"On the committee which is now to revise the nationalization decree or to recommend its complete abrogation sits Mme. Vera Arkadieff, a Bolshevist enthusiast, who commanded a detachment of women soldiers during the recent operations against Admiral Kolchak"s army at Perm. She has been twice wounded."
"The Krasnaya Gazeta," translated, means the Red Gazette. It is a Bolshevist newspaper published in Petrograd. The following "Special Cable" to "The New York Times," dated Milan, April 24, 1919, published April 26, 1919, gives a Bolshevist"s explanation of the Russian s.e.x legislation:
"A Bolshevist statesman, from whom the "Journal Epoca" obtained a special interview respecting the Leninist legislation on the s.e.x problem, complains that a vast amount of grotesque misrepresentation has appeared on the subject in the hostile or unsympathetic press.
""Abolition of celibacy has been adopted," he stated, "simply as a means toward cla.s.s equality. Every woman, on attaining her eighteenth and every man on his twentieth year, is bound to inscribe his or her name in a special register kept at the Commissariat of Unions, and must then contract a union within the period of six months. Should they fail to do so, they are served with three warning notices at successive intervals of two months, before any step is taken in the way of coercive measures. Every bachelor and every spinster is bound to furnish a written explanation of their irregular condition, and the only reasons admitted as valid are serious ill-health or organic defects.
""When two lovers wish to marry they present themselves to the People"s Commissary, who witnesses their marriage. The same course is followed as regards separating, only that the Commissary, after freeing the unhappy pair, inscribes the man afresh on the celibate list and the woman on the register of marriageable persons, notifying each of the obligation to find another partner within six months. In case children have been born from their union, they are either delivered to the custody of the particular parent desiring them or else divided between them. The Commissariat of Unions aids the youth of either s.e.x in their quest of a mate by promoting all healthy forms of social intercourse and facilitating introductions among families of every type.""
The above despatch was published in the April 26, 1919, issue of "The New York Times."
On April 28, 1919, the following very apt comment was made on it and appeared on the editorial page of the "New York Times":
"As explained by somebody whom a Milan paper calls a "Bolshevist statesman," marriage as regulated by the great and good Lenine is not at all the dreadful thing described recently by the mendacious enemies of his Socialistic paradise. As pictured by his friends, nothing worse has been done than to exert a gentle pressure on the marriageable unmarried to the end that they may do their duty to the Bolshevist State and provide it as soon as may be with new sons and daughters to take the place of those recently "removed" by a benevolent terrorism.
"Bachelorhood and spinsterhood are to be regarded as "irregular"--conditions that must be explained in writing to the proper authorities. For the well disposed a simple civil marriage ceremony is provided; also a simple divorce ceremony in case the union proves wearisome. And that is all there is to the Bolshevist marriage system, the statesman says.
"But one notices that he does not disclose what is done to those who fail to find pleasing mates in the six months allowed after notification for the making of a choice. Apparently it is then that the so-called nationalization of women comes in, and the statesman forgot to say a word about the only peculiarity of the system that has evolved any serious criticism."
Commenting on Bolshevism, Mr. Eber Cole Byam, in the April 26, 1919, issue of "America," very aptly says:
"As the Roman world was reduced to barbarism by the barbarians so now the modern world is threatened with reduction to Bolshevism by the Bolsheviki. Whatever the word Bolshevism may have meant originally it has come to mean fiendish treatment of women, the savage murder and mutilation of men and the wanton destruction of the acc.u.mulated labors of generations. The Bolshevik is a Socialist, not the armchair theorist dreaming fantastic fancies.
The Bolshevik is the real Socialist, the Socialist of practice."
The following encomium on Bolshevism appeared in "The Call," New York, April 26, 1919, and shows what strange inclinations the Socialists have towards barbarism:
"For the first time in Russia"s history law has been established based on the direct will of the population, established through the most democratic franchise in the world. Under Czarism, law was merely the promulgation of autocratic tyranny....
"For the first time in Russia"s history, perfect freedom of religion is guaranteed to Christian, Moslem and Jew alike. After the American pattern, no church may control the state....
"For the first time, millions of Russian workers and peasants find themselves with decent homes. For the first time, women have equal social rights with men. For the first time, a real educational system has been inaugurated for the children....
"The recent official American investigators sent to Russia found a great change in the life of the cities from of old. They described the life as puritanical. Russians explained the change to them by the fact that vice and debauchery had been confined mostly to the idle ruling cla.s.s, the old aristocracy, and these things had pa.s.sed with the pa.s.sing of that cla.s.s."
Listen now to the words of the Russian Socialist author, Leonoid Andreiev, who has seen quite enough of the "blessings" of Bolshevism.
They appear in the April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under the caption, "S. O. S., An Appeal to Humanity":
"One must, indeed, be insane not to understand the palpable and simple acts of Bolshevism! One must be sightless, stark-blind or have eyes that see not, to fail to observe on the face of the great mutilated Russia murder without end, ruins, miles of cemeteries, dungeons and insane asylums; not to perceive what hunger and terror have done to Petrograd, and, alas, to many other cities!
"One must be earless, stone-deaf, or have ears that hear not, to remain callous to the sobs, the sighs and the wailing of women, the heart-rending cries of the children, the death-rattle of strangled men, the cracking of the a.s.sa.s.sins" rifles, the only music that has filled the air of Russia for the last eighteen months!...
"As the wireless operator on a sinking vessel, in the thick blackness of the night, sends out his last appeal, "Help, quick, we are sinking, save us!" so I, moved by my faith in the goodness of man, am sending out into distance and darkness my prayer for my people who are sinking.
"If you only knew how dark is the night around us, if my words could only convey its density and depth! Whom am I calling? I know not. Does the wireless operator know who may intercept his call?
For thousands of miles around the ocean may be deserted and not a living soul may overhear his appeal.
"The night is dark. The sea is frightful. But the operator has not lost his faith, and he calls persistently, to the very last minute, until the last light is gone and his apparatus is silenced forever.
"What does he trust in? He trusts in humanity, and so do I. He trusts in the law of human love and life. It is impossible that one human being will deny help to another in his hour of perdition. It is impossible that one human being will abandon another to perish without attempting to help. It is impossible that such an appeal for help will not receive any response!...
"Friend! I do not even attempt to tell you how frightful life is in Russia at present, in our tormented Petrograd. Others have told enough, and new words cannot be coined by the human tongue.
"It is frightful when children starve and perish, and a.s.sa.s.sins are well-fed and Trotzky is pouring down his throat the last bottle of milk. It is frightful when the cemeteries of Petrograd have no more room for the dead, and the murderers have a free road not only to the Princess Islands, but to all the ends of the world, and the wealth they have stolen will enable them to live in balmy lands and in the most attractive corners of our mercenary globe."
Catherine Breshkovsky, the Socialist "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," though now an aged woman, lived long enough to bewail the fate of her country. Speaking of her native land, now reaping the harvest from the Marxian seed first sown many years ago, she says in her "Message to the American People":
"Flooded with tears and blood, Russia moans and cries out to the world. She is a living body, and her tortures cannot be looked upon cold-bloodedly as an extraordinary, never-before-witnessed experiments in social evolution. She is alive and every pore of her body is shedding blood."
Let the "scientific" American Socialists continue to take their information from "The Call." They are far too learned to be deceived by Russians such as Andreiev or the "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution." "The capitalist press is lying about the conditions in Russia." "The Call" alone speaks the truth, for it is a proletarian sheet.
Not satisfied with ruining his own country, Lenine would have Bolshevism spread to all other nations. He longs for their workingmen to rise in revolt against their present systems of government. Listen to his words in his "Letter to American Workingmen," published by the Socialist Publication Society, 431 Pulaski street, Brooklyn, New York:
"We know that it may take a long time before help can come from you, Comrades, American Workingmen, for the development of the revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with various rapidity (how could it be otherwise!) We know full well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days.
We are counting on the inevitability of the international revolution. But that does not mean that we count on its coming at some definite date. We have experienced two great revolutions in our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that revolutions cannot come either at word of command nor according to prearranged plans. We know that circ.u.mstances alone have pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new stage in the social life of the world not because of our superiority but because of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the outbreak of the international revolution, revolutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of setbacks and serious overthrows....
"We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international Socialist revolution comes to our a.s.sistance with its armies. But these armies exist, they are stronger than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer imperialism, with its brutalities, continues. Workingmen the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and their Scheidemanns. Inevitably labor is approaching communistic Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone is capable of preserving culture and humanity from destruction. We are invincible, for invincible is the Proletarian Revolution."
The above words of the dictator Lenine may throw some light on the Socialists" demand for "justice" to Russia, and their campaign in behalf of the recognition of the Soviet Government of that country.
The Socialist Publication Society of Brooklyn at the end of the World War issued a large pamphlet ent.i.tled, "One Year of Revolution,"
celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the Russian Soviet Republic. On the cover page, under the caption, "The Spirit of Revolutionary Russia," and the subt.i.tle, "To the Oppressed of All Countries," we read the summons to a Socialist world-wide revolution:
"And this life and death struggle with our own oppressors gives us the right to appeal to you, proletarians of all countries, with a strong voice, with the voice of those who look into the eyes of death in the revolt against the exploiters.
"Break the chains, you who are oppressed! Rise in revolt!
"We have nothing to lose but our chains!
"We believe in the victory of the revolution, we are full of this belief.
"We know that our Comrades in the Revolution will fulfill their duty on the barricades to the bitter end.
"We know that decisive moments are coming.
"A gigantic struggle will set the world afire. On the horizon the fires of the revolt of all oppressed peoples are already glowing and taking definite shape.
"At the moment that the waters of the Baltic will become red with the blood of our Comrades, will close forever over their bodies, at this moment we call upon you.
"Already in the clutch of death, we send our warm greetings and appeal to you.
"Proletarians of the world, all, unite!
"Rise in revolt, you who are oppressed.
"All hail, the International Revolution!
"Long live Socialism!"
In the spring of 1919 reports reached the United States that the Bolsheviki had been inciting our troops in the Archangel District of Russia to disloyalty against our government. An a.s.sociated Press dispatch, dated Vienna, April 24, 1919, shows how the Bolshevists carried on their campaign in the Ukraine: