Nationalization of industry meant, and could only mean, state capitalism. Communism was as far away as it was under czarism. And many of the old complaints so familiar in capitalist countries were heard. The workers were discontented and restless; production, while it was better than under Soviet control, was still far below the normal level; there was an enormous growth of bureaucracy and an appalling amount of corruption. Profiteering and speculation were rampant and inefficiency was the order of the day. The following extract from an article in _Pravda_, March 15, 1919, is a confession of failure most abject: Last year the people of Russia were suffering from lack of bread. To-day they are in distress because there is plenty of foodstuffs which cannot be brought out from the country and which will, no doubt, decay to a great extent when hot weather arrives. The misery of bread scarcity is replaced by another calamity--the plentifulness of breadstuffs. That the situation is really such is attested by these figures: The Food Commission and its subsidiary organs have stored up from August, 1918, to February 20, 1919, grain and forage products amounting to 82,633,582 poods. There remained on the last-mentioned date in railroad stations and other collection centers not less than 22,245,072 poods of grain and fodder. Of these stocks, according to the incomplete information by the Transport Branch of the Food Commission, there are stalled on the Moscow-Kazan and Syzran-Viazma Railroads alone not less than 2,000,000 poods of grain in 2,382 cars. There are, moreover, according to the same source, on the Kazanburgsk and Samara-Zlatoostovsk Line, at least 1,300 more car-loads of breadstuffs that cannot be moved. All this grain is stalled because there are no locomotives to haul the rolling-stock. Thus the starving population does not receive the bread which is provided for it and which is, in part, even loaded up in cars. * * * * * In a hungry land there must be no misery while there is a surplus of bread. Such a misfortune would be truly unbearable! On April 15, 1919, _Izvestia_ published an article by Zinoviev, in which the famous Bolshevist leader confessed that the Soviet Government had not materially benefited the average working-man: Has the Soviet Government, has our party done everything that can be done for the direct improvement of the daily life of the average working-man and his family? Alas! we hesitate to answer this question in the affirmative.