PROPAGANDA
On my way into Red Russia the train on which I was travelling passed,
between Rejistza and Novo-Sokoliev, a train of ten or twelve cars, the
sides of which were covered with huge, multi-colored placards. It was
the “Lenin Train” used for carrying propaganda literature all over the
republic. When I saw it, it was on a tour of the country behind the
Western Front.
The train was decorated with great paintings in bright colors and with
revolutionary inscriptions. In one of the cars was a moving picture
apparatus and screen; another was fitted up as a book shop; and a third
as a telegraph station which posted the latest news bulletins at every
station, and circulated news from the front and from the rest of the
world. The train carried representatives from government departments and
a staff of speakers and lecturers.
It had been in constant service for about two months, during which time
it travelled through the districts of Pskov, Vitebsk, Lettonia, White
Russia, Lithuania, and Kharkov, covering some 3,590 versts. In all the
stations and towns through which it passed, leaflets, pamphlets and
books were distributed. Meetings were arranged and lectures given, and
the Commissary representatives visited the Soviet institutions offering
suggestions and aid. Workers and peasants assembled about the train and
listened to speeches made from the roofs of cars and gathered bundles of
literature to be distributed in the villages and workshops. They told of
their difficulties to the speakers and asked them for their advice.
In America I had always heard so much about the illiteracy of the
Russian peasants that I wondered what use quantities of reading matter
would be to them. I discovered that illiteracy was not nearly so general
as popularly supposed, and was decreasing rapidly under the government’s
energetic educational program. In every community there is at least one
who can read and write. Russians live in villages everywhere; even on
the plains or steppes such a thing as an isolated farmhouse or workman’s
cottage is rare. The farmer may, and often does, have to go some
distance to work his land, but his home is always among other homes.
When literatures arrives those who can, read aloud. The others gather
around the reader to listen. Long discussions, so dearly loved by the
Russians, follow.
The “Lenin Train” was preceded by telegraphic announcements of its
coming, so there was a crowd to meet it at every station. Sometimes the
reception was very ceremonious. At Rejistza, where it arrived at night,
it was met with banners, music and torches. At a tiny station,
Malinooka, a crowd of peasants from the nearby villages was waiting to
receive their literature and “to hear directly from the seat of their
government.” I learned that five more similar trains were being prepared
to be put on the Volga and its tributaries, and motor-trucks to be sent
into the sections where neither railways nor waterways entered. One was
to be called “The October Revolution,” another “The Communist,” and a
third “The Red Army.” The others were not yet named. Boats too were used
for that purpose.
It was easy to understand why these people, beset on all sides, were
carrying on propaganda to defend their country. But I found that their
propaganda did not end with this defensive material. By far the greater
proportion of it was what might be called cultural. It was intended not
only to waken the people to a realization that their own lives were
threatened, but to teach them that they were a part of the great world
that lay outside their own land. The art, the music, the literature and
the science of the world was brought to them in simple form so that they
could comprehend it and be stimulated to further reading and study.
Whatever else the Russians may be they are not materialistic. I found
them more eager for news and knowledge than for food, of which they got
so little. Whatever news is obtained from the outside world is
disseminated at once, by telegraph and bulletins, to all parts of the
country.
At the town of Praele a Bolshevist soldier said to me with a twinkle in
his eye, “You have a great country in America.”
“Why do you think it a great country?” I asked.
“They are shooting negroes in Chicago and Washington now,” was his
answer; “and that’s the country that talks about Soviet Russia being
barbarous.”
Naturally I was interested in the confirmation or refutation of the
reports I had heard, that the Bolsheviki intend to spread their
propaganda all over the world. Soviet officials talked frankly to me
about prisoners and propaganda. They liked to take prisoners, they said.
They only wished they had more food so that they could afford to take
more of them. They didn’t want them to starve. They would like to take a
million prisoners a day if they had enough food and paper. “After all,”
they said, “our war is primarily a war of education.”
At many points along the battlefronts I saw great banners stretched
between posts, with letters large enough to be read a hundred yards
away, telling the other side what the war was about. One, which I had
translated for me on the Lettish front, read, “The Germans are marching
on Riga. German soldiers are helping you to destroy the working class
republic in Russia. If you want to defend Lettland go back and drive the
Germans out of Riga.” The Russians placed great reliance on this
battlefront propaganda. I found evidence in the Lettish ranks of the
effectiveness of these tactics.
In striking contrast to the enthusiasm of the Soviet officials for this
propaganda at the fighting front, and their reliance upon it to achieve
important military results, was their seeming indifference to propaganda
abroad. They were anxious enough that the case for the Russian
revolution and the Soviet Government should be presented to the people
of other countries, but they displayed none of that eager confidence in
their ability to stir revolution abroad with which they are commonly
credited. They believed that by means of propaganda they could break the
morale of any army brought against them; but they did not pretend to be
able to subvert remote governments. They were amused by the fear of
Bolshevik propaganda displayed in the foreign press. They were not
inclined to rate their powers so highly. “To be sure,” they told me, “we
are internationalists and revolutionists, but if other countries are not
ready for revolution how can we stimulate it? That is not our job. We
have had our revolution in Russia and we must bend all our energies to
preserve it. The workers in other countries must take care of their own
affairs.”
[Illustration:
“RED TERROR”
Execution of a Red Guard on an English gunboat in Lake Onega, Russia,
in the presence of
English and American Officers
]
They were willing to give guarantees that the Soviet Government would
not engage in revolutionary propaganda abroad. They told me that they
had repeatedly assured foreign journalists and agents that their
governments could take any measures they saw fit to protect themselves
against Russian propaganda.
Of propaganda in Russia itself there is plenty. I have already described
the propaganda among prisoners of war, and of its effect upon the
English prisoners in Moscow. I have no doubt the same “torture” was
administered to Americans in Siberia. I saw, in an American magazine, a
statement of a Canadian soldier that he and many of his comrades had
been entirely converted to the doctrines of Bolshevism, but he
attributed his conversion to actual experiences and to the things he saw
rather than to anything he had read or been told. It occurs to an
unprejudiced observer who has been in Soviet Russia that the nations
that feared the contagion of Bolshevist propaganda took the worst
possible way of avoiding it when they sent their young soldiers into a
land full of propaganda explaining and upholding the new order
established there.
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