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held back the Constituent Assembly and even started a series of repressive measures against the Land Committees.
Experience teaches that there is no middle course possible. Either all power to the Soviets, centrally and locally, all the land to the peasants at once, before the decision of the Constituent Assembly, or the landlords and capitalists will thwart everything, restore the rule of the landlords, arouse the resentment of the peasants, and so aggravate the situation as to cause a regrettably violent agrarian revolt.
It is the same story, with the capitalists, who with the aid of Palchinsky prevent any serious control over production, the merchants preventing monopolization of bread, and even Pechekhonov's attempt to establish the principle of a regulated democratic bread distribution.
In Russia now the question is not to invent new reforms, to undertake cherished transformations. Nothing of the kind. Yet that is how the question is put—and put knowingly, falsely by the capitalists, the Petressovs, the Plekhanovs who clamor against the «introduction of Socialism» and the «dictatorship of the proletariat». In reality the situation in Russia is such that the unequalled sufferings of the war, the unparalleled danger of imminent ruin and famine, have themselves dictated the way out, have themselves pointed out the imperative necessity, of these reforms: bread monopoly, control of pro-
