How Goes the Fight?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12193, 17 December 1917, Page 2

How Goes the Fight?

BOTES 01 THE WAR,

THE PCSiTiOH ANALYSED,

CHRISTCHURCH, December 17

Some very interesting aspects of the Russian revolution are discussed D t v the Petrograd correspondent of "The Times" in the course of a recent series of articles, and he throws much new iidit on events. He insists that the. Bolsheviks wore not numerically the strongest party in Uhe State, but they had the advantage of organisation and their agents were so active in the early days that they secured control of the Soviet or committee system. .Moreover, they attracted the agents of the oid 01dira.ua, or secret- police system, most of whom .joined the BoNhevik wing oi the Socialist Party, and the Okhrana agents, with the most violent of the reactionaries, whose purpose is to wreck the revolution, have largely influenced the pol.cy of the Maximalists. Itho union of these forces, savs the correspondent, "implies a particular dancer for the country, because their longstanding experience m terroiisiic and destructive activity gives them a toimidable advantage over all the p-olitiea l parties that remain in the field of piactieal politics, namely, the Men.hevik, or Minimalist wingoi the Soeial-Dc.no-crats, led b" M. Tehkheidze. the. Sn-cialist-R evolutionary party. represented by M. Kerensky, and the Constitu-tional-Democrats, directed by M. Miliuknff. Uhe Bolsheviks and their allies, Russian and German, have been tlie smallest- but the most active an<. influential force .in Russian politics; Lhcy have always worked in dark and devious ways —through Rasputin, Azeff and a host of pp:es, informers ami agents provocateurs, before the. resolution, through Lenin and a well-trained and organised army or agitators and demagogues sines the Revolution.

The policy and programme, .of Bolshevism have lice 11 clear virtually from tho beginning of the revolution. H was responsible for the breakdown of all the regular machinery of government .on which the promoters of tn« revolution depended. It swept aside the Zemstvos and municipal courcds and replaced them by committees of uneducated men. directed by torroiist-s-It introduced the committee system m the army, and reduced discipline to a mere name. Whenever Socialist groups havo endeavoured to unite with 0110 another or with constitutionalists and Cadets tlie Bolshevik ager.ts set to work to prevent the union. Hicy were active in every combination, always insisting on conditions that rendered the movements abortive. They wrecked ono coalition government aftei another. They were unscrupulous and tremendously industrious. "Constitutionalists and moderate Socialists sought to work together. The former hoped Whereby to save the country from anarchy ; the latter realised that revolutionary excesses would lead to reaction and compromise Socialism. But neither .of them could develop tho strongtli or the organisation or the unscrupulous activity of the Bolsheviks. M. Korensky, himself a revolutionary politician of no mean order, tried conclusions with i|he Bolsheviks, sometimes with their own weapons; but what could one man do against the constant insidious activity of the Bolshevik organisation? He. was handicapped by his own antecedents, by the fact that many ,of the Bolshevik chieftains had been, and nominally remained, his political associates."

T]Vie Bolshevik influence nn the mass of the people is not difficult to understand- " Unprepared for political independence, incapable of resisting the demagogic tide," the correspondent writes " the non-Socialist parties and the bulk of the intelligentsia, drifted helplessly. Many entered the Socialist-Revolution-ary stream, vainly hoping thereby to cheek the swifter Bolshevik _ current. Bolshevism attracted the primitive, untutored minds,of tho multitude. Lenin spoke a language that the simplest mu.jik could understand. Utterly befogged by the learned arguments _ and foreign words so abundantly declaimed by Social Revolutionaries and Social Democrats, quite unable to reconcile their pacifist tendencies with outward readiness to carry on the war, the ignorant masses, and especially the demoralised soldiery, listened delightedly to Lenin and his horde of pro-German agitators. 'Take the land; it is yours by right. Do not fight. All men are brothers; there should bo universal brotherhood, no war.' This was the sort of Socialism that the mitjik who was yesterday a serf could digest with ease and comfort. He was then prepared to swallow a cruder dose- 'lt tho owner resists, take the land by force. There is no such thing as property —there shouli be no owners.' lie did not mind the trap concealed in thiutterance. Once he got the land he would iake care that nobody else should take it from him. Then came the final and least digestible bolus: ' The Germans are your friends- They qro fighting because England will not make peace. England is prolonging the war because she is making a good thing out of it. You are England's tools.' Tinder various guises and disguises this has been the substance of the Roishevik propaganda."

The correspondent is prepared to say that possibly a Bolshevik Government is a necessary evil, and that not until Russia has passed through a Bolshevik regime ""ill the mass of the people realise that the Maximalists arc the true counter-revolutionaries, that they are doing their best to ruin the country and that they are working hand in glovo with the enemies of Russia and the agents of the monarchy. There is an aspect of the present disorders to which the correspondent does not refer, and which, curiously enough, seems to have been overlooked by all the correspondents. In no other country in the world <3id anarchism and nihilism, as creeds, receive greater attention than in Russia. Some of the ablest men in the country have been professed nihilists. Elsewhere the tendency was to emphasise the philosophical side of anarchism, to elevate it into a branch of reasoned political science. But in Russia there were thousands of anarchists waiting for just the opportunity that the revolution .offeredj eager to wreck all human governments, opposed as bitterly to republics as to monarchies. The Maximalists must have drawn no small share of

their extraordinary influence from tlho anarchist and nihilist organisations, and the fact that so little not ice has

been given to those organisations is surely reinurkable.

The correspondent looks to the Cossacks as the hope of Russia, though it may be observed that if Kaledin is in tftie hands of the Bolsheviks there can be small prospect of a Cossack movement succeeding. " Numbering several millions, grouped in twelve armies, wide flung along the southern borders of the Empire, between the Don and tlio Pacific Ocean, the Cossacks, whether of Russian or semi-Asiatic descent, had long been accustomed to freedom and had been inured to discipline and hardship," the correspondent writes. " They (held broad lands from the State in return for military service. Serving with the colours, fighting the frontier tribes, or rirotectmg the border, or working in their villages, they were all obliged to appear. horsed and armed, when danger threatened the State. They (bad large vested interests at stake; what is more, they had an inbred tradition of duty and patriotism. Therein they differed irum the ordinary peasant, and it was this difference that rendered the Cossack so quickly alive to the dangers that (threatened himself and his country and enabled him to focus and develop the instinct of self-preservation among his weaker, less advanced countrymen. He was not a counter-revolu-tionary, but just a plain, honest yeoman, a soldier-farmer. We must appi'i'c.aie these elementary truths about the, Cossack, casting aside the absurd picture of him in the guise of a bloodthirsty ogre which has Ixen handed down to us sine.' the days of the Napoleonic invasion, for unless wo know the Cossack as be is we nil all tail to understand the real significance of the events that arc happening and preparing in Russia at the moment."