themselves along. I asked the reason of the improvement,
and the driver told me the horses]26]were now rationed like
human beings, and all got a small allowance of oats. There
were crowds of people about, but the numbers of closed
shops were very depressing. I did not then know that this
was due to the nationalization of trade and a sort of general
stock-taking, the object of which was to prevent
profiteering in manufactured goods, etc., of which there
were not enough to go round. Before I left many shops
were being reopened as national concerns, like our own
National Kitchens. Thus, one would see over a shop the
inscription, "The 5th Boot Store of the Moscow Soviet" or
"The 3rd Clothing Store of the Moscow Soviet" or "The
11th Book Shop." It had been found that speculators
bought, for example, half a dozen overcoats, and sold them
to the highest bidders, thus giving the rich an advantage over
the poor. Now if a man needs a new suit he has to go in his
rags to his House Committee, and satisfy them that he really
needs a new suit for himself. He is then given the right to
buy a suit. In this way an attempt is made to prevent
speculation and to ensure a more or less equitable
distribution of the inadequate stocks. My greatest surprise
was given me by the Metropole itself, because the old
wounds of the revolution, which were left unhealed all last
summer, the shell-holes and bullet splashes which marked it
when I was here before, have been repaired.


Litvinov had given me a letter to Karakhan of the
Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, asking him to help me in