rest of Europe, in the rest of the world, is wrecked and
abolished in Russia.

The revolution didn't do it. The Tsar's Government had
rotted it. The war broke down the worn-out machinery of it;
the revolution has merely scrapped it finally.

The effect is hunger, cold, misery, anguish, disease--death
to millions. But worse than these--I mean this--was the
confusion of mind among the well and the strong. We do not
realize, any of us--even those of us who have
imagination--how fixed our minds and habits are by the ways
of living that we know. So with the Russians. They
understood how to work and live under their old system; it
was not a pretty one; it was dark, crooked, and dangerous,
but they had groped around in it all their lives from
childhood up. They could find their way in it. And now they
can remember how it was, and they sigh for the old ways. The
rich emigres knew whom to see to bribe for a verdict, a
safe-conduct, or a concession; and the poor, in their
hunger, think now how it would be to go down to the market
and haggle, and bargain, from one booth to another, making
their daily purchases, reckoning up their defeats and
victories over the traders. And they did get food then. And
now--it is all gone. They have destroyed all this, and
having destroyed it they were lost, strangers in their own
land.

This tragedy of transition was anticipated by the leaders of
the revolution, and the present needs were prepared for in
the plans laid for reconstruction.

Lenin has imagination. He is an idealist, but he is a
scholar, too, and a very grim realist. Lenin was a
statistician by profession. He had long been trying to
foresee the future of society under socialism, and he had
marked down definitely the resources, the machinery, and the
institutions existing under the old order, which could be
used in the new. There was the old Russian communal land
system, passing, but standing in spots with its peasants
accustomed to it. That was to be revived; it is his solution
of the problem of the great estates. They are not to be
broken up, but worked by the peasants in common. Then there
was the great Russian Cooperative (trading) Society, with
its 11,000,000 families before the war; now with 17,000,000
members. He