February 13th.
After yesterday's talk with a capitalist victim of the
revolution, I am glad for the sake of contrast to set beside it
a talk with one of the revolution's chief theorists. The
leather-worker illustrated the revolution as it affects an
individual. The revolutionary theorist was quite incapable of
even considering his own or any other individual interests
and thought only in terms of enormous movements in which
the experiences of an individual had only the significance of
the adventures of one ant among a myriad. Bucharin,
member of the old economic mission to Berlin, violent
opponent of the Brest peace, editor of Pravda, author of
many books on economics and revolution, indefatigable
theorist, found me drinking tea at a table in the Metropole.
I had just bought a copy of a magazine which contained
a map of the world, in which most of Europe was coloured
red or pink for actual or potential revolution. I showed it to
Bucharin and said, "You cannot be surprised that people
abroad talk of you as of the new Imperialists."
Bucharin took the map and looked at it.
"Idiotism, rank idiotism!" he said. "At the same time," he
added, "I do think we have entered upon a period of
revolution which may last fifty years before the revolution is
at last victorious in all Europe and finally in all the world."
Now, I have a stock theory which I am used to set before
revolutionaries of all kinds, nearly always with interesting
results. (See p.118.) I tried it on Bucharin. I said:-
"You people are always saying that there will be revolution
in England. Has it not occurred to you that England is a
factory and not a granary, so that in the event of revolution
we should be immediately cut off from all food supplies.
According to your own theories, English capital would unite
with American in ensuring that within six weeks the
revolution had nothing to eat. England is not a country like
Russia where you can feed yourselves somehow or other
by simply walking to where there is food. Six weeks would
see starvation and reaction in England. I am inclined to
think that a revolution in England would do Russia more
harm than good."
Bucharin laughed. "You old counter-revolutionary!"
he said. "That would be all true, but you must look
further. You are right in one thing. If the
revolution spreads in Europe, America will cut off food
supplies. But by that time we shall be getting food from
Siberia."
"And is the poor Siberian railway to feed Russia, Germany,
and England?"
"Before then Pichon and his friends will have gone. There
will be France to feed too. But you must not forget that
there are the cornfields of Hungary and Roumania. Once
civil war ends in Europe, Europe can feed herself. With
English and German engineering assistance we shall soon
turn Russia into an effective grain supply for all the working
men's republics of the Continent. But even then the task will
be only beginning. The moment there is revolution in
England, the English colonies will throw themselves
eagerly into the arms of America. Then will come
America's turn, and, finally, it is quite likely that we shall all
have to combine to overthrow the last stronghold of
capitalism in some South African bourgeois republic. I can
well imagine," he said, looking far away with his bright little
eyes through the walls of the dark dining room, "that the
working men's republics of Europe may have to have a
colonial policy of an inverse kind. Just as now you conquer
backward races in order to exploit them, so in the future you
may have to conquer the colonists to take from them the
means of exploitation. There is only one thing I am afraid
of."
"And what is that?"
"Sometimes I am afraid that the struggle will be so bitter and
so long drawn out that the whole of European culture may
be trampled under foot."
I thought of my leather-worker of yesterday, one of
thousands experiencing in their own persons the appalling
discomforts, the turn over and revaluation of all established
values that revolution, even without death and civil war,
means to the ordinary man; and, being perhaps a little
faint-hearted, I finished my tea in silence. Bucharin, after
carelessly opening these colossal perspectives, drank his tea
in one gulp, prodigiously sweetened with my saccharin,
reminded me of his illness in the summer, when Radek
scoured the town for sweets for him, curing him with no
other medicine, and then hurried off, fastening his coat as he
went, a queer little De Quincey of revolution, to disappear
into the dusk, before, half running, half walking, as his way
is, he reached the other end of the big dimly lit, smoke-filled dining room.