The problems arising out of property rights would be resolved by not allowing anyone to have any property rights. The problem of equalizing wages would be solved by abolishing wages. Problems connected with money, markets and prices would be solved by doing away with money, markets and prices. Problems of competition in production and distribution would be solved by forcibly prohibiting competition.
Finally, they would solve all the problems of modern society by using revolution to destroy this society. It seems the phantom of Communist hope can only arise from the bowels of the earth through the ashes of all that now is. Communism must be built for one purpose—to destroy. Only after the great destruction did the Communist leaders dare to hope that they might offer to their disciples the possibility of freedom, equality and justice.
It is this dismal and nebulous promise for the future which Communism offers the world today. Until such a day comes, the Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as “based on force and unrestricted by any laws,” the suspension of all civil liberties—suppression of free press, free speech and assembly, the existence of slave labor camps, the constant observation of all citizens by secret police, the long periods of service in the military, the poverty of collective farming, the risk of being liquidated if discovered associating with deviationists, and finally, the tolerance of an economic order which promises little more than a life of bare subsistence for generations to come.
More than forty years have come and gone since Communist leaders first seized a nation to demonstrate to a curious world what marvelous wonders might be wrought. From that one nation they have expanded their grip until one-third of the human race now bows to their iron-clad dictates. Those who have escaped their tyranny bear witness that Marxist Man has produced a political monstrosity containing the collected relics of practically every form of human degradation and torture invented by the mind of man since the dawn of history.
While pretending to liberate mankind from the alleged oppression of capitalism Marxist Man has defied the warm, white light of Twentieth Century civilization to introduce slavery on a scale unprecedented in the history of the race. While claiming to foster the “rights of the common man” the Marxist has butchered his fellow citizens from Kulaks to aristocrats in numbers that baffle rational comprehension. And while describing himself as the epitome of the best in nature—the creature of science, the supreme intelligence of the universe—Homo-Marxian has exploited his cunning to compound crimes which scarcely would be duplicated by the most predatory tribes of pre-historic times.
It is for this reason that discerning men have described Communism as reversing and negating history. It has turned man against himself. Instead of solving the many complex problems of modern life, Marxism’s negative approach has simply resurrected primitive problems which past generations of struggling humanity had already succeeding in solving.
To more fully appreciate precisely what has been happening we shall now examine the circumstances which led to the launching of the first Communist controlled nation in the history of the world.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Rise of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia
The events described in this chapter are intimate facts in the minds of all well-informed Marxists. Communists often base their arguments on their interpretation of these events and therefore the student should find this historical background helpful.
This chapter also includes the biographies of the principal Communist leaders—Nikolai (V.I.) Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
A review of the following questions will indicate some of the answers which this chapter is designed to provide.
• Who launched Marxism in Russia in 1868? Why did Marx consider this man his “enemy”? After the assassination of Alexander II what did Marx say about the possibility of a Communist revolution in Russia?
• What kind of environment produced Nikolai Lenin? Why was his brother hanged?
• Who organized the Bolsheviks? What does the name mean? What did they call their enemies? Was this an accurate designation or a matter of strategy?
• What was the background of Leon Trotsky? How did he get this name? How did he escape from Siberia? Why did he oppose Lenin in 1903?
• Was the Russian Revolution of 1905 led by a few radicals or was it a general uprising of the whole people? Why did Lenin and the Bolsheviks oppose the “October Manifesto” which promised the people representative government?
• From what kind of home did Joseph Stalin come? Why was he expelled from the seminary where he was being trained as a priest? What did the criminal activities of Joseph Stalin during 1907 reveal about his personality? How extensive were Stalin’s activities as a union organizer, propagandist and revolutionary leader during this period? What was his relationship to Lenin?
• What brought Russia to the brink of another general uprising during the First World War? What was the Tsar’s attitude during this crisis?
Marxism Comes to Russia
In 1885 a U.S. citizen, Andrew D. White, returned from a tour of duty as attache in the American Embassy at St. Petersburg and described the Russian situation as follows: “The whole governmental system is the most atrociously barbarous in the world. There is on earth no parallel example of a polite society so degraded, a people so crushed, an official system so unscrupulous.”{65}
When White made this statement, the population of Russia was slightly over 70,000,000. Of these, 46,000,000 were in virtual captivity as serfs.
It will be recalled that Marx and Engels had been aroused to wrathful vehemence when they saw conditions among the industrial workers of England, but the status of life among the English was far above that of the peasants in Russia. The Russian serfs were not only starved, exploited and pauperized, but they were subjected to an iron-clad system of feudal political suppression. Always there was the plague of the secret police, the threat of arrest and sentencing to forced labor camps in Siberia and the cruel indecencies imposed upon them by the Tsar’s everpresent military. A Russian serf seemed to enjoy no sacred immunities whatever, neither in his person, his possessions, his children, nor, sometimes, his wife. All were subject to the petty whims of grasping officials in the Tsar’s corrupt bureaucracy.
Between 1861 and 1866, Tsar Alexander II sincerely attempted to do away with the institution of serfdom by approving several acts of emancipation. However, for all practical purposes, the impoverished lives of the peasants continued to be insecure, harsh and austere. Circumstances leading to a revolution were in the making.
Marxism came to Russia in 1868 when Bakunin’s translation of Capital escaped the Tsar’s censors and passed among liberals and radicals like a choice morsel of spiritual meat. For Russia it meant the kindling of the bright red flame in the original Communist Manifesto: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains…. Working men of all countries, unite!”
Russian revolutionary movements soon began to take shape and by 1880 Marxism could be described as definitely taking hold. The first significant violence came in 1881 when Tsar Alexander II fell dying beneath the shattering impact of a bomb which was hurled into the royal carriage by Ignatius Grinevitsky, a member of a revolutionary group called “The People’s Will.”
The successful murder of the Tsar led many Marxists to feel that the hour for unrestricted revolution might be very near. Over in London, the aging Marx began receiving inquiries from his Russian disciples. They wanted to know whether or not it might be possible to have a revolution in Russia even though the Russian economy had never passed through the capitalistic development which Marx had always said was a prerequisite. Marx studied the problem diligently. Finally, he gave it as his opinion that Russia had “the rarest and most suitable opportunity ever offered to an
y country to avoid (skip) the phase of capitalistic development.” In other words, Marx was suggesting the possibility of an early revolution in Russia.
This was a complete theoretical switch for Marx. He was also admitting the error of one of his earlier prophecies; namely, that the revolution would come first among highly developed capitalistic nations such as Germany and England. Among his friends he declared: “It is an irony of fate that the Russians, whom I have fought for twenty-five years, and not only in German (publications), but in French and English, have always been my patrons.”
It was indeed ironical that the Russian Marxists had remained loyal to Marx and his theories in spite of the verbal and editorial abuse he had heaped upon them. This was never truer than in the case of Bakunin, the first Russian Marxist, who promoted the theories of Marx and Engels with such zeal, that they both feared he might take over the First International. They, therefore, marked him for political liquidation.
Even at the end, however, Bakunin reaffirmed his faith in Marxism, and after referring to the “furious hatred” of Marx toward himself, he concluded: “This has given me an intense loathing of public life. I have bad enough of it, and after devoting all my days to the struggle, I am weary…. Let other and younger persons put their hands to the work. For my own part, I no longer feel strong enough…. I therefore, withdraw from the arena, and ask only one thing of my dear contemporaries—oblivion.”
In 1876 Bakunin laid down the burden of his life, but the “younger persons” to whom he bequeathed Marxism and the Russian people’s revolution were already commencing to make their appearance among men.
In 1870, Nikolai Lenin was born, and in the year 1879, there arrived on earth both Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Others would come, but these three were to be the principal leaders in carrying forward the traditions of Bakunin and at the same time doing for Marx what he was never able to do for himself; these three would convulse a great nation in a revolution and would serve as midwives at the birth of the world’s first Communist dictatorship.
Nikolai Lenin, first Communist dictator: “Marxists have never forgotten that violence will be an inevitable accompaniment of the collapse of capitalism… and of the birth of the socialist society.”
The Early Life of Nikolai (V.I.) Lenin
Marx would hardly have guessed that the first Communist dictator would be a man like Lenin, who was born on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, on the Volga. His father was a Councilor of State with a hereditary title of nobility while his mother was a German of the Lutheran faith. Lenin had red hair, high cheek bones, and the slanting eyes of his Tartar ancestors from Astrakhan.
Originally, Lenin was named Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, but “Nikolai Lenin” is the revolutionary pseudonym under which he became famous. As a boy he had strict training under a father who was called a “liberal” even though he was a Councilor of State. His father was a man of humanitarian ideals who worked himself to death setting up four-hundred and fifty primary schools during a period of seventeen years. Lenin was fifteen when his father died, and soon afterwards an even greater tragedy struck the family—his older brother was hanged.
This brother, named Alexander, was nearing twenty-one. He had lost his religious faith some time before and had become deeply impressed with the philosophy of materialism. He had also come to feel the need for direct and decisive action in getting social reforms in Russia.
While attending the University at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), Alexander agreed with several associates to construct a bomb which could be used to kill Tsar Alexander III. The bomb was built inside a bogus medical dictionary and consisted of dynamite and strychnine-treated bullets. The police discovered the assassination plot just before it was to have been executed and the entire group was summarily arrested. Trials and convictions soon followed, and in May, 1887, the St. Petersburg papers announced that Lenin’s older brother had gone to the gallows.
When the excitement subsided, Lenin, who had just turned 17, went back to reading Marx and other revolutionary writers in deadly earnest. Like his brother, Lenin had lost his religious faith two or three years before and was becoming reconciled to the cynicism of the Marxist interpretation of life. Furthermore, the death of his brother accelerated his determination to become an active revolutionist as soon as possible.
To give himself some kind of professional status, Lenin made an intensive study of law. Through the intercession of his mother, he was allowed to take his final examinations at the Univerity in St. Petersburg and came out first among one hundred and twenty-four students. Lenin then attempted to practice law, but for some reason lost nearly all his cases and, therefore, abandoned the law and never returned to it.
In 1891-92 the Russian famine and cholera epidemic broke out. Lenin was living in a region where Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer and philanthropist, was trying to sustain the courage of the people by organizing hundreds of soup kitchens and distributing seed-grain and horses to the impoverished peasants. But Lenin would have none of it. He would not help set up soup-kitchens nor join a relief committee. Later he was accused of welcoming the famine as a means of accentuating the suffering of the people and firing up their revolutionary will to act. There is no doubt that during these years the Marxist program was ram-rodding Lenin’s thinking into that of an uncompromising revolutionist.
Shortly after this, Lenin took up residence in St. Petersburg. He was now twenty-three and anxious to begin active revolutionary work. He therefore joined the “Fighting Union for the Liberation of the Working Class.” However, in 1895 Lenin learned that he had tuberculosis of the stomach. This made it necessary for him to go to Switzerland and undergo a cure at a special sanitarium. While in Western Europe, he made contact with George Plekhanov, the leader of the exiled Russian Marxists.
Lenin spent long hours with Plekhanov and felt highly flattered that the big man among the exiled Russian radicals would share with a newcomer his plans for a violent revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar. Plekhanov was equally impressed with Lenin. He felt the heat of Lenin’s glowing hatred for everything tainted by the Tsar’s regime, and therefore decided that Lenin should return to Russia, rally the Marxists, and organize a national Communist political party patterned after the highly successful Social Democrats in Germany. Lenin was also asked to begin publishing a revolutionary periodical.
This assignment was accepted by Lenin as a heroic mission for which fate had predestined him. Upon returning to Russia, he organized strikes, trained recruits, formulated political strategy and wrote inflammatory articles. But in the midst of this promising campaign, a police agent betrayed the group and Lenin found himself sentenced to exile in faraway Siberia. Lenin accepted this interruption of his revolutionary career with bitter resignation.
Soon after his arrival in Siberia Lenin was joined by a Marxist girl, whom he had met in 1894, named Nadezhda Krupskaya. She was allowed to come, at Lenin’s request, on condition that she and Lenin legalize their union with a marriage ceremony. This violated their Marxist principle of “abolition of the family,” but they consented in order to remain together. Lenin now had a companion as dedicated to the revolution as himself. They had no children, and close associates stated that they intentionally planned against children because they both felt their missions in life would not permit them to be thus encumbered.
Lenin spent his time in Siberia studying, writing reams of letters in secret ink, solidifying the program of the new Social-Democratic Party of Russia and completing his book called, Capitalism in Russia.
When he was released in 1900, Lenin had become a cautious, calculating, full-fledged, conspiratorial revolutionist. He immediately headed for Munich, Germany, where he started printing a paper called The Spark, which could be smuggled into Russia. Thus began seventeen years of almost continuous exile in Western Europe for Lenin and his wife. Only on rare occasions did they secretly visit Russia. They lived modestly and traveled light. It was as though they were waiting for the voice of histo
ry to assign them to their revolutionary roles.
Origin of the Bolsheviks
By 1903 Lenin and his wife had set up headquarters in London. They had the feeling they were carrying on where Marx had left off. Marx had been dead seventeen years and often they made pilgrimages to the cemetery where the grave of Marx is located.
In July of that year a Russian-Social-Democratic congress convened in London. Forty-three delegates came from Russia as well as from various groups of Russian exiles in Western Europe. As chairman of the congress, Lenin started off with a moderate and impartial attitude, but as the discussions continued he was horrified to discover that the congress was moving toward pacifistic socialism rather than militant revolution. Lenin immediately gathered his friends and followers around him. He split the congress wide open on the issue of whether party membership should be limited to hard-core revolutionists (as advocated by Lenin) or broadened to include anyone who felt sympathy for the movement.
In this dispute Lenin temporarily rallied around him a majority of the congress and thereafter used this as a basis for calling those who supported him “Bolsheviks” (which comes from a Russian word meaning “majority”), while those who opposed him were called “Mensheviks” (which is taken from the Russian word meaning “minority”). The propaganda value of a party title meaning “majority” will be quickly recognized. It was another illustration of Lenin’s absolute determination to exploit every situation so as to make it a tool to further his over-all political strategy.
The Naked Communist Page 10
