Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 11 (4/4)

The organizer of this entertainment, though he played but little part in the performance, deserves a word of mention. As a sailor, of about twenty years of age, he differed greatly from his fellows. He was not ill-favoured in looks, unintelligent but upright, and occupied the post of chairman of the Poor Committee of a house where I was an habitual visitor. I will refer to him as Comrade Rykov. Like Morozov, Rykov had had only an elementary education and knew nothing of history, geography, or literature. History for him dated from Karl Marx, whom he was taught to regard rather as the Israelites did Moses; while his conception of geography was confined to a division of the world’s surface into Red and un-Red. Soviet Russia was Red, capitalistic countries (of which he believed there were very few) were White; and “White” was an adjective no less odious than “bourgeois.” But Rykov’s instincts were none the less good and it was with a genuine desire to better the lot of the proletariat that he had drifted into “the party.” Under the Tsarist regime he had suffered maltreatment. He had seen his comrades bullied and oppressed. The first months of the revolution had been too tempestuous, especially for the sailors, and the forces at issue too complex, for a man of Rykov’s stamp to comprehend the causes underlying the failure of the Provisional Government. To him the Soviet Government personified the Revolution itself. A few catchphrases, such as “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “tyranny of the bourgeoisie,” “robber-capitalism,” “Soviet emancipation” completely dominated his mind and it seemed to him indisputably just that the definition of these terms should be left absolutely to the great ones who had conceived them. Thus Rykov, like most Communists, was utterly blind to inconsistencies. The discussion of policy, especially of foreign policy, of which the rest of the world hears so much, was not attempted by him. Rykov accepted his directions unhesitatingly from “those who knew.” He never asked himself why the party was so small, and popular discontent he attributed, as he was told to do, to the pernicious agitation of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were but Monarchists in disguise. Rykov was the type of man the Bolsheviks were striving their utmost to entice into the Communist Party. He had three supreme recommendations: he was a untiring worker, his genuinely good motives would serve to popularize the party, and he never thought. It is independent thinkers the Bolsheviks cannot tolerate. Rykov, like a good Communist, accepted the dogma propounded from above and that was the alpha and omega of his creed. But when it came to doing something to improve the lot of his fellows, and, incidentally, to lead them into the true Communist path, Rykov was all there. In other realms he would have made an ideal Y.M.C.A. or Salvation Army worker, and it was not surprising that he was in great demand whenever it was a question of amusing or entertaining the soldiers.

The hall was decorated with red flags. Portraits of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and of course of Karl Marx, wreathed in red bunting and laurels, decorated the walls. Over the stage hung a crude inscription painted on cardboard: “Long live the Soviet Power,” while similar inscriptions, “Proletarians of all countries, unite,” and “Long live the World Revolution,” were hung around. The audience, consisting of the regiment and numerous guests, sat on wooden forms and disregarded the injunction not to smoke.

The entertainment began with the singing of the “Internationale,” the hymn of the World Revolution. The music of this song is as un-Russian, unmelodious, banal, and uninspiring as any music could possibly be. To listen to its never-ending repetition on every possible and impossible occasion is not the least of the inflictions which the Russian people are compelled to suffer under the present dispensation. When one compares it with the noble strains of the former national anthem, or with the revolutionary requiem which the Bolsheviks have happily not supplanted by any atrocity such as the “Internationale” but have inherited from their predecessors, or with national songs such as “Ey, Ukhnem,” or for that matter with any Russian folk-music, then the “Internationale” calls up a picture of some abominable weed protruding from the midst of a garden of beautiful and fragrant flowers.

The “Internationale” was sung with energy by those in the audience who knew the words, and the accompanist made up with bombastic pianistic flourishes for the silence of those who did not.

Nothing could have afforded a more remarkable contrast than the item that followed. It was an unaccompanied quartet by four soldiers who sang a number of Russian folk-songs and one or two composed by the leader of the four. If you have not listened to the Russian peasants of a summer evening singing to accompany their dances on the village green, you cannot know exactly what it meant to these peasant soldiers, cooped in their city barracks, to hear their songs re-sung. The singers had rehearsed carefully, the execution was excellent, the enthusiasm they aroused was unbounded, and they were recalled again and again. They would probably have gone on endlessly had not the Jewish agitator, who was acting as master of ceremonies and who had to make a speech later, announced that they must get along with the programme. The contrast between Bolshevism and Russianism could never have been more strikingly illustrated than by this accident of the “Internationale” being followed by Russian folk-songs. The former was an interpretation in sound of all the drab, monotonous unloveliness of the supposedly proletarian regime, the latter an interpretation in music of the unuttered yearnings of the Russian soul, aspiring after things unearthly, things beautiful, things spiritual.

There followed a selection of songs and romances by a lady singer from one of the musical-comedy theatres, and then the agitator rose. The job of a professional agitator is a coveted one in Red Russia. A good agitator is regarded as a very important functionary, and receives high pay. Coached in his arguments and phraseology in the propagandist schools of the capitals, he has nothing whatever to do but talk as loudly and as frequently as possible, merely embellishing his speeches in such a way as to make them forceful and, if possible, attractive. He requires no logic, and consequently no brains, for he is guaranteed against heckling by the Bolshevist system of denouncing political opponents as “enemies of the State” and imprisoning them. Thus the entire stock-in-trade of a professional agitator consists of “words, words, words,” and the more he has of them the better for him.

The youth who mounted the stage and prepared to harangue the audience was nineteen years of age, of criminal past (at that very time he was charged by the Bolsheviks themselves with theft), and possessed of pronounced Hebrew features. His complexion was lustrous, his nose was aquiline and crooked, his mouth was small, and his eyes resembled those of a mouse. His discourse consisted of the usual exhortations to fight the landlord Whites. He was violent in his denunciation of the Allies, and of all non-Bolshevist Socialists. His speech closed somewhat as follows:

So, comrades, you see that if we give in to the Whites all your land will go back to the landowners, all the factories to the moneymakers, and you will be crushed again under the yoke of the murderous bankers, priests, generals, landlords, police, and other hirelings of bourgeois tyranny. They will whip you into slavery, and they will ride to wealth on the bleeding backs of you, your wives, and your children. Only we Communists can save you from the bloody rage of the White demons. Let us defend Red Petrograd to the last drop of our blood! Down with the English and French imperialist bloodsuckers! Long live the proletarian World Revolution!

Having ended his speech, he signalled to the accompanist to strike up the “Internationale.” Then followed another strange contrast, one of those peculiar phenomena often met with in Russia, even in the Communist Party. A modest, nervous, and gentle-looking individual whom I did not know, as different from the previous speaker as water from fire, made a strangely earnest speech, urging the necessity of self-education as the only means of restoring Russia’s fallen fortunes. At the admission of fallen fortunes the Jew looked up with displeasure. He had sung the glories of the Red administration and the exploits of the Red army. It was not enough, said the speaker, that Russia had won the treasured Soviet Power⁠—that, of course, was an inestimable boon⁠—but until the people dragged themselves out of the morass of ignorance they could not profit by its benefits. The masses of Russia, he urged, should set strenuously to work to raise themselves culturally and spiritually, in order to fit themselves for the great task they were called upon to perform, namely, to effect the emancipation of the workers of all the world.

The “Internationale” was not sung when he concluded. There was too much sincerity in his speech, and the bombastic strains of that tune would have been sadly out of place. The rest of the programme consisted of two stage performances, enacted by amateurs, the first one a light comedy, and the second a series of propagandist tableaux, depicting the sudden emancipation of the worker by the Soviet Power, heralded by an angel dressed all in red. In one of these Comrade Rykov proudly participated. In the concluding tableau the Red angel was seen guarding a smiling workman and his family on one side, and a smiling peasant and family on the other, while the audience was invited to rise and sing the “Internationale.”

Of conscious political intelligence in the cultural-enlightenment committees there is none, nor under “iron party discipline” can there possibly be any. All Communist agitators repeat, parrot-like, the epithets and catchphrases dictated from above. None the less, despite their crudity and one-sidedness, these committees serve a positive purpose in the Red army. By the provision of entertainment the savagery of the soldiery has been curbed and literacy promoted. If they were nonpolitical and run by intelligent people with the sole object of improving the minds of the masses they might be made a real instrument for the furtherance of education and culture. At present they are often grotesque. But representing an “upward” trend, the cultural-enlightenment committees form a welcome contrast to the majority of Bolshevist institutions.

Our survey of the essential features of the Red army is now complete and may be summed up as follows:

1. A military machine, with all the attributes of other armies but differing in terminology. Its strength at the close of 1920 was said to be about two million, but this is probably exaggerated.
2. A concomitant organization, about one-tenth in size, of the Communist Party, permeating the entire army, subjected to military experts in purely military decisions, but with absolute powers of political and administrative control, supplemented by Special Departments of the Extraordinary Commission, Revolutionary Tribunals, and Special Commissions for Combating Desertion.
3. A network of Communist-controlled propagandist organizations called Cultural-Enlightenment Committees, whose object is the entertainment and education of the soldiers.

Tractable, docile, and leaderless though the Russian people are, the machine which has been built up in the Red army is still a monument to the inflexible will and merciless determination of its leader, Trotsky. Its development has been rapid and is perhaps not yet complete. Trotsky would make of it an absolutely soulless, will-less, obedient instrument which he can apply to whatsoever end he thinks fit. Unless a popular leader appears, the army is Trotsky’s as long as he can feed it.

There are those who have long believed an internal military coup to be imminent, organized by old-time generals such as Brusilov, Baluev, Rattel, Gutov, Parsky, Klembovsky and others, whose names are associated with the highest military posts in Soviet Russia. Three things militate against the early success of such a coup. First, the experience of internal conspiracies shows it to be next to impossible to conspire against the Extraordinary Commission. Secondly, the memory of White administrations is still too fresh in the minds of the common soldier. Thirdly, these generals suffer from the same defect as Wrangel, Denikin, and Kolchak, in that they are not politicians and have no concrete programme to offer the Russian people.

The local popularity of peasant leaders such as the “little fathers,” Balahovitch in Belorussia and Makhno in Ukrainia, who denounce Bolsheviks, Tsars, and landlords alike, shows that could a bigger man than these be found to fire the imagination of the peasantry on a nationwide scale the hoped-for national peasant uprising might become a reality. Until such a figure arises it is not to outside pressure or internal militarist conspiracies that we must look for the decay of Bolshevism, but must seek the signs of it in the very heart and core of the Communist Party. Such signs are already coming to light, and indicate sooner or later cataclysmic developments⁠—unless the decay is forestalled by what Pilsudski, the Socialist president of the Polish Republic, foresees as a possibility. Pilsudski spent many years in exile in Siberia for revolutionary agitation against the Tsar and knows Russia through and through. He foresees the possibility that the entire Russian population, maddened with hunger, disease, and despair, may eventually rise and sweep down on western Europe in a frantic quest for food and warmth.

Such a point will not be reached as long as the peasant, successfully defying Bolshevist administration, continues to produce sufficient for his own requirements. It needs, however, but some severe stress of nature, such as the droughts which periodically visit the country, to reduce the people to that condition. Will anything be able to stop such an avalanche? Should it ever begin, the once so ardently looked-for Russian steam roller will at last have become an awful, devastating reality.