“THE GREATEST FAILURE
IN ALL HISTORY”

Books by
JOHN SPARGO

“THE GREATEST FAILURE IN ALL HISTORY”
RUSSIA AS AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOLSHEVISM
BOLSHEVISM
AMERICANISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY EXPLAINED

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
Established 1817

“THE GREATEST FAILURE
IN ALL HISTORY”

A Critical Examination of
The Actual Workings of
Bolshevism In Russia

BY
JOHN SPARGO
AUTHOR OF
“BOLSHEVISM” “THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOLSHEVISM”
“RUSSIA AS AN AMERICAN PROBLEM”
“SOCIAL DEMOCRACY EXPLAINED”

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Greatest Failure in all History

Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published August, 1920
G-U

To The
MISGUIDED, THE MISTAKEN,
AND THE MISINFORMED
Who Have Hailed Bolshevism in Russia as the Advent of
A NEW FREEDOM

I Submit a Part of the Indisputable Evidence Upon Which, as a Socialist, Who Believes in Democracy in Government and Industry—and in the Generous Individualism Which Communism of Opportunity Alone Can Give—I Base My Condemnation of Bolshevism as a Mad Attempt, by a Brutal and Degrading Tyranny, to Carry Out an Impossible Program

NOTE

My thanks are due to many friends, in this country and in Europe, for their kindly co-operation, assistance, and advice. I do not name them all—partly because many of them have requested me not to do so. I must, however, express my thanks to Mr. Henry L. Slobodin of New York, for kindly placing his materials at my disposal; Dr. S. Ingerman of New York, for his valuable assistance; Mr. Jerome Landfield of New York, for most valuable suggestions; Prof. V. I. Issaiev of London, for personal courtesies and for the assistance derived from his valuable collection of data; Dr. Joseph M. Goldstein, author of Russia, Her Economic Past and Future; Mr. Gregor Alexinsky; Mr. Alexander Kerensky, former Premier of Russia; Madame Catherine Breshkovsky; Dr. J. O. Gavronsky of London; the editors of Pour la Russie, Paris; Gen. C. M. Oberoucheff, military commander of the Kiev District under the Provisional Government; Mr. J. Strumillo, of the Russian Social Democratic Party; Mr. G. Soloveytchik of Queen’s College, Oxford; to the Institute for Public Service for the diagram used on [page 65]; and, finally, my old friend and colleague of twenty-five years ago, Col. John Ward, C.B., C.M.G., member of the British House of Commons, founder of the Navvies’ Union, whose courageous struggle against Bolshevism has won for him the respect and gratitude of all friends of Russian freedom.

J. S.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Like the immortal Topsy, this book may be said to have “just growed.” In it I have simply assembled in something like an orderly arrangement a vast amount of carefully investigated evidence concerning the Bolshevist system and its workings—evidence which, in my judgment, 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.

I do not discuss theories in this book, except in a very incidental way. In two earlier volumes my views upon the theories of Bolshevism have been set forth, clearly and with emphasis. On its theoretical side, despite the labored pretentiousness of Lenin and his interminable “Theses,” so suggestive of medieval theology, Bolshevism is the sorriest medley of antiquated philosophical rubbish and fantastic speculation to command attention among civilized peoples since Millerism stirred so many of the American people to a mental process they mistook for and miscalled thinking.

No one who is capable of honest and straight-forward thinking upon political and economic questions can read the books of such Bolshevist writers as Lenin, Trotsky, and Bucharin, and the numerous proclamations, manifestoes, and decrees issued by the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, and retain any respect for the Bolsheviki as thinkers. Neither can any one who is capable of understanding the essential difference between freedom and despotism read even those official decrees, programs, and legal codes which they themselves have caused to be published and doubt that the régime of the Bolsheviki in Russia is despotic in the extreme. The cretinous-minded admirers and defenders of Bolshevism, whether they call themselves Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists—dishonoring thereby words of great and honorable antecedents—“bawl for freedom in their senseless mood” and, at the same time, give their hearts’ homage to a monstrous and arrogant tyranny.

In these pages will be found, I venture to assert, ample and conclusive evidence to justify to any healthy and rational mind the description of Bolshevism as “a monstrous and arrogant tyranny.” That is the purpose of the volume. It is an indictment and arraignment of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki at the bar of enlightened public opinion. The evidence upon which the indictment rests is so largely drawn from official publications of the Soviet Government and of the Communist Party, and from the authorized writings of the foremost spokesmen of Russian Bolshevism, that the book might almost be termed a self-revelation of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki. Such evidence as I have cited from non-Bolshevist sources is of minor importance, slight in quantity and merely corroborative of, or supplementary to, the evidence drawn from the Bolshevist sources already indicated. Much of the evidence has been published from time to time in numerous articles, state reports, and pamphlets, both here and in England, but this is the first volume, I believe, to bring the material together in a systematic arrangement.

Following the publication of my Bolshevism I found myself called upon to deliver many addresses upon the subject. Some of these were given before college and university audiences—at Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Barnard, and elsewhere—while others were given before a wide variety of public audiences. The circulation of my book and many magazine and newspaper articles on the subject, together with the lectures and addresses, had the result of bringing me a veritable multitude of questions from all parts of the country. The questions came from men and women of high estate and of low, ranging from United States Senators to a group of imprisoned Communists awaiting deportation. Some of the questions were asked in good faith, to elicit information; others were obviously asked for quite another purpose. For a long time it seemed that every statement made in the press about Bolshevism or the Bolsheviki reached me with questions or challenges concerning it.

To every question which was asked in apparent good faith I did my best to reply. When—as often happened—the information was not in my possession, I invoked the assistance of those of my Russian friends in Europe and this country who have made it their special task to keep well informed concerning developments in Russia. These friends not only replied to my specific questions, but sent me from time to time practically every item of interest concerning developments in Russia. As a result, I found myself in the possession of an immense mass of testimony and evidence of varying value. Fully aware of the unreliability of much of the material thus placed in my hands, for my own satisfaction I weeded out all stories based upon hearsay, all stories told by unknown persons, all rumors and indefinite statements, and, finally, all stories, no matter by whom told, which were not confirmed by dependable witnesses. This winnowing process left the following classes of evidence and testimony: (1) Statements by leading Bolsheviki, contained in their official press or in publications authorized by them; (2) reports of activities by the Soviet Government or its officials, published in the official organs of the government; (3) formal documents—decrees, proclamations, and the like—issued by the Soviet Government and its responsible officials; (4) statements made by well-known Russian Socialists and trades-unionists of high standing upon facts within their own knowledge, where there was confirmatory evidence; (5) the testimony of well-known Socialists from other countries, upon matters of which they had personal knowledge and concerning which there was confirmatory evidence.

Every scrap of evidence adduced in the following pages belongs to one or other of the five classes above described. Moreover, the reader can rest assured that every possible care has been taken to guard against misquotation and against quotation which, while literally accurate, nevertheless misrepresents the truth. This is often done by unfairly separating text from context, for example, and in other ways. I believe that I can assure the reader of the freedom of this book from that evil; certainly nothing of the sort has been intentionally included. While I have accepted as correct and authentic certain translations, such as the translations of Lenin’s Soviets at Work and his State and Revolution, both of which are largely circulated by pro-Bolshevist propagandists, and such collections of documents as have been published in this country by the Nation—the Soviet Constitution and certain Decrees—and by Soviet Russia, the official organ of the Soviet Government in this country, I have had almost every other line of translated quotation examined and verified by some competent and trustworthy Russian scholar.

The book does not contain all or nearly all the evidence which has come into my possession in the manner described. I have purposely omitted much that was merely harrowing and brutal, as well as sensational incidents which have no direct bearing upon the struggle in Russia, but properly belong to the category of crimes arising out of the elemental passions, which are to be found in every country. Crimes and atrocities by irresponsible individuals I have passed over in silence, confining myself to those things which reflect the actual purposes, methods, and results of the régime itself.

I have not tried to make a sensational book, yet now that it is finished I feel that it is even worse than that. It seems to me to be a terrible book. The cumulative effect of the evidence of brutal oppression and savagery, of political trickery and chicane, of reckless experimentation, of administrative inefficiency, of corrupt bureaucratism, of outraged idealism and ambitious despotism, seems to me as terrible as anything I know—more terrible than the descriptions of czarism which formerly harrowed our feelings. When I remember the monstrous evils that have been wrought in the name of Socialism, my soul is torn by an indescribable agony.

Yet more agonizing still is the consciousness that here in the United States there are men and women of splendid character and apparent intelligence whose vision has been so warped by hatred of the evils of the present system, and by a cunning propaganda, that they are ready to hail this loathsome thing of hatred, this monstrous tyranny, as an evangel of fraternalism and freedom; ready to bring upon this nation—where, despite every shortcoming, we are at least two centuries ahead of Bolshevized Russia, politically, economically, morally—the curse which during less than thirty months has afflicted unhappy Russia with greater ills than fifty years of czarism.

They will not succeed. They shall strive in vain to replace the generous spirit of Lincoln with the brutal spirit of Lenin. For us there shall be no dictatorship other than that of our own ever-growing conscience as a nation, seeking freedom and righteousness in our own way.

We shall defeat and destroy Bolshevism by keeping the light shining upon it, revealing its ugliness, its brutality, its despotism. We do not need to adopt the measures which czarism found so unavailing. Oppression cannot help us in this fight, or offer us any protection whatsoever. If we would destroy Bolshevism we must destroy the illusions which surround it. Once its real character is made known, once men can see it as it is, we shall not need to fear its spread among our fellow-citizens. Light, abundant light, is the best agent to fight Bolshevism.

John Spargo. “Nestledown,” Old Bennington, Vermont, May 1920.

“THE GREATEST FAILURE IN ALL HISTORY”

“THE GREATEST FAILURE IN ALL HISTORY”

I
WHY HAVE THE BOLSHEVIKI RETAINED POWER?

The Bolsheviki are in control of Russia. Never, at any time since their usurpation of power in November, 1917, have Lenin and Trotsky and their associates been so free from organized internal opposition as they are now, after a lapse of more than two and a quarter years. This is the central fact in the Russian problem. While it is true that Bolshevist rule is obviously tottering toward its fall, it is equally true that the anti-Bolshevist forces of Russia have been scattered like chaff before the wind. While there is plenty of evidence that the overwhelming mass of the Russian people have been and are opposed to them, the Bolsheviki rule, nevertheless. This is what many very thoughtful people who are earnestly seeking to arrive at just and helpful conclusions concerning Russia find it hard and well-nigh impossible to understand. Upon every hand one hears the question, “How is it possible to believe that the Bolsheviki have been able for so long to maintain and even increase their power against the opposition of the great mass of the Russian people?”

The complete answer to this question will be developed later, but a partial and provisional answer may, perhaps, do much to clear the way for an intelligent and dispassionate study of the manner in which Bolshevism in Russia has been affected by the acid test of practice. In the first place, it would be interesting to discuss the naïveté of the question. Is it a new and unheard-of phenomenon that a despotic and tyrannical government should increase its strength in spite of the resentment of the masses? Czarism maintained itself in power for centuries against the will of the people. If it be objected that only a minority of the people of Russia actively opposed czarism, and that the masses as a whole were passive for centuries, no such contention can be made concerning the period from 1901 to 1906. At that time the country was aflame with passionate discontent; the people as a whole were opposed to czarism, yet they lacked the organized physical power to overthrow it. Czarism ruled by brute force, and the methods which it developed and used with success have been adopted by the Bolsheviki and perfected by them.

However, let a veteran Russian revolutionist answer the question: Gen. C. M. Oberoucheff is an old and honored member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists of Russia and under the old régime suffered imprisonment and exile on account of his activities in the revolutionary movement. Under the Provisional Government, while Kerensky was Premier, he was made Military Commissary of Kiev, at the request of the local Soviet. General Oberoucheff says:

“Americans often ask the question: ‘How can it be explained that the Bolsheviki hold power?... Does this not prove that they are supported by the majority of the people?’ For us Russians the reply to this question is very simple. The Czars held power for centuries. Is that proof that their rule was supported by the will of the people? Of course not. They held power by the rule of blood and iron and did not rest at all upon the sympathies of the great masses of the people. The Bolsheviki are retaining their power to-day by the same identical means.... Russia of the Czars’ time was governed by Blue gendarmes. Great Russia of to-day is ruled by Red gendarmes. The distinction is only in color and perhaps somewhat in methods. The methods of the Red gendarmes are more ruthless and cruel than those of the old Blue gendarmes.”

The greater part of a year has elapsed since these words were written by General Oberoucheff. Since that time there have been many significant changes in Russia, including recently some relaxation of the brutal oppression. Czarism likewise had its periods of comparative decency. It still remains true, however, that the rule of the Bolsheviki rests upon the same basis as that of the old régime. It is, in fact, only an inverted form of czarism.

As we shall presently see, the precise methods by which monarchism was so long maintained have been used by the Bolsheviki. The main support of the old régime was an armed force, consisting of the corps of gendarmes and special regiments of guards. Under Bolshevism, corresponding to these, we have the famous Red Guards, certain divisions of which have been maintained for the express purpose of dealing with internal disorder and suppressing uprisings. Just as, under czarism, the guard regiments were specially well paid and accorded privileges which made them a class apart, so have these Red Guards of the Bolsheviki enjoyed special privileges, including superior pay and rations.

Under czarism the Okhrana and the Black Hundreds, together with the Blue gendarmes, imposed a reign of terror upon the nation. They were as corrupt as they were cruel. Under the Bolsheviki the Extraordinary Committees and Revolutionary Tribunals have been just as brutal and as corrupt as their czaristic predecessors. Under the Bolsheviki the system of espionage and the use of provocative agents can be fairly described as a continuance of the methods of the old régime.

Czarism developed an immense bureaucracy; a vast army of petty officials and functionaries was thus attached to the government. This bureaucracy was characterized by the graft and corruption indulged in by its members. They stole from the government and they used their positions to extort blackmail and graft from the helpless and unhappy people. In the same manner Bolshevism has developed a new bureaucracy in Russia, larger than the old, and no less corrupt. As we shall see later on, the sincere and honest idealists among the Bolsheviki have loudly protested against this evil. Moreover, the system has become so burdensome economically that the government itself has become alarmed. By filling the land with spies and making it almost impossible for any man to trust his neighbor, by suppressing practically all non-Bolshevist journals, and by terrorism such as was unknown under the old régime, the Bolsheviki have maintained themselves in power.

There is a still more important reason why the Bolshevist régime continues, namely, its own adaptability. Far from being the unbending and uncompromising devotees of principle they are very generally regarded as being, the Bolshevist leaders are, above all else, opportunists. Notwithstanding their adoption of the repressive and oppressive methods of the old régime, the Bolsheviki could not have continued in power had they remained steadfast to the economic theories and principles with which they began. No amount of force could have continued for so long a system of government based on economic principles so ruinous. As a matter of fact, the Bolsheviki have continued to rule Russia because, without any change of mind or heart, but under pressure of relentless economic necessity, they have abandoned their theories. The crude communism which Lenin and his accomplices set out to impose upon Russia by force has been discarded and flung upon the scrap-pile of politics. That this is true will be abundantly demonstrated by the testimony of the Bolsheviki themselves.

No study of the reasons for the success of the Bolsheviki can be regarded as complete which does not take into account the fact that Russia has been living upon the stored-up resources of the old order. When the Bolsheviki seized the reins of government there were in the country large stores of food, of raw materials, of manufactured and partially manufactured goods. There were also large numbers of industrial establishments in working order. With these things alone, even without any augmentation by new production—except, of course, agricultural production—the nation could for a considerable time escape utter destruction. With these resources completely in the hands of the government, any opposition was necessarily placed at a very great disadvantage. The principal spokesmen of the Bolsheviki have themselves recognized this from time to time. On January 3, 1920, Pravda, the official organ of the Communist Party—that is, of the Bolsheviki—said:

We must not forget that hitherto we have been living on the stores and machinery, the means of production, which we inherited from the bourgeoisie. We have been using the old stores of raw material, half-manufactured and manufactured goods. But these stores are getting exhausted and the machinery is wearing out more and more. All our victories in the field will lead to nothing if we do not add to them victories gained by the hammer, pick, and lathe.

It must be confessed that the continued rule of the Bolsheviki has, to a very considerable extent, been due to the political ineptitude and lack of coherence on the part of their opponents. The truth is that on more than one occasion the overthrow of the Bolsheviki might easily have been brought about by the Allies if they had dared do it. The chancelleries of Europe were, at times, positively afraid that the Bolshevist Government would be overthrown and that there would be no sort of government to take its place. In the archives of all the Allied governments there are filed away confidential reports warning the governments that if the Bolsheviki should be overthrown Russia would immediately become a vast welter of anarchy. Many European diplomats and statesmen, upon the strength of such reports, shrugged their shoulders and consoled themselves with the thought that, however bad Bolshevist government might be, it was at least better than no government at all.

Finally, we must not overlook the fact that the mere existence of millions of people who, finding it impossible to overthrow the Bolshevist régime, devote their energies to the task of making it endurable by bribing officials, conspiring to evade oppressive regulations, and by outward conformity, tends to keep the national life going, no matter how bad the government.

II
THE SOVIETS

The first articulate cry of Bolshevism in Russia after the overthrow of the monarchy was the demand “All power to the Soviets!” which the Bolshevist leaders raised in the summer of 1917 when the Provisional Government was bravely struggling to consolidate the democratic gains of the March Revolution. The Bolsheviki were inspired by that anti-statism which one finds in the literature of early Marxian Socialism. It was not the individualistic antagonism to the state of the anarchist, though easily confounded with and mistaken for it. It was not motivated by an exaltation of the individual, but that of a class. The early Marxian Socialists looked upon the modern state, with its highly centralized authority, as a mere instrument of class rule, by means of which the capitalist class maintained itself in power and intensified its exploitation of the wage-earning class. Frederick Engels, Marx’s great collaborator, described the modern state as being the managing committee for the capitalist class as a whole.

Naturally, the state being thus identified with capitalist exploitation, the determination to overthrow the capitalist system carried with it a like determination to destroy the political state. Given a victory by the working-class sufficiently comprehensive to enable it to take possession of the ruling power, the state would either become obsolete, and die of its own accord, or be forcibly abolished. This attitude is well and forcibly expressed by Engels in some well-known passages.

Thus, in his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels says:

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalistic machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit.... Whilst the capitalist mode of production ... forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplish this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property.

What Engels meant is made clear in a subsequent paragraph in the same work. He argues that as long as society was divided into antagonistic classes the state was a necessity. The ruling class for the time being required an organized force for the purpose of protecting its interest and particularly of forcibly keeping the subject class in order. Under such conditions, the state could only be properly regarded as the representative of society as a whole in the narrow sense that the ruling class itself represented society as a whole. Assuming the extinction of class divisions and antagonisms, the state would immediately become unnecessary:

The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not “abolished.” It dies out.

In another work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels says:

We are now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in production in which the existence of classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on production. Hence these classes must fall as inevitably they once rose. The state must irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will transfer the machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze ax.

These passages from the classic literature of Marxian Socialism fairly and clearly express the character of the anti-statism which inspired the Bolsheviki at the outset. They wanted to develop a type of social organization in which there would be practically no “government of persons,” but only the “administration of things” and the “conduct of the processes of production.” Modern Socialist thinkers have fairly generally recognized the muddled character of the thinking upon which this anti-statism rests. How can there be “administration of things” without “government of persons”? The only meaning that can possibly be attached to the “administration of things” by the government is that human relations established through the medium of things are to be administered or governed. Certainly the “conduct of the processes of production” without some regulation of the conduct of the persons engaged in those processes is unthinkable.

We do not need to discuss the theory farther at this time. It is enough to recognize that the primitive Marxian doctrine which we have outlined required that state interference with the individual and with social relations be reduced to a minimum, if not wholly abolished. It is a far cry from that conception to the system of conscript labor recently introduced, and the Code of Labor Laws of Soviet Russia, which legalizes industrial serfdom and adscription and makes even the proletarian subject to a more rigid and despotic “government of persons” than has existed anywhere since the time when feudalism flourished.

The Bolsheviki believed that they saw in the Soviets of factory-workers, peasants, and Socialists the beginnings of a form of social organization which would supplant the state, lacking its coercive features and better fitted for the administration of the economic life of the nation. The first Soviet of Workmen’s Deputies appeared in October, 1905, in Petrograd, at the time of the abortive revolution. The idea of organizing such a council of workmen’s representatives originated with the Mensheviki, the faction of the Social Democratic Party opposed to the Bolsheviki. The sole aim of the Soviet was to organize the revolutionary forces and sentiment. But, during the course of its brief existence, it did much in the way of relieving the distress. The Socialists-Revolutionists joined with the Mensheviki in the creation of this first Soviet, but the Bolsheviki were bitterly opposed to it, denouncing it as “the invention of semi-bourgeois parties to enthrall the proletariat in a non-partizan swamp.” When the Soviet was well under way, however, and its success was manifest, the Bolsheviki entered it and became active participants in its work. With the triumph of czarism, this first Soviet was crushed, most of its leaders being banished to Siberia.

Even before the formation of the Provisional Government was completed, in March, 1917, the revolutionary working-class leaders of Petrograd had organized a Soviet, or council, which they called the Council of Workmen’s Deputies of Petrograd. Like all the similar Soviets which sprang up in various parts of the country, this was a very loose organization and very far from being a democratic body of representatives. Its members were chosen at casual meetings held in the factories and workshops and sometimes on the streets. No responsible organizations arranged or governed the elections. Anybody could call a mass-meeting, in any manner he pleased, and those who came selected—usually by show of hands—such “deputies” as they pleased. If only a score attended and voted in a factory employing hundreds, the deputies so elected represented that factory in the Soviet. This description equally applies to practically all the other Soviets which sprang up in the industrial centers, the rural villages, and in the army itself. Among the soldiers at the front company Soviets, and even trench Soviets, were formed. In the cities it was common for groups of soldiers belonging to the same company, meeting on the streets by accident, to hold impromptu street meetings and form Soviets. There was, of course, more order and a better chance to get representative delegates when the meetings were held in barracks.

Not only were the Soviets far from being responsible democratically organized representative bodies; quite as significant is the fact that the deputies selected by the factory-workers were, in many instances, not workmen at all, but lawyers, university professors, lecturers, authors and journalists, professional politicians, and so on. Many of the men who played prominent rôles in the Petrograd Soviet, for example, as delegates of the factory-workers, were Intellectuals of the type described. Any well-known revolutionary leader who happened to be in the public eye at the moment might be selected by a group of admirers in a factory as their delegate. It was thus that Kerensky, the brilliant lawyer, found himself a prominent member of the Petrograd Soviet of Workmen’s Deputies, and that, later on, Trotsky, the journalist, and Lenin, the scholar, became equally prominent.

It was to such bodies as these that the Bolsheviki wanted to transfer all the power of the government—political, military, and economic. The leaders of the Provisional Government, when they found their task too heavy, urged the Petrograd Soviet to take up the burden, which it declined to do. That the Soviets were needed in the existing circumstances, and that, as auxiliaries to the Provisional Government and the Municipal Council, they were capable of rendering great service to the democratic cause, can hardly be questioned by any one familiar with the conditions that prevailed. The Provisional Government, chosen from the Duma, was not, at first, a democratic body in the full sense of that word. It did not represent the working-people. It was essentially representative of the bourgeoisie and it was quite natural, therefore, that in the Soviets there was developed a very critical attitude toward the Provisional Government.

Before very long, however, the Provisional Government became more democratic through the inclusion of a large representation of the working-class parties, men who were chosen by and directly responsible to the Petrograd Soviet. This arrangement meant that the Soviet had definitely entered into co-operation with the Provisional Government; that in the interest of the success of the Revolution the working-class joined hands with the bourgeoisie. This was the condition when, in the summer of 1917, the Bolsheviki raised the cry “All power to the Soviets!” There was not even the shadow of a pretense that the Provisional Government was either undemocratic or unrepresentative. At the same time the new municipal councils were functioning. These admirable bodies had been elected upon the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. Arrangements were far advanced for holding—under the authority of the democratically constituted municipal councils and Zemstvos—elections for a Constituent Assembly, upon the same basis of generous democracy: universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, with proportional representation. It will be seen, therefore, that the work of creating a thoroughly democratic government for Russia was far advanced and proceeding with great rapidity. Instead of the power of government being placed in the hands of thoroughly democratic representative bodies, the Bolsheviki wanted it placed in the hands of the hastily improvised and loosely organized Soviets.

At first the Bolsheviki had professed great faith in, and solicitude for, the Constituent Assembly, urging its immediate convocation. In view of their subsequent conduct, this has been regarded as evidence of their hypocrisy and dishonesty. It has been assumed that they never really wanted a Constituent Assembly at all. Of some of the leaders this is certainly true; of others it is only partially true. Trotsky, Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and others, during the months of June and July, 1917, opposed the policy of the Provisional Government in making elaborate preparations for holding the elections to the Constituent Assembly. They demanded immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, upon the basis of “elections” similar to those of the Soviets, knowing well that this would give them an irresponsible mass-meeting, easily swayed and controlled by the demagoguery and political craft of which they were such perfect masters. Had they succeeded in their efforts at that time, the Constituent Assembly would not have been dispersed, in all probability. It would have been as useful an instrument for their purpose as the Soviets. When they realized that the Constituent Assembly was to be a responsible representative body, a deliberative assembly, they began their agitation to have its place taken by the Soviets. They were perfectly well aware that these could be much more easily manipulated and controlled by an aggressive minority than a well-planned, thoroughly representative assembly could be.

The Bolsheviki wanted to use the Soviets as instruments. In this simple statement of fact there is implicit a distinction between Soviet government and Bolshevism, a distinction that is too often lost sight of. Bolshevism may be defined either as an end to be attained—communism—or as a policy, a method of attaining the desired end. Neither the Soviet as an institution nor Soviet government, as such, had any necessary connection with the particular goal of the Bolsheviki or their methods. That the Bolsheviki in Russia and in Hungary have approved Soviet government as the form of government best adapted to the realization of their program, and found the Soviet a desirable instrument, must not be regarded as establishing either the identity of Bolshevism and Soviet government or a necessary relation between the Soviet and the methods of the Bolsheviki. The same instrument is capable of being used by the conservative as well as by the radical.

In this respect the Soviet system of government is like ordinary parliamentary government. This, also, is an instrument which may be used by either the reactionary or the revolutionist. The defender of land monopoly and the Single-taxer can both use it. To reject the Soviet system simply because it is capable of being used to attain the ends of Bolshevism, or even because the advocates of Bolshevism find it better adapted to their purpose than the political systems with which we are familiar, is extremely foolish. Such a conclusion is as irrational as that of the superficial idealists who renounce all faith in organized government and its agencies because they can be used oppressively, and are in fact sometimes so used.

It is at least possible, and, in the judgment of the present writer, not at all improbable, that the Soviet system will prove, in Russia and elsewhere, inclined to conservatism in normal circumstances. Trades-unions are capable of revolutionary action, but under normal conditions they incline to a cautious conservatism. The difference between a trades-union and a factory Soviet is, primarily, that the former groups the workers of a trade and disregards the fact that they work in different places, while the latter groups the workers in a particular factory and disregards the fact that they pursue different trades or grades of labor. What is there in this difference to warrant the conclusion that the factory-unit form of organization is more likely to adopt communist ideals or violent methods than the other form of organization? Surely the fact that the Bolsheviki have found it necessary to restrict and modify the Soviet system, even to the extent of abolishing some of its most important features, disposes of the mistaken notion that Bolshevism and the Soviet system are inseparable.

It is not without significance that the leading theoretician of Bolshevism, Lenin, on the basis of pure theory, opposed the Soviets at first. Nor is the fact that many of the bitterest opponents of Bolshevism in Russia, among the Socialists-Revolutionists, the Mensheviki, the Populists, the leaders of the co-operatives and the trades-unions, are stanch believers in and defenders of the Soviet system of government, and confidently believe that it will be the permanent form of Russian government.

For reasons which will be developed in subsequent chapters, the present writer does not accept this view. The principal objection to the Soviet system, as such, is not that it is inseparable from Bolshevism, that it must of necessity be associated with the aims and methods of the latter, but that—unless greatly modified and limited—it must prove inefficient to the point of vital danger to society. This does not mean that organizations similar in structure to the Soviets can have no place in the government or in industrial management. In some manner the democratization of industry is to be attained in a not far distant future. When that time comes it will be found that the ideas which gave impulse to syndicalism and to Soviet government have found concrete expression in a form wholly beneficent.

III
THE SOVIETS UNDER THE BOLSHEVIKI

After the coup d’état, the Soviets continued to be elected in the same haphazard manner as before. Even after the adoption, in July, 1918, of the Constitution, which made the Soviets the basis of the superstructure of governmental power, there was no noticeable improvement in this respect. Never, at any time, since the Bolsheviki came into power, have the Soviets attained anything like a truly representative character. The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic stamps it as the most undemocratic and oligarchic of the great modern nations. The city Soviets are composed of delegates elected by the employees of factories and workshops and by trades and professional unions, including associations of mothers and housewives. The Constitution does not prescribe the methods of election, these being determined by the local Soviets themselves. In the industrial centers most of the elections take place at open meetings in the factories, the voting being done by show of hands. In view of the elaborate system of espionage and the brutal repression of all hostile criticism, it is easy to understand that such a system of voting makes possible and easy every form of corruption and intimidation.

The whole system of government resulting from these methods proved unrepresentative. A single illustration will make this quite plain:

Within four days of the Czar’s abdication, the workers of Perm, in the Government of the Urals, organized a Soviet—the Urals Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet. At the head of it, as president, was Jandarmov, a machinist, who had been active in the Revolution of 1905, a Soviet worker and trades-unionist, many times imprisoned under the old régime. This Soviet supplemented and co-operated with the Provisional Government, worked for a democratic Constituent Assembly, and, after the first few days of excitement had passed, greatly increased production in the factories. But when the Bolshevist régime was established, after the adoption of the Constitution, the Government of the Urals, with its four million inhabitants, did not represent, even on the basis of the Soviet figures, more than 72,000 workers. That was the number of workers supposedly represented by the delegates of the Soviet Government. As a matter of fact, in that number was included the anti-Bolshevist strength, the workers who had been outvoted or intimidated, as the case might be. When the peasants elected delegates they were refused seats, because they were known to be, or believed to be, anti-Bolshevists. This is the much-vaunted system of Soviet “elections” concerning which so many of our self-styled Liberals have been lyrically eloquent.

Of course, even under the conditions described, anti-Bolshevists were frequently elected to the Soviets. It was a very general practice, in the early days of the Bolshevist régime, to quite arbitrarily “cleanse” the Soviets of these “undesirable counter-revolutionaries,” most of whom were Socialists. In December, 1917, the Soviets in Ufa, Saratov, Samara, Kazan, and Jaroslav were compelled, under severe penalties, to dismiss their non-Bolshevist members; in January, 1918, the same thing took place at Perm and at Ekaterinburg; and in February, 1918, the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd were similarly “cleansed.”

It was a very ordinary occurrence for Soviets to be suppressed because their “state of mind” was not pleasing to the Bolsheviki in control of the central authority. In a word, when a local Soviet election resulted in a majority of Socialists-Revolutionists or other non-Bolshevist representatives being chosen, the Council of the People’s Commissaries dissolved the Soviet and ordered the election of a new one. Frequently they used troops—generally Lettish or Chinese—to enforce their orders. Numerous examples of this form of despotism might be cited from the Bolshevist official press. For example, in April, 1918, the elections to the Soviet of Jaroslav, a large industrial city north of Moscow, resulted in a large majority of anti-Bolshevist representatives being elected. The Council of the People’s Commissaries sent Lettish troops to dissolve the Soviet and hold a new “election.” This so enraged the people that they gave a still larger majority for the anti-Bolshevist parties. Then the Council of the People’s Commissaries issued a decree stating that as the working-class of Jaroslav had twice proved their unfitness for self-government they would not be permitted to have a Soviet at all! The town was proclaimed to be “a nest of counter-revolutionaries.” Again and again the workers of Jaroslav tried to set up local self-government, and each time they were crushed by brutal and bloody violence.[1]

[1] The salient facts in this paragraph are condensed from L’Ouvrier Russe, May, 1918. See also Bullard, The Russian Pendulum—Autocracy, Democracy, Bolshevism, p. 92, for an account of the same events.

L. I. Goldman, member of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, made a report to that body concerning one of these Jaroslav uprisings in which he wrote:

The population of that city consists mainly of workmen. Having the assistance of a military organization under the leadership of General Alexiev and General Savinkov, the laborers of all the plants and factories took part in the uprising. Before the uprising began the leaders declared that they would not allow it unless they had the sympathy of the laborers and other classes. Trotsky sent a message stating that if the revolt could not be quelled he would go as far as having the city of Jaroslav with its 40,000 inhabitants completely destroyed.... Though surrounded by 17,000 Red Guards, Jaroslav resisted, but was finally captured by the Bolsheviki, due to the superiority of their artillery. The uprising was suppressed by bloody and terrible means. The spirit of destruction swayed over Jaroslav, which is one of the oldest Russian cities.

Bearing in mind that the sole aim of the people of Jaroslav—led by Socialist workmen—was to establish their own local self-government, the inviolability of the Soviet elections, let us examine a few of the many reports concerning the struggle published in the official Bolshevist organs. Under the caption “Official Bulletin,” Izvestia published, on July 21, 1918, this item:

At Jaroslav the adversary, gripped in the iron ring of our troops, has tried to enter into negotiations. The reply has been given under the form of redoubled artillery fire.

Four days later, on July 25th, Izvestia published a military proclamation addressed to the inhabitants of Jaroslav, from which the following passage is taken:

The General Staff notifies to the population of Jaroslav that all those who desire to live are invited to abandon the town in the course of twenty-four hours and to meet near the America Bridge. Those who remain will be treated as insurgents, and no quarter will be given to any one. Heavy artillery fire and gas-bombs will be used against them. All those who remain will perish in the ruins of the town with the insurrectionists, the traitors, and the enemies of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolution.

On the day following, July 26th, Izvestia published an article to the effect that “after minute questionings and full inquiry” a special commission of inquiry appointed to investigate the Jaroslav insurrection had listed three hundred and fifty persons as having “taken an active part in the insurrection and had relations with the Czechoslovaks,” and that the commissioners had ordered the whole three hundred and fifty to be shot.

Throughout the summer the struggle went on, and in the Severnaya Communa, September 10, 1918, the following despatch from Jaroslav was published:

Jaroslav, 9th September.—In the whole of the Jaroslav government a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its partizans has been organized. Manifestly anti-Soviet elements are being shot; suspected persons are interned in concentration camps; non-working sections of the population are subjected to forced labor.

Here is further evidence, from official Bolshevist sources, that when the Soviet elections went against them the Bolshevist Government simply dissolved the offending Soviets. Here are two despatches from Izvestia, from the issues of July 28 and August 3, 1918, respectively:

Kazan, July 26th.—As the important offices in the Soviet were occupied by Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, the Extraordinary Commission has dissolved the Provisional Soviet. The governmental power is now represented by a Revolutionary Committee.

Kazan, August 1st.—The state of mind of the workmen is revolutionary. If the Mensheviki dare to carry on their propaganda death menaces them.

By way of confirmation we have the following, from Pravda, August 6, 1918:

Kazan, August 4th.—The Provisional Congress of the Soviets of the Peasants has been dissolved because of the absence from it of poor peasants and because its state of mind is obviously counter-revolutionary.

Whenever a city Soviet was thus suppressed a military revolutionary committee, designated by the Bolsheviki, was set up in its place. To these committees the most arbitrary powers were given. Generally composed of young soldiers from distant parts, over whom there was practically no restraint, these committees frequently indulged in frightful acts of violence and spoliation. Not infrequently the Central Government, after disbanding a local Soviet, would send from places hundreds of miles away, under military protection, members of the Communist Party, who were designated as the executive committee of the Soviet for that locality. There was not even a pretense that they had been elected by anybody. Thus it was in Tumen: Protected by a convoy of eight hundred Red Guards, who remained there to enforce their authority, a group of members of the Communist Party arrived from Ekaterinburg and announced that they were the executive committee of the Soviet of Tumen where, in fact, no Soviet existed. This was not at all an unusual occurrence.

The suppression by force of those Soviets which were not absolutely subservient to the Central Bolshevik Government went on as long as there were any such Soviets. This was especially true in the rural villages among the peasantry. The following statement is by an English trades-unionist, H. V. Keeling, a member of the Lithographic Artists’ and Engravers’ Society (an English trades-union), who worked in Russia for five years—1914-19:

In the villages conditions were often quite good, due to the forming of a local Soviet by the inhabitants who were not Bolshevik. The villagers elected the men whom they knew, and as long as they were left alone things proceeded much as usual.

Soon, however, a whisper would reach the district Commissar that the Soviet was not politically straight; he would then come with some Red soldiers and dissolve the committee and order another election, often importing Bolshevik supporters from the towns, and these men the villagers were instructed to elect as their committee. Resistance was often made and an army of Red Guards sent to break it down. Pitched battles often took place, and in one case of which I can speak from personal knowledge twenty-one of the inhabitants were shot, including the local telegraph-girl operator who had refused to telegraph for reinforcements.

The practice of sending young soldiers into the villages which were not Bolshevik was very general; care was taken to send men who did not come from the district, so that any scruples might be overcome. Even then it would happen that after the soldiers had got food they would make friends with the people, and so compel the Commissar to send for another set of Red Guards.[2]

[2] Bolshevism, by H. V. Keeling, pp. 185-186.

In the chapter dealing with the relation of the Bolsheviki to the peasants and the land question abundant corroboration of Mr. Keeling’s testimony is given. The Bolsheviki have, however, found an easier way to insure absolute control of the Soviets: as a general rule they do not depend upon these crude methods of violence. Instead, they have adopted the delightfully simple method of permitting no persons to be placed in nomination whose names are not approved by them. As a first step the anti-Bolshevist parties, such as the Menshevist Social Democrats, Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right and Center, and the Constitutional Democrats, were excluded by the issuance of a decree that “the right to nominate candidates belongs exclusively to the parties of electors which file the declaration that they acknowledge the Soviet authorities.”

The following resolution was adopted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on June 14, 1918:

The representatives of the Social Revolutionary Party (the Right wing and the Center) are excluded, and at the same time all Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossacks’ Deputies are recommended to expel from their midst all representatives of this faction.

This resolution, which was duly carried into effect, was strictly in accordance with the clause in the Constitution of the Soviet Republic which provides that “guided by the interests of the working-class as a whole, the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic deprives all individuals and groups of rights which could be utilized by them to the detriment of the Socialist Revolution.” Thus entire political parties have been excluded from the Soviets by the party in power. It is a noteworthy fact that many of those persons in this country, Socialists and others, who have been most vigorous in denouncing the expulsion from the New York Legislature of the elected representatives of the Socialist Party are, at the same time, vigorous supporters of the Bolsheviki. Comment upon the lack of moral and intellectual integrity thus manifested is unnecessary.

Let us consider the testimony of three other witnesses of unquestionable competence: J. E. Oupovalov, chairman of the Votkinsk Metal Workers’ Union, is a Social Democrat, a working-man. He was a member of the local Soviet of Nizhni-Novgorod. Three times under Czar Nicholas II this militant Socialist and trades-unionist was imprisoned for his activities on behalf of his class. Here, then, is a witness who is at once a Russian, a Socialist, a trades-unionist, and a wage-worker, and he writes of matters of which he has intimate personal knowledge. He does not indulge in generalities, but is precise and specific in his references to events, places, and dates:

In February, 1919, after the conclusion of the shameful Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Soviet of Workmen’s Delegates met in Nizhni-Novgorod for the purpose of electing delegates to the All-Russian Congress, which would be called upon to decide the question of peace. The Bolsheviks and the Left Social-Revolutionaries obtained a chance majority of two votes in the Soviet. Taking advantage of this, they deprived the Social Democrats and Right Social-Revolutionaries of the right to take part in the election of delegates. The expelled members of the Soviet assembled at a separate meeting and decided to elect independently a proportionate number of delegates. But the Bolsheviks immediately sent a band of armed Letts and we were dispersed.

In March, 1918, the Sormovo workmen demanded the re-election of the Soviet. After a severe struggle the re-elections took place, the Mensheviks and the Social-Revolutionaries obtaining a majority. But the former Bolshevist Soviet refused to hand over the management to the newly elected body, and the latter was dispersed by armed Red Guards on April 8th. Similar events took place in Nizhni-Novgorod, Kovrov, Izhevsk, Koloma, and other places. Who, therefore, would venture to assert that power in Russia belongs to the Soviets?

Equally pertinent and impressive is the testimony of J. Strumillo, also a Social Democrat and trades-unionist. This militant working-man is a member of the Social Democratic Party, to which both Lenin and Trotsky formerly belonged. He is also a wage-worker, an electric fitter. He is an official of the Metal Workers’ Union and a member of the Hospital Funds Board for the town of Perm. He says:

... the Labor masses began to draw away from Bolshevism. This became particularly evident after the Brest-Litovsk Peace, which exposed the treacherous way in which the Bolsheviks had handed over the Russian people to the German Junkers. Everywhere re-elections began to take place for the Soviets of Workmen’s Delegates and for the trades-unions. On seeing that the workmen were withdrawing from them, the Bolsheviks started by forbidding the re-elections to be held, and finally declared that the Bolsheviks alone had the right to elect and be elected. Thus an enormous number of workmen were disfranchised.... The year 1918 saw the complete suppression of the Labor movement and of the Social Democratic Party. All over Russia an order was issued from Moscow to exclude representatives of the Social Democratic Party from the Soviets, and the party itself was declared illegal.

V. M. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, came to this country in February, 1919, and spent several weeks, during which time the present writer made his acquaintance. Zenzinov was many times arrested under czarism for his revolutionary activities, and more than once sent into Siberian exile. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly, and later, in September, 1918, at the Ufa Conference, was elected member of the Directory. It will be remembered that the Directory was forcibly overthrown and the Kolchak Government set up in its place. Zenzinov is an anti-Bolshevik, but his testimony is not to be set aside on that account. He says: “The Soviet Government is not even a true Soviet régime, for the Bolsheviki have expelled the representatives of all the other political parties from the Soviets, either by force or by other similar means. The Soviet Government is a government of the Bolshevist Party, pure and simple; it is a party dictatorship—not even a dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The apologists for the Bolsheviki in this country have frequently denied the charge that the Soviets were thus packed and that anti-Bolshevist parties were not given equal rights to secure representation in them. Of the facts there can be no question, but it is interesting to find such a well-known pro-Bolshevist writer as Mr. Arthur Ransome stating, in the London Daily News, January 11, 1919, that “the Mensheviki now stand definitely on the Soviet platform” and that “a decree has accordingly been passed readmitting them to the Soviets.” Does not the statement that a decree had been passed “readmitting” this Socialist faction to the Soviets constitute an admission that until the passing of the decree mentioned that faction, at least, had been denied representation in the Soviets? Yet this same Mr. Ransome, in view of this fact, which was well known to most students of Russian conditions, and of which he can hardly have been ignorant, addressed his eloquent plea to the people of America on behalf of the Soviet Government as the true representative of the Russian people!

Even the trades-unions are not wholly assured of the right of representation in the Soviets. Only “if their declared relations to the Soviet Government are approved by the Soviet authorities” can they vote or nominate candidates. Trades-unions may solemnly declare that they “acknowledge the Soviet authorities,” but if their immediate relations with the People’s Commissaries are not good—if they are engaged in strikes, for example—there is little chance of their getting the approval of the Soviet authorities, without which they cannot vote. Finally, no union, party, faction, or group can nominate whomever it pleases; all candidates must be acceptable to, and approved by, the central authority!

Numerous witnesses have testified that the Soviets under Bolshevism are “packed”; that they are not freely elected bodies, in many cases. Thus H. V. Keeling writes:

The elections for the various posts in our union and local Soviet were an absolute farce. I had a vote and naturally consulted with friends whom to vote for. They laughed at me and said it was all arranged, “we have been told who to vote for.” I knew some of these “nominated” men quite well, and will go no farther than saying that they were not the best workmen. It is a simple truth that no one except he be a Bolshevik was allowed to be elected for any post.[3]

[3] Keeling, op. cit., p. 159.

In A Memorandum on Certain Aspects of the Bolshevist Movement in Russia, published by the State Department of the United States, January, 1920, the following statement by an unnamed Russian appears in a report dated July 2, 1919:

Discontent and hatred against the Bolsheviks are now so strong that a shock or the knowledge of approaching help would suffice to make the people rise and annihilate the Communists. Considering this discontent and hatred, it would seem that elections to different councils should produce candidates of other parties. Nevertheless all councils consist of Communists. The explanation is very plain. That freedom of election of which the Bolsheviks write and talk so much consists in the free election of certain persons, a list of which had already been prepared. For instance, if in one district six delegates have to be elected, seven to eight names are mentioned, of which six can be chosen. Very characteristic in this respect were the elections February last in the district of ——, Moscow Province, where I have one of my estates. Nearly all voters, about 200, of which twelve Communists, came to the district town. Seven delegates had to be elected and only seven names were on the prepared list, naturally all Communists. The local Soviet invited the twelve communistic voters to a house, treated them with food, tea, and sugar, and gave each ten rubles per day; the others received nothing, not even housing. But they, knowing what they had to expect from former experiences, had provided for such an emergency and decided to remain to the end. The day of election was fixed and put off from day to day. After four postponements the Soviet saw no way out. The result was that the seven delegates elected by all against twelve votes belonged to the Octobrists and Constitutional-Democrats. But these seven and a number of the wealthier voters were immediately arrested as agitators against the Soviet Republic. New elections were announced three days later, but this time the place was surrounded by machine-guns. The next day official papers announced the unanimous election of Communists in the district of Verea. After a short time peasant revolts started. To put down these, Chinese and Letts were sent and about 300 peasants were killed. Then began arrests, but it is not known how many were executed.

Finally, there is the testimony of the workman, Menshekov, member of the Social Democratic Party, who was himself given an important position in one of the largest factories of Russia, the Ijevsky factory, in the Urals, when the Bolsheviki assumed control. This simple workman was not, and is not, a “reactionary monarchist,” but a Social Democrat. He belonged to the same party as Lenin and Trotsky until the withdrawal of these men and their followers and the creation of the Communist Party. Menshekov says:

One of the principles which the Bolsheviki proposed is rule by the Workers’ Councils. In June, 1918, we were told to elect one of 135 delegates. We did, and only fifty pro-Bolsheviki got in. The Bolshevist Government was dissatisfied with this result and ordered a second election. This time only twenty pro-Bolsheviki were elected. Now, I happen to have been elected a member of this Workers’ Council, from which I was further elected to sit on the Executive Council. According to the Bolsheviki’s own principle, the Executive Council has to do the whole administration. Everything is under it. But the Bolshevist Government withheld this right from us. For two weeks we sat and did nothing; then the Bolsheviki solved the problem for themselves. They arrested some of us—I was arrested myself—and, instead of an elected Council, the Red Government appointed a Council of selected Communists, and formed there, as everywhere, a special privileged class.[4]

[4] Menshekov’s account is from a personal communication to the present writer, who has carefully verified the statements made in it.

All such charges have been scouted by the defenders of the Bolsheviki in this country and in England. On March 22, 1919, the Dyelo Naroda, organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists, reproduced the following official document, which fully sustains the accusation that the ordering of the “election” of certain persons to important offices is not “an invention of the capitalist press”:

Order of the Department of Information and Instruction of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Delegates of the Melenkovski District:

No. 994. Town of Melenki (Prov. of Vladimir)
Feb. 25, 1919

To the Voinovo Agricultural Council:

The Provincial Department instructs you, on the basis of the Constitution of the Soviet (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic). Section 43, Sub-section 6, letter a, to proceed without fail with elections for an Agricultural Executive Committee.

The following must be elected to the committee: As president, Nikita Riabov; as member, Ivan Soloviev; and as secretary, Alexander Krainov. These people, as may be gathered from the posts to which they are named, must be elected without fail. The non-fulfilment of this Order will result in those responsible being severely punished. Acknowledge the carrying out of these instructions to Provincial Headquarters by express.

Head of Provincial Section. [Signed] J. Nazarov.

Surely there never was a greater travesty of representative government than this—not even under czarism! This is worse than anything that obtained in the old “rotten boroughs” of England before the great Reform Act. Yet our “Liberals” and “Radicals” hail this vicious reactionary despotism with gladness.

If it be thought that the judgment of the present writer is too harsh, he is quite content to rest upon the judgment pronounced by such a sympathizer as Mr. Isaac Don Levine has shown himself to be. In the New York Globe, January 5, 1920, Mr. Levine said: “To-day Soviet Russia is a dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but for the proletariat. It certainly is not democracy.” And again: “The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia is really a dictatorship of the Bolshevist or Communist Party. This is the great change wrought in Soviet Russia since 1918. The Soviets ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies. Soviet elections, which were frequent in 1918, are very rare now. In Russia, where things are moving so fast and opinions are changing so rapidly, the majority of the present Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses.”

If the government is really a dictatorship of the Communist Party—which does not include in its membership 1 per cent. of the people of Russia—if the Soviets have ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies, if the majority of the Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses, the condemnation expressed in this chapter is completely justified.

IV
THE UNDEMOCRATIC SOVIET STATE

Mr. Lincoln Steffens is a most amiable idealist who possesses an extraordinary genius for idealizing commonplace and even sordid realities. He can always readily idealize a perfectly rotten egg into a perfectly good omelet. It is surely significant that, in spite of his very apparent efforts to justify and even glorify the Soviet Government and the men who have imposed it upon Russia, even Mr. Steffens has to admit its autocratic character. He says:

The soviet form of government, which sprang up so spontaneously all over Russia, is established.

This is not a paper thing; not an invention. Never planned, it has not yet been written into the forms of law. It is not even uniform. It is full of faults and difficulties; clumsy, and in its final development it is not democratic. The present Russian Government is the most autocratic government I have ever seen. Lenin, head of the Soviet Government, is farther removed from the people than the Czar was, or than any actual ruler in Europe is.

The people in a shop or an industry are a soviet. These little informal soviets elect a local soviet; which elects delegates to the city or country (community) soviet; which elects delegates to the government (State) soviet. The government soviets together elect delegates to the All-Russian Soviet, which elects commissionnaires (who correspond to our Cabinet, or to a European minority). And these commissionnaires finally elect Lenin. He is thus five or six removes from the people. To form an idea of his stability, independence, and power, think of the process that would have to be gone through with by the people to remove him and elect a successor. A majority of all the soviets in all Russia would have to be changed in personnel or opinion, recalled, or brought somehow to recognize and represent the altered will of the people.[5]

[5] Report of Lincoln Steffens, laid before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, September, 1919. Published in The Bullitt Mission to Russia, pp. 111-112. Italics mine.

This is a very moderate estimate of the government which Lenin and Trotsky and their associates have imposed upon Russia by the old agencies—blood and iron. Mr. Steffens is not quite accurate in his statement that the Soviet form of government “has not yet been written into the forms of law.” The report from which the above passage is quoted bears the date of April 2, 1919; at that time there was in existence, and widely known even outside of Russia, the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, which purports to be “the Soviet form of government ... written into the forms of law.” Either it is that or it is a mass of meaningless verbiage. There existed, too, at that time, a very plethora of laws which purported to be the written forms of Soviet government, and as such were published by the Bolshevist Government of Russia. The Fundamental Law of Socialization of the Land, which went into effect in September, 1918; the law decreeing the Abolition of Classes and Ranks, dated November 10, 1917; the law creating Regional and Local Boards of National Economy, dated December 23, 1917; the law creating The People’s Court, November 24, 1917; the Marriage and Divorce Laws, December 18, 1917; the Eight Hour Law, October 29, 1917, and the Insurance Law, November 29, 1917, are a few of the bewildering array of laws and decrees which seem to indicate that the Soviet form of government has “been written into the forms of law.”

It is in no hypercritical spirit that attention is called to this rather remarkable error in the report of Mr. Steffens. It is because the Soviet form of government has “been written into the forms of law” with so much thoroughness and detail that we are enabled to examine Bolshevism at its best, as its protagonists have conceived it, and not merely as it appears in practice, in its experimental stage, with all its mistakes, abuses, and failures. After all, a written constitution is a formulation of certain ideals to be attained and certain principles to be applied as well as very imperfect human beings can do it. Given a worthy ideal, it would be possible to make generous allowance for the deficiencies of practice; to believe that these would be progressively overcome and more or less constant and steady progress made in the direction of the ideal. On the other hand, when the ideal itself is inferior to the practice, when by reason of the good sense and sound morality of the people the actual political life proves superior to the written constitution and laws, it is not difficult to appreciate the fact. In such circumstances we are not compelled to discredit the right practice in order to condemn the wrong theory. It is true that as a general rule mankind sets its ideals beyond its immediate reach; but it is also true that men sometimes surpass their ideals. Most men’s creeds are superior to their deeds, but there are many men whose deeds are vastly better than their creeds.

Similarly, while the political life of nations generally falls below the standards set in their formal constitutions and laws, exceptions to this rule are by no means rare. Constitutions are generally framed by political theorists and idealists whose inveterate habit it is to overrate the mental and moral capacity of the great majority of human beings and to underrate the force of selfishness, ignorance, and other defects of imperfect humanity. On the other hand, constitutions have sometimes been framed by selfish and ignorant despots, inferior in character and intelligence to the majority of the human beings to be governed by the constitutions so devised. Under the former conditions political realities fail to attain the high levels of the ideals; under the latter conditions they rise above them. Finally, people outgrow constitutions as they outgrow most other political devices and social arrangements. In old civilizations it is common to find political life upon a higher level than the formal constitutions, which, unrepealed and unamended, have in fact become obsolete, ignored by the people of a wiser and more generous age.

The writer of these pages fully believes that the political reality in Russia is already better than the ignoble ideal set by the Bolshevist constitution. The fundamental virtues of the Russian people, their innate tolerance, their democracy, and their shrewd sense have mitigated, and tend to increasingly mitigate, the rigors of the new autocracy. Once more it is demonstrated that “man is more than constitutions”; that adequate resources of human character can make a tolerable degree of comfort possible under any sort of constitution, just as lack of those resources can make life intolerable under the best constitution ever devised. Men have attained a high degree of civilization and comfort in spite of despotically conceived constitutions, and, on the other hand, the evils of Tammany Hall under a Tweed developed in spite of a constitution conceived in a spirit more generous than any modern nation had hitherto known. Great spiritual and moral forces, whose roots are deeply embedded in the soil of historical development, are shaping Russia’s life. Already there is discernible much that is better than anything in the constitution imposed upon her.

A more or less vague perception of this fact has led to much muddled thinking; because the character of the Russian people and the political and economic conditions prevailing have led to a general disregard of much of Bolshevist theory, because men and women in Russia are finding it possible to set aside certain elements of Bolshevism, and thereby attain increasingly tolerable conditions of life, we are asked to believe that Bolshevism is less evil than we feared it to be. To call this “muddled thinking” is to put a strain upon charity of judgment. The facts are not capable of such interpretation by minds disciplined by the processes of straight and clear thinking. What they prove is that, fortunately for mankind, the wholesomeness of the thought and character of the average Russian has proved too strong to be overcome by the false ideas and ideals of the Bolsheviki and their contrivances. The Russian people live, not because they have found good in Bolshevism, but because they have found means to circumvent Bolshevism and set it aside. What progress is being made in Russia to-day is not the result of Bolshevism, but of the growing power of those very qualities of mind and heart which Bolshevism sought to destroy.

Bolshevism is autocratic and despotic in its essence. Whoever believes—as the present writer does—that the only rational and coherent hope for the progress of civilization lies in the growth of democracy must reject Bolshevism and all its works and ways. It is well to remember that whatever there is of freedom and good will in Russia, of democratic growth, exists in fundamental defiance and antagonism to Bolshevism and would be crushed if the triumph of the latter became complete. It is still necessary, therefore, to judge Bolshevism by its ideal and the logical implications of its ideal; not by what results where it is made powerless by moral or economic forces which it cannot overcome, but by what it aims at doing and will do if possible. It is for this reason that we must subject the constitution of Bolshevist Russia to careful analysis and scrutiny. In this document the intellectual leaders of Bolshevism have set forth in the precise terms of organic law the manner in which they would reconstruct the state.

In considering the political constitution of any nation the believer in democratic government seeks first of all to know the extent and nature of the franchise of its citizens, how it is obtained, what power it has, and how it is exercised. The almost uniform experience of those nations which have developed free and responsible self-government has led to the conclusion that the ultimate sovereignty of the citizens must be absolute; that suffrage must be equal, universal, direct, and free; that it must be exercised under conditions which do not permit intimidation, coercion, or fraud, and that, finally, the mandate of the citizens so expressed must be imperative. The validity of these conclusions may not be absolute; it is at least conceivable that they may be revised. For that matter, a reversion to aristocracy is conceivable, highly improbable though it may be. With these uniform results of the experience of many nations as our criteria, let us examine the fundamental suffrage provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and the provisions relating to elections. These are all set forth in Article IV, Chapters XIII to XV, inclusive:

Article IV

Chapter XIII
THE RIGHT TO VOTE

64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by the following citizens of both sexes, irrespective of religion, nationality, domicile, etc., of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, who shall have completed their eighteenth year by the day of election:

(a) All who have acquired the means of livelihood through labor that is productive and useful to society, and also persons engaged in housekeeping which enables the former to do productive work, i.e., laborers and employees of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc., and peasants and Cossack agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making profits.

(b) Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets.

(c) Citizens of the two preceding categories who have in any degree lost their capacity to work.

Note 1: Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power, lower the age standard mentioned herein.

Note 2: Non-citizens mentioned in Section 20 (Article II. Chapter V) have the right to vote.

65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely:

(a) Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase in profits.

(b) Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

(c) Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers.

(d) Monks and clergy of all denominations.

(e) Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps, and the Okhrana (Czar’s secret service), also members of the former reigning dynasty.

(f) Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

(g) Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the period fixed by the sentence.

Chapter XIV
ELECTIONS

66. Elections are conducted according to custom on days fixed by the local Soviets.

67. Election takes place in the presence of an election committee and the representative of the local Soviet.

68. In case the representative of the Soviet cannot for valid causes be present, the chairman of the election meeting replaces him.

69. Minutes of the proceedings and results of elections are to be compiled and signed by the members of the election committee and the representative of the Soviet.

70. Detailed instructions regarding the election proceedings and the participation in them of professional and other workers’ organizations are to be issued by the local Soviets, according to the instructions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Chapter XV
THE CHECKING AND CANCELLATION OF ELECTIONS AND RECALL OF THE DEPUTIES

71. The respective Soviets receive all the records of the proceedings of the election.

72. The Soviet appoints a commission to verify the election.

73. This commission reports the results to the Soviet.

74. The Soviet decides the question when there is doubt as to which candidate is elected.

75. The Soviet announces a new election if the election of one candidate or another cannot be determined.

76. If an election was irregularly carried on in its entirety, it may be declared void by a higher Soviet authority.

77. The highest authority in relation to questions of elections is the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

78. Voters who have sent a deputy to the Soviet have the right to recall him, and to have a new election, according to general provisions.

It is quite clear that the suffrage here provided for is not universal; that certain classes of people commonly found in modern civilized nations in considerable numbers are not entitled to vote. There may be some doubt as to the precise meaning of some of the paragraphs in Chapter XIII, but it is certain that, if the language used is to be subject to no esoteric interpretation, the following social groups are excluded from the right to vote: (a) all persons who employ hired labor for profit, including farmers with a single hired helper; (b) all persons who draw incomes from interest, rent, or profit; (c) all persons engaged in private trade, even to the smallest shopkeeper; (d) all ministers of religion of every kind; (e) all persons engaged in work which is not defined by the proper authorities as “productive and useful to society”; (f) members of the old royal family and those formerly employed in the old police service.

It is obvious that a very large part of the present voting population of this country would be disfranchised if we should adopt these restrictions or anything like them. It may be fairly argued in reply, however, that the disfranchisement would be—and now is, in Russia—a temporary condition only; that the object of the discriminations, and of other political and economic arrangements complementary to them, is to force people out of such categories as are banned and penalized with disfranchisement—and that this is being done in Russia. In other words, people are to be forced to cease hiring labor for profit, engaging in private trade, being ministers of religion, living on incomes derived from interest, rent, or profits. They are to be forced into service that is “productive and useful to society,” and when that is accomplished they will become qualified to vote. Thus practically universal suffrage is possible, in theory at any rate.

So much may be argued with fair show of reason. We may dispute the assumption that there is anything to be gained by disfranchising a man because he engages in trade, and thereby possibly confers a benefit upon those whom he serves. We may doubt or deny that there is likely to accrue any advantage to society from the disfranchisement of all ministers of religion. We may believe that to suppress some of the categories which are discriminated against would be a disaster, subversive of the life of society even. When all this has been admitted it remains the fact that it is possible to conceive of a society in which there are no employers, traders, recipients of capitalist incomes, or ministers of religion; it is possible to conceive of such a society in which, even under this constitution, only a very small fraction of the adult population would be disfranchised. Of course, it is so highly improbable that it borders on the fantastic; but it is, nevertheless, within the bounds of conceivability that practically universal suffrage might be realized within the limits of this instrument.

Let us examine, briefly, the conditions under which the franchise is to be exercised: we do not find any provision for that secrecy of the ballot which experience and ordinary good sense indicate as the only practicable method of eliminating coercion, intimidation, and vote-trafficking. Nor do we find anything like a uniform method of voting. The holding of elections “conducted according to custom on days fixed by the local Soviets”—themselves elective bodies—makes possible an amount of political manipulation and intrigue which almost staggers the imagination. Not until human beings attain a far greater degree of perfection than has ever yet been attained, so far as there is any record, will it be safe or prudent to endow any set of men with so much arbitrary power over the manner in which their fellows may exercise the electoral franchise.

There is one paragraph in the above-quoted portions of the Constitution of Soviet Russia which alone opens the way to a despotism which is practically unlimited. Paragraph 70 of Chapter XIV provides that: “Detailed instructions regarding the election proceedings and the participation in them of professional and other workers’ organizations are to be issued by the local Soviets, according to the instructions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.” Within the scope of this general statement every essential principle of representative government can be lawfully abrogated. Elsewhere it has been shown that trades-unions have been denied the right to nominate or vote for candidates unless “their declared relations to the Soviet Government are approved by the Soviet authorities”; that parties are permitted to nominate only such candidates as are acceptable to, and approved by, the central authority; that specific orders to elect certain favored candidates have actually been issued by responsible officials. Within the scope of Paragraph 70 of Chapter XIV, all these things are clearly permissible. No limit to the “instructions” which may be given by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee is provided by the Constitution itself. It cannot be argued that the danger of evil practices occurring is an imaginary one merely; the concrete examples cited in the previous chapter show that the danger is a very real one.

In this connection it is important to note Paragraph 23 of Chapter V, Article VI, which reads as follows:

Being guided by the interests of the working-class as a whole, the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic deprives all individuals and groups of rights which could be utilized by them to the detriment of the Socialist Revolution.

This means, apparently, that the Council of People’s Commissars can at any time disfranchise any individual or group or party which aims to overthrow their rule. This power has been used with tremendous effect on many occasions.

Was it this power which caused the Bolsheviki to withhold the electoral franchise from all members of the teaching profession in Petrograd, we wonder? According to Section 64 of Chapter XIII of the Soviet Constitution, the “right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets” belongs, first, to “all who have acquired the means of livelihood through labor that is productive and useful to society.” Teachers employed in the public schools and other educational institutions—especially those controlled by the state—would naturally be included in this category, without any question, one would suppose, especially in view of the manner in which the Bolsheviki have paraded their great passion for education and culture. Nevertheless, it seems to be a fact that, up to July, 1919, the teaching profession of Petrograd was excluded from representation in the Soviet. The following paragraph from the Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, dated July 3, 1919, can hardly be otherwise interpreted:

Teachers and other cultural-educational workers this year for the first time will be able, in an organized manner through their union, to take an active part in the work of the Petrograd Soviet of Deputies. This is the first and most difficult examination for the working intelligentsia of the above-named categories. Comrades and citizens, scholars, teachers, and other cultural workers, stand this test in a worthy manner!

Let us now turn our attention to those provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic which concern the general political organization of the Soviet state. These are contained in Article III, Chapters VI to XII, inclusive, and are as follows:

Article III
Construction of the Soviet Power
A. Organization of the Central Power

Chapter VI
THE ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF SOVIETS OF WORKERS’, PEASANTS’, COSSACKS’, AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES

24. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is the supreme power of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

25. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of urban Soviets (one delegate for 25,000 voters), and of representatives of the provincial (Gubernia) congresses of Soviets (one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants).

Note 1: In case the Provincial Congress is not called before the All-Russian Congress is convoked, delegates for the latter are sent directly from the County (Oyezd) Congress.

Note 2: In case the Regional (Oblast) Congress is convoked indirectly, previous to the convocation of the All-Russian Congress, delegates for the latter may be sent by the Regional Congress.

26. The All-Russian Congress is convoked by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at least twice a year.

27. A special All-Russian Congress is convoked by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee upon its own initiative, or upon the request of local Soviets having not less than one-third of the entire population of the Republic.

28. The All-Russian Congress elects an All-Russian Central Executive Committee of not more than 200 members.

29. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is entirely responsible to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

30. In the periods between the convocation of the Congresses, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee is the supreme power of the Republic.

Chapter VII
THE ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

31. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is the supreme legislative, executive, and controlling organ of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

32. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee directs in a general way the activity of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and of all organs of the Soviet authority in the country, and it co-ordinates and regulates the operation of the Soviet Constitution and of the resolutions of the All-Russian Congresses and of the central organs of the Soviet power.

33. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee considers and enacts all measures and proposals introduced by the Soviet of People’s Commissars or by the various departments, and it also issues its own decrees and regulations.

34. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee convokes the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, at which time the Executive Committee reports on its activity and on general questions.

35. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee forms a Council of People’s Commissars for the purpose of general management of the affairs of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, and it also forms departments (People’s Commissariats) for the purpose of conducting the various branches.

36. The members of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee work in the various departments (People’s Commissariats) or execute special orders of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Chapter VIII
THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS

37. The Council of People’s Commissars is intrusted with the general management of the affairs of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

38. For the accomplishment of this task the Council of People’s Commissars issues decrees, resolutions, orders, and, in general, takes all steps necessary for the proper and rapid conduct of government affairs.

39. The Council of People’s Commissars notifies immediately the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of all its orders and resolutions.

40. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee has the right to revoke or suspend all orders and resolutions of the Council of People’s Commissars.

41. All orders and resolutions of the Council of People’s Commissars of great political significance are referred for consideration and final approval to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Note: Measures requiring immediate execution may be enacted directly by the Council of People’s Commissars.

42. The members of the Council of People’s Commissars stand at the head of the various People’s Commissariats.

43. There are seventeen People’s Commissars: (a) Foreign Affairs, (b) Army, (c) Navy, (d) Interior, (e) Justice, (f) Labor, (g) Social Welfare, (h) Education, (i) Post and Telegraph, (j) National Affairs, (k) Finances, (l) Ways of Communication, (m) Agriculture, (n) Commerce and Industry, (o) National Supplies, (p) State Control, (q) Supreme Soviet of National Economy, (r) Public Health.

44. Every Commissar has a Collegium (Committee) of which he is the President, and the members of which are appointed by the Council of People’s Commissars.

45. A People’s Commissar has the individual right to decide on all questions under the jurisdiction of his Commissariat, and he is to report on his decision to the Collegium. If the Collegium does not agree with the Commissar on some decisions, the former may, without stopping the execution of the decision, complain of it to the executive members of the Council of People’s Commissars or to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Individual members of the Collegium have this right also.

46. The Council of People’s Commissars is entirely responsible to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

47. The People’s Commissars and the Collegia of the People’s Commissariats are entirely responsible to the Council of People’s Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

48. The title of People’s Commissar belongs only to the members of the Council of People’s Commissars, which is in charge of general affairs of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, and it cannot be used by any other representative of the Soviet power, either central or local.

Chapter IX
AFFAIRS IN THE JURISDICTION OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS AND THE ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

49. The All-Russian Congress and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee deal with questions of state, such as:

(a) Ratification and amendment of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(b) General direction of the entire interior and foreign policy of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(c) Establishing and changing boundaries, also ceding territory belonging to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(d) Establishing boundaries for regional Soviet unions belonging to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, also settling disputes among them.

(e) Admission of new members to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, and recognition of the secession of any parts of it.

(f) The general administrative division of the territory of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic and the approval of regional unions.

(g) Establishing and changing weights, measures, and money denominations in the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(h) Foreign relations, declaration of war, and ratification of peace treaties.

(i) Making loans, signing commercial treaties and financial agreements.

(j) Working out a basis and a general plan for the national economy and for its various branches in the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(k) Approval of the budget of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic.

(l) Levying taxes and establishing the duties of citizens to the state.

(m) Establishing the bases for the organization of armed forces.

(n) State legislation, judicial organization and procedure, civil and criminal legislation, etc.

(o) Appointment and dismissal of the individual People’s Commissars or the entire Council, also approval of the President of the Council of People’s Commissars.

(p) Granting and canceling Russian citizenship and fixing rights of foreigners.

(q) The right to declare individual and general amnesty.

50. Besides the above-mentioned questions, the All-Russian Congress and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee have charge of all other affairs which, according to their decision, require their attention.

51. The following questions are solely under the jurisdiction of the All-Russian Congress:

(a) Ratification and amendment of the fundamental principles of the Soviet Constitution.

(b) Ratification of peace treaties.

52. The decision of questions indicated in Paragraphs (c) and (h) of Section 49 may be made by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee only in case it is impossible to convoke the Congress.

B. Organization of Local Soviets

Chapter X
THE CONGRESSES OF THE SOVIETS

53. Congresses of Soviets are composed as follows:

(a) Regional: of representatives of the urban and county Soviets, one representative for 25,000 inhabitants of the county, and one representative for 5,000 voters of the cities—but not more than 500 representatives for the entire region—or of representatives of the provincial Congresses, chosen on the same basis, if such a Congress meets before the regional Congress.

(b) Provincial (Gubernia): of representatives of urban and rural (Volost) Soviets, one representative for 10,000 inhabitants from the rural districts, and one representative for 2,000 voters in the city; altogether not more than 300 representatives for the entire province. In case the county Congress meets before the provincial, election takes place on the same basis, but by the county Congress instead of the rural.

(c) County: of representatives of rural Soviets, one delegate for each 1,000 inhabitants, but not more than 300 delegates for the entire county.

(d) Rural (Volost): of representatives of all village Soviets in the Volost, one delegate for ten members of the Soviet.

Note 1: Representatives of urban Soviets which have a population of not more than 10,000 persons participate in the county Congress; village Soviets of districts less than 1,000 inhabitants unite for the purpose of electing delegates to the county Congress.

Note 2: Rural Soviets of less than ten members send one delegate to the rural (Volost) Congress.

54. Congresses of the Soviets are convoked by the respective Executive Committees upon their own initiative, or upon request of local Soviets comprising not less than one-third of the entire population of the given district. In any case they are convoked at least twice a year for regions, every three months for provinces and counties, and once a month for rural districts.

55. Every Congress of Soviets (regional, provincial, county, or rural) elects its Executive organ—an Executive Committee the membership of which shall not exceed: (a) for regions and provinces, twenty-five; (b) for a county, twenty; (c) for a rural district, ten. The Executive Committee is responsible to the Congress which elected it.

56. In the boundaries of the respective territories the Congress is the supreme power; during intervals between the convocations of the Congress, the Executive Committee is the supreme power.

Chapter XI
THE SOVIET OF DEPUTIES

57. Soviets of Deputies are formed:

(a) In cities, one deputy for each 1,000 inhabitants; the total to be not less than fifty and not more than 1,000 members.

(b) All other settlements (towns, villages, hamlets, etc.) of less than 10,000 inhabitants, one deputy for each 100 inhabitants; the total to be not less than three and not more than fifty deputies for each settlement.

Term of the deputy, three months.

Note: In small rural sections, whenever possible, all questions shall be decided at general meetings of voters.

58. The Soviet of Deputies elects an Executive Committee to deal with current affairs; not more than five members for rural districts, one for every fifty members of the Soviets of cities, but not more than fifteen and not less than three in the aggregate (Petrograd and Moscow not more than forty). The Executive Committee is entirely responsible to the Soviet which elected it.

59. The Soviet of Deputies is convoked by the Executive Committee upon its own initiative, or upon the request of not less than one-half of the membership of the Soviet; in any case at least once a week in cities, and twice a week in rural sections.

60. Within its jurisdiction the Soviet, and in cases mentioned in Section 57, Note, the meeting of the voters is the supreme power in the given district.

Chapter XII
JURISDICTION OF THE LOCAL ORGANS OF THE SOVIETS

61. Regional, provincial, county, and rural organs of the Soviet power and also the Soviets of Deputies have to perform the following duties:

(a) Carry out all orders of the respective higher organs of the Soviet power.

(b) Take all steps for raising the cultural and economic standard of the given territory.

(c) Decide all questions of local importance within their respective territories.

(d) Co-ordinate all Soviet activity in their respective territories.

62. The Congresses of Soviets and their Executive Committees have the right to control the activity of the local Soviets (i.e., the regional Congress controls all Soviets of the respective region; the provincial, of the respective province, with the exception of the urban Soviets, etc.); and the regional and provincial Congresses and their Executive Committees have in addition the right to overrule the decisions of the Soviets of their districts, giving notice in important cases to the central Soviet authority.

63. For the purpose of performing their duties, the local Soviets, rural and urban, and the Executive Committees form sections respectively.

It is a significant and notable fact that nowhere in the whole of this remarkable document is there any provision which assures to the individual voter, or to any group, party, or other organization of voters, assurance of the right to make nominations for any office in the whole system of government. Incredible as it may seem, this is literally and exactly true. The urban Soviet consists of “one deputy for each 1,000 inhabitants,” but there is nowhere a sentence prescribing how these deputies are to be nominated or by whom. The village Soviet consists of “one deputy for each 100 inhabitants,” but there is nowhere a sentence to show how these deputies are to be nominated, or wherein the right to make nominations is vested. The Volost Congress is composed of “representatives of all village Soviets” and the County Congress (Oyezd) of “representatives of rural Soviets.” In both these cases the representatives are termed “delegates,” but there is no intimation of how they are nominated, or what their qualifications are. The Provincial Congress (Gubernia) is composed of “representatives of urban and rural (Volost) Soviets.” In this case the word “representatives” is maintained throughout; the word “delegates” does not appear. In this provision, as in the others, there is no intimation of how they are nominated, or whether they are elected or designated.

It can hardly be gainsaid that the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic is characterized by loose construction, vagueness where definiteness is essential, and a marked deficiency of those safeguards and guaranties which ought to be incorporated into a written constitution. There is, for example, no provision for that immunity of parliamentary representatives from arrest for libel, sedition, and the like, which is enjoyed in practically all other countries. Even under Czar Nicholas II this principle of parliamentary immunity was always observed until November, 1916, when the ferment of revolution was already manifesting itself. It requires no expert legal knowledge or training to perceive that the fundamental instrument of the political and legal system of Soviet Russia fails to provide adequate protection for the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Let us consider now another matter of cardinal importance, the complex and tedious processes which intervene between the citizen-voter and the “Council of People’s Commissars.”

(1) The electorate is divided into two groups or divisions, the urban and the rural. Those entitled to vote in the city form, in the first instance, the Soviet of the shop, factory, trades-union, or professional association, as the case may be. Those entitled to vote in the rural village form, in the first instance, the village Soviet.

(2) The Soviets of the shops, factories, trades-unions, and professional associations choose, in such manner as they will, representatives to the urban Soviet. The urban Soviets are not all based on equal representation, however. According to announcements in the official Bolshevist press, factory workers in Petrograd are entitled to one representative in the Petrograd Soviet for every 500 electors, while the soldiers and sailors are entitled to one representative for every 200 members. Thus two soldiers’ votes count for exactly as much as five workmen’s votes. Those entitled to vote in the village Soviets choose representatives to a rural Soviet (Volost), and this body, in turn, chooses representatives to the county Soviet (Oyezd). This latter body is equal in power to the urban Soviet; both are represented in the Provincial Soviet (Gubernia). The village peasant is one step farther removed from the Provincial Soviet than is the city worker.

(3) Both the urban Soviets of the city workers’ representatives and the county Soviets of the peasants’ representatives are represented in the Provincial Soviet. There appears at this point another great inequality in voting power. The basis of representation is one member for 2,000 city voters and one for 10,000 inhabitants of rural villages. At first this seems to mean—and has been generally understood to mean—that each city worker’s vote is equal to the votes of five peasants. Apparently this is an error. The difference is more nearly three to one than five to one. Representation is based on the number of city voters and the number of village inhabitants.

(4) The Provincial Congress (Gubernia) sends representatives to the Regional Congress. Here again the voting power is unequal: the basis of representation is one representative for 5,000 city voters and one for “25,000 inhabitants of the county.” The discrimination here is markedly greater than in the case of the Provincial Congresses for the following reason: The members of these Regional Congresses are chosen by the Gubernias, which include representatives of city workers as well as representatives of peasants, the former being given three times proportionate representation of the latter. Obviously, to again apply the same principle and choose representatives of the Gubernias to the Regional Congresses on the same basis of three to one has a cumulative disadvantage to the peasant.

(5) The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of delegates chosen by the Provincial Congresses, which represent city workers and peasants, as already shown, and of representatives sent direct from the urban Soviets.

From Voter to National Government—Russia and U. S. A.[6]

[6] In all the Soviets, from County Soviets onward, city voters have a larger vote in proportion to numbers than rural voters. (See text.)

It will be seen that at every step, from the county Soviet to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, elaborate care has been taken to make certain that the representatives of the city workers are not outnumbered by peasants’ representatives. The peasants, who make up 85 per cent. of the population, are systematically discriminated against.

(6) We are not yet at the end of the intricate Soviet system of government. While the All-Russian Congress of Soviets is nominally the supreme power in the state, it is too unwieldy a body to do more than discuss general policies. It meets twice a year for this purpose. From its membership of 1,500 is chosen the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of “not more than 200 members.” This likewise is too unwieldy a body to function either quickly or well.

(7) The All-Russian Central Executive Committee selects the Council of People’s Commissars of seventeen members, each Commissar being at the head of a department of the government.

A brief study of the diagram on the preceding page will show how much less directly responsive to the electorate than our own United States Government is this complicated, bureaucratic government of Soviet Russia.

V
THE PEASANTS AND THE LAND

At the time of the Revolution the peasantry comprised 85 per cent. of the population. The industrial wage-earning class—the proletariat—comprised, according to the most generous estimate, not more than 3 to 4 per cent. That part of the proletariat which was actively interested in the revolutionary social change was represented by the Social Democratic Party, which was split into factions as follows: on the right the moderate “defensist” Mensheviki; on the left the radical “defeatist” Bolsheviki; with a large center faction which held a middle course, sometimes giving its support to the right wing and sometimes to the left. Each of these factions contained in it men and women of varying shades of opinion and diverse temperaments. Thus among the Mensheviki were some who were so radical that they were very close to the Bolsheviki, while among the latter were some individuals who were so moderate that they were very close to the Mensheviki.

That part of the peasantry which was actively interested in revolutionary social change was represented by the peasant Socialist parties, the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, and the Populists, or People’s Socialists. The former alone possessed any great numerical strength or political significance. In this party, as in the Social Democratic Party, there was a moderate right wing and a radical left wing with a strong centrist element. In this party also were found in each of the wings men and women whose views seemed barely distinguishable from those generally characteristic of the other. In a general way, the relations of the Socialists-Revolutionists and the Social Democrats were characterized by a tendency on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right to make common cause with the Menshevist Social Democrats and a like tendency on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left to make common cause with the Bolshevist Social Democrats.

This merging of the two parties applied only to the general program of revolutionary action; in particular to the struggle to overthrow czarism. Upon the supreme basic economic issue confronting Russia they were separated by a deep and wide gulf. The psychology of the peasants was utterly unlike that of the urban proletariat. The latter were concerned with the organization of the state, with factory legislation, with those issues which are universally raised in the conflict of capitalists and wage-earners. The consciousness of the Social Democratic Party was proletarian. On the other hand, the peasants cared very little about the organization of the state or any of the matters which the city workers regarded as being of cardinal importance. They were “land hungry”; they wanted a distribution of the land which would increase their individual holdings. The passion for private possession of land is strong in the peasant of every land, the Russian peasant being no exception to the rule. Yet there is perhaps one respect in which the psychology of the Russian peasant differs from that of the French peasant, for example. The Russian peasant is quite as deeply interested in becoming an individual landholder; he is much less interested in the idea of absolute ownership. Undisturbed possession of an adequate acreage, even though unaccompanied by the title of absolute ownership, satisfies the Russian.

The moderate Social Democrats, the Mensheviki, and the Socialists-Revolutionists stood for substantially the same solution of the land problem prior to the Revolution. They wanted to confiscate the lands of great estates, the Church and the Crown, and to turn them over to democratically elected and governed local bodies. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, wanted all land to be nationalized and in place of millions of small owners they wanted state ownership and control. Large scale agriculture on government-owned lands by government employees and more or less rapid extinction of private ownership and operation was their ideal. The Socialists-Revolutionists denounced this program of nationalization, saying that it would make the peasants “mere wage-slaves of the state.” They wanted “socialization” of all land, including that of the small peasant owners. By socialization they meant taking all lands “out of private ownership of persons into the public ownership, and their management by democratically organized leagues of communities with the purpose of an equitable utilization.”

The Russian peasant looked upon the Revolution as, above everything else, the certain fulfilment of his desire for redistribution of the land. There were, in fact, two issues which far outweighed all others—the land problem and peace. All classes in Russia, even a majority of the great landowners themselves, realized that the distribution of land among the peasants was now inevitable. Thus, interrogated by peasants, Rodzianko, President of the Fourth Duma, a large landowner, said:

“Yes, we admit that the fundamental problem of the Constituent Assembly is not merely to construct a political system for Russia, but likewise to give back to the peasantry the land which is at present in our hands.”

The Provisional Government, under Lvov, dominated as it then was by landowners and bourgeoisie, never for a moment sought to evade this question. On March 15, 1917, the very day of its formation, the Provisional Government by a decree transferred all the Crown lands—approximately 12,000,000 acres—to the Ministry of Agriculture as state property. Two weeks later the Provisional Government conferred upon the newly created Food Commissions the right to take possession of all vacant and uncultivated land, to cultivate it or to rent it to peasants who were ready to undertake the cultivation. This order compelled many landowners to turn their idle lands over to peasants who were willing and ready to proceed with cultivation. On April 21, 1917, the Provisional Government by a decree created Land Commissions throughout the whole of Russia. These Land Commissions were created in every township (Volost), county (Oyezd), and province (Gubernia). They were to collect all information concerning landownership and local administrative agencies and make their reports to a superior national body, the All-Russian Land Commission, which, in turn, would prepare a comprehensive scheme for submission to the Constituent Assembly. On May 18, 1917, the Provisional Government announced that the question of the transfer of the land to the peasants was to be left wholly to the Constituent Assembly.

These local Land Commissions, as well as the superior national commission, were democratically chosen bodies, thoroughly representative of the peasantry. As might be expected, they were to a very large extent guided by the representatives of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists. There was never any doubt concerning their attitude toward the peasants’ demand for distribution of the land. On the All-Russian Land Commission were the best-known Russian authorities on the land question and the agrarian problem. Professor Posnikov, the chairman; Victor Chernov, leader of the Socialists-Revolutionists; Pieshekhonov; Rakitnikov; the two Moslovs; Oganovsky; Vikhliaev; Cherenekov; Veselovsky, and many other eminent authorities were on this important body. To the ordinary non-Russian these names will mean little, perhaps, but to all who are familiar with modern Russia this brief list will be a sufficient assurance that the commission was governed by liberal idealism united to scientific knowledge and practical experience.

The Land Commissions were not created merely for the purpose of collating data upon the subject of landownership and cultivation. That was, indeed, their avowed and ostensible object; but behind that there was another and much more urgent purpose. In the first place, as soon as the revolutionary disturbances began, peasants in many villages took matters into their own hands and appropriated whatever lands they could seize. Agitators had gone among the peasantry—agitators of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists not less than of the Bolsheviki—and preached the doctrine of “the expropriation of the expropriators.” They told the peasants to seize the land and so execute the will of the people. So long as czarism remained the peasants held back; once it was destroyed, they threw off their restraint and began to seize the land for themselves. The Revolution was here. Was it not always understood that when the Revolution came they were to take the land?

Numerous estates were seized and in some cases the landowners were brutally murdered by the frenzied peasants. On some of the large estates the mansions of the owners, the laborers’ cottages, stables, cattle-sheds, and corn-stacks were burned and the valuable agricultural machinery destroyed. Whenever this happened it was a great calamity, for on the large estates were the model farms, the agricultural experiment stations of Russia. And while this wanton and foolish destruction was going on there was a great dearth of food for the army at the front. Millions of men had to be fed and it was necessary to make proper provision for the conservation of existing food crops and for increased production. Nor was it only the big estates which were thus attacked and despoiled; in numerous instances the farms of the “middle peasants”—corresponding to our moderately well-to-do farmers—were seized and their rightful owners driven away. In some cases very small farms were likewise seized. Something had to be done to save Russia from this anarchy, which threatened the very life of the nation. The Land Commissions were made administrative organs to deal with the land problems as they arose, to act until the new Zemstvos could be elected and begin to function, when the administrative work of the commissions would be assumed by the Land Offices of the Zemstvos.

There was another very serious matter which made it important to have the Land Commissions function as administrative bodies. Numerous landowners had begun to divide their estates, selling the land off in parcels, thus introducing greater complexity into the problem, a more numerous class of owners to be dealt with. In many cases, moreover, the “sales” and “transfers” were fictitious and deceptive, the new “owners” being mere dummies. In this manner the landowners sought to trick and cheat the peasants. It was to meet this menace that the Provisional Government, on July 12, 1917, by special decree put a stop to all land speculation and forbade the transfer of title to any land, outside of the cities, except by consent of the local Land Commission approved by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Chernov, who under Kerensky became Minister of Agriculture, was the creator of the Land Commissions and the principal author of the agrarian program of the Provisional Government as this was developed from March to October. How completely his policy was justified may be judged from the fact that while most of the landlords fled to the cities at the outbreak of the Revolution in March, fearing murderous riotings such as took place in 1906, in June they had nearly all returned to their estates. The Land Commissions had checked the peasant uprisings; they had given the peasants something to do toward a constructive solution, and had created in their minds confidence that they were going to be honestly dealt with; that the land would be distributed among them before long. In other words, the peasants were patiently waiting for freedom and land to be assured by legal and peaceful means.

Then the Bolsheviki began to rouse the peasants once more and to play upon their suspicions and fears. Simultaneously their propagandists in the cities and in the villages began their attacks upon the Provisional Government. To the peasants they gave the same old advice: “Seize the land for yourselves! Expropriate the landlords!” Once more the peasants began to seize estates, to sack and burn manor houses, and even to kill landowners. The middle of July saw the beginning of a revival of the “Jacqueries,” and in a few weeks they had become alarmingly common. The propagandists of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists did their best to put an end to the outrages, but the peasants were not so easily placated as they had been in March and April. Hope long deferred had brought about a state of despair and desperation. The poor, bewildered peasants could not understand why such a simple matter as the distribution of the land—for so it seemed to them—should require months of preparation. They were ready to believe the Bolshevist propagandists who told them that the delay was intended to enable the bourgeoisie to betray the toilers, and that if they wanted the land they must take it for themselves. “You know how the Socialists-Revolutionists always talked to you aforetime,” said these skilful demagogues; “they told you then to seize the land, but now they only tell you to wait, just as the landlords tell you. They have been corrupted; they are no longer true representatives of your interest. We tell you, what you have long known, that if you want the land you must seize it for yourselves!”

Anarchy among the peasants grew apace. Some of the wisest of the leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement urged the Provisional Government to hurry, to revise its plan, and, instead of waiting for the Constituent Assembly to act upon the land program, to put it into effect at once. The All-Russian Land Commission hastened its work and completed the formulation of a land program. The Provisional Government stuck to its original declaration that the program must be considered and approved or rejected by the Constituent Assembly. In October, at the Democratic Conference in Petrograd, the so-called Pre-Parliament, Prokopovich, the well-known Marxian economist, who had become Minister of Commerce and Labor, uttered a solemn warning that “the disorderly seizing of land was ruining agriculture and threatening the towns and the northern provinces with famine.”

It is one of the numerous tragedies of the Russian Revolution that at the very time this warning was issued Kerensky had in his possession two plans, either of which might have averted the catastrophe that followed. One of them was the completed program of the All-Russian Land Commission, largely Chernov’s work. It had already been approved by the Provisional Government. It was proposed that Kerensky should make a fight to have the Cabinet proclaim this program to be law, without waiting for the Constituent Assembly. The other plan was very simple and crude. It was that all the large estates be seized at once, as a measure of military necessity, and that in the distribution of the land thus taken peasant soldiers with honorable discharges be given preference. In either case, Kerensky would have split his Cabinet.

When we consider the conditions which prevailed at that time, the extreme military and political weakness, and the vast stakes at issue, it is easy to understand why Kerensky decided to wait for the Constituent Assembly. It is easy enough to say now, after the event, that Kerensky’s decision was wrong; that his only chance to hold the confidence of the peasants was to do one of two things, declare immediate peace or introduce sweeping land reforms. Certainly, that seems fairly plain now. At that time, however, Kerensky faced the hard fact that to do either of these things meant a serious break in the Cabinet, another crisis, the outcome of which none could foretell.

Moreover, we must bear in mind that Kerensky himself and those with whom he was working were inspired by a very genuine and sincere passion for democracy. They believed in the Constituent Assembly. They had idealized it. To them it was in the nature of a betrayal of the Revolution that a matter of such fundamental importance should be disposed of by a small handful of men, rather than by the representatives of the people duly elected, upon a democratic basis, for that purpose. The Provisional Government was pledged to leave the Constituent Assembly free and untrammeled to deal with the land problem: how could it violate its pledge and usurp the functions of the Assembly? If Kerensky’s course was a mistaken one, it was so only because conscientious loyalty to principle is not invariably expedient in politics; because the guile and dishonesty of his opponents triumphed over his simple honesty and truthfulness.

On October 20, 1917, the Provisional Government enacted a law which marked a further step in the preparation of the way for the new system of land tenure. The new law extended the control of the Land Offices of the Zemstvos—where these existed, and of the Land Commissions, where the Zemstvos with their Land Offices did not yet exist—over all cultivated land. It was thus made possible for the provisions of a comprehensive land law to be applied quickly, with a minimum amount of either disturbance or delay.

From the foregoing it will be readily seen that the Bolshevist coup d’état interfered with the consummation of a most painstaking, scientific effort to solve the greatest of all Russian problems. Their apologists are fond of claiming that the Bolsheviki can at least be credited with having solved the land problem by giving the land to the peasants. The answer to that preposterous claim is contained in the foregoing plain and unadorned chronological record, the accuracy of which can easily be attested by any person having access to a reasonably good library. In so far as the Bolsheviki put forward any land program at all, they adopted, for reasons of political expediency, the program which had been worked out by the Land Commissions under the Provisional Government—the so-called Chernov program. With that program they did nothing of any practical value, however. Where the land was distributed under their régime it was done by the peasants themselves. In many cases it was done in the primitive, violent, destructive, and anarchical ways of the “Jacqueries” already described, adding enormously to Russia’s suffering and well-nigh encompassing her destruction. By nothing else is the malefic character and influence of Bolshevism more clearly shown than by the state in which it placed the land problem, just when it was about to be scientifically and democratically solved.

When the Constituent Assembly met on January 5, 1918, the proposed land law was at once taken up. The first ten paragraphs had been adopted when the Assembly was dispersed by Trotsky’s Red Guards. The entire bill was thus not acted upon. The ten paragraphs which were passed give a very good idea of the general character and scope of the measure:

In the name of the peoples of the Russian State, composing the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, be it ordained that:

1. Right of ownership to land within the limits of the Russian Republic is henceforth and forever abolished.

2. All lands contained within the boundaries of the Russian Republic with all their underground wealth, forests, and waters become the property of the people.

3. The control of all lands, the surface and under the surface, and all forests and waters belongs to the Republic, as expressed in the forms of its central administrative organs and organs of local self-government on the principles enacted by this law.

4. Those territories of the Russian Republic which are autonomous in a juridico-governmental conception, are to realize their agrarian plans on the basis of this law and in accord with the Federal Constitution.

5. The aims of the government forces and the organs of local self-government in the sphere of the control of lands, underground riches, forests, and waters constitute: (a) The creation of conditions most favorable to the greater exploitation of the natural wealth of the land and the highest development of productive forces; (b) The equitable distribution of all natural wealth among the population.

6. The right of any person or institution to land, underground resources, forests, and waters is limited only to the utilization thereof.

7. All citizens of the Russian Republic, and also unions of such citizens and states and social institutions, may become users of land, underground resources, forests, and waters, without regard to nationality or religion.

8. The land rights of such users are to be obtained, become effective, and cease under the terms laid down by this law.

9. Land rights belonging at present to private persons, groups, and institutions, in so far as they conflict with this law, are herewith abrogated.

10. The transformation of all lands, underground strata, forests, and waters, belonging at present to private persons, groups, or institutions, into popular property is to be made without recompense to such owners.

After they had dispersed the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviki published their famous “Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited People,” containing their program for “socialization of the land,” taken bodily from the Socialists-Revolutionists. This declaration had been first presented to the Constituent Assembly when the Bolsheviki demanded its adoption by that body. The paragraphs relating to the socialization of the land read:

1. To effect the socialization of the land, private ownership of land is abolished, and the whole land fund is declared common national property and transferred to the laborers without compensation, on the basis of equalized use of the soil.

All forests, minerals, and waters of state-wide importance, as well as the whole inventory of animate and inanimate objects, all estates and agricultural enterprises, are declared national property.

This meant literally nothing from the standpoint of practical politics. Its principal interest lies in the fact that it shows that the Bolsheviki accepted in theory the essence of the land program of the elements comprised in the Provisional Government and in the Constituent Assembly, both of which they had overthrown. Practically the declaration could have no effect upon the peasants. Millions of them had been goaded by the Bolsheviki into resorting to anarchistic, violent seizing of lands on the principle of “each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” These would now be ready to fight any attempt made by the Soviet authorities to “socialize” the land they held. Millions of other peasants were still under the direction of the local Land Commissions, most of which continued to function, more or less sub rosa, for some time. And even when and where the local Land Commissions themselves did not exist, the plans they had prepared were, in quite a large measure, put into practice when local land divisions took place.

The Bolsheviki were powerless to make a single constructive contribution to the solution of the basic economic problem of Russia. Their “socialization decree” was a poor substitute for the program whence it had been derived; they possessed no machinery and no moral agencies to give it reality. It remained a pious wish, at best; perhaps a far harsher description would be that much more nearly true. Later on, when they went into the villages and sought to “socialize” them, the Bolsheviki found that they had not solved the land problem, but had made it worse than it had been before.

We have heard much concerning the nationalization of agriculture in Soviet Russia, and of the marvelous success attending it. The facts, as they are to be found in the official publications of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, do not sustain the roseate accounts which have been published by our pro-Bolshevist friends. By July, 1918, the month in which the previously decreed nationalization of industry was enforced, some tentative steps toward the nationalization of agriculture had already been taken. Maria Spiridonova, a leader of the extreme left wing of the Socialists-Revolutionists, who had co-operated with the Bolsheviki, bitterly assailed the Council of the People’s Commissaries for having resorted to nationalization of the great estates, especially in the western government. In a speech delivered in Petrograd, on July 16th, Spiridonova charged that “the great estates were being taken over by government departments and were being managed by officials, on the ground that state control would yield better results than communal ownership. Under this system the peasants were being reduced to the state of slaves paid wages by the state. Yet the law provided that these estates should be divided among the peasant communes to be tilled by the peasants on a co-operative basis.” It appears that this policy was adopted in a number of instances where the hostility to the Bolsheviki manifested by the peasants made the division of the land among them “undesirable.” Nationalization upon any large scale was not resorted to until some months later. Nationalization of the agriculture of the country as a whole has never been attempted, of course. There could not be such a nationalization of agriculture without first nationalizing the land, and that, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, has never been done in Russia as yet. The Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 229) declared, in November, 1919, that “in spite of the fact that the decree announcing the nationalization of the land is now two years old, this nationalization has not yet been carried out.”

It was not until March, 1919, according to a report by N. Bogdanov in Economicheskaya Zhizn, November 7, 1919, that nationalized agriculture really began on a large scale. From this report we learn something of the havoc which had been wrought upon the agricultural industry of Russia from March, 1917 to 1919:

A considerable portion of the estates taken over by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture could not be utilized, due to the lack of various accessories, such as harness, horseshoes, rope, small instruments, etc.

The workers were very fluctuating, entirely unorganized, politically inert—all this due to the shortage of provisions and organization. The technical forces could not get used to the village; besides, we did not have sufficient numbers of agronomists (agricultural experts) familiar with the practical organization of large estates. The regulations governing the social management of land charged the representatives of the industrial proletariat with a leading part in the work of the Soviet estates. But, torn between meeting the various requirements of the Republic, of prime importance, the proletariat could not with sufficient speed furnish the number of organizers necessary for agricultural management.

The idea of centralized management on the Soviet estates has not been properly understood by the local authorities, and the work of organization from the very beginning had to progress amid bitter fighting between the provincial Soviet estates and the provincial offices of the Department of Agriculture. This struggle has not as yet ceased.

Thus, the work of nationalizing the country’s agriculture began in the spring—i.e., a half-year later than it should have, and without any definite territory (every inch of it had to be taken after a long and strenuous siege on the part of the surrounding population); with insufficient and semi-ruined equipment; without provisions; without an apparatus for organization and without the necessary experience for such work; with the agricultural workers engaged in the Soviet estates lacking any organization whatever.

Naturally, the results of this work are not impressive.

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Within the limits of the Soviet estates the labor-union of agricultural proletariat has developed into a large organization.

In a number of provinces the leading part in the work of the Soviet estates has been practically assumed by the industrial proletariat, which has furnished a number of organizers, whose reputation has been sufficiently established.

Estimating the results of the work accomplished, we must admit that we have not yet any fully nationalized rural economy. But during the eight months of work in this direction all the elements for its organization have been accumulated.

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A preliminary familiarity with individual estates and with agricultural regions makes it possible to begin the preparation of a national plan for production on the Soviet estates and for a systematic attempt to meet the manifold demands made on the nationalized estates by the agricultural industries: sugar, distilling, chemical, etc., as well as by the country’s need for stock-breeding, seeds, planting, and other raw materials.

The greatest difficulties arise in the creation of the machinery of organization. The shortage of agricultural experts is being replenished with great difficulty, for the position of the technical personnel of the Soviet estates, due to their weak political organization, is extremely unstable. The mobilization of the proletarian forces for the work in the Soviet estates gives us ground to believe that in this respect the spring of 1920 will find us sufficiently prepared.

The ranks of proletarian workers in the Soviet estates are drawing together. True, the level of their enlightenment is by no means high, but “in union there is strength,” and this force if properly utilized will rapidly yield positive results.

The sole purpose of these quotations is to show that at best the “nationalization of agriculture” in Russia, concerning which we have heard so much, is only an experiment that has just been begun; that it bears no very important relation to the industry as a whole. It would be just as true to say, on the basis of the agricultural experiment stations of our national and state governments, that we have “nationalized agriculture” as to make that claim for Russia. The records show that the “nationalized” farms did not produce enough food to maintain the workers employed on them.

Apart from the nationalization of a number of large estates upon the basis of wage labor under a centralized authority, the Committee for the Communization of Agricultural Economy was formed for the purpose of establishing agricultural communes. At the same time—February, 1919—the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets called on the Provincial Soviets to take up this work of creating agricultural communes. Millions of rubles were spent for this purpose, but the results were very small. In March, 1919, Pravda declared that “15,000 communes were registered, but we have no proofs as to their existence anywhere except on paper.” The Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, May, 1919, complained that “the number of newly organized communes is growing smaller from month to month; the existing communes are becoming disintegrated, twenty of them having been disbanded during March.” City-bred workers found themselves helpless on the land and in conflict with the peasants. On the other hand, the peasants would not accept the communes, accompanied as these were with Soviet control. In the same number of the Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, Nikolaiev, a well-known Bolshevik, declared:

The communes are absolutely contradictory to the mode of living of our toiling peasant masses, as these communes demand not only the abolition of property rights, to implements and means of production, but the division of products according to program.

At the Congress of Trades-unions, which met in Moscow in May, 1919, the possibility of using the communes as means of relieving the wide-spread unemployment and distress among the city workers was discussed by Platonov, Rozanov, and other noted Bolsheviki. The closing down of numerous factories and the resulting unemployment of large masses of workmen had brought about an appalling amount of hunger. It was proposed, therefore, that communes be formed in the villages under the auspices of the trades-unions, and as branches of the unions, parcels of land being given to the unions. In this way, it was argued, employment would be found for the members of the unions and the food-supply of the cities would be materially increased. While approving the formation of communes, the Congress voted down the proposal.

On June 8, 1919, there was established the Administration of Industrial Allotments. The object of this new piece of bureaucratic machinery was the increase of agricultural production through land allotments attached to, or assigned to, industrial establishments, and their cultivation by the workers. This scheme, which had been promulgated as early as February, 1919, was a pathetic anticlimax to the ambitious program with which the Bolshevist Utopia-builders set out. It was neither more nor less than the “allotment gardens” scheme so long familiar in British cities. Such allotment gardens were common enough in the industrial centers of the United States during the war. As an emergency measure for providing vegetables they were useful and even admirable; as a contribution to the solution of the agricultural problem in its largest sense their value was insignificant. Yet we find the Economicheskaya Zhizn, in November, 1919, indulging in the old intoxicating visions of Utopia, and seeing in these allotments the means whereby the cities could be relieved of their dependence upon the rural villages for food:

Out of the hitherto frenzied rush of workmen into villages, brought about by hunger, a healthy proletariat movement was born, aiming at the creation of their own agriculture by means of allotments attached to the works. This movement resulted, on February 15, 1919, in a decree which granted to factory and other proletariat groups the right to organize their own rural economy.... The enthusiasm of the workmen is impressive.... The complete emancipation of the towns from the villages in the matter of food-supply appears to be quite within the realms of possibility in the near future, without the unwieldy, expensive, and inefficient machinery of the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply, and without undue irritation of the villages. This will, besides, relieve enormously the strain on the crippled railways. And, what is even more important, it points out a new and the only right way to the nationalization of the land and to the socialization of agriculture. And, indeed, in spite of the fact that the decree announcing the nationalization of the land is now two years old, this nationalization has not yet been carried out. The attitude of the peasant to the land, psychologically as well as economically, is still that of the small landowner. He still considers the land his property, for, as before, it is he, and not the state, that draws both the absolute and the differential rent, and he is fighting for it, with the food detachments, with all his power. If there is any difference at all it is that the rent which formerly used to find its way into the wide pockets of the landowners now goes into the slender purse of the peasant. The difference, however, in the size of the respective pockets is becoming more and more insignificant.... In order to make the approach to socialization of the land possible, it is necessary that the Soviet authorities should, besides promulgating decrees, actually take possession of the land, and the authorities can only do this with the help of the industrial proletariat, whose dictatorship it represents.

How extremely childish all this is! How little the knowledge of the real problem it displays! If the official organ of the Supreme Economic Council and the People’s Commissaries of Finance, Commerce and Trade and Food knew no better than this after two such years as Russia had passed through, how can there be any hope for Russia until the reckless, ignorant, bungling experimenters are overthrown? Pills of Podophyllum for earthquakes would be less grotesque than their prescription for Russia’s ailment.

VI
THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANTS

In the fierce fratricidal conflict between the Bolsheviki and the democratic anti-Bolshevist elements so much bitterness has been engendered that anything approaching calm, dispassionate discussion and judgment has been impossible for Russians, whether as residents in Russia, engaged in the struggle, or as émigrés, impotent to do more than indulge in the expression of their emotions, practically all Russians everywhere have been—and still are—too intensely partizan to be just or fair-minded. And non-Russians have been subject to the same distorting passions, only to a lesser degree. Even here in the United States, while an incredibly large part of the population has remained utterly indifferent, wholly uninterested in the struggle or the issues at stake, it has been practically impossible to find anywhere intelligent interest dissociated from fierce partizanship.

The detachment and impartiality essential to the formation of sound and unbiased judgment have been almost non-existent. The issues at stake have been too vast and too fundamental, too vitally concerned with the primal things of civilization, the sources of some of our profoundest emotions, to permit cool deliberation. Moreover, little groups of men and women with strident cries have hurled the challenge of Bolshevism into the arena of our national life, and that at a time of abnormal excitation, at the very moment when our lives were pulsing with a fiercely emotional patriotism. As a result of these conditions there has been little discriminating discernment in the tremendous riot of discussion of Russian Bolshevism which has raged in all parts of the land. It has been a frenzied battle of epithet and insult, calumny and accusation.

It is not at all strange or remarkable that their opponents, in Russia and outside of it, have been ready to charge against the Bolsheviki every evil condition in Russia, including those which have long existed under czarism and those which developed during and as a result of the war. The transportation system had been reduced to something nearly approaching chaos before the Revolution of March, 1917, as all reasonably well-informed people know. Yet, notwithstanding these things, it is a common practice to charge the Bolsheviki with the destruction of the transportation system and all the evil results following from it. Industrial production declined greatly in the latter part of 1916 and the early weeks of 1917. The March Revolution, by lessening discipline in the factories, had the effect of lessening production still further. The demoralization of industry was one of the gravest problems with which Kerensky had to deal. Yet it is rare to find any allowance made for these important facts in anti-Bolshevist polemics. The Bolsheviki are charged with having wrought all the havoc and harm; there is no discrimination, no intellectual balance.

Similarly, many of their opponents have charged against the Russian Bolsheviki much brutality and crime which in fairness should be attributed rather to inherent defects of the peasant character, themselves the product of centuries of oppression and misrule. There is much that is admirable in the character of the Russian peasant, and many western writers have found the temptation to idealize it irresistible. Yet it is well to remember that it is not yet sixty years since serfdom was abolished; that under a very thin veneer there remain ignorant selfishness, superstition, and the capacity for savage brutality which all primitive peoples have. Nothing is gained, nobody is helped to an understanding of the Russian problem, if emphasis is laid upon the riotous seizures of land by the peasants in the early stages of the Bolshevist régime and no attention paid to the fact that similar riotings and land seizures were numerous and common in 1906, and that as soon as the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, the peasant uprisings began. Undoubtedly the Bolsheviki must be held responsible for the fact that they deliberately destroyed the discipline and restraint which the Land Commissions exercised over the peasants; that they instigated them to riot and anarchy at the very time when a peaceful and orderly solution of the land problem was made certain. It is not necessary to minimize their crime against Russian civilization: only it is neither true nor wise to attribute the brutal character of the peasant to Bolshevism.

The abolition of the courts of justice and the forms of judicial procedure threw upon the so-called “People’s Tribunals” the task of administering justice—a task which the peasants of whom the village tribunals were composed, many of them wholly illiterate and wholly unfit to exercise authority, could not be expected to discharge other than as they did, with savage brutality. Here is a list of cases taken from a single issue (April 26, 1918) of the Dyelo Naroda (People’s Affair), organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists:

In Kirensk County the People’s Tribunal ordered a woman, found guilty of extracting brandy, to be inclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked against the ground until dead.

In the Province of Tver the People’s Tribunal has sentenced a young fellow “to freeze to death” for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting him.

In Sarapulsk County a peasant woman, helped by her lover, killed her husband. For this crime the People’s Tribunal sentenced the woman to be buried alive and her lover to die. A grave was dug, into which first the body of the killed lover was lowered, and then the woman, hands and feet bound, put on top. She had been covered by almost fifteen feet of earth when she still kept on yelling “Help!” and “Have pity, dear people!” The peasants, who witnessed the scene, later said, “But the life of a woman is as lasting as that of a cat.”

In the village of Bolshaya Sosnovka a shoemaker killed a soldier who tried to break in during the night. The victim’s comrades, also soldiers, created a “Revolutionary Tribunal,” which convicted the shoemaker to “be beheaded at the hands of one of his comrades to whose lot it should fall to perform the task.” The shoemaker was put to death in the presence of a crowd of thousands of people.

In the village of Bootsenki five men and three women were accused of misconduct. The local peasant committee undertook to try them. After a long trial the committee reached the verdict to punish them by flogging, giving each one publicly thirty-five strokes with the rod. One of the women was pregnant and it was decided to postpone the execution in her case until she had been delivered. The rest were severely flogged. In connection with this affair an interesting episode occurred. One of the convicted received only sixteen strokes instead of thirty-five. At first no attention was paid to it. The next day, however, rumors spread that the president of the committee had been bribed, and had thus mitigated the punishment.

Then the committee decreed to flog the president himself, administering to him fifty strokes with the rod.

In the village of Riepyrky, in Korotoyansk County, the peasants caught a soldier robbing and decided to drown him. The verdict was carried out by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the presence of all the people of the village.

In the village of Vradievka, in Ananyensky County, eleven thieves, sentenced by the people, were shot.

In the district of Kubanetz, in the Province of Petrograd, carrying out the verdict of the people, peasants shot twelve men of the fighting militia who had been caught accepting bribes.

These sentences speak for themselves. They were not expressions of Bolshevist savagery, for in the village tribunals there were very few Bolsheviki. As a matter of fact, the same people who meted out these barbarous sentences treated the agents of the Soviet Government with equally savage brutality. The Bolsheviki had unleashed the furious passion of these primitive folk, destroyed their faith in liberty within the law, and replaced it by license and tyranny. Thus had they recklessly sown dragons’ teeth.

As early as December, 1917, the Bolshevist press was discussing the serious conditions which obtained among the peasants in the villages. It was recognized that no good had resulted from the distribution of the land by the anarchical methods which had been adopted. The evils which the leaders of the Mensheviki and the Socialists-Revolutionists had warned against were seen to be very stern realities. As was inevitable, the land went, in many cases, not to the most needy, but to the most powerful and least scrupulous. In these cases there was no order, no wisdom, no justice, no law save might. It was the old, old story of

Let him take who has the power;
And let him keep who can.

All that there was of justice and order came from the organizations set up by the Provisional Government, the organizations the Bolsheviki sought to destroy. Before they had been in power very long the new rulers were compelled to recognize the seriousness of the situation. On December 26, 1917, Pravda said:

Thus far not everybody realizes to what an extent the war has affected the economic condition of the villages. The increase in the cost of bread has been a gain only for those selling it. The demolition of the estates of the landowners has enriched only those who arrived at the place of plunder in carriages driven by five horses. By the distribution of the landowners’ cattle and the rest of their property, those gained most who were in charge of the distribution. In charge of the distribution were committees, which, as everybody was complaining, consisted mainly of wealthy peasants.

One of the most terrible consequences of the lawless anarchy that had been induced by the Bolsheviki was the internecine strife between villages, which speedily assumed the dimensions of civil war. It was common for the peasants in one village to arm themselves and fight the armed peasants of a neighboring village for the possession of the lands of an estate. At the instigation of the Bolsheviki and of German agents, many thousands of peasants had deserted from the army, taking with them their weapons and as much ammunition as they could. “Go back to your homes and take your guns with you. Seize the land for yourselves and defend it!” was the substance of this propaganda. The peasant soldiers deserted in masses, frequently terrorizing the people of the villages and towns through which they passed. Several times the Kerensky Government attempted to disarm these masses of deserters, but their number was so great that this was not possible, every attempt to disarm a body of them resolving itself into a pitched battle. In this way the villages became filled with armed men who were ready to use their weapons in the war for booty, a sort of savage tribal war, the village populations being the tribes. In his paper, Novaya Zhizn, Gorky wrote, in June, 1918:

All those who have studied the Russian villages of our day clearly perceive that the process of demoralization and decay is going on there with remarkable speed. The peasants have taken the land away from its owners, divided it among themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. And they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine struggle for the division of the booty. In certain districts the population has consumed the entire grain-supply, including the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to chaos, destruction, and murder.[7]

[7] Italics mine.—J. S.

As a matter of fact the “bloody internecine struggle” had been going on for some time. Even before the overthrow of Kerensky there had been many of these village wars. The Bolshevist Government did not make any very serious attempt to interfere with the peasant movements for the distribution of land for some time after the coup d’état. It was too busy trying to consolidate its position in the cities, and especially to organize production in the factories. There was not much to be done with the farms at that season of the year. Early in the spring of 1918 agents of the Soviet Government began to appear in the villages. Their purpose was to supervise and regulate the distribution of the land. Since a great deal of the land had already been seized and distributed by the peasants, this involved some interference on the part of the central Soviet power in matters which the peasants regarded themselves as rightfully entitled to settle in their own way.

This gave rise to a bitter conflict between the peasants and the central Soviet authorities. If the peasants had confiscated and partitioned the land, however inequitably, they regarded their deed as conclusive and final. The attempt of the Soviet agents to “revise” their actions they regarded as robbery. The central Soviet authorities had against them all the village population with the exception of the disgruntled few. If the peasants had not yet partitioned the land they were suspicious of outsiders coming to do it. The land was their own; the city men had nothing to do with it. In hundreds of villages the commissions sent by the Bolsheviki to carry out the provisions of the land program were mobbed and brutally beaten, and in many cases were murdered. The issue of Vlast Naroda (Power of the People) for May, 1918, contained the following:

In Bielo all members of the Soviets have been murdered.

In Soligalich two of the most prominent members of the Soviets have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten half dead.

In Atkarsk several members of the Soviets have been killed. In an encounter between the Red Guards and the masses, many were killed and wounded. The Red Guards fled.

In Kleen a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the Soviets, with the intention of bringing the deputies before their own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial Commissary committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to escape the infuriated crowd.

In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo the deputies work in their offices guarded by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.

In Penza an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The Soviet building is now surrounded with cannon and machine-guns.

In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a St. Bartholomew night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals.

In the district of Kaliasinsk the peasantry has decidedly refused to obey orders of the Soviets to organize an army by compulsion. Some of the recruiting officers and agitators have been killed.

Similar acts become more numerous as time goes on. The movement against the Soviets spreads far and wide, affecting wider and wider circles of the people.

The warfare between villages over confiscated land was a very serious matter. Not only did the peasants confiscate and divide among themselves the great estates, but they took the “excess” lands of the moderately well-to-do peasants in many instances—that is, all over and above the average allotment for the village. Those residing in a village immediately adjoining an estate thus confiscated had, all other things being equal, a better chance to get the lands than villagers a little farther distant, though the latter might be in greater need of the land, owing to the fact that their holdings were smaller. Again, the village containing many armed men stood a better chance than the village containing few. Village made war against village, raising armed forces for the purpose. We get a vivid picture of this terrible anarchy from the following account in the Vlast Naroda:

The village has taken away the land from the landlords, farmers, wealthy peasants, and monasteries. It cannot, however, divide it peacefully, as was to be expected.

The more land there is the greater the appetite for it; hence more quarrels, misunderstandings, and fights.

In Oboyansk County many villages refused to supply soldiers when the Soviet authorities were mobilizing an army. In their refusal they stated that “in the spring soldiers will be needed at home in the villages,” not to cultivate the land, but to protect it with arms against neighboring peasants.

In the Provinces of Kaluga, Kursk, and Voronezh peasant meetings adopted the following resolutions:

“All grown members of the peasant community have to be home in the spring. Whoever will then not return to the village or voluntarily stay away will be forever expelled from the community.

“These provisions are made for the purpose of having as great a force as possible in the spring when it comes to dividing the land.”

The peasantry is rapidly preparing to arm and is partly armed already. The villages have a number of rifles, cartridges, hand-grenades, and bombs.

Some villages in the Nieshnov district in the Province of Mohilev have supplied themselves with machine-guns. The village of Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen machine-guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able better to defend a piece of land taken away from the landlords, and, as they say, that “the neighboring peasants should not come to cut our hay right in front of our windows, like last year.” When the neighboring peasants “heard of the decision” they also procured machine-guns. They have formed an army and intend to go to Little Nieshnov to cut the hay on the meadows “under the windows” of the disputed owners.

In the Counties of Schigrovsk, Oboyansk, and Ruilsk, in the Province of Kursk, almost every small and large village has organized a Red Guard and is making preparations for the coming spring war. In these places the peasants have taken rich booty. They took and devastated 160 estates, 14 breweries, and 26 sugar refineries. Some villages have even marked the spot where the machine-guns will have to be placed in the spring. In Volsk County in the Province of Saratov five large villages—Kluchi, Pletnevka, Ruibni, Shakhan, and Chernavka—expect to have war when the time comes to divide the 148,500 acres of Count Orlov-Denisov’s estate. Stubborn fights for meadows and forests are already going on. They often result in skirmishes and murder. There are similar happenings in other counties of the province; for instance, in Petrov, Balashov, and Arkhar.

In the Province of Simbirsk there is war between the community peasants and shopkeepers. The former have decided to do away with “Stolypin heirs,” as they call the shopkeepers. The latter, however, have organized and are ready for a stubborn resistance. Combats have already taken place. The peasants demolish farms, and the farmers set fire to towns, villages, threshing-floors, etc.

We have received from the village of Khanino, in the Province of Kaluga, the following letter:

“The division of the land leads to war. One village fights against the other. The wealthy and strong peasants have decided not to let the poor share the land taken away from the landlords. In their turn, the poor peasants say, ‘We will take away from you bourgeois peasants not only the lands of the landlords, but also your own. We, the toilers, are now the government.’ This leads to constant quarrels and fights. The population of the neighboring village consists of so-called natives and of peasants brought by landlords from the Province of Orlov. The natives now say to those from Orlov: ‘Get away from our land and return to your Province of Orlov. Anyhow, we shall drive you away from here.’ The peasants from Orlov, however, threaten ‘to kill all the natives.’ Thus there are daily encounters.”

In another village the peasants have about 5,400 acres of land, which they bought. For some reason or other they failed to cultivate it last year. Therefore the peasants of a neighboring village decided to take it away from them as “superfluous property which is against the labor status.” The owners, however, declared:

“First kill us and then you will be able to take away our land.”

In some places the first battles for land have already taken place.

In the Province of Tambov, near the village of Ischeina, a serious encounter has taken place between the peasants of the village of Shleyevka and Brianchevka. Fortunately, among the peasants of Brianchevka was a wise man, “the village Solomon,” who first persuaded his neighbors to put out for the peasants of Shleyevka five buckets of brandy. The latter actually took the ransom and went away, thus leaving the land to the owners.

In some instances the Bolsheviki instigated the peasants to massacre hundreds of innocent people in adjacent villages and towns. They did not stop, or even protest against, the most savage anti-Jewish pogroms. Charles Dumas, the well-known French Socialist, a Deputy in Parliament, after spending fifteen months in Russia, published his experiences and solemnly warned the Socialists of France against Bolshevism. His book[8] is a terrible chronicle of terrorism, oppression, and anarchy, all the more impressive because of its restraint and careful documentation. He cites the following cases:

[8] La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki, par Charles Dumas.

On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About five hundred bodies of the victims were found afterward, most of them “Intellectuals.” All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.

In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and three hundred citizens were killed.

In May, 1918, the relations of the Soviet Government to the peasantry were described by Gorky as the war of the city against the country. They were, in fact, very similar to the relations of conquering armies to the subjugated but rebellious and resentful populations of conquered territories. On May 14th a decree was issued regarding the control of grain, the famous compulsory grain registration order. This decree occupies so important a place in the history of the struggle, and contains so many striking features, that a fairly full summary is necessary:[9]

[9] The entire text is given as an appendix at the end of the volume.

While the people in the consuming districts are starving, there are large reserves of unthreshed grain in the producing districts. This grain is in the hands of the village bourgeoisie—“tight-fisted village dealers and profiteers”—who remain “deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving workmen and peasant poverty” and hold their grain in the hope of forcing the government to raise the price of grain, selling only to the speculators at fabulous prices. “An end must be put to this obstinacy of the greedy village grain-profiteers.” To abolish the grain monopoly and the system of fixed prices, while it would lessen the profits of one group of capitalists, would also “make bread completely inaccessible to our many millions of workmen and would subject them to inevitable death from starvation.” Only food grains absolutely necessary for feeding their families, on a rationed basis, and for seed purposes should be permitted to be held by the peasants. “The answer to the violence of grain-growers toward the starving poor must be violence toward the bourgeoisie.”

Continuing its policy of price-fixing and monopolization of the grain-supply, the government decreed “a merciless struggle with grain speculators,” compulsion of “each grain-owner to declare the surplus above what is needed to sow the fields and for personal use, according to established normal quantities, until the new harvest, and to surrender the same within a week after the publication of this decision in each village.” The workmen and poor peasants were called upon “to unite at once for a merciless struggle with grain-hoarders.” All persons having a surplus of grain and failing to bring it to the collecting-points, and those wasting grain on illicit distillation of alcohol, were to be regarded as “enemies of the people.” They were to be turned over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which would “imprison them for ten years, confiscate their entire property, and drive them out forever from the communes”; while the distillers must, in addition, “be condemned to compulsory communal work.”

To carry out this rigorous policy it was provided that any person who revealed an undeclared surplus of grains should receive one-half the value of the surplus when it was seized and confiscated, the other half going to the village commune. “For the more successful struggle with the food crisis” extraordinary powers were conferred upon the People’s Food Commissioner, appointed by the Soviet Government. This official was empowered to (1) publish at his discretion obligatory regulations regarding the food situation, “exceeding the usual limits of the People’s Food Commissioner’s competence”; (2) to abrogate the orders of local food bodies and other organizations contravening his own plans and orders; (3) to demand from all institutions and organizations the immediate carrying out of his regulations; (4) “to use armed forces in case resistance is shown to the removal of grains or other food products; (5) to dissolve or reorganize the food agencies where they might resist his orders; (6) to discharge, transfer, commit to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or subject to arrest officers and employees of all departments and public organizations in case of interference with his orders; (7) to transfer the powers of such officials, departments, and institutions,” with the approval of the Council of People’s Commissaries.

It is not necessary here to discuss the merits of these regulations, even if we possessed the complete data without which the merit of the regulations cannot be determined. For our present purpose it is sufficient to recognize the fact that the peasants regarded the regulations as oppressive and vigorously resisted their enforcement. They claimed that the amount of grain—and also of potatoes—they were permitted to keep was insufficient; that it meant semi-starvation to them. The peasant Soviets, where such still existed, jealous of their rights, refused to recognize the authority of the People’s Food Commissaries. No material increase in the supply of “surplus grain” was observed. The receiving-stations were as neglected as before. The poor wretches who, inspired by the rich reward of half the value of the illegal reserves reported, acted as informers were beaten and tortured, and the Food Commissaries, who were frequently arrogant and brutal in their ways, were attacked and in some cases killed.

The Soviet Government had resort to armed force against the peasants. On May 30, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissaries met and decided that the workmen of Petrograd and Moscow must form “food-requisitioning detachments” and “advance in a crusade against the village bourgeoisie, calling to their assistance the village poor.” From a manifesto issued by the Council of People’s Commissaries this passage is quoted:

The Central Executive Committee has ordered the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd to mobilize 10,000 workers, to arm them and to equip them for a campaign for the conquest of wheat from the rapacious and the monopolists. This order must be put into operation within a week. Every worker called upon to take up arms must perform his duty without a murmur.

This was, of course, a mobilization for war of the city proletariat against the peasantry. In an article entitled, “The Policy of Despair,” published in his paper, the Novaya Zhizn, Gorky vigorously denounced this policy:

The war is declared, the city against the country, a war that allows an infamous propaganda to say that the worker is to snatch his last morsel of bread from the half-starved peasant and to give him in return nothing but Communist bullets and monetary emblems without value. Cruel war is declared, and what is the more terrible, a war without an aim. The granaries of Russia are outside of the Communistic Paradise, but rural Russia suffers as much from famine as urban Russia.

We are profoundly persuaded—and Lenin and many of the intelligent Bolsheviks know this very well—that to collect wheat through these methods that recall in a manner so striking those employed by General Eichhorn (a Prussian general of enduring memory for cruelty) in Ukrainia, will never solve the food crisis. They know that the return to democracy and the work of the local autonomies will give the best results, and meantime they have taken this decisive step on the road to folly.

How completely the Bolshevist methods failed is shown by the official Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 38), November, 1918. The following figures refer to a period of three months in the first half of 1918, and show the number of wagon-loads demanded and the number actually secured:

In explanation of these figures the apologists of Bolshevist rule have said that the failure was due in large part to the control of important grain-growing provinces by anti-Bolshevist forces. This is typical of the half-truths which make up so much of the Bolshevist propaganda. Of course, important grain districts were in the control of the anti-Bolshevist forces, but the fact was known to the Bolsheviki and was taken into account in making their demands. Otherwise, their demands would certainly have been much greater. Let us, however, look at the matter from a slightly different angle and consider how the scheme worked in those provinces which were wholly controlled by the Bolsheviki, and where there were no “enemy forces.” The following figures, taken from the same Soviet journal, refer to the month of June, 1918:

On June 11, 1918, a decree was issued establishing the so-called Pauper Committees, or Committees of the Poor. The decree makes it quite clear that the object was to replace the village Soviets by these committees, which were composed in part of militant Bolsheviki from the cities and in part of the poorest peasants in the villages, including among these the most thriftless, idle, and dissolute. Clause 2 of the decree of June 11th provided that “both local residents and chance visitors” might be elected. Those not admitted were those known to be exploiters and “tight-fists,” those owning commercial or industrial concerns, and those hiring labor. An explanatory note was added which stated that those using hired labor for cultivating land up to a certain area might be considered eligible. An official description of these Committees of the Poor was published in Pravda, in February, 1919. Of course, the committees had been established and working for something over six months when Pravda published this account:

A Committee of the Poor is a close organization formed in all villages of the very poorest peasants to fight against the usurers, rich peasants, and clergy, who have been exploiting the poorest peasants and squeezing out their life-blood for centuries under the protection of emperors. Only such of the very poorest peasants as support the Soviet authority are elected members of these committees. These latter register all grain and available foodstuffs in their villages, as well as all cattle, agricultural implements, carts, etc. It is likewise their duty to introduce the new land laws issued by order of the Soviets of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossacks’ Deputies.

The fields are cultivated with the implements thus registered, and the harvest is divided among those who have worked in accordance with the law. The surplus is supplied to the starving cities in return for goods of all kinds that the villagers need. The motto of the Communist-Bolshevist Party is impressed upon all members of these committees—namely, “Help the poor; do not injure the peasant of average means, but treat usurers, clergy, and all members of the White Army without mercy.”

Even this account of these committees of the poor indicates a terrible condition of strife in the villages. These committees were formed to take the place of the Soviets, which the Food Commissars, in accordance with the wide powers conferred upon them, could order suppressed whenever they chose. Where the solidarity of the local peasantry could not be broken up “chance visitors,” poor wretches imported for the purpose, constituted the entire membership of such committees. In other cases, a majority of the members of the committees were chosen from among the local residents. There was no appeal from the decision of these committees. Any member of such a committee having a grudge against a neighbor could satisfy it by declaring him to be a hoarder, could arrest him, seize his property and have him flogged or, as sometimes happened, shot. The military detachments formed to secure grain and other foodstuffs had to work with these committees where they already existed, and to form them where none yet existed.

The Severnaya Oblast, July 4, 1918, published detailed instructions of how the food-requisitioning detachments were to proceed in villages where committees of the poor had not yet been formed. They were to first call a meeting, not of all the peasants in a village, but only of the very poorest peasants and such other residents as were well known to be loyal supporters of the Soviet Government. From the number thus assembled five or seven must be selected as a committee. When formed this committee must demand, as a first step, the surrendering of all arms by the rest of the population. This disarming of the people must be very vigorously and thoroughly carried out; refusal to surrender arms to the committee, or concealing arms from the committee, involved severe punishment. Persons guilty of either offense might be ordered shot by the Committee of the Poor, the Food Commissar or the Revolutionary Tribunal. After the disarmament had been proclaimed, three days’ notice was to be served upon the peasants to deliver their “surplus” grain—that is, all over and above the amount designated by the committee—at the receiving station. Failure to do this entailed severe penalties; destroying or concealing grain was treason and punishable by death at the hands of a firing-squad.

The war between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Bolshevist officials, the food-requisitioning detachments and the pauper committees, on the other, went on throughout the summer of 1918. The first armed detachments reached the villages toward the end of June. From that time to the end of December the sanguinary struggle was maintained. According to Izvestia of the Food Commissariat, December, 1918, the Food Army consisted of 3,000 men in June and 36,500 in December. In the course of the struggle this force had lost 7,309 men, killed, wounded, and sick. In other words, the casualties amounted to 30 per cent. of the highest number ever engaged. These figures of themselves bear eloquent witness to the fierce resistance of the peasantry. It was a common occurrence for a food-requisitioning detachment to enter a village and begin to search for concealed weapons and grain and to be at once met with machine-gun and rifle-fire, the peasants treating them as robbers and enemies. Sometimes the villagers were victorious and the Bolshevist forces were driven away. In almost every such case strong reinforcements were sent, principally Lettish or Chinese troops, to subdue the rebel village and wipe out the “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeoisie”—that is to say, nine-tenths of the peasants in the village.

Under these conditions things went from bad to worse. Naturally, there was some increase in the amount of grain turned in at the receiving stations, but the increase was not commensurate with the effort and cost of obtaining it. In particular, it did not sustain the host of officials, committees, inspectors, and armed forces employed in intimidating the peasants. One of the most serious results was the alarming decline of cultivation. The incentive to labor had been taken away from the hard-working, thrifty peasants. Their toil was penalized, in fact. A large part of the land ordinarily tilled was not planted that autumn and for spring sowing there was even less cultivation. The peasants saw that the industrious and careful producers had most of the fruits of their labors taken from them and were left with meager rations, which meant semi-starvation, while the idle, thriftless, and shiftless “poorest peasants” fared much better, taking from the industrious and competent. Through the peasantry ran the fatal cry: “Why should we toil and starve? Let us all be idle and live well as ‘poor peasants’!”

Thus far, we have followed the development of the agrarian policy of the Bolsheviki through two stages: First of all, peasant Soviets were recognized and regarded as the basis of the whole system of agricultural production. It was found that these did not give satisfactory results; that each Soviet cared only for its own village prosperity; that the peasants held their grain for high prices while famine raged in the cities. Then, secondly, all the village Soviets were shorn of their power and all those which were intractable—a majority of them—suppressed, their functions being taken over by state-appointed officials, the Food Commissars and the Committees of the Poor acting under the direction of these. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, these stages corresponded in a very striking way to the first two stages of industrial organization under Bolshevist rule.

The chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, M. C. Eroshkin, visited the United States in the winter of 1918-19. It was the good fortune of the present writer to become acquainted with this brilliant Russian Socialist leader and to obtain much information from him. Few men possess a more thorough understanding of the Russian agrarian problem than Mr. Eroshkin, who during the régime of the Provisional Government was the representative for the Perm District of the Ministry of Agriculture and later became a member of the Provisional Government of Ural. In March, 1919, he said:

The Russian peasant could, in all fairness, scarcely be suspected of being a capitalist, and even according to the Soviet constitution, no matter how twisted, he could not be denied a vote. But fully aware that the peasants constitute a majority and are, as a whole, opposed to the Bolsheviki, the latter have destroyed the Soviets in the villages and instead of these they have created so-called “Committees of the Poor”—i.e., aggregations of inebriates, propertyless, worthless, and work-hating peasants. For, whoever wishes to work can find work in the Russian village which is always short of agricultural help. These “Committees of the Poor” have been delegated to represent the peasantry of Russia.

Small wonder that the peasants are opposed to this scheme which has robbed them of self-government. Small wonder that their hatred for these “organizations” reaches such a stage that entire settlements are rising against these Soviets and their pretorians, the Red Guardsmen, and in their fury are not only murdering these Soviet officials, but are practising fearful cruelties upon them, as happened in December, 1918, in the Governments of Pskov, Kaluga, and Tver.

By removing and arresting all those delegates who are undesirable to them, the Bolsheviki have converted these Soviets into organizations loyal to themselves, and, of course, fear to think of a true general election, for that will seal their doom at once.

Mr. Eroshkin, like practically every other leader of the Russian peasants’ movement, is an anti-Bolshevik and his testimony may be regarded as biased. Let us, therefore, consider what Bolshevist writers have said in their own press.

Izvestia of the Provincial Soviets, January 18, 1919, published the following:

The Commissaries were going through the Tzaritzin County in sumptuous carriages, driven by three, and often by six, horses. A great array of adjutants and a large suite accompanied these Commissaries and an imposing number of trunks followed along. They made exorbitant demands upon the toiling population, coupled with assaults and brutality. Their way of squandering money right and left is particularly characteristic. In some houses the Commissaries gambled away and spent on intoxicants large sums. The hard-working population looked upon these orgies as upon complete demoralization and failure of duty to the world revolution.

In the same official journal, four days later, January 22, 1919, Kerzhentzev, the well-known Bolshevik, wrote:

The facts describing the village Soviet of the Uren borough present a shocking picture which is no doubt typical of all other corners of our provincial Soviet life. The chairman of this village Soviet, Rekhalev, and his nearest co-workers have done all in their power to antagonize the population against the Soviet rule. Rekhalev himself has often been found in an intoxicated condition and he has frequently assaulted the local inhabitants. The beating-up of visitors to the Soviet office was an ordinary occurrence. In the village of Bierezovka the peasants have been thrashed not only with fists, but have often been assaulted with sticks, robbed of their footwear, and cast into damp cellars on bare earthen floors. The members of the Varnavinsk Ispolkom (Executive Committee), Glakhov, Morev, Makhov, and others, have gone even farther. They have organized “requisition parties” which were nothing else but organized pillagings, in the course of which they have used wire-wrapped sticks on the recalcitrants. The abundant testimony, verified by the Soviet Commission, portrays a very striking picture of violence. When these members of the Executive Committee arrived at the township of Sadomovo they commenced to assault the population and to rob them of their household belongings, such as quilts, clothing, harness, etc. No receipts for the requisitioned goods were given and no money paid. They even resold to others on the spot some of the breadstuffs which they had requisitioned.

In the same paper (No. 98), March 9, 1919, another Bolshevist writer, Sosnovsky, reported on conditions in the villages of Tver Province as follows:

The local Communist Soviet workers behave themselves, with rare exception, in a disgusting manner. Misuse of power is going on constantly.

Izvestia published, January 5, 1919, the signed report of a Bolshevist official, Latzis, complaining that “in the Velizsh county of the Province of Vitebsk they are flogging the peasants by the authority of the local Soviet Committee.” On May 14, 1919, the same journal published the following article concerning conditions in this province:

Of late there has been going on in the village a really scandalous orgy. It is necessary to call attention to the destructive work of the scoundrels who worked themselves into responsible positions. Evidently all the good and unselfish beginnings of the workmen’s and peasants’ authority were either purposely or unintentionally perverted by these adventurers in order to undermine the confidence of the peasants in the existing government in order to provoke dissatisfaction and rebellion. It is no exaggeration to say that no open counter-revolutionary or enemy of the proletariat has done as much harm to the Socialist republic as the charlatans of this sort. Take, as an instance, the third district of the government of Vitebsk, the county of Veliashkov. Here the taxes imposed upon the peasants were as follows: “P. Stoukov, owning 17 dessiatines, was compelled to pay a tax of 5,000 rubles, while U. Voprit, owning 24 dessiatines, paid only 500 rubles. S. Grigoriev paid 2,000 on 29 dessiatines, while Ivan Tselov paid 8,000 on 23 dessiatines.” (Quoting some more instances, the writer adds that the soil was alike in all cases. He then brings some examples of the wrongs committed by the requisitioning squads.)

The same issue of this Soviet organ contained the report of an official Bolshevist investigation of the numerous peasant uprisings. This report stated that “The local communists behave, with rare exceptions, abominably, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we were able to explain to the peasants that we were also communists.”

Izvestia also published an appeal from one Vopatin against the intolerable conditions prevailing in his village in the Province of Tambov:

Help! we are perishing! At the time when we are starving do you know what is going on in the villages? Take, for instance, our village, Olkhi. Speculation is rife there, especially with salt, which sells at 40 rubles a pound. What does the militia do? What do the Soviets do? When it is reported to them they wave their hands and say, “This is a normal phenomenon.” Not only this, but the militiamen, beginning with the chief and including some communists, are all engaged in brewing their own alcohol, which sells for 70 rubles a bottle. Nobody who is in close touch with the militia is afraid to engage in this work. Hunger is ahead of us, but neither the citizens nor the “authorities” recognize it. The people’s judge also drinks, and if one wishes to win a case one only needs to treat him to a drink. We live in a terrible filth. There is no soap. People and horses all suffer from skin diseases. Epidemics are inevitable in the summer. If Moscow will pay no attention to us, then we shall perish. We had elections for the village and county Soviets, but the voting occurred in violation of the Constitution of the Soviet Government.

As a result of this a number of village capitalists, who, under the guise of communists, entered the party in order to avoid the requisitions and contributions, were elected. The laboring peasantry is thus being turned against the government, and this at a time when the hosts of Kolchak are advancing from the east.

Lenin, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party last April, published in Pravda, April 9, 1919, faced the seriousness of the situation indicated by these reports. He said:

All class-conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivano-Voznesensk, and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did not speak according to the book, but in language which the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing himself to issue orders, though unacquainted with village life, but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted themselves like commanders or superiors.

In the Severnaya Communa, May 10, 1919, another Bolshevist official, Krivoshayev, reported:

The Soviet workers are taking from the peasants chicken, geese, bread, and butter without paying for it. In some households of these poverty-stricken folk they are confiscating even the pillows and the samovars and everything they can lay their hands on. The peasants naturally feel very bitterly toward the Soviet rule.

Here, then, is a mass of Bolshevist testimony, published in the official press of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party. It cannot be set aside as “capitalist misrepresentation,” or as “lying propaganda of the Socialists-Revolutionists.” These and other like phrases which have been so much on the lips of our pro-Bolshevist Liberals and Socialists are outworn; they cannot avail against the evidence supplied by the Bolsheviki themselves. If we wanted to draw upon the mass of similar evidence published by the Socialists-Revolutionists and other Socialist groups opposed to the Bolsheviki, it would be easy to fill hundreds of pages. The apologists of Bolshevism have repeatedly assured us that the one great achievement of the Bolsheviki, concerning which there can be no dispute, is the permanent solution of the land problem, and that as a result the Bolsheviki are supported by the great mass of the peasantry. Against that silly fable let one single fact stand as a sufficient refutation: According to the Severnaya Communa, September 4, 1919, the Military Supply Bureau of Petrograd alone had sent, up to April 1, 1919, 225 armed military requisitioning detachments to various villages. Does not that fact alone indicate the true attitude of the peasants?

Armed force did not bring much food, however. The peasants concealed and hoarded their supplies. They resisted the soldiers, in many instances. When they were overcome they became sullen and refused to plant more than they needed for their own use. Extensive curtailment of production was their principal means of self-defense against what they felt to be a great injustice. According to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 54), 1919, this was the principal reason for the enormous decline of acreage under cultivation—a decline of 13,500,000 acres in twenty-eight provinces—and the main cause of the serious shortage of food grains. Instead of exporting a large surplus of grain, Tambov Province was stricken with famine, and the plight of other provinces was almost as bad.

In the Province of Tambov the peasants rose and drove away the Red Guards. In the Bejetsh district, Tver Province, 17,000 peasants rose in revolt against the Soviet authorities, according to Gregor Alexinsky. A punitive detachment sent there by Trotsky suppressed this rising with great brutality, robbing the peasants, flogging many of them, and killing many others. In Briansk, Province of Orel, the peasants and workmen rose against the Soviet authorities in November, 1919, being led by a former officer of the Fourth Soviet Army named Sapozhnikov. Lettish troops suppressed this uprising in a sanguinary manner. In the villages of Kharkov Province no less than forty-nine armed detachments appeared, seeking to wrest grain from the peasants, who met the soldiers with rifles and machine-guns. This caused Trotsky to send large punitive expeditions, consisting principally of Lettish troops, and many lives were sacrificed. Yet, despite the bloodshed, only a small percentage of the grain expected was ever obtained. There were serious peasant revolts against Soviet rule in many other places.

The District Extraordinary Commissions and the revolutionary tribunals were kept busy dealing with cases of food-hoarding and speculation. A typical report is the following taken from the Bolshevist Derevenskaia Communa (No. 222), October 2, 1919. This paper complained that the peasants were concealing and hoarding grain for the purpose of selling it to speculators at fabulous prices:

Every day the post brings information concerning concealment of grain and other foodstuffs, and the difficulties encountered by the registration commissions in their work in the villages. All this shows the want of consciousness among the masses, who do not realize what chaos such tactics introduce into the general life of the country.

No one can eat more than the human organism can absorb; the ration—and that not at all a “famine” one—is fixed. Every one is provided for, and yet—concealment, concealment everywhere, in the hope of selling grain to town speculators at fabulous prices.

How much is being concealed, and what fortunes are made by profiteering, may be seen from the following example: The Goretsky Extraordinary Commission has fined Irina Ivashkevich, a citizeness of Lapinsky village, for burying 25,000 rubles’ worth of grain in a hole in her back yard.

Citizeness Irina Ivashkevich has much money, but little understanding of what she is doing.

Neither force nor threats could overcome the resistance of the peasants. In the latter part of November, 1919, sixteen food-requisitioning detachments of twenty-five men each were sent from Petrograd to the Simbirsk Province, according to the Izvestia of Petrograd. They were able to secure only 215 tons of grain at a very extraordinary price. Speculation had raised the price of grain to 600 rubles per pood of 36 pounds. The paper Trud reported at the same time that the delegates of forty-five labor organizations in Petrograd and Moscow, who left for the food-producing provinces to seek for non-rationed products, returned after two months wholly unsuccessful, having spent an enormous amount of money in their search. Their failure was due in part to a genuine shortage, but it was due in part also to systematic concealment and hoarding for speculation on the part of the peasants. Much of this illicit speculation and trading was carried on with the very Soviet officials who were charged with its suppression![10]

[10] The Bulletin of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (No. 25), February 24, 1919, reports such a case. Many other similar references might be quoted. Pravda, July 4, 1919, said that many of those sent to requisition grain from the peasants were themselves “gross speculators.”

How utterly the attempt to wrest the food from the peasants by armed force failed is evidenced by figures published in the Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 310). The figures show the amounts of food-supplies received in Petrograd in the first nine months of 1918 as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. The totals include flour, rye, wheat, barley, oats, and peas:

If we take barley and oats, which were drawn mainly from the northern and central provinces and from the middle Volga—territories occupied by the Bolsheviki and free from “enemy forces”—we find that the same story is told: in the three months July-September, 1918, 105 tons of barley were received, as against 1,245 tons in the corresponding period of the previous year. Of oats the amount received in the three months of July-September, 1918, was 175 tons as against 3,105 tons in the corresponding period of 1917.

Armed force failed as completely as Gorky had predicted it would. References to the French Revolution are often upon the lips of the leaders of Bolshevism, and they have slavishly copied its form and even its terminology. It might have been expected, therefore, that they would have remembered the French experience with the Law of Maximum and its utter and tragic failure, and that they would have learned something therefrom, at least enough to avoid a repetition of the same mistakes as were made in 1793. There is no evidence of such learning, however. For that matter, is there any evidence that they have learned anything from history?

Not only was armed force used in a vain attempt to wrest the grain from the peasants, but similar methods were relied upon to force the peasants into the Red Army. On May 1, 1919, Pravda, official organ of the Communist Party, published the following announcement:

From the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.

The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party announces the following—

To all provincial committees of the Communist Party, to Provincial Military Commissaries.

The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, at the session of April 23d, unanimously adopted the decree to bring the middle and poor peasants into the struggle against the counter-revolution. According to this decree, every canton must send 10 to 20 strong, capable soldiers, who can act as nuclei for Red Army units in those places to which they will be sent.