But whether this line of slower and more peaceful development will be permitted to Russia remains to be seen. I sincerely hope it may. There are discontented democrats, however, rightly insisting on the speedy restoration of democratic political methods. They want the Zemstvo restored and the National Constituent Assembly. They want simple and equal adult suffrage, as much for the peasants as for the townsfolk. They want vote by ballot. They want freedom of thought, of speech and of the press. They want restrictions on labour removed and freedom of contract restored. They want free trade. Will these good things be given back to the Russians at an early date? I am very hopeful. A good beginning has just been made.
If Lenin has restored to himself and his Government by his drastic reform of the levy on the peasants, those vast millions of Russian folk, he can, if he chooses, continue his regime for an indefinite time. With such modifications in the system as I have just named this would be the best way out of Russia’s present distressing state, for, should counter-revolution arise and spread, a new chaos would almost certainly follow, opening up dreadful possibilities for the population; and for the watchful and greedy adventurers, out to carve a kingdom for themselves from Russia’s enormous territories, or thirsty to exploit her unimaginable resources of precious metals and rich forests in their own selfish interests, would present the opportunities they are palpitating to use.
But there is yet another element threatening the future happiness of Russia—her own Napoleons, and the flushed and triumphant militarism which supports them. Trotsky has the reputation of an extremist. There is said to be a coldness between Lenin and himself. It is commonly believed that he will not readily disband the army that he has created and employed with such signal success. Not only that, but he believes with many others that Bolshevism can only survive if a strong, active and triumphant army supports it. He believes that the conquest of the East for Bolshevism will not only keep the soldiers busy and add to the glory of Russian arms, but will menace the proud empires which have caused so much unnecessary suffering to his people, and which are still opposing the interests of Russia, though in less apparent fashion. It is openly said in Moscow that Trotsky himself is the coming Napoleon.
The Russo-Polish peace signed at Riga on March 18, 1921, and ratified by Poland on April 16 points rather in the other direction; unless, as is suggested, it was signed through fear of defeat or in order to clear the way for a concentration of warlike operations in the Caucasus and the Near East. The fear of defeat it is impossible to believe in. Russia is too big to be defeated.
The recent news from the Caucasus, however, supplies conclusive evidence, as far as it goes, of a distinctively imperialist policy, which recks as little of the right of self-determination as the policies of capitalist governments. A treaty with Kemal Pasha and joint action between the Turkish Nationalists and the Bolsheviks against Armenia (that pitiful victim of Allied policy), and Georgia, promised self-government and independence by Moscow only a few months previously; the domination of Azerbaijan from Moscow for the security to Russia of the oil supplies of Baku; the intrusion of Soviet politics into Persia with its intended threat to British interests in India; Bolshevik propaganda marching with the armies or bulging from the portfolios of the political and diplomatic agents of Russia—these things and others, have an alarming appearance of old-fashioned militarist Imperialism very disturbing to those who wish well to Russia, and who long desperately that she shall not copy too closely the aims and methods of the discredited diplomacy of the Western Powers, even though it be on behalf of the whole nation and not of a single class that the methods of conquest and spoliation be employed.
The alliance between Kemal Pasha and the Bolsheviks can have no other meaning than a common design to embarrass the Entente’s plans in the Near East, and to menace British and French capitalist interests in India, Mesopotamia and Angora. Kemal Pasha is no more a Bolshevik than the man in the moon. The cynical Radek is clearly aware of all this. He wrote in the Moscow Pravda of January 26, 1921, examining the possibility of the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres and the consequent desertion of themselves by Kemal and his army:
“Which way Kemal Pasha will choose we certainly cannot say; but we have never been so simple as to throw ourselves unreservedly in the embraces of the Nationalists of the East. It is an absolute necessity for us to be on guard, and not only to be awake but to act also. The stronger we are on the Caucasus the more solid our position in Turkestan, the more real our assistance, the more certain shall we be to hasten the development of the East in the direction and in the interests of world revolution.”
He rejoices in the same article on the complete Bolshevization of Georgia, the recalcitrant, whilst his colleague, Steklov, in Isvestia of January 30, 1921, wrote with equal cynicism of removing “the black point” (Georgia) from the Caucasus, and so making easy joint action between the Kemalists and themselves against the armies serving the interests of the Entente. Thus, in spite of solemn pledges, promises of protection, League of Nations covenants and the rest, the wretched Armenians are tossed into the laps of new tyrants, the close associates of the old, whose unspeakable cruelties towards their hapless dependents have scandalized mankind for generations; whilst the unhappy Georgians have had to stop their constructive work for social democracy to defend themselves almost with bare fists against the faithless Russian hordes whose leaders had guaranteed their independence. Of this I shall write elsewhere.
Writing these words in the warmth of a bright April sun, within sight of trees weighed down with vast masses of snowy blossom, the pink and white of the cherry and the apple, a soft wind from the valley blowing gently in at the tiny casement window, the mind turns to the quite other scenes of exactly a year ago. In the imagination are pictured the endless plains of Russia with the patient peasant walking at midnight behind his span of oxen and his wooden plough; the brown, muddy waters of the rolling Volga with its picturesque rafts carrying whole villages; the red-robed Kalmuk priest in the cold moonlight; the glittering domes of Moscow’s thousand churches; the dull, pale-faced hungry crowds of Petrograd; the happy children, utterly fearless, on the great estates of vanished proprietors; the lazy routine of numberless offices; the careworn and incompetent high officials, with their indolent staffs and littered desks and stuffy buildings; the talkative Commissars; the strife, the passion, the idealism of it all.