Page:Sergei Ilich Kaplun - The Protection of Labor in Soviet Russia (1920).pdf/32

 character, we make sure that protection of labor in Soviet Russia does actually embrace illimitably wide circles of working masses, who may be said fully to have become the "self-protectors" of the proletariat against all abnormal, difficult and harmful conditions with which the capitalistically organized public labor is connected, and which inevitably lead to a physical and mental degeneration of the working masses. We have not by far succeeded in fully realizing all the demands of labor protection. This is in the first place to be explained by the fact that, generally speaking, social measures can under no conditions be fully realized on a large scale within one or two years. In addition to the conditions prevailing in all countries, Russia was laboring under an uninterrupted three years' civil war and principally under a brutal and criminal blockade of the aggressive Entente, which prevented among other things the full realization of protection of labor. The armed counter-revolution supported by Anglo-French bayonets, bullets, and money, and at times even with human "cannon-fodder", compelled the Russian workers and peasants to strain all their forces for the defence of the Soviet system. At the same time the Western European capitalists, having economically isolated Russia from the whole world, contributed towards the extreme economic disorganization, tortured by hunger and cold the children of the proletariat, and it is clear enough that under such conditions not all the aspects of labor protection could be realized.

However, Soviet Russia is slowly but surely advancing along the road of extending and deepening real social Protection of Labor. However difficult the general position of the country is at the present time, the Russian workers nevertheless lay the cornerstone of the edifice of Labor Protection, whose problem it is to serve as the temple of healthy, beautiful and joyous labor.