Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/185

 faced by so many and such frightful difficulties could have made it a success. Alien invasion, internal disorder, counter-revolutionary activities, scarcities of necessaries of all sorts, the blockade of Russia—all these things made it quite impossible for the Russian Revolutionary Government with the best brains and the finest intentions in the world to carry out more than a fraction of its programme in a very imperfect manner. The wonder is not that they have failed to establish Socialism, but that they have successfully accomplished so much that is good.

But the person who maintains that so much has been done and done admirably that the other nations should immediately copy is making just as big a mistake in the other direction. Much might advantageously be imitated by countries where the war has created similar problems. Russia has communised her housing accommodation, so that now everybody has shelter and nobody need be overcrowded. This is all to the good. From such things the overcrowded towns and cities of Europe might take a lesson from Moscow; but unless and until the new institutions of Russia, political, industrial, and social, prove themselves to be of more social value than the similar institutions of other lands, the men are doing a disservice to their country who advocate the slavish copying of Russia.