To the Editor:

More than forty years have passed since the last repetition of the canard concerning the nationalization of women in Russia with the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution. Your reviewer, Ernst Pawel, has no concept of the amazing irony of finding a forgery on this subject repeated at this late date—and not in some work published abroad, but of all things in a book by a Russian student published in Russia [“Sex Under Socialism,” Sept. ’65]. I have been unable to lay my hands on a copy of Marriage and the Family in the USSR but it seems clear that both the writer, A. G. Kharchev, and Mr. Pawel, accept the quoted document at its face value. Yet how could the book have appeared in Russia?

In recalling the polemics of that period—in particular between Karl Kautsky and Leon Trotsky—we are reminded that Kautsky, too, made use of a forgery in his attacks on the Bolshevik revolution. (Trotsky refers to it in his pamphlet, “Terrorism and Communism, a Reply to Karl Kautsky.”) This forgery was of a document allegedly issued by the Murzilovka Soviet, empowering the bearer, a certain “Comrade Gregory Sareiev,” to “requisition . . . sixty women and girls from the bourgeois and speculating class” for the use of a certain artillery division stationed in Murzilovka, Briansk County.” . . . Trotsky had a thorough investigation made which showed that no such town existed, . . . that the document had been forged by an Anglo-Bulgarian police agent named Malejeff living in Lausanne. . . . Other forgeries appeared at that period in the world press, all with the obvious purpose of discrediting the revolution.

Now we have an entirely new forgery . . . an edict supposedly passed by the Soviet of Vladimir, a town about 110 miles distant from Moscow. This town is now credited with the “Nationalization of Women,” according to your reviewer. It is utterly unthinkable, however, that such a document would not have come to the attention of the authorities in Moscow, and that it would have remained suppressed all these years. . . . It would be interesting to know where the document used by Kharchev was obtained.

It does not seem to occur to those who accept such a document as genuine, what the reaction would have been among Russian women of that day. One has only to read a pamphlet like Alexandra Kolontay’s “Communism and the Family” to see what Russian women expected from the revolution. . . . Sections of the pamphlet are headed: “The Family. A Union of Affection and Comradeship” . . . “No More Prostitution” . . . “Women No Longer to be Enslaved by their Men-folk,” etc. The outcry of women against such an unthinkable outrage as “nationalization” of their sex would surely have been heard around the world!

The early ideals of the revolution were not fulfilled. Things degenerated under Thermidor and Stalinist counter-revolution. But that does not mean that one must accept malicious, downright forgeries about what occurred in the early days.

Jack Weber
Forest Hills, New York

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Mr. Pawel writes:

I didn’t mean to get caught in the crossfire between Trotsky and Kautsky; I was only quoting from Kharchev (page 39). Canard it may well be—not the only one ever to appear in Pravda, cited as the source. That the “nationalization” of women by the Bolsheviks was a White lie has long since been established, but this does not preclude instances of localized lunacy during the turmoil of revolution and civil war. Whether or not the episode in question did actually take place I have no way of knowing, and Mr. Weber’s skepticism may be entirely justified. If, on the other hand, he is implying that it could not have taken place, he is in my opinion being pointlessly ingenuous. Excesses and atrocities were committed by both sides, regardless of broad policy lines from above. Acknowledgment of such inevitable human factors affects neither the historical significance of the Russian revolution nor anyone’s basic attitude toward it at this point in time.

Moreover, though I am unable here to cite chapter and verse, Trotsky’s writings lend support to the belief that he himself did not regard all partisans and sympathizers of the cause as immaculate paragons of Bolshevik virtue but instead found among them a fair number of mental and moral defectives, ranging from simple fools all the way to Stalin.

The irony perceived by Mr. Weber is real enough, to be sure; but it seems to me dwarfed by many others in recent Soviet history.