+ − Pub W 97:175 Ja 17 ’20 700w
“There are evidences of cuts which in places make for uncertainty of delineation—the only blemish of an otherwise almost perfect work of its kind.”
+ − Survey 44:385 Je 12 ’20 150w
SPARGO, JOHN. “Greatest failure in all history.” *$2.50 (2c) Harper 947
20–14005
In this “critical examination of the actual workings of bolshevism in Russia” (Sub-title) the author claims to have assembled evidence which “must compel every honest believer in freedom and democracy to condemn bolshevism as a vicious and dangerous form of reaction, subversive of every form of progress and every agency of civilization and enlightenment,” and to show it up as “the curse which during less than thirty months has afflicted unhappy Russia with greater ills than fifty years of czarism.” (Preface) Contents: Why have the bolsheviki retained power? The soviets; The soviets under the bolsheviki; The undemocratic soviet state; The peasants and the land; The bolsheviki and the peasants; The red terror; Industry under soviet control; The nationalization of industry (I-II); Freedom of press and assembly: “The dictatorship of the proletariat”; State communism and labor conscription; Let the verdict be rendered; Documents; Index.
“Although most of the evidence carries its own weight the disinterested reader will wish in many cases for some critical evaluation of authorities cited.”
+ − Booklist 17:55 N ’20
“Mr Spargo is a Socialist, and it is because he considers the doctrines of Lenin and his followers a ‘grotesque travesty of Marx’s teachings,’ and a blow to socialism, and the arch enemy of all democracy, political, and industrial, that he exposes it as it is. This is the great merit of the book. It compels the reader to look at bolshevism as it is.” F. W. C.