Chapter III: Preface (2)

Even the trades-unions are not wholly assured of the right of representation in the Soviets. Only “if their declared relations to the Soviet Government are approved by the Soviet authorities” can they vote or nominate candidates. Trades-unions may solemnly declare that they “acknowledge the Soviet authorities,” but if their immediate relations with the People’s Commissaries are not good--if they are engaged in strikes, for example--there is little chance of their getting the approval of the Soviet authorities, without which they cannot vote. Finally, no union, party, faction, or group can nominate whomever it pleases; all candidates must be acceptable to, and approved by, the central authority!

Numerous witnesses have testified that the Soviets under Bolshevism are “packed”; that they are not freely elected bodies, in many cases. Thus H. V. Keeling writes:

The elections for the various posts in our union and local
Soviet were an absolute farce. I had a vote and naturally
consulted with friends whom to vote for. They laughed at me and
said it was all arranged, “we have been told who to vote for.”
I knew some of these “nominated” men quite well, and will go no
farther than saying that they were not the best workmen. It is
a simple truth that no one except he be a Bolshevik was allowed
to be elected for any post.[3]

[3] Keeling, _op. cit._, p. 159.

In _A Memorandum on Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist Movement in Russia_, published by the State Department of the United States, January, 1920, the following statement by an unnamed Russian appears in a report dated July 2, 1919:

Discontent and hatred against the Bolsheviks are now so strong
that a shock or the knowledge of approaching help would
suffice to make the people rise and annihilate the Communists.
Considering this discontent and hatred, it would seem that
elections to different councils should produce candidates of
other parties. Nevertheless all councils consist of Communists.
The explanation is very plain. That freedom of election of
which the Bolsheviks write and talk so much consists in the
free election of certain persons, a list of which had already
been prepared. For instance, if in one district six delegates
have to be elected, seven to eight names are mentioned, of
which six can be chosen. Very characteristic in this respect
were the elections February last in the district of ----,
Moscow Province, where I have one of my estates. Nearly all
voters, about 200, of which twelve Communists, came to the
district town. Seven delegates had to be elected and only seven
names were on the prepared list, naturally all Communists.
The local Soviet invited the twelve communistic voters to a
house, treated them with food, tea, and sugar, and gave each
ten rubles per day; the others received nothing, not even
housing. But they, knowing what they had to expect from former
experiences, had provided for such an emergency and decided
to remain to the end. The day of election was fixed and put
off from day to day. After four postponements the Soviet saw
no way out. The result was that the seven delegates elected
by all against twelve votes belonged to the Octobrists and
Constitutional-Democrats. But these seven and a number of the
wealthier voters were immediately arrested as agitators against
the Soviet Republic. New elections were announced three days
later, but this time the place was surrounded by machine-guns.
The next day official papers announced the unanimous election
of Communists in the district of Verea. After a short time
peasant revolts started. To put down these, Chinese and Letts
were sent and about 300 peasants were killed. Then began
arrests, but it is not known how many were executed.

Finally, there is the testimony of the workman, Menshekov, member of the Social Democratic Party, who was himself given an important position in one of the largest factories of Russia, the Ijevsky factory, in the Urals, when the Bolsheviki assumed control. This simple workman was not, and is not, a “reactionary monarchist,” but a Social Democrat. He belonged to the same party as Lenin and Trotsky until the withdrawal of these men and their followers and the creation of the Communist Party. Menshekov says:

One of the principles which the Bolsheviki proposed is rule by
the Workers’ Councils. In June, 1918, we were told to elect
one of 135 delegates. We did, and only fifty pro-Bolsheviki
got in. _The Bolshevist Government was dissatisfied with
this result and ordered a second election._ This time only
twenty pro-Bolsheviki were elected. Now, I happen to have been
elected a member of this Workers’ Council, from which I was
further elected to sit on the Executive Council. According
to the Bolsheviki’s own principle, the Executive Council has
to do the whole administration. Everything is under it. But
the Bolshevist Government withheld this right from us. For
two weeks we sat and did nothing; then the Bolsheviki solved
the problem for themselves. They arrested some of us--I was
arrested myself--and, instead of an elected Council, _the Red
Government appointed a Council of selected Communists_, and
formed there, as everywhere, a special privileged class.[4]

[4] Menshekov’s account is from a personal communication to the present writer, who has carefully verified the statements made in it.

All such charges have been scouted by the defenders of the Bolsheviki in this country and in England. On March 22, 1919, the _Dyelo Naroda_, organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists, reproduced the following official document, which fully sustains the accusation that the ordering of the “election” of certain persons to important offices is not “an invention of the capitalist press”:

Order of the Department of Information and Instruction of the
Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’
Delegates of the Melenkovski District:

No. 994. Town of Melenki (Prov. of Vladimir)

Feb. 25, 1919

To the Voinovo Agricultural Council:

The Provincial Department instructs you, on the basis of the
Constitution of the Soviet (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic). Section 43, Sub-section 6, letter _a_, to proceed
without fail with elections for an Agricultural Executive
Committee.

The following _must be elected_ to the committee: As president,
Nikita Riabov; as member, Ivan Soloviev; and as secretary,
Alexander Krainov. These people, as may be gathered from
the posts to which they are named, _must be elected without
fail_. The non-fulfilment of this Order will result in those
responsible being severely punished. Acknowledge the carrying
out of these instructions to Provincial Headquarters by express.

_Head of Provincial Section._

[Signed] J. NAZAROV.

Surely there never was a greater travesty of representative government than this--not even under czarism! This is worse than anything that obtained in the old “rotten boroughs” of England before the great Reform Act. Yet our “Liberals” and “Radicals” hail this vicious reactionary despotism with gladness.

If it be thought that the judgment of the present writer is too harsh, he is quite content to rest upon the judgment pronounced by such a sympathizer as Mr. Isaac Don Levine has shown himself to be. In the New York _Globe_, January 5, 1920, Mr. Levine said: “To-day Soviet Russia is a dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but for the proletariat. It certainly is not democracy.” And again: “_The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia is really a dictatorship of the Bolshevist or Communist Party._ This is the great change wrought in Soviet Russia since 1918. _The Soviets ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies._ Soviet elections, which were frequent in 1918, are very rare now. In Russia, where things are moving so fast and opinions are changing so rapidly, the majority of the present Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses.”

If the government is really a dictatorship of the Communist Party--which does not include in its membership 1 per cent. of the people of Russia--if the Soviets have ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies, if the majority of the Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses, the condemnation expressed in this chapter is completely justified.

IV

THE UNDEMOCRATIC SOVIET STATE

Mr. Lincoln Steffens is a most amiable idealist who possesses an extraordinary genius for idealizing commonplace and even sordid realities. He can always readily idealize a perfectly rotten egg into a perfectly good omelet. It is surely significant that, in spite of his very apparent efforts to justify and even glorify the Soviet Government and the men who have imposed it upon Russia, even Mr. Steffens has to admit its autocratic character. He says:

The soviet form of government, which sprang up so spontaneously
all over Russia, is established.

This is not a paper thing; not an invention. Never planned, it
has not yet been written into the forms of law. It is not even
uniform. It is full of faults and difficulties; clumsy, and in
its final development it is not democratic. The present Russian
Government is the most autocratic government I have ever seen.
_Lenin, head of the Soviet Government, is farther removed from
the people than the Czar was, or than any actual ruler in
Europe is._

The people in a shop or an industry are a soviet. These little
informal soviets elect a local soviet; which elects delegates
to the city or country (community) soviet; which elects
delegates to the government (State) soviet. The government
soviets together elect delegates to the All-Russian Soviet,
which elects commissionnaires (who correspond to our Cabinet,
or to a European minority). And these commissionnaires finally
elect Lenin. He is thus five or six removes from the people. To
form an idea of his stability, independence, and power, think
of the process that would have to be gone through with by the
people to remove him and elect a successor. A majority of all
the soviets in all Russia would have to be changed in personnel
or opinion, recalled, or brought somehow to recognize and
represent the altered will of the people.[5]

[5] Report of Lincoln Steffens, laid before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, September, 1919. Published in _The Bullitt Mission to Russia_, pp. 111-112. Italics mine.

This is a very moderate estimate of the government which Lenin and Trotsky and their associates have imposed upon Russia by the old agencies--blood and iron. Mr. Steffens is not quite accurate in his statement that the Soviet form of government “has not yet been written into the forms of law.” The report from which the above passage is quoted bears the date of April 2, 1919; at that time there was in existence, and widely known even outside of Russia, the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, which purports to be “the Soviet form of government ... written into the forms of law.” Either it is that or it is a mass of meaningless verbiage. There existed, too, at that time, a very plethora of laws which purported to be the written forms of Soviet government, and as such were published by the Bolshevist Government of Russia. The Fundamental Law of Socialization of the Land, which went into effect in September, 1918; the law decreeing the Abolition of Classes and Ranks, dated November 10, 1917; the law creating Regional and Local Boards of National Economy, dated December 23, 1917; the law creating The People’s Court, November 24, 1917; the Marriage and Divorce Laws, December 18, 1917; the Eight Hour Law, October 29, 1917, and the Insurance Law, November 29, 1917, are a few of the bewildering array of laws and decrees which seem to indicate that the Soviet form of government has “been written into the forms of law.”

It is in no hypercritical spirit that attention is called to this rather remarkable error in the report of Mr. Steffens. It is because the Soviet form of government has “been written into the forms of law” with so much thoroughness and detail that we are enabled to examine Bolshevism at its best, as its protagonists have conceived it, and not merely as it appears in practice, in its experimental stage, with all its mistakes, abuses, and failures. After all, a written constitution is a formulation of certain ideals to be attained and certain principles to be applied as well as very imperfect human beings can do it. Given a worthy ideal, it would be possible to make generous allowance for the deficiencies of practice; to believe that these would be progressively overcome and more or less constant and steady progress made in the direction of the ideal. On the other hand, when the ideal itself is inferior to the practice, when by reason of the good sense and sound morality of the people the actual political life proves superior to the written constitution and laws, it is not difficult to appreciate the fact. In such circumstances we are not compelled to discredit the right practice in order to condemn the wrong theory. It is true that as a general rule mankind sets its ideals beyond its immediate reach; but it is also true that men sometimes surpass their ideals. Most men’s creeds are superior to their deeds, but there are many men whose deeds are vastly better than their creeds.

Similarly, while the political life of nations generally falls below the standards set in their formal constitutions and laws, exceptions to this rule are by no means rare. Constitutions are generally framed by political theorists and idealists whose inveterate habit it is to overrate the mental and moral capacity of the great majority of human beings and to underrate the force of selfishness, ignorance, and other defects of imperfect humanity. On the other hand, constitutions have sometimes been framed by selfish and ignorant despots, inferior in character and intelligence to the majority of the human beings to be governed by the constitutions so devised. Under the former conditions political realities fail to attain the high levels of the ideals; under the latter conditions they rise above them. Finally, people outgrow constitutions as they outgrow most other political devices and social arrangements. In old civilizations it is common to find political life upon a higher level than the formal constitutions, which, unrepealed and unamended, have in fact become obsolete, ignored by the people of a wiser and more generous age.

The writer of these pages fully believes that the political reality in Russia is already better than the ignoble ideal set by the Bolshevist constitution. The fundamental virtues of the Russian people, their innate tolerance, their democracy, and their shrewd sense have mitigated, and tend to increasingly mitigate, the rigors of the new autocracy. Once more it is demonstrated that “man is more than constitutions”; that adequate resources of human character can make a tolerable degree of comfort possible under any sort of constitution, just as lack of those resources can make life intolerable under the best constitution ever devised. Men have attained a high degree of civilization and comfort in spite of despotically conceived constitutions, and, on the other hand, the evils of Tammany Hall under a Tweed developed in spite of a constitution conceived in a spirit more generous than any modern nation had hitherto known. Great spiritual and moral forces, whose roots are deeply embedded in the soil of historical development, are shaping Russia’s life. Already there is discernible much that is better than anything in the constitution imposed upon her.

A more or less vague perception of this fact has led to much muddled thinking; because the character of the Russian people and the political and economic conditions prevailing have led to a general disregard of much of Bolshevist theory, because men and women in Russia are finding it possible to set aside certain elements of Bolshevism, and thereby attain increasingly tolerable conditions of life, we are asked to believe that Bolshevism is less evil than we feared it to be. To call this “muddled thinking” is to put a strain upon charity of judgment. The facts are not capable of such interpretation by minds disciplined by the processes of straight and clear thinking. What they prove is that, fortunately for mankind, the wholesomeness of the thought and character of the average Russian has proved too strong to be overcome by the false ideas and ideals of the Bolsheviki and their contrivances. The Russian people live, not because they have found good in Bolshevism, but because they have found means to circumvent Bolshevism and set it aside. What progress is being made in Russia to-day is not the result of Bolshevism, but of the growing power of those very qualities of mind and heart which Bolshevism sought to destroy.

Bolshevism is autocratic and despotic in its essence. Whoever believes--as the present writer does--that the only rational and coherent hope for the progress of civilization lies in the growth of democracy must reject Bolshevism and all its works and ways. It is well to remember that whatever there is of freedom and good will in Russia, of democratic growth, exists in fundamental defiance and antagonism to Bolshevism and would be crushed if the triumph of the latter became complete. It is still necessary, therefore, to judge Bolshevism by its ideal and the logical implications of its ideal; not by what results where it is made powerless by moral or economic forces which it cannot overcome, but by what it aims at doing and will do if possible. It is for this reason that we must subject the constitution of Bolshevist Russia to careful analysis and scrutiny. In this document the intellectual leaders of Bolshevism have set forth in the precise terms of organic law the manner in which they would reconstruct the state.

In considering the political constitution of any nation the believer in democratic government seeks first of all to know the extent and nature of the franchise of its citizens, how it is obtained, what power it has, and how it is exercised. The almost uniform experience of those nations which have developed free and responsible self-government has led to the conclusion that the ultimate sovereignty of the citizens must be absolute; that suffrage must be equal, universal, direct, and free; that it must be exercised under conditions which do not permit intimidation, coercion, or fraud, and that, finally, the mandate of the citizens so expressed must be imperative. The validity of these conclusions may not be absolute; it is at least conceivable that they may be revised. For that matter, a reversion to aristocracy is conceivable, highly improbable though it may be. With these uniform results of the experience of many nations as our criteria, let us examine the fundamental suffrage provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and the provisions relating to elections. These are all set forth in Article IV, Chapters XIII to XV, inclusive:

ARTICLE IV