Chapter XII: Jurisdiction of the Local Organs of the Soviets (11)

This experiment is of the most vital moral and material
importance. We cannot mobilize the peasants by means of
trades-unions, and the trades-unions themselves do not possess
any means of laying hold of millions of peasants. They can best
be mobilized on a military footing. Their labor formations will
have to be organized on a military model--labor platoons, labor
companies, labor battalions, disciplined as required, for we
shall have to deal with masses which have not passed through
trades-union trading. This is a matter of the near future. We
shall be compelled to create military organizations such as
exist already in the form of our armies. It is therefore urgent
to utilize them by adapting them to economic requirements. That
is exactly what we are doing now.

At the ninth Congress of the Communist Party in March, according to _Izvestia_ of March 21, 1920, Trotsky made another report on the militarization of labor, in which he said:

At the present time the militarization of labor is all the more
needed in that we have now come to the mobilization of peasants
as the means of solving the problems requiring mass action.
We are mobilizing the peasants and forming them into labor
detachments which very closely resemble military detachments.
Some of our comrades say, however, that even though in the case
of the working power of mobilized peasantry it is necessary to
apply militarization, a military apparatus need not be created
when the question involves skilled labor and industry because
there we have professional unions performing the function of
organizing labor. This opinion, however, is erroneous.

At present it is true that professional unions distribute labor
power at the demand of social-economic organizations, but what
means and methods do they possess for insuring that the workman
who is sent to a given factory actually reports at that factory
for work?

We have in the most important branches of our industry more
than a million workmen on the lists, but not more than eight
hundred thousand of them are actually working, and where are
the remainder? They have gone to the villages, or to other
divisions of industry, or into speculation. Among soldiers this
is called desertion, and in one form or another the measures
used to compel soldiers to do their duty should be applied in
the field of labor.

_Under a unified system of economy the masses of workmen should
be moved about, ordered and sent from place to place in exactly
the same manner as soldiers. This is the foundation of the
militarization of labor, and without this we are unable to
speak seriously of any organization of industry on a new basis
in the conditions of starvation and disorganization existing
to-day...._

In the period of transition in the organization of labor,
compulsion plays a very important part. The statement that free
labor--namely, freely employed labor--produces more than labor
under compulsion is correct only when applied to feudalistic
and bourgeois orders of society.

It is, of course, too soon to attempt anything in the nature of a final judgment upon this new form of industrial serfdom. In his report to the ninth Congress of the Communist Party, already quoted, Trotsky declared that the belief that free labor is more productive than forced labor is “correct only when applied to feudalistic and bourgeois orders of society.” The implication is that it will be otherwise in the Communistic society of the future, but of that Trotsky can have no knowledge. His declaration springs from faith, not from knowledge. All that he or anybody else can know is that the whole history of mankind hitherto shows that free men work better than men who are not free. Arakcheev’s militarized peasants were less productive than other peasants not subject to military rule. So far as the present writer’s information goes, no modern army when engaged in productive work has equaled civilian labor in similar lines, judged on a per-capita basis. Slaves, convicts, and conscripts have everywhere been notoriously poor producers.

Will it be better if the conscription is done by the Bolsheviki, and if the workers sing revolutionary songs, instead of the hymns to the Czar sung by Arakcheev’s conscript settlers, or the religious melodies sung by the negro slaves in our Southern States? Those whose only guide to the future is the history of the past will doubt it; those who, like Trotsky, see in the past no lesson for the future confidently believe that it will. The thoughtful and candid mind wonders whether the following paragraph, published by the _Krasnaya Gazeta_ in March, may not be regarded as a foreshadowing of Bolshevist disillusionment:

The attempts of the Soviet power to utilize the Labor Army for
cleansing Petrograd from mud, excretions, and rubbish have not
met with success. In addition to the usual Labor Army rations,
the men were given an increased allowance of bread, tobacco,
etc. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get not only any
intensive work, but even, generally speaking, any real work at
all out of the Labor Army men. Recourse, therefore, had to
be had to the usual means--the men had to be paid a premium
of 1,000 rubles for every tramway-truck of rubbish unloaded.
Moreover, the tramway brigade had to be paid 300 rubles for
every third trip.

In hundreds of statements by responsible Bolshevist officials and journals the wonderful morale of the Petrograd workers has been extolled and held up to the rest of Russia for emulation. If these things are possible in “Red Peter” at the beginning, what may we not expect elsewhere--and later? The _Novaya Russkaya Zhizn_, published at Helsingfors, is an anti-Bolshevist paper. The following quotation from its issue of March 6, 1920, is of interest and value only in so far as it directs attention to a Bolshevist official report:

In the Soviet press we find a brilliant illustration (in
figures) of the latest “new” tactics proclaimed by the
Communists of the Third International on the subject of
soldiers “stacking their rifles and taking to axes, saws, and
spades.”

“The 56th Division of the Petrograd Labor Army, during the
fortnight from 1st to 14th February, loaded 60 cars with
wood-fuel, transported 225 sagenes,[70] stacked 43 cubic
sagenes, and sawed up 39 cubic sagenes.” Besides this, the
division dug out “several locomotives” from under the snow.

[70] One sagene equals seven feet.

In Soviet Russia a regiment is about 1,000 strong, and a
division is about 4,000. In the course of a fortnight the
division worked twelve days. According to our calculation this
works out, on an average, at a fraction over one billet of wood
per diem per Red Army man handled by him in one way or another.

Thus it took 4,000 men a fortnight to do what could, in former
days, be easily performed by ten workmen.

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks have not yet calculated the cost
to the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government of the wood-fuel
which was loaded, transported, stacked, and sawn up by the 56th
Division of the Labor Army in the course of a fortnight.

These quotations are not offered as proof of the uneconomical character of compulsory labor. It is useless to argue that question further than we have already done. But there is a question of vastly greater importance than the volume of production--namely, the effect upon the human elements involved, the producers themselves. It is quite clear that this universal conscription of the laborers cannot be carried out without a large measure of adscription to the jobs assigned them, however modified in individual cases. It is equally certain that under the conditions described by Lenin and Trotsky in the official utterances we have quoted, nothing worthy the name of personal freedom can by any possibility exist. The condition of the workers under such a system cannot be fundamentally different from that of the natives of Paraguay in the theocratic-communist régime established by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, or from that of Arakcheev’s militarized serfs. External and superficial differences there may be, but none of fundamental importance. The Bolshevist régime may be less brutal and more humane than Arakcheev’s, but so was the Jesuit rule in Paraguay. Yet in the latter, as in the former, the workers were reduced to the condition of mere automatons until, led by daring spirits, they rose in terrible revolt of unparalleled brutality.

Such is the militarization of labor in the Bolshevist paradise, and such is the light that history throws upon it. We do not wonder that _Pravda_ had to admit, on March 28, 1920, that mass-meetings to protest against the new system were being held in all parts of Soviet Russia. That the Russian workers will submit for long to the new tyranny is, happily, unthinkable.

XIV

LET THE VERDICT BE RENDERED

The men and women of America are by the force of circumstance impaneled as a jury to judge the Bolshevist régime. The evidence submitted in these pages is before them. It is no mere chronicle of scandal; neither is it a cunningly wrought mosaic of rumors, prejudiced inferences, exaggerated statements by hostile witnesses, sensational incidents and utterances, selected because they are calculated to provoke resentment. On the contrary, the most scrupulous care has been taken to confine the case to the well-established and acknowledged characteristic features of the Bolshevist régime. The bulk of the evidence cited comes from Bolshevist sources of the highest possible authority and responsibility. The non-Bolshevist witnesses are, without exception, men of high character, identified with the international Socialist movement. There is not a reactionist or an apologist for the capitalist order of society among them. In each case special attention has been directed to their anti-Bolshevist views, so that the jury can make full allowance therefor. Moreover, in no instance has the testimony of witnesses of anti-Bolshevist views been cited without ample corroborative evidence from responsible and authoritative Bolshevist sources. The jury must now pass upon this evidence and render its verdict.

It is urged by the Bolsheviki and by their defenders that the time for passing judgment has not yet arrived; that we are not yet in possession of sufficient evidence to warrant a decision. Neither the Bolsheviki nor their defenders have the right to make this plea, for the simple reason that they themselves have long since demanded that, with less than a thousandth part of the testimony now before us, we pass judgment--and, of course, give our unqualified approval to Bolshevism and its works. It is a matter of record and of common knowledge that soon after the Bolshevist régime was instituted in Russia a vigorous, systematic propaganda in its favor and support was begun in all the western nations, including the United States. By voice and pen the makers of this propaganda called upon the people of the western nations to adopt Bolshevism. They presented glowing pictures of the Bolshevist Utopia, depicting it, not as an experiment of uncertain outcome, to be watched with sympathetic interest, but as an achievement so great, so successful and beneficent, that to refrain from copying it was both stupid and wrong. In this country, as in the other western nations, pamphlets extolling the merits of the Soviet régime were extensively circulated by well-organized groups, while certain “Liberal” weeklies devoted themselves to the task of presenting Bolshevism as a great advance in political and economic practice, a triumph of humanitarian idealism. Organizations were formed for the purpose of molding our public opinion in favor of Bolshevism.

It was not until this pro-Bolshevist propaganda was well under way that anything in the nature of a counter-propaganda was begun. For a considerable period of time this counter-propaganda in defense of existing democratic forms of government was relatively weak, and even now it has to be admitted that the pro-Bolshevist books and pamphlets in circulation in this country greatly outnumber those on the other side. In view of these facts, the defenders of Bolshevism have no moral right to demand suspension of judgment now. They themselves rushed to the bar of public opinion with a flimsy case, composed in its entirety of _ex parte_ and misleading statements by interested witnesses, many of them perjured, and demanded an instant verdict of approval. Upon what intellectual or moral grounds, then, shall others be denied the right to appear before that same court of public opinion, with a much more complete case, composed mainly of unchallenged admissions and records of the Bolsheviki themselves, and to ask for a contrary verdict?

There is not the slightest merit in the claim that we do not possess sufficient evidence to warrant a conclusive verdict in the case. Whether the Soviet form of government, basing suffrage upon occupation and economic functioning, is better adapted for Russia than the types of representative parliamentary government familiar to us in the western nations, does not enter into the case at all. The issue is not Sovietism, but Bolshevism. It is the tragic failure of Bolshevism with which we are concerned. It has failed to give the people freedom and failed to give them bread. We know that there is no freedom in Russia, and, what is more, that freedom can never be had upon the basis of the Bolshevist philosophy. Whether in Russia or in this country, government must rest upon the consent of the governed in order to merit the designation of free government; upon any other basis it must be tyrannical. It is as certain now as it will be a generation or a century hence, as certain as that yesterday belongs to the past and is irrevocable, that Bolshevism is government by a minority imposed upon the majority by force; that its sanctions are not the free choice and consent of the governed.

We know as much now as our descendants will know a couple of centuries hence concerning the great fundamental issues involved in this controversy. More than seven centuries have elapsed since the signing of Magna Charta at Runnimede. Upon every page of the history of the Anglo-Saxon people, from that day in June, 1215, to the present, it is plainly written that government which does not rest upon the consent of the governed cannot satisfy free men. Throughout that long period the moral and intellectual energy of the race has been devoted to the attainment of the ideal of universal and equal suffrage as the basis of free government. There are many persons who do not believe in that ideal, and it is possible to bring against it arguments which do not lack plausibility or force. Czar Nicholas II did not believe in that ideal; George III did not believe in it; Nicolai Lenin does not believe in it. Lincoln did believe in it; Marx believed in it; the American people believe in it. At this late day it is not necessary to argue the merits of democratic government. The consensus of the opinion of mankind, based upon long experience, favors government resting upon the will of the majority, with proper safeguards for the rights of the minority, as against government by minorities however constituted. Bolshevism, admittedly based upon the theory of rule by a minority of the people, thus runs counter to the experience and judgment of civilized mankind in every nation. In Russia a democratic government conforming to the experience and judgment of civilized and free peoples was being set up when the Bolsheviki by violence destroyed the attempt.

More conclusive, however, is the moral judgment of the conduct of the Bolsheviki as exemplified by their attitude toward the Constituent Assembly: During the summer of 1917, the period immediately preceding the _coup d’état_ of November, while the Provisional Government under Kerensky was engaged in making preparations for the holding of the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviki professed to believe that the Provisional Government was not loyal to the Constituent Assembly, and that there was danger that this instrument of popular sovereignty would be crippled, if not wholly destroyed, unless Kerensky and his associates were replaced by men and women more thoroughly devoted to the Constituent Assembly than they. It was as champions and defenders of the Constituent Assembly that the Bolsheviki obtained the power which enabled them to overthrow the Provisional Government. As late as October 25th Trotsky denounced Kerensky, charging him with conspiring to prevent the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. He demanded that the powers of government be taken over by the Soviets, which would, he said, convoke the Assembly on December 12th, the date assigned for it. Immediately after the _coup d’état_, the triumphant Bolsheviki, at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, announced that “pending the calling together of the Constituent Assembly, a Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is to be formed, which is to be called the Council of People’s Commissaries.” On the day following the _coup d’état_, November 8, 1917, Lenin made this very positive and explicit statement at the Soviet Congress:

As a democratic government, we cannot disregard the will of
the masses, even though we disagree with it. In the fires of
life, applying the decree in practice, carrying it out on
the spot, the peasants will themselves understand where the
truth is. _And even if the peasants will continue to follow
the Socialists-Revolutionists, and even if they will return a
majority for that Party in the elections to the Constituent
Assembly, we shall still say--let it be thus!_ Life is the best
teacher, and it will show who was right. And let the peasants
from their end, and us from ours, solve this problem. Life
will compel us to approach each other in the general current
of revolutionary activity, in the working out of new forms of
statehood. We should keep abreast of life; we must allow the
masses of the people full freedom of creativeness.

On that same day the “land decree” was issued. It began with these words: “The land problem in its entirety can be solved only by the national Constituent Assembly.” Three days after the revolt Lenin, as president of the People’s Commissaries, published a decree, stating:

1. That the elections to the Constituent Assembly shall be held
on November 25th, the day we set aside for this purpose.

2. All electoral committees, all local organizations, the
Councils of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates and
the soldiers’ organizations at the front are to bend every
effort toward safeguarding the freedom of the voters and fair
play at the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will
be held on the appointed date.

If language has any meaning at all, by these declarations the Bolsheviki were pledged to recognize and uphold the Constituent Assembly.

As the electoral campaign proceeded and it became evident that the Bolsheviki would not receive the support of the great mass of the voters, their organs began to adopt a very critical attitude toward the Constituent Assembly. There was a thinly veiled menace in the following passages from an article published in _Pravda_ on November 18, 1917, while the electoral campaign was in full swing:

_To expect from the Constituent Assembly a painless solution
of all our accursed problems not only savors of parliamentary
imbecility, but is also dangerous politically...._ The victory
of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison in the November
revolution furnishes the only possible guaranty of the
convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and, what is not less
important, assures success to such a solution of our political
and social problems which the War and the Revolution have
made the order of the day. The convocation of the Constituent
Assembly stands or falls with the Soviet power.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in a large majority of electoral districts on the 12th, 19th, and 26th of November, 1917--that is, after the _coup d’état_, in the full tide of Bolshevist enthusiasm. The Bolsheviki were in power, and there is abundant evidence that they resorted to almost every known method of coercion and intimidation to secure a result favorable to themselves. Of 703 deputies elected in 54 out of a total of 81 election districts, only 168 belonged to the Bolshevist Party. At the same time the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists proper, not reckoning the organizations of the same party among other nationalities of Russia, won twice that number of seats--namely, 338. Out of a total of 36,257,960 votes cast in 54 election districts the Bolshevist Party counted barely 25 per cent. The votes cast for their candidates amounted to 9,023,963, whereas the Socialists-Revolutionists polled 20,893,734--that is, 58 per cent. of all the votes cast.

When the election results were known _Pravda_ and _Izvestia_ both took the position that the victorious people did not need a Constituent Assembly; that a new instrument, greatly superior to the old and “obsolete” democratic instrument, had been created. On December 1, 1917, _Pravda_ said: “If the lines of action of the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly should diverge, if there should arise between them any disagreements, the question will arise as to who expresses better the will of the masses. _We think it is the Soviets who through their peculiar organization express more clearly, more correctly, and more definitely the will of the workers, soldiers, and peasants...._ This is why the Soviets will have to propose to the Constituent Assembly to adopt as the constitution of the Russian Republic, not that political system which forms the basis of its convocation (_i.e._, Democracy), but the Soviet system, the constitution of the Republic of Workers’, soldiers’, and Peasants’ Soviets.” On December 7, 1917, the Executive Committee of the Soviet power published a resolution which indicated that this self-constituted authority, despite the most solemn pledges, was already tampering with the newly elected Constituent Assembly. The resolution asserted that the Soviet power had the right to issue writs for new elections where a majority of the voters expressed themselves as dissatisfied with the result of the elections already held. In other words, notwithstanding the fact that the elections for the Constituent Assembly had been held in November, while the Bolsheviki were in power, and the first meeting of that body was scheduled for December 12th, new elections might be ordered by the Soviet power in response to a request from the majority of the electorate. That the elections had gone so overwhelmingly against the Bolsheviki, most of their candidates being badly defeated, throws a sinister light upon this decision. _Pravda_ demanded that the leading members of the Constitutional-Democratic Party be arrested, including those elected to the Constituent Assembly, and on December 13, 1917, it published this decree of the Council of People’s Commissaries: “The leading members of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, as a party of enemies of the people, are to be arrested and brought to trial before the Revolutionary Tribunals.”

On December 26, 1917, Lenin published in _Pravda_ a series of nineteen “theses” concerning the Constituent Assembly. He therein set forth the doctrine that although the elections had taken place after the Bolshevist _coup d’état_, and under the authority and protection of the temporary Soviet power, yet the elections gave no clear indication of the real mind of the masses of the people, because, forsooth, the Socialists-Revolutionists Party, whose candidates had been elected in a majority of the constituencies, had divided into a Right Wing and a Left Wing subsequent to the elections. That the differences between these factions would be fully threshed out in the Constituent Assembly was obvious. Nevertheless, Lenin announced that the Constituent Assembly just elected was not suitable. Again we are compelled to connect this announcement with the fact that the Bolsheviki had not succeeded in winning the support of the electorate. In these tortuous logomachies we encounter the same immoral doctrine that we have noticed in Lenin’s discussion of the demand for freedom of speech, publication, and assemblage. The demand for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly had been “an entirely just one in the program of revolutionary Social-Democracy” in the past, but now with the Bolsheviki in power it was a different matter! Whereas the Soviets had been declared to be the loyal protectors of the Constituent Assembly, Lenin’s new declaration was, “The Soviet Republic represents not only a higher form of democratic institutions (in comparison with the middle-class republic and the Constituent Assembly as its consummation), it is also the sole form which renders possible the least painful transition to Socialism.”

When the Constituent Assembly finally convened on January 18, 1918, there were sailors and Lettish troops in the hall armed with rifles, hand-grenades, and machine-guns, placed there to intimidate the elected representatives of the people. The Bolshevist delegates demanded the adoption of a declaration by the Assembly which was tantamount to a formal abdication. One of the paragraphs in this declaration read: “Supporting the Soviet rule and _accepting the orders of the Council of People’s Commissaries_, the Constituent Assembly acknowledges its duty to outline a form for the reorganization of society.” When the Constituent Assembly, which represented more than thirty-six million votes, declined to adopt this declaration, the Bolsheviki withdrew and later, by force of arms, dispersed the Assembly. It was subsequently promised that arrangements for the election of a new Constituent Assembly would be made, but, as all the world knows, _no such elections have been held to this time_.

At the Congress of the Bolshevist Party--now Communist Party--held in February, 1918, Lenin set forth a brand-new set of principles for adoption as a program. He declared that the transition to Socialism necessarily presupposes that there can be “no liberty and democracy for all, but only for the exploited working-classes, for the sake of their liberation from exploitation”; that it requires “the automatic exclusion of the exploiting classes, and of the rich representatives of the petty bourgeoisie” and “the abolition of parliamentary government.” On the basis of these principles the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic was developed.

To say that we are not yet in a position to judge such a record as this is an insult to the intelligence. A century hence the record will stand precisely as it is and the base treachery and duplicity of the Bolsheviki will be neither more nor less obvious. The betrayal of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviki constitutes one of the blackest crimes in the history of politics and is incapable of defense by any honest democrat. It is only necessary to imagine a constitutional convention representing the free choice of the electorate in any state of the Union thus dealt with by a political faction representing only a small minority of the population to arrive at a just estimate of its infamous character. As the evidence drawn from official Bolshevist sources shows, the Bolsheviki have not respected the integrity of the Soviet any more than they respected that of the Constituent Assembly. When Soviet elections have gone against them they have not hesitated to suppress the Soviets. Is there any room for rational doubt what the verdict of decent liberty-loving and law-respecting men and women ought to be? The Bolshevist régime was conceived in dishonor and born in infamy.

We are as fully competent to judge the Red Terror organized and maintained by the Bolsheviki as our descendants will be. The civilized world has long since made up its mind concerning the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. Contemporary foreign opinion became the judgment of posterity. That it did not help the cause of freedom and democracy, which the Revolution as a whole served, is so plainly apparent and so universally admitted that it need not be argued. It rendered aid only to the reaction. When the leaders of the Bolsheviki proclaimed their intention of copying the methods of the Reign of Terror _it was already possible to form a just judgment of the spirit of their undertaking_. The civilized world had no difficulty in judging the conduct of the Germans in shooting innocent hostages during the war. Neither has it any difficulty in making up its mind concerning the wholesale shooting of innocent hostages by the Bolsheviki. From their own records we have read their admissions that hundreds and thousands of such hostages--men, women, and children--who were not even accused of crime, were shot down in cold blood. To say that we lack sufficient evidence to pronounce judgment upon such crimes is tantamount to a confession of lacking elemental moral sense.

It is sometimes said that these things are but the violent birth pangs which inevitably accompany the birth of a new social order. With such flimsy evasions it is difficult to have patience. This specious defense utterly lacks moral and intellectual sincerity. It is a craven coward’s plea. If we are to use the facts and the language of obstetrics to illustrate the great Russian tragedy, at least let us be honest and use them with some regard to the essential realities. In terms of obstetrics, Russia in 1917 was like unto a woman in the agony of her travail. From March onward she labored to give birth to her child, the long-desired democratic freedom. She was carefully watched and tenderly cared for by the accoucheur, the Provisional Government. At the critical moment of her delivery a ruthless brute drove the accoucheur away from her side, brutally maltreated her, strangled her newly born infant, and in its place substituted a hideous monstrosity. That is the only true application of the obstetrical simile to the realities of the Russian tragedy. The sufferings of Russia under the Bolsheviki have nothing to do with the natural birth pains of the Russian Revolution. Nobody ever expected the Russian Revolution to be accomplished without suffering and hardship; revolutions do not come that way. For all the natural and necessary pains of such a profound event as the birth of a new social order every friend of Russian freedom was prepared. What was not foreseen or anticipated by anybody was that when the agony of parturition was practically at an end, and the birth of the new order an accomplished fact, such a brutal assault would be made upon the maternal body of Russia. It is upon this crime, infamous beyond infamy, that the great jury of civilized public opinion is asked to pronounce its condemnation.

There is absolutely no justification for the view that the evils of the Bolshevist régime, and especially its terroristic features, should be regarded as the inevitable incidental evil accompaniments of a great beneficent process. Neither is any useful purpose served by dragging in the French Revolution. The champions of Bolshevism cite that great event and assert that everybody now acknowledges that it was a great liberating force, a notable advance in the evolution of freedom and democracy, and that nobody now condemns it on account of the Reign of Terror.

This argument is the result of a lamentable misreading of history, where it is not a deliberate and carefully studied deception. No honest parallel can be drawn between the French Revolution and the Bolshevist Counter-Revolution. That there are certain similarities between the revolutionary movement of eighteenth-century France and that of twentieth-century Russia is fairly obvious. In both cases the revolutions were directed against corrupt, inefficient, and oppressive monarchical absolutism. In France in 1789 the peasantry formed about 75 per cent. of the population, the bourgeoisie about 20 per cent., the proletariat about 3 per cent., and the “privileged” class about 1 per cent. In Russia in 1917 the peasantry amounted to something over 85 per cent. of the population, the bourgeoisie--the merchants, manufacturers, tradesmen, and investors--to about 9 per cent., the proletariat to about 3 per cent., and the nobility and clergy to 1 per cent. Both in France and in Russia the peasantry was identified with the struggle against monarchical absolutism, being motivated by great agrarian demands.

Moreover, the similarities extend to the moral and psychological factors involved. In the French Revolution, precisely as in the Russian, we see a great mass of illiterate peasants led by a few intellectuals, abstract thinkers wholly without practical experience in government or economic organization. In both cases we find a naïve Utopianism, a conviction that a sudden transformation of the whole social order could be easily effected. What the shibboleths of Karl Marx are to the Bolsheviki the shibboleths of Rousseau were to many of the leaders of the French Revolution. And just as in 1789 there was a pathetic dependence upon _anarchie spontanée_, a conviction, wholly non-rational and exclusively mystical, that in the chaos and disorder creative powers latent in the masses would be discovered--itself an evidence of the purely abstract character of their thinking--so it was in Russia in 1917. The revolution which overthrew the absolutism of Nicholas II of Russia repeated many of the characteristic features of that which overthrew the absolutism of Louis XVI of France.

Yet the true parallel to the French Revolution is not the Bolshevist _coup d’état_, but the Revolution of March, 1917. It was not the Bolshevist revolution that overturned the throne of the Romanovs and destroyed czarism. That was done by the March Revolution. Whereas the French Revolution was a revolution against a corrupt and oppressive monarchy, the Bolshevist revolt was a counter-revolution against democracy. The Bolsheviki had played only a very insignificant part in the revolution against czarism. They rose against the Provisional Government of the triumphant people. This Provisional Government represented the forces that had overthrown czarism; it was not a reactionary body of aristocrats and monarchists, but was mainly composed of Socialists and radicals and was thoroughly devoted to republicanism and democracy. It had immediately adopted as its program all that the French Revolution attained, and more: it had placed suffrage upon an even more generous basis, and dealt much more thoroughly with the land problem. The Directory put Gracchus Babeuf to death for advocating the redistribution of the land in 1795, but the Provisional Government of Russia did not hesitate to declare for that in 1917 and to create the machinery for carrying it into effect. At the very moment when it was overthrown by the Bolsheviki it was engaged in bringing about the election of the Constituent Assembly, the most democratic body of its kind in history.

Finally, just as the French Revolution was characterized by a passionate national consciousness and pride, so that it is customary to speak of it as the birth of French nationalism, so the Provisional Government represented a newly awakened Russian nationalism. Bolshevism, on the contrary, in its early stages, at any rate, represented the opposite, a violent antagonism to the ideology and institutions of nationalism. The French in 1793, and throughout the long struggle, were zealous for France and in her defense; the Bolsheviki cared nothing for Russia and would sacrifice her upon the altar of world revolution. In view of all these facts, it is simply absurd to liken the Bolshevist phase of the Russian Revolution, the counter-revolutionary phase of it, to the French Revolution.

There were phases of the French Revolution which can be fairly likened to the Bolshevist phase of the Russian Revolution. There is a striking analogy between the Reign of Terror instituted in 1793 and the Red Terror which began in Russia early in 1918. The Montagnards and the Bolsheviki are akin; the appeal of the former to the sansculottes and of the latter to the proletariat are alike. In both cases we see a brutal and desperate attempt to establish the dictatorial rule of a class comprising only 3 per cent. of the population. There is an equally striking analogy between the struggle of the Girondins against the Jacobins in France and the struggle of the Socialists-Revolutionists and Social Democrats against the Bolsheviki. In Russia at the beginning of 1920 the significant term “Thermidorians” began to be used. To compare Bolshevism to the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution is quite a different matter from comparing it to the Revolution as a whole.

The permanent achievements of the French Revolution afford no justification for the Reign of Terror. The Revolution succeeded in spite of the Terror, not because of it, and the success was attended by evils which might easily have been averted. To condemn the Terror is not to decry the Revolution. Similarly, the Russian Revolution will succeed, we may well believe, not because of the Red Terror or of the Bolsheviki, but in spite of them. The bitterest opponents of the Bolsheviki are the most stalwart defenders of the Revolution. No appeal to the history of the French Revolution can extenuate or palliate the crimes of the Bolsheviki. Perhaps their greatest crime, the one which history will regard as most heinous, is their wanton disregard of all the lessons of that great struggle. They could not have entertained any rational hope of making their terrorism more complete or more fearful than was the Reign of Terror, which utterly failed to maintain the power of the proletariat. They could not have been unaware of the fierce resistance the Terror provoked and evoked, the counter-terror and the reaction--the Ninth Thermidor, the Directory, the _coup d’état_ of the Eighteenth Brumaire, the Empire. They could not have been ignorant of the fact that the Reign of Terror divided and weakened the revolutionary forces. That they embarked upon their mad and brutal adventure in the face of the plain lessons of the French Revolution is the unpardonable crime of the Bolsheviki.

Despite their copying of the vices of the worst elements in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviki are most closely connected in their ideals and their methods with those cruel and adventurous social rebels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose exploits, familiar to every Russian, are practically unknown to the rest of the world. Upon every page of the record of the Bolshevist régime there are reminders of the revolt of Bogdan Khnielnitski (1644-53) and that of Stenka Razin (1669-71). These cruel and bloodthirsty men, and others of the same kind who followed them, appealed only to the savage hatred and envy of the serfs, encouraged them to wanton destruction and frightful terror. Quite justly does the Zionist organ, _Dos Yiddishce Volk_,[71] say:

[71] July 11, 1919.

The slogans of Bolshevist practice are, in fact, the old
Russian slogans with which the Volga bands of Pubachev and
Razin ambushed the merchant wagon-trains and the Boyars. It is
very characteristic that the Central Committee of the Communist
Party has seen fit to unveil, on May 1st, at Moscow, a monument
to the Ataman Stenka Razin, the hero of the Volga robber raids
in the seventeenth century. Razin, indeed, is the legitimate
father of Bolshevist practice.

Here we may as well give attention to another appeal which the Bolsheviki and their champions make to French history. They are fond of citing the Paris Commune of 1871, and claiming it as the model for their tactics. This claim, which is thoroughly dishonest, has often been made by Lenin himself. In the “Theses on Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracies,” published in _Pravda_, March 8, 1919, Lenin says: “Precisely at the present moment when the Soviet movement, covering the whole world, continues the work of the Paris Commune before the eyes of the whole world, the traitors to Socialism forget concrete experiences and the concrete lessons of the Paris Commune, repeating the old bourgeois rubbish about ‘democracy in general.’ The Commune was not a parliamentary institution.” On many occasions Lenin has made similar references to the Commune of 1871. The official Bolshevist press constantly indulges in such statements. The _Krasnaya Gazeta_, for example, published an article on the subject on December 17, 1919, parrot-like repeating Lenin’s sophistries.

The simple facts are that (1) the Paris Commune had nothing to do with Communism or any other social theory. It was an intensely nationalistic movement, inspired by resentment of a peace which it regarded as dangerous and humiliating to France. It was a movement for local independence; (2) it was not a class movement, but embraced the bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat; (3) it _was_ a “parliamentary institution,” based upon universal, equal suffrage; (4) the first act of the revolutionists in 1871 was to appeal to the will of the people, through popular elections, in which all parties were free and voting was, as stated, based on equal and universal suffrage; (5) within two weeks the elections were held, with the result that sixty-five revolutionists were chosen as against twenty-one elected by the opposition parties. The opposition included six radical Republicans of the Gambetta school and fifteen reactionaries of various shades. In the majority were representatives of every Socialist group and faction; (6) the Communards never attempted to set up a minority dictatorship, but remained true to the principles of democracy. This Karl Marx himself emphasized in his _The Civil War in France_. Bolshevist “history” is as grotesque as Bolshevist economics! No matter what we may think of the Commune of 1871, it cannot justly be compared to the cruel betrayal of Russian democracy by the Bolsheviki. The Communards were democrats in the fullest sense of the term and their brief rule had the sanction of a popular majority.

The Bolsheviki and their defenders are never tired of contending that most of the sufferings of the Russian people during the Bolshevist régime have been due, not to those responsible for that régime, but to the “blockade” imposed by the Allies upon Russian trade with foreign nations. Perhaps no single argument has won so much sympathy from sentimental and ill-informed people as this. Yet the falsity of the contention has been demonstrated many times, even by those Russians opposed to the blockade. A brief summary of the salient facts will show that this claim has been used as a peg upon which to hang a propaganda remarkable for its insincerity and its trickery.

The blockade was declared in November, 1917, shortly after the Bolsheviki seized the machinery of government. It was already quite apparent that they would make a separate peace with Germany, and that Germany would be the dictator of the peace. There was great danger that supplies furnished to Russia under these conditions would be used by the Germans. As a policy, therefore, the blockade was dictated by military considerations of the highest importance and was directed against the Central Empires, and not primarily against the Bolsheviki. It was, of course, inevitable that it would inflict hardship upon Russia, our former ally, and not merely upon the Bolsheviki. So long as the Central Empires were in a position to carry on the fight, however, and especially after the Brest-Litovsk Peace gave Germany such a command over the life of Russia, the maintenance of the blockade seemed to be of the highest importance from a military point of view. That it entailed hardship and suffering upon people who were our friends was one of the numerous tragedies of the war, not more terrible, perhaps--except as regards the number of people affected--than many of the measures taken in those parts of France occupied by the enemy or in the fighting-zone.

After the armistice and the cessation of actual fighting the question at once took on a new aspect. Many persons--the present writer among the number--believed and urged that the blockade should then be lifted entirely. The issue was blurred, however, by the fact that while this would certainly give aid to the Bolsheviki there was no assurance that it would in any degree benefit the people in Russia who were opposed to them. The discrimination in favor of the Bolsheviki practised in the distribution of food and everything else was responsible for this. It must be borne in mind that the blockade did not cut off from Russia any important source of food-supply. Russia had never depended upon other nations for staple foods. On the contrary, she was a food-exporting country. She practically fed the greater part of western Europe. Cutting off her _imports_ did not lessen the grain she had; cutting off her _exports_ certainly had the effect of _increasing_ the stores available for home consumption. All this is as plain as the proverbial pikestaff.

The starvation of the Russian people was not caused by the blockade, which did not lessen the amount of staple foods available, but, on the contrary, increased it. The real causes were these: the breakdown of the transportation system, which made it impossible to transport the grain to the great centers of population; the stupid policy of the Bolsheviki toward the peasants and the warfare consequent thereon; the demoralization of industry and the resulting inability to give the peasants manufactured goods in exchange for their grain. It may be objected, in reply to this statement, that but for the blockade it would have been possible to import railway equipment, industrial machinery, and so on, and that therefore the blockade was an indirect cause of food shortage. The fallacy in this argument is transparent: as to the industrial machinery, Soviet Russia had, and according to Rykov still has, much more than could be used. As regards large importations of manufactured goods and railway equipment, what would have been exported in exchange for such imports? The available stocks of raw materials, especially flax and hides, were exceedingly small and would have exchanged for very little. We have the authority of Rykov for this statement also.

What, then, was there available for export? The answer is--_food grains_! In almost every statement issued by the Bolsheviki in their propaganda against the blockade wheat figured as the most important available exportable commodity. The question arises, therefore, _how could the export of wheat from Russia help to feed her starving people_? If there was wheat for export, hunger was surely an absurdity! Victor Kopp, representative of the Soviet Government in Berlin, in a special interview published in the London _Daily Chronicle_, February 28, 1920, made this quite clear, pointing out that the hope that Russia would be able to send food grains to central Europe in exchange for manufactured goods was entirely unfounded, because Russia sorely needed all her foodstuffs of every kind. Krassin, head of the department of Trade and Commerce in the Soviet Government, told Mr. Copping--that most useful of phonographs!--that the shattered condition of transportation “leaves us temporarily unable to get adequate supplies of food for our own cities, and puts entirely out of the question any possibility, at present, of assembling goods at our ports for sending abroad.”[72] As a matter of fact, the raising of the blockade, if, and in so far as, it led to an export of wheat and other food grains in return for manufactured goods, _would have increased the hunger and underfeeding of the Russian people_.

[72] _Daily Chronicle_, London, February 26, 1920.

The Bolsheviki knew this quite well and did not want the blockade raised. They realized that the propaganda in other countries against the blockade was an enormous asset to them, whereas removal of the blockade would reveal their weakness. Support is given to this contention by the following passage from Rykov’s report in January of this year:

It is the greatest fallacy to imagine that the lifting of
the blockade or conclusion of peace is able in any degree to
solve our raw-material crisis. _On the contrary, the lifting
of the blockade and conclusion of peace, if such should take
place, will mean an increased demand for raw materials_, as
these are the only articles which Russia can furnish to Europe
and exchange for European commodities. The supplies of flax
on hand are sufficient for a period of from eight months to a
year. _But we shall not be able to export large quantities of
flax abroad_, and the catastrophic decline in flax production
as compared with 1919 raises the question whether the flax
industry shall not experience in 1920 a flax shortage similar
to the one experienced by the textile industry in cotton.

In the spring of 1919 Mr. Alexander Berkenheim, one of the managers of the “Centrosoyuz,” with other well-known Russian co-operators, represented to the British Government that the blockade of Russia was inflicting hardship and famine only, or at least mainly, upon the innocent civil population. They argued that if the blockade were lifted the Bolsheviki would see to the feeding of the general population. Berkenheim and his friends applied for permission for their association to send a steamer to Odessa laden with foodstuffs, medicines, and other supplies, to be distributed exclusively among children and sick and convalescing civilians. Backed by influential British supporters, Berkenheim and his friends gave guaranties that not a single pound of such supplies would reach the Red Army. All was to be distributed by the co-operatives without any interference by the authorities. The Bolshevist Government gave a similar guaranty, stated in very definite and unequivocal terms. Accordingly, the British Government consented to allow the steamer to sail, and in June, 1919, the steamer, with a cargo of tea, coffee, cocoa, and rice, consigned to the “Centrosoyuz,” arrived at Odessa. But no sooner had the steamer entered the port than the whole cargo was requisitioned by the Soviet authorities and handed over to the organization supplying the Red Army.

This treachery was the principal cause of the continuance of the blockade. That it was intended to have precisely that effect is not improbable. On January 16, 1920, the Supreme Council of the League of Nations, at its first meeting, upon the proposal of the British Government, decided to so greatly modify the blockade as to amount to its practical abandonment. Trade was to be opened up with Russia through the co-operatives, it was announced. The co-operatives were to act as importing and exporting agencies, receiving clothing, machinery, medicines, railroad equipment, and so on, and exporting the “surplus” grain, flax, hides, and so on, in return.

Immediately after that arrangement was announced the Bolsheviki adopted an entirely new attitude. They began to raise hitherto unheard-of objections. They could not permit trade with the co-operatives on the conditions laid down; the co-operatives were not independent organizations, but a part of the Soviet state machinery; trade must accompany recognition of the Soviet Government, and so on. Thus the “diplomatic” arguments went. In Russia itself the leaders took the position expressed by Rykov in the speech already quoted.

To sum up: the blockade was a natural military measure of precaution, rendered necessary by the actions of the Bolsheviki; it was directed primarily against the Germans; it was not at any time a primary cause of the food shortage in Russia. When efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of the civil population by raising the blockade the Bolsheviki treacherously defeated such efforts. The prolonged continuation of the blockade was mainly due to the policy of obstruction pursued by the Bolsheviki. No large volume of trade could have been had with Russia at any time during the Bolshevist régime. The Bolsheviki themselves did not want the blockade removed, and finally confessed that such removal would not help them. Certainly, the Allies and the United States made many mistakes in connection with the blockade; but, when that has been fully admitted, and when all that can fairly be said against that policy has been said, it remains the fact that the Bolsheviki were responsible for creating the conditions which made the blockade necessary and inevitable, and that their treachery forced its continuation long after the Allies had shown themselves ready and even anxious to abandon it. At every step of their fatal progress in the devastation and spoliation of Russia the treachery of the Bolsheviki, their entire lack of honor and good faith, appear.

Herein lies the real reason why no civilized government can with safety to its own institutions--to say nothing of regard for its own dignity and honor--enter into any covenant with the Bolshevist Government of Russia or hold official relations with it. At the root of Bolshevism lies a negation of everything of fundamental importance to the friendly and co-operative relations of governments and peoples. When the leaders of a government that is set up and maintained by brute force, and does not, therefore, have behind it the sanction of the will of its citizens, being subject to no control other than its own ambitions, declare that they will sign agreements with foreign nations without feeling in the slightest degree obligated by such agreements, they outlaw themselves and their government.