Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

I suspected that this excessive caution was due more to Semenoff’s desire to impress the city with the protection he afforded, than a necessity for vigilance. By this method Semenoff demonstrated his worth to the bankers and merchants of the city, so that he found it easier to “borrow” money for his military and other necessities.

But to go out every evening to theaters and dinners, knowing that venturing forth into the cold night means to be challenged by none-too-careful sentries (some of them more or less under the influence of vodka and likely to shoot first and challenge afterward) revealed some traits of the Siberian character. They will have their amusement despite all odds; they do not worry overmuch about the condition of their government; they curse certain foreigners for coming in and protecting them and yet are suspicious of every native who sets himself up as a military leader; they talk of their great love of Russia but if they have their choice between going to a salacious play or to a public gathering to discuss the affairs of their stricken country, they choose the play. There they know they will enjoy themselves and can go through the forms of excessive politeness with their friends and even with officers belonging to the armies of Cossack and Russian leaders who are mistrusted.

But if they all gathered to discuss the welfare of Russia they know the meeting would probably end in a near-riot, if not open warfare. So they find it easier to be charmingly hospitable to possible enemies, and presently whispering behind the backs of the possible enemies about their treason to Holy Russia.

In the meantime the reactionary forces grow stronger, the general disorder gradually converts the people to a belief that it would be better for a monarchy to be restored, and certain imperial personages lurk in Harbin or other hiding places, waiting for the time when the population will tire of revolutionary conditions and demand a restoration of the throne.

These monarchists speak vaguely of a “proper time” in the future. Most of them have plenty of money, and enjoy themselves waiting for this “proper time.” The poorer peoples are steadily consuming food surpluses, raising less each year; they are wearing out their clothes and gradually approaching beggary while they keep up a sort of continual celebration over their freedom, as they call it.

The monarchists can afford to bide their time. Our diplomats wait and wait for “things to settle down.” They predict that Bolshevism will burn itself out, when as a matter of fact the fuse is burning closer to more destruction all the time. And Russian and Germany money is being spent in various countries of the world for the purpose of spreading Bolshevist ideas, in order that other countries will have troubles of their own and be compelled to leave Russia alone. These ideas are nothing but class hatred worked out subtly and made to appeal to people whose reasoning powers are most primitive—or to educated “idealists” who either have addled brains in their heads or Bolshevist money in their pockets.

Tell me how people amuse themselves and I will tell you what they are; tell me that they seek only amusement when their country is in ruins, and they cannot tell me that the patriotism they prate about is genuine patriotism. It struck me that the Siberians were more concerned with what went down their gullets than with a decent government and a decent future for themselves and their children.

People get the government they deserve. People are responsible for their governments. If they assert that their rulers led them into war, it is not the fault of their rulers, but their own, for their rulers know them well enough to know what they could be led into. If people whine that they are oppressed by an autocracy, they confess that there is something lacking in themselves. If they howl against capitalism, when all the things they have could only be produced for them by a system of capital invested to good purpose, they lack brains; and if they cannot devise a government which protects them from exploitation they deserve to be exploited.

I do not believe that all capitalists combine power with justice, any more than I believe that all working men understand the laws of economics and would create a régime of justice if they had all power in their hands. They mistake the machine which has been created to produce jobs for them, as the machine by which they themselves create, when as a matter of fact they themselves are only a part of the machine. That they happen to be part of that machine is not the fault of the inventor of the machine or its owner, but their own.

Of course, the necessity for labor, on their part may be due to a lack of opportunity due to bad government, lack of education, misfortune or the thousand and one elements of which an individual’s history may be composed. A man running a loom might have been a scientist if he had been educated, but he cannot turn himself into a scientist by burning the factory in which he works.