ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Bolshevist achievements in some individual points of the social fabric and explores to what extent does this building, the result of eight years' restoration work, as a whole, offer more tolerable conditions of life to its occupiers. As far as the present class is concerned, the answer has, to some extent, been given in the account of the Bolshevists' peasant policy. In times gone by the peasant simply took what he required out of his own, or, much more often, out of the landowner's forest. The peasants have always considered it one of their most inalienable rights to steal timber without penalty; now they talk till they are hoarse of all the endless trouble they have to fetch a load or even a few sticks from the Government forest. It is well known that the economic position of the Russian working-class before the war was a terrible one.
