CHAPTER XII
“THE PARTY” AND THE PEOPLE
If I were asked what feature of the Communist régime I regarded as, above all, the most conspicuous, the most impressive, and the most significant, I should say without hesitation the vast spiritual gulf separating the Communist Party from the Russian people. I use the word “spiritual” not in the sense of “religious.” The Russian equivalent, duhovny, is more comprehensive, including the psychological, and everything relating to inner, contemplative life, and ideals.
History scarcely knows a more flagrant misnomer than that of “government of workers and peasants.” In the first place, the Bolshevist Government consists not of workers and peasants, but of typical intellectual bourgeois. In the second, its policy is categorically repudiated by practically the entire Russian nation, and it keeps in the saddle only by bullying the workers and peasants by whom it purports to have been elected. The incongruity between Russian national ideals and the alien character of the Communists will naturally not be apparent to outsiders who visit the country to study the Bolshevist system from the very view-point which least of all appeals to the Russian, namely, the possibility of its success as a Socialist experiment. But those foreign Socialist enthusiasts who adhere to Bolshevist doctrines are presumably indifferent to the sentiments of the Russian people, for their adherence appears to be based on the most un-Russian of all aspects of those doctrines, namely, their internationalism. And this un-Russian international aspect of Bolshevism is admittedly its prime characteristic.
There is a sense of course in which the psychology of all peoples is becoming increasingly international, to the great benefit of mankind. No one will deny that half our European troubles are caused by the chauvinistic brandishing of national flags and quarrels about the drawing of impossible frontier lines. But these are the antics of a noisy few—“Bolsheviks of the right”—and do not reflect the true desire of the peoples, which is for peace, harmony, and neighbourliness. Hitherto the immediate aspirations of the Bolsheviks have been anything but this. Their first principle is world-wide civil war between classes, and their brandishing of the red flag surpasses that of the most rabid Western chauvinists. Theirs is not true internationalism. Like their claim to represent the Russian people, it is bogus.
The gulf between “the party” and the people yawns at every step, but I will only mention one or two prominent instances. The most important institution established by the Bolsheviks is that known as the “Third International Workers’ Association,” or, briefly, the “Third International.” The aim of this institution is to reproduce the Communist experiment in all countries. The First International was founded in 1864 by Karl Marx. It was a workers’ association not world-revolutionary in character. Its sympathy, however, with the Paris Commune discredited it, and it was followed by the Second, which confined itself to international labour interests. The Third International was founded in Moscow in the first week of March, 1919, amid circumstances of great secrecy by a chance gathering of extreme Socialists from about half-a-dozen of the thirty European States, leavened with a similar number of Asiatics. Subsequently a great meeting was held, at which the Second, called the “yellow” International because it is composed of moderates, was declared defunct and superseded by the “real,” that is, the Communist, International.
The next day this group of unknown but precocious individuals came to their headquarters at Petrograd, “the Metropolis of the World Revolution.” I went to meet them at the Nicholas railway station. The mystery that enshrouded the birth of the Third International rendered it impossible to be duly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, and although I had not come either to cheer or to jeer, but simply to look on, I could not but be struck by the comicality of the scene. The day was frosty, and for nearly two hours the members of the Third International, standing bareheaded on a specially constructed tribune, wasted time saying exactly the same things over and over again, their speeches being punctuated by the cacophony of three badly-directed bands. In spite of their luxurious fur coats the delegates shivered and their faces turned blue. They did not at all look the desperadoes I had half anticipated. Some of them were even effeminate in appearance. Only Zinoviev, the president, with his bushy, dishevelled hair, looked like an unrepentant schoolboy amid a group of delinquents caught red-handed in some unauthorized prank.
The orators, with chattering teeth, sang in divers tongues the praises of the Red régime. They lauded the exemplary order prevailing in Russia and rejoiced at the happiness, contentment, and devotion to the Soviet Government which they encountered at every step. They predicted the immediate advent of the world revolution and the early establishment of Bolshevism in every country. They all closed their lengthy orations with the same exclamations: “Long live the Third International!” “Down with the bourgeoisie!” “Long live Socialism!” (by which they meant Bolshevism), etc., and no matter how many times these same slogans had been shouted already, on each occasion they were retranslated at length, with embellishments, and to the musical accompaniments of the inevitable “Internationale.”
The position of the Third International in Russia and its relation to the Soviet Government are not always easy to grasp. The executives both of the International and of the Government are drawn from the Communist Party, while every member of the Government must also be a member of the Third International. Thus, though technically not interchangeable, the terms Soviet Government, Third International, and Communist Party merely represent different aspects of one and the same thing. It is in their provinces of action that they differ. The province of the Third International is the whole world, including Russia: that of the present Soviet Government is Russia alone. It would seem as if the Third International, with its superior powers and scope and with firebrands like Zinoviev and Trotzky at its helm, must override the Moscow government. In practice, however, this is not so. For the hard logic of facts has now proved to the Moscow government that the theories which the Third International was created to propagate are largely wrong and unpracticable, and they are being repudiated by the master mind of Lenin, the head of the home government. Thus two factions have grown up within the Communist Party: that of Lenin, whose interests for the time are centred in Russia, and who would sacrifice world-revolutionary dreams to preserve Bolshevist power in one country; and that of the Third International, which throws discretion to the winds, and stands for world revolution for ever, and no truck with the bourgeoisie of capitalistic States. Hitherto the majority in the party has been on the side of Lenin, as is not unnatural, for very few rank-and-file Communists really care about the world revolution, having no conception of what it implies. If they had, they would probably support him more heartily still.
At the very moment when the Third International was haranguing for its own satisfaction outside the Nicholas Station, very different things were happening in the industrial quarters of the city. There, the workers, incensed by the suppression of free speech, of freedom of movement, of workers’ co-operation, of free trading between the city and the villages, and by the ruthless seizure and imprisonment of their spokesmen, had risen to demand the restoration of their rights. They were led by the men of the Putilov iron foundry, the largest works in Petrograd, at one time employing over forty thousand hands. The Putilov workers were ever to the fore in the revolutionary movement. They led the strikes which resulted in the revolution of March, 1917. Their independent bearing, their superior intelligence and organization, and their efforts to protest against Bolshevist despotism, aroused the fears and hatred of the Communists, who quite rightly attributed this independent attitude to the preference of the workers for the non-Bolshevist political parties.
The dispute centred round the Bolshevist food system, which was rapidly reducing the city to a state of starvation. Hoping the storm would blow over, the Bolshevist authorities allowed it to run its course for a time, endeavouring to appease the workers by an issue of rations increased at the expense of the rest of the population. This measure, however, only intensified the workers’ indignation, while the hesitation of the Bolsheviks to employ force encouraged them in their protests. Unauthorized meetings and processions increased in frequency, the strikes spread to every factory in the city, speakers became more violent, and all sorts of jokes were made publicly at the expense of the Bolsheviks. Strolling in the industrial quarters I saw a party of men emerge from a plant singing the Marseillaise and cheering. At the same time they carried a banner on which was rudely imprinted the following couplet: Doloi Lamina s koninoi, Daitje tsarya s svininoi, which being interpreted means: “Down with Lenin and horseflesh, give us a tsar and pork!”