Page:Emma Goldman - The Truth about the Bolsheviki (1918).pdf/13

 That is why the Boylsheviki took possession of the banks and are urging the peasants to confiscate the land. They have no desire to turn the banks and land, the raw material and the products of Labor's toil over to the state. They want to place all the natural resources and the wealth of the country in the hands of the people for common holding and common use, because the Russian people are by instinct and tradition communists, and have neither need nor desire for the competitive system.

The Boylsheviki are translating into reality the very things many people have been dreaming about, hoping for, planning and discussing in private and public. They are building a new social order which is to come out of the chaos and conflicts now confronting them.

Why is it that many Russian revolutionists are opposed to the Boylsheviki? Some of the finest types of men and women in Russia, such as our beloved Babushka Breshkovskaia, Peter Kropotkin, and others, are antagonistic to the Boylsheviki. It is because these good people have been lured by the glamor of political liberalism as represented by Republican France, Constitutional England and Democratic America. Alas, they have yet to realize that the line of demarcation between liberalism and autocracy is purely imaginary, the sole difference being that the people under autocracy know that they are enslaved, and love liberty to such an extent that they would fight and die for it, while the people in a democracy imagine that they are free and are content in their bondage.

The Russian revolutionists who are opposed to the Boylsheviki will soon come to appreciate that the Boylsheviki represent the most fundamental, far-reaching and all-embracing principles of human freedom and of economic well-being.

It might be asked, what would the Boylsheviki do if they were opposed by all the other governments? It is not at all unlikely that if the Boylsheviki attain to complete economic and social power in Russia, the combined governments might make common cause with German Imperialism in order to crush the Boylsheviki. It can be safely predicted that the imperialistic elements will join the bourgeoisie to defeat the Russian Revolution.

The Boylsheviki are alive to these dangers and are using the most effective measures to combat them. Their influence on the proletariat of Germany and Austria has been immeasurable. Returning German