Bolshevik imperialism

Today’s situation gives cause for reflection for everyone, not least for all libertarian socialists. What is threatening humanity today? It is the spread of a state totalitarian system of government that makes all people slaves under a layer of politically powerful tyrants. Under this system, people are ruled day and night by anxiety and fear. No one knows what day or hour he may be arrested by the state police, accused of the most horrible things and sentenced without the possibility of defending himself. Everyone is at the mercy of the police state. Anyone who wants to keep his life, however miserable this life may be to live under the pressure of the terror of those in power, cannot utter a word without risking it being misinterpreted as dissatisfaction with the masters. He must put the stiff mask of a dead man over his face because even a look of dissatisfaction can deprive him of his freedom. He cannot without risking his freedom conduct a discussion about social matters, for to discuss is to criticize something that must not be criticized. He cannot trust anyone, since he does not know whether his best friend is not a police agent, perhaps not a police agent of his own free will, but one who has been forced under threat to report to the police everything he observes among his friends in order to avoid losing his freedom himself. Where one lives in a poisoned atmosphere of denunciation, espionage, anxiety and fear. Not even in family life can one be safe. One must learn to be silent and put up with everything. One knows that if one is guilty of criticism or opposition, one can be put in a concentration camp or deported. Deportation to Siberia is a fairly daily occurrence in Eastern Europe. One knows that physical abuse and psychological terror can be one’s fate at any time. Security of life and limb does not exist under this system. There is no room for personal freedoms and rights. No freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of organization is permitted. You can read, but only what the authorities think you should read. You are under police surveillance at every step. At any moment you can be brought in for questioning by the police and, by torture, extorted confessions that the authorities put into your mouth, no matter how false they may be. You cannot dare to associate with other people, for it may happen that the police want to extort information from you against people they want to get hold of and send to the penitentiary or to death. To harbor an opinion that is different from those in power and to reveal this opinion easily becomes “treason against the state” that can land you in the gallows. Every sign of discontent can turn you into a slave laborer. If you want to live in peace, you must become a hypocrite who expresses satisfaction with your shackles, your anxiety, your fear, your insecurity. For such is state totalitarianism, the kind of political rule that is sought to impose first on the people of Europe and then on other peoples. Hitler’s quest for a “new order” in Europe was of this nature, but the Bolsheviks’ quest for power is of exactly the same nature.

With each passing day, the feeling that humanity is approaching a fateful situation where weapons may once again speak in an apocalyptic third world war is intensifying. The world is today divided into two rival power groups prepared for anything. However much we acknowledge the traditional involvement of the capitalist forces in world politics, on the other hand, we cannot but see that the current acute situation must be attributed at least as much — and perhaps more — to the imperialism represented by the Soviet expansionist efforts.

With the seizure of power by Bolshevism in the Russian Revolution, the thesis of a world revolution under the leadership of Bolshevism was brought to its knees. Bolshevik parties arose in almost all countries which, in international cooperation, would realize this world revolution. Attempts to realize this idea were also made in connection with the First World War, but they did not succeed. However, the idea of Bolshevism’s “world-liberating mission” did not die with this. When Russia became the only country where Bolshevism definitively seized power, the seat of world Bolshevism was moved to Moscow. From here a propaganda was organized that came to warm all the countries of the world. The royal idea in this activity was the seizure of power through armed uprisings. The successes were not as immediate or extensive as had been dreamed of, but the work on the realization of the dreams continued.

The Bolshevik rulers in Moscow, however, were obsessed with the firm belief that sooner or later the capitalist states would try to defeat Russian Bolshevism by force of arms, because it was “socialist” and the other powers were capitalist. Because of this obsession, Russian foreign policy was directed towards preventing such a development of affairs with the help of the Bolshevik parties in the various capitalist countries, which, through revolutionary action, would make the capitalist governments incapable of mobilizing the working masses for war. Millions flowed out of the Russian treasury throughout the world to strengthen international Bolshevik activity, and with the help of Russian rubles an extraordinarily intensive activity was carried on. Moscow became an international college for the training of Bolshevik theologians, propagandists and professional revolutionaries. This activity was apparently internationalist. Perhaps it was so at the beginning, but as time went on it became nothing more than a part of Russian foreign policy, which gradually set itself more and more clearly imperialist goals. The parties in the respective capitalist countries became nothing more or less than “fifth columns” subordinated to directives from Moscow. A kind of world conspiracy for the seizure of power grew up and this conspiratorial activity was monitored most closely by the political traveling salesmen (Ex. R.) who were constantly sent from Moscow to inspect international activities. As soon as any leading force within the respective national Bolshevik branches showed a tendency to think for themselves and to deviate even slightly from the assigned “general line”, he was immediately de-polled by directives from Moscow. In this way, all deviations were constantly overcome and it was possible to effectively maintain uniformity, so that everywhere they worked according to Moscow’s schedule. In this way, Russia built up an international instrument for its nationalist policy. Bolshevism, which had initially internationalist aims, became a tool for Russian imperialism.

Obsessed with the obsessive idea of an inevitable capitalist attack on Russia, Russia’s efforts came rather “unnaturally” to focus on conquests through Bolshevik revolutions. With the establishment of Bolshevik dictatorships in various countries, these were to be brought under Russian control and expand Russia’s war potential. It is this policy that Russia seeks to implement in connection with the Second World War. It is a purely imperialist policy of conquest adapted to the special political conditions of the time.

Perhaps one would say that the German war of aggression against Russia proved the correctness of the Bolshevik view that it would sooner or later be attacked by the capitalist countries. But the German aggression cannot prove anything of the sort. First of all, the Nazi aggression was only an expression of the Drang nach Osten of traditional German policy. Secondly, Nazi Germany was a country that, following the Russian model, had begun to liquidate private capitalism and build a state capitalist order. Secondly, what the Russians had expected, that the capitalist countries would unite with Germany to crush “socialist” Russia, did not happen. On the contrary, immediately after the German attack, the capitalist countries offered Russia an armed alliance against the “Axis Powers”. And such an alliance was concluded.

Russia’s imperialist aspirations are in the open. They are already documented by the treaty of friendship concluded with Nazi Germany on August 23, 1939, a few days before Germany’s attack on Poland. The agreement between Stalin and Hitler was that the two aggressors would each take half of Poland, which also happened. Shortly afterwards, Russia began its war of aggression against Finland and forced that country to make certain concessions. Then came the Russian forcible occupation of the Baltic States and their incorporation into the Russian Empire. It is this imperialist policy of conquest that has continued in various forms and is still ongoing. And the respective fifth columns have been the tools with the help of which Russia’s imperialist policy of conquest has been promoted.

Russia’s imperialist aims are also confirmed by the documents concerning the Russo-German agreements at the beginning of the war, which were found in Germany and have now been published in Washington. During the conference between Molotov and Hitler in Berlin in August 1939, it was agreed to divide the world into a Russian, a German, an Italian and a Japanese sphere of interest, as well as to divide the British Empire. The Soviets were to direct their territorial expansion “south of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean”. Later, Molotov requested that the area south of Batum and Baku “with a clear direction towards the Persian Gulf” be recognized as the center of Soviet expansion plans. In an additional protocol to the August agreement, the northern border of Lithuania was established as the dividing line between the German and Russian spheres of interest. In a later additional protocol, Lithuania was transferred to the Russian sphere of interest. In connection with the agreement on the partition of Poland, Germany declared itself politically uninterested in developments in Southeastern Europe, which meant that this part of the world was declared a Russian sphere of interest.

After the German attack on Denmark and Norway in April 1940, Moscow sent congratulations to Hitler on the German successes, congratulations that were then repeated when the German slags had trampled the Dutch, Belgian and French peoples and placed them under German terror. And the Bolshevik fifth column in Norway declared in its newspaper Arbeideren (8 May) that the responsibility lay “exclusively with our social democrats and our English-oriented capitalists”. The Nygaardsvold government was declared (11 June) to continue “its criminal lackey service for the money-mad men of the City of London”. The Norwegian people were urged (20 June) to “break with British imperialism” and ensure that they had a government “prepared to make peace with Germany”. An example of how the Bolshevik fifth columns were trained to represent Russia and work the Russian ally into the hands of the Russian ally even in the midst of this ally exercising its brutal reign of terror over the Norwegian people. This pro-German attitude was immediately transformed into active struggle against the Germans when they attacked Russia in June 1941, which once again shows how the Bolshevik fifth columns work for Russia’s national and imperialist interests.

That Russia seeks to acquire hegemony seems unquestionable. Through its policy of violence it has subjugated Finnish territories. Through collaboration with Hitler it subjugated half of Poland. Through its policy of violence it took possession of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. It subjugated Bessarabia and Bukovina.

In November 1944 Molotov urged Norway to grant the Soviets expanded economic privileges on Spitsbergen. He demanded Bear Island and the right for the Soviets to establish military bases on Spitsbergen, but in vain.

In the East, the Soviet Union has seized all of Sakhalin, and has also obtained the Kuril Islands and certain privileges regarding Port Arthur, Dairen, and the Manchurian railway.

In the South, the Soviet Union has aspirations to advance beyond Batum and Baku. It has urged Turkey to cede the provinces of Kars and Ardahan south of Batum. It has requested permission to build fortifications and have bases at the Dardanelles. It has sought to extend its territory south of Baku into Persia. During the occupation, it sought to install a puppet government in Persia under the protection of the Red Army. It sought to establish a puppet government in Azerbaijan. But here its imperialist expansionist policy was stopped by the UN Security Council.

The Bulgarian government was installed by the Red Army. By ultimatum, the Soviets appointed a government of their own choosing in Romania. In partnership with Hitler, they invaded Poland and conquered half the country in 1939. Two robbers who shared the spoils fraternally! When, after 1945, it found it good policy to establish a new Poland as a vassal state, it expelled about ten million Germans from East Prussia, where the Germans had lived for many centuries. They were practically deprived of everything they owned and men, women and children were driven like cattle along the country roads into the western parts of Germany. Such a barbarity of conquest is probably unparalleled in history. Albania and Yugoslavia have been incorporated into the Slavic bloc. Czechoslovakia has been surrounded in this bloc. Of all the demands for conquest that Molotov made during the negotiations with Hitler in 1940, only Turkey and Greece still remain. War against Turkey was pointed out by Molotov in his conversation with Hitler as a possible necessity for the advancement of Russian aspirations. The struggle for Greece is ongoing and Greece would today have been in Soviet power if the UN Commission of Inquiry had not intervened.

The eastern part of Germany is already under Soviet control, but it is striving to make the whole of Germany a Bolshevik obedient state. In France, before July 1947, it sought to overthrow the Social Democratic government and seize power by making use of its Bolshevik fifth column and the French national organization controlled by it. Through the Bolshevik fifth column in Italy and making use of the Italian national organization, it sought to bring about a coup d’état just before Christmas 1947 that would bring the Bolsheviks to power.

It spares no means to realize its aims. It seeks to cultivate famine and want in order to thereby exploit the misery and discontent of the masses for its imperialist policy. It has drawn up a grand plan for the sabotage of German industry for this purpose. “Protocol M” is a document according to which the German Bolsheviks hold a “key position and must fight at the central point of European production — the Ruhr area”. The plan is to sabotage productive activity. The Ruhr workers are to be driven into action here. Should they refuse, efforts must be directed to sabotage the transport system in western Germany. Food supplies must be delayed. This will create further famine. To make the people even poorer, to increase hunger, to create all possible difficulties in order to make things even more miserable for the people — that is the plan that is to be put into effect if possible. Furthermore, the Bolshevik fifth columns in all the countries that are making use of the Marshall Plan are to be set in motion to sabotage this plan for the reconstruction of Europe, for the restoration of industry and the people’s livelihood. But when it was feared that Russia’s influence on countries that made use of American credits could be considerably reduced at the same time as America’s was increased, the Soviets stepped in to mobilize their fifth columns to sabotage the plan.

The gentlemen in the Kremlin had well prepared for their expansionist policy after the war. In the Balkan countries, the Soviets imposed the governments they wanted on the various countries. It was no great feat to carry this out when the country was occupied by Russian bayonets as the German armies were gradually driven back. The open and brutal language of power came into use where it was needed. We cannot give detailed information in this article about the methods used; we will come back to that. The methods are worth studying. In Germany, where the Russian occupation could not be nationwide, the work had to be done differently. German communists had been trained in Russia in large numbers for various functions. When they marched in, the Russian troops brought leading German communists at the head of their units, who immediately took over the police functions. Police power is the key to the rule of a people. The German Bolsheviks have been trained in Russia to practice the art of terror that accompanies the police in a totalitarian state.

Four American newspaper correspondents have traveled through the occupied countries after the occupation: Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. They compared their experiences and found them to be remarkably similar. The procedure in all countries was largely so similar that one could speak of action according to a definite schedule. In order to carry out the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks, a government had to be constituted with a certain composition:

1. A Bolshevik had to become Minister of the Interior and Police and thus control the executive power.

2. A Bolshevik had to become Minister of Justice in order to control, direct and appropriately use the courts and the administration of justice.

3. A Bolshevik or an obedient general had to become Minister of War or Chief of the General Staff, to control and be able to use the military means of power.

4. The government had to be so composed that it could be controlled by the Bolshevik party.

5. A parliament had to be composed in such a way that the Bolsheviks had a majority or absolutely secure control over it. Electoral fraud was the common means.

6. No other political parties were allowed to exist than those that accepted cooperation with the Bolsheviks on the conditions set by the Bolsheviks. Parties that led systematic opposition had to be decimated and rendered powerless through terror and persecution.

7. A press censorship had to be established under the leadership of Bolsheviks who would not allow any press attacks against the Bolsheviks and the Bolshevik-controlled government.

8. When one had come so far that one had established a government in which all the key positions: Minister of the Interior and Police, Minister of Justice, Minister of War, were held by the Bolsheviks, one had the power and the means of terror in one’s hands and one could proceed to the elimination of possible opponents in government and parliament, the dismissal of inconvenient ministers, the dissolution of opposition parties, etc. Letting people “disappear” is also a means. All with the aim of consolidating power in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Suitable laws with rubber-stamp clauses and administrative decrees with room for arbitrary use of power have been successful means. The workers are organized on a state-totalitarian model, which allows them to be used in appropriate cases as support for the Bolshevik party. The opposition is accused of plotting against the state, of preparing foreign intervention, of organizing civil war, of economic sabotage, etc. The police fabricate all the necessary indictments and the courts operate according to higher instructions. Finally, inconvenient opposition parties are banned and perhaps their leaders (the example of Petkov) are also hanged. Finally, a situation is reached in which there is practically only one “state-supporting” party and the opposition is definitively silenced.

Should, against all probability, there still be someone or a few who dare to express opinions other than those of the Bolsheviks, a warning will probably suffice. As, for example, when 9 Social Democrats in the Bulgarian parliament in January 1948 refused to vote for the government budget, when Georgi Dimitrov, the dictator of Bulgaria, explained to them in parliament: “Ten times I warned your friends in Nikola Petkov’s group. They did not listen. They were crushed and their leader is now in the grave. Think carefully so that you do not share the fate that befell your friends, the foreign agents and the enemies of Bulgaria.” It is unlikely that the nine oppositionists will dare to have an opinion of their own again after this threat of the gallows. At least not to express it openly.

The police force that is being built up in the areas of the various Eastern powers is organized according to the Russian model and is sufficient to subdue all opposition currents. The political police in Poland (UB) is estimated to number 230,000 men. Anyone who has once fallen into its clutches has no chance of escaping his fate.

Concentration camps are being set up and forced labor is being introduced for dissenters. In Germany, where the Social Democratic Party is banned in the Russian zone, Nazi concentration camps have been taken over, including Buchenwald, where masses of Social Democrats are interned. From time to time they are emptied. The prisoners are sent to mines where slave labor has been established, or they are sent to Siberia or some other place, or they simply “disappear.” Open Social Democratic documented accusations provide information about this. The treatment in the internment camps is reminiscent of the Nazi dictatorship. Espionage in the workplaces is well organized. If you do not register with the Bolshevik Party, you are easily dismissed, arrested, sent away without being allowed to see your wife and children. The system of terror is uniform wherever the Russian occupation armies have created Bolshevik-controlled regions.

These countries are nothing more than Russian satellites. They have practically no independent life. Their unification into a Slavic bloc under Russian control (even the non-Slavic states) is in full swing. They are forming alliances with each other. Let us recall the following data:

On November 27, 1947, an alliance was concluded between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. On December 8, an alliance between Yugoslavia and Hungary. On December 16, an alliance between Albania and Bulgaria. On December 19, an alliance between Romania and Bulgaria. On January 24, an alliance between Romania and Hungary. Here we have the formation of blocs in full swing. In connection with the conclusion of the Bulgaria-Romania alliance, Dimitrov said: “We have become allies in the same way that we are actually allies with the Soviet Union by treaty.” This statement can be applied to all the Eastern states “liberated” by the Soviets.

That we are dealing here with a Russian imperialist expansionist policy is a fact that is palpable to all. This imperialism threatens freedom in all countries where it advances, in Europe and throughout the world. One can call this imperialism socialist. Why not? Didn’t German Nazism also call itself socialist? But the name cannot mislead. As true as freedom is an inseparable component of socialism, equally true is despotism and terror an inseparable component of Bolshevism and Russian imperialism. Wherever it advances and threatens to seize power, it threatens all humanity, all human rights, all the best in humanity. It means the enslavement and tyrannization of humanity. To take a stand on this imperialism, to take a stand against Bolshevism is today’s imperative duty for every person who loves freedom, and first and foremost for all socialists for whom there can be no socialism without freedom.