Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/13

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Introduction
9

of voting power for peasant and artisan. No reply had been received from Moscow at the time of our visit. I afterwards discovered in Moscow a sternly unrelenting attitude on the question of revolution by violence.

In Stockholm the great bulk of the Labour movement is against Bolshevism, although a small section approves it. We behaved with strict impartiality to both kinds, and received and gave hospitality indiscriminately.

The same story was repeated at Reval. And in common fairness to the Bolsheviki it must be admitted that they have a grievance against the Moderates of Reval as great as any grievance the Moderates may have against them. They appear to attack each other with equal ferocity.

I have not attempted in these pages to argue right down to the last syllable any one of the great questions which are pivotal to modern political controversies. Other writers have done that, or will do it. Russian Communist literature circulates abundantly in this country for all those whose interest in the Russian experiment lies deep. I have sought only to give a series of pen-pictures of Russian life under the Bolsheviki, and to state interesting facts about that small piece of mighty Russia which it was my great privilege to see. In choosing to do this I shall have satisfied neither of the two sorts