He was born of a peasant family living in the province of Vatka. His education was paid for by an elder sister who had married well. Because of revolutionary activities he was sentenced to Siberia and served seven years in _solitary confinement_. When he told me this, I was so astonished that I asked him to repeat it. It is a trial which would have broken almost any man; yet I think I never met a man with less “nerves” than Rykov has. By his manner and his good humor and his serenity, he resembles Lenin to a startling degree. It is rather amazing that Russia produced two men of the same type during the same period. That is one reason why the government machinery ran along so smoothly after Lenin stepped out. Rykov has been in such close touch with Lenin in the last years that he almost anticipates Lenin’s decisions. He told me that for three years he has been sharing Lenin’s work. When the Council of Labor and Defense was formed during the blockade, Lenin headed it and Rykov and Alexander Demietrievitch Tsurupa served with Lenin. They also shared Lenin’s work on the Council of People’s Commissars; and when Rykov was temporarily elevated to Lenin’s office, Tsurupa was elevated to Rykov’s. As Lenin grew stronger, after his operation, Rykov went to the country about once a fortnight to consult him on vital matters of state. It is his opinion that Lenin will soon be back in the Kremlin. But if Rykov’s prediction does not prove true, Rykov himself will be able to guide, with a steady hand, the shifting fortunes of war-torn and famine-ridden Russia. I do not think he will go down in history as a great figure; he will probably be overlooked by history as has many another such unselfish and solid builder of empire, who worked always in the shadow of a greater man. JACOB PETERS, FEDORE S. DZERZHINSKY AND THE EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION It is a curious but indisputable fact that Jacob Peters, known to the world as “Peters, the Terrorist,” has never been head of the Russian Extraordinary Commission. Since its inception, Fedore Dzerzhinsky has had charge of that sombre institution, which in the revolutionary vernacular is known as the “Cheka,” a word derived from the initial letters of “extraordinary” and “commission.” Dzerzhinsky is a Pole, forty-four years of age, with an unusually classical background for a Chief Executioner. He ranks high even among the intelligentsia. After finishing his literary studies in a Russian university, he took post-graduate courses in Vienna, Berlin and Zurich.