to have been found.

Certainly, the destructive phase of the revolution in Russia
is over. Constructive work has begun.

We saw this everywhere. And we saw order, and though we
inquired for them, we heard of no disorders. Prohibition is
universal and absolute. Robberies have been reduced in
Petrograd below normal of large cities. Warned against
danger before we went in, we felt safe. Prostitution has
disappeared with its clientele, who have been driven out by
the "no-work-no-food law," enforced by the general want and
the labor-card system. Loafing on the job by workers and
sabotage by upper-class directors, managers, experts and
clerks have been overcome. Russia has settled down to work.

The soviet form of government, which sprang up so
spontaneously all over Russia, is established.

This is not a paper thing; not an invention. Never planned,
it has not yet been written into the forms of law. It is not
even uniform. It is full of faults and difficulties; clumsy,
and in its final development it is not democratic. The
present Russian Government is the most autocratic government
I have ever seen. Lenin, head of the Soviet Government, is
farther removed from the people than the Tsar was, or than
any actual ruler in Europe is.

The people in a shop or an industry are a soviet. These
little informal Soviets elect a local soviet; which elects
delegates to the city or country (community) soviet; which
elects delegates to the government (State) soviet. The
government Soviets together elect delegates to the
All-Russian Soviet, which elects commissionaires (who
correspond to our Cabinet, or to a European minority). And
these commissionaires finally elect Lenin. He is thus five
or six removes from the people. To form an idea of his
stability, independence, and power, think of the process
that would have to be gone through with by the people to
remove him and elect a successor. A majority of all the
Soviets in all Russia would have to be changed in personnel
or opinion, recalled, or brought somehow to recognize and
represent the altered will of the people.

No student of government likes the soviet as it has
developed. Lenin himself doesn't. He calls it a
dictatorship, and he opposed it at first. When I was in
Russia i