Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 12 (3/4)

There is one source upon which the Bolsheviks can rely with some confidence for new drafts. I refer to the Union of Communist Youth. Realizing their failure to convert the present generation, the Communists have turned their attention to the next, and established this Union which all school children are encouraged to join. Even infants, when their parents can be induced or compelled to part with them, are prepared for initiation to the Union by concentration in colonies and homes, where they are fed on preferential rations, at the expense of the rest of the population, and clothed with clothing seized from children whose parents refuse to be separated from them. It is the object of these colonies to protect the young minds from pernicious non-Communist influence and so to instil Bolshevist ideals that by the time they reach adolescence they will be incapable of imbibing any others. According to Bolshevist admissions many of these homes are in an appalling state of insanitation, but a few are kept up by special efforts and exhibited to foreign visitors as model nurseries. It is still too early to estimate the success of this system. Personally I am inclined to think that, when not defeated by the misery of insanitation and neglect, the propagandist aims will be largely counteracted by the silent but benevolent influence of the self-sacrificing intellectuals (doctors, matrons, and nurses) whose services in the running of them cannot be dispensed with. The tragedy of the children of Soviet Russia is in the numbers that are thrown into the streets. But the Union of Communist Youth, consisting of adolescents, with considerable license permitted them, with endless concerts, balls, theatre parties and excursions, supplementary rations and issues of sweetmeats, processioning, flag-waving, and speechmaking at public ceremonies, is still the most reliable source of recruits to the Communist Party.

It will be readily realized that the party consisted of a medley of widely differing characters, in which genuine toilers were a minority. When the novel suggestion was made of inviting workers to join, this fact was admitted with laudable candour. The Bolshevist spokesmen frankly avowed they had completely forgotten the workers, and a great campaign was opened to draw them into the party. “The watchword ‘Open the party doors to the workers,’ ” said Pravda on July 25, 1919, “has been forgotten. Workers get ‘pickled’ as soon as they join”⁠—which meant they become Communists and entirely lose their individuality as workers. Zinoviev wrote a long proclamation to toilers explaining who the Communists were and their objects.

“The Bolshevist Party,” said he, “was not born only a year or two ago. Our party has behind it more than one decade of glorious activity. The best workers of the world called themselves Communists with pride.⁠ ⁠… The party is not a peculiar sect, it is not an aristocracy of labour. It also consists of workers and peasants⁠—only more organized, more developed, knowing what they want and with a fixed programme. The Communists are not the masters, in the bad sense of that word, of the workers and peasants, but only their elder comrades, able to point out the right path.⁠ ⁠… Recently we have purged our ranks. We have ejected those who in our opinion did not merit the great honour of being called Communists. They were mostly not workers but people more or less of the privileged classes who tried to ‘paste’ themselves on to us because we are in power.⁠ ⁠… Having done this we open wide the door of the party to the ranks of labour.⁠ ⁠… All honest labourers may enter it. If the party has defects let us correct them together.⁠ ⁠… We warn everyone that in our party there is iron discipline. You must harden yourself and at the call of the party take up very hard work. Our call is addressed to all who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the working class. Strengthen and help the only party in the world that leads the workers to liberty!”

With all formalities, such as probationary stages, removed, and diffident candidates magnanimously assured that if only they would join they could learn later what it was all about, the membership of the party in the northern capital rose in three months to 23,000. This was slightly less than could have been mustered, prior to the purging, by combining members, sympathizers, candidates, and the Union of Communist Youth. The figures in Moscow were approximately the same.

The above remarks apply to the rank and file. Intellectuality in the party has always been represented largely, though by no means exclusively, by Jews, who dominate the Third International, edit the Soviet journals, and direct propaganda. It must never be forgotten, however, that there are just as many Jews who are opposed to Bolshevism, only they cannot make their voices heard. I find that those who utter warnings of a coming pogrom of Jews as a result of the evils of Bolshevism are liable to meet with the reception of a Cassandra. But I fear such an occurrence to be inevitable if no modifying foreign influence is at hand, and it will be promoted by old-regimists the world over. It will be a disaster, because Jews who have become assimilated into the Russian nation may play a valuable part in the reconstruction of the country. There are many who have already played leading roles in Russia’s democratic institutions, such as the cooperative societies and land and town unions, which the Bolsheviks have suppressed.

The higher orders of the party, whether Jew or Russian, consist of the same little band of devotees, a few hundred strong, who before the Revolution were, still are, and presumably ever will be the Bolshevist party proper. They in their turn are subjected to the rigid dictatorship of the central party committee, which rules Russia absolutely through the medium of the Council of People’s Commissars.

As it became increasingly evident that the only people who would join the party of their own free will and in considerable numbers were “undesirables,” while a large proportion of the workers who had been coaxed into it were but indifferent Communists, the tendency grew to make of the party a closed corporation subject to merciless discipline. Members, though enjoying material privileges, should have no will of their own; undesirables should be deterred from joining by imposing arduous duties upon all members. Such is the position in the capitals at the present time. The “iron party discipline” is needed for another reason besides that of barring out black sheep. With demoralization, famine, and misery on the increase, insubordinate whisperings and questions are arising, even within the party, especially since the factor of war has disappeared. These questionings are growing in force and affect the highest personages in the State. Trotsky, for instance, no longer able to satisfy his insatiable ambition, is showing an inclination to branch out on a line of his own in opposition to the moderate and compromising tendencies of Lenin. The tension between them has been relieved temporarily by assigning to Trotsky a dominant role in the promotion of the world revolution, while Lenin controls domestic affairs. But the arrangement is necessarily temporary. The characters of the two men, except under stress of war, are as incompatible as their respective policies of violence and moderation.

The number of Communists being relatively so infinitesimal, how is it that today on every public and supposedly representative body there sits an overwhelming and triumphant Communist majority? I will very briefly describe the method of election and a single meeting of the Soviet of Petrograd, whose sittings I attended.

Some people still ask: What exactly is a “soviet”?⁠—and the question is not unnatural considering that the Bolsheviks have been at pains to persuade the world that there is an indissoluble connection between “Soviet” and “Bolshevism.” There is, however, absolutely no essential association whatsoever between the two ideas, and the connection that exists in the popular mind in this and other countries is a totally fallacious one. The Russian word soviet has two meanings: “counsel” and “council.” When you ask advice you say, “Please give me soviet,” or “Can you soviet me what to do?” Dentists have on their notices: “Painless extractions. Soviet gratis.” There was a State Soviet (in the sense of “council”) in the constitution of the Tsar. It was the upper house, corresponding to the Senate or the House of Lords. It was a reactionary institution and resembled the Bolshevist soviets in that only certain sections of the community had a voice in elections to it.

According to the original idea, even as propounded at one time by the Bolsheviks, the political soviet or council should be a representative body for which all sections of the working community (whether of hand or brain) should have an equal right to vote. These soviets should elect superior ones (borough, county, provincial, etc.), until a central soviet is constructed, electing in its turn a cabinet of People’s Commissars, responsible to a periodically convened Congress. This system exists on paper to this day, but its working is completely nullified by the simple process of preventing any but Communists from entering the lowest soviet⁠—the only one that is in direct contact with the people. This restraint is often effected by force, but the franchise in any case is limited and has the effect of disenfranchising four out of every five peasants. Nevertheless, a few non-Bolsheviks generally manage to get elected, although at risk of gross molestation; but they are regarded by the Communists as intruders and can exert no influence in politics.

One might ask why the Bolsheviks, while suppressing all free soviets, still maintain the farce of elections, since they cause a lot of bother. “Soviets,” however, in some form or other, are indispensable in order that the government may continue to call itself for propagandist purposes the “Soviet” Government. If the soviet or freely elected council system did work unshackled in Russia today, Bolshevism would long ago have been abolished. In fact one of the demands frequently put forward during strikes is for a restoration, side by side with the free cooperative societies, of the soviet system which is now virtually suppressed. Paradoxical though it be, Bolshevism is in reality the complete negation of the soviet system. It is by no means impossible that the downfall of the Communists may result in a healthy effort being made to set the soviets to work in some form for the first time. If this book serves no other purpose than to impress this vitally important fact upon the reader, I shall feel I have not written in vain.

Whenever it is possible, that is, whenever no serious opposition to a Communist candidate is expected, the Bolsheviks allow an election to take its normal course, except that the secret ballot has been almost universally abolished. Before they rose to power the secret ballot was a cardinal principle of the Bolshevist programme. The argument, so typical of Bolshevist reasoning, now put forward in justification of its abolition is that secret voting would be inconsistent in a proletarian republic that has become “free.”

The number of Communists who are elected without opposition is very considerable, and, strangely enough, it is upon the bourgeoisie, engaged in the multifarious clerical tasks of the bureaucratic administration, that the authorities are able to rely for the least opposition. Employees of the government offices mostly miss the elections if they can, and if they cannot, acquiesce passively in the appointment of Communists, knowing that the proposal of opponents will lead, at the least, to extreme unpleasantness. A partial explanation of this docility and the general inability of the Russian people to assert themselves is to be found in sheer political inexperience. The halcyon days of March, 1917, before the Bolsheviks returned, was the only period in which they have known liberty, and at the elections of that time there was little or no controversy. In any case, political experience is not to be acquired in the short space of a few weeks.

I will cite but one instance of an election in a thoroughly bourgeois institution. The return by the Marinsky Opera of a Communist delegate to the Petrograd Soviet was given prominence in the Bolshevist Press, and as I had at one time been connected with this theatre I was interested to elucidate the circumstances. On the election day, of all the singers, orchestra, chorus, and the large staff of scene-shifters, mechanics, attendants, caretakers, etc., numbering several hundred people, not half-a-dozen appeared. So the election was postponed until another day, when the Communist “cell,” appointed to control the election, brought in a complete outsider, whom they “elected” as delegate from the theatre. The staff were completely indifferent and unaware, until afterwards, that any election had taken place!

Not to the passive bourgeoisie, but to the active workers, do the Bolsheviks look for opposition in the cities. It is to counteract and forcibly prevent non-Bolshevist propaganda in the workshops that their chief energies are devoted. The elections I am describing were noteworthy because they followed immediately upon an outburst of strikes, particularly affecting the railwaymen and streetcar workers. At one of the tramway parks bombs had been thrown, killing one worker and wounding three Communists.

Only one meeting was permitted at each factory or other institution and the printed instructions stated that it must be controlled by Communists, who were to put forward their candidates first. Everywhere where there had been disturbances guards were introduced to maintain order during the meeting, and spies of the Extraordinary Commission were sent to note who, if anyone, raised his hand against the Communist candidates. At the Obukhov works the workers were told straight out that anyone who voted against the Communists would be dismissed without the right of employment elsewhere. At the Putilov works the election meeting was held without notice being given, so that scarcely anyone was present. Next day the Putilov men heard to their amazement that they had unanimously elected to the soviet some twenty Communists!

In the district where I was living the Jewish agitator, of whom I have previously spoken, was entrusted with the conduct of a much-advertised house-to-house campaign to impress the workers and especially their wives with the virtues of the Communists. The reception he received was by no means universally cordial and the ultimate triumph of the Communists was to him a matter of considerable relief. It goes without saying this was the only kind of canvassing. All non-Communist parties being denounced as counterrevolutionary, the entire populace, except for a few intrepid individuals who courageously proclaimed their adherence to non-Bolshevist Socialist parties, sheltered itself behind the title of “nonpartisan,” and having no programme but an anti-Communist one, put forward none at all. To put one forward was impossible anyway, for the use of the printing press, the right of free speech, and the right to use firearms (which played a great part) were confined exclusively to Communists.