Chapter LX: The Case of Russia

But the perfect case of journalistic knavery, the case which in the annals of history will take precedence over all others, past or present, is the case of Russia. You might say that all previous experience of the capitalist press of America in perverting and distorting news was but training for what it was to do to the Russian revolution. Say to yourself as follows: American Journalism did thus and so to an American author who advocated the abolition of privilege and exploitation; what would this Journalism do to a hundred and eighty million people who rose up and actually put an end to privilege and exploitation upon the half of two continents?

Let me make clear at the outset my point of view, oft repeated. I am not a Bolshevik, and have never been a Bolshevik. I understand that a Bolshevik is one who repudiates political action, and wishes to accomplish the social revolution by mass action of the proletariat, the direct overthrow of our present capitalist government and the setting up of a government by councils of the workers, something corresponding to our present trade union councils and conventions. For my part, I agree with the syndicalists in thinking that the best way to govern industry is through trade unions; that is the only real industrial democracy. But I believe that the trade unions can get this power by the ballot, backed by the mass strike. I don’t believe that it will be necessary for the workers to seize guns and turn the politicians out of office; I believe that they can elect their own politicians, or force even capitalist legislatures pass laws recognizing union control of industry.

I am well aware that this method will be slower, but I believe it will be quicker in the long run, because it will avoid the waste incidental to civil war, and the possibilities of failure and temporary reaction. Anybody can see that, as a matter of business, it would pay the workers better to continue working for the capitalists a few months or even a few years longer, than to take a course which might result in burning down the factories and getting the best leaders of the movement stood up against a wall and shot.

But such a program, of course, can be effective only in a country where political rights are recognized. Russia was not such a country. The Russian people had been held down by an utterly ruthless and utterly corrupt despotism, deprived of all opportunity to organize and to educate themselves, to acquire experience in government affairs; so, when they rose, they turned upon their oppressors the weapons they had been taught to understand. We, who were born in a more fortunate land, and have learned to use, if only half successfully, the ballot and public discussion in the settlement of our affairs—what attitude were we to take towards the Russian people, striking out blindly against their oppressors, groping for liberty and life?

The first revolution, the Kerensky revolution, was a political one, and that suited us fairly well; it made no threat against property, and it proposed to support our war. Our capitalist newspapers had no difficulty in getting the news about it, and had no objection to letting us read this news. But then came the second revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and that did threaten property, and proposed to withdraw from our war. How did we treat that?

We had been training ourselves for a generation, so as to be instantly ready; we had been training ourselves in the office of Mr. Hearst’s “Cosmopolitan Magazine,” where Mr. Hearst had a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year journalistic wizard by the name of Edgar Sisson. When we needed a molder of opinion for Russia, we sent this Hearst wizard across the seas, where he came upon a set of documents proving that Lenin and Trotsky were German agents. These documents had been examined and rejected as forgeries by Raymond Robins, also by the British Embassy, none too favorably disposed to the Bolsheviks; but matters like that do not trouble Hearst editors, who have learned to think in headlines. The “Sisson documents” were shipped to Washington, and issued under the authority of the United States government, and published in every newspaper in America.

We know today who were the real pro-Germans in Russia. Viscount French, in his recently published book, has told us that the Russian Court was rotten with pro-Germanism, and that if it had not been for treason among the Russian aristocracy, the war would have been won two years earlier. As for Lenin and Trotsky, not only were they bitter enemies of the German government, they were at this time offering to reject the Brest-Litovsk treaty, if America would support them; but America was a virtuous capitalist nation, and the entire capitalist press of America was a unit in proclaiming that our country should have no relations with men who refused to pay interest on the Tsar’s debts to J. P. Morgan & Company.

All the lying power of our Journalism was turned against the Russian Soviets; and if you have read this book without skipping, you know what that lying power is. No tale was too grotesque to be believed and spread broadcast. In the same week we would read that Trotsky had fled to Spain, that he had been put in jail by Lenin, that he had been seeking a job on the “Appeal to Reason,” Girard, Kansas! They published so many inventions that they couldn’t keep track of them. Here are two paragraphs from a single issue of one newspaper:

Nicolai Lenin, the Bolshevist Premier, is the only prominent
Bolshevist left who appears to lead an austere life.—“New York Times,”
February 26, 1919.

Premier Lenin, refugees say, is not affected by the food problem. His
bill for fruit and vegetables in a recent month amounted to sixty
thousand rubles.—“New York Times,” February 26, 1919.

In his book, “Russia in 1919,” Arthur Ransom tells how in Finland he read detailed accounts of mutiny and revolt in Petrograd, the city being bombarded by naval guns. He went into Petrograd and found the city peaceful, and everybody laughing at his tales. Returning to England he found that the tales had been forwarded to England, and published and universally believed. As I write these words, I read in my paper every other day of the fall of Petrograd. The accounts are detailed, some of them are “official,” and they continue for weeks. But finally I read that the anti-Bolshevik armies are in retreat from Petrograd!

Or take the “nationalization of women,” the most grotesque scarecrow ever constructed to terrify a highly moral people. I have shown you how the imagination of “kept” journalists runs to foul tales about sex orgies of radicals. A comic paper in Moscow published such a “skit” on Bolshevism, and the outcome is explained in the following from the “Isvestija,” the official organ of the Central Soviet Government, May 18, 1918:

Moscow Soviet decision.—The Moscow newspaper, the “Evening Life,” for
printing an invented decree regarding the socialization of women, in
the issue of the 3rd of May, No. 36, shall be closed for ever and
fined 25,000 roubles.

And then again, in the city of Saratov, in central Russia, the Anarchists were making trouble, and some wag, to discredit the Anarchists, invented an elaborate decree, signed, “The Free Association of Anarchists of Saratov.” This decree was discovered one morning, posted in several parts of the city. An American official, Oliver M. Sayler, who was in Saratov, wrote the story in the “New Republic,” March 15, 1919. He visited the Anarchist clubs, and found them boiling with indignation—calling it a “Bolshevist plot”! Needless to say, of course, the decree had no relation to reality; the Anarchists never had any power to enforce any decree, whether in Saratov or anywhere else in Russia; several hundred Anarchists had been jailed by the Bolsheviki. But that, of course, made no difference to the editors of capitalist newspapers in America, to whom Anarchists, Bolsheviki, and Socialists were all the same; from one end of the country to the other this decree took the front page. The “Los Angeles Times” published it with a solemn assurance to its readers that the authenticity of the decree might be accepted without question. And forthwith all our capitalist clergymen rose up in their pulpits to denounce the Bolsheviki as monsters and moral perverts, and a good part of the moving picture machinery of Southern California has been set to work constructing romances around this obscene theme.

The “New Europe,” which had first published the story, made a full retraction and apology. Harold Williams, who had sent the story to England, also apologized. The American State Department denied the story officially, February 28, 1919. Jerome Davis, of the American Red Cross, denied it from first-hand knowledge in the “Independent,” March 15, 1919. But did you read these apologies and denials in American capitalist newspapers? You did not! It would not be too much to say that nine people out of ten in America today firmly believe that women have been “nationalized” in Russia, or at any rate that the Bolsheviki attempted it. In the “World Tomorrow,” for July, 1919, I come upon a letter signed Remington Rogers, Tulsa, Oklahoma. I find something very quaint and pathetic about this letter. How does it strike you?

I find that like most radical papers, you assume that your reader
knows a great many things that may be trite in the discussion of
parlor Socialists, but with which the average citizen is not in the
least familiar. For example, in your May issue, page 141, I find the
assertion that the reports purporting to show how family life had been
officially demoralized in Russia are “now happily proved false.” If
this is the fact, no such proof has leaked into the newspapers or
other periodicals to which I subscribe, and in view of the fact that
we have what purport to be authentic copies of the official edicts and
decrees, I cannot believe that these reports have been proved false.

And here is a letter from Alice Stone Blackwell, which, needless to say, could only be published in some radical paper. It appeared in the “Public,” New York:

Catherine Breshkovsky “the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” is
getting badly misquoted. She is astonished to see how different some
of the press reports are from what she really said. She tells me she
declared the other day that she would work twenty years longer to keep
Russia from having another Tsar, and she was reported as saying that
she would work twenty years longer to get the Tsar back.

She also denied that women have been “nationalized,” or “made common
property,” or that the Government puts any compulsion upon them in
matters of sex. She said to me: “Women have more freedom in Russia now
than they ever had before.” As Madame Breshkovsky is strongly opposed
to the Bolshevist régime, her denial of this particular accusation may
be accepted as conclusive.

I have at several places in this book portrayed the degeneracy of “McClure’s Magazine,” since it has become an organ of privilege; also I have mentioned Newell Dwight Hillis, agent of the Clerical Camouflage, and his knavish pamphlet against the Colorado strikers. Now we see “McClure’s” hiring Hillis to vilify the Russian Soviets. After all these denials have been published, and are available to all honest men, this agent of the Clerical Camouflage contributes to “McClure’s” (June, 1919) a long article calling for the blood of the Russian people. “McClure’s” puts over the article a picture representing a hideous fiend with a torch and bomb; also this editorial statement:

Dr. Hillis’s articles have brought in a flood of letters of
commendation. He writes as he preaches, fearlessly, truthfully.

I ask: Could the re-crucifixion of Christ go farther than the application of the words “fearlessly, truthfully,” to the following dastardly lie:

It is now conceded that the interior towns and cities of Russia have
gone over to this nationalization of women.

This agent of the Clerical Camouflage of course portrays Russia as a chaos of murder and bloodshed; in which our whole capitalist press agrees. We now know that most of the time Petrograd and Moscow were the most orderly capitals in Europe; but our newspaper correspondents in Stockholm and Copenhagen and Odessa and Omsk, meeting in the cafés with exiled Russian noblemen, thought nothing of standing a few thousand Russians against the wall of the Kremlin and shooting them in a news despatch. For weeks they harrowed us with a projected “St. Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre,” in which all the bourgeoisie in Russia were to be destroyed. Bartholomew’s Eve came, and next morning I looked in the papers, and saw that there had been a general amnesty for political prisoners in Russia—something for which I am still petitioning the President of my own country! I saw no mention of the massacre; but this did not surprise me. I, too, have been lied about by Capitalist Journalism on the front page, and have seen the retraction buried in small print among the advertisements.

That there was much killing in Russia, I do not doubt; but whether there was more killing than under the government of the Tsar—that is the real question. Frazier Hunt tells us that in the first fourteen months of their rule, the Bolsheviki executed four thousand, five hundred persons, mostly for stealing and speculation; whereas, in twelve months after the 1905 revolution, Stolypin, minister of the Tsar, caused the execution of thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three persons. That is about the usual proportion of the White Terror to the Red, and the proportion that would have prevailed had the Allies succeeded in their plan of getting Kolchak to Moscow.

Our papers were giving us lurid accounts of the Bolsheviki advancing in the Baltic provinces, burning and slaying as they went; but the conspiracy slipped a cog, and there crept into an Associated Press dispatch a little paragraph which gave the game away. In reading it, understand that these provinces are a part of Russia, which the Russians were taking back from the Germans:

Warsaw, Dec. 29.—The Bolsheviki are advancing rapidly toward Vilna,
and are favored by mild weather. Their advance guards are said to be
orderly, well clothed and well armed. _They have committed no
depredations except where they met with resistance._

And here is another from Berlin, Feb. 15, 1919, which gives us the real reason for the world-wide dread of the Bolsheviki. Ralph Rotheit, correspondent of the Berlin “Vossische Zeitung,” visited the Bolshevik line at Vilna.

He pictured the situation as extremely pessimistic, although so far
the Bolsheviki have always been defeated by the Germans whenever they
ventured skirmishing. However, Rotheit writes, the Bolsheviki do not
rely so much on fighting as on corrupting opponents by never-ceasing
wireless propaganda, and by sending emissaries into the districts
still occupied by the Germans, and by Bolshevik literature with which
the latter’s positions are flooded. Rotheit says unfortunately the
effect of this propaganda at Kovno, headquarters of the German
commander, was only too evident, as in many other places on German
territory, as well as the Russian and Polish.

Here we have the real quarrel with the Soviets, the real reason why they must not, cannot be permitted to survive. They are propagandists; day and night they agitate, they preach and they print—and for some reason, the more loudly we proclaim that their propaganda is false, the more deeply we seem to dread its success! Since when have we lost our faith in the might of truth? Since when have we decided that error must be fought with bullet and machine-gun? Surely there must be some dark secret here, some skeleton in our family closet!

The truth is that we have seen in Russia a gigantic strike, an I. W. W. strike, if you please; and it has been successful. The workers have seized the factories, and now we call for the militia to drive them out. The very existence of capitalism depends upon their being driven out; as the phrase is, they must “be made an example of.” And so the capitalist press is called in, our great lying-machine is given the biggest job in its history. The Associated Press does for Russia precisely what Charles Edward Russell showed it doing for Calumet, what I showed it doing for Colorado. All our newspapers, big and little, do what they are accustomed to do whenever there is a strike in America—telling everything evil about the strikers and nothing good about them, clamoring for violence against them, justifying every crime committed against them in the name of “law and order.”

Recently the Soviets, pressed by starvation, have bowed so far to the will of world-capitalism as to agree to pay interest on the Tsar’s debts; they have offered to pledge some of the vast natural resources of Russia to pay for the machinery and supplies they must have. So Allied diplomacy hesitates and falters; dare the diplomats risk the terrors of Bolshevist propaganda, that mysterious black magic? Dare they allow the world to see a prospering social revolution, a government of the workers, by the workers, for the workers, which does not perish from the earth?

They decided upon a conference with the Bolsheviki, on a remote island in Turkish waters. Our newspapers printed the fact that the invitation had been extended to the Bolsheviki: but they did not print the Bolshevik acceptance. They did not print the text of the Russian foreign minister’s appeal to the French Socialist, Longuet, as to the meaning of the Allied proposals. They did not print the fact that the conference was abandoned because William Allen White, American delegate and man of honor, insisted upon full publicity.

President Wilson sent a confidential mission to Russia, composed of William C. Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens. They came back and reported that there was order in Russia; that the Russian people were satisfied with the Soviet régime; that the “nationalization of women” in Russia was an absurd yarn; that the cause of the starvation and misery in Russia was the allied blockade; and that Lenin wanted peace, and was willing to do almost anything to get peace. President Wilson, for reasons presumably known to him, turned down the advice of this commission. Steffens made a public statement as to his position, which was reported in the “London Daily Herald,” but in no American newspaper or magazine. Bullitt resigned from the Peace Commission, and addressed to President Wilson a brief and dignified letter, explaining his reasons: which letter was published in the “New York Nation,” but in no capitalist newspaper in America, so far as I could find out.

Then Bullitt was summoned before the Senate committee, and the Associated Press sent out a brief and inadequate report of his testimony. Next day he submitted the confidential report about Russia which he had delivered to President Wilson. This was the most important information about Russia yet available to the American people; and the “Los Angeles Times,” from which I get my first news of the world, gave not a line of this report! More than that, in order to avoid having to mention the report, the “Times” cut out that day every word of its news about the struggle over the peace treaty in the Senate! Instead, it gave two columns, of which I quote the headlines:

ROOSEVELT SCORES REDS

“Smash ’Em!” Cries Teddy, Jr., in Talks Telling of Perils in
Radicalism

That was on Sunday morning. On Monday morning again, the “Times” had not a word about Bullitt, and not a word about the agitation over the peace treaty in Washington, the most important news of the day; the reason being simply that Washington was talking about the Bullitt report, and about nothing else! But on Tuesday, the British government issued a denial of some of Bullitt’s statements—one of those evasive denials whereby the gigantic trading corporation tells lies without quite telling them; so once more the “Los Angeles Times” was willing to mention William C. Bullitt!

I call up the “Los Angeles Examiner,” to ask if the Associated Press handled the Bullitt report. The “Los Angeles Examiner,” you understand, gets the Associated Press service—is one of the “forty-one vote” newspapers. Both the city editor and the telegraph editor assure me that the Associated Press did not send the “Examiner” a word of it—the most important news about Russia yet made available to the American people! Says the “Nation”:

No newspaper has printed Mr. Bullitt’s testimony in full or even in
generous part; there were only three press representatives present
when he testified, and he has had the invariable experience of having
his testimony misquoted and altered, and interviews attributed to him
which he never gave.

The Social Revolution came in Hungary. It came in an orderly and sensible way, without terror, without bloodshed; and how was it treated by Capitalist Journalism? It was treated just as the Russian Soviets had been treated—as an outcast and outlaw. All the power of World Capitalism was turned against the Hungarian Communist government. Poland, Roumania, the Ukraine, all made war upon it, with French officers and British tanks and American money; and at the same time the great lying-machine was put to work. The news agencies brought the report that Bela Kun had fled to the Argentine; and two days later that he was about to be overthrown in Budapesth! All the power of American Journalism was set to keeping the workers from realizing that a nation of fifteen or twenty million people had overthrown the profit system, and was making a success of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

I have before me some letters from a correspondent in Budapesth, representing one of the most influential and supposed-to-be-respectable of the great New York newspapers. This correspondent explains that she sends her articles with the instructions that they shall be published as written or not at all—and they are not published. “One of my confrères here had an article twisted and turned about so badly that it meant exactly the opposite of what he knew and wrote to be true.” And there is a group of correspondents in Budapesth, all having the same experiences, it appears:

Their economic sentences are cut out of articles and their radical
articles are paid for but never printed. There isn’t a day passes that
we don’t have an indignation meeting. One man wrote a long article for
one of the prominent magazines two months ago alluding to the new
order. He received a fat check with the letter announcing that the
article could not be used; they wished him to write more _moderately_.
Since my trip to Hungary and my conviction that Budapesth is the only
honest place in Europe outside Russia, I am not any longer willing to
write “moderately.”

Only once before in modern history was there a crime like this—when the kings and emperors of Europe went to war to wipe out the French revolution, which their hired propagandists described in precisely the same terms as we now see applied to the Bolsheviki. Then it was political revolution, now it is social revolution; but the program is the same—the earth is to be soaked with the blood of revolutionists, their new ideal is to be corrupted in the military campaign necessary to its defense, and the world is to be made safe for another Holy Alliance—this time of the profit-system, of Industrial Exploitation. It is for the people, who pay for all privilege and maintain all parasites, to decide whether history shall repeat itself to the full; whether the Holy Alliance of World Capitalism is to crush for another century the hopes of the working masses of the world.