Much has been said in defense of the Russian intelligentsia. Still more has been said against it.

As for myself, I shall not undertake to pronounce judgment on those Russian intellectuals who have left Russia and are scattered now in various foreign countries.

Let these intellectuals themselves ponder well the following question: Is that intellectual worker doing the right thing who, instead of doing some kind of intellectual work he is used to, undertakes to pave the streets, to break houses, to work as night-watchman, or as shoemaker, or as waiter or dishwasher in a restaurant?

I know that in the city of Chicago alone one can find hundreds of 2Russian intellectuals with college education who are doing anything but the kind of work which they have been trained for in schools.

A physician paints houses; an engineer who could teach engineering to others, draws geographical maps; a man who knows thoroughly all about surveying, both the elementary and the higher geodesy, becomes a draughtsman and draws lines under the supervision of some person whom he could teach.

A prominent war correspondent and journalist works as watchman.

A highly educated and cultured lecturer of a Russian polytechnic school, carries boxes from place to place or pastes together cardboard boxes.

We have here something similar to such anomalies as the following: A tractor is being used for digging a small pit in the earth, while 3a spade is being used for digging the ground of an area measuring some 30 acres.

Such a distribution of work is ridiculously abnormal. A lot of energy is wasted, and the result, of course, is nil.

Personally, I would consider it a grave crime on the part of the Russian intellectuals to apply the knowledge of a philosopher to the making of shoes, the training of an engineer to the carrying of cardboard boxes, etc. These people did not prepare themselves for such work as this, and should be doing something else.

After having examined all the conditions, I cannot condemn the Russian intellectuals. They have not prepared themselves for doing work in the streets of Chicago, in the city's factories and workshops, but for the 4teaching of Russians in Russia, for building bridges, making roads, draining and irrigating large areas of land, giving medical treatments to people, creating great values from which humanity could derive benefit.

But the Russian tragedy, during which every brain worker was regarded as a "bourgeois," who is to be hanged or shot, has driven away all those who were lucky enough to remain alive. They left their native country and went abroad; and scientists had to become factory workmen, dishwashers, cooks and shoemakers.

"We do not want to die," is their answer.

On the other hand this is what I hear:

"Why did not the intellectuals, if they love Russia and are willing 5to serve the people, remain in Russia? They should have taken up the struggle against ignorance, violence and the bloodthirstiness of the rabble. Even if some hundreds of them had perished, a thousand would have survived. This thousand could have helped the Russian people to make the revolution holy and acceptable, and not terrible and disorderly. The intellectuals could have taught the Russian people how to reconstruct that which had been destroyed, how to avoid famines, etc.

Why did they not stay?

Is it that the saving of their own lives was more important to them than the lives of millions of Russian peasants who have perished because during the revolution the intellectuals had left Russia, and their places were occupied by men who did not know how to do constructive work, what to do and how to serve the people?

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If this is so, we cannot regard as true intellectuals those who deserted the people when the hard times came, and who did not go hand in hand with the people in order to build up Russia and the happiness of the Russian people.

The true intelligentsia has remained in Russia. This is what some people tell me.

But after all this has been told, I still do not take it upon myself to judge the Russian intellectuals who are living abroad.

Let the whole Russian colony judge them, if the colony can do it. Let the colony tell whether the intellectuals are right or wrong in having become shoemakers, blacksmiths, cooks, and dishwashers.

I. Borodick.