Great October Series: 'Mass Movements' by George E. Sokolsky

Coshocton Tribune

Coshocton, Ohio

East North Central Ohio

United States of America

May 18^th, 1961

Times Recorder

Zanesville, Ohio

United States of America

May 20^th, 1961

‘Mass Movement’

by George E. Sokolsky

I am often told not to dignify somebody or something by giving him or it public attention.  The idea behind this advice is that nothing exists unless it is noted in the press.

I learned different in October 1917.  Seven men and two women who were generally of neutral personalities came to Petrograd to take over Russia.  I knew most of them.  I knew where they were hiding.  Of an evening one might have gone to a Café Chantant, as they called a nightclub there, to listen to an actress ridicule these men and women.  Trotzky, in particular was ridiculed; Madam Kollantai, a wealthy woman turned Red, was laughed at for her beauty and good clothes.

That was 11 years ago. I recall attending the Constituent Assembly which was the hope of the Russian people.  Lenin sat on the platform for a short time.  He was a mild, calm, dull-looking man who looked perhaps like a printer or maybe a grocer.  He waved to a girl in the balcony.  Then the Bolsheviks got bored.  They left the hall.  The seats they vacated were so few that numerically they counted for nothing.  This was a small band of nobodies who fancied themselves rulers.  Then, one of them, Dybenko, came into the Tauride Palace and gently told the assembled delegates that they had better get out.  One man against a nation.  So they all got out.  They went their various ways. 

During the intervening 44 years, this small band became masters of a large part of the world.  Lenin has been deified and most of his associates have been murdered.  Trotzky was assassinated in Mexico and Angelica Ralanbanoff is in Palo Alto writing.  Perhaps she alone remains of those who attended the Zimmerwald Conference which started this particular historic ball rolling.

At that time, who thought that the Bolsheviks would ever amount to anything: Every day I went to the Smolny Institute where they made their headquarters and never did one see a more motley crew.  But soon the ‘hair was combed; the clothes were more orderly.  These were the new rulers.

 

Since then I have never ignored a mass movement, no matter how small or how absurd.  Most mass movements appear absurd, even ridiculous, when they start.  The beginnings of Hitler must have been very funny to the onlooker; this Charlie Chaplin figure, screaming and yelling and attitudinizing in beer halls.  Hitler was not so funny when he disturbed the entire world.  We laughed at him but many of our sons died on account of him.  Perhaps they died because no one would take Hitler seriously at the right time, which was when he started.

When I report small mass movements, some serious, some screwball, in the United States, I am often told not to “dignify” such absurdities by giving them publicity.  The surprising fact is they somehow make their own publicity, just as a man trying to jump off a 10^th story ledge into a crowded street will attract attention.

The little mass movements at this moment in this country are very different from those in the 1930’s.  Then folks, young and old, were angry because of the shock of the Depression.  They had not expected that the American economic system could ever collapse.  They had lived through the mad 20’s and expected its inflationary character to be permanent.  They drank spiked beer and bought liquor from bootleggers.  The spree came to an end and an entire nation lost hope.

In the 1960’s the mass movements are beginning to take on different characteristics.  Keynesian economics and the United Nations have not brought them peace and contentment.  Laugh at these young people because of their nihilistic symbolism but their protest is spreading.  So older folks are demanding the abolition of the income tax and other groups pick on other segments of our troubled lives.  To ignore these movements because their causes are badly stated and because con men get into them as they got into liberalism of the 20’s and 30’s does not understand the period in which we live.  When one organization can build a membership of 100,000, it cannot be ignored.