Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/10

 10 the village gatherings of the peasants. Theoretically it is a Government of all the propertyless, or more strictly, of all who do productive work and hire no one to gain greater profits. Article 4, Chapter XIII, No. 65, of the Constitution reads:

"The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely:

"(a) Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an increase in profits.

"(b) Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

"(c) Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers.

"(d) Monks and Clergy of all denominations.

"(e) Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps, and the Okhrana (Tsar's secret service), also members of the former reigning dynasty."

According to these laws, a farmer or shopkeeper employing even one person is without a vote. It is what one man has called a "limited democracy," which, of course, means no democracy at all.

The elections are mass elections and "are conducted according to custom on days fixed by the local Soviets," The right of recall; and of a new election carried on in the same way for another deputy are also given. These features of the Soviets' elections—mass elections, local determination of the time of election, and the recall of the deputies by mass elections locally decided on, serve very well the purposes of the class-conscious and militant city workmen and poorest peasants. They make it easy for a small and active group to control the elections; just as, for example, mass primaries in this country are easily controlled. Lenin, to prove the Socialist character of the Soviet Republic, emphasizes that through the