# Out of Their Own Mouths/Chapter 2

II
THE PRACTICAL FOUNDATION OF BOLSHEVISM —MENDACIOUS PROPAGANDA
The Bolshevists have frequently declared that the foundation of their whole movement is propaganda. This, in itself, is an amazing confession, but more amazin still is their frank avowal of the character of this propaganda. The ninth Communist Congress (March–April, 1920) says on this subject:
The first condition of the success of the Soviet Republic in all departments, including the economic, is chiefly systematic printed agitation.
As to the nature of the propaganda, we have the following historic utterance of the Bolshevist high priest himself in regard to the methods to be used in order to destroy the labor unions:
We must know how to apply at need, knavery, deceit, illegal methods, hiding truth by silence, in order to penetrate to the very heart of the trade unions, to remain there and to accomplish there the Communist task.—Lenin, in "Radicalism, the Infantile Malady of Communism!"
It must not be supposed for one moment that the childlike stupidity involved in this public pronouncement of the intent to deceive is exceptional for the ​great Bolshevist "master mind." In his letter of last November to British labor he shows the same mixture of simplicity and arrogance. The substance of that letter was summed up last November by the pro-Soviet London Daily News as follows:
The true British Communist is told that it is his duty to cooperate with Mr. Henderson, Mr. Snowden and other degraded "bourgeois," in order to return members to Parliament pledged to destroy from within that institution, and incidentally to expose and ruin Mr. Henderson, Mr. Snowden and the colleagues who are to assist unwittingly in the operation. And this is said openly in the hearing of the intended victims and of the millions who are yet unconverted to the Gospel of Communist "hate." No one that we remember, except some of the German war lords towards the end of the great struggle, has ever thought aloud in public in this semi-insane manner. The parallel is ominous.
This letter was such an exhibition of incredible ignorance regarding Great Britain, combined with incapacity for the simplest logical reasoning, that even the friendly British Labor Party lost its patience while The Daily News, unable to restrain its wrath, thus characterized the Bolshevist "Czar":
Mad Kings, Tzars and Kaisers ruin, as a rule, only themselves and their subjects; a mad demagogue provides every half-witted enemy of liberty with a moral to his servile tale. …
Bolshevism has many enemies, but it has none so formidable as its foremost figure. We can imagine a man thinking in the sort of way in which Lenin talks to his British Communist "Comrades" in the extracts from his new book printed elsewhere in our columns ​to-day. We can imagine a man unfolding to like-minded friends in the privacy of his own house some such plan of campaign as he suggests to them. But that anyone having conceived such a design should proceed to proclaim it from the housetops is a thing almost incredible. It argues an arrogant contempt for all possible opposition which, to those who know the real strength of "Communism" in this country, seems not far removed from insanity.
The workings of the mind of this half-crazed and inflated fanatic are important not only as largely dominating the movement but because they are typical of his even less gifted Bolshevists. Perhaps the greatest oratorical effort of his life was at the Second Congress of the Communist Internationale held at Moscow in July, 1920. There, in rapid succession, he made a whole string of utterly ignorant or consciously false statements about Germany, America, Japan and France—making these propositions the very foundation of the world policy of the Internationale and foreign policy of the Soviets. Here are a few of his remarks:
You know that the Versailles Treaty forced Germany and a whole series of conquered States, into conditions of absolute impossibility of economic existence, into conditions of complete absence of rights, of utter humiliation. … America, which profited most of all from the war, being converted into a rich country from a country that had a mass of debts. … Japan, which profited much by remaining outside the actual conflict, seizing the Asiatic continent. …
France's assets are three and one-quarter billions, while her liabilities are ten and a half; that is three times more. … This is the country which has lived ​as a progressive civilized country because its savings (colonial thefts, called savings), made it possible for her to lend billions to other countries, and particularly to Russia.
No more false, boastful, or deluded utterance was ever recorded from the lips of Kaiser or Czar than the following from Lenin's much advertised but little read "moderate" speech at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March, 1921; nor could any citation better illustrate the great hallucination upon which all present Bolshevist calculations are built:
Certainly the Communist International which at the time of last year's Congress existed only in the form of proclamations has now begun to act as an independent body in every country, and as more than merely a vanguard party. Communism has become the central question of the whole labor movement. In Germany, France, and Italy, the Communist International has become the center not only of the labor movement, but of the whole political life of the country. It was impossible to pick up a German or a French newspaper last autumn without seeing discussions on Moscow and the Bolsheviks, and how the twenty-one conditions of entry into the Third International had become the central question of the political life of those countries. This is our gain of which no one can deprive us. (Russian Press Review, March 15th, 1921.)
The complete falsity of the entire Bolshevist propaganda may be best understood by Americans from a few quotations suggesting the picture that is presented to the Russian people of America and of the rest of the world. As the Bolshevists have a monopoly of the press and even of the paper of the country, thus ​effectively precluding the expression of non-Bolshevist opinion, they are able to a considerable degree to impress these pictures upon the minds of the Russian people and to shape their attitude to America and other countries accordingly. According to Mrs. Snowden and other recent visitors, the Russian people have been persuaded by such methods to believe that Bolshevism is spreading all the world over and that many countries are on the verge of Bolshevist revolutions. We read frequently in the Bolshevist press also statements like the following: "If we compare the conditions of life in Russia with the conditions of life in the West, we have to state that our situation is a brilliant one." (From Boyevaya Pravda, May 19, 1920.)
Here are a few statements illustrating American news as it appears in the Soviet wireless:
Russian workmen, emigrants who have just returned from America and are now in Sormovo, state that the Russians in America are suffering great hardships. They experience there all the horrors of prison life. Workmen are arrested for participation in party conferences; torture is resorted to when they are being cross-examined. Many unions are obliged to work in secret. (From Moscow wireless, January 4, 1921.)
The workers say that the work of the American Bolshevik party is proceeding successfully and that in New York alone there are 200,000 members in the party. (From Moscow wireless message, via London, January 4, 1921.)
The American Government has asked Latvia to consent to allow 100,000 Russians to proceed to Soviet Russia through her territory. The American Government intends to deport these Russians in the near future. (From Moscow wireless, February 7, 1921.)
Gompers, when he starts out for conferences, surrounds himself with five experienced boxers. (From Izvestia, October 19, 1920.)
The Soviet régime is keeping a number of Americans as hostages in the hope that it will be able to use them to compel recognition by the American Government—a method which undoubtedly had considerable effect in Great Britain. Among these hostages is the well-known Red Cross worker, Kilpatrick. When first captured by the famous Bolshevist cavalry General, Budenny, Kilpatrick reported that the chief intelligence officer insisted "that the American working classes were starving and the whole country on the verge of revolution." This was at the end of 1920! Yet, the Russian intelligence officer could have reached no other conclusion from the Bolshevist press.
If a government appeals to its own people largely on the basis of such falsehoods, we can imagine how much reliance is to be placed upon Soviet statements about their own performances especially issued for consumption abroad.
The character of the Soviet régime in Russia and of the Communist Internationale based upon it can be understood only if we grasp firmly and keep steadily in mind the utter and wholesale mendacity of the Bolshevist propaganda. Practically every statement that comes directly or indirectly from Bolshevist sources is vitiated, while statements emanating from the pro​Bolshevists who, in addition to being indoctrinated with this Bolshevist contempt for truth are, almost without exception, wofully ignorant of Russia, are often still more fanciful.
It is the vast extent and persistence of this propaganda smoke-screen that has obscured Soviet Russia from our eyes, and not the lack of well authenticated facts or any incomprehensible mystery in Soviet Russia or in Bolshevism.
The enormous role played by mendacious propaganda in the Bolshevist political system arises only in part from the character of the propaganda and in part from the monopoly they have established in the control of education and the press (including the monopoly of paper) together with their prohibition of free speech and assemblage for all opposition parties.
It may be doubted if any State Socialist writer has hitherto even conceived an Utopian system under which all printed matter whatever is controlled by the State. Not only have the Communists set up such a State control but they have established at the same time a control over the state by the very small group which dominates the Communist Party, as we show in following chapters. We read in a recent despatch:
All payments for newspapers, books, magazines, pamphlets and pictures is abolished in a decree of the People's Commissaries. Printed matter may be distributed among organizations and institutions, but not sold to the public.
In other words a small group has undertaken to establish a complete monopoly over the intellectual output of ​the country. This group has practically attempted to direct the entire intellectual intake of a hundred million people! Now let us recall once more the character of the Communist intellectual output—as already sketched—and we can begin to realize how monstrous is the crime that is being attempted against the soul and mind of the Russian people.
But this is only one aspect—though the most fundamental—of Bolshevist rule. We shall now take up some others.