(1)
Albert Rhys Williams, speech to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets
(8th July, 1917)
I bring
you greetings from the Socialists of America. We do not venture to
tell you here how to run a Revolution. Rather we come here to learn
its lesson and to express our appreciation for your great achievements.
A dark
cloud of despair and violence was hanging over mankind threatening
to extinguish the torch of civilization in streams of blood. But you
arose, comrades, and the torch flamed up anew. You have resurrected
in all hearts everywhere a new faith in freedom.
You have
made the political revolution. Freed from the threat of German militarism
your next task is the Social revolution. Then the workers of the world
will no longer look to the West, but to the East - toward great Russia,
to the Field of Mars in Petrograd, where lie the first martyrs of
your revolution.
(2)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
The Bolsheviks
understood the people. They were strong among the more literate strata,
like the sailors, and comprised largely the artisans and labourers
of the cities. Sprung directly from the people's lions they spoke
the people's language, shared their sorrows and thought their thoughts.
They were the people. So they were trusted.
(3)
Albert Rhys Williams described the arrival of troops to put down the
Bolshevik uprising in July, 1917, in his book, Through the Russian
Revolution.
On the
third day the troops arrive. Bicycle battalions, the reserve regiments,
and then the long grim lines of horsemen, the sun glancing on the
tips of their lances. They are the Cossacks, ancient foes of the revolutionists,
bring dread to the workers and the joy to the bourgeoisie. The avenues
are filled now with well-dressed throngs cheering the Cossacks, crying
"Shoot the rabble". "String up the Bolsheviks".
A wave
of reaction runs through the city. Insurgent regiments are disarmed.
The death penalty is restored. The Bolshevik papers are suppressed.
Forged documents attesting the Bolsheviks as German agents are handled
to the press. Leaders like Trotsky and Kollontai are thrown into prison.
Lenin and Zinoviev are driven into hiding. In all quarters sudden
seizures, assaults and murder of workingmen.
(4)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
In thousands
the soldiers were throwing down their guns and streaming from the
front. Like plagues of locusts they came, clogging railways, highways
and waterways. They swarmed down on trains, packing roofs and platforms,
clinging to car-steps like clusters of grapes, sometimes evicting
passengers from their berths.
The ruling-class
used every device to keep those weapons in the soldiers' hands. It
waved the flag and screamed "Victory and Glory." It organized
Women's Battalions of Death crying "Shame on you men to let girls
do your fighting." It placed machine-guns in the rear of rebelling
regiments declaring certain death to those who retreated.
(5)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
When the
news of Kornilov's advance on Petrograd was flashed to Kronstadt and
the Baltic Fleet, it aroused the sailors like a thunderbolt. From
their ships and island citadel they came pouring out in tens of thousands
and bivouacked on the Field of Mars. They stood guard at all the nerve
centres of the city, the railways and the Winter Palace. With the
big sailor Dybenko leading, they drove headlong into the midst of
Kornilov's soldiers exhorting them not to advance.
(6)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
Attempt
is made to suppress the Revolution by force of arms. Kerensky begins
calling "dependable" troops into the city; that is, troops
that may be depended upon to shoot down the rising workers. Among
these are the Zenith Battery and the Cyclists' Battalion. Along the
highroads on which these units are advancing into the city the Revolution
posts its forces. They subject these troops to a withering fire of
arguments and pleas. Result: these troops that are being rushed to
the city to crush the Revolution enter instead to aid and abet it.
(7)
Albert Rhys Williams was with Louise Bryant,
Bessie Beatty and John
Reed when the Winter Palace was taken on 7th November, 1917.
We had
been sitting in Smolny, gripped by the pleas of the speakers, when
out of the night that other voice crashed into the lighted hall -
the cannon of the cruiser Aurora, firing at the Winter Palace. Steady,
insistent, came the ominous beat of the cannon, breaking the spell
of the speakers upon us. We could not resist its call and hurried
away.
Outside,
a big motor-truck with engines throbbing was starting for the city.
We climbed aboard and tore through the night, a plunging comet, flying
a tail of white posters in our wake. As we come into the Palace Square
the booming of the guns die away. The rifles no longer crackle through
the dark. The Red Guards are crawling out to carry off the dead and
dying.
Forming
a column, they pour through the Red Arch and creep forward, silent.
Near the barricade they emerge into the light blazing from within
the palace. They scale the rampart of logs, and storm through the
iron gateway into the open doors of the east wing - the mob swarming
in behind them.
A terrible
lust lays hold of the mob - the lust that ravishing beauty incites
in the long starved and long denied - the lust of loot. Even we, as
spectators, are not immune to it. It burns up the last vestige of
restraint and leaves one passion flaming in the veins - the passion
to sack and pillage. Their eyes fall upon this treasure-trove, and
their hands follow.
Along the
walls of the vaulted chamber we enter there runs a row of huge packing-cases.
With the butts of their rifles, the soldiers batter open the boxes,
spilling out streams of curtains, linen, clocks, vases and plates.
Pandemonium
breaks loose in the Palace. It rolls and echoes with myriad sounds.
Tearing of cloth and wood, clatter of glass from splintered windows,
clumping of heavy boots upon the parquet floor, the crashing of a
thousand voices against the ceiling. Voices jubilant, then jangling
over division of the spoils. Voices hoarse, high-pitched, muttering,
cursing.
Then another
voice breaks into this babel - the clear, compelling voice of the
Revolution. It speaks through the tongues of its ardent votaries,
the Petrograd workingmen. There is just a handful of them, weazened
and undersized, but into the ranks of these big peasant soldiers they
plunge, crying out - "Take nothing. The Revolution forbids it.
No looting. This is the property of the people."
(8)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
The Revolution
was not everywhere powerful enough to check the savage passions of
the mobs. Not always was it on time to allay the primitive blood-lusts.
Unoffending citizens were assaulted by hooligans. In out-of-the-way
places half-savages, calling themselves Red Guards, committed heinous
crimes. At the front General Dukhonin was dragged from his carriage
and torn to pieces despite the protesting commissars. Even in Petrograd
some Yunkers were clubbed to death by the storming crowds; others
were pitched into the Neva.
(9)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
The Tsar
had used the priests of the Greek Orthodox Church as his spiritual
police making "Religion the opiate of the people." With
threats of hell and promises of heaven the masses had been bludgeoned
into submission to autocracy. Now the church was called to perform
the same function for the bourgeoisie. By solemn proclamation the
Bolsheviks were excommunicated from all its rites and services.
The Bolsheviks
made no direct assault upon religion, but separated Church from State.
The flow of government funds into the ecclesiastical coffers was stopped.
Marriage was declared a civil institution. The monastic lands were
confiscated. Parts of monasteries were turned into hospitals.
(10)
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (1923)
For four
years the Communists have had control of Russia. What are the fruits
of their stewardship? "Repression, tyranny, violence," cry
the enemies. "They have abolished free speech, free press, free
assembly. They have imposed drastic military conscription and compulsory
labour. They have been incompetent in government, inefficient in industry.
They have subordinated the Soviets to the Communist Party. They have
lowered their Communist ideals, changed and shifted their program
and compromised with the capitalists."
Some of
these charges are exaggerated. Many can be explained away. Friends
of the Soviet grieve over them. Their enemies have summoned the world
to shudder and protest against them.
When I
am tempted to join the wailers and the mud-slingers my mind goes back
to the tremendous obstacles it confronted. In the first place the
Soviet faced the same conditions that had overwhelmed the Tsar and
Kerensky governments, i.e., the dislocation of industry, the paralysis
of transport, the hunger and misery of the masses.
In the
second place the Soviet had to cope with a hundred new obstacles -
desertion of the intelligentsia, strike of the old officials, sabotage
of the technicians, excommunication by the church, the blockade by
the Allies. It was cut off from the grain fields of the Ukraine, the
oil fields of Baku, the coal mines of the Don, the cotton of Turkestan
- fuel and food reserves were gone.
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