owards the awakening of a
political consciousness which, if and when normal conditions-of feeding
and peace, for example-are attained, will make dictatorship of any kind
almost impossible.

To illustrate these methods of the Dictatorship, I cannot do better than
copy into this book some pages of my diary written in March of this year
when I was present at one of the provincial conferences which were held
in preparation of the All-Russian Communist Conference at the end of the
month.

At seven in the evening Radek called for me and took me to the Jaroslavl
station, where we met Larin, whom I had known in 1918. An old Menshevik,
he was the originator and most urgent supporter of the decree annulling
the foreign debts. He is a very ill man, partially paralyzed, having to
use both hands even to get food to his mouth or to turn over the leaves
of a book. In spite of this he is one of the hardest workers in Russia,
and although his obstinacy, his hatred of compromise, and a sort of
mixed originality and perverseness keep him almost permanently at
loggerheads with the Central Committee, he retains everybody's respect
because of the real heroism with which he conquers physical disabilities
which long ago would have overwhelmed a less unbreakable spirit. Both
Radek and Larin were going to the Communist Conference at Jaroslavl
which was to consider the new theses of the Central Committee of the
party with regard to Industrial Conscription. Radek was going to defend
the position of the Central Committee, Larin to defend his own. Both
are old friends. As Radek said to me, he intended to destroy Larin's
position, but not, if he could help it, prevent Larin being nominated
among the Jaroslavl delegates to All-Russian Conference which was in
preparation. Larin, whose work keeps him continually traveling, has his
own car, specially arranged so that his uninterrupted labor shall have
as little effect as possible on his dangerously frail body. Radek and I
traveled in one of the special cars of the Central Executive Committee,
of which he is a member.

The car seemed very clean, but, as an additional precaution, we began
by rubbing turpentine on our necks and wrists and angles for the
discouragement of lice, now generally known as "Semashki" from the name
of Semashko, the Commissar of Public Health, who wages unceasing war
for their destruction as the carriers of typhus germs. I rubbed the
turpentine so energetically into my neck