BOLSHEVISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 264, 6 November 1937, Page 21

BOLSHEVISM.

A 20 YEARS' REVIEW. SUCCESS OF * ORGANISED HATE." nXDVLUM HOW ■ WIH OB TO RIOKT. (By WILLIAM C. McCLOY.) No. IV. From the very first, those Russian revolutionary figures which later years were to make to familiar dominated the new State they had ruthlessly crcated. Lenin (Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov) was the first President of Russia's first Bolshevist Government in November, 1917. Trotsky (L. D. Bronstoin) was Foreign Minister. Ovseenko, who had started things in the Winter Palace, was head of Military and Naval Affair*. Lunacharsky had charge of People's Education. The President of Nationality .Affairs (Secretary of the Interior) was Stalin (L. V. Djugashvili), now the surviving head of revolutionised Russia. And in the background were troops of energetic, enthusiastic lieutenants who could be depended upon to help make Bolshevist history. There was KamenefT, propagandist, Zinovieff, agitator; Chicherin, one of few aristocrats, and proud of it. The latter elaimed descent from Cicero, and once snubbed Lord Curzon at a League of Nations meeting with the words: My ancestors were highly placed, cultivated men and women when yours were daubing ■woad on their naked bodies." And many others.

Liberal* Alwaya Victim*. All were full-fledged Bolshevists. There were hosts of Liberals in R» 9 9' a — of every shade and grade-many of them aristocrats, but all were united in one thing—distrust of the extremists The time had not yet come to denounce them, as did the French Minister Pichon in 1919, when, in reply to a tentative pri poaal from Russia, he wrote: The French Government will make no cont with crime." General Miller, victim of a sensational disappearance in Faris recently, and who was head ■ ofWh'te Russia's northern Government in 191 , refused to entertain * I,k ® P r "j "Moral considerations do not to confer on an equal basis with traiito s murderers and robbers, he sai . even in 1917 Russia® Liberals loath to associate themselves too closely with the Bolsheviki. The extremists were called Bolsheviki. They out-num-bered the other faction of the R« VO, V" tion, the Mensheviki. Bolsheviki » Russian for majority; Mensheviki means 1,1 When' Great Britain's first Government took office, in 1923, a servative leader predicted in prin • the future I am not sure. But I do know that, if revolution conms, the will flow with the blood of our Liberali . Past revolutions justified his prediction. Rusaia l(o Exception. The plight of Russia's Liberals wa * exception —save that everything nected with Russia's upheaval w« mightier than the world had ever known before. Hwinburne's poignant verse describes the noyades men and w tied together in couples and Fiance 150 yer.« ago. Rusaia * n°y al j® were drowned in mwi format^n—help less, naked men and bound togethjrf, by scores and do»sn», and shoved off high bridges tat ° water. Everything connected with tne Russian Revolution operated upon tn© same unprecedented acale,

"What great happiness to live in such days as these 1" wrote Prince Lvov, leading Russian Liberal, who almost automatically became first President of the Provisional Government in March, 1917. "The great Russian Revolution is really miraculous in its vast and tranquil progress!" He was soon got rtd of, Kerensky taking his place." The Cheka, Lenin's secret police force, killed him eventually. The Countess Sofia Panina, an active social worker in pre-revolutionary days, founder of the huge People's Palace where thousands of poor workers had been taught to read and write, was clapped into prison the first month of the Provisional Government for refusing to give up 90,000 roubles in her possession as Minister of Public Reform. Fate unknown. Two years of Bolsheviki rule disillusioned Prince Wolkonskv, ardent Liberal, who all his life and his family before him had laboured in the people's cause. For some time he held an important, post under the Bolshevist Government, his book upon his revolutionary experiences tell us, but he escaped in time to Rome. The Gospel of Hate. The bitter truth is that, more than Lenin's leadership, Trotsky's inflammatory eloquence and Stalin's steel-like determination, class hatred was the driving force of the Revolution. Hate against anyone who had wealth, education and breeding wiped out all differences in the revolutionary rank and file as it did away with rivalries among the leaders. Kipling defined war as "organised death." Russia's revolution may be defined as "organised hate." The Gospel of Hate was the only religion Lenin preached. And the strength of this hatred fell fiercest upon the Liberals. Three major crises marked the Bolshevist Revolution —three periods when the existence of the Soviet State was threatened seriously. The first and greatest came during the summer of 1918, when there was neither a trained army nor an adequate administration apparatus, when Soviet territory had shrunk to little more than the fifteenth century's principality of Moscow, when foreign intervention seemed certain, when disloyalty among the workers was rampant and when—always we come back to hunger—bread Was scarcest. On July 16, 1918, the Czar and his entire family, who had been in captivity for 16 months, were shot to death, their bodies so far as possible being destroyed. On August 3», 1918. culminating point, perhaps, of this perilous period for the Bolshevists, Lenin, while addressing a meeting of the Michelson factory workers, was shot at three times. Two of the shots took effect and Lenin fell. His condition for a few days was critical, but he soon recovered to resume his operations in behalf of Soviet success. Lenin Forsakes Pare Communism. Crisis No. 2 came hard on the heels of the first. In the autumn of 1919, with the White General Denikin threatening Tula, largest city south of Moscow, and another White General, Yudenvitch, in the suburbß of Petrograd, the fate of Soviet Russia hung by a hair. But short though the time was and pressing as was the need, a formidable army was forming. The Government was functioning actively, if not smoothly. The people's distress was partially relieved. The third crisis was in the spring of 1921, when there was widespread discontent even among the Bolshevists thenwelves. Famine stalked throughout i the country that year, a famine such as had not been experienced in Russia since i 1625.

It was this last crUis that decided Lenin to switch from his no-bnying-and-selling policy to a modified form of capitalism he had so long preached ■gainst. The "Nep"—new economic policy —restored internal economic freedom in the villages and freedom of trade in the cities. The Civil War was over. No longer was there the same I necessity for the war communism that had prevailed. It was the turning [point, The smoother operation of the

Soviet Government dates from that time. Progress since then has been uninterrupted. The Cheka and its successor, the Ogpu, the Soviet secret police force, took their cue from the Czarist secret jiolice force that had preceded them. They modelled themselves upon the Czarist system and it is by no means sure that they exceeded it. White Russians shared with the Reds the cruelties of the Civil War. The same spirit inspired both sides—Russian. The White General Denisov speaks of "exterminating all persons suspected of sympathising with the Bolshevists." Another White, General Drozdovsky, tells how, in the village of Malfeevka, his men "beat everyone hard with bayonets." General Wrangcl, commander of the last White army, writes: "I had 570 Bolshevist officers and non-commissioned officers shot on the spot." Turning to the Right. The world revolution, so dear to Lenin and Trotsky, was all undreamed of by the Germans when they blithely let Lenin pass through Germany on the way back to Petrograd from Zurich in March, 1917. The Germans hoped only to disintegrate their enemy nation from within. That Lenin's return to the great land-locked plateau known as Russia might prove a boomerang to themselves was dreamed of least of all. Germany's Bolshevist revolution was short-lived. But its operations, with the example of nearby Bolshevist Russia, have left an indelible mark upon Germany. Stalin, Russia's present governmental head, seems to have modified the hope for world revolution as he has modified much else. How sincere or even how important his work may be, time alone can show. But it is significant that Soviet stability dates from their turning to the Right. The more they keep in the direction of the Right, the more likely they are to keep the regard of other nations. —N.A.N.A. (To be concluded.)