ON TERROR
Medem, Vladimir
Vladimir Medem was one of the major intellectual figures in the Bund, the Jewish socialist movement of Poland. Strong-willed and clear-minded, he was one of the first socialists in Europe to...
...Translated by GERSHON FREIDLIN 190 NOTEBOOK...
...The system of ruthless persecution, doing away with freedoms and negating the achievements of the fledgling Russian democracy, has reached its logical consequence: a reign of mass terror, a governmental terror, broad and far-reaching, unknown in Russia since the dark days of Czar Ivan the Terrible...
...Against whom do they direct this merciless process of oppression...
...Terror has always been an indication of weakness and a source of future bankruptcy...
...But even Lenin understood that this was a mistake: just a few months ago, in an informal talk, he declared the main enemy to be no longer the robber barons but the petty bourgeoisie...
...A socialism forced upon people—with rifles and machine guns, grenades and cannon, exclusive decrees and prisons—is no socialism...
...We reprint this article in a slightly abridged form—its contemporary relevance need not be underlined...
...But what can we do," the Bolsheviks claim, "the bourgeoisie are rebellious...
...Certainly, a political war can be waged against the petty bourgeoisie...
...Or the socialists who were thrown in jail, tried before "revolutionary tribunals," and stand threatened with a death sentence—are they of the bourgeoisie, just because they want to organize a conference of socialist workers...
...It turns out, though, that the latter comprises Russia's majority...
...Slavery can never be a means to deliverance...
...Blood," says Goethe's Mephistopheles, "is a unique sap...
...Since the Bolsheviks, even by their own admission, form only a small minority in Russia, the repressions of the government are directed against the large majority of the population...
...Socialism is liberation...
...Certainly, that class, under the increasing atmosphere of proletarianization, will become a minority sooner or later...
...Socialism can be realized only by the people themselves...
...The Bolsheviks trifle with the meaning of "bourgeoisie...
...THE MAIN POINT IS that rifles of hired Bolshevik soldiers are not directed at bourgeois millions but at workers, socialist proletarians...
...Read through the material carefully, word for word, and you will get a clear impression that it is not the laboring masses which employ such means but a group of bitter, confused usurpers fighting against the people...
...Are we not obligated to sweep the obstruction from our path—sweep it away with weapons...
...A few months passed and the tasteless joke became harsh reality, the difference being that, in "liberated" Russia, now instead of the chop of the bourgeois guillotine, "socialist" bullets whistle from Latvian rifles...
...agree to return a Bolshevik majority at elections...
...its circle of support, narrower...
...It becomes demoralized: use of raw force decivilizes the holders of power...
...When Trotsky, in the first weeks of his regime, threatened opponents with an ingenious gadget that shortens a person "only by the length of a head," one may have dismissed the remark as a bad joke from a temperamental orator trying to cut the figure of a Robespierre...
...In Bolshevism's infancy it was customary to refer to a small band of giant capitalists who controlled the country's economy...
...Even were we to restrict the meaning of bourgeoisie to a pure usage, could members of that class really be wiped out...
...Never in history has government terror yielded a definitive victory for the political system that depends upon it...
...Terror is used not against the bourgeoisie but against whatever does not carry the Bolshevik seal...
...Shall we let ourselves be guided by sentimental humanitarian189 ism, put on white gloves and wait patiently till the bourgeoisie lovingly `permits' us to realize our socialist ideal...
...These are their words, but what are their actions...
...Would that not be a utopian dream...
...Blood gives birth to blood...
...Each shot sets in motion new waves among the sufferers...
...Strong-willed and clear-minded, he was one of the first socialists in Europe to propose a principled criticism of the Bolshevik regime and its methods...
...If today Lenin desires to shoot Abramovitch, who can tell that tomorrow he will not shoot Trotsky...
...In their parlance the term loses any sense of relating to a specific social class...
...And the Soviets themselves, which are, according to the Bolsheviks, the very embodiment of popular sovereignty—now they are hunted down by Bolshevik satraps, just because they do not * Maria Spiridonova, a leader of the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries (the Russian populist party), who had become a heroine in revolutionary circles because of the sufferings to which she had been subjected after she had assassinated a czarist general...
...A socialist government that uses mass terror is absurd: the very meaning of socialism connotes salvation for the overwhelming majority of a population...
...Are they, too, a bourgeois institution...
...The day is not far off when we will see revolutionary tribunals in which the more kosher Bolsheviks will execute the more suspect...
...And Raphael Abramovitch, the left-wing Menshevik, who during the entire revolution fought against any coalition of workers with bourgeois parties—is he of the bourgeoisie...
...Is Spiridonova part of that bourgeoisie that must be exterminated...
...And the workers thrown out of the Soviets, deprived of voting rights because they are not Bolsheviks —are they of the bourgeoisie...
...The same woman who sat at one table with Lenin—the party leader whom he proclaimed the "true representative of the poorest peasantry...
...It is enough for us to pose such questions— answers are self-evident...
...it becomes merely a label for non-Bolshevikseven for tried and true proletarians...
...One can oppress a huge economic class, but one cannot exterminate it, choking its members in blood through punitive expeditions...
...In September 1918, in the Bund publication Lebensfragen (Problems of Life), he wrote an article "On Terror," attacking the methods of the Lenin regime...
...On the grave of every executed victim of government terror arise a hundred vengeanceseekers...
...According to this view, the revolution should have entailed just the arrest of three minyanim (quorums) of bankers...
...Some bloody battle against the bourgeoisie...
...It is a ghastly misrepresentation of the term "socialism" and a perversion of its essence...
...The terror-minded government grows increasingly isolated...
...A socialist government that takes to mass terror signs its own death warrant...
...The Bolsheviks answer their own question: "Yes, we must persecute the bourgeoisie and not await its popular demise...
...Read through the material on Bolshevik deeds that we printed in our last three issues— material gathered not by sensation-seeking newsmen but by longtime, proven fighters for socialism, whose hearts tremble at the destruction of their lives' ideals...
...A government that treads the path of terror signs its own death warrant...
...ED...
...the circle of "kosher" or "authentic" socialists grows narrower...
Vol. 22 • April 1975 • No. 2
