TRAVELLING SALESMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
Great preparations were being made by the Communists for the Third
Congress of the Third International and the First Congress of the Red
Trade Union International. A preliminary committee had been organized in
the summer of 1920, while delegates from various countries were in
Moscow. How much the Bolsheviki depended upon the First Congress of the
Red Trade Union International was apparent from a remark of an old
Communist. “We haven’t the workers in the Third International,” he said;
“unless we succeed in welding together the proletariat of the world into
the R. T. U. I., the Third International cannot last very long.”
The Hôtel de Luxe, renovated the previous year, became the foreign guest
house of the Third International and was put in festive attire. The
delegates began to arrive in Moscow.
During my stay in Russia I came across three classes of visitors who
came to “study the Revolution.” The first category consisted of earnest
idealists to whom the Bolsheviki were the symbol of the Revolution.
Among them were many emigrants from America who had given up everything
they possessed to return to the promised land. Most of these became
bitterly disappointed after the first few months and sought to get out
of Russia. Others, who did not come as Communists, joined the Communist
Party for selfish reasons and did in Rome as the Romans do. There were
also the Anarchist deportees who came not of their own choice. Most of
them strained every effort to leave Russia after they realized the
stupendous deception that had been imposed on the world.
In the second class were journalists, newspapermen, and some
adventurers. They spent from two weeks to two months in Russia, usually
in Petrograd or Moscow, as the guests of the Government and in charge of
Bolshevik guides. Hardly any of them knew the language and they never
got further than the surface of things. Yet many of them have presumed
to write and lecture authoritatively about the Russian situation. I
remember my astonishment when I read in a certain London daily that the
teachings of Jesus were “being realized in Russia.” A preposterous
falsehood of which none but a charlatan could be guilty. Other writers
were not much nearer the truth. If they were at all critical of the
Bolsheviki they were so at the expense of the whole Russian people, whom
they charged with being “crude, primitive savages, too illiterate to
grasp the meaning of the Revolution.” According to these writers it was
the Russian people who imposed upon the Bolsheviki their despotic and
cruel methods. It did not occur to those so-called investigators that
the Revolution was made by those primitive and illiterate people, and
not by the present rulers in the Kremlin. Surely they must have
possessed some quality which enabled them to rise to revolutionary
heights--a quality which, if properly directed, would have prevented the
wreck and ruin of Russia. But that quality has persistently been
overlooked by Bolshevik apologists who sacrifice all truth in their
determination to find extenuating circumstances for the mess made by the
Bolsheviki. A few wrote with understanding of the complex problems and
with sympathy for the Russian people. But their voice was ineffectual in
the popular craze that Bolshevism had become.
The third category--the majority of the visitors, delegates, and
members of various commissions--infested Russia to become the agents of
the ruling Party. These people had every opportunity to see things as
they were, to get close to the Russian people, and to learn from them
the whole terrible truth. But they preferred to side with the
Government, to listen to its interpretation of causes and effects. Then
they went forth to misrepresent and to lie deliberately in behalf of the
Bolsheviki, as the Entente agents had lied and misrepresented the
Russian Revolution.
Nor did the sincere Communists realize the disgrace of the
situation--not even Angelica Balabanova. Yet she had good judgment of
character and knew how to appraise the people who flocked to Russia. Her
experience with Mrs. Clare Sheridan was characteristic. The lady had
been smuggled into Russia before Moscow realized that she was the cousin
of Winston Churchill. She was obsessed by the desire “to sculp”
prominent Communists. She had also begged Angelica to sit for her.
“Lenin, Trotsky, and other leaders are going to; aren’t you?” she
pleaded. Angelica, who hated sensationalism in any form, resented the
presence in Russia of these superficial visitors. “I asked her,” she
afterward related, “if she would have thought of ‘sculping’ Lenin three
years ago when the English Government denounced him as a German spy.
Lenin did not make the Revolution. The Russian people made it. I told
this Mrs. Sheridan that she would do better to ‘sculp’ Russian
workingmen and women who were the real heroes of the Revolution. I know
she did not like what I said. But I don’t care. I can’t stand people to
whom the Russian struggle is mere copy for poor imitations or cheap
display.”
Now the new delegates were beginning to arrive. They were royally
welcomed and fêted. They were taken to show schools, children’s homes,
colonies, and model factories. It was the traditional Potemkin
villages[D] that were shown the visitors. They were graciously received
and “talked to” by Lenin and Trotsky, treated to theatres, concerts,
ballets, excursions, and military parades. In short, nothing was left
undone to put the delegates into a frame of mind favourable to the great
plan that was to be revealed to them at the Red Trade Union and the
Third International Congresses. There were also continuous private
conferences where the delegates were subjected to a regular third
degree, Lozovsky--prominent Bolshevik labour leader--and his retinue
seeking to ascertain their attitude to the Third International, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and similar subjects. Here and there
was a delegate who refused to divulge the instructions of his
organization on the ground that he was pledged to report only to the
Congress. But such naïve people reckoned without their host. They soon
found themselves ostracized and at the Congress they were given no
opportunity to make themselves heard effectively.
The majority of the delegates were more pliable. They learned quickly
that pledges and responsibilities were considered bourgeois
superstitions. To show their ultra-radicalism they quickly divested
themselves of them. They became the echoes of Zinoviev, Lozovsky, and
other leaders.
The American delegates to the Red Trade Union International were most
conspicuous by their lack of personality. They accepted without question
every proposition and suggestion of the Chair. The most flagrant
intrigues and political machinations and brazen suppression of those
who would not be cajoled or bullied into blind adherence found ready
support by the American Communist crew and the aides they had brought
with them.
The Bolsheviki know how to set the stage to produce an impression. In
the staging of the two Congresses held in July, 1921, they outdid
themselves. The background for the Congress of the Third International
was the Kremlin. In the royal halls where once the all-powerful Romanovs
had sat, the awed delegates hung with bated breath upon every word
uttered by their pope, Lenin, and the other Grand Seigneurs of the
Communist Church. On the eve of the Congress a great meeting was held in
the big theatre to which only those whose passports had been approved by
the All-Russian Tcheka were admitted. The streets leading to the theatre
were turned into a veritable military camp. Tchekists and soldiers on
foot and on horseback created the proper atmosphere for the Communist
conclave. At the meeting resolutions were passed extending fraternal
greetings to “the revolutionists in capitalist prisons.” At that very
moment every Russian prison was filled with revolutionists but no
greetings were sent to them. So all-pervading was Moscow hypnotism that
not a single voice was raised to point out the farce of Bolshevik
sympathy for political prisoners.
The Red Trade Union Congress was set on a less pretentious scale in the
House of the Trade Unions. But no details were overlooked to get the
proper effects. “Delegates” from Palestine and Korea--men who had not
been out of Russia for years--delegates from the great industrial
centres of Bokhara, Turkestan, and Adzerbeydzhan, packed the Congress to
swell the Communist vote and help carry every Communist proposition.
They were there to teach the workers of Europe and America how to
reconstruct their respective countries and to establish Communism after
the world revolution.
The plan perfected by Moscow during the year 1920-21, and which was a
complete reversal of Communist principles and tactics, was very
skilfully and subtly unrolled--by slow degrees--before the credulous
delegates. The Red Trade Union International was to embrace all
revolutionary and syndicalist organizations of the world, with Moscow as
its Mecca and the Third International as its Prophet. All minor
revolutionary labour organizations were to be dissolved and Communist
units formed instead within the existing conservative trade union
bodies. The very people who a year ago had issued the famous Bull of
twenty-one points, they who had excommunicated every heretic unwilling
to submit to the orders of the Holy See--the Third International--and
who had applied every invective to labour in the 2nd and the 2½
Internationals, were now making overtures to the most reactionary labour
organizations and “resoluting” against the best efforts of the
revolutionary pioneers in the Trade Union movement of every country.
Here again the American delegates proved themselves worthy of their
hire. Most of them had sprung from the Industrial Workers of the World;
had indeed arisen to “fame and glory” on the shoulders of that militant
American labour body. Some of the delegates had valiantly escaped to
safety, unselfishly preferring the Hôtel de Luxe to Leavenworth
Penitentiary, leaving their comrades behind in American prisons and
their friends to refund the bonds they had heroically forfeited. While
Industrial Workers continued to suffer persecution in capitalistic
America, the renegade I. W. W.’s living in comfort and safety in Moscow
maligned and attacked their former comrades and schemed to destroy
their organization. Together with the Bolsheviki they were going to
carry out the job begun by the American Vigilantes and the Ku Klux Klan
to exterminate the I. W. W. _Les extrêmes ce touchent_.
While the Communists were passing eloquent resolutions of protest
against the imprisonment of revolutionaries in foreign countries, the
Anarchists in the Bolshevik prisons of Russia were being driven to
desperation by their long imprisonment without opportunity for a hearing
or trial. To force the hand of the Government the Anarchists
incarcerated in the Taganka (Moscow) decided on a hunger strike to the
death. The French, Spanish, and Italian Anarcho-syndicalists, when
informed of the situation, promised to raise the question at an early
session of the Labour Congress. Some, however, suggested that the
Government be first approached on the matter. Thereupon a Delegate
Committee was chosen, including the well-known English labour leader,
Tom Mann, to call upon the Little Father in the Kremlin. The Committee
visited Lenin. The latter refused to have the Anarchists released on the
ground that “they were too dangerous,” but the final result of the
interview was a promise that they would be permitted to leave Russia;
should they, however, return without permission, they would be shot. The
next day Lenin’s promise was substantiated by a letter of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party, signed by Trotsky, reiterating what
Lenin had said. Naturally the threat of shooting was omitted in the
official letter.
The hunger strikers in the Taganka accepted the conditions of
deportation. They had for years fought and bled for the Revolution and
now they were compelled to become Ahasueruses in foreign lands or suffer
slow mental and physical death in Bolshevik dungeons. The Moscow
Anarchist groups chose Alexander Berkman and A. Shapiro as their
representatives on the Delegates’ Committee to arrange with the
Government the conditions of the release and deportation of the
imprisoned Anarchists.
In view of this settlement of the matter the intention of a public
protest at the Congress was abandoned by the delegates. Great was their
amazement when, just before the close of the Congress, Bukharin--in the
name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party--launched into a
scurrilous attack on the Anarchists. Some of the foreign delegates,
outraged by the dishonourable proceeding, demanded an opportunity to
reply. That demand was finally granted to a representative of the French
delegation after Chairman Lozovsky had exhausted every demagogic trick
in a vain attempt to silence the dissenters.
At no time during the protracted negotiations on behalf of the
imprisoned Anarchists and the last disgraceful proceedings at the Red
Trade Union Congress did the American Communist delegates make a
protest. Loudly they had shouted for political amnesty in America, but
not a word had they to say in favour of the liberation of the politicals
in Russia. One of the group, approached on behalf of the hunger
strikers, exclaimed: “What are a few lives or even a few hundred of them
as against the Revolution!” To such Communist minds the Revolution had
no bearing on justice and humanity.
In the face of abject want, with men, women, and children hungrily
watching the white bread baked for the Luxe Hotel in its adjoining
bakery, one of the American fraternal delegates wrote to a publication
at home that “the workers in Russia control the industries and are
directing the affairs of the country; they get everything free and need
no money.” This noble delegate lived in the palatial home of the former
Sugar King of Russia and enjoyed also the hospitality of the Luxe. He
indeed needed no money. But he knew that the workers lacked even the
basic necessities and that without money they were as helpless in Russia
as in any other country, the week’s _payok_ not being sufficient for two
days’ existence. Another delegate published glowing accounts dwelling on
the absence of prostitution and crime in Moscow. At the same time the
Tcheka was daily executing hold-up-men, and on the Tverskaya and the
Pushkin Boulevard, near the Luxe Hotel, street women mobbed the
delegates with their attentions. Their best customers were the very
delegates who waxed so enthusiastic about the wonders of the Bolshevik
régime.
The Bolsheviki realized the value of such champions and appreciated
their services. They sent them forth into the world generously equipped
in every sense, to perpetuate the monstrous delusion that the Bolsheviki
and the Revolution are identical and that the workers have come into
their own “under the proletarian dictatorship.” Woe to those who dare to
tear the mask from the lying face. In Russia they are put against the
wall, exiled to slow death in famine districts, or banished from the
country. In Europe and America such heretics are dragged through the
mire and morally lynched. Everywhere the unscrupulous tools of the great
disintegrator, the Third International, spread distrust and hatred in
labour and radical ranks. Formerly ideals and integrity were the impulse
to revolutionary activity. Social movements were founded upon the inner
needs of each country. They were maintained and supported by the
interest and zeal of the workers themselves. Now all this is condemned
as worthless. Instead the golden rain of Moscow is depended onto produce
a rich crop of Communist organizations and publications. Even uprisings
may be organized to deceive and mislead the people as to the quality and
strength of the Communist Party. In reality, everything is built on a
foundation that crumbles to pieces the moment Moscow withdraws its
financial support.
During the two Congresses held in July, 1921, the friends and comrades
of Maria Spiridonova circulated a manifesto which had been sent by them
to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and to the main
representatives of the Government, calling attention to the condition
of Spiridonova and demanding her release for the purpose of adequate
medical treatment and care.
A prominent foreign woman delegate to the Third Congress of the
Communist International was approached. She promised to see Trotsky, and
later it was reported that he had said that Spiridonova was “still too
dangerous to be liberated.” It was only after accounts of her condition
had appeared in the European Socialist press that she was released, on
condition that she return to prison on her recovery. Her friends in
whose care she is at present face the alternative of letting Spiridonova
die or turning her over to the Tcheka.