position to
supply.

When the food shortage was at its worst, the Government antagonized
the peasants by forced requisitions, carried out with great harshness
by the Red Army. This method has been modified, but the peasants still
part unwillingly with their food, as is natural in view of the
uselessness of paper and the enormously higher prices offered by
private buyers.

The food problem is the main cause of popular opposition to the
Bolsheviks, yet I cannot see how any popular policy could have been
adopted. The Bolsheviks are disliked by the peasants because they take
so much food; they are disliked in the towns because they take so
little. What the peasants want is what is called free trade, i.e.,
de-control of agricultural produce. If this policy were adopted, the
towns would be faced by utter starvation, not merely by hunger and
hardship. It is an entire misconception to suppose that the peasants
cherish any hostility to the Entente. The _Daily News_ of July 13th,
in an otherwise excellent leading article, speaks of "the growing
hatred of the Russian peasant, who is neither a Communist nor a
Bolshevik, for the Allies generally and this country in particular."
The typical Russian peasant has never heard of the Allies or of this
country; he does not know that there is a blockade; all he knows is
that he used to have six cows but the Government reduced him to one
for the sake of poorer peasants, and that it takes his corn (except
what is needed for his own family) at a very low price. The reasons
for these actions do not interest him, since his horizon is bounded by
his own village. To a remarkable extent, each village is an
independent unit. So long as the Government obtains the food and
soldiers that it requires, it does not interfere, and leaves untouched
the old village communism, which is extraordinarily unlike Bolshevism
and entirely dependent upon a very primitive stage of culture.

The Government represents the interests of the urban and industrial
population, and is, as it were, encamped amid a peasant nation, with
whom its relations are rather diplomatic and military than
governmental in the ordinary sense. The economic situation, as in
Central Europe, is favourable to the country and unfavourable to the
towns. If Russia were governed democratically, according to the will
of the majority, the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of
starvation. As it is, Moscow and Petrograd just manage to live