The Crisis in Russia Part 3

The opposition inside the productive Trades Unions is of two kinds.

There is the opposition, which is of merely psychological interest, of old Trades Union leaders who have always thought of themselves as in opposition to the Government, and feel themselves like watches without mainsprings in their new role of Government supporters. These are men in whom a natural intellectual stiffness makes difficult the complete change of front which was the logical result of the revolution for which they had been working. But beside that there is a much more interesting opposition based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or rather in the permanence of the victory of the town workers. They point to the divergence in interests between the town and country populations, and are convinced that sooner or later the peasants will alter the government to suit themselves, when, once more, it will be a government against which the town workers will have to defend their interests. The Mensheviks object to the identification of the Trades Unions with the Government apparatus on the ground that when this change, which they expect comes about, the Trade Union movement will be so far emasculated as to be incapable of defending the town workers against the peasants who will then be the ruling cla.s.s. Thus they attack the present Trades Union leaders for being directly influenced by the Government in fixing the rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a precedent from which, when the change comes, it will be difficult to break away. The Communists answer them by insisting that it is to everybody's interest to pull Russia through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were for such academic reasons to insist on their complete independence instead of in every possible way collaborating with the Government, they would be not only increasing the difficulties of the revolution in its economic crisis, but actually hastening that change which the Mensheviks, though they regard it as inevitable, cannot be supposed to desire. This Menshevik opposition is strongest in the Ukraine. Its strength may be judged from the figures of the Congress in Moscow this spring when, of 1,300 delegates, over 1,000 were Communists or sympathizers with them; 63 were Mensheviks and 200 were non-party, the bulk of whom, I fancy, on this point would agree with the Mensheviks.

But apart from opposition to the "stratification" of the Trades Unions, there is a cleavage cutting across the Communist Party itself and uniting in opinion, though not in voting, the Mensheviks and a section of their Communist opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers' control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate desirability of this, but insist that the important question is not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the orders shall be given. I have nowhere found this matter properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely strong. Everybody whom I asked about it began at once to address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I found it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it may be fairly said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned the ideas of 1917, which resulted in the workmen in a factory deposing any technical expert or manager whose orders were in the least irksome to them. These ideas and the miseries and unfairness they caused, the stoppages of work, the managers sewn up in sacks, ducked in ponds and trundled in wheelbarrows, have taken their places as curiosities of history. The change in these ideas has been gradual. The first step was the recognition that the State as a whole was interested in the efficiency of each factory, and, therefore, that the workmen of each factory had no right to arrange things with no thought except for themselves. The Committee idea was still strong, and the difficulty was got over by a.s.suring that the technical staff should be represented on the Committee, and that the casting vote between workers and technical experts or managers should belong to the central economic organ of the State. The next stage was when the management of a workshop was given a so called "collegiate"

character, the workmen appointing representatives to share the responsibility of the "bourgeois specialist." The bitter controversy now going on concerns the seemingly inevitable transition to a later stage in which, for all practical purposes, the bourgeois specialist will be responsible solely to the State. Many Communists, including some of the best known, while recognizing the need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all, regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long run to make the revolution not worth preserving. [*]

* Thus Rykov, President of the Supreme Council of Public Economy: "There is a possibility of so constructing a State that in it there will be a ruling caste consisting chiefly of administrative engineers, technicians, etc.; that is, we should get a form of State economy based on a small group of a ruling caste whose privilege in this case would be the management of the workers and peasants." That criticism of individual control, from a communist, goes a good deal further than most of the criticism from people avowedly in opposition.] The enormous importance attached by everybody to this question of individual or collegiate control, may be judged from the fact that at every conference I attended, and every discussion to which I listened, this point, which might seem of minor importance, completely overshadowed the question of industrial conscription which, at least inside the Communist Party, seemed generally taken for granted. It may be taken now as certain that the majority of the Communists are in favor of individual control. They say that the object of "workers' control" before the revolution was to ensure that factories should be run in the interests of workers as well of employers. In Russia now there are no employers other than the State as a whole, which is exclusively made up of employees. (I am stating now the view of the majority at the last Trades Union Congress at which I was present, April, 1920.) They say that "workers' control"

exists in a larger and more efficient manner than was suggested by the old pre-revolutionary statements on that question. Further, they say that if workers' control ought to be identified with Trade Union control, the Trades Unions are certainly supreme in all those matters with which they have chiefly concerned themselves, since they dominate the Commissariat of Labor, are very largely represented on the Supreme Council of Public Economy, and fix the rates of pay for their own members. [*]

* The wages of workmen are decided by the Trades Unions, who draw up "tariffs" for the whole country, basing their calculations on three criteria: (I) The price of food in the open market in the district where a workman is employed, (2)the price of food supplied by the State on the card system, (3)the quality of the workman. This last is decided by a special section of the Factory Committee, which in each factory is an organ of the Trades Union.]

The enormous Communist majority, together with the fact that however much they may quarrel with each other inside the party, the Communists will go to almost any length to avoid breaking the party discipline, means that at present the resolutions of Trades Union Congresses will not be different from those of Communists Congresses on the same subjects. Consequently, the questions which really agitate the members, the actual cleavages inside that Communist majority, are comparatively invisible at a Trades Union Congress. They are fought over with great bitterness, but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once the Club of the n.o.bility, with on its walls on Congress days the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country. And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor their internal squabbles affects the cardinal fact that in the present crisis the Trades Unions are chiefly important as part of that organization of human will with which the Communists are attempting to arrest the steady progress of Russia's economic ruin. Putting it brutally, so as to offend Trades Unionists and Communists alike, they are an important part of the Communist system of internal propaganda, and their whole organization acts as a gigantic megaphone through which the Communist Party makes known its fears, its hopes and its decisions to the great ma.s.ses of the industrial workers.

THE PROPAGANDA TRAINS

When I crossed the Russian front in October, 1919, the first thing I noticed in peasants' cottages, in the villages, in the little town where I took the railway to Moscow, in every railway station along the line, was the elaborate pictorial propaganda concerned with the war. There were posters showing Denizen standing straddle over Russia's coal, while the factory chimneys were smokeless and the engines idle in the yards, with the simplest wording to show why it was necessary to beat Denizen in order to get coal; there were posters ill.u.s.trating the treatment of the peasants by the Whites; posters against desertion, posters ill.u.s.trating the Russian struggle against the rest of the world, showing a workman, a peasant, a sailor and a soldier fighting in self-defence against an enormous Capitalistic Hydra. There were also-and this I took as a sign of what might be-posters encouraging the sowing of corn, and posters explaining in simple pictures improved methods of agriculture.

Our own recruiting propaganda during the war, good as that was, was never developed to such a point of excellence, and knowing the general slowness with which the Russian centre reacts on its periphery, I was amazed not only at the actual posters, but at their efficient distribution thus far from Moscow.

I have had an opportunity of seeing two of the propaganda trains, the object of which is to reduce the size of Russia politically by bringing Moscow to the front and to the out of the way districts, and so to lessen the difficulty of obtaining that general unity of purpose which it is the object of propaganda to produce. The fact that there is some hope that in the near future the whole of this apparatus may be turned over to the propaganda of industry makes it perhaps worth while to describe these trains in detail.

Russia, for purposes of this internal propaganda, is divided into five sections, and each section has its own train, prepared for the particular political needs of the section it serves, bearing its own name, carrying its regular crew-a propaganda unit, as corporate as the crew of a ship. The five trains at present in existence are the "Lenin,"

the "Sverdlov," the "October Revolution," the "Red East," which is now in Turkestan, and the "Red Cossack," which, ready to start for Rostov and the Don, was standing, in the sidings at the Kursk station, together with the "Lenin," returned for refitting and painting.

Burov, the organizer of these trains, a ruddy, enthusiastic little man in patched leather coat and breeches, took a party of foreigners-a Swede, a Norwegian, two Czechs, a German and myself to visit his trains, together with Radek, in the hope that Radek would induce Lenin to visit them, in which case Lenin would be kinematographed for the delight of the villagers, and possibly the Central Committee would, if Lenin were interested, lend them more lively support.

We walked along the "Lenin" first, at Burov's special request. Burov, it seems, has only recently escaped from what he considered a bitter affliction due to the Department of Proletarian Culture, who, in the beginning, for the decoration of his trains, had delivered him bound hand and foot to a number of Futurists. For that reason he wanted us to see the "Lenin" first, in order that we might compare it with the result of his emanc.i.p.ation, the "Red Cossack," painted when the artists "had been brought under proper control." The "Lenin" had been painted a year and a half ago, when, as fading h.o.a.rding in the streets of Moscow still testify, revolutionary art was dominated by the Futurist movement. Every carriage is decorated with most striking but not very comprehensible pictures in the brightest colors, and the proletariat was called upon to enjoy what the pre-revolutionary artistic public had for the most part failed to understand. Its pictures are "art for art's sake," and cannot have done more than astonish, and perhaps terrify, the peasants and the workmen of the country towns who had the luck to see them. The "Red Cossack" is quite different. As Burov put it with deep satisfaction, "At first we were in the artists' hands, and now the artists are in our hands," a sentence suggesting the most horrible possibilities of official art under socialism, although, of course, bad art flourishes pretty well even under other systems.

I inquired exactly how Burov and his friends kept the artists in the right way, and received the fullest explanation. The political section of the organization works out the main idea and aim for each picture, which covers the whole side of a wagon. This idea is then submitted to a "collective" of artists, who are jointly responsible for its realization in paint. The artists compete with each other for a prize which is awarded for the best design, the judges being the artists themselves. It is the art of the poster, art with a purpose of the most definite kind.

The result is sometimes amusing, interesting, startling, but, whatever else it does, hammers home a plain idea.

Thus the picture on the side of one wagon is divided into two sections.

On the left is a representation of the peasants and workmen of the Soviet Republic. Under it are the words, "Let us not find ourselves again..." and then, in gigantic lettering under the right-hand section of the picture, "... in the HEAVEN OF THE WHITES." This heaven is shown by an epauletted officer hitting a soldier in the face, as was done in the Tsar's army and in at least one army of the counter revolutionaries, and workmen tied to stakes, as was done by the Whites in certain towns in the south. Then another wagon ill.u.s.trating the methods of Tsardom, with a State vodka shop selling its wares to wretched folk, who, when drunk on the State vodka, are flogged by the State police. Then there is a wagon showing the different Cossacks-of the Don, Terek, Kuban, Ural-riding in pairs. The Cossack infantry is represented on the other side of this wagon. On another wagon is a very jolly picture of Stenka Razin in his boat with little old-fashioned bra.s.s cannon, rowing up the river. Underneath is written the words: "I attack only the rich, with the poor I divide everything." On one side are the poor folk running from their huts to join him, on the other the rich folk firing at him from their castle. One wagon is treated purely decoratively, with a broad effective characteristically South Russian design, framing a huge inscription to the effect that the Cossacks need not fear that the Soviet Republic will interfere with their religion, since under its regime every man is to be free to believe exactly what he likes. Then there is an entertaining wagon, showing Kolchak sitting inside a fence in Siberia with a Red soldier on guard, Judenitch sitting in a little circle with a sign-post to show it is Esthonia, and Denikin running at full speed to the asylum indicated by another sign-post on which is the crescent of the Turkish Empire. Another lively picture shows the young Cossack girls learning to read, with a most realistic old Cossack woman telling them they had better not. But there is no point in describing every wagon. There are sixteen wagons in the "Red Cossack," and every one is painted all over on both sides.

The internal arrangements of the train are a sufficient proof that Russians are capable of organization if they set their minds to it.

We went through it, wagon by wagon. One wagon contains a wireless telegraphy station capable of receiving news from such distant stations as those of Carnarvon or Lyons. Another is fitted up as a newspaper office, with a mechanical press capable of printing an edition of fifteen thousand daily, so that the district served by the train, however out of the way, gets its news simultaneously with Moscow, many days sometimes before the belated Izvestia or Pravda finds its way to them. And with its latest news it gets its latest propaganda, and in order to get the one it cannot help getting the other. Next door to that there is a kinematograph wagon, with benches to seat about one hundred and fifty persons. But indoor performances are only given to children, who must come during the daytime, or in summer when the evenings are too light to permit an open air performance. In the ordinary way, at night, a great screen is fixed up in the open. There is a special hole cut in the side of the wagon, and through this the kinematograph throws its picture on the great screen outside, so that several thousands can see it at once. The enthusiastic Burov insisted on working through a couple of films for us, showing the Communists boy scouts in their country camps, children's meetings in Petrograd, and the big demonstrations of last year in honor of the Third International. He was extremely disappointed that Radek, being in a hurry, refused to wait for a performance of "The Father and his Son," a drama which, he a.s.sured us with tears in his eyes, was so thrilling that we should not regret being late for our appointments if we stayed to witness it. Another wagon is fitted up as an electric power-station, lighting the train, working the kinematograph and the printing machine, etc. Then there is a clean little kitchen and dining-room, where, before being kinematographed-a horrible experience when one is first quite seriously begged (of course by Burov) to a.s.sume an expression of intelligent interest--we had soup, a plate of meat and cabbage, and tea. Then there is a wagon bookshop, where, while customers buy books, a gramophone sings the revolutionary songs of Demian Bledny, or speaks with the eloquence of Trotsky or the logic of Lenin. Other wagons are the living-rooms of the personnel, divided up according to their duties-political, military, instructional, and so forth. For the train has not merely an agitational purpose. It carries with it a staff to give advice to local authorities, to explain what has not been understood, and so in every way to bring the ideas of the Centre quickly to the backwoods of the Republic. It works also in the opposite direction, helping to make the voice of the backwoods heard at Moscow. This is ill.u.s.trated by a painted pillar-box on one of the wagons, with a slot for letters, labelled, "For Complaints of Every Kind." Anybody anywhere who has grievance, thinks he is being unfairly treated, or has a suggestion to make, can speak with the Centre in this way. When the train is on a voyage telegrams announce its arrival beforehand, so that the local Soviets can make full use of its advantages, arranging meetings, kinematograph shows, lectures.

It arrives, this amazing picture train, and proceeds to publish and distribute its newspapers, sell its books (the bookshop, they tell me, is literally stormed at every stopping place), send books and posters for forty versts on either side of the line with the motor-cars which it carries with it, and enliven the population with its kinematograph.

I doubt if a more effective instrument of propaganda has ever been devised. And in considering the question whether or no the Russians will be able after organizing their military defence to tackle with similar comparative success the much more difficult problem of industrial rebirth, the existence of such instruments, the use of such propaganda is a factor not to be neglected. In the spring of this year, when the civil war seemed to be ending, when there was a general belief that the Poles would accept the peace that Russia offered (they ignored this offer, advanced, took Kiev, were driven back to Warsaw, advanced again, and finally agreed to terms which they could have had in March without bloodshed any kind), two of these propaganda trains were already being repainted with a new purpose. It was hoped that in the near future all five trains would be explaining not the need to fight but the need to work. Undoubtedly, at the first possible moment, the whole machinery of agitation, of posters, of broadsheets and of trains, will be turned over to the task of explaining the Government's plans for reconstruction, and the need for extraordinary concentration, now on transport, now on something else, that these plans involve.

SAt.u.r.dAYINGS

So much for the organization, with its Communist Party, its system of meetings and counter-meetings, its adapted Trades Unions, its infinitely various propaganda, which is doing its best to make headway against ruin. I want now to describe however briefly, the methods it has adopted in tackling the worst of all Russia's problems-the non-productivity and absolute shortage of labor.

I find a sort of a.n.a.logy between these methods and those which we used in England in tackling the similar c.u.mulative problem of finding men for war. Just as we did not proceed at once to conscription, but began by a great propaganda of voluntary effort, so the Communists, faced with a need at least equally vital, did not turn at once to industrial conscription. It was understood from the beginning that the Communists themselves were to set an example of hard work, and I dare say a considerable proportion of them did so. Every factory had its little Communist Committee, which was supposed to leaven the factory with enthusiasm, just as similar groups of Communists drafted into the armies in moments of extreme danger did, on more than one occasion, as the non-Communist Commander-in-Chief admits, turn a rout into a stand and s.n.a.t.c.h victory from what looked perilously like defeat. But this was not enough, arrears of work acc.u.mulated, enthusiasm waned, productivity decreased, and some new move was obviously necessary. This first move in the direction of industrial conscription, although no one perceived its tendency at the time, was the inauguration of what have become known as "Sat.u.r.dayings".

Early in 1919 the Central Committee of the Communist Party put out a circular letter, calling upon the Communists "to work revolutionally,"

to emulate in the rear the heroism of their brothers on the front, pointing out that nothing but the most determined efforts and an increase in the productivity of labor would enable Russia to win through her difficulties of transport, etc. Kolchak, to quote from English newspapers, was it "sweeping on to Moscow," and the situation was pretty threatening. As a direct result of this letter, on May 7th, a meeting of Communists in the sub-district of the Moscow-Kazan railway pa.s.sed a resolution that, in view of the imminent danger to the Republic, Communists and their sympathizers should give up an hour a day of their leisure, and, lumping these hours together, do every Sat.u.r.day six hours of manual labor; and, further, that these Communist "Sat.u.r.dayings"

should be continued "until complete victory over Kolchak should be a.s.sured." That decision of a local committee was the actual beginning of a movement which spread all over Russia, and though the complete victory over Kolchak was long ago obtained, is likely to continue so long as Soviet Russia is threatened by any one else.

The decision was put into effect on May 10th, when the first Communist "Sat.u.r.daying" in Russia took place on the Moscow-Kazan railway. The Commissar of the railway, Communist clerks from the offices, and every one else who wished to help, marched to work, 182 in all, and put in 1,012 hours of manual labor, in which they finished the repairs of four locomotives and sixteen wagons and loaded and unloaded 9,300 poods of engine and wagon parts and material. It was found that the productivity of labor in loading and unloading shown on this occasion was about 270 per cent. of the normal, and a similar superiority of effort was shown in the other kinds of work. This example was immediately copied on other railways. The Alexandrovsk railway had its first "Sat.u.r.daying" on May 17th. Ninety-eight persons worked for five hours, and here also did two or three times as much is the usual amount of work done in the same number of working hours under ordinary circ.u.mstances. One of the workmen, in giving an account of the performance, wrote: "The Comrades explain this by saying that in ordinary times the work was dull and they were sick of it, whereas this occasion they were working willingly and with excitement. But now it will be shameful in ordinary hours to do less than in the Communist 'Sat.u.r.daying.'" The hope implied in this last sentence has not been realized.

In Pravda of June 7th there is an article describing one of these early "Sat.u.r.dayings," which gives a clear picture of the infectious character of the proceedings, telling how people who came out of curiosity to look on found themselves joining in the work, and how a soldier with an accordion after staring for a long time open-mouthed at these lunatics working on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon put up a tune for them on his instrument, and, delighted by their delight, played on while the workers all sang together.

The idea of the "Sat.u.r.dayings" spread quickly from railways to factories, and by the middle of the summer reports of similar efforts were coming from all over Russia. Then Lenin became interested, seeing in these "Sat.u.r.dayings" not only a special effort in the face of common danger, but an actual beginning of Communism and a sign that Socialism could bring about a greater productivity of labor than could be obtained under Capitalism. He wrote: "This is a work of great difficulty and requiring much time, but it has begun, and that is the main thing. If in hungry Moscow in the summer of 1919 hungry workmen who have lived through the difficult four years of the Imperialistic war, and then the year and a half of the still more difficult civil war, have been able to begin this great work, what will not be its further development when we conquer in the civil war and win peace." He sees in it a promise of work being done not for the sake of individual gain, but because of a recognition that such work is necessary for the general good, and in all he wrote and spoke about it he emphasized the fact that people worked better and harder when working thus than under any of the conditions (piece-work, premiums for good work, etc.) imposed by the revolution in its desperate attempts to raise the productivity of labor. For this reason alone, he wrote, the first "Sat.u.r.daying" on the Moscow-Kazan railway was an event of historical significance, and not for Russia alone.

Whether Lenin was right or wrong in so thinking, "Sat.u.r.dayings" became a regular inst.i.tution, like Dorcas meetings in Victorian England, like the thousands of collective working parties inst.i.tuted in England during the war with Germany. It remains to be seen how long they will continue, and if they will survive peace when that comes. At present the most interesting point about them is the large proportion of non-Communists who take an enthusiastic part in them. In many cases not more than ten per cent. of Communists are concerned, though they take the initiative in organizing the parties and in finding the work to be done. The movement spread like fire in dry gra.s.s, like the craze for roller-skating swept over England some years ago, and efforts were made to control it, so that the fullest use might be made of it. In Moscow it was found worth while to set up a special Bureau for "Sat.u.r.dayings." Hospitals, railways, factories, or any other concerns working for the public good, notify this bureau that they need the sort of work a "Sat.u.r.daying"

provides. The bureau informs the local Communists where their services are required, and thus there is a minimum of wasted energy. The local Communists arrange the "Sat.u.r.dayings," and any one else joins in who wants. These "Sat.u.r.dayings" are a hardship to none because they are voluntary, except for members of the Communist Party, who are considered to have broken the party discipline if they refrain. But they can avoid the "Sat.u.r.dayings" if they wish to by leaving the party. Indeed, Lenin points, out that the "Sat.u.r.dayings" are likely to a.s.sist in clearing out of the party those elements which joined it with the hope of personal gain. He points out that the privileges of a Communists now consist in doing more work than other people in the rear, and, on the front, in having the certainty of being killed when other folk are merely taken prisoners.

The following are a few examples of the sort of work done in the "Sat.u.r.dayings." Briansk hospitals were improperly heated because of lack of the local transport necessary to bring them wood. The Communists organized a "Sat.u.r.daying," in which 900 persons took part, including military specialists (officers of the old army serving in the new), soldiers, a chief of staff, workmen and women. Having no horses, they harnessed themselves to sledges in groups of ten, and brought in the wood required. At Nijni 800 persons spent their Sat.u.r.day afternoon in unloading barges. In the Basman district of Moscow there was a gigantic "Sat.u.r.daying" and "Sundaying" in which 2,000 persons (in this case all but a little over 500 being Communists) worked in the heavy artillery shops, shifting materials, cleaning tramlines for bringing in fuel, etc.

Then there was a "Sat.u.r.daying" the main object of which was a general autumn cleaning of the hospitals for the wounded. One form of "Sat.u.r.daying" for women is going to the hospitals, talking with the wounded and writing letters for them, mending their clothes, washing sheets, etc. The majority of "Sat.u.r.dayings" at present are concerned with transport work and with getting and shifting wood, because at the moment these are the chief difficulties. I have talked to many "Sat.u.r.dayers," Communist and non-Communist, and all alike spoke of these Sat.u.r.day afternoons of as kind of picnic. On the other hand, I have met Communists who were accustomed to use every kind off ingenuity to find excuses not to take part in them and yet to preserve the good opinion of their local committee.

But even if the whole of the Communist Party did actually indulge in a working picnic once a week, it would not suffice to meet Russia's tremendous needs. And, as I pointed out in the chapter specially devoted to the shortage of labor, the most serious need at present is to keep skilled workers at their jobs instead of letting them drift away into non-productive labor. No amount of Sat.u.r.day picnics could do that, and it was obvious long ago that some other means, would have to be devised.

INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION

The general principle of industrial conscription recognized by the Russian Const.i.tution, section ii, chapter v, paragraph 18, which reads: "The Russian Socialist Federate Soviet Republic recognizes that work is an obligation on every citizen of the Republic," and proclaims, "He who does not work shall not eat." It is, however, one thing to proclaim such a principle and quite another to put it into action.