Wairarapa Daily Times. (Established 45 Years,] WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1920. RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14127, 26 May 1920, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times. (Established 45 Years,] WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1920. RUSSIA.

For long our appreciation of the course of events in Russia suffered through the lack of any first-hand and unbiassed information; recently, however, several attempts at an impartial analysis of the situation have appeared, the latest df which is “Bolshevist Russia,” by M. Etienne Antonelli. The author, who is an official of the Faculty of Law in Paris, keeps two guiding principles in view throughout his work. However opposed to Bolshevism he may be, nothing is gained by exaggeration or (misrepresentation. These merely defeat their own ends by supplying sympathisers with Bolshevism with dialectical weapons. In the second place, facts must be faced. It is foolish to under-estimate the strength of Bolshevism, At the second revolution in 1917 its' adherents were definitely in a minority, yet since thcp they have, consolidated their position and imposed their doctrine on the mass of the .Russian people. It is idle to dismiss the movement as the coup of a few self-seeking adventurers, even if it is doomed to eventual collapse, and M. Antonelli thinks that it is, there must be something about it that gives it a compelling, if transient, appeal to the Russians. After all, any form df government rests in the last resort upon the consent 'of the governed. M. Antonelli’s attitude may be gathered from some of the omissions in the book. He has little to say about Bolshevist atrocities or scandals,’ such as the nationalisation of women, which have provided the counter-propagandists , with sensational and sometimes unreliable mtaerial. To prove his case he does not

need to depend on unautbenticated testimony; the official proclamations of the Government serve his purpose. lie does not labour the depression in Petrograd and the other cities he visited; they were not the revolutionary furnaces pictured by the bourgeois, and though they stfemed to be “slowly dying of desertion and indolence,” social and economic life still moved languidly. His detachment is shown in his treatment of the controversy as to whether the Bolshevist leaders were in German pay. The charge, it is said, is positively established by documents; M. Antonelli does not dispute this, but holds that it is irrelevant, for the treason of individuals does not necessarily implicate a party. The question must be considered from another point ot view. The historian must ask whether the Bolshevist leaders were bribed to drag Russia into a path which she would not otherwise have entered. To this, in the author’s opinion, the answer is, No. If Lenin and Trotsky received German money it was for doing what they would in any case have done, and what Russia would have done even without their guidance. M. Antonelli is convinced that 'before they ever came upon the scene, before the Revolution of March, 1917, “the masses of the peasantry and the army wanted peace with all their strength, unconditionally, at any. price.” The Allies have denounced the treachery of the Bolshevists at Brest Litovsk, but the author suggests that while that treaty left the Russians full of rancour against Germany, the continuance of the old regiihb would have involved a peace “under the same material conditions, but under conditions of moral alliance infinitely more formidable than the Bolshevik agreements.” But, it is argued, apart from his duty to the Allies, "Lenin betrayed his own principles by submitting to a peace at any price, which would inevitably strengthen the enemy capitalist Powers and weaken the Russian peo rle. That objection has no weight with tim, for “• Bolshevism provides an excuse for submitting to the most shameful humiliations which the victor may impose, and adorns them with a kind of idealism.” In discussing the subsequent relations between the Allies and the Bolsheviks, M.' Antonelli does not sit in judgment; he merely states facts which explain to some extent the contradictions in Allied policy. At the outset both the Entente and .Russia wished to preserve the outward signs of the former bond —the Bolsheviks because this made propaganda in Allied countries more easy; the Entente because it thought that a Bolshevik Government would be short-lived, and wanted to keep in touch with the opposition parties, which might later regain But the Bolsheviks lasted; riot became rule. Allied diplomacy had to meet an unforeseen situation, and its new attitude w,as, legally speaking, quite anomalous. “The Allied Governments regarded the Bolshevist Government us hot real. They adopted the theory iflftts i/ nonhsxiisfemce; and acted as if il%id' not exist. But then there was no., other. Government. So they proceeded to consider Russia as a land wit lion a’ head, a.s a territory in* tematinnr'lv •e.{d;m’«ed. They addressed the people of Russia as a Bougainille wan'd adilves-* the South Sea Island tribes; they dealt with the people direct; they landed expeditionary forces; they waged war. But they did not consider /themselves in a state of war. Never was an international situation between civilised nations more singular or more false. Russia to the ' Entente was neither an ally nor an enemy, nor yet a neutral.” The position has not altered since M. Antonelli wrote. It, must not be supposed that M. Antonelli is in any sense an apologist for Bolshevism; lie is emphatic in his condemnation of the system. He attributes its spread to two factors. It appeals to man’s selfish instincts —the hope of geting something for nothing at the expense of someone else. / And “it gave satisfaction to the mystical and emotional desire for despotism which slumbers in every Slav soul. ’ ’ He objects, above all, to its hypocrisy, its parade of idealism and fraternity where none exjsl. Bolshevist policy is full of lofty professions which accord ill with the actual measures employed to maintain authority.