Bolshevists who, in addition to being indoctrinated with this Bolshevist contempt for truth are, almost without exception, wofully ignorant of Russia, are often still more fanciful.
It is the vast extent and persistence of this propaganda smoke-screen that has obscured Soviet Russia from our eyes, and not the lack of well authenticated facts or any incomprehensible mystery in Soviet Russia or in Bolshevism.
The enormous role played by mendacious propaganda in the Bolshevist political system arises only in part from the character of the propaganda and in part from the monopoly they have established in the control of education and the press (including the monopoly of paper) together with their prohibition of free speech and assemblage for all opposition parties.
It may be doubted if any State Socialist writer has hitherto even conceived an Utopian system under which all printed matter whatever is controlled by the State. Not only have the Communists set up such a State control but they have established at the same time a control over the state by the very small group which dominates the Communist Party, as we show in following chapters. We read in a recent despatch:
All payments for newspapers, books, magazines, pamphlets and pictures is abolished in a decree of the People's Commissaries. Printed matter may be distributed among organizations and institutions, but not sold to the public.
In other words a small group has undertaken to establish a complete monopoly over the intellectual output of
