much as it can, the atmosphere is one in
which art cannot flourish, because art is anarchic and resistant to
organization. Gorky has done all that one man could to preserve the
intellectual and artistic life of Russia. I feared that he was dying,
and that, perhaps, it was dying too. But he recovered, and I hope it
will recover also.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Electrification is desired not merely for reorganizing industry,
but in order to industrialize agriculture. In _Theses presented to the
Second Congress of the Communist International_ (an instructive little
book, which I shall quote as _Theses_), it is said in an article on
the Agrarian question that Socialism will not be secure till industry
is reorganized on a new basis with "general application of electric
energy in all branches of agriculture and rural economy," which "alone
can give to the towns the possibility of offering to backward rural
districts a technical and social aid capable of determining an
extraordinary increase of productivity of agricultural and rural
labour, and of engaging the small cultivators, in their own interest,
to pass progressively to a collectivist mechanical cultivation" (p. 36
of French edition).

[3] In _Theses_ (p. 34) it is said: "It would be an irreparable error
... not to admit the gratuitous grant of part of the expropriated
lands to poor and even well-to-do peasants."

IV

ART AND EDUCATION

It has often been said that, whatever the inadequacy of Bolshevik
organization in other fields, in art and in education at least they
have made great progress.

To take first of all art: it is true that they began by recognizing,
as perhaps no other revolutionary government would, the importance and
spontaneity of the artistic impulse, and therefore while they
controlled or destroyed the counter-revolutionary in all other social
activities, they allowed the artist, whatever his political creed,
complete freedom to continue his work. Moreover, as regards clothing
and rations they treated him especially well. This, and the care
devoted to the upkeep of churches, public monuments, and museums, are
well-known facts, to which there has already been ample testimony.

The preservation of the old artistic community practically intact was
the more remarkable in view of the pronounced sympathy of most of them
with the old regime. The theory, however, was that art and politics
belonged to two separate realms; but great honour would of cours