RUSSIA RED WITH BLOOD AND BLACK WITH CRIME
Socialists have for many years boasted of the perfect peace and harmony
which would prevail when once they had established their state.
Bloodshed, civil discord and strife of every kind would cease when the
Marxian workers ruled the land, for, as they said, privately owned
property, and exploitation of workers are the source of wars and the
fundamental cause of the oppression of the people. Bolshevist Russia,
however, the first Socialist country, appears to be an exception.
Perhaps no nation has ever witnessed such scenes of violence, bloodshed,
murder and cruelty, perpetrated by a government, not against a foreign
foe, but against its own people, and this not after an existence of a
hundred or several hundred years, but constantly from its very birth. So
far only a few pages, comparatively speaking, of the history of the
terrible outrages are opened to us, but from these we can form some
slight idea of the dreadful condition of the land that is truly red, but
red principally from the rivers of blood that flow in abundance over
every section of the country.
The "Izvestia," an official Bolshevist publication, on October 19, 1918,
published the following news item under the heading, "The Conference of
the Extraordinary Commission:"
"Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the District Commission of
Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission for Moscow. The total number of people arrested by the
Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220. Eight hundred people were
shot."
The "Northern Commune," another official Bolshevist publication, in its
issue of September 10, 1918, stated:
"In the whole of the Jaroslavl Government a strict registration of
the bourgeoisie and its partisans has been organized. Manifestly
anti-Soviet elements are being shot; suspected persons are being
interned in concentration camps; non-working sections of the
population are being subjected to compulsory labor."
The same edition of the "Northern Commune" publishes the following
despatch:
"Tver, Sept. 9.--The Extraordinary Commission has arrested and sent
to concentration camps over 130 hostages from among the
bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the Cadet Party,
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, former officers, well known
members of the propertied class and policemen."
From the September 18, 1918, edition of the "Northern Commune" we learn
that in Perm, in retaliation for the assassination of Uritzky and for
the attempt on Lenine, fifty hostages from among the bourgeois classes
and the White Guards were shot.
"Struggling Russia," March 22, 1919, supplies us with other details of
Bolshevist rifle rule:
"We know a great deal about the terror in Petrograd, and
considerably less about Moscow. The reason is plain. We find the
curtain dropped on the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission which had its seat in Moscow. In a report of the meeting
of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, which took place
on October 16, we read:
"'The report of the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission was read at a secret session of the Executive Committee.
But the report and the discussion of it were held behind closed
doors and will not be published.' ['Izvestia,' October 17, 1918.]
"The kind of decisions adopted by the Moscow Bolsheviki behind
closed doors and the mass terror practised in Moscow and all over
Russia under the direction of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission are well illustrated by Eugene Trupp, a prominent
Socialist-Revolutionist and a member of the All-Russian Constituent
Assembly, who wrote the following in the Socialist-Revolutionary
daily, 'Zemlia i Volia' (Land and Freedom) of October 3, 1918:
"'After the murder of Uritzky in Petrograd, 1,500 people were
arrested; 512, including 10 Socialists-Revolutionists, were shot.
At the same time 800 people were arrested in Moscow. It is unknown,
however, how many of these were shot. In Nizhni-Novgorod, 41 were
shot; in Yaroslavl, 13; in Astrakhan, 12 Socialists-Revolutionists;
in Sarapool, a member of the Central Committee of the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, I. I. Teterkin; in Penza, about 40
officers; in Kooznetzk people are daily shot in masses; all this is
only a drop in the ocean. I have no exact information as to the
number of people shot in other cities.' ...
"'Despite all these and other outrages, a demonstration of Red
Guards took place in Moscow on September 6. Their main demands were
"deeds for words" and "relentless red terror in the fight against
the bourgeoisie." ...
"'The last days of my stay Moscow and Soviet-Russia in general were
filled with red terror. A gray, silent and dejected crowd, with
pale, terrified faces and eyes full of excitement, was moving along
the streets. "Such or such people have been arrested today." "This
or that number has been shot." "Do not sleep at home, they are
looking for you." "You are still alive?" "Why do you not go away
from here?" were expressions hastily exchanged.
"'No conversations were heard; only silent whispering in corners.
All were trembling. All were filled with horror of the wild terror.
Spies were all over. At the proper places you could see their
familiar figures.
"'These spies sneak about the stations, mingling with the crowds of
Red Guards, in the trains, and in all dirty, warm corners always
pushing forward. While traveling you feel that if your face or
perhaps your attire, or your opinion, carelessly uttered, will not
please them, you may be held up at any moment. You feel that every
passenger is hiding something in himself. Keep silent; we will
talk later when we have passed the spying cordons.'"
In the September 18, 1918, evening issue of the "Northern Commune,"
there is a report of a meeting of the Soviet of the First District of
Petrograd. After a report made by Kharitonoff, who emphasized the
necessity of suppressing the bourgeois press, and after speeches by
other members, the following resolution was passed:
"The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being used
against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and declares
that every attempt on the life of our leaders will be answered by
the proletariat by the shooting down not only of hundreds, as the
case is now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers,
manufacturers, Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right."
We are indebted to "Struggling Russia," March 29, 1919, for the
following information as regards the Red rule of Lenine and the shooting
of children:
"The following quotation from a speech of one of the most active
Bolshevist leaders, Zinoviev, printed in the 'Northern Commune' of
September 19, 1918, fully expresses the spirit of the Bolshevist
terrorism:
"'To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist
Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100
millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the
rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.'
"The program of annihilating ten million of the opponents of
Bolshevism in Russia (Mr. Zinoviev has considerably underestimated
their number) began to be executed by the Bolsheviki from the first
moment of their coming into power. In the beginning of March, 1918,
they held mass executions in Rostov-on-the-Don, killing, among
others, many youths. The Moscow 'Russkiya Viedomosti' (Russian
News) in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president
of the Rostov Municipal Council and the Chairman of the Don
Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, B. C. Vasiliev,
the mayor of the city, P. Petrenko, the former Chairman of the
Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' Delegates,
P. Melnikov, and even M. Smirnov, at that time Chairman of the
Council, have handed in a petition to the Bolshevist
War-Revolutionary Council asking them to shoot them 'instead of the
innocent children who are executed without law and justice.' A
group of women, horrified by what was going on, also asked that
they be shot instead of the children. In their petition they wrote
as follows:
"'If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and
life in order to establish a Socialistic state and to create new
ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers,
but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live;
they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives.
Take our lives and our blood as ransom....
"'We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands
and brothers. Pray, take our last possession, our lives, but spare
our children. Call us, one after the other, for execution, when our
children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order
to save the life of her children or that of other children.
"'Citizens, members of the War Revolutionary Council, listen to the
cries of the mothers. We cannot be kept silent!'"
Charles Dumas, a French Socialist, on his return to France from Russia,
wrote a book in which he warns his fellow-comrades on the dangers of
Bolshevism, and among other things he says:
"Upon my arrival in Petrograd I wanted, first of all, to meet three
of my old Russian friends, but soon learned that my searches were
in vain. Two of the poor fellows had lost their minds and the third
had cut his own throat with a razor....
"The Sebastopol horrors of March, 1918, when the sailors of the
port, inflamed to a high pitch of bestiality by the Bolshevist
press decided to kill all the inhabitants of the principal streets,
not sparing even children above the age of five, are still so fresh
in your minds that I need not remind you of them....
"On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized,
in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night
in the city of Kuklovo. About 500 bodies of the victims were found
afterwards, most of them 'intellectuals.' All residences and stores
were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst
sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the
Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.
"In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible
massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and 300 citizens were
killed. The Peoples' Commissaries and the Soviets have, upon more
than one occasion, made admissions that these horrors were part of
their program. At the Congress of the Soviets the chairman of the
Central Committee of the Soviets, Sverdlov, said: 'We invoke the
Soviets not to relent, but to fortify the Terror, no matter how
terrible it may be and what dimensions it may assume.'"
An Associated Press despatch, dated Omsk, April 5, 1919, stated that the
Bolsheviki had murdered 2,000 at or near Osa:
"Indisputable evidence of the massacre by the Bolsheviki of more
than 2,000 civilians in and near the town of Osa has been obtained
by Messrs. Simmonds and Emerson and Dr. Rudolph Teusler of the
American Red Cross, who have just returned from reoccupied Russian
territory. Approximately 500 persons were killed at Osa and 1,500
in the surrounding districts."
The same despatch shows the excessive cruelty of Lenine's gang of
blood-thirsty Reds:
"A blacksmith was shot because he could not pay 5,000 rubles. A man
was shot because he lived in a brick house. All attorneys and
jurists and doctors whose services were not required were killed. A
woman was compelled to fetch a lamp and gaze upon her murdered sons
for the amusement of the slayers.
"The Soviet called a meeting and prepared lists of those to die.
The houses prescribed were visited by squads, the doors were
smashed in, the victims dragged to the edge of the town and forced
to dig their own graves. A survivor testified that he had seen men
thrown into a pit and buried alive. Priests were hunted
unmercifully. The evidence showed that men were slain whose only
offense was that they worked as sextons or caretakers of churches.
In the Perm district everything of value was stolen from the
churches, the monastery was looted and several priests were
murdered."
According to two more Associated Press despatches, even women and
children were not excepted by the Bolsheviki who have been so much
extolled by our American Socialists and recognized as their brethren:
"Stockholm, April 17, 1919.--The Bolsheviki are carrying out a
rapid and systematic annihilation of all the bourgeois elements in
Riga, according to reports from Libau to 'Svenska Dagblast.' The
victims of the Bolsheviki terror are taken to the Island of Hasen,
in the Dvina river, and are said to number 70,000, including women
and children. No one is permitted to take food or money to the
island."
"London, April 17, 1919.--Eighteen hundred persons, including 400
women, were murdered by the Bolsheviki at Ufa, according to a
dispatch from Omsk, received in official quarters here."
The "Northern Commune" published the following report in which the
horrors of the Bolsheviki prisons were described by the Bolsheviki
themselves:
"The presiding officers of the Soviet of the Viborg district
decided to send a delegation to the prisons of that district when
they heard that terrible scenes were occurring there. The prisoners
were starving. Many of them who had been held eight months had not
yet been tried, for the Commission entrusted with the investigation
of their cases had not yet been in session.
"The delegation consisted of Dr. Petropavlovsky, the Military
Commissionary, Vasilyevsky, and the President of the Soviet,
Frilisser. The latter handed in the following report: 'Comrades,
what we saw and heard in visiting the prisons of the Viborg
district cannot be described....
"'The cells are repulsively dirty. There is neither clean linen nor
pillows. The prisoners are being punished for the least offence.
"'But what is most terrible is the scene we witnessed in the prison
hospital.
"'Comrades! We found there no people! We found there living ghosts
who had no strength to talk, for they were starving.
"'When somebody dies, the corpse remains for several hours with its
living neighbors, who say: "That is nothing. We shall all soon die
of hunger."'"
"Dyelo Naroda," in its issue of April 26, 1918, thus describes the
cruelties of the barbarous Bolshevists:
"In Kirensk County the people's tribunal ordered a woman found
guilty of extracting brandy, to be enclosed in a bag and repeatedly
knocked against the ground until dead.
"In the Province of Tver the people's tribunal had sentenced a
young fellow to freeze to death for theft. In a rigid frost he was
led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he
turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures
short by shooting him."
The British High Commissioner, R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, in his telegram to
the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, thus describes one of the
methods of torture and the taking of hostages as practiced by the
followers of the "gentle" Lenine:
"The Bolsheviki have restored the barbarous methods of torture. The
examination of prisoners frequently takes place with a revolver at
the unfortunate prisoner's head.
"The Bolsheviki have established the odious practice of taking
hostages. Still worse, they have struck at their political
opponents through their woman folk. When recently a long list of
hostages was published in Petrograd, the Bolsheviki seized the
wives of those men whom they could not find and threw them into
prison until their husbands should give themselves up."
When the Bolsheviki were forced to evacuate Riga, in May, 1919, they
left behind them in the [**] prisons 1,600 hostages who were found to be
in a state of unspeakable misery and starvation.
An Associated Press despatch of March 22, 1919, states that "a Russian
girl of 19 years, who, in December, 1918, had been charged with
espionage, was tortured by being pierced thirteen times in the same
wound with a bayonet. She lived, however, and made an affidavit to these
details."
The same dispatch states that "an examination of dead bodies of persons
alleged to have been killed by the Bolsheviki in the Perm district,
shows a preponderance of bayonet wounds in the back, but in other
instances mouths were slit, fingers and hands cut off, and the heads of
the victims smashed."
"Struggling Russia," in its issue of April 5, 1919, informs us that
"officers have come out of Petrograd prisons with their nails torn off,
and that prisoners after having been fed on herrings were given nothing
to drink for two or three days."
A dispatch from Warsaw, dated April 10, 1919, stated that fugitives from
Russia were pouring into that city, each of them bringing fresh tales of
Bolsheviki horrors. The people in Russia, it was said, were being shot
on the least provocation. For instance, men who remained in bed during
the cold weather to keep warm because they had no fuel were accused of
"discontent" and dragged into the streets and shot. Dead bodies, it was
claimed, were left lying in the streets in heaps.
In order to maintain their popularity with the workingmen and with their
hired mercenaries, the Bolsheviki paid their supporters enormous wages
by means of an unchecked paper issue. In fact they have turned out so
many tons of paper money, without financial guarantees of any sort, that
today in Russia money has lost practically all its value.
"Struggling Russia," March 22, 1919, publishes an appeal issued in
Petrograd and signed by the following organizations: Committee for the
Defence of Freedom of the Press; Central Committee of the Russian Social
Democratic Labor Party; Central Committee of the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists; Central Committee of the Councils of Peasant
Deputies and the Union of Workmen-Printers. Among other things the
appeal says:
"Civil war has inflamed the whole country. Cities are being
destroyed. The war of brother against brother is consuming the
strength of our revolutionary democracy. The cannons, secured to
guard the conquests of our revolution, shatter monuments, homes,
and shrines of art. The cities of Russia fall at the hands of her
own citizens....
"The nation is being driven towards ruin. The people are deprived
of all liberties won by the revolution."
The April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under the caption,
"City of the Dead," describes the deplorable condition of Petrograd as
follows:
"Vladimir Bourtzev published in his paper, 'Obscherye Dyelo,' (The
Common Cause), appearing in Paris, an interview with a well known
pedagogist and journalist, C. L. Avaliani, who recently arrived
from Petrograd. Mr. Avaliani lived in Petrograd during the bright,
early days of the revolution and has also witnessed the tragic
period of the Bolshevist rule:
"'That Petrograd that used to draw to itself the leading social and
scientific forces is no more. That living spring that sent upward a
spray of rainbow hues and colors has gradually died out and is now
finally extinct.
"'There is no scientific activity, no research work, no literary or
artistic life. All is leveled down and compressed under one
Bolshevist lid. The only burning question is the problem of food.
The only blessed object of Bolshevist providence is the remaining
bourgeois element, the only axis around which all their creative
experiments revolve. On the one hand, those who toil,--and on the
other the "parasites," and to the latter class all the members of
the liberal professions, all the literateurs, the lawyers and the
clergy were assigned. The sympathizers and upholders of the "rule
of the Soviets" get a food ticket; all the others are sentenced to
starvation.
"'It is a rule that rests solely on bayonets! There is no popular
confidence, no social support. It is all regarded as superfluous
and a "burgeois" prejudice. The sole means of enlightenment and
conviction are the bayonet and machine gun....
"'A real Kingdom of the Dead! Petrograd is empty. Many have been
summarily shot, but still more have died from exhaustion and
disease, and some have fled. From a population of three million
only 976,000 remain.'"
"Struggling Russia," on April 5, 1919, published a detailed list of 76
places or districts in which there were uprisings against the Bolsheviki
in the year 1918. In the year 1919 the revolutionary outbreaks seem to
have become far more numerous.
Evidence as to the criminal nature of Russian Bolshevism was supplied by
the Rev. Dr. George S. Simons, who, in February, 1919, testified before
the Senatorial Committee as to his personal knowledge of the matter:
"There is a large criminal element in the Bolshevist regime. The
fact that the criminal has a big part in the movement is proven by
the destruction in a public bonfire of court records, the
destruction of prisons and the liberation of all criminals who are
sympathetic with the cause. We know it to be a fact that some of
the worst criminal characters in all Russia hold positions under
the Bolshevist Government, while others are helping as agitators."
A press dispatch dated Warsaw, April 10, 1919, states that it has been
decided by the Bolsheviki regime that control of desire of impulse, even
when self-imposed, is against the freedom of man, that as a consequence
unbelievable orgies and indecencies take place, and that all restraint
is at an end. The despatch states, futhermore[11], that the aristocrats
remaining in Russia have lost all will and energy. They accept
degradation or death with complete fatalism and do not even try to save
their wives and daughters.
The deplorable condition of that part of Russia under Bolshevist rule
was described in the Declaration adopted by the Socialist groups in Omsk
on February 23, 1919. The Declaration says in part:
"The main prop of an agricultural country such as Russia
principally is, the peasant population, is pauperized, starving and
is being driven under the banners of the Red Armies by lash and
rifle. The numerically small class of intellectuals is being shot
down and exterminated. The cities have been handed over to the
pillage and rule of Red Army troops. The prisons are overcrowded.
The enemies of the people have carried out their destructive
program to the very end, and given the people, in place of bread,
peace and freedom--a new inter-Russian war, the complete exhaustion
of all the productive forces of the land, economic, industrial and
railroad desolation, unemployment, a terrorizing reign of disorder
and a lapse into barbarity."
The Council of the All-Siberian Co-operative Assemblies, in a
Declaration brought to this country by C. A. Kovalsky, a prominent
Russian writer and a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists,
says:
"The All-Siberian Co-operative Movement--as the expression of the
unity of the creative democratic elements--strives for the
rehabilitation of the destroyed statehood of Russia....
"The immediate aims of our political activities must be--the
support of the existing Omsk Government, which has proclaimed
itself a democratic rule; the steering of its political course into
democratic channels; the struggle with anti-democratic influences
from the Right as well as with the destructive forces from the
left; the strengthening of the ties between the rear and the
fighting front, and the support of the army as the cultural force
which is reconquering the violated rights of the people to the
formation of a democratic state."
The Russian Co-operative Unions, having a membership of over 20,000,000,
and representing the strongest economic organization in Russia, reaching
every little town and village, announced through its representatives in
New York, on May 20, 1919, its opposition to the Lenine regime and its
support of the Provisional Russian Government at Omsk, Siberia, headed
by Admiral Kolchak:
"When Russia fell under the Bolshevist Soviet rule, the
representatives of the Co-operative Organizations, at the
All-Russian Co-operative Congress in Moscow, April 18 to 24, 1918,
rejected the principles and the methods of the Bolsheviki and
declared the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, concluded by the Soviet
authorities with the Austro-German, dishonorable and ruinous for
Russia. In these terrible and trying times of bloody rule that our
suffering and worn-out country is passing through, the Co-operative
Organizations of Siberia and North Russia serve as a unifying link
for all the honest, healthy and State-preserving elements of the
Russian democracy.
"The All-Siberian United Co-operatives are fully cognizant of the
abnormal conditions in which the territories liberated from the
Bolsheviki--the Ural, Siberia and the North Russian Provinces--find
themselves, where in pain and anguish a new Russian Statehood is
arising. Nevertheless, considering the unusual difficulties
connected with the work of rebuilding and re-establishing legality
and order in a land overburdened financially and economically,
ravaged by civil war and hunger, and with a popular psychology
corrupted by Bolshevism, the United Co-operatives recognize and
support, until the formation of a new, ultimate government through
the Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Russian Government formed
on Siberian territory and headed by Admiral Kolchak....
"We have, on our side, State wisdom, equity and justice. Our
adversaries oppose us with terror, violence and complete social and
economic ruin."
In the early part of the year 1919, the report reached America that the
Bolshevist authorities were nationalizing women. The Socialists of our
own country, who are far from being noted for their reliability and
truthfulness, have, of course, denied the charge, in order that the
Lenine regime, which they support and wish to see extended to our own
land, might not have its already terribly sullied name dishonored still
more. The Bolshevists are far from being saints, and a "few" of their
"shortcomings" have been pointed out in this chapter.
Certainly the Lenine Government is absolutely lax in matters
appertaining to sex relations. It has fully legalized free love, as we
learn from the No. 2 issue of the radical Los Angeles magazine, "More
Truth About Russia." This magazine, of course, defends the Bolshevists,
and on page 6 of the above-mentioned issue quotes several of the decrees
of the Lenine Government on the matter of marriage and divorce. Among
the decrees we read:
"Marriage is annulled by the petition of both parties or even one of
them." All that is necessary to annul a marriage is the expressed desire
of either party. The party is, of course, then free to marry again and
remain married till another partner is desired. Hence free love is
legalized. A government that legalizes free love may be expected to
nationalize those women who do not wish to marry or who are unable to
secure partners by the time they have reached a certain age.
"The Call," New York, April 2, 1919, on its editorial page reprinted an
apology of the English publication, "New Europe," which in a previous
issue had given as the authority for its charge of the nationalization
of women in Russia an article in the Soviet paper "Izvestija:"
"I have made particular inquiries among friends recently arrived from
Russia," says Dr. Harold Williams, "New Europe's" collaborator, "as to
the alleged nationalization of women, and they have all assured me
positively that they have never heard or read of such a decree."
Those "friends," whoever they were, were possibly Bolsheviki themselves,
and are not said to have denied that the women were nationalized, but
merely that they had never heard or read of the "decree." Lots of things
are enforced by authorities without decrees. The Bolshevist authorities
may have had no decrees for the murder of the many thousands of innocent
citizens whom they tortured and put to death.
Dr. Harold Williams states, moreover, that it is certain that "the
Central Bolshevist Government has issued no order of the kind" (i.e., of
nationalization), but he does not deny that in different places the
local Bolshevist authorities may have nationalized women.
Further on it is admitted that not the official national Soviet organ,
but the local Vladimir Soviet organ, "Izvestija," was the Bolshevist
paper which stated that the Bolshevists of Vladimir had nationalized
women.
The article in "New Europe," republished in "The Call," concludes with
these words:
"As this puts an entirely different complexion on the matter, and
as the Central Moscow Government cannot be held responsible for the
lucubrations of every local committee, we desire to withdraw
unreservedly the imputation and to express our regret for the
mistake."
This article in the March 13, 1919, issue of "New Europe," which thus
apologizes for the "mistake" that it claims it made in a previous issue,
has been quoted far and wide by American Socialists and other radicals
of our country. Yet witnesses who were questioned at the Senatorial
investigation at Washington, in February, 1919, attested to the
nationalization by the Bolshevists.
On February 7, 1919, the Orthodox Greek Archbishop of Omsk and other
clergy of the Russian Church sent a letter to Pope Benedict XV,
mentioning, with other crimes and abuses of the Bolshevists, the
socialization of women.
A press despatch dated Warsaw, April 10, 1919, stated the following
concerning the condition of women in Russia:
"The nationalization of women is becoming quite general. The
Bolsheviki have declared war on family life and consideration for
one another's mother or sister is forbidden. All must be treated
alike. The most terrible thing is that the women themselves have
accepted this nationalization and very little protest is made. This
applies to every class. In certain cases, however, a hitch has
occurred. Even Bolshevism cannot master human nature, and it has
been found that a masculine jealousy occasionally stands in a way.
Certain men have refused to nationalize a particular woman and as a
result Bolshevik has fought Bolshevik with considerable force."
An Associated Press despatch from London, April 15, 1919, gives lengthy
details regarding the nationalization of women, and even the opposition
offered to it:
"The law providing for the nationalization of women in Northeast
Russia has been suspended in one province as a result of popular
outcry, according to information reaching London today, from
Stockholm.
"The Commissary of Vladimir has, by decree, appointed a committee
of women, who are to inquire into operations of the law and make a
report with the least possible delay. His action has been approved
by the local Soviet.
"'The Krasnaya Gazeta' publishes an account of the results of
nationalization. The system provides that every girl on reaching
the age of eighteen must register her name in the Bureau of Free
Love, after which she is compelled to select a partner from among
men between the ages of 19 and 50 years old. The law led to
lamentable confusion, says the 'Gazeta,' in judicial notions as to
personal inviolability.
"A few days after the Soviet's decree, which women very generally
ignored, two men known to nobody, arrived in the town and seized
the two daughters of a well-known non-bourgeois comrade, declaring
they had chosen them as wives and that the girls without further
ceremony must submit, as they had not observed the registration
rule.
"Comrades Yablonovski and Guriakin, who sat as judges on the claim,
decided that the men were right, and the girls were carried off.
They have not been heard of since by the village folk.
"This, says the Gazeta, was done in the name of the nationalization
of women.
"Many other instances of the fantastic operation of the law, not to
speak of its inhumanities, are cited by the Gazeta. Enthusiasts for
nationalization, naturally all males, raid whole villages, seize
young girls, and demand proof that they are not over 18. As this
proof is difficult to give, many of the girls are carried off, and
there have been suicides and murders as a result.
"In the town of Kovrov, a campaign without parallel since the
Trojan war was waged between the vengeful relatives of an abducted
nationalized girl and her persecutors.
"In this town the 'register of nationalized women' was opened on
December 1, but up to February 1 last only two women, both over 40,
and neither of whom had ever been married, registered themselves as
willing to accept the first husband the state sent along.
"On the committee which is now to revise the nationalization decree
or to recommend its complete abrogation sits Mme. Vera Arkadieff, a
Bolshevist enthusiast, who commanded a detachment of women soldiers
during the recent operations against Admiral Kolchak's army at
Perm. She has been twice wounded."
"The Krasnaya Gazeta," translated, means the Red Gazette. It is a
Bolshevist newspaper published in Petrograd. The following "Special
Cable" to "The New York Times," dated Milan, April 24, 1919, published
April 26, 1919, gives a Bolshevist's explanation of the Russian sex
legislation:
"A Bolshevist statesman, from whom the 'Journal Epoca' obtained a
special interview respecting the Leninist legislation on the sex
problem, complains that a vast amount of grotesque
misrepresentation has appeared on the subject in the hostile or
unsympathetic press.
"'Abolition of celibacy has been adopted,' he stated, 'simply as a
means toward class equality. Every woman, on attaining her
eighteenth and every man on his twentieth year, is bound to
inscribe his or her name in a special register kept at the
Commissariat of Unions, and must then contract a union within the
period of six months. Should they fail to do so, they are served
with three warning notices at successive intervals of two months,
before any step is taken in the way of coercive measures. Every
bachelor and every spinster is bound to furnish a written
explanation of their irregular condition, and the only reasons
admitted as valid are serious ill-health or organic defects.
"'When two lovers wish to marry they present themselves to the
People's Commissary, who witnesses their marriage. The same course
is followed as regards separating, only that the Commissary, after
freeing the unhappy pair, inscribes the man afresh on the celibate
list and the woman on the register of marriageable persons,
notifying each of the obligation to find another partner within six
months. In case children have been born from their union, they are
either delivered to the custody of the particular parent desiring
them or else divided between them. The Commissariat of Unions aids
the youth of either sex in their quest of a mate by promoting all
healthy forms of social intercourse and facilitating introductions
among families of every type.'"
The above despatch was published in the April 26, 1919, issue of "The
New York Times."
On April 28, 1919, the following very apt comment was made on it and
appeared on the editorial page of the "New York Times":
"As explained by somebody whom a Milan paper calls a 'Bolshevist
statesman,' marriage as regulated by the great and good Lenine is
not at all the dreadful thing described recently by the mendacious
enemies of his Socialistic paradise. As pictured by his friends,
nothing worse has been done than to exert a gentle pressure on the
marriageable unmarried to the end that they may do their duty to
the Bolshevist State and provide it as soon as may be with new sons
and daughters to take the place of those recently 'removed' by a
benevolent terrorism.
"Bachelorhood and spinsterhood are to be regarded as
'irregular'--conditions that must be explained in writing to the
proper authorities. For the well disposed a simple civil marriage
ceremony is provided; also a simple divorce ceremony in case the
union proves wearisome. And that is all there is to the Bolshevist
marriage system, the statesman says.
"But one notices that he does not disclose what is done to those
who fail to find pleasing mates in the six months allowed after
notification for the making of a choice. Apparently it is then that
the so-called nationalization of women comes in, and the statesman
forgot to say a word about the only peculiarity of the system that
has evolved any serious criticism."
Commenting on Bolshevism, Mr. Eber Cole Byam, in the April 26, 1919,
issue of "America," very aptly says:
"As the Roman world was reduced to barbarism by the barbarians so
now the modern world is threatened with reduction to Bolshevism by
the Bolsheviki. Whatever the word Bolshevism may have meant
originally it has come to mean fiendish treatment of women, the
savage murder and mutilation of men and the wanton destruction of
the accumulated labors of generations. The Bolshevik is a
Socialist, not the armchair theorist dreaming fantastic fancies.
The Bolshevik is the real Socialist, the Socialist of practice."
The following encomium on Bolshevism appeared in "The Call," New York,
April 26, 1919, and shows what strange inclinations the Socialists have
towards barbarism:
"For the first time in Russia's history law has been established
based on the direct will of the population, established through the
most democratic franchise in the world. Under Czarism, law was
merely the promulgation of autocratic tyranny....
"For the first time in Russia's history, perfect freedom of
religion is guaranteed to Christian, Moslem and Jew alike. After
the American pattern, no church may control the state....
"For the first time, millions of Russian workers and peasants find
themselves with decent homes. For the first time, women have equal
social rights with men. For the first time, a real educational
system has been inaugurated for the children....
"The recent official American investigators sent to Russia found a
great change in the life of the cities from of old. They described
the life as puritanical. Russians explained the change to them by
the fact that vice and debauchery had been confined mostly to the
idle ruling class, the old aristocracy, and these things had passed
with the passing of that class."
Listen now to the words of the Russian Socialist author, Leonoid
Andréiev, who has seen quite enough of the "blessings" of Bolshevism.
They appear in the April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under
the caption, "S. O. S., An Appeal to Humanity":
"One must, indeed, be insane not to understand the palpable and
simple acts of Bolshevism! One must be sightless, stark-blind or
have eyes that see not, to fail to observe on the face of the great
mutilated Russia murder without end, ruins, miles of cemeteries,
dungeons and insane asylums; not to perceive what hunger and terror
have done to Petrograd, and, alas, to many other cities!
"One must be earless, stone-deaf, or have ears that hear not, to
remain callous to the sobs, the sighs and the wailing of women, the
heart-rending cries of the children, the death-rattle of strangled
men, the cracking of the assassins' rifles, the only music that has
filled the air of Russia for the last eighteen months!...
"As the wireless operator on a sinking vessel, in the thick
blackness of the night, sends out his last appeal, 'Help, quick, we
are sinking, save us!' so I, moved by my faith in the goodness of
man, am sending out into distance and darkness my prayer for my
people who are sinking.
"If you only knew how dark is the night around us, if my words
could only convey its density and depth! Whom am I calling? I know
not. Does the wireless operator know who may intercept his call?
For thousands of miles around the ocean may be deserted and not a
living soul may overhear his appeal.
"The night is dark. The sea is frightful. But the operator has not
lost his faith, and he calls persistently, to the very last minute,
until the last light is gone and his apparatus is silenced forever.
"What does he trust in? He trusts in humanity, and so do I. He
trusts in the law of human love and life. It is impossible that one
human being will deny help to another in his hour of perdition. It
is impossible that one human being will abandon another to perish
without attempting to help. It is impossible that such an appeal
for help will not receive any response!...
"Friend! I do not even attempt to tell you how frightful life is in
Russia at present, in our tormented Petrograd. Others have told
enough, and new words cannot be coined by the human tongue.
"It is frightful when children starve and perish, and assassins are
well-fed and Trotzky is pouring down his throat the last bottle of
milk. It is frightful when the cemeteries of Petrograd have no more
room for the dead, and the murderers have a free road not only to
the Princess Islands, but to all the ends of the world, and the
wealth they have stolen will enable them to live in balmy lands and
in the most attractive corners of our mercenary globe."
Catherine Breshkovsky, the Socialist "Grandmother of the Russian
Revolution," though now an aged woman, lived long enough to bewail the
fate of her country. Speaking of her native land, now reaping the
harvest from the Marxian seed first sown many years ago, she says in her
"Message to the American People":
"Flooded with tears and blood, Russia moans and cries out to the
world. She is a living body, and her tortures cannot be looked upon
cold-bloodedly as an extraordinary, never-before-witnessed
experiments in social evolution. She is alive and every pore of her
body is shedding blood."
Let the "scientific" American Socialists continue to take their
information from "The Call." They are far too learned to be deceived by
Russians such as Andréiev or the "Grandmother of the Russian
Revolution." "The capitalist press is lying about the conditions in
Russia." "The Call" alone speaks the truth, for it is a proletarian
sheet.
Not satisfied with ruining his own country, Lenine would have Bolshevism
spread to all other nations. He longs for their workingmen to rise in
revolt against their present systems of government. Listen to his words
in his "Letter to American Workingmen," published by the Socialist
Publication Society, 431 Pulaski street, Brooklyn, New York:
"We know that it may take a long time before help can come from
you, Comrades, American Workingmen, for the development of the
revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths,
with various rapidity (how could it be otherwise!) We know full
well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may
take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days.
We are counting on the inevitability of the international
revolution. But that does not mean that we count on its coming at
some definite date. We have experienced two great revolutions in
our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that
revolutions cannot come either at word of command nor according to
prearranged plans. We know that circumstances alone have pushed us,
the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new
stage in the social life of the world not because of our
superiority but because of the peculiarly reactionary character of
Russia. But until the outbreak of the international revolution,
revolutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of
setbacks and serious overthrows....
"We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other
international Socialist revolution comes to our assistance with its
armies. But these armies exist, they are stronger than ours, they
grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer
imperialism, with its brutalities, continues. Workingmen the world
over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and
their Scheidemanns. Inevitably labor is approaching communistic
Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution
that alone is capable of preserving culture and humanity from
destruction. We are invincible, for invincible is the Proletarian
Revolution."
The above words of the dictator Lenine may throw some light on the
Socialists' demand for "justice" to Russia, and their campaign in behalf
of the recognition of the Soviet Government of that country.
The Socialist Publication Society of Brooklyn at the end of the World
War issued a large pamphlet entitled, "One Year of Revolution,"
celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the Russian Soviet
Republic. On the cover page, under the caption, "The Spirit of
Revolutionary Russia," and the subtitle, "To the Oppressed of All
Countries," we read the summons to a Socialist world-wide revolution:
"And this life and death struggle with our own oppressors gives us
the right to appeal to you, proletarians of all countries, with a
strong voice, with the voice of those who look into the eyes of
death in the revolt against the exploiters.
"Break the chains, you who are oppressed! Rise in revolt!
"We have nothing to lose but our chains!
"We believe in the victory of the revolution, we are full of this
belief.
"We know that our Comrades in the Revolution will fulfill their
duty on the barricades to the bitter end.
"We know that decisive moments are coming.
"A gigantic struggle will set the world afire. On the horizon the
fires of the revolt of all oppressed peoples are already glowing
and taking definite shape.
"At the moment that the waters of the Baltic will become red with
the blood of our Comrades, will close forever over their bodies, at
this moment we call upon you.
"Already in the clutch of death, we send our warm greetings and
appeal to you.
"Proletarians of the world, all, unite!
"Rise in revolt, you who are oppressed.
"All hail, the International Revolution!
"Long live Socialism!"
In the spring of 1919 reports reached the United States that the
Bolsheviki had been inciting our troops in the Archangel District of
Russia to disloyalty against our government. An Associated Press
dispatch, dated Vienna, April 24, 1919, shows how the Bolshevists
carried on their campaign in the Ukraine:
"The Bolsheviki penetrated the country in four sections. First came
agitators and next marauding bands to strike terror. These were
followed by larger bodies of troops, made up of foreign elements.
Last came Soviet troops, headed by Bolshevist commissioners. Iron
discipline was maintained by Chinese assassins, who executed all
soldiers who revolted against orders."
On May 26, 1919, the "New York Times" announced that a Bolshevist weekly
paper would be issued in that city:
"Nicholai Lenine, the Premier, and Leon Trotzky, the Minister of
War, together with other officials of the Russian Bolshevist
Government, will begin next Monday the publication in this city of
a sixteen page weekly newspaper, the purpose of which will be to
spread propaganda favorable to the Bolsheviki. This announcement is
made in today's issue of the propaganda sheet issued weekly from
the headquarters of Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, the unrecognized
'Bolshevist Ambassador' to the United States. The paper is to be
known as 'Soviet Russia.'"
"'Every friend of Russia, as well as every person interested in
international affairs,' says the announcement, 'will subscribe to
this weekly.' 'Soviet Russia' will contain news items, editorials,
original articles, and unpublished documents."
The American Socialist Party acknowledges the Bolshevist regime of
murder and starvation to be a Socialist regime and states that it
upholds the lofty, international proletarian ideals. Debs and the
American Socialist press, at the present writing, acknowledge the
Bolsheviki to be real Socialists, not reactionaries or Socialists merely
in name, like the Ebert-Scheidemann group in Germany. They want
Bolshevism in America. They welcome it, laud it, love it. At least this
is the case just now. Will they presently be offering arguments to prove
that the Bolshevists were not Socialists at all, but traitors to the
whole Marxian movement? Meantime the American Socialists spread all
kinds of lies about the "wonders" of the Soviet Government while
claiming that "the press" is lying about the Lenine system to save the
capitalists from the demands of the laboring class.
Let us sincerely hope that no more Bolshevists from Russia will land on
our shores. We have enough rebellious, hypocritical Reds here already,
and need no more of them to teach us how to run our government. Congress
should pass strict laws allowing no immigrants to land here who are
Bolshevists.
It is to be hoped, too, that the leaders of the Illinois Labor Party who
secured the adoption in their platform of a pro-Soviet plank in the
spring of 1919 will take a few hours off and learn something about the
Russian system before trying to "work it off" on our country.
There has been a great deal of "pussy-footing" talk in the American
press about Bolshevism and Socialism, implying that there is no
connection between the two. Yet Bolshevism is nothing but a form of
Socialism. It is Socialism applied, though not yet as completely applied
as the teachings of Karl Marx require. If an incomplete application of
the principles of Socialism reduces a country to such an awful condition
as Russia reveals, what may be expected from the full dose of Socialism?
At the last moment, with this book in type, a cry from the Bolshevik
dictatorship comes out of Russia through interviews given by Lenine and
Trotzky to the "New York World's" European correspondent, Lincoln Eyre.
"I had an hour's talk with Lenine in the Kremlin at Moscow," Eyre writes
in a dispatch headed, "Riga (by courier to Berlin), Feb. 20, 1920," and
printed in the "World" of February 21, 1920. Lenine turned the interview
into an argument for the lifting of the Allied blockade of Russia, and
gave more than a hint that Russia's economic condition is desperate.
According to Mr. Eyre's cable to the "New York World" of February 21,
1920, Lenine said, speaking in English:
"Russia's present economic distress is simply a part of the world's
economic distress. Until the economic problem is faced from a world
standpoint and not merely from the standpoint of certain nations or
groups of nations, a solution is impossible.... Not only Russia but
all Europe is going to pieces, and the [Allied] Supreme Council
still indulges in tergiversation. Russia can be saved from utter
ruin and Europe, too, but it must be done soon and quickly."
By insinuating that "all Europe is going to pieces" with Russia, and
faces the same "utter ruin," Lenine covers his plea for Russia under an
appeal to the self-interest of other nations. Yet his confession that
Russia is "going to pieces" and trembles on the brink of "utter ruin" is
plain enough, making his whole argument a cry to the "capitalistic"
nations to help Socialistic Russia. Indeed, in other parts of the same
interview, as reported by Mr. Eyre in the "World" of February 21, 1920,
Lenine appeals to "foreign capital" and the "capitalistic countries" in
the baldest terms, as follows:
"We have reiterated and reiterated our desire for peace, our need
for peace and our readiness to give foreign capital the most
generous concessions and guarantees.... I know of no reason why a
Socialistic commonwealth like ours cannot do business indefinitely
with capitalistic countries. We don't mind taking their
capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why should they
mind taking our Socialistic wheat, flax and platinum?"
Having waded through blood and violence to exterminate "capitalism" and
cancel all "concessions" and "guarantees" in Russia, has "the
dictatorship of the proletariat" emerged out of its nightmare of
destruction simply to coax "foreign capital" back into Socialistic
Russia by bribing offers of "the most generous concessions and
guarantees?" After two years of a reign of terror to make an earthly
paradise by destroying "capitalism" and the whole machinery of
"capitalistic countries," this hungry reaching out by Lenine after
"capital" and "capitalistic" things is almost too ludicrous for belief!
Eyre's interview with Trotzky, sent from "Riga (by courier to Berlin,
Feb. 23)" and printed in the "New York World" of February 25, 1920,
simply reenforces Lenine's appeal to "foreign capital" and the wicked
"capitalistic countries." According to Eyre in the "World" of February
25, Trotzky spoke of "Russia, bankrupt, bleeding and starved," and said
in part:
"Our military successes have not blinded us to our need of peace.
We require peace for the re-establishment of economic
stabilization.... We have had to sacrifice the welfare of our
people and the health of future generations to the desperate needs
of the hour."
And for what? Apparently only to substitute the autocracy of a new
proletarian aristocracy for the autocracy of the old regime, and the
czardom of Lenine and Trotzky for that of the Romanoffs. And the new
tyranny not only re-establishes the old partnership between "capital"
and labor, but puts the burden of militarism on labor more exclusively
than before. This seems to be the program of Trotzky, "the People's
Commissary for Military Affairs," according to Eyre's report of
Trotzky's words in the "New York World" of February 25, 1920. His words
are as follows:
"We recognize our need for outside aid in setting this country on
its feet industrially and economically. It is a tremendous
enterprise, one that will take two, five, perhaps ten years to
carry out, but through the indomitable spirit of our proletariat it
will be accomplished with a speed and competency that will amaze
our foemen.... And once again I say that the people who help us
gain peace will share in the profits, the very considerable
profits, resultant from the aid they will have extended to us....
"Foreign capitalists who invest their money in Russian enterprises
or who supply us with merchandise we require will receive material
guarantees of amply adequate character. They need have no fears on
that score.... It is obvious that we must look to the victorious
nations, to Great Britain or, still better, to America for
machinery, agricultural tools and other imports which Russia's
economic renaissance demands."
Thus the old partnership of capital and labor is to be resumed. But what
of the Russian workers? Having fought and toiled to put Lenine and
Trotzky on the proletarian throne they must keep up military training to
keep them there, and must toil hard to produce "the very considerable
profits" which Lenine and Trotzky are going to share with the "foreign
capitalists" who help them. But let Trotzky explain the destiny of the
Russian workers in his own words, as reported by Eyre in the "World" of
February 25, 1920:
"The workers and peasants will insist, once the revolution is no
longer in peril, on returning to their factories and farms and
making Russia a fit land to live in. Frontier guards will be
maintained, of course. The framework of our (military) organization
must also be preserved in order that with the experience they have
received in the past eighteen months our proletarian fighting men
can be remodelled in two or three months if the need arises. There
will also be some form of military training for the working class,
that it may always be ready to defend itself against the
bourgeoisie."
Will not this be "militarism?" Of course not; for, in Trotzky's words in
the same interview, "Militarism, striking as it does at the very roots
of Communism, cannot possibly exist in Soviet Russia, the only truly
pacific country in the world!" Thus facts disappear behind words.
Conscription was militaristic under the Czar, but it cannot be under a
Trotzky, for he has labeled his system a Soviet Republic and since
Soviets are never military their military arrangements, though
apparently more severe than the other kind, are really only a form of
pacifism! Thus the happy Russian workers must serve as "frontier
guards," keep up the framework of their military organization, and
submit to "some form of military training," but may whistle as they
groan, knowing that the yoke they bear "cannot exist."
Other contradictions in these interviews will be discussed later in this
book. For example, we shall find, in Chapter XVI, that the Soviet
Republic at Moscow can make peace with "capitalistic countries" and form
partnerships with "foreign capital" while at the same time the Third
International at Moscow carries on a world-wide conspiracy to destroy
"capitalism" and overthrow the governments and institutions of
"capitalistic countries."