A. That is the theory, but the dividends for the Soviet peasant consist of the barest subsistence. They must turn over to the State trusts a stipulated amount or share of whatever their collective produces, wheat, or dairy products, beef or pork, and this share is usually so high that there is nothing left for the peasants to eat but black bread and cabbage. It is the settled policy of the Five-Year Plans to take from the soil all its produce except the minimum subsistence for the peasants and devote it to industrialization, by distribution at high prices to the workmen, and by export, in exchange for machines from abroad. Q. _Then, surely the Russian workman is much better off, since the whole system is supposed to be for the benefit of the proletariat._ A. He is better off than the peasant, but he is worse off than any other white workman in the world. In the winter of 1934-1935 I made a survey of the Russian standard of living and compared it with the standard of living in capitalist states. In order to make the comparison as fair as possible I chose the little capitalist states which used to be a part of Imperial Russia--Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. First I spent two months in Moscow, studying the standard of living of the workmen in the best Moscow factories. These workmen were more favorably situated than any others in the Soviet Union. Then I spent three months studying the standard of living of typical working-class families in the little capitalist states. To my surprise I found that the poorest workmen’s families in the capitalist states lived considerably better than the Moscow workers, who were the most prosperous in all Russia. This was after seventeen years of Communism, and the capitalist states used for comparison were among the poorest in the world. They had all suffered more from the World War than Russia as a whole had suffered, and they began their new national lives from scratch, without capital or credit. Yet the average workman in Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland was living at least twice as well as the best-off workmen in the Soviet Union. Q. _How did you get your facts?_ A. By visiting scores of homes and talking with the housewives. I asked each one fifty to a hundred questions, and found out the total family income, how it was earned, and how it was spent. Then I made up a theoretical basket, to contain a week’s supply of food for a workman, and found out by direct inquiry the number of hours a man would have to work to earn the basket. I found that in order to buy the basket the Soviet workman had to spend an average of twice as many working hours as his fellow worker in the small capitalistic states, while he would have to spend over three times as many working hours as a workman in the United States.