No More Learning

These reflections lead us to a further recognition of
complexity. In the Soviet Union there is a unique
merging not only of East and West, but of old and new.
In 1917 one of the most backward nations in the world,
economically and culturally, was Tsarist Russia. It was
hardly modern in any sense of the word. When the Com-
munists took power they immediately set out to establish
something so modern that it had never been tried before,
namely a full-fledged, nation-wide socialist society based
on Marxist principles. Marx had thought that such a
society would probably first come into being in one of
the highly industrialized states like England or Germany.
Instead it happened in the least industrialized of all the
Great Powers.
The Soviet Communists proceeded energetically and
enthusiastically with their unheard-of job, hitching a
powerful twentieth-century automobile engine, as it were,
to an antiquated horse carriage. The strange combina-
tion went ahead by fits and starts, with frequent break-
downs and numerous repairs. Gradually the Communists
succeeded in constructing a fairly adequate chassis for the
engine. The pervasive and dramatic interweaving of
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medieval and modern and ultra-modern in the U. S. S. R.
is a phenomenon that demands the most careful analysis.
Truly the Soviet Union presents a most complex picture.
Continuing with our introductory bases of judgment,
I suggest, thirdly, that we should be aware of the histor-
ical and cultural background of Soviet Russia.
The Revolution of 1917 took place in a semi-feudal
country which had lived under Tsarist absolutism for
some 400 years. Russia had never experienced the pro-
gressive, invigorating influences of a Renaissance and
Reformation, an Enlightenment and Bourgeois Revolu-
tion. It had never gone through anything remotely re-
sembling the long evolution of democracy and civil liber-
ties characteristic of England and the United States.
While the oppressive Tsarist dictatorship, noted for the
number and cruelty of its political persecutions, made
a concession towards democracy by instituting, as a result
of the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905, the Duma or
House of Representatives, this body was soon reduced
to a parliamentary nonentity.
In 1917 approximately 85 percent of the population
were peasants engaged in agricultural pursuits and using,
for the most part, primitive methods. Only in 1861 had
the Russian peasants been legally freed from the old
medieval system of serfdom. Grafted onto an incredibly
inefficient and backward agricultural economy, there was
in 1917 a weak and spasmodically developed capitalist
industry, largely depending on foreign financing and
foreign technical management. The peasants and the
relatively small working class endured an extremely low
living standard comparable to that of India and China.
About 70 percent of the entire people were illiterate; and
enjoyment of the splendid Russian achievements in
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drama and literature and music was limited to a thin
top-layer of the economically and socially privileged. In
the development of industry Tsarist Russia was in 1917
at least a century behind advanced countries like the
United States and Great Britain; in the development of
democratic institutions easily two centuries behind.
The influence of the Tsarist background upon Soviet
Russia cannot be exaggerated. Many of the weaknesses
and shortcomings that the U. S. S. R. has demonstrated
during its existence can be traced to the Tsarist inheri-
tance. No people can quickly throw off the habits and
customs of centuries. Part holdovers from Tsarist days
are the intense Soviet suspicion of foreigners, the per-
vasive activity of the secret police, the lag in free speech
and civil liberties, and a certain unsophisticated and
frequently undiplomatic bluntness of language.
The basic principles of Marxism are internationally
relevant and applicable. Yet the precise way in which
these general principles are put into effect is moulded
by the traditions and circumstances of each country in
which they take root. The evolution of both Christianity
and capitalism indicates such an outcome. Inevitably the
whole complex of a particular people's history, geograph-
ical situation, economic resources, national characteristics
and cultural level condition that people's future, some-
times for the better, sometimes for the worse. Soviet
socialism, therefore, is bound to differ from British
socialism in the West and from Chinese socialism in the
East, though they all share certain fundamental economic
and social methods and objectives.
In March of 1917, following more than two and one-
half years of disastrous belligerency in the First World
War, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and a provisional Gov-
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ernment of liberals and middle-class Republicans took
over the state. Under its muddling eight months' rule
things went from bad to worse throughout the land.
When Lenin and his colleagues seized control in Novem-
ber, they faced the chaos of a completely disorganized
economy, with the transportation system in collapse and
famine threatening; and the problems of a people whose
morale had been shattered by defeat after defeat at the
hands of the Germans, by some 7,000,000 military casual-
ties, including over 2,000,000 dead, and by overwhelm-
ingly trying economic conditions. Such were the unpro-
pitious circumstances under which the Russian Bolshe-
viks set out to construct the first socialist commonwealth
in history.
No sooner had the new Soviet Government made
peace with imperialist Germany, through signing the
humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918,
than it was forced to rally all its strength to resist a fresh
invasion, from east, west, south and north, on the part
of the Allies. This Allied intervention of 1918-22 con-
tinued for four years after final defeat of the Central
Powers had done away with the shadowy excuse of trying
to re-establish the Eastern Front. And it quickly joined
hands with the White counter-revolution in a joint cam-
paign to overthrow the Soviets by force. During this
period the armies of fourteen nations, including expedi-
tionary units from the United States, invaded the Soviet
Republic.
Although finally victorious, the Soviet regime suffered
enormous property losses and approximately 2,000,000
more dead. One of the worst effects of the combined
intervention and Civil War was that the Soviet Govern-
ment, forced to fight for its very life, found it necessary
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to tighten up the political dictatorship and to institute
the most repressive measures against the White counter-
revolutionaries. When the Communists actually took
power in 1917, they did so with a comparatively small
loss of life throughout Russia. Bloodshed on a large
scale came later. The author R. H. Bruce Lockhart (later
knighted), attached to the British diplomatic corps dur-
ing the exciting Civil War days and never a Soviet sym-
pathizer, throws light on these matters.
In his book British Agent Mr. Lockhart, referring
to the early months of 1918, writes that the Communists
"had not yet embarked on their own campaign of sup-
pression. I mention this comparative tolerance of the Bol-
sheviks, because the cruelties which followed were the
result of the intensification of the Civil War. For the in-
tensification of that bloody struggle Allied intervention,
with the false hopes it raised, was largely responsible . . .
and sent thousands of Russians to their death. Indirectly
it was responsible for the Terror. "11 The Communists
as well as their opponents fought ferociously and with
little regard for the so-called rules of warfare. Both
sides in the terrible civil conflict fully bore out an old
Russian saying, "One life, one kopek. "
During this period, in the autumn and winter of
1921-22, the Soviet Union suffered a fearful drought and
famine, aggravated by the shattered state of transporta-
tion, the ravages of counter-revolution and intervention,
and the war-weariness of the peasantry. This crisis of
crops and hunger brought another fearful toll, with at
least 1,000,000 people perishing. To its lasting credit
the American Relief Administration rendered yeoman
service to the Soviet Russians in this emergency and so
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offset to some degree United States participation in the
Allied invasion.
On October 25, 1922, when the Japanese forces and
the last remnants of the White armies evacuated Vladi-
vostok in Far Eastern Siberia, civil war and armed foreign
intervention finally came to an end. * Not until almost
five full years after the Revolution of 1917 was the Soviet
Government able to cease military operations and settle
down to the immense tasks of peaceful reconstruction.
With the odds heavily against them at the start and the
whole world expecting their downfall, the Soviets had
struggled through to victory over foreign invasion, civil
conflict, territorial loss, economic breakdown and famine,
all inflicted on a country that had already experienced
three calamitous years of the First World War and two
far-reaching revolutions. It was an epic triumph.
These first five years of the Soviet Republic's existence
naturally conditioned its entire future. The long battle
for survival made it doubly aware and doubly suspicious
of enemies plotting violence against it both at home and
abroad. The dictatorial features of Soviet political life
were accordingly accentuated. Well-founded fears of
still another attack on the part of foreign powers retarded
the evolution of democracy in the U. S. S. R. and held
down living standards by necessitating enormous invest-
ments in the production of armaments for self-defense.
Despite earnest efforts on behalf of international
amity, Soviet Russia continued to live in a world bitterly
hostile to it and reluctant to enter into normal diplomatic
and trade relations with it. The United States did not
* Japanese military units remained in the Soviet northern half of the
Far Eastern island of Sakhalin until April, 1925.
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officially recognize the Soviet Government until 1933
during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Handicapped by a credit blockade, the Soviet regime
was unable to obtain foreign loans of any substance and
had to lift itself by its own bootstraps in regard to eco-
nomic reconstruction and development.
Fourthly, it follows from what I have already said
about the historical background of the Soviet Union that
in comparing the U. S. S. R. with other countries, we must
pay constant attention to the principle of historical rela-
tivity.
I mean by this that different peoples of the earth are
in different stages of historical development and that
it would not be fair to apply to all of them the same
absolute measuring rod of judgment. Since Russia in
1917 was from one to two centuries behind the United
States in most of the ways we deem modern, it is obvi-
ously absurd to expect that the Soviet Union, having
to cope with such Herculean tasks as the repulse of the
Nazi invasion, could completely catch up to America in
a short thirty-five years. The building of either a highly
advanced capitalist society or a highly advanced socialist
society takes a good deal of time. And frequently in dis-
cussing some special aspect of Soviet life, our real ques-
tion should be: How much have conditions improved
since Tsarist Russia of 1917?
I would apply the same principle of relative com-
parisons to any country that had been in a generally
backward condition and had made some drastic change
in government or economic system in an effort to develop
a more mature and secure civilization. So today we
would all do well to judge with restraint, and with some
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understanding of the past, recent revolutionary events
in India and China, both of which have joined the
twentieth-century march toward progress.
The need of making comparisons between the U. S.
S. R. and other nations on a relative as well as an absolute
basis extends to all spheres of Soviet life. Regarding the
average material standard of living in Soviet Russia, un-
questionably it is still considerably below that enjoyed
in the United States. Yet it has gone up a great deal
since 1917 and promises to advance to much higher
levels. Those Americans who emphasize the fact that
Soviet living standards in terms of consumption goods
lag far behind what we take for granted in the U. S. A.
tend to forget that the American standard of living is
by all odds the highest in the world and has for a long
time outstripped that of any European or Asiatic country.
It is easy to overlook or romanticize the material short-
comings of lands other than Soviet Russia.
Many return from the U. S. S. R. , however, and con-
demn it wholesale for the sort of material backwardness
that they regard as merely picturesque in other parts of
the world. And they will construct whole books or lec-
ture tours around the lack of those mechanical gadgets
and modern conveniences for which the United States
is noted. But it is hardly to be expected that the Soviet
Russians, who have had a multitude of world-shaking
and world-making problems, could have turned the
U. S. S. R. into a tourist's paradise in so short a time or
would in any case have made that a main objective.
Actually, in 1938 when I last visited Soviet Russia,
traveling was becoming fairly comfortable there; and the
Russians were becoming increasingly efficient in the
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small things that often loom so large in the consciousness
of travelers from abroad.
Again, the pertinency of relative comparisons be-
comes plain in regard to Soviet democracy. So far as
political democracy and civil liberties are concerned,
the Soviet Union has not caught up with the Anglo-Saxon
countries, but it has made notable headway since Tsarist
days. When we turn to other significant forms of demo-
cracy -- racial, cultural, economic, or that which consists
of equality between the sexes -- we find that Soviet pro-
gress since 1917 has been even more impressive. Indeed,
as I shall show in Chapter III, in racial democracy Soviet
Russia has gone beyond the United States and most other
nations of the world. This brings out the important
point that in some respects, even on the basis of absolute
comparisons, the Soviet Union ranks above the most
highly developed countries.
Fifthly and finally, any proper evaluation of the
Soviet Union must take into account not only the past
and present, but also the probable future.
No sensible person expects that a radical and inclusive
new social-economic order such as socialism could be built
overnight in any country, let alone in one that had as
many handicaps holding over from the past as Soviet
Russia. The construction of a socialist society entailed
a long, hard pull in overcoming the initial political chaos
and economic ruin of 1917; in warding off foreign ag-
gression and putting down civil strife; in setting up the
economic and cultural foundations of socialism; and in
eradicating the habits and psychology of the former abso-
lutist-feudalist-capitalist state. In this evolution upward
there were bound to be bad years as well as good, failures
as well as triumphs, detours as well as marches straight
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OH EVALUATING SOVIET RUSSIA
ahead. Since the Soviet Union was the first nation in
history to attempt the creation of a socialist civilization
and since the Communists and their supporters had
practically no precedents on which to draw, it was almost
inevitable that unforeseen problems should arise and
serious mistakes be made.
Accordingly, if the student of Soviet affairs concen-
trates exclusively on some present phase, perhaps one of
the bad years, in the development of Soviet socialism, he
will get a misleading impression because he will be
neglecting the possible or probable course of future
events. Again and again the Soviets have faced, fought
through and surmounted some crisis that might have
proved disastrous to a less determined people. Since the
revolution the domestic or international situation has
repeatedly called on them to make tremendous sacrifices;
but those sacrifices have always had meaning and pur-
pose. The Soviet people have suffered, bled and died, as
they did during the Nazi onslaught from 1941 to 1945,
in order to preserve their new socialist order and to
press forward with the fulfilment of the Marxist ideal of
a society guaranteeing security, abundance and freedom
to everyone. In the perspectives of history the distinction
between constructive and fruitless sacrifice is of utmost
significance. The Soviet people never forget the future.
The story of the Five-Year Plans, the long-range,
country-wide programs of social-economic development
starting in 1928, provides examples of what I am talking
about. The First Five-Year Plan, 1928-32, with its enorm-
ous stress on heavy industry and machine building, re-
quired that the Soviet people forego the more rapid rise
in living standards which could have been brought about
by concentration on the manufacture of consumer goods.
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But the more Spartan policy proved sound because it
enabled the nation to lay the permanent foundations
of socialism. The Second Five-Year Plan, 1933-37, put
considerably more emphasis on consumer goods, and the
standard of living rose higher than ever before in Tsarist
or Soviet Russia.
The Third Five-Year Plan, scheduled for 1938-42,
was designed to continue this progress. But with the
growing menace of foreign aggression and the outbreak
of the Second World War in 1939, the stress had to be
shifted to the production of defense implements such
as guns, airplanes and tanks. An accelerated increase in
consumer goods was necessarily postponed. Again, the
sacrifice on the part of the Soviet people paid off in terms
of the future; for it was an essential factor in their ability
to hold off and hurl back Hitler's assault.
In examining the status of democracy in the Soviet
Union, we likewise need to consider future prospects.
In the first place, the lack of democratic institutions and
the low cultural level in the old Tsarist autocracy did
not provide an auspicious starting point for the develop-
ment of democracy under the Soviets. It was obvious
from the beginning that the evolution of the Soviet
people into modern democracy in the best sense of that
term would take decades to accomplish. As America's
greatest philosopher, the late John Dewey, repeatedly
pointed out, the intelligent and efficient functioning of
political democracy requires a fairly high development
of popular education. But as we have seen, the popula-
tion of Russia was only about 30 percent literate in 1917;
most of them, therefore, did not possess the elementary
cultural prerequisites for proper participation in the
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complicated processes of democratic government. They
did not even know what a ballot was or how to mark it.
In the second place, the Soviet Communists have
frankly put into effect the Marxist theory that a tempo-
rary dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary during
the transition from capitalism to socialism, with that
dictatorship having strong elements of democracy within
it. Again in line with Marxist doctrine, the Communists
claim that the dictatorship will sink into the past entirely
as the need for it passes with the disappearance of press-
ing dangers both internal and external. They insist,
above all, that the enduring economic foundations of
democracy must be securely established in the new social-
ist system; and that democratic institutions in capitalist
countries remain weak, unstable and in danger of com-
plete overthrow by fascist movements precisely because
capitalist economies are constantly floundering about in
the quicksand of financial crisis, economic depression and
mass unemployment.
To explain is not always to excuse. The Soviet Gov-
ernment has from time to time used unnecessarily harsh
measures to maintain itself. Yet we should not lose sight
of the ultimate democratic aims of the Soviet Republic.
In my opinion the Soviet people and their leaders have
never relinquished those objectives. In the nature of
the case, however, since the Communists both in theory
and in practice give priority to the economic base of
their socialist society, and believe that democracy can
grow and expand only if this fundamental substructure
is sound, it is not surprising that the full flourishing of
democratic institutions in the Soviet Union should come
gradually and late. In this matter, taking the long view
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of Soviet civilization is a helpful corrective to hasty con-
demnation and premature judgment.
In the light of the future, too, and of Soviet Russia's
many difficulties, the various compromises and shifts in
policy that occur in the U. S. S. R. become intelligible. It
was Lenin himself who enunciated the strategy of "one
step backward, if necessary, in order to take two steps
forward. " And the Soviets have frequently followed out
this common-sense procedure. In 1921, for instance,
toward the end of the trying Civil War period, the Soviet
Government, in order to expedite recovery and give the
population a breathing spell, introduced the New Eco-
nomic Policy (N. E. P. ), which encouraged certain com-
promises toward capitalist principles. Practically the
entire foreign press interpreted the N. E. P. as heralding
the final abandonment of socialism in Russia. Of course,
as the Soviet regime had planned all along, it constituted
only a temporary episode and in due course was discarded
altogether.
Another instance of the same sort of thing occurred
during the 1932-33 food crisis when, in the drive to col-
lectivize agriculture, the Communists went too fast and
provoked dangerous opposition among the peasants by
extremist policies. Joseph Stalin himself finally inter-
vened and pointed out that some of the comrades had
become over-zealous, "dizzy with success," as he put it.
The Government proceeded to make certain concessions
to the individualistic tendencies of the peasants.
Commenting on these compromise measures, the
New York Herald Tribune, in an editorial published in
November of 1932, stated that the Soviet agrarian prob-
lem could be solved "only by such a swift retreat from
Marxian first principles as will leave no doubt in any
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Russian or foreign mind of the collapse of the Commun-
ist experiment under the relentless pressure of faulty but
unalterable human nature. "12 Actually "a swift retreat"
did take place, but the final result was a record-breaking
harvest in 1933 and the successful completion of the
collectivization program, which meant the extension of
socialism to the vital sphere of agriculture.
The statement from the Herald Tribune, which over
the years has run much first-rate material about the Soviet
Union, is one which I always like to quote. For it shows
how even one of the more restrained and reliable Amer-
ican newspapers is ever ready to seize upon the slightest
sign of Soviet weakness and draw from it the most exag-
gerated implications. To this day most foreign observers
of the U. S. S. R. have failed to learn that occasional steps
backward in Soviet Russia do not necessarily spell failure,
but usually indicate a willingness on the part of a radical
government with all the responsibilities of political power
to face the facts and to exercise intelligent flexibility in
the conduct of affairs. The Communists always remem-
ber their great goal of a full-fledged socialist and Com-
munist system and do not mind too much if they have to
pursue a zigzag course to get there.
In more recent years the greatest compromise which
circumstances compelled the Russians to adopt was the
extensive retreat of the Soviet armies during the high-
tide of the Nazi invasion in 1941 and 1942. During this
critical period the Soviet forces fell back almost to the
gates of Moscow and yielded most of the city of Stalin-
grad. With blood, territory and scorched earth tactics
they bought time and opportunity for preparing a mighty
counter-offensive that finally broke the back of German
military power. Yet, as we know, foreign observers
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everywhere misread the signs. Just as earlier swift retreats
(of a non-military nature) had led them to forecast the
failure of the whole drive toward socialism in Soviet
Russia, so Soviet military defeats and withdrawals dur-
ing the Second World War caused them to pronounce a
premature sentence of doom on the Soviet war effort.
Sheer ignorance plus neglect of future prospects brought
them unenviable reputations as discredited prophets.
Professor John Dewey was one of the typical Ameri-
can intellectuals who, at first sympathetic toward the
Soviet Union, later turned against it in disillusionment
that was also typical. Yet he provides an answer to him-
self in an excellent passage on the sort of ethical stand-
ards that intelligence requires in the modern world: "No
individual or group will be judged by whether they
come up to or fall short of some fixed result, but by
the direction in which they are moving. The bad man
is the man who no matter how good he has been is be-
ginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man
is the man who no matter how morally unworthy he has
been is moving to become better. Such a conception
makes one severe in judging himself and humane in
judging others. "13 It is my claim, of course, that the
large group of people who make up the population of
Soviet Russia have been steadily moving in an upward
direction.
The Utopian liberals and the infantile leftists have
violated Dewey's proposed criterion by judging the
U. S. S. R. in terms of whether it comes up to or falls short
of "some fixed result" held inflexibly in their minds.
Evidently expecting that Soviet Russia would set up in
the twinkling of an eye the brave new world of all their
dreams, they have been most neglectful in considering
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the future of the U. S. S. R. Impetuous, impatient souls,
they could not wait for history to catch up with their
beautiful ideals and were ever ready to consign the Soviet
Republic to limbo for its tactics of compromise and delay,
for shifting gears and reducing speed in order to over-
come mountains of trouble.
Many of them sincere idealists and humanitarians,
they apparently thought that the most tremendous social
upheaval on record, telescoping into itself the sort of
revolutions which had occurred in America, England
and France during the seventeenth or eighteenth centur-
ies, could take place with the relative restraint of a New
Deal movement in the United States. These naive Utop-
ians were offended to their depths by the rough-and-
tumble aspects of the Russian Revolution and finally
adopted a policy of resolving every doubt in a manner
hostile to the Soviet regime.
The Soviet Revolution, like the great Western Rev-
olutions long before it, constituted an irrepressible move-
ment of liberation that swept like an avalanche over
whatever opposed or threatened it. Released at last from
the tyranny and oppression of ages, the Russian workers
and peasants, led by a stern and determined Communist
minority, took destiny into their own hands and rode
roughshod over the enemies of the new order. Internally
the immense scope and rapid tempo of economic develop-
ment, especially the speedy industrialization of the coun-
try, demanded a discipline in work far removed from the
easy-going psychology of Tsarist days when "Nichevo! "
(No matter! ) was such a common response to difficulties.
Such discipline only too often had to be imposed from
above on lagging or unwilling elements of the population
during the arduous era of the initial Five-Year Plans.
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Due to the continuing danger and frequent actuality
of foreign aggression, the Government and the people
developed understandable nervous tensions and a dis-
tinct crisis psychology. The Soviet Republic, with its
back to the wall in the early years and once more in the
later years during World War II, lashed out savagely to
preserve itself. Many of its actions were crude and cruel;
blood flowed throughout the Russian land; purges and
political persecutions took place; sometimes the innocent
suffered along with the guilty. But the first socialist
society in history survived, persevered and moved for-
ward into the future.
# *#
In this introductory chapter I have outlined some
elementary principles that should be helpful, I feel, in
the understanding of Soviet Russia. Having assumed at
the start the importance of the Soviet Union as a topic
of discussion and study, having laid down the proposi-
tion that much reliable information has been and is avail-
able about the U. S. S. R. , and having insisted that the
method of reason must be followed in our inquiries con-
cerning it, I have presented five standards of judgment,
often overlooked, for aid in the evaluation of Soviet
affairs.
These are, to summarize, first, that Soviet Russia is
neither a heaven nor a hell; second, that we should
realize the extraordinary complexity of the Soviet Union;
third, that we should bear in mind the historical and
cultural background of Soviet Russia; fourth, that in
comparing the U. S. S. R. with other countries, we must
make allowances for historical relativity; and fifth, that
if we are to assess Soviet civilization as a whole, we ought
to consider not only the past and present, but also future
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? OH EVALUATIHG SOVIET RUSSIA
prospects and eventual goals. Actually, these suggested
standards of judgment are applicable today not only to
the Soviet Union, but also to most other countries and
particularly to those which are emerging out of a dark
past under the leadership of new and radical regimes.
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? - r~T~F
CHAPTER II THE SOVIET CONSTITUTION
1. Background of the Constitution
Of all the primary documents from original Soviet
sources most conducive to an understanding of the U. S.
S. R. the Soviet Constitution ranks first. Usually printed
in pamphlet form and totaling only about forty pages,
it is also the briefest single document I know that pre-
sents an over-all survey of Soviet institutions and aims.
For it goes beyond a description of the machinery of
government, with which most state constitutions are
primarily concerned, to define the fundamental eco-
nomic, social and political principles upon which the
Soviet commonwealth is based.
It was adopted late in 1936. Instead of going through
the cumbrous process of drastically amending and bring-
ing up to date the previous Constitution of 1924, the
Soviets followed the sensible procedure of drawing up
a new Constitution altogether. The first tentative draft
of it was published in June, 1936. This text was issued
in 60,000,000 pamphlet copies and printed repeatedly
in the Soviet press. During some six months of public
discussion of the proposed Constitution 527,000 meet-
ings were held with a total attendance of 36,500,000
people. Individuals, meetings or organizations sent into
the Constitutional Commission 154,000 amendments, of
which forty-three were finally accepted. The supreme
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? THE SOVIET COHSTITUTIOH
legislative body of the U.