After a short trip to Russia Lord Passfield has published a few articles dealing with Russia and Communism. Russia, according to him, ‘has a will and a plan,’ whether it is the will of the people themselves, or one which has been forcibly imposed upon them, the writer does not tell us, and yet this is precisely what the average reader is anxious to know. Nevertheless, despite this reticence, Lord Passfield conveys a sufficiently clear idea of the only state which has adopted in its totality the teaching of Communism.

To begin with, the population of this Socialist State is strictly divided into classes. At the summit stands a very small minority—the Communist Party. The writer estimates it at one and an half million strong, which represents less than one per cent, of the total population of one hundred and sixty millions. This Communist Party, which does not wish to increase its membership but remains numerically stationary by a process of continuous weeding-out, is, as the writer puts it, the ‘governing class’ holding all power in the State. Next to it stand the candidates for membership. These are selected from another half million whose fidelity to the régime has been tested. Then come various other classes of the population graded according to their economic importance to the State, and lastly the people who have no right to exist in the Socialist State and must be ‘liquidated’ or destroyed not only as classes but as individuals also. These Socialist ‘untouchables’ do not interest Lord Passfield: he knew of their existence, for in one of his articles he has a passing reference to one of such classes, namely the kulaki.