"Impracticable visionaries, returned political exiles, emancipated criminals, wild idealists, Jewish Internationalists, all the cranks, and most of the crooks, joined hands in the Soviet in an orgy of passion and unreason, the contagion of which … plunged Russia … into a whirlpool of frenzied grab!"
(It must be understood that by "frenzied grab" Leslie is not referring to international financiers, mining magnates, or Allied expeditions. Quite otherwise.)
"While Korniloff seems to have failed in his recent enterprise, a dictatorship of some kind is, in my judgment, inevitable. … There is a chance, and I think, a good one, that a limited and constitutional monarchy may possibly succeed to the temporary dictatorship."
From the above remarks readers will draw certain conclusions, They will realise that Russia is a country of immense wealth, that capitalists in Britain and elsewhere would like to develop that wealth, that they object to common Socialists saying that this wealth shall belong to the people and not to the profiteers, that they will not relinquish this rich prize without a struggle, and that, therefore, they wish to overthrow—with or without the aid of Allied bayonets—the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic and to establish a dictatorship, a monarchy, or some other form of reactionary government in its stead (any government, in fact, which will give them a free hand to exploit). As early as October 13, 1917, we hear the Petrograd correspondents of the "Morning Post" saying that "the Russians in bulk can be driven by appropriate methods in any direction. … Upon England lies the duty of . . . . applying appropriate remedies, which remedies," we are further told, "hardly fall quite under the rules of the normal course of the normal English normal life." (Faugh! We stifle as we read the suggestions so insidiously conveyed! Please open the window, someone!)
This capitalist point of view will become still more apparent later on when we come to the time when the Russian Majority Socialists or Bolsheviks at last took the command.
The Fall of Kerensky.
Towards the end of October, Kerensky was declaring that Russia was worn out and could fight no more, and Mr. Bonar Law was making a final blunder by stating that the Allied Conference for the Revision of War Aims, for which the Russian Government had so long and so earnestly pressed, would not discuss war aims at all, but merely methods of prosecuting the war. This was the end. The Bolshevik Revolution took place. Kerensky fled. And the first Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic was established in the government, which, despite all the predictions of the Capitalist Press, it has maintained, with increasing power and efficiency, ever since.
II.
The Second Revolution.
Directly the second, or "Bolshevik," Revolution took place, the Bolsheviks ("Bolshevik" is only the Russian word for "majority") were bitterly attacked in the Capitalist Press of Britain and her Allies.
Wildly waving their gold-tipped fountain pens, newspaper editors and proprietors directed a furious barrage of abuse and calumny upon the devoted heads of Lenin and Trotsky, a form of attack which they seem—strangely enough—to have survived.
(5)
