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ding its real import, to tear down the standard of Proletarian revolution, which the workers and peasants of Russia, with desperate courage and determination, had raised in their struggle for their existence, against death!
„Make no mistake: it is us right enough that they are against. Too many milliards are involved for them to draw back before any crime“—said Comrade Reinstein to me upon my telling him of my conviction that it could not be possible, that it was a misunderstanding even if a tragic misunderstanding, that as soon as they would know in Paris, London and Washington what the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia really meant, all would at once be explained.
After the German revolution it became impossible for me to retain my last illusions any longer,—and force of circumstances was finally to bring me to reason.
This revolution produced on my mind a terrible impression and suddenly opened up for me horizons which up to then had remained unseen. By a symbolical caprice of chance, the overthrow of German Imperialism coincided with the first anniversary of the proletarian revolution of October, as if Fate had been pleased to render homage to the workers and peasants of Russia, the leaders of whom, during one whole year, had been shamefully overwhelmed with the most infamous and stupid calumny!
Right up to the last moment I had obstinately refused to believe that a revolution in Germany was possible and now suddenly all that I had hated more than anything else in the world, this Prussian Imperialism and this Prussian
