364 THE CLASS STRUGGLE TWO YEARS OF SOVIET RUSSIA 365 mountable difficulties, it has established a system of schools that reaches out to the most forsaken village in the land.
Threatened by foes on every hand, on the verge of annihilation from day to day, face to face with the stupendous task of socializing its industries, the largest of which are in the hands and under the direct control of German and Allied capitalists, the proletarian government has yet found time to establish a system of schools that is based upon the most modern principles of pedagogy. John Rickman, the English writer, says. The educational programıne of the Bolsheviks was anbitious, but it was this ambitiousness which commended it to the people. The Bolsheviks aimed at starting a school in every village and increasing the number of gymnasia in the district and founding a university, but in this project thev were stopped by lack of teachers. To overcome this difficulty they started training colleges for teachers, which were financed by the Soviet. Scholarships were given to promising pupils, which would carry them through the gymnasia and on to the universities already founded.
The enthusiasm of teachers for their work, which had been depressed by the restrictions of the old régime, revived.
They gave up their holidays to attend university extension lectures and evening classes, in order to improve their teaching capacity for the coming terms. Technical classes were started, and the agricultural. schools and colleges, some of which were already in operation under the old régime, were revived, additional instructers obtained, and new institutions begun. In every village the Soviets have turned the largest buildings into schools, libraries and public meeting halls.
Expenses for outfitting, lighting and heating are met by the government. The passion of the Russian for long and exhaustive discussion on all questions of public interest has been satisfied to the utmost.
Industrial difficulties that were bound to arise were met, wherever this was possible by the workmen themselves. They were given the opportunity of solving difficult situations that arose by majority decisions. Very often, it is true, this resulted in costly mistakes, mistakes that sometimes resulted in the complete breakdown of the plant or railway involved.
But it had the great advantage of building up a stable system of production and distribution that depended not so much upon orders from Moscow which had to be obeyed as on motives for good work and co operation which carried their own inducement.
Internally, therefore, the Soviet government is founded firmly on the broadest possible foundation, the confidence and the co operation of the producing classes. That is the secret of its power, the reason why it has been able to throw back attack after attack of the trained men at arms who have been sent out against them.
But the future of the Russian proletarian revolution is by no means assured. No people can starve indefinitely.
Ultimately the continued cutting off of Russia from the world market is bound to have its effect, while the support of a strong military force adequate for its protection against foreign attack will sooner or later deplete the resources, both material and human, at its command. In the last analysis, therefore, the life of the Russian proletarian government lies in the hands of the working classes of the West European nations. The Russian revolution will stand and fall with the revolutionary world proletariat. Of this the leaders of the Russian revolution are only too well aware. Their intensive propaganda, therefore, that they are carrying on in every country of the civilized world, is in a sense a campaign for their own preservation.
The great strikes that are following one upon the other in Great Britain, the ceaseless unrest that is agitating France, the chronic state of disquiet that has taken hold of Italy, the utter political and industrial collapse of Germany, broken down beyond hope of recovery, the increasing radicalization of the working class movement the world over even here in America these give us the assurance that the two years of Soviet control in Russia are but the forerunner of the final world revolution of the proletariat that will bring liberation to the Russian and to the International working classes.