Seldom does the All-Russian Soviet meet, and then only to do formal business, such as recording the decrees issued by the People’s Commissars or to ratify the decisions of the Communist party. The People’s Commissars, of whom there are seventeen, have the power to issue decrees without consulting the Soviets at all. More than that, each Commissar can issue decrees relative to the work of his own department; or two Commissars can do this in their joint names on a matter jointly affecting their two departments. These decrees have all the force of law, and must be obeyed under heavy penalties. To the slaves of theory, the abstractionists and dogmatists, the decrees which consent to the modifications in committee management of industry must be considered wholly bad. But when I record the fact that the power of workmen to interfere through those committees in highly important productive and reconstructive work, either through delays, or ignorance, or in the name of a democratic principle run to seed, has given place all over Russia to control by experts, and management on lines of personal responsibility, I am placing on record what I consider to be a good and wise thing. In Russia Trade Unionism is of very recent birth. In February, 1917, there were three Trade Unions in Russia with a membership of less than one thousand five hundred persons. When the revolution broke out, some of the workmen thought it part of the plan to smash the machinery in the workshops, so ignorant were they of the source of their woes and of the remedy for these. The want of Trade Union training, the lack of discipline, the absence of co-ordination, both in industry and in their organisations, helped still further to increase the sufferings of the people, by delaying the work of rebuilding. The fear of bourgeois technical and scientific experts, who were accused freely of sabotage, caused their necessary skill and labour for a long period to be refused; this still further aggravated the situation. And it appears to be entirely creditable that, in those matters where the special training and specialised mind are essential, the Communist rulers have seen proper to change their method. But it is too dangerous a step on the road to complete centralisation of power to have made of the Trade Unions, as is practically the case, a Government department working under the control of the Supreme Economic Council. The Supreme Economic Council, when its structure is complete, will have fifty productive departments under its control, a department of finance and a department for the co-ordination and supervision of the local Economic Councils which are spread all over the country. A Collegium of three or five members is in charge of each department, whilst the greater body, the Supreme Economic Council itself is controlled by a Presidium of eleven members, nominated by the Executive Committee of the Trade Unions and confirmed by the Council of People’s Commissars.