The Struggle for Control

The Electoral System.

Although the electoral system under the Soviet Constitution of 1923 had been carefully devised to redress the numerical disproportion between the rural and urban populations and to maintain the control of the Communist Party and organized labour over the principal organs of government, the power of self-expression which universal suffrage gave to the villages could not be ignored. However great might be the author ity of the Communist Party, it hesitated to pursue any policy counter to the clearly defined will of the rural masses. The Party regarded itself as the guardian of the infant proletarian State, not yet fitted by experience and political development for full adult freedom. The electoral system was a valuable guide to public opinion, but as far as the real exercise of power was concerned, it was little more than a form of education in self-government.

This educational process was reinforced in a number of ways, the first of which was the Communist Party itself, which on Nov.

1928, had 1,500,000 members. The Communist Youth organi zation had over 2,000,000 members, young persons of both sexes between the ages of 15 and 22. After them came 1,500,000 Young Pioneers (Communist Boy and Girl Scouts), aged 7 to 15. Some 12,000,000 urban workers were enrolled in trade unions, controlled by Communists and sympathetic with their aims. The Soviet Air League (Osoaviakim), a patriotic organization similar to the Ger man Navy League before the World War, had thousands of branches throughout the country and a membership of 3,000,000. The Army and Navy, approximately 600,000 strong on a peace footing, was another forcing-ground for Communism. Only ro% of the recruits were members of the Communist Party or the Communist League of Youth, but at the expiration of service the proportion had increased to 5o per cent. Finally, the whole system of primary and secondary education had been revised to accord with Marxist ideals. On Nov. r, 1928, there were in the Union I18,000 primary schools and 3,00o secondary schools and univer sities, all rigorously secular, with an obligatory course in the ele mentary principles of Socialism.

Foreign Relations.

The rupture with England did not pre vent the Soviet from taking part in international disarmament conferences at Geneva in the autumn of 1927 and the spring of 1928. Disarmament had long been advocated by the Soviet Gov ernment, which in the winter of 1922-23 had attempted to arrange a scheme of armament limitation in a conference with its neigh bours, Poland, Finland and the Baltic States. At Geneva the Soviet Government proposed to begin immediately the progressive reduction of land, sea and air forces. The other European Powers

were distrustful and unprepared for such sweeping action, and the conferences ended without result.

Although the Geneva Conferences did little to improve the rela tions of the Soviet with the leading Powers of western Europe, and although the Soviet was excluded from the number of original signatories to the Kellogg World Pact of Non-Aggression signed at Versailles in the summer of 1928, there were signs in the fol lowing autumn that the United States, which had become a reservoir of capital for European post-war reconstruction, was beginning to modify its aloof or even hostile attitude towards the Soviet. For several years the two great international oil groups, the American Standard Oil and the British Royal Dutch Shell, had been laying claim to a large part of the nationalized oil-fields of the Caucasus; Standard as purchaser of the former Nobel interests, and Royal Dutch Shell by virtue of concessions they had formerly controlled. At the Genoa Conference in the spring of 1922 the Soviet seemed willing to discuss the oil question, and at one moment it was reported that it had arranged a modus oper andi with the British group. This, however, fell through. Subse quent attempts to obtain sales contracts were unsuccessful until the Soviet Oil Syndicate concluded a series of sales contracts with two of the Standard subsidiaries in the winter of 1926-27, on terms advantageous to the Standard.

The hostility of the English group, already aroused by direct Soviet competition in England, France and elsewhere, was in creased by this coup, which for a time threatened to precipitate a rate war between the English and American oil interests through out the world. The parent Standard Company, however, had not renounced its claims to the Nobel properties, and in this respect its interests coincided with those of the English group. The rate war was checked, but whereas the British oil interests remained actively hostile to the Soviet, the Americans were passively friendly.

In the autumn of 1928 a contract between the Soviet Trading Corporation in New York and the General Electric Company in the United States, giving the former five years' credit on pur chases, was the first real breach in the "credit blockade," as it was called, which had hampered business relations between Russia and the United States. Hopes were roused in Moscow that the economic tension caused by the rupture with Britain and the ab sence of grain exports might be eased by financial aid from America.