tariat is unemployed and forced to migrate out of the cities to get bread and labor.

The whole socialization of industry and banking and commerce and other branches of business life were doomed to failure from the outset. Everything was regulated by decrees issued by theorists without previous consultation with experts from the industries affected, and without any prior investigation or practical knowledge of the real situation. When they nationalized the banks they annulled private deposits, and factories had great difficulty in getting even money enough to pay wages. Allotments of money for their necessary operating expenses were not obtained until weeks and months after they were requested. Inevitably the whole manufacturing world was paralyzed. The new system of administering manufacturing establishments completed the ruin. Experienced managers were removed and committees appointed in their place consisting mainly of good agitators for Bolshevism but mighty poor managers. Very soon these committees developed into a bureaucratic institution incapable of rendering positive aid but powerful enough to settle the fortunes of the workingmen.

As an outcome, instead of nationalizing the instruments of production in Russia, Bolshevism has destroyed them and precipitated the proletariat into misery and despair. The Russian proletarians cannot claim to be as well trained and independent as their western brethren. They have not the same ability to analyze and to test things out. When they get an idea they obstinately try to apply it at once. They did not want to fight, and neither Milyukof nor Kerensky nor Plechinof nor Kropotkin could make them fight any longer. Now they have gone to the other extreme and are intensely embittered by their recent experience. Unemployment, hunger, sickness, suffering, and warfare are the gifts of Bolshevism. So the people are now raising themselves slowly, but threateningly, against Lenine and Trotzky. The situation in the Bolshevik camp has changed. The anti-Bolshevik proletariat is in the majority, while the former Bolshevik proletariat is ready to witness the overthrow of Bolshevism with indifference. The movement against it is growing and gaining strength. The city proletarians and the educated classes, the country laborers and all the democratic elements are rallying their forces and preparing to cast down Bolshevism. You hear of strikes now and then and of revolts and mutinies throughout Central Russia. These

are merely the trials of strength of the proletariat. The rebellious element is multiplying and winning adherents from circles that were but a short time ago the body-guard of Bolshevism. There are already many formerly Bolshevik factories, and entire regions, which are feared to-day by the Bolshevik leaders as hostile to them.

In this manner another front has been erected against Bolshevism, a democratic front, real and powerful, although we cannot draw its strategic lines upon the map. It is the supreme danger for Bolshevism, because it has been organized within its own ranks and among its former adherents. This front is making no dramatic gestures before the world, but it is the front that ultimately will conquer and subdue Bolshevism.

In my opinion the situation in Russia is hastening to a climax. Before many months Bolshevism will collapse. It is more likely that it will voluntarily surrender. But it will not surrender to reactionary militarism or to an intimidated bourgeoisie fighting it from abroad. Bullets and swords cannot kill Bolshevism, even though all the world outside of Russia rise against it. Democracy at home will force Bolshevism to surrender and will then organize a new Russia-a democratic Russia.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONISTS AGAINST
BOLSHEVISM1

Confronted with the fact that at present two extreme tendencies are raging in Russia, one worse than the other, Bolshevism and the reaction of the Black Hundreds, and knowing that Russia can be regenerated only through freedom and popular rule, we must wage an open war against the Bolsheviki of the Left and the Right. We must eliminate both of these elements that are destroying Russia's existence and freedom, and thereby make possible the speediest application of the principles laid down by the Great Revolution of March 1917. We must adopt the following program: (1) The reestablishment of all civic liberties; (a) freedom of speech, (b) of the press, (c) of assembly, (d) of associations, (e) inviolability of person, residence and mail, (f) freedom of religion,-on the basis of the temporary laws passed by the Russian Provisional Government.

(2) The reestablishment of municipal and rural (Zemstvo) selfgovernment on the basis of the laws passed by the Russian Provisional Government.

(3) The summoning in the briefest possible time of an All-Russian Constituent Assembly on the basis of the election law promulgated by the Provisional Government.

1 From an article by Catherine Breshkovsky. Struggling Russia. 1:52. April 12, 1919. This represents the views of famous revolutionists like Bourtzev, Kropotkin, Tchaykovsky and others.

(4) The proclamation of Russia as a democratic, federated Republic. (5) The resumption of the work of the Committees assigned to prepare the plans for the organization of regional Dumas (Siberia, Ural, Northern Provinces, Southern Provinces, etc.), and the renewal of the functioning of the Regional Governments.

(6) The recognition of the transition of the land to the toiling masses, pending the final solution of the land problem by the Constituent Assembly, and the transfer of the administration of agrarian affairs to the proper Zemstvo institutions.

(7) The recognition of the nationalization of forests, waters and the substrata of the soil, pending action by the Constituent Assembly.

(8) The State control of industry in cooperation with the Zemstvos and workers' organizations.

(9) Decisive encouragement and help to Cooperatives and to the Zemstvos by the Government. The immediate organization of trade and industry.

(10) Autonomy for nationalities in Russia on the basis of the laws passed by the Russian Provisional Government.

(11) The recognition of the separation of Church from State. (12) The organization of an effective Army on the basis of the soldier's retention of his rights as a man and a citizen.

(13) The declaration as null and void of all the decrees of the Bolsheviki, with the adoption of a policy of gradual transition from conditions under their regime to the newly moulded forms, on the basis of temporary regulations to be ordained either by the future Provisional Government or by the Constituent Assembly.

(14) Immediate amnesty to all political prisoners, if their offenses have no taint of criminality.

The time for despotism and the suppression of the ideas and strivings of the people towards a decent human life is gone forever. We cannot save Russia without sincere service to the ideals of freedom. We are prepared to give her all freely, unhesitatingly and without fear of sacrifice.

BOLSHEVIKI AS CAPITALISTS

1

Writing recently to the Morning Post on Russian affairs, I quoted the Bolshevik politician Chudskayeff's heretical opinion that soviet nationalization would after all prove to be only "nonsense." The reasons for M. Chudskayeff's view I gave with facts and figures. The Supreme Council of National Economy, which is the ultimate authority in these grave matters, is now rushing headlong into a new system, which indicates that though one cannot undo "nonsense" already done, one may correct it. The new move is back toward capitalism, not indeed to what Lenine in an excellent speech calls "the predatory side of capitalism," but toward "the, by us, unfortunately, neglected organizatory side." In other words, private individuals are still to be forbidden to make profits, but the methods by which these private individuals made profits in pre-Bolshevik days are to be restored, and the profit is to be turned into the pocket of the State. And even, it seems, large incomes are sometimes to be tolerated, for Lenine, in his New Problems of

1 From the Living Age. 301:760-2. June 21, 1919.

Soviet Power, admits that an expert factory director may be paid as much as 100,000 rubles a year.

"State capitalism," the form which was emphatically rejected by the majority of the recently-dispersed German Socialization Commission, is Bolshevism's latest expedient. It means the exploitation of workmen to an extent to which they were not exploited by the least merciful private capitalists in modern times. Further, it is directly contrary to the SyndicalistBolshevik trend elsewhere in Europe. While industrial workmen in Norway are demanding the elimination from their collective wage agreements of the provision that the employer "directs and distributes work," the Russian Supreme Council of Economy is depriving the workmen of their supposed elementary right to "direct and distribute work." But necessity knows no law. The last Russian newspapers received by me contain abundant evidence that only by compromising with "Capitalism," by becoming plus capitaliste que les capitalistes, can the Government of People's Commissaries survive-if it can survive at all. For instance, the new half-yearly budget (JanuaryJune, 1919) shows that the estimated expenditure is 49,100,000,000 rubles, as compared with 17,602,727,444 rubles for the corresponding half of 1918.

And there are other facts. The official Ekonomitcheskaya Zhian states that in some cities the population is so badly off for metal goods that they pull down wooden houses for the sake of the nails, screws, locks, the roofing-lead, and the drainage pipes. Nails, says this journal, cost 700 rubles per pound; tinned kitchen utensils average 450 rubles per pound; enameled iron utensils, 600 rubles per pound; and the thin brass plates, usually about eighteen inches square, which are nailed to dwelling-room floors in front of Dutch stoves, change hands at 270300 rubles each. The raw materials-pig-iron and copper-used in the construction of a locomotive at the Putiloff works cost 170,000 rubles. But, according to M. Hessen, formerly editor of the Riech, the one locomotive started since Bolshevism seized power is not yet finished. There is plenty more material as to the complete collapse of nationalized industry. And it is the same with nationalized trade. The Bolshevik Commissary, Molotoff, complained to the party conference at Petrograd that of the state stores in Petrograd 380 are closed and sealed.

The cause everywhere is idleness, or, as it is politely expressed, "fall-off in per capita production." This is the motive

which has induced Lenine, backed, it seems here, by Trotzky, Chicherin, and Lunacharsky, to resort to capitalistic methods. The move has gone so far that the less compromising Bolsheviki-Kameneff, Zinovieff, and, it seems, the Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution-have begun to regard Lenine and his friends as themselves "counter-revolutionaries." When Lenine in January restored freedom of trade except in bread, salt, sugar, and vegetable fats, the ultra-Communist newspapers of Petrograd openly attacked him as a traitor to the Bolshevik cause. And there is the same tendency now. It began when Lenine in the pamphlet mentioned demanded severe factory discipline, the subordination of employees to expert managers and technicians, piece-work, payment by results, and even the "Taylor system," which the enslaved workman of backward Western Europe has managed to resist. "Whereas until now," said Lenine, “the workmen have been autocratic masters of the factories and workshops, the interests of the revolution and of the workmen themselves demand the absolute submission of employees to the manager of each industrial enterprise." And Trotzky, in a speech which I have not seen, but which is quoted in the Berlin Vorwärts, said that:

All your elected committees, even though they contain the workingclass' best representatives cannot replace a single technical expert with special school training. The working-class must now understand when it is necessary to submit to the expert no capable and talented expert can do his work if he is made subordinate to a committee of workingmen who do not know the expert's work.

No one can accuse the Bolsheviki of lack of daring. When they decided "Self-Government in the Factory" had failed they set about establishing the alternative, "Autocracy in the Factory," with unshrinking zeal. As far as one can judge from scattered references in the irregularly received Bolshevik newspapers, two systems were adopted. In some factories the detested piece-work is enforced, and in some the old system of payment by hour, day, or month is retained, combined with the new rule of a minimum output and a premium payment for output above the minimum. Workmen who fail to reach the minimum are dismissed or reduced to a lower wage scale. The minimum output and premium-payment system has been introduced into the Tula small-arms and cartridge works and into several Moscow factories, including boot and clothing works. According to the Golos Rossiyi, the innovation produced "consternation and a sentiment of revolt." This is natural enough,