The Author, Disguised
The Author, Disguised
A detailed narrative of my experiences during the following six months would surpass the dimensions to which I must limit this book. Some of them I hope to make the subject of a future story. For I met other “Stepanovnas,” “Marias” and “Journalists,” in whom I came to trust as implicitly as in the old and who were a very present help in time of trouble. I also inevitably met with scoundrels, but thoughNo. 2 Goróhovayaagain got close upon my track—even closer than through Zorinsky—and one or two squeaks were very narrow indeed, still I have survived to tell the tale.
This is partly because the precautions I took to avoid detection became habitual. Only on one occasion was I obliged to destroy documents of value, while of the couriers who, at grave risk, carried communications back and forth from Finland, only two failed to arrive and, I presume, were caught and shot. But the messages they bore (as indeed any notes I ever made) were composed in such a manner that they could not possibly be traced to any individual or address.
I wrote mostly at night, in minute handwriting on tracing-paper, with a small india-rubber bag about four inches in length, weighted with lead, ready at my side. In case of alarm all my papers could be slipped into this bag and within thirty seconds betransferred to the bottom of a tub of washing or the cistern of the water-closet. In efforts to discover arms or incriminating documents, I have seen pictures, carpets, and bookshelves removed and everything turned topsy-turvy by diligent searchers, but it never occurred to anybody to search through a pail of washing or thrust his hand into the water-closet cistern.
Through the agency of friends I secured a post as draftsman at a small factory on the outskirts of the city. A relative of one of the officials of this place, whose signature was attached to my papers and who is well known to the Bolsheviks, called on me recently in New York. I showed him some notes I had made on the subject, but he protested that, camouflaged though my references were, they might still be traced to individuals concerned, most of whom, with their families, are still in Russia. I therefore suppressed them. For similar reasons I am still reticent in details concerning the regiment of the Red army to which I was finally attached.
Learning through military channels at my disposal that men of my age and industrial status were shortly to be mobilized and despatched to the eastern front, where the advance of Kolchak was growing to be a serious menace, I forestalled the mobilization order by about a week and applied for admission as a volunteer in the regiment of an officer acquaintance, stationed a short distance outside Petrograd. There was some not unnatural hesitation before I received an answer, due to the necessity of considering the personality of the regimental commissar—a strong Communist who wished to have the regiment despatched to perform its revolutionary duty against Kolchak’s armies. But at the critical moment this individual was promoted to ahigher divisional post, and the commander succeeded in getting nominated to his regiment a commissar of shaky communistic principles, who ultimately developed anti-Bolshevist sympathies almost as strong as his own. How my commander, a Tsarist officer, who detested and feared the Communists, was forced to serve in the Red army I will explain later.
Despite his ill-concealed sympathies, however, this gentleman won Trotzky’s favour in an unexpected and remarkable manner. Being instructed to impede an advance of the forces of the “White” general, Yudenitch, by the destruction of strategic bridges, he resolved to blow up the wrong bridge, and, if possible, cut off the Red retreat and assist the White advance. By sheer mistake, however, the company he despatched to perform the task blew up the right bridge, thus covering a precipitate Red retreat and effectually checking the White advance.
For days my commander secretly tore his hair and wept, his mortification rendered the more acute by the commendations he was obliged for the sake of appearances to shower upon his men, whose judgment had apparently been so superior to his own. His chagrin reached its height when he received an official communication from army headquarters applauding the timely exploit, while through the Communist organization he was formally invited to join the privileged ranks of the Communist Party! In the view of my commander no affront could have been more offensive than this unsought Bolshevist honour. He was utterly at a loss to grasp my point of view when I told him what to me was obvious, namely, that no offer could have been more providential and that he ought to jump at it. Though inside Russia the approaching White armies were oftenimagined to be a band of noble and chivalrous crusaders, certain information I had received as to the disorganization prevailing amongst them aroused my misgivings, and I was very doubtful whether my commander’s error had materially altered the course of events. The commissar, who did not care one way or the other, saw the humour of the situation. He, too, urged the commander to smother his feelings and see the joke, with the result that the would-be traitor to the pseudo-proletarian cause became a Communist, and combining his persuasions with those of the commissar, succeeded in keeping the regiment out of further action for several weeks. The confidence they had won made it easy to convince army headquarters that the regiment was urgently required to suppress uprisings which were feared in the capital. When disturbances did break out, however, the quelling of them was entrusted to troops drafted from the far south or east, for it was well known that no troops indigenous to Petrograd or Moscow could be relied upon to fire on their fellow-townspeople.
I had hitherto evaded military service as long as possible, fearing that it might impede the conduct of my intelligence work. The contrary proved to be the case, and for many reasons I regretted I had not enlisted earlier. Apart from greater freedom of movement and preference over civilians when applying for lodging, amusement, or travelling tickets, the Red soldier received rations greatly superior both in quantity and quality to those of the civilian population. Previous to this time I had received only half a pound of bread daily and had had to take my scanty dinner at a filthy communal eating-house, but as a Red soldier I received, besides a dinner and other odds and ends not worth mentioning, a pound and sometimesa pound and a half of tolerably good black bread, which alone was sufficient, accustomed as I am to a scanty diet, to subsist on with relative comfort.
The commander was a good fellow, nervous and sadly out of place in “the party,” but he soon got used to it and enjoyed its many privileges. He stood me in good stead. Repeatedly detailing me off to any place I wished to go to, on missions he knew were lengthy (such as the purchase of automobile tyres, which were unobtainable, or literature of various kinds), I was able to devote my main attention as before to the political and economic situation.
As a Red soldier, I was sent to Moscow and there consulted with the National Centre, the most promising of the political organizations whose object was to work out a programme acceptable to the Russian people as a whole. On account of its democratic character this organization was pursued by the Bolshevist Government with peculiar zeal, and was finally unearthed, and its members, of whom many were Socialists, shot.3From Moscow also I received regularly copies of the summaries on the general situation that were submitted to the Soviet of People’s Commissars. The questions I was instructed in messages from abroad to investigate covered the entire field of soviet administration, but I do not propose to deal with that huge subject here. It is the present and the inscrutable future that fascinate me rather than the past. I will speak only of the peasantry, the army, and “the party.” For it is on the abilityor inability of the Communists to control the army that the stability of the Bolshevist régime in a considerable measure depends, while the future lies in the lap of that vast inarticulate mass of simple peasant toilers, so justly termed the Russian Sphinx.
The day I joined my regiment I donned my Red army uniform, consisting of a khaki shirt, yellow breeches, putties, a pair of good boots which I bought from another soldier (the army at that time was not issuing boots), and a grey army overcoat. On my cap I wore the Red army badge—a red star with a mallet and plough imprinted on it.
This could not be said to be the regular Red army uniform, though it was as regular as any. Except for picked troops, smartly apparelled in the best the army stores could provide, the rank and file of recruits wore just anything, and often had only bast slippers in place of boots. There is bitter irony and a world of significance in the fact that in 1920, when I observed the Red army again from the Polish front, I found many of the thousands who deserted to the Poles wearing British uniforms which had been supplied, together with so much war material, to Denikin.
“Tovarishtch Kommandir,” I would say on presenting myself before my commander, “pozvoltye dolozhitj.... Comrade Commander, allow me, to report that the allotted task is executed.”
“Good, Comrade So-and-so,” would be the reply, “I will hear your report immediately,” or: “Holdyourself in readiness at such and such an hour to-morrow.”
The terminology of the former army, like the nomenclature of many streets in the capitals, has been altered and the word “commander” substituted for “officer.” When we were alone I did not say “Comrade Commander” (unless facetiously) but called him “Vasili Petrovitch,” and he addressed me also by Christian name and patronymic.
“Vasili Petrovitch,” I said one day, “what made you join the Red army?”
“You think we have any option?” he retorted. “If an officer doesn’t want to be shot he either obeys the mobilization order or flees from the country. And only those can afford to take flight who have no family to leave behind.” He drew a bulky pocket-book from his pocket, and fumbling among the mass of dirty and ragged documents, unfolded a paper and placed it before me. “That is a copy of a paper I was made to fill in and sign before being given a Red commission. We all have to sign it, and if you were discovered here I should have signed away my wife’s life as well as my own.”
The paper was a typewritten blank, on which first the name, rank in the old army, present rank, regiment, abode, etc., had to be filled in in detail. Then followed a space in which the newly mobilized officer gave an exhaustive list of his relatives, with their ages, addresses, and occupations; while at the bottom, followed by a space for signature, were the following words:
I hereby declare that I am aware that in the event of my disloyalty to the Soviet Government, my relatives will be arrested and deported.
I hereby declare that I am aware that in the event of my disloyalty to the Soviet Government, my relatives will be arrested and deported.
A Review of ‘Red’ Troops
A Review of ‘Red’ Troops
Vasili Petrovitch spread out his hands, shrugging his shoulders.
“I should prefer to see my wife and my little daughters shot,” he said, bitterly, “rather than that they be sent to a Red concentration camp. I am supposed to make my subordinates sign these declarations, too. Pleasant, isn’t it? You know, I suppose,” he added, “that appointment to a post of any responsibility is now made conditional upon having relatives near at hand who may be arrested?” (This order had been published in the Press.) “The happiest thing nowadays is to be friendless and destitute, then you cannot get your people shot. Or else act on the Bolshevist principle that conscience, like liberty, is a ‘bourgeois prejudice.’ Then you can work forNo. 2 Goróhovayaand make a fortune.”
Not only my commander but most of the men in my unit talked like this amongst themselves, only quietly, for fear of Bolshevist spies. One little fellow who was drafted into the regiment was uncommonly outspoken. He was a mechanic from a factory on the Viborg side of the city. His candour was such that I suspected him at first of being aprovocateur, paid by the Bolsheviks to speak ill of them and thus unmask sympathizers. But he was not that sort. One day I overheard him telling the story of how he and his fellows had been mobilized.
“As soon as we were mobilized,” he said, “we were chased to all sorts of meetings. Last Saturday at theNarodny Dom[the biggest hall in Petrograd] Zinoviev spoke to us for an hour and assured us we were to fight for workmen and peasants against capitalists, imperialists, bankers, generals, landlords, priests, and other bloodsucking riff-raff. Then he read a resolution that every Red soldier swears to defend RedPetrograd to the last drop of blood, but nobody put up his hand except a few in the front rows who had, of course, been put there to vote ‘for.’ Near me I heard several men growl and say, ‘Enough! we aren’t sheep, and we know for what sort of freedom you want to use us as cannon fodder.’ Son of a gun, that Zinoviev!” exclaimed the little man, spitting disgustedly; “next day—what do you think?—we read in the paper that ten thousand newly mobilized soldiers had passed a resolution unanimously to defend what Zinoviev and Lenin call the ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’!”
Few people ventured to be so outspoken as this, for everybody feared the four or five Communists who were attached to the regiment to eavesdrop and report any remarks detrimental to the Bolsheviks. One of these Communists was a Jew, a rare occurrence in the rank and file of the army. He disappeared when the regiment was moved to the front, doubtless having received another job of a similar nature in a safe spot in the rear. The only posts in the Red army held by Jews in any number are the political posts of commissars. One reason why there appear to be so many Jews in the Bolshevist administration is that they are nearly all employed in the rear, particularly in those departments (such as of food, propaganda, public economy) which are not concerned in fighting. It is largely to the ease with which Jewish Bolsheviks evade military service, and the arrogance some of them show toward the Russians, whom they openly despise, that the intense hatred of the Jew and the popular belief in Russia that Bolshevism is a Jewish “put-up job” are due. There are, of course, just as many Jews who oppose the Bolsheviks, and many of these are lying in prison. But this is not widelyknown, for like Russian anti-Bolsheviks they have no means of expressing their opinions.
Leo Bronstein, the genius of the Red army, now universally known by his more Russian-sounding pseudonym of Trotzky, is the second of the triumvirate of “Lenin, Trotzky, and Zinoviev,” who guide the destinies of the Russian and the world revolution. That the accepted order of precedence is not “Trotzky, Lenin, and Zinoviev” must be gall and wormwood to Trotzky’s soul. His first outstanding characteristic is overweening ambition; his second—egoism; his third—cruelty; and all three are sharpened by intelligence and wit of unusual brilliancy. According to his intimate associates of former days, his nature is by no means devoid of cordiality, but his affections are completely subordinated to the promotion of his ambitious personal designs, and he casts off friends and relatives alike, as he would clothing, the moment they have served his purpose.
A schoolmate, prison-companion, and political colleague of Trotzky, Dr. Ziv, who for years shared his labours both openly and secretly, travelled with him to exile, and was associated with him also in New York, thus sums up his character:
“In Trotzky’s psychology there are no elements corresponding to the ordinary conceptions of brutality or humanity. In place of these there is a blank.... Men, for him, are mere units—hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of units—by means of which he may satisfy hisWille zur Macht. Whether this end is to be achieved by securing for those multitudes conditions of supreme happiness or by mercilessly crushing or exterminating them, is for Trotzky an unessential detail, to be determined notby sympathies or antipathies but by the accidental circumstances of the moment.”4
The same writer throws some interesting light on how Bronstein chose his pseudonym. His present assumed name of “Trotzky” was that of the senior jailer of the Tsarist prison-house at Odessa, where Bronstein and Dr. Ziv were incarcerated. The latter describes this jailer as “a majestic figure, leaning on his long sabre and with the eagle eye of a field-marshal surveying his domain and feeling himself a little tsar.”5The motive impelling Trotzky to use a pseudonym is peculiar. “To call himself Bronstein would be once and for all to attach to himself the hated label designating his Jewish origin, and this was the very thing that he desired everyone to forget as quickly and thoroughly as possible.” This estimation is the more valuable in that the writer, Dr. Ziv, is himself a Jew.
The creation and control of a huge militarist machine have hitherto afforded full and ample scope for the exercise of Trotzky’s superhuman energy and indomitable will. Regarding the Russian peasants and workers as cattle and treating them as such, he naturally strove at an early date, by coercion or by flattering and alluring offers, to persuade the trained Tsarist officer staff, with whose technical knowledge he could not dispense, to serve the Red flag. The ideas of a “democratic army” and “the arming of the entire proletariat,” the demand for which, together with that for the constituent assembly, had served to bring Trotzky and his associates to power, were discarded the moment they had served their purpose.
The same measures as were employed by the Tsaristarmy were introduced to combat wholesale robbery and pillage—an inevitable phenomenon resulting from Bolshevist agitation—and with even greater severity. Soldiers’ committees were soon suppressed. The “revolutionary” commanders of 1918, untrained and unqualified for leadership, were dismissed and supplanted by “specialists”—that is, officers of the Tsarist army, closely watched, however, by carefully selected Communists.
The strength of the Red army now undoubtedly lies in its staff of officers. As the indispensability of expert military knowledge became more and more apparent, the official attitude toward Tsarist officers, which was one of contempt and hostility as bourgeois, became tempered with an obvious desire to conciliate. The curious phenomenon was observable of a ribald Red Press, still pandering to mob-instincts, denouncing all Tsarist officers as “counter-revolutionary swine,” while at the same time Trotzky, in secret, was tentatively extending the olive branch to these same “swine,” and addressing them in tones of conciliation and even respect. Officers were told that it was fully understood that, belonging to “the old school,” they could not readily acquiesce in all the innovations of the “proletarian” régime, that it was hoped in course of time they would come to adapt themselves to it, and that if in the meantime they would “give their knowledge to the revolution” their services would be duly recognized.
“We found it difficult to believe it was Trotzky talking to us,” an officer said to me after the extraordinary meeting of commissars and naval specialists of the Baltic fleet, at which Trotzky abolished the committee system and restored the officers’ authority. My friend participated at the meeting, being a highofficial in the Admiralty. “We all sat round the table in expectation, officers at one end and the Communist commissars at the other. The officers were silent, for we did not know why we had been called, but the commissars, all dressed in leathern jerkins, sprawled in the best chairs, smoking and spitting, and laughing loudly. Suddenly the door opened and Trotzky entered. I had never seen him before and was quite taken aback. He was dressed in the full uniform of a Russian officer with the sole exception of epaulettes. The dress did not suit him, but he held himself erect and leader-like, and when we all stood to receive him the contrast between him and the commissars, whom he himself had appointed, was striking. When he spoke we were thunderstruck—and so were the commissars—for turning to our end of the table he addressed us not as ‘Comrades’ but as ‘Gentlemen,’ thanked us for our services, and assured us he understood the difficulties, both moral and physical, of our situation. Then he suddenly turned on the commissars and to our amazement poured forth a torrent of abuse just such as nowadays we are accustomed to hear directed against ourselves. He called them skulking slackers, demanded to know why they dared sit in his presence with their jerkins all unbuttoned, and made them all cringe like dogs. He told us that the ship committees were abolished; that thenceforward the commissars were to have powers only of political control, but none in purely naval matters. We were so dumbfounded that I believe, if Trotzky were not a Jew, the officers would follow him to a man!”
The position of officers was grievous indeed, especially of those who had wives and families. Flight with their families was difficult, while flight withouttheir families led to the arrest of the latter the moment the officer’s absence was noted. Remaining in the country their position was no better. Evasion of mobilization or a default in service alike led to reprisals against their kith and kin. Trotzky’s approaches were not an effort to make them serve—that was unavoidable—but to induce them to serve well. Alone his persuasions might have availed little. But with the passage of time the bitter disappointment at continued White failures, and growing disgust at the effect of Allied intervention, coming on the top of constant terror, drove many to desperate and some to genuine service in the Red ranks, believing that only with the conclusion of war (irrespective of defeat or victory) could the existing régime be altered. I believe that the number of those who are genuinely serving, under a conviction that the present order of things is a mere passing phase, is considerably larger than is generally supposed outside Russia.
One of the most pitiable sights I have ever witnessed was the arrest of women as hostages because their menfolk were suspected of anti-Bolshevist activities. One party of such prisoners I remember particularly because I knew one or two of the people in it. They were all ladies, with the stamp of education and refinement—and untold suffering—on their faces, accompanied by three or four children, who I presume had refused to be torn away. In the hot summer sun they trudged through the streets, attired in the remnants of good clothing, with shoes out at heel, carrying bags or parcels of such belongings as they were permitted to take with them to prison. Suddenly one of the women swooned and fell. The little party halted. The invalid was helped to a seat by her companions, while the escort stood and looked on as if bored withthe whole business. The guards did not look vicious, and were only obeying orders. When the party moved forward one of them carried the lady’s bag. Standing beneath the trees of the Alexander Garden I watched the pitiful procession, despair imprinted on every face, trudge slowly across the road and disappear into the dark aperture ofNo. 2 Goróhovaya.
Meanwhile their husbands and sons were informed that a single conspicuous deed on their part against the White or counter-revolutionary armies would be sufficient to secure the release of their womenfolk, while continued good service would guarantee them not only personal freedom, but increased rations and freedom from molestation in their homes. This last means a great deal when workmen or soldiers may be thrust upon you without notice at any time, occupying your best rooms, while you and your family are compelled to retire to a single chamber, perhaps only the kitchen.
Such duress against officers showed an astute understanding of the psychology of the White armies. A single conspicuous deed for the Bolsheviks by an officer of the old army was sufficient to damn that officer for ever in the eyes of the Whites, who appeared to have no consideration for the painful and often hopeless position in which those officers were placed. It was this that troubled my commander after his accidental destruction of the right bridge. I am told that General Brusilov’s son was shot by Denikin’s army solely because he was found in the service of the Reds. The stupidity of such conduct on the part of the Whites would be inconceivable were it not a fact.
A Certificate of Identification
A Certificate of Identification
The complete absence of an acceptable programme alternative to Bolshevism, the audibly whispered threats of landlords that in the event of a Whitevictory the land seized by the peasants would be restored to its former owners, and the lamentable failure to understand that in the anti-Bolshevist war politics and not military strategy must play the dominant rôle, were the chief causes of the White defeats. This theory is borne out by all the various White adventures, whether of Kolchak, Denikin, or Wrangel, the course of each being, broadly speaking, the same. First the Whites advanced triumphantly, and until the character of their régime was realized they were hailed as deliverers from the Red yoke. The Red soldiers deserted to them in hordes and the Red command was thrown into consternation. There was very little fighting considering the vast extent of front. Then came a halt, due to incipient disaffection amongst the civil population in the rear. Requisitioning, mobilization, internecine strife, and corruption amongst officials, differing but little from the régime of the Reds, rapidly alienated the sympathies of the peasantry, who revolted against the Whites as they had against the Reds, and the position of the White armies was made untenable. The first sign of yielding at the front was the signal for a complete reversal of fortune. In some cases this process was repeated more than once, the final result being a determination on the part of the peasantry to hold their own against Red and White alike.
Most Russianémigrésnow admit not only that warring against the so-called Soviet Republic has served above all else to consolidate the position of the Bolshevist leaders, but also that the failure of the anti-Bolsheviks was due largely to their own deficient administration. But there are many who continue to lay the blame on any one’s shoulders rather than their own, and primarily upon England—a reproach whichis not entirely unjustified, though not for quite the reasons that these critics suppose. For while the Allies and America all participated in military intervention, it was England who for the longest time, and at greatest cost to herself, furnished the counter-revolution with funds and material. Her error and that of her associates lay in making no effort to control the political,i. e.the most important, aspect of the counter-revolution. England appeared to assume that the moral integrity of Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, which has never been called in question by any serious people, was the gauge of the political maturity of these leaders and of the Governments they brought into being. Herein lay the fundamental misjudgment of the situation. The gulf that yawns between the White leaders and the peasantry is as wide as that between the Communist Party and the Russian people. Not in Moscow, but in the camps of the White leaders themselves were sown the seeds of the disasters that befell them, and this was apparent neither to England nor to any other foreign Power.
By the end of 1919 the higher military posts in the Red army, such as those of divisional-, artillery-, and brigade-commanders, were occupied almost exclusively by former Tsarist generals and colonels. The Bolsheviks are extremely proud of this fact, and frequently boast of it to their visitors. These officers are treated with deference, though as known anti-Bolsheviks they are closely watched, and their families are granted considerable privileges.
In lower ranks there is a predominance of “Red” officers, turned out from the Red cadet schools where they are instructed by Tsarist officers. Few of the Red cadets are men of education. They are, however, on the whole, strong supporters of the soviet régime. Butcivilians and even private soldiers also find their way by good service to positions of high responsibility, for the Red army offers a field for advancement not, as in the White armies, according to rank, “blood,” or social standing, but primarily for talent and service. Merit is the only accepted standard for promotion. Common soldiers have become expert regimental commanders, artillery officers, and cavalry leaders. In many cases opportunities which were formerly unknown, but are now offered, make of such people, of whose courage and determination there can be no doubt, convinced supporters of the present régime. Provided he signs on as a member of the Communist Party any clever adventurer who devotes his talent to the Red army can rise to great heights and make for himself a brilliant career. Had the Russian people really been fired by revolutionary enthusiasm or devotion to their present rulers, the Red army would, under the system introduced by Trotzky, have rapidly become not merely a formidable but an absolutely irresistible military force.
But the Russian people are not and never will be fired by enthusiasm for the Communist revolution. As long as the White armies were permeated by the landlord spirit there was indeed an incentive to defend the land, an incentive exploited to the full by the Bolsheviks in their own favour. I witnessed a striking instance of this on the north-west front. One of the generals of the White army operating against Petrograd issued an order to the peasant population to the effect that “this year the produce of the land might be reaped and sold by those who had sown and tilled it [that is, by the peasants who had seized it], but next year the land must be restored to its rightful owners[that is, the former landlords].” Needless to say, the effect was fatal, although this same general had been welcomed upon his advance three weeks before with unprecedented rejoicings. Moreover, this particular order was republished by the Bolsheviks in every paper in Soviet Russia and served as powerful propaganda amongst the peasant soldiers on every front.
In November, 1920, I talked to soldiers fresh from the Red ranks in the northern Ukraine. I found that peasants, who were willing enough to join insurgents, feared to desert to Wrangel’s army. Asked why they had not deserted on the southern front, they replied with decision and in surprising unison: “Rangelya baimsya”; which was their way of saying: “We are afraid of Wrangel.” And this in spite of Wrangel’s much-vaunted land law, which promised the land to the peasants. ButbehindWrangel they knew there stood the landlords.
But the first campaign of the Red army against a non-Russian foe, Poland, which did not threaten the peasants’ possession of the land, resulted in complete collapse at the very height of Red power. And this is the more significant in that quite an appreciable degree of anti-Polish national feeling was aroused in Russia, especially amongst educated people, and was exploited by the Bolsheviks to strengthen their own position. But there was one striking difference between the Red and the Polish armies, which largely accounted for the outcome of the war. Badly officered as the Poles were by incompetent, selfish, or corrupt officers, the rank and file of the Polish army was fired even in adversity by a spirit of national patriotism unseen in Europe since the first days of the Great War. It only required the drafting in of a few French officers, and the merciless weeding out of traitors from thePolish staff, to make of the Polish army the formidable weapon that swept the Red hordes like chaff before it. In the Red army, on the other hand, the situation was precisely the reverse. The Reds were officered be commanders who were either inspired by anti-Polish sentiment, or believed, as the Communist leaders assured them, that the revolutionary armies were to sweep right across Europe. But the rank and file were devoid of all interest in the war. Thus they only advanced as long as the wretchedly led Poles retreated too rapidly to be caught up, and the moment they met organized resistance the Russian peasants either fled, deserted, or mutinied in their own ranks.
The Polish victory effectually dispelled the myths of peasant support of the revolution and the invincibility of the Red army, but beyond that it has served no useful purpose as far as Russia is concerned. Rather the contrary, for by temporarily aligning Russian intellectuals on the side of the Communists it served even more than the civil wars to consolidate the position of the Soviet Government.
The terror that prevails in the Red army, and is, when all is said and done, the measure most relied upon by the Soviet Government to ensure discipline, leads at times to extraordinary and apparently inexplicable episodes. In September, 1920, I witnessed the retaking of the fortress of Grodno by the Poles. As I watched the shells falling over the trenches on the outskirts of the town I thought of the wretches lying in them, hating the war, hating their leaders, and merely waiting till nightfall to creep out of the city. Though it was said that Grodno was defended by some of the best Red regiments, the retreat was precipitate. But a day or two later near Lida they unexpectedly turned and gave battle. Trotzky was, or had recently been inthat sector, and had ordered that ruthless measures should be taken to stay the flight. One Polish division was suddenly attacked by five Red divisions. Four of the latter were beaten, but the last, the 21st, continued to fight with savage fury. Three times they bore down in massed formation. It came to a hand-to-hand fight in which the Poles were hard pressed. But after the third attack, which fortunately for the Poles was weaker, an entirely unforeseen and incomprehensible event occurred. The soldiers of the 21st Soviet division killed every one of their commissars and Communists and came over to the Poles in a body with their guns!
It would seem that conscious human intelligence was completely benumbed at such times. Impelled by despair, people act like automatons, regardless of danger, knowing that worse things await them (and especially their kith and kin) if they are detected in attempted disloyalty. People may, by terror, be made to fight desperately for a thing they do not believe in, but there comes after all a breaking-point.
The means of producing terror in the army are Special Departments of the Extraordinary Commission, and Revolutionary Tribunals. The methods of the Extraordinary Commission have been described. In the army to which my regiment belonged the order for the formation of Revolutionary Tribunals stated that they “are to be established in each brigade area, to consist of three members, and to carry out on the spot investigations of insubordination, refusal to fight, flight or desertion by complete units, such as sections, platoons, companies, etc.” Sentences (including that of death) were to be executed immediately. Sentences might also be conditional, that is, guilty units mightbe granted an opportunity to restore confidence by heroic conduct and thus secure a reversal of the verdict. At the same time, “separate specially reliable units are to be formed of individuals selected from steady units, whose duty will be to suppress all insubordination. These selected units will also execute the sentences of death.”
Desertion from the Red army is not difficult, but if one lives in or near a town one’s relatives pay. Desertion, being what the Bolsheviks call a “mass-phenomenon,” is combated by special Commissions for Combating Desertion, established in every town and large village and at frontier points. The number of these commissions is indicative of the prevalence of desertion. Their agents hang about the outskirts of towns, at cross-roads, frontier stations, etc., prodding truckloads of hay or looking under railroad cars. If a man is known to be a deserter but cannot be ferreted out, the property of his relatives is confiscated and they are liable to be arrested unless they inform against him or he returns voluntarily.
The peasantry sometimes try to organize desertion. Pickets are posted to give warning of the approach of punitive detachments. In Ukrainia, where the peasants show more vigour and capacity for self-defence against the Communists than in the north, villagers organize themselves into armed bands led by non-commissioned officers of the old army and effectively hold the punitive detachments at bay for considerable periods.
The calling up of peasants is at times so difficult a business that when a regiment has been mobilized it is often sent down to the front in sealed cars. Arms are rarely distributed until the moment of entering the fray, when a machine-gun is placed behind theraw troops, and they are warned that they have the option either of advancing or being fired on from the rear. Provincial districts are cautioned that every village in which a single deserter is discovered will be burned to the ground. But though several such orders have been published, I do not know of a case in which the threat has been put into execution.
Mobilization of town-workers is naturally easier, but here also subterfuge has sometimes to be resorted to. In Petrograd I witnessed what was announced to be a “trial” mobilization; that is, the workers were assured that they were not going to the front and that the trial was only to practise for an emergency. The result was that the prospective recruits, glad of an extra holiday plus the additional bread ration issued on such occasions, turned up in force (all, of course, in civilian clothes) and the trial mobilization was a great success. A portion of the recruits were taken to the Nicholas Station and told they were going out of town to manœuvre. Imagine their feelings when they discovered that they were locked into the cars, promptly despatched to the front, and (still in civilian clothes) thrust straight into the firing line!
Every man of the Red army is supposed to have taken the following oath:
“I, a member of a labouring people and citizen of the Soviet Republic, assume the name of warrior of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Army. Before the labouring classes of Russia and of the whole world I pledge myself to bear this title with honour, conscientiously to study the science of war, and as the apple of my eye to defend civil and military property from spoliation and pillage. I pledge myself strictly and unswervingly to observe revolutionary disciplineand perform unhesitatingly all orders of the commanders appointed by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. I pledge myself to refrain and to restrain my comrades from any action that may stain and lower the dignity of a citizen of the Soviet Republic, and to direct my best efforts to its sole object, the emancipation of all workers. I pledge myself at the first call of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to defend the Soviet Republic from all dangers and assault on the part of her foes, and to spare neither my energies nor life in the struggle for the Russian Soviet Republic, for the cause of Socialism and the fraternity of peoples. If with evil intent I infringe this my solemn oath may my lot be universal contempt and may I fall a victim to the ruthless arm of revolutionary law.”
Very few Red army men have any recollection of having taken this oath, which is reserved for officers or for propagandist purposes. If it is taken by the common soldiers at all it is read out to whole battalions at a time and they are told when to raise their hands.
The method of administering justice followed by the Revolutionary Tribunals is primitive. The judges are guided by no rules, instructions, or laws, but solely by what is known as “revolutionary conscience.” The fact that the judges are often illiterate does not affect the performance of their functions, for since none but ardent Communists are admitted to these posts, their revolutionary consciences mustipso factoalways be clear.
The malpractices of these courts reached such a pitch that late in 1920 the Bolsheviks, after abolishing all jurisprudence at the universities, were actually combing out from the ranks of the army all who had technical knowledge of Tsarist law, offering themposts as legal “specialists,” as had already been done with military, industrial, and agricultural experts.
The Bolsheviks discriminate minutely between regiments, which are classed as reliable, semi-reliable, and doubtful. The backbone of the army is composed of regiments which consist purely of convinced Communists. These units, called by such names as the “Iron Regiment,” the “Death Regiment,” the “Trotzky Regiment,” etc., have acted up to their names and fight with desperate ferocity. Reliance is also placed in non-Russian regiments, Lettish, Bashkir, Chinese troops, etc., though their numbers are not large. The total number of Communists being exceedingly small, they are divided up and distributed amongst the remaining regiments in little groups called “cells.” The size of a “cell” averages about ten per cent. of the regimental strength. It is this political organization of the Red army for purposes of propaganda and political control which is its most interesting feature, distinguishing it from all other armies. Isolated as the soldiers are from their homes, unhabituated in many cases by nearly seven years of war from normal occupations, and visibly better provisioned than civilians, it is felt that the peasant will be most susceptible to Communist propaganda under military conditions.
The system of political control is as follows. Side by side with the hierarchy of military officers there exists a corresponding hierarchy of members of the Communist Party, small numerically, but endowed with far-reaching powers of supervision. These branches of the Communist Party extend their tentacles to the smallest unit of the army, and not a single soldier is exempt from the omnipresent Communist eye. The responsible Communist official in aregiment is called the Commissar, the others are called “political workers,” and constitute the “cell.” In my own unit, numbering nearly 200 men, there were never more than half-a-dozen Communists or “political workers,” and they were regarded with hatred and disgust by the others. Their chief duty obviously was to eavesdrop and report suspicious remarks, but their efforts were crowned with no great success because the commissar, to whom the Communists reported, was himself a sham Communist and a personal friend of my commander.
In other regiments in Petrograd with which I was in touch it was different. I particularly remember one commissar, formerly a locksmith by trade. He had had an elementary education and was distinguished by a strange combination of three marked traits: he was an ardent Communist, he was conspicuously honest, and he was an inveterate toper. I will refer to him as Comrade Morozov. Knowing that drunkenness was scheduled as a “crime unworthy of a Communist,” Morozov tried to cure himself of it, a feat which should not have been difficult considering that vodka had been almost unobtainable ever since the Tsar prohibited its production and sale at the beginning of the Great War. But Morozov nevertheless fell to vodka every time there was a chance. On the occasion of the wedding of a friend of his who was a speculator (and a genuine speculator) in foodstuffs, he invited two or three regimental companions, one of whom I knew well, to the feast. Although Petrograd was starving, there was such an abundance of good things at this repast and such a variety of wines and spirits, extracted from cellars known only to superior “speculators” who supplied important people like commissars, that it lasted not only one night, butwas continued on the morrow. Morozov disappeared from his regiment for three whole days and would undoubtedly have lost his post and, in the event of the full truth leaking out, have been shot, had not his friends sworn he had had an accident.
Yet Morozov could not have been bribed by money, and would have conscientiously exposed any “speculator” he found in his regiment. He was thoroughly contrite after the episode of the marriage feast. But it was not the wanton waste of foodstuffs that stirred his conscience, nor his connivance and participation in the revels of a “speculator,” but the fact that he had failed in his duty to his regiment and had only saved his skin by dissembling. His sense of fairness was remarkable for a Communist. At the elections to the Petrograd Soviet for which he was candidate for his regiment, he not only permitted but positively insisted that the voting should be by secret ballot—the only case of secret voting that I heard of. The result was that he was genuinely elected by a large majority, for apart from this quite unusual fairness he was fond of his soldiers and consequently popular. His intelligence was rudimentary and may be described as crudely locksmithian. An eddy of fortune had swept him to his present pinnacle of power, and judging others by himself he imagined the soviet régime was doing for everyone what it had done for him. Possessing plenty of heart but a weak head, he found considerable difficulty in reconciling the ruthless attitude of the Communists toward the people with his own more warm-hearted inclinations, but the usual argument served to stifle any inner questionings—namely, that since the Communists alone were right, all dissentients must be “enemies of the State” and he was in duty bound to treat them as such.
During the six or eight weeks that I had the opportunity to study Morozov after his appointment as regimental commissar, a perceptible change came over him. He grew suspicious and less frank and outspoken. Though he would scarcely have been able to formulate his thoughts in words, it was clear that the severity with which any criticism, even by Communists, of political commands from above was suppressed, and the rigid enforcement of iron discipline, within and without the party, differed greatly from the prospect of proletarian brotherhood which he had pictured to himself. At the same time he could only escape from these shackles by becoming an “enemy of the State,” and finally he, like all Communists, attributed the non-realization of his dreams to the insidious machinations of the scapegoats designated by his superiors, the non-Bolshevist Socialists, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who must be exterminated wholesale.
Morozov’s responsibilities, like those of all commissars, were heavy. Though in purely military affairs he was subordinate to the regimental commander, he was responsible for the latter’s loyalty and equally answerable with him for discipline in the ranks; besides which the responsibility for all political propaganda (regarded by the Government as of paramount importance) and even for the accuracy of army service rested upon him. A regimental commissar’s responsibilities are, in fact, so great that he can rarely secure his own safety without having recourse to spying provocation, and “experimental denunciation.”
Even Morozov had to resort to questionable strategy of this nature to forestall possible treachery in others for which he would have been held responsible. Havingbeen informed by a member of his “cell” that the conduct of a junior officer gave rise to misgivings, he had a purely fictitious charge made against him merely to see how the officer would be affected by it. It was found, as was not unusual, that the original complaint of the “political worker” was due to sheer spite, and that nothing had been further from the mind of the young officer, who was of a mild disposition, than to conspire against the all-powerful commissar. Anonymous written denunciations of individuals, charging them with counter-revolutionary activities, are of frequent occurrence, and commissars, terrified for their own safety, will rather err at the cost of the accused than risk their own positions through leniency or over-scrupulous attention to justice.
There is an intermediate grade between a “cell” leader and a commissar, known as a political guide. The latter has not the authority of a commissar but represents a stepping-stone to that dignity. Political guides have duties of investigation and control, but their chief task is to rope in the largest possible number of neophytes to the Communist Party. The whole power of the Bolshevist Government is founded on the diligence, zeal, and—it must be added—unscrupulousness of these various Communist officials. All sorts of instructions and propaganda pamphlets and leaflets are received by the “cells” in enormous quantities, and they have to see that such literature is distributed in the ranks and amongst the local population. It is read but little, for the soldiers and peasants are sick of the constant repetition of worn-out propagandist phrases. It was hoped originally that by the never-ending repetition of the words “vampires,” “bourgeois,” “class-struggle,” “bloodsucking capitalists and imperialists,” and so forth,some at least of the ideas presented would sink into the listeners’ minds and be taken for good coinage. But the results are almost negligible. It says much for the latent intelligence of the Russian peasant and worker that in spite of it all the members of “the party” number no more than some half-million, half of whom would be anything but Communists if they could. Propagandist leaflets are used principally for wrapping up herrings and making cigarettes, formahorka(the pepper-like tobacco beloved of the Russian soldier) is still issued in small quantities.
The only positive result which has been obtained by the above propaganda is the rousing of hatred and revenge against everything “bourgeois.” The wordbourgeoisis as foreign to the Russian language as it is to the English, and the average Russian soldier’s conception of “bourgeois” is simply everything that is above his understanding. But by cleverly associating the idea of “bourgeois” with that of opulence and landed possessions, Bolshevist agitators have made great play with it.
Yet even this has cut less deep than might have been expected, considering the effort expended. Propaganda on a wide scale is possible only in the towns and the army, and the army is after all but a very small percentage of the whole peasantry. The vast majority of the peasants are at home in their villages, and Bolshevist propaganda and administration reach no farther than a limited area on either side of Russia’s sparse network of railways.
Every Communist organization throughout Russia has to present periodical reports to headquarters on the progress of its labours. It goes without saying that, from fear of censure, such reports are invariably drawn up in the most favourable light possible. Particularlyis this the case in the army. If the membership of a “cell” does not increase, the supervising commissar or political guide will be asked the reason why. He will be publicly hauled over the coals for lack of energy, and unless his labours fructify he is liable to be lowered to an inferior post. Thus it is in the interest of Communist officials to coax, cajole, or even compel soldiers to enter the ranks of the party. The statistics supplied are collected at headquarters and summaries are published. It is according to these statistics that the membership of the Communist Party is a little more than half a million, out of the 120 or 130 million inhabitants of Soviet Russia.
Another feature of the Red army which is worthy of note is the group of organizations known as “Cultural-Enlightenment Committees,” which are entrusted with the work of entertaining and “enlightening” the soldiers. Being partly of an educational character the collaboration of non-Communists on these committees is indispensable, though rigid Communist control renders free participation by intellectuals impossible. There is also a lack of books. A department at headquarters, in which Maxim Gorky is interested, deals with the publication of scientific and literary works, but compared with the deluge of propagandist literature the work of his department is nil. The cultural-enlightenment committees arrange lectures on scientific subjects, dramatic performances, concerts, and cinema shows. The entertainments consist chiefly of the staging of “proletarian” plays, written to the order of the department of propaganda. From the artistic standpoint these plays are exceedingly bad—unmitigated Bolshevist atrocities—but their strong point is that they represent the class-struggle in avivid and lurid light. As no one would go to see them alone, other plays, usually farces, or musical items are thrown in by way of attraction. Propagandist speeches by Lenin, Trotzky, Zinoviev and others, reproduced on gramophones, are sometimes reeled off in the intervals. Schools of reading and writing are attached to some cultural-enlightenment committees.
In my regiment we had no cultural-enlightenment committee. Being unnecessary for purposes of control they were not so universal as the “cells,” but depended to some extent for their establishment upon the enterprise of the commissar. Living, however, mostly in Petrograd, I came in touch through friends with other regiments than my own, and attended entertainments got up by cultural-enlightenment committees until I knew the propagandist speeches, which were always the same, almost by heart. Let me describe one such meeting. It was in the regiment of which Morozov was commissar. At this particular meeting I was to have functioned as amateur accompanist and should have done so if one of the singers, from a Petrograd theatre, had not unexpectedly brought a professional with her.6
The organizer of this entertainment, though he played but little part in the performance, deserves a word of mention. As a sailor, of about twenty years of age, he differed greatly from his fellows. He was not ill-favoured in looks, unintelligent but upright, and occupied the post of chairman of the Poor Committee of a house where I was an habitual visitor. I will refer to him as Comrade Rykov. Like Morozov, Rykov had had only an elementary education and knew nothing of history, geography, or literature. History for him dated from Karl Marx, whom he was taught to regard rather as the Israelites did Moses; while his conception of geography was confined to a division of the world’s surface into Red and un-Red. Soviet Russia was Red, capitalistic countries (of which he believed there were very few) were White; and “White” was an adjective no less odious than “bourgeois.” But Rykov’s instincts were none the less good and it was with a genuine desire to better the lot of the proletariat that he had drifted into “the party.” Under the Tsarist régime he had suffered maltreatment. He had seen his comrades bullied and oppressed. The first months of the revolution had been too tempestuous, especially for the sailors, and the forces at issue too complex, for a man of Rykov’s stamp to comprehend the causes underlying the failure of the Provisional Government. To him the Soviet Government personified the Revolution itself. A few catch-phrases, such as “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “tyranny of the bourgeoisie,” “robber-capitalism,” “Soviet emancipation” completely dominated his mind and it seemed to him indisputably just that the definition of these terms should be left absolutely to the great ones who had conceived them. Thus Rykov, like most Communists, was utterly blindto inconsistencies. The discussion of policy, especially of foreign policy, of which the rest of the world hears so much, was not attempted by him. Rykov accepted his directions unhesitatingly from “those who knew.” He never asked himself why the party was so small, and popular discontent he attributed, as he was told to do, to the pernicious agitation of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were but Monarchists in disguise. Rykov was the type of man the Bolsheviks were striving their utmost to entice into the Communist Party. He had three supreme recommendations: he was a untiring worker, his genuinely good motives would serve to popularize the party, and he never thought. It is independent thinkers the Bolsheviks cannot tolerate. Rykov, like a good Communist, accepted the dogma propounded from above and that was the alpha and omega of his creed. But when it came to doing something to improve the lot of his fellows, and, incidentally, to lead them into the true Communist path, Rykov was all there. In other realms he would have made an ideal Y.M.C.A. or Salvation Army worker, and it was not surprising that he was in great demand whenever it was a question of amusing or entertaining the soldiers.
The hall was decorated with red flags. Portraits of Lenin, Trotzky, Zinoviev, and of course of Karl Marx, wreathed in red bunting and laurels, decorated the walls. Over the stage hung a crude inscription painted on cardboard: “Long live the Soviet Power,” while similar inscriptions, “Proletarians of all countries, unite,” and “Long live the World Revolution,” were hung around. The audience, consisting of the regiment and numerous guests, sat on wooden forms and disregarded the injunction not to smoke.
The entertainment began with the singing of the“Internationale,” the hymn of the World Revolution. The music of this song is as un-Russian, unmelodious, banal, and uninspiring as any music could possibly be. To listen to its never-ending repetition on every possible and impossible occasion is not the least of the inflictions which the Russian people are compelled to suffer under the present dispensation. When one compares it with the noble strains of the former national anthem, or with the revolutionary requiem which the Bolsheviks have happily not supplanted by any atrocity such as the “Internationale” but have inherited from their predecessors, or with national songs such asYeh-Uhnem, or for that matter with any Russian folk-music, then the “Internationale” calls up a picture of some abominable weed protruding from the midst of a garden of beautiful and fragrant flowers.
The “Internationale” was sung with energy by those in the audience who knew the words, and the accompanist made up with bombastic pianistic flourishes for the silence of those who did not.
Nothing could have afforded a more remarkable contrast than the item that followed. It was an unaccompanied quartette by four soldiers who sang a number of Russian folk-songs and one or two composed by the leader of the four. If you have not listened to the Russian peasants of a summer evening singing to accompany their dances on the village green, you cannot know exactly what it meant to these peasant soldiers, cooped in their city barracks, to hear their songs re-sung. The singers had rehearsed carefully, the execution was excellent, the enthusiasm they aroused was unbounded, and they were recalled again and again. They would probably have gone on endlessly had not the Jewish agitator, who wasacting as master of ceremonies and who had to make a speech later, announced that they must get along with the programme. The contrast between Bolshevism and Russianism could never have been more strikingly illustrated than by this accident of the “Internationale” being followed by Russian folk-songs. The former was an interpretation in sound of all the drab, monotonous unloveliness of the supposedly proletarian régime, the latter an interpretation in music of the unuttered yearnings of the Russian soul, aspiring after things unearthly, things beautiful, things spiritual.
There followed a selection of songs and romances by a lady singer from one of the musical-comedy theatres, and then the agitator rose. The job of a professional agitator is a coveted one in Red Russia. A good agitator is regarded as a very important functionary, and receives high pay. Coached in his arguments and phraseology in the propagandist schools of the capitals, he has nothing whatever to do but talk as loudly and as frequently as possible, merely embellishing his speeches in such a way as to make them forceful and, if possible, attractive. He requires no logic, and consequently no brains, for he is guaranteed against heckling by the Bolshevist system of denouncing political opponents as “enemies of the State” and imprisoning them. Thus the entire stock-in-trade of a professional agitator consists of “words, words, words,” and the more he has of them the better for him.
The youth who mounted the stage and prepared to harangue the audience was nineteen years of age, of criminal past (at that very time he was charged by the Bolsheviks themselves with theft), and possessed of pronounced Hebrew features. His complexion was lustrous, his nose was aquiline and crooked, his mouthwas small, and his eyes resembled those of a mouse. His discourse consisted of the usual exhortations to fight the landlord Whites. He was violent in his denunciation of the Allies, and of all non-Bolshevist Socialists. His speech closed somewhat as follows:
“So, comrades, you see that if we give in to the Whites all your land will go back to the landowners, all the factories to the money-makers, and you will be crushed again under the yoke of the murderous bankers, priests, generals, landlords, police, and other hirelings of bourgeois tyranny. They will whip you into slavery, and they will ride to wealth on the bleeding backs of you, your wives, and your children. Only we Communists can save you from the bloody rage of the White demons. Let us defend Red Petrograd to the last drop of our blood! Down with the English and French imperialist bloodsuckers! Long live the proletarian World Revolution!”
Having ended his speech, he signalled to the accompanist to strike up the “Internationale.” Then followed another strange contrast, one of those peculiar phenomena often met with in Russia, even in the Communist Party. A modest, nervous, and gentle-looking individual whom I did not know, as different from the previous speaker as water from fire, made a strangely earnest speech, urging the necessity of self-education as the only means of restoring Russia’s fallen fortunes. At the admission of fallen fortunes the Jew looked up with displeasure. He had sung the glories of the Red administration and the exploits of the Red army. It was not enough, said the speaker, that Russia had won the treasured Soviet Power—that, of course, was an inestimable boon—but until the people dragged themselves out of the morass of ignorance they could not profit by its benefits. Themasses of Russia, he urged, should set strenuously to work to raise themselves culturally and spiritually, in order to fit themselves for the great task they were called upon to perform, namely, to effect the emancipation of the workers of all the world.
The “Internationale” was not sung when he concluded. There was too much sincerity in his speech, and the bombastic strains of that tune would have been sadly out of place. The rest of the programme consisted of two stage performances, enacted by amateurs, the first one a light comedy, and the second a series of propagandist tableaux, depicting the sudden emancipation of the worker by the Soviet Power, heralded by an angel dressed all in red. In one of these Comrade Rykov proudly participated. In the concluding tableau the Red angel was seen guarding a smiling workman and his family on one side, and a smiling peasant and family on the other, while the audience was invited to rise and sing the “Internationale.”
Of conscious political intelligence in the cultural-enlightenment committees there is none, nor under “iron party discipline” can there possibly be any. All Communist agitators repeat, parrot-like, the epithets and catch-phrases dictated from above. None the less, despite their crudity and one-sidedness, these committees serve a positive purpose in the Red army. By the provision of entertainment the savagery of the soldiery has been curbed and literacy promoted. If they were non-political and run by intelligent people with the sole object of improving the minds of the masses they might be made a real instrument for the furtherance of education and culture. At present they are often grotesque. But representing an “upward” trend, the cultural-enlightenmentcommittees form a welcome contrast to the majority of Bolshevist institutions.
Our survey of the essential features of the Red army is now complete and may be summed up as follows:
1. A military machine, with all the attributes of other armies but differing in terminology. Its strength at the close of 1920 was said to be about two million, but this is probably exaggerated.
2. A concomitant organization, about one-tenth in size, of the Communist Party, permeating the entire army, subjected to military experts in purely military decisions, but with absolute powers of political and administrative control, supplemented by Special Departments of the Extraordinary Commission, Revolutionary Tribunals, and Special Commissions for Combating Desertion.
3. A network of Communist-controlled propagandist organizations called Cultural-Enlightenment Committees, whose object is the entertainment and education of the soldiers.
Tractable, docile, and leaderless though the Russian people are, the machine which has been built up in the Red army is still a monument to the inflexible will and merciless determination of its leader, Trotzky. Its development has been rapid and is perhaps not yet complete. Trotzky would make of it an absolutely soulless, will-less, obedient instrument which he can apply to whatsoever end he thinks fit. Unless a popular leader appears, the army is Trotzky’s as long as he can feed it.
There are those who have long believed an internal military coup to be imminent, organized by old-time generals such as Brusilov, Baluev, Rattel, Gutov,Parsky, Klembovsky and others, whose names are associated with the highest military posts in Soviet Russia. Three things militate against the early success of such a coup. First, the experience of internal conspiracies shows it to be next to impossible to conspire against the Extraordinary Commission. Secondly, the memory of White administrations is still too fresh in the minds of the common soldier. Thirdly, these generals suffer from the same defect as Wrangel, Denikin, and Kolchak, in that they are not politicians and have no concrete programme to offer the Russian people.
The local popularity of peasant leaders such as the “little fathers,” Balahovitch in Bielorusia and Makhno in Ukrainia, who denounce Bolsheviks, Tsars, and landlords alike, shows that could a bigger man than these be found to fire the imagination of the peasantry on a nation-wide scale the hoped-for national peasant uprising might become a reality. Until such a figure arises it is not to outside pressure or internal militarist conspiracies that we must look for the decay of Bolshevism, but must seek the signs of it in the very heart and core of the Communist Party. Such signs are already coming to light, and indicate sooner or later cataclysmic developments—unless the decay is forestalled by what Pilsudski, the Socialist president of the Polish Republic, foresees as a possibility. Pilsudski spent many years in exile in Siberia for revolutionary agitation against the Tsar and knows Russia through and through. He foresees the possibility that the entire Russian population, maddened with hunger, disease, and despair, may eventually rise and sweep down on western Europe in a frantic quest for food and warmth.
Such a point will not be reached as long as the peasant, successfully defying Bolshevist administration, continues to produce sufficient for his own requirements. It needs, however, but some severe stress of nature, such as the droughts which periodically visit the country, to reduce the people to that condition. Will anything be able to stop such an avalanche? Should it ever begin, the once so ardently looked-for Russian steam roller will at last have become an awful, devastating reality.