shops. Power is divided into a legislative and an executive one. The sending of deputies from the workmen to parliament once in four years gives rise to the fiction that workmen share in political work. In truth even the deputies do not share in it, because they talk. The real rulers are the members of a caste, of a social bu- reaucracy." 1
One might think that the rule of Soviets was free from all fictions and substitution of power.
Organization of Supplies and of the Army. The greater part of the meetings of the Fifth Congress was taken up by the dis- cussion of two topics of primary practical importance the organization of supplies and the organization of the army. The first of these questions gave rise to a violent conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries of the Left. For the latter the socialization of the land was a measure of para- mount importance for the future of Russia, and they wanted it carried out with corresponding regularity and deliberation, in conformity with the wishes and the interests of the peasant class as a whole. Spiridonova, the leader of this faction in the Congress, objected strongly to the anarchistic way in which land was grabbed by the peasants, and reproached Lenin with his cynical declaration that as the peasants had seized the land they might divide it as best they could. As a result of this cyn- ical indifference the country-side had been a cockpit in which villagers and householders were arming and fighting for the pos- session of coveted plots. These rural feuds were not distasteful to the Bolsheviks, who were intent on crushing all well-to-do and thrifty elements of the population as representing the hated bourgeoisie. In practice they wanted corn supplies, knew that some were in the hands of the wealthier peasants and did not find any other means of getting at them but the raising of the poor peasants against the richer ones. The result was the creation of " Committees of the Indigent," whose special pur- pose was to ascertain who had put by any supplies and to expropriate these " tight-fists." Part of the loot would go to replenish the bins of the Red Government. This was called the " Dictatorship of the Indigent," and Lenin boasted that the Bolsheviks had succeeded in driving a wedge into the compact mass of the peasantry.
The Social Revolutionaries opposed the Bolsheviks in terror- ist measures as well as in the case of supplies. In the interval between the Fourth and the Fifth Congresses the Central Executive Committee had founded and organized the " Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal " from its own ranks. The Social Revo- lutionaries had consented in the beginning to take part in the constitution of this Tribunal, but they seceded from it in con- nexion with the first trial, when Adml. Shtchaskny had been condemned to death. They protested altogether against the reintroduction of capital punishment, although they did not scruple to participate in bloody repressions of risings and conspir- acies. The same difference of opinion reappeared in connexion with the reorganization of the army. Trotsky came to the Congress with a complete programme for the reconstruction of the Red army which amounted to a return to the iron discipline of the ancient regime with a change of provost marshals. " Ote- toi de Id,, queje m'y metis " was the approved maxim of the time, and, after having preached and agitated for years against the death penalty and other cruel punishments inflicted " by order of the Tsar," Trotsky found it simple and convenient to adopt all these Draconian measures and to employ former officers of the Old Army to enforce them as long as there was not a sufficient number of Red commanders and officers to provide the necessary personnel. The Social Revolutionaries were again true to .theory, and denounced this change of front with bitter indigna- tion. Their opponents retorted that it was absurd to reject the death penalty when inflicted by the courts while practising terrorism and shooting people at sight. The Bolsheviks wanted a disciplined army, and were not disposed to be fettered by sentimental considerations or the reproach of inconsistency. These conflicts coincided with the assassination of Count Mir- bach and the suppression of a Social Revolutionary rising on Mos-
1 Bukharin, " The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship," The October Upheaval and Proletarian Dictatorship, pp. 19, 20.
cow: they ended in a disastrous way for the Social Revolution- aries, whose leaders were either shot or imprisoned.
In the interval between the Fifth and the Sixth Congresses the Central Executive Committee had to settle the foundations of two most important sides of social life the organization of justice and the establishment of school education. Of course legislation in these respects was by no means restricted to the action of the Central Executive Committee in 1918: measures were taken both before and after, but our account must for the sake of convenience be concentrated around the laws and decrees of that year.
Administration of Justice. Taking first the province of justice, we may notice to begin with the main principle of the Judicature: it is the substitution for the various courts of professional jus- tice of popular courts consisting of three judges a chairman and two assessors. The first of these was supposed to have some knowledge of legal subjects, though he need not be a trained lawyer; the assessors represent the lay community, and the framers of the new rules give emphatic expression to the wish that the common sense and the practical spirit of the lay mem- bers should prevail over technical considerations and a super- stitious regard for laws enacted by overthrown governments. They refer with disapprobation to the bad influence of former lawyers who had found their way into the new courts and com- plicate their decisions by a casuistic treatment of the subject in the old style. The publications of the Narkomjust (People's Commissariat of Justice) gave unstinted praise to decisions free from the trammels of juridical dialectic and book-learning. The hope is expressed that the popular courts will open up new avenues of legal thought by the motives and arguments of their decisions and thus create a new and beneficial source of law.
One of the leading representatives of Soviet jurisprudence, Hochberg, compares the position of public and private law in the new system, and comes to the conclusion that the latter is the creation of the bourgeois social order, as it supposes an abstention of judicial authority from interference with the contents of claims and assumes an appearance of impartial indifference. This reminds one of the attitude of Pilate washing his hands, as regards the truth or justice of the verdict. Civil law is decentralizing, anarchistic, derived from a fiction of free- dom, while public law aims at concentration and cooperation, and that is the law suitable to a socialistic commonwealth.
Another article on Soviet jurisprudence dwells on the total transformation of criminal law, and the author is not less nihil- istic in his appreciation of this branch of legal organization than his colleague Hochberg was as regards private law; indeed, one branch is not more necessary than the other:
" There can be no idea of retribution, because the modern scientific view does not recognize any free or responsible will. Detcrminists cannot build their law on the idea of punishment. It is certain that crime is the product of social conditions, and therefore cannot be imputed to any single individual. This l>eing so, there is no reason to despair of the disappearance of crime and of the coercive law directed against it. Menger halted half way: he thought that in- fringements of rights are to some extent the result of human na- ture, of inherent self-will. But serious infringements of rights pro- ceed from class distinctions and class antagonisms. There will be no burglary or theft when there is no private property protected by law: all serious motives for homicide and other crimes of violence will disappear when men are all comrades and there is no wealth or privilege to excite hatred. Whatever occasions there may remain for inordinate self-will will be rare anomalies and can be treated as negligible quantities."
In spite of all these enchanting perspectives it is recognized that the stage of a lawless Elysium has not yet been reached, and in concession to human frailty certain prohibitions and rules have to be maintained in the epoch of transition. This epoch may last for a long time, because the new order can be secured only by psychological transformation, and psychological processes take many years to mature.
Meanwhile speculators, traders, hooligans and counter- revolutionary agitators have to be coerced, and this is the chief business of popular courts, reinforced in dangerous cases by the ruthless action of the Extraordinary Commission. Trade was made a punishable offence and threatened with most severe
