The Bolshevik Myth

State and its police methods, but the solidaric cooperation of all working elements⁠—the proletariat, the peasantry, the revolutionary intelligentsia⁠—mutually helping each other in their voluntary associations, will emancipate us from the State superstition and bridge the passage between the abolished old civilisation and Free Communism. Not by order of some central authority, but organically, from life itself, must grow up the closely knit federation of the united industrial, agrarian, and other associations; by the workers themselves must they be organised and managed, and then⁠—and only then⁠—will the great aspiration of labor for social regeneration have a sound, firm foundation. Only such an organisation of the commonwealth will make room for the really free, creative, new humanity, and will be the actual threshold of nongovernmental, Anarchist Communism.

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We live on the eve of tremendous social changes. The old forms of life are breaking and falling apart. New elements are coming into being, seeking adequate expression. The pillars of present-day civilisation are being shattered. The principles of private ownership, the conception of human personality, of social life and liberty are being transvalued. Bolshevism came to the world as the revolutionary symbol, the promise of the better day. To millions of the disinherited and enslaved it became the new religion, the beacon of social salvation. But Bolshevism has failed, utterly and absolutely. As Christianity, once the hope of the submerged, has driven Christ and his spirit from the Church, so has Bolshevism crucified the Russian Revolution, betrayed the people, and is now seeking to dupe other millions with its Judas kiss.

It is imperative to unmask the great delusion, which otherwise might lead the Western workers to the same abyss as their brothers in Russia. It is incumbent upon those who have seen through the myth to expose its true nature, to unveil the social menace that hides behind it⁠—the red Jesuitism that would throw the world back to the dark ages and the Inquisition.

Bolshevism is of the past. The future belongs to man and his liberty.

Endnotes

1. Statue of Peter the Great ↩

2. Master. ↩

3. Well-to-do peasants. ↩

4. Requisition. ↩

5. Master. ↩

6. Raid. ↩

7. Communist Party. ↩

8. Political imprisoned in the Schlüsselburg Fortress. ↩

9. Your health. ↩

10. Show schools. ↩

11. Siberian jungle. ↩

12. Popular patronymic of Lenin. ↩

13. House. ↩

14. Chairman. ↩

15. Committee of Poverty organized by the Bolsheviki. ↩

16. Lenin. ↩

17. Sentinel. ↩

18. Fighting. ↩

19. From the Russian subota, Saturday. Applied to volunteers offering their labor Saturday after hours. ↩

20. Communist students of military academies training officers for the Red Army. ↩

21. On September 25, 1919, an “underground” group of Left Social Revolutionists and Anarchists exploded a bomb in the Leontievsky Pereulok house in which the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party was in session. ↩

22. Anarchists of ideas. ↩

23. The famous revolutionist who killed General Lukhomsky, the peasant flogger, and who was tortured by the Tsar’s officers and then sent to Siberia for life. Released by the Revolution of 1917, she became the leader of the Left Social Revolutionary wing, gaining a large following, especially among the peasantry. ↩

24. Lenin. ↩

25. Petrograd Fuel Department. ↩

26. President of the All-Russian Cheka. ↩

27. Popular name for Petrograd. ↩

28. Union of Communist Youth. ↩

29. Peasant Bands, called Zelyonniy (green) because of their habitat in forests. According to another version the appellation is derived from the name of one of their leaders. ↩

30. Nightmare. ↩

31. Chairman. ↩

32. A political prisoner condemned to hard labor. ↩

33. The fall of Robespierre⁠—July 27, 1794. ↩

34. Masters. ↩

35. Old tradition. Yemilian Pugatchev, leader of the great peasant and Cossack uprising under Catherine II, was executed in 1775. ↩

36. Grandmother. ↩

37. Good one. ↩

38. Pious earlocks. ↩

39. Opprobrious term for the Jew. ↩

40. Father, leader. ↩

41. Took place in the village of Sentovo, Kherson province, July 27, 1919. ↩

42. Cabmen. ↩

43. Bagmen, traders. ↩

44. Der Bund⁠—an organization of Jewish Socialists. ↩

45. Astrov later died in prison. ↩

46. Master. ↩

47. General Slastchev-Krinski was later received with special honors into the Red Army and sent by Trotsky to subdue the Karelian peasants (1922). ↩

48. In Atlanta, Georgia, where the author served two years for anti-militarist propaganda. ↩

49. See Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, by Alexander Berkman, Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York, 1912. ↩

50. At the last moment the Cheka refused to release them. ↩

51. An exhaustive study of the Kronstadt tragedy, with the documents pertaining to it, will be found in the author’s brochure, “The Kronstadt Rebellion,” published by Der Syndicalist, Berlin, 1922. ↩

52. The historic document, suppressed in Russia, is here reproduced in full. ↩

53. Popular abbreviation of the “New Economic Policy” reestablishing capitalism. Introduced by the Tenth Congress of Soviets during the Kronstadt days. ↩

54. Several months later the entire Moscow Housing Department, comprising several hundred agents and chief commissars, was arrested an charges of graft. ↩

55. Not till January, 1922, were the released Taganka Anarchists deported to Germany. ↩

56. Fanya Baron and Lev Tchorny, Anarchist poet and author, were executed with