BOLSHEVISM.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 15320, 16 September 1920, Page 6

BOLSHEVISM.

NO FREEDOM SAVE FOR THE ELECT. By Ambrose Lambert. (Mr. Lambert went to Russia some months ago with the express, understanding that he would be permitted to write witliout let or hindrance of what he saw. He was m Moscow several months, and has now returned.) I hay. just returned from Soviet Russia alter a prolonged visit, and am not a Bolshevik. I remained too long to become one. Russia is the place effectually to cure any tendency to Bolshevism, providing you stay long enough- There is not one. I venture to say. of those Russians whom' the United States deported back to their native land who would not give his or her heart and soul to be back again m the United States. I met i several of them, and managed to learn their real' views. I will not indicate their I identities, because of what I know of the conditions m Russia. Had the duration of my stay m Russia been the fortnight to which Litvinoff (whom I personally like, as l«like many others whom I met) m his cleverness limited mc m his permission to visit Soviet Russia, I should probably have come away convinced that everything m the Bolshevist garden was lovely, and Communism was a workable ideal stulti-' fled m its realisation by oppressive capitalism. ■ . «• ■ But I was permitted to stay on, with the unintended result that I caught sufficient glimpses of the real naked conditions to realise that Bolshevism -deserves no place m the scheme of western democracy and that its greatest friends outside Russia are its greatest enemies, the men who over-advertjse it and create for it an attraction, dangerous only by making a mystery of it. The truth about Russia to-day is that the tyranny of a minority under Czarism has simply been replaced by another minority tyranny every .bit as ruthless, but without the . glitter, glamor, and bright lights of the Imperial regime. The Bolsheviks number, according to their own figures, not more than 600,000. They are ruling a population of 160,000,000 because they happen to be the .only disciplined and organised force that* exists m Russia to-day. There is considerable analogy m the state of Russia and that of Ireland, where the terrorist group constitutes such an infinitesimal 'proportion of the population. Facts have to be faced, and the Bolsheviks are ruling at least, sections of the big cities, Such as Petrograd and Moscow. They.' are not ruling the peasants, who are revelling ln a prosperity of food and paper money, but suffering from an acute poverty of essentials of life such as clothes and salt. The question naturally, arises: Why do not the peasants—numbering, as they do, over a hundred million—revolt? The answer is obvious— lack of organisation. The' same answer applies to the decreasing multitudes m Moscow and Petrograd. • In .addition there-is the terrorism. The famous secret, police, of Czarist days has been replaced by the secret police of the Bolsheviks, both admirable as instruments of repression. Public physical out-rages-»-that is, wholesale slaughters— no longer exist m the big cities. Yet there continues the policy of secret arrest, imprisonment without tr.'al and without charges, and the fear of the secret police, or extraordinary commission, as it is euphemistically termed, is over every man and woman living m Russia to-day. There is no personal -freedom m Russia to-day save for the elect and those who want to eat and live, and therefore join or pretend to sympathise or be of the elect. General Brusiloff is no more a Bolshevik to-day than he ever was. He joined them for two reas.Qns.the flrst a public one— his resentment as a Russian against outside interference. The second and dominating reason was that he is an old man who has lost practically everything he possessed m the world and needed a job tc eat and live. In Soviet Russia one's life Is regulated by -tyrannical rules. The word home has practically be^n eliminated. You live where you are told to live, and with whom the authorities tell you to live' you move only and when they tell you to' move. There is no free Press, nothing but llolshevist newspapers and publications. Private property and the right of individual domioile haYe 7 been abolished. Every tfting tn theory, 'and very nearly m praciice, belongs to the' State; even the children, whose physical care is. however, the one oasis m a huge desert of misery, if there is anything 1o eat, they get it. That must be said to the credit of the Bolsheviks. I am hazily sketching one ot two of the outstanding features that remain m my mind; Personally l was treated with every consideration. I like the Bolsheviks I met, I like their constructive programme as it is outlined on paper and by word of mouth. It would make any slncero wisher for the future welfare of a great country enthusiastic, but the trouble is that it is only on paper. That Is Russra to-day They have not the capacity for self-government. They are children ln sympathy, suspicion, and cruelty. The policy— and 1 say this not because of any association with it— of opening Russia to trade will kill Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks cannot resist prosperltv. They can be destroyed also by outside pressure, but what would happen to Russia then?' ln my humble opinion a condition of chaos, the horrors of which 1 fear to contemplate.