(5) There are no juries.
(6) Trade unions have been abolished.
(7) The right to strike is denied.
(8) There is military conscription.
And, having done so, to say whether or not they desire to bring about the same conditions in their countries. I don’t think they will. I think they will agree with me that such a government is impossible. Those foreigners who have lived in Russia under the Soviet rule are unanimous in denouncing it as the worst government the world has ever seen.
Wells Knows Nothing About It
Mr. Wells, after two weeks’ stay in the country, tells us that the Soviet power is the only possible form of government for Russia at the present time. He conveys the impression that inasmuch as he has decided that “there is now no alternative to that Government possible,” that that settles the matter and we must do as Mr. Wells advises us. Mr. Wells ridicules Marx and yet, almost in the same breath, tells us that the Bolshevist Government, which is a Communistic government, is the only possible government for Russia.
It would seem to me that we are entitled to judge the value of Mr. Wells’s advice on these two statements alone and that it is not necessary to delve further into his impertinent literary gymnastics except to say that Mr. Wells, despite his boast that he was not hoodwinked during his stay in Russia, if judged by what he has written, was fooled up to the hilt.
Mr. Wells states: “Much that the Red Terror did was cruel and frightful; it was largely controlled by narrow-minded men, and many of its officials were inspired by social hatred and the fear of counter revolution, but if it was fanatical, it was honest. Apart from individual atrocities it did, on the whole, kill for a reason and to an end.”
Again, I suppose, we must attribute this statement to Mr. Wells’s ignorance. There has never been in the history of the world a more corrupt and dishonest organization than the Extraordinary Commission. There is no greater scoundrel than a Dzherjinsky, the President of it. But, ignorant and bumptious as you are, Mr. Wells, who are you to tell the world that the Extraordinary Commission is honest? What do you know about it? What have you seen of its methods? I venture to say that you have seen nothing and that you are writing, as you frequently do, of things you know nothing about.