ABSTRACT

Parliamentary Government in the English sense is quite outside the experience of the ordinary Russian. There is the concentration of everything in Government hands, the restriction of private trading, the occupation of private houses and hotels for Government offices, the shortage of commodities, the inferior and ersatz quality of others, the ration-card system, the queues outside food-shops and eating-houses. There is the scarcity of all but official news, the prevalence of rumours, the pervasion of propaganda. In Russia, however, once the superstructure of Tzarism was overturned, there remained only a primitive social organism, on the one hand almost insensitive to rough treatment, and on the other a virgin field for propaganda. Anti-Imperialism, illustrated by capitalist oppression of coloured races, and especially of the Chinese, is a common theme; so is anti-religious propaganda, and the portrayal of Russian history in terms of oppression by Tzar and Church. Anti-religious propaganda has official support.