New-York tribune., 1919-07-09
Written in Sand
By Maxim Corky
Translated from an editorial in his Petrograd newspaper

doubtful If such things would mean any
thing to the masses in our cities. The
book is the most important instrument
of culture. Our teachers - Radischev,
Chenischevsky, Marx and other spirit
ual creators of books-have staked their
freedom and their very lives to wofe
books. But what do the technical makers
of books to-day do to help spread the
books among the people?
For fourteen days now warehouses are
being plundered at Petrograd. The peo-
pie get drunk, then use the bottles on
each others heads, cutting up their
faces and hands horribly, and roll in
the dirt and blood like pigs. In these
two weeks wines to the amount of more
than 100000 rubles have been de-
stroyed and before the orgy is over it
is likely that close.to 100,OO0,000 rubles
worth of wine will be destroyed.
We could we'll sell this wine to Sweden
and get for it products Of value-the
products that we need most, such as
medicaments and machinery.
The men who stand at the helm IN
the Smolny Institute have become aware
of this orgy rather late. Now they
threaten the drunks with heavy punish
ment. But the drunkards do not fear
these threats and they 60 on plundering
the goods which should long have been
declared national property and been
sold, that the public could realize some
thing from it.
In these wine pogroms individual
plunderers are here and there shot down
like mad wolves. This is a bad example,
as it teaches the people to indulge in
cold-blooded destruction Of one another.
The "Pravda" says that these pogroms
we're provoked by the bourgeoisie." 1t
is, of course, lie, and will only serve
to increase bloodshed.
Thefts and robberies are increasing in
Petrograd in a most shameful manner.
Shameless officials permit themselves to
accept bribes just as brazenly as the
officials Of the old regime did. Shady
characters who fit back and forth about
Smolny Institute, where the Bolshevist
government is located, fleece the scared
citizen in shameful manner. The
coarseness and incivility Of the repre-
sentatives of the peoples commissaries
arouse in every one just resentment.
All sorts of small people have sud-
denly come to the helm and treat the
public as one treats a conquered enemy,
just as the police of the Car treated the
public. They yell at person in man.
ner in which only officials in distant prov
inces of Russia permitted themselves to
veil. All this is being done "in the name
of the proletariat," "in the name of the
social revolution" 1t is a triumph only
of the beastliness to which we are sink
ing, of the deeper Asiatism to which we
are descending.
Where is one to find an expression
of the so-called "idealsm Of the Russian
workman" of which Kautsky (the
famous German Socialist) said so many
fattering things?
Where and how does the morality
of socialism" find its realization in this
new morality Of ours?
am quite prepared to hear ono OF
our "realpoltiker" ("practical" states
men) reply to all my above statements:
What do you want? This is the social
revolution"
No, gentlemen, in this riot Of geologic
instincts | see none Of the elements Of
social revolution. 1t is only a typically
Russian rebellion, without the least CO.
operation Of the socialist spirit or
socialist psychology.