Pan Sovietism The Issue Before America And The World

133948

PAN-SOVIETISM

PAN-SO VIETTSM

The Issue

and the World

BY
BRUCE HOPPER

Boston and New York

HOUGHTON MIFFUN COMPANY

(Efce fctotrgfoe $rtg* CamttrOisse

1931

COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY BRUCE C. HOPPER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

tTbe Xttoewtoe $ra

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.SA.

TO

THE MEMORY OF

ARCHIBALD CABY COOLIDGE

PREFACE

QUESTIONS about Russia which are put to ob-
servers returning from first-hand study of the
Soviet regime may perhaps be summed up in a
general query of wonderment: * And what is your
particular key to the riddle? * The answers are as
numerous and diverse as the persons giving them.
The main interest, however, seems to be not in
Russia as such, but in ideas about Russia.

This small volume, a reproduction of eight lec-
tures entitled * Soviet Russia After Thirteen
Years/ given before the Lowell Institute in 1931,
presents the idea that a key to the riddle might
possibly be found by thinking through the logi-
cal consequences of certain fundamental forces
which are too often taken for granted or ignored.
Application of this idea demands that the pro-
blems and forces natural or inherent in the land
and people be distinguished from the problems
and forces imposed upon the country by the
Communist Party. The potential result of har-
monizing these two forces, and directing them
toward expansion, is Pan-Sovietism.

The lectures were frankly of the "gadfly* order,
intended to persuade Americans of the necessity

vii

PREFACE

to pull the Bolshevik dragon of our imagination
out of the cave for rational study, rather than to
compile a work for scientific reference. Passing
judgments, based on outraged ethics, obviously
do not get the dragon out into the light of day.
Embargoes, deportation of alien Communists,
and similar gestures may appease the righteous
clamor that something must be done, but they do
not bring us perceptibly nearer a solution of the
real issue. For that we need long-range vision,
based on knowledge of the social forces shaping
the present age in the general sweep of history.
And vision, however we may define it, does not
come to us through underestimation of the
amazing brain power, which, for better or for
worse, is directing the Soviet expansion.

America's selling power in the future world
market is at stake. That China is destined to be-
come the economic battlefield in the struggle
between capitalism and socialism may seem a
speculative premise just now. But that the en-
tire East is the logical economic and political
hinterland of the Soviet system no one familiar
with the Orient and Asiatic people can deny.

I acknowledge my debt to the many students
of the tsarist regime, whose records prove that
much of what is called new is really old in Russia.
My apologia for the conversational tone of the

viii

PREFACE

present volume is that personal experiences tend
to take charge in the telling of a story intensely
human.

BRUCE HOPPEK

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
March 18, 1931

CONTENTS

I. AMERICA'S ROLE IN SOLVING THE WOELD PROBLEM 1

n. THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE 12

THE HUMAN RAW MATERIAL 15

EFFECT OF GEOGRAPHY 17

EFFECT OF CLIMATE 21

THE AUTOCRACY 6

THE CLASS SYSTEM %&

PRE-WAR ECONOMIC SYSTEM 32

THE SOVIET MAN-POWER 35

in. STATE ECONOMIC CONTROL OF THE OLD REGIME 41

PRE-WAR AGRICULTURE 41

PRE-WAR INDUSTRY 47

STATE-CONTROLLED ECONOBfclCS 49

IV. NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION 53

IMPORTED REVOLUTION 56

HOW THE REVOLUTION CAME 64

, V. POLITICAL CONTROL 70

THE SOVIET STATE 74

GOVERNMENT SET-UP 78

COMMUNIST PARTY SET-UP 80

THE COMMUNIST YOUTH 85
INTERRELATION OF PARTY AND GOVERNMENT 88

xi

CONTENTS

THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL 90

SPIRIT Or SOVIET LAW 9&

VI. SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY 101

MILITARY COMMUNISM 102

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY 109

THE FOREIGN TRADE MONOPOLY

FOREIGN CONCESSIONS

THE SOCIALIST OFFENSIVE 130

VII. ECONOMIC CONTROL 135

THE G.P.U. 138

THE RKI 140
GOVERNMENTAL UNIFIED ECONOMIC CONTROL 144

STATE PLANNING 146

STATISTICS 151

PRICE-FIXING 156

THE BUDGET SYSTEM 158

FINANCIAL PLAN 165

VIII. THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF A BACKWARD

COUNTRY 172

THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN 175

TRAINING PERSONNEL 182

WILL THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN SUCCEED? 188

'FORCED* LABOR 190

IX. THE HUMAN SIDE 203

HEALTH FACILITIES 205

HOUSING 208

xii

CONTENTS

EDUCATION 213

ART 18

THE REVOLUTIONARY LINGO 221

RELIGION 228

EQUALITY 236

EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN 237

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 238

COLLECTIVE MAN 242

X. THE WORLD ISSUE 246

THE SOCIALIST CAMP 254

THE CAPITALIST CAMP: AMERICA 261

NO MAN'S LAND: THE EAST 268

CAPITALIST RIVALRY 277

RISE OF THE COMMON MAN 279

THE ECONOMIC BATTLEFIELD 281

PAN-SOVIETISM

CHAPTER I

America 9 s Rdle in Solving the World Problem

WHETHER they like it or not, all thinking Ameri-
cans seem to be classified according to their views
on two dominant issues. One of these is prohibi-
tion, which has made us an argumentative people.
The other is Soviet Russia, on which subject we
are likely to get slightly hysterical. Socially, we
are rarely allowed to be without convictions in
these two controversies.

Really to be objective in studying the bitterly
contested social questions of the age, one must
identify himself with the mass of humanity,
moving slowly, in the fullness of time, along the
middle of the road as it is cleared of obstructions.
The actual clearing away is done by radical
crusaders and die-hard conservatives, who do
their work and then annihilate each other for
the good of the race.

Humanity does seem to advance by the middle
of the road* It may or may not be advancing

1

PAN-SOVIETISM

toward peace and increased leisure. But it would
be considered inhuman for a single writer to be
so circumspect as humanity. He would be too
consistent. He would be right, and he would be
dull.

The present writer seeks to be neither objec-
tive nor consistent, but purely subjective. Soviet
Russia is a problem for America collectively as a
nation, and personally for every individual cit-
izen. The question is not so much how and when
we are going to recognize the Soviets diplomati-
cally. That technical business is not so pressing.
What cannot wait is : How and when are we going
to become aware of Soviet Russia as a tremendous
fact in America's future? We can become aware
of Russia only by an open-minded approach,
never for the moment losing sight of our own
problems. We respect the middle of the road, but
we are not afraid of the ditch. We want perspec-
tive, and a long shot ahead. Therefore, we jump
about with a telescope. All that we need fear,
really, is allowing those who lost by the Russian
Revolution, or those who gained by the Russian
Revolution, to interfere too much with our
American vision.

The economic consequences of the victors'
peace have begun to overtake us. The winter
of 1930-31 was our winter of discontent. As a

AMERICA AND THE WORLD PROBLEM

nation, in the days before we set out to win self-
determination for other people, we weathered
many an economic depression, secure in the faith
that the glorious sun of good times would shine
again in due season. We silenced our chronic
pessimists, our Cassandras. Some of them we
made take hemlock as false prophets. For we
had learned to accept the alternating cycles of
depression and prosperity as the pendulum move-
ment of our system. We always swung back from
depression to a higher position than before, so
that our general advance seemed determined by
immutable economic law. With knowledge of
this seemingly changeless economic law, we could
always trust to the c ingenuity of our people, 5 and
to time.

In our earlier years, when we were, in fact, the
youngest great nation, we had an abundance of
raw materials. We relied on our fields for expan-
sion. Now we are almost a full-grown nation,
with enormous capital tied up in finished, manu-
factured goods. We have huge investments and
loans abroad. For that reason we have become
more inflexible in an economic world which is
changing with astonishing rapidity. Our old in-
dependence is difficult to maintain because of the
interdependence and specialization of the machine
age* So we begin to wonder. And we have such

3

PAN-SOVIETISM

contradictions as general pessimism of American
business men opposed to the general optimism of
the American press. Need for advertising does
not quite explain that situation. It may be that
this is only the usual wave of pessimism that
sweeps America at the bottom of a depression.
It may be that the timely unexpected will again
whip us out of the doldrums.

Nevertheless, we do fear the strange, powerful
forces which have been gaining momentum since
the war, forces which obey laws other than those
to which we are accustomed. We are a people
with a treasure to guard, a treasure accumulated
partly by our toil and skill, and partly as a result
of enormous comparative advantage, in the past,
over the rest of the world. That treasure is the
American standard of living. To maintain our
standard of living and wage levels we build
higher the tariff walls, we limit immigration, we
threaten to deport aliens. Owen D, Young, a
great American, all the greater because of his
vision and world mind, has said: 'Let no man
think that the living standards of America can
be permanently maintained at a measurably
higher level than those of other civilized coun-
tries. Either we shall lift theirs to ours, or they
will drag ours down to theirs. Tariffs and other
petty political barriers, temporarily justifiable,

4

AMERICA AND THE WORLD PROBLEM

will in the long run only accentuate the trouble.*
If true, that should make us think seriously.

Forces of equalization threaten to drag America
off the plateau. Of the forces which may in the
long haul operate against the American standard
of living, there are two which demand attention
now. The first is the impact on our system
caused by the diversion of economic streams to
political ends in Europe. America has shared in
this economic nationalism since the war, the
reaction against redistribution of wealth between
nations. The machine age brings increasing
economic interdependence between nations, but
there is a powerful counteraction in the political
restrictions on the movement of capital, labor,
and goods. In times of trouble nations, including
America, behave more than ever like human
beings. There is a struggle for the lifeboats. Self-
preservation is more instinctive than courtesy.

Concretely, this threat to the American stand-
ard of living takes the form of a proposed regional
economic union of Europe. The question arises:
Are the forces of common economic interest, as
against creditor America, more or less powerful
than the forces of political isolation? This much
seems to be certain; Europe, as an economic unit,
must in the very nature of things present a united
front to the creditor with the higher standard of

5

PAN-SOVIETISM

living. Even if the enormous nationalistic bar-
riers prevent such a union, the very effort to
combine might lead to a scattered but none the
less effective sales resistance to American goods.

However, we have a certain defense despite the
great increase of state regulation of business in
Europe. The concept of private property still
maintains there. And should the issue ever grow
into a trans-Atlantic crisis, we could regain our
selling power by cancelling the war debts. This
contingency is always on the American horizon.
Cancellation would release potential wealth in
Europe, at least to the extent of service on the
war debts, which wealth might be used to trade
with us.

The second line of attack on the American
standard of living comes from points beyond our
controlling devices. It is the impact of socialist
competition, against which we have no huge
balance of debts to write off as insurance to our
productive machine. That Soviet competition,
still relatively unimportant, may seem unreal,
even now. One of our statesmen declared in 1921
that there was no point in making a trade agree-
ment with the Soviet government because it had
nothing to trade with, and it never would have
so long as the Bolsheviks remained in power.
That belief was fairly general in

6

AMERICA AND THE WORLD PROBLEM

The forces behind that competition obey laws
unfamiliar to us. Our Soviet competitor is a
state in business. It operates on the assumption
that even economic laws are not fixed, but sub-
ject to the conditions of society. When social
conditions change, the laws change. In the con-
duct of its business the Soviet state may, or may
not, set market prices according to supply and
demand. It may, or may not, allow the cost of
production and distribution to determine value
in specific instances. Behind its water-tight mo-
nopoly of foreign trade with its money free from
the fluctuations of international exchange, it is
now reducing most of the turnover of state-
owned economy to bookkeeping, without trans-
ferring money. Professor Edwin F. Gay, whose
views on world economic trends can scarcely be
challenged, is only one of the economists with
vision who are concerned about the pending
shortage of gold. Oriental countries have been
shifting from a silver to a gold basis, with the
result that silver is brought up from the family
hoard and replaced by gold. These economists
estimate that there is not enough gold obtainable
in the world's mines to back the money required
by a greatly increased commodity turnover in
the future, especially in view of the hoarding
propensities of India. It is not likely that the

7

PAN-SOVIETISM

Soviets can get away from the gold cover to their
currency, but they can lessen the necessity for
gold by making bookkeeping do the work of
money transfer within the state economic system.

Now, this may mean much, or little, to us.
But we cannot get away from the economic
interdependence and social implications of the
machine age. We led the way in conquering
nature by the machine. We cast out the torch
which set the world afire with fevers of indus-
trialization. At the same time, we must sell
goods. Europe still takes nearly half of our
exports. But Eastern Europe has been industri-
alizing, and must become a diminishing market.
Taking the long view of the future we see that
the greatest potential and vacant market is the
continent of Asia. Since the war the entire East
has been undergoing a renaissance, a rebirth.
The keynote of the movement which has seized
Arab, Persian, Indian, and Chinese is nation-
alism, to be achieved by industrialization, by
modernization, by opposing economic and politi-
cal power of the native to the economic and
political power of Western imperialism. That
imperialism began to loosen its grip in Europe's
self -destructive war of attrition.

It may well be that the decisive battle between
capitalism and socialism, between individualism

8

AMERICA AND THE WORLD PROBLEM

and collectivism, if it comes to that, will be
f ought out, not in Europe or America, but in the
fluid East, where economic systems are still in
the making. According to present indications the
probable economic antagonists will be America
and Soviet Russia.

Taking the historical view, we find that we
inherited our civil law from Rome. Our moral
law comes from Judaism and Christianity. But
our economic law has never been codified. Deal-
ing with futures is always risky. There is the
possibility, however, that the system which cap-
tures the Asiatic market will have the greater
share in moulding the new political institutions
of the East. The system that wins the support
of the billion people in Asia might thereby have
the balance of power necessary to dictate the lex
economica of the future, the relation of public
authority to property, and the relation of man
to the machine.

In the spring of 1918 shells suddenly began to
fall in Paris. Wild rumors spread about they
come from invisible enemy airplanes, they come
from our own guns, they must be meteors. Many
explanations were offered before the right o:
was announced by the French Intelligence Staff*
That the shells actually came from a German gun
seventy miles away we refused to believe. Such

9

PAN-SOVIETISM

a gun was impossible. Theoretically, such a gun
could not exist. Empirically, a shell came over
every hour. Of course, that gun there were
eventually four as replacements failed of its
ultimate purpose, which was to shatter the
French civilian morale. What it did shatter was
the accepted understanding of the laws limiting
artillery.

One of America's great educators has said : ' We
suffer not so much from the people who are con-
sciously wicked, as from the people who are
consciously righteous/ We were consciously
righteous about that Paris gun; to us it could not
exist. The Bolsheviks are consciously righteous
in their doctrine that by the inevitableness of
history capitalism must shake itself to pieces.
But they are on the offensive. The capitalist
system does seem to need some renovation. At
any rate, it is on the defensive today. And while
we are prepared to defend it, we know that to be
consciously righteous on the defensive invites the
disaster of change forced from below.

This is not to imply that America is in any
danger of social revolution. But that danger does
exist elsewhere. America can meet it by working
out a solution of the world issue between profit-
making individualism and social control, a solu-
tion which takes full cognizance of the social impli-

10

AMERICA AND THE WORLD PROBLEM

cations of the machine age, without, of necessity,
abandoning the concept of private property.
Where our system can stand the pressure of the
new forces, those key points we must defend with
our strength and intelligence. Where our system
is out of harmony with the new age, such points
we must shift or abandon. That is, eventually.
If changes must come, we want to do the chang-
ing ourselves. What we are after here is informa-
tion about Russia's experience, which we may,
or may not, find applicable to our own problems.
We must be careful not to draw analogies be-
tween conditions which might be utterly dis-
similar.

Because of the post-war economic geography,
nations of Western Europe look to America for
a solution of this world problem. America's r61e
is not only to find remedies for the social conse-
quences of machine production, but also to
develop leaders of vision who will have thought
out in advance the defenses against Pan-So-
vietism.

CHAPTER H

The Russian Land and People

IN Moscow, along the walls of the Kremlin, ex-
tends Alexander Garden. In the trees there are
thousands of ravens, so thick that they cast a
winter shade. Day and night they hnddle to-
gether, and mutter, and croak. Occasionally, as
though by secret signal, they rise with great
flapping of wings, swoop over the Kremlin walls
on tours of inspection, and then circle back to the
trees, to mutter and croak. They seem to live
without eating. These ravens may know what
goes on in the Kremlin, but their answer to the
student is symbolically a croak.

Russia is called an enigma, a riddle, which is
something not even the blind men of the fable
called the elephant they could feel, but could not
see. Who knows Russia? The foreigner, no
matter how long he lives there, has certain limita-
tions of language and psychology. The average
Russian is bewildered by the frequency of the
unexpected in his strange fatherland. Perhaps
the most current phrase in Russian is ne snayu,
C I don't know.' If no one knows Russia, ergo 9

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

Russia is unknown. That's one of the few general
statements about the country which was true
when Rurik, the first notable foreigner, came to
Russia about 862, and which continues to be
true in 1931.

And yet we can no longer call Russia an
enigma, and dismiss it as something pertaining
to another planet. For thirteen years the red
flag has been flying over the Kremlin. And for
thirteen years the soothsayers have been casting
spells, chanting the formula: It's bound to fall,
it's bound to fall, it's bound to fall. But some-
how the Kremlin walls have not yet proved to be
so responsive to magic as were the walls of
( Jericho. Meanwhile, the revolution has passed
through famine and exhaustion to its present
position as economic threat to the world. So
there must be mystery somewhere. Communists
are even credited with occult powers. According
o the American press the Communists just have
to whisper, and banks forthwith close their doors,
and fail.

Now, we can avoid certain major pitfalls in
the situation if we distinguish between, the pro-
blems inherent in land and people, and the pro-
blems superimposed by the Communists. Our
Evidence, however incomplete, is sufficient to
indicate two sets of data with which we can

13

PAN-SOVIETISM

follow the internal conflict between economic
pressure from below and ideological pressure
from above, the contradiction which foreigners
call the enigma. We must think through the
fundamentals, and agree upon what is known
before we close in on the unknown. This, of
course, is the methodology of the new school of
international relations which seeks to measure
the fundamental forces which make nations be-
have the way they do, despite what their states-
men say they will do. By this method we can
dispel much of the surface mystery, and get down
to the real Quantity X, and there is one, in the
Soviet system.

A large part of this Quantity X is rooted in the
soil, and in the character qualities of the Russian
people. These people are the imponderables. In
time, they will determine the success or failure of
the system. Therefore, in our selection of the
fundamental forces we must give first and last
place to the human raw material, the 160 mil-
lion * little brothers* being experimented upon in
the Soviet laboratory. Why were these people so
backward? Why did they call themselves the
'dark people'? The general explanation is that
these people are what they are as a result of
geography, climate, political autocracy, the class
system, and the pre-war economic system, all of

14

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

which combine to explain Russia's backwardness.
These factors of nature and history still condition
the Soviet regime after thirteen years.

THE HUMAN RAW MATERIAL

The Slavs are a branch of the Aryan stock.
Their original home was on the northern slopes
of the Carpathians, from which, in the third
century A.D., they began to migrate. Some went
west to form the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks.
Some crossed Hungary to the south, and formed
the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and to a lesser extent
the Bulgarians. The greatest part went east to
form the Eastern Slavs. This division was com-
plete by the sixth century.

In what is now Russia the Eastern Slavs found
the Finns, an Asiatic people, with whom they
mixed freely. They evidently did not mix very
much with the Varangians, or Scandinavians, of
the Rurik dynasty which ruled Russia from the
ninth to the end of the sixteenth centuries. But
later they mixed with the Tartars, who held the
land in tribute for two hundred and fifty years.
The Tartars were Mongols in the upper crust,
and Turks in the rank and file. Just what per-
centage of Asiatic strains is to be found in the
modern Russian is a question which historians
argue endlessly. The high cheek-bones and flat

15

PAN-SOVIETISM

faces, seen so often, are attributed to the Finnish,
mixture.

After the Tartar conquest, in the thirteenth
century, these Eastern Slavs began to subdivide
into Great Russians, in the north, Little Russians
or Ukrainians, and White Russians to the west.
The Ukrainians and White Russians were under
Lithuanian and Polish rule for four centuries.
The Great Russians, more mixed with the Finns,
became the pioneering, colonizing branch. They
are tougher than other Slavs. The Ukrainians
are the softer people of the South, more imagi-
native, and less enterprising. The White Rus-
sians, numerically less important, were largely
Polonized.

The language of these people, likewise sub-
divided, was reduced to writing by Saint Cyril,
a Byzantine missionary of the ninth century,
whence comes the Cyrillic alphabet. The written
language for centuries was largely limited to
church use, the Old Church Slavonic. Peter the
Great introduced the civil alphabet. Then the
Bolsheviks reduced the alphabet from thirty-
five to thirty letters. The Russian language re-
veals much about the character of the people
who evolved it, French is concise, crystalline,
adapted to logic and the fine meanings of diplo-
macy. English, because of our ambiguities, is

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

more poetic, German still more, and Russian
most of all. Russian is closest to the soil. And
Russian poetry is a primitive yearning which
takes us right back to the morning of the race.

There are in the Soviet Union 182 nationalities,
speaking 149 different languages or dialects. Of
a total population of 147 million, noted in the
1926 census, 113 million, or some 77 per cent are
Slavs, and the rest Kazaks, Uzbeks, Tartars,
Georgians, Armenians, and so on down a long list
of Asiatic peoples. Less than three million Jews
live in Russia today, and about a million and a
half descendants of the old German colonists.
The fact that one fourth of the population is
Asiatic, and that Great Russians have such a
strong mixture of Asiatic blood, gives some
weight to the dictum that Russia is not Eastern
Europe but Western Asia. This Soviet nation-
ality problem we must consider later, along with
the thesis that the whole continent of Asia seems
destined by geography and spiritual affinity to
become a huge reserve of political and economic
power for Russia.

EFFECT OF GEOGRAPHY

The first fundamental factor affecting these
people is geography. Russians have never
recognized the Urals as a boundary. A school of

17

PAN-SOVIETISM

Russian emigres, called Eurasians, or Europa-
sians, contend that Russia is neither Europe nor
Asia, but a third continent, which must develop
its own indigenous institutions. To them the
great mistake of Russia's history was in going to
school in the West instead of pursuing the destiny
marked out by geography. They have, of course,
a political, social, economic, and religious pro-
gram to apply if, and when, the Bolsheviks are
overthrown.

Russia's fundamental urge has always been to
the east. According to the Russian geographer,
Semenov Tian-Shansky, of all the emigrants
from Europe between the end of the fifteenth and
the end of the nineteenth centuries 72 per cent,
mostly Western Europeans, came to the Amer-
icas, and 28 per cent, mostly Slavs, went into the
interior of Eurasia. The East is to Russia what
the Far West has been to us. But the expansion
of the Great Russian race gave rise to a duality,
European and Asiatic, a contradiction which
underlies all of Russian life and institutions.

A glance at the map reveals a startling con-
trast. Western Europe is cut up by gulfs and
mountain ranges, behind which people differ-
entiated, and formed nationalities. There are no
such natural subdivisions of the Eurasian Plain,
from the Baltic almost to the Pacific, and from

18

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

the Arctic to the mountain wall of Tibet. Here
there is unity and immensity. As Western
Europe was destined to develop small states, the
Russian land was destined to be an unbroken
political unit, the largest in the world. Geograph-
ical unity and immensity explain much about
the Tsarist autocracy and the centralized control
of the Communist Party.

There are other features. The country is re-
mote from maritime influence, hence the historic
quest for an ice-free port. Russian civilization is
a river culture. Her history is divided into the
Dnieper period, Kievan rule; the Volga period,
Muscovite rule; the Neva period, from Peter the
Great to the Bolsheviks ; and now again the Volga
and Moscow. The great rivers of Russia and
Siberia are the traditional highways of commerce,
navigable for most of their length. Unfortu-
nately for Russia's economic development, the
Mother Volga empties into the inland Caspian
Sea. A project to build a canal between the
Volga and Don, thus opening the interior to
ocean traffic, has been entertained by various
rulers sbce Peter the Great. The Soviets have
actually begun the work.

Russia has its contrasts and variety not in
mountains and valleys, but in the conditions
imposed by latitude. Five zones cross the map.

19

PAN-SOVIETISM

The Arctic zone is mostly frozen bog and tundra.
The Urals, in flora and fauna, form a long tongue
of the Arctic pushed down into the heart of the
steppes. Once, with an American companion,
I took a winter reindeer trip into the interior of
the Kola Peninsula along the Arctic, and had a
rather gay time with the Lapps, Samoyeds, and
Finno-TJgrian peoples. It was not so difficult as
it sounds, for we crossed the Arctic Circle in a
wagon-lit. We fattened on reindeer soup and got
too big for our furs. (The natives there, by the
way, have local prohibition. They say vodka is
bad for reindeer.) Next comes the forest zone,
which broadens in Siberia to form the virginal
e taiga/ The famous Black Soil Belt is next to the
south. This soil of decomposed steppe grass,
from one to four feet deep, has the wonderful
fertility which, made Russia the granary of
Europe. Then come the steppes proper, of song
and story, now made productive by scientific
farming. And lastly are the saline deserts to the
southeast. These regions have always been
peculiarly interdependent. Food-producing has
been concentrated in the South and in Siberia;
manufacturing and fuel in the North. Distance
has always been a barrier to economic develop-
ment, and never more than now when the Soviets
find that transport difficulties threaten to limit

20

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

the Five- Year Plan. But this distance barrier
has likewise served Russia as a natural defense
against military attack, as Europe has discovered
many times.

EFFECT OF CLIMATE

The second fundamental in our study is cli-
mate. The ancient Greeks called Russia the
outer darkness, the land of the Scythian winter.
The climate is continental and extreme. The
range from the Arctic to the sub-tropics is be-
tween the isotherms of 20 degrees of frost to 20
degrees of heat, Centigrade, making a total of
40 degrees Centigrade, or 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
This wide range occurs in no other single country.
The United States has a range of 36 degrees
Fahrenheit.

Over half of Russia has a winter of six months.
Beyond the Yenesei, where the ground is per-
manently frozen, the winter runs into nine
months. In that region, northeastern Siberia,
shut off from the sea, is situated the Pole of Cold
of the world. The average January temperature
there is 59 degrees below Fahrenheit zero. At
Verkhoyansk it drops to 90 below. At only one
point, Murmansk, does the Gulf Stream in-
fluence Russia. Wherever you are on that im-
mense Eurasian plain you feel the presence of

21

PAN-SOVIETISM

that Pole of Cold, and the ice-pack of the long
Arctic coast. There is not a sizable barrier to stop
the howling gales from the Siberian North, which
blow right off the ice to the Black Sea.

In summer, the reverse is true. Torrid winds
sweep up from Turkestan and the Caspian.
Summers are short, but hot. Southern Russia has
a winter like Scandinavia and a summer like the
interior of Spain. There are instances recorded,
on the Khirgiz Steppe, of the mercury in the
thermometer congealing in winter, and bursting
the tube in July. I have been on the Khirgiz
Steppe in July, and found the Cossacks hugging
their sheepskins at night, and saying, 'skoro
zimma budyet,' 'soon it will be winter/

The seasons alter violently. Autumn is brief,
and spring is briefer still. The snow goes out with
a rush. Then follow a few weeks of slop. Some-
times the cold comes back after the thaw has
begun. Then summer also comes in a rush for the
short growing season.

Now, continued extreme cold produces effects
not unlike those produced by continued extreme
heat. Both bring on lassitude, and passivity of
body and spirit. In the South the human coun-
teraction is the siesta; in the North it is hiber-
nation. It is the violence of these extremes which
has affected the Russian character. The Russian

22

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

peasants seal up their izbas, putty all the cracks,
and keep the temperature inside at about eighty
degrees. From that atmosphere, hot and stale,
they step out into forty below. For us that would
be like stepping from Singapore into Labrador
for Christmas, with one result, pneumonia.

Much of Russia can also be explained by the
long winter night. In Leningrad, in mid-winter,
it is light from ten to about half -past two. It was
during the long winter night that thrifty peasants
developed the wonderful handicraft in making
the kustarni ware which we see on Fifth Avenue,
New York. And the long winter night probably
accounts for Russian loquacity. No people in
the world talk so much as the Russians. They
have behind them centuries of long winter nights
around the samovar. Russian friends have kept
me up all night to convince me on some point in
metaphysics, and when I, in weariness, would be
convinced, they would switch positions and at-
tack me with the very arguments I had used ten
hours before. That's why so many Russians are
political prisoners on the island of Solovetsky in
the White Sea. They just must talk. If no one
will listen, they talk to themselves. Foreigners
in Russia get that way, too.

Then come the white nights of summer. In
Leningrad, from the roof of the Europa Hotel,

PAN-SOVIETISM

you can see the last flicker of the sun setting to
the west of north, and the first rays of the same
sun rising to the east of north. After an evening
at the theater you come out into the fresh blue of
a new day. You travel on one of the many river
steamers, sit around and enjoy the evening, and
before you think of going to bed, the sun is up,
and peasants are working in the fields along the
banks. In summer the peasant works eighteen to
twenty hours a day. In winter he hibernates like
a bear. Of course, the summers are short, and the
winters are long. The difference is important
from the peasant's point of view.

Like his climate the Russian lacks balance,
rushing from one extreme to another. He hasn't
much conception of time. Nature placed him
under heavy odds. Why try to conquer Nature?
Nitchevo it doesn't matter! Better just endure
it as best you can. Nekrassov's famous poem,
4 The Red-Nosed Frost/ is a thrilling reproduc-
tion of the shudders of the North, and the sleepi-
ness of freezing to death. Every Great Russian
knows something of the feeling. Now, this op-
pression of climate has prepared the Russian for
the oppression of man. To him endurance is the
supreme virtue. In 1915, in sections of the Rus-
sian trenches, there was only one rifle to every
four or five men. As the one with the .gun would

24

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

be killed, the next would catch it as it fell, and go
on firing until he stopped the bullet meant for
him. As in the old Russian game of boxing, the
victor was not the one who could inflict, but the
one who could endure, the most punishment.

But for all his capacity to suffer, the Russian is
a contradictory animal. The Russian peasant is
lovable and gentle, but can be brutal and savage.
In 1917 peasants all over the country killed their
barins, or landlords, and burned the manor
houses. In explaining to me, they would say:
*Yes, the barin was a good man, and we loved
him. But we just had to kill him, otherwise he
would have come back for the land.'

You have to live awhile under that melancholy
sky of the steppe to understand the Russian.
Man feels so small in that immensity. I traveled
by telega, or peasants' light wagon, south of the
Urals. Day after day it was the same old steppe.
Toward night I would look anxiously ahead, and
see first the tip of a church steeple over the
curvature of the earth. An hour later I might see
the roof and eventually the lights of the village.
The next morning was always like going out to
sea all over again.

Foreigners are surprised at the number of Rus-
sians who can live in one room. They do not
share our views of privacy. There has always

25

PAN-SOVIETISM

been a kind of primitive communism among the
peasants. Russians, huddling together in the
midst of a cold immensity, have long been ac-
customed to doing things collectively, as groups
rather than as individuals. That is one reason
why they may take on a socialism which would
be rejected elsewhere.

THE AUTOCRACY

r The third fundamental moulding force, this
time an historical one, is the theo-political auto-
cracy. The Russians endured autocracy for
nearly five hundred years. Many factors might
explain this seeming supineness of the people.
Geography, climate, and the proximity of Asia
must not be overlooked. The Russians have a
habit of blaming the Tartars for everything bad
in their country. As a matter of fact, they took
the practice of autocracy from the Tartars, but
they received the theory of it in direct gift from
Byzantium. Without support of the Church it is
unlikely that the autocracy could have continued
so long. It was Ivan III, end of the fifteenth
century, who first took the title of autocrat, or
*auto-krator,* one who rules in his own right.
That was shortly after the fall of Constantinople
and the Balkan Christian states to the Turks.
The events of the time favored the conclusion

26

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

that God had singled out Moscow for a unique
mission, for breaking the Tartar yoke and for
protecting the true faith. It was believed that
as the Roman Empire could not die, it merely
shifted its capital from Rome to Constantinople,
and thence to Moscow, the third and last Rome.
An ancient crown was produced, supposed to
have been given by an angel from heaven to
the Greeks, who transferred it, along with the
sovereignty of the Caesars, to Vladimir Mono-
machus. Thus the divine origin of the autocracy,
and thus the Holy Russia of centuries to come.
Ivan IH, an excellent business man, also man-
aged to marry the niece of the last Byzantine
Emperor. He called himself heir to the Csesars.
This marked the introduction into Russia of the
Oriental splendor of Byzantium, and the pomp,
extravaganza, and aloofness of the ruler. The
old leniency disappeared. The kowtow was bor-
rowed from the Tartars, along with their bureau-
cracy. Princes of the realm could approach the
sovereign only in a prostrate position. And to
express opposition to the government became
dangerous; to express opposition has never ceased
to be dangerous in Russia.

The Moscow tsars ('tsar' is the Russian cor-
ruption of Caesar, introduced by Ivan IV) used
the Church for political ends. With the exception

PAN-SOVIETISM

of Patriarch Nikhon's short struggle with Tsar
Alexis, in the third quarter of the seventeenth
century, the Church was the staunch bulwark of
the autocracy right down to the end, in 1917.
That should be remembered in considering the
Bolshevik hostility to organized religion.

There were moments when Russia seemed on
the verge of constitutionalism. When the Na-
tional Assembly elevated the Romanov family to
the throne in 1613, it could have imposed limits
on the autocracy. This National Assembly was
called from time to time to raise money. The last
one met in 1654. In 1730, Empress Anne signed
the celebrated conditions, granting executive
rights to a council, and then tore them up. She
was persuaded that Russia preferred being ruled
in the old way. And she evidently was right.
Catherine the Great, in her first flush of liberal-
ism, thought of granting representative rights,
and called a parliament of law-makers in 1767*
But she was frightened by the Pugachev revolt*
The Speransky reforms under Alexander I, the
early measures of Alexander II, and the pseudo-
constitution he signed on the eve of his assas-
sination in 1881, all seemed to indicate propitious
moments. But in typical Russian style nothing
much happened. The tsars were often benevo-
lent, but the autocracy was incapable of ref orm-

0Q

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

ing itself. A constitution, such as it was, was
forced from the crown by the 1905 revolution.
But it did not lead to popular government. The
Russian people have never known popular gov-
ernment. They lived under the regime of auto-
cracy, orthodoxy, and Russian nationalism. The
Communists are not alone in blaming the Church
for making this possible, the Church which made
obedience to the autocrat the will of God, and
which instructed its priests that the secrecy of
confession could be violated when it revealed
acts against the safety of the semi-divine ruler.
With the Church as a political instrument, the
tsarist regime brought the dead hand of medieval
theocracy down into the twentieth century. It
was a tragic anachronism.

THE CLASS SYSTEM

The fourth fundamental explanation for Rus-
sia's backwardness is the class system which de-
veloped out of the state's need for large armies.
By the sixteenth century the Moscow princes had
established the principle that any one holding
land must give lifelong military service to the
state. This was called 'enserfment of the nobil-
ity/ Enforcement of this principle meant exten-
sive expropriations, and continual redistribution
pf land. The tsar was absolute sovereign over the

29

PAN-SOVIETISM

property held by his subjects. Ivan IV, for in-
stance, nationalized on a grand scale the land of
nobles who were delinquent in service, and re-
distributed the estates among his immediate
followers, the opritchniki. The Bolsheviks had a
number of such spiritual ancestors in Russia.

Down to the close of the Middle Ages the great
mass of the peasants were free, holding free ten-
ure rights. The new feudal system which came as
a result of the growing autocracy, and the state's
meed for armies, changed everything for the tillers
of the soil. That is, if the nobles had to spend
their time serving the state, some one had to
support the nobles. Land was not enough; they
needed workers. There was a gradual shift in
ownership. Peasants lost their freehold rights,
and became tenants. As tenants they no longer
paid taxes to the state, but to the nobles. An
economic crisis in the second half of the sixteenth
century forced the issue. Peasants began to de-
sert in droves, seeking new land in the Wildfields
of the southeast. The nobles, deprived of labor
force, and still obliged to serve the state, were
threatened with ruin.

It is hard to say just when the enserfment of
the peasants took place. The process extended
over a hundred years. The Ulozhenia, or Law
Code of 1649, required the peasants to stay put,

30

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

where they were. From then on to the end of the
century, they were stripped of one right after
another, and became, in reality, slaves. Feudal-
ism thus came to Russia in the seventeenth cen-
tury, after it was dead in the West. Russian
feudalism was distinguished from ours in that it
was imposed by the crown from above, not by
the nobles from below. And there was no hier-
archy of allegiance; land was held direct from the
tsar.

Peter the Great fastened the state shackles
even tighter on nobles and serfs. He made the
nobles begin serving the state at the age of fif-
teen, either in the army or navy or in the bu-
reaucracy. He began the hated poll, or soul, tax,
from which the nobles were exempt, but which
took the peasants' blood down to 1886. Of
course, there were even then some free peasants.
But, in general, nobles were slaves to the state,
and the serfs were slaves to both. That state
dominance over the individual has continued to
the present in Russia.

Emancipation of the nobles was effected in
1762, under Peter HI. Thereafter, service to
the state, the basis of right to possess serfs, was
no longer obligatory on the nobles. That should
have been followed shortly by the emancipation
of the serfs. Instead of such logical sequence,

31

PAN-SOVIETISM

Catherine granted the Charter of Privileges to
the Nobility in 1785, which united the nobles
with the crown against the peasants.

By the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and
1865-66, two thirds of the total population, 46
million people, were freed. They were freed,
after three hundred years of bondage, only to
become financial slaves to the state and the land
redemption payments. The results of this dis-
creditable compromise we must note in the next
chapter.

PRE-WAR ECONOMIC SYSTEM

r The fifth fundamental cause for backwardness
was the pre-war economic system. In this we
should include agriculture, but the organization
of industry will illustrate the point.

Peter the Great is called the father of Russian
industry. He wished to westernize Russia, and
at the same time to free the country from de-
pendence on foreign supplies. One is struck by
the analogy between Peter and the Bolsheviks,
in the reliance on industry to lift the prosperity
of the country, in the importation of foreign
technicians, and in the ruthless methods of driv-
ing the people willy-nilly into efficient industrial
methods of the day.

It was Peter who established the principle that
32

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

the economic system must be regulated by the
needs of the state. His particular need was to
maintain a standing army of 250,000 men. The
sacrifice of individual welfare for the good of the
state was as cardinal a policy with Peter as it is
with the Bolsheviks. Besides establishing state
factories, Peter gave factories to nobles on con-
dition of lifelong service. He and his successors
supplied labor force merely by allotting state
serfs to the factories. Sometimes whole villages
were turned over. A decree of 1736 provided
that all artisans then working in factories must
remain there with their families forever. Free
workers, who had no owners, were given to the
factories gratuitously. During the eighteenth
century one and a half million serfs were appor-
tioned to factories, Russian industry was thus
built, and it grew up, on bondage labor. And in
the evolution of the system the workers, once
leased by the state, became personally bonded to
the factory owners, who had jurisdictional powers
over them. After the emancipation of 1861, this
bonded labor formed what was to become the
rock-bottom proletariat, now supposed to be
ruling Russia.

The absence of a large middle class is often
given as the reason for the failure of the Keren-
sky regime. With the exception of the intelli-

33

PAN-SOVIETISM

gentsia, a middle class grows by the possession of
property. Now, in Russia, the state tutelage of
the economic system precluded wide possession
of private property. Even in granting land,
which it could take back, the state retained title
to the sub-soil. In the eighteenth century the
supposed owner could not chop down an oak
tree on his land without becoming liable to the
death penalty. Not until 1782 do we meet,
in a legal sense, the Russian word for property,
sobstvennost. Until 1801 only nobles could hold
property in land. A history of property rights
would reveal the astounding fact that Russian
people, as a mass, did not acquire property rights
until comparatively recently. The great mass of
peasants did not acquire even civic rights until
1906. A capitalist class began to develop late in
the nineteenth century, but was numerically
small. Of course, if the revolution had been
staved off for a few more decades, a strong mid-
dle class of industrial owners, intellectuals, and
independent farmers, might have developed. As
it was, when the autocracy toppled, class sov-
ereignty fell all the way to the lowest class, the
proletariat, because there was nothing effective
to stop it on the way down, except the unorgan-
ized peasantry.

This natural and historical setting we must
34

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

keep in mind. It is essential to the picture of a
new form of state tutelage superimposed upon
the same old problems. The people supply the
continuity between the old and the new, and
prove that much of what is called new is really
old in Russia.

By Russian people I do not mean the 1.5 per
cent minority, the nobles who charmed and daz-
zled the Riviera, nor the 8 or 9 per cent minority,
the bourgeoisie, even though that class contained
scholars and reformers who made contributions
to society of permanent worth. I mean the 85
per cent majority, the people who never had their
day.

THE SOVIET MAN-POWER

The population of the Russian Empire in 1914
was about 180 million. Of these, 30 million were
detached upon the formation of the border states,
Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
and the forced cession of Bessarabia to Rou-
mania, which the Soviets have never recognized.

Of the 14 million men mobilized for Russian
armies during the World War, 11 mill ion died of
wounds and disease. The effects of the war on
the incidence of disease in Russia are only now
becoming known. Dr. W. Horsley Gantt, an
American assistant to the great Pavlov in Lenin-

35

PAN-SOVIETISM

grad, spent years studying this problem. Dr.
Gantt first went to Russia with the American
Relief Administration in 1922. The A.R.A., or
ARA as it is called by the Russians, left a mem-
ory of American good will and bounty, and no
matter what government officials might say
about the commercial propensities of certain
members, the word ARA is spoken with touching
gratitude by millions of children now grown up
to be men in what was the Black Belt of famine
on the Volga.

According to Dr. Gantt what the Soviets in-
herited from the tsarist regime by way of health
service amounted to just about nothing. In the
United States before the war there was one doctor
to every 800 inhabitants, in England one to 1400,
in Germany one to 1500, in tsarist Russia one to
6000. It is not strange that the war and its after-
math, restriction of food, physical and mental
suffering, famine and epidemics, to say nothing
of the disorders of the revolution, caused more
disease than any other war or calamity in the
medical history of Europe.

At one time 20 million were starving. Between
1920 and 1922, 10 million died of starvation.
Then came the epidemics. There were 35 million
cases of typhus and relapsing fever in Russia
after the war. On the heels of these came tuber-

36

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

culosis, which took off almost all the chronic
cases. Malaria was next, with 18 million cases,
some as far north as Archangel and Murmansk
on the Arctic, spread by the enormous mass
movement of the people, and aggravated by the
lack of quinine and medical personnel. Given
the ( famine inanition/ even dysentery became a
deadly disease.

Now, it is difficult to apportion the blame for
this. The health of Russia ten years ago was a
legacy of war, which assumed the proportions of
tremendous cataclysm because of a combination
of circumstances in which the inefficiency of the
old regime must have a place. The revolution in-
creased the disorder, and made outside aid diffi-
cult. The economic policies which forced the
peasants' strike, and the civil war, prolonged by
Allied intervention, all contributed to the smash-
ing of Russia.

We find the results of the famine to be a de-
generation, a decrease in the capacity for work,
an apathy, an impairment of memory, and a
weakness of will, and a universal decline in the
national resistance to disease. There were an-
thropological changes, a decrease in the average
height, a decrease in weight from 20 to 40 per
cent, and a shrinkage of the skull, which became
longer back of the middle of the head. The face

37

PAN-SOVIETISM

became longer, the arms longer, and the lips
thinner, which are supposed to indicate a return
to the features of our primitive ancestors. Rus-
sian specialists declare that these anthropological
changes are present in the offspring as mutations
and regressions, although there are some signs
that they will disappear.

That is the picture of the Russian giant, writh-
ing like Prometheus chained, with the vultures of
famine and disease devouring him. The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse scourged the Russian
land, mowed down 40 million people between
1917 and 1924, and left the rest staggering.

In the West we have a famous painting by
Cowboy Russell, a picture of a cow, shrunken and
humped, wobbling in the whirling snow. The
title is "The Last of the Five Thousand, Waiting
for a Chinook. 5 The Chinook is the warm wind
from the Pacific which takes off the snow in a
single night. That is my idea of the man-power
with which the Soviets began to build social-
ism.

But amazing is the vitality of the Slav. On
the present territory of the Soviet Union there
were in 1850 some 57 million people, with 5 per
cent dwelling in towns. In 1923 there were 133
million, and today close to 160 million. There
are some 20 per cent living in cities today. This

38

THE RUSSIAN LAND AND PEOPLE

tenacious, persistent population has thus almost
trebled in eighty years, despite the unparalleled
loss during the war decade.

These people never had a renaissance. They
never had a reformation* They have no real
tradition of self-government. They know neither
freedom nor the intoxication of liberty, except
for the six weeks* delirium in the spring of 1917.
They are peasants, or ex-peasants with their
roots in the village, until recently dark in their
illiteracy. They emerged from serfdom only to
be plunged into the 1905 revolution. Before they
recovered from that, they were flung into a world
war which they never could understand. For six-
teen years now they have been under the tent,
a people at war, for the so-called transition to
socialism is war continued. They have gone
through famine, plague, and economic exhaus-
tion. No people has suffered as have the Rus-
sians, unless it be the Chinese. How the Com-
munists will transform these * little brothers' is
a question. They are specimens in the laboratory.
Whether they are to become soulless, mechanical
robots, or a wonder people with potential creative
power unleashed from centuries of shackles, we
cannot yet tell. They have been through the fire
many times, and have proved indestructible.
Like the land they live in, they are built on the

39

PAN-SOVIETISM

big scale. They have big ideas. And they have
a real love for Russia.

These people we must have before us in ex-
amining the Soviet system. These are people
who can endure what they have endured, and
still go on increasing at the rate of three million
a year, a larger annual increase than the whole
population of Denmark. It is this fertility of the
Russians, even in adversity, which is at the root
of Russia's great economic problem. Over a long
period of years the population has been growing
faster than the means to provide ordinary neces-
sities of life and employment. That was Russia's
problem before the war. That has been the
problem of the Soviets. And that is the problem
which must lie in the background of any realistic
study of the Soviet system.

CHAPTER III

State Economic Control of the Old Regime

IN attempting to distinguish the problems which
the Communists inherited from those which they
have imposed, we must emphasize the state's
tutelage over national economic life, which began
long before 1917. It may be that there is some-
thing about the soil of the Eurasian plain which
is unfree. It may be that the struggle between
man and nature in that large and rich segment
of the earth will continue until the creation of
supermen in a higher stage of human develop-
ment. Viewed historically, Russia seemed de-
stined to remain an agricultural appanage of the
industrial West, with the darkness of the cen-
turies over the land because of her disadvan-
tages in world economics. And however we may
disapprove of certain tenets of the Communist
creed, we cannot, in justice, hold them respon-
sible for the dead hand of the past which con-
tinues to weigh down Russian life.

PRE-WAR AGRICULTURE

The emancipation which freed 25 million
private serfs in 1861, and 21 million crown serfs

41

PAN-SOVIETISM

in 1865-66, has been called the greatest legisla-
tive act of any Russian sovereign. The edict was
a law code of two thousand articles. All serfs re-
ceived their freedom. House serfs received no
land; they became the landless peasants and
rural laborers. But peasants settled on the land
received ownership of their homes and gardens
attached, in return for a nominal price fixed by
law. The difficulty arose over the division of the
old manorial lands between the freed serfs and
their former masters. The government put up
four fifths of the purchase price when the peasants
could furnish the other fifth. The nobles were
thus paid off at once, and the peasants went into
debt to the state, and were allowed to pay in
installments over forty-nine years, plus interest.
These were the famous redemption payments
which loom so large in the revolutionary litera-
ture of Russia.

This settlement was a moral and economic
gain, but it had many defects. The peasants did
not get as much land as they had leased under
serfdom, which at that was just enough to enable
them to pay taxes to the state. The other half of
their obligations that is, to their masters
they had discharged by labor on the domains,
three days a week. Hence the land hunger. Then
there was the alarming fcirth rate. Peasant hold-

42

ECONOMIC CONTROL OF OLD REGIME

ings increased 50 per cent between 1861 and
1905, but the peasant population increased 100
per cent. According to one set of figures the
average holding per head of the male peasant
population was 4.8 dessiatines in 1861 (a dessia-
tine is 2.7 acres), 3.5 in 1880, and 2.6 in 1905, a
decrease of one half in 44 years. Now, the aver-
age peasant family required about 12 dessiatines,
or over 30 acres, for a satisfactory livelihood. It
is estimated that 70 per cent of the peasants got
less from the land than would suffice for a decent
existence. About 20 per cent could feed them-
selves, but not their live-stock. And only 10 per
cent could produce enough to get a little more
than the bare necessities of existence. In the
Black Soil Belt, where the holdings were smallest,
the average money turnover of a peasant family
of five persons, after paying taxes, was 82 rubles
a year, a little over $40.

The agrarian committee appointed by Count
Witte in 1903 reported: 'When the harvest is
normal the amount of nutriment obtainable by
the peasant is, on the average, 30 per cent below
the minimum requisite to maintain the strength
of an adult worker on the land/ And yet hungry
Russia continued to export grain!

There were other manifestations of agricultural
decline. The head of cattle, for instance, declined

PAN-SOVIETISM

from 37.2 per 100 inhabitants in 1880 to SO in
1909. Tax burdens increased. From 1893 to
1902 the population increased 13 per cent, and
taxes increased 49 per cent. That was during
the industrialization fever of Count Witte. The
peasants became more and more hopelessly in
arrears with taxes and redemption payments.
When they could not pay, the gendarmes seized
their horses, cattle, and other means of produc-
tion, leaving them nothing but the land. The
coming of the gendarmes, the chattels piled out
in front of the izba, and the peasant family weep-
ing, became a familiar picture of Russian life.

What is important for our study is that the
peasant did not become an individual landowner
in 1861. The land was not bought by individual
peasants, but by the mir, or community, which
became known thereafter as the obshchina. Now
what was this mzr, or obshchina, which may be
called the curse of Russian agriculture?

Throughout Russian history communal divi-
sion of land was a constant feature of peasant
life. The Russkaya Pravda, eleventh century,
contains the first mention of a system of land
tenure of undivided ownership by members of a
household, each member having a share in the
family fields. This family ownership developed
into communal ownership in medieval times,

44

ECONOMIC CONTROL OF OLD REGIME

and village communities became known as mirs.
Members of a mir were bound together by
mutual guarantee for payment of taxes. The mir
assessed the land, and paid the taxes. If an
individual peasant absconded, the deficit was
made up out of the mir funds. After the six-
teenth century the individual was bound to the
community, and there was compulsory equality
in the allotment of land as among households.
The change of 1861 was that division of land was
thereafter made according to the number of
working members of a household, which necessi-
tated frequent redistribution.

This mir was bolstered up by the government
and was a substitute for the police power of the
nobles in collecting taxes and redemption pay-
ments. It condemned Russia to agricultural
backwardness. It discouraged initiative and
improvement. If a peasant fertilized his plot, he
might lose it at the next redistribution. The
mutual guarantee of taxes meant that the in-
dustrious peasant had to carry the load of the
shiftless.

The worst feature of the mir was the parcella-
tion, or strip system. Within a community each
family was entitled to its bit of clay land, sand,
good soil, or marsh. Not only did this enforce
compulsory rotation of crops that is, all strips

45

PAN-SOVIETISM

in a field had to be sown alike but it meant
that the strips were too small for the use of
machinery. Much land was wasted in boundary
furrows. In the southern and southeastern sec-
tions, where the lands are of fairly even quality,
the families had their land in less than ten strips.
But farther north, where swamps and forests
abound, and the soil is multi-colored, nearly one
half of the peasant families had their land in
more than forty tiny strips, some in more than
one hundred.

Another factor was the distance between the
villages and the fields. On the Volga, and in the
southeast, the chief grain regions, where water is
scarce and wells must be deep, the peasants have
settled in large villages of 10,000 and more. There
only one fourth of the fields are within five versts
(a verst is two thirds of a mile), and the rest five
to fifteen versts, and even more. In the north,
the distances are not so great. Distance is always
an obstacle in Russia, We cannot imagine an
American farmer driving his nag ten miles to
hoe a row of corn, but that has not been unusual
in Russia.

During the 1905 revolution the government
awakened to the fact that the mir was the great-
est evil of agriculture. In 1906 the redemption
payments were abolished, and individual peas-

46

ECONOMIC CONTROL OF OLD REGIME

ants were permitted to leave the mir. By 1911,
some six million peasant families were detached
from the communities, in personal possession of
land. Stolypin, and others of his time, believed
that the best way to avert revolution was by
building up a big class of peasant proprietors,
who would naturally be conservative in their
political ideas. But the pardon came too late;
1917 restored equality of shares. The mir,
obshchina, again became the dominant order, and
continued so until the collectivization process of
1930. This land problem was the broad base of
the Russian Revolution, and has been the most
serious obstacle to Soviet plans.

PRE-WAR INDUSTRY

"* Turning now to industry, we find that, in spite
of Peter the Great, it played a minor r61e in
economic life down to the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Then began the industrialization which
was expected to free the country from depend-
ence on foreign manufactures, and to provide
employment for the surplus population. With
the supply of free and cheap labor, released by
the emancipation, Russia's potentialities were
recognized abroad, which led to an influx of
foreign capital. This industrial expansion, and
feverish railway-building, was largely financed by

47

PAN-SOVIETISM

foreign borrowings, or by permitting a measure
of foreign control.

We need note only a few features. First, there
was the creation of a working class. Previously,
the compulsory factory labor consisted of peas-
ants, still attached to the soil. The Russian
industrial specialist, Tugan-Baranovsky, notes
four stages of divorcing peasants from the soil to
create the proletariat class. Even in 1900, when
there were three million wage-earners of the
proletariat, the worker could always return to
his village and get land. With the encourage-
ment of individual landholdings under the
Stolypin reform, it became more difficult to
obtain land upon return to the village. In this
way the Stolypin reform helped develop the class
consciousness of the rock-bottom proletariat.

There was a woeful lack of labor legislation.
Even after the emancipation, workers were not
considered to have any particular rights, except
to be fed on minimum rations in order to get the
work done. Hours of labor were fifteen to sixteen
a day. The law of 1897 limited the working day
to eleven and one half hours, but this was not
respected. Wages ranged from $70 to $170 a
year. Russian workers were just as hungry as
Russian peasants. Often the wages had to be
taken in goods from the factory store. It is true

48

ECONOMIC CONTROL OF OLD REGIME

that these low monetary wages were sometimes
offset by free housing, factory hospitals, recrea-
tion grounds, day nurseries, etc., but the shining
examples of such factories only emphasized the
dismal picture in factories where the workers had
to sleep alongside the machines.

Russian industry developed a savage discipline.
There was a system of fines for delinquencies.
Before 1905 labor unions were forbidden, except
a few under government tutelage. Strikes were
criminal. Nevertheless strikes were frequent,
and violent. Another familiar picture in Russia
was the labor disorder, and the Cossacks clearing
the streets with sabers drawn. By siding with
the factory-owners, the government was sowing
for the whirlwind.

The Russian factory-owners tended to con-
centrate into a number of big enterprises, and
to combine into syndicates to regulate output
and fix prices, making monopolies. These pluto-
crats, the upper layer of the bourgeoisie, were not
very numerous, but mere mention of them today
is enough to send the old Russian worker into
frenzies of hatred.

STATE-CONTEOLLED ECONOMICS

Not only was this large-scale industry under
the tutelage of the state, but also much of the

49

PAN-SOVIETISM

rest of economic life. In 1889 the state controlled
23 per cent of the railroads; in 1900, 60 per cent.
In order to finance the industrial development
and railway construction the government was
forced to maintain a favorable balance of trade,
that is, an excess of exports over imports. Agri-
culture had to feed the country, and maintain
this export surplus. Grain amounted to 48 per
cent of the export* Russian grain, being poorly
cleaned and sorted, sold for less in the London
market than other grains. And the peasant was
forced by taxation, which fell due immediately
after the harvest, to sell his grain at prices which
met the world competition. Russia was even
then being industrialized at the cost of under-
consumption at home.

The hand of the state was heaviest, however,
in finance. In 1897 the State Bank became a
Bankers* Bank, feeding credit institutions. The
Minister of Finance thus assumed tremendous
power over the economic life, and diverted funds
to industrial schemes under the management of
friends. This led to state control over big in-
dustries. The state became the chief money-
lender, and aided industry to the detriment of
agriculture.

By the Monetary Reform of 1897, Russia was
transferred from a silver to a gold basis, with a

50

ECONOMIC CONTROL OF OLD REGIME

fifty per cent cover of gold. But Russia did not
possess the necessary gold, which had to come
from abroad from the export surplus and foreign
investment. To obtain gold huge quantities of
grain were often thrown on the market, lowering
the price to the great disadvantage of the peas-
ant. The gold standard thus became a white
elephant. And the cry was: c We export not the
surplus, but the necessary/ All this has a familiar
ring now in view of the so-called Soviet dumping.

The foreign investment in Russia in 1914
amounted to 2243 million rubles, over half of
which was in mining and metallurgy. The French
controlled three fourths of Russia's production
of coal and pig iron. According to Pasvolsky
and Moulton, Russia's pre-war debt, public and
private, incurred for economic and military pur-
poses, amounted to 7142 million rubles. The war
borrowings added 6681 million, to make a total
of 13,823 million rubles gold. The total interest
charges on this sum would be 720 million gold
rubles a year, or about 360 -million dollars.

With a foreign debt of 7 billion dollars it is
hard to see how the tsarist regime could ever have
recovered in this generation, even if it had
acquired Constantinople, even if there had been
no revolution. The country would probably have
been mortgaged to foreign banks. The state was

51

PAN-SOVIETISM

the economic overlord even before the war; the
state controlled banking, industry, the railroads,
the mercantile fleet, and much of the trade. It
attempted to solve the population-production
problem, and to transform Russia by industrial-
ization financed from abroad. It failed. The
difficulties were too enormous for the autocracy.
The Soviets have the same problem. Their
methods are different. And they are forced to do
without foreign loans. How they are trying to
do it without foreign loans is the subject of later
chapters.

CHAPTER IV

Native and Imported Revolution

FEOM what we often read we might conclude that
new ideas burst like a flood on Russia in 1917,
that certain Bolshevik leaders came in a sealed
train and started the world's greatest revolution
merely with the persuasion of German gold and
magic words. That would leave out of account
the tradition of revolution in Russia itself.

The Russian people, long suffering though they
were, occasionally flashed into revolt. The Cos-
sacks were always turbulent. The Stenka Razin
revolt, in the seventeenth century, was one. The
peasants still sing of Stenka Razin, because,
according to the legend, he took from the rich
and gave to the poor. The Pugachev affair under
Catherine was unparalleled in ferocity, even for
Russia. Pugachev masqueraded as Peter HI
come to life another case of the False Dmitri
pretenders to the throne who appear periodically
in Russian history. Even today peasants in
certain sections do not believe that the Romanovs
are dead.

But there was no continuous thread of revolt
until the nineteenth century. The Decembrists,

53

PAN-SOVIETISM

so-called because the outbreak occurred in De-
cember, 1825, were aristocratic young officers
who had picked up ideas of freedom while cam-
paigning against Napoleon. We have several of
their projects for constitutions. The Nikita
Murav'ev constitution was for a limited mon-
archy, based on the United States, which would
have made Russia a federation of thirteen states.
Colonel Pestel, the real leader, is now called a
'socialist before socialism/ He had a copy of the
American Constitution. George Washington was
his hero. He proposed to destroy the aristocracy,
liberate the peasants, and endow them with com-
munal property. While the country was being
educated to democracy he proposed a dictator-
ship for ten years to effect the transition. The
Decembrists thought out in 1825 the lines the
revolution eventually took in Russia. I bring
this out as only one instance in showing that the
Soviet system has grown out of the people of
Russia, and the land of Russia, as well as out of
the doctrines of Marx. Five of the Decembrists
were executed, and the rest exiled to Siberia.
Their aristocratic names are revered today by
Soviet school children.

To trace the gathering of the revolutionary
forces we should have to bring in Pushkin,
Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevski, and

54

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

Tolstoi, the great masters of literature, who kept
up an indirect attack on the autocracy by photo-
graphing the iron age of reaction. We should
have to note the early Westernizers (the Zapad-
niki), Bielinski, and Alexander Herzen, who
poured devastating pamphlets into Russia from
London, and did more than any one man to
prepare the way for smashing the autocracy.

But Nihilism is the only movement which has
interest for us now. The name Nihilism was
supplied by Turgenev. The gospel of the move-
ment was written by Cheryushevski in his book,
'What Is To Be Done? 5 Nihilism was popular
among students, who believed that Russia's hu-
miliation of the Crimean War was due to her
backwardness, especially her religion and igno-
rance. They proposed to substitute science for
religion, collective property for private property,
free love for family restrictions, and a govern-
ment of federated communes for the autocracy.
They were atheists and realists. Their positivism
they took from Comte, as do many of the leading
Bolsheviks. They campaigned against conven-
tions, the same guideposts which the Communist
youth of today call bourgeois morality. Above
all they desired new life, and new humanity.
Now, this was in Russia long before Lenin and
the Communist Party were heard of. If any one

55

PAN-SOVIETISM

believes the Communist youth are today doing
unheard of things, let him go to the records and
he will find that the Nihilists did them sixty and
seventy years ago.

The peculiarity of this revolutionary move-
ment native to Russia was that chief reliance
was placed on the peasant, and on the mir, to
work out economic salvation. Over a long period
all the efforts were directed toward converting the
peasants to socialism, the V Narod movement,
the Narodnaya Volya, etc., which culminated in
1901 in the formation of the Social Revolutionary,
or Peasants' Party, which was largely responsible
for the acts of terrorism even down to 1918.
That was the home brand of revolution.

IMPOBTED EEVOLTJTION

The Communists are comparatively recent in
the apostolic succession of social reformers.
Where did they get their ideology? Other than
the general inheritance of socialist thinking we
note three fountain heads of Communist thought,
Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals of the
French revolution, the Paris Commune, 1871,
and the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels.
All three assume new importance in the light of
what has happened since 1917.

Babeuf wanted to get back to the proletarian
56

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

control as it existed before 1793, that is, before
the Thermidor reaction which resulted in the
execution of Robespierre and the restoration of
bourgeois control. In recent years, the cry of
Thermidor has often been heard in Moscow, con-
nected with the predicted fall of Stalin and the
expected swing to the right. Babeuf and the
Conspiracy of Equals proposed nationalization of
property by abolishing inheritance, limitation of
political rights to workers, a state planning com-
mission, and dictatorship of the proletariat dur-
ing the transition from capitalism to socialism,
fifty years before Marx, and one hundred and
twenty years before Lenin.

The spotlight has also been turned on the
Paris Commune, 1871, because it is now realized
how much the Bolsheviks use it as a model. The
Paris Commune was the first proletarian govern-
ment of the world. During its two months of
existence it abolished the standing army, intro-
duced universal suffrage with the delegates sub-
ject to immediate recall, kept salaries of public
officials down to the level of workers' wages, and
established other precedents which are dupli-
cated in Russia today. Lenin and others drew
their lessons in revolutionary tactics from the
Paris Commune, the main one being that the
Commune took only halfway measures. It re-

57

PAN-SOVIETISM

fused to seize the Banque de France, it refused to
march on the government at Versailles, it did
not expropriate, it acted moderately. The Bol-
sheviks had pondered long on the failure of the
Paris Commune. When they swung into action
in 1917, they seldom erred on the side of mod-
eration.

Now we come to Marx. There are many ob-
vious objections to his doctrines. But whether
we like it or not, *Das KapitaP has been in view
of world events perhaps the most influential piece
of writing ever produced by one man. Professor
Seligman, a learned defender of capitalism, as-
sures us that * with the exception of Ricardo there
has been no more original, no more powerful, and
no more acute intellect in the entire history of
economic science' than Marx, Every intelligent
Bolshevik knows his Marx. Lenin seemed to
know *Das KapitaP by rote, judging from the
quotations he flung off from the haystack in
Finland where he was hid in 1917. Revisionists
have qualified Marx. Others have riddled Marx
to their own satisfaction. But for us the point is
that the Communist Party which rules Russia
believes absolutely in Marx, with the distinction
that Leninism is Marxism of the imperialistic era.
Soviet Russia is ruled in the Marxian principles.
To approach Soviet Russia without Marx would

58

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

be like studying the Christian religion without
the Bible. The simile is not strange, for militant
materialism acts as a religion in Russia today.

There are two Marxian concepts which we
must have clear in order to come to grips with
Quantity X in the Soviet system. The first con-
cept is sociological, the economic interpretation
of history, and its corollary of the continuous
class struggle. The second is economic, the
theory of surplus value.

We should, in passing, recall the Hegelian
dialectic. Hegel depicted the law of progress as
change through the struggle of opposing elements,
and the evolution therefrom into a new and
higher element. First there is the positive, which
he called the thesis. This creates a negative, or
contradiction, the source of movement and life,
which he called the antithesis. These two destroy
each other, and form the synthesis, which in turn
becomes a positive, only to create a negative, and
so on up as man progresses toward his destiny.

Marx took over this dialectic, and thereafter
could think only in terms of contradictions. He
made his positive, or thesis, private property.
He made his negative, or antithesis, the prole-
tariat. As a result of the conflict between the
rising proletariat and private property there
must emerge the synthesis, a new order of society,

59

PAN-SOVIETISM

a result of the destruction of both private pro-
perty and the proletariat.

This is the formula of revolution. It was first
expressed in the Communist Manifesto, written
by Marx in 1847, which reviewed the continuous
class struggle, and gave the working class a
philosophy and a mission. The last sentences of
the Communist Manifesto still ring in the halls of
Moscow, *The proletariat have nothing to lose
but their chains. They have a world to gain/
And the final words are the first words to meet
the visitor entering Russia, on the arch at the
frontier. That slogan, * Proletariat of All Coun-
tries, Unite/ is the * masthead' of newspapers,
such as the Pravda and the Isvestia; it appears on
banners in Soviet demonstrations, and anywhere
else it can be placed to catch the eye.

The economic interpretation of history is
simply that the modes of production and ex-
change have determined the evolution of society.
Marx did not exclude other factors, in spite of
what critics say, but he made the economic the
dominant factor. This * scientific socialism' is
what gives the Bolsheviks their conscious right-
eousness, the fanatic faith in the inevitable logic
of their system, when they say that history is
with them, time is with them, that capitalists
are their own grave-diggers, and that socialism

60

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

must come with the relentless logic of social
evolutionary law.

Marx's theory of class struggle was this: The
institution of private property destroyed primi-
tive communism, after which there was slavery,
exploitation, and division of society into classes
of owners and non-owners, so that antagonisms
were aroused which broke up the Roman Empire
and led to the Dark Ages. Then the feudal sys-
tem evolved out of chaos, and new classes were
formed, with the nobility at the top along with
the clergy, a few townspeople and free tenure
holders in the middle, and the great mass bound
to the glebe as serfs at the bottom. The class
struggle flared up again, until the bourgeoisie
broke the power of the nobles, after which there
ensued the modern era of commercialism, capital-
ism, with its so-called wage slavery.

Under capitalism the class struggle goes on.
Marx predicted that the middle class would sink
into the proletariat, and disappear. Then the
dialectic swings into action, the proletariat gets
organized as the antithesis, marches on private
property, the thesis in the form of the capitalist
class, smashes the system, and after a period of
transition and reconstruction ushers in the collec-
tive era, organizes industry on a basis of common
ownership and public management, establishes

61

PAN-SOVIETISM

equality of distribution, so that capitalism will be
destroyed, classes will be abolished, as there will
be only one class and all of them producers, with
a slogan of "He who does not work shall not
eat/

Now, it is perfectly apparent that the American
middle class has not disappeared, but is getting
stronger. The hard-and-fast class divisions de-
scribed by Marx do not fit American society.
Employees of capitalist owners, managers, fore-
men, and even workmen, tend to become capi-
talists, and trade in stocks. Furthermore, there
is a tendency toward widely dispersed ownership
in America, such as in the shares of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company. It is pos-
sible to cite many instances of capitalists sharing
ownership with employees, and to show that the
capitalists, instead of digging their own graves,
are reading the signs of the times and making
shift to solve the labor problems by turning
workers into small capitalists.

But such instances in American life are neither
general nor typical. And what we are primarily
concerned with is what the Communist Party in
Russia believes. It believes that the present
struggle between the bourgeoisie and the prole-
tariat will be the last one, that when the prole-
tariat smashes the old order it will rule during a

62

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

transition period, until the class lines are abol-
ished, after which there will be no exploitation
because, there are no classes, and man will be free.
The historic mission of the proletariat is thus
conceived on a grand scale, to free all mankind.
Such is the true faith in Moscow.

The Russian word for struggle is bor'ba. That
word dots the pages of the Soviet newspapers.
It can be heard every few minutes in most public
speeches, or from the radio loud-speakers in the
city squares. It is bor'ba against this, bor'ba
against that; all of life is bor'ba in Russia.

Marx's theory of labor power as a commodity
goes back to Ricardo's iron law of wages. Marx
tried to prove that the proletariat creates all the
commodities and values, whereas the capitalists
live on the surplus value which they have stolen
from the creators of value. Surplus value is the
difference in value between what the laborers
create and what they receive as wages. As an
example, let us say a laborer can produce in four
hours the necessaries for himself and his family,
expressed in the form of $3. If he worked four
hours a day for $3, there would be no surplus
value. But in buying labor power the capitalist
employer treats it as any other commodity, and
makes the laborer work eight, ten, or more hours
a day. The theory is that during four hours the

63

PAN-SOVIETISM

laborer is putting in * necessary labor time/
enough for subsistence wages. During the rest of
the day he is putting in "surplus labor time/
creating surplus value for the employer. He
creates all told, say $6 or $8, but he receives only
$3. The rest is the employer's gross profit, which
is divided into rent, interest, and net profit.

This theory of surplus value is the crux of
Marxism. And that is what the Soviets mean by
exploitation of labor. It leaves out factors which
we consider important, such as managerial skill.
According to its constitution, Soviet Russia is
dedicated to the abolition of all exploitation of
man by man. The constitution, however, is
eloquently silent on exploitation of man by the
State.

HOW THE EEVOLUTION CAME

These two volcanoes of revolutionary thought,
the Russian or peasant, and the imported or
proletarian, both dominated by intellectuals,
were smoking hot at the turn of the century.
Marxism became organized when the Social
Democratic Labor Party was formed in 1898, the
party which five years later, in London, split into
the Bolsheviks, who favored violent methods,
and the Mensheviks, who were content with
evolution by legislation. The volcanoes burst

64

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

into flames in the 1905 Revolution, when the
autocracy was shaken by the ghastly mistake of
the Japanese War.

It is interesting, what that 1905 Revolution
did to the autocracy. The fundamental law of
1832 reads : * The tsar of all Russia is an autocratic
and absolute monarch. God Himself commands
us to obey the tsar's supreme authority, not from
fear alone, but as a point of conscience/ The
fundamental law was altered, May, 1906, to
read: *To the tsar of all Russia appertains su-
preme autocratic authority. God Himself com-
mands us to obey, etc.' It took seventy-four
years to get the word absolute, as applied to the
tsar, out of the fundamental law. The word auto-
crat remained, and with it the csesaro-papism of
the tsar.

The autocracy granted a constitution, provid-
ing for a Duma of consultative, but not legisla-
tive, rights. When the first two Dumas proved
hostile, the autocracy simply changed the elec-
toral law by fiat, in violation of the constitution
it had granted, and packed the Duma with con-
servative members. This new electoral law,
based on the Prussian three-class system, per-
mitted one elector for 230 gentry, one for 60,000
peasants, and one for 125,000 workmen, with
various other scales in between. The Soviet elec-

65

PAN-SOVIETISM

toral law, as we shall see, is just as unbalanced,
but in exactly the reverse sense.

The Bolsheviks at first boycotted the Duma.
One story is that the Bolshevik leaders met in a
deserted country house in Finland to decide
whether or not they would cooperate with the
Duma. The majority seemed in favor. Stalin
opposed. Just before the vote was taken, Stalin
disappeared. Presently two pistol shots were
heard. Some one cried, * Police!* The meeting
exploded without a vote. Stalin was behind the
stable, cleaning his gun. He is still master of the
political science of steering by indirection.

Now, the chief lesson for America to be gained
from Russia's experience is that economic pres-
sure from below burst through the lid of the
autocracy. That same economic pressure we
meet again in Soviet problems. In attempting
to industrialize the country, the tsarist regime
grafted industrialism on a medieval society. The
autocracy wanted industrialism without social
change, which was impossible. The state eco-
nomic control served to prevent the social change
which was a necessary corollary of economic
change. This fact was all the more important in
that Russian society was overweighted in the
lower strata. It was mostly lower strata, with a
thin veneer for a top. Russia rotted at the top.

66

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

The treachery at court, the Rasputins and
Sokhomlimovs, the inefficiency and corruption,
and other dark ( forces' which are not identified
in the records, brought the country to her knees
before Germany. The autocracy could not solve
the economic problems, it could not win the war,
it could not reform itself.

The real Russia came out in the March Revo-
lution, but the provisional government could not
solve these problems either. We are told that
Kornilov torpedoed the provisional government.
As a matter of fact, the liberal revolution, even
though served by such fine minds as Miliukov's,
was scuttled from above by the vested capital
interests. It was they who prevented a settlement
of the land question, the labor question, and most
of the other pressing questions except that of
continuing the war. They were the consciously
righteous. They were blind to the handwriting
on the wall. The doctrinaire liberals of the pro-
visional government were caught between the
upper grindstone of vested interests and the lower
grindstone of the proletariat and peasantry.
They were too liberal to put through the govern-
mental economic control which might have saved
them. Their fate touches us all. The capitalists
on the right have money, which is power. Labor,
on the left, has numerical superiority and organi-

67

PAN-SOVIETISM

zation, which is power. The intellectuals in the
middle of the road have only ideas with which to
fight for moderation. Ideas avail not much, un-
less backed by power.

The Bolsheviks really had an easy time in
seizing power. All they had to do was to promise
the people what they wanted. 'Land to those
who till it; factory control to the workers; and
immediate peace/

In keeping our American point of view we
must not use our own criteria in examining Soviet
conditions, but the criteria of things to which the
Russian people have been accustomed. The
* little brothers* never did have many of the et
ceteras of life. Whether or not they would have
more under any other form of government than
the existing one is a matter of sheer speculation,

Russia is attempting to go from autocracy to
socialism without passing through the stage of
parliamentary democracy. The facts in these
last two chapters we need, not only to understand
the length of that jump, but also to refute those
among us, who, in zeal for some cause, assume
that America in 1931 is as full of dynamite as was
Russia in 1917.

Many of the theories and practices in Russia
today proceed from ideas which have existed or
have been fermenting and bubbling below the

68

NATIVE AND IMPORTED REVOLUTION

surface for the past century. This complicates
the picture. A whole people might be smashed,
but it cannot very well be overthrown. So when
there is talk about overthrowing the Bolsheviks,
we should have a working notion of the difference
between what is Bolshevik and what is just
Kussia. For that we must have new measuring
rods.

CHAPTER V

Political Control

To prevent the Russian economic pressure from
below, which sealed the doom of the autocracy,
from endangering their own plans, the Com-
munists have built up a system of political con-
trol new to statecraft,

Capitalism, in the Communist definition, is a
system based on private ownership, characterized
by commodity production for market, which
permits monopoly ownership of the means of
production and distribution by a small wealthy
group, and exploitation of labor, which through
the wage system robs labor of its self-created
value, and degrades the working strength of man.

According to the Kremlin doctrine, capitalism,
as an economic mode, is becoming obsolete, unfit
for the changing needs of an increasingly popu-
lous and industrialized world, and must even-
tually follow the outworn systems of feudalism
and slavery into the scrapbag of history. It is
believed that capitalism must shake itself to
pieces by reason of its internal contradictions;
first, the division of society into two classes; and
second, the anarchy of production.

70

POLITICAL CONTROL

We have already touched upon the class divi-
sions, the exploitation of labor, and the theory of
surplus value. With the money power thus ac-
quired, capitalists are supposed to entrench their
class in positions of command, so that the state,
the army, the police, the legislature, etc., func-
tion to preserve that position. Opportunities for
education, training, and other means to rise in
station are in the main denied to wage-earners.
One class is kept up by keeping the other down.
As the gulf widens, the inevitable class struggle
flares out in recurrent labor strikes, and finally
in revolution.

The second charge against capitalism, anarchy
of production, is the logical result of laissez-faire
economics. Productive units operate independ-
ently, with little or no central control, and no
guidance but the desire for profits. Lack of
planned control fosters destructive parallelism,
hence market competition, crises of overproduc-
tion, economic imperialism, and wars.

So much for the indictment of capitalism.
Now for the Communist remedies.

To correct the evil of classes they propose a
classless society, in which, there are to be no
private accumulations, but which permits the
economic surpluses to be applied to increase the
real rewards to labor, shorten the working day,

71

PAN-SOVIETISM

and raise the cultural level of the common
man.

To correct the evil of anarchy of production
they propose an organized society free from
competition, free from crises and wars, based on
a socialized economy of unified plan and control
which coordinates all branches of production and
distribution in a general scheme of industrializa-
tion.

We must reason through this revolutionary
philosophy of the Communists. They claim to be
working for the prosperity of society as a whole.
And they claim many advantages for their
proposed methods of attaining and maintaining
prosperity. The first is that the human energy
now absorbed by the class conflict, the strikes,
revolts, police activities, law courts, etc., will be
liberated for production. The second is that the
wastes of competition, crises, and wars will be
avoided. And the third, that a general plan of
economy will eliminate waste in production, and
permit superscale production, which is more eco-
nomical, and permit technical advance at a rate
impossible under the planless capitalistic system.

This never-never land of Communism is pre-
dicated on an economy of abundance, with an
uninterrupted flow of goods through the chan-
nels of planned production, and with the motto:

72

POLITICAL CONTROL

'From each according to his ability, to each ac-
cording to his need/ Labor is to cease being the
means to support life, and become the first neces-
sity of life. The opposition between mental and
manual labor is to disappear. It is supposed that
parasitism will disappear, and that crime will
cease. Man will be required to spend less time on
material provision for himself, and more on his
mental development, so that human culture will
rise to unprecedented heights as collective man
moves farther and farther away from his brutal
past under capitalism.

Of course, men have talked of Communism for
thousands of years. Plato is blamed for starting
the mode. But even before him were the prophets
of Israel. Just when such a society can be achieved
not even Lenin presumed to know. Poor old
humanity will probably never get there. The
way thither is said to be through socialism. But
the necessary overflowing abundance will not ar-
rive with socialism. So socialistic economy must
be founded not on abundance, but on scarcity.
Socialism will habituate the people to social
ownership, and to plan discipline that is, sub-
mission to the general plan of collectivism.

Now, socialism, though not so distant, cannot
be attained overnight. There must ensue the
years of socialistic transformation, during which

73

PAN-SOVIETISM

capitalism is rooted out, class lines obliterated,
economic life socialized, and socialistic institu-
tions created and developed under the dictator-
ship of the proletariat. This is the reality to-
day, the so-called transition period during which
Russia is in the process of becoming socialistic.

THE SOVIET STATE

Having the purpose clearly in our minds we
now turn to the apparatus devised to effect this
transition, so we will know something about the
socialistic institutions with which we have to
deal. This involves a political and economic
control which has no parallel in history.

What is the workers' state? In line with pure
Marxian doctrine of class antagonism, the state
is considered the organ of oppression of one class
by another. Officials rule society in the interests
of the politically dominant class. When classes
are abolished, the state becomes superfluous and
has no function. In the words of Engels the state
must ' wither away* and be stored in the museum
with the spinning wheel and bronze axe. We can-
not get a clear picture of that far-off administra-
tion of Communist society. According to Bukha-
rin, it will consist mostly of bookkeepers and
statisticians. But during the transition period
the proletariat must use the state as a technical

74

POLITICAL CONTROL

instrument to attain the revolutionary ends in
view.

In practice, this dictatorship of the proletariat,
far from being transitional, seems to be crystal-
Iking the workers* state. Lenin defined the
dictatorship of the proletariat as c unlimited, not
limited by any law, by any absolute rule a
power which rests directly on violence/ Again,
he writes, * the economic interest of the dominant
class is the active force and fundamental law of
the state/ Hence arises an enormous contradic-
tion between the ideology which proclaims the
disappearance of the state and the practice of
ruling power, between the idea of government
by the producers and political domination over
economic life. The largest economic enterprise
known to history is also a political institution, a
state in business, which is the main cause for
conflict in its international relations.

Now, the first characteristic to notice about
this proletarian state is the non-separation of
executive and legislative powers. Separation of
executive and legislative powers might jeopardize
the dictatorship of the proletariat.

A second characteristic is negation of individual
rights. Political rights are denied to a whole
class, and special rights granted to another whole
class. Article 23, Constitution of RSFSB, pro-

75

PAN-SOVIETISM

vides: c Guided by the interests of the working
class as a whole, the RSFSR deprives individuals
or separate groups of any privileges which they
may use to the detriment of the socialist revolu-
tion/ An individual may be deprived of civil
rights simply because of his class origin, or of his
activities before the revolution. The constitution
thus makes the proletarian class and the state
identical, with unlimited power. It is not con-
cerned with the rights of citizens, but with the
rights of a class, which is the state.

Under this class-limited oligarchy only produc-
ers may be Soviet citizens. These are divided
into four economic categories: the proletariat, or
manual laborers and poor peasants; middle-class
peasants; toiling intelligentsia, employees; and
lastly the capitalistic elements, private traders
and kulaks. They are divided into two political
groups: first, members of the Communist Party
and Communist Youth, roughly 3 per cent of the
population; and second, non-members, 97 per
cent*

The right to vote and to be elected to the
Soviets is granted to all citizens who gain their
livelihood by productive work useful to society,
and to members of the defense forces. Those ex-
cluded from electoral rights are persons employ-
ing labor for profit, those living on income not

76

POLITICAL CONTROL

derived from their own labor, private traders,
clergymen of all denominations, former police,
the insane and imbecile, and persons convicted
of infamous or mercenary crime. This makes a
large class of non-citizens.

Tsarist Russia was a unitary state with unitary
legislative powers, granting no autonomy to the
numerous nationalities of the empire. By con-
trast, the Soviet Union is a federation of seven
soviet socialist republics, differing greatly in size
and economic resource, RSFSR (Russia proper
and Siberia), the Ukraine, White Russia, Trans-
Caucasus, Uzbekestan, Turkmenistan, and Tadz-
hikistan. In the absence of express provision
these federated republics are legislatively autono-
mous. In general, the principles of private law
are laid down by the federal government; civil
matters are left to the republics* But legislation
for the whole Union is uniform because of the
centrally controlled Communist Party. Accord-
ing to the constitution, any republic has the right
of free withdrawal from the Union. This is con-
sidered one of the jokers. In tsarist days cohesion
was attained by common allegiance to the crown,
and by the church; it is now attained by the
Communist Party, and by the fact that the
skilled workers and so-called vanguard of the
proletariat in the various regions of the nation-

77

PAN-SOVIETISM

alities are predominantly Great Russians who
migrated from the center.

A cardinal policy of the Soviets is cultural
autonomy within federation. This is of tremen-
dous importance when we consider Soviet ex-
pansion to the East, and the general means by
which Moscow expects to effect an economic
federation of the world simply by admitting new
members to the Union. The four largest republics
are organized internally on the federal principle
so as to give the separate nationalities oppor-
tunity for independent cultural development.
Within the RSFSR there are eleven autonomous
republics, such as the Bashkir Republic, the
Buriat-Mongol, the Dagestan, the Crimean, the
Tartar Republics, etc. And there are thirteen
autonomous regions. Within these areas there is
now going on an administrative reorganization
to reduce the burdens of the central government,
and to make the divisions correspond to economic
and nationalistic lines. The whole map is being
changed, the gubernia or provincial lines abol-
ished, and new regions, or oblasts, estab-
lished.

GOVERNMENT SET-UP

The government of Soviet Russia is something
new to political science. It is in the form of a

78

POLITICAL CONTROL

pyramid which rests on town and village Soviets,
and is stepped up through successively higher
bodies, the rayon, the oblast, the republic Soviets,
to the All-Union Congress of Soviets in which
supreme power is theoretically vested. This
Congress meets for two weeks every two years, if
not postponed. Representation is occupational
and regional. Delegates to higher bodies are
subject to immediate recall. And elections, con-
ducted only after publishing a list of those barred
from voting, are on a strict class basis. The
method of voting is by showing of hands. Secret
balloting and dictatorship are not on speaking
terms with each other. There is one deputy for
every 25,000 electors in the cities, and one for
every 125,000 of the rural population, which
gives the towns roughly five times more repre-
sentative power than the villages.

The All-Union Congress elects a Central Ex-
ecutive Committee, the Tsik, made up of a Union
Council of 451 members, representative of the
whole population as is our House of Representa-
tives, and a Council of Nationalities of 131 mem-
bers, representing the nationalities as our Senate
does the constituent states of America. This
Central Executive Committee meets four times
a year, has full executive and legislative power
and control of the budget. In between its ses-

79

PAN-SOVIETISM

sions the Central Executive Committee entrusts
control to its presidium of 27 members.

The administrative organ of the Central Ex-
ecutive Committee, likewise endowed with ex-
ecutive and legislative power, is the Council of
People Commissars, the cabinet of state which
is the nominal ruler of the Soviet Union. The
commissariats correspond roughly to our depart-
ments in Washington.

The All-Union government machine is, in
general outline, duplicated in the federated re-
publics. Some commissariats are exclusively All-
Union, Foreign Affairs, War and Navy, Trans-
port, Post and Telegraph. Some exist both at the
center and in the republics, the Supreme Eco-
nomic Councils, Domestic Trade, Finance, Labor,
Workers-Peasants Inspection. And some are
peculiar to the republics, Justice, the Interior,
Education, Health, etc.

This pyramidal form of government of federa-
tions within federation, something quite distinct
from the parliamentary form, is devised to con-
centrate control in the hands of the proletariat
class and the Communist Party.

COMMTJNIST PARTY SET-UP

The revolution of October, 1917, was carried
through by the left wing of the Russian Work-

80

POLITICAL CONTROL

men's Social Democratic Party, the Bolsheviks,
with, the assistance of the left wing Social Revolu-
tionaries, the Peasants' Party. During the early
months other parties were permitted.

In 1918, the Bolsheviks dropped the name of
Social Democrats and became the Russian Com-
munist Party. Other socialist groups were ex-
cluded from the government. The Communist
Party assumed a 'monopoly of legality/ 1 No
other party is allowed to exist.

The party organization is based on town, fac-
tory, or village units called cells. A cell must
have at least three members, and be organized
with a bureau and a secretary. From the cells
the party organization steps up also in pyramidal
form through successive higher committees, on
the principle of election from below with approval
or outright designation from above, on up to the
All-TJnion Party Congress, the supreme organ.

This Party Congress is supposed to be con-
voked every year, but that seems to be only a
theory. In the interval between congresses the
entire work is carried on by a Central Committee
of 71 members (not to be confused with the
Central Executive Committee of the govern-

1 The most authoritative treatment of this subject in English
is to be found in Civic Training in Soviet Eu8sia> by Professor
Samuel N. Harper, University of Chicago.

81

PAN-SOVIETISM

ment). Once in the interval between congresses
there is held an All-Union Party Conference of
representatives of local party units.

The Central Committee convenes once every
two months. In the interval authority is vested
in the Politbureau for political work, an Org-
bureau for organization, and a secretariat. The
Politbureau, now consisting of twelve men, is the
ruling power of Russia. The Party Congress also
elects a Central Control Commission. This last
is the party cleanser which carries out the periodic
chisika, or expulsion of members who oppose the
party line or whose ardors have cooled. From
January 1, 1928, to April 1, 1930, some 170,000
were expelled. The general effort has been to
weed out the intelligentsia and increase the per-
centage of workers. Of the million and a half
party members in 1930, 68.2 per cent were
workers, 18.8 per cent peasants, and 12.2 per
cent employees.

There are a few features of the Communist
Party which we should note. First there is the
absolute unity. Factionalism is strictly forbidden.
Such a faction was the Left Opposition, Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Radek, Rakovsky, who had a big
following. One hundred were expelled in De-
cember, 1927, and many more later. This Left
Opposition favored faster industrialization, mak-

82

POLITICAL CONTROL

ing agriculture bear even more of tlie load, and
sacrificing even more immediate welfare for long-
haul projects. Most of all they favored working
for world revolution before establishing social-
ism in Russia. Stalin defeated them, and then
adopted much of their program.

In 1928 there developed a strong Right Op-
position, headed by Rykov, Bukharin, and
Tomsky, who wished to slacken the tempo, give
more attention to welfare and consumers' goods,
and to lessen the load on the peasants. All three
leaders have been since chastised and deprived of
office.

The point about factionalism is that there is
complete freedom for discussion of all contro-
versial questions within the party until a decision
is reached. After the vote is taken, a party mem-
ber opposes the decision of the majority at the
risk of expulsion. If the opposer is high in party
councils, he is hurled from the heights like
Lucifer.

Then there is the so-called democratic central-
ism that is, the subordination of each unit to
the next higher unit in the hierarchy. Control is
thus made constant.

But what most astonishes foreigners is the iron
discipline. A party member must accept assign-
ment, no matter where it takes him in Russia or

83

PAN-SOVIETISM

abroad, and carry out his mission with fire and
zeal. This discipline is enforced by penalties
from censure up to expulsion and the loss of
government post, which is equivalent now to
forced hunger. Among the grounds for discipline
are habitual drunkenness, abuse of the laws on
marriage and divorce, even bullying or domineer-
ing methods* When Communists are found
guilty of corruption, they are punished much
more severely than others, which is consistent
with the Soviet idea of justice that there must be
a gradation of severity for the same crime com-
mensurate with the culprit's conscious responsi-
bility.

A Communist is forbidden to hire labor for
profit or to engage in trade. He is forbidden to
associate too closely with the bourgeoisie, hence
with foreigners. It is as difficult to see a high
Communist as it was the tsar. He must not
marry a person from another class. He must
dress like the proletariat, and live like the pro-
letariat, so there will not grow up a class of Com-
munist nobility. In general he must live an
orderly life, avoiding excess, and devoting his
entire energy to the revolution,

On the positive side he must give a minimum
of public service and promote civic virtue. A
Communist must be an atheist, but not neces-

84

POLITICAL CONTROL

sarily a militant atheist. He must pay party
dues, ranging from one half of one per cent to
three per cent of his monthly wages, and loses
membership if he lets three months go by without
paying. If a Communist's government post pays
more than 225 rubles a month in the cities, he
must turn the surplus over to the party treasury.
A writer gives a certain percentage of his surplus
earnings.

THE COMMUNIST YOUTH

This party perpetuates itself by cooption and
keeps the candidates on probation for six months
to two years, according to their social origin. The
old guard of Communists are what they are be-
cause of fanatic devotion to principle. Many of
them are sick men, who rotted in Siberian prisons,
or lived in squalor in foreign exile, the slums of
European cities.

Now, it is one thing to be fanatic in hatred of
capitalism, backed up by a life of suffering. It is
quite another to hate capitalism as a result of
civic training. Therefore, the Communist Youth,
known as Komsomols, are very interesting to us.
We do not know which way these Komsomols
will go when they become the majority, when the
old Bolsheviks have passed on, or have been
shorn of their power. In one way, Stalin's

85

PAN-SOVIETISM

triumph over the two oppositions, both com-
posed of old Bolsheviks, is explained by his
alliance with the Communist Youth. At present
the young Communists are politically farther left
than their elders. Whether this is due to convic-
tion, or mostly to youthful adventure, one can-
not tell. But they are the people to watch.

This young guard has close to three million
members, and some 70,000 cells. Its discipline is
^almost as strict as that of the party, with even
greater emphasis on study and political training.
The Komsomols have civic duties too numerous
to mention. They form the shock brigades in
putting through particular policies of the party.
If the transport is tied up, the Komsomols turn
out in big numbers to unload the cars. They
clean up the cities. In 1927 the government was
unable to handle the bezprisornik, or homeless
children, who swarmed the streets stealing every-
thing movable. The Komsomols were ordered
out, and within three days there was not a waif
to be seen. When the foreign visitors caipe for
the tenth anniversary of the revolution, the
bezprisorniks were tucked away in monasteries
and correction homes.

At present, one fourth of the party members
are former Komsomols. In recent years one third
of the admissions to the party have been from the

86

POLITICAL CONTROL

young guard. Through Stalin they are reaching
up for control. When they gain that control,
Russia will be ruled by people who have never
known the tsarist regime, and who will have little
or no first-hand knowledge of capitalism in its
actual form.

The age-limit for Komsomols is fourteen to
twenty-three. The next younger group are the
Pioneers, from ten to sixteen, about two million
of them organized into brigades, also pursuing
civic virtue. Even the infants up to ten are
organized, and called the Little Octobrists. Each
organization has its rules, all proceeding from the
general principles of Communist training. The
party trains the Komsomols, they the Pioneers,
and the Pioneers train the little tots.

The general result is a growing mass of youth,
trained in politics, economics and social welfare,
and trained to be useful to society and the inter-
ests of the proletarian class. The younger groups
also make a virtue of good manners.

It was Lenin who said: * Give me four years to
teach the children, and the seed I have sown shall
never be uprooted/ These leaders of tomorrow
in Russia are the product of Communist civic
training. They represent power, disciplined
power, obedient to the central will. No one can
see the Komsomols in action, on parade, in their

87

PAN-SOVIETISM

athletics, in preserving order, in stamping out
hooliganism, without being impressed by their
militant determination. They are being trained
to conquer and to strike by collective action.
What it bodes we do not know. But any one who
denies its significance is hiding his head in the
sand.

INTEEEELATION OF PAETT AND GOVEENMENT

The easiest way to get the picture of the in-
terrelation between the Communist Party and
the Soviet government is by imagining the
pyramid of control. The body of the pyramid is
society in general. The stages are the steps of the
government, from the lowest Soviets at the bot-
tom to the All-Union Congress of Soviets at the
top. Then imagine the surface of these steps
laced by iron ribs, holding the steps and the
pyramid itself in shape. Those ribs, which are
all-inclusive, represent the Communist Party.

The resolutions adopted by the party are not
laws. But party discipline demands that all
members abide by them. As all the Peoples
Commissars are at the same time members of the
Central Committee of the party, the decisions of
the latter are readily transmuted into govern-
mental decrees. No orders, party to government,
axe needed. The party will is expressed in the

88

POLITICAL CONTROL

form of directives, which lay down the general
principles to be followed in enacting particular
legislation, or in effecting policies. Other mem-
bers of the Central Committee hold key posts in
the government organization. At times a party
decision starts the machinery of application with-
out waiting for the technical legalization by
governmental decree*

In general, policy originates in the Politbureau,
and is made concrete in the Central Committee.
The Politbureau is the real source of legislation,
and has the power to annul the decisions of the
constitutional or Soviet organs of authority.

This interrelation at the top exists also at
every step in the pyramid, from the local soviet
up. In every important governmental body there
is what is called the party * fraction 5 that is,
the employees, or elected members, who are like-
wise party members. When the Ail-Union Con-
gress of Soviets meets at four in the afternoon,
the 'fraction 5 will have met at eleven in the
morning. The 'fraction' takes its orders from
the party, and is thus the instrument of control.
The * fraction* is all-powerful within any insti-
tution, and its unfavorable report on the manage-
ment is the signal for a chistka, or cleansing, in
the name of the proletariat.

Actual sovereignty in Soviet Russia is not
89

PAN-SOVIETISM

vested in the people, nor in the government, but
in the party, the Central Committee and the
Politbureau. There was a time when the secret
police, the old Cheka, could flout high party
commands. At present the will of the Polit-
bureau is supreme; it is the will of the Kremlin,

THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL,

The socialists, in accepting the Marxian theory
of continuous class struggle, tend to make class
solidarity transcend national ties. They believe
that a worker, whether he be French, German,
Russian, or Chinese, owes loyalty to the working
class of the world, rather than to any national
government. Workers of the world are expected
to help each other bring about the desired social
changes. International socialism thus cuts di-
rectly across the stream of nationalism. Nation-
alism chops up the world into vertical chunks.
International socialism would chop it up into
horizontal layers, really only two layers, the cap-
italists and the workers. According to Marx,
the proletariat knows no fatherland.

The First International had a short existence,
passing its declining days in the United States of
America, 1872-76. The Second International
became ineffective when the socialists of various
countries turned nationalistic with the outbreak

90

POLITICAL CONTROL

of the World War. The Third, the revolution-
ary, or Communist International, known as the
Comintern, was organized in Moscow in 1919, and
has been the nightmare of statesmen ever since.
It likewise has a youth movement; the Com-
munist Youth International, which is very active.
The object of the Comintern is world revolu-
tion, the 6 creation of a world federation of soviet
republics/ It is a fighting missionary organiza-
tion, with strong centralized control. Of course,
the Soviet government repudiates the Comintern,
and refuses to accept responsibility for its acts.
The answer to that is they are both creations of
the same mind, the Russian Communist Party.
They drink at the same spring. The Russians
are numerically in the minority in the Comintern
congresses and in its Executive Committee. But
of the Communists of the world three fourths are
in Russia; they pay three fourths of the dues. By
the statutes of the Comintern the voting power
of the delegates is in proportion to the numerical
strength of the parties they represent. So Rus-
sians control the Comintern. The dual or triple
personality of high Communists is interesting.
Stalin, for instance, steps out of one office where
he is secretary-general of the Russian Communist
Party, into another where he is a member of the
Executive Committee of the Comintern, and

91

PAN-SOVIETISM

from there into still a third, where he is a mem-
ber of the Council of Labor and Defense of the
Soviet government. It is true, these offices have
nothing to do with each other, but it is also pos-
sible that Stalin in one office might be acquainted
with Stalin in another office, and even with Stalin
in a third office, or Stalin on the street.

SPIRIT OF SOVIET LAW

As an expression of the political control we
should feel the spirit of Soviet law. 1 Now, of
course, when socialism is achieved, classes are
abolished, and every one is socially educated, the
state will wither away and there will be no need
for law. But during the transitional dictatorship
there must be laws, laws which solidify that
dictatorship.

The general legal purpose in Soviet Russia has
been to transmute the economic interpretation
of history into jurisprudence. To that end the
constitution vests authority in the entire working
class, thus a doctrine of class rights, not individ-
ual rights. The person is the whole class, in the
collective sense. Lenin put it more bluntly: 'The
Soviet state is nothing but a tool of the proletariat

1 Taracous-Turacorizio, in charge of the Russian collection of
the Harvard Law School, is preparing an interpretive study of
Soviet law which should reveal much about the whole system.

92

POLITICAL CONTROL

in its class struggle. A special oak cudgel, no-
thing more/

The obvious effect of this credo is that the
state transcends the law. The state is the instru-
ment with which to attain the revolutionary end
in view. That is why it is so difficult to come to
grips with Russia legally. There is something
beyond the law which legalizes the social moral-
ity of dictatorship, and legalizes injustice, some-
thing called revolutionary legality.

During Military Communism, when there was
a legal vacuum, there was not much need for
law. The basis of court decision was the revolu-
tionary conscience of the judge* But with the
country economically exhausted and devastated
by civil war, the state had to call in individual
initiative again in order to restore economic life.
This led to the celebrated New Economic Policy
of 1921, and marked the advent of the various
law codes, the Civil Code, the Land Code, the
Labor Code, the Marriage and Family Code, the
Criminal Code, etc. In all of these the Com-
munists have enshrined the economic interpreta-
tion of history. In all of them they have erected
elaborate safeguards against the exploitation of
man by man. But, as in the constitution, there
is no safeguard against exploitation of man by
the state.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

In order to restore economic relations as be-
tween individuals, the state had to give some
kind of guarantee to property. By the decree of
May 22, 1923, which has been called the magna
carta of civil liberties, the state bestowed on
citizens rights to hold property and to make con-
tracts. This is quite different from law systems
which we know. It implies that private legal
capacity is not inherent in the individual, but
merely enjoyed by him as a boon from the state.
The individual has one function in a collective
society, and that function is service to the class,
or state.

This Civil Code, compiled in six weeks, and
promulgated January 1, 1923, is an extremely
interesting charter showing the relations between
the workers' state and its citizens. Article I
of the fundamental rules reads: * Civil rights
enjoy the protection of laws except in those
cases in which they are sought to be real-
ized in opposition to their social-economic de-
signation/ This clause is strengthened by Ar-
ticle IV: *... civil capacity is bestowed for the
development of the productive forces of the
country. 5

This provision is legalization of revolutionary
exigency. He who does not work shall not eat. If
a person does not work, he cannot be a citizen;

POLITICAL CONTROL

hence the disenfranchisement of priests, private
traders, etc. Under this law almost anybody
might be accused of counter-revolution in that he
might seek to realize his civil rights in opposition
to their social-economic designation, which is to
develop production. So the interests of an in*
dividual are valid only when they do not con-
tradict the state's economic and social interests.
The Russians have a word for it, Sovietsjcaya
Vlast, Soviet Power. Sovietskaya Vlast is in the
hotel, the restaurant, the tram, the theater, the
railroad, the factory. Everywhere one goes, there
is the state and its rights which must not be
transgressed.

A feature of Soviet jurisprudence which is very
troublesome to foreigners is the juridical person.
Soviet economy is collectivistic. Articles 13 and
14 of the Civil Code define juridical persons as
associations of persons or institutions, which
may acquire property, incur obligations, sue or
be sued. But more and more these juridical per-
sons represent the state, and often partake of
state sovereignty, an industrial trust, for in-
stance.

Property has an interesting status. The Civil
Code, in Article 58, does not define title, but
establishes what is called the * doctrine of eco-
nomic use 5 ; in other words, usufruct. Property

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PAN-SOVIETISM

in land, for instance, is not granted as a right; it
is leased in usufruct, which lease the state may
withdraw.

During the early years, the basis of court
decision in criminal law was the revolutionary
conscience of the judge. In laying down the
principles for the enactment of criminal legisla-
tion by the republics, the central government
issued Instructions. These are characterized by
the following:

1. Punishment is not a revenge, but social
protection.

2. Punishment must be corrective, medical,
and pedagogical.

3. Inequality in application of the Criminal
Code.

By Article 31 of the Instructions the court, at
its discretion, may impose the highest measure of
social protection if the crime has been committed
by a person of the exploiting class. By Article
32, allowance should be made when the accused
belongs to the proletariat.

The purpose is to make punishment fit, not the
crime so much as the sense of responsibility
which the accused should have. The usual cri-
terium is social origin. That is, a person with
a cultural background is more of a culprit, for the
same crime, than an illiterate workman. The

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POLITICAL CONTROL

Soviet courts view criminals of the lower classes
as victims of the past.

Now, what is crime? Article 6 declares:
* ... every act or lack of action which threatens
the safety of the soviet order and regime is a
criminal offense/ This is a sweeping designation
of crime, because it is left to the public authorities
to decide what is threatening to the safety of the
soviet order. This would apply, for instance, to
a manager of a factory who neglects his job*
With us that would be inefficiency. Under the
Soviet system neglect becomes a crime, because
it prevents attainment of the revolutionary end
in view.

Article 10 goes still farther afield in declaring
that when the Criminal Code does not supply the
exact provision to cover a particular type of
crime, the court must impose punishment and
social protection in accordance with the pro-
visions of the Code which are closest to the crime
from the point of view of its importance. The
Soviet Criminal Code thus seems to dispose of
the principle, nullen crimen sine lege, in the
absence of law there is no crime, which is the
very touchstone of our civil liberties. The
touchstone in Soviet Russia is revolutionary
legality of the class struggle.

As for penalties, first degree murder is punished
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PAN-SOVIETISM

by ten years' restriction of liberty. There is no
capital punishment for criminal offenses against
the safety of individuals. If a peasant kills his
wife, he is withdrawn from circulation and edu-
cated. If he behaves, he is allowed to go home
for three months a year to take in the harvest.
There is no intervening penalty between ten
years' restriction of liberty, and the highest social
protection, which is death. However, about forty
articles list the offenses endangering the class,
hence the state, with one penalty, death. This
turns our conceptions upside down. For mur-
der, the penalty up to ten years; for theft
or serious mistakes in the state's business,
death. But we must remember that tiie Soviet
state is extremely vulnerable because of its
economic character, and also that in establish-
ing class justice the Communists claim they are
merely reversing the tenets of bourgeois jus-
tice.

In this system the courts, the peoples' courts,
district courts, and the supreme court, are all
organs of state authority. There is no jury; just
a judge and two assistants. All three issue the
decree of judgment. The judge is not only an
administrator of justice; he is a politician de-
fending the class interest, who may disregard
even the laws when they conflict with his revolu-

POLITICAL CONTROL

tionary honor. This has been called socialization
of the law.

From the American point of view the Soviet
system is based on legalized injustice. But we
must keep our perspective. We see injustice of
the present against the background of injustice
in the past. Old Russian society had a thin
veneer on the top. New Russian society has that
thin veneer on the bottom. The old bottom has
become the new top, but the great bulky body
of Russia remains as it was and probably shall be.

The purpose of the huge political apparatus
is to focus power. The towns dictate to the rural
districts (industry to agriculture), the proletariat
dictates to the towns, tihie Communist Party
dictates to the proletariat, and the Central Com-
mittee and Politbureau dictate to the party as a
whole, to the government, and to the country at
large, making a pyramid of political control un-
paralleled in all history. Strict political control
is considered necessary to solve the old popula-
tion-production problem by industrialization.
It is dedicated to the destruction of capitalism
within Soviet Russia, the abolition of classes, and
the replacement of the so-called anarchy of capi-
talistic production by a socialized economy of
unified plan and control.

These principles have guided the Communist
99

PAN-SOVIETISM

rulers in the creation and development of their
system. Some of these principles are operative at
present. Others are delayed in application by the
unreadiness of the land and people. Theories are
adjusted to hard practice by adaptations and
expedients. But the principles remain orthodox.
The expedients change; immediate objectives
change. Tactics change. And the Soviet govern-
ment has bowed now to economic pressure, now
to ideological pressure. But the Communist
Party never loses sight of its ultimate objective.
The government goes zigzag; the party clings to
the so-called ' Lenin line/ deviating now and
then, only to come back to the main track when
circumstances permit. This constancy of first
principles must be kept in mind when considering
the bewildering change in revolutionary expe-
dients since 1928.

CHAPTER VI

Socialization and Unity

FOB reasons given in the preceding chapters the
Soviet economic system has evolved under the
compulsion of the two conflicting forces the
economic pressure of Russia's millions for ordi-
nary necessities of life and employment, and the
ideological pressure inherent in the efforts of the
rulers to attain socialism. To these must be
added the pressure of the outside, capitalistic
world. This situation has given rise to an eco-
nomic statecraft which, rightly understood, is
the key to the government's zigzag policies.

Because of these pressures the Soviet system
has developed with a certain amount of private
capitalism always operating. Consequently the
economic life of the country has flowed in two
main streams:

A. The socialized sector all economic enter-
prises operated by the state and cooperatives, in
which direct control, initiative, and profits are
reserved to governmental agencies.

B. The non-socialized, or private, sector the
individual operators in agriculture, industry, and
trade, in which governmental control is indirect,

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PAN-SOVIETISM

and the initiative and profits belong to the in-
dividuals themselves.

Between the two is an intermediate field desig-
nated as state capitalism the foreign conces-
sions and mixed companies, in which there is a
temporary partnership arrangement between the
government and private operators.

This division has maintained to the present.
The struggle between individualism and col-
lectivism, which now confronts the world in
general, has been constant in Russia since 1917.
This struggle makes the drama of the revolution.
For thirteen years that socialization process has
been pounding constantly on the shell of in-
dividual initiative. It is a story of building power,
of obtaining control through possession of the
means of production, of achieving unity through
coordination of the economic forces, and finally
of subjecting the unified whole to a general plan
and financial control, all presumably dedicated
to lifting the prosperity of society as a whole by
modernization and industrialization. This drama
we may divide into three acts.

MILITARY COMMUNISM

The first act was Military Communism, 1917-
21. The Communist economic program, in gen-
eral, is an attempt to omit the stage of mergers,

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

consolidations, and private monopolies, now
characteristic of capitalistic development. The
Communists want to jump immediately to gov-
ernment monopoly of production and distribu-
tion toward which they believe the entire world
is drifting.

Under Military Communism they attempted
to apply their principles in full force. Ideology
was uppermost. But the country was economi-
cally and politically in chaos. Socialism could not
be grafted on to bankruptcy. The civil war con-
tinued, and brought economic life to a standstill.
Nevertheless, the Communists proclaimed state
monopolies on the so-called ' commanding
heights ' (big industry, transport, credit, foreign
trade, insurance, and large agricultural estates).
Traditional private property and personal rights
were virtually destroyed. Individualism was
smothered.

That was the time of the cordon sanitaire, when
the Bolsheviks were to be allowed to stew in
their own juice. Russia was an outlaw.

In agriculture, the peasants during 1917, be-
fore the Bolsheviks even assumed power, had
seized forty million hectares of land belonging to
the landlords and fifty million more belonging to
individual prosperous peasants who had thrived
under the Stolypin reform. The land hunger of

103

PAN-SOVIETISM

the centuries was temporarily appeased in a riot
of equalization. The old obshchina, mir, came
back in full force,

As early as April, 1917, the Bolsheviks declared
for nationalization of the land. On their second
day of power the Congress of Soviets proposed
that private ownership in land be * abolished for-
ever, without compensation/ The use of the
land was granted to those who tilled it with their
own labor. Each locality was left to decide for
itself the form of land utilization, but under no
form was hired labor permitted. Sub-lease was
forbidden.

The peasants had seized the land which they
believed always should have belonged to them.
Then the new state stepped in, claiming title.
The Bolshevik idea was that Russia should be-
come a huge controlled grain factory. Thus be-
gan the conflict which is still going on.

With the constant redivision of land on equal-
ity basis, set up as an achievement of the revolu-
tion, the holdings became smaller, production
decreased, and the number of live-stock decreased
through consumption as food. Socialist doctrine
has maintained for years the superiority of the
large, industrialized farm over the small hand-
operated unit. A big effort was made to consoli-
date the small units, with provision for cooper-

104

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

ative management, but the peasants preferred to
sit on their scattered, tiny strips.

Under the stress of civil war, collection and
distribution of agricultural products was de-
clared a state monopoly. The peasants were sup-
posed to receive a credit redeemable in goods in
return for surrendered farm products. All ordi-
nary trade processes ceased. The peasant reac-
tion was to limit production to that required for
family needs. Confiscation and requisition be-
came the order of the day. Red soldiers replaced
the old Cossacks in assaulting the villages. The
result was that agricultural production dropped
to less than half of the pre-war level, and the
towns were threatened with starvation.

Now glance at industry. The Communists
found industry on a war basis, many factories
being devoted to the manufacture of military
supplies. They were confronted with the problem
of replacement of worn-out machinery, for which
funds were lacking. In order not to arrest pro-
duction, they proceeded slowly in nationalization
measures. At first the factory-owners were left
in nominal possession. Successive efforts at con-
trolling the owners, by workers' committees, by
trade unions, by collegiums, resulted in virtual
cessation of all production. To restart the ma-
chinery, heavy industries and mines were national-

105

PAN-SOVIBTISM

ized in June, 1918, and the remaining industries
whose workers exceeded ten in November, 1920.
The Communist plan for industry was for such
a degree of coordination and centralization as
would lead to a "single state factory/ With this
objective in view there was promptly created a
Supreme Economic Council, of which the various
departments, the glavki 9 were plenary organs of
the government. The continuance of war and
military absolutism and the breakdown of the
financial structure necessitated a control system
of supply and distribution. In 1918, a Commis-
sariat of Supply was created, which is interesting,
for in 1930 it has been reestablished after being
defunct for a decade. Exchange and transport of
goods were effected by documentary transfer
through, the treasury. By March, 1919, industrial
enterprises operated by the state were conducted
entirely on a non-commercial basis, without the
use of money. Workers received wages in the
form of a payok, or card, entitling them to food
and goods in proportion to the labor credited
them. There was also a general militarization of
labor. And yet foreigners write with amazement
of the trends in Russia today as something un-
heard of, whereas the whole system is just re-
turning to methods attempted in 1918-19. The
Communists cling to their ideology.

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

The net result was that by 1920 private capital
had been abolished, products were no longer
marketable assets, and the legal function of
money disappeared. Industry reached a stage
of * socialized, centralized economy/ But pro-
duction dropped to fifteen per cent of the pre-
war level. .

In transport the problem was different. Three
fourths of the railways were state-owned before
the war. The remainder were taken over by decree
in 1918, as was the trade fleet. The air lines are
owned by the state. Only minor elements of
local traffic remained in private hands. The in-
heritance in railways was a net of 58,549 kilo-
meters, after cutting off the 12,000 kilometers
that went to the new border states. A picture of
the remaining network was like a many-pronged
fork, with no connecting lines, and with useless
junctions. Only 27 per cent was double-tracked.
Most of the equipment was old-fashioned, one
fourth of the locomotives had been in the service
twenty years. During the Civil War the railroads
were the object of fierce contest, with the result
that 3672 bridges and 22,000 kilometers of track
were destroyed, 52 per cent of the locomotives
and 22 per cent of the freight cars were 'sick' (in
need of repair).

There was a credit vacuum during this period.
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PAN-SOVIETISM

Private banks were nationalized in December,
1917. On January 18, 1918, all loans concluded
by former Russian governments were annulled.
During the era of moneyless accounting the
practice of commercial credit disappeared.

Domestic trade was never nationalized in
Russia, nor was it ever expressly forbidden.
What really happened in the early years was that
the state declared a monopoly on all agricultural
supplies, nationalized big industry, and confis-
cated goods in the warehouses* The market was
swept bare. And conscription of labor made it
illegal for any one to be engaged in trade. The
government undertook to feed the whole popu-
lation. Food cards were issued on the class prin-
ciple. The first served were manual workers
and intellectuals doing important service for the
state; second were the employees and laboring
intelligentsia; third were the non-laboring ele-
ments. By the famous labor ration of April,
1920, food was restricted to the laboring masses,
and at that given only on working days.

Foreign trade was declared a state monopoly,
April 22, 1918. But as there was but little trade
then, we will reserve that subject for a moment.

In general, the first act, Military Communism,
was a time of terror for social elements other
than the proletariat. It was a desperate attempt

108

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

to force collectivism. It was a time of religious
persecution, of liquidating capitalism, of destruc-
tion of old institutions, of conquering the country.
But if we want to guess what next in Russia to-
day we must go back to the program, and to the
tactics of Military Communism, of the early
years which are being repeated. The difference
is that the country then was weak; it now is
strong.

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

The second act was the New Economic Policy,
called a retreat to capitalism. It was, in fact, a
compromise between the economic and ideologi-
cal pressures which lasted from 1921 to 1928.
Individual initiative was permitted, within limits,
to aid in the economic restoration. It assumed
that the socialized sector would expand in due
time to such an extent that the private sector
would disappear.

Military Communism was defeated by the
very inertia of the peasants. The first step in the
NEP was that confiscation of grain gave way to
a tax payable in kind, the prodnalog. The peas-
ants were granted the right to dispose of their
surplus over this tax in grain. But they refused
to deliver products against any vague promise
of goods, and demanded money. Therefore,

109

PAN-SOVIETISM

industries could not obtain raw materials, nor
the towns food, without money. The circulat-
ing medium had to be restored, along with the
open market. In 1921 the peasants held the
trumps.

By the Land Code of 1922 the peasants were
assured permanence in landholding, and freedom
to keep the mir system until they chose collectiv-
ism. Renting of land and hiring of labor were
both permitted.

Now, the land was redistributed equally, but
the live-stock and tools were not. Enterprising
peasants, who possessed live-stock and tools,
acquired more economic power than their neigh-
bors as soon as the restrictions were lifted. The
peasants began to divide into four main cate-
gories, according to their economic power. This
is the differentiation in the village which the
Communists have been fighting since 1921. The
latest classification census which we can trust is
that of 1926-27, which shows the following:

1. Landless peasants, having no means of
production, the rural laborers, numbering 5.8
million.

2. Poor peasants, having less than four hectares
(a hectare is two and a half acres), or one horse,
and no cattle, barely sufficient means for sub-
sistence. These numbered 22.4 million,

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

3. Middle peasants, Laving 4 to 15 hectares,
one or two horses, and employing seasonal labor.
These were 76.7 million.

4. Rich peasants, the well-known JculaJcs, hav-
ing more than fifteen hectares, three horses, two
paid workers, a piece of machinery, tools, or an
enterprise* The 4.9 million kulaks, one twenty-
fifth of the total peasant families, occupied one
sixth of the sown area, held two thirds of the
rented land, and employed one half of the hired
rural labor. Kulaks sometimes lent money.
They dealt with private traders, defeating the
government in its price policies. Elsewhere these
kulaks would be moderately successful farmers.
As capitalists under a socialistic regime they
became enemies of the state.

The best agricultural estates, the orchards,
vineyards, sugar-beet farms, cotton plantations,
animal breeding farms, etc., were reserved to the
state for experimental purposes, to serve as
models to teach the peasants scientific farming,
and to train agricultural experts. These state
farms were considered a joke until 1928.

Of the collective farms the simplest form is the
Association for Collective Cultivation, that is
merely for common working of the land. A
second type is the Artel, in which there is sharing
not only in working the land, but in means of

111

PAN-SOVIETISM

production. The most advanced form is the
Agricultural Commune in which there is sharing
in production, distribution, and consumption,
under the supervision of the state. In 1927-28,
the socialized sector had only 3 million hectares
of sown area, the private sector 98 million. The
socialized sector accounted for some 2 per cent
of the total agricultural production, and the 25
million peasant families for 98 per cent. Social-
ization of the land had thus not progressed very
far during the first ten years.

The New Economic Policy ushered in a de-
centralization period in industry. Private citi-
zens were granted the right to engage in small
industrial occupations. And under the conditions
of the keen competition thus introduced in the
open market, the state found its centralized
organization too inflexible. Accordingly the state
enterprises were reorganized in 1923 into trusts,
each having factories and other state property.
In that first decree the definition of a trust was:
*a state enterprise to which the state grants in-
dependence in conduct of operations, and which
functions on the basis of commercial account
with a view to making profits/

Confusion as to the status of the trusts led to a
redefinition in 1927, in which they are described
as: "state enterprises operating on the basis of

112

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

commercial account in accordance with planned
tasks sanctioned by the state/

The 1923 decree gave liberty to the trusts.
Their function was to make profits* The 1927
decree curtailed this autonomy. The emphasis
was no longer on profits, but on adherence to the
plan given them by the central organs.

When these trusts were formed, they were
given fixed capital, plant, and raw materials, but
little or no money. There ensued a selling com-
petition in order to get money, not unlike the
Soviet dumping abroad today. To eliminate
further competition among themselves and to
present a united front on the market, trusts in
allied lines began to set up syndicates for trade
operations. Trusts are the producers; syndicates
are the wholesale distributors. This gives the
state absolute control of the wholesale supply,
which it uses for political as well as economic ends.

The trust-syndicate system raises questions
for which there are at present no precise answers.
The state is not responsible for the debts of a
trust, nor a trust for those of the state. Whether
a foreigner could collect from a trust in a Soviet
court is an open question. When asked about it
Soviet officials shrug, and say the state would not
allow such a situation to arise. And there the
matter rests.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

The formula in the organization of state in-
dustry is thus centralized control and regulation
by the Supreme Economic Council, and decen-
tralized administration by trusts, which buy and
sell through syndicates. The interesting result
of such organization is that state industry is the
fulcrum of Communist power, and is considered
not only the means of industrialization, but of
socializing all the rest of economic life in the
Union,

There was also cooperative industry, and
some private industry, or * tolerated capitalism,'
mostly small enterprises and handicrafts. In
1927-28 the socialized sector in industry pro-
duced 88 per cent of the output, and the private
sector 12 per cent.

Drawing the contrast we see that in the base
year of the Five-Year Plan, 1927-28, industry
was mostly socialized, and agriculture almost
exclusively private. This made coordination
difficult. Socialized planning could not develop.

During the NEP, transport was greatly ex-
tended. A general political purpose is to control
the distribution of goods, and at the same time
bring larger areas under the immediate influence
of Moscow, and to educate the peasants in the
ways of socialism by closer contact with Soviet
culture. To settle the historic quarrel between

114

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

town and village, dating from Peter the Great,
Lenin announced the doctrine of the smychka,
or link between industry and agriculture, eco-
nomically and culturally. The highway program
is of particular interest to travelers who have
roamed the steppes* Until the NEP, the only
highways worthy of the name were the Georgian
Military Road, the coastal roads of Crimea, and
sections of the old Siberian trace down which the
politically and socially dead were sent to the dry
guillotine. In summer the roads were a series of
tracks a hundred yards wide; in spring and
autumn they were troughs of mud. With the
automobilization of Russia the country has be-
come * road-conscious/ There is a fever of road-
building. It is too early to make predictions, but
a note of progress is heard in the impatient honk-
ing of the automobile horn in the mud-bound
villages of the Volga*

The restoration of the market and money ex-
change of the NEP likewise led to the founding
of the State Bank in 1921 and the return of com-
mercial credit. By its exclusive monopoly of
credit the state regulates production and market-
ing. For instance, if a trade enterprise does not
conform to prices fixed by the state, its bank
credit may be cut off. Soviet money is an inter-
esting phenomenon. The State Bank in 1922,

115

PAN-SOVIETISM

issued Chervontsi 10-ruble notes which are
covered 25 per cent by precious metals and for-
eign currency, and 75 per cent by short-term bills.
In 1924 the State Bank began to issue so-called
treasury notes, in 1, 3, and 5 ruble denomina-
tions, which pass as legal tender, but are not re-
deemable in Chervontsi. The limit of issue of
these treasury notes was first fixed at 50 per cent
of the Chervontsi banknotes in circulation. In
August, 1928, this limit was raised to 75 per cent.
This last September it was raised again to 100
per cent.

The Soviet ruble is pegged at 1.94 to the dollar.
For every dollar that it puts in its vaults the
State Bank, within the limit of the 25 per cent
cover, may issue 8 Chervontsi rubles. Against
these 8 rubles in bank-note form it can likewise
issue 8 rubles in treasury notes. In this way one
dollar is the cover for 16 rubles, which at the
State Bank rate ought to be worth about $8.
Putting one capitalist dollar in the hole, and
drawing out the par equivalent of $8 in socialist
money is a feat not to be treated lightly these
hard times. There are now over two billion
rubles in bank-notes in circulation, which per-
mits two billion more in treasury notes, a total
of four billion which is an increase of 2J times in
three years. Soviet officials deny that there is

116

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

inflation on the grounds that the increasing com-
mercial turnover within the country demands
more money, and that the treasury notes are
backed by the entire property of the state eco-
nomic system. That, of course, has been tried be-
fore, even in America, but never on such a scale.

Since March, 1928, the export and import of
Soviet currency has been strictly forbidden.
Some rubles do escape with the smugglers, and
can be bought in Berlin and Warsaw for 8 to the
dollar instead of 1.94 as at the State Bank. But
such rubles can be confiscated at the frontier. If
the owner of them is a Russian, he will probably
be sent to the White Sea.

This currency question is troublesome. It has
been a prime cause for the liquidation of con-
cessions. In their dealings abroad the Soviets are
compelled to use foreign currency. To get for-
eign money they are accused of selling goods at a
loss. But, protected by the foreign trade mo-
nopoly, they go on building socialism with
socialized money.

Trade revived with the NEP. Trade relation-
ships were legalized. Of the 584,000 trade enter-
prises which sprang into existence by the end of
1922, 548,000 were private. While such develop-
ment of private^ trading was welcomed at the
time, the idea was never lost sight of that trade

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PAN-SOVIETISM

should become the prerogative of state and co-
operative enterprises. The state trading organs
are the syndicates, to some extent the trusts,
the gostorgs of the various republics, etc. The
cooperative is the central fact of Russia's domes-
tic trade. Lenin considered the cooperative the
chief defense against speculation, as it combines
individual initiative with centralized control.
Russian cooperatives do not pay dividends, but
keep the prices low. Sales are for cash only. The
advantage to members is the preferential right
to receive goods and food. The cooperatives
maintain schools, libraries, publish newspapers
and magazines, and conduct a social work of
great magnitude.

Private trade, to be legal, must be registered
and licensed. The suppression of private trade
has been consistent since 1923. But in 1927-28
it still conducted one fourth of the retail. Of the
total trade that year 90 per cent was socialized
and 10 per cent private. That leaves out of ac-
count the illegal private trade which cannot be
calculated.

In regard to foreign trade it is necessary to note
that very little capital is owned abroad by in-
dividuals within the Soviet Union. That owned
by the Soviet government is employed in trade
operations. Nor has Soviet Russia shipping and

118

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

other facilities of international service which
would produce income abroad. Therefore, in
order to pay for raw materials and equipment,
imported for industrialization purposes, the
Soviet government must export sufficient com-
modities to cover the cost of goods imported.
Lacking foreign credits, the Soviets can make
only such purchases abroad as are covered "by
exports. Other countries might be able to af-
ford an unfavorable trade balance, an excess of
imports over exports in commodity value; Russia
cannot. Britain, for instance, has shipping, and
takes a toll on the traffic in other ways, as the
world's banking center, for instance, and besides
has millions invested abroad in production so
that she operates on an excess of imports. Be-
sides, England is a trans-shipment point. Russia
has exports, and only exports with which to pay,
as her production of gold, about eight tons a year,
must be retained as cover for the currency.

THE FOREIGN TRADE MONOPOLY

The foreign trade monopoly is the corner-
stone of the Soviet edifice. Only the state and
its agencies can import and export. This is the
Chinese wall around the Soviet Union, which is
designed:

1. To permit utilization of foreign trade as an
119

PAN-SOVIETISM

instrument of planned industrialization by sub-
jecting export and import to license. The import
of consumers' goods is strictly limited in favor of
producers* goods, chiefly machinery. Luxuries
are forbidden entirely.

2. To take advantage of the competition be-
tween private trade organizations abroad by
centralized purchasing and selling on a united
front. This is done by Trade Delegations, which
enjoy a measure of diplomatic immunity as
representatives of state sovereignty, in spite of
international law to the contrary.

3. To prevent the flooding of the Russian
market with foreign goods, which, being pro-
duced more cheaply, would arrest the develop-
ment of home industries, the goods famine is so
intense that high tariffs would not effect this end.
Soviets believe that their capitalist enemies
would even sell at a loss in Russia in order to
undermine the system.

4. To prevent the escape abroad of valuables
and products needed at home.

5. To prevent the divergence into private
channels of imports needed in the socialized
sector.

The Commissariat of Foreign Trade maintains
Trade Delegations abroad, which are composed
of two sections: the regulating section and the

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

commercial section. The regulating section en-
joys a certain extent of diplomatic immunity.
The commercial section actually conducts busi-
ness, mostly on commission for socialized in-
stitutions in Moscow. Attached to the Trade
Delegations, and controlled by the regulating
section, are representatives of the various gos-
torgs, syndicates, trusts, and cooperatives. The
Amtorg of New York, which is registered as an
American corporation, is equivalent to the com-
mercial section of a Trade Delegation. Diplo-
matic immunity is not involved.

In foreign trade policy the Soviets recognize
the principles of most-favored-nation treatment,
but with reservations.

1. The policy is to divide countries into three
groups:

(a) Such Eastern countries as are econom-
ically weak.

Here the foreign trade monopoly does not ap-
ply strictly. Exports and imports are not, as a
rule, subject to license, and customs tariffs are
low. This is part of the general policy of develop-
ing social and political ties throughout Asia.

(6) Countries formerly attached to Tsarist
empire. These have certain privileges,
(c) All other countries.

%. A second reservation to the application of
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PAN-SOVIETISM

most-favored-nation treatment is based on the
time of recognition of the Soviet government. It
is always stipulated in a trade agreement that
neither country has the right to demand of the
other privileges granted to countries the govern-
ments of which recognized the Soviet Union, de
jure, before February 15, 1924. The political
significance is apparent. Thus far it has not had
much economic significance. A nice question for
international lawyers is the Soviet contention
that recognition of the government is ipso facto
recognition of the foreign trade monopoly, a
guarantee of special rights to the Trade Delega-
tions, and diplomatic immunity to trade dele-
gates. The state is sovereign, the state does
business, ergo, business agents partake of that
sovereignty...

Before the Genoa Conference, May, 1922,
Western countries were willing to do business
with the Soviets, but not to recognize the foreign
trade monopoly.

The British-Soviet Agreement, 1921, was not
recognition of anything, but it provided for a
limited most-favored-nation treatment. It gave
no special rights to the Russian Trade Delega-
tion.

The German-Soviet Agreement, November 5,
1921, gave the Trade Delegation certain rights

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

as the ( Soviet government trading organization/
which rights were extended by the Treaty of
Rapallo, 1922*

The Italian-Soviet Treaty, February 7, 1924,
carries full recognition of the Soviet Foreign
Trade monopoly, as follows:

'Art. 3. Considering that the monopoly of
foreign trade in USSR is vested in the state, the
Italian government will allow the Trade Delega-
tion of the Union, and its organs, to exercise its
assigned functions on Italian territory. * * *

'The trade representatives and members of
the Council of the Trade Delegation, to a number
to be fixed by the contracting parties, will form
an integral part of the Plenipotentiary Delega-
tion, and will enjoy the rights of personal in-
violability, of extraterritoriality in regard to
their offices, and all such other privileges and
immunities as are accorded to members of dip-
lomatic missions/ This was the high-water mark
for the Soviets in their attempt to establish their
foreign trade monopoly as a legal entity in world
trade*

The German-Soviet Treaty, October 18, 1925,
grants an array of privileges, and recognizes the
principle that the trade delegation is part of the
plenipotentiary delegation. Diplomatic immu-
nity is granted to the chief of the Trade Delega-

PAN-SOVIETISM

tion and his two assistants, and members of the
council of the Trade Delegation domiciled in
Berlin. The offices are assured benefits of extra-
territoriality.

However* economic acts of the Trade Delega-
tion consummated in Germany shall be subject
to German law and jurisdiction. Therefore, the
German courts have jurisdiction over goods
owned by the Soviets, which are not required in
the exercise of sovereign right of diplomatic and
consular agents. This was an effort on the part
of the Germans to draw the distinction between
the Soviet state's property in commerce and its
property necessary for diplomatic functions. It
goes right to the heart of the problem.

The World Economic Conference, Geneva,
May, 1927, witnessed an attempt to revise the
relations of capitalistic countries with Russia.
The slogan of the non-Russian delegates was
'free circulation of goods and capital/ A princi-
ple was set forth that ownership and control of
industry, trade, banking, transport, and other
enterprises must be regarded as a private, not
a sovereign, right of governments. Naturally,
there was no reconciliation effected between the
two systems. The Germans were particularly
dissatisfied because in their trade with Russia a
share in the conduct of that trade is denied to

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SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

Germans even on German territory. They de-
clared that the most-favored-nation treatment
was a farce when German firms are forbidden to
operate in Russia while the Russian government
has the freedom of the German market.

The Soviets obliged by answering that the
most-favored-nation principle means that they
treat all countries alike who enjoy the privileges,
but that it does not imply * material mutuality/
to grant which would necessitate fundamental
changes in the socialistic system. Economists
have been wondering ever since if this lack of
'material mutuality' as between the Soviets and
the rest of the world does not mean permanent
conflict until one or the other system is over-
thrown.

There have been numerous attempts in specific
fields to organize concrete opposition to the
Soviet monopoly, to counter with credit mono-
poly, raw materials monopoly, and in general to
give the Soviets some of their own medicine.
Thus far the inherent rivalries of capitalistic
states have prevented an organized front. The
Soviets count on this rivalry to continue.

This foreign trade monopoly has given the
Soviets an enormous advantage in dealing com-
mercially with other countries. There is only one
buyer and one seller the Soviet government.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

It is the bulwark against capitalism, the wall be-
hind which socialism is being built up. It per-
mits not only strict control of trade, but divorces
Russia from the fluctuations of international
exchange, so that the Soviets can make their
money legally valueless outside of Russia, and
give it value by law within the country. The
foreign trade monopoly is thus the armor plate of
socialism, the highest protection ever devised in
international relations.

FOREIGN CONCESSIONS

Foreign concessions, the so-called state capi-
talism, occupy the middle ground between the
socialized and private sectors. In the Commu-
nist view, unrestrained investment of foreign
capital in Russia would transfer abroad owner-
ship and control, which would be disastrous to
their politico-social system. Because of the low
cultural level of the people and the lack of in-
dustrial training, uncontrolled foreign invest-
ment would make Russia an economic colony of
the West, a process already under way before
the war. The World War went by the name of
the Second Fatherland War in Russia because it
was to break the economic dependence on Eu-
rope, particularly Germany. Foreign-owned in-
dustry would provide employment, but the

126

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

profits would be sucked out of the country, as
they are from India, China, Africa, and other
non-industrialized lands. Marxian doctrine, as
developed in Russia, maintains that there is
exploitation of nation by nation, as well as ex-
ploitation of man by man.

Nevertheless, the Communists wanted capital
to come in, subject to their control. When they
passed the concessions decree in 1920, they pic-
tured greedy capitalists waiting along the frontier
to pounce upon Russia's natural riches and to
exploit her market and people. But somehow
the capitalists were wary. There was no guaran-
tee of property in Russia which a hard-headed
business man would accept. In 1927-28, after
seven years of such policy, the foreign conces-
sions accounted for less than one half of one per
cent of the capital in industry, less than one per
cent of the hired labor, andless than one per cent of
the production. It is now still less. The policy to
attract foreign capital has been one of the great-
est failures of the Soviet regime. The one funda-
mental and all-explanatory reason is that the
environment is hostile to private capital in
Russia no matter who owns it.

But foreign skill is required. Hence the new
form of technical assistance concession. Amer-
ican engineers are in Russia today teaching in-

127

PAN-SOVIETISM

dustrial science. They receive their pay in hard
American dollars. These technical concessions,
be it understood, involve an outgo, not an intake,
of foreign capital.

Now, then, to sum up the NEP, which was
forced by economic pressure from below. It was
assumed that private capitalism could not com-
pete for long against the state, and that the pri-
vate sector in due time would naturally and eas-
ily be swallowed by the socialized sector. And
yet, at the end of the first decade of the revolu-
tion, the private sector accounted for 98 per cent
of the agricultural and 12 per cent of the indus-
trial production, and conducted one fourth of the
retail trade. Because of the goods famine and
existence of non-citizens and others who had to
devise means of getting food other than through
government agencies, there was a great amount
of illegal trade which the state could not control.
The private traders allied with the kulaks to
speculate against the state's fixed prices. This
meant, for one thing, that the state had enor-
mous difficulties in forcing the kulaks and other
peasants who owned the marketable surplus in
agriculture to yield that surplus at prices which
would enable the state to export grain and buy
machinery.

Moreover, agriculture remained backward, the
128

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

land still cut up into strips which prevented sci-
entific farming by machine power. A further
difficulty was that the line which divided the
socialized sector from the private sector in the
country likewise divided industry as a whole
from agriculture as a whole. In its effort to
liquidate the private sector, by taxation, etc., the
state was pumping capital from agriculture into
industry, thus liquidating agriculture along with
the private sector. And, according to its ideology,
it could not put money into private agriculture
which would develop a capitalist class. The
state could not coordinate such forces pulling in
opposite directions. It could not plan so long as
125 million peasants were lined up against its
program.

During all these years the current question in
Moscow was Kto-Kogo? TVho-Whom? Who
beats whom, the socialized or the private sector?
Under the conditions of 1927 the odds seemed in
favor of the private sector.

The Communist rulers were in an impasse.
They either had to retreat again, holding ideology
in abeyance for the sake of immediate economic
advance, or scale the wall and risk everything on
the gamble of speed in socialization. Being
schooled in audacity, they chose to gamble.
Thus the tremendous decision at the Fifteenth

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PAN-SOVIETISM

Party Congress, December, 1927, to launch the
Socialist Offensive. And thus the end of tolerated
individualism in Russia.

THE SOCIALIST OFFENSIVE

Our third act is this Socialist Offensive. As
1928 was a year of crop failure, the offensive in
agriculture was delayed until the bumper harvest
of 1929. Then began the drive. The party sent
out its agents. Between January and March,
1930, the collectivist area jumped 40 million hec-
tares, from 2 per cent to 40 per cent of the total.
Being forced to enter collectives, many of the
peasants killed off their live-stock so as to come
in empty-handed. It is estimated that one half
the pigs and one third of the cattle were slaugh-
tered and eaten. On March 2, Stalin issued his
famous * dizziness from success* proclamation
which called a halt to forced collectivization.
There followed a period of decollectivization, but
the whole set-up is such that peasants find it ad-
visable to enter collectives. The tide is advancing
rapidly again.

The form of collective adopted is the Artel.
The procedure is to gather together the landless,
poor, and middle peasants of a village. The
boundaries between their allotments are elimi-
nated. They are allowed to keep their houses and

130

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

gardens and one cow for individual use. All other
means of production are thrown into the common
pool. There is sharing of labor and distribution
of the products. That makes an ArteL

These collective units are united into larger
units, the rayon collectives, and into still larger
ones of the region, and so on up to the All-Union
Collective (Kolkhoz) Administration. That pro-
vides the control. When 75 per cent of a district
is collectivized, the remaining private farmers,
mostly kulaks, are dispossessed and exiled to the
northern woods to chop timber. The confiscated
land becomes part of the collective. This process
is called liquidation of the kulak class.

In industry, the Socialist Offensive involves a
reorganization with a view to centralization of
planning and control of accumulations. Indus-
try is being transformed by the creation of huge
combines, uniting trusts and syndicates. These
are vertical institutions, which conduct all opera-
tions from getting the raw materials on through
to production and marketing. The trusts lose
their commercial functions and become merely
technical producing units. Other factors in-
volved, the unbroken week, the five-day week,
the shock brigades, and socialist competition, we
will note later.

In trade, the offensive has practically wiped
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PAN-SOVIETISM

out the private trader. The Commissariat of
Supply has come back to replace the Commis-
sariat of Domestic Trade.

The most significant innovation is the credit
reform, now under way. The general idea is this.
Soviet finance was modeled on the capitalistic
system. But with the closing-out of private
capital the capitalistic forms of credit, such as
commercial credit and bills of exchange, became
obsolete. The ultimate aim of socialist credit is
to concentrate all credit transactions in the State
Bank, making it a clearing-house for checks and
reducing the system to accounts* Commercial
credit is abolished and replaced by exclusive bank
credit. A trust no longer advances goods, say, to
a cooperative, and then waits six months for pay-
ment in money. It merely forwards the goods.
The State Bank gives the trust credit for the
proper amount on the books and deducts the
same from the account of the cooperative, so the
transfer is reduced to bookkeeping. This like-
wise does away with the bill of exchange, which
has been with us for centuries, and goes a long
way toward abolition of money transfer between
institutions of the socialized sector. It does not
involve wages nor retail trade. But considering
the size of the commercial turnover within the
state-controlled system, the inflation of Soviet

132

SOCIALIZATION AND UNITY

money, and the pending gold shortage in the
world, this attempt to operate on socialist credit
is an experiment of keen interest.

In general, the Socialist Offensive, Five-Year
Plan and all, is but fulfillment of the program
laid down in 1917. We now begin to see the whole
cycle. Military Communism was a time of de-
struction and premature attempts to socialize a
bankrupt country. The NEP was a period of
economic restoration with the aid of individual-
ism. When the time was ripe, the Communists
declared a Socialist Offensive, the era of new
construction. They have reintroduced many of
their schemes which failed in 1919. This time
they have the greatest economic enterprise
known to history at their command.

Some centuries ago Cyrano de Bergerac wrote
a tale of an imaginary trip to the moon. He made
a frame, onto which he tied bottles of dew. As
the dew evaporated, he sailed upward. It was
difficult getting away, because of the earth's at-
traction. But after rising slowly for two thirds
of the way, he was suddenly turned end for end,
and fell straight for the moon. He got into the
moon's zone of gravity. For thirteen years now
socialization has been retarded by the old at-
traction of individualism for human beings. But
in 1931 the attraction seems to be overcome*

133

PAN-SOVIETISM

Kfo-Kogo Who beats whom seems to be
answered. And socialization will probably go
the rest of the way by its own momentum. Of
course, Cyrano de Bergerac did come back to
earth, which might indicate a moral.

And lastly, we should note that this Socialist
Offensive tightens the control for the final drive
to build socialism in the closed proletarian state.
It involves even greater sacrifice of immediate
welfare, presumably for the ultimate prosperity
of society as a whole. It involves a renewal of the
war on religion, a cleansing of party and govern-
ment, and a severe discipline which harnesses not
only the peasants and intelligentsia, but the pro-
letariat workers as well. Above all it lashes a
whole people to the wheel of mundane things; it
whips up a faster and faster tempo of that wheel,
at a human cost yet to be determined, all to build
an industrial Juggernaut, so that when the guns
cut loose in the next war, which they fully expect
in Moscow, the people of Russia will be prepared,
economically independent and powerful, and
ready not only to defend the socialist fatherland,
but to advance, if need be, against crumbling
capitalism.

CHAPTER VH

Economic Control

THE Communist program is predicated on the
toil and sacrifice of all Soviet citizens. Immediate
welfare is deliberately sacrificed for the sake of
long haul projects of industrialization. In pro-
claiming religion as the opium of the people, the
Communists say, 'Let parsons of all religious
creeds keep telling us of a paradise in the world to
come; we want to create a real paradise on this
earth for human beings/ "While the proposed
earthly paradise is being laid out, the builders
must evidently content themselves with iron
rations and TmTifmirm comforts. As one might
suspect, the first essentials of an earthly paradise
in the machine age are power plants, railroads,
iron foundries, and other basic means of produc-
tion. Into these the state pours the wealth of the
country. Meanwhile, the light industries which
produce consumers' goods are relatively neg-
lected, and are forced, in fact, to bring in revenue
with which to build power plants.

The scheme to correct Russia's backwardness
thus means that this generation must suffer. But
the sacrifice of the welfare of a whole generation

135

PAN-SO VIETISM

in order to build socialism is only a new form of
the old subservience to the will of the state. The
mass of the Russian people have long been ac-
customed to the sacrifice of their welfare without
even the promise of earthly paradise which per-
haps only their children can hope to enjoy.
Failure to understand this policy leads to the
snap conclusions we hear and read about the
certain downfall of the system because of the
welfare conditions. On the contrary, the Bol-
sheviks can improve the mass welfare whenever
they choose, merely by easing off the pressure to
industrialize.

I do not for the moment qualify my opinion
that the people of Russia will eventually deter-
mine the success or failure of the system. But it
is a mistake to believe that the mass of these
people are going through very much more than
the customary sacrifice of their welfare. When
asked if there is a desperation point at which the
population might revolt, the Communist leaders
say, * We have not yet plumbed the depths of the
patience of our people/ The party keeps its ear
to the ground.

Now, there is no doubt that the Communists
and Communist Youth, 3 per cent of the popula-
tion, are sincerely working for the earthly para-
dise in Russia. The 97 per cent majority, born to

136

ECONOMIC CONTROL

be patient, but unsustained by the sweets of
power, are more concerned with the problems of
subsistence. The interesting question arises, how
do 3 per cent make 97 per cent submit to the
sacrifice, to accept steel mills owned by society in
place of boots which an individual can wear?

In the first place, armed resistance is virtually
impossible. And because of the political set-up
we have described, even unarmed resistance is
kept within local bounds and quickly punished.
The peasants, hitherto, have lacked organization.
But they have kept up a passive resistance, a
sullen sabotage, which forced the government to
go zigzag. In the towns the party has enlisted
most of the active intelligentsia to the work of
fulfilling its plans. Persons who do not approve
of socialism must cooperate or starve. Further-
more, the party is staunchly supported by the
trade unions and by the proletariat in general.
Workers grumble fiercely as individuals. Col-
lectively they cooperate with the party and
government, secure in the knowledge that they
will receive boots first when boots are passed
around.

But the real answer to the question of how a
fanatic minority makes the majority submit to
sacrifice is the organic nerve system of control
which threads the immensity of Russian life, with

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PAN-SOVIETISM

its brain in the Kremlin. In the words of Lenin:
*The road to socialism is through public account-
ing (that is, statistics) and control/ This is the
Quantity X of the Soviet system, which permits
the government to industrialize the country
without the aid of foreign capital. It is the
economic control, built up over the years, which
foreign economists ignore when they predict the
fall of the Kremlin.

The supreme control is, of course, the party.
We have examined the interlocking directorate
by which party control is effected, through
command of the key posts in the government and
the party "fractions' in all socialized institutions.
About four fifths of the managers in state indus-
try are party members. And the rank and file of
the party at all stages of the pyramid serve as
constant inspectors.

THE G.P.U.

Then there is the G.P.TL, the State Political
Administration. This secret police differs from
the old Cheka in that it is, at least nominally,
subject to the constitutional organs of authority.
As a matter of fact, its orders come from the
Politbureau and the Central Committee of the
party. It differs also from other famous weapons
of class justice, such as the Committee of Public

138

ECONOMIC CONTROL

Safety of the French Revolution, or the Okhrana
of the tsars, by its functions in economic as well
as political control. The G.P.U. is called the
' watchful eye of the revolution 5 and the "puni-
tive organ of class war/ It pursues the specu-
lator, the counterfeiter, the smuggler, and all
economic criminals who ordinarily lie beyond the
jurisdiction of a politico-military tribunal. In
Russia and abroad it ferrets out economic
espionage, economic conspiracy, and economic
counter-revolution, generic terms which cover
all possible offenses against a state which is in
business.

The G.P.U. took, over the methods of the
tsarist Okhrana and improved on them. It has
about 130,000 agents in uniform, on the railroads
and elsewhere. As it is a crime not to report
observed activities hostile to the state's interests,
the G.P.U. has also a civilian army, the size and
identity of which are unknown. This is the
invisible control.

The G.P.U. has power to carry out administra-
tive justice, without triaL It strikes generally at
night. There is a knock on the door and a de-
mand to open in the name of Sovietskaya Vlast.
Then enter the polite and efficient G.P.TL agents,
who present the warrant and proceed to ransack
the apartment. In the morning the neighbors

139

PAN-SOVIETISM

hurry by without looking, not even breathing the
letters, G.P.U. Another citizen disappears from
circulation, charged with offending against the
revolution. His relatives may not learn until
months later that he is to be released, to be exiled
to Solovetsky or Siberia, or that he has already
felt the sudden press of the cold pistol behind the
ear in the cellar of the Lubianka.

There are times of quiet. Suddenly the politi-
cal atmosphere gets sultry. The 'punitive organ
of class war' strikes with the swiftness of light-
ning. And for days the air is electric with fear.
Even neutral foreigners absorb the thought-
currents which come in through the windows.

But it must be admitted that the G.P.TL, as
distinct from the old Cheka, very seldom inter-
feres with the great mass of peasants and work-
ers. And it must be remembered that the state is
economically vulnerable. The revolution is not
over; the conditions of war continue. Treason in
time of war is the highest form of social danger.
And obstruction to the government's plans is
made identical with treason in Moscow.

THE RKI

Another organ of direct political control of the
economic system is the Workers-Peasants In-
spection, known as the RKI. Nominally the

140

ECONOMIC CONTROL

RKI is a government commissariat. In reality,
it is an extension of tlie Central Control Com-
mission of the party, the instrument of the chistka,
or cleansing. One man is always chief of both.

Before 1920 the management of each factory
was controlled by a workers 5 committee. In 1923
the RKI was directed by the party to begin re-
organization of the government apparatus, to
place it on a scientific basis which would exclude
the possibility of bureaucracy, perversity, and
superfluity* The RKI was to study the Soviet
system at the commanding points, and to recom-
mend changes which would relieve the central
government of routine.

It was found that a tapeworm was feeding
on the vitals of the state body, absorbing its
strength, and causing a terrific overhead in non-
productive expenditure. That tapeworm was
the inherited bureaucracy, which produced a
progeny in kind, the paper work and volokita.
Volokita is the drag, the obstruction, the anti-
efficiency. It was everywhere, in high offices
and low, in commissariats and village Soviets.
It was stamped on important papers going
through channels, which in some cases took six
weeks to pass through twelve hands in one in-
stitution, housed in one building.

As a result of this investigation, the party in
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PAN-SOVIETISM

1926 directed the RKI to overhaul the govern-
ment apparatus and establish a * regime of
economy/ The ship of state had to shorten sail
so as to lie closer to the wind, just as any other
commercial venture. The idea was to reduce
administrative cost by killing bureaucracy at
the heart, and by sweeping the debris into the
dump of old institutions.

To that end the party in 1926 directed the
masses, the trade unions, economic commissions,
etc., to report to the KKI all instances of volo-
Jcita, bureaucracy, incompetence, and breach of
trust. This implied inspection from below, an
elaborate spy system. The RKI thus became a
board of censors.

The method of inspection is for a commission
from the Control and Verification section of the
RKI to appear, without notice, at the head-
quarters of a commissariat, a trust, a factory, a
soviet, a bank, a railroad office, almost any state
institution, and call for its books. The doors are
locked and guarded. For weeks the commission
checks accounts against ascertainable facts. The
working conditions of the organization are ex-
amined in the light of the general plan. The
Council of Peoples Commissars then publishes
the findings of the EKE along with a decree to
effect the changes recommended.

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

Within two years the REI reduced the politico-
economic machinery by 20 per cent and cut the
paper work in half. It now works with the so-
called "self -criticism* campaign begun by Stalin.
Thousands of letters pour in every day, com-
plaints from below about the way the plan is
being carried out, or grievances against the
managers or against party members. The REI
offices are generally filled with voluntary assist-
ants, the Komsomols, who open this mail. The
complaints are classified, after which there is
inspection, and then action.

Party congresses from time to time have given
more and more power to the REI until it is
today a searchlight of the Kremlin from which
there is no escape. To put teeth in the so-called
* regime of economy,* the REI recommends
liquidation of institutions, consolidation of func-
tions, elimination of parallelism, abolition of red
tape, discharge of unnecessary employees, and
criminal prosecution of those who have been
neglectful or guilty of venality, whether members
of the party or not.

In actual practice its recommendations
amount to orders. The REI works with one
guiding principle: Whatever is necessary to
the state and production remains; whatever is
unnecessary must go. To individuals it gives

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PAN-SOVIETISM

the alternative: 'Pull your weight in the boat
or get out.'

It used to be very difficult to get money at the
State Bank. The lady cashiers were inclined to
let queues form while they dawdled over the
hourly glass of tea or gossiped among themselves
on matters of high interest, but remote from
state finance. Then came a short visit from the
RE3, after which the cashiers were so intent on
serving you that they would read your mind
before you spoke. After the RKI swept through
the very citadel of voloJcita, the post-office, the
stamps fairly popped across the counter, and
every one was polite and efficient, as though it
were a Rotary Club. Of course, one was al-
ways reminded of Charles Lamb, c Gone, all
are gone, the old familiar faces/ But gone, also
was much of the dilly-dally of group responsi-
bility.

GOVERNMENTAL "UNIFIED ECONOMIC CONTEOL

Turning now to economic control in the strict
sense, we find tJiat the administrative control of
the economic activites of the state is vested in the
Council of Labor and Defense, called the STO.
This is an inter-departmental group responsible
directly to the Council of Peoples Commissars.
Its twelve members, trusted Communists of long

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

standing, are holders of the key positions in the
economic system.

The Bolsheviks had a preconceived program of
unified economic control. In 1917 they set up the
Supreme Economic Council, which was to direct
the entire economic life of the country, industry,
agriculture, and trade. Under the stress of civil
war this Supreme Economic Council became, in
reality, the Commissariat of Industry, which it
still is.

In 1920, the Council of Defense, an inter-
departmental war cabinet, was reorganized on a
wider basis as the Council of Labor and Defense,
the STO, with executive and legislative powers.
It became an All-Union organ in 1923. Its chief
functions are preparation of all measures for
defense of the country, including the military;
preparation and execution of all economic and
financial plans of the Union; supervision of the
commissariats; and decision in questions, such as
division of property as between state organs, and
between the federal government and those of the
republics. The decrees of the STO are com-
pulsory for all central and local organs of author-
ity throughout the Union.

Until Stalin became a member of the STO
recently, but little was heard about it abroad.
It is the unifying organ at the apex of the pyra-

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PAN-SOVIETISM

mid. It originates the general economic plan, it
has supervision of the * commanding heights/ and
through its subsidiaries it controls the economic
life of Russia.

The STO operates through a number of com-
missions, the most important of which has been
the State Planning Com mission, the Gosplan.
On December 4, 1930, there was created an-
other organ, the Verification Committee, which
seems to have functions of a super-KKI, directed
toward enforcement of discipline in carrying out
the Five- Year Plan. One used to wonder what
would eventually control the RKI, which was
controlling almost everything else. This Verifica-
tion Committee evidently is the supercontrol.

STATE PLANNING

State planning is the most original contribu-
tion of the Soviets to the science of modern gov-
ernment. Under capitalism we operate on the
principle of free enterprise, without any con-
scious, general planning. We attempted govern-
ment regulation during the war, on the railroads,
for instance, and found it unprofitable. Our co-
ordination in trade comes about through the
movement of prices. The laws of supply and
demand regulate industry, but only after enor-
mous overproduction has taken place. Duplica-

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

tion of plant and effort does lead to a struggle for
the market and waste. But the American con-
tention is that regulation curbs private initiative,
and if the price of efficiency is the loss of that
private initiative, then let us do without effi-
ciency, even in our national economy as a
whole.

The Soviet answer is state planning by experts,
on a basis of complete statistical data, so that the
needs of the consumers are calculated in advance,
and the allocation of capital and labor in each
branch of production is arranged to meet the
consumers' needs exactly, with due allowance for
export. This permits the coordination of all the
resources of the country on the basis of a single,
comprehensive plan, having for one of its objec-
tives the balance between production and con-
sumption. This stupendous conception is the
real challenge of the Soviet system to laissez-
faire capitalism.

The Gosplan, subsidiary to the Council of
Labor and Defense (STO), has neither executive
nor legislative powers, but it is what we might
call a reference control of the economic system.
In 1926 the STO ordered all state organs and
cooperatives to submit information to the Gos-
plan on demand, and to observe the strictest
discipline in carrying out the plan* This began

147

PAN-SOVIETISM

the now celebrated ' planning discipline* by
which the Soviets expect to defeat the world
economically.

The Gosplan Control Figures, a survey of
national economy as a whole, first appeared for
1925-26, setting the program for the current
year, from October 1 to September 30. (Begin-
ning this year the economic year is January 1 to
December 31 .) From that beginning it has grown
until it is now considered the finest forecasting
system known to business. The Gosplan has
headquarters in Moscow. In each republic there
is a planning commission subject to orders from
Moscow. The various commissariats also have
planning commissions, with ramifications all over
the Union. And each local unit of the economic
system must have a planning section.

The plans of local organizations, based on
policies defined in Moscow and capacities of local
plant, are forwarded up the stages of the eco-
nomic pyramid to the Gosplan, for coordination
into a single plan for the whole Soviet Union.
After modification by the STO and ratification
by the Central Executive Committee, this unified
plan becomes the law of the land and the general
guide for the year. The scope of planning has
increased from year to year, until now there is
practically no activity without its particular

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

plan. Krylenko, the public prosecutor, Has
even organized a five-year plan for playing
chess.

Now, state planning requires a corps of highly
trained financial and statistical engineers. These
the Soviets have lacked in the past. But they are
producing rapidly a huge staff of technicians,
experienced in the dynamics of planning. In the
past the chief handicap has been the unreliability
of agricultural statistics. The sown area had to
be calculated from information furnished by the
peasants themselves, who intentionally or un-
intentionally gave wrong figures. With the
collectivism, however, much of the guesswork in
agricultural data has been eliminated. Miscal-
culation also arises from the necessity to set
the Control Figures for the ensuing year before
the results of the current years are fully known.
And state planning has such a short history that
the average of error has not yet been worked out.
Natural calamity and unforeseen changes in
policy may cause even greater upsets.

Note briefly how planning works in foreign
trade. Under state operation, all the import
needs and all the resources available for export
must be estimated approximately. This infor-
mation is taken every summer by the Commis-
sariat of Foreign Trade from the estimates of

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PAN-SOVIETISM

production, consumption, and surplus. The pro-
cedure has been simple in industry, because of its
centralized control. In agriculture it necessitated
considerable guesswork.

After estimating the expected exportable sur-
plus, the next step is to calculate the amount of
foreign currency that export will bring abroad.
The total value of the imports permitted is then
fixed within the limits of the total value of the
expected exports, unless foreign credit justifies
an unfavorable goods balance.
' The schedule of purchasing abroad is based on
the necessity to give first consideration to the
current needs of industry, and since collectiviza-
tion, also the needs of agriculture; second, to the
needs of construction; and third, to the needs
of popular consumption. The consumer always
comes last in building socialism.

The export-import plan is rectified every~quar-
ter. Details of the plan, and of the funds to meet
foreign payments, are secrets of state. Inside the
country there is a system of quotas and allot-
ments by regions and institutions, both as to
exports and imports. Abroad the quotas are
made according to the credit available in the
various countries. The Soviets use their purchas-
ing power for political ends. For instance, they
reduced their purchases in England to a mini-

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

mum after the break in relations in 1927. They
have been buying in America because they like
American machinery, but not without a hope
that thereby they will build up a large group of
American manufacturers who are vitally inter-
ested in promoting Soviet trade.

Concretely, the foreign trade monopoly oper-
ates on the license system. Each request for a
license is examined in the light of the export-
import plan and the quota limits. It is thus a
* prohibiting-permitting * system. Commodities
in trade go into, and out of, Russia only under
the state's auspices. And when mistakes occur in
planning, the least necessary imports are im-
mediately curtailed. In time of depression the
Soviet government can shorten sail quickly, and
prevent overexpenditure.

STATISTICS

Lenin's dictum that * accounting (statistics)
and control 5 lead to socialism underlies the whole
structure of planned economy. For this reason
statistics, per se, are of much greater importance
in Russia than in capitalist countries. The statis-
tical organization is enormous. Weekly, monthly,
and quarterly reports go forward from all local,
industrial, labor, financial, and transport units.
These figures are fairly accurate*

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PAN-SOVIETISM

The pyschological factor is important. In the
early years of planning the desire on the part of
local trusts to fulfill their quotas in the plan led
to overoptimism. There was a chronic over-
estimation of the crop, and of the raw materials
available. Moreover, the Russian people are
blessed with what is called the shirokaya natura,
wide, or generous, nature.

I once hired a Cossack to take me on a week's
journey in his telega. In the course of things the
rim of the rear wheel worked loose, and finally
parted at the weld. Then it began to flip-flap at
every turn. I said nothing, for we were almost at
a village. The next morning, I expected to find
the wheel fixed. But there it was, flip-flap, flip-
flap. I punched my Cossack, and said: *Hey,
little brother, you have wire under the seat, why
don't you bind up that wheel?' He stopped the
horses, and said: *The devil take it, Barin, I
didn't know it bothered you/ Then he reached
under the seat and produced, not the wire, but
the axe. He spat on his hands and forthwith as-
saulted the rim* He pounded away for fifteen
minutes, and then began to bend a piece a foot
long, back and forth, until he broke it off. To all
my questions he would say: 'Nitchevo 9 it's
nothing, it doesn't matter. Then he tossed the
piece he had broken off out into the steppe. I

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

asked why. He said 'Nitchevo! 9 So I demanded
how he could reconcile such destruction with the
* regime of economy/ Whereupon he thumped his
chest, and said, * U nas, shirokaya natura* We,
the Russians, have a generous nature.

The Communists are up against the nitchevo
and shirokaya natura. They are trying to econo-
mize the celebrated Slavic soul. Every Russian
has a soul tucked away somewhere, a highly
imaginative soul which is apt to soar away to
astronomy when dealing with figures. But the
hard realities of state planning demand accurate
reports from below. Persons submitting statis-
tics not based on careful study of ascertainable
facts are punished under the laws designed to
enforce * planning discipline/

In general, there is a constant pressure from
the center to develop scientific methodology, to
build up a corps of statistical engineers and lesser
technicians. This socialism might turn the Rus-
sians into a race of bookkeepers. Sometimes a
worker or peasant will tell you that the only good
thing in the old days was that no one was obliged
to keep accounts. The net result is that the
socialist accounting of Russia is approaching a
state of efficiency which compares favorably with
the statistical work in most other countries.
Even in efficient America this winter no two f act-

153

PAN-SOVIETISM

finding institutions seem able to agree on the
amount of unemployment.

There are many ramifications to this economic
control which would be very interesting to our
study. But this is the main outline. The party
controls through political power, by its monopoly
of the key posts in the government, and by its
* fractions 3 in all socialized institutions. One of
its instruments is the G.P.U., which has visible
and invisible armies of agents to protect the
state's economic interests. Another instrument
is the Workers-Peasants Inspection, the KKI,
which acts as censor of the entire government
apparatus. In the economic system proper the
apex of the pyramid of control is the Council of
Labor and Defense, the STO, which unifies the
whole and supervises the preparation and execu-
tion of the single, comprehensive economic plan.
All of the Union is guided by this plan, set from
year to year as a forecast of production and dis-
tribution. As this plan is the law of the land, and
violation of it might be criminal, there has de-
veloped the so-called 'planning discipline/ which
is forcing change in the habits and customs of the
nation.

Now, this centralized economic control is
something new in statecraft. It has many func-
tions which might interest us. But what we want

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

to know is how this economic control permits
industrialization of a backward country without
the aid of foreign capital That's Quantity X.
The answer is that this huge control system
makes possible the redistribution of the national
income and the attainment of the revolutionary
ends in view.

This is highly important to us, as it is the
process which gives Soviet Russia the economic
power to challenge America's position in Asia
and elsewhere. America was largely industri-
alized with the aid of foreign capital, which
flowed to our shores and built our railroads and
many of our big industries. That made us a
debtor nation. The World War turned the scale.
As a neutral we were able to pay off our indus-
trialization debts abroad, and we even became
what we are, a creditor nation.

The Soviet government is an Ishmael among
governments of the world. For economic and
psychological reasons foreign capital does not flow
to Russia. I believe it is a common experience in
any American family that an automobile can be
obtained on credit, a stake against the family's
earning power; or it can be obtained by eating
less, wearing less, and using less fuel in winter.
The Soviets have no choice, as between the two
methods. So we have the picture of a whole

155

PAN-SOVIETISM

nation forced to tighten the belt for the long
haul in overcoming the economic drag of the
centuries.

The gigantic control system is dedicated to the
payment for industrialization from sources within
the country. The first factor to notice is the
price-control, which assumes great significance in
socialist economy.

PBICB-FIXING

The Commissariat of Supply fixes prices on
agricultural products to be collected and on
industrial commodities to be distributed. The
government organs have developed a technique
in price-fixing by a trained personnel. Price-
fixing gives the state enormous power in favoring
one group of the population against another, or
one region against another. This is one of the real
mysteries in Russia.

In dealing with private agriculture the price-
fixing organs compute the amount a peasant
should receive in order that he will feel it worth
while to produce. Data are also collected on the
quantity and kinds of products he is likely to
produce. From these two sets of data the mini-
mum prices are calculated that is, the lowest
at which the peasant is likely to sell in order to
get supplies for his family. The Commissariat of

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

Supply also calculates the maximum prices which
industry can afford to pay for such products,
using as the basis the estimated costs of rework-
ing raw materials. Workers 5 budgets must be
considered and, in the case of exportable pro-
ducts, world prices. The final prices fixed repre-
sent a compromise. Prices are fixed for large
areas, sometimes for whole republics. And price
violation is punishable.

Prices are manipulated to make it more profit-
able to grow the kind of crop desired by Moscow.
If there has been an overproduction, say, of rye,
the prices for rye will be lowered and those for
wheat will be raised in advance. Price-control in
this way thus replaces the law of supply and
demand which operates elsewhere.

The Commissariat of Supply also fixes the
price-norms at which industrial trusts and syndi-
cates must sell manufactured goods to the central
trading organs and the trade surcharges permis-
sible at each stage in the distribution system.
Disputes as to the 'freeing* or factory prices
between the Supreme Economic Council, repre-
senting the producers, and the Commissariat of
Supply, representing the consumers, are referred
to the STO for arbitration.

This price-control has been used to liquidate
the private sector. At the opening of the Socialist

157

PAN-SOVIETISM

Offensive In 1927-28, agricultural production
was still 98 per cent private, whereas industrial
production was 88 per cent socialized. Therefore,
the collecting or wholesale prices which the gov-
ernment paid the peasants for farm products
were kept low, while the retail prices on industrial
commodities were kept high. This meant that
there was a constant flow of capital from agricul-
ture to industry, from the villages to the towns,
from the private sector into the socialized.

THE BUDGET SYSTEM

Now we come to the budget system. The single
state budget, which incorporates the budgets of
the central government and of the governments
of the seven federated republics, is prepared by
the Commissariat of Finance and ratified by the
Central Executive Committee. It must be ap-
proved by the Gosplan to ensure its conformity
to the general economic plan, of which it forms
an integral part.

The first source of state income is taxation. In
view of the fact that all land in theory belongs to
the state there is no land tax as the term is under-
stood in America. In the place of such a tax and
of all other direct taxes, the Russian peasants pay
taxes on their estimated, not their real, income
from land, live-stock, and other means of produc-

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

tion. This agricultural tax bears a frankly class
character. The policy is to exempt the poor
peasants and to take as much as possible from the
prosperous. Even before the wave of collectiviza-
tion last year, 35 per cent of the peasants were
exempt from taxation, and the kulaks and upper
middle peasants bore the load. There was also a
system of deducting twenty rubles per * mouth *
from the estimated taxable income of a peasant
household, in order to arrest the tendency toward
subdivision of holdings and entire escape from
taxation.

There are trade-industrial taxes, heavily
weighted against the private sector. And there
is also the familiar income tax, which as elsewhere
is used as a means of redistributing wealth. The
difference is that in Soviet Russia the income tax
is graduated not only in proportion to income,
but also with regard to social groupings. That is,
a private trader might have less real income than
a proletarian worker, but his income tax would
be higher.

Indirect taxes have yielded huge revenue. The
vodka monopoly produced nearly a billion rubles
in 1928-29. There is a movement to dispense
with this revenue and reduce the consumption of
vodka. Customs duties supplement the foreign
trade monopoly in protecting Russian industries,

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PAN-SOVIETISM

but contribute comparatively little revenue, as
most state-owned imports are exempt.

The second source of state income is the non-
tax revenue, which are rents from state property
and profits from state enterprises.

The third source is the state internal loans.
There is no rentier class in Russia. Nor is there a
stock exchange. But the savings of the popula-
tion are mobilized for state purposes by means of
these loans, which now total a billion and a half
rubles. In theory there is no compulsion to sub-
scribe, but the trade unions, house committees,
local Soviets, etc., exert pressure on their mem-
bers. Subscription is considered a duty. In many
factories the names of the workers who refuse to
subscribe, but who could, are posted on the
blackboard, along with scurrilous remarks. Those
who subscribe freely are posted on the red board,
thus acquiring merit. This is called socialist
competition.

According to Communist doctrine, taxation is
a class function. The class controlling a state
shifts the burden of taxation to the oppressed
class. In ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and
through the eighteenth century it was the peas-
ants who carried the load. In the nineteenth
century the proletariat shared with the peasants.
With the development of capitalism not enough

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

revenue for military purposes could be obtained
in this way, so there were evolved the property
and income taxes, as distinct from the earlier
forms of taxation limited largely to articles of
mass consumption.

Now, the Communists contend that taxation,
as a method of extraction from the income or
property of citizens, is necessary only while there
is opposition between the state and private eco-
nomy. Thus, in their transition period to social-
ism taxation is an instrument of the proletarian
class to liquidate the private sector. During that
period, under conditions of competition in the
open market, the socialized sector likewise must
be taxed, though less heavily. But once socializa-
tion is accomplished and the private sector dis-
appears, then taxation becomes obsolete as a
means of obtaining state revenue, and must be
replaced by a simpler method of extraction
that is, by prices, and by a percentage assessment
on profits.

If we turn this around, we can visualize the
process of reconstruction of the Soviet financial
system, going on today. Under Military Com-
munism there was unity. There was a budget
process for everything. There was no market, no
credit, no legal money. The New Economic
Policy, beginning in 1921, put socialized eco-

161

PAN-SOVIETISM

nomic enterprises on the basis of commercial
account, detached from the budget* Thereafter
the state economy was divided into two parts,
that on the budget, such as the administration,
transport and communications, and that on com-
mercial account, such as trusts, and other eco-
nomic enterprises* The opposition between the
budget and institutions on commercial account
made taxes necessary. Socialized institutions
paid a multitude of scattered payments into the
treasury as budget revenue, such as taxes, cus-
toms, stamp duties, excess profits taxes, and
others* They retained a legal portion of their
profits and subscribed to state loans. And they
received from the budgets whatever capital was
assigned to them by the general plan. That was
the scheme of financing during the restoration
period, while the private sector still took a large
part in economic life.

The great increase of the national income and
the rapid advance of socialization changed the
situation. Private trade has dropped away to
almost nothing. Industry is being reorganized
into huge combines, all subject to planning and
regulation. And agriculture is on the way to
complete socialization by 1933. So socialized
institutions evolve into what is called a higher
form.

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

Under the new conditions the parceling system
of budget payments, which were necessary with
the stress of competition with the private sector
during the restoration period, are no longer ad-
visable. In fact, they become a drag on planned
economy. On December 5, 1929, the Central
Committee of the party decided that: 'There
should be worked out a system of assessment of
state industry on the principle of a single deduc-
tion from profits.' This meant complete change
in the methods of extraction for budget revenue.
The new system must take account of the differ-
ence between * freeing' or factory prices, and the
cost of production. Hence, the tax reform of
October, 1930, by which socialized institutions
pay budget revenue through two channels: first,
the tax on the turnover, in which are unified all
the former payments, the trade-industrial tax, the
excise, the state insurance, tax on ore, and the
whole series of minor payments; and second, a
deduction from the profits, which includes in
one payment all the former extractions from the
net income of any institution.

The objective is a once-for-all assessment on
goods and the abolition of all other forms of taxes.
With the collectivization of agriculture there is
likewise a shift from the graduated tax, which
mounted rapidly on the higher incomes, to a

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PAN-SOVIETISM

proportion tax, which applies in equal percentage
to small and large income alike. The effort is to
prevent penalization of large incomes in the
socialized sector. The same measures apply to
trade.

The significance of this tax reform is not only
in the increased economic power derived, and in
the saving of time by simplification. It puts an
end to the opposition between commercial ac-
count institutions, as objects of taxation, and the
budget. It means that when the state squeezes
the private sector out of existence, it need no
longer tax itself. That time has not yet come.
But the tax reform, introduced among other
things, a threefold increase in taxation on private
traders who handle goods not handled by the
socialized stores. In general, the tax reform
brings the budget and commercial account to-
gether again. And the unity, established under
Military Communism, and broken by the NEP 5
is reestablished in 1931. So say the Communists.

The sweeping internal changes of this shift to
socialist finance give an entirely new direction to
the whole economic system. We noted the credit
reform which compels socialized institutions to
dear their mutual obligations at the State Bank
without transferring money. The new system not
only abolishes commercial credit, but forces the

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

institutions to keep within the limits of bant
credit allotted to them, thus tightening the
planning discipline.

An interesting creation is the Credit Tovarish-
stvo, the lowest unit in the new financial chain,
which functions somewhat the same way for the
agricultural collectives. A decree of September
26, 1930, directs collective farms to deposit all
their cash over that needed for daily expenses in
these Credit Tovarishstvos. Peasants, in general,
are put under social pressure to take their savings
out of the family stocking and put them into
these branch banks of the collectives, to pay the
agricultural tax in advance, and to subscribe to
state loans.

FINANCIAL PLAN

The greatest, and all-inclusive, innovation is
the Financial Plan, called the Finplan, which
charts the movement of values within the coun-
try and the resources and accumulations of
the socialized sector, thus the redistribution of
wealth. It includes all the budgets, plus all non-
budgetary resources which figure in this redis-
tribution. Experts have been devising this
Finplan for two years. It became fixed by law,
May 23, 1930.

We need only a few figures, which, by the way,
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PAN-SOVIETISM

are given in the unchanging prices of 1926-27,
and are therefore corrected according to the pur-
chasing power of the ruble in socialized trade.
Three years ago the national income was 25
billion rubles, of which 48 per cent was in the
hands of the private sector and citizens* In 1930,
it was 33 billion, with the share of the private
sector and citizens dropped to 38 per cent. So
there still is money in the private sector, plus
money owned by individuals as wages.

Redistribution of the national income is
effected by pouring funds:

1. From the private sector into the socialized.

2. From one branch of economy into another
e.g., from agriculture into industry.

3. From one sphere of the same branch into
another e.g., from industries for consumers
goods into those for means of production.

4. From one territory into another e.g.,
from the prosperous regions into the backward
lands of Central Asia.

5. From one class into another, from all classes
into the proletariat and poor peasants.

The instruments of the redistribution are taxes,
prices, loans, and emission of currency. In the
past taxes have been the most important. But
with the advance of socialization, it is expected
that prices will have first place that is, the

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

profits of socialized economy. A temporary fea-
ture is the system of liigh prices designed to
entrap the surplus purchasing power of the popu-
lation. In the autumn of 1930, the state estab-
lished a chain of open stores where any one can
buy, in contrast to the closed coSperatives where
only persons with trade-union or special food
cards are admitted. These open stores are sup-
posed to stock only the surplus commodities over
the normal supply, so as not to lower the real
wages of the workers. Their prices are from three
to five times higher than those of the closed
stores. These are the prices which the average
foreigner must pay.

It is difficult to show this redistribution of
wealth without columns of figures, but a few will
illustrate what has been happening all these
years. The mobilization of funds for redistribu-
tion according to the 1930 Finplan amounted to
20 billion rubles. Of this huge sum 34.6 per cent
came from prices (profits of socialized economy) ;
28.9 per cent from taxes; a fraction under 20 per
cent from the state loans, savings banks, etc.;
and 8.4 per cent from state and social insurance.
(Social insurance is profitable. For instance, I
paid 150 rubles social insurance for my cook
during two years, and she never was sick.)

Of the expenditure 9.5 per cent went for ad-
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PAN-SOVIETISM

ministration and defense, 63.4 per cent for financ-
ing socialized economy, 21 per cent for social-
cultural needs, such as education and health, and
the rest for service on loans, insurance payments,
and other items.

Turning this around, we find that the social-
ized sector paid in something over 6 billion rubles
and took out 13 billion. The private sector and
citizens paid in over 7 billion and received back
a billion and a half. In the balance of redistribu-
tion, the socialized sector was plus 6869 million
rubles. The private sector and citizens were
minus 5768 million. These two do not offset each
other, because of certain other items in the minus
column.

The actual accumulations of fixed capital in
the socialized sector during 1930 were computed
last month at nearly 11 billion rubles, or one
third of the total national income. These esti-
mates are in unchanging 1926-27 prices, fixed
within the socialized sector, which do not fluc-
tuate much with supply and demand, nor with
the inflation of the ruble as do prices of the open
market.

The social significance of this redistribution is
made clear from the following. For every ruble
(a ruble is 100 kopeks) a poor peasant paid in,
he received 68 kopeks in return, in the form

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

of educational, health, and other facilities. A
worker or employee for his ruble received 57
kopeks, a middle peasant 31, a town bour-
geois 9, and a kulak 8 kopeks. The average
for the whole population was 41 kopeks on the
ruble.

The proportion of the national income which
passes through the funnel of the financial plan
increases in a ratio faster than the increase of the
national income itself* Last year the financial
plan was over half, this year it is expected to be
two thirds of the national income. This mobiliza-
tion of all resources, and pouring them through
a single funnel of redistribution, is considered the
major triumph of the Soviet system.

It permits suction of capital from private and
individual sources into socialized economy. In
1928, 2 billion rubles were pumped over, in 1930
nearly 6 billion. But it does more. It serves as a
class equalizer by extraction of money from the
small capitalists, bourgeoisie, kulaks, and middle
peasants, and expenditure of that same money on
the proletariat and poor peasants in the form of
educational and health facilities from which the
former classes are somewhat excluded. It thus
whips onward the social transformation and the
abolition of classes, the ultimate objective of the
revolution.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

Not even the Ptolemies, who managed Egypt
as a private estate to bring them income from
taxes, and grain, quarry, wine, and foreign trade
monopolies, devised such a system of all-inclusive
control of the minutise of economic life. This re-
distribution of wealth permits financing indus-
trialization without the aid of foreign capital.
This is Quantity X of the Soviet system, because
concealed in this controlled movement of values
within the country are many factors which
defy measurement, including the patience of the
Russian people. Command of all the resources of
the country, even to the small change in the
pocket of the individual, a condition which seems
to be approaching, will mean that the Soviet
state at any given moment can hurl enormous
economic power into an international conflict, be
it commercial or military.

This economic control demonstrates the power
brought to focus by a state run as a business con-
cern with unlimited political, social, and eco-
nomic prerogatives. The Soviet economic state-
craft may be justified by the end in view, or
condemned for its human cost. But the issue is
not the lamented loss of individual liberty which
never really existed for the majority of Russians.
Nor is it the immediate welfare which has been
sacrificed to build socialism. The issue for us is

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ECONOMIC CONTROL

plainly this: How is laissez-faire individualism
going to retain the world market against the
competitive onslaught of planned, disciplined
collectivism?

CHAPTER

The Industrialization of a Backward Country

AT the beginning of 1931 the conflict between the
socialized and the private sectors is no longer the
dominant issue. The Communists declare that
the transition period is over and that the era of
socialism has begun. Granted that they are over-
optimistic, it does seem likely that the process of
socialization will go the rest of the way by mass
weight and momentum. But there is another
side to it. The Communists also proposed to
bring prosperity to society as a whole, and leisure
and enlightenment.

The year 1927-28, the beginning of the Social-
ist Offensive, is known in Russia as the year of
the perelom that is, the point in the illness
from which the patient begins to mend. That
year economy reached and passed the pre-war
level. It marked the end of the restoration of old
plant and the beginning of expansion by building
new plant. In the early years the Soviet system
used up the tsarist accumulations. During the
NEP the system expanded by extracting the
accumulations remaining in the villages. Since
1927-28 it has expanded on new accumulations.

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A BACKWARD COUNTRY

The country was supposed to be economically
restored, but that meant it was still backward.
The industrial production of the United States
was twenty-five times greater than that of Soviet
Russia in 1927-28, the output per worker five
times more, and the standard of living of workers
four times higher.

In 1913, the technical level of Russian industry
was considered 26 per cent lower than the aver-
age for advanced countries. With the moral
depreciation of worn-out machinery during the
war it fell even lower. By 1924 it was 52 per cent
lower. This is equivalent to saying that Soviet
industry in 1924 was only one half as efficient as
that outside of Russia. And the only way to
catch up with the world was by lowering the cost
of production, rationalization, and by raising the
level of technical skill.

For the Russian people there is no alternative
to economic backwardness but industrialization.
The first party program was to create the Soviet
system. The second party program is to use that
system as an instrument for achieving industrial-
ization. Industrialization is expected to correct
the old disproportion between opportunities for
employment and population increase, between
supply and demand for goods, between the de-
velopment of the various branches of economy.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

It is expected by improved methods to raise the
productivity of labor and to lower production
costs, to raise the standard of living, to permit
the attainment of socialism, and to ensure the
economic independence of the Soviet Union in its
relation with the outside capitalist world.

Certain problems immediately arise, such as
the two related questions: the source of funds for
financing industrial development and the rate at
which industrialization can be effected. The first
of these we answered by showing how the govern-
ment was able to divert the earnings of agricul-
ture, light industry, and the private sector gener-
ally, into heavy industry, mining, electrification,
transport, etc. By 1927-28 the socialized sector
was accumulating fixed capital at the rate of five
billion rubles a year, or one fifth of the national
income. This rate of accumulation started bolder
schemes.

. During those years we heard much about in-
dustrialization, but saw very little evidence of it.
The country had not changed its appearance
since the war the same sleepy countryside,
dilapidated buildings, locomotives that would
not pull, roads a morass of mud, and crowds and
crowds of unkempt people. They jammed the
railway stations with their packs, always going
somewhere. They bulged the third-class car-

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A BACKWARD COUNTRY

riages. They stood around, just looking patient
and foolish, for they had nothing to do. Life was
comparatively normal then. The famine was
past, the epidemics were over, and food was
cheap. But there were ten million persons of
working age in the villages with nothing to do.
Here was Russia's old population problem pic-
tured in any street, in any village. Then came
the change.

THE FIVE-TEAK PLAN

The Gosplan was ordered in 1927 to begin
preparation of a Five-Year Plan of development,
as an introduction to the general plan for build-
ing a socialist society in Russia. For two years
alternative drafts of plans were submitted and
criticized and threshed out in economic organiza-
tions, in trade unions, in Soviets, in factories, and
party meetings. The first plan estimated the
increase of production in heavy industry for the
five years at 77 per cent. It was rejected as too
low. The second one estimated the increase at
108 per cent. It likewise was considered too low.
These two trial Five-Year Plans were worked out
on a f flattening curve 5 that is, a relatively
higher rate of expansion for the first years when
the accumulations of the restoration period
would be expended, and then a decline m the

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PAN-SOVIETISM

rate of yearly increase to 6 per cent, which is
about the American average. Even at the rate
of 10 per cent increase a year, it was estimated
that Soviet Russia could reach the American
level of production and technical skill only after
thirty-five years, and could overtake America
only after seventy years. The tempo eventually
set for increased production in heavy industry
was 163 per cent in five years, and that rate has
been chronically modified upward.

The Five-Year Plan was finally adopted by
the party in April, 1929, and approved by the
Congress of Soviets the following month, making
the first comprehensive survey of the potential
resources of the Eurasian continent. It is an
encyclopedia of national economy in three vol-
umes, which embodies the amazing proposition
that backward Russia shall overtake and outstrip
the most advanced capitalist countries within an
historical period (just how long that is no one
knows).

The Five-Year Plan was submitted with two
variants: 1. The TniniTmrm 3 or assured, variant,
allowing for the possibility of bad crops, no ex-
tension of foreign credit or investment, and no
great improvement in technique. 2. The maxi-
mum variant envisaged the desired reverse of all
these. The spread between the TrnniTnimn and

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A BACKWARD COUNTRY

maximum variants was about twenty per cent
for the five years. The plan was adopted in a
wild burst of shirokaya natura at the maximum
variant, and has since been so revised upward
that the original plan cannot be found beneath
the superimposed accelerations.

Among the startling proposals are doubling of
the national income in five years, investment of
66 billion rubles, and lowering production costs
and raising the standard of living at rates never
before attained by any country. In fact, all the
desirable changes are mapped out for realization.
Construction, exploitation of Russia's fabulous
natural riches, new railroads and highways, new
empires in virgin territories, new cities, new
housing, new education, new health service, no
phase of life is left untouched.

Now, what is the propulsion behind all this
fever to finish the Five- Year Plan in four years?
No one knows but the men in the Kremlin. How-
ever, one guess is as good as another. The Com-
munists have always believed that the capitalist
states must in the nature of things attempt to
throttle the Soviet system. They believe that
economic blockade and eventual military attack
are postponed only until the bourgeois countries
are themselves stabilized. As a gradual indus-
trialization would give the outside world time to

177

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

close the ring around Russia, the only alternative
is speed so that the industrial plant and great
mechanized farms will enable the country to
stand a siege. This military aspect of the Five-
Year Plan must be kept in mind, along with
another motive, as announced by the Pravda,
August 29, 1929: 'The Five-Year Plan is an
important part of the offensive of the proletariat
of the world against capitalism; it is a plan tend-
ing to undermine capitalist stabilization; it is a
great plan of world revolution.'

In setting this terrific tempo the Communists
claim that certain advantages of their system
warrant a faster development than ever achieved
by any country, even Japan. For one thing, they
are in a position to take advantage of all the
lessons capitalist countries have learned through
generations of constant effort. They adopt only
the latest technique, without repeating the mis-
takes made elsewhere in developing that tech-
nique. They pay no rent for property . The strict
control of planned economy permits them to
force all the money of the country into work
necessary for production. The abolition of profit-
seeking competition reduces internal waste to a
minimum. The foreign trade monopoly prevents
suction of profits out of the country to be spent
elsewhere. Middlemen and other non-producers

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A BACKWARD COUNTRY

are eliminated. The financial plan redistributes
the national wealth, thus permitting the develop-
ment of backward regions from which will come
fresh riches. And lastly, the workers of Russia
have untapped energies and creative powers
called into play for the first time by the revolu-
tion. They are a young people, eager for civil-
ization.

We may call this Five-Year Plan the con-
summating nightmare of the Bolshevik regime,
forcing the reenserfment of the Russian people.
The Communists have never masked their inten-
tions. Building socialism involves something
akin to forced labor. Of course, we would not
tolerate such a system. But we have behind us
John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and a host of
other pathfinders of liberty. The Russians have
behind them the Veliki Tsar, and the obligation
to serve the state. That is one reason why Rus-
sia is psychologically prepared to e starve Jierself
great/

Now, we need not analyze the diz2y arith-
metic of the Five-Year Plan in order to get the
spirit of the thing. One plan begets another.
There is no end to the study, because of the
breathless changes. Ideas in Russia are vast like
the steppes. The grandiojse has particular appeal.
An illiterate peasant in a remote section once

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PAN-SOVIETISM

told me tliat he could not start at ten o'clock, but
at thirty o'clock the horses would be ready. He
did not know the hours of the clock, but he was
eager to bargain for a higher number. The "little
brothers* are like children with wonderful toys,
machinery that goes around. The Five- Year
Plan is based primarily on the transfer from
human and animal power to mechanical power,
from the wooden plough to the tractor, from the
sickle to the harvester-combines, from the human
carrier to the huge electric crane. Lenin was the
author of the premise that Soviet power plus
electrification equals socialism. The early elec-
trification schemes were properly labeled electro-
fiction. Soviet enthusiasts, however, assure us
that capitalism was the age of steam, whereas
socialism is the age of electricity. Be that as it
may, electric current is a cheap commodity in
Moscow.

Now, to get the spirit of this plan of economic
salvation we must see the human beings forced
to labor under its aegis. First, however, a few key
figures in the present astronomy of the shiroJcaya
naiura should be noted. Factory production in
1929-30 is quoted at double the 1913 figure in
quantity. The bumper crop was 87 million tons
of grain, one fifth larger than the year before,
despite the disorganization of the campaign for

180

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

collectives. The cotton crop was a million and a
quarter tons, which hits the American South. All
these are greatly in excess of the expectations for
the second year of the Five- Year Plan. There are
others less promising.

On this basis the plan for 1931 estimates the
national income for the coming year at 49 billion
rubles, a jump of 35 per cent over last year. Two
million more workers are expected to be em-
ployed in socialized economy. The industrial
program for the five years is expected to be four
fifths complete at the end of this year, the third
of the five. There is the usual estimate that the
productivity of labor shall increase by 35 per
cent, and the cost of construction be reduced by
12 per cent, desired changes which never come
up to expectations. Nearly 4 billion rubles are to
be poured into socialized agriculture. Some 6.5
billion rubles are to be spent for education,
health, and social purposes. And the whole plan
for the year transfers greatly increased authority
to the Commissariat of Finance. The slogan,
* planning discipline, 5 has moved onward to
6 financial discipline/ which reaches down into
the pocket of the individual.

The extraordinary feature of this industrializa-
tion fever is that when the figures are criticized as
fantastic, the Soviet officials promptly revise

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PAN-SOVIETISM

them upward and make them delirious. Now,
there is no way to check either the figures nor the
underlying data, any more than there is to in-
vestigate the forced labor of the lumber camps.
All that we can be sure of is what we see. We see
that life is moving at high speed in Russia, that
great power plants are being built, steel mills are
springing up, factories are turning out tractors
and combines, oil is flowing at a tremendous rate,
new railroads are tying up the industrial centers
with the sources of raw materials, unemployment
has disappeared, and the Russian land, which
today has one fifth of the total cultivated area of
the globe, is being tractorized and motorized, all
this as a prelude to an assault on the world
market by the Soviet system in which the cost"
of production cannot be exactly calculated, and
which is dedicated to the smashing of the eco-
nomic power of capitalist countries, including
America*

TRAINING PERSONNEL

The internal technical problems of the Five-
Year Plan are too vast for us to consider here.
The quality of Soviet products is, in general,
below our standards. The real barrier is the slow-
ness in training personnel to manage this in-
dustrial Juggernaut. But training, too, has been

182

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

caught in the momentum of the furious tempo.
During the war we had to fly eight or ten hours
double control before we were allowed to fly solo.
Recently a boy at Roosevelt Field flew an hour
with an instructor, and then hopped off alone.
The same acceleration of the rate of training can
be observed in Soviet Russia.

In regard to training we must remember that
industrialization in America was greatly aided by
the constant stream of immigrants, engineers,
skilled workmen, experienced farmers, stalwart
muscles and brains coming to our shores every
year whose education and training had been paid
for elsewhere. Moreover, they came mostly with-
out women, which fact was to our advantage in
the production-consumption ratio. One social
result has been that American women, inheriting
a tradition of scarcity from our frontier days,
enjoy a position of dominance which is still the
envy of European women and the dread of
European men.

The Russian problem is fundamentally differ-
ent. The country cannot absorb great armies of
skilled workmen from abroad; they must be
trained from the native raw material, the 'dark
people.' Of the total population over seven years
of age in 1897, the last pre-war census, 6.3 per
cent of the males and 87.5 per cent of the females

183

PAN-SOVIETISM

were illiterate. But little progress was made
under the autocracy, which, feared education.
The 1926 census shows the illiteracy reduced to
34.6 per cent of the males and 63.3 per cent of the
females, an average of 43.3 per cent illiteracy.
For the first time in history the majority of the
Russian people could read and write. In 1930,
illiteracy was reduced to 39 per cent. The plan
calls for utter liquidation of illiteracy by the end
of next year for all persons under forty-five years
of age.

The Soviets must train a huge civilian army to
operate the industrial machine being constructed.
The Russians have one characteristic which miti-
gates against industrial training, and that is ab-
horrence of routine. In science, for instance, the
Russian is capable of brilliant performance on a
special job, to which he is keyed up. But he lacks
the persistence necessary for a painstaking piece
of work extending over a long period. Again, we
can blame the climate.

As a race of talkers they are naturally long on
theory and short on practice. That comes from
the old habit of waiting months for the snow to
melt. The delightful character of Russian litera-
ture is the one who spins out noble thoughts
about the future accomplishment and then
allows trifles to prevent execution. You know

184

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

the type, Turgenev's Rodin, and the one who
was always planning for years to come to
America, but never could find his carpet slippers
at the right time. Now all is changed. Everyone
must be purposeful and make a career in Soviet-
skaya Vlast. If possible one must wear a leather
jacket, carry a portfolio, and always be in a rush.
Above all, the Soviet citizen must have a spe-
cialty. Even a foreigner on applying for a visa
must invent a specialty for himself; otherwise he
might be suspected of being artfully vague.

For training there is a widespread system of
technical education. The old idea of polytechnic
education has been abandoned, and is replaced
by the monotechnic schools, which work in con-
junction with trusts or factories specializing in
the practice of the subject taught. This close
relation between pure knowledge and application
of knowledge as the students progress permits
much more rapid training of experts. Of course,
the cultural background is thin, as the students
are supposed to get that from social work. For
industry there are 188 technical schools of uni-
versity rank, 663 technicians, of the rank of our
high schools, and 321 Rabfacs, or Workers' Fac-
ulties, designed for adult workers between eight-
een and thirty. Then there are multiple factory
schools, trade schools, and even technical schools

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PAN-SOVIETISM

for children. Besides, there are 68 agricultural
institutions of university rank, and 352 techni-
cians. In other branches, such as medicine,
pedagogy, art, etc., there are 126 universities. As
this large network is still inadequate, there has
recently been started a system of short training
courses where a worker can improve his rating
qualification and thereby increase his pay. In
these technical schools in 1930 there were almost
a million and a half students.

According to the Five-Year Plan these schools
must increase the engineers from 16,000 to
60,000, and the technicians and skilled practi-
tioners from 37,000 to 90,000. There also must
be 35,000 agricultural engineers and agronomists,
and 40,000 lesser experts in scientific farming. In
all branches of economy similar figures could be
mentioned. Since April 4, 1929, industrial enter-
prises must assign 3 per cent of their profits to
training their personnel. Half the students in the
higher institutes, and three fourths of those in
the day technicums, are on scholarship. Those
assigned to the higher technical institutes draw
wages on the average of 70 rubles a month, and
are given from 20 to 30 rubles a year for text-
books. The students, of course, are denied many
of the comforts of life in their huge dormitories.
But they do get paid while being trained. The

186

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

same applies to students in the new kolkhoz, or
collective farm, schools.

Previous to 1930 the bourgeois specialists were
treated with constant suspicion. No matter how
hard they worked for the government, their
children were, in general, denied admission to the
higher schools. In May, 1930, the government
ordered all bars removed for the children of
specialists. One reason, of course, was that the
so-called red specialists were increasing in num-
bers, and it was hard to distinguish their children
from those of the ex-bourgeois. In July the
specialists were admitted to the benefits of social
insurance, on the same basis as workers. The
same decree established a scale of bonuses for
engineers and technicians, such as 10 per cent of
the salary for those who remain with the same
institution for three years. The specialist (spets)
is the man of the hour in Russia.

In all this vast system of training experts there
is considerable confusion and cross-purpose.
Even when complete, the training is far from
adequate. Again, it is not a question of figures,
so much as of spirit. And certainly the sight of
people poring over technical books on the trams,
in the parks, and even in the theaters, indicates
a persistent quest for expert knowledge. The
lights of the night schools burn late in Russia,

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PAN-SOVIETISM

the midnight oil consumed by a nation educating
itself.

Another phase of the training program is the
technical aid contract, by which foreign experts
supervise construction, teach technique, or grant
the use of their patents in return for fixed salaries
or commissions. There are several thousand for-
eign engineers in Russia today. The payroll of
Americans alone is estimated at ten million dol-
lars a year. The plan for 1931 calls for the import
of 13,000 more technicians to speed up the work
of training personnel.

Invention, also, has an interesting place in the
Soviet scheme. Since the passing of the patent
right law in 1924 the number of applications for
patents has increased to 30,000 a year. Of these,
12 per cent have come from ordinary workmen.
The economic reward is generally only a few
hundred rubles, but the privileges of the inventor
are comparatively great. The Communists rely
on the native ingenuity of the Russian workmen
to fill, in time, the gap left by the perishing
intelligentsia.

WILL THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN SUCCEED?

The financial part of the Five-Year Plan seems
to be assured. The capital is there, the resources
are there, the human power is there, endowed

188

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

with creative talents which for centuries have
been smothered.

But the technical difficulties are enormous.
Even with the advantages described and the
tremendous expenditure on technical education,
the training of a people recently illiterate to
command and operate the delicately balanced
machinery of a huge industrial Juggernaut can-
not possibly proceed at the furious tempo set for
the economy as a whole*

The uneven execution of the plan makes it
difficult to judge the success of the whole. But
that does not weigh in the final issue. Russia is
being filled with the smoke of new chimneys,
life is being mechanized and transformed, the
countryside is changed from a sleepy expanse of
steppe into a stormy sea of commotion, the rattle
of the hammer and the drill is heard everywhere,
and the result is an industrial plant the im-
mensity of which really staggers the eye. Russia
is closing the gap of the centuries.

The ultimate human cost of the madness we
cannot begin to appraise. There is an increase of
neurasthenia which cannot be measured. The
economic interpretation of history lashes the
Russian people to a wheel which turns faster and
faster in the effort to overtake and outstrip
capitalist countries. And short of an economic

189

PAN-SOVIETISM

blockade or actual war, we may predict that the
wheel will go faster still until the equilibrium is
struck between the pace desired by the rulers
and the demonstrated capacity of the "little
brothers' for training. Meanwhile, a second
Five-Year Plan, 1933-37, has been prepared in
outline, a Fifteen-Year Plan is around the corner,
and a Fifty-Year Plan is not far in the
offing*

'FORCED' LABOR

With these cursory glimpses at the capital and
training aspects of the Five-Year Plan, let us
turn now to that which interests us most, the
conditions of labor. I should like to indicate
some of the changes I found last summer after
an absence of a year, and also those introduced
by new laws of the last few months.

Let us first visit the peasant. The cultivated
area of the globe in 1930 was about 650 million
hectares. Of this total one fifth was in the Soviet
Union, The great significance of the change
which had occurred in one year was that social-
ization of so much of agriculture has resulted in
an integration of the Soviet state. The majority
of the peasants are no longer a producing class
apart. They are absorbed into the state system;
they are on the road to become a rural prole-

190

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

tariat. From the Soviet point of view this means
final unification of the national economy.

We find, first, these enormous state farms,
* grain factories/ 142 last year, with a sown area
of 8.9 million hectares. They produced one
Tnillion tons of grain, mostly for export, and re-
placed the kulaks in supplying the marketable
surplus. With scientific farming their yield has
been raised from 45 to 70 poods per hectare.
Their 1600 harvester combines are to be increased
to 4000 this year. Labor on the state farms
observes trade-union rules, eight-hour day, vaca-
tions, etc.

Next, the collectives. There is the beginning
of a collective in the contractation. When the
majority of a village wish to make a contract to
deliver a certain portion of the crop to the gov-
ernment at a certain price, the rest are forced to
agree. Or it might begin with the cooperative use
of machinery. Or the strips might be eliminated
and means of production pooled, to form an Artel.
The entrance fee for each household is 2 to 10
per cent of the value of family property, or 10 per
cent of the person's wages. One half of the share
a member brings into the Artel goes into the
reserve fund. The other half remains his pro-
perty, which he receives back if he quits. All work
is done collectively, and is paid for from the

191

PAN-SOVIETISM

revenue according to three categories of skill,
1, 1.25, 1.50 rubles a day for labor. Strict account
is kept of the labor time, which means a compli-
cated system of bookkeeping. Current wages
can be drawn up to 50 per cent; the rest payable
after the harvest. The transfer to piece work
for labor on collective farms seems to be only a
question of time.

Administration of an Artel is by a committee
elected at the general meeting of members. There
is also a Control Commission. The Artel is the
lowest link. There might be several in one vil-
lage. But each Artel enters into a Kolkhoz, or
Collective, which is very large. The local Kolk-
hoz supplies the Artels with goods from the co-
operatives, with machinery, clean seed, fertilizer,
etc., and might have a branch bank to furnish
production credit. The local Kolkhoz enters a
rayon union of Kolkhozes, and so on up to
the Union of Unions of Kolkhozes in Mos-
cow.

These collectives in 1930 cultivated 38 million
hectares. In the grain regions they occupied 60
per cent of the land, and supplied the govern-
ment with 10 minion tons of grain. The larger
ones are becoming towns, with plans for play-
grounds, public dining-rooms, bakeries, laun-
dries, libraries, schools, clubs, creches, and

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A BACKWARD COUNTRY

kindergartens. The village soviet remains, how-
ever, as the organ of political authority.

Now what of the peasant himself? Ivan Ivano-
vich has not accepted the new order whole-
heartedly. The ground has simply moved out
from under his feet. He prefers the old days
when he did not plough till St. Nicholas Day,
and did not harvest until some other saint turned
up on the calendar. Moreover, he could loaf in
the winter and make samogon (moonshine). Now,
he must rise to the bell, troop into the mess-hall
for morning tea, rush out to work at the sound
of another bell. Nor does he go to his former
work. The tractor brigade moves past him in
column, a dozen, fifteen, or twenty monsters
hauling gang ploughs, and ploughing deep,
something Ivan always refused to do. This
spring 75,000 tractors are expected to be in
operation. For this tractor service the collective
pays the state 30 per cent of the harvest. Ivan
does not plough. He works in the orchard, with
the poultry, or with the live-stock and hay. He
does not like it much, because there is always
some one checking up on the amount of weeds
he pulls in an hour or the way he plants cabbage,
or there is some work-fiend of the shock brigade
who sets a pace no normal person cares to emu-
late. And he must not quit till the bell rings.

193

PAN-SOVIETISM

Besides all that there is no barrel of moonshine
standing by the door, from which he can scoop a
ladleful in passing. Ivan Ivanovich, called the
muzhik (little man), also the Jcrestiyanin (the man
of the cross), is losing his identity and becoming
a rural proletariat, with social insurance, and
other advantages of the ruling class. Economi-
cally, he is better or worse off, according to his
former particular status.

Around these collectives are great numbers of
discharged soldiers. Since last spring the govern-
ment has been shunting the entire discharge from
the army into the collectives, to build roads for
the tractor columns, bridges, and to man the
machine repair shops which now dot the map.
There are also children of kulaks whose parents
are away in the northern woods or out in the
irrigation projects of Turkestan. These children
are, on the whole, treated kindly. The principal
crime of the kulaks was desire for money, which
is against socialist sharing. So far as I could
learn last summer, the dispossessed kulaks get
trade-union wages for their labor, wherever it is,
but they are not allowed to leave. I was told
they are not under military guard. But there is
no chance for them to escape, because every
citizen needs papers and credentials. There
would be no place for them to escape to. After

194

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

one year at labor under detention, the local trade
union votes by majority whether or not par-
ticular kulaks will be admitted to the ranks. If
so voted, the kulak becomes a citizen again, and
can move where he likes.

Now for labor in industry. The revolution
established a universal eight-hour day for manual
and a six-hour day for brain labor, with a con-
tinuous rest of 42 hours each week* Labor is
regulated by the collective agreements between
the trade unions and the employers* Vacations
of two weeks or a month are enforced. Overtime
is paid at double the rate. And social insurance,
paid by the employer, guarantees medical atten-
tion within the limits of the equipment. The
privileges of the proletariat aristocracy are too
numerous to mention, making a large amount
of social wages.

There are several features of the labor situation
to note. First, this tremendous construction all
over the country has not only absorbed the
surplus population, but has produced an acute
shortage of both skilled and unskilled labor. In
1930, 1.5 million were added to the payroll of
hired labor, making nearly 14 million in all,
which is expected to reach 16 million in 1931.
This leaves out of account the selected army
assigned to take technical training.

195

PAN-SOVIETISM

The Five-Year Plan introduced the so-called
socialist competition, as distinct from the profit-
seeking competition of capitalism. This socialist
competition is whipped up by various means,
rewards to the factory which produces more than
the next one, or bonuses for getting a piece of
work done within a certain time. It is supposed
to reduce laziness at the bench and to make the
workers keen to discover deficiencies in operation.

One third of the workers in state industry are
now on the seven-hour day. The transfer is
supposed to be complete by next year. Since
October, 1929, Soviet Russia has operated on an
unbroken week. Sunday is abolished. Factories,
stores, government offices are open and running
on Sunday as on any other day. The idea is to
keep the machinery turning and increase the
number of shifts. By abolishing other religious
holidays the workdays of the year have increased
from 300 to 360. This alone increased production
by 20 per cent, and the employment by one
sixth. It also eases the strain on the stores, as it
does away with the Saturday rush.

At the same time there was decreed the five-
day week that is, four days of work followed
by one day of rest. In Moscow now a Russian
hands you his card on which he has his rest day
inscribed, the fifth, the tenth, the fifteenth of the

196

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

month, or the second, the seventh, the twelfth,
etc. Rest days within a family are different, gen-
erally, so family outings are no more. There are
72 working weeks in the year, and only five holi-
days. Labor is forbidden on Lenin Day, January
22; International Labor Day, May 1 and 2; and
the birthday of the revolution, November 7
and 8. The odd day of leap year is set aside as
Industrialization Day.

For years the workers through their trade
unions and committees in factories were dictating
to the managers, who were often ex-bourgeois.
One result was inefficiency, because these workers
would frequently go into a huddle to decide what
Marx or Lenin would have done in the case
before them. Also there was prevalence of the
progul, absence from work, and Blue Mondays.
Then came the institution known as the red
manager, a worker risen from the ranks, and the
bourgeois manager became only the technical
specialist. Metaphorically, the whip began to
crack. The slogan was: *We are being under-
mined by the lack of labor discipline. 5

The first order in establishing labor discipline
was that for unique command in industry,
September, 1929. Workers' interference with the
management was forbidden, no matter what
their position was in the party or trade union.

197

PAN-SOVIETISM

The director's orders had to be carried out with-
out question. All this time, of course, there had
been blackboards in the factories, for posting the
names of workers who misbehaved. The 'wall
newspapers' published detailed accounts of mis-
demeanors* It now became a dishonor to be
posted.

Much of Russian industry is on piece work.
The products were of uneven quality, and some
were very poor. In November, 1929, it was
decreed that persons guilty of defective produc-
tion through carelessness were subject to depriva-
tion of liberty for five years and hard labor for
one. For not keeping up to standard they were
liable to two years in prison. And in August,
1930, there was established a State Inspection
Department of the Commissariat of Domestic
Trade, the function of which is to check and
trace back to their sources all products below
par in quality.

Also in the last few months a whole series of
decrees have been issued to arrest the huge labor
turnover, in some places as high as 100 per cent,
caused by the labor shortage. The workers find-
ing the tide had turned, that they were in big
demand, began to shift from factory to factory,
out to the collectives and back. In September,
1930, the government ordered the labor ex-

198

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

changes to strike from their lists all persons who
had left their jobs at their own inclination and to
counteract the enticement of workers from one
institution to another. Above all, the labor ex-
changes were ordered to register every one who
refused a job, if it could be proved that he was
drawing some kind of unemployment insurance*
The monetary payments for unemployment were
suspended entirely, October 9.

Already last July the labor exchanges began
the formation of the so-called reserve squads,
which were shunted from factory to factory for
emergency tasks. The idea of the shock bri-
gades, or pace-makers, was carried further in
September by increasing the reward to the best
workers for the Five-Year Plan, in the form of
excursions around the Union to the interesting
new industrial centers, sojourns at the health
resorts in the Crimea and the Caucasus, special
facilities for study at home and abroad, includ-
ing scholarships, and even such features as gifts
of bicycles. So bicycle riders become another
class apart, the heroes of production.

Of particular interest was the decision of the
Central Committee of the party, October 20,
1930, that the various Commissariats of Labor, in
conjunction with the trade unions, have the right
to remove specialists and skilled workers from

199

PAN-SOVIETISM

one district to another, and from the less im-
portant industries to the more important, such
as coal mining, iron foundries, transport, and
large-scale construction. The privileges granted
to the shock brigades were increased, and extra
holidays promised for uninterrupted work.

The transport situation has been especially
serious. The enormous movement of goods in
1930 demanded loading of freight cars at the rate
of some 60,000 a day. The actual average was
only 47,000 a day. Besides, the passenger traffic
swelled beyond all proportion with the rushing
about of officials on commanderovka, and of
migrating workmen. The new discipline hit the
transport system by the orders of November 3 in
the definition of what is called ' service offense/
Any infringement of regulations, any non-
fulfillment of orders, becomes a * service offense/
The penalties range from reprimand through
three months arrest on half -pay up to dismissal
with prohibition of working anywhere else.

In September, orders were issued to recruit
60,000 boys for automobile-transport training
before April, 1931. To supplement the loading
gangs reserve squads were formed under * skilled'
leaders, to move the freight which can be handled
by inexperienced labor. And in January, 1931,
all institutions were directed to list all their

200

A BACKWARD COUNTRY

employees who formerly worked in the transport
services. These employees are given five days
in which to report to the labor exchange for re-
assignment to transport work somewhere in the
Soviet Union. This mobilization is now being
extended to include farm experts, and nearly
every other type of skilled labor of which the
state has pressing need.

All these laws indicate a return to the militari-
zation of labor of 1919. But we must distinguish
between forced labor, and ' planning, financial,
and labor discipline/ By following through the
decrees and party decisions we find laws to en-
force previous laws, then more laws to enforce
these, indicating the difficulties of holding labor
in the harness. But labor is paid and the in-
dustrial army is clothed and fed. Moreover,
these people are constantly assured that the fac-
tories are theirs, the collective farms are theirs,
the railroads are theirs. They own the country,
but whether they like it or not, they must turn
it into a paradise for the next generation.

What makes application of embargoes against
Soviet * convict' goods somewhat futile, unless
indiscriminate, is that all of the 160 million
people of the Soviet Union, party and non-party
alike, are under a regime of forced labor, work-
ing in places not always of their own choosing,

201

PAN-SOVIETISM

and at a tempo only the enthusiasts and shock
brigades find agreeable. This gives the Soviet
Union a military complexion, a state preparing
for economic war. And since November 21, 1929,
the citizens who choose to desert Soviet service
abroad, forsaking the cause of socialism to enjoy
bourgeois life, are pronounced traitors, to be
shot at the frontier should they attempt to
return.

CHAPTER IX

The Human Side

THE system we have described is the instrument
to attain the political and economic ends in view,
and to transform society. That is the revolution.
We now turn to the human raw material in the
laboratory of experiment. Here we find even
more stupendous changes than those in the
political and economic fields. We find the deifi-
cation of the machine, the utilitarian concept of
value, the violent break with centuries of habit,
and the tremendous acceleration of the rhythm
of life, of doing, thinking, talking, and eating.
The * little brothers' even rest faster than of old.
The efforts to economize the Slavic soul, to
establish militant materialism, and to create a
mass impersonality known as collective man,
have profoundly changed the people themselves.
That is the revolution within the revolution.

Who are the Russian people today? The old
upper classes have passed from the picture.
Many were snuffed out by the civil war and the
terror; many more escaped to the destitution of
exile abroad in an overpopulated world. Those
who remained have starved in the squalor of the

203

PAN-SOVIETISM

cellars of Russian cities. They are now very
few.

Gone, too, are most of the old intelligentsia.
The parasite class paid the penalty for the sins of
their fathers. But the intelligentsia of Russia was
one of the most enlightened in the world. Among
them were many revolutionists, who wanted
heart and soul to bring the light of freedom to the
dark steppes of Russia. But they were idealists.
They believed in compromise. They could see
two sides to a question. They had scruples. In
the course of time they, too, have fallen in the
class struggle. Their fate is the real tragedy of
the revolution. Some work faithfully for the
Sovietskaya Vlast. But they never can over-
come their class origin.

Then, there are the many unclassified ele-
ments who have consciously or unconsciously
been obstructions to the buildings of Socialism.
Slowly, but relentlessly, all these are being
'liquidated/ Liquidation of potential opposition
has been the creed of the rulers of Russia. From
such scenes the foreigner, in emotional self-
protection, must hurry away. Like the tragedy
of King Lear, the lingering starvation of the
disenfranchised is too harrowing to the Anglo-
Saxon mind.

204

THE HUMAN SIDE

HEALTH FACILITIES

Again, we must remember the class sover-
eignty of the workers' state. The whole set-up is
designed to make it difficult for potential enemies
of that class to exist. But for the sovereign class
the state spares no expense* The health of the
worker is a primary concern of the government.
And the record here is excellent. Before the war
there were 14,000 doctors; there are now 92,193,
including some 10,000 dentists. Last year there
were very close to 6000 hospitals, with nearly
300,000 beds, almost double the amount per
capita of the tsarist days. A particular institu-
tion is the ambulatoria, or dispensary, of which
there are over 12,000 in towns and villages.
Especial attention is paid to workers 5 children
and maternity facilities, which now number al-
most 10,000 institutions. There are 250 roving
medical detachments serving remote sections.
(I, myself, have met Soviet doctors north of the
Arctic Circle, 120 versts from the railroad, treat-
ing the Lapps and Samoyeds.) In addition there
are 64 bacteriological institutes, 787 laboratories,
88 Pasteur stations, and specialized medical
dep6ts too numerous to mention. '

The point to all these figures is that there is an
enormous health service in Soviet Russia, but
it serves the proletariat, poorer peasants, and

205

PAN-SOVIETISM

socialized sector in general. In November, 1927,
an American girl, a revolutionist, died in Mos-
cow. The entire American colony turned out to
march behind her coffin, draped in red. During
the march to the crematory a worker fell into
step with me, and asked: 'Ona nasha?' She
was ours? When I told him she was, he joined
the procession. That line between *ours' and
'not ours' runs through all of Russian life.

For the worker medical attendance is free at
any of the numerous clinics. If incapacitated he
receives 100 per cent of his regular wage through
the social insurance. If he becomes a permanent
invalid as a result of labor, he receives two thirds
of his wage. Old-age pensions amount to one
half of the wage. Unemployment doles include
cash, distribution of food, free medical service,
and free housing. These have ceased since last
October because of the labor shortage. Another
feature is that women are excused from work on
full pay for eight weeks before and eight after
childbirth in manual labor, and for six weeks in
clerical work.

There is a general shortage of medical supplies,
as there is of soap, and other articles of comfort
which the state has not manufactured in suffi-
cient quantities. But all workers and employees,
depending on their occupation, have two weeks 5

206

THE HUMAN SIDE

or a month's vacation every year, for which
most of them flock to the rest homes, sanitoria,
kurorts (health resorts), which literally dot the
Caucasus and the Crimea. Under the new
system vacations are distributed throughout the
year. Even for the foreigner going to Crimea is
an exhilaration. He leaves Moscow, cold and
gray, and possibly wet. Some thirty hours later,
he bursts into the glorious dry sunshine of the
Crimea, a fairyland of rocky shores, open sea,
with the cypress and the pine everywhere, and
miles and miles of vineyards. In this land of
Beulah the old nobility built their summer pal-
aces. Every one of the palaces is now a rest home
for the workers, peasants, and employees. The
Livadia, the tsar's own palace, is reserved for
peasants. Ivan Ivanovich dreamt he dwelt in
marble halls, and there he is stroking his beard.
While on vacation every one seems to forget the
wear and tear of the class struggle. Moscow is
remote. There is much levity. Spirits are high.
There is also hospitality, for I, though classed
as a bourgeois, was admitted to the kurort of the
Tsekubu (House of the Learned), on the plea that
I was ill and needed sunshine. So I enjoyed but-
ter and milk, white bread, and other items of the
social wages reserved for the Soviet professors.
And the industrial army is fed and clothed, not
207

PAN-SOVIETISM

well, but sufficiently. They are the producers in
a producers' society. In cities such as Moscow
there is strict rationing and scarcity for the gen-
eral population. Food is shunted out to the new
industrial centers. The meals are not of high
quality, and they, are likely to be monotonous
meat three times a week, and kasha (a cereal) in
abundance every meal. In such centers hot
lunches are provided for school-children. A new
institution is the socialized restaurant. There are
how 1281 such restaurants, and almost 4000
buffets, around Moscow alone, supplying 50
per cent of the workers and their families with
hot meals. The idea of this communal feeding is
to do away with the waste of individual cooking.
Meal tickets are sold in advance. The service is
to be trebled this year. At the end of five years
it is expected that the greater part of the in-
dustrial army will be put on communal feeding.
Meanwhile, although the food scarcity has been
somewhat relieved this last autumn, the rest of
the population exists, or fails to exist, on what
is left after the government fulfills the export
program.

HOUSING

The intense housing shortage has been a result
of the deterioration and lack of building during

208

THE HUMAN SIDE

the war and the urbanization process of in-
dustrialization. Leningrad, the magnificent city,
graced by miles of government offices and spa-
cious residences, the show place of imperial
splendor, was considered by tte new rulers as too
exposed to attack. After the German guns were
silenced at the price of the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk in 1918, the capital was shifted to Mos-
cow, the semi-Oriental city of narrow sidewalks.
Into this space were jammed hundreds of gov-
ernmental institutions large and small. The
population of Moscow jumped half a million
within a few months.

To meet the problem the government fixed a
sanitary rmnJTTmTn of living floor space at 86
square feet per person. In practice this legal
minimum fell to 43 square feet, or one half the
amount actually required for health during the
long winter when Russian windows are sealed.
Meanwhile, the lure of the capital continued to
attract people from all over Russia at the rate of
100,000 a year. The floor space per person de-
creased even more. Moreover, old buildings be-
gan to fall apart. The government then began
the policy of long lease to private persons and,
cooperatives, who would make over apartments,
with the privilege of sub-leasing them at fabulous
rents. At the fixed time the property reverts to

209

PAN-SOVIETISM

the government. In such remodeled houses 10
per cent of the space had to be reserved for
workers. Rent charges were weighted, so that
the worker paid little or nothing, and the so-
called responsible tenant, especially if he were a
foreigner, paid as high as $200 for two or three
rooms with bath. Once a worker got into a room
it was almost impossible to dislodge him.

A feature of Russian life is the House Com-
mittee, or Dom Com. The Dom Com represents
economic and political power. If a tenant wants
to rent a piano, to change his type of electric
light, or to burn coal instead of wood, the Dom
Com forthwith forbids the outrage. Life in these
apartment warrens is a series of dramatic mo-
ments.

A typical establishment near us was the former
town house of the Countess Obolenskaya. The
house itself has a history of one hundred and
fifty years, and was frequented by Pushkin and
other shining lights of the past. The hall with its
marble columns was divided into four box-like
cubicles, reaching about eight feet toward the
lofty ceiling. From the cubicles stovepipes led
off in all directions. In each cubby-hole dwelt a
family. Fourteen other families were bunched
around the main floor, with furniture as parti-
tions. In the attic lived the old Obolenskaya

210

THE HUMAN SIDE

servants, who refused to be dislodged, and a
number of old women who were kept from starva-
tion by the people below. Who inhabited the
cellar no one seemed to know.

The tenants included an engineer, a lawyer,
two journalists, two factory workers, and several
Soviet employees. Nearly all had children. This
group was torn asunder by internal politics. For
instance, a bit of space became free. The en-
gineer wanted it; so did the lawyer. The engin-
eer then presented the child of one of the factory
workers with a tricycle, as a bribe to get support
in the House Committee. The matter was set-
tled in court by giving the space to an additional
tenant from the outside. There were frequent
squabbles about who owned the rubber plant or
who should feed the house cat. Often the families
were not on speaking terms for months, over the
question of who should clean the corridor. As
electric current was on a common meter, the
monthly light bill generally started a riot, every
family accusing the others of staying up nights.
The real battlefield, however, was the kitchen.
Often ten primuses (the gasoline torch stoves on
which Moscow cooks) were roaring at one time,
with a family or two doing the weekly wash in
the corners. Every housewife had her inches of
domain staked off, and it was a trying moment

PAN-SOVIETISM

for any imperialist who planted a pot on any but
her own domain. As wood was expensive, the
big stove was heated only on bake days, when
each family had to furnish its quota of fuel and
argument. The hottest spot on the stove was
always captured by storm.

Not all of Moscow has lived this way. Com-
parative abundance and starvation have existed
side by side, as before the revolution. As we were
foreigners, and had our own kitchen, we kept a
fire in the stove. This was soon discovered by
our neighbors. Our kitchen became the political
center of the courtyard, the place where the
daughters of the revolution cooked their soup.
They also made off with the hot water. They
were always friendly and grateful. But on soup
days our own meals were in a state of indefinite
suspension because of the overpopulation in the
kitchen.

As soon as it was able, the government began
building apartment houses for workers, and they,
at least, are better housed today. The interesting
thing is that the old jumble of the common
kitchen, which we thought would pass with in-
creased construction, is carried over into the
new houses. The family apartments are modern
rooms, opening off corridors. Cooking must be
done in the common kitchen, and feeding in the

THE HUMAN SIDE

common dining-room. And with the great in-
crease of socialized restaurants home cooking is
beginning to disappear entirely for industrial
workers.

An interesting development is the new type of
socialized city, springing up in the shadow of the
great industrial plants of the Urals and elsewhere.
Sections of these cities are to be completely
socialized, and the rest of the transitional type.
Children will be reared and supported by the
community itself in kindergartens, schools and
high schools. Parents are encouraged to visit the
children, but not to interfere with the state
training. The immense housing communes will
have clubs, gymnasiums, libraries, etc. Food
will be cooked and distributed from a single
communal kitchen, just another necessary com-
modity like the water supply. Other such cities
are under way for agricultural centers, collecti-
vizing life, and sinking the individual in the
impersonal mass man. Even though privacy in
rooms is assured to individuals, under such con-
ditions the old life of the family is replaced by
life of the herd.

EDUCATION

In education, aside from the technical training
already described, there has likewise been a sud-

213

PAN-SOVIETISM

den expansion. Before the war about 7 million,
or 50 per cent of the children, attended school.
In 1930 there were 11.8 million children in ele-
mentary schools, 92 per cent of the eligible chil-
dren of school age. Since October 1, 1930, there
has been compulsory education for all children
between 8 and 11, and for those between 11 and
15 who have not been to primary schools. The
estimates call for 14 million pupils in elementary
schools during this year. But like most Soviet
plans, this project is meeting with obstacles*
There is a need for school buildings. There are
300,000 primary teachers, but that is not enough.
They cannot be trained fast enough for the plan.
Since October 1 teachers are given special privi-
leges for going to the country, free transport and
living accommodations.

The elementary grade is four years. Then
comes the second grade of five years. During the
latter two years of the second grade the students
must select their vocations, after which they pass
into the high schools specializing in the subject
chosen. This vocational work is coordinated for
the whole Union.

An interesting development is the universal
training for the children of each nationality in
their own language. The policy of the tsarist
autocracy was Russification, the suppression of

THE HUMAN SIDE

native languages and cultures. Even nationali-
ties which before the war did not have a written
language now have schools in their own tongue.
Today there are schools in 35 different languages
in the Soviet Union. The tremendous importance
of this we shall see when we consider Soviet ex-
pansion to the East through the policy of cultural
autonomy within federation.

The Red Army is likewise a training school.
In the past 50 per cent of the recruits were illiter-
ate. After two years of service all but 1 per cent
can read and write.

Throughout this vast system of mass education
move the social workers and the c school shifters/
especially the Komsomols, who teach political
grammar. The fundamentals of Marx and Lenin
replace religion. The quality of the teaching is
uneven according to our standards. That has
been because of lack of money. However, the
expenditure in elementary education has risen
from 10 rubles per pupil before the war, to 52
rubles in 1930, with 68 rubles per pupil scheduled
for this year. Legally, there is no discrimination
against children of other classes. But in the
absence of adequate equipment preference is
given to children of the proletariat and poor
peasants.

All this education is dedicated to industrializa-
215

PAN-SOVIETISM

tion, and to the development of * group conscious-
ness/ Atheism is not taught, but the teaching of
Marxism accomplishes the same end. Above all
the children are taught through 'pupil auton-
omy' to decide matters for themselves, as they
do, for instance, in the ( Diary of a Communist
Schoolboy/ And their ideal of Soviet citizenship
is service. Soviet citizenship is not without
meaning. A young taxi-driver once took me for
a wild ride over the cobblestones. When I called
out to slow down, he took his hands off the wheel
entirely and grinned like an ape. He loved speed.
Whereupon I called him a durak that is, a fool.
Upon arriving at my destination I found the
place closed and asked him to take me home. He
refused, and said: *I am a citizen of Sovietskaya
Vlast, and no foreigner is going to call me a fool/
The progress in the liquidation of illiteracy has
widened the reading public. The yearly circula-
tion of newspapers before the war was 2.5 mil-
lion; it is now 22 million. There has been such
an avalanche of books and pamphlets that the
supply of paper runs out periodically. When that
happens, the students of Soviet affairs rejoice,
hoping it will be less difficult to keep up with the
trends. But the printers always seem to get the
paper from somewhere. In 1930 they printed on
a quarter of a million tons of paper.

216

THE HUMAN SIDE

Other means for the spread of culture are the
thousands of clubs and reading-rooms. Museums
exist by the score in every big city. Especially
interesting is the use of the radio, of which there
are 2.6 million receiving sets. Radio in Soviet
Russia is distinguished from that of other coun-
tries by its collective use, its strictly educational
character, the complete absence of advertising,
and the centralized control of programs.

The loud-speaker is almost everywhere, in the
clubs, in the factories, the public squares of the
cities, and at the village pump. To stimulate the
use of radio sets the * Radio Shifter/ an auto-
mobile equipped with a loud-speaker, moves
from village to village as a demonstrator. After
a short concert the shifter tunes in with some
station instructing peasants how to plough scien-
tifically, how to mulch the soil for drought, how
to increase the yield, etc. Then he might turn on
another station broadcasting what every mother
should know. Regular courses are conducted by
radio, as here, in world affairs, health, and natu-
ral sciences. But, besides, the Soviets broadcast
new laws, legal advice, and party decisions. A
special feature is the radio news, which is devoted
to different groups at different hours, one for
soldiers, one for peasants, one for children, etc.
The workers hear the news during the noon rest.

PAN-SOVIETISM

Under the system of state-controlled economy
there is naturally no need for radio advertising,
which is at least one advantage to the score of
socialism. But it has more than educational
value. It breaks through the static of the cen-
turies- It brings the music and cheer of the out-
side world, even from Berlin, to the far reaches of
the melancholy steppe. Whatever scientists may
say about the origin of the radio, to Ivan Ivano-
vich it is the voice of the angels. He considers it
a direct gift from the revolution. For forming the
common mind the radio is the instrument in
excelsis of Soviet statecraft. And recently the
government from its powerful stations has begun
to broadcast to the world in German, French,
English, and Swedish. This is radioizing Com-
munism.

ABT

In promoting this Soviet culture a foremost
place is given to art. Here, too, the dominating
force is industrialization and a general war against
the old forms. Our own magazines have been full
of articles about the Moscow theaters. Last year
a new organization called ' October 5 was formed,
and is now perhaps the largest art association. It
sets forth the utilitarian ideals of the proletarian
artist on two planes : first to promote ideological

218

THE HUMAN SIDE

propaganda through pictures, posters, sculpture,
cinema, and drama; second, to formulate collec-
tive life through, architecture, mass festivals, and
in the artistic production of material things,
clothes, furniture, household utensils, etc. This
is supposed to lead away from representative art
of individuals to synthetic art of the masses. In
architecture, the cultural parks and the new
communal institutions, the idea is to get away
from bourgeois individualism, and return to the
community expression, such as that which built
the Gothic cathedrals. These artists declare that
the new industrial technique forces art to keep
pace if it is to be a social utility.

By applying that formula to the theater we
understand the new economic plays, such as
*0il/ or 'Lead and Steel.' The purpose behind
all this industrial drama is to drive home the
economic problems of the country, why food
must be exported, why workers must be shunted
out to the Urals, or what elements of the popula-
tion prevent fulfillment of the plan. The stage
setting is always mechanical, pipes, engines, and
derricks. In an agricultural play a tractor is sure
to come rolling on. This is mass education. It
makes industrialization a breathless, heroic
drama. And at the end of such a performance a
member of the shock brigade for theater work

219

PAN-SOVIETISM

steps out to the footlights, and says, f Comrades,
this is only a play, but you can make it a reality.
Won't it be wonderful? *

In music the formula is expressed in the sym-
phonies of industrial noises, the imitation of the
machines, the song of the hammers and the
whirring of belts. The factory sirens of a district
are harmonized, and directed by a leader waving
flags from the top of the tallest building, to pro-
duce the siren symphony, the theme song of
industrialization.

In other forms of art the same change is taking
place. Bustling operas replace the classical types.
Ballets such as the Red Poppy, depicting Soviet
virtue in contrast to bourgeois vice in China, dis-
place the fairy tales.

In literature the old Russian reflective type has
given way entirely to the man of action, such as
Gleb in Gladkov's novel "Cement/ Gleb per-
sonifies the revolution. After discharge from the
Red Army he returns to his village and runs
amuck, and by example of tireless work and con-
stant urging of his less enthusiastic neighbors, by
cajoling and whipping them together, finally gets
the old factory started again. In Soviet novels
the hero is the man or woman who speeds up
production.

Soviet art in general has reflected the course of
220

THE HUMAN SIDE

the revolution. The earlier plays and novels
depicted the civil war, and the conquest of the
country by the proletariat. Then followed the
era of the NEP, the novels and plays built around
socialization and the war on privateers. For a
time world revolution was a popular theme. The
present era is given over to the technical pro-
blems of industrialization, the glorification of the
machine, and the sacrifice all good citizens are
willing to make so that Soviet Russia will be
great among the powers of the earth.

THE REVOLUTIONARY LINGO

In all this proletarian culture the language is
changing. This may prove to be one of the most
significant results. Historians are fond of telling
us that great social change brings great linguistic
change. New and tremendous ideas cannot be
expressed in languages which have stopped grow-
ing. In the humanly heated crucible of trans-
formation the dross of the centuries rises to the
scoop. And along with the system of oppression
the terminology of oppression is scooped into the
discard.

The Crusades, to cite a classic example, not
only hastened the conversion of European society
from agricultural feudalism into the commercial-
ism of the rising towns, but spread through

221

PAN-SOVIETISM

Aryan dialects the wisdom of the East, expressed
in terms of trade, science, architecture, and
military tactics. Likewise, the French termi-
nology of social revolution shot like a tongue of
fire through the languages of Europe.

With such precedents in mind we may well
wonder how penetrating will be the revolution-
idiom now evolving in Soviet Russia. This party
parlance was at first a flash-tongue, peculiar to
revolt. It is now coextensive with the revolution,
the Esperanto of socialism. Russian slogans of
1917 reappeared in Canton in 1927, the same
terms for acquiring power, the same names for
institutions. A Russian who left the country
before the revolution would be lost in the whirl of
change. His pre-1917 language, formulated by
Pushkin and embellished by Tolstoi, would seem
archaic. He would need a thesaurus of the
revolution-lingo.

Several factors account for the swiftness of
language change these thirteen years. The pro-
iessional revolutionists themselves had picked
up in foreign exile an underworld jargon, flavored
with students' slang, to which they added the
Marxist vocabulary of politico-economico-social
terms of class war. Their party parlance sounded
strange, but, defining exactly the popular de-
mands, was quickly adopted as word artillery

222

THE HUMAN SIDE

with which to demolish the landlord system.
About the same time the enormous mass of
demobilized soldiers took into civilian speech
not only military terms, but the military custom
of abbreviating. Officials from their posts of
party and government control spread downward
an office terminology, which the growth of paper
work served to perpetuate and extend. Added to
these expediting factors was the craze of the
revolution innovation.

But current speech obeys only one law, that
of popular fancy. The leaders merely coined the
catchwords which expressed the public mind.
One cannot say there was a conscious effort to
invent a new language. The new ideas simply
overflowed the old dikes. The alphabet was de-
leted by decree of unnecessary symbols. The
method was to simplify the old and create the
new. Soon the snowball started, and it is still
rolling, coined words, battle-cries of class com-
bat, abbreviations, amalgamated words, 'ation*
words of foreign tongues, and words that never
had a language before.

Periodically there appears a dictionary of ab-
breviations. But it is always several months out
of date* A newly formed socialist institution
takes on a name which is either an amalgamation
of the first syllables of the full title of four or five

223

PAN-SOVIETISM

words or it becomes known by the initials of such
words. In the first case one has some hope of de-
ciphering the title. But when only initials are
given, the student is baffled.

The language is losing much of its old poetic
overtone. It is becoming not only economic and
utilitarian, but also sharper and rougher. The
Komsomols, with their extreme aversion for the
language of the intelligentsia, are active agents
in spreading the blatnoi musika, or underworld
music, of the homeless children. This jargon of
the depths has been popularized, but is often as
unintelligible to government officials as to the
peasants. The Komsomols profess a cult for the
strong befitting athletes who are being trained to
conquer. Naturally, innuendo is a bourgeois art
not to be tolerated by strong young people of the
new order. A spade must be called a big strong
shovel to demonstrate the speaker's glorious
freedom from the shackles of old proprieties.

This coarsening tendency is frowned upon by
the elders of the party and government. And yet
the new Rabelaisian idiom, racy of the depths, is
what is heard in the street. The government does
encourage the new strain of ribaldry which re-
lieves the seriousness of the march to socialism.
A foreigner can spend mirthful days just wander-
ing about listening to the latest jokes on the

224

THE HUMAN SIDE

Soviet regime. For instance, the Communist
Party seeks as recruits the rabochi of stanJca
that is, the worker from the machine and the
Jcrestianin ot sokhi the peasant from the
plough to make the rock-bottom proletariat
without the slightest bourgeois taint. And thus
the Komsomols sing: * Give me, please for a ruble
fifty, a father from the machine, a mother from
the plough.'

In the land of Peoples this and Peoples that it
follows that words which emphasize old class
distinctions are forbidden. In address, Gospodin
(Mister) and Barin (Master) are replaced by
plain Grazhdanin, which is citizen. Tovarishch,
once applied indiscriminately, is now restricted
to party members. Chinovnik, since the time of
Peter the Great the designation for office-holders
by grade, or chin, has given way to sluzhashchi,
those who serve, the employees. There are no
more policemen in Russia. Militsia perform po-
lice duties, but only blow their whistles when
the citizens misbehave. No longer may the
bourgeois gourmand shout: *Hey, ChelovekP to
the waiter in the restaurant. He must address him
as Grazhdanin, in keeping with the dignity of
labor. And many a factory manager has landed
in court for raising his voice to stentorian tones
in addressing his workers.

225

PAN-SOVIETISM

The Communist doctrine itself has caused
many of the changes in terminology. Prisons, as
such, no longer exist. There are places of deten-
tion, and houses of correction, also isolators, in
which the social disease of crime is cured. A
criminal is withdrawn from circulation in the
hope of reforming him. If ten years will not
effect the cure he should be done away with.
On saditsya he is sitting is the phrase to
indicate that So and So is in prison. The word
* censor' is also obnoxious. The official who per-
forms surgical operations on the cable dispatches
of correspondents is the 'political controller/
His business is not to censor, but just to prevent
foreigners from making mistakes.

The Moscow rulers did not emulate the French
revolutionists in renaming the months after the
prevailing seasons. They did try to give revolu-
tionary names to religious holidays. But the
peasants simply refused to call Christmas the
'Day of the Red Star/ And these holidays have
been abolished since 1929.

As atheists the Communists do not christen
their babies but 'October 5 them. October is the
generic term synonymous with the revolution,
even though the shift to the Gregorian calendar
makes the celebration of the revolution fall on
November 7. We could mention many significant

226

THE HUMAN SIDE

changes, if space permitted. The word venchat-
sya, to wed, has been driven out of use by raspi-
satsya, to sign your name. A beautiful old word
is proshchat, meaning farewell, or forgive me,
according to the aspect used. One never hears
it now. Even when parting for a long time the
new people say, polca, meaning until, or So long.
Paradoxically, spasibo, thank you, from the roots
God protect you,' clings to revolutionary speech.

Most things have names in Russia, the loco-
motive, the factory, the village reading-room,
the tractor. The purpose is to keep inspiring
names before the eye. But the majority of the
4 little brothers' never heard of the hero nor of
his glorious deeds. The names of many cities
have been changed. Streets bearing offending
names have likewise been 'Octobered/ But the
izvozchiks profess ignorance of the new official
titles. To get about you must know the old
names. The sign in the main square in Moscow
declares that it is Sverdlova Ploshchad, but the
people call it Teatralny, after the big theater.
And Nevski Prospect in Leningrad is October
only on the map.

Class consciousness demands that children
born these stirring times shall be named not
after the saints, whose bones have been proved
devoid of the supposed miraculous power, but

227

PAN-SOVIETISM

after revolutionary heroes and fighting qualities.
Many names are concocted from the syllables of
Vladimir Ulich Lenin Vladilen, Vilen, Leni-
ana, and Ninel (which is Lenin spelt backward).
Also one hears the young called Stalina, Revo-
lutsia, Terror, Oktiabrina, Dekreta, Krasnoslav
(red glory), Volya (will), Sila (strength), Smena
(change), and others of even more striking al-
legorical significance. One can only wonder how
young Terror, grown to maturity, will bear out
his name when he begins to woo, say, Miss Revo-
lutsia. Of course, romantic love is a bourgeois
prejudice; all is science in Sovietskaya Vlast.
These few illustrations indicate change, not only
in thought, but in the medium of expression it-
self.

KELIGION

Now, this mechanization of life which we have
been describing is carried to the extreme in the
war on religion. To follow through our method
of investigation we should have to bring up the
past and show how the church became the polit-
ical instrument of the autocracy and the barrier
to social reform. The old Orthodox church had
much that was good and much that was very bad.
It had noble figures, endowed with real spiritual
power. When compared with the Latin church

THE HUMAN SIDE

its intellectual contributions were insignificant.
The mass of the village clergy was illiterate.
Nevertheless, that church gave us what is per-
haps the most beautiful music ever heard by
man, music which reaches heights known only
to the Slavs. It gave likewise an original richness
and mysticism in the ikons and Eastern service.
With the passing of that church much of the
beautiful was lost, along with the ugly corruption
of the church-state.

The first revolution, March, 1917, meant,
among other things, restoration of freedom to the
church, lost centuries before. The patriarchate
was brought back. What the Russian church
might have become had the provisional govern-
ment endured, we shall never know. Reform was
in the air.

Then came the Bolsheviks. To them religion
is only one of the forms of idealist philosophy,
which is bad for the masses, as it turns the eyes
toward the world to come and away from the
problems on earth. They seek to create a new
world by militant materialism, to replace the
worship of God with worship of man himself and
the machine. They contend that religion is a
factor in oppression, that faith in a better life
in the world to come is produced by oppression
in this world, and that as people rise from pov-

PAN-SOVIETISM

erty they lose interest in future salvation by the
effort to make the present world a better one in
which to live.

It is interesting that many of the sectarian
creeds, of which there were large numbers in
Russia, had a certain resemblance to Commu-
nism. The Old Believers, who stood for the exact
letter of the prayer books and liturgy, as before
the revision of the seventeenth century, fought
state control of the church and promoted popular
education. Then there were the spiritual Chris-
tians, resembling our Quakers, who believed in
having no private property. We are familiar
with the Dukhobors in America* Other sects,
such as the Stundists, the Baptists, and the
Lutherans, emphasized Bible reading. Then
there were the mystic sects, such as the Khlysty,
to which Rasputin is supposed to have belonged;
also the Skoptsy, the cult of self -mutilation, ac-
cused of debauchery. A common characteristic
of most of these sects was that they believed God
created men to be brothers, that the cause of
evil was possessions, and that the solution would
be to wipe out the distinction between rich and
poor to make a classless society. It is interesting
that the Russian word for God, Bog, comes from
the same root as bogaty, which means rich. Some
investigators estimate that the number of sec-

230

THE HUMAN SIDE

tarians and their sympathizers included before
the war one third of the Christian population of
Russia, but that is hard to believe.

At any rate, here was a large religious group
which suffered less than the Orthodox church
from the revolution, because it was less vulner-
able. The Baptists and Evangelicals competed
with Karl Marx more successfully than did the
old church. But eventually the sects also came
under the ban in 1929.

Everything in Russia falls into the slots of the
three periods we have noted. Military Com-
munism was a time of outright persecution,
shooting and exiling of priests. The church was
separated from the state and from the schools,
and all its property was nationalized, to be
granted in usufruct. The NEP brought a mea-
sure of tolerance in religion, as in economic fields.
In 1923 the Living Church, or Free Church of
Fighting Workers, was organized. It has not de-
veloped in importance. Then the Socialist Of-
fensive since 1928 reintroduced direct persecu-
tion in the Communist drive to capture the
Russian soul.

The Bezbozhnik, or Godless, Society for
spreading militant atheism increased its member-
ship from a quarter of a million in 1927 to two
million last year. It is this society which brings

231

PAN-SOVIETISM

pressure to bear on local groups for the closing of
churches. Considering the housing shortage,
and the need of all possible buildings for economic
use, the Bezbozhniks always have a forceful
argument to convert a * useless 5 church into a
'useful' granary, a garage, or a clubhouse for
workers. There are anti-religious museums,
anti-religious textbooks, and the society pub-
lishes a newspaper and a journal. There is even
socialist competition among the members to see
who can accomplish the most. They spare no
religion, Christian, Moslem, or Jewish.

Of course, the Bezbozhnik Society is not the
government, although it has affiliations with the
Commissariat of Education. It is not the Com-
munist Party, although 50 per cent of its mem-
bers belong to the party or to the Komsomols.

The renewed persecution in 1929 took the
form mostly of economic measures and the pro-
hibition of missionary work, which hit the Bap-
tists and Evangelicals in particular- Nor are
religious societies allowed to collect money from
their members. No religious training is per-
mitted. No figures are available as to the number
of priests killed or exiled since 1917. But as the
old priests die, there are no young priests to take
up the mantle in Russia.

According to the figures of the Godless society
232

THE HUMAN SIDE

3450 churches have been closed since the revolu-
tion, but 50,000 are still in the hands of their
congregations. That does not mean that services
are held in these churches. A church is closed by
the vote of its congregation, if attendance has
fallen away, if the cost is too great, or simply if
the state decides that a particular church is
needed in the economic program. The state
transcends the law, and the vote of the congrega-
tion can be influenced. Legally, atheism is not on
the curriculum in the schools; but it is insinuated.

The priest, denied the right to hold land and
having no means of livelihood, came to rely on
the only element in the village who could give
him food, namely, the kulak. This natural al-
liance between the priest and kulak means that
both are liquidated 5 at the same time as eco-
nomic enemies of the state. The drive for col-
lectivization and the drive on the religious front
go together. In 1929 the pressure was intense in
both policies. In March, 1930, it slackened off to
a measure of tolerance. Stalin has just now an-
nounced a renewal of the drive to complete col-
lectivization. Religion shares the fate of the in-
dividual farmer, although it no longer appears in
the news.

Now, there is undoubtedly some truth in the
Communist contention that the superstitions of

233

PAN-SOVIETISM

the peasant prevent scientific farming. Waiting
till St. Nicholas Day to plough is a custom which
comes down the centuries. It is the ancient
Festival of Adonis, the pagan worship of fertility,
with a saint's name tacked on to it. I once ar-
rived in the village of Saburova, between Mos-
cow and Riazan, just in time for the feast of the
Mother of Kazan. The religious service took just
forty minutes. The festivities lasted three days,
bazaar, merry-go-round and all. That was in
July, during the harvest of winter wheat. It was
threatening rain. I asked the village starosta:
*Why not postpone the Mother of Kazan and
get the grain shocked before it rains?' He re-
plied with the usual Chert s 9 nim, the devil take it.
Last summer in Moscow I missed the bells.
No longer are there forty times forty churches.
In fact there were never more than a thousand.
At any rate, many have been demolished, some
because they were decrepit, some to widen the
streets, and some to get the bricks. Along many
of the side streets were long piles of these bricks,
with gangs of workmen breaking big bricks into
little ones. Down the street was a huge concrete
mixer, with a likewise huge inscription, 'Made in
Milwaukee. 5 The rubble of crushed brick was
being wheeled into the big maw of the machine.
From the spreader end emerged the concrete to

234

THE HUMAN SIDE

make street paving. Moscow thus walks on what
was the church.

The Iberian Shrine is gone. For eleven years
that lighted shrine, by the gate leading to the
Red Square, challenged the sign overhead to the
right, * Religion is Opium for the People/ It dis-
appeared during the night, in August, 1929. The
sign has triumphed over the shrine, for the pre-
sent. The ikon of the Iberian virgin is hidden in a
museum, not to be displayed for fifty years, until
the people will have lost their belief in the
miracle-working powers of ikons. That is the
socialist ending for an ikon which led processions
to ward off plagues and calamities in bygone
centuries.

But this militant materialism of the Com-
munists paradoxically becomes a religion. Igno-
rant people must have a symbol, be it an ikon, a
picture of Lenin, or the red flag. The Commu-
nists are attempting to replace traditional religion
with a code of morality of their own, based on
civic virtue and devotion to humanity within the
limits of ruthless class struggle, and further to
replace the objective of paradise to come by one
attainable now, and to replace God by man him-
self, and the power of man symbolized in the
machine. Their teaching has been more success-
ful with young people than with the mature.

235

PAN-SOVIETISM

There is a strong counter-drift back to traditional
religion by people who cannot accept militant
materialism, and who will continue their faith
underground, whatever the restrictions. But the
whole set-up is against religion. And the un-
broken week abolishes Sunday. The general
effect is that Russia has been changed from a
land of churches and monasteries into a land of
workers 9 clubs.

However, with our knowledge of human na-
ture, we can be sure that what is true and abiding
in religion, what comes from man's inherent need
of God, from within himself, will remain and be
purified. What passed for religion as a depart-
ment of state, the overhead of political autocracy,
and what was superstition to be dispelled by
enlightenment that will probably be gone
never to return. The fact remains that the great
mass of Russian youth is growing up without
God. But that Russia is without a soul, I do not
believe.

EQUALITY

Another interesting phase of the human pro-
blem is the so-called equality. Strange as it may
seem there always was a kind of social equality
in Russia. The relations between individuals of
the various classes were free and natural, without

236

THE HUMAN SIDE

formality or inhibitions. Servants used to sit in
the best room and gossip with the master. The
revolution only legalized a social equality which
was instinctive.

In economic affairs inequality continues. For
one thing, there is piece work. And the economic
reward is scaled according to the skill required,
just as elsewhere. The technicians are more im-
portant to the state, as individuals, than are
ordinary workmen, even though the latter rule
as a class. All useful labor is not only dignified,
it is glorified. And every citizen is called upon to
serve according to his capacity, which he must
constantly endeavor to expand.

EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN

The complete emancipation of women stands
as the achievement of the Russian Revolution.
Even the harems of Central Asia are breaking up.
Women have equal rights with men in every ac-
tivity. They won this right fighting shoulder to
shoulder with the men during the civil war and
in all the economic struggles since. In many
ways they have demonstrated a stamina superior
to that of man and a remarkable capacity for
politics in the party and government. By offering
women the stimulus of equal wages for equal
work and equal opportunities for training along

237

PAN-SOVIETISM

with the men, the Soviets have doubled their
potential labor force. More and more the women
are released from housework. The creches, kin-
dergartens, and schools take care of the children.
The socialized restaurants and cooperatives re-
lease them from cooking. So they are drawn out
into the wide life of public service, serving
equally with men, in hard work, in brain work,
and even in dangerous work. Women are every-
where, in the army, the air service; one is Com-
missar of Finance, RSFSR; one is diplomatic
envoy; many are distinguished judges in the
higher courts. This transformation is now mov-
ing faster. The collective farm really emanci-
pates the individual peasant woman from the
old subservience to the head of the household.
And the pendulum has swung so far that the in-
satiable fire-eaters in the war on capitalism are
not the men, but the Komsomolkas, Amazons
thirsting for action.

MABRIAGE AND DIVORCE

Marriage and divorce are both obtained merely
by civil registration. Violation of marriage is not
an offense. Bigamy itself is not a crime. But
to commit bigamy a person would have to make
a false statement about his previous marriage. It
is that statement which makes the offense.

238

THE HUMAN SIDE

The main purpose is to facilitate both marriage
and divorce, but at the same time protect the
material interests of all concerned. By the 1927
law the property brought to a marriage by hus-
band and wife remains his or her property on
separation. The property acquired after mar-
riage is common and must be divided between
them. This gives the wife full independence,
especially if she is not acquiring property, but
doing housework.

For a divorce only one spouse need declare his
or her will to the registry clerk. Rumor has it
that a divorce can be obtained merely by writing
a postcard to the party of the second part. That
is not true. The applicant must sign the book.

Cohabitation without registry is likewise
legal. All children are legitimate. There is a
powerful brake on the marriage turnover in the
form of alimony. The Soviets make alimony pay-
able either to the wife or the husband, according
to the conditions of earning power. That is, a
man can divorce his wife, but he may be bound
to support her for a period fixed by the court. If
the husband is unable to work, it may be the
wife who must do the supporting after separa-
tion. If there are children, either in a registered
marriage or from cohabitation, the law fastens
the support of the children until the age of eight-

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PAN-SOVIETISM

een on one or the other of the parents. Before
1927 it was generally the man who was charged
with this support. But the women over-enjoyed
their revolutionary independence. There were
cases in 1927 showing that certain women were
receiving alimony for the support of children
from three different men. As alimony involves
one third of the man's salary until the child is
eighteen, such women were receiving three
thirds, or 100 per cent salary, as alimony until
the children began to arrive at legal maturity.
So the law was changed. Needless to say, this
economic responsibility for the results of mar-
riage made the men rather wary. In 1927, I
knew Russians who would flee at the sight of a
woman, because, they said, it would only lead to
alimony. So while there was considerable license
in the early years of the revolution, the system
has shaken down into something amazingly
moral. It is the old economic interpretation of
history applied to marriage with extraordinary
results. Relations are free, but economics must
be considered.

There are other developments of the marriage
law. A woman does not have to take her hus-
band's name. She does not have to live in the
same domicile nor follow him in change of resi-
dence. Nor is her nationality affected.

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THE HUMAN SIDE

The housing shortage complicates marriage.
A man may be deprived of his room for some
reason. He might then look for a woman who
has a room, and marry her if he can. It might
prove to be a mistake, that they are incompat-
ible. Then the woman goes down to the registry
and signs the divorce book. She conies back and
tells the husband: * You're divorced, here's your
hat, or rather, your cap/ But he says, * Nitckevo,'
and refuses to vacate. To get rid of him she
marries some one else, and brings home husband
No. . They both tell the ex-husband to move
out into the wide life of the town. He then re-
ports to the House Committee that his ex-wife is
trying to eject him. Whereupon the House Com-
mittee calls on the wife, and tells her that Ivan
Ivanovitch must not be put out on the streets, as
he is a worker, or an employee, or something. So
they all three settle down to enjoy life in one
room. They do it with good temper and amazing
unconcern.

Very often one's Russian friends will say,
* There goes an old wife of mine.' An electrician
once came to repair our lights. He addressed our
cook by her Christian name. I asked her how
she happened to know him. And she said, 'Oh,
lie was my husband in 1923/

Now, all this leads to international complica-
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PAN-SOVIETISM

tions. Most countries do not recognize Soviet
marriage and divorce. But the system seems to
be adapted to collective society and is working
out in a moral way. The worst feature, from our
point of view, is the recognition of de facto mar-
riage, equalizing legal and extra-legal birth,
which must in the long run break up family life.

COLLECTIVE MAN

The general question in America is: Are the
people any better off than before? One answer
would be to tell of the Alexandrite. This is a
gem, more costly than the diamond first dis-
covered in the Urals in 1833, and named after the
tsarevich who was to become Alexander IL The
Alexandrite is green in the daytime. At night,
under artificial light, it turns fiery red and gleams
like the star Acturus. Russians are better or
worse off according to the light used in looking at
them. Some foreigners see only the unfortunates,
the non-citizens. To them Russia is cold, sordid
green. Others see only the workers building
paradise. To them Russia is brilliant red. Still
others are aware that Russia has both extremes
of color, and all the shades in between. My own
opinion is that the sacrifice of welfare, and the
patience to endure that sacrifice, have entered a
race, of which the outcome seems in favor of the

242

THE HUMAN SIDE

state because it can relax the pressure at will.

The substitute for material goods in Russia is
intoxication with change and public service. The
Communists have aroused a consuming enthu-
siasm for service, in the opera singers who go to
the fields to sing to the peasants taking in the
harvest, in the traveling free theatricals to enter-
tain the industrial army, in the unceasing effort
of all with a little culture to impart what they
know to 'the dark people,* and in such efforts as
the business-like and humane solution of the
homeless children problem by volunteer work of
the Komsomols.

The picture of Russia today shows a whole
people energized and galvanized into action, a
people who never were punctual and who had no
conception of time. The high note of industrial-
ization is the syncopation of labor, not the slow
rhythm of thefellahin lifting water to the shadufs
swinging along the Nile, nor the song of the
carrying pole and the heave of the coolies on the
towline of Chinese river junks not these, but
the merciless beat of the pile-driver. Human
power must keep time with the machine power,
stepping up the tempo as the wheels accelerate
their spinning. At present that machine seems
to have no governor. Whether or not this will
change the 'little brothers' into mechanical

243

PAN-SOVIETISM

robots who can move only like wooden soldiers
is a question.

The product of this crucible of change is col-
lective man. The individual is never alone.
Children are trained in group action and group
responsibility. This undertone and overtone of
Russian life is heard best in the full volume of the
mass singing of soldiers who march past when the
Kremlin changes the guard.

The implications of collectivism might well
give us the shudders. It destroys many of the
things we hold dear, including family life and
freedom for religious worship. But in economic
results, there can be no doubt of its effectiveness.
Production does increase. Cost is cheaper, at
least while welfare is sacrificed for the good of
the state,

The * little brothers* are unaware of the his-
torical significance of what is happening to them.
It means that a whole people, made fluid by
tremendous events, are being repoured into a
collective mould. It has not been long since
serfs were currency in barter and exchange.
From serfdom to collectivism is a long step, even
for Russia. The result seems to be an athletic,
healthy, energetic, creative but unromantic,
moral but utilitarian and Godless, new creature
in the social cosmos of man.

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THE HUMAN SIDE

Human kind has never produced a creature
like this impersonal mass man, the synthetic
beehive, destined to ride Russia in the years im-
mediately to come.

CHAPTER X

The World Issue

TAKING the long view, the world issue raised
by the Soviet system seems to be this: Is the
apparent economic success of collectivism in
Russia the result of peculiar conditions which
do not maintain elsewhere; or is the major im-
plication of the machine age in which we live
such that the entire industrialized world must
eventually adopt collectivism as the only remedy
for the self-destructive crises of competitive
society?

We can approach an answer to this question
only after we stop trying to measure the strange
forces for which we have no measuring rods (such
as the cost of production under socialism, or the
exact degree of compulsion behind socialist
labor), and frankly recognize the final issue to
be, not between forced labor and free labor, but
between two economic systems, between co-
operation and laissez-faire, between collective
man and individual man*

That issue is the most momentous ever con-
fronted by the world as a whole. It is all the
more weighty because of the coincidence be-

246

THE WORLD ISSUE

tween the Soviet burst of industrial expansion
and the period of capitalist depression. In the
absence of markets, the world is out of joint for
the average business man. His psychology at
present is not unlike that of the dog in Pavlov's
experiment.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the greatest of all
physiologists, who is protected in Russia by the
express will of Lenin, has been working for half
a century to formulate the laws of the human
brain. He has a splendid laboratory in Lenin-
grad, with sound-proof towers, padded and
insulated experimental chambers. Consider one
of Pavlov's simplest experiments. He takes a
normal, healthy dog from the streets, pursuing
a dog's life with gay companions, and puts him
in harness on one of the tables in the sound-
proof room. No stimulus can reach the dog save
by the will of the operator, who makes observa-
tions through the periscope. Into the dog's
mouth is placed a suction tube, and other tubes
are attached to his stomach, to register the flow
of saliva.

Many kinds of stimuli are used. The simplest
is the ordinary metronome. The first step is to
set the metronome at one hundred beats per
minute. At the same moment the tray in front
revolves, and there is a dish of food. This is

247

PAN-SOVIETISM

repeated until the dog connects the sound of the
metronome with food. Accordingly the saliva
will flow with the metronome, with or without
food* That is the positive conditioned stimulus.

There are also indifferent stimuli, to which the
dog is trained not to respond. Then the metro-
nome is set at fifty beats. The tray revolves, but
there is no food. The dog is confused at first.
But after repeated attempts he learns to dis-
tinguish between one hundred beats, the positive
stimulus with food, and fifty beats, the negative
stimulus, without food. The negative is thus
established as an inhibition. The saliva flows for
the positive, but not for the negative.

Thus far the dog is merely being educated to
things he ought to know. His brain reactions are
registered by the flow or lack of flow of saliva.
Then comes the real test. The metronome is set
at seventy-five beats. The dog is puzzled, un-
decided. Is it food, or is it not food? The saliva
will flow in jerks, then stop, then start again.
He looks around, begins to bark, and tries to
break out of the harness. The remorseless
seventy-five beats go on and on. After a time the
dog usually lies back in the harness and begins to
whine. His tail droops. He gives up. When the
beat goes back to one hundred, and food appears,
he is no longer interested. He just feels sorry for

248

THE WORLD ISSUE

himself, a complete case of neurasthenia estab-
lished in four or five hours. Pavlov has also
been able to cure the dog with bromides and
rest.

Now, the dog's mental breakdown results
from frustration. He cannot strike the balance
between the processes of stimulation and in-
hibition to which he had been educated. For
him, the problems of differentiation are too enor-
mous, hence the resulting neurasthenia.

We may apply this formula to the world at
large. There is a cross-beat cutting in on the
symphony of ordered existence, something be-
tween positive and negative, the uncertainty
between food and no food. That twilight tone in
the music of the spheres drowns out the old
rhythms of fulfillment and non-fulfillment. For
us the nerve-jarring cadence is the ceaseless
pounding of the new world social and economic
forces on tense framework of the political status
quo.

The traditional method in the study of inter-
national relations is to weigh carefully what
diplomats said or wrote on specific occasions, the
noble words of sacred treaties, and the talky-talk
of gorgeously arrayed plenipotentiaries in inter-
national parley assembled. The statesmen fore-
gather, exchange courtesies according to pro-,

249

PAN-SOVIETISM

tocol over the wine, assure each other of their
respective desires for disarmament and harmony,
and all is Balm in Gilead until the unexpected
happens, the bolt of thunder through the static
of serenity. And then every one is surprised and
pained by what the Bolsheviks have done, or
what Mussolini has done, or what the people of
China or India have done.

For years we have been studying that fagade.
Governments proclaim their high intentions, but
forces bound up with land and people prevent
action, or dictate action in a direction opposite
to that proclaimed. There is a wise observation,
ascribed to Dwight Morrow, that we judge our-
selves and our own nation by our intentions; but
we judge other people and other nations by their
acts.

The fundamental forces of Russia we have
attempted to define in general terms of economic
pressure, ideological pressure, national intoxica-
tion for change, and the driving energy of a
people recently unshackled from serfdom. The
energy of the Russian people, pent-up for cen-
turies and released by the revolution, might have
taken any of three directions. It might have
found outlet in foreign war, as did the French
Revolution. It might have expended itself in
civil war. Or it might have been harnessed to

250

THE WORLD ISSUE

work. The economic backwardness of the coun-
try made work the choice.

We have felt these fundamental forces in
Russia at close hand. But to gain an idea of the
direction they will take in the future, we must
get off in the airscape so as to view the whole
world in a sweep. From out there we get a per-
spective of the doings of mankind in their true
proportions, and their inter-relations, not by
countries, but by continents. To gain per-
spective, we must leave most of our factual
equipment behind and get into the upper strata
of ideas. For this we need vision.

In the world are two billion people who have
trebled their numbers in a century and a quarter.
The friction between nations has become ex-
tremely acute since the war because of the un-
equal distribution of the sources of economic
power. Some states are saturate and desire to
preserve the status quo, which involves privileges
derived from economic power acquired in other
days.- Other states, previously backward, have
been emulating the favored states, and have
begun to grasp for more economic power, which
they can obtain chiefly at the cost of those states
already entrenched.

Into this formula of advanced and backward
nations we can fit the present economic crisis, the

251

PAN-SOVIETISM

first in history to shake the entire world at one
and the same time. The general cause is excess
of productive power. It is estimated that the
world's capacity to produce is fifty per cent
greater than the world's effective consumer
demand. The picture shows that the advanced
nations are weighted down with goods for which
there is no market. Hence the shut-down of
over-expanded industrial plant, and unemploy-
ment* It likewise shows that backward nations
lack purchasing power, and that they themselves
have been feverishly building industrial plant to
supply their own needs. The spread of industri-
alization is thus the prime cause of world distress.
Into this picture there comes a new nation,
equipped with a new system and a potential
productive power which is immeasurable. This
is the impact of socialism on a world already
saturate with grain, cotton, and manufactured
goods. It means that socialism, after a century
in the nebulous region of doctrine, has finally
entered the realities of big business.

The issue is clearly drawn. The constitution
of the Soviet Union opens with the statement
that the world is now divided into two camps:
the camp of capitalism and the camp of socialism.
These two camps are diametrically opposed to
each other in political, economic, and social

252

THE WORLD ISSUE

principles. When directly opposite forces line
up against each other, and both want the same
thing, conflict must result. That such, conflict is
only a matter of time is the conviction of Mos-
cow, and of students who have made anything
like a profound study of the temper of the forces
at work in Russia.

If any one doubts that Moscow conviction, let
him read the stenographic reports of the Six-
teenth Communist Party Congress in the sum-
mer of 1930, or the resolutions of the Executive
Committee of the Comintern regarding the world
crisis of capitalism. Of course, gloating over the
troubles of capitalist countries is not new. But
there is now a crescendo of triumph. The Com-
munists marshal facts to prove that the decay of
capitalism has intensified since the war, that its
equilibrium is undermined, that there must now
ensue a revolutionization of the world proletariat
which will transform this economic crisis into a
political crisis, and that the bourgeois countries
in an effort to save themselves will resort to war
on the Soviet Union. The last war gave birth to
the Russian Revolution. The next war will be
the prelude to world revolution. Class war is
expected to transform the world, now divided
into vertical compartments, the national states,
into horizontal layers of capitalists and laborers.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

To that end the sections of the Comintern in the
various countries have been instructed to orga-
nize a widespread publicity campaign every-
where for defense of the Soviet Union against the
expected foreign intervention.

THE SOCIALIST CAMP

Now, the conflict between these two systems
takes the form of a struggle for economic power.
We must therefore draw up a balance sheet of the
sources of power in the socialist camp. These
we cannot measure, but we can acknowledge
their existence.

In the first place, the Soviet Union is the
largest single territory of the world. It has
natural riches beyond compare, nearly every
known mineral, the exploitation of which has
only begun; forests so vast that cutting one
fourth of the annual growth has already dis-
turbed the world lumber market; and millions
of square miles still awaiting the plough. In
1930, one fifth of the cultivated area of the globe
was in the Soviet Union. Nature made Russia
on an immense scale, a food-producing area with-
out a rival. The application of science to these
gifts of Nature is the foundation of the Soviet
challenge to capitalist economy.

Secondly, we find Soviet Russia under a politi-
254

THE WORLD ISSUE

cal and economic dictatorship. It is not to be
compared with any other single country because
its immensity makes it a continent apart. The
socialized economy of unified plan and control
permits redistribution of the national income
within the continent, thus coordination of re-
sources and focus of all the economic power in the
hands of the state. Protection against the eco-
nomic laws of the outside world is provided by
the foreign trade monopoly. This permits such
keen students as Salvador de Madariaga to say
that Soviet Russia is the only part of the world
today in which there is order applied with in-
telligence and perseverance worthy of human
beings, while the rest of the world is in a state of
anarchy. And further, declares Madariaga, the
contrast between a scheme that is consistent and
a complete lack of scheme is both a very dis-
turbing and a very stimulating factor, which is
advancing the cause of Bolshevism in the world.
The advance, however, is kept within bounds by
the absurdity of its own propaganda.

Thirdly, the Bolsheviks are undoubtedly trans-
forming Russia from a backward agricultural
country into a comparatively advanced indus-
trial one at an unprecedented rate of speed.

Fourthly, that transformation is being effected
at a human cost yet to be determined. The im-

255

PAN-SOVIETISM

mediate welfare of a whole generation is bartered
for industrial plant. This sacrifice weighs heavi-
est on the classes not favored by the state in its
social program. Such classes are being gradually
annihilated.

Fifthly, there seems to be emerging a new type
of social creature, the collective man, the mass
impersonality of work bees in the hive, with a
new culture, a new language, new social forms,
and new customs.

In sum, the Soviet state is a controlled ma-
chine which can hurl enormous economic power
into the conflict with the opposite camp. This
state is seeking new markets. With the resources
of a continent and the pocket money of 160
million people at its command, it can sell for any
price in order to get foreign currency with which
to buy more machines. Its internal power en-
ables it to export food needed for home consump-
tion. The Soviet exports were valued at half a
billion dollars in 1930, an increase of 21 per cent
during the year, whereas the average decline of
export by other countries was about 12 per cent.

Russia's wheat belt, more than 3000 miles long
and 200 wide, is the celebrated black soil, a rich
humus of decomposed steppe grass, the finest
wheatland in the world. Moreover, it is level,
with an ideal rainfall of 16 to 20 inches. Much of

256

THE WORLD ISSUE

this virgin land still awaits the tractor. Among
the exports in 1930 were 3.5 million tons of grain,
of which close to one minion tons were wheat.
The grain crop in 1931 is expected to exceed
100 million tons. (In American terms this is 3.6
billion bushels. The export surplus of wheat is
expected to be 200 million bushels.) When the
new South Siberian trunk railroad is finished, a
matter of connecting links between Troisk, south
of the Urals, and the port of Rostov, Russia
will be in a position to smash the grain market of
the world.

Other exports are gathering in volume, oil and
cotton cloth to Asia, sugar, and an avalanche of
cheap conserved food in the form of canned fish,
and of fruit which now rots on the ground all over
southern Russia. How can we estimate the cost
of production of these commodities when the
state pays no rent for the land, and pays its
labor in sufficient rations to maintain working
strength and the rest in enthusiasm for building
socialism? The so-called dumping is bound to
lead to increased embitterment as the competi-
tion sharpens*

This Soviet system has been made possible by
the international situation since the war. The
capitalist camp has been divided into victorious
and defeated nations. Germany, writhing under

257

PAN-SOVIETISM

reparation debts which mortgage her children's
children, over the loss of the Polish corridor, and
the denial of the Anschluss with Austria, has
sought a counter-weight against France in the
bugaboo of Bolshevism. Year by year the Euro-
pean line-up has become more favorable to the
Soviets. Italy has now joined Germany in eco-
nomic collaboration with Moscow. And other
defeated powers, Hungary and Turkey, for
instance, have thrown their influence into the
scale. Moreover, many of these governments
have guaranteed credit to the Soviets in order to
get the trade, Great Britain, Germany, Austria,
Italy, and Norway, to mention the outstanding
examples. The present world depression finds
these nations at war with themselves over desire
to sell to the Soviets and desire to curb Soviet
dumping.

Will the Soviets succeed in smashing the world
market? The consciously righteous assure us
that Soviet Russia is a giant of straw. There are
many weaknesses in this forced expansion. The
foundations are not all concrete and steel. But
the issue will probably be forced before those
weaknesses become decisive in the conflict. The
inadequacy of transport is serious. The lack of
training is the chief obstacle to fulfillment of the
plans, but the state is evidently willing to import

258

THE WORLD ISSUE

13,000 more foreign technicians this year. With
universal unemployment in the capitalist world,
such technicians will be found, at low salaries.
Self-preservation continues to be the first law of
nature.

Unless an economic blockade or actual war
intervenes, the Soviets will go on building social-
ism. An economic blockade could, in reality, only
slow up the tempo. Even if the Communists were
removed, these socialistic institutions would
most likely remain, at least in part. But what
happens after the peasants do become group
conscious, organized in collectives? Is that not
a potential opposition to the state? From one
point of view, it is. From another point of view,
collective man does not revolt. The pendulum
may swing back after socialism is achieved and
the enthusiasm of building something new has
given way to the commonplace routine of exist-
ence. Then human nature may prove as un-
changeable as it has in the past. This sharing of
collectivism may prove, in the end, to be only
another instrument for correcting the economic
backwardness of Russia. The real danger to
Soviet plans will probably be prosperity. Col-
lectivism, with force behind it, is working in
scarcity. Can it work in abundance, when force
is removed? That contingency is far off.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

On the military side, what is there to fear
from Russia? Is there to be a Red Napoleon?
Immense distances have always protected Russia
in the past. But this centralized control and
industrialization make the country more vulner-
able. There are more vital chords. Suppose, for
instance, an Allied navy broke through the
Dardanelles and landed an army of occupation
in the Caucasus to seize Russia's oil supply. It
would not be difficult to hold the line of the
mountains. In view of such danger the Soviets
have concentrated on aviation and chemical
warfare, in which they have the aid of foreign
technicians. The Red Army is consistently
quoted at 562,000, but the entire country has
been taking military training in some form or
another. It is estimated that the Soviets could
put fifteen million troops in the field for defense
of the country. And any one who believes that
the peasants will rise up to support foreign in-
vaders just does not know his muzhik.

In the final analysis, have the Russian people
any particular gift which will enable them to
compete with more advanced people? To my
mind, they have a demonstrated capacity for co-
operation. If the machine age necessitates in-
tense cooperation between people, then the
Russians might be in advance of the procession.

260

THE WORLD ISSUE

By using some imagination we might compare
this socialist construction to the solar system.
The planets rotate and revolve in fixed relations.
Out on the fringes there are commotion and
irregularities. But they all revolve around the
sun, and the whole solar system moves hy some
law in time and space toward the Constellation
of Hercules. The socialist construction of Russia
likewise has fixed relationships, commotion and
disorder, all revolving with faster and faster
velocity around a central force, and the whole
system by the logic of its nature is moving in
time and space toward a single fixed objective,
World Revolution.

THE CAPITALIST CAMP: AMEEICA

Now, what does all this mean to us as Ameri-
cans? We, too, have our problems of adjustment
to the machine age. What can we learn from
Russia? In the first place, we have a system
which is wanting in many ways, but which has
raised us from an agricultural colony to pre-
eminence, the model for all countries seeking to
improve their relative prosperity. Moreover,
we are predominantly a middle-class nation,
with a more even distribution of wealth than in
any other country, except Russia.

We can eliminate the factors in the Russian
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PAN-SOVIETISM

situation which proceed from the country's
backwardness. We are not economically back-
ward. And the Soviet methods of applying
capital and labor may be successful in correcting
backwardness, without being able to advance
after that is accomplished. Politically, we have
a pronounced aversion to dictatorship. Socially,
the very thought of collective living is obnoxious.
Economically, we would not tolerate pauperiza-
tion of our people for the sake of strengthening
the state. Is there, then, nothing America can
learn from Russia?

As an individual, I believe there is. But, first,
who is competent to judge? The Russians who
lost by the revolution, even though sincere,
which they all are not, are naturally too bitter as
a class to help us much. The Russians who won
are too eager to justify their gains. Americans
who are losing money from Soviet trade, and
those who are consciously righteous in condemna-
tion of everything un-American, are not worthy
guides. They want the Soviets to lose. Nor can
we rely on Americans who are profiting from
Soviet trade, nor the emotional reformers who
would welcome destruction of our cherished in-
stitutions in order to effect a number of desirable
changes. Such Americans may want the Soviets
to win.

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THE WORLD ISSUE

To my mind, the only competent judge is the
American with an alert, inquiring mind, who
rates somewhere in the middle of the average
economic power an American who owns his
home, and perhaps an automobile, and has a
growing family, which he would not like to see
collectivized, but who has no coupons to clip and
no means of income but his hands and brain. It
is impossible to find the average man, but his
judgment on what is happening in Eussia would
be interesting. Supplying him with unbiased in-
formation might be difficult.

Eliminating all the minor merits of the Soviet
system, such as social insurance and labor hours,
also the social consequences of collectivism, this
average man would probably fasten on one ad-
vantage which we could establish in our own
country. That advantage would be sufficient
state planning, based on private property, to
permit coordination of production and consump-
tion, the lack of which has produced the present
world crisis. Mere information about pending
overproduction does not bring results, as evi-
denced by the warnings to cotton-growers in the
South. Each farmer depends on his neighbors to
curtail production, while he grows all the soil
will yield.

We must have some measure of planning to
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PAN-SOVIETISM

overcome the technological unemployment, and
to give the highest possible wage to labor, along
with security of employment and provision for
retirement. The ruthless competition of laissez
faire must be curbed. And we must realize, late
or soon, that we cannot retain our grip on both
ends of the horn of plenty; we cannot keep the
gold coming to our shores when there is no loose
gold. Nor can we force debtor nations to pay us
principal and interest on the outstanding sixteen
billion dollars abroad, and at the same time buy
our wares. We are entering an era of intense
competition with a closed and controlled eco-
nomic system. To rely on laissez faire would be
like matching an army of scattered volunteers
against a professional army able to concentrate
and to smash the volunteers in one position after
another.

Of course, we have already taken halfway
steps toward planning. During this depression
the various states and our federal government
are devoting huge sums to public works in order
to take up some of the slack of unemployment.
Our Federal Reserve System is certainly a suc-
cessful effort toward financial planning. The
Interstate Commerce Commission regulates the
movement of goods in the interest of the public.
The state public utility commissions protect the

264

THE WORLD ISSUE

interest of the consumers In rate charges and
prevent duplication of equipment by competing
services. The radio channels of the air are as-
signed to the various broadcasting stations by
the federal government. Coordination in high-
way building has been worked out between
states, so that splendid roads are less likely to
end in trackless wilds upon reaching the frontiers
of other states. But all these are concerned with
finance, utilities, and traffic. Production and
consumption remain unbalanced, and the un-
certainty of employment remains to harass the
workmen and make them ready listeners to the
provocatory proclamations from Moscow.

This is not to suggest that America would
tolerate collectivism, nor that Soviet expansion
proves that system superior even for Russia in
normal situations. But, in times of crisis, and
as a means to prevent recurrence of crises, this
Soviet planning has merits which are attracting
world attention. Planning is, after all, a problem
for the whole world. The economic councils at-
tached to European governments are halfway
steps toward planning. If we had even a measure
of centralized planning, American firms, instead
of undercutting each other in the foreign market,
would present a semblance of united front. As it
is, American firms, rather than lose business to

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PAN-SOVIETISM

competing American firms, throw that business
to the foreign competitors. America's rivalry
with herself abroad is bound to be ruinous to our
economy as a whole* Certain European coun-
tries are already following the Soviet lead in di-
recting foreign trade. We cannot meet this
socialist competition, which is organized and
planned, with anarchy and laissez faire. We too
must plan with intelligence* Just what measure
of planning and regulation we can fit into our
principles of private initiative awaits the ex-
periment. We already have the framework of
planning organization in such institutions as the
Federal Trade Commission. Advance study is
the first mark of sound statecraft.

Seeley, the historian, is responsible for the
statement that the British Empire grew up in a
fit of absence of mind. That is the British way
of saying that in most of the crises of her history
Britain has had at the helm a group of statesmen
who read the signs of the times and sacrificed the
immediate gain for the long and accruing ad-
vantage. Certain British thinkers, in February,
1931, presented for public discussion a * Na-
tional Plan/ involving self-government in in-
dustry, and planned control in production and
trade without jeopardizing private property
rights, or removing the stimulus of gain.

66

THE WORLD ISSUE

Whether feasible or not this * National Plan 5
seems to be an ingenious attempt to combine
the merits and avoid the evils of both the cap-
italist and socialist systems. That long-range
vision, thinking into the future, is what we need
in America.

To plunge into decisions regarding the Soviets,
under the propulsion of commercial fears, would
reflect small renown on our political wisdom.
Suppose we do bar Soviet trade; Germany and
Italy are eager to make the desired machines.
Nor can deportation of alien Communists ac-
complish anything beyond removing a small per-
centage of the active agents of Communism.

Some two thousand years ago there was a
trade war in the Mediterranean. Periodically
old Cato rose with or without provocation in
the Roman senate, and shrieked: 'Delenda est
Carthago!* He eventually was heard. We also
have our Catos, who keep up the shout: 'Let
this modern Carthage be destroyed; exterminate
this race of pirates and smash the slave state
they have created/ These Catos of ours know
that one nation no longer puts another nation to
the sword. They might serve us better if they
applied their cunning to an analysis of the
strength and weakness of the socialist means of
attack and showed us how to plan our production

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PAN-SOVIETISM

without sacrificing institutions which still claim
our faith.

We can meet this socialist competition on OUJT
home grounds. If necessary we can use pro-
tective measures as well as the Soviets. More-
over, American industrial technique in general
lines is the most advanced of the world. The
4 native ingenuity * of our people has in no wise
diminished, although our industrial engineers
believe that progress would be more r^pid if
corporate interests were prevented from buying
up and shelving new inventions which threaten
to make their existing plants obsolete. But the
test is not at home. America must sell abroad.
In that we have no choice,

NO MAN'S LAND: THE EAST
Now, between the camp of socialism and the
camp of capitalism is a No Man's Land, the en-
tire East, neither socialistic nor capitalistic, but
likewise made fluid by tremendous events.

The East lures Russia with the * logic of geo-
graphy/ The Russification policy of the tsars has
given way to the Soviet policy of cultural auto-
nomy within federation, of encouraging racial
groups to preserve their indigenous culture, their
language, their art, their legends, and even their
songs. Critics point out that cultural autonomy

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THE WORLD ISSUE

is no cost on the central government, and that
the nationalities would prefer material goods to
cultural freedom. And certainly there is a strong
separatist movement in Ukraine and in Georgia,
where the natives feel that they are giving more
than they receive in the general redistribution of
the national income. The money drawn out of
these republics is spent in the East. The Great
Russian tide is rolling into Siberia and Central
Asia, up to the mountain wall, and establishing
the Marxist system under the eyes of neighbors
who are not unreceptive to things which at least
promise economic salvation. Will it jump that
wall?

To come back, for a moment, to our first
principles, Leninism is defined as Marxism of the
epoch of imperialism. (In another place Stalin
defines Leninism as the harmonious union of
Russian revolutionary inspiration and American
practical spirit.) Imperialism, according to
Lenin, is dying capitalism, because it carries the
contradictions of capitalism to their extreme
limits, after which revolution begins.

There are three contradictions in imperial-
ism:

1. Between capital and labor.

2. Between financial groups in the competition
for sources of raw materials and labor power;

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PAN-SOVIETISM

hence for concessions, spheres of influence, man-
dates, and colonies.

3. Between a few powerful nations and the
hundreds of millions of colonial, backward, and
subject peoples.

Stalin puts the world program this way:

A. The world is divided into the minority, the
civilized nations possessing the finance capital,
and exploiting the rest of the population of the
globe; and the majority, the colonial and subject
peoples.

B. These colonies and subject peoples con-
stitute an immense reserve of forces for imperial-
ism.

C. These subject peoples have already en-
tered upon the path of nationalism, and emanci-
pation from the imperialist yoke.

D. The interests of the proletarian movement
in the advanced countries, and of the national
movements in the backward countries, have a
common enemy, Western imperialism.

To put it another way, the class struggle within
a single advanced country works with the class
struggle between nations. The Soviets, there-
fore, support purely national movements in order
to overthrow imperialism in the backward
states.

Like Janus in the Roman temple, the Russian
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THE WORLD ISSUE

Revolution has two faces, one to the east and the
other to the west. Russia turns east; this fact is
the most potential for the future of all post-war
phenomena. The East, cradle of the race, sent
wave after wave of conquerors into Europe, the
Huns, Avars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks.
The Arab civilization flourished in Spain as well
as in Africa and Bagdad. But with the renais-
sance in Europe the tide turned. Western science
and navigation of the age of discovery led to
European encroachment upon Asia until im-
perialism began to crack during the World War,
1914-18. Since the war the entire East, in turn,
has been stirred by a renaissance and by nation-
alism.

Hans Kohn, the celebrated German authority
on nationalism, divides the world since the war
into three fellowships with common destinies:

1. The Continental European, in which self-
determination and economic self-interest have
carried nationalism to the absurdity which leads
to self-destruction unless the nations form a
regional union.

2. The Anglo-Saxon fellowship, the British
Empire and the United States, a hegemony based
on sea power, scattered throughout the world,
with special interests in Asia.

3. The fellowship in a common destiny which

271

PAN-SOVIETISM

unites all the peoples of Asia and North Africa in
the struggle to break up imperial tutelage.

The first of these, the Continental European,
seems to be stripped of potential expansive
power. But the old struggle between East and
West is revived in the gigantic issue between the
second and third, between the Anglo-Saxon
fellowship and that of Asia and North
Africa.

The free agent, neither east nor west, but both,
is Russia, placed by geography and spiritual
affinity to work the seesaw from the middle. And
Russia has turned east, to the billion people of
the East, with a program of national autonomy
within federation, thus linking the social revolu-
tion with the struggle for national freedom from
imperialism.

The constitution of the Soviet Union is offered
as a model for a world federation of Soviet re-
publics. The republics of the Union are not
limited to their present territories, but must
endeavor to take in more people as cooperating
partners as soon as such people adopt a socialist
constitution and coordinate their economy with
that of the Union.

: Capitalism, say the Communists, cannot build
such cooperation between peoples. To that end
the Soviets have spread education to the East,

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THE WORLD ISSUE

have separated the church from the state, and
have introduced militant materialism. They
have maintained a university for Oriental stu-
dents in Moscow, and spend great sums in train-
ing them, often financing their missionary ex-
peditions to their native lands. And special
facilities are offered to Soviet citizens who will
study Turkish, Persian, Chinese, and even
Hindustani.

The Soviets have drawn their immediate
neighbors, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, into a
network of non-aggressive, benevolent neutrality
treaties, which operate against the imperialistic
countries of the West. They took concrete steps
to make that cooperation bilateral by renouncing
all the concession, privileges, and debts owed to
the tsarist state by all these countries and by
China. They grant equal rights to natives and
submit to native courts. By wiping the slate
dean of social inequalities, of superior and in-
ferior people, they have won friendship in the
East. The Russians understand the East. *

In stirring up the nationalism of the East to
fight imperialism, the Soviets look forward to
unification, an Asiatic federation, a Pan-Asiatic
economy, with the usual right of free withdrawal
in the constitution. It was Kautsky, the eminent
socialist, now the arch-enemy of the Bolsheviks,

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PAN-SOVIETISM

who in 1905 declared that the Russian Revolu-
tion would awaken the nations of the Middle
East and Asia to historical life, which prophecy
is now coming true. Of course, the East repudi-
ates Communism. But any kind of opposition
to the domination of capitalist countries serves
the Soviet purpose. Even the remotest villages of
the East have grasped the meaning of Wilson's
doctrine of self-determination.

Asia is being modernized much more rapidly
than is commonly supposed. Most of these
countries from Turkey to China are attempting
to jump from the Middle Ages to the industrial
era without taking the intervening steps. The
thrust is for economic power, by Western meth-
ods. The greatest market of the future will
undoubtedly be awakened Asia, in which the
consumer's demand is beyond calculation, once
the desires have been stimulated by the spread
of the modernization process. Of course, these
Asiatic countries lack purchasing power, par-
ticularly since the debasement of silver, but they
have enormous bargaining power, raw materials,
and privileges of market to exchange. The
Soviets have earmarked most of Asia as their
private market, in which they believe they can
undersell capitalist countries by reason of the
so-called superiorities of their socialist system.

274

THE WORLD ISSUE

They are favored by shorter all-land routes of
transport.

The most significant phase of this push to the
east is the industrialization of Siberia and Cen-
tral Asia. Millions of rubles are being poured
into those regions. The Kuznets basin is the
largest exploited coal area in the world. Steel
mills, iron foundries, chemical plants, textile
mills are under construction along the sleepy
Chinese frontier. The Turkestan-Siberia rail-
way, completed last April, is the avenue of
empire, tying up the wheatlands of the North
with the cotton regions. Settlers have been
arriving all year, new towns appear, and even
Lake Balkhash suddenly looms on the map as a
health resort. And the roar of industrial civiliza-
tion awakens a mid-continent from its centuries
of vacancy.

Irrigation in Central Asia is a romance of
history. This hinterland of ancient empires was
a broodland for conquering races, whose economy
was based on cattle and irrigation. The causes
of the fall of empires are always in dispute be-
tween historians. One theory is that wars so
decimated the population in these regions that
there was insufficient labor force to work irriga-
tion. The decrease in irrigation meant decrease
in evaporation, and eventually decrease in rain-

275

PAN-SOVIETISM

fall. Under Turkish rule Mesopotamia reverted
to the desert. Or it might have been that the
prevailing winds changed and ceased to bring
moisture, so that the springs dried up. In our
own time, in western America, we have seen
great arid areas transformed and rainfall in-
creased through the increased evaporation of
irrigation. And that is what is happening in
Central Asia today with the huge irrigation
projects for cotton culture. It means a new
seat of economic power under the red flag on the
very borders of China.

Another interesting factor is the changing
spirit of the people of the East. You feel the
change vis-a-vis the white man throughout the
Arab world, in India where the movement is for
outright independence, and in China where the
natives demand tariff autonomy and abolition
of extraterritoriality. The great race of Nordics
is not passing, but it is losing its grip on the
East. Talk with these people, from the Bos-
phorus to the China Sea, share their salt, and
you must realize that the entire East is on the
march, and the first objective is economic and
political freedom from the white man's im-
perialism.

And there is Japan, which within forty years
transformed herself from a tribal society into an

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THE WORLD ISSUE

industrial nation, often with the deciding vote in
world council at Versailles or Geneva, Japan
scooped up our science, and with cheap labor
made herself a competitor of decisive weight in
the struggle for Asia. Again by the 'logic of
geography/ Japan must sink her roots into the
continent of Asia, for raw materials, and for
room in which to overflow. Upon the behest of
America and the Dominions, Britain refused
to renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1922.
Japan was also snubbed by America with our
exclusion immigration law of 1924. So Japan,
too, has turned to the continent of Asia for her
future. Relations between Tokio and Moscow
are mysteriously amicable. A working arrange-
ment between Japan and the Soviets, even in
Manchuria, the bread-basket of the Far East, is
not the most unlikely prospect in the picture.

The world policy of the Soviets is offense to
the east and defense to the west. In their de-
fense they are aided by two powerful forces
within European capitalism. The first is the
intense rivalry inherent in economic nationalism,
and the second is the rise of the common man.

CAPITALIST RIVALRY

This rivalry between nations ranges from fair
competition to tremendous greed. Europe has

277

PAN-SOVIETISM

shifted to a new constellation of powers over
such questions as revision of the war treaties.
The defeated nations turn to Russia, not lured
by Communism, but in economic desperation
for a weapon with which to threaten the victors*
Then there is the old cleavage between the in-
dustrial nations of the Atlantic and the agri-
cultural lands of eastern Europe. The latter are
now attempting to form an agrarian bloc to
demand preferential treatment from the rest
of Europe against Che dumping from both over-
seas and Russia. And there is Briand's scheme
for Pan-Europa, to present a united economic
front against the pressure from America and the
Soviets. Considerable confusion exists in the
economic relations of these states, mounting
tariff barriers vying with mutual contingents in
trade agreements, a trend away from the most-
favored-nation clause, and, along with the
etatism, a general dissatisfaction with parlia-
mentary forms of government. There is also
a move toward regulation of trade after the
manner of the Soviet foreign trade monopoly.
European dissension brought on the World War
and made the Russian Revolution possible; it
continues to ensure the Russian Revolution
against attack.

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THE WORLD ISSUE

RISE OF THE COMMON MAN

The rise of the common man is even more sig-
nificant. Feudalism was maintained by inequal-
ity in armament. Froissart tells us in his de-
scription of the Battle of Crecy, 1346, that the
snowstorm of arrows from the English yeomanry
darkened the sun and destroyed the flower of
French chivalry, the mounted knights clad in
mail. The longbow and artillery, soon to follow,
smashed the feudal order and increased the im-
portance of the common man. Since then his
progress has been now up, now down.

Preparation for the World War was in heavy
artillery. The Germans produced guns which
could demolish any fortress erected by man.
But as the war of attrition went on, it became
apparent that big guns alone could not win. The
chief offense had to be the rifle and the bayonet,
and the chief defense the bodies of the common
soldiers. Germany could blow up Belgian forts,
send Zeppelins to London, and Gothas to Paris,
but the German army could not break the French
line of poilus at Verdun. In 1916, the German
Crown Prince sent more and more big guns into
the line, until they were almost locked wheel to
wheel from Saint-Mihiel around the salient to
the Meuse, and for six months there ensued the
most destructive warfare ever known. But the

279

PAN-SOVIETISM

living wall of Frenchmen, constantly replaced,
absorbed the bullets and shells. The line held.
Recently, bodies have been dug up, standing up-
right with bayonets, where they had been buried
alive during the mining operations at Verdun.
France has reason to worship the poilu, the
common soldier. The unknown soldier is also
our symbol of national heroism in Arlington,
before which we burn the undying fire.

Now, how much of this is mere lip service?
The common man fought the war. In England
he came back to what Lloyd George promised
would be a land fit for heroes, where a threepenny
bit woifld be worth ninepence. Instead, he saw
pictures not unlike that described by Alfred
Noyes in his poem the * Victory BalT gor-
geous ladies and gentlemen in a luxurious hall,
congratulating each other on the Pax Britannica,
while around in the dark corners were the
specters from Flanders Field, representing those
who paid for the ball.

Nevertheless, there has been a general move-
ment to power of the common man since the war.
There has been equalization of the franchise, a
triumph of peasants over their landlords, and an
advance of the 'new rich,' to offset the drop of a
great portion of the old middle class into the
ranks of the poor. There has been increased

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THE WORLD ISSUE

recognition of the voice of the producer in the
councils of economic representation attached to
governments. Organized labor is consulted now
on national policy, even in America. And the
International Labor Organization in Geneva
advances the cause of labor in general. More-
over, the socialist governments of Europe, such
as that in England today, are conducted by men
who were formerly workmen.

There is a certain class solidarity growing up
which is hard to measure. But it cuts across
international lines. It is deep calling to deep.
That tendency the Communists attempt to in-
flame. Class interest, however inarticulate in
quiet times, is the chief defense of the Soviets to
the west. It enables them to carry the offense
to the east.

THE ECONOMIC BATTLEFIELD

Soviet Russia is thus in the background of
almost every international conference today, the
counter-weight used by one side or the other.
And that counter-weight in world problems can-
not be ignored.

Reading the future is the business of those who
delight in speculation. "Without going to the
extreme of making prophecies, we may apply the
lessons of history to the present world situation.

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PAN-SOVIETISM

We know that there are three essentials to na-
tional greatness large geographical area for
internal expansion; access to an abundance of
raw materials and food supply; and a creative,
energetic, fresh people, whose driving power is
focused on some great national objective. Ap-
plying this formula, we find three such regions
in the world today, the United States, the
Soviet Union, and China.

In the United States capitalism is evolving
new forms, based on private property and initi-
ative, to better the conditions of those able to rise.

In Soviet Russia, socialism is evolving new
forms, based on the absence of private property
and on collective effort, to better the conditions
of society as a whole.

China is neither capitalistic nor socialistic, but
fluid, just emerging from medievalism. China
also has the three essentials of national great-
ness more than four million square miles of
territory rich in diversity; potential raw ma-
terials for an industrial civilization, including
one billion tons of iron ore and 300 billion tons
of coal reserve; and a hardy, industrious popu-
lation of 400 million, struggling for the great
objective of political unity which is retarded
by the lack of adequate transport and com-
munications.

282

THE WORLD ISSUE

Russia and China are both old empires and
new civilizations. The analogy could be carried
through their political institutions, for China,
like Russia, is ruled by a party (the Kuomin-
tang) through a Central Executive Committee.
Both are in social convulsion; both are effecting
an intellectual transition; both are training a
new citizenship, youth battling with age for the
establishment of new institutions. And though
Communism has been rejected by the rulers of
Nanking, there is an enormous propertyless
class in China which serves as pressure toward
conciliation with Moscow. Need for outside aid
forced the Kuomintang into alliance with Mos-
cow in 1925, and may do so again, especially in
view of the debasement of silver by capitalist
countries, which reduced the value of Chinese
currency by more than one half.

The springboard for Russian operations in
China is Outer Mongolia, which borders the
Soviet Union for one thousand miles. This * in-
dependent* republic is controlled by a Peoples
Revolutionary Party in the name of the Mon-
golian Proletariat. Here the equivalent of the
Soviet foreign trade monopoly cooperates with
Moscow. The strategic value of this land of
Genghiz Elan is fully recognized in Soviet rail-
road and highway schemes.

283

PAN-SOVIETISM

These factors point to China, particularly
Manchuria, as the economic battlefield for the
supreme test between capitalism and socialism.
The world's greatest vacant market is where
capitalism is most vulnerable. Of course, Ori-
ental trade is not yet of decisive weight. But, in
the words of Wu T'ing Fang, * Add an inch to the
shirt tail of every Chinese and you will keep the
cotton mills of the world busy for a year supply-
ing the increased demand occasioned thereby/
And Julean Arnold, American Commercial At-
tache in China, makes the prophecy: *A thor-
oughly modernized Asia will offer an opportunity
in international trade probably surpassing that
yet presented by any other section of the earth
during all of human history.'

Our consciously righteous may cling to the
self-satisfaction that the world must come to us,
as we hold the bank, but the Soviets know the
evangelizing power of cheap timber to a China
denuded of forests and of cheap oil to her grow-
ing industries. It is not improbable that the
machines bought by industrializing China within
a few years will be American models, made in
Russia. The Soviets learn technique from the
West; they teach in the East. With their teach-
ing goes Karl Marx. And with Karl Marx will
go an increasing flood of manufactured goods,

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THE WORLD ISSUE

which might not sell in the West, but which the
Soviets are willing to sell at a loss in the East in
return for political influence against Western
imperialism. Reports from Manchuria indicate
that Soviet goods sold there are up to Western
standards and much cheaper.

The system that wins the Asiatic market, and
builds up the purchasing power of the world's
largest block of consumers, will probably dictate
the new political and economic institutions of the
East. That certain Asiatic countries might be
brought into the Soviet orbit of foreign trade
monopoly, and closed to us, is more than a mere
possibility. We must be prepared to see the
East adopt collectivism as the means to ensure
economic development by strictly native owner-
ship. That Soviet achievements in a backward
country should awaken the slumbering East to
emulation is to be expected. But that Asia, at
present neutral, has the potential mass weight
to throw victory either to capitalism or socialism
is a fact realized only by the few who take the
long view of history.

We inherited our civil law from Rome and our
moral law from Judaism and Christianity, but
lex economica has never been codified. The ma-
chine age has introduced a whole series of new
situations to which our old categories do not

285

PAN-SOVIETISM

apply. And the relations of public authority to
property and of man to the machine are perforce
open questions. The struggle of the two systems
for Asia is thus also a struggle for the right to
dictate the lex economica of the future.

Individualism versus collectivism is the issue
before the whole world. In the machine age,
when the wage-earners shackled to the machine
are increasing faster than any other class, the
implication is that man cedes first place to sys-
tem. We have been adapting ourselves to the
new order unconsciously, the shift from spacious
residential homes to stuffy apartments is only
one instance. But does it mean that democracy
must be enserfed, and that we must adopt all
that collectivism implies? I believe not.

It does mean, however, that socialist compe-
tition will force significant changes in inter-
national relationships. We seem to be entering
an era of regional collectivism between capital-
ist nations. As the conflict sharpens between
Geneva and Moscow or the Comintern, between
capitalist and labor internationalism, there might
be a breaking-down of the vertical divisions and
an increasing accentuation of the international
line between the horizontal layers. Economi-
cally, certain countries of Europe seem destined
to become more and more producers of luxury

286

THE WORLD ISSUE

goods and playgrounds for the new world pro-
ducers, while the two industrial Juggernauts of
America and Soviet Russia confront each other
across Europe and in the open markets of Asia.

In this world issue America (with Canada as
an integral part of the geographical block), has
a particular r6le. We showed the way in indus-
trialization. By reason of our position we are
favored to work out a compromise between indi-
vidualism and collectivism. The next stage of
human development cannot possibly retain
laissez-faire economics. It must be an age of
new capitalism, of balance, order, and discipline,
of cooperation within nations and between na-
tions. It is for America to work out the solu-
tion of this over-production, by preserving the
best features of individual initiative and yet
gaining the advantages of collective effort. To
solve this problem, the ideal of service must, at
times, be accepted in lieu of economic reward.
To keep the leadership in world affairs, Ameri-
cans must bring into play the two qualities as-
cribed to them by Delisle Burns the intelli-
gence of scientists and the sympathy of poets.

This world issue emphasizes more than ever
the truth of the old prophecy, * Westward the
course of empire takes its way/ Empire has fol-
lowed man in his quest for raw materials, and

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PAN-SOVIETISM

space, and sources of economic power, from
Babylon to Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain, France,
England, and Germany, to America. The domi-
nance lias passed from the Mediterranean to
the Atlantic, and in the future must pass to
the Pacific. Spengler's 'Untergang des Abend-
landes/ may be a premature prophecy of the
twilight of the European gods. Nevertheless,
the arena is shifting to the new economic centers
of the Pacific. The old East becomes the new
West. It is there that capitalism and socialism,
America and Pan-Sovietism, will meet in conflict.

The issue of that conflict is dark in the crystal-
It can be foretold only by men of such vision that
they identify themselves with the mass of hu-
manity, moving slowly in the fullness of time,
along the middle of the road between the radical
crusaders and the consciously righteous. With-
out the radicals progress would be slow. With-
out Sinn Fein there would be no Irish Free
State. Without the Bolsheviks the capitalist
states would not recognize the social dangers in-
herent in machine civilization*

My personal view of the struggle was stated
long ago by Bobby Burns, that 'Man's in-
humanity to man makes countless thousands
mourn/ But man is always interesting even
when forlorn, for he never gives up his quest of
the Holy Grail, which is to abolish poverty.