Page:John Rickman - An Eye-witness from Russia.djvu/8

 ing an experiment which should teach the people a lesson and satisfy the minds of the workmen with respect to these innumerable little ideas which had irritated them because they had been neglected. Accordingly the railway passing through every county in the Samara government, at any rate, was placed under the full control of the county Soviet. No train could pass along that line without the permission of the county Soviet, and the head stationmaster in the county was made Commissary of Railways.

Complete disorganisation resulted—which was what the Bolsheviks wanted. We were told by one such Commissary that the boiler-cleaners had devised a new way for cleaning the engines—one of the little ideas that had rankled long in their minds. He gave them full permission to go ahead and clean the engines in their own way. Within a week the engine-drivers complained; so he called a meeting—one of millions of such meetings—and let the engine-drivers and engine-cleaners settle the matter in their own way. Within a day the old system of engine-cleaning was restored, to the complete satisfaction of both. In this way the Bolsheviks were building up again a stable railway system, based not so much on orders from Moscow which had to be obeyed as on motives for good work and co-operation which carried their own inducement.

On the land question the Bolsheviks and the peasants were of differing opinions. The former wished to manage the large estates with agricultural experts and the latest machinery that could be obtained; the latter wished to own the land communally, according to the village custom. Nationalisation of land has never appealed to the peasants; village ownership has almost always seemed to them the proper course. There might have been a serious division between the Bolsheviks and the peasants had the matter come to a head, but as there was not enough rye or wheat for planting in the peasants' own allotments the question of what was to be done with the large estates did not arise.

Food committees were established in every district for the purpose of commandeering food and for its just distribution, and revenue was raised by the Soviet by means of commandeering stores and selling part of the produce so taken at a high price. Another source of revenue was a capital levy, another by taxation