w Soviet is nominally sovereign in Moscow, it is
really only a body of electors who choose the executive committee of
forty, out of which, in turn, is chosen the Presidium, consisting of
nine men who have all the power. The Moscow Soviet, as a whole, meets
rarely; the Executive Committee is supposed to meet once a week, but
did not meet while we were in Moscow. The Presidium, on the contrary,
meets daily. Of course, it is easy for the Government to exercise
pressure over the election of the executive committee, and again over
the election of the Presidium. It must be remembered that effective
protest is impossible, owing to the absolutely complete suppression of
free speech and free Press. The result is that the Presidium of the
Moscow Soviet consists only of orthodox Communists.

Kamenev, the President of the Moscow Soviet, informed us that the
recall is very frequently employed; he said that in Moscow there are,
on an average, thirty recalls a month. I asked him what were the
principal reasons for the recall, and he mentioned four: drinking,
going to the front (and being, therefore, incapable of performing the
duties), change of politics on the part of the electors, and failure
to make a report to the electors once a fortnight, which all members
of the Soviet are expected to do. It is evident that the recall
affords opportunities for governmental pressure, but I had no chance
of finding out whether it is used for this purpose.

In country districts the method employed is somewhat different. It is
impossible to secure that the village Soviet shall consist of
Communists, because, as a rule, at any rate in the villages I saw,
there are no Communists. But when I asked in the villages how they
were represented on the Volost (the next larger area) or the Gubernia,
I was met always with the reply that they were not represented at all.
I could not verify this, and it is probably an overstatement, but all
concurred in the assertion that if they elected a non-Communist
representative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and,
therefore, could not attend the Volost or Gubernia Soviet. I saw a
meeting of the Gubernia Soviet of Saratov. The representation is so
arranged that the town workers have an enormous preponderance over the
surrounding peasants; but even allowing for this, the proportion of
peasants seemed astonishingly small for the centre of a very important
agricultural area.

The All-Russian Soviet, which is cons