Assembly and demanded that that body adopt a document which would
virtually amount to a complete abdication of its functions, that
document contained a clause--Article II, Paragraph 4--which read as
follows: “To enforce general compulsory labor, in order to destroy the
class of parasites, and to reorganize the economic life.” In April,
1918, Lenin wrote:
The delay in introducing obligatory labor service is another
proof that the most urgent problem is precisely the preparatory
organization work which, on one hand, should definitely
secure our gains, and which, on the other hand, is necessary
to prepare the campaign to “surround capital” and to “compel
its surrender.” _The introduction of obligatory labor service
should be started immediately, but it should be introduced
gradually and with great caution, testing every step by
practical experience, and, of course, introducing first of all
obligatory labor service for the rich._ The introduction of
a labor record-book and a consumption-budget record-book for
every bourgeois, including the village bourgeois, would be a
long step forward toward a complete “siege” of the enemy and
toward the creation of a really _universal_ accounting and
control over production and distribution.[67]
[67] _The Soviets at Work_, p. 19
Some idea of the extent to which the principle of compulsory labor was
applied to the bourgeoisie, as suggested by Lenin, can be gathered
from the numerous references to the subject in the official Bolshevist
press, especially in the late summer and early autumn of 1918. The
extracts here cited are entirely typical: as early as April 17,
1918, _Izvestia_ published a report by Larine, one of the People’s
Commissaries, on the government of Moscow, in which he said: “A
redistribution of manual labor must be made by an organized autonomous
government composed of workers; compulsory labor for workmen must
be prohibited; it would subject the proletariat to the peasants and
on the whole could be of no use, seeing the general stoppage of all
labor. Compulsion can be used only for those who have no need to work
for their living--members of heretofore ruling classes.” _Bednota_, an
official organ of the Communist Party, on September 20, 1918, published
an interesting item from the Government of Smolensk, saying: “We shall
soon have a very interesting community: we are bringing together
all the landed proprietors of the district, are assigning them one
property, supplying them with the necessary inventory, and making them
work. Come and see this miracle! It is evident that this community is
strictly guarded. The affair seems to promise well.”
Here are seven typical news items from four issues of _Bednota_, the
date of the paper being given after each item:
_The mobilization of the bourgeoisie._--In the Government of
Aaratov the bourgeoisie is mobilized. The women mend the sacks,
the men clear the ruins from a big fire. In the Government of
Samara the bourgeois from 18 to 50 years of age, not living
from the results of their labor, are also called up. (September
19, 1918.)
VIATKA, _24th September_.--The mobilization of the idlers
(bourgeois) has been decided. (September 26, 1918.)
NEVEL, _26th September_.--The executive committee has decreed
the mobilization of the bourgeoisie in town and country. All
the bourgeois in fit state to work are obliged to do forced
labor without remuneration. (September 27, 1918.)
KOSTROMA, _26th September_.--The mobilized bourgeoisie is
working at the paving of the streets. (September 27, 1918.)
The executive committee of the Soviet of the Government of
Moscow has decided to introduce in all the districts the use
of forced labor for all persons from 18 to 50 years of age,
belonging to the non-working class. (September 27, 1918.)
VORONEGE, _28th September_.--The poverty committee has
decided to call up all the wealthy class for communal work
(ditch-making, draining the marshes, etc.). (September 29,
1918.)
SVOTSCHEVKA, _28th September_.--The concentration of the
bourgeoisie is being proceeded with and the transfer of the
poor into commodious and healthy dwellings. The bourgeois is
cleaning the streets. (September 29, 1918.)
From other Bolshevist journals a mass of similar information might
be cited. Thus _Goloss Krestianstva_, October 1, 1918, said:
“_Mobilization of the parasites._--Odoeff, 28th September.--The
Soviet of the district has mobilized the bourgeoisie, the priests,
and other parasites for public works: repairing the pavements,
cleaning the pools, and so on.” On October 6, 1918, _Pravda_ reported:
“Chembar.--The bourgeoisie put to compulsory work is repairing the
pavements and the roads.” On October 11th the same paper reported
Zinoviev as saying, in a speech: “If you come to Petrograd you will
see scores of bourgeoisie laying the pavement in the courtyard of the
Smolny.... I wish you could see how well they unload coal on the Neva
and clean the barracks.” _Izvestia_, October 19, 1918, published this:
“Orel.--To-day the Orel bourgeoisie commenced compulsory work to which
it was made liable. Parties of the bourgeoisie, thus made to work, are
cleaning the streets and squares from rubbish and dirt.” The _Krasnaya
Gazeta_, October 16, 1918, said, “Large forces of mobilized bourgeoisie
have been sent to the front to do trench work.” Finally, the last-named
journal on November 6, 1918, said: “The District Extraordinary
Commission (Saransk) has organized a camp of concentration for the
local bourgeoisie and _kulaki_.[68] The duties of the confined shall
consist in keeping clean the town of Saransk. The existence of the camp
will be maintained at the expense of the same bourgeoisie.”
[68] _i.e._, “close-fists.”
That a great and far-reaching social revolution should deny to the
class overthrown the right to live in idleness is neither surprising
nor wrong. A Socialist revolution could not do other than insist that
no person able to work be entitled to eat without rendering some useful
service to society. No Socialist will criticize the Bolsheviki for
requiring work from the bourgeoisie. What is open to criticism and
condemnation is the fact that compulsory labor for the bourgeoisie
was not a measure of socialization, but of stupid vengeance. The
bourgeois members of society were not placed upon an equality with
other citizens and told that they must share the common lot and give
service for bread. Instead of that, they were made a class apart and
set to the performance of tasks selected only to degrade and humiliate
them. In almost every reference to the subject appearing in the
official Bolshevist press we observe that the bourgeoisie--the class
comprising the organizers of industry and business and almost all the
technical experts in the country--was set to menial tasks which the
most illiterate and ignorant peasants could better do. Just as high
military officers were set to digging trenches and cleaning latrines,
so the civilian bourgeoisie were set to cleaning streets, removing
night soil, and draining ditches, and not even given a chance to render
the vastly greater services they were capable of, in many instances;
services, moreover, of which the country was in dire need. A notable
example of this stupidity was when the advocates of Saratov asked the
local Soviet authorities to permit them to open up an idle soap-factory
to make soap, of which there was a great scarcity. The reply given was
that “_the bourgeoisie could not be suffered to be in competition with
the working-class_.” Not only was this a brutal policy, in view of the
fact that the greater part of the bourgeoisie had been loyal to the
March Revolution; it was as stupid and short-sighted as it was brutal,
for it did not, and could not, secure the maximum services of which
these elements were capable. It is quite clear that, instead of being
dominated by the generous idealism of Socialism, they were mastered by
hatred and a passion for revenge.
Of course the policy pursued toward the bourgeoisie paved the way,
as Lenin intended it to do, for the introduction of the principle of
compulsory labor in general. By pandering to the lowest instincts and
motives of the unenlightened masses, causing them to rejoice at the
enslavement of the formerly rich and powerful, as well as those only
moderately well-to-do, Lenin and his satellites knew well that they
were surely undermining the moral force of those who rejoiced, so
that later they would be incapable of strong resistance against the
application of the same tyranny to themselves. The publication of the
Code of Labor Laws, in 1919, was the next step. This code contains 193
regulations with numerous explanatory notes, with all of which the
ordinary workman, who is a conscript in the fullest sense of the word,
is presumed to be familiar. Only a few of its outstanding features
can be noted here. The principle of compulsion and the extent of its
application are stated in the first article of the Code:
ARTICLE I
_On Compulsory Labor_
1. All citizens of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
Republic, with the exceptions stated in Section 2 and 3, shall
be subject to compulsory labor.
2. The following persons shall be exempt from compulsory labor:
(_a_) Persons under 16 years of age;
(_b_) All persons over 50 years;
(_c_) Persons who have become incapacitated by injury or
illness.
3. Temporarily exempt from compulsory labor are:
(_a_) Persons who are temporarily incapacitated owing to
illness or injury, for a period necessary for their recovery.
(_b_) Women, for a period of 8 weeks before and 8 weeks after
confinement.
4. All students shall be subject to compulsory labor at the
schools.
5. The fact of permanent or temporary disability shall be
certified after a medical examination by the Bureau of Medical
Survey in the city, district or province, by accident insurance
office or agencies representing the former, according to the
place of residence of the person whose disability is to be
certified.
_Note I._ The rules on the method of examination of disabled
workmen are appended hereto.
_Note II._ Persons who are subject to compulsory labor and
are not engaged in useful public work may be summoned by the
local Soviets for the execution of public work, on conditions
determined by the Department of Labor in agreement with the
local Soviets of trades-unions.
6. Labor may be performed in the form of:
(_a_) Organized co-operation;
(_b_) Individual personal service;
(_c_) Individual special jobs.
7. Labor conditions in government (Soviet) establishments shall
be regulated by tariff rules approved by the Central Soviet
authorities through the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
8. Labor conditions in all establishments (Soviet,
nationalized, public, and private) shall be regulated by
tariff rules drafted by the trades-unions, in agreement with
the directors or owners of establishments and enterprises, and
approved by the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
_Note._ In cases where it is impossible to arrive at an
understanding with the directors or owners of establishments
or enterprises, the tariff rules shall be drawn up by the
trades-unions and submitted for approval to the People’s
Commissariat of Labor.
9. Labor in the form of individual personal service or in the
form of individual special jobs shall be regulated by tariff
rules drafted by the respective trades-unions and approved by
the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
It will be observed that this subjection to labor conscription
applies to “all citizens” except for certain exempted classes. Women,
therefore, are equally liable with men, except for a stated period
before and after childbirth. It will also be observed that apparently
a great deal of control is exercised by the trades-unions. We must
bear in mind, however, at every point, that the trades-unions in
Soviet Russia are not free and autonomous organs of the working-class.
A free trades-union--that is, a trades-union wholly autonomous and
independent of government control, _does not exist in Russia_. The
actual status of Russian trades-unions is set forth in the resolution
adopted at the ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, in March,
1920, which provides, that “All decisions of the All-Russian Central
Soviet of Trades-Unions concerning the conditions and organization
of labor are obligatory for all trades-unions and the members of the
Communist Party who are employed in them, and _can be canceled only by
the Central Committee of the Party_.” The hierarchy of the Communist
Party is supreme, the trades-unions, the co-operatives, and the Soviet
Government itself being subordinate to it.
Article II deals with the manner in which the compulsion to labor is to
be enforced. Paragraph 16 of this article provides that “the assignment
of wage-earners to work shall be carried out through the Departments
of Labor Distribution.” Paragraph 24 reads as follows: “_An unemployed
person has no right to refuse an offer of work at his vocation_,
provided the working conditions conform with the standards fixed by the
respective tariff regulations, or in the absence of the same by the
trades-unions.” Paragraphs 27 to 30, inclusive, show the extraordinary
power of the Departments of Labor Distribution over the workers:
27. Whenever workers are required for work outside of their
district, a roll-call of the unemployed registered in the
Department of Labor Distribution shall take place, to ascertain
who are willing to go; if a sufficient number of such should
not be found, _the Department of Labor Distribution shall
assign the lacking number from among the unemployed in the
order of their registration_, provided that those who have
dependents must not be given preference before single persons.
28. If in the Departments of Labor Distribution, within the
limits of the district, there be no workmen meeting the
requirements, the District Exchange Bureau has the right, upon
agreement with the respective trades-union, to send unemployed
of another class approaching as nearly as possible the trade
required.
29. An unemployed person who is offered work outside his
vocation shall be obliged to accept it, on the understanding,
if he so wishes, that this be only temporary, until he receives
work at his vocation.
30. A wage-earner who is working outside his specialty, and
who has stated his wish that this be only temporary, shall
retain his place on the register on the Department of Labor
Distribution until he gets work at his vocation.
It is quite clear from the foregoing that the Department of Labor
Distribution can arbitrarily compel a worker to leave a job satisfying
to him or her and to accept another job and remain at it until given
permission to leave. The worker may be compelled by this power to
leave a desirable job and take up a different line of work, or even to
move to some other locality. It is hardly possible to imagine a device
more effective in liquidating personal grudges or effecting political
pressure. One has only to face the facts of life squarely in order
to recognize the potentiality for evil embodied in this system. What
is there to prevent the Soviet official removing the “agitator,” the
political opponent, for “the good of the party”? What man wants his
sister or daughter to be subject to the menace of such power in the
hands of unscrupulous officials? There is not the slightest evidence
in the record of Bolshevism so far as it has been tried in Russia to
warrant the assumption that only saints will ever hold office in the
Departments of Labor Distribution.
Article V governs the withdrawal of wage-earners from jobs which
do not satisfy them. Paragraph 51 of this article clearly provides
that a worker can only be permitted to resign if his reasons are
approved by what is described as the “respective organ of workmen’s
self-government.” Paragraph 52 provides that if the resignation is
not approved by this authority “the wage-earner must remain at work,
but may appeal from the decision of the committee to the respective
professional unions.” Provision is made for fixing the remuneration of
labor by governmental authority. Article VI, Paragraph 55, provides
that “the remuneration of wage-earners for work in enterprises,
establishments, and institutions employing paid labor ... shall be
fixed by tariffs worked out for each kind of labor.” Paragraph 57
provides that “in working out the tariff rates and determining the
standard remuneration rates, all the wage-earners of a trade shall
be divided into groups and categories and a definite standard of
remuneration shall be fixed for each of them.” Paragraph 58 provides
that “the standard of remuneration fixed by the tariff rates must be at
least sufficient to cover the minimum living expenses _as determined
by the People’s Commissariat of Labor_ for each district of the
Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.” Paragraph 60 provides
that “the remuneration of each wage-earner shall be determined by his
classification in a definite group and category.” Paragraph 61, with an
additional note, explains the method of thus classifying wage-earners.
“Valuation commissions” are established by the “professional
organizations” and their procedure is absolutely determined by the
local Soviet official called the Commissariat of Labor. If a worker
receives more than the standard remuneration fixed, “irrespective of
the pretext and form under which it might be offered and whether it
be paid in only one or in several places of employment”--Paragraph
65--the excess amount so received may be deducted from his next wages,
according to Paragraph 68.
The amount of work to be performed each day is arbitrarily assigned.
Thus, Article VIII, Paragraph 114, provides that “every wage-earner
must during a normal working-day and under normal working conditions
perform the standard amount of work fixed for the category and group in
which he is enrolled.” According to Paragraph 118 of the same article,
“a wage-earner systematically producing less than the fixed standard
may be transferred by decision of the proper valuation commission to
other work in the same group and category, or to a lower group or
category, with a corresponding reduction of wages.” If it is judged
that his failure to maintain the normal output is due to lack of good
faith and to negligence, he may be discharged without notice.
An appendix to Section 80 provides that every wage-earner must carry
a labor booklet. The following description of this booklet shows how
thoroughly registered and controlled labor is in Sovdepia:
1. Every citizen of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
Republic, upon assignment to a definite group and category
(Section 62 of the present Code), shall receive, free of
charge, a labor booklet.
_Note._ The form of the labor booklets shall be worked out by
the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
2. Each wage-earner, on entering the employment of an
enterprise, establishment, or institution employing paid labor,
shall present his labor booklet to the management thereof, and
on entering the employment of a private individual--to the
latter.
_Note._ A copy of the labor booklet shall be kept by the
management of the enterprise, establishment, institution, or
private individual by whom the wage-earner is employed.
3. All work performed by a wage-earner during the normal
working-day as well as piece-work or overtime work, and all
payments received by him as a wage-earner (remuneration in
money or in kind, subsidies from the unemployment and hospital
funds), must be entered in his labor booklet.
_Note._ In the labor booklet must also be entered the leaves of
absence and sick-leave of the wage-earner, as well as the fines
imposed on him during and on account of his work.
4. Each entry in the labor booklet must be dated and signed by
the person making the entry, and also by the wage-earner (if
the latter is literate), who thereby certifies the correctness
of the entry.
5. The labor booklet shall contain:
(_a_) The name, surname, and date of birth of the wage-earner;
(_b_) The name and address of the trades-union of which the
wage-earner is a member;
(_c_) The group and category to which the wage-earner has been
assigned by the valuation commission.
6. Upon the discharge of a wage-earner, his labor booklet shall
under no circumstances be withheld from him. Whenever an old
booklet is replaced by a new one, the former shall be left in
possession of the wage-earner.
7. In case a wage-earner loses his labor booklet, he shall be
provided with a new one into which shall be copied all the
entries of the lost booklet; in such a case a fee determined
by the rules of internal management may be charged to the
wage-earner for the new booklet.
8. A wage-earner must present his labor booklet upon the
request:
(_a_) Of the managers of the enterprise, establishment, or
institution where he is employed;
(_b_) Of the Department of Labor Distribution;
(_c_) Of the trades union;
(_d_) Of the officials of workmen’s control and of labor
protection;
(_e_) Of the insurance offices or institutions acting as such.
A wireless message from Moscow, dated February 11, 1920, referring to
the actual introduction of these labor booklets, says:
The decree on the establishment of work-books is in course of
realization at Moscow and Petrograd. The book has 32 pages in
it, containing, besides particulars as to the holder’s civil
status, information on the following points:
Persons dependent on the holder, degree of capacity for work,
place where employed, pay allowanced or pension, food-cards
received, and so forth. One of these books should be handed
over to all citizens not less than 16 years old. It constitutes
the proof that the holder is doing his share of productive
work. The introduction of the work-book will make it possible
for us to ascertain whether the law as to work is being
observed by citizens. This being the object, it will only be
handed to workmen and employees in accordance with the lists of
the business concerns in which they are working, to artisans
who can produce a regular certificate of their registration as
being sick or a certificate from the branches of the Public
Welfare Administration, and to women who are engaged in keeping
house, and who produce a certificate by the House Committee.
When the distribution has been completed, all sick persons, not
possessed of work-books, will be sent to their work by the
branch of the Labor Distribution Administration.
We have summarized, in the exact language of the official English
translation published by the Soviet Government Bureau in this country,
the characteristic and noteworthy features of this remarkable scheme.
Surely this is the ultimate madness of bureaucratism, the most complete
subjection of the individual citizen to an all-powerful state since
the days of Lycurgus. At the time of Edward III, by the Statute of
Laborers of 1349, not only was labor enforced on the lower classes, but
men were not free to work where they liked, nor were their employers
permitted to pay them more than certain fixed rates of wages. In
short, the laborer was a serf; and that is the condition to which this
Bolshevist scheme would reduce all the people of Russia except the
privileged bureaucracy. It is a rigid and ruthless rule that is here
set up, making no allowance for individual likes or dislikes, leaving
no opportunity for honest personal initiative. The only variations and
modifications possible are those resulting from favoritism, political
influence, and circumvention of the laws by corruption of official and
other illicit methods.
We must bear in mind that what we are considering is not a body of
facts relating to practical work under pressure of circumstance, but
a carefully formulated plan giving concrete form to certain aims and
intentions. It is not a record of which the Bolsheviki can say, “This
we were compelled to do,” but a prospectus of what they propose to
do. As such the Bolsheviki have caused the wide-spread distribution
of this remarkable Code of Labor Laws in this country and in England,
believing, apparently, that the workers of the two countries must
be attracted by this Communist Utopia. They have relied upon the
potency of slogans and principles long held in honor by the militant
and progressive portion of the working-class in every modern nation,
such as the right to work and the right to assured living income and
leisure, to win approval and support. But they have linked these things
which enlightened workers believe in to a system of despotism abhorrent
to them. After two full years of terrible experience the Bolsheviki
propose, in the name of Socialism and freedom, a tyranny which goes far
beyond anything which any modern nation has known.
It was obvious from the time when this scheme was first promulgated
that it could only be established by strong military measures. No one
who knew anything of Russia could believe that the great mass of the
peasantry would willingly acquiesce in a scheme of government so much
worse than the old serfdom. Nor was it possible to believe that the
organized and enlightened workers of the cities would, as a whole,
willingly and freely place themselves in such bondage. It was not
at all surprising, therefore, to learn that it had been decided to
take advantage of the military situation, and the existence of a vast
organization of armed forces, to introduce compulsory labor as part
of the military system. On December 11, 1919, _The Red Baltic Fleet_,
a Bolshevist paper published for the sailors of the Baltic fleet,
printed an abstract of Trotsky’s report to the Seventh Congress of
Soviets, from which the following significant paragraphs are quoted:
If one speaks of the conclusion of peace within the next
months, such a peace cannot be called a permanent peace. So
long as class states remain, as powerful centers of Imperialism
in the Far East and in America, it is not impossible that the
peace which we shall perhaps conclude in the near future will
again be for us only a long and prolonged respite. So long as
this possibility is not excluded, it is possible that it will
be a matter _not of disarming, but of altering the form of the
armed forces of the state_.
We must get the workmen back to the factories, and the
peasants to the villages, re-establish industries and develop
agriculture. Therefore, the troops must be brought nearer to
the workers, and the regiments to the factories, villages, and
cantons. We must pass to the introduction of the militia system
of armed forces.
There is a scarcely veiled threat to the rest of the world in Trotsky’s
intimation that the peace they hope to conclude will perhaps be only
a prolonged respite. As an isolated utterance, it might perhaps
be disregarded, but it must be considered in the light of, and in
connection with, a number of other utterances upon the same subject.
In the instructions from the People’s Commissar for Labor to the
propagandists sent to create sympathy and support for the Labor Army
scheme among the soldiers we find this striking passage: “The country
must continue to remain armed for many years to come. _Until Socialist
revolution triumphs throughout the world we must continue to be armed
and prepared for eventualities._” A Bolshevist message, dated Moscow,
March 11, 1920, explains that: “The utilization of whole Labor Armies,
retaining the army system of organization, may only be justified from
the point of view of keeping the army intact for military purposes.
As soon as the necessity for this ceases to exist the need to retain
large staffs and administrations will also cease to exist.” There is
not the slightest doubt that the Bolsheviki contemplate the maintenance
of a great army to be used as a labor force until the time arrives when
it shall seem desirable to hurl it against the nations of central and
western Europe in the interests of “world revolution.”
On January 15, 1920, Lenin and Brichkina, president and secretary,
respectively, of the Council of Defense, signed and issued the first
decree for the formation of a Labor Army. The text of the decree
follows:
DECREE OF THE WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ COUNCIL OF DEFENSE ON THE FIRST
REVOLUTIONARY LABOR ARMY
1. The Third Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army is to be utilized
for labor purposes. This army is to be considered as a complete
organization; its apparatus is neither to be disorganized nor
split up, and it is to be known under the name of the First
Revolutionary Labor Army.
2. The utilization of the Third Red Army for labor purposes
is a temporary measure. The period is to be determined by a
special regulation of the Council of Defense in accordance
with the military situation as well as with the character of
the work which the army will be able to carry out, and will
especially depend on the practical productivity of the labor
army.
3. The following are the principal tasks to which the forces
and means of the third army are to be applied:
_First_:
(_a_) The preparation of food and forage in accordance with
the regulation of the People’s Commissariat for Food, and the
concentration of these in certain depots:
(_b_) The preparation of wood and its delivery to factories and
railway stations;
(_c_) The organization for this purpose of land transport as
well as water transport;
(_d_) The mobilization of necessary labor power for work on a
national scale;
(_e_) Constructive work within the above limits as well as on a
wider scale, for the purpose of introducing, gradually, further
works.
_Second_:
(_f_) For repair of agricultural implements;
(_g_) Agricultural work, etc.
4. The first duty of the Labor Army is to secure provisions, not below
the Red Army ration, for the local workers in those regions where the
army is stationed; this is to be brought about by means of the army
organs of supply in all those cases where the President of the Food
Commissariat of the Labor Army Council (No. 7) will find that no other
means of securing the necessary provisions for the above-mentioned
workers are to be had.
5. The utilization of the labor of the third army in a certain locality
must take place in the locality in which the principal part of the army
is stationed; this is to be determined exactly by the leading organs
of the army (No. 6) with a subsequent confirmation by the Council of
Defense.
6. The Revolutionary Council of the Labor Army is the organ in charge
of work appointed, with the provision that the locality where the
services of the Labor Army are to be applied is to be the same locality
where the services of the Revolutionary Council of the Labor Army
enjoys economic authority.
7. The Revolutionary Council of the Labor Army is to be composed
of members of the Revolutionary War Council and of authorized
representatives of the People’s Commissariat for Food, the Supreme
Council for Public Economy, the People’s Commissariat for Agriculture,
the People’s Commissariat for Communication, and the People’s
Commissariat for Labor.
An especially authorized Council of Defense which is to enjoy the
rights of presidency of the Council of the Labor Army is to be put at
the head of the above Council.
8. All the questions concerning internal military organizations and
defined by regulations of internal military service and other military
regulations are to be finally settled upon by the Revolutionary War
Council which introduces in the internal life of the army all the
necessary changes arising in consequence of the demands of the economic
application of the army.
9. In every sphere of work (food, fuel, railway, etc.) the final
decision in the matter of organizing this work is to be left with the
representative of the corresponding sphere of the Labor Army Council.
10. In the event of radical disagreement the case is to be transferred
to the Council of Defense.
11. All the local institutions, Councils of Public Economy, Food
Committees, land departments, etc., are to carry out the special
orders and instructions of the Labor Army Council through the latter’s
corresponding members either in its entirety or in that sphere of the
work which is demanded by the application of the mass labor power.
12. All local institutions (councils of public economy, food
committees, etc.) are to remain in their particular localities and
carry out, through their ordinary apparatus, the work which falls to
their share in the execution of the economic plans of the Labor Army
Council; local institutions can be changed, either in structure or in
their functions, on no other condition except with the consent of the
corresponding departmental representatives who are members of the Labor
Army Council, or, in the case of radical changes, with the consent of
the corresponding central department.
13. In the case of work for which individual parts of the army can be
utilized in a casual manner, as well as in the case of those parts
of the army which are stationed outside the chief army, or which can
be transferred beyond the limits of this locality, the Army Council
must in each instance enter into an agreement with the permanent
local institutions carrying out the corresponding work, and as far as
that is practical and meets with no obstacles, the separate military
detachments are to be transferred to their temporary economic disposal.
14. Skilled workers, in so far as they are not indispensable for the
support of the life of the army itself, must be transferred by the
army to the local factories and to the economic institutions generally
under direction of the corresponding representatives of the Labor Army
Council.
_Note_: Skilled labor can be sent to factories under no other condition
except with the consent of those economic organs to which the factory
in question is subject. Members of trades-unions are liable to be
withdrawn from local enterprises for the economic needs in connection
with the problems of the army only with the consent of the local organs.
15. The Labor Army Council must, through its corresponding members,
take all the necessary measures toward inducing the local
institutions of a given department to control, in the localities, the
army detachments and their institutions in the carrying out of the
latter’s share of work without infringing upon the respective by-laws,
regulations, and instructions of the Soviet Republic.
_Note_: It is particularly necessary to take care that the general
state rate of pay is to be observed in the remuneration of peasants for
the delivery of food, for the preparation of wood or other fuel.
16. The Central Statistical Department in agreement with the Supreme
Council for Public Economy and the War Department is instructed to draw
up an estimate defining the forms and period of registration.
17. The present regulation comes into force with the moment of its
publication by telegraph.
_President of the Council of Defense_,
V. ULIANOV (LENIN).
S. BRICHKINA, _Secretary_.
Moscow, _January 15, 1920_.
On January 18, 1920, the _Krasnaya Gazeta_ published the following
order by Trotsky to the First Labor Army:
ORDER TO THE FIRST REVOLUTIONARY LABOR ARMY
1. The First Army has finished its war task, but the enemy is
not completely dispersed. The rapacious imperialists are still
menacing Siberia in the extreme Orient. To the East the armies
paid by the Entente are still menacing Soviet Russia. The bands
of the White Guards are still at Archangel. The Caucasus is
not yet liberated. For this reason the First Russian Army has
not as yet been diverted, but retains its internal unity and
its warlike ardor, in order that it may be ready in case the
Socialist Fatherland should once more call it to new tasks.
2. The First Russian Army, which is, however, desirous of doing
its duty, does not wish to lose any time. During the coming
weeks and months of respite it will have to apply its strength
and all its means to ameliorate the agricultural situation in
this country.
3. The Revolutionary War Council of the First Army will come to
an agreement with the Labor Council. The representatives of the
agricultural institutions of the Red Republic of the Soviets
will work side by side with the members of the Revolutionary
Council.
4. Food-supplies are indispensable to the famished workmen of
the commercial centers. The First Labor Army should make it its
essential task to gather systematically in the region occupied
by it such food-supplies as are there, as well as also to make
an exact listing of what has been obtained, to rapidly and
energetically forward them to the various factories and railway
stations, and load them upon the freight-cars.
5. Wood is needed by commerce. It is the important task of
the Revolutionary Labor Army to cut and saw the wood, and to
transport it to the factories and to the railway stations.
6. Spring is coming; this is the season of agricultural work.
As the productive force of our factories has lessened, the
number of new farm implements which can be delivered has become
insufficient. The peasants have, however, a tolerably large
number of old implements which are in need of repair. The
Revolutionary Labor Army will employ its workshops as well as
its workmen in order to repair such tools and machinery as are
needed. When the season arrives for work in the fields, the Red
cavalry and infantry will prove that they know how to plow the
earth.
7. All members of the army should enter into fraternal
relations with the professional societies[69] of the local
Soviets, remembering that such organizations are those of the
laboring people. All work should be done after having come to
an understanding with them.
[69] _i.e._, trades-unions.
8. Indefatigable energy should be shown during the work, as
much as if it were a combat or a fight.
9. The necessary efforts, as well as the results to be
obtained, should be carefully calculated. Every pound of Soviet
bread, and every log of national wood should be tabulated.
Everything should contribute to the foundation of the Socialist
activities.
10. The Commandants and Commissars should be responsible for
the work of their men while work is going on, as much as if it
were a combat. Discipline should not be relaxed. The Communist
Societies should during the work be models of perseverance and
patience.
11. The Revolutionary Tribunals should punish the lazy and
parasites and the thieves of national property.
12. Conscientious soldiers, workmen, and revolutionary peasants
should be in the first rank. Their bravery and devotion should
serve as an example to others and inspire them to act similarly.
13. The front should be contracted as much as possible. Those
who are useless should be sent to the first ranks of the
workers.
14. Start and finish your work, if the locality permits it,
to the sound of revolutionary hymns and songs. Your task is
not the work of a laborer, but a great service rendered the
Socialist Fatherland.
15. Soldiers of the Third Army, called the First Revolutionary
Army of Labor. Let your example prove a great one. All Russia
will rise to your call. The Radio has already spread throughout
the universe all that the Third Army intends in being
transposed into the First Army of Labor. Soldier Workmen! Do
not lower the red standard!
_The President of the War Council of the
Revolutionary Republic_,
[Signed] TROTSKY.
There is not the slightest doubt where Lenin and Trotsky found the
model for the foregoing orders and the inspiration of the entire
scheme. Almost exactly a century earlier, that is to say in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, Count Arakcheev, a favorite of
Alexander I, introduced into Russia the militarization of agricultural
labor. Peasant conscripts were sent to the “military settlements,”
formed into battalions under command of army officers, marched in
proper military formation to their tasks, which they performed to
martial music. The arable lands were divided among the owner-settlers
according to the size of their families. Tasks were arbitrarily set for
the workers by the officers; resignation or withdrawal was, of course,
impossible; desertion was punished with great severity. Elaborate
provisions were made by this monarchist autocrat for the housing of the
conscript-settlers, for medical supervision, and for the education of
the children. Everything seems to have been provided for the conscripts
in these settlements except freedom.
Travelers gave most glowing accounts of Arakcheev’s Utopia, just as
later travelers did of the Russia of Nicholas II, and as the Ransomes,
Goodes, Lansburys, and other travelers of to-day are giving of
Bolshevist Russia. But the people themselves were discontented and
unhappy, a fact evidenced by the many serious uprisings. Robbed of
freedom, all initiative taken from them, so that they became abject and
cowed and almost devoid of will power, like dumb beasts yet under the
influence of desperate and daring leaders, they rose in revolt again
and again with brutal fury. Arakcheev’s Utopia was not intended to be
oppressive or unjust, we may well believe. There are evidences that it
was conceived in a noble and even generous spirit. It inevitably became
cruel and oppressive, however, as every such scheme that attempts to
disregard the variations in human beings, and to compel them to conform
to a single pattern or plan, must do. At a meeting of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party in Petrograd Trotsky protested that
only the “petty bourgeois intellectuals” could liken his system of
militarized labor to Arakcheev’s, but the facts speak for themselves.
And in all Russia’s tragic history there are no blacker pages than
those which record her great experiments with militarized labor.
Addressing the joint meeting of the third Russian Congress of
Soviets of National Economy, the Moscow Soviet of Deputies and the
Administrative Boards of the Trades-Unions, on January 25, 1920,
Trotsky made a report which required more than two hours for its
delivery. Defining labor conscription, he said:
We shall succeed if qualified and trained workers take part
in productive labor. They must all be registered and provided
with work registration books. Trades-unions must register
qualified workmen in the villages. Only in those localities
where trades-union methods are inadequate other methods must
be introduced, in particular that of compulsion, because labor
conscription gives the state the right to tell the qualified
workman who is employed on some unimportant work in his
villages, “You are obliged to leave your present employment and
go to Sormova or Kolomna, because there your work is required.”
Labor conscription means that qualified workmen who leave
the army must take their work registration books and proceed
to places where they are required, where their presence
is necessary to the economic system of the country. Labor
conscription gives the Labor State the right to order a workman
to leave the village industry in which he is engaged and to
work in state enterprises which require his services. We
must feed these workmen and guarantee them the minimum food
ration. A short time ago we were confronted by the problem of
defending the frontiers of the Soviet Republic, now our aim is
to collect, load, and transport a sufficient quantity of bread,
meat, fats, and fish to feed the working-class. We are not only
confronted by the question of the industrial proletariat, but
also by the question of utilizing unskilled labor.
* * * * *
There is still one way to the reorganization of national
economy--the way of uniting the army and labor and changing the
military detachments of the army into labor detachments of a
labor army. Many in the army have already accomplished their
military task, but they cannot be demobilized as yet. Now that
they have been released from their military duties, they must
fight against economic ruin and against hunger; they must work
to obtain fuel, peat, and inflammable slate; they must take
part in building, in clearing the lines of snow, in repairing
roads, building sheds, grinding flour, and so on. We have
already got several of these armies. These armies have already
been allotted their tasks. One must obtain foodstuffs for the
workmen of the district in which it was formerly stationed, and
there also it will cut down wood, cart it to the railways, and
repair engines. Another will help in the laying down of railway
lines for the transport of crude oil. A third will be used for
repairing agricultural implements and machines, and in the
spring for taking part in working the land. At the present time
among the working masses there must be the greatest exactitude
and conscientiousness, together with responsibility to the end;
there must be utter strictness and severity, both in small
matters and in great. If the most advanced workmen in the
country will devote all their thoughts, all their will, and all
their revolutionary duty to the cause of regulating economic
affairs, then I have no doubt that we shall lead Russia on a
new free road, to the confounding of our enemies and the joy of
our friends.
Going into further details concerning the scheme, Trotsky said,
according to _Izvestia_, January 29, 1920:
Wherein lies the meaning of this transformation? We possess
armies which have accomplished their military tasks. _Can
we demobilize them? In no case whatever. If we have learned
anything in the civil war it is certainly circumspection._
While keeping the army under arms, we may use it for economic
purposes, with the _possibility of sending it to the front in
case of need_.
Such is the present condition of the Third Soviet Army at
Ekaterinburg, some units of which are quartered in the
direction of Omsk. It numbers no less than _150,000 men, of
whom 7,000 are Communists and 9,000 are sympathizers_. Such
an army is class-conscious to a high degree. No wonder it
has offered itself for employment for labor purposes. The
labor army must perform definite and simple tasks requiring
the application of mass force, such as lumbering operations,
peat-cutting, collecting grain, etc. Trades-unions, political
and Soviet organizations must, of course, establish the closest
contact with the Labor Army. An experienced and competent
workman is appointed as chief of staff of this army, and
a former chief of staff, an officer of the general staff,
is his assistant. The Operative Department is renamed the
Labor-Operative Department, and controls requisitions and the
execution of the labor-operative orders and the labor bulletins.
A great number of labor artels, with a well-ordered telegraph
and telephone system, is thus at our disposal. They receive
orders and report on their execution the same day. This is
but the beginning of our work. There will be many drawbacks
at first, much will have to be altered, but the basis itself
cannot be unsound, as it is the same on which our entire Soviet
structure is founded.
In this case we possess several thousand Ural workmen, who
are placed at the head of the army, and a mass of men under
the guidance of these advanced workmen. What is it? It is but
a reflection on a small scale of Soviet Russia, founded upon
millions upon millions of peasants, and the guiding apparatus
is formed of more conscious peasants and an overwhelming
majority of industrial workers. This first experiment is being
made by the other armies likewise. It is intended to utilize
the Seventh Army, quartered at the Esthonian frontier, for
peat-cutting and slate-quarrying. If these labor armies are
capable of extracting raw materials, of giving new life to our
transport, of providing corn, fuel, etc., to our main economic
centers, then our economic organism will revive.
This experiment is of the most vital moral and material
importance. We cannot mobilize the peasants by means of
trades-unions, and the trades-unions themselves do not possess
any means of laying hold of millions of peasants. They can best
be mobilized on a military footing. Their labor formations will
have to be organized on a military model--labor platoons, labor
companies, labor battalions, disciplined as required, for we
shall have to deal with masses which have not passed through
trades-union trading. This is a matter of the near future. We
shall be compelled to create military organizations such as
exist already in the form of our armies. It is therefore urgent
to utilize them by adapting them to economic requirements. That
is exactly what we are doing now.
At the ninth Congress of the Communist Party in March, according to
_Izvestia_ of March 21, 1920, Trotsky made another report on the
militarization of labor, in which he said:
At the present time the militarization of labor is all the more
needed in that we have now come to the mobilization of peasants
as the means of solving the problems requiring mass action.
We are mobilizing the peasants and forming them into labor
detachments which very closely resemble military detachments.
Some of our comrades say, however, that even though in the case
of the working power of mobilized peasantry it is necessary to
apply militarization, a military apparatus need not be created
when the question involves skilled labor and industry because
there we have professional unions performing the function of
organizing labor. This opinion, however, is erroneous.
At present it is true that professional unions distribute labor
power at the demand of social-economic organizations, but what
means and methods do they possess for insuring that the workman
who is sent to a given factory actually reports at that factory
for work?
We have in the most important branches of our industry more
than a million workmen on the lists, but not more than eight
hundred thousand of them are actually working, and where are
the remainder? They have gone to the villages, or to other
divisions of industry, or into speculation. Among soldiers this
is called desertion, and in one form or another the measures
used to compel soldiers to do their duty should be applied in
the field of labor.
_Under a unified system of economy the masses of workmen should
be moved about, ordered and sent from place to place in exactly
the same manner as soldiers. This is the foundation of the
militarization of labor, and without this we are unable to
speak seriously of any organization of industry on a new basis
in the conditions of starvation and disorganization existing
to-day...._
In the period of transition in the organization of labor,
compulsion plays a very important part. The statement that free
labor--namely, freely employed labor--produces more than labor
under compulsion is correct only when applied to feudalistic
and bourgeois orders of society.
It is, of course, too soon to attempt anything in the nature of a final
judgment upon this new form of industrial serfdom. In his report to
the ninth Congress of the Communist Party, already quoted, Trotsky
declared that the belief that free labor is more productive than forced
labor is “correct only when applied to feudalistic and bourgeois
orders of society.” The implication is that it will be otherwise in
the Communistic society of the future, but of that Trotsky can have no
knowledge. His declaration springs from faith, not from knowledge.
All that he or anybody else can know is that the whole history of
mankind hitherto shows that free men work better than men who are not
free. Arakcheev’s militarized peasants were less productive than other
peasants not subject to military rule. So far as the present writer’s
information goes, no modern army when engaged in productive work has
equaled civilian labor in similar lines, judged on a per-capita basis.
Slaves, convicts, and conscripts have everywhere been notoriously poor
producers.
Will it be better if the conscription is done by the Bolsheviki, and if
the workers sing revolutionary songs, instead of the hymns to the Czar
sung by Arakcheev’s conscript settlers, or the religious melodies sung
by the negro slaves in our Southern States? Those whose only guide to
the future is the history of the past will doubt it; those who, like
Trotsky, see in the past no lesson for the future confidently believe
that it will. The thoughtful and candid mind wonders whether the
following paragraph, published by the _Krasnaya Gazeta_ in March, may
not be regarded as a foreshadowing of Bolshevist disillusionment:
The attempts of the Soviet power to utilize the Labor Army for
cleansing Petrograd from mud, excretions, and rubbish have not
met with success. In addition to the usual Labor Army rations,
the men were given an increased allowance of bread, tobacco,
etc. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get not only any
intensive work, but even, generally speaking, any real work at
all out of the Labor Army men. Recourse, therefore, had to
be had to the usual means--the men had to be paid a premium
of 1,000 rubles for every tramway-truck of rubbish unloaded.
Moreover, the tramway brigade had to be paid 300 rubles for
every third trip.
In hundreds of statements by responsible Bolshevist officials and
journals the wonderful morale of the Petrograd workers has been
extolled and held up to the rest of Russia for emulation. If these
things are possible in “Red Peter” at the beginning, what may we not
expect elsewhere--and later? The _Novaya Russkaya Zhizn_, published at
Helsingfors, is an anti-Bolshevist paper. The following quotation from
its issue of March 6, 1920, is of interest and value only in so far as
it directs attention to a Bolshevist official report:
In the Soviet press we find a brilliant illustration (in
figures) of the latest “new” tactics proclaimed by the
Communists of the Third International on the subject of
soldiers “stacking their rifles and taking to axes, saws, and
spades.”
“The 56th Division of the Petrograd Labor Army, during the
fortnight from 1st to 14th February, loaded 60 cars with
wood-fuel, transported 225 sagenes,[70] stacked 43 cubic
sagenes, and sawed up 39 cubic sagenes.” Besides this, the
division dug out “several locomotives” from under the snow.
[70] One sagene equals seven feet.
In Soviet Russia a regiment is about 1,000 strong, and a
division is about 4,000. In the course of a fortnight the
division worked twelve days. According to our calculation this
works out, on an average, at a fraction over one billet of wood
per diem per Red Army man handled by him in one way or another.
Thus it took 4,000 men a fortnight to do what could, in former
days, be easily performed by ten workmen.
Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks have not yet calculated the cost
to the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government of the wood-fuel
which was loaded, transported, stacked, and sawn up by the 56th
Division of the Labor Army in the course of a fortnight.
These quotations are not offered as proof of the uneconomical character
of compulsory labor. It is useless to argue that question further
than we have already done. But there is a question of vastly greater
importance than the volume of production--namely, the effect upon the
human elements involved, the producers themselves. It is quite clear
that this universal conscription of the laborers cannot be carried
out without a large measure of adscription to the jobs assigned them,
however modified in individual cases. It is equally certain that
under the conditions described by Lenin and Trotsky in the official
utterances we have quoted, nothing worthy the name of personal freedom
can by any possibility exist. The condition of the workers under such
a system cannot be fundamentally different from that of the natives of
Paraguay in the theocratic-communist régime established by the Jesuits
in the seventeenth century, or from that of Arakcheev’s militarized
serfs. External and superficial differences there may be, but none of
fundamental importance. The Bolshevist régime may be less brutal and
more humane than Arakcheev’s, but so was the Jesuit rule in Paraguay.
Yet in the latter, as in the former, the workers were reduced to the
condition of mere automatons until, led by daring spirits, they rose in
terrible revolt of unparalleled brutality.
Such is the militarization of labor in the Bolshevist paradise, and
such is the light that history throws upon it. We do not wonder that
_Pravda_ had to admit, on March 28, 1920, that mass-meetings to protest
against the new system were being held in all parts of Soviet Russia.
That the Russian workers will submit for long to the new tyranny is,
happily, unthinkable.
XIV
LET THE VERDICT BE RENDERED
The men and women of America are by the force of circumstance impaneled
as a jury to judge the Bolshevist régime. The evidence submitted in
these pages is before them. It is no mere chronicle of scandal; neither
is it a cunningly wrought mosaic of rumors, prejudiced inferences,
exaggerated statements by hostile witnesses, sensational incidents and
utterances, selected because they are calculated to provoke resentment.
On the contrary, the most scrupulous care has been taken to confine
the case to the well-established and acknowledged characteristic
features of the Bolshevist régime. The bulk of the evidence cited
comes from Bolshevist sources of the highest possible authority and
responsibility. The non-Bolshevist witnesses are, without exception,
men of high character, identified with the international Socialist
movement. There is not a reactionist or an apologist for the capitalist
order of society among them. In each case special attention has been
directed to their anti-Bolshevist views, so that the jury can make
full allowance therefor. Moreover, in no instance has the testimony
of witnesses of anti-Bolshevist views been cited without ample
corroborative evidence from responsible and authoritative Bolshevist
sources. The jury must now pass upon this evidence and render its
verdict.
It is urged by the Bolsheviki and by their defenders that the time for
passing judgment has not yet arrived; that we are not yet in possession
of sufficient evidence to warrant a decision. Neither the Bolsheviki
nor their defenders have the right to make this plea, for the simple
reason that they themselves have long since demanded that, with
less than a thousandth part of the testimony now before us, we pass
judgment--and, of course, give our unqualified approval to Bolshevism
and its works. It is a matter of record and of common knowledge that
soon after the Bolshevist régime was instituted in Russia a vigorous,
systematic propaganda in its favor and support was begun in all the
western nations, including the United States. By voice and pen the
makers of this propaganda called upon the people of the western nations
to adopt Bolshevism. They presented glowing pictures of the Bolshevist
Utopia, depicting it, not as an experiment of uncertain outcome, to be
watched with sympathetic interest, but as an achievement so great, so
successful and beneficent, that to refrain from copying it was both
stupid and wrong. In this country, as in the other western nations,
pamphlets extolling the merits of the Soviet régime were extensively
circulated by well-organized groups, while certain “Liberal” weeklies
devoted themselves to the task of presenting Bolshevism as a great
advance in political and economic practice, a triumph of humanitarian
idealism. Organizations were formed for the purpose of molding our
public opinion in favor of Bolshevism.
It was not until this pro-Bolshevist propaganda was well under way
that anything in the nature of a counter-propaganda was begun. For
a considerable period of time this counter-propaganda in defense of
existing democratic forms of government was relatively weak, and even
now it has to be admitted that the pro-Bolshevist books and pamphlets
in circulation in this country greatly outnumber those on the other
side. In view of these facts, the defenders of Bolshevism have no moral
right to demand suspension of judgment now. They themselves rushed to
the bar of public opinion with a flimsy case, composed in its entirety
of _ex parte_ and misleading statements by interested witnesses, many
of them perjured, and demanded an instant verdict of approval. Upon
what intellectual or moral grounds, then, shall others be denied the
right to appear before that same court of public opinion, with a much
more complete case, composed mainly of unchallenged admissions and
records of the Bolsheviki themselves, and to ask for a contrary verdict?
There is not the slightest merit in the claim that we do not possess
sufficient evidence to warrant a conclusive verdict in the case.
Whether the Soviet form of government, basing suffrage upon occupation
and economic functioning, is better adapted for Russia than the types
of representative parliamentary government familiar to us in the
western nations, does not enter into the case at all. The issue is
not Sovietism, but Bolshevism. It is the tragic failure of Bolshevism
with which we are concerned. It has failed to give the people freedom
and failed to give them bread. We know that there is no freedom in
Russia, and, what is more, that freedom can never be had upon the basis
of the Bolshevist philosophy. Whether in Russia or in this country,
government must rest upon the consent of the governed in order to
merit the designation of free government; upon any other basis it must
be tyrannical. It is as certain now as it will be a generation or a
century hence, as certain as that yesterday belongs to the past and is
irrevocable, that Bolshevism is government by a minority imposed upon
the majority by force; that its sanctions are not the free choice and
consent of the governed.
We know as much now as our descendants will know a couple of centuries
hence concerning the great fundamental issues involved in this
controversy. More than seven centuries have elapsed since the signing
of Magna Charta at Runnimede. Upon every page of the history of the
Anglo-Saxon people, from that day in June, 1215, to the present, it is
plainly written that government which does not rest upon the consent
of the governed cannot satisfy free men. Throughout that long period
the moral and intellectual energy of the race has been devoted to the
attainment of the ideal of universal and equal suffrage as the basis
of free government. There are many persons who do not believe in that
ideal, and it is possible to bring against it arguments which do not
lack plausibility or force. Czar Nicholas II did not believe in that
ideal; George III did not believe in it; Nicolai Lenin does not believe
in it. Lincoln did believe in it; Marx believed in it; the American
people believe in it. At this late day it is not necessary to argue
the merits of democratic government. The consensus of the opinion of
mankind, based upon long experience, favors government resting upon
the will of the majority, with proper safeguards for the rights of the
minority, as against government by minorities however constituted.
Bolshevism, admittedly based upon the theory of rule by a minority
of the people, thus runs counter to the experience and judgment of
civilized mankind in every nation. In Russia a democratic government
conforming to the experience and judgment of civilized and free peoples
was being set up when the Bolsheviki by violence destroyed the attempt.
More conclusive, however, is the moral judgment of the conduct of the
Bolsheviki as exemplified by their attitude toward the Constituent
Assembly: During the summer of 1917, the period immediately preceding
the _coup d’état_ of November, while the Provisional Government under
Kerensky was engaged in making preparations for the holding of the
Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviki professed to believe that the
Provisional Government was not loyal to the Constituent Assembly, and
that there was danger that this instrument of popular sovereignty
would be crippled, if not wholly destroyed, unless Kerensky and his
associates were replaced by men and women more thoroughly devoted to
the Constituent Assembly than they. It was as champions and defenders
of the Constituent Assembly that the Bolsheviki obtained the power
which enabled them to overthrow the Provisional Government. As late as
October 25th Trotsky denounced Kerensky, charging him with conspiring
to prevent the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. He demanded
that the powers of government be taken over by the Soviets, which
would, he said, convoke the Assembly on December 12th, the date
assigned for it. Immediately after the _coup d’état_, the triumphant
Bolsheviki, at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, announced
that “pending the calling together of the Constituent Assembly, a
Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is to be formed, which
is to be called the Council of People’s Commissaries.” On the day
following the _coup d’état_, November 8, 1917, Lenin made this very
positive and explicit statement at the Soviet Congress:
As a democratic government, we cannot disregard the will of
the masses, even though we disagree with it. In the fires of
life, applying the decree in practice, carrying it out on
the spot, the peasants will themselves understand where the
truth is. _And even if the peasants will continue to follow
the Socialists-Revolutionists, and even if they will return a
majority for that Party in the elections to the Constituent
Assembly, we shall still say--let it be thus!_ Life is the best
teacher, and it will show who was right. And let the peasants
from their end, and us from ours, solve this problem. Life
will compel us to approach each other in the general current
of revolutionary activity, in the working out of new forms of
statehood. We should keep abreast of life; we must allow the
masses of the people full freedom of creativeness.
On that same day the “land decree” was issued. It began with these
words: “The land problem in its entirety can be solved only by the
national Constituent Assembly.” Three days after the revolt Lenin, as
president of the People’s Commissaries, published a decree, stating:
1. That the elections to the Constituent Assembly shall be held
on November 25th, the day we set aside for this purpose.
2. All electoral committees, all local organizations, the
Councils of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates and
the soldiers’ organizations at the front are to bend every
effort toward safeguarding the freedom of the voters and fair
play at the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will
be held on the appointed date.
If language has any meaning at all, by these declarations the
Bolsheviki were pledged to recognize and uphold the Constituent
Assembly.
As the electoral campaign proceeded and it became evident that the
Bolsheviki would not receive the support of the great mass of the
voters, their organs began to adopt a very critical attitude toward the
Constituent Assembly. There was a thinly veiled menace in the following
passages from an article published in _Pravda_ on November 18, 1917,
while the electoral campaign was in full swing:
_To expect from the Constituent Assembly a painless solution
of all our accursed problems not only savors of parliamentary
imbecility, but is also dangerous politically...._ The victory
of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison in the November
revolution furnishes the only possible guaranty of the
convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and, what is not less
important, assures success to such a solution of our political
and social problems which the War and the Revolution have
made the order of the day. The convocation of the Constituent
Assembly stands or falls with the Soviet power.
The elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in a large majority
of electoral districts on the 12th, 19th, and 26th of November,
1917--that is, after the _coup d’état_, in the full tide of Bolshevist
enthusiasm. The Bolsheviki were in power, and there is abundant
evidence that they resorted to almost every known method of coercion
and intimidation to secure a result favorable to themselves. Of 703
deputies elected in 54 out of a total of 81 election districts, only
168 belonged to the Bolshevist Party. At the same time the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists proper, not reckoning the organizations of
the same party among other nationalities of Russia, won twice that
number of seats--namely, 338. Out of a total of 36,257,960 votes
cast in 54 election districts the Bolshevist Party counted barely 25
per cent. The votes cast for their candidates amounted to 9,023,963,
whereas the Socialists-Revolutionists polled 20,893,734--that is, 58
per cent. of all the votes cast.
When the election results were known _Pravda_ and _Izvestia_ both took
the position that the victorious people did not need a Constituent
Assembly; that a new instrument, greatly superior to the old and
“obsolete” democratic instrument, had been created. On December 1,
1917, _Pravda_ said: “If the lines of action of the Soviets and the
Constituent Assembly should diverge, if there should arise between them
any disagreements, the question will arise as to who expresses better
the will of the masses. _We think it is the Soviets who through their
peculiar organization express more clearly, more correctly, and more
definitely the will of the workers, soldiers, and peasants...._ This
is why the Soviets will have to propose to the Constituent Assembly to
adopt as the constitution of the Russian Republic, not that political
system which forms the basis of its convocation (_i.e._, Democracy),
but the Soviet system, the constitution of the Republic of Workers’,
soldiers’, and Peasants’ Soviets.” On December 7, 1917, the Executive
Committee of the Soviet power published a resolution which indicated
that this self-constituted authority, despite the most solemn pledges,
was already tampering with the newly elected Constituent Assembly. The
resolution asserted that the Soviet power had the right to issue writs
for new elections where a majority of the voters expressed themselves
as dissatisfied with the result of the elections already held. In other
words, notwithstanding the fact that the elections for the Constituent
Assembly had been held in November, while the Bolsheviki were in power,
and the first meeting of that body was scheduled for December 12th, new
elections might be ordered by the Soviet power in response to a request
from the majority of the electorate. That the elections had gone so
overwhelmingly against the Bolsheviki, most of their candidates being
badly defeated, throws a sinister light upon this decision. _Pravda_
demanded that the leading members of the Constitutional-Democratic
Party be arrested, including those elected to the Constituent
Assembly, and on December 13, 1917, it published this decree of
the Council of People’s Commissaries: “The leading members of the
Constitutional-Democratic Party, as a party of enemies of the people,
are to be arrested and brought to trial before the Revolutionary
Tribunals.”
On December 26, 1917, Lenin published in _Pravda_ a series of nineteen
“theses” concerning the Constituent Assembly. He therein set forth
the doctrine that although the elections had taken place after the
Bolshevist _coup d’état_, and under the authority and protection of
the temporary Soviet power, yet the elections gave no clear indication
of the real mind of the masses of the people, because, forsooth, the
Socialists-Revolutionists Party, whose candidates had been elected in
a majority of the constituencies, had divided into a Right Wing and a
Left Wing subsequent to the elections. That the differences between
these factions would be fully threshed out in the Constituent Assembly
was obvious. Nevertheless, Lenin announced that the Constituent
Assembly just elected was not suitable. Again we are compelled to
connect this announcement with the fact that the Bolsheviki had not
succeeded in winning the support of the electorate. In these tortuous
logomachies we encounter the same immoral doctrine that we have
noticed in Lenin’s discussion of the demand for freedom of speech,
publication, and assemblage. The demand for the convocation of the
Constituent Assembly had been “an entirely just one in the program
of revolutionary Social-Democracy” in the past, but now with the
Bolsheviki in power it was a different matter! Whereas the Soviets
had been declared to be the loyal protectors of the Constituent
Assembly, Lenin’s new declaration was, “The Soviet Republic represents
not only a higher form of democratic institutions (in comparison
with the middle-class republic and the Constituent Assembly as its
consummation), it is also the sole form which renders possible the
least painful transition to Socialism.”
When the Constituent Assembly finally convened on January 18, 1918,
there were sailors and Lettish troops in the hall armed with rifles,
hand-grenades, and machine-guns, placed there to intimidate the elected
representatives of the people. The Bolshevist delegates demanded the
adoption of a declaration by the Assembly which was tantamount to a
formal abdication. One of the paragraphs in this declaration read:
“Supporting the Soviet rule and _accepting the orders of the Council
of People’s Commissaries_, the Constituent Assembly acknowledges its
duty to outline a form for the reorganization of society.” When the
Constituent Assembly, which represented more than thirty-six million
votes, declined to adopt this declaration, the Bolsheviki withdrew and
later, by force of arms, dispersed the Assembly. It was subsequently
promised that arrangements for the election of a new Constituent
Assembly would be made, but, as all the world knows, _no such elections
have been held to this time_.
At the Congress of the Bolshevist Party--now Communist Party--held
in February, 1918, Lenin set forth a brand-new set of principles for
adoption as a program. He declared that the transition to Socialism
necessarily presupposes that there can be “no liberty and democracy
for all, but only for the exploited working-classes, for the sake of
their liberation from exploitation”; that it requires “the automatic
exclusion of the exploiting classes, and of the rich representatives of
the petty bourgeoisie” and “the abolition of parliamentary government.”
On the basis of these principles the Constitution of the Russian
Socialist Federated Soviet Republic was developed.
To say that we are not yet in a position to judge such a record as
this is an insult to the intelligence. A century hence the record will
stand precisely as it is and the base treachery and duplicity of the
Bolsheviki will be neither more nor less obvious. The betrayal of the
Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviki constitutes one of the blackest
crimes in the history of politics and is incapable of defense by any
honest democrat. It is only necessary to imagine a constitutional
convention representing the free choice of the electorate in any state
of the Union thus dealt with by a political faction representing only
a small minority of the population to arrive at a just estimate of its
infamous character. As the evidence drawn from official Bolshevist
sources shows, the Bolsheviki have not respected the integrity of the
Soviet any more than they respected that of the Constituent Assembly.
When Soviet elections have gone against them they have not hesitated
to suppress the Soviets. Is there any room for rational doubt what the
verdict of decent liberty-loving and law-respecting men and women ought
to be? The Bolshevist régime was conceived in dishonor and born in
infamy.
We are as fully competent to judge the Red Terror organized and
maintained by the Bolsheviki as our descendants will be. The civilized
world has long since made up its mind concerning the Reign of Terror in
the French Revolution. Contemporary foreign opinion became the judgment
of posterity. That it did not help the cause of freedom and democracy,
which the Revolution as a whole served, is so plainly apparent and so
universally admitted that it need not be argued. It rendered aid only
to the reaction. When the leaders of the Bolsheviki proclaimed their
intention of copying the methods of the Reign of Terror _it was already
possible to form a just judgment of the spirit of their undertaking_.
The civilized world had no difficulty in judging the conduct of the
Germans in shooting innocent hostages during the war. Neither has
it any difficulty in making up its mind concerning the wholesale
shooting of innocent hostages by the Bolsheviki. From their own records
we have read their admissions that hundreds and thousands of such
hostages--men, women, and children--who were not even accused of crime,
were shot down in cold blood. To say that we lack sufficient evidence
to pronounce judgment upon such crimes is tantamount to a confession of
lacking elemental moral sense.
It is sometimes said that these things are but the violent birth pangs
which inevitably accompany the birth of a new social order. With such
flimsy evasions it is difficult to have patience. This specious defense
utterly lacks moral and intellectual sincerity. It is a craven coward’s
plea. If we are to use the facts and the language of obstetrics to
illustrate the great Russian tragedy, at least let us be honest and
use them with some regard to the essential realities. In terms of
obstetrics, Russia in 1917 was like unto a woman in the agony of her
travail. From March onward she labored to give birth to her child, the
long-desired democratic freedom. She was carefully watched and tenderly
cared for by the accoucheur, the Provisional Government. At the
critical moment of her delivery a ruthless brute drove the accoucheur
away from her side, brutally maltreated her, strangled her newly born
infant, and in its place substituted a hideous monstrosity. That is the
only true application of the obstetrical simile to the realities of the
Russian tragedy. The sufferings of Russia under the Bolsheviki have
nothing to do with the natural birth pains of the Russian Revolution.
Nobody ever expected the Russian Revolution to be accomplished without
suffering and hardship; revolutions do not come that way. For all the
natural and necessary pains of such a profound event as the birth of
a new social order every friend of Russian freedom was prepared. What
was not foreseen or anticipated by anybody was that when the agony of
parturition was practically at an end, and the birth of the new order
an accomplished fact, such a brutal assault would be made upon the
maternal body of Russia. It is upon this crime, infamous beyond infamy,
that the great jury of civilized public opinion is asked to pronounce
its condemnation.
There is absolutely no justification for the view that the evils of the
Bolshevist régime, and especially its terroristic features, should be
regarded as the inevitable incidental evil accompaniments of a great
beneficent process. Neither is any useful purpose served by dragging
in the French Revolution. The champions of Bolshevism cite that great
event and assert that everybody now acknowledges that it was a great
liberating force, a notable advance in the evolution of freedom and
democracy, and that nobody now condemns it on account of the Reign of
Terror.
This argument is the result of a lamentable misreading of history,
where it is not a deliberate and carefully studied deception. No
honest parallel can be drawn between the French Revolution and the
Bolshevist Counter-Revolution. That there are certain similarities
between the revolutionary movement of eighteenth-century France and
that of twentieth-century Russia is fairly obvious. In both cases the
revolutions were directed against corrupt, inefficient, and oppressive
monarchical absolutism. In France in 1789 the peasantry formed about
75 per cent. of the population, the bourgeoisie about 20 per cent.,
the proletariat about 3 per cent., and the “privileged” class about
1 per cent. In Russia in 1917 the peasantry amounted to something
over 85 per cent. of the population, the bourgeoisie--the merchants,
manufacturers, tradesmen, and investors--to about 9 per cent., the
proletariat to about 3 per cent., and the nobility and clergy to 1 per
cent. Both in France and in Russia the peasantry was identified with
the struggle against monarchical absolutism, being motivated by great
agrarian demands.
Moreover, the similarities extend to the moral and psychological
factors involved. In the French Revolution, precisely as in the
Russian, we see a great mass of illiterate peasants led by a few
intellectuals, abstract thinkers wholly without practical experience
in government or economic organization. In both cases we find a naïve
Utopianism, a conviction that a sudden transformation of the whole
social order could be easily effected. What the shibboleths of Karl
Marx are to the Bolsheviki the shibboleths of Rousseau were to many of
the leaders of the French Revolution. And just as in 1789 there was a
pathetic dependence upon _anarchie spontanée_, a conviction, wholly
non-rational and exclusively mystical, that in the chaos and disorder
creative powers latent in the masses would be discovered--itself an
evidence of the purely abstract character of their thinking--so it was
in Russia in 1917. The revolution which overthrew the absolutism of
Nicholas II of Russia repeated many of the characteristic features of
that which overthrew the absolutism of Louis XVI of France.
Yet the true parallel to the French Revolution is not the Bolshevist
_coup d’état_, but the Revolution of March, 1917. It was not the
Bolshevist revolution that overturned the throne of the Romanovs and
destroyed czarism. That was done by the March Revolution. Whereas the
French Revolution was a revolution against a corrupt and oppressive
monarchy, the Bolshevist revolt was a counter-revolution against
democracy. The Bolsheviki had played only a very insignificant part
in the revolution against czarism. They rose against the Provisional
Government of the triumphant people. This Provisional Government
represented the forces that had overthrown czarism; it was not a
reactionary body of aristocrats and monarchists, but was mainly
composed of Socialists and radicals and was thoroughly devoted to
republicanism and democracy. It had immediately adopted as its
program all that the French Revolution attained, and more: it had
placed suffrage upon an even more generous basis, and dealt much more
thoroughly with the land problem. The Directory put Gracchus Babeuf to
death for advocating the redistribution of the land in 1795, but the
Provisional Government of Russia did not hesitate to declare for that
in 1917 and to create the machinery for carrying it into effect. At the
very moment when it was overthrown by the Bolsheviki it was engaged
in bringing about the election of the Constituent Assembly, the most
democratic body of its kind in history.
Finally, just as the French Revolution was characterized by a
passionate national consciousness and pride, so that it is customary
to speak of it as the birth of French nationalism, so the Provisional
Government represented a newly awakened Russian nationalism.
Bolshevism, on the contrary, in its early stages, at any rate,
represented the opposite, a violent antagonism to the ideology and
institutions of nationalism. The French in 1793, and throughout
the long struggle, were zealous for France and in her defense; the
Bolsheviki cared nothing for Russia and would sacrifice her upon the
altar of world revolution. In view of all these facts, it is simply
absurd to liken the Bolshevist phase of the Russian Revolution, the
counter-revolutionary phase of it, to the French Revolution.
There were phases of the French Revolution which can be fairly likened
to the Bolshevist phase of the Russian Revolution. There is a striking
analogy between the Reign of Terror instituted in 1793 and the Red
Terror which began in Russia early in 1918. The Montagnards and the
Bolsheviki are akin; the appeal of the former to the sansculottes
and of the latter to the proletariat are alike. In both cases we
see a brutal and desperate attempt to establish the dictatorial
rule of a class comprising only 3 per cent. of the population.
There is an equally striking analogy between the struggle of the
Girondins against the Jacobins in France and the struggle of the
Socialists-Revolutionists and Social Democrats against the Bolsheviki.
In Russia at the beginning of 1920 the significant term “Thermidorians”
began to be used. To compare Bolshevism to the Jacobin phase of the
French Revolution is quite a different matter from comparing it to the
Revolution as a whole.
The permanent achievements of the French Revolution afford no
justification for the Reign of Terror. The Revolution succeeded in
spite of the Terror, not because of it, and the success was attended
by evils which might easily have been averted. To condemn the Terror
is not to decry the Revolution. Similarly, the Russian Revolution will
succeed, we may well believe, not because of the Red Terror or of
the Bolsheviki, but in spite of them. The bitterest opponents of the
Bolsheviki are the most stalwart defenders of the Revolution. No appeal
to the history of the French Revolution can extenuate or palliate the
crimes of the Bolsheviki. Perhaps their greatest crime, the one which
history will regard as most heinous, is their wanton disregard of all
the lessons of that great struggle. They could not have entertained
any rational hope of making their terrorism more complete or more
fearful than was the Reign of Terror, which utterly failed to maintain
the power of the proletariat. They could not have been unaware of the
fierce resistance the Terror provoked and evoked, the counter-terror
and the reaction--the Ninth Thermidor, the Directory, the _coup d’état_
of the Eighteenth Brumaire, the Empire. They could not have been
ignorant of the fact that the Reign of Terror divided and weakened the
revolutionary forces. That they embarked upon their mad and brutal
adventure in the face of the plain lessons of the French Revolution is
the unpardonable crime of the Bolsheviki.
Despite their copying of the vices of the worst elements in the French
Revolution, the Bolsheviki are most closely connected in their ideals
and their methods with those cruel and adventurous social rebels of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose exploits, familiar to
every Russian, are practically unknown to the rest of the world. Upon
every page of the record of the Bolshevist régime there are reminders
of the revolt of Bogdan Khnielnitski (1644-53) and that of Stenka Razin
(1669-71). These cruel and bloodthirsty men, and others of the same
kind who followed them, appealed only to the savage hatred and envy of
the serfs, encouraged them to wanton destruction and frightful terror.
Quite justly does the Zionist organ, _Dos Yiddishce Volk_,[71] say:
[71] July 11, 1919.
The slogans of Bolshevist practice are, in fact, the old
Russian slogans with which the Volga bands of Pubachev and
Razin ambushed the merchant wagon-trains and the Boyars. It is
very characteristic that the Central Committee of the Communist
Party has seen fit to unveil, on May 1st, at Moscow, a monument
to the Ataman Stenka Razin, the hero of the Volga robber raids
in the seventeenth century. Razin, indeed, is the legitimate
father of Bolshevist practice.
Here we may as well give attention to another appeal which the
Bolsheviki and their champions make to French history. They are fond
of citing the Paris Commune of 1871, and claiming it as the model for
their tactics. This claim, which is thoroughly dishonest, has often
been made by Lenin himself. In the “Theses on Bourgeois and Proletarian
Democracies,” published in _Pravda_, March 8, 1919, Lenin says:
“Precisely at the present moment when the Soviet movement, covering
the whole world, continues the work of the Paris Commune before the
eyes of the whole world, the traitors to Socialism forget concrete
experiences and the concrete lessons of the Paris Commune, repeating
the old bourgeois rubbish about ‘democracy in general.’ The Commune
was not a parliamentary institution.” On many occasions Lenin has made
similar references to the Commune of 1871. The official Bolshevist
press constantly indulges in such statements. The _Krasnaya Gazeta_,
for example, published an article on the subject on December 17, 1919,
parrot-like repeating Lenin’s sophistries.
The simple facts are that (1) the Paris Commune had nothing to do
with Communism or any other social theory. It was an intensely
nationalistic movement, inspired by resentment of a peace which it
regarded as dangerous and humiliating to France. It was a movement for
local independence; (2) it was not a class movement, but embraced the
bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat; (3) it _was_ a “parliamentary
institution,” based upon universal, equal suffrage; (4) the first act
of the revolutionists in 1871 was to appeal to the will of the people,
through popular elections, in which all parties were free and voting
was, as stated, based on equal and universal suffrage; (5) within
two weeks the elections were held, with the result that sixty-five
revolutionists were chosen as against twenty-one elected by the
opposition parties. The opposition included six radical Republicans of
the Gambetta school and fifteen reactionaries of various shades. In
the majority were representatives of every Socialist group and faction;
(6) the Communards never attempted to set up a minority dictatorship,
but remained true to the principles of democracy. This Karl Marx
himself emphasized in his _The Civil War in France_. Bolshevist
“history” is as grotesque as Bolshevist economics! No matter what we
may think of the Commune of 1871, it cannot justly be compared to the
cruel betrayal of Russian democracy by the Bolsheviki. The Communards
were democrats in the fullest sense of the term and their brief rule
had the sanction of a popular majority.
The Bolsheviki and their defenders are never tired of contending that
most of the sufferings of the Russian people during the Bolshevist
régime have been due, not to those responsible for that régime, but to
the “blockade” imposed by the Allies upon Russian trade with foreign
nations. Perhaps no single argument has won so much sympathy from
sentimental and ill-informed people as this. Yet the falsity of the
contention has been demonstrated many times, even by those Russians
opposed to the blockade. A brief summary of the salient facts will show
that this claim has been used as a peg upon which to hang a propaganda
remarkable for its insincerity and its trickery.
The blockade was declared in November, 1917, shortly after the
Bolsheviki seized the machinery of government. It was already quite
apparent that they would make a separate peace with Germany, and that
Germany would be the dictator of the peace. There was great danger
that supplies furnished to Russia under these conditions would be
used by the Germans. As a policy, therefore, the blockade was dictated
by military considerations of the highest importance and was directed
against the Central Empires, and not primarily against the Bolsheviki.
It was, of course, inevitable that it would inflict hardship upon
Russia, our former ally, and not merely upon the Bolsheviki. So long as
the Central Empires were in a position to carry on the fight, however,
and especially after the Brest-Litovsk Peace gave Germany such a
command over the life of Russia, the maintenance of the blockade seemed
to be of the highest importance from a military point of view. That
it entailed hardship and suffering upon people who were our friends
was one of the numerous tragedies of the war, not more terrible,
perhaps--except as regards the number of people affected--than many of
the measures taken in those parts of France occupied by the enemy or in
the fighting-zone.
After the armistice and the cessation of actual fighting the question
at once took on a new aspect. Many persons--the present writer among
the number--believed and urged that the blockade should then be lifted
entirely. The issue was blurred, however, by the fact that while this
would certainly give aid to the Bolsheviki there was no assurance that
it would in any degree benefit the people in Russia who were opposed
to them. The discrimination in favor of the Bolsheviki practised in
the distribution of food and everything else was responsible for
this. It must be borne in mind that the blockade did not cut off
from Russia any important source of food-supply. Russia had never
depended upon other nations for staple foods. On the contrary, she
was a food-exporting country. She practically fed the greater part of
western Europe. Cutting off her _imports_ did not lessen the grain she
had; cutting off her _exports_ certainly had the effect of _increasing_
the stores available for home consumption. All this is as plain as the
proverbial pikestaff.
The starvation of the Russian people was not caused by the blockade,
which did not lessen the amount of staple foods available, but, on the
contrary, increased it. The real causes were these: the breakdown of
the transportation system, which made it impossible to transport the
grain to the great centers of population; the stupid policy of the
Bolsheviki toward the peasants and the warfare consequent thereon;
the demoralization of industry and the resulting inability to give
the peasants manufactured goods in exchange for their grain. It may
be objected, in reply to this statement, that but for the blockade
it would have been possible to import railway equipment, industrial
machinery, and so on, and that therefore the blockade was an indirect
cause of food shortage. The fallacy in this argument is transparent: as
to the industrial machinery, Soviet Russia had, and according to Rykov
still has, much more than could be used. As regards large importations
of manufactured goods and railway equipment, what would have been
exported in exchange for such imports? The available stocks of raw
materials, especially flax and hides, were exceedingly small and would
have exchanged for very little. We have the authority of Rykov for
this statement also.
What, then, was there available for export? The answer is--_food
grains_! In almost every statement issued by the Bolsheviki in their
propaganda against the blockade wheat figured as the most important
available exportable commodity. The question arises, therefore, _how
could the export of wheat from Russia help to feed her starving
people_? If there was wheat for export, hunger was surely an absurdity!
Victor Kopp, representative of the Soviet Government in Berlin, in a
special interview published in the London _Daily Chronicle_, February
28, 1920, made this quite clear, pointing out that the hope that Russia
would be able to send food grains to central Europe in exchange for
manufactured goods was entirely unfounded, because Russia sorely needed
all her foodstuffs of every kind. Krassin, head of the department of
Trade and Commerce in the Soviet Government, told Mr. Copping--that
most useful of phonographs!--that the shattered condition of
transportation “leaves us temporarily unable to get adequate supplies
of food for our own cities, and puts entirely out of the question any
possibility, at present, of assembling goods at our ports for sending
abroad.”[72] As a matter of fact, the raising of the blockade, if, and
in so far as, it led to an export of wheat and other food grains in
return for manufactured goods, _would have increased the hunger and
underfeeding of the Russian people_.
[72] _Daily Chronicle_, London, February 26, 1920.
The Bolsheviki knew this quite well and did not want the blockade
raised. They realized that the propaganda in other countries against
the blockade was an enormous asset to them, whereas removal of the
blockade would reveal their weakness. Support is given to this
contention by the following passage from Rykov’s report in January of
this year:
It is the greatest fallacy to imagine that the lifting of
the blockade or conclusion of peace is able in any degree to
solve our raw-material crisis. _On the contrary, the lifting
of the blockade and conclusion of peace, if such should take
place, will mean an increased demand for raw materials_, as
these are the only articles which Russia can furnish to Europe
and exchange for European commodities. The supplies of flax
on hand are sufficient for a period of from eight months to a
year. _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.
In the spring of 1919 Mr. Alexander Berkenheim, one of the managers
of the “Centrosoyuz,” with other well-known Russian co-operators,
represented to the British Government that the blockade of Russia was
inflicting hardship and famine only, or at least mainly, upon the
innocent civil population. They argued that if the blockade were lifted
the Bolsheviki would see to the feeding of the general population.
Berkenheim and his friends applied for permission for their association
to send a steamer to Odessa laden with foodstuffs, medicines, and
other supplies, to be distributed exclusively among children and sick
and convalescing civilians. Backed by influential British supporters,
Berkenheim and his friends gave guaranties that not a single pound of
such supplies would reach the Red Army. All was to be distributed by
the co-operatives without any interference by the authorities. The
Bolshevist Government gave a similar guaranty, stated in very definite
and unequivocal terms. Accordingly, the British Government consented
to allow the steamer to sail, and in June, 1919, the steamer, with a
cargo of tea, coffee, cocoa, and rice, consigned to the “Centrosoyuz,”
arrived at Odessa. But no sooner had the steamer entered the port than
the whole cargo was requisitioned by the Soviet authorities and handed
over to the organization supplying the Red Army.
This treachery was the principal cause of the continuance of the
blockade. That it was intended to have precisely that effect is not
improbable. On January 16, 1920, the Supreme Council of the League
of Nations, at its first meeting, upon the proposal of the British
Government, decided to so greatly modify the blockade as to amount
to its practical abandonment. Trade was to be opened up with Russia
through the co-operatives, it was announced. The co-operatives were to
act as importing and exporting agencies, receiving clothing, machinery,
medicines, railroad equipment, and so on, and exporting the “surplus”
grain, flax, hides, and so on, in return.
Immediately after that arrangement was announced the Bolsheviki adopted
an entirely new attitude. They began to raise hitherto unheard-of
objections. They could not permit trade with the co-operatives on
the conditions laid down; the co-operatives were not independent
organizations, but a part of the Soviet state machinery; trade must
accompany recognition of the Soviet Government, and so on. Thus the
“diplomatic” arguments went. In Russia itself the leaders took the
position expressed by Rykov in the speech already quoted.
To sum up: the blockade was a natural military measure of precaution,
rendered necessary by the actions of the Bolsheviki; it was directed
primarily against the Germans; it was not at any time a primary
cause of the food shortage in Russia. When efforts were made to
ameliorate the condition of the civil population by raising the
blockade the Bolsheviki treacherously defeated such efforts. The
prolonged continuation of the blockade was mainly due to the policy of
obstruction pursued by the Bolsheviki. No large volume of trade could
have been had with Russia at any time during the Bolshevist régime.
The Bolsheviki themselves did not want the blockade removed, and
finally confessed that such removal would not help them. Certainly, the
Allies and the United States made many mistakes in connection with the
blockade; but, when that has been fully admitted, and when all that can
fairly be said against that policy has been said, it remains the fact
that the Bolsheviki were responsible for creating the conditions which
made the blockade necessary and inevitable, and that their treachery
forced its continuation long after the Allies had shown themselves
ready and even anxious to abandon it. At every step of their fatal
progress in the devastation and spoliation of Russia the treachery of
the Bolsheviki, their entire lack of honor and good faith, appear.
Herein lies the real reason why no civilized government can with safety
to its own institutions--to say nothing of regard for its own dignity
and honor--enter into any covenant with the Bolshevist Government of
Russia or hold official relations with it. At the root of Bolshevism
lies a negation of everything of fundamental importance to the friendly
and co-operative relations of governments and peoples. When the leaders
of a government that is set up and maintained by brute force, and
does not, therefore, have behind it the sanction of the will of its
citizens, being subject to no control other than its own ambitions,
declare that they will sign agreements with foreign nations without
feeling in the slightest degree obligated by such agreements, they
outlaw themselves and their government.
Not only have the Bolsheviki boasted that this was their attitude, but
they have gone farther. Their responsible leaders and spokesmen--Lenin,
Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, and others--have openly declared
that they are determined to use any and all means to bring about
revolts in all other civilized countries, to upset their governments
and institute Bolshevist rule. They have declared that only by such a
universal spread of its rule can Bolshevism be maintained in Russia.
“Soviet Russia by its very existence is a ferment and a propagator of
the inevitable world revolution,” wrote Radek in Maximilian Harden’s
_Zukunft_, in February, 1920. Referring to the Spartacist uprisings in
Germany, he said: “You are afraid of Bolshevist propaganda penetrating
into Germany with other goods. You recall an experiment already
carried out by Germany. _Yes, I glory in the results of our work._”
“One does not demand a patent for immortality from the man to whom
one sells a suit of underclothing ... and our only concern is trade,”
said Radek in the same article. When Radek wrote that he knew that he
was lying. He knew that, far from being their “only concern,” trade
was the least of the concerns of the Bolsheviki. Upon this point the
evidence leaves no room for doubt. In _The Program of the Communist
Party_, Chapter XIX, Bucharin says, “The program of the Communist
Party is not alone a program of liberating the proletariat of one
country; it is the program of liberating the proletariat of the world.”
Lenin wrote in _The Chief Tasks of Our Times_: “Only a madman can
imagine that the task of overthrowing international imperialism can
be fulfilled by Russians alone. While in the west the revolution is
maturing and is making appreciable progress, the task before us is as
follows: We who in spite of our weakness are in the forefront must do
all in our power to retain the occupied positions.... We must strain
every nerve in order to remain in power as long as possible, _so as
to give time for a development of the western revolution_, which is
growing much more slowly than we expected and wished.” Zinoviev wrote
in _Pravda_, November 7, 1919, that “in a year, in two years, the
Communist International will rule the world.” Kalinin, president of
the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Power, in
his New-Year’s greeting for 1920, published in the _Krasnaya Gazeta_,
January 1, 1920, declared that, “Western European brothers in the
coming year should overthrow the rule of their capitalists and should
join with the Russian proletariat and establish the single authority of
the Soviets through the entire world under the protection of the Third
International.” Many other statements of a similar character could
be quoted to show that the Russian Bolsheviki’s chief concern is not
trade, but world-wide revolt on Bolshevist lines.
That the Bolsheviki would use the privileges and immunities accorded
to diplomatic representatives to foster Bolshevist agitation and
revolt is made manifest by their utterances and their performances
alike. “We have no desire to interfere in the internal affairs of any
country,” said Kopp, in the interview already quoted, and the Soviet
Government has repeatedly stated its willingness to give assurances
of non-interference with the political or economic system of other
countries. But of what use are assurances from men who boast that they
are willing to sign agreements without the slightest intention of
being bound by them? Take, for example, Trotsky’s statement, published
at Petrograd, in February, 1918: “If, in awaiting the imminent
proletarian flood in Europe, Russia should be compelled to conclude
peace with the present-day governments of the Central Powers, it would
be a provisional, temporary, and transitory peace, with the revision
of which the European Revolution will have to concern itself in the
first instance. _Our whole policy is built upon the expectation of
this revolution._” Precisely the same attitude toward the Allies was
more bluntly expressed by Zinoviev on February 2, 1919, regarding the
proposed Prinkipo Conference: “We are willing to sign an unfavorable
peace with the Allies.... _It would only mean that we should put no
trust whatever in the bit of paper we should sign._ We should use the
breathing-space so obtained in order to gather our strength in order
that the mere continued existence of our government would keep up the
world-wide propaganda which Soviet Russia has been carrying on for more
than a year.” Of the Third International, so closely allied with the
Soviet Government, Zinoviev is reported by Mr. Lincoln Eyre as saying:
“Our propaganda system is as strong and as far-reaching as ever. The
Third International is primarily an instrument of revolution. This work
will be continued, no matter what happens, legally or illegally. The
Soviet Government may pledge itself to refrain from propaganda abroad,
but the Third International, never.”[73]
[73] New York _World_, February 26, 1920.
Finally, there is the speech of Lenin before the Council of the
People’s Commissaries during the negotiations upon the ill-starred
Prinkipo Conference proposal, in which he said:
The successful development of the Bolshevist doctrine
throughout the world can only be effected by means of periods
of rest during which we may recuperate and gather new strength
for further exertions. I have never hesitated to come to
terms with bourgeois governments, when by so doing I thought I
could weaken the bourgeoisie. It is sound strategy in war to
postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy
renders the delivery of a mortal blow possible. This was the
policy we adopted toward the German Empire, and it has proved
successful. _The time has now come for us to conclude a second
Brest-Litovsk_, this time with the Entente. We must make peace
not only with the Entente, but also with Poland, Lithuania, and
the Ukraine, and all the other forces which are opposing us in
Russia. _We must be prepared to make every concession, promise,
and sacrifice in order to entice our foes into the conclusion
of this peace._ We shall know that we have but concluded a
truce permitting us to complete our preparations for a decisive
onslaught which will assure our triumph.
In view of these utterances, and scores of others like them, of
what value are the “assurances of non-interference”--or any other
assurances--offered by Chicherine, Lenin, and the rest? But we are not
confined to mere utterances: there are deeds aplenty which fully bear
out the inferences we have from the words of the Bolshevist leaders.
In a London court, before Mr. Justice Neville, it was brought out
that the Bolshevist envoy, Litvinov, had been guilty of using his
position to promote revolutionary agitation. Not only had Litvinov
committed a breach of agreement, said Mr. Justice Neville, but he
had been guilty of a breach of public law. A circular letter to the
British trades-unions was read by the justice, containing these words:
“_Hence it is that the Russian revolutionaries are summoning the
proletarians of all countries to a revolutionary fight against their
government._” Even worse was the case of the Bolshevist ambassador,
Joffe, who was expelled from Berlin for using his diplomatic position
to wage a propaganda for the overthrow of the German Government, and
this notwithstanding the fact that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in its
second article specifically forbade “any agitation against the state
and military institutions of Germany.”
In an official note to the German Foreign Office, published in
_Izvestia_, December 26, 1918, Chicherine boasted that millions of
rubles had been sent to Berlin for the purpose of revolutionary
propaganda. The duplicity revealed by this note was quite
characteristic of the Bolshevist régime and in keeping with the record
of Chicherine himself in his relations with the British Government
during his stay in London, where he acted as one of the representatives
of the Russians in London who were seeking repatriation. _Izvestia_,
on January 1, 1919, contained an article by Joffe on “Revolutionary
Methods,” in which he said: “Having accepted this forcibly imposed
treaty [Brest-Litovsk], revolutionary Russia of course had to accept
its second article, which forbade ‘any agitation against the state and
military institutions of Germany.’ But both the Russian Government as a
whole and its accredited representative in Berlin _never concealed the
fact that they were not observing this article and did not intend to do
so_.” As a matter of fact, the agitation against the German Government
by the Bolsheviki continued even after the so-called supplementary
treaties of Brest-Litovsk, dated August 27, 1918, which, as pointed out
by the United States Department of State, were not signed under duress,
as was the original treaty, but were actively sought for and gladly
signed by the Bolsheviki.
In view of these indisputable facts, is there any honest and worthy
reason for suspending judgment upon the character of the Soviet
Government? Surely it must be plainly evident to every candid and
dispassionate mind that Bolshevism is practically a negation of
every principle of honor and good faith essential to friendly and
co-operative relations among governments in modern civilization. The
Bolsheviki have outlawed themselves and placed themselves outside the
pale of the community of nations.
The merits of Sovietism as a method of government do not here and
now concern us. But we are entitled to demand that those who urge us
to adopt it furnish some evidence of its superiority in practice. Up
to the present time, no such evidence has been offered by those who
advocate the change; on the other hand, all the available evidence
tends to show that Soviet government, far from being superior to our
own, is markedly inferior to it. We are entitled, surely, to call
attention to the fact that, so far as it has been tried in Russia,
Sovietism has resulted in an enormous increase in bureaucracy; that it
has not done away with corruption and favoritism in government; that
it has shown itself to be capable of every abuse of which other forms
of government, whether despotic, oligarchic, or democratic, have been
capable. It has not given Russia a government one whit more humane or
just, one whit less oppressive or corrupt than czarism. It seems to be
inherently bureaucratic and therefore inefficient. Be that how it may,
it is impossible to deny that it has failed and failed utterly. Even
the Bolsheviki, whose sole excuse for their assault upon the rapidly
evolving democracy of Russia was their faith in the superiority of
Sovietism over parliamentary government, have found it necessary to
abandon it, not only in government, but in industry and in military
organization.
In industry Sovietism, so far as it has been tried in Russia, has
shown itself to be markedly inferior to the methods of industrial
organization common to the great industrial nations, and the so-called
Soviet Government itself, which is in reality an oligarchy, has had
to abandon it and to revert to the essential principles and methods
of capitalist industry. This is not the charge of a hostile critic:
it is the confession of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Krassin, of Rykov, and
practically every acknowledged Bolshevist authority. We do not say that
the Soviet idea contains nothing of good; we do not deny that, under
a democratic government, Soviets might have aided, and may yet aid,
to democratize Russian industrial life. What we do say is that the
Bolsheviki have failed to make them of the slightest service to the
Russian people; that Bolshevism has completely failed to organize the
industrial life of Russia, either on Soviet lines or any other, and has
had to revert to capitalism and to call upon the capitalists of other
lands to come and rescue them from utter destruction. After ruthlessly
exterminating their own capitalists, they have been compelled to offer
to give foreign capitalists, in the shape of vast economic concessions,
a mortgage upon the great heritage of future generations of the Russian
people and the right to exploit their toil.
So, too, with the military organization of the country: Starting out
with Soviet management in the army, the present rulers of Russia soon
discovered that the system would not work. As early as January, 1918,
Krylenko, Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the Bolsheviki,
reported to the Central Executive Committee that the soldiers’
committees were “the only remnant of the army.” In May, 1919, Trotsky
was preaching the necessity of “respect for military science” and of “a
genuine army, properly organized and firmly ruled by a single hand.”
Conscription was introduced, not by law enacted by responsible elected
representatives of the people, but by decree. It was enforced with
a brutality and savagery unknown to this age in any other country.
Just as in industry the “bourgeois specialists” were brought back
and compelled to work under espionage and duress, so the officers of
the old imperial army were brought back and held to their tasks by
terror, their wives and children and other relatives being held as
hostages for their conduct. _Izvestia_ published, September 18, 1918,
Trotsky’s famous Order No. 903, which read: “Seeing the increasing
number of deserters, especially among the commanders, orders are
issued to _arrest as hostages_ all the members of the family one can
lay hands on: father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and children.”
Another order issued by Trotsky in the summer of 1919 said, “In case an
officer goes over to the enemy, _his family should be made to feel the
consequences of his betrayal_.”
_Pravda_[74] published an article giving an account of the formation of
a Red cavalry regiment. From that article we learn that every officer
mobilized in the Red Army had to sign the following statement:
[74] No. 11, 1919.
I have received due notice that in the event of my being guilty
of treason or betrayal in regard to the Soviet Government,
my nearest relatives [names given] residing at [full address
given] will be responsible for me.
What this meant is known from the many news items in the Bolshevist
press relating to the arrest, imprisonment, and even shooting of
the relatives of deserters. To cite only one example: the _Krasnaya
Gazeta_, November 4, 1919, published a “preliminary list” of nine
deserting Red Army officers whose relatives--including mothers,
fathers, sisters, brothers, and wives--had been arrested. _Izvestia_
printed a list of deserters’ relatives condemned to be shot, _including
children fourteen and sixteen years old_.
At the Joint Conference on National Economy in Moscow, January,
1920, Lenin summed up the experience of the Bolsheviki with Soviet
direction of the army, saying, “In the organization of the army we
have passed from the principle of commanding by committee to the
direct command of the chiefs. We must do the same in the organization
of government and industry.” And again, “The experience of our army
shows us that primitive organization based on the collectivist
principle becomes transformed into an administration based upon the
principle of individual power.” In the _Program of the Communists_ we
read that “The demand that the military command should be elective
... has no significance with reference to the Red Army, composed of
class-conscious workmen and peasants.” In a pamphlet issued by the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the latter part of 1918 we
read that “Regimental Committees, acting as administrative organs,
cannot exist in the Soviet Army.” These quotations amply prove that
Sovietism in the army was found undesirable and unworkable by the
Bolsheviki themselves and by them abandoned.
We remember the glowing promises with which the first Red Army was
launched: volunteers considering it an honor to be permitted to fight
for the Communist Utopia; the “collective self-discipline”; the
direction of the whole military organization by soldiers’ committees,
and all the rest of the wild vision. We compare it with the brutal
reality, and the contrast between the hope and the reality is the
measure of the ghastly failure of Bolshevism. The military system of
the Bolsheviki is infinitely more brutal than the old Prussian system
was. The Red Army is an army of slaves driven by terrorized slaves.
Sovietism proved a fool’s fantasy. The old military discipline came
back harsher than ever; the death penalty was restored; conscription
and mobilization at the point of the bayonet were carried out with a
ferocity never equaled in any modern nation, not even in Russia under
Czar Nicholas II. Was there ever a more complete failure?
The mass of evidence we have cited from Bolshevist authorities warrants
the judgment that Sovietism, as exemplified during the Bolshevist
régime, in every department of the national life, is at best an utterly
impracticable Utopian scheme. Certainly every fair-minded person of
normal intelligence must agree that there is nothing in the record of
the experiment--a record, be it remembered, made by the Bolsheviki
themselves--to rouse enthusiastic hopes or to justify any civilized
nation in throwing aside the existing machinery of government and
industrial organization and immediately substituting Sovietism therefor.
As for Bolshevism, in contradistinction from Sovietism, there can be
no hesitation in reaching a verdict upon the evidence supplied by its
own accredited spokesmen and official records. We have not massed the
isolated crimes of individuals and mobs and presented the result as a
picture of Russian life. That would be as unjust as to list all the
accounts of race riots, lynchings, and murders in this country and
offering the list as a fair picture of American life. Ignoring these
things completely, we have taken the laws and decrees of Soviet Russia;
its characteristic institutions; the things done by its government; the
writings and speeches of its statesmen and recognized interpreters;
the cold figures of its own reports of industry and agriculture. The
result is a picture of Bolshevism, self-drawn, more ugly and repellent
than the most malicious imagination could have drawn.
On the other side there is no single worthy creative achievement to
be recorded. There are almost innumerable “decrees,” some of them
attractive enough, but there are no actual achievements of merit to be
credited to the Bolsheviki. Even in the matter of education, concerning
which we have heard so much, there is not a scintilla of evidence that
will bear examination which tends to show that they have actually
accomplished anything which Russia will gratefully remember or cherish
in the days that are to come. The much-vaunted “Proletcult” of Soviet
Russia is in practice little more than a means of providing jobs for
Communists. The Bolshevist publicist, Mizkevich, made this charge in
_Izvestia_, March 22, 1919. “The Proletcult is using up our not very
numerous forces, and spending public money, which it gets from ... the
Commissariat for Public Instruction, on the same work that is done by
the Public Instruction departments ... opposes its own work for the
creation of proletarian culture to the same work of the agents of the
proletarian authority, and thus creates confusion in the minds of the
proletarian mass.”
The Bolsheviki have published decrees and articles on education
with great freedom, but they have done little else except harm.
They have weakened the great universities and rudely interrupted
the development of the great movement to improve and extend popular
education initiated shortly before the Revolution by Count Ignatiev,
the best friend of popular education that ever held office in Russia,
compared to whom Lunacharsky is a cretin. They have imposed upon the
universities and schools the bureaucratic rule of men most of whom know
nothing of university requirements, are at best poorly educated and
sometimes even illiterate.
Promising peace and freedom from militarism, they betrayed their
Allies and played the game of their foes; they brought new wars upon
the already war-weary nation and imposed upon it a militarism more
brutal than the old. Promising freedom, they have developed a tyranny
more brutal and oppressive than that of the Romanovs. Promising humane
and just government, they instituted the _Chresvychaikas_ and a vast,
corrupt bureaucracy. Promising to so organize production that there
should be plenty for all and poverty for none, they ruined industrial
production, decreased agricultural production to a perilously low level
and so that famine reigned in a land of plentiful resources, human
and material. Promising to make the workers masters of the machines,
free citizens in a great industrial democracy, they have destroyed the
machines, forced the workers to take the places of beasts of burden,
and made them bond-slaves.
_The evidence is in: let the jury render its verdict._
FINIS
DOCUMENTS
I
DECREE REGARDING GRAIN CONTROL
The disastrous undermining of the country’s food-supply, the serious
heritage of the four years’ war, continues to extend more and more, and
to be more and more acute. While the consuming provincial governments
are starving, in the producing governments there are at the present
moment, as before, large reserves of grain of the harvests of 1916 and
1917 not yet even threshed. This grain is in the hands of tight-fisted
village dealers and profiteers, of the village bourgeoisie. Well fed
and well provided for, having accumulated enormous sums of money
obtained during the years of war, the village bourgeoisie remains
stubbornly deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving workmen and
peasant poverty, and does not bring the grain to the collecting-points.
The grain is held with the hope of compelling the government to raise
repeatedly the prices of grain, at the same time that the holders sell
their grain at home at fabulous prices to grain speculators.
An end must be put to this obstinacy of the greedy village
grain-profiteers. The food experience of former years showed that
the breaking of fixed prices and the denial of grain monopoly, while
lessening the possibility of feasting for our group of capitalists,
would make bread completely inaccessible to our many millions of
workmen and would subject them to inevitable death from starvation.
The answer to the violence of grain-owners toward the starving poor
must be violence toward the bourgeoisie.
Not a pood should remain in the hands of those holding the grain,
except the quantity needed for sowing the fields and provisioning their
families until the new harvest.
This policy must be put into force at once, especially since the German
occupation of the Ukraine compels us to get along with grain resources
which will hardly suffice for sowing and curtailed use.
Having considered the situation thus created, and taking into account
that only with the most rigid calculation and equal distribution of all
grain reserves can Russia pass through the food crisis, the Central
Executive Committee of All Russia has decreed: