taking its place. Its failure is highly undesirable, not because
it itself is good, but because such failure would be preceded
or followed by a breakdown of all existing organizations.
Food distribution, inadequate as it now is, would come to an
end. The innumerable non-political committees, which are
rather like Boards of Directors controlling the Timber, Fur,
Fishery, Steel, Matches or other Trusts (since the
nationalized industries can be so considered) would collapse,
and with them would collapse not only yet one more hope of
keeping a breath of life in Russian industry, but also the
actual livelihoods of a great number of people, both
Communists and non-Communists. I do not think it is
realized out-side Russia how large a proportion of the
educated classes have become civil servants of one kind or
another. It is a rare thing when a whole family has left
Russia, and many of the most embittered partisans of war on
Russia have relations inside Russia who have long ago found
places under the new system, and consequently fear its
collapse as much as any one. One case occurs to me in
which a father was an important minister in one of the
various White Governments which have received Allied
support, while his son inside Russia was doing pretty well as
a responsible official under the Communists. Now in the
event of a violent change, the Communists would be outlaws
with a price on every head, and those who have worked with
them, being Russians, know their fellow countrymen well
enough to be pretty well convinced that the mere fact that
they are without cards of the membership of the Communist
Party, would not save them in the orgy of slaughter that
would follow any such collapse.