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III.
Let us see now how Bolshevik “Communism” affects the lives of the masses and of the individual.
There are naive people who believe that at least some features of Communism have been introduced into the lives of the Russian people.
I wish it were true, for that would be a hopeful sign, a promise of potential development along that line.
But the truth is that in no phase of Soviet life, no more in the social than in individual relations, has there ever been any attempt to apply Communist principles in any shape or form.
As I have pointed out before, the very suggestion of free, voluntary Communism is taboo in Russia and is regarded as counter-revolutionary and high treason against the infallible Stalin and the holy “Communist” Party.
And here I do not speak of the libertarian, Anarchist Communism.
What I assert is that there is not the least sign in Soviet Russia even of authoritarian, State Communism.
Let us glance at the actual facts of everyday life there.
The essence of Communism, even of the coercive kind, is the absence of social classes.
The introduction of economic equality is its first step.
This has been the basis of all Communist philosophies, however they may have differed in other respects.
The purpose common to all of them was to secure social justice; and all of them agreed that it was not possible without establishing economic equality.
Even Plato, in spite of the intellectual and moral strata in his Republic, provided for absolute economic equality, since the ruling classes were not to enjoy greater rights or privileges than the lowest social unit.
Even at the risk of condemnation for telling the whole truth, I must state unequivocally and unconditionally that the very opposite is the case in Soviet Russia.
Bolshevism has not abolished the classes in Russia: it has merely reversed their former relationship.
As a matter of fact, it has multiplied the social divisions which existed before the Revolution.
When I arrived in Soviet Russia in January, 1920, I found innumerable economic categories, based on the food rations received from the government.
The sailor was getting the best ration, superior in quality, quantity and variety to the food issued to the rest of the population.
He was the aristocrat of the Revolution: economically and socially he was universally considered to belong to the new privileged classes.
After him came the soldier, the Red Army man, who received a much smaller ration, even less bread.
Below the soldier in the scale was the worker in the military industries; then came other workers, subdivided into the skilled, the artisan, the laborer, etc.
Each category received a little less bread, fats, sugar, tobacco, and other products (whenever they were to be had at all).
Members of the former bourgeoisie, officially abolished as a class and expropriated, were in the last economic category and received practically nothing.
Most of them could secure neither work nor lodgings, and it was no one's business how they were to exist, to keep from stealing or from joining the counter-revolutionary armies and robber bands.
The possession of a red card, proving membership in the Communist Party, placed one above all these categories.
It entitled its owner to a special ration, enabled him to eat in the Party stolovaya (mess-room) and produced, particularly if supported by recommendations from party members higher up, warm underwear, leather boots, a fur coat, or other valuable articles.
Prominent party men had their own dining-rooms, to which the ordinary members had no access.
In the Smolny, for instance, then the headquarters of the Petrograd government, there were two different dining-rooms, one for Communists in high position, the other for the lesser lights.
Zinoviev, then chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and virtual autocrat of the Northern District, and other government heads took their meals at home in the Astoria, formerly the best hotel in the city, turned into the first Soviet House, where they lived with their families.
Later on I found the same situation in Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa—everywhere in Soviet Russia.
It was the Bolshevik system of “Communism.”
What dire effects it had in causing dissatisfaction, resentment and antagonism throughout the country, resulting in industrial and agrarian sabotage, in strikes and revolts—of this further on.
It is said that man does not live by bread alone.
True, but he cannot live at all without it.
To the average man, to the masses in Russia, the different rations established in the country for the liberation of which they had bled, was the symbol of the new regime.
It signified to them the great lie of Bolshevism, the broken promises of freedom, for freedom meant to them social justice, economic equality.
The instinct of the masses seldom goes wrong; in this case it proved prophetic.
What wonder, then, that the universal enthusiasm over the Revolution soon turned into disillusionment and bitterness, to opposition and hatred.
How often Russian workers complained to me:
“We don’t mind working hard and going hungry.
It's the injustice which we mind.
If the country is poor, if there is little bread, then let us all share that little, but let us share equally.
As things are now, it's the same as it used to be; some get more, others less, and some get nothing at all.”
The Bolshevik system of privilege and inequality was not long in producing its inevitable results.
It created and fostered social antagonisms; it alienated the masses from the Revolution, paralyzed their interest in it and their energies, and thus defeated all the purposes of the Revolution.
The same system of privilege and inequality, strengthened and perfected, is in force today.
The Russian Revolution was in the deepest sense a social upheaval: its fundamental tendency was libertarian, its essential aim economic and social equality.
Long before the October-November days (1917) the city proletariat began taking possession of the mills, shops and factories, while the peasants expropriated the big estates and turned the land to communal use.
The continued development of the Revolution in its Communist direction depended on the unity of the revolutionary forces and the direct, creative initiative of the laboring masses.
The people were enthusiastic in the great object before them; they eagerly applied their energies to the work of social reconstruction.
Only they who had for centuries borne the heaviest burdens could, through free and systematic effort, find the road to a new, regenerated society.
But Bolshevik dogmas and “Communist” statism proved a fatal handicap to the creative activities of the people.
The fundamental characteristic of Bolshevik psychology is distrust of the masses.
Their Marxist theories, centering all power in the exclusive hands of their party, quickly resulted in the destruction of revolutionary cooperation, in the arbitrary and ruthless suppression of all other political parties and movements.
Bolshevik tactics encompassed the systematic eradication of every sign of dissatisfaction, stifled all criticism and crushed independent opinion, popular initiative and effort.
Communist dictatorship, with its extreme mechanical centralization, frustrated the economic and industrial activities of the country.
The great masses were deprived of the opportunity to shape the policies of the Revolution or to take part in the administration of their own affairs.
The labor unions were governmentalized and turned into mere transmitters of the orders of the state.
The people's cooperatives—that vital nerve of active solidarity and mutual help between city and country—were liquidated.
The Soviets of peasants and workers were castrated and transformed into obedient committees.
The government monopolized every phase of life.
A bureaucratic machine was created, appalling in its inefficiency, corruption, brutality.
The Revolution was divorced from the people and thus doomed to perish; and over all hung the dreaded sword of Bolshevik terrorism.
That was the “Communism” of the Bolsheviki in the first stages of the Revolution.
Everyone knows that it brought the complete paralyzes of industry, agriculture and transport.
It was the period of “military Communism,” of agrarian and industrial conscription, of the razing of peasant villages by Bolshevik artillery—those “constructive” social and economic policies of Bolshevik Communism which resulted in the fearful famine in 1921.
(Continued tommorow, ed.)
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.