prohibition of discussion almost an invitation to discuss. I
have never met a Russian who could be prevented from
saying whatever he liked whenever he liked, by any threats
or dangers whatsoever. The only way to prevent a Russian
from talking is to cut out his tongue. The real reason for the
apathy is that, for the moment, for almost everybody
political questions are of infinitesimal importance in
comparison with questions of food and warmth. The
ferment of political discussion that filled the first years of the
revolution has died away, and people talk about little but
what they are able to get for dinner, or what somebody else
his been able to get. I, like other foreign visitors coming to
Russia after feeding up in other countries, am all agog to
make people talk. But the sort of questions which interest
me, with my full-fed stomach, are brushed aside almost
fretfully by men who have been more or less hungry for two
or three years on end.


I find, instead of an urgent desire to alter this or that at
once, to-morrow, in the political complexion of the country,
a general desire to do the best that can be done with things
as they are, a general fear of further upheaval of any kind, in

fact a general acquiescence in the present state of affairs
politically, in the hope of altering the present state of affairs
economically. And this is entirely natural. Everybody,
Communists included, rails bitterly at the inefficiencies of
the present system, but everybody, Anti-Communists
included, admits that there is nothing whatever capable of