Immediately after the purge there were districts of the “metropolis of the world revolution” where scarcely a Communist was left. The central committee had been prepared to purge the party of a certain number of undesirables, but the sudden reduction by over one half was a totally unexpected blow. Its bitterness was enhanced by the fact that only three weeks earlier, by means of threats, bribes, trickery, and violence, the Communists had secured over 1,100 out of 1,390 seats at the elections to the Petrograd Soviet, which result they were holding up to the outside world as indicative of the spreading influence of Bolshevism.
The problem of how to increase the party membership became vitally urgent. With this end in view a novel and ingenious idea was suddenly conceived. It was resolved to make an appeal for party recruits among the workers! Amazing though it may seem, the Communist leaders, according to their own accounts, thought of this course only as a last resort. To the outsider this is almost incredible. Even in Russia it seemed so at first, but on second thoughts it appeared less strange. For ever since the murder in 1918 of the Jewish commissars Volodarsky and Uritzky, the former by unknown workmen and the latter by a Socialist-Revolutionary Jew, the Communists had come to regard the workers in general as an unreliable element, strongly under Menshevist and Socialist-Revolutionary influence. The small section that joined the Bolsheviks were elevated to posts of responsibility, and thus became detached from the masses. But a larger section, openly adhering to anti-Bolshevist parties, was left, whose spokesmen were constantly subjected to persecution which only enhanced their prestige in the workers’ eyes.
Of whom, then, had the Communist Party consisted for the first two years of the Red régime? The question is not easy to answer, for the systems of admission have varied as much as the composition of the party itself. The backbone of the rank and file was originally formed by the sailors, whom I heard Trotzky describe during the riots of July, 1917, as “the pride and glory of the revolution.” But a year or so later there was a good sprinkling of that type of workman who, when he is not a Communist, is described by the Communists as “workman bourgeois.” Though these latter were often self-seekers and were regarded by the workers in general as snobs, they were a better element than the sailors, who with few exceptions were ruffians. Further recruits were drawn from amongst people of most varied and indefinite types—yard-keepers, servant girls, ex-policemen, prison warders, tradesmen, and the petty bourgeoisie. In rare instances one might find students and teachers, generally women of the soft, dreamy, mentally weak type, but perfectly sincere and disinterested. Most women Communists of the lower ranks resembled ogresses.
In the early days membership of the party, which rapidly came to resemble a political aristocracy, was regarded as an inestimable privilege worth great trouble and cost to obtain. The magic word Communist inspired fear and secured admission and preference everywhere. Before it every barrier fell. Of course endless abuses arose, one of which was the sale of the recommendations required for membership. As workers showed no inclination to join, it was self-seekers for the most part who got in, purchasing their recommendations by bribes or for a fixed sum, and selling them in their turn after admission. These were the “undesirables” of whom the leaders were so anxious to purge the party.
Various expedients were then devised to filter applicants. Party training schools were established for neophytes, where devotion to “our” system was fanned into ecstasy, while burning hatred was excited toward every other social theory whatsoever. The training schools were never a brilliant success, for a variety of reasons. The instruction was only theoretical and the lecturers were rarely able to clothe their thoughts in simple language or adapt the abstruse aspects of sociological subjects to the mentality of their audiences, which consisted of very youthful workers or office employees lured into attendance by an extra half-pound of bread issued after each lecture. To attend the whole course was irksome, involving sacrifice of leisure hours, and the number of ideiny (“idealistic”) applicants was too small to permit rigorous discipline. The training schools were gradually superseded by Communist clubs, which devoted their attention to concerts and lectures, thus resembling the cultural-enlightenment committees in the army.
Another deterrent to “radishes” was devised by establishing three degrees for professing converts:
1. Sympathizers.
2. Candidates.
3. Fully qualified Communists.
Before being crowned with the coveted title of “member of the Communist Party,” neophytes had to pass through the first two probationary stages, involving tests of loyalty and submission to party discipline. It was the prerogative only of the third category to bear arms. It was to them that preference was given in all appointments to posts of responsibility.
There is one source upon which the Bolsheviks can rely with some confidence for new drafts. I refer to the Union of Communist Youth. Realizing their failure to convert the present generation, the Communists have turned their attention to the next, and established this Union which all school children are encouraged to join. Even infants, when their parents can be induced or compelled to part with them, are prepared for initiation to the Union by concentration in colonies and homes, where they are fed on preferential rations, at the expense of the rest of the population, and clothed with clothing seized from children whose parents refuse to be separated from them. It is the object of these colonies to protect the young minds from pernicious non-Communist influence and so to instil Bolshevist ideals that by the time they reach adolescence they will be incapable of imbibing any others. According to Bolshevist admissions many of these homes are in an appalling state of insanitation, but a few are kept up by special efforts and exhibited to foreign visitors as model nurseries. It is still too early to estimate the success of this system. Personally I am inclined to think that, when not defeated by the misery of insanitation and neglect, the propagandist aims will be largely counteracted by the silent but benevolent influence of the self-sacrificing intellectuals (doctors, matrons, and nurses) whose services in the running of them cannot be dispensed with. The tragedy of the children of Soviet Russia is in the numbers that are thrown into the streets. But the Union of Communist Youth, consisting of adolescents, with considerable license permitted them, with endless concerts, balls, theatre parties and excursions, supplementary rations and issues of sweetmeats, processioning, flag-waving, and speech-making at public ceremonies, is still the most reliable source of recruits to the Communist Party.
It will be readily realized that the party consisted of a medley of widely differing characters, in which genuine toilers were a minority. When the novel suggestion was made of inviting workers to join, this fact was admitted with laudable candour. The Bolshevist spokesmen frankly avowed they had completely forgotten the workers, and a great campaign was opened to draw them into the party. “The watchword ‘Open the party doors to the workers,’” said Pravda on July 25, 1919, “has been forgotten. Workers get ‘pickled’ as soon as they join”—which meant they become Communists and entirely lose their individuality as workers. Zinoviev wrote a long proclamation to toilers explaining who the Communists were and their objects.