ABSTRACT
Improved economic conditions with political and social freedom formed the desire of the Russian artisan class. The revolutionary phrases have never had the same fascination for the peasants as for the artisans. The life of the former middle-class has become one great tragedy, of which the fate of every middle-class family forms just a little fragment. The attitude of the Russian proletariate to Bolshevism is of a particularly heterogeneous character. As regards the artisan-class, there are, in spite of all, several things that bind them to Bolshevism. When it comes, however, to the peasant-class, one look in vain for any such bonds. The feeling, therefore, to be found amongst the proletarian masses is very different in town and village. It is not too much to say that the attitude of the peasant-class to Communism has been one great disappointment for the Bolshevists; sometimes, indeed, it is a source of very pronounced nervousness.
