cooperatives, this movement — especially as regards the intellectuals and the rich peasants among the cooperative leaders — assumed a definitely hostile attitude towards the socialist revolution. Indeed, the Siberian cooperatives, in the form of the organisation known as Purchase and Sale, and other distributive cooperatives, sided openly with the counter-revolution and advocated the crushing of the Soviet Republic with the assistance of world imperialism.
On October 1, 1917, there were 612 cooperative societies in Russia. Apparently, however, this figure is too low, for on January 1, 1918, according to estimates from various sources, there were 1000 such societies. In the Centrosoyus [the central cooperative league] there were 38,601 societies with a total membership of 13,694,196. Since, however, one and the same cooperative may belong to two or three different leagues, it is probable that the number of cooperatives and cooperators in Russia is smaller than this statement would suggest. As far as productive cooperation is concerned, in 1918 there existed in Russia 469 cooperative societies and leagues, small undertakings for the most part.
118. Contemporary Cooperation.
In the capitalist regime, cooperation fulfils a definite role in the general system. In the soviet regime, the cooperative apparatus is destined either to die out gradually in conjunction with all the other apparatus of capitalist distribution, or else to enter the system of socialist distribution and to assume the role of a State distributive apparatus. The old leaders of the cooperatives — the mensheviks, the social revolutionaries, and the various “socialists” of the Kolchak type — would like to ensure for the cooperatives independence of the proletarian State, which means to ensure for them the freedom to die out. The Soviet Power, on the other hand, having an eye to the real interests of the great masses of the workers, and caring in particular for the interests of the cooperators themselves, pursues another path. Disregarding the opinions of the