tional structure of the Soviet Republic and should
not lead to the exploitation of the workmen.
They wanted railways, locomotives, and machines,
and their country was rich enough to pay for these
things out of its natural resources without sensible
loss to the state or the yielding of an inch in their
programme of internal reconstruction.

He was followed by Krestinsky, who pointed
out that whereas the commissariats were, in a
sense, altered forms of the old ministries, links
with the past, the Council of Public Economy,
organizing the whole production and distribution
of the country, building the new socialist state,
was an entirely new organ and a link, not with the
past, but with the future.

The two next speeches illustrated one of the
main difficulties of the revolution. Krasin (see
p. 153) criticized the council for insufficient con-
fidence in the security of the revolution. He said
they were still hampered by fears lest here or
there capitalism should creep in again. They
were unnecessarily afraid to make the fullest pos-
sible use of specialists of all kinds who had taken
a leading part in industry under the old régime

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