ly psychological interest, of
old Trades Union leaders who have always thought of themselves as in
opposition to the Government, and feel themselves like watches without
mainsprings in their new role of Government supporters. These are men
in whom a natural intellectual stiffness makes difficult the complete
change of front which was the logical result of the revolution for which
they had been working. But beside that there is a much more interesting
opposition based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint
is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or rather in
the permanence of the victory of the town workers. They point to the
divergence in interests between the town and country populations,
and are convinced that sooner or later the peasants will alter the
government to suit themselves, when, once more, it will be a government
against which the town workers will have to defend their interests. The
Mensheviks object to the identification of the Trades Unions with the
Government apparatus on the ground that when this change, which they
expect comes about, the Trade Union movement will be so far emasculated
as to be incapable of defending the town workers against the peasants
who will then be the ruling class. Thus they attack the present Trades
Union leaders for being directly influenced by the Government in fixing
the rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a precedent from
which, when the change comes, it will be difficult to break away. The
Communists answer them by insisting that it is to everybody's interest
to pull Russia through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were
for such academic reasons to insist on their complete independence
instead of in every possible way collaborating with the Government, they
would be not only increasing the difficulties of the revolution in
its economic crisis, but actually hastening that change which the
Mensheviks, though they regard it as inevitable, cannot be supposed
to desire. This Menshevik opposition is strongest in the Ukraine. Its
strength may be judged from the figures of the Congress in Moscow
this spring when, of 1,300 delegates, over 1,000 were Communists or
sympathizers with them; 63 were Mensheviks and 200 were non-party, the
bulk of whom, I fancy, on this point would agree with the Mensheviks.

But apart from opposition to the "stratification" of the Trades Unions,
there is a cleavage cutting across the Communist Party