Excerpt from The Russian Workers' Republic

This book is the fruit of two months spent in the autumn of 1920 in Soviet Russia. A visit to Russia is no longer a difficult adventure. I obtained a British passport to Esthonia and a Russian permit quite easily. Travelling was uneventful, and less uncomfortable than I had found it in Poland, Austria and Germany the year before. I met invariably with kindness and courtesy, and made many acquaint ances, who represented every phase of opinion. White exiles in London had told me that I should be watched, followed and personally conducted Wherever I went, and that no opponent of the Communists would dare to talk with me or approach me. None of these predictions came true. I went about alone Whenever and wherever I wished. I saw the leaders of the opposition alone in Moscow. In the provinces the local leaders of the opposition sought me out. Even in trains and libraries, strangers would enter into conversation and express them selves quite freely. Let me say at once that While I heard much criticism in Russia, I never heard there the Wild exaggerations in which exiles indulge abroad. So far from receiving too much help from official quarters in my, inquiries, I could sometimes have wished for more. There is much kindness but very little method in the dealings of the Bolsheviks with foreign journalists.

I divided my time between Petrograd, Moscow, Minsk and the Western war-front and the central province of Vladimir. Moscow is still incorrigibly Russian, which means that it is unpunctual and unbusinesslike. The distances are great and the communications primitive. The telephone works badly and is little used. The Press reflects only one point of view. One may spend a week in Moscow and learn less than one could gather in two days in Berlin. Everyone, moreover, is overworked, and officials, after the Congress of the Third International, were rather tired, I suspect, of foreigners. In any event, I was anxious to see something of the provinces and of country life. I chose Vladimir for a short visit, and found it so interesting that I remained for two weeks. I learned in these two weeks more about Russia than in the other six. To investigate the life of a small town is a manageable problem. You can walk all over it without fatigue. Also, I could get conveyances to visit the villages, a thing I only once achieved from Moscow. Above all, everyone was interested in the presence of a. Stranger. Vladimir had seen no foreigner of any sort for six long years, and it was as eager to question me as I was to study it. This mutual inclination led to a stimulating exchange of thought and information. My reasons for choosing Vladimir were partly that it combined industry with agriculture, and partly that it had escaped the ravages of the civil war. I wanted to see the normal development of Soviet institutions after three years of revolution.

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