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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: ...which was far from clean, we found three or four peasants at tables making a meal of tea and bread. The proprietor, a quiet man, had long been a friend of Tarasov's. About fifty years old and of medium size, he was dressed in gray, with a bright blue shirt. He had a scraggy blond mustache, high cheek bones, a strong steady face and one glass eye which gave him rather a stony expression. He took us into his living-room, which was deliciously cool and clean. The walls and low ceiling were plastered in gray; at the windows were white curtains, and a heavily curtained bed stood over in one corner. He spread the small table with a clean cloth; and after serving us luncheon there, he sat down and lit a cigarette. The talk soon turned to the question of how to get food supplies from the peasants and of how to get goods from the towns. He was one of the local supply committee. The chairman, he informed us, was the former starosta (village elder); the secretary was a young student, the illegitimate son of the mid-wife; and there were four peasant members besides. The committee had control of the work in thirty-nine villages, including the little hamlets up near Tarasov's farm. In each village we have a peasant, he said, who brings us a report every week of what grain and fodder his neighbors have. But the reports are all the same. The peasants will not give up their grain until they can get real goods in trade; and as yet, we can get so few goods from the towns that we cannot persuade the peasants to take their grain out of their barns. The only hope that I can see is in our Cooperative here. Our cooperative store has still quite a stock of goods, and the steadier peasants all belong. We have eighteen hundred members now. Each paid five roubl...

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