Isaac McBride - Barbarous Soviet Russia

BARBAROUS SOVIET RUSSIA

MR. AVERAGE MANS IMPRESSION OF THE MEANING OF CERTAIN RUSSIAN WORDS

Copr. Life Pub. Co.

Acknowledgment is hereby made to the Christian Science Monitor, Universal Service (Hearst), and Asia Magazine for courtesies extended, in using some of the material that appeared in those publications.

Of the five weeks I spent in Soviet Russia ten days were spent in Moscow and eight in Petrograd. The remainder of the time I traveled along the Western Front, from the Esthonian border to Moghilev, with leisurely stops at Pskov, Vitebsk, Polotzk, Smolensk, and numerous small towns. I tried to see as much as possible of this vast and unknown land in the short time at my disposal, and I tried especially to check up from first-hand observation some of the many things I had heard on the outside. I also tried to test the truth of what was told me in Russia itself,to find visible evidence of the fairness of the claims made. Some popular fancies were quickly dispelled. Disproof of others came sometimes in vividly concrete fashion.

Soviet Russia is not unanimously Bolshevist, any more than the United States has ever been unanimously Democratic or Republican, or Prohibitionist. The speculators are not Bolshevist, nor are the irreconcilable bourgeoisie, nor the Monarchists, nor the Cadets nor the Menshevists, nor the Social Revolutionists and Anarchists. Nevertheless Russia stands overwhelmingly in support of the Soviet Government, just as the United States stands overwhelmingly in support of Congress and the Constitution. There are many who are opposed to Soviet rule in its present form, and this opposition is not confined to the old bourgeoisie and the anarchists. It prevails to a certain extentvariously estimatedamong the peasants. But it is an opposition which ceases at the military frontier of the nation. I found many critics of Soviet rule within Soviet Russia, but they insisted that whatever changes are to be made in the government must be made without foreign interference. At present their first interest is the defence of Russian soil and the Russian state against foreign assault and foreign interference.

The peasant opposition is mainly due to the deficiencies in transportation and the shortage of manufactured articles. They blame this on the government, much as other peoples lay their troubles to the government. The peasants are reluctant to give up their grain for paper money which is of no value to them unless it will buy shoes and cloth and salt and tools,and of these necessities there are not enough to go round. While the blockade continued the government was striving vigorously to overcome the shortage of manufactured articles brought about by the blockade, knowing that this alone would satisfy the peasants. They claimed to have made encouraging progress, especially in the production of agricultural machinery, of which they were trying to have the largest possible supply ready by spring.

Whatever the state of mind of the peasants, they are certainly better off materially than the city workers. In all the villages I visited I found the peasants faring much better than were the Commissars in Moscow. They had plentiful supplies of good rye bread on their tables, with butter and eggs and milk,almost unknown luxuries in the cities. Their cattle looked well fed and well cared for. It was harvest time and the farmers were gathering in their crops. They told me that the season had been exceptionally bountiful.

I learned after my return to America that there had been a great deal of agitation among the upholders of the old Russian order in this country last summer and early fall over the pogroms which were said to have been carried on by the Bolsheviki. I found nothing but cooperation and sympathy and understanding between the Russians and the Jews. There was no discrimination whatsoever, as far as I could see. Jews and Russians share alike in the councils of the Soviet Government and in the factories and workshops.

In fact I found nothing but the utmost kindness and good will towards the whole world, all through Russia. "If they will only let us alone they have nothing to fear from us,not even propaganda,"was said to me over and over again. There were no threats made against the interventionists. The Soviet forces merely went ahead and demonstrated their strength and ability to defend themselves, and left the record of their achievements to speak for itself.

Isaac McBride.

Barbarous Soviet Russia

You will never return alive. They will slaughter you. They will rob you of everything. They will take your clothes from your very back.

With stubborn conviction the dapper young Lettish gentleman spoke to me as he attempted to change my mind about going into Soviet Russia. He was attached to the Foreign Information Bureau of Latvia. He had been in Riga all through the Bolshevist rgime, from November, 1918, to May, 1919, when the German army of occupation in the Baltic provinces drove them out. There was nothing he could not tell me about that rgime. He was especially eager to impart his experiences to foreign journalists.