[3] Keeling, op. cit., p. 159.
In A Memorandum on Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist Movement in Russia, published by the State Department of the United States, January, 1920, the following statement by an unnamed Russian appears in a report dated July 2, 1919:
Discontent and hatred against the Bolsheviks are now so strong that a shock or the knowledge of approaching help would suffice to make the people rise and annihilate the Communists. Considering this discontent and hatred, it would seem that elections to different councils should produce candidates of other parties. Nevertheless all councils consist of Communists. The explanation is very plain. That freedom of election of which the Bolsheviks write and talk so much consists in the free election of certain persons, a list of which had already been prepared. For instance, if in one district six delegates have to be elected, seven to eight names are mentioned, of which six can be chosen. Very characteristic in this respect were the elections February last in the district of ——, Moscow Province, where I have one of my estates. Nearly all voters, about 200, of which twelve Communists, came to the district town. Seven delegates had to be elected and only seven names were on the prepared list, naturally all Communists. The local Soviet invited the twelve communistic voters to a house, treated them with food, tea, and sugar, and gave each ten rubles per day; the others received nothing, not even housing. But they, knowing what they had to expect from former experiences, had provided for such an emergency and decided to remain to the end. The day of election was fixed and put off from day to day. After four postponements the Soviet saw no way out. The result was that the seven delegates elected by all against twelve votes belonged to the Octobrists and Constitutional-Democrats. But these seven and a number of the wealthier voters were immediately arrested as agitators against the Soviet Republic. New elections were announced three days later, but this time the place was surrounded by machine-guns. The next day official papers announced the unanimous election of Communists in the district of Verea. After a short time peasant revolts started. To put down these, Chinese and Letts were sent and about 300 peasants were killed. Then began arrests, but it is not known how many were executed.
Finally, there is the testimony of the workman, Menshekov, member of the Social Democratic Party, who was himself given an important position in one of the largest factories of Russia, the Ijevsky factory, in the Urals, when the Bolsheviki assumed control. This simple workman was not, and is not, a “reactionary monarchist,” but a Social Democrat. He belonged to the same party as Lenin and Trotsky until the withdrawal of these men and their followers and the creation of the Communist Party. Menshekov says:
One of the principles which the Bolsheviki proposed is rule by the Workers’ Councils. In June, 1918, we were told to elect one of 135 delegates. We did, and only fifty pro-Bolsheviki got in. The Bolshevist Government was dissatisfied with this result and ordered a second election. This time only twenty pro-Bolsheviki were elected. Now, I happen to have been elected a member of this Workers’ Council, from which I was further elected to sit on the Executive Council. According to the Bolsheviki’s own principle, the Executive Council has to do the whole administration. Everything is under it. But the Bolshevist Government withheld this right from us. For two weeks we sat and did nothing; then the Bolsheviki solved the problem for themselves. They arrested some of us—I was arrested myself—and, instead of an elected Council, the Red Government appointed a Council of selected Communists, and formed there, as everywhere, a special privileged class.[4]
[4] Menshekov’s account is from a personal communication to the present writer, who has carefully verified the statements made in it.
All such charges have been scouted by the defenders of the Bolsheviki in this country and in England. On March 22, 1919, the Dyelo Naroda, organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists, reproduced the following official document, which fully sustains the accusation that the ordering of the “election” of certain persons to important offices is not “an invention of the capitalist press”:
Order of the Department of Information and Instruction of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Delegates of the Melenkovski District:
No. 994. Town of Melenki (Prov. of Vladimir)
Feb. 25, 1919To the Voinovo Agricultural Council:
The Provincial Department instructs you, on the basis of the Constitution of the Soviet (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic). Section 43, Sub-section 6, letter a, to proceed without fail with elections for an Agricultural Executive Committee.
The following must be elected to the committee: As president, Nikita Riabov; as member, Ivan Soloviev; and as secretary, Alexander Krainov. These people, as may be gathered from the posts to which they are named, must be elected without fail. The non-fulfilment of this Order will result in those responsible being severely punished. Acknowledge the carrying out of these instructions to Provincial Headquarters by express.
Head of Provincial Section. [Signed] J. Nazarov.
Surely there never was a greater travesty of representative government than this—not even under czarism! This is worse than anything that obtained in the old “rotten boroughs” of England before the great Reform Act. Yet our “Liberals” and “Radicals” hail this vicious reactionary despotism with gladness.
If it be thought that the judgment of the present writer is too harsh, he is quite content to rest upon the judgment pronounced by such a sympathizer as Mr. Isaac Don Levine has shown himself to be. In the New York Globe, January 5, 1920, Mr. Levine said: “To-day Soviet Russia is a dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but for the proletariat. It certainly is not democracy.” And again: “The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia is really a dictatorship of the Bolshevist or Communist Party. This is the great change wrought in Soviet Russia since 1918. The Soviets ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies. Soviet elections, which were frequent in 1918, are very rare now. In Russia, where things are moving so fast and opinions are changing so rapidly, the majority of the present Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses.”