H G Wells in Russia; M. Gardiner

The Soviet Empire has now crumbled, Communist parties are dissolving, the old tricolor Russian flag has replaced the ham mer and sickle, statues of Lenin have been toppled, and Marxist ideology is dead ex cept in the atrophied brains of a few elderly die-hards around the globe. As history takes this unexpected turn, it is good to remember that from the beginning-not just among conservatives but among democratic social ists-there were many who saw clearly that Marxism was a weird mystique set forth by an egotistical crank. In 1920, three years after the Bolsheviks seized power, two of England's most influ ential writers, Bertrand Russell and H. G. Wells, made trips to Moscow to converse with Lenin. Each recorded his negative impressions in a book. Russell's Practice Martin Gardner is a science writer, author of some fifty books about science, math, philoso phy, and literature. His best known book is The Annotated Alice. He was the editor of the math department of Scientific American for 25 years.

and Theory of Bolshevism is the more per ceptive of the two books, but it is stillin print and widely known. Here I shall focus on the book by Wells, Russia in the Shadows, because it has been almost totally forgotten. It deserves to be read today for three rea sons: its vivid account of Russian chaos following the first world war, its portrait of Lenin, and its insights into Wells' early opinions of Marx and the future of Russia. Wells made three visits to Russia. The first, accompanied by Maurice Baring, was in 1914,just before the outbreak of war, to see his old friend Maxim Gorky. Gorky's secretary and mistress was then the Count ess Benckendorff, formerly Moura Zak revskaya. She had been planted on Gorky as a government spy. But Moura had told Gorky this. Admiring her straightforward ness, Gorky did not seem to mind. In 1920, when Wells returned to Russia, Gorky (a personal friend of Lenin) arranged for Moura to be Wells' guide and inter preter. Although there is no hint of it in Wells' book, he fellpassionately in love with her. The full story of this beautiful and witty woman has yet to be told, although Anthony West, Wells' illegitimate son by Rebecca West, devotes many pages to her in his biography of Wells. "My father could not reason himself out of his intoxication with her, and however little future his passion might seem to have, he went home with it burning in him."

Wells' account of his 1920 trip first ran as a series of articles in London's Sunday Express, instantly boosting that paper's cir282 culation by 80,000. Hodden and Stoughton brought the series out as a book in 1920,the same year that Russell's book appeared. Wells went first to S1. Petersburg (later renamed Petrograd, then Leningrad, now back to St. Petersburg) to renew his friend ship with Gorky. Since 1914 Moura had been imprisoned several times by the Bol sheviks, and was now forbidden to leave Petersburg to return to her children in nearby Estonia. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, was in a state of almost total ruin. The old Czarist order had collapsed because of what Wells called its "inherent rottenness." The Bolsheviks had snatched power from the democratic but indecisive Mensheviks. There had been much killing to establish order and there was a crude rationing sys tem for food and goods. Everywhere was evidence of a "vast irreparable break down." Shops were closed, clothes were shabby, roads were terrible, houses had been torn down for firewood. A black mar ket flourished, though occasionally a profi teer was caught and shot. Men were un shaven only because they had no razor blades. Hospitals had broken down. Medi cines were unavailable. Everybody looked sick and sad. People stood for hours in long queues to get bread. Wherever Wells looked, and he was allowed to roam freely, he saw nothing but decay and desolation.

Over and over again Wellsinsists that this decay was not the product of Bolshevism but the cause. "It was not Communism which built up these great, impossible cities, but capitalism. It was not Communism that plunged this huge, creaking, bankrupt em pire into six years of exhausting war. It was European imperialism. Nor is it Commu nism that has pestered this suffering and perhaps dying Russia with a series of sub sidized raids, invasions and insurrections, and inflicted upon it an atrocious blockade. The vindictive French creditor, the journal istic British oaf are far more responsible for these deathbed miseries than any Commu nist." The Communist Party, Wells stressed, was at the moment the only possible govH. G. WELLS IN RUSSIA 283 ernment for Russia. Small in number, the Bolsheviks had been able to take over dur ing the confusion that followed six years of war because they were the only party with a clear vision. Its leaders, Wells believed, were fanatical but honest. He acknowledged their brutalities, but suspected that a Red Terror, inspired by hate, was the only way order could have been restored.

Russell, whose visit to Russia preceded Wells', found Gorky dying along with Rus sian culture. Wells chides Russell for this. Russell had simply caught Gorky with a bad cold, then his imagination led him into a "dark and purple passage." Although Gorky was a great admirer of Lenin, Wells found him bitter toward the Communist Party, and strong in his respect for Western science and literature. Now thanks to Bol shevik efforts to prevent counterrevolution ary forces, Russian art, literature, and sci ence had almost disappeared. Eminent scientists were without funds or access to Westernjournals. "The crude Marxist phi losophy," Wells wrote, "which divides all men into bourgeoisie and proletariat, which sees all social life as a stupidly simple 'class war,' had no knowledge of the con ditions necessary for the collective mental life." Amazingly, only in plays and operas did pockets of the old culture persist. "When one faced the stage, it was as if nothing had changed." Another hopeful sign was the government subsidy for a vast encyclope dia, though how would it be distributed?

Wells granted that the Bolsheviks were basically honest, but they were also naive and simpleminded. Astonished to find them selves in power, they were without plans or ideas. "Marx the Prophet and his.Sacred Book" provided no leads. Although Marx had given a good factual account of the evils of unfettered capitalism, he offered no blue prints for what would replace it. All he did was intimate vaguely about the new para dise that would eventually result after a temporary socialist phase had withered away. Communism, wrote Wells, was like a magician who had lost his rabbit and could produce nothing from his hat.

284 THE FREEMAN • MAY 1995 An Active Hostility Toward Marx In a chapter titled "The Quintessence of Bolshevism" Wells slashed away at Marxist ideology in two memorable paragraphs: It will be best if I write about Marx without any hypocritical deference. I have always regarded him as a Bore of the extremest sort. His vast unfinished work, Das Kap itaI, a cadence of wearisome volumes about such phantom unrealities as the bourgeoisie and proletariat, a book for ever maundering away into tedious secondary discussions, impresses me as a monument of pretentious pedantry. But before I went to Russia on this last occa sion I had no active hostility to Marx. I avoided his works and when I encoun tered Marxists I disposed of them by asking them to tell me exactly what people constituted the proletariat. None of them knew. No Marxist knows. In Gorky's flat I listened with attention while Bokaiev discussed with Shalyapin the fine ques tion of whether in Russia there was a proletariat at all, distinguishable from the peasants. As Bokaiev has been head of the Extraordinary Commission of the Dic tatorship of the Proletariat in Petersburg, it was interesting to note the fine difficul ties of the argument. The "proletarian" in the Marxist jargon is like the "producer"

in thejargon of some political economists, who is supposed to be a creature abso lutely distinct and different from the "consumer. " So the proletarian is a figure put into flat opposition to something called capital. I find in large type outside the current number of the Plebs, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common." Apply this to a works foreman who is being taken in a train by an engine-driver to see how the house he is having built for him by a building society is getting on. To which of these immiscible does he belong, em ployer or employed? The stuff is sheer nonsense. In Russia I must confess my passive objection to Marx has changed to a very active hostility. Wherever we went we encountered busts, portraits, and statues of Marx. About two-thirds of the face of Marx is beard, a vast solemn wooly un eventful beard that must have made all normal exercise impossible. It is not the sort of beard that happens to a man, it is a beard cultivated, cherished, and thrust patriarchally upon the world. It is exactly like Das Kapital in its inane abundance, and the human part of the face looks over it owlishly as if it looked to see how the growth impressed mankind. I found the omnipresent images of that beard more and more irritating. A gnawing desire grew upon me to see Karl Marx shaved.

Some day, if I am spared, I will take up shears and a razor against Das Kapital; I will write The Shaving of Karl Marx. Marxism, Wells wrote, was a cult that appealed to energetic young men and women who were aware of capitalism's excesses and who longed for a new order. They would have become Marxists if Marx had never lived. Wells recalls his own youth. Denied an education, he had worked long hours in a detestable shop which he would have gladly burned down if he had not assumed it was overinsured. Marxism spread like fire around the world not be cause Marx was wise but because capitalism was "stupid, selfish, wasteful, and anarchis tic." Marx saw a "great conspiracy against human happiness concocted by a mysteri ous body of wicked men called capitalists." Wells saw these tycoons as "no more than a scrambling disorder of mean-spirited and shortsighted men." Marxism, with its con spiracy mania and revolutionary ardor offered an illusory hope for a quick fix.

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks had no ex perience in running a giant nation. Wells found their incompetence amazing, their ignorance profound. Repeatedly he was asked, "When is the social revolution going to happen in England?" Every intelligent Bolshevik, wrote Wells, is bothered by the fact that the revolution happened first in Russia. According to Marx, it was to occur in advanced capitalist countries-first in England, then France, and Germany, and finally in America. In stead, it happened in Russia where there was no specialized working class at all. Russian factories were worked by peasants who came and went from villages. There was no proletariat, in Marx's sense, to unite with the workers of the world. Slowlydawn ing on the minds of Bolsheviks was the "chill suspicion" that what happened in Russia was not a Marxist revolution at all, but only the capture of a derelict ship. Wells tried to convince Russian leaders that in England there were at least 200 different classes, and the only class-con scious proletarians he knew were a small band of Scotch workers under the leader ship of a gentleman named MacManus.

Wellswas amused by the repeated scoldings that came by wireless to British labor lead ers because they refused to behave like Marx said they would. They ought to be Red. They were just yellow. In Wells' eyes "never was there so ama teurish a government. " Their preposterous ideology was doing irreparable damage to science and art. The teaching of chemistry was actually forbidden unless it was Marxist chemistry. Art and literature were sup pressed if not politically correct. Wells visited a school selected by the government. When children were asked what Western writers they liked best, Wells' name dominated! "Such comparatively triv ial figures as Milton, Dickens, Shakespeare ran about intermittently between the feet of that literary colossus." Wells was furious. The next day he visited a school of his own choice and found it far superior. There were no Wells books in its library. None of the children had ever heard of him.

At a meeting of Petersburg leaders he heard himself repeatedly praised. They urged him to write fairly about Russia; not to emulate Russell who had accepted their hospitality then gone home to write harsh criticism. To avoid mistranslations, Wells wrote down his speech and had it carefully translated before he gave it. He was not a H. G. WELLS IN RUSSIA 285 Marxist, he told his listeners. He was a "collectivist. " He wished Russia well, but assured them that in England any movement toward socialism would be peaceful, the product of education, not class hatred. The speech was reported fairly in Pravda. The meeting .ended with everyone singing the Internationale. Wellsrealized that in no way was the meeting democratic. It simply rub berstamped what it had been told. It was like "a big bagful of miscellaneous wheels" compared to an "old-fashioned and inaccu rate but still going clock." Wells Meets Lenin The sixth chapter of Wells' book, titled "The Dreamer in the Kremlin," describes Wells' chat with Lenin. He found Moscow in less disrepair than Petersburg. Its churches were open. Ten thousand crosses glittered in the sunlight, and kissing icons was still a flourishing industry. A sign out side one church said, "Religion is the opiate of the people." It had little effect, Wells observed, because most of the people in the street could not read.

After a long irritating wait, Wells was ushered through a labyrinth of passageways and guards to Lenin's sanctum. Wells was surprised at how small Lenin was. He had expected to find a doctrinaire Marxist, but found him nothing of the sort. He had a pleasant, quick-changing, brownish face, lively smile, and a habit of screwing up one side of his face because of defective vision in one eye. Speaking excellent English, Lenin asked the inevitable question. Why is there no social revolution in England? Wells in turn wanted to know what Lenin planned to do with the mammoth country he found on his hands. There were huge plans. The cities would become smaller, all Russia would be electrified, agriculture would be seized by the state and modernized. "Come back," he said, "and see what we have done in ten years." Wells was favorably im pressed. In spite of Lenin's cumbersome Marxist baggage, Wells believed that "this amazing little man" might actually succeed in revitalizing Russia.

286 THE FREEMAN • MAY 1995 H. G. Wells lecturing on Soviet Russia. Wells stressed his faith in evolutionary socialism. Lenin disagreed. Capitalism was incurable. It had to be totally overturned. Their argument ended indecisively, but they parted warmly. Wells and his Russian speaking biologist son G. P. ("Gip") who had accompanied him on the trip returned to Petersburg, then on to Revel to catch a ship home. Wells left convinced that Western nations should do all they could to provide aid, especially food to prevent a looming famine during the coming winter. If Russia were to collapse again, Bolshevism might be replaced by a new ideology and a dictator ship worse than Lenin's. Such a collapse, Wells feared, could spread westward, and "possibly all modern civilization may tum ble in." Leon Trotsky, in his biography of Lenin, wrote that several years after Wells' visit Lenin had said of Wells, "Ugh! What a narrow petty bourgeois he is! He is a phi listine! Ugh! What a philistine!" Anthony West, in his biography of his father says that he thinks Trotsky fabricated Lenin's remark out of whole cloth.

Although Russia in the Shadows sold well in England, it was bitterly denounced by Communists for its attacks on Marx, and by conservatives for its tolerance of the Rus sian experiment and for its admiration of Lenin. Winston Churchill, who correctly perceived Communism as a growingcancer, blasted Wells' book in The Daily Express (December 5, 1920), followed by Wells' reply. Churchill and Wells had long been at odds. Wells would later caricature him as Rupert Catskill in his science fantasy Men Like Gods (1923).Arch-conservative Henry Arthur Jones was so enraged that he bar raged Wells with abusive letters which he later published as a book My Dear Wells (1921). Wells' Defective Vision Who today can fault Wells for seeing clearly through the shams of Marx, and for his fears that Bolshevik fanaticism would stifleRussian science and culture? But there are three glaring defects in his book.

Wells was curiously unimpressed by the absence of democracy in the new Russia. Not once did he ask Lenin if there were plans for free elections and secret ballots. Wells had never been keen on allowing uneducated people to vote, preferring in stead a state governed by an appointed elite of scientists and technicians. Perhaps he bought the Bolshevik notion that a democ racy of sorts operated in Russia as decisions made by low-level party cells filtered up ward to the Kremlin. There is no excuse for Wells not realizing that without a vigorous democracy, and a press free to criticize, there could be no guarantee that a tyrant would not gain total control, as indeed one did. Nor did Wells show an awareness that a free-market economy, combined with pri vate property, is a far more efficient way to produce food and goods than a command economy that stiflesinitiatives and regulates with a clumsy, easily corrupted bureau cracy. As a democratic (of sorts) socialist, Wells shared Marx's indictment of unre strained capitalism, but he did not under stand, as even democratic socialists do to day, that a modern economy must be founded on free markets.

Finally, as an atheist himself, Wells was not appalled by Lenin's efforts to eliminate Christianity from Russian culture and estab lish atheism as a state "religion." Wells should have realized that efforts to stamp out religious faith, especially in a culture as deeply pious as Russia, would only alienate the masses and increase their hostility to ward the government. As we now see, the Russian people are hungry as ever for the right to worship God, and flocking back by the millions to their newly opened churches. Some Russian leaders are even daring to end their speeches with "God bless you"! This is not the place to cover the history of Wells' growing realization that nothing good would ever come from the Russian experiment, and that universal suffrage was essential for the health of any nation. In 1934, during his three-hour conversation with Stalin, Wells tried to persuade Stalin that Roosevelt's New Deal was the begin ning in America of a movement toward socialism, and that the world's two great superpowers should seize the chance to work together for a world socialist state.

Stalin countered, as had Lenin, with the H. G. WELLS IN RUSSIA 287 usual Marxist bromides. American capital ists were simply making a few trivial con cessions to stay in power. They would never give up without a workers' revolt that would totally overthrow them. Wells' last full-length novel, Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940), was about the dis enchantment of two young Stalinists, a change of heart triggered by Stalin's inva sion of Finland. Hard as it is to believe, Wells still clung to his view that Stalin was a sincere, essentially decent fellow who was caught in the coils of a worthless ideology. By 1940 many books had accurately de scribed Stalin's terror-the millions of in nocents he had shot or sent to die in the Gulag-but Wells either had not read them or he knew about them and did not believe them. His last great outburst of anger, Crux Ansata (1943) was directed not against the crimes of Stalin, but against what he con sidered the crimes of Roman Catholicism.

When Wells died in 1946, soon after the first atom bomb fell on Japan, he had given up hope that humanity could save itself from wars that would plunge it back to barbarism. Many of Wells' prophecies were eerily accurate. As early as 1914, in his science fiction novel The World Set Free, he de scribed a second world war beginning in the forties in which "atom bombs" were dropped from planes. The one great event he totally failed to see was the abrupt collapse in the U.S.S.R. of its entire Marxist-Engels Leninist-Stalinist heritage. As I write, Russia is back in shadows strangely similarto those Wellsencountered in 1920. Its economy is in chaos, famine is again a threat, and help from the West is desperately needed. As in 1920 its leaders have only the vaguest plans for restructuring a shattered empire along democratic and free-market lines. It is one of the magnificent and ironic surprises of history that this great culture, after 74 years of brutal Communist dictatorship, is now eager to construct a political and economic system of the very sort that Marx regarded as something so malevolent that it had to be destroyed ut terly by workers of the world who had nothing to lose but their chains. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY "Zero Inflation": A Flawed Ideal by George A. Selgin L ately a consensus has formed among policymakers that a stable price level or "zero inflation" should be the goal of mon etary policy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has recently expressed sympathy for this view, long favored by some other members of the Fed Board of Governors. A few years ago the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Pol icy introduced a Joint Resolution that would have required the Fed to achieve and main tain zero inflation within five years. Today, Congress is considering amending the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act so as to make achievement of zero inflation the sole object of monetary policy.