Indirect Elections.
These elections, poor as they are and so readily liable to change from an election into a conspiracy, are not for the purpose of sending representatives to the Central Government. The elections of the Deputies to the All-Russian or Central Congress are indirect. The peasants have three or four grades of delegates between them and the All-Russian Congress. The city workmen are two or three steps removed from their deputies in the Congress. Nor is the All-Russian Congress, far removed as it is from the people, itself the real Government. According to the Constitution, the Congress is "the supreme power of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic."[1] But it meets only twice a year for short sittings; to supply the intervening period, it elects an executive committee which is "the supreme legislative, executive and controlling organ,"[2] and in the periods between the sessions of the Congress, is the supreme power of the country.[3] The acting power thus, for most of the year, is another step removed from the voters.
The Real Government.
Still another step intervenes. The Executive Committee appoints Commissars "for the purpose of general management of the affairs" of the Republic.[4] Theoretically, they are under the control of the Executive Committee, but from various sources it is learned that they, who are still another step removed. from the voters, are the real rulers of Russia. One of them, Lenin, the President of the Council of Commissars, is their chief, and, according to Lincoln Steffins in a report favorable
