A Committee of the Poor is a close organization formed in all villages of the very poorest peasants to fight against the usurers, rich peasants, and clergy, who have been exploiting the poorest peasants and squeezing out their life-blood for centuries under the protection of emperors. _Only such of the very poorest peasants as support the Soviet authority are elected members of these committees._ These latter register all grain and available foodstuffs in their villages, as well as all cattle, agricultural implements, carts, etc. It is likewise their duty to introduce the new land laws issued by order of the Soviets of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossacks’ Deputies. The fields are cultivated with the implements thus registered, and the harvest is divided among those who have worked in accordance with the law. The surplus is supplied to the starving cities in return for goods of all kinds that the villagers need. _The motto of the Communist-Bolshevist Party is impressed upon all members of these committees_--namely, “Help the poor; do not injure the peasant of average means, but treat usurers, clergy, and all members of the White Army without mercy.” Even this account of these committees of the poor indicates a terrible condition of strife in the villages. These committees were formed to take the place of the Soviets, which the Food Commissars, in accordance with the wide powers conferred upon them, could order suppressed whenever they chose. Where the solidarity of the local peasantry could not be broken up “chance visitors,” poor wretches imported for the purpose, constituted the entire membership of such committees. In other cases, a majority of the members of the committees were chosen from among the local residents. There was no appeal from the decision of these committees. Any member of such a committee having a grudge against a neighbor could satisfy it by declaring him to be a hoarder, could arrest him, seize his property and have him flogged or, as sometimes happened, shot. The military detachments formed to secure grain and other foodstuffs had to work with these committees where they already existed, and to form them where none yet existed.