THE NEW TSARDOM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4926, 15 January 1926, Page 4

THE NEW TSARDOM.

RUSSIA'S TERRIBLE SERVITUDE.

METHODS OF ZINOVIEV. Change of political party decs' not necessarily involve a change of social conditions. Tyranny, oppression, cruelty, and inefficiency are identical in their effects whether exercised by overbearing Emperors or silver-tongu-ed Revolutionaries. A Proletarian dictatorship is not necessarily a better thing, and there are m.any 'reasons why it should be a worse thing, than the dictatorship of a- ruling caste.

These (observes “J.MG.” in the “Scotsman”) are .the obviojus reflections aroused by the perusal qf an important book on Russia, “My Disillusionment in Russia,” by Emma Goldman. The importance of the book lies in the fact that whereas most writers on the Russian Revolution have had their political axe to grind, or have studied conditions in Russia without knowledge either of itjs' language or traditions, here we have a professed revolutionary and anarchist, deported from America for her activities in that direction, heart and soul in sympathy with the aims and ideals of the Russian Revolution, for two years a, worker with the Soviet, devoting herself not to criticism, but to a- des’cription and analysis of the greatest political experiment the world has known.

WINTER NIGHTS IN PETROGADI

To leave America was, not a great ordeal for the political outcasts, deported at the end of 1919. “Out spirits were high,” writes’ Emma Goldman. Russia, new Russia, was before us.” But the Russia they arrive at ifc, a different Russia from tnat of their dreams. Winter nights in Petrogad awiaited them!. “The utter stillness, of the large city was paralysing. It fairly haunted me, this awful oppresive silence, broken only by occasional shots. I would lie awake at nights trying to. pier’ce the mystery. Did not Zwrin say that .capital punishment wap abolished ? Why thfe’ shooting ? Doubts disturbed my mind, but I tried to wave them up,ide.” And worse still: “Passing Nevsky Prpspekt, near Liteiny Street I-came upon a group'of women huddled together to protect themselves from the cold. They were surrounded by soldiers talking and gestulatingi These women, I learned, were selling themselves for a pound of bread, piece qf soap, of chocolate. The soldiers were the only ones' who could afford to buy them because of their extra rations. ■ . . The Soviet Government had closed the houses these women conducted, and was now trying to drive the women off the streets, but hunger and cold drove them back again ;. besides, the soldiers had to be humoured. . .. I tried to dismiss the thought of that huddled group, but it clung to me : I felt something snap within me.”

First glimpses of the new Russia, and not the worst.

One of the most painful discoveries of Enima Goldman was that there was no free speech in Russia, that her Anarchist friends; ardent supporters of the revolution, were being persecuted, spied on, and hounded into prisons Zinoviev, Zorin, Lenin, their answer was the same“ Free speech is a bourgeois notion.” Everything that seemed to questioned the infallibilty of the caste in power was rapidly’ exterminated. Witness the fate of Kronstadt, Lenin said at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia: ‘The sailors' did not want the Counter-Revolutionists, but they did not want us either.’ And — irony of Bolshevism —i’.,t that very Congress Lenin advocated free trade — a more reactionary step than any charged to the Kronstadt sailors I” THE TERROR OF THE TCHEKA. But how did the Bolhseviks, under these conditions continue to hold power ? Were they not there by the ■will of the people 1 “When I broached .the subject of the People’s Soviets and the elections my visitors smiled. ‘Elections ! There are no such things in Russia, unless, you call, threats and terrorism elections.’' ” Threats and terrorism a,nd the T'cheka—with these Zinoviev and company have kept themselves in the public favour. The terror of tiie Tcheka was in every breast from the Black Sea to the Baltic. An Odessa doctor in conversation with Emma Gojldman tells, how the chairman of the: T'cheka fe under his charge, suffering from a nervous breakdown. No wonder. “He works sixteen hours a, day sending people to their death.” . The depravity of the Tcheka • was a matter of common knowledge. People were shot for slight offences, while those who could afford to give bribes were freed even after they had been sentenced to death.

‘‘One of the doctor’s, guests, who lived in the 'Tcheka Street,’ told of the refinements of terrorism practised to awe the population. ‘Almost daily he witnessed the same sights : early, in the morning mounted Tchekists would dash by, shooting into the air—a wa,ruing that all windows must be closed. Then came motor trucks T. aded with the doomed. They l|ay in rows, faces downward, their hands tied, soldiers! standing over them with rifles. They were being carried to execution outside the city. A .few hours later the trucks would return empty save for a few soldiers. Blood dripped from tlie waggons', leaving a crimson streak on the, pavements all' the way to the Tcheka headauarters. Spiridonova, “one of Russia’s great martyrs,” who had suffered imprisonment and torture under the Tsar, had the same .tale to tell. “On several occasions she was tortured by being taken out at night and inform-! ed that she was to be shot—a favoured Tcheka method.” . . . “She would reach over to a, pile of letters pn her desk and read to me passages heartrending with misery and bitterness against the Bolsheviki. In stilted handwriting, sometimes almost illegible, the peasants of Ukraine and Siberia wrote of the horrors of the ‘razverstka’ and what it has done for them and their land. ‘They have taken away everything, even, the last

seeds for the next sowing-’ ‘The Commissars’ have robbed us, of eveiything.’ Thus ran the letters. Frequently peasants wanted to know if Spiridonova had gone over .to .the Bolsheviks. ‘lf you also forsake us, matushka, we have no one to turn to,’ one peasant wrote.” Kovolehko and Peter Kropotkin—they tell the same tragic story. “If the gendarmes, of the Tsar should have had the power not only to arrest but to shoot us .the situation would have been like the present one.” “They (the Bolshevik!) created a bureaucracy and. officialdom which surpasses even that of the old regime. In little Dimitrov there were more Bolshevik officials than ever existed there during the reign of the Romanovs,” “The Bolsliviki claim that such methods are inseparable from the Revolution.”