Correspondence
A LETTER FROM Moscow. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —The first months of the twelfth year of Soviet rule in Russia have brought a feeling of uncertainty which contrasts with the dogmatic self-assurance that has hitherto characterized Bolshevik thought. Superficially, it might appear that these doubts have been caused by the economio and financial difficulties which are freely admitted by public speakers and the official Press. In reality, the issue goes deeper, and concerns the fundamental validities of the " gospel according to Marx."
For the first time since the abandonment of militant Communism, in 1921, the Soviet State has during the past nine months been brought into conflict with the peasants, who form over eighty per cent. of the population. In order to obtain an adequate supply of food for urban consumption and for the army, the State was compelled to resort to coercive measures similar to the requisitions of the militant Communism period, which roused widespread discontent in the villages. The reason was that the peasants did not wish to part with their produce at the comparatively low prices fixed by the State so long as the cost of State-manufactured goods remained, in their opinion, unfairly high.
Even so, the coercive measures produced only enough food for internal needs, and gave no surplus for export, which fell to a minimum, thus disorganizing the nicely adjusted plan of export and import and producing a financial tension which was only relieved by currency inflation to the extent of 250,000,000 roubles in the early autumn.
The Kremlin found it necessary to disavow the coercive measures, and promise they should not be renewed in future, but it is not at present able to correct the disproportion of prices between agricultural and manufactured products. This raised the whole question of agrarian policy. Either the villages must be abandoned to individualism, or Socialism, which is now being applied with some measure of success in the urban and industrial centres, must be extended to the country also. The Kremlin preferred the latter.
In November a meeting of the Communist leaders decided that the most pressing problem was the socialization of agriculture. The Soviet Parliament, which has been in session during the past fortnight, accordingly voted a unanimous resolution introducing a " five years' agricultural plan," parallel to the five years' industrialization programme adopted in 1926. The significance of this new departure lies in the fact that the five years' industrial plan was avowedly a measure of socialization. One is bound to conclude that its agrarian counterpart has the same purpose. Any doubts on this point must-be removed by the methods contemplated. According to the agrarian plan, the total harvest is to be increased from thirty to thirty-five per cent. by the year 1934, by an extension of centrally controlled State farms, collective or co-operative farms, communal farms, and State-aided " metayage ' (shareholding tenancies). This is an obvious declaration of war between Socialism and indiVidualisni in the villages. '
It must not be supposed; however, that this important decision was reached without opposition, frank and vehement in the meeting of Communist leaders, more guarded, but none the less real, in the Parliamentary debate. The advocates of Socialism won, not so much because this is a Socialist State (that is, on account of natural preferences), but because it was generally felt that compromise was impossible. Unless steps were taken immediately to curb peasant individualism, it would soon become too strong for any control whatever, and the political bankruptcy of the Socialist theory as applied to agriculture would be inevitable. No one here fails to realize what a gigantic task the State has thus undertaken. Despite the public branding of critics of the Kremlin policy as back- sliders, heretics and Laodiceans in the Marxist faith, their number and influence is great.
In the midst of this uncertainty, the report that an influential section of English opinion is beginning to favour a renewal of relations with Russia has come as a welcome surprise. That both countries have been economic losers by the rupture is clearly shown by the just-published trade figures for the fiscal year October 1st-September- 80th, 1927-28. In comparison with 1926-27 exports from England to Russia have dropped over 50 million roubles-53.2 per, cent.—and imports to England from Russia also decreased 50 millions. Meanwhile England's chief competitor4 in the Russian market, Germany and the United States, increased their exports to this country by 85 millions (55.9 per cent.) and 38 millions (26.6 per cent.) respectively.
Your correspondent has every reason to know that the Soviet would welcome a renewal of relations with Great Britain, but it is doubtful whether amour propre would allow it to make the first step towards reconciliation. -
The Soviet Parliament which meets three times yearly in the Kremlin has a proletarian flavour enhanced by contrast with its gorgeous setting .of bygone Imperial splendour. It i is really a congress rather than a parliament in the English sense, as two bodies, the elected Central Executive Committee and the selected Council of Nationalities, sit jointly in what was formerly the hall of the Order of Chivalry of St. Andrew. The plain, dark-oak benches, gallery and speakers' tribune seem strangely out of place beneath the gilt roof and massive gilt columns. The marble walls are decorated with the arms of St. Andrew's and other civil and military orders, in gold and many-coloured mosaics. Another discordant note is added by the tin " loud :speaker " trumpets which project from the columns at intervals along the hall. The speeches are conveyed by similar loud-speakers to the principal squares, workers' clubs, &c., of Moscow, and are broadcast by radio
throughout the country. • Congress delegates, men and women, wear picturesque national costumes or the conventional dark blouses of the Russian proletariat. White collars are rare, but it is interesting to note that most of the delegates are under forty and that even peasant representatives have mostly discarded the traditional heavy beard which even Peter the Great was unable to abolish.
Voting is conducted by a show of hands, but the two sections of the Congress vote separately. The suggestions of the presiding committee are followed with a docility which might well lead- a superficial observer to suppose that the whole thing is more or less of a farce, and that the Congress has no real function but to ratify the decisions of the ruling Communist Party. In a sense, of course, this is true ; but the Congress does more than that. It acts as a school of self- government for a nation of a hundred and fifty million people, to whom the most elementary ideas of Western electoral representation have hitherto been unknown. Secondly, it serves the inarticulate masses of Russia as a means of self- expression to which the Kremlin is always ready to give ear. Most of the speeches, too, not only by members of the presiding committee, but from the body of the assembly, showed the same desire for rural socialization and the same dcpubts as to its immediate practicability as the deliberations of the Communist leaders in the Kreinlin.
Even under a Strict censorship, or perhaps because of it, drama and • literature tend to reproduce the political "atmosphere " of the time. Thus the most notable production of the current theatrical season is the Kamerny Theatre extravaganza The Dark Red Island, satirizing not only the so-called revolutionary dramas of new Russia, but the dramatic censorship and the idea of revolution itself. The
author, Dr. Bulgakov, whose Days of the Turbine, produced by one of the Art Theatre studios, has been the most striking and successful of post-revolutionary plays, pokei fun- at revolutionary principles in general and the world -revolution in particular. It is done slyly, in many cases by -cleverly transpoSed musical parody, rather than in words ; but the meaning and effect are unmistakable.
The Kamerny Theatre is too small and avant-garde for any wide popular appeal ; but the significance of this new play should not be underestimated. The Dark Red Island burlesques the transition from the primitive autocracy of a
South Sea island sultanate to ' revolutionary freedom with the Sailors of an English gunboat; sent to enforce a pearling concession, subjugating their officers and joining the " enfranchised helots. It has had a deplorable reception in- the-official Press—and small wonder, for the sarcastic intent is quite apparent—but full houses eyery. night would seem to contradict the critics' verdict. That the play should have been allowed at all is perhaps no disContaging sign. 'A 'despotic regithe which does not mind bag laughed at is either securely based or growing less despotic.—I ana, Sir, &c, YOUR Moscow. CORRESPONPENT.
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