How is that will expressed? What is the organization welded by adversity which, in this crisis, supersedes even the Soviet Constitution, and stands between this people and chaos?
It is a commonplace to say that Russia is ruled, driven if you like, cold, starving as she is, to effort after effort by the dictatorship of a party. It is a commonplace alike in the mouths of those who wish to make the continued existence of that organization impossible and in the mouths of the Communists themselves. At the second congress of the Third International, Trotsky remarked. "A party as such, in the course of the development of a revolution, becomes identical with the revolution." Lenin, on the same occasion, replying to a critic who said that he differed from, the Communists in his understanding of what was meant by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, said, "He says that we understand by the words 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' what is actually the dictatorship of its determined and conscious minority. And that is the fact." Later he asked, "What is this minority? It may be called a party. If this minority is actually conscious, if it is able to draw the masses after it, if it shows itself capable of replying to every question on the agenda list of the political day, it actually constitutes a party." And Trotsky again, on the same occasion, illustrated the relative positions of the Soviet Constitution and the Communist Party when he said, "And today, now that we have received an offer of peace from the Polish Government, who decides the question? Whither are the workers to turn? We have our Council of People's Commissaries, of course, but that, too, must be under a certain control. Whose control? The control of the working class as a formless chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of the party is called together to discuss and decide the question. And when we have to wage war, to form new divisions, to find the best elements for them-to whom do we turn? To the party, to the Central Committee. And it gives directives to the local committees, 'Send Communists to the front.' The case is precisely the same with the Agrarian question, with that of supply, and with all other questions whatsoever."
No one denies these facts, but their mere statement is quite inadequate to explain what is being done in Russia and how it is being done. I do not think it would be a waste of time to set down as briefly as possible, without the comments of praise or blame that would be inevitable from one primarily interested in the problem from the Capitalist or Communist point of view what, from observation and inquiry, I believe to be the main framework of the organization whereby that dictatorship of the party works.
The Soviet Constitution is not so much moribund as in abeyance. The Executive Committee, for example, which used to meet once a week or even oftener, now meets on the rarest occasions. Criticism on this account was met with the reply that the members of the Executive Committee, for example, which used to meet once a week or even oftener, now meets on the rarest occasions. Criticism on this account was met with the reply that the members of the Executive Committee were busy on the front and in various parts of Russia. As a matter of fact, the work which that Committee used to do is now done by Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, so that the bulk of the 150 members of the Central Executive are actually free for other work, a saving of something like 130 men. This does not involve any very great change, but merely an economy in the use of men. In the old days, as I well remember, the opening of a session of the Executive Committee was invariably late, the reason being that the various parties composing it had not yet finished their preliminary and private discussions. There is now an overwhelming Communist majority in the Executive Committee, as elsewhere. I think it may be regarded as proved that these majorities are not always legitimately obtained. Non-Communist delegates do undoubtedly find every kind of difficulty put in their way by the rather Jesuitical adherents of the faith. But, no matter how these majorities are obtained, the result is that when the Communist Party has made up its mind on any subject, it is so certain of being able to carry its point that the calling together of the All-Russian Executive Committee is merely a theatrical demonstration of the fact that it can do what it likes. When it does meet, the Communists allow the microscopical opposition great liberty of speech, listen quietly, cheer ironically, and vote like one man, proving on every occasion that the meeting of the Executive Committee was the idlest of forms, intended rather to satisfy purists than for purposes of discussion, since the real discussion has all taken place beforehand among the Communists themselves. Something like this must happen with every representative assembly at which a single party has a great preponderance and a rigid internal discipline. The real interest is in the discussion inside the Party Committees.
This state of affairs would probably be more actively resented if the people were capable of resenting anything but their own hunger, or of fearing anything but a general collapse which would turn that hunger into starvation. It must be remembered that the urgency of the economic crisis has driven political questions into the background. The Communists (compare Rykov's remarks on this subject, p. 175) believe that this is the natural result of social revolution. They think that political parties will disappear altogether and that people will band together, not for the victory of one of several contending political parties, but solely for economic cooperation or joint enterprise in art or science. In support of this they point to the number of their opponents who have become Communists, and to the still greater number of non-Communists who are loyally working with them for the economic reconstruction of the country. I do not agree with the Communists in this, nor yet with their opponents, who attribute the death of political discussion to fear of the Extraordinary Commission. I think that both the Communists and their opponents underestimate the influence of the economic ruin that affects everybody. The latter particularly, feeling that in some way they must justify themselves to politically minded foreign visitors, seek an excuse for their apathy in the one institution that is almost universally unpopular. I have many non-Communist friends in Russia, but have never detected the least restraint that could be attributed to fear of anybody in their criticisms of the Communist regime. The fear existed alike among Communists and non-Communists, but it was like the fear of people walking about in a particularly bad thunderstorm. The activities and arrests of the Extraordinary Commission are so haphazard, often so utterly illogical, that it is quite idle for any one to say to himself that by following any given line of conduct he will avoid molestation. Also, there is something in the Russian character which makes any prohibition of discussion almost an invitation to discuss. I have never met a Russian who could be prevented from saying whatever he liked whenever he liked, by any threats or dangers whatsoever. The only way to prevent a Russian from talking is to cut out his tongue. The real reason for the apathy is that, for the moment, for almost everybody political questions are of infinitesimal importance in comparison with questions of food and warmth. The ferment of political discussion that filled the first years of the revolution has died away, and people talk about little but what they are able to get for dinner, or what somebody else his been able to get. I, like other foreign visitors coming to Russia after feeding up in other countries, am all agog to make people talk. But the sort of questions which interest me, with my full-fed stomach, are brushed aside almost fretfully by men who have been more or less hungry for two or three years on end.
I find, instead of an urgent desire to alter this or that at once, to-morrow, in the political complexion of the country, a general desire to do the best that can be done with things as they are, a general fear of further upheaval of any kind, in fact a general acquiescence in the present state of affairs politically, in the hope of altering the present state of affairs economically. And this is entirely natural. Everybody, Communists included, rails bitterly at the inefficiencies of the present system, but everybody, Anti-Communists included, admits that there is nothing whatever capable of taking its place. Its failure is highly undesirable, not because it itself is good, but because such failure would be preceded or followed by a breakdown of all existing organizations. Food distribution, inadequate as it now is, would come to an end. The innumerable non-political committees, which are rather like Boards of Directors controlling the Timber, Fur, Fishery, Steel, Matches or other Trusts (since the nationalized industries can be so considered) would collapse, and with them would collapse not only yet one more hope of keeping a breath of life in Russian industry, but also the actual livelihoods of a great number of people, both Communists and non-Communists. I do not think it is realized out-side Russia how large a proportion of the educated classes have become civil servants of one kind or another. It is a rare thing when a whole family has left Russia, and many of the most embittered partisans of war on Russia have relations inside Russia who have long ago found places under the new system, and consequently fear its collapse as much as any one. One case occurs to me in which a father was an important minister in one of the various White Governments which have received Allied support, while his son inside Russia was doing pretty well as a responsible official under the Communists. Now in the event of a violent change, the Communists would be outlaws with a price on every head, and those who have worked with them, being Russians, know their fellow countrymen well enough to be pretty well convinced that the mere fact that they are without cards of the membership of the Communist Party, would not save them in the orgy of slaughter that would follow any such collapse.
People may think that I underestimate the importance of, the Extraordinary Commission. I am perfectly aware that without this police force with its spies, its prisons and its troops, the difficulties of the Dictatorship would be increased by every kind of disorder, and the chaos, which I fear may come, would have begun long ago. I believe, too, that the overgrown power of the Extraordinary Commission, and the cure that must sooner or later be applied to it, may, as in the French Revolution, bring about the collapse of the whole system. The Commission depends for its strength on the fear of something else. I have seen it weaken when there was a hope of general peace. I have seen it tighten its grip in the presence of attacks from without and attempted assassination within. It is dreaded by everybody; not even Communists are safe from it; but it does not suffice to explain the Dictatorship, and is actually entirely irrelevant to the most important process of that Dictatorship, namely, the adoption of a single idea, a single argument, by the whole of a very large body of men. The whole power of the Extraordinary Commission does not affect in the slightest degree discussions inside the Communist Party, and those discussions are the simple fact distinguishing the Communist Dictatorship from any of the other dictatorships by which it may be supplanted.
There are 600,000 members of the Communist Party (611,978 on April 2, 1920). There are nineteen members of the Central Committee of that party. There are, I believe, five who, when they agree, can usually sway the remaining fourteen. There is no need to wonder how these fourteen can be argued into acceptance of the views of the still smaller inner ring, but the process of persuading the six hundred thousand of the desirability of, for example, such measures as those involved in industrial conscription which, at first sight, was certainly repugnant to most of them, is the main secret of the Dictatorship, and is not in any way affected by the existence of the Extraordinary Commission.
Thus the actual government of Russia at the present time may be not unfairly considered as a small group inside the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This small group is able to persuade the majority of the remaining members of that Committee. The Committee then sets about persuading the majority of the party. In the case of important measures the process is elaborate. The Committee issues a statement of its case, and the party newspapers the Pravda and its affiliated organs are deluged with its discussion. When this discussion has had time to spread through the country, congresses of Communists meet in the provincial centres, and members of the Central Committee go down to these conferences to defend the "theses" which the Committee has issued. These provincial congresses, exclusively Communist, send their delegates of an All-Russian Congress. There the "theses" of the Central Committee get altered, confirmed, or, in the case of an obviously unpersuaded and large opposition in the party, are referred back or in other ways shelved. Then the delegates, even those who have been in opposition at the congress, go back to the country pledged to defend the position of the majority. This sometimes has curious results. For example, I heard Communist Trades Unionists fiercely arguing against certain clauses in the theses on industrial conscription at a Communist Congress at the Kremlin; less than a week afterwards I heard these same men defending precisely these clauses at a Trades Union Congress over the way, they loyally abiding by the collective opinion of their fellow Communists and subject to particularly uncomfortable heckling from people who vociferously reminded them (since the Communist debates had been published) that they were now defending what, a few days before, they had vehemently attacked.
The great strength of the Communist Party is comparable to the strength of the Jesuits, who, similarly, put themselves and their opinions at the disposal of the body politic of their fellow members. Until a decision had been made, a Communist is perfectly free to do his best to prevent it being made, to urge alterations in it, or to supply a rival decision, but once it has been made he will support it without changing his private opinion. In all mixed congresses, rather than break the party discipline, he will give his vote for it, speak in favor of it, and use against its adversaries the very arguments that have been used against himself. He has his share in electing the local Communist Committee, and, indirectly, in electing the all-powerful Central Committee of the party, and he binds himself to do at any moment in his life exactly what these Committees decide for him. These Committees decide the use that is to be made of the lives, not only of the rank and file of the party, but also of their own members. Even a member of the Central Committee does not escape. He may be voted by his fellow members into leaving a job he likes and taking up another he detests in which they think his particular talents will better serve the party aims. To become a member of the Communist Party involves a kind of intellectual abdication, or, to put it differently, a readiness at any moment to place the collective wisdom of the party's Committee above one's individual instincts or ideas. You may influence its decisions, you may even get it to endorse your own, but Lenin himself, if he were to fail on any occasion to obtain the agreement of a majority in the Central Committee, would have to do precisely what the Committee should tell him. Lenin's opinion carries great weight because he is Lenin, but it carries less weight than that of the Central Committee, of which he forms a nineteenth part. On the other hand, the opinion of Lenin and a very small group of outstanding figures is supported by great prestige inside the Committee, and that of the Committee is supported by overwhelming prestige among the rank and file. The result is that this small group is nearly always sure of being able to use the whole vote of 600,000 Communists, in the realization of its decisions.
Now 600,000 men and women acting on the instructions of a highly centralized directive, all the important decisions of which have been thrashed out and re-thrashed until they have general support within the party; 600,000 men and women prepared, not only to vote in support of these decisions, but with a carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women who are persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be saved; who are persuaded (to put it as cynically and unsympathetically as possible) that the noblest death one can die is in carrying out a decision of the Central Committee; such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an enormously strong embodiment of human will, an instrument of struggle capable of working something very like miracles. It can be and is controlled like an army in battle. It can mobilize its members, 10 per cent. of them, 50 per cent., the local Committees choosing them, and send them to the front when the front is in danger, or to the railways and repair shops when it is decided that the weakest point is that of transport. If its only task were to fight those organizations of loosely knit and only momentarily united interests which are opposed to it, those jerry-built alliances of Reactionaries with Liberals, United-Indivisible-Russians with Ukrainians, Agrarians with Sugar-Refiners, Monarchists with Republicans, that task would long ago have been finished. But it has to fight something infinitely stronger than these in fighting the economic ruin of Russia, which, if it is too strong, too powerful to be arrested by the Communists, would make short work of those who are without any such fanatic single-minded and perfectly disciplined organization.
I have already suggested that although the small Central Committee of the Communist Party does invariably get its own way, there are essential differences between this Dictatorship and the dictatorship of, for example, a General. The main difference is that whereas the General merely writes an order about which most people hear for the first time only when it is promulgated, the Central Committee prepares the way for its dictation by a most elaborate series of discussions and counter discussions throughout the country, whereby it wins the bulk of the Communist Party to its opinion, after which it proceeds through local and general congresses to do the same with the Trades Unions. This done, a further series of propaganda meetings among the people actually to be affected smooths the way for the introduction of whatever new measure is being carried through at the moment. All this talk, besides lessening the amount of physical force necessary in carrying out a decision, must also avoid, at least in part, the deadening effect that would be caused by mere compulsory obedience to the unexplained orders of a military dictator. Of the reality of the Communist Dictatorship I have no sort of doubt. But its methods are such as tend towards the awakening of a political consciousness which, if and when normal conditions-of feeding and peace, for example-are attained, will make dictatorship of any kind almost impossible.
To illustrate these methods of the Dictatorship, I cannot do better than copy into this book some pages of my diary written in March of this year when I was present at one of the provincial conferences which were held in preparation of the All-Russian Communist Conference at the end of the month.
At seven in the evening Radek called for me and took me to the Jaroslavl station, where we met Larin, whom I had known in 1918. An old Menshevik, he was the originator and most urgent supporter of the decree annulling the foreign debts. He is a very ill man, partially paralyzed, having to use both hands even to get food to his mouth or to turn over the leaves of a book. In spite of this he is one of the hardest workers in Russia, and although his obstinacy, his hatred of compromise, and a sort of mixed originality and perverseness keep him almost permanently at loggerheads with the Central Committee, he retains everybody's respect because of the real heroism with which he conquers physical disabilities which long ago would have overwhelmed a less unbreakable spirit. Both Radek and Larin were going to the Communist Conference at Jaroslavl which was to consider the new theses of the Central Committee of the party with regard to Industrial Conscription. Radek was going to defend the position of the Central Committee, Larin to defend his own. Both are old friends. As Radek said to me, he intended to destroy Larin's position, but not, if he could help it, prevent Larin being nominated among the Jaroslavl delegates to All-Russian Conference which was in preparation. Larin, whose work keeps him continually traveling, has his own car, specially arranged so that his uninterrupted labor shall have as little effect as possible on his dangerously frail body. Radek and I traveled in one of the special cars of the Central Executive Committee, of which he is a member.
The car seemed very clean, but, as an additional precaution, we began by rubbing turpentine on our necks and wrists and angles for the discouragement of lice, now generally known as "Semashki" from the name of Semashko, the Commissar of Public Health, who wages unceasing war for their destruction as the carriers of typhus germs. I rubbed the turpentine so energetically into my neck that it burnt like a collar of fire, and for a long time I was unable to get to sleep.
In the morning Radek, the two conductors who had charge of the wagons and I sat down together to breakfast and had a very merry meal, they providing cheese and bread and I a tin of corned beef providently sent out from home by the Manchester Guardian. We cooked up some coffee on a little spirit stove, which, in a neat basket together with plates, knives, forks, etc. (now almost unobtainable in Russia) had been a parting present from the German Spartacists to Radek when he was released from prison in Berlin and allowed to leave Germany.
The morning was bright and clear, and we had an excellent view of Jaroslavl when we drove from the station to the town, which is a mile or so off the line of the railway. The sun poured down on the white snow, on the barges still frozen into the Volga River, and on the gilt and painted domes and cupolas of the town. Many of the buildings had been destroyed during the rising artificially provoked in July, 1918, and its subsequent suppression. More damage was done then than was necessary, because the town was recaptured by troops which had been deserted by most of their officers, and therefore hammered away with artillery without any very definite plan of attack. The more important of the damaged buildings, such as the waterworks and the power station, have been repaired, the tramway was working, and, after Moscow, the town seemed clean, but plenty of ruins remained as memorials of that wanton and unjustifiable piece of folly which, it was supposed, would be the signal for a general rising.
We drove to the Hotel Bristol, now the headquarters of the Jaroslavl Executive Committee, where Rostopchin, the president, discussed with Larin and Radek the programme arranged for the conference. It was then proposed that we should have something to eat, when a very curious state of affairs (and one extremely Russian) was revealed. Rostopchin admitted that the commissariat arrangements of the Soviet and its Executive Committee were very bad. But in the center of the town there is a nunnery which was very badly damaged during the bombardment and is now used as a sort of prison or concentration camp for a Labor Regiment. Peasants from the surrounding country who have refused to give up their proper contribution of corn, or leave otherwise disobeyed the laws, are, for punishment, lodged here, and made to expiate their sins by work. It so happens, Rostopchin explained, that the officer in charge of the prison feeding arrangements is a very energetic fellow, who had served in the old army in a similar capacity, and the meals served out to the prisoners are so much better than those produced in the Soviet headquarters, that the members of the Executive Committee make a practice of walking over to the prison to dine. They invited us to do the same. Larin did not feel up to the walk, so he remained in the Soviet House to eat an inferior meal, while Radek and I, with Rostopchin and three other members of the local committee walked round to the prison. The bell tower of the old nunnery had been half shot away by artillery, and is in such a precarious condition that it is proposed to pull it down. But on passing under it we came into a wide courtyard surrounded by two-story whitewashed buildings that seemed scarcely to have suffered at all. We found the refectory in one of these buildings. It was astonishingly clean. There were wooden tables, of course without cloths, and each man had a wooden spoon and a hunk of bread. A great bowl of really excellent soup was put down in the middle of table, and we fell to hungrily enough. I made more mess on the table than any one else, because it requires considerable practice to convey almost boiling soup from a distant bowl to one's mouth without spilling it in a shallow wooden spoon four inches in diameter, and, having got it to one's mouth, to get any of it in without slopping over on either side. The regular diners there seemed to find no difficulty in it at all. One of the prisoners who mopped up after my disasters said I had better join them for a week, when I should find it quite easy. The soup bowl was followed by a fry of potatoes, quantities of which are grown in the district. For dealing with these I found the wooden spoon quite efficient. After that we had glasses of some sort of substitute for tea.
The Conference was held in the town theatre. There was a hint of comedy in the fact that the orchestra was playing the prelude to some very cheerful opera before the curtain rang up. Radek characteristically remarked that such music should be followed by something more sensational than a conference, proposed to me that we should form a tableau to illustrate the new peaceful policy of England with regard to Russia. As it was a party conference, I had really no right to be there, but Radek had arranged with Rostopchin that I should come in with himself, and be allowed to sit in the wings at the side of the stage. On the stage were Rostopchin, Radek, Larin and various members of the Communist Party Committee in the district. Everything was ready, but the orchestra went on with its jig music on the other side of the curtain. A message was sent to them. The music stopped with a jerk. The curtain rose, disclosing a crowded auditorium. Everybody stood up, both on the stage and in the theater, and sang, accompanied by the orchestra, first the "Internationale" and then the song for those who had died for the revolution. Then except for two or three politically minded musicians, the orchestra vanished away and the Conference began.
Unlike many of the meetings and conferences at which I have been present in Russia, this Jaroslavl Conference seemed to me to include practically none but men and women who either were or had been actual manual workers. I looked over row after row of faces in the theatre, and could only find two faces which I thought might be Jewish, and none that obviously belonged to the "intelligentsia." I found on inquiry that only three of the Communists present, excluding Radek and Larin, were old exiled and imprisoned revolutionaries of the educated class. Of these, two were on the platform. All the rest were from the working class. The great majority of them, of course, had joined the Communists in 1917, but a dozen or so had been in the party as long as the first Russian revolution of 1905.
Radek, who was tremendously cheered (his long imprisonment in Germany, during which time few in Russia thought that they would see him alive again, has made him something of a popular hero) made a long, interesting and pugnacious speech setting out the grounds on which the Central Committee base their ideas about Industrial Conscription. These ideas are embodied in the series of theses issued by the Central Committee in January (see p. 134). Larin, who was very tired after the journey and patently conscious that Radek was a formidable opponent, made a speech setting out his reasons for differing with the Central Committee, and proposed an ingenious resolution, which, while expressing approval of the general position of the Committee, included four supplementary modifications which, as a matter of fact, nullified that position altogether. It was then about ten at night, and the Conference adjourned. We drove round to the prison in sledges, and by way of supper had some more soup and potatoes, and so back to the railway station to sleep in the cars.
Next day the Conference opened about noon, when there was a long discussion of the points at issue. Workman after workman came to the platform and gave his view. Some of the speeches were a little naive, as when one soldier said that Comrades Lenin and Trotsky had often before pointed out difficult roads, and that whenever they had been followed they had shown the way to victory, and that therefore, though there was much in the Central Committee's theses that was hard to digest, he was for giving them complete support, confident that, as Comrades Lenin and Trotsky were in favor of them, they were likely to be right this time, as so often heretofore. But for the most part the speeches were directly concerned with the problem under discussion, and showed a political consciousness which would have been almost incredible three years ago. The Red Army served as a text for many, who said that the methods which had produced that army and its victories over the Whites had been proved successful and should be used to produce a Red Army of Labor and similar victories on the bloodless front against economic disaster. Nobody seemed to question the main idea of compulsory labor. The contest that aroused real bitterness was between the methods of individual and collegiate command. The new proposals lead eventually towards individual command, and fears were expressed lest this should mean putting summary powers into the hands of bourgeois specialists, thus nullifying "workers' control". In reply, it was pointed out that individual command had proved necessary in the army and had resulted in victory for the revolution. The question was not between specialists and no specialists. Everybody knew that specialists were necessary. The question was how to get the most out of them. Effective political control had secured that bourgeois specialists, old officers, led to victory the army of the Red Republic. The same result could be secured in the factories in the same way. It was pointed out that in one year they had succeeded in training 32,000 Red Commanders, that is to say, officers from the working class itself, and that it was not Utopian to hope and work for a similar output of workmen specialists, technically trained, and therefore themselves qualified for individual command in the factories. Meanwhile there was nothing against the employment of Political Commissars in the factories as formerly in the regiments, to control in other than technical matters the doings of the specialists. On the other hand, it was said that the appointment of Commissars would tend to make Communists unpopular, since inevitably in many cases they would have to support the specialists against the workmen, and that the collegiate system made the workmen feel that they were actually the masters, and so gave possibilities of enthusiastic work not otherwise obtainable. This last point was hotly challenged. It was said that collegiate control meant little in effect, except waste of time and efficiency, because at worst work was delayed by disputes and at best the workmen members of the college merely countersigned the orders decided upon by the specialists. The enthusiastic work was said to be a fairy story. If it were really to be found then there would be no need for a conference to discover how to get it.
The most serious opposition, or at least the most serious argument put forward, for there was less opposition than actual discussion, came from some of the representatives of the Trade Unionists. A good deal was said about the position of the Trades Unions in a Socialist State. There was general recognition that since the Trade Unions themselves controlled the conditions of labor and wages, the whole of their old work of organizing strikes against capitalists had ceased to have any meaning, since to strike now would be to strike against their own decisions. At the same time, certain tendencies to Syndicalism were still in existence, tendencies which might well lead to conflict between different unions, so that, for example, the match makers or the metal worker, might wish to strike a bargain with the State, as of one country with another, and this might easily lead to a complete collapse of the socialist system.
The one thing on which the speakers were in complete agreement was the absolute need of an effort in industry equal to, if not greater than, the effort made in the army. I thought it significant that in many of the speeches the importance of this effort was urged as the only possible means of retaining the support of the peasants. There was a tacit recognition that the Conference represented town workers only. Larin, who had belonged to the old school which had grown up with its eyes on the industrial countries of the West and believed that revolution could be brought about by the town workers alone, that it was exclusively their affair, and that all else was of minor importance, unguardedly spoke of the peasant as "our neighbor." In Javoslavl, country and town are too near to allow the main problem of the revolution to be thus easily dismissed. It was instantly pointed out that the relation was much more intimate, and that, even if it were only "neighborly," peace could not long be preserved if it were continually necessary for one neighbor to steal the chickens of the other. These town workers of a district for the most part agricultural were very sure that the most urgent of all tasks was to raise industry to the point at which the town would really be able to supply the village with its needs.
Larin and Radek severally summed up and made final attacks on each other's positions, after which Radek's resolution approving the theses of the Central Committee was passed almost unanimously. Larin's four amendments received 1, 3, 7 and 1 vote apiece. This result was received with cheering throughout the theater, and showed the importance of such Conferences in smoothing the way of the Dictatorship, since it had been quite obvious when the discussion began that a very much larger proportion of the delegates than finally voted for his resolution had been more or less in sympathy with Larin in his opposition to the Central Committee.
There followed elections to the Party Conference in Moscow. Rostopchin, the president, read a list which had been submitted by the various ouyezds in the Jaroslavl Government. They were to send to Moscow fifteen delegates with the right to vote, together with another fifteen with the right to speak but not to vote. Larin, who had done much work in the district, was mentioned as one of the fifteen voting delegates, but he stood up and said that as the Conference had so clearly expressed its disagreement with his views, he thought it better to withdraw his candidature. Rostopchin put it to the Conference that although they disagreed with Larin, yet it would be as well that he should have the opportunity of stating his views at the All-Russian Conference, so that discussion there should be as final and as many-sided as possible. The Conference expressed its agreement with this. Larin withdrew his withdrawal, and was presently elected. The main object of these conferences in unifying opinion and in arming Communists with argument for the defence of this unified opinion a mong the masses was again illustrated when the Conference, in leaving it to the ouyezds to choose for themselves the non-voting delegates urged them to select wherever possible people who would have the widest opportunities of explaining on their return to the district whatever results might be reached in Moscow.
It was now pretty late in the evening, and after another very satisfactory visit to the prison we drove back to the station. Larin, who was very disheartened, realizing that he had lost much support in the course of the discussion, settled down to work, and buried himself in a mass of statistics. I prepared to go to bed, but we had hardly got into the car when there was a tap at the door and a couple of railwaymen came in. They explained that a few hundred yards away along the line a concert and entertainment arranged by the Jaroslavl railwaymen was going on, and that their committee, hearing that Radek was at the station, had sent them to ask him to come over and say a few words to them if he were not too tired.
"Come along," said Radek, and we walked in the dark along the railway lines to a big one-story wooden shanty, where an electric lamp lit a great placard, "Railwaymen's Reading Room." We went into a packed hall. Every seat was occupied by railway workers and their wives and children. The gangways on either side were full of those who had not found room on the benches. We wriggled and pushed our way through this crowd, who were watching a play staged and acted by the railwaymen themselves, to a side door, through which we climbed up into the wings, and slid across the stage behind the scenery into a tiny dressing-room. Here Radek was laid hold of by the Master of the Ceremonies, who, it seemed, was also part editor of a railwaymen's newspaper, and made to give a long account of the present situation of Soviet Russia's Foreign Affairs. The little box of a room filled to a solid mass as policemen, generals and ladies of the old regime threw off their costumes, and, in their working clothes, plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen. When the act ended, one of the railwaymen went to the front of the stage and announced that Radek, who had lately come back after imprisonment in Germany for the cause of revolution, was going to talk to them about the general state of affairs. I saw Radek grin at this forecast of his speech. I understood why, when he began to speak. He led off by a direct and furious onslaught on the railway workers in general, demanding work, work and more work, telling them that as the Red Army had been the vanguard of the revolution hitherto, and had starved and fought and given lives to save those at home from Denikin and Kolchak, so now it was the turn of the railway workers on whose efforts not only the Red Army but also the whole future of Russia depended. He addressed himself to the women, telling them in very bad Russian that unless their men worked superhumanly they would see their babies die from starvation next winter. I saw women nudge their husbands as they listened. Instead of giving them a pleasant, interesting sketch of the international position, which, no doubt, was what they had expected, he took the opportunity to tell them exactly how things stood at home. And the amazing thing was that they seemed to be pleased. They listened with extreme attention, wanted to turn out some one who had a sneezing fit at the far end of the hall, and nearly lifted the roof off with cheering when Radek had done. I wondered what sort of reception a man would have who in another country interrupted a play to hammer home truths about the need of work into an audience of working men who had gathered solely for the purpose of legitimate recreation. It was not as if he sugared the medicine he gave them. His speech was nothing but demands for discipline and work, coupled with prophecy of disaster in case work and discipline failed. It was delivered like all his speeches, with a strong Polish accent and a steady succession of mistakes in grammar.
As we walked home along the railway lines, half a dozen of the railwaymen pressed around Radek, and almost fought with each other as to who should walk next to him. And Radek entirely happy, delighted at his success in giving them a bombshell instead of a bouquet, with one stout fellow on one arm, another on the other, two or three more listening in front and behind, continued rubbing it into them until we reached our wagon, when, after a general handshaking, they disappeared into the night.
Trade Unions in Russia are in a different position from that which is common to all other Trades Unions in the world. In other countries the Trades Unions are a force with whose opposition the Government must reckon. In Russia the Government reckons not on the possible opposition of the Trades Unions, but on their help for realizing its most difficult measures, and for undermining and overwhelming any opposition which those measures may encounter. The Trades Unions in Russia, instead of being an organization outside the State protecting the interests of a class against the governing class, have become a part of the State organization. Since, during the present period of the revolution the backbone of the State organization is the Communist Party, the Trade Unions have come to be practically an extension of the party organization. This, of course, would be indignantly denied both by Trade Unionists and Communists. Still, in the preface to the All-Russian Trades Union Reports for 1919, Glebov, one of the best-known Trade Union leaders whom I remember in the spring of last year objecting to the use of bourgeois specialists in their proper places, admits as much in the following muddleheaded statement:—
"The base of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist Party, which in general directs all the political and economic work of the State, leaning, first of all, on the Soviets as on the more revolutionary form of dictatorship of the proletariat, and secondly on the Trades Unions, as organizations which economically unite the proletariat of factory and workshop as the vanguard of the revolution, and as organizations of the new socialistic construction of the State. Thus the Trade Unions must be considered as a base of the Soviet State, as an organic form complementary to the other forms of the Proletariat Dictatorship." These two elaborate sentences constitute an admission of what I have just said.
Trades Unionists of other countries must regard the fate of their Russian colleagues with horror or with satisfaction, according to their views of events in Russia taken as a whole. If they do not believe that there has been a social revolution in Russia, they must regard the present position of the Russian Trades Unions as the reward of a complete defeat of Trade Unionism, in which a Capitalist government has been able to lay violent hands on the organization which was protecting the workers against it. If, on the other hand, they believe that there has been a social revolution, so that the class organized in Trades Unions is now, identical with the governing, class (of employers, etc.) against which the unions once struggled, then they must regard the present position as a natural and satisfactory result of victory.
When I was in Moscow in the spring of this year the Russian Trades Unions received a telegram from the Trades Union Congress at Amsterdam, a telegram which admirably illustrated the impossibility of separating judgment of the present position of the Unions from judgments of the Russian revolution as a whole. It encouraged the Unions "in their struggle" and promised support in that struggle. The Communists immediately asked "What struggle? Against the capitalist system in Russia which does not exist? Or against capitalist systems outside Russia?" They said that either the telegram meant this latter only, or it meant that its writers did not believe that there had been a social revolution in Russia. The point is arguable. If one believes that revolution is an impossibility, one can reason from that belief and say that in spite of certain upheavals in Russia the fundamental arrangement of society is the same there as in other countries, so that the position of the Trade Unions there must be the same, and, as in other countries they must be still engaged in augmenting the dinners of their members at the expense of the dinners of the capitalists which, in the long run (if that were possible) they would abolish. If, on the other hand, one believes that social revolution has actually occurred, to speak of Trades Unions continuing the struggle in which they conquered something like three years ago, is to urge them to a sterile fanaticism which has been neatly described by Professor Santayana as a redoubling of your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
It 's probably true that the "aim" of the Trades Unions was more clearly defined in Russia than elsewhere. In England during the greater part of their history the Trades Unions have not been in conscious opposition to the State. In Russia this position was forced on the Trades Unions almost before they had time to get to work. They were born, so to speak, with red flags in their hands. They grew up under circumstances of extreme difficulty and persecution. From 1905 on they were in decided opposition to the existing system, and were revolutionary rather than merely mitigatory organizations.
Before 1905 they were little more than associations for mutual help, very weak, spending most of their energies in self-preservation from the police, and hiding their character as class organizations by electing more or less Liberal managers and employers as "honorary members." 1905, however, settled their revolutionary character. In September of that year there was a Conference at Moscow, where it was decided to call an All-Russian Trades Union Congress. Reaction in Russia made this impossible, and the most they could do was to have another small Conference in February, 1906, which, however, defined their object as that of creating a general Trade Union Movement organized on All-Russian lines. The temper of the Trades Unions then, and the condition of the country at that time, may be judged from the fact that although they were merely working for the right to form Unions, the right to strike, etc., they passed the following significant resolution: "Neither from the present Government nor from the future State Duma can be expected realization of freedom of coalition. This Conference considers the legalization of the Trades Unions under present conditions absolutely impossible." The Conference was right. For twelve years after that there were no Trades Unions Conferences in Russia. Not until June, 1917, three months after the March Revolution, was the third Trade Union Conference able to meet. This Conference reaffirmed the revolutionary character of the Russian Trades Unions.
At that time the dominant party in the Soviets was that of the Mensheviks, who were opposed to the formation of a Soviet Government, and were supporting the provisional Cabinet of Kerensky. The Trades Unions were actually at that time more revolutionary than the Soviets. This third Conference passed several resolutions, which show clearly enough that the present position of the Unions has not been brought about by any violence of the Communists from without, but was definitely promised by tendencies inside the Unions at a time when the Communists were probably the least authoritative party in Russia. This Conference of June, 1917, resolved that the Trades Unions should not only "remain militant class organizations... but... should support the activities of the Soviets of soldiers and deputies." They thus clearly showed on which side they stood in the struggle then proceeding. Nor was this all. They also, though the Mensheviks were still the dominant party, resolved on that system of internal organizations and grouping, which has been actually realized under the Communists. I quote again from the resolution of this Conference:
"The evolution of the economic struggle demands from the workers such forms of professional organization as, basing themselves on the connection between various groups of workers in the process of production, should unite within a general organization, and under general leadership, as large masses of workers as possible occupied in enterprises of the same kind, or in similar professions. With this object the workers should organize themselves professionally, not by shops or trades, but by productions, so that all the workers of a given enterprise should belong to one Union, even if they belong to different professions and even different productions." That which was then no more than a design is now an accurate description of Trades Union organization in Russia. Further, much that at present surprises the foreign inquirer was planned and considered desirable then, before the Communists had won a majority either in the Unions or in the Soviet. Thus this same third Conference resolved that "in the interests of greater efficiency and success in the economic struggle, a professional organization should be built on the principle of democratic centralism, assuring to every member a share in the affairs of the organization and, at the same time, obtaining unity in the leadership of the struggle." Finally "Unity in the direction (leadership) of the economic struggle demands unity in the exchequer of the Trades Unions."
The point that I wish to make in thus illustrating the pre-Communist tendencies of the Russian Trades Unions is not simply that if their present position is undesirable they have only themselves to thank for it, but that in Russia the Trades Union movement before the October Revolution was working in the direction of such a revolution, that the events of October represented something like a Trade Union victory, so that the present position of the Unions as part of the organization defending that victory, as part of the system of government set up by that revolution, is logical and was to be expected. I have illustrated this from resolutions, because these give statements in words easily comparable with what has come to pass. It would be equally easy to point to deeds instead of words if we need more forcible though less accurate illustrations.
Thus, at the time of the Moscow Congress the Soviets, then Mensheviks, who were represented at the Congress (the object of the Congress was to whip up support for the Coalition Government) were against strikes of protest. The Trades Unions took a point of view nearer that of the Bolsheviks, and the strikes in Moscow took place in spite of the Soviets. After the Kornilov affair, when the Mensheviks were still struggling for coalition with the bourgeois parties, the Trades Unions quite definitely took the Bolshevik standpoint. At the so-called Democratic Conference, intended as a sort of life belt for the sinking Provisional Government, only eight of the Trades Union delegates voted for a continuance of the coalition, whereas seventy three voted against.
This consciously revolutionary character throughout their much shorter existence has distinguished Russian from, for example, English Trades Unions. It has set their course for them.
In October, 1917, they got the revolution for which they had been asking since March. Since then, one Congress after another has illustrated the natural and inevitable development of Trades Unions inside a revolutionary State which, like most if not all revolutionary States, is attacked simultaneously by hostile armies from without and by economic paralysis from within. The excited and lighthearted Trades Unionists of three years ago, who believed that the mere decreeing of "workers' control" would bring all difficulties automatically to an end, are now unrecognizable. We have seen illusion after illusion scraped from them by the pumice-stone of experience, while the appalling state of the industries which they now largely control, and the ruin of the country in which they attained that control, have forced them to alter their immediate aims to meet immediate dangers, and have accelerated the process of adaptation made inevitable by their victory.
The process of adaptation has had the natural result of producing new internal cleavages. Change after change in their programme and theory of the Russian Trades Unionists has been due to the pressure of life itself, to the urgency of struggling against the worsening of conditions already almost unbearable. It is perfectly natural that those Unions which hold back from adaptation and resent the changes are precisely those which, like that of the printers, are not intimately concerned in any productive process, are consequently outside the central struggle, and, while feeling the discomforts of change, do not feel its need.
The opposition inside the productive Trades Unions is of two kinds. There is the opposition, which is of merely psychological interest, of old Trades Union leaders who have always thought of themselves as in opposition to the Government, and feel themselves like watches without mainsprings in their new role of Government supporters. These are men in whom a natural intellectual stiffness makes difficult the complete change of front which was the logical result of the revolution for which they had been working. But beside that there is a much more interesting opposition based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or rather in the permanence of the victory of the town workers. They point to the divergence in interests between the town and country populations, and are convinced that sooner or later the peasants will alter the government to suit themselves, when, once more, it will be a government against which the town workers will have to defend their interests. The Mensheviks object to the identification of the Trades Unions with the Government apparatus on the ground that when this change, which they expect comes about, the Trade Union movement will be so far emasculated as to be incapable of defending the town workers against the peasants who will then be the ruling class. Thus they attack the present Trades Union leaders for being directly influenced by the Government in fixing the rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a precedent from which, when the change comes, it will be difficult to break away. The Communists answer them by insisting that it is to everybody's interest to pull Russia through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were for such academic reasons to insist on their complete independence instead of in every possible way collaborating with the Government, they would be not only increasing the difficulties of the revolution in its economic crisis, but actually hastening that change which the Mensheviks, though they regard it as inevitable, cannot be supposed to desire. This Menshevik opposition is strongest in the Ukraine. Its strength may be judged from the figures of the Congress in Moscow this spring when, of 1,300 delegates, over 1,000 were Communists or sympathizers with them; 63 were Mensheviks and 200 were non-party, the bulk of whom, I fancy, on this point would agree with the Mensheviks.
But apart from opposition to the "stratification" of the Trades Unions, there is a cleavage cutting across the Communist Party itself and uniting in opinion, though not in voting, the Mensheviks and a section of their Communist opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers' control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate desirability of this, but insist that the important question is not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the orders shall be given. I have nowhere found this matter properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely strong. Everybody whom I asked about it began at once to address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I found it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it may be fairly said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned the ideas of 1917, which resulted in the workmen in a factory deposing any technical expert or manager whose orders were in the least irksome to them. These ideas and the miseries and unfairness they caused, the stoppages of work, the managers sewn up in sacks, ducked in ponds and trundled in wheelbarrows, have taken their places as curiosities of history. The change in these ideas has been gradual. The first step was the recognition that the State as a whole was interested in the efficiency of each factory, and, therefore, that the workmen of each factory had no right to arrange things with no thought except for themselves. The Committee idea was still strong, and the difficulty was got over by assuring that the technical staff should be represented on the Committee, and that the casting vote between workers and technical experts or managers should belong to the central economic organ of the State. The next stage was when the management of a workshop was given a so called "collegiate" character, the workmen appointing representatives to share the responsibility of the "bourgeois specialist." The bitter controversy now going on concerns the seemingly inevitable transition to a later stage in which, for all practical purposes, the bourgeois specialist will be responsible solely to the State. Many Communists, including some of the best known, while recognizing the need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all, regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long run to make the revolution not worth preserving. [*]