Before I went to Russia I imagined that I was going to see an interesting experiment in a new form of representative government.  I did see an interesting experiment, but not in representative government.  Every one who is interested in Bolshevism knows the series of elections, from the village meeting to the All-Russian Soviet, by which the people’s commissaries are supposed to derive their power.  We were told that, by the recall, the occupational constituencies, and so on, a new and far more perfect machinery had been devised for ascertaining and registering the popular will.  One of the things we hoped to study was the question whether the Soviet system is really superior to Parliamentarism in this respect.

We were not able to make any such study, because the Soviet system is moribund.[4] No conceivable system of free election would give majorities to the Communists, either in town or country.  Various methods are therefore adopted for giving the victory to Government candidates.  In the first place, the voting is by show of hands, so that all who vote against the Government are marked men.  In the second place, no candidate who is not a Communist can have any printing done, the printing works being all in the hands of the State.  In the third place, he cannot address any meetings, because the halls all belong to the State.  The whole of the press is, of course, official; no independent daily is permitted.  In spite of all these obstacles, the Mensheviks have succeeded in winning about 40 seats out of 1,500 on the Moscow Soviet, by being known in certain large factories where the electoral campaign could be conducted by word of mouth.  They won, in fact, every seat that they contested.

But although the Moscow Soviet is nominally sovereign in Moscow, it is really only a body of electors who choose the executive committee of forty, out of which, in turn, is chosen the Presidium, consisting of nine men who have all the power.  The Moscow Soviet, as a whole, meets rarely; the Executive Committee is supposed to meet once a week, but did not meet while we were in Moscow.  The Presidium, on the contrary, meets daily.  Of course, it is easy for the Government to exercise pressure over the election of the executive committee, and again over the election of the Presidium.  It must be remembered that effective protest is impossible, owing to the absolutely complete suppression of free speech and free Press.  The result is that the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet consists only of orthodox Communists.

Kamenev, the President of the Moscow Soviet, informed us that the recall is very frequently employed; he said that in Moscow there are, on an average, thirty recalls a month.  I asked him what were the principal reasons for the recall, and he mentioned four:  drinking, going to the front (and being, therefore, incapable of performing the duties), change of politics on the part of the electors, and failure to make a report to the electors once a fortnight, which all members of the Soviet are expected to do.  It is evident that the recall affords opportunities for governmental pressure, but I had no chance of finding out whether it is used for this purpose.