do so; thirdly, that it respects neither morality nor the law and
appeals to the basest passions in man; and, finally, that all sections
of the Socialist Party are on the strictest terms of friendship with it
and are giving it full support.

CHAPTER X

BOLSHEVIST RULE IN RUSSIA

Shortly after the Lenine-Trotzky government came into power in Russia,
in the latter part of the year 1917, Bolshevism became very popular in
America among the radicals, especially the Socialists. Among those who
helped most to bring it into such high esteem was Albert Rhys Williams,
who had spent but one year of his life in Russia, hardly spoke the
Russian language, and while staying in that country was in the pay of
the Bolsheviki, as he testified before the Senate Committee.

The Bolsheviki came into power by violence and have sustained themselves
in power by violence and terrorism. Their main support, the so-called
Red Army, in which the Chinese and Letts have played a prominent part,
is an army of mercenaries who are well paid and well fed, while
thousands of civilians are dying from starvation in the cities and towns
of Russia.

The first success of the Bolsheviki was the dissolution by bayonets of
the Constituent Assembly, which for forty years had been the goal of all
Russians--even of the Bolsheviki up to the time when they found it
overwhelmingly against them. Then they invented a new double name for
their anti-democratic government: Soviets, or dictatorship of the
proletariat. Next they dissolved all the democratic Municipal Councils
and Zemstvos and proceeded to take away the various liberties won in the
revolution against the regime of the Czar.

The dictatorship of the proletariat led rapidly to an almost complete
stoppage of industry. Governmental expenditures increased by leaps and
bounds with the growing pauperization of the people; for the growing
staffs of Bolshevist officials were utterly incompetent, a large army of
mercenaries was required in order to keep down the ever-increasing
number of insurrections and the ceaseless attacks from many foreign
foes, enormous subsidies had to be paid to Bolshevist workingmen,
regardless of the fact that the factories were producing sometimes
little and sometimes nothing, and, finally, the Lenine government spent
great sums in revolutionary propaganda in the different countries of
the world. Political and economic slavery, moral corruption and the
starvation of millions o