The Waikato Times With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1927. SOVIET REGIME.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17284, 21 December 1927, Page 6

The Waikato Times With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1927. SOVIET REGIME.

The announcement is made that

wholesale expulsions of the erstwhile notable leaders of the Soviet

cause have been made by the Communist Congress, and they have been warned that they are to be treated as counter-revolutionaries. The same cable also significantly adds that the Congress praised the work of the Cheka, the infamous body which has done so much to reduce the enemies of the Red regime. It is just over a decade since Lenin assumed control in Russia. The deposed Emperor Nicholas and his family had been sent to Siberia by Kerensky two months before, and on that November evening the Provisional Government of Liberals and Socialists was holding in the Winter Palace one of its frequent Cabinet meetings. This Government, born of tho March Revolution, still trusted, while the shadows deepened around it, in the inherent vigour and authority of pure democratic principles. It had just completed the preparations for a Constituent Assembly in which the people of Russia were to decide freely on their form of Government. Yet the realties of the situation with which the Provisional Government was confronted were gloomy* indeed. The country was at war, and the armies at the Russian front were melting away under the irJluence of Bolshevist propaganda. A disorganised armed soldiery was at large in the towns and the villages, ready to listen to any extremist agitation. The Provisional Government had taken no pains to organise its own protection. On that critical evening Lenin sent out his bands there was no one to defend the Winter Palace but a few boys from Officers' Training Schools and a company or two of Women Volunteers. With noise and clamour the Bolshevist irregulars forced their way into the Palace and arrested the members of the Provisional Government —except Kerensky, who escaped. Within an hour or two Lenin was able to proclaim the victory of the Soviets and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Within a week or two the new system was set up in the greater part of Russia. That evening made history. The men who thus roughly wrested power from the timid leaders of the new Russian democracy were no ordinary conspirators. The apparent case of their victory was not the measure of their ultimate success. It is not enough to say that Lenin and his followers were unscrupulous, that they [ duKoisad aedinnrv n-Lorality;, that they

cynically exploited for their own ends the passion that divided a world at war. There was some singular power in Lenin himself that appealed very strongly to all the forces of discontent. The little band of Bolshevist conspirators, had an unexampled opportunity in Russia. A large part of the adult male population of the country was mobilised, uprooted from normal conditions, cut off from normal restraints, armed, ignorant and weary. Lenin had a plan, based on a shrewd and comprehensive appreciation of human infirmity, in contrast wilh Hie vague optimism of his immediate predecessors. Jic crystallised tho prevailing discontents into a rigid system, lie based his rule not so much on Hie perpetual aspiration of the underdog for a broader and fuller life as on the smouldering passions of the crowd. By his gospel of universal hatred he called the proletariat to power, and, subtly concentrated flic real power in the hands of a highly disciplined group, which under him and since his death has secured such a control over Russia as the most autocratic of Tsars might have envied. Yet Lenin was the slave of an outworn doctrine. Just at tho moment when the close contact of Russia and Western civilisation was bearing fruit In increasing economic prosperity and the extension of political liberty, this doctrinaire Marxist, in alliance with the most crude and barbarous instincts of the population, plunged the country into a reaction which has lasted for ten years, with deplorable consequences to Russia and to the world. What has happened in Russia is not progress, not even the faintest shadow of a possible issue from harassing social perplexities. The cruelty of the regime alone is utterly revolting. Nowhere else has the massacre of political opponents been carried out under the eyes of modern men with such grim ferocity and on such an appalling scale. The middle and upper classes have been practically wiped out, having either been killed or gone away. In a broad historical perspective even such a sacrifice of thousands who were mostly innocent might be weighed carefully in the balance against the increasing liberty and happiness of millions if the Bolshevists had actually achieved, or were likely to achieve, such a* result. Yet it is hardly even pretended that the gigantic Bolshevist experiment has been anything but a miserable failure. The industrial workers, in whose name the revolution was made, are still ready to parade in organised Soviet festivities, but they are dogged by the spectre of growing unemployment. The peasants, though they rallied for a moment to the Soviet regime for the disorderly seizure of the

squire's estates, find themselves far poorer than they were before the war;

in the mass they are now bitterly hostile to the urban workers and their Communist leaders. The whole level of civilisation in Russia has sunk; yet the Bolshevists, by their highly developed system of mass-suggeston, carried out by the most modern methods w'th the assistance of an implacable organisation of terror, still keep tin country sternly in control. The generation that has grown up in Russia during these ten years knows hardly anything except what the Bolshevists choose to tell it, for the Soviet Government has the monopoly of news, of education, and of propaganda. The existence of Russia, with its great territory and its population of 140,000,000, is of very serious importance to the rest of the world. The products of Russian genius in literature and art have had a strons and subtle influence in many lands. The Bolshevist experiment is one of the most striking events in modern history. It

has had a disturbing effect on the people during the painful recovery after the war. This effect has been intensified by the active propaganda of world revolution which the Bolshevists have carried out persistently in the East and in the West. The danger of this propaganda lies not so much in the phrases used as in the fact that the Bolshevists skilfully instruct the discontented everywhere in the technique of revolution, for which they often provide the means. Their attempts have failed so far in Europe; the great gamble in China appears to have failed also. To seek relief in adventures abroad from growing difficulties at home is the traditional device of despotism. Through their failures abroad the Bolshevists have been contronted with the results of their Russian failure. That may be the real explanation of the bitter quarrel between the Stalin and Trotsky factions which has now culminated in wholesale expulsions. Ten years have passed, and the Russian problem still looms up darkly in the background of all the complexities of international affairs. The Soviet Government may continue to exist for a few years longer, or it may suddenly collapse in storm. No one knows. But the clear lesson of these years of crucial experiment in unhappy Russia is that in the search for a remedy for the ills of modern civilisation there is no more glaring danger signal than Bolshevism. The experiment is the sternest warning of our time.