Ethel Snowden

“ No living human being faced by so many and such frightful difficulties could have made it a success. Alien invasion, internal disorder, counter-revolutionary activities, scarcities of necessaries of all sorts, the blockade of Russia—all these things made it quite impossible for the Russian Revolutionary Government with the best brains and the finest intentions in the world to carry out more than a fraction of its programme in a very imperfect manner. The wonder is not that they have failed to establish Socialism, but that they have successfully accomplished so much that is good. ”

“ Has a handful of brilliant and thoughtful men, however good and sincere they may be, the moral right to enforce upon a whole community the system they believe in but the community as a whole rejects, with all the tyranny and cruelty such dictatorship must inevitably mean? Had the men of Russia the moral right to break up their own National Assembly, however inadequate and faulty, thereby bringing upon their country civil war and alien aggression, for the sake of a theory however magnificent? ”

“ The friendships of a lifetime are being broken in fruitless efforts to prove either the faultlessness or the folly of the theory of Communism. The doctrines of Karl Marx and the philosophy of Bakounin are the twin rocks upon which the Labour movement in every land threatens to split. Without in the remotest degree intending or desiring it, Lenin has drawn to his head a halo of some magnificence, and an odour of sanctity, notwithstanding the inscription upon its walls, envelops that part of the Kremlin where the little, great man sits and issues his decrees. ”

“ If one may judge by appearances, by the expression of their faces, by the brisk march and the smart response to the word of command, by their bright smiles and thundering cheers, the Red Army at least is well content to serve the present Government. And it is not by any means solely because life, except for those in the front lines of battle, is more assured than for the rest of the population. True it is that the army receives first attention. ”

“ The education system has its truly beautiful artistic side, and so long as that is not stultified the soul of Russia is safe; but, for the most part, the Russian system is utilitarian, with, I repeat, Communism as its ultimate purpose, the making of Communists its goal. I could quote extensively from Communist sources to prove this, as to prove other matters; and there are those Socialists who would justify it. But I have been interested in education all my life, and I feel very strongly that it is a wrong to a child to bend its mind towards any special theories, Communist or other. ”

“ The propaganda trains they are sending daily to the Polish front are marvels of ingenuity. Inside and outside these trains are covered with vivid pictures portraying side by side the horrors of Capitalism and the glories of Communism in simple intelligible form, the horrid capitalist murdering the poor peasant or standing triumphant over a dying woman and child, whilst Communist fields bursting with grain yield to the sickle of the happy, sun-browned, well-fed harvester. ”

“ In the interests of Russia herself it is for those who care, to stop all alien wars against her, and so give her people a chance of shaking themselves free of tyranny, both within and without.
And for ourselves, we shall be wise to move as quickly as may be along the sure and peaceful paths of political and industrial democracy, seeking by education and by constant endeavour and sacrifice to convince the minds of men and women that the world has something better to give them of culture as well as comfort than the best of them have ever dreamed. ”

“ The droshky drivers, of whom few are left in Petrograd but many in Moscow, are a picturesque race of old fellows, with their tall, broad-brimmed hats, their thick, ample coats with leather or metal belts, their high boots and profuse whiskers. For a thousand roubles you might drive a mile or so in a very comfortable little carriage out of which it would be almost impossible to fall.
There is perfect order in the city streets. By night or by day one can walk with absolute safety. During the summer months it never really grows dark. ”

“ At the same time, I believe him to be altogether too sane to be ready to throw away when it offers opportunities of really beginning to develop the Communist State.
Lenin, like all the Communists, conveys the impression of awful sureness of himself, of an immovable and overpowering self-confidence. It is not the smiling self-complacency, the shallow cocksureness of that very common individual amongst us who is sure that wisdom will die with him. ”

“ Our experience of Russia fills us with mingled fear and hope. During the last two and a half years of bitter fighting the Russian Government has trained and equipped a magnificent army. Its navy is utterly devoted to it. In a sense the Revolution is the child of the navy, for the sailors brought the thing to birth. It is not possible to estimate the exact number of men in the active forces, but it is very large indeed, and it is a very different army from the ragged, ignorant, ill-equipped forces of the Czar, cheated and abused by corrupt generals and politicians. ”

“ For the life of me I was unable to discover why so mild a little woman should have been sent out of America. Her opinions, compared with those of the average Communist in Russia, appeared to be as water is to strong wine. She reminded me of nobody so much as a typical member of the Women's Co-operative Guild or of a Woman's Social Service Club in the United States. She is certainly not happy where she is, and ought to be allowed to return if she wishes. She complained that very many anarchists, known to her, had been shot in Petrograd for counter-revolutionary activity. ”

“ Has the evident pride in their new Red Army already bitten deep into their souls, so that every fresh victory adds a glory to it? A boy with a knife wants to whittle something. Is it certain that even peace-loving Russians may not be willing to allow their brave men to advance from one conquest to another in the hope, either of making their country feared and respected by the other Powers, or in the still larger hope of accomplishing by this means the world-revolution of which their leaders dream? ”

“ After the great bulk of the people left at Saratov the ship’s human machinery ran with greater smoothness.
A trip on the Volga was supposed to be one of the great experiences of the rich traveller before the war. It is an experience anyone may be very glad and proud to have had. More of the heart and soul of Russia lies on each bank of this mighty river than can be found in Russia’s cosmopolitan cities. The country is low and fertile, except for the desert stretches of the lower reaches. The green of its grass is a bright emerald. ”

“ The Allies will never destroy the idea of Communism with their guns. The Communists can never destroy the idea of kingship and capitalism with their scaffolds. Only a good idea can slay a bad one. Only by proving that there is more manliness in democracy than autocracy, and more morality in Communism than in capitalism will the one institution give way to the other. ”

“ Men like Kameneff, Sverdloff and Krassin, who hold high and responsible positions in the State service, good and sincere Communists, would not rise to power nor maintain their position by indiscriminate slaughter and brutal methods of tyranny, but having faith in the ultimate triumph of their principle, would establish it through education and organisation. That men of a more violent character hold the reins of power is due, in my considered judgment, to the fatal policy of the Allies, and in these days, of the Poles, in seeking to decide the issue by the sword. ”

“ I believe in the dictatorship of the idea, that is in the power of the idea to conquer without force, and the right of the majority to decide all those matters of high policy which cannot be settled amicably without a vote; but I consider that the sources of information should be available for all, the right of propaganda be universal and unrestricted, and the liberties and rights of the minorities safeguarded in all those things where the well-being of the community is not manifestly to all threatened by too great concessions. ”

“ Whether he thought we were seeking his life, or whether he was in a vast hurry and did not wish to be detained by a broken-down car we shall never know. But there was more than a slight thrill in the adventure for the man who looked down the muzzle of that revolver!
The trams were running in Moscow, and they were as crowded as the London tube railway-carriages at the evening hour during the war. On every inch where a foothold could be maintained, both inside and out, people stood or clung. ”

“ The discipline of the West, if taken with its civilisation, may add to [Pg 17] the fullness of your future life. But what you want at the moment is very much less and very much simpler than the ardent theorists have conceived you need, and that you ought to want and must be made to have.
The people of Russia want peace and bread, peace that will last and bread that they can eat. I am convinced without the shadow of a doubt, that they are everywhere sick to the very soul of bloodshed. They dislike even the talk about war and revolutions. ”

“ To the slaves of theory, the abstractionists and dogmatists, the decrees which consent to the modifications in committee management of industry must be considered wholly bad. But when I record the fact that the power of workmen to interfere through those committees in highly important productive and reconstructive work, either through delays, or ignorance, or in the name of a democratic principle run to seed, has given place all over Russia to control by experts, and management on lines of personal responsibility, I am placing on record what I consider to be a good and wise thing. ”

“ The real nature of our mission to Russia appeared not to be understood. It was believed, or the belief was affected, that we had come in the spirit of full agreement with them, whereas we were there to enquire and to inform ourselves. It was frequently suggested, both privately and publicly, that “the representatives of the revolutionary working-class movement in Great Britain had come to bring greetings and assistance to the revolutionary Government of Russia.” From this belief, or the affectation of it, sprang the clever notion of using us in every possible way to advance their propaganda. ”

“ They are moving slowly but surely towards the achievement of that economic freedom without which they cannot hope to make secure the rest. And this they are doing without the bloodshed and suffering to themselves and innocent people that violent change would inevitably produce. Why, then, should they copy Russia, whose condition is so different and to whom it might have appeared there was no other way out? I feel myself so strongly the value of liberty that I would not jeopardise it, even for a hypothetical Kingdom of Heaven on earth. ”

“ The invocation of the League of Nations by Great Britain, after the League had remained silent, whilst one of its members, Poland, played the pirate, has brought still greater contempt upon that poor ghost of the thing designed to help mankind.
One’s whole sympathy is with the Russians. By every precedent established by history, by the precedent of every government engaged in the recent war, Russia would be entitled to march on and bid the Allies do their worst. ”

“ If the poor duped populace can be successfully delivered from the brigandage and trickery of unscrupulous and avaricious priests, of whom there has been a great host in the past, it will be a benefit not only to the suffering people but to the cause of true religion itself. And what I describe as “true religion,” the living spirit of goodness in the hearts and minds of men, is growing in the very land where God is regarded as counter-revolutionary and banished, officially, as a traitor to mankind. ”

“ Nobody can criticise the Government on one point, and that their protection and encouragement of Art. The most grudging in his praise must perforce admit that the Bolsheviki have shown their wisdom in leaving undamaged up to the present the artistic side of Russian life; whilst the just will give them credit for fostering Art by taking special care of the artists and by bringing it within the reach of the poorest classes in the community, hitherto totally shut out from the best and finest which Art can give.
The concert halls and theatres of Petrograd and Moscow are crowded every night. ”

“ It is the old, old story of force breeding force, and evil producing evil. The inhabitants of Russia lived so long with the evil system of the Czar’s bureaucracy, with its Cossacks, and knouts, its prisons and scaffolds, that the thing has entered into their very blood, and under the necessity of maintaining their power, the Communist rulers slip easily and naturally into the same institutions and methods, adopting even the old machinery and the ancient servitors. ”

“ Tchicherine, Commissar for Foreign Affairs, gentle by nature, artistic by temperament, uncomfortable in the whirlpool of politics as it seemed to me, and shrinking, sad-eyed, into nothing with the burden of the office unto which he was not born, turned tyrant through suffering, the instrument of less admirable men than himself. ”

“ Very few of the Communist leaders of Russia there are who have not had to endure one or all of these hideous experiences. That they should be infected, unconsciously to themselves, by the virus of cruelty is not to be wondered at. And the greater part of the blame for all that has happened and is happening to the opponents of unadulterated Communism must be laid upon the shoulders of those who, by promoting wars, civil and foreign, have made their task of government impossibly hard. ”

“ All this discussion of the attempt of a handful of sincere and brilliant men and women to build upon the ruins of war, famine and pestilence a new and better social system in one gigantic effort is inevitable; and in common fairness it must be said that the experiment in Russia might have been of the greatest possible value to the rest of the world had its purity not been sullied by civil wars and unpardonable alien aggression. ”

“ Pure and unselfish idealists as many of them undoubtedly are, and born out of due time, they are the terrible progeny of the maddest war and the cruellest “peace” that ever tore civilisation to tatters.
Some work quietly, live nobly, and starve on the rations which only the very best men decline to augment. But, for the most part, the Communists live better than the rest and form the new aristocracy. ”

“ Lenin believes that a very tiny Communist group, working upon a mass of inflammable human beings, suffering from unemployment and hunger, can make the revolution necessary to establish a new order of society. He urges all Communists in Great Britain to get together in one party and work to this end. He appears to think that the British revolution is imminent. He has no use for the pacifist philosophy of life and believes that only the working classes should be armed and the rest disarmed. He looks for a world-revolution in which the toiling masses shall own and control everything. ”

“ It is not the frank critic of Bolshevism who is doing harm to the Bolshevik cause. It is those supporters of Lenin in this, and other countries, who maintain that no compromise with the old has been made by the new in Russia, and who, if they could be made to admit that their Russian comrades had modified their decrees to meet the necessities of the hour, would regard this conduct as traitorous, and would denounce with equal extravagance of language the men they had before incontinently adored. ”