The Bolshevist leader would find but few disputants of his admission that Bolshevist power rests to a large extent on Jewish brains and Chinese bayonets. But his gratitude for the stupidity of the Russian people is misplaced. The Russian people have shown not stupidity but eminent wisdom in repudiating both Communism and the alternative to it presented by the landlords and the generals. Their tolerance of the Red in preference to the White is based upon the conviction, universal throughout Russia, that the Red is a merely passing phenomenon. Human nature decrees this, but there was no such guarantee against the Whites with the support of the Allies behind them. A people culturally and politically immature like the Russians may not easily be able to embody in a formula the longings that stir the hidden depths of their souls, but you cannot on this account call them stupid. The Bolsheviks are all formula—empty formula—and no soul. The Russians are all soul with no formula. They possess no developed system of self-expression outside the arts. To the Bolshevik the letter is all in all. He is the slave of his shibboleths. To the Russian the letter is nothing; it is only the spirit that matters. More keenly than is common in the Western world he feels that the kingdom of heaven is to be found not in politics or creeds of any sort or kind, but simply within each one of us as individuals.
The man who says: “The Russians are a nation of fools,” assumes a prodigious responsibility. You cannot call a people stupid who in a single century have raised themselves from obscurity to a position of preeminence in the arts, literature, and philosophy. And whence did this galaxy of geniuses from Glinka to Scriabin and Stravinsky, or such as Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and the host of others whose works have so profoundly affected the thought of the last half-century—whence did they derive their inspiration if not from the common people around them? The Russian nation, indeed, is not one of fools, but of potential geniuses. But the trend of their genius is not that of Western races. It lies in the arts and philosophy and rarely descends to the more sordid realms of politics and commerce.
Yet, in spite of a reputation for unpracticalness, the Russians have shown the world at least one supreme example of economic organization. It is forgotten nowadays that Russia deserves an equal share in the honours of the Great War. She bore the brunt of the first two years of it and made possible the long defence of the Western front. And it is forgotten (if ever it was fully recognized) that while corruption at Court and treachery in highest military circles were leading Russia to perdition, the provisioning of the army and of the cities was upheld heroically, with chivalrous self-sacrifice, and with astonishing proficiency, by the one great democratic and popularly controlled organization Russia has ever possessed, to wit, the Union of Cooperative Societies. The almost incredible success of the Russian cooperative movement was due, I believe, more than anything else to the spirit of devotion that actuated its leaders. It is futile to point, as some do, to exceptional cases of malpractices. When an organization springs up with mushroom growth, as did the Russian cooperatives, defects are bound to arise. The fact remains that by the time the Revolution came, the Russian cooperative societies were not only supplying the army but also providing for the needs of almost the entire nation with an efficiency unsurpassed in any other country.
The Bolsheviks waged a ruthless and desperate war against public cooperation. The Cooperative Unions represented an organization independent of the State and could therefore not be tolerated under a Communist regime. But, like religion, cooperation could never be completely uprooted. On the contrary, their own administration being so incompetent, the Bolsheviks have on many occasions been compelled to appeal to what was left of the cooperative societies to help them out, especially in direct dealings with the peasantry. So that, although free cooperation is entirely suppressed, the shell of the former great organization exists in a mutilated form, and offers hope for its resuscitation in the future when all cooperative leaders are released from prison. There are many ways of reducing the Russian problem to simple terms, and not the least apt is a struggle between Cooperation and Coercion.
A deeper significance is attached in Russia to the word “Cooperation” than is usual in western countries. The Russian Cooperative Unions up to the time when the Bolsheviks seized power by no means limited their activities to the mere acquisition and distribution of the first necessities of life. They had also their own press organs, independent and well-informed, they were opening scholastic establishments, public libraries and reading-rooms, and they were organizing departments of Public Health and Welfare. Russian Cooperation must be understood in the widest possible sense of mutual aid and the dissemination of mental and moral as well as of physical sustenance. It is a literal application on a wide social scale of the exhortation to do unto others as you would that they should do to you. This comprehensive and idealistic movement was the nearest expression yet manifested of the Russian social ideal, and I believe that, whatever the outward form of the future constitution of Russia may be, in essence it will resolve itself into a Cooperative Commonwealth.
There is one factor in the Russian problem which is bound to play a large part in its solution, although it is the most indefinite. I mean the power of emotionalism. Emotionalism is the strongest trait of the Russian character and
