Russia as an American Problem
by New York and London: Harper and Brothers. 1920. 8vo, xii+444 pp. $2.25.
THOUGH we now have a score or so of books describing the present situation in Russia, few writers have seriously faced the question, ’What is to be done about it?’ Mr. Spargo has devoted his latest volume chiefly to that question, starting from the belief that ‘ Russia is the decisive factor in the history of the world at the present time,’ and aiming to convince us that the problem of her reconstruction concerns us preëminently, that it is ‘a challenge to America.’
Having set forth in two previous volumes and in no mincing terms what an independent American Socialist thinks of the Bolsheviki, the author, on this occasion, touches only slightly upon the existing situation. He deplores the collapse of Kolchak, Denikin, and their associates, for which he holds the timid and bungling policy of the Allies chiefly to blame; he suspects that Bolshevism, although it has now denied its own first principles and become only ‘ militarism run mad,’ may maintain itself for some time still; he protests against any recognition of such a faction as the government of Russia, but would favor the resumption of trade relations through the coöperative societies, although admitting that the latter would be ‘the agents of, and subject to control by, the Soviet Government.’ But his attention is mainly centred upon less immediate and more fundamental problems.
Whatever the outcome of the internal conflict, whatever the nature of the future government of Russia, the economic reconstruction of that country is an urgent necessity for the rest of the world, not only from the humanitarian standpoint, but for very practical reasons. ‘It is not an exaggeration,’ the author declares, ‘to say that what is called the Russian problem enters into the grocery bill of every American household.’
Moreover, for the reconstitution of her economic system, Russia will need to buy an immense mass of things abroad. The United States is uniquely fitted to supply these needs; and even if there were no moral or sentimental ties involved, our material interests alone should prompt us to seize this unparalleled opportunity.
But Mr. Spargo’s main argument — to which the bulk of the volume is devoted — is that, unless we step into the breach which our exhausted allies are unable to fill, Germany and Japan will do so, to Russia’s undoing and to ours. Germany’s past efforts and great success in gaining a ‘strangle-hold’ upon the economic life of Russia, her present sinister relations with the Bolsheviki, and her presumed plans for the future, are set forth with a great wealth of statistics and some perhaps questionable conjectures. At still greater length the author describes the ‘Pan-Asian’ ambitions of ‘the Prussia of the East’ which he regards as an even graver danger than Pan-Germanism ever was. ‘It requires no great imagination to see that, with Germany in control of the economic life of Russia in Europe, and possibly even of Western Siberia, and Japan in control of the rest of Siberia, the result would be a menace to every democratically governed nation in the world. Across the prostrate form of Russia, the two great militarist powers could join hands and control the resources and the fate of something like 700 million people.’
To obviate this danger, Mr. Spargo urges that as soon as such assistance becomes at all possible, the United States should do everything in its power to furnish Russia with both the capital and the technical experts necessary for reorganizing its railways, its agricultural and industrial production, its currency system, its public-health service, its foreign commerce — in short, its whole economic life. ‘Russia is neither a pauper nor a bankrupt nation. . . . Every economic law warrants the extension of credit to such a people’; and in granting it we should only be serving our own vital interests as well as those of Russia.
The reader may, perhaps, lay down the book not altogether convinced that Japan’s conduct and aims have been quite so iniquitous as they are here made out to be; or that she is financially, industrially, or commercially able to play the rôle indicated; or that even Germany, in the state to which she is now reduced, will be capable of all the mischief prophesied. Nevertheless, the danger of a Berlin-Tokio entente, or even of a German-Russo-Japanese combination, is one that has haunted many other minds besides Mr. Spargo’s, and is certainly not to be lightly eliminated from the horoscope of the new Russia. Through insisting so strongly upon our immense interest in, and responsibility for, the economic reconstruction of the country, Mr. Spargo has done a very real service both to Russia and to his own fellow countrymen.
R. H. L.