Russia in Midstream

In the Land of Communist Dictatorship. By Anatole V. Baikaloff. (Cape. 78. 6d.) Soviet Rule in Russia. By W. R. Batsoll. (Now York. Mac- millan. 258.) THE more one reads books on Soviet Russia, the more one realizes how much the human mind is a prism, and also how little outsiders can understand of the emerging Russian cosmos. Of all people, Dr. E. J. Dillon, one might have expected, would be qualified to give us something like a clear picture. An Englishman and a Roman Catholic, who was a student at the Faculty of Oriental Languages in St. Petersburg, he became in turn Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Kharkov, a journalist and Editor of a Liberal daily paper in Odessa, a social " lion " in the capital, and finally he was for twenty-five years up to the outbreak of War correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.

Dr. Dillon went back in the autumn of 1928 to the country of his adoption, completely unknown to the " new men," to see for himself the inside of the Medea's cauldron. With such antecedents one expects to hear, if not the plaintive voice of a laudator tentporis acti, at least accents of horror or bewilder- ment at the conditions of this huge Topsyturvia. Instead, we get a sympathy with and enthusiasm for what the Bolshevists are trying to do, which certainly reflects great credit on Dr. Dillon and his love of Russia, but which is almost valueless to the ordinary person who has not had a similar baptism of Russian experience. What he has to say about the attitude of the peasants, the emancipation of women, the cultural efforts of the Government, &c., is all very readable, without being particularly original.

For instance, contrasting the lot of the peasants with that of former times, as described in his book, Russian Charac- teristics, written over the signature of " E. B. Lenin," he enthuses :-

" To keep the soul-spark of these semi-savages from being utterly extinguished, to make them active members of the human community was the work to which the Bolshevists set their hands. And if they have not yet accomplished it, even to their own satisfaction, what they have achieved borders on the miraculous. To-day the peasant is wide-awake and superlatively solf-cona scious."

Then, again, where so many visitors come back from Russia reporting the dreadful monotony, drabness and general air of despondency, Dr. Dillon, describing Leningrad, goes to the other extreme :—

" All the men and women, aye, and -the very children .who were forging ahead to-day .on either side of the broad thoroughfare were brimful of life, enterprising, instinct with animation, veritable incarnations of self-consciousness in all its forms." " •

Although he is not blind to the folly of the Marxian obses- sion, Dr. Dillon leaves the reader in no doubt of his admiration for the " disenthrahnent and cultural uplift " which is going on. As he says :—

" Every revolution has for its object the realization of the un- realizable, the creation of a complete Utopia. And the effort invariably ends as it must. 'For human life is the reality of realiti4s, to which the most genial (eic) ideas have ultimately to adjust them- selves instead of vice versa."

Perhaps, after all, he has done Englishmen a great service in his role of advocatusdiaboli (which incidentally he disclaims). How many persons take it upon themselves to contemn the Soviets in the name of Christianity, when really they mean, as Dr. Dillon hints throughout his book, that the new Russia offends against all the ordinary conventions of our Western society. There is not much harm nowadays, Dr. Dillon suggests, in the fact that the world should realize, as Bolshevism makes us realize, "how provisional and fleeting are our traditional definitions of morality, justice, liberty, law, &c." Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett has collected in book-form the articles which he wrote on a recent visit to Soviet Russia as a special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Here we have a jumble of contradictory impressions and observations, the value of which is, perhaps, best summed up in his judgment, " the actions of the administration are determined by a mix- ture of hate, fear, good intentions, and a craze for strange social experiments." He writes exactly like one of those Mammon-serving specimens of our Western civilization whom Dr. Dillon particularly abominates. Looking down upon the " masses " that fill to overflowing the Opera, the theatre, and the music-halls, &c., in Moscow, to seek temporary oblivion from their sorrows, and warmth from the cold, cheerless atmosphere, he writes :—

" . . . these same poor never gaze on white bread, or butter, or milk, or tea, and seldom on a full dinner pail. After all, a shapely ankle, •ri well-formed calf or an angelic voice- are poor substitutes, when your stomach is empty, for a fat mutton chop or juicy beef- steak.

And a little further on :-

" It is horrible to have to rub shoulders with this Communist throng . . . the only possible way to visit the Opera is with some member of the Corps Diplomatique "

A man revealing so naively this Philistine and " class- conscioas " scale of values is not likely to help us very much in solving the riddle of Russia. We may, nevertheless, agree with him in his view that science as a substitute for the Christian Faith is hardly likely to satisfy the spiritual needs of the new generation when it reaches maturity.

This book also shows clearly one thing : that even those who are most opposed to the present regime recognize there is now no turning back. Russia is in midstream, and 'in the words of a University Professor, whem writer" quotes,

" anything -is better than returning to the bank from whence

we came."

Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett tells one good story, of Miss B., an English mannequin from Bond Street, on her way to the Far East, dressed in the latest fashion and therefore very conspicuous among the simply-clad Russians. By the side of Lenin's mausoleum :—

" She was gazing with a disdainful look on the squalor of the mob, and then hor eyes passed to the modern structure containing all that is mortal of the soul of modern Russia. Suddenly she murmured, Who was Lenin ? ' " The other two books are of a different calibre. Mr. Baikaloff sets out -with the help of copious quotations from Soviet documents to describe " Labour and Social Conditions in Russia To-day." As one who has all his life been a pro- tagonist of Russian Socialism, he knows what he is talking about. Since Professor Mayor's standard work on the Russian Revolution, no one has sufficiently emphasizeftthe undoubted and all-important fait that the " workers " on behalf of whom Lenin and' his friends made their revolution, were composed for the most part, not of the industrialized proletariat proper (the bulk of these were then fighting at the fronty-but"cif`tin-

skilled peasants, small artisans, traders, paupers, &c., much the same class of persons as were pressed into service as muni- tion-workers here at home. In 1917 the Bolshevist leaders exploited the tactics of social demagogy with immense 'skill and success, but •neither then nor since, as we are shown- here, have they cared two straws for social democracy. The masses who made the revolution :—

" wanted to overthrow the former ruling class in order to enjoy its social privileges. They wanted to put the social ladder upside down, but not to abolish it altogether.".

The teachings of Bakotinin and other anarchists, in fact, have been followed far more than any Socialist doctrine. -

Mr. Baikaloff gives us a good deal of interesting material concerning the " Triangle " system of control of the workers, and about the difference between the so-called Trade Unions in Russia (cf. Italy), and what we understand by the term. He explains, too, something of the mysteries of Bolshevist

statistics, the difference between the Labour laws on paper and in practice, and to what extent piece-work rates have replaced payment by time—i.e., the seven-hours' day pro- mised, with much ado, 'in 1927. Most of us will agree with him that the solution of Russia's problem lies in the development of her agriculture. But the Soviets, on the other hand, with their doctrinaire obsession are staking their all on the State- Farm experiment in an attempt to make the small Communist class—which is in reality the party of Government officials— independent of the rest of the community. We commend Mr. Baikaloff's book and his judgment that Bolshevism is the most coloisal fraud ever imposed on the world to the senti- mentalists of our own Labour Party, for whom, he admits, he has chiefly written it.

Those who have the time or inclination to study the inge- nious system of government of the various component parts of the vast unit, the U.S.S.R., will find all' that they want in Mr. Batsell's book. The relations between the various organs of the Party and the written constitution are here clearly described with excellent diagrams, as also the Soviet's inge- nious treatment of the problem of nationalities, from which, indeed, Minority States have something to learn. Mr. •Batsell is a research student of Harvard, and his work seems as thorough and objective as one could wish: But it is a book for the expert rather than for the ordinary reader.