ABSTRACT
Is the Communistic ideal really too visionary for us Westerners to take it seriously? When the Communists seized power in Russia, their opponents gave them ‘a few weeks’ run’ at most. That was ten years ago. Since then progress in order, welfare and strength has been continuous. Nevertheless, the ‘impracticability’ argument against Socialism is still being used in other countries with undiminished conviction. As regards Russia, it was unbelievable in 1917 that these ignorant working men and peasants, with their childish ideas of politics and economics, could maintain themselves in power and actually control the Government machinery of this colossal State of 140 million inhabitants and covering one-seventh of the globe! For people without any experience of governing, who had only recently been allowed even to organize Trade Unions for themselves, people, moreover, as unbusinesslike by nature as Russians appear to be, it would indeed have seemed madness, even on the part of well-wishers, to anticipate the least measure of success in an attempt to reorganize society on a new basis. It was a most ambitious, unparalleled and altogether extraordinary experiment. To the impartial onlooker the wonder must surely be not that the new régime shows many 78errors and failures at certain points, but that, on the whole, it has worked, is working, and promises to go on working. It was marvellous to me as I travelled about both in towns and villages that the life of the country should present, at any rate on the surface, an appearance so normal and so happy. One must remember, too, that the experiment was introduced in a country reduced to the last degree of chaos, famine, and penury as the result of the World War, and that the difficulties within were matched by the difficulties without, where world-wide opposition, including the attacks of the Allies, had to be encountered. Surely a moment’s consideration is enough to show that under such circumstances even the partial success of a Communist régime is a fact of extraordinary significance. Russia now represents the unique example in the world of a country where great strides have actually been made towards the realization of a Socialist ideal. What is the matter with us all that a fact so startling still receives so little attention?
