Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/143

 Rh machinery, boots, clothing, and everything in which the British Labor Delegation found the peasants so deplorably lacking—so far as these things exist at all in the country.

From the side of the population of the small towns there will be a certain amount of "free trade" with these few lucky peasants who have a surplus above the "taxation in kind." This trade has also gone on steadily, though the Soviets have hitherto branded it as criminal "speculation" and executed many persons accordingly.

Already the so-called "co-operatives" are setting their own prices for the scythes, sickles, and other imported tools which have obtained such a high value in the country-side because of their scarcity. There is no competition, the Government has a monopoly, and can set its own prices.

To call the local governmental trading posts "co-operatives" because they consist of remnants of the organization of the co-operatives of the past is the grossest deception. At one time, and until a year or so ago, the co-operatives were the most remarkable native product of the genius of the Russian people. Not only has the Soviet Government destroyed them but it has given no indication whatever of reviving them in the shape of what the rest of the world calls "co-operatives." It will be recalled that the Soviets refused a large relief expedition by the Entente powers for the sole reason that it was proposed to put these supplies in the hands of the real co-operatives. It was—then March 20, 1920—that the Soviets dissolved that organization. How complete the work of dissolution was we may see from the