The Workers and Peasants of Russia and Ukraine: How Do They Live? - Augustin Souchy

Excerpt from The Workers and Peasants of Russia and Ukraine: How Do They Live?
Such questions as the above, were they asked a year or two ago by any radical, would have been howled down as heresy. But at the present day and on the eve of Russian recognition by the capitalist powers, the questions above suddenly assume great importance and demand an answer one way or another. And they are being answered as all such questions are, in various ways, depending on what influence prompts the reply. Formerly the capitalist press carried its daily quota of polished news depicting conditions in Russia. But generally these tales were concerned only with the misfortune of the bourgeois class, and lately there is noted from that source a sudden still ness about Russian atrocities and in lts place appear conciliatory articles that portend - what?

Those 180 millions of people; peasants and workers, what of them? How have they fared since the November days of 1917? Are the programs and slogans of those thrilling November days being carried out or is it true that the initiative and revolutionary ardor of the workers in Russia nave been stifled by the iron-rule of a party dictatorship?