that grow in the ancient moat of the Kremlin, back to our Guest House. I
wanted to think Lenin over while I had him fresh in my mind, and I did
not want to be assisted by the expositions of my companion. But Mr.
Rothstein kept on talking.
He was still pressing me not to mention this little sketch of the
Russian American outlook to Mr. Vanderlip long after I assured him that
I respected Mr. Vanderlip’s veil of discretion far too much to pierce it
by any careless word.
And so back to No. 17 Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya, and lunch with Mr.
Vanderlip and the young sculptor from London. The old servant of the
house waited on us, mournfully conscious of the meagreness of our
entertainment and reminiscent of the great days of the past when Caruso
had been a guest and had sung to all that was brilliant in Moscow in the
room upstairs. Mr. Vanderlip was for visiting the big market that
afternoon—and later going to the Ballet, but my son and I were set upon
returning to Petersburg that night and so getting on to Reval in time
for the Stockholm boat.
VII
THE ENVOY
In these seven papers I have written in the first person and in a
familiar style because I did not want the reader to lose sight for a
moment of the shortness of our visit to Russia and of my personal
limitations. Now in conclusion, if the reader will have patience with me
for a few final words, I would like in less personal terms and very
plainly to set down my main convictions about the Russian situation.
They are very strong convictions, and they concern not merely Russia but
the whole present outlook of our civilisation. They are merely one man’s
opinion, but as I feel them strongly, so I put them without weakening
qualifications.
First, then, Russia, which was a modern civilisation of the Western
type, least disciplined and most ramshackle of all the Great Powers, is
now a modern civilisation _in extremis_. The direct cause of its
downfall has been modern war leading to physical exhaustion. Only
through that could the Bolsheviki have secured power. Nothing like this
Russian downfall has ever happened before. If it goes on for a year or
so more the process of collapse will be complete. Nothing will be left
of Russia but a country of peasants; the towns will be practically
deserted and in ruins, the railways will be rusting in disuse. With the
railways will go the last vestiges of any general government. The
peasants are absolutely illiterate and collectively stupid, capable of
resisting interference but incapable of comprehensive foresight and
organisation. They will become a sort of human swamp in a state of
division, petty civil war, and political squalour, with a famine
whenever the harvests are bad; and they will be breeding epidemics for
the rest of Europe. They will lapse towards Asia.
The collapse of the civilised system in Russia into peasant barbarism
means that Europe will be cut off for many years from all the mineral
wealth of Russia, and from any supply of raw products from this area,
from its corn, flax, and the like. It is an open question whether the
Western Powers can get along without these supplies. Their cessation
certainly means a general impoverishment of Western Europe.
The only possible Government that can stave off such a final collapse of
Russia now is the present Bolshevik Government, if it can be assisted by
America and the Western Powers. There is now no alternative to that
Government possible. There are of course a multitude of
antagonists—adventurers and the like—ready, with European assistance, to
attempt the overthrow of that Bolshevik Government, but there are no
signs of any common purpose and moral unity capable of replacing it. And
moreover there is no time now for another revolution in Russia. A year
more of civil war will make the final sinking of Russia out of
civilisation inevitable. We have to make what we can, therefore, of the
Bolshevik Government, whether we like it or not.
The Bolshevik Government is inexperienced and incapable to an extreme
degree; it has had phases of violence and cruelty; but it is on the
whole honest. And it includes a few individuals of real creative
imagination and power, who may with opportunity, if their hands are
strengthened, achieve great reconstructions. The Bolshevik Government
seems on the whole to be trying to act up to its professions, which are
still held by most of its supporters with a quite religious passion.
Given generous help, it may succeed in establishing a new social order
in Russia of a civilised type with which the rest of the world will be
able to deal. It will probably be a mitigated Communism, with a
large-scale handling of transport, industry, and (later) agriculture.
It is necessary that we should understand and respect the professions
and principles of the Bolsheviki if we Western peoples are to be of any
effectual service to humanity in Russia. Hitherto these professions and
principles have been ignored in the most extraordinary way by the
Western Governments. The Bolshevik Government is, and says it is, a
Communist Government. And it means this, and will make this the standard
of its conduct. It has suppressed private ownership and private trade in
Russia, not as an act of expediency but as an act of right; and in all
Russia there remain now no commercial individuals and bodies with whom
we can deal who will respect the conventions and usages of Western
commercial life. The Bolshevik Government, we have to understand, has,
by its nature, an invincible prejudice against individual business men;
it will not treat them in a manner that they will consider fair and
honourable; it will distrust them and, as far as it can, put them at the
completest disadvantage. It regards them as pirates—or at best as
privateers. It is hopeless and impossible therefore for individual
persons and firms to think of going into Russia to trade. There is only
one being in Russia with whom the Western world can deal, and that is
the Bolshevik Government itself, and there is no way of dealing with
that one being safely and effectually except through some national or,
better, some international Trust. This latter body, which might
represent some single Power or group of Powers, or which might even have
some titular connection with the League of Nations, would be able to
deal with the Bolshevik Government on equal terms. It would have to
recognise the Bolshevik Government and, in conjunction with it, to set
about the now urgent task of the material restoration of civilised life
in European and Asiatic Russia. It should resemble in its general nature
one of the big buying and controlling trusts that were so necessary and
effectual in the European States during the Great War. It should deal
with its individual producers on the one hand, and the Bolshevik
Government would deal with its own population on the other. Such a Trust
could speedily make itself indispensable to the Bolshevik Government.
This indeed is the only way in which a capitalist State can hold
commerce with a Communist State. The attempts that have been made during
the past year and more to devise some method of private trading in
Russia without recognition of the Bolshevik Government were from the
outset as hopeless as the search for the North-West passage from England
to India. The channels are frozen up.
Any country or group of countries with adequate industrial resources
which goes into Bolshevik Russia with recognition and help will
necessarily become the supporter, the right hand, and the consultant of
the Bolshevik Government. It will react upon that Government and be
reacted upon. It will probably become more collectivist in its methods,
and, on the other hand, the rigours of extreme Communism in Russia will
probably be greatly tempered through its influence.
The only Power capable of playing this _rôle_ of eleventh-hour helper to
Russia single-handed is the United States of America. Other Powers than
the United States will, in the present phase of world-exhaustion, need
to combine before they can be of any effective use to Russia. Big
business is by no means antipathetic to Communism. The larger big
business grows the more it approximates to Collectivism. It is the upper
road of the few instead of the lower road of the masses to Collectivism.
The only alternative to such a helpful intervention in Bolshevik Russia
is, I firmly believe, the final collapse of all that remains of modern
civilisation throughout what was formerly the Russian Empire. It is
highly improbable that the collapse will be limited to its boundaries.
Both eastward and westward other great regions may, one after another,
tumble into the big hole in civilisation thus created. Possibly all
modern civilisation may tumble in.
These propositions do not refer to any hypothetical future; they are an
attempt to state the outline facts and possibilities of what is going
on—and going on with great rapidity—in Russia and in the world generally
now, as they present themselves to my mind. This in general terms is the
frame of circumstance in which I would have the sketches of Russia that
have preceded this set and read. So it is I interpret the writing on the
Eastern wall of Europe.
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.