The Communists
Accompanying the British Delegation were two British journalists, one
representing a great Liberal daily and the other a well-known Radical
weekly journal. At Reval we were joined by an American writer. Later
a French and an Italian journalist were added to the number. Later
still came a German writer on the scene; and in addition a considerable
number of Swedes and Norwegians who had come to Russia to make a
special study of industrial life, with a view to organising assistance
from Sweden of the various big constructive plans contemplated by the
Russian Government. We were all housed under the same roof, fed at
the same tables, carried about in the same fleet of automobiles and
subjected to the same supervision during the visit to Petrograd and
Moscow.
Radios sent out by delegates and journalists were censored by the
Authorities, who have sole control of all the means of communication
with the outer world, a very natural state of affairs in a country at
war with so many enemies. Very natural, also, is it that in this, as in
other ways, the Russian Government should exactly copy the methods of
other Governments in selecting for world-distribution those messages
which tell in its favour. It must certainly be conceded in their behalf
that never in the history of mankind has the public Press been used to
pervert the truth and exaggerate the evil more than for the purposes of
destroying the detested Communist régime.
But of this monopoly of the wires by the Government we were ourselves
occasionally the victims, the smiling and amused victims I may say; as
when a fiery speech on true Bolshevist lines by an eloquent Britisher,
unable to resist his atmosphere, was flashed around the world, whilst a
more sober utterance was treated with contemptuous disregard.
I remember one little incident which caused those of us who were aware
of it the greatest entertainment as evidencing the methods of some of
the more timid and consequently the more autocratic of the Communists.
The representative of the _Daily News_ and the American journalist
wished to extend their trip on the Volga and to go down to Astrakhan.
To do this it was necessary to have permission from the Foreign Office.
They drew up a telegram and handed it to the Commissioner in charge
of our party, who smilingly assured them that the telegram should be
sent and that they might expect the reply in a few hours. They waited.
The point at which the Delegation was to leave the ship and return to
Moscow was reached. They approached the Commissioner and asked him if
there were any news for them.
“The message was sent at once, but no reply has come; therefore it is
impossible for you to stay on the ship” he replied in good French,
lying without a wink. Their message had never been sent to Moscow!
Red Petrograd is very proud of its name. The reason why it is “redder”
than Moscow is due in all probability to the fact that, as the capital
city and the place of residence of the Czars, it has been the scene of
more revolutionary propaganda and anarchist intrigues than any other
single city in the wide dominions of Russia. Add to this the terrors
of the blockade, the invasion by Judenitch, who crept very close to
the city, and the very fearful sufferings of Petrograd during the war
and there is sufficient to explain the more terrible reaction. The
marked despotism and even cruelty of the men in power in Petrograd
became noticeable to us before we left. A brief conversation with one
Communist there lingers in my mind.
“There is a rivalry between Moscow and Petrograd,” he informed me
“which threatens to become something very serious.”
“Very much like the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool or
Lancashire and Yorkshire, I suppose?” was my reply.
“Not in the very least” was his answer. “Perhaps rivalry is not the
right word. Rather is it a conflict; or only a rivalry in the sense of
striving to keep the Communist ideal untarnished.”
I was interested, and bade him continue.
“There are certain elements in Moscow which are still tainted
with the spirit of compromise. Even Lenin himself is not above
suspicion. There is a great and growing opposition to Lenin in Red
Petrograd. We do not like his tenderness for the interests of foreign
concessionaires. We do not approve of the toleration shown in Moscow to
the counter-revolutionary Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. It is
necessary we yield nothing to those who are not fully with us in our
programme and our methods. These traitors will undermine the fabric of
the Communist Republic. Lenin himself must go if this is his way.”
The man was a bitter and gloomy fanatic. But his words were
interesting. “You do not suggest that Lenin is seeking compromise for
his own ends, do you?” I asked, unwilling that anything so squalid
should fasten itself to the reputation of one of the most amazing
personalities the war has produced. I was promptly reassured on that
point.
“Oh, no, indeed no,” was his answer. “Lenin is pure. He seeks nothing
for himself. But he is making mistakes. The influences in Moscow are
not good. Here we are strong. Red Petrograd is different from Moscow.”
So I learnt first, and afterwards was confirmed in the knowledge,
that there are several varieties of Communists in Russia, and that
to criticise those in power at present is not by any means to be an
opponent of Communism. Everybody is behind the Government at present,
because of the war. Soldiers and statesmen of the old régime who have
not fled; literary men like Gorky; bourgeois citizens who remain in
Russia are serving the Government, and every variety of Socialist,
hating the methods of the Communist with a deadly hatred, is none the
less tacitly behind it so long as the country is in danger from outside
aggression.
Men like Kameneff, Sverdloff and Krassin, who hold high and responsible
positions in the State service, good and sincere Communists, would not
rise to power nor maintain their position by indiscriminate slaughter
and brutal methods of tyranny, but having faith in the ultimate
triumph of their principle, would establish it through education and
organisation. That men of a more violent character hold the reins
of power is due, in my considered judgment, to the fatal policy of
the Allies, and in these days, of the Poles, in seeking to decide
the issue by the sword. The resumption of war by the misguided Poles
and the consequent fear that fell upon the Russian people, joined
to a perfectly proper patriotism, gave that powerful instrument of
tyranny, the Extraordinary Commission, with its secret police, the
opportunity to revive itself, and fasten itself like the plague upon
terror-stricken population and frightened administrators alike.
But the extreme men, with their gospel of a world-revolution by
violence, and the dictatorship of one class over the rest of mankind,
are a painful phenomenon. Pure and unselfish idealists as many of
them undoubtedly are, and born out of due time, they are the terrible
progeny of the maddest war and the cruellest “peace” that ever tore
civilisation to tatters.
Some work quietly, live nobly, and starve on the rations which only
the very best men decline to augment. But, for the most part, the
Communists live better than the rest and form the new aristocracy.
Their duties are specially dangerous and hazardous, and the difference
is justified for this reason. If there is an epidemic to be fought
or special labour to be performed, the Communists are the first to be
called upon to do the work; but there are privileges also, as with
the aristocracy of any other country. Of the civilian population,
Communists only may carry arms. Special food and clothing privileges
are made available for Communists. The children of Communists form
the greater number in the country colonies for children. The way to
professional advancement and to positions of power and responsibility
is through the Communist Party. This fact may explain the position
within the Party of one able man with whom I spoke. I had been trying
to convince a little Communist lady that there was no Communist Party
as such in Great Britain and that the number of Communists in England
was very small.
“There are no published statistics, but,” I said, “I do not believe
there are five thousand Communists in the whole of England. I doubt if
there are five hundred Communists there who have thought the thing out
to the very bottom, and who give to Communism anything more than an
emotional support.”
“And do you really think there are more than five thousand or even
five hundred Communists of the better sort in this country?” was his
question.
“Indeed I do,” I replied. “I believe that there are 650,000 Communists
according to your own published statistics.”
“Published statistics are queer things,” he said slowly. “It is not
easy to join the Communist Party. There is six months’ probation to
be served. One has to have two guarantors. But when joining the Party
is the only sure way to sufficient nourishment and some prospect of
advancement, even the dangerous duties cannot deter all from joining.”
He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He, along with the rest of
the Trade Unionists, had been ordered under threat of penalties to
join the parade in the Uritzky Platz which had been organised for the
British Delegation.
The first public meeting in Petrograd and a similar occasion in the
Moscow Opera House were like every other meeting we had in Russia. The
slight difference between these two gatherings was that in Petrograd
the audience was restricted to Trade Unionists as the hall-space was
limited to about two thousand, and the meeting was held under the
auspices of the Unions, whilst in Moscow the meeting was open to the
general public and was three times as big as in Petrograd.
Speeches were made by Russians and British alternately. At the
Moscow meeting a Menshevik was permitted to speak, and made a plucky
performance under very trying circumstances. The Russian official
speeches were all of one quality and directed towards very definite
ideas. These speeches soon became so familiar that we learnt to
anticipate the phrases. When a little boy of ten was brought forward at
one of the schools to repeat to us his Communist lesson, we recognised
the words of the father on the lips of the child. There was the same
talk of the dictatorship of the working masses, the same passionate
appeal to the British workers to drop their old method and march
into the streets and to the barricades, the same prophecies of a
world-revolution, the same sneers at those who hope to achieve their
object by peaceful and democratic means, the same wearisome exclamatory
phrases at the end. “Long live the Soviet Republic!” “Long live the
Workers Revolution!” “Long live the international solidarity of
Labour!” Admirable phrases were some of these, but incongruous in the
mouth of a pale little fellow of ten, undersized on his cabbage soup
and black bread; and unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed
lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the
delivery of explosive perorations. “Long live Soviet Russia!” “Long
live the Russian Communist Party!” “Long live the Workers Revolution!”
A few phrases from the speeches of the Russian orators will illustrate
the kind of message they wished to give us and will show the
misunderstanding of our mission and of the state of the Labour Movement
in Great Britain of which I wrote in a previous chapter. To take the
following sentences from a speech delivered by Ziperovitch, of the
Trades Union Council of the Province of Petrograd:
“It is with a feeling of deep satisfaction that the Russian Trades
Union Council notices that the mighty pressure of the British
Revolutionary Movement has at last made the Government of Lloyd George
give up the police methods (as the refusal of passports) so degrading
to the British proletariat.”
Was it, I wonder, the “mighty pressure of the British Revolutionary
Movement” which accomplished this? Or was it due to the Prime
Minister’s desire to begin the movement for happier relations with
Russia? Take another phrase:
“I am deeply convinced that the visit of our British comrades is a
promising symbol of the great moral upheaval in that country.”
Knowing as I did the ideas about the British Labour Movement they
have in mind in Russia, I felt it incumbent upon me for the sake of
the Russians themselves, to disabuse them of the notion that there is
any evidence worthy of the name to show that the British workers are
within appreciable distance of using Communist methods of violence for
what, in some respects, is a oneness of _ultimate_ ideal; but that
history, tradition, temperament, training and the great fact of our
comparative freedom and prosperity all precluded the hope on their part
of entering together upon the last decisive fight for world revolution.
From the speech of Losowsky, also a Trade Union leader, I have selected
the following phrases to show the aim of the Bolshevik leaders:
“The Labour movement of Russia stands determinedly and definitely for
the Social Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Social Revolution and
the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
“The working class has taken the power into its own hands and with fire
and sword annihilates all who seek to turn Russian history backward.”
“No compromise. Merciless war on the bourgeoisie to the victorious end.”
The terrible danger of this inflammatory talk lies in the fact that
the deeds of the Communists in power march with their words, and as
every person who ventures to disagree in the slightest particular with
the principles of the Party is regarded as a traitor, he comes under
the suspicion of the Authorities and goes about daily in fear of being
denounced and punished as a counter-revolutionary.
But for many of these bitter men, much excuse may be made when the
facts of their lives are known. Many of them have been the greatest
sufferers from the tyranny of the Czardom. Many of them have had long
terms of imprisonment or exile, have suffered from the knout or the
bayonet, have been sentenced to death and escaped, or have lost health
and happiness in Siberian wilds. Six years in solitary confinement
does not tend to sweeten a man’s outlook on life. Fourteen years in
the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the daily terror of being
taken out of his cell and shot, does not make for sweetness and light.
Outrage and torture of women very naturally hardens them and forms
into a thin cruel line many of the lips made to press tender kisses on
the foreheads of little children. Very few of the Communist leaders of
Russia there are who have not had to endure one or all of these hideous
experiences. That they should be infected, unconsciously to themselves,
by the virus of cruelty is not to be wondered at. And the greater
part of the blame for all that has happened and is happening to the
opponents of unadulterated Communism must be laid upon the shoulders of
those who, by promoting wars, civil and foreign, have made their task
of government impossibly hard.