Despite the early problems, the kommunary forged ahead, including creating the commune's governing structure. Soviet statues defined a model governance structure for a commune as consisting of a general assembly of all members and a council elected by the members.[1] In 1925, a report of the commune carried the signatures of seven council members, two of whom appear to have been women.[2] A photo of the 1926 executive board includes one woman.
Dashwood described governance in 1936 as consisting of a Control Board of three elected by the workers, in charge of all work plans, income, and expenditures; an Executive Board or council of nine, also elected at large, which met regularly to discuss the general workings of the commune; and a General Meeting of all workers, held four times a year. Unlike some communes, all Seattle’s council meetings were open to all commune members. Although Finns dominated the elected leadership throughout the 1920s, they conducted monthly council meetings in Russian, English, and Finnish, and logged the minutes of meetings in Finnish and Russian.[3]
Early Discord and Disaffection
The largest number of Seattle’s first settlers were of Finnish descent, and many accounts pointed to national differences as the major factor creating acrimony in the commune. Very few of the Finns spoke much Russian. When they moved to Seattle, the Finnish Americans struggled to interact with their Russian-speaking neighbors. Even more troublesome for the commune was that the Finnish majority in the council fought bitterly with the smaller national groups. Language and cultural differences also contributed to and mirrored other differences among the commune’s members.
The first chairpersons of the commune, Karl Mattillo and Oscar Hendrickson, believed in the aims of the commune and its goal to build socialism but neither knew the Russian language. They were not the only ones. A government report from 1927 said that, despite the availability of Russian language classes, the majority of Seattle’s members “understood absolutely no Russian.”[4] This shortcoming, the report continued, isolated the commune from surrounding villages. Its isolation was particularly problematic because the commune was supposed to lead local peasants out of their political and agricultural backwardness. This problem even came out in newspaper interviews. When a regional paper published a series of articles about the commune, the author conveyed Hendrickson’s use of a translator through halting, strangely constructed phrases. A 1935 biographical sketch of Hendrickson noted that his work as "manager" was difficult "due to lack of language skills."[5]
In 1928, a Soviet paper claimed that, in 1922-23, “the Finnish group poisoned the commune's council; the Russian group sowed national discontent. Meetings ended scandalously.”[6] Even members who had no allegiance to either faction became entangled in the quarrels, which continued well past the early years. In 1926, Enoch Nelson’s wife, Irene, a native of Soviet Karelia who knew Finnish and Russian, found herself in “a hell of a position” as an interpreter. Nelson wrote to his brother that “the Russians give her more credit than the Finns but as the Russians are a minority she gets into a place between two fires. . . . Hard words come from both sides and as usual the translator is to blame.”[7]
Economic stratification also caused discontent and may sometimes have coincided with the ethnic strife. While Seattle had a minimum entrance fee, it apparently waived the fee for members with skills that were particularly needed. Enoch Nelson, a skilled machinist, was one of those who did not pay anything. In August 1925, while trying to enlist a notary to tie up the sale of some property in the United States, he butted heads with the commune’s leaders: "These people are so darn small that they do not consider a person of any importance unless he has money . . . The work I have done in the past year has been of much greater value to the commune than the 500 bucks that many members have paid. During the last trials that I made with the deed [to the property he was trying to sell] the chairman of our commune wouldn't even answer me."[8]
Commune leaders, often those who had contributed the most capital to the venture, were angry that Nelson, who owned property in the US, had not contributed all the cash he could to Seattle. Their resentment reflected a sense that the commune’s leaders had tied their entire lives to Seattle while Nelson and others had less commitment. The divide between those who had put the most capital into the commune and those who had put only their labor into the commune seems to have split at least partly along national lines. No surviving records log who paid what amounts in dues at the commune. However, circumstantial evidence suggests Finns contributed the most capital to the commune while the Russians and other groups—some of whom came directly from the Soviet Union and had less capital—contributed much less. The initial settlers were more likely than later settlers to pay the entrance fee, and those initial settlers were overwhelmingly Finnish.[9] The question of having an economic stake was not inherently a national issue but it overlapped with and likely increased tensions in the rift between the Finns and other groups.
Facing malaria and problems with housing (see below), as well as ethnic discord within the commune, many members left. Nelson reported in mid-1924, just twenty months after the first arrivals, that “lack of sufficient capital, misunderstanding of orders by the Central Committee in New York, and the change in the mode of living . . . have driven many members away.”[10] KraiZU, the regional land authority, calculated in 1927 that, between October 1922 and January 1927, 220 adult kommunary had arrived from the United States and 102 had departed—nearly half the total. However, when children are included, the numbers stood at 334 arrivals and 134 departures, suggesting that those most likely to remain were those with children.[11] (Those data suggest a population as of 1927, not including births and deaths, of 118 adults and 92 children, implying that the commune had become more family-oriented by 1927 than was the case in October 1922.) Departing individuals cited such varied reasons as "People gathered in the community are not at my level of education" and "Too little tobacco is grown." One violinist left when he was not paid to play. A couple left because there were no numbered seats in the canteen. The chicken keeper left for the fear his wife was losing weight. A study in 1926 found that the most commonly cited reasons for leaving Seattle were unfamiliarity with agriculture, sickness (especially malaria), hard or dull living conditions, lonesomeness (cited by unmarried men), and dissatisfaction with the food.[12]
Malaria drove away many in the mid-1920s. E. Kuula wrote about his family's experience: “The work went well as long as the workers were allowed to keep their health, but then when that malaria from southern Russia attacked us, that’s when it started to cause trouble. The number of people who were abducted by the aforementioned disease were numerous, keeping them many months in bed. The undersigned was ill for a couple of months and so did all three of my children, after which I thought it best to leave the commune like many others who had suffered the same fate . . . most of them who left same fall [1924] as I left were definitely devastated by the disease."[13]
Nelson’s letters, newspaper stories, and official surveys all noted the conflict between national groups in the commune as another major source of trouble between members. Official accounts sometimes did so in passing, as a thing of the past, while in reality these struggles continued throughout the 1920s. Indeed, there was a real divide in the commune that split on linguistic and cultural lines. Yet the strife between the commune’s Finns and the other groups was not only a problem of national-linguistic differences. Marriage and housing, membership dues, and the contradiction of a hierarchical system in an egalitarian commune caused unrest. National difference coincided with these problems and this correspondence led commune members and outside observers to believe that nationality was the root cause of quarrels in the commune. In truth it was the combination of all these factors that led many people to leave Seattle—and other communes—during the first years.[14]
Three Who Left the Commune
Enoch Nelson resigned in January 1926. His and his wife’s first child had died at the age of three and a half months, after the most minimal professional medical care. Some of his complaints about Seattle sound rather materialistic, especially coming from a committed socialist. Commune members who had paid the $500 entrance fee treated him like a second-class citizen. “Furnishing clothing for the wife is impossible unless you beg,” he wrote to his brother. The used clothing, hygienic supplies, and tools sent by his brother from America, if not labeled with his name, disappeared. Tools in the machine shop where he worked were constantly disappearing: “[When] everyone is owner everyone wants to use it and it so happens that it is never to be had when wanted.”[15] What frustrated Nelson was, in fact, a central principle of communal life, described by Dashwood, ten years later, as “everything was held in common by the workers.” This was, in fact, required by a Soviet statute governing communes which specified that “everything belongs to everyone.” Nonetheless, petty theft was one of the most frequent misconducts to come before the commune’s Comradely Court, and Dashwood was warned never to leave her valuables without locking them up.[16]
The final straw that led to Nelson’s departure, however, was the constant fighting between the Finns and Russians. Nelson attributed part of the problem to “the wrangling [that] past members of the Finnish Federation learned in America and brought over with them to this country.” (Before 1919, the Finnish Federation, part of the Socialist Party of America, was notorious for its internal disputes.[17]) According to Nelson, “The Finns, of course, as usual, see only the mistakes of the other nationalities and think themselves immune from nationalistic tendencies.” At one point, the council, angry with Irene Nelson’s translating, threatened to discontinue subsidizing her party education in Leningrad and revoke her party membership. Nelson concluded, “The nationalist question is one that is hard to settle and will cause much headaching before it is finally liquidated.”[18] His prediction proved unfortunately true, and his use of liquidated was personally prophetic.
Alarik Reinikka, one of the founders of the commune, became disillusioned much sooner than Enoch Nelson. Arriving with the first group of kommunary, he came alone, leaving his wife and five children on their farm in Washington. Reinikka wanted to leave after less than a year, and his wife sent funds for that purpose with a Finn who was moving to the commune and who met Reinikka in St. Petersburg. However, the man refused to give Reinikka the money, claiming that it belonged instead to the commune. Upon Reinikka's return to the commune, he was accused of damaging a plow. Eventually, he was put in jail (accounts do not specify whether the jail was on the commune or nearby) and, according to his later account, was held without being charged for seven months. His brother-in-law learned of the situation and contacted Oregon's US Senators, who were able to secure Reinikka's release. Reinikka was transported to the border with Latvia, from where he had to make his way back to the US. He became an outspoken anti-communist, stating in an interview in 1924, “People who are not accustomed to being slaves cannot succumb to the arbitrariness and the most ruthless tyranny that the bunch of rubbish that holds power in its hands in Russia with bayonets and dungeons."[19]
Clas Collan, another of the original party sent to locate a site for the commune, left in the mid-1920s. In late 1923, while still at the commune, he married Laina Paajanen, a nurse and mid-wife, who came to the commune directly from Finland earlier that year. Theirs was the first marriage among the Finnish kommunary. However, Clas and Laina left the commune a year and a half later, crossing into Finland on January 12, 1925. Both had retained their passports and neither had become Soviet citizens, so it was possible for them to leave although they had to undergo intense questioning by Soviet authorities as to the reason they were leaving. The reason they gave was health problems, which was not only politically acceptable but may also have been the actual reason. Malaria had been especially serious in late 1924. In addition, Laina was pregnant with their first child, who was born in June. The Collans remained in Finland, living in the house where Clas had grown up.[20]
Life on the Commune in the 1920s
Those who stayed through the ordeals of the early years were clearly the most dedicated. In 1927 more than a third of commune members were affiliated with party organizations. As Richard Stites writes about communes in general in this period, “There was apparently a high correlation between ideological commitment or level of spirit in the commune and its material success.” Those who stayed or joined later were those who proved the staunchest supporters of the project of building a holistic community. [21]
The commune set forth as a basic rule that it would hire no labor, a rule reflecting a Soviet statute that specified that communes were permitted to hire only for unusual or emergency situations. This rule, though, appears to have been somewhat flexible. Having an excess of land, communes often faced serious labor shortages. Other nearby communes, including the Estonian-American Koit and the multi-national Pioneer, received sizable government loans that they used to hire local peasants. Various studies cited by Wesson suggest that four-fifths of all communes hired labor in 1924, three-fifths in 1925, and “almost all” in 1930. Though Seattle preferred to use only its own members as workers, the commune had the advantage, from 1924 onward, of agricultural students who worked at the commune during the summer in exchange for experience with its machinery. The students who helped at the Seattle Commune did not entirely fill the need for labor, yet the commune continued to emphasize the importance of self-sufficient, communal labor.[22] Even so, by 1933, the chairman of the commune, Victor Saulit, complained that the commune had to hire a hundred extra workers during harvest, which, he grumbled, “doesn’t look nice in a Commune.”[23]
Equality was a firm commitment of many of the original commune members. A journalist profiling the commune in 1923 could hardly believe that the wife of the chairman scrubbed the floor of the communal dining hall and did communal laundry, as did all the other women. He photographed her in action, apparently deciding that he could not report such an unbelievable item without documentary evidence. She claimed that it was “better and more pleasant to wash the sheets of 178 workers than be the maid of one lord or banker.”[24]
Work assignments were based on skill and gender. Labor in the commune was divided into “departments.” The largest departments were the field department that handled the staple crops and the culinary department that did cooking and laundry. Some “departments” consisted of only one or a few specialists, notably the poultry and dairy men. The rye beer department—the term Nelson used for Russia’s traditional, hot-weather drink, kvas, which was fermented from rye bread to about one percent alcohol—consisted of one man who brewed a hundred gallons a day in mid-summer.[25]
The commune largely maintained preexisting gender roles—women staffed the culinary and laundry department while mechanics and most tractor drivers were men. Kommunary put in long hours. Nelson spoke of working eleven to fifteen hours per day in the machine shop in 1925, and Strong in 1933 described wheat-harvest workdays that began at 4:10 a.m. and ended at 8:00 p.m. Though Nelson complained of many things, he did not protest the equity of labor distribution.[26]
Equality also meant equal pay, but only in the beginning. In the first years, each person, regardless of assignment, made 15 kopecks per hour. Equal pay for all did not last long. Wesson notes that a change in Soviet law in 1926 specified that communes should pay their members in accordance with “the quantity and quality of their work.”[27]
Soviet statutes specified that communes should have communal eating facilities, living space (with a minimum of one room per family), child care facilities, and laundry.[28] The Seattle kommunary seem to have embraced that vision from the beginning, sharing nearly all aspects of daily life. It would appear that they defined the primary purpose of their communal meals not as a time to socialize but instead as a necessary occasion to provide energy for work in an efficient manner. A reporter from Sal’sk, the nearest large town, wrote in 1925, “We arrived [at dinner] only a few minutes after the bell but had to sit at the very last table. . . . We could not manage to eat the main course before everyone had left.” Dashwood, in 1936, noted that meals were usually taken in “almost unbroken silence,” and that her first mid-day meal lasted only about ten minutes.[29]
Their three daily meals were functional and nourishing, if bland. In 1933, supper consisted of unlimited quantities of bread (at a time of national rationing), unlimited milk (hot or cold), carrots, potatoes, and a bowl of pork and beans. Dashwood recorded the dining hall menu for the month she spent there in 1936. Breakfast, at 6:30 a.m., was black bread and a coffee-like drink made with barley. The main meal of the day, between 11 and 11:30 a.m., consisted of a soup, often cabbage soup, followed by a stew, accompanied by tea and large quantities of black bread. The evening meal was similar—a soup, usually cabbage, followed by another dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes a cheese dish, sometimes fried eggs, all accompanied by unlimited quantities of black bread. Dashwood found the meat so tough that she gave up trying to chew it. She noted that the diet was almost completely deficient in sugar and seemed, to her English tastes, restricted and unpalatable. She also noted that, though meals were usually silent and quick, the dining hall was also a center of communal social life. At one end was a stage and curtains, and behind the dining hall was a small library with books, magazines, and newspapers. In addition to his other duties, Oscar Hendrickson was the librarian as of 1935.[30]
Like dining, housing was functional but never spacious or private. Unmarried men lived four to a room in dormitories according to a 1928 account. When Enoch Nelson’s wife left for to pursue her political education in Leningrad, he moved to the single-men’s dormitory but complained that the “rooms are so occupied that it is impossible to write anything excepting early in the morning.” Dashwood, in 1936, described each family building as containing “four to six rooms, and one family lived in each room. . . . whatever the size of the family.” She added that most families were small. In one room that she visited, the furnishings for a husband and wife consisted of a double bed, a sewing machine, an electric iron, and two rugs, all of which came from the United States, and two chairs, a table, and a wooden chest that were Russian.
Adequate housing seems to have been a constant problem--and source of complaints--throughout the 1920s and 1930s, overlapping with and compounding the ethnic strife.[31] Although the commune had the financial means to build more residences, its leaders gave higher priority to more productive infrastructure. In doing so, they were likely being guided from Moscow. In a book published around 1931, Y. A. Yakovlev, the People’s Commissar of Agriculture, noted, "We must openly admit that when commune members ask our advice as to how to spend their money on the building of a common dwelling-house or on the building of socialized ties, we answer: First organize your socialized animal husbandry, your socialized barns. On this basis your resources will began [sic] to grow literally week by week, and after two or three years you will be able to build any kind of dwelling-house you like. If on the other hand, you begin with a common dwelling-house and equality of distribution, your undertaking may turn out badly."[32]
The decision to build productive infrastructure before housing drew the ire of some members. In 1927, some ten percent of the commune’s members complained about inadequate housing in a government survey.[33] For some, the shortage of housing for married couples meant that they were not able to marry. In 1933, Saulit, the chairman, complained that outside authorities had denied permission to construct more housing, even though the commune did not have enough housing for their existing members and outside authorities (he wasn’t clear whether it was the same or different ones) were pressuring Seattle to accept more members.[34] In fact, the population of Seattle seems to have nearly doubled between 1927 and 1932, from 210 to 407, and nearly doubled again between 1932 and 1936, when Dashwood reported 728, of whom 530 were workers (probably meaning those over the age of fourteen).[35]
The commune established a modern, technological infrastructure, including electricity and telephones. Kommunary from urban areas in the US are likely to have had access to those amenities and grown accustomed to them, as a 1923 newspaper profile asserted.[36] However, only 3 percent of American farms had electricity in 1925 and only 11 percent as late as 1935, although many--perhaps most--had telephones. The decision to install telephones and electricity reflects the commune’s vision of agrarian socialism as based on the most modern technology. Lenin famously declared that communism is “Soviet authority plus electricity.” Whether or not commune members drew their inspiration directly from the Soviet leader, they seem to have been committed to the same concept. For them, the road to successful rural socialism lay in communal living combined with up-to-date technology.[37]
Leadership
Changes in the commune's top leadership point to another, early problem area, even as many of the same figures remained on committees and provided continuity. The first chairman, Karl Mattilo, though a skilled blacksmith and an experienced salmon fisherman, was unprepared by either education or ability to lead an agricultural commune. The second chairman, Oscar Hendrickson, had more experience with farming. But both Mattilo and Hendrickson needed translators when dealing with Russian speakers, a situation that may have exacerbated national conflicts. The 1935 biography of Hendrickson notes "illness forced him to resign" and that he had subsequently "held the position of responsible night watchman." Both Mattilo and Hendrickson firmly embraced the communist vision, but Seattle needed a more disciplined and knowledgeable leader. In 1931, the commune turned to the “iron leadership” of Victor Saulit.[38]
Commune members later remembered Saulit as very well educated, and Dashwood described him as “elderly” (he would have been in his mid-50s when Dashwood visited) and as “a slow, amiable man, always pleasant and good-tempered.” His education, skills, and temperament made him an excellent chairman for several reasons: he was among the few in the commune who had some agricultural education and could better guide the commune agriculturally. He spoke English, Finnish, and Russian besides his native Latvian, and his linguistic capabilities were instrumental for communication among members of the commune, as well as with peasants and authorities outside the commune. Moreover, he and Julia, his wife, an Estonian, were the only members of their respective nationalities and may have represented a compromise between the Finns and Russians.[39]
Developing Large-Scale Agriculture
Though the commune made improvements to its infrastructure, it was not initially a success as a farm. In their first year, of their twenty square miles, commune members managed to sow less than one and a half square miles[40]–less than 135 acres per tractor. The late delivery of their farm equipment, malaria, and lack of labor account for at least some of this poor performance, and eventually the commune members were able to develop large fields of several types of grain.
Few commune members were experienced with livestock. “On the pig farm,” one history notes, “many people watched 'pig fights.' They laughed at the funny and often bloody scenes. But they were laughing at themselves. 'Pig fights' started because we fed the small and big, older and younger animals in one place. The stronger beat the weaker.”[41] This vignette indicates that, in fact, commune members did not know the basics of feeding pigs, let alone the hundreds of other nuances of running a huge farming operation.
In September 1923, one V. Lehtelä criticized the incompetence of the commune's management in Raivaaja, a Finnish-language newspaper, describing them as shoemakers, fishermen, foresters, industrial workers, miners, few of whom had even a little agricultural expertise, and claiming that those who knew farming could not make their voices heard but instead had to be content with the decisions by those in higher authority who were less familiar with agriculture. Lehtelä also criticized the confusing and incompetent accounting. He further reported that local “agronomists” claimed the site was ill-suited to the kind of farming that the kommunaryhad planned, and that some commune members wanted to follow local guidelines, and others wanted to proceed as originally intended. The latter group proved to be right.[42]
Harri Vanhala, drawing upon his extensive research in Finnish language sources, has provided information on the development of the commune's livestock. Karl Mattila recalled that when he first arrived, there were no animals other than a stray dog and a couple of cats. Dairy cattle were not common in the area. The commune initially had some beef cattle, but they yielded only enough milk for the commune's children. In 1924, news about the commune's problems with dairying reached A. Markkanen in the US. Markkanen sold his own possessions and arrived at the commune in the spring of 1925, intent on developing a herd of dairy cows that could produce dairy products. The commune first bought two hundred German dairy cattle. By 1927, a few of Seyatel's cows were producing more than 5,000 liters of milk a year. Markkanen directed construction of American-style barns and silos for storage of food for the cows during the winter months. With the new emphasis on dairying, the commune's earlier emphasis on sheep raising was reduced to a lower priority. Though the kommunary also learned how to care for pigs, in 1928 swine fever took more than two hundred of their stock.[43]
Problems of Other "American" Communes
Seattle, in spite of these problems, established itself in the region and lasted out its 18-year lease.[44] It had material advantages that considerably exceeded those of domestic communes but were only marginally greater than the foreign communes that were its neighbors. And it faced the same cultural and material problems as other foreign communes. Yet it was apparently the only commune (international or domestic) to survive that long. The example of the nearby California Commune demonstrates the similar conditions shared by the communes. In 1922, a group centered in Los Angeles, including many Communist Party members, formed the California commune, which was also in the Don region. Many were of Russian origin, but the commune had enough members who did not speak Russian that it had an English-speaking branch of the Communist Party. Like Seattle, California was organized through the Society for Technical Aid to the Soviet Union. Like the Seattle kommunary, members of the California commune put large sums of capital into the commune. Although the total sum of money put into California was around half of Seattle’s funds, individual contributions were only slightly less than Seattle’s and the biggest outlays for both communes were comparable. These funds were not wasted but bought tractors and initial supplies. The Californians, mostly former immigrants to the United States of Russian and Eastern European descent, gave their reason for joining the commune as a desire to help the Soviet Union build socialism. Like Seattle, California faced malaria and lack of housing on its initial plot—indeed the commune moved in 1923. Nonetheless, a group of settlers left the commune after less than a year, taking more than half of its property.[45]
The California Commune collapsed in 1927. The local land authority recounted problems that were remarkably similar to Seattle’s: conflicting national groups, confusion due to language, lack of living space, and lack of agricultural knowledge. The commune seems to have been eager to acquire members with agricultural experience. In 1925, the CP District Organizer for California wrote to CP headquarters in New York regarding a request to emigrate: "The secretary of the Calif. Commune here tells me that that Commune is very anxious to have . . . an expert gardener."[46] From 1923 to 1926, half the commune, representing twelve national backgrounds fought with a group made up exclusively of Russians.[47] In December 1926, the multinational group split off from the Russians, took one of the plots and founded their own commune, Pioneer. The remaining members of the California Commune dispersed in late 1926 and early 1927, taking back whatever remained of their initial capital via state-run sales of the commune’s property. Some members of California returned to the United States, some went to other communes, and some stayed elsewhere in the Soviet Union.[48]
By 1928 the members of Pioneer, too, were abandoning their commune. Earlier in the year, the land authority had ordered the commune combined with a local commune, “New Life” and the Pioneer kommunary were becoming dispirited. According to a local land inspector, “Many Americans from the commune ‘Pioneer’ are thinking of leaving, not considering the fact that they have placed all of their assets into the undividable [i.e., non-refundable] capital of the commune.”[49] Traces of the Pioneer Commune stop in 1929, suggesting that the farm had been dissolved.
The Estonian-American Koit Commune had a serious internal dispute when a member could not provide a receipt for several thousand rubles of merchandise purchased on behalf of the commune. Like the California Commune, Koit also had difficulties paying its extensive governmental loans.
A group of Molokan Christians from San Francisco—definitely not Communists--created the San Francisco commune in the Don region. (Molokans had broken away from the Russian Orthodox church; many came to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where some attempted to create communal agricultural life.) The Molokans had gone with the understanding that the Soviet government would protect their freedom to worship in their own way, but learned to their disappointment that any religious practices brought disapproval. They returned to San Francisco.[50]
A similar experience befell seventy Finnish-American fishermen and their families, the largest number from Astoria, Oregon, who formed the Karelian Fishermen’s Commune and were promised control of fishing in the White Sea and along the Arctic coast of Karelia. They planned to take seven or eight fishing boats, fishing equipment, shipyard equipment, and cannery machinery, along with a motion-picture projector, a small library, and musical instruments for a small band. Though they had expected the Soviet government to send a freighter to transport all their equipment and supplies, they instead were told to take the train to New York and a ship from there, forcing them to leave behind their boats and other equipment in the expectation that a ship would come for them later. Months later, a ship did pick up most of the equipment but not the fishing boats. When they arrived in Soviet Karelia in mid-1922, expecting to begin construction of buildings for work and housing, their construction equipment was held up. They managed to put up several buildings, but their fishing boats never arrived and they were never ever able to get the cannery operating. Within a year of their arrival, many began to abandon the commune, most of them to return to Astoria. Paul Hummasti, the major historian to study the commune, explains: "The major disappointment the American Finns experienced in Karelia was the difficulty of accomplishing even the smallest task because of the almost totally inefficient management of the country. Time and again their efforts met with frustration, not because they lacked capital, but because needed equipment and materials got to them only after much delay, if at all. They had become Americanized to the extent that they were accustomed to things running with a certain degree of efficiency, and they did not find that in Soviet Karelia." [51]
The Karelian fishing commune faced significantly different problems than those of the California/Pioneer and Seattle communes, but the generally comparable situations of the farming communes raise the question—why did Seattle survive while others did not? True, Seattle had more startup capital and attracted more members at the start. But these were not the only reasons Seattle persisted where others did not. Nor is the answer that Seattle’s members were more ideologically dedicated than California’s or those of any other international commune.
Rather, one major difference seems to have been the level of individual material commitment. The California Commune allowed its members to withdraw their dues in full from the commune if they decided to leave. Pioneer’s members addressed this issue when it broke away but it was too late to stop that farm’s free fall. In contrast, Seattle’s regulations from the outset allowed members to take only half of their initial outlay. Only after conditions had stabilized on the commune in the late 1920s was it was possible to retrieve more savings. Even then, though, the commune repaid departed comrades in installments, meaning that those who left did not receive full payment for years.[52] Those who had placed all their assets into the commune had to think more seriously about abandoning the project than seems to have been the case at other communes.
Linguistic and social factors may also have contributed to some members’ staying on the commune. The language difficulties of the Finns paradoxically helped the commune retain members. Communes—both foreign and domestic—where Russian speakers were a large contingent faced turnover problems because their members could easily relocate throughout the Soviet Union. The Finnish majority in Seattle caused problems but it also somewhat limited turnover. Speaking little or no Russian, the Finns would have to travel to faraway Soviet Karelia to be among Finnish speakers and would have faced difficulties finding work elsewhere.[53] Returning to the United States or going to Finland was even more difficult, requiring an exit interview with Soviet authorities.
The Finns were also more likely than the other nationalities to have brought their families and their savings to the commune. These were factors in whether they stayed or left. Though 46 percent of the full members left the Seattle commune between 1922 and 1927, only 28 percent of non-members departed. These non-members were primarily dependent children--two-thirds were under eighteen--and many of the adult non-members were likely spouses.[54] This evidence suggests that members without families were more likely to leave than members with families. The reasons for this pattern are multiple. Arranging to move oneself in the Soviet Union (or anywhere, for that matter) was much easier than trying to move an entire family. The commune was also relatively comfortable for families, who had a room of their own rather than living in a dormitory. Moreover, those who came with their families tended to have contributed the most financially to the commune. For example, Oscar Hendrickson sold his family’s 50-acre farm and six-room house and placed that money into the commune.[55] If they were even considering the difficult decision to uproot their families from the commune, commune members could not get back their entire outlay.
All the foreign communes had turnover rates of forty to fifty percent during the years 1922-27.[56] But, alone among the foreign communes, Seattle survived. Wesson claims that three-quarters of all Soviet communes, whether of international or local origin, faced similar difficulties.[57] In short, Seattle’s problems and members’ reasons for leaving were probably representative of problems facing all the communes in the area—particularly the foreign communes—in the 1920s.
Despite its many difficulties, by the early 1930s, the Seattle Commune had become one of the most successful agricultural communes in the Soviet Union--if it was not the most successful.
[1] Wesson, p. 127.
[2] Report of the “Seatel” Commune for the year 1928, GARO 4340-1-1-23, translated by Lara King. The two women’s names are Maria Koskinen and Alina Laytala.
[3] “Kommuna Seattle,” Salskii Pakhar, July 29, 1925, p. 3; Delafield, p. 22; Wesson, p. 137. When Seth Bernstein visited Seiatel' in 2008, he learned that the minutes of the commune’s meetings had been destroyed in a flood several years previously.
[4] GARO1485-1-488-210.
[5] “V gostiak u amerikantsev,” Trudovoi Don, Oct. 5, 1923, p. 3; Oct. 6, 1923, p. 3; Oct. 10. 1923, p. 3; Oct. 14, 1923, p. 3; Eero Haapalainen, Kommuuni Kylvãjã (1935), translated and provided by Harri Vanhala.
[6] S kogo brat primer.
[7] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Jan., 18 1926, folder 11, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[8] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Aug. 13, 1925, folder 10, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[9] A Soviet journalist in 1923 wrote that all of Seattle’s members had contributed between 500 and 5,000 dollars to the commune; Mikhail Kozlov, “Po Sal’skim zemlim, v gostiakh u amerikantsev,” Rabochii Don, Oct. 6, 1923, p. 3.
[10] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, July 9, 1924, folder 9, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[11] GARO1485-1-488-208.
[12] K. Kindeev, Kollectivnye khoziaistva (Moscow, 1927), p. 156, as cited in Wesson, p. 179 and p. 264, n. 36; Haapalainen as translated by Vanhala.
[13] E. Kuula in Toveri, May 12, 1925, translated and proved by Harri Vanhala.
[14] GARO1485-1-488-208.
[15] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Oct. 9, 1924; Aug. 13, 1925; Jan. 18, 1926; Dec. 7, 1924, Folders 9-11, Box 5, Nelson Letters.
[16] Delafield, pp. 23, 35.
[17] See, e.g., Kivisto, pp. 124-126, 163-165; Paul George Hummasti, Finnish Radicals in Astoria, Oregon, 1904-1940: A Study in Immigrant Socialism (New York: Arno Press, 1979), pp. 90-170.
[18] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Jan. 18, 1926, folder 11, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[19] Harri Vanhala provided this information based on his translations from Finnish-language newspapers of the period.
[20] Harri Vanhala provided this information about his grandparents, based in part on their documents.
[21] GARO1485-1-488-208; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 221.
[22] Wesson, p. 174; GARO 2563-1-143-5; Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, July 9, 1924, folder 9, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[23] Strong, Moscow Daily News, Sep. 5, 1933, p. 2.
[24] GARO2563-1-143-5; “V gostiakh u amerikantsev,” Oct.14, 1923.
[25] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, July 9, 1924, folder 9, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[26] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, August 13, 1925, folder 10, box 5, Nelson Letters; Strong, Moscow Daily News, Sep. 5, 1933, p. 2.
[27] Wesson, p. 130.
[28] Wesson, pp. 127, 130, 142-143, discusses the significance of having communal dining and childcare facilities.
[29] “Obratsovaia kommuna,” Salskii Pakhar, Dec. 7,1925, p. 3; Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Mar. 31, 1925, folder 10, box 5, Nelson Letters; Delafield, pp. 16, 30, 32. On the cult of efficiency in the early Soviet Union, see Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, pp. 145-164.
[30] Delafield, pp. 16-17, 29-30, 42; Strong, “Commune Seattle”; Haapalainen, translated by Vanhala.
[31] Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, Dec. 16 1925, folder 10, box 5, Nelson Letters; “S kogo brat primer”; Delafield, p. 31; GARO 1485-1-488-221.
[32] Y. A. Yakovlev, Red Villages: The 5-Year Plan in Soviet Agriculture, translated by Anna Louise Strong, (London: Martin Lawrence, Limited, n.d. but c. 1931).
[33] GARO 1485-1-488-222.
[34] Strong, Moscow Daily News, Sep. 5, 1933, p. 2.
[35] Richard Gerbac, “Commune Reviews Ten Years,” Moscow Daily News, Oct. 20, 1932; Dashwood, p. 18.
[36] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers in a Changing World: The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1940 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, n.d.), p. 790.
[37] At least in the mid-1920s, the electrical generator was powered by an old Russian-made, two-cycle motor that burned crude oil; see Enoch Nelson to Arvid Nelson, May 11, 1925, folder 10, box 5, Nelson Letters.
[38] Mamanov, p. 100; From a Hailuoto Fisherman to the Chairman of a Collective Farm; Edgar Cheporov and Pyotr Yashchenko [APN Soviet Correspondents], “1922 Seattle Commune Thrives in Russia,” Longview [Washington] Daily News, Nov. 11-12, 1967, p. 2; Trudovoi Don, Nov. 14, 1923, p. 3; GARO 1390-11-90-10-12; Haapalainen, translated by Vanhala.
[39] Delafield, p. 17, 32-33; GARO 1485-1-488. Delafield identifies the chairman's wife as Eva, an Estonian. I suspect that Delafield was changing names, since the available evidence from multiple sources on Genealogy.com is that Victor's wife's name was Julia, and she was Estonian.
[40] “V gostiak u amerikantsev,” Oct. 5, 1923.
[41] Mamanov, pp. 17-8.
[42] Harri Vanhala ms.
[43] Harri Vanhala ms. Vanhala's source says that the dairy cows were bought from "nearby German villages," perhaps other foreign communes or perhaps from some of the German settlements that dated to the times of Catherine the Great.
[44] In 1939 the commune became a collective farm (i.e., an artel’) and was renamed the Stalin Collective Farm. The state confiscated some or all of its heavy agricultural machinery, still among the best in the Soviet Union, and redistributed it to the local Machine Tractor Station, which serviced all the collective farms in the area.
[45] GARO 2563-1-118-85. See the various requests to transfer membership from District 13 of the CPUSA to the California commune, e.g., James H. Dolsen to Workers Party NO, March 11, 1925, Fond 515, opis 1, delo 497, Rossiiskii gosudarstvenn'ii archiv sotsial'no-politicheckoi historii (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Moscow, hereinafter RGASPI). Other requests to move to the California Commune or another Soviet commune can be found RGASPI 515-1-496, 497.
[46] James H. Dolsen to Earl Browder, March 12, 1925, RGASPI 515-1-497.
[47] GARO 1485-1-488-208.
[48] The Rostov Archive has an entire file dedicated to selling the California Commune’s considerable assets; see GARO 2563-1-118.
[49] GARO 2563-1-143-8.
[50] See RGASPI 515-1-496-497, esp. James H. Dolsen to Earl Browder, March 12, 1925, d. 496. Robert Cherny interviewed the son of one of the participants in the San Francisco commune, who declined to be identified or recorded, and who provided his understanding of the reasons the Molokans returned to San Francisco. Regarding Molokan communes, see also Wesson, pp. 70, 75-76. For a report on the other communes, see GARO 1485-1-488-207-224.
[51] Hummasti, pp. 239-252, esp. 251-252. For the experiencee of Finnish American and Finnish Canadian immigrants to Karela in the 1930s, see Alexey Golubev and Irina Takala, The Search for a Socialist El Dorado: Finnish Immigration to Soviet Karelia from the United States and Canada in the 1930s (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014). Enoch Nelson, in letters to his brother Arvid, blamed some of the members of the commune for their problems rather than the Soviet state; see Nelson, The Nelson Brothers, pp. 86-87.
[52] GARO 1485-1-488-218. Seth Bernstein interviewed Hendrickson’s grandson, Matvei Tarkhalo (Mattai Tarhalo), who kept a private collection of documents from the commune. One document shows that an Everet Peltomeki made an agreement with the commune to withdraw his initial dues of more than 3,000 rubles over the course of three years in November 1929. He took 675 rubles immediately and was to take the remaining money in two portions over the next two years, plus 6% interest. This was in keeping with changes in Soviet law regarding communes; see Wesson, Soviet Communes, pp. 130-131.
[53] Eventually many, perhaps most, of the Seattle Finns did leave for Karelia. Matvei Tarkhalo told Seth Bernstein that as many at 80% left. Here, too, there were push and pull factors. As the commune became relatively successful, even nationally famous, struggles between the Finns and other groups in the commune continued. In May 1930, one member of the commune denounced the Finns in a letter to Pravda that was never published. Meanwhile, so-called “Karelian fever” struck Finns in the United States and Canada in the 1930s, when thousands of Finnish-Americans immigrated to Soviet Karelia. This made Karelia an attractive option for relocation. Many of the Finnish-Americans who went to Karelia, including Enoch Nelson and others from Seattle, fell victim to Stalinist repression as supposed “bourgeois nationalists.” GARO 2053-1-164-81-84; Nick Baron, Karelia, Planning, Politics and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1920-1939, (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 116; Hummasti, pp. 236-272; Alexis Pogorelskin, “New Perspectives on Karelian Fever: The Recruitment of North American Finns to Karelia in the Early 1930's,” Journal of Finnish Studies, 1 (Dec. 1997): 165-178; Michael Gelb, “‘Karelian Fever’: The Finnish Immigrant Community During Stalin’s Purges,” Europe Asia Studies 45 (1993): 1091-1116; Lam, “Forging a Socialist Homeland From Multiple Worlds,” 219-222.
[54] GARO 1485-1-488-208.
[55] Sevander, Red Exodus, p. 60.
[56] GARO 1485-1-488-208.
[57] Wesson, Soviet Communes, p. 119.