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Many industrial experts of the old regime are again managing their plants and sabotage by such managers has ceased. Loafing by the workmen during work hours has been overcome. (Appendix, p. 57.) SOCIAL CONDITIONS The destructive phase of the revolution is over and all the energy of the Government is turned to constructive work. The terror has ceased. All power of judgment has been taken away from the extraordinary commission for suppression of the counter-revolution, which now merely accuses suspected counter-revolutionaries, who are tried by the regular, established, legal tribunals. Executions are extremely rare. Good order has been established. The streets are safe. Shooting has ceased. There are few robberies. Prostitution has disappeared from sight. Family life has been unchanged by the revolution, the canard in regard to "nationalization of women" notwithstanding. (Appendix, p. 58.) The theaters, opera, and ballet are performing as in peace. Thousands of new schools have been opened in all parts of Russia and the Soviet Government seems to have done more for the education of the Russian people in a year and a half than czardom did in 50 years. (Appendix, p. 59.) POLITICAL SITUATION The Soviet form of government is firmly established. Perhaps the most striking fact in Russia today is the general support which is given the government by the people in spite of their starvation. Indeed, the people lay the blame for their distress wholly on the blockade and on the governments which maintain it. The Soviet form of government seems to have become to the Russian people the symbol of their revolution. Unquestionably it is a form of government which lends itself to gross abuse and tyranny but it meets the demand of the moment in Russia and it has acquired so great a hold on the imagination of the common people that the women are ready to starve and the young men to die for it. The position of the communist party (formerly Bolsheviki) is also very strong. Blockade and intervention have caused the chief opposition parties, the right social revolutionaries and the menshiviki, to give temporary support to the communists. These opposition parties have both made formal statements against the blockade, intervention, and the support of antisoviet governments by the allied and associated governments. Their leaders, Volsky and Martov, are most vigorous in their demands for the immediate raising of the blockade
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