Bolsheviks

“ Next to the Bolsheviks this is the most contemptible and the most tragic group of Russian people, mastered by thirst for revenge for all the horrors they have endured, or governed by personal ambitions and political views of the epoch of Peter the Great. They are the most efficient allies of the Bolsheviks, even though they stand at the other extreme. With the Bolsheviki they have in common their methods of political struggle: murder, terror, violence. The Russian people fear them so greatly that they are ready to make common cause even with the odious, bloody Bolsheviks against them. ”

“ Is it not almost inevitable that men placed as the Bolsheviks are placed in Russia, and as they maintain that the Communists must place themselves wherever the social revolution succeeds, will be loath to relinquish their monopoly of power, and will find reasons for remaining until some new revolution ousts them? ”

“ At first they shouted about the inevitable failure and doom of the Bolsheviks; later, to the extent that the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, more and more loudly was heard another note: the Bolsheviks are holding on, but they are not the same Bolsheviks; the Bolsheviks are strengthening their position, but they are degenerating under the influence of the seething peasant tide. ”

“ What motive is possible except idealism, love of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort that Bolsheviks decry? The system created by violence and the forcible rule of a minority must necessarily allow of tyranny and exploitation; and if human nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers neglect such opportunities of selfish advantage? ”

“ First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and secondly because, even after paying the price, I do not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks profess to desire. ”

“ Other hostilities besides those of the outside world have been incurred by the Bolsheviks with open eyes, notably the hostility of the peasants and that of a great part of the industrial population. They have attempted, in accordance with their usual contempt for conciliatory methods, to substitute terror for reward as the incentive to work. Some amiable Socialists have imagined that, when the private capitalist had been eliminated, men would work from a sense of obligation to the community. The Bolsheviks will have none of such sentimentalism. ”

“ Bolsheviks tacitly assume that every other party will preserve this respect while they themselves, unhindered, prepare the revolution. But if their philosophy of violence becomes popular, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that they will be its beneficiaries. They believe that Communism is for the good of the majority; they ought to believe that they can persuade the majority on this question, and to have the patience to set about the task of winning by propaganda. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To understand Bolshevism it is not sufficient to know facts; it is necessary also to enter with sympathy or imagination into a new spirit. The chief thing that the Bolsheviks have done is to create a hope, or at any rate to make strong and widespread a hope which was formerly confined to a few. This aspect of the movement is as easy to grasp at a distance as it is in Russia—perhaps even easier, because in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of the distant future. ”

“ From what I saw of the Russian character and of the opposition parties, I became persuaded that Russia is not ready for any form of democracy, and needs a strong Government. The Bolsheviks represent themselves as the Allies of Western advanced Socialism, and from this point of view they are open to grave criticism. ”

“ One of the first things that I discovered after passing the Red Flag which marks the frontier of Soviet Russia, amid a desolate region of marsh, pine wood, and barbed wire entanglements, was the profound difference between the theories of actual Bolsheviks and the version of those theories current among advanced Socialists in this country. Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as merely a new form of representative government, in which only working men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly occupational, not geographical. ”

“ In this respect, and in the laziness and incapacity of the Russian workman, the Bolsheviks have had to face special difficulties which would be less in other countries. On the other hand, they have had special advantages in the fact that Russia is self-supporting in the matter of food; no other country could have endured the collapse of industry so long, and no other Great Power except the United States could have survived years of blockade. ”

“ Owing to unpopularity, the Bolsheviks have had to rely upon the army and the Extraordinary Commission, and have been compelled to reduce the Soviet system to an empty form. More and more the pretence of representing the proletariat has grown threadbare. Amid official demonstrations and processions and meetings the genuine proletarian looks on, apathetic and disillusioned, unless he is possessed of unusual energy and fire, in which case he looks to the ideas of syndicalism or the I.W.W. to liberate him from a slavery far more complete than that of capitalism. ”

“ The Bolsheviks, albeit numbering less than five per cent of the population, have been able to seize and retain power in Russia because they were and are the only body of people in this vast spectacle of Russian ruin with a common faith and a common spirit. ”

“ The Bolsheviks are the Communards of France of 1871 who are left unrestrained for the sake of sane principle until it is perceived too late that to allow these mad fanatics to speechify and act leads to ruin. ”

“ That is the dividing line between the Bolsheviks and their Social-Democratic opponents, the Mensheviks, and their far more numerous and powerful antagonists, the Social Revolutionaries, who obtained an overwhelming majority in the Constituent Assembly which the Bolsheviks dissolved by force. The Social Revolutionaries seek the emancipation of the peasants and workers by democratic means—the only safe and sure way—though they were quite ready to use force for the overthrow of Tsardom, happily effected in March, 1917. ”

“ Bolshevism may be defended, possibly, as a dire discipline through which a backward nation is to be rapidly industrialized; but as an experiment in Communism it has failed.
There are two things that a defender of the Bolsheviks may say against the argument that they have failed because the present state of Russia is bad. It may be said that it is too soon to judge, and it may be urged that whatever failure there has been is attributable to the hostility of the outside world. ”

“ But in view of its desire to promote world-revolution, no one could expect--and the Bolsheviks certainly did not expect--that capitalist Governments would be friendly. If Germany had won the war, Germany would have shown a hostility more effective than that of the Entente. However we may blame Western Governments for their policy, we must realize that, according to the deterministic economic theory of the Bolsheviks, no other policy was to be expected from them. Other men might have been excused for not foreseeing the attitude of Churchill, Clemenceau and Millerand ”

“ A great part of the despotism which characterizes the Bolsheviks belongs to the essence of their social philosophy, and would have to be reproduced, even if in a milder form, wherever that philosophy became dominant. ”

“ The greatest triumphs enjoyed by the Bolsheviks outside of Russia were not the overthrow of any capitalist State but the destruction of working-class and socialist unity in all countries where affiliated sections of the Communist International could gain a foothold. ”

“ The evils produced in Russia by the enmity of the Entente are therefore to be reckoned as essential in the Bolshevik method of transition to Communism, not as specially Russian. I am not sure that we cannot even go a step further. The exhaustion and misery caused by unsuccessful war were necessary to the success of the Bolsheviks; a prosperous population will not embark by such methods upon a fundamental economic reconstruction. One can imagine England becoming Bolshevik after an unsuccessful war involving the loss of India--no improbable contingency in the next few years. ”

“ But they are not the methods appropriate to more advanced countries, and our Socialists will be unnecessarily retrograde if they allow the prestige of the Bolsheviks to lead them into slavish imitation. It will be a far less excusable error in our reactionaries if, by their unteachableness, they compel the adoption of violent methods. We have a heritage of civilization and mutual tolerance which is important to ourselves and to the world. ”

“ The Bolsheviks have a very definite programme for achieving Communism--a programme which has been set forth by Lenin repeatedly, and quite recently in the reply of the Third International to the questionnaire submitted by the Independent Labour Party.
Capitalists, we are assured, will stick at nothing in defence of their privileges. It is the nature of man, in so far as he is politically conscious, to fight for the interests of his class so long as classes exist. ”

“ In the Western World, the hope inspired by Bolshevism is more immediate, less shot through with tragedy. Western Socialists who have visited Russia have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the present régime, and have disseminated a belief among their followers that the millennium would be quickly realized there if there were no war and no blockade. Even those Socialists who are not Bolsheviks for their own country have mostly done very little to help men in appraising the merits or demerits of Bolshevik methods. ”

“ Though this is the expressed opinion of what the Bolshevik would term one of the "old régime," it is nevertheless the openly-expressed opinion of the sensible leaders of every class of Russian society except two—the Bolsheviks at one end, and the Absolutists at the other. More than once already these two extremes have come close together to frustrate the possibility of a compromise on constitutional lines. They openly declare that, unless power is given to either one or the other, they would prefer that the present anarchy should continue. ”

“ In Russia it has a very definite and often striking meaning, as many anti-Bolsheviks have known and are learning to their cost. Elsewhere it has a wider, if looser, significance, and is frequently employed to express or describe a number of things to which one objects. ”

“ The second class in the bureaucracy, among whom are to be found most of the men occupying political posts just below the top, consists of arrivistes, who [79] are enthusiastic Bolsheviks because of the material success of Bolshevism. With them must be reckoned the army of policemen, spies, and secret agents, largely inherited from the Tsarist times, who make their profit out of the fact that no one can live except by breaking the law. ”

“ Then when the Bolsheviks started he went over to them, like plenty of other grandees, and now he's one of their chief brains—none of your callow revolutionaries, but a man of the world, a kind of genius, she says, who can hold his own anywhere. ”

“ On certain questions the Social Revolutionaries of the Left and the Social Democrats—Internationalists—were leaning towards the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, until September the Bolsheviks were not in a majority in the Petrograd Soviet or in many provincial Soviets. ”

“ For intellectual convenience, the Soothsayer tersely ascribes all ills that befall him to Bolshevism. If the waitress is tardy in delivering his cheese omelet, she is a bolshevixen. If a motortruck driver skims his polished fender, he is a bolshevik. In other words, those who Don't Give a Damn are bolsheviks. ”

“ Any one of these could adopt the method of obtaining power advocated by the Bolsheviks, and any one would be just as likely to succeed as they are. What restrains these minorities, more or less, at present, is respect for the law and the constitution. ”

“ Russia is a backward country, not yet ready for the methods of equal co-operation which the West is seeking to substitute for arbitrary power in politics and industry. In Russia, the methods of the Bolsheviks are probably more or less unavoidable ”

“ The Bolsheviks seized power by taking advantage of the weakness of the bourgeoisie, who became bankrupt after the war. The capture of power with the aid of soldiery cannot be regarded as the beginning of a Socialist revolution; the proletariat has not ripened for Socialism while the peasantry are in the majority. ”

“ Those rascals, I tell you, will be working inside of a year, working like hell, because if the Whites get here every commissar 93 will be hanged, drawn and quartered. Somebody must work to keep things going. Mark my words, first the Bolsheviks will make their Communists work, they’ll give them all sorts of privileges and power, and then they’ll make the Communists make the others work. ”