Red Russia through Rose Spectacles
Hdtv the Soviets Work. By H. N. Brailsford. (New York: Vanguard Press. Obtainable in England from the New Leader. 14 Great George Street S.W. 1. 2s. 6d.) • WE find Mr. BraiLsford's new book very puzzling. We are qiiite unable to, explain why -.his highly trained mind has been moved to exultation by the facts he- relates. His dedication of the book to the 'makers of the revolution is characteristic. " To the sincere men and women of Rlissia who, *despite prison, exile and death, burned out their lives trying to attain freedom, peace and brotherhood for the common people." Those are beautiful words, beitutifully compoted. We wish that we could think them deserved. But what about the other people who were murdered, starved and tortured in order that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat n 'light be established ? Mr. Brailsford • tells us nothing about them, though their number must have been much greater than in any revolution in history.
The opening chapter describes a factory under Soviet rule and. compares the conditions with those under the Imperial regime: -Mr. Brailsford interviews " old Ivan," one of the veterans of the factory, and makes him tell us of the days when the attempt to strike was sunnressed by Cossacks with
whips. In this very factory eighteen men, whose names are now commemorated on a tablet, were " shot in cold blood by the Tsar's soldiery." What had these men done ? Had they done something more than strike ? Mr. Brailsford helps us to a judgment by giving us the history of the factory's part in the revolutionary movement of 1905. Old Ivan joined the factory in 1897, and we learn that as the result of frequent strikes—" two or three in every year "—the wage- earners always won something. " By 1908 they had more than doubled their wages." In spite of the rise of wages the workers still objected to the manner in which the manage- ment " took advantage of then-i." We have no doubt that their grievance was just. They called in the " Government Inspector." So there was a Government Inspector. Unfor- tunately, this official was corrupt and he gave judgment in ' favour of the management. The workers determined to continue the particular strike which was in progress at the moment and then the Cossacks with their whips arrived.
What was the culmination ? " In the end the owners were forced to offer reparation for the losses which the piece- workers had suffered by a system of false measures. Everyone received three months' pay by way of compensation and only then was work resumed."
Had the strikers any object except the ordinary object of a strike ? Mr. Brailsford tells us that they had. Their object was to overthrow the Tsardom. Several men in this factory belonged to the revolutionary party, which made a practice of ambushing Cossacks and stealing their arms. The revolutionaries had amassed a large store of rifles and revolvers and they had manufactured many bombs. "With the aid of the students," said old Ivan, " we had learned how to make bombs." We admit that the Russian Govern- ment under the old regime was about as bad a Government as any country could have, but we cannot help asking ourselves whether-the Cossacks with their whips—the shooting doWn of men did not begin till the revolution had declared itself—were worse than the Soviet rulers who decreed the death of (it is said) nearly a million people whose only crime was that they resented the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Mr. Brailsford says that Ivan's story haunted him. We also might be haunted by it if it were not that our memory is full of other and much worse hauntings. " The Cossacks are gone from the courtyard," he says, " and the snow at last is white." Yet presumably the blood of hundreds of thousands made the snow redder than it ever was before 1917.
And what has been gained ? We read of the present consideration for the poor; of the creches for children of
-workers, of the improved education, of the popular institutions
which are placed in the private houses from which the noble or bourgeois owners were driven. These are good points, but in spite of them the facts about the condition of the people remain terrible. Mr. Brailsford says that in Moscodr there is " the barest minimum of sanitary housing to every inhabitant. New housing schemes have as yet scarcely begun to make an impression." As for wages, Mr. Brailsford says, Even when we allow for the benefits in kind represented by social insurance (which may add twenty per cent. to wages), for the decrease in rent (which is said to be equivalent to an addition of four or five per cent. to wages), and for free education, it is obvious that even textile workers are financially in a worse position than before the War." Surely this is a most depressing result now that the Soviet State has been in existence for ten years.
We cannot complain that Mr. Brailsford shirks awkward facts=except in relation to the Soviet massacres—but when he has written of the wretched housing and the miserable wages, and has pointed out (as he does with great force at the end of the book) that the chief danger which besets the Soviet is that it may lapse into a kind of conventional bureaucracy, he seems to have convinced himself that the present rulers of Russia are very heroic people who have
worked and suffered heroically and have a heroic achievement to their credit. He is so afraid that this achievement may be watered down that he writes with approval of the Communists' system of prohibiting opposition to the Government, " What was won at such a cost in life and treasure," he says, " that party will not expose to the hazard of argument or the chances of the voting urn." Charles I. could not have put it better.
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