Let me say that I agree with you and say that intellectualism per se is wonderful as is preached and practiced in the civilized world today, but it has the formulation of the concept of immediacy, rooted in the uncertainty of changing, flexible opportunistic principles as contrasted with the intellectualism of purpose and action in Marx, Plakhanov and Lenin. The parlor room Socialists talk endlessly often in brilliant philippics without showing results while Marx is the only socio-economic-political prophet who systemized and defined parts to the whole and designated where each part played in the whole. To put it in another way, Communism is the only doctrine which embraces completely politics, social phenomena and economics all integrated into the best possible system. Communism is the only doctrine which recognizes the importance of economic and social reforms. As Marx is inclusively integral in his doctrine, others are at best fractionated and mutually exclusive of socio-politico-economic interactions. Plakhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, augured Lenin in proclaiming that it is explicit and implicit that every principle of liberty, individual rights, decency, democracy and justice should be subordinated to the Revolution, and it is along these lines that we have put maxim into action.
Here I would like to interject by saying that while Borodin continued on with his thinking-aloud soliloquy, in my mind I was not a little surprised that he had made no mention of the contribution of Gracchus Babeuf. Leon Trotsky at the Communist International of 1919 had hailed this French revolutionary leader and insurrectionist, not Plakhanov nor Lenin, as one of the great founding fathers who had prepared the ground for the Bolshevik triumph in Russia and the imminent World Revolution. Some of Trotsky's paeans of Babeuf I had retained in my mind especially because at the time when I read it cursorily I thought of Trotsky as being perhaps exaggeratingly hortatory. Yet by Mr. Borodin's not mentioning Babeuf, by hindsight I wonder whether it was that like a good Communist bureaucrat, he already had sensed that Trotsky was on the skids, as were Zinoviev, Kamanev and Bukharin, who were in time labeled "October deserters," ("October deserters" were those who wavered or supposedly wavered at the time of the Revolution in October 1917 - a serious crime of betrayal.) or was it merely inadvertence or was he, too, an expert in survival?
Necessary temporization
Mr. Borodin continued: Lenin was not only the leader who made the Revolution of the proletariat come to pass but made it work by sensing that for the Revolution to endure in the face of British, French and Japanese allied military pressure both on the Eastern Front - Siberia - and on the Western Front, the Poles led by (the French General) Maxime Weygand, as well as the many-faceted civil war, internal opposition of Semenov, Kolchak, Denniken, Yudenich and Wrangel, he needed to temporize and dissemble for the moment. But he never lost sight of the ultimate goal he wanted to achieve.
Lenin's success in a backward, mainly agricultural country contrary to Marx's prognostication shows that Communism is flexible, and not at all rigid as some portray it to be. The New Economic Policy (known as NEP, in which Lenin slowed down the confiscation and communization of the land) and Brest-Litovsk (Treaty of BrestLitovsk in which Lenin compromised with the Allies) are examples par excellence of this flexibility. The Third International (founded on March 2, 1919) in instituting total World Revolution prepared individual game plans of action for various countries by first purchasing the services of the Intellectuals through various means, not necessarily with the material but by convincing them to work for the poor and the underprivileged, by buttering up to their pride, and flattering their idealism towards a better society through Communism, or by enrolling the help of the rich who have or are induced to have a guilt complex about their wealth or who are sympathetic to our pronounced aims in propitiation of their wastrel lives. By dwelling on their guilt feelings that their forebears had exploited and squeezed the poor, a feeling especially acute in those who had never known a day's honest work, or by making them probe their own inferiority or callow superiority complexes - complexes that are enlisted to insinuate into various callings and levels of society such as religious hierarchies and organizations, academe of middle and university levels, non-profit foundations large and small, mass communications media such as newspapers, publishing houses, radio stations, magazines, galleries, theaters, cinemas, lecture bureaus, and most important, into all kinds of unions, etc., etc., etc., in a word, all visual and audio media - we awaken them to their former evil ways. All these methods must have certain definite objectives in mind, firstly to work up the necessary imagination and indignation synchronized to whatever theme or cause we espouse for the moment, and secondly to complicate facts, figures and events so that we shall decide for them right from wrong, what we want and do not want for our Party. Above all, they must be good soldiers. It is of great moment that various newspapers, magazines and radio news commentators are imbued with the correct notion that being a little left is chic but that being more left is more chic, and that for the dedicated, being an outright Communist left is to assume heroic proportions and stature. If you will but notice in our propaganda paintings on the outside walls and murals of houses in China and in Russia, the soldiers, workers and farmers are all depicted with enormous muscular arms and hands, square shoulders, big craniums and an intense purposeful squint of the eyes. This is to give them the impressive larger-than-life look which impresses the ordinary man and woman.
We also realize the human wish for singular identity. By criticizing and arrogating faults to others, the critic immediately feels that he is free of those failings and instantly assumes a better-than-thou near-perfection mental attitude. He is above any of the faults of the person under criticis. Making use of this human trait, we go a step further by allowing the critic to criticize others and then gradually let it be veered on to the critic by slowly or suddenly leading him onto the path of self-criticism - self-flagellation, if you will. It has proven to be a wonderful method of keeping our comrades on the straight and narrow and to instill humility in the cadre as well as keeping in check the obstreperous.
Guarantees of freedom
In the United States free speech and free press are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the written Constitution while in England it is guaranteed by tradition - there is always the soap box in Hyde Park and one can declaim against the government and the established order of things. To the intellectually inclined and the Intellectuals, holding forth is to let off steam to their yearnings and frustrations, but to us, it must be realized that it is very unwise to set off emotions. People's emotions must be kept in check by various means. We came to succeed by this very road and so we frown upon anything that incites our own people.
For our next objective, to achieve world dictatorship of the proletariat, we must dismantle first, the British Empire and free al1 the colonial peoples of the world. Britain as a colonial power has ruled on the whole with moderation and great wile. They have seemingly a gift to rule by their knowing political laissez faire, cunning and temperance. Britain is already remarkable in that it produced enough men with vision and talent in governance for almost five centuries, but her basic inbuilt weakness is her geographic insularity. Limited by her own small national territory composing of only the islands in the North Sea, ruling her huge empire is like a bobtail wagging a huge mastiff. Russia wants India to be free not because we merely wish her to become another Communist state, but because we think she should not be exploited by England for her manpower to work the factories and dockyards, etc., in the event of war, nor do we think England should use Indian sepoys to garrison her Empire. The continent of Africa should be set free instead of being mainly divided between England and France with little European countries such as Belgium and Portugal owning huge territories and exploiting for their own enrichment the mineral and natural wealth that do not belong to them and should not belong to them and far in excess of their capability to use this wealth wisely. Africa should become as many countries as the various tribes wish so that they will achieve their native and tribal aspirations.
End of colonialism
Moreover, all the wealth accumulated by those European exploiters not only does not elevate the livelihood of native Africans from whom it has been taken by force, nor has it basically benefited the British, French, Belgian and Portuguese peoples except the few exploiting companies and their hangers-on. Naturally some wealth does trickle down to the lower levels but by and large the "goodies" go to the haute and petite bourgeoisies.
As I have said, the first urgent task for great world progress is to dismantle the "coolie power" of India from the British Empire, to be followed by the dissolution of English colonialism in other parts of Asia; next in Africa, where she plunders mercilessly. Once Britain is divested of her Colonial Empire, France's colonial power will wither quickly enough. Africa with its many tribes, different dialects, diverse traditions, animosities and subcultures should not and shall not be a source for coupon clippers (those who live in England but get a regular income in dividends from India) to live high on the hog just because there is a propped-up artificial British Empire - artificial in the sense that she does not have the endemic wherewithal to sustain her as an empire. She should be made ready for an awakening by her Socialists. And the U.S.S.R. will contribute much towards the great days of emancipation of the oppressed peoples from British colonialism.
In retrospect, anyone can see how carefully the Third International studied and researched in its carefully laid plans for the truncation of Africa into many fractioned and fractious countries, presumably to whet the political appetite of the many tribes but in actuality to render Communist domination and takeover so much easier in the future.
Impediment of France
To return to Borodin: But for the World Revolution to reach its zenith and most meaningful conclusion, we must address the United States, the strongest bastion of capitalism and of free enterprise - in other words, the greatest obstacle to overcome in our reaching the goal of World Communism.
France is a relatively troublesome impediment to Communism. Basically the Frenchman is self- centered and is leary of team spirit and views the world with a cynical if not too jaundiced an eye. The French make-up is a man enamored of property, movable or immovable, with a tremendous desire for ownership of all types of material things, be it gold or silver, yet frugal and careful in ministering what he has. Evasion of taxes is a great sport in France and almost no stigma is attached to it. In fact, it is very much a national pastime. The concept of tax evasion is entirely divorced from the French concept of French honor. But French poetry, literature and history are built around French glory and grandeur - of the Maid of Orleans, Rouget del'Isle and Napoleon.
Through her thrifty and saving habits France has developed a very large class of highly property conscious bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie from its working classes, be it white or blue-collared. Thus it would be more difficult to turn France communistic than it is to turn England, for the middle and lower class Englishmen do not seem to hold the same keen personal acquisitive instincts of the French.
U.S. is a tough nut
With the United States, the task of fostering the Leninist praxis of dictatorship of the proletariat is even more difficult - "a truly tough nut to crack" - in that the petit bourgeoisie and the upper middle class are proportionately even of greater wealth and number and are on an ever-increasing higher standard of living. Until we are capable of exscinding ultimately this baneful capitalistic system of the bourgeoisie, its philosophy of the toxic free enterprise system and the illusion that everyone can clamber up the ladder of success as far as his luck and brain power would permit him, the United States will present immeasurable problems. Fortunately she is a country without ethnic homogeneity. People have gone to the United States mostly because of the fabled streets of gold. Due to her wealth and pretensions to innocence, she is called the land of opportunities - yes, opportunities for the carpetbaggers and the unscrupulous. For example, Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn gave the impression that he and his cavalry were massacred by Sitting Bull's Indians while carrying out pacification of the marauding Sioux war parties. Actually the massacre was the direct result of the whites who encroached on the Indian Reservation of the Black Hills, a reservation guaranteed by a treaty concluded and sanctified by the U.S. Government with the Indians. And the reason why the white man had broken the Treaty was gold. Gold was found in "them thar hills" in the Indian Reservation that needed pacification. American history books lied to justify the treatment dealt to the Indians that it was to teach them a lesson.
There are examples after examples of the general meanness of the white man, the intolerance of the bourgeoisie be they of the haute bourgeois or the petit bourgeois mentalities. They share a common sin - avarice, the touchstone of all their points of departure in the approach to any and every motivation of their activity. Were it not for the premeditated imperialistic expansionism of the United States against Mexico much of the State of California would still belong to Mexico. And whenever Texas is mentioned Sam Houston, San Juan Hill, General Santa Anna come to mind. Should one talk to Mexicans and to American historians of true metier, they would agree that California, at least Southern California which includes Los Angeles, is in Mexico.
The United States because of her greater wealth and the greater number who are in the ranks of the middle class, the wellspring and bulwark of bourgeoisie thinking and life style, must be expunged and made amenable to Communism. Only then will Communism be safe from the pernicious influence of bourgeois mentality in America.
As I (Borodin) have previously stated, it is because of the shortcomings of human nature which are bred, encouraged and perpetuated by capitalism into human misery that Marxism comes to radicalize this great evil. Marx has mapped out and advocated a system of government and livelihood for the common people whereby all facilities, all wealth should be concentrated in the hands of the state and apportioned out by the state so that all would share and share alike. In order to achieve this equality the government should be the disciplinarian and administrator of such an egalitarian policy, carrying out the program without fear or favor. Stringent dispositions must be made through the anxiety of otherwise inevitable consequence.
Rewards for the managers
Be it as it may, we Communists are also realistic enough to know that the better and good things of life are yet at a premium. Therefore we have to reserve a judicious portion to the deserving - our managerial cadre. The cadre and the leaders of our revolutionary movement unhappily must have the better things given to them for their toil for the proletariat, not because they are of another class such as the n'er-do-well aristocrats who were the parasites and incubuses - the bloodsuckers of society. What rhyme or reason is there for the aristocracies of wealth in the capitalistic system to be permitted to enjoy the fat of the land while in truth it should be our Communist cadre that should enjoy the good things of life so that they can be preserved from generation to generation to work for the well-being of Communist society. It is we who are for the common good of the common people.
Again unfortunately, the important task and sacred responsibility should and can only rest in the hands of a relatively small group of a proven few - the leadership and the cadre. It can never rest in the hands of the populace as the hypocritical concept of democracy wishes to impart. Moreover, we do expose, through and through, the fallacy of the concept of the rule of the majority. For since when has there been majority rule anywhere in the world except for the postage stamp sized Greek city-states which we know were experiments in failures of democracy? True, there are many examples of minority rule cloaked in the guise of majority rule, but they are shams. To achieve the aim of turning a country into a happy Communist state, the following steps must be taken:
We Communists must act as the indispensable leavener (1) to foment a sensitivity and a consciousness of discontent within a country; (2) to permit our-so-called "agents provocateur" to commit calculated indiscretions to establish confidence for the advancement of Communism; (3) to occasion the camouflage of our real purpose when ever needed and whenever possible; (4) to design anti-Communist behavior and action even to the point of expendability and regard our comrades as sacrifices for the cause in order to augment our power structure from within; (5) to propagate and create sympathetic and humane ideas in our adversary countries with the aim of spending the country into greater yet greater national deficits over a period of years or decades - if at all possible, funneled through power groups and social institutions; (6) to expose wherever possible the Achilles' heel, malfeasance and embezzlements in a country, wherever and whenever we find them; (7) to exploit to the fullest cultural and social dichotomies wherever they exist within a geographic area, such as differences of patois, customs, racial prejudices in a given area; (8) to create or take to the fullest advantage political scandals as well as exposing them so as to undermine public confidence in known personages or regimes; (9) to bare social scandals in order to show up politicians and the idle rich who are no better than parasites living off of the tailing proletariat; (10) to heighten, foment and influence sentient thinking at political, social or policy making levels; (11) to engender public opinion through greater activities among the various minorities, first by raising the anxiety of insecurity among the minorities through rumors and fabrication and exploiting innate conflicts by pamphleteering, demonstrations, writings, theaters and radio broadcasting, etc. In short, to formulate and bring into the forefront a sense of acute awareness of uncertainty, insecurity, indeterminacy peculiar to the various minorities and situations; (12) to justify unjustifiable obvious mistakes or simply repeated nonadmission of mistakes.
Mistakes undermine confidence
As the saying goes, the great lie - such as religion, becomes the great truth. This again is not because we Communists prevaricate easily or are perennial liars but because it is for a higher ethic and a higher cause. And for this high ethic and cause we cannot afford to admit mistakes, for admitting mistakes undermines confidence. Why should we admit to the kind of mistakes made by the Liberal Intellectuals who have oftener than not presented our high aims badly, wrongly or unwisely to the capitalist democratic world? In a democracy whatever its shade, when opposition to and advocate of a political policy is proven wrong, the men responsible are not held to account unless in the case of flagrant dereliction. With us we do not tolerate opposition to our policy any more than we tolerate a wrong policy. A wrong policy connotes definite lack of understanding of correct analyses of a problem and therefore a wrong approach. Hence it signifies that not enough care, attention and time are given to studying the problem. This is irresponsibility. And we do not hold brief for nor do we permit irresponsibility. With this policy we have been able to eradicate greatly irresponsible policymaking and behavior amongst our comrades. We have also made our comrades more dedicated, more conscientious, and more responsible.
Liberal inconsistency
Liberals, Liberal Intellectuals and Intellectuals are all ready instruments to be used for the advancement of our beliefs and cause. From what we read and hear, modern day Liberals of all shades and nuances preempt our theories in parroting us. But they distort or diminish them in substance. This is because Liberals as intellectuals manipulatively play with doctrines and political theories. Thus their beliefs cannot be consistent. Their premise cannot but be contradictory to their conclusion. Therefore they oftentimes do not stand up to sustained analyses. In our revolutionary experience which spanned three decades (Borodin dates it from May of 1887 when Lenin's brother Sasha-Alexander Ulyanov was hanged) before the Revolution of October 1971, except for the few anarchists who had no comprehensive plan of action to follow through other than resorting to occasional bomb throwing and assassinations as a means of registering protest, we were doers while the Liberals could only talk away. They have been most disappointing, as talk to them is action, and talk is result. In times of crises we find Liberals to be unreliable fellow travelers with every tendency to desert when events go badly. Our jails were filled with "October deserters" of many hues. They function only under ideal, controlled conditions such as in the democracies. Leadership demands unfortunately the stomach to withstand reverses and dangers. Intellectual doctrinal apostasy will never do.
Rulers of democracy
True, Communist leadership requires a total imperviousness to assaults and opprobrious invectives by others. We do not quail before bitter criticisms and verbal attacks by Rightists, Liberals and Intellectuals of any color. On the contrary, from attacks we gather strength and grow stronger for we realize that ultimately, if not sooner, the whole world will come to adulate us and pay us homage. Democracy on the other hand just does not have the staunchness of purpose and robustness of spirit since democracy is malleable to criticisms and swaged by pressure. To be otherwise is to betray the ideals of democracy.
Marx and Lenin in their wisdom in breaking down autocracy knew democracy in theory and in actuality - pronunciamentoes and actual practice are miles apart. Democracy in practice is a figment because (1) politicians in their pretense are forever vainly calling upon the people; (2) open politics as in open diplomacy are not workable in that they reveal to friend and foe alike. Oftentimes, indiscreet, premature or inopportune disclosure can be harmful; (3) the naive assumption that a group, let alone a whole nation, can keep a secret is a bad joke; (4) in a democracy 50.1% can constitute a majority which means that 49.9% can be ruled by the majority against their will and they are as ineffectual politically as they are in political limbo; (5) the phraseology, consultation with the people, is another farce of democracy; (6) only the capitalists, the organized unions, guilds and groups, the vociferous, be it only a minute minority or the majority of one as the writers of editorials in prestigious newspapers, presume unto themselves to be "public opinion." It is those few who wield great influence and power by paying glib lip-service to democracy - who are the true rulers of democracy.
Contempt of Lenin
Liberal intellectuals can be intellectually as freely obstreperous and cantankerous as mountain goats when the political climate is like that in England and the United States. Others take to liberalism as if they were going through a gold plating bath - a thin veneer with base metal inside, yet they fancy themselves to be made of pure gold - intractable and obdurate Liberal Intellectuals.
Lenin, indebted to his years of bitter experience with Liberals while in and out of Russia, entertained his boundless loathing, hatred and contempt for them; he vented and expostulated his scorn in his utterances and letters. Many among our comrades who had experience with Liberals look upon them with pathological curiosity. I personally find them oftentimes stimulatingly amusing and interesting as intellectual jousting companions but not to be taken too seriously and to be borne in mind that they are fair weather friends.
Therefore to our Communist comrades, to achieve our world goal we must not only insist on exposing the pretense of the capitalist world, we must also expose the vacillating liberal flunkies who actually are exploiting Communism, growing fat and insolent in the process by appropriating our thoughts and accomplishments and acting on our behalf as if they are really bleeding hearts for the poor oppressed masses in the capitalist societies. As to the riposte that we Communists are also hypocrites because of our well-founded, sensible tenets let it be understood that we have always openly and guilelessly said that our means justify our end. Can it be expressed in plainer language? And if the Liberals still persist in being supportive of us, can it be said fairly by our enemies that it was our Cyrene songs that enticed them? Can we be made culpable when Liberals do harm unto liberalism? We Communists know that for liberalism to stay alive, let alone flourish, it needs the Anglo-Saxon type of conditioned hot-housed jurisprudence. What did Thoreau's Civil Disobedience achieve in bettering the United States capitalistic system? Capitalism in the United States was as mercenary and greedy as ever after Walden Pond appeared. This is the sort of pampering and coddling we Communists do not expect and can ill afford. Fortunately for our party, Communism thrives and grows best in the soil of capitalistic chaos - "chaos and old night" as the saying goes, and not in a controlled ideal climate.
Fascism delays Communism
To us there is no more fertile ground for revolutionary growth than the reversal of the odious "law and order" cant so endearing to the imperialistic and capitalistic world of the West. Freedom in democracy both implicit and explicit gives it the right to success as well as the right to failure. Democracy is failing while Communism does not choose of fail. For those who sing the praise of democracy let me recall for you the recent experience of Portugal. In 1910 Portugal wanted to be politically chic by essaying democracy. Between that year and this year, an elapse of approximately fifteen years, the economy is in ruins and politically there have been forty-odd (Actually between 1910 and 1926 there were 45 cabinets until Salazaar came to power in that year. He was in power until 1968.) cabinet changes!
Much as we decry Fascism, Mussolini - the Socialist foxy turncoat - knew that in order to govern half efficiently he had to turn his back from the parlor games that Liberals play. We understand his shrewd reasons for rejecting Socialistic Liberalism. One need but go to Southern Italy to see for oneself the poverty and misery of people living in caves to know that they are ripe for Communism yet because of Mussolini and Fascism, Communism will be delayed in Italy.
I want to emphasize we are not bigots. We are not ghouls. We only choose what is best for the people and for our party. We can be very open-minded in being eclectic. But we Communists cannot permit vacillation and ambivalence in our Revolution. Ours is an ism which goes forward and must pervade the whole world just as capitalism will decline and eventually fall as had been presaged for the future by its own intense rivalry and propensity for self-devourment. It does not mean, however, that we are blind to the fact that some people are not gullible, emotionally immature, politically ignorant and cannot be easily manipulated. It is our duty to be prepared to lead them to a happier life.
Apart from people's discipline, as a matter of fact, in our own Revolution, for a time we were able to put to good use many of the so-called an-idea-a-minute Intellectuals to reach the people. They were of every shade, from the Turgenev nihilists on the extreme left to the Constitutional Royalists or to the erstwhile dyed-in-the-wool Royalists of the extreme right.
On our part we Communists were never neutral, although in our strivings to reach our goal we may zig or zag, but we always advance. We have strict norms of right or wrong. We promulgate and propagate our ideas through logic so that our political ism alone will inherit the earth. We recruit youth who are inexperienced but bubbling with enthusiasm, attractive in their very spirit of restlessness and rich with the imagination for daring and adventure. They are precious to us because they can always be like selected sturdy seeds that would yield manifold at harvest time. They know instinctively that we know best and that we can do all the thinking for them and by casting their lot with us they are following the path of glory. Theirs will be the greatest reward in the knowledge that they have served our common Communist cause well.
Fear of forgiving
Much has been made of the fact that Communists are atheists. One of the many reasons given is because of the repressive measures of the police everywhere in the world when we wish to stoke up resistance against oppressive governments. It is true that anti-repressiveness is something to which the common man can naturally and fully relate. The real motive of our atheism resides on a loftier plane. It is because of a little word, Forgiveness. The Christian doctrine of Forgiveness, so little practiced, yet so often preached and seemingly so innocuous, is the single greatest enemy to the dissemination of Communism. We too are capable of love for those who follow our tenets and discipline. But forgiveness is not love, it embraces love, hope, faith, charity and all other human foibles of penitence; therefore, with forgive ness forever troubling the being of a person it could not make a truly new and unblemished Communist man. Forgiveness throughout the ages has proven to be the readymade excuse for sloth, sloppy willfulness and compromise which incidentally also exist in the Confucian teachings of Chung-she (忠恕). It counters and negates all that we wish to instill in the people. The debilitating germ must be quickly and terminally purged decimated - so that the moulding of the paradigmatic man can go forward apace without let or hindrance. Lenin has taught us that we build with one purpose in mind and it is our hope that within half a century it will have converted much of the world, if not the whole world, steadily if not stealthily, and if possible without much proportionate bloodletting. By that time the hemophilia of capitalism and imperialism, if not entirely eradicated, will have hemorrhaged enough for us to tackle the last bastion of this craven system the archenemy of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the United States of America. In view of this great task ahead of us, the U.S.S.R. has dedicated itself to helping China so that our two peoples will work together for the coming completion of the Revolution of the world. Sic!
Two Principles rejected
With regard to Dr. Sun's Three Principles (San Min Chu I) we readily agree with one: People's Livelihood. As to the other two, Nationalism and the Power of the People, they are not in congruence with Marxist-Leninist doctrine. For Nationalism evokes ethnicity and emotions of native soil and country while we are for international proletarianism - the breaking down of narrow compartmentalized national states and the alliance of the world of the proletariat. Dr. Sun's nationalism advocates a sense of love of country which is antithetical to internationalism of the proletariat.
To advocate nationalism is to intentionally advocate apartness. On the principle that power rests with the people, I (Borodin) again go back to what I initially called attention to with regard to the Greek city-states. They were the dreams of impractical idealists. It is the proletariat dictatorship which was an effective vehicle that made the gift of Communism to the Russian people. But perhaps (still Borodin speaking) for a period of time Dr. Sun's Three Principles will be good and purposeful in unifying China, as the Chinese people, led by the literati, feel the frustration and humiliation of extraterritoriality and foreign domination ever since they were made captive by the Western type of capitalistic nationalism. The Chinese people having suffered under corrupt and inept central, regional and local governments and having gone through tremendous devastating and traumatic rebellions and the indignities of Western imperialism, are chafing at the bit for a change as was Russia under the backward Czarist regime for a different set of corrupt reasons. The Chinese Revolution was something new, something exciting, something vibrant and not really on the whole understood by the people. The Chinese people went along with revolution without really under standing revolution, just as the Russian peasants did not understand our Revolution. It took one small Communist party, our party, to make what Russia is today and what Russia of the future will be.
Revulsed and repelled
The above are the salients of the evocative game plan of the Third International for China first and for the rest of the world to follow as was expatiated upon in the conversations with Borodin in 1926.
It is superfluous to say that my nature and instinct, in effect my whole being, and my convictions were revulsed and repelled by what Mr. Borodin propounded. His calmly postulated propositions were mostly preposterous and his justifications were outrageous. If democracy with its shortcomings was deceiving as a system of governing, what was presented by Communism had a never-never land scenario and ethos to it. If anything, Communism as delineated by our subject was a mirror of abject human intellectual despair and the harbinger of total despondency. Over the many years, it has crossed my mind innumerable times how could a sane, mature, well-read man, wise in the ways of the world, like Borodin and his ilk, accept the premise that men are by nature vile and lowly and are content to remain servile with not a desire to exercise their will but would be content to remain as serfs to the new Communist aristocracy.
Schooled in academic broadmindedness, a spirit of quest made me a tolerably tolerant listener to the ventilating of much venal humbuggery of double-tongued doctrines. Communism as stridently enunciated by Lenin, specially after 1917 in Soldatskaya Pravda and in Pravda, really takes the cake in literally dripping vitriolic venom. At times it was hard to keep a straight face and not smile at the willfulness of blatant oratorical moonshine. At other times I felt the gradual elevation of my pulse as it quickened to the beat because of its out-and-out reprehension. Borodin's denigration of the United States was no surprise. To me he was merely reciting facts that the founding fathers as human beings were imperfect. Many of the facts I had long before already known. What was important to me was that in spite of their infirmities, they were achievers, be they imperfect achievers in elevating human dignity and the concept of freedom. They at least did something about them.
Our conversations began on a basis of China's future prospects in the world after the passing of colonialism and of Russia's real motivations in her professions of altruism in helping weaker countries to liberate themselves from imperialism. As our conversation progressed with time, I could perceive that our subject had a purpose that was interesting in its format but eclectically informative in revealing its content.
Spiel for snake oil
To be sure, 1 was disturbed in what he had told me. For had it been practiced in any other provenance it would be denounced as cold-blooded, arrant, inhuman cruelty on a massive scale. What went through my mind was, could what he was recounting be quietly accepted as the necessary terrible ordeal that a whole people must go through in order to enjoy the ultimate Marxian Utopia of the "withering away of the state"? The revelations troubled me because of Russian Communism's unconscionably devastating approach to human problems it professes to solve by ensconcing them in deliberately flagrant lies and perverted reasoning based on tendentious premises. It reminded me so much of the so-called "spiel" of the proverbial medicine men of the American West when they sold snake oil or some such elixir that promised to be the panacea - the all-time cure.
In retrospect, any dispassionate intellectual interest evinced in hearing out the Comintern's processional plan was very worthwhile in that firstly, I had gained the greater actual insight from a more than "usually reliable source" into the sub-rosa purpose of "proletarian internationalism." It meant that substantively we should ask ourselves, do we want Soviet imperialism in exchange for English and French and other forms of Western imperialism from which we were trying to extricate ourselves? To hear directly from a responsible and high Comintern official in China their apologetics and their reasons to "save us as well as the rest of humanity" (sic!), I need not say that this imperialism is more embracive, more insidious and more quidit than all the imperialisms that went before in our history.
Fifty years after
Fifty years have passed. Euro-Communists, headed by Italy's Sr. Enrico Berlinguer, France's M. Georges Marchais and Spain's still exiled Communist leader, Sr. Santiago Carillo, are saying in substance, "The only sensible way to progress toward Socialism and Communism is by a gradual multiparty and progressive system." To some people this meant that Russia was at long last told off. In answer, Mr. Brezhnev in the more recently convened East Berlin Communist summit has ostensibly made concessions to this erstwhile heresy of the Euro-Communists. Yet should we pause and refresh our memory, it must be remembered that since World War II the Russian Communist Empire has geographically grown larger, ever larger, in the world. It also means she has more manpower to do her bidding. In power both overt and covert and in influence also both overt and covert, Russia globally today is greater than she ever was under generations of expansionist Czars; yet Communist political and territorial ambitions remain insatiable.
Evans and Novak in the New York Post of Thursday, July 29 of 1976 report: The Soviet Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, known as the father of the modem Soviet Navy, wrote in the Sea Power of the State that Soviet naval power is to be used effectively around the "...World Ocean in the interest of building Communism." Mr. Brezhnev puts it rather well when in toasting French President Giscard d'Estaing he said, "Relaxation of international tension in no way cancels out the struggle of ideas." Translated into the more mundane language of his predecessor Nikita Khrushchev, "Do not believe we have forgotten Marx, Engels and Lenin. They will not be forgotten until shrimps learn to whistle."