"Barbarous Soviet Russia - free ebook by Isaac McBride

“Barbarous Soviet Russia”

Acknowledgment is hereby made to the “Christian Science Monitor,” “Universal Service” (Hearst), and “Asia Magazine” for courtesies extended, in using some of the material that appeared in those publications....

25 minute read

Read Chapter

Preface

Of the five weeks I spent in Soviet Russia ten days were spent in Moscow and eight in Petrograd. The remainder of the time I traveled along the Western Front, from the Esthonian border to Moghilev, with leisurely stops at Pskov, Vitebsk, Polotzk, Smolensk, and numerous small towns. I tried to see as much as possible of this vast and unknown land in the short time at my disposal, and I tried especially to check up from first-hand observation some of the many things I had heard on the outside. I a

3 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER I ENTERING RED LAND

“You will never return alive. They will slaughter you. They will rob you of everything. They will take your clothes from your very back.” With stubborn conviction the dapper young Lettish gentleman spoke to me as he attempted to change my mind about going into Soviet Russia. He was attached to the Foreign Information Bureau of Latvia. He had been in Riga all through the Bolshevist régime, from November, 1918, to May, 1919, when the German army of occupation in the Baltic provinces drove them out

21 minute read

Read Chapter

THE RED ARMY

The ordinary Red soldier gets 400 rubles a month, with rations and clothes. Soviet officials told me that there were 2,000,000 thoroughly trained and equipped men in the fighting forces, with another million in reserve and under training. About 50,000 young officers, they said, chosen from the most capable peasants and workers, had already graduated from the officers’ training schools under the Soviet Government. Thousands of others had been developed from the ranks. It is easy for the casual ob

6 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER III ON TO MOSCOW

Before leaving Velikie Luki I wandered with my guard down a street of the town and came upon a Soviet bookstore. Inside were thousands of books and pamphlets, in what seemed to me all the languages of the world. The store was full of men and women buying these books and pamphlets. I learned that this store and many others like it had been opened almost two years before, and that knowledge of history and social conditions throughout the world was thus being brought to millions of Russians formerl

10 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IV MOSCOW

I reached Moscow on Sunday afternoon and was taken at once by “Larkin” to the Foreign Office at the Metropole hotel. As we drove through the picturesque town of many churches we passed great numbers of people enjoying the sunshine. The parks and squares were full of romping children. In the Foreign Office I was greeted by Litvinoff, who gave me credentials which granted me freedom of action—freedom to go where I pleased and without a guard as long as I remained in Soviet Russia; and Communist li

12 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER V INTERVIEW WITH LENIN

A quarter of an hour ahead of the hour set for my appointment with Lenin, I hastened to the Kremlin enclosure, the well-guarded seat of the executive government. Two Russian soldiers inspected my pass and led me across a bridge to obtain another pass from a civilian to enter the Kremlin itself and to return to the outside. I had heard that Lenin was guarded by Chinese soldiers, but I looked in vain for a Chinese among the guards that surrounded the Kremlin. In fact I saw but two Chinese soldiers

7 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VI “WHO IS LENIN?”

Many conflicting stories were told and published about Lenin after the Bolshevist uprising in November, 1917. I decided to ascertain for myself during the two weeks I spent in Switzerland before going into Russia what the people of that country knew about him. Lenin arrived in Switzerland in September, 1914, and left for Russia in March, 1917, with thirty other Russians, on the much-talked-of train that went through Germany with the sanction of the Kaiser. A whole myth has grown up around Lenin

14 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER VII PETROGRAD

I arrived at the Nicolai station in Petrograd on the 24th of September, from Moscow, and went at once to the Astoria hotel on St. Isaac’s Square at the farther end of Nevsky Prospekt. As we drove along the thoroughfare I noticed workmen tearing out the wooden paving-blocks which covered that famous street, and recalled having read in New York papers that whole streets in Petrograd had been torn up and used for fuel. This seemed credible enough, even desirable, I thought, as I recalled the shiver

14 minute read

Read Chapter

TROTZKY

Almost inseparable from the name of Lenin, in the minds of Americans, is that of Trotzky, Minister of War, whose history is well known here. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs up to the time of the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, when it became necessary to mobilize an army to protect Soviet Russia from foreign invasion, and he was made Minister of War. He took hold of a badly disorganized and worse discouraged army, and through his own hard work, and with the assistance of others, built up

1 minute read

Read Chapter

CHICHERIN

As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trotzky was succeeded by Chicherin. He is a tall, slightly stooped figure, about fifty years old, with eyes that burn like coals. He is emaciated from hunger and from hard work. Never a day goes by but Chicherin can be found in his office from twelve to sixteen hours of the time, working with quiet determination and zeal. I saw him in his office at the Metropole two or three times, and was captivated by his kind and gentle manner. “Yes,” he said to me, "we want pe

1 minute read

Read Chapter

LITVINOFF

Litvinoff is a solidly built, jovial, and very astute Lithuanian. He was one of the Collegium in the foreign office under Chicherin, and was the Soviet ambassador in England after the revolution. Later he was sent back to Russia by the British Government. He is an equally shrewd business man and diplomat, and looks more like a British member of parliament than a Russian Bolshevik. He has a keen sense of humor and fun, but takes his duties very seriously. He is the type of man often seen among di

38 minute read

Read Chapter

MADAME KOLLONTAY

I met Madame Kollontay in the National Hotel, three or four days after I arrived in Moscow. She is a beautiful, cultured woman, and an excellent speaker. She had just returned from a tour of the southern part of Russia, where she had been establishing schools and organizing homes for the aged, and informed me that the children are so enthusiastic that they do not want to go home when the day’s session is over. “There is a feeling of solidarity among them,” she said. “They are being educated with

1 minute read

Read Chapter

MADAME BALABANOVA

Madame Balabanova, secretary of the Third International, which has headquarters at Moscow, is an Italian, not over five feet tall, elderly, but full of fire and spirit. She speaks many languages, including fluent English. I met her on several occasions in Moscow. She reminded me that there was much work to be done, and that the revolution had not ended with the overthrowing of the old order. “We are building the new society,” she said, “but it is slow work because of the necessity of converting

1 minute read

Read Chapter

BUCHARIN

Bucharin, a close friend and companion of Lenin, is the editor of Pravda , the party organ in Moscow. I learned that he, too, had been in America for two or three months previous to the overthrow of the Czar, and had hurried back when this news reached him. He is a small figure, always hurrying somewhere, with a book under his arm. One meets him in the Theater Square in the morning, in Soviet Square a few hours later, at the Kremlin still later, and in the evening at the extreme opposite end of

40 minute read

Read Chapter

GEORGE MELCHOIR

George Melchoir is president of the Moscow Central Federation of All-Russian Professional Alliances. He worked for a long time at Bayonne, New Jersey, but like many others returned to Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. He took an active part in organizing the taking of Moscow in the early days of the Bolshevist uprising. Melchoir has been a working man all his life, and is extremely intelligent. The position which he holds demands a great deal of technical knowledge, as well as executive ab

39 minute read

Read Chapter

PETERS

In the early days of the revolution Peters was chief of the Internal Defense of Petrograd. American newspapers said of him that “his fingers were cramped from writing death warrants.” I asked him how many death warrants he had signed and he told me three hundred in all. He expressed regret that he had been looked upon in other countries as a murderer, and said it was unfortunate that those people did not understand the conditions that surrounded Russia while in the throes of a revolution. He ins

49 minute read

Read Chapter

BORIS REINSTEIN

As a former resident of Buffalo, New York, and member of the American Socialist Labor Party, Boris Reinstein returned to Russia after the overthrow of the Czar. He was for some time an assistant in the Foreign Office; later a lecturer in a military school, and is now an official lecturer in the large college for training writers and speakers in Moscow. This school was running full blast while I was there. Classes number from seventy-five to one hundred each. Pupils are elected by various Soviet

46 minute read

Read Chapter

“BILL” SHATOFF

“Bill” Shatoff, described by American papers as “the well-known anarchist,” is one of the officials of the Soviet Army. When I was in Petrograd he was the commander of the Petrograd front. He is a big jolly Russian Jew, and certainly does not look any the worse for his participation in Soviet warfare, nor for the stinted rations he has shared with his men. CHILDREN OF THE SOVIET SCHOOL AT DIETSKOE SELO Formerly Tsarskoe Selo, the residence of the Czar...

27 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER IX WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The Education of the children occupies as important a place in the administration of the Soviet Government as the maintenance of the Red Army. The Budget for education and child welfare is unstinted, and at every turn one encounters evidence of actual accomplishment in the interest of the growing generation. “First we must defend the workers’ state against its enemies,” said a Commissar to me, “then we must prepare the coming generation to carry on and develop the state won for them by the Red A

6 minute read

Read Chapter

THE SOVIET STATE

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of urban Soviets, one delegate for 25,000 voters, and of rural Soviets, one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants. This Congress is convoked at least twice a year. There had already been six meetings. The Congress elects an All-Russian Central Executive Committee of not more than two hundred members, which is the supreme power of the republic, in all periods between convocations of the Congress. It directs in a general way the activit

4 minute read

Read Chapter

LAND NATIONALIZATION

The brief Land Decree of November 7, 1917, was replaced in September, 1918, by “The Fundamental Law of Socialization of the Land,” which has already been enforced throughout the country except in the cases of land owned by peasants and worked by the owner and his family. This land decree has been enforced gradually, and perhaps less completely than any other of the Soviet decrees, first because the energies of the Government were diverted to a war of defence, and secondly, because the land quest

2 minute read

Read Chapter

LABOR LAWS

The Soviet Russian Code of Labor Laws passed by the Russian Central Executive Committee in 1919 covers the whole field of Russian labor activities. To workers in other countries some of the provisions will appear drastic, but it must be remembered that Russia is still an armed camp and that the war has disorganized industry, transportation and almost every other form of endeavor. I was informed that every effort was being made under these laws to coordinate the productive forces of the country w

7 minute read

Read Chapter

TRANSPORTATION

Before the war there were in Russia 37,000 railway locomotives. At the end of the war 13,000 were left. Of these, at the time of the Brest Litovsk treaty, thirty-five percent were disabled. In the spring of 1919 the total number of disabled locomotives amounted to fifty percent. Since that time there has been some improvement, and last August only forty-seven percent of them were disabled. There is a great demand for locomotives. Russia could use to advantage the entire product of the United Sta

1 minute read

Read Chapter

INDUSTRY

While I was in Moscow the Government received a report from the Supreme Council of National Economy to the effect that war industry was progressing at full speed and producing sufficient supplies and ammunitions for the army. In addition the departments of building materials, fur, leather, fuel, metal, chemicals, and trade, had been organized. There were fifty-one factories in the building material branch alone, capable of producing 121,500,000 bricks, 2,000,000 poods of cement, 870,000 poods of

51 minute read

Read Chapter

CANALS

The Volga and Don canal will connect the Black and Caspian Seas and the Volga river with the Baltic Sea. Canal Dredges are needed to build these....

9 minute read

Read Chapter

RAW MATERIALS

There are at present in warehouses in Russia 200,000 tons of flax, the present market price of which, in London, is over $1,000 per ton. There are also 100,000 tons of hemp. There is gold, timber, and ninety percent of the world’s supply of platinum. Many factories will be erected, great rolling mills, steel mills, etc. There is no doubt but that Russia will eventually be able to produce everything it needs. The country is thoroughly stocked with all kinds of mineral products and it is merely a

40 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XI PROPAGANDA

On my way into Red Russia the train on which I was travelling passed, between Rejistza and Novo-Sokoliev, a train of ten or twelve cars, the sides of which were covered with huge, multi-colored placards. It was the “Lenin Train” used for carrying propaganda literature all over the republic. When I saw it, it was on a tour of the country behind the Western Front. The train was decorated with great paintings in bright colors and with revolutionary inscriptions. In one of the cars was a moving pict

5 minute read

Read Chapter

CHAPTER XII COMING OUT OF SOVIET RUSSIA

I was checked and guarded out of Red Russia in the same manner in which I had been checked and guarded into it. When I was ready to leave Petrograd, early in October, Zinovieff delegated as my guard and guide a short, stocky Esthonian, Isaac Mikkal. As Grafman had reminded me of Larkin, so Mikkal reminded me of Tom Hickey, the famous Texas socialist. He appeared rather pleased at my calling him “Hickey” which I did, throughout the journey. We left Petrograd at eleven o’clock at night, and arrive

12 minute read

Read Chapter

SOVIET RUSSIA’S CODE OF LABOR LAWS

I. The Code of Labor Laws shall take effect immediately upon its publication in the Compilation of Laws and Regulations of the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Government . This Code must be extensively circulated among the working class of the country by all the local organs of the Soviet Government and be posted in a conspicuous place in all Soviet Institutions. II. The regulations of the Code of Labor Laws shall apply to all persons receiving remuneration for their work and shall be obligatory for all

39 minute read

Read Chapter

THE SECOND ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF TRADES UNIONS (VOCATIONAL UNIONS)

A year’s work of the professional trades unions of Russia was completed by a new conference, the second one in its history—which shows how young our professional movement is as yet. The past year was unparalleled in the history of the entire international trade union movement, both according to the kind of activity as well as those circumstances under which our unions had to carry on their work. It was a year of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the ruins of the demolished capitalist syste

4 minute read

Read Chapter

THE PROBLEMS OF THE PROFESSIONAL TRADES UNIONS

One year of political and economic dictatorship of the proletariat and the growth of the workers’ revolution the world over, have fully borne out the correctness of the position taken by the first All-Russian Conference of the Professional Trades Unions, who have unconditionally bound up the fate of the economically organized proletariat with that of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. The attempt, under the flag of “unity” and “independence” of the trades union movement, to pit the economica

2 minute read

Read Chapter

PROFESSIONAL UNIONS AND THE COMMISSARIAT

OF LABOR Professional trades unions organized according to the scale of production, called upon to regulate the conditions of labor and production in the interests of the working class as a whole, under the conditions of proletarian dictatorship, are becoming gradually converted into economic associations of the proletariat, acquiring a nation-wide significance. On the other hand, the Commissariat of Labor, as an organ of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, in which the organized industrial p

1 minute read

Read Chapter

THE PARTICIPATION OF THE UNIONS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY

1. The process of taking over the control of the industries which is now being completed by the workers’ government, places the vocational associations in a position where they are coming to play an ever more and more important part in the special fields of their activity. 2. Standing in close relationship to the actual production and thus being the natural guardians of industry against the remnants of the bureaucratic apparatus permeated by the traditions of the old regime, the unions must buil

3 minute read

Read Chapter

WORKERS’ CONTROL

The Second All-Russian Congress of Vocational Unions, having heard the report on workers’ control, recognizes the following: 1. Workers’ control, which was the strongest revolutionary weapon in the hands of the labor organizations in their struggle against economic disruption and the sabotage practised by the employers in their struggle against the proletariat for economic supremacy, has led the working class into direct participation in the organization of production. 2. The economic dictatorsh

4 minute read

Read Chapter

WAGE AND WORK REGULATION

Observing a great variety and lack of coordination of the tariff (wage scale) regulations which hamper not only the standardization of labor, but their practical materialization, and explaining such an abnormal phenomenon in this matter by the presence of a number of glaring defects, (absence of a definite system of wages, which would serve as a basis of the tariff regulations, the elasticity of groups and categories, the elimination from these regulations of the salaries of the higher technical

4 minute read

Read Chapter

LABOR SAFEGUARDS AND SOCIAL INSURANCE

OF THE WORKERS In capitalist society, with the complete economic and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie, the legal measures which were enacted for the safeguarding of labor and the individual kinds of social insurance of the workers were being enforced under the control of the capitalist state, together with the employing class, and beyond the reach of direct influence of the labor organizations. With the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat it became possible for the first t

3 minute read

Read Chapter

THE INTERRELATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL INSURANCE AND LABOR SAFEGUARDS OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF LABOR AND THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF SOCIAL INSURANCE

Whereas in the process of development of the social revolution the division of society into a handful of parasites, on the one hand, and into the masses of workers and peasants overloaded with excessive toil, on the other, is constantly disappearing, and the entire population is being transformed into a mass of producers who must be insured, in accordance with the provisions of the regulations on social insurance of the laborers, of October 31, 1918, against all accidents that might incapacitate

2 minute read

Read Chapter

CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE VOCATIONAL UNIONS AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING

1. The Socialist revolution has put before the proletariat a series of the most important problems in the field of reconstruction. Simultaneously and in connection with the revolutionization of the economic relations, the working class, as the standard-bearer of Socialism, must get down to the work of creating a proletarian culture, instead of that of the bourgeoisie, in order to prepare the masses for the complete realization of the Socialist Commonwealth. 2. The dictatorship of the proletariat

4 minute read

Read Chapter

THE QUESTION OF PROVISIONING

Fully supporting the general principal policy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government on the questions of provisioning and supplying the population, taking into consideration the extraordinary difficulty of the food situation, caused by the general conditions of the moment and by the weakness of the food supplying apparatus, the Congress resolves to give its best forces to the work of organization of the provisioning work, to continue the work of mobilization and centralization for this purpose

5 minute read

Read Chapter

THE QUESTION OF ORGANIZATION

1. Adapting its organizations to the conditions of the economic struggle in capitalist society, the working class in the interests of economy and concentration of its divided forces, gradually passed over from the close narrow guild organizations to the broader vocational and, finally, in the course of struggle against capitalism, building its forces on the principle of more efficient centralization of power for the realization of its war aims (class war aims), it came to form organizations embr

16 minute read

Read Chapter

BY-LAWS OF THE ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL TRADES UNION COUNCIL

1. The All-Russian Trade Union Congress elects an executive body of the All-Russian Central Trades Union Council—the presiding officers (Presidium), who are to submit a detailed report on their activity to the following Congress. 2. The supreme leading body of the All-Russian Trade-Union Association is the All-Russian Central Trade-Union Council, which is to be guided in its activity by resolutions of congresses and conferences and which is responsible for its actions to the All-Russian Trades U

5 minute read

Read Chapter

ORDER OF ADMISSION OF ALL-RUSSIAN TRADES UNIONS INTO THE ALL-RUSSIAN CENTRAL TRADES UNIONS COUNCIL

19. An All-Russian Trades Union, desiring to enter the All-Trade Association must submit to the presidium of the All-Russian Central Trades Union Council the following documents: ( a ) the by-laws, ( b ) information on the number of dues-paying members, ( c ) information on the existing branches and number of dues-paying members of each of them, ( d ) minutes of any convention or conference at which the central committee of the organization has been elected, ( e ) financial report, ( f ) sample

1 minute read

Read Chapter

THE FINANCIAL POLICY AND THE RESULTS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF FINANCE

When the Soviet Government was first organized, a number of purely financial questions arose which necessitated the utilization of the services of the old financial-administrative apparatus in the form in which it existed prior to the October Revolution. It is quite natural that the first period of work in the domain of finance, that is, between the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Peace, had of necessity to be marked by efforts to conquer the financial apparatus, its central as well as

18 minute read

Read Chapter

DOCUMENT IV—A, B, C

The two years that have passed since the November Revolution have been marked by civil war, which still continues. Russia’s isolation from the outside world, the loss and, later on, the recapture of entire provinces of decisive importance to her industries, the feverish, and therefore unsystematic, transfer of the industries to a peace basis, and then, during the last year the reorganization of the industries, the unusual conditions of transportation, the fuel and the food questions, and as a re

5 minute read

Read Chapter