THE CORDOVA DAILY TIMES
Entered at the Postoffice at Cordova,
Alaska, as second-class matter.
H. G. STEEL
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
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MONDAY. JULY 7, 1919
THE SOVIET FICTION
The political dilettanti have evolved
a delightfully simple theory of the
regime at Moscow. It runs something
like this: The soviets constitute a
form of democratic government de
rived from peasant institutions, in
harmony with Russian political ge
nius, and directly responsive to popu
lar will. The Bolsheviki are a politi
cal party that has got control of the
soviet machinery of government. They
are extremists, honest to be sure, but
attempting an impracticable economic
program. They may be displaced in
the soviets by some other party, or
they may adapt their program to the
demands of economic fact. Indeed,
their American apologists would have
us believe that they are now follow
ing the latter course and have so far
abandoned their intransigeant atti
tude that it is possible for other peo
ples to have relations with them. In
any case, your Russian peasant loves
his dear soviet and is ready to die in
its defense, and any Russians who op
pose it are reactionaries, counter-rev
olutionaries, imperialists, Black Hun
dreds, and every other thing in the
radical vocabulary.
This glamorous theory of Russian
politics has only one little defect—it
is utterly false and has no foundation
in fact. It rests on the fanciful inter
pretation by unsound minds of data
furnished by a few ignorant and biased
observers, who know nothing of the
Russian people, their life and history,
and who were singularly susceptible
to the revolutionary atmosphere in
which they found themselves in Petro
grad and Moscow.
The soviet, in the sense in which the
word is now used, is not a natural Rus
sian institution, and it has no connec
tion whatever with the mir, or peasant
commune, as alleged by Raymond Rob
ins in the hodge-podge of misrepre
sentations that make up his oratorical
fantasies. The word is good Russian,
and means “council.” A board of di
rectors is a soviet; the upper house
under the old regime was called the
Gosudarstvenny soviet, or council of
the empire.
As now used, the term had its ori
gin in 1905. When the revolution of
1905 took place, one phase of it was
the attempt of the workingmen to
seize power. For a short time they
dominated Petrograd and Moscow. The
power naturally fell into the hands of
their labor union councils, or soviets.
This gave the idea to Trotsky, who
later pointed out in his writings that
this afforded a handy instrument for
imposing the dictatorship of the prole
tariat. It was natural, then, that when
the revolution of March, 1917, took
place, as the result of a rising of the
workmen and soldiers of Petrograd,
they should hark back to the precedent
of 1905.
i ne soviets oi woriunen ana soiuiers
deputies did not, however, at first con
sider themselves a governing body.
They accepted the provisional govern
ment and looked upon themselves as
charged with the duty of protecting
the interests of the workingmen and
soldiers in that government. As the
days went by and the provisional gov
ernment showed itself incapable of
meeting the situation, the power of
the soviets grew. They at first con
tained a majority of Mensheviks. The
Bolsheviks used the slogan, “All
power to the soviets,” effectively, as
well as the universal demand for a
cessation of the war, and in November
came into full control, and the soviets
became the government organization
of Russia. Meanwhile the soviet or
ganization has been extended to the
towns and even to the villages, dis
placing the zemstvos and peasant in
stitutions of self-government. Theo
retically it was supposed to be elec
tive^; practically, it was self-chosen
find was made up of the worst ele
ments of the local population, fre
quently including released criminals
and thugs imported from other towns
and provinces.
Today the Bolsheviks and the so
viets are one and the same thing. The
soviets could not last a single day
without the support of the mercenary
armies. The soviet government looks
pretty on paper. It has a constitution
that provides for the election of local
and provincial soviets, for the All
Russian soviet, for the executive com
mittee. Presumably any Russian who
works for his living, who hires no one,
who has no connection with the church
or with trade, and u-hose political
views are approved by the Bolsheviks,
may vote for the members of these
soviets. In practice they are self
chosen and self-perpetuating.
The fact is that long ago all the
Bolshevik leaders, with the possible
exception of five or six fanatics, lost
faith in the Bolshevik formula—if they
ever had any. They now openly scoff
at such deluded followers as take Bol
shevism seriously. They are out for
loot and plunder and to hold their
power as long as they can and to find
a safe refuge when their orgy is over.
They are spending millions of their
stolen money in propaganda abroad,
propaganda that seeks, on the one
hand, to stir tip unrest and revolution,
and, on the other, to convince the
wTorld that they are now becoming con
servative and constructive, and may
safely be taken into the family of nar
tions. It is the plea of the cornered
thief for immunity and for the reten
tion of part of his loot on the promise
of reform.
Another phase of the soviet legend
deserves comment. There are those
who seriously speak of the soviet sys
tem as an ideal form of democracy,
while decrying Bolshevik excesses
and extremes. They allege that the
soviet means direct and immediate re
sponsibility of government to the peo
ple. They prate much of some vague
thing they call “industrial democracy.”
But the soviet idea not only is a death
blow to liberty and democracy, it
spells irresponsible tyranny on the
part of the ignorant and incompetent,
and brings in its wake economic ruin
and innumerable petty autocracies.
HOW THE NEWS IS RECEIVED
Readers of the Daily Times, regaled
daily in their homes or offices through
these columns with exact, impartial
and interesting accounts of happenings
here, there and everywhere, possibly
often wonder at the means by which
these results are obtained and how a
paper in the local field obtains a report
of the daily doings of the world as
comprehensive as that available to the
greatest papers in the largest cities on
the continent.
The answer is contained in the cap
tion, “By Associated Press.” These
few words, to the initiated, mean that
in addition to the high class reportor
ial staff known to the city, the Daily
Times has another staff composed of
the keenest and best newspaper men
in the world—a staff that instead of
being confined to one city is world
wide in its territory; that can and
does report on the spot the action of
a city council a hundred miles from
here and the deliberations of a peace
commission sitting half a world away;
that is on duty twenty-four hours in
the day on the Mexican border and
the Arctic circle; that is as much at
home in the tropical jungles or a
front line trench as our city hall man
is in the ante-room of the mayor’s
office.
“By Associated Press,” seen in these
columns, reflects the co-ordination of
more than eleven hundred newspapers
of the United States in a mutual asso
ciation by which each individual paper
becomes the servant of all, and all the
servants of each.
The great metropolitan publications,
with their enormous staffs and facili
ties, are at the service of the small
town daily. The small daily is also
bound in honor in the service of the
greater publications. Each places at
the disposal of the other, through the
medium of the Associated Press, the
important happenings or its locality.
In addition, through its membership
in the Associated Press, each member
paper has also the service of numer
ous correspondents in other lands,
some of them employes of news agen
cies with which the Associated Press
has working affiliations, and others,
staff men of the Associated Press
itself. '
As a member of this great co-opera
tive organization, and under the cap
tion, “By Associated Press,” the Daily
Times is able to place before its read
ers each day the cream of the world
news, with absolute assurance that
fact and not fancy, truth and not false
hood, is being printed.
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