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 \ Christianity and World Problems: No. 2 
 
 RUSSIA 
 
 A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 BY 
 
 SHERWOOD EDDY 
 
 AUTHOR OF “FACING THE CRISIS,” ‘'EVERYBODY’S WORLD, 
 “THE NEW WORLD OF LABOR,’ ETC. 
 
 NEW 'HEJT YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 Ten Cents Net 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 
 
 BY GEORGE H, DORAN COMPANY 
 
 RUSSIA! A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 -C - 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction ..... 
 
 Russia a Warning 
 Russia a Challenge . . . 
 
 Russia’s Past ..... 
 
 The Revolution .... 
 Military Communism 
 The New Economic Policy 
 The Present Government . 
 Russian Industry 
 Education and Religion in Russia 
 The Final Challenge .... 
 
PUBLISHER’S NOTE 
 
 This pamphlet seeks impartially to state the facts ob¬ 
 served in a recent trip to Russia, allowing the reader to 
 form his own conclusions. Where views are expressed 
 they are purely personal and do not represent those of any 
 organization. The pamphlet contains, with additional 
 material, brief selections from Chapters IV and IX of the 
 author’s book “The New World of Labor/' published 
 by George H. Doran Company, 240 pages, $1.50. Table 
 of Contents: Chapters I, Industrial China; II, The New 
 Japan; III, India’s Industrial Revolution; IV, The Re¬ 
 construction of Russia; V, The Evolution of Labor in the 
 West; VI, The British Labor Movement; VII, Labor in 
 Europe; VIII, American Labor Problems; IX, The Chal¬ 
 lenge of a New World of Labor. 
 
 iv 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 At the entrance of Petrograd, the former capital of Russia, 
 there stands in the public square the vulgar, squat and bulg¬ 
 ing statue of the royal autocrat, Alexander III. No statue in 
 the world so embodies the insolence of autocracy. Instead of 
 destroying this statue the Bolshevist leaders of the Russian 
 Workers Revolution of November 7, 1917, with a fine sense 
 of humor have carefully preserved it and have placed under 
 it the following significant inscription: “My father and son 
 during their lifetime paid the price of their tyranny (both 
 were assassinated), while I stand here as a miserable scare¬ 
 crow to zvarn all nations of the sin of autocracy.” All Rus¬ 
 sia, as well as this statue, stands before the world today both 
 as a warning and a challenge. She is a warning not to drift 
 blindly, as her former government did, to its impending 
 doom; she is a challenge to every nation to put its house in 
 order before it is too late. 
 
 With the thought in mind of studying the significance of 
 the present movement we visited Russia. Concerning no 
 other country has there been such a flood of propaganda, both 
 red and white, such exaggeration and distortion of fact in the 
 interest of passion and prejudice. In no other country did 
 we find it so difficult simply to see and to tell the truth objec¬ 
 tively. For instance, as we crossed the border we saw the 
 red flag and the soldiers of the red army. To one traveler 
 in our compartment they suggested the red of bloodshed and 
 the terror, to another the great principle of the blood of a 
 common humanity of one brotherhood. The determining 
 factor was the attitude of the observer. It is so throughout 
 Russia. Some can see nothing good, and others nothing bad, 
 because of their prejudice. 
 
 Our one desire has been to keep an open mind and to be 
 fair; to record impartially and objectively what we saw. 
 During our visit, from Riga through Russia and back to the 
 Polish border, we moved everywhere with perfect freedom. 
 We went anywhere alone by night or day, chose our own 
 interpreters, selected the factories we wished to inspect, saw 
 everything we desired and talked with everybody we wished, 
 whether they were friends or foes of the present regime. 
 Nowhere have we been accorded greater kindness, courtesy 
 and freedom of movement; or met more frank, fearless and 
 honest men than some of the leaders we interviewed. We 
 
 5 
 
6 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 criticized freely the methods of the government and told the 
 leaders the evils we observed in their system. 
 
 With all its faults the present government impressed us 
 as better than the hideous regime of old Czarist Russia 
 which we found a decade ago. Instead of the hunger and 
 famine in Moscow, “the city of the dead,” of two years 
 before, it is now stirring with new life and its population has 
 increased from one to two millions. Shops are open, private 
 business is thriving, buying and selling in industry and agri¬ 
 culture are in full swing; everywhere streets are being paved, 
 houses repaired and painted and life is quickened by a new 
 hope. 
 
 We attended the great All-Russian Agricultural and Home 
 Industries Exhibition where the whole life of Russia is 
 focused and visualized from the Arctic to the semi-tropics, 
 from the Esquimaux of the Pacific to Turkestan and the 
 borders of India. We saw their exhibits of industry, agri¬ 
 culture, peasant life and the working of their great Co-op¬ 
 eratives. We observed their demonstrations and tourist 
 parties for nearly a million peasants brought in from all the 
 Russias to be instructed in the use of tractors and modern 
 machinery, for demonstrations in methods of farming, the 
 conduct of community centers, social welfare and training 
 for citizenship. 
 
 With all its mistakes, which are many, we found an actual 
 government composed for the most part of workingmen, 
 administering with growing success the most extensive state 
 in the world. And they are in a measure economically suc¬ 
 ceeding after facing for six years probably the most colossal 
 combination of difficulties which ever confronted a single 
 people in the same period of time. They have had to over¬ 
 come the inheritance of a corrupt Czarist regime, the greatest 
 loss of any nation in the World War, a world blockade and 
 two revolutions. They have had to meet allied invasion from 
 without and counter revolutionary white armies within, 
 fighting at one time on twelve fronts. They have had to 
 contend with the strike and sabotage of almost their whole 
 bureaucracy and united bourgeois opposition. Finally, they 
 have had to pass in turn through chaos, bankruptcy and 
 awful famine. 
 
 Despite the almost daily prophecy of their speedy down¬ 
 fall, and their widespread unpopularity, they have emerged 
 from all this not only more firmly entrenched than ever, but 
 apparently the most enduring cabinet or party in Europe 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 7 
 
 today. The Conservative Baldwin Government in Britain, 
 and that of Poincare in France, Stresemann in Germany and 
 Mussolini in Italy give promise of falling long before that in 
 Russia. We refer in this connection to the government as 
 enduring, in the British sense of the cabinet or party in 
 power, not to the social order. Nearly all responsible leaders 
 in Russia agree that the people are utterly sick of further 
 war, or revolution, or foreign intervention which proved such 
 a miserable failure and that there is no other party in sight 
 that could preserve law and order in Russia. 
 
 Now let us face the facts. Here is a movement of vast 
 possible significance for good or evil, which must be studied 
 and interpreted if we are to understand the present interna¬ 
 tional situation. 
 
 As we endeavored to focus our thought and sum up our 
 conflicting impressions of Russia, which is today such a 
 strange mixture of good and evil, we found that they could 
 not be reduced to a single formula. Rather we were forced 
 to note the things wherein Russia constitutes a warning to 
 the world, and those in which she is a challenge to other 
 nations. Here was a nation which had suffered centuries of 
 oppression, at the hands both of the State and of the Church; 
 under autocracy, aristocracy and plutocracy, under a system 
 which was the antithesis of liberty, equality and fraternity. 
 The leaders who rose to throw off the tyranny of this system 
 sought earnestly to establish a new social order of righteous¬ 
 ness. But in destroying the evil of the old order they swept 
 away also much that was good. They sought to set up on a 
 vast scale a government of the working masses, by the work¬ 
 ers, for the workers. But in their determination to abolish 
 the tyranny of the rule of the bourgeois class they finally felt 
 themselves driven to a party dictatorship which denied liberty 
 to the rest of the people. In seeking to abolish the super¬ 
 stition and abuses of a reactionary and political state church, 
 they almost rooted up the wheat with the tares, and wellnigh 
 threatened to destroy religion itself. Thus in its temporary 
 dictatorship and tyranny Russia constitutes a warning to 
 other nations. But in so far as they seek to build anew a 
 state which shall provide liberty and justice for all exploited 
 peoples, Russia constitutes a challenge to the world. These 
 we may state briefly at the outset as follows: 
 
RUSSIA A WARNING 
 
 1. Russia stands as a warning and menace in its orthodox 
 Marxian policy of the class war and the dictatorship of the 
 proletariat. They believe that other countries have a veiled 
 dictatorship of the privileged one-tenth, while they claim a 
 frank dictatorship on behalf of the hitherto unprivileged nine- 
 tenths who constitute the working masses. • They claim that 
 this dictatorship is temporary, and that once it has been fully 
 established by a minority on behalf of the majority, it will 
 automatically terminate all class distinctions, abolish itself 
 and take in the whole united communal society. But the love 
 of power may prove an evil and a tyranny as great as the 
 love of money which they decry. Class war means class 
 hatred, and it means a civil war of force and violence. 
 
 2. There is a fundamental denial of liberty to all who 
 oppose the government, similar to that of the old regime. 
 Russia has always had a strong, stern, centralized, autocratic 
 government. As we compare Russia under the Bolsheviks, 
 and under the Czar as we saw it a decade ago, the present 
 government appears to be better than that of the old system. 
 But there is little room for the expression of public opinion, 
 no freedom of the press, and no liberty for voting or acting 
 on economic, social or religious issues in opposition to the 
 policy of the present government. For the present at least 
 they frankly profess dictatorship rather than democracy. 
 The priceless possession of the spirit of liberty, after a thou¬ 
 sand years of struggle, has been abandoned, at least for the 
 present. 
 
 3. There is a continued bureaucracy, compulsion and state 
 control of life, often similar to that of the old regime, that 
 does not allow the same free play for independence and indi¬ 
 vidual initiative that is found in other countries. There is a 
 remarkable discipline in the Communist Party which is today 
 guiding the destinies of the 132,000,000 people of Russia. 
 Of the body politic, the directing brain and nervous system 
 is the Communist Party of 450,000; the body and hands are 
 the workers in organized trade unions numbering some 
 5,000,000; the ponderous limbs are the more than 110,000,000 
 peasants who constitute 85 per cent of the population. Most 
 of the rest are considered vestigial survivals like the appendix 
 which once had a functional use. This dominance of the 
 
 8 
 
RUSSIA A WARNING 
 
 9 
 
 Communist Party constitutes an abnormal control which is a 
 denial of democracy. 
 
 4. There is an evident lowering of standards in higher 
 education, especially in the universities. Russia has a re¬ 
 markable plan for primary, practical and technical education, 
 though she lacks means as yet adequately to carry it out. 
 But there has been a frank suppression of idealistic teaching 
 in philosophy, theology and cultural studies; a suppression of 
 academic freedom, and a dilution of the universities in the 
 interest of practical, utilitarian education for the working 
 classes. There is a whole Russian university in Berlin com¬ 
 posed largely of professors and students who were banished 
 for their idealism or who fled from the terror or from the 
 red armies. 
 
 5. There is still a painful lack of moral and spiritual stand¬ 
 ards in Russian life, chiefly as the result of the inherited 
 corruption of the Czarist regime, the pressure of poverty, 
 and a materialistic and atheistic interpretation of life. Typ¬ 
 ical of this lack of moral standards we may take the statement 
 of Joffe in an article entitled “Revolutionary Methods,” in 
 the official Moscow IZVESTIA, dated January 1, 1919: 
 “To deceive your class enemy, to violate, to destroy a treaty 
 imposed by force, but never to sin against the revolutionary 
 proletariat, never to violate the obligation taken on yourself 
 before the revolution—those are the true revolutionary meth¬ 
 ods of the true revolutionary struggle.” 
 
 As a result of this situation, liberty, religion and idealism 
 will have to fight for their very life in Russia during this 
 generation as in no other country in the world. 
 
 6. Despite the measure of liberty of conscience and relig¬ 
 ious toleration which the government has allowed to the 
 Church and to all who have real religious convictions, there 
 is a frankly avowed atheism, materialism and anti-religious 
 policy of the individual members of the Communist Party. 
 At the plenary meeting of the Third International a resolu¬ 
 tion adopted on July 1, 1923, speaks of “The Marxian view¬ 
 point, an essential part of which is atheism.” This is not 
 to be wondered at when we remember the religious conditions 
 which prevailed in Czarist Russia. 
 
 We appreciate the deep, mystical religious consciousness 
 of the Russian people, their unique capacity for suffering and 
 sacrifice, and the sublime elements of worth in the Orthodox 
 Church once it is reformed. But when it is remembered how 
 
10 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 some of Russia’s present leaders suffered at the hands of 
 the Church as well as of the State, and what a caricature of 
 religion was often presented to them in the superstition, hy¬ 
 pocrisy and corruption in the Church, typified at its worst by 
 such men as Rasputin, their rejection of the only religion 
 they knew is not so much to be wondered at as their measure 
 of toleration. They have, however, been merciless to those 
 whom they believed were guilty of counter-revolutionary 
 plotting and meddling in politics. 
 
 Thus as a warning Russia furnishes the first avowedly 
 atheistic government in history which has given promise of 
 permanence. While granting liberty of conscience and wor¬ 
 ship, the Communists are frankly aiming as far as possible 
 to root out of the rising generation all religion, which they 
 regard as sheer superstition. Religion is on trial in Russia, 
 Religious formalism, oppression, tyranny, priest-craft, polit¬ 
 ical espionage, meddling in politics, hypocrisy, bogus relics 
 and sham have been mercilessly condemned. Along with 
 deep devotion and mysticism these evils all existed in the old 
 Russia and they must perish. Nothing but truth and reality, 
 nothing but the most vital moral and spiritual dynamic, as 
 ready to suffer for its faith as were the Bolshevist revolu¬ 
 tionists in the dungeons of the Czar and the wastes of 
 Siberian exile, can meet the ordeal which religion must face 
 in Russia today. 
 
 The fundamental instincts of human nature, hunger and 
 love, both in the material and spiritual realm, cannot be 
 crushed and conquered either by capitalism or Communism. 
 Both systems in their worst applications have outraged the 
 free spirit of man. But man survived the enthroning of a 
 painted Goddess of Reason in the enduring cathedral of 
 Notre Dame, the red terror of the guillotine, and the mili¬ 
 tarism and sordid vanity of the Corsican butcher who made 
 a caricature of the French Revolution. France still bears the 
 scars of the evils of that period. Yet the great ideals of 
 liberty, equality and fraternity lived on in a freer Europe 
 despite the wild license and debasing mixture of good and 
 evil in the movement. 
 
 In the light of the experience of Russia which constitutes 
 a warning to other nations, we do not believe that State 
 Capitalism, State Socialism or Military Communism furnish 
 any panacea for the evils of our present system. We do not 
 
RUSSIA A WARNING 
 
 11 
 
 believe in the Bolshevist theory of life for the reasons already 
 stated—its class war and dictatorship, its fundamental denial 
 of liberty, its state control of life, its lowering of standards 
 in higher education, its lack of moral and spiritual standards 
 and its anti-religious policy. 
 
 In spite of all its own defects, however, we must also 
 observe wherein this nation constitutes a challenge. 1 
 
 1 Woodrow Wilson broke the silence of his retirement to warn the nation in 
 the August Atlantic on “The Road Away From Revolution.” He says, “There 
 must be some real ground for the universal unrest and perturbation. * * * It 
 probably lies deep in the sources of the spiritual life of our time. It leads to 
 revolution; and perhaps if we take the case of the Russian Revolution, the out¬ 
 standing event of its kind in our age, we may find a good deal of instruction for 
 our judgment of present critical situations and circumstances. 
 
 ‘‘What gave rise to the Russian Revolution? The answer can only be that it 
 was the product of a whole social system. * * * It was due to the systematic 
 denial to the great body of Russians of the rights and privileges which all normal 
 men desire. * * * It is against capitalism under one name or another that the 
 discontented classes everywhere draw their indictment. * * * Great and wide¬ 
 spread reactions like that which is now unquestionably manifesting itself against 
 capitalism do not occur without cause or provocation. * * * _ 
 
 “Democracy has not yet made the world safe against irrational revolution. 
 That supreme task, which is nothing less than the salvation of civilization, now 
 faces democracy, insistent, imperative. * * * The road that leads away from 
 revolution is clearly marked. * * * 
 
 “The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive 
 materially unless it be redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming 
 permeated with the spirit of Christ and being made free and happy by the prac¬ 
 tices which spring out of that spirit. Only thus can discontent be driven out 
 and all the shadows lifted from the road ahead. Here is the final challenge to 
 our churches, to our political organizations, and to our capitalists—to everyone 
 who fears God or loves his country. Shall we not all earnestly cooperate to 
 bring in the new day?” 
 
RUSSIA A CHALLENGE 
 
 1. There are elements of value in the dynamic ideal that 
 lies at the heart of their purpose, “to suppress all exploita¬ 
 tion of man by man,” abolish all parasitic elements in so¬ 
 ciety; abolish all secret treaties; free from enslavement 
 millions of laborers in Asia, the colonies and smaller na¬ 
 tions; obtain self-determination for oppressed nationalities; 
 liberty of conscience, full liberty of association; a complete 
 education free for all, and the ultimate equality of sW. 
 citizens regardless of race and nationality. They aim to 
 end the domination of capitalism, make war impossible, 
 wipe out state boundaries, transform the whole world into 
 a co-operative commonwealth, and bring about real human 
 brotherhood and freedom.” 1 We do not claim that Russia 
 has fulfilled its ideal, nor carried out the pledges of its Con¬ 
 stitution. But, consciously or unconsciously, there are many 
 Christian elements in their purpose and ideal of brotherhood. 
 
 2. Here is the first labor government in the world, on 
 such a scale, planned and executed for the benefit of. the 
 laboring masses. Though still hampered for lack of funds, 
 and unable to carry out all the provisions of their legislation, 
 perhaps no other country has such favorable labor laws and 
 such methods for the assistance and benefit of the majority 
 of the population that make up the toiling masses, especially 
 of the industrial workers. 
 
 3. They have made provision for art , music and the whole 
 aesthetic side of life; for athletics, sports and recreation 
 for the development and expression of the working masses 
 as no other government in the world has done. 
 
 4. Russia has more completely realized an industrial revo¬ 
 lution than any other country. For five thousand years, 
 
 1 From the Manifesto of the Third Moscow International, and Declaration of 
 Rights of the Third All-Russian Soviet Congress. . . . A , , 
 
 The communism found in the early Christian Church was s P ir yuM and 
 voluntary in a small homogeneous and prepared community, while that in Russia 
 is materialistic and enforced in a vast heterogeneous empire. In Acts 11: 44-46 
 and IV: 32-35 we read: “The believers all kept together; they shared all they 
 had with one another, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute 
 the proceeds among all, as any one might be in need. Day after day they 
 resorted with one accord to the temple and broke bread together in their own 
 homes; they ate with a glad and simple heart . . . Now there was but one 
 
 heart and soul among the multitude of the believers; not one of them considered 
 anything his personal property; they shared all they had with one another. 
 There was not a needy person among them, for those who owned land or houses 
 would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sale, laying the money before the 
 feet of the apostles; it was then distributed according to each individuals need. 
 Moffatt’s Translation. 
 
 12 
 
RUSSIA A CHALLENGE 
 
 13 
 
 since the construction of the great Pyramid in Egypt, most 
 nations have been exploited in the interests of a privileged 
 minority. Russia is the first country to be exploited for the 
 unpriviledged masses. Thus Russia constitutes an eco¬ 
 nomic and . industrial challenge, wherever capitalism is ruth¬ 
 less. In referring to “ruthless capitalism” we fully recog¬ 
 nize the legitimate and necessary accumulation of capital 
 without which modern industry cannot be conducted. What 
 we mean by ruthless capitalism is the excessive concentra¬ 
 tion of power and privilege as a result of vast wealth in 
 the hands of a few; monopoly of natural resources for 
 private gain at the expense of public welfare; autocratic 
 control of industry; production for individual profit and 
 power rather than for social use and service, with consequent 
 extravagant luxury for some while many live in poverty 
 and want. In spite of all its own evils Russia openly chal¬ 
 lenges the whole present capitalistic order with its vast con¬ 
 centration of wealth and poverty, of profiteering and 
 sweating. 
 
 5. Russia also constitutes a social challenge, for she has 
 attempted the first actual establishment of a new social order 
 based on the boldest social experiment known in history, 
 national and international Communism. From Plato on¬ 
 ward we have read of Utopias and theories for a new social 
 order. Russia is the first country that has ever attempted 
 on a national scale to carry out such a colossal experiment. 
 
 6. In spite of her own glaring evils and shortcomings 
 Russia stands as a political challenge to every country and 
 every future international conference; a challenge to all im¬ 
 perialism, militarism and colonial conquest and exploitation. 
 She has immediate and powerful influence on the present 
 situation in Turkey, Poland, Germany and much of Europe 
 and Asia. Henceforth Russia must be reckoned with. 
 
 We may look upon Russia as a vast laboratory for social 
 experiment. In a world fettered and bound by conservative 
 custom and tradition, with its incubus and inheritance of 
 medievalism and absolutism, its uncorrected results of a 
 laissez-faire industrial revolution, its enormous injustices and 
 inequalities, its masses often in poverty and ignorance, with¬ 
 out adequate opportunity for expression or self-realization, 
 it may be of some real value to have at least one country 
 free to test certain theories by a system of trial and error. 
 In so far as they are fit to survive they will eventually suc¬ 
 ceed, but where they are false they will finally fail. If we 
 
14 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 have open minds we shall learn much both from the suc¬ 
 cess and failure of the good and the evil in Russia. 
 
 The significance of Russia is enhanced by its very mass 
 and magnitude. Midway between East and West, the Rus¬ 
 sian Empire at the opening of the war contained more than 
 one-seventh of the land surface of the globe and about one- 
 ninth of its population. 1 Stretching for over six thousand 
 miles, across Asia and Europe, it was approximately twice 
 the size of all the rest of Europe. Siberia alone with its 
 vast resources has an area one and a half times that of 
 the United States, and if peopled with the same density of 
 population as Belgium, would hold almost twice the present 
 population of the world. When a state with such resources 
 and with the largest white population in the world tries 
 the boldest social experiment in all history, it must be 
 reckoned with. At least we shall not solve the problem by 
 telling lies about the present government such as the ridic¬ 
 ulous statement that all women had been nationalized, or 
 other baseless propaganda, furnished by members of the 
 old order dispossessed of their privileges under the Czar, or 
 other interested parties, determined that a workingman’s 
 government should not succeed. 
 
 1 1915 1923 
 
 Area in Square Miles. 8,417,118 8,166,130 
 
 Population (estimated). 182,182,600 131,546,045 
 
 Large sections of the population were lost to Poland, Finland, Latvia, 
 Esthonia, Lithuania, etc. Statesman’s Year Book, 1923, p. 1278. 
 
RUSSIA’S PAST 
 
 The significance of the present movement in Russia can 
 only be adequately understood in the light of its past history. 
 Russia has been marked for suffering for a thousand years. 
 It has been the land of autocracy and revolution. Between 
 the eighth and thirteenth centuries the land was laid waste 
 by eighty-three civil wars. For the next two centuries 
 (1238-1467 A. D.) it was swept by invasion under the 
 galling Tartar or Mongol domination; it was rent by ninety 
 internal conflicts and more than a hundred and fifty foreign 
 wars. 
 
 Then for five centuries Russia suffered under the au¬ 
 tocracy of the Czars. Ivan the Terrible began a reign of 
 terror which lasted for twenty-five years. Before the last 
 feeble Czar, Nicholas II, came to the throne in 1894, for 
 two decades some thousands of victims each year had been 
 sent to Siberia. The government of the last Czar had also 
 banished thousands of political exiles. 
 
 We stood in Petrograd in the dark fortress of Peter and 
 Paul between the tombs of the dead Czars on the one 
 hand, and the cells of their former political prisoners on 
 the other. For centuries the finest spirits in Russia had 
 cherished their dream of a new social order. They had 
 lived for it, suffered for it in dungeon and exile, thousands 
 had died for it. They had dreamed of a country that should 
 be free of police and spies, free from the caricature of 
 religion in a State Church that had become almost an adjunct 
 of the police department and of the spy system, free from 
 the exploiter and profiteer, from all autocracy, aristocracy 
 and plutocracy. They had dreamed of world brotherhood, 
 of communal well-being in mutual service without the 
 motive of private profit and selfish hoarding. 
 
 We stood in the Revolutionary Museum in the Czar’s 
 Winter Palace in Petrograd, where one sees the portrayal 
 of the long century of struggle for freedom, from the revo¬ 
 lution of 1825 to the present. A blind bureaucracy had 
 opposed all reformers, suppressed the conquered national¬ 
 ities, dissolved or treated with contempt the Duma and 
 legislative assemblies, outlawed trade unions and had put 
 down peasant revolts and industrial strikes with bloodshed. 
 The spy system and secret police both in state and church 
 developed into “a vast secret society which permeated and 
 
 15 
 
16 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 poisoned the whole of Russian social life.” This was the 
 stern school of autocracy and oppression in which the pres¬ 
 ent rulers of Russia studied. And this must be remembered 
 in judging the present government. Most of the evils of 
 the present system were found in the old Czarist regime 
 which our government officially recognized. 
 
 In the World War Russia suffered more than any other 
 great nation. Of over 15,000,000 called to the colors, 1,700,- 
 000 fell among the battle dead, and a total of over 3,000,000 
 died of wounds, disease, neglect and starvation. . Betrayed 
 by their corrupt leaders, left often without munitions and 
 supplies to fight with sticks and stones, the morale of the 
 troops at the front was finally broken, and the hungry mobs 
 in Petrograd rose in bread riots, only to be shot down by the 
 soldiers. In all the terrible events that followed in the down¬ 
 fall of Russia the malign influence of Germany must be fully 
 recognized. 
 
THE REVOLUTION 
 
 It is said that every country gets the kind of revolution 
 it deserves. On March 12, 1917, the first revolution broke 
 out in Russia, beginning with a strike of the industrial 
 workers threatened with starvation. Regiments sent to 
 crush the revolt joined the strikers; and the Czar, Nicholas 
 II, finally abdicated. A provisional government under 
 Prince LvofT was followed by a new cabinet under Keren¬ 
 sky, but neither satisfied the demands of the people. Liberty 
 had given place to license, discipline was at an end, chaos 
 reigned. The peasants wanted land, the industrial workers 
 demanded control of the factories, there were constant dem¬ 
 onstrations and threatened uprisings, while the central gov¬ 
 ernment was weak and nerveless. Russia was on the verge 
 of breaking up into rival revolutionary states in endless civil 
 war. One party alone now emerged that knew just what it 
 wanted and had the power to enforce its demands. 1 
 
 During the war, councils or soviets of workers were 
 formed in the factories, of peasants in the country, and 
 soldiers in the army. As the peasants had not been given 
 the land nor the town workers bread, a popular revolt be¬ 
 gan. This second Russian Workers’ Resolution took place 
 on November 7, 1917. As soon as the Petrograd Soviet 
 obtained a Bolshevik majority they seized the Government 
 and handed it over to the All-Russia Congress of Soviets. 
 The Czarist Empire had now become the “Russian Socialist 
 Federal Soviet Republic.” 2 
 
 The Bolshevist Government withdrew from what they re¬ 
 garded as an imperialist war and signed the separate and 
 humiliating peace of Brest-Litovsk. They then endeavored 
 to make the colossal transition from a capitalist to a socialist 
 order. Two series of decrees were now issued, one aiming 
 at the destruction of the old order and the other at the 
 establishment of the new through the improvement of the 
 social conditions of the people. A Declaration of Rights 
 
 1 There had been three principal revolutionary groups in Russia, the Com¬ 
 munist followers of Marx, the Anarchist followers of Bakunin and Prince 
 Kropotkin, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, one wing of which pursued the 
 policy of terrorism. The first group organized the Marxian Social Democratic 
 Labor Party in 1898 among the town workers. In the division which arose in 
 the party the Mensheviki favored co-operation with the bourgeois Liberals, while 
 the Bolsheviki under Lenine favored the dictatorship of the proletarian workers 
 on their own account. 
 
 2 At the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, December 23 - 27 , 1922 , it was 
 decided to unite all the Soviet Republics in a single federal state. The present 
 official name is the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or the S. S. S. R. 
 
 17 
 
18 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 was passed at the Third All-Russia Soviet Congress and a 
 Constitution was adopted at the fifth Congress. Russia be¬ 
 came a Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peas¬ 
 ants. Private property in land was abolished, all land be¬ 
 coming, in theory at least, the common property of the 
 people. The State declared its ownership of all forests, 
 mines, .national resources, factories, railways and other 
 means of production and transport. 
 
 The Republic became a free Socialist community of all 
 laboring classes. Freedom of conscience, of opinion, of the 
 press and of meeting were guaranteed. The franchise was 
 granted irrespective of religion, nationality or sex to all 
 citizens over eighteen engaged in productive labor; it was 
 denied to all who exploited the labor of others for profit, or 
 lived on unearned income, also to monks, priests, members 
 of the former police and criminals. It cannot be maintained 
 that all of the above ideals or guarantees were carried into 
 practice. Religious liberty, for instance, was hedged about 
 with many restrictions. Russia is the only country which 
 the writer has visited in thirty years where no Student Chris¬ 
 tian Movement is as yet permitted. 
 
 The Bolshevist Revolution was accomplished with remark¬ 
 ably little bloodshed and employees and men of all classes 
 were invited to co-operate with the new government. With 
 the beginning of the destruction of the old capitalist regime 
 and the erection of a new social order, almost the entire 
 bourgeois, professional and technically skilled class went on 
 strike, adopted the method of sabotage, and organized a 
 counter-revolutionary movement with the aid of foreign 
 powers. Fighting now for their very existence and the 
 principles of the revolution, the government replied by the 
 Extraordinary Commission and the terror, which, however, 
 was abolished as soon as counter-revolutionary activity 
 ceased. We make no defence of this terror, any more than 
 we do of that of the French Revolution. Its severity can 
 hardly be exaggerated. 
 
MILITARY COMMUNISM 
 
 For three years private shops were closed and there was 
 almost no buying and selling. A period of “military com¬ 
 munism” was instituted in which the state tried to organize 
 the whole life of the people on a communal basis. The 
 peasants’ entire surplus grain was taken by the state for the 
 support of the army, the industrial workers and the rest of 
 the population. 
 
 Private property and trade were now to be replaced by 
 the free exchange of the products of industry for food from 
 the country. But when industry ceased effectively to pro¬ 
 duce, the burden of the support of the population fell upon 
 the peasants, who had all their surplus crops taken from 
 them. To eliminate the money power of the bourgeoisie, 
 paper currency was deliberately debased by a flood of paper 
 money which soon became worthless and which the peasants 
 were unwilling to receive. Peasant uprisings began to in¬ 
 crease and the area cultivated was reduced to half what it 
 had been before the war. 
 
 Resenting this forcible seizure of their grain, the peas¬ 
 ants ceased to raise more than they needed for themselves 
 and the government was now compelled to face a world of 
 enemies from without and within the country. For six 
 years they were forced to meet obstacles and opposition un¬ 
 paralleled in history. They had inherited the corruption of 
 five centuries of Czardom. The country was exhausted by 
 the war and impoverished by a world blockade. It was 
 crushed by Germany in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. It suf¬ 
 fered from invasion, as it had to fight against the Central 
 Powers, the English, French, Japanese, Czecho-Slovaks, 
 Poles, Finns, Greeks, and Roumanians. Even an American 
 army invaded their territory. 
 
 The white armies of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, Kras- 
 noff, Semenoff, Wrangel, Petlura, Balakhovitch and the 
 Cossacks were not only fighting but some of them were 
 perpetrating atrocities upon the helpless inhabitants equal to 
 anything in history. Under the White Terror in Finland 
 alone out of a small population of 3,000,000 some 17,000 
 are said to have perished. In the meantime Russia was 
 devastated by red and white terror alike. 
 
 After six years of warfare following 1914, Russia col¬ 
 lapsed in sheer exhaustion. She was devastated by war 
 
 19 
 
20 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 and revolution, swept by vast epidemics, bankrupt and 
 threatened with chaos. Following all this came the awful 
 famine of 1921. The American Relief Administration re¬ 
 ported 23,895,000 starving out of a population of 42,000,- 
 000 in the famine area. 1 Reliable witnesses informed the 
 writer that frozen corpses, dogs and even children were 
 eaten by persons frenzied by hunger. Some three millions 
 are said to have perished of starvation and a total of not 
 less than ten millions from all causes of war, revolution, 
 famine and disease. 
 
 In the face of such titanic obstacles the policy of mili¬ 
 tary communism broke down. Russia had attempted to 
 pass at a bound from primitive agriculture and a disorgan¬ 
 ized industrial system to State Socialism and Communism. 
 This was impossible. The new state had destroyed its credit. 
 With the abolition of private wealth there was almost noth¬ 
 ing left to tax, for state industries were running at a loss. 
 A flood of paper money to pay the government’s bills ruined 
 the currency. The workers were for a time demoralized by 
 the new license. Even school children had their committees 
 for running the schools, as the soldiers tried to run the army 
 and the workers the factories. But all reserves were soon 
 exhausted, and the state could not even provide adequate 
 food rations to keep the workers from hunger. The period 
 of destruction was at an end. 
 
 1 The A. R. A. reported nearly 15,000,000 fed, 12,000 medical institutions 
 assisted, 7,000,000 persons inoculated or vaccinated, 912,121 tons of food im¬ 
 ported, and a total expenditure of some $75,000,000. The work of the A. R. A. 
 was beyond all praise and has left an enduring gratitude in the hearts of the 
 Russian people that will have an important influence upon the future relations of 
 these two great nations. 
 
THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY 
 
 The Communist leaders received the shock of a rude 
 awakening when there was a peasant uprising in the province 
 of Tambov, and the fortress of Cronstadt revolted. Pro¬ 
 duction in industry had fallen to a desperate fraction of 
 the pre-war basis and of the national needs. 1 
 
 The government had failed and confessed it. 2 Lenine 
 and his colleagues had the sagacity to see it in time, frankly 
 admit their failure, and turn right about face, in the adop¬ 
 tion of “The New Economic Policy.” 
 
 The new economic policy embraced: 1. The substitution 
 for the requisition of all the peasants’ surplus grain by a 
 definite food tax, taking a maximum of 20 per cent of his 
 crop. 2. Freedom of trade within Russia. 3. The dena¬ 
 tionalization of small business, the revival of private small 
 capitalist production, and of banks and shops on a profit¬ 
 making basis. Also the leasing of the majority of state- 
 controlled enterprises. 4. The concentration of state con¬ 
 trol to the more important nationalized industries, and their 
 combination in autonomous state “trusts” under the Su¬ 
 preme Economic Council. 5. The institution of a State 
 Bank and the encouragement of the Co-operative Societies 
 which had been temporarily absorbed by the state. 3 
 
 1 Larin, the Communist economist, contrasted the production of 1920 with 1914 
 as follows: The production of coal had declined 75 per cent, petroleum 67, gold 
 88, cast iron 97.6, iron and steel 96, cotton and wool 80, rubber 98 and chemicals 
 
 89.6 per cent. , , , .. ..... . 
 
 2 See Izvestia, August 11, 1921. Lenine frankly said: We can only con¬ 
 tinue to exist by making an appeal to the peasants .. . . The role of the pro- 
 letariat in such a situation is to supervise and guide these small farmers in their 
 transition to socialized, collective, communal labor ... Ten years at least, 
 and, in view of our present ruin, probably more will be required for this transi¬ 
 tion . . . We must decide which of two policies we shall choose. Either we 
 forbid absolutely every private exchange of goods or we take the trouble to 
 make it a state capitalism . . . State capitalism is a step forward toward 
 
 the destruction of the small bourgeois attitude . . . The kernel of the situa¬ 
 tion is that one must find a means of directing the evolution of capitalism in the 
 bed of state capitalism so as to insure the transition of state capitalism into 
 
 Socialism.” _„ 
 
 3 See Statesman’s Year Book 1923, p. 1286. The sweeping changes m the 
 policy and laws of Soviet Russia are shown by the following: November 14, 
 1917, Decree giving Workers’ Committees complete control of all industries; 
 May’ 1921, Law repealed, individual management restored; November 24, 1917, 
 Decree abolishing all existing courts and legal institutions, Extraordinary Com¬ 
 mission or Cheka established; January, 1922, New system of courts established, 
 Cheka abolished; December 14, 1917, all banks closed, nationalized and assets 
 confiscated; December, 1921, new bank law passed and State Bank with branches 
 established; August 20, 1918, nationalization of land, prohibiting private owner¬ 
 ship of real estate; June 1, 1922, Decree passed giving perpetual right to posses¬ 
 sion and right to inherit same; June 29, 1918, all industries nationalized; June, 
 1922, many smaller industries surrendered. Owners given perference in leasing 
 others on long-time leases, 50 to 100 years, etc. . 
 
 Ex-Governor Goodrich, of Indiana, “The Evolution of Soviet Russia, p. 223. 
 
 21 
 
22 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 It is only fair to say that the “new” economic policy was 
 in fact a frank retreat, and in part a return to the old 
 methods of capitalism which had been so condemned. The 
 government has not, however, abandoned its ideal and aim. 
 The present policy is only a temporary concession. Their 
 plan is State Capitalism now, State Socialism as soon as 
 possible, and ultimately pure Communism that proposes to 
 obviate state control. 
 
 History proves, however, that once this ground is sur¬ 
 rendered it will be difficult to recover. In Rome under the 
 Republic and the Empire no citizen ever held title to his 
 land as a personal possession. Under English law all the 
 land theoretically belongs to the crown, but this is now 
 a mere fiction and it would be fatal to try and reclaim 
 it. When the peasants of Russia have long possessed the 
 land, when private industry has been re-established, when 
 leases have been made to private capitalists and concessions 
 granted to foreign governments for recognition, when Russia 
 comes again into the family of nations with the constant 
 influence and pressure of the rest of the world upon her, it 
 will be difficult if not impossible for one nation to live under 
 an economy of pure communism if all the rest of the world 
 is upon a basis of unrestricted capitalism. 
 
 In the meantime, the Soviet Government maintains an 
 almost absolute political and economic control. It retains 
 the monopoly of foreign trade, the control of basic indus¬ 
 tries, the railways, the banking system and of most prop¬ 
 erty. A new capitalist class is again springing up under the 
 present system of private trading. 
 
 In spite of all its concessions, the new economic policy, 
 while it has succeeded superficially in stimulating trade upon 
 the surface, has not as yet restored production to its pre¬ 
 war level nor attracted a large amount of capital, either for¬ 
 eign or domestic. Within Russia there is not much private 
 capital left to attract. Its pre-war estimated wealth of only 
 $40,000,000,000 has been reduced to little more than half. 
 Russia’s greatest economic needs at the moment are capital, 
 credit and confidence, but she is slowly gaining ground in 
 all three. 
 
THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT 
 
 As we have seen, the present government of Russia is a 
 frankly imposed dictatorship. It does not profess to be a 
 democracy for all. Theoretically it is a “Government of 
 Workmen and Peasants,” but as the peasants are unprepared 
 and unwieldy, highly individualistic instead of socialistic, 
 Zinoviev well says a “government of workmen and peasants 
 is not realizable. . . . The Soviet government is in fact 
 
 a workmen s government.” That is, it is a dictatorship of 
 the proletariat. But as the proletariat is for the most part 
 ignorant and uninstructed, and often dissatisfied with its low 
 wages, the dictatorship has to be in fact one of the Com¬ 
 munist Party of less than half a million members, or a third 
 of one per cent of the population. As this party in turn is 
 liable to get out of hand, and as it needs a directing brain 
 and the control of an “iron discipline,” there must be a 
 nucleus, an inner group or guiding center. This is found in 
 the Political Bureau of the Communist Party. Here is the 
 invisible government and the directing mind and will of the 
 whole machine. It is composed of seven men, with three 
 associates. Here is the motor brain center of the whole body 
 which determines the general policy and program of the 
 party and makes the more important assignments of positions. 
 
 This invisible government functions through the Commu¬ 
 nist Party. The Communists are distributed in strategic posi¬ 
 tions everywhere and aim to have a party “cell” in all political 
 and industrial organizations. Before every meeting the 
 Communists hold a private caucus. The questions at issue 
 are fully discussed and a vote is taken. The decision of the 
 majority is binding and under an iron party discipline the 
 Communist members enter the public meeting to vote, speak 
 and act as a unit. As they are the one body that knows just 
 what it wants, as they have thought through the questions at 
 issue, and as their dominant purpose is usually the workers’ 
 welfare, they generally carry the meeting, especially as voting 
 must be “open” and as opposition in the past has been known 
 to be dangerous. 
 
 Professor Harper, of Chicago University, in the Interna¬ 
 tional Interpreter states that although there are not enough 
 Communists to go around, they constitute a vast bureaucracy. 
 They control, all the more effectively because not always ob¬ 
 viously, not only the central, provincial and local government 
 
 23 
 
24 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 bodies, but the principal trade unions, the central Cooperative 
 Society, the red army of some 600,000, the directorate of the 
 more important industrial enterprises, the entire press, 83 
 per cent of the provincial judges, the prosecuting attorneys—■ 
 in short, everything that is worth controlling in the cities. 
 In the last All-Russian Congress of Soviets there were 1,154 
 Communists and only 63 “non-party” men out of a total of 
 1,217 delegates. They continue to rule by a combination of 
 force and sagacity. They are masters of propaganda, pub¬ 
 licity and diplomacy. The peasants are their unsolved prob¬ 
 lem. The 110,853,734 rural inhabitants are too numerous, 
 too widely scattered, and, since the war, too sturdy and inde¬ 
 pendent to be thus tamely and paternally controlled. The 
 final issue in Russia may be between the industrial Com¬ 
 munist Party and a peasants’ republic. 
 
 The Communist Party rules through the Soviet system. A 
 soviet is simply a committee or council. Every body has its 
 soviet. Each trade and profession, all workers by hand or 
 brain, whether mechanics, teachers or lawyers; all soldiers, 
 workmen and peasants; each factory, village, town, city, 
 province or republic has its representative committee or 
 soviet. This system may be truly democratic and representa¬ 
 tive, or it may be paternally controlled. It is in accord with 
 the democratic genius of the Russian people and will doubt¬ 
 less be permanent in Russia whether the Communist Party 
 continues to dominate a socialist state, or whether it is finally 
 overthrown by a peasant republic, or is democratically modi¬ 
 fied in that direction, which now seems more probable. 
 
 According to the new Soviet Constitution the Communist 
 Party operates through the Soviet system as follows: There 
 is at the top (save for the invisible government of the Polit¬ 
 ical Bureau of the Communist Party which must never be 
 forgotten) a visible cabinet of some 21 members, called the 
 Presidium of the Executive Committee. This body can bring 
 anyone to trial, or veto action of any local or state parlia¬ 
 ment. Next, there is the Executive Committee, which is 
 really a parliament of three or four hundred members, com¬ 
 posed of two houses. The senate or upper house is the 
 Council of Nationalities composed of five men from each 
 state of the S. S. R., or Union of Soviet Republics. There 
 is also a lower house elected according to states. These two 
 bodies each elect seven members to the Presidium, and seven 
 others are chosen by cooption. 
 
 Subject to the Executive Committee, or Parliament, are 
 
THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT 25 
 
 some sixteen Commissariats, or government departments, or 
 ministries, such as Defence, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, 
 Posts and Telegraphs, the Police or “G. P. U.” which is 
 under the legal department as a regular, and very important, 
 department of state. 
 
 Each state or republic has its own parliament, is supposed 
 to be independent, and, theoretically, can leave or secede when 
 it wishes. As a matter of fact, Russia is a highly centralized 
 paternal state. It is neither a democracy nor an autocracy, 
 but an oligarchy, practically controlled by a small group. 
 Lenine has long been the head of the Council of Commissars 
 and Kalinin the President of the Central Executive Commit¬ 
 tee. Lenine has broken down physically and his work is fin¬ 
 ished. Though greatly revered, he is hardly missed, for Rus¬ 
 sia is not, and never has been, a one-man government. The 
 men who dominate the movement at present are Trotsky, 
 Kamenev, Zenoviev and Stalin, who is often a spokesman for 
 the party. 
 
 Stalin thus defines the system, “The governmental author¬ 
 ity is the mass apparatus uniting the working class, which is 
 in power in the person of its party, with the peasantry, thus 
 making it possible for the working class, in the person of its 
 party, to direct the peasantry.” 1 The highly centralized 
 groups of the party have a “monopoly of legality” and con¬ 
 trol the 530 newspapers with their very limited circulation. 
 The whole system provides for wide representation and free¬ 
 dom of discussion, with highly centralized effective control 
 by experts. But “the party” permits no effective opposition 
 nor democratic control. This is at once its strength and 
 weakness. There is but one party. It has been sustained 
 thus far by the enthusiasm of the revolutionary psychology, 
 by rigid discipline and where necessary by the use of force. 
 
 The Cheka, or secret tribunal of the period of the terror, 
 has been replaced by the state political department with re¬ 
 duced powers. As the government has become more secure, 
 it has relaxed its more oppressive control, yet in July, 1923, 
 it extended its criminal-code to include under counter-revolu¬ 
 tionary activity all “attempts to overthrow, undermine or 
 weaken” the authority of the government. 
 
 According to the statement of Trotsky to the Twelfth Con¬ 
 gress of the Communist Party in April, 1923, the hopes of 
 the government are based upon four elements: 1, The dic- 
 
 1 Quoted by Prof. S. N. Harper in the International Interpreter, November 
 3, 1923. 
 
26 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 tatorship of the Communist Party; 2, the red army; 3, the 
 nationalization of production; 4, the monopoly of foreign 
 trade. To these might be added their recruiting from the 
 candidates in the Young Communist Party. Thus Luna¬ 
 charsky, Commissar of Education, says, “The Communist 
 Youth is ours ... to drive its class enemy out of the 
 schools, proletarianizing the higher and secondary schools.” 
 
 It is in the light, not of its profession of words and phrases 
 but of its practice that the system must be judged. It aims 
 at “brotherhood,” but its conception is a whole spiritual 
 world removed from that of an all-inclusive human brother¬ 
 hood, in the light of a divine Fatherhood, bound together by 
 the universal law of love, including even enemies, which 
 Jesus taught. According to Lenine the class war must be 
 a civil war and “revolution is unthinkable without force and 
 violence.” According to Joffe, lying to the class enemy is a 
 proletarian virtue. We have thus a “brotherhood” of work¬ 
 ingmen based upon a hatred of capitalists; a brotherhood 
 which counts it a duty to hate and to kill its class enemy. 
 The word “love” was absent from the vocabulary which the 
 writer heard in Russia. 1 
 
 2 Russia constitutes a warning and a challenge to every country that permits 
 class, racial and religious hatred to prepare the ground for a class war. The 
 class war was no outdoor sport in Russia. Several hundred thousand have 
 perished there in the red and the white terror. In the face of such an example, 
 how pathetic it is to see a class war begun on the free soil of America by the 
 secret order of the Ku Klux Klan. This nation conceived in liberty and dedi¬ 
 cated to the proposition that all men are created free and equal, now witnesses 
 the sad spectacle of Protestant Americans appealing to racial and religious 
 hatred by sordid propaganda against the Jew, against the Catholic, against the 
 Negro, against the foreigner, and against the liberal. Many of those who belong 
 to this “invisible empire” are earnest and well meaning just as many were who 
 took part in the Inquisition, the burning of witches, slavery and other evils that 
 have afflicted humanity. But however well meaning, if persisted in it will send 
 our free and united commonwealth into the jealous factions of a class war. 
 Russia stands as a warning where this may lead. 
 
RUSSIAN INDUSTRY 
 
 The writer spent most of his time in Russia investigating 
 labor conditions, visiting factories, interviewing officials, 
 trade union leaders and representatives of the public concern¬ 
 ing industrial problems. 
 
 Apart from the independent republics, Russia has but 
 7,785 factories with 1,744,000 workers, or little more than 
 Japan or India. According to official figures there were 
 1,180,000 less industrial workers in 1923 than in 1913. 
 
 Trotsky in his report to the Twelfth Congress of the Com¬ 
 munist Party in 1923 stated that the total income from indus¬ 
 try and agriculture in 1922 was only 60 per cent of what it 
 was in 1913. While the agricultural income was approxi¬ 
 mately two-thirds of the pre-war standard that from industry 
 had fallen from $2,200,000,000 in 1913 to $650,000,000 in 
 1922, or less than one-third of its pre-war value. 
 
 The gold value of the money in circulation is approximately 
 only one-tenth what it was before the war. Russia’s chief 
 resources lie in grain, timber, coal, iron, oil, gold, platinum, 
 manganese, flax and cotton. 1 In all of these, production has 
 fallen off greatly. Compared to the pre-war standard of 
 1913, Russia’s production in 1922, according to the most 
 reliable statistics obtainable, was as follows: Oil, 49 per 
 cent, salt 36, coal 34, electro-technical supplies 26, wool 27, 
 chemicals 21, matches 20, paper 17, sugar 12, glass 9, plat¬ 
 inum 15, gold 7, brass 3.5, steel 7.4, pig iron 3.9, iron ore 2.2, 
 plows and reapers 6, railway carriages only 4 per cent of pre¬ 
 war production. 
 
 It must be remembered that Russia is still a primitive agri¬ 
 cultural country, more than a century behind Western Europe 
 in its cultural standards, and that only in recent decades had 
 it witnessed the beginning of an industrial revolution and the 
 development of its wealth. 
 
 In visiting Russian factories we selected first certain na¬ 
 tionalized rubber works in Petrograd and Moscow. The 
 total production of each factory was about one-third of its 
 pre-war output. The individual worker, owing to the dis¬ 
 organization of industry, produces from 50 to 60 per cent 
 
 1 Before the War Russia stood sixth among the nations of the world in the 
 production of coal, second in petroleum, fourth in iron, and provided nine-tenths 
 of the world’s supply of platinum. Russia took first place in the production of 
 rye, second in wheat and oats, and third in the number of cattle, and second in 
 her railway system of 42,504 miles. Russia is a land of raw products and vast 
 potential wealth. 
 
 27 
 
28 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 of what he did before the war. In one factory the workers 
 had been reduced from 18,000 to 8,000. Industry as a whole 
 has been constitutionalized and each factory had its printed 
 constitution or standard contract sent from Moscow, and 
 worked upon the basis of a signed agreement between the 
 government “Trust” of the industry on the one hand and 
 the workers’ trade union on the other. 
 
 There was a thorough organization both of workers and 
 management under a government constitution with elaborate 
 provision for the settlement of disputes and conflicts. There 
 was a local trade union committee in each factory; a conflict 
 committee composed of half workers and half management; 
 a district council to which appeal could be made, and final 
 arrangement for arbitration. Practically all disagreements 
 were settled before reaching the stage of strikes, which, how¬ 
 ever, were not forbidden as a last resort. 
 
 The management and technical staff were men of the old 
 regime working loyally with the new order. Labor showed 
 a will to work; there was evidence of discipline and of def¬ 
 erence paid to the management on the part of the workers. 
 Labor’s interference with management and the workers’ 
 control of two years before had almost entirely ceased. 
 
 The wages of the workers, which were chiefly on a piece¬ 
 work basis, ran from $6.50 to $45.00 a month in Petrograd, 
 and from $10.00 to $50.00 in Moscow. Highly skilled work¬ 
 ers received about a dollar a day. The working day had been 
 reduced from 10 hours before the war to 8 hours. Condi¬ 
 tions for the workers in the factories were excellent. 
 
 Approximately 28 per cent of the wage bill of each factory 
 was set aside for social insurance for the workers. There 
 were so many taxes and restrictions that at present there was 
 no indication that the factories were making a profit for the 
 state. The cost of the product was about double that of pre¬ 
 war days, the cost of living was also doubled, the real wages 
 of the workers were less, and the profit of the factory had 
 disappeared. Too many cooks tended to spoil the broth. 
 The moral standards of the workers were not high. 
 Throughout the factories we noticed signs, “Discharge for 
 Theft,” and observed that we ourselves and all workers were 
 searched on leaving the factory to see if we had any stolen 
 goods upon us. In the state flour mills employees stole so 
 much of the flour that profits vanished and some were offered 
 to their former owners or to private capitalists. This may 
 be attributed to long-continued poverty, a period of lawless- 
 
RUSSIAN INDUSTRY’ 29 
 
 ness, and to the confessed materialism and dictatorship of the 
 present regime. 
 
 Nevertheless, in production, in method and in relation¬ 
 ships, conditions were steadily if slowly improving every¬ 
 where. Two years ago nearly all writers like H. G. Wells 
 and Sokoloff were speaking of industry as being “rapidly 
 ruined” and of impending disaster. There is evidence now 
 of progressive adjustment and adaptation and the promise 
 of stable and permanent success in industry. 
 
 In textile factories we found wages running from ap¬ 
 proximately $4.00 to $30.00 a month, or from seventeen 
 cents to a dollar a day. We met one director receiving 
 $1.25 a day. The real wages of the workers were about 
 65 per cent of the pre-war standard. Production in the 
 individual factory had fallen off from 10 to 20 per cent 
 of the pre-war level but was much better than two years 
 ago. In the textile industry as a whole, however, produc¬ 
 tion is scarcely a fifth of what it was in 1913. 
 
 The average wage for all Russia for an unskilled worker 
 in 1916 was, according to Stroumiline, $141.60 a year, or 
 $11.75 a month; it was only $77.50 a year, or $6.41 a 
 month, in 1923, in spite of the high cost of living. This 
 means an average of about 25 cents a day. 
 
 Concerning the settlement of labor disagreements we 
 found more disputes and less strikes in Russia than in 
 almost any other industrial country. The right to strike 
 is maintained both in state and private enterprises, but 
 recourse to arbitration is compulsory before a strike can be 
 declared. 
 
 In spite of low wages in Russia today the cost of liv¬ 
 ing is much higher than before the war. My first meal 
 in a Moscow hotel with two courses for two persons cost 
 over $5.00 gold. A pair of shoe laces cost me 65,000,000 
 rubles. The face value of this before the war would have 
 been a fortune of $32,500,000, but with rubles at 480,- 
 000,000 to the dollar, and falling daily, the cost of the 
 shoe laces in American money was about thirteen cents. 
 My first street car fare was 26,000,000 rubles. For half 
 a large loaf of bread I paid 96,000,000 rubles. A pound 
 of tea costs from $1.00 to $4.00, or over 480,000,000 rubles, 
 and a cheap suit of clothes 12,000,000,000. 
 
 The writer found much discontent among unskilled and 
 poorly paid workers outside the ranks of the Communist 
 Party. Within this favored group, industry, the govern- 
 
30 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 ment, everything is theirs and utopia lies just over the brow 
 of the next hill. The two chief causes of complaint on the 
 part of non-Communists, however, were poor pay and lack 
 of liberty. Voting is not by secret ballot but openly. Any¬ 
 one is free to oppose if he dares to become a marked man, 
 vote against the policy of the Party and take the conse¬ 
 quences. The lowered voice and furtive glance often bore 
 witness to the shadow of the terror that still lingers in the 
 memory. One quiet but fearless worker testified to having 
 been imprisoned four times under the present government 
 and fourteen times in his lifetime, because he dared to 
 stand for his principles. 
 
 We met no workingmen in all Russia, however, who, 
 even for increased wages, would be willing to return to 
 the regime of the Czar or of Liberalism after the first 
 revolution. Poor as it is, it remains a workingman’s gov¬ 
 ernment, in many respects nearer the people than any other 
 in the world. Even among the bourgeoisie I found a grow¬ 
 ing number who feel that their early sabotage against the 
 government was a great mistake, that their trust in futile 
 British and French intervention had been disastrous and 
 that there is no other possible government in sight that can 
 maintain law and order. They say the whole country is 
 sick of war and revolution, and that they should now loyally 
 co-operate with the government in its present progressive 
 policy and hope for a growing measure of liberty in the 
 future. 
 
 The truth is that Russia has never yet known liberty, nor 
 enjoyed a government sure enough of itself and of its 
 principles to allow the free criticism of enlightened public 
 opinion and a free press. The entire press today with all 
 its sources of news and editorial interpretation of events 
 is the controlled mouthpiece of the state. With the in¬ 
 creasing stability and confidence of the present government 
 there is a growth of freedom. But no system will ever com¬ 
 mend itself to well-paid, well-housed, educated Anglo-Saxon 
 workers who have tasted hard-won liberty, if it can only 
 maintain itself by an iron dictatorship of force, and dare 
 not trust truth to the full blaze of democratic discussion and 
 opposition. 
 
 The money of the new system is of three kinds: side by 
 side with the depreciated paper currency there is the 
 stabilized currency upon a gold basis. One paper cher- 
 
RUSSIAN INDUSTRY 31 
 
 vonetz, or ten gold rubles, is worth a little more than an 
 English pound, or a little less than $5.00. Workmen are 
 frequently paid, however, and wage agreements calculated 
 in the “tovarni,” commodity or goods ruble. This is based 
 upon the index figure of fifteen** principal articles, and 
 represents, therefore, a real wage which will always purchase 
 the same amount of supplies. At present one tovarni 
 ruble is equivalent to about two gold rubles in Moscow. 
 Thus Russia has already adopted this scientific method of 
 payment, similar to the plan proposed by Professor Irving 
 Fisher of Yale for stabilizing the dollar, which still seems 
 distant and utopian in progressive America. 
 
 We found Russia a land of organized labor and trade 
 unions, and they have greater power than in any other 
 country in the world. Representation on the All-Russian 
 Congress of Soviets is in the proportion of one worker to 
 every 25,000 electors in the towns, but only one peasant 
 to every 125,000 from the provinces, thus giving the in¬ 
 dustrial workers proportionally five times as many delegates 
 as the farmers. It is a workingman’s government and 
 country. 
 
 This is often indignantly denied by those who claim that 
 it is a government of intellectuals, and that the workers 
 are the mere pawns of this oligarchy, but in the estimation 
 of the writer this is not true. The sources of information 
 and interpretation for most American visitors and readers 
 are the old dispossessed bourgeois class, who are not un¬ 
 prejudiced witnesses. It is true that they have been often 
 cruelly treated. We saw men of this class loyally trying to 
 work with the present government, but who were held under 
 suspicion by it and who were allowed neither employment 
 within Russia nor permission to leave the country. From 
 the point of view of this class alone the present government 
 is indeed cruelly unjust, but from the standpoint of the long- 
 exploited masses, it is a prodigious effort at emancipation 
 and justice. Most of us are too bitter and partisan, too near 
 to the events in question to see the movement in perspective 
 as we now can see the French Revolution. Strangely enough 
 we now view this movement with the same horror and in¬ 
 dignation as the royalists of France did the French Revolu¬ 
 tion, and as the aristocracy of England viewed the rebellion 
 
 of the ungrateful colonists in America. 
 
 Under the autocratic Czarist regime it was illegal to be a 
 
32 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 member of a trade union prior to 1905, and free labor 
 organizations and strikes were strictly prohibited. It was 
 the power of repressed organized labor driven underground 
 that finally broke in volcanic upheaval, organized its Soviets 
 and led the revolution for the overthrow of the old order. 
 
 In February, 1917, there were only three trade unions in 
 Russia, with a membership of 1,385. Upon gaining their 
 liberty, within six months a thousand labor organizations 
 had enrolled some two million members. In 1923 there were 
 4,828,000 members, including workers by hand and brain 
 in industry, agriculture, the professions and government 
 employment. 1 
 
 The personnel of the Soviet Government is drawn chiefly 
 from the ranks of labor. Within the Communist Party 55 
 per cent are from the industrial workers, 30 per cent are 
 peasants, and 15 per cent are intellectuals. Although four¬ 
 teen out of the sixteen Peoples’ Commissars of two years 
 ago were professional men or university graduates, yet this 
 class is held under suspicion unless they have been seasoned 
 in prison or enlisted in the cause before the revolution of 
 1905. The trade unions are an integral part of the ma¬ 
 chinery .of state organization. They have their represen¬ 
 tatives in nearly all important industrial and political bodies. 
 They have the right to nominate candidates for nearly all 
 important offices in industry or government, in the manage¬ 
 ment of each factory and trust. By the Labor Code of 
 1922 they are given large powers in fixing wages, working 
 hours and conditions of labor. Where labor demands, as it 
 frequently does, increased wages, shorter hours or better 
 working conditions, labor also, as represented in industrial 
 management and government, must answer the question, 
 Where is the money to come from? As yet there has never 
 been enough to go round, never enough to carry out the re¬ 
 forms for education, social insurance, and increased wages 
 which all desire. The worker in Russia has more power 
 and less wages than in other industrial countries. Thus far 
 he has succeeded in securing favorable labor legislation and 
 industrial and political control, but not in the production of 
 enough “surplus value” to improve his economic condition. 
 
 Members of the trade unions are given special privilege 
 in education, in schools for workers to prepare them for the 
 
 1 Labor statistics in this chapter are taken whenever possible from the publica¬ 
 tions of the All-Russian Central Soviet of Labor Unions, and State Department 
 of Labor translated from the Russian. Numbers 1 to 6, 1923. 
 
RUSSIAN INDUSTRY 
 
 33 
 
 universities, to which they must be admitted after a three- 
 year course without examination. 
 
 The government has aimed at and achieved a large meas¬ 
 ure of social equalization. In general, a single standard of 
 living has been established. Apart from a few secret 
 profiteers no gross inequalities of fortune exist, for the 
 reason that all are poor together. Life has been levelled 
 down rather than up. Lenine and the Soviet leaders get 
 a salary not exceeding two dollars a day, with certain al¬ 
 lowances and privileges. They are men of simple life, who 
 daily sacrifice for a cause that has for them the force of a 
 religion. But in many respects the early decrees and efforts 
 of the Party to achieve power, privilege and comfort for the 
 working class have failed. 
 
 In some cases, such as social insurance, the legislation 
 remains but is still partially ineffective, owing to insuffi¬ 
 cient funds. In other cases new legislation has withdrawn 
 the privileges granted to the workers which proved harm¬ 
 ful or impossible of fulfillment. An example of this is 
 found in workers’ control of the factories. This was tried 
 and proved a failure under existing conditions, as it did 
 later in Italy, and as it did in the Russian army when sol¬ 
 diers’ committees endeavored to take the place of the offi¬ 
 cers. It is difficult to conduct an orchestra by a divided 
 committee or soviet; some one has to beat time and be the 
 sole director for the moment. 
 
 On November 14, 1917, a Workers’ Control Decree gave 
 the workers almost complete supervision of industries, in¬ 
 cluding the purchase and sale of raw materials and manu¬ 
 factures. After disastrous experiences of mismanagement, 
 in May, 1921, the law was repealed, workers’ control was 
 abolished, individual management was restored and in some 
 instances former owners were put in charge. On December 
 28, 1921, the central committee of the Communist Party, in 
 agreement with the All-Russian Central Council of Trade 
 Unions, adopted the following resolution covering large 
 scale industry: “Conditions in Russia unquestionably de¬ 
 mand concentration of all power in the hands of the man¬ 
 agement of the factories. The direct intervention of trade 
 unions in the management of undertakings is also inad¬ 
 missible.” 1 
 
 There is now a steady evolutionary development of labor 
 
 1 Labor Conditions in Soviet Russia. International Labor Office, Geneva, 
 pp. 48, 49. 
 
34 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 within revolutionary Russia. Forced labor has been abol¬ 
 ished. Membership in a trade union is no longer compul¬ 
 sory, but it is almost universal because there are so many 
 advantages of membership and such limitations placed upon 
 “free” labor. Strikes are no longer forbidden as anti¬ 
 revolutionary. Competition is now resorted to between the 
 state and co-operative and private industries, while scien¬ 
 tific management, piece work, special rewards for excellence 
 and many other devices to stimulate production are re¬ 
 sorted to. 
 
 There is also a growing tendency toward the recognition 
 of certain rights of private property in Russia.. In a decree 
 of the All-Russian Central Executive Council in May, 1922, 
 citizens were granted the right to hold property which had 
 not already been municipalized and to transfer it by rental 
 contracts. Private persons can acquire land on a forty-nine- 
 year lease from local authorities and build upon it. In¬ 
 dividuals may hold all movable property, including capital, 
 factories, shops and personal property. Security of copy¬ 
 right, inventions and trade-marks were restored. Property 
 may be mortgaged or bequeathed to one’s family up to the 
 value of $5,000. Property expropriated by revolutionary 
 laws was not restored. But with increased intercourse and 
 trade relations conditions in Russia are constantly approx¬ 
 imating those of other nations. 
 
 An impartial perusal of Labor Legislation in the Labor 
 Code of 1922 reveals the fact that the new Government of 
 Russia in five years has produced a more advanced body of 
 legislation than many other countries in a century. 
 
 Almost the first law passed was for an eight-hour day 
 and a forty-eight-hour week, a law which a century after 
 the industrial revolution has never been enacted in Britain 
 or America. Work is limited to 8 hours for day work, 
 7 for night work and 6 for unhealthy industries. Every 
 worker has the right to a weekly rest of 42 hours, if possible 
 on Sunday. Women are safeguarded from night work, 
 overtime and unhealthy industries. Provision on full wages 
 is made for mothers for 8 weeks before and 8 weeks after 
 confinement. Creches or homes are provided for the chil¬ 
 dren of workers. 
 
 For young persons the normal working day must not ex¬ 
 ceed 6 hours from 16 to 18 years, and 4 hours for 14 to 16. 
 Children under 14 are not allowed to work. In glaring 
 contrast to the factories in China, Japan, and the backward 
 
RUSSIAN INDUSTRY 
 
 35 
 
 states in America, the writer saw no child workers in any 
 factory in Russia. 
 
 An elaborate plan of Social Insurance is provided by 
 levying from 12 to 28 per cent of the wage bill upon all 
 industries, state or private. This covers the cost of sick¬ 
 ness, accidents, incapacity for work, forced unemployment, 
 confinement for women, old age and burial. “The Russian 
 proletariat has taken as its motto the complete social insur¬ 
 ance of salaried workers as well as the poor in the towns 
 and villages.” Until industry becomes more profitable, 
 however, and more successful in production, funds are in¬ 
 adequate for the fulfillment of more than a part of this 
 program. 
 
EDUCATION AND RELIGION IN RUSSIA 
 
 Russia has not only a new economic policy but a new 
 educational and a new religious policy. Before the war 
 education in Russia had been very backward. Less than 
 20 per cent of the population was literate. In 1912 there 
 were 68,671 in the universities and colleges, 467,558 in 
 secondary schools, 6,697,385 in elementary schools or a 
 total of only 8,263,999 pupils in 125,723 institutions. The 
 students in higher education were gathered chiefly in nine 
 great university centers. Although their intellectual stand¬ 
 ards were high, their culture was often borrowed and 
 artificial. The masses were left in profound ignorance, 
 while the students were under suspicion by the authorities 
 for their liberal or revolutionary ideas. 
 
 When the Bolshevist government came into power they 
 adopted a new policy of compulsory, free, elementary educa¬ 
 tion. Under the brilliant leadership of M. Lunacharsky, 
 Peoples Commissar for Public Instruction, the latest educa¬ 
 tional methods were introduced in a four years’ system of 
 compulsory primary education. One-sixth of the best pupils 
 were to continue their studies for five years of secondary 
 education. This was to be followed by the university course, 
 where, instead of the former emphasis upon cultural studies, 
 the applied sciences, engineering, and political and social 
 studies of the Marxian school were to be favored. 
 
 In order to train a new leadership for government and 
 industry to take the place of the old bourgeoisie a short 
 three years’ course in the “workers’ faculties’’ was estab¬ 
 lished. The brightest workers were chosen from the fac¬ 
 tories, 25 per cent of them from the Communist Party and 
 most of the remainder from the trade unions and various 
 government bodies. Lew places were left for the former 
 class of privilege. Bukharin, a leading Communist writer, 
 thus defends their policy of education: “The true basis and 
 meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat must be a 
 proletarian monopoly of education. This may appear shock¬ 
 ing, but the monopoly of education always was and always 
 is the most important privilege of every ruling class. There 
 is nothing else on which a ruling class can base its power. 
 The monopoly of education must become the privilege of 
 the proletariat if the proletariat is to win.” 
 
 The new policy of education largely broke down because 
 
 36 
 
EDUCATION AND RELIGION IN RUSSIA 37 
 
 of lack of funds. Dr. Nansen reports less pupils in elemen¬ 
 tary schools in 1923 than under the Czar’s regime. During 
 this year hardly one-third of the 120,000 students in Russia 
 were receiving government rations, and some had no other 
 means of support. The Student Relief organization has 
 been providing daily meals for some 30,000 students at a 
 cost of about $1.25 a month per student. Many are in 
 great need. Several Russian professors literally starved 
 to death. 
 
 Lunacharsky reported to the Tenth Soviet Congress in 
 December, 1922, that the conditions under which the teachers 
 lived were appalling and that the $18,000,000 spent on 
 education was onlv about one-tenth what the schools received 
 before the war. He stated that while builders received 
 76 per cent of a minimum living wage, teachers received 
 only 12 per cent. On October 7, 1923, Lunacharsky re¬ 
 ported that there are less schools in Russia at present 
 than there were in 1914. He states the number of schools 
 and pupils in the various years as follows: 
 
 Year 
 
 Schools 
 
 Pupils 
 
 1911 
 
 50,000 
 
 3,500,000 
 
 1914 
 
 64,000 
 
 4,200,000 
 
 1921 
 
 70,000 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 1922 
 
 58,000 
 
 4,900,000 
 
 1923 January 
 
 53,000 
 
 4,400,000 
 
 Russia was converted to Christianity in 988 A. D., adopting 
 the Greek form of worship, and with it the imperial tradition 
 from Byzantium, the second Rome. Moscow in time became 
 a third Rome. The first Romanoff Czar was the son of 
 the Patriarch who was the real ruler of Russia. Then 
 Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate and became, with 
 all succeeding Czars, the head of both Church and State. 
 The Church became not only the chief support of the auto¬ 
 cratic State but its subservient tool and most reactionary 
 weapon. The Czar’s appointee, the Procurator of the Holy 
 Synod, was often the most sinister influence in political life. 
 The village priest was at times the effective policeman of 
 the Czar, and the confessional was often an agency of 
 espionage. The miracle-working mummies of the saints 
 were found to be merely dried bones or bogus figures of 
 wax or stuffed with cotton. As F. A. Mackenzie says, 
 “The Church was rich, powerful and corrupt and stood 
 
38 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 everywhere for reaction. The life in many monasteries 
 was a scandal.” It was such a Church that the leaders of 
 the Revolution feared. It had consistently opposed reform 
 under the Czar and under the new government. Many 
 of the priests were involved in counter-revolutionary activity. 
 As Archbishop Evdokim admits, “It is not surprising that 
 the government is suspicious of the Church. During the 
 civil war the heads of the Church worked in open sympathy 
 with the enemies of the republic.” 
 
 Before the war some eighty millions, or 94 per cent of 
 the population, belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church, 
 some three millions were Roman Catholics, and 1,225,000 
 were Protestants. There was almost no preaching save 
 a few formal carefully censored sermons. 
 
 The attitude of the Communist Party to the Church is 
 shown by Bucharin in the A. B. C. of Communism; “In 
 practice no less than in theory Communism is incompatible 
 with religious faith.” He says, “We have a struggle with 
 the Church as a special organization existing for religious 
 propaganda, materially interested in the maintenance of 
 popular ignorance and religious enslavement.” . . . “The 
 campaign against the backwardness of the masses in the 
 matter of religion must be conducted with patience and 
 considerateness as well as with energy and perseverance. 
 The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything that 
 hurts religious feeling. To thrust atheism on the masses, 
 to interfere forcibly with religious practices, and to make 
 mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist 
 but would rather hinder the campaign against religion.” 
 
 Yet in spite of Bucharin’s words the Young Communist 
 Party by parades and parodies, by cartoons and ridicule, 
 has done all in its power to make a mockery of religion. 
 The Constitution declares that, “for the purpose of securing 
 to the workers real freedom of conscience the Church is 
 to separate from the State, and the school from the Church. 
 Religious and anti-religious propaganda is guaranteed to 
 every citizen.” However, “anti-religious propagandists must 
 not interfere with or incite the public against the religious 
 propagandists, and vice versa.” Before the war those who 
 were not in the State Church could be expelled from gov¬ 
 ernment service, but now, “any legal disabilities connected 
 with the profession of any religion, or none, are abolished.” 
 
 Prior to 1914 there were 40,000 Church schools with some 
 1,500,000 pupils, but now, according to the Decree of the 
 
EDUCATION AND RELIGION IN RUSSIA 39 
 
 Council of the People’s Commissars, “The schools are 
 separate from the Church. The teaching of religious doc¬ 
 trine in all state and public, as well as in private educational 
 institutions in which general subjects are taught is forbidden. 
 Citizens may teach and study religion privately.” 
 
 Education of the youth of Russia is solely a state function. 
 Religion is not supposed to be taught to persons below the 
 age of 18 years. In the home, from the pulpits of churches 
 and in Protestant Sunday schools, however, such instruction 
 is given. But the Church is forbidden to engage in educa¬ 
 tional and charitable activities and is thus shorn of much 
 of its cultural and social influence. The Criminal Code de¬ 
 clares that: “Imparting religious instruction in State or 
 private educational institutions to children or minors (under 
 18 years) is punished by forced labor up to one year” (Arti¬ 
 cle 121, Chapter III, Moscow, 1923). 
 
 Immediately after the revolution a council was summoned 
 to deal with the abuses of the Church. The council re¬ 
 established the patriarchate and elected Archbishop Tikhon 
 to that office. After his arrest another council was called 
 in 1922 when many conservative or reactionary Church 
 officials had been placed under arrest or sent to distant 
 parts by the Soviet government. 
 
 This council, in which the members of the “Living Church” 
 were the determining factor, abolished the patriarchate, and 
 decided upon a policy of reform. The revolution was ac¬ 
 cepted as an accomplished fact and the existing government 
 was recognized. The separation of Church and State was 
 approved. The restrictions of celibacy were removed from 
 the higher clergy. The worship of relics was denounced 
 as superstition. The liturgy was revised, and it was decided 
 to replace the old dead language of Slavonic by the living 
 Russian tongue in the Church services. Plans were adopted 
 for the education of the clergy, the restoration of the preach¬ 
 ing function of the ministry, and for the application of 
 religion in a program of social justice for the working 
 masses. The social aims of the people’s revolution were 
 endorsed but not the anti-religious policy of the Com¬ 
 munist Party. 
 
 As the Reformed Church of Russia, endeavoring to unite 
 all progressive elements under the leadership of Archbishop 
 Evdokim, the Metropolitan of Moscow, Vedensky, Kras- 
 nitsky and M. Lvov, they are seeking a genuine Reforma¬ 
 tion which the Church sorely needs as in the days of Luther. 
 
40 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 The more conservative portion of the Church under Tikhon 
 is also seeking reform somewhat more slowly. The govern¬ 
 ment will doubtless use one against the other in their effort 
 to divide and weaken the religious forces. 
 
 The writer saw the Church of St. Pieman which had been 
 confiscated and handed over to the Young Communist Party 
 because the janitor had been making some home brew vodka 
 in the belfry. In place of the altar stood the bust of Karl 
 Marx. Above were the portraits of Lenine and Trotsky. 
 The sacred pictures were whitewashed over and replaced 
 by cartoons. One showed God as an old man with the 
 Virgin Mary and a new born child. Beneath was the com¬ 
 ment, “For 1922 years the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ. 
 In 1923 the Young Communist Party was born.” Worse 
 cartoons are exhibited in the magazine “The Atheist” and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 When we spoke of our feeling at such a coarse exhibition 
 of vulgarity a leading Communist said regarding their at¬ 
 titude to religion, “Old Church, or Living Church, or any 
 fortune-telling gypsy on the street, they are all the same 
 to us, and we mean by all the means in our power, yet with¬ 
 out the persecution to which we ourselves were subjected, 
 to root out what you regard as religion and what we regard 
 as sheer superstition.” 
 
 Doubtless the government believed it had evidence of 
 counter-revolutionary activity of many of the bishops and 
 priests who were shot, including the Roman Catholic Father 
 Butchkawitch and the beloved Archbishop Benjamin, Metro¬ 
 politan of Petrograd. But these anti-religious activities of 
 the Communists have done more to outrage and estrange 
 public opinion and defer the recognition of the government 
 than any other thing. Being stern realists themselves and 
 accustomed to look with contempt upon the whole sordid 
 world of “capitalism,” which in their view cares for nothing 
 but profit, they have greatly underrated these imponderable 
 moral forces which count for so much with other nations. 
 
 We repeat our earnest hope that just as the present gov¬ 
 ernment had the good sense to adopt a new economic policy, 
 that so they may also have the wisdom to devise a new 
 religious policy which will place them more in line with 
 the sensibilities of the civilized world. 
 
THE FINAL CHALLENGE 
 
 Vividly the writer recalls a scene recently witnessed in 
 Moscow. Just at the entrance to the Kremlin, which is the 
 heart of Russia, the home of the Czars, the historic citadel 
 of church and state, there stands the most sacred shrine in all 
 the Russias, that of the Iberian Virgin. Worshippers from 
 all parts of the land, simple peasants and devout women, 
 night and day stand praying at this shrine, seeking its tra¬ 
 ditional blessings of healing. Just beside it, on the wall 
 facing this chapel, the revolutionists placed without comment 
 the familiar inscription from Karl Marx, “Religion the opium 
 of the people.” 
 
 This shrine and this inscription represent the two forces 
 that are today contending for Russia and the world—God 
 and mammon, the spiritual and the carnal, vital religion 
 and materialistic atheism, Love and Hate. 
 
 Let us make no mistake about the forces behind these 
 two. Both are powerful. Behind that inscription stands 
 the frank determination of the most enduring party govern¬ 
 ment in Europe today to root out, by all known means without 
 force, that religion which they regard as pure superstition. 
 Behind it are vast masses of labor in many lands, growingly 
 class-conscious, disillusioned—socialist, communist, syndi¬ 
 calist, anarchist, revolutionary or reformist—but prevail¬ 
 ingly apathetic or antagonistic to religion. 
 
 Behind that shrine, that ikon and image, are—what ? 
 The organized churches of the world, Greek, Roman and 
 Protestant. Are they prepared for this struggle? Are they 
 fit to survive just as they are? Observe the superstition 
 of many of these worshippers at this typical shrine, as they 
 pay for their prayers, rely upon these holy relics, bow and 
 cross themselves with touching devotion. The Greek 
 Orthodox Church desperately needs a thorough reformation. 
 
 Have we all faced this challenge of Religion as the 
 “opium of the people”? Is there any measure of truth in 
 the assertion? Jesus’ way of life was revolutionary, thor¬ 
 oughgoing, transforming. It meant crucifixion, resurrection, 
 a new socialized and spiritualized community that had all 
 things common, not in the prosaic literalism of legal com¬ 
 pulsion, but in the communal life dominated by the one 
 master passion of love. They actually did share the life 
 of God and man, of rich and poor, “from each according 
 to his ability, to each according to his need.” 
 
 41 
 
42 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 But have not our later adaptations and compromises of 
 religion often proved an orthodox opiate and sedative, mak¬ 
 ing us content to worship at the shrine of the known god of 
 things-as-they-are, not a revolutionary challenge to seek the 
 new social order of things-as-they-ought-to-be ? For illus¬ 
 tration, when the writer was in Japan, he found a common 
 practice of the managers of certain factories of calling in 
 the ministers of religion, usually Buddhist but sometimes 
 Christian, to talk to the workers and keep them contented, 
 in order to increase production. 
 
 In one city the keeper of a brothel asked an earnest 
 missionary to talk to the inmates. The missionary accepted 
 the invitation just as he would have done to any prison or 
 other institution of need. The keeper was profuse in his 
 gratitude after the address, providing tea and cake. “But 
 why,” asked the missionary, “do you wish me to help these 
 poor creatures while you treat them as you do?” “Oh,” 
 said the brothel keeper, “they are getting ‘dangerous thoughts’ 
 these days, they are no longer contented with their lot.” He 
 was quite willing for a personal application of religion for a 
 future life, provided there was no social application to com 
 ditions in this; quite willing to have their souls saved pro¬ 
 vided their bodies were not. This man conceived of religion 
 as an opiate of contentment for the status quo, not a revo¬ 
 lutionary challenge to change conditions. The illustration 
 was an extreme case but typical of a common misconception 
 of religion. 
 
 After the American colonies had been driven to revolu¬ 
 tion, King George III issued a proclamation calling a fast 
 throughout the churches of England to atone for the sins 
 of the rebellious colonists. On this occasion scores of ser¬ 
 mons were preached by eminent clergymen upholding the 
 divine right of kings, and upbraiding the revolutionists for 
 their disloyalty and ingratitude. To them religion was a 
 respectable convention, a comfortable s.edative, a quieting 
 opiate to subdue revolutionary discontent and uphold the 
 vested interests of Church and State. 
 
 In 1793, Paley showed to his own satisfaction that there 
 was scarcely any respect in which the poor were not more 
 fortunate than the rich. “Some of the necessities which 
 poverty imposes are not hardships but pleasures. Frugality 
 itself is a pleasure. It is an exercise of attention and con¬ 
 trivance, which, whenever it is successful, produces satisfac¬ 
 tion. The very care and forecast that are necessary to keep 
 
THE FINAL CHALLENGE 
 
 43 
 
 expenses and earning upon a level, form, when not em¬ 
 barrassed by too great difficulties, an agreeable engagement 
 of the thoughts. This is lost amidst abundance. A yet more 
 serious advantage which persons in inferior stations possess, 
 is the ease with which they provide for their children. All 
 the provision which a poor man’s child requires is contained 
 in two words, ‘industry and innocence.’ With these qualities, 
 though without a shilling to set him forwards, he goes into 
 the world prepared to become a useful, virtuous and happy 
 man.” 
 
 “Happy man!” ah, thrice happy if he has partaken plenti¬ 
 fully enough of this opium of the people, of a personal, 
 possessive and exclusive religion which preaches Content¬ 
 ment to others, while it refuses to share its own well- 
 hoarded store. 
 
 When slavery was a part of the established order, for 
 centuries it received the hearty support of most of the 
 churches. For example, in 1853 a typical volume was 
 printed entitled “Plain Sermons for Servants,” to keep the 
 slaves contented, with an introduction by Bishop Meade. 
 The following is typical of the teaching of the day: “You 
 should remember that God has placed you where you are. 
 God knows better than you do whether it is best for you to 
 be rich or poor, high or low, in bondage or in liberty. Had 
 He left you to choose your state in life for yourself, you 
 might have made a choice that would ruin you forever! 
 The last typical sermon in this volume is entitled, “The 
 Faithful Christian Shall Wear a Crown.” The opiate is, 
 contentment in slavery here—a crown hereafter! 
 
 These men were not conscious hypocrites. They were 
 the typical religious leaders of their day. They were simply 
 blinded by tradition and self-interest. Are the people of this 
 generation subject to similar temptations? Are there equally 
 earnest and sincere men today among employers and leaders 
 of thought who all unconsciously are using their privilege 
 and power to .support “things-as-they-are” and to brand as 
 revolutionary every effort to make “things-as-they-ought-to- 
 be” ? Are they giving the workers reason to regard religion 
 as the opium of the people, rather than what it was to 
 Jesus, a constructive revolutionary force for the building 
 of a new world? 
 
 The consistent Christian and the Russian Communist agree 
 in this, that “no man can serve two masters”; he cannot be 
 true both to God and mammon. He must choose between a 
 
44 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 material and "a spiritual interpretation of life. Is the thor¬ 
 oughgoing materialistic interpretation of history by economic 
 determinism, or the spiritual interpretation of life valid? 
 There seems to be no escape from this final alternative. 
 
 Nineteen centuries ago a Galilean carpenter in an obscure 
 province of the Roman Empire of blood and iron and gold 
 hurled into a warring world a message of Good News. He 
 proclaimed a new social order which he called the Kingdom 
 of God on earth. With bold, concrete, practical idealism 
 he interpreted life as ultimately personal and spiritual. He 
 did not believe in an unexplained and sordid world merely 
 of matter and force, nor in a brute struggle for existence, 
 resulting in the survival of the fittest to fight. He did not 
 advocate a class war motivated by hate, the dictatorship of 
 one class, however large or needy, based upon the compulsion 
 of armed force and a terror, red or white. He was not con¬ 
 cerned with economic “surplus values” but with human 
 values. 
 
 For him all life derives its meaning and power from its 
 source, and that source is not matter but spirit, not hate 
 but love, not man but God. In him we live and move and 
 have our being, so that all life is of infinite worth, with 
 eternal possibilities. 
 
 Life to him was not a sordid scramble for wealth and 
 power. It was not a rushing distraction, a fiercely com¬ 
 peting conflict of hate. It gained repose because immov¬ 
 ably centered in a single principle—love. Love meant the 
 full sharing of life, in limitless self-giving and self-sacrifice, 
 for the building of a new social order which was at once 
 “the commonweal of God” and a brotherhood of co-operant 
 goodwill. And this new humanity, this practical ideal of a 
 social order which was at the same time a Kingdom of God 
 and a democracy of free men, was gloriously possible. It 
 was worth living and dying for. 
 
 And straightway his followers went forth to conquer a 
 world. Where they followed his way of life they achieved 
 his victory. But many forgot his way and took their own. 
 The little indomitable band of militant love became in time 
 a vast and vested hierarchy of wealth and worldly power. 
 Popes, priests, monks, kings and politicians wore his 
 emblem of sacrifice and shame as a graceful ornament. 
 They built him cathedrals of costly stone and stained glass 
 instead of a social structure of a redeemed humanity. They 
 gave their alms and “charity,” but not justice and mercy, 
 
THE FINAL CHALLENGE 
 
 45 
 
 to the least of these his brethren. They made ikons and 
 images, hard and fast ecumenical creeds and Protestant 
 dogmas, they offered him faith and works, the gifts of their 
 superfluous wealth, the profession of faultless orthodoxy, or 
 even at times the zealous persecution of heretics and free 
 thinkers when permitted by the secular state. They fought 
 his battles with the sword, they worshipped him; they gave 
 their bodies to be burned in his cause. But the one thing 
 needful they often forgot—Love, the full sharing of life 
 here and now with their fellow men. 
 
 Gradually the laboring masses, the weary and heavy laden 
 to whom the Galilean Jesus had preached, drew apart. They 
 became “this multitude that knoweth not the law that is 
 accursed” ; fiercely blamed for their irreligion, their atheism, 
 their Bolshevism—a great mass often Marxian and material¬ 
 istic and finally hardened and embittered. God knows the 
 writer would not make light of true religion, in which he 
 passionately believes, and of which there is much in the 
 world today. He believes in vital personal religion not only, 
 but in necessary organization in all departments of life, in¬ 
 cluding the Church as the organic, social expression of 
 religion. 1 
 
 But the masses could not seem to believe in a future 
 heaven promised by a prosperous class which did not prac¬ 
 tice their professed creed here on earth. So they tried to 
 form a gospel of their own. They, too, sought to build a 
 new social order of brotherhood. They incorporated in 
 their programmes and constitutions many of the principles 
 of the spiritual social order, but they built it on force rather 
 than on freedom, on a class rather than on an all-inclusive 
 brotherhood, and mindful of their lot and the treatment 
 they had received, sometimes on hatred rather than on love. 
 But it was a gospel of a sort, for it was tangible, concrete, 
 immediate, challenging; something here and now for this 
 earth, for which they were willing to die, as they would 
 have done for the spiritual gospel had they seen it lived 
 and practiced in the spirit of Jesus. 
 
 Here was a body of labor lacking only a spiritual soul; 
 and there was the Church with a soul but no body of social 
 expression. They represented two incomplete and comple¬ 
 mentary fragments of one common humanity, and they 
 needed each other. The Church needed to be socialized; 
 
 labor needed to be spiritualized. 
 
 » 1 • 
 
 1 His position in this matter is stated in “Facing the Crisis,” pp. 203-231. 
 
46 RUSSIA: A WARNING AND A CHALLENGE 
 
 Labor has issued the call, “Workers of the world, unite! ’ 
 Yes, they will, they must unite; they already are uniting. 
 But for what? For a class war, a dictatorship, a terror, a 
 revolution ? Most certainly if we drive them to it and if 
 there is nothing left for them but that. 
 
 But there is one way left. Why not try Jesus’ way of 
 life? Whv not share our whole life in “creation’s final 
 
 J 
 
 law”—the law of Love? 
 
 One and all we stand today before this final challenge, 
 this ultimate choice. Are we to follow God or mammon? 
 The choice is not a matter of course, a mere matter of 
 profession or creed, or lip service, to a Master whose way 
 of life we crucify and reject. “Mammon” is not a poetical 
 scriptural allusion, it means money, our money, a selfish way 
 of living, a materialistic interpretation of life. It may be 
 the frankly confessed way of the Marxian Communist, the 
 secretly veiled way of the militarist, the respectable and 
 prosperous way of the selfish capitalist, the equally selfish 
 way of the labor leader who is out for his own gain rather 
 than the cause of his comrades, or it may be the consciously 
 or unconsciously hypocritical way of the religionist who pro¬ 
 fesses Jesus’ way of life while he denies it in practice and 
 makes religion “a spitting and a byword” to the masses now 
 in open rebellion. 
 
 It is thus that Russia constitutes a warning and a challenge 
 to us all. Each must make the choice between a materialistic 
 and a spiritual interpretation of life. One and all, let us 
 work together, not for our class, small or large, privileged 
 or unprivileged, propertied or proletarian, but for the com¬ 
 mon undivided humanity of one world of brother men. 
 
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