United States or Svalbard and Jan Mayen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Western statesmen should realize this, and should remember that Bolshevism's best propagandist agent is, not Zinoviev orating at Baku, but General Gouraud, with his Senegalese battalions and "strong-arm" methods in Syria and the Arab hinterland. Certainly, any extensive spread of Bolshevism in the East would be a terrible misfortune both for the Orient and for the world at large.
Russian Bolshevism's Oriental policy was formulated soon after its accession to power at the close of 1917. The year 1918 was a time of busy preparation. An elaborate propaganda organization was built up from various sources. A number of old Czarist agents and diplomats versed in Eastern affairs were cajoled or conscripted into the service.
In all the elaborate network of Bolshevist propaganda which to-day enmeshes the East we must discriminate between Bolshevism's two objectives: one immediate the destruction of Western political and economic supremacy; the other ultimate the bolshevizing of the Oriental masses and the consequent extirpation of the native upper and middle classes, precisely as has been done in Russia and as is planned for the countries of the West.
They believed that if the East could be set on fire, not only would Russian Bolshevism gain vast additional strength but also the economic repercussion on the West, already shaken by the war, would be so terrific that industrial collapse would ensue, thereby throwing Europe open to revolution. Bolshevism's propagandist efforts were nothing short of universal, both in area and in scope.
By the end of 1918 Bolshevism's Oriental propaganda department was well organized, divided into three bureaux, for the Islamic countries, India, and the Far East respectively. With Bolshevism's Far Eastern activities this book is not concerned, though the reader should bear them in mind and should remember the important part played by the Chinese in recent Russian history.
Every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social injustice, every racial discrimination, was fuel for Bolshevism's incitement to violence and war. Particularly promising fields for Bolshevist activity were the Near and Middle East.
The Baku congress was the opening gun in Bolshevism's avowed campaign for the immediate Bolshevizing of the East. It was followed by increased Soviet activity and by substantial Soviet successes, especially in the Caucasus, where both Georgia and Armenia were Bolshevized in the spring of 1921. These very successes, however, awakened growing uneasiness among Soviet Russia's nationalist protégés.
No part of the world was free from the plottings of its agents; no possible source of discontent was overlooked. Strictly "Red" doctrines like the dictatorship of the proletariat were very far from being the only weapons in Bolshevism's armoury.
And, Bolshevism's practical method for realising its Utopia being "the armed conflict of classes . . . the dream of the earthly paradise, to be brought into being through civil war, becomes instantly the reality of hell let loose."
No longer is it in the main a matter of taking sides for or against the desirability of a Bolshevist rule or a dictatorship by the proletariat, but a matter of ascertaining the relative strength and probable behavior of the classes in a given society. It is as futile to "see red" in America because of Bolshevism in Russia as to yearn for Bolshevism's advent in the United States.
Word Of The Day