"So, practically, there remained only Bolsheviki in the Soviets. And as there was no difference of opinion among them, regular meetings were soon abandoned altogether and the ostensible 'rule of the working masses' thus definitely disappeared. A few persons, often appointed from above (the Bolsheviki often had recourse to bayonets to support the fiction of Soviet rule: in Tumen the Executive Committee of a non-existent Soviet was brought from Ekaterinburg under a convoy of 800 Red Guards), would rule and lord it over the people, tired and weary of the war and a sterile revolution.

"Occasional outbursts of popular wrath serve as indications of the depth of dissatisfaction which is engendered by the Soviets and their offshoots, the Military-Revolutionary Committee. Thus, in the Polevsky works, in Ekaterinburg County, a mob of peasants, armed with axes, scythes and sticks, fell upon the Soviets and beast-like tore into fragments fifty Bolsheviki. In the Neviansk works the insurrection of the workers against the Red Army lasted for three days, until reinforcements from Perm finally subdued this 'counter-revolutionary' revolt. In Okhansk County 2,000 peasants were shot down for demanding the abolition of the Soviets and the re-establishment of the rule of the people."

In the April 19, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia" we are told that "Vlast Naroda," in May, 1918, thus described the uprisings against the Soviets:

"In Kleen, a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the Soviets with the intention of bringing the deputies before their own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial Commisary committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to escape the infuriated crowd.

"In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo, the deputies work in their offices, guarded by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.

"In Penza, an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The Soviet building is now surrounded with cannons and machine-guns.

"In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a Bartholomew night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals....

"In Bielo, all members of the Soviets have been murdered.

"In Soligalich, two of the most prominent members of the Soviets have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten half-dead.

"In Atkarsk, several members of the Soviets have been killed."

"Struggling Russia," May 31, 1919, informs us that the Petrograd Committee of the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, in the middle of March, 1919, issued the following proclamation condemning the Petrograd Soviet:

"Shame to the Bolshevist Violators, Liars and 'Agents Provocateurs!'

"The Petrograd Soviet does not express the will of the Workmen, Sailors and 'Reds.'

"The Soviet was not elected. The elections were either pretenses or held under threats of shooting or starvation. This terrorism completely suffocated freedom of speech, the press and meetings of the laboring classes.

"The Petrograd Soviet consists of self-appointed Bolsheviki. It is a blind tool in the hands of the 'agents-provacateurs,' hangmen and assassins of the Bolshevist regime....

"Where is the dictatorship of the proletariat and working peasantry? It has been supplanted by the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the Bolshevist Party, governing with the assistance of a swarm of extraordinary commissions and punitive detachments of imported soldiers."

Though the Russian Socialists overthrew the government of the Czar in the hope of securing liberty, liberty, under the Bolshevist regime, is farther off than it was before. The British High Commissioner, R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, in a telegram sent to the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, among other things said:

"The Bolsheviki have established a rule of force and oppression unequaled in the history of any autocracy.

"Themselves the fiercest upholders of the right of free speech, they have suppressed, since coming into power, every newspaper which does not approve their policy.

"The right of holding public meetings has been abolished. The vote has been taken away from everybody except the workmen in factories and the poorer servants, and even amongst the workmen those who dared to vote against the Bolsheviki are marked down by the Bolshevist police as counter-revolutionaries, and are fortunate if their worst fate is to be thrown into prison, of which in Russia today it may truly be said, 'many go in but few come out.'"

V. M. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialists-Revolutionists, in an article published in "Struggling Russia," April 12, 1919, speaking of absence of liberty under Bolshevism, says:

"It was during my stay in Petrograd in April, 1918, that a conference of factory and industrial plant employees of Petrograd and vicinity was held, to which 100,000 Petrograd workingmen (out of a total of 132,000) sent delegates. The conference adopted a resolution sharply denouncing the Bolshevist regime. Following this conference an attempt was made, in May, to call together an All-Russian Congress of workmen's deputies in Moscow, but all the delegates were arrested by the Bolsheviki, and to this day I am ignorant of the fate that befell my comrades."

Justice, as well as liberty, is a dead letter in the land of Lenine, and conscription is rigidly enforced by the Russian Socialist Government. R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, to whom reference has been made, in his telegram to the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, stated:

"The Bolsheviki have abolished even the most primitive forms of justice. Thousands of men and women have been shot without even the mockery of a trial, and thousands more are left to rot in the prisons under conditions to find a parallel to which one must turn to the darkest annals of Indian or Chinese history....

"The Bolsheviki who destroyed the Russian army, and who have always been the avowed opponents of militarism, have forcibly mobilized officers who do not share their political views, but whose technical knowledge is indispensable, and by the threat of immediate execution have forced them to fight against their fellow-countrymen in a civil war of unparalleled horror."

Concerning religious conditions in Russia, the Rev. Dr. George S. Simons, shortly after his return from that country, testified before the Senatorial Committee, which, in February, 1919, was investigating the nature of Russian Bolshevism:

"The Bolshevik is not only an atheist, but he also seeks to make all religions impossible. They assert that all misery is due to the superstition that there is a God. One of their officials told me:

"'We now propose to enlighten our children, and with this purpose in view, we are issuing a catechism on atheism for use in all the schools.'

"The man who told me this was the Commissionaire of Enlightenment and Education."

On February 7, 1919, an appeal was sent to Pope Benedict XV, by the Orthodox Greek clergy of that part of Russia which had not fallen a prey to the Bolsheviki. It was signed by Sylvester, Archbishop of Omsk, President of the Supreme Administration of the Orthodox Church, and by other members of the same administration. This letter implored the Holy Father to deign to take into consideration the conditions existing in Russia. It exposed a list of crimes and outrages, cities sacked, churches profaned and pillaged, more than twenty bishops and more than one hundred priests assassinated, the victims being of every kind. Some of them before they were put to death had their arms and legs cut off, while others were buried alive. Nuns were violated; the socialization of women was proclaimed; rein was given to unbridled passions; everywhere there was nothing but famine, death and misery. The following message is also noteworthy:

"With deep grief, Venerable Father, we expose to you the unhappy conditions in which millions of Russians of true Russia are reduced. Relying on that unity which makes all mankind one, and on the strength of Christian fraternity, we hope, Venerable Father, that we may count on your compassion as representing the Christian Church, and trust that your flock will be informed of what is going on, and that in common with you they will offer fervent prayers to Him, in whose hands are both life and death, for those who in the northeast of Europe are being made, because of their love of Christ, Martyrs of the faith in the twentieth century."

"Dyelo Naroda," an organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists of Russia, in April, 1918, stated that the situation of the church and clergy was horrible. "Everything pertaining to them is being spit upon and profaned. People, with rifles on their shoulders and their hats on, often enter the church and right there question the clergymen and arrest priests, at the same time mocking the religious feelings of the praying crowd. Many churches have been closed as a result of the edict concerning the separation of Church and State."

"The New York Times," April 11, 1919, published the following special cable despatch concerning the religious persecution:

"London, April 10.—The Chronicle publishes an article by R. Courtier Foster, a British Chaplain at Odessa and Russian ports of the Black Sea, describing the religious persecution practised by the Bolsheviki following upon their former capture of Odessa. He says:

"'Committees were held on board the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, among the dockers in the port, in the towns and villages on every hand, which passed resolutions reading:

"'"We abolish God." In Odessa Cathedral, when the Archbishop of Kherson was celebrating the Holy Mysteries, an uproar occurred with cries of "Down with the priests!" "Down with the Church!" At a fete in the town gardens one saw a soldier of the Red Army, amid the guffaws of his fellows, spit on the Russian holy picture of the face of Christ, then tear it into fragments and stamp it into the dust.

"'The Bolshevist conception of religious toleration is considerably more elastic and far-reaching than the ideas of any mediaeval inquisition. In this matter the Bolsheviki pride themselves on being far in advance of our effete western thought. They have murdered Vladimir, the Metropolitan of Kiev, twenty bishops, and many hundreds of priests. Before killing them they cut off the limbs of their victims, some of whom they buried alive in the Kremlin. The Cathedrals in Moscow and those in the towns of Yaroslav and Simferopol have been sacked. Many nuns were violated and churches defiled.

"'The ancient and historical sacristies and famous libraries of Moscow and Petrograd were pillaged and countless sanctuaries profaned. In Cronstadt Cathedral the great figure of the Crucified Christ was torn down and removed, and a monstrous and appalling pagan form placed in its stead, symbolizing "Freedom of Mind."

"'It is not against any one particular form of religion that the terrors of the new Freedom are hurled. Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Lutherans alike have been tortured, mutilated, and done to death under the aegis of the Holy Revolution which appeals to the proletariat of the whole world to join its forces.

"'The Revolutionary Government is subjecting the Christian religion to persecutions as great and brutal as anything the world saw during the first three centuries of the Christian era. Moral disintegration and ruin spread their tentacles on every side. Any restraint on sinful impulse or covetous desire is laughed to scorn. The Bolsheviki publicly encourage outrage and looting. The propaganda for freedom of mind is essentially nihilistic. It is based on negation and denial of the existence of God, denial of the authority of any moral law, denial of all rights of conscience, denial of all religious liberty, denial of all freedom of the press, denial of any liberty of speech.

"'One officer remarked despairingly to me: "In Russia now there is no God, no Czar, no law, no property, no money, no food—only freedom." And in that travesty of liberty, which the whole civilized world may well shudder at, all mercy, pity and toleration are alike scorned. And it is this new and wonderful equality of man which by means of torture, outrage and assassinations proclaims the "freedom of mind and body" to the devastated Russian nation.'"

In an Associated Press despatch, from London, that appeared in "The New York Times" on April 19, 1919, we are informed that of the 300 priests in the Perm diocese, 46 have been killed; moreover, that two monasteries were pillaged.

A very interesting and enlightening article on religion in Russia and the attitude of the Bolsheviki towards it appears in "The Proletarian," Detroit, April, 1919. The author is Ernest Greenburg and we shall quote the greater part of his article:

"The resolution adopted by the Socialist Party of Michigan at its recent State Convention that, 'It shall be the duty of all agitators and organizers upon all occasions to avail themselves of the opportunity of explaining religion,' caused a storm of indignation to arise among certain 'Socialists.' Clinging to the old fallacy that religion should be left alone, they point to the Russian Constitution and the works of the Bolshevik leaders who say 'Religion is a private matter.' But they fail to understand that the interpretation of the term 'Religion is a private matter,' has a different meaning here than it has in Russia.

"The slogan, 'Religion is a private matter,' is not of Russian origin. It has been and is one of the battle cries of the Revolutionary working class in all countries in which the Church and the State are combined. Different conditions account for different understandings of the terms 'Private Matter' here and in Russia.

"Probably in no other country have religion and the church played such an important role in the affairs of the state as in Russia up to the very present time. Truly, it was not so much the force of arms as that of ignorance which kept up the Czardom for hundreds of years. The Feudal aristocracy realized the advantages to be derived from keeping the minds of its slaves in darkness and superstition. One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of aristocracy was the Church, whose noble duty it was to sow and to propagate ignorance. The Church was officially a part of the state. People were forced to go to church; school children[10] were taught the 'Holy Law of God,' attacks against the church were punished as attacks against the Czar.

"Religious ignorance of the masses was the greatest enemy of the Socialists in their propaganda work; at every step they had to meet and to combat the authority of God, in whose name the church servants consecrated the yoke of the Czar and the landlords. It was necessary to pull this poisonous tooth out of the jaws of the state. Hence came the demand: 'Religion is a private matter,'—private as opposed to state. It meant that the Church should be separated from the state and be deprived from its protection. It was a demand which, put to the Czarist government, if granted would only facilitate the struggle against this very religion.

"Similar demands have been put in the Socialist platforms of Germany, Austria, and other countries which were confronted with conditions like those in Russia. One of the immediate demands of the French revolutionists of the nineteenth century was of this nature.

"The November Revolution put the Russian workers in possession of the machinery of the church. As a weapon of ignorance, it could not be used against the exploiters; nor could it be destroyed by force. Then the Russian workers declared religion a private matter, thereby depriving it of State protection and forcing it under the blows of scientific criticism, which will rapidly do away with the reminders of the decrepit superstitions.

"In America religion always was 'a private matter.' It had never been officially related to the state, but just the same it is now being employed by the ruling class against the workers. If it is not yet as influential here as it was in Russia during the reign of the Czars—it is becoming so. Its destructive work cannot be neglected any longer. It must be fought....

"German Socialists understand that by destroying the holy alliance between the Church and the State their task would not be completed. After that 'We must wage unrelenting war against the Church,' says Bebel, 'because she foments civil war among the workers—because it is the only reactionary force which has any strength and which keeps us in voluntary slavery.'

"By separating the Church from the State and thereby enforcing their demand, 'Religion is a private matter,' the French Socialists were not yet satisfied. They went on fighting religion, and their Belgian comrades worked in accord with them. Says E. Vandervelde, 'We are bound to admit that both in philosophy and in politics there must be war between Socialism and the Church.'

"This attitude of the French and Belgian Socialists was approved by the international Congress at Amsterdam, 1904.

"The position of the Russian Socialists is very clear. They fully understand that 'Religion is a private matter' signifies only the first stage in the war against mental slavery. 'Religion is a private matter,' says N. Boucharin (The Church and the School), 'but it does not mean that we must not fight it by persuasion.' Further on he emphasizes that it is a 'private matter' only as much as forceful protection or forceful destruction is concerned. Beyond the gates of the State's protection, religion is not considered to be a private matter in Russia. It is fought there in schools and educational institutions by 'Propaganda, explanation and education.'

"In this question American Socialists must not be misled by the seeming contradiction in terms."

In the April 19, 1919, number of "Struggling Russia," Dioneo gives some interesting information relative to the destruction of education under the Bolshevist regime:

"The lower and secondary schools are ruined. The villages have their Soviets, their premises for meetings, but no lower schools. As regards secondary schools, the Bolshevist reformers are of the opinion that, in general, such institutions are not wanted and are just as unnecessary as the intermediate stage between nascent capitalism and the extreme form of communism.

"The Bolsheviki have only acknowledged the universities. At first, the reformers made such experiments on the latter as, for instance, the appointment of a porter to the post of inspector of the Technological institute, or of a cook as head-mistress of the Higher Courses for Girls. Then the Bolsheviki decided that no certificates were necessary for matriculation at the university. Any half-educated person might become a student of any faculty. The professors were at a loss to know how to lecture on higher mathematics to students ignorant of the multiplication table, or how to explain spectral analysis to persons hardly able to read. Then the Bolsheviki decided that there was no necessity for the professor to have a diploma either. It was only necessary that he should be a supporter of the Bolshevist platform. That is all! And celebrated Professors were obliged to leave the universities which they had made famous....

"National education—elementary, secondary, and higher—has been completely ruined by the Bolsheviki. Lately, they have apparently decided that Bolshevism ought to give the world a new type of university, quite different from that of the bourgeoisie. And with that in mind, the Municipal Council of Voronezh has thought of a 'Street University.' This is how the 'Izvestia' describes this curious institution of higher education: 'Each of the principal thoroughfares of Voronezh is now a faculty—of law, economics, history, literature, science, etc. The walls of the houses are placarded with posters, containing portraits and brief biographies of men distinguished in one or another branch of knowledge and brief items of information concerning the respective subject.' Thus comments the organ of the Bolshevist Government: 'Every citizen, instead of spending years at a university, can pick up a general knowledge of the principal educational subjects as he goes along.' ...

"Russia's school system is ruined. Education reforms exist only on paper. And at the same time the Bolsheviki, wishing to show that they value knowledge very highly, have announced that a geographical university such as the world has 'never yet seen' is going to be opened in Petrograd. It is interesting to know what professors will lecture in this new university, and who will form their audience?"



CHAPTER XI

RUSSIA RED WITH BLOOD AND BLACK WITH CRIME



Socialists have for many years boasted of the perfect peace and harmony which would prevail when once they had established their state. Bloodshed, civil discord and strife of every kind would cease when the Marxian workers ruled the land, for, as they said, privately owned property, and exploitation of workers are the source of wars and the fundamental cause of the oppression of the people. Bolshevist Russia, however, the first Socialist country, appears to be an exception. Perhaps no nation has ever witnessed such scenes of violence, bloodshed, murder and cruelty, perpetrated by a government, not against a foreign foe, but against its own people, and this not after an existence of a hundred or several hundred years, but constantly from its very birth. So far only a few pages, comparatively speaking, of the history of the terrible outrages are opened to us, but from these we can form some slight idea of the dreadful condition of the land that is truly red, but red principally from the rivers of blood that flow in abundance over every section of the country.

The "Izvestia," an official Bolshevist publication, on October 19, 1918, published the following news item under the heading, "The Conference of the Extraordinary Commission:"

"Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the District Commission of Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Moscow. The total number of people arrested by the Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220. Eight hundred people were shot."

The "Northern Commune," another official Bolshevist publication, in its issue of September 10, 1918, stated:

"In the whole of the Jaroslavl Government a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its partisans has been organized. Manifestly anti-Soviet elements are being shot; suspected persons are being interned in concentration camps; non-working sections of the population are being subjected to compulsory labor."

The same edition of the "Northern Commune" publishes the following despatch:

"Tver, Sept. 9.—The Extraordinary Commission has arrested and sent to concentration camps over 130 hostages from among the bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the Cadet Party, Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, former officers, well known members of the propertied class and policemen."

From the September 18, 1918, edition of the "Northern Commune" we learn that in Perm, in retaliation for the assassination of Uritzky and for the attempt on Lenine, fifty hostages from among the bourgeois classes and the White Guards were shot.

"Struggling Russia," March 22, 1919, supplies us with other details of Bolshevist rifle rule:

"We know a great deal about the terror in Petrograd, and considerably less about Moscow. The reason is plain. We find the curtain dropped on the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission which had its seat in Moscow. In a report of the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, which took place on October 16, we read:

"'The report of the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission was read at a secret session of the Executive Committee. But the report and the discussion of it were held behind closed doors and will not be published.' ['Izvestia,' October 17, 1918.]

"The kind of decisions adopted by the Moscow Bolsheviki behind closed doors and the mass terror practised in Moscow and all over Russia under the direction of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission are well illustrated by Eugene Trupp, a prominent Socialist-Revolutionist and a member of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, who wrote the following in the Socialist-Revolutionary daily, 'Zemlia i Volia' (Land and Freedom) of October 3, 1918:

"'After the murder of Uritzky in Petrograd, 1,500 people were arrested; 512, including 10 Socialists-Revolutionists, were shot. At the same time 800 people were arrested in Moscow. It is unknown, however, how many of these were shot. In Nizhni-Novgorod, 41 were shot; in Yaroslavl, 13; in Astrakhan, 12 Socialists-Revolutionists; in Sarapool, a member of the Central Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, I. I. Teterkin; in Penza, about 40 officers; in Kooznetzk people are daily shot in masses; all this is only a drop in the ocean. I have no exact information as to the number of people shot in other cities.' ...

"'Despite all these and other outrages, a demonstration of Red Guards took place in Moscow on September 6. Their main demands were "deeds for words" and "relentless red terror in the fight against the bourgeoisie." ...

"'The last days of my stay Moscow and Soviet-Russia in general were filled with red terror. A gray, silent and dejected crowd, with pale, terrified faces and eyes full of excitement, was moving along the streets. "Such or such people have been arrested today." "This or that number has been shot." "Do not sleep at home, they are looking for you." "You are still alive?" "Why do you not go away from here?" were expressions hastily exchanged.

"'No conversations were heard; only silent whispering in corners. All were trembling. All were filled with horror of the wild terror. Spies were all over. At the proper places you could see their familiar figures.

"'These spies sneak about the stations, mingling with the crowds of Red Guards, in the trains, and in all dirty, warm corners always pushing forward. While traveling you feel that if your face or perhaps your attire, or your opinion, carelessly uttered, will not please them, you may be held up at any moment. You feel that every passenger is hiding something in himself. Keep silent; we will talk later when we have passed the spying cordons.'"

In the September 18, 1918, evening issue of the "Northern Commune," there is a report of a meeting of the Soviet of the First District of Petrograd. After a report made by Kharitonoff, who emphasized the necessity of suppressing the bourgeois press, and after speeches by other members, the following resolution was passed:

"The meeting welcomes the fact that mass terror is being used against the White Guards and higher bourgeois classes, and declares that every attempt on the life of our leaders will be answered by the proletariat by the shooting down not only of hundreds, as the case is now, but of thousands of White Guards, bankers, manufacturers, Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right."

We are indebted to "Struggling Russia," March 29, 1919, for the following information as regards the Red rule of Lenine and the shooting of children:

"The following quotation from a speech of one of the most active Bolshevist leaders, Zinoviev, printed in the 'Northern Commune' of September 19, 1918, fully expresses the spirit of the Bolshevist terrorism:

"'To overcome our enemies we must have our own Socialist Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100 millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.'

"The program of annihilating ten million of the opponents of Bolshevism in Russia (Mr. Zinoviev has considerably underestimated their number) began to be executed by the Bolsheviki from the first moment of their coming into power. In the beginning of March, 1918, they held mass executions in Rostov-on-the-Don, killing, among others, many youths. The Moscow 'Russkiya Viedomosti' (Russian News) in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president of the Rostov Municipal Council and the Chairman of the Don Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, B. C. Vasiliev, the mayor of the city, P. Petrenko, the former Chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, P. Melnikov, and even M. Smirnov, at that time Chairman of the Council, have handed in a petition to the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council asking them to shoot them 'instead of the innocent children who are executed without law and justice.' A group of women, horrified by what was going on, also asked that they be shot instead of the children. In their petition they wrote as follows:

"'If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and life in order to establish a Socialistic state and to create new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives. Take our lives and our blood as ransom....

"'We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands and brothers. Pray, take our last possession, our lives, but spare our children. Call us, one after the other, for execution, when our children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order to save the life of her children or that of other children.

"'Citizens, members of the War Revolutionary Council, listen to the cries of the mothers. We cannot be kept silent!'"

Charles Dumas, a French Socialist, on his return to France from Russia, wrote a book in which he warns his fellow-comrades on the dangers of Bolshevism, and among other things he says:

"Upon my arrival in Petrograd I wanted, first of all, to meet three of my old Russian friends, but soon learned that my searches were in vain. Two of the poor fellows had lost their minds and the third had cut his own throat with a razor....

"The Sebastopol horrors of March, 1918, when the sailors of the port, inflamed to a high pitch of bestiality by the Bolshevist press decided to kill all the inhabitants of the principal streets, not sparing even children above the age of five, are still so fresh in your minds that I need not remind you of them....

"On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About 500 bodies of the victims were found afterwards, most of them 'intellectuals.' All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.

"In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and 300 citizens were killed. The Peoples' Commissaries and the Soviets have, upon more than one occasion, made admissions that these horrors were part of their program. At the Congress of the Soviets the chairman of the Central Committee of the Soviets, Sverdlov, said: 'We invoke the Soviets not to relent, but to fortify the Terror, no matter how terrible it may be and what dimensions it may assume.'"

An Associated Press despatch, dated Omsk, April 5, 1919, stated that the Bolsheviki had murdered 2,000 at or near Osa:

"Indisputable evidence of the massacre by the Bolsheviki of more than 2,000 civilians in and near the town of Osa has been obtained by Messrs. Simmonds and Emerson and Dr. Rudolph Teusler of the American Red Cross, who have just returned from reoccupied Russian territory. Approximately 500 persons were killed at Osa and 1,500 in the surrounding districts."

The same despatch shows the excessive cruelty of Lenine's gang of blood-thirsty Reds:

"A blacksmith was shot because he could not pay 5,000 rubles. A man was shot because he lived in a brick house. All attorneys and jurists and doctors whose services were not required were killed. A woman was compelled to fetch a lamp and gaze upon her murdered sons for the amusement of the slayers.

"The Soviet called a meeting and prepared lists of those to die. The houses prescribed were visited by squads, the doors were smashed in, the victims dragged to the edge of the town and forced to dig their own graves. A survivor testified that he had seen men thrown into a pit and buried alive. Priests were hunted unmercifully. The evidence showed that men were slain whose only offense was that they worked as sextons or caretakers of churches. In the Perm district everything of value was stolen from the churches, the monastery was looted and several priests were murdered."

According to two more Associated Press despatches, even women and children were not excepted by the Bolsheviki who have been so much extolled by our American Socialists and recognized as their brethren:

"Stockholm, April 17, 1919.—The Bolsheviki are carrying out a rapid and systematic annihilation of all the bourgeois elements in Riga, according to reports from Libau to 'Svenska Dagblast.' The victims of the Bolsheviki terror are taken to the Island of Hasen, in the Dvina river, and are said to number 70,000, including women and children. No one is permitted to take food or money to the island."

"London, April 17, 1919.—Eighteen hundred persons, including 400 women, were murdered by the Bolsheviki at Ufa, according to a dispatch from Omsk, received in official quarters here."

The "Northern Commune" published the following report in which the horrors of the Bolsheviki prisons were described by the Bolsheviki themselves:

"The presiding officers of the Soviet of the Viborg district decided to send a delegation to the prisons of that district when they heard that terrible scenes were occurring there. The prisoners were starving. Many of them who had been held eight months had not yet been tried, for the Commission entrusted with the investigation of their cases had not yet been in session.

"The delegation consisted of Dr. Petropavlovsky, the Military Commissionary, Vasilyevsky, and the President of the Soviet, Frilisser. The latter handed in the following report: 'Comrades, what we saw and heard in visiting the prisons of the Viborg district cannot be described....

"'The cells are repulsively dirty. There is neither clean linen nor pillows. The prisoners are being punished for the least offence.

"'But what is most terrible is the scene we witnessed in the prison hospital.

"'Comrades! We found there no people! We found there living ghosts who had no strength to talk, for they were starving.

"'When somebody dies, the corpse remains for several hours with its living neighbors, who say: "That is nothing. We shall all soon die of hunger."'"

"Dyelo Naroda," in its issue of April 26, 1918, thus describes the cruelties of the barbarous Bolshevists:

"In Kirensk County the people's tribunal ordered a woman found guilty of extracting brandy, to be enclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked against the ground until dead.

"In the Province of Tver the people's tribunal had sentenced a young fellow to freeze to death for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting him."

The British High Commissioner, R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, in his telegram to the British Foreign Office, November 10, 1918, thus describes one of the methods of torture and the taking of hostages as practiced by the followers of the "gentle" Lenine:

"The Bolsheviki have restored the barbarous methods of torture. The examination of prisoners frequently takes place with a revolver at the unfortunate prisoner's head.

"The Bolsheviki have established the odious practice of taking hostages. Still worse, they have struck at their political opponents through their woman folk. When recently a long list of hostages was published in Petrograd, the Bolsheviki seized the wives of those men whom they could not find and threw them into prison until their husbands should give themselves up."

When the Bolsheviki were forced to evacuate Riga, in May, 1919, they left behind them in the [**] prisons 1,600 hostages who were found to be in a state of unspeakable misery and starvation.

An Associated Press despatch of March 22, 1919, states that "a Russian girl of 19 years, who, in December, 1918, had been charged with espionage, was tortured by being pierced thirteen times in the same wound with a bayonet. She lived, however, and made an affidavit to these details."

The same dispatch states that "an examination of dead bodies of persons alleged to have been killed by the Bolsheviki in the Perm district, shows a preponderance of bayonet wounds in the back, but in other instances mouths were slit, fingers and hands cut off, and the heads of the victims smashed."

"Struggling Russia," in its issue of April 5, 1919, informs us that "officers have come out of Petrograd prisons with their nails torn off, and that prisoners after having been fed on herrings were given nothing to drink for two or three days."

A dispatch from Warsaw, dated April 10, 1919, stated that fugitives from Russia were pouring into that city, each of them bringing fresh tales of Bolsheviki horrors. The people in Russia, it was said, were being shot on the least provocation. For instance, men who remained in bed during the cold weather to keep warm because they had no fuel were accused of "discontent" and dragged into the streets and shot. Dead bodies, it was claimed, were left lying in the streets in heaps.

In order to maintain their popularity with the workingmen and with their hired mercenaries, the Bolsheviki paid their supporters enormous wages by means of an unchecked paper issue. In fact they have turned out so many tons of paper money, without financial guarantees of any sort, that today in Russia money has lost practically all its value.

"Struggling Russia," March 22, 1919, publishes an appeal issued in Petrograd and signed by the following organizations: Committee for the Defence of Freedom of the Press; Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party; Central Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists; Central Committee of the Councils of Peasant Deputies and the Union of Workmen-Printers. Among other things the appeal says:

"Civil war has inflamed the whole country. Cities are being destroyed. The war of brother against brother is consuming the strength of our revolutionary democracy. The cannons, secured to guard the conquests of our revolution, shatter monuments, homes, and shrines of art. The cities of Russia fall at the hands of her own citizens....

"The nation is being driven towards ruin. The people are deprived of all liberties won by the revolution."

The April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under the caption, "City of the Dead," describes the deplorable condition of Petrograd as follows:

"Vladimir Bourtzev published in his paper, 'Obscherye Dyelo,' (The Common Cause), appearing in Paris, an interview with a well known pedagogist and journalist, C. L. Avaliani, who recently arrived from Petrograd. Mr. Avaliani lived in Petrograd during the bright, early days of the revolution and has also witnessed the tragic period of the Bolshevist rule:

"'That Petrograd that used to draw to itself the leading social and scientific forces is no more. That living spring that sent upward a spray of rainbow hues and colors has gradually died out and is now finally extinct.

"'There is no scientific activity, no research work, no literary or artistic life. All is leveled down and compressed under one Bolshevist lid. The only burning question is the problem of food. The only blessed object of Bolshevist providence is the remaining bourgeois element, the only axis around which all their creative experiments revolve. On the one hand, those who toil,—and on the other the "parasites," and to the latter class all the members of the liberal professions, all the literateurs, the lawyers and the clergy were assigned. The sympathizers and upholders of the "rule of the Soviets" get a food ticket; all the others are sentenced to starvation.

"'It is a rule that rests solely on bayonets! There is no popular confidence, no social support. It is all regarded as superfluous and a "burgeois" prejudice. The sole means of enlightenment and conviction are the bayonet and machine gun....

"'A real Kingdom of the Dead! Petrograd is empty. Many have been summarily shot, but still more have died from exhaustion and disease, and some have fled. From a population of three million only 976,000 remain.'"

"Struggling Russia," on April 5, 1919, published a detailed list of 76 places or districts in which there were uprisings against the Bolsheviki in the year 1918. In the year 1919 the revolutionary outbreaks seem to have become far more numerous.

Evidence as to the criminal nature of Russian Bolshevism was supplied by the Rev. Dr. George S. Simons, who, in February, 1919, testified before the Senatorial Committee as to his personal knowledge of the matter:

"There is a large criminal element in the Bolshevist regime. The fact that the criminal has a big part in the movement is proven by the destruction in a public bonfire of court records, the destruction of prisons and the liberation of all criminals who are sympathetic with the cause. We know it to be a fact that some of the worst criminal characters in all Russia hold positions under the Bolshevist Government, while others are helping as agitators."

A press dispatch dated Warsaw, April 10, 1919, states that it has been decided by the Bolsheviki regime that control of desire of impulse, even when self-imposed, is against the freedom of man, that as a consequence unbelievable orgies and indecencies take place, and that all restraint is at an end. The despatch states, futhermore[11], that the aristocrats remaining in Russia have lost all will and energy. They accept degradation or death with complete fatalism and do not even try to save their wives and daughters.

The deplorable condition of that part of Russia under Bolshevist rule was described in the Declaration adopted by the Socialist groups in Omsk on February 23, 1919. The Declaration says in part:

"The main prop of an agricultural country such as Russia principally is, the peasant population, is pauperized, starving and is being driven under the banners of the Red Armies by lash and rifle. The numerically small class of intellectuals is being shot down and exterminated. The cities have been handed over to the pillage and rule of Red Army troops. The prisons are overcrowded. The enemies of the people have carried out their destructive program to the very end, and given the people, in place of bread, peace and freedom—a new inter-Russian war, the complete exhaustion of all the productive forces of the land, economic, industrial and railroad desolation, unemployment, a terrorizing reign of disorder and a lapse into barbarity."

The Council of the All-Siberian Co-operative Assemblies, in a Declaration brought to this country by C. A. Kovalsky, a prominent Russian writer and a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, says:

"The All-Siberian Co-operative Movement—as the expression of the unity of the creative democratic elements—strives for the rehabilitation of the destroyed statehood of Russia....

"The immediate aims of our political activities must be—the support of the existing Omsk Government, which has proclaimed itself a democratic rule; the steering of its political course into democratic channels; the struggle with anti-democratic influences from the Right as well as with the destructive forces from the left; the strengthening of the ties between the rear and the fighting front, and the support of the army as the cultural force which is reconquering the violated rights of the people to the formation of a democratic state."

The Russian Co-operative Unions, having a membership of over 20,000,000, and representing the strongest economic organization in Russia, reaching every little town and village, announced through its representatives in New York, on May 20, 1919, its opposition to the Lenine regime and its support of the Provisional Russian Government at Omsk, Siberia, headed by Admiral Kolchak:

"When Russia fell under the Bolshevist Soviet rule, the representatives of the Co-operative Organizations, at the All-Russian Co-operative Congress in Moscow, April 18 to 24, 1918, rejected the principles and the methods of the Bolsheviki and declared the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, concluded by the Soviet authorities with the Austro-German, dishonorable and ruinous for Russia. In these terrible and trying times of bloody rule that our suffering and worn-out country is passing through, the Co-operative Organizations of Siberia and North Russia serve as a unifying link for all the honest, healthy and State-preserving elements of the Russian democracy.

"The All-Siberian United Co-operatives are fully cognizant of the abnormal conditions in which the territories liberated from the Bolsheviki—the Ural, Siberia and the North Russian Provinces—find themselves, where in pain and anguish a new Russian Statehood is arising. Nevertheless, considering the unusual difficulties connected with the work of rebuilding and re-establishing legality and order in a land overburdened financially and economically, ravaged by civil war and hunger, and with a popular psychology corrupted by Bolshevism, the United Co-operatives recognize and support, until the formation of a new, ultimate government through the Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Russian Government formed on Siberian territory and headed by Admiral Kolchak....

"We have, on our side, State wisdom, equity and justice. Our adversaries oppose us with terror, violence and complete social and economic ruin."

In the early part of the year 1919, the report reached America that the Bolshevist authorities were nationalizing women. The Socialists of our own country, who are far from being noted for their reliability and truthfulness, have, of course, denied the charge, in order that the Lenine regime, which they support and wish to see extended to our own land, might not have its already terribly sullied name dishonored still more. The Bolshevists are far from being saints, and a "few" of their "shortcomings" have been pointed out in this chapter.

Certainly the Lenine Government is absolutely lax in matters appertaining to sex relations. It has fully legalized free love, as we learn from the No. 2 issue of the radical Los Angeles magazine, "More Truth About Russia." This magazine, of course, defends the Bolshevists, and on page 6 of the above-mentioned issue quotes several of the decrees of the Lenine Government on the matter of marriage and divorce. Among the decrees we read:

"Marriage is annulled by the petition of both parties or even one of them." All that is necessary to annul a marriage is the expressed desire of either party. The party is, of course, then free to marry again and remain married till another partner is desired. Hence free love is legalized. A government that legalizes free love may be expected to nationalize those women who do not wish to marry or who are unable to secure partners by the time they have reached a certain age.

"The Call," New York, April 2, 1919, on its editorial page reprinted an apology of the English publication, "New Europe," which in a previous issue had given as the authority for its charge of the nationalization of women in Russia an article in the Soviet paper "Izvestija:"

"I have made particular inquiries among friends recently arrived from Russia," says Dr. Harold Williams, "New Europe's" collaborator, "as to the alleged nationalization of women, and they have all assured me positively that they have never heard or read of such a decree."

Those "friends," whoever they were, were possibly Bolsheviki themselves, and are not said to have denied that the women were nationalized, but merely that they had never heard or read of the "decree." Lots of things are enforced by authorities without decrees. The Bolshevist authorities may have had no decrees for the murder of the many thousands of innocent citizens whom they tortured and put to death.

Dr. Harold Williams states, moreover, that it is certain that "the Central Bolshevist Government has issued no order of the kind" (i.e., of nationalization), but he does not deny that in different places the local Bolshevist authorities may have nationalized women.

Further on it is admitted that not the official national Soviet organ, but the local Vladimir Soviet organ, "Izvestija," was the Bolshevist paper which stated that the Bolshevists of Vladimir had nationalized women.

The article in "New Europe," republished in "The Call," concludes with these words:

"As this puts an entirely different complexion on the matter, and as the Central Moscow Government cannot be held responsible for the lucubrations of every local committee, we desire to withdraw unreservedly the imputation and to express our regret for the mistake."

This article in the March 13, 1919, issue of "New Europe," which thus apologizes for the "mistake" that it claims it made in a previous issue, has been quoted far and wide by American Socialists and other radicals of our country. Yet witnesses who were questioned at the Senatorial investigation at Washington, in February, 1919, attested to the nationalization by the Bolshevists.

On February 7, 1919, the Orthodox Greek Archbishop of Omsk and other clergy of the Russian Church sent a letter to Pope Benedict XV, mentioning, with other crimes and abuses of the Bolshevists, the socialization of women.

A press despatch dated Warsaw, April 10, 1919, stated the following concerning the condition of women in Russia:

"The nationalization of women is becoming quite general. The Bolsheviki have declared war on family life and consideration for one another's mother or sister is forbidden. All must be treated alike. The most terrible thing is that the women themselves have accepted this nationalization and very little protest is made. This applies to every class. In certain cases, however, a hitch has occurred. Even Bolshevism cannot master human nature, and it has been found that a masculine jealousy occasionally stands in a way. Certain men have refused to nationalize a particular woman and as a result Bolshevik has fought Bolshevik with considerable force."

An Associated Press despatch from London, April 15, 1919, gives lengthy details regarding the nationalization of women, and even the opposition offered to it:

"The law providing for the nationalization of women in Northeast Russia has been suspended in one province as a result of popular outcry, according to information reaching London today, from Stockholm.

"The Commissary of Vladimir has, by decree, appointed a committee of women, who are to inquire into operations of the law and make a report with the least possible delay. His action has been approved by the local Soviet.

"'The Krasnaya Gazeta' publishes an account of the results of nationalization. The system provides that every girl on reaching the age of eighteen must register her name in the Bureau of Free Love, after which she is compelled to select a partner from among men between the ages of 19 and 50 years old. The law led to lamentable confusion, says the 'Gazeta,' in judicial notions as to personal inviolability.

"A few days after the Soviet's decree, which women very generally ignored, two men known to nobody, arrived in the town and seized the two daughters of a well-known non-bourgeois comrade, declaring they had chosen them as wives and that the girls without further ceremony must submit, as they had not observed the registration rule.

"Comrades Yablonovski and Guriakin, who sat as judges on the claim, decided that the men were right, and the girls were carried off. They have not been heard of since by the village folk.

"This, says the Gazeta, was done in the name of the nationalization of women.

"Many other instances of the fantastic operation of the law, not to speak of its inhumanities, are cited by the Gazeta. Enthusiasts for nationalization, naturally all males, raid whole villages, seize young girls, and demand proof that they are not over 18. As this proof is difficult to give, many of the girls are carried off, and there have been suicides and murders as a result.

"In the town of Kovrov, a campaign without parallel since the Trojan war was waged between the vengeful relatives of an abducted nationalized girl and her persecutors.

"In this town the 'register of nationalized women' was opened on December 1, but up to February 1 last only two women, both over 40, and neither of whom had ever been married, registered themselves as willing to accept the first husband the state sent along.

"On the committee which is now to revise the nationalization decree or to recommend its complete abrogation sits Mme. Vera Arkadieff, a Bolshevist enthusiast, who commanded a detachment of women soldiers during the recent operations against Admiral Kolchak's army at Perm. She has been twice wounded."

"The Krasnaya Gazeta," translated, means the Red Gazette. It is a Bolshevist newspaper published in Petrograd. The following "Special Cable" to "The New York Times," dated Milan, April 24, 1919, published April 26, 1919, gives a Bolshevist's explanation of the Russian sex legislation:

"A Bolshevist statesman, from whom the 'Journal Epoca' obtained a special interview respecting the Leninist legislation on the sex problem, complains that a vast amount of grotesque misrepresentation has appeared on the subject in the hostile or unsympathetic press.

"'Abolition of celibacy has been adopted,' he stated, 'simply as a means toward class equality. Every woman, on attaining her eighteenth and every man on his twentieth year, is bound to inscribe his or her name in a special register kept at the Commissariat of Unions, and must then contract a union within the period of six months. Should they fail to do so, they are served with three warning notices at successive intervals of two months, before any step is taken in the way of coercive measures. Every bachelor and every spinster is bound to furnish a written explanation of their irregular condition, and the only reasons admitted as valid are serious ill-health or organic defects.

"'When two lovers wish to marry they present themselves to the People's Commissary, who witnesses their marriage. The same course is followed as regards separating, only that the Commissary, after freeing the unhappy pair, inscribes the man afresh on the celibate list and the woman on the register of marriageable persons, notifying each of the obligation to find another partner within six months. In case children have been born from their union, they are either delivered to the custody of the particular parent desiring them or else divided between them. The Commissariat of Unions aids the youth of either sex in their quest of a mate by promoting all healthy forms of social intercourse and facilitating introductions among families of every type.'"

The above despatch was published in the April 26, 1919, issue of "The New York Times."

On April 28, 1919, the following very apt comment was made on it and appeared on the editorial page of the "New York Times":

"As explained by somebody whom a Milan paper calls a 'Bolshevist statesman,' marriage as regulated by the great and good Lenine is not at all the dreadful thing described recently by the mendacious enemies of his Socialistic paradise. As pictured by his friends, nothing worse has been done than to exert a gentle pressure on the marriageable unmarried to the end that they may do their duty to the Bolshevist State and provide it as soon as may be with new sons and daughters to take the place of those recently 'removed' by a benevolent terrorism.

"Bachelorhood and spinsterhood are to be regarded as 'irregular'—conditions that must be explained in writing to the proper authorities. For the well disposed a simple civil marriage ceremony is provided; also a simple divorce ceremony in case the union proves wearisome. And that is all there is to the Bolshevist marriage system, the statesman says.

"But one notices that he does not disclose what is done to those who fail to find pleasing mates in the six months allowed after notification for the making of a choice. Apparently it is then that the so-called nationalization of women comes in, and the statesman forgot to say a word about the only peculiarity of the system that has evolved any serious criticism."

Commenting on Bolshevism, Mr. Eber Cole Byam, in the April 26, 1919, issue of "America," very aptly says:

"As the Roman world was reduced to barbarism by the barbarians so now the modern world is threatened with reduction to Bolshevism by the Bolsheviki. Whatever the word Bolshevism may have meant originally it has come to mean fiendish treatment of women, the savage murder and mutilation of men and the wanton destruction of the accumulated labors of generations. The Bolshevik is a Socialist, not the armchair theorist dreaming fantastic fancies. The Bolshevik is the real Socialist, the Socialist of practice."

The following encomium on Bolshevism appeared in "The Call," New York, April 26, 1919, and shows what strange inclinations the Socialists have towards barbarism:

"For the first time in Russia's history law has been established based on the direct will of the population, established through the most democratic franchise in the world. Under Czarism, law was merely the promulgation of autocratic tyranny....

"For the first time in Russia's history, perfect freedom of religion is guaranteed to Christian, Moslem and Jew alike. After the American pattern, no church may control the state....

"For the first time, millions of Russian workers and peasants find themselves with decent homes. For the first time, women have equal social rights with men. For the first time, a real educational system has been inaugurated for the children....

"The recent official American investigators sent to Russia found a great change in the life of the cities from of old. They described the life as puritanical. Russians explained the change to them by the fact that vice and debauchery had been confined mostly to the idle ruling class, the old aristocracy, and these things had passed with the passing of that class."

Listen now to the words of the Russian Socialist author, Leonoid Andreiev, who has seen quite enough of the "blessings" of Bolshevism. They appear in the April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under the caption, "S. O. S., An Appeal to Humanity":

"One must, indeed, be insane not to understand the palpable and simple acts of Bolshevism! One must be sightless, stark-blind or have eyes that see not, to fail to observe on the face of the great mutilated Russia murder without end, ruins, miles of cemeteries, dungeons and insane asylums; not to perceive what hunger and terror have done to Petrograd, and, alas, to many other cities!

"One must be earless, stone-deaf, or have ears that hear not, to remain callous to the sobs, the sighs and the wailing of women, the heart-rending cries of the children, the death-rattle of strangled men, the cracking of the assassins' rifles, the only music that has filled the air of Russia for the last eighteen months!...

"As the wireless operator on a sinking vessel, in the thick blackness of the night, sends out his last appeal, 'Help, quick, we are sinking, save us!' so I, moved by my faith in the goodness of man, am sending out into distance and darkness my prayer for my people who are sinking.

"If you only knew how dark is the night around us, if my words could only convey its density and depth! Whom am I calling? I know not. Does the wireless operator know who may intercept his call? For thousands of miles around the ocean may be deserted and not a living soul may overhear his appeal.

"The night is dark. The sea is frightful. But the operator has not lost his faith, and he calls persistently, to the very last minute, until the last light is gone and his apparatus is silenced forever.

"What does he trust in? He trusts in humanity, and so do I. He trusts in the law of human love and life. It is impossible that one human being will deny help to another in his hour of perdition. It is impossible that one human being will abandon another to perish without attempting to help. It is impossible that such an appeal for help will not receive any response!...

"Friend! I do not even attempt to tell you how frightful life is in Russia at present, in our tormented Petrograd. Others have told enough, and new words cannot be coined by the human tongue.

"It is frightful when children starve and perish, and assassins are well-fed and Trotzky is pouring down his throat the last bottle of milk. It is frightful when the cemeteries of Petrograd have no more room for the dead, and the murderers have a free road not only to the Princess Islands, but to all the ends of the world, and the wealth they have stolen will enable them to live in balmy lands and in the most attractive corners of our mercenary globe."

Catherine Breshkovsky, the Socialist "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," though now an aged woman, lived long enough to bewail the fate of her country. Speaking of her native land, now reaping the harvest from the Marxian seed first sown many years ago, she says in her "Message to the American People":

"Flooded with tears and blood, Russia moans and cries out to the world. She is a living body, and her tortures cannot be looked upon cold-bloodedly as an extraordinary, never-before-witnessed experiments in social evolution. She is alive and every pore of her body is shedding blood."

Let the "scientific" American Socialists continue to take their information from "The Call." They are far too learned to be deceived by Russians such as Andreiev or the "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution." "The capitalist press is lying about the conditions in Russia." "The Call" alone speaks the truth, for it is a proletarian sheet.

Not satisfied with ruining his own country, Lenine would have Bolshevism spread to all other nations. He longs for their workingmen to rise in revolt against their present systems of government. Listen to his words in his "Letter to American Workingmen," published by the Socialist Publication Society, 431 Pulaski street, Brooklyn, New York:

"We know that it may take a long time before help can come from you, Comrades, American Workingmen, for the development of the revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with various rapidity (how could it be otherwise!) We know full well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days. We are counting on the inevitability of the international revolution. But that does not mean that we count on its coming at some definite date. We have experienced two great revolutions in our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that revolutions cannot come either at word of command nor according to prearranged plans. We know that circumstances alone have pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new stage in the social life of the world not because of our superiority but because of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the outbreak of the international revolution, revolutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of setbacks and serious overthrows....

"We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international Socialist revolution comes to our assistance with its armies. But these armies exist, they are stronger than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer imperialism, with its brutalities, continues. Workingmen the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and their Scheidemanns. Inevitably labor is approaching communistic Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone is capable of preserving culture and humanity from destruction. We are invincible, for invincible is the Proletarian Revolution."

The above words of the dictator Lenine may throw some light on the Socialists' demand for "justice" to Russia, and their campaign in behalf of the recognition of the Soviet Government of that country.

The Socialist Publication Society of Brooklyn at the end of the World War issued a large pamphlet entitled, "One Year of Revolution," celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the Russian Soviet Republic. On the cover page, under the caption, "The Spirit of Revolutionary Russia," and the subtitle, "To the Oppressed of All Countries," we read the summons to a Socialist world-wide revolution:

"And this life and death struggle with our own oppressors gives us the right to appeal to you, proletarians of all countries, with a strong voice, with the voice of those who look into the eyes of death in the revolt against the exploiters.

"Break the chains, you who are oppressed! Rise in revolt!

"We have nothing to lose but our chains!

"We believe in the victory of the revolution, we are full of this belief.

"We know that our Comrades in the Revolution will fulfill their duty on the barricades to the bitter end.

"We know that decisive moments are coming.

"A gigantic struggle will set the world afire. On the horizon the fires of the revolt of all oppressed peoples are already glowing and taking definite shape.

"At the moment that the waters of the Baltic will become red with the blood of our Comrades, will close forever over their bodies, at this moment we call upon you.

"Already in the clutch of death, we send our warm greetings and appeal to you.

"Proletarians of the world, all, unite!

"Rise in revolt, you who are oppressed.

"All hail, the International Revolution!

"Long live Socialism!"

In the spring of 1919 reports reached the United States that the Bolsheviki had been inciting our troops in the Archangel District of Russia to disloyalty against our government. An Associated Press dispatch, dated Vienna, April 24, 1919, shows how the Bolshevists carried on their campaign in the Ukraine:

"The Bolsheviki penetrated the country in four sections. First came agitators and next marauding bands to strike terror. These were followed by larger bodies of troops, made up of foreign elements. Last came Soviet troops, headed by Bolshevist commissioners. Iron discipline was maintained by Chinese assassins, who executed all soldiers who revolted against orders."

On May 26, 1919, the "New York Times" announced that a Bolshevist weekly paper would be issued in that city:

"Nicholai Lenine, the Premier, and Leon Trotzky, the Minister of War, together with other officials of the Russian Bolshevist Government, will begin next Monday the publication in this city of a sixteen page weekly newspaper, the purpose of which will be to spread propaganda favorable to the Bolsheviki. This announcement is made in today's issue of the propaganda sheet issued weekly from the headquarters of Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, the unrecognized 'Bolshevist Ambassador' to the United States. The paper is to be known as 'Soviet Russia.'"

"'Every friend of Russia, as well as every person interested in international affairs,' says the announcement, 'will subscribe to this weekly.' 'Soviet Russia' will contain news items, editorials, original articles, and unpublished documents."

The American Socialist Party acknowledges the Bolshevist regime of murder and starvation to be a Socialist regime and states that it upholds the lofty, international proletarian ideals. Debs and the American Socialist press, at the present writing, acknowledge the Bolsheviki to be real Socialists, not reactionaries or Socialists merely in name, like the Ebert-Scheidemann group in Germany. They want Bolshevism in America. They welcome it, laud it, love it. At least this is the case just now. Will they presently be offering arguments to prove that the Bolshevists were not Socialists at all, but traitors to the whole Marxian movement? Meantime the American Socialists spread all kinds of lies about the "wonders" of the Soviet Government while claiming that "the press" is lying about the Lenine system to save the capitalists from the demands of the laboring class.

Let us sincerely hope that no more Bolshevists from Russia will land on our shores. We have enough rebellious, hypocritical Reds here already, and need no more of them to teach us how to run our government. Congress should pass strict laws allowing no immigrants to land here who are Bolshevists.

It is to be hoped, too, that the leaders of the Illinois Labor Party who secured the adoption in their platform of a pro-Soviet plank in the spring of 1919 will take a few hours off and learn something about the Russian system before trying to "work it off" on our country.

There has been a great deal of "pussy-footing" talk in the American press about Bolshevism and Socialism, implying that there is no connection between the two. Yet Bolshevism is nothing but a form of Socialism. It is Socialism applied, though not yet as completely applied as the teachings of Karl Marx require. If an incomplete application of the principles of Socialism reduces a country to such an awful condition as Russia reveals, what may be expected from the full dose of Socialism?

At the last moment, with this book in type, a cry from the Bolshevik dictatorship comes out of Russia through interviews given by Lenine and Trotzky to the "New York World's" European correspondent, Lincoln Eyre. "I had an hour's talk with Lenine in the Kremlin at Moscow," Eyre writes in a dispatch headed, "Riga (by courier to Berlin), Feb. 20, 1920," and printed in the "World" of February 21, 1920. Lenine turned the interview into an argument for the lifting of the Allied blockade of Russia, and gave more than a hint that Russia's economic condition is desperate. According to Mr. Eyre's cable to the "New York World" of February 21, 1920, Lenine said, speaking in English:

"Russia's present economic distress is simply a part of the world's economic distress. Until the economic problem is faced from a world standpoint and not merely from the standpoint of certain nations or groups of nations, a solution is impossible.... Not only Russia but all Europe is going to pieces, and the [Allied] Supreme Council still indulges in tergiversation. Russia can be saved from utter ruin and Europe, too, but it must be done soon and quickly."

By insinuating that "all Europe is going to pieces" with Russia, and faces the same "utter ruin," Lenine covers his plea for Russia under an appeal to the self-interest of other nations. Yet his confession that Russia is "going to pieces" and trembles on the brink of "utter ruin" is plain enough, making his whole argument a cry to the "capitalistic" nations to help Socialistic Russia. Indeed, in other parts of the same interview, as reported by Mr. Eyre in the "World" of February 21, 1920, Lenine appeals to "foreign capital" and the "capitalistic countries" in the baldest terms, as follows:

"We have reiterated and reiterated our desire for peace, our need for peace and our readiness to give foreign capital the most generous concessions and guarantees.... I know of no reason why a Socialistic commonwealth like ours cannot do business indefinitely with capitalistic countries. We don't mind taking their capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why should they mind taking our Socialistic wheat, flax and platinum?"

Having waded through blood and violence to exterminate "capitalism" and cancel all "concessions" and "guarantees" in Russia, has "the dictatorship of the proletariat" emerged out of its nightmare of destruction simply to coax "foreign capital" back into Socialistic Russia by bribing offers of "the most generous concessions and guarantees?" After two years of a reign of terror to make an earthly paradise by destroying "capitalism" and the whole machinery of "capitalistic countries," this hungry reaching out by Lenine after "capital" and "capitalistic" things is almost too ludicrous for belief!

Eyre's interview with Trotzky, sent from "Riga (by courier to Berlin, Feb. 23)" and printed in the "New York World" of February 25, 1920, simply reenforces Lenine's appeal to "foreign capital" and the wicked "capitalistic countries." According to Eyre in the "World" of February 25, Trotzky spoke of "Russia, bankrupt, bleeding and starved," and said in part:

"Our military successes have not blinded us to our need of peace. We require peace for the re-establishment of economic stabilization.... We have had to sacrifice the welfare of our people and the health of future generations to the desperate needs of the hour."

And for what? Apparently only to substitute the autocracy of a new proletarian aristocracy for the autocracy of the old regime, and the czardom of Lenine and Trotzky for that of the Romanoffs. And the new tyranny not only re-establishes the old partnership between "capital" and labor, but puts the burden of militarism on labor more exclusively than before. This seems to be the program of Trotzky, "the People's Commissary for Military Affairs," according to Eyre's report of Trotzky's words in the "New York World" of February 25, 1920. His words are as follows:

"We recognize our need for outside aid in setting this country on its feet industrially and economically. It is a tremendous enterprise, one that will take two, five, perhaps ten years to carry out, but through the indomitable spirit of our proletariat it will be accomplished with a speed and competency that will amaze our foemen.... And once again I say that the people who help us gain peace will share in the profits, the very considerable profits, resultant from the aid they will have extended to us....

"Foreign capitalists who invest their money in Russian enterprises or who supply us with merchandise we require will receive material guarantees of amply adequate character. They need have no fears on that score.... It is obvious that we must look to the victorious nations, to Great Britain or, still better, to America for machinery, agricultural tools and other imports which Russia's economic renaissance demands."

Thus the old partnership of capital and labor is to be resumed. But what of the Russian workers? Having fought and toiled to put Lenine and Trotzky on the proletarian throne they must keep up military training to keep them there, and must toil hard to produce "the very considerable profits" which Lenine and Trotzky are going to share with the "foreign capitalists" who help them. But let Trotzky explain the destiny of the Russian workers in his own words, as reported by Eyre in the "World" of February 25, 1920:

"The workers and peasants will insist, once the revolution is no longer in peril, on returning to their factories and farms and making Russia a fit land to live in. Frontier guards will be maintained, of course. The framework of our (military) organization must also be preserved in order that with the experience they have received in the past eighteen months our proletarian fighting men can be remodelled in two or three months if the need arises. There will also be some form of military training for the working class, that it may always be ready to defend itself against the bourgeoisie."

Will not this be "militarism?" Of course not; for, in Trotzky's words in the same interview, "Militarism, striking as it does at the very roots of Communism, cannot possibly exist in Soviet Russia, the only truly pacific country in the world!" Thus facts disappear behind words. Conscription was militaristic under the Czar, but it cannot be under a Trotzky, for he has labeled his system a Soviet Republic and since Soviets are never military their military arrangements, though apparently more severe than the other kind, are really only a form of pacifism! Thus the happy Russian workers must serve as "frontier guards," keep up the framework of their military organization, and submit to "some form of military training," but may whistle as they groan, knowing that the yoke they bear "cannot exist."

Other contradictions in these interviews will be discussed later in this book. For example, we shall find, in Chapter XVI, that the Soviet Republic at Moscow can make peace with "capitalistic countries" and form partnerships with "foreign capital" while at the same time the Third International at Moscow carries on a world-wide conspiracy to destroy "capitalism" and overthrow the governments and institutions of "capitalistic countries."



CHAPTER XII

EUROPEAN SPARTACIDES AND COMMUNISTS



In Berlin, shortly after the Revolution against the Imperial Government, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and their group of Socialists of the extreme Left were raising a merry riot almost every day in the hope of overcoming the ultra-conservative Socialist government and introducing the radical Bolshevist program. The constant disorder occasioned by these Spartacans or Spartacides of the Left provoked the opposition parties very much, annoying them to such an extent that many Germans wished to remove the capital of the country from Berlin to some more orderly city.

The name "Spartacides" or "Spartacans" came from the fact that early in the World War Karl Liebknecht, their leader, issued a number of anti-war pamphlets bearing the pseudonym, "Spartacus."

The Spartacides are the reddest of the Reds, the real Socialists of Germany. They differ very much from the Ebert-Scheidemann group, for the Spartacans want the principles of Socialism applied immediately, whereas Ebert and other members of his government warned their followers that though they held Socialist theories, the application of Socialism must be postponed to the distant future. The Ebert-Scheidemann Majority Socialists are regarded by the others as Socialists only in name, being really social reformers, or, at the most, weak-kneed Socialists who sought power, but fully realized that the application of the Marxian principles would be doomed to absolute failure. The Spartacans, however, still have confidence in Socialism; they agree heart and soul with the Russian Bolsheviki; they are the rowdies and ruffians of Germany, always looking for trouble. Strikes, riots and civil discord are their weapons, and the American Socialists are among their particular friends. Indeed, the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs has no use whatever for the Ebert-Scheidemann group, who are looked upon as reactionaries, hypocrites, murderers and traitors to Socialism.

In the latter part of 1918, the Berlin correspondent of the "Koelnische Zeitung" drew a graphic picture of the terrorism exercised in Berlin by the Spartacan gangs:

"Dr. Liebknecht himself, whose imprisonment has obviously clouded his formerly keen intelligence and probably turned his brain, spends his time in visiting barracks in Berlin, Spandau and elsewhere, and inciting the men to refuse to allow any distinctions even of non-commissioned rank or to accept anything resembling orders from officers or to admit them to the local councils. His chief of staff, Dr. Levy, who before the war was his business partner in his law office, is preaching fanaticism in Berlin to all and sundry.

"The word Spartacus goes through the city like a bogy. Civilians, soldiers, employees, capitalists, all feel themselves equally threatened. A sitting of the Prussian Lower House had to be adjourned because it was feared that the Spartacus gang was going to seize the building.

"'The Lokal Anzeiger' has several times failed to appear, as the result of repeated efforts of the Spartacus gang to seize it. Careful burghers chain up the house doors, and it would be well if the steadier elements of our workmen and soldiers would chain up the door of their hearts against the murderous and suicidal ideas of the Spartacus gang."

The Spartacides made a practice of terrorizing German newspapers into supporting them. In the early part of 1919, they tried to prevent the Constituent Assembly from coming together, and later on engineered many a revolt in the various cities of Germany. Since their leaders, the fiery Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were assassinated, the orderly elements of the German people have succeeded more and more in weakening the power and influence of the Spartacans.

Kurt Eisner, of Bavaria, after the overthrow of the German Imperial Government, sought to establish a federation of German republics under the head of Bavaria. It was not very long before the first step was taken, Bavaria declaring itself a republic independent of the Berlin Government. After the assassination of Eisner, Bavaria, and especially its capital, Munich, came more and more under the control of the extreme radical group of Socialists known as the Communists. About the end of March, 1919, Bela Kun, the Foreign Minister of the newly established Communist Government of Hungary and one of the most active propagandists of Russian Bolshevism, arrived at Munich to confer with the leaders of the Bavarian Government. Shortly afterwards, in the early part of April, a Soviet Republic was proclaimed at Munich.

The socialization of industry began. That part of the press that favored the new regime was upheld by the Government, which suppressed unfriendly organs. Members of the Christian Textile Workers' Association were forced, on pain of being deprived of work, to join the Social-Democratic Union. Various other measures of "freedom, equality, and justice" were also bestowed upon the people, and the hope was expressed by the Red Socialists of Munich that the proclamation of a Bavarian Soviet would have its effect throughout Germany and result in a world revolution.

Towards the middle of April, 1919, press dispatches stated that the Munich Communists had elected a council, consisting of five workmen and five soldiers, with Herr Klatz, a bricklayer, as president; that the police was disarmed; that eleven hostages were taken from the ranks of the trade-union leaders; that revolutionary tribunals were established at Munich, where twenty-eight judges continued, in relays of seven, to pass sentences day and night, and, finally, that a decree was issued by the Communist government confiscating all dwellings.

Shortly after these reports reached America, the peasants of Bavaria rose up against the revolutionary government in Munich and declared an effective ban on the shipment of food to that city. No attacks were made upon Munich by the troops of the moderate Hoffman government of Bavaria which had been ousted by the Communists, for it was feared that the whole country might thus be plunged into civil war. The only strategic movement of these troops was to cut off the supplies of food.

Discord soon sprang up among the Soviet leaders themselves, who engaged in open street fights against each other. Before the end of April, 1919, the Central Council had been dissolved and the Communist mob had turned to plundering. Food ration cards were taken away from the bourgeoisie, and barricades were erected around the city to defend it from Noske's army, sent to attack it by the Ebert-Scheidemann moderate Socialist Government of Berlin. In the early part of May, 1919, the Communist rabble of the Bavarian capital was finally overcome by the artillery fire of Noske's troops, and Hoffman was once more put in control.

The American Socialists look upon the ousted Communists of Bavaria as the upholders of the Marxian doctrine, and consider them, along with the Russian Bolsheviki and the Hungarian Communists, as Socialist brethren worthy of their respect and imitation.

In Hungary the "100 per cent" Socialists, the Communists, under the leadership of Bela Kun, came into power in the early part of the year 1919. Press despatches, at the end of March, stated that all villas, industries and building had been declared the property of the state; that each factory was controlled by a Council of Laborers; that free-love was legalized as in Russia; that all clergymen and nuns were removed from the hospitals, excepting those who acted in the capacity of nurses, and the religious, tuition schools were abolished.

A press dispatch dated Buda-Pest, April 4, 1919, said that "in Transylvania, following the practice in Moscow, the churches have been converted into music halls, the best seats being reserved for the proletariat. The government officials do not pay house rent and have priority on foodstuffs and clothing."

The American Socialists boasted about the absence of bloodshed in Hungary during the early part of Bela Kun's regime. Whether or not he had been cautioned by Lenine not to wear out too many rifles in the beginning, lest there be a dearth later on, we do not know. At any rate, by the latter part of May, 1919, the Hungarian Communists also began to manifest their true color. They were not satisfied with "painting everything red" in Buda-Pest, but also wanted to see red blood flowing in the gutters. In confirmation of this we have the following Associated Press report, dated Vienna, May 20, but not appearing in the "New York Times" till May 23:

"Many persons accused of being counter-revolutionists are being executed by the Hungarian Communists, according to despatches received here. The victims are usually shot in front of the Hungarian Parliament House in the daytime or in the school-yard in the Markostrasse at night.

"Among those who are said to have been executed are Herr Holan, manager of the Kaschau-Oderberg Railway; Bishop Balthasar, a hostage from Debreczen, and Colonel Dormany of the General Staff, who was taken from a hospital. Several girls, who were accused of making tri-color rosettes for the counter-revolutionists, also were executed. The presiding Judge of the Revolutionary tribunal, which orders the executions, it is said, is a former locksmith, 22 years of age.

"Many bodies of men and women and girls of the better classes have been found on the shores of islands in the Danube below the city. It is reported that they were arrested in the residential quarter of Buda and thrown into the Danube by guards who were taking them to prisons in Pest."

In the summer of 1919 the Hungarian Communists lost control of the country. Not only had internal dissensions broken out at home, but they had been attacked for a long time by the Rumanians, who had caused them endless trouble. If they had succeeded in remaining in power long enough, they would, no doubt, in time have shown themselves proficient in murdering their fellow-countrymen and as skilled in the use of the rifle as the Bolsheviki in Russia, the Spartacides in Germany and the Communists in Bavaria. These four groups of European Socialists of the extreme Left—ruffians, brutes, murderous thugs, half barbarous savages, slayers even of their own Socialist brethren—have long been in a "position" to teach the "gentle art" of plunder and murder to their admiring comrades on this side of the Atlantic, that "poor," "persecuted," "workingman," Eugene V. Debs, and his crowd of "honest," "scientific," "evolutionists."

With these European thugs Berger and Hillquit deliberately "lined up" the Socialist Party of America in the words of their Chicago manifesto of September 4, 1919:

"The Socialist Party of the United States at its first national convention after the war, squarely takes its position with the uncompromising section of the international Socialist Movement. We unreservedly reject the policy of those Socialists who supported their belligerent capitalist governments on the plea of 'national defense,'" etc.

There is no breath of patriotism in these dogs.

The above "line up" was confirmed by the rank and file of the Socialist Party of America in their referendum vote identifying their party with the Revolutionary Third (Moscow) International. (See Chapters V and XVI.)



CHAPTER XIII

THE BOLSHEVISM OF AMERICAN SOCIALISTS



To accuse American Socialists of conspiring against our fair land may at first startle the reader. Brand as traitors to the common welfare men who boast so loudly of being the only friends of the oppressed laborer! Call the followers of Karl Marx the enemies of our country after they have lavished so much precious time on exposures of those who defraud American workingmen of an honest wage! Yet, as our investigation moves along, telling evidence uncovers the existence of an alarmingly widespread conspiracy.

Our Chapters VIII and IX have clearly revealed the I. W. W. as a purely revolutionary organization, enrolling under its red flag discontented workingmen, even negroes and Chinese, pledged to overthrow our Government, while meanwhile, with anarchistic contempt for law and morality, they do what damage they can through strikes and sabotage.

The same chapters proved that the Socialists are co-operating heart and soul with the Industrial Workers of the World.

Chapters X, XI and XII gave the reader evidence of some of the terrible results of Bolshevism in Russia, Communism in Hungary and Bavaria, and Spartacism in Germany. Yet far from being dismayed by these horrors, the Socialists of the United States proclaim themselves of the same breed as the Bolshevists, Communists and Spartacans abroad, whose torch of incendiarism they would apply to the United States.

The Socialist Party of Buffalo, New York, published a pink booklet entitled, "The Truth About Russia," in which reference is made to the Russian call to a world-wide Socialist revolution. On page 41, at the conclusion of the articles of the Bolshevik Constitution concerning rights and duties, we read:

"In proclaiming these rights and duties the Russian Socialist Republic of the Soviets calls upon the working classes of the entire world to accomplish their task to the very end, and in the faith that the Socialist ideal will soon be achieved to write upon their flags the old battle cry of the working people:

"'Proletarians of all lands, unite!

"'Long live the Socialistic world revolution!'"

The plan is for Socialists in countries outside of Russia to be helped in their revolts against their governments by their Bolshevist comrades. In the "Labor Scrap Book," published by Chas. H. Kerr and Co., there is a long article by Nicholas Lenine, the Russian dictator. Several quotations are here given:

"Russia's revolution is not a domestic revolution, but essentially a world revolution....

"The Bolsheviki follow a consistent policy. They realized long ago that the revolution, though primarily political, must become economic and socialist. They know that economy and socialism have nothing to do with racial or political boundaries and that the future of our revolution must, therefore, be international. The revolution must pass over all political and racial frontiers and crush opposing economic ideas. They know that a state organized on Socialist and pacifist lines cannot exist if hemmed in by capitalistic and militarist states. Russia's revolution must follow the law of all healthy organisms. It must increase. If it does not increase it will decline....

"Russia will continue to propagandize unshrinkingly in all countries.

"We may be left temporarily in peace to enjoy our revolutionary social and economic system while the rest of Europe continues to groan under a capitalism and monarchism which, perhaps, for the time being, will be purged of a too dangerous imperialism.

"What will Russia do if this be so?

"Short-sighted men reply: 'Cherish your own revolution; thank Heaven that you are better off than the rest of the world; and let the rest of the world do what it likes.'

"But we Bolsheviki are against such a policy. Short of armed pressure against any European country, we shall not shrink from measures necessary for spreading our revolution in the world.

"The motives why every Bolshevik must approve of this policy are overwhelming. The first is that a peace between the ideas of revolutionary Russia and the ideas of non-revolutionary Europe could at best be a truce....

"Each side would foster its ideas and prepare for a future struggle, and since non-revolutionary Europe will always be better armed than pacifist Russia, the European despots (as soon as they have recovered from their present bitter lesson of the meaning of war) undoubtedly would hurl themselves upon Russia in order to wipe away the one revolutionary plague-spot.