THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Saturday, March 1, 1919 The Artist and the Revolution century Social the and lism, it had become ound wanting, great hise parties succumbed Bernard conscription in the way lived imagination, system of society. He trace its Being An Open Letter to Maxim Gorky URING the period immediately preceding the By Henriette Roland Holst had taught them to commit. The revolution aroused world war, when Socialisnı had become tame in the masses for the first time human personalities and gentle throughout Western Europe, when it but it could not prevent the awakening being accomwas at home in salons and drawing rooms and even panied by rough, wild, coarse egotism.
frequented court circles, many great scientists, artists FOREWORD and literary men called themselves Socialist.
This explains the wild chaotic character of the beEven as far back as the forties of the last ginning of the proletarian revolution. The unchecked This article (translated from the Dutch by Auerism had already become fashionable. The rulers and haan) is written hy one of the most brilliant women in eruptions of desires, the anarchistic tendencies, which diplomats. their fears of its name. To be the revolutionary Socialist movement of Europe.
again and again came to the surface, the currents of known as och was entirely harmless and placed cruelty and vengeance, which made for trouble and Henriette Roland Holst is a member of the Commun disturbance. These things are conceivable to us, lut no obstac. vay of an honorable social ca ist Party of Holland, until recently the Social Demo they are nevertheless not less terrible to our imaginreer, the amount or higher positions and appoint cratic Party in Holland, which is the left wing expresation and conscience.
ments to obtai tations. On the contrary, as part sion of the Dutch Socialist movement. This party soon of a And when you, Maxim Gorky, in the midst of all a parliares y sujority of a ministry the Social after the November Revolution was designated by the these terrors, when the revolution in its wild leap ir son of its leaders, controlled the Bolshevik Government as its representative to secure information from neutral and belligerent countries. The appointment 01 bs and high functionaries and often destroyed everything that was to you holy and bestowal decorations.
supreme, and which you trusted would be holy and party publishes daily newspaper in Amsterdam, The.
supreme to the masses freedom of the press Social Democracy was no longer hostile to Capita Tribune, which is a splendid exponent of revolutionary speech, justice and tenderness, humaneness and muideas, and which wages a merciless a part of civil society.
fight against the tual interest then your heart hesitated for a time reactionary, petty bourgeois Socialism represented by Socialism of the official Social Democratic parties was the catastrophe of the world war, however, the and you wavered in your confidence in the revolution.
the party of Peter Troelstra. Comrade Roland Holst tested and found the is associated with Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorliterary men who There are, perhaps, among us revolutionary inteliectuals of Western Europe, some who sneer at your were closely connected with these ter on the editorial staff of the theoretical monthly to the nationalistic and imperialistic cliques. Anatole magazine of the party, The New Age; she is also asso wavering and looked with distain upon your internal France, Verhaeren, George Shaw, all ciated with Wynkoop of The Tribune.
struggle; writing desk heroes, people without any the world celebrated writers who adorned the pro Besides being active in the revolutionary movement.
power of imagination who cannot conceive what it gressive, humanitarian, pacifist and reformist Socialmeans to be a living part of a social revolution. People Henriette Roland Holst is literary artist of the first ism since the beginning of the twentieth century were without the wide and deep sympathy which is part of magnitude, and is recognized as one of the foremost hurled upon the rocks of capitalist by the literary critics of Europe. The Revolutionary Age exyou, who in their own narrow jealousy and dull hatred awful flood of passionate desires aroused by the war. pects to print her articles regularly, as well as the arwere fattered by the rough instinctive deeds of the They became idolators and apostles of the national ticles of the brilliant group Pannekoek, Gorter and centuries long enslaved masses.
ist imponistic idea and revealed how closely they Wonkoop To these then let my voice interpret the sentiments were vei connected with the bourgeoisie, how imof those, who, revolutionary in mind and heart, even pregnated with its ideology, and their complete inas you, Maxim Gorky, have hesitated, have struggled ability to conceive the future of humanity in any other seething peasant and proletarian masses. You rer with themselves because they, with you, have, as far in the political and social forms of bourgeois as it is mained true after the defeat; amidst the reaction of society soul shalssible in experiences of the proletarian revolution, Romain Rolland alone, of all the celebrated writers 1917 and the following years you remained true to have tasted its bitterness, have suffered its disillusionof Western Europe, remained true to his cosmopolithe proletariat when so many lesser notables deserted ments, of those who have beheld the naked realities tan principles, in his ideas of conciliation between. when nearly all the intellectuals sunk into obscurity collide with their dream and threaten to destroy it.
and sensualism Germany and France, without the realization that the We revolutionary poets and writers cannot do differbasis of such a conciliation was lacking in the persent And in those years before, as well as during, the world war, you continued in close relation with the and around us a beautiful image of the proletariat as e presented a tragic figure his moral courage, lis absolute independence, his Russian Social Democracy, the party which West it wishes in its struggle for world freedom ate struggle to save international thought and demo cratie liserty in the imperialistic face of Capitalism, February, 1917, Czarism collapsed under the pattack yet Thelonines were eidmire, we love; it is a dream and of the workers and soldiers masses, it became eviand nis initial impotence to understand that Το its features in the deeds of blind egotism, dent we were mistaken.
could only be saved of fierce hatred and beastly, dissoluteness which acfor a new part of the Russian Social Democracy went over companied the revolution and sometimes appeared to As did Romain Rolland in the bourgeois West, to the bourgeoisie, as averse to revolutionaries as the be the revolution itself, is hard and difficult did Maxim alone, of all the renowned official parties of Western Europe. Instead of sup We have to struggle and struggle to poets and writers of the absolutist East of Europe, porting the slogan of the Bolsheviki. All power to he held his stand in live name of an ideolobyt which hypocriticas, politically imposeemselves with the weak, se ois culture, we are Tavished with its untimiteiten bate ha We have grown with it, it was part of our very lives.
marionettes whose actions were controlled by the In the proletarian revolution we see how rough hands principle that could only arouse a few, you took a great Capitalists in London and New York. destroy it.
And when in November of the same year the SoviThe toiling masses have no reverence for bourgeois Socialism, the ideology that inspired the advance ets pressed between the choice of surrendering Russia culture. How could they have? They never had a And we, the revolutionary Socialist artists, in small to the reactionary adventurers or attempting to make part in it! They destroyed with sensual pleasure that which we hoped would be treated gently. This aroused neutral Holland, where the political and social Mensheviki and Right Social Revolutionaries arrayed pain and to conquer this anguish is hard and difficult.
thought is in advance of the social struggle. where We have to struggle continuously to accomplish it.
the revolutionists feed themselves on the ideal reflec This them from the first day they assumed power.
We all, poets and artists, have our sympathies retion of the struggle which is in action outside its cuals and petty bourgeois decided meant that a great part of the specialized intelfined to the extreme, their feelings reach out to all the boundaries, we looked with pride and love and warm to realize the Socialist idea in Russia insofar as her boundaries of life. The sufferings of the masses was comradeship to you, who, in the general renunciation, econoinic development would allow. The break in key that opened our souls to them. We were remained true to the International revolutionary ideal. We did not expect anything less from you. We the Social Democracy weakened the revolution, li moved to the revolation by the sufferings and the minished its basis, lowered its moral and political estruction of the mass, insulted and humiliated, who knew oyur works and were aware of your love as a superiority and made it impossible for the masses to ecause of their ignorance or their fanaticism were son and brother of the people thirsting for liberty conquer power and maintain their conquest without connected with the rulers, who were tortured, illtreatWe knew you as an eneniy, not only of Russian ab resorting to force. This relative weakness of the ed and killed.
solutism, but of Russian bourgeois and petty bour revolution, through the lack of unity amongst the Our sense of justice, our humaneness goes out to geois society.
masses, resulted in an inevitably severe, often cruel these victims of the sins of others; we can easily prate Did you not always condemn bourgeois society for proletarian dictatorship. Indeed this lack of unity about injustice, our hate is not like the hatred of the its miserable narroww mindedness, its cowardly fears gave the dethroned oppressors and exploiters courage masses, hardened like stone by centuries of oppression, and cringings? Were your works not a hymn of resis to repeatedly intrigue and conspire against the Soviet we can easily prate about humanity, we who have had tance and revolt against the fetters of old ideas and Government.
morals, of old forms and prejudices.
every opportunity to train ourselves in humaneness, As long as the masses in Russia were too weak to More than that, the Mensheviki and Right Social to relish the holy truths of Socialism; we who above all live in Socialism, its external appearance, its Revolutionaries supplied the men for the attempts of wage war on coercion and oppression, you moulded the reactionaries to enslave the masses again. Still farthest objective, the realization of the Brotherhood your heroes after individual and individualistic rebof Man.
els, from the gypsics and tramps. You never praised, born, multiply the terrors without end. The revoluthe circumstances, out of which the revolution was But the masses are in the stress of the struggle.
as did the generation of great writers before you, the tion that was born out of the war says Lenin in his wholly absorbed with the work that is necessary to patience and docility of the peasants as their highest Letter to the American Workers, must necessarily bring about this unity; to repulse and conquer the virtue, never was your social ileal that of submission you always praised rebellion the active uprising that war created, through this heritage of destruction powering they are often compelled to do things which against the unbearable conditions from which the and reactionary, mass murder. The revolution found offend our sense of justice and is abhorrent to our people suffered, against ignorance, tradition, preju Russia, economically and socially, in a state of terrible dice. And as soon as the labor moveinent manifested deterioration. It found starvation and general un Thus the revolution, for which we have longed so its power you made it your hero.
employment, the stores of supplies empty, the means ferrently, brings countless symptoms which confuse In The Mother you have tried to picture something of communication and traffic at a standstil. It found us make us unhappy, irritate. disturb and amaze 11s.
of the greatness of the first semi proletarian revolu the old ties of docility and fear, which had kept the It is the old old difference between the dream and the tion: the Russia of 1903. something of the greatness suppressed masses in check through their elementary realityWe must work undauntedly to abolish this of the suffering and struggling masses, which for the instincts, gone as if by magic, it found their souls difference.
first time appeared on the world stage. You were brutalized and savaged by the horrors and cruelties as one with the idea of this struggle, the wrestling and through which they had lived and which their masters Trotzky Il ork. Discipline and Order, Page 17.
niass action de la verde bay war like Communista, hehe in SO yould Gorkyje to recognize it.
the humaneness.