The Terror

The development we have just sketched did not, of course, arise in accordance with the intentions of the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, it was really something, quite different from what they wanted, and they sought by all means in their power to arrest its development. But in the end they had to resort to the same recipe from which the Bolshevik regime from the very beginning had worked, i.e., to the arbitrary force of a few dictators, whom it was impossible to affect by the slightest criticism. The Regiment of Terror thus became the inevitable result of Communist methods. It is the desperate attempt to avoid the consequences of its own methods.

Among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, Terrorism, which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale execution, is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all. It is that which gave rise to the greatest hatred against the Bolsheviks. Yet this is really no more than their tragic fate, not their fault – in so far as it is permissible to speak of fault or blame in so enormous an historical upheaval as we are now experiencing. In any case, at bottom any fault or blame can only be a personal one. Whoever sets about to discuss a question of culpability must set about to examine the defiance of certain moral laws on the part of individual persons; since the “will” taken in its strictest sense can only be the will of individual persons. A mass, a class, a nation cannot in reality will. It lacks the necessary faculties for such. Therefore it cannot sin. A mass of people or an organisation can act universally. Nevertheless, the motives of each person actively concerned may be very different. But it is the motives which form the determining factor in the question of apportioning culpability.

The motives of the Bolsheviks were certainly of the best. Right from the beginning of their supremacy they showed themselves, to be filled with human ideals, which had their origin in the conditions of the proletariat as a class. Their first decree was concerned with the abolition of the death penalty; and yet if we would consider the question of their culpability, we should find that this came to light at the very time when this decree was promulgated, namely, when they decided, in order to gain power, to sacrifice the principles of democracy and of historical materialism, for which they during many long years had fought with unswerving determination. Their culpability comes to light at the time when they, like the Bakunists of Spain in the year 1873, proclaimed the “immediate and complete emancipation of the working-classes,” in spite of the backward state of Russia; and with this end in view, since the democracy had not fulfilled their expectations, established their own dictatorship in the name of “The dictatorship of the proletariat.” It is here where the culpability can be looked for. From the moment they started on this path they could not avoid terrorism. The idea of a peaceful and yet real dictatorship without violence is an illusion.

The instruments of terrorism were the revolutionary tribunals and the extraordinary commissions, about which we have already spoken. Both have carried on fearful work, quite apart from the so-called military punitive expeditions, the victims of which are, incalculable. The number of victims of the extraordinary commissions will never be easy to ascertain. In any case they number their thousands. The lowest estimate puts the number at 6,000; others give the total as double that number, others treble; and over and above these are numberless cases of people who have been immured alive or ill-treated and tortured to death.

Those who defend Bolshevism do so by pointing out that their opponents, the White Guards of the Finns, the Baltic barons, the counter-revolutionary Tsarist generals and admirals have not done any better. But is it a justification of theft to show that others steal? In any case, these others do not go against their own principles, if they deliberately sacrifice human life in order to maintain their power; whereas the Bolsheviks most certainly do. For they thus become unfaithful to the principles of the sanctity of human life, which they themselves openly proclaimed, and by means of which they have themselves become raised to power and justified in their actions. Do we not indeed all equally oppose these barons and generals just because they held human life so cheap and regarded it as a mere means for their own ends? It will be urged, perhaps, that it is the object in view that makes the difference; that the higher object in view should sanctify means, which, in the case of mere seekers after power, become infamous and wicked because of their evil ends. But the end does not justify every means, but only such as are in agreement with that means. A means which is in opposition to the end cannot be sanctified by that end. One should just as little strive to defend one’s principles by surrendering them, as to defend one’s life by sacrificing what gives to that life content and purpose. Good intentions may excuse those who have recourse to wrong means; but these means nevertheless remain reprehensible, the more so the greater the damage that may be caused by them.

But not even the aim of the Bolsheviks is free from objection. Its immediate endeavour is to preserve the militarist bureaucratic apparatus of power, which it has created; but most certainly this should be done by opposition to the corruption that has made itself manifest within that apparatus.

In the Pravda of April 1st, 1919, Prof. Dukelski insisted that Bolshevism and the government institutions should be cleansed of all the rogues and adventurers who had thrown in their lot with Communism, and who were simply exploiting it for their own criminal ends. Whereupon Lenin replied: “The writer of this letter demands that we should cleanse our Party of the adventurers and rogues – a perfectly justifiable demand which we ourselves have for some time past been making and have carried out. The rogues and adventurers we shoot down, and we shall continue to shoot them down. Yet, in order to carry out more expeditiously and more thoroughly this cleansing process, we need the help of sincere and unbiased intelligence.”

Shooting – that is the Alpha and Omega of Communist government wisdom. Yet does not Lenin himself call upon the “intelligentsia” to help him in the struggle against the rogues and the adventurers? Certainly he does; only he withholds from them the one and only means that can help, namely, the freedom of the Press. The control exercised by the Press, in every respect free and unimpeded, alone can keep in check those rogues and adventurers who inevitably fasten on to any Government which is unlimited in its powers and uncontrolled. Indeed, often through the very lack of the freedom of the Press these parasites thrive the more.

Yet the Russian Press is at the present day entirely in the hands of those government institutions in which the rogues and adventurers have found their place. And what guarantee has Lenin, under the present circumstances, that these very rogues and adventurers shall not somehow work their way into the revolutionary tribunals and the extraordinary commissions, and will not cause the sincere and unbiased “intelligentsia” to be shot down with their aid? It is just the extraordinary commissions corruption which have the most absolute and supreme power. They are entirely free from every form of control, i.e., they work for the most part under conditions that are actually favourable to corruption.

The Revolutionary Tribunal of 1793, even at that time, possessed an unheard-of degree of arbitrary power. The guarantees in favour of the rights of those who were indicted were at a minimum. Nevertheless, the Tribunal at that time did at least function in public, so that a certain control of its activity was possible. But the Extraordinary Commissions of the Soviet Republic deliberate in secret, without any sort of guarantee that the accused shall have their due rights. For it is not absolutely imperative that the accused himself should be heard, let alone his witnesses. A mere denunciation, a mere suspicion suffices to remove him.

This evil took on such enormous dimensions that it had to be abolished. It was therefore determined that these Commissions should no longer proceed to execution without examination and judgment. But despotism is so much of the very essence of dictatorship that it cannot be abolished without abolishing dictatorship as well. Hence this particular decree becomes itself annulled, by reason of an exception which admits summary execution in the case of “obviously counter-revolutionary conspiracy.” Thus naturally the door is wide open for every kind of arbitrary execution! If, however, this decision is observed within the proper bounds, it merely succeeds in protecting the robbers and the rogues; but not the sincere and unbiased “intelligentsia,” through whose appearance the Government institutions are to be cleansed. For what is such a cleansing process if it is not a counter-revolution? The slightest expression of discontent is threatened with the same severity as is any form of roguery. And the threat is not rendered abortive by any countermeasure, since it relates to matters in which the sincere communist as well as the rogues have equal interest. For in their criticism of the Soviet regime they both work hand in hand. Hence any modification is out of the question. Thus, quite recently, the “All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Opposing the Counter-Revolution” made the following proclamation:-

“A series of revolts, which have broken out recently, proves that the laurels acquired by Krassnoff, as well as the Socialist revolutionaries of the Left Wing and the Mensheviks of the Left Wing, have not caused them to cease their activity. It is their exclusive aim to undermine our army (Briansk, Samara, and Smolensk), to destroy our industry (Petrograd and Tula), as well as our means of transport and food supply through railway strikes. The `All Russian Extraordinary Commission’ declares herewith that it will make no difference whatever between the White Guards among Krassnoff’s troops and the White Guards belonging to the party of the Mensheviks and of the social revolutionaries of the Left Wing. The chastising hand of the Extraordinary Commission will work with equal severity in the one case as well as in the other. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks who have been arrested by us will be held as hostages, and their fate will depend entirely upon the attitude of both parties.” – President of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, F. Jershinski (taken from the Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Number 59, March 1st, 1919).

Hence, because in the army there are signs of dissolution visible, and because discontent is growing among the industrial workers and the railway employees, the leading elements of the non-Bolshevik Socialists are to be arrested, so that they may be summarily shot at the sign of any further proletarian opposition. The quelling of a discontented proletariat – that is the sublime object with which it is attempted to sanctify the fatuous means of wholesale executions in Russia. It cannot possibly turn economic failure into a success. It can only lead to the possibility that the fall of Bolshevism will not be accepted by the masses of Russia in the same way as the fall of the Second Paris Commune was received by the whole of the Socialist proletariat at that time; but rather as the fall of Robespierre of the 9th Thermidor 1794 was received by the whole of France, namely, as salvation from some heavy load, and by no means as a defeat felt with intense pain and sorrow.