Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/21

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INTRODUCTION
5

In the French Revolution the great word was "Citizen." In the Russian Revolution the great word is "Comrade!"—tovarishtch. I have written it more simply tovarish.

For the right to use here some of my articles I am indebted to the editors of Asia, the Yale Review, the Dial, the Nation, the New Republic, and the New York Evening Post.

The visitor to Soviet Russia is struck by the multitudes of posters—in factories and barracks, on walls and railway-cars, on telephone-poles—everywhere. Whatever the Soviet does, it strives to make the people understand the reason for it. If there is a new call to arms, if rations must be cut down, if new schools or courses of instruction are opened, a poster, promptly appears telling why, and how the people can co-operate. Some of these posters are crude and hurried, others are works of art. Ten of them are reproduced in this book in almost the exact colors of the originals. The cost has been borne by friends of Russia, and the reader is particularly indebted to Mrs. Jessie Y. Kimball and Mr. Aaron Berkman.

On the next page is reproduced the first issue of the first revolutionary newspaper—the official Soviet News (Izvestia). It was published on the day of the Czar's fall and every day since then.