there against the license given to the futurists to spread
themselves about the town, and demanded that the art of the
revolution should be more comprehensible and less violent.
These criticisms, however, did not apply to the row of
booths which were a pleasure to me every time I passed
them.


In the evening I went to see Reinstein in the National.
Reinstein is a little old grandfather, a member of the
American Socialist Labour Party, who was tireless in helping
the Americans last year, and is a prodigy of knowledge
about the revolution. He must be nearly seventy, never
misses a meeting of the Moscow Soviet or the Executive