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Emma Goldman has turned her back on Russia and the Bolsheviks. "An abyss," she says, "separates the Russian people and the Bolshevik government." At almost the same moment comes word that the much heralded movement for University primary education has failed. Soviet Minister of Education Lunacharsky in a report to the Central Executive Committee bewails a general decline. Only one-third as many children receive instruction today as in the closing years of the Romanoff regime.
Since the beginning of Bolshevik rule the dictator's hold has been precarious. But external circumstances helped him. Continued hostility of foreign countries mustered all the force of Russian patriotism to support the Bolshevik cause. But this bulwark, of late, is losing force. The great dictator is dead. Establishment of diplomatic relations with the important countries of Europe, moreover, brings peace with the outside world a condition new to Soviet experience. With pressure from without removed, Russian national feeling wanes. Now for the first time the Russian has leisure to survey conditions at home. And the suspicion prevails that all is not well.
During the seven years of Bolshevik control, an extraordinary gullibility has possessed the Russian people. It has been easy for them to accept shadows for reality. "You are free," shouted the dictator. And the multitude took up the cry: "Yea, we are free." "State education for every child," promised the dictator. "For every child," echoed the crowd. But words, after all, are only words, even in Russia. The promise of universal education has turned out meaningless. There is no way to judge how extensive is the disillusion of which Forma Goldman is so signal an example. But the day may dawn when the great unwashed masses will rise to ask with slaister emphasis: "Are we really free?"
Stanley High, who visited Russia last Summer and only recently returned to this city, spoke at a meeting of the New England Woman's Club in the "Life is Russia runs on very much the same as in other European countries. There is nothing communistic about living conditions. Taxi fares are higher than elsewhere. It costs $10 to have tars put on a pair of shoes and 40 cents to have a white collar laundered. The Government owns the houses in which one lives, but there is nothing communistic about the rents."
"Life is Russia runs on very much the same as in other European countries. There is nothing communistic about living conditions. Taxi fares are higher than elsewhere. It costs $10 to have tars put on a pair of shoes and 40 cents to have a white collar laundered. The Government owns the houses in which one lives, but there is nothing communistic about the rents."
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