BourgeoisieCapitalismCivil WarCominternCommunismCommunist PartyLeninRadekRussian RevolutionSocialismSovietTrotskyUnited FrontWorking Class

DECEMBER 15, 1921)
THE WORKERS COUNCIL 151 150 THE WORKERS COUNCIL DECEMBER 15, 1921 The New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia By HELLER Washington Plans United Front Against Russia KA ARL RADEK, one of the keenest critics in Soviet Russia of international politics, in a special article on the Washington Conference, declares that. In Washington the Allied Entente is endeavoring to form a single front against Soviet Russia. The great powers wish to come to an understanding with each other, not only over Eastern Siberia but over the whole Russian question. They are attempting to settle questions in advance which can only be examined with Russian participation. Soviet Russia can await the results of the Washington Conference quite coolly and quietly. Decisions which are made by this conference will remain without force because these decisions will stand face to face with the organized force of the Russian people, who in spite of hunger and cold will not submit themselves to the orders of Washington, all the more so as these orders will undergo a certain loss of emphasis by the time they reach the people ordered. The unity of the Allied Entente is for the time being only a pious wish. If this unity is put down on paper the difference of interests between the members of the Entente will be stronger than the paper which they have created.
the Revolution have penetrated deeply into the life.
bright sunny day early in June, remarked of the people.
to the Russian comrade next to me: Vot matushka There are many things about Soviet Russia which Moskva, belokamennaya. Here we are approach do not seem clear, which may be difficult to grasp.
ing stony white Mother Moscow. Red Moscow, To get a clear picture of the situation there, to Comrade, answered my companion.
understand Soviet Russia, it is necessary to bear in Truly Moscow is red. The red flag is waving mind firstly, that the revolution is still on; it is not from the Kremlin palace the old palace of the completed, only the first phase of it, the destructive Czars and from numerous flag poles all over phase, the period of military communism, as Moscow.
Trotzky calls it, being completed.
GREET WORLD DELEGATES The revolution is now entering the second phase the constructive period.
On the 17th of June the Red Square in front of The whole thought and energy of the Soviet the Kremlin was ablaze with red banners of marchGovernment and the nation are now concentrated ing hosts, the Red Army passing in review, in on what is called in Russia the Economic Fronthonor of the delegates to the Third (Communist) the rebuilding of the economic life of the country, International.
the rehabilitation of its industries.
Red Moscow is the heart of Soviet Russia. But REVOLUTION PREPARES GROUND no less red are the other towns and villages of the Republic.
Secondly, the revolution itself has not produced Red, by the way, is synonymous with beautiful communism, but only prepared the ground, in a in the Russian language, and is the chosen color of thorough and decisive manner, for the communist the Russians.
edifice.
Everywhere the presence of the Soviet Power is The Russian leaders endeavor to make this plain in evidence: an arch with some striking inscription, on every occasion. They repeat again and again that as, for instance, In October was born, for the first the present order in Russia is not communism.
time in the world, the power of horny hands, or, Lenin, in his famous brochure, On the Tax in The bourgeois takes with gold, the workman with Kind (April 1921. says: Not a single communist the hammer, etc. or a monument or a People but desires that the expression Socialist Soviet ReHouse, or a simple Agitpunkt Agitation Point public denotes the determination of the Soviet Power a room at the railway station where meetings are to realize a transition to Socialism, but not at all the held or where information, literature and newsacceptance of the given economic arrangements as papers can be obtained by travelers.
Socialist. We are thus only at the beginning of a WORKERS STRENGTH OF REVOLUTION Communist State.
These are of course only the outer signs. The Hence the new Economic Policy. This policy atreal strength of the Soviet Government comes tempts to establish governmental capitalism in Soviet from the working class that made the Revolution Russia; in other words, to use the capitalist method and carries the brunt of it on its shoulders to this of industrial organization mass production, extensive day, as well as from the peasants, the vast majority application of the latest technique, careful accountof the Russian population, to whom the Revolution ing in order to develop industry quickly, in a country brought not only civil rights and liberty, but actual as industrially backward as Russia with its vast agrimaterial improvement in their condition.
cultural population, comprising 83. per cent. of the The peasants to day own 96. per cent of the total number.
land as against 76. per cent before the war. Where COMMUNISM MAKES DETOUR the crops haven failed, as in the Volga district, they live better. They have bread and eggs and butter, only 21, 252, 600 or 16. per cent live in cities; and Of the 130 millions of inhabitants of Soviet Russia, Czar rule. They have also obtained in exchange only per cent or 4, 755, 100 are workmen in facfor their products much of the possessions of the tories, mines and transportation.
bourgeoisie.
The seven years of imperialist and civil war have In the course of my six months visit in Soviet ruined Russian industries, while the primitive, ineffiRussia, covered a great part of European Russia cient agricultural methods of the Russian peasant never and Siberia, studying conditions, observing life in really produced sufficient food for the country even in the best years.
town and country, visiting factories, mines, communal and private farms in a word, coming very In 1913, for example, Russia had per person 22 poods close to the people, in their daily life.
of grain and poods of potatoes, as compared with 54. poods of grain and poods of potatoes per SOVIET POWER TO STAY person in the United States, or 15. poods of grain: have come out of Russia firmly convinced that and 40 poods of potatoes in Germany.
there is no power on earth that can dislodge the Thus Russian export of foodstuffs prior to the revoSoviet Government, and that the achievements of lution was at the expense of the population.
Under these conditions Russia has no reserve, no lease, rental, or other basis, and to help such groups in saved up capital with which to start the operations of every way to establish themselves in Russia.
her industries, and is compelled to invite foreign con It is also inviting technicians, professional men, cessionaires and capitalists to bring the required funds. engineers who, understanding Russian conditions, This of course is a detour from the straight road; wish to go there to help in the rebuilding of the but is in no way an abandonment of the Communist Soviet Republic.
principles.
This of course does not mean inviting general imThe new policy is dictated by living life to use migration, which for the time being is not desired. But Lenin expression, in fact, by the very course of the industrial or agricultural groups are welcome and will Russian Revolution and the peculiar structure of the be given every opportunity to succeed.
economic fabric in Russia.
CONFIDENT AS TO FUTURE NEW POLICY IS SUCCESSFUL Soviet Russia is laboring under great difficulties.
The new economic policy was promulgated with the The famine in the Volga district affecting 25, 000, 000 approval of the Russian Communist Party.
people has struck her a heavy blow, especially after Whatever dangers some may see in it, whatever the bad harvest of last year.
fear some may have is overcome by the confidence of the Party and the government in themselves, in the Instead of feeding the workers in the industries as ability to control the situation.
the government planned when the new tax law was The powerful Soviet ark may have to alter its proclaimed this spring, it is obliged to throw all its recourse to weather a storm, but being seaworthy and sources into the hunger stricken region.
There is a shortage of fuel, of medicines, of many capably managed, it will reach the port for which it started.
other necessities. For want of fuel, the railroads are not Already the effect of the new policy is everywhere operating fully or efficiently; for want of repair parts, electrical supplies, leather belting, many industrial apparent: peasants bring their products to market, in the ci ies stores and shops open, many of the undertakings are shut down.
smaller factories are leased to organized groups or But in spite of all this, in spite of all the hardindividuals, foreign trade is increasing.
ships and privations, the feeling in Soviet Russia when left at the end of October was that of conWELCOME REAL HELP fidence in the future, of determination to win, of The Soviet Government in its efforts to rehabilitate more life and activity there than in the spring, of the industrial life of the country, is prepared to give renewed enthusiasm.
concessions to capitalists on advantageous terms.
It invites at the same time organized labor in Amer The Irish Free State has come out of the nationalica to take part in the re establishment of Russian istic struggle between Ireland and England. The class industries.
struggle will now be renewed with increased vigor It is prepared to turn over to organized groups of for the establishment of the Irish Workers Republic.
workingmen or fatm workers, co operatives, partner James Connolly did not die, and James Larkin is not ships, etc. factories, mills or farming property on in prison in vain.