Mr. Roger E. Simmons also describes the Bolshevik government as it existed when he left Russia in November, 1918, as follows:
“The Soviet government, composed solely of Bolsheviks, of a portion only of the ‘manual proletariat’ is a government in name only. Rightly stated, it is a well-organized institution functioning to further the social revolution, the overthrow of all recognized standards of morality and civilization.”[25]
That gradual despotism shown by the testimony of these witnesses to exist in 1918 has tended to become more and more complete is shown by evidence of a recent date. The British White Book, “Russia No. 1 (1919), Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia,” contains a report of a Mr. C. who was formerly connected with a commercial company which had a branch in Moscow. This document bears the date of January 21, 1919. Among other information therein contained is the following:
“All factories nationalized; only about half of them working. Men all anti-Bolshevik. Very discontented with conditions of life, and with the working of the factories. Conditions getting worse and worse every day. A great many of the men have gone to the country, as it is practically impossible to live in the towns.... In Petrograd more attempts to strike than in Moscow; this is because in Moscow the workmen are more under the power of the government, and they do not dare to strike. Even if they did there is nothing to gain by it, for the government would simply stop their wages, discharge a good many, and probably cancel their bread cards.”
As recently as in the fall of 1919 conditions in the factories were reported to be intolerable. The Soviet officials have gone far beyond that part of the program of Karl Marx in his “Communist Manifesto,” which prescribes “Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.” The Soviet government’s Code of Labor Laws, translated into English and published in New York in Soviet Russia, the organ of the Russian Soviet Bureau, in its issue of February 21, 1920, imposes compulsory labor upon every one, male or female, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, unless physically disqualified, and enforces iron discipline of the most tyrannical nature.
Moreover, the New York World of Friday, April 9, 1920, published an article entitled “Mobilize Russian Labor,” in which it was stated that Trotzky, addressing the ninth convention of the Communist Party at Moscow on March 27, 1920, directed his address chiefly to defining the relation between the mobilization of industry to the industrial rehabilitation of Russia, and stated:
“Mobilization is more necessary now than it was formerly, because we have to deal with the peasant population and masses of unskilled labor which cannot be utilized to the fullest extent by any other means than military discipline. Trades unions are capable of organizing great masses of qualified workers, but 30 per cent of the people cannot be reached by this means.”
An elaborate system among the workmen had been gradually established and at present the communist spy reporting directly to the Soviets has almost mediaeval powers of executing a man merely for the reason that he is opposed to the tyranny of the Soviets. Moreover, by the weapon of starvation, the workman is compelled to work more hours than under any preceding form of government. The very right to strike is entirely denied the workmen. Every strike is called sabotage against the Soviets and every act of sabotage is forbidden under pain of capital punishment. Supplementary Decree No. 27 deals specifically with incitements to strike. Persons violating such decree are brought before the Extraordinary Committees to Combat Counter-revolution.
This situation strikingly recalls a passage in the Protocols where it is stated: