The claim of Bolshevism that it is a step forward toward democracy has not been justified by the facts. The essence of democracy is the equality of all men before the law and the right of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bolshevism in practice has been the exact antithesis of this idea. It has disfran chised and oppressed a large part of the Russian people, and that the most in telligent and progressive part. It has put a premium on ignorance and a pen alty on brains. Professional men and business men have been enslaved. The Czar has indeed been dethroned, but a many-headed tyrant, the proletariat, has been enthroned in his place. And even this is only a fictitious rule, for the pro letariat itself is mercilessly tyrannized over by Lenine and Trotzky and their associates. No man's house is his castle. There is no such thing as the liberty of the press. Life itself is only held on the tenure of servile, instant, unquestioning obedience to the despots who have re placed the Romanoffs. ? Cunning casuistry is used to explain and justify these departures from gen uine democratic principles. Thus N. Bukharin, a Bolshevist leader, in a pam phlet on "The Program of the Bolshe vist Party" elaborates its principles. Since it is the aim of the workmen and peasants to wipe out the bourgeoisie, he states, this class must be denied all great liberties, including the right of suffrage. Admitting the charges of suppression of the press, of arbitrary arrests, of the denial of the right of free assemblage, of violation, assassination, and tyrannical methods, the author draws a distinction between the press of the bourgeoisie and that of the workingmen, between gather ings of friends of the Government and those opposed to it, between strikes of laborers against capitalists and strikes of bourgeois intellectuals against the pro letariat. The only question is as to what class is using these weapolls and against what class they are directed. The con clusion drawn is that liberty of person, speech, press, and assemblage is the right only of those who favor the existing order and should be denied to those who oppose it. To those who assert that that kind of "liberty" is not worth having, a bullet is the sufficient answer.
An invasion of personal liberty that tended more perhaps than any single previous measure to merge the individual in the mass was the mobilization of labor on military lines in the early part of 1920.
The laborer was not henceforth to own himself, to sell his services to whom he chose in the labor market or to choose his own place of residence. Trotzky was frankness itself in discussing the plan. Under the proposed regime, he admitted, each workman was to be a soldier of labor who could not freely dispose of himself. If an order were given him to move to another position, he would have to obey it. If he disobeyed, he would be a deserter and be punished as such. The masses of workmen were to be moved about, ordered and sent from place to place like soldiers. Compulsion, he de clared, had always existed in some form or other; under capitalistic forms of gov ernment, men had been driven by the blows of economic necessity and the urge of hunger; under the labor militarization plan, they would simply be sent from factory to factory, not by their own will and consent, but in obedience to a single economic plan.
To explain the matter further and emphasize the necessity of the new policy, Lenine amplified the subject in a letter that he addressed in March to all branches of the Communist party.
' The social aspects of the theory have come in for severe criticism, especially the attitude taken by it toward the home. It is alleged that the sacredness of that institution has been profaned, and that a state of affairs prevails that is es sentially the practice of the doctrine of free love. It is but fair to say that the so-called "nationalization of women," which was alleged against the system, has not been sustained by the facts. There seems to be little doubt that in the early days of the Soviet Government, two or three local Soviets promulgated de crees in their districts establishing this revolting perversion, but the experiment was short-lived and has not received the sanction of the ruling authorities. Az
was pointed out, however, in the United States Senate report previously referred to, a condition exists as to marriage and divorce that destroys the sanctity of the marriage relation and can be made a ve hicle of unbounded license. The mar riage bond can be severed at the merest whim of either party to the contract and there is no limit to the successive unions that may be contracted. It practically establishes a state of free love.
Bolshevism is the avowed enemy of re ligion. Atheism is taught to the chil dren. All church property has been con fiscated, and the clergy and all others connected with religious institutions have been disfranchised and deprived of the right to occupy public positions. The Sunday school has been suppressed and all teaching of religious doctrines in public, either in schools or institutions of any kind, is expressly forbidden. The recognition of a Supreme Being in judicial oaths has been prohibited. Un der the old regime, it was obligatory on every newspaper or periodical printed in Russia, on Easter Sunday, to carry as a headline, "Christ is Risen." On Easter Sunday, 1918, the Bolshevist papers sub stituted the headline "One Hundred Years Ago To-day, Karl Marx Was Born." As regards secular education, the Bol shevists have made some progress in re ducing the immense proportion of illit erates among the Russian people. Schools have been established in all parts of the former empire. A decree issued by the Government reads as follows: "The whole population of the Soviet Republic must be able to read and write. All Russians between the ages of 8 and 50 who are illiterate are bound hereby to learn to read and write in the Russian language or in their original tongue as they please. All literate persons may be called upon to teach the illiterate. The period in which illiteracy is to be abol ished shall be fixed by the municipal or provincial Soviet in each district. For adult citizens undergoing instruction in reading and writing, the working day is abridged by two hours during the entire educational period. Citizens evading duties specified by this decree or in any way interfering with its provisions are subject to trial by the revolutionary tribunal." Large sums have been devoted by the Bolshevist Government to spreading propaganda with a view to undermining and overthrowing other governments. They have had paid emissaries at work in Sweden, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States, as well as in Brazil and Argentina in South America. In many of these countries the Bolshevist agents, when they could be detected, have been arrested and de ported. They have been dangerously near to success in Hungary, where for a time a Communist regime, modeled closely upon its Russian prototype, held control of the Government; in Germany where the Spartacist outbreaks were largely subsidized by Russian funds, and to a lesser degree in other European countries. In the United States their activities were quelled, temporarily at least, by the rounding up and deportation of over two hundred of the most danger ous agitators. The story of their en deavors will be narrated at greater length in the articles bearing on the vari ous countries concerned.
It is in the East, however, that the wide spread of Bolshevist doctrines has caused the greatest uneasiness and alarm. The unrest among Mohammedan populations was seized upon by Lenine and his associates as a lever for provok ing revolution in the East, with the view of ultimately reaching India and over turning British rule in that country. Starting among the Mohammedan Tatars of Russia itself, the movement spread rapidly to Turkestan, Afghanistan, and Persia, even infecting the new Republics of Georgia and Azerbaidjan, and coming close to the gateway of India. An Afghan mission was sent to Moscow to avow its solidarity with Russia on the principles of Bolshevism. Even in China and Japan Bolshevist emissaries are working with fervor and a degree of suc cess that threaten the peace and security of those governments, unless effective steps are taken to render the efforts fruitless.