Inside the Russian Revolution

by Rheta Childe Dorr

CHAPTER XXIV RUSSIA’S GREATEST NEEDS

It would be a very terrible thing for democracy and the world’s peace if the Allies, observing the anarchy into which Russia has fallen, should relax any of their efforts to help her back to a sound military, economic and social foundation. The first impulse is to beseech the United States government to refuse to loan money to such an unstable government, and even to decline to send Red Cross relief to a people who will not try to help themselves. But second thought reveals the unwisdom of deserting Russia in her crisis, however wilfully the crisis was brought on. We must loan money to Russia even though we lose the money. We must send her food and supplies even though they be received without much gratitude. For the sake of democracy, to which revivified and regenerated Russia has a world to contribute, we must help her now. The task will not be as difficult as the surface facts indicate. Russia is rapidly approaching the climax of her woe.

Aside from her military situation, bankruptcy is coming if it is not already there. Bankruptcy for the national treasury, for few taxes are being paid. Bankruptcy for food, clothing, fuel for all the people except a few on the farms, and even they will suffer for many things. Hunger and cold are at the door. The Russian army may rally, may turn on the Germans and magnificently retrieve its lost reputation as a fighting force. But there is no way in which the army of producers, the farmers and the working people, can rout the enemy they have admitted within the lines.

The farmer class of Russia this year did not produce full crops, and they refused to send to market a very large proportion of what they did produce. They hoarded their grain for their own use and some of it at least they have turned into vodka. In the towns and cities of Russia prohibition almost prohibits, but the peasant very quickly learned the art of illicit distilling, and I heard on authority I could scarcely question that stills have been established in half the villages of Russia. The statement is borne out to some extent by the fact that drunkenness among soldiers is increasing, especially in places remote from the larger cities. In Petrograd I saw little drunkenness, but the farther I traveled southward into the farming area the more I saw and heard of it. At the military position in Poland where the Botchkareva Battalion of Death was stationed, I talked with a soldier who had lived in America. In the course of our conversation he mentioned that a group in his regiment had got drunk and were in trouble.

“Where could they get liquor?” I asked.

“Oh, they get it,” he replied. “It’s new and it’s quite horrible, but they drink it.”

Serious as the grain shortage was, the transportation situation was still more serious. Food for which Petrograd and Moscow would pay almost any money, rotted on the ground, spoiled in the half-loaded freight cars, and wasted in congested way stations for lack of transportation facilities and for lack of labor. In the industrial world things were as bad. The working people, blind to their own peril, had shortened hours of work, had gone slack on their jobs, and had voted themselves wages far in excess of their productive activities. The consequences were rapidly accumulating. Factories were closing down, partly because they could not get coal and partly because of the extortions of labor. Soon there will be gaunt famine in the land. The working people will know what it is to go hungry with their pockets full of money.

When these troubles culminate—and in a few weeks at the most, the world will stand aghast at Russia’s state—the orgy of the Bolsheviki, the riot of the dreamers will end. Human nature is the same in Russia as it is elsewhere, the same as it is in New York or in Emporia, Kansas. We all know how, when hard times pinch the country, the Republican party elects its candidates. The people follow their theorizing and dreaming leaders in good times, but when the hard times come they turn to the party of strong business men to set them on their feet again. The full dinner pail argument is going to appeal strongly to the Russian masses this coming winter, and if the constituent assembly is postponed until the autumn of 1918, I am confident that the people will vote in favor, not of a socialistic millennium that will not work, but for a sane, practical democracy that will.

What Russia needs above all other things is leaders. What the people of this country must do for Russia is to help her find and develop those leaders. They are there somewhere. Russia has shown that she can produce great men and great women, people whom any nation might be proud to follow. But under czardom the only people permitted to lead were so corrupt, so reactionary and tyrannical that the Russians learned to fear and distrust all leadership. When they overthrew czardom and banished the tyrants and the corruptionists they thought they could get along without any leaders. The world knows now how fatal was their mistake, and very soon the blindest of the blind in Russia will know it.