How much Bolshevism is there in America? — Context and Discussion

Two Reporters, Two Journeys

The book is not a single narrative but a compilation of two newspaper series, each with its own author, itinerary, and focus. Dosch-Fleurot, identified as the only American correspondent in Petrograd during the 1917 revolution, traveled across the United States to gauge the impact of European upheaval. Boon, a New York businessman recently returned from Russia, describes his passage through Siberian towns under Red control. The editor’s note explicitly separates their contributions, and the text itself maintains this division: Dosch-Fleurot’s articles are numbered and titled, while Boon’s are introduced with a separate heading. This dual structure allows the reader to compare how each journalist frames similar questions—about labor, governance, and revolutionary sentiment—from opposing geographic vantage points.

Movement Through Checkpoints and Train Stations

Boon’s narrative is built around physical movement: he arrives at a Japanese outpost, presents papers, is delayed, then proceeds to a Red position. The journey is punctuated by encounters with officials and material details—wagons attached to a post train, a propaganda train in the station, a commissar’s modest room with “a deal table, a few chairs and a truckle bed.” These details ground the political analysis in concrete settings. The recurring image of the train, both as transport and as a vehicle for Bolshevik propaganda (the train “in charge of Dvornik”), underscores the theme of movement as a means of control and observation. Dosch-Fleurot’s American tour, by contrast, is described in the editor’s note as a journey “about the country,” but the excerpts do not reveal its specific itinerary; the contrast between the two reporters’ modes of travel—one through war-torn Siberia, the other across a prosperous United States—is implicit in the book’s structure.

The Buffer State as a Fiction of Governance

Boon’s encounter with Commissar Krassnochokoff, who claims the Far Eastern Republic is a separate, moderate state, is immediately undercut by visual evidence: “the entire population was sporting hastily improvised red stars and rosettes.” Boon notes his skepticism, and later confirms that “the buffer state exists only in name. It is part of Soviet Russia, administered by Moscow on the communist system.” This observation—that political labels can mask reality—echoes the book’s central question about how much Bolshevism actually exists in America. The detail of Krassnochokoff’s later conflict with Moscow, and the threat from “the butcher Dzherjinsky,” adds a layer of personal risk to the political analysis. Boon’s desire to see “uncamouflaged Bolsheviks” and to test whether “the wild beasts I had known in 1917 and 1918 had become tame” reveals his own evolving perspective, shaped by the atrocities committed by both sides.

Recurring Contrasts Between Wealth and Deprivation

Dosch-Fleurot’s series is introduced as a contrast between America’s “war-born wealth” and the “war-impoverished countries of Europe.” The editor’s note frames this as an insurance against Bolshevism, but the excerpts do not develop the argument further. Boon’s account, however, repeatedly emphasizes scarcity: the population is “half starved,” industry has died, and firing squads execute those who criticize commissar rule. The juxtaposition of American abundance with Siberian deprivation is structural, not explicit—the book places Dosch-Fleurot’s domestic survey alongside Boon’s foreign report, inviting the reader to weigh the conditions that foster or prevent revolutionary sentiment. The recurring image of improvised red stars, hastily made, suggests a performative aspect to Bolshevik allegiance, while the commissar’s assurance that “there would be no confiscation or requisitioning” is contradicted by the surrounding evidence of economic collapse.

Readers should approach this volume as two separate reports bound together for comparison, not as a unified argument. The excerpts provide only fragments of each series; the full text likely contains more detailed analysis of American labor movements and Russian daily life. Pay attention to the dates—January 1921—and the context of the Red Scare in the United States. The book’s value lies in its contemporaneous, on-the-ground perspective, filtered through the biases and limitations of its authors.

I think often of that 1921 series, two reporters circling the same restless century from opposite shores. Reading it, I was reminded of another voice, one that saw the gilded age as a veil over deeper troubles. There is a quiet kinship between such books, a shared knowing that power’s shine rarely tells the whole story, as The Reign of Gilt — Key Ideas to Explore gently confirms.