Moscow from Various Angles
Unwin. 21s.)
Tms average Englishman who is not an ardent politician is puzzled about Russia. He does not want to interfere in Russia's domestic affairs and he cannot understand why the rulers of Russia should seem so anxious to interfere in the affairs of other nations, ourselves included. He is not greatly concerned about Russia's form of government ; it may, so far as be knows, suit the Russians though it would not suit us.
But he is troubled by all that he hears about the Russian rulers' untiring efforts to extend their queer system- to other lands both in the East and in the West. If he can view the question dispassionately, he seeks light in the books and pamphlets which these rulers write and get translated and published in English as well as in other languages. And when he reads such books—the works of Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin and now the Leninism of Stalin, who is the present head of the Russian State—he is More perplexed than ever. For these men, except Trotsky in his lucid intervals, seem to -be enmeshed in a web of phrases that have no relation to life as the Englishman
knows it, and that when repeated incessantly seem as meaning- less as the "Ow mane padme om "of the Tibetan praying- wheel. The parallel is not a remote one, for Stalin in this new book—evidently translated with great care—appears as the pontiff of a creed, fulminating against schismatics like Zinovieff, who differs from his interpretation of the sacred books of Lenin. According to Stalin, his late chief did not say that a Russian Communist State would not endure without a world- revolution, whereas Zinovieff takes the opposite view of Lenin's meaning. But such controversies and the splitting of hairs about the precise significance of "the dictatorship of the proletariat "seem very remote and unfruitful. Mediaeval scholastics used to argue about the number of angels who could perch on the point of a needle ; the Muscovite scholastics waste much good print and paper on arguments that are equally barren.
If Stalin's book is intended, as the preface suggests, to throw light on "the concrete problems of Socialist con- struction," it is a very poor illuminant. For it consists partly of lectures on the creed, and partly of reports to the fourteenth party conference (1925), and the author is always much more anxious to denounce than to inform, to throw brickbats rather than shed light. A mere Englishman is not satisfied to be told that "Leninism is the theory and the tactic of the prole- tarian revolution in general, and the theory and the tactic of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular." He would like to know when the dictatorship is going to end, and what kind of society is to be the outcome of it, since to the English mind it is inconceivable that a dictatorship—a tyranny—is the ultimate and ideal form of government in a world most of which is permeated by democratic principles. Further, the English inquirer would wish to learn from Stalin what, in his view, are the advantages that the Communist dispensation has conferred upon Russia, as compared with the Tsardom, and when that much-troubled country is going to settle down. But the dictator, fluent enough about destructive measures, here relapses into Sphinx-like silence. The peasants are to be kept under the heel of the town proletariat and encouraged just enough to make them grow corn but not enough to let them accumulate wealth. The metallurgical industry is said
to be growing rapidly, but the trials of German and Russian ekineers, which are now proceeding, are apparently based on the belief that this industry is in a bad way. Stalin, however,
is not interested in material progress.
To turn from Stalin to the late Professor Mayor is to emerge from a fog into the clear air. Professor Mayor for many years held the chair of Economics at Toronto and made a special study of Russian economic history. . He knew Russia shll before the War and read Russian._ In his last book he tried to give an accurate and unimpassioned account of the revolution and to estimate its effects. Nothing could be more
effective as criticism than this plain statemer.t. The author: for instance, gives details of the normal raticns fixed for the privileged worker in Petrograd in 1921; he ot serves that the bread ration was about half of the quantity necessary to sustain life, as determined by an investigation of the Russian
peasant's diet thirty years before. In regard to the metal industries he quotes Communist statistics. The output of pig iron in 1922 was about 6 per cent. of the output in 1913, the output of steel 10 per cent., of metal manufactures barely 11 per cent. Obviously it was easy for Stalin to speak of a rapid growth of these industries when they were in fact only begin- ning to revive from almost complete decay. And the revival, as the author shows, was due only to Lenin's " New Economic Policy," which allowed a number of small employers to resume control of their factories and workshops and to com- pete, more or less, with the State factories. Professor Mayor concluded that while the Bolsheviks, like the Tsars before them, might maintain a minority rule for a long time, they had nothing to teach the world except that "communism and State collectivism bear only a negative relation to progress and that the sooner public illusions about them are dispelled the better." "Under Bolshevik policy and methods no social advancement is possible, for Bolshevism is in its essence the
very antithesis of progress." .
Many foreigners of different types have visited Russia of late and reported not unfavourably on the conditions pre- vailing under Soviet rule. But, if we are to believe M. Douillet, who lived in Russia from 1891 to 1926, who was a Belgian Consul and who assisted in the administration of Dr. Nansen's relief fund at Rostoff, the Muscovite administration never allows any foreigner to make independent inquiries if it can prevent him. His graphic and terrifying description of the " Ogpu," the successor of the Tsarist " Okrana," or secret police, is full of circumstantial details. He gives many cases of Russians who were sent to penal colonies for the crime of speaking to foreigners. He relates how foreign deputations of Socialists were hoodwinked or put off when they wanted to see typical factories or converse with genuine workmen. The Communists, he declares, maintain their hold by universal espionage and brutal punishments. A good party man may do what he pleases ; M. Douillet gives disgusting instances of the maltreatment of women by passport officers, and of the crimes conunitted with impunity by Young Communists." But those who are not of the party are at the mercy of the officials. He himself was arrested and kept in various prisons for seven months before he was able to secure his freedom through the good offices of the Red Cross and the Belgian Government. M. Douillet's account of the horrors of the prisons, where prisoners are tortured nightly and shot by scores or hundreds, is appalling. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" has not made Russia a happier place than it was under the Tsars, nor does there seem any reason why. other countries should follow the Russian example. If the Bolsheviks, instead of financing conspiracies all over the world, were to spend the money at home in developing agri- culture and industry, they would give their queer creed a better advertisement.
It is hard to suppose that Russia with its 120 millions of people can continue indefinitely under a debased Terror such as now prevails. Some Russian idealists, whose views are explained by an English sympathizer in Russia in Resurrection, look for a religious revival which will take account of the fact that Russia belongs both to the East and to the West, that she is " Europasian " rather than European, and has been perverted and thwarted by the tendency of all her rulers since Peter the Great to force her into a European mould. It is a tenable view which was advocated long before the revolu- tion and which was discussed at length in Dr. IVIasarylCs classic work on Russia. The " Europasians " regard Bolshevism as an utter failure. They attach importance to the renewal of the religious forces in Russia which is causing serious concern to its atheistic rulers. They await the development of a new and happier society in the near future when the nation shakes off its Communist tyrants. But they do not propose that Russia should revert to the old system. The " Europasians " would retain what may be called the welfare programmes-
for" agriculture and industry, as well as the Soviet and federal! systems." But they would recognize the right of private property, subject to the condition that property haS duties as well as rights ; and they would have something like repre- sentative gOveniment instead of a dictatorship. In the main, however, the Russia of these idealists would be a religious community rather than a secular State of the usual modern type. It would be easy to criticize their programme for its vagueness, but they have at any rate a very noble aim—that of making Russia happy and prosperous. It would be well for Russia and for the world if they could achieve it.
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