The final report of the British Labour delegation to Russia
has been published. Among the signatories are Mr. Tom Shaw, Mr. Robert Williams, Mrs. Snowden, and Mr. C. R. Buxton. After calling attention to the exaggerations which have been current about conditions in Russia, the delegates admit that " the average Russian in the towns is underfed, badly clothed and badly shod." The peasants are much better off—naturally, since it is not easy to starve where there is land which can be cultivated. The delegates were struck by " the enlightened policy of the Soviet Government in the matter of child life." Returning to the other side of the shield, they find that " personal freedom is severely repressed. . . . The Terror has left its traces behind in the form of a pervading fear that any expression of opinion adverse to the dominant party will be treated as counter-revolutionary. . . . Labour is compulsory for all able- bodied men and women of eighteen years and over up to sixty." In their concluding summary the delegates say that " the Russian Revolution has not had a fair chance." They put the blame on the Allies, on the blockade, and indeed on everybody and everything but on that autocratic, doctrinaire Lenin. The Report as a whole is dispassionate and courageous and is most enlightening, but we cannot appreciate this interjection about a fair chance. When Labour leaders here used to catalogue the abominations of Tsarist Russia, did they ever remark that the Government had not had a fair chance ? Yet the Tsar's chance was no more fair than that of Lenin.
Previous page
