Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/74

 CHAPTER VI

The Artistic Life of Russia

LMOST everybody in Russia is hungry and cold, and many surface critics in Russia blame the Government for conditions for which they cannot be held in any great degree responsible. It is perfectly true that in the beginning, Committee management of an industry sometimes brought that industry to a full stop. Kameneff is reported by Arthur Ransome to have explained the non-working of certain excellent soap factories on the double ground of lack of material and "because some crazy fool imagined that to take an inventory you must bring everything to a standstill." "Establish a Commission," he had previously said, "and soap instantly disappears. But put in one man to see that soap is forthcoming, and somehow or other we get it." The greater part of the blame for the hunger and privation must be placed upon those who made the wars which have afflicted Russia so long.

Nobody can criticise the Government on one point, and that their protection and encouragement of Art. The most grudging in his praise 70