MOSCOW'S ATTITUDE 177
provinces has already been explained in detail; so that it
now remains only to refer to the ill-treatment and even exter-
mination of undesirable categories in the towns. The Russian
food-rationing system is such that outwardly everything is in
perfect order. Individuals are allocated to certain distribution
centres and are required to comply with their regulations. The
essential point of this system is that the various distributing
centres are the only places where persons attached to them are
legally entitled to obtain supplies. Persons attached to one
distributing point have nothing to do with the members or
supplies of another. They are thus more closely bound to their
own community than., in earlier times, were the members of
any guild or profession. Each commissariat and every great
Soviet organization has its own distributing centre, which
observes the utmost reticence towards outsiders with regard
to the quantity of its supplies.
The people in the towns who are worst off are naturally
those who have no licence to work or permission to reside.
These unfortunates are automatically doomed to starvation.
Their fete is a particularly tragic one. The strictly regulated
system of rationing enables the authorities to make the whole
population completely dependent on the regime; a "regulated
situation" prevails which in effect is the essence of tyranny.
No protests avail against inclusion in any given category*
The individual has to remain satisfied with the amount of food
which the regime considers proper for his category, and if
this is insufficient it is his function to accept the inevitable^ to
vegetate in hunger, or to die without protest. For a protest
would be evidence of a class-hostile spirit or of hostility
to the Soviet regime.
How far the privileged categories in the Soviet Union
differ from the more comfortably situated elements in the
"class states" is another question. The general economic
decline of Russia has led to a standard of living which by non-
Ck>minimist standards is extremely low even among the
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