ABSTRACT

The "outlaws" in Russia are often people who formerly bought the pictures of foreign masters, who nursed the arts and who were nursed by them, who belonged to the international intellectual coterie of Europe. The "basic outlaws" are: The clergy of all religions; those who were connected in a reactionary sense with political cases during the tsardom; those who exploited hired labour. The institution of "outlaws" has therefore a double character—offensive and defensive. It has a defensive character in so far as it is aimed at clearing off the face of the earth, or at least crushing down, economically suffocating, the class of society suspected of harbouring an unfavourable attitude towards the Soviet regime. This is the strangling of the class which might possibly form the basis of a counter-revolution. The "outlaws" are the institution on which the revolutionary temperaments unload themselves. The revolution in Russia was made by "outlaws".