only partly responsible for the shortage of raw materials, however.
It was only one of several causes: “On account of the disorganized
state of transportation we are unable to obtain cotton now, as the
railroads are unable to carry it here. But even as regards those raw
materials which are produced in the central parts of Soviet Russia,
such as flax, wool, hemp, hides, even in these raw stuffs Soviet Russia
is experiencing a severe crisis.” Attention is called to the enormous
decline in the production of flax, the acreage devoted to this crop
being only 30 per cent. of that formerly devoted to it and the yield
very much poorer. Rykov offers as an explanation of this condition the
fact that, as the Soviet Government had not been able to deliver to the
peasants in the flax-producing districts “any considerable quantity of
foodstuffs,” the peasants grew foodstuffs instead of flax. He adds,
“Another reason why the peasants began to cultivate grains instead
of flax was that the speculative prices of bread are higher than the
fixed prices of flax at which the state is purchasing it.” He pours the
cold water of realism upon the silly talk of huge exports of flax from
Russia as soon as trade with foreign nations is opened up, and says,
“_But we shall not be able to export large quantities of flax abroad,
and the catastrophic decline in flax production as compared with 1919
raises the question whether the flax industry shall not experience in
1920 a flax shortage similar to the one experienced by the textile
industry in cotton._”
Rykov calls attention to the decline in the production of hides for
leather and of wool. During the first six months of 1919 the hides
collected amounted to about one million pieces, but the total for the
whole of 1920 was not expected to exceed 650,000 pieces. “The number
of hides delivered to the government decreases with every succeeding
month.” There was also to be observed “a decline in the quantity of
live stock, especially those kinds which furnish wool for our woolen
mills.” But perhaps the most impressive part of his report is that
dealing with the fuel shortage. Though adjacent to large coal-fields,
as well as to vast forests, Moscow in the winter of 1919-20 lacked fuel
“even for heating the infirmaries and hospitals.” For the winter of
1919-20 the Council of People’s Commissaries had fixed the necessary
quantity of wood for fuel to be produced at 12,000,000 to 14,000,000
cubic sagenes (one cubic sagene being equal to two cubic meters). But
the Administrations which were charged with the work forwarded to the
railroads and to the rivers less than 2,500,000 sagenes. It must be
added that of these same 2,500,000 sagenes the Soviet Administrations
were not able to transport to the cities and industrial centers more
than a very small quantity, and “even the minimum program of supply of
fuel for the factories of Moscow could not be carried out because of
the lack of means of transport.”
Bad as this is, the coal-supply is in a worse condition yet. “Things
are going badly for the production of coal and petroleum” we are told.
Upon their reoccupation of the Donetz Basin the Bolsheviki found coal
on the surface, ready to be shipped, which was estimated at 100,000,000
poods. “But until the reconstruction of bridges and re-establishment
of railroad communications in the Donetz territory these coal-supplies
cannot be utilized.” Of course the havoc wrought by war in the Donetz
Basin must be taken into account and full allowance made for it. But
what is the explanation of conditions in the coal-fields of the Moscow
region, which from the very first has been under Bolshevist rule, and
never included in the territory of war, civil or otherwise? Says Rykov:
The fields of Moscow not only have not given what they ought
to have given for the fuel-supply of Soviet Russia, but the
production of coal remained in 1919 at the same level as in
1918 and it did not reach the figure of 30,000,000 poods;
whereas, under the Czar at the time of the Imperialist War, the
Czar’s officials, with the aid of prisoners of war, knew how to
increase the production of coal in the Moscow fields to the
extent of 40,000,000 poods and even more.
This brings us face to face with the most vitally important fact
of all, namely, the relatively low productivity of labor under
nationalization of industry as practised in the sorry Utopia of the
Bolsheviki. This is evident in every branch of industry. “When we
speak, in the factories and mills, of the increase of the productivity
of labor, the workmen always answer us,” says Rykov, “with the same
demand and always present us with the same complaint, _Give us bread
and then we will work_.” But the demand for bread could not be met,
despite the fact that there was a considerable store of wheat and
other flour grains. Whereas at the beginning of 1919 there was a wheat
reserve of 60,000,000 poods, on January 1, 1920, the reserve was
90,000,000 poods. Rykov admits that this is really not a great deal,
and explains that in 1919 the government had only been able to collect
about half the wheat demanded from the peasants, despite the vigorous
policy pursued. He says that “in the grain elevators there are reserves
which assure the supply for workmen and peasants for three months.”
This calculation is based upon the near-famine rationing, for Rykov is
careful to add the words, “according to the official food rations.”
* * * * *
So, the whole reserve, if fairly distributed, would last until April.
But again the problem of transportation comes in: “If the workers and
peasants have until now received no bread, and if up to this time a
food shortage exists in the greater part of the starving consuming
localities, the cause does not lie in inadequate preparations, but in
the fact that we are unable to ship and distribute the grain already
carted and stored in the granaries.” As a result of these conditions
the workers in the factories at mass-meetings “demand the breach of the
economic front of Bolshevism,” that is to say, the re-establishment of
free and unrestricted commerce. In other words, their demand is for the
abolition of the nationalization policy. It is from the _proletariat_
that this cry comes, be it observed; and it is addressed to rulers
who claim to represent the “dictatorship of the proletariat”! Could
there be more conclusive evidence that Bolshevism in practice is the
dictatorship of a few men _over_ the proletariat?
What remedial measures does this important official, upon whom the
organization of the work of economic reconstruction chiefly depends,
propose to his colleagues? All that we get by way of specific and
definite plans is summed up in the following paragraph:
The Council of People’s Commissaries has already decided to
call upon individual workmen as well as groups of them to
repair the rolling-stock, granting them the right to use the
equipment which they shall have repaired with their own forces
for the transportation of food to those factories and mills
which repair the locomotives and cars. Recently this decision
has been also extended to the fuel-supply. Each factory and
each mill now has the opportunity to carry its own fuel,
provided they repair with their own forces the disabled
locomotives and cars they obtain from the commissariat of ways
and communications.
Was ever such madness as this let loose upon a suffering people? Let
those who have dilated upon the “statesmanship” and the “organizing
genius” of these men contemplate the picture presented by the decision
of the Council of People’s Commissaries. Each factory to repair with
its own forces the disabled locomotives and cars it needs to transport
fuel and raw materials. Textile-workers, for instance, must repair
locomotives and freight-cars or go without bread. Individual workmen
and groups of workmen and individual factories are thus to be turned
loose upon what remains of an organized transportation system. Not
only must this result in the completion of the destruction of railway
transportation, but it must inevitably cripple the factories. Take
workers from unrelated industries, unused to the job, and set them to
repairing locomotives and freight-cars; every man who has ever had
anything to do with the actual organization and direction of working
forces knows that such men, especially when the special equipment
and tools are lacking, cannot perform, man for man, one-tenth as
much as men used to the work and equipped with the proper tools and
equipment. And then to tell these factory workers that they have “the
right to use the equipment which they shall have repaired” means, if
it means anything at all, that from the factories are to be diverted
further forces to operate railway trains and collect food, fuel,
and raw materials. What that means we have already noted in the case
of the decline of production in the match-factories, “owing to the
wholesale dispersing of workmen in the search for bread, to field work
and unloading of wood.”[59] Of all the lunacy that has come out of
Bolshevist Russia, even, this is perhaps the worst.
[59] _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, No. 225.
Rykov tells us that at the end of 1919 4,000 industrial establishments
had been nationalized. “That means,” he says, “that nearly the
whole industry has been transferred to the state, to the Soviet
organizations, and that the industry of private owners, of
manufacturers, has been done away with, for the old statistics
estimated the total number of industrial establishments, including
peasants’ homework places, to be around 10,000. The peasants’ industry
is not subject to nationalization, and 4,000 nationalized industrial
establishments include not only the largest, but also the greater part
of the middle-sized, industrial enterprises of Soviet Russia.”
What is the state of these nationalized factories, and are the results
obtained satisfactory? Again Rykov’s report gives the answer in very
clear terms: “Of these 4,000 establishments only 2,000 are working at
present. All the rest are closed and idle. The number of workers, by a
rough estimate, is about 1,000,000. Thus you can see that both in point
of number of the working-men employed as well as in point of numbers
of still working establishments, the manufacturing industry is also in
the throes of a crisis.” The explanation offered by Trotsky, that the
industrial failure was due to the destruction of technical equipment,
Rykov sweeps aside. “_The Soviet state, the Workers’ and Peasants’
Power, could not utilize even those lathes, machines, and factory
equipment which were still at its disposal._ And a considerable part of
manufacturing enterprises was shut down, while part is still working
only in a few departments and workshops.” On every hand it is evident
that shortage of raw materials and of skilled labor are the really
important causes, not lack of machinery. Of 1,191 metallurgical plants
614 had been nationalized. The government had undertaken to provide
these with about 30 per cent. of the metals required, but had been able
to supply only 15 per cent., “less than one-quarter of the need that
must be satisfied in order to sustain a minimum of our industrial life.”
Take the textile industry as another example: Russia was the third
country in Europe in textile manufacture, England and Germany alone
leading her, the latter by no large margin. No lack of machinery
accounts for the failure here, for of the available looms only 11 per
cent. were used in 1919, and of the spindles only 7 per cent. The
decline of production in 1919 was enormous, so that at the end of that
year it was only 10 per cent. of the normal production. We are told
that: “During the period of January-March, 1919, 100,000 to 200,000
poods of textile fabrics were produced per month; during the period of
September-November only 25,000 to 68,000 poods were produced per month.
Therefore we have to face an almost complete stoppage of all textile
production in central Russia, which dominated all the other textile
regions in Russia.”
Rykov seems to have no illusions left concerning the prospects for the
immediate future. He realizes that Bolshevism has nothing to offer
the working-people of Russia in the way of immediate improvement. He
confesses “that in regard to industry the supplying of the population
with footwear, clothing, metals, and so on, Soviet Russia is living
only one-third of the life which Russia lived in times of peace.” As to
the future he has only this to say: “Such a condition might last one
or two years, during which we might live on former reserves, thanks to
that which remained from the preceding period of Russian history. But
these reserves are being exhausted and from one day to another, from
one hour to another, we are approaching a complete crisis in these
branches of industry.”
But what of the human element in industry, the workers themselves,
that class whose interests and aspirations Bolshevism is supposed to
represent? We have already noted Rykov’s admission that the workers and
peasants lack bread and his explanation. Upon this same matter, Tomsky,
president of the Central Council of the Trades-Unions, says:
So far as food-supplies are concerned it is evident that under
the present condition of transport we will not be able to
accumulate reserves of provisions sufficiently great so that
each workman may have a sufficient ration. We must renounce the
principle of equality in rationing and reduce the latter to
two or three categories of workman’s ration. We must recognize
that making our first steps upon the road of ameliorating the
situation of industrial workers, we must introduce a system
of so-called “supply of essential occupation.” “Above all, we
will have to supply those groups of workmen who are especially
necessary to production.”
Two and a quarter years after the forcible seizure of power by the
Bolsheviki one of their “statesmen” prates to his colleagues about
making the “first steps” toward “ameliorating the situation of
industrial workers.” The leading speakers who addressed the congress
discussed at length the bearing of these conditions upon what
Trotsky called “the dissipation of the working-class”--that is, the
disappearance of the proletariat from the industrial centers. Rykov
explained that:
The crisis of skilled labor has a special importance for our
industry, because even in those industrial branches which
work for our army we make vain efforts because of the lack of
qualified workmen. Sometimes for weeks and even entire months
we could not find the necessary number of workmen skilled and
knowing the trade of which the factories and mills had such
need, in order to give to the Red Army rifles, machine-guns,
and cannon and thereby save Moscow. We experienced enormous
difficulties to find even as few as twenty or thirty workmen.
We hunted for them everywhere, at the employment bureaus,
among trades-unions, in the regiments, and in the villages.
The wastage of the most precious element which production
calls for--that is to say, skilled labor--is one of the most
dangerous phenomena of our present economic life. This wastage
has reached to-day colossal and unheard-of dimensions and
_there are industrial enterprises which we cannot operate even
if we had fuel and raw materials, because competent skilled
labor is lacking_.
That Rykov is not an alarmist, that his statements are not exaggerated,
we may be quite assured. Even Trotsky protested that conditions were
worse than Rykov had described them, and not better. While Rykov
claimed that there were 1,000,000 workmen engaged in the nationalized
factories, Trotsky said that in reality there were not more than
850,000. But how is this serious decrease in the number of workmen to
be accounted for? An insatiable hunger, idle factories, unused raw
materials, a government eagerly seeking workmen, and yet the workmen
are not forthcoming. Trotsky offers this explanation: “Hunger, bad
living conditions, and cold drive the Russian workmen from industrial
centers to the rural districts, and not only to those districts, but
also _into the ranks of profiteers and parasites_.” Kamenev agrees
with Trotsky and says that “profiteering is the enemy whom the Moscow
proletariat has felt already for some time to be present, but who has
succeeded in growing up to full height and is now _eating up the entire
fabric of the new socialistic economic structure_.” Tomsky answers the
question in a very similar manner. He says:
If in capitalistic society a shortage of labor power marks the
most intensive activity of industry, in our own case this has
been caused by conditions which are unique and unprecedented in
capitalist economic experience. Only part of our industry is at
work, and yet there is a shortage of labor power felt in the
cities and industrial centers. We observe an exodus of laborers
from industrial centers, caused by poor living conditions.
Those hundreds of skilled laborers whom we are at present
lacking for the most elementary and minimal requirements of
industry have gone partly to the country, to labor communes,
Soviet farms, producers’ associations, while another part, a
very considerable one, serves in the army. _But the proletariat
also leaks away to join the ranks of petty profiteers and
barter-traders, we are ashamed and sorry to confess._ This fact
is being observed and there is no use concealing or denying
it. There is also another cause which hurts the industrial
life and hinders a systematic organization of work. This is
the migration of the workers from place to place in search of
better living conditions. All of this, again, is the result of
the one fundamental cause--the very critical food situation in
the cities and, in general, the hard conditions of life for the
industrial proletariat.
Finally, some attention must be given to the speech of Lenin, reported
in _Izvestia_, January 29, 1920. Discussing the question whether
industry should be administered by a “collegium” or by a single
individual clothed with absolute authority, Lenin defended the latter
as the only practical method, illustrating his case by reference to
the Red Army. The Soviet organization in the army was well enough at
first, as a start, but the system of administration has now become
“administration by a single individual as the only proper method of
work.” He explains this point in the following words:
Administration by “colleges” as the basic type of the
organization of the Soviet administration presents in itself
something fundamental and necessary for the first stage when it
is necessary to build anew. But with the establishing of more
stable forms, a transition to practical work is bound up with
administration by a single individual, a system which, most of
all, assures the best use of human powers and a real and not
verbal control of work.
Thus the master pronounces the doom of industrial Sovietism. No cry of,
“All power to the Soviets!” comes from his lips now, but only a demand
that the individual must be made all-powerful. Lenin the ruler pours
scorn upon the vision of Lenin the leader of revolt. His ideal now is
that of every industrial despot everywhere. He has no pity for the
toiler, but tells his followers that they must “replace the machines
which are lacking and those which are being destroyed by the strength
of the living laborer.” That means rope haulage instead of railway
transportation; it means that, instead of being masters of great
machines, the Russian toilers must replace the machines.
What a picture of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” these
utterances of the leading exponents of Bolshevism make! Proletarians
starving in a land of infinite abundance; forced by hunger, cold, and
oppression to leave homes and jobs and go back to village life, or,
much worse, to become either vagabonds or petty profiteers trafficking
in the misery of their fellows. Their tragic condition, worse than
anything they had to endure under czarism, suggests the lines:
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
We do not wonder at Krassin’s confession, published early this year
in the _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, urging “a friendly liquidation of
Bolshevism in Russia” and declaring that: “The Communistic régime
cannot restore the life of the country, and the fall of Bolshevism is
inevitable. The people are beginning to recognize that the Bolshevist
experiment has plunged them into a sea of blood and torment and aroused
no more than a feeling of fatigue and disappointment.”
Here, then, is a picture of nationalized industry under Bolshevism,
drawn by no unfriendly or malicious critic, but by its own stout
upholders, its ablest champions. It is a self-portrait, an
autobiographical sketch. In it we can see Bolshevism as it is, a
repellent and terrifying thing of malefic might and purpose. Possessed
of every vice and every weakness of capitalism, with none of its
virtues, Bolshevism is abhorrent to all who love liberty and hold faith
in mankind. Promising plenty, it gives only famine; promising freedom,
it gives only fetters; promising love, it gives only hate; promising
order, it gives only chaos; promising righteous and just government,
it gives only corrupt despotism; promising fraternity, it gives only
fratricide.
Yet, despite the overwhelming mass of evidence, there will still be
defenders and apologists of this monstrous perversion of the democratic
Socialist ideal. We shall be told that the Bolsheviki have had to
contend against insurmountable obstacles; that when they entered into
power they found the industrial system already greatly demoralized;
that they have been compelled to devote themselves to war instead of
to reconstruction; that they have been isolated and deprived of those
things with which other nations hitherto supplied Russia.
All these things are true, but in what way do they excuse or palliate
the crimes of the Bolsheviki? When they overthrew the Provisional
Government and by brute force usurped its place they knew that the
industrial life of the nation, including the transportation system,
had been gravely injured. They knew, moreover, that it was recovering
and that its complete restoration could only be brought about by the
united effort of all the freedom-loving elements in the land. They
knew, or ought to have known, just as every sane person in and out of
Russia knew, that if they deserted the Allies in the time of their
gravest peril, and, by making peace with Germany, aided her upon the
western front, the Allies would not--could not and dare not--continue
to maintain their friendly and co-operative relations with Russia.
They knew, or ought to have known, as every sane person in and out of
Russia did, that if they tried to impose their rule upon the nation by
force of arms, they would be resisted and there would be civil war.
All these things Lenin and his followers had pointed out to them by
clear-visioned Socialists. All of them are written large upon history’s
pages.
No defense of Bolshevism has yet been made which is not itself an
accusation.
XI
FREEDOM OF PRESS AND ASSEMBLY
In 1903, after the split of the Russian Social Democratic Party
into two factions--the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki--the late Rosa
Luxemburg, in an article which she contributed to _Iskra_ (_Spark_),
gave a keen analysis of Lenin. She charged that he was an autocrat at
heart, that he despised the workers and their rights. In burning words
she protested that Lenin wanted to rule Russia with an iron fist,
to replace one czarism by another. Now, Rosa Luxemburg was no “mere
bourgeois reformer,” no “sentimental opportunist”; even at that time
she was known in the international Socialist movement as “Red Rosa,”
a revolutionist among revolutionists, one of the reddest of them all.
Hating despotism and autocracy as such, and not merely the particular
manifestation of it in the Romanov régime, she saw quite clearly,
and protested against, the contempt for democracy and all its ways
which, even at that time, she recognized as underlying Lenin’s whole
conception of the revolutionary struggle.
A very similar estimate of Lenin was made ten years later, in 1913,
by one of his associates, P. Rappaport. When we remember that it was
written a year before the World War began, and five years before the
outbreak of the Russian Revolution in March, 1917, this estimate of
Lenin, written by Rappaport in 1913, is remarkable: “No party in the
world could live under the régime of the Czar Social Democrat, who
calls himself a liberal Marxist, and who is only a political adventurer
on a grand scale.”
These estimates of Lenin by fellow-Socialists who knew him well, and
who were thoroughly familiar with his thought, possess no small amount
of interest to-day. Of course, we are concerned with the individual
and with the motivation of his thought and actions only in so far as
the individual asserts an influence upon contemporary developments,
either directly, by deeds of his own, or indirectly through others.
There is much significance in the fact that “Bolshevism” and “Leninism”
are already in use as synonyms, indicating that a movement which has
spread with great rapidity over a large part of the world is currently
regarded as exemplifying the thought and the purpose of the man,
Ulianov, whom posterity, like his contemporaries, will know best by
his pseudonym. Nicolai Lenin’s contempt for democratic ways, and his
admiration for autocratic and despotic ways, are thus of historical
importance.
There was much that was infamous in the régime of the last of the
Romanovs, Nicholas II, but by comparison with that of his successor,
“Nicholas III,” it was a régime of benignity, benevolence, and
freedom. No government that has been set up in modern times, among
civilized peoples, has been so thoroughly tyrannical, so intolerant and
hostile to essential freedom, as the government which the Bolsheviki
established in Russia by usurpation of power and have maintained thus
far by a relentless and conscienceless use of every instrumentality
of oppression and suppression known to the hated Romanovs. _Without
mandate of authority from the people, or even any considerable part of
the people, this brutal power dissolved the Constituent Assembly and
annulled all its acts; chose its own agents and conferred upon them the
title of representatives of the people; disbanded the courts of law and
substituted therefor arbitrary tribunals, clothed with unlimited power;
without semblance of lawful trial, sentenced men and women to death,
many of them not even accused of any crime whatsoever; seized innocent
men, women, and children as hostages for the conduct of others;
shot and otherwise executed innocent persons, including women and
children, for crimes and offenses of others, of which they admittedly
knew nothing; deprived citizens of freedom, and imprisoned them in
vile dungeons, for no crime save written or spoken appeal in defense
of lawful rights; arbitrarily suppressed the existing freedom of
assemblage and of publication; based civic rights upon the acceptance
of particular beliefs; by arbitrary decree levied unjust, unequal, and
discriminatory taxes; filled the land with hireling secret spies and
informers; imposed a constitution and laws upon the people without
their consent, binding upon the people, but not upon itself; placed the
public revenues at the disposal of a political faction representing
only a minority of the people; and, finally, by a decree restored
involuntary servitude._
This formidable indictment is no more than a mere outline sketch of
the despotism under which Russia has suffered since November, 1917.
There is not a clause in the indictment which is not fully sustained by
the evidence given in these pages. Lenin is fond of quoting a saying
of Marx that, “The domination of the proletariat can most easily be
accomplished in a war-weary country--_i.e._, in a worn-out, will-less,
and weakened land.” He and his associates found Russia war weary, worn
out, and weakened indeed, but not “will-less.” On the contrary, the
great giant, staggering from the weakness and weariness arising from
years of terrible struggle, urged by a mighty will to make secure the
newly conquered freedom, was already turning again to labor, to restore
industry and build a prosperous nation. By resorting to the methods
and instrumentalities which tyrants in all ages have used to crush the
peoples rightly struggling to be free, the Bolsheviki have imposed upon
Russia a tyranny greater than the old. That they have done this in the
name of liberty in no wise mitigates their crime, but, on the contrary,
adds to it. The classic words of the English seventeenth-century
pamphleteer come to mind: “Almost all tyrants have been first captains
and generals for the people, under pretense of vindicating or defending
their liberties.... Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud
than force ... with cunning, plausible pretenses to impose upon men’s
understandings, and in the end they master those that had so little
wit as to rely upon their faith and integrity.”
The greatest liberty of all, that liberty upon which all other
liberties must rest, and without which men are slaves, no matter by
what high-sounding names they may be designated, is the liberty of
discussion. Perhaps no people in the world have realized this to
the same extent as the great Anglo-Saxon peoples, or have been so
solicitous in maintaining it. Only the French have approached us in
this respect. The immortal words of a still greater seventeenth-century
pamphleteer constitute a part of the moral and political heritage of
our race. Who does not thrill at Milton’s words, “Give me the liberty
to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above
all liberties.” That fine declaration was the inspiration of Patrick
Henry’s sublime demand, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Upon that
rock, and that rock alone, was built “government of the people, by the
people, and for the people.”
The manner in which the Bolsheviki have stifled protest, discussion,
and appeal through the suppression of the opposition newspapers
constitutes one of the worst chapters in their infamous history. Yet,
strangely enough, of such perversity is the human mind capable, they
have found their chief defenders, outside of Russia, among individuals
and groups devoted to the upholding of popular liberties. Let us
take, for example, the case of Mr. William Hard and his laborious and
ingenious--though disingenuous--articles in defense of the Bolsheviki,
published in the _New Republic_ and elsewhere:
In an earlier volume,[60] written at the close of 1918, and published
in March, 1919, the present writer said of the Bolsheviki, “When they
came into power they suppressed all non-Bolshevist papers in a manner
differing not at all from that of the Czar’s régime, forcing the other
Socialist partizan groups to resort to pre-Revolution underground
methods.” The statement that the “other Socialist partizan groups”
were forced to “resort to pre-Revolution underground methods,” made in
the connection it was, conveyed to every person reading that paragraph
who knew anything at all of the history of the Russian revolutionary
struggle the information that the statement that the Bolsheviki
“suppressed all non-Bolshevist papers” was not to be interpreted
as meaning the suppression was absolute. Even if it had not been
pointed out elsewhere--as it was, upon the authority of a famous
Socialist-Revolutionist--that in some instances suppressed papers
managed to appear in spite of the authorities, simply changing their
names, _precisely as they had done under czarism_, the statement quoted
above would have been justified as a substantially correct statement of
the facts, particularly in view of the boast of responsible Bolsheviki
themselves that they had suppressed the entire opposition press and
that only the Bolshevist press remained. Certainly when one speaks or
writes of the suppression of newspapers under czarism one does not
deny that the revolutionists from time to time found ways and means
of circumventing the authorities, and that it was more or less common
for such suppressed newspapers to reappear under new names. The
whole point of the paragraph in question was that the characteristic
conditions of czarism had been restored.
[60] _Bolshevism_, by John Spargo, New York, 1919.
With a mental agility more admirable than either his controversial
manners or his political morals, by a distortion of facts worthy of his
mentors, but not of himself or of his reputation, Mr. Hard makes it
appear that the Bolsheviki only suppressed the opposition newspapers
after the middle of 1918, when, as he alleges, the opposition to the
Bolsheviki assumed the character of “open acute civil war.” Mr. Hard
admits that prior to this time there were suppressions and that “if any
paper tried not merely to criticize the Lenin administration, but to
utterly destroy the Bolshevik Soviet idea of the state, its editor was
likely to find his publishing life quite frequently interrupted.”
Now the facts in the case are as different from Mr. Hard’s presentation
as a normal mind can well conceive. Mr. David N. Shub, a competent
authority, made an exhaustive reply to Mr. Hard’s article, a reply
that was an exposure, in the columns of _Struggling Russia_. Before
reproducing Mr. Shub’s reply it may be well to set forth a few facts
of record which are of fundamental importance: _On the very day on
which the Bolsheviki published the decree on the establishment of the
Soviet power, November 10, 1917, they published also a decree directed
against the freedom of the press._ The decree proper was accompanied
by a characteristic explanatory statement. This statement recited that
it had been necessary for the Temporary Revolutionary Committee to
“adopt a series of measures against the counter-revolutionary press
of various shades”; that protests had been made on all sides against
this as a violation of the program which provided for the freedom of
the press; repressive measures were temporary and precautionary, and
that they would cease and complete freedom be given to the press, in
accordance with the widest and most progressive law, “as soon as the
new régime takes firm root.” The decree proper read:
I. Only those organs of the press will be suspended
(_a_) Which appeal for open resistance to the government
of workmen and peasants.
(_b_) Which foment disorders by slanderously falsifying
facts.
(_c_) Which incite to criminal acts--_i.e._, acts within
the jurisdiction of the police courts.
II. Provisional or definitive suspension can be executed
only by order of the Council of People’s Commissaries.
III. These regulations are only of a provisional nature
and shall be abrogated by a special ukase when
life has returned to normal conditions.
If Mr. Hard or any of the numerous journalistic apologists of
the Bolsheviki in this country will look the matter up he or
they will find that this decree copied the forms usually used
by the Czar’s government. It is noteworthy that the restoration
of freedom of the press was already made dependent upon that
czaristic instrument, the _ukase_. On the 16th of November the
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets adopted a resolution
which read:
The closure of the bourgeois papers was caused not only by
the purely fighting requirements in the period of the rising
and the suppression of counter-revolutionary attempts, but
likewise as a necessary temporary measure for the establishment
of a new régime in the sphere of the press, under which the
capital proprietors of printing-works and paper would not be
able to become autocratic beguilers of public opinion....
The re-establishment of the so-called freedom of the press,
_viz._, the simple return of printing-offices and paper to
capitalists, poisoners of the people’s conscience, would be
an unpermissible surrender to the will of capital--_i.e._, a
counter-revolutionary measure.
At the meeting when this resolution was adopted, and speaking in its
support, Trotsky made a speech remarkable for its cynical dishonesty
and its sinister menace. He said, according to the report in _Pravda_
two days later:
_Those measures which are employed to frighten individuals must
be applied to the press also...._ All the resources of the
press must be handed over to the Soviet Power. You say that
formerly we demanded freedom of the press for the _Pravda_? But
then we were in a position to demand a minimum program; now we
insist on the maximum program. _When the power was in the hands
of the bourgeoisie we demanded juridical freedom of the press._
When the power is held by the workmen and peasants--we must
create conditions for the freedom of the press.
Quite obviously, as shown by their own official reports, Mr. Hard and
gentlemen of the _New Republic_, Mr. Oswald Villard and gentlemen
of _The Nation_, and you, too, Mr. Norman Thomas, who find Mr.
Hard’s disingenuous pleading so convincing,[61] the hostility of
the Bolsheviki to freedom of the press was manifest from the very
beginning of their rule. On the night of November 30th ten important
newspapers were suppressed and their offices closed, among them being
six Socialist newspapers. Their offense lay in the fact that they urged
their readers to stand by the Constituent Assembly. Not only were the
papers suppressed and their offices closed, but the best equipped of
them all was “requisitioned” for the use of a Bolshevist paper, the
_Soldatskaia Pravda_. The names of the newspapers were: _Nasha Rech_,
_Sovremennoie Delo_, _Utro_, _Rabochaia Gazeta_, _Volia Naroda_,
_Trudovoe Slovo_, _Edinstvo_, and _Rabotcheie Delo_. The suppression
of the _Rabochaia Gazeta_, official organ of the Central Committee
of the Social Democratic Party, caused a vigorous protest and the
Central Committee of the party decided “to bring to the knowledge of
all the members of the party that the central organ of the party, the
_Rabochaia Gazeta_, is closed by the Military Revolutionary Committee.
While branding this as an arbitrary act in defiance of the Russian
and international proletariat, committed by so-called Socialists on
a Social-Democrat paper and the Labor Party, whose organ it is, the
Central Committee has decided to call upon the party to organize a
movement of protest against this act in order to open the eyes of the
labor masses to the character of the régime which governs the country.”
[61] See _The World Tomorrow_, February, 1920, p. 61.
In consequence of the tremendous volume of protest and through the
general adoption of the devices familiar to the revolutionaries under
czarism--using new names, changing printing-offices, and the like--most
of the papers reappeared for a brief while in one form or another.
But in February, 1918, all the anti-Bolshevist papers were again
suppressed, save one, the principal organ of the Cadets, formerly the
_Rech_, but later appearing as the _Nash Viek_. This paper was suffered
to appear for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained.
Mr. Shub’s article contains a detailed, though by no means full,
account of the further suppressions:
A few days after the Bolshevist coup, in November, 1917,
the Bolsheviki closed down, among others, the organ of
the Mensheviki-Internationalists, _Rabochaya Gazeta_; the
central organ of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists,
_Dyelo Naroda_; the _Volia Naroda_, published by Catherine
Breshkovsky; the _Yedinstvo_, published by George Plechanov;
the _Russkaya Volia_, published by Leonid Andreiev; the
_Narodnoye Slovo_, the organ of the People’s Socialists, and
the _Dien_, published by the well-known Social-Democrat,
Alexander Potresov.
The printing-presses which belonged to Andreiev were
confiscated and his paper, _Russkaya Volia, never again
appeared under any other name_. The editor-in-chief of
the _Volia Naroda_--the newspaper published by Catherine
Breshkovsky--A. Agunov, was incarcerated by the Bolsheviki
in the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul and this paper was
_never able to appear again, even under a changed name_.
The offices of the _Dyelo Naroda_ were for a time guarded
by groups of armed soldiers in sympathy with the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, and notwithstanding all orders
by the Commissary of the Press to cease publication, the
Socialists-Revolutionists managed from time to time to issue
their newspapers, in irregular form, under one name or another.
But the copies of the paper would be confiscated from the
newsdealers immediately upon their appearance, and the newsboys
who risked the selling of it were subjected to unbelievable
persecutions. There were even cases when the sellers of these
“seditious” Socialist papers were shot by the Bolsheviki. These
facts were recorded by every newspaper which appeared from time
to time in those days in Petrograd and Moscow.
The _Dien_ (_Day_) did not appear at all for some time after
its suppression. Later there appeared in its place the
_Polnotch_ (_Midnight_), which was immediately suppressed for
publishing an exposé of the Bolshevist Commissary, Lieutenant
Schneuer, an ex-provocateur of the Tzar’s government and a
German spy, the same Schneuer who conducted negotiations with
the German command for an armistice, and who later, together
with Krylenko, led the orgy called “the capture of the General
Headquarters,” in the course of which General Dukhonine, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, was brutally murdered
and mutilated for his refusal to conclude an armistice with the
Germans.
A few days after the _Polnotch_ was closed another paper
appeared in its place, called _Notch_ (_Night_), but this one
was just as rapidly suppressed. Again _V Glookhooyou Notch_
(_In the Thick of Night_) appeared for a brief period, and
still later _V Temnooyou Notch_ (_In the Dark of Night_). The
paper was thus appearing once a week, and sometimes once every
other week, under different names. I have all these papers
in my possession, and their contents and fate would readily
convince the reader how “tolerantly” the Bolsheviki, in the
early days of their “rule,” treated the adverse opinions of
even such leading Socialists as Alexander Potresov, one of the
founders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, who, for
decades, was one of the editors of the central organs of the
party.
The publication of G. V. Plechanov’s--Russia’s greatest
Socialist writer and leader--the _Yedinstvo_, after it was
suppressed, appeared in the end of December, 1917, under the
name _Nashe Yedinstvo_, but was closed down in January, 1918,
and the Bolsheviki _confiscated its funds kept in a bank and
ordered the confiscation of all moneys coming in by mail to its
office_. This information was even cabled to New York by the
Petrograd correspondent of the New York Jewish pro-Bolshevist
newspaper, the _Daily Forward_. The _Nashe Yedinstvo_, at
the head of which, besides George Plechanov, there were such
widely known Russian revolutionists and Socialists as Leo
Deutsch, Vera Zasulitch, Dr. N. Vassilyev, L. Axelrod-Orthodox,
and Gregory Alexinsky, was thus permanently destroyed by the
Bolsheviki in January, or early in February, 1918, and never
appeared again under any other name.
The newspapers _Dien_, _Dyelo Naroda_, the Menshevist _Novy
Looch_, and a few others did make an attempt to appear later,
but on the eve of the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty
_all_ oppositional Socialist newspapers were again suppressed
wholesale. In the underground Socialist bulletins, which were
at that time being published by the Socialists-Revolutionists
and Social Democrats, it was stated that this move was carried
out by order of the German General Staff. The prominent Social
Democrat and Internationalist, L. Martov, later, at an open
meeting of the Soviet, flung this accusation in the face of
Lenin, _who never replied to it by either word or pen_.
When the Germans, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, still
continued their offensive movement, occupying one Russian city
after another, and the Bolsheviki had reasons to believe that
they were nearing their end, they somewhat relaxed their régime
and some newspapers obtained the possibility of appearing
again, _on condition that all such newspapers, under threat
of fine and confiscation, were to print on their first pages
all the Bolshevist decrees and all distorted information and
explanations by the Bolshevist commissaries_. Aside from that,
the press was subject to huge fines for every bit of news
that did not please the eye of the Bolshevist censor. Thus,
for instance, _Novaya Zhizn_, Gorky’s organ, was fined 35,000
rubles for a certain piece of “unfavorable” news which it
printed.
However, early in May, 1918--_i.e._, _before the beginning
of the so-called “intervention” by the Allies_--even this
measure of “freedom” of the press appeared too frivolous for
the Bolshevist commissaries, and they permanently closed down
_Dyelo Naroda_, _Dien_, and _Novy Looch_, and, somewhat later,
all the remaining opposition papers, including Gorky’s _Novaya
Zhizn_, and since that time none of them have reappeared. In
spite of endless attempts, Maxim Gorky did not succeed in
obtaining permission to establish his paper even six months
afterward, when he had officially made peace with the Soviet
régime. The Bolsheviki are afraid of the free speech of even
their official “friends,” and that is the true reason why there
is not in Soviet Russia to-day a single independent organ of
the press.[62]
[62] April, 1919.
With one kick of the Red Army boot was thus destroyed Russia’s
greatest treasure, her independent press. The oldest and
greatest founts of Russian culture and social justice, such
as the monthly magazine, _Russkoye Bogatstvo_, and the daily
_Russkya Viedomosti_, which even the Czar’s government never
dared to suppress permanently, were brutally strangled. These
organs have raised entire generations of Russian radicals
and Socialists and had among their contributors and editors
the greatest savants, publicists, and journalists of Russia,
such as Nicholas Chernishevsky, Glieb Uspensky, Nicholas
Mikhailovsky, N. Zlatovratsky, Ilya Metchnikov, Professor N.
Kareiev, Vladimir Korolenko, Peter Kropotkin, and numerous
others.
Let us look at the subject from a slightly different angle: one
of the first things they did was to declare the “nationalization”
of the printing-establishments of certain newspapers, which they
immediately turned over to their own press. In this manner the
printing-establishment of the _Novoye Vremia_ was seized and used
for the publication of _Izvestia_ and _Pravda_, the latter being an
organ of the party and not of the government. Here was a new form of
political nepotism which a Tweed might well envy and only a Nash could
portray. We are at the beginning of the nepotism, however. On November
20, 1917, the advertising monopoly was decreed, and on December 10th
following it went into effect. This measure forbade the printing of
advertisements in any except the official journals, thereby cutting off
the revenue from advertising, upon which newspapers depend, from all
except official journals. This measure alone had the effect of limiting
the possibility of publication practically to the official papers and
those which were heavily subsidized. Moreover, the Bolsheviki used the
public revenues to subsidize their own newspapers. They raised the
postal rates for sending newspapers by mail to a prohibitive height,
and then carried the newspapers of their own partizans free of charge
at the public expense. They “nationalized” the sale of newspapers,
which made it unlawful for unauthorized persons to obtain and offer for
sale any save the official Bolshevist newspapers and those newspapers
published by its partizans which supported the government. The decree
forbade taking subscriptions for the “unauthorized” papers at the
post-offices, in accordance with custom, forbade their circulation
through the mails, and imposed a special tax upon such as were
permitted to appear. Article III of this wonderful decree reads:
Subscriptions to the bourgeois and pseudo-Socialist newspapers
are suppressed and will not hereafter be accepted at the
post-office. Issues of these journals that may be mailed will
not be delivered at their destination.
Newspapers of the bourgeoisie will be subject to a tax
which may be as great as three rubles for each number.
Pseudo-Socialist journals such as the _V period_ and the _Troud
Vlast Naroda_[63] will be subject to the same tax.
[63] These were organs of the Mensheviki and the Social Revolutionists.
Is it any wonder that by the latter part of May, 1918, the
anti-Bolshevist press had been almost entirely exterminated except
for the fitful and irregular appearance of papers published
surreptitiously, and the few others whose appearance was due to the
venality of some Bolshevist officials? Was there ever, in the history
of any nation, since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type made
newspapers possible, such organized political nepotism? Was there ever,
since men organized governments, anything more subversive of freedom
and political morality? Yet there is worse to come; as time went on,
new devices suggested themselves to these perverters of democracy
and corrupters of government. On July 27, 1918, _Izvestia_ published
the information that the press department would grant permits for
periodical publications, _provided they accepted the Soviet platform_.
In carrying out this arrangement, so essentially despotic, the press
department reserved to itself the right to determine _whether or not
the population was in need of the proposed publication_, whether it was
advisable to permit the use of any of the available paper-supply for
the purpose, and so forth and so on. Under this arrangement permission
was given to publish a paper called the _Mir_. Ostensibly a pacifist
paper, the _Mir_ was very cordially welcomed by the Bolshevist papers
to the confraternity of privileged journals. That the _Mir_ was
subsidized by the German Government for the propaganda of international
pacificism (this was in the summer of 1918) seems to have been
established.[64] The closing chapter of the history of this paper is
told in the following extract from _Izvestia_, October 17, 1918, which
is more interesting for its disclosures of Bolshevist mentality than
anything else:
[64] See Dumas, _op. cit._, p. 80.
The suppression of the paper _Mir_ (_Peace_).--In accordance
with the decision published in the _Izvestia_ on the 27th
July, No. 159, the Press Department granted permits to
issue _to periodical publications which accepted the Soviet
platform_. When granting permission the Press Department took
into consideration the available supplies of paper, _whether
the population was in need of the proposed periodical
publication_, and also the necessity of providing employment
for printers and pressmen. Thus permission was granted to
issue the paper _Mir_, especially in view of the publisher’s
declaration that the paper was intended to propagate pacifist
ideas. At the present moment _the requirements of the
population of the Federal Socialist Republic for means of daily
information are adequately met by the Soviet publications_;
employment for those engaged in journalistic work is secured
in the Soviet papers; a paper crisis is approaching. The Press
Department, therefore, considers it impossible to permit the
further publication of the _Mir_ and has decided to _suppress
this paper forever_.
Another device which the Bolsheviki resorted to was the compulsion of
people to purchase the official newspapers, whether they wanted them or
not. On July 20, 1918, there was published “Obligatory Regulation No.
27,” which provided for the compulsory purchase by all householders of
the _Severnaya Communa_. This unique regulation read as follows:
OBLIGATORY REGULATION NO. 27
Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns
included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is
under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of
the newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, the official organ of
the Soviets of the Northern Region.
The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on
the first demand.
Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region,
Gr. Zinoviev.
Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.
The _Severnaya Communa_, on November 10, 1918, published the following
with reference to this beautiful scheme:
To the Notice of the House Committees of the Poor:
On 20th July of the present year there was published obligatory
regulation No. 27, to the following effect:
“Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns
included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is
under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of
the newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, the official organ of
the Soviets of the Northern Region.
“The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house
on the first demand.
“Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region,
Gr. Zinoviev.
“Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.”
However, until now the majority of houses inhabited mainly by the
bourgeoisie do not fulfil the above-expressed obligatory regulation,
and the working population of such houses is deprived of the
possibility of receiving the _Severnaya Communa_ in its house
committees.
Therefore, the publishing office of the _Severnaya Communa_ brings to
the notice of all house committees that it has undertaken, through
the medium of especial emissaries, the control of the fulfilment by
house committees of the obligatory regulation No. 27, and all house
committees which cannot show a receipt for a subscription to the
newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, will be immediately called to the
most severe account for the breaking of the obligatory regulation.
Subscriptions will be received in the main office and branches of the
_Severnaya Communa_ daily, except Sundays and holidays, from 10 to 4.
After this it is something of an anticlimax to even take note of
the tremendous power wielded by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the
Press, Section of Political Crimes, which was created in March, 1918.
The decree relating to this body and outlining its functions, dated
December 18, 1917, read as follows:
THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL OF THE PRESS
1. Under the Revolutionary Tribunal is created a Revolutionary
Tribunal of the Press. This Tribunal will have jurisdiction of
crimes and offenses against the people committed by means of
the press.
2. Crimes and offenses by means of the press are the
publication and circulation of any false or perverted reports
and information about events of public life, in so far as they
constitute an attempt upon the rights and interests of the
revolutionary people.
3. The Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press consists of three
members, elected for a period not longer than three months by
the Soviet of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.
These members are charged with the conduct of the preliminary
investigation as well as the trial of the case.
4. The following serve as grounds for instituting proceedings:
reports of legal or administrative institutions, public
organizations, or private persons.
5. The prosecution and defense are conducted on the principles
laid down in the instructions to the general Revolutionary
Tribunal.
6. The sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press are
public.
7. The decisions of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press are
final and are not subject to appeal.
8. The Revolutionary Tribunal imposes the following penalties:
(1) fine; (2) expression of public censure, which the convicted
organ of the Press brings to the general knowledge in a way
indicated by the Tribunal; (3) the publication in a prominent
place or in a special edition of a denial of the false report;
(4) temporary or permanent suppression of the publication or
its exclusion from circulation; (5) confiscation to national
ownership of the printing-shop or property of the organ of the
Press if it belongs to the convicted parties.
9. The trial of an organ of the Press by the Revolutionary
Tribunal of the Press does not absolve the guilty persons from
general criminal responsibility.
Under the provisions of this body the newspapers which were appearing
found themselves subject to a new terror. An offensive reference to
Trotsky caused the _Outre Rossii_ to be mulcted to the extent of 10,000
rubles. Even the redoubtable Martov was punished and the _Vperiod_,
organ of the Social Democratic Party, suppressed. The _Nache Slovo_
was fined 25,000 rubles and the _Ranee Outre_ was mulcted in a like
amount for printing a news article concerning some use of the Lettish
sharp-shooters by the Bolsheviki, though there was no denial that the
facts were as stated. It was a common practice to impose fines of
anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 rubles upon papers which had indulged
in criticism of the government or anything that could be construed as
“an offense against the people” or “an attempt upon the rights and
interests of the revolutionary people.”
Here, then, is a summary of the manner in which the Bolsheviki have
suppressed the freedom of the press. It is a record which cannot be
equaled, nor approached, in all the history of Russia during the reign
of Nicholas Romanov II. Mr. Hard attempts to cover the issue with
confusion by asking, “Is there any government in the world that permits
pro-enemy papers to be printed within its territory during a civil
war?” and he is applauded by the entire claque of so-called “Liberal”
and “Radical” pro-Bolshevist journals. It was done in this country
during the War of the Rebellion, Mr. Hard; it has been done in Ireland
under “British tyranny.” The Bolshevist records show, first, that the
suppression of non-Bolshevist journals was carried out upon a wholesale
scale when there was no state of civil war, no armed resistance to
the Bolsheviki; that it was, in fact, carried out upon a large scale
during the period when preparations were being made for holding the
Constituent Assembly which the Bolsheviki themselves, in repeated
official declarations, had sworn to uphold and defend. The records
show, furthermore, that the Bolsheviki sought not merely to suppress
those journals which were urging civil war, but that, as a matter of
fact, they suppressed the papers which urged the contrary--that is,
that the civil war be brought to an end. The _Vsiegda Vperiod_ is a
case in point. In February, 1919, the Central Executive Committee of
the Soviets announced that it had confirmed the decision to close this
newspaper, “_as its appeals for the cessation of civil war appear to be
a betrayal of the working-class_.”
No, Mr. Hard. No, Mr. Oswald Villard. No, Mr. Norman Thomas. No,
gentlemen of the _New Republic_. No, gentlemen of _The Nation_.
There can be no escape through the channels of such juggling with
facts. When you defend the Bolshevist régime you defend a monstrous
organized oppression, and you thereby disqualify yourselves to set
up as champions and defenders of Freedom. When you protest against
restrictions of popular liberties here the red ironic laughter of the
tyrants you have defended drowns the sound of your voices. When you
speak fair words for Freedom in America your fellow-men hear only
the echoes of your louder words spoken for tyranny in Russia. You
do not approach the bar with clean hands and clean consciences. You
are forsworn. By what right shall you who have defended Bolshevism
in Russia, with all its brutal tyranny, its loathsome corruption,
its unrestrained reign of hatred, presume to protest when Liberty is
assailed in America? Those among us who have protested against every
invasion of popular liberties at home, and have at the same time been
loyal to our comrades in Russia who have so bravely resisted tyranny,
have the right to enter the lists in defense of Freedom in America, and
to raise our voices when that Freedom is assailed. You have not that
right, gentlemen; you cannot speak for Freedom, in America or anywhere
else, without bringing shame upon her.
In all the platforms and programs of the Socialist parties of the
world, without a single exception, the demand for freedom of the press
has held a prominent place. No accredited spokesmen of the Socialist
movement, anywhere, at any time, has suggested that this demand was
made with mental reservations of any kind, or that when Socialists
came into power they would suppress the publication of views hostile
to their own, or the views of parties struggling to introduce other
changes. Yet we find Lenin at the meeting of the Central Executive
Committee of the Soviets held on November 18, 1917, saying: “We, the
Bolsheviki, have always said that when we came into power we would
shut down the bourgeois newspapers. To tolerate bourgeois newspapers
is to quit being Socialists.” And Trotsky supported this position and
affirmed it as his own.
We have here only the beginnings of a confession of moral bankruptcy,
of long-continued, systematic, studied misrepresentation of their
purpose and deception of their comrades and of all who believed the
words they said, unsuspecting the serious reservations back of the
words. _Theses Respecting the Social Revolution and the Tasks of
the Proletariat During Its Dictatorship in Russia_ is, as might be
inferred from its title, a characteristic piece of Lenin’s medieval
scholasticism, in which, with ponderous verbosity, he explains and
interprets Bolshevism. Let us consider _Theses_ Nos. 17, 18, 19, and 20:
(17) The former demands for a democratic republic, and general
freedom (that is freedom for the middle classes as well),
were quite correct in the epoch that is now past, the epoch
of preparation and gathering of strength. _The worker needed
freedom for his press, while the middle-class press was noxious
to him, but he could not at this time put forward a demand
for the suppression of the middle-class press._ Consequently,
the proletariat demanded general freedom, even freedom for
reactionary assemblies, for black labor organizations.
(18) Now we are in the period of the direct attack on capital,
the direct overthrow and destruction of the imperialist robber
state, and the direct suppression of the middle class. It is,
therefore, absolutely clear that in the present epoch the
principle of defending general freedom (that is also for the
counter-revolutionary middle class) is not only superfluous,
but directly dangerous.
(19) This also holds good for the press, and the leading
organizations of the social traitors. The latter have been
unmasked as the active elements of the counter-revolution.
They even attack with weapons the proletarian government.
Supported by former officers and the money-bags of the defeated
finance capital, they appear on the scene as the most energetic
organizations for various conspiracies. The proletariat
dictatorship is their deadly enemy. Therefore, they must be
dealt with in a corresponding manner.
(20) As regards the working-class and the poor peasants, these
possess the fullest freedom.
What have we here? One reads these paragraphs and is stunned by them;
repeated readings are necessary. We are told, in fact, that all the
demands for freedom of the press, including the bourgeois press, made
by Socialists out of office, during the period of their struggle, were
hypocritical; that the demand for freedom for all was made for no other
reason than the inability of those making it to secure their freedom by
themselves and apart from the general freedom; that there was always
an unconfessed desire and intention to use the power gained through
the freedom thus acquired to suppress the freedom already possessed
by others. What a monstrous confession of duplicity and deceit long
practised, and what a burden of suspicion and doubt it imposes upon
all who hereafter in the name of Socialism urge the freedom of the
press.[65]
[65] See Kautsky, _The Dictatorship of the Proletariat_.
Let us hear from another leading Bolshevist luminary, Bucharin, who
shares with Lenin the heaviest tasks of expounding Bolshevist theories
and who is in some respects a rival theologian. In July, 1918, Bucharin
published his pamphlet, _The Program of the Communists_, authorized
by the Communist Party, of whose organ, _Pravda_, he is the editor. A
revolutionary organization in this country published the greater part
of this pamphlet, and it is significant that it omitted Chapter VII,
in which Bucharin reveals precisely the same attitude as Lenin. He
goes farther in that he admits the same insincerity of attitude toward
equal suffrage and the Constituent Assembly based on the will of the
majority. He says:
If we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, the object of
which is to stifle the bourgeoisie, to compel it to give up
its attempts for the restoration of the bourgeois authority,
then it is obvious that there can be no talk of allowing
the bourgeoisie electoral rights or of a change from soviet
authority to a bourgeois-republican parliament.
The Communist (Bolshevik) party receives from all sides
accusations and even threats like the following: “You close
newspapers, you arrest people, you forbid meetings, you trample
underfoot freedom of speech and of the press, you reconstruct
autocracy, you are oppressors and murderers.”
It is necessary to discuss in detail this question of
“liberties” in a Soviet republic.
At present the following is clear for the working-men and the
peasants. The Communist party not only does not demand any
liberty of the press, speech, meetings, unions, etc., for the
bourgeois enemies of the people, but, on the contrary, it
demands that the government should be always in readiness to
close the bourgeois press; to disperse the meetings of the
enemies of the people; to forbid them to lie, slander, and
spread panic; to crush ruthlessly all attempts at a restoration
of the bourgeois régime. This is precisely the meaning of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Another question may be put to us: “Why did the Bolsheviki
not speak formerly of the abrogation of full liberty for the
bourgeoisie? Why did they formerly support the idea of a
_bourgeois-democratic republic? Why did they support the idea
of the Constituent Assembly and did not speak of depriving the
bourgeoisie of the right of suffrage?_ Why have they changed
their program so far as these questions are concerned?”
_The answer to this question is very simple. The working-class
formerly did not have strength enough to storm the bulwarks
of the bourgeoisie. It needed preparation, accumulation of
strength, enlightenment of the masses, organization. It needed,
for example, the freedom of its own labor press. But it could
not come to the capitalists and to their governments and
demand that they shut down their own newspapers and give full
freedom to the labor papers. Everybody would merely laugh at
the working-men. Such demands can be made only at the time
of a storming attack. And there had never been such a time
before. This is why the working-men demanded (and our party,
too) “Freedom of the press.” (Of the whole press, including the
bourgeois press.)_
A more immoral doctrine than that contained in these utterances by
the foremost intellectual leaders of Russian Bolshevism can hardly be
conceived of. How admirably their attitude and their method is summed
up in the well-known words of Frederick II of Prussia: “I understand by
the word ‘policy’ that one must make it his study to deceive others;
that is the way to get the better of them.” And these are the men and
this the policy which have found so many champions among us! When or
where in all the history of a hundred years was such a weapon as this
placed in the hands of the reactionists? Here are the spokesmen of what
purports to be a Socialist republic, and of the political party which
claims to present Socialism in its purest and undiluted form, saying
to the world, “Socialists do not believe in freedom of the press; they
find it convenient to say they do while they are weak, in order to
gain protection and aid for their own press, but whenever and wherever
they obtain the power to do so they will suppress the press of all who
disagree with them or in any way oppose them.” That, and not less than
that, is the meaning of these declarations.
The Socialist Party of America has always declared for the fullest
freedom of the press, without any expressed qualifications or
reservations. Tens of thousands of honest men and women have accepted
the party’s declarations upon this subject in good faith, and found
satisfaction and joy in upholding them. No doubt of the sincerity of
the professions of loyalty to the principle of freedom and equality
for all ever entered their minds; no thought or suspicion of sinister
secret reservations or understandings ever disturbed their faith. Not
once, but hundreds of times, when unjust discrimination by government
officials and others seemed to imperil the safety of some Socialist
paper, men and women who were not Socialists at all, but who were
believers in freedom of the press, rushed to their aid. This hundreds
of thousands of Americans have done, because they believed the
Socialists were sincere in their professions that they wanted only
justice, not domination; that they sought only that measure of freedom
they themselves would aid others in securing and maintaining.
If at any time some one had challenged the good faith of the
Socialists, and charged that in the event of their obtaining control of
the government they would use its powers to cripple and suppress the
opposition press, he would have been denounced as a malignant libeler
of honest men and women. Yet here come Lenin and Bucharin, and others
of the same school, affirming that this has always been a Socialist
principle; that the Bolsheviki at least have always said they would act
in precisely that manner. What say American Socialists? The Socialist
Party has declared its support of the party of Lenin and Trotsky and
Bucharin; its national standard-bearer has declared himself to be a
Bolshevik; the party has joined the party of the Russian Bolsheviki in
the Third International, forsaking for that purpose association with
the non-Bolshevist Socialist parties and the Second International.
_Unless and until they unequivocally and unreservedly repudiate the
vicious doctrine set forth by the leading theorists of Bolshevism, the
spokesmen of American Socialism will be properly and justly open to the
suspicion that they cherish in their hearts the intention to use the
powers of government whensoever, and in whatsoever manner, these shall
fall under their control, to abolish the principle of equal freedom for
all, and to suppress by force the organs of publicity of all who do not
agree with them._
If they are not willing to repudiate this doctrine, and to deny the
purpose imputed to them, let them be honest and admit the belief
and the purpose. Silence cannot save them in the face of the words
of Lenin and Bucharin. Silence is eloquent confession henceforth.
Behind every Socialist speaker who seeks to obscure this issue with
rhetoric, or to remain silent upon it, every American who believes in
and loves Freedom--thousands of Socialists among the number--will see
the menacing specter of Bolshevism, nursling of intriguing hate and
lying treason. America will laugh such men to scorn when they invoke
Freedom’s name. Against the masked spirit of despotism which resides in
the Bolshevist propaganda America will set her own traditional ideal,
so well expressed in Lincoln’s fine saying, “As I would not be a slave,
so I would not be a master,” and Whitman’s line, so worthy to accompany
it--“By God! I want nothing for myself that all others may not have
upon equal terms.”
That is the essence of democracy and of liberty; that is the sense in
which these great words live in the heart of America. And that, too, be
it said, is the sense in which they live in the Socialism of Marx--of
which Bolshevism is a grotesque and indecent caricature. That is the
central idea of Marx’s vision of a world free from class divisions and
class strife--a world where none is master and none is slave; where all
good things are accessible to all upon equal terms, and where burdens
are shared with the equality that is fraternal.
With the freedom of the press freedom of assemblage and of speech is
closely interwoven. The foes of the freedom of the press are always and
everywhere equally the foes of the right to assemble for discussion and
argument. And the Bolsheviki are no exception to the rule. From the
beginning, as soon as they had consolidated their power sufficiently
to do so, they have repressed by all the force at their command the
meetings, both public and private, of all who were opposed to them,
even meetings of Socialists called for no purpose other than to
demand government by equal suffrage and meetings of workmen’s unions
called for the purpose of explaining their grievances in such matters
as wages, hours of labor, and shop management. Hundreds of pages of
evidence in support of this statement could be given if that were
necessary. Here, for example, is the testimony of V. M. Zenzinov,
member of the Central Committee of the Socialists-Revolutionists Party:
The Bolsheviki are the only ones who are able to hold political
meetings in present-day Russia; everybody else is deprived of
the right to voice his political opinions, for “undesirable”
speakers are promptly arrested on the spot by the Bolshevist
police. All the Socialist, non-Bolshevist members of the
Soviets were ejected by force of arms; many leaders of
Socialist parties have been arrested. The delegates to the
Moscow Congress of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists
scheduled for May, 1918, were arrested by the Bolsheviki,
yet nobody will attempt to claim that this party, which has
participated in every International Socialist Congress, is not
a Socialist Party.
It was during my stay in Petrograd in April, 1918, that a
conference of factory and industrial plants employees of
Petrograd and vicinity was held, to which 100,000 Petrograd
working-men (out of a total of 132,000) sent delegates.
The conference adopted a resolution sharply denouncing the
Bolshevist régime. Following this conference an attempt was
made in May to call together an All-Russian Congress of
workmen’s deputies in Moscow, but all the delegates were
arrested by the Bolsheviki, and to this day I am ignorant of
the fate that befell my comrades. For all I know they may have
been put to death, as a number of other Socialists have been.
Here is the testimony of Oupovalov, Social Democrat and
trades-unionist, who once more speaks only of matters of which he has
personal knowledge:
On June 22, 1918, the Social Democratic Committee at Sormovo
called a Provincial Non-Party Labor Conference for the purpose
of discussing current events; 350 delegates were present,
representing 350,000 workmen. The afternoon meeting passed
off safely, but before the opening of the evening meeting a
large crowd of local workmen who had gathered in front of the
conference premises were fired upon by a Lettish detachment by
order of the commissaries. The result was that several peaceful
workmen were killed and wounded. The conference was dispersed,
and I, being one of the speakers, was arrested. After a
fortnight’s confinement in a damp cellar, with daily threats of
execution, I was released, owing to energetic protests on the
part of my fellow-workmen, but not for long.
A Labor meeting was convoked at Sormovo by a commissar of
the People’s Economic Soviet from Moscow for the purpose of
discussing the question of food-supply. I was delegated by the
Social Democratic Party to speak at this meeting and criticize
the Bolsheviks’ food policy. _The resolution proposed by me
demanded the cessation of civil war, the summoning of the
Constituent Assembly, the right for co-operatives to purchase
foodstuffs freely._ Out of the 18,000 persons present only 350
voted against the resolution.
That same night I was arrested and sentenced to be shot. The
workmen declared a strike, demanding my release. The Bolsheviks
sent a detachment of Letts, who fired on the unarmed workmen
and many were killed. Nevertheless, the workmen would not give
in, and the Bolsheviki mitigated their sentence and deported me
to the Perm Province.
But what is the use of citing any number of such instances? When a
score, a hundred, or a thousand have been cited we shall hear from the
truculent defenders of Bolshevism that no testimony offered by Russian
revolutionists of the highest standing is worth anything as compared to
the testimony of the Ransomes, Goodes, Coppings, Lansburys, _et al._,
the human phonograph records who repeat with such mechanical precision
the words which the Bolsheviki desire the world outside of Russia
to hear. Against this logic of unreason no amount of testimony can
prevail. It is not so easy, however, to dispose of a “decree” of the
Soviet Government--for is not a “decree” a thing to be regarded as the
Mohammedan regards the Koran? Here, then, is a Bolshevist decree--not,
it need hardly be said, to be found included in any of the collections
of Bolshevist laws and decrees issued to impress the public of America
in favor of the Bolsheviki. Read, mark, and learn, and inwardly digest
it, Mr. Oswald Villard, Mr. Norman Thomas, Mr. William Hard, gentlemen
of the Civil Liberties Bureau, and you others who find America so
reactionary and tyrannical. It is taken from the _Severnaya Communa_,
September 13, 1919, and is signed by Zinoviev:
DECREE REGULATING RIGHT OF PUBLIC ASSOCIATIONS AND MEETINGS
(1) All societies, unions, and associations--political,
economic, artistic, religious, etc.--formed on the territory
of the Union of the Commune of the Northern Region must be
registered at the corresponding Soviets or Committees of the
Village Poor.
(2) The constitution of the union or society, a list of
founders and members of the committee, with names and
addresses, and a list of all members, with their names and
addresses, must be submitted at registration.
(3) All books, minutes, etc., must always be kept at the
disposal of representatives of the Soviet Power for purposes of
revision.
(4) Three days’ notice must be given to the Soviet or to the
Committee of the Village Poor, of all public and private
meetings.
(5) All meetings must be open to the representatives of the
Soviet Power, _viz._, the representatives of the Central
and District Soviet, the Committee of the Poor, and the
Kommandantur of the Revolutionary Secret Police Force.
(6) Unions and societies which do not comply with those
regulations will be regarded as counter-revolutionary
organizations and prosecuted.
This document, like so many others issued by the Bolsheviki, bears a
striking resemblance to the regulations which were issued under Czar
Nicholas II. There is not the slightest suggestion of a spirit and
purpose more generous in its regard for freedom. Nowhere is there
any evidence of a different psychology. Of course, it may be said
in defense, or extenuation if not defense, of the remarkable decree
just quoted that it was a military measure; that it was due to the
conditions of civil warfare prevailing. That defense might be seriously
considered but for the fact that similar regulations have been imposed
in places far removed from any military activity, where there was
no civil warfare, where the Bolsheviki ruled a passive people. More
important than this fact, however, is the evidence of the attitude of
the Bolsheviki, as revealed by their accredited spokesmen. From this it
is quite clear that, regardless of this or that particular decree or
proclamation, _the Bolsheviki look upon the continuous and permanent
suppression of their opponents’ right to hold meetings as a fundamental
policy_. The decree under consideration, with its stringent provisions
requiring registration of all societies and associations of every
kind, the list and addresses of all members, and of all who attend the
meetings, and the arrangement for the attendance of the “Kommandantur
of the Revolutionary Secret-Police Force” at meetings of every kind,
trades-union meetings and religious gatherings no less than political
meetings, is fully in harmony with the declaration of fundamental
policy made by the intellectual leaders of Bolshevism. _Pravda_,
December 7, 1919, quotes Baranov as saying at the seventh All-Russian
Congress: “We do not allow meetings of Mensheviki and Cadets, who in
these meetings would speak of counter-revolution within the country.
The Soviet Power will not allow such meetings, of course, just as it
will not allow freedom of the press, as there are appearing sufficient
White Guardists’ leaflets.” But let us listen once more to the chief
sophist:
7. “Freedom of meeting” may be taken as an example of the
demands for “pure democracy.” Any conscious workman who has
not broken with his own class will understand immediately that
it would be stupid to permit freedom of meetings to exploiters
at this period, and under the present circumstances, when the
exploiters are resisting their overthrow, and are fighting
for their privileges. When the bourgeoisie was revolutionary,
in England in 1649, and in France in 1793, it did not give
“freedom of meetings” to monarchists and nobles who were
calling in foreign troops and who were “meeting” to organize
attempts at restoration. _If the present bourgeoisie, which
has been reactionary for a long time now, demands of the
proletariat that the latter guarantee in advance freedom
of meetings for exploiters no matter what resistance the
capitalists may show to the measures of expropriation directed
against them, the workmen will only laugh at the hypocrisy of
the bourgeoisie._
On the other hand, the workmen know very well that “freedom
of meetings,” even in the most democratic bourgeois republic,
is an empty phrase, for the rich have all the best public
and private buildings at their disposal, and also sufficient
leisure time for meetings and for the protection of these
meetings by the bourgeois apparatus of authority. The
proletarians of the city and of the village and the poor
peasants--that is, the overwhelming majority of the population,
have none of these three things. So long as the situation is
such, “equality”--that is, “pure democracy”--is sheer fraud.
In order to secure genuine equality, in order to realize in
fact democracy for the toilers, one must first take away from
the exploiters all public and luxurious private dwellings, one
must give leisure time to the toilers, _one must protect the
freedom of their meetings by armed workmen, and not by noble or
capitalist officers with browbeaten soldiers_.
Only after such a change can one speak of freedom of meetings
and of equality, without scoffing at workmen, toilers, and
the poor. And no one can bring about this change except the
advance-guard of the toilers--that is, the proletariat--by
overthrowing the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.
8. “Freedom of press” is also one of the main arguments
of “pure democracy,” but again the workmen know that the
Socialists of all countries have asserted millions of times
that _this freedom is a fraud so long as the best printing
machinery and the largest supplies of paper have been seized
by the capitalists, and so long as the power of capital over
the press continues, which power in the whole world is clearly
more harsh and more cynical in proportion to the development
of democratism and the republican principle, as, for example,
in America_. In order to secure actual equality and actual
democracy for the toilers, for workmen and peasants, _one must
first take from capitalists the possibility of hiring writers,
of buying up publishing houses, of buying up newspapers, and
to this end one must overthrow the yoke of capital, overthrow
the exploiters, and put down all resistance on their part_.
The capitalists have always called “freedom” the freedom to
make money for the rich and the freedom to die of hunger for
workmen. The capitalists call “freedom” the freedom of the
rich, freedom to buy up the press, freedom to use wealth, to
manufacture and support so-called public opinion. The defenders
of “pure democracy” again in actual fact turn out to be the
defenders of the most dirty and corrupt system of the rule
of the rich over the means of education of the masses. They
deceive the people by attractive, fine-sounding, beautiful,
but absolutely false phrases, trying to dissuade the masses
from the concrete historic task of freeing the press from the
capitalists who have gotten control of it. Actual freedom
and equality will exist only in the order established by the
Communists, in which it will be impossible to become rich at
the expense of another, where it will be impossible, either
directly or indirectly, to subject the press to the power of
money, where there will be no obstacle to prevent any toiler
(or any large group of such) from enjoying and actually
realizing the equal right to the use of public printing-presses
and of the public fund of paper.
These are “theses” from the report of Lenin on “Bourgeois and
Proletarian Democracies,” published in _Pravda_, March 8, 1919. That
the very term “proletarian democracy” is an absurd self-contradiction,
just as “capitalist democracy” would be, since democracy is inherently
incompatible with class domination of any kind, is worthy of remark
only in so far as the use of the phrase shows the mentality of the man.
Was ever such a farrago of nonsense put forward with such solemnly
pretentious pedantry? The unreasoning hatred and shallow ignorance
of the most demagogic soap-box Socialist propaganda are covered with
the verbiage of scholasticism, and the result is given to the world
as profound philosophy. If there is any disposition to question the
justice of this summary judgment a candid consideration of the two
“theses” just quoted should suffice to settle all doubts.
In the first place, the dominant note is hatred and retaliation: In
1649 the bourgeoisie of England suppressed the right of assemblage,
and in 1793 the bourgeoisie of France did likewise. Therefore, if the
present bourgeoisie, “which has been reactionary for a long time,” now
demands that the workers guarantee freedom of meetings, the workers
will only laugh at their hypocrisy. One is reminded of the ignorant
pogrom-makers who gave the crucifixion of Jesus as their reason for
persecuting Jews in the twentieth century. Upon what higher level is
Lenin’s justification than the ignorant feeling of hostility toward
England, still found in some dark corners of American life, because
of the misgovernment of the Colonies by the England of George the
Third? Is there to be no allowance for the advance made, even by the
bourgeoisie, since the struggles of 1649 and 1793; no consideration of
the fact that the bourgeoisie of England and France in later years
have gone far beyond the standards set by their forerunners in 1649
and 1793; _that they have granted freedom of assemblage, even to those
struggling to overthrow them_? Is twentieth-century Socialism to have
no higher ideal than capitalism already had in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries? Waiving the greater question of whether or not
the claim of any class to succeed to power is worthy of attention
unless its ideals are measurably higher than those of the class it
would displace, is it not quite clear that Lenin’s appeal to “history”
is arrant demagoguery?
Consider the argument further: There is no freedom of meetings, “even
in the most democratic bourgeois republic,” we are told, because “the
rich” have the halls in which to meet, the leisure for meeting and
the “bourgeois apparatus of authority” for the protection of their
meetings. This absurd travesty of facts which are well known to all who
know life in democratic nations is put forward by a man who is hailed
as a philosopher-statesman, though his ponderous “theses” show him to
be among the most blatant demagogues of modern history, his greatest
mental gift being unscrupulous cunning. The workers lack leisure for
meetings, we are told, therefore no freedom of meeting exists--in the
bourgeois democracies. Well, what of the Utopia of the Bolsheviki, the
Utopia of Lenin’s own fashioning? Is there greater leisure for the
worker there? By its own journals we are informed that the Russian
worker now works _twelve hours a day_, but let us not take advantage
of that fact, which is admittedly due to a desperate economic
condition--for which, however, the Bolsheviki are mainly responsible.
But in the very much praised labor laws of the Russian Socialist
Federal Soviet Republic an eight-hour workday is provided for. Are
we to assume that this leaves sufficient leisure to the workers to
make freedom of meeting possible for them? Very well. To a very large
extent the eight-hour day prevails in this poor despised “bourgeois
democracy,” either as a result of legislation or of trades-union
organization. Nay, more, the forty-four-hour week is with us, and even
the _six-hour day_, in some trades. The unattained ideal of Sovdepia’s
labor legislation is thus actually below what is rapidly coming to be
our common practice. Anybody who knows anything at all of the facts
knows that the conditions here set forth are true of this country and,
to a very large degree, of England.
Is it true that freedom of assemblage is impossible in this poor old
“bourgeois democracy,” because, forsooth, the workers lack the halls
in which to meet? Is that the condition in England, or in any of the
western nations in which the much-despised “bourgeois democracy”
prevails? How many communities are there in America where meeting-halls
are accessible only to “the rich,” where they cannot be had by the
workers upon equal terms with all other people? Over the greater part
of America--wherever “bourgeois democracy” exists--our publicly owned
auditoriums, the city halls, and school halls, are open to all citizens
upon equal terms. Even where private halls have to be hired, and
stiff rents paid, it is common for the collections to cover expenses
and even leave a profit. In many of the cities the organized workers
own their own auditoriums. In England, Belgium, Denmark, and other
European countries--“bourgeois democracies” all--a great many of the
finest auditoriums are those owned and controlled by the workmen’s
organizations, and they are frequently hired by “the rich.” Finally,
wherever the government of any city has come under the control of
Socialist or Labor movements, auditoriums freely accessible to the
workers have been provided, and this obstacle to freedom of assemblage
which gives Lenin such concern has been removed. This has been done,
moreover, without descending to the level of old oppressors, and it
has not been necessary to resort to “armed workmen,” any more than to
“browbeaten soldiers” with capitalist officers to protect the freedom
of assemblage.
So, too, with the freedom of the press. In the nations where democratic
laws prevail _the workers’ press is just as strong and powerful as the
interest and will of the workers themselves decree_. If the Socialist
press in our cities is weak and uninfluential, that fact is the natural
and inevitable corollary of the weakness of the Socialist movement
itself. Was _L’Humanité_, when it was still a great and powerful
newspaper, or were the Berlin _Vorwärts_, _Le Peuple_ of Brussels,
and _L’Avanti_ of Rome, less “free” than other newspapers? Were they
less “free” than _Pravda_, even, to say nothing of the anti-Bolshevist
papers opposed to Bolshevism? True, they had not the privilege of
looting the public treasuries; they could not force an oppressive,
discriminatory, and confiscatory tax upon the other newspapers; they
could not utilize the forces of the state to seize and use the plants
belonging to their rivals; they could not rely upon the power of the
state to compel people against their will to “subscribe” to them. In
other words, the freedom they possessed was the freedom to publish
their views and to gain as many readers as possible by lawful methods;
the only “freedom” they lacked was the freedom of brigandage, the right
to despoil and oppress others.
So much, then, for the labored sophistry of the chief Talmudist of
Bolshevism and his tiresome “theses” with their demagogic cant and
their appeals to the lowest instincts and passions of his followers.
The record herein set forth proves beyond shadow of a doubt that
neither in the régime Lenin and his co-conspirators have thus far
maintained nor in the ideal they set for themselves is there any place
for that freedom of speech and thought and conscience without which all
other liberties are unavailing. These men prate of freedom, but they
are tyrants. If they be not tyrants, “we then extremely wrong Caligula
and Nero in calling them tyrants, and they were rebels that conspired
against them.” If Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Bucharin are not
tyrants, but liberators, so were the Grand Inquisitors of Spain.
XII
“THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT”
In a pamphlet entitled _Two Tactics_, published in Geneva, in 1905, at
the time of the first Russian Revolution, Lenin wrote:
Whoever wants to try any path to Socialism other than political
democracy _will inevitably come to absurd and reactionary
conclusions, both in an economic and a political sense_. If
some workmen ask us, “Why not achieve the maximum program?”
we shall answer them by pointing out how alien to Socialism
the democratic masses are, how undeveloped are the class
contradictions, how unorganized are the proletarians.... The
largest possible realization of democratic reform is necessary
and requisite for the spreading of socialistic enlightenment
and for introducing appropriate organization.
These words are worth remembering. In the light of the tragic
results of Bolshevism they seem singularly prophetic, for certainly
by attempting to achieve Socialism through other methods than those
of political democracy Lenin and his followers have “come to absurd
and reactionary conclusions, both in an economic and a political
sense.” They profess, for example, to have established in Russia a
“dictatorship of the proletariat.” In reality they have set up a
tyrannical rule over the proletariat, together with the rest of the
population, by an almost infinitesimal part of the population of
Russia. Lenin and his followers claim to be the logical exemplars of
the teachings of Karl Marx, whereas their whole theory is no more than
a grotesque travesty of Marx’s teachings.
More than seventy years have elapsed since the publication of Marx’s
_Communist Manifesto_, in which he set forth his theory of the
historic rôle of the proletariat. Thirty-seven years--more than a full
generation--have elapsed since his death in 1883. Even if it were true
that during the period spanned by these two dates Karl Marx believed
in and advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense in
which that term is used by the Bolsheviki, that fact would possess
little more than historical interest. Much has happened since the
death of Marx, and still more since the early ’seventies, when his
life-work virtually ended, which the political realist needs must take
into account. Marx did not utter the last word of human wisdom upon
the laws and methods of social progress and so render new and fresh
judgments unnecessary and wrong. No one can study the evolution of
Marx himself and doubt that if he were alive to-day he would hold very
different views from those which he held in 1847 and subsequently. Our
only justification for considering the relation of Leninism to Marxism
lies in the fact that in this and other countries outside of Russia a
considerable element in the Socialist movement, deceived by Lenin’s
use of certain Marxian phrases, gives its support to Leninism in the
belief that it is identical with Marxism. Nothing could be farther from
the teachings of Marx than the oppressive bureaucratic dictatorship by
an infinitesimal minority set up by Lenin and his disciples.
In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx used the term “proletariat” in the
sense in which it was used by Barnave and other Intellectuals of the
French Revolution, not as it is commonly used to-day, as a synonym for
the wage-earning class. The term as used by Marx connoted not merely
an absence of property, not merely poverty, but a peculiar state of
degradation. Just as in Roman society the term was applied to a large
class, including peasants, wage laborers, and others without capital,
property, or assured means of support, unfit and unworthy to exercise
political rights, so the term was used by Marx, as it had been by
his predecessors, to designate a class in modern society similarly
denied the rights of citizenship. When Marx wrote in 1847 this was
the condition of the wage-earning class in every European country.
In no one of these countries did the working-class enjoy the right
of suffrage. Marx saw no hope of any amelioration of the lot of this
class. On the contrary, he believed that the evolution of society
would take the form of a relentless, brutal process, unrestrained by
any humane consciousness or legislation, which would culminate in a
division of society into two classes, on the one hand a very small
ruling and owning class, on the other hand the overwhelming majority
of the population. He specifically rejected the idea of minority
rule: “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities,
or in the interest of minorities. _The proletarian movement is the
self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the
interest of the immense majority._ The proletariat, the lowest stratum
of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without
the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into
the air.”
Not only does Marx here present the proletarian uprising as the
culmination of a historical process which has made proletarians of
“the immense majority,” but, what is more significant, perhaps,
he presents this movement, not as a conscious _ideal_, but as an
inevitable and inescapable _condition_. In 1875, in a famous letter
criticizing the Gotha program of the German Social Democrats, he
wrote: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of
the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. This
requires a political transition stage, which can be nothing less than
the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” It is mainly upon
this single quotation that Lenin and his followers rely in claiming
Marxian authority for the régime set up in Russia under the title the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The passage cited cannot honestly and
fairly be so interpreted. We are bound to bear in mind that Marx still
held to the belief that the revolution from capitalist to communist
society could only take place when the proletariat had become “the
immense majority.”
Moreover, it is quite clear that he was still thinking, in 1875, of
dictatorship by this _immense majority_ as a temporary measure. Of
course, the word “dictatorship” is a misnomer when it is so used, but
not more so than when used to describe rule by any class. Strictly
speaking, dictatorship refers to a rule by a single individual who is
bound by no laws, the absolute supremacy of an individual dictator.
Friedrich Engels, who collaborated with Marx in writing the _Communist
Manifesto_ and in much of his subsequent work, and who became his
literary executor and finished _Das Kapital_, certainly knew the mind
of Marx as no other human being did or could. Engels has, fortunately,
made quite clear the sense in which Marx used the term “dictatorship
of the proletariat.” In his _Civil War in France_, Marx described the
Paris Commune as “essentially a government of the working-class, the
result of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating
class, the political form under which the freedom of labor could
be attained being at length revealed.” He described with glowing
enthusiasm the Commune with its town councilors chosen by universal
suffrage, and not by the votes of a single class. As Kautsky remarks,
“the dictatorship of the proletariat was for him a condition which
necessarily arose in a real democracy, because of the overwhelming
numbers of the proletariat.”[66] That this is a correct interpretation
of Marx’s thought is attested by the fact that in his introduction
to the _Civil War in France_ Engels describes the Commune, based on
the general suffrage of the whole people, as “the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat.”
[66] Kautsky, _The Dictatorship of the Proletariat_, p. 45.
Of course, the evolution of modern industrial nations has proceeded
upon very different lines from those forecasted by Marx. The middle
class has not been exterminated and shows no signs of being submerged
in the wage-earning class; the workers are no longer disfranchised and
outside the pale of citizenship; on the contrary, they have acquired
full political rights and are becoming increasingly powerful in the
parliaments. In other words, the wage-earning class is, for the most
part, no longer “proletarian” in the narrow sense in which Marx
used the term. Quite apart from these considerations, however, it
is very obvious that the theory of Lenin and his followers that the
whole political power of Russia should be centered in the so-called
industrial proletariat, which even the Bolsheviki themselves have not
estimated at more than 3 per cent. of the entire population, bears
no sort of relation to the process Marx always had in mind when he
referred to “proletarian dictatorship.” Not only is there no sanction
for the Leninist view in Marxian theory, but the two are irreconcilably
opposed.
The Bolshevist régime does not even represent the proletariat,
however. The fact is thoroughly well established that the political
power rests in the Communist Party, which represents only a minority
of the proletariat. What we have before us in Russia is not even a
dictatorship of the proletariat, but a dictatorship over an entire
people, including the proletariat, by the Communist Party. The
testimony of the Bolsheviki themselves upon this point is abundant
and conclusive. If any good purpose were served thereby, pages of
statements to this effect by responsible Bolshevist leaders could be
cited; for our present purpose, however, the following quotations will
suffice:
In a letter to workmen and peasants issued in July, 1918, Lenin said,
“The dictatorship of the proletariat _is carried out by the party of
the Bolsheviki_, which, as early as 1905, and earlier, became one with
the entire revolutionary proletariat.” In an article entitled, “The
Party and the Soviets,” published in _Pravda_, February 13, 1919,
Bucharin, editor-in-chief of that important official organ of the
Communist Party, said: “It is no secret for any one that in a country
where the working-class and the poorest peasantry are in power, that
party is the directing party which expresses the interests of these
groups of the population--the Communist Party. All the work in the
Soviet goes on under the influence and the political leadership of
our party. It is the forms which this leadership should assume that
are the subject of disagreement.” In _Pravda_, November 5, 1919, the
leading editorial says of the “adventure of Yudenich” that in the last
analysis “this ordeal has strengthened the cause of revolution and has
_strengthened the hegemony of the Communist Party_.” In the _Samara
Kommuna_, April 11, 1919, we read that “The Communist Party as a whole
is responsible for the future of the young Soviet Socialist Republic,
for the whole course of the world Communist revolution. In the country
_the highest organ of authority, to which all Soviet institutions and
officials are subordinate, is again the Communist Party_.”
Not only do we find that the Bolshevist régime rests upon the theory
of the hegemony of the Communist Party, but in practice the party
functions as a part of the state machinery, as the directing machinery,
in point of fact, placing the Soviets in a subordinate position. At
times the Communist Party has exercised the entire power of government,
as, for example, from July, 1918, to January, 1919. Thus we read in
_Izvestia_, November 6, 1919, “From October, 1917, up to July, 1918,
is the first period of Soviet construction; from July, 1918, up to
January, 1919, the second period, _when the Soviet work was conducted
exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party_; and the third
period from January this year, when in the work of Soviet construction
broad non-partizan masses participated.”
This condition was, of course, made possible by the predominance of
Communist Party members in the Soviet Government, a predominance due
to the measures taken to exclude the anti-Bolshevist parties. Thus 88
per cent. of the members of the Executive Committees of the Provincial
Soviets were members of the Communist Party, according to _Izvestia_,
November 6, 1919. In the army, while their number was relatively small,
not more than 10,000 in the entire army, members of the Communist Party
held almost all the responsible posts. Trotsky, as Commander-in-Chief,
reported to the seventh Congress, according to the _Red Baltic Fleet_,
December 11, 1919, “our Army consists of peasants and workmen. _Workmen
represent scarcely more than 15 to 18 per cent., but they maintain
the same directing position as throughout Soviet Russia._ This is
a privilege secured to them because of their greater consciousness,
compactness, and revolutionary zeal. The army is the reflection of our
whole social order. It is based on the rule of the working-class, in
which latter the party of Communists plays the leading rôle.” Trotsky
further said: “The number of members of this party in the army is about
ten thousand. The responsible posts of commissaries are occupied by
them in the overwhelming majority of instances. In each regiment there
is a Communist group. The significance of the Communists in the army is
shown by the fact that when conditions become unfavorable in a given
division the commanding staff appeals to the Revolutionary Military
Soviet with a request that a group of Communists be sent down.”
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find the party itself exercising
the functions of government and issuing orders. In _Izvestia_ and
_Pravda_, during April, 1919, numerous paragraphs were published
relating to the mobilization of regiments by the Communist Party.
From figures published by the Bolsheviki themselves it is possible to
obtain a tolerably accurate idea of the actual numerical strength of
the Communist Party. During the second half of 1918, when, as stated
in the paragraph already quoted from _Izvestia_, “the Soviet work was
conducted exclusively by the power of the Russian Communist Party,”
there was naturally a considerable increase in the party membership,
for very obvious reasons. In _Severnaya Communa_, February 22, 1919,
appeared the following:
At the session of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist
Party, on February 15, 1919, the following resolutions were
carried: Taking into account--(1) That the uninterrupted
growth of our party during the year of dictatorship has
inevitably meant _that there have entered its ranks elements
having absolutely nothing in common with Communism_, joining
in order to use the authority of the Russian Communist
Party for their own personal, selfish aims; (2) That these
elements, taking cover under the flag of Communism, are by
their acts discrediting in the eyes of the people the prestige
and glorious name of our Proletarian Party; (3) That _the
so-called “Communists of our days” by their outrageous behavior
are arousing discontent and bitter feeling in the people_,
thus creating a favorable soil for counter-revolutionary
agitation--taking all this into account, the Moscow Committee
of the Russian Communist Party declares:
(_a_) That the party congress about to be held should call
on all party organizations to check up in the strictest
manner all members of the party and cleanse its ranks of
elements foreign to the party; (_b_) that one must carry on
a decisive struggle against those elements whose acts create
a counter-revolutionary state of mind; (_c_) that one must
make every effort to raise the moral level of members of the
Russian Communist Party and educate them in the spirit of true
Proletarian Communism; (_d_) that one must direct all efforts
toward strengthening party discipline and establishing strict
control by the party over all its members in all fields of
Party-Soviet activity.
Yet, notwithstanding the inflation of party membership here referred
to, we find _Izvestia_ reporting in that same month, February, 1919,
as follows: “The secretary of the Communist Party of the Moscow
Province states that the total number of party members throughout the
whole province is 2,881.” At the eighth Congress of the Communist
Party, March, 1919, serious attention was given to the inflation of
the party membership by the admission of Soviet employees and others
who were not Communists at heart, and it was decided to cleanse the
party of such elements and, after that was done, to undertake a
recruiting campaign for new members. Yet, according to the official
minutes of this Congress, “_the sum total of the Communist Party
throughout Soviet Russia represents about one-half of one per cent.
of the entire population_.” We find in _Izvestia_, May 8, 1919, that
out of a total of more than two million inhabitants in the Province
of Kaluga the membership of the Communist Party amounted to less than
one-fifth of one per cent. of the population: “According to the data
of the Communist Congress of the Province of Kaluga there are 3,861
registered members of the party throughout the whole province.” On the
following day, May 9, 1919, _Izvestia_ reported: “At the Communist
Congress of the Riazan Province 181 organizations were represented,
numbering 5,994 members.” As the population of the Riazan Province was
well over 3,000,000 it will be seen that here again the Communist Party
membership was less than one-fifth of one per cent. of the population.
At this time various Bolshevist journals gave the Communist Party
membership at 20,000 for the city of Moscow and 12,000 for Petrograd.
Then took place the so-called “re-registration,” to “relieve the
party of this ballast,” as _Pravda_ said later on, “those careerists
of the petty bourgeois groups of the population.” In Petrograd the
membership was reduced by nearly one-third and in some provincial towns
by from 50 to 75 per cent. The result was that in September, 1919,
_Pravda_ reported the number of Communist Party members in Petrograd as
9,000, “with at least 50,000 ardent supporters of the anti-Bolshevist
movement.” This official journal did not regard the 9,000 as a united
body of genuine and sincere Communists: “Are the 9,000 upholding the
cause of Bolshevism acting according to their convictions? No. Most of
them are in ignorance of the principles of the Communists, _which at
heart they do not believe in_, but all the employees of the Soviets
study these principles much the same as under the rule of the Czar they
turned their attention to police rules _in order to get ahead_.”
On October 1, 1919, _Pravda_ published two significant circular letters
from the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the district
and local organizations of the party. The first of these called for
“a campaign to recruit new members into the party” and to induce old
members to rejoin. To make joining the party easier “entry into the
party is not to be conditioned by the presentation of two written
recommendations as before.” The appeal to the party workers says,
“During ‘party-week’ _we ought to increase the membership of our party
to half a million_.” The second circular is of interest because of the
following sentences: “The principle of administration by ‘colleges’
must be reduced to a minimum. Discussions and considerations must be
given up. _The party must be as soon as possible rebuilt on military
lines_, and there must be created a military revolutionary apparatus
which would work solidly and accurately. In this apparatus there must
be clearly distributed privileges and duties.”
The frenzied efforts to increase the party membership by “drives” in
which every device and every method of persuasion and pressure was used
brought into the party many who were not Communists at all. Thus we
find _Pravda_ saying, December 12, 1919: “The influx of many members
to the collectives (Soviet Management groups) comes not only from the
working-class, _but also from the middle bourgeoisie_ which formerly
considered Communists as its enemies. One of the new collectives is a
collective at the estate of Kurakin (a children’s colony). Here entered
the collective not only loyal employees, _but also representatives
of the teaching staff_.” _Pravda_ adds that “this inrush of the
bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie that formerly considered the Communists
as its enemies, is not at all to our interest. Of course, there may be
honest Soviet officials who have in fact shown their loyalty to the
great ideas of Communism, and such can find their place in our ranks.”
Other Bolshevist journals wrote in the same spirit deploring the
admission of so many “bourgeois” Soviet officials into the party.
In spite of this abnormal and much-feared inflation of the party
membership, _Pravda_ reported on March 18, 1920, that with more than
300,000 workmen in Petrograd the total membership of the Communist
Party in that city was only 30,000. That is to say, including all
the Soviet officials and “bourgeois elements,” the party membership
amounted to rather less than 10 per cent. of the industrial
proletariat, and that in the principal center of the party, the first
of the two great cities. Surely this is proof that the Communist Party
really represents only a minority of the industrial proletariat. If
even with all its bourgeois elements it amounts in the principal
industrial city, its stronghold, to less than 10 per cent. of the
number of working-men, we may be quite certain that in the country as a
whole the percentage is very much smaller.
Even if we take into account only the militant portion of the organized
proletariat, the Communist Party is shown to represent only a minority
of it. _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, October 15, 1919, published an
elaborate statistical analysis of the First Trades-Union Conference of
the Moscow Government. We learn that in the Union of Textile Workers,
the largest union represented, of 131 delegates present only 27, or
20.6 per cent., declared themselves to be Communists; while 94, or 71.7
per cent., declared themselves to be non-party, and 3 declared that
they were Mensheviki. Of the 21 delegates of the Union of Compositors
13, or 62.3 per cent., declared themselves to be Mensheviki; 7, or 33
per cent., to be non-party, and only 1 registered as a Communist. The
Union of Soviet employees naturally sent a majority of delegates who
registered as Communists, 45 out of 67 delegates, or 67 per cent., so
registering themselves. The unions were divided into four classes or
categories, as follows:
_Category_ _No. of _No. of Members
Delegates_ Represented_
_First_: Workers employed in
large industries 287 266,660
_Second_: Workers employed in
small industries 113 806,200
_Third_: “Mixed unions” of
Soviet employees, etc 197 204,100
_Fourth_: Intellectual workers’
unions 183 132,800
If we take the first two categories as representing the industrial
proletariat as a whole we get 1,072,860 proletarians represented by
400 delegates; in the third and fourth categories, representing Soviet
officials, Intellectuals, and “petty bourgeois elements,” we get 380
delegates representing 336,900 members. Thus the industrial proletariat
secured only about one-third of the representation in proportion to
membership secured by the other elements. Representation was upon this
basis:
_Category_ _One Delegate for
Every_
_First_: Workers in large industries 610 workers
_Second_: Workers in small industries 1,427 “
_Third_: “Mixed unions”--Soviet employees,
city employees, etc 247 “
_Fourth_: Intellectuals 237 “
With all this juggling and gerrymandering the Bolsheviki did not manage
to get a majority of out-and-out Communists, and only by having a
separate classification for “sympathizers” did they manage to attain
such a majority, namely, 52 per cent. of all delegates. If we take the
delegates of workers engaged in the large industries, the element which
Lenin has so often called “the kernel of the proletariat,” we find that
only 28 per cent. declared themselves as belonging to the Communist
Party. At the All-Russian Conference of Engineering Workers, reported
in _Economicheskaya Zhizn_ (No. 219), we find that of the delegates
present those declaring themselves to be Communists were 40 per cent.,
those belonging to no party 46 per cent., and Mensheviki 8 per cent.
In considering these figures we must bear in mind these facts: First,
delegates to such bodies are drawn from the most active men in the
organizations; second, persecution of all active in opposition to the
Bolsheviki inevitably lessened the number of active opponents among the
delegates; third, for two years there had been no freedom of press,
speech, or assemblage for any but the Communists; fourth, by enrolling
as a Communist, or even by declaring himself to be a “sympathizer,”
a man could obtain a certain amount of protection and a privileged
position in the matter of food distribution. When all these things are
duly taken into account the weakness of the hold of the Bolsheviki upon
the minds of even the militant part of the proletariat is evident.
What an absurdity it is to call the Bolshevist régime a dictatorship
of the proletariat, even if we accept the narrow use of this term upon
which the Bolsheviki insist and omit all except about 5 per cent.
of the peasantry, a class which comprises 85 per cent. of the entire
population. It is a dictatorship by the Communist Party, a political
faction which, according to its own figures, had in its membership in
March, 1919, about one-half of one per cent. of the population--or,
roughly, one and a half per cent. of the adult population entitled
to vote under the universal franchise introduced by the Provisional
Government; a party which, after a period of confessedly dangerous
inflation by the inclusion of non-proletarian elements in exceedingly
large numbers, had in March of this year, in the greatest industrial
center, a membership amounting to less than 10 per cent. of the
number of working-men. To say that Soviet Russia is governed by the
proletariat is, in the face of these figures, a grotesque and stupid
misstatement.
XIII
STATE COMMUNISM AND LABOR CONSCRIPTION
Many of the most influential critics of modern Socialism have argued
that the realization of its program must inevitably require a complete
and intolerable subjection of the individual to an all-powerful,
bureaucratic state. They have contended that Socialism in practice
would require the organization of the labor forces of the nation upon
military lines; that the right of the citizen to select his or her own
occupation subject only to economic laws, and to leave one job for
another at will, would have to be denied and the sole authority of
the state established in such matters as the assignment of tasks, the
organization and direction of industry.
Writers like Yves Guyot, Eugene Richter, Herbert Spencer, Huxley,
Goldwin Smith, and many others, have emphasized this criticism and
assailed Socialism as the foe of individual freedom. Terrifying
pictures have been drawn of the lot of the workers in such a society;
their tasks assigned to them by some state authority, their hours of
labor, and their remuneration similarly controlled, with no freedom of
choice or right of change of occupation. Just as under the _adscriptio
glebæ_ of feudalism the worker was bound to the soil, so, these
hostile critics of Socialism have argued, must the workers be bound
to bureaucratically set tasks under Socialism. Just as, immediately
prior to the breaking up of the Roman Empire, workers were thus bound
to certain kinds of work and, moreover, to train their children to the
same work, so, we have been told a thousand times, it must necessarily
be in a Socialist state.
Of course all responsible Socialists have repudiated these fantastic
caricatures of Socialism. They have uniformly insisted that Socialism
is compatible with the highest individualism; that it affords the
basis for a degree of personal freedom not otherwise obtainable.
They have laughed to scorn the idea of a system which gave to the
state the power to assign each man or woman his or her task. Every
Socialist writer has insisted that the selection of occupation, for
example, must be personal and free, and has assailed the idea of a
regimentation or militarization of labor, pointing out that this would
never be tolerated by a free democracy; that it was only possible in a
despotic state, undemocratic, and not subject to the will and interest
of the people. Many of the most brilliant and convincing pages of the
great literature of modern international Socialism are devoted to its
exoneration from this charge, particular attention being given to the
anti-statist character of the Socialist movement and to the natural
antagonism of democracy to centralization and bureaucracy.
It is a significant fact that from the middle of the nineteenth
century right down to the present day the extreme radical left wing
of the Socialist movement in every country has been bitter in its
denunciation of those Socialists who assumed the continued existence
of the state, rivaling the most extreme individualists in abuse of
“the tyranny of the state.” Without a single noteworthy exception
the leaders of the radical left wing of the movement have been
identified with those revolts against “statism” which have manifested
themselves in the agitations for decentralized autonomy. They have been
anti-parliamentarians and direct-actionists almost to a man.
By a strange irony of history it has remained for the self-styled
Marxian Socialists of Russia, the Bolsheviki, who are so much more
Marxist than Marx himself, to give to the criticism we are discussing
the authority of history. They have lifted it from the shadowy regions
of fantastic speculation to the almost impregnable and unassailable
ground of established law and practice. The Code of Labor Laws of
Soviet Russia, recently published in this country by the official
bureau of the Russian Soviet Government, can henceforth be pointed
to by the enemies of social democracy as evidence of the truth of
the charge that Socialism aims to reduce mankind to a position of
hopeless servitude. Certainly no freedom-loving man or woman would
want to exchange life under capitalism, with all its drawbacks and
disadvantages, for the despotic, bureaucratic régime clearly indicated
in this most remarkable collection of laws.
As we have seen, Lenin and his followers were anti-statists. Once
in the saddle they set up a powerful state machine and began to
apotheosize the state. Not only did the term “Soviet State” come into
quite general use in place of “Soviet Power”; what is still more
significant is the special sanctity with which they endowed the state.
In this they go as far as Hegel, though they do not use his spiritual
terminology. The German philosopher saw the state as “the Divine Will
embodied in the human will,” as “Reason manifested,” and as “the
Eternal personified.” Upon that conception the Prussian-German ideal
of the state was based. That the state must be absolute, its authority
unquestioned, is equally the basic conception upon which the Bolshevist
régime rests. In no modern nation, not even the Germany of Bismarck
and Wilhelm II, has the authority of the state been so comprehensive,
so wholly dependent upon force or more completely independent of the
popular will. Notwithstanding the revolutionary ferment of the time,
so arrogantly confident have the self-constituted rulers become that
we find Zinoviev boasting, “Were we to publish a decree ordering the
entire population of Petrograd, under fifty years of age, to present
themselves on the field of Mars to receive twenty-five birch rods, we
are certain that 75 per cent. would obediently form a queue, and the
remaining 25 per cent. would bring medical certificates exempting them
from the flogging.”
It is interesting to note in the writings of Lenin the Machiavellian
manner in which, even before the _coup d’état_ of November, 1917,
he began to prepare the minds of his followers for the abandonment
of anti-statism. Shortly before that event he published a leaflet
entitled, “Shall the Bolsheviki Remain in Power?” In this leaflet he
pointed out that the Bolsheviki had preached the destruction of the
state _only because, and so long as, the state was in the possession
of the master class_. He asked why they should continue to do this
after they themselves had taken the helm. The state, he argued, is
the organized rule of a privileged minority class, and the Bolsheviki
must use the enemy’s machinery and substitute their minority. Here we
have revealed the same vicious and unscrupulous duplicity, the same
systematic, studied deception, as in such matters as freedom of speech
and press, equal suffrage, and the convocation of the Constituent
Assembly--a fundamental principle so long as the party was in revolt,
anti-statism was to be abandoned the moment the power to give it
effect was secured. Other Socialists had been derided and bitterly
denounced by the Bolsheviki for preaching the “bourgeois doctrine”
of controlling and using the machinery of the state; nothing but the
complete destruction of the state and its machinery would satisfy their
revolutionary minds. But with their first approach to power the tune is
changed and possession and use of the machinery of the state are held
to be desirable and even essential.
For what is this possession of the power and machinery of the state
desired? For no constructive purpose of any sort or kind whatever, if
we may believe Lenin, but only for destruction and oppression. In his
little book, _The State and the Revolution_, written in September,
1917, he says: “As the state is only a transitional institution
which we must use in the revolutionary struggle _in order forcibly
to crush our opponents_, it is a pure absurdity to speak of a Free
People’s State. While the proletariat still needs the state, _it does
not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of
crushing its antagonists_.” Here, then, is the brutal doctrine of
the state as an instrument of coercion and repression which the arch
Bolshevist acknowledges; a doctrine differing from that of Treitschke
and other Prussians only in its greater brutality. The much-discussed
Code of Labor Laws of the Soviet Government, with its elaborate
provisions for a permanent conscription of labor upon an essentially
military basis, is the logical outcome of the Bolshevist conception of
the state.
The statement has been made by many of the apologists of the Bolsheviki
that the conscription of labor, which has been so unfavorably commented
upon in the western nations, is a temporary measure only, introduced
because of the extraordinary conditions prevailing. It has been stated,
by Mr. Lincoln Eyre among others, that it was adopted on the suggestion
of Mr. Royal C. Keely, an American engineer who was employed by Lenin
to make an expert report upon Russia’s economic position and outlook,
and whose report, made in January of this year, is known to have been
very unfavorable. A brief summary of the essential facts will show (1)
that the Bolsheviki had this system in mind from the very first, and
(2) that quite early they began to make tentative efforts to introduce
it.