possible of the life and outlook of peasants, village schoolmasters,
small Jew traders, and all kinds of people. Unfortunately, my friend,
Clifford Allen, fell ill, and my time was much taken up with him. This
had, however, one good result, namely, that I was able to go on with
the boat to Astrakhan, as he was too ill to be moved off it. This not
only gave me further knowledge of the country, but made me acquainted
with Sverdlov, Acting Minister of Transport, who was travelling on the
boat to organize the movement of oil from Baku up the Volga, and who
was one of the ablest as well as kindest people whom I met in Russia.

One of the first things that I discovered after passing the Red Flag
which marks the frontier of Soviet Russia, amid a desolate region of
marsh, pine wood, and barbed wire entanglements, was the profound
difference between the theories of actual Bolsheviks and the version
of those theories current among advanced Socialists in this country.
Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as
merely a new form of representative government, in which only working
men and women have votes, and the constituencies are partly
occupational, not geographical. They think that "proletariat" means
"proletariat," but "dictatorship" does not quite mean "dictatorship."
This is the opposite of the truth. When a Russian Communist speaks of
dictatorship, he means the word literally, but when he speaks of the
proletariat, he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the
"class-conscious" part of the proletariat, _i.e._, the Communist
Party.[1] He includes people by no means proletarian (such as Lenin
and Tchicherin) who have the right opinions, and he excludes such
wage-earners as have not the right opinions, whom he classifies as
lackeys of the _bourgeoisie_. The Communist who sincerely believes the
party creed is convinced that private property is the root of all
evil; he is so certain of this that he shrinks from no measures,