B. Organization of Local Soviets

Chapter X
THE CONGRESSES OF THE SOVIETS

53. Congresses of Soviets are composed as follows:

(a) Regional: of representatives of the urban and county Soviets, one representative for 25,000 inhabitants of the county, and one representative for 5,000 voters of the cities—but not more than 500 representatives for the entire region—or of representatives of the provincial Congresses, chosen on the same basis, if such a Congress meets before the regional Congress.

(b) Provincial (Gubernia): of representatives of urban and rural (Volost) Soviets, one representative for 10,000 inhabitants from the rural districts, and one representative for 2,000 voters in the city; altogether not more than 300 representatives for the entire province. In case the county Congress meets before the provincial, election takes place on the same basis, but by the county Congress instead of the rural.

(c) County: of representatives of rural Soviets, one delegate for each 1,000 inhabitants, but not more than 300 delegates for the entire county.

(d) Rural (Volost): of representatives of all village Soviets in the Volost, one delegate for ten members of the Soviet.

Note 1: Representatives of urban Soviets which have a population of not more than 10,000 persons participate in the county Congress; village Soviets of districts less than 1,000 inhabitants unite for the purpose of electing delegates to the county Congress.

Note 2: Rural Soviets of less than ten members send one delegate to the rural (Volost) Congress.

54. Congresses of the Soviets are convoked by the respective Executive Committees upon their own initiative, or upon request of local Soviets comprising not less than one-third of the entire population of the given district. In any case they are convoked at least twice a year for regions, every three months for provinces and counties, and once a month for rural districts.

55. Every Congress of Soviets (regional, provincial, county, or rural) elects its Executive organ—an Executive Committee the membership of which shall not exceed: (a) for regions and provinces, twenty-five; (b) for a county, twenty; (c) for a rural district, ten. The Executive Committee is responsible to the Congress which elected it.

56. In the boundaries of the respective territories the Congress is the supreme power; during intervals between the convocations of the Congress, the Executive Committee is the supreme power.

Chapter XI
THE SOVIET OF DEPUTIES

57. Soviets of Deputies are formed:

(a) In cities, one deputy for each 1,000 inhabitants; the total to be not less than fifty and not more than 1,000 members.

(b) All other settlements (towns, villages, hamlets, etc.) of less than 10,000 inhabitants, one deputy for each 100 inhabitants; the total to be not less than three and not more than fifty deputies for each settlement.

Term of the deputy, three months.

Note: In small rural sections, whenever possible, all questions shall be decided at general meetings of voters.

58. The Soviet of Deputies elects an Executive Committee to deal with current affairs; not more than five members for rural districts, one for every fifty members of the Soviets of cities, but not more than fifteen and not less than three in the aggregate (Petrograd and Moscow not more than forty). The Executive Committee is entirely responsible to the Soviet which elected it.

59. The Soviet of Deputies is convoked by the Executive Committee upon its own initiative, or upon the request of not less than one-half of the membership of the Soviet; in any case at least once a week in cities, and twice a week in rural sections.

60. Within its jurisdiction the Soviet, and in cases mentioned in Section 57, Note, the meeting of the voters is the supreme power in the given district.

Chapter XII
JURISDICTION OF THE LOCAL ORGANS OF THE SOVIETS

61. Regional, provincial, county, and rural organs of the Soviet power and also the Soviets of Deputies have to perform the following duties:

(a) Carry out all orders of the respective higher organs of the Soviet power.

(b) Take all steps for raising the cultural and economic standard of the given territory.

(c) Decide all questions of local importance within their respective territories.

(d) Co-ordinate all Soviet activity in their respective territories.

62. The Congresses of Soviets and their Executive Committees have the right to control the activity of the local Soviets (i.e., the regional Congress controls all Soviets of the respective region; the provincial, of the respective province, with the exception of the urban Soviets, etc.); and the regional and provincial Congresses and their Executive Committees have in addition the right to overrule the decisions of the Soviets of their districts, giving notice in important cases to the central Soviet authority.

63. For the purpose of performing their duties, the local Soviets, rural and urban, and the Executive Committees form sections respectively.

It is a significant and notable fact that nowhere in the whole of this remarkable document is there any provision which assures to the individual voter, or to any group, party, or other organization of voters, assurance of the right to make nominations for any office in the whole system of government. Incredible as it may seem, this is literally and exactly true. The urban Soviet consists of “one deputy for each 1,000 inhabitants,” but there is nowhere a sentence prescribing how these deputies are to be nominated or by whom. The village Soviet consists of “one deputy for each 100 inhabitants,” but there is nowhere a sentence to show how these deputies are to be nominated, or wherein the right to make nominations is vested. The Volost Congress is composed of “representatives of all village Soviets” and the County Congress (Oyezd) of “representatives of rural Soviets.” In both these cases the representatives are termed “delegates,” but there is no intimation of how they are nominated, or what their qualifications are. The Provincial Congress (Gubernia) is composed of “representatives of urban and rural (Volost) Soviets.” In this case the word “representatives” is maintained throughout; the word “delegates” does not appear. In this provision, as in the others, there is no intimation of how they are nominated, or whether they are elected or designated.

It can hardly be gainsaid that the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic is characterized by loose construction, vagueness where definiteness is essential, and a marked deficiency of those safeguards and guaranties which ought to be incorporated into a written constitution. There is, for example, no provision for that immunity of parliamentary representatives from arrest for libel, sedition, and the like, which is enjoyed in practically all other countries. Even under Czar Nicholas II this principle of parliamentary immunity was always observed until November, 1916, when the ferment of revolution was already manifesting itself. It requires no expert legal knowledge or training to perceive that the fundamental instrument of the political and legal system of Soviet Russia fails to provide adequate protection for the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Let us consider now another matter of cardinal importance, the complex and tedious processes which intervene between the citizen-voter and the “Council of People’s Commissars.”

(1) The electorate is divided into two groups or divisions, the urban and the rural. Those entitled to vote in the city form, in the first instance, the Soviet of the shop, factory, trades-union, or professional association, as the case may be. Those entitled to vote in the rural village form, in the first instance, the village Soviet.

(2) The Soviets of the shops, factories, trades-unions, and professional associations choose, in such manner as they will, representatives to the urban Soviet. The urban Soviets are not all based on equal representation, however. According to announcements in the official Bolshevist press, factory workers in Petrograd are entitled to one representative in the Petrograd Soviet for every 500 electors, while the soldiers and sailors are entitled to one representative for every 200 members. Thus two soldiers’ votes count for exactly as much as five workmen’s votes. Those entitled to vote in the village Soviets choose representatives to a rural Soviet (Volost), and this body, in turn, chooses representatives to the county Soviet (Oyezd). This latter body is equal in power to the urban Soviet; both are represented in the Provincial Soviet (Gubernia). The village peasant is one step farther removed from the Provincial Soviet than is the city worker.

(3) Both the urban Soviets of the city workers’ representatives and the county Soviets of the peasants’ representatives are represented in the Provincial Soviet. There appears at this point another great inequality in voting power. The basis of representation is one member for 2,000 city voters and one for 10,000 inhabitants of rural villages. At first this seems to mean—and has been generally understood to mean—that each city worker’s vote is equal to the votes of five peasants. Apparently this is an error. The difference is more nearly three to one than five to one. Representation is based on the number of city voters and the number of village inhabitants.

(4) The Provincial Congress (Gubernia) sends representatives to the Regional Congress. Here again the voting power is unequal: the basis of representation is one representative for 5,000 city voters and one for “25,000 inhabitants of the county.” The discrimination here is markedly greater than in the case of the Provincial Congresses for the following reason: The members of these Regional Congresses are chosen by the Gubernias, which include representatives of city workers as well as representatives of peasants, the former being given three times proportionate representation of the latter. Obviously, to again apply the same principle and choose representatives of the Gubernias to the Regional Congresses on the same basis of three to one has a cumulative disadvantage to the peasant.

(5) The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of delegates chosen by the Provincial Congresses, which represent city workers and peasants, as already shown, and of representatives sent direct from the urban Soviets.

From Voter to National Government—Russia and U. S. A.[6]

[6] In all the Soviets, from County Soviets onward, city voters have a larger vote in proportion to numbers than rural voters. (See text.)

It will be seen that at every step, from the county Soviet to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, elaborate care has been taken to make certain that the representatives of the city workers are not outnumbered by peasants’ representatives. The peasants, who make up 85 per cent. of the population, are systematically discriminated against.

(6) We are not yet at the end of the intricate Soviet system of government. While the All-Russian Congress of Soviets is nominally the supreme power in the state, it is too unwieldy a body to do more than discuss general policies. It meets twice a year for this purpose. From its membership of 1,500 is chosen the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of “not more than 200 members.” This likewise is too unwieldy a body to function either quickly or well.

(7) The All-Russian Central Executive Committee selects the Council of People’s Commissars of seventeen members, each Commissar being at the head of a department of the government.

A brief study of the diagram on the preceding page will show how much less directly responsive to the electorate than our own United States Government is this complicated, bureaucratic government of Soviet Russia.

V
THE PEASANTS AND THE LAND

At the time of the Revolution the peasantry comprised 85 per cent. of the population. The industrial wage-earning class—the proletariat—comprised, according to the most generous estimate, not more than 3 to 4 per cent. That part of the proletariat which was actively interested in the revolutionary social change was represented by the Social Democratic Party, which was split into factions as follows: on the right the moderate “defensist” Mensheviki; on the left the radical “defeatist” Bolsheviki; with a large center faction which held a middle course, sometimes giving its support to the right wing and sometimes to the left. Each of these factions contained in it men and women of varying shades of opinion and diverse temperaments. Thus among the Mensheviki were some who were so radical that they were very close to the Bolsheviki, while among the latter were some individuals who were so moderate that they were very close to the Mensheviki.

That part of the peasantry which was actively interested in revolutionary social change was represented by the peasant Socialist parties, the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, and the Populists, or People’s Socialists. The former alone possessed any great numerical strength or political significance. In this party, as in the Social Democratic Party, there was a moderate right wing and a radical left wing with a strong centrist element. In this party also were found in each of the wings men and women whose views seemed barely distinguishable from those generally characteristic of the other. In a general way, the relations of the Socialists-Revolutionists and the Social Democrats were characterized by a tendency on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right to make common cause with the Menshevist Social Democrats and a like tendency on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left to make common cause with the Bolshevist Social Democrats.

This merging of the two parties applied only to the general program of revolutionary action; in particular to the struggle to overthrow czarism. Upon the supreme basic economic issue confronting Russia they were separated by a deep and wide gulf. The psychology of the peasants was utterly unlike that of the urban proletariat. The latter were concerned with the organization of the state, with factory legislation, with those issues which are universally raised in the conflict of capitalists and wage-earners. The consciousness of the Social Democratic Party was proletarian. On the other hand, the peasants cared very little about the organization of the state or any of the matters which the city workers regarded as being of cardinal importance. They were “land hungry”; they wanted a distribution of the land which would increase their individual holdings. The passion for private possession of land is strong in the peasant of every land, the Russian peasant being no exception to the rule. Yet there is perhaps one respect in which the psychology of the Russian peasant differs from that of the French peasant, for example. The Russian peasant is quite as deeply interested in becoming an individual landholder; he is much less interested in the idea of absolute ownership. Undisturbed possession of an adequate acreage, even though unaccompanied by the title of absolute ownership, satisfies the Russian.

The moderate Social Democrats, the Mensheviki, and the Socialists-Revolutionists stood for substantially the same solution of the land problem prior to the Revolution. They wanted to confiscate the lands of great estates, the Church and the Crown, and to turn them over to democratically elected and governed local bodies. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, wanted all land to be nationalized and in place of millions of small owners they wanted state ownership and control. Large scale agriculture on government-owned lands by government employees and more or less rapid extinction of private ownership and operation was their ideal. The Socialists-Revolutionists denounced this program of nationalization, saying that it would make the peasants “mere wage-slaves of the state.” They wanted “socialization” of all land, including that of the small peasant owners. By socialization they meant taking all lands “out of private ownership of persons into the public ownership, and their management by democratically organized leagues of communities with the purpose of an equitable utilization.”

The Russian peasant looked upon the Revolution as, above everything else, the certain fulfilment of his desire for redistribution of the land. There were, in fact, two issues which far outweighed all others—the land problem and peace. All classes in Russia, even a majority of the great landowners themselves, realized that the distribution of land among the peasants was now inevitable. Thus, interrogated by peasants, Rodzianko, President of the Fourth Duma, a large landowner, said:

“Yes, we admit that the fundamental problem of the Constituent Assembly is not merely to construct a political system for Russia, but likewise to give back to the peasantry the land which is at present in our hands.”

The Provisional Government, under Lvov, dominated as it then was by landowners and bourgeoisie, never for a moment sought to evade this question. On March 15, 1917, the very day of its formation, the Provisional Government by a decree transferred all the Crown lands—approximately 12,000,000 acres—to the Ministry of Agriculture as state property. Two weeks later the Provisional Government conferred upon the newly created Food Commissions the right to take possession of all vacant and uncultivated land, to cultivate it or to rent it to peasants who were ready to undertake the cultivation. This order compelled many landowners to turn their idle lands over to peasants who were willing and ready to proceed with cultivation. On April 21, 1917, the Provisional Government by a decree created Land Commissions throughout the whole of Russia. These Land Commissions were created in every township (Volost), county (Oyezd), and province (Gubernia). They were to collect all information concerning landownership and local administrative agencies and make their reports to a superior national body, the All-Russian Land Commission, which, in turn, would prepare a comprehensive scheme for submission to the Constituent Assembly. On May 18, 1917, the Provisional Government announced that the question of the transfer of the land to the peasants was to be left wholly to the Constituent Assembly.

These local Land Commissions, as well as the superior national commission, were democratically chosen bodies, thoroughly representative of the peasantry. As might be expected, they were to a very large extent guided by the representatives of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists. There was never any doubt concerning their attitude toward the peasants’ demand for distribution of the land. On the All-Russian Land Commission were the best-known Russian authorities on the land question and the agrarian problem. Professor Posnikov, the chairman; Victor Chernov, leader of the Socialists-Revolutionists; Pieshekhonov; Rakitnikov; the two Moslovs; Oganovsky; Vikhliaev; Cherenekov; Veselovsky, and many other eminent authorities were on this important body. To the ordinary non-Russian these names will mean little, perhaps, but to all who are familiar with modern Russia this brief list will be a sufficient assurance that the commission was governed by liberal idealism united to scientific knowledge and practical experience.

The Land Commissions were not created merely for the purpose of collating data upon the subject of landownership and cultivation. That was, indeed, their avowed and ostensible object; but behind that there was another and much more urgent purpose. In the first place, as soon as the revolutionary disturbances began, peasants in many villages took matters into their own hands and appropriated whatever lands they could seize. Agitators had gone among the peasantry—agitators of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists not less than of the Bolsheviki—and preached the doctrine of “the expropriation of the expropriators.” They told the peasants to seize the land and so execute the will of the people. So long as czarism remained the peasants held back; once it was destroyed, they threw off their restraint and began to seize the land for themselves. The Revolution was here. Was it not always understood that when the Revolution came they were to take the land?

Numerous estates were seized and in some cases the landowners were brutally murdered by the frenzied peasants. On some of the large estates the mansions of the owners, the laborers’ cottages, stables, cattle-sheds, and corn-stacks were burned and the valuable agricultural machinery destroyed. Whenever this happened it was a great calamity, for on the large estates were the model farms, the agricultural experiment stations of Russia. And while this wanton and foolish destruction was going on there was a great dearth of food for the army at the front. Millions of men had to be fed and it was necessary to make proper provision for the conservation of existing food crops and for increased production. Nor was it only the big estates which were thus attacked and despoiled; in numerous instances the farms of the “middle peasants”—corresponding to our moderately well-to-do farmers—were seized and their rightful owners driven away. In some cases very small farms were likewise seized. Something had to be done to save Russia from this anarchy, which threatened the very life of the nation. The Land Commissions were made administrative organs to deal with the land problems as they arose, to act until the new Zemstvos could be elected and begin to function, when the administrative work of the commissions would be assumed by the Land Offices of the Zemstvos.

There was another very serious matter which made it important to have the Land Commissions function as administrative bodies. Numerous landowners had begun to divide their estates, selling the land off in parcels, thus introducing greater complexity into the problem, a more numerous class of owners to be dealt with. In many cases, moreover, the “sales” and “transfers” were fictitious and deceptive, the new “owners” being mere dummies. In this manner the landowners sought to trick and cheat the peasants. It was to meet this menace that the Provisional Government, on July 12, 1917, by special decree put a stop to all land speculation and forbade the transfer of title to any land, outside of the cities, except by consent of the local Land Commission approved by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Chernov, who under Kerensky became Minister of Agriculture, was the creator of the Land Commissions and the principal author of the agrarian program of the Provisional Government as this was developed from March to October. How completely his policy was justified may be judged from the fact that while most of the landlords fled to the cities at the outbreak of the Revolution in March, fearing murderous riotings such as took place in 1906, in June they had nearly all returned to their estates. The Land Commissions had checked the peasant uprisings; they had given the peasants something to do toward a constructive solution, and had created in their minds confidence that they were going to be honestly dealt with; that the land would be distributed among them before long. In other words, the peasants were patiently waiting for freedom and land to be assured by legal and peaceful means.

Then the Bolsheviki began to rouse the peasants once more and to play upon their suspicions and fears. Simultaneously their propagandists in the cities and in the villages began their attacks upon the Provisional Government. To the peasants they gave the same old advice: “Seize the land for yourselves! Expropriate the landlords!” Once more the peasants began to seize estates, to sack and burn manor houses, and even to kill landowners. The middle of July saw the beginning of a revival of the “Jacqueries,” and in a few weeks they had become alarmingly common. The propagandists of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists did their best to put an end to the outrages, but the peasants were not so easily placated as they had been in March and April. Hope long deferred had brought about a state of despair and desperation. The poor, bewildered peasants could not understand why such a simple matter as the distribution of the land—for so it seemed to them—should require months of preparation. They were ready to believe the Bolshevist propagandists who told them that the delay was intended to enable the bourgeoisie to betray the toilers, and that if they wanted the land they must take it for themselves. “You know how the Socialists-Revolutionists always talked to you aforetime,” said these skilful demagogues; “they told you then to seize the land, but now they only tell you to wait, just as the landlords tell you. They have been corrupted; they are no longer true representatives of your interest. We tell you, what you have long known, that if you want the land you must seize it for yourselves!”

Anarchy among the peasants grew apace. Some of the wisest of the leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement urged the Provisional Government to hurry, to revise its plan, and, instead of waiting for the Constituent Assembly to act upon the land program, to put it into effect at once. The All-Russian Land Commission hastened its work and completed the formulation of a land program. The Provisional Government stuck to its original declaration that the program must be considered and approved or rejected by the Constituent Assembly. In October, at the Democratic Conference in Petrograd, the so-called Pre-Parliament, Prokopovich, the well-known Marxian economist, who had become Minister of Commerce and Labor, uttered a solemn warning that “the disorderly seizing of land was ruining agriculture and threatening the towns and the northern provinces with famine.”

It is one of the numerous tragedies of the Russian Revolution that at the very time this warning was issued Kerensky had in his possession two plans, either of which might have averted the catastrophe that followed. One of them was the completed program of the All-Russian Land Commission, largely Chernov’s work. It had already been approved by the Provisional Government. It was proposed that Kerensky should make a fight to have the Cabinet proclaim this program to be law, without waiting for the Constituent Assembly. The other plan was very simple and crude. It was that all the large estates be seized at once, as a measure of military necessity, and that in the distribution of the land thus taken peasant soldiers with honorable discharges be given preference. In either case, Kerensky would have split his Cabinet.

When we consider the conditions which prevailed at that time, the extreme military and political weakness, and the vast stakes at issue, it is easy to understand why Kerensky decided to wait for the Constituent Assembly. It is easy enough to say now, after the event, that Kerensky’s decision was wrong; that his only chance to hold the confidence of the peasants was to do one of two things, declare immediate peace or introduce sweeping land reforms. Certainly, that seems fairly plain now. At that time, however, Kerensky faced the hard fact that to do either of these things meant a serious break in the Cabinet, another crisis, the outcome of which none could foretell.

Moreover, we must bear in mind that Kerensky himself and those with whom he was working were inspired by a very genuine and sincere passion for democracy. They believed in the Constituent Assembly. They had idealized it. To them it was in the nature of a betrayal of the Revolution that a matter of such fundamental importance should be disposed of by a small handful of men, rather than by the representatives of the people duly elected, upon a democratic basis, for that purpose. The Provisional Government was pledged to leave the Constituent Assembly free and untrammeled to deal with the land problem: how could it violate its pledge and usurp the functions of the Assembly? If Kerensky’s course was a mistaken one, it was so only because conscientious loyalty to principle is not invariably expedient in politics; because the guile and dishonesty of his opponents triumphed over his simple honesty and truthfulness.

On October 20, 1917, the Provisional Government enacted a law which marked a further step in the preparation of the way for the new system of land tenure. The new law extended the control of the Land Offices of the Zemstvos—where these existed, and of the Land Commissions, where the Zemstvos with their Land Offices did not yet exist—over all cultivated land. It was thus made possible for the provisions of a comprehensive land law to be applied quickly, with a minimum amount of either disturbance or delay.

From the foregoing it will be readily seen that the Bolshevist coup d’état interfered with the consummation of a most painstaking, scientific effort to solve the greatest of all Russian problems. Their apologists are fond of claiming that the Bolsheviki can at least be credited with having solved the land problem by giving the land to the peasants. The answer to that preposterous claim is contained in the foregoing plain and unadorned chronological record, the accuracy of which can easily be attested by any person having access to a reasonably good library. In so far as the Bolsheviki put forward any land program at all, they adopted, for reasons of political expediency, the program which had been worked out by the Land Commissions under the Provisional Government—the so-called Chernov program. With that program they did nothing of any practical value, however. Where the land was distributed under their régime it was done by the peasants themselves. In many cases it was done in the primitive, violent, destructive, and anarchical ways of the “Jacqueries” already described, adding enormously to Russia’s suffering and well-nigh encompassing her destruction. By nothing else is the malefic character and influence of Bolshevism more clearly shown than by the state in which it placed the land problem, just when it was about to be scientifically and democratically solved.

When the Constituent Assembly met on January 5, 1918, the proposed land law was at once taken up. The first ten paragraphs had been adopted when the Assembly was dispersed by Trotsky’s Red Guards. The entire bill was thus not acted upon. The ten paragraphs which were passed give a very good idea of the general character and scope of the measure:

In the name of the peoples of the Russian State, composing the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, be it ordained that:

1. Right of ownership to land within the limits of the Russian Republic is henceforth and forever abolished.

2. All lands contained within the boundaries of the Russian Republic with all their underground wealth, forests, and waters become the property of the people.

3. The control of all lands, the surface and under the surface, and all forests and waters belongs to the Republic, as expressed in the forms of its central administrative organs and organs of local self-government on the principles enacted by this law.

4. Those territories of the Russian Republic which are autonomous in a juridico-governmental conception, are to realize their agrarian plans on the basis of this law and in accord with the Federal Constitution.

5. The aims of the government forces and the organs of local self-government in the sphere of the control of lands, underground riches, forests, and waters constitute: (a) The creation of conditions most favorable to the greater exploitation of the natural wealth of the land and the highest development of productive forces; (b) The equitable distribution of all natural wealth among the population.

6. The right of any person or institution to land, underground resources, forests, and waters is limited only to the utilization thereof.

7. All citizens of the Russian Republic, and also unions of such citizens and states and social institutions, may become users of land, underground resources, forests, and waters, without regard to nationality or religion.

8. The land rights of such users are to be obtained, become effective, and cease under the terms laid down by this law.

9. Land rights belonging at present to private persons, groups, and institutions, in so far as they conflict with this law, are herewith abrogated.

10. The transformation of all lands, underground strata, forests, and waters, belonging at present to private persons, groups, or institutions, into popular property is to be made without recompense to such owners.

After they had dispersed the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviki published their famous “Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited People,” containing their program for “socialization of the land,” taken bodily from the Socialists-Revolutionists. This declaration had been first presented to the Constituent Assembly when the Bolsheviki demanded its adoption by that body. The paragraphs relating to the socialization of the land read:

1. To effect the socialization of the land, private ownership of land is abolished, and the whole land fund is declared common national property and transferred to the laborers without compensation, on the basis of equalized use of the soil.

All forests, minerals, and waters of state-wide importance, as well as the whole inventory of animate and inanimate objects, all estates and agricultural enterprises, are declared national property.

This meant literally nothing from the standpoint of practical politics. Its principal interest lies in the fact that it shows that the Bolsheviki accepted in theory the essence of the land program of the elements comprised in the Provisional Government and in the Constituent Assembly, both of which they had overthrown. Practically the declaration could have no effect upon the peasants. Millions of them had been goaded by the Bolsheviki into resorting to anarchistic, violent seizing of lands on the principle of “each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” These would now be ready to fight any attempt made by the Soviet authorities to “socialize” the land they held. Millions of other peasants were still under the direction of the local Land Commissions, most of which continued to function, more or less sub rosa, for some time. And even when and where the local Land Commissions themselves did not exist, the plans they had prepared were, in quite a large measure, put into practice when local land divisions took place.

The Bolsheviki were powerless to make a single constructive contribution to the solution of the basic economic problem of Russia. Their “socialization decree” was a poor substitute for the program whence it had been derived; they possessed no machinery and no moral agencies to give it reality. It remained a pious wish, at best; perhaps a far harsher description would be that much more nearly true. Later on, when they went into the villages and sought to “socialize” them, the Bolsheviki found that they had not solved the land problem, but had made it worse than it had been before.

We have heard much concerning the nationalization of agriculture in Soviet Russia, and of the marvelous success attending it. The facts, as they are to be found in the official publications of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, do not sustain the roseate accounts which have been published by our pro-Bolshevist friends. By July, 1918, the month in which the previously decreed nationalization of industry was enforced, some tentative steps toward the nationalization of agriculture had already been taken. Maria Spiridonova, a leader of the extreme left wing of the Socialists-Revolutionists, who had co-operated with the Bolsheviki, bitterly assailed the Council of the People’s Commissaries for having resorted to nationalization of the great estates, especially in the western government. In a speech delivered in Petrograd, on July 16th, Spiridonova charged that “the great estates were being taken over by government departments and were being managed by officials, on the ground that state control would yield better results than communal ownership. Under this system the peasants were being reduced to the state of slaves paid wages by the state. Yet the law provided that these estates should be divided among the peasant communes to be tilled by the peasants on a co-operative basis.” It appears that this policy was adopted in a number of instances where the hostility to the Bolsheviki manifested by the peasants made the division of the land among them “undesirable.” Nationalization upon any large scale was not resorted to until some months later. Nationalization of the agriculture of the country as a whole has never been attempted, of course. There could not be such a nationalization of agriculture without first nationalizing the land, and that, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, has never been done in Russia as yet. The Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 229) declared, in November, 1919, that “in spite of the fact that the decree announcing the nationalization of the land is now two years old, this nationalization has not yet been carried out.”

It was not until March, 1919, according to a report by N. Bogdanov in Economicheskaya Zhizn, November 7, 1919, that nationalized agriculture really began on a large scale. From this report we learn something of the havoc which had been wrought upon the agricultural industry of Russia from March, 1917 to 1919:

A considerable portion of the estates taken over by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture could not be utilized, due to the lack of various accessories, such as harness, horseshoes, rope, small instruments, etc.

The workers were very fluctuating, entirely unorganized, politically inert—all this due to the shortage of provisions and organization. The technical forces could not get used to the village; besides, we did not have sufficient numbers of agronomists (agricultural experts) familiar with the practical organization of large estates. The regulations governing the social management of land charged the representatives of the industrial proletariat with a leading part in the work of the Soviet estates. But, torn between meeting the various requirements of the Republic, of prime importance, the proletariat could not with sufficient speed furnish the number of organizers necessary for agricultural management.

The idea of centralized management on the Soviet estates has not been properly understood by the local authorities, and the work of organization from the very beginning had to progress amid bitter fighting between the provincial Soviet estates and the provincial offices of the Department of Agriculture. This struggle has not as yet ceased.

Thus, the work of nationalizing the country’s agriculture began in the spring—i.e., a half-year later than it should have, and without any definite territory (every inch of it had to be taken after a long and strenuous siege on the part of the surrounding population); with insufficient and semi-ruined equipment; without provisions; without an apparatus for organization and without the necessary experience for such work; with the agricultural workers engaged in the Soviet estates lacking any organization whatever.

Naturally, the results of this work are not impressive.

Within the limits of the Soviet estates the labor-union of agricultural proletariat has developed into a large organization.

In a number of provinces the leading part in the work of the Soviet estates has been practically assumed by the industrial proletariat, which has furnished a number of organizers, whose reputation has been sufficiently established.

Estimating the results of the work accomplished, we must admit that we have not yet any fully nationalized rural economy. But during the eight months of work in this direction all the elements for its organization have been accumulated.

A preliminary familiarity with individual estates and with agricultural regions makes it possible to begin the preparation of a national plan for production on the Soviet estates and for a systematic attempt to meet the manifold demands made on the nationalized estates by the agricultural industries: sugar, distilling, chemical, etc., as well as by the country’s need for stock-breeding, seeds, planting, and other raw materials.

The greatest difficulties arise in the creation of the machinery of organization. The shortage of agricultural experts is being replenished with great difficulty, for the position of the technical personnel of the Soviet estates, due to their weak political organization, is extremely unstable. The mobilization of the proletarian forces for the work in the Soviet estates gives us ground to believe that in this respect the spring of 1920 will find us sufficiently prepared.

The ranks of proletarian workers in the Soviet estates are drawing together. True, the level of their enlightenment is by no means high, but “in union there is strength,” and this force if properly utilized will rapidly yield positive results.

The sole purpose of these quotations is to show that at best the “nationalization of agriculture” in Russia, concerning which we have heard so much, is only an experiment that has just been begun; that it bears no very important relation to the industry as a whole. It would be just as true to say, on the basis of the agricultural experiment stations of our national and state governments, that we have “nationalized agriculture” as to make that claim for Russia. The records show that the “nationalized” farms did not produce enough food to maintain the workers employed on them.

Apart from the nationalization of a number of large estates upon the basis of wage labor under a centralized authority, the Committee for the Communization of Agricultural Economy was formed for the purpose of establishing agricultural communes. At the same time—February, 1919—the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets called on the Provincial Soviets to take up this work of creating agricultural communes. Millions of rubles were spent for this purpose, but the results were very small. In March, 1919, Pravda declared that “15,000 communes were registered, but we have no proofs as to their existence anywhere except on paper.” The Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, May, 1919, complained that “the number of newly organized communes is growing smaller from month to month; the existing communes are becoming disintegrated, twenty of them having been disbanded during March.” City-bred workers found themselves helpless on the land and in conflict with the peasants. On the other hand, the peasants would not accept the communes, accompanied as these were with Soviet control. In the same number of the Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, Nikolaiev, a well-known Bolshevik, declared:

The communes are absolutely contradictory to the mode of living of our toiling peasant masses, as these communes demand not only the abolition of property rights, to implements and means of production, but the division of products according to program.

At the Congress of Trades-unions, which met in Moscow in May, 1919, the possibility of using the communes as means of relieving the wide-spread unemployment and distress among the city workers was discussed by Platonov, Rozanov, and other noted Bolsheviki. The closing down of numerous factories and the resulting unemployment of large masses of workmen had brought about an appalling amount of hunger. It was proposed, therefore, that communes be formed in the villages under the auspices of the trades-unions, and as branches of the unions, parcels of land being given to the unions. In this way, it was argued, employment would be found for the members of the unions and the food-supply of the cities would be materially increased. While approving the formation of communes, the Congress voted down the proposal.

On June 8, 1919, there was established the Administration of Industrial Allotments. The object of this new piece of bureaucratic machinery was the increase of agricultural production through land allotments attached to, or assigned to, industrial establishments, and their cultivation by the workers. This scheme, which had been promulgated as early as February, 1919, was a pathetic anticlimax to the ambitious program with which the Bolshevist Utopia-builders set out. It was neither more nor less than the “allotment gardens” scheme so long familiar in British cities. Such allotment gardens were common enough in the industrial centers of the United States during the war. As an emergency measure for providing vegetables they were useful and even admirable; as a contribution to the solution of the agricultural problem in its largest sense their value was insignificant. Yet we find the Economicheskaya Zhizn, in November, 1919, indulging in the old intoxicating visions of Utopia, and seeing in these allotments the means whereby the cities could be relieved of their dependence upon the rural villages for food:

Out of the hitherto frenzied rush of workmen into villages, brought about by hunger, a healthy proletariat movement was born, aiming at the creation of their own agriculture by means of allotments attached to the works. This movement resulted, on February 15, 1919, in a decree which granted to factory and other proletariat groups the right to organize their own rural economy.... The enthusiasm of the workmen is impressive.... The complete emancipation of the towns from the villages in the matter of food-supply appears to be quite within the realms of possibility in the near future, without the unwieldy, expensive, and inefficient machinery of the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply, and without undue irritation of the villages. This will, besides, relieve enormously the strain on the crippled railways. And, what is even more important, it points out a new and the only right way to the nationalization of the land and to the socialization of agriculture. And, indeed, in spite of the fact that the decree announcing the nationalization of the land is now two years old, this nationalization has not yet been carried out. The attitude of the peasant to the land, psychologically as well as economically, is still that of the small landowner. He still considers the land his property, for, as before, it is he, and not the state, that draws both the absolute and the differential rent, and he is fighting for it, with the food detachments, with all his power. If there is any difference at all it is that the rent which formerly used to find its way into the wide pockets of the landowners now goes into the slender purse of the peasant. The difference, however, in the size of the respective pockets is becoming more and more insignificant.... In order to make the approach to socialization of the land possible, it is necessary that the Soviet authorities should, besides promulgating decrees, actually take possession of the land, and the authorities can only do this with the help of the industrial proletariat, whose dictatorship it represents.

How extremely childish all this is! How little the knowledge of the real problem it displays! If the official organ of the Supreme Economic Council and the People’s Commissaries of Finance, Commerce and Trade and Food knew no better than this after two such years as Russia had passed through, how can there be any hope for Russia until the reckless, ignorant, bungling experimenters are overthrown? Pills of Podophyllum for earthquakes would be less grotesque than their prescription for Russia’s ailment.

VI
THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANTS

In the fierce fratricidal conflict between the Bolsheviki and the democratic anti-Bolshevist elements so much bitterness has been engendered that anything approaching calm, dispassionate discussion and judgment has been impossible for Russians, whether as residents in Russia, engaged in the struggle, or as émigrés, impotent to do more than indulge in the expression of their emotions, practically all Russians everywhere have been—and still are—too intensely partizan to be just or fair-minded. And non-Russians have been subject to the same distorting passions, only to a lesser degree. Even here in the United States, while an incredibly large part of the population has remained utterly indifferent, wholly uninterested in the struggle or the issues at stake, it has been practically impossible to find anywhere intelligent interest dissociated from fierce partizanship.

The detachment and impartiality essential to the formation of sound and unbiased judgment have been almost non-existent. The issues at stake have been too vast and too fundamental, too vitally concerned with the primal things of civilization, the sources of some of our profoundest emotions, to permit cool deliberation. Moreover, little groups of men and women with strident cries have hurled the challenge of Bolshevism into the arena of our national life, and that at a time of abnormal excitation, at the very moment when our lives were pulsing with a fiercely emotional patriotism. As a result of these conditions there has been little discriminating discernment in the tremendous riot of discussion of Russian Bolshevism which has raged in all parts of the land. It has been a frenzied battle of epithet and insult, calumny and accusation.

It is not at all strange or remarkable that their opponents, in Russia and outside of it, have been ready to charge against the Bolsheviki every evil condition in Russia, including those which have long existed under czarism and those which developed during and as a result of the war. The transportation system had been reduced to something nearly approaching chaos before the Revolution of March, 1917, as all reasonably well-informed people know. Yet, notwithstanding these things, it is a common practice to charge the Bolsheviki with the destruction of the transportation system and all the evil results following from it. Industrial production declined greatly in the latter part of 1916 and the early weeks of 1917. The March Revolution, by lessening discipline in the factories, had the effect of lessening production still further. The demoralization of industry was one of the gravest problems with which Kerensky had to deal. Yet it is rare to find any allowance made for these important facts in anti-Bolshevist polemics. The Bolsheviki are charged with having wrought all the havoc and harm; there is no discrimination, no intellectual balance.

Similarly, many of their opponents have charged against the Russian Bolsheviki much brutality and crime which in fairness should be attributed rather to inherent defects of the peasant character, themselves the product of centuries of oppression and misrule. There is much that is admirable in the character of the Russian peasant, and many western writers have found the temptation to idealize it irresistible. Yet it is well to remember that it is not yet sixty years since serfdom was abolished; that under a very thin veneer there remain ignorant selfishness, superstition, and the capacity for savage brutality which all primitive peoples have. Nothing is gained, nobody is helped to an understanding of the Russian problem, if emphasis is laid upon the riotous seizures of land by the peasants in the early stages of the Bolshevist régime and no attention paid to the fact that similar riotings and land seizures were numerous and common in 1906, and that as soon as the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, the peasant uprisings began. Undoubtedly the Bolsheviki must be held responsible for the fact that they deliberately destroyed the discipline and restraint which the Land Commissions exercised over the peasants; that they instigated them to riot and anarchy at the very time when a peaceful and orderly solution of the land problem was made certain. It is not necessary to minimize their crime against Russian civilization: only it is neither true nor wise to attribute the brutal character of the peasant to Bolshevism.

The abolition of the courts of justice and the forms of judicial procedure threw upon the so-called “People’s Tribunals” the task of administering justice—a task which the peasants of whom the village tribunals were composed, many of them wholly illiterate and wholly unfit to exercise authority, could not be expected to discharge other than as they did, with savage brutality. Here is a list of cases taken from a single issue (April 26, 1918) of the Dyelo Naroda (People’s Affair), organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists:

In Kirensk County the People’s Tribunal ordered a woman, found guilty of extracting brandy, to be inclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked against the ground until dead.

In the Province of Tver the People’s Tribunal has sentenced a young fellow “to freeze to death” for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting him.

In Sarapulsk County a peasant woman, helped by her lover, killed her husband. For this crime the People’s Tribunal sentenced the woman to be buried alive and her lover to die. A grave was dug, into which first the body of the killed lover was lowered, and then the woman, hands and feet bound, put on top. She had been covered by almost fifteen feet of earth when she still kept on yelling “Help!” and “Have pity, dear people!” The peasants, who witnessed the scene, later said, “But the life of a woman is as lasting as that of a cat.”

In the village of Bolshaya Sosnovka a shoemaker killed a soldier who tried to break in during the night. The victim’s comrades, also soldiers, created a “Revolutionary Tribunal,” which convicted the shoemaker to “be beheaded at the hands of one of his comrades to whose lot it should fall to perform the task.” The shoemaker was put to death in the presence of a crowd of thousands of people.

In the village of Bootsenki five men and three women were accused of misconduct. The local peasant committee undertook to try them. After a long trial the committee reached the verdict to punish them by flogging, giving each one publicly thirty-five strokes with the rod. One of the women was pregnant and it was decided to postpone the execution in her case until she had been delivered. The rest were severely flogged. In connection with this affair an interesting episode occurred. One of the convicted received only sixteen strokes instead of thirty-five. At first no attention was paid to it. The next day, however, rumors spread that the president of the committee had been bribed, and had thus mitigated the punishment.

Then the committee decreed to flog the president himself, administering to him fifty strokes with the rod.

In the village of Riepyrky, in Korotoyansk County, the peasants caught a soldier robbing and decided to drown him. The verdict was carried out by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the presence of all the people of the village.

In the village of Vradievka, in Ananyensky County, eleven thieves, sentenced by the people, were shot.

In the district of Kubanetz, in the Province of Petrograd, carrying out the verdict of the people, peasants shot twelve men of the fighting militia who had been caught accepting bribes.

These sentences speak for themselves. They were not expressions of Bolshevist savagery, for in the village tribunals there were very few Bolsheviki. As a matter of fact, the same people who meted out these barbarous sentences treated the agents of the Soviet Government with equally savage brutality. The Bolsheviki had unleashed the furious passion of these primitive folk, destroyed their faith in liberty within the law, and replaced it by license and tyranny. Thus had they recklessly sown dragons’ teeth.

As early as December, 1917, the Bolshevist press was discussing the serious conditions which obtained among the peasants in the villages. It was recognized that no good had resulted from the distribution of the land by the anarchical methods which had been adopted. The evils which the leaders of the Mensheviki and the Socialists-Revolutionists had warned against were seen to be very stern realities. As was inevitable, the land went, in many cases, not to the most needy, but to the most powerful and least scrupulous. In these cases there was no order, no wisdom, no justice, no law save might. It was the old, old story of

Let him take who has the power;
And let him keep who can.

All that there was of justice and order came from the organizations set up by the Provisional Government, the organizations the Bolsheviki sought to destroy. Before they had been in power very long the new rulers were compelled to recognize the seriousness of the situation. On December 26, 1917, Pravda said:

Thus far not everybody realizes to what an extent the war has affected the economic condition of the villages. The increase in the cost of bread has been a gain only for those selling it. The demolition of the estates of the landowners has enriched only those who arrived at the place of plunder in carriages driven by five horses. By the distribution of the landowners’ cattle and the rest of their property, those gained most who were in charge of the distribution. In charge of the distribution were committees, which, as everybody was complaining, consisted mainly of wealthy peasants.

One of the most terrible consequences of the lawless anarchy that had been induced by the Bolsheviki was the internecine strife between villages, which speedily assumed the dimensions of civil war. It was common for the peasants in one village to arm themselves and fight the armed peasants of a neighboring village for the possession of the lands of an estate. At the instigation of the Bolsheviki and of German agents, many thousands of peasants had deserted from the army, taking with them their weapons and as much ammunition as they could. “Go back to your homes and take your guns with you. Seize the land for yourselves and defend it!” was the substance of this propaganda. The peasant soldiers deserted in masses, frequently terrorizing the people of the villages and towns through which they passed. Several times the Kerensky Government attempted to disarm these masses of deserters, but their number was so great that this was not possible, every attempt to disarm a body of them resolving itself into a pitched battle. In this way the villages became filled with armed men who were ready to use their weapons in the war for booty, a sort of savage tribal war, the village populations being the tribes. In his paper, Novaya Zhizn, Gorky wrote, in June, 1918:

All those who have studied the Russian villages of our day clearly perceive that the process of demoralization and decay is going on there with remarkable speed. The peasants have taken the land away from its owners, divided it among themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. And they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine struggle for the division of the booty. In certain districts the population has consumed the entire grain-supply, including the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to chaos, destruction, and murder.[7]

[7] Italics mine.—J. S.

As a matter of fact the “bloody internecine struggle” had been going on for some time. Even before the overthrow of Kerensky there had been many of these village wars. The Bolshevist Government did not make any very serious attempt to interfere with the peasant movements for the distribution of land for some time after the coup d’état. It was too busy trying to consolidate its position in the cities, and especially to organize production in the factories. There was not much to be done with the farms at that season of the year. Early in the spring of 1918 agents of the Soviet Government began to appear in the villages. Their purpose was to supervise and regulate the distribution of the land. Since a great deal of the land had already been seized and distributed by the peasants, this involved some interference on the part of the central Soviet power in matters which the peasants regarded themselves as rightfully entitled to settle in their own way.

This gave rise to a bitter conflict between the peasants and the central Soviet authorities. If the peasants had confiscated and partitioned the land, however inequitably, they regarded their deed as conclusive and final. The attempt of the Soviet agents to “revise” their actions they regarded as robbery. The central Soviet authorities had against them all the village population with the exception of the disgruntled few. If the peasants had not yet partitioned the land they were suspicious of outsiders coming to do it. The land was their own; the city men had nothing to do with it. In hundreds of villages the commissions sent by the Bolsheviki to carry out the provisions of the land program were mobbed and brutally beaten, and in many cases were murdered. The issue of Vlast Naroda (Power of the People) for May, 1918, contained the following:

In Bielo all members of the Soviets have been murdered.

In Soligalich two of the most prominent members of the Soviets have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten half dead.

In Atkarsk several members of the Soviets have been killed. In an encounter between the Red Guards and the masses, many were killed and wounded. The Red Guards fled.

In Kleen a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the Soviets, with the intention of bringing the deputies before their own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial Commissary committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to escape the infuriated crowd.

In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo the deputies work in their offices guarded by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.

In Penza an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The Soviet building is now surrounded with cannon and machine-guns.

In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a St. Bartholomew night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals.

In the district of Kaliasinsk the peasantry has decidedly refused to obey orders of the Soviets to organize an army by compulsion. Some of the recruiting officers and agitators have been killed.

Similar acts become more numerous as time goes on. The movement against the Soviets spreads far and wide, affecting wider and wider circles of the people.

The warfare between villages over confiscated land was a very serious matter. Not only did the peasants confiscate and divide among themselves the great estates, but they took the “excess” lands of the moderately well-to-do peasants in many instances—that is, all over and above the average allotment for the village. Those residing in a village immediately adjoining an estate thus confiscated had, all other things being equal, a better chance to get the lands than villagers a little farther distant, though the latter might be in greater need of the land, owing to the fact that their holdings were smaller. Again, the village containing many armed men stood a better chance than the village containing few. Village made war against village, raising armed forces for the purpose. We get a vivid picture of this terrible anarchy from the following account in the Vlast Naroda:

The village has taken away the land from the landlords, farmers, wealthy peasants, and monasteries. It cannot, however, divide it peacefully, as was to be expected.

The more land there is the greater the appetite for it; hence more quarrels, misunderstandings, and fights.

In Oboyansk County many villages refused to supply soldiers when the Soviet authorities were mobilizing an army. In their refusal they stated that “in the spring soldiers will be needed at home in the villages,” not to cultivate the land, but to protect it with arms against neighboring peasants.

In the Provinces of Kaluga, Kursk, and Voronezh peasant meetings adopted the following resolutions:

“All grown members of the peasant community have to be home in the spring. Whoever will then not return to the village or voluntarily stay away will be forever expelled from the community.

“These provisions are made for the purpose of having as great a force as possible in the spring when it comes to dividing the land.”

The peasantry is rapidly preparing to arm and is partly armed already. The villages have a number of rifles, cartridges, hand-grenades, and bombs.

Some villages in the Nieshnov district in the Province of Mohilev have supplied themselves with machine-guns. The village of Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen machine-guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able better to defend a piece of land taken away from the landlords, and, as they say, that “the neighboring peasants should not come to cut our hay right in front of our windows, like last year.” When the neighboring peasants “heard of the decision” they also procured machine-guns. They have formed an army and intend to go to Little Nieshnov to cut the hay on the meadows “under the windows” of the disputed owners.

In the Counties of Schigrovsk, Oboyansk, and Ruilsk, in the Province of Kursk, almost every small and large village has organized a Red Guard and is making preparations for the coming spring war. In these places the peasants have taken rich booty. They took and devastated 160 estates, 14 breweries, and 26 sugar refineries. Some villages have even marked the spot where the machine-guns will have to be placed in the spring. In Volsk County in the Province of Saratov five large villages—Kluchi, Pletnevka, Ruibni, Shakhan, and Chernavka—expect to have war when the time comes to divide the 148,500 acres of Count Orlov-Denisov’s estate. Stubborn fights for meadows and forests are already going on. They often result in skirmishes and murder. There are similar happenings in other counties of the province; for instance, in Petrov, Balashov, and Arkhar.

In the Province of Simbirsk there is war between the community peasants and shopkeepers. The former have decided to do away with “Stolypin heirs,” as they call the shopkeepers. The latter, however, have organized and are ready for a stubborn resistance. Combats have already taken place. The peasants demolish farms, and the farmers set fire to towns, villages, threshing-floors, etc.

We have received from the village of Khanino, in the Province of Kaluga, the following letter:

“The division of the land leads to war. One village fights against the other. The wealthy and strong peasants have decided not to let the poor share the land taken away from the landlords. In their turn, the poor peasants say, ‘We will take away from you bourgeois peasants not only the lands of the landlords, but also your own. We, the toilers, are now the government.’ This leads to constant quarrels and fights. The population of the neighboring village consists of so-called natives and of peasants brought by landlords from the Province of Orlov. The natives now say to those from Orlov: ‘Get away from our land and return to your Province of Orlov. Anyhow, we shall drive you away from here.’ The peasants from Orlov, however, threaten ‘to kill all the natives.’ Thus there are daily encounters.”

In another village the peasants have about 5,400 acres of land, which they bought. For some reason or other they failed to cultivate it last year. Therefore the peasants of a neighboring village decided to take it away from them as “superfluous property which is against the labor status.” The owners, however, declared:

“First kill us and then you will be able to take away our land.”

In some places the first battles for land have already taken place.

In the Province of Tambov, near the village of Ischeina, a serious encounter has taken place between the peasants of the village of Shleyevka and Brianchevka. Fortunately, among the peasants of Brianchevka was a wise man, “the village Solomon,” who first persuaded his neighbors to put out for the peasants of Shleyevka five buckets of brandy. The latter actually took the ransom and went away, thus leaving the land to the owners.

In some instances the Bolsheviki instigated the peasants to massacre hundreds of innocent people in adjacent villages and towns. They did not stop, or even protest against, the most savage anti-Jewish pogroms. Charles Dumas, the well-known French Socialist, a Deputy in Parliament, after spending fifteen months in Russia, published his experiences and solemnly warned the Socialists of France against Bolshevism. His book[8] is a terrible chronicle of terrorism, oppression, and anarchy, all the more impressive because of its restraint and careful documentation. He cites the following cases:

[8] La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki, par Charles Dumas.

On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About five hundred bodies of the victims were found afterward, most of them “Intellectuals.” All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.

In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and three hundred citizens were killed.

In May, 1918, the relations of the Soviet Government to the peasantry were described by Gorky as the war of the city against the country. They were, in fact, very similar to the relations of conquering armies to the subjugated but rebellious and resentful populations of conquered territories. On May 14th a decree was issued regarding the control of grain, the famous compulsory grain registration order. This decree occupies so important a place in the history of the struggle, and contains so many striking features, that a fairly full summary is necessary:[9]

[9] The entire text is given as an appendix at the end of the volume.

While the people in the consuming districts are starving, there are large reserves of unthreshed grain in the producing districts. This grain is in the hands of the village bourgeoisie—“tight-fisted village dealers and profiteers”—who remain “deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving workmen and peasant poverty” and hold their grain in the hope of forcing the government to raise the price of grain, selling only to the speculators at fabulous prices. “An end must be put to this obstinacy of the greedy village grain-profiteers.” To abolish the grain monopoly and the system of fixed prices, while it would lessen the profits of one group of capitalists, would also “make bread completely inaccessible to our many millions of workmen and would subject them to inevitable death from starvation.” Only food grains absolutely necessary for feeding their families, on a rationed basis, and for seed purposes should be permitted to be held by the peasants. “The answer to the violence of grain-growers toward the starving poor must be violence toward the bourgeoisie.”

Continuing its policy of price-fixing and monopolization of the grain-supply, the government decreed “a merciless struggle with grain speculators,” compulsion of “each grain-owner to declare the surplus above what is needed to sow the fields and for personal use, according to established normal quantities, until the new harvest, and to surrender the same within a week after the publication of this decision in each village.” The workmen and poor peasants were called upon “to unite at once for a merciless struggle with grain-hoarders.” All persons having a surplus of grain and failing to bring it to the collecting-points, and those wasting grain on illicit distillation of alcohol, were to be regarded as “enemies of the people.” They were to be turned over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which would “imprison them for ten years, confiscate their entire property, and drive them out forever from the communes”; while the distillers must, in addition, “be condemned to compulsory communal work.”

To carry out this rigorous policy it was provided that any person who revealed an undeclared surplus of grains should receive one-half the value of the surplus when it was seized and confiscated, the other half going to the village commune. “For the more successful struggle with the food crisis” extraordinary powers were conferred upon the People’s Food Commissioner, appointed by the Soviet Government. This official was empowered to (1) publish at his discretion obligatory regulations regarding the food situation, “exceeding the usual limits of the People’s Food Commissioner’s competence”; (2) to abrogate the orders of local food bodies and other organizations contravening his own plans and orders; (3) to demand from all institutions and organizations the immediate carrying out of his regulations; (4) “to use armed forces in case resistance is shown to the removal of grains or other food products; (5) to dissolve or reorganize the food agencies where they might resist his orders; (6) to discharge, transfer, commit to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or subject to arrest officers and employees of all departments and public organizations in case of interference with his orders; (7) to transfer the powers of such officials, departments, and institutions,” with the approval of the Council of People’s Commissaries.

It is not necessary here to discuss the merits of these regulations, even if we possessed the complete data without which the merit of the regulations cannot be determined. For our present purpose it is sufficient to recognize the fact that the peasants regarded the regulations as oppressive and vigorously resisted their enforcement. They claimed that the amount of grain—and also of potatoes—they were permitted to keep was insufficient; that it meant semi-starvation to them. The peasant Soviets, where such still existed, jealous of their rights, refused to recognize the authority of the People’s Food Commissaries. No material increase in the supply of “surplus grain” was observed. The receiving-stations were as neglected as before. The poor wretches who, inspired by the rich reward of half the value of the illegal reserves reported, acted as informers were beaten and tortured, and the Food Commissaries, who were frequently arrogant and brutal in their ways, were attacked and in some cases killed.

The Soviet Government had resort to armed force against the peasants. On May 30, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissaries met and decided that the workmen of Petrograd and Moscow must form “food-requisitioning detachments” and “advance in a crusade against the village bourgeoisie, calling to their assistance the village poor.” From a manifesto issued by the Council of People’s Commissaries this passage is quoted:

The Central Executive Committee has ordered the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd to mobilize 10,000 workers, to arm them and to equip them for a campaign for the conquest of wheat from the rapacious and the monopolists. This order must be put into operation within a week. Every worker called upon to take up arms must perform his duty without a murmur.

This was, of course, a mobilization for war of the city proletariat against the peasantry. In an article entitled, “The Policy of Despair,” published in his paper, the Novaya Zhizn, Gorky vigorously denounced this policy:

The war is declared, the city against the country, a war that allows an infamous propaganda to say that the worker is to snatch his last morsel of bread from the half-starved peasant and to give him in return nothing but Communist bullets and monetary emblems without value. Cruel war is declared, and what is the more terrible, a war without an aim. The granaries of Russia are outside of the Communistic Paradise, but rural Russia suffers as much from famine as urban Russia.

We are profoundly persuaded—and Lenin and many of the intelligent Bolsheviks know this very well—that to collect wheat through these methods that recall in a manner so striking those employed by General Eichhorn (a Prussian general of enduring memory for cruelty) in Ukrainia, will never solve the food crisis. They know that the return to democracy and the work of the local autonomies will give the best results, and meantime they have taken this decisive step on the road to folly.

How completely the Bolshevist methods failed is shown by the official Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 38), November, 1918. The following figures refer to a period of three months in the first half of 1918, and show the number of wagon-loads demanded and the number actually secured:

1918Wagon-loads
Demanded		Wagon-loads
Secured		Percentage
of Demand
Realized
April20,9671,4626.97
May19,7801,6847.02
June17,3707864.52

In explanation of these figures the apologists of Bolshevist rule have said that the failure was due in large part to the control of important grain-growing provinces by anti-Bolshevist forces. This is typical of the half-truths which make up so much of the Bolshevist propaganda. Of course, important grain districts were in the control of the anti-Bolshevist forces, but the fact was known to the Bolsheviki and was taken into account in making their demands. Otherwise, their demands would certainly have been much greater. Let us, however, look at the matter from a slightly different angle and consider how the scheme worked in those provinces which were wholly controlled by the Bolsheviki, and where there were no “enemy forces.” The following figures, taken from the same Soviet journal, refer to the month of June, 1918:

ProvinceWagon-loads
Demanded		Wagon-loads
Secured		Percentage
of Demand
Realized
Voronezh1,00020.20
Viatka1,300141.07
Kazan40020.50
Kursk50071.40
Orel30082.67
Tambo6759814.51

On June 11, 1918, a decree was issued establishing the so-called Pauper Committees, or Committees of the Poor. The decree makes it quite clear that the object was to replace the village Soviets by these committees, which were composed in part of militant Bolsheviki from the cities and in part of the poorest peasants in the villages, including among these the most thriftless, idle, and dissolute. Clause 2 of the decree of June 11th provided that “both local residents and chance visitors” might be elected. Those not admitted were those known to be exploiters and “tight-fists,” those owning commercial or industrial concerns, and those hiring labor. An explanatory note was added which stated that those using hired labor for cultivating land up to a certain area might be considered eligible. An official description of these Committees of the Poor was published in Pravda, in February, 1919. Of course, the committees had been established and working for something over six months when Pravda published this account:

A Committee of the Poor is a close organization formed in all villages of the very poorest peasants to fight against the usurers, rich peasants, and clergy, who have been exploiting the poorest peasants and squeezing out their life-blood for centuries under the protection of emperors. Only such of the very poorest peasants as support the Soviet authority are elected members of these committees. These latter register all grain and available foodstuffs in their villages, as well as all cattle, agricultural implements, carts, etc. It is likewise their duty to introduce the new land laws issued by order of the Soviets of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossacks’ Deputies.

The fields are cultivated with the implements thus registered, and the harvest is divided among those who have worked in accordance with the law. The surplus is supplied to the starving cities in return for goods of all kinds that the villagers need. The motto of the Communist-Bolshevist Party is impressed upon all members of these committees—namely, “Help the poor; do not injure the peasant of average means, but treat usurers, clergy, and all members of the White Army without mercy.”

Even this account of these committees of the poor indicates a terrible condition of strife in the villages. These committees were formed to take the place of the Soviets, which the Food Commissars, in accordance with the wide powers conferred upon them, could order suppressed whenever they chose. Where the solidarity of the local peasantry could not be broken up “chance visitors,” poor wretches imported for the purpose, constituted the entire membership of such committees. In other cases, a majority of the members of the committees were chosen from among the local residents. There was no appeal from the decision of these committees. Any member of such a committee having a grudge against a neighbor could satisfy it by declaring him to be a hoarder, could arrest him, seize his property and have him flogged or, as sometimes happened, shot. The military detachments formed to secure grain and other foodstuffs had to work with these committees where they already existed, and to form them where none yet existed.

The Severnaya Oblast, July 4, 1918, published detailed instructions of how the food-requisitioning detachments were to proceed in villages where committees of the poor had not yet been formed. They were to first call a meeting, not of all the peasants in a village, but only of the very poorest peasants and such other residents as were well known to be loyal supporters of the Soviet Government. From the number thus assembled five or seven must be selected as a committee. When formed this committee must demand, as a first step, the surrendering of all arms by the rest of the population. This disarming of the people must be very vigorously and thoroughly carried out; refusal to surrender arms to the committee, or concealing arms from the committee, involved severe punishment. Persons guilty of either offense might be ordered shot by the Committee of the Poor, the Food Commissar or the Revolutionary Tribunal. After the disarmament had been proclaimed, three days’ notice was to be served upon the peasants to deliver their “surplus” grain—that is, all over and above the amount designated by the committee—at the receiving station. Failure to do this entailed severe penalties; destroying or concealing grain was treason and punishable by death at the hands of a firing-squad.

The war between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Bolshevist officials, the food-requisitioning detachments and the pauper committees, on the other, went on throughout the summer of 1918. The first armed detachments reached the villages toward the end of June. From that time to the end of December the sanguinary struggle was maintained. According to Izvestia of the Food Commissariat, December, 1918, the Food Army consisted of 3,000 men in June and 36,500 in December. In the course of the struggle this force had lost 7,309 men, killed, wounded, and sick. In other words, the casualties amounted to 30 per cent. of the highest number ever engaged. These figures of themselves bear eloquent witness to the fierce resistance of the peasantry. It was a common occurrence for a food-requisitioning detachment to enter a village and begin to search for concealed weapons and grain and to be at once met with machine-gun and rifle-fire, the peasants treating them as robbers and enemies. Sometimes the villagers were victorious and the Bolshevist forces were driven away. In almost every such case strong reinforcements were sent, principally Lettish or Chinese troops, to subdue the rebel village and wipe out the “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeoisie”—that is to say, nine-tenths of the peasants in the village.

Under these conditions things went from bad to worse. Naturally, there was some increase in the amount of grain turned in at the receiving stations, but the increase was not commensurate with the effort and cost of obtaining it. In particular, it did not sustain the host of officials, committees, inspectors, and armed forces employed in intimidating the peasants. One of the most serious results was the alarming decline of cultivation. The incentive to labor had been taken away from the hard-working, thrifty peasants. Their toil was penalized, in fact. A large part of the land ordinarily tilled was not planted that autumn and for spring sowing there was even less cultivation. The peasants saw that the industrious and careful producers had most of the fruits of their labors taken from them and were left with meager rations, which meant semi-starvation, while the idle, thriftless, and shiftless “poorest peasants” fared much better, taking from the industrious and competent. Through the peasantry ran the fatal cry: “Why should we toil and starve? Let us all be idle and live well as ‘poor peasants’!”

Thus far, we have followed the development of the agrarian policy of the Bolsheviki through two stages: First of all, peasant Soviets were recognized and regarded as the basis of the whole system of agricultural production. It was found that these did not give satisfactory results; that each Soviet cared only for its own village prosperity; that the peasants held their grain for high prices while famine raged in the cities. Then, secondly, all the village Soviets were shorn of their power and all those which were intractable—a majority of them—suppressed, their functions being taken over by state-appointed officials, the Food Commissars and the Committees of the Poor acting under the direction of these. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, these stages corresponded in a very striking way to the first two stages of industrial organization under Bolshevist rule.

The chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, M. C. Eroshkin, visited the United States in the winter of 1918-19. It was the good fortune of the present writer to become acquainted with this brilliant Russian Socialist leader and to obtain much information from him. Few men possess a more thorough understanding of the Russian agrarian problem than Mr. Eroshkin, who during the régime of the Provisional Government was the representative for the Perm District of the Ministry of Agriculture and later became a member of the Provisional Government of Ural. In March, 1919, he said:

The Russian peasant could, in all fairness, scarcely be suspected of being a capitalist, and even according to the Soviet constitution, no matter how twisted, he could not be denied a vote. But fully aware that the peasants constitute a majority and are, as a whole, opposed to the Bolsheviki, the latter have destroyed the Soviets in the villages and instead of these they have created so-called “Committees of the Poor”—i.e., aggregations of inebriates, propertyless, worthless, and work-hating peasants. For, whoever wishes to work can find work in the Russian village which is always short of agricultural help. These “Committees of the Poor” have been delegated to represent the peasantry of Russia.

Small wonder that the peasants are opposed to this scheme which has robbed them of self-government. Small wonder that their hatred for these “organizations” reaches such a stage that entire settlements are rising against these Soviets and their pretorians, the Red Guardsmen, and in their fury are not only murdering these Soviet officials, but are practising fearful cruelties upon them, as happened in December, 1918, in the Governments of Pskov, Kaluga, and Tver.

By removing and arresting all those delegates who are undesirable to them, the Bolsheviki have converted these Soviets into organizations loyal to themselves, and, of course, fear to think of a true general election, for that will seal their doom at once.

Mr. Eroshkin, like practically every other leader of the Russian peasants’ movement, is an anti-Bolshevik and his testimony may be regarded as biased. Let us, therefore, consider what Bolshevist writers have said in their own press.

Izvestia of the Provincial Soviets, January 18, 1919, published the following:

The Commissaries were going through the Tzaritzin County in sumptuous carriages, driven by three, and often by six, horses. A great array of adjutants and a large suite accompanied these Commissaries and an imposing number of trunks followed along. They made exorbitant demands upon the toiling population, coupled with assaults and brutality. Their way of squandering money right and left is particularly characteristic. In some houses the Commissaries gambled away and spent on intoxicants large sums. The hard-working population looked upon these orgies as upon complete demoralization and failure of duty to the world revolution.

In the same official journal, four days later, January 22, 1919, Kerzhentzev, the well-known Bolshevik, wrote:

The facts describing the village Soviet of the Uren borough present a shocking picture which is no doubt typical of all other corners of our provincial Soviet life. The chairman of this village Soviet, Rekhalev, and his nearest co-workers have done all in their power to antagonize the population against the Soviet rule. Rekhalev himself has often been found in an intoxicated condition and he has frequently assaulted the local inhabitants. The beating-up of visitors to the Soviet office was an ordinary occurrence. In the village of Bierezovka the peasants have been thrashed not only with fists, but have often been assaulted with sticks, robbed of their footwear, and cast into damp cellars on bare earthen floors. The members of the Varnavinsk Ispolkom (Executive Committee), Glakhov, Morev, Makhov, and others, have gone even farther. They have organized “requisition parties” which were nothing else but organized pillagings, in the course of which they have used wire-wrapped sticks on the recalcitrants. The abundant testimony, verified by the Soviet Commission, portrays a very striking picture of violence. When these members of the Executive Committee arrived at the township of Sadomovo they commenced to assault the population and to rob them of their household belongings, such as quilts, clothing, harness, etc. No receipts for the requisitioned goods were given and no money paid. They even resold to others on the spot some of the breadstuffs which they had requisitioned.

In the same paper (No. 98), March 9, 1919, another Bolshevist writer, Sosnovsky, reported on conditions in the villages of Tver Province as follows:

The local Communist Soviet workers behave themselves, with rare exception, in a disgusting manner. Misuse of power is going on constantly.

Izvestia published, January 5, 1919, the signed report of a Bolshevist official, Latzis, complaining that “in the Velizsh county of the Province of Vitebsk they are flogging the peasants by the authority of the local Soviet Committee.” On May 14, 1919, the same journal published the following article concerning conditions in this province:

Of late there has been going on in the village a really scandalous orgy. It is necessary to call attention to the destructive work of the scoundrels who worked themselves into responsible positions. Evidently all the good and unselfish beginnings of the workmen’s and peasants’ authority were either purposely or unintentionally perverted by these adventurers in order to undermine the confidence of the peasants in the existing government in order to provoke dissatisfaction and rebellion. It is no exaggeration to say that no open counter-revolutionary or enemy of the proletariat has done as much harm to the Socialist republic as the charlatans of this sort. Take, as an instance, the third district of the government of Vitebsk, the county of Veliashkov. Here the taxes imposed upon the peasants were as follows: “P. Stoukov, owning 17 dessiatines, was compelled to pay a tax of 5,000 rubles, while U. Voprit, owning 24 dessiatines, paid only 500 rubles. S. Grigoriev paid 2,000 on 29 dessiatines, while Ivan Tselov paid 8,000 on 23 dessiatines.” (Quoting some more instances, the writer adds that the soil was alike in all cases. He then brings some examples of the wrongs committed by the requisitioning squads.)

The same issue of this Soviet organ contained the report of an official Bolshevist investigation of the numerous peasant uprisings. This report stated that “The local communists behave, with rare exceptions, abominably, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we were able to explain to the peasants that we were also communists.”

Izvestia also published an appeal from one Vopatin against the intolerable conditions prevailing in his village in the Province of Tambov:

Help! we are perishing! At the time when we are starving do you know what is going on in the villages? Take, for instance, our village, Olkhi. Speculation is rife there, especially with salt, which sells at 40 rubles a pound. What does the militia do? What do the Soviets do? When it is reported to them they wave their hands and say, “This is a normal phenomenon.” Not only this, but the militiamen, beginning with the chief and including some communists, are all engaged in brewing their own alcohol, which sells for 70 rubles a bottle. Nobody who is in close touch with the militia is afraid to engage in this work. Hunger is ahead of us, but neither the citizens nor the “authorities” recognize it. The people’s judge also drinks, and if one wishes to win a case one only needs to treat him to a drink. We live in a terrible filth. There is no soap. People and horses all suffer from skin diseases. Epidemics are inevitable in the summer. If Moscow will pay no attention to us, then we shall perish. We had elections for the village and county Soviets, but the voting occurred in violation of the Constitution of the Soviet Government.

As a result of this a number of village capitalists, who, under the guise of communists, entered the party in order to avoid the requisitions and contributions, were elected. The laboring peasantry is thus being turned against the government, and this at a time when the hosts of Kolchak are advancing from the east.

Lenin, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party last April, published in Pravda, April 9, 1919, faced the seriousness of the situation indicated by these reports. He said:

All class-conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivano-Voznesensk, and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did not speak according to the book, but in language which the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing himself to issue orders, though unacquainted with village life, but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted themselves like commanders or superiors.

In the Severnaya Communa, May 10, 1919, another Bolshevist official, Krivoshayev, reported:

The Soviet workers are taking from the peasants chicken, geese, bread, and butter without paying for it. In some households of these poverty-stricken folk they are confiscating even the pillows and the samovars and everything they can lay their hands on. The peasants naturally feel very bitterly toward the Soviet rule.

Here, then, is a mass of Bolshevist testimony, published in the official press of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party. It cannot be set aside as “capitalist misrepresentation,” or as “lying propaganda of the Socialists-Revolutionists.” These and other like phrases which have been so much on the lips of our pro-Bolshevist Liberals and Socialists are outworn; they cannot avail against the evidence supplied by the Bolsheviki themselves. If we wanted to draw upon the mass of similar evidence published by the Socialists-Revolutionists and other Socialist groups opposed to the Bolsheviki, it would be easy to fill hundreds of pages. The apologists of Bolshevism have repeatedly assured us that the one great achievement of the Bolsheviki, concerning which there can be no dispute, is the permanent solution of the land problem, and that as a result the Bolsheviki are supported by the great mass of the peasantry. Against that silly fable let one single fact stand as a sufficient refutation: According to the Severnaya Communa, September 4, 1919, the Military Supply Bureau of Petrograd alone had sent, up to April 1, 1919, 225 armed military requisitioning detachments to various villages. Does not that fact alone indicate the true attitude of the peasants?

Armed force did not bring much food, however. The peasants concealed and hoarded their supplies. They resisted the soldiers, in many instances. When they were overcome they became sullen and refused to plant more than they needed for their own use. Extensive curtailment of production was their principal means of self-defense against what they felt to be a great injustice. According to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 54), 1919, this was the principal reason for the enormous decline of acreage under cultivation—a decline of 13,500,000 acres in twenty-eight provinces—and the main cause of the serious shortage of food grains. Instead of exporting a large surplus of grain, Tambov Province was stricken with famine, and the plight of other provinces was almost as bad.

In the Province of Tambov the peasants rose and drove away the Red Guards. In the Bejetsh district, Tver Province, 17,000 peasants rose in revolt against the Soviet authorities, according to Gregor Alexinsky. A punitive detachment sent there by Trotsky suppressed this rising with great brutality, robbing the peasants, flogging many of them, and killing many others. In Briansk, Province of Orel, the peasants and workmen rose against the Soviet authorities in November, 1919, being led by a former officer of the Fourth Soviet Army named Sapozhnikov. Lettish troops suppressed this uprising in a sanguinary manner. In the villages of Kharkov Province no less than forty-nine armed detachments appeared, seeking to wrest grain from the peasants, who met the soldiers with rifles and machine-guns. This caused Trotsky to send large punitive expeditions, consisting principally of Lettish troops, and many lives were sacrificed. Yet, despite the bloodshed, only a small percentage of the grain expected was ever obtained. There were serious peasant revolts against Soviet rule in many other places.

The District Extraordinary Commissions and the revolutionary tribunals were kept busy dealing with cases of food-hoarding and speculation. A typical report is the following taken from the Bolshevist Derevenskaia Communa (No. 222), October 2, 1919. This paper complained that the peasants were concealing and hoarding grain for the purpose of selling it to speculators at fabulous prices:

Every day the post brings information concerning concealment of grain and other foodstuffs, and the difficulties encountered by the registration commissions in their work in the villages. All this shows the want of consciousness among the masses, who do not realize what chaos such tactics introduce into the general life of the country.

No one can eat more than the human organism can absorb; the ration—and that not at all a “famine” one—is fixed. Every one is provided for, and yet—concealment, concealment everywhere, in the hope of selling grain to town speculators at fabulous prices.

How much is being concealed, and what fortunes are made by profiteering, may be seen from the following example: The Goretsky Extraordinary Commission has fined Irina Ivashkevich, a citizeness of Lapinsky village, for burying 25,000 rubles’ worth of grain in a hole in her back yard.

Citizeness Irina Ivashkevich has much money, but little understanding of what she is doing.

Neither force nor threats could overcome the resistance of the peasants. In the latter part of November, 1919, sixteen food-requisitioning detachments of twenty-five men each were sent from Petrograd to the Simbirsk Province, according to the Izvestia of Petrograd. They were able to secure only 215 tons of grain at a very extraordinary price. Speculation had raised the price of grain to 600 rubles per pood of 36 pounds. The paper Trud reported at the same time that the delegates of forty-five labor organizations in Petrograd and Moscow, who left for the food-producing provinces to seek for non-rationed products, returned after two months wholly unsuccessful, having spent an enormous amount of money in their search. Their failure was due in part to a genuine shortage, but it was due in part also to systematic concealment and hoarding for speculation on the part of the peasants. Much of this illicit speculation and trading was carried on with the very Soviet officials who were charged with its suppression![10]

[10] The Bulletin of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (No. 25), February 24, 1919, reports such a case. Many other similar references might be quoted. Pravda, July 4, 1919, said that many of those sent to requisition grain from the peasants were themselves “gross speculators.”

How utterly the attempt to wrest the food from the peasants by armed force failed is evidenced by figures published in the Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 310). The figures show the amounts of food-supplies received in Petrograd in the first nine months of 1918 as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. The totals include flour, rye, wheat, barley, oats, and peas:

Jan.-Mar.
Tons		Apr.-June
Tons		July-Sept.
Tons		Total for
Nine Mos.
Tons
In 191324,62624,16520,43869,229
In 191812,0015,3882,24119,639

If we take barley and oats, which were drawn mainly from the northern and central provinces and from the middle Volga—territories occupied by the Bolsheviki and free from “enemy forces”—we find that the same story is told: in the three months July-September, 1918, 105 tons of barley were received, as against 1,245 tons in the corresponding period of the previous year. Of oats the amount received in the three months of July-September, 1918, was 175 tons as against 3,105 tons in the corresponding period of 1917.

Armed force failed as completely as Gorky had predicted it would. References to the French Revolution are often upon the lips of the leaders of Bolshevism, and they have slavishly copied its form and even its terminology. It might have been expected, therefore, that they would have remembered the French experience with the Law of Maximum and its utter and tragic failure, and that they would have learned something therefrom, at least enough to avoid a repetition of the same mistakes as were made in 1793. There is no evidence of such learning, however. For that matter, is there any evidence that they have learned anything from history?

Not only was armed force used in a vain attempt to wrest the grain from the peasants, but similar methods were relied upon to force the peasants into the Red Army. On May 1, 1919, Pravda, official organ of the Communist Party, published the following announcement:

From the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.

The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party announces the following—

To all provincial committees of the Communist Party, to Provincial Military Commissaries.

The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, at the session of April 23d, unanimously adopted the decree to bring the middle and poor peasants into the struggle against the counter-revolution. According to this decree, every canton must send 10 to 20 strong, capable soldiers, who can act as nuclei for Red Army units in those places to which they will be sent.

Just as they had resisted all efforts to wrest away their grain and other foodstuffs by force, so the peasants resisted the attempts at forcible mobilization. Conscripted peasants who had been mobilized refused to go to the front and attempted mass desertions in many places, notably, however, in Astrakhan. These struggles went on throughout the early summer of 1919, but in the end force triumphed. On August 12, 1919, Trotsky wrote in Pravda:

The mobilization of the 19-year-old and part of the 18-year-old men, the inrush of the peasants who before refused to appear in answer to the mobilization decree, all of this is creating a powerful, almost inexhaustible, source from which to build up our army.... From now on any resistance to local authorities, any attempt to retain and protect any valuable and experienced military worker is deliberate sabotage.... No one should dare to forget that all Soviet Russia is an armed camp.... All Soviet institutions are obliged, immediately, within the next months, not only to furnish officers’ schools with the best quarters, but, in general, they must furnish these schools with such material and special aids as will make it possible for the students to work in the most intensive manner....

Bitter as the conflict was during this period and throughout 1919, it was, nevertheless, considerably less violent than during the previous year. This was due to the fact that the Bolsheviki had modified their policy in dealing with the peasants in some very important respects. Precisely as they had manifested particular hatred toward the bourgeoisie in the cities, and made their appeal to the proletariat, so they had, from the very first, manifested a special hatred toward the great body of peasants of the “middle class”—that is to say, the fairly well-to-do and successful peasant—and made their appeal to the very poorest and least successful. The peasants who owned their own farms, possessed decent stock, and perhaps employed some assistance, were regarded as the “rural bourgeoisie” whom it was necessary to expropriate. The whole appeal of the Bolsheviki, so far as the peasant was concerned, was to the element corresponding to the proletariat, owning nothing. The leaders of the Bolsheviki believed that only the poorest section of the peasantry could make common cause with the proletariat; that the greater part of the peasantry belonged with the bourgeoisie. They relied upon the union of the urban proletariat and the poorest part of the peasantry, led by the former, to furnish the sinews of the Revolution. Over and over again Lenin’s speeches and writings prior to April, 1919, refer to “the proletariat and the poorest peasants”; over and over again he emphasizes this union, always with the more or less definite statement that “the proletariat” must lead and “the poorest peasants” follow.

In April, 1919, at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin read a report on the attitude of the proletariat and the Soviet power to the peasantry which marked a complete change of attitude, despite the fact that Lenin intimated that neither he nor the party had ever believed anything else. “No sensible Socialist ever thought that we might apply violence to the middle peasantry,” he said. He even disclaimed any intention to expropriate the rich peasants, if they would refrain from counter-revolutionary tendencies! Of course, in thus affirming his orthodoxy while throwing over an important article of his creed, Lenin was simply conforming to an old and familiar practice. When we remember how he berated the Menshevist Social Democrats and declared them not to be Socialists because their party represented “fairly prosperous peasants,”[11] and the fact that the Soviet Constitution itself sets forth that the dictatorship to be set up is “of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry,[12]” Lenin’s attempt to make it appear that he had always regarded the middle and rich peasantry with such benign toleration can only move us to laughter.

[11] The New International, April, 1918.

[12] Article II, chap. v, paragraph 9.

To present Lenin’s change of front fairly it is necessary to quote at considerable length from his two speeches at the Congress as reported in Pravda, April 5 and 9, 1919:

During the long period of the bourgeois rule the peasant has always supported the bourgeois authority and was on the side of the bourgeoisie. This is understandable if one takes into account the economic strength of the bourgeoisie and the political methods of its rule. We cannot expect the middle peasant to come over to our side immediately. But if we direct our policy correctly, then after a certain period hesitation will cease and the peasant may come over to our side. Engels, who, together with Marx, laid the foundations of scientific Marxism—that is, of the doctrine which our party follows constantly and particularly in time of revolution—Engels already established the fact that the peasantry is differentiated with respect to their land holdings into small, middle, and large; and this differentiation for the overwhelming majority of the European countries exists to-day. Engels said, “Perhaps it will not be necessary to suppress by force even the large peasantry in all places.” And no sensible Socialist ever thought that we might ever apply violence to the middle peasantry (the smaller peasantry is our friend). This is what Engels said in 1894, a year before his death, when the agrarian question was the burning question of the day. This point of view shows us that truth which is sometimes forgotten, though with which we have always theoretically been in accord. With respect to landlords and capitalists our task is complete expropriation. But we do not permit any violence with respect to the middle peasant. Even with respect to the rich peasant, we do not speak with the same determination as with regard to the bourgeoisie, “Absolute expropriation of the rich peasantry.” In our program this difference is emphasized. We say, “The suppression of the resistance of the peasantry, the suppression of its counter-revolutionary tendencies.” This is not complete expropriation.

The fundamental difference in our attitude toward the bourgeoisie and toward the middle peasantry is complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie, but union with the middle peasantry that does not exploit others. This fundamental line in theory is recognized by all. In practice this line is not always observed strictly, and local workers have not learned to observe it at all. When the proletariat overthrew the bourgeois authority and established its own and set about to create a new society, the question of the middle peasantry came into the foreground. Not a single Socialist in the world has denied the fact that the establishment of communism will proceed differently in those countries where there is large land tenure. This is the most elementary of truths and from this truth it follows that as we approach the tasks of construction our main attention should be concentrated to a certain extent precisely on the middle peasantry. Much will depend on how we have defined our attitude toward the middle peasantry. Theoretically, this question has been decided, but we know from our own experience the difference between the theoretical decision of a question and the practical carrying out of the decision.

... All remember with what difficulty, and after how many months, we passed from workmen’s control to workmen’s administration of industry, and that was development within our class, within the proletarian class, with which we had always had relations. But now we must define our attitude toward a new class, toward a class which the city workmen do not know. We must define our attitude toward a class which does not have a definite steadfast position. The proletariat as a mass is for Socialism; the bourgeoisie is against Socialism; it is easy to define the relations between two such classes. But when we come to such a group as the middle peasantry, then it appears that this is such a kind of class that it hesitates. The middle peasant is part property-owner and part toiler. He does not exploit other representatives of the toilers. For decades he has had to struggle hard to maintain his position and he has felt the exploitation of the landlord-capitalists. But at the same time he is a property-owner.

Therefore our attitude toward this class presents enormous difficulties. On the basis of our experience of more than a year, and of proletariat work in the village for more than a year, and in view of the fact that there has already taken place a class differentiation in the village, we must be most careful not to be hasty, not to theorize without understanding, not to consider ready what has not been worked out. In the resolution which the committee proposes to you, prepared by the agrarian section, which one of the next speakers will read to you, you will find many warnings on this point. From the economic point of view it is clear that we must go to the assistance of the middle peasant. On this point theoretically there is no doubt. But with our level of culture, with our lack of cultural and technical forces which we could offer to the village, and with that helplessness with which we often go to the villages, comrades often apply compulsion, which spoils the whole cause. Only yesterday one comrade gave me a small pamphlet entitled, Instructions for Party Activity in the Province of Nizhninovgorod, a publication of the Nizhninovgorod Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki), and in this pamphlet I read, for example, on page 41, “The decree on the extraordinary revolutionary tax should fall with its whole weight on the shoulders of the village rich peasant speculators, and in general on the middle elements of the peasantry.” Now here one may see that people have indeed “understood,” or is this a misprint? But it is not admissible for such misprints to appear. Or is this the result of hurried, hasty work, which shows how dangerous haste is in a matter like this? Or have we here simply a failure to understand, though this is the very worst supposition which I really do not wish to make with reference to our comrades at Nizhninovgorod? It is quite possible that this is simply an oversight. Such instances occur in practice, as one of the comrades in the commission has related. The peasants surrounded him and each peasant asked: “Please define, am I a middle peasant or not? I have two horses and one cow. I have two cows and one horse,” etc. And so this agitator who was traveling over entire districts had to use a kind of thermometer in order to take each peasant and tell him whether he was a middle peasant or not. But to do this he had to know the whole history and economic life of this particular peasant and his relations to lower and higher groups, and of course we cannot know this with exactness.

Here one must have practical experience and knowledge of local conditions, and we have not these things as yet. We are not at all ashamed to admit this; we must admit this openly. We have never been Utopists and have never imagined that we could build up the communistic society with the pure hands of pure communists who would be born and educated in a pure communistic society. Such would be children’s fables. We must build communism on the ruins of capitalism, and only that class which has been tempered in the struggle against capitalism can do this. You know very well that the proletariat is not without the faults and weaknesses of the capitalistic society. It struggles for Socialism, and at the same time against its own defects. The best and most progressive portion of the proletariat which has been carrying on a desperate struggle in the cities for decades was able to imitate in the course of this struggle all the culture of city life, and to a certain extent did acquire it. You know that the village even in the most progressive countries was condemned to ignorance. Of course, the cultural level of the village will be raised by us, but that is a matter of years and years. This is what our comrades everywhere forget, and this is what every word that comes to us from the village portrays with particular clearness, when the word comes not from local intellectuals and local officials, but from people who are watching the work in the village from a practical point of view.

When we speak of the tasks in connection with work in the villages, in spite of all difficulties, in spite of the fact that our knowledge has been directed to the immediate suppression of exploiters, we must nevertheless remember and not forget that in the villages with relation to the middle peasantry the task is of a different nature. All conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did not speak according to the book, but in language which the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing himself to issue orders though unacquainted with village life, but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted themselves like commanders or superiors.

The resolution which we now present for your attention is drawn up in this spirit. I have tried in this report to emphasize the main principles behind this resolution, and its general political significance. I have tried to show, and I trust I have succeeded, that from the point of view of the interests of the revolution as a whole we have not made any changes. We have not altered our line of action. The White-Guardists and their assistants shout and will continue to shout that we have changed. Let them shout. That does not disturb us. We are developing our aims in an absolutely logical manner. From the task of suppressing the bourgeoisie we must now transfer our attention to the task of building up the life of the middle peasantry. We must live with the middle peasantry in peace. The middle peasantry in a communistic society will be on our side only if we lighten and improve its economic conditions. If we to-morrow could furnish a hundred thousand first-class tractors supplied with gasolene and machinists (you know, of course, that for the moment this is dreaming), then the middle peasant would say, “I am for the Commune.” But in order to do this we must first defeat the international bourgeoisie; we must force them to give us these tractors, or we must increase our own production so that we can ourselves produce them. Only thus is the question stated correctly.

The peasant needs the industries of the cities and cannot live without them and the industries are in our hands. If we approach the situation correctly, then the peasant will thank us because we will bring him the products from the cities—implements and culture. It will not be exploiters who will bring him these things, not landlords, but his own comrades, workers whom he values very deeply. The middle peasant is very practical and values only actual assistance, quite carelessly thrusting aside all commands and instructions from above.

First help him and then you will secure his confidence. If this matter is handled correctly, if each step taken by our group in the village, in the canton, in the food-supply detachment, or in any organization, is carefully made, is carefully verified from this point of view, then we shall win the confidence of the peasant, and only then shall we be able to move forward. Now we must give him assistance. We must give him advice, and this must not be the order of a commanding officer, but the advice of a comrade. The peasant then will be absolutely for us.

... We learned how to overthrow the bourgeoisie and suppress it and we are very proud of what we have done. We have not yet learned how to regulate our relations with the millions of middle peasants and how to win their confidence. We must say this frankly; but we have understood the task and we have undertaken it and we say to ourselves with full hope, complete knowledge, and entire decision: We shall solve this task, and then Socialism will be absolute, invincible.

At the same time, at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet, Kalinin, a peasant and a Bolshevik, was elected president of the Central Executive Committee. His speech, reported in Severnaya Communa, April 10, 1919, sounded the same note as the speeches of Lenin—conciliation of the middle peasantry:

My election is the symbol of the union of the proletariat and the peasantry. At the present moment when all counter-revolutionary forces are pressing in on us, such a union is particularly valuable. The peasantry was always our natural ally, but in recent times one has heard notes of doubt among the peasants; parties hostile to us are trying to drive a wedge between us and the peasantry. We must convince the middle peasants that the working-class, having in its hands the factories, has not attacked, and will not attack, the small, individual farms of the peasant. This can be done all the more easily because neither the old nor the new program of communists says that we will forcibly centralize the peasant lands and drive them into communes, etc. Quite to the contrary, we say definitely that we will make every effort to readjust and raise the level of the peasant economic enterprises, helping both technically and in other ways, and I shall adhere to this policy in my new post. Here is the policy we shall follow:

We shall point out to province, district, and other executive committees that they should make every effort in the course of the collecting of the revolutionary tax, to the end that it should not be a heavy burden on the middle peasant; that they should make self-administration less costly and reduce bureaucratic routine. We shall make every effort so that the local executive committees shall not put obstacles in the way of exchange of articles of agriculture and of home consumption between cantons and peasants—that is, the purchase of farm and household utensils that are sold at fairs. We shall try to eliminate all friction and misunderstandings between provinces and cantons. We shall appeal to the local executive committees not only not to interfere with, but, on the contrary, to support, separate peasant economic enterprises which, because of their special character, have a special value. The mole of history is working well for us; the hour of world revolution is near, though we must not close our eyes to the fact that at the present moment it is all the more difficult for us to struggle with counter-revolution because of the disorganization of our economic life. Frequently they prophesied our failure, but we still hold on and we shall find new sources of strength and support. Further, each of us must answer the question as to how to adjust production, carry out our enormous tasks, and use our great natural resources. In this field the unions of Petersburg and Moscow are doing very much, because they are the organizing centers from whose examples the provinces will learn. Much has been done in preparing products, but much still has to be done. We in Petersburg fed ourselves for three months, from the end of June to the beginning of September, on products from our Petersburg gardens.

The new attitude toward the peasantry revealed in the speeches of Lenin and Kalinin was already manifesting itself in the practical policy of the Soviet power. Greatly alarmed by the spread of famine in the cities, and by the stout resistance of the peasants to the armed requisitioning detachments, which amounted to civil war upon a large scale, they had established in many county towns in the grain-producing provinces central exchanges to which the peasants were urged to bring their grain to be exchanged for the manufactured goods so sorely needed by them. The attitude toward the peasants was more tolerant and friendly; the brutal strife practically disappeared. This did not bring grain to the cities, however, in any considerable quantity. The peasants found that the price offered for their grain was too low, and the prices demanded for the manufactured goods too high. According to Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, No. 443, the fixed price of grain was only 70 per cent. higher than in the month preceding the Bolshevist coup d’état, whereas the prices on manufactured goods needed by the peasants, including shoes, clothing, household utensils, and small tools, average more than 2,800 per cent. higher. The peasant saw himself once more as a victim of the frightful parasitism of the cities and refused to part with his grain. The same issue of Izvestia explained that the exchange stations “have functioned but feebly and have brought very little relief to the villages”; that the stations soon became storehouses for “bread taken away from the peasants by force at the fixed prices.” When cajoling failed to move the peasants the old agencies of force were resorted to. The grain was forcibly taken and the peasants were paid in paper currency so depreciated as to be almost worthless. Thus the villages were robbed of grain and, at the same time, left destitute of manufactured goods.

At the Congress of the Communist Party, following the speeches of Lenin, from which we have quoted, it was decided that the work of securing grain and other foodstuffs should be turned over to the co-operatives. A few days earlier, according to Pravda, March 15, 1919, a decree was issued permitting, in a number of provinces, “free sales of products, including foodstuffs.” This meant that the peasants were free to bring their supplies of grain out in the open and to sell them at the best prices they could get. The situation was thus somewhat improved, but not everywhere nor for long. Many of the local Soviets refused to adopt the new policy and, as pointed out by the Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, March 24, 1919, continued to make forced requisitions. There was, however, some limitation upon the arrogant and brutal rule of the local Soviets; some restrictions were imposed upon the dictatorship of the Committees of the Poor.

From an article in Izvestia, November 3, 1919, we get some further information concerning the attitude of the peasants toward the Soviet power, and its bearing upon the food question. Only a summary of the article is possible here: “The food conditions are hard, not because Russia, by being cut off from the principal bread-producing districts, does not have sufficient quantities of grain, but principally owing to the class war, which has become permanent and continuous. This class war hinders the work of factories and shops” and, by lessening the production of manufactured goods, “naturally renders the exchange of goods between towns and country difficult, because the peasants consider money of no value, not being able to buy anything with it.” The peasants are not yet “sufficiently far-sighted to be quite convinced of the stability of the Soviet power and the inevitability of Socialism.” The peasants of the producing provinces “do not willingly enough give the grain to the towns, and this greatly drags on the class war, which of course ruins them.” The food conditions in the towns promote “counter-revolution,” creating the hope that the famine-stricken people in the towns will cease to support the Soviet power. “Thus the peasants by concealing their bread ... render conditions harder, not only for the workmen, but also for themselves.” A statistical table shows that from August, 1918, to September, 1919, in the twelve principal provinces, “99,980,000 poods of bread and fodder grains were delivered to the state, which constitutes 38.1 per cent. of the quantity which was to be received according to the state allocation by provinces. The delivery of bread grain equaled 42.5 per cent. Thus these provinces gave less than one-half of what they could and should have given to the state.”

Such is the self-confessed record of Bolshevism in rural Russia. It is a record of stupid, blundering, oppressive bureaucracy at its best, and at its worst of unspeakable brutality. In dealing with the peasantry, who make up more than 85 per cent. of the population of Russia, Lenin and Trotsky and their followers have shown no greater wisdom of statesmanship, no stronger love of justice, no greater humanity, than the old bureaucracy of czarism. They have not elevated the life of the peasants, but, on the contrary, have checked the healthy development that was already in progress and that promised so well. They have further brutalized the life of the peasants, deepened their old distrust of government, fostered anarchy, and restored the most primitive methods of living and working. All this they have done in the name of Socialism and Progress!

VII
THE RED TERROR

It is frequently asserted in defense of the Bolsheviki that they resorted to the methods of terrorism only after the bourgeoisie had done so; that, in particular, the attempts to assassinate Lenin and other prominent Bolshevist leaders induced terroristic reprisals. Thus the Red Terror is made to appear as the response of the proletariat to the White Terror of the bourgeoisie. This is not true, unless, indeed, we are to take seriously the alleged “attack” on Lenin on January 16, 1918. A shot was fired, it was said, at Lenin while he was riding in his motor-car. No one was arrested and no attempt was made to discover the person who fired the shot. The general impression in Petrograd was that it was a trick, designed to afford an excuse for the introduction of the Terror. The assassination of Uritzky and the attempted assassination of Lenin, in the summer of 1918, were undoubtedly followed by an increase in the extent and savagery of the Red Terror, but it is equally true that long before that time men and women who had given their lives to the revolutionary struggle against czarism, and who had approved of the terroristic acts against individual officials, were staggered by the new mass terrorism which began soon after the Bolsheviki seized the reins of power.

On January 16th, following the alleged “attack” upon Lenin above referred to, Zinoviev, Bouch-Bruyevich, and other leaders of the Bolsheviki raised a loud demand for the Terror. On the 18th, the date set for the opening of the Constituent Assembly, the brutal suppression of the demonstration was to be held, but on the 16th the self-constituted Commissaries of the People adopted a resolution to the effect that any attempt “to hold a demonstration in honor of the Constituent Assembly” would be “put down most ruthlessly.” This resolution was adopted, it is said, at the instigation of Bouch-Bruyevich, who under czarism had been a noted defender of religious liberty.

The upholders of the Constituent Assembly proceeded to hold their demonstration. What happened is best told in the report of the event made to the Executive Committee of the International Socialist Bureau by Inna Rakitnikov:

From eleven o’clock in the morning cortèges, composed principally of working-men bearing red flags and placards with inscriptions such as “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!” “Land and Liberty!” “Long Live the Constituent Assembly!” etc., set out from different parts of the city. The members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates had agreed to meet at the Field of Mars, where a procession coming from the Petrogradsky quarter was due to arrive. It was soon learned that a part of the participants, coming from the Viborg quarter, had been assailed at the Liteiny bridge by gun-fire from the Red Guards and were obliged to turn back. But that did not check the other parades. The peasant participants, united with the workers from Petrogradsky quarter, came to the Field of Mars; after having lowered their flags before the tombs of the Revolution of February and sung a funeral hymn to their memory, they installed themselves on Liteinaia Street. New manifestants came to join them and the street was crowded with people. At the corner of Fourstatskaia Street (one of the streets leading to the Taurida Palace) they found themselves all at once assailed by shots from the Red Guards.

The Red Guard fired without warning, something that never before happened, even in the time of czarism. The police always began by inviting the participators to disperse. Among the first victims was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates, the Siberian peasant, Logvinov. An explosive bullet shot away half of his head (a photograph of his body was taken; it was added to the documents which were transferred to the Commission of Inquiry). Several workmen and students and one militant of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Gorbatchevskaia, were killed at the same time. Other processions of participants on their way to the Taurida Palace were fired into at the same time. On all the streets leading to the palace, groups of Red Guards had been established; they received the order, “Not to spare the cartridges.” On that day at Petrograd there were one hundred killed and wounded.[13]

[13] How the Russian Peasants Fought for a Constituent Assembly. A report to the International Socialist Bureau by Inna Rakitnikov, vice-president of the executive committee of the Soviet of Delegates, placing themselves upon the grounds of the defense of the Constituent Assembly. With a letter-preface by the citizen, E. Roubanovitch, member of the International Socialist Bureau. May 30, 1918. Note: This report is printed in full as Appendix II to Bolshevism, by John Spargo, pp. 331-384.

What of the brutal murder of the two members of the Provisional Government, F. F. Kokoshkin and A. I. Shingarev? Seized in the middle of December, they were cast into dark, damp, and cold cells in the Peter and Paul Fortress, in the notorious “Trubetskoy Bastion.” On the evening of January 18th they were taken to the Marie Hospital. That night Red Guards and sailors forced their way into the hospital and brutally murdered them both. It is true that Izvestia condemned the crime, saying: “Apart from everything else it is bad from a political point of view. This is a fearful blow aimed at the Revolution, at the Soviet authorities.” It is true, also, that Dybenko, Naval Commissary, published a remarkable order, saying: “The honor of the Revolutionary Fleet must not bear the stain of an accusation of revolutionary sailors having murdered their helpless enemies, rendered harmless by imprisonment. I call upon all who took part in the murder ... to appear of their own accord before the Revolutionary Tribunal.”

In the absence of definite proof to the contrary it is perhaps best to regard this outrage as due to the brutal savagery of individuals, rather than as part of a deliberate officially sanctioned policy of terrorism. Yet there is the fact that the sailors and Red Guards, who were armed, had gone straight to the hospital from the office of the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Profiteering. That this body, which from the first enlisted the services of many of the spies and secret agents of the old régime, had some connection with the murders was generally believed.

At the end of December, 1917, and in January, 1918, there were wholesale massacres in Sebastopol, Simferopol, Eupatoria, and other places. The well-known radical Russian journalist, Dioneo-Shklovsky, quotes Gorky’s paper, the Novaya Zhizn (New Life), as follows:

The garrison of the Revolutionary Army at Sebastopol has already begun its final struggle against the bourgeoisie. Without much ado they decided simply to massacre all the bourgeoisie. At first they massacred the inhabitants of the two most bourgeois streets in Sebastopol, then the same operation was extended to Simferopol, and then it was the turn of Eupatoria.

In Sebastopol not less than five hundred citizens disappeared during this St. Bartholomew massacre, according to this report, while at Simferopol between two and three hundred officers were shot in the prisons and in the streets. At Yalta many persons—between eighty and one hundred—were thrown into the bay. At Eupatoria the sailors placed the local “bourgeoisie in a barge and sank it.”

Of course Gorky’s paper was at that time very bitter in its criticisms of the brutal methods of the Bolsheviki, and that fact must be taken into account in considering its testimony. Gorky had been very friendly to the Bolsheviki up to the coup d’état, but revolted against their brutality in the early part of their régime. Subsequently, as is well known, he became reconciled to the régime sufficiently to take office under it. The foregoing accounts, as well as those in the following paragraph, agree in all essential particulars with reports published in the Constitutional-Democratic paper, Nast Viek. This paper, for some inexplicable reason, notwithstanding its vigorous opposition to the Bolsheviki, was permitted to appear, even when all other non-Bolshevist papers were suppressed.

According to the Novaya Zhizn, No. 5, the Soviets in many Russian towns made haste to follow the example of the revolutionary forces at Sebastopol and Simferopol. In the town of Etaritsa the local Red Guard wired to the authorities at the Smolny Institute, Petrograd, for permission to have “a St. Bartholomew’s night” (Yeremeievskaia Notch). In Tropetz, according to the same issue of Gorky’s paper, the commandant presented this report to the Executive Committee of the local Soviet: “The Red Army is quite ready for action. Am waiting for orders to begin a St. Bartholomew’s massacre.” During the latter part of February and the first week of March, 1918, there were wholesale massacres of officers and other bourgeoisie in Kiev, Rostov-on-Don and Novotcherkassk, among other places. The local Socialists-Revolutionists paper, Izvestia, of Novotcherkassk, in its issue of March 6, 1918, gave an account of the killing of a number of officers.

In the beginning of March, 1918, mass executions were held in Rostov-on-Don. Many children were executed by way of reprisal. The Russkiya Viedomosti (Russian News), in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president of the Municipal Council of Rostov, B. C. Vasiliev, a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party; the mayor of the city; the former chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Working-men’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, P. Melnikov; and M. Smirnov, who was chairman of this Soviet at the time—had handed in a petition to the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council, asking that they themselves be shot “instead of the innocent children who are executed without law and justice.”

A group of mothers submitted to the same Bolshevist tribunal the following heartrending petition:

If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and life in order to establish a socialistic state and to create new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives. Take our lives and our blood as ransom.

Our voices are calling to you, laborers. You have not stained the banner of the Revolution even with the blood of traitors, such as Shceglovitov and Protopopov. Why do you now witness indifferently the bloodshed of our children? Raise your voices in protest. Children do not understand about party strife. Their adherence to one or another party is directed by their eagerness for new impressions, novelty, and the suggestions of elders.

We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands, and brothers. Pray, take our last possessions, our lives, but spare our children. Call us one after the other for execution, when our children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order to save the life of her children or that of other children.

Citizens, members of the War-Revolutionary Council, listen to the cries of the mothers. We cannot keep silent!

A. Lockerman is a Socialist whose work against czarism brought prison and exile. He was engaged in Socialist work in Rostov-on-Don when the Bolsheviki seized the city in 1918, and during the seventy days they remained its masters. He says:

The callousness with which the Red soldiers carried out executions was amazing. Without wasting words, without questions, even without any irritation, the Red Army men took those who were brought to them from the street, stripped them naked, put them to the wall and shot them. Then the bodies were thrown out on the embankment and stable manure thrown over the pools of blood.[14]

[14] A. Lockerman; Les Bolsheviks à l’œuvre, preface par V. Zenzinov, Paris, 1920.

Such barbarity and terrorism went on wherever the Bolsheviki held control, long before the introduction of a system of organized terror directed by the central Soviet Government. Not only did the Bolshevist leaders make no attempt to check the brutal savagery, the murders, lynchings, floggings, and other outrages, but they loudly complained that the local revolutionary authorities were not severe enough. Zinoviev bewailed the too great leniency displayed toward the “counter-revolutionaries and bourgeoisie.” Even Lenin, popularly believed to be less inclined to severity than any of his colleagues, complained, in April, 1918, that “our rule is too mild, quite frequently resembling jam rather than iron.” Trotsky with greater savagery said:

You are perturbed by the mild terror we are applying against our class enemies, but know that a month hence this terror will take a more terrible form on the model of the terror of the great revolutionaries of France. Not a fortress, but the guillotine, will be for our enemies!

Numerous reports similar to the foregoing could be cited to disprove the claim of the apologists of the Bolsheviki that the Red Terror was introduced in consequence of the assassination of Uritzky and the attempt to assassinate Lenin. The truth is that the tyrannicide, the so-called White Terror, was the result of the Red Terror, not its cause. It is true, of course, that the terrorism was not all on the one side. There were many uprisings of the people, both city workers and peasants, against the Bolshevist usurpers. Defenders of the Bolsheviki cite these uprisings and the brutal savagery with which the Soviet officials were attacked to justify the terroristic policy of the Bolsheviki. The introduction of such a defense surely knocks the bottom out of the claim that the Bolsheviki really represented the great mass of the working-people, and that only the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the rich peasants were opposed to them. The uprisings were too numerous, too wide-spread, and too formidable to admit of such an interpretation.

M. C. Eroshkin, who was chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, and represented the Minister of Agriculture in the Perm district under the Provisional Government, during his visit to the United States in 1919 told the present writer some harrowing stories of uprisings against the Soviets which took on a character of bestial brutality. One of these stories was of an uprising in the Polevsky Works, in Ekaterinburg County, where a mob of peasants, armed with axes, scythes, and sticks, fell upon the members of the Soviet like so many wild animals, tearing fifty of them literally into pieces!

That the government of Russia under the Bolsheviki was to be tyrannical and despotic in the extreme was made evident from the very beginning. By the decree of November 24, 1917, all existing courts of justice were abolished and in their places set up a system of local courts based upon the elective principle. The first judges were to be elected by the Soviets, but henceforth “on the basis of direct democratic vote.” It was provided that the judges were to be “guided in their rulings and verdicts by the laws of the governments which had been overthrown only in so far as those laws are not annulled by the Revolution, and do not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary conception of right.” An interpretative note was appended to this clause explaining that all laws which were in contradiction to the decrees of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Government, or the minimum programs of the Social Democratic or Socialists-Revolutionists parties, must be regarded as canceled.

This new “democratic judicial system” was widely hailed as an earnest of the democracy of the new régime and as a constructive experiment of the highest importance. That the decree seemed to manifest a democratic intention is not to be gainsaid: the question of its sincerity cannot be so easily determined. Of course, there is much in the decree and in the scheme outlined that is extremely crude, while the explanatory note referred to practically had the effect of enacting the platforms of political parties, which had never been formulated in the precise terms of laws, being rather general propositions concerning the exact meaning, of which there was much uncertainty. Crude and clumsy though the scheme might be, however, it had the merit of appearing to be democratic. A careful reading of the decree reveals the fact that several most important classes of offenses were exempted from the jurisdiction of these courts, among them all “political offenses.” Special revolutionary tribunals were to be charged with “the defense of the Revolution”:

For the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces by means of measures for the defense of the Revolution and its accomplishments, and also for the trial of proceedings against profiteering, speculation, sabotage, and other misdeeds of merchants, manufacturers, officials, and other persons, Workmen’s and Peasants’ Revolutionary Tribunals are established, consisting of a chairman and six members, serving in turn, elected by the provincial or city Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.

Perhaps only those who are familiar with the methods of czarism can appreciate fully the significance of thus associating political offenses, such as counter-revolutionary agitation, with such offenses as illegal speculation and profiteering. Proceedings against profiteers and speculators could be relied upon to bring sufficient popularity to these tribunals to enable them to punish political offenders severely, and with a greater degree of impunity than would otherwise be possible. On December 19, 1917, I. Z. Steinberg, People’s Commissar of Justice, issued a decree called “Instructions to the Revolutionary Tribunal,” which caused Shcheglovitov, the most reactionary Minister of Justice the Czar ever had, to cry out: “The Cadets repeatedly charged me in the Duma with turning the tribunal into a weapon of political struggle. How far the Bolsheviki have left me behind!” The following paragraphs from this remarkable document show how admirably the institution of the Revolutionary Tribunal was designed for political oppression:

1. The Revolutionary Tribunal has jurisdiction in cases of persons (a) who organize uprisings against the authority of the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government, actively oppose the latter or do not obey it, or call upon other persons to oppose or disobey it; (b) who utilize their positions in the state or public service to disturb or hamper the regular progress of work in the institution or enterprise in which they are or have been serving (sabotage, concealing or destroying documents or property, etc.); (c) who stop or reduce production of articles of general use without actual necessity for so doing; (d) who violate the decrees, orders, binding ordinances, and other published acts of the organs of the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government, if such acts stipulate a trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal for their violation; (e) who, taking advantage of their social or administrative position, misuse the authority given them by the revolutionary people. Crimes against the people committed by means of the press are under the jurisdiction of a specially instituted Revolutionary Tribunal.

2. The Revolutionary Tribunal for offenses indicated in Article I imposes upon the guilty the following penalties: (1) fine; (2) deprivation of freedom; (3) exile from the capitals, from particular localities, or from the territory of the Russian Republic; (4) public censure; (5) declaring the offender a public enemy; (6) deprivation of all or some political rights; (7) sequestration or confiscation, partial or general, of property; (8) sentence to compulsory public work.

The Revolutionary Tribunal fixes the penalty, being guided by the circumstances of the case and the dictates of the revolutionary conscience.

II. The verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal are final. In case of violation of the form of procedure established by these instructions, or the discovery of indications of obvious injustice in the verdict, the People’s Commissar of Justice has the right to address to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies a request to order a second and last trial of the case.

Refusal to obey the Soviet Government, active opposition to it, and calling upon other persons “to oppose or disobey it” are thus made punishable offenses. In view of the uproar of protest raised in this country against the deportation of alien agitators and conspirators, especially by the defenders and upholders of the Bolsheviki who have assured us of the beneficent liberality of the Soviet Utopia, it may be well to direct particular attention to the fact that these “instructions” make special and precise provisions for the deportation of political undesirables. It is set forth that the Revolutionary Tribunal may inflict, among other penalties, “exile from the capitals, from particular localities, or from the territory of the Russian Republic,” that is, deportation. These penalties, moreover, apply to Russian citizens, not, as in the case of our deportations, to aliens. The various forms of exile thus provided for were common penalties under the old régime.[15]

[15] To avoid misunderstanding (though I cannot hope to avert misrepresentation) let me say that this paragraph is not intended to be a defense or a justification of the policy of deporting alien agitators. While admitting the right of our government to deport undesirable aliens, as a corollary to the undoubted right to deny their admission in the first place, I do not believe in deportation as a method of dealing with revolutionary propaganda. On the other hand, I deny the right of the Bolsheviki or their supporters to oppose as reactionary and illiberal a method of dealing with political undesirables which is in full force in Bolshevist Russia, which they acclaim so loudly.

It is interesting to observe, further, that there is no right of appeal from the verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, except that “the People’s Commissar of Justice has the right to address to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies a request to order a second and last trial” of any case in which he is sufficiently interested to do so. Unless this official can be convinced that there has been some “violation of the form of procedure” or that there is “obvious injustice in the verdict,” and unless he can be induced to make such a “request” to the central Soviet authority, the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal is final and absolute. What a travesty upon justice and upon democracy! What an admirable instrument for tyrants to rely upon!

Even this terrible weapon of despotism and oppression did not satisfy the Bolsheviki, however. For one thing, the decree constituting the Revolutionary Tribunal provided that its session must be held in the open; for another, its members must be elected. Consequently, a new type of tribunal was added to the system, the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution—the infamous Chresvychaika. Not since the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages has any civilized nation maintained tribunals clothed with anything like the arbitrary and unlimited authority possessed by the central and local Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution. They have written upon the pages of Russia’s history a record of tyranny and oppression which makes the worst record of czarism seem gentle and beneficent.

It is not without sinister significance that in all the collections of documents which the Bolsheviki and their sympathizers have published to illustrate the workings of the Soviet system, in this country and in Europe, there is not one explaining the organization, functions, methods, and personnel of it’s most characteristic institution—more characteristic even than the Soviet. Neither in the several collections published by The Nation, the American Association for International Conciliation, the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, nor in the books of writers like John Reed, Louise Bryant, William C. Bullitt, Raymond Robins, William T. Goode, Arthur Ransome, Isaac Don Levine, Colonel Malone, M.P., Lincoln Eyre, Etienne Antonelli, nor any other volume of the kind, can such information be found. This silence is profoundly eloquent.

This much we know about the Chresvychaikas: The Soviet Government created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Profiteering, and established it at the headquarters of the former Prefecture of Petrograd, 2, Gorokhovaia Street. Its full personnel has never been made known, but it is well known that many of the spies and confidential agents of the former secret police service entered its employ. Until February, 1919, it possessed absolutely unlimited powers of arrest, except for the immunity enjoyed by members of the government; its hearings were held in secret; it was not obliged to report even the names of persons sentenced by it; mass arrests and mass sentences were common under its direction; it was not confined to dealing with definite crimes, violations of definite laws, but could punish at will, in any manner it deemed fit, any conduct which it pleased to declare to be “counter-revolutionary.”

Those apologists who say that the Bolsheviki resorted to terrorism only after the assassination of Uritzky, and those others who say that terrorism was the answer to the intervention of the Allies, are best answered by the citation of official documentary evidence furnished by the Bolsheviki themselves. In the face of such evidence argument is puerile and vain. In February, 1918, months before either the assassination of Uritzky or the intervention of the Allies took place, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission issued the following proclamation, which was published in the Krasnaya Gazeta, official organ of the Petrograd Soviet, on February 23, 1918:

The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation, of the Council of People’s Commissaries, brings to the notice of all citizens that up to the present time it has been lenient in the struggle against the enemies of the people.

But at the present moment, when the counter-revolution is becoming more impudent every day, inspired by the treacherous attacks of German counter-revolutionists; when the bourgeoisie of the whole world is trying to suppress the advance-guard of the revolutionary International, the Russian proletariat, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, acting in conformity with the ordinances of the Council of People’s Commissaries, sees no other way to combat counter-revolutionists, speculators, marauders, hooligans, obstructionists, and other parasites, except by pitiless destruction at the place of crime.

Therefore the Commission announces that all enemy agents, and counter-revolutionary agitators, speculators, organizers of uprisings or participants in preparations for uprisings to overthrow the Soviet authority, all fugitives to the Don to join the counter-revolutionary armies of Kaledin and Kornilov and the Polish counter-revolutionary Legions, sellers or purchasers of arms to be sent to the Finnish White Guard, the troops of Kaledin, Kornilov, and Dovbor Musnitsky, or to arm the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie of Petrograd, will be mercilessly shot by detachments of the Commission at the place of the crime.

Petrograd, February 22, 1918. All-Russian Extraordinary Commission.

In connection with this ferocious document and its announcement that “counter-revolutionists” would be subject to “pitiless destruction,” that “counter-revolutionary agitators” would be “mercilessly shot,” it is important to remember that during the summer of 1917, when Kerensky was struggling against “German counter-revolutionists” and plots to overthrow the Revolution, the Bolsheviki had demanded the abolition of the death penalty. Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others denounced Kerensky as a “hangman” and “murderer.” Where is the moral integrity of these men? Like scorpion stings are the bitter words of the protest of L. Martov, leader of the radical left wing of the Menshevist Social Democrats:

In 1910 the International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen passed a resolution in favor of starting a campaign in all countries for the abolition of the death penalty.

All the present leaders of the Bolshevist Party—Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, Radek, Rakovsky, Lunarcharsky—voted for this resolution. I saw them all there raising their hands in favor of the resolution declaring war on capital punishment.

Then I saw them in Petrograd in July, 1917, protesting against punishing by death even those who had turned traitors to their country during the war.

I see them now condemning to death and executing people, bourgeoisie and workmen, peasants and officers alike. I see them now demanding from their subordinates that they should not count the victims, that they should put to death as many opponents of the Bolshevist régime as possible.

And I say to these Bolshevist “judges”: “You are malignant liars and perjurers! You have deceived the workmen’s International by signing its demand for the universal abolition of the death penalty and by its restoration when you came to power.

No idle threat was the proclamation of February: the performance was fully as brutal as the text. Hundreds of people were shot. The death penalty had been “abolished,” and on the strength of that fact the Bolsheviki had been lauded to the skies for their humanity by myopic and perverse admirers in this country and elsewhere outside of Russia. But the shooting of people by the armed detachments of the Extraordinary Commission went on. No court ever examined the cases; no competent jurists heard or reviewed the evidence, or even examined the charges. A simple entry, such as “Ivan Kouzmitch—Robbery—Shot,” might cover the murder of a devoted Socialist whose only crime was a simple speech to his fellow-workmen in favor of the immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, or calling upon them to unite against the Bolsheviki. And where counter-revolutionary agitation was given as the crime for which men were shot there was nothing to show, in many cases, whether the victim had taken up arms against the Soviet power or merely expressed opinions unfavorable to the régime.

Originally under the direction of Uritzky, who met a well-deserved fate at the hands of an assassin[16] in July, 1918, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission in turn set up Provincial and District Extraordinary Commissions, all of which enjoyed the same practically unlimited powers. Before February, 1919, these bodies were not even limited in the exercise of the right to inflict the death penalty, except for the immunity enjoyed by members of the government. Any Extraordinary Commission could arrest, arraign, condemn, and execute any person in secret, the only requirement being that afterward, if called upon to do so, it must report the case to the local Soviet! A well-known Bolshevist writer, Alminsky, wrote in Pravda, October 8, 1918:

[16] Uritzky is thus described by Maurice Verstraete:

“He is a refined sadist, who does his grim work for the love of it.... Uritzky is a hunchback and seems to be revenging himself on all mankind for his deformity. His heart is full of hatred, his nerves are shattered, and his mind depraved. He is the personification of a civilized brute—that is to say, the most cruel of all. Yesterday he was laughing at his own joke. He had ordered twenty men to be executed. Among the condemned was a lover of the girl who was waiting to be examined. Uritzky himself told her of the death of her lover.... The only emotion of which Uritzky is capable is fear. The only person Uritzky obeys is the Swiss ambassador, as he hopes, in return, that the latter will enable him to procure a passport to Switzerland, in case he is forced to escape when the Bolsheviks are overthrown.... Trotsky and Zinoviev are in many ways like Uritzky. They are also cruel, hysterical, and ready to overwhelm the world with blood.”—Verstraete, Mes Cahiers Russes, p. 350.

The absence of the necessary restraint makes one feel appalled at the “instruction” issued by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to “All Provincial Extraordinary Commissions,” which says: “The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission is perfectly independent in its work, carrying out house-searches, arrests, executions, of which it afterward reports to the Council of the People’s Commissaries and to the Central Executive Council.” Further, the Provincial and District Extraordinary Commissions “are independent in their activities, and when called upon by the local Executive Council present a report of their work.” In so far as house-searches and arrests are concerned, a report made afterward may result in putting right irregularities committed owing to lack of restraint. The same cannot be said of executions.... It can also be seen from the “instruction” that personal safety is to a certain extent guaranteed only to members of the government, of the Central Council, and of the local Executive Committees. With the exception of these few persons all members of the local committees of the (Bolshevik) Party, of the Control Committees, and of the Executive Committee of the party may be shot at any time by the decision of any Extraordinary Commission of a small district town if they happen to be on its territory, and a report of that made afterward.

After the assassination of Uritzky, and the attempted assassination of Lenin, there was instituted a mad orgy of murderous terror without parallel. It was a veritable saturnalia of brutal repression. Against the vain protestation of the defenders of the Bolsheviki that the Red Terror has been grossly exaggerated, it is quite sufficient to set down the exultations and admissions of the Bolsheviki themselves, the records made and published in their own official reports and newspapers. The evidence which is given in the next few pages is only a small part of the immense volume of such evidence that is available, every word of it taken from Bolshevist sources.

Under czarism revolutionary terrorism directed against government officials was almost invariably followed by increased repression; terror made answer to terror. We shall search the records of czarism in vain, however, for evidence of such brutal and blood-lusting rage as the Bolsheviki manifested when their terror was answered by terror. When a young Jew named Kannegiesser assassinated Uritzky the Krasnaya Gazeta declared:

The whole bourgeoisie must answer for this act of terror.... Thousands of our enemies must pay for Uritzky’s death.... We must teach the bourgeoisie a bloody lesson.... Death to the bourgeoisie!

This same Bolshevist organ, after the attempt to assassinate Lenin, said:

We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the flood-gates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritzky, Zinoviev, and Volodarsky, let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeoisie—more blood, as much as possible.

In the same spirit the Izvestia declared, “The proletariat will reply to the attempt on Lenin in a manner that will make the whole bourgeoisie shudder with horror.” Peters, successor to Uritzky as head of the Extraordinary Commission, said, in an official proclamation, “This crime will be answered by a mass terror.” On September 2d, Petrovsky, Commissar for the Interior, issued this call to mass terror:

Murder of Volodarsky and Uritzky, attempt on Lenin, and shooting of masses of our comrades in Finland, Ukrainia, the Don and Czechoslovakia, continual discovery of conspiracies in our rear, open acknowledgment of Right Social Revolutionary Party and other counter-revolutionary rascals of their part in these conspiracies, together with the insignificant extent of serious repressions and mass shooting of White Guards and bourgeoisie on the part of the Soviets, all these things show that notwithstanding frequent pronouncements urging mass terror against the Socialists-Revolutionaries, White Guards, and bourgeoisie no real terror exists.

Such a situation should decidedly be stopped. End should be put to weakness and softness. All Right Socialists-Revolutionaries known to local Soviets should be arrested immediately. Numerous hostages should be taken from the bourgeoisie and officer classes. At the slightest attempt to resist or the slightest movement among the White Guards, mass shooting should be applied at once. Initiative in this matter rests especially with the local executive committees.

Through the militia and extraordinary commissions, all branches of government must take measures to seek out and arrest persons hiding under false names and shoot without fail anybody connected with the work of the White Guards.

All above measures should be put immediately into execution.

Indecisive action on the part of local Soviets must be immediately reported to People’s Commissary for Home Affairs.

The rear of our armies must be finally guaranteed and completely cleared of all kinds of White-Guardists, and all despicable conspirators against the authority of the working-class and of the poorest peasantry. Not the slightest hesitation or the slightest indecisiveness in applying mass terror.

Acknowledge the receipt of this telegram.

Transmit to district Soviets.

[Signed] Petrovsky.[17]

[17] The text is taken from the Weekly of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (No. 1), Moscow, September 21, 1918. The translation used is that published by the U. S. Department of State. It has been verified.

On September 3, 1918, the Izvestia published this news item:

In connection with the murder of Uritzky five hundred persons have been shot by order of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution. The names of the persons shot, and those of candidates for future shooting, in case of a new attempt on the lives of the Soviet leaders, will be published later.[18]

[18] Desiring to confine the evidence here strictly to Bolshevist sources, I have passed over much testimony by well-known Socialists-Revolutionists, Social Democrats, and others. Because it has not been possible to have the item referring to the retaliatory massacre in Petrograd satisfactorily verified, I introduce here, by way of corroboration, a statement by the Socialists-Revolutionists leader, Eugene Trupp, published in the organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists, Zemlia i Volia, October 3, 1918:

“After the murder of Uritzky in Petrograd 1,500 people were arrested; 512, including 10 Socialists-Revolutionists, were shot. At the same time 800 people were arrested in Moscow. It is unknown, however, how many of these were shot. In Nizhni-Novgorod, 41 were shot; in Jaroslavl, 13; in Astrakhan, 12 Socialists-Revolutionists; in Sarapool, a member of the Central Committee of the party of Socialists-Revolutionists, I. I. Teterin; in Penza, about 40 officers.”

See also the corroboration of this incident quoted from the Weekly Journal of the Extraordinary Commission, on p. 171.

Two days later, September 5, 1918, a single column of Izvestia contained the following paragraphs, headed “Latest News”:

Arrest of Right Socialists-Revolutionaries

At the present moment the ward extraordinary commissioners are making mass arrests of Right Socialists-Revolutionaries, since it has become clear that this party is responsible for the recent acts of terrorism (attempt on life of Comrade Lenin and the murder of Uritzky), which were carried out according to a definitely elaborated program.

Arrest of a Priest

For an anti-Soviet sermon preached from the church pulpit, the Priest Molot has been arrested and turned over to the counter-revolutionary section of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission.

Struggle Against Counter-Revolutionaries

We have received the following telegram from the president of the Front Extraordinary Commission, Comrade Latsis: “The Extraordinary Commission of the Front had shot in the district of Ardatov, for anti-Soviet agitation, 4 peasants, and sent to a concentration camp 32 officers.

“At Arzamas were shot three champions of the Tsarist régime, and one peasant-exploiter, and 14 officers were sent to the concentration camp for anti-Soviet agitation.”

House Committee Fined

For failure to execute the orders of the dwelling section of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, the house committee at 42, Pokrovka, has been fined 20,000 rubles.

This fine is a punishment for failure to remove from the house register the name of the well-known Cadet Astrov, who disappeared three months ago.

All the movable property of Astrov has been confiscated.

The Arrest of Speculators

On September 3d members of the Section to Combat Speculation of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission arrested Citizen Pitkevich, who was trying to buy 125 food-cards at 20 rubles each. A search was made in the apartment of Pitkevich, which revealed a store of such cards bearing official stamps.

This section also arrested a certain Bosh, who was speculating in cocaine brought from Pskov.

On September 5, 1918, the Council of the People’s Commissaries ordered that the names of persons shot by order of the Extraordinary Commission should be published, with full particulars of their cases, a decision which was flouted by the Extraordinary Commission, as we shall see. The resolution of the Council of People’s Commissaries was published in the Severnaya Communa, evening edition, November 9, 1918, and reads as follows:

The Council of the People’s Commissaries, having considered the report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission, finds that under the existing conditions it is most necessary to secure the safety of the rear by means of terror. All persons belonging to the White Guard organizations or involved in conspiracies and rebellion are to be shot. Their names and the particulars of their cases are to be published.

On September 10, 1918, the Severnaya Communa published in its news columns the two following despatches:

Jaroslavl, September 9th.—In the whole of the Jaroslavl Government a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its partizans has been organized. Manifestly anti-Soviet elements are being shot; suspected persons are being interned in concentration camps; non-working sections of the population are being subjected to compulsory labor.

Tyer, September 9th.—The Extraordinary Commission has arrested and sent to concentration camps over 130 hostages from among the bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the Cadet Party, Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, former officers, well-known members of the propertied class, and policemen.

Two days later, September 12th, the same journal contained the following:

Atkarsk, September, 11th.—Yesterday martial law was proclaimed in the town. Eight counter-revolutionaries were shot.

On September 18, 1918, the Severnaya Communa published the following evidences of the wide-spread character of the terrorism which the Bolsheviki were practising:

In Sebesh a priest named Kikevitch was shot for counter-revolutionary propaganda and for saying masses for the late Nicholas Romanov.

In Astrakhan the Extraordinary Commission has shot ten Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right involved in a plot against the Soviet power. In Karamyshev a priest named Lubinoff and a deacon named Kvintil have been shot for revolutionary agitation against the decree separating the Church from the State and for an appeal to overthrow the Soviet Government. In Perm, in retaliation for the assassination of Uritzky and for the attempt on Lenin, fifty hostages from among the bourgeois classes and the White Guards were shot.

The shooting of innocent hostages is a peculiarly brutal form of terrorism. When it was practised by the Germans during the war the world reverberated with denunciation. That the Bolsheviki ever were guilty of this crime, so much more odious than anything which can be charged against czarism, has been many times denied, but the foregoing statement from one of their most influential official journals is a complete refutation of all such denials. Perm is more than a thousand miles from Petrograd, where the assassination of Uritzky occurred, and no attempt was ever made to show that the fifty hostages who were shot, or any of them, were guilty of any complicity in the assassination. It was a brutal, malignant retaliation upon innocent people for a crime of which they knew nothing. The famous “Decree No. 903,” signed by Trotsky, which called for the taking of hostages as a means of checking desertions from the Red Army, was published in Izvestia, September 18, 1918:

Decree No. 903: Seeing the increasing number of deserters, especially among the commanders, orders are issued to arrest as hostages all the members of the family one can lay hands on: father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and children.

The evening edition of Severnaya Communa, September 18, 1918, reported a meeting of the Soviet of the first district of Petrograd, stating that the following resolution had been passed:

The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being used against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and declares that every attempt on the life of any of our leaders will be answered by the proletariat by the shooting down not only of hundreds, as the case is now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers, Cadets, and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right.

On the following day, September 19th, the same journal quoted Zinoviev as saying:

To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100 millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.

Reference has already been made to the fact that the Council of the People’s Commissaries ordered that the Extraordinary Commission publish the names of all persons sentenced to be shot, with particulars of their cases, and the further fact that the instruction was ignored. It is well known that great friction developed between the Extraordinary Commissions and the Soviet power. In many places the Extraordinary Commissions not only defied the local Soviets, but actually suppressed them. Naturally, there was friction between the Soviet power and its creature. There were loud protests on the part of influential Bolsheviki, who demanded that the Chresvychaikas be curbed and restrained and that the power to inflict the death penalty be taken from them. That is why the resolution of September 5th, already quoted, was passed. Nevertheless, in practice secrecy was very generally observed. Trials took place in secret and there was no publication, in many instances, of results. Reporting a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, which took place on October 16, 1918, Izvestia, the official Bolshevist organ, contained the following in its issue of the next day:

The report of the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was read at a secret session of the Executive Committee. But the report and the discussion of it were held behind closed doors and will not be published. After a debate the doors of the Session Hall were thrown open.

From an article in the Severnaya Communa, October 17, 1918, we learn that the Extraordinary Commission “has registered 2,559 counter-revolutionary affairs and 5,000 arrests have been made”; that “at Kronstadt there have been 1,130 hostages. Only 183 people are left; 500 have been shot.”

Under the heading, “The Conference of the Extraordinary Commission,” Izvestia of October 19, 1918, printed the following paragraph:

Petrograd, October 17th.—At to-day’s meeting of the Conference of the Extraordinary Investigating Commission, Comrades Moros and Baky read reports giving an account of the activities of the Extraordinary Commission in Petrograd and Moscow. Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the district commission of Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Moscow. The total number of people arrested by the Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220. Eight hundred people were shot.

On November 5, 1918, Izvestia said:

A riot occurred in the Kirsanoff district. The rioters shouted, “Down with the Soviets.” They dissolved the Soviet and Committee of the Village Poor. The riot was suppressed by a detachment of Soviet troops. Six ringleaders were shot. The case is under examination.

The Weekly Journal of the Extraordinary Commissions to Combat Counter-Revolution is, as the name implies, the official organ in which the proclamations and reports of these Extraordinary Commissions are published. It is popularly nicknamed “The Hangmen’s Journal.” The issue of October 6, 1918 (No. 3), contains the following:

We decided to make it a real, not a paper terror. In many cities there took place, accordingly, mass shootings of hostages, and it is well that they did. In such business half-measures are worse than none.

Another issue (No. 5), dated October 20, 1918, says:

Upon the decision of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, 500 hostages were shot.

These are typical extracts: it would be possible to quote from this journal whole pages quite similar to them.

How closely the Extraordinary Commissions copied the methods of the Czar’s secret police system can be judged from a paragraph that appeared in the Severnaya Communa, October 17, 1918:

The Extraordinary Commission has organized the placing of police agents in every part of Petrograd. The Commission has issued a proclamation to the workmen exhorting them to inform the police of all they know. The bandits, both in word and action, must be forced to recognize that the revolutionary proletariat is watching them strictly.

Here, then, is a formidable array of evidence from Bolshevist sources of the very highest authority. It is only a part of the whole volume of such evidence that is available; nevertheless, it is sufficient, overwhelming, and conclusive. If we were to draw upon the official documentary testimony of the Socialist parties and groups opposed to the Bolsheviki, hundreds of pages of records of Schrecklichkeit, even more brutal than anything here quoted, could be easily compiled. Much of this testimony is as reliable and entitled to as much weight as any of the foregoing. Take, for example, the statement of the Foreign Representatives of the Russian Social Democratic Party upon the shooting of six young students arrested in Petrograd: In the New York World, March 22, 1920, Mr. Lincoln Eyre quotes “Red Executioner Peters” as saying: “We have never yet passed the sentence of death on a foreigner, although some of them richly deserved it. The few foreigners who have lost their lives in the Revolution have been killed in the course of a fight or in some such manner.” Shall we not set against that statement the signed testimony of responsible and honored spokesmen of the Russian Social Democratic Party?

Three brothers, named Genzelli, French citizens, were arrested and shot without the formality of a trial. They had been officers in the Czar’s army, and, with three young fellow-officers, Russians, were discovered at a private gathering, wearing the shoulder-straps indicative of their former military rank. This was their offense. According to a statement issued by the Foreign Representatives of the Russian Social Democratic Party, Lenin was asked at Smolny, “What is to be done with the students?” and replied, “Do with them what you like.” The whole six were shot, but it has never been possible to ascertain who issued the order for the execution.

Another example: The famous Schastny case throws a strong light upon one very important phase of the Bolshevist terror. Shall we decline to give credence to Socialists of honorable distinction, simply because they are opposed to Bolshevism? Here are two well-known Socialist writers, one French and the other Russian, long and honorably identified with the international Socialist movement. Charles Dumas, the French Socialist, from whose book[19] quotation has already been made, gives an account of the Schastny case which vividly illustrates the brutality of the Bolsheviki:

[19] La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki, par Charles Dumas, Paris, 1919.

The Schastny case is the most detestable episode in Bolshevist history. Its most repulsive feature is the parody of legality which the Bolsheviki attempt to attach to a case of wanton murder. Admiral Schastny was the commander of the Baltic Fleet and was put in command by the Bolsheviki themselves. Thanks to his efforts, the Russian war-ships were brought out of Helsingfors harbor in time to escape capture by the Germans on the eve of their invasion of Finland. In general, it was he who contributed largely to the saving of whatever there was left of the Russian fleet. His political views were so radical that even the Bolsheviki tolerated him in their service. Notwithstanding all this, he was accused of complicity in a counter-revolutionary plot and haled before a tribunal. In vain did the judge search for a shred of proof of his guilt. Only one witness appeared against him—Trotsky—who delivered an impassioned harangue full of venom and malice. Admiral Schastny implored the court to allow witnesses for the defense to testify, but the judges decreed that his request was sheer treason. Thereupon the witnesses who were prevented from appearing in court forwarded their testimony in writing, but the court decided not to read their communication. After a simulated consultation, Schastny was condemned to die—a verdict which later stirred even Krylenko, one of his accusers, to say: “That was not a death sentence—that was a summary shooting!”

The verdict was to be carried out in twenty-four hours. This aroused the ire of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, who at that time were represented in the People’s Commissariat, and they immediately forwarded, in the name of their party, a sharp protest against the official confirmation of the death sentence. The Commissaries, in reply, ordered the immediate shooting of Schastny.

Apparently Schastny was subjected to torture before his death. He was killed without witnesses, without a priest, and even his lawyer was not notified of the hour of his execution. When his family demanded the surrender of his body to them, it was denied. What, if otherwise, did the Bolsheviki fear, and why did they so assiduously conceal the body of the dead admiral? The same occurred after the execution of Fanny Royd, who shot at Lenin. There is also indisputable evidence that the Bolsheviki are resorting to torture at inquests. The assassin of Commissary Uritzky (whose family, by the way, was entirely wiped out by the Bolsheviki as a matter of principle, without even the claim that they knew anything about the planned attempt) was tortured by his executioners in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul.

In the modern revolutionary movement of Russia few men have served with greater distinction than L. Martov, and none with greater disinterestedness. His account of the Schastny trial is vibrant with the passionate hatred of tyranny and oppression characteristic of his whole career:

He was accused of conspiring against the Soviet power. Captain Schastny denied it. He asked the tribunal to hear witnesses, including Bolshevist commissaries, who had been appointed to watch him. Who was better qualified to state whether he had really conspired against the Soviet power?

The tribunal refused to hear witnesses. Refused what every court in the world, except Stolypin’s field court martials, recognized the worst criminal entitled to.

A man’s life was at stake, the life of a man who had won the love and confidence of his subordinates, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, who protested against the captain’s arrest. The life of a man who had performed a marvelous feat! He had somehow managed to take out of Helsingfors harbor all the ships of the Baltic Fleet, and had thus saved them from capture by the Finnish Whites.

It was not the enraged Finnish Whites, nor the German Imperialists, who shot this man. He was put to death by men who call themselves Russian Communists—by Messrs. Medvedeff, Bruno, Karelin, Veselovski, Peterson, members of the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal.

Captain Schastny was refused the exercise of the right to which every thief or murderer is entitled—i.e., to call in witnesses for the defense. But the witness for the prosecution was heard. This witness was Trotsky, Trotsky, who, as Commissary for War and Naval Affairs, had arrested Captain Schastny.

At the hearing of the case by the tribunal, Trotsky acted, not as a witness, but as a prosecutor. As a prosecutor he declared, “This man is guilty; you must condemn him!” And Trotsky did it after having gagged the prisoner by refusing to call in witnesses who might refute the accusations brought against him.

Not much valor is required to fight a man who has been gagged and whose hands are tied, nor much honesty or loftiness of character.

It was not a trial; it was a farce. There was no jury. The judges were officials dependent upon the authorities, receiving their salaries from the hands of Trotsky and other People’s Commissaries. And this mockery of a court passed the death sentence, which was hurriedly carried out before the people, who were profoundly shaken by this order to kill an innocent man, could do anything to save him.

Under Nicholas Romanov one could sometimes stop the carrying out of a monstrously cruel sentence and thus pull the victim out of the executioner’s hands.

Under Vladimir Ulianov this is impossible. The Bolshevist leaders slept peacefully when, under the cover of night, the first victim of their tribunal was stealthily being killed.

No one knew who murdered Schastny or how he was murdered. As under the Czars, the executioners’ names are concealed from the people. No one knows whether Trotsky himself came to the place of the execution to watch and direct it.

Perhaps he, too, slept peacefully and saw in his dreams the proletariat of the whole world hailing him as the liberator of mankind, as the leader of the universal revolution.

In the name of Socialism, in thy name, O proletariat, blind madmen and vainglorious fools staged this appalling farce of cold-blooded murder.

The evidence we have cited from Bolshevist sources proves conclusively that the Red Terror was far from being the unimportant episode it is frequently represented to have been by pro-Bolshevist writers. It effectually disposes of the assiduously circulated myth that the Extraordinary Commissions were for the most part concerned with the suppression of robbery, crimes of violence, and illegal speculation, and that only in a few exceptional instances did they use their powers to suppress anti-Bolshevist propaganda. The evidence makes it quite clear that from the early days of the Bolshevist régime until November, 1918, at least, an extraordinary degree of terrorism prevailed throughout Soviet Russia. According to a report published by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission in February of the present year, not less than 6,185 persons were executed in 1918 and 3,456 in 1919, a total of 9,641 in Moscow and Petrograd alone. Of the total number for the two years, 7,068 persons were shot for counter-revolutionary activities, 631 for crimes in office—embezzlement, corruption, and so on—217 for speculation and profiteering, and 1,204 for all other classes of crime.

That these figures understate the extent of the Red Terror is certain. In the first place, the report covers only the work of the Extraordinary Commissions of Moscow and Petrograd. The numerous District Extraordinary Commissions are not reported on. In the next place, there is reason to believe that many of the reports of the Extraordinary Commissions were falsified in order not to create too bad an impression. Quite frequently, as a matter of fact, the number of victims reported by the Chresvychaikas was less than the number actually known to have been killed. Moreover, the figures given refer only to the victims of the Extraordinary Commissions, and do not include those sentenced to death by the other revolutionary tribunals. The 9,641 executions—even if we accept the figures as full and complete—refer only to the victims of the Moscow and Petrograd Chresvychaikas, men and women put to death without anything like a trial.[20] When to these figures there shall be added the victims of all the District Extraordinary Commissions and of all the other revolutionary tribunals, the real meaning of the Red Terror will begin to appear. But even that will not give us the real measure of the Red Terror, for the simple reason that the many thousands of peasants and workmen who have been slain in the numerous uprisings, frequently taking on the character of pitched battles between armed masses and detachments of Soviet troops, are not included.

[20] The figures are taken from Russkoe Delo (Prague), March 4, 1920.

The naïve and impressionable Mr. Goode says of the judicial system of Soviet Russia: “Its chief quality would seem to be a certain simplicity. By a stroke of irony the people’s courts aim not only at punishment of evil, but also at reformation of the wrongdoer! A first offender is set free on condition that he must not fall again. Should he do so, he pays the penalty of his second offense together with that to which his first crime rendered him liable.”[21] That Mr. Goode should be ignorant of the fact that such humane measures were not unknown or uncommon in the administration of justice by the ordinary criminal courts under czarism is perhaps not surprising. It is somewhat surprising, however, that he should write as though the Soviet courts have made a distinct advance in penology. Has he never heard of the First Offenders Act in his own country, or of our extensive system of suspended sentences, parole, probation, and so on? It is not necessary to deny Mr. Goode’s statement, or even to question it. As a commentary upon it, the following article from Severnaya Communa, December 4, 1918, is sufficient:

[21] Bolshevism at Work, by William T. Goode, pp. 96-97.

It is impossible to continue silent. It has constantly been brought to the knowledge of the Viborg Soviet (Petrograd) of the terrible state of affairs existing in the city prisons. That people all the time are dying there of hunger; that people are detained six and eight months without examination, and that in many cases it is impossible to learn why they have been arrested, owing to officials being changed, departments closed, and documents lost. In order to confirm, or otherwise, these rumors, the Soviet decided to send on the 3d November a commission consisting of the president of the Soviet, the district medical officer, and district military commissar, to visit and report on the “Kresti” prison. Comrades! What they saw and what they heard from the imprisoned is impossible to describe. Not only were all rumors confirmed, but conditions were actually found much worse than had been stated. I was pained and ashamed. I myself was imprisoned under czardom in that same prison. Then all was clean, and prisoners had clean linen twice a month. Now, not only are prisoners left without clean linen, but many are even without blankets, and, as in the past, for a trifling offense they are placed in solitary confinement in cold, dark cells. But the most terrible sights we saw were in the sick-bays. Comrades, there we saw living dead who hardly had strength enough to whisper their complaints that they were dying of hunger. In one ward, among the sick a corpse had lain for several hours, whose neighbors managed to murmur, “Of hunger he died, and soon of hunger we shall all die.” Comrades, among them are many who are quite young, who wish to live and see the sunshine. If we really possess a workmen’s government such things should not be.

Following the example of Mr. Arthur Ransome, many pro-Bolshevist writers have assured us that after 1918 the Red Terror practically ceased to exist. Mr. Ransome makes a great deal of the fact that in February, 1919, the Central Executive Committee of the People’s Commissaries “definitely limited the powers of the Extraordinary Commission.”[22] Although he seems to have attended the meeting at which this was done, and talks of “the bitter struggle within the party for and against the almost dictatorial powers of the Extraordinary Committee,” he appears not to have understood what was done. Perhaps it ought not to be expected that this writer of fairy-stories who so naïvely confesses his ignorance of “economics” should comprehend the revolutionary struggle in Russia. Be that how it may, he does not state accurately what happened. He says: “Therefore the right of sentencing was removed from the Extraordinary Commission; but if, through unforeseen circumstances, the old conditions should return, they intended that the dictatorial powers of the Commission should be returned to it until those conditions had ceased.” Actually the decision was that the power to inflict the death penalty should be taken from the Extraordinary Commissions, except where and when martial law existed. When Krylenko, Diakonov, and others protested against the outrage of permitting the Extraordinary Commissions to execute people without proof of their guilt, Izvestia answered in words which clearly reveal the desperate and brutal spirit of Bolshevism: “If among one hundred executed one was guilty, this would be satisfactory and would sanction the action of the Commission.”

[22] Russia in 1919, by Arthur Ransome, pp. 108-114.

As a matter of fact, the resolution which, according to Mr. Ransome, “definitely limited the powers of the Extraordinary Commission,” was an evasion of the issue. Not only was martial law in existence in the principal cities, and not only was it easy to declare martial law anywhere in Soviet Russia, but it was a very easy matter for accused persons to be brought to Moscow or Petrograd and there sentenced by the Extraordinary Commission. This was actually done in many cases after the February decision. Mr. Ransome quotes Dzerzhinsky to the effect that criminality had been greatly decreased by the Extraordinary Commissions—in Moscow by 80 per cent.!—and that there was now, February, 1919, no longer danger of “large scale revolts.” What a pity that the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission did not consult Mr. Ransome before publishing its report in February of this year! That report shows, first, that in 1919 the activities of the Extraordinary Commission were much greater than in 1918; second, that the number of arrests made in 1919 was 80,662 as against 46,348 in 1918; third, that in 1919 the arrests of “ordinary criminals” nearly equaled the total number of arrests made in 1918 for all causes, including counter-revolutionary activity, speculation, crimes in office, and general crime. The figures given in the report are: arrests for ordinary crimes only in 1919, 39,957; arrests for all causes in 1918, 47,348. When it is remembered that all the other revolutionary tribunals were active throughout this period, how shall we reconcile this record of the Extraordinary Commission with Mr. Ransome’s account? The fact is that crime steadily increased throughout 1919, and that at the very time Mr. Ransome was in Moscow conditions there were exceedingly bad, as the report of arrests and convictions shows.

Terrorism continued in Russia throughout 1919, the rose-colored reports of specially coached correspondents to the contrary notwithstanding. There was, indeed, a period in the early summer when the rigors of the Red Terror were somewhat relaxed. This seems to have been connected with the return of the bourgeois specialists to the factories and the officers of the Czar’s army to positions of importance in the Red Army. This could not fail to lessen the persecution of the bourgeoisie, at least for a time. In July the number of arrests made by the Extraordinary Commission was small, only 4,301; in November it reached the high level of 14,673. To those who claim that terrorism did not exist in Russia during 1919, the best answer is—this very illuminating official Bolshevist report.

On January 10, 1919, Izvestia published an article by Trotsky in which the leader of the military forces of the Soviet Republic dealt with the subject of terrorism. This was, of course, in advance of the meeting which Mr. Ransome so completely misunderstood. Trotsky said:

By its terror against saboteurs the proletariat does not at all say, “I shall wipe out all of you and get along without specialists.” Such a program would be a program of hopelessness and ruin. While dispersing, arresting, and shooting saboteurs and conspirators, the proletariat says, “I shall break your will, because my will is stronger than yours, and I shall force you to serve me.” Terror as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working-class is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the will of the Intelligentsia, pacify the professional men of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the fields of their specialties.

On April 2, 1919, Izvestia published a proclamation by Dzerzhinsky, president of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, warning that “demonstrations and appeals of any kind will be suppressed without pity”:

In view of the discovery of a conspiracy which aimed to organize an armed demonstration against the Soviet authority by means of explosions, destruction of railways, and fires, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission warns that demonstrations and appeals of any kind will be suppressed without pity. In order to save Petrograd and Moscow from famine, in order to save hundreds and thousands of innocent victims, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission will be obliged to take the most severe measures of punishment against all who will appeal for White Guard demonstration or for attempts at armed uprising.

[Signed] F. Dzerzhinsky, President of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission.

The Severnaya Communa of April 2, 1919, contains an official report of the shooting by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission of a printer named Michael Ivanovsky “for the printing of proclamations issued by the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left.” Later several Socialists-Revolutionists, among them Soronov, were shot “for having proclamations and appeals in their possession.”

On May 1, 1919, the Izvestia of Odessa, official organ of the Soviet in that city, published the following account of the infliction of the death penalty for belonging to an organization. It said:

The Special Branch of the Staff of the Third Army has uncovered the existence of an organization, the Union of the Russian People, now calling itself “the Russian Union for the People and the State.” The entire committee was arrested.

After giving the names of those arrested the account continued:

The case of those arrested was transferred to the Military Tribunal of the Soviet of the Third Army. Owing to the obvious activity of the members of the Union directed against the peaceful population and the conquests of the Revolution, the Revolutionary Tribunal decided to sentence the above-mentioned persons to death. The verdict was carried out on the same night.

On May 6, 1919, Severnaya Communa published the following order from the Defense Committee:

Order No. 8 of the Defense Committee. The Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution is to take measures to suppress all forms of official crime, and not to hesitate at shooting the guilty. The Extraordinary Committee is bound to indict not only those who are guilty of active crime, but also those who are guilty of inaction of authority or condonement of crime, bearing in mind that the punishment must be increased in proportion to the responsibility attached to the post filled by the guilty official.

On May 14, 1919, Izvestia published an article by a Bolshevist official describing what happened in the Volga district as the Bolsheviki advanced. This article is important because it calls attention to a form of terrorism not heretofore mentioned: it will be remembered that in the latter part of 1918 the Bolsheviki introduced the system of rationing out food upon class lines, giving to the Red Army three times as much food per capita as to the average of the civil population, and dividing the latter into categories. The article under consideration shows very clearly how this system was made an instrument of terrorism:

Instructions were received from Moscow to forbid free trade, and to introduce the class system of feeding. After much confusion, this made the population starve in a short time, and rebel against the food dictatorship.... “Was it necessary to introduce the class system of feeding into the Volga district so haphazardly?” asks the writer. “Oh no. There was enough bread ready for shipment in that region, and in many places it was rotting, because of the lack of railroad facilities. The class-feeding system did not increase the amount of bread.... It did create, together with the inefficient policy, and the lack of a distribution system, a state of starvation, which provoked dissatisfaction.”

Throughout 1919 the official Bolshevist press continued to publish accounts of the arrest of hostages. Thus Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workmen’s and Red Army Deputies (No. 185), August 16, 1919, published an official order by the acting Commandant of the fortified district of Petrograd, a Bolshevist official named Kozlovsky. The two closing paragraphs of this order follow:

I declare that all guilty of arson, also all those who have knowledge of the same and fail to report the culprits to the authorities, will be shot forthwith.

I warn all that in the event of repeated cases of arson I will not hesitate to adopt extreme measures, including the shooting of the bourgeoisie’s hostages, in view of the fact that all the White Guards’ plots directed against the proletarian state must be regarded not as the crime of individuals, but as the offense of the entire enemy class.

That hostages were actually shot, and not merely held under arrest, is clearly stated in the Severnaya Communa, March 11, 1919:

By order of the Military Revolutionary Committee of Petrograd several officers were shot for spreading untrue rumors that the Soviet authority had lost the confidence of the people.

All relatives of the officers of the 86th Infantry Regiment (which deserted to the Whites) were shot.

The same journal published, September 2, 1919, the following decree of the War Council of the Petrograd Fortified District:

It has been ascertained that on the 17th of August there was maliciously cut down in the territory of the Ovtzenskaya Colony about 200 sazhensks of telegraph and telephone wire. In consequence of the above-mentioned criminal offense, the War Council of the Petrograd Fortified District has ordered—

(1) To impose on the Ovtzenskaya Colony a fine of 500,000 rubles; (2) the guarding of the intactness of the lines to be made incumbent upon the population under reciprocal responsibility; and (3) hostages to be taken.

Note: The decree of the War Council was carried out on the 30th of August. The following hostages have been taken: Languinen, P. M.; Languinen, Ya. P.; Finck, F. Kh.; Ikert, E. S.; Luneff, F. L.; Dalinguer, P. M.; Dalinguer, P. Ya.; Raw, Ya. I.; Shtraw, V. M.; Afanassieff, L. K.

This drastic order was issued and carried out nearly a month before the district was declared to be in a state of siege.

The Krasnaya Gazeta, November 4, 1919, published a significant list of Red Army officers who had deserted to the Whites and of the retaliatory arrests of innocent members of their families. Mothers, brothers, sisters, and wives were arrested and punished for the acts of their relatives in deserting the Red Army. The list follows:

1. Khomutov, D. C.—brother and mother arrested.

2. Piatnitzky, D. A.—mother, sister, and brother arrested.

3. Postnov—mother and sister arrested.

4. Agalakov, A. M.—wife, father, and mother arrested.

5. Haratkviech, B.—wife and sister arrested.

6. Kostylev, V. I.—wife and brother arrested.

7. Smyrnov, A. A.—mother, sister, and father arrested.

8. Chebykin—wife arrested.

In September, 1919, practically all the Bolshevist papers published the following order, signed by Trotsky:

I have ordered several times that officers with indefinite political convictions should not be appointed to military posts, especially when the families of such officers live on the territory controlled by enemies of the Soviet Power. My orders are not being carried out. In one of our armies an officer whose family lives on the territory controlled by Kolchak was appointed as a commander of a division. Consequently, this commander betrayed his division and went over, together with his staff, to the enemy. Once more I order the Military Commissaries to make a thorough cleansing of all Commanding Staffs. In case an officer goes over to the enemy, his family should be made to feel the consequences of his betrayal.

Early in November, 1919, the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission announced that by its orders forty-two persons had been shot. A number of these were ordinary criminals; several others had been guilty of selling cocaine. Among the other victims we find one Maximovich, “for organizing a mass desertion of Red Army soldiers to the Whites”; one Shramchenko, “for participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy”; E. K. Kaulbars, “for spying”; Ploozhnikoff and Demeshchenke, “for exciting the politically unconscious masses and hounding them on against the Soviet Power.”

In considering this terribly impressive accumulation of evidence from the Bolshevist press we must bear in mind that it represents not the criticism of a free press, but only that measure of truth which managed to find its way through the most drastic censorship ever known in any country at any time. Not only were the organs of the anti-Bolshevist Socialists suppressed, but even the Soviet press was not free to publish the truth. Trotsky himself made vigorous protest in the Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee (No. 13) against the censorship which “prevented the publication of the news that Perm was taken by the White Guards.” A congress of Soviet journalists was held at Moscow, in May, 1919, and made protest against the manner in which they were restrained from criticizing Soviet misrule. The Izvestia of the Provincial Executive Committee, May 8, 1919, quotes from this protest as follows:

The picture of the provincial Soviet press is melancholy enough. We journalists are particularly “up against it” when we endeavor to expose the shortcomings of the local Soviet rule and the local Soviet officials. Immediately we are met with threats of arrest and banishment, threats which are often carried out. In Kaluga a Soviet editor was nearly shot for a remark about a drunken communist.

Under such conditions as are indicated in this protest the evidence we have cited was published. What the record would have been if only there was freedom for the opposition press can only be imagined. In the light of such a mass of authoritative evidence furnished by the Bolsheviki themselves, of what use is it for casual visitors to Russia, like Mr. Goode and Mr. Lansbury, for example, to attempt to throw dust into our eyes and make it appear that acts of terrorism and tyranny are no more common in Russia than in countries like England, France, and America? And how, in the light of such testimony, shall we explain the ecstatic praise of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki by men and women who call themselves Socialists and Liberals, and who profess to love freedom? It is true that the abolition of the death penalty has now been decreed, the decree going into effect on January 22, 1920. Lenin has declared that this date marks the passing of the policy of blood, and that only a renewal of armed intervention by the Allies can force a return to it. We shall see. This is not the first time the death penalty has been “abolished” by decree during the Bolshevist régime. Some of us remember that on November 7, 1918, the Central Executive Committee in Moscow decreed the abolition of the death penalty and a general amnesty. After that murder, by order of the Extraordinary Commissions, went on worse than before.[23]

[23] As proofs of these pages are being revised, word comes that the death penalty has been revived—Vide London Times, May 26, 1920.

In Odessa an investigation was made into the workings of the Chresvychaika and a list of fifteen classes of crimes for which the death penalty had been imposed and carried out was published. The list enumerated various offenses, ranging from espionage and counter-revolutionary agitation to “dissoluteness.” The fifteenth and last class on the list read, “Reasons unknown.” Perhaps these words sum up the only answer to our last question.

VIII
INDUSTRY UNDER SOVIET CONTROL

For the student of the evolution of Bolshevism in Russia there is, perhaps, no task more difficult than to unravel the tangled skein of the history of the first few weeks after the coup d’état. Whoever attempts to set forth the development of events during those weeks in an ordered and consecutive narrative, and to present an accurate, yet intelligible, account of the conditions that prevailed, must toil patiently through a bewildering snarled mass of conflicting testimony, charges and counter-charges, claims and counter-claims. Statements concerning apparently simple matters of fact, made by witnesses whose competence and probity are not to be lightly questioned, upon events of which they were witnesses, are simply irreconcilable. Moreover, there is a perfect welter of sweeping generalizations and an almost complete lack of such direct and definite information, statistical and other, as can readily be found relating to both the earlier and the later stages of the Revolution.

Let us first set down the facts concerning which there is substantial agreement on the part of the partizans of the Bolsheviki and the various factions opposed to them, ranging from the Constitutional-Democrats to such factions as the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left and the “Internationalist” section of the Menshevist Social Democrats, both of which were quite closely allied to the Bolsheviki in sympathy and in theory. At the time when the Bolsheviki raised the cry, “All power to the Soviets!” in October, 1917, arrangements were well under way for the election, upon the most democratic basis imaginable, of a great representative constitutional convention, the Constituent Assembly. Not only had the Bolsheviki nominated their candidates and entered upon an electoral campaign in advocacy of their program; not only were they, in common with all other parties, pledged to the holding of the Constituent Assembly; much more important is the fact that they professed to be, and were by many regarded as, the special champions and defenders of the Constituent Assembly, solicitous above all else for its convocation and its integrity. From June onward Trotsky, Kamenev, and other Bolshevist leaders had professed to fear only that the Provisional Government would either refuse to convoke the Constituent Assembly or in some manner prevent its free action. No small part of the influence possessed by the Bolsheviki immediately prior to the overthrow of Kerensky was due to the fact that, far from being suspected of hostility to the Constituent Assembly, they were widely regarded as its most vigorous and determined upholders. To confirm that belief the Council of the People’s Commissaries issued this, its first decree:

In the name of the Government of the Russian Republic, chosen by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies with participation of peasant deputies, the Council of People’s Commissars decrees:

1. The elections for the Constituent Assembly shall take place at the date determined upon—November 12th.

2. All electoral commissions, organs of local self-government, Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, and soldiers’ organizations on the front should make every effort to assure free and regular elections at the date determined upon.

In the name of the Government of the Russian Republic,

The President of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vladimir Ulianov—Lenin.

That was in November, 1917—and the Constituent Assembly has not yet been convoked. In Pravda, December 26, 1917, Lenin published a series of propositions to show that the elections, which had taken place since the Bolsheviki assumed power, did not give a clear indication of the real voice of the masses! The elections had gone heavily against the Bolsheviki, and that fact doubtless explains Lenin’s disingenuous argument. Later on Lenin was able to announce that no assembly elected by the masses by universal suffrage could be accepted! “The Soviet Republic repudiates the hypocrisy of formal equality of all human beings,” he wrote in his Letter to American Workmen.

It is quite certain that the political power and influence of the Soviets was never so small at any time since the birth of the Revolution in March as it was when the Bolsheviki raised the cry, “All power to the Soviets!” The reasons for this, if not obvious, are easily intelligible: the mere facts that the election of a thoroughly democratic constitutional convention at an early date was assured, and that the electoral campaign had already begun, were by themselves sufficient to cause many of those actively engaged in the revolutionary struggle to turn their interest from the politics of the Soviets to the greater political issues connected with the campaign for the Constituent Assembly elections. There were other factors at work lessening the popular interest in and, consequently, the political influence of, the Soviets. In the first place, the hectic excitement of the early stages of the Revolution had passed off, together with its novelty, and life had assumed a tempo nearer normal; in the second place, city Dumas and the local Zemstvos, which had been elected during the summer, upon a thoroughly democratic basis, were functioning, and, naturally, absorbing much energy which had hitherto been devoted to the Soviets.

Concerning these things there is little room for dispute. The Izvestia of the Soviets again and again called attention to the waning power and influence of the Soviets, always cheerfully and with wise appreciation. On September 28, 1917, it said:

At last a truly democratic government, born of the will of all classes of the Russian people, the first rough form of the future liberal parliamentary régime, has been formed. Ahead of us is the Constituent Assembly, which will solve all questions of fundamental law, and whose composition will be essentially democratic. The function of the Soviets is at an end, and the time is approaching when they must retire, with the rest of the revolutionary machinery, from the stage of a free and victorious people, whose weapons shall hereafter be the peaceful ones of political action.

On October 23, 1917, Izvestia published an important article dealing with this subject, saying:

We ourselves are being called the “undertakers” of our own organization. In reality, we are the hardest workers in constructing the new Russia.... When autocracy and the entire bureaucratic régime fell, we set up the Soviets as barracks in which all the democracy could find temporary shelter. Now, in place of barracks we are building the permanent edifice of a new system, and naturally the people will gradually leave the barracks for the more comfortable quarters.

Dealing with the lessening activity of the local Soviets, scores of which had ceased to exist, the Soviet organ said:

This is natural, for the people are coming to be interested in the more permanent organs of legislation—the municipal Dumas and the Zemstvos.

Continuing, the article said:

In the important centers of Petrograd and Moscow, where the Soviets were best organized, they did not take in all the democratic elements.... The majority of the intellectuals did not participate, and many workers also; some of the workers because they were politically backward, others because the center of gravity for them was in their unions.... We cannot deny that these organizations are firmly united with the masses, whose every-day needs are better served by them....

That the local democratic administrations are being energetically organized is highly important. The city Dumas are elected by universal suffrage, and in purely local matters have more authority than the Soviets. Not a single democrat will see anything wrong in this....

... Elections to the municipalities are being conducted in a better and more democratic way than the elections to the Soviets.... All classes are represented in the municipalities.... And as soon as the local self-governments begin to organize life in the municipalities, the rôle of the local Soviets naturally ends....

... There are two factors in the falling off of interest in the Soviets. The first we may attribute to the lowering of political interest in the masses; the second to the growing effort of provincial and local governing bodies to organize the building of new Russia.... The more the tendency lies in this latter direction the sooner disappears the significance of the Soviets....

It seems to be hardly less certain, though less capable of complete demonstration, perhaps, that the influence of the Soviets in the factories was also on the wane. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that there was an increasing sense of responsibility and a lessening of the dangerous recklessness of the earlier stages of the Revolution. The factory Soviets in the time of the Provisional Government varied so greatly in their character and methods that it is rather difficult to accurately represent them in a brief description. Many of them were similar, in practice, to the shop meetings of the trades-unions; others more nearly resembled the Whitley Councils of England. There were still others, however, which asserted practically complete ownership of the factories and forced the real owners out.

On March 20, 1917, Izvestia said:

If any owner of an undertaking who is dissatisfied with the demands made by the workmen refuses to carry on the business, then the workmen must resolutely insist on the management of the work being given over into their hands, under the supervision of the Commissary of the Soviets.

That is precisely what happened in many cases. We must not forget that the Bolsheviki did not introduce Soviet control of industry. That they did so is a very general belief, but, like so many other beliefs concerning Russia, it is erroneous. The longest trial of the Soviet control of industry took place under the régime of the Provisional Government, in the pre-Bolshevist period. Many of the worst evils of the system were developed during that period, though as a result of Bolshevist propaganda and intrigue to a large degree.

Industrial control by the workers, during the pre-Bolshevist period of the Revolution, and especially during the spring and early summer, was principally carried on by means of four distinct types of organization, to all of which the general term “Soviet” was commonly applied. Perhaps a brief description of each of these types will help to interpret the history of this period:

(1) Factory Councils. These may be called the true factory Soviets. They existed in most factories, large and small alike, their size varying in proportion to the number of workers employed. In a small factory the Council might consist of seven or nine members; in a large factory the number might be sixty. The latter figure seems rarely to have been exceeded. Most of the Councils were elected by the workers directly, upon a basis of equal suffrage, every wage-worker, whether skilled or unskilled, male or female, being entitled to vote. Boys and girls were on the same footing as their elders in this respect. Generally the voting was done at mass-meetings, held during working-hours, the ordinary method being a show of hands. While there were exceptions to this rule, it was rare that foremen, technical supervisors, or other persons connected with the management were permitted to vote. In some cases the Council was elected indirectly, that is to say, it was selected by a committee, called the Workshop Committee. The Factory Council was not elected for any specified period of time, as a rule, and where a definite period for holding office was fixed, the right of recall was so easily invoked, and was so freely exercised, that the result was the same as if there had been no such provision. As a result of the nervous tension of the time, the inevitable reaction against long-continued repression, there was much friction at first and recalls and re-elections were common. The present writer has received several reports, from sources of indubitable authority, of factories in which two, and even three, Council elections were held in less than one month! Of course, this is an incidental fact, ascribable to the environment rather than to the institution. The Councils held their meetings during working-hours, the members receiving full pay for the time thus spent. Usually the Council would hold a daily meeting, and it was not uncommon for the meetings to last all day, and even into the evening—overtime being paid for the extra hours. Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Socialist Minister of State—a most sympathetic observer—is authority for the statement that in one establishment in Petrograd, employing 8,000 skilled workers, the Factory Council, composed of forty-three men who each earned sixteen rubles per day of eight hours, sat regularly eight hours per day.[24]

[24] Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution, by Emile Vandervelde, p. 71.

To describe fully the functions of the Factory Councils would require many pages, so complex were they. Only a brief synopsis of their most important rights and duties is possible here. Broadly speaking, they possessed the right of control over everything, but no responsibility for successful management and administration. In their original form, and where the owners still remained at the head, the Councils did not interfere in such matters as the securing of raw materials, for example. They did not interest themselves in the financial side of the undertaking, at least not to see that its operations were profitable. Their concern was to control the working conditions and to “guard the interests of the workers.” They sometimes assumed the right to refuse to do work upon contracts of which they disapproved. Jealous in their exercise of the right to control, they would assume no responsibility for direction. At the same time, however, they asserted—and generally enforced—their right to determine everything relating to the engaging or dismissal of workers, the fixing of wages, hours of labor, rules of employment, and so on, as well as the selection of foremen, superintendents, technical experts, and even the principal managers of the establishments. Professor Ross quotes the statement made by the spokesman of the employers at Baku, adding that the men did strike and win:

They ask that we grant leave on pay for a certain period to a sick employee. Most of us are doing that already. They stipulate that on dismissal an employee shall receive a month’s pay for every year he has been in our service. Agreed. They demand that no workman be dismissed without the consent of a committee representing the men. That’s all right. They require that we take on new men from a list submitted by them. That’s reasonable enough. They know far better than we can whether or not a fellow is safe to work alongside of in a dangerous business like ours. But when they demand control over the hiring and firing of all our employees—foremen, superintendents, and managers as well as workmen—we balk. We don’t see how we can yield that point without losing the control essential to discipline and efficiency. Yet if we don’t sign to-night, they threaten to strike.[25]

[25] Russia in Upheaval, by E. A. Ross, p. 277.

(2) Workshop Committees. This term was sometimes used instead of “Factory Councils,” particularly in the case of smaller factories, and much confusion in the published reports of the time may be attributed to this fact. Nothing is gained by an arbitrary division of Factory Councils on the basis of size, since there was no material difference in functions or methods. The term “Workshop Committee” was, however, applied to a different organization entirely, which was to be found in practically every large industrial establishment, along with, and generally subordinated to, the Factory Council. These committees usually carried out the policies formulated by the superior Factory Councils. They did the greater part of the work usually performed by a foreman, and their functions were sometimes summed up in the term “collective foremanship.” They decided who should be taken on and who employed; they decided when fines or other forms of punishment should be imposed for poor work, sabotage, and other offenses. The foreman was immediately responsible to them. Appeals from the decisions of these committees might be made to the Councils, either by the owners or the workers. Like the Councils, the committees were elected by universal, equal voting at open meetings; indeed, in some cases, only the Workshop Committee was so elected, being charged with the task of selecting the Factory Council.

(3) Wages Committees. These committees existed in the large establishments, as a rule, especially those in which the labor employed was of many kinds and varying degrees of skill. Like all other factory organizations, they were elected by vote of the employees. Responsible to the Factory Councils, though independently elected, the Wages Committees classified all workers into their respective wage-groups, fixed prices for piece-work, and so on. They could, and frequently did, decide these matters independently, without consulting the management at all.

(4) Committees of Arbitration and Adjustment. These seem to have been less common than the other committees already described. Elected solely by the workers, in the same manner as the other bodies described, they were charged with hearing and settling disputes arising, no matter from what cause. They dealt with the charges brought by individual employees, whether against the employers or against fellow-employees; they dealt, also, with complaints by the workers as a whole against conditions, with disputes over wages, and so on. In all cases of disputes between workers and employers the decision was left entirely to the elected representatives of the workers.

The foregoing gives a very fair idea of the proletarian machinery set up in the factories under the Provisional Government. In one factory might be found operating these four popularly elected representative bodies, all of them holding meetings in working-hours and being paid for the time consumed; all of them involving more or less frequent elections. No matter how moderate and restrained the description may be, the impression can hardly fail to be one of appalling wastefulness and confusion. As a matter of fact, there is very general agreement that in practice, after the first few weeks, what seems a grotesque system worked reasonably well, or, at least, far better than its critics had believed possible. Of course, there was much overlapping of functions; there was much waste. On the other hand, wasteful strikes were avoided and the productive processes were maintained. Of course, the experiment was made under abnormal conditions. Not very much in the way of certain conclusion can be adduced from it. Opponents of the Soviet theory and system will always point to the striking decline of productive efficiency and say that it was the inevitable result of the Soviet control; believers in the theory and the system will say that the inefficiency would have been greater but for the Soviets.

That there was an enormous decline in productive efficiency during the early part of the period of Soviet control cannot be disputed. The evidence of this is too overwhelmingly conclusive. As early as April, 1917, serious reports of this decline began to be made. It was said that in some factories the per capita daily production was less than a third of what it was a few weeks before. The air was filled with charges that the workers were loafing and malingering. On April 11th Tseretelli denounced these “foul slanders” at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet and was wildly cheered. Nevertheless, one fact stood out—namely, the sharp decline in productivity in almost every line. There were not a few cases in which the owners and highly trained managers were forced out entirely and their places filled by wholly incompetent men possessing no technical training at all. An extreme illustration is quoted by Ross:[26] In a factory in southern Russia the workers forced the owner out and then undertook to run the plant themselves. When they had used up the small supply of raw material they had they began to sell the machines out of the works in order to get money to buy more raw material; then, when they obtained the raw material, they lacked the machinery for working it up. Of course, the incident is simply an illustration of extreme folly, merely. Men misuse safety razors to commit suicide with in extreme cases, and the misuse of Soviet power in isolated cases proves little of value. On the other hand, the case cited by Ross is only an extreme instance of a very general practice. Many factories were taken over in the same way, after the competent directors had been driven out, and were brought to ruin by the Soviets. It was a general practice or, at any rate, a common one, which drew from Skobelev, Minister of Labor, this protest, which Izvestia published at the beginning of May:

[26] Ross, op. cit., p. 283.

The seizure of factories makes workmen without any experience in management, and without working capital, temporarily masters of such undertakings, but soon leads to their being closed down, or to the subjugation of the workmen to a still harder taskmaster.

On July 10th Skobelev issued another stirring appeal to the workers, pointing out that “the success of the struggle against economic devastation depends upon the productivity of labor, and pointing out the danger of the growing anarchy. The appeal is too long to quote in its entirety, but the following paragraphs give a good idea of it, and, at the same time, indicate how serious the demoralization of the workers had become:

Workmen, comrades, I appeal to you at a critical period of the Revolution. Industrial output is rapidly declining, the quantity of necessary manufactured articles is diminishing, the peasants are deprived of industrial supplies, we are threatened with fresh food complications and increasing national destitution.

The Revolution has swept away the oppression of the police régime, which stifled the labor movement, and the liberated working-class is enabled to defend its economic interests by the mere force of its class solidarity and unity. They possess the freedom of strikes, they have professional unions, which can adapt the tactics of a mass economic movement, according to the conditions of the present economic crisis.

However, at present purely elemental tendencies are gaining the upper hand over organized movement, and without regard to the limited resources of the state, and without any reckoning as to the state of the industry in which you are employed, and to the detriment of the proletarian class movement, you sometimes obtain an increase of wages which disorganizes the enterprise and drains the exchequer.

Frequently the workmen refuse all negotiations and by menace of violence force the gratification of their demands. They use violence against officials and managers, dismiss them of their own accord, interfere arbitrarily with the technical management, and even attempt to take the whole enterprise into their own hands.

Workmen, comrades, our socialistic ideals shall be attained not by the seizure of separate factories, but by a high standard of economic organization, by the intelligence of the masses, and the wide development of the country’s productive forces.... Workmen, comrades, remember not only your rights, but also your duties; think not only of your wishes, but of the possibilities of granting them, not only of your own good, but of the sacrifices necessary for the consolidation of the Revolution and the triumph of our ideals.

In July the per capita output in the munition-works of Petrograd was reported as being only 25 per cent. of what it was at the beginning of the year. In August Kornilov told the Moscow Democratic Conference that the productivity of the workers in the great gun and shell plants had declined 60 per cent., as compared with the three months immediately prior to the Revolution; that the decline at the aeroplane-factories was still greater, not less than 70 per cent. No denial of this came from the representatives of the Soviets. In Petrograd, Nijni-Novgorod, Saratov, and other large centers there was an estimated general decline of production of between 60 and 70 per cent.

The representatives of the workers, the Soviet leaders, said that the decline, which they admitted, was due to causes over which the Soviets had no control to a far greater degree than to any conscious or unconscious sabotage by the workers. They admitted that many of the workers had not yet got used to freedom; that they interpreted it as meaning freedom from work. There was a very natural reaction, they said, against the tremendous pace which had been maintained under the old régime. They insisted, however, that this temporary failing of the workers was a minor cause only, and that far greater causes were (1) deterioration of machinery; (2) withdrawal for military reasons and purposes of many of the most capable and efficient workers; (3) shortage and poor quality of materials.

There is room here for an endless controversy, and the present writer does not intend to enter into it. He is convinced that the three causes named by the Soviet defenders were responsible for a not inconsiderable proportion of the decline in productivity, but that the Soviets and the impaired morale of the workers were the main causes. In the mining of coal and iron, the manufacture of munitions, locomotives, textiles, metal goods, paper, and practically everything else, the available reports show an enormous increase in production cost per unit, accompanied by a very great decline in average per capita production. It is true that there were exceptions to this rule, that there were factories in which, after the first few days of the revolutionary excitation in March, production per capita rose and was maintained at a high level for a long time—until the Bolsheviki secured ascendancy in those factories, in fact. The writer has seen and examined numerous reports indicating this, but prefers to confine himself to the citation of such reports as come with the authority of responsible and trusted witnesses.

Such a report is that of the Social Democrat, the workman Menshekov, concerning the Ijevski factory with its 40,000 workmen, and of the sales department of which he was made manager when full Soviet control was established. In that position he had access to the books showing production for the years 1916, 1917, and 1918, and the figures show that under the Provisional Government production rose, but that it declined with the rise of Bolshevism among the workers and declined more rapidly when the Bolsheviki gained control. Such another witness is the trades-unionist and Social Democrat, Oupovalov, concerning production in the great Sormovo Works, in the Province of Nijni-Novgorod, which during the war employed 20,000 persons. Not only was production maintained, but there was even a marked improvement. The writer has been permitted to examine the documentary evidence in the possession of these men and believes that it fully confirms and justifies the claim that, where there was an earnest desire on the part of the workers to maintain and even to improve production, this proved possible under Soviet control.

The fact seems quite clear to the writer (though perhaps impossible to prove by an adequate volume of concrete evidence) that the impaired morale of the workers which resulted in lessened production was due to two principal causes, namely, Bolshevist propaganda and the lack of an intelligent understanding on the part of masses of workers who were not mentally or morally ready for the freedom which was suddenly thrust upon them. The condition of these latter is readily understood and appreciated. The disciplines and self-compulsions of freedom are not learned in a day. When we reflect upon the conditions that obtained under czarism, we can hardly wonder that so many of the victims of those conditions should have mistaken license for liberty, or that they should have failed to see the vital connection between their own honest effort in the shop and the success of the Revolution they were celebrating.

All through the summer the Bolsheviki were carrying on their propaganda among the workers in the shops as well as among the troops at the front. Just as they preached desertion to the soldiers, so they preached sabotage and advocated obstructive strikes among the workers in the factories. This was a logical thing for them to do; they wanted to break up the military machine in order to compel peace, and a blow at that machine was as effective when struck in the factory as anywhere else. For men who were preaching mass desertion and mutiny at the front, sabotage in the munition-works at the rear, or in the transportation service on which the army depended, was a logical policy. It is as certain as anything can be that the Bolshevist agitation was one of the primary causes of the alarming decrease in the production during the régime of the Provisional Government. On the other hand, the Socialist leaders who supported the Provisional Government waged a vigorous propaganda among the workers, urging them to increase production. Where they made headway, in general there production was maintained, or the decline was relatively small. The counterpart of that patriotism which Kerensky preached among the troops at the front with such magnificent energy was preached among the factory-workers. Here is what Jandarmov says:

It is a mistake to suppose that output was interfered with, for, to do our working-class justice, nowhere was work delayed for more than two days, and in many factories this epoch-making development was taken without a pause in the ordinary routine.

I cannot too strongly insist upon the altogether unanimous idealism of those early days. There was not an ugly streak in that beautiful dawn where now the skies are glowering and red and frightful. I say that output was speeded up. I, as chairman of the first Soviet,[27] assure you that we received fifty-seven papers from workmen containing proposals for increasing the efficiency of the factory; and that spirit lasted three months, figures of output went well up and old closed-down factories were reopened. New Russia was bursting with energy—the sluice-gates of our character were unlocked.

[27] That is, “first Soviet” at the Lisvinsk factory, about seventy miles from Perm.

There must have been a great deal of that exalted feeling among the intelligent working-men of Russia in those stirring times. No one who has known anything of the spiritual passion, of sacrificial quality, which has characterized the Russian revolutionary movement can doubt this. Of course, Jandarmov is referring to the early months before Bolshevism began to spread in that district. Then there was a change. It was the old, old story of rapidly declining production:

But after the first few months the workers as a whole began to fall under the spell of catchwords and stock phrases. Agitation began among the lower workers. Bolshevism started in the ranks of unskilled labor. They clamored for the reduction of hours and down went the output. The defenders of the idea of the shortest possible working-day were the same men who afterward turned out very fiends of Bolshevism and every disorder. I watched the growing of their madness and the development of their claims, each more impossible than the last.

In the Kiselovski mines the output of 2,000,000 poods monthly dropped to 300,000, and the foundries of Upper Serginski produced 1,200 poods of iron instead of 2,000. Why such a fall? The engineers wondered how workers could reduce output to such an extent if they tried, but one soon ceased to wonder at the disasters that followed in quick succession.

There was anarchy in the factories and a premium on idleness became the order of the day. It was a positive danger to work more than the laziest unskilled laborer, because this was the type of man who always seemed to get to the top of the Soviet. “Traitor to the interests of Labor” you were called if you exceeded the time limit, which soon became two hours a day.[28]

[28] These extracts are from a personal report by Jandarmov, sent to the present writer.

By September, 1917, a healthy reaction against the abuses of Soviet industrial control was making itself felt in the factories. The workers were making less extravagant demands and accepting the fact that they could gain nothing by paralyzing production; that reducing the quantity and the quality of production can only result in disaster to the nation, and, most of all, to the workers themselves. In numerous instances the factory Soviets had called back the owners they had forced out, and the managers and technical directors they had dismissed, and restored the authority of foremen. In other words, they ceased to be controlling authorities and became simply consultative bodies. While, therefore, they were becoming valuable democratic agencies, the economic power and influence of the Soviets was waning.

On the day of the coup d’état, November 7, 1917, the Bolshevist Military Revolutionary Committee issued a special proclamation which said, “The goal for which the people fought, the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the abolition of private landed property, labor control of industry, the establishment of a Soviet Government—all this is guaranteed.” Seven days later, November 14th, a decree was issued, giving an outline of the manner in which the control of industry by the Soviets was to be organized and carried out. The principal features of this outline plan are set forth in the following paragraphs:

(1) In order to put the economic life of the country on an orderly basis, control by the workers is instituted over all industrial, commercial, and agricultural undertakings and societies; and those connected with banking and transport, as well as over productive co-operative societies which employ labor or put out work to be done at home or in connection with the production, purchase, and sale of commodities and of raw materials, and with conservation of such commodities as well as regards the financial aspect of such undertakings.

(2) Control is exercised by all the workers of a given enterprise through the medium of their elected organs, such as factories and works committees, councils of workmen’s delegates, etc., such organs equally comprising representatives of the employees and of the technical staff.

(3) In each important industrial town, province, or district is set up a local workmen’s organ of control, which, being the organ of the soldiers’, workmen’s, and peasants’ council, will comprise the representatives of the labor unions, workmen’s committees, and of any other factories, as well as of workmen’s co-operative societies.

(5) Side by side with the Workmen’s Supreme Council of the Labor Unions, committees of inspection comprising technical specialists, accountants, etc. These committees, both on their own initiative or at the request of local workmen’s organs of control, proceed to a given locality to study the financial and technical side of any enterprise.

(6) The Workmen’s Organs of Control have the right to supervise production, to fix a minimum wage in any undertaking, and to take steps to fix the prices at which manufactured articles are to be sold.

(7) The Workmen’s Organs of Control have the right to control all correspondence passing in connection with the business of an undertaking, being held responsible before a court of justice for diverting their correspondence. Commercial secrets are abolished. The owners are called upon to produce to the Workmen’s Organs of Control all books and moneys in hand, both relating to the current year and to any previous transactions.

(8) The decisions of the Workmen’s Organs of Control are binding upon the owners of undertakings, and cannot be nullified save by the decision of a Workmen’s Superior Organ of Control.

(9) Three days are given to the owners, or the administrators of a business, to appeal to a Workmen’s Superior Court of Control against the decisions filed by any of the lower organs of Workmen’s Control.

(10) In all undertakings, the owners and the representatives of workmen and of employees delegated to exercise control on behalf of the workmen, are responsible to the government for the maintenance of strict order and discipline, and for the conservation of property (goods). Those guilty of misappropriating materials and products, of not keeping books properly, and of similar offenses, are liable to prosecution.

It was not until December 27, 1917—seven weeks after their arbitrary seizure of the reins of government—that the Bolsheviki published the details of their scheme. Both the original preliminary outline and the later carefully elaborated scheme made it quite evident that, no matter how loudly and grandiloquently Lenin, Trotsky, Miliutin, Smedevich, and others might talk about the “introduction” of workers’ control, in point of fact they were only thinking of giving a certain legal status to the Soviet system of control already in operation. That system, as we have already seen, had been in their hands for some time. They had used it to destroy efficiency, to cripple the factories and assist in paralyzing the government and the military forces of the nation. Now that they were no longer an opposition party trying to upset the government, but were themselves the de facto government, the Bolsheviki could no longer afford to pursue the policy of encouraging the factory Soviets to sabotage. Maximum production was the first necessity of the Bolshevist Government, quite as truly as it had been for the Provisional Government, and as it must have been for any other government. Sabotage in the factories had been an important means of combating the Provisional Government, but now it must be quickly eliminated. So long as they were in the position of being a party of revolt the Bolshevist leaders were ready to approve the seizure of factories by the workers, regardless of the consequences to industrial production or to the military enterprises dependent upon that production. As the governing power of the nation, in full possession of the machinery of government, such ruinous action by the workers could not be tolerated. For the same reasons, the demoralization of the army, which they had laboriously fostered, must now be arrested.

In the instructions to the All-Russian Council of Workers’ Control, published December 27, 1917, we find no important extension of the existing Soviet control; we do, however, find its legalization with important limitations. These limitations, moreover, are merely legalistic formulations of the modifications already developed in practice and obtaining in many factories. A comparison of the full text of the instructions with the account of the system of factory control under the Provisional Government will demonstrate this beyond doubt.[29] The control in each enterprise is to be organized “either by the Shop or Factory Committee or by the General Assembly of workers and employees of the enterprise, who elect a Special Commission of Control” (Article I). In “large-scale enterprises” the election of such a Control Commission is compulsory. To the Commission of Control is given sole authority to “enter into relations with the management upon the subject of control,” though it may give authorization to other workers to enter into such relations if it sees fit (Article III). The Control Commission must make report to the general body of workers and employees in the enterprise “at least twice a month” (Article IV). The article (No. 5) which deals with and defines the “Duties and Privileges of the Control Commission” is so elaborate that it is almost impossible to summarize it without injustice. It is, therefore, well to quote it in full.

[29] This important document is printed in full at the end of the book as an Appendix.

V. The Control Commission of each enterprise is required:

1. To determine the stock of goods and fuel possessed by the plant, and the amount of these needed respectively for the machinery of production, the technical personnel, and the laborers by specialties.

2. To determine to what extent the plant is provided with everything that is necessary to insure its normal operation.

3. To forecast whether there is danger of the plant closing down or lowering production, and what the causes are.

4. To determine the number of workers by specialties likely to be unemployed, basing the estimate upon the reserve supply and the expected receipts of fuel and materials.

5. To determine the measures to be taken to maintain discipline in work among the workers and employees.

6. To superintend the execution of the decisions of governmental agencies regulating the buying and selling of goods.

7. (a) To prevent the arbitrary removal of machines, materials, fuel, etc., from the plant without authorization from the agencies which regulate economic affairs, and to see that inventories are not tampered with.

(b) To assist in explaining the causes of the lowering of production and to take measures for raising it.

8. To assist in elucidating the possibility of a complete or partial utilization of the plant for some kind of production (especially how to pass from a war to a peace footing, and what kind of production should be undertaken), to determine what changes should be made in the equipment of the plant and in the number of its personnel, to accomplish this purpose; to determine in what period of time these changes can be effected; to determine what is necessary in order to make them, and the probable amount of production after the change is made to another kind of manufacture.

9. To aid in the study of the possibility of developing the kinds of labor required by the necessities of peace-times, such as the methods of using three shifts of workmen, or any other method, by furnishing information on the possibilities of housing the additional number of laborers and their families.

10. To see that the production of the plant is maintained at the figures to be fixed by the governmental regulating agencies, and until such time as these figures shall have been fixed to see that the production reaches the normal average for the plant, judged by a standard of conscientious labor.

11. To co-operate in estimating costs of production of the plant upon the demand of the higher agency of workers’ control or upon the demand of the governmental regulating institutions.

It is expressly stipulated that only the owner has “the right to give orders to the directors of the plant”; that the Control Commission “does not participate in the management of the plant and has no responsibility for its development and operation” (Article VII). It is also definitely stated that the Control Commission has no concern with financial management of the plant (Article VIII). Finally, while it has the right to “recommend for the consideration of the governmental regulating institutions the question of the sequestration of the plant or other measures of constraint upon the plant,” the Control Commission “has not the right to seize and direct the enterprise” (Article IX). These are the principal clauses of this remarkable document relating to the functions and methods of the Soviet system of control in the factory itself; other clauses deal with the relations of the factory organizations to the central governmental authority and to the trades-unions. They prescribe and define a most elaborate system of bureaucracy.

So much for the imperium in imperio of the Soviet system of industrial control conceived by the Bolsheviki. In many important respects it is much more conservative than the system itself had been under Kerensky. It gives legal form and force to those very modifications which had been brought about, and it specifically prohibits the very abuses the Bolshevist agitators had fostered and the elimination of which they had everywhere bitterly resisted. Practically every provision in the elaborate decree of instructions limiting the authority of the workers, defining the rights of the managers, insisting upon the maintenance of production, and the like, the Kerensky government had endeavored to introduce, being opposed and denounced therefor by the Bolsheviki. It is easy to imagine how bitterly that decree of instructions on Workers’ Control would have been denounced by Lenin and Trotsky had it been issued by Kerensky’s Cabinet in July or August.

Let us not make the mistake, however, of assuming that because the Bolsheviki in power thus sought to improve the system of industrial control, to purge it of its weaknesses—its reckless lawlessness, sabotage, tyranny, dishonesty, and incompetence—that there was actually a corresponding improvement in the system itself. The pro-Bolshevist writers in this country and in western Europe have pointed to these instructions, and to many other decrees conceived in a similar spirit and couched in a similar tone, as conclusive evidence of moderation, constructive statesmanship, and wise intention. Alas! in statesmanship good intention is of little value. In politics and social polity, as in life generally, the road to destruction is paved with “good intentions.” The Lenins and Trotskys, who in opposition and revolt were filled with the fury of destruction, might be capable of becoming builders under the influence of a solemn recognition of the obligations of authority and power. But for the masses of the people no such change was possible. Such miracles do not happen, except in the disordered imaginations of those whose minds are afflicted with moral Daltonism and that incapacity for sequential thinking which characterizes such a wide variety of subnormal mentalities.

By their propaganda the Bolsheviki had fostered an extremely anti-social consciousness, embracing sabotage, lawlessness, and narrow selfishness; the manner in which they had seized the governmental power, and brutally frustrated the achievement of that great democratic purpose which had behind it the greatest collective spiritual impulse in the history of the nation, greatly intensified that anti-social consciousness. Now that they were in power these madmen hoped that in the twinkling of an eye, by the mere issuance of decrees and manifestoes, they could eradicate the evil thing. Canute’s command to the tide was not one whit more vain than their verbose decrees hurled against the relentless and irresistible sequence of cause and effect. Loafing, waste, disorder, and sabotage continued in the factories, as great a burden to the Bolshevist oligarchs as they had been to the democrats. Workers continued to “seize” factories as before, and production steadily declined to the music of an insatiable demand on the part of the workers for more pay. There was no change in the situation, except in so far as it grew worse. The governmental machine grew until it became like an immense swarm of devastating locusts, devouring everything and producing nothing. History does not furnish another such record of industrial chaos and ruinous inefficiency.

Five days after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviki, the Commissar of Labor, Shliapnikov, issued a protest against sabotage and violence. Naturally, he ascribed the excesses of the workers to provocation by the propertied classes. That “proletarian consciousness” upon which the Bolsheviki based their faith must have been sadly lacking in the workers if, at such a time, they were susceptible to the influence of the “propertied classes.” The fact is that the destructive anarchical spirit they had fostered was now a deadly menace to the Bolsheviki themselves. Shliapnikov wrote:

The propertied classes are endeavoring to create anarchy and the ruin of industry by provoking the workmen to excesses and violence over the question of foremen, technicians, and engineers. They hope thereby to achieve the complete and final ruin of all the mills and factories. The revolutionary Commission of Labor asks you, our worker-comrades, to abstain from all acts of violence and excess. By a joint and creative work of the laboring masses and proletarian organizations, the Commission of Labor will know how to surmount all obstacles in its way. The new revolutionary government will apply the most drastic measures against all industrials and those who continue to sabotage industry, and thereby prevent the carrying out of the tasks and aims of the great proletarian and peasant Revolution. Executions without trial and other arbitrary acts will only damage the cause of the Revolution. The Commission of Labor calls on you for self-control and revolutionary discipline.

In January, 1918, Lenin read to a gathering of party workers a characteristic series of numbered “theses,” which Izvestia published on March 8th of that year. In that document he said:

1. The situation of the Russian Revolution at the present moment is such that almost all workmen and the overwhelming majority of the peasants undoubtedly are on the side of the Soviet authority, and of the social revolution started by it. To that extent the success of the socialistic revolution in Russia is guaranteed.

2. At the same time the civil war, caused by the frantic resistance of the propertied classes which understand very well that they are facing the last and decisive struggle to preserve private property in land, and in the means of production, has not as yet reached its highest point. The victory of the Soviet authority in this war is guaranteed, but inevitably some time yet must pass, inevitably a considerable exertion of strength will be required, a certain period of acute disorganization and chaos, which always attend any war and in particular a civil war, is inevitable, before the resistance of the bourgeoisie will be crushed.

3. Further, this resistance takes less and less active and non-military forms: sabotage, bribing beggars, bribing agents of the bourgeoisie who have pushed themselves into the ranks of the Socialists in order to ruin the latter’s cause, etc. This resistance has proved stubborn, and capable of assuming so many different forms, that the struggle against it will inevitably drag along for a certain period, and will probably not be finished in its main aspects before several months. And without a decisive victory over this passive and concealed resistance of the bourgeoisie and its champions, the success of the socialistic revolution is impossible.

4. Finally, the organizing tasks of the socialistic reorganization of Russia are so enormous and difficult that a rather prolonged period of time is also required to solve them, in view of the large number of petty bourgeois fellow-travelers of the socialistic proletariat, and of the latter’s low cultural level.

5. All these circumstances taken together are such that from them result the necessity, for the success of Socialism in Russia, of a certain interval of time, not less than a few months, in the course of which the socialistic government must have its hands absolutely free, in order to triumph over the bourgeoisie, first of all in its own country, and in order to adopt broad and deep organizing activity.

The greatest significance of Lenin’s words lies in their recognition of the seriousness of the non-military forms of resistance, sabotage, and the like, and of the “low cultural level” of the “socialistic proletariat.” Reading the foregoing statements carefully and remembering Lenin’s other utterances, both before and after, we are compelled to wonder whether he is intellectually dishonest, an unscrupulous trickster playing upon the credulity of his followers, or merely a loose thinker adrift and helpless on the swift tides of events. “For the success of Socialism ... not less than a few months” we read from the pen of the man who, in June of the previous year, while on his way from Switzerland, had written “Socialism cannot now prevail in Russia”; the same man who in May, 1918, was to tell his comrades “it is hardly to be expected that the even more developed coming generation will accomplish a complete transition to Socialism”; who later told Raymond Robins: “The Russian Revolution will probably fail. We have not developed far enough in the capitalist stage, we are too primitive to realize the Socialist state.”[30]

[30] Vide testimony of Robins before U. S. Senate Committee.

And yet—“the success of Socialism ... not less than a few months!”

By the latter part of February, 1918, it was quite clear that the Soviet control of industry was “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs”; that it was ruining the industrial life of the nation. The official press began to discuss in the most serious manner the alarming decline in production and the staggering financial losses incurred in the operation of what formerly had been profitable enterprises. At the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, in March, 1918, the seriousness of the situation caused great alarm and a desperate appeal was made to the workers to increase production, refrain from sabotage, and practise self-discipline. The congress urged “a merciless struggle against chaos and disorganization.” Lenin himself pointed out that confiscation of factories by the workers was ruining Russia. The very policy they had urged upon the workers, the seizure of the factories, was now seen as a menace.

On April 28, 1918, Lenin said: “If we are to expropriate at this pace, we shall be certain to suffer a defeat. The organization of production under proletarian control is notoriously very much behind the expropriation of big masses of capital.”[31] He had already come to realize that the task of transforming capitalist society to a Socialist society was not the easy matter he had believed shortly before. In September he had looked upon the task of realizing Socialism as a child might have done. It would require a Freudian expert to explain the silly childishness of this paragraph from The State and Revolution, published in September, 1917:

[31] Soviets at Work. I have quoted the passage as it appears in the English edition of Kautsky’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 125. This rendering, which conforms to the French translations of the authorized text, is clearer and stronger than the version given in the confessedly “improved” version of Lenin’s speech by Doctor Dubrovsky, published by the Rand School of Social Science.

Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, posts, telephones, and so forth; and on this basis the great majority of the functions of the old state have become enormously simplified and reduced in practice to very simple operations, such as registration, filing, and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual “working-man’s wages.”[32]

[32] The State and Revolution, by N. Lenin, p. 12.

Thus it was in September, before the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Then Lenin was at the head of a revolting faction and presented the task of reorganizing the state as very simple indeed. In April he was at the head of a government, confronted by realities, and emphasizing the enormous difficulty and complexity of the task of reorganization. The Soviets at Work and the later booklet, The Chief Tasks of Our Times, lay great emphasis upon the great difficulties to be overcome, the need of experienced and trained men, and the folly of expecting anything like immediate success. “We know all about Socialism,” he said, “but we do not know how to organize on a large scale, how to manage distribution, and so on. The old Bolshevist leaders have not taught us these things, and this is not to the credit of our party.”[33]

[33] The Chief Tasks of Our Times, p. 12.

The same man who had urged the workers to “take possession of the factories” now realized how utterly unfitted the mass of the workers must be for undertaking the management of modern industrial establishments:

To every deputation of workers which has come to me complaining that a factory was stopping work, I have said, “If you desire the confiscation of your factory the decree forms are ready, and I can sign a decree at once. But tell me: Can you take over the management of the concern? Have you reckoned what you can produce? Do you know the relations of your work with Russian and foreign markets?” Then it has appeared that they are inexperienced in these matters; that there is nothing about them in the Bolshevist literature, in the Menshevist, either.[34]

[34] Idem, p. 12.

Lenin and his associates had been brought face to face with a condition which many Marxian Socialist writers had foreseen was likely to exist, not only in Russia, but in far more highly developed industrial nations, namely, a dangerous decline of production and of the average productivity of the workers, instead of the enormous increase which must be attained before any of the promises of Socialism could be redeemed. A few figures from official Bolshevist sources will serve to illustrate the seriousness of the decline in production. The great Soromovo Works had produced fifteen locomotives monthly, even during the last months of the Kerensky régime. By the end of April, 1918, it was pointed out, the output was barely two per month. At the Mytishchy Works in Moscow, the production, as compared with 1916, was only 40 per cent. At this time the Donetz Basin was held by the Bolsheviki. The average monthly output in the coal-fields of this important territory prior to the arrival of the Bolsheviki was 125,000,000 poods. The rule of the Bolsheviki was marked by a serious and continuous decline in production, dropping almost at once to 80,000,000 poods and then steadily declining, month by month, until in April-May, 1918, it reached the low level of 26,000,000 poods.[35] When the Bolsheviki were driven away, the production rose month by month, until, in December, 1918, it had reached 40,000,000 poods. Then the Bolsheviki won control once more and came back, and at once production declined with great swiftness, soon getting down to 24,000,000 poods.[36] These figures, be it remembered, are official Bolshevist figures.

[35] Economicheskaya Zhizn, May 6, 1919.

[36] Idem.

So serious was the decline of production in every department that a commission was appointed to investigate the matter. The commission reported in January, 1919, and from its report the following facts are quoted: in the Moscow railway workshops the number of workmen in 1916 was 1,192; in 1917 the number was 1,179; in 1918 it was 1,772—an increase of 50 per cent. The number of holidays and “off days” rose from 6 per cent. in 1916 to 12 per cent. in 1917 and 39.5 per cent. in 1918. At the same time, each car turned out per month represented the labor of 3.35 men in 1918 as against 1 in 1917 and .44 in 1916. In the Mytishchy Works, Moscow, the loss of production was enormous. Taking the eight-hour day as a basis, and counting as 100 the production of 1916, the production in 1917 amounted to 75, and only 40 in 1918. In the coal-mines of the Moscow region the fall of labor productivity was equally marked. The normal production per man is given as 750 poods per month. In 1916 the production was 614 poods; in 1917 it was 448 poods, and in 1918 it was only 242 poods. In the textile industries the decline in productivity was 35 per cent., including the flax industry, which does not depend upon the importation of raw materials.[37] In the Scherbatchev factory the per-capita production of calico was 68 per cent, lower than in 1917, according to the Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 50).

[37] For most of the statistical data in this chapter I am indebted to Prof. V. I. Issaiev, whose careful analyses of the statistical reports of the Soviet Government are of very great value to all students of the subject.—Author.

It is not necessary to quote additional statistics from the report of the investigating commission. The figures cited are entirely typical. The report as a whole reveals that there not only had been no arrest of the serious decline of the year 1917, but an additional decline at an accelerated rate, and that the condition was general throughout all branches of industry. The report attributes this serious condition partly to loss of efficiency in the workers due to under-nutrition, but more particularly to the mistaken conception of freedom held by the workers, their irresponsibility and indifference; to administrative chaos arising from inefficiency; and, finally, the enormous amount of time lost in holding meetings and elections and in endless committees. In general this report confirms the accounts furnished by the agent of the governments of Great Britain and the United States of America and published by them,[38] as well as reports made by well-known European Socialists.

[38] See the British White Book and the Memorandum on Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist Movement in Russia, presented to the Foreign Relations Committee of the U. S. Senate by Secretary of State Lansing, January 5, 1920.

As early as April, 1918, Lenin and other Bolshevist leaders had taken cognizance of the enormous loss of time consumed by the innumerable meetings which Soviet control of industry involved. Lenin claimed, with much good reason, that much of this wasteful talking was the natural reaction of men who had been repressed too long, though his argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that there had been eight months of such talk before the Bolshevist régime began:

The habit of holding meetings is ridiculed, and more often wrathfully hissed at by the bourgeoisie, Mensheviks, etc., who see only chaos, senseless bustle, and outbursts of petty bourgeoisie egoism. But without the “holding of meetings” the oppressed masses could never pass from the discipline forced by the exploiters to conscious and voluntary discipline. “Meeting-holding” is the real democracy of the toilers, their straightening out, their awakening to a new life, their first steps on the field which they themselves have cleared of reptiles (exploiters, imperialists, landed proprietors, capitalists), and which they want to learn to put in order themselves in their own way; for themselves, in accord with the principles of their, “Soviet,” rule, and not the rule of the foreigners, of the nobility and bourgeoisie. The November victory of the toilers against the exploiters was necessary; it was necessary to have a whole period of elementary discussion by the toilers themselves of the new conditions of life and of the new problems to make possible a secure transition to higher forms of labor discipline, to a conscious assimilation of the idea of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to absolute submission to the personal orders of the representatives of the Soviet rule during work.[39]

[39] The Soviets at Work, p. 37.

There is a very characteristic touch of Machiavellian artistry in this reference to “a secure transition to higher forms of labor discipline,” in which there is to be “absolute submission to the personal orders of the representatives of the Soviet rule during work.” The eloquent apologia for the Soviet system of industrial control by the workers carries the announcement of the liquidation of that system. It is to be replaced by some “higher forms of labor discipline,” forms which will not attempt the impossible task of conducting factories on “debating-society lines.” The “petty bourgeois tendency to turn the members of the Soviets into ‘parliamentarians,’ or, on the other hand, into bureaucrats,” is to be combated. In many places the departments of the Soviets are turning “into organs which gradually merge with the commissariats”—in other words, are ceasing to function as governing bodies in the factories. There is a difficult transition to be made which alone will make possible “the definite realization of Socialism,” and that is to put an end to the wastefulness arising from the attempt to combine the discussion and solution of political problems with work in the factories. There must be a return to the system of uninterrupted work for so many hours, with politics after working-hours. That is what is meant by the statement: “It is our object to obtain the free performance of state obligations by every toiler after he is through with his eight-hour session of productive work.”

Admirable wisdom! Saul among the prophets at last! The romancer turns realist! But this program cannot be carried out without making of the elaborate system of workers’ control a wreck, a thing of shreds and patches. Away goes the Utopian combination of factory and forum, in which the dynamos are stilled when there are speeches to be made—pathetic travesty of industry and government both. The toiler must learn that his “state obligations” are to be performed after the day’s work is done, and not in working-time at the expense of the pay-roll. More than this, it is necessary to place every factory under the absolute dictatorship of one person:

Every large machine industry requires an absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the joint work of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of people.... But how can we secure a strict unity of will? By subjecting the will of thousands to the will of one.[40]

[40] The Soviets at Work.

If the workers are properly submissive, if they are “ideally conscious and disciplined,” this dictatorship may be a very mild affair; otherwise it will be stern and harsh:

There is a lack of appreciation of the simple and obvious fact that, if the chief misfortunes of Russia are famine and unemployment, these misfortunes cannot be overcome by any outbursts of enthusiasm, but only by thorough and universal organization of discipline, in order to increase the production of bread for men and fuel for industry, to transport it in time, and to distribute it in the right way. That, therefore, responsibility for the pangs of famine and unemployment falls on every one who violates the labor discipline in any enterprise and in any business. That those who are responsible should be discovered, tried, and punished without mercy.[41]

[41] Idem.

Not only must the workers abandon their crude conception of industrial democracy as requiring the abolition of individual authority, but they must also abandon the notion that in the management of industry one man is as good as another. They must learn that experts are necessary:[42] “Without the direction of specialists of different branches of knowledge, technique, and experience, the transformation toward Socialism is impossible.” Although it is a defection from proletarian principles, a compromise, “a step backward by our Socialist Soviet state,” it is necessary to “make use of the old bourgeois method and agree to a very high remuneration for the biggest of the bourgeois specialists.” The proletarian principles must still further be compromised and the payment of time wages on the basis of equal remuneration for all workers must give place to payment according to performance; piece-work must be adopted. Finally, the Taylor system of scientific management must be introduced: “The possibility of Socialism will be determined by our success in combining the Soviet rule and Soviet organization of management with the latest progressive measures of capitalism. We must introduce in Russia the study and the teaching of the Taylor system, and its systematic trial and adaptation.”[43]

[42] A much later statement of Lenin’s view is contained in this paragraph from a speech by him on March 17, 1920. The quotation is from Soviet Russia, official organ of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau in the United States:

“Every form of administrative work requires specific qualifications. One may be the best revolutionist and agitator and yet useless as an administrator. It is important that those who manage industries be completely competent, and be acquainted with all technical conditions within the industry. We are not opposed to the management of industries by the workers. But we point out that the solution of the question must be subordinate to the interests of the industry. Therefore the question of the management of industry must be regarded from a business standpoint. The industry must be managed with the least possible waste of energy, and the managers of the industry must be efficient men, whether they be specialists or workers.”

[43] The Soviets at Work.

In all this there is much that is fine and admirable, but it is in direct and fundamental opposition to the whole conception of industrial control by factory Soviets. No thoughtful person can read and compare the elaborate provisions of the Instructions on Workers’ Control, already summarized, and Lenin’s Soviets at Work without reaching the conclusion that the adoption of the proposals contained in the latter absolutely destroys the former. The end of the Soviet as a proletarian industry-directing instrument was already in sight.

Bolshevism was about to enter upon a new phase. What the general character of that phase would be was quite clear. It had already been determined and Lenin’s task was to justify what was in reality a reversal of policy. The essential characteristics of the Soviet system in industry, having proved to be useless impedimenta, were to be discarded, and, in like manner, anti-Statism was to be exchanged for an exaggerated Statism. In February, 1918, the Bolshevist rulers of Russia were confronted by a grave menace, an evil inherent in Syndicalism in all its variant forms, including Bolshevism—namely, the assertion of exorbitant demands by workers employed in performing services of immediate and vital importance in the so-called “key industries.” Although the railway workers were only carrying the Bolshevist theories into practice, acquiescence in their demands would have placed the whole industrial life of Russia under their domination. Instead of a dictatorship of the proletariat, there would have been dictatorship by a single occupational group. Faced by this danger, the Bolshevist Government did not hesitate to nationalize the railways and place them under an absolute dictator, responsible, not to the railway workers, but to the central Soviet authority, the government. Wages, hours of labor, and working conditions were no longer subject to the decision of the railway workers’ councils, but were determined by the dictators appointed by the state. The railway workers’ unions were no longer recognized, and the right to strike was denied and strikes declared to be treason against the state. The railway workers’ councils were not abolished at first, but were reduced to a nominal existence as “consultative bodies,” which in practice were not consulted. Here was the apotheosis of the state: the new policy could not be restricted to railways; nationalization of industry, under state direction, was to take the place of the direction of industry by autonomous workers’ councils.

In May, 1918, Commissar of Finances Gukovsky, staggered by the enormous loss incurred upon every hand, in his report to the Congress of Soviets called attention to the situation. He said that the railway system, the arterial system of the industrial life of the nation, was completely disorganized and demoralized. Freight-tonnage capacity had decreased by 70 per cent., while operating expenses had increased 150 per cent. Whereas before the war operating expenses were 11,579 rubles per verst, in May, 1918, wages alone amounted to 80,000 rubles per verst, the total working expenses being not less than 120,000 rubles per verst. A similar state of demoralization obtained, said Gukovsky, in the nationalized marine transportation service. In every department of industry, according to this highly competent authority, waste, inefficiency, idleness, and extravagance prevailed. He called attention to the swollen salary-list; the army of paid officials. Already the menace of what soon developed into a formidable bureaucracy was seen: “The machinery of the old régime has been preserved, the ministries remain, and parallel with them Soviets have arisen—provincial, district, volost, and so forth.”

In June, 1918, after the railways had been nationalized for some time, Kobozev, Bolshevist Commissar of Communications, said: “The eight-hour workday and the payment per hour have definitely disorganized the whole politically ignorant masses, who understand these slogans, not as an appeal to the most productive efficiency of a free citizen, but as a right to idleness unjustified by any technical means. Whole powerful railway workshops give a daily disgraceful exhibition of inactivity on the principle of ‘Why should I work when my neighbor is paid by time for doing no work at all?’”

Although nationalization of industry had been decided upon in February, and a comprehensive plan for the administration and regulation of nationalized enterprises had been published in March, promulgated as a decree, with instructions that it must be enforced by the end of May, it was not until July that the Soviet Government really decided upon its enforcement. It should be said, however, that a good many factories were nationalized between April and July. Many factories were actually abandoned by their owners and directors, and had to be taken over. Many others were just taken in an “irregular manner” by the workers, who continued their independent confiscations. For this there was indeed some sort of authority in the decree of March, 1918.[44] Transportation had broken down, and there was a lack of raw materials. It was officially reported that in May there were more than 250,000 unemployed workmen in Moscow alone. No less than 224 machine-shops, which had employed an aggregate of 120,000 men, were closed. Thirty-six textile factories, employing a total of 136,000 operatives, were likewise idle. To avert revolt, it was necessary to keep these unemployed workers upon the pay-roll. Under czarism the policy of subsidizing industrial establishments out of the government revenues had been very extensively developed. This policy was continued by the Provisional Government under Kerensky and by the Bolsheviki in their turn. Naturally, with industry so completely disorganized, this led toward bankruptcy at a rapid rate. The following extract from Gukovsky’s report to the Central Executive Committee in May requires no elucidation:

[44] See text of the decree—Appendix.

Our Budget has reached the astronomical figures of from 80 to 100 billions of rubles. No revenue can cover such expenditure. Our revenue for the half-year reaches approximately 3,294,000,000 rubles. It is exceedingly difficult to find a way of escape out of this situation. The repudiation of state loans played a very unfavorable part in this respect, as now it is impossible to borrow money—no one will lend. Formerly railways used to yield a revenue, and agriculture likewise. Now agriculturists refuse to export their produce, they are feeding better and hoarding money. The former apparatus—in the shape of a Government Spirit Monopoly and rural police officers—no longer exists. Only one thing remains to be done—to issue paper money ad infinitum. But soon we shall not be able to do even this.

At the Congress of the Soviets of People’s Economy in May, Rykov, the president of the Superior Council of the National Board of Economy, reported, concerning the nationalization of industries, that so far it had been carried out without regard to industrial economy or efficiency, but exclusively from the point of view of successfully struggling against the bourgeoisie. It was, therefore, a war measure, and must not be judged by ordinary economic standards. Miliutin, another Bolshevist Commissar, declared that “nationalization bore a punitive character.” It was pointed out by Gostev, another Bolshevist official, that it had been carried out against the wishes of many of the workers themselves quite as much as against the wishes of the bourgeoisie. “I must laugh when they speak of bourgeois sabotage,” he said. “We have a national people’s and proletarian sabotage. We are met with enormous opposition from the labor masses when we start standardizing.” For good or ill, however, and despite all opposition, Bolshevism had turned to nationalization and to the erection of a powerful and highly centralized state. What the results of that policy were we shall see.

IX
THE NATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY—I

To judge fairly and wisely the success or failure of an economic and political policy so fundamental and far-reaching as the nationalization of industry we must discard theories altogether and rely wholly upon facts. Nothing could be easier than to formulate theoretical arguments of great plausibility and force, either in support of the state ownership of industries and their direction by state agencies or in opposition to such a policy. Interesting such theorizing may be, but nothing can be conclusively determined by it. When we come to deal with the case of a country where, as in Russia, nationalization of industry has been tried upon quite a large scale, there is only one criterion to apply, namely, its relative success as compared with other methods of industrial organization and management in the same or like conditions. If nationalization and state direction can be shown to have brought about greater advantage than other forms of industrial ownership and control, then nationalization is justified by that result; if, on the other hand, its advantages are demonstrably less, it must be judged a failure.

Whether the nationalization of industry by the Bolshevist Government of Russia was a sound policy, wisely conceived and carried out with a reasonable degree of efficiency, can be determined with a fair approach to certainty and finality. Our opinions concerning Karl Marx’s theory of the economic motivation of social evolution, or Lenin’s ability and character, or the methods by which the Bolsheviki obtained power, are absolutely irrelevant and inconsequential. History will base its estimate of Bolshevism, not upon the evidence of the terrorism which attended it, ample and incontestable as that evidence may be, but upon its success or failure in solving the great economic problems which it set out to solve. Our judgment of the nationalization of industry must not be warped by our resentment of those features of Bolshevist rule which established its tyrannical character. The ample testimony furnished by the official journals published by the Bolshevist Government and the Communist Party enables us to visualize with great clearness the conditions prevailing in Russia before nationalization of industry was resorted to. We have seen that there was an alarming shortage of production, a ruinous excess of cost per unit of production, a great deal of inefficiency and waste, together with a marked increase in the number of salaried administrative officials. We have seen that during the period of industrial organization and direction by the autonomous organizations of the workers in the factories these evils grew to menacing proportions. It was to remedy these evils that nationalization was resorted to. If, therefore, we can obtain definite and authoritative answers to certain questions which inevitably suggest themselves, we shall be in a position to judge the merits of nationalization, not as a general policy, for all times and places, but as a policy for Russia in the circumstances and conditions prevailing when it was undertaken. The questions suggest themselves: Was there any increase in the total volume of production? Was the average per-capita production raised or lowered? Did the new methods result in lessening the excessive average cost per unit of production? Was there any perceptible marked increase in efficiency? Finally, did nationalization lessen the number of salaried administrative officials or did it have a contrary effect?

We are not concerned with opinions here, but only with such definite facts as are to be had. The replies to our questions are to be found in the mass of statistical data which the Bolsheviki have published. We are not compelled to rely upon anybody’s opinions or observations; the numerous reports published by the responsible officials of the Bolshevist Government, and by their official press, contain an abundance of statistical evidence affording adequate and reliable answer to each of the questions we have asked.

Because the railways were nationalized first, and because of their vital importance to the general economic life of the nation, let us consider how the nationalization of railroad transportation worked out. The following table is taken from the report of the Commissar of Ways and Communications:

YearGross
Receipts
(rubles)		Working
Expenses
(rubles)		Working
Expenses
per Verst
(rubles)		Wages and
Salaries
(rubles)		Profit and
Loss
(rubles)
1916 1,350,000,000 1,210,000,000 1,700 650,000,000 +140,000,000
1917 1,400,000,000 3,300,000,000 46,000 2,300,000,000 -1,900,000,000
1918 1,500,000,000 9,500,000,000 44,000 8,000,000,000 -8,000,000,000

These figures indicate that the nationalization of railways during the nine months of 1918 was characterized by a condition which no country in the world could stand for a very long time. This official table affords no scintilla of a suggestion that nationalization was succeeding any better than the anarcho-Syndicalist management which preceded it. The enormous increase in operating cost, the almost stationary receipts, and the resulting colossal deficit require no comment. At least on the financial side the nationalization policy cannot be said to have been a success, a fact which was frankly admitted by the Severnaya Communa, March 26, 1919. To see a profit of 140 million rubles transformed into a loss of 8 billion rubles is surely a serious matter.

Let us, however, adopt another test than that of finance, namely, the service test, and see whether that presents us with a more favorable result: According to the official report of the Commissar of Ways and Communications, there were in operation on October 1, 1917—that is, shortly before the Bolshevist coup d’état—52,597 versts[45] of railroad line in operation; on October 1, 1918, there were in operation 21,800 versts, a decrease of 30,797. On October 1, 1917, there were in working order 15,732 locomotives; on October 1, 1918, the number had dwindled to 5,037, a decrease of 10,695. On October 1, 1917, the number of freight cars in working condition was 521,591; on October 1, 1918, the number was 227,274, a decrease of 294,317.

[45] One verst equals .663 mile, roughly, about two-thirds of a mile.

The picture presented by these figures is, for one who knows the economic conditions in Russia, simply appalling. At its best the Russian railway system was wholly inadequate to serve the economic life of the nation. The foregoing official figures indicate an utter collapse of the railways at a time when the nation needed an efficient railroad transportation system more than at any time in its history. One of the reasons for the collapse of the railway system was the failure of the fuel supply. In northern and central Russia wood is generally used for fuel in the factories and on the railways. Difficult as it might be for them to maintain the supply of coal under the extraordinary conditions prevailing, it would seem that with enormous forests at their disposal, so near at hand, they would have found it relatively easy to supply the railways with wood for fuel purposes. Yet nowhere in the whole range of the industrial system of Russia was the failure more disastrous or more complete than here. According to an official estimate, the amount of wood fuel required for the railways from May 1, 1918, to May 1, 1919, estimated upon the basis of “famine rations,” was 4,954,000 cubic sazhens,[46] of which 858,000 cubic sazhens was on hand, leaving 4,096,000 cubic sazhens as the amount to be provided. A report published in the Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 41) stated that not more than 18 per cent. of the total amount of wood required was felled, and that not more than one-third of that amount was actually delivered to the railways. In other words, 82 per cent. of the wood fuel was not cut at all, at least so far as the particular economic body whose business it was to provide the wood was concerned. Extraordinary measures had to be taken to secure the fuel. From Economicheskaya Zhizn, February 22, 1919, we learn that the railway administration managed to secure fuel wood amounting to 70 per cent. of its requirements, and the People’s Superior Economic Council another 2 per cent., a very large part of which had been secured by private enterprise. If this last statement seems astonishing and anomalous, it must be understood that as early as January 17, 1919, Lenin, as President of the Central Soviet Government, promulgated a decree which in a very large measure restored the right to private enterprise. Already nationalization was being pronounced a failure by Lenin. In an address announcing this remarkable modification of policy he said:

[46] One sazhen equals seven feet.

If each peasant would consent to reduce his consumption of products to a point a little less than his needs and turn over the remainder to the state, and if we were able to distribute that remainder regularly, we could go on, assuring the population a food-supply, insufficient, it is true, but enough to avoid famine.

This last is, however, beyond our strength, due to our disorganization. The people, exhausted by famine, show the most extreme impatience. Assuredly, we have our food policy, but the essential of it is that the decrees should be executed. Although they were promulgated long ago, the decrees relative to the distribution of food products by the state never have been executed because the peasants will sell nothing for paper money.

It is better to tell the truth. The conditions require that we should pitilessly, relentlessly force our local organizations to obey the central power. This, again, is difficult because millions of our inhabitants are accustomed to regard any central power as an organization of exploiters and brigands. They have no confidence in us and without confidence it is impossible to institute an economic régime.

The crisis in food-supplies, aggravated by the breakdown of transportation, explains the terrible situation that confronts us. At Petrograd the condition of the transportation service is desperate. The rolling-stock is unusable.

Another reason for the failure of the railways under nationalization during the first year’s experimentation with that policy was the demoralization of the labor force. The low standard of efficiency, constant loafing, and idleness were factors in the problem. The interference by the workers’ councils was even more serious. When the railways were nationalized the elected committees of workers, while shorn of much of their power, were retained as consultative bodies, as we have already seen. Toward the end of 1918 the officials responsible for the direction of the railroads found even that measure of authority which remained to these councils incompatible with efficient organization. Consequently, at the end of 1918 the abolition of the workers’ committees of control was decreed and the dictatorial powers of the railroad directors made absolute. The system of paying wages by the day was replaced by a piece-work system, supplemented by cash bonuses for special efficiency. Later on, as we shall see, these changes were made applicable to all the nationalized industries. Thus, the principal features of the capitalist wage system were brought back to replace the communistic principles which had failed. When Lomov, president of the Chief Forest Committee, declared, as reported in Izvestia, June 4, 1919, that “proletarian principles must be set aside and the services of private capitalistic apparatus made use of,” he simply gave expression to what was already a very generally accepted view.

The “return to capitalism,” as it was commonly and justly described, had begun in earnest some months before Lomov made the declaration just quoted. The movement was attended by a great deal of internal conflict and dissension. In particular the trades-unions were incensed because they were practically suppressed as autonomous organs of the working-class. The dictatorship of the proletariat was already assuming the character of a dictatorship over the proletariat by a strongly centralized state. The rulers of this state, setting aside the written Constitution, were in fact not responsible to any electorate. They ruled by fiat and proclamation and ruthlessly suppressed all who sought to oppose them. They held that, industry having become nationalized, trades-unions were superfluous, and that strikes could not be tolerated because they became, ipso facto, acts of treason against the state. Such was the evolution of this anti-Statist movement.

The unions resisted the attempts to deprive them of their character as fighting organizations. They protested against the denial of the right to strike, the suppression of their meetings and their press. They resented the arbitrary fixing of their wages by officials of the central government. As a result, there was an epidemic of strikes, most of which were suppressed with great promptitude and brutality. At the Alexander Works, Moscow, eighty workers were killed by machine-gun fire. From March 6 to 26, 1919, the Krasnaya Gazeta published accounts of fifteen strikes in Petrograd, involving more than half the wage-workers of the city, some of the strikes being attended with violence which was suppressed by armed troops. At the beginning of March there was such a strike at the Tula Works, reported in Izvestia, March 2, 1919. On March 16, 1919, the Severnaya Communa gave an account of the strike at the famous Putilov Works, and of the means taken to “clear out the Social Revolutionary blackguards”—meaning thereby the striking workmen. Pravda published on March 23, 1919, accounts of serious strikes at the Putilov Works, the Arthur Koppel Works, the government car-building shops, and elsewhere. Despite a clearly defined policy on the part of the press to ignore labor struggles as far as possible, sufficient was published to show that there was an intense struggle by the Russian proletariat against its self-constituted masters. “The workers of Petrograd are in the throes of agitation, and strikes are occurring in some shops. The Bolsheviki have been making arrests,” said Izvestia on March 2, 1919.

Of course it may be fairly said that the strikes did not of themselves indicate a condition of unrest and dissatisfaction peculiar to Russia. That is quite true. There were strikes in many countries in the early months of 1919. This fact does not, however, add anything to the strength of the defense of the Bolshevist régime. In the capitalist countries, where the struggle between the wage-earning and the employing classes is a normal condition, strikes are very ordinary phenomena. The Bolsheviki, in common with all other Socialists, pointed to these conflicts as evidence of the unfitness of capitalism to continue; and of the need for Socialism. It was the very essence of their faith that in the Socialist state strikes would be unknown, because no conflict of class interests would be possible. Yet here in the Utopia of the Bolsheviki the proletarian dictatorship was accompanied by strikes and lock-outs precisely like those common to the capitalist system in all lands. Moreover, while the nations which still retained the capitalist system had their strikes, there was not one of them in which such brutal methods of repression were resorted to. Russia was at war, we are told, and strikes were a deadly menace to her very existence. But this argument, like the other, is of no avail. England, France, Italy, and America on the one side, and Germany and Austria upon the other side, all had strikes during the war, but in no one of them were strikers shot down with such savage recklessness as in Russia under the Bolsheviki.

Where and when in any of the great capitalist nations during the war was there such a butchery of striking workmen as that at the Alexander Works, already referred to? Where and when during the whole course of the war did any capitalist government suppress a strike of workmen with anything like the brutality with which the Bolshevist masters of Russia suppressed the strike at the Putilov Works in March, 1919? At first the marines in Petrograd were ordered to disperse the strikers and break the strike, but they refused to obey the order. At a meeting these marines decided that, rather than shoot down the striking workmen, they would join forces with them. Then the Bolsheviki called out detachments of coast guards, armed sailors from Kronstadt and Petrograd formerly belonging to the “disciplinary battalions,” chiefly Letts. The strikers put up an armed resistance, being supported in this by a small body of soldiers. They were soon overcome, however, and the armed sailors took possession of the works and summarily executed many of the strikers, shooting them on the spot without even a drum-head court martial. The authorities issued a proclamation—published in Severnaya Communa, March 16, 1919—forbidding the holding of meetings and “inviting” the strikers back to work:

All honest workmen desirous of carrying out the decision of the Petrograd Soviet and ready to start work will be allowed to go into the factory on condition that they forthwith go to their places and take up their work. All those who begin work will receive an additional ration of one-half pound of bread. They who do not want to resume work will be at once discharged, without receiving any concessions. A special commission will be formed for the reorganization of the works. No meetings will be allowed to be held.... For the last time the Petrograd Soviet invites the Putilov workmen to expiate their crime committed against the working-class and the peasantry of Russia, and to cease at once their foolish strike.

On the following day this “invitation” was followed up by a typical display of Bolshevist force. A detachment of armed sailors went to the homes of the striking workmen and at the point of the bayonet drove the men back into the works, about which a strong guard was placed. The men were kept at work by armed guards placed at strategic positions in the shops. All communication with the outside was strictly prohibited. Numerous arrests were made. With grim irony the Bolshevist officials posted in and around the shops placards explaining that, unlike imperialistic and capitalistic governments, the Soviet authority had no intention of suppressing strikes or insurrections by armed force. For the good of the Revolution, however, and to meet the war needs, the government would use every means at its command to force the workmen to remain at their tasks and to prevent all demonstrations.

A bitter struggle took place between the trades-unions and the Soviet Government. It was due, not to strikes merely, or even mainly, though these naturally brought out its bitterest manifestations. The real cause of the conflict was the fact that the government had thrown communism to the winds and adopted a policy of state capitalism. All the evils of capitalism in its relation to the workers reappeared, intensified and exaggerated as an inevitable result of being fundamental elements of the polity of an all-powerful state wholly free from democratic control. The abolition of the right to strike; the introduction of piece-work, augmented by a bonus system in place of day wages; the arbitrary fixing of wages and working conditions; the withdrawal of the powers which the workers’ councils, led by the unions, had possessed since the beginning of the Revolution, and the substitution for the crude spirit of democracy which inspired the Soviet control of industry of the despotic principle of autocracy, “absolute submission to the will of a single individual”—these things inevitably evoked the active hostility of the organized workers. It was from the proletariat, and from its most “class-conscious” elements, that the Bolshevist régime received this determined resistance.

Many unions were suppressed altogether. This happened to the Teachers’ Union, which was declared to be “counter-revolutionary.”[47] It happened also to the Printers’ Union. In this case the authorities simply declared that all membership cards were invalid and that the old officers were displaced. In order to work as a printer it was necessary to get a new card of membership, and such cards were only issued to those who signed declarations of loyalty to the Bolshevist authority.[48] The trades-unions were made to conform to the decisions of the Communist Party and subordinated to the rule of the Commissaries. Upon this point there is a good deal of evidence available, though most of it comes from non-Bolshevist sources. The references to this important matter in the official Bolshevist press are very meager and vague, and the Ransomes, Goodes, Malones, Coppings, and other apologists are practically silent upon the subject.

[47] See Keeling, op. cit.

[48] Idem.

The Socialist and trades-union leader, Oupovalov, from whom we have previously quoted, testifies that “Trades-unions, as working-class organizations independent of any political party, were transformed by the Bolsheviki into party organizations and subordinated to the Commissaries.” Strumillo, equally competent as a witness, says: “Another claim of the Social Democrats—that trades-unions should be independent of political parties—likewise came to nothing. They were all to be under the control of the Bolsheviki. Alone the All-Russian Union of Printers succeeded in keeping its independence, but eventually for that it was dispersed by the order of Lenin, and the members of its Executive Committee arrested.” These statements are borne out by the testimony of the English trades-unionist, Keeling, who says:

If a trades-union did not please the higher Soviet it was fined and suppressed and a new union was formed in its place by the Bolsheviks themselves. Entry to this new union was only open to members of the old union who signed a form declaring themselves entirely in agreement with, and prepared completely to support in every detail, the policy of the Soviet Government.

Refusal to join on these terms meant the loss of the work and the salary, together with exclusion from both the first and second categories.[49] It will readily be understood how serious a matter it was to oppose any coercive measure.

[49] I.e., the food categories entitling one to the highest and next highest food rations.

Every incentive was held out to the poorer people to spy and report on the others. A workman or a girl who gave information that any member of the trades-union was opposed in any way to the Soviet system was specially rewarded. He or she would be given extra food and promoted as soon as possible to a seat upon the executive of the union or a place on the factory committee.

Soon after the first Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, in February, 1918, the unions of railway workers were “merged with the state”—that is, they were forbidden to strike or to function as defensive or offensive organizations of the workers, and were compelled to accept the direction of the officials appointed by the central government and to carry out their orders. At the second Congress of the Railroad Workers’ Unions, February, 1919, according to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 42), this policy was “sharply and categorically opposed” by Platonov, himself a Bolshevik and one of the most influential of the leaders of the railway men’s unions. At the Moscow Conference of Shop Committees and Trades-Unions, March, 1919, it was reported, according to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 51), the unions “having given up their neutrality and independence, completely merged their lot with that of the Soviet Government.... Their work came to be closely interwoven with the state activities of the Soviet Government.... Only practical utilitarian considerations prevent us from completely merging the trades-unions with the administrative apparatus of the state.”

At the ninth Congress of the Communist Party, held in Moscow, Bucharin proposed the adoption of certain “basic principles” governing the status of trades-unions and these were accepted by the Congress: “In the Soviet state economic and political issues are indivisible, therefore the economic organs of the Labor movement—the unions—have to be completely merged with the political—the Soviets—and not to continue as independent organizations as is the case in a capitalistic state. Being more limited in their scope, they have to be subordinate to the Soviets, which are more universal institutions. But merging with the Soviet apparatus the unions by no means become organs of the state power; they only take upon themselves the economic functions of this power.” In his speech Bucharin contended that “such an intimate connection of the trades-unions with the Soviet power will present an ideal network of economic administrative organization covering the whole of Russia.” It is quite clear that the unions must cease to exist as fighting organizations in the Bolshevist state, and become merely subordinate agencies carrying out the will of the central power.

Even if this testimony, official and otherwise, were lacking, it would be evident from the numerous strikes of a serious character among the best organized workers, and from their violence, that Bolshevism at this stage of its development found itself in opposition to the trades-unions. And if the evidence upon that point were not overwhelming and conclusive, it would only be necessary to read carefully the numerous laws and decrees of the Bolshevist Government, and to observe the development of its industrial policy, in order to understand that trades-unions, as independent and militant working-class organizations, fighting always to advance the interests of their class, could not exist under such a system.

The direct and immediate reason for the policy that was adopted toward the unions was, of course, the state of the industries, which made it impossible to meet the ever-growing demands made by the unions. There was, however, a far deeper and profounder reason, namely, the character of the unions themselves. The Bolsheviki had been forced to recognize the fundamental weakness of every form of Syndicalism, including Sovietism. They had found that the Soviets were not qualified to carry on industry efficiently; that narrow group interests were permitted to dominate, instead of the larger interests of society as a whole. The same thing was true of the trades-unions. By its very nature the trades-union movement is limited to a critical purpose and attitude; it makes demands and evades responsibilities. The trades-union does not and cannot, as a trades-union, possess the capacity for constructive functioning that a co-operative society possesses, for instance.

This fact was very clearly and frankly stated in March, 1919, by L. B. Krassin, in a criticism which was published in the Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 52). He pointed out that, apart from the struggle for higher wages, “the labor control on the part of the trades-unions confined itself the whole time to perfunctory supervision of the activities of the plants, and completely ignored the general work of production. A scientific technical control, the only kind that is indispensable, is altogether beyond the capacities of the trades-unions.” The same issue of this authoritative Bolshevist organ stated that at the Conference of Electrical Workers it was reported that “In the course of last year everybody admitted the failure of workers’ control,” and that the conference had adopted a resolution “to replace the working-men’s control by one of inspection—i.e., by the engineers of the Council of National Economy.”

Instead of the expected idyllic peace and satisfaction, there was profound unrest in the Utopia of the Bolsheviki. There was not even the inspiration of enthusiastic struggle and sacrifice to attain the goal. The organized workers were disillusioned. They found that the Bolshevist state, in its relations to them as employer, differed from the capitalist employers they had known mainly in the fact that it had all the coercive forces of the state at its command, and a will to use them without any hesitation or any mercy. One view of the social and industrial unrest of the period is set forth in the following extract from the Severnaya Communa, March 30, 1919:

At the present moment a tremendous struggle is going on within the ranks of the proletariat between two diametrically opposed currents. Part of the proletariat, numerically in the great majority, still tied to the village, both in a material as well as an ideological respect, is in an economic sense inclined to anarchism. It is not connected in production and in interest in its development. The other part is the industrial, highly skilled mechanics, who fight for new methods of production.

By the equalization of pay, and by the introduction of majority rule in the management of the factories, supposed to be a policy of democracy, we are only sawing off the limb on which we are sitting, for the flower of our proletariat, the most efficient workers, prefer to go to the villages, or to engage in home trades, or to do anything else but to remain within those demolished and dusty fortresses we call factories. Why, this means in its truest sense a dictatorship of unskilled laborers!

This outcry from one of the principal official organs of the Bolsheviki is interesting from several points of view. The struggle within the proletariat itself is recognized. This alone could only mean the complete abandonment of faith in the original Bolshevist ideal, which was based upon the solidarity of interest of the working-class as a whole. The denunciation of the equalitarian principle of uniform wages for all workers, and of majority rule in the factories, could only come from a conviction that Bolshevism and Sovietism were alike unsuited to Russia and undesirable. The scornful reference to a “dictatorship of unskilled laborers” might have come from any bourgeois employer.

From the official Bolshevist press of this period pages of quotations might easily be given to show that the transformation to familiar capitalist conditions was proceeding at a rapid rate. Thus, the Bolshevist official, Glebov, reported at the Conference of Factory Committees, in March, 1919: “The fight against economic disintegration demanded the reintroduction of the premium system. This system has produced splendid results in many instances, having increased the productivity of labor 100 to 200 per cent.” The Bolshevist journal, Novy Put, declared, “The most effective means for raising the efficiency of labor is the introduction of the premium and piece-work system as against daily wages.” The Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 46) declared, “An investigation undertaken last month by the trades-unions has shown that in 75 per cent. of the plants the old system of wages has been reintroduced and that nearly everywhere this has been followed by satisfactory and even splendid results.” The same issue of this important official organ showed that there had been large increases in production wherever the old system of wages and premiums had been restored. At the Marx Printing Works the increase was 20 per cent.; at the Nobel Factory 35 per cent.; at the Aviation Plant 150 per cent.; and at Seminov’s Lumber Mill 243 per cent.

The Severnaya Communa reported that “In the Nevski Works the substitution of the premium system for the monthly wage system increased the productivity of the working-men three and one-half times, and the cost of labor for one locomotive dropped from 1,400,000 rubles to 807,000 rubles—i.e., to almost one-half.” Rykov, president of the Superior Council of National Economy, one of the ablest of the Bolshevist officials, reported, according to Izvestia, that “in the Tula Munition Works, after the old ‘premium’ system of wages had been restored, the productivity of the works and of labor rose to 70 per cent. of what it was in 1916.”

These are only a few of the many similar statements appearing in the official Bolshevist press pointing to a reversal of policy and a return to capitalist methods. On March 1, 1919, a decree of the People’s Commissaries was promulgated which introduced a new wage scale, based upon the principle of extra pay for skill. The greater the skill the higher the rate of wages was the new rule. As published in Severnaya Communa, the scale provided for twenty-seven classes of workers. The lowest, unskilled class of laborers, domestics, and so forth, receive 600 rubles per month (1st class), 660 rubles (2d class), and so on. Higher employees, specialists, are put in classes 20 to 27, and receive from 1,370 to 2,200 rubles a month. Skilled mechanics in chemical plants, for example, receive 1,051-1,160 rubles. Unskilled laborers, 600 rubles, and chemical engineers more than 2,000 rubles a month.

Nationalization of industry meant, and could only mean, state capitalism. Communism was as far away as it was under czarism. And many of the old complaints so familiar in capitalist countries were heard. The workers were discontented and restless; production, while it was better than under Soviet control, was still far below the normal level; there was an enormous growth of bureaucracy and an appalling amount of corruption. Profiteering and speculation were rampant and inefficiency was the order of the day. The following extract from an article in Pravda, March 15, 1919, is a confession of failure most abject:

Last year the people of Russia were suffering from lack of bread. To-day they are in distress because there is plenty of foodstuffs which cannot be brought out from the country and which will, no doubt, decay to a great extent when hot weather arrives.

The misery of bread scarcity is replaced by another calamity—the plentifulness of breadstuffs. That the situation is really such is attested by these figures:

The Food Commission and its subsidiary organs have stored up from August, 1918, to February 20, 1919, grain and forage products amounting to 82,633,582 poods. There remained on the last-mentioned date in railroad stations and other collection centers not less than 22,245,072 poods of grain and fodder. Of these stocks, according to the incomplete information by the Transport Branch of the Food Commission, there are stalled on the Moscow-Kazan and Syzran-Viazma Railroads alone not less than 2,000,000 poods of grain in 2,382 cars. There are, moreover, according to the same source, on the Kazanburgsk and Samara-Zlatoostovsk Line, at least 1,300 more car-loads of breadstuffs that cannot be moved.

All this grain is stalled because there are no locomotives to haul the rolling-stock. Thus the starving population does not receive the bread which is provided for it and which is, in part, even loaded up in cars.

In a hungry land there must be no misery while there is a surplus of bread. Such a misfortune would be truly unbearable!

On April 15, 1919, Izvestia published an article by Zinoviev, in which the famous Bolshevist leader confessed that the Soviet Government had not materially benefited the average working-man:

Has the Soviet Government, has our party done everything that can be done for the direct improvement of the daily life of the average working-man and his family? Alas! we hesitate to answer this question in the affirmative.

Let us look the truth in the face. We have committed quite a number of blunders in this realm. We have to confess that we are unable to improve the nutrition of the average worker to any serious extent. But do the wages correspond with the actually stupendous rise of prices for unrationed foodstuffs? Nobody will undertake to answer this question entirely in the affirmative, while the figures given by Comrade Strumilin show that in spite of a threefold raise of the wage scale, the real purchasing power of these wages had shrunk, on the average, more than 30 per cent. by March of the current year, as compared with May of last year.

The Economicheskaya Zhizn, May 6, 1919, gave a despondent account of the coal industry and the low production, accompanied by this alarming picture: “The starving, ill-clad miners are running away from the pits in a panic, and it is to be feared that in two or three weeks not only the whole production of coal will be stopped, but most of the mines will be flooded.”

Nationalization of industry was not a new thing in Russia. It was, indeed, quite common under czarism. The railways were largely state owned and operated by the government. Most of the factories engaged in the manufacture of guns and munitions were also nationalized under czarism. It is interesting, therefore, to compare the old régime with the new in this connection. Under czarism nationalization had always led to the creation of an immense bureaucracy, politically powerful by reason of its numbers, extravagant, inefficient, and corrupt. That nationalization under the new régime was attended by the same evils, in an exaggerated form, the only difference being that the new bureaucracy was drawn from a different class, is written so plainly in the records that he who runs may read. No country in the world, it is safe to say, has ever known such a bureaucracy as the Bolshevist régime produced.

At the eighth All-Russian Congress of the Communist Party, held in March, 1919, Lenin said: “You imagine that you have abolished private property, but instead of the old bourgeoisie that has been crushed you are faced by a new one. The places of the former bourgeoisie have already been filled up by the newly born bourgeoisie.” The backbone of this new bourgeoisie was the vast army of government officials and employees. These and the food speculators and profiteers, many of whom have amassed great wealth—real wealth, not worthless paper rubles—make up a formidable bourgeoisie. Professor Miliukov tells of a statistical department in Moscow with twenty-one thousand employees; and of eighteen offices having to be visited to get permission to buy a pair of shoes from the government store. Alexander Berkenheim, vice-chairman of the Moscow Central Union of Russian Consumers’ Co-operative Societies, said: “The experiment in socialization has resulted in the building up of an enormous bureaucratic machine. To buy a pencil one has to call at eighteen official places.” These men are competent witnesses, notwithstanding their opposition to Bolshevism. Let us put it aside, however, and consider only a small part of the immense mass of official Bolshevist testimony to the same general effect.

On February 21, 1919, the Bolshevist official, Nemensky, presented to the Supreme Council of National Economy the report of the official inspection and audit of the Centro-Textile, the central state organization having charge of the production and distribution of textiles. There are some sixty of these organizations, such as Centro-Sugar, Centro-Tea, Centro-Coal, and so on, the entire number being federated into the Supreme Council of National Economy. From the report referred to, as published in Economicheskaya Zhizn, February 25, 1919, the following paragraphs are quoted:

An enormous staff of employees (about 6,000), for the most part loafing about, doing nothing; it was discovered that 125 employees were actually not serving at all, but receiving a salary the same as the others. There have been cases where some have been paid twice for the same period of time. The efficiency of the officials is negligible to a striking degree....

The following figures may partially serve as an illustration of what was the work of the collaborators: For four months—from August 25 to November 21, 1918—the number of letters received amounted to 59,959 (making an average of 500 a day), and the number of letters sent was 25,781 (an average of 207 per day). Each secretary had to deal with 10 letters received and 4 sent, each typist with 2 letters sent, and each clerk with 1 letter received and 0.5 sent. Together with chairs, tables, etc., the inventory-book contained entries of dinners, rent, etc. When checking the inventory of the department it was established that the following were missing—142 tables, 500 chairs, 39 cupboards, 14 typewriters, etc. On the whole, the entries in the book exceeded by 50 per cent, the number of articles found on the spot.

Commenting upon this report the Izvestia[50] said: “An enormous staff of employees in most cases lounge about in idleness. An inquiry showed that the staff of the Centro-Textile included 125 employees who were practically not in its service, though drawing their pay. There were cases where one and the same person drew his pay twice over for one and the same period of time. The working capacity of the employees is ridiculously low; the average correspondence per typist was one letter outward and one inward per day; the average per male clerk was a half a letter outward and one inward.” We do not wonder, at Nemensky’s own comment, “Such Soviet institutions are a beautiful example of deadening bureaucracy and must be liquidated.”

[50] No. 63, 1919.

The disclosures made in the Centro-Textile were repeated in other state economic institutions. Thus the Izvestia of the State Control, commenting upon the Budget for 1919, said:

The Audit Department sees in the increase of expenditure for the payment of work a series of negative causes. Among these is that it leads to a double working on parallel lines—viz., the same work is done by two and even more sections, resulting in mutual friction and disorder and bringing the number of employees beyond all necessary requirements. We noticed on more than one occasion that an institution with many auxiliary branches had been opened before any operations to be carried on by them were even started.

Furthermore, the work is mostly very slovenly and inefficiently conducted. It leads to an increase of the number of employees and workmen without benefit to the work.

In the Bulletin of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (No. 15) we find this confession: “We have created extraordinary commissaries and Extraordinary Commissions without number. All of these are, to a lesser or greater degree, only mischief-makers.” Lunacharsky, the Bolshevist Commissary of Education, is reported by the Severnaya Communa of May 23, 1919, as saying: “The upper stratum of the Soviet rule is becoming detached from the masses and the blunders of the communist workers are becoming more and more frequent. These latter, according to statements made by workmen, treat the masses in a high-handed manner and are very generous with threats and repressions.” In Pravda, May 14, 1919, the Bolshevik, Monastyrev, wrote: “Such a wholesale loafing as is taking place in our Soviet institutions and such a tremendous number of officials the history of the world has never known and does not know. All the Soviet papers have written about it, and we have felt it on our backs, too.” Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee (No. 15), 1919, said: “Besides Soviets and committees, many commissaries and committees have been instituted here. Almost every commissariat has an extraordinary organ peculiar to its own department. As a result we have numberless commissaries of all kinds. All of them are more or less highly arbitrary in their behavior and by their actions undermine Soviet authority.”

These are only a few of the many statements of a like character published in the official Bolshevist press. In a country which had long been accustomed to an immense bureaucracy, the horde of officials was regarded with astonishment and alarm. Like the old bureaucracy, the new bureaucracy was at once brutal and corrupt. No one can read the reports published by the Bolsheviki themselves and fail to be impressed by the entire absence of idealism so far as the great majority of the officials are concerned, a fact which Lenin himself has commented upon more than once. That there were and are exceptions to the rule we may well believe, just as there were such exceptions under the old régime of Nicholas II. Upon the whole, however, it is difficult to see wherein the bureaucracy of the Bolsheviki was less brutal, less coarse, or less corrupt than that of czarism. But again let the Bolsheviki speak through their own recognized spokesmen:

According to Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, November 1, 1918, a commission of five which had been appointed to discover and distribute metal among the factories in proportion to their needs was found to have been bribed to distribute the metal, not in proportion to the needs of the industries, but according to the value of the bribe.

From the Weekly Report of the Extraordinary Commission, No. 1, page 28, we learn that the administration of the combined Moscow nationalized factories was convicted of a whole series of abuses and speculations, resulting in the embezzlement of many millions of rubles. It was said that members of the administrative board and practically all the employees took part in this graft.

From Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, November 3, 1918, we learn that the Soviet of National Economy of Kursk, connected with the Supreme Council of National Economy, was found guilty of speculative dealings in sugar and hemp.

In the same important official journal, January 22, 1919, the well-known Bolshevik, Kerzhentzev, in a terrible exposure from which we have already quoted in an earlier chapter, says: “The abundant testimony, verified by the Soviet Commission, portrays a very striking picture of violence. When these members of the Executive Committee [he names Glakhov, Morev, and Makhov] arrived at the township of Sadomovo they commenced to assault the population and to rob them of foodstuffs and of their household belongings, such as quilts, clothing, harness, etc. No receipts for the requisitioned goods were given and no money paid. “They even resold to others on the spot some of the breadstuffs which they had requisitioned.” Again, the same journal published, on March 9, 1919, a report by a prominent Bolshevik, Sosnovsky, on conditions in the Tver Province, saying: “The local Communist Soviet workers behave themselves, with rare exceptions, in a disgusting manner. Misuse of power is going on constantly.”

A cursory examination of the files of the Bulletin of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, for the first few months of 1919, reveals a great deal of such evidence as the foregoing. In No. 12 we read: “The toiling population see in the squandering of money right and left by the commissaries and in their indecent loudness and profanity during their trips through the district, the complete absence of party discipline.” In No. 13 of the same organ there is an account of the case of Commissary Odintzov, a member of the peace delegation to the Ukraine, who was “found speculating in breadstuffs.” In No. 20 we read that “members of the Extraordinary Commission, Unger and Lebedev, were found guilty of embezzlement.” No. 25 says that “a case has been started against the commissaries, O. K. Bogdanov and Zaitzev, accused of misappropriating part of the requisitioned gold and silver articles.”

Let us hear from some of the leading Bolsheviki who participated in the debate on the subject of the relation of the central Soviet authority to local self-government at the eighth Congress of the Communist Party, March, 1919. Nogin, former president of the Moscow Soviet, said: “The time has come to state openly before this meeting how low our party has fallen. We have to confess that the representatives both of the central and the local authorities disgrace the name of the party by their conduct. Their drunkenness and immorality, the robberies and other crimes committed by them, are so terrible as scarcely to be believed.” Commissar Volin said: “Some of the local authorities give themselves over to outrageous abominations. How can they be put a stop to? The word ‘communist’ rouses deep hatred, not only among the bourgeoisie, but even among the poorer and the middle classes which we are ruining. What can we do for our own salvation?” Pakhomoff said: “I sent several comrades to the villages. They had barely reached their destination when they turned bandits.” Ossinsky said, “The revolts now taking place are not White Guard risings, as formerly, but rebellions caused by famine and the outrageous behavior of our own commissaries.”

Zinoviev was equally emphatic in his declaration: “It cannot be concealed from this meeting that in certain localities the word ‘communist’ has become a term of abuse. The people are beginning to hate the ‘men in leather jackets,’ as the commissaries were nicknamed in Perm. The fact cannot be denied, and we must look the truth in the face. Every one knows that both in the provinces and in the large towns the housing reform has been carried out imperfectly. True, the bourgeoisie has been driven out of its houses, but the workmen have gained nothing thereby. The houses are taken possession of by Bolshevist state employees, and sometimes they have been occupied, not even by the ‘Soviet bureaucrat,’ but by his mother-in-law or grandmother.”

Not only has the bribery of officials grown, as revealed by the reports of the Extraordinary Commissions, but many of the Bolshevist officials have engaged in food speculation. That the greatest buyers of the food illegally sold at the Sukharevka market are the highly paid Soviet officials is a charge frequently made in the Bolshevist press. In November, 1919, Tsurupa, People’s Commissary for Supplies, published an article in Izvestia (No. 207), exposing the speculation in foodstuffs at the Sukharevka market, formerly the largest market for second-hand goods in Moscow, now the center of illicit speculation. Tsurupa said:

At the present moment a number of measures are being drawn up to begin war on “Sukharevka.” The struggle must be carried on in two directions: first, the strengthening of the organs of supply and the control over the work of Soviet machinery; secondly, the destruction of speculators. The measures of the second kind are, of course, merely palliative, and it is impossible to overcome “Sukharevka” without insuring the population a certain supply of the rationed foodstuffs.

Even among our respected comrades there are some who consider “Sukharevaka” as an almost normal thing, or, at any rate, as supplementing the gaps in food-supply.

Many defects in our organization are directly conducive to speculation. Thus many head commissariats, centers, factories, and works pay their workmen and employees in foodstuffs exceeding their personal requirements, and, as a rule, these articles find their way to “Sukharevka” for purposes of speculation.

The foodstuffs which find their way to “Sukharevka” are sold at such high prices that only the upper circles of Soviet employees can afford to buy them, the masses of consumers being totally unable to do so. These foodstuffs are at the disposal of the—so to speak—Soviet bourgeoisie, who can afford to squander thousands of rubles. “Sukharevka” gives nothing to the masses.

The Moscow Extraordinary Commission is carrying on an active campaign against “Sukharevka” speculation. As a result of a fortnight’s work, 437 persons have been arrested, and a series of transactions have been discovered. The most important cases were as follows:

(1) Sale of 19 million rubles’ worth of textiles.

(2) Sale of three wagon-loads of sugar. (At the price of even 200 rubles, and not 400 rubles, a wagon of 36,000 pounds of sugar works out at 8,000,000 rubles, and the whole deal amounts to 24,000,000 rubles.)

(3) Seventeen wagon-loads of herrings.

(4) 15,000,000 rubles’ worth of rubber goods, etc.

In the course of the campaign of the Moscow Extraordinary Commission above referred to it was discovered that the state textile stores in Moscow had been looted by the “Communists” in charge of them. Millions of yards of textiles, instead of being placed on sale in the nationalized stores, had been sold to speculators and found their way into the Sukharevka. During the summer of 1919 the Bolshevist official press literally teemed with revelations of graft, spoliation, and robbery by officials. The report of the Smolensk Extraordinary Commission showed that hundreds of complaints had been made and investigated. In general the financial accounts were kept with almost unbelievable carelessness and laxity. Large sums of money were paid out on the order of single individuals without the knowledge of any other officials, and without check of any sort. Out of a total expenditure of three and a half million rubles for food rations to soldiers’ families there were no vouchers or receipts for 1,161,670 rubles, according to the report. Commenting upon the reign of corruption in all parts of Soviet Russia, the Krasnaya Gazeta, in an article entitled, “When Is This to End?” said:

In the Commissariat of the Boards for the various municipalities thefts of goods and money are almost of daily occurrence. Quite recently representatives of the State Control found that silk and other goods for over a million rubles had been stolen within a short space of time from the goods listed as nationalized. Furthermore, it has come out during the inspection of the nationalized houses that thefts and embezzlements of the people’s money have become an ordinary occurrence. It is remarkable how light-fingered gentry who are put to manage the confiscated houses succeed in getting away after pocketing the money belonging to the Soviet, and all that with impunity, and yet the money stolen by them is estimated not at hundreds of rubles, but at tens of thousands of rubles. Will there ever be an end to these proceedings? Or is complete liberty to be given to the thieves in Soviet Russia to do as they like?

Why does the Extraordinary Commission not see to the affairs of the Commissariat of the Municipality? It is high time all these Augean stables were cleaned up. This must stop at last. The Soviet authorities are sufficiently strong to have some scores of these thieves of the people’s property hanged. To close one’s eyes to all this is the same as encouraging the thieves.

Here, then, is a part of the evidence of the brutality and corruption of the vast bureaucracy which Bolshevism has developed to replace the old bureaucracy of the Czars. It is only a small part of the total mass of such evidence.[51] Every word of it comes from Bolshevist officials and journals of standing and authority. It will not do to seek to evade the issue by setting up the plea that corruption and brutality are found in other lands. That plea not only “begs the question,” but it destroys the only foundation upon which an honest attempt to justify Bolshevism can be made, namely, the claim that it represents a higher stage of civilization, of culture, and morality than the old. Only a profound belief in the righteousness of that claim could justify the recourse to such a terrible method of bringing about a change in the social organization of a great nation. There is not the faintest shadow of a reason for believing that Bolshevism has been one whit less corrupt than the czarist bureaucracy.

[51] In Les Bolsheviks à l’œuvre, Paris, 1920, A. Lockerman gives a list of many similar cases of looting and graft by commissars.

What of efficiency? Does the available evidence tend to show that this bureaucratic system managed to secure a degree of efficiency in production and distribution commensurate, in part, at least, with its enormous cost? On the contrary, while there was a marked increase in output after nationalization was introduced, due to the restoration of capitalist methods of management, the enormous cost at which the improvement was effected, for which the bureaucracy was responsible, left matters in a deplorable condition. This can be well understood in view of the fact, cited by Professor Issaiev, that in one of the largest metal works in Moscow the overhead charges, cost of administration, accounting, and so on, which in 1916, the last year of the old régime, amounted to 15 per cent. of the total cost, rose to over 65 per cent. in 1918-19. This was not an unusual case, but fairly typical. Once again, however, let us resist the temptation to quote such figures, based upon the calculations and researches of hostile critics, and confine ourselves strictly to Bolshevist testimony.

At the end of December, 1918, Rykov, president of the Supreme Council of National Economy, reported to the Central Executive Committee, according to Economicheskaya Zhizn, “Now almost all the large and medium-sized establishments are nationalized.” A few days later an article by Miliutin, published in the same paper, said: “A year ago there were about 36 per cent. of nationalized establishments throughout Soviet Russia. At the present time 90 per cent. of industrial establishments are nationalized.” On January 12, 1919, the same journal reported that nationalization had become general throughout Russian industry, embracing the textile and metallurgical industries, glass-making, printing, publishing, practically all commerce, and even barber shops. We are, therefore, in a fair position to judge the effects of nationalization upon the basis of subsequent reports.

It is not as well known as it ought to be that the Bolsheviki, even under nationalization, continued the practice, established under czarism and maintained by the Provisional Government under Kerensky, of subsidizing factories from the central treasury of the government. Bad as this practice was under capitalism, it was immeasurably worse when applied to industry under Soviet control and to nationalized industry. It was not only conducive to laxity and bad management, but it invited these as well as being destructive of enterprise and energy. The sums spent for this purpose were enormous, staggering in their total. A few illustrations must suffice to show this. According to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 50), in the month of January, 1919, the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of National Economy distributed among the various nationalized metallurgical works 1,167,295,000 rubles, and the central organization of the copper industry received 1,193,990,000 rubles. According to a report of the Section of Polygraphic Trades, published in Pravda, May 17, 1919, nineteen nationalized printing-establishments lost 13,500,000 rubles during 1918, the deficit having to be made up by subsidies from the central treasury. At the Conference of Tobacco Workers, held on April 25, 1919, it was reported, according to Severnaya Communa, that the Petrograd factories alone were being operated at a loss approaching two million rubles a month. It was further stated that “the condition of the tobacco industry is bad. The number of plants has been decreased by more than half, and the output is only one-third.” In the report of Nemensky on the audit of the Centro-Textile, from which we have already quoted, we read:

The Finance Credit Division of the Centrotekstil received up to February 1, 1919, 3,400,000,000 rubles. There was no control of the expenditure of moneys. Money was advanced to factories immediately upon demand, and there were cases when money was forwarded to factories which did not exist. From July 1 to December 31, 1918, the Centrotekstil advanced on account of products to be received 1,348,619,000 rubles. The value of the goods securing these advances received up to January 1, 1919, was only 143,716,000 rubles. The Centrotekstil’s negligent way of doing business may be particularly observed from the way it purchased supplies of raw wool. Up to January 1, 1919, only 129,803 poods of wool was acquired, whereas the annual requirement is figured at 3,500,000 poods.

The value of the goods actually received was, according to this authority, only 10 per cent. of the money advanced. We are told that “money was forwarded to factories which did not exist.” That this practice was not confined to the Centro-Textile we infer from the account given in the Izvestia of State Control (No. 2) of a firm which obtained a large sum of money in advance for Westinghouse brakes to be manufactured and supplied by it, though investigation proved that the firm did not even own a foundry and was unable to furnish any brakes at all. How much of this represents inefficiency, and how much of it graft, the reader must judge for himself. The Bolshevist newspaper, Trud, organ of the trades-unions, in an article dealing with the closing down of nineteen textile factories, said, April 28, 1919:

In our textile crisis a prominent part is played also by the bad utilization of that which we do have. Thus the efficiency of labor has dropped to almost nothing, of labor discipline there is not even a trace left, the machinery, on account of careless handling, has deteriorated and its productive capacity has been lowered.

In Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, March 21, 1919, Bucharin said: “Our position is such that, together with the deterioration of the material production—machinery, railways, and other things—there is a destruction of the fundamental productive force, the labor class, as such. Here in Russia, as in western Europe,[52] the working-class is dissolving, factories are closing, and the working-class is reabsorbed into the villages.”

[52] Sic!

From the report of the Supreme Council of National Economy, March, 1919, we learn that in the vast majority of the branches of Russia’s industry the labor required for production had increased from 400 to 500 per cent. The Congress of Salesmen’s Unions, held at the end of April, 1919, adopted a resolution, published in Izvestia (No. 97), which said, “The nationalization of commerce, owing to the pell-mell speed of the methods employed in carrying it out, has assumed with us extremely ugly forms, and has only aggravated the bad state of affairs in the circulation of goods in the country, which was poor enough as it was.”

These statements show that in the early part of last year the Bolshevist régime was in a very critical condition. Demands for the “liquidation” of the system were heard on every hand. Instead of this, the resourceful rulers of Soviet Russia once more revolutionized their methods. The period of nationalization we have been considering may be described as the first phase, the period of the rule of industry by the professional politicians of the Communist Party. When, in March, 1919, Leonid B. Krassin[53] undertook the reorganization of the industrial life of the nation, Bolshevism entered upon a new phase.

[53] Krassin’s first name is usually given as “Gregory,” but this is an error. His full name is Leonid Borisovitch Krassin. He is a Siberian of bourgeois extraction.

X
THE NATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY—II

The second phase of nationalization may be characterized as the adoption by a political state of the purest capitalist methods. Krassin was not a Bolshevik or a Socialist of any kind, so far as can be learned. He severed his rather nominal connection with the Socialist movement in 1906, it is said, and, thoroughly disillusioned, devoted himself to his profession and to the management of the Petrograd establishment of the great German firm of Siemens-Schuckart. He is said to have maintained very cordial relations with Lenin and was asked by the latter to accept three portfolios, namely, Commerce and Industry, Transports, and War and Munitions. He agreed to take the appointment, provided the Soviet Government would accept his conditions. He demanded (1) the right to appoint specialists of his own choosing to manage all the departments under his control, regardless of their political or social views; (2) that all remaining workers’ committees of control be abolished and that he be given the power to replace them by responsible directors, with full powers; (3) that piece-work payments and premiums take the place of day-work payment, with the right to insist upon overtime regardless of any existing rules or laws.

Of course, acceptance of these conditions was virtually an abandonment of every distinctive principle and ideal the Bolsheviki had ever advanced. Krassin immediately set to work to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos. The “iron discipline” that was introduced and the brutal suppression of strikes already described were due to his powerful energy. A martinet, with no sort of use for the Utopian visions of his associates, Krassin is a typical industrial despot. The attitude of the workers toward him was tersely stated by the Proletarskoe Echo in these words: “How Comrade Krassin has organized the traffic we have all seen and now know. We do not know whether Comrade Krassin has improved the traffic, but one thing is certain, that his autocratic ways as a Commissary greatly remind us of the autocratic policy of a Czar.”[54]

[54] Quoted by H. W. Lee, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, p. 7.

Yet Krassin failed to do more or better than prolong the hopeless struggle against utter ruin and disastrous failure. He was, after all, an engineer, not a miracle-worker. Trades-unions were deprived of power and made mere agencies for transmitting autocratic orders; tens of thousands of useless politicians were ousted from the factories and the railways; the workers’ control was so thoroughly broken that there were not left in Soviet Russia a dozen workers’ committees possessing the power of the printers’ “chapel” in the average large American newspaper plant, or anything like the power possessed by hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of shop committees in our industrial centers.[55] But Krassin and his stern capitalist methods had come too late. The demoralization had gone too far.

[55] In view of the denials of the dissolution of workers’ control, circulated by Soviet Russia and the whole body of pro-Bolshevist propagandists, it may be well to clinch the statements made on this point by quoting from an indisputable authority. In the issue of Economicheskaya Zhizn, November 13, 1919, appears the following paragraph:

“Schliapnikoff, Commissar of Labor in the Soviet Republic, writes: ‘The principal cause of the deplorable situation of the Russian industry is a total absence of order and discipline in the factories. The Working Men’s Councils and the Shop Committees, created with the purpose of establishing order in the factories, exercised an injurious influence on the general course of affairs by destroying the last traces of discipline and by squandering away the property of the factories. All those circumstances put together have compelled us to abolish the Working Men’s Councils and to place at the head of the most important concerns special “dictators,” with unlimited powers and entitled to dispose of the life and death of the workmen.’”

Only a brief summary of the most important statistical data illustrating the results attained during the remainder of the year 1919, that is to say, the second phase of nationalization, can be given here. To attempt anything like a detailed presentation of the immense mass of available official statistical data covering this period would of itself require a large volume. If we take the Economicheskaya Zhizn for the months of October and November, 1919, we shall be able to get a fairly good measure of the results attained during the half-year following the reorganization of the system by Krassin. It must always be borne in mind that the Economicheskaya Zhizn is the official organ of the Supreme Economic Council and of the Ministries of Finance, Commerce and Trade, and Food. To avoid having to use the name of the journal in almost every other line, the statements of fact made upon its authority are followed by numbers inclosed in brackets; these numbers indicate the issues from which the statements are taken.[56]

[56] For the mass of translations covering this period the author is indebted to Mr. Alexander Kerensky.

Turning our attention first to the important subject of transportation, to which Krassin naturally devoted special attention, we find that on the entire railway system of Soviet Russia the number of freight-cars and trucks in daily service during August and September averaged between 7,000 and 7,500. Of this number from 45 to 50 per cent.—that is, from 3,500 to 3,750 cars—were used for carrying fuel for the railway service itself; transportation of military supplies took 25 per cent., from 1,750 to 1,850 cars; 10 per cent., from 700 to 750 cars, were used for “evacuation purposes,” and only 15 to 20 per cent., 1,050 to 1,150 cars, for general transportation (215). It is worthy of note that of this absurdly inadequate service for the transportation of general supplies for the civilian population, 95 per cent. was used for the transportation of wood fuel for the cities and towns (229). Not less than 50 per cent. of all the locomotives in the country were out of order at the beginning of November, 1919, and it was stated that to increase the percentage of usable engines to the normal level would require, under the most favorable circumstances, a period of at least five years (228). Despite this deplorable condition there was still a great deal of bureaucratic red tape and waste. At the meeting of the directors of the Supreme Council of National Economy, in September, Markov, a member, argued in favor of eliminating the red tape and waste. He pointed out that wood was being transported to Moscow from the West and at the same time to the West from the North. The Main Fuel Committee had rejected a proposal to exchange the supplies of wood and thus save transportation (214). River transportation was in just as bad a condition, to judge from the fact that the freight tonnage on the river Volga was only 11 per cent. of the pre-war volume (228).

To prove the humanitarian character of the Bolshevist régime its apologists in this country and in England have cited the fact that the Soviet authorities offered a prize for the invention of a hand-cart which would permit a maximum load to be pushed or drawn with a minimum expenditure of human strength. Quite another light is thrown upon this action by the data concerning the breakdown of mechanical transportation and the rapid disappearance of horses from Moscow and Petrograd. The number of horses in September, 1919, was only 8 per cent. of the number in November, 1917—that is to say, under Bolshevism the number of horses had declined 92 per cent. (207). Of course the decline was not so enormous throughout the whole of Soviet Russia, but it was, nevertheless, so serious as to prohibit any hope of making up the loss of mechanical power by the use of horses. Accordingly, we find arrangements for the organization of a rope haulage system for the transportation of coal and food. In the Bazulk and Aktiubin districts provision was made for the use of 6,000 carts to transport wood fuel, and 10,000 carts for corn (228). Similar arrangements were under way in other districts. From locomotives and steamers to transport food and fuel there was a return to the most primitive of methods, such as were used to transport the Great Pyramid in Egypt, as shown by the hieroglyphs. For this purpose the peasants were mobilized (228). The bodies of masses of men were substituted for horses and mechanical traction. Thus was reintroduced into Russian life in the twentieth century the form of labor most hated in the old days of serfdom.

The fuel situation was exceedingly bad. Not more than 55 per cent. of the fuel oil required could be obtained, the deficiency amounting to over four million poods of oil (221). Only 33 per cent. of the fuel wood required was obtained (221). The production of coal in the Moscow region was 45 per cent. lower than in 1917 (224). To overcome the shortage of fuel in Petrograd a large number of houses and boats were ordered to be wrecked for the sake of the wood (227). To save the country from perishing for lack of fuel, it was proposed that the modest fir cones which dropped from the trees be collected and saved. It was proposed to mobilize school-children, disabled soldiers, and old and sick persons to collect these fir cones (202).

In the nationalized cotton-factories there were 6,900,962 spindles and 169,226 looms, but only 300,000 spindles and 18,182 looms were actually working on September 1st (207). On January 1, 1919, there were 48,490 textile-workers in the Moscow District; six months later there were 33,200, a reduction of 15,290—that is, 35 per cent. (220). In the same period the number of workers engaged in preparing raw cotton was reduced by 47.2 per cent. (220). In the metal works of Petrograd there were nominally employed a total of 12,141 workers, of which number only 7,585—that is, 62.4 per cent.—were actually working. Of 7,500 workmen registered at the Putilov Works only 2,800, or 37.3 per cent., were actually working on August 15th. At the Nevsky Shipbuilding and Engineering Works not less than 56 per cent. of the employees were classed as absentees for the first half of July, 70 per cent. for the second half, and 84 per cent. for the first half of August. That is to say, of those nominally employed at this important works the actual daily attendance was 44 per cent. during the first half of July, 30 per cent. for the second half, and only 16 per cent. for the first half of August (209). Since then the Nevsky Shipbuilding and Engineering Works have been entirely closed. It must be remembered that even during the Kerensky régime the metallurgical establishments in Petrograd District, which included some of the finest plants in the world, gave employment to more than 100,000 workmen as against 12,141 registered employees in September, 1919.

In the nationalized leather-factories of the Moscow District the output of large hides was 43 per cent. less than the output of 1918, which was itself far below the normal average (227). In the factories which were not nationalized the output of large hides was 60 per cent. less than in 1918. The apparent superiority of the nationalized factories indicated by these figures is explained by the fact that the Centrokaja, the central administration of the leather industry, gave preference to the nationalized factories in the supply of tanning acids, fuel, and other necessities of production (227). Just as in the metallurgical industry smaller undertakings had a better chance of surviving than larger ones (211), so in the leather industry[57] (227). In both cases the establishments not nationalized are far more successful than the nationalized. The output of small hides in nationalized undertakings fell by 60 per cent., and in the establishments not nationalized by 18 per cent. (227).

[57] Yet we find the Bolshevik, Bazhenov, writing in the Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 50), in March, 1919, the following nonsense: “The only salvation for Russia’s industry lies in the nationalization of large enterprises and the closing of small and medium-sized ones.” Bazhenov is evidently a doctrinaire Marxist of the school to whom one ounce of theory is of more worth than a ton of facts.

The four nationalized match-factories in the northern region employed 2,000 persons. The output in October, 1919, was 50 per cent. of the normal output, the explanation being given that the falling off was due to the fact that large numbers of workmen had to be sent off into the villages to search for bread, while others had to be assigned to work in the fields and to loading wood for fuel (225). The manufacture of electric lamps was practically at a standstill. The Petrograd factories were closed down because of a shortage of skilled workmen and technical directors; the Moscow factories, because of the complete absence of gas (210). The sugar industry was almost completely liquidated (207).

In the report of the People’s Commissariat for Finance we get a graphic and impressive picture of the manner in which this ill-working nationalization was, and is, bolstered up. For financing the nationalized industries appropriations were made as follows:

First six months of 1918762,895,100rubles
Second six months of 19185,141,073,179“
First six months of 191915,439,115,828“

The report calls attention to the fact that whereas it had been estimated that there would be paid into the treasury during the first six months of 1919 for goods issued for consumption 1,503,516,945 rubles, the sum actually received was 54,564,677 rubles—that is, only 3.5 per cent.

Some idea of the conditions prevailing can be gathered from the desperate attempts to produce substitutes for much-needed articles. The ersatz experiments and achievements of the Germans during the war may have had something to do with this. At all events, we find attempts made in the cotton-factories to use “cottonized” flax as a substitute for cotton (207). These attempts did not afford any satisfactory or encouraging results. In consequence of the almost complete stoppage of the sugar industry we find the Soviet authorities resorting to attempts to produce sugar from sawdust (207). Even more pathetic is the manner in which attempts were made to supply salt. This necessary commodity had, for all practical purposes, completely disappeared from the market, though on October 3d, in Petrograd, it was quoted at 140 to 150 rubles per pound (221). As a result of this condition, in several districts old herring-barrels, saturated with salt, were cut up into small pieces and used in cooking instead of salt (205). A considerable market for these pieces of salted wood was found.

We may profitably close this summary of the economic situation in Soviet Russia in October and November, 1919, by quoting from the report of the Chief Administration of Engineering Works:

If we had reason to fear last year for the working of our transport, the complaints of its inefficiency being well grounded, matters have become considerably worse during the period under report. Water transport is by no means in a better position, whilst of haulage transport there is no need to speak.... The consuming needs of the workmen have not been even remotely satisfied, either in the last year or in the current year, by the Commissariat of Food Supply, the main source of food-supply of the workmen being speculation and free market. But even the latter source of food-supply of the workmen in manufacturing districts is becoming more and more inaccessible. Besides the fact that prices have soared up to a much greater extent than the controlled rates of wages, we see the almost complete disappearance of food articles from working-center markets. Of recent times, even pilgrimage to villages is of no avail. The villages will not part with food for money even at high prices. What they demand is articles of which the workers are no less in need. Hence the workers’ escape from the factories (220).

Unfortunately, a good many of the concerns enumerated [in the Tula District] do not work or work only with half the output, in spite of the fact that 20 of the shafts working yield considerable quantities of coal, 10 mines supply much raw material (15 milliard poods of minerals are estimated to be lying in this district), whilst there is also a large number of broken lathes and machinery which can, however, be repaired. Bread for the workers could also be found, if all efforts were strained (the district used to export corn in peace-time). All these possibilities are not carried into life, as there are no people who could by their intense will and sincere desire restore the iron discipline of labor. Our institutions are filled with “Sovburs” and “Speks,” who only think of their own welfare and not of the welfare of the state and of making use of the revolutionary possibilities of the “toilers in revolt.”

In the light of this terrible evidence we can readily believe what Zinoviev wrote in an article contributed to the Severnaya Communa in January of this year. In that article he said: “King Famine seems to be putting out his tongue at the proletariat of Petrograd and their families.... Of late I have been receiving, one after another, starving delegations from working men and women. They do not protest, nor do they make any demands; they merely point out, with silent reproach, the present intolerable state of affairs.”

We are not dependent upon general statements such as Zinoviev’s for our information concerning the state of affairs in Soviet Russia in January, 1920. We have an abundance of precise and authoritative data. In the first place, Gregor Alexinsky has published, in admirable translation, the text of the most important parts of the reports made to the Joint Congress of the Councils of National Economy, Trades-Unions and the Central Soviet Power. This congress opened in Moscow on January 25, 1920, and lasted for several days. Important reports were made to it by A. Rykov, president of the Supreme Council of National Economy; M. Tomsky, chairman of the Central Council of Trades-Unions; Kamenev, president of the Moscow Soviet; Lenin, Trotsky, and others. Alexinsky was fortunate enough to secure copies of the stenographic reports of the speeches made at this joint congress. In addition to this material the present writer has had placed at his disposal several issues of Izvestia containing elaborate reports of the congress. At the outset Rykov dealt with the effects of the World War and the Civil War upon the economic situation:

During the past few years of Imperialistic (World) and Civil Wars the exhaustion of the countries of Europe, and in particular of Russia, has reached unheard-of proportions. This exhaustion has affected the whole territory of the Imperialistic war, but the Civil war has been, as regards dissipation of the national wealth and waste of material and human resources, much more detrimental than the Imperialistic war, for it spread across the greater part of the territory of Soviet Russia, involving not only the clashing of armies, but also devastation, fires, and destruction of objects of greatest value and of structures.

The Civil War, having caused an unparalleled waste of the human and material resources of the Republic, has engendered an economic and productive crisis. In its main features this crisis is one of transportation, fuel, and human labor power.

Truly these are interesting admissions—here is “a very Daniel come to judgment.” The civil war, we are told, has been “much more detrimental than the Imperialistic war,” it has “caused an unparalleled waste of the human and material resources of the republic.” Is it not pertinent to remind ourselves that for bringing on the civil war the Bolsheviki were solely responsible? There was no civil war in Russia until they began it. The whole of the democratic forces of Russia were unitedly working for the reconstruction of the nation upon a sound basis of free democracy. They began the civil war in the face of the most solemn warnings and despite the fact that every thoughtful person could foresee its inevitable disastrous results. By Rykov’s confession the Bolsheviki are condemned for having brought upon Russia evils greater than those which the World War brought in its train. Of the transportation problem Rykov has this to say:

Before the war, the percentage of disabled locomotives, even in the worst of times, never rose above 15 per cent. At the present time, however, we have 59.5 per cent. of disabled locomotives—i.e., out of every 100 locomotives in Soviet Russia 60 are disabled, and only 40 capable of working. The repair of disabled locomotives also keeps on declining with extraordinary rapidity; before the war we used to repair up to 8 per cent.; this percentage, after the October revolution, sometimes dropped to 1 per cent.; now we have gone up, but only 1 per cent., and we are now repairing 2 per cent. of our locomotives. Under present conditions of railway transportation the repairs do not keep abreast of the deterioration of our locomotives, and every month we have, in absolute figures, 200 locomotives less than the preceding month. It is indispensable that we raise the repair of locomotives from 2 per cent. up to 10 per cent., in order to stop the decline and further disintegration of railway transportation, in order to maintain it at least on the level on which it stands at the present time. As for the broad masses of the population, the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia, these figures simply mean that there is no possibility of utilizing any one of those grain-producing regions, nor those which have raw material and fuel, that have been added to Soviet Russia as a result of the victory of the Red Army.

According to Trotsky, Rykov’s figures, depressing enough in all conscience, did not disclose the full gravity of the situation. The real number of disabled locomotives was greater than the figures given, he said, for the reason that “we frequently call ‘sound’ half-disabled locomotives which threaten to drop out completely on the morrow.” Rykov’s statements do more than merely confirm those previously quoted from the Economicheskaya Zhizn: they show that from October to January there had been a steady increase of deterioration; that conditions had gone from bad to worse. The report proceeds to illustrate the seriousness of the situation by concrete examples of the actual conditions confronting the government:

We have a metallurgical region in the Ural mountains; but we have had at our disposal until now but one single special train a month to carry metals from the Urals to central Russia. In order to transport 10 million poods[58] of metal by one single train per month several decades would be required, should we be able to utilize those scanty supplies of metal which are ready in the Urals.

[58] One pood equals thirty-six pounds.

In order to deliver cotton from Turkestan to the textile factories in Moscow, we have to carry more than one-half million poods per month—up to 600,000 poods. But at this time we have only about two trains a month; that is, scores of years will be required for transporting under present conditions from Turkestan those 8 million poods of cotton which we could convert, but are unable to deliver to the factories.

The disorganized and demoralized state of the transportation system was only partly responsible for the shortage of raw materials, however. It was only one of several causes: “On account of the disorganized state of transportation we are unable to obtain cotton now, as the railroads are unable to carry it here. But even as regards those raw materials which are produced in the central parts of Soviet Russia, such as flax, wool, hemp, hides, even in these raw stuffs Soviet Russia is experiencing a severe crisis.” Attention is called to the enormous decline in the production of flax, the acreage devoted to this crop being only 30 per cent. of that formerly devoted to it and the yield very much poorer. Rykov offers as an explanation of this condition the fact that, as the Soviet Government had not been able to deliver to the peasants in the flax-producing districts “any considerable quantity of foodstuffs,” the peasants grew foodstuffs instead of flax. He adds, “Another reason why the peasants began to cultivate grains instead of flax was that the speculative prices of bread are higher than the fixed prices of flax at which the state is purchasing it.” He pours the cold water of realism upon the silly talk of huge exports of flax from Russia as soon as trade with foreign nations is opened up, and says, “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.”

Rykov calls attention to the decline in the production of hides for leather and of wool. During the first six months of 1919 the hides collected amounted to about one million pieces, but the total for the whole of 1920 was not expected to exceed 650,000 pieces. “The number of hides delivered to the government decreases with every succeeding month.” There was also to be observed “a decline in the quantity of live stock, especially those kinds which furnish wool for our woolen mills.” But perhaps the most impressive part of his report is that dealing with the fuel shortage. Though adjacent to large coal-fields, as well as to vast forests, Moscow in the winter of 1919-20 lacked fuel “even for heating the infirmaries and hospitals.” For the winter of 1919-20 the Council of People’s Commissaries had fixed the necessary quantity of wood for fuel to be produced at 12,000,000 to 14,000,000 cubic sagenes (one cubic sagene being equal to two cubic meters). But the Administrations which were charged with the work forwarded to the railroads and to the rivers less than 2,500,000 sagenes. It must be added that of these same 2,500,000 sagenes the Soviet Administrations were not able to transport to the cities and industrial centers more than a very small quantity, and “even the minimum program of supply of fuel for the factories of Moscow could not be carried out because of the lack of means of transport.”

Bad as this is, the coal-supply is in a worse condition yet. “Things are going badly for the production of coal and petroleum” we are told. Upon their reoccupation of the Donetz Basin the Bolsheviki found coal on the surface, ready to be shipped, which was estimated at 100,000,000 poods. “But until the reconstruction of bridges and re-establishment of railroad communications in the Donetz territory these coal-supplies cannot be utilized.” Of course the havoc wrought by war in the Donetz Basin must be taken into account and full allowance made for it. But what is the explanation of conditions in the coal-fields of the Moscow region, which from the very first has been under Bolshevist rule, and never included in the territory of war, civil or otherwise? Says Rykov:

The fields of Moscow not only have not given what they ought to have given for the fuel-supply of Soviet Russia, but the production of coal remained in 1919 at the same level as in 1918 and it did not reach the figure of 30,000,000 poods; whereas, under the Czar at the time of the Imperialist War, the Czar’s officials, with the aid of prisoners of war, knew how to increase the production of coal in the Moscow fields to the extent of 40,000,000 poods and even more.

This brings us face to face with the most vitally important fact of all, namely, the relatively low productivity of labor under nationalization of industry as practised in the sorry Utopia of the Bolsheviki. This is evident in every branch of industry. “When we speak, in the factories and mills, of the increase of the productivity of labor, the workmen always answer us,” says Rykov, “with the same demand and always present us with the same complaint, Give us bread and then we will work.” But the demand for bread could not be met, despite the fact that there was a considerable store of wheat and other flour grains. Whereas at the beginning of 1919 there was a wheat reserve of 60,000,000 poods, on January 1, 1920, the reserve was 90,000,000 poods. Rykov admits that this is really not a great deal, and explains that in 1919 the government had only been able to collect about half the wheat demanded from the peasants, despite the vigorous policy pursued. He says that “in the grain elevators there are reserves which assure the supply for workmen and peasants for three months.” This calculation is based upon the near-famine rationing, for Rykov is careful to add the words, “according to the official food rations.”

So, the whole reserve, if fairly distributed, would last until April. But again the problem of transportation comes in: “If the workers and peasants have until now received no bread, and if up to this time a food shortage exists in the greater part of the starving consuming localities, the cause does not lie in inadequate preparations, but in the fact that we are unable to ship and distribute the grain already carted and stored in the granaries.” As a result of these conditions the workers in the factories at mass-meetings “demand the breach of the economic front of Bolshevism,” that is to say, the re-establishment of free and unrestricted commerce. In other words, their demand is for the abolition of the nationalization policy. It is from the proletariat that this cry comes, be it observed; and it is addressed to rulers who claim to represent the “dictatorship of the proletariat”! Could there be more conclusive evidence that Bolshevism in practice is the dictatorship of a few men over the proletariat?

What remedial measures does this important official, upon whom the organization of the work of economic reconstruction chiefly depends, propose to his colleagues? All that we get by way of specific and definite plans is summed up in the following paragraph:

The Council of People’s Commissaries has already decided to call upon individual workmen as well as groups of them to repair the rolling-stock, granting them the right to use the equipment which they shall have repaired with their own forces for the transportation of food to those factories and mills which repair the locomotives and cars. Recently this decision has been also extended to the fuel-supply. Each factory and each mill now has the opportunity to carry its own fuel, provided they repair with their own forces the disabled locomotives and cars they obtain from the commissariat of ways and communications.

Was ever such madness as this let loose upon a suffering people? Let those who have dilated upon the “statesmanship” and the “organizing genius” of these men contemplate the picture presented by the decision of the Council of People’s Commissaries. Each factory to repair with its own forces the disabled locomotives and cars it needs to transport fuel and raw materials. Textile-workers, for instance, must repair locomotives and freight-cars or go without bread. Individual workmen and groups of workmen and individual factories are thus to be turned loose upon what remains of an organized transportation system. Not only must this result in the completion of the destruction of railway transportation, but it must inevitably cripple the factories. Take workers from unrelated industries, unused to the job, and set them to repairing locomotives and freight-cars; every man who has ever had anything to do with the actual organization and direction of working forces knows that such men, especially when the special equipment and tools are lacking, cannot perform, man for man, one-tenth as much as men used to the work and equipped with the proper tools and equipment. And then to tell these factory workers that they have “the right to use the equipment which they shall have repaired” means, if it means anything at all, that from the factories are to be diverted further forces to operate railway trains and collect food, fuel, and raw materials. What that means we have already noted in the case of the decline of production in the match-factories, “owing to the wholesale dispersing of workmen in the search for bread, to field work and unloading of wood.”[59] Of all the lunacy that has come out of Bolshevist Russia, even, this is perhaps the worst.

[59] Economicheskaya Zhizn, No. 225.

Rykov tells us that at the end of 1919 4,000 industrial establishments had been nationalized. “That means,” he says, “that nearly the whole industry has been transferred to the state, to the Soviet organizations, and that the industry of private owners, of manufacturers, has been done away with, for the old statistics estimated the total number of industrial establishments, including peasants’ homework places, to be around 10,000. The peasants’ industry is not subject to nationalization, and 4,000 nationalized industrial establishments include not only the largest, but also the greater part of the middle-sized, industrial enterprises of Soviet Russia.”

What is the state of these nationalized factories, and are the results obtained satisfactory? Again Rykov’s report gives the answer in very clear terms: “Of these 4,000 establishments only 2,000 are working at present. All the rest are closed and idle. The number of workers, by a rough estimate, is about 1,000,000. Thus you can see that both in point of number of the working-men employed as well as in point of numbers of still working establishments, the manufacturing industry is also in the throes of a crisis.” The explanation offered by Trotsky, that the industrial failure was due to the destruction of technical equipment, Rykov sweeps aside. “The Soviet state, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Power, could not utilize even those lathes, machines, and factory equipment which were still at its disposal. And a considerable part of manufacturing enterprises was shut down, while part is still working only in a few departments and workshops.” On every hand it is evident that shortage of raw materials and of skilled labor are the really important causes, not lack of machinery. Of 1,191 metallurgical plants 614 had been nationalized. The government had undertaken to provide these with about 30 per cent. of the metals required, but had been able to supply only 15 per cent., “less than one-quarter of the need that must be satisfied in order to sustain a minimum of our industrial life.”

Take the textile industry as another example: Russia was the third country in Europe in textile manufacture, England and Germany alone leading her, the latter by no large margin. No lack of machinery accounts for the failure here, for of the available looms only 11 per cent. were used in 1919, and of the spindles only 7 per cent. The decline of production in 1919 was enormous, so that at the end of that year it was only 10 per cent. of the normal production. We are told that: “During the period of January-March, 1919, 100,000 to 200,000 poods of textile fabrics were produced per month; during the period of September-November only 25,000 to 68,000 poods were produced per month. Therefore we have to face an almost complete stoppage of all textile production in central Russia, which dominated all the other textile regions in Russia.”

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: