THE STABILITY OF THE SOVIETS' POWER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3139, 16 October 1922, Page 2

THE STABILITY OF THE SOVIETS' POWER.

lii tile Mercure de France tor July 15, M. A. Gorovzov, former professor of law at Perm and Petrograd, writes with an frankness, courage, high moral spirit, and breadth of view that should win a world-wide hearing. Me goes liif to convince thoughtful readers that the Russian question is the most vital of all- and iias been handled with well-nigh fatal unwisdom. Not the stolid passivity of the l!ussiau peasant, nor fear of the Red Army's bayonets, upholds the universally detested regime. Its one chief support, to-day. is that very famine, from which its downfall has been so confidently expected. In the great cities, where alone an uprising could hope for success, all food is not merely • socialised'' but •■nationalised." Everyone save government officials is in the forlorn breadline that receives the wretched ration of two ounce* ol hrcad dailv. So even if freedom could |,o I'ullv assured as the reward for a single week of upheaval, struggle, confusion and I'resli organisation, each starving man knows that ho would perish meantime. '•| watched before the grill the long lino of wretches who extended their Lands, like beggars, to receive I rom a Soviet girl a, (piarter-pound ol rice or a pitiful half-herring. I could recognise in that" miserable procession, .great scholars whose names are known and honored throughout Russia, Europe, the entire world, in a prison i is impossible to obtain nourishment save from the jailers' hands and Russia is one vast prison-house. "If it is desired to rescue Russia ,-,.„,„ famine—which is impossible until the Bolshevist rule ceases to exist help should bo accorded by sending ,„, 1;H 1 „ 0 t to remote villages on the Volcra but to the population ol gitni cities like Moscow and Petrograd . Th(T( , i s no reason to lea. that t s would confirm the power of the 1 olsl - vist On the contrary, it would be tie safest and least costly means to accomplish, through the destruction ol I <>i'shevism by the Russians own hands the reconstruction ol Russia, and ol F T P a.''second section the. writer revei,|s the larger explanation ol < Soviets' long .continuance, name , th persistent and fatal errors ol the I. ■onean policy toward them. .He Sites a far-sighted French i-in . X.! i« 1792. uttering a wise protest against promulgation ol t Ouko of Brunswick s manifesto, y>l»c iinanded the French peop In „ko instant and repentent su In us si n to the principle ol monarchical a »- olutism and to their own dmncely ~„„i„ted Rourbon sovereign. no the blaze which is perhaps bout to die out of itself. Far Iron, in, an end to that movement you ri'k giving to its chief new grounds of support in their inlluence over t u mas^s—an inlluence .winch may piesentlv exhaust itself. ' . -And so now." the writer proceeds to argue, "the horror of the name o Capitalism, and everything associated with that term, is pretty much tin same in Russia, since the 'social revolution, as. 'Tyranny' was tor the revolutionary masse, of 1792." '1 he most emphatic warning against the pel il m the cholera epidemic, in 1920. was to set up immense placards a I ovei Kussia. reading: "Cholera and Capitalism are the two most dangerous enemies ol the Proletariat." ,- The writer nowhere repeats.) directly supports, the allocation that the ccstl'v. fultile and harmful invasions by Kolehak. Denikine. and others, were financed or even instigated by bankeis or Governments chiefly interested in the collections of the gigantic lc>reiKii debts incurred by the Romanoffs. Rut I well remember that 1 could not restrain mv indignation when, still inside the Soviet frontier. I used to hear their manifestos and prnnunciainentos, announcing, as one of the lundainental principles of the struggle against Bolshevism, the recognition of the Russian debts to foreign countries. . . I hey misconceived the true state ol the popular psychology, which was profoundly anticapitalistic. . . The truth is. -that in each European country the real "Bolshevist problem is not'a question of foreign policy, but ii vital homo question. Consider, lor instance, how a typical English workingman laces this discussion of the Russian debts. He suffers from non-employment'. Ho does not charge it, to the abominable misgovernnient of Russia to-day. to the havoc it has made of all its own people's means of production, but s-m----plv to the embargo, which his own Government will lift only on-condition ol the pavment, by a freed people, ol the "old Czars' " debts to Kuropean capitalists. All this will certainly make no appeal to his own "natural antipathy to Capitalism." So those invasions, and I he ill-limedl avowal of their special aim. alienated the working classes of all other countries- from their present rulers. and also enabled the Petrograd autocrats to call even on thy. Petrograd autocrats to to enlist in the defence of flu common fatherland. There can he no reconstruction of Russia or of rCurope until the present regime ceases to exist; but it can be overthrown only by the Russians tliems Ives, from within, not by invasion. So the Governments of Kuropo must wait until the autocratic group completes its work of bankrupting the whole country, before the eyes of the entire proletariat of Europe, thus presenting a memorable deterrent object lesson. Meantime let there be no talk of debts- which a Rolshevised Russia, certainly never will nor can pay—but rather a concerted, unceasing demand for individual freedom. political libel t\ in Russia.. That, alone will arouse. the sympathy of the masses both in Russia and in every other land. In particular, there are to-day many thousands of political prisoners crowding all the Soviet gaols. Though hardly to be grounded on any right under international law or usage, an appeal for their release would be infinitely more salutary than any financial (lonian, which only a liberated and recognised Russia can develop any rostwvres \v\ meet. Most, impressive of all. from such ~ pen comes the repeated appeal that we distingirsh always between a great and most unfortunate nation, on the one bund, and the group of murderous conspirators- who to-day stamp up.m it and upon all their own hypocritical |U'or'<. ssii lis on the oilier. Any al tempt, by Lloyd George in particular, to open economic or political relations with the oligarchy is deplored. If we \'v.'<\. the starving peasants for the ntxf irw years, the rulers will only perfect, meanwhile ,-iii tinny already a menace to Kurono. A Government created amid Hood-, of gore, which through lour long yearhas never ceased In proclaim its devotion to one sole ideal lo cut ihe throat of every bourgeois in the world a Government which has been able onl\ lo de-li(i\ everything that had life in a great country like Russia, its whole civilisation, :d! its industries, even its agriculture, which has actually succeeded in turning the granary of Europe into .-i realm ol famine such ;. Government can never he anything hut an agency of war. that supreme personification <if destruction and of dentil.

lint neighborlands, like Poland and Rouma.mii in particular, have made a. grievous error in waging wars of racehatred and conquest against Russia itself, not merely the Bolshevist dictators, who are bleeding it to death, though they cried out: “Everybody to the defence of the Fatherland!’’ I know personally Russian officers, anti-revolutionists who on hearing that call argued thus: “The Soviet regime, which I hate with all my soul, is bu| a passing phase, while Russia, my country, is an eternal, a sacred ideal. If the Poles had made war on the Bolshevist tyranny, not only would 1 never bate lifted a linger to defend it, but 7 could have brought myself to enlist in the Polish army to fight against the butchers of Russia. Rut as matters now stand, on the question of defending Russia's territory. I cannot hesitate to array myself, no matter under what command, even that of the Sovets’. if it comes to my country’s defence against foreign invasion.” Thousands of Russian officers, so reasoning. followed (tenoral Rrusilov’s example. and eagerly volunteered for the war against Poland. 'Tlie Polish Government needed only to announce that it waged war not against the Russian people and land, but against the Soviet Government, that while taking possession of territories not essentially Polish, it stood ready to restore them the moment Russia iiad a real Government, exercising authority not by lucky usurpation but as an honest representative of the people's will. II Is not I topsail to add that Poland in that case would never have seen Soviet troops under the walls of Warsaw. Iml on the contrary the war would have resolved itself into a triumphal march to .Moscow, without the striking of a blow. The Russian people itself, already largely hypnotised by the Bclshevistic terror within their own souls, would have lent them its aid to cast oil’ the yoke of their oppressors. It is added lhat a conquest like Bessarabia may be a decided source of wiakness to Roumania, as its racial, political, and religious relations to Russia will keep alive a strong proRussian party, which in a peasant population of low intelligence makes the best of soil in which to sow the Bolshevistic tart's. In this and similar suggestions concerning ‘‘ratification" of the Polish frontier as setthd at Riga, tlie writer asserts himself frankly as a patriotic Russian who expects yet to be proud of his country and her Government: hut he is no less a lughsoulcd cosmopolitan for that. Indeed he suggests no more than a self-deter-mining plebiscite five or ten years lienee, and then only if the Soviet rule has meantime vanished. The writer does not regard the \ ersailles treaty as final in any sense. Recurring to tlie precedent of ) <SI.T. hi' ventures ‘‘the opinion, which is shared furthermore by the most practical nation in the'world, the I nited States, that the epoch through which we are now passing will behold, soon or late, its Congress of Vienna —tor the definitive and righteous settlement, of inter-state lines and general problems for all Europe.’’ in a third and final section, the author oilers a partially prophetic view of what must follow on the rather fruitless discussions at Genoa and Ihe Hague. Fnioss a wiser policy shall (di ed i vely weaken the Soviets, the time i s approaching when in Europe as in .\si:i the Bolshevist propaganda will take the form of overwhelming militarv invasion of neighborhoods in which tin' proletariat are believed to !,,, larvelv Rolshevie at heart. An assault on Roumania through Bessarabia seems the logical first dnikc, and a determined movement into the inflammable Balkan peninsula generally is far more imminent than any voluntary locking of horns with anv or all the \\ estern Allies. In l>ulgaria especially agents ol Bolshevism arc- already active. More encouraging for the future ol Russia than anything else revealed m (Ids article- arc the lucid intellect and lolly spirit of its author.