sad-faced priests, until the Bolsheviks came to undermine their power;
for the Bolsheviks have spared not the old Imperial government. The
church had been a potent organization for the Czar to strengthen his
sway throughout his far-reaching dominions and every priest was an
enlisted crusader of the Little Father. So the Bolsheviki, sweeping
over the country, have seized, first of all, upon these priests of
Romanoff, torturing them to death with hideous cruelty, if there be any
truth in stories, and finding vindictive delight in deriding sacred
things and violating holy places.
The moujik, ever susceptible to influence, has been quick to become
infected with this bacillus of agnosticism, and while he still
professes the faith and observes many of the forms as by habit, his
fervor is cooling and already is grown luke-warm. Now on Sundays,
despite all of the execrations of the priest, and the terrible threats
of eternal damnation, he often dozes the Sabbath away unperturbed on
the stove; and lets the women attend to the church going. Under
Bolshevik rule Holy Russia will be Agnostic Russia; and it is a pity,
for religious teaching was the guiding star of these poor people, and
religious precepts, hard, gloomy and dismal though they were, the
foundation of the best in their character.
Icons are pictorial, usually half length representations of the Saviour
or the Madonna or some patron saint, finished in a very archaic
Byzantine style on a yellow or gold background, and vary in size from a
square inch to several square feet. Very often the whole picture is
covered with various ornaments, ofttimes with precious stones. In
respect to their religious significance icons are of two classes,
simple or miracle-working. The former are manufactured in enormous
quantities and are to be found in every Russian house, from the lowest
peasant to the highest official. They are generally placed high up in a
corner of the living room facing the door, and every good Orthodox
peasant on entering the door bows in the direction of the icon and
crosses himself repeatedly. Before and after meals the same ceremony is
always performed and on holiday or fete days a small taper or candle is
kept burning before the icon throughout the day.
An amusing incident is related which took place in the allied hospital
in Shenkursk. A young medical officer had just arrived from Archangel
and was sitting in the living room or entrance-way of the hospital
directly underneath one of these icons. One of the village ladies,
having occasion to call at the hospital, entered the front door and as
usual stepped toward the center of the room facing the icon, bowed very
low and started crossing herself. The young officer who was
unacquainted with the Russian custom, believing that she was saluting
him, quickly stepped forward and stretched forth his hand to shake
hands with her while she was still in the act of crossing herself.
Great was his consternation when he was later informed by his
interpreter of the significance of this operation.
Doughboys on the Railroad front at Obozerskaya will recall the fact
that when the first three Americans killed in action in North Russia
were buried, it was impossible to get one of our chaplains from
Archangel to come to Obozerskaya to bury them. The American officer in
command engaged the local Russian priest to perform the religious
service. By some trick of fate it had happened that these first
Americans who fell in action were of Slavic blood, so the strange
funeral which the doughboys witnessed was not so incongruous after all.
With the long-haired, wonderfully-robed priest came his choir and many
villagers, who occupied one side of the square made by the soldiers
standing there in the dusk to do last honors to their dead comrades.
With chantings and doleful chorus the choir answered his solemn oratory
and devotional intercessions. He swung his sacred censer pot over each
body and though we understood no word we knew he was doing reverence to
the spirit of sacrifice shown by our fallen comrades. There in the
darkness by the edge of the forest, the priest and his ceremony, the
firing squad’s volley, and the bugler’s last call, all united to make
that an allied funeral. The American soldier and the priest and his
pitiful people had really begun to spin out threads of sympathy which
were to be woven later into a fabric of friendliness. The doughboy
always respected the honest peasant’s religious customs.
XXXIII
BOLSHEVISM
Why Chapter Is Written—Venerable Kropotkin’s Message Direct From
Central Russia—Official Report Of United States Department Of
State—Conclusions Of Study Prepared For National Chamber Of
Commerce—Authoritative Comment By Men Who Are In Position To Know—A
Cartoon And Comment Which Speak For Veterans.
The writers have an idea that the veterans of the North Russian
Expedition would like a short, up-to-date chapter on Bolshevism. We
used to wonder why it was that John Bolo was so willing to fight us and
the White Guards. We would not wish to emphasize the word willing for
we remember the fact that many a time when he was beaten back from our
defenses we knew by the sound that he was being welcomed back to his
camp by machine guns. And the prisoners and wounded whom we captured
were not always enthusiastic about the Bolshevism under whose banner
they fought. To be fair, however, we must remark that we captured some
men and officers who were sure enough believers in their cause.
And the general reader will probably like a chapter presented by men
who were over in that civil war-torn north country and who might be
expected to gather the very best materials available on the subject of
Bolshevism. And what we have gathered we present with not much comment
except that we ourselves are trying to keep a tolerant but wary eye
upon those who profess to believe in Bolshevism. We say candidly that
we think Bolshevism is a failure. But we do not condemn everyone else
who differs with us. Let there be fair play and justice to all, freedom
of thought and speech, with decent respect for the rights of all.
The first article is adapted from an article in _The New York Times_ of
recent date, according to which Margaret Bondfield, a member of the
British Labor Delegation which recently visited Russia, went to see
Peter Kropotkin, the celebrated Russian economist and anarchist, at his
home at Dimitroff, near Moscow. The old man gave her a message to the
workers of Great Britain and the western world:
“In the first place, the workers of the civilized world and their
friends among other classes should persuade their governments to give
up completely the policy of armed intervention in the affairs of
Russia, whether that intervention is open or disguised, military, or
under the form of subventions by different nations.
“Russia is passing through a revolution of the same significance and of
equal importance that England passed through in 1639-1648 and France in
1789-1794. The nations of today should refuse to play the shameful role
to which England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia sank during the French
Revolution.
“Moreover, it is necessary to consider that the Russian
Revolution—which seeks to erect a society in which the full production
of the combined efforts of labor, technical skill and scientific
knowledge shall go to the community itself—is not a mere accident in
the struggle of parties. The revolution has been in preparation for
nearly a century by Socialist and Communist propaganda, since the times
of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier. And although the attempt to
introduce the new society by the dictatorship of a party apparently
seems condemned to defeat, it must be admitted that the revolution has
already introduced into our life new conceptions of the rights of
labor, its true position in society, and the duties of each citizen.
Not only the workers, but all progressive elements in the civilized
nations should bring to an end the support so far given to the
adversaries of the revolution. This does not mean that there is nothing
to oppose in the methods of the Bolshevist government. Far from it! But
all armed intervention by a foreign power necessarily results in an
increase of the dictatorial tendencies of the rulers and paralyzes the
efforts of those Russians who are ready to aid Russia, independent of
her government, in the restoration of her life.
“The evils inherent in the party dictatorship have grown because of the
war conditions in which this party has maintained itself. The state of
war has been the pretext for increasing the dictatorial methods of the
party as well as the reason for the tendency to centralize each detail
of life in the hands of the government, which has resulted in the
cessation of many branches of the nation’s usual activities. The
natural evils of state Communism have been multiplied tenfold under the
pretext that the distress of our existence is due to the intervention
of foreigners.
“It is my firm opinion that if the military intervention of the Allies
is continued it will certainly develop in Russia a bitter sentiment
with respect to the western nations, a sentiment that will be utilized
some day in future conflicts. This bitter feeling is already growing.
“So far as our present economic and political situation is concerned,
the Russian revolution, being the continuation of the two great
revolutions in England and France, undertakes to progress beyond the
point where France stopped when she perceived that actual equality
consists in economic equality.
“Unfortunately, this attempt has been made in Russia under the strongly
centralized dictatorship of a party, the Maximalist Social Democrats.
The Baboeuf conspiracy, extremely centralized and jacobinistic, tried
to apply a similar policy. I am compelled frankly to admit that, in my
opinion, this attempt to construct a communist republic with a strongly
centralized state communism as its base, under the iron law of the
dictatorship of a party, is bound to end in a fiasco. We are learning
in Russia how communism should not be introduced, even by a people
weary of the ancient regime and making no active resistance to the
experimental projects of the new rulers.
“The Soviet idea—that is to say, councils of workers and peasants,
first developed during the revolutionary uprisings of 1905 and
definitely realized during the revolution of February, 1917—the idea of
these councils controlling the economic and political life of the
country, is a great conception. Especially so because it necessarily
implies that the councils should be composed of all those who take a
real part in the production of national wealth by their own personal
efforts.
“But as long as a country is governed by the dictatorship of a party,
the workers’ and peasants’ councils evidently lose all significance.
They are reduced to the passive role formerly performed by the states
generals and the parliaments when they were convened by the king and
had to combat an all-powerful royal council.
“A labor council ceases to be a free council when there is no liberty
of the press in the country, and we have been in this situation for
nearly two years—under the pretext that we are in a state of war. But
that is not all. The workers’ and peasants’ councils lose all their
significance unless the elections are preceded by a free electoral
campaign and when the elections are conducted under the pressure of the
dictatorship of a party. Naturally, the stock excuse is that the
dictatorship is inevitable as a method to fight the ancient regime. But
such a dictatorship evidently becomes a barrier from the moment when
the revolution undertakes the construction of a new society on a new
economic basis. The dictatorship condemns the new structure to death.
“The methods resorted to in overthrowing governments already tottering
are well known to history, ancient and modern. But when it is necessary
to create new forms of life—especially new forms of production and
exchange—without examples to follow, when everything must be
constructed from the ground up, when a government that undertakes to
supply even lamp chimneys to every inhabitant demonstrates that it is
absolutely unable to perform this function with all its employees,
however limitless their number may be, when this condition is reached
such a government becomes a nuisance. It develops a bureaucracy so
formidable that the French bureaucratic system, which imposes the
intervention of 40 functionaries to sell a tree blown across a national
road by a storm, becomes a bagatelle in comparison. This is what you,
the workers in the occidental countries, should and must avoid by all
possible means since you have at heart the success of a social
reconstruction. Send your delegates here to see how a social revolution
works in actual life.
“The prodigious amount of constructive labor necessary under a social
revolution cannot be accomplished by a central government, even though
it may be guided by something more substantial than a collection of
Socialist and anarchistic manuals. It requires all the brain power
available and the voluntary collaboration of specialized and local
forces, which alone can attack with success the diversity of the
economic problems in their local aspects. To reject this collaboration
and to rely on the genius of a party dictatorship is to destroy the
independent nucleus, such as the trade unions and the local
co-operative societies by changing them into party bureaucratic organs,
as is actually the case at present. It is the method not to accomplish
the revolution. It is the method to make the realization of the
revolution impossible. And this is the reason why I consider it my duty
to warn you against adopting such methods.
It must be evident to the reader that Russia is at present being ruled
by a system of pyramided majorities, many of which are doubtful popular
majorities. In the name of the Red Party Lenin and Trotsky rule. They
themselves admit it. The dictatorship of the proletariat, and similar
terms are used by them in referring to their highly centralized
control. We Americans are in the habit of overturning state and
national administrations when we think one party has ruled long enough.
Even a popular war president at the pinnacle of his power found the
American people resenting, so it has been positively affirmed, his plea
for the return of his party to continued control in 1918. Can we as a
self-governing people look with anything but wonder at the occasional
American who fails to see that the perpetual rule of one party year
after year which we as Americans have always doubted the wisdom of, is
the very thing that Lenin and Trotsky have fastened upon Russia.
Russia, that wanted to be freed from the Romanoff rule and its
bureaucratic system of fraud, waste, and cruelty, today groans under a
system of despotism which is just as, if not more, wasteful, fraudulent
and cruel.
There are sincere people who might think that because the Bolsheviks
have kept themselves in power, that they must be right. We can not
agree with the reasoning. Even if we knew nothing about the bayonets
and machine guns and firing squads and prisons, we would not agree to
the reasoning that the Bolshevik government is right just because it is
in power. We prefer the reasoning of the greatest man whom America has
produced, Abraham Lincoln, whose words, which we quote, seem to us to
exactly fit the present Russian situation:
“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations,
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions
and sentiments, is the only free sovereign of a free people. Whoever
rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity
is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy
or despotism in some form is all that is left.”—_Abraham Lincoln._
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States has, through Frederic J.
Haskin, Washington, D. C., distributed an admirable pamphlet, temperate
and judicial, which compares the Soviet system with the American
constitutional system. This pamphlet written by Hon. Burton L. French,
of Idaho, concludes his discussion as follows:
“In a government that has been heralded so widely as being the most
profound experiment in democracy that has ever been undertaken, we
would naturally expect that the franchise would be along lines that
would recognize all mankind embraced within the citizenship of the
nation as standing upon an equal footing. The United States has for
many years adhered to that principle. It was that principle largely for
which our fathers died when they established our government, and yet
that principle seems foreign to the way of thinking of Lenin and
Trotsky as they shaped the Russian constitution.
PARALLEL 8—THOSE WHO MAY VOTE
RUSSIA
1. The franchise extends to all over 18 years of age who have acquired
the means of living through manual labor, and also persons engaged in
housekeeping for the former.
2. Soldiers of the army and navy.
3. The former two classes when incapacitated.
UNITED STATES
All men (and women in many states, and soon in all) who are citizens
and over 21 years of age, excepting those disfranchised on account of
illiteracy, mental ailment or criminal record.
“Bear in mind the liberal franchise with which the American Nation
meets her citizens and let me ask you to contemplate the franchise that
is handed out to the people of Russia who are; 18 years of age or over
who have acquired the means of living through labor that is productive
and useful to society and persons engaged in housekeeping in behalf of
the former are entitled to the franchise. Who else? The soldiers of the
army and navy. Who else? Any of the former two classes who have become
incapacitated.
“Now turn to the next sections of the Russian constitution and see who
are disfranchised.
“The merchant is disfranchised; ministers of all denominations are
disfranchised; and then, while condemning the Czar for tyranny, the
soviet constitution solemnly declares that those who were in the employ
of the Czar or had been members of the families of those who had ruled
in Russia for many generations shall be denied suffrage.
“Persons who have income from capital or from property that is theirs
by reason of years of frugality, industry, and thrift are penalized by
being denied the right to vote. They are placed in the class with
criminals, while the profligate, the tramp who works enough to obtain
the means by which he can hold body and soul together, is able to
qualify under the constitution of Russia and is entitled to a vote.
Under that system in the United States the loyal men and women who
bought Liberty Bonds, in their country’s peril would be disfranchised
while the slacker would have the right of suffrage.
“Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase
in profits may not vote or hold office. Under that system the
manufacturer who furnishes employment for a thousand men would be
denied the ballot, while those in his employ could freely exercise the
right of franchise. Under that system the farmer who hires a crew of
men to help him harvest his crop is denied the franchise. Under that
system the dairyman who hires a boy to milk his cows or to deliver milk
is denied the franchise.
“The constitution of Russia adopts the declaration of rights as part of
the organic act to the extent that changes have not been made, by the
constitution. Examine them—the constitution and the declaration of
rights—we find other most astounding doctrines in the soviet
fundamental law. I shall not discuss but merely mention a few of them.
They do not pertain so much to the structure of government as they do
to the economic and social conditions surrounding the people under the
soviet system:
“_First._ Private ownership of land is abolished. (No compensation,
open or secret, is paid to the former owner.)
“_Second._ Civil marriage alone is legal. By act of the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets a marriage may be accomplished by the contracting
parties declaring the fact orally, or by writing to the department of
registry of marriage. Divorce is granted by petition of both or either
party upon proof alone that divorce is desired.
“_Third._ The teaching of religious doctrines is forbidden in private
schools, as well as in schools that are public.
“_Fourth._ No church or religious society has the right to own
property. (The soviet leaders boldly proclaim the home and the church
as the enemies of their system, and from the foregoing it would seem
that they are trying to destroy them.)
“_Fifth._ Under the general authority granted to the soviets by the
constitution inheritance of property by law or will has been abolished.
“These amazing features of the constitution and laws enacted under the
constitution speak more eloquently than any words that could be used to
amplify them in portraying the hideousness of a system of government
that, if permitted to continue, must inevitably crush out the home in
large part by the flippancy with which marriage and divorce are
regarded, by the refusal of permitting the land to be held in private
ownership, and by refusing the parent the right at death to pass on to
his wife or to his children the fruits of years of toil.
“What, then, is my arraignment of sovietism according to the soviet
constitution?
“1. The people have no direct vote or voice in government, except the
farmers in their local rural soviets and the city dwellers in their
urban soviets.
“2. The rural, county, provincial, regional, and All-Russian soviets
are elected indirectly, and the people have no direct vote in the
election.
“3. The people have no voice in the election of executive officers of
the highest or lowest degrees.
“4. There is no mention of independent judicial officers in the
constitution.
“5. The people are very largely disfranchised.
“6. The farmer of Russia is discriminated against.
“7. The system raises class against class; the voters vote by trade and
craft groups instead of on the basis of thought units.
“8. The system strikes a blow at the church and the home.
“9. The system is pyramidal and means highly centralized and autocratic
power.
“The soviet system of government can not be defended. It is against the
interests of the very men for whom it is supposed to have been
established—the laboring man. He is the man most of all who must suffer
under any kind of government or system that is wrong. He is the man who
would be out of bread within the shortest time. He is the man whose
family would be destitute of clothing in the shortest time. He is the
man whose family will suffer through disease, famine, and pestilence in
the shortest time.
“As it is against the best interest of the laboring man, so it is
against the best interest of all the people, and, as a matter of fact,
the overwhelming mass of people of this country and all countries is
made up of laboring people.
“Finally, the soviet government, as foreshadowed in its constitution,
is obviously unjust, unfair and discriminatory. This fact will appear
at once to any mind trained to the American manner of thought, which
takes the trouble to investigate sovietism, and whatever tendency there
may be to approve will disappear with better understanding.”
“Men in high places who have had opportunity to get the facts,” says
Mr. Burton, “give their impressions of the experiment:
“WOODROW WILSON, _President of the United States_.—‘There is a closer
monopoly of power in Moscow and Petrograd than there ever was in
Berlin.’
“SAMUEL GOMPERS, _President of the American Federation of Labor_.—
‘Bolshevism is as great an attempt to disrupt the trade unions as it is
to overturn the government of the United States. It means the decadence
or perversion of the civilization of our time. To me, the story of the
desperate Samson who pulled the temple down on his head is an example
of what is meant by bolshevism.’