And in the Soviet Union ... there exists a higher type of democracy than in any other country in the world. Mention must be made, to understand this double talk, of a communist deceptive device called _Aesopian language_. Nearly everyone is familiar with the fables of Aesop, such as “The Fox and the Crow” and “The Lion and the Mouse.” Often the point of the story is not directly stated but must be inferred by the reader. This is a “roundabout” presentation. Lenin and his associates before 1917, when living in exile, made frequent use of “Aesopianism.” Much of their propaganda was written in a “roundabout” and elusive style to pass severe Czarist censorship. They desired revolution but could not say so. They had to resort to hints, theoretical discussions, even substituting words, which, though fooling the censor, were understood by the “initiated,” that is, individuals trained in Party terminology. The official _History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)_, telling how Bolshevik agitation in Saint Petersburg in 1912-14 was led by _Pravda_, the communist newspaper, explained that the periodical could not openly call for revolutionary action. That would have brought government suppression. Rather, “hints,” understood by the communists, were used: When, for example, _Pravda_ wrote of the “full and uncurtailed demands of the Year Five,” the workers understood that this meant the revolutionary slogans of the Bolsheviks, namely, the overthrow of tsardom.... In 1914 labor troubles sprang up in the capital of Russia. The communists wanted mass meetings and demonstrations. _Pravda_ couldn’t publicly sound the call, so it resorted to Aesopian language. But [the communist _History_ reads] the call was understood by class-conscious workers when they read an article by Lenin bearing the modest title “Forms of the Working-Class Movement” and stating that at the given moment strikes should yield place to a higher form of the working-class movement—which meant a call to organize meetings and demonstrations. Lenin himself told how he was compelled to write: with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, mainly economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in that Aesopian language—in that cursed Aesopian language—to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse, whenever they took up their pens to write a “legal” work. In one propaganda tract Lenin, writing about world problems, mentioned “Japan.” However, as he later explained, that was merely a trick to pass the censor. “The careful reader,” Lenin said, “will easily substitute Russia for Japan....”