CHANGES IN PRINCIPLES 291
hailed. Thus the democratization of local government, although
highly important and even necessary, was doomed to failure and
proved incapable of yielding the beneficial results that had been
expected.
It is not possible, however, to pass final judgment upon the new
zemstvo Institutions merely in the light of what these first zemstvo
assemblies, meeting under such abnormal conditions, were able to
achieve. But there is no other criterion at our disposal, for a few
months later the Bolshevik Government abolished the zemstvo institutions
 in practically every section of the Empire. As for those zemstvos
 which succeeded in surviving the Bolshevik Revolution in the
southern and eastern parts of the country occupied by anti-Bolshevik
 forces,® we must recollect that their operations were conducted
while civil war was raging and when the ruble had sunk to a very
low level, in other words, under exceedingly abnormal conditions, so
that here, again, it is impossible to pass fair judgment on the merits
of their work.

* The zemstvos were finally abolished in the Crimea in 1920, after the
evacuation of General Wrangel’s army, and they survived in Eastern Siberia
until 1922, when Vladivostok was captured by the Red Army.