1. TO THE INDIAN REVOLUTIONARY ASSOCIATION.1
I am glad to hear that the principles of self-determination and liberation of the oppressed nations from exploitation by foreign and native capitalists, proclaimed by the Workers' and Peasants' Republic, has stimulated such a ready response from progressive Indians who are waging a heroic fight for freedom. The working masses of Russia are following the awakening of Indian workers and peasants with unflagging attention. The organization, perseverance and discipline of the working people and their solidarity with the working people of the world are an earnest of ultimate success.
We welcome the close alliance between Moslem and non-Moslem elements.2 We sincerely want to see this alliance replicated among all the toilers of the East. Only when Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian and Turkish workers and peasants join hands and march together in the common cause of liberation—only then—will the decisive victory over the exploiters be ensured.
Long live a free Asia!
2. THESES ON THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL.1
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8. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most determined and revolutionary form of the proletarian class struggle against the bourgeoisie. This struggle can be successful only when the most revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat has the backing of the overwhelming majority of the proletariat.
Hence preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat entails not only an explanation of the bourgeois character of all reformism or defence of democracy which preserves the private ownership of the means of production, entails not only exposing those trends inside the labour movement which in fact support the bourgeoisie, but entails also the replacement inside the proletarian organizations of absolutely every type (political, trade-union, cooperative, eeducational, etc.) of the old leaders by the Communists. The more successful, lengthy and firmly established is bourgeois democracy in a given country, the more likely are the bourgeoisie to have secured the appointment of sympathizers and fellow travelers to leading posts in proletarian organizations. Those leaders were very often paid off directly or indirectly.
These representatives of the labour aristocracy, these quasi-bourgeois workers, should be ousted from all their posts a hundred times more conclusively than hitherto, and be replaced by workers—even by wholly inexperienced ones—provided they are on familiar terms with the exploited masses and enjoy their confidence in the struggle against the exploiters.
The dictatorship of the proletariat will require the appointment of such inexperienced workers to the most responsible posts of the state; otherwise the workers' government will be impotent and will not have the support of the masses.
3. THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE ANTHEM.
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Anthem of the Soviet Pioneers (1922) |
Official Induction Ceremony (Komsomol) |
4. THE TASKS OF THE YOUTH LEAGUES.
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It was the task of the older generation to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The main task then was to criticize the bourgeoisie, arouse hatred of the bourgeoisie among the masses, unite the masses and sharpen their class-consciousness.
The new generation is confronted with a far more complex task. Your duty does not just lie in assembling your forces to uphold the workers' and peasants' government against an invasion instigated by the capitalists. Of course you must do that; you clearly realize it and every Communist discerns it. However it is not enough. You have to construct a communist society. In many respects half the work is done. The old order has been destroyed just as it deserved, it has become a heap of ruins just as it deserved. The ground has been cleared, and on this ground the younger communist generation must build a communist society. You face a task of construction which you can complete only if you first learn all the branches of modern knowledge and then graduate from cut-and-dried, memorized formulas, counsels, recipes, prescriptions and programs to the living reality which blends your hands-on toil with the guidance of communism.
The task is to educate, train and rouse your entire generation. You must be the best from among the millions of young men and women who are building the communist society, but you will not build it unless you enlist the mass of young workers and peasants in the effort. It is the task of the Youth League to program grassroot activities that involve learning, teamwork, directing and effort, thereby teaching its members and all those who look to it for leadership how to become Communists.
You must train yourselves to become Communists. This naturally brings me to the question of how we should teach communism, what specific methods we should use.
I shall deal here first of all with the question of communist ethics. The entire purpose of training, educating and teaching the youth of today is to imbue them with communist ethics.
But is there such a thing as communist ethics? Is there such a thing as a communist morality? Of course there is.
It is often suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality. This is a way of confusing the issue, of throwing dust in the eyes of workers and peasants.
In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality?
In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie who based ethics on God's commandments. On this point we say of course that we do not believe in God and that we know perfectly well that the clergy, landowners and the bourgeoisie invoked the name of God to further their own interests as exploiters.
Or instead of basing ethics on the commandments of morality, on the commandments of God, the bourgeoisie based it on idealist or semi-idealist phrases that always amounted to something very similar to God's commandments.
We reject any morality based on ultra-human and ultra-class concepts. We say that this is deception, dupery, stultification of workers and peasants in the interests of landowners and capitalists.
We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle. Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.
The old society was based on the oppression of all workers and peasants by the landowners and capitalists. We had to destroy all that and overthrow them but first we had to create unity. That is something God cannot create.
Unity could only be bestowed by the factories and by a proletariat trained and roused from its long slumber. Only when that class jelled did a mass movement surface which gave us what we have now: the victory of the proletarian revolution in one of the weakest countries, one which for three years has been repulsing the onslaught of the global bourgeoisie. Now we can see how the proletarian revolution is growing all over the world.
Based on our experience we say that only the proletariat could have created the solid force that shepherds an isolated, scattered peasantry and that has withstood all the onslaughts of the exploiters. Only this class can rally or help the toiling masses unite and conclusively defend, conclusively consolidate and conclusively construct a communist society.
That is why we say that for us there is no such thing as a morality that stands outside human society; that is a fraud. For us morality is subscribed to the interests of the proletarian class struggle.
What does that class struggle consist in? It consists in overthrowing the tsar, overthrowing and abolishing the capitalist class.
What are classes in general? Classes are what lets a section of society appropriate the labour of another. If a segment of society appropriates all the land then we get a landowner class and a peasant class. If a segment of society owns all the factories, stocks and capital, then we get a capitalist class and the class of the industrial factory workers.
It was not difficult to drive out the tsar; it took only a few days. It was not very difficult to drive out the landowners; it took a few months. Nor was it very difficult to drive out the capitalists. But it's incomparably more difficult to abolish classes.
We still have two classes, workers and peasants.
If a peasant is installed on his plot of land and keeps his surplus grain (i.e., grain he does not need for himself or for his cattle) when the rest of the population goes without bread he becomes an exploiter. The more grain he hoards, the more he profits from its sale until he ends up thinking, "let people starve, the more they starve, the higher will be the price I can sell this grain for."
Everyone should work according to a common plan, on common land, in common factories and with a common system (the dictatorship of the proletariat).
Is that easy to do?
You see that it's not as easy as driving out the tsar, the landowners and the capitalists. The proletariat is required to win over and re-educate the working peasants in order to crush the resistance of the rich peasants who profit from the poverty and want of the rest of the population.
Hence the task of the proletarian struggle is not quite finished right after the tsar is overthrown and the landowners and capitalists are driven out. What is still pending is now the task of the system we call the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The class struggle persists; it's merely mutated. The current proletarian struggle is to frustrate the return of the old exploiters and to meld the scattered masses of unenlightened peasants into a single unit. The class struggle persists and our task is to subordinate everything to it.
Our communist morality is likewise subscribed to it. We say: morality is whatever tends to destroy the old exploiting society and to rally the working people around the proletariat for the construction of a new communist society. Communist morality is whatever helps this struggle and unites the toilers against all exploitation, against all petty private property, for petty property places what the bulk of society created in the hands of one person; and so in our country the land is by decree common property.2 But suppose I take a piece of this common property and grow on it twice as much grain as I need to and profiteer on the surplus? Suppose I argue that the more starvation there is the more money I shall make? Would I be behaving like a Communist then? No, I would be behaving like an exploiter, like a proprietor.3 That must be combated. If that is allowed to go on, everything will revert to the rule of the capitalists, to the rule of the bourgeoisie, as has happened more than once in previous revolutions. To prevent the restoration of capitalist and bourgeoisie rule we must not tolerate profiteering; we must not allow individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest; the working people must unite with the proletariat and form a communist society. This is the core task of the League and of communist youth organizations.
The old society was based on the principle: rob or be robbed; work for others or make others work for you; be a slave-owner or a slave. Naturally people brought up in such a society assimilate with their mother's milk, one might say, the psychology, the habit, the axiom: be either a master or a slave, a petty owner, petty employee, petty official, an intellectual; in short, a man who is concerned only with himself and does not care a rap for anybody else. If I work this plot of land I do not care a rap for anybody else; if others starve, all the better, I shall get more for my grain. If I have a job as a doctor, engineer, teacher or clerk I do not care a rap for anybody else. If I toady to and please the powers that be I may be able to keep my job, get on in life and even become a bourgeois.
A Communist cannot harbour that psychology or such sentiments.5 When workers and peasants proved through their efforts that they could defend themselves and create a new society it was the beginning of a new communist education, an education in struggling against the exploiters, an education allied with the proletariat against the self-seekers and petty proprietors, against the psychology and habits that say: "I seek my own profit and don't care a rap for anything else."
That is the reply to the question of how the young and rising generation should learn communism. They can learn communism only by blending every step of their studies, training or education with the continuous struggle waged by the proletarians and the working people against the old society of exploiters.
When people talk to us about morality we say: for a Communist all morality has for goal this united disciplined conscious mass struggle against the exploiters. We do not believe in an eternal morality and we expose the untruth of all the conventional fables about morality. The purpose of our morality is to lift human society to a higher level where the exploitation of labour is ended.
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To make this clearer to you I shall quote an example. We call ourselves Communists. What is a Communist? Communist is a Latin word. Communis is Latin for "common". Communist society is a society where everything, the land, the factories, are under common ownership and the people work in common. That is communism.
Is it possible to work in common if everyone works separately on his own plot of land?
Work in common cannot be implemented all at once. It's impossible. It does not drop from the skies. It comes through toil and suffering in the course of struggle. Old books are useless here; no one will believe them. Personal experience is paramount. When Kolchak and Denikin were advancing from Siberia and the South, the peasants were on their side. They did not like Bolshevism because the Bolsheviks took their grain at a fixed price. But when the peasants of Siberia and the Ukraine experienced the rule of Kolchak and Denikin they realized that they had only one choice: either go to the capitalists who would at once hand them over to enslavement by the landowners or follow the workers who would deliver them from that enslavement although, it's true, they did not promise a land flowing with milk and honey but enjoined iron discipline and steadfastness in an arduous struggle. When even an ignorant peasant confronted this choice he became a conscious adherent of communism after his severe schooling. Similar experiences must enrich the activities of the Young Communist League.4
I have answered the questions of what we must learn, what we must take from the old school and science. Now I shall try to answer the question of how this must be learnt. The answer is: only by inseparably linking every activity, training, education or teaching with the struggle of the working people against the exploiters.
I shall quote a few examples from the working experience of some youth organizations to illustrate what this communist training should look like.
Everybody is talking about abolishing illiteracy. You know that a communist society is impossible in an illiterate country. It is not enough for the Soviet government to issue an order or for the Party to issue a particular slogan or to assign a certain number of the best workers to the task. The young generation itself must pick up this burden. Communism means that the young men and women of the Youth League should say: this is our job; let's team up, go to the rural districts to abolish illiteracy and there will be no more illiterate youth in our country.
We are trying to get the rising generation to devote themselves to this task. You know that we cannot turn an ignorant illiterate Russia into a literate country overnight, but if the Youth League with its membership of 400,000 young men and women gets down to the job and works for everyone's benefit the League will be entitled to call itself a Young Communist League then.
It is not enough to study, another task of the League is to help young people free themselves from the burdens of illiteracy. Being a member of the Youth League means devoting one's labour and efforts to the common cause. That is what communist education means. Only in the course of similar work do young men and women become genuine Communists. Only if they obtain tangible results will they become Communists.
Take another example, the suburban vegetable gardens. Is that a real job or not? It's a task for the Young Communist League. People are starving. There is hunger in the factories. To vanquish starvation the vegetable gardens must be expanded, but farming is done the old way. Therefore more class-conscious elements must take up this task and then you will see vegetable gardens rise in number, grow in acreage and increase the yields. The Young Communist League must take an active part. Every League and League branch should have this as a duty.
The Young Communist League must be a shock force, willing to help in every job, displaying initiative and pluck. The League should let any worker see that it consists of people whose teachings perhaps he does not understand or right away believe but whose work and energy are pointing out to him the right road to follow.
If the Young Communist League fails to work in this manner in every field it will revert to the old bourgeois road. We must combine our education with the struggle of the working people against the exploiters so as to help the former accomplish the tasks set down by the teachings of communism.
The members of the League should devote every spare hour to improving the vegetable gardens or educating young people at some factory, and so on. We want to transform Russia from a poverty-stricken and wretched country to a wealthy one. The Young Communist League must mix its education, learning and training with the toil of workers and peasants so as not to shut itself off at schools or by simply reading communist books and pamphlets. Only by working side by side with workers and peasants can someone become a genuine Communist. The people must see in the Youth League literate members keen at their jobs. Then people will no longer view work in the old-fashioned way as they see us ditching the drill-ground style of the old school for conscious discipline, subbotniks and enrolment in every suburban farm to aid the population.
It's the task of the Young Communist League to provide assistance everywhere, in village or city block, in such matters as public hygiene or food distribution, for instance.
How was this done in the old capitalist society? Everybody worked only for himself and nobody cared a straw for the aged or the sick or whether housework was the sole duty of women (who were consequently in a condition of oppression and servitude). Whose business is it to combat this? The Youth Leagues'. They must say, "we shall change all this, we shall create detachments to help with public hygiene, distribute food, conduct systematic house-to-house inspections and work for the good of society." They must deploy their forces properly and demonstrate to everybody that labour must be organized. In the old society each family worked separately and labour was organized by the landowners and capitalists who oppressed the masses. However toilsome or messy a task it may be we must presently organize all labour in such a way that every worker and peasant can say: I am part of the great army of free labour and I can live out my life under a communist system without landowners and capitalists.
The generation of people who are now fifty years old cannot expect to see a communist society. We must assume that electrification of the country will require no less than ten years before our impoverished land can profit from the latest achievements of technology. This generation will be gone before then. But the fifteen-year-old generation will build and see a communist society. And so the generation of those who are now fifteen years old and will be living in a communist society ten or twenty years from now should educate itself in such a way that every day in every village and city they will tackle as a team the hands-on solution of some problem of labour, even the most trivial or easy. The success of communist construction will be assured when this attitude is replicated in every village, as communist emulation spreads and youth shows that it can work together as a team. This generation should digest that the entire purpose of their lives is to build a communist society.
The Young Communist League should train all young people in conscious and disciplined labour from an early age, so we may be confident that the problems now facing us will be solved. Only by having in mind the success of communist construction with every step you take and only by checking whether you have done all you can to be a politically-conscious body of toilers will the Young Communist League of half a million members succeed, be an army of labour and win universal respect.
(Stormy applause)
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5. SPEECH DELIVERED AT AN ALL-RUSSIA CONFERENCE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION WORKERS OF GUBERNIA AND UYEZD EDUCATION DEPARTMENTS ON NOVEMBER 3, 1920.1
Comrades, allow me to speak on several ideas. The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of People's Commissars dealt with some ideas on the creation of the Chief Committee for Political Education. I dealt with others...
I shall only say, for my part, that I was highly averse at first to any change in the former name of your institution, People's Commissariat of Education whose function was in my opinion to help people learn and teach others. A new name has now been chosen: Chief Committee for Political Education. My Soviet experience has taught me to regard titles as childish jokes; after all, any title is a joke in its own way. As this matter has already been decided, you must take this comment as nothing more than a personal remark. If the novelty is not confined to a mere change of label it is only to be welcomed. If we succeed in drawing new people into cultural and educational work, it won`t just be a change of title, and then we may reconcile ourselves to the "Soviet" penchant for sticking a label on every new undertaking and on every new institution: we will have accomplished more than ever before. The connection between education and our policy should be the chief inducement for making people join us in our cultural and educational work.
Along the whole line of our educational work we have to abandon the old standpoint that education should be non-political; we cannot conduct educational work detached from politics although that idea has always steeped bourgeois society. The very term, "apolitical" or "non-political" education, is a piece of bourgeois hypocrisy, nothing but humbuggery practised on the masses, 99% of whom are humiliated and degraded by the rule of the church, private property and the like. That is in fact how the bourgeoisie deceives the masses in every bourgeois country. There the more important a political apparatus is, the less independent of capital or capital's policy it is. In all bourgeois states the connection between the political apparatus and education is very strong though that society cannot acknowledge it frankly. Withal that society indoctrinates the masses through the church and the institution of private property. One of our basic tasks is to contrapose our own truth to bourgeois "truth" and win its recognition.
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We must overcome resistance from the capitalists in all spheres, not only the military and political but also the ideological, the most entrenched and hardest to overcome.
It is the duty of our educational workers to re-educate the masses. Their patent interest and thirst for information about communism are our guarantee of success in this field too. Perhaps not as quickly as at the war front or perhaps only after great difficulties and even occasional setbacks. Still we shall ultimately win.
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6. THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR (IV).
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Tachanka (1937) |
Russian song about Wrangel |
London: The Ukrainians have taken Odessa during the last hours of the morning.
London: Lenin has arrived. He will hold a talk with the president of the International Financial Conference.
London: The hostilities between Russians and Japanese ended on the 25th. The Russo-Japanese commission has arrived in Kabaro to draw up the armistice.
Court martial. The court martial of the ministers of Admiral Kolckak has gotten underway. The prosecutor solicits the death penalty for every one.
London: A serious peasant uprising occurred recently in south Russia. The repression ordered by the Government of the Soviets was "extremely bloody." More than a hundred peasants were slain. The fighting in the villages was "horrendous"; many localities were obliterated by the bombardment employed to quell the uprising.
London: The British government has signed a postal agreement with Russia. This constitutes a first step toward the recognition of the Soviets.
Brussels: The Belgian Government leans toward a renewal of diplomatic and trade relations with Russia.
Paris: The Bolsheviks have suppressed Tartar hostility in bloody fashion; five thousand men, women and children were murdered by the Bolshevik hordes.
Copenhaguen: The presence of troops preparing to launch a counter-revolutionary movement is conspicuous in several Russian counties. The movement is led by a colonel of the old Imperial Army. Furthermore the movement will send delegates to Paris to get the Allies' approval before an offensive is launched.
Warsaw: Our detachments yielding to the pressure of the enemy had to regroup south of the Old River, letting the adversary occupy the "Mitchalisyei" (?) sector. An important enemy group also occupied Molodechno, pressing the attack along the railway line to "Smebgene" (?) and "Listopadow" (?). The Lithuanian detachments of White Russia have repelled repeated Red attacks heroically.
Paris: News from Kovno (Lithuania) say that the Bolsheviks will march on Warsaw with three columns. No power will intervene because they will halt their advance on the Polish border unilaterally.
Moscow: The Red Army has gained a great advantage southwest of "Credno" (?). They seized heavy guns, matériel and made many war prisoners. One enemy Cavalry regiment was annihilated. There is heavy fighting in Crimea.
The Soviets are expecting Poland's capitulation at any moment.
Warsaw: A delegation of Polish parliamentarians headed to the front to meet with representatives of the Soviets and negotiate an armistice. The fate of the parliamentarians is unknown and it is feared that the Reds may seize them and use them as hostages.
Stockholm: Famine assails Russia and the proceedings of terror have intensified. Soviet military hordes engage in mass shootings. Troops stab the people with their bayonets without compassion, thinking that any hint of rebellion constitutes a reactionary movement in light of the new turn that the offensive against Poland has taken.
London: The British government has issued an official declaration of neutrality in the war between Russia and Poland.
Fine American words. The American Secretary of State received a Polish delegation seeking support from the United States. He expressed his sympathy and the wish that Poland be victorious.
Warsaw: Polish troops continue routing the Red troops, which retreat suffering many casualties.
Berlin: Reports from Moscow say that recent Bolshevik defeats are the result of a powerful conspiracy by Tsarist officers who betrayed the Reds by disobeying an order to concentrate their Cavalry on the Warsaw front. Rudpiny in Lemberg also refused to obey. The Tsarists were hoping that the disaster would spark a revolution in Russia. The reports add that the conspirators colluded with Wrangel.
The Bolshevik disaster. In view of the colossal rout that the Poles have inflicted on the Red Army the Government of the Soviets has sent reinforcements to the Polish front but these have rebelled and declined to fight. Meanwhile the Poles advance methodically and secure the positions they have conquered.
Moscow: We have repelled several enemy attempts to advance. The Red Army retreats in orderly fashion, has boundless reserves of men and matériel at the ready. General Wrangel is in a difficult position in Crimea, forced to defend.
Helsingfors: A radiogram informed that a "horrendous explosion" shook the battleship Red Dawn. The vessel sank at the naval base of Kronstadt. A hundred and fifty crewmen perished.
Kovno: The Poles inflicted "enormous" losses on the Lithuanians near "Anquiton" (?) Channel. Meanwhile a general mobilization proceeds apace in Russia.
The American Red Cross has sent seven hundred and eighty-one Russian children to France to proceed to their repatriation.
These kids, four hundred and thirty boys and three hundred and thirty-one girls, are from Moscow and Petrograd. Their families sent them away to the safety of Silesia (Poland) at the start of the Russian Revolution. Winter came and they could not return to their families because the war blocked their route.
Their situation was deplorable: out of money, clothes, lodging.
The Omsk Government in southeastern Siberia asked the Commission of the American Red Cross to take care of the children. They were taken to Vladivostok in three special trains, a trip lasting three weeks. There they were embarked on the Japanese steamship Josuel Maru, which is scheduled to arrive in the port of Bordeaux toward the end of the current month.
Colonel Emerson of the American Red Cross has set up a school camp in the suburbs of Bordeaux. There the Russian children will be housed, fed, clothed and schooled until they can return safely to their families. Those children unable to return will after a prudent wait be inscribed in French orphanages where they will learn a trade.
The children who three years ago departed Moscow and Petrograd bidding a good-bye to their parents which turned out to be so gripping and tragic have their names listed on the bulletin board of the main office of the American Red Cross in Paris.
Warsaw: The Reds continue being repelled in Lithuania and in other regions.
Vladivostok: A seizure of grain triggered bloody skirmishes between the troops and the people in Irkurst.
The Bolsheviks murdered a thousand five hundred Polish prisoners of war. The news caused an "enormous" impression.
Paris: Reports from Helsingfors state that a serious mutiny broke out on the cruiser Erasnaia after docking at Kronstadt. Several warships anchored in the harbour intervened to quell the mutiny.
Copenhaguen: The news is confirmed that a revolution has broken out in Moscow.
Helsingfors: The official daily of the Soviets Government publishes the number of executions ordered by the revolutionary tribunal of Moscow from July 20 to August 21. That number is 7,182.
General Wrangel has entered Sevastopol. The evacuation of the city continues. The Bolshevik cavalry flees.
Constantinople: General Wrangel evacuated Sevastopol. He departed on a warship with many other soldiers. Another vessel carries many wounded.
Berlin: Reports from Warsaw say that nineteen out of the thirty divisions deployed against Wrangel are being moved to northwest Russia.
| And Now For Something Completely Different |