Chapter XII: Jurisdiction of the Local Organs of the Soviets (8)

Rykov seems to have no illusions left concerning the prospects for the immediate future. He realizes that Bolshevism has nothing to offer the working-people of Russia in the way of immediate improvement. He confesses “that in regard to industry the supplying of the population with footwear, clothing, metals, and so on, Soviet Russia is living only one-third of the life which Russia lived in times of peace.” As to the future he has only this to say: “Such a condition might last one or two years, during which we might live on former reserves, thanks to that which remained from the preceding period of Russian history. But these reserves are being exhausted and from one day to another, from one hour to another, we are approaching a complete crisis in these branches of industry.”

But what of the human element in industry, the workers themselves, that class whose interests and aspirations Bolshevism is supposed to represent? We have already noted Rykov’s admission that the workers and peasants lack bread and his explanation. Upon this same matter, Tomsky, president of the Central Council of the Trades-Unions, says:

So far as food-supplies are concerned it is evident that under
the present condition of transport we will not be able to
accumulate reserves of provisions sufficiently great so that
each workman may have a sufficient ration. We must renounce the
principle of equality in rationing and reduce the latter to
two or three categories of workman’s ration. We must recognize
that making our first steps upon the road of ameliorating the
situation of industrial workers, we must introduce a system
of so-called “supply of essential occupation.” “Above all, we
will have to supply those groups of workmen who are especially
necessary to production.”

Two and a quarter years after the forcible seizure of power by the Bolsheviki one of their “statesmen” prates to his colleagues about making the “first steps” toward “ameliorating the situation of industrial workers.” The leading speakers who addressed the congress discussed at length the bearing of these conditions upon what Trotsky called “the dissipation of the working-class”--that is, the disappearance of the proletariat from the industrial centers. Rykov explained that:

The crisis of skilled labor has a special importance for our
industry, because even in those industrial branches which
work for our army we make vain efforts because of the lack of
qualified workmen. Sometimes for weeks and even entire months
we could not find the necessary number of workmen skilled and
knowing the trade of which the factories and mills had such
need, in order to give to the Red Army rifles, machine-guns,
and cannon and thereby save Moscow. We experienced enormous
difficulties to find even as few as twenty or thirty workmen.
We hunted for them everywhere, at the employment bureaus,
among trades-unions, in the regiments, and in the villages.
The wastage of the most precious element which production
calls for--that is to say, skilled labor--is one of the most
dangerous phenomena of our present economic life. This wastage
has reached to-day colossal and unheard-of dimensions and
_there are industrial enterprises which we cannot operate even
if we had fuel and raw materials, because competent skilled
labor is lacking_.

That Rykov is not an alarmist, that his statements are not exaggerated, we may be quite assured. Even Trotsky protested that conditions were worse than Rykov had described them, and not better. While Rykov claimed that there were 1,000,000 workmen engaged in the nationalized factories, Trotsky said that in reality there were not more than 850,000. But how is this serious decrease in the number of workmen to be accounted for? An insatiable hunger, idle factories, unused raw materials, a government eagerly seeking workmen, and yet the workmen are not forthcoming. Trotsky offers this explanation: “Hunger, bad living conditions, and cold drive the Russian workmen from industrial centers to the rural districts, and not only to those districts, but also _into the ranks of profiteers and parasites_.” Kamenev agrees with Trotsky and says that “profiteering is the enemy whom the Moscow proletariat has felt already for some time to be present, but who has succeeded in growing up to full height and is now _eating up the entire fabric of the new socialistic economic structure_.” Tomsky answers the question in a very similar manner. He says:

If in capitalistic society a shortage of labor power marks the
most intensive activity of industry, in our own case this has
been caused by conditions which are unique and unprecedented in
capitalist economic experience. Only part of our industry is at
work, and yet there is a shortage of labor power felt in the
cities and industrial centers. We observe an exodus of laborers
from industrial centers, caused by poor living conditions.
Those hundreds of skilled laborers whom we are at present
lacking for the most elementary and minimal requirements of
industry have gone partly to the country, to labor communes,
Soviet farms, producers’ associations, while another part, a
very considerable one, serves in the army. _But the proletariat
also leaks away to join the ranks of petty profiteers and
barter-traders, we are ashamed and sorry to confess._ This fact
is being observed and there is no use concealing or denying
it. There is also another cause which hurts the industrial
life and hinders a systematic organization of work. This is
the migration of the workers from place to place in search of
better living conditions. All of this, again, is the result of
the one fundamental cause--the very critical food situation in
the cities and, in general, the hard conditions of life for the
industrial proletariat.

Finally, some attention must be given to the speech of Lenin, reported in _Izvestia_, January 29, 1920. Discussing the question whether industry should be administered by a “collegium” or by a single individual clothed with absolute authority, Lenin defended the latter as the only practical method, illustrating his case by reference to the Red Army. The Soviet organization in the army was well enough at first, as a start, but the system of administration has now become “administration by a single individual as the only proper method of work.” He explains this point in the following words:

Administration by “colleges” as the basic type of the
organization of the Soviet administration presents in itself
something fundamental and necessary for the first stage when it
is necessary to build anew. But with the establishing of more
stable forms, a transition to practical work is bound up with
administration by a single individual, a system which, most of
all, assures the best use of human powers and a real and not
verbal control of work.

Thus the master pronounces the doom of industrial Sovietism. No cry of, “All power to the Soviets!” comes from his lips now, but only a demand that the individual must be made all-powerful. Lenin the ruler pours scorn upon the vision of Lenin the leader of revolt. His ideal now is that of every industrial despot everywhere. He has no pity for the toiler, but tells his followers that they must “replace the machines which are lacking and those which are being destroyed by the strength of the living laborer.” That means rope haulage instead of railway transportation; it means that, instead of being masters of great machines, the Russian toilers must replace the machines.

What a picture of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” these utterances of the leading exponents of Bolshevism make! Proletarians starving in a land of infinite abundance; forced by hunger, cold, and oppression to leave homes and jobs and go back to village life, or, much worse, to become either vagabonds or petty profiteers trafficking in the misery of their fellows. Their tragic condition, worse than anything they had to endure under czarism, suggests the lines:

The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.

We do not wonder at Krassin’s confession, published early this year in the _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, urging “a friendly liquidation of Bolshevism in Russia” and declaring that: “The Communistic régime cannot restore the life of the country, and the fall of Bolshevism is inevitable. The people are beginning to recognize that the Bolshevist experiment has plunged them into a sea of blood and torment and aroused no more than a feeling of fatigue and disappointment.”

Here, then, is a picture of nationalized industry under Bolshevism, drawn by no unfriendly or malicious critic, but by its own stout upholders, its ablest champions. It is a self-portrait, an autobiographical sketch. In it we can see Bolshevism as it is, a repellent and terrifying thing of malefic might and purpose. Possessed of every vice and every weakness of capitalism, with none of its virtues, Bolshevism is abhorrent to all who love liberty and hold faith in mankind. Promising plenty, it gives only famine; promising freedom, it gives only fetters; promising love, it gives only hate; promising order, it gives only chaos; promising righteous and just government, it gives only corrupt despotism; promising fraternity, it gives only fratricide.

Yet, despite the overwhelming mass of evidence, there will still be defenders and apologists of this monstrous perversion of the democratic Socialist ideal. We shall be told that the Bolsheviki have had to contend against insurmountable obstacles; that when they entered into power they found the industrial system already greatly demoralized; that they have been compelled to devote themselves to war instead of to reconstruction; that they have been isolated and deprived of those things with which other nations hitherto supplied Russia.

All these things are true, but in what way do they excuse or palliate the crimes of the Bolsheviki? When they overthrew the Provisional Government and by brute force usurped its place they knew that the industrial life of the nation, including the transportation system, had been gravely injured. They knew, moreover, that it was recovering and that its complete restoration could only be brought about by the united effort of all the freedom-loving elements in the land. They knew, or ought to have known, just as every sane person in and out of Russia knew, that if they deserted the Allies in the time of their gravest peril, and, by making peace with Germany, aided her upon the western front, the Allies would not--could not and dare not--continue to maintain their friendly and co-operative relations with Russia. They knew, or ought to have known, as every sane person in and out of Russia did, that if they tried to impose their rule upon the nation by force of arms, they would be resisted and there would be civil war. All these things Lenin and his followers had pointed out to them by clear-visioned Socialists. All of them are written large upon history’s pages.

No defense of Bolshevism has yet been made which is not itself an accusation.

XI

FREEDOM OF PRESS AND ASSEMBLY

In 1903, after the split of the Russian Social Democratic Party into two factions--the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki--the late Rosa Luxemburg, in an article which she contributed to _Iskra_ (_Spark_), gave a keen analysis of Lenin. She charged that he was an autocrat at heart, that he despised the workers and their rights. In burning words she protested that Lenin wanted to rule Russia with an iron fist, to replace one czarism by another. Now, Rosa Luxemburg was no “mere bourgeois reformer,” no “sentimental opportunist”; even at that time she was known in the international Socialist movement as “Red Rosa,” a revolutionist among revolutionists, one of the reddest of them all. Hating despotism and autocracy as such, and not merely the particular manifestation of it in the Romanov régime, she saw quite clearly, and protested against, the contempt for democracy and all its ways which, even at that time, she recognized as underlying Lenin’s whole conception of the revolutionary struggle.

A very similar estimate of Lenin was made ten years later, in 1913, by one of his associates, P. Rappaport. When we remember that it was written a year before the World War began, and five years before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in March, 1917, this estimate of Lenin, written by Rappaport in 1913, is remarkable: “No party in the world could live under the régime of the Czar Social Democrat, who calls himself a liberal Marxist, and who is only a political adventurer on a grand scale.”

These estimates of Lenin by fellow-Socialists who knew him well, and who were thoroughly familiar with his thought, possess no small amount of interest to-day. Of course, we are concerned with the individual and with the motivation of his thought and actions only in so far as the individual asserts an influence upon contemporary developments, either directly, by deeds of his own, or indirectly through others. There is much significance in the fact that “Bolshevism” and “Leninism” are already in use as synonyms, indicating that a movement which has spread with great rapidity over a large part of the world is currently regarded as exemplifying the thought and the purpose of the man, Ulianov, whom posterity, like his contemporaries, will know best by his pseudonym. Nicolai Lenin’s contempt for democratic ways, and his admiration for autocratic and despotic ways, are thus of historical importance.

There was much that was infamous in the régime of the last of the Romanovs, Nicholas II, but by comparison with that of his successor, “Nicholas III,” it was a régime of benignity, benevolence, and freedom. No government that has been set up in modern times, among civilized peoples, has been so thoroughly tyrannical, so intolerant and hostile to essential freedom, as the government which the Bolsheviki established in Russia by usurpation of power and have maintained thus far by a relentless and conscienceless use of every instrumentality of oppression and suppression known to the hated Romanovs. _Without mandate of authority from the people, or even any considerable part of the people, this brutal power dissolved the Constituent Assembly and annulled all its acts; chose its own agents and conferred upon them the title of representatives of the people; disbanded the courts of law and substituted therefor arbitrary tribunals, clothed with unlimited power; without semblance of lawful trial, sentenced men and women to death, many of them not even accused of any crime whatsoever; seized innocent men, women, and children as hostages for the conduct of others; shot and otherwise executed innocent persons, including women and children, for crimes and offenses of others, of which they admittedly knew nothing; deprived citizens of freedom, and imprisoned them in vile dungeons, for no crime save written or spoken appeal in defense of lawful rights; arbitrarily suppressed the existing freedom of assemblage and of publication; based civic rights upon the acceptance of particular beliefs; by arbitrary decree levied unjust, unequal, and discriminatory taxes; filled the land with hireling secret spies and informers; imposed a constitution and laws upon the people without their consent, binding upon the people, but not upon itself; placed the public revenues at the disposal of a political faction representing only a minority of the people; and, finally, by a decree restored involuntary servitude._

This formidable indictment is no more than a mere outline sketch of the despotism under which Russia has suffered since November, 1917. There is not a clause in the indictment which is not fully sustained by the evidence given in these pages. Lenin is fond of quoting a saying of Marx that, “The domination of the proletariat can most easily be accomplished in a war-weary country--_i.e._, in a worn-out, will-less, and weakened land.” He and his associates found Russia war weary, worn out, and weakened indeed, but not “will-less.” On the contrary, the great giant, staggering from the weakness and weariness arising from years of terrible struggle, urged by a mighty will to make secure the newly conquered freedom, was already turning again to labor, to restore industry and build a prosperous nation. By resorting to the methods and instrumentalities which tyrants in all ages have used to crush the peoples rightly struggling to be free, the Bolsheviki have imposed upon Russia a tyranny greater than the old. That they have done this in the name of liberty in no wise mitigates their crime, but, on the contrary, adds to it. The classic words of the English seventeenth-century pamphleteer come to mind: “Almost all tyrants have been first captains and generals for the people, under pretense of vindicating or defending their liberties.... Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud than force ... with cunning, plausible pretenses to impose upon men’s understandings, and in the end they master those that had so little wit as to rely upon their faith and integrity.”

The greatest liberty of all, that liberty upon which all other liberties must rest, and without which men are slaves, no matter by what high-sounding names they may be designated, is the liberty of discussion. Perhaps no people in the world have realized this to the same extent as the great Anglo-Saxon peoples, or have been so solicitous in maintaining it. Only the French have approached us in this respect. The immortal words of a still greater seventeenth-century pamphleteer constitute a part of the moral and political heritage of our race. Who does not thrill at Milton’s words, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” That fine declaration was the inspiration of Patrick Henry’s sublime demand, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Upon that rock, and that rock alone, was built “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The manner in which the Bolsheviki have stifled protest, discussion, and appeal through the suppression of the opposition newspapers constitutes one of the worst chapters in their infamous history. Yet, strangely enough, of such perversity is the human mind capable, they have found their chief defenders, outside of Russia, among individuals and groups devoted to the upholding of popular liberties. Let us take, for example, the case of Mr. William Hard and his laborious and ingenious--though disingenuous--articles in defense of the Bolsheviki, published in the _New Republic_ and elsewhere:

In an earlier volume,[60] written at the close of 1918, and published in March, 1919, the present writer said of the Bolsheviki, “When they came into power they suppressed all non-Bolshevist papers in a manner differing not at all from that of the Czar’s régime, forcing the other Socialist partizan groups to resort to pre-Revolution underground methods.” The statement that the “other Socialist partizan groups” were forced to “resort to pre-Revolution underground methods,” made in the connection it was, conveyed to every person reading that paragraph who knew anything at all of the history of the Russian revolutionary struggle the information that the statement that the Bolsheviki “suppressed all non-Bolshevist papers” was not to be interpreted as meaning the suppression was absolute. Even if it had not been pointed out elsewhere--as it was, upon the authority of a famous Socialist-Revolutionist--that in some instances suppressed papers managed to appear in spite of the authorities, simply changing their names, _precisely as they had done under czarism_, the statement quoted above would have been justified as a substantially correct statement of the facts, particularly in view of the boast of responsible Bolsheviki themselves that they had suppressed the entire opposition press and that only the Bolshevist press remained. Certainly when one speaks or writes of the suppression of newspapers under czarism one does not deny that the revolutionists from time to time found ways and means of circumventing the authorities, and that it was more or less common for such suppressed newspapers to reappear under new names. The whole point of the paragraph in question was that the characteristic conditions of czarism had been restored.

[60] _Bolshevism_, by John Spargo, New York, 1919.

With a mental agility more admirable than either his controversial manners or his political morals, by a distortion of facts worthy of his mentors, but not of himself or of his reputation, Mr. Hard makes it appear that the Bolsheviki only suppressed the opposition newspapers after the middle of 1918, when, as he alleges, the opposition to the Bolsheviki assumed the character of “open acute civil war.” Mr. Hard admits that prior to this time there were suppressions and that “if any paper tried not merely to criticize the Lenin administration, but to utterly destroy the Bolshevik Soviet idea of the state, its editor was likely to find his publishing life quite frequently interrupted.”

Now the facts in the case are as different from Mr. Hard’s presentation as a normal mind can well conceive. Mr. David N. Shub, a competent authority, made an exhaustive reply to Mr. Hard’s article, a reply that was an exposure, in the columns of _Struggling Russia_. Before reproducing Mr. Shub’s reply it may be well to set forth a few facts of record which are of fundamental importance: _On the very day on which the Bolsheviki published the decree on the establishment of the Soviet power, November 10, 1917, they published also a decree directed against the freedom of the press._ The decree proper was accompanied by a characteristic explanatory statement. This statement recited that it had been necessary for the Temporary Revolutionary Committee to “adopt a series of measures against the counter-revolutionary press of various shades”; that protests had been made on all sides against this as a violation of the program which provided for the freedom of the press; repressive measures were temporary and precautionary, and that they would cease and complete freedom be given to the press, in accordance with the widest and most progressive law, “as soon as the new régime takes firm root.” The decree proper read:

I. Only those organs of the press will be suspended

(_a_) Which appeal for open resistance to the government
of workmen and peasants.

(_b_) Which foment disorders by slanderously falsifying
facts.

(_c_) Which incite to criminal acts--_i.e._, acts within
the jurisdiction of the police courts.

II. Provisional or definitive suspension can be executed
only by order of the Council of People’s Commissaries.

III. These regulations are only of a provisional nature
and shall be abrogated by a special ukase when
life has returned to normal conditions.

If Mr. Hard or any of the numerous journalistic apologists of
the Bolsheviki in this country will look the matter up he or
they will find that this decree copied the forms usually used
by the Czar’s government. It is noteworthy that the restoration
of freedom of the press was already made dependent upon that
czaristic instrument, the _ukase_. On the 16th of November the
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets adopted a resolution
which read:

The closure of the bourgeois papers was caused not only by
the purely fighting requirements in the period of the rising
and the suppression of counter-revolutionary attempts, but
likewise as a necessary temporary measure for the establishment
of a new régime in the sphere of the press, under which the
capital proprietors of printing-works and paper would not be
able to become autocratic beguilers of public opinion....
The re-establishment of the so-called freedom of the press,
_viz._, the simple return of printing-offices and paper to
capitalists, poisoners of the people’s conscience, would be
an unpermissible surrender to the will of capital--_i.e._, a
counter-revolutionary measure.

At the meeting when this resolution was adopted, and speaking in its support, Trotsky made a speech remarkable for its cynical dishonesty and its sinister menace. He said, according to the report in _Pravda_ two days later:

_Those measures which are employed to frighten individuals must
be applied to the press also...._ All the resources of the
press must be handed over to the Soviet Power. You say that
formerly we demanded freedom of the press for the _Pravda_? But
then we were in a position to demand a minimum program; now we
insist on the maximum program. _When the power was in the hands
of the bourgeoisie we demanded juridical freedom of the press._
When the power is held by the workmen and peasants--we must
create conditions for the freedom of the press.

Quite obviously, as shown by their own official reports, Mr. Hard and gentlemen of the _New Republic_, Mr. Oswald Villard and gentlemen of _The Nation_, and you, too, Mr. Norman Thomas, who find Mr. Hard’s disingenuous pleading so convincing,[61] the hostility of the Bolsheviki to freedom of the press was manifest from the very beginning of their rule. On the night of November 30th ten important newspapers were suppressed and their offices closed, among them being six Socialist newspapers. Their offense lay in the fact that they urged their readers to stand by the Constituent Assembly. Not only were the papers suppressed and their offices closed, but the best equipped of them all was “requisitioned” for the use of a Bolshevist paper, the _Soldatskaia Pravda_. The names of the newspapers were: _Nasha Rech_, _Sovremennoie Delo_, _Utro_, _Rabochaia Gazeta_, _Volia Naroda_, _Trudovoe Slovo_, _Edinstvo_, and _Rabotcheie Delo_. The suppression of the _Rabochaia Gazeta_, official organ of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party, caused a vigorous protest and the Central Committee of the party decided “to bring to the knowledge of all the members of the party that the central organ of the party, the _Rabochaia Gazeta_, is closed by the Military Revolutionary Committee. While branding this as an arbitrary act in defiance of the Russian and international proletariat, committed by so-called Socialists on a Social-Democrat paper and the Labor Party, whose organ it is, the Central Committee has decided to call upon the party to organize a movement of protest against this act in order to open the eyes of the labor masses to the character of the régime which governs the country.”

[61] See _The World Tomorrow_, February, 1920, p. 61.

In consequence of the tremendous volume of protest and through the general adoption of the devices familiar to the revolutionaries under czarism--using new names, changing printing-offices, and the like--most of the papers reappeared for a brief while in one form or another. But in February, 1918, all the anti-Bolshevist papers were again suppressed, save one, the principal organ of the Cadets, formerly the _Rech_, but later appearing as the _Nash Viek_. This paper was suffered to appear for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained. Mr. Shub’s article contains a detailed, though by no means full, account of the further suppressions:

A few days after the Bolshevist coup, in November, 1917,
the Bolsheviki closed down, among others, the organ of
the Mensheviki-Internationalists, _Rabochaya Gazeta_; the
central organ of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists,
_Dyelo Naroda_; the _Volia Naroda_, published by Catherine
Breshkovsky; the _Yedinstvo_, published by George Plechanov;
the _Russkaya Volia_, published by Leonid Andreiev; the
_Narodnoye Slovo_, the organ of the People’s Socialists, and
the _Dien_, published by the well-known Social-Democrat,
Alexander Potresov.

The printing-presses which belonged to Andreiev were
confiscated and his paper, _Russkaya Volia, never again
appeared under any other name_. The editor-in-chief of
the _Volia Naroda_--the newspaper published by Catherine
Breshkovsky--A. Agunov, was incarcerated by the Bolsheviki
in the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul and this paper was
_never able to appear again, even under a changed name_.
The offices of the _Dyelo Naroda_ were for a time guarded
by groups of armed soldiers in sympathy with the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, and notwithstanding all orders
by the Commissary of the Press to cease publication, the
Socialists-Revolutionists managed from time to time to issue
their newspapers, in irregular form, under one name or another.
But the copies of the paper would be confiscated from the
newsdealers immediately upon their appearance, and the newsboys
who risked the selling of it were subjected to unbelievable
persecutions. There were even cases when the sellers of these
“seditious” Socialist papers were shot by the Bolsheviki. These
facts were recorded by every newspaper which appeared from time
to time in those days in Petrograd and Moscow.

The _Dien_ (_Day_) did not appear at all for some time after
its suppression. Later there appeared in its place the
_Polnotch_ (_Midnight_), which was immediately suppressed for
publishing an exposé of the Bolshevist Commissary, Lieutenant
Schneuer, an ex-provocateur of the Tzar’s government and a
German spy, the same Schneuer who conducted negotiations with
the German command for an armistice, and who later, together
with Krylenko, led the orgy called “the capture of the General
Headquarters,” in the course of which General Dukhonine, the
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, was brutally murdered
and mutilated for his refusal to conclude an armistice with the
Germans.

A few days after the _Polnotch_ was closed another paper
appeared in its place, called _Notch_ (_Night_), but this one
was just as rapidly suppressed. Again _V Glookhooyou Notch_
(_In the Thick of Night_) appeared for a brief period, and
still later _V Temnooyou Notch_ (_In the Dark of Night_). The
paper was thus appearing once a week, and sometimes once every
other week, under different names. I have all these papers
in my possession, and their contents and fate would readily
convince the reader how “tolerantly” the Bolsheviki, in the
early days of their “rule,” treated the adverse opinions of
even such leading Socialists as Alexander Potresov, one of the
founders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, who, for
decades, was one of the editors of the central organs of the
party.

The publication of G. V. Plechanov’s--Russia’s greatest
Socialist writer and leader--the _Yedinstvo_, after it was
suppressed, appeared in the end of December, 1917, under the
name _Nashe Yedinstvo_, but was closed down in January, 1918,
and the Bolsheviki _confiscated its funds kept in a bank and
ordered the confiscation of all moneys coming in by mail to its
office_. This information was even cabled to New York by the
Petrograd correspondent of the New York Jewish pro-Bolshevist
newspaper, the _Daily Forward_. The _Nashe Yedinstvo_, at
the head of which, besides George Plechanov, there were such
widely known Russian revolutionists and Socialists as Leo
Deutsch, Vera Zasulitch, Dr. N. Vassilyev, L. Axelrod-Orthodox,
and Gregory Alexinsky, was thus permanently destroyed by the
Bolsheviki in January, or early in February, 1918, and never
appeared again under any other name.

The newspapers _Dien_, _Dyelo Naroda_, the Menshevist _Novy
Looch_, and a few others did make an attempt to appear later,
but on the eve of the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty
_all_ oppositional Socialist newspapers were again suppressed
wholesale. In the underground Socialist bulletins, which were
at that time being published by the Socialists-Revolutionists
and Social Democrats, it was stated that this move was carried
out by order of the German General Staff. The prominent Social
Democrat and Internationalist, L. Martov, later, at an open
meeting of the Soviet, flung this accusation in the face of
Lenin, _who never replied to it by either word or pen_.

When the Germans, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, still
continued their offensive movement, occupying one Russian city
after another, and the Bolsheviki had reasons to believe that
they were nearing their end, they somewhat relaxed their régime
and some newspapers obtained the possibility of appearing
again, _on condition that all such newspapers, under threat
of fine and confiscation, were to print on their first pages
all the Bolshevist decrees and all distorted information and
explanations by the Bolshevist commissaries_. Aside from that,
the press was subject to huge fines for every bit of news
that did not please the eye of the Bolshevist censor. Thus,
for instance, _Novaya Zhizn_, Gorky’s organ, was fined 35,000
rubles for a certain piece of “unfavorable” news which it
printed.

However, early in May, 1918--_i.e._, _before the beginning
of the so-called “intervention” by the Allies_--even this
measure of “freedom” of the press appeared too frivolous for
the Bolshevist commissaries, and they permanently closed down
_Dyelo Naroda_, _Dien_, and _Novy Looch_, and, somewhat later,
all the remaining opposition papers, including Gorky’s _Novaya
Zhizn_, and since that time none of them have reappeared. In
spite of endless attempts, Maxim Gorky did not succeed in
obtaining permission to establish his paper even six months
afterward, when he had officially made peace with the Soviet
régime. The Bolsheviki are afraid of the free speech of even
their official “friends,” and that is the true reason why there
is not in Soviet Russia to-day a single independent organ of
the press.[62]

[62] April, 1919.

With one kick of the Red Army boot was thus destroyed Russia’s
greatest treasure, her independent press. The oldest and
greatest founts of Russian culture and social justice, such
as the monthly magazine, _Russkoye Bogatstvo_, and the daily
_Russkya Viedomosti_, which even the Czar’s government never
dared to suppress permanently, were brutally strangled. These
organs have raised entire generations of Russian radicals
and Socialists and had among their contributors and editors
the greatest savants, publicists, and journalists of Russia,
such as Nicholas Chernishevsky, Glieb Uspensky, Nicholas
Mikhailovsky, N. Zlatovratsky, Ilya Metchnikov, Professor N.
Kareiev, Vladimir Korolenko, Peter Kropotkin, and numerous
others.

Let us look at the subject from a slightly different angle: one of the first things they did was to declare the “nationalization” of the printing-establishments of certain newspapers, which they immediately turned over to their own press. In this manner the printing-establishment of the _Novoye Vremia_ was seized and used for the publication of _Izvestia_ and _Pravda_, the latter being an organ of the party and not of the government. Here was a new form of political nepotism which a Tweed might well envy and only a Nash could portray. We are at the beginning of the nepotism, however. On November 20, 1917, the advertising monopoly was decreed, and on December 10th following it went into effect. This measure forbade the printing of advertisements in any except the official journals, thereby cutting off the revenue from advertising, upon which newspapers depend, from all except official journals. This measure alone had the effect of limiting the possibility of publication practically to the official papers and those which were heavily subsidized. Moreover, the Bolsheviki used the public revenues to subsidize their own newspapers. They raised the postal rates for sending newspapers by mail to a prohibitive height, and then carried the newspapers of their own partizans free of charge at the public expense. They “nationalized” the sale of newspapers, which made it unlawful for unauthorized persons to obtain and offer for sale any save the official Bolshevist newspapers and those newspapers published by its partizans which supported the government. The decree forbade taking subscriptions for the “unauthorized” papers at the post-offices, in accordance with custom, forbade their circulation through the mails, and imposed a special tax upon such as were permitted to appear. Article III of this wonderful decree reads:

Subscriptions to the bourgeois and pseudo-Socialist newspapers
are suppressed and will not hereafter be accepted at the
post-office. Issues of these journals that may be mailed will
not be delivered at their destination.

Newspapers of the bourgeoisie will be subject to a tax
which may be as great as three rubles for each number.
Pseudo-Socialist journals such as the _V period_ and the _Troud
Vlast Naroda_[63] will be subject to the same tax.

[63] These were organs of the Mensheviki and the Social Revolutionists.

Is it any wonder that by the latter part of May, 1918, the anti-Bolshevist press had been almost entirely exterminated except for the fitful and irregular appearance of papers published surreptitiously, and the few others whose appearance was due to the venality of some Bolshevist officials? Was there ever, in the history of any nation, since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type made newspapers possible, such organized political nepotism? Was there ever, since men organized governments, anything more subversive of freedom and political morality? Yet there is worse to come; as time went on, new devices suggested themselves to these perverters of democracy and corrupters of government. On July 27, 1918, _Izvestia_ published the information that the press department would grant permits for periodical publications, _provided they accepted the Soviet platform_. In carrying out this arrangement, so essentially despotic, the press department reserved to itself the right to determine _whether or not the population was in need of the proposed publication_, whether it was advisable to permit the use of any of the available paper-supply for the purpose, and so forth and so on. Under this arrangement permission was given to publish a paper called the _Mir_. Ostensibly a pacifist paper, the _Mir_ was very cordially welcomed by the Bolshevist papers to the confraternity of privileged journals. That the _Mir_ was subsidized by the German Government for the propaganda of international pacificism (this was in the summer of 1918) seems to have been established.[64] The closing chapter of the history of this paper is told in the following extract from _Izvestia_, October 17, 1918, which is more interesting for its disclosures of Bolshevist mentality than anything else:

[64] See Dumas, _op. cit._, p. 80.

The suppression of the paper _Mir_ (_Peace_).--In accordance
with the decision published in the _Izvestia_ on the 27th
July, No. 159, the Press Department granted permits to
issue _to periodical publications which accepted the Soviet
platform_. When granting permission the Press Department took
into consideration the available supplies of paper, _whether
the population was in need of the proposed periodical
publication_, and also the necessity of providing employment
for printers and pressmen. Thus permission was granted to
issue the paper _Mir_, especially in view of the publisher’s
declaration that the paper was intended to propagate pacifist
ideas. At the present moment _the requirements of the
population of the Federal Socialist Republic for means of daily
information are adequately met by the Soviet publications_;
employment for those engaged in journalistic work is secured
in the Soviet papers; a paper crisis is approaching. The Press
Department, therefore, considers it impossible to permit the
further publication of the _Mir_ and has decided to _suppress
this paper forever_.

Another device which the Bolsheviki resorted to was the compulsion of people to purchase the official newspapers, whether they wanted them or not. On July 20, 1918, there was published “Obligatory Regulation No. 27,” which provided for the compulsory purchase by all householders of the _Severnaya Communa_. This unique regulation read as follows:

OBLIGATORY REGULATION NO. 27

Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns
included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is
under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of
the newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, the official organ of
the Soviets of the Northern Region.

The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on
the first demand.

Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region,
Gr. Zinoviev.

Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.

The _Severnaya Communa_, on November 10, 1918, published the following with reference to this beautiful scheme:

To the Notice of the House Committees of the Poor:

On 20th July of the present year there was published obligatory
regulation No. 27, to the following effect:

“Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns
included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is
under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of
the newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, the official organ of
the Soviets of the Northern Region.

“The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house
on the first demand.

“Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region,
Gr. Zinoviev.

“Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.”

However, until now the majority of houses inhabited mainly by the bourgeoisie do not fulfil the above-expressed obligatory regulation, and the working population of such houses is deprived of the possibility of receiving the _Severnaya Communa_ in its house committees.

Therefore, the publishing office of the _Severnaya Communa_ brings to the notice of all house committees that it has undertaken, through the medium of especial emissaries, the control of the fulfilment by house committees of the obligatory regulation No. 27, and all house committees which cannot show a receipt for a subscription to the newspaper, the _Severnaya Communa_, will be immediately called to the most severe account for the breaking of the obligatory regulation.

Subscriptions will be received in the main office and branches of the _Severnaya Communa_ daily, except Sundays and holidays, from 10 to 4.

After this it is something of an anticlimax to even take note of the tremendous power wielded by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press, Section of Political Crimes, which was created in March, 1918. The decree relating to this body and outlining its functions, dated December 18, 1917, read as follows:

THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL OF THE PRESS

1. Under the Revolutionary Tribunal is created a Revolutionary
Tribunal of the Press. This Tribunal will have jurisdiction of
crimes and offenses against the people committed by means of
the press.

2. Crimes and offenses by means of the press are the
publication and circulation of any false or perverted reports
and information about events of public life, in so far as they
constitute an attempt upon the rights and interests of the
revolutionary people.

3. The Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press consists of three
members, elected for a period not longer than three months by
the Soviet of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.
These members are charged with the conduct of the preliminary
investigation as well as the trial of the case.

4. The following serve as grounds for instituting proceedings:
reports of legal or administrative institutions, public
organizations, or private persons.

5. The prosecution and defense are conducted on the principles
laid down in the instructions to the general Revolutionary
Tribunal.

6. The sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press are
public.

7. The decisions of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press are
final and are not subject to appeal.

8. The Revolutionary Tribunal imposes the following penalties:
(1) fine; (2) expression of public censure, which the convicted
organ of the Press brings to the general knowledge in a way
indicated by the Tribunal; (3) the publication in a prominent
place or in a special edition of a denial of the false report;
(4) temporary or permanent suppression of the publication or
its exclusion from circulation; (5) confiscation to national
ownership of the printing-shop or property of the organ of the
Press if it belongs to the convicted parties.

9. The trial of an organ of the Press by the Revolutionary
Tribunal of the Press does not absolve the guilty persons from
general criminal responsibility.

Under the provisions of this body the newspapers which were appearing found themselves subject to a new terror. An offensive reference to Trotsky caused the _Outre Rossii_ to be mulcted to the extent of 10,000 rubles. Even the redoubtable Martov was punished and the _Vperiod_, organ of the Social Democratic Party, suppressed. The _Nache Slovo_ was fined 25,000 rubles and the _Ranee Outre_ was mulcted in a like amount for printing a news article concerning some use of the Lettish sharp-shooters by the Bolsheviki, though there was no denial that the facts were as stated. It was a common practice to impose fines of anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 rubles upon papers which had indulged in criticism of the government or anything that could be construed as “an offense against the people” or “an attempt upon the rights and interests of the revolutionary people.”

Here, then, is a summary of the manner in which the Bolsheviki have suppressed the freedom of the press. It is a record which cannot be equaled, nor approached, in all the history of Russia during the reign of Nicholas Romanov II. Mr. Hard attempts to cover the issue with confusion by asking, “Is there any government in the world that permits pro-enemy papers to be printed within its territory during a civil war?” and he is applauded by the entire claque of so-called “Liberal” and “Radical” pro-Bolshevist journals. It was done in this country during the War of the Rebellion, Mr. Hard; it has been done in Ireland under “British tyranny.” The Bolshevist records show, first, that the suppression of non-Bolshevist journals was carried out upon a wholesale scale when there was no state of civil war, no armed resistance to the Bolsheviki; that it was, in fact, carried out upon a large scale during the period when preparations were being made for holding the Constituent Assembly which the Bolsheviki themselves, in repeated official declarations, had sworn to uphold and defend. The records show, furthermore, that the Bolsheviki sought not merely to suppress those journals which were urging civil war, but that, as a matter of fact, they suppressed the papers which urged the contrary--that is, that the civil war be brought to an end. The _Vsiegda Vperiod_ is a case in point. In February, 1919, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announced that it had confirmed the decision to close this newspaper, “_as its appeals for the cessation of civil war appear to be a betrayal of the working-class_.”

No, Mr. Hard. No, Mr. Oswald Villard. No, Mr. Norman Thomas. No, gentlemen of the _New Republic_. No, gentlemen of _The Nation_. There can be no escape through the channels of such juggling with facts. When you defend the Bolshevist régime you defend a monstrous organized oppression, and you thereby disqualify yourselves to set up as champions and defenders of Freedom. When you protest against restrictions of popular liberties here the red ironic laughter of the tyrants you have defended drowns the sound of your voices. When you speak fair words for Freedom in America your fellow-men hear only the echoes of your louder words spoken for tyranny in Russia. You do not approach the bar with clean hands and clean consciences. You are forsworn. By what right shall you who have defended Bolshevism in Russia, with all its brutal tyranny, its loathsome corruption, its unrestrained reign of hatred, presume to protest when Liberty is assailed in America? Those among us who have protested against every invasion of popular liberties at home, and have at the same time been loyal to our comrades in Russia who have so bravely resisted tyranny, have the right to enter the lists in defense of Freedom in America, and to raise our voices when that Freedom is assailed. You have not that right, gentlemen; you cannot speak for Freedom, in America or anywhere else, without bringing shame upon her.

In all the platforms and programs of the Socialist parties of the world, without a single exception, the demand for freedom of the press has held a prominent place. No accredited spokesmen of the Socialist movement, anywhere, at any time, has suggested that this demand was made with mental reservations of any kind, or that when Socialists came into power they would suppress the publication of views hostile to their own, or the views of parties struggling to introduce other changes. Yet we find Lenin at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets held on November 18, 1917, saying: “We, the Bolsheviki, have always said that when we came into power we would shut down the bourgeois newspapers. To tolerate bourgeois newspapers is to quit being Socialists.” And Trotsky supported this position and affirmed it as his own.

We have here only the beginnings of a confession of moral bankruptcy, of long-continued, systematic, studied misrepresentation of their purpose and deception of their comrades and of all who believed the words they said, unsuspecting the serious reservations back of the words. _Theses Respecting the Social Revolution and the Tasks of the Proletariat During Its Dictatorship in Russia_ is, as might be inferred from its title, a characteristic piece of Lenin’s medieval scholasticism, in which, with ponderous verbosity, he explains and interprets Bolshevism. Let us consider _Theses_ Nos. 17, 18, 19, and 20:

(17) The former demands for a democratic republic, and general
freedom (that is freedom for the middle classes as well),
were quite correct in the epoch that is now past, the epoch
of preparation and gathering of strength. _The worker needed
freedom for his press, while the middle-class press was noxious
to him, but he could not at this time put forward a demand
for the suppression of the middle-class press._ Consequently,
the proletariat demanded general freedom, even freedom for
reactionary assemblies, for black labor organizations.

(18) Now we are in the period of the direct attack on capital,
the direct overthrow and destruction of the imperialist robber
state, and the direct suppression of the middle class. It is,
therefore, absolutely clear that in the present epoch the
principle of defending general freedom (that is also for the
counter-revolutionary middle class) is not only superfluous,
but directly dangerous.

(19) This also holds good for the press, and the leading
organizations of the social traitors. The latter have been
unmasked as the active elements of the counter-revolution.
They even attack with weapons the proletarian government.
Supported by former officers and the money-bags of the defeated
finance capital, they appear on the scene as the most energetic
organizations for various conspiracies. The proletariat
dictatorship is their deadly enemy. Therefore, they must be
dealt with in a corresponding manner.

(20) As regards the working-class and the poor peasants, these
possess the fullest freedom.

What have we here? One reads these paragraphs and is stunned by them; repeated readings are necessary. We are told, in fact, that all the demands for freedom of the press, including the bourgeois press, made by Socialists out of office, during the period of their struggle, were hypocritical; that the demand for freedom for all was made for no other reason than the inability of those making it to secure their freedom by themselves and apart from the general freedom; that there was always an unconfessed desire and intention to use the power gained through the freedom thus acquired to suppress the freedom already possessed by others. What a monstrous confession of duplicity and deceit long practised, and what a burden of suspicion and doubt it imposes upon all who hereafter in the name of Socialism urge the freedom of the press.[65]

[65] See Kautsky, _The Dictatorship of the Proletariat_.

Let us hear from another leading Bolshevist luminary, Bucharin, who shares with Lenin the heaviest tasks of expounding Bolshevist theories and who is in some respects a rival theologian. In July, 1918, Bucharin published his pamphlet, _The Program of the Communists_, authorized by the Communist Party, of whose organ, _Pravda_, he is the editor. A revolutionary organization in this country published the greater part of this pamphlet, and it is significant that it omitted Chapter VII, in which Bucharin reveals precisely the same attitude as Lenin. He goes farther in that he admits the same insincerity of attitude toward equal suffrage and the Constituent Assembly based on the will of the majority. He says:

If we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, the object of
which is to stifle the bourgeoisie, to compel it to give up
its attempts for the restoration of the bourgeois authority,
then it is obvious that there can be no talk of allowing
the bourgeoisie electoral rights or of a change from soviet
authority to a bourgeois-republican parliament.

The Communist (Bolshevik) party receives from all sides
accusations and even threats like the following: “You close
newspapers, you arrest people, you forbid meetings, you trample
underfoot freedom of speech and of the press, you reconstruct
autocracy, you are oppressors and murderers.”

It is necessary to discuss in detail this question of
“liberties” in a Soviet republic.

At present the following is clear for the working-men and the
peasants. The Communist party not only does not demand any
liberty of the press, speech, meetings, unions, etc., for the
bourgeois enemies of the people, but, on the contrary, it
demands that the government should be always in readiness to
close the bourgeois press; to disperse the meetings of the
enemies of the people; to forbid them to lie, slander, and
spread panic; to crush ruthlessly all attempts at a restoration
of the bourgeois régime. This is precisely the meaning of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.

Another question may be put to us: “Why did the Bolsheviki
not speak formerly of the abrogation of full liberty for the
bourgeoisie? Why did they formerly support the idea of a
_bourgeois-democratic republic? Why did they support the idea
of the Constituent Assembly and did not speak of depriving the
bourgeoisie of the right of suffrage?_ Why have they changed
their program so far as these questions are concerned?”

_The answer to this question is very simple. The working-class
formerly did not have strength enough to storm the bulwarks
of the bourgeoisie. It needed preparation, accumulation of
strength, enlightenment of the masses, organization. It needed,
for example, the freedom of its own labor press. But it could
not come to the capitalists and to their governments and
demand that they shut down their own newspapers and give full
freedom to the labor papers. Everybody would merely laugh at
the working-men. Such demands can be made only at the time
of a storming attack. And there had never been such a time
before. This is why the working-men demanded (and our party,
too) “Freedom of the press.” (Of the whole press, including the
bourgeois press.)_