I am not a Bolshevik or a defender of the Bolsheviki.  As a Social Democrat and Internationalist of many years’ standing—­and therefore loyal to America and American ideals—­I am absolutely opposed to the principles and practices of the Bolsheviki, which, from the very first, I have regarded and denounced as an inverted form of Czarism.  It is quite clear to my mind, however, that there can be no good result from wild abuse or from misrepresentation of facts and motives.  I am convinced that the stupid campaign of calumny which has been waged against the Bolsheviki has won for them the sympathy of many intelligent Americans who love fairness and hate injustice.  In this way lying and abuse react against those who indulge in them.

In this study I have completely ignored the flood of newspaper stories of Bolshevist “outrages” and “crimes” which has poured forth during the past year.  I have ignored, too, the remarkable collection of documents edited and annotated by Mr. Sisson and published by the United States Committee on Public Information.  I do not doubt that there is much that is true in that collection of documents—­indeed, there is some corroboration of some of them—­but the means of determining what is true and what false are not yet available to the student.  So much doubt and suspicion is reasonably and properly attached to some of the documents that the value of the whole mass is greatly impaired.  To rely upon these documents to make a case against the Bolsheviki, unless and until they have been more fully investigated and authenticated than they appear to have been as yet, and corroborated, would be like relying upon the testimony of an unreliable witness to convict a man serious crime.

That the Bolsheviki have been guilty of many crimes is certain.  Ample evidence of that fact will be found in the following pages.  They have committed many crimes against men and women whose splendid service to the Russian revolutionary movement serves only to accentuate the crimes in question.  But their worst crimes have been against political and social democracy, which they have shamefully betrayed and opposed with as little scruple, and as much brutal injustice, as was ever manifested by the Romanovs.  This is a terrible charge, I know, but I believe that the most sympathetic toward the Bolsheviki among my readers will, if they are candid, admit that it is amply sustained by the evidence.

Concerning that evidence it is perhaps necessary to say that I have confined myself to the following:  official documents issued by the Bolshevist government; the writings and addresses of accredited Bolshevik leaders and officials—­in the form in which they have been published by the Bolsheviki themselves; the declarations of Russian Socialist organizations of long and honorable standing in the international Socialist movement; the statements of equally well-known and trusted Russian Socialists, and of responsible Russian Socialist journals.