A Side-Step

Russia escapes her due classification among the Totalitarian states. In that happy realm where the Don and the Dneiper [unclear: now] so peacefully, where the worker drives to his palatial factory in the same motor car as Stalin; in that blissful classless state where all work the same hours for the same wage, where all are accorded the same fine living conditions, surely there must be some sacrifice asked [unclear: of] the individual. Surely the State that gives him so much must ask something in return. He is obliged to sell his soul to the State. Pardon, that is an unfortunate way or stating it, for souls are out of date in Russia. Each man belongs to the masses; he exists for the sake of the race. For the sake of the masses he submits to the tyranny of a few men alleged to represent the masses. In a land of so many millions there is but one mind. It is the mind of Stalin. There is but one will. I'll give you two guesses—whose? Liquidations, and "liquidations or the liquidators" suggest that it is perilous to have a private mind, more dangerous to reveal it; that it is purgeworthy to fail in any duty assigned by the State, and most un-Russian not to confess, when tried, that you are guilty, and traitorous not to plead for punishment. Even Mr. Gollancz seems to have a vague suspicion or the existence of the O.G.P.U., for in a speech before the Left Book Club at Caxton Hall, London. November 8, 1937. he is reported: "In the U.S.S.R. prices are falling and salaries increasing. It is true that in England we enjoy certain things. We have more liberty of speech and of propaganda than in the U.S.S.R." We can draw our own conclusion about liberty in Russia, when even he, in the transport of ecstacy, occasioned by being "caught up" to the Workers' Heaven, noticed that liberty was circumscribed. Democracy demands freedom in politics. When this is absent the whole box and dice belongs to Cæsar—to Sawdust Cæsar, to Swastika Cæsar, or to Cæsar of the Hammer and Sickle.