Now 600,000 men and women acting on the instructions of
a highly centralized directive, all the important decisions of
which have been thrashed out and re-thrashed until they
have general support within the party; 600,000 men and
women prepared, not only to vote in support of these
decisions, but with a carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice
their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women
who are persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be
saved; who are persuaded (to put it as cynically and
unsympathetically as possible) that the noblest death one can
die is in carrying out a decision of the Central Committee;
such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an
enormously strong embodiment of human will, an
instrument of struggle capable of working something very
like miracles. It can be and is controlled like an army in
battle. It can mobilize its members, 10 per cent. of them,
50 per cent., the local Committees choosing them, and send
them to the front when the front is in danger, or to the
railways and repair shops when it is decided that the weakest
point is that of transport. If its only task were to fight those
organizations of loosely knit and only momentarily united
interests which are opposed to it, those jerry-built alliances
of Reactionaries with Liberals, United-Indivisible-Russians
with Ukrainians, Agrarians with Sugar-Refiners,
Monarchists with Republicans, that task would long ago

have been finished. But it has to fight something infinitely
stronger than these in fighting the economic ruin of Russia,