TALKS WITH LENIN

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1919, Page 10

TALKS WITH LENIN

"THE MICROBE IS THERE"

REVOLUTIONS AND ENGLAND

RUSSIAN ' PEASANTS' AOTITUDE,

Mr. Arthur Ransome, whose intimate acquaintance with Russia goes back to before the revolution, wriites in an independent fashion of the position occupied by Bolshevism as he saw it during six weeks early in 1919. In his little work dealing with these experiences (published by George Allen and Unwin, London), Mr. Ransome makes no reference at all to many things about Bolshevism as practised in Russia, of which so many people in Great Britain and the Dominions would like to know more. All he says of the terror is: " I imagine people will find my book very poor in the matter of terrors. There is nothing here of the Red Terror, or of any terrors on the other side." On the nationalisation of women Mr. Ransome is silent. His conversations with Lenin, as here set down, will, no doubt, be found of general public interest in -New Zealand, in view of the result of investigations made by Scotland Yard as cabled of Bolshevik activities in Great Britain:

Whatever else . they may think of him, not even his enemies deny that Vladimir Ilyitch Oulianov (Lenin) is one of the greatest personalities of his time. I therefore make no apology foi writing down such scraps of his conversation as seem to me to illustrate his manner of mind.

He was talking of the lack of thinkers in the' English Labour movement, and said he remembered hearing Shaw speak at some meeting.' - Shaw, he said, was "A good man fallen among Fabians," and a great deal further left than his company. Ho had not heard of "The Perfect Wagnorite," but was_ interested when I told him the general idea of the book, and turned fiercely on an interrupter who said that Shaw was a clown. " He may be a clown for the bourgeoisie in a bourgeois State, but they would not think him a clown in a revolution."

He asked whether Sidney Webb was consciously working in the interests of the capitalists, and when I said. I was quite sure that he was not, "he said, ". Then ho has more industry than brains. He certainly has great knowledge." He was entirely convinced that England was on the eve of revolution, and pooh-poohed my objections. . "Three months ago I thought it would end' in all tho world having to fightthe centre of reaction in England. But I do not think so now. Things have gcr.a further there than in France, if the news as to the extent of the strikes is true."

I pointed out some of the circumstances, geographical and economical, which would make the success of a violent revolution in England problematical in the extreme, and put to him the same suggestion that I put to Bucharin, namely, that a suppressed movement in England would be worse for Russia than our traditional method of compromise. He agreed at once, but said, " That is quite true, but you cannot stop' a revolution . . . although Ramsay Macdonald will try to at' the last minute Strikes and Soviets. If these two habits once get hold, nothing will keep the workmen from them. And Soviets, once started, must sooner or later come to supreme power." Then, "But certainly it would be much more difficult in England. Your big clerk and shopkeeping class would oppose it, until the workmen broke them. Russia .was indeed the only .country in. which the revolution could start. And we are not yet through our troubles with the peasantry."

ROOM TO RETREAT. \ I suggested that one reason why it/ had; been'possible in Russia was. that.i they had'had room to retreat. . ■ i'Yes," he said. "The distances saved j us. 'The.Germans were frightened 'of them, at the.time when they could indeed have eaten us up, and won peace, which.the Allies would have given them in gratitude for our destruction. A revolution in England would have nowhere whither to retire."

■Of the Soviets he said, "In the beginning I thought they were rfnd would' remain a.purely Russian form,; but it is now- quite clear that under various names they' must be.the instruments of revolution everywhere." . ' He expressed the opinion that in England they would not allow me to tell the truth about Russia, and gave" as ah examplel- the way in which Colonel Robins had been kept silent in America. He!asked about Robins, "Had he really been as. friendly to the Soviet Government as:lie made out?" I said, "Yes, if only as a sportsman admiring its pluck and courage in difficulties." I ■ quoted Robins's saying, "I can't go against a baby I have sat up with for six months. But if there were a Bolshevik movement, in America I'd be out with my rifle to fight it every time." "Now that," said Lenin, "is an honest man and more far-seeing than most. I always liked that man." •He shook with laughter at the image of the baby, and said, "That baby had_ several million other folk sitting up with it too." Talking of the lies that are told about Russia, he said it was interesting; to notice that they were mostly perversions of truth and not pure inventions, and gave as an example the recent story that he had recanted. "Do you know the origin of that?" he said. " I was wishing a happy New Year to a friend over the telephone, and said 'And may we commit' fewer stupidities this year than last!' Someone overheard it and told someone else."- A newspaper announced 'Lenin say- we are committing stupidities,' and so the story started." LENIN A HAPPY MAN. More than ever, Lenin struck me as a happy man. Walking home from the Kremlin, I tried to think of any other man of his calibre who had had a similar joyous temperament. I could think of none. This little, bald-headed, wrinkled man, who tilts his chair this way and that, laughing over one thing or another, ready any minute to give serious advice to any who interrupt him to ask for it, advice so well reasoned that it is to his followers far more compelling than any command, every one of his wrinkles is a wrinkle of laughter, not of worry. 1 think the reason must be that he is the first great leader who utterly- discounts the value of his own personality. He is quite, without per-t-onal ambition. More than that, he believes, as a Marxist, in, the movement of ths masses which, with or without him, would still move. His whole faith is in the elemental forces that move people, his faith in himself is merely his belief that ho justly estimates the direction of those forces. He does not believe that any man could make or stop the revolution which he thinks inevitable. If the Russian revolution fails, according lo him, it fails only temporarily, and because of forces beyond any man's control. He is consequently free with a freedom no other great man has ever had. It is not so . much what he says that inspires confi- | dence in him. It is this sensible freedom, this obvious .detachment. With his philosophy he cannot for a moment believe that one man's mistake might ruin all. He is, for himself at any rate, the exponent, hot the cause, of the' events that will be for ever linked with his name. THE LAST TALK. I went to see Lenin the day after the review in, Red Square, and the general holiday in honour of the Third

International. The first thing he said was: " I am afraid that the Jingoes in England and France will make use of yesterday's doings as an excuse for further action against us. They will say 'How can we leave them in peace when they set about setting the world on fire?' To that I would answer, 'We are at war, Messieurs! And just as during your war you tried to make revolution in Germany, and Germany did her best to make trouble in Ireland and India, so we, while we are at war with you, adopt the measures that are open to us. We have told you we aro willing to make peace.'" He spoke of Chicherin's last note, and said they based all their hopes on it. Balfour had said somewhere, " Let the fire burn itself out." That it would not do. But the quickest way of restoring good conditions in Russia was, of course, peace and agreement with the Allies. "I am sure we could* come to terms, if they want to come to terms at all. England and America would be willing, perhaps, if their hands were not tied hy Franco. But intervention in the large sense can now hardly be. They must have learnt that Russia could never be -governed as India is governed, and that sending troops here is the same thing as sending them to a Communist University." I said something about the general hostility to their propaganda noticeable in foreign countries. Lenin : " Tell them to build a (Chinese wall round each of their countries. They have their Customs officers, their frontiers, their coastguards. They can expel any Bolsheviks they wish. Revolution does not depend on'propaganda. If the conditions of revolution are not there no sort of propaganda will either hasten or impede it. The war has brought about those conditions in all countries, and I am convinced that if Russia to-day were to be swallowed up by the sea, were to cease to exist altogether, the revolution in the rest of Europe would go on. . Put Russia under water for twenty years, and you would not affect by a shilling or an hour a week the demands of the shopstewards in England." I told him, what I have told most of them many times, that I did not believe there would be a revolution in England. ' CAUGHT THE DISEASE. j Lenin: "We have a saying that a I man may have typhoid while still on his legs. Twenty, maybe,, thirty, years ago I had abortive typhoid, and was going about with it, had had it some days before it knocked me over. Well, England and France and Italy have caught the disease already. England may seem to you to bo untouched, but the microbe is already there." I said that just as his typhoid was abortive typhoid, so the disturbances in England to which he alluded might well be abortive revolution, and come to nothing. I told him the vague, disconnected character of the strikes and the generally Liberal as opposed to } Socialist character of the movement, so far as it was political at all, reminded me of what I had heard of 1905 in Russia aird not at all of 1917, and that I was suare it would settle down.

Lenin: "Yes, that is possible. It is, perhaps, an educative period, in which the English workmen will come to realise their political needs, and_ turn from Liberalism to Socialism. Socialism is certainly weak in England. Your Socia'iist-movemea-s, your Socialist parties . . when I v. as in England I zealously attended everything I could, and for a country with so large an industrial population they were pitiable, pitiable . . ,a handful at a street corner . . a meeting in a drawing room . . a school class . . pitiable. Hut yovt must remember one great difference between Russia of 1905 and England of to-day. Our first Soviet /in Russia was made -during : the revolution. Your shop-stewards committees have been in existence long before. They are without programme, without direction-, but the opposition they will meet will force a programme upon them." WORKERS' CONTROL. We then talked a little on a subject that interests me' very much, namely, the way in which insensibly, quite apart from war, the Communist theories are being modified m the difficult process of their translation into practice. We talked of the changes in "workers' control," which is now a very different thing from the wild committee business that" at first made work almost impossible. Wo talked then of the antipathy of the peasants to compulsory communism, and how that idea also had j been considerably whittled awtey. I asked him what were going to be the relations between the Communists of the towns and the property-loving peasants, and whether there was not great da^er of antipathy between them, andyjSJr.l I regretted leaving too soon to see the elasticity of the Communist theories tested by the inevitable pressure of the peasantry. Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty sharp distinction between the rich peasants and the poor._ "The only opposition we. have here in Russia is directly or indirectly due to the rich peasants. The poor, as soon as they are liberated from the political domination of the rich, are on oui^ side and are in an enormous majority." I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, where property among the peasants is much more equally distributed. . Lenin: "No. And there, in the Ukraine, you will certainly see our policy modified. Civil war, whatever happens, is likely to be more bitter in,the Ukraine than elsewhere, because there the instinct of property has been further developed in the peasantry, and the minority and majority will be more equal." . k ' He asked me if I meant to return, saying that I could go down to Kiev to watcK the revolution there as I had watched it in Moscow. I said I should be very sorry to think that this was my last visit to the country which I love only second to my own. _ He laughed, and paid me the compliment of saying that, "although English," I had more or less succeeded, in understanding what they were at, and that ho should be pleased to see me again.