RUSSIAN VILLAGE ANARCHY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 243, 2 July 1918, Page 7

RUSSIAN VILLAGE ANARCHY

A THURIBLE DESCRIPTION. Tho following terrible account of tho condition of Russia is given in Jtaxim Gorki's organ "Novaya Zhiisu," which may be described as advanced Socialist but not Bolshovik in character-.—'

All observers of tho village to-day aro unanimously of the opinion that the process of disintegration and demoralisation is proceeding there with irresistible force. •Having plundered tho estates of the landowners, having shared out among themselves or simply destroyed tho dead and living stocks 011 those estates, having even taken to pieces tho buildings, tho peasants are now preparing for war against one another for the division of the spoil. To this is added the calamity c-f famine. In some districts the population, has long ani consumed all the available stocks of corn, including seed-corn, while in others the peasants, having had a good harvest, aro hiding corn and even burying it in order not to share it with their starving neighbours. AH this must, lead, and in some places ha.; already led, to a war of all against nil, and ,lo tho most senseless chaos and universal destruction and murder.

Information is constantly arriving of tho division of military properly among the demoralised soldiers and of.various outrages committed tlwii. Monstrous rumours are circulated about the army which is returning from Asia Minor. It appears that it has brought into tho Crimea a large number of female slaves, and that at Theodosia a regular slave market is being held, the supply being so large th(it prices soon fell" from 100 or 150 roubles io 'J5 or :il) roubles per slave. Can any contrast be more striking, and sarcasm more biting than this? According to official assurances we are entering the Kingdom of C'ommuism, where complete'equality is to reign among men, where bourgeois property is entirely abolished, and where the power of chattels is entilely broken. In reality wc are transforming human beings into chattels; we aJ'ii restoring pro-bourgeois property in human beings, and the soldiers of the Revolutionary army are publicly trading in slaves, as the planters did* in tho times of Mrs. Heecher Stowe.

Yes, the process of sclf-disciplino among (lie n.n.sse-i is proceeding with gigantic strides. The Revolutionary army garrison nt Sebaslopol has already undertaken tlio last final struggle with the bourgeoisie. Without much ado they deckled simply to massacre nil tlio bonri'<»ise wliii lived within their reach, 'l'hey dccidocl and did it. At first they massacred the inhabitants of tho two most bourgeois streets in Sevastopol; then the same operation, in spite of tho resistance of the local Soviet, was extended to Simferopol, and then the turn ennio of liupatoria. Apparently similar radical methods of cliLss-war will soon be applied also to Greater Hussia, for we have already 11. Bleiehmaiiii (the leader of the Anarchists: energetically canying on an agitation within the walls of the Vetrognid Soviet in this sense. In I'ctrograd itsell'. at the factories, Hie discipline lias reached such a si ale of perfection that mon- and more the subordinate organs ol Hie Soviet. and 'nen tho trade unions, have, to issue threats of deductions from wages and even of complete dinmissal for the never-ending holding of meetings.