nds of the government, which has resulted in the
cessation of many branches of the nation's usual activities. The natural
evils of state Communism have been multiplied tenfold under the pretext
that the distress of our existence is due to the intervention of
foreigners.

"It is my firm opinion that if the military intervention of the Allies
is continued it will certainly develop in Russia a bitter sentiment with
respect to the western nations, a sentiment that will be utilized some
day in future conflicts. This bitter feeling is already growing.

"So far as our present economic and political situation is concerned,
the Russian revolution, being the continuation of the two great
revolutions in England and France, undertakes to progress beyond the
point where France stopped when she perceived that actual equality
consists in economic equality.

"Unfortunately, this attempt has been made in Russia under the strongly
centralized dictatorship of a party, the Maximalist Social Democrats.
The Baboeuf conspiracy, extremely centralized and jacobinistic, tried to
apply a similar policy. I am compelled frankly to admit that, in my
opinion, this attempt to construct a communist republic with a strongly
centralized state communism as its base, under the iron law of the
dictatorship of a party, is bound to end in a fiasco. We are learning in
Russia how communism should not be introduced, even by a people weary of
the ancient regime and making no active resistance to the experimental
projects of the new rulers.

"The Soviet idea--that is to say, councils of workers and peasants,
first developed during the revolutionary uprisings of 1905 and
definitely realized during the revolution of February, 1917--the idea of
these councils controlling the economic and political life of the
country, is a great conception. Especially so because it necessarily
implies that the councils should be composed of all those who take a
real part in the production of national wealth by their own personal
efforts.

"But as long as a country is governed by the dictatorship of a party,
the workers' and peasants' councils evidently lose all significance.
They are reduced to the passive role formerly performed by the states
generals and the parliaments when they were convened by the king and had
to combat an all-powerful royal council.

"A labor council ceases to be a free council when there is no liberty of
the press in the country, and we have been in thi