The New Terror in Russia
THE Soviet Government has resorted again to Terrorism. This is a fact remarkable enough in itself, but what is more remarkable is that the Soviet has not hushed up its brutality, as it has done on several occasions since the early days of regular massacre, but has advertised it and explained it. The local authorities all over Russia, for instance, have been informed that it was necessary to prevent the counter-revolutionary work of Great. Britain and other " Imperialistic " Powers from going further. And so twenty aristocrats and former landowners and persons known to have sympathized with monarchy and with " Imperialistic " foreign countries have been hauled out of prison and shot without trial. The ignorant peasants may, of course, fall to the argument that when the aristocrats, or men who once had the audacity to own land, have been murdered the proletariat is well rid of a few more of its natural enemies. But we doubt it. It seems rather that the Russian people as a whole have been disturbed and shocked by this fresh outburst of murder, and are much less concerned with the disappearance of a few " reactionaries " than with the new reminder that nobody is safe who is heard to utter a word in criticism of the 'Soviet.
To English minds it is inconceivable that the Soviet rulers can really believe what they say. M. Voikoff is assassinated by an unbalanced youth at Warsaw. Thereupon the Soviet accuses Poland of having regularly and maliciously harboured enemies of the Russian revolution, and demands that all these enemies shall be expelled from Poland and that the Soviet shall be informed as quickly as possible that this has been done: What the SOviet really requires is that Poland should feebly repudiate her right to give asylum to refugees. There may be plots in Warsaiv• against the Russian revolutionary authorities as there may be in other great capitals in the world, but it is almost impossible to trace these things. It is certain that if the Polish Government became aware of anti-Russian intrigues they would suppress them, for the very good reason that nobody would stand to be embarrassed more by Such intrigues than Poland herself. The only Govern- Inca in the world, so far as we know, which unceasingly schemes to undermine the Governments of other nations, is the Soviet itself.
. In a long Note to Poland the Soviet narrates a string of atrocious deeds against the Russian State, and has the effrontery to declare that Great Britain was behind them all. The fact that British metal was found in a bomb used in Russia is enough for the authors of these whirling accusations to charge the British Government with having ordered the assassination of Soviet agents. All this is a miserable excuse for reviving the functions of the infamous Cheka under its new name of Ogpu. The twenty prisoners executed last week probably had not even heard of the Warsaw assassination. This week eleven more have been executed. Of the twenty, perhaps the best known was Prince Dolgurokoff. He had lived in England for some years. Under the old regime he was a politician of liberal sympathies. No doubt he has always hated CoMmunism, but his only crime seems to haire been that he smuggled himself back into Russia by way of Rumania because he was filled with a longing to see his country again.
In a communication to the Press, Sir Robert Hodgson, who was British Diplomatic Representative in Moscow before the recent breach, has pointed out the absurdity of the Soviet accusation that four of the twenty prisoners executed were spies in British employ. Sir Robert explains that the British Mission in Moscow were extremely careful not to cultivate any friendship that could possibly be misunderstood. They knew only too well what danger threatened any man or woman who was seen consorting with members of the Mission. Accordingly the Mission lived in a self-denying seclusion. Even that precaution, however, has not prevented the present grotesque charges. For instance, Sir Robert obtained employment for a Russian with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, in Moscow. The unhappy man was accused as acting as a spy for Great Britain for no other reason than that he was paid by British subjects. He was arrested and shot. A maid-servant at the British Mission was threatened with imprisonment for life unless she consented to act as informer on the Mission. She was also threatened with death if she revealed the fact that she had been requested to become an informer. As Sir Robert justly says, " information supplied by agents recruited in this manner is entirely valueless."
The abominable distortions of which the Soviet is guilty are just such effects as we feared might flow from the expulsion of the Russian officials from London. It is true that the Russian pretext for resentment is absolutely false, but it is none the less a pretext. Harm rather than good will come of what the British Government intended to be an act of righteous indignation, if in the present Russian frenzy the extremists overpower the moderates, whose position had been improving.
The new Terror professes to come of conviction, but it is, of course, the result of panic. When a Slav revolutionary turns to murder, he does so with less hesitation than was characteristic of the French revolu- tionaries. Danton had been driven by the logic of his own words and by circumstances into an utter impasse before he could bring himself to sanction massacre. His subsequent boasts about the massacre were certainly caused by the knowledge that he could not in any case escape the responsibility. Robespierre was terribly deliberate in his cruelty, but he, again, was at the very end of his expedients when he gave the word. The new Terror in Russia is a small matter compared with the slaughter of 1918 and 1919, but the Bolshevists among them have been responsible for a far greater number of deaths than Robespierre and Saint-Just ever dreamed of.
The only consolation is that Terrorism cannot last indefinitely. Because it is a kind of desperation, it heralds a change. The French Terror led straight to the rise of Napoleon. Probably there is not a Napoleon lying in wait in Russia, but there arc countless Russians who loathe murder, and they will help the first mani- festations of change to become a transformation when the time comes. Words, however idealistic, are a poor covering for cruelty. Was it not Metternich will exclaimed, in regard to the horrors of the French Revolution, committed under the motto of " Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," that if a. Frenchman called him his brother, he would insist that he was only a cousin u When tyrants publicly attribute the frustration of their desires to a want of rigour, they are really advertising for their successors.
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