his own village. To a remarkable extent, each village is an
independent unit. So long as the Government obtains the food and
soldiers that it requires, it does not interfere, and leaves untouched
the old village communism, which is extraordinarily unlike Bolshevism
and entirely dependent upon a very primitive stage of culture.

The Government represents the interests of the urban and industrial
population, and is, as it were, encamped amid a peasant nation, with
whom its relations are rather diplomatic and military than
governmental in the ordinary sense. The economic situation, as in
Central Europe, is favourable to the country and unfavourable to the
towns. If Russia were governed democratically, according to the will
of the majority, the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of
starvation. As it is, Moscow and Petrograd just manage to live, by
having the whole civil and military power of the State devoted to
their needs. Russia affords the curious spectacle of a vast and
powerful Empire, prosperous at the periphery, but faced with dire want
at the centre. Those who have least prosperity have most power; and
it is only through their excess of power that they are enabled to live
at all. The situation is due at bottom to two facts: that almost the
whole industrial energies of the population have had to be devoted to
war, and that the peasants do not appreciate the importance of the war
or the fact of the blockade.

It is futile to blame the Bolsheviks for an unpleasant and difficult
situation which it has been impossible for them to avoid. Their
problem is only soluble in one of two ways: by the cessation of the
war and the blockade, which would enable them to supply the peasants
with the goods they need in exchange for food; or by the gradual
development of an independent Russian industry. This latter method