Part 19
There is a joker in this “new form of government” known as Bolshevism. In fact, the joker is the very core of the whole matter. Mutilated wall-paper gave me my first inkling of that joker. In Chita, the searchers after freedom had done a thorough job. For not only were the interior walls of the town everywhere stripped clean, but, according to the proprietor of a local store the stock in the different shops had gone to feed the bon-fires.
“So the Bolshevists hate wall-paper even before it is hung,” I said to this merchant.
“Yes,” he replied through my interpreter. “I heard from a friend in another town that soon we’d be able to get some from Japan. But a German prisoner of war, who helps my wife with the cooking, says to wait till the railroad opens up to Petrograd, and then I’ll be able to get cheaper and better wall-paper from Germany.”
I lunched that day at the Hotel Dayooria. A German prisoner of war was my waiter. He was a meek sort of person who had set out from home with Kultur on the point of his bayonet and now found himself a slave in a foreign land. He served my tea in a glass that had been made from a wine bottle by cutting the top off. The upper edge of the glass was dangerously sharp.
“I am sorry, captain,” said the waiter; “--no other glasses now.” (He spoke in English. He had learned it in a German school. He gently hinted that any stray magazines I might have would be welcome.)
“Well, when is the boss going to order some regular goblets?”--which was more or less an attempt at humor on my part, since in Siberia at that time there was small chance of getting anything from anywhere.
“Pretty soon we’ll have glassware from Germany,” the waiter assured me proudly. Then with a click of his heels, he went back to the kitchen.
That was my second glimpse of the joker.
Across the street from the Dayooria was a much larger and more modern hotel, the Select. The lower windows on the street were all boarded up, for these had been the fronts of banks and shops when the Bolshevists cut loose on the town, and, in order to become free, found it necessary to smash the plate-glass, and loot--all of which was done to the (I was going to say King’s) proletariat’s taste.
But the interior of the Select had not suffered so complete a wrecking as the Dayooria. An American consul had once occupied a room at the Select, and through the kindness of the Cossack chief of staff, I was allowed to rent this room, with another for my interpreter. (The rent was raised each week, a mere detail even in Bolshevist Siberia.)
There was a shortage of electric globes in Chita. But the commandant managed so that I had globes for the three wires hanging from my ceiling, and a globe for the drop-light on my desk. In the halls of the hotel, as in my room, the globes hung from the ceilings on wires. One evening in a hall I observed a German war prisoner shorten the loop in one wire so that the globe fell as low as his shoulder. The next time he came through from the kitchen to the officers’ mess with a tray, he bumped the globe in such a manner that it crashed against the wall, and broke.
The same night I noticed that one of the lights in my room was not burning. I called the German prisoner who acted as janitor, and asked him to fix it. He brought a ladder, climbed up, unscrewed the globe, dropped it, and broke it. He said he felt rather bad about it, too. It was a blot on his efficiency.
The next night another globe gave no light. I investigated myself, by moving my bed and piling my two lockers on it. The globe burned all right when it was screwed into the socket. I unscrewed it until it again failed to burn, moved the bed and lockers back into place, and called the same German. He came with his ladder, examined the globe, told me it was burned out, and took it away.
When the third globe went dark, I found that it too, had been unscrewed enough to break the circuit. The German came, climbed his ladder, and with pliers, when he thought I was not looking, pried off the glass tip, rendering the globe useless. Then he told me the globe was no good. And--there were no more globes.
Now all I had left was the globe in the drop-light. Every morning I hid it, and thereby worried the German. There was evidence that he hunted for it when I was out of my room. Why were the janitor and the waiter destroying globes that were a necessity even to themselves? I clinched my suspicions by asking a former merchant of electrical supplies this question: “Where did you buy your electric globes and fixtures before the war?” Well, they came from Moscow--mostly made in Germany.
Here was another corner of that joker! When Russian Bolshevists were afraid they would get caught breaking things, the German prisoners helped the game along by doing a little sly smashing on their own account!
Because I had the room of a former American consul, the Russian owner of a gold mine near Chita called upon me, thinking I was the present American consul. He said he wanted advice as to where he might, some time in the future, buy mining-machinery.
The Bolshevists had wrecked his entire plant. Their leaders had told the peasants that the mines of Siberia belong to all, and that in time a Bolshevist government would work the mines, and divide the gold among the people. In that way no one would become richer than someone else.
“The German prisoners,” he said, “now tell my workmen that if I have machinery I will need only a few men, and so hundreds of workmen will be thrown out of jobs. Of course, if I could put machinery in I would employ ten times as many men as I do now. I can’t make my mine pay without machinery, and for the present I am employing only common labor to clean things up so as to be ready for better times. If we Russian mine owners can’t make our mines pay, we’ll have to sell out. During the revolution, German capitalists have bought up a lot of companies in European Russia at bankrupt prices.
“But assuming that Germany takes the mines, how can the Germans hope to operate them if the workmen refuse to allow machinery to be used in them?”
“You do not know our _moujiks_,” he replied. “They will not believe what I tell them for their own good. But they will believe the lies of an outsider--any childish story told to swindle them. By the time Germany is ready to sell us machinery, maybe the _moujiks_ will be told not to smash it--if the machinery is German.”
And picture the amount of mining-machinery that Siberia will be able to use! For two thousand versts to the north of Chita there are gold fields. The fields which have been developed make scarcely a dot on the map. No. One Russian mine-worker will not become richer than another when that vast country is worked. If Germany’s plans do not miscarry, those who will profit first will be the German machinery manufacturers.
It was brought to my attention in a certain part of Siberia that wool, cow hair and camel hair, valued at nine million rubles, purchased just before the revolution by a Boston company through its Moscow agency, was to be seized. Who was going to seize it is not a matter for me to discuss here, but I can say there was good evidence that it would have gone in the direction of Germany.
The warehouses containing this material were in three cities, and somehow escaped being burned. Whenever Bolshevist bands broke loose to loot and burn, the word must have been passed from some mysterious fountain-head to spare the warehouses containing that wool and hair--for, mind, those warehouses were in three different cities, far apart. This would indicate that, after all, there is a system to Bolshevism. The system appears to be, “Smash machinery and manufactured goods but spare raw material.” As the wool and hair was owned by an American company, an inference might be drawn that the protection was due to its being American property. If so, why--when there was a rumor that American troops might soon be in the vicinity of the warehouses--was it to be seized and moved toward Germany?
Siberian Bolshevists with whom I talked told me of the great yearning for education among the masses, and how the Bolshevists would provide plenty of schools. I examined the condition of several schools where the Bolshevists had been in control for a time. Every possible book had been destroyed--geographies, grammars, spelling-books. It was a case of _spurlos versenkt_. Pens, paper, pencils, maps, erasers, rulers, ink and all other school accessories went the way of the books--to the bon-fires in the streets. A yearning to learn? Certainly. One might describe it as a burning desire. And will it not be fine for Leipsic to print Russia’s new school books, with some German propaganda thrown in free? Also, _lieber Gott_, vot a market for pencils and other little things! (Note for Leipsic: Printers in Japan are already printing Russian books!)
There is a significant angle to the smashing and burning that has gone on in Russia--an angle which the American working man should bear in mind when he is told that Russian Bolshevists are on the right track for turning a _moujik_ into a magnate over night. Russia is a great producer of raw material. Smashed machinery there means that whatever raw material escapes destruction must seek a foreign market. Naturally, if such material cannot be sold to a Russian factory, the factory abroad buys it much cheaper than if there were a home demand for it. Also, smashed machinery in Russia means no production in Russia of manufactured goods; and no manufactured goods in Russia means that the very working men who smashed the machinery must buy goods manufactured abroad.
Further, if there are no goods manufactured in Russia, the foreign manufacturer makes his own prices, both for what he buys from Russia and what he sells to her. In other words, he gets raw materials from her at low prices, and sells manufactured goods to her at high prices. This forces all Russian labor, skilled as well as unskilled, into working at low wages on the production of raw materials, and the cost of the raw materials is constantly being pulled down because, with no Russian demand for factory-skilled labor, there is a surplus of labor. So the Russian manufacturing capitalist is wiped out, sure enough, along with all machinery. Also, in time, Russian skilled labor will be wiped out!
And for this condition of affairs, Russians can thank themselves!
Germany realized how crude were her methods when she sent to Belgium and France a force that, operating behind her fighting men, wrecked or burned factories, and seized raw material. That was a job she did herself, and she had to take the blame of the whole world for it. She had to devise a scheme by which she could get the same results elsewhere without having to bear any blame.
That scheme was Bolshevism. The craftiest criminals always use fools as their tools. And in Bolshevism Germany found the _Ersatz_, or substitute, for an army of thieving and destroying Germans. It has been estimated that more than a million Germans are prisoners of war in Russia. These men whispered anti-capitalistic propaganda into the ear of the poor _moujik_, who wants education so badly that he is willing to burn school books, and who thinks he can attain freedom by ripping off wall-paper. And the _moujik_, under skillful leadership, did Germany’s work, and did it for nothing. That same Ivan who had died by millions to beat the Germans ran home from the trenches and wrecked his own country to the Kaiser’s taste, at the Kaiser’s word--wrecked it more thoroughly than the German armies would have been able to wreck it. For he smashed everything but the ikons and the rubber-plants. Why he did not destroy the rubber-plants we cannot understand. Is it because Germany does not wish to sell rubber-plants to Russia?
So keen were the Germans to help the Russian Bolshevists to “overthrow the Russian capitalists,” that the German capitalists loaned the Bolshevists armored cars and cannon made in Germany by the Krupp works and in Austria by the Skoda works. Evidently the German capitalists had suddenly fallen in love with the Russian proletariat! (This is a nut for our own parlor Bolshevists to crack.)
I can guess how they will crack it. They will say, “Yes, the Russian Bolshevists took help from the German capitalists, but in time they will turn those guns upon the very capitalists who loaned them.” Yet what I ask to know, as Hashimura Togo would say, is, “Why did the German capitalists ever begin to help the Bolshevists?”
After all, Russian capitalists are the only people who can give Russian working men jobs. By the same token, German capitalists are the only people who can give German working men jobs. If the German capitalists do not want the Russian capitalists to be able to give jobs to Russians, are the German capitalists who loaned guns to Russian Bolshevists, friends of the Russian working men?
The first parlor Bolshevist who answers that question correctly will explain the joker in Bolshevism.
Germany mobilized the fools of Russia. Why not, she asked herself, extend a scheme that worked so successfully with the _moujiks_ to the working populations of other countries? She began to have hopes (with the aid of Bolshevist propaganda) of mobilizing the malcontents everywhere. Capital, if not wiped out, could at least be frightened or forced into a period of non-production--or production at high prices. High prices, in turn, create demands for higher wages--demands that usually take the form of strikes. Labor troubles may lead to riots, or even revolution--with consequent destruction. And to judge by Belgium, northern France and Russia, destruction is what Germany wants.
Meanwhile, rumors of riots in the Fatherland encourage Bolshevism in other countries. We have had copious news of Bolshevist troubles in Germany. The fact that we get this news over German wires is evidence that Germany wants us to get it. It makes a fine smoke-screen behind which stand her great untouched factories with their unsmashed machinery.
The Germans told the Russians that the great war was a “capitalistic war.” Germany was right. But she neglected to say that it was designed to aid the German capitalists. And if enough fools in every other country can be induced to smash and tear and burn, saving only (take note) some raw materials, then with her own factories and machinery intact, Germany can flood the world with her own cheap manufactured goods.
For this is the joker in Bolshevism: The providing for Germany, of colossal markets!
And if she has these markets created for her, the indemnity which the Allies have demanded, and which Germany says is “staggering,” will be to her a mere handful of small change.
XXVIII
THE UNITED STATES IN ASIA
It must be fairly obvious to the reader in following my account of what I saw and heard in Siberia that I regard the whole adventure on the part of the United States in Siberia as a failure, whether it is regarded in the light of being an attempt at international diplomacy, military intervention, a gesture of friendship toward Russia, or an enterprise in the nature of insurance against the spread of Bolshevism.
Primarily, it began as a new campaign against Germany-to prevent Germany from getting possession of war-stores in Russia and Siberia and replenishing her stocks of food, munitions and men and to prevent her from penetrating the country for conquest. There was every reason for our being in Russia, both on the Archangel front, and in Siberia, to accomplish these ends. Our presence in Siberia alone was a menace to Germany, a threat of a thrust through her back door in combination with the other powers involved with us, including Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, British, French, Japanese and others interested and concerned.
But we went about it even before the armistice was dreamed of, in a tentative manner. We did not start a campaign, we began a debating society. We twiddled our thumbs all winter in Siberia, while the forces of evil, Bolshevist and others, took advantage of our lack of decision on anything and acquired a certain technique in a chicane suitable to the conditions existing to thwart us in any decision we might reach in the future.
We kept insisting that we were helping Russia by being in Siberia. The Czechs, the Russians and the Japanese knew that only action could help, and action meant fighting those who were ruining the country. We were helping Russia and Siberia in just about the manner a man might help a family which was being beaten and robbed by burglars if the man sat out on the front porch and remarked: “If this thing gets too serious, I am here with a gun to help.”
And while he sat there, the members of the family still alive, yelled frantically: “This is serious now--half my children are dead, and the biggest robber has me by the throat.”
Whereupon the visitor on the porch would reply: “If I do anything rough I will hurt somebody’s feelings. I don’t want to do that. But if you kill the robbers, then you have settled the affair yourself, with my moral support. But I am not quite sure the robbers are not in the right. I am your friend, if you win this fight; if the robber wins it, I want to make friends with him. In the meantime, I can supply you with a Red Cross nurse to bind your wounds if you escape alive; I can give you food if the robber steals or destroys all you have to eat; I can send you ministers to bury you with prayers if you are killed, or to preach to you if you are spared. I am a Good Samaritan but I must not interfere.”
While we were thus pausing and surveying the wreckage, human and material, various Cossack chiefs, schooled in the methods of the old régime, seized power and began building up principalities of their own--Kalmikoff as governor-general of the Ussuri district, and Semenoff as boss of the Trans-Baikal.
They used the old tricks of autocracy--swords and ceremony--which the people feared and by which they were impressed with demonstrations of physical power. Then to catch the imagination of the nations which wished to see Russia rehabilitate herself speedily, they began to talk in a patter, the key-note of which was, and is: “I stand for a free and reunited Russia, a Russia greater than the old.” Whereupon they proceeded to deny anything in the nature of freedom, and to disunite Russia. All they stood for, and still stand for, is their own glorification and reward and the gambler’s chance that they will inherit the throne of the Czars. If they cannot attain to such ambitions, at least they hope to sell out their usurped powers in case some figure of imperial lineage comes out of hiding to take the shattered crown.
We kept assuring the Siberians that our government stood as their friend, at the same time neither denouncing, nor interfering with these usurpers. The people, for all their abysmal ignorance, knew perfectly well what was going on--they recognized autocracy because they had to submit to it. And, speaking generally, the attitude of the United States was: “Why cannot you people get together and settle up this mess--all you have to do is come to an agreement, and reunite Russia!”
This while several civil wars were being fought in the country!
At home our press and public were making a hue and cry against Bolshevism. Yet in Siberia were Cossack chiefs with little armies opposed to the Bolshevists, but inactive because they were not sure what we might do. Our failure to throw in with these chiefs, led the Bolshevist leaders to hope, if not actually believe, that we favored Bolshevism, or at least did not dare fight it. At any rate, our “do nothing” policy allowed the Bolshevist leaders, crafty in intrigue, propaganda and organization, to whisper to their wavering adherents that the United States was passively favoring them and that recognition of the Bolshevist government was only a matter of time.
In effect, our operations for nearly a year, were a subsidy to Bolshevism. Our civilian-aid agencies were unwitting helpers to the secret Bolshevists of Siberia, for they gave comfort and encouragement to the idea that Bolshevism in Siberia was a success. We repaired a lot of damage that Bolshevism had done, before the people of Siberia could realize what the destruction meant--before they could learn for themselves what a mess they had made of things.
Our government did relief work, and became actually thereby an ally of the Bolshevist régime, though maintaining an attitude of non-interference--neutrality.
“One faction is as bad as another,” was the way our spokesmen put it. That was a comforting phrase, but not true. It meant blaming our own ignorance on the factions. It was on the same scale as the statement made so often after the outbreak of the war: “Europe has gone war-mad--one nation is as bad as the other,” a frame of mind which helped Germany. How the Bolshevist leaders must have chuckled when they heard that the United States classed them as no better and no worse than the Russians who were actively fighting Bolshevism, and opposing it in other ways. And the gallant Czechs were amazed and discouraged by our failure to coöperate with them to the extent they had been led to believe that we would.
Kalmikoff and Semenoff, more particularly the former, carried on executions by the wholesale. It was a system of eliminating such persons as might oppose them. Some of the victims were probably Bolshevists, but many of them were decent and orderly Russians from our viewpoint. They dared whisper their suspicions against the Cossack chiefs--that was enough to send them to the execution party.
For instance, men and women of Khabarovsk protested to Colonel Styer that Kalmikoff had their friends and relatives in prison and would shoot them. Colonel Styer took the matter up with Kalmikoff. That night fifteen or twenty men were chosen at random from the prison, taken out into a grove, and shot down. They did not know what they had been arrested for, they had never been tried.
This sort of thing went on for months after our forces were stationed in Khabarovsk. But with Washington giving strict orders that there should be nothing in the nature of “interference,” what could Colonel Styer do? Yet at the same time we were assuring the “loyal” Russians that our troops were on the ground for their protection.
To the Russians, who could not possibly fathom our policy and could not know what was going on between our commanders and Kalmikoff, it looked as if our troops were there to protect Kalmikoff while he decimated the population. And Kalmikoff continued to lift himself into power by the simple process of killing off everybody who objected to his assuming autocratic powers.
Yet Kalmikoff and Semenoff, if properly dealt with from the first, might have joined forces with us against the Bolshevists. They could not have opposed us. They both have certain qualities as military leaders, and while they undoubtedly are monarchists or “men on horseback,” they are certainly anti-Bolshevist. And if we had adopted an anti-Bolshevist policy from the start, this policy would have given us a point of contact with the Cossack chiefs. We could have demanded that they behave themselves, get busy and fight Bolshevists at the front.
But they camped down in Khabarovsk and Chita, clamped a tight lid on the press in their districts, and inspired the writing of articles for the local newspapers which extolled their own virtues as Russian patriots, and denounced the other Cossack chiefs with whom they were at odds. And the peculiar fact about this press campaign, was that when each told of the others faults and selfish ambitions, he was telling the truth, as truth goes in Siberia.