IV.
THE LOGIC OF THE STORM.
The proletarian revolution is above all else a great work of organisation. The power of the Government should be organised as the mechanism of the power of the working class; the proletarian army should be organised as a sure support of this power, and the class-war should be organised on a Socialist basis.
Many observations made in the course of this work of organisation demand a special treatment which we have no intention of giving them here. Here we intend to indicate merely the main directing lines which experience has shown us to be necessary to follow in organising revolution.
In the practical work of Government organisation we were at the outset led into the right path through a general strike of officials. In spite of all our wanderings in the paths of Liberalism, the entire management of State and communal affairs fell into the hands of the organised workers from the moment the officials had decided unanimously to strike. In places a certain number kept at work, but generally speaking their aim was either sabotage or to help the butchers to make war. This happened on the railways and in the post and telegraph offices. As far as the latter are concerned, we should perhaps have played our game better by dismissing all employees known for their bourgeois opinions, even if this had dislocated and diminished, or for that matter almost entirely suspended the telegraphic service for a time: for as long as the war was in progress front to front, it was dangerous to permit adversaries and deserters to continue at their work in the railway and telegraph services. A free telephone service could be used for the purposes of military espionage by members of the bourgeois class remaining on our side of the front. Moreover, its use during the time of open struggle ought to have been reduced to a minimum, since a really effective control cannot be exercised in any case.
As a result of the general strike of managers and technical experts, the organisation of production went partly in the direction desired by the workers, i.e., that of socialisation, much more rapidly and completely than our Social-Democracy had wished it to go. First of all came, naturally, the state and communal commercial establishment, which fell into the hands of the organised workers, but they were soon followed by several big capitalist concerns, notably by the biggest enterprise of its kind in the country—the paper factories. Generally speaking the re-working of the factories stopped by the capitalists did not present any insurmountable difficulties to the workers. Doubtless the want of technical experts would later on have made itself felt more strongly than at first, but however, imperfect the resources at the workers' command, experience proved in most cheering fashion that the workers of Finland were capable of organising production. In the majority of industries much greater success was obtained than had ever been counted on.
On the other hand in the class-war itself, and in the organisation of the Red Army, mistakes irregularities and omissions were made, due largely, it is true, to lack of experience and technical knowledge, but also to the fact that sufficient attention was not paid to organising for the combat itself. Preparations for taking up the struggle were not sufficiently detailed or methodical and lacked energy. Not oven the arrest of the bourgeois agitators had been prepared for beforehand. The Red Army was at first formed solely of volunteers from the ranks of the organised workers; later unorganised workers were admitted; in some places they were forced to join the army; in others universal compulsory military service was set up, and even the bourgeoisie were sent to the front armed with rifles. Evidently the most practical measure would have been to adopt general compulsory service in the working class by calling up all men able to bear arms, or those of certain classes. Army pay, which was about the same as that received by a well-paid worker, need not have been so high. The provisioning of the army was organised in a satisfactory manner, but the need of footwear and clothing was great, especially the former. The transport and storage of munitions, so that they could be at hand when wanted, was at first badly organised, and never was really satisfactory. Worst of all was the organisation of the intelligence system. The organisation of corps of scouts at the back of tho army was also a mistake, and the action of this corps was harmful and a danger ta military operations. The fact that in the army on the front not even the simplest measures relating to the scout corps were put into practice, which the Red Army suffered, namely, the lack of trained, capable and punctual officers who could inspire confidence. We had previously had no trained forces, since the country had been without an army for a sufficiently long period; only a few old non-commissioned officers were requisitioned by the workers. The most elementary military instruction for officers would certainly have been extremely useful, but it was not to be had, and we were without it throughout the whole course of the revolution.
To a most alarming extent it was sheer hazard which decided to whom such or such a post of command should he given. Sometimes these men were equal to the task before them, and made model troops of their men. But there were also in officers' corps and in the staffs a great number of unskilful, incompetent men, who, while not ne'er-do-wells, were nevertheless mere talkers who had never yet succeeded in any organising work or post of command, and who did not know how to set about things, although they had risen in the general confusion. If the well-tried organisers of the working-class movement had volunteered in greater numbers to lead the operations (as often was the case), the leadership of the class-war would certainly have improved on our side. The agitation undertaken in our ranks by the paid agents of the bourgeoisie against our military command would then have borne less fruit. An underground agitation of this kind is in a class-war the most dangerous and insidious weapon of the bourgeoisie, and the greater the number of elements with obscure antecedents who rise to the surface during a revolution, the more easily when reverses come do doubts arise about the honesty and incorruptibility of lenders.
The general leadership of the class struggle on our side also leaves much room for criticism. Lack of arms was the chief reason why a more energetic and continuous offensive was not undertaken at the outset. However, even when we had obtained arms, there was still the lack of drilled men. The weeks which had gone by had not been employed in energetically forming and drilling new troops, for no one had then expected a long class-war extending over several months. There was no regular specialist organisation. Our troops fought practically the whole time without reserves, a most fatiguing and dangerous thing. True, our front resisted the enemy's attacks, but, wanting as we were in reserves and in special attacking battalions, we were not in a position to make any really serious attacks. As our advance on the northern front continued for some time, there resulted from it to the north at Tammerfors a dangerous bulge, the flanks of which were almost entirely uncovered. This bulge required five or six times more men to hold it than a straight front immediately to the north of Tammerfors would have needed. We were soon to pay for this tactical error. The Whites' flank attack produced such unsteadiness amongst the tired troops holding the inside of the are, and forced them to retreat in such disorder, that the enemy had every opportunity for surrounding Tammerfors and pushing his front to the south of the town.
Without doubt our troops were already depressed, by the announcement that the German Government had promised to come to the aid of the bourgeoisie, by sending first of all an expedition to the Aaland Islands to facilitate the transport of arms and troops in Finland. It was in Aaland, too, that the descent on our rear of the Germans and of the butchers' troops was prepared. The Russian officers had taken good care that the enemy should encounter no more resistance from the fortifications outside Hangö than they did at Aaland. The Russian defenders had been withdrawn, but the forts had not been handed over to the Finns. The landing at Hangö, which we could not prevent for want of troops, directly threatened the capital, and made the defence of the whole of south-west Finland a forlorn hope. The evacuation of the whole of this territory began at once with the object of retiring into eastern Finland, up to the line of the river Kymene, for example. But it then appeared that it was difficult to withdraw troops from localities which had not been attacked by the enemy. Whilst our evacuation and retreat were being delayed, the enemy got imposing forces together in eastern Finland to prevent our retreating into Russia. Towards the end of April it became impossible for us to resist these attacks made by the troops of the international butchers. And when our Karelian front was broken the greatest part of our army was surrounded. Probably only four or five thousand of our revolutionary forces managed to pass into Russia.
The Government of Finland had at first asked for help from the Swedish Government. Arms and munitions were constantly coming in from Sweden, but the negotiations came to nothing as far as direct military intervention was concerned. On their side the Swedes tried during the revolution to put an embargo on Aaland, which belonged to Finland. When the defeat of tho revolutionary army was certain, and there was left only the hangman's work to do, Sweden sent her "black brigade" to Tammerfors to drink the blood of the revolutionary workers, a thing which the faithful Socialist lackeys of the Swedish Government and bourgeoisie made no attempt to prevent. Before the arrival of the black brigade a semi-official delegation of Right Swedish Socialists came to Helsingfors, and Möller, the secretary of the party, declared in their name that the victory of the Finnish Revolution would be a disaster for international democracy. The international Socialist swindlers were thus already afraid of our revolution. They feared lest it should spread the flames which threatened to set fire to the feathers of the couch which the bourgeoisie had prepared for them. For us, on the other hand, it seems terrible that our revolution with its democratic programme might have been triumphant. It would have troubled the understanding of the workers of neighbouring countries in relation to the great task of the proletarian revolution.
Once more did victory rest with capitalist violence. German imperialism gave ear to the lamentations of our bourgeois, and gave itself out as ready to swallow up the newly-acquired independence, which, at the request of the Finnish Social Democrats, had been granted to Finland by the Soviet Republic of Russia. The national sentiment of the bourgeoisie did not suffer in the least on this account, and the yoke of a foreign imperialism had no terrors for them when it seemed that their "fatherland" was on the point of becoming the fatherland of the workers. They were willing to sacrifice the entire people to the great German bandit provided that they could keep for themselves the dishonourable position of slave drivers.
They were now indeed in this position, and they took the whip in hand. And never had the whip been wielded in more bestial, brutal fashion than it was under Svinhufoud's rule in Finland every day uninterruptedly for seven months. The savage lust for revenge on the pan of the Finnish bourgeoisie was responsible for more victims amongst defenceless prisoners than the war of the classes had cost the workers during three months. By a systematic mass massacre of our comrades, the butchers' Government seemed as if it were desirous of proving by moving evidence to the workers of all lands what relentless vengeance they, the workers, bring upon themselves if they do not from the moment they arrive in power subject the bourgeoisie of their country to an iron dictatorship, instead of remaining animated, as was the revolutionary Government in Finland, by such delicate feelings of humanity towards their class enemies. Not content with mass shootings, the bourgeoisie immediately set about starving their prisoners to death. Evidently this is the favourite form of vengeance for the clerical-monarchic-capitalist joint stock society! When the workers, feeling themselves proudly to be the true proprietors and creators of all wealth, are writhing in the pangs of hunger and dying one after the other, then it is that the tine shareholder enjoys such a sight all the more, whets his appetite with it, and feels what superhuman power is his! Like all scoundrels he relishes it so much as to forget that the labour-power of the worker is necessary to him, until some private capitalist, like Baron Linder in this case, aroused from his intoxicating joy by the view of depopulated fields and factories, gives utterance to the truth that "this is shameful," and exhorts his boon companions in Svinhufoud's camp to exercise more moderation in their revenge.
The capitalists' paradise was now well nigh complete. The golden crown alone was lacking. But it was soon ordered—vulgar work from the Hohenzollern branch in Hesse, and modelled on Master William's designs. On the eve of the day when the bourgeois Diet was to elect its king, the Nemesis of History raised a warning finger, and in Bulgaria and on the French front there sounded the fateful funeral knell of German imperialism.
The mad masters of Finland did not yet understand the importance of retreating. They wished to run full tilt with their horns against the wall. Soon we shall see them cringing and fawning before English imperialism—until such time as the workers shall make short shrift of the English brigand too.
The workers' movement in Finland was broken last spring, and will not be reborn in its primitive form. The axe without an edge was cast into the furnace of history—to be re-smelted, and soon we shall see it emerge pure communist steel! The rust and scum float on the surface in Finland. The Socialist renegades under tho leadership of Tanner, a former senator, came upon the scene to barter openly their worn-out ideals for the greater joy of the bourgeois "Progressives." "Comrade." Tokoi, accompanied by the comedian Orjatsalo and others, shifted their stall to the Archangel market, there to play a tragic-comic farce to keep up the Finnish Legion, lured into the ranks of British imperialism. At the end of August we finally settled our accounts with the officials of the old organisation at the Moscow Congress, when the Communist Party of Finland was founded on the following fundamental principles:—
(1). The working class must energetically prepare for an armed revolution, and not hang back with the old system with its Parliaments and professional and co-operative societies.
(2). Only a working-class party working for the propagation of Communism and for the success of the future social revolution can be recognised or supported. All other action must be resolutely condemned, unmasked and combatted.
(3). By the revolution the working class must take all power into its hands, and set up an iron dictatorship. Therefore our efforts must lead to the suppression of the bourgeois state and not to the setting up of a democracy, neither before nor after the revolution.
(4). Through the dictatorship of the workers must be created a Communist society, by means of the expropriation of all land and capitalist property, and by the workers taking production and distribution into their own hands. Thus neither before nor by the revolution must anything he undertaken which aims merely at rendering more supportable the system of the expropriation of capital.
(5). The proletarian revolution must be propagated as energetically as possible, and the Russian People's Soviet Socialist Republic supported by every means in our power.
These are the lessons we have drawn from our struggle and from the great example of the Russian people. We now understand that the principal rule of Marxian tactics is as follows:—First of all a just appreciation of the historical situation, and then no energetic movement going as for as possible within the limits set by evolution.
When the historical conditions are absent, to make a revolution is contrary to the Marxian idea. After a revolution has failed, fugitives have often succumbed to the temptation of arranging for revolutionary plots with their eyes closed, and at moments when the course of events has brought about the disappearance of favourable conditions. These improvisers of revolution and this revolutionary stupidity have been censured in the severest way by Marx. On the other hand, when history has entered upon a revolutionary period, when conditions favourable to revolution seem to exist, when it appears to be "coming," as is the case in Europe to-day, then inactivity or the curbing of the march of revolution must be strongly condemned from a Marxian point of view. The working-class movement should take the direction of revolution, should prepare itself seriously for the event, and not seek to avoid it by other action.
It is in this spirit that we now want to take action, in Finland as in Russia, and everywhere where our young forces may be necessary to the success of the international proletarian revolution. In Russia our first duty must be to organise and exercise in the best possible way contingents for the Red Guards. Our young men are already displaying great activity in this respect.
In an open letter addressed to Comrade Lenin our party congress asked him to give the following message to the Russian friends of our Party:—
"The Finnish Communists go with joy into the battle. We would fain be there when the final assault is given to the fortresses of capitalism, and raze them level with the ground. The Finnish Communists will not lag behind when the Proletarians of all lands are conquering the world."