BOLSHEVIST RULE IN RUSSIA
Shortly after the Lenine-Trotzky government came into power in Russia,
in the latter part of the year 1917, Bolshevism became very popular in
America among the radicals, especially the Socialists. Among those who
helped most to bring it into such high esteem was Albert Rhys Williams,
who had spent but one year of his life in Russia, hardly spoke the
Russian language, and while staying in that country was in the pay of
the Bolsheviki, as he testified before the Senate Committee.
The Bolsheviki came into power by violence and have sustained themselves
in power by violence and terrorism. Their main support, the so-called
Red Army, in which the Chinese and Letts have played a prominent part,
is an army of mercenaries who are well paid and well fed, while
thousands of civilians are dying from starvation in the cities and towns
of Russia.
The first success of the Bolsheviki was the dissolution by bayonets of
the Constituent Assembly, which for forty years had been the goal of all
Russians--even of the Bolsheviki up to the time when they found it
overwhelmingly against them. Then they invented a new double name for
their anti-democratic government: Soviets, or dictatorship of the
proletariat. Next they dissolved all the democratic Municipal Councils
and Zemstvos and proceeded to take away the various liberties won in the
revolution against the regime of the Czar.
The dictatorship of the proletariat led rapidly to an almost complete
stoppage of industry. Governmental expenditures increased by leaps and
bounds with the growing pauperization of the people; for the growing
staffs of Bolshevist officials were utterly incompetent, a large army of
mercenaries was required in order to keep down the ever-increasing
number of insurrections and the ceaseless attacks from many foreign
foes, enormous subsidies had to be paid to Bolshevist workingmen,
regardless of the fact that the factories were producing sometimes
little and sometimes nothing, and, finally, the Lenine government spent
great sums in revolutionary propaganda in the different countries of
the world. Political and economic slavery, moral corruption and the
starvation of millions of people, are a few of the "blessings" bestowed
upon Russia by Bolshevism.
Catherine Breshkovsky, the "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,"
herself a Socialist, speaking of the Bolsheviki, said:
"In addition to the crimes in their foreign policy, which
culminated in the treacherous Brest-Litovsk 'peace' with German
militarists, the Bolsheviki have committed innumerable crimes in
their internal policy. They have destroyed all civil liberties in
Russia: freedom of speech, of the press, of assemblage and of
organization; they have filled prisons through the country with
their political adversaries, proclaiming 'enemies of the people'
not only the Liberals, the Constitutional-Democratic Party, but
also the party of the Socialists-Revolutionists and the
Social-Democrats Mensheviki, that is, the parties of the Russian
peasantry and proletariat. They have instituted a system of terror
unequaled in cruelty, and while hundreds of innocent hostages would
pay with their lives for the assassination or for the attempt to
assassinate a Bolshevist commissaire, they did not punish the Red
Guards who assassinated the two Ministers of the Provisional
Government, Kokoshkin and Shingariev, while the latter were under
Bolshevist arrest, lying sick in a hospital."
The January, 1919, issue of "The Eye Opener," the official organ of the
National Office, Socialist Party, publishes the full text of the Russian
Bolshevist Constitution under the caption, "Here's Constitution of
World's First Socialist Republic." Some quotations from the document
will no doubt prove interesting as well as instructive:
"For the purpose of realizing the socialization of land, all
private property in land is abolished, and the entire land is
declared to be national property and is to be apportioned among
husbandmen without any compensation to the former owners, in the
measure of each one's ability to till it.
"All forests, treasures of the earth, and waters of general public
utility, all implements whether animate or inanimate, model farms
and agricultural enterprises are declared to be national property.
"As a first step toward complete transfer of ownership to the
Soviet Republic of all factories, mills, mines, railways and other
means of production or transportation, the Soviet law, for the
control by workmen and the establishment of the Supreme Soviet of
National Economy is hereby confirmed, so as to assure the power of
the workers over their exploiters....
"Universal obligation to work is introduced for the purpose of
eliminating the parasitic strata of society and organizing the
economic life of the country.
"For the purpose of securing the working class in the possession of
the complete power, and in order to eliminate all possibility of
restoring the power of the exploiters, it is decreed that all
toilers be armed, and that a Socialist Red Army be organized and
the propertied class be disarmed....
"The Russian Republic is a free Socialist society of all the
working people of Russia. The entire power, within the boundaries
of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, belongs to all
the working people of Russia, united in urban and rural Soviets....
"The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic considers work the
duty of every citizen of the Republic, and proclaims as its motto:
'He shall not eat who does not work.'
"The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the
right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the
categories enumerated above, namely:
"Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an
increase in profits.
"Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as
interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.
"Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers.
"Monks and clergy of all denominations."
This Bolshevist Constitution shows that the Lenine government has
decreed the socialization of all the land, factories, mills, mines and
other means of production, as well as the railways and the various means
of transportation. This program has been carried out, though as yet
probably not completely. Conditions in Russia were deplorable under the
regime of the Czar, but the Socialist government has made them a
thousand times worse. Industry has been reduced to an almost negligible
minimum, property has been destroyed on every side and possession made a
crime. The country has been reduced to chaos, for no one cares to sow
where others will reap; and unemployment is widespread, for employers
are outlawed, and the government has not enough satisfactory positions
to offer. The right to hold property is one of the binding forces that
holds civilization together and supplies incentive to labor. Some of the
evil effects of the confiscation and socialization of property in Russia
are shown from the following articles, published by the
Socialists-Revolutionists, a faction of the Marxians opposed to the
Bolsheviki. Their paper, "Vlast Naroda," declares:
"The village has taken away the land from the landlords, farmers,
wealthy peasants and monasteries. It cannot, however, divide it
peacefully, as was to be expected.
"The more land there is, the greater the appetite for it; hence
more quarrels, misunderstandings and fights.
"In Oboyansk County, many villages refused to supply soldiers when
the Soviet authorities were mobilizing an army. In their refusal
they stated 'in the spring soldiers will be needed at home in the
villages,' not to cultivate the land, but to protect it with arms
against neighboring peasants.
"In the Provinces of Kaluga, Kursk and Voronezh peasant meetings
adopted the following resolution:
"'All grown members of the peasant community have to be home in the
spring. Whoever will then not return to the village or voluntarily
stay away will be forever expelled from the community.
"'These provisions are made for the purpose of having as great a
force as possible in the spring when it comes to dividing the
land.' ...
"Some villages in the Nieshnov district, in the Province of
Mohilev, have supplied themselves with machine guns. The village of
Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen machine
guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able better to
defend a piece of land taken away from the landlord and, as they
say, that 'the neighboring peasants should not come to cut our hay
right in front of our windows, like last year.' When the
neighboring peasants heard of the decision they also procured
machine guns. They have formed an army and intend to go to Little
Nieshnov to cut the hay on the meadows 'under the windows' of the
disputed owners....
"Stubborn fights for meadows and forests are always going on. They
often result in skirmishes and murder. There are similar happenings
in other counties of the Province, for instance, in Petrov,
Balashov and Arkhar.
"In the Province of Simbirsk there is war between the community
peasants and shopkeepers. The former have decided to do away with
'Stolypin heirs,' as they call the shopkeepers. The latter,
however, have organized and are ready for a stubborn resistance.
Combats have already taken place. The peasants demolish farms, and
farmers set fire to towns, villages, thrashing floors, etc."
Indeed, the results of confiscation and socialization were so bad from
the very beginning that no less a personage than Lenine himself, in "A
Letter to American Workingmen," published by the Socialist Publication
Society of Brooklyn, New York, on pages 12 and 13, says:
"Mistakes are being made by our peasants who, at one stroke, in the
night from October 25 to October 26 (Russian Calendar), 1917, did
away with all private ownership of land, and are now struggling,
from month to month, under the greatest difficulties, to correct
their own mistakes, trying to solve in practice the most difficult
problems of organizing a new social state, fighting, against
profiteers to secure the possession of the land, for the workers
instead of for the speculator, to carry on agricultural production
under a system of communist farming on a large scale.
"Mistakes are being made by our workmen in their revolutionary
activity, who, in a few short months, have placed practically all
the large factories and workers under state ownership, and are now
learning, from day to day, under the greatest difficulties, to
conduct the management of entire industries, to reorganize
industries already organized, to overcome the deadly resistance of
laziness and middle-class reaction and egotism."
The Socialists of the United States and other radical elements in our
country, after the World War, began to laud to the skies the Russian
Soviets as the most perfect form of government that the world had ever
seen. They were held to far surpass parliaments, congress and other
legislative bodies and to be the supreme accomplishments of a democratic
form of government. The deputies of the soviets, according to the
Bolshevist Constitution, were to be elected by the secret, direct and
equal vote of all the working masses. Theoretically the soviets were
very attractive, but in reality fall far short of the ideal. "Struggling
Russia," a well-known weekly magazine published in New York City by one
of the groups of Russian Socialists, has this to say about the Soviets
in its issue of April 5, 1919:
"In fact, there never was either a secret election in Soviet
Russia, or one based on equal suffrage. Elections are usually
conducted at a given factory or foundry at open meetings, by the
raising of hands and always under the knowing eye of the chairman.
The majority of the workers very frequently do not take part in
these elections at all. The rights of a minority are never
recognized, as proportional representation has been rejected.
"As regards direct elections, it is again a mere phrase. The
Central Executive Committee, which is supposed to embody the
supreme administrative organ of the country, was actually being
elected through a four-grade system. Local Soviets send their
representatives to the Provincial Congress, the Provincial Congress
is represented by delegates at the All-Russian Congress, and only
this last body elects the Central Executive Committee. Often the
delegates are not elected by the regular meetings of the Soviets at
all, but are sent by the Executive Committees, cleverly handpicked
by the Bolsheviki after the system of proportional representation
was rejected....
"The exclusion from the Soviets of all who think differently from
the Bolsheviki developed gradually. They 'cleansed' the Soviets in
Perm and Ekaterinburg, in January 1918; in Ufa, Saratov, Samara,
Kazan and Yaroslavl in December, 1917; in Moscow and Petrograd in
February, 1918. They were excluding all Socialists-Revolutionists
and the Mensheviki, to say nothing of the People's Socialists and
members of the Labor Group. Often, when workers demanded new
elections to the Soviet (as happened in Petrograd late in December
of 1917, and early in January, 1918), and such elections did take
place, the Bolsheviki would not permit the newly elected delegates
to enter the building of the Soviet and frequently arrested them.
Gradually only Bolsheviki and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left
remained in the Soviets. Soon, however, after the assassination in
Moscow of Count Mirbach, the German Ambassador, and the attempt at
rebellion in Moscow early in June, 1918, by the
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, the Bolsheviki began to fill
up the prisons with the latter just as they did with the
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right and the Menshiviki.
"So, practically, there remained only Bolsheviki in the Soviets.
And as there was no difference of opinion among them, regular
meetings were soon abandoned altogether and the ostensible 'rule of
the working masses' thus definitely disappeared. A few persons,
often appointed from above (the Bolsheviki often had recourse to
bayonets to support the fiction of Soviet rule: in Tumen the
Executive Committee of a non-existent Soviet was brought from
Ekaterinburg under a convoy of 800 Red Guards), would rule and lord
it over the people, tired and weary of the war and a sterile
revolution.
"Occasional outbursts of popular wrath serve as indications of the
depth of dissatisfaction which is engendered by the Soviets and
their offshoots, the Military-Revolutionary Committee. Thus, in the
Polevsky works, in Ekaterinburg County, a mob of peasants, armed
with axes, scythes and sticks, fell upon the Soviets and beast-like
tore into fragments fifty Bolsheviki. In the Neviansk works the
insurrection of the workers against the Red Army lasted for three
days, until reinforcements from Perm finally subdued this
'counter-revolutionary' revolt. In Okhansk County 2,000 peasants
were shot down for demanding the abolition of the Soviets and the
re-establishment of the rule of the people."
In the April 19, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia" we are told that
"Vlast Naroda," in May, 1918, thus described the uprisings against the
Soviets:
"In Kleen, a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the
Soviets with the intention of bringing the deputies before their
own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial Commisary
committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to escape the
infuriated crowd.
"In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo, the deputies work in their offices, guarded
by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are
accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.
"In Penza, an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet
members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The Soviet
building is now surrounded with cannons and machine-guns.
"In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a Bartholomew
night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals....
"In Bielo, all members of the Soviets have been murdered.
"In Soligalich, two of the most prominent members of the Soviets
have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten
half-dead.
"In Atkarsk, several members of the Soviets have been killed."
"Struggling Russia," May 31, 1919, informs us that the Petrograd
Committee of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, in the middle of
March, 1919, issued the following proclamation condemning the Petrograd
Soviet:
"Shame to the Bolshevist Violators, Liars and 'Agents
Provocateurs!'
"The Petrograd Soviet does not express the will of the Workmen,
Sailors and 'Reds.'
"The Soviet was not elected. The elections were either pretenses or
held under threats of shooting or starvation. This terrorism
completely suffocated freedom of speech, the press and meetings of
the laboring classes.
"The Petrograd Soviet consists of self-appointed Bolsheviki. It is
a blind tool in the hands of the 'agents-provacateurs,' hangmen and
assassins of the Bolshevist regime....
"Where is the dictatorship of the proletariat and working
peasantry? It has been supplanted by the dictatorship of the
Central Committee of the Bolshevist Party, governing with the
assistance of a swarm of extraordinary commissions and punitive
detachments of imported soldiers."
Though the Russian Socialists overthrew the government of the Czar in
the hope of securing liberty, liberty, under the Bolshevist regime, is
farther off than it was before. The British High Commissioner, R. H.
Bruce-Lockhart, in a telegram sent to the British Foreign Office,
November 10, 1918, among other things said:
"The Bolsheviki have established a rule of force and oppression
unequaled in the history of any autocracy.
"Themselves the fiercest upholders of the right of free speech,
they have suppressed, since coming into power, every newspaper
which does not approve their policy.
"The right of holding public meetings has been abolished. The vote
has been taken away from everybody except the workmen in factories
and the poorer servants, and even amongst the workmen those who
dared to vote against the Bolsheviki are marked down by the
Bolshevist police as counter-revolutionaries, and are fortunate if
their worst fate is to be thrown into prison, of which in Russia
today it may truly be said, 'many go in but few come out.'"
V. M. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee of the
Socialists-Revolutionists, in an article published in "Struggling
Russia," April 12, 1919, speaking of absence of liberty under
Bolshevism, says:
"It was during my stay in Petrograd in April, 1918, that a
conference of factory and industrial plant employees of Petrograd
and vicinity was held, to which 100,000 Petrograd workingmen (out
of a total of 132,000) sent delegates. The conference adopted a
resolution sharply denouncing the Bolshevist regime. Following this
conference an attempt was made, in May, to call together an
All-Russian Congress of workmen's deputies in Moscow, but all the
delegates were arrested by the Bolsheviki, and to this day I am
ignorant of the fate that befell my comrades."
Justice, as well as liberty, is a dead letter in the land of Lenine, and
conscription is rigidly enforced by the Russian Socialist Government. R.
H. Bruce-Lockhart, to whom reference has been made, in his telegram to
the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, stated:
"The Bolsheviki have abolished even the most primitive forms of
justice. Thousands of men and women have been shot without even the
mockery of a trial, and thousands more are left to rot in the
prisons under conditions to find a parallel to which one must turn
to the darkest annals of Indian or Chinese history....
"The Bolsheviki who destroyed the Russian army, and who have always
been the avowed opponents of militarism, have forcibly mobilized
officers who do not share their political views, but whose
technical knowledge is indispensable, and by the threat of
immediate execution have forced them to fight against their
fellow-countrymen in a civil war of unparalleled horror."
Concerning religious conditions in Russia, the Rev. Dr. George S.
Simons, shortly after his return from that country, testified before the
Senatorial Committee, which, in February, 1919, was investigating the
nature of Russian Bolshevism:
"The Bolshevik is not only an atheist, but he also seeks to make
all religions impossible. They assert that all misery is due to the
superstition that there is a God. One of their officials told me:
"'We now propose to enlighten our children, and with this purpose
in view, we are issuing a catechism on atheism for use in all the
schools.'
"The man who told me this was the Commissionaire of Enlightenment
and Education."
On February 7, 1919, an appeal was sent to Pope Benedict XV, by the
Orthodox Greek clergy of that part of Russia which had not fallen a prey
to the Bolsheviki. It was signed by Sylvester, Archbishop of Omsk,
President of the Supreme Administration of the Orthodox Church, and by
other members of the same administration. This letter implored the Holy
Father to deign to take into consideration the conditions existing in
Russia. It exposed a list of crimes and outrages, cities sacked,
churches profaned and pillaged, more than twenty bishops and more than
one hundred priests assassinated, the victims being of every kind. Some
of them before they were put to death had their arms and legs cut off,
while others were buried alive. Nuns were violated; the socialization of
women was proclaimed; rein was given to unbridled passions; everywhere
there was nothing but famine, death and misery. The following message is
also noteworthy:
"With deep grief, Venerable Father, we expose to you the unhappy
conditions in which millions of Russians of true Russia are
reduced. Relying on that unity which makes all mankind one, and on
the strength of Christian fraternity, we hope, Venerable Father,
that we may count on your compassion as representing the Christian
Church, and trust that your flock will be informed of what is going
on, and that in common with you they will offer fervent prayers to
Him, in whose hands are both life and death, for those who in the
northeast of Europe are being made, because of their love of
Christ, Martyrs of the faith in the twentieth century."
"Dyelo Naroda," an organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists of Russia, in
April, 1918, stated that the situation of the church and clergy was
horrible. "Everything pertaining to them is being spit upon and
profaned. People, with rifles on their shoulders and their hats on,
often enter the church and right there question the clergymen and arrest
priests, at the same time mocking the religious feelings of the praying
crowd. Many churches have been closed as a result of the edict
concerning the separation of Church and State."
"The New York Times," April 11, 1919, published the following special
cable despatch concerning the religious persecution:
"London, April 10.--The Chronicle publishes an article by R.
Courtier Foster, a British Chaplain at Odessa and Russian ports of
the Black Sea, describing the religious persecution practised by
the Bolsheviki following upon their former capture of Odessa. He
says:
"'Committees were held on board the ships of the Black Sea Fleet,
among the dockers in the port, in the towns and villages on every
hand, which passed resolutions reading:
"'"We abolish God." In Odessa Cathedral, when the Archbishop of
Kherson was celebrating the Holy Mysteries, an uproar occurred with
cries of "Down with the priests!" "Down with the Church!" At a fête
in the town gardens one saw a soldier of the Red Army, amid the
guffaws of his fellows, spit on the Russian holy picture of the
face of Christ, then tear it into fragments and stamp it into the
dust.
"'The Bolshevist conception of religious toleration is considerably
more elastic and far-reaching than the ideas of any mediæval
inquisition. In this matter the Bolsheviki pride themselves on
being far in advance of our effete western thought. They have
murdered Vladimir, the Metropolitan of Kiev, twenty bishops, and
many hundreds of priests. Before killing them they cut off the
limbs of their victims, some of whom they buried alive in the
Kremlin. The Cathedrals in Moscow and those in the towns of
Yaroslav and Simferopol have been sacked. Many nuns were violated
and churches defiled.
"'The ancient and historical sacristies and famous libraries of
Moscow and Petrograd were pillaged and countless sanctuaries
profaned. In Cronstadt Cathedral the great figure of the Crucified
Christ was torn down and removed, and a monstrous and appalling
pagan form placed in its stead, symbolizing "Freedom of Mind."
"'It is not against any one particular form of religion that the
terrors of the new Freedom are hurled. Orthodox, Roman Catholics
and Lutherans alike have been tortured, mutilated, and done to
death under the aegis of the Holy Revolution which appeals to the
proletariat of the whole world to join its forces.
"'The Revolutionary Government is subjecting the Christian religion
to persecutions as great and brutal as anything the world saw
during the first three centuries of the Christian era. Moral
disintegration and ruin spread their tentacles on every side. Any
restraint on sinful impulse or covetous desire is laughed to scorn.
The Bolsheviki publicly encourage outrage and looting. The
propaganda for freedom of mind is essentially nihilistic. It is
based on negation and denial of the existence of God, denial of the
authority of any moral law, denial of all rights of conscience,
denial of all religious liberty, denial of all freedom of the
press, denial of any liberty of speech.
"'One officer remarked despairingly to me: "In Russia now there is
no God, no Czar, no law, no property, no money, no food--only
freedom." And in that travesty of liberty, which the whole
civilized world may well shudder at, all mercy, pity and toleration
are alike scorned. And it is this new and wonderful equality of man
which by means of torture, outrage and assassinations proclaims the
"freedom of mind and body" to the devastated Russian nation.'"
In an Associated Press despatch, from London, that appeared in "The New
York Times" on April 19, 1919, we are informed that of the 300 priests
in the Perm diocese, 46 have been killed; moreover, that two monasteries
were pillaged.
A very interesting and enlightening article on religion in Russia and
the attitude of the Bolsheviki towards it appears in "The Proletarian,"
Detroit, April, 1919. The author is Ernest Greenburg and we shall quote
the greater part of his article:
"The resolution adopted by the Socialist Party of Michigan at its
recent State Convention that, 'It shall be the duty of all
agitators and organizers upon all occasions to avail themselves of
the opportunity of explaining religion,' caused a storm of
indignation to arise among certain 'Socialists.' Clinging to the
old fallacy that religion should be left alone, they point to the
Russian Constitution and the works of the Bolshevik leaders who say
'Religion is a private matter.' But they fail to understand that
the interpretation of the term 'Religion is a private matter,' has
a different meaning here than it has in Russia.
"The slogan, 'Religion is a private matter,' is not of Russian
origin. It has been and is one of the battle cries of the
Revolutionary working class in all countries in which the Church
and the State are combined. Different conditions account for
different understandings of the terms 'Private Matter' here and in
Russia.
"Probably in no other country have religion and the church played
such an important role in the affairs of the state as in Russia up
to the very present time. Truly, it was not so much the force of
arms as that of ignorance which kept up the Czardom for hundreds of
years. The Feudal aristocracy realized the advantages to be derived
from keeping the minds of its slaves in darkness and superstition.
One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of aristocracy was
the Church, whose noble duty it was to sow and to propagate
ignorance. The Church was officially a part of the state. People
were forced to go to church; school children[10] were taught the
'Holy Law of God,' attacks against the church were punished as
attacks against the Czar.
"Religious ignorance of the masses was the greatest enemy of the
Socialists in their propaganda work; at every step they had to meet
and to combat the authority of God, in whose name the church
servants consecrated the yoke of the Czar and the landlords. It was
necessary to pull this poisonous tooth out of the jaws of the
state. Hence came the demand: 'Religion is a private
matter,'--private as opposed to state. It meant that the Church
should be separated from the state and be deprived from its
protection. It was a demand which, put to the Czarist government,
if granted would only facilitate the struggle against this very
religion.
"Similar demands have been put in the Socialist platforms of
Germany, Austria, and other countries which were confronted with
conditions like those in Russia. One of the immediate demands of
the French revolutionists of the nineteenth century was of this
nature.
"The November Revolution put the Russian workers in possession of
the machinery of the church. As a weapon of ignorance, it could not
be used against the exploiters; nor could it be destroyed by force.
Then the Russian workers declared religion a private matter,
thereby depriving it of State protection and forcing it under the
blows of scientific criticism, which will rapidly do away with the
reminders of the decrepit superstitions.
"In America religion always was 'a private matter.' It had never
been officially related to the state, but just the same it is now
being employed by the ruling class against the workers. If it is
not yet as influential here as it was in Russia during the reign of
the Czars--it is becoming so. Its destructive work cannot be
neglected any longer. It must be fought....
"German Socialists understand that by destroying the holy alliance
between the Church and the State their task would not be completed.
After that 'We must wage unrelenting war against the Church,' says
Bebel, 'because she foments civil war among the workers--because it
is the only reactionary force which has any strength and which
keeps us in voluntary slavery.'
"By separating the Church from the State and thereby enforcing
their demand, 'Religion is a private matter,' the French Socialists
were not yet satisfied. They went on fighting religion, and their
Belgian comrades worked in accord with them. Says E. Vandervelde,
'We are bound to admit that both in philosophy and in politics
there must be war between Socialism and the Church.'
"This attitude of the French and Belgian Socialists was approved by
the international Congress at Amsterdam, 1904.
"The position of the Russian Socialists is very clear. They fully
understand that 'Religion is a private matter' signifies only the
first stage in the war against mental slavery. 'Religion is a
private matter,' says N. Boucharin (The Church and the School),
'but it does not mean that we must not fight it by persuasion.'
Further on he emphasizes that it is a 'private matter' only as
much as forceful protection or forceful destruction is concerned.
Beyond the gates of the State's protection, religion is not
considered to be a private matter in Russia. It is fought there in
schools and educational institutions by 'Propaganda, explanation
and education.'
"In this question American Socialists must not be misled by the
seeming contradiction in terms."
In the April 19, 1919, number of "Struggling Russia," Dioneo gives some
interesting information relative to the destruction of education under
the Bolshevist regime:
"The lower and secondary schools are ruined. The villages have
their Soviets, their premises for meetings, but no lower schools.
As regards secondary schools, the Bolshevist reformers are of the
opinion that, in general, such institutions are not wanted and are
just as unnecessary as the intermediate stage between nascent
capitalism and the extreme form of communism.
"The Bolsheviki have only acknowledged the universities. At first,
the reformers made such experiments on the latter as, for instance,
the appointment of a porter to the post of inspector of the
Technological institute, or of a cook as head-mistress of the
Higher Courses for Girls. Then the Bolsheviki decided that no
certificates were necessary for matriculation at the university.
Any half-educated person might become a student of any faculty. The
professors were at a loss to know how to lecture on higher
mathematics to students ignorant of the multiplication table, or
how to explain spectral analysis to persons hardly able to read.
Then the Bolsheviki decided that there was no necessity for the
professor to have a diploma either. It was only necessary that he
should be a supporter of the Bolshevist platform. That is all! And
celebrated Professors were obliged to leave the universities which
they had made famous....
"National education--elementary, secondary, and higher--has been
completely ruined by the Bolsheviki. Lately, they have apparently
decided that Bolshevism ought to give the world a new type of
university, quite different from that of the bourgeoisie. And with
that in mind, the Municipal Council of Voronezh has thought of a
'Street University.' This is how the 'Izvestia' describes this
curious institution of higher education: 'Each of the principal
thoroughfares of Voronezh is now a faculty--of law, economics,
history, literature, science, etc. The walls of the houses are
placarded with posters, containing portraits and brief biographies
of men distinguished in one or another branch of knowledge and
brief items of information concerning the respective subject.'
Thus comments the organ of the Bolshevist Government: 'Every
citizen, instead of spending years at a university, can pick up a
general knowledge of the principal educational subjects as he goes
along.' ...
"Russia's school system is ruined. Education reforms exist only on
paper. And at the same time the Bolsheviki, wishing to show that
they value knowledge very highly, have announced that a
geographical university such as the world has 'never yet seen' is
going to be opened in Petrograd. It is interesting to know what
professors will lecture in this new university, and who will form
their audience?"