Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/75

 presents, nevertheless, the most varied and wonderful collection of elective bodies, deliberating night and day, in all conceivable places and on all possible questions. There is a "Soviet" of officers and soldiers in each barracks, and in each unit at the front from a company to the group of armies. There is in every town a "Soviet" of workmen and soldiers. There is at least one congress of peasants representing in its turn thousands of local assemblies. There are Doumas in the towns and suburbs, not to mention the party congresses or the congresses of nationalities or professions. In short, the political life is, as it were, broken up, scattered in a veritable "dust of parliaments." How then could the factories stand aloof from the general movement? They also have their deliberative assemblies. They have even more than one kind. It would be very difficult to enumerate all the various committees that have seen the day and to indicate in what way each one came into existence, its method of election, its composition, and its precise functions. We must keep on general lines. In most of the factories, then, there are: