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John Spargo - Bolshevism

J >> John Spargo >> Bolshevism



Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors in the original text
have been corrected and footnotes moved to the
end of the book.





BOLSHEVISM

The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy

by

JOHN SPARGO

Author of
"Social Democracy Explained" "Socialism, a Summary and Interpretation of
Socialist Principles" "Applied Socialism" etc.

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London

1919







* * * * * * *

BOOKS BY

JOHN SPARGO

BOLSHEVISM
AMERICANISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY EXPLAINED


HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

ESTABLISHED 1817


* * * * * * *




CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

II. FROM REVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION

III. THE WAR AND THE PEOPLE

IV. THE SECOND REVOLUTION

V. FROM BOURGEOISIE TO BOLSHEVIKI

VI. THE BOLSHEVIK WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY

VII. BOLSHEVIST THEORY AND PRACTICE

POSTSCRIPTUM: A PERSONAL STATEMENT


APPENDICES:

I. AN APPEAL TO THE PROLETARIAT BY THE PETROGRAD WORKMEN'S AND
SOLDIERS' COUNCIL

II. HOW THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS FOUGHT FOR A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

III. FORMER SOCIALIST PREMIER OF FINLAND ON BOLSHEVISM





PREFACE


In the following pages I have tried to make a plain and easily
understandable outline of the origin, history, and meaning of Bolshevism. I
have attempted to provide the average American reader with a fair and
reliable statement of the philosophy, program, and policies of the Russian
Bolsheviki. In order to avoid confusion, and to keep the matter as simple
and clear as possible, I have not tried to deal with the numerous
manifestations of Bolshevism in other lands, but have confined myself
strictly to the Russian example. With some detail--too much, some of my
readers may think!--I have sketched the historical background in order that
the Bolsheviki may be seen in proper perspective and fairly judged in
connection with the whole revolutionary movement in Russia.

Whoever turns to these pages in the expectation of finding a sensational
"exposure" of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki will be disappointed. It has
been my aim to make a deliberate and scientific study, not an _ex-parte_
indictment. A great many lurid and sensational stories about the Bolsheviki
have been published, the net result of which is to make the leaders of this
phase of the great universal war of the classes appear as brutal and
depraved monsters of iniquity. There is not a crime known to mankind,
apparently, of which they have not been loudly declared to be guilty. My
long experience in the Socialist movement has furnished me with too much
understanding of the manner and extent to which working-class movements are
abused and slandered to permit me to accept these stories as gospel truth.
That experience has forced me to assume that most of the terrible stories
told about the Bolsheviki are either untrue and without any foundation in
fact or greatly exaggerated. The "rumor factories" in Geneva, Stockholm,
Copenhagen, The Hague, and other European capitals, which were so busy
during the war fabricating and exploiting for profit stories of massacres,
victories, assassinations, revolutions, peace treaties, and other momentous
events, which subsequent information proved never to have happened at all,
seem now to have turned their attention to the Bolsheviki.

However little of a cynic one may be, it is almost impossible to refrain
from wondering at the fact that so many writers and journals that in the
quite recent past maintained absolute silence when the czar and his minions
were committing their infamous outrages against the working-people and
their leaders, and that were never known to protest against the many crimes
committed by our own industrial czars against our working-people and their
leaders--that these writers and journals are now so violently denouncing
the Bolsheviki for alleged inhumanities. When the same journals that
defended or apologized for the brutal lynchings of I.W.W. agitators and the
savage assaults committed upon other peaceful citizens whose only crime was
exercising their lawful and moral right to organize and strike for better
wages, denounce the Bolsheviki for their "brutality" and their
"lawlessness" and cry for vengeance upon them, honest and sincere men
become bitter and scornful.

I am not a Bolshevik or a defender of the Bolsheviki. As a Social Democrat
and Internationalist of many years' standing--and therefore loyal to
America and American ideals--I am absolutely opposed to the principles and
practices of the Bolsheviki, which, from the very first, I have regarded
and denounced as an inverted form of Czarism. It is quite clear to my mind,
however, that there can be no good result from wild abuse or from
misrepresentation of facts and motives. I am convinced that the stupid
campaign of calumny which has been waged against the Bolsheviki has won for
them the sympathy of many intelligent Americans who love fairness and hate
injustice. In this way lying and abuse react against those who indulge in
them.

In this study I have completely ignored the flood of newspaper stories of
Bolshevist "outrages" and "crimes" which has poured forth during the past
year. I have ignored, too, the remarkable collection of documents edited
and annotated by Mr. Sisson and published by the United States Committee on
Public Information. I do not doubt that there is much that is true in that
collection of documents--indeed, there is some corroboration of some of
them--but the means of determining what is true and what false are not yet
available to the student. So much doubt and suspicion is reasonably and
properly attached to some of the documents that the value of the whole mass
is greatly impaired. To rely upon these documents to make a case against
the Bolsheviki, unless and until they have been more fully investigated and
authenticated than they appear to have been as yet, and corroborated, would
be like relying upon the testimony of an unreliable witness to convict a
man serious crime.

That the Bolsheviki have been guilty of many crimes is certain. Ample
evidence of that fact will be found in the following pages. They have
committed many crimes against men and women whose splendid service to the
Russian revolutionary movement serves only to accentuate the crimes in
question. But their worst crimes have been against political and social
democracy, which they have shamefully betrayed and opposed with as little
scruple, and as much brutal injustice, as was ever manifested by the
Romanovs. This is a terrible charge, I know, but I believe that the most
sympathetic toward the Bolsheviki among my readers will, if they are
candid, admit that it is amply sustained by the evidence.

Concerning that evidence it is perhaps necessary to say that I have
confined myself to the following: official documents issued by the
Bolshevist government; the writings and addresses of accredited Bolshevik
leaders and officials--in the form in which they have been published by the
Bolsheviki themselves; the declarations of Russian Socialist organizations
of long and honorable standing in the international Socialist movement; the
statements of equally well-known and trusted Russian Socialists, and of
responsible Russian Socialist journals.

While I have indicated the sources of most of the evidence against the
Bolsheviki, either in the text itself or in the foot-notes and references,
I have not thought it advisable to burden my pages with such foot-notes and
references concerning matters of general knowledge. To have given
references and authorities for all the facts summarized in the historical
outlines, for example, would have been simply a show of pedantry and served
only to frighten away the ordinary reader.

I have been deeply indebted to the works of other writers, among which I
may mention the following: Peter Kropotkin's _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_
and _Ideals and Realities of Russian Literature_; S. Stepniak's
_Underground Russia_; Leo Deutsch's _Sixteen Years in Siberia_; Alexander
Ular's _Russia from Within_; William English Walling's _Russia's Message_;
Zinovy N. Preev's _The Russian Riddle_; Maxim Litvinov's _The Bolshevik
Revolution: Its Rise and Meaning_; M.J. Olgin's _The Soul of the Russian
Revolution_; A.J. Sack's _The Birth of Russian Democracy_; E.A. Ross's
_Russia in Upheaval_; Isaac Don Levine's _The Russian Revolution_; Bessie
Beatty's _The Red Heart of Russia_; Louise Bryant's _Six Red Months in
Russia_; Leon Trotzky's _Our Revolution_ and _The Bolsheviki and World
Peace_; Gabriel Domergue's _La Russe Rouge_; Nikolai Lenine's _The Soviets
at Work_; Zinoviev and Lenine's _Sozialismus und Krieg_; Emile
Vandervelde's _Trois Aspects de la Revolution Russe_; P.G. Chesnais's _La
Revolution et la Paix_ and _Les Bolsheviks_. I have also freely availed
myself of the many admirable translations of official Bolshevist documents
published in _The Class Struggle_, of New York, a pro-Bolshevist magazine;
the collection of documents published by _The Nation_, of New York, a
journal exceedingly generous in its treatment of Bolshevism and the
Bolsheviki; and of the mass of material published in its excellent
"International Notes" by _Justice_, of London, the oldest Socialist
newspaper in the English language, I believe, and one of the most ably
edited.

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made of friendly service rendered and
valuable information given by Mr. Alexander Kerensky, former Premier of
Russia; Mr. Henry L. Slobodin, of New York; Mr. A.J. Sack, Director of the
Russian Information Bureau in the United States; Dr. Boris Takavenko,
editor of _La Russia Nuova_, Rome, Italy; Mr. William English Walling, New
York; and my friend, Father Cahill, of Bennington.

Among the Appendices at the end of the volume will be found some important
documents containing some contemporary Russian Socialist judgments of
Bolshevism. These documents are, I venture to suggest, of the utmost
possible value and importance to the student and general reader.

JOHN SPARGO,

"NESTLEDOWN,"
OLD BENNNIGTON, VERMONT,
_End of January, 1919_.




BOLSHEVISM




CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND


I

For almost a full century Russia has been the theater of a great
revolutionary movement. In the light of Russian history we read with
cynical amusement that in 1848, when all Europe was in a revolutionary
ferment, a German economist confidently predicted that revolutionary
agitation could not live in the peculiar soil of Russian civilization.
August Franz von Haxthausen was in many respects a competent and even a
profound student of Russian politics, but he was wrong in his belief that
the amount of rural communism existing in Russia, particularly the _mir_,
would make it impossible for storms of revolutionary agitation to arise and
stir the national life.

As a matter of historical fact, the ferment of revolution had appeared in
the land of the Czars long before the German economist made his remarkably
ill-judged forecast. At the end of the Napoleonic wars many young officers
of the Russian army returned to their native land full of revolutionary
ideas and ideals acquired in France, Italy, and Germany, and intent upon
action. At first their intention was simply to make an appeal to Alexander
I to grant self-government to Russia, which at one time he had seemed
disposed to do. Soon they found themselves engaged in a secret conspiratory
movement having for its object the overthrow of Czarism. The story of the
failure of these romanticists, the manner in which the abortive attempt at
revolution in December, 1825, was suppressed, and how the leaders were
punished by Nicholas I--these things are well known to most students of
Russian history. The Decembrists, as they came to be called, failed, as
they were bound to do, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their
efforts were altogether vain. On the contrary, their inspiration was felt
throughout the next thirty years and was reflected in the literature of the
period. During that period Russian literature was tinged with the faith in
social regeneration held by most of the cultured intellectual classes. The
Decembrists were the spiritual progenitors of the Russian revolutionary
movement of our time. In the writings of Pushkin--himself a
Decembrist--Lermontoff, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, and many others less
well known, the influence of the Decembrist movement is clearly manifested.

If we are to select a single figure as the founder of the modern social
revolutionary movement in Russia, that title can be applied to Alexander
Herzen with greater fitness than to any other. His influence upon the
movement during many years was enormous. Herzen was half-German, his mother
being German. He was born at Moscow in 1812, shortly before the French
occupation of the city. His parents were very rich and he enjoyed the
advantages of a splendid education, as well as great luxury. At twenty-two
years of age he was banished to a small town in the Urals, where he spent
six years, returning to Moscow in 1840. It is noteworthy that the offense
for which he had been sent into exile was the singing of songs in praise of
the Decembrist martyrs. This occurred at a meeting of one of the "Students'
Circles" founded by Herzen for the dissemination of revolutionary Socialist
ideals among the students.

Upon his return to Moscow in 1840 Herzen, together with Bakunin and other
friends, again engaged in revolutionary propaganda and in 1842 he was again
exiled. In 1847, through the influence of powerful friends, he received
permission to leave Russia for travel abroad. He never again saw his native
land, all the remaining years of life being spent in exile. After a tour of
Italy, Herzen arrived in Paris on the eve of the Revolution of 1848,
joining there his friends, Bakunin and Turgeniev, and many other
revolutionary leaders. It was impossible for him to participate actively in
the 1848 uprising, owing to the activity of the Paris police, but he
watched the Revolution with the profoundest sympathy. And when it failed
and was followed by the terrible reaction his distress was almost
unbounded. For a brief period he was the victim of the most appalling
pessimism, but after a time his faith returned and he joined with Proudhon
in issuing a radical revolutionary paper, _L'Ami du Peuple_, of which,
Kropotkin tells us in his admirable study of Russian literature, "almost
every number was confiscated by the police of Napoleon the Third." The
paper had a very brief life, and Herzen himself was soon expelled from
France, going to Switzerland, of which country he became a citizen.

In 1857 Herzen settled in London, where he published for some years a
remarkable paper, called _Kolokol (The Bell)_, in which he exposed the
iniquities and shortcomings of Czarism and inspired the youth of Russia
with his revolutionary ideals. The paper had to be smuggled into Russia, of
course, and the manner in which the smuggling was done is one of the most
absorbing stories in all the tragic history of the vast land of the Czars.
Herzen was a charming writer and a keen thinker, and it is impossible to
exaggerate the extent of his influence. But when the freedom of the serfs,
for which he so vigorously contended, was promulgated by Alexander II, and
other extensive reforms were granted, his influence waned. He died in 1870
in Switzerland.


II

Alexander II was not alone in hoping that the Act of Liberation would usher
in a new era of prosperity and tranquillity for Russia. Many of the most
radical of the Intelligentsia, followers of Herzen, believed that Russia
was destined to outstrip the older nations of western Europe in its
democracy and its culture. It was not long before disillusionment came: the
serfs were set free, but the manner in which the land question had been
dealt with made their freedom almost a mockery. As a result there were
numerous uprisings of peasants--riots which the government suppressed in
the most sanguinary manner. From that time until the present the land
question has been the core of the Russian problem. Every revolutionary
movement has been essentially concerned with giving the land to the
peasants.

Within a few months after the liberation of the serfs the revolutionary
unrest was so wide-spread that the government became alarmed and instituted
a policy of vigorous repression. Progressive papers, which had sprung up as
a result of the liberal tendencies characterizing the reign of Alexander
II thus far, were suppressed and many of the leading writers were
imprisoned and exiled. Among those thus punished was that brilliant writer,
Tchernyshevsky, to whom the Russian movement owes so much. His
_Contemporary Review_ was, during the four critical years 1858-62 the
principal forum for the discussion of the problems most vital to the life
of Russia. In it the greatest leaders of Russian thought discussed the land
question, co-operation, communism, popular education, and similar subjects.
This served a twofold purpose: in the first place, it brought to the study
of the pressing problems of the time the ablest and best minds of the
country; secondly, it provided these Intellectuals with a bond of union and
stimulus to serve the poor and the oppressed. That Alexander II had been
influenced to sign the Emancipation Act by Tchernyshevsky and his friends
did not cause the authorities to spare Tchernyshevsky when, in 1863, he
engaged in active Socialist propaganda. He was arrested and imprisoned in a
fortress, where he wrote the novel which has so profoundly influenced two
generations of discontented and protesting Russians--_What is to Be Done?_
In form a novel of thrilling interest, this work was really an elaborate
treatise upon Russian social conditions. It dealt with the vexed problems
of marriage and divorce, the land question, co-operative production, and
other similar matters, and the solutions it suggested for these problems
became widely accepted as the program of revolutionary Russia. Few books in
any literature have ever produced such a profound impression, or exerted as
much influence upon the life of a nation. In the following year, 1864,
Tchernyshevsky was exiled to hard labor in Siberia, remaining there until
1883, when he returned to Russia. He lived only six years longer, dying in
1889.

The attempt made by a young student to assassinate Alexander II, on April
4, 1866, was seized upon by the Czar and his advisers as an excuse for
instituting a policy of terrible reaction. The most repressive measures
were taken against the Intelligentsia and all the liberal reforms which had
been introduced were practically destroyed. It was impossible to restore
serfdom, of course, but the condition of the peasants without land was even
worse than if they had remained serfs. Excessive taxation, heavy redemption
charges, famine, crop failures, and other ills drove the people to
desperation. Large numbers of students espoused the cause of the peasants
and a new popular literature appeared in which the sufferings of the people
were portrayed with fervor and passion. In 1868-69 there were numerous
demonstrations and riots by way of protest against the reactionary policy
of the government.

It was at this time that Michael Bakunin, from his exile in Switzerland,
conspired with Nechaiev to bring about a great uprising of the peasants,
through the Society for the Liberation of the People. Bakunin advised the
students to leave the universities and to go among the people to teach them
and, at the same time, arouse them to revolt. It was at this time, too,
that Nicholas Tchaykovsky and his friends, the famous Circle of
Tchaykovsky, began to distribute among students in all parts of the Empire
books dealing with the condition of the peasants and proposing remedies
therefor. This work greatly influenced the young Intelligentsia, but the
immediate results among the peasants were not very encouraging. Even the
return from Switzerland, by order of the government, of hundreds of
students who were disciples of Bakunin and Peter Lavrov did not produce any
great success.

Very soon a new organization appeared. The remnant of the Circle
Tchaykovsky, together with some followers of Bakunin, formed a society
called the Land and Freedom Society. This society, which was destined to
exert a marked influence upon revolutionary Russia, was the most ambitious
revolutionary effort Russia had known. The society had a constitution and a
carefully worked out program. It had one special group to carry on
propaganda among students; another to agitate among the peasants; and a
third to employ armed force against the government and against those guilty
of treachery toward the society. The basis of the society was the
conviction that Russia needed an economic revolution; that only an economic
revolution, starting with the producers, could overthrow Czarism and
establish the ideal state of society.

The members of this Land and Freedom Society divided their work into four
main divisions: (1) Agitation--passive and active. Passive agitation
included strikes, petitions for reforms, refusal to pay taxes, and so on.
Active agitation meant riots and uprisings. (2) Organization--the formation
of a fighting force prepared to bring about a general uprising. (3)
Education--the spreading of revolutionary knowledge and ideas, a
continuation of the work of the Tchaykovsky Circle. (4) Secularization--the
carrying on of systematic work against the Orthodox Church through special
channels. One of the early leaders of this society was George Plechanov,
who later founded the Russian Social Democracy and gave to the Russian
revolutionary movement its Marxian character, inspiring such men as Nikolai
Lenine and Leon Trotzky, among many others. The society did not attain any
very great amount of success in its efforts to reach the peasants, and it
was that fact more than any other which determined Plechanov's future
course.


III

When the failure of the Land and Freedom methods became evident, and the
government became more and more oppressive, desperate individuals and
groups resorted to acts of terrorism. It was thus that Vera Zasulich
attempted the assassination of the infamous Chief of Police Trepov. The
movement to temper Czarism by assassination systematically pursued was
beginning. In 1879 the Land and Freedom Society held a conference for the
purpose of discussing its program. A majority favored resorting to
terroristic tactics; Plechanov and a few other well-known revolutionists
were opposed--favoring the old methods. The society split, the majority
becoming known as the Will of the People and adopting a terroristic
program. This organization sentenced Czar Alexander II to death and several
unsuccessful attempts were made to carry out the sentence. The leaders
believed that the assassination of the Czar would give rise to a general
revolution throughout the whole of Russia. In February, 1880, occurred the
famous attempt to blow up the Winter Palace. For a time it seemed that the
Czar had learned the lesson the Will of the People sought to teach him, and
that he would institute far-reaching reforms. Pursuing a policy of
vacillation and fear, however, Alexander II soon fell back into the old
attitude. On March 1, 1881, a group of revolutionists, among them Sophia
Perovskaya, made another attempt upon his life, succeeding, at first, only
in damaging the bottom of the Czar's carriage and wounding a number of
Cossack soldiers. "Thank God, I am untouched," said the Czar, in response
to the inquiry of an officer of his guard. "It's too soon to thank God!"
cried N.I. Grinevitsky, hurling a bomb at the Czar. Within a short time
Alexander II and his assailant were both dead.

The assassination of Alexander II was a tragic event for Russia. On the
very morning of his death the ill-fated monarch had approved a plan for
extensive reforms presented by the liberal Minister, Loris-Melikoff. It had
been decided to call a conference three days later and to invite a number
of well-known public men to co-operate in introducing the reforms. These
reforms would not have been far-reaching enough to satisfy the
revolutionists, but they would certainly have improved the situation and
given Russia a new hope. That hope died with Alexander II. His son,
Alexander III, had always been a pronounced reactionary and had advised his
father against making any concessions to the agitators. It was not
surprising, therefore, that he permitted himself to be advised against the
liberals by the most reactionary bureaucrats in the Empire, and to adopt
the most oppressive policies.

The new Czar was greatly influenced by his former tutor, the reactionary
bureaucrat Pobiedonostzev. At first it was believed that out of respect for
his father's memory Alexander III would carry out the program of reforms
formulated by Loris-Melikoff, as his father had promised to do. In a
Manifesto issued on the 29th of April, 1881, Alexander III promised to do
this, but in the same document there were passages which could only be
interpreted as meaning that all demands for constitutional reform would be
resisted and Absolutism upheld at all cost. Doubtless it was due to the
influence of Pobiedonostzev, Procurator of the Holy Synod, that Alexander
III soon abandoned all intention of carrying out his father's wishes in the
matter of reform and instituted such reactionary policies that the peasants
feared that serfdom was to be restored. A terrible persecution of the Jews
was begun, lasting for several years. The Poles, too, felt the oppressive
hand of Pobiedonostzev. The latter was mastered by the Slavophil philosophy
that the revolutionary unrest in Russia was traceable to the diversity of
races, languages, and religions. He believed that Nihilism, Anarchism, and
Socialism flourished because the people were cosmopolitan rather than
nationalistic in experience and feeling, and that peace and stability could
come only from the persistent and vigorous development of the three
principles of Nationality, Orthodoxy, and Autocracy as the basis of the
state.

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