In all the elaborate network of Bolshevist propaganda which to-day enmeshes the East we must discriminate between Bolshevism's two objectives: one immediate—the destruction of Western political and economic supremacy; the other ultimate—the bolshevizing of the Oriental masses and the consequent extirpation of the native upper and middle classes, precisely as has been done in Russia and as is planned for the countries of the West. In the first stage, Bolshevism is quite ready to respect Oriental faiths and customs and to back Oriental nationalist movements. In the second stage, religions like Islam and nationalists like Mustapha Kemal are to be branded as "bourgeois" and relentlessly destroyed. How Bolshevik diplomacy endeavours to work these two schemes in double harness, we shall presently see.
Russian Bolshevism's Oriental policy was formulated soon after its accession to power at the close of 1917. The year 1918 was a time of busy preparation. An elaborate propaganda organization was built up from various sources. A number of old Czarist agents and diplomats versed in Eastern affairs were cajoled or conscripted into the service. The Russian Mohammedan populations such as the Tartars of South Russia and the Turkomans of Central Asia furnished many recruits. Even more valuable were the exiles who flocked to Russia from Turkey, Persia, India, and elsewhere at the close of the Great War. Practically all the leaders of the Turkish war-government—Enver, Djemal, Talaat, and many more, fled to Russia for refuge from the vengeance of the victorious Entente Powers. The same was true of the Hindu terrorist leaders who had been in German pay during the war and who now sought service under Lenin. By the end of 1918 Bolshevism's Oriental propaganda department was well organized, divided into three bureaux, for the Islamic countries, India, and the Far East respectively. With Bolshevism's Far Eastern activities this book is not concerned, though the reader should bear them in mind and should remember the important part played by the Chinese in recent Russian history. As for the Islamic and Indian bureaux, they displayed great zeal, translating tons of Bolshevik literature into the various Oriental languages, training numerous secret agents and propagandists for "field-work," and getting in touch with all disaffected or revolutionary elements.
With the opening months of 1919 Bolshevist activity throughout the Near and Middle East became increasingly apparent. The wave of rage and despair caused by the Entente's denial of Near Eastern nationalist aspirations[299] played splendidly into the Bolshevists' hands, and we have already seen how Moscow supported Mustapha Kemal and other nationalist leaders in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, and elsewhere. In the Middle East, also, Bolshevism gained important successes. Not merely was Moscow's hand visible in the epidemic of rioting and seditious violence which swept northern India in the spring of 1919,[300] but an even shrewder blow was struck at Britain in Afghanistan. This land of turbulent mountaineers, which lay like a perpetual thundercloud on India's north-west frontier, had kept quiet during the Great War, mainly owing to the Anglophile attitude of its ruler, the Ameer Habibullah Khan. But early in 1919 Habibullah was murdered. Whether the Bolsheviki had a hand in the matter is not known, but they certainly reaped the benefit, for power passed to one of Habibullah's sons, Amanullah Khan, who was an avowed enemy of England and who had had dealings with Turco-German agents during the late war. Amanullah at once got in touch with Moscow, and a little later, just when the Punjab was seething with unrest, he declared war on England, and his wild tribesmen, pouring across the border, set the North-West Frontier on fire. After some hard fighting the British succeeded in repelling the Afghan invasion, and Amanullah was constrained to make peace. But Britain obviously dared not press Amanullah too hard, for in the peace treaty the Ameer was released from his previous obligation not to maintain diplomatic relations with other nations than British India. Amanullah promptly aired his independence by maintaining ostentatious relations with Moscow. As a matter of fact, the Bolsheviki had by this time established an important propagandist subcentre in Russian Turkestan, not far from the Afghan border, and this bureau's activities of course envisaged not merely Afghanistan but the wider field of India as well.[301]
During 1920 Bolshevik activities became still more pronounced throughout the Near and Middle East. We have already seen how powerfully Bolshevik Russia supported the Turkish and Persian nationalist movements. In fact, the reckless short-sightedness of Entente policy was driving into Lenin's arms multitudes of nationalists to whom the internationalist theories of Moscow were personally abhorrent. For example, the head of the Afghan mission to Moscow thus frankly expressed his reasons for friendship with Soviet Russia, in an interview printed by the official Soviet organ, Izvestia: "I am neither Communist nor Socialist, but my political programme so far is the expulsion of the English from Asia. I am an irreconcilable enemy of European capitalism in Asia, the chief representatives of which are the English. On this point I coincide with the Communists, and in this respect we are your natural allies.... Afghanistan, like India, does not represent a capitalist state, and it is very unlikely that even a parliamentary régime will take deep root in these countries. It is so far difficult to say how subsequent events will develop. I only know that the renowned address of the Soviet Government to all nations, with its appeal to them to combat capitalists (and for us a capitalist is synonymous with the word foreigner, or, to be more exact, an Englishman), had an enormous effect on us. A still greater effect was produced by Russia's annulment of all the secret treaties enforced by the imperialistic governments, and by the proclaiming of the right of all nations, no matter how small, to determine their own destiny. This act rallied around Soviet Russia all the exploited nationalities of Asia, and all parties, even those very remote from Socialism." Of course, knowing what we do of Bolshevik propagandist tactics, we cannot be sure that the Afghan diplomat ever said the things which the Izvestia relates. But, even if the interview be a fake, the words put into his mouth express the feelings of vast numbers of Orientals and explain a prime cause of Bolshevik propagandist successes in Eastern lands.
So successful, indeed, had been the progress of Bolshevik propaganda that the Soviet leaders now began to work openly for their ultimate ends. At first Moscow had posed as the champion of Oriental "peoples" against Western "imperialism"; its appeals had been to "peoples," irrespective of class; and it had promised "self-determination," with full respect for native ideas and institutions. For instance: a Bolshevist manifesto to the Turks signed by Lenin and issued toward the close of 1919 read: "Mussulmans of the world, victims of the capitalists, awake! Russia has abandoned the Czar's pernicious policy toward you and offers to help you overthrow English tyranny. She will allow you freedom of religion and self-government. The frontiers existing before the war will be respected, no Turkish territory will be given Armenia, the Dardanelles Straits will remain yours, and Constantinople will remain the capital of the Mussulman world. The Mussulmans in Russia will be given self-government. All we ask in exchange is that you fight the reckless capitalists, who would exploit your country and make it a colony." Even when addressing its own people, the Soviet Government maintained the same general tone. An "Order of the Day" to the Russian troops stationed on the borders of India stated: "Comrades of the Pamir division, you have been given a responsible task. The Soviet Republic sends you to garrison the posts on the Pamir, on the frontiers of the friendly countries of Afghanistan and India. The Pamir tableland divides revolutionary Russia from India, which, with its 300,000,000 inhabitants, is enslaved by a handful of Englishmen. On this tableland the signallers of revolution must hoist the red flag of the army of liberation. May the peoples of India, who fight against their English oppressors, soon know that friendly help is not far off. Make yourselves at home with the liberty-loving tribes of northern India, promote by word and deed their revolutionary progress, refute the mass of calumnies spread about Soviet Russia by agents of the British princes, lords, and bankers. Long live the alliance of the revolutionary peoples of Europe and Asia!"
Such was the nature of first-stage Bolshevik propaganda. Presently, however, propaganda of quite a different character began to appear. This second-stage propaganda of course continued to assail Western "capitalist imperialism." But alongside, or rather intermingled with, these anti-Western, fulminations, there now appeared special appeals to the Oriental masses, inciting them against all "capitalists" and "bourgeois," native as well as foreign, and promising the "proletarians" remedies for all their ills. Here is a Bolshevist manifesto to the Turkish masses, published in the summer of 1920. It is very different from the manifestoes of a year before. "The men of toil," says this interesting document, "are now struggling everywhere against the rich people. These people, with the assistance of the aristocracy and their hirelings, are now trying to hold Turkish toilers in their chains. It is the rich people of Europe who have brought suffering to Turkey. Comrades, let us make common cause with the world's toilers. If we do not do so we shall never rise again. Let the heroes of Turkey's revolution join Bolshevism. Long live the Third International! Praise be to Allah!"
And in these new efforts Moscow was not content with words; it was passing to deeds as well. The first application of Bolshevism to an Eastern people was in Russian Turkestan. When the Bolsheviki first came to power at the end of 1917 they had granted Turkestan full "self-determination," and the inhabitants had acclaimed their native princes and re-established their old state-units, subject to a loose federative tie with Russia. Early in 1920, however, the Soviet Government considered Turkestan ripe for the "Social Revolution." Accordingly, the native princes were deposed, all political power was transferred to local Soviets (controlled by Russians), the native upper and middle classes were despoiled of their property, and sporadic resistance was crushed by mass-executions, torture, and other familiar forms of Bolshevist terrorism.[302] In the Caucasus, also, the social revolution had begun with the Sovietization of Azerbaidjan. The Tartar republic of Azerbaidjan was one of the fragments of the former Russian province of Transcaucasia which had declared its independence on the collapse of the Czarist Empire in 1917. Located in eastern Transcaucasia, about the Caspian Sea, Azerbaidjan's capital was the city of Baku, famous for its oil-fields. Oil had transformed Baku into an industrial centre on Western lines, with a large working population of mixed Asiatic and Russian origin. Playing upon the nascent class-consciousness of this urban proletariat, the Bolshevik agents made a coup d'état in the spring of 1920, overthrew the nationalist government, and, with prompt Russian backing, made Azerbaijan a Soviet republic. The usual accompaniments of the social revolution followed: despoiling and massacring of the upper and middle classes, confiscation of property in favour of the town proletarians and agricultural labourers, and ruthless terrorism. With the opening months of 1920, Bolshevism was thus in actual operation in both the Near and Middle East.[303]
Having acquired strong footholds in the Orient, Bolshevism now felt strong enough to throw off the mask. In the autumn of 1920, the Soviet Government of Russia held a "Congress of Eastern Peoples" at Baku, the aim of which was not merely the liberation of the Orient from Western control but its Bolshevizing as well. No attempt at concealment of this larger objective was made, and so striking was the language employed that it may well merit our close attention.
In the first place, the call to the congress, issued by the Third (Moscow) International, was addressed to the "peasants and workers" of the East. The summons read:
"Peasants and workers of Persia! The Teheran Government of the Khadjars and its retinue of provincial Khans have plundered and exploited you through many centuries. The land, which, according to the laws of the Sheriat, was your common property, has been taken possession of more and more by the lackeys of the Teheran Government; they trade it away at their pleasure; they lay what taxes please them upon you; and when, through their mismanagement, they got the country into such a condition that they were unable to squeeze enough juice out of it themselves, they sold Persia last year to English capitalists for 2,000,000 pounds, so that the latter will organize an army in Persia that will oppress you still more than formerly, and so the latter can collect taxes for the Khans and the Teheran Government. They have sold the oil-wells in South Persia and thus helped plunder the country.