tion to the post of Premier in preference to several other men who played more prominent parts in the revolutionary drama. To be sure Rykov was a wellknown figure among the Soviet leaders. As head of the Supreme Economic Council and chairman of the Sto he worked in close coöperation with Lenin on problems of economic reconstruction. But he has figured as an economic expert rather than as a popular leader. Subject to fits of stammering, he has never been able to sway the masses like several of the other Communist leaders who are notable orators. His health has suffered from the strain of the Revolution; and immediately after his election as Premier he was compelled to go abroad, traveling under a strict incognito, for the purpose of receiving expert medical treatment in Germany.

Rykov has the reputation of being a moderate among the Communist leaders; his mind works along analytical rather than emotional lines, and his practical experience as an economic administrator has doubtless exerted a sobering effect upon his revolutionary theories. His election as Premier is something of a guaranty that there will be no serious tamperings with the New Economic Policy which was adopted by the Soviet Government in the spring of 1921 as a sort of compromise between revolutionary principles and Russian realities.

A popular speaker at Soviet and Party meetings is a slightly built man with a pointed beard, a resonant voice, and a splendid command of the Russian language. This is Nikolai Bukharin, editor of the official Communist organ, Pravda, leading Party theoretician and joint author with Evgeny Preobrazhensky of The A B C of Communism, the outstanding popular textbook on the subject. Bukharin is a favorite among the workers and the Communist youth,

both for his fiery eloquence and for his austere life. He has never lived in the Kremlin, the residence of most of the leading Communists, but occupies simple quarters in the Hotel Metropole. The condition of this hotel, until it shared in the general renovation brought about by the New Economic Policy, made residence there a genuine test of asceticism.

There was a time when Bukharin was regarded as an untamed rebel in the Communist ranks. He led the fight against the ratification of the BrestLitovsk Treaty and bitterly opposed Lenin's policy of paying high salaries to specialists in the interest of industrial efficiency. But Bukharin's outbursts of insurgency now seem to be over. He was not associated with any of the sporadic revolts against the New Economic Policy and its application which were headed by Shliapnikov, Kollontai, Lutovinov, and others. He was on the orthodox side in the Party controversy last winter, and the thunders of Pravda were directed exclusively against the opposition. Bukharin may still be a left-winger in temperament and theory; but he is a tame left-winger, well broken to the traces of Party discipline.

Besides being editor of Pravda, Bukharin is an outstanding figure in the councils of the Third International and a member of the powerful Political Bureau, the inner steering committee of seven members which leads and shapes the deliberations of the large Party Central Committee, which includes fifty-three members. The other members of the Political Bureau are Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotzky, Rykov, and Tomsky. The last-named is President of the All-Russian Trades-Union Council.

The only outstanding Communist leader who possesses previous experience as an economic administrator is

Leonid Borisovitch Krassin, the Commissar for Foreign Trade. Krassin can claim to be an old revolutionist; his association with the Bolshevist Party antedates the unsuccessful 1905 Revolution. After 1905, however, instead of going into underground work as a professional revolutionist, he became a skilled engineer in the service of the well-known German firm, SiemensSchueckert. After the November Revolution Krassin joined the Communists, and ever since he has been furnishing a certain amount of practical ballast for the more doctrinaire revolutionary theories of his associates in the government.

A witty Communist journalist once remarked: 'In Russia we regard Krassin as a good business-man but a poor Bolshevik; in England they look on him as a good Bolshevik but a poor business-man.'

There is a sting of unfairness about this remark; the journalist in question was not on good terms personally with Krassin. But it is true that Krassin has had to play a rather difficult and anomalous rôle in serving as a medium of connection between his own revolutionary government and the capitalist world. What sounds like stark radicalism to a London banker may often impress a Russian Communist Congress as Menshevist heresy. Krassin deserves most of the credit for the gradual resumption of commercial relations with most of the European countries. If his advice had been consistently followed Russia might have had more success in attracting foreign capital into the economic reconstruction of the country. But of course the Communist revolutionary psychology is a formidable obstacle in this connection.

Krassin gives the impression of being an anchor to windward for the Soviet Government. Should Russia's internal necessities demand a funda

mental revision of the New Economic Policy in the direction of further concessions to capitalism, Krassin would seem ideally fitted to direct the necessary transitional steps. In such a contingency his political influence and prestige would be enormously increased. But until and unless some such situation arises Krassin is likely to go on occupying his present position that of a specialist of proved loyalty who enjoys wide powers in his own field, but who wields comparatively little influence in the general councils of the Party. Not until the last Party Congress was Krassin elected a member of the Central Committee. He has never been a member of the Political Bureau.

George Chicherin, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, is a striking example of the aristocrat turned revolutionary. Born of a noble family and trained in the school of Tsarist diplomacy, Chicherin is probably the most cultured Foreign Minister in Europe to-day. He speaks a multitude of languages with absolute fluency; the writer has heard him pass from Russian to English, French, or German with the utmost ease. His knowledge of English is a scholar's knowledge, as one may recognize from the meticulous wording of his notes and communiqués.

Chicherin is a formidable controversialist. Along with his exhaustive knowledge of history, politics, and international law goes a keen, logical mind, quick to seize on every point of casuistry and make the most of it. His habits of work are unique. His favorite reception-hour is any time after midnight. This is due to his practice of beginning work about two or three in the afternoon and staying in his office until five or six the following morning. His secretaries work in two or three shifts, and even so they are worn out by Chicherin's insatiable thirst for work.

Chicherin never seems to rest. His office is working even on Sundays and big holidays when every other government institution in Moscow is tightly closed. The only time he is known to have been lured away from his desk was on the occasion of a series of Scriabin concerts given last year in the State Opera House. Chicherin is an excellent amateur pianist himself and he stayed away from his masses of diplomatic papers, documents, and protocols long enough to lend an appreciative ear to the Scriabin concerts.

And interview with Chicherin is a notable experience. One is solemnly ushered by a Red Army soldier into a sumptuously furnished anteroom and left to meditate for a time in surroundings of solitary and rather oppressive splendor. What impresses one in talking with Chicherin, next to his remarkable courtesy and self-possession of manner, is a certain curious impersonality, which seems to connote absorption in some problem far away from the immediate present. He follows every question with the closest attention, carefully thinking out every detail of the answers. But one always has the impression that at least part of his mind is elsewhere, perhaps subconsciously absorbed in some of the complicated problems of Soviet diplomacy.

Quite unknown, probably, outside of Russia, but a formidable power in the Communist Party, is Jaroslavsky, secretary of the Party Control Committee. It is the business of this Committee to see that every Communist toes the line in observing Party ethics, and Jaroslavsky, as a result of his post, has sweeping disciplinary powers. To be summoned for an interview with Jaroslavsky is as ominous for the holder of a Communist Party card as for a college sophomore to be called up for a talk with the dean. Jaroslavsky is just the

kind of man one would expect to find in such a responsible inquisitorial position. He is an old revolutionist, austere in his personal life, rooted in his convictions, and quite relentless in ferreting out offenses against Party discipline, whether these offenses take the form of extravagant living or of deviation from the straight line of orthodox Communist theory. Lenin himself is reported to have picked out Jaroslavsky for his post.

Authority is notably concentrated in Soviet Russia. The ten men I have just described hold in their hands the threads of leadership both of the Party and of the State apparatus. They control Russia's economic development, together with its relations, political and commercial, with other countries. Their removal would leave a huge vacuum in the place of the existing Soviet régime. But along with these foremost leaders there are other outstanding personalities in Russia, men who are already occupying important posts or who may occupy them in the future.

There is Mikhail Kalinin, President of the Union Soviet Executive Committee, a figure very typical of the hundred million Russian peasants, somewhat bent and worn from toil, with clear blue eyes, stubbly yellowish beard, and wrinkled face. Kalinin, who is himself of peasant origin, spends much of his time traveling in the peasant districts; and the anteroom of his simply furnished office in Moscow is always crowded with peasants from all over the Union waiting to lay their grievances and problems before him. In the Soviet State machinery he serves in the very useful capacity of a link between the government, with its preponderance of city-bred officials, and the masses of peasantry.

There was a time when Karl Radek might have claimed a place in the top

most tier of the Soviet hierarchy. But to-day this brilliant revolutionary Austrian pamphleteer is out of favor, having been made the scapegoat for the failure of the German revolutionary movement last autumn. It is scarcely probable that Radek's eclipse will be permanent; his mordant wit, facile pen, and vast store of political and historical knowledge are weapons with which the Communist International can ill afford to dispense.

As a member of the inner Party ruling group known as the Political Bureau, Tomsky is entitled to consideration in any enumeration of the Soviet leaders. A quiet and reserved man, his personality seems to afford little opportunity for extended comment. But he has held for some time the strategic post of President of the All-Russian Trades-Unions, and he has played an important part in the London Conference.

The Russian Revolution has been less dominated by military leaders than most similar upheavals; but among the Communists who rose to prominence through their army work may be mentioned Mikhail Vassilevich Frunze and the cavalry-general Budenny. Frunze is a veteran Bolshevik, who is said to have gained his first military experience by taking a pot shot at a Tsarist police chief. During the civil war he showed marked ability as a general on the southern front and became War Commissar for the Ukraine. He sided strongly with the Central Committee in the controversy last winter, and during Trotzky's absence he was transferred from his post in the Ukraine and made first assistant in the War Commissariat, where he undertook a sweeping programme of reorganization. Budenny, a huge Ukrainian peasant with drooping black moustaches, makes a striking impression when he appears at a Soviet Congress or in a box at the

State Opera House. Budenny was a sergeant-major in the Tsar's cavalry. He came to the front in spectacular fashion during the civil war, when his hastily organized cavalry-corps broke through the ranks of the White General Denikin and harried the Polish army from Kiev almost to the gates of Warsaw.

Chicherin's two chief diplomatic lieutenants are Litvinov for the West and Karakhan for the East. Litvinov, who seems to be a red rag to the British Tory press, has a reputation as a shrewd and hard bargainer and has represented Russia at many conferences since the end of the period of civil war and blockade. He was at one time expelled from England by Lloyd George on the charge of circulating Bolshevist propaganda; he must have experienced a certain feeling of satisfaction on returning to England recently as a prominent member of the Russian delegation. Karakhan, an Armenian, is a typical oriental figure, tall, stout, dark. He has been carrying on the somewhat tortuous negotiations between Russia and China and Japan and deserves a reputation as a diplomat, if only because of the formula which he devised in order to be able to press the claim of the Soviet Government to control of the Chinese Eastern Railroad without appearing to revive the imperialistic claims of the Tsarist régime. The railroad, according to Karakhan, belonged to the toiling of Russia,' and starting from this base he has finally been able apparently to reach a satisfactory agreement with the Chinese Government on the question.

Another outstanding Soviet diplomat is Christian Rakovsky, the cultured and charming Bulgarian physician and Socialist leader who is now the Russian representative in England. Rakovsky, like Radek, is a foreigner who completely identified himself with the Russian Communist Party. For

some time he was Premier of the Ukraine, a post which he left to succeed Krassin as Russian representative in London.

It is natural that the arduous work of economic reconstruction should have claimed some of the strongest and most prominent figures in the revolutionary ranks. One man who seems likely to go far in the future is Pyatakov, head of the committee that passes on concessions to foreigners. Pyatakov has had an exceptionally varied and picturesque career. Coming of an aristocratic Ukrainian family he, with his brother, threw himself into the Bolshevist movement. His brother was killed under revolting conditions by the Whites. Pyatakov was first President of the State Bank after the November Revolution, but soon laid down this post for the more congenial work of leading a Red Guard invasion of the Ukraine. During the civil war he filled various important administrative positions, restoring order in the Donetz Basin at one time with an iron hand. One need only take one look at Pyatakov's tense, set, fanatical countenance to be certain that no Teapot Dome concessions will be granted in Russia so long as he is at the head of the concessions committee.

Sokolnikov, Commissar for Finance, deserves much of the credit for giving Russia a stable currency in place of the uncounted trillions of worthless paper rubles that were circulating in 1921 and 1922. An old revolutionary theoretician, experience has taught him to be as ruthless as any capitalist banker in demanding that every state department cut its expenses to the bone in order to permit the balancing of the budget.

Tsurupa, an Ukrainian and a former agronome, Food Commissar during the years of greatest shortage, has the reputation of a capable administrator. He is head of the Gosplan, or State Planning Commission, a body which

works out projects for the future development of Russia's industry, agriculture, and general economic life. His chief assistant is the Polish engineer Krzhizhanovsky, author of the famous scheme for the electrification of Russia that serves as the theoretical basis for the Communist reconstruction pro

gramme.

The manipulation of the Communist Party machinery has developed several leaders who may be considered understudies to Stalin and Zinoviev. Among these are Molotov, a relative of the composer Scriabin, an excellent organizer, who does much of the practical detail work of appointing and transferring Party officials from one post to another, and Andreev, one of the several assistant Party secretaries, who has devoted a good deal of attention to the problems of trades-union and coöperative organization.

The old saying that a prophet is without honor in his own country has some application to Anatole Lunacharsky, Commissar for Education. Lunacharsky's cultivated and attractive personality, his discriminating appreciation of music and the drama, his eloquent writings on educational subjects have won him many admirers among the foreigners who have visited Russia and spread his reputation as a great educator. But in Russia he is blamed, perhaps unjustly, for much of the poverty and disorder of the Russian educational system. Critical observers declare that things would go better if the Commissar for Education devoted less time to studying new forms of the ballet and delivering lectures on abstract philosophical subjects and more attention to improving the condition of the country teachers and schools.

Much of the difficult, thankless spade-work in the field of education is quietly and unostentatiously done by Lenin's widow, Nadyezhda Konstanti