IV. The Machinery of Dictatorship

The dictatorship of the extremists is embodied in governmental forms as a rough-and-ready centralization. In detail these forms vary in our different societies, but the Commonwealth in England, the gouvernement révolutionnaire in France and the Bolshevik dictatorship during the period of “war communism” in Russia all display uniformities of the kind the systematist in biology or zoology would not hesitate to catalogue as uniformities. Notably the making of final decisions in a wide range of matters is taken away from local and secondary authorities, especially if those authorities have been “democratically” elected, and is concentrated on a few persons in the national capital. Though names like Cromwell, Robespierre, and Lenin stand out as those of rulers, and although these men did exercise unquestioned power in many ways, the characteristic form of this supreme authority is that of a committee. The government of the Terror is a dictatorship in commission.

This centralized executive commission—Committee of Public Safety, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Vtsik)—rests on a supine if talkative legislative body—Rump, Convention, All-Russian Congress of Soviets—and gets its orders carried out by an extemporized bureaucracy, largely recruited from party workers, and from that club-sect-pressure-group we have seen as the body of the extremist group. The old law courts cannot work, at least in their traditional manner. They are therefore supplemented by extraordinary courts, revolutionary tribunals, or are wholly transformed by new appointments and by special jurisdictions. Finally, a special sort of revolutionary police appears. The Russian Cheka is familiar to everyone with the slightest knowledge of recent history. In France the comité de surété générale and the comités révolutionnaires fulfilled these police functions; in the English revolution they were carried out very effectively by the new Independent parish clergy, aided by various ad hoc committees in the army. But in England the whole fabric of governmental centralization was rudimentary and simple—Cromwell’s own anomalous dictatorship, the new Court set up by the Rump in March, 1650, in which legislative, administrative, and judicial powers were as thoroughly combined as ever in the Star Chamber, the curious experiment of the Major Generals in 1655-56. The fact of the centralization in England is, however, unquestionable. Even the sacred functions of that holiest guardian of English local liberties, the Justice of the Peace, were under attack all during the domination of the extremists.

These extemporized dictatorships were faced not only with the ordinary problems of government, but with civil and foreign war, and with at least a certain number of actual reform measures which they had to try to put through. Notably in the French and Russian revolutions, the new government had to administer what, to avoid dispute as to the meaning of Socialism, we may call measures of economic planning—fixed prices and wages, managed currency, food rationing, and so on. We need not here bother with the problem as to whether in France these were purely war measures or not. The point is that the government found itself obliged to try to administer them. In Russia, of course, there were conscious efforts to embody Marxist Socialism in working institutions.

But these were all very rough-and-ready forms of dictatorship. The governments of the Terror were on the whole much less efficient, less effectively absolute than many peacetime governments with nowhere near their reputation for absoluteness. Indeed, one of the reasons why they seem so tyrannical and hard to bear, even retrospectively, is precisely because they were so inefficient. They got their big tasks done—saved England, France, and Russia from dissolution or conquest, but they did it very messily and, in detail, very badly. The actual administrators were usually inexperienced, were often petty fanatics, often incompetent blow-hards who had risen to prominence in the clubs or the party. They were under tremendous pressure from above to get results. They were frequently in charge of operations very close to the heart of the revolution as an economic movement—confiscation of Royalist estates and clerical livings in England, disposition of the confiscated lands of clergy and émigrés in France, nationalization of land and factories in Russia—which gave them grand opportunities for graft. They had to work with a population many if not most of whom were distrustful or hostile. Small wonder then that these reigns of terror stand out rather for irregular acts of violence, that their full history is a matter of incredible complexity. Nothing is more illuminating in the study of these revolutions than the study of local history. Here you see the Terror as it really was, no steady and efficient rule from above, as in an army or in Sparta, but a state of suspense and fear, a dissolution of the sober little uniformities of provincial life. Much depends on the accidents of personality—a sensible squire, a moderate and able local revolutionary or two, and a given village may go through a revolution fairly serenely. In others, terror may rule as bitterly as in the capital.

This inefficiency of the governments of the crisis period comes out clearly in their attempts to regulate and control the economic life of the state. This whole matter has probably very little to do with the general problem of what is known as “economic planning.” Again we must emphasize that we are concerned only with the anatomies of certain specific revolutions. Suffice it to say that in France in 1793-94 and in Russia in 1918-21 armies were fed and supplied with munitions, and some civilians kept alive at any rate, under a pretty absolute state control of economic activity. The French maximum meant of course price- and wage-fixing, and the Russian war communism was an even more complete form of central planning. Yet in France violation of the maximum was as frequent as bootlegging used to be in this country, and the detailed history of the maximum seen as part of local history would certainly provide some amusing bits. In Russia illegal trading in the war years was again very like our bootlegging. The famous Sukharevka Market in Moscow was occasionally raided but on the whole winked at by Lenin’s government. All city dwellers who could possibly do so made trips to the country to bargain with peasants for forbidden food supplies. Here again the intimate little details of daily life are fascinating, and call for the full talents of the social historian.

There seems to be a pretty unanimous admission by historians, even when they are hostile to revolutions in general, that during the crisis period ordinary crimes of violence are rare. There may be plenty of cruelty and corruption among these new administrators and judges, the new regime may be very far from insuring peace and order, but conventional robbers, cutthroats, kidnapers, and their like are not very active. Your good stupid Tory has a simple explanation: they’ve all got government jobs. We can, however, hardly accept this as a blanket explanation. It seems likely that the ordinary criminals are for the moment pretty well cowed by the general crusade against ordinary vice and crime which is a part of the crisis period and to which we are coming shortly. Petty thieves and in several instances even prostitutes were summarily disposed of by what amounts to lynch law during the French revolution, and similar instances can be found in England and Russia. One need not accept it as a general suggestion that you can always cow criminals by lynching; here, as throughout this book, we are studying a particular set of events, seeking some rough uniformities, and making no attempt at general conclusions in any such field as criminology. It may be that in the general tension, in the extraordinary widening of public concerns until privacy is almost impossible, so private a thing as ordinary crime is difficult. The criminal is disturbed, not only by fear of being lynched, but by an indefinable general fear which he shares with ordinary citizens. For fear needs no object, and in the Terror often has none. It must be remembered that this crisis period is brief—a few months, a few years at the most. At any rate, again a simple uniformity stands out: a considerable lessening in the number of ordinary crimes is to be noted during the crisis period. Mr. Chamberlin notes that Moscow in 1918-19 was a very safe place to live in—if you could get enough to eat and keep warm.

There is usually a short period between the overthrow of the moderates and the full impact of the Terror. The machinery of the Terror, for one thing, hastily assembled though it is, cannot be assembled overnight. Though the earlier history of the revolution has had its share of violence, there has been an interlude or so of apparent peace at times during the struggle between the moderates and the extremists. The pressure of foreign enemies and their émigré allies is not immediately at its strongest. Yet as the weeks go on the forces that make for the Terror come into full operation.

We have in this chapter briefly described the rise of the extremists, and have attempted to analyze the reasons for their victory. We have taken them to the point where they have disposed of all important conflicting groups, and have consolidated their position by installing a centralized system of government. For the next few months, or for a year or so, the extremists can be as extreme as they like. No one dare challenge them. We have come to that crisis in the fever of revolution men commonly call the Reign of Terror. This very important subject must be treated in a separate chapter.