"The Communist International said from the very first day of its existence: 'There are four times as many people living in Asia as live in Europe. We will free all peoples, all who labour.'... We know that the labouring masses of the East are in part retrograde, though not by their own fault; they cannot read or write, are ignorant, are bound in superstition, believe in the evil spirit, are unable to read any newspapers, do not know what is happening in the world, have not the slightest idea of the most elementary laws of hygiene. Comrades, our Moscow International discussed the question whether a socialist revolution could take place in the countries of the East before those countries had passed through the capitalist stage. You know that the view which long prevailed was that every country must first go through the period of capitalism ... before socialism could become a live question. We now believe that this is no longer true. Russia has done this, and from that moment we are able to say that China, India, Turkey, Persia, Armenia also can, and must, make a direct fight to get the Soviet System. These countries can, and must, prepare themselves to be Soviet republics.
"I say that we give patient aid to groups of persons who do not believe in our ideas, who are even opposed to us on some points. In this way, the Soviet Government supports Kemal in Turkey. Never for one moment do we forget that the movement headed by Kemal is not a communist movement. We know it. I have here extracts from the verbatim reports of the first session of the Turkish people's Government at Angora. Kemal himself says that 'the Caliph's person is sacred and inviolable.' The movement headed by Kemal wants to rescue the Caliph's 'sacred' person from the hands of the foe. That is the Turkish Nationalist's point of view. But is it a communist point of view? No. We respect the religious convictions of the masses; we know how to re-educate the masses. It will be the work of years.
"We use great caution in approaching the religious convictions of the labouring masses in the East and elsewhere. But at this Congress we are bound to tell you that you must not do what the Kemal Government is doing in Turkey; you must not support the power of the Sultan, not even if religious considerations urge you to do so. You must press on, and must not allow yourselves to be pulled back. We believe the Sultan's hour has struck. You must not allow any form of autocratic power to continue; you must destroy, you must annihilate, faith in the Sultan; you must struggle to obtain real Soviet organizations. The Russian peasants also were strong believers in the Czar; but when a true people's revolution broke out there was practically nothing left of this faith in the Czar. The same thing will happen in Turkey and all over the East as soon as a true peasants' revolution shall burst forth over the surface of the black earth. The people will very soon lose faith in their Sultan and in their masters. We say once more, the policy pursued by the present people's Government in Turkey is not the policy of the Communist International, it is not our policy; nevertheless, we declare that we are prepared to support any revolutionary fight against the English Government.
"Yes, we array ourselves against the English bourgeoisie; we seize the English imperialist by the throat and tread him underfoot. It is against English capitalism that the worst, the most fatal blow must be dealt. That is so. But at the same time we must educate the labouring masses of the East to hatred, to the will to fight the whole of the rich classes indifferently, whoever they be. The great significance of the revolution now starting in the East does not consist in begging the English imperialist to take his feet off the table, for the purpose of then permitting the wealthy Turk to place his feet on it all the more comfortably; no, we will very politely ask all the rich to remove their dirty feet from the table, so that there may be no luxuriousness among us, no boasting, no contempt of the people, no idleness, but that the world may be ruled by the worker's horny hand."
The Baku congress was the opening gun in Bolshevism's avowed campaign for the immediate Bolshevizing of the East. It was followed by increased Soviet activity and by substantial Soviet successes, especially in the Caucasus, where both Georgia and Armenia were Bolshevized in the spring of 1921.
These very successes, however, awakened growing uneasiness among Soviet Russia's nationalist protégés. The various Oriental nationalist parties, which had at first welcomed Moscow's aid so enthusiastically against the Entente Powers, now began to realize that Russian Bolshevism might prove as great a peril as Western imperialism to their patriotic aspirations. Of course the nationalist leaders had always realized Moscow's ultimate goal, but hitherto they had felt themselves strong enough to control the situation and to take Russian aid without paying Moscow's price. Now they no longer felt so sure. The numbers of class-conscious "proletarians" in the East might be very small. The communist philosophy might be virtually unintelligible to the Oriental masses. Nevertheless, the very existence of Soviet Russia was a warning not to be disregarded. In Russia an infinitesimal communist minority, numbering, by its own admission, not much over 600,000, was maintaining an unlimited despotism over 170,000,000 people. Western countries might rely on their popular education and their staunch traditions of ordered liberty; the East possessed no such bulwarks against Bolshevism. The East was, in fact, much like Russia. There was the same dense ignorance of the masses; the same absence of a large and powerful middle class; the same tradition of despotism; the same popular acquiescence in the rule of ruthless minorities. Finally, there were the ominous examples of Sovietized Turkestan and Azerbaidjan. In fine, Oriental nationalists bethought them of the old adage that he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon.
Everywhere it has been the same story. In Asia Minor, Mustapha Kemal has arrested Bolshevist propaganda agents, while Turkish and Russian troops have more than once clashed on the disputed Caucasus frontiers. In Egypt we have already seen how an amicable arrangement between Lord Milner and the Egyptian nationalist leaders was facilitated by the latter's fear of the social revolutionary agitators who were inflaming the fellaheen. In India, Sir Valentine Chirol noted as far back as the spring of 1918 how Russia's collapse into Bolshevism had had a "sobering effect" on Indian public opinion. "The more thoughtful Indians," he wrote, "now see how helpless even the Russian intelligentsia (relatively far more numerous and matured than the Indian intelligentsia) has proved to control the great ignorant masses as soon as the whole fabric of government has been hastily shattered."[304] In Afghanistan, likewise, the Ameer was losing his love for his Bolshevist allies. The streams of refugees from Sovietized Turkestan that flowed across his borders for protection, headed by his kinsman the Ameer of Bokhara, made Amanullah Khan do some hard thinking, intensified by a serious mutiny of Afghan troops on the Russian border, the mutineers demanding the right to form Soldiers' Councils quite on the Russian pattern. Bolshevist agents might tempt him by the loot of India, but the Ameer could also see that that would do him little good if he himself were to be looted and killed by his own rebellious subjects.[305] Thus, as time went on, Oriental nationalists and conservatives generally tended to close ranks in dislike and apprehension of Bolshevism. Had there been no other issue involved, there can be little doubt that Moscow's advances would have been repelled and Bolshevist agents given short shrift.
Unfortunately, the Eastern nationalists feel themselves between the Bolshevist devil and the Western imperialist deep sea. The upshot has been that they have been trying to play off the one against the other—driven toward Moscow by every Entente aggression; driven toward the West by every Soviet coup of Lenin. Western statesmen should realize this, and should remember that Bolshevism's best propagandist agent is, not Zinoviev orating at Baku, but General Gouraud, with his Senegalese battalions and "strong-arm" methods in Syria and the Arab hinterland.
Certainly, any extensive spread of Bolshevism in the East would be a terrible misfortune both for the Orient and for the world at large. If the triumph of Bolshevism would mean barbarism in the West, in the East it would spell downright savagery. The sudden release of the ignorant, brutal Oriental masses from their traditional restraints of religion and custom, and the submergence of the relatively small upper and middle classes by the flood of social revolution would mean the destruction of all Oriental civilization and culture, and a plunge into an abyss of anarchy from which the East could emerge only after generations, perhaps centuries.