In country districts the method employed is somewhat different.  It is impossible to secure that the village Soviet shall consist of Communists, because, as a rule, at any rate in the villages I saw, there are no Communists.  But when I asked in the villages how they were represented on the Volost (the next larger area) or the Gubernia, I was met always with the reply that they were not represented at all.  I could not verify this, and it is probably an overstatement, but all concurred in the assertion that if they elected a non-Communist representative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and, therefore, could not attend the Volost or Gubernia Soviet.  I saw a meeting of the Gubernia Soviet of Saratov.  The representation is so arranged that the town workers have an enormous preponderance over the surrounding peasants; but even allowing for this, the proportion of peasants seemed astonishingly small for the centre of a very important agricultural area.

The All-Russian Soviet, which is constitutionally the supreme body, to which the People’s Commissaries are responsible, meets seldom, and has become increasingly formal.  Its sole function at present, so far as I could discover, is to ratify, without discussion, previous decisions of the Communist Party on matters (especially concerning foreign policy) upon which the constitution requires its decision.

All real power is in the hands of the Communist Party, who number about 600,000 in a population of about 120 millions.  I never came across a Communist by chance:  the people whom I met in the streets or in the villages, when I could get into conversation with them, almost invariably said they were of no party.  The only other answer I ever had was from some of the peasants, who openly stated that they were Tsarists.  It must be said that the peasants’ reasons for disliking the Bolsheviks are very inadequate.  It is said—­and all I saw confirmed the assertion—­that the peasants are better off than they ever were before.  I saw no one—­man, woman, or child—­who looked underfed in the villages.  The big landowners are dispossessed, and the peasants have profited.  But the towns and the army still need nourishing, and the Government has nothing to give the peasants in return for food except paper, which the peasants resent having to take.  It is a singular fact that Tsarist roubles are worth ten times as much as Soviet roubles, and are much commoner in the country.  Although they are illegal, pocket-books full of them are openly displayed in the market places.  I do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect a Tsarist restoration:  they are merely actuated by custom and dislike of novelty.  They have never heard of the blockade; consequently they cannot understand why the Government is unable to give them the clothes and agricultural implements that they need.  Having got their land, and being ignorant of affairs outside their own neighbourhood, they wish their own village to be independent, and would resent the demands of any Government whatever.