Without for a moment allowing myself to be intimidated b; the loud outcries of the bolsheviks, who brand everybody making these assertions as a counter-revolutionary, I must mention som< examples. The workers in a Moscow munition factory, the name of which I have forgotten, elected as their representative in th( Moscow soviet the anarchist Gordin. This was in the first months of 1920. The election of Gordin was not recognized by the bolsheviks, and for this factory new elections were announced. H( was again elected. Because his electors as well as he himself stood fast by the election he was arrested and given two months in prison as a "demagogue/' Such names they have always al hand. But the workers of this factory did not elect any othei soviet member and remained during that legislative period without representation in the Moscow soviet. Besides this case the] are many, many cases when the election has been declared and void by the ruling pa\rty. As this is an every-day occurrence the people no longer get excited about it. As Gordin tol< me his case in the presence of many witnesses, he laughed over il when I found the case amazing. In Samara there is a munitioi factory which at the outbreak of the revolution employed 23,00( workers. These elected members to the Samara soviet. When visited the factory on May 21, 1920, there were only 1,600 peopL working there. A year before the bolsheviks had dissolved th< executive committee of the Workers' and Peasants' Council of th< gouvernement Samara, because they did not have the majority therein. The opposing parties, however, did not want to undertake anything at that moment because the rich peasants were jusl making a counter-revolutionary attempt, and thus the dissolutioi of the executive committee of the soviet was accomplished without friction. But in the same year only 1,000 people worked in that factory, because they were out fighting the Czecho-Slovaks who had taken Kasan and were in the neighborhood of Samara. The bolsheviks did not hold any new elections to replace the city soviet elected while there were 23,000 workers. The reason was that in that soviet the bolsheviks had the majority. Through such illegalities they held the whole gouvernment in check, but it was a representation which did not reflect the real conditions.
But, apart from these cases, which are not by far exhausted with the above related ones, the bolsheviks have another method of securing the majority in the soviet. The bolsheviks are the ruling state party. The paper is nationalized; the printshops, the houses, in brief, everything belongs to the state and is, therefore, in the hands of the bolshevik party. Thus, only this party is in a position to carry on an election agitation; what wonder then if they receive the most votes and the most seats. And in spite of all that, it happens that the mensheviks or the left socialrevolutionaries receive considerable numbers of votes.
From all this it is evident that in the Russian Soviet Republic the Soviets only to a small extent are the expression of the free will of the workers and the peasants. A peculiar light is thrown on the government Soviets of Russia by a resolution adopted by the Russian-Ukrainian anarchists of the "Nabat" in their last congress, held in Charkov 3-8 September. It says, among other things, about the relationship to the soviet power: