ne can die is in carrying out a decision of the
Central Committee; such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an
enormously strong embodiment of human will, an instrument of struggle
capable of working something very like miracles. It can be and is
controlled like an army in battle. It can mobilize its members, 10 per
cent. of them, 50 per cent., the local Committees choosing them, and
send them to the front when the front is in danger, or to the railways
and repair shops when it is decided that the weakest point is that of
transport. If its only task were to fight those organizations of loosely
knit and only momentarily united interests which are opposed to
it, those jerry-built alliances of Reactionaries with Liberals,
United-Indivisible-Russians with Ukrainians, Agrarians with
Sugar-Refiners, Monarchists with Republicans, that task would long ago
have been finished. But it has to fight something infinitely stronger
than these in fighting the economic ruin of Russia, which, if it is too
strong, too powerful to be arrested by the Communists, would make
short work of those who are without any such fanatic single-minded and
perfectly disciplined organization.

A CONFERENCE AT JAROSLAVL

I have already suggested that although the small Central Committee of
the Communist Party does invariably get its own way, there are essential
differences between this Dictatorship and the dictatorship of, for
example, a General. The main difference is that whereas the General
merely writes an order about which most people hear for the first time
only when it is promulgated, the Central Committee prepares the way
for its dictation by a most elaborate series of discussions and counter
discussions throughout the country, whereby it wins the bulk of the
Communist Party to its opinion, after which it proceeds through local
and general congresses to do the same with the Trades Unions. This done,
a further series of propaganda meetings among the people actually to be
affected smooths the way for the introduction of whatever new measure
is being carried through at the moment. All this talk, besides lessening
the amount of physical force necessary in carrying out a decision, must
also avoid, at least in part, the deadening effect that would be caused
by mere compulsory obedience to the unexplained orders of a military
dictator. Of the reality of the Communist Dictatorship I have no sort
of doubt. But its methods are such as tend t