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THE DECENTRALISATION OF
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GEROID TANQUARY ROBINSON

REPRINTED FROM POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, September, 5921

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THE DECENTRALIZATION OF
RUSSIAN HISTORY

BY
GEROID TANQUARY ROBINSON
n «

REPRINTED FROM POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLT
Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, September, 1921

NEW YORK
PUBLISHED BY THE
ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
1921

THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY1
BECAUSE of the condition of low visibility created by the
hopes and fears that cluster around the Russian revolu
tion and the subsequent experiment in Communism, it
is perhaps impossible for anyone, however favorably placed, to
give at this time an adequate answer to the question, " What
has actually happened in Russia, and why ?" Popular interest
demands that Communism shall be treated as a world-problem
of the future, and yet the Communist experiment itself, in so
far as it can now be brought within the bounds of knowledge,.
is primarily a Russian problem of the past. The great concen
tration of interest upon what may happen, is certainly a prime
obstacle to the understanding of what has happened, for the
atmosphere of agitation and counter-agitation is most uncon
genial to sound scholarship.
Nevertheless it may not be impossible to formulate even now
a few of the problems that must be solved if the history of re
cent years in Russia is ever to be made comprehensible. To
begin with, it may be said that the conventional treatment of
the history of this period by chronological stages is subject ta
some of the same disabilities that attend the division of the his
tory of the United States into four-year periods, with the names
of the presidents for chapter-headings. In the one case as in
the other, the chronological method makes for a concentration
of attention upon political activities at the capital, and a very-
1 Bolshevik Russia. By Etienne Antonelli. Translated from the French by
Charles A. Carroll. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1920. — xi, 307 pp.
The Russian Workers' Republic. By Henry Noel Brailsford. New York
Harper & Brothers, 1921.— x, 274 pp.
The Russian Peasant and the Revolution. By Maurice G. Hindus. New York
Henry Holt and Company, 1920. — xii, 327 pp.
The Crisis in Russia. By Arthur Ransome. New York, B. W. Huebsch Inc.
1921. — xiv, 201 pp.
Bolshevism: Practice and Theory. By Bertrand Russell. New York Har-
court, Brace and Howe, 1920. — 192 pp. 454

THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 455
skimpy handling of developments in the provinces. Hence it
seems advisable to suggest a primary division of the subject into
four parallel phases, which may even be referred to, for the
sake of emphasis, as four distinct revolutions — the agrarian, the
industrial, the commercial, and the political. Next, it may be
said that each of these revolutions has passed through a period
of destruction, followed by a period of construction. In what
stage, then, was each of the revolutions at the time of the Bol
shevik coup d'etat, and in what direction was each proceeding?
Has there been, in any case, a change of direction since the coup
d'etat; if so, what were the causes of the change; what specific
means were used in effecting it; and what measurable results
have been produced ?
Although the various analytical studies suggested by these
questions can in themselves produce no substitute for a syn
thetic account of the revolution, they are the necessary pre
liminaries to any adequate synthesis. Hence Mr. Maurice G.
Hindus's recent volume on The Russian Peasant and the Revo
lution would be a welcome addition to the literature of the
period, even if it did nothing more than suggest the possibility
of treating the agrarian revolution, not as a purely incidental
matter, but as a more or less autonomous movement, with a
history of its own. If the promise of the title is not fully
realized in the text, one may be sure that the fault does not lie
chiefly with the method of approach.
Mr. Hindus opens his volume with a sketch of the "pain
fully picturesque " conditions in a Russian village, followed by
a brief account of the rise of serfdom and a more extended
discussion of the hardships which the peasants have suffered
since the promulgation of the Emancipation Act in 1861. The
picture of peasant misery is rather freely drawn, in a manner
calculated to appeal to the popular taste, and yet the founda
tion of statistical facts is very solidly built. The partial expro
priation of the emancipated peasantry from the lands they had
occupied as serfs, the levying of excessive redemption dues
upon the lands allotted to the peasants after the emancipation,.
the shortage of every facility for the improvement of agricul
ture, and the efforts of the peasants to supplement the insuffi-

456 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [Vol. XXXVI
cient income from their allotments by domestic industry and
by wage-work — these are some of the subjects discussed in the
four chapters which form the most substantial portion of the
book. The conditions described correspond somewhat to those
created in England by the later enclosures, except that in
Russia industry had not been sufficiently developed to afford a
large outlet for the labor-surplus.
When the mir or village commune comes up for examina
tion, the author loses much of his sureness of touch. The
spheres of communistic and bureaucratic activity under the old
regime are not clearly defined, and a tendency to minimize the
importance of the mir becomes immediately apparent. It is
stated that the mir might " elect its shepherds for the sum
mer " ; it might " exercise its own discretion in levying the
amount of grain each member was to contribute to the village
granary — a sort of grain-bank where in winter and spring the
needy might borrow rye, barley, oats, for seed and bread " ; it
might " build its own blacksmith shop and windmill, and choose
its own smith and miller". The mir was also the owner of
forests and pastures, which were generally used in common,
and of arable lands, which were periodically redistributed for
cultivation by individual families. However, Mr. Hindus allows
himself to say that " in the larger and more significant aspect
of the individual and social life of the peasant, the mir was de
prived of the privilege of formulating its own will " ; and yet it
should be self-evident that even under the old regime the free
functions of the mir were of surpassing importance. Bureau
cratic officials were simply meddlers in the life of the village,
but the mir was a living organism that gave promise of being
able to live by itself, if the opportunity should ever come.
The opportunity did come at last, when the land-hunger of
the peasants had been redoubled by privations incident to the
war, and the Autocracy had fallen before a light puff of wind
blowing through the streets of Petrograd. The agrarian revo
lution which had died down after the jacqueries of 1905 now
broke out once more. The dispossession of the landlords be
gan in real earnest. The Constitutional Democrats had a plan
for stopping the process by a careful redistribution of lands,

No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 457
with compensation to the owners. The Social Revolutionaries
would have called a halt in the process of expropriation until
the Constitutional Assembly met. Kerensky formed local and
central committees to settle disputes, and then began at the last
moment to prepare a decree of expropriation which he never
had the opportunity to issue. At two o'clock in the morning
of their second day in power, the Bolsheviki declared : " All
private ownership in land is abolished immediately, without any
indemnification." Mr. Hindus discusses the land-programs of the various
parties in detail, and perhaps too seriously. What one would
really like to know is, what — in detail — was going on in the
provinces where the peasants were making their own revolution,
first in direct opposition to the will of the Government, and
finally with its approval. Mr. Hindus gives little help here —
but perhaps the data are not yet available.
Further than this, one would like to know whether the un
controlled agrarian revolution was proceeding toward individual
proprietorship, or toward a considerable enlargement of the
functions of the mir. Mr. Hindus does not find it necessary to
establish the decay of the mir as a preliminary to his advance
ment of the theory that nearly all the peasants favor the indi
vidual ownership of land. In fact he himself says that com
paratively few peasants took advantage of the imperial ukase
of November, 1906, which gave them the opportunity to
" emerge " from the mir and to claim their share of the com
munal lands as private property. Ever since the overthrow of
the Tsar, the peasants have been quite free to do what they
pleased with the mir. Apparently no one knows exactly what
they have done, but in the absence of any proof to the con
trary, it may perhaps be safe to assume that the mir became
more important, as the central government became less so.
The communism of the village, with its system of individual
cultivation, and of private property in the products of the soil, is
of course quite different from Bolshevik communism, but it is
also quite different from Mr. Hindus's individualism. In time it
will perhaps be recognized as the constructive principle of the
agrarian revolution.

458 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [Vol. XXXVI
For on account of what was going forward in the shops and
factories of Russia during the period of political disintegration,
one must trust to incidental references in volumes that deal
primarily with events at the capital. There is real need for a
book on the industrial revolution, but if any such book has yet
appeared, it has not come to the writer's notice. However, it
seems to be pretty generally agreed that the collapse of the
central political authority opened the way for a process of ex
propriation by the industrial workers which proceeded in par
allel with the land-seizures of the peasants. The factory coun
cils corresponded roughly with the village communes, and in
the one case as in the other the spontaneous action of the revo
lutionists seems to have produced a high degree of decentral
ization, with a corresponding development of local organs of
economic self-government. In most accounts of the period,
the factory councils have received more attention than the vil
lage communes, but no one appears to know just what propor
tion of the industrial plants of the country were already in the
hands of these councils when the Bolsheviki came to power in
Petrograd. In the absence of specific facts, the acknowledged
difficulty which the Bolsheviki experienced in establishing cen
tral industrial control will give a general notion of the strength
of the movement for " self-determination " in the factories.
The commercial revolution has not been treated anywhere as
a specific movement, and perhaps does not deserve to be so
treated. While the destruction of the old systems of agricul
tural and industrial production seems to have been due almost
exclusively to the action of the peasants and the workers, there
is little evidence that the dissolution of the distributive system
was caused by any positive activity on the part of those en
gaged in its operation. Indeed the decay of trade and com
merce seems to have been in part a by-product of the blockade
and the decrease in domestic industrial production, and in part
the result of destructive attacks from without. Thus the trad
ing group did not develop within itself any such constructive
principle as that which operated in the village communes and
the factory councils. The societies for cooperative distribution
were perhaps the sole exception to this rule.

No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 459
If this speculative analysis of the trend of events in Russia is
accepted as tolerably sound, in spite of the manifest incom
pleteness of the data upon which it rests, it will then become
apparent that the destruction of the old economic order was
inevitable, whatever the attitude of the Government might be.
If revolutionary destruction was inevitable, then civil war was
inevitable, with all the hardships entailed by the disorganization
of industry and commerce, and the diversion of energy into
military channels. Under the pressure of such conditions, the
revolutionists would necessarily be drawn together for the pur
poses of self-protection. If the new leaders could not stop the
process of destruction, the question of prime importance was,
would they accept as their final guide the constructive princi
ples embodied in the mir, the factory council and the cooper
atives, departing from these principles only in so far as was
absolutely necessary to meet the economic and military needs
of the moment, or would they attempt to effect a fundamental
alteration in the course the revolution had naturally taken?
The answer to this question was supplied by the political
revolution which brought the Bolsheviki to power. This revo
lution is called " political ", because in the beginning it resulted
simply in the replacement of one impotent government by
another. Now, for the first time, the political wind blew with
the tide, and even accelerated its movement. In his volume on
Bolshevik Russia, M. Etienne Antonelli says that before any
official action was taken by the Bolsheviki, the soldiers had
already made peace, the peasants had seized the lands, and the
workers had created committees which claimed exclusive con
trol of the factories. Elsewhere he characterizes the Bolsheviki
as the "accidental instruments of an inevitable evolution", and
says that they asserted " a policy of direct and voluntary organ
ization from the bottom up, by means of free and self-deter
mined action by the proletariat ".
However, this was only the beginning of the story. If at
first the mass of the workers and the peasants were either pro-
Bolshevik or indifferent to Bolshevism, it was because they be
lieved that the new government would permit the revolution to
take its course. In this they were not altogether correct, for as

460 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY " [Vol. XXXVI
M. Antonelli says, the Bolsheviki were " socialists, . . . con
cerned with the social organization of the whole community ;
' Power to the Soviets ' for them was a means ; for the mass of
the people it was an end ". In other words, the Bolsheviki, or
as they are now called, the Communists, had constructive aims
of their own which differed somewhat from those already ex
pressed in the action of the masses. In order to achieve their
aims, the Communists proposed to complete the destruction of
the bourgeois State and to erect a powerful proletarian State
in its place. The existing Soviets or Councils of revolutionary
workers, soldiers and peasants had already given some vague
promise of the political reunification of the country, but thus
far most of the workers and peasants had gotten along fairly
well without paying any attention to the State. Now, however,
the Communists said that it must be rebuilt on a new founda
tion, and used as an instrument for the final suppression of the
propertied class. The process of destroying the old State had
begun in March, 1917; the process of constructing the new
State began with the Bolshevik coup d'etat; the history of this
double process is the history of the political revolution.
M. Antonelli's volume is primarily a history of Bolshevik
politics during the months immediately following the coup. It
is by no means a satisfactory account, for it is badly organized,
and somewhat too heavily weighted with superfluities about the
Slav soul. Nevertheless it should be said that the author's
fair-mindedness is well established by the answer he gives to the
question, " Could the Bolshevik leaders be bribed [by Germany]
to perform a task opposed to their political convictions ? "
In these times, such a question as this has hardly more than
an antiquarian interest. The facts of prime importance in
Bolshevik political history are those which have to do with the
gradual narrowing-down of the class of " active citizens ", and
the establishment of a complete Communist dictatorship. As
has been said already, the agrarian and industrial revolutions
belonged in the beginning to the mass of the peasants and the
workers. The accession of the Bolsheviks was regarded as a
confirmation of the control of the masses. The Soviet Consti
tution seemed to accept this situation, for it restricted suffrage

No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ^Qi
to the workers, and grouped these worker-citizens primarily in
accordance with their economic interest as producers ; in the
agricultural regions, the village was the basic unit ; in the towns,
the shop-organization or the trade union. Upon this foundation
there was erected a complicated system of indirectly elected
Soviets, heading up finally in the All-Russian Congress. On
the basis of evidence contained within the Constitution itself,
one may say that the whole system was pretty thoroughly gerry
mandered for the purpose of increasing the influence of the
industrial proletariat. Just where the line fell between the ur
ban and rural forms of organization is by no means certain, but
a consideration of the census leads one to suppose that it would
have been tolerably easy for the industrial element to maintain
a position of control by the peaceable use of the constitutional
means provided. Unfortunately, however, a considerable pro
portion of the industrial workers still insisted upon the main
tenance of a high degree of autonomy in the factories. If a
centralization of power in the new State was to be achieved,
these recalcitrants also must be deprived of their influence — a
result finally accomplished by an informal suspension of the
Soviet Constitution and a practical restriction of political life
to the 600,000 members of the Communist Party.
If no adequate account of these changes has yet been written,
it is partly because the friends and enemies of Communism
have been so much occupied with explaining why the changes
were made. On the one hand, one hears that civil war and
Allied intervention inevitably called up a dictatorship for the
defense of the nation. On the other, one is told that the Com
munist leaders imposed the dictatorship of their own free will,
for some fell purpose not specifically named. The truth prob
ably lies somewhere between these two statements, and rather
nearer the former than the latter.
On this subject, one can get but little light from such a vol
ume as Bertrand Russell's Bolshevism : Practice and Theory.
Mr. Russell entered upon his investigation of conditions in
Russia with an avowed predilection for Anarchist Communism,
and apparently also with a feeling of heavy responsibility for
the effect his findings might have in Western Europe. In his

462 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [Vol. XXXVI
book he occupies himself chiefly with an appraisal of Bolshe
vism as a means of attaining the "fundamental economic recon
struction " he desires ; he tends from first to last to treat the
revolution in all its aspects as a Bolshevik revolution, and to
regard a Bolshevik revolution, not as something inevitable, but
as something that one may take or let alone, as one pleases.
Now, as a matter of course, Mr. Russell is at liberty to say, if
he will, " I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons :
first, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Commu
nism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible ; and secondly be
cause, even after paying the price, I do not believe the result
would be what the Bolsheviki profess to desire." He is even at
liberty to transfer the theory of full, free and conscious self-
determination to past history, though fewer people will follow
him in this. However he produces a most confused impression
when he says that the Bolshevik outlook on life is the outcome
of the cruelty of Tsarism and the savagery of the Great War ;
that this Bolshevik outlook is " the ultimate source of the whole
train of evils" in Russia; that the Bolsheviks are specifically
accountable for provoking war and causing material disaster;
that war and material disaster gave rise to most of the disagree
able features of the Bolshevik regime; and that " in Russia, the
methods of the Bolsheviki were probably more or less unavoid
able ". In fact Mr. Russell's investigations seem to have
yielded, not one theory, but several theories, of the part played
by the Bolsheviki in the revolution. His appraisal of Bolshevik
theory doubtless has some importance as a polemic document in
the West, where Bolshevism is still nothing more than a theory,
but his volume does not contribute materially to an understand
ing of the situation in Russia, where Bolshevism is, for him, a
well-nigh inexplicable fact. If the reader follows Mr. Russell
to the very end, and agrees with him in all respects, he will not
want Bolshevism in his native land, but neither will he under
stand the nature of Bolshevik power in the ex-Empire of the
Tsars. Upon the authority of two competent observers who visited
Russia in 1920 — Mr. Ransome and Mr. Henry Noel Brailsford
— one may say that in Russia the Communist Party is, for all

No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 463
practical purposes, the State. Since the party is not in any
sense an economic organism for the production or distribution
of goods, but a political organism for the control of the revo
lution, it is apparent that political activity still has some im
portance in Russia. In this state of affairs, the constitution
and methods of the Communist Party are matters of the great
est importance in the history of the revolutionary movement as
a whole. In his recent book on The Russian Workers' Repub
lic Mr. Brailsford supplies a description of the party which
suggests comparison with a religious order, and calls to mind
Mr. Russell's statement that Bolshevism is a type of religious
fanaticism. According to Mr. Brailsford, the existing dictator
ship is based upon the perfect discipline and the heroic rash
ness of the party-members. A careful scrutiny of candidates,
a long and rigorous novitiate, and a periodic purging of the
party-rolls fits the membership for duty as " shock troops "
wherever, at the front or in the factories, there is work of par
ticular danger or difficulty to be done. " Such democracy as
there is in Russia exists within the Communist Party, and not
outside it. It is a grave mistake to suppose that Lenin rules
as an autocrat. Every new departure of Russian policy,
whether internal or external, is debated at the elected con
gresses of the Party and its elected executive is the real con
trolling power. . . . The vote of the Party Congress . . .
closes all debate, and the minority submits absolutely." Com
munist majorities in the Soviets are secured by various legal
and illegal means, sometimes simply by denying the opposition
the use of the press and of public halls for the conduct of its
campaign ; and in the Soviets the Communists vote " as one
man ", in accordance with decisions already reached in their
own party-meetings. In The Crisis in Russia, Mr. Arthur
Ransome presents a less complete account of the methods used
by the Communists to control the Soviets and the government,
but one that agrees in all essential respects with that of Mr.
Brailsford. When matters of policy have once been decided in the man
ner described, the Government is immediately faced with the
task of making the decision effective. Mr. Brailsford and Mr.

464 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [Vol. XXXVr
Ransome are agreed that propaganda is of primary importance-
here, though both admit that force is used where propaganda
does not produce the desired results. The army is of course
the Government's most powerful weapon; Mr. Brailsford says
that it will sooner or later be entirely in the control of Com
munist officers. Mr. Russell stresses rather heavily the impor
tance of the Extraordinary Commission ; Mr. Brailsford says the
Commission admits having shot 8,500 prisoners before March
5, 1920, while Mr. Ransome expresses the belief that this or
ganization is by no means the chief support of the dictatorship.
Naturally such agencies as the schools, the press, and the
theater are often used and abused for political purposes, and
yet Mr. Brailsford is able to say, " It may be honestly claimed,.
I think, for the Soviet Administration that it has a better record
in its relations to art and culture, generally, than any other
government in the civilized world." It goes without saying
that the intellectual life of Russia during the revolution can be
treated historically as a mere annex to politics only in so far as
the Communists have made it so, through the exercise of gov
ernmental control.
The means for the exercise of the dictatorship which have
thus far been mentioned are those that operate through the
government upon all the people alike, without special reference
to economic function or organization. That is to say, these
means of control are the political manifestations of the political
power of the Communist Party. The history of the develop
ment of the Communist Party itself and of these means of con
trol has an important place in the history of the political revo
lution, and yet it has already been said that the political revo
lution was of minor importance, as compared with the economic
changes that accompanied it, altered its course, and were at
last in some measure deflected by it.
In the opinion of Mr. Brailsford, the agrarian revolution
came as the inevitable result of misery and oppression, and
civil war and industrial collapse followed naturally in its train.
The industrial workers were drawn off into the army, or went
back to the land, and the government was soon faced with a
labor-shortage which, Mr. Brailsford says, has since been at the

"No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 465
l>ottom of all its difficulties. Mr. Ransome also discusses the
labor-shortage at considerable length, and both writers are
agreed that in the absence of some central agency, revolution
ary or counter-revolutionary, for the conscription of industrial
workers and the requisitioning of food, industry would have
come completely to a halt, the towns would have been depopu
lated, civilization itself would have been extinguished, and
Russia would have been thrown open to colonization and ex
ploitation by Western Europe. Mr. Ransome even fears that
the dissolution of Russia might involve the whole continent in
the same fate. He looks upon the Communist Government as
the only agency now capable of halting this process of dissolu
tion, and the avowed purpose of his argument is the prevention
of any conflict that might result in the overthrow of that gov
ernment. All this involves much speculation; and certainly one is not
¦obliged to accept the identification of civilization with town-
life maintained by requisition and conscription. However it is
fairly clear that although the village communes and the factory
councils were quite capable of performing the destructive work
of the revolution, and would doubtless have carried this work
through to a conclusion without governmental help, or in spite
•of governmental hindrance if hindrance had been offered, they
-were not capable of defending themselves during a long period
of slow and entirely natural reconstruction. Thus a partial
alteration of the course of the industrial revolution was neces
sary for purposes of defense, and in this sense it was inevitable.
What was especially required to meet the needs of the
moment was not so much a political dictatorship which would
affect all the people of the country, as an industrial dictatorship
which would prevent the whole fabric of urban society from
going to pieces. In a very real sense, the Communists chose
the inevitable, and the history of their conquest of Russian in
dustry is perhaps the most important chapter in the annals of
the new regime. The nature of the methods employed is by
no means clear, but it is extremely significant that the party
does not now exert its control of industry solely through the
mechanism of the Soviets and the government. The system of

466 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [Vol. XXXVI
Soviets certainly exercises a considerable degree of control over
industrial affairs, particularly through the Supreme Council of
National Economy. On the other hand, the factory councils
are not only bound together in territorial groups in the Soviet
system, but are organized industrially in national unions, with
the provision that organized labor as such shall have a consid
erable degree of control over wages and working conditions,.
and some share also in the actual management of plants and
industries, either directly or through representation in the
Supreme Council and other Soviet institutions. Since most of
the Communists, perhaps nearly all of them, are members of
these factory councils, they are in a position to control the in
dustrial unions and the National Trade Union Congress from
the inside by the same means they have employed for the con
trol of the system of Soviets ; and, according to Mr. Brailsford,
this is approximately what they are doing. Thus it appears
that in any account of the industrial revolution under the new
regime, the history of the unions cannot properly be subordin
ated to that of the government. If both the unions and the
government are nothing more than mechanisms employed by
the Communist Party to make its will effective, it is nevertheless
important that the principle of national organization by indus
tries still does service in company with that of organization by
districts and provinces.
Under Communist control, two notable changes have taken
place in the actual conduct of industry ; management has been
to some extent centralized, and industrial conscription has been
instituted. Mr. Ransome reports that in 1920 the centralization
of management was the subject of bitter controversy, with the
prospect that the factories would eventually be placed in the
control of "bourgeois specialists", who, for all practical pur
poses, would be responsible to the State alone. Mr. Brailsford
says, " individual management is now [in 1920] the rule, though
the Workers' Councils survive". According to Mr. Ransome,
all stages of industrial conscription existed simultaneously in
Russia in 1920; the tremendous difficulty of the labor-problem
is indicated by his statement that the number of workmen in
Moscow in 1919 was only 105,000, as against 157,000 in 19 18.

No. 3] THE DECENTRALIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 467
Statistical studies of the operation of conscription, and of in
dustrial output under various conditions of technical direction
and labor-control, would furnish invaluable material for a his
tory of the industrial revolution. Mr. Brailsford and Mr. Ran
some supply figures on production and transportation which are
of great interest at the moment, but naturally the data are
hardly full enough to be of permanent value to the historian
of the Revolution.
If the history of the industrial revolution is somewhat obscure,
that of the commercial revolution is certainly far more so.
The exchange of commodities seems to have been less system
atically organized than their production, for at one time private
traders, cooperative societies and governmental agencies for the
requisition and rationing of food were operating simultaneously.
Evidence of a tendency to eliminate confusion is contained in
Mr. Brailsford's statement that the official cooperative organiza
tion now represents the whole body of the citizens as consum
ers, and has been brought under Communist control by methods
similar to those employed in the conquest of the Soviets and the
industrial unions. If this is literally true, then the history of
the third organ of the dictatorship demands as much attention
as has habitually been given to the unions. However one sus
pects a certain inaccuracy in this reference to " the whole body
of the citizens ", for the place of the peasants in the official co
operative organization remains undefined. The peasants were a
most important factor in the cooperatives of pre-revolutionary
days; if they no longer participate, how did the Communists
dispose of them ; if they are still included, does this mean that
the mir is now the basis of the cooperative organization in the
agricultural districts? Does the cooperative system have local
institutions of its own among the industrial workers ; or does
the factory council function as a primary unit, as it does in the
system of Soviets and the system of unions? The answers to
these questions, together with statistics on the origin, amount
and destination of imports and domestic manufactures and
foodstuffs handled by the organs of distribution, would consti
tute some of the material for a history of the commercial revo
lution under the Communists.

468 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
The action of the Communist Party in dealing more or less
systematically with the individual as a citizen, as a producer,
and as a consumer, through three separate organs of the dicta
torship — the Soviets, the unions, and the cooperatives — natur
ally facilitates the treatment of the revolution in parallel phases ;
and it is certainly no fault of the Communists that the movement
must still be treated, not in three phases only, but in four. The
peasants are citizens, producers, and consumers, and yet their
influence in the Soviets is minimized even by the Constitution,
now suspended ; the system of industrial unions makes no place
for any agricultural workers except those on the few Soviet
farms which are organized and managed like factories ; and the
status of the peasants in the official cooperative organization is,
to say the least, uncertain. In other words, the agricultural
revolution still holds very much to its original course as a spon
taneous and unorganized movement for the seizure of the land,
with the promise of an increase in the importance of the mir
as an incidental result.
Even without an effective central control of agriculture, the
Communists can perhaps defend the country and, in exchange
for foreign and domestic manufactures, secure enough of the
peasants' food products to maintain the life of the towns under
conditions which — they say — will eventually make all the towns
men into Communists ; but at best this would simply broaden
the non-agricultural basis of the dictatorship. The unorgan
ized masses of the peasants would still stand between the Com
munists and their objective ; and it is the very essence of Com
munist theory that the dictatorship shall be maintained until
complete Communism is achieved.
What, then, of the future ? The question is an engaging one,
and no author here mentioned has missed the opportunity to
answer it. Mr. Brailsford's speculations are, like the rest of
his book, most interesting. However, information on the sub
ject is extraordinarily scarce, and one is not disposed to attempt
at the moment a careful analysis of prophecy.
Geroid Tanquary Robinson.
Columbia University.

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