THE NEW RUSSIA

DR. H. GUEST • has compiled a valuable work on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He has wisely refrained from adding one more to the lengthening list of personal opinions and impressions with which recent travellers in Russia have supplied us. Still less has he attempted to prove any case by the facts and figures which he presents. The object of the book, he tells us, is a modest one : " It is to give infor- mation about the Soviet Union of Republics which will be useful to the politician, to the student of social questions and to the business man." He starts, he tells us, with the assump- tion that the New Russia is an accomplished fact which whether we like it or not, we must recognize and, having recognized' it, we must apply our minds to the study of the structure and character of the New Russian States in the most objective way possible. Thus Chapter I is a general geo- graphical and political description of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The chapter brings home vividly to us

that Russia is a continent rather than a State, and that -one great change which has come about by the Revolution is that

whereas one-sixth of the world's surface was formerly governed by a centralized Administration in Moscow, Russia is now administered by a federal system in which there are some nine independent republics and many semi-independent

provinces and districts. How much the local autonomy: is real and how much theoretical, Dr. Haden Guest does not

tell us. Another striking point which he makes, and which one

verifies with surprise when one looks at his excellent maps, is that the whole of Soviet Russia lies to the east of Constantinople. Chapter II describes the nature of the Government of the Union, that is the central Government at. Moscow, and all

the various local authorities, down to the village organization.

Chapter III gives the actual text of the , Constitution of the Union, a highly important document which, as far as we know, has hitherto only been available to the English reader in the Foreign Office pamphlet on Soviet Russia (Stationery Office, 1924). Chapter IV gives the most important part of the laws of the Union. Chapter V deals with foreign policy and quotes the vital clauses of the late Anglo-Russian Treaty. Chapter VI deals with economic development. Chapter VII with agriculture, &c., &c. These chapters should prove of value to all those who are concerned with modern Russia.

But to return td Chapter 117. The text of the Constitution begins with a flamboyant Declaration regarding the formation

of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. We are told that it is only the bourgeois pressure from outside which has necessitated the Federation of the new Socialist Republics into a Union which, will stand by itself against the world.

To English readers, steeped in parliamentary tradition, it is not by any means easy to conceive of a representative, and at any rate formerly democratic, system totally unlike our own. Yet that is what the Soviet system is, or purports to be. It is based on two fundamental principles, both contrary to British practice. (1) Representation is functional instead of territorial, and (2) it is indirect instead of direct. Thus those workers who live in a particular suburb of Moscow do not elect a Deputy to the Annual Soviet Congress, but those workers engaged in, say, steel manufacturing in particular Moscow factories, elect their Deputy to represent them as steel workers. In the case of the agricultural industry, functional and territorial representation, in a country like Russia, means, of course, much the same thing.

At first sight the distribution of seats between workers and peasants in the Soviet Congress seems most unfair. One deputy has to represent five times as many peasants as workers : but, it seems, the peasant deputy represents the whole popu- lation, men, women and children, while the workers' deputy

represents only the adult workers in the factory. Thus it

is calculated that the workers' deputy really represents as lirge a part of the population as does the peasant deputy.

But though the electoral system may seem alien to us, it is

not so-difficult for the British reader-to-gra:Sp; as is the nature df the Annual SoViet Congress -This in no sense corres- ponds to our:Parliament. It meets only once a year, for a few days, and its real purpose is to elect an executive committee. One is apt to think of this executive committee as correspond- ing roughly to our Cabinet,- but this is not so, for it is a large body„ consisting of over three hundred members, who only meet three times a year ; in some Ways it corresponds to our Parliament, and its members seem to enjoy something of the position of an English -M.P. This kiecutiye Committee elects a Presidium, which is a smallbody in permanent 'session, This body more nearly corresPonds to our Cabinet. But the Executive ComMittee also delegates its authority te anothe'r bodY, the Union Council of People's Commissaries,. which appears to be a sort of Cabinet of super-civil servants, as if the permanent chiefs of all Our great departMents formed a second and administrative Cabinet. This body appears to be 'definitely subordinated to the Presidium, but it initiates edidts and deerees which have the fOree of law unless repealed by the Presidium. We have attempted Only an extremely rough description of the central instrument of government at Moscow. The complication of the whole system is enormously, greater than we have suggested, since this elaborate system is dovetailed into similar systems in each of the constituent republics of the Union: The system seems complicated to us, but One must remember that it is both a Legislature, an Executive and a Judiciary all rolled into one. The questieh arises inevitably in the English mind : Is this system really functioning or is it merely' a paper constitution never realized in practice ? Is it merely, as Leibnicht said of the Reichstag in pre-War days, " But the lig-leaf of absolutiani," behind which the uncontrolled will of the little group of Bolshevik leaders is carried out ? The differenc es and contrasts betWeeh this" country and Russia are so- great that we can well imagine that a system of Government utterlyUnlike our own is 'a possible one for that country. '" The United States of Russia," vii3 agree with Dr: Haden Guest, is likely to play an impOrtant part in the world's history, as the third of the three 060 federations which have emerged into the twentieth century, viz., the United States of America, " the United States Of the British Empire " and the UniOn of the Soviet Republics. Of these, of course, the United States of America is by far the closest federation, both structurally and geographically. The Soviet Union is the next closeit, although we notice that the right of secession for any 'constituent republic is specifi- cally retained in the constitution. While the undefined, and probably undefinable, relation between this country and the Dominions forms geographically and politibally the looseit, though not necessarily the weakest, of the three- federaticini.

In conclusion, we must thank Dr. Guest for a most helpful work. We have one word of warning to the reader, though not of criticism ; the facts and figures in the book do not extend beyond 1923, and the years 1924-25 have made, by all accounts, great changes in Russia. Thus, though no fault of the author's, the book is in some respects a little out of date already. This merely illustrates the difficulty of studying a country in such a state of flux and transition as is the Russia of to-day.

Dr. Guest asks his, readers, to point out any mistakes in his facts or figures. On page 83, the percentage of Nationalized and Municipalized Houses is giyen as 185.9 per cent, It should be according to his figures about 6,8per cent.