The history of Russia is the history of a pendulum. Striving for expansion to the sea, she has swung from one point of the compass to the other. Balked in the west, she turns east. Foiled in the east, she turns west. As the mass of a sphere gives rise to gravitational attraction, so the huge, inert mass of Russian peasantry seems always to inspire in its government a desire to extend its influence over neighboring states. The shadow of the Bear lay athwart the scenes of Kipling’s tales of India; and now, although the Czar is gone, the Bear is still there, peering over the Himalayas.
Russia for the past decade has been a paradox, a conundrum. The answer, as usual, comes from the peasant. He decided in 1917 that he wished to stop fighting, and accepted the only government that would make peace. He now decides that he wishes to keep for himself the produce of his farm, and the government of Stalin is respecting his wishes. But what is the external attitude of the government which he accepts at present? Let us make a brief inspection of the antecedents of several political figures.
When Kerensky, half visionary, half politician, was transformed from a member of the extreme left wing of the Duma into the leader of the extreme right wing of the Revolution, he immediately caused a nationwide jail delivery, and then signed his own dismissal by telegraphing for the return of all political refugees. There arrived in reply a most significant group, the chief members of which were Ulianov, Braunstein, and Zinoviev. Ulianov, a journalist, had been banished to Siberia on account of his revolutionary activities, had escaped and later returned to Russia, had been again banished, and had again escaped. His brother had been executed by the Russian government on the charge of treason. Ulianov now returned freely under the name of Lenin,
Braunstein had also been banished to Siberia, where his rankling anger had found vent in the composition of pamphlets. He also escaped, and at the time of the fatal telegrams was in New York, happily filling the columns of a communist newspaper, the Novsky Mir, with a maze of Marxian doctrine. He had not been in America very long, but his brief stay sufficed to make him somewhat of an expert, in revolutionary circles, on American conditions. He returned to Russia, via a detention camp in Halifax, and appeared under the name of Trotzky.
The reasons behind these changes of name do not appear. Probably the caution of the hunted asserted itself. At any rate, history records, instead of Ulianov and Braunstein, Lenin and Trotzky. The British military attache in St. Petersburg at the time records current rumor as presenting Lenin as a fanatic with a clever brain. Trotzky was supposed to have been a German revolutionary agent. Trotzky in his later books vehemently denies this charge, and in fact no substantiating proof has appeared.
The pair had certain differences which were smoothed out, and Trotzky accepted the leadership of Lenin. The following establishment of the Soviets and the negotiations for peace need not be discussed. Lenin came into power with a cabinet almost entirely ready made, each member a theorist willing to put his theory into practice. The trusted Zinoviev held the leadership of the Third Internationale, a congress of the most blindly radical elements of the world, whose exultance in opposition has finally deprived the body of the influence it was at first supposed to have. Trotzky, the fighter, or the prince of pamphleteers, whichever way one looks at the matter—at any rate an efficient publicist—was given the army. His influence with the soldiers was probably responsible, but one can see the shrewd policy of Lenin in the manner in which this uncompromising firebrand was thus kept clear of whatever constructive work lay ahead. Heads of other departments were appointed, under rather baffling titles, and among them was a Georgian named Stalin. He was given charge of the racial policy.
The personality of Stalin eludes the student of the early phases of the history of the Soviets. The Encyclopedia Britannica in its 1922 supplement records the history of Trot- zky, always in the limelight, and of Lenin. Krassin is recognized, and Bukharin is mentioned under the heading of Lenin, but Stalin is not mentioned. And at present, this man controls Russia insofar as the inert bulk of Russian peasantry can be controlled.
Stalin was a lieutenant of Lenin’s before the October revolution. Such is also the claim of most present-day Russian politicians, but in this case the relations were such that Stalin was placed in charge of a very important phase of Soviet activity—the handling of the racial minorities. Himself a member of such a minority—the Georgians of the Caucasus—it may be inferred that his first-hand knowledge of the aspirations and fears of these peoples pointed to the unusual action taken as a first step. Against the advice of Bukharin, a propagandist turned advisor, Lenin issued a call to any and all groups to form, if they so desired, separate republics independent of Russia. The response was immediate. Self-determination was in the air, and a large number of small republics came into being. These republics were then invited to join the Union of Soviet Republics. A striking division then appeared among these small states.
Those states that were predominantly European stayed out of the Union; those that were Asiatic rejoined. Finland, Estho- nia, Latvia, and Lithuania now stand with Poland and Czechoslovakia as buffer states along the western frontier.
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and others came back into the fold, sovietized. Hopes were high in communist circles that they were the forefront of a stampede of Asiatic countries into the Soviet circle. An immense effort in the matter of propaganda was put forth in Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan, and a change of government occurred in all three. The result at present, however, is that Turkey has emerged practically under the dictatorship of Kemal Pasha; in Persia Riza Kahn ascended the throne in 1924; and Afghanistan has been convulsed by an over-strenuous effort to convert the country overnight to an external similarity to Europe. Far from being sovietized, these states are appearing as buffer states along the southern frontier. The New York Times recently quoted the “usually well-informed” Germania, the organ of the German Centrist Party, as predicting an Afro-Asiatic alliance of Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Egypt, and mentioned these countries as withdrawing from Soviet influence. “From communist influence” would perhaps be a better phrase. Their relations with the Russian government appear very friendly; and the latter, comforting itself with the Marxian axiom, repeated by Lenin, that the proletarian revolution cannot take place in an agricultural country, is extending the hand of anti-imperialist, instead of anticapitalist, friendship.
Stalin is the exponent of this change. When he speaks of Russia’s enemies, he speaks of the “imperialistic” nations. Capitalism, the abstraction, is disappearing as the objective of Russian effort—mainly on account of the peasant. Lenin finally came to realize the impossibility of treating the farmer as a member of the proletariat of the mathematical theorists, and the New Economic Policy was the result. It was defended in debate as an “economic retreat” and so on, but it stood. Lenin died, and his lieutenants fell to disputing among themselves. Roughly, Zinoviev and Kamenev advocated the complete subjugation of the farmer and the establishment of a complete dictatorship by the industrial worker. They lost their case. Zinoviev today, after losing office after office, has finally lost his grip on the Third Internationale, the Komintern. He opposed the farmer.
Trotzky led a second group, which recognized to a degree the necessity for conciliating the farmer. He advocated the establishment of class distinctions among the peasants, and the use of the poor peasant, in conjunction with the industrial worker, to support a communistic government in the face of the opposition of the Kulak, the peasant grown wealthy. Trotzky was also expelled from the government, and is now again writing pamphlets in a place of exile. He opposed the farmer.
Stalin recognizes the twenty-two million small farms of Russia as the basis of future Russian prosperity. Although not in office, he holds the leadership of the party, and the Communist Party, in accepting his leadership, has taken a step towards becoming a representative Russian party. In several recent books—Incredible Siberia, by Junius Wood, and Present-Day Russia, by Ivy Lee, among them—the authors call attention to the fact that the old guard of European revolutionists has almost passed out of the picture, and that a new generation of officeholders has come into power. These have never been thrown into close contact with industrialism, and ideas other than that of the industrial revolution are coming to the fore.
In a book published in China, Mr. Kasuji Fuse, correspondent of the Tokio Nichi- Nichi and the Osaka Mainichi, has given an extremely interesting set of impressions gathered in Russia during the past several years. He speaks of an interview with Stalin in 1925, and quotes him as saying, “I am also an Asian.” Mr. Fuse continues: “I did not only realize that Stalin was a Georgian and pure blooded Asian, whose hair and eyes were black and whose complexion was yellow, looking exactly like a Japanese, but Soviet Russia herself, whose power of control is grasped by Stalin, was also an Asian country.” And he shows that of the six major groups of republics which compose the Soviet Union—Russia, Ukraine, White Russia, the Caucasus, Usbeg, and Turkoman —the latter three had at the head of their governments Soviet chairmen who are Asians. The population of the three republics is relatively small, but still they stand as an indication that Russia’s present movement to the east is by means of growth rather than by conquest.
It is perhaps natural that Russian foreign policy should have an internal as well as an external effect. The extended contact with China undoubtedly fostered the Nationalist movement under the Kuomintang. This movement has more and more ceased to be communistic, and the trend toward Nationalism in China has been paralleled by a similar trend in Russia. Trotzky brands Chiang Kai-chek as a traitor to Internationalism. Prior to the recent Russo-Chinese rupture, Stalin hailed him as a brother, and lauded the success of his party in the face of the “imperialist” nations of Europe and America. During a period when Russia was almost entirely cut off from Europe, the governments of Russia and China were in very close touch. Recently Stalin stated that Russia had been opposed to Chang Tso-lin for the reason that Chang had based his entire policy on the differences between Russia and Japan, and emphasized the desire of the present Russian government for the most friendly relations. This attitude toward the one nation of Asia that can be regarded as essentially industrial and capitalist must make Trotzky and Zinoviev turn in their political graves.
In viewing the extent of territory which has been brought under Soviet influence, there comes to mind the previous sway of the Mongols over the same territory. As a historic coincidence, though hardly a parallel, we may remark that the territory of the buffer states along Russia’s European frontier represents the high-water mark of the Mongol advance westward. Here it was that Chepe Noyon, the wandering lieutenant of Genghiz Khan, defeated one German and one Hungarian army, avoided a strong Bavarian Army, and turned back to the east. In the south, where once the Mongols cut through the kingdoms of the Abbasids and the Assassins until halted by the Mamelukes, the Mohammedan countries have banded together into a bulwark against communism, incidentally protecting India. In the east, where in hundreds of forgotten battles and sieges the Chinese desperately resisted the Mongol advance, China now, although welcoming Russian assistance, still turns a deaf ear to the doctrines of Marx.
When the tide of sovietism reached Mongolia, the failures of propaganda in Turkey and in Persia had left little hope in Moscow that communism would succeed in a country so lacking in the elements of an industrial civilization. Mongolia is populated largely by nomadic herdsmen. The country is backward even in agriculture. But overnight, almost, Mongolia became communized. There occurred first a “Nationalist” revolution in 1921. The Hutukhutu, or Living God, was left in nominal control, with a mildly radical premier and cabinet. These latter, proving too mild, were shot to death in 1922, and the regular Soviet organization came openly into power. The Hutukhutu was not shot, probably because he was expected to die soon anyway; but after his death in 1924 no successor followed him. The Buriat and Mongol Republic is now one of the ten small republics forming the Russian Soviet Republic, which is in turn one of the six major republics of the U.S.S.R. The entire absence of an industrial proletariat in this promising protege puzzled Moscow, and steps were taken to remedy the defect. Factories were transferred bodily from Russia to Mongolia. Quoting Amor, chief of the delegation from the Mongolian government to Moscow: “Prior to the revolution, there was not a single factory in Mongolia. Today we have leather, soap, chemical, and other factories, and are developing gold mining and many other industries.”
Mongolia took up communism while the Russian peasants opposed it. Mr. Fuse examines this situation and comes to the conclusion that, owning as they do very little besides their yoorts or tepees and a few cattle, the Mongolians have little to lose under the new regime. Having no wealth, they can lose none. There would, however, appear to be a more general principle underlying this particular situation. The Mongolian herdsmen represent a type that has been in existence since the dawn of history—the nomads. Another type—the farmer—has within the extent of our knowledge always been a contemporary of the nomad. The nomad desires absolute freedom to travel at will; he resents ownership of the land by anyone who halts his use of what he regards as common pasturage. He takes from the land but puts nothing into the land. He reaps without sowing. The farmer sets aside a bit of land and works over it. His excess produce he stores against a time of need. His stores demand shelter and defense. His life becomes stabilized, and this stability in time produces cities and industry. He is a landowner and a capitalist, while the nomad is naturally a communist.
These two types have been in perpetual conflict, always. The marches of Genghiz Khan, until his sons settled down as rulers of the captured lands, represented nomad victories over the agricultural peoples of Islam and China. The most imposing conflict between the two types in fairly recent years has been the steady march of the American squatter-farmer west, and his thorough defeat of the Indian nomad; and the last echo of this march appeared in the form of the border wars of thirty years or so ago between the sheep-herders and the cattlemen of our plains in attack on and defense of the theory of the open range. In the still more recent past, we may note the spread of radical theories among the “wobblies,” or migratory laborers, nomads.
So Mongolia became sovietized, although possessing no industrial proletariat. The government of the country in 1922 and 1923 was a melange that should have satisfied everyone. The divine right of sovereigns was represented by the presence of the Living God as head of the state. The other extreme was represented by the Youth’s Communist League, hard at work proselyting. Representatives of the labor unions were urging the descendants of Genghiz Khan to come into the new factories, start making soap, and organize.
Russia’s approach to the east is by means of the trans-Siberian Railway. At the farther end of this railway a recent phenomenon has occurred. The Shantung famine in Nationalist China started a starving population on its way to the north. Families gathered together what belongings they could carry and began a few months’ walk into Manchuria, the promised land. Japanese colonists have been submerged by the flood of newcomers, and Manchuria is in a fair way to become Chinese rather than Manchu. Will Manchuria be for the present Russian government the point of focus that it was at the beginning of the century? A recent observer, Mr. Wood, places his finger on the Sungari River as the scene of some very interesting future happenings.
In the meantime, the Soviets have been attempting to force the plan of life of the nomad on his arch enemy, the farmer. Trial and error are indicating that in the degree that the farmer becomes literate and prosperous, a communist government will find its position untenable. As an edifice of industrialism has never been reared on a nomad base, so, paradoxically, the Russian government must abandon communism in order to produce the industrial conditions which it asserts are necessary for the establishment of communism. The moral is, that in the last analysis the farmer will rule the "Granary of the World”; and that the major effect of the establishment of the Soviets has been to cause the Russian government to recoil from the deadline drawn across Europe and to seek in the east the exercise in foreign relations which preceding governments have periodically sought.