Read Ebook: The Crisis in Russia by Ransome Arthur

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 156 lines and 37586 words, and 4 pages

The one thing on which the speakers were in complete agreement was the absolute need of an effort in industry equal to, if not greater than, the effort made in the army. I thought it significant that in many of the speeches the importance of this effort was urged as the only possible means of retaining the support of the peasants. There was a tacit recognition that the Conference represented town workers only. Larin, who had belonged to the old school which had grown up with its eyes on the industrial countries of the West and believed that revolution could be brought about by the town workers alone, that it was exclusively their affair, and that all else was of minor importance, unguardedly spoke of the peasant as "our neighbor." In Javoslavl, country and town are too near to allow the main problem of the revolution to be thus easily dismissed. It was instantly pointed out that the relation was much more intimate, and that, even if it were only "neighborly," peace could not long be preserved if it were continually necessary for one neighbor to steal the chickens of the other. These town workers of a district for the most part agricultural were very sure that the most urgent of all tasks was to raise industry to the point at which the town would really be able to supply the village with its needs.

Larin and Radek severally summed up and made final attacks on each other's positions, after which Radek's resolution approving the theses of the Central Committee was passed almost unanimously. Larin's four amendments received 1, 3, 7 and 1 vote apiece. This result was received with cheering throughout the theater, and showed the importance of such Conferences in smoothing the way of the Dictatorship, since it had been quite obvious when the discussion began that a very much larger proportion of the delegates than finally voted for his resolution had been more or less in sympathy with Larin in his opposition to the Central Committee.

There followed elections to the Party Conference in Moscow. Rostopchin, the president, read a list which had been submitted by the various ouyezds in the Jaroslavl Government. They were to send to Moscow fifteen delegates with the right to vote, together with another fifteen with the right to speak but not to vote. Larin, who had done much work in the district, was mentioned as one of the fifteen voting delegates, but he stood up and said that as the Conference had so clearly expressed its disagreement with his views, he thought it better to withdraw his candidature. Rostopchin put it to the Conference that although they disagreed with Larin, yet it would be as well that he should have the opportunity of stating his views at the All-Russian Conference, so that discussion there should be as final and as many-sided as possible. The Conference expressed its agreement with this. Larin withdrew his withdrawal, and was presently elected. The main object of these conferences in unifying opinion and in arming Communists with argument for the defence of this unified opinion a mong the masses was again illustrated when the Conference, in leaving it to the ouyezds to choose for themselves the non-voting delegates urged them to select wherever possible people who would have the widest opportunities of explaining on their return to the district whatever results might be reached in Moscow.

It was now pretty late in the evening, and after another very satisfactory visit to the prison we drove back to the station. Larin, who was very disheartened, realizing that he had lost much support in the course of the discussion, settled down to work, and buried himself in a mass of statistics. I prepared to go to bed, but we had hardly got into the car when there was a tap at the door and a couple of railwaymen came in. They explained that a few hundred yards away along the line a concert and entertainment arranged by the Jaroslavl railwaymen was going on, and that their committee, hearing that Radek was at the station, had sent them to ask him to come over and say a few words to them if he were not too tired.

"Come along," said Radek, and we walked in the dark along the railway lines to a big one-story wooden shanty, where an electric lamp lit a great placard, "Railwaymen's Reading Room." We went into a packed hall. Every seat was occupied by railway workers and their wives and children. The gangways on either side were full of those who had not found room on the benches. We wriggled and pushed our way through this crowd, who were watching a play staged and acted by the railwaymen themselves, to a side door, through which we climbed up into the wings, and slid across the stage behind the scenery into a tiny dressing-room. Here Radek was laid hold of by the Master of the Ceremonies, who, it seemed, was also part editor of a railwaymen's newspaper, and made to give a long account of the present situation of Soviet Russia's Foreign Affairs. The little box of a room filled to a solid mass as policemen, generals and ladies of the old regime threw off their costumes, and, in their working clothes, plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen. When the act ended, one of the railwaymen went to the front of the stage and announced that Radek, who had lately come back after imprisonment in Germany for the cause of revolution, was going to talk to them about the general state of affairs. I saw Radek grin at this forecast of his speech. I understood why, when he began to speak. He led off by a direct and furious onslaught on the railway workers in general, demanding work, work and more work, telling them that as the Red Army had been the vanguard of the revolution hitherto, and had starved and fought and given lives to save those at home from Denikin and Kolchak, so now it was the turn of the railway workers on whose efforts not only the Red Army but also the whole future of Russia depended. He addressed himself to the women, telling them in very bad Russian that unless their men worked superhumanly they would see their babies die from starvation next winter. I saw women nudge their husbands as they listened. Instead of giving them a pleasant, interesting sketch of the international position, which, no doubt, was what they had expected, he took the opportunity to tell them exactly how things stood at home. And the amazing thing was that they seemed to be pleased. They listened with extreme attention, wanted to turn out some one who had a sneezing fit at the far end of the hall, and nearly lifted the roof off with cheering when Radek had done. I wondered what sort of reception a man would have who in another country interrupted a play to hammer home truths about the need of work into an audience of working men who had gathered solely for the purpose of legitimate recreation. It was not as if he sugared the medicine he gave them. His speech was nothing but demands for discipline and work, coupled with prophecy of disaster in case work and discipline failed. It was delivered like all his speeches, with a strong Polish accent and a steady succession of mistakes in grammar.

As we walked home along the railway lines, half a dozen of the railwaymen pressed around Radek, and almost fought with each other as to who should walk next to him. And Radek entirely happy, delighted at his success in giving them a bombshell instead of a bouquet, with one stout fellow on one arm, another on the other, two or three more listening in front and behind, continued rubbing it into them until we reached our wagon, when, after a general handshaking, they disappeared into the night.

THE TRADE UNIONS

Trade Unions in Russia are in a different position from that which is common to all other Trades Unions in the world. In other countries the Trades Unions are a force with whose opposition the Government must reckon. In Russia the Government reckons not on the possible opposition of the Trades Unions, but on their help for realizing its most difficult measures, and for undermining and overwhelming any opposition which those measures may encounter. The Trades Unions in Russia, instead of being an organization outside the State protecting the interests of a class against the governing class, have become a part of the State organization. Since, during the present period of the revolution the backbone of the State organization is the Communist Party, the Trade Unions have come to be practically an extension of the party organization. This, of course, would be indignantly denied both by Trade Unionists and Communists. Still, in the preface to the All-Russian Trades Union Reports for 1919, Glebov, one of the best-known Trade Union leaders whom I remember in the spring of last year objecting to the use of bourgeois specialists in their proper places, admits as much in the following muddleheaded statement:--

"The base of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist Party, which in general directs all the political and economic work of the State, leaning, first of all, on the Soviets as on the more revolutionary form of dictatorship of the proletariat, and secondly on the Trades Unions, as organizations which economically unite the proletariat of factory and workshop as the vanguard of the revolution, and as organizations of the new socialistic construction of the State. Thus the Trade Unions must be considered as a base of the Soviet State, as an organic form complementary to the other forms of the Proletariat Dictatorship." These two elaborate sentences constitute an admission of what I have just said.

Trades Unionists of other countries must regard the fate of their Russian colleagues with horror or with satisfaction, according to their views of events in Russia taken as a whole. If they do not believe that there has been a social revolution in Russia, they must regard the present position of the Russian Trades Unions as the reward of a complete defeat of Trade Unionism, in which a Capitalist government has been able to lay violent hands on the organization which was protecting the workers against it. If, on the other hand, they believe that there has been a social revolution, so that the class organized in Trades Unions is now, identical with the governing, class against which the unions once struggled, then they must regard the present position as a natural and satisfactory result of victory.

When I was in Moscow in the spring of this year the Russian Trades Unions received a telegram from the Trades Union Congress at Amsterdam, a telegram which admirably illustrated the impossibility of separating judgment of the present position of the Unions from judgments of the Russian revolution as a whole. It encouraged the Unions "in their struggle" and promised support in that struggle. The Communists immediately asked "What struggle? Against the capitalist system in Russia which does not exist? Or against capitalist systems outside Russia?" They said that either the telegram meant this latter only, or it meant that its writers did not believe that there had been a social revolution in Russia. The point is arguable. If one believes that revolution is an impossibility, one can reason from that belief and say that in spite of certain upheavals in Russia the fundamental arrangement of society is the same there as in other countries, so that the position of the Trade Unions there must be the same, and, as in other countries they must be still engaged in augmenting the dinners of their members at the expense of the dinners of the capitalists which, in the long run they would abolish. If, on the other hand, one believes that social revolution has actually occurred, to speak of Trades Unions continuing the struggle in which they conquered something like three years ago, is to urge them to a sterile fanaticism which has been neatly described by Professor Santayana as a redoubling of your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

It 's probably true that the "aim" of the Trades Unions was more clearly defined in Russia than elsewhere. In England during the greater part of their history the Trades Unions have not been in conscious opposition to the State. In Russia this position was forced on the Trades Unions almost before they had time to get to work. They were born, so to speak, with red flags in their hands. They grew up under circumstances of extreme difficulty and persecution. From 1905 on they were in decided opposition to the existing system, and were revolutionary rather than merely mitigatory organizations.

Before 1905 they were little more than associations for mutual help, very weak, spending most of their energies in self-preservation from the police, and hiding their character as class organizations by electing more or less Liberal managers and employers as "honorary members." 1905, however, settled their revolutionary character. In September of that year there was a Conference at Moscow, where it was decided to call an All-Russian Trades Union Congress. Reaction in Russia made this impossible, and the most they could do was to have another small Conference in February, 1906, which, however, defined their object as that of creating a general Trade Union Movement organized on All-Russian lines. The temper of the Trades Unions then, and the condition of the country at that time, may be judged from the fact that although they were merely working for the right to form Unions, the right to strike, etc., they passed the following significant resolution: "Neither from the present Government nor from the future State Duma can be expected realization of freedom of coalition. This Conference considers the legalization of the Trades Unions under present conditions absolutely impossible." The Conference was right. For twelve years after that there were no Trades Unions Conferences in Russia. Not until June, 1917, three months after the March Revolution, was the third Trade Union Conference able to meet. This Conference reaffirmed the revolutionary character of the Russian Trades Unions.

At that time the dominant party in the Soviets was that of the Mensheviks, who were opposed to the formation of a Soviet Government, and were supporting the provisional Cabinet of Kerensky. The Trades Unions were actually at that time more revolutionary than the Soviets. This third Conference passed several resolutions, which show clearly enough that the present position of the Unions has not been brought about by any violence of the Communists from without, but was definitely promised by tendencies inside the Unions at a time when the Communists were probably the least authoritative party in Russia. This Conference of June, 1917, resolved that the Trades Unions should not only "remain militant class organizations... but... should support the activities of the Soviets of soldiers and deputies." They thus clearly showed on which side they stood in the struggle then proceeding. Nor was this all. They also, though the Mensheviks were still the dominant party, resolved on that system of internal organizations and grouping, which has been actually realized under the Communists. I quote again from the resolution of this Conference:

"The evolution of the economic struggle demands from the workers such forms of professional organization as, basing themselves on the connection between various groups of workers in the process of production, should unite within a general organization, and under general leadership, as large masses of workers as possible occupied in enterprises of the same kind, or in similar professions. With this object the workers should organize themselves professionally, not by shops or trades, but by productions, so that all the workers of a given enterprise should belong to one Union, even if they belong to different professions and even different productions." That which was then no more than a design is now an accurate description of Trades Union organization in Russia. Further, much that at present surprises the foreign inquirer was planned and considered desirable then, before the Communists had won a majority either in the Unions or in the Soviet. Thus this same third Conference resolved that "in the interests of greater efficiency and success in the economic struggle, a professional organization should be built on the principle of democratic centralism, assuring to every member a share in the affairs of the organization and, at the same time, obtaining unity in the leadership of the struggle." Finally "Unity in the direction of the economic struggle demands unity in the exchequer of the Trades Unions."

Thus, at the time of the Moscow Congress the Soviets, then Mensheviks, who were represented at the Congress were against strikes of protest. The Trades Unions took a point of view nearer that of the Bolsheviks, and the strikes in Moscow took place in spite of the Soviets. After the Kornilov affair, when the Mensheviks were still struggling for coalition with the bourgeois parties, the Trades Unions quite definitely took the Bolshevik standpoint. At the so-called Democratic Conference, intended as a sort of life belt for the sinking Provisional Government, only eight of the Trades Union delegates voted for a continuance of the coalition, whereas seventy three voted against.

This consciously revolutionary character throughout their much shorter existence has distinguished Russian from, for example, English Trades Unions. It has set their course for them.

In October, 1917, they got the revolution for which they had been asking since March. Since then, one Congress after another has illustrated the natural and inevitable development of Trades Unions inside a revolutionary State which, like most if not all revolutionary States, is attacked simultaneously by hostile armies from without and by economic paralysis from within. The excited and lighthearted Trades Unionists of three years ago, who believed that the mere decreeing of "workers' control" would bring all difficulties automatically to an end, are now unrecognizable. We have seen illusion after illusion scraped from them by the pumice-stone of experience, while the appalling state of the industries which they now largely control, and the ruin of the country in which they attained that control, have forced them to alter their immediate aims to meet immediate dangers, and have accelerated the process of adaptation made inevitable by their victory.

The process of adaptation has had the natural result of producing new internal cleavages. Change after change in their programme and theory of the Russian Trades Unionists has been due to the pressure of life itself, to the urgency of struggling against the worsening of conditions already almost unbearable. It is perfectly natural that those Unions which hold back from adaptation and resent the changes are precisely those which, like that of the printers, are not intimately concerned in any productive process, are consequently outside the central struggle, and, while feeling the discomforts of change, do not feel its need.

The opposition inside the productive Trades Unions is of two kinds. There is the opposition, which is of merely psychological interest, of old Trades Union leaders who have always thought of themselves as in opposition to the Government, and feel themselves like watches without mainsprings in their new role of Government supporters. These are men in whom a natural intellectual stiffness makes difficult the complete change of front which was the logical result of the revolution for which they had been working. But beside that there is a much more interesting opposition based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or rather in the permanence of the victory of the town workers. They point to the divergence in interests between the town and country populations, and are convinced that sooner or later the peasants will alter the government to suit themselves, when, once more, it will be a government against which the town workers will have to defend their interests. The Mensheviks object to the identification of the Trades Unions with the Government apparatus on the ground that when this change, which they expect comes about, the Trade Union movement will be so far emasculated as to be incapable of defending the town workers against the peasants who will then be the ruling class. Thus they attack the present Trades Union leaders for being directly influenced by the Government in fixing the rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a precedent from which, when the change comes, it will be difficult to break away. The Communists answer them by insisting that it is to everybody's interest to pull Russia through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were for such academic reasons to insist on their complete independence instead of in every possible way collaborating with the Government, they would be not only increasing the difficulties of the revolution in its economic crisis, but actually hastening that change which the Mensheviks, though they regard it as inevitable, cannot be supposed to desire. This Menshevik opposition is strongest in the Ukraine. Its strength may be judged from the figures of the Congress in Moscow this spring when, of 1,300 delegates, over 1,000 were Communists or sympathizers with them; 63 were Mensheviks and 200 were non-party, the bulk of whom, I fancy, on this point would agree with the Mensheviks.

But apart from opposition to the "stratification" of the Trades Unions, there is a cleavage cutting across the Communist Party itself and uniting in opinion, though not in voting, the Mensheviks and a section of their Communist opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers' control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate desirability of this, but insist that the important question is not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the orders shall be given. I have nowhere found this matter properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely strong. Everybody whom I asked about it began at once to address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I found it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it may be fairly said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned the ideas of 1917, which resulted in the workmen in a factory deposing any technical expert or manager whose orders were in the least irksome to them. These ideas and the miseries and unfairness they caused, the stoppages of work, the managers sewn up in sacks, ducked in ponds and trundled in wheelbarrows, have taken their places as curiosities of history. The change in these ideas has been gradual. The first step was the recognition that the State as a whole was interested in the efficiency of each factory, and, therefore, that the workmen of each factory had no right to arrange things with no thought except for themselves. The Committee idea was still strong, and the difficulty was got over by assuring that the technical staff should be represented on the Committee, and that the casting vote between workers and technical experts or managers should belong to the central economic organ of the State. The next stage was when the management of a workshop was given a so called "collegiate" character, the workmen appointing representatives to share the responsibility of the "bourgeois specialist." The bitter controversy now going on concerns the seemingly inevitable transition to a later stage in which, for all practical purposes, the bourgeois specialist will be responsible solely to the State. Many Communists, including some of the best known, while recognizing the need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all, regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long run to make the revolution not worth preserving.

The enormous Communist majority, together with the fact that however much they may quarrel with each other inside the party, the Communists will go to almost any length to avoid breaking the party discipline, means that at present the resolutions of Trades Union Congresses will not be different from those of Communists Congresses on the same subjects. Consequently, the questions which really agitate the members, the actual cleavages inside that Communist majority, are comparatively invisible at a Trades Union Congress. They are fought over with great bitterness, but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once the Club of the Nobility, with on its walls on Congress days the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country. And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor their internal squabbles affects the cardinal fact that in the present crisis the Trades Unions are chiefly important as part of that organization of human will with which the Communists are attempting to arrest the steady progress of Russia's economic ruin. Putting it brutally, so as to offend Trades Unionists and Communists alike, they are an important part of the Communist system of internal propaganda, and their whole organization acts as a gigantic megaphone through which the Communist Party makes known its fears, its hopes and its decisions to the great masses of the industrial workers.

THE PROPAGANDA TRAINS

When I crossed the Russian front in October, 1919, the first thing I noticed in peasants' cottages, in the villages, in the little town where I took the railway to Moscow, in every railway station along the line, was the elaborate pictorial propaganda concerned with the war. There were posters showing Denizen standing straddle over Russia's coal, while the factory chimneys were smokeless and the engines idle in the yards, with the simplest wording to show why it was necessary to beat Denizen in order to get coal; there were posters illustrating the treatment of the peasants by the Whites; posters against desertion, posters illustrating the Russian struggle against the rest of the world, showing a workman, a peasant, a sailor and a soldier fighting in self-defence against an enormous Capitalistic Hydra. There were also-and this I took as a sign of what might be-posters encouraging the sowing of corn, and posters explaining in simple pictures improved methods of agriculture. Our own recruiting propaganda during the war, good as that was, was never developed to such a point of excellence, and knowing the general slowness with which the Russian centre reacts on its periphery, I was amazed not only at the actual posters, but at their efficient distribution thus far from Moscow.

I have had an opportunity of seeing two of the propaganda trains, the object of which is to reduce the size of Russia politically by bringing Moscow to the front and to the out of the way districts, and so to lessen the difficulty of obtaining that general unity of purpose which it is the object of propaganda to produce. The fact that there is some hope that in the near future the whole of this apparatus may be turned over to the propaganda of industry makes it perhaps worth while to describe these trains in detail.

Russia, for purposes of this internal propaganda, is divided into five sections, and each section has its own train, prepared for the particular political needs of the section it serves, bearing its own name, carrying its regular crew-a propaganda unit, as corporate as the crew of a ship. The five trains at present in existence are the "Lenin," the "Sverdlov," the "October Revolution," the "Red East," which is now in Turkestan, and the "Red Cossack," which, ready to start for Rostov and the Don, was standing, in the sidings at the Kursk station, together with the "Lenin," returned for refitting and painting.

Burov, the organizer of these trains, a ruddy, enthusiastic little man in patched leather coat and breeches, took a party of foreigners-a Swede, a Norwegian, two Czechs, a German and myself to visit his trains, together with Radek, in the hope that Radek would induce Lenin to visit them, in which case Lenin would be kinematographed for the delight of the villagers, and possibly the Central Committee would, if Lenin were interested, lend them more lively support.

We walked along the "Lenin" first, at Burov's special request. Burov, it seems, has only recently escaped from what he considered a bitter affliction due to the Department of Proletarian Culture, who, in the beginning, for the decoration of his trains, had delivered him bound hand and foot to a number of Futurists. For that reason he wanted us to see the "Lenin" first, in order that we might compare it with the result of his emancipation, the "Red Cossack," painted when the artists "had been brought under proper control." The "Lenin" had been painted a year and a half ago, when, as fading hoarding in the streets of Moscow still testify, revolutionary art was dominated by the Futurist movement. Every carriage is decorated with most striking but not very comprehensible pictures in the brightest colors, and the proletariat was called upon to enjoy what the pre-revolutionary artistic public had for the most part failed to understand. Its pictures are "art for art's sake," and cannot have done more than astonish, and perhaps terrify, the peasants and the workmen of the country towns who had the luck to see them. The "Red Cossack" is quite different. As Burov put it with deep satisfaction, "At first we were in the artists' hands, and now the artists are in our hands," a sentence suggesting the most horrible possibilities of official art under socialism, although, of course, bad art flourishes pretty well even under other systems.

I inquired exactly how Burov and his friends kept the artists in the right way, and received the fullest explanation. The political section of the organization works out the main idea and aim for each picture, which covers the whole side of a wagon. This idea is then submitted to a "collective" of artists, who are jointly responsible for its realization in paint. The artists compete with each other for a prize which is awarded for the best design, the judges being the artists themselves. It is the art of the poster, art with a purpose of the most definite kind. The result is sometimes amusing, interesting, startling, but, whatever else it does, hammers home a plain idea.

Thus the picture on the side of one wagon is divided into two sections. On the left is a representation of the peasants and workmen of the Soviet Republic. Under it are the words, "Let us not find ourselves again..." and then, in gigantic lettering under the right-hand section of the picture, "... in the HEAVEN OF THE WHITES." This heaven is shown by an epauletted officer hitting a soldier in the face, as was done in the Tsar's army and in at least one army of the counter revolutionaries, and workmen tied to stakes, as was done by the Whites in certain towns in the south. Then another wagon illustrating the methods of Tsardom, with a State vodka shop selling its wares to wretched folk, who, when drunk on the State vodka, are flogged by the State police. Then there is a wagon showing the different Cossacks-of the Don, Terek, Kuban, Ural-riding in pairs. The Cossack infantry is represented on the other side of this wagon. On another wagon is a very jolly picture of Stenka Razin in his boat with little old-fashioned brass cannon, rowing up the river. Underneath is written the words: "I attack only the rich, with the poor I divide everything." On one side are the poor folk running from their huts to join him, on the other the rich folk firing at him from their castle. One wagon is treated purely decoratively, with a broad effective characteristically South Russian design, framing a huge inscription to the effect that the Cossacks need not fear that the Soviet Republic will interfere with their religion, since under its regime every man is to be free to believe exactly what he likes. Then there is an entertaining wagon, showing Kolchak sitting inside a fence in Siberia with a Red soldier on guard, Judenitch sitting in a little circle with a sign-post to show it is Esthonia, and Denikin running at full speed to the asylum indicated by another sign-post on which is the crescent of the Turkish Empire. Another lively picture shows the young Cossack girls learning to read, with a most realistic old Cossack woman telling them they had better not. But there is no point in describing every wagon. There are sixteen wagons in the "Red Cossack," and every one is painted all over on both sides.

The internal arrangements of the train are a sufficient proof that Russians are capable of organization if they set their minds to it. We went through it, wagon by wagon. One wagon contains a wireless telegraphy station capable of receiving news from such distant stations as those of Carnarvon or Lyons. Another is fitted up as a newspaper office, with a mechanical press capable of printing an edition of fifteen thousand daily, so that the district served by the train, however out of the way, gets its news simultaneously with Moscow, many days sometimes before the belated Izvestia or Pravda finds its way to them. And with its latest news it gets its latest propaganda, and in order to get the one it cannot help getting the other. Next door to that there is a kinematograph wagon, with benches to seat about one hundred and fifty persons. But indoor performances are only given to children, who must come during the daytime, or in summer when the evenings are too light to permit an open air performance. In the ordinary way, at night, a great screen is fixed up in the open. There is a special hole cut in the side of the wagon, and through this the kinematograph throws its picture on the great screen outside, so that several thousands can see it at once. The enthusiastic Burov insisted on working through a couple of films for us, showing the Communists boy scouts in their country camps, children's meetings in Petrograd, and the big demonstrations of last year in honor of the Third International. He was extremely disappointed that Radek, being in a hurry, refused to wait for a performance of "The Father and his Son," a drama which, he assured us with tears in his eyes, was so thrilling that we should not regret being late for our appointments if we stayed to witness it. Another wagon is fitted up as an electric power-station, lighting the train, working the kinematograph and the printing machine, etc. Then there is a clean little kitchen and dining-room, where, before being kinematographed-a horrible experience when one is first quite seriously begged to assume an expression of intelligent interest--we had soup, a plate of meat and cabbage, and tea. Then there is a wagon bookshop, where, while customers buy books, a gramophone sings the revolutionary songs of Demian Bledny, or speaks with the eloquence of Trotsky or the logic of Lenin. Other wagons are the living-rooms of the personnel, divided up according to their duties-political, military, instructional, and so forth. For the train has not merely an agitational purpose. It carries with it a staff to give advice to local authorities, to explain what has not been understood, and so in every way to bring the ideas of the Centre quickly to the backwoods of the Republic. It works also in the opposite direction, helping to make the voice of the backwoods heard at Moscow. This is illustrated by a painted pillar-box on one of the wagons, with a slot for letters, labelled, "For Complaints of Every Kind." Anybody anywhere who has grievance, thinks he is being unfairly treated, or has a suggestion to make, can speak with the Centre in this way. When the train is on a voyage telegrams announce its arrival beforehand, so that the local Soviets can make full use of its advantages, arranging meetings, kinematograph shows, lectures. It arrives, this amazing picture train, and proceeds to publish and distribute its newspapers, sell its books , send books and posters for forty versts on either side of the line with the motor-cars which it carries with it, and enliven the population with its kinematograph.

I doubt if a more effective instrument of propaganda has ever been devised. And in considering the question whether or no the Russians will be able after organizing their military defence to tackle with similar comparative success the much more difficult problem of industrial rebirth, the existence of such instruments, the use of such propaganda is a factor not to be neglected. In the spring of this year, when the civil war seemed to be ending, when there was a general belief that the Poles would accept the peace that Russia offered , two of these propaganda trains were already being repainted with a new purpose. It was hoped that in the near future all five trains would be explaining not the need to fight but the need to work. Undoubtedly, at the first possible moment, the whole machinery of agitation, of posters, of broadsheets and of trains, will be turned over to the task of explaining the Government's plans for reconstruction, and the need for extraordinary concentration, now on transport, now on something else, that these plans involve.

SATURDAYINGS

So much for the organization, with its Communist Party, its system of meetings and counter-meetings, its adapted Trades Unions, its infinitely various propaganda, which is doing its best to make headway against ruin. I want now to describe however briefly, the methods it has adopted in tackling the worst of all Russia's problems-the non-productivity and absolute shortage of labor.

I find a sort of analogy between these methods and those which we used in England in tackling the similar cumulative problem of finding men for war. Just as we did not proceed at once to conscription, but began by a great propaganda of voluntary effort, so the Communists, faced with a need at least equally vital, did not turn at once to industrial conscription. It was understood from the beginning that the Communists themselves were to set an example of hard work, and I dare say a considerable proportion of them did so. Every factory had its little Communist Committee, which was supposed to leaven the factory with enthusiasm, just as similar groups of Communists drafted into the armies in moments of extreme danger did, on more than one occasion, as the non-Communist Commander-in-Chief admits, turn a rout into a stand and snatch victory from what looked perilously like defeat. But this was not enough, arrears of work accumulated, enthusiasm waned, productivity decreased, and some new move was obviously necessary. This first move in the direction of industrial conscription, although no one perceived its tendency at the time, was the inauguration of what have become known as "Saturdayings".

Early in 1919 the Central Committee of the Communist Party put out a circular letter, calling upon the Communists "to work revolutionally," to emulate in the rear the heroism of their brothers on the front, pointing out that nothing but the most determined efforts and an increase in the productivity of labor would enable Russia to win through her difficulties of transport, etc. Kolchak, to quote from English newspapers, was it "sweeping on to Moscow," and the situation was pretty threatening. As a direct result of this letter, on May 7th, a meeting of Communists in the sub-district of the Moscow-Kazan railway passed a resolution that, in view of the imminent danger to the Republic, Communists and their sympathizers should give up an hour a day of their leisure, and, lumping these hours together, do every Saturday six hours of manual labor; and, further, that these Communist "Saturdayings" should be continued "until complete victory over Kolchak should be assured." That decision of a local committee was the actual beginning of a movement which spread all over Russia, and though the complete victory over Kolchak was long ago obtained, is likely to continue so long as Soviet Russia is threatened by any one else.

The decision was put into effect on May 10th, when the first Communist "Saturdaying" in Russia took place on the Moscow-Kazan railway. The Commissar of the railway, Communist clerks from the offices, and every one else who wished to help, marched to work, 182 in all, and put in 1,012 hours of manual labor, in which they finished the repairs of four locomotives and sixteen wagons and loaded and unloaded 9,300 poods of engine and wagon parts and material. It was found that the productivity of labor in loading and unloading shown on this occasion was about 270 per cent. of the normal, and a similar superiority of effort was shown in the other kinds of work. This example was immediately copied on other railways. The Alexandrovsk railway had its first "Saturdaying" on May 17th. Ninety-eight persons worked for five hours, and here also did two or three times as much is the usual amount of work done in the same number of working hours under ordinary circumstances. One of the workmen, in giving an account of the performance, wrote: "The Comrades explain this by saying that in ordinary times the work was dull and they were sick of it, whereas this occasion they were working willingly and with excitement. But now it will be shameful in ordinary hours to do less than in the Communist 'Saturdaying.'" The hope implied in this last sentence has not been realized.

In Pravda of June 7th there is an article describing one of these early "Saturdayings," which gives a clear picture of the infectious character of the proceedings, telling how people who came out of curiosity to look on found themselves joining in the work, and how a soldier with an accordion after staring for a long time open-mouthed at these lunatics working on a Saturday afternoon put up a tune for them on his instrument, and, delighted by their delight, played on while the workers all sang together.

The idea of the "Saturdayings" spread quickly from railways to factories, and by the middle of the summer reports of similar efforts were coming from all over Russia. Then Lenin became interested, seeing in these "Saturdayings" not only a special effort in the face of common danger, but an actual beginning of Communism and a sign that Socialism could bring about a greater productivity of labor than could be obtained under Capitalism. He wrote: "This is a work of great difficulty and requiring much time, but it has begun, and that is the main thing. If in hungry Moscow in the summer of 1919 hungry workmen who have lived through the difficult four years of the Imperialistic war, and then the year and a half of the still more difficult civil war, have been able to begin this great work, what will not be its further development when we conquer in the civil war and win peace." He sees in it a promise of work being done not for the sake of individual gain, but because of a recognition that such work is necessary for the general good, and in all he wrote and spoke about it he emphasized the fact that people worked better and harder when working thus than under any of the conditions imposed by the revolution in its desperate attempts to raise the productivity of labor. For this reason alone, he wrote, the first "Saturdaying" on the Moscow-Kazan railway was an event of historical significance, and not for Russia alone.

Whether Lenin was right or wrong in so thinking, "Saturdayings" became a regular institution, like Dorcas meetings in Victorian England, like the thousands of collective working parties instituted in England during the war with Germany. It remains to be seen how long they will continue, and if they will survive peace when that comes. At present the most interesting point about them is the large proportion of non-Communists who take an enthusiastic part in them. In many cases not more than ten per cent. of Communists are concerned, though they take the initiative in organizing the parties and in finding the work to be done. The movement spread like fire in dry grass, like the craze for roller-skating swept over England some years ago, and efforts were made to control it, so that the fullest use might be made of it. In Moscow it was found worth while to set up a special Bureau for "Saturdayings." Hospitals, railways, factories, or any other concerns working for the public good, notify this bureau that they need the sort of work a "Saturdaying" provides. The bureau informs the local Communists where their services are required, and thus there is a minimum of wasted energy. The local Communists arrange the "Saturdayings," and any one else joins in who wants. These "Saturdayings" are a hardship to none because they are voluntary, except for members of the Communist Party, who are considered to have broken the party discipline if they refrain. But they can avoid the "Saturdayings" if they wish to by leaving the party. Indeed, Lenin points, out that the "Saturdayings" are likely to assist in clearing out of the party those elements which joined it with the hope of personal gain. He points out that the privileges of a Communists now consist in doing more work than other people in the rear, and, on the front, in having the certainty of being killed when other folk are merely taken prisoners.

The following are a few examples of the sort of work done in the "Saturdayings." Briansk hospitals were improperly heated because of lack of the local transport necessary to bring them wood. The Communists organized a "Saturdaying," in which 900 persons took part, including military specialists , soldiers, a chief of staff, workmen and women. Having no horses, they harnessed themselves to sledges in groups of ten, and brought in the wood required. At Nijni 800 persons spent their Saturday afternoon in unloading barges. In the Basman district of Moscow there was a gigantic "Saturdaying" and "Sundaying" in which 2,000 persons worked in the heavy artillery shops, shifting materials, cleaning tramlines for bringing in fuel, etc. Then there was a "Saturdaying" the main object of which was a general autumn cleaning of the hospitals for the wounded. One form of "Saturdaying" for women is going to the hospitals, talking with the wounded and writing letters for them, mending their clothes, washing sheets, etc. The majority of "Saturdayings" at present are concerned with transport work and with getting and shifting wood, because at the moment these are the chief difficulties. I have talked to many "Saturdayers," Communist and non-Communist, and all alike spoke of these Saturday afternoons of as kind of picnic. On the other hand, I have met Communists who were accustomed to use every kind off ingenuity to find excuses not to take part in them and yet to preserve the good opinion of their local committee.

But even if the whole of the Communist Party did actually indulge in a working picnic once a week, it would not suffice to meet Russia's tremendous needs. And, as I pointed out in the chapter specially devoted to the shortage of labor, the most serious need at present is to keep skilled workers at their jobs instead of letting them drift away into non-productive labor. No amount of Saturday picnics could do that, and it was obvious long ago that some other means, would have to be devised.

INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION

The general principle of industrial conscription recognized by the Russian Constitution, section ii, chapter v, paragraph 18, which reads: "The Russian Socialist Federate Soviet Republic recognizes that work is an obligation on every citizen of the Republic," and proclaims, "He who does not work shall not eat." It is, however, one thing to proclaim such a principle and quite another to put it into action.

On December 17, 1919, the moment it became clear that there was a real possibility that the civil war was drawing to an end, Trotsky allowed the Pravda to print a memorandum of his, consisting of "theses" or reasoned notes about industrial conscription and the militia system. He points out that a Socialist State demands a general plan for the utilization of all the resources of a country, including its human energy. At the same time, "in the present economic chaos in which are mingled the broken fragments of the past and the beginnings of the future," a sudden jump to a complete centralized economy of the country as a whole is impossible. Local initiative, local effort must not be sacrificed for the sake of a plan. At the same time industrial conscription is necessary for complete socialization. It cannot be regardless of individuality like military conscription. He suggests a subdivision of the State into territorial productive districts which should coincide with the territorial districts of the militia system which shall replace the regular army. Registration of labor necessary. Necessary also to coordinate military and industrial registration. At demobilization the cadres of regiments, divisions, etc., should form the fundamental cadres of the militia. Instruction to this end should be included in the courses for workers and peasants who are training to become officers in every district. Transition to the militia system must be carefully and gradually accomplished so as not for a moment to leave the Republic defenseless. While not losing sight of these ultimate aims, it is necessary to decide on immediate needs and to ascertain exactly what amount of labor is necessary for their limited realization. He suggests the registration of skilled labor in the army. He suggests that a Commission under general direction of the Council of Public Economy should work out a preliminary plan and then hand it over to the War Department, so that means should be worked out for using the military apparatus for this new industrial purpose.

Trotsky's twenty-four theses or notes must have been written in odd moments, now here now there, on the way from one front to another. They do not form a connected whole. Contradictions jostle each other, and it is quite clear that Trotsky himself had no very definite plan in his head. But his notes annoyed and stimulated so many other people that they did perhaps precisely the work they were intended to do. Pravada printed them with a note from the editor inviting discussion. The Ekonomitcheskaya Jizn printed letter after letter from workmen, officials and others, attacking, approving and bringing new suggestions. Larin, Semashko, Pyatakov, Bucharin all took a hand in the discussion. Larin saw in the proposals the beginning of the end of the revolution, being convinced that authority would pass from the democracy of the workers into the hands of the specialists. Rykov fell upon them with sturdy blows on behalf of the Trades Unions. All, however, agreed on the one point--that something of the sort was necessary. On December 27th a Commission for studying the question of industrial conscription was formed under the presidency of Trotsky. This Commission included the People's Commissars, or Ministers, of Labor, Ways of Communication, Supply, Agriculture, War, and the Presidents of the Central Council of the Trades Unions and of the Supreme Council of Public Economy. They compiled a list of the principal questions before them, and invited anybody interested to bring them suggestions and material for discussion.

But the discussion was not limited to the newspapers or to this Commission. The question was discussed in Soviets and Conferences of every kind all over the country. Thus, on January 1st an All-Russian Conference of local "departments for the registration and distribution of labor," after prolonged argument, contributed their views. They pointed out the need of bringing to work numbers of persons who instead of doing the skilled labor for which they were qualified were engaged in petty profiteering, etc.; that there evaporation of skilled labor into unproductive speculation could at least be checked by the introduction of labor books, which would give some sort of registration of each citizen's work; that workmen can be brought back from the villages only for enterprises which are supplied with provisions or are situated in districts where there is plenty. that there should be a census of labor and that the Trades Unions should be invited to protect the interests of the conscripted. Finally, this Conference approved the idea of using the already existing military organization for carrying out a labor census of the Red Army, and for the turning over to labor of parts of the army during demobilization, but opposed the idea of giving the military organization the work of labor registration and industrial conscription in general.

On January 22, 1920, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, after prolonged discussion of Trotsky's rough memorandum, finally adopted and published a new edition of the "theses," expanded, altered, almost unrecognizable, a reasoned body of theory entirely different from the bundle of arrows loosed at a venture by Trotsky. They definitely accepted the principle of industrial conscription, pointing out the immediate reasons for it in the fact that Russia cannot look for much help from without and must somehow or other help herself.

Long before the All-Russian Congress of the Communist Party approved the theses of the Committee, one form of industrial conscription was already being tested at work. Very early in January, when the discussion on the subject was at its height, the Soviet of the Third Army addressed itself to the Council of Defense of the Republic with an invitation to make use of this army and to experiment with it as a labor army. The Council of Defense agreed. Representatives of the Commissariats of Supply, Agriculture, Ways and Communications, Labor and the Supreme Council of Public Economy were sent to assist the Army Soviet. The army was proudly re-named "The First Revolutionary Army of Labor," and began to issue communiques "from the Labor front," precisely like the communiques of an army in the field. I translate as a curiosity the first communique issued by a Labor Army's Soviet:

"Wood prepared in the districts of Ishim, Karatulskaya, Omutinskaya, Zavodoutovskaya, Yalutorovska, Iushaly, Kamuishlovo, Turinsk, Altynai, Oshtchenkovo, Shadrinsk, 10,180 cubic sazhins. Working days, 52,651. Taken to the railway stations, 5,334 cubic sazhins. Working days on transport, 22,840. One hundred carpenters detailed for the Kizelovsk mines. One hundred carpenters detailed for the bridge at Ufa. One engineer specialist detailed to the Government Council of Public Economy for repairing the mills of Chelyabinsk Government. One instructor accountant detailed for auditing the accounts of the economic organizations of Kamuishlov. Repair of locomotives proceeding in the works at Ekaterinburg. January 20, 1920, midnight."

On January 23rd the Council of Defense of the Republic, encouraged to proceed further, decided to make use of the Reserve Army for the improvement of railway transport on the Moscow-Kazan railway, one of the chief arteries between eastern food districts and Moscow. The main object is to be the reestablishment of through traffic between Moscow and Ekaterinburg and the repair of the Kazan-Ekaterinburg line, which particularly suffered during the war. An attempt was to be made to rebuild the bridge over the Kama River before the ice melts. The Commander of the Reserve Army was appointed Commissar of the eastern part of the Moscow-Kazan railway, retaining his position as Commander of the Army. With a view of coordination between the Army Soviet and the railway authorities, a member of the Soviet was also appointed Commissar of the railway. On January 25th it was announced that a similar experiment was being made in the Ukraine. A month before the ice broke the first train actually crossed the Kama River by the rebuilt bridge.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet