kov, a member of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party,
has worked for a long time in the ranks of this party as a
publicist and organizer and propagandist, especially among the
peasants. She has known long years of prison, of Siberia, of
exile. Before and during the war until the beginning of the
Revolution she lived as a political fugitive in Paris. While being
a partizan convinced of the necessity of national defense of
invaded countries against the imperialistic aggression of German
militarism--in which she is in perfect accord with the members of
our party such as Stepan Sletof, Iakovlef, and many other
voluntary Russian republicans, all dead facing the enemy in the
ranks of the French army--the citizen Rakitnikov belonged to the
international group. I affirm that her sincere and matured
testimony cannot be suspected of partizanship or of dogmatic
partiality against the Bolsheviki, who, as you know, tried to
cover their follies and their abominable crimes against the plan
of the Russian people, and against all the other Socialist
parties, under the lying pretext of internationalist ideas, ideas
which they have, in reality, trampled under foot and betrayed.

Yours fraternally,
E. ROUBANOVITCH,
_June 28, 1918._
_Member of the B.S.I._

"The Bolsheviki who promised liberty, equality, peace, etc., have not been
ashamed to follow in the footsteps of Czarism. It is not liberty; it is
tyranny." (Extract from a letter of a young Russian Socialist, an
enthusiast of liberty who died all too soon.)

I

_Organization of the Peasants after the Revolution in Soviets of Peasant
Delegates_

A short time after the Revolution of February the Russian peasants grouped
themselves in a National Soviet of Peasant Delegates at the First Congress
of the Peasants of All-Russia, which took place at Petrograd. The Executive
Committee of this Soviet was elected. It was composed of well-known leaders
of the Revolutionary Socialist party and of peasant delegates sent from the
country. Without adhering officially to the Revolutionary Socialist party,
the Soviet of Peasant Delegates adopted the line of conduct of this party.
While co-ordinating its tactics with the party's, it nevertheless remained
an organization completely independent. The Bolsheviki, who at this
Congress attempted to subject the peasants to their influence, had not at
the time