“As long as you’ll have dictatorship, you’ll have present conditions,” the Anarchist host replied. “The centralized State, that is the great evil. It does not permit the creative impulses of the people to express themselves. Give the people a chance, let them exercise their initiative and constructive energies—only that will save the Revolution.”
“You fellows don’t realize the great role the Bolsheviki have played,” a slender, nervous man spoke up. “They have made mistakes, of course, but they were not those of timidity or cowardice. They dispersed the Constituent Assembly? The more power to them! They did no more than Cromwell did to the Long Parliament: they sent the idle talkers away. And, incidentally, it was an Anarchist, Anton Zhelezniakov, on duty that night with his sailors at the palace, who ordered the Assembly to go home. You talk of violence and terror—do you imagine a Revolution is a drawing-room affair? The Revolution must be sustained at all costs; the more drastic the measures, the more humanitarian in the long run. The Bolsheviki are Statists, extreme governmentalists, and their ruthless centralization holds danger. But a revolutionary period, such as we are going through, is not possible without dictatorship. It is a necessary evil that will be outlived only with the full victory of the Revolution. If the left political opponents would join hands with the Bolsheviki and help in the great work, the evils of the present regime would be mitigated and constructive effort hastened.”
“You’re a Sovietski Anarchist,” the others teased him.
Almost every otvetstvenny (responsible) Communist is gone to Moscow to attend the Ninth Congress of the Party. Grave questions are at issue, and Lenin and Trotsky have sounded the keynote—militarization of labor. The papers are filled with the discussion of the proposed introduction of yedinolitchiye (one-man industrial management) to take the place of the present collegiate form. “We must learn from the bourgeoisie,” Lenin says, “and use them for our purposes.”
Among the labor elements there is strong opposition to the new plan, but Trotsky contends that the unions have failed in the management of industry: the proposed system is to organize production more efficiently. The labor men, on the contrary, say that the workers had not been given the opportunity, extreme State centralization having taken over the functions of the unions. Yedinolitchiye, they claim, means complete charge of factory and shop by one man, the so-called spets (specialists), to the exclusion of the workers from management.
“Step by step we are losing everything we’ve gained by the Revolution,” a shop committeeman said to me. “The new plan means the return of the former master. The spets is the old bourzhooi, and now he is coming back to whip us to work again. But last year Lenin himself denounced the plan as counterrevolutionary, when the Mensheviki advocated it. They are still in prison for it.”
Others are less outspoken. This morning I met N⸺, of the Buford group, a man of intellectual attainment and much political acumen. “What do you think of it?” I asked, anxious to know his view of the proposed changes.
“I can’t afford the luxury of expressing an opinion,” he replied with a sad smile. “I have been promised a place on a commission to be sent to Europe. It’s my only chance of joining my wife and children.”
—A beautiful, bright Sunday. In the morning I attended the burial of Semyon Voskov, a prominent Communist agitator killed on the front by typhus. I had met him in the States, and he impressed me as a fine type of revolutionist and enthusiastic devotee of the Bolsheviki. Now his body lay in state in the Uritsky Palace, and high tribute was paid the dead as an heroic victim of the Revolution.
Along the Nevsky the funeral procession wended its way to the Field of Mars, marching to the strains of music and the singing of a choir from Archangel. Thousands of workers followed the hearse, line after line of men and women from shop and factory, tired toilers, in a spiritless, mechanical way. Military salutes were fired at the grave, and eulogies pronounced by several speakers—rather official, I thought; all too partisan, lacking the warm personal note.
The huge demonstration, arranged by the Petrograd Soviet of labor unions within twenty-four hours, as I was informed, seemed a striking proof of organization. I congratulated the chief Committee man on the quick and efficient work.
“Done without my leaving the office,” he said proudly. “The Soviet decision was wired to every mill and factory, ordering each to send a certain contingent of its employees to the demonstration. And the thing was ready.”
“It was not left to the choice of the men?” I asked in surprise.
“Well,” he smiled, “we leave nothing to chance.”
Returning from the Voskov funeral I met another procession. Two men and a woman walked behind a pushcart on which stood a rough, unpainted pine coffin, holding the dead body of their brother. A young girl, leading a little child by the hand, was wearily following the remains to its last resting place. Three men on the sidewalk stopped to watch the tragic sight. The mourners passed in silence, the picture of misery and friendlessness—black cameos sharply etched on the bright day. In the distance crashed the martial music of the Bolshevik funeral and long lines of soldiers in parade dress, their bayoneted guns glistening in the sun, marched to the Field of Mars to pay honor to Voskov, Communist martyr.
Easter Week.—No newspapers have appeared for several days. There have been rumors
