Excerpts from The Russian Pendulum:
Autocracy—Democracy—Bolshivism (1919)
by Arthur Bullard
The subject of Russia turns dinner-table discussions into brawls, turns old friendships into feuds.
Perhaps this only points to the vitality and tremendous importance of the Revolution. We cannot ignore so stupendous an event. We must take sides.
In listening to this very heated discussion, I am impressed and surprised to find so many liberal-minded persons, who are always on the side of democratic progress at home, taking up arms for the Bolshiviki. In Russia, all those who have devoted their lives to the development of democratic liberties are under the ban. They are apparently more feared and hated, certainly more ruthlessly persecuted, by the Bolshiviki than the supporters of the Old Regime.
This sympathy for Leninism is partly explained by simple misinformation . . . Some of it is traceable to a naïve belief that Bolshivist politicians always mean exactly what it suits their convenience to say . . .
It is rather amusing to hear those who protest so vehemently against our war measures which have limited free speech hold up Bolshivist Russia in comparison. When they were still in the Oppositions, the orators of the Bolshiviki made some wonderfully eloquent pleas for absolute freedom of speech and press—some of the best contributions to the literature of the subject I have ever read. But unfortunately they did not convince themselves by their own eloquence. Whey they won to power they changed minds. Their methods of suppressing hostile criticism . . . make the authors and administrators of our Espionage Law seem either very timid or very tolerant . . .
No one knows the whole truth about these events [in Russia]. Those of us who happened to be in Russia saw only a few out of the myriad incidents of the titanic upheaval; we noted, and can report, only the things which seemed to us
significant . . .
My first acquaintance with Lenin dates back to the summer of 1905. I had gone to Switzerland as a journalist to try to understand the Revolutionary Movement which Father Gapon had suddenly called to the attention of the Western World. Lenin was only one—and far from the most impressive—of the political exiles I met there.
I saw him several times in St. Petersburg during the “Forty Days of Freedom” which followed the great general strike of October of that year. And after the collapse of that revolutionary outburst, when he was again an exile, I had another long discussion with him.
Having known him in days of adversity, it was doubly surprising to watch him rise to power in 1917 and 1918. He is not an impassioned orator. Even in private conversation he talks in a monotone. He is short, rather fat, bald-headed, and unimpressive. He has none of the ordinary marks of a popular leader. He has always seemed to me the very opposite of magnetic—dreary.
Yet few leaders have ever dominated the thought of their followers as he does. Of course, the great majority of those who have called themselves Bolshiviki have never heard him speak, read his writings, nor understood his theories. But the “leaders” of the movement, the men who popularize his doctrines, accept his pronunciamentos with surprising docility. The editors of Bolshivist newspapers, the writers of their pamphlets, are “disciples” in the antique sense of the word . . . Lenin does the thinking for his cohorts. He is “the theoretician” of Bolshivism.
But the magic by which he won and maintains this control over his followers is a complete mystery to me. Coming home from an all night session of the Petrograd Soviet, in the first days of 1918 . . . I asked my interpreter, who had strong leanings towards Bolshivism, to explain the secret of Lenin’s influence. He said he was fascinated by Lenin’s cold logic and consistency.
Certainly no man in public life today—no one I have read of in history—has been so painfully consistent as Nicolai Lenin. He is simply doing today—now that he is in power—exactly what he said he would do, when I knew him a dozen odd years ago.
His mind, in those first discussions about politics, did not impress me as original—only as logical. If one wished to quarrel with his conclusions, it was necessary to go back and fight over his primary assumptions. His arguments are hard to combat, if you grant his first claims.
The only originality in his thought was the strange grouping of its foundation stones. There were three ideas in the philosophy which he outlined to me which he accepted as axiomatic and needing no argument. He had borrowed them from three great revolutionary thinkers—Marx, Blanqui, and Nietzsche.
In his youth Lenin was close student of Karl Marx and today quotes from as readily as any real Marxist I know. But he had repudiated almost all of the Socialist theories except “The Class War” and “Internationalism.”
When he talks of the relation between Capital and Labor, he uses the familiar phraseology of Socialism, but with a twist not to be found in “Das Kapital.” Marx was much too human to believe that the “types” he defined were real people. He said that the man who works for wages in modern industry and the man who employs labor tend to approach the typical “propertlyless Proletarian” and the “exploiting Capitalist.” As they resist this trend they are likely to become eliminated in the struggle for existence.
Lenin talks and acts as if these “types” were the only real people. Many of the Russian factory workers still own a meagre plot of land in the village and are peasants at heart. But Lenin speaks to them as if they were propertyless—as if they thought in the same terms as the landless proletarians of the long established industry of the West—theoretically they should. He occasionally meets an employer who thinks he is trying to be decent, but Lenin knows better. Theoretically he must be heartless. Marx described a process which he thought he saw in modern life leading towards an inevitable war of the classes. Lenin acts on the assumption that this process is completed. People and things and events in this picture puzzle of life which do not fit at once into his “theory” of the picture he impatiently throws aside—ignores and denies their existence. This habit of mind is illustrated in his attitude towards Socialist Internationalism . . . .
To Lenin, the enemy, the only worth discussing, is Capital. And high finance is international, travelling in search of profits from one country to another, interlocking across every frontier and dominant everywhere. Its sinister rule can be broken only by an international revolt of the exploited proletarians . . .
“Patriotism” does not fit into his [Lenin’s] theory. He ignores it. In his letters and manifestos to the workingmen of Western countries he does not argue with them about “Patriotism,” he does not warn them against being tricked by such fine phrases in the mouths of capitalist spellbinders. He assumes that they understand Internationalism just as he does and have no preference for their own country over others. He thinks that “Patriotism” is bad and so he shuts his eyes to its existence.
The second foundation stone in his thinking he has borrowed, with less alteration, from the French revolutionist, Blanqui. In common with some modern “Syndicalists,” Lenin is frankly and outspokenly anti-Democratic. He cannot be interested in making “the world safe for democracy.” He has no use for the idea.
In general in our discussion he was cool and passionless, but on this subject he became heated. He objects to both the theory and practice of majority rule. The mass of the people, he argues, have been too debased by capitalist oppression to know what is good for them. Bitter long hours of labor have robbed them of any chance to acquire general culture or to understand their own position and needs. And they are too ill-nourished to have the energy to struggle, too terrorized by fear of losing their jobs to revolt. He spoke hopelessly, with marked disdain, of the “lethargic mass.” The capitalists will always be able to fool the majority. He saw no hope of progress if one waited for democratic action by the masses. Towards democracy in practice he was even more bitter. What, he demanded vehemently, has it accomplished for the workers in France, Britain, or America? He was surprisingly well informed about the sore spots in our civilization. He knew many returned immigrants, who had told him all about our sweatshops and slums. He had read a translation of “The Jungle.” “Democracy” is to him an empty word by means of which scheming capitalists fool the people into thinking they are free . . .
Lenin pins his faith on “the enlightened, militant minority,” “the elite of the proletariat.” He is frankly for “a minority revolution.” Of course, he maintained, “the lethargic mass” would benefit by his projects and in the end rally to them. But he does not expect them to initiate anything. Revolution for, but not by, the people is his ideal . . . .
In this matter Lenin parted company with the dominant opinion of Western Socialism. Jean Jaurès, the great French leader, had said: “We need not only a majority, but an overwhelming majority.” The more experienced Socialists of the West realized the great value to them of such democratic liberties as universal suffrage and freedom of discussion. Their main efforts were used in organizing their co-believers into a coherent political party which, when it had won over a majority, could take over the governing power and democratize industry as well as politics. And in this attitude most Russian Socialists concurred.
But for such slow methods, Lenin had no patience. It would take too long. He advocated minority insurrection and “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” not of all the workers, not even a majority of them, but of his “enlightened, militant minority.” The argument over “tactics,” which split the Russian Social Democrats into two factions—“Bolshiviki” and “Menshiviki”—was on this point. Plekhanov and the Menshiviki were interested in the democratic liberties. Lenin was for the conspirative organization of a centralized, disciplined—desperate—group to start the minority insurrection and Proletarian Dictatorship. And he advocated this policy in Russia—where eighty per cent of the people are peasants and not proletarians at all!
Lenin had borrowed his third foundation stone—also as a basic assumption—from that part of Nietsche’s teaching which is summed up in the title of his book, “Beyond Good and Evil.” The ethical teachings of the day, Lenin argued, have been imposed on us—like our property laws—by the possessing class. The capitalist shrewdly supports the clergy to preach: “Servants, obey your masters.” The university professor, who lectures about “honor,” “fidelity to the pledged word,” “the sacredness of contracts,” is also paid by the exploiters, just as much as the corporation lawyer who defends the unjust owner in court by making the worse appear the better reason for a fee. The so-called Moral Law is a ruling class affair. Just as Constantine the Great bullied the Fathers of the Early Church into a theology which favored his ambitions, so the rich and powerful of our day have fostered a system of ethics which supports their graft.
Lenin repudiated all allegiance to what most people call “moral obligations.” For him, the only “Good” is that which hurries on the Emancipation of the Working Class. All things which hinder this liberation are unqualifiedly “Bad,” no matter what fine names may be given them by the Poets and Priests—courtesans of the Ruling Class.
I think that if Lenin should chance to read this summary of his views—the bases of his political philosophy—he would agree that it was an accurate report. And then he would boast of the consistency with which he has striven to put them into practice . . . .
It is a difficult intellectual feat to weave a consistent policy out of doctrine so diverse. And I think I embarrassed him somewhat by one question in those discussions a dozen odd years ago. And least he showed irritability when I insisted on it.
“How,” I asked, “if you repudiate the democratic verdict of the majority, are you going to determine what is ‘Good’—what is helpful—in the struggle for Emancipation? There are likely to be differences of opinion within the working class. The ‘lethargic majority’ may want one thing and your ‘enlightened minority’ quite the opposite. If you are not going to consult their opinion how will you determine what is good for the masses?”
He seemed to me to dodge the issue. It was plain that the “majority” did not interest him. He used just as disdainful phraseology about it as the Anarchists and Aristocrats, who oppose democracy. He spoke contemptuously of “the fatuity of counting noses.”
But it seemed to me then—years before he reached power, at a time when there was no visible chance of his doing so—that he was quite prepared to decide these momentous questions himself. He was convinced that he knew what was necessary for the welfare of the Race.
Perhaps this dazzling self-confidence . . . is the secret of his mastery over men.
[pp. 1-7]
Source: http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/ryost/hist201/Nationalism/russian1919.doc
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