the concessions whether the foreign capitalists would obtain feudal franchises with police powers of their own, or the Soviet power would keep watch on their behalf and use coercive meas- ures to keep the Russian workmen up to the mark.
Another side of the repressive policy of the Soviets in the stress of dire need was presented by the appeal to the help of cooperatives. These organizations had gone through a chequered existence under the rule of the Soviets. In the early days of 1917 and 1918, the proletarian dictators used them as convenient tools at home and abroad in order to counteract the impression that Russia was ruled by an uncompromising despotism. The leaders of the cooperatives were encouraged to preach a non-party attitude, and to concentrate their efforts on purely economic work without any admixture of political opposition. In the campaign for the reopening of trade with Soviet Russia it was usual to assert that such trade would be carried on exclusively with cooperators and not with the ill-famed Moscow Government. In 1919, however, a sharp turn was given to the wheel, and the cooperatives were " nationalized " declared to be subordinate committees of the Central Economic Council. In Sovdepia this measure was explained not only as a consequence of the general policy of Communism, but also as a necessary precaution against Social revolutionaries and Mensheviks, accused of having barri- caded themselves within the cooperatives for purposes of politi- cal agitation.
In the beginning of the year 1921 a new current set in: cooperatives were to some extent reestablished as autonomous organizations. The object was to revive them as agents of repar- tition. The Soviet decree of April 7 1921 was drawn up, however, in such a narrow and ambiguous form, that the institution re- mained doomed to mechanical subjection. The Act concerned primarily cooperatives of consumers. It allows combinations for protection and traffic only in an exceptional case and in obscure terms. As far as allowed, cooperatives are included in adminis- trative units of state origin and local delimitation. All freedom of action is curtailed and subjected to strict supervision. Lastly, the members are not voluntary associates intending to help each other according to free agreement, but people brought together by the fact of dwelling in the same locality or belonging to the same professional group.
All this shows to what extent the principle of autonomous association was felt to be antagonistic to Soviet despotism. It might be assumed that the cooperatives would either remain in- active and fictitious, or else that they would contrive to escape the jealous supervision and the step-motherly pressure exercised by the " Glavki " and " centres."
The hard facts of economic decay admitted of no controversy and could be illustrated by tabulated results. It was still im- possible in 1921 to apply the same tests to the moral aspect of the condition of Russia, although there could be no doubt that the deterioration of national life in this respect was more harmful than economic decay. The aggressive tone of Communist propa- ganda could not deceive any one who considered the efforts of the " Proletcult " with common sense. It was not the number of schools that mattered, but their efficiency and educational influence. The prophecy of Dostoievsky in The Possessed had come true: the Bolsheviks had not only squandered the reserves accumulated by orderly government, and scattered some 2,000,- ooo of the best educated Russians across the world they had poisoned the mainsprings of national morals for generations to come. One or two of the conclusions of Lord Emmott's Committee may be appropriately cited in this connexion; their studied moderation makes them particularly effective:
" Child education in Soviet Russia is based upon an attempt to dissolve the ties hitherto existing between parent and child, and children are removed from the care of their parents soon after birth we have received no information on the moral and physical effects of this policy. Education, both child and adult, is not merely secular, but directly anti-religious in bias."
As a specimen of the educational practice of Soviet Russia we will quote from the experience of a leading professor of the medi- cal faculty of the university of Moscow, published under the
pseudonym of " Donskry " in the Archives of the Russian Revolu- tion, I (Berlin, 1921) :
" By order of the commissars 5,000 applicants had been admitted as freshmen in the medical faculty, although the lecture-rooms were constructed for 250. Representations had been made that it was impossible to admit persons who had received no appropriate in- struction, but they were disregarded. The only thing required was that applicants should have attained the age of 16 years the rules as to admission did not mention even the necessity of knowing how to read and write. The crowd of students dwindled to small num- bers very soon, however, on account of the absence of heating during the winter and of the almost insuperable difficulty in getting materials for experimental teaching."
BOOKS OF REFERENCE. Claude Anet, Through the Russian Rev- olution (1917); Lujo Brentano, Russland der kranke Mann (1918); E. J. Dillon, The Eclipse of Russia (1919) ; A. Iswolsky, The Memoirs of Alexander Iswolsky (edited and translated by C. L. Seeger, 1920) ; Carl Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1920); A. Keren- sky, The Prelude to Bolshevism the Kornilov Rebellion (1919); Raoul Labry, L'Industrie Russe et la Revolution (1919), Une Le- gislation communiste (1920); M. A. Landau-Aldanoff, Lenine (1919); V. Lenin, " Left Wing " Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920), Land Revolution in Russia (1919), The Great Initiative (1920); Roger L6vy, Trotsky (1920); Francis MacCullagh, A Prisoner of the Reds (1921); P. N. Milinkov, History of the Second Rus- sian Revolution ( 1920) ; Bolshevism an International Danger (1920) ; K. Nabokov, Ordeal of a Diplomat (1921); A. Nekludoff, Diplomatic Reminiscences before and during the World War, 1911-1917 (1920); New Russia (weekly publication, 1920); Boris Nold6, Le Regne de Lenin (1920) ; R. W. Postgate, The Bolshevik Theory (1920) ; Maurice Palfologue, " La Russie des Tsars pendant la grande Guerre," La Revue des Deux Mondes (Jan.-May 1921); M. A. Ransome, Six Weeks in Russia (1919), The Crisis in Russia (1921) ; Report (Political and Economic) of the Committee to Collect Information on Russia (1921); C. E. Russell, Unchained Russia (1918), The Russian Economist (N I, 2 and 3 periodical 1920-1), The Russian Common- wealth; Alexander Schreiber, L' Organisation judicaire de la Russie des Soviets (1918) ; Ethel Snowden, Through Bolsltevik Russia (1920), Soviet Russia (weekly publication, vols. I. and II. 1919-20); John Spargo, The Psychology of Bolshevism (1919), The Greatest Failure in all History (1920), Bolshevism, the Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy (1919), Struggling Russia (weekly magazine, in progress 1919); Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace (1918), Our Revolution (1918), War or Revolution (1918), A Paradise in this World (1920) ; The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk (1919) ; Emile Vandervelde, Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution (1918); Maurice Verstraete, Mes Cahiers Russes (1920); V. Victoroff- Toporoff, La premiere Annee de la Revolution Russe (1919); Sir Paul Vinogradoff, Self-Government in Russia (1915), The Recon- struction of Russia (1919) ; H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows (1920) ; Ariadna Tyrkova Williams, From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk (1919); Robert Wilton, Russia's Agony (1918), The Last Days of the Romanovs (1920); S. Zagorsky, La Republique des Soviets, Bilan economique (1921). (P.Vl.)
RUSSKY, NIKOLAI (1854-1918), Russian general, was born in 1854. On leaving the infantry military school in St. Petersburg in 1874 he was given a commission in the Guard. Graduating from the Academy of the General Staff in 1881, he served as an officer of the general staff in the Kiev military district, and by 1896, after commanding an infantry regiment, had reached general's rank. During the war with Japan in 1904-5 he was the head of the staff of the II. Army, and planned the offensive carried out by Gen. Grippenberg which led to the prematurely abandoned offensive of Sandepu. In 1909 he was assistant commander of the Kiev military district. He enjoyed the special friendship of the War Minister, Sukhomlinov. At the beginning of the campaign of 1914 he commanded the III. Army, which attacked in Galicia, and after the vicissitudes of the bloody heavy battles about Krasnik and Rava Ruska advanced to Lvov (Lemberg), through which it passed in the further advance to the San-Dniester line. The dramatic entry of the III. Army into Lvov created for Gen. Russky a popularity and prestige out of proportion to the real importance of his success. In Oct. 1914 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the north-western and afterwards of the northern "front" (i.e. group of armies), but, suffering from very bad health, he had on more than one occasion to leave the front for a time. He continued, however, to hold the command, and it was at his headquarters that the final scenes of Nicholas II. 's reign and his abdication took place in March 1917. Soon after the Revolution Russky retired and in 1918 he was reported killed by the Bolsheviks.
