on a street car when a fine looking fellow entered and spotted us as foreigners. He at once launched into an attack on the Soviet Government in Russian, which was duly translated to us. He was a technician and bitterly opposed to the whole new scheme of things. He had just got his ration for the week, and he unrolled it before us with the most sneering remarks about its black bread and horsemeat sausags, and the system of society that could not furnish the people better food. Some buildings along the street that had been stripped of their fittings for fuel the winter before furnished further grounds for attacks upon the Communist Party and the Government. We estimated that in the United States similar remarks about the American Government, no matter what the provocation, would have netted the speaker at least half a dozen years in jail. Yet all that happened to this fellow in Russia was that after he had raged on for some time a Communist worker in the rear of the car remonstrated with him and tried to explain the cause of the food and fuel shortages. Merely a wordy war developed. In Russia I heard people criticise their Government more freely than in any country I have ever been in.
Two more typical incidents from important congresses: The first from the recent congress in Moscow of the Moscow State Soviet, the largest in Russia. No sooner had this body gone into session than six Menshevik, Anarchist, and Social Revolutionist delegates, one after the other, mounted the platform and denounced the Government for its alleged harsh treatment of their party comrades taken prisoner during the Kronstad rebellion shortly before. I expected to see these protestors squelched immediately. But this did not happen. Although the arrested men had been caught with arms in their hands, and in many other countries under similar circumstances would have been shot forthwith, still the protest was taken seriously and a committee appointed, containing several of the protestors, to investigate the prisons complained of and to submit a full report back to the body as quickly as possible. I could not help but compare this fair recognition of the rebels with the brutal steamrollering outlaw strikers and other unwelcome minorities usually get in American trade union conventions. The second incident occurred at the congress of the Red Trade
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