Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Russian Revolution (1921).pdf/107

 least as far as it is committed by workers, is considered primarily a product of ignorance. The prevailing conception is that offenders should be educated, not punished. Many remarkable and curious "sentences" are continually being delivered in the Peoples' Courts. For example, not long ago, a worker guilty of a serious offense was ordered by the judge, with the alternative of a jail sentence, to study the scientific explanation of why such crimes as his are committed, and then to deliver a lecture to the Court six months hence on the subject. The judge outlined a course of reading for him. Another recent case was that of a worker who was caught practicing sabotage and ordered to deliver a series of lectures to workers in various Moscow factories, explaining to them the virtues of working faithfully for the Soviet Republic, and exhorting them to avoid such crimes as his. The story goes that he derived as much good from his experience as his hearers did. for he developed into an active militant. Social parasites, however, do not come off with the light sentences that usually are given to actual workers. The "education" they get is always more drastic and less sympathetic. They are considered and treated as enemies of the new social order.