stroy the larger bourgeois of both town and country so completely that it can be levied only once.
Trotzky is also right about the coercion. There has certainly been nothing voluntary about the payment of this "tax in kind."
Up to April 1, 1919, the Military Supply Bureau (from Petrograd alone) sent 255 military requisitioning detachments to various provinces. (The Northern Commune, No. 73, September 4, 1919.)
According to the report presented to the Moscow Conference of Soviets 30,000 men had been sent in the course of a short period, but the majority of them were incapable of performing their task, while others were themselves gross speculators. (The Moscow Pravda, No. 105, July 4, 1919.)
An atmosphere of aggression, espionage and bloody strife permeated the villages, coupled with an uncertainty as to the results of agricultural labor. The situation is best illustrated by the fact that out of the 36,500 men forming the total of the food requisitioning detachments during the period from June to December, 1918, 7,309, i.e., 20 per cent., were killed and wounded by the peasants while "collecting the grain." (Izvestia of the Food Commissariat for December, 1918.)
From the very first and while all of these activities were going on, Lenin continued his usual policy of applying plausible phrases to the Bolshevist practices. At the Communist Party Congress in March, 1919, he declared:
