"The Greatest Failure in All History" / A Critical Examination of the Actual Workings of Bolshevism in Russia

by John Spargo

Obligatory Regulation No. 27

Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of the newspaper, the Severnaya Communa, the official organ of the Soviets of the Northern Region.

The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on the first demand.

Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region, Gr. Zinoviev.

Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.

The Severnaya Communa, on November 10, 1918, published the following with reference to this beautiful scheme:

To the Notice of the House Committees of the Poor:

On 20th July of the present year there was published obligatory regulation No. 27, to the following effect:

“Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of the newspaper, the Severnaya Communa, the official organ of the Soviets of the Northern Region.

“The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on the first demand.

“Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region, Gr. Zinoviev.

“Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.”

However, until now the majority of houses inhabited mainly by the bourgeoisie do not fulfil the above-expressed obligatory regulation, and the working population of such houses is deprived of the possibility of receiving the Severnaya Communa in its house committees.

Therefore, the publishing office of the Severnaya Communa brings to the notice of all house committees that it has undertaken, through the medium of especial emissaries, the control of the fulfilment by house committees of the obligatory regulation No. 27, and all house committees which cannot show a receipt for a subscription to the newspaper, the Severnaya Communa, will be immediately called to the most severe account for the breaking of the obligatory regulation.

Subscriptions will be received in the main office and branches of the Severnaya Communa daily, except Sundays and holidays, from 10 to 4.

After this it is something of an anticlimax to even take note of the tremendous power wielded by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Press, Section of Political Crimes, which was created in March, 1918. The decree relating to this body and outlining its functions, dated December 18, 1917, read as follows: