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Where the Soviet Gets Its Power.

Russia's present official title is "The
Russian Socialistic Federated Republic of
Soviets." The Present day Russian soviet
Government is really only the executive
committee of a vast number of local vil-
lage, town and city soviets in which there
exists a real sound democratic idea of
majority rule. The village soviets hold
local elections and select members to at-
tend the all-Russian congress of soviets.
This congress chooses the government.
It was such an organization that ratified
the Russo-German peace.

The bolsheviki were extreme socialists.
They perfected the organization of a cen-
tral clearing house for these thousands of
soviets. They used this organization to
spread their propaganda and won over to
their point of view 95 per cent of the sol-
diers and 80 per cent of the peasant
masses. The soviet program was im-
possibly radical. It proposed impractical
reforms. The bolshevik ideas are the
narrow outgrowth of sixty years of
forced, secret revolutionary work.

Soviet is Largely Atheistic.

We can hardly expect these revolu-
tionists to possess modern ideals, when
they saw mostly only the seamy side of
the czar's regime. Already a century
behind the times, the revolutionary work-
ers became atheists. The soviet is large-
ly atheistic in tendency. The Russian
church was so bound up with the czar
that the masses say: "The church be-
longed to the czar. It was the czar's in-
strument. We do not trust the czar."

But, regardless of their atheism and
their fatuous, impossible reasoning, the
bolsheviki swept the country completely,
coming to dominate the national organi-
zation of the village soviets. And in
sweeping the country the bolsheviki be-
came one with the soviet. The conserva-
tive representatives of allied countries
reasoned that the bolsheviki, now the so-
viet leaders, were simply hired agents of
Germany. They knew that Lenine came
through Germany in a sealed car. They
said that Trotzky was notoriously anti-
British. They declared that the soviet
program was "made in Berlin."

Lenine did come to Russia through Ber-
lin. The bolsheviki did perhaps accept

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money from Germany. They explain that
by saying, "We would accept money from
the devil himself in aid of our cause."
There exists and old saying that you may
give a fanatic money, but you cannot buy
him. Germany undoubedly regrets Le-
nine's passage through Berlin; certainly
the Germans regret the money given to the
bolshevik propaganda which threatens to
boomerang back on Austria. Lenine did
not utter a single new word of extreme
socialism. He and his associates made
use of the most radical ready made argu-
ments available because, knowing the
psychology of the Russisan masses, they
understood the arguments, "Peace,
land, bread and factory control," would
appeal to 93 per cent of the mass because
the individuals of this mass never before
owned even their own souls.

Formula Not Made in Berlin.

Perhaps Germany crystallized things by
urging bolshevik work in Russia, but the
bolshevik formula was never made in
Berlin. "The land for the peasants" is a
reiteration of the Fourier-Proudhon
scheme based on the idea that "all land
belongs to the tillers of the soil," pro-
posed in France in 1842. "Control of in-
dustries by the workingman" is only the
Pfert program of 1876 and "peace for the
soldier" is the formula of the interna-
tional published in the communist mani-
festo of 1884 which expounded the theory
that autocratic ruling classes made
wars to allay discontent at home and also
for the purposes of imperialistic exploita-
tion and acquisition of foreign terri-
tories.

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