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ILLINOI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2011. COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Copyright. Reproduced according to U.S. copyright law USC 17 section 107. Contact [email protected] for more information. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Preservation Department, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2011 C OMMUNISM I. RUSSIA 1. HISTORICAL. The idea of Communism, which Webster defines as "Any theory or system of social organization involving common ownership of the agents of production, and some approach to equality in the distribution of the pro- ducts of industry," is not new. In 1776 Dr. Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law in a Bavarian college, founded the Order of the Illuminati with the aim of abolishing monarchy and all ordered government, private property, inheritance, patriotism, the family, and religion. The order spread rapidly tl :agh France, Italy and Germany, but was eventually exposed and driv- e :nderground. In 1789 the Jacobin Club, organized by Robespierre and ot a who had been affiliated with the Illuminati, did much to give so sa ,ainary a hue to the French Revolution and provide a pattern for the R ussian Bolsheviks some 130 years later. Undoubtedly influenced by Weishaupt, Jean Jacques Rousseau and ot' ers, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, two apostate young German Jews, produced the famous Communist Manifesto in 1848 as the platform of the Communist League, a German organization which later became inter- national. Marx divided society into two opposing camps, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, separated by class warfare until the former should have overcome the latter through the destruction of all those institutions of civilization which Weishaupt had aimed to abolish in the previous cen- tury. As a result of the spread of these doctrines, the First International was organized in London in 1864, a world body composed of radical groups from various nations, which survived until 1876 when its last convention was held in Philadelphia. Considerable impetus had been given to radical thought by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Second International was organized within a few years of the dissolution of the First. In 1903 the radical left wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party, called the Bolsheviki, or "majority", split off from the right wing, the Menshevike, or "minority", to form two groups within the International. At the outbreak of the World War, the Bolsheviki repudiated the moderate group, which is still in existence as the Labor Socialist International with headquarters in London. Frequent conferences were held by the Second International, and in 1915 at Zmimer- wald, Switzerland, Nicolai Lenin, exiled from Russia for many years for his revolutionary activities, came into prominence. With Lenin in Switzerland, Trotzki in the Bronx, and Stalin exiled in Siberia, all completely detached for the time being from the: Russian scene, the Czar abdicated in March 1917 as a result of the first Russian Revolution, which was comparatively bloodless and of a bourgeois rather than proletarian character, the government being taken over by Prince Lvoff and the Douma. Within 30 or 40 days after the Prince had been succeeded by Kerensky, Lenin with thirty other left wing revolutionaries, through the good offices of the German Government, was conveyed in a sealed railway car via Germany into Russia, where, as the result of a second Revolution starting on 7 November 1917, Kerensky was overthrown and Lenin and Trotsky, as the leaders of the Bolsheviki, came into posses- 2 COMMUNISM sion of the supreme power. And thus, through the instrumentality of 30,000 or 40,000 actual Communists, the Soviet form of government was imposed upon this vast country of 150,000,000 souls amid scenes which far outdid the French Revolution. While Trotzky and the Red Army dealt with the Polish and the White Russian Armies, and the Cheka (secret police) suppressed all in- ternal riots and opposition with massacre and ruthless terrorism, Lenin set out to establish a state on pure Communistic lines. The value of the rouble was destroyed; trade of every kind, except by the state, was for- bidden; private and church property confiscated; industry nationalized; and the best brains of the country, technical along with the rest, destroyed or driven into exile. In 1921 Lenin, faced with a crisis in the total failure of the Marxian economic system, introduced his N. E. P. (or New Economic Policy), under which a certain amount of private business was permitted. In 1924, fearful of fostering capitalism in view of the accumulating means of individuals engaged in trade under this policy, repressive measures were taken by the Government, and in 1928 the so-called Five Year Plan was formulated, which brings us up to the present day. 2. PRESENT ORGANIZATION IN RUSSIA. To help complete our background for the study of Communism in this country, some understanding of the present regime in Russia is neces- sary. The legislative power is vested in the Congress of Soviets, which meets every two years, selecting a central executive committee of between 400 and 500 members to represent it during the intermission. This com- mittee, in turn, selects a smaller group, known as the Praesidium, which is the real legislative authority and appoints the commissars and judicial officers of the government. Early in 1919, the Russian Communist Party and the Spartacus group of revolutionaries in Germany joined in issuing a call for an international congress of revolutionary workers to be held in Moscow. Out of this evolv- ed the Third, or Communist, International, also called the "Comintern" the instigating source of propaganda and revolutionary activities in other countries. To the protest of foreign governments against this Russian-inspired subversive action in their countries, the Soviet foreign minister is wont to disclaim all knowledge, with the statement that any such activities must have been the work of the Third International for which his government is not responsible. In point of fact, a thoroughly specious claim, for the directorates of the International (Komintern) and Soviet governments are interlocking, Stalin sitting at the same time in the Praesidia of both. For a present day description of the Russion Communist Party, which is inextricably bound up with the other two organizations, we quote from Professor Samuel N. Harper's recent book, "Making Bolshevilks": "There are just short of 2,000,000 Communist party-members, including candidates passing through a period of probation. It is enough to speak of them as 'party-members', for there is only the single party in the Soviet order. The two million Communists are distributed in some 50,000 groups or 'cells'; in practically every institution of any importance-government office, school, factory, or collective farm-there is the organized group of party-members, and it is the only group that is permitted to organize. The Communist leads politically the larger group of which he is a member, and supervises and directs its economic activity, carrying out the directions of the party authorities. These cells are coordinated by local committees, which, in turn, are under higher committees, all headed up in the Central Commit- tee, of which Stalin is the General Secretary ........... The party cells are RUSSIA 3 distributed also through the Red Army, in every regiment and barrack, to the number of over 6,000, coordinating the activity of the 120,000 Commun- ists in the official total of 562,000 Red Armyists." Theoretically, the Rus- sian Communist Party is only a branch of the Komintern and neither have anything to do with the Soviet Government. Practically, however, the party controls both through the Political Bureau of its Central Committee, called the Polit-bureau and consisting of 10 members. This domination is indicated by an. extract from a speech by Lenin: "Formally a solution of this problem is very difficult, because the only legal party among us con- trols the Government; " and again from a speech by Trotzky, "Who is going to decide this question? We have the council of people's commis- sars, but that council must be under a certain control. That control can- not be exercised by the unorganized working masses. We, therefore, have to summon the central committee of the party and have it formulate an answer to this proposition." Since, as Lenin says, "the only legal party controls the government", there is no opposition, no minority party whatever, with the result that the Soviet is an autocratic government comparable to that of Mussolini in Italy and far more ruthless. We quote Professor Harper again on the recent liquidation of the Kulaks, or rich peasants, by way of example, "It was in the looting of the rich peasants that the class struggle took on its most distressing forms during the first months of 1930 ........ The number of families literally thrown out of their homes, and even expelled from the village, cannot be estimated with any accuracy. There were about 5,000,000 officially designated as rich peasants. Many of the middle peasants were subjected to practically the same forcible expropriation, being told that they would be treated as rich peasants if they did not join the collective farm........Poor peasants told the writer of the ruthless methods of liqui- dation of the rich peasant which they adopted, 'We gave them till morning to get out, they could go where they wanted but they had to get out.' The freight trains of those sent north were described by railway workers" The Report of the Fish Committee mentions the same subject: "The O.
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