Various expedients were then devised to filter applicants. Party training schools were established for neophytes, where devotion to “our” system was fanned into ecstasy, while burning hatred was excited toward every other social theory whatsoever. The training schools were never a brilliant success, for a variety of reasons. The instruction was only theoretical and the lecturers were rarely able to clothe their thoughts in simple language or adapt the abstruse aspects of sociological subjects to the mentality of their audiences, which consisted of very youthful workers or office employees lured into attendance by an extra half-pound of bread issued after each lecture. To attend the whole course was irksome, involving sacrifice of leisure hours, and the number of ideiny (“idealistic”) applicants was too small to permit rigorous discipline. The training schools were gradually superseded by Communist clubs, which devoted their attention to concerts and lectures, thus resembling the cultural-enlightenment committees in the army.
Another deterrent to “radishes” was devised by establishing three degrees for professing converts:
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Sympathizers.
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Candidates.
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Fully qualified Communists.
Before being crowned with the coveted title of “member of the Communist Party,” neophytes had to pass through the first two probationary stages, involving tests of loyalty and submission to party discipline. It was the prerogative only of the third category to bear arms. It was to them that preference was given in all appointments to posts of responsibility.
There is one source upon which the Bolsheviks can rely with some confidence for new drafts. I refer to the Union of Communist Youth. Realizing their failure to convert the present generation, the Communists have turned their attention to the next, and established this Union which all school children are encouraged to join. Even infants, when their parents can be induced or compelled to part with them, are prepared for initiation to the Union by concentration in colonies and homes, where they are fed on preferential rations, at the expense of the rest of the population, and clothed with clothing seized from children whose parents refuse to be separated from them. It is the object of these colonies to protect the young minds from pernicious non-Communist influence and so to instil Bolshevist ideals that by the time they reach adolescence they will be incapable of imbibing any others. According to Bolshevist admissions many of these homes are in an appalling state of insanitation, but a few are kept up by special efforts and exhibited to foreign visitors as model nurseries. It is still too early to estimate the success of this system. Personally I am inclined to think that, when not defeated by the misery of insanitation and neglect, the propagandist aims will be largely counteracted by the silent but benevolent influence of the self-sacrificing intellectuals (doctors, matrons, and nurses) whose services in the running of them cannot be dispensed with. The tragedy of the children of Soviet Russia is in the numbers that are thrown into the streets. But the Union of Communist Youth, consisting of adolescents, with considerable license permitted them, with endless concerts, balls, theatre parties and excursions, supplementary rations and issues of sweetmeats, processioning, flag-waving, and speechmaking at public ceremonies, is still the most reliable source of recruits to the Communist Party.
It will be readily realized that the party consisted of a medley of widely differing characters, in which genuine toilers were a minority. When the novel suggestion was made of inviting workers to join, this fact was admitted with laudable candour. The Bolshevist spokesmen frankly avowed they had completely forgotten the workers, and a great campaign was opened to draw them into the party. “The watchword ‘Open the party doors to the workers,’ ” said Pravda on July 25, 1919, “has been forgotten. Workers get ‘pickled’ as soon as they join”—which meant they become Communists and entirely lose their individuality as workers. Zinoviev wrote a long proclamation to toilers explaining who the Communists were and their objects.
“The Bolshevist Party,” said he, “was not born only a year or two ago. Our party has behind it more than one decade of glorious activity. The best workers of the world called themselves Communists with pride. … The party is not a peculiar sect, it is not an aristocracy of labour. It also consists of workers and peasants—only more organized, more developed, knowing what they want and with a fixed programme. The Communists are not the masters, in the bad sense of that word, of the workers and peasants, but only their elder comrades, able to point out the right path. … Recently we have purged our ranks. We have ejected those who in our opinion did not merit the great honour of being called Communists. They were mostly not workers but people more or less of the privileged classes who tried to ‘paste’ themselves on to us because we are in power. … Having done this we open wide the door of the party to the ranks of labour. … All honest labourers may enter it. If the party has defects let us correct them together. … We warn everyone that in our party there is iron discipline. You must harden yourself and at the call of the party take up very hard work. Our call is addressed to all who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the working class. Strengthen and help the only party in the world that leads the workers to liberty!”
With all formalities, such as probationary stages, removed, and diffident candidates magnanimously assured that if only they would join they could learn later what it was all about, the
