Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/145

 highly educated, industrially efficient country like England or the United States, it does not work in Russia. There is not an ounce of democratic control in the politics of Russia. The theory is that everybody is entitled to vote. But the peasants have only one vote to the townspeople's five, or, to put it the other way, each townsman votes—if he works—but five peasants together cast one vote. All who do no work or who employ labour for profit, or who follow the priestly vocation are disfranchised. Women stand on the same footing as men in theory. But in the villages we explored we discovered a difference in eligibility to the Soviets. An illiterate man may be eligible, an illiterate woman is definitely not so.

The elections are not free. If free, in my judgment there would not be a majority for the Communists. Voting is by show of hands, so that those who vote against the candidates chosen for them by the Executive of the Communist party or sent down from the People's Commissars become marked men and women. In spite of this, the Mensheviki have secured majorities in certain districts where their candidates were well-known and needed no electioneering to carry them in; for, had they needed that their case would have been hopeless. As all the halls belong to the Government it is the simplest device in the world to engage them for the sole use of