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From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 42 [24], 7 June 1923, pp. 401–402.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2021). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
In July 1922, an international congress of the Workers Relief committee, held in Berlin, resolved to continue the relief action for Soviet Russia, even after having overcome the worst of the famine. A year has passed since this resolve, and in the course of a few days the delegates of the Workers’ Relief Committee will meet in Berlin for the second time. It is therefore an opportune moment to glance back over what has been accomplished by the Workers’ Relief during the past year, and to draw conclusions for the future activity of the IWR.
The International Workers’ Relief set itself three great tasks for the past year: propaganda for Soviet Russia, material and cultural aid for the Russian children, and co-operative help in the socialist reconstruction of Soviet Russia.
The centre around which all the work revolved has been, and had to be, the propaganda work for Soviet Russia. Even though the fables about Soviet Russia, as spread abroad by the bourgeois and social democratic press agencies, may not be so absolutely clumsy and silly as during the first years of the Soviet government, they have not grown less numerous. On some occasions, as for instance the S.R. trial, or the trial of the White Guard Catholic prelates, a muddy flood of mendacious and slanderous statements were spread abroad about Soviet Russia. The International Workers’ Relief regarded it as one of its first tasks to dispel the false ideas prevailing as to life in Soviet Russia, and to enlighten the widest circles of the population as to the actual economic, political, and cultural situation in that country. The international committees, which now exist in 30 countries in various parts of the world, have held hundreds of public meetings in the course of the past year, hundreds of Russian art evenings, and such like. Some countries, as for instance Holland, England, etc. have arranged special enlightenment weeks. In over one hundred European cities, and in as many overseas, exhibitions have been held of Russian posters, Russian domestic art, and Russian literature. The IWR arranged Russian stalls at various German, Dutch, and French fairs, as well as a most successful Russian art exhibition in Berlin and Amsterdam. Over a million Russian photographs and cards, thousands of albums containing Russian pictures, and 6 waggon-loads of Russian home art products have been sold by the IWR. The film has proved an excellent propaganda medium. Millions of workers and others, of every social position, have visited the Russian film evenings arranged by the IWR in Europe, America, and Japan. The illustrated newspapers issued by the IWR have also become widely popular m Europe and America. A total of more than three million copies Have been sold.
At particularly critical moments the IWR has summoned its committees to engage in specially zealous activity, and, as on the occasion of the last Anglo-Russian incident, it has successfully contributed to the mobilization of wide sections of the working class against imperialist war tendencies, and for the defence of Soviet Russia.
This propaganda work done by the IWR must be continued in the future. Hie increasing tension between Soviet Russia and the western capitalist states – a result of the growing anxiety roused in western capitalist circles by the progressive economic improvement in Soviet Russia – render it an imperative necessity that well-organized and systematic enlightenment work, dealing with Soviet Russia, the continued everywhere, especially in those countries where there are no political parties for the fulfilment of this task (North and South America, Japan, Australia, etc.). Now as before, propaganda work for Soviet Russia remains the most urgent and important task of the IWR.
The IWR is also able to record success in the sphere of children’s relief. Despite all the unfavorable economic and political conditions, the IWR, in the course of the past year, was able to raise over 300.000 dollars, for the material support of Russian orphans from the one-time famine area. The money was expended in the purchase of food, clothing, medicine, erection of children’s homes, etc. Besides this, the IWR sent 50,000 copy books, drawing books, and other school materials, and had a Russian school book published in Berlin with an edition of 5,000 copies. Thanks to a guardianship system, close and lasting relations were established between hundreds of Russian children and European and American workers, accompanied by a lively exchange of letters and school work of every description. During the coming months the material support of the Russian children will hardly be so urgent as in recent years. The IWR will thus be able to devote more time than before to the cultural needs of the Russian children (establishment of school-workshops, arrangement of communication between Russian and European children’s groups, obtaining of school requisites, printing of Russian school books, etc., etc.). A task no less important and significant than the provision of food for the Russian children. The IWR has been less successful in its actual practical sphere, that is, the sphere of productive relief. This is due to two reasons. In the first place there has been a shortage of money – the International Workers’ loan is subscribed to but slowly – and in the second place there are great general difficulties in the way of agricultural and industrial undertakings in Russia at the present time. However, the IWR has been successful in maintaining its most important enterprises, and to some extent in expanding and developing these. The agricultural farms near Casan have yielded a good surplus during the past year, and the coming crops promise to be even better. The fishery near Zaryzien has been exchanged for a larger one near Astrakhan, and the spring catch this year amounted to over 200,000 puds of fish. At the present time the fishery in Astrakhan is the most important and largest undertaking being carried on by the IWR. Over 500 workers are occupied here permanently, and during the fishing season the number amounts to some thousands. The IWR has at its disposal a great curing plant, sailing boats, steam yachts, and hundreds of fishing boats.
In the Ural over 40 of the best American tractors are now working, and serve as a foundation for a great joint stock company which is seeking to introduce American agrarian cultivation into the Ural.
The shoe factory run by the IWR in Moscow commenced running in the autumn of 1922, and has increased its production from week to week. The factory is shortly to be provided with new machines, and to be considerably enlarged.
Despite all this, the first year of work done by the IWR in this sphere has not yielded the fruits first hoped from it. Still, it would be entirely wrong to limit, or perhaps even abandon, work in this direction on that account. That which has already been accomplished up to to now, with such limited means and under the most difficult circumstances, is a striking proof that it is possible for the international proletariat to cooperate in this manner in economic reconstitution. To this must be added that the IWR has gained much useful knowledge from its experience up to now, and will work in future even more systematically and carefully. If the forces of the IWR are concentrated on undertakings to which it is fully equal, then the successes of the IWR in this sphere will, even if small, be yet of great advantage for Russian economics.
A survey of the first and most difficult year of organization, of the creation of committees in the various countries, of transition from famine relief to economic relief, of first groping attempts in the work of production – all this justifies the hope that a systematic and energetic continuation of the work of the IWR in the coming year, will be of even greater material and cultural utility to Soviet Russia than before.
Last updated on 29 April 2023