 Preface of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Landon D.C. Elkide at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell. Preface. The Russian Revolution is one of the great heroic events of the world's history. It is natural to compare it to the French Revolution, but it is in fact something of even more importance. It does more to change daily life and the structure of society. It also does more to change men's beliefs. The difference is exemplified by the difference between Marx and Rousseau. The latter sentimental and soft, appealing to emotion, obliterating sharp outlines, the former systematic like Hegel, full of hard intellectual content, appealing to historic necessity, and the technical development of industry, suggesting a view of human beings as puppets in the grip of omnipotent material forces. Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam, and the result is something radically new, which can only be understood by a patient and passionate effort of imagination. Before entering upon any detail, I wish to state as clearly and unambiguously as I can my own attitude towards this new thing. By far the most important aspect of the Russian Revolution is as an attempt to realize communism. I believe that communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind. But the method by which Moscow aims at establishing communism is a pioneer method, rough and dangerous, too heroic to count the cost of the opposition it arouses. I do not believe that by this method a stable or desirable form of communism can be established. Three issues seem to me possible from the present situation. The first is the ultimate defeat of Bolshevism by the forces of capitalism. The second is the victory of the Bolshevists accompanied by a complete loss of their ideals and a regime of Napoleonic imperialism. The third is a prolonged world war in which civilization will go under, and all of its manifestations, including communism, will be forgotten. It is because I do not believe that the methods of the third international can lead to the desired goal that I have thought it worthwhile to point out what seemed to me undesirable features in the present state of Russia. I think there are lessons to be learned which must be learned if the world is ever to achieve what is desired by those in the West who have sympathy with the original aims of the Bolsheviks. I do not think that these lessons can be learned except by facing frankly and fully whatever elements of failure there are in Russia. I think these elements of failure are less attributable to faults of detail than to an impatient philosophy which aims at creating a new world without sufficient preparation in the opinions and feelings of ordinary men and women. But although I do not believe that communism can be realized immediately by the spread of Bolshevism, I do believe that if Bolshevism falls, it will have contributed a legend and a heroic attempt without which ultimate success might never have come. A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling in philosophy and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master. In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks. Politically, I criticize them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their own ideals. There is, however, another aspect of Bolshevism from which I differ more fundamentally. Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine. It is also a religion with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so if possible by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs, such as philosophic materialism, for example, which may be true but are not to a scientific temper capable of being known to be true with any certainty. This habit of militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters is one which, since the Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging into that temper of constructive and fruitful skepticism which constitutes the scientific outlook. I believe the scientific outlook to be immeasurably important to the human race. If a more just economic system were only attainable by closing men's minds against free inquiry and plunging them back into the intellectual prison of the Middle Ages, I should consider the price too high. It cannot be denied that over any short period of time, dogmatic belief is helpful in fighting. If all communists become religious fanatics, while supporters of capitalism retain a skeptical temper, it may be assumed that the communists will win, while on the contrary case, the capitalists would win. It seems evident from the attitude of the capitalist world to Soviet Russia, of the Entente to the central empires, and of England to Ireland and India, that there is no depth of cruelty, perfidy, or brutality, from which the present holders of power will shrink when they feel themselves threatened. If in order to oust them, nothing short of religious fanaticism will serve, it is they who are the prime sources of the resultant evil. And it is permissible to hope that when they have been dispossessed, fanaticism will fade, as other fanaticisms have faded in the past. The present holders of power are evil men, and the present manner of life is doomed. To make the transition with a minimum of bloodshed, with a maximum of preservation of whatever has value in our existing civilization is a difficult problem. It is this problem which has chiefly occupied my mind in writing the following pages. I wish I could think that its solution would be facilitated by some slight degree of moderation and humane feeling on the part of those who enjoy unjust privileges in the world as it is. The present work is the outcome of a visit to Russia, supplemented by much reading and discussion both before and after. I thought it best to record what I saw separately from theoretical considerations, and I have endeavored to state my impressions without any bias for or against the Bolsheviks. I received at their hands the greatest kindness and courtesy, and I owe them a debt of gratitude for the perfect freedom which they allowed me in my investigations. I am conscious that I was too short a time in Russia to be able to form really reliable judgments. However, I share this drawback with most other Westerners who have written on Russia since the October Revolution. I feel that Bolshevism is a matter of such importance that it is necessary, for almost every political question, to define one's attitude in regard to it. And I have hopes that I may help others to define their attitude, even if only by way of opposition to what I have written. I have received invaluable assistance from my secretary, Miss D. W. Black, who was in Russia shortly after I had left. The chapter on art and education is written by her throughout. Neither is responsible for the other's opinions. Bertrand Russell, September 1920. End of preface. Part 1, Chapter 1 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Landon D. C. L. Kind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. Part 1, The Present Condition of Russia. Chapter 1, What is Hoped from Bolshevism? To understand Bolshevism, it is not sufficient to know facts. It is necessary also to enter with sympathy or imagination into a new spirit. The chief thing that the Bolsheviks have done is to create a hope, or at any rate to make strong and widespread a hope which was formerly confined to a few. This aspect of the movement is as easy to grasp at a distance as it is in Russia, perhaps even easier, because in Russia present circumstances tend to obscure the view of the distant future. But the actual situation in Russia can only be understood superficially if we forget that the hope, which is the motive power of the whole. One might as well describe the Thebade without mentioning that the Hermits expected eternal bliss as the reward of their sacrifices here on earth. I cannot share the hopes of the Bolsheviks any more than those of the Egyptian Anchorites. I regard both as tragic delusions, destined to bring upon the world centuries of darkness and futile violence. The principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect upon average human nature was very different from what was intended. Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to turn the other cheek. They learned instead to use the Inquisition and the Stake to subject the human intellect to the yoke of an ignorant and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and extinguish science for a thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not of the teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching. The hopes which inspire Communism are in the main as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are likely to do as much harm. Cruelty lurks in our instincts, and fanaticism is a camouflage for cruelty. Fanatics are seldom genuinely humane, and those who sincerely dread cruelty will be slow to adopt a fanatical creed. I do not know whether Bolshevism can be prevented from requiring universal power, but even if it cannot, I am persuaded that those who stand out against it, not from love of ancient injustice, but in the name of the free spirit of man, will be the bearers of the seeds of progress, from which, when the world's gestation is accomplished, new life will be born. The war has left throughout Europe a mood of disillusionment and despair, which calls aloud for a new religion, as the only force capable of giving men the energy to live vigorously. Bolshevism has supplied the new religion. It promises glorious things, an end of the injustice of rich and poor, an end of economic slavery, an end of war. It promises an end of the disunion of classes which poisons political life and threatens our industrial system with destruction. It promises an end to commercialism, that subtle falsehood that leads men to appraise everything by its money value, and to determine money value, often merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work shall be of value to the community, not only to a few wealthy vampires. This is to sweep away listlessness and pessimism and wariness and all the complicated miseries of those whose circumstances allow idleness and whose energies are not sufficient to force activity. In place of palaces and hovels, futile vice and useless misery, there is to be wholesome work, enough but not too much, all of it useful, performed by men and women who have no time for pessimism and no occasion for despair. The existing capitalist system is doomed. Its injustice is so glaring that only ignorance and tradition could lead wage earners to tolerate it. As ignorance diminishes, tradition becomes weakened, and the war destroyed the hold upon men's minds of everything merely traditional. It may be that, through the influence of America, the capitalist system will linger for another 50 years, but it will grow continually weaker and can never recover the position of easy dominance which it held in the 19th century. To attempt to bolster it up is a useless diversion of energies which might be expended upon building something new. Whether the new thing will be Bolshevism or something else, I do not know. Whether it will be better or worse than capitalism, I do not know. But that a radically new order of society will emerge, I feel no doubt. And I also feel no doubt that the new order will be either some form of socialism or a reversion to barbarism and petty war, such as occurred during the barbarian invasion. If Bolshevism remains the only vigorous and effective competitor of capitalism, I believe that no form of socialism will be realized, but only chaos and destruction. This belief, for which I shall give reasons later, is one of the grounds upon which I oppose Bolshevism. But to oppose it from the point of view of a supporter of capitalism would be, to my mind, utterly futile and against the movement of history in the present age. The effect of Bolshevism as a revolutionary hope is greater outside Russia than within the Soviet Republic. Grim realities have done much to kill hope among those who are subject to the dictatorship of Moscow. Yet even within Russia, the Communist Party, in whose hands all political power is concentrated, still lives by hope, though the pressure of events has made the hope severe and stern and somewhat remote. It is this hope that leads to concentration upon the rising generation. Russian Communists often avow that there is little hope for those who are already adult and that happiness can only come to the children who have grown up under the new regime and been molded from the first to the group mentality that Communism requires. It is only after the lapse of a generation that they hope to create a Russia that shall realize their vision. In the Western world, the hope inspired by Bolshevism is more immediate, less shot through with tragedy. Western socialists who have visited Russia have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the present regime and have disseminated a belief among their followers that the Millennium would be quickly realized there if there were no war and no blockade. Even those socialists who are not Bolsheviks for their own country have mostly done very little to help men in appraising the merits or demerits of Bolshevik methods. By this lack of courage, they have exposed Western socialism to the danger of becoming Bolshevik through ignorance of the price that has to be paid and of the uncertainty as to whether the desired goal will be reached in the end. I believe that the West is capable of adopting less painful and more certain methods of teaching socialism than those that have seen necessary in Russia. And I believe that while some forms of socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even worse. Among those that are worse, I reckon the form which is being achieved in Russia not only in itself, but as a more insuperable barrier to further progress. In judging of Bolshevism from what is to be seen in Russia at present, it is necessary to disentangle various factors which contribute to a single result. To begin with, Russia is one of the nations that were defeated in the war. This has produced a set of circumstances resembling those found in Germany and Austria. The food problem, for example, appears to be essentially similar in all three countries. In order to arrive at what is specifically Bolshevik, we must first eliminate what is merely characteristic of a country which has suffered military disaster. Next, we come to factors which are Russian, which Russian communists share with other Russians, but not with other communists. There is, for example, a great deal of disorder and chaos and waste, which shocks Westerners, especially Germans, even when they are in close political sympathy with the Bolsheviks. My own belief is that, although with the exception of a few very able men, the Russian government is less efficient in organization than the Germans or the Americans would be in similar circumstances, yet it represents what is most efficient in Russia and does more to prevent chaos than any possible alternative government would do. Again, the intolerance and lack of liberty, which has been inherited from the Tsarist regime, is probably to be regarded as Russian rather than communist. If a communist party were to acquire power in England, it would probably be met by a less irresponsible opposition and would be able to show itself far more tolerant than any government can hope to be in Russia if it is to escape assassination. This, however, is a matter of degree. A great part of the despotism which characterizes the Bolsheviks belongs to the essence of their social philosophy and would have to be reproduced even if in a milder form wherever that philosophy became dominant. It is customary among the apologists of Bolshevism in the West to excuse its harshness on the ground that it has been produced by the necessity of fighting the Entente and its mercenaries. Undoubtedly it is true that this necessity has produced many of the worst elements in the present state of affairs. Undoubtedly, also, the Entente has incurred a heavy load of guilt by its peevish and futile opposition. But the expectation of such opposition was always part of Bolshevik theory. A general hostility to the first communist state was both foreseen and provoked by the doctrine of the class war. Those who adopt the Bolshevik standpoint must reckon with the embittered hostility of capitalist states. It is not worthwhile to adopt Bolshevik methods unless they can lead to good in spite of this hostility. To say that capitalists are wicked and we have no responsibility for their acts is unscientific. It is in particular contrary to the Marxian doctrine of economic determinism. The evils produced in Russia by the enmity of the Entente are therefore to be reckoned as essential in the Bolshevik method of transition to communism, not as specially Russian. I am not sure that we cannot even go a step further. The exhaustion and misery caused by unsuccessful war were necessary to the success of the Bolsheviks. A prosperous population will not embark by such methods upon a fundamental economic reconstruction. One can imagine England becoming Bolshevik after an unsuccessful war involving the loss of India. No improbable contingency in the next few years. But at present the average wage earner in England will not risk what he has for the doubtful gain of a revolution. A condition of widespread misery may therefore be taken as indispensable to the inauguration of communism unless indeed it were possible to establish communism more or less peacefully by methods which would not even temporarily destroy the economic life of the country. If the hopes which inspired communism at the start, and which still inspire its western advocates, are ever to be realized, the problem of minimizing violence is in itself delightful to most really vigorous revolutionaries, and they feel no interest in the problem of avoiding it as far as possible. Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large, no great good is to be expected. End of Chapter 1. Part 1, Chapter 2 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. Chapter 2, Part 1, General Characteristics. I entered Soviet Russia on May 11th and recrossed the frontier on June 16th. The Russian authorities only admitted me on the express condition that I should travel at the British Labor Delegation, a condition with which I was naturally very willing to comply, and which that delegation kindly allowed me to fulfill. We were conveyed from the frontier to Petrograd, as well as on subsequent journeys in a special train de l'eau, covered with mottos about the social revolution and the proletariat of all countries. We were received everywhere by regiments of soldiers, with the international being played on the regimental band, while civilians stood bare-headed and soldiers at the salute. Congratulatory orations were made by local leaders and answered by prominent communists who accompanied us. The entrances to the carriages were guarded by magnificent Bashkir cavalrymen in resplendent uniforms. In short, everything was done to make us feel like the Prince of Wales. Enumerable functions were arranged for us, banquets, public meetings, military reviews, and so on. The assumption was that we had come to testify to the solidarity of British labor with Russian communism, and on that assumption the utmost possible use was made of us for Bolshevik propaganda. We, on the other hand, desired to ascertain what we could of Russian conditions and Russian methods of government, which was impossible in the atmosphere of a royal progress. Hence arose an amicable contest, degenerating at times into a game of hide and seek. While they assured us how splendid the banquet or parade was going to be, we tried to explain how much we would prefer a quiet walk in the streets. I, not being a member of the delegation, felt less obligation than my companions did to attend at propaganda meetings where one knew the speeches by heart beforehand. In this way, I was able, by the help of neutral interpreters, mostly English or American, to have many conversations with casual people whom I met in the streets or on village greens, and to find out how the whole system appears to the ordinary non-political man and woman. The first five days we spent in Petrograd, the next eleven in Moscow, during this time we were living in daily contact with important men in the government, so that we learned the official point of view without difficulty. I saw also what I could of the intellectuals in both places. We were all allowed complete freedom to see politicians of opposition parties, and we naturally made full use of this freedom. We saw Mensheviks, social revolutionaries of different groups, and anarchists. We saw them without the presence of any Bolsheviks, and they spoke freely after they had overcome their initial fears. I had an hour's talk with Lenin, virtually teta-teta. I met Trotsky, though only in company. I spent a night in the country with Kamenev, and I saw a great deal of other men who, though less known outside Russia, are of considerable importance in the government. At the end of our time in Moscow, we all felt a desire to see something of the country, and to get in touch with the peasants, since they form about 85% of the population. The government showed the greatest kindness in meeting our wishes, and it was decided that we should travel down the Volga, from Nizhny Novgorod to Saratov, stopping at many places, large and small, and talking freely with the inhabitants. I found this part of the time extraordinarily instructive. I learned to know more than I should have thought possible of the life and outlook of peasants, village school masters, small Jew traders, and all kinds of people. Unfortunately, my friend Clifford Allen fell ill, and my time was much taken up with him. This had, however, one good result, namely that I was able to go on with the boat to Astrakhan, as he was too ill to be moved off it. This not only gave me further knowledge of the country, but made me acquainted with Sverdorlov, acting minister of transport, who was traveling on the boat to organize the movement of oil from Baku up the Volga, and who was one of the ablest as well as kindest people whom I met in Russia. One of the first things that I discovered after passing the red flag, which marks the frontier of Soviet Russia, amid a desolate region of marsh, pinewood, and barbed wire entanglements, was the profound difference between the theories of actual Bolsheviks and the version of those theories current among advanced socialists in this country. Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as merely a new form of representative government, in which only working men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly occupational, not geographical. They think that proletariat means proletariat, but dictatorship does not quite mean dictatorship. This is the opposite of the truth. When a Russian communist speaks of dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the proletariat, he means the word in a Pikwikian sense. He means the class-conscious part of the proletariat, that is, the Communist Party. Footnote 1. See the article on the role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution. In theses presented to the Second Congress of the Communist International, Petrograd, Moscow, 18th of July 1920, a valuable work which I possess only in French. End of footnote 1. He includes people, by no means proletarian, such as Lenin and Tcherin, who have the right opinions and he excludes such wage earners as have not the right opinions, whom he classifies as lackeys of the bourgeoisie. The Communist, who sincerely believes the party creed is convinced that private property is the root of all evil. He is so certain of this that he shrinks from no measures, however harsh, which seem necessary for constructing and preserving the Communist state. He spares himself as little as he spares others. He works 16 hours a day and foregoes his Saturday half holiday. He volunteers for any difficult or dangerous work which needs to be done, such as clearing away piles of infected corpses left by Kulchak or Denikin. In spite of his position of power and his control of supplies, he lives an austere life. He is not pursuing personal ends, but aiming at the creation of a new social order. The same motives, however, which make him austere make him also ruthless. Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about. This fits in with the oriental traits in the Russian character and produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Muhammad. Opposition is crushed without mercy and without shrinking from the methods of the Tsarist police, many of whom are still employed at their old work. Since all evils are due to private property, the evils of the Bolshevik regime, while it has to fight private property, will automatically cease as soon as it has succeeded. These views are the familiar consequences of fanatical belief. To an English mind, they reinforce the conviction upon which English life has been based ever since 1688 that kindness and tolerance are worth all the creeds in the world. Of you which, it is true, we do not apply to other nations or to subject races. In a very novel society, it is natural to seek for historical parallels. The baser side of the present Russian government is most nearly paralleled by the directory in France, but on its better side, it is closely analogous to the rule of Cromwell. The sincere communists and all the older members of the party have proved their sincerity by years of persecution are not unlike the Puritan soldiers in their stern political moral purpose. Cromwell's dealings with parliament are not unlike Lenin's with the constituent assembly. Both, starting from a combination of democracy and religious faith, were driven to sacrifice democracy to religion and forced by military dictatorship. Both tried to compel their countries to live at a higher level of morality and effort than the population found tolerable. Life in modern Russia, as in Puritan England, is in many ways contrary to instinct, and if the Bolsheviks ultimately fail, it will be for the reason for which the Puritans fell, because there comes a point at which men feel that amusement and ease are worth more than all other goods put together. Far closer than any actual historical parallel is the parallel of Plato's Republic. The Communist Party corresponds to the Guardians. The soldiers have about the same status in both. There is in Russia an attempt to deal with family life more or less as Plato suggested. I suppose it may be assumed that every teacher of Plato throughout the world abhors Bolshevism, and that every Bolshevik regards Plato as an antiquated bourgeois. Nevertheless, the parallel is extraordinarily exact between Plato's Republic and their regime which the better Bolsheviks are endeavoring to create. Bolshevism is internally aristocratic and externally militant. The Communists in many ways resemble the British public school type. They have all the good and bad traits of an aristocracy which is young and vital. They are courageous, energetic, capable of command, always ready to serve the state. On the other hand, they are dictatorial, lacking in ordinary consideration for the plebes. They are practically the sole possessors of power, and they enjoy innumerable advantages and consequence. Most of them, though far from luxurious, have better food than other people. Only people of some political importance can obtain motor cars or telephones. Permits for railway journeys for making purchases at the Soviet stores, where prices are about one-fiftieth of what they are in the market, for going to the theater and so on, are of course easier to obtain for the friends of those in power than for ordinary mortals. In a thousand ways, the Communists have a life which is happier than that of the rest of the community. Above all, they are less exposed to the unwelcome attentions of the police and the extraordinary commission. The Communist theory of international affairs is exceedingly simple. The revolution foretold by Marx, which is to abolish capitalism throughout the world, happened to begin in Russia, though Marxian theory would seem to demand that it should begin in America. In countries where the revolution has not yet broken out, the sole duty of a Communist is to hasten its advent. Agreements with capitalist states can only be makeshifts and can never amount on either side to a sincere peace. No real good can come to any country without a bloody revolution. English labor may fancy that a peaceful evolution is possible, but they will find their mistake. Lenin told me that he hopes to see a labor government in England and would wish his supporters to work for it, but solely in order that the futility of parliamentarianism may be conclusively demonstrated to the British working man. Nothing will do any real good except the arming of the proletariat and the disarming of the bourgeoisie. Those who preach anything else are social traitors or deluded fools. For my part, after weighing this theory carefully and after admitting the whole of its indictment of bourgeois capitalism, I find myself definitely and strongly opposed to it. The Third International is an organization which exists to promote the class war and to hasten the advent of revolution everywhere. My objection is not that capitalism is less bad than the Bolsheviks believe, but that socialism is less good, not in its best form, but in the only form which is likely to be brought about by war. The evils of war, especially of civil war, are certain and very great. The gains to be achieved by victory are problematical. In the course of a desperate struggle, the heritage of civilization is likely to be lost, while hatred, suspicion, and cruelty become normal in the relations of human beings. In order to succeed in war, a concentration of power is necessary, and from concentration of power, the very same evils flow, as from the capitalist concentration of wealth. For these reasons, chiefly, I cannot support any movement which aims at world revolution. The damage to civilization done by revolution in one country may be repaired by the influence of another in which there has been no revolution. But in a universal cataclysm, civilization might go under 4,000 years. But while I cannot advocate world revolution, I cannot escape from the conclusion that the governments of the leading capitalist countries are doing everything to bring it about. Abuse of our power against Germany, Russia, and India, to say nothing of any other countries, may well bring about our downfall and produce those very evils which the enemies of Bolshevism most dread. The true communist is thoroughly international. Lenin, for example, so far as I could judge, is not more concerned with the interests of Russia than with those of other countries. Russia is, at the moment, the protagonist of the social revolution, and as such, valuable to the world. But Lenin would sacrifice Russia rather than the revolution if the alternative should ever arise. This is the orthodox attitude and is no doubt genuine in many of the leaders. But nationalism is natural and instinctive. Through pride in the revolution, it grows again even in the breasts of communists. Through the Polish War, the Bolsheviks have acquired the support of national feeling and their position in the country has been immensely strengthened. The only time I saw Trotsky was at the opera in Moscow. The British labour delegation were occupying what had been the Tsar's box. After speaking with us in the antechamber, he stepped to the front of the box and stood with folded arms while the house cheered itself horse. Then he spoke a few sentences, short and sharp, with military precision, winding up by calling for three cheers for our brave fellows at the front, to which the audience responded as a London audience would have responded in the autumn of 1914. Trotsky and the Red Army undoubtedly now have behind them a great body of nationalist sentiment. The reconquest of Asiatic Russia has even revived what is essentially an imperialist way of feeling, though this would be indignantly repudiated by many of those in whom I seemed to detect it. Experience of power is inevitably altering communist theories, and men who control a vast governmental machine can hardly have quite the same outlook on life as they had when they were hunted fugitives. If the Bolsheviks remain in power, it is much to be feared that their communism will fade and that they will increasingly resemble any other Asiatic government. For example, our own government in India. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Part 1 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. Part 1 Chapter 3. Lenin, Trotsky, and Gorky. Soon after my arrival in Moscow, I had an hour's conversation with Lenin in English, which he speaks fairly well. An interpreter was present, but his services were scarcely required. Lenin's room is very bare. It contains a big desk, some maps on the walls, two bookcases, and one comfortable chair for visitors, in addition to two or three hard chairs. It is obvious that he has no love of luxury or even comfort. He is very friendly and apparently simple, entirely without a trace of hate. If one met him without knowing who he was, one would not guess that he is possessed of great power, or even that he is in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal. At first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, unembodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his lifeblood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding. I got the impression that he despises a great many people and is an intellectual aristocrat. The first question I asked him was as to how far he recognized the peculiarity of English economic and political conditions. I was anxious to know whether Advocacy of Violent Revolution is an indispensable condition of joining the Third International, although I did not put this question directly because others were asking it officially. His answer was unsatisfactory to me. He admitted that there is little chance of revolution in England now and that the working man is not yet disgusted with parliamentary government, but he hopes that this result may be brought about by a labor ministry. He thinks that if Mr. Henderson, for instance, were to become Prime Minister, nothing of importance would be done. Organized labor would then, so he hopes and believes, turn to revolution. On this ground, he wishes his supporters in this country to do everything in their power to secure a labor majority in parliament. He does not advocate abstention from parliamentary contests, but participation with a view to making parliament obviously contemptible. The reasons which make attempts at violent revolution seem to most of us both improbable and undesirable in this country, carry no weight with him, and seem to him mere bourgeois prejudices. When I suggested that whatever is possible in England can be achieved without bloodshed, he waived aside the suggestion as fantastic. I got little impression of knowledge or psychological imagination as regards Great Britain. Indeed, the whole tendency of Marxianism is against psychological imagination, since it attributes everything in politics to purely material causes. I asked him next whether he thought it possible to establish communism firmly and fully in a country containing such a large majority of peasants. He admitted that it was difficult and laughed over the exchange the peasant is compelled to make of food for paper. The worthlessness of Russian paper struck him as comic, but he said, what is no doubt true, that things will write themselves when there are goods to offer to the peasant. For this, he looks partly to electrification in industry, which he says is a technical necessity in Russia, but will take 10 years to complete. Footnote 1. Electrification is desired not merely for reorganizing industry, but in order to industrialize agriculture. In Theses presented to the Second Congress of the Communist International, an instructive little book, which I shall quote as Theses, it is said in an article on the agrarian question that socialism will not be secure till industry is reorganized on a new basis with, quote, general application of electric energy in all branches of agriculture and rural economy, unquote, which, quote, alone can give to the towns the possibility of offering to backward rural districts a technical and social aid capable of determining an extraordinary increase of productivity of agricultural and rural labor and of engaging the small cultivators in their own interest to pass progressively to a collectivist mechanical cultivation, unquote, page 36 of the French edition, end of footnote 1. He spoke with enthusiasm, as they all do, of the great scheme for generating electrical power by means of peat. Of course, he looks to the raising of the blockade as the only radical cure, but he was not very hopeful of this being achieved thoroughly or permanently except through revolutions in other countries. Peace between Bolshevik Russia and capitalist countries, he said, must always be insecure. The entente might be led by wariness and mutual dissensions to conclude peace, but he felt convinced that peace would be of brief duration. I found in him, as in almost all leading communists, much less eagerness than existed in our delegation for peace and the raising of the blockade. He believes that nothing of real value can be achieved except through world revolution and the abolition of capitalism. He felt that he regarded the resumption of trade with capitalist countries as a mere palliative of doubtful value. He described the division between rich and poor peasants and the government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing. He spoke as though the dictatorship over the peasant would have to continue a long time because of the peasant's desire for free trade. Nobody knew from statistics, what I can well believe, that the peasants have had more to eat these last two years than they ever had before. Quote, and yet they are against us, unquote. He added a little wistfully. I asked him what to reply to critics who say that in the country he has merely created a peasant proprietorship, not communism. He replied that that is not quite the truth, but he did not say what the truth is. Footnote 1. In theses page 34, it is said, quote, it would be an irreparable error not to admit the gratuitous grant of part of the expropriated lands to poor and even well-to-do peasants, end of quote, end of footnote 1. The last question I asked him was whether resumption of trade with capitalist countries, if it took place, would not create centers of capitalist influence and make the preservation of communism more difficult. It had seemed to me that the more ardent communists might well dread commercial intercourse with the outer world, as leading to an infiltration of heresy and making the rigidity of the present system almost impossible. I wished to know whether he had such a feeling. He admitted that trade would create difficulties, but said they would be less than those of the war. He said that two years ago neither he nor his colleagues thought they could survive against the hostility of the world. He attributes their survival to the jealousies and divergent interests of the different capitalist nations, also to the power of Bolshevik propaganda. He said the Germans had laughed when the Bolsheviks proposed to combat guns with leaflets, but that the event had proved the leaflets quite as powerful. I do not think he recognizes that the labor and socialist parties have had any part in the matter. He does not seem to know that the attitude of British labor has done a great deal to make a first class war against Russia impossible, since it has confined the government to what could be done in a whole and corner way and denied without a too blatant modacity. He thoroughly enjoys the attacks of Lord Northcliff, to whom he wishes to send a medal for Bolshevik propaganda. Accusations of spoilation, he remarked, may shock the bourgeois, but have an opposite effect upon the proletarian. I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have guessed that he was a great man. He struck me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty, courage and unwavering faith, religious faith in the Marxian Gospel, which takes the place of the Christian martyr's hopes of paradise, except that it is less egotistical. He has as little love of liberty as the Christians who suffered under Diocletian and retaliated when they acquired power. Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with wholehearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the skeptical temper of the Western world. I went to Russia a communist, but contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to communism itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery. Trotsky, whom the communists do not by any means regard as Lenin's equal, made more impression upon me from the point of view of intelligence and personality, though not of character. I saw too little of him, however, to have more than a very superficial impression. He has bright eyes, military bearing, lightning intelligence, and magnetic personality. He is very good looking, with admirable wavy hair. One feels he would be irresistible to women. I felt in him a vein of gay good humor, so long as he was not crossed in any way. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that his vanity was even greater than his love of power, the sort of vanity that one associates with an artist or actor. The comparison with Napoleon was forced upon one, but I had no means of estimating the strength of his communist conviction, which may be very sincere and profound. An extraordinary contrast to both these men was Gorky, with whom I had a brief interview in Petrograd. He was in bed apparently dying and obviously heartbroken. He begged me in anything I might say about Russia, always to emphasize what Russia has suffered. He supports the government, as I should do if I were a Russian, not because he thinks it faultless, but because the possible alternatives are worse. One felt in him a love of the Russian people, which makes their present martyrdom almost unbearable, and prevents the fanatical faith by which the pure Marxians are upheld. I felt in him the most lovable, and to me the most sympathetic, of all the Russians I saw. I wished for more knowledge of his outlook, but he spoke with difficulty and was constantly interrupted by terrible fits of coughing, so that I could not stay. All the intellectuals whom I met, a class who have suffered terribly, expressed their gratitude to him for what he has done on their behalf. The materialistic conception of history is all very well, but some care for the higher things of civilization is a relief. The Bolsheviks are sometimes said to have done great things for art, but I could not discover what they had done more than preserve something of what existed before. When I questioned one of them on the subject, he grew impatient and said, quote, we haven't time for a new art any more than for a new religion, end of quote. Unavoidably, although the government favors art as much as it can, the atmosphere is one in which art cannot flourish, because art is anarchic and resistant to organization. Gorky has done all that one man could do to preserve the intellectual and artistic life of Russia. I feared that he was dying, and that perhaps it was dying too. I hope I was mistaken in both respects. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa. Part 1 Chapter 4 Art and Education It has often been said that, whatever the inadequacy of Bolshevik organization in other fields, in art and in education at least, they have made great progress. To take first of all art, it is true that they began by recognizing, as perhaps no other revolutionary government would, the importance and spontaneity of the artistic impulse. And therefore, while they controlled or destroyed the counter-revolutionary in all other social activities, they allowed the artist, whatever his political creed, complete freedom to continue his work. Moreover, as regards clothing and rations, they treated him especially well. This, and the care devoted to the upkeep of churches, public monuments, and museums, are well-known facts to which there has already been ample testimony. The preservation of the old artistic community, practically intact, was the more remarkable in view of the pronounced sympathy of most of them with the old regime. The theory, however, was that art and politics belonged to two separate realms. But great honor would, of course, be the portion of those artists who would be inspired by the revolution. Three years' experience, however, have proved the falsity of this doctrine and led to a divorce between art and popular feeling, which a sensitive observer cannot fail to remark. It is glaringly apparent in the hitherto most vital of all Russian arts, the theatre. The artists have continued to perform the old classics in tragedy or comedy and the old style operette. The theatre programs have remained the same for the last two years, and, but for the higher standard of artistic performance, might belong to the theatres of Paris or London. As one sits in the theatre, one is so acutely conscious of the discrepancy between the daily life of the audience and that depicted in the play that the latter seems utterly dead and meaningless. To some of the more fiery communists, it appears that a mistake has been made. They complain that bourgeois art is being preserved long after its time. They accuse the artists of showing contempt for their public, of being as untouched by the revolutionary mood as an elderly bourgeoisie, bewailing the loss of her personal comfort. They would like to see only the revolutionary mood embodied in art, and to achieve this would make a clean sweep, enforcing the writing and performance of nothing but revolutionary plays and the painting of revolutionary pictures. Nor can it be argued that they are wrong as to the facts. It is plain that the preservation of the old artistic tradition has served very little purpose, but on the other hand it is equally plain that an artist cannot be drilled like a military recruit. There is fortunately no sign that these tactics will be directly adopted, but in an indirect fashion they are already being applied. An artist is not to blame if his temperament leads him to draw cartoons of leading Bolsheviks to satirize the various comical aspects, and there are many, of the Soviet regime. To force such a man, however, to turn his talent only against Denikin, Yudinich or Kolchak, or the leaders of the Entente, is momentarily good for communism, but it is discouraging to the artist and may prove in the long run bad for art and possibly for communism also. It is plain from the religious nature of communism in Russia that such controlling of the impulse to artistic creation is inevitable, and that propaganda art alone can flourish in such an atmosphere. For example, no poetry or literature that is not orthodox will reach the printing press. It is so easy to make the excuse of lack of paper and the urgent need for manifestos. Thus there may well come to be a repetition of the attitude of the medieval church to the sagas and legends of the people, except that in this case it is the folktales which will be preserved and the more sensitive and civilized products banned. The only poet who seems to be much spoken of at present in Russia is one who writes rough popular songs. There are revolutionary odes, but one may hazard a guess that they resemble our patriotic war poetry. I said that this state of affairs may in the long run be bad for art but the contrary may equally well prove to be the truth. It is of course discouraging and paralyzing to the old style artist and it is death to the old individual art which depended on subtlety and oddity of temperament and arose very largely from the complicated psychology of the idol. There it stands, this old art, the purest monument to the nullity of the art for art's sake doctrine like a rich exotic plant of exquisite beauty still apparently in its glory till one perceives that the roots are cut and that leaf by leaf it is gradually fading away. But unlike the Puritans in this respect, the Bolsheviks have not sought to dig up the roots and there are signs that the paralysis is merely temporary. Moreover, individual art is not the only form and in particular the plastic arts have shown that they can live by mass action and flourish under an intolerant faith. Communist artists of the future may erect public buildings surpassing in beauty the medieval churches, they may paint frescoes, organize pageants, make Homeric songs about their heroes. Communist art will begin and is beginning now in the propaganda pictures and stories such as those designed for peasants and children. There is for instance a kind of rake's progress or how she became a communist in which the Entente leaders make a sorry and grotesque appearance. Lenin and Trotsky already figure in woodcuts as Moses and Aaron, deliverers of their people. While the mother and child who illustrate the statistics of the maternity exhibition have the grace and beauty of medieval Madonna's. Russia is only now emerging from the Middle Ages and the church tradition in painting is passing with incredible smoothness into the service of communist doctrine. These pictures have to an oriental flavor. There are brown Madonna's and the Russian churches and such and one illustrates the statistics of infant mortality in India. While the Russian mother, broad-footed in gay petticoat and kerchief, sits in a starry meadow suckling her baby from a very ample white breast. I think that this movement towards the church tradition may be unconscious and instinctive and would perhaps be deplored by many communists for whom grandiose bad rodent statuary and the crudity of cubism better express what they mean by revolution. But this revolution is Russian and not French and its art, if all goes well, should inevitably bear the popular Russian stamp. It is would-be primitive and popular art that is vulgar. Such at least is the reflection engendered by an inspection of Russian peasant work as compared with the spirit of children's tales. The Russian peasants' artistic impulse is no legend. Besides the carving and embroidery, which speak eloquently to peasants' skill, one observes many instances in daily life. He will climb down when his slowly moving train stops by the wayside to gather branches and flowers with which he will decorate the railway carriage both inside and out. He will work willingly at any task which has beauty for its object and was all too prone under the old regime to waste his time and his employer's material in fashioning small metal or wooden objects with his hands. If the bourgeois tradition then will not serve, there is a popular tradition which is still live and passionate and which may perhaps persist. Unhappily it has a formidable enemy in the organization and development of industry, which is far more dangerous to art than communist doctrine. Indeed, industry in its early stages seems everywhere doomed to be the enemy of beauty and instinctive life. One might hope that this would not prove to be so in Russia, the first socialist state, as yet unindustrial, able to draw on the industrial experience of the whole world. Were it not that one discovers with a certain misgiving in the Bolshevik leaders the rasping, arid temperament of those to whom the industrial machine is an end in itself and in addition reflects that these industrially minded men have as yet no practical experience, nor do there exist men of good will to help them. It does not seem reasonable to hope that Russia can pass through the period of industrialization without a good deal of mismanagement involving waste resulting in too long hours, child labor, and other evils with which the West is all too familiar. What the Bolsheviks would not therefore willingly do to art, the juggernaut which they are bent on setting in motion may accomplish for them. The next generation in Russia will have to consist of practical hardworking men. The old-style artists will die off and successors will not readily arise. A state which is struggling with economic difficulties is bound to be slow to admit an artistic vocation since this involves exemption from practical work. Moreover, the majority of minds always turn instinctively to the real need of the moment. A man therefore who is adapted by talent and temperament to becoming an opera singer will under the pressure of communist enthusiasm and government encouragement turn his attention to economics. I am here quoting an actual instance. The whole Russian people at this stage in their development strike one as being forced by the logic of their situation to make a similar choice. It may be all to the good that there should be fewer professional artists since some of the finest work has been done by men and groups of men to whom artistic expression was only a pastime. They were not hampered by the solemnity and reverence for art which too often destroy the spontaneity of the professional. Indeed, a revival of this attitude to art is one of the good results which may be hoped for from a communist revolution in a more advanced industrial community. There the problem of education will be to stimulate the creative impulse towards art and science so that men may know how to employ their leisure hours. Work in the factory can never be made to provide an adequate outlet. The only hope if men are to remain human beings under industrialism is to reduce hours to the minimum. But this is only possible when production and organization are highly efficient which will not be the case for a long time in Russia. Hence not only does it appear that the number of artists will grow less but that the number of people undamaged in their artistic impulses and on that account able to create or appreciate as amateurs is likely to be deplorably small. It is in this damaging effect of industry on human instinct that the immediate danger to art in Russia lies. The effect of industry on the crafts is quite obvious. A craftsman who is accustomed to work with his hands following the tradition developed by his ancestors is useless when brought face to face with a machine. And the man who can handle the machine will only be concerned with quantity and utility in the first instance only gradually do the claims of beauty come to be recognized. Compare the modern motor car with the first of its species or even since the same law seems to operate in nature the prehistoric animal with its modern descendant. The same relation exists between them as between man and the ape or the horse and the hyperion. The movement of life seems to be towards ever greater delicacy and complexity and man carries it forward in the articles that he makes and the society that he develops. Industry is a new tool, difficult to handle but it will produce just as beautiful objects as did the medieval builder and craftsman though not until it has been in being for a long time and belongs to tradition. One may expect therefore that while the crafts in Russia will lose an artistic value, the drama, sculpture and painting and all those arts which have nothing to do with the machine and depend entirely upon mental and spiritual inspiration will receive an impetus from the communist faith. Whether the flowering period will be long or short depends partly on the political situation but chiefly on the rapidity of industrial development. It may be that the machine will ultimately conquer the communist faith and grind out the human impulses and Russia become during this transition period as in artistic and soulless as was America until quite recent years. One would like to hope that mechanical progress will be swift and social idealism sufficiently strong to retain control but the practical difficulties are almost insuperable. Such signs of the progress of art as it is possible to notice at this early stage would seem to bear out the above argument. For instance, an attempt is being made to foster the continuation of peasant embroidery, carving, etc. in the towns. It is done by people who have evidently lost the tradition already. They are taught to copy the models which are placed in the peasant museum but there is no comparison between the live little wooden lady who smiles beneath the glass case and the soulless, staring-eyed creature who is offered for sale nor between the quite ordinary carved fowl one may buy and the amusing lifelike figure one may merely gaze at. But when one comes to art directly inspired by communism it is a different story. Apart from the propaganda pictures already referred to there are propaganda plays performed by the Red Army in its spare moments and there are the mass pageant plays performed on state occasion. I had the good fortune to witness one of each kind. The play was called Zarevo, the Dawn, and was performed on a Saturday night on a small stage in a small hall in an entirely amateur fashion. It represented Russian life just before the Revolution. It was intense and tragic and passionately acted. Dramatic talent is not rare in Russia. Almost the only comic relief was provided by the Tsarist police who made one appearance towards the end, got up like comic military characters in a musical comedy just as in medieval miracle plays the comic character was Satan. The play's intention was to show a typical Russian working-class family. There were the old father constantly drunk on vodka, alternately maudlin and scolding, the old mother, the two sons, the one a communist and the other an anarchist, the wife of the communist who did dressmaking, her sister a prostitute, and a young girl of bourgeois family, also a communist involved in a plot with the communist son who was of course the hero of the play. The first act revealed the stern and heroic communist maintaining his views despite the reproaches of father and mother and the nagging of his wife. It showed also the anarchist brother, as might be expected from the Bolshevik hostility to anarchism, as an unruly, lazy, narrow duel with a passionate love for Sonia, the young bourgeoisie, which was likely to become dangerous if not returned. She, on the other hand, obviously preferred the communist. It was clear that he returned her love, but it was not quite clear that he would wish the relation to be anything more than platonic comradeship in the service of their common ideal. An unsuccessful strike bringing want and danger from the police, together with increasing jealousy on the part of the anarchist, led up to the tragic denouement. I was not quite definite as to how this was brought about. All violent action was performed off the stage, and this made the plot at times difficult to follow. But it seemed that the anarchist, in a jealous rage, forged a letter from his brother to bring Sonia to a rendezvous, and there murdered her, at the same time betraying his brother to the police. When the latter came to effect his arrest and accuse him also, as the most likely person of the murder, the anarchist was seized with remorse and confessed. Both were therefore led away together. Once the plot is sketched, the play calls for no comment. It had not great merit, though it is unwise to hazard a judgment on a play whose dialogue was not fully interpreted, but it was certainly real, and the link between audience and performers was established as it never seemed to be in the professional theatre. After the performance, the floor was cleared for dancing, and the audience were in a mood of thorough enjoyment. The pageant of the World Commune, which was performed at the opening of the Third International Congress in Petrograd, was a still more important and significant phenomenon. I do not suppose that anything of the kind has been staged since the days of the medieval mystery plays. It was, in fact, a mystery play, designed by the high priests of the communist faith to instruct the people. It was played on the steps of an immense white building that was once the stock exchange, a building with a classical colonnade on three sides of it, with a vast flight of steps in front. That did not extend the whole width of the building, but left at each side a platform that was level with the floor of the colonnade. In front of this building, a wide road ran from a bridge over one arm of the river to a bridge over the other, so that the stretches of water and sky on either side seemed to the eye of imagination, like the painted wings of a gigantic stage. Two battered red columns of fantastic design that were once light towers to guide ships stood on either side midway between the extremities of the building and the water, but on the opposite side of the road. These two towers were be flagged and illuminated and carried the limelight, and between and behind them was gathered a densely packed audience of 40 or 50,000 people. The play began at sundown, while the sky was still red, away to the right, and the palaces on the far bank to the left still aglow with the setting sun, and it continued under the magic of the darkening sky. At first the beauty and grandeur of the setting drew the attention away from the performers, but gradually one became aware that on the platform before the columns, kings and queens and courtiers, insumptuous conventional robes, and attended by soldiers were conversing in dumb show with one another. A few climbed the steps of a small wooden platform that was set up in the middle, and one indicated by a lifted hand that here should be built a monument to the power of capitalism over the earth. All gave signs of delight. Sentimental music was heard, and the gay company fell to waltzing away the hours. Meanwhile from below on the road level, they are streamed out of the darkness on either side of the building and up the half lit steps, their fetters ringing in harmony with the music. The enslaved and toiling masses coming in response to command to build the monument for their masters. It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the slow movement of those dark figures as slant the broad flight of steps. Individual expressions were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theater. Some groups carried hammer and anvil and of course staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful a result, I remembered the mad leap of the archers down the stage in Prince Igor, which is also apparently careless and spontaneous and full of wild and irregular beauty, yet never varies a hair breath from one performance to the next. For a time the workers toiled in the shadow in their earthly world and dancing continued in the lighted paradise of the rulers above. Until presently, in sign that the monument was complete, a large yellow disc was hoisted amid acclamation above the highest platform between the columns, but at the same moment a banner was uplifted amongst the people and a small figure was seen gesticulating. Angry fists were shaken and the banner and speaker disappeared, only to reappear almost immediately in another part of the dense crowd. Again hostility until finally among the French workers away up on the right, the first communist manifesto found favor. Rallying around their banner, the communards ran, shouting down the steps, gathering supporters as they came. Above all is confusion, kings and queens scuttling in unroyal fashion with flying velvet robes to safe citadel's right and left, while the army prepares to defend the main citadel of capitalism with its golden disc of power. The communards scale the steps to the fortress, which they finally capture, haul down the disc and set their banner in its place. The merry music of the carmenal is heard and the victors are seen waving triumphant hands and dancing first on one foot and then on the other, like marionettes. Below the masses dance with them in a frenzy of joy, but a pompous procession of Prussian legions is seen approaching and amid shrieks and wails of despair, the people are driven back and their leaders set in a row and shot. Thereafter came one of the most moving scenes in the drama. Several dark clad women appeared carrying a black pall supported on sticks, which they set in front of the bodies of the leaders so that it stood out, an irregular pointed black shape against the white columns behind. But for this melancholy monument, the stage was now empty. Thick clouds of black smoke arose from the braziers on either side and obscured the steps and the platform. Through the smoke came the distant sound of Chopin's March Funibre, and as the air became clearer, white figures could be dimly seen moving around the black pall in a solemn dance of mourning. Behind them the columns shone ghostly and unreal against the glimmering mauve rays of an uncertain and watery dawn. The second part of the pageant opened in July 1914. Once again the rulers were feasting in the workers at toil, but the scene was enlivened by the presence of the leaders of the Second International, a group of decrepit professional old men who waddled in in solemn procession carrying tomes full of international learning. They sat in a row between the rulers and the people, deep in study, spectacles on nose. The call to war was the signal for a dramatic appeal from the workers to these leaders who refused to accept the red flag, but weakly received patriotic flags from their respective governments. Jauriz elevated to be the symbol of protest, towered above the people, crying in a loud voice, but fell back immediately as the assassins shot ring out. Then the people divided into their national groups and the war began. It was at this point that God Save the King was played as the English soldiers marched out in a comic manner which made one think of it as God Save the King. Other national anthems were burlesque in a similar fashion, but none quite so successfully. A ridiculous effigy of the Tsar with a newt in his hand now occupied the symbolic position and dominated the scene. The incidents of the war, which affected Russia, were then played. Spectacular cavalry charges on the road, marching soldiers, batteries of artillery, a pathetic procession of cripples and nurses and other scenes too numerous to describe made up that part of the pageant devoted to the war. Then came the Russian Revolution in all its stages. The Tsars dashed by full of armed men, red flags appeared everywhere. The people stormed the citadel and hauled down the effigy of the Tsar. The Kerensky government assumed control and drove them forth to war again, but soon they returned to the charge, destroyed the provisional government and hoisted all the emblems of the Russian Soviet Republic. The Entente leaders however were seen preparing their troops for battle and the pageant went on to show the formation of the Red Army under its emblem, the Red Star. White figures with golden trumpets appeared foretelling victory for the proletariat. The last scene, the world commune, is described in the words of the abstract taken from a Russian newspaper as follows. Quote, Canon shots announced the breaking of the blockade against Soviet Russia and the victory of the world proletariat. The Red Army returns from the front and passes in triumphant review before the leaders of the revolution. At their feet lie the crowns of kings and the gold of the bankers. Ships draped with flags are seen carrying workers from the west, the workers of the whole world with the emblems of labor gather for the celebration of the world commune. In the heavens, luminous inscriptions in different languages appear greeting the Congress, Long Live the Third International, the workers of the world unite, triumph to the sounds of the hymn of the world commune, the international. End quote. Even so glowing an account, however, hardly does it justice. It had the pomp and majesty of the day of judgment itself. Rockets climbed the skies and peppered them with a thousand stars, fireworks blazed on all sides, garlanded and be flagged, ships moved up and down the river, carrying the emblems of prosperity, grapes and corn traveled slowly along the road. The eastern peoples came carrying gifts and emblems. The actors massed upon the steps, waved triumphant hands, trumpets sounded, and the song of the international from ten thousand throats rose like a mighty wave engulfing the whole. Though the end of this drama may have aired on the side of the grandiose, this may perhaps be forgiven the organizers in view of the occasion for which they prepared it. Nothing, however, could detract from the beauty and dramatic power of the opening and of many of the scenes. Moreover, the effects obtained by movement in the mass were almost intoxicating. The first entrance of the masses gave a sense of dumb and patient force that was moving in the extreme and the frenzy delight of the dancing crowd at the victory of the French Nards stirred one to ecstasy. The pageant lasted for five hours or more and was as exhausting emotionally as the passion play is said to be. I had the vision of a great period of communist art more especially of such open air spectacles which should have the grandeur and scope and eternal meaning of the plays of ancient Greece, the medieval mysteries or the Shakespearean theater. In building, writing, acting, even in painting work would be done, as it once was, by groups. Not by one hand or mind and evolution would proceed slowly until once again the individual emerged from the mass. In considering education under the Bolshevik regime, the same two factors which I have already dealt with in discussing art, namely industrial development and the communist doctrine, must be taken into account. Industrial development is in reality one of the tenets of communism. But as it is one, which in Russia is likely to endanger the doctrine as a whole, I have thought it better to consider it as a separate item. As in the matter of art, so in education, those who have given unqualified praise seem to have taken the short and superficial view. It is hardly necessary to launch into descriptions of the crochets, country homes or palaces for children where Montessori methods prevail, where the pupils cultivate their little gardens, gmodel and plasticine, draw and sing and act, and dance their eurythmic dances barefoot on floors once sacred to the tread of the nobility. I saw a reception and distributing house in Petrograd with which no fault could be found from the point of view of scientific organization. The children were bright-eyed and merry, and the rooms airy and clean. I saw to a performance by schoolchildren in Moscow, which included some quite wonderful eurythmic dancing, in particular an interpretation of Grieg's Danzen der All des Bokongigs by the Dahl-Kroes method, but with a color and warmth which were Russian, and an odd contrast to the mathematical precision associated with most Dahl-Kroes performances. But in spite of the obvious merit of such institutions as exist, misgivings would arise. To begin with, it must be remembered that it is necessary first to admit that children should be delivered up almost entirely to the state. Nominally, the mother still comes to see her child in these schools, but in actual fact the drafting of children to the country must intervene, and the whole temper of the authorities seemed to be directed towards breaking the link between mother and child. To some, this will seem an advantage, and it is a point which admits of lengthy discussion, but as it belongs rather to the question of women and the family under communism, I can do no more than mention it here. Then again, it must be remembered that the tactics of the Bolsheviks towards such schools as existed under the old regime in provincial towns and villages have not been the same as their tactics towards the theaters. The greater number of these schools are closed, in part it would seem from lack of personnel, and in part from fear of counter revolutionary propaganda. The result is that, though those schools which they have created are good and organized on modern lines, on the whole there would seem to be less diffusion of child education than before. In this, as in most other departments, the Bolsheviks show themselves loathe to attempt anything which cannot be done on a large scale and impregnated with communist doctrine. It goes without saying that communist doctrine is taught in schools, as Christianity has been taught hitherto. Moreover, the communist teachers show bitter hostility to other teachers who do not accept the doctrine. At the children's entertainment alluded to above, the dances and poems performed had nearly all some close relation to communism. And a teacher addressed the children for something like an hour and a half on the duties of communists and the errors of anarchism. This teaching of communism, however necessary it may appear for the building of the communist state of the future, does seem to me to be an evil in that it is done emotionally and fanatically, with an appeal to hate and militant ardor, rather than to constructive reason. It binds the free intellect and destroys initiative. An industrial state needs not only obedient and patient workers and artists, it needs also men and women with initiative in scientific research. It is idle to provide channels for scientific research later if it is to be choked at the source. That source is an inquiring and free intellect unhampered by iron dogma. Beneficial to artistic and emotional development, therefore the teaching of communism as a faith may well be most pernicious to the scientific and intellectual side of education, and will lead direct to the pragmatist view of knowledge and scientific research, which the church and the capitalist already find it so convenient to adopt. But to come to the chief and most practical question, the relation of education to industry. Sooner or later, education in Russia must become subordinate to the needs of industrial development. That the Bolsheviks already realize this is proved by the articles of Lunartarsky, which recently appeared in Laferre, Geneva. It was the specter of industry that haunted me throughout the consideration of education as in the consideration of art. And what I have said above of its dangers to the latter, seems to me also to apply here. Montessori schools belong, in my view, to that stage in industrial development when education is directed as much towards leisure occupations, as towards preparation for professional life. Possibly the fine flower of useless scientific inquiry belongs to this stage also. Nobody in Russia is likely to have much leisure for a good many years to come if the Bolshevik program of industrial development is efficiently carried out. And there seemed to me to be something pathetic and almost cruel in this varied and agreeable education of the child when one reflected on the long hours of grinding toil to which he was soon to be subject in the workshop or factory. For I repeat that I do not believe industrial work in the early days of industry can be made tolerable to the worker. Once again I experienced the dread of seeing the ideals of the Russian revolutionaries go down before the logic of necessity. They are beginning to pride themselves on being hard, practical men and it seems quite reasonable to fear that they should come to regard this full and humane development of the child as a mere luxury and ultimately neglect it. Worse still the few of these schools exist may perhaps become exclusive to the communists and their children or that company of samurai which is to leaven and govern the mass of the people. If so they will soon come to resemble our public schools in that they will prepare in an artificial play atmosphere men who will pass straight to the position of leaders while the portion of the proletariat who serve under them will be reading and writing just so much technical reading as is necessary and communist doctrine. This is a nightmare hypothesis but the difficulties of the practical problem seem to warrant its entertainment. The number of people in Russia who can even read and write is extremely small. The need to get them employed industrially as rapidly as possible is very great hence the system of education which develops out of this situation cannot be very ambitious and enlightened. Further it will have to continue over a sufficiently long period of time to allow of the risk of its becoming stable and traditional. In adult education already the pupil comes for a short period learns communism reading and writing there is hardly time to give him much more and returns to leaven the army or his native village. In achieving this the Bolsheviks are already doing a very important and reliable work but they cannot hope for a long while to become the model of public instruction which they have hitherto been represented to be and the conditions of their becoming so ultimately are adherents to their ideals through a very long period of stress and a lessening of fanaticism in their communist teaching conditions which unhappily seem to be mutually incompatible. The whole of the argument set out in this chapter may be summed up in the statement of one fact which the mere idealist is prone to overlook. Namely that Russia is a country at a stage in economic development not much more advanced than America in the pioneer days. The old civilization was aristocratic and exotic. It could not survive in the modern world. It is true that it produced great men but its foundations were rotten. The new civilization may for the moment be less productive of individual works of genius but it has a new solidity and gives promise of a new unity. It may be that I have taken to hopeful a view and that the future evolution of Russia will have as little connection with the life and tradition of its present population as modern America with the life of the red Indian tribes. The fact that there exists in Russia a population at a far higher stage of culture which will be industrially educated not exterminated militates against this hypothesis but the need for education may make progress slower than it was in the United States. One would not have looked for the millennium of communism or even for valuable art and educational experiment in the America of early railroading and farming days nor must one look for such things from Russia yet. It may be that during the next hundred years there economic evolution will obscure communist ideals until finally in a country that has reached the stage of present-day America the battle will be fought out again to a victorious and stable issue. Unless indeed the Marxian scripture proved to be not infallible and faith and heroic devotion show themselves capable of triumphing over economic necessity. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism by Bertrand Russell This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Landon D.C. Elkind at the University of Iowa in Coralville, Iowa Part 1 Chapter 5 Communism and the Soviet Constitution Before I went to Russia I imagined that I was going to see an interesting experiment in a new form of representative government. I did see an interesting experiment but not in representative government. Everyone who is interested in Bolshevism knows that they have elections from the village meeting to the all Russian Soviet by which the people's commissaries are supposed to derive their power. We were told that by the recall the occupational constituencies and so on a new and far more perfect machinery had been devised for ascertaining and registering the popular will. One of the things we hoped to study was the question whether the Soviet system is really superior to parliamentarism in this respect. We were not able to make any such study because the Soviet system is more abound. In theses, page 6 of the French edition it is said The ancient classic subdivision of the labor movement into three forms parties trade unions and cooperatives has served its time. The proletarian revolution has raised up in Russia the essential form of proletarian dictatorship the Soviets. But the work in the Soviets as in the industrial trade unions which have become revolutionary must be invariably and systematically directed by the party of the proletariat that is the communist party. As the organized advanced guard of the working class the communist party answers equally to the economic, political and spiritual needs of the entire working class. It must be the soul of the trade unions, the Soviets and all other proletarian organizations. The appearance of the Soviets the principal historical form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in no way diminishes the directing role of the party in the proletarian revolution. When the German communists of the left declare that the party itself must also adapt itself more and more to the Soviet idea and proletarianize itself we see there only an insinuating expression of the idea that the communist party must dissolve itself into the Soviets so that the Soviets can replace it. This idea is profoundly erroneous and reactionary. The history of the Russian revolution shows us at a certain moment the Soviets going against the proletarian party and helping the agents of the bourgeoisie in order that the Soviets may fulfill their historic mission the existence of a communist party strong enough not to adapt itself to the Soviets but to exercise on them a decisive influence to force them not to adapt themselves to the bourgeoisie and official social democracy is on the contrary necessary end of footnote one no conceivable system of free election would give majorities to the communists either in town or country various methods are therefore adopted for giving the victory to government candidates in the first place the voting is by show of hands so that all who vote against the government are marked men in the second place no candidate who is not a communist can have any printing done the printing works being all in the hands of the state in the third place he cannot address any meetings because the halls all belong to the state the whole of the press is of course official no independent daily is permitted in spite of all these obstacles the Mensheviks have succeeded in winning about 40 seats out of 1500 on the Moscow Soviet by being known in certain large factories where the electoral campaign could be conducted by word of mouth they won in fact every seat that they contested but although the Moscow Soviet is nominally sovereign in Moscow it is really only a body of electors who choose the executive committee of 40 out of which in turn is chosen the presidium consisting of nine men who have all the power the Moscow Soviet as a whole it is rarely the executive committee is supposed to meet once a week but did not meet while we were in Moscow the presidium on the contrary needs daily of course it is easy for the government to exercise pressure over the election of the executive committee and again over the election of the presidium it must be remembered that effective protest is impossible owing to the absolutely complete suppression of free speech and free press the results is that the presidium of the Moscow Soviet consists only of Orthodox Communists Kamenev the president of the Moscow Soviet informed us that the recall is very frequently employed he said that in Moscow there are on an average 30 recalls a month I asked him what were the principal reasons for the recall and he mentioned four drinking, going to the front being therefore incapable of performing the duties change of politics on the part of the electors and failure to make a report to the electors once a fortnight which all members of the Soviet are expected to do it is evident that the recall affords opportunities for governmental pressure but I had no chance of finding out whether it is used for this purpose in country districts the method employed is somewhat different it is impossible to secure that the village soviet shall consist of communists because as a rule, at any rate in the villages I saw there are no communists but when I asked in the villages how they were represented on the volist, the next larger area or the goobernia I was met always with the reply that they were not represented at all I could not verify this and it is probably an overstatement but all concurred in the assertion that if they elected a non-communist representative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and therefore could not attend the volist or goobernia soviet I saw a meeting of the goobernia soviet of Saratov the representation is so arranged that the town workers have an enormous preponderance over the surrounding peasants but even allowing for this the proportion of peasants seemed astonishingly small for the center of a very important agricultural area the all-russian soviet which is constitutionally the supreme body to which the people's commissaries are responsible meets seldom and has become increasingly formal its sole function at present so far as I could discover is to ratify without discussion previous decisions of the communist party on matters especially concerning foreign policy upon which the constitution requires its decision all real power is in the hands of the communist party who number about 600,000 in a population of about 120 millions I never came across a communist by chance the people whom I met in the streets or in the villages when I could get into conversation with them almost invariably said they were of no party the only other answer I ever had was from some of the peasants who openly stated that they were tsarists it must be said that the peasants reasons for disliking the bolsheviks are very inadequate it is said and all I saw confirmed the assertion that the peasants are better off than they ever were before I saw no one, man, woman or child who looked underfed in the villages the big landowners are dispossessed and the peasants have profited but the towns and the army still need nourishing and the government has nothing to give the peasants in return for food except paper which the peasants resent having to take it is a singular fact that tsarist rubles are worth 10 times as much as soviet rubles and are much commoner in the country although they are illegal pocketbooks full of them are openly displayed in the marketplaces I do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect a tsarist restoration they are merely actuated by custom and dislike of novelty they have never heard of the blockade consequently they cannot understand why the government is unable to give them the clothes and agricultural implements that they need having got their land and being ignorant of affairs outside their own neighborhood they wish their own village to be independent and would resent the demands of any government whatever within the communist party there are of course as always in a bureaucracy different factions though hitherto the external pressure has prevented disunion it seems to me that the personnel of the bureaucracy could be divided into three classes there are first the old revolutionists tested by years of persecution these men have most of the highest posts prison and exile have made them tough and fanatical and rather out of touch with their own country they are honest men with a profound belief that communism will regenerate the world they think themselves utterly free from sentiment but in fact they are sentimental about communism and about the regime that they are creating they cannot face the fact that what they are creating is not complete communism and that communism is anathema to the peasant who wants his own land and nothing else they are pitiless in punishing corruption or drunkenness when they find either among officials but they have built up a system in which the temptations to petty corruption are tremendous and their own materialistic theory should persuade them that under such a system corruption must be rampant the second class in the bureaucracy among whom are to be found most of the men occupying political posts just below the top consists of a revistas who are enthusiastic bolsheviks because of the material success of bolshevism with them must be reckoned the army of policemen, spies, and secret agents largely inherited from this are as times who make their profit out of the fact that no one can live except by breaking the law this aspect of bolshevism is unified by the extraordinary commission a body practically independent of the government possessing its own regiments who are better fed than the red army this body has the power of imprisoning any man or woman without trial on such charges as speculation or counter-revolutionary activity it has shot thousands without proper trial and though now it has nominally lost the power of inflicting the death penalty by no means certain that it has altogether lost it in fact it has spies everywhere and ordinary mortals live in terror of it the third class in the bureaucracy consists of men who are not ardent communists who have rallied to the government since it has proved itself stable and who worked for it either out of patriotism or because they enjoy the opportunity of developing their ideas freely without the obstacle of traditional institutions among this class are to be found men of the same type of the successful businessman men with the same sort of ability as is found in the American self-made trust magnate but working for success and power not for money there is no doubt that the bolsheviks are successfully solving the problem of enlisting this kind of ability in the public service of mass wealth as it does in capitalist communities this is perhaps their greatest success so far outside the domain of war it makes it possible to suppose that if Russia is allowed to have peace an amazing industrial development may take place making Russia a rival of the united states the bolsheviks are industrialists in all their aims they love everything in modern industry except the excessive rewards of the capitalists and the harsh discipline to which they are subjecting the workers is calculated if anything can to give them the habits of industry and honesty which have hitherto been lacking and the lack of which alone prevents Russia from being one of the four most industrial countries End of chapter 5