Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
"There is iron law and order all over Russia, neither anarchy nor
chaos being visible.... With the recent abolition of the death
penalty the Red terror, long since bleached to pale pink, came to a
definite end. Such is the omnipotence of the Soviets that it is no
longer necessary for them to terrorize their opponents into
obedience."
Thus horrible butcheries are no longer necessary because no one longer
dares to resist. All liberty, all self-government, all self-initiative
have been crushed in the iron vise of dictated policy. This is the case,
as Eyre says, "twenty-seven months after the social revolution gripped
the nation in a clutch of steel that never has been relaxed since." Is
not such mental, moral and spiritual death a greater calamity than
physical death?
Sixthly, the common people, crushed under this experimental Socialist
Juggernaut, are starving to death. In the article last cited, in the
"World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
"The food problem is hideously acute, yet not quite so critical as
at the outset of the winter. In Moscow, Petrograd and other
industrial centres some 8,000,000 human beings, of whom only a tiny
fraction are Bolsheviki, are slowly but surely starving to death.
There are abundant food stocks in the south and east, but they
cannot be carried in sufficient quantity over the semi-paralyzed
railroads....
"Trotzky himself defined the industrial situation as a race between
economic reconstruction and reversion to savagery."
Seventhly, craving for food is one of the things which make it
impossible to shut out the food speculator, whose extortion at least
helps to prolong life. As Eyre says:
"City and country food speculation, which the dictatorship thus far
confesses its inability to suppress or even control, is fast
developing a new capitalist class right under the Communists'
noses. One of the most painful sights in Russia is some pale, thin,
tottering old woman paying out more than she earns in a week for a
few lumps of sugar bought from a well-fed trader from the country
in the Sukfarevka, Moscow's open air market place."
Eighthly, the common people are nearly as cold as they are hungry. In
the cable printed in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
"Fuel is slightly less scarce than it was two months ago. The lack
of heat, however, is helping the food shortage to increase the
mortality rate, which is likely to attain 30 per cent in Moscow
before spring."
In the ninth place, disease stalks through the land, hand in hand with
cold and famine. The article just cited contains the following by Eyre:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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