Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 12 (1/4)

XII

“The Party” and the People

If I were asked what feature of the Communist regime I regarded as, above all, the most conspicuous, the most impressive, and the most significant, I should say without hesitation the vast spiritual gulf separating the Communist Party from the Russian people. I use the word “spiritual” not in the sense of “religious.” The Russian equivalent, duhovny, is more comprehensive, including the psychological, and everything relating to inner, contemplative life, and ideals.

History scarcely knows a more flagrant misnomer than that of “government of workers and peasants.” In the first place, the Bolshevist Government consists not of workers and peasants, but of typical intellectual bourgeois. In the second, its policy is categorically repudiated by practically the entire Russian nation, and it keeps in the saddle only by bullying the workers and peasants by whom it purports to have been elected. The incongruity between Russian national ideals and the alien character of the Communists will naturally not be apparent to outsiders who visit the country to study the Bolshevist system from the very viewpoint which least of all appeals to the Russian, namely, the possibility of its success as a Socialist experiment. But those foreign Socialist enthusiasts who adhere to Bolshevist doctrines are presumably indifferent to the sentiments of the Russian people, for their adherence appears to be based on the most un-Russian of all aspects of those doctrines, namely, their internationalism. And this un-Russian international aspect of Bolshevism is admittedly its prime characteristic.

There is a sense of course in which the psychology of all peoples is becoming increasingly international, to the great benefit of mankind. No one will deny that half our European troubles are caused by the chauvinistic brandishing of national flags and quarrels about the drawing of impossible frontier lines. But these are the antics of a noisy few⁠—“Bolsheviks of the right”⁠—and do not reflect the true desire of the peoples, which is for peace, harmony, and neighbourliness. Hitherto the immediate aspirations of the Bolsheviks have been anything but this. Their first principle is worldwide civil war between classes, and their brandishing of the red flag surpasses that of the most rabid Western chauvinists. Theirs is not true internationalism. Like their claim to represent the Russian people, it is bogus.

The gulf between “the party” and the people yawns at every step, but I will only mention one or two prominent instances. The most important institution established by the Bolsheviks is that known as the “Third International Workers’ Association,” or, briefly, the “Third International.” The aim of this institution is to reproduce the Communist experiment in all countries. The First International was founded in 1864 by Karl Marx. It was a workers’ association not world-revolutionary in character. Its sympathy, however, with the Paris Commune discredited it, and it was followed by the Second, which confined itself to international labour interests. The Third International was founded in Moscow in the first week of March, 1919, amid circumstances of great secrecy by a chance gathering of extreme Socialists from about half-a-dozen of the thirty European States, leavened with a similar number of Asiatics. Subsequently a great meeting was held, at which the Second, called the “yellow” International because it is composed of moderates, was declared defunct and superseded by the “real,” that is, the Communist, International.

The next day this group of unknown but precocious individuals came to their headquarters at Petrograd, “the Metropolis of the World Revolution.” I went to meet them at the Nicholas railway station. The mystery that enshrouded the birth of the Third International rendered it impossible to be duly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, and although I had not come either to cheer or to jeer, but simply to look on, I could not but be struck by the comicality of the scene. The day was frosty, and for nearly two hours the members of the Third International, standing bareheaded on a specially constructed tribune, wasted time saying exactly the same things over and over again, their speeches being punctuated by the cacophony of three badly-directed bands. In spite of their luxurious fur coats the delegates shivered and their faces turned blue. They did not at all look the desperadoes I had half anticipated. Some of them were even effeminate in appearance. Only Zinoviev, the president, with his bushy, dishevelled hair, looked like an unrepentant schoolboy amid a group of delinquents caught red-handed in some unauthorized prank.

The orators, with chattering teeth, sang in divers tongues the praises of the Red regime. They lauded the exemplary order prevailing in Russia and rejoiced at the happiness, contentment, and devotion to the Soviet Government which they encountered at every step. They predicted the immediate advent of the world revolution and the early establishment of Bolshevism in every country. They all closed their lengthy orations with the same exclamations: “Long live the Third International!” “Down with the bourgeoisie!” “Long live Socialism!” (by which they meant Bolshevism), etc., and no matter how many times these same slogans had been shouted already, on each occasion they were retranslated at length, with embellishments, and to the musical accompaniments of the inevitable “Internationale.”

The position of the Third International in Russia and its relation to the Soviet Government are not always easy to grasp. The executives both of the International and of the Government are drawn from the Communist Party, while every member of the Government must also be a member of the Third International. Thus, though technically not interchangeable, the terms Soviet Government, Third International, and Communist Party merely represent different aspects of one and the same thing. It is in their provinces of action that they differ. The province of the Third International is the whole world, including Russia: that of the present Soviet Government is Russia alone. It would seem as if the Third International, with its superior powers and scope and with firebrands like Zinoviev and Trotsky at its helm, must override the Moscow government. In practice, however, this is not so. For the hard logic of facts has now proved to the Moscow government that the theories which the Third International was created to propagate are largely wrong and unpracticable, and they are being repudiated by the master mind of Lenin, the head of the home government. Thus two factions have grown up within the Communist Party: that of Lenin, whose interests for the time are centred in Russia, and who would sacrifice world-revolutionary dreams to preserve Bolshevist power in one country; and that of the Third International, which throws discretion to the winds, and stands for world revolution forever, and no truck with the bourgeoisie of capitalistic States. Hitherto the majority in the party has been on the side of Lenin, as is not unnatural, for very few rank-and-file Communists really care about the world revolution, having no conception of what it implies. If they had, they would probably support him more heartily still.

At the very moment when the Third International was haranguing for its own satisfaction outside the Nicholas Station, very different things were happening in the industrial quarters of the city. There, the workers, incensed by the suppression of free speech, of freedom of movement, of workers’ cooperation, of free trading between the city and the villages, and by the ruthless seizure and imprisonment of their spokesmen, had risen to demand the restoration of their rights. They were led by the men of the Putilov iron foundry, the largest works in Petrograd, at one time employing over forty thousand hands. The Putilov workers were ever to the fore in the revolutionary movement. They led the strikes which resulted in the revolution of March, 1917. Their independent bearing, their superior intelligence and organization, and their efforts to protest against Bolshevist despotism, aroused the fears and hatred of the Communists, who quite rightly attributed this independent attitude to the preference of the workers for the non-Bolshevist political parties.

The dispute centred round the Bolshevist food system, which was rapidly reducing the city to a state of starvation. Hoping the storm would blow over, the Bolshevist authorities allowed it to run its course for a time, endeavouring to appease the workers by an issue of rations increased at the expense of the rest of the population. This measure, however, only intensified the workers’ indignation, while the hesitation of the Bolsheviks to employ force encouraged them in their protests. Unauthorized meetings and processions increased in frequency, the strikes spread to every factory in the city, speakers became more violent, and all sorts of jokes were made publicly at the expense of the Bolsheviks. Strolling in the industrial quarters I saw a party of men emerge from a plant singing the “Marseillaise” and cheering. At the same time they carried a banner on which was rudely imprinted the following couplet:

Doloi Lamina s koninoi,

Daitje tsarya s svininoi,

which being interpreted means: “Down with Lenin and horseflesh, give us a tsar and pork!”

As the disturbances developed, typewritten leaflets began to be distributed containing resolutions passed at the various meetings. One of these leaflets was the resolution passed unanimously by 12,000 workers (at that time the entire staff) of the Putilov works, demanding that the task of provisioning be restored to the former cooperative societies. The language of the resolution was violent, the Bolshevist leaders were referred to as bloody and hypocritical tyrants, and demands were also put forward for the cessation of the practice of torture by the Extraordinary Commission and for the immediate release of numerous workers’ representatives.

I knew of this resolution on the day of the meeting, because some friends of mine were present at it. The proceedings were enthusiastic in the extreme. The Bolsheviks, however, did not mind that much, because they were careful that nothing about it should get into the Press. But when the typed resolutions spread surreptitiously with alarming rapidity, in exactly the same way as, in December, 1916, the famous speech by Milyukov in the Duma against Rasputin was secretly distributed from hand to hand, then the Bolsheviks saw things were going too far and took drastic measures to suppress the unrest without any further delay.

One Sunday between thirty and forty streetcars full of sailors and guards, the latter of whom spoke a language that workers who encountered them declared was not Russian, arrived in the vicinity of the Putilov works and occupied all the entrances. During the next three days between three and four hundred men were arrested, while in those cases where the workers were not to be found their wives were taken in their stead. These arrests are always easily carried out, for the workers are not allowed to possess arms. It is significant that among those arrested at one of the shipping yards were two men who had declared at a meeting that even the English Parliament was superior to the soviets as the Bolsheviks ran them. These two were among those who were subsequently shot. When after returning to England I recounted this incident to the Committee on International Affairs of the British Labour Party, the gentleman on my right (I do not know his name) found nothing better to exclaim than, “Serve ’em right.”

The uproar over the arrest of the workers, and especially of their wives, was terrific. The resolutions having spread all over the city, you could almost hear people whispering to each other with furtive joy that there was shortly to be a general insurrection, that Zinoviev and others were preparing to take flight, and so on. In the course of three weeks things became so bad that it was deemed advisable to call Lenin from Moscow in the hope that his presence would overawe the workers, and a great Communist counter-demonstration was organized at the Narodny Dom.

The Narodny Dom (House of the People) is a huge palace built for the people by the late Tsar. Before the war it used to be very difficult, owing to the system of abonnements, to obtain tickets to the State theatres, of which the Marinsky Opera and the Alexandrinsky Theatre were the chief; so the Tsar, at his own expense, built this palace and presented it to the people. Besides numerous side shows, it contained a large theatre where the same dramatic works were produced as in the State theatres, and the biggest opera house in Russia, where the Russian peasant Chaliapin, the greatest operatic singer and actor the world has yet seen, sang regularly to huge audiences of six or eight thousand lower middle class and working people. In the days when I was a student of the Conservatoire of Petrograd, eking out a living by teaching English, I used often to frequent the Narodny Dom opera. There was free admission to a portion of the hall, while the most expensive seats were at cinematograph prices. The inevitable deficit was made up out of the State exchequer. Over the porch of the building was an inscription: “From the Tsar to His People.” When the Bolsheviks came into power they removed this inscription, and also abolished the name of “House of the People,” changing it to “House of Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht.” This building, containing the largest auditorium in Russia, is now frequently used for special celebrations. As a rule, on such occasions only the Communist élite and special delegates are admitted. The common people to whom the Tsar presented the palace are refused admission.

On the evening of the great Communist counter-demonstration against the Petrograd strikers, machine-guns barred the entrance to what was once the House of the People, and the approaches bristled with bayonets. The former Tsar, when last he visited it, drove up in an open carriage. Not so the new “Tsar,” the president of the workers’ republic. The moment of his arrival was a secret, and he arrived literally hedged round with a special bodyguard of Red cadets.

The audience was a picked one, consisting of the principal Communist bodies of the city and delegates from organizations such as trade unions, teachers, and pupils, selected by the Communists. I got in with a ticket procured by my manager. When Lenin emerged on to the stage, the audience rose as one man and greeted him with an outburst of vociferous applause lasting several minutes. The little man, who has such a hold on a section of his followers, advanced casually to the footlights. His oriental features betrayed no emotion. He neither smiled nor looked austere. Dressed in a plain drab lounge suit, he stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently till the cheering should subside. Was he indifferent to the welcome, or was he secretly pleased? He showed no sign and at length held up his hand to indicate that there had been enough of it.