Bolshevism

Marian Zdziechowski

 Bolshevism

Since the beginning of the Russian Revolution I have been playing Cassandra’s thankless role, namely warning, wherever and however I can, with my word and pen, against the greatest danger the world has ever seen. And unfortunately, same as the mythical Trojan priestess, I am doing this in vain and to no avail.

“Mundus vult decipi — the world wants to be deceived,” wrote in 1924 late Leon Kozłowski,1 one of the best journalists in our country and a real expert on Russia, whose writings I published in 1930. “The prophet Isaiah,” to quote Kozłowski, “rebuked those who consciously desire illusions and falsity and urge prophets to tell them pleasant things and prophesy deceit. The prophet would rebuke us today in the same way and likewise in vain: ‘A thick veil woven of unconscious illusions and deliberate falsity, of naive ignorance and pointless lies, obscures Soviet Russia from the eyes of the Western man.’”

The Soviets are taking advantage of this and they are quickly and skillfully preparing a future offensive with unshakable faith in victory (unshakable for based on strong foundations). Taught by what happened in 1920, they will not launch it until they become certain that Europe’s psychical disarmament has become a fact accomplished. The path to this psychical disarmament is propaganda, whose all threads in all countries come together in Soviet embassies and commercial agencies, and which in the countries selected for invasion and conquest skilfully takes advantage of all factors of discontent arising from both social and political conditions, from class struggle and ethnic conflicts.

Aside that, an equally important aid to the Soviets, which greatly facilitates their task, is the widespread defeatism, especially common in larger European countries, which manifests itself clearly in the carefully cultivated diplomatic and commercial relations with the Soviets. This defeatism has already convinced itself that defeat in the struggle against Soviet Russia is inevitable and that consequently all fight is futile. But it believes that cajoling and concessions can push the dangerous tomorrow far into indefinite future. We are witnessing a truly astounding and unprecedented conversation. It is a conversation between the two opponents. “The days of your potency and might,” the first of them says with astonishingly overt insolence, “are numbered. I am readying a revolution in your house. It shall begin upon my signal and it is going to level your house with the ground and exterminate or subjugate its inhabitants.” “I refuse to believe this,” replies the other with a low bow, “I refuse to question the sincerity of our mutual friendship. My goal is to strengthen and consolidate it.”

From time to time, a Soviet diplomat, after falling out with his superiors, decides to play a trick on them and reveal some details of their destructive activity in a given country. That was how we learned that the explosion at the Warsaw citadel1 was the Soviets’ doing and that the Bolsheviks were planning to assassinate Marshal Piłsudski along with Marshal Foch, during Foch’s visit to Warsaw. “This does not change our policy,” responds our side again, “We shall continue to strive to strengthen and consolidate the bounds that bind us with you.”2

I shall never believe that such tactics can lead us anywhere. On the contrary, I can hear the triumphant laughter of Moscow, which knows that the less personal or national dignity its opponent has, the weaker his convictions, and the less he believes in the justness of his cause (in short, the more he lacks everything that constitutes moral strength), the more certain and nearer Moscow’s victory.

The opponent’s moral weakness strengthens the other party. We saw this in 1929 on the example of heroic Finland, which knew how to deal a blow to Bolshevism like it had never received anywhere before. Tough, hardened in the constant struggle against their homeland’s harsh nature and having strong will and common sense, the Finnish peasants decided to save their homeland from the specter of the Red plague hovering above it. The signal came from the remote parish of Lappo, somewhere in the north-west. First, destroyed was a communist printing house in the nearest town of Vaasa, after which the perpetrators, two hundred strong, voluntarily surrendered themselves to the authorities but have not yet been put on trial because the town folk has not allowed that. Next, in various localities in Finland, communists were apprehended and expelled from the country, but no one was killed or even harmed in the process. The entire movement was organized by a peasant living near Lappo, Victor Kossola.2 A delegation of 23 people made it to Helsinki to demand that the parliament pass the bill on “enhanced protection of the state” and the introduction of a new electoral law that would bar the communists’ access to the lower chamber of the parliament.

Following the delegation, a number of peasants flocked to the Finnish capital from all parts of Finland to support the demands. Approximately 12,000 of the peasants gathered there. The government gave in. The peasants became the masters of the situation, but they did not wish to be a political party — that was what differentiated them from the fascists. They did not lay claims to rule the state; they were a union of people of good will, who did not differ in faith, nationality or political beliefs. They achieved their goal. They knocked down and shackled the horrifying enemy. Finland sighed with relief. And what did the powerful Soviet state do? Did it threaten war or invasion? No, it just weakly protested. In short, Finland proved that Bolshevism is not some organic phenomenon, a result of natural evolution that no power can stop. Bolshevism is an ulcer, a disgusting ulcer that threatens to turn into gangrene. But this ulcer can be quite easily removed through surgery, and even a painless one.

This is a great lesson for Europe, for us. But who will act on it? Who will rise above the dumb partisan wrongheadedness? Who will free themselves of the cowardly way of thinking that revels in the mud of petty interests and low passions? Where are those hearts that throb with enthusiasm at the sound of words such as religion, spiritual culture, beauty, goodness, and homeland?

The monthly Walka z Bolszewizmem3 was published for a few years in Warsaw. Who has heard of it? I have not met anybody who has. Despite that, its editorial staff tirelessly and using carefully collected and verified facts explained to the handful of its readers, in the simplest of terms, that the Soviets had already completely destroyed our centuries-old cultural heritage in the borderlands of the former Republic of Poland, that they had blocked the expansion of our culture in that direction, and that they had entered into a military agreement with Germany against Poland, and that they supported and organized all sabotage in our country.

Has anyone in Poland had the time to reflect on that? No, people are absorbed by partisan strife, and those who look beyond it for a moment do that only to foolishly rejoice at our good relations with the Soviets and at the thought that the Soviets are a far more desirable neighbor to us than any other anti-revolutionary and cultured Russia that would come after them! Quos Deus perdere vult…4

Footnotes

1 The attack on the Warsaw Citadel was carried out on 13 October 1923, when the ammunition depot was blown up. Twenty-eight people were killed. The perpetrators were not found.

2 Vihtori Kosola (1884‒1936) — Finnish farmer and political activist; imprisoned in 1916 as recruiter of Finnish troops to Germany; released after the 1917 Russian Revolution; participant of the 1918 Finnish Civil War; leader of the pro-German and anti-communist Lapua Movement, which was founded in 1929 in the town of Lapua in reaction to a parade of young communists. Participated in a failed attempt to overthrow the Finnish government in 1932. Also led the Lapua Isänmaallinen Kansanliike (Patriotic People’s Movement), which was established after the government had delegalized the Lapua Movement.

3 Walka z Bolszewizmem [fight against Bolshevism] — monthly published during 1927‒1931 on the initiative of Henryk Glass (1896‒1984) — a scouting and anti-communist activist and post-WWII émigré.

4 Part of the maxim: those whom a god wishes to destroy he first drives mad.