Chapter IV: Life in Communist Russia

ALL who are interested in Socialism—and who is not interested in that very practical question? —should pay great attention to what is happening in Russia. During the last few years Russia has been the theatre of a gigantic experiment in that form of scientific Socialism which was advocated by Karl Marx. A well-organized party, consisting now of about 200,000 people, seized the reins of government and imposed its will on 120,000,000 Russians. Private ownership of property was abolished, and in the name of the People’s Revolution, of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, all productive property and all capital were vested in the Commonwealth. At the head of the Communist party are about six individuals who exercise despotic sway in the name of the People.

All the circumstances were exceedingly favourable for a huge experiment in Marxism.

The people were docile, accustomed to obey, and illiterate. At first they could not distinguish between high-sounding phrases and realities. Bitter experience was soon to teach them. In Marxian theory all were to work, and whatever portion of the product was not required for the personal support of the producer was handed over to the State. In return the agriculturist, for example, received what he required of other goods produced by other citizens of the State. In practice it was soon found that the agriculturist was loth to part with his surplus of corn. He kept some for seed for the crop of next year. He did not want any manufactured goods, and he was loth to part with what his own labour had brought him. On Marxian principles he should have checked these capitalistic propensities, but Marxism offers inadequate motives for self-denial, and, in spite of political revolutions, human nature still remains very selfish.

The Government seized the seed-corn when it could find it, and thus caused the great Russian famine. Production was also diminished by unwillingness to work. Laziness is another of the propensities of poor human nature, and the glory of working for others makes small appeal to many people.

Hence, as Trotsky, one of the six, explained to the Third All-Russian Trade Union Congress of 1920, it was necessary to introduce military discipline into the field of labour. Those who had served as officers in the Red Army must be employed to conscribe and militarize labour. The way to Socialism lay through the highest and most intensive development of the State. Workers must go where they are commanded to go, and work at what they are commanded to work at. They must allow themselves to be moved like pieces of machinery. To disobey, to strike, was treason against the People’s Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Even the docile people of Russia were not ready for such measures as these, and Marxian Communism broke down almost at once. At the present time there is no system at work, but muddle and confusion reign everywhere. Necessity has compelled a return to some extent to the system of wages. Unemployment in Petrograd and Moscow is as acute as in England, and wages are much lower. No one is permitted by law to receive more than about five shillings a week. Industry and trade are diminishing. Discontent is general among the working class as well as among the better educated.

At the cost of murders without number and wholesale robbery individual capitalism has been suppressed in Russia, but State Capitalism has been introduced in its stead. State Capitalism has all the evils of the old system and has many others besides. “Graft,” or official corruption, prevails everywhere. Meanwhile, the condition of the people is worse than ever.

A Special Correspondent of The Times has described how Communism in Russia has affected the home in large cities like Moscow. Immediately after the Revolution all the house property of Moscow became Government property.

It is administered by a House Bureau for the Government, and the House Bureau has appointed a director to act in its name, who calls himself Comrade London. The houses are generally large, imposing buildings, leased in flats and apartments. The tenants of these flats and apartments now pay less rent to the Government, it is true, than they used to pay to the landlord, but they do not get the same value for their money. Each tenant has a ridiculously small cubic space allotted to him, but this space was twice reduced during the seven months which the Special Correspondent spent in Moscow. Comrade London seems to take delight in breaking up all family privacy, and uses his power to quarter undesirable strangers on families and individuals.

A man sometimes finds that a person of the other sex has been installed in his room, and he is under the necessity of sharing it with her. Communists recognize no class distinctions, and the same house is inhabited by professors, engineers, students, clerks, chauffeurs, blacksmiths, tailors, and carpenters. The affairs of the house are entrusted to a committee or soviet of its inhabitants. A volume containing the housing laws in force is issued once a month. Some of the most voluble and self-asserting of the inhabitants made it their duty to make themselves acquainted with this ever-changing code of legislation. They post up notices in the house urging the workers to attend the meetings of the house soviet, held several times a week, and to defend their rights.

Perhaps the lift or the heating apparatus of the house needs repairing. The house soviet discusses the question and decides by a majority of votes that the professors and engineers should undertake the expense of repairs, inasmuch as they are presumed to have more money than the rest. Such articles as cutlery, firewood, and cooking utensils have to be kept in one’s own room or they are stolen. Door-knobs, electric fittings, locks, hooks, water-cocks, marble mantelpieces, water-closets, window glass, and nails are wrenched away and sold in the public market. To get a wash at the common tap, one must wait one’s turn in the long queue, while similar queues are waiting their turn for other domestic requirements. Some of the more objectionable inhabitants at night introduce others more objectionable than themselves and disturb the whole house with their uproar.

Bath-rooms and other places intended for the use of all in the house are indescribably filthy. Slops are thrown out of the window, and thus the walls of once fashionable houses become caked with filth. Pipes intended to carry off water from the roof are appropriated for stoves in private rooms. Hundreds of houses in Moscow have been ruined by such treatment and are no longer fit for human habitation.

I have purposely dwelt on these details of home life. They are not small matters in the aggregate. Such details affect the comfort and endurability of ordinary existence.

At first the Communist Revolutionaries of Russia proclaimed complete liberty of religious profession and worship. However, they confiscated Church property, and when the leaders of the Church resisted, and refused to surrender it, the conflict began. Church property was not the only cause of quarrel. It was the duty of the Church to condemn and denounce the wholesale murders and robberies of which the Communists were guilty, and it performed that duty and anathematized the leaders of the Revolution. The Special Correspondent of The Times gives a third reason for the Communist attack on Christianity. The Revolution did not bring with it universal prosperity, contentment, and happiness. On the contrary, the condition of the people became worse, and its support of Communism became luke-warm. Christianity was attacked in order to rekindle and keep alive Revolutionary fervour.

The terrible spy system which has been one of the chief instruments of government in Russia since the outbreak of the Revolution was employed against the Church. Orthodox bishops and priests offered their services to the Government for the purpose of enslaving the Russian Church. In every ecclesiastical institution and centre of influence these men, with Government help, placed a “cell,” that is, two or three of their own party. It was the duty of this “cell” to observe, worm out secrets, steal documents, and inform the Government of all that went on. They profess to speak in the name of the Church, and they bless the Communist Revolution in the name of Christianity itself. Communists set many of the ordinary rules of morality at defiance, but in Russia they have not succeeded in getting their own rules observed. It has been stated already that official corruption is general, and, although the sale of vodka has been prohibited, large quantities are brewed privately or smuggled into the country, and drunkenness is more prevalent than in the time of the Tsars.

One of the worst features of Communist Russia is the systematic corruption of children in the State schools. They are herded together like sheep and taught to hate the religion of Jesus Christ. Incalculable harm has been done already, and there is no hope of a speedy remedy. As the Special Correspondent of The Times says: ‘No change in the form of government can alter, for a long time, the main facts of the Russian situation, which are: poverty, wholesale demoralization, decreased production, ruined industries, economic chaos, damaged railways, State bankruptcy, and general collapse.”

I will add a sentence taken from The Socialist Movement, published by Dr. Shadwell in 1925: “Surely the irony of history presents no such spectacle of promises, pretensions, and expectations realized in the opposite sense as Bolshevism. Instead of peace, civil war; instead of plenty, starvation; instead of political liberty, despotism upheld by the Terror; instead of industrial liberty, a rigid, iron discipline; instead of liberty of conscience, religious persecution; instead of free speech, suppression. These things have waxed and waned at different times, but they are the standing marks of Bolshevism, which was to introduce the millennium.”—Op. cit., ii 50.