RUSSIA REVISITED

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 10

RUSSIA REVISITED

DR DILLON ON BOLSHEVISM “ MIGHTIEST DRIVING FORCE TO-DAY " Having spent the best part of my life in Russia, which 1 left for the last time just before the World War, it was natural that I should feel a strong desire to revisit the country. My longing to return to the country which Iliad known under three Vsars was so strong that it overcame the formidable obstacles which, my failing health, presented, and 1 set out alone for Leningrad and Moscow. My visit had no controversial object, no pet theory to demonstrate. The fact that 1 am a creditor of the Soviet Governmeni, which confiscated nearly everything I possessed, did not enter into my calculations. I went to view things as they are and not as I might deem that they ought to be. For good or for evil the new order of things is established. in the country that onco was Russia, but is now become the Union of the Socialist Soviet Republics, and I am neither disposed nor competent to cast its horocope.—Dr E. J. Dillon, in tho ‘ Contemporary Review'.’

It is clear that the personal grievances of Dr Dillon do not prevent him from seeing the best in the Soviet regime. for Tn the course of a lengthy contribution he says:—

THE LIFE OF THE STREETS. ‘ In Leningrad and Moscow it is no easy matter to stand still or to saunter about the stieets; the crowds pushed me forwards and backwards like a shuttlecock. Several trams rushed by, biro the passengers on them were so numerous that they clustered in and around the wagons, hanging on like swarms of bees and looking so sour and aggressive—in consequence it may be of their cramped position—that no outsider would seek to ]oin them unless vconstrained by dire necessity. The names of the streets and squares were nearly all new to me and enshrined tha memory of various revolutionary leaders, martyrs, or incidents. “The scenes on the streets were calculated to awaken my curiosity and hold my attention. The compact crowd that literally choked the sidewalks were not the pedestrians with whom I had been familiar. The individual types were wholly different. Nowhere in the for instance, was the young, dreamy, listless truth-seeker of Tsarist times to be discerned. All the men and women, aye and the very children, who were forging ahead to-day were brimful of life, enterprising instinct with animation, veritable incarnations of self-consciousness in all its forms.

Divided into groups, each individual attired in decent, unpretentious garments, many of them carrying satchels, portfolios, or well-thumbed volumes, they chatted earnestly of sociology, foreign politics, natural sciences, of France, England, and Germany aloud, without heeding what was going on beside them. At many street corners there were newspaper stands at which one could purchase Russian and German dailies, reviews, and books, and many were the hawkers of tobacco, cigarettes, and other semi-necessaries. THE VASTNESS OF THE UPHEAVAL. “ It gave me undiluted pleasure to watch the finer specimens of robust manhood and womanhood visibly thirsting for action as they marched blithely forward with sure tread and overweening exuberance, heedless of those whom they encountered on their route. I, who meekly make way for them by way of atoning for rny warm old fur coat, was often violently butted against and pushed aside, without compunction or evil intent. “Analysing the traits, the accents, and the gait of those crowds, I could see that they were not the Russians I had *known; many of them, indeed, I guessed, and afterwards discovered, were not Russians at all, but naturalised Esthonians, Lithuanians, Finns, Latvians, Poles, Hebrews, etc. —but one and all thev wore the successful elements of the population, those, who had struggled and emerged, the survivors of the fittest, types of the proletariat triumphant, whose only nationality is fidelity to Marx and citizenship of the world. “ Outsiders cannot realise the vnstness of the upheaval effected by the October Revolution. One must have lived and worked in the land under the Tsarist regime, and one must have resided there again after the revolution, in order to compare properly the two states. What happened in October, 1917, was not merely the substitution of one form of government for another, or of one set of institutions for another. It was a sweeping organic change in every branch or life, public and private, in the reciprocal relations of persons and social groups, in law, in ethics, in education, social aims, land tenure, anti in the people’s outlook upon life and death. And those startling innovations not confined to local or national use, were destined for the entire universe, that being a characteristic of all Russian reforms—even of the crude projects put forward by the young generation when I was a graduate at a Russian university in the reign of Alexander 11.

“To sum up, the Russia I went to see no longer exists. In fact, it never existed. It was a gross deception, Tike the make-believe cities improvised by the Empress Catherine’s Minister. Potemkin, in order to impose upon his imperial mistress. It was a vast mosaic of nations held together by violence, •falsehood, and injustice. To-dny in the country once miscalled Russia dwell Marxists, Communists, Ukrainians, etc Russians of the old type have vanished. The unified laws for one and all have been to a considerable extent abolished, republic has now not only its own language, but its ovyn legislation from which, however, certain subjects are excluded. “ Centralisation is beneficially modified by local self-government. Everywhere people are thinking, working, combining, making scientific discoveries and industrial inventions. If one could obtain a bird’s-eye view of the numerous activities of the citizens of the Soviet republics, one would hardly trust the evidence of one’s senses. Nothing like it in variety, intensity, tenacity of purpose, has ever been witnessed Revolutionary endeavour is melting obstacles and fusing heterogeneous elements into one great people—not indeed a nation in the old world meaning, but a strong people cemented by quasi-religious enthusiasm. WRECKED AND BURIED THE OLD WORLD ORDER. “ Will that new people with its dissolvent principles and aggressive action hold its own l in the long run agaiTist its enemies and stem the stream of capitalism? I am not Qualified to answer this question, on which the leaders of the movement are themselves at variance. “ The Bolshvists have accomplished much of what they aimed at and more than seemed attainable by any human organisation under the adverse conditions that faced them. They have mobilised well over 150 milium- of listless unman beings and infused into

thorn a now spirit. They have wrecked and buried tho entire old world order in one-sixth ot the globe, and arc making ready to inter it everywhere else.

“ They have shown themselves able and resolved to meet emergency and to fructify opportunity. Their way of dealing with home rule, and the Nationalities is a masterpieces of ingenuity and elegance. None of the able statesmen of to-day in other lands has attempted to vie with them in their method of satisfying the claims of minorities. In ail these enterprises they are moved by a force which is irresisalmost thaumaturgical, “But all those achievements belong to the external order, and would never have been realised had Bolshevism been but one of the occasional salient, phenomena measured by tho ordinary f standards of historical criticism. It is ) more. It is a transcendental agency J which took its origin from the un- j plumbed depths, and its charter from Fate. And it is amoral and inexorable because transcendental. It has come, as Christianity came, not for peace but for the sword, and its victims outnumber those of the most sanguinary wars. To me it seems to be, the mightiest driving force for good or for evil in the world to-day.”