THE SOVIET STATE

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of urban Soviets, one delegate for 25,000 voters, and of rural Soviets, one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants. This Congress is convoked at least twice a year. There had already been six meetings. The Congress elects an All-Russian Central Executive Committee of not more than two hundred members, which is the supreme power of the republic, in all periods between convocations of the Congress. It directs in a general way the activities of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, considers and enacts all measures or proposals introduced by the Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars, convokes the Congress of Soviets, and forms a Council of People’s Commissars. This council in turn is entrusted with the general management of the affairs of the republic and in this capacity issues decrees, resolutions and orders, notifying the Central Executive Committee immediately of all such orders or decrees.

There are seventeen of these Commissars, (1) Foreign Affairs, (2) Army, (3) Navy, (4) Interior, (5) Justice, (6) Labor, (7) Social Welfare, (8) Education, (9) Post and Telegraph, (10) National Affairs, (11) Finances, (12) Ways of Communication, (13) Agriculture, (14) Commerce and Industry, (15) National Supplies, (16) Supreme Soviet of National Economy, (17) Public Health. Each Commissar has a collegium, or committee, the members of which are appointed by the Council of People’s Commissars, of which body Lenin is the president.

These committees act as the administrators of the nation, dealing with ratification and amendments to the constitution; the general interior and foreign policy of the republic; boundaries; the admission or secessions of new members; the establishing or changing of weights, measures, or money denominations; declarations of war or peace treaties; loans, commercial agreements or treaties; taxes; military affairs; legislation and judicial procedure; civil and criminal procedure; and citizenship.

Local affairs are administered by local Soviets, in the following order: Rural Soviets, of ten or less than ten members, send one delegate to the rural congress, which in turn sends one delegate for each ten of its members to the County Soviet Congress. This County Soviet Congress sends one delegate for each 1,000 inhabitants (though not more than three hundred in all may be sent) to the Provincial Soviet Congress, which is made up of representatives of both urban and rural Soviets. The Provincial Soviet Congress sends from its body one representative for 10,000 inhabitants of the rural districts, and one for each 2,000 voters in the city, to the Regional Soviet Congress. This Congress sends one delegate for each 125,000 inhabitants to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

All these Congresses of Soviets elect their own executive committees for handling local affairs, but in small rural districts questions are decided at general meetings of the voters whenever possible. The functions of the local Congresses of Soviets and deputies are given thus in the Constitution: To carry out all orders of the respective higher organs of the Soviet Power; to take all steps for raising the cultural and economic standard of the given territory; to decide all questions of local importance within their respective territories; and to coordinate all Soviet activity in their respective territories.

Roughly speaking, the Supreme Council of National Economy, which is established under the Council of the People’s Commissars, deals with the organization and distribution of production. It coordinates the activities of the federal and the local Soviets, and has the right of confiscation, requisition, or compulsory syndication of various branches of industry and commerce; it determines the amount of raw materials and fuel needed, obtains and distributes them, and organizes and supplies the rural economy. It works in close and constant touch with the All-Russian Professional Alliances, and under its direction the latter constantly regulates the wage scales in accordance with the rise and fall of prices of commodities. When I was in Moscow the average wage paid was 3,000 rubles per month, and in Petrograd 3,500. A member of the Council of People’s Commissars received 4,500 per month, out of which he had to pay rent and buy food and clothing. Lenin, as president, received the same amount, which was equivalent to about $180 in American money.

All men and women of the republic belonging to the following classes are allowed to vote after their eighteenth year: Individuals doing productive or useful work; all persons engaged in housekeeping which enables others to do productive work; peasants who employ no help in agricultural labor; soldiers of the army and sailors of the navy; citizens who are incapacited for work; and foreigners who live in and are working for the republic.

Suffrage and candidacy are denied to persons who employ labor in order to obtain profits; persons who live on an income, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.; private merchants, trade or commercial brokers; monks and clergy of all denominations;^[A] employees and agents of the former police, gendarmes, or secret service; persons under legal guardianship, or who have been declared by law as demented or mentally deficient; and persons who have been deprived of their rights of citizenship by a Soviet, for selfish or dishonorable offences for the term fixed by the Soviet.

The Church has been separated from the State and the School from the Church, but the right of religious or anti-religious propaganda is accorded to every citizen. The government press has been freed from all dependence upon capital in the form of advertising, and all the technical and material means for publication, as well as for the publication of books and pamphlets are free. Furnished halls, with heating and lighting free, are given to the poorest peasantry for meeting-places.

LAND NATIONALIZATION

The brief Land Decree of November 7, 1917, was replaced in September, 1918, by “The Fundamental Law of Socialization of the Land,” which has already been enforced throughout the country except in the cases of land owned by peasants and worked by the owner and his family. This land decree has been enforced gradually, and perhaps less completely than any other of the Soviet decrees, first because the energies of the Government were diverted to a war of defence, and secondly, because the land question would naturally take the longest to settle even in times of peace.

The land decree provides that all property rights in land, minerals, oil, gas, peat, medicinal springs, waters, timber and other natural resources be abolished and the land given to the use of the entire laboring population, without open or secret compensation to former owners. The right to use this land belongs to those who till it by their own labor, and is not restricted by sex, religion, nationality, or foreign citizenship. Under-surface deposits, timber, etc., are at the disposal of the Soviet powers, local or federal, and all live stock and agricultural implements are to be taken over without indemnification by the land departments of the Soviets. Infants, or minors, cripples, invalids, or aged persons who would be deprived of their means of subsistence by the enforcement of this decree are pensioned either for life or until they attain their majority. Minors are given the same pension as soldiers.

Land may be used for cultural and educational purposes; for agricultural purposes, communities, associations, village organizations, individuals and families; and for industrial, commercial and transportation enterprises under the control of the Soviet power. It is given to those who wish to work it for themselves, to local agricultural workers whose plots are now too small, or who have been employed by land owners, and to immigrants who come from towns or cities in order to work on the land.

When the land was turned over to the peasants each one seized the opportunity to establish his own little homestead. Since that time the peasants have discovered the benefits of cooperative agricultural production, and have established their own agricultural communes all over the country.

In the Orel Government there were 391 of these communes, covering 39,000 dessiatins,^[B] with a population of 29,000 people. In the province of Moghilev there were 225, with more than 11,000 people and 40,000 dessiatins of land. In the Vitebsk government there were 214, covering 60,000 dessiatins of land with a population of 60,000. In the province of Novgorod there were 72, with 11,376 inhabitants and 22,253 dessiatins. In Kaluga 150, with 6,500 inhabitants, covering 12,000 dessiatins. Officials estimated that this number would be doubled before the end of 1919. In the Petrograd Government 830 communes were organized, with 17,000 dessiatins and 15,313 inhabitants, all of whom were laborers. In Tula there were 78, with 5,465 workers, and 8,554 dessiatins of land.

LABOR LAWS

The Soviet Russian Code of Labor Laws passed by the Russian Central Executive Committee in 1919 covers the whole field of Russian labor activities. To workers in other countries some of the provisions will appear drastic, but it must be remembered that Russia is still an armed camp and that the war has disorganized industry, transportation and almost every other form of endeavor. I was informed that every effort was being made under these laws to coordinate the productive forces of the country with a view to securing the highest possible production for the pressing needs of the Russian people. When the war stops, as it no doubt will in the immediate future, Soviet Russia will be faced with the problem of diverting into productive channels its three million soldiers, as well as other millions now engaged directly or indirectly in the war. Just as we had our “Work or Fight” measures in this country for the purpose of utilizing the nation’s human energy in a profitable way in time of stress, so in Soviet Russia every effort is being made to place the workers where the greatest results to the nation as a whole will accrue.

In connection with the passage of these labor laws, it must be borne in mind that the working people in Soviet Russia enjoy much more control at the present time than do the same class of people in possibly any other country. One must take into consideration the fact that these laws were initiated by the unions themselves or their representatives, who shared jointly with the political side of the Government the responsibility for maintaining the new order. Many of the former so-called bourgeoisie of the old regime, I was informed, have spent the past two years doing nothing but live by speculation and they stir up trouble on the slightest pretext against the new Government. It was primarily to reach recalcitrants of this character that the compulsory provisions were inserted in the code. The result of the passage of these laws did not, so far as I could judge, diminish the enthusiasm of the Russian workers for the new order, but on the other hand their energy seems to have been stimulated, no doubt because they were beginning to feel that through their various organizations this step had been taken for the express purpose of forcing into production every man and woman in the country capable of producing and helping to reconstruct Russia.

Article I of the code deals with compulsory labor. It provides that all citizens of the Soviet Republic, with the following exceptions, are subject to compulsory labor:

First, persons under sixteen years of age; second, all persons over fifty years of age; third, persons who have become incapacitated by injury or illness; fourth, women for a period of eight weeks before and eight weeks after confinement.

All students are subject to compulsory labor at the schools. Labor conditions in all establishments, Soviet, nationalized, public and private, are regulated by tariff rules drafted by the trade unions in agreement with the directors or owners of establishments and enterprises and approved by the people’s commissariat of labor.

Article II, entitled “The Right to Work,” provides that all citizens able to work have the right to employment at their vocations and remuneration fixed for such class of work. The district exchange bureaus of the Department of Labor Distribution, in agreement with respective unions, assign individual wage earners or groups of them to work at other trades if there is no demand for labor at the vocation of the persons in question. All persons of the female sex and those of the male sex under eighteen years of age have no right to work at night or in those industries in which the conditions of labor are especially hard or dangerous.

Article III, provides for the methods of labor distribution. Any wage earner who is not engaged on work at his vocation shall register at the Local Department of Labor Distribution as unemployed. An unemployed person has no right to refuse an offer of work at his vocation, providing the working conditions conform with the standards fixed by the respective tariff regulations, or, in the absence of the same, by the trades unions. An unemployed person who is offered work outside his vocation shall be obliged to accept it on the understanding, if he so wishes, that this be only until he receives work at his vocation.

Article V, makes provision for the transfer of a wage earner to other work within the enterprise, establishment or institution where he is employed. His transfer may be ordered by the managing authorities of said enterprise, establishment or institution. The decision of the Department of Labor in the matter of a transfer of labor may be appealed from under the law by the interested parties to the District Department of Labor or to the People’s Commissariat of Labor, whose decision of the matter in dispute is final. In case of urgent public work the Department of Labor, in agreement with the respective professional unions, may order the transfer of a whole group of wage earners from the organization where they are employed to another situated in the same or a different locality. This is done, provided a sufficient number of volunteers for such work cannot be found.

Under Article VI, which covers remuneration of labor, the law provides that in working out tariff rates and determining the standard rates of remuneration all wage earners of a trade shall be divided into groups of skill, and a definite standard of remuneration shall be fixed for each group. In determining the standard of remuneration for each category, consideration must be given to the kind of labor, the danger of the conditions under which the work is performed, the complexity and accuracy of the work. Remuneration for piece-work is computed by dividing the daily tariff rate by the number of pieces constituting the production standard. Remuneration for overtime work shall not exceed time and a half. During illness of a wage earner the remuneration due him shall be paid as a subsidy from the hospital fund. The unemployed receive a subsidy out of the funds for unemployed.

Under Article VII, which deals with working hours, provision is made that the duration of a normal working day must in no case exceed eight hours for day work and seven hours for night work, and that the duration of a normal day, first, for persons under eighteen years of age, and second, for persons working in especially hard or health-endangering branches of industry, must not exceed six hours. In case the nature of the work is such that it requires a working day in excess of the normal, two or more shifts shall be engaged. Except in extreme cases work in excess of the normal hours, or what is usually called overtime work, is not permitted. No females and no males under eighteen years of age may do any overtime work, and the time spent by those on such work in the course of two consecutive days must not exceed four hours. All wage earners must be allowed a weekly uninterrupted rest of not less than forty-two hours, and on the eve of rest days the normal working day is reduced by two hours. Every wage earner who has worked without interruption not less than six months shall be entitled to leave of absence for two weeks, and every wage earner who has worked without interruption not less than a year shall be entitled to leave of absence for not less than one month with full pay.

Article VIII deals with methods to insure efficiency of labor. The standard output for wage earners of each trade and group is fixed by valuation commissions of the respective trades unions. This article provides that a wage earner systematically producing less than the fixed standard may be transferred by the decision of the proper valuation commission to other work in the same group and category, or to a lower group or category with a corresponding reduction of wages. However, appeal can be taken from this provision of the law as well as all other provisions in the code.

Article IX provides for protection of life, health and labor of persons engaged in any economic activity, and the carrying out of this part of the law is entrusted to labor inspectors, technical inspectors and the representatives of sanitary inspection. The labor inspection is under the jurisdiction of the People’s Commissariat of Labor and its local branches, which are the Departments of Labor, and is composed of labor inspectors, elected by the councils of professional unions. The inspectors are compelled under the law to visit at any time of the day or night all the industrial enterprises of their district and all places where work is carried on, as well as places provided for the workmen by the enterprises, such as rooming-houses, asylums, baths, etc., and to assist the trades unions and works committee in their efforts to ameliorate in individual enterprises as well as in branches of industry.

This brief outline of the Code of Labor Laws, the full text of which will be found in the appendix, shows how thoroughly the new rÉgime in Russia has gone into the question of organizing the labor power of the country for production on the highest scale. I was told over and over again by various officials of the labor organizations of Soviet Russia and the Government officials as well, that what they were interested in above all else at the present time was the organization of labor along lines that would insure sufficient production of essential commodities to meet the needs of all the people under Soviet rule.

TRANSPORTATION

Before the war there were in Russia 37,000 railway locomotives. At the end of the war 13,000 were left. Of these, at the time of the Brest Litovsk treaty, thirty-five percent were disabled. In the spring of 1919 the total number of disabled locomotives amounted to fifty percent. Since that time there has been some improvement, and last August only forty-seven percent of them were disabled. There is a great demand for locomotives. Russia could use to advantage the entire product of the United States for the next six years. Approximately the same conditions prevail with reference to cars.

Practically the whole transportation system was given over to the movement of troops and army supplies. In certain sections of the country there was a surplus of grain, but no facilities to transport it to the cities.

On the last stage of the journey to Moscow I had a vivid glimpse into the transportation problem of Soviet Russia. Two or three hours out of Smolensk we stopped at a small way station and hooked on seventeen cars loaded with wood intended to relieve the critical fuel shortage in Moscow. After five or six hours’ journey, with only brief stops, the train made a prolonged halt. I got out to learn the cause of the delay. The cars loaded with wood had been uncoupled from the train and men were busy throwing the billets into the field by the track. The station was crowded with soldiers. Word had been received to rush reinforcements southward to meet the advance of Denikin. These cars were needed to carry the troops.

“What about the wood?” I asked, “Isn’t it needed in Moscow?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “The nights are getting very cold in Moscow. But Moscow must wait. The army comes first.”

Such incidents were happening daily, hourly, no doubt, all over Russia. Always, they complained, the necessities of the war and the mobilization hampered the productive enterprises of the nation.

INDUSTRY

While I was in Moscow the Government received a report from the Supreme Council of National Economy to the effect that war industry was progressing at full speed and producing sufficient supplies and ammunitions for the army. In addition the departments of building materials, fur, leather, fuel, metal, chemicals, and trade, had been organized. There were fifty-one factories in the building material branch alone, capable of producing 121,500,000 bricks, 2,000,000 poods of cement, 870,000 poods of lime, and 510,000 poods of tiles. The tanneries were running on the basis of 240,800 poods annually. The department of forests had obtained a contract for twenty percent of the fuel demand, in the Moscow Government alone. There were sixty-eight saw mills and 128 planing mills running on full time. All paper factories were working. The chemical department controls the paper, china, and chemical production. The trade department supervised 175,000 workers and had its own art industry museum.

The Government is planning the construction of enormous power systems, one of which will be the largest in the world. They will also utilize the water falls for great hydraulic power stations, all of which would require great amounts of machinery from America.

CANALS

The Volga and Don canal will connect the Black and Caspian Seas and the Volga river with the Baltic Sea. Canal Dredges are needed to build these.

There are at present in warehouses in Russia 200,000 tons of flax, the present market price of which, in London, is over $1,000 per ton. There are also 100,000 tons of hemp. There is gold, timber, and ninety percent of the world’s supply of platinum.

Many factories will be erected, great rolling mills, steel mills, etc. There is no doubt but that Russia will eventually be able to produce everything it needs. The country is thoroughly stocked with all kinds of mineral products and it is merely a matter of time before it will be entirely independent. It struck me that in the meantime the American business men are missing a wonderful opportunity in these ready markets for their machinery and equipment. Russia will be, in the course of a very few years, a very strong competitor, whereas now it offers a vast market.