Communism -- Soviet Union; Goldman, Emma, 1869-1940; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Personal narratives, American
Both these criticisms would be justified had I come to Russia expecting
to find Anarchism realized, or if I were to maintain that revolutions
can be made peacefully. Anarchism to me never was a mechanistic
arrangement of social relationships to be imposed upon man by political
scene-shifting or by a transfer of power from one social class to
another. Anarchism to me was and is the child, not of destruction, but
of construction--the result of growth and development of the conscious
creative social efforts of a regenerated people. I do not therefore
expect Anarchism to follow in the immediate footsteps of centuries of
despotism and submission. And I certainly did not expect to see it
ushered in by the Marxian theory.
I did, however, hope to find in Russia at least the beginnings of the
social changes for which the Revolution had been fought. Not the fate
of the individual was my main concern as a revolutionist. I should have
been content if the Russian workers and peasants as a whole had derived
essential social betterment as a result of the Bolshevik régime.
Two years of earnest study, investigation, and research convinced me
that the great benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism
exist only on paper, painted in glowing colours to the masses of Europe
and America by efficient Bolshevik propaganda. As advertising wizards
the Bolsheviki excel anything the world had ever known before. But
in reality the Russian people have gained nothing from the Bolshevik
experiment. To be sure, the peasants have the land; not by the grace
of the Bolsheviki, but through their own direct efforts, set in motion
long before the October change. That the peasants were able to retain
the land is due mostly to the static Slav tenacity; owing to the
circumstance that they form by far the largest part of the population
and are deeply rooted in the soil, they could not as easily be torn
away from it as the workers from their means of production.
The Russian workers, like the peasants, also employed direct action.
They possessed themselves of the factories, organized their own shop
committees, and were virtually in control of the economic life of
Russia. But soon they were stripped of their power and placed under the
industrial yoke of the Bolshevik State. Chattel slavery became the lot
of the Russian proletariat. It was suppressed and exploited in the name
of something which was later to bring it comfort, light, and warmth.
Try as I might I could find nowhere any evidence of benefits received
either by the workers or the peasants from the Bolshevik régime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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