Ignacy Czuma

Bolshevism

The world has got used to the fact that lying has become so rampant in public life. However, we have learned to decipher the truth which with some effort can be glimpsed behind the catch phrases; “democracy”, “will of the people”, “struggle for peace”, and so on, these attractive embellishments hiding the unpleasant and painful truth. Yet there is no other country in the world where lying is so deeply and consistently ingrained in every act as in the Soviet Union. The Soviet State is erected on the framework of these outraging falsehoods. Let us review some of the major ones.

“The workers’, peasants’ [and others’] soviets constitute the political foundation of the Soviet Union”. In fact these soviets do not have any real importance, except as a facade. “All power belongs to the working class”. In fact the so-called working class has no influence whatsoever on power. In the Bolshevik State the bureaucratic and party apparatus has always held the power in all its expressions, and now this apparatus is thoroughly corrupt and depraved. Instructions issue from the dictator above and on their way down they are executed in utmost fear and utmost uncertainty whether they are effected in accordance with the wishes of the despot – who is compared to the “sun” and to a true demigod. “The exploitation of man by man has been eradicated”. In fact, that which was called “exploitation” before the revolution was incommensurable with what is now called the “eradication of exploitation”, and we should find a different term for the former, the latter being the most cruel “exploitation” in the accepted sense of the word. This does not mean that the “exploitation” of one man by another has been replaced by exploitation of man by the state, for in the Soviet Union we have both these forms of exploitation. Rather, this means that pre-Revolutionary injustice constitutes but a pale and small beginning of the cruel injustice, the cruel exploitation now inflicted upon man in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet State is a “voluntary association of Soviet republics”. History has seen various atrocities connected with subduing peoples, but if has rarely been witness to such artful tormenting of the conquered populations as we can observe in the Soviet Union. We may add to this the principle upheld by all Soviet constitutions hitherto: “Every republic is free to withdraw from the Soviet Union”. Upon my word! Explaining the articles of the proposed constitution, Stalin expressly proclaimed that the right to withdraw from the Soviet Union should be maintained, but only with regard to those republics which border with other states, and therefore can put their right of withdrawal into physical, geographic effect. If offered the occasion, the republics will surely take advantage of this right, even if it does not exist! Every Soviet citizen knows this. But now the clause about the right of withdrawal is included only in order to confuse and stupefy the naive outside Russia, and there are still many of them in this world, because it is not easy to accept that falsehood and fraud could have assumed such proportions. All these falsehoods and frauds perpetrated by the Soviet Union have the aim of persuading not the Soviet subjects, because after twenty years they are able to see through the mendacious slogans, but the foreign public. “The sovereignty of the Soviet republics” is also a lie! Yet how nicely it sounds to the naive and to fools! Not only can there be no talk of sovereignty, but the republics would be greatly relieved if they were awarded even a modest degree of local government: compared to the current sophisticated centralism it would bring some alleviation and ease. “The government is nominated in a joint session of both chambers of the Supreme Council (article 56 of Stalin’s constitution). We know that in the Western systems which emerged in the nineteenth century the nomination of the government by the head of state is only a formality in relation to the pressure exerted by the right of the parliamentary majority. If a constitutional lie is committed by Western civilization, why should the Russian constitution not resort to it? The Soviet dictator designates the government! Yet again they wanted to pull the wool over the eyes of the West! Behold! In your system it is only a matter of convention that the parliamentary majority designates the government, while in the Soviet State this power was vested in the “parliament” by the constitution. Article 52 of Stalin’s constitution also creates “immunity” of the representative. The Soviet “representative” could invoke this immunity. “The judges are independent and subject only to the law” (article 25). The cruel and bloody irony of the Soviet judiciary! “Freedom of conscience” (article 124 of Stalin’s constitution). Yes, that is what it says! This freedom of conscience has already cost rivers of blood. “In order to secure the citizens’ freedom of conscience, the church in the USSR is separated from the state, and the schools from the church. Each citizen has the freedom of religious worship and the freedom of anti-religious propaganda”. What does this clause say to the states of Western civilization? We are only doing what you have been doing for a long time! We separate the church from the state, as you have done, we separate the schools from the church, as you are doing, we grant freedom of anti-religious propaganda, as you do. Nothing more! This invoking the father by the child is very characteristic. I am doing what you have been doing for a long time, so this must be right, since you have been doing it for so long and are happy with yourself, therefore allow me to be happy with myself and you should be satisfied with me. Of course, the Soviet Union does not, in fact, recognize the freedom of conscience.

It has been noted that these outrageous lies are committed in order to cement the “popular fronts”. There is some political truth in it, but we are concerned with a different kind of truth. “Popular fronts” are held together, despite enormous discrepancies in political culture and norms of personal conduct, by one common harmonizing factor. “Popular fronts” are joined by forces which wage either open, or a secret and covert war against God, and aim at liberating the human community from the shackles of God’s Law and morality. This bond is much stronger than differences in nationality, than differences in political outlook, than differences in material standards and intellectual development. Thanks to his hatred of God and God’s Law, a French freemason, though a rich “bourgeois” entrepreneur and rentier, is closer to the Bolshevik than his wealth, lifestyle and nationality would suggest. Of course, all the more closer to bolshevism are socialist parties, which share its hatred of God and the Church, although for opportunistic reasons they do not yet exhibit it too openly in public, as bolshevism does at home, though outside it is recently trying deceitfully to lure even Catholics. This is the only essential and true explanation of the astonishing affiliations and friendly relations of bolshevism with “bourgeois” elements in the West.

Hatred of God, of the higher moral order, is stronger than barriers of station, nationality, culture, politics, etc. We should bear this in mind and not look for explanations where no essential explanations can be found.

The imitation of Western standards by the Soviet State is evident in Stalin’s constitution, especially in the clauses about “freedom of conscience”. The son invoking the father! Where he cannot do it sincerely, he does it disingenuously, but still he does it. For when the father lives a life that the son is proposing to live, the son wants to shift the burden of responsibility on the father by adopting his program. However, there is one more possibility. In its new constitution the Soviet State expressed the wish to retreat at least to the point from which it started, imitating the Western-European state in its bad traits. This constitutes a tacit acknowledgment that this retreat, were it achievable, is worth attaining.

“Freedom of speech”, “freedom of the press”, “freedom of association”, of “rallies”, “marches”, “habeas corpus”, “secrecy of correspondence”, all these so shamelessly mock the reality of the Soviet State that we cry out in astonishment: Is it possible that such perverse falsehoods and lies could be pronounced when the Soviet man is afraid of his own shadow, when he cannot find a minute’s shelter where he would be at least slightly more at rest and free?

The horror of this state frightens its creators. Perhaps they would prefer to reverse what they have done. However, it is too late. The “making” of the constitution is followed by the mass murder of former friends. God punishes the criminals with their own hands. They shed the last vestiges of human dignity before they are executed. They make themselves into “traitors of the people”, “enemies of the people”, “spies”, “vile renegades”. The Soviet State, which grew upon the utmost degradation, degrades its creators by inflicting upon them the death of traitors and social outcasts, accusing them of being sophisticated murderers, which they unfortunately are. “In the harshest human codes of law one cannot find sufficient punishment for the Moscow clique and above all for its leader”, writes Trotsky. Let us include Trotsky among the unpunished and then these words will be quite precise. The process of God’s punishment will continue, and if we live long enough, we will see it with our own eyes. This terrible betrayal of God, this brazen and impudent offending God which was begun by the decaying part of the West, and is now completed by bolshevism, freeing the state from its subjection to God’s Law, cannot go unpunished! Unless Western civilization turns back from this wicked road of betrayal and whole-heartedly returns to God, it will step by step enter its own destruction, just as a large portion of mankind, subject to the Soviet State, is being destroyed.

The selected fragments are from text by Ignacy Czuma: “Bolszewizm” (“Bolshevism”), originally published in Pr¹d (Feb 1938), reprinted from Bolszewizm (collected articles): Lublin 1938, pp. 96-108.