information concerning the attitude of the peasants toward the Soviet
power, and its bearing upon the food question. Only a summary of the
article is possible here: “The food conditions are hard, not because
Russia, by being cut off from the principal bread-producing districts,
does not have sufficient quantities of grain, but principally owing
to the class war, _which has become permanent and continuous_. This
class war hinders the work of factories and shops” and, by lessening
the production of manufactured goods, “naturally renders the exchange
of goods between towns and country difficult, _because the peasants
consider money of no value, not being able to buy anything with
it_.” The peasants are not yet “sufficiently far-sighted to be quite
convinced of the stability of the Soviet power and the inevitability
of Socialism.” The peasants of the producing provinces “do not
willingly enough give the grain to the towns, and this greatly drags
on the class war, _which of course ruins them_.” The food conditions
in the towns promote “counter-revolution,” creating the hope that
the famine-stricken people in the towns will cease to support the
Soviet power. “Thus the peasants by concealing their bread ... render
conditions harder, not only for the workmen, but also for themselves.”
A statistical table shows that from August, 1918, to September, 1919,
in the twelve principal provinces, “99,980,000 poods of bread and
fodder grains were delivered to the state, which constitutes 38.1 per
cent. of the quantity which was to be received according to the state
allocation by provinces. The delivery of bread grain equaled 42.5 per
cent. Thus these provinces gave less than one-half of what they could
and should have given to the state.”
Such is the self-confessed record of Bolshevism in rural Russia. It is
a record of stupid, blundering, oppressive bureaucracy at its best, and
at its worst of unspeakable brutality. In dealing with the peasantry,
who make up more than 85 per cent. of the population of Russia,
Lenin and Trotsky and their followers have shown no greater wisdom
of statesmanship, no stronger love of justice, no greater humanity,
than the old bureaucracy of czarism. They have not elevated the life
of the peasants, but, on the contrary, have checked the healthy
development that was already in progress and that promised so well.
They have further brutalized the life of the peasants, deepened their
old distrust of government, fostered anarchy, and restored the most
primitive methods of living and working. All this they have done in the
name of Socialism and Progress!
VII
THE RED TERROR
It is frequently asserted in defense of the Bolsheviki that they
resorted to the methods of terrorism only after the bourgeoisie had
done so; that, in particular, the attempts to assassinate Lenin and
other prominent Bolshevist leaders induced terroristic reprisals. Thus
the Red Terror is made to appear as the response of the proletariat to
the White Terror of the bourgeoisie. This is not true, unless, indeed,
we are to take seriously the alleged “attack” on Lenin on January 16,
1918. A shot was fired, it was said, at Lenin while he was riding in
his motor-car. No one was arrested and no attempt was made to discover
the person who fired the shot. The general impression in Petrograd was
that it was a trick, designed to afford an excuse for the introduction
of the Terror. The assassination of Uritzky and the attempted
assassination of Lenin, in the summer of 1918, were undoubtedly
followed by an increase in the extent and savagery of the Red Terror,
but it is equally true that long before that time men and women who had
given their lives to the revolutionary struggle against czarism, and
who had approved of the terroristic acts against individual officials,
were staggered by the new mass terrorism which began soon after the
Bolsheviki seized the reins of power.
On January 16th, following the alleged “attack” upon Lenin above
referred to, Zinoviev, Bouch-Bruyevich, and other leaders of the
Bolsheviki raised a loud demand for the Terror. On the 18th, the
date set for the opening of the Constituent Assembly, the brutal
suppression of the demonstration was to be held, but on the 16th the
self-constituted Commissaries of the People adopted a resolution
to the effect that any attempt “to hold a demonstration in honor
of the Constituent Assembly” would be “put down most ruthlessly.”
This resolution was adopted, it is said, at the instigation of
Bouch-Bruyevich, who under czarism had been a noted defender of
religious liberty.
The upholders of the Constituent Assembly proceeded to hold their
demonstration. What happened is best told in the report of the event
made to the Executive Committee of the International Socialist Bureau
by Inna Rakitnikov:
From eleven o’clock in the morning cortèges, composed
principally of working-men bearing red flags and placards with
inscriptions such as “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!”
“Land and Liberty!” “Long Live the Constituent Assembly!” etc.,
set out from different parts of the city. The members of the
Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates had
agreed to meet at the Field of Mars, where a procession coming
from the Petrogradsky quarter was due to arrive. It was soon
learned that a part of the participants, coming from the Viborg
quarter, had been assailed at the Liteiny bridge by gun-fire
from the Red Guards and were obliged to turn back. But that
did not check the other parades. The peasant participants,
united with the workers from Petrogradsky quarter, came to the
Field of Mars; after having lowered their flags before the
tombs of the Revolution of February and sung a funeral hymn to
their memory, they installed themselves on Liteinaia Street.
New manifestants came to join them and the street was crowded
with people. At the corner of Fourstatskaia Street (one of the
streets leading to the Taurida Palace) they found themselves
all at once assailed by shots from the Red Guards.
The Red Guard fired _without warning_, something that never
before happened, even in the time of czarism. The police always
began by inviting the participators to disperse. Among the
first victims was a member of the Executive Committee of the
Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates, the Siberian peasant, Logvinov.
An explosive bullet shot away half of his head (a photograph of
his body was taken; it was added to the documents which were
transferred to the Commission of Inquiry). Several workmen
and students and one militant of the Revolutionary Socialist
Party, Gorbatchevskaia, were killed at the same time. Other
processions of participants on their way to the Taurida Palace
were fired into at the same time. On all the streets leading
to the palace, groups of Red Guards had been established; they
received the order, “Not to spare the cartridges.” On that day
at Petrograd there were one hundred killed and wounded.[13]
[13] _How the Russian Peasants Fought for a Constituent Assembly._
A report to the International Socialist Bureau by Inna Rakitnikov,
vice-president of the executive committee of the Soviet of Delegates,
placing themselves upon the grounds of the defense of the Constituent
Assembly. With a letter-preface by the citizen, E. Roubanovitch, member
of the International Socialist Bureau. May 30, 1918. Note: This report
is printed in full as Appendix II to _Bolshevism_, by John Spargo, pp.
331-384.
What of the brutal murder of the two members of the Provisional
Government, F. F. Kokoshkin and A. I. Shingarev? Seized in the middle
of December, they were cast into dark, damp, and cold cells in the
Peter and Paul Fortress, in the notorious “Trubetskoy Bastion.” On the
evening of January 18th they were taken to the Marie Hospital. That
night Red Guards and sailors forced their way into the hospital and
brutally murdered them both. It is true that _Izvestia_ condemned the
crime, saying: “Apart from everything else it is bad from a political
point of view. This is a fearful blow aimed at the Revolution, at the
Soviet authorities.” It is true, also, that Dybenko, Naval Commissary,
published a remarkable order, saying: “The honor of the Revolutionary
Fleet must not bear the stain of an accusation of revolutionary
sailors having murdered their helpless enemies, rendered harmless by
imprisonment. _I call upon all who took part in the murder ... to
appear of their own accord before the Revolutionary Tribunal._”
In the absence of definite proof to the contrary it is perhaps best
to regard this outrage as due to the brutal savagery of individuals,
rather than as part of a deliberate officially sanctioned policy of
terrorism. Yet there is the fact that the sailors and Red Guards,
who were armed, had gone straight to the hospital from the office
of the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and
Profiteering. That this body, which from the first enlisted the
services of many of the spies and secret agents of the old régime, had
some connection with the murders was generally believed.
At the end of December, 1917, and in January, 1918, there were
wholesale massacres in Sebastopol, Simferopol, Eupatoria, and other
places. The well-known radical Russian journalist, Dioneo-Shklovsky,
quotes Gorky’s paper, the _Novaya Zhizn_ (_New Life_), as follows:
The garrison of the Revolutionary Army at Sebastopol has
already begun its final struggle against the bourgeoisie.
Without much ado they decided simply to massacre all the
bourgeoisie. At first they massacred the inhabitants of the two
most bourgeois streets in Sebastopol, then the same operation
was extended to Simferopol, and then it was the turn of
Eupatoria.
In Sebastopol not less than five hundred citizens disappeared during
this St. Bartholomew massacre, according to this report, while at
Simferopol between two and three hundred officers were shot in the
prisons and in the streets. At Yalta many persons--between eighty and
one hundred--were thrown into the bay. At Eupatoria the sailors placed
the local “bourgeoisie in a barge and sank it.”
Of course Gorky’s paper was at that time very bitter in its criticisms
of the brutal methods of the Bolsheviki, and that fact must be taken
into account in considering its testimony. Gorky had been very friendly
to the Bolsheviki up to the _coup d’état_, but revolted against their
brutality in the early part of their régime. Subsequently, as is well
known, he became reconciled to the régime sufficiently to take office
under it. The foregoing accounts, as well as those in the following
paragraph, agree in all essential particulars with reports published
in the Constitutional-Democratic paper, _Nast Viek_. This paper, for
some inexplicable reason, notwithstanding its vigorous opposition
to the Bolsheviki, was permitted to appear, even when all other
non-Bolshevist papers were suppressed.
According to the _Novaya Zhizn_, No. 5, the Soviets in many Russian
towns made haste to follow the example of the revolutionary forces
at Sebastopol and Simferopol. In the town of Etaritsa the local Red
Guard wired to the authorities at the Smolny Institute, Petrograd,
for permission to have “a St. Bartholomew’s night” (_Yeremeievskaia
Notch_). In Tropetz, according to the same issue of Gorky’s paper, the
commandant presented this report to the Executive Committee of the
local Soviet: “The Red Army is quite ready for action. Am waiting for
orders to begin a St. Bartholomew’s massacre.” During the latter part
of February and the first week of March, 1918, there were wholesale
massacres of officers and other bourgeoisie in Kiev, Rostov-on-Don and
Novotcherkassk, among other places. The local Socialists-Revolutionists
paper, _Izvestia_, of Novotcherkassk, in its issue of March 6, 1918,
gave an account of the killing of a number of officers.
In the beginning of March, 1918, mass executions were held in
Rostov-on-Don. Many children were executed by way of reprisal. The
_Russkiya Viedomosti_ (_Russian News_), in its issue of March 23, 1918,
reported that the president of the Municipal Council of Rostov, B. C.
Vasiliev, a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party; the mayor
of the city; the former chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of
Working-men’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, P. Melnikov; and M. Smirnov, who
was chairman of this Soviet at the time--had handed in a petition to
the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council, asking that they themselves
be shot “instead of the innocent children who are executed without law
and justice.”
A group of mothers submitted to the same Bolshevist tribunal the
following heartrending petition:
If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and
life in order to establish a socialistic state and to create
new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and
fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a
chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not
destroy young lives. Take our lives and our blood as ransom.
Our voices are calling to you, laborers. You have not stained
the banner of the Revolution even with the blood of traitors,
such as Shceglovitov and Protopopov. Why do you now witness
indifferently the bloodshed of our children? Raise your voices
in protest. Children do not understand about party strife.
Their adherence to one or another party is directed by their
eagerness for new impressions, novelty, and the suggestions of
elders.
We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons,
husbands, and brothers. Pray, take our last possessions, our
lives, but spare our children. Call us one after the other for
execution, when our children are to be shot! Every one of us
would gladly die in order to save the life of her children or
that of other children.
Citizens, members of the War-Revolutionary Council, listen to
the cries of the mothers. We cannot keep silent!
A. Lockerman is a Socialist whose work against czarism brought prison
and exile. He was engaged in Socialist work in Rostov-on-Don when the
Bolsheviki seized the city in 1918, and during the seventy days they
remained its masters. He says:
The callousness with which the Red soldiers carried out
executions was amazing. Without wasting words, without
questions, even without any irritation, the Red Army men took
those who were brought to them from the street, stripped them
naked, put them to the wall and shot them. Then the bodies were
thrown out on the embankment and stable manure thrown over the
pools of blood.[14]
[14] A. Lockerman; _Les Bolsheviks à l’œuvre_, preface par V. Zenzinov,
Paris, 1920.
Such barbarity and terrorism went on wherever the Bolsheviki held
control, long before the introduction of a system of organized
terror directed by the central Soviet Government. Not only did the
Bolshevist leaders make no attempt to check the brutal savagery, the
murders, lynchings, floggings, and other outrages, but they loudly
complained that the local revolutionary authorities were not severe
enough. Zinoviev bewailed the too great leniency displayed toward
the “counter-revolutionaries and bourgeoisie.” Even Lenin, popularly
believed to be less inclined to severity than any of his colleagues,
complained, in April, 1918, that “our rule is too mild, quite
frequently resembling jam rather than iron.” Trotsky with greater
savagery said:
You are perturbed by the mild terror we are applying against
our class enemies, but know that a month hence this terror
will take a more terrible form on the model of the terror of
the great revolutionaries of France. Not a fortress, but the
guillotine, will be for our enemies!
Numerous reports similar to the foregoing could be cited to disprove
the claim of the apologists of the Bolsheviki that the Red Terror was
introduced in consequence of the assassination of Uritzky and the
attempt to assassinate Lenin. The truth is that the tyrannicide, the
so-called White Terror, was the result of the Red Terror, not its
cause. It is true, of course, that the terrorism was not all on the one
side. There were many uprisings of the people, both city workers and
peasants, against the Bolshevist usurpers. Defenders of the Bolsheviki
cite these uprisings and the brutal savagery with which the Soviet
officials were attacked to justify the terroristic policy of the
Bolsheviki. The introduction of such a defense surely knocks the bottom
out of the claim that the Bolsheviki really represented the great mass
of the working-people, and that only the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie,
and the rich peasants were opposed to them. The uprisings were too
numerous, too wide-spread, and too formidable to admit of such an
interpretation.
M. C. Eroshkin, who was chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, and represented the Minister of Agriculture
in the Perm district under the Provisional Government, during his visit
to the United States in 1919 told the present writer some harrowing
stories of uprisings against the Soviets which took on a character
of bestial brutality. One of these stories was of an uprising in the
Polevsky Works, in Ekaterinburg County, where a mob of peasants, armed
with axes, scythes, and sticks, fell upon the members of the Soviet
like so many wild animals, tearing fifty of them literally into pieces!
That the government of Russia under the Bolsheviki was to be
tyrannical and despotic in the extreme was made evident from the very
beginning. By the decree of November 24, 1917, all existing courts of
justice were abolished and in their places set up a system of local
courts based upon the elective principle. The first judges were to
be elected by the Soviets, but henceforth “on the basis of direct
democratic vote.” It was provided that the judges were to be “guided
in their rulings and verdicts by the laws of the governments which
had been overthrown only in so far as those laws are not annulled by
the Revolution, and do not contradict the revolutionary conscience
and the revolutionary conception of right.” An interpretative note
was appended to this clause explaining that all laws which were in
contradiction to the decrees of the Central Executive Committee of the
Soviet Government, or the minimum programs of the Social Democratic or
Socialists-Revolutionists parties, must be regarded as canceled.
This new “democratic judicial system” was widely hailed as an earnest
of the democracy of the new régime and as a constructive experiment of
the highest importance. That the decree seemed to manifest a democratic
intention is not to be gainsaid: the question of its sincerity cannot
be so easily determined. Of course, there is much in the decree and
in the scheme outlined that is extremely crude, while the explanatory
note referred to practically had the effect of enacting the platforms
of political parties, which had never been formulated in the precise
terms of laws, being rather general propositions concerning the exact
meaning, of which there was much uncertainty. Crude and clumsy though
the scheme might be, however, it had the merit of appearing to be
democratic. A careful reading of the decree reveals the fact that
several most important classes of offenses were exempted from the
jurisdiction of these courts, among them all “political offenses.”
Special revolutionary tribunals were to be charged with “the defense of
the Revolution”:
For the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces
by means of measures for the defense of the Revolution and
its accomplishments, and also for the trial of proceedings
against profiteering, speculation, sabotage, and other
misdeeds of merchants, manufacturers, officials, and other
persons, Workmen’s and Peasants’ Revolutionary Tribunals
are established, consisting of a chairman and six members,
serving in turn, elected by the provincial or city Soviets of
Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.
Perhaps only those who are familiar with the methods of czarism can
appreciate fully the significance of thus associating political
offenses, such as counter-revolutionary agitation, with such offenses
as illegal speculation and profiteering. Proceedings against profiteers
and speculators could be relied upon to bring sufficient popularity to
these tribunals to enable them to punish political offenders severely,
and with a greater degree of impunity than would otherwise be possible.
On December 19, 1917, I. Z. Steinberg, People’s Commissar of Justice,
issued a decree called “Instructions to the Revolutionary Tribunal,”
which caused Shcheglovitov, the most reactionary Minister of Justice
the Czar ever had, to cry out: “The Cadets repeatedly charged me in the
Duma with turning the tribunal into a weapon of political struggle.
How far the Bolsheviki have left me behind!” The following paragraphs
from this remarkable document show how admirably the institution of the
Revolutionary Tribunal was designed for political oppression:
1. The Revolutionary Tribunal has jurisdiction in cases of
persons (_a_) who organize uprisings against the authority of
the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government, actively oppose the
latter or do not obey it, or call upon other persons to oppose
or disobey it; (_b_) who utilize their positions in the state
or public service to disturb or hamper the regular progress
of work in the institution or enterprise in which they are or
have been serving (sabotage, concealing or destroying documents
or property, etc.); (_c_) who stop or reduce production of
articles of general use without actual necessity for so doing;
(_d_) who violate the decrees, orders, binding ordinances,
and other published acts of the organs of the Workmen’s and
Peasants’ Government, if such acts stipulate a trial by the
Revolutionary Tribunal for their violation; (_e_) who, taking
advantage of their social or administrative position, misuse
the authority given them by the revolutionary people. Crimes
against the people committed by means of the press are under
the jurisdiction of a specially instituted Revolutionary
Tribunal.
2. The Revolutionary Tribunal for offenses indicated in Article
I imposes upon the guilty the following penalties: (1) fine;
(2) deprivation of freedom; (3) exile from the capitals, from
particular localities, or from the territory of the Russian
Republic; (4) public censure; (5) declaring the offender a
public enemy; (6) deprivation of all or some political rights;
(7) sequestration or confiscation, partial or general, of
property; (8) sentence to compulsory public work.
The Revolutionary Tribunal fixes the penalty, being guided
by the circumstances of the case and the dictates of the
revolutionary conscience.
* * * * *
II. The verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal are final. In
case of violation of the form of procedure established by
these instructions, or the discovery of indications of obvious
injustice in the verdict, the People’s Commissar of Justice
has the right to address to the Central Executive Committee of
the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies a
request to order a second and last trial of the case.
Refusal to obey the Soviet Government, active opposition to it, and
calling upon other persons “to oppose or disobey it” are thus made
punishable offenses. In view of the uproar of protest raised in this
country against the deportation of alien agitators and conspirators,
especially by the defenders and upholders of the Bolsheviki who have
assured us of the beneficent liberality of the Soviet Utopia, it
may be well to direct particular attention to the fact that these
“instructions” make special and precise provisions for the deportation
of political undesirables. It is set forth that the Revolutionary
Tribunal may inflict, among other penalties, “exile from the capitals,
from particular localities, _or from the territory of the Russian
Republic_,” that is, deportation. These penalties, moreover, apply to
Russian citizens, not, as in the case of our deportations, to aliens.
The various forms of exile thus provided for were common penalties
under the old régime.[15]
[15] To avoid misunderstanding (though I cannot hope to avert
misrepresentation) let me say that this paragraph is not intended
to be a defense or a justification of the policy of deporting alien
agitators. While admitting the right of our government to deport
undesirable aliens, as a corollary to the undoubted right to deny
their admission in the first place, I do not believe in deportation
as a method of dealing with revolutionary propaganda. On the other
hand, I deny the right of the Bolsheviki or their supporters to oppose
as reactionary and illiberal a method of dealing with political
undesirables which is in full force in Bolshevist Russia, which they
acclaim so loudly.
It is interesting to observe, further, that there is no right of
appeal from the verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, except that
“the People’s Commissar of Justice has the right to address to the
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and
Peasants’ Deputies a _request_ to order a second and last trial” of
any case in which he is sufficiently interested to do so. Unless this
official can be convinced that there has been some “violation of the
form of procedure” or that there is “obvious injustice in the verdict,”
and unless he can be induced to make such a “request” to the central
Soviet authority, the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal is final
and absolute. What a travesty upon justice and upon democracy! What an
admirable instrument for tyrants to rely upon!
Even this terrible weapon of despotism and oppression did not satisfy
the Bolsheviki, however. For one thing, the decree constituting the
Revolutionary Tribunal provided that its session must be held in the
open; for another, its members must be elected. Consequently, a new
type of tribunal was added to the system, the Extraordinary Commission
for Combating Counter-Revolution--the infamous _Chresvychaika_. Not
since the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages has any civilized nation
maintained tribunals clothed with anything like the arbitrary and
unlimited authority possessed by the central and local Extraordinary
Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution. They have written upon
the pages of Russia’s history a record of tyranny and oppression which
makes the worst record of czarism seem gentle and beneficent.
It is not without sinister significance that in all the collections of
documents which the Bolsheviki and their sympathizers have published
to illustrate the workings of the Soviet system, in this country and
in Europe, there is not one explaining the organization, functions,
methods, and personnel of it’s most characteristic institution--more
characteristic even than the Soviet. Neither in the several collections
published by _The Nation_, the American Association for International
Conciliation, the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, nor in the books
of writers like John Reed, Louise Bryant, William C. Bullitt, Raymond
Robins, William T. Goode, Arthur Ransome, Isaac Don Levine, Colonel
Malone, M.P., Lincoln Eyre, Etienne Antonelli, nor any other volume
of the kind, can such information be found. This silence is profoundly
eloquent.
This much we know about the _Chresvychaikas_: The Soviet Government
created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating
Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Profiteering, and established
it at the headquarters of the former Prefecture of Petrograd, 2,
Gorokhovaia Street. Its full personnel has never been made known, but
it is well known that many of the spies and confidential agents of
the former secret police service entered its employ. _Until February,
1919, it possessed absolutely unlimited powers of arrest, except
for the immunity enjoyed by members of the government; its hearings
were held in secret; it was not obliged to report even the names of
persons sentenced by it; mass arrests and mass sentences were common
under its direction; it was not confined to dealing with definite
crimes, violations of definite laws, but could punish at will, in any
manner it deemed fit, any conduct which it pleased to declare to be
“counter-revolutionary.”_
Those apologists who say that the Bolsheviki resorted to terrorism
only after the assassination of Uritzky, and those others who say
that terrorism was the answer to the intervention of the Allies,
are best answered by the citation of official documentary evidence
furnished by the Bolsheviki themselves. In the face of such evidence
argument is puerile and vain. In February, 1918, months before either
the assassination of Uritzky or the intervention of the Allies took
place, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission issued the following
proclamation, which was published in the _Krasnaya Gazeta_, official
organ of the Petrograd Soviet, on February 23, 1918:
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat
Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation, of the Council
of People’s Commissaries, brings to the notice of all citizens
that up to the present time it has been lenient in the struggle
against the enemies of the people.
But at the present moment, when the counter-revolution is
becoming more impudent every day, inspired by the treacherous
attacks of German counter-revolutionists; when the bourgeoisie
of the whole world is trying to suppress the advance-guard of
the revolutionary International, the Russian proletariat, the
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, acting in conformity with
the ordinances of the Council of People’s Commissaries, sees
_no other way to combat counter-revolutionists_, speculators,
marauders, hooligans, obstructionists, and other parasites,
_except by pitiless destruction at the place of crime_.
Therefore the Commission announces that all enemy agents, _and
counter-revolutionary agitators, speculators, organizers of
uprisings or participants in preparations for uprisings to
overthrow the Soviet authority, all fugitives to the Don to
join the counter-revolutionary armies of Kaledin and Kornilov
and the Polish counter-revolutionary Legions_, sellers or
purchasers of arms to be sent to the Finnish White Guard, the
troops of Kaledin, Kornilov, and Dovbor Musnitsky, or to arm
the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie of Petrograd, _will be
mercilessly shot by detachments of the Commission at the place
of the crime_.
PETROGRAD, _February 22, 1918_.
ALL-RUSSIAN EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION.
In connection with this ferocious document and its announcement that
“counter-revolutionists” would be subject to “pitiless destruction,”
that “counter-revolutionary agitators” would be “mercilessly shot,” it
is important to remember that during the summer of 1917, when Kerensky
was struggling against “German counter-revolutionists” and plots to
overthrow the Revolution, the Bolsheviki had demanded the abolition
of the death penalty. Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others
denounced Kerensky as a “hangman” and “murderer.” Where is the moral
integrity of these men? Like scorpion stings are the bitter words
of the protest of L. Martov, leader of the radical left wing of the
Menshevist Social Democrats:
In 1910 the International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen
passed a resolution in favor of starting a campaign in all
countries for the abolition of the death penalty.
All the present leaders of the Bolshevist Party--Lenin,
Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, Radek, Rakovsky,
Lunarcharsky--voted for this resolution. I saw them all there
raising their hands in favor of the resolution declaring war on
capital punishment.
Then I saw them in Petrograd in July, 1917, protesting against
punishing by death even those who had turned traitors to their
country during the war.
I see them now condemning to death and executing people,
bourgeoisie and workmen, peasants and officers alike. I see
them now demanding from their subordinates that they should
not count the victims, that they should put to death as many
opponents of the Bolshevist régime as possible.
And I say to these Bolshevist “judges”: You are malignant
liars and perjurers! You have deceived the workmen’s
International by signing its demand for the universal abolition
of the death penalty and by its restoration when you came to
power.
No idle threat was the proclamation of February: the performance
was fully as brutal as the text. Hundreds of people were shot. The
death penalty had been “abolished,” and on the strength of that fact
the Bolsheviki had been lauded to the skies for their humanity by
myopic and perverse admirers in this country and elsewhere outside of
Russia. But the shooting of people by the armed detachments of the
Extraordinary Commission went on. No court ever examined the cases; no
competent jurists heard or reviewed the evidence, or even examined the
charges. A simple entry, such as “Ivan Kouzmitch--Robbery--Shot,” might
cover the murder of a devoted Socialist whose only crime was a simple
speech to his fellow-workmen in favor of the immediate convocation of
the Constituent Assembly, or calling upon them to unite against the
Bolsheviki. And where counter-revolutionary agitation was given as the
crime for which men were shot there was nothing to show, in many cases,
whether the victim had taken up arms against the Soviet power or merely
expressed opinions unfavorable to the régime.
Originally under the direction of Uritzky, who met a well-deserved
fate at the hands of an assassin[16] in July, 1918, the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission in turn set up Provincial and District
Extraordinary Commissions, all of which enjoyed the same practically
unlimited powers. Before February, 1919, these bodies were not even
limited in the exercise of the right to inflict the death penalty,
except for the immunity enjoyed by members of the government. Any
Extraordinary Commission could arrest, arraign, condemn, and execute
any person in secret, the only requirement being that _afterward_, if
called upon to do so, it must report the case to the local Soviet! A
well-known Bolshevist writer, Alminsky, wrote in _Pravda_, October 8,
1918:
[16] Uritzky is thus described by Maurice Verstraete:
“He is a refined sadist, who does his grim work for the love of it....
Uritzky is a hunchback and seems to be revenging himself on all
mankind for his deformity. His heart is full of hatred, his nerves
are shattered, and his mind depraved. He is the personification of a
civilized brute--that is to say, the most cruel of all. Yesterday he
was laughing at his own joke. He had ordered twenty men to be executed.
Among the condemned was a lover of the girl who was waiting to be
examined. Uritzky himself told her of the death of her lover.... The
only emotion of which Uritzky is capable is fear. The only person
Uritzky obeys is the Swiss ambassador, as he hopes, in return, that the
latter will enable him to procure a passport to Switzerland, in case
he is forced to escape when the Bolsheviks are overthrown.... Trotsky
and Zinoviev are in many ways like Uritzky. They are also cruel,
hysterical, and ready to overwhelm the world with blood.”--VERSTRAETE,
_Mes Cahiers Russes_, p. 350.
The absence of the necessary restraint makes one feel appalled
at the “instruction” issued by the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission to “All Provincial Extraordinary Commissions,” which
says: “The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission is perfectly
independent in its work, carrying out house-searches, arrests,
executions, of which it _afterward_ reports to the Council
of the People’s Commissaries and to the Central Executive
Council.” Further, the Provincial and District Extraordinary
Commissions “are independent in their activities, and when
called upon by the local Executive Council present a report
of their work.” In so far as house-searches and arrests are
concerned, a report made _afterward_ may result in putting
right irregularities committed owing to lack of restraint.
The same cannot be said of executions.... It can also be seen
from the “instruction” that personal safety is to a certain
extent guaranteed only to members of the government, of the
Central Council, and of the local Executive Committees. With
the exception of these few persons all members of the local
committees of the (Bolshevik) Party, of the Control Committees,
and of the Executive Committee of the party may be shot at any
time by the decision of any Extraordinary Commission of a small
district town if they happen to be on its territory, and a
report of that made _afterward_.
After the assassination of Uritzky, and the attempted assassination
of Lenin, there was instituted a mad orgy of murderous terror without
parallel. It was a veritable saturnalia of brutal repression. Against
the vain protestation of the defenders of the Bolsheviki that the Red
Terror has been grossly exaggerated, it is quite sufficient to set
down the exultations and admissions of the Bolsheviki themselves,
the records made and published in their own official reports and
newspapers. The evidence which is given in the next few pages is only
a small part of the immense volume of such evidence that is available,
every word of it taken from Bolshevist sources.
Under czarism revolutionary terrorism directed against government
officials was almost invariably followed by increased repression;
terror made answer to terror. We shall search the records of czarism
in vain, however, for evidence of such brutal and blood-lusting rage
as the Bolsheviki manifested when their terror was answered by terror.
When a young Jew named Kannegiesser assassinated Uritzky the _Krasnaya
Gazeta_ declared:
The whole bourgeoisie must answer for this act of terror....
Thousands of our enemies must pay for Uritzky’s death.... We
must teach the bourgeoisie a bloody lesson.... Death to the
bourgeoisie!
This same Bolshevist organ, after the attempt to assassinate Lenin,
said:
We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in
the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom.
We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that
no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver
at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the
flood-gates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we
will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be
thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For
the blood of Lenin and Uritzky, Zinoviev, and Volodarsky, let
there be floods of the blood of the bourgeoisie--more blood, as
much as possible.
In the same spirit the _Izvestia_ declared, “The proletariat will
reply to the attempt on Lenin in a manner that will make the whole
bourgeoisie shudder with horror.” Peters, successor to Uritzky as head
of the Extraordinary Commission, said, in an official proclamation,
“This crime will be answered by a mass terror.” On September 2d,
Petrovsky, Commissar for the Interior, issued this call to mass terror:
Murder of Volodarsky and Uritzky, attempt on Lenin, and
shooting of masses of our comrades in Finland, Ukrainia, the
Don and Czechoslovakia, continual discovery of conspiracies in
our rear, open acknowledgment of Right Social Revolutionary
Party and other counter-revolutionary rascals of their part
in these conspiracies, together with the insignificant extent
of serious repressions and mass shooting of White Guards and
bourgeoisie on the part of the Soviets, all these things show
that notwithstanding frequent pronouncements urging mass terror
against the Socialists-Revolutionaries, White Guards, and
bourgeoisie no real terror exists.
Such a situation should decidedly be stopped. End should be put
to weakness and softness. All Right Socialists-Revolutionaries
known to local Soviets should be arrested immediately. Numerous
hostages should be taken from the bourgeoisie and officer
classes. At the slightest attempt to resist or the slightest
movement among the White Guards, mass shooting should be
applied at once. Initiative in this matter rests especially
with the local executive committees.
Through the militia and extraordinary commissions, all branches
of government must take measures to seek out and arrest persons
hiding under false names and shoot without fail anybody
connected with the work of the White Guards.
All above measures should be put immediately into execution.
Indecisive action on the part of local Soviets must be
immediately reported to People’s Commissary for Home Affairs.
The rear of our armies must be finally guaranteed and
completely cleared of all kinds of White-Guardists, and
all despicable conspirators against the authority of the
working-class and of the poorest peasantry. Not the slightest
hesitation or the slightest indecisiveness in applying mass
terror.
Acknowledge the receipt of this telegram.
Transmit to district Soviets.
[Signed] PETROVSKY.[17]
[17] The text is taken from the _Weekly of the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission_ (No. 1), Moscow, September 21, 1918. The
translation used is that published by the U. S. Department of State. It
has been verified.
On September 3, 1918, the _Izvestia_ published this news item:
In connection with the murder of Uritzky five hundred persons
have been shot by order of the Petrograd Extraordinary
Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution. The names of the
persons shot, and those of candidates for future shooting, in
case of a new attempt on the lives of the Soviet leaders, will
be published later.[18]
[18] Desiring to confine the evidence here strictly to Bolshevist
sources, I have passed over much testimony by well-known
Socialists-Revolutionists, Social Democrats, and others. Because it
has not been possible to have the item referring to the retaliatory
massacre in Petrograd satisfactorily verified, I introduce here, by way
of corroboration, a statement by the Socialists-Revolutionists leader,
Eugene Trupp, published in the organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists,
_Zemlia i Volia_, October 3, 1918:
“After the murder of Uritzky in Petrograd 1,500 people were
arrested; 512, including 10 Socialists-Revolutionists, were shot.
At the same time 800 people were arrested in Moscow. It is unknown,
however, how many of these were shot. In Nizhni-Novgorod, 41 were
shot; in Jaroslavl, 13; in Astrakhan, 12 Socialists-Revolutionists;
in Sarapool, a member of the Central Committee of the party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, I. I. Teterin; in Penza, about 40 officers.”
See also the corroboration of this incident quoted from the _Weekly
Journal of the Extraordinary Commission_, on p. 171.
Two days later, September 5, 1918, a single column of _Izvestia_
contained the following paragraphs, headed “Latest News”:
_Arrest of Right Socialists-Revolutionaries_
At the present moment the ward extraordinary commissioners are
making mass arrests of Right Socialists-Revolutionaries, since
it has become clear that this party is responsible for the
recent acts of terrorism (attempt on life of Comrade Lenin and
the murder of Uritzky), which were carried out according to a
definitely elaborated program.
_Arrest of a Priest_
For an anti-Soviet sermon preached from the church pulpit,
the Priest Molot has been arrested and turned over to the
counter-revolutionary section of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission.
_Struggle Against Counter-Revolutionaries_
We have received the following telegram from the president
of the Front Extraordinary Commission, Comrade Latsis: “The
Extraordinary Commission of the Front had shot in the district
of Ardatov, for anti-Soviet agitation, 4 peasants, and sent to
a concentration camp 32 officers.
“At Arzamas were shot three champions of the Tsarist régime,
and one peasant-exploiter, and 14 officers were sent to the
concentration camp for anti-Soviet agitation.”
_House Committee Fined_
For failure to execute the orders of the dwelling section of
the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, the house committee
at 42, Pokrovka, has been fined 20,000 rubles.
This fine is a punishment for failure to remove from the
house register the name of the well-known Cadet Astrov, who
disappeared three months ago.
All the movable property of Astrov has been confiscated.
_The Arrest of Speculators_
On September 3d members of the Section to Combat Speculation
of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission arrested Citizen
Pitkevich, who was trying to buy 125 food-cards at 20 rubles
each. A search was made in the apartment of Pitkevich, which
revealed a store of such cards bearing official stamps.
This section also arrested a certain Bosh, who was speculating
in cocaine brought from Pskov.
On September 5, 1918, the Council of the People’s Commissaries ordered
that the names of persons shot by order of the Extraordinary Commission
should be published, with full particulars of their cases, a decision
which was flouted by the Extraordinary Commission, as we shall see. The
resolution of the Council of People’s Commissaries was published in the
_Severnaya Communa_, evening edition, November 9, 1918, and reads as
follows:
The Council of the People’s Commissaries, having considered the
report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission, finds
that under the existing conditions it is most necessary to
secure the safety of the rear by means of terror. All persons
belonging to the White Guard organizations or involved in
conspiracies and rebellion are to be shot. Their names and the
particulars of their cases are to be published.
On September 10, 1918, the _Severnaya Communa_ published in its news
columns the two following despatches:
JAROSLAVL, _September 9th_.--In the whole of the Jaroslavl
Government a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its
partizans has been organized. Manifestly anti-Soviet elements
are being shot; suspected persons are being interned in
concentration camps; non-working sections of the population are
being subjected to compulsory labor.
TYER, _September 9th_.--The Extraordinary Commission has
arrested and sent to concentration camps over 130 hostages from
among the bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the
Cadet Party, Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, former
officers, well-known members of the propertied class, and
policemen.
Two days later, September 12th, the same journal contained the
following:
ATKARSK, _September, 11th_.--Yesterday martial law was
proclaimed in the town. Eight counter-revolutionaries were shot.
On September 18, 1918, the _Severnaya Communa_ published the following
evidences of the wide-spread character of the terrorism which the
Bolsheviki were practising:
In Sebesh a priest named Kikevitch was shot for
counter-revolutionary propaganda and for _saying masses for the
late Nicholas Romanov_.
In Astrakhan the Extraordinary Commission has shot _ten
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right involved in a plot
against the Soviet power_. In Karamyshev a priest named
Lubinoff and a deacon named Kvintil have been shot for
_revolutionary agitation against the decree separating
the Church from the State_ and for an appeal to overthrow
the Soviet Government. In Perm, _in retaliation for the
assassination of Uritzky and for the attempt on Lenin, fifty
hostages from among the bourgeois classes and the White Guards
were shot_.
The shooting of innocent hostages is a peculiarly brutal form of
terrorism. When it was practised by the Germans during the war the
world reverberated with denunciation. That the Bolsheviki ever were
guilty of this crime, so much more odious than anything which can be
charged against czarism, has been many times denied, but the foregoing
statement from one of their most influential official journals is a
complete refutation of all such denials. Perm is more than a thousand
miles from Petrograd, where the assassination of Uritzky occurred, and
no attempt was ever made to show that the fifty hostages who were shot,
or any of them, were guilty of any complicity in the assassination. It
was a brutal, malignant retaliation upon innocent people for a crime
of which they knew nothing. The famous “Decree No. 903,” signed by
Trotsky, which called for the taking of hostages as a means of checking
desertions from the Red Army, was published in _Izvestia_, September
18, 1918:
Decree No. 903: Seeing the increasing number of deserters,
especially among the commanders, orders are issued to arrest as
hostages all the members of the family one can lay hands on:
father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and children.
The evening edition of _Severnaya Communa_, September 18, 1918,
reported a meeting of the Soviet of the first district of Petrograd,
stating that the following resolution had been passed:
The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being used
against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and
declares that every attempt on the life of any of our leaders
will be answered by the proletariat by the shooting down
not only of hundreds, as the case is now, but of thousands
of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers, Cadets, and
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right.
On the following day, September 19th, the same journal quoted Zinoviev
as saying:
To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist
Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of
the 100 millions of population of Russia under the Soviets.
_As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be
annihilated._
Reference has already been made to the fact that the Council of the
People’s Commissaries ordered that the Extraordinary Commission publish
the names of all persons sentenced to be shot, with particulars of
their cases, and the further fact that the instruction was ignored. It
is well known that great friction developed between the Extraordinary
Commissions and the Soviet power. In many places the Extraordinary
Commissions not only defied the local Soviets, _but actually suppressed
them_. Naturally, there was friction between the Soviet power and
its creature. There were loud protests on the part of influential
Bolsheviki, who demanded that the _Chresvychaikas_ be curbed and
restrained and that the power to inflict the death penalty be taken
from them. That is why the resolution of September 5th, already quoted,
was passed. Nevertheless, in practice secrecy was very generally
observed. Trials took place in secret and there was no publication,
in many instances, of results. Reporting a meeting of the Executive
Committee of the Moscow Soviet, which took place on October 16, 1918,
_Izvestia_, the official Bolshevist organ, contained the following in
its issue of the next day:
The report of the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission was read at a secret session of the Executive
Committee. _But the report and the discussion of it were held
behind closed doors and will not be published._ After a debate
the doors of the Session Hall were thrown open.
From an article in the _Severnaya Communa_, October 17, 1918, we
learn that the Extraordinary Commission “has registered 2,559
counter-revolutionary affairs and 5,000 arrests have been made”; that
“at Kronstadt there have been 1,130 hostages. Only 183 people are left;
500 have been shot.”
Under the heading, “The Conference of the Extraordinary Commission,”
_Izvestia_ of October 19, 1918, printed the following paragraph:
PETROGRAD, _October 17th_.--At to-day’s meeting of the
Conference of the Extraordinary Investigating Commission,
Comrades Moros and Baky read reports giving an account of the
activities of the Extraordinary Commission in Petrograd and
Moscow. Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the district
commission of Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission for Moscow. The total number of people
arrested by the Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220.
_Eight hundred people were shot._
On November 5, 1918, _Izvestia_ said:
A riot occurred in the Kirsanoff district. The rioters
shouted, “Down with the Soviets.” They dissolved the Soviet
and Committee of the Village Poor. The riot was suppressed by
a detachment of Soviet troops. Six ringleaders were shot. The
case is under examination.
The _Weekly Journal of the Extraordinary Commissions to Combat
Counter-Revolution_ is, as the name implies, the official organ in
which the proclamations and reports of these Extraordinary Commissions
are published. It is popularly nicknamed “The Hangmen’s Journal.” The
issue of October 6, 1918 (No. 3), contains the following:
We decided to make it a real, not a paper terror. In many
cities there took place, accordingly, _mass shootings of
hostages_, and it is well that they did. In such business
half-measures are worse than none.
Another issue (No. 5), dated October 20, 1918, says:
Upon the decision of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission,
500 hostages were shot.
These are typical extracts: it would be possible to quote from this
journal whole pages quite similar to them.
How closely the Extraordinary Commissions copied the methods of the
Czar’s secret police system can be judged from a paragraph that
appeared in the _Severnaya Communa_, October 17, 1918:
The Extraordinary Commission has organized the placing of
police agents in every part of Petrograd. The Commission has
issued a proclamation to the workmen exhorting them to inform
the police of all they know. The bandits, both in word and
action, must be forced to recognize that the revolutionary
proletariat is watching them strictly.
Here, then, is a formidable array of evidence from Bolshevist sources
of the very highest authority. It is only a part of the whole volume
of such evidence that is available; nevertheless, it is sufficient,
overwhelming, and conclusive. If we were to draw upon the official
documentary testimony of the Socialist parties and groups opposed to
the Bolsheviki, hundreds of pages of records of _Schrecklichkeit_,
even more brutal than anything here quoted, could be easily compiled.
Much of this testimony is as reliable and entitled to as much weight
as any of the foregoing. Take, for example, the statement of the
Foreign Representatives of the Russian Social Democratic Party upon
the shooting of six young students arrested in Petrograd: In the New
York _World_, March 22, 1920, Mr. Lincoln Eyre quotes “Red Executioner
Peters” as saying: “We have never yet passed the sentence of death
on a foreigner, although some of them richly deserved it. The few
foreigners who have lost their lives in the Revolution have been killed
in the course of a fight or in some such manner.” Shall we not set
against that statement the signed testimony of responsible and honored
spokesmen of the Russian Social Democratic Party?
Three brothers, named Genzelli, French citizens, were arrested and shot
without the formality of a trial. They had been officers in the Czar’s
army, and, with three young fellow-officers, Russians, were discovered
at a private gathering, wearing the shoulder-straps indicative of
their former military rank. This was their offense. According to a
statement issued by the Foreign Representatives of the Russian Social
Democratic Party, Lenin was asked at Smolny, “What is to be done with
the students?” and replied, “Do with them what you like.” The whole six
were shot, but it has never been possible to ascertain who issued the
order for the execution.
Another example: The famous Schastny case throws a strong light upon
one very important phase of the Bolshevist terror. Shall we decline to
give credence to Socialists of honorable distinction, simply because
they are opposed to Bolshevism? Here are two well-known Socialist
writers, one French and the other Russian, long and honorably
identified with the international Socialist movement. Charles Dumas,
the French Socialist, from whose book[19] quotation has already been
made, gives an account of the Schastny case which vividly illustrates
the brutality of the Bolsheviki:
[19] _La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki_, par Charles Dumas, Paris, 1919.
The Schastny case is the most detestable episode in Bolshevist
history. Its most repulsive feature is the parody of legality
which the Bolsheviki attempt to attach to a case of wanton
murder. Admiral Schastny was the commander of the Baltic
Fleet and was put in command by the Bolsheviki themselves.
Thanks to his efforts, the Russian war-ships were brought
out of Helsingfors harbor in time to escape capture by the
Germans on the eve of their invasion of Finland. In general,
it was he who contributed largely to the saving of whatever
there was left of the Russian fleet. His political views were
so radical that even the Bolsheviki tolerated him in their
service. Notwithstanding all this, he was accused of complicity
in a counter-revolutionary plot and haled before a tribunal.
In vain did the judge search for a shred of proof of his
guilt. Only one witness appeared against him--Trotsky--who
delivered an impassioned harangue full of venom and malice.
Admiral Schastny implored the court to allow witnesses for the
defense to testify, but the judges decreed that his request
was sheer treason. Thereupon the witnesses who were prevented
from appearing in court forwarded their testimony in writing,
but the court decided not to read their communication. After
a simulated consultation, Schastny was condemned to die--a
verdict which later stirred even Krylenko, one of his
accusers, to say: “That was not a death sentence--that was a
summary shooting!”
The verdict was to be carried out in twenty-four hours. This
aroused the ire of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left,
who at that time were represented in the People’s Commissariat,
and they immediately forwarded, in the name of their party, a
sharp protest against the official confirmation of the death
sentence. The Commissaries, in reply, ordered the immediate
shooting of Schastny.
Apparently Schastny was subjected to torture before his death.
He was killed without witnesses, without a priest, and even
his lawyer was not notified of the hour of his execution.
When his family demanded the surrender of his body to them,
it was denied. What, if otherwise, did the Bolsheviki fear,
and why did they so assiduously conceal the body of the dead
admiral? The same occurred after the execution of Fanny Royd,
who shot at Lenin. There is also indisputable evidence that the
Bolsheviki are resorting to torture at inquests. The assassin
of Commissary Uritzky (whose family, by the way, was entirely
wiped out by the Bolsheviki as a matter of principle, without
even the claim that they knew anything about the planned
attempt) was tortured by his executioners in the Fortress of
St. Peter and Paul.
In the modern revolutionary movement of Russia few men have served
with greater distinction than L. Martov, and none with greater
disinterestedness. His account of the Schastny trial is vibrant with
the passionate hatred of tyranny and oppression characteristic of his
whole career:
He was accused of conspiring against the Soviet power. Captain
Schastny denied it. He asked the tribunal to hear witnesses,
including Bolshevist commissaries, who had been appointed to
watch him. Who was better qualified to state whether he had
really conspired against the Soviet power?
The tribunal refused to hear witnesses. Refused what every
court in the world, except Stolypin’s field court martials,
recognized the worst criminal entitled to.
A man’s life was at stake, the life of a man who had won the
love and confidence of his subordinates, the sailors of the
Baltic Fleet, who protested against the captain’s arrest.
The life of a man who had performed a marvelous feat! He had
somehow managed to take out of Helsingfors harbor all the ships
of the Baltic Fleet, and had thus saved them from capture by
the Finnish Whites.
It was not the enraged Finnish Whites, nor the German
Imperialists, who shot this man. He was put to death by men
who call themselves Russian Communists--by Messrs. Medvedeff,
Bruno, Karelin, Veselovski, Peterson, members of the Supreme
Revolutionary Tribunal.
Captain Schastny was refused the exercise of the right
to which every thief or murderer is entitled--_i.e._, to
call in witnesses for the defense. But the witness for the
prosecution was heard. This witness was Trotsky, Trotsky, who,
as Commissary for War and Naval Affairs, had arrested Captain
Schastny.
At the hearing of the case by the tribunal, Trotsky acted, not
as a witness, but as a prosecutor. As a prosecutor he declared,
“This man is guilty; you must condemn him!” And Trotsky did
it after having gagged the prisoner by refusing to call in
witnesses who might refute the accusations brought against him.
Not much valor is required to fight a man who has been gagged
and whose hands are tied, nor much honesty or loftiness of
character.
It was not a trial; it was a farce. There was no jury. The
judges were officials dependent upon the authorities, receiving
their salaries from the hands of Trotsky and other People’s
Commissaries. And this mockery of a court passed the death
sentence, which was hurriedly carried out before the people,
who were profoundly shaken by this order to kill an innocent
man, could do anything to save him.
Under Nicholas Romanov one could sometimes stop the carrying
out of a monstrously cruel sentence and thus pull the victim
out of the executioner’s hands.
Under Vladimir Ulianov this is impossible. The Bolshevist
leaders slept peacefully when, under the cover of night, the
first victim of their tribunal was stealthily being killed.
No one knew who murdered Schastny or how he was murdered. As
under the Czars, the executioners’ names are concealed from the
people. No one knows whether Trotsky himself came to the place
of the execution to watch and direct it.
Perhaps he, too, slept peacefully and saw in his dreams the
proletariat of the whole world hailing him as the liberator of
mankind, as the leader of the universal revolution.
In the name of Socialism, in thy name, O proletariat, blind
madmen and vainglorious fools staged this appalling farce of
cold-blooded murder.
The evidence we have cited from Bolshevist sources proves conclusively
that the Red Terror was far from being the unimportant episode it
is frequently represented to have been by pro-Bolshevist writers.
It effectually disposes of the assiduously circulated myth that the
Extraordinary Commissions were for the most part concerned with the
suppression of robbery, crimes of violence, and illegal speculation,
and that only in a few exceptional instances did they use their powers
to suppress anti-Bolshevist propaganda. The evidence makes it quite
clear that from the early days of the Bolshevist régime until November,
1918, at least, an extraordinary degree of terrorism prevailed
throughout Soviet Russia. According to a report published by the
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission in February of the present year,
not less than 6,185 persons were executed in 1918 and 3,456 in 1919,
a total of 9,641 in Moscow and Petrograd alone. Of the total number
for the two years, _7,068 persons were shot for counter-revolutionary
activities_, 631 for crimes in office--embezzlement, corruption, and
so on--217 for speculation and profiteering, and 1,204 for all other
classes of crime.
That these figures understate the extent of the Red Terror is
certain. In the first place, the report covers only the work of the
Extraordinary Commissions of Moscow and Petrograd. The numerous
District Extraordinary Commissions are not reported on. In the next
place, there is reason to believe that many of the reports of the
Extraordinary Commissions were falsified in order not to create too
bad an impression. Quite frequently, as a matter of fact, the number
of victims reported by the _Chresvychaikas_ was less than the number
actually known to have been killed. Moreover, the figures given refer
only to the victims of the Extraordinary Commissions, and do not
include those sentenced to death by the other revolutionary tribunals.
The 9,641 executions--even if we accept the figures as full and
complete--refer only to the victims of the Moscow and Petrograd
_Chresvychaikas_, men and women put to death without anything like
a trial.[20] When to these figures there shall be added the victims
of all the District Extraordinary Commissions and of all the other
revolutionary tribunals, the real meaning of the Red Terror will begin
to appear. But even that will not give us the real measure of the Red
Terror, for the simple reason that the many thousands of peasants and
workmen who have been slain in the numerous uprisings, frequently
taking on the character of pitched battles between armed masses and
detachments of Soviet troops, are not included.
[20] The figures are taken from _Russkoe Delo_ (Prague), March 4, 1920.
The naïve and impressionable Mr. Goode says of the judicial system
of Soviet Russia: “Its chief quality would seem to be a certain
simplicity. By a stroke of irony the people’s courts aim not only at
punishment of evil, but also at reformation of the wrongdoer! A first
offender is set free on condition that he must not fall again. Should
he do so, he pays the penalty of his second offense together with that
to which his first crime rendered him liable.”[21] That Mr. Goode
should be ignorant of the fact that such humane measures were not
unknown or uncommon in the administration of justice by the ordinary
criminal courts under czarism is perhaps not surprising. It is somewhat
surprising, however, that he should write as though the Soviet courts
have made a distinct advance in penology. Has he never heard of the
First Offenders Act in his own country, or of our extensive system of
suspended sentences, parole, probation, and so on? It is not necessary
to deny Mr. Goode’s statement, or even to question it. As a commentary
upon it, the following article from _Severnaya Communa_, December 4,
1918, is sufficient:
[21] _Bolshevism at Work_, by William T. Goode, pp. 96-97.
It is impossible to continue silent. It has constantly been
brought to the knowledge of the Viborg Soviet (Petrograd) of
the terrible state of affairs existing in the city prisons.
That people all the time are dying there of hunger; _that
people are detained six and eight months without examination,
and that in many cases it is impossible to learn why they have
been arrested, owing to officials being changed, departments
closed, and documents lost_. In order to confirm, or otherwise,
these rumors, the Soviet decided to send on the 3d November
a commission consisting of the president of the Soviet, the
district medical officer, and district military commissar, to
visit and report on the “Kresti” prison. Comrades! What they
saw and what they heard from the imprisoned is impossible to
describe. Not only were all rumors confirmed, but conditions
were actually found much worse than had been stated. I was
pained and ashamed. I myself was imprisoned under czardom in
that same prison. Then all was clean, and prisoners had clean
linen twice a month. Now, not only are prisoners left without
clean linen, but many are even without blankets, and, as in
the past, for a trifling offense they are placed in solitary
confinement in cold, dark cells. But the most terrible sights
we saw were in the sick-bays. Comrades, there we saw living
dead who hardly had strength enough to whisper their complaints
that they were dying of hunger. In one ward, among the sick
a corpse had lain for several hours, whose neighbors managed
to murmur, “Of hunger he died, and soon of hunger we shall
all die.” Comrades, among them are many who are quite young,
who wish to live and see the sunshine. If we really possess a
workmen’s government such things should not be.
Following the example of Mr. Arthur Ransome, many pro-Bolshevist
writers have assured us that after 1918 the Red Terror practically
ceased to exist. Mr. Ransome makes a great deal of the fact that
in February, 1919, the Central Executive Committee of the People’s
Commissaries “definitely limited the powers of the Extraordinary
Commission.”[22] Although he seems to have attended the meeting at
which this was done, and talks of “the bitter struggle within the party
for and against the almost dictatorial powers of the Extraordinary
Committee,” he appears not to have understood what was done. Perhaps
it ought not to be expected that this writer of fairy-stories who
so naïvely confesses his ignorance of “economics” should comprehend
the revolutionary struggle in Russia. Be that how it may, he does
not state accurately what happened. He says: “Therefore the right of
sentencing was removed from the Extraordinary Commission; but if,
through unforeseen circumstances, the old conditions should return,
they intended that the dictatorial powers of the Commission should
be returned to it until those conditions had ceased.” Actually the
decision was that the power to inflict the death penalty should be
taken from the Extraordinary Commissions, _except where and when
martial law existed_. When Krylenko, Diakonov, and others protested
against the outrage of permitting the Extraordinary Commissions to
execute people without proof of their guilt, _Izvestia_ answered
in words which clearly reveal the desperate and brutal spirit of
Bolshevism: “_If among one hundred executed one was guilty, this would
be satisfactory and would sanction the action of the Commission._”
[22] _Russia in 1919_, by Arthur Ransome, pp. 108-114.
As a matter of fact, the resolution which, according to Mr. Ransome,
“definitely limited the powers of the Extraordinary Commission,” was
an evasion of the issue. Not only was martial law in existence in the
principal cities, and not only was it easy to declare martial law
anywhere in Soviet Russia, but it was a very easy matter for accused
persons to be brought to Moscow or Petrograd and there sentenced
by the Extraordinary Commission. _This was actually done in many
cases after the February decision._ Mr. Ransome quotes Dzerzhinsky
to the effect that criminality had been greatly decreased by the
Extraordinary Commissions--in Moscow by 80 per cent.!--and that there
was now, February, 1919, no longer danger of “large scale revolts.”
What a pity that the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission did not
consult Mr. Ransome before publishing its report in February of this
year! That report shows, first, that in 1919 the activities of the
Extraordinary Commission were much greater than in 1918; second, that
the number of arrests made in 1919 was 80,662 as against 46,348 in
1918; third, that in 1919 the arrests of “ordinary criminals” nearly
equaled the total number of arrests made in 1918 for _all causes_,
including counter-revolutionary activity, speculation, crimes in
office, and general crime. The figures given in the report are: arrests
for ordinary crimes only in 1919, 39,957; arrests for all causes in
1918, 47,348. When it is remembered that all the other revolutionary
tribunals were active throughout this period, how shall we reconcile
this record of the Extraordinary Commission with Mr. Ransome’s account?
The fact is that crime steadily increased throughout 1919, _and that
at the very time Mr. Ransome was in Moscow conditions there were
exceedingly bad, as the report of arrests and convictions shows_.
Terrorism continued in Russia throughout 1919, the rose-colored reports
of specially coached correspondents to the contrary notwithstanding.
There was, indeed, a period in the early summer when the rigors of the
Red Terror were somewhat relaxed. This seems to have been connected
with the return of the bourgeois specialists to the factories and the
officers of the Czar’s army to positions of importance in the Red Army.
This could not fail to lessen the persecution of the bourgeoisie,
at least for a time. In July the number of arrests made by the
Extraordinary Commission was small, only 4,301; in November it reached
the high level of 14,673. To those who claim that terrorism did not
exist in Russia during 1919, the best answer is--this very illuminating
official Bolshevist report.
On January 10, 1919, _Izvestia_ published an article by Trotsky in
which the leader of the military forces of the Soviet Republic dealt
with the subject of terrorism. This was, of course, in advance of the
meeting which Mr. Ransome so completely misunderstood. Trotsky said:
By its terror against saboteurs the proletariat does not at
all say, “I shall wipe out all of you and get along without
specialists.” Such a program would be a program of hopelessness
and ruin. _While dispersing, arresting, and shooting saboteurs
and conspirators_, the proletariat says, “_I shall break your
will, because my will is stronger than yours, and I shall force
you to serve me_.” Terror as the demonstration of the will
and strength of the working-class is historically justified,
precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break
the will of the Intelligentsia, pacify the professional men of
various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to
its own aims within the fields of their specialties.
On April 2, 1919, _Izvestia_ published a proclamation by Dzerzhinsky,
president of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, warning that
“demonstrations and appeals of any kind will be suppressed without
pity”:
In view of the discovery of a conspiracy which aimed to
organize an armed demonstration against the Soviet authority by
means of explosions, destruction of railways, and fires, the
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission warns that demonstrations
and appeals of any kind will be suppressed without pity. In
order to save Petrograd and Moscow from famine, in order
to save hundreds and thousands of innocent victims, the
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission will be obliged to take
the most severe measures of punishment against all who will
appeal for White Guard demonstration or for attempts at armed
uprising.
[Signed] F. DZERZHINSKY,
_President of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission_.
The _Severnaya Communa_ of April 2, 1919, contains an official report
of the shooting by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission of a
printer named Michael Ivanovsky “_for the printing of proclamations
issued by the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left_.” Later several
Socialists-Revolutionists, among them Soronov, were shot “for having
proclamations and appeals in their possession.”
On May 1, 1919, the _Izvestia_ of Odessa, official organ of the Soviet
in that city, published the following account of the infliction of the
death penalty for belonging to an organization. It said:
The Special Branch of the Staff of the Third Army has uncovered
the existence of an organization, the Union of the Russian
People, now calling itself “the Russian Union for the People
and the State.” The entire committee was arrested.
After giving the names of those arrested the account continued:
The case of those arrested was transferred to the Military
Tribunal of the Soviet of the Third Army. Owing to the obvious
activity of the members of the Union directed against the
peaceful population and the conquests of the Revolution, the
Revolutionary Tribunal decided to sentence the above-mentioned
persons to death. The verdict was carried out on the same night.
On May 6, 1919, _Severnaya Communa_ published the following order from
the Defense Committee:
Order No. 8 of the Defense Committee. The Extraordinary
Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution is to take measures
to suppress all forms of official crime, and not to hesitate at
shooting the guilty. The Extraordinary Committee is bound to
indict not only those who are guilty of active crime, but also
those who are guilty of inaction of authority or condonement of
crime, bearing in mind that the punishment must be increased in
proportion to the responsibility attached to the post filled by
the guilty official.
On May 14, 1919, _Izvestia_ published an article by a Bolshevist
official describing what happened in the Volga district as the
Bolsheviki advanced. This article is important because it calls
attention to a form of terrorism not heretofore mentioned: it will be
remembered that in the latter part of 1918 the Bolsheviki introduced
the system of rationing out food upon class lines, giving to the Red
Army three times as much food per capita as to the average of the civil
population, and dividing the latter into categories. The article under
consideration shows very clearly how this system was made an instrument
of terrorism:
Instructions were received from Moscow to forbid free trade,
and to introduce the class system of feeding. After much
confusion, _this made the population starve in a short time_,
and rebel against the food dictatorship.... “Was it necessary
to introduce the class system of feeding into the Volga
district so haphazardly?” asks the writer. “Oh no. _There
was enough bread ready for shipment in that region, and in
many places it was rotting, because of the lack of railroad
facilities._ The class-feeding system did not increase
the amount of bread.... It did create, together with the
inefficient policy, and the lack of a distribution system, a
state of starvation, which provoked dissatisfaction.”
Throughout 1919 the official Bolshevist press continued to publish
accounts of the arrest of hostages. Thus _Izvestia_ of the Petrograd
Soviet of Workmen’s and Red Army Deputies (No. 185), August 16, 1919,
published an official order by the acting Commandant of the fortified
district of Petrograd, a Bolshevist official named Kozlovsky. The two
closing paragraphs of this order follow:
I declare that all guilty of arson, also all those who have
knowledge of the same and fail to report the culprits to the
authorities, _will be shot forthwith_.
I warn all that in the event of repeated cases of arson I will
not hesitate to adopt extreme measures, _including the shooting
of the bourgeoisie’s hostages_, in view of the fact that all
the White Guards’ plots directed against the proletarian state
_must be regarded not as the crime of individuals, but as the
offense of the entire enemy class_.
That hostages were actually shot, and not merely held under arrest, is
clearly stated in the _Severnaya Communa_, March 11, 1919:
By order of the Military Revolutionary Committee of Petrograd
several officers were shot for _spreading untrue rumors that
the Soviet authority had lost the confidence of the people_.
_All relatives of the officers of the 86th Infantry Regiment
(which deserted to the Whites) were shot._
The same journal published, September 2, 1919, the following decree of
the War Council of the Petrograd Fortified District:
It has been ascertained that on the 17th of August there was
maliciously cut down in the territory of the Ovtzenskaya
Colony about 200 sazhensks of telegraph and telephone wire. In
consequence of the above-mentioned criminal offense, the War
Council of the Petrograd Fortified District has ordered--
(1) To impose on the Ovtzenskaya Colony a fine of 500,000
rubles; (2) the guarding of the intactness of the lines
to be made incumbent upon the population under reciprocal
responsibility; and (3) _hostages to be taken_.
Note: The decree of the War Council was carried out on the 30th
of August. The following hostages have been taken: Languinen,
P. M.; Languinen, Ya. P.; Finck, F. Kh.; Ikert, E. S.; Luneff,
F. L.; Dalinguer, P. M.; Dalinguer, P. Ya.; Raw, Ya. I.;
Shtraw, V. M.; Afanassieff, L. K.
This drastic order was issued and carried out nearly a month before the
district was declared to be in a state of siege.
* * * * *
The _Krasnaya Gazeta_, November 4, 1919, published a significant
list of Red Army officers who had deserted to the Whites and of the
retaliatory arrests of innocent members of their families. Mothers,
brothers, sisters, and wives were arrested and punished for the acts of
their relatives in deserting the Red Army. The list follows:
1. Khomutov, D. C.--brother and mother arrested.
2. Piatnitzky, D. A.--mother, sister, and brother arrested.
3. Postnov--mother and sister arrested.
4. Agalakov, A. M.--wife, father, and mother arrested.
5. Haratkviech, B.--wife and sister arrested.
6. Kostylev, V. I.--wife and brother arrested.
7. Smyrnov, A. A.--mother, sister, and father arrested.
8. Chebykin--wife arrested.
In September, 1919, practically all the Bolshevist papers published the
following order, signed by Trotsky:
I have ordered several times that officers with indefinite
political convictions should not be appointed to military
posts, especially when the families of such officers live
on the territory controlled by enemies of the Soviet Power.
My orders are not being carried out. In one of our armies
an officer whose family lives on the territory controlled
by Kolchak was appointed as a commander of a division.
Consequently, this commander betrayed his division and went
over, together with his staff, to the enemy. Once more I order
the Military Commissaries to make a thorough cleansing of all
Commanding Staffs. In case an officer goes over to the enemy,
_his family should be made to feel the consequences of his
betrayal_.
Early in November, 1919, the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission
announced that by its orders forty-two persons had been shot. A number
of these were ordinary criminals; several others had been guilty
of selling cocaine. Among the other victims we find one Maximovich,
“for organizing a mass desertion of Red Army soldiers to the Whites”;
one Shramchenko, “_for participating in a counter-revolutionary
conspiracy_”; E. K. Kaulbars, “for spying”; Ploozhnikoff and
Demeshchenke, “_for exciting the politically unconscious masses and
hounding them on against the Soviet Power_.”
In considering this terribly impressive accumulation of evidence from
the Bolshevist press we must bear in mind that it represents not the
criticism of a free press, but only that measure of truth which managed
to find its way through the most drastic censorship ever known in any
country at any time. Not only were the organs of the anti-Bolshevist
Socialists suppressed, but even the Soviet press was not free to
publish the truth. Trotsky himself made vigorous protest in the
_Izvestia_ of the Central Executive Committee (No. 13) against the
censorship which “prevented the publication of the news that Perm was
taken by the White Guards.” A congress of Soviet journalists was held
at Moscow, in May, 1919, and made protest against the manner in which
they were restrained from criticizing Soviet misrule. The _Izvestia_
of the Provincial Executive Committee, May 8, 1919, quotes from this
protest as follows:
The picture of the provincial Soviet press is melancholy
enough. We journalists are particularly “up against it” when we
endeavor to expose the shortcomings of the local Soviet rule
and the local Soviet officials. Immediately we are met with
threats of arrest and banishment, _threats which are often
carried out_. In Kaluga a Soviet editor was nearly shot for a
remark about a drunken communist.
Under such conditions as are indicated in this protest the evidence we
have cited was published. What the record would have been if only there
was freedom for the opposition press can only be imagined. In the light
of such a mass of authoritative evidence furnished by the Bolsheviki
themselves, of what use is it for casual visitors to Russia, like Mr.
Goode and Mr. Lansbury, for example, to attempt to throw dust into our
eyes and make it appear that acts of terrorism and tyranny are no more
common in Russia than in countries like England, France, and America?
And how, in the light of such testimony, shall we explain the ecstatic
praise of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki by men and women who call
themselves Socialists and Liberals, and who profess to love freedom? It
is true that the abolition of the death penalty has now been decreed,
the decree going into effect on January 22, 1920. Lenin has declared
that this date marks the passing of the policy of blood, and that only
a renewal of armed intervention by the Allies can force a return to it.
We shall see. This is not the first time the death penalty has been
“abolished” by decree during the Bolshevist régime. Some of us remember
that on November 7, 1918, the Central Executive Committee in Moscow
decreed the abolition of the death penalty and a general amnesty. After
that murder, by order of the Extraordinary Commissions, went on worse
than before.[23]
[23] As proofs of these pages are being revised, word comes that the
death penalty has been revived--_Vide_ London _Times_, May 26, 1920.
In Odessa an investigation was made into the workings of the
_Chresvychaika_ and a list of fifteen classes of crimes for which
the death penalty had been imposed and carried out was published.
The list enumerated various offenses, ranging from espionage and
counter-revolutionary agitation to “dissoluteness.” The fifteenth and
last class on the list read, “Reasons unknown.” Perhaps these words sum
up the only answer to our last question.
VIII
INDUSTRY UNDER SOVIET CONTROL
For the student of the evolution of Bolshevism in Russia there is,
perhaps, no task more difficult than to unravel the tangled skein of
the history of the first few weeks after the _coup d’état_. Whoever
attempts to set forth the development of events during those weeks
in an ordered and consecutive narrative, and to present an accurate,
yet intelligible, account of the conditions that prevailed, must toil
patiently through a bewildering snarled mass of conflicting testimony,
charges and counter-charges, claims and counter-claims. Statements
concerning apparently simple matters of fact, made by witnesses whose
competence and probity are not to be lightly questioned, upon events of
which they were witnesses, are simply irreconcilable. Moreover, there
is a perfect welter of sweeping generalizations and an almost complete
lack of such direct and definite information, statistical and other, as
can readily be found relating to both the earlier and the later stages
of the Revolution.
Let us first set down the facts concerning which there is
substantial agreement on the part of the partizans of the
Bolsheviki and the various factions opposed to them, ranging
from the Constitutional-Democrats to such factions as the
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left and the “Internationalist”
section of the Menshevist Social Democrats, both of which were quite
closely allied to the Bolsheviki in sympathy and in theory. At the
time when the Bolsheviki raised the cry, “All power to the Soviets!”
in October, 1917, arrangements were well under way for the election,
upon the most democratic basis imaginable, of a great representative
constitutional convention, the Constituent Assembly. Not only had the
Bolsheviki nominated their candidates and entered upon an electoral
campaign in advocacy of their program; not only were they, in common
with all other parties, pledged to the holding of the Constituent
Assembly; much more important is the fact that they professed to be,
and were by many regarded as, the special champions and defenders of
the Constituent Assembly, solicitous above all else for its convocation
and its integrity. From June onward Trotsky, Kamenev, and other
Bolshevist leaders had professed to fear only that the Provisional
Government would either refuse to convoke the Constituent Assembly or
in some manner prevent its free action. No small part of the influence
possessed by the Bolsheviki immediately prior to the overthrow of
Kerensky was due to the fact that, far from being suspected of
hostility to the Constituent Assembly, they were widely regarded as
its most vigorous and determined upholders. To confirm that belief the
Council of the People’s Commissaries issued this, its first decree:
In the name of the Government of the Russian Republic, chosen
by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Deputies with participation of peasant deputies, the
Council of People’s Commissars decrees:
1. The elections for the Constituent Assembly shall take place
at the date determined upon--November 12th.
2. All electoral commissions, organs of local self-government,
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, and
soldiers’ organizations on the front should make every effort
to assure free and regular elections at the date determined
upon.
In the name of the Government of the Russian Republic,
_The President of the Council of People’s Commissars_,
VLADIMIR ULIANOV--LENIN.
That was in November, 1917--and the Constituent Assembly has not yet
been convoked. In _Pravda_, December 26, 1917, Lenin published a series
of propositions to show that the elections, which had taken place
since the Bolsheviki assumed power, did not give a clear indication of
the real voice of the masses! The elections had gone heavily against
the Bolsheviki, and that fact doubtless explains Lenin’s disingenuous
argument. Later on Lenin was able to announce that no assembly elected
by the masses by universal suffrage could be accepted! “The Soviet
Republic repudiates the hypocrisy of formal equality of all human
beings,” he wrote in his _Letter to American Workmen_.
It is quite certain that the political power and influence of the
Soviets was never so small at any time since the birth of the
Revolution in March as it was when the Bolsheviki raised the cry,
“All power to the Soviets!” The reasons for this, if not obvious, are
easily intelligible: the mere facts that the election of a thoroughly
democratic constitutional convention at an early date was assured,
and that the electoral campaign had already begun, were by themselves
sufficient to cause many of those actively engaged in the revolutionary
struggle to turn their interest from the politics of the Soviets to
the greater political issues connected with the campaign for the
Constituent Assembly elections. There were other factors at work
lessening the popular interest in and, consequently, the political
influence of, the Soviets. In the first place, the hectic excitement of
the early stages of the Revolution had passed off, together with its
novelty, and life had assumed a _tempo_ nearer normal; in the second
place, city Dumas and the local Zemstvos, which had been elected during
the summer, upon a thoroughly democratic basis, were functioning, and,
naturally, absorbing much energy which had hitherto been devoted to the
Soviets.
Concerning these things there is little room for dispute. The
_Izvestia_ of the Soviets again and again called attention to the
waning power and influence of the Soviets, always cheerfully and with
wise appreciation. On September 28, 1917, it said:
At last a truly democratic government, born of the will of
all classes of the Russian people, the first rough form of
the future liberal parliamentary régime, has been formed.
Ahead of us is the Constituent Assembly, which will solve all
questions of fundamental law, and whose composition will be
essentially democratic. The function of the Soviets is at an
end, and the time is approaching when they must retire, with
the rest of the revolutionary machinery, from the stage of a
free and victorious people, whose weapons shall hereafter be
the peaceful ones of political action.
On October 23, 1917, _Izvestia_ published an important article dealing
with this subject, saying:
We ourselves are being called the “undertakers” of our own
organization. In reality, we are the hardest workers in
constructing the new Russia.... When autocracy and the entire
bureaucratic régime fell, we set up the Soviets as barracks in
which all the democracy could find temporary shelter. Now, in
place of barracks we are building the permanent edifice of a
new system, and naturally the people will gradually leave the
barracks for the more comfortable quarters.
Dealing with the lessening activity of the local Soviets, scores of
which had ceased to exist, the Soviet organ said:
This is natural, for the people are coming to be interested in
the more permanent organs of legislation--the municipal Dumas
and the Zemstvos.
Continuing, the article said:
In the important centers of Petrograd and Moscow, where the
Soviets were best organized, they did not take in all the
democratic elements.... The majority of the intellectuals did
not participate, and many workers also; some of the workers
because they were politically backward, others because the
center of gravity for them was in their unions.... We cannot
deny that these organizations are firmly united with the
masses, whose every-day needs are better served by them....
That the local democratic administrations are being
energetically organized is highly important. The city Dumas are
elected by universal suffrage, and in purely local matters have
more authority than the Soviets. Not a single democrat will see
anything wrong in this....
... Elections to the municipalities are being conducted
in a better and more democratic way than the elections
to the Soviets.... All classes are represented in the
municipalities.... And as soon as the local self-governments
begin to organize life in the municipalities, the rôle of the
local Soviets naturally ends....
... There are two factors in the falling off of interest in
the Soviets. The first we may attribute to the lowering of
political interest in the masses; the second to the growing
effort of provincial and local governing bodies to organize the
building of new Russia.... The more the tendency lies in this
latter direction the sooner disappears the significance of the
Soviets....
It seems to be hardly less certain, though less capable of complete
demonstration, perhaps, that the influence of the Soviets in the
factories was also on the wane. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that
there was an increasing sense of responsibility and a lessening of the
dangerous recklessness of the earlier stages of the Revolution. The
factory Soviets in the time of the Provisional Government varied so
greatly in their character and methods that it is rather difficult to
accurately represent them in a brief description. Many of them were
similar, in practice, to the shop meetings of the trades-unions;
others more nearly resembled the Whitley Councils of England. There
were still others, however, which asserted practically complete
ownership of the factories and forced the real owners out.
On March 20, 1917, _Izvestia_ said:
If any owner of an undertaking who is dissatisfied with the
demands made by the workmen refuses to carry on the business,
then the workmen must resolutely insist on the management
of the work being given over into their hands, under the
supervision of the Commissary of the Soviets.
That is precisely what happened in many cases. We must not forget that
the Bolsheviki did not introduce Soviet control of industry. That
they did so is a very general belief, but, like so many other beliefs
concerning Russia, it is erroneous. The longest trial of the Soviet
control of industry took place under the régime of the Provisional
Government, in the pre-Bolshevist period. Many of the worst evils of
the system were developed during that period, though as a result of
Bolshevist propaganda and intrigue to a large degree.
Industrial control by the workers, during the pre-Bolshevist period of
the Revolution, and especially during the spring and early summer, was
principally carried on by means of four distinct types of organization,
to all of which the general term “Soviet” was commonly applied. Perhaps
a brief description of each of these types will help to interpret the
history of this period:
(1) Factory Councils. These may be called the true factory Soviets.
They existed in most factories, large and small alike, their size
varying in proportion to the number of workers employed. In a small
factory the Council might consist of seven or nine members; in a
large factory the number might be sixty. The latter figure seems
rarely to have been exceeded. Most of the Councils were elected by the
workers directly, upon a basis of equal suffrage, every wage-worker,
whether skilled or unskilled, male or female, being entitled to vote.
Boys and girls were on the same footing as their elders in this
respect. Generally the voting was done at mass-meetings, held during
working-hours, the ordinary method being a show of hands. While there
were exceptions to this rule, it was rare that foremen, technical
supervisors, or other persons connected with the management were
permitted to vote. In some cases the Council was elected indirectly,
that is to say, it was selected by a committee, called the Workshop
Committee. The Factory Council was not elected for any specified
period of time, as a rule, and where a definite period for holding
office was fixed, the right of recall was so easily invoked, and was
so freely exercised, that the result was the same as if there had been
no such provision. As a result of the nervous tension of the time, the
inevitable reaction against long-continued repression, there was much
friction at first and recalls and re-elections were common. The present
writer has received several reports, from sources of indubitable
authority, of factories in which two, and even three, Council elections
were held in less than one month! Of course, this is an incidental
fact, ascribable to the environment rather than to the institution.
The Councils held their meetings during working-hours, the members
receiving full pay for the time thus spent. Usually the Council would
hold a daily meeting, and it was not uncommon for the meetings to last
all day, and even into the evening--overtime being paid for the extra
hours. Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Socialist Minister of State--a
most sympathetic observer--is authority for the statement that in
one establishment in Petrograd, employing 8,000 skilled workers, the
Factory Council, composed of forty-three men who each earned sixteen
rubles per day of eight hours, sat regularly eight hours per day.[24]
[24] _Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution_, by Emile Vandervelde,
p. 71.
To describe fully the functions of the Factory Councils would require
many pages, so complex were they. Only a brief synopsis of their most
important rights and duties is possible here. Broadly speaking, they
possessed the right of control over everything, but no responsibility
for successful management and administration. In their original form,
and where the owners still remained at the head, the Councils did
not interfere in such matters as the securing of raw materials, for
example. They did not interest themselves in the financial side of the
undertaking, at least not to see that its operations were profitable.
Their concern was to control the working conditions and to “guard the
interests of the workers.” They sometimes assumed the right to refuse
to do work upon contracts of which they disapproved. Jealous in their
exercise of the right to _control_, they would assume no responsibility
for _direction_. At the same time, however, they asserted--and
generally enforced--their right to determine everything relating to the
engaging or dismissal of workers, the fixing of wages, hours of labor,
rules of employment, and so on, as well as _the selection of foremen,
superintendents, technical experts, and even the principal managers of
the establishments_. Professor Ross quotes the statement made by the
spokesman of the employers at Baku, adding that the men did strike and
win:
They ask that we grant leave on pay for a certain period to
a sick employee. Most of us are doing that already. They
stipulate that on dismissal an employee shall receive a month’s
pay for every year he has been in our service. Agreed. They
demand that no workman be dismissed without the consent of
a committee representing the men. That’s all right. They
require that we take on new men from a list submitted by
them. That’s reasonable enough. They know far better than we
can whether or not a fellow is safe to work alongside of in
a dangerous business like ours. But when they demand control
over the hiring and firing of _all_ our employees--foremen,
superintendents, and managers as well as workmen--we balk.
We don’t see how we can yield that point without losing the
control essential to discipline and efficiency. Yet if we don’t
sign to-night, they threaten to strike.[25]
[25] _Russia in Upheaval_, by E. A. Ross, p. 277.
(2) Workshop Committees. This term was sometimes used instead of
“Factory Councils,” particularly in the case of smaller factories, and
much confusion in the published reports of the time may be attributed
to this fact. Nothing is gained by an arbitrary division of Factory
Councils on the basis of size, since there was no material difference
in functions or methods. The term “Workshop Committee” was, however,
applied to a different organization entirely, which was to be found
in practically every large industrial establishment, along with, and
generally subordinated to, the Factory Council. These committees
usually carried out the policies formulated by the superior Factory
Councils. They did the greater part of the work usually performed by
a foreman, and their functions were sometimes summed up in the term
“collective foremanship.” They decided who should be taken on and who
employed; they decided when fines or other forms of punishment should
be imposed for poor work, sabotage, and other offenses. The foreman was
immediately responsible to them. Appeals from the decisions of these
committees might be made to the Councils, either by the owners or the
workers. Like the Councils, the committees were elected by universal,
equal voting at open meetings; indeed, in some cases, only the Workshop
Committee was so elected, being charged with the task of selecting the
Factory Council.
(3) Wages Committees. These committees existed in the large
establishments, as a rule, especially those in which the labor employed
was of many kinds and varying degrees of skill. Like all other factory
organizations, they were elected by vote of the employees. Responsible
to the Factory Councils, though independently elected, the Wages
Committees classified all workers into their respective wage-groups,
fixed prices for piece-work, and so on. They could, and frequently did,
decide these matters independently, without consulting the management
at all.
(4) Committees of Arbitration and Adjustment. These seem to have been
less common than the other committees already described. Elected solely
by the workers, in the same manner as the other bodies described, they
were charged with hearing and settling disputes arising, no matter
from what cause. They dealt with the charges brought by individual
employees, whether against the employers or against fellow-employees;
they dealt, also, with complaints by the workers as a whole against
conditions, with disputes over wages, and so on. _In all cases of
disputes between workers and employers the decision was left entirely
to the elected representatives of the workers._
The foregoing gives a very fair idea of the proletarian machinery set
up in the factories under the Provisional Government. In one factory
might be found operating these four popularly elected representative
bodies, all of them holding meetings in working-hours and being paid
for the time consumed; all of them involving more or less frequent
elections. No matter how moderate and restrained the description may
be, the impression can hardly fail to be one of appalling wastefulness
and confusion. As a matter of fact, there is very general agreement
that in practice, after the first few weeks, what seems a grotesque
system worked reasonably well, or, at least, far better than its
critics had believed possible. Of course, there _was_ much overlapping
of functions; there _was_ much waste. On the other hand, wasteful
strikes were avoided and the productive processes were maintained. Of
course, the experiment was made under abnormal conditions. Not very
much in the way of certain conclusion can be adduced from it. Opponents
of the Soviet theory and system will always point to the striking
decline of productive efficiency and say that it was the inevitable
result of the Soviet control; believers in the theory and the system
will say that the inefficiency would have been greater but for the
Soviets.
That there was an enormous decline in productive efficiency during
the early part of the period of Soviet control cannot be disputed.
The evidence of this is too overwhelmingly conclusive. As early as
April, 1917, serious reports of this decline began to be made. It was
said that in some factories the per capita daily production was less
than a third of what it was a few weeks before. The air was filled
with charges that the workers were loafing and malingering. On April
11th Tseretelli denounced these “foul slanders” at a meeting of the
Petrograd Soviet and was wildly cheered. Nevertheless, one fact stood
out--namely, the sharp decline in productivity in almost every line.
There were not a few cases in which the owners and highly trained
managers were forced out entirely and their places filled by wholly
incompetent men possessing no technical training at all. An extreme
illustration is quoted by Ross:[26] In a factory in southern Russia
the workers forced the owner out and then undertook to run the plant
themselves. When they had used up the small supply of raw material
they had they began to sell the machines out of the works in order to
get money to buy more raw material; then, when they obtained the raw
material, they lacked the machinery for working it up. Of course, the
incident is simply an illustration of extreme folly, merely. Men misuse
safety razors to commit suicide with in extreme cases, and the misuse
of Soviet power in isolated cases proves little of value. On the other
hand, the case cited by Ross is only an extreme instance of a very
general practice. Many factories were taken over in the same way, after
the competent directors had been driven out, and were brought to ruin
by the Soviets. It was a general practice or, at any rate, a common
one, which drew from Skobelev, Minister of Labor, this protest, which
_Izvestia_ published at the beginning of May:
[26] Ross, _op. cit._, p. 283.
The seizure of factories makes workmen without any experience
in management, and without working capital, temporarily masters
of such undertakings, but soon leads to their being closed
down, or to the subjugation of the workmen to a still harder
taskmaster.
On July 10th Skobelev issued another stirring appeal to the workers,
pointing out that “the success of the struggle against economic
devastation depends upon the productivity of labor, and pointing out
the danger of the growing anarchy. The appeal is too long to quote in
its entirety, but the following paragraphs give a good idea of it,
and, at the same time, indicate how serious the demoralization of the
workers had become:
Workmen, comrades, I appeal to you at a critical period of
the Revolution. Industrial output is rapidly declining, the
quantity of necessary manufactured articles is diminishing, the
peasants are deprived of industrial supplies, we are threatened
with fresh food complications and increasing national
destitution.
* * * * *
The Revolution has swept away the oppression of the police
régime, which stifled the labor movement, and the liberated
working-class is enabled to defend its economic interests by
the mere force of its class solidarity and unity. They possess
the freedom of strikes, they have professional unions, which
can adapt the tactics of a mass economic movement, according to
the conditions of the present economic crisis.
However, at present purely elemental tendencies are gaining the
upper hand over organized movement, and without regard to the
limited resources of the state, and without any reckoning as
to the state of the industry in which you are employed, and to
the detriment of the proletarian class movement, you sometimes
obtain an increase of wages which disorganizes the enterprise
and drains the exchequer.
Frequently the workmen refuse all negotiations and by menace
of violence force the gratification of their demands. They
use violence against officials and managers, dismiss them of
their own accord, interfere arbitrarily with the technical
management, and even attempt to take the whole enterprise into
their own hands.
* * * * *
_Workmen, comrades, our socialistic ideals shall be attained
not by the seizure of separate factories, but by a high
standard of economic organization, by the intelligence of the
masses, and the wide development of the country’s productive
forces...._ Workmen, comrades, remember not only your rights,
but also your duties; think not only of your wishes, but of
the possibilities of granting them, not only of your own good,
but of the sacrifices necessary for the consolidation of the
Revolution and the triumph of our ideals.
In July the per capita output in the munition-works of Petrograd was
reported as being only 25 per cent. of what it was at the beginning of
the year. In August Kornilov told the Moscow Democratic Conference that
the productivity of the workers in the great gun and shell plants had
declined 60 per cent., as compared with the three months immediately
prior to the Revolution; that the decline at the aeroplane-factories
was still greater, not less than 70 per cent. No denial of this came
from the representatives of the Soviets. In Petrograd, Nijni-Novgorod,
Saratov, and other large centers there was an estimated general decline
of production of between 60 and 70 per cent.
The representatives of the workers, the Soviet leaders, said that
the decline, which they admitted, was due to causes over which the
Soviets had no control to a far greater degree than to any conscious
or unconscious sabotage by the workers. They admitted that many of
the workers had not yet got used to freedom; that they interpreted it
as meaning freedom from work. There was a very natural reaction, they
said, against the tremendous pace which had been maintained under the
old régime. They insisted, however, that this temporary failing of
the workers was a minor cause only, and that far greater causes were
(1) deterioration of machinery; (2) withdrawal for military reasons
and purposes of many of the most capable and efficient workers; (3)
shortage and poor quality of materials.
There is room here for an endless controversy, and the present writer
does not intend to enter into it. He is convinced that the three causes
named by the Soviet defenders were responsible for a not inconsiderable
proportion of the decline in productivity, but that the Soviets and
the impaired morale of the workers were the main causes. In the mining
of coal and iron, the manufacture of munitions, locomotives, textiles,
metal goods, paper, and practically everything else, the available
reports show an enormous increase in production cost per unit,
accompanied by a very great decline in average per capita production.
It is true that there were exceptions to this rule, that there were
factories in which, after the first few days of the revolutionary
excitation in March, production per capita rose and was maintained at
a high level for a long time--until the Bolsheviki secured ascendancy
in those factories, in fact. The writer has seen and examined numerous
reports indicating this, but prefers to confine himself to the citation
of such reports as come with the authority of responsible and trusted
witnesses.
Such a report is that of the Social Democrat, the workman Menshekov,
concerning the Ijevski factory with its 40,000 workmen, and of the
sales department of which he was made manager when full Soviet
control was established. In that position he had access to the
books showing production for the years 1916, 1917, and 1918, and the
figures show that under the Provisional Government production rose,
but that it declined with the rise of Bolshevism among the workers
and declined more rapidly when the Bolsheviki gained control. Such
another witness is the trades-unionist and Social Democrat, Oupovalov,
concerning production in the great Sormovo Works, in the Province of
Nijni-Novgorod, which during the war employed 20,000 persons. Not only
was production maintained, but there was even a marked improvement.
The writer has been permitted to examine the documentary evidence in
the possession of these men and believes that it fully confirms and
justifies the claim that, where there was an earnest desire on the part
of the workers to maintain and even to improve production, this proved
possible under Soviet control.
The fact seems quite clear to the writer (though perhaps impossible to
prove by an adequate volume of concrete evidence) that the impaired
morale of the workers which resulted in lessened production was due
to two principal causes, namely, Bolshevist propaganda and the lack
of an intelligent understanding on the part of masses of workers who
were not mentally or morally ready for the freedom which was suddenly
thrust upon them. The condition of these latter is readily understood
and appreciated. The disciplines and self-compulsions of freedom are
not learned in a day. When we reflect upon the conditions that obtained
under czarism, we can hardly wonder that so many of the victims of
those conditions should have mistaken license for liberty, or that
they should have failed to see the vital connection between their own
honest effort in the shop and the success of the Revolution they were
celebrating.
All through the summer the Bolsheviki were carrying on their propaganda
among the workers in the shops as well as among the troops at the
front. Just as they preached desertion to the soldiers, so they
preached sabotage and advocated obstructive strikes among the workers
in the factories. This was a logical thing for them to do; they wanted
to break up the military machine in order to compel peace, and a
blow at that machine was as effective when struck in the factory as
anywhere else. For men who were preaching mass desertion and mutiny
at the front, sabotage in the munition-works at the rear, or in the
transportation service on which the army depended, was a logical
policy. It is as certain as anything can be that the Bolshevist
agitation was one of the primary causes of the alarming decrease in
the production during the régime of the Provisional Government. On
the other hand, the Socialist leaders who supported the Provisional
Government waged a vigorous propaganda among the workers, urging them
to increase production. Where they made headway, in general there
production was maintained, or the decline was relatively small. The
counterpart of that patriotism which Kerensky preached among the troops
at the front with such magnificent energy was preached among the
factory-workers. Here is what Jandarmov says:
It is a mistake to suppose that output was interfered with,
for, to do our working-class justice, nowhere was work delayed
for more than two days, and in many factories this epoch-making
development was taken without a pause in the ordinary routine.
I cannot too strongly insist upon the altogether unanimous
idealism of those early days. There was not an ugly streak
in that beautiful dawn where now the skies are glowering and
red and frightful. I say that output was speeded up. I, as
chairman of the first Soviet,[27] assure you that we received
fifty-seven papers from workmen containing proposals for
increasing the efficiency of the factory; and that spirit
lasted three months, figures of output went well up and old
closed-down factories were reopened. _New Russia was bursting
with energy--the sluice-gates of our character were unlocked._
[27] That is, “first Soviet” at the Lisvinsk factory, about seventy
miles from Perm.
There must have been a great deal of that exalted feeling among the
intelligent working-men of Russia in those stirring times. No one who
has known anything of the spiritual passion, of sacrificial quality,
which has characterized the Russian revolutionary movement can doubt
this. Of course, Jandarmov is referring to the early months before
Bolshevism began to spread in that district. Then there was a change.
It was the old, old story of rapidly declining production:
But after the first few months the workers as a whole began to
fall under the spell of catchwords and stock phrases. Agitation
began among the lower workers. Bolshevism started in the ranks
of unskilled labor. They clamored for the reduction of hours
and down went the output. The defenders of the idea of the
shortest possible working-day were the same men who afterward
turned out very fiends of Bolshevism and every disorder. I
watched the growing of their madness and the development of
their claims, each more impossible than the last.
In the Kiselovski mines the output of 2,000,000 poods monthly
dropped to 300,000, and the foundries of Upper Serginski
produced 1,200 poods of iron instead of 2,000. Why such a fall?
The engineers wondered how workers could reduce output to such
an extent if they tried, but one soon ceased to wonder at the
disasters that followed in quick succession.
There was anarchy in the factories and a premium on idleness
became the order of the day. It was a positive danger to work
more than the laziest unskilled laborer, because this was the
type of man who always seemed to get to the top of the Soviet.
“Traitor to the interests of Labor” you were called if you
exceeded the time limit, which soon became two hours a day.[28]
[28] These extracts are from a personal report by Jandarmov, sent to
the present writer.
By September, 1917, a healthy reaction against the abuses of Soviet
industrial control was making itself felt in the factories. The workers
were making less extravagant demands and accepting the fact that
they could gain nothing by paralyzing production; that reducing the
quantity and the quality of production can only result in disaster
to the nation, and, most of all, to the workers themselves. In
numerous instances the factory Soviets had called back the owners they
had forced out, and the managers and technical directors they had
dismissed, and restored the authority of foremen. In other words, they
ceased to be controlling authorities and became simply consultative
bodies. While, therefore, they were becoming valuable democratic
agencies, the economic power and influence of the Soviets was waning.
On the day of the _coup d’état_, November 7, 1917, the Bolshevist
Military Revolutionary Committee issued a special proclamation which
said, “The goal for which the people fought, the immediate proposal of
a democratic peace, the abolition of private landed property, _labor
control of industry_, the establishment of a Soviet Government--all
this is guaranteed.” Seven days later, November 14th, a decree was
issued, giving an outline of the manner in which the control of
industry by the Soviets was to be organized and carried out. The
principal features of this outline plan are set forth in the following
paragraphs:
(1) In order to put the economic life of the country on an
orderly basis, control by the workers is instituted over all
industrial, commercial, and agricultural undertakings and
societies; and those connected with banking and transport, as
well as over productive co-operative societies which employ
labor or put out work to be done at home or in connection with
the production, purchase, and sale of commodities and of raw
materials, and with conservation of such commodities as well as
regards the financial aspect of such undertakings.
(2) Control is exercised by all the workers of a given
enterprise through the medium of their elected organs, such
as factories and works committees, councils of workmen’s
delegates, etc., such organs equally comprising representatives
of the employees and of the technical staff.
(3) In each important industrial town, province, or district
is set up a local workmen’s organ of control, which, being the
organ of the soldiers’, workmen’s, and peasants’ council, will
comprise the representatives of the labor unions, workmen’s
committees, and of any other factories, as well as of workmen’s
co-operative societies.
* * * * *
(5) Side by side with the Workmen’s Supreme Council of the
Labor Unions, committees of inspection comprising technical
specialists, accountants, etc. These committees, both on their
own initiative or at the request of local workmen’s organs of
control, proceed to a given locality to study the financial and
technical side of any enterprise.