behind the stage to a little empty room, where we were
joined by a member of the Soviet whose name I forget.


It was Kamenev's first talk with Litvinov after his return, and
I think they forgot that I was there. Kamenev asked Litvinov
what he meant to do, and Litvinov told him he wished to
establish a special department of control to receive all
complaints, to examine into the efficiency of different
commissariats, to get rid of parallelism, etc., and, in fact, to
be the most unpopular department in Moscow. Kamenev
laughed. "You need not think you are the first to have that
idea. Every returning envoy without exception has the same.
Coming back from abroad they notice more than we do the
inefficiencies here, and at once think they will set everything
right. Rakovsky sat here for months dreaming of nothing
else. Joffe was the same when he came back from that tidy
Berlin. Now you; and when Vorovsky comes (Vorovsky
was still in Petrograd) I am ready to wager that he too has a
scheme for general control waiting in his pocket. The thing
cannot be done. The only way is, when something
obviously needs doing, to put in some one we can trust to
get it done. Soap is hard to get. Good. Establish a
commission and soap instantly disappears. But put in one
man to see that soap is forthcoming, and somehow or other
we get it."



"Where is the soap industry concentrated?"