om
Bolshevism, was grist to the Bolshevist mill. Accordingly, in every
quarter of the globe, in Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, as
in Europe, Bolshevik agitators whispered in the ears of the discontented
their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every nationalist aspiration, every
political grievance, every social injustice, every racial
discrimination, was fuel for Bolshevism's incitement to violence and
war.[298]

Particularly promising fields for Bolshevist activity were the Near and
Middle East. Besides being a prey to profound disturbances of every
description, those regions as traditional objectives of the old Czarist
imperialism, had long been carefully studied by Russian agents who had
evolved a technique of "pacific penetration" that might be easily
adjusted to Bolshevist ends. To stir up political, religious, and racial
passions in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, especially against
England, required no original planning by Trotzky or Lenin. Czarism had
already done these things for generations, and full information lay both
in the Petrograd archives and in the brains of surviving Czarist agents
ready to turn their hands as easily to the new work as the old.

In all the elaborate network of Bolshevist propaganda which to-day
enmeshes the East we must discriminate between Bolshevism's two
objectives: one immediate--the destruction of Western political and
economic supremacy; the other ultimate--the bolshevizing of the Oriental
masses and the consequent extirpation of the native upper and middle
classes, precisely as has been done in Russia and as is planned for the
countries of the West. In the first stage, Bolshevism is quite ready to
respect Oriental faiths and customs and to back Oriental nationalist
movements. In the second stage, religions like Islam and nationalists
like Mustapha Kemal are to be branded as "bourgeois" and relentlessly
destroyed. How Bolshevik diplomacy endeavours to work these two schemes
in double harness, we shall presently see.

Russian Bolshevism's Oriental policy was formulated soon after its
accession to power at the close of 1917. The year 1918 was a time of
busy preparation. An elaborate propaganda organization was built up from
various sources. A number of old Czarist agents and diplomats versed in
Eastern affairs were cajoled or conscripted into the service. The
Russian Mohammedan populations such as the Tartars of South Russia and
the Turkomans of Central Asia fu