178 How to Pay for the ]\\i7 



appears on p. 176, foretold the downfall of the Bolsheviki, 

 in a long article that he wrote on the subject for Current 

 Opinion, of New York, and which was published by that 

 enterprising monthly in their March (1918) issue. With 

 the fall of the Bolsheviki element will come, we are told, 

 the rise to power of the social revolutionists under the 

 leadership of Chernov, ex-Minister of Agriculture in the 

 Kerensky Cabinet. At the present time even, the son of 

 the great Russian novelist and humanitarian claims that 

 the social revolutionists are by far the most numerous and 

 their representatives formed the majority of the repre- 

 sentatives to the Constitutional Assembly which was broken 

 up by the Bolsheviki, known as the social democrats, 

 since by force alone could such a majority be disposed of. 

 It is the knowledge of the certainty of this majority when 

 it comes to a question of votes, that has all along made 

 the Bolsheviki so antagonistic to the social revolutionists. 



Looking ahead, one naturally asks — What has the 

 future in store for us ? What are the desires and wishes 

 of the leaders of the social revolutionists who are — no one 

 knows where just now. Count Ilya Tolstoy claims that 

 the overwhelming nmjority of the Russian nation — who 

 are peasants since they constitute 85 per cent, of the 

 population — has a definite desire and a clear goal in mind. 

 All they ask for is land and liberty and the fact that they 

 are doing so is, 1 would claim, the great reason why we 

 can still hope to see the German Baltic barons and the 

 German influence, pushed out of Lithuania and elsewhere 

 in Russia and not welcomed as a friend and helpmate, for 

 even the long-suffering Est and Lett is not so foolish as 

 to expect permanent help from their German overlords 

 who have so long held them in serfdom, deprived them of 

 their land and generally tyrannized over them. 



This cry for land and liberty can be heard from all 

 corners of Russia — from the Black Sea to the Baltic. 

 " The slavery of our times," wrote the father of Count 

 Ilya, " lies in the existence of big estates and in the lack 

 of land among the peasants." If, therefore, modern 

 Russia submits to the modern Teutonic yoke, the most 

 illiterate of them will soon find, if they do not already 

 realize it but are too indolent to try and shake themselves 

 free of it, that their future state of misery and oppression, 

 nominally under the Bolshevik social democrats, but really 

 under the heel of Berlin, would exceed even that which 

 they had to put up with, and of which Count Leo Tolstoy 

 complained under the Czars. 



