31 DECEMBER 1921, Page 3

According to the Observer's Moscow correspondent, Lenin attacked the extreme

Communists at the Congress of Soviets last week. Reversing all his old arguments, he told his deluded followers that civil war and a rigid Communism could never save Russia from famine and ruin. He went on to declare that the powers of the " Extraordinary Commission for fighting Counter- Revolution " must be drastically limited, as it was now doing mischief. It is instructive to find the Russian Robespierre denouncing the Terrorist tribunal just as his prototype did in 1794 ; we wonder whether Lenin, too, will fall a victim to the deadly machine that he set up. History does not repeat itself exactly, but all revolutions follow much the same course, and the maddest fanatic, after a short lease of power, tends to become a moderate, if not a veritable, reactionary.