To-day the peasants are no longer so much interested in the parties as they were in the beginning of the revolution. They are still for the Soviets and will probably always remain in favor of them, but the parties are not of such a stable nature as the soviet idea. It has often happened that the peasants have showed themselves against all parties. Socialism, or rather, communist husbandry and mode of living, does not strike the peasants as a party matter. For that reason the Soviets are not identical with communism, as many workers think. Still, libertarian communism has always been connected with a kind of council system. For when the peasants or the workers in a place manage their own affairs, then they always elect their councils, or Soviets, which decide' on all matters that cannot be decided by each one separately. At the present time there are in Russia many peasants who are not communists but who take a stand for the soviet system. The soviet system is then for them only a form of direct political representation with elimination of all interferences from a central body in the local self-government. But, as in the historic moment of the outbreak of the revolution the parties still exerted some power of attraction over the peasants, we have to note that one party finally succeeded to gain and assert influence and power in the councils. But to the extent that the party sueceeded in gaining poiver and control in the Soviets, to that extent the free Soviets lost their power. Of course, the larger the party is, the less this loss of freedom is felt. If most of the Soviets consist of representatives elected as party members, then the party members feel correspondingly free, provided they agree with the tactics and politics of the party. But it often happens that the peasants have not put any party lists in the field for the soviet elections. Particularly in the Ukraine have I found instances of this. I have been present at several meetings of the executive committee of the district Soviets and gouvernement Soviets, as well ,as once in the congress of all the gouvernement Soviets in Samara. The deliberations turned upon the economic situation. But I noticed that the economic policy was determined in accordance with the program of the bolshevik party. The higher authorities, such as the Council of People's Commissars, issue decrees through the different People's Commissariats and their department for agriculture, for education, for traffic and transportation, and the Soviets are the organs which have to carry out these decrees or see to it that they are carried out.
At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the District Soviet in the province of Charkov on Sept. 13, 1920, there were two matters under discussion: (1) The provisioning of the army, and (2) The procuring of fire wood. According to the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars, each precinct had to deliver a certain quantity of wood and provisions, according to its possibilities. A representative reported how the peasants in one precinct refused to help out with the wood cutting because they received no pay. He thought it would be necessary to, at least, give the peasants promises of delivery of goods to them, after which they would probably help out. Without such help of the peasants it would be impossible to obtain the required quantity of wood. Another representative spoke of the fact that there were bands of men in the woods which made the wood cutting difficult for the peasants. It would be necessary to induce the peasants to drive these bands away, but this the peasants do not want to do. (The reason why the peasants did not want to do this was that many of them belonged to these "bands" themselves.) There was also a speech by a delegate from the department for care of the wounded soldiers from the Polish and the Wrangel fronts. He described the misery of the wounded in lurid colors, in order to prevail upon the representatives of the Executive Committee of the Soviets to send them the means of life on a greater scale than before.