It is said--and all I saw confirmed
the assertion--that the peasants are better off than they ever were
before. I saw no one--man, woman, or child--who looked underfed in the
villages. The big landowners are dispossessed, and the peasants have
profited. But the towns and the army still need nourishing, and the
Government has nothing to give the peasants in return for food except
paper, which the peasants resent having to take. It is a singular fact
that Tsarist roubles are worth ten times as much as Soviet roubles,
and are much commoner in the country. Although they are illegal,
pocket-books full of them are openly displayed in the market places. I
do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect a Tsarist
restoration: they are merely actuated by custom and dislike of
novelty. They have never heard of the blockade; consequently they
cannot understand why the Government is unable to give them the
clothes and agricultural implements that they need. Having got their
land, and being ignorant of affairs outside their own neighbourhood,
they wish their own village to be independent, and would resent the
demands of any Government whatever.
Within the Communist Party there are, of course, as always in a
bureaucracy, different factions, though hitherto the external pressure
has prevented disunion. It seemed to me that the personnel of the
bureaucracy could be divided into three classes. There are first the
old revolutionists, tested by years of persecution.
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