LENINISM: THE DESIGN OF THE BOLSHEVIKS
No matter what promises the Bolsheviks enter into with Great Britain,
they will not abandon the active prosecution of their plans for
revolutionizing the world. These plans are an essential part of their
theory, and for us to expect the Communists to give them up would be
like the Communists expecting us to give up our theory and practice of
ministerial responsibility.
The Bolsheviks hold that mankind is divided not into nationalities but
into two classes, the Proletariat and the Parasites. Such of them as have
had some education admit, however, that unfortunately in the benighted
capitalistic States outside Russia many of the proletariat are at present
working as slaves and instruments of the parasitic classes, being drugged
and stupefied by patriotism, religion, and a _bourgeois_ education
ingeniously designed by the capitalists to make them contented with their
servile lot. When these deluded workers have been enlightened they will
see that their place is not with the capitalists but with the people.
Such, in short, is the Bolshevik contention.
Carlyle describes in a well-known passage how a dozen French peasants
are taken by their Government, put into gay clothes, armed, drilled, and
sent out to kill a dozen German peasants who have been put through a
similar process by _their_ war-lords. A Bolshevik official, who greatly
appreciates this piece of literature, told me once that the Communist
idea is to arm all the peasants and workers of the world, but to make
them then turn their rifles on their respective oppressors, the kings and
capitalists of their own lands, and, having abolished these, to shake
hands all round in token of perpetual peace.
This simple theory has gripped the Bolshevik mind in Russia, as if it
were a Divine revelation, and its ready acceptance is probably due to
several conditions peculiar to that country—the simplicity and ignorance
of the people, the ascetic and mystical traits in their national
character, their misgovernment in the past, their profound love of peace,
their sufferings in the war, and their conviction, implanted and fostered
by an able but mendacious propaganda, that the workers of the world are
following in their footsteps, though their efforts have not, as yet, been
crowned with quite the same success. Another condition peculiar to Russia
is the feebly developed nationalistic sense of the people. Most of them
have as little idea of a _patria_ as the average Gaul had in the time
of Cæsar, and I have heard of many Russians who did not know that they
themselves were Russian, their imagination having never travelled beyond
the confines of their native province.
Knowing the existence of this state of things, I was not surprised,
consequently, when we were captured at Krasnoyarsk, to find that the
soldiers of the Red Army were indifferent as to our nationality, and
were only anxious to know which of their two categories we belonged to.
We were never once asked for our passports, such tokens of nationality
being regarded as antique lumber, which all mankind was throwing on the
scrap-heap as fast as it could along with crowns and croziers. There was
pained surprise when the private soldiers in our party did not, on being
released by capture from their military “servitude,” join their natural
friends the Bolsheviks joyfully and at once, but remained voluntarily
with their natural enemies, us, their officers.
The Irish soldiers amongst us were not treated differently from the
others, because the Bolsheviks who captured us had never heard of
Ireland, but later I found that the leading Bolsheviks were favourably
disposed towards the Irish, whom they regarded as disinterested agitators
with a genuine sense of grievance and with a considerable practice in
agitation since the days of Parnell.
These Communist leaders expect much help from disgruntled nationalities
outside Russia; hence the support they give to nationalist movements
abroad, and the great sympathy they express for them in every issue of
their newspapers. But if those movements succeeded, the Bolsheviks would
be the first to undermine the resultant nationalist Governments in order
to clear the way for Soviets. Many similar instances of dishonesty on the
part of the Bolsheviks could be given. They manifest, for instance, great
sympathy with strikers abroad, yet they not only crush strikers at home,
but, owing to their complete control of the Press, are able to cover
them with moral obloquy as well, by denouncing them as traitors bought
by foreign capitalists. Workmen so accused have no means of publicly
refuting these charges. Such a case happened recently when a strike
occurred on the Moscow-Kursk railway. They turn a moist eye towards the
“enslaved” British workman, yet treat a deserter from the labour army as
a deserter from the fighting army at the Front is treated in war-time.
A ring of Soviets all round the world is their ideal, but circumstances
have rendered their present policy complex. Though anti-nationalist
themselves, they have been assisted in their struggle against Kolchak,
Denikin, and the Poles by a nationalist movement among the Russians who
saw that practically all the Red Army was Russian, while Kolchak, for
example, though professedly nationalist and ultra-Russian, was assisted
to such an extent by British, French, Italians, Americans, Japanese,
Chinese, Poles, Serbs, Czechs, and Letts, that his enterprise was
described as an invasion of Russia by a gang of international capitalists.
Lenin knows more about conditions in the outer world than the simple folk
who captured us at Krasnoyarsk, but he knows much less than he is given
credit for in this country. He is a fanatical believer in his own dogma
of internationalism—or, more properly speaking, anti-nationalism and
cosmopolitanism—and in the duty incumbent on him of preaching this dogma
to all peoples.
In speaking of this man many Englishmen seem to form in their minds
the picture of a statesman who will act as they themselves would act
if they were in his position. They think that the responsibilities of
office must sober and modify him as they would sober and modify an
English Socialist. They believe that his extremist utterances are mere
popular clap-trap such as an English politician sometimes indulges in for
electioneering purposes, that he must “play up” to the impossible demands
of his party, but that, when it comes to practical politics, he is bound
to display moderation and common sense.
Such Englishmen do not know Lenin. They read their own character into
that of the Communist leader, and attribute to him an English mentality
and training which he has not got. There is in Lenin and in the
whole Communist party a good deal of that inflexibility, narrowness,
intolerance, and fanaticism which we associate with the Eastern Church;
and I might add, by the way, that if Bolshevism continues in power for a
few years longer, it will inevitably become a dead and mummified system,
a mechanical, devitalized structure such as I believe official Orthodoxy
to be.
The meticulous care which the Bolsheviks take to prevent foreign
literature and non-Bolshevik foreigners from disturbing the belief of
their neophytes in the Bolshevik faith, reminds one of the care taken
by Pobydonostsev, the Procurator of the Most Holy Synod. The mentality
in both cases is the same, though the object is different. No mistress
of novices in a convent could be more careful than the head of the
Extraordinary Commission to prevent bad, breezy men from the outer
world from “blowing in” among the innocent novices, and shaking by
profane laughter their delicately poised faith. A full description of
these minute precautions would be amusing, but it would be too long a
digression. What I have said, however, will show what a mistake it would
be for us to think that these people can modify their programme. To
think so is to attribute to the Bolsheviks the character of an English
political party. Bolshevism has been called “inverted Tsarism,” but it
might also be described as “inverted Christianity,” for whereas the
Founder of Christianity sacrificed Himself for the World, the founders of
Bolshevism are, like the first Mohammedans, ready to sacrifice all the
rest of the world if it does not accept their creed.
Lenin himself impressed me as having all the characteristics of a
fanatical Byzantine monk. He has narrowness, intolerance, asceticism, a
fixed idea, and an incapacity to change. Later I came across a similar
view of him in Landau-Aldanov’s “Lenin und der Bolschewismus” (Berlin,
1920). The Russian Socialist writer says that “some of the Bolsheviks,
and perhaps some of the best of them, have the mentality and the entire
psychology of monks. Had he lived some centuries earlier, Lenin himself
might have made an excellent Jesuit.” Landau-Aldanov goes on to institute
a comparison between the hair-splitting of the Greek theologians at the
Œcumenical Council of Constantinople and the hair-splitting of Lenin,
Martov, and other Bolshevik ideologues at the Second Congress of the
Social Democratic party in August, 1903. He does not strengthen his case,
however, by dragging in Captain Pascal, an officer of the French Mission
in Moscow and formerly a Catholic priest, who has now become a Bolshevik.
“Dostoievsky tells us in one of his novels of an atheist who blew out all
the candles in front of his holy _ikons_, replaced the _ikons_ by the
works of anti-Christian philosophers like Buechner and Moleschott, and,
having done so, piously lighted the candles again. This expresses exactly
what the Reds have done. Yesterday they believed blindly in St. Nicholas
the Wonder-worker; to-day they have transferred the same unreasoning
faith to Karl Marx; and their scientific superstition of to-day is as
childish as was their religious superstition of yesterday.”
Though he has travelled abroad, Lenin has lived, even abroad, in a
close revolutionary atmosphere, which is, after all, a very narrowing
atmosphere. He brooded over his own ideas, exchanged views with people
who were much of the same way of thinking as himself, and entered into
controversy only with Mensheviks, Anarchists, and other theorists who are
even further removed from the realities of life than he is. His ignorance
of conditions in England is therefore very great. His manner of life has
deprived his mind of all flexibility, and imparted to his utterances
a pontifical character which would not be tolerated for a moment in
political circles anywhere outside Russia.
The Russian newspapers are filled daily with interminable dissertations
on abstruse socialistic subjects from his pen or from the pens of other
prophets of Bolshevism, and the style of these lucubrations bears some
resemblance, in respect at least of extreme aridity, to the interminable
treatises on obscure theological questions which were popular in Europe
during the religious ferment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Instead of quotations from pious divines and from the Early Fathers, they
are full of ponderous passages from German professors, who are apparently
regarded by the Communists as infallible authorities. And in the same way
that some English congregations of the post-Reformation period delighted
in sermons lasting three or four hours, so the Bolsheviks delight in
endless speeches on abstruse socialistic subjects, of which most of them
can understand only very little.
But amid all this confusion and obscurity there remains clear the fixed
idea of “internationalism” or anti-nationalism whereof Lenin is the
Prophet. He has passed most of his life in poverty and exile on account
of it. He is now wading towards it through blood. It would be a mistake,
therefore, to think that he will ever really surrender it—though he
may promise to do so for the sake of getting locomotives and machinery
from us. He has made this perfectly clear in hundreds of speeches and
newspaper articles; if we think otherwise, he has a perfect right to say
that he has not deceived us, that we have deceived ourselves. He has
warned us not only in his public utterances, but by his actions, that he
will not keep any promises he makes to capitalist States, and that he
will use any methods and accept help from any quarters in order to attain
his ends. He accepted help from the Kaiser in 1918 in order to contribute
afterwards towards the Kaiser’s overthrow; and he has frequently boasted
that when he made peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk, and promised to
cease his revolutionary propaganda in Germany, he never meant to observe
the conditions of that peace and did not observe them in so far as they
related to propaganda.
This is not his policy alone, but that of all his party, which admits
that it has always acted on it and always will act on it. In his pamphlet
on the “Bolshevik Party,” Radek, an authoritative spokesman of the
Communists, says that the Bolsheviks supported the agitation for a Duma
in 1905, not because they wanted to keep a Duma in existence, but because
they were convinced that it would be a ladder which would enable them to
reach their goal, and which they could then kick away. The same pamphlet
and all the recent literature of the Bolsheviks are full of similar
admissions of dishonesty.
After peace was concluded with Esthonia, Lenin said in effect:
We have acknowledged the _bourgeois_ Government of Esthonia.
We have given it money and concessions and territory and all
the other playthings that a Capitalist State hankers after,
because we are perfectly sure of our ability to undermine the
foundations on which it stands. We will work silently and
tirelessly among its working classes, and it is only a question
of time when the whole fabric will come tumbling down. Esthonia
is now in the Kerensky stage, but, as surely as sunrise follows
darkness, so surely will the Communist stage follow the
Kerensky and the Esthonian workers establish a Soviet republic.
It may be taken for granted, therefore, that, no matter what promises
Lenin makes, he will not cease to encourage Bolshevik propaganda in the
British Empire.
The danger of this propaganda consists in the idea of internationalism
which I have explained above, and which might better perhaps be called
anti-nationalism or anationalistic class war. This theory enables the
Bolsheviks to find accomplices and allies in the most unexpected places
outside Russia—in battleships, wireless stations, military barracks,
post-offices, consulates, palatial hotels, and mansions. The result is
that no one holding a responsible position in a non-Bolshevik country
can be sure that he has not in his employ an embittered subordinate,
sometimes with a genuine grievance against society and a genuine belief
in Communism as a cure for all the ills of the world, but more frequently
aggrieved because of a natural incapacity which education does not and
cannot remedy. Such a man may feel that his place is with the all-world
proletariat and not with the mixture of classes which compose his
particular country, so that, if not actually working for the Bolsheviks,
he may be quite ready to work for them if the opportunity presents itself.
I know nothing of present conditions in this country (Great Britain)
owing to my long absence from it, but this danger is manifest on the
Continent, and especially in the countries which lie near Russia. There
is a leakage of official information in the Finnish, Scandinavian, and
Polish posts, telegraphs and hotels, and even in some of the foreign
consulates and legations, where non-Britishers have to be employed. One
such case of leakage that I know of was suspected to have taken place
in a foreign consulate in Warsaw. The position in Finland is especially
bad from this point of view, owing to the accentuation of class
differences by the arming of the middle classes and the disarming of the
working classes, a measure which has been of enormous assistance to the
“Internationalist” propaganda in that country.
Even here in London the establishment of a Bolshevik embassy with the Red
flag flying over it might have anything but a tranquillizing effect on a
section of our working classes. Workmen and private soldiers, who would
be incapable of feeling any sympathy with a foreign nation which attacked
England, might, in some cases, sympathize with what Chicherin calls “the
Government of the Poor and of the Oppressed.” You will notice from this
phrase how Bolshevism has stolen the thunder of Christianity. Thus one
of the principal Bolshevik newspapers is called _Bednota_ (Poverty).
Lunacharsky, the Bolshevik Minister of the Fine Arts, has maintained
in numberless discourses delivered in Russia that Christ was the first
Bolshevik, and that the early Christians were the first Communists.
Even anti-Bolsheviks have expressed astonishment at Lenin’s choice of
“such a dangerous clerical”; but doubtless Lenin knew, when he made the
appointment, that a Modernist like Lunacharsky is a far more dangerous
enemy to Christianity than a violent unbeliever. He was still engaged in
this campaign when I was in Moscow in the spring, and I think that, in
the opinion of the simple Russians who heard him, he had the advantage
of the learned theologians who ventured to dispute his theory. A drift
towards religious anarchy has long been characteristic of the Russians,
as may be seen by a study of their literature for the last fifty years.
It has been counteracted by a powerful ecclesiastical organization, but
the Bolsheviks have now stopped the machinery of that organization, and
are undermining all confidence in it by a series of carefully conducted
exposures in connection with bogus relics of saints, etc.
Even if the Bolshevik succeeded in establishing Soviet republics all over
the world, they could not succeed in eliminating national feeling and
war, for, in this as in other matters, they are fighting against human
nature. But even their temporary success would, I think, do irreparable
harm to our civilization. And it would be foolish to ignore the fact
that their theory does contain a seductive appeal to that large number
of people in every land who are convinced that they have never had a
fair chance owing to the faulty construction of the society in which
they live. The seductiveness of that appeal is increased by the most
ingenious devices. If a Bolshevik embassy comes to London, it will not
only fly the Red flag, signifying the triumph of the proletariat, but
it will use on its official notepaper and on all its stamps the crest
of the Republic—a crossed hammer and reaping-hook, symbolical of the
union of peasants and workers. If the Bolshevik trade unions and other
organizations send deputations to this country, they will also use seals
which are in all cases humble implements of manual labour. A Bolshevik
official once pointed out to me with pride that the Communists had thrown
into the scrap-heap the lions and eagles, swords and battle-axes, and all
the other emblems of ferocity and slaughter in which the old heraldry
delighted, and had substituted for them “the poor, crooked scythe and
spade.” In his opinion—the comparison is sacrilegious, but we must know
the views of the other side in order to combat them—the world has entered
on a phase such as that which began when a gibbet replaced the Roman
eagles as the emblem under which the most important portion of humanity
marched.
The Bolsheviks have, of course, no right to a monopoly of those emblems,
which were chosen for them by clever literary men who have never done
manual labour in their lives, but many people are misled by symbols.
All pictorial advertisement is based on this weakness in the logical
powers of the human mind. An advertisement containing a picture of a
fat baby and a eulogy of somebody’s patent food establishes in the mind
of the average woman a connection between the fatness of the baby and
the nutritive value of the food, though no such connection necessarily
exists; and the Bolsheviks, who are extremely up to date in many of their
methods, act continually and with great success on this principle in all
their propaganda. The pictorial propaganda which raised the Kitchener
Army is elementary in comparison with the propaganda which raised the Red
Army, and this latter propaganda is only one manifestation of a system
carefully and scientifically constructed by men of considerable artistic
talent and with a profound knowledge of Russian, and indeed of world,
psychology.
This sort of deception is easier when, as is the case at present, a sort
of madness has seized upon men’s minds, as has happened on one or two
occasions in the past history of Europe. On such occasions all opinions
and beliefs seem to become, so to speak, liquefied or molten, and the
mind of the world is ready to take the imprint of any new stamp that is
applied to it. When this period of liquefaction has passed, opinions
harden again either in the new mould or in the old mould. The Reformation
and the French Revolution are cases in point. The former established the
principle of private judgment and maimed the system of an international
Church. The latter established the rule of the _bourgeoisie_ and made the
heads of states their servants. According to the contention of Lenin and
his followers who, to do them justice, are close students of past history
and take a wide survey of it, the proletariat have now as much right to
subjugate the middle classes as the latter had in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries to subjugate the nobility and heads of states. All
the Bolshevik literature now being published emphasizes this point. Lenin
cannot see how England, which allowed the right of private judgment to
her middle classes in the seventeenth century, and allowed every kind of
Reformist literature to enter the country, can now deny the right of
private judgment to her lower classes and prevent Bolshevik publications
from circulating among them. The Bolshevik leader knows that, as the
present period of liquefaction will not last long, it is necessary for
him to act quickly, or else public opinion in England will harden again
and the receptivity of the popular mind in England to the new ideas will
cease, or, as we would put it, the period of madness will pass. As Lenin
would put it, Spain was kept unchanged during and after the Reformation
owing to the energetic measures taken by Charles the Fifth and Philip the
Second to prevent the circulation of Reformist literature among their
subjects, though it is an historical fact that the latter manifested
a keen appetite for this forbidden fruit. The Bolsheviks admit that,
if England could establish a similarly strict blockade against their
ideas, England would be saved from Bolshevism, but they do not think
that, under modern conditions and with trade re-established between the
two countries, and especially in view of her well-known theories on the
subject of free speech and a free press, England can ever establish such
a blockade. Some of them are enthusiastic on this subject; others are
inclined to fear that they are already too late; that, in these swift
days of the aeroplane and the radio, movements of popular effervescence
soon pass, and that Great Britain is hardening again in the old
_bourgeois_ mould.
I have tried to make it clear how impossible it is for the Communists
to abandon their theory and practice of international propaganda.
My contention may be strengthened by a description, from personal
observation, of the conditions which prevail in the People’s Commissariat
of Foreign Affairs at Moscow. Most of the members of that department
belong to the Third International, and their main work is to produce
revolutions in foreign countries. After working hard all day organizing
trouble for us in India, Persia, Turkey, and Egypt, they allow themselves
some comic relief and relaxation in the afternoon by the composition
of soothing despatches intended for the English _bourgeoisie_. One
of them, Commissar Feinberg, acted very often as correspondent of an
English newspaper, the _Daily Herald_. Many of the English passports
which go through Feinberg’s hands get “lost”—that is, they are set
aside for the use of Bolshevik emissaries going to England, or else
utilized as models in the well-equipped establishment for the fabrication
of English passports which the “Third International” has inaugurated.
English banknotes are also fabricated there, and may be expected on the
market at any moment. Thus we have the Foreign Office of a great country
deliberately forging the passports and the paper money of a foreign
Government with which it is conducting friendly negotiations, and Foreign
Office officials calmly supervising the work of forgery.
I have already spoken of the character of the Pan-Mohammedan Congress
held under the _ægis_ of Chicherin in April, 1920, of his Korean and
Japanese intrigues, and of the entertainment provided for foreign
revolutionaries who are housed, fed, paid, and clothed by the Soviet
Government, travel free, and enjoy every facility for their destructive
activities.
Can we make the Bolshevik Government stop all this? I do not think that
we can, for the Foreign Office, like the Ministry of Communications,
the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and one or two other organizations of
technical experts, is regarded by the Executive Committee generally as
being very lukewarm in the faith and as having made too many concessions
already to the capitalistic heretics outside. The organization of the
“Third International” is so interwoven with the Bolshevik Government
organization that it would be difficult to say where the one ends and
the other begins, and quite impossible to tear them apart. Most of the
leading Commissars are in “the International” as well as in the Communist
group which rules Russia, and they can never be depended upon to expel
themselves from the latter body. Foreign revolutionaries orate frequently
from the same platform as Lenin and Trotsky, and they are not regarded
as foreigners because in the Communist scheme of things there are no
foreigners. There are only Proletariat and Parasites.
I must admit, however, that the Reds are as afraid of us as we are afraid
of them; indeed, my stay among them gave me the impression that one of
their leading characteristics was an intense suspicion and great fear of
what they call “the great predatory Empires.”
Their state of mind is, in some respects, the same as Japan’s was in
1868. Japan then found herself the only non-Christian nation in the
world which the Christian Whites had not conquered or undermined; and,
consequently, she became profoundly alarmed at the irresistible military
strength, the utter unscrupulousness, and the consummate diplomatic
talent of the European, with the result that their whole national
character, which is naturally joyous, became permanently altered for
the worse. I do not mean to say that this change took place in 1868.
It began, as a matter of fact, long before, in the time of the Shogun
Hideyoshi, when the Philippines had been conquered by Spain and Japan
itself had become filled with Spanish and Portuguese Jesuits; but the
effects were apparent twenty years ago, when I lived in Japan, and are
apparent still.
I shall now give the Bolshevik point of view, not because I sympathize
with it, but because it is always useful to know what the people on the
other side think and to understand the suspicions and delusions under
which they labour.
The Bolshevik Government now finds itself the only Government of its
kind in the world, and in an infinitely more dangerous position than the
Japanese were. The Government of the Shoguns represented all the Japanese
race, which was as patriotic and as firmly welded together as the British
race was in 1914 and is still. The Government of Lenin is brand-new, and
has therefore none of the forces and sanctions of tradition behind it. It
represents but a very small section of the Russian people and is menaced
not only by powerful interests inside Russia, but also, in the firm
opinion of the Bolsheviks, by all the other Governments in the world,
republican as well as monarchical. The Soviet Republic believes that
these Governments hate it intensely, and are, some of them, in a state
of acute fear for their own existence. But I have seen myself that the
countries which suffer most from this fear—Finland, for example—are by
no means in such a state of panic as the Bolshevik Government, which is
convinced, rightly or wrongly, that all the wealth of the world and all
the intellect of the world are working against it ceaselessly and with
supreme ability. Wealth, according to Lenin, is naturally against him;
and intellect has been subdued to the service of wealth by capitalism,
religion, patriotism, and militarism.
Despite all their bluster and all their military success, the Bolsheviks
therefore feel themselves at times to be nothing but amateurs in the
realms of diplomacy, war, secret service, and economics; and, on more
than one occasion, Lenin himself confessed to a painful sinking at the
heart, and even declared in public that his great experiment would
probably fail.
The leading Bolsheviks whom I met in Moscow are profoundly convinced
that their enemies have a great advantage over them in being able to
offer rewards which they cannot offer—wealth, comfort, high and permanent
positions, the esteem of powerful and ancient empires, the blessings
of religion. The Soviet can only give its agents hard work, danger,
permanent discomfort. It cannot provide them even with good cigarettes or
with matches which will light. It can only promise them the applause of
a small clique, not the applause of a people. It measures so accurately
the tremendous strength of the temptations to which they are exposed
that, when it sends abroad not only an ordinary agent, but even a leading
Commissar, it generally keeps his wife or some of his relatives behind as
a hostage, lest, corrupted by the gold of the capitalists, he should grow
faint-hearted, tired of the bitter, unending struggle, and abandon them
altogether.
Lenin has himself confessed, in moments of depression, that, though
there are nominally 600,000 Communists in Russia, there are not 6,000
who can be trusted implicitly. Only fanatics can be depended upon in all
circumstances, and fanatics are few, even in Russia. The average man
cannot rise to the heights or sink to the depths of fanaticism, and even
if he does, he is easily tempted by the easy, normal life which ensures
him cigars, beer, soap, clean linen, and other comforts which Bolshevism
cannot give him, not to speak of nice dresses, jewelry, scent, and real
tea with sugar in it for his wife, as well as playthings for his children.
Even the fanatics in Russia have been kept at too tense a strain during
the last two years: weak human nature cannot stand it. Lenin and Trotsky
both realize this, and are appalled by the infinite staying-power, the
secular experience, and the extreme seductiveness of the vast, patient
force entrenched in front of them. They are all the more appalled because
they realize that, though the workers are tired, the work has hardly yet
begun.
The foregoing explains why Lenin and Trotsky tolerate, and will in all
probability continue to tolerate, such a mediæval institution as the
Extraordinary Commission. Despite the dangerous wideness of its powers,
it at least guards them from the anti-Bolshevik conspirators and the
foreign agents who, in their opinion, swarm in every part of Russia.
Most of the things we say about them they say about us. We praise their
“Intelligence,” but they think that ours is of extreme and deadly
efficiency. They gave me to understand that more than 99 per cent. of
the sympathetic foreigners to whom they opened their minds have turned
out to be agents of their worst enemies. Trotsky, in particular, has
become so nervous and frightened at what he regards as the “disloyalty”
of sympathetic Britishers that he starts whenever he is addressed in
English, and, though he speaks that language fairly well, he conducts the
conversation in Russian or French if his interlocutor happens to know
either of these languages.
He does not understand our institutions; he is suffering from
overwork and nervous strain; he is even afraid for his own life; and,
consequently, he believes the impossible story of the renegade French
officer Sadul that the British Government hired assassins to murder him.
We must bear this in mind if we want to understand fully the truth of Mr.
Lloyd George’s remark in this connection, that we are “dealing not with
realities, but with illusions, myths, and ghosts.”
What frightens the Bolsheviks most of all, however, is the well-founded
suspicion that the very nature of man is working against them. All their
attempts to abolish capitalism, trading, and that legitimate desire
for gain which, after all, makes the world go round, are as futile as
cutting water with a sword and expecting the fissure to remain open. Not
a month passes without the Extraordinary Commission discovering that some
new financial or commercial nucleus has formed on the old lines; and
for the past six months a vast amount of speculation has been connived
at in Moscow and elsewhere. As much of this speculation is carried on,
especially in the Moscow Food Control, by high officials of the Soviet
itself, the Extraordinary Commission lost heart altogether in April last
and has practically ceased to contend against it ever since.
Even this natural result the Bolsheviks attribute, however, to
“Capitalist” Propaganda, so that they have decided that there is not room
in the world for both a Soviet and a Capitalist Government. Hence, plots
for the overthrow of all existing Governments, counteraction by these
Governments, and a thickening of the fog of suspicion, a multiplication
of the “illusions, myths, and ghosts.”