There is a passage in John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World–his account of the Bolshevik revolution–that has always had a special place in my heart. I reproduce it here, because I feel like it:
We sallied out into the town. Just at the door of the station stood two soldiers with rifles and bayonets fixed. They were surrounded by about a hundred business men, Government officials and students, who attacked them with passionate argument and epithet. The soldiers were uncomfortable and hurt, like children unjustly scolded.
A tall young man with a supercilious expression, dressed in the uniform of a student, was leading the attack.
“You realise, I presume,” he said insolently, “that by taking up arms against your brothers you are making yourselves the tools of murderers and traitors?”
“Now brother,” answered the soldier earnestly, “you don’t understand. There are two classes, don’t you see, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We—”
“Oh, I know that silly talk!” broke in the student rudely. “A bunch of ignorant peasants like you hear somebody bawling a few catch-words. You don’t understand what they mean. You just echo them like a lot of parrots.” The crowd laughed. “I’m a Marxian student. And I tell you that this isn’t Socialism you are fighting for. It’s just plain pro-German anarchy!”
“Oh, yes, I know,” answered the soldier, with sweat dripping from his brow. “You are an educated man, that is easy to see, and I am only a simple man. But it seems to me—”
“I suppose,” interrupted the other contemptuously, “that you believe Lenin is a real friend of the proletariat?”
“Yes, I do,” answered the soldier, suffering.
“Well, my friend, do you know that Lenin was sent through Germany in a closed car? Do you know that Lenin took money from the Germans?”
“Well, I don’t know much about that,” answered the soldier stubbornly, “but it seems to me that what he says is what I want to hear, and all the simple men like me. Now there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—”
“You are a fool! Why, my friend, I spent two years in Schlüsselburg for revolutionary activity, when you were still shooting down revolutionists and singing ‘God Save the Tsar!’ My name is Vasili Georgevitch Panyin. Didn’t you ever hear of me?”
“I’m sorry to say I never did,” answered the soldier with humility. “But then, I am not an educated man. You are probably a great hero.”
“I am,” said the student with conviction. “And I am opposed to the Bolsheviki, who are destroying our Russia, our free Revolution. Now how do you account for that?”
The soldier scratched his head. “I can’t account for it at all,” he said, grimacing with the pain of his intellectual processes. “To me it seems perfectly simple—but then, I’m not well educated. It seems like there are only two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—”
“There you go again with your silly formula!” cried the student.
“—only two classes,” went on the soldier, doggedly. “And whoever isn’t on one side is on the other…”
We wandered on up the street….
I’m a Mormon. I did my two years proselytizing, like many. I went to Pennsylvania, and spent some time among Amish and various sorts of Mennonites.
Once they knew who we were, they would invariably say, “We have our books, and we have our bible, and we’re happy.”
Many of them would feed us, or provide us with drinks on a hot day, but there was no further conversation possible on the subject of religion.
—–
Early on in my two years, my partner and a pastor of a small church went toe to toe on scripture. I couldn’t tell who won, because it felt like they were using the same words to mean utterly different things, and certainly the passages they wielded meant different things to them.
——
I try to be open to new information, and especially to other people’s ways of thinking. I think that the biggest problem I have in my search for Truth, is telling the Vasili Georgevitch Panyin’s from the soldiers with bayonets fixed. They don’t always dress differently, or carry firearms.
AAanyway, added that to the list of things I hope to read someday. It grows faster, that list, than I can prune it.
“Anyway, added that to the list of things I hope to read someday. It grows faster, that list, than I can prune it.”
My greatest fear of death is that I will leave so many books left unread.
If yer ain’t fer it, yer agin it.
It’s always us versus them, ain’t it?