(Signatures)
The above is correct.
—The hunger protest was terminated last night. The prisoners are momentarily expecting to be freed. Extremely weakened and in highly nervous state after eleven days of striking.
Like a bombshell came Bukharin’s attack upon the Anarchists in the closing hour of the Trade Union Congress. Though not a delegate, he secured the platform and in the name of the Communist Party denounced the hunger strikers as counterrevolutionists. The whole Anarchist movement of Russia, he declared, is criminal banditism waging warfare against the Soviet Republic; it is identical with Makhno and his povstantsi who are exterminating Communists and fighting against the Revolution.
The session was thrown into an uproar. The majority of delegates resented this breach of faith in view of the tacit agreement to eliminate the matter from the Congress. But the chairman refused to permit a rejoinder, declaring the subject closed. A storm of indignation swept the house.
The insistence of the Congress at last compelled a hearing, and a French delegate took the floor to reply to Bukharin’s charges. In the name of the Revolution he solemnly protested against the sinister Machiavelian diplomacy of the Bolsheviki. To attack the opposition at the closing of the Congress, without an opportunity of defense, he declared, was an act of perfidy unworthy of a revolutionary party. Its sole purpose was to prejudice the departing delegates against the revolutionary minority and justify continued political persecution; its obviously desired effect to annul the conciliatory efforts of the joint Committee.
—Days and weeks are passing; the politicals still remain in prison. The conferences of the Joint Committee have practically ceased—rarely can the representatives of the Government be induced to attend. The promises of Lenin and Lunacharsky are broken. The Cheka has made the resolution of the Executive Committee of the Party ineffective.
The Congresses are closed, and most of the delegates have departed.
—At noon today the hunger strikers were released from the Taganka, two months after the Government had pledged their liberation. The men look worn and old, withered by anguish and privation. They have been put under surveillance and forbidden to meet their comrades. It is said weeks will pass before opportunity will be given them to leave the country. They are not permitted to work and they have no means of subsistence.55 The Cheka declares that no other politicals will be freed. Arrests of revolutionists are taking place throughout the country.
—With bowed heart I seek a familiar bench in the park. Here little Fanya sat at my side. Her face was turned to the sun, her whole being radiant with idealism. Her silvery laughter rang with the joy of youth and life, but I trembled for her safety at every approaching step. “Do not fear,” she kept reassuring me, “no one will know me in my peasant disguise.”
Now she is dead. Executed yesterday by the Cheka as a “bandit.”56
Gray are the passing days. One by one the embers of hope have died out. Terror and despotism have crushed the life born in October. The slogans of the Revolution are foresworn, its ideals stifled in the blood of the people. The breath of yesterday is dooming millions to death; the shadow of today hangs like a black pall over the country. Dictatorship is trampling the masses under foot. The Revolution is dead; its spirit cries in the wilderness.
High time the truth about the Bolsheviki were told. The whited sepulcher must be unmasked, the clay feet of the fetish beguiling the international proletariat to fatal will o’ the wisps exposed. The Bolshevik myth must be destroyed.
I have decided to leave Russia.
XL
The Lessons of the “Bolshevik Myth”
I
My Personal Attitude and Reactions
Since my early youth, revolution—social revolution—was the great hope and aim of my life. It signified to me the Messiah who was to deliver the world from brutality, injustice, and evil, and pave the way for a regenerated humanity of brotherhood, living in peace, liberty, and beauty.
Without exaggeration I may say that the happiest day of my existence was passed in a prison cell—the day when the first news of the October Revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviki reached me in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The night of my dungeon was illumined by the glory of the great dream coming true. The bars of steel melted away, the stone walls receded, and I trod on the golden fleece of the Ideal about to be realised. Then followed weeks and months of trepidation, and I lived in a ferment of hope and fear—fear lest reaction overwhelm the Revolution, hope of reaching the land of promise.
At last arrived the longed-for day, and I was in Soviet Russia. I came exultant with the Revolution, full of admiration for the Bolsheviki, and flushed with the joy of useful work awaiting me in the midst of the heroic Russian people.
I knew that the Bolsheviki were Marxists, believers in a centralised State which I, an Anarchist, deny in principle. But I placed the Revolution above theories, and it seemed to me that the Bolsheviki did the same. Though Marxists, they had been instrumental in bringing about a revolution that was entirely un-Marxian; that was indeed in defiance of Marxian dogma and prophecy. Ardent advocates of parliamentarism, they repudiated it in their acts. Having persistently demanded the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, they unceremoniously dissolved it when life
