we must build,
in harmony and in peace--not by force, as the Russian Bolsheviki
want--a new and a better social order under the guardianship of
which the people may develop peacefully and securely.

I have been explaining to you my ideas, expecting that you will
publish them. You over in America are not able to imagine how
horrible the life in Russia at the present time is. The period
after the French Revolution surely must have been as a life in a
paradise compared with this. Hunger, brigandage, arrests, and
murders are such every-day events that nobody pays any attention
to them. Freedom of assemblage, association, free speech, and free
press is a far-away ideal which is altogether destroyed at the
present time. Arbitrary rule and terror are raging everywhere,
and, what is worst of all, not only the terror proclaimed by the
government, but individual terror as well.

My greetings to all friends and comrades.

OSKAR TOKOI.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Plechanov never formally joined the Menshevik faction, I believe, but
his writings showed that he favored that faction and the Mensheviki
acknowledged his intellectual leadership.

[2] They had gained one member since the election.

[3] Quoted by Litvinov, _The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Rise and Meaning_,
p. 22. Litvinov, it must be remembered, was the Bolshevik Minister to Great
Britain. His authority to speak for the Bolsheviki is not to be questioned.

[4] The date is Russian style--March 12th, our style.

[5] _The State in Russia--Old and New_, by Leon Trotzky; _The Class
Struggle_, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 213-221.

[6] This document is printed in full at the end of the volume as Appendix.
I

[7] The author of the present study is responsible for the use of italics
in this document.

[8] Litvinov, _The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Rise and Meaning_, p. 30.

[9] Lenine is not quite accurate in his statement of Marx's views nor quite
fair in stating the position of the "opportunists." The argument of Marx in
_The Civil War in France_ is not that the proletariat must "break down" the
governmental machinery, but that it must _modify_ it and _adapt_ it to the
class needs. This is something quite different, of course. Moreover, it is
the basis of the policy of the "opportunists." The Mensheviki and other
moderate Socialists in Russia were trying to _modify_ and _adapt_ the
political state.

[10] The r