HOW COMMUNISM SHOULD

NOT BE INTRODUCED

A LETTER TO THE WORKERS OF WESTERN EUROPE

DMITROV. MOSCOW GUBERNIYA, APRIL 28. 1919

I have been asked whether I do not have a message for the workers of the
western world. Assuredly, there is a lot to say and learn about the current
events in Russia. As the message might be unduly long, let me just set out a
few main points.
First of all, the workers of the civilized world and their friends in other
classes ought to lobby their governments to

completely the

of

armed intervention in Russia's affairs, whether this be mounted overtly or in

an underhand, military way or in the form of subsidies to different nations.
At this moment, Russia is undergoing a revolution as profound and important as those made by England in 1639-1648 and France in 1789-1794. Each
nation ought to refuse the shameful role to which England, Prussia, Austria
were reduced

the

Furthermore, it should be remembered that the Russian revolution which

is aiming to

a society in which the entire output ofthe combined efforts

oflabor, technical expertise and scientific knowledge would go wholly to the

itself, is not a

accident ofparty

over almost a century of

It

socialist

ever

since the days ofRobert Owen, Saint-Simon

the

attempt to usher in the new society by means ofa one-party dictatorship may
seem condemned to failure, it has to be acknowledged that the revolution has
already introduced into our everyday life fresh ideas regarding the rights of
its true status

the duties of every

and

these

will
Not just workers but all progressive elements in the civilized nations
ought to cut off the support that they have hitherto given adversaries of the
revolution. Not that there is nothing objectionable in the methods of the
Bolshevik government. Far from it! But any armed intervention by a foreign
power necessarily leads to a
of
tendencies of
in government and stymies the efforts of those Russians ready to help Russia,
regardless of their government, in the restoration ofits life.
The evils inherent in party dictatorship have thus been magnified by the
war-time circumstances amid which that party exists. The state of war has
provided the pretext for reinforcing the dictatorial methods of the party as
well as its tendency to centralise every detail oflife within government hands,
the upshot of which is to halt the enormous ramifications of the nation's
The native evils ofState

have been multiplied

ten-fold, on the pretext that all of the miseries of our lives are ascribable to
by foreigners.

PETER KROPOTKIN 1

I ought to point out, too, that if the Allies' military intervention persists,
it will assuredly spawn in Russia a feeling of resentment towards the western
nations, a sentiment of which use will some day be made in future conflicts.
Even now that resentment is growing.
In short, it is high

that the nations of western Europe entered into

direct relations with the Russian nation. And in this regard, you, the working
class and most advanced elements in every nation, ought to have your say.
One more word on the overall situation. The restoration of relations
between the European nations, America and Russia in no way signifies the
nation's supremacy

the nationalities

up the empire of

the tsars. Imperial Russia is dead and will not return from the grave. The
future of its different provinces lies in the direction of a great federation. The
natural territories of the various parts of this federation are quite distinct,
as any of us conversant with Russia's history, ethnography and economic
life are

All efforts to unite under a central command

ent parts ofthe

Baltic provinces,

the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Siberia, etc.are assuredly doomed to

fail. So it would be useful, were the western nations to declare that they
recognise the right to independence of each and every part of the former
Russian
My view is that this trend will continue. I see coming soon a time when
each part of this federation will itself be a federation of rural communes and
free cities. And I believe, further, that certain parts of western Europe will
soon follow the example of this movement.
As far as our present economic and political position is concerned, the
Russian revolution, being the continuation of the two great revolutions in
England and France, is trying to venture beyond the point where France
stopped, when she managed to establish what was called de facto equality,
which is to say, economic equality.
Regrettably, in Russia, this attempt has been mounted under the strongly
centralized dictatorship of one party, the maximalist Social Democrats. An
experiment along the same lines was conducted by Babeuf's extremely centralisticJacobin conspiracy. I have to tell you candidly that, in my view, this
attempt to erect a communist republic upon a base of strongly centralized
State communism, under the iron law of a one-party dictatorship is heading
for fiasco. We in Russia are beginning to learn how communism should not
be introduced, even by a populace weary of the old regime and offering no
active resistance to the experiment being conducted by the new governors.
The idea ofSoviets, that is, ofworkers' and peasants' councils, first advocated
prior to the attempted revolution of 1905 and promptly realized by the February 1917 revolution, once tsarism had been overthrown, the idea of such
councils controlling the country's political and economic life, is a
Especially as it necessarily leads to the idea that these councils ought to be
made up ofall who, through their

personal effort, play a real part in the

production of the nation's wealth.

But as long as a country is governed by a one-party dictatorship, the workers' and peasants' councils obviously lose all significance. They are reduced
to the passive role formerly played by the estates general and

PETER KROPOTKIN 2

when these were summoned by the king and pitted against all-powerful
royal council.
A labor council ceases to be a free and substantial council when there is
no press freedom in the land, and we have been in those circumstances for
the past

years, supposedly because a state of war obtains.

workers' and peasants'

is

lose all significance when elections are not

preceded by free electioneering, and when elections are conducted under the
pressure from a party dictatorship. Ofcourse, the usual excuse is that dictatorial legislation is inevitable as a means ofcombatting the old regime. But such
law obviously becomes a retrograde step once the revolution buckles

to

the construction of a new society upon a new economic foundation. It turns

into a sentence ofdeath upon the new construction.
The ways of overthrowing

government are well known to

history, ancient and modern. But when new forms of living have to be created, especially new forms of production

with no

to imitate, when
has to be built on the hoof, when a government
that undertakes to issue every inhabitant with lamp glass and matches shows
that it is utterly incapable of managing with its officials, no matter how
many ofthe latter there may be, that

becomes irksome. It

up a bureaucracy so formidable that the French

requires the involvement of forty civil servants before a tree felled by storms
upon a national highway can be sold offbecomes child's play by comparison.
This is what we are learning in Russia today. And this is

you western

workers can and should avoid by all means if you have the success of social
reconstruction at heart. Send your delegates over here to see how a social
revolution operates in real life.
The tremendous constructive endeavor which a social revolution requires
cannot be performed by a central government, even if it is guided by something more substantial than a few socialist and anarchist hand-books. It takes
brains and

cooperation of a

of local

elements, who, alone, can successfully address the range of economic issues
as they affect the locality. Rejecting such

and falling

upon

the genius of the party's dictators is tantamount to destroying the independent

agent such as the trade unions (known in Russia as professional unions) and local
cooperative organizations, by turning them into bureaucratic adjuncts of the
party, as is currently the case. But that is the way not to make the revolution,
the way to render its making impossible. And the reason why I feel it my duty
to place you on your guard against borrowing such directives.
The imperialist conquerors ofevery nationality may want the populations
of the one-time Russian empire to remain for as long as possible in miserable
economic conditions and thus condemned to furnishing western and central
Europe with raw

the western industrialists

the

have been able to reap from their labors.

that Russians

pocket all of

the working classes of Europe and America, as well as

these countries, assuredly understand that violence

of
trap Russia

in such subjection. At the same time, the sympathies which our revolution
evoked everywhere in

and in America show

you were

to

salute Russia as a new member of the internaional confraternity of nations.

And you will assuredly soon notice that it is in the interests of all the workers

PETER KROPOTKIN 3

of the world that Russia should be freed as soon as possible from the conditions presently arresting her development.
A few words more. The last war ushered in new living conditions for the
civilized world. Socialism will surely make considerable progress and new

PETER KROPOTKIN 4

forms of more independent living will certainly be generated, with their

foundations in local freedom and constructive initiative: these will be created
either peacefully or by revolutionary means ifthe intelligent segments ofthe
civilized nations do not collaborate in inevitable reconstruction.
But the success ofthat reconstruction will largely be

upon the

chances for close cooperation between different nations. In order to bring

this about, the working classes ofevery nation must be closely united and the
notion of a great international ofall the world's workers must be revived, not
in the

of a unity under the baton ofa single party, as was the case with

the Second International, and is again the case

the Third

Such unions of course have every reason to exist, but outside of them, and
uniting them all, there ought to be a union of all the world's trade unions,
federated so as to deliver worldwide production from its present subjection to
capital.

PETER KROPOTKIN 5