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To the Voinovo Agricultural Council:

The Provincial Department instructs you, on the basis of the Constitution of the Soviet (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic). Section 43, Sub-section 6, letter a, to proceed without fail with elections for an Agricultural Executive Committee.

The following must be elected to the committee: As president, Nikita Riabov; as member, Ivan Soloviev; and as secretary, Alexander Krainov. These people, as may be gathered from the posts to which they are named, must be elected without fail. The non-fulfilment of this Order will result in those responsible being severely punished. Acknowledge the carrying out of these instructions to Provincial Headquarters by express.

Head of Provincial Section. [Signed] J. Nazarov.

Surely there never was a greater travesty of representative government than this—not even under czarism! This is worse than anything that obtained in the old “rotten boroughs” of England before the great Reform Act. Yet our “Liberals” and “Radicals” hail this vicious reactionary despotism with gladness.

If it be thought that the judgment of the present writer is too harsh, he is quite content to rest upon the judgment pronounced by such a sympathizer as Mr. Isaac Don Levine has shown himself to be. In the New York Globe, January 5, 1920, Mr. Levine said: “To-day Soviet Russia is a dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but for the proletariat. It certainly is not democracy.” And again: “The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia is really a dictatorship of the Bolshevist or Communist Party. This is the great change wrought in Soviet Russia since 1918. The Soviets ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies. Soviet elections, which were frequent in 1918, are very rare now. In Russia, where things are moving so fast and opinions are changing so rapidly, the majority of the present Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses.”

If the government is really a dictatorship of the Communist Party—which does not include in its membership 1 per cent. of the people of Russia—if the Soviets have ceased functioning as parliamentary bodies, if the majority of the Soviets are obsolete and do not represent the present view of the masses, the condemnation expressed in this chapter is completely justified.