cherished their dream of a new scial order, They had lived for it, suffered for it in dungeon and exile, thousands had died for it. They had dreamed of a country that should be free of police and spies, free from the caricature of religion in a State Church that had become almost an adjunct of the police department and of the spy system, free from the exploiter and profiteer, from all autocracy, aristocracy and plutocracy. They had dreamed of world brotherhood, of communal well-being in mutual service without the motive of private profit and selfish hoarding.

We stood in the Revolutionary Museum in the Czar's Winter Palace in Petrograd, where one sees the portrayal of the long century of struggle for freedom, from the revolution of 1825 to the present. A blind bureaucracy had opposed all reformers, suppressed the conquered nationalities, dissolved or treated with contempt the Duma and legislative assemblies, outlawed trade unions and had put down peasant revolts and industrial strikes with bloodshed. The spy system and secret police both in state and church developed into "a vast secret society which permeated and poisoned the whole of Russian social life." This was the stern school of autocracy and oppression in which the present rules of Russia studied. And this must be remembered in judging the present government. Most of the evils of the present system were found in the old Czarist régime which our government recognized.

In the World War Russia suffered more than any other great nation. Of some 15,000,000 called to the colors 1,700,000 fell among the battle dead, and a total of over 3,000,000 died of wounds, disease, neglect and starvation. Betrayed by their corrupt leaders, left often without munitions and supplies to fight with sticks and stones, the morale of the troops at the front was finally broken, and the hungry mobs in Petrograd rose in bread riots, only to

be shot down by the soldiers. In all the terrible events that followed in the downfall of Russia the malign influence of Germany must be fully recognized.

It is said that every country gets the kind of revolution it deserves. On March 12, 1917, the first revolution broke out in Russia, beginning with a strike of the industrial workers threatened with starvation. Regiments sent to crush the revolt joined the strikers; and the Czar, Nicholas II, finally abdicated. A provisional government under Prince Lvoff was followed by a new cabinet under Kerensky, but neither satisfied the demands of the people. Liberty had given place to license, discipline was at an end, chaos reigned. The peasants wanted land, the industrial workers demanded control of the factories, there were constant demonstrations and threatened uprisings, while the central government was weak and nerveless. Russia was on the verge of breaking up into rival revolutionary states in endless civil war. One party alone now emerged that knew just what it wanted and had the power to enforce its demands.1

During the war, councils or soviets of workers were formed in the factories, of peasants in the country, and soldiers in the army. As the peasants had not been given the land nor the town workers bread, a popular revolt began. This second Russian Workers' Revolution took place on November 7, 1917. As soon as the Petrograd Soviet obtained a Bolshevik majority they seized the Government and handed it over to the All-Russia Congress

There had been three revolutionary groups in Russia, the Communist followers of Marx, the Anarchist followers of Bakunin and Prince Kropotkin, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, one wing of which pursued the policy of terrorism. The first group organized the Marxian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1898 among the town workers. In the division which arose in the party the Mensheviki favored co-operation with the bourgeois Liberals, while the Bolsheviki under Lenine favored the dic tatorship of the proletarian workers on their own account.

The Czarist Empire had now become the

"1

of Soviets. "Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic." The Bolshevik Government withdrew from what they regarded as an imperialist war and signed the separate and humiliating peace of Brest-Litovsk. They then endeavored to make the colossal transition from a capitalist to a socialist order. Two series of decrees were now issued, one aiming at the destruction of the old order, and the other at the establishment of the new through the improvement of the social conditions of the people. A Declaration of Rights was passed at the Third All-Russia Soviet Congress and a Constitution was adopted at the fifth Congress. Russia became a Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. Private property in land was abolished, all land becoming, in theory at least, the common property of the people. The State declared its ownership of all forests, mines, national resources, factories, railways and other means of production and transport.

The Republic became a free Socialist community of all laboring classes. Freedom of conscience, of opinion, of the press and of meeting were guaranteed. The franchise was granted irrespective of religion, nationality or sex to all citizens over eighteen engaged in productive labor; it was denied to all who exploited the labor of others for profit, or lived on unearned income, also to monks, priests, members of the former police and criminals. It cannot be maintained that all of the above ideals or guarantees were carried into practice. Religious liberty, for instance, was hedged about with many restrictions. Russia is the only country which the writer has visited in thirty years where no Student Christian Movement is as yet permitted.

1 At the Tenth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, December 23-27, 1922, it was decided to unite all the Soviet Republics in a single federal state. The present official name is the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics or the S. S. S. R.

Private property and trade were now to be replaced by the free exchange of the products of industry for food from the country. But when industry ceased effectively to produce, the burden of the support of the population fell upon the peasants, who had all their surplus crops taken from them. To eliminate the money power of the bourgeoisie, paper currency was deliberately debased by a flood of paper money which soon became worthless and which the peasants were unwilling to receive. Peasant uprisings began to increase and the area cultivated was reduced to half what it had been before the war.

The Bolshevik Revolution was accomplished with remarkably little bloodshed and employees and men of all classes were invited to co-operate with the new government. With the beginning of the destruction of the old capitalist régime and the erection of a new social order, almost the entire bourgeois, professional and technically skilled class went on strike, adopted the method of sabotage, and organized a counter revolutionary movement with the aid of foreign powers. Fighting now for their very existence, the government replied by the Extraordinary Commission and the Terror, the worst features of which, however, were abolished as soon as counter-revolutionary activity ceased. We make no defence of this terror, any more than we do of that of the French Revolution. Its severity can hardly be exaggerated.

For three years private shops were closed and there was almost no buying and selling. A period of "military communism" was instituted in which the state tried to organize the whole life of the people on a communal basis. The peasants' entire surplus grain was taken by the state for the support of the army, the industrial workers and the rest of the population.

Resenting this forcible seizure of their grain, the peas

ants ceased to raise more than they needed for themselves and the government was now compelled to face a world of enemies from without and within the country. For six years they were forced to meet obstacles and opposition unparalleled in history. They had inherited the corruption of five centuries of Czardom. The country was exhausted by the war and impoverished by a world blockade. It was crushed by Germany in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. It suffered from invasion, as it had to fight against the Central Powers, the English, French, Japanese, CzechoSlovaks, Poles, Finns, Greeks, and Roumanians. Even an American army invaded their territory.

The white armies of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, Krasnoff, Semenoff, Wrangel, Petlura, Balakhovitch and the Cossacks were not only fighting but some of them perpetrating atrocities upon the helpless inhabitants equal to anything in history. Under the White Terror in Finland alone out of a small population of 3,000,000 some 17,000 are said to have perished. In the meantime Russia was devastated by red and white terror alike.

After six years of warfare following 1914, Russia collapsed in sheer exhaustion. She was devastated by war and revolution, swept by vast epidemics, bankrupt and threatened with chaos. Following all this came the awful famine of 1921. The American Relief Administration reported 23,895,000 starving out of a population of 42,000,000 in the famine area.1 Reliable witnesses informed the writer that frozen corpses, dogs and even children were eaten by persons frenzied by hunger. Some three millions are said to have perished of starvation and a total of not

1 The A. R. A. reported nearly 15,000,000 fed, 12,000 medical institutions assisted, 7,000,000 persons inoculated or vaccinated, 912,121 tons of food imported, and a total expenditure of some $75,000,000. The work of the A. R. A. was beyond all praise and has left an enduring gratitude in the hearts of the Russian people that will have an important influence upon the future relations of these two great nations,