that the social revolution would break out in the West sooner than in Russia, they devoted so much attention to propaganda in the West that their minds were diverted from Russian conditions. On this propaganda they spent, moreover, comparatively large sums. In short, Bolshevist policy is extensive, not intensive; broad, not deep, inwardly and outwardly. In a word, it is primitive.
Russian Bolshevism which is, at best, a form of State Socialism and State Capitalism, is by no means identical with Communism. Experience shows that real, lasting Communism is possible only on a moral or a religious basis—among friends—but we have all far to go before we attain a state of society founded on friendship and sympathy. At the beginning of a revolution, in the moment of enthusiasm, Communistic experiments may succeed, but they decline and degenerate when enthusiasm has to stand the test of daily life.
The way for Lenin’s régime had been prepared by the Provisional Government and by Kerensky, both of whom showed administrative incapacity and entrusted wide spheres of action to bad and incompetent men. Lenin did likewise. The anarchical proceedings of the Russian intelligentsia, from 1906 onwards, had smoothed his path. Even the non-Socialist parties then failed to comprehend that, after a Revolution and the attainment of (no matter how imperfect) a Constitution, political action needed to become more positive. Lenin was a logical consequence of Russian illogicality. The sealed German railway carriages played a very minor part. Like many a usurper before him, Lenin took possession of Russia—usurpation fills a long chapter in Russian history. As means of agitation he utilized war-weariness, the disintegration of the army and the peasant yearning for land, a yearning stimulated by all the Socialist and Liberal tendencies after the liberation of the serfs in 1862. The peasants seized the land—there was no Communism about them—and the peasants are Russia. It is wrong to charge Lenin and his experiment with not being Russian. They are entirely Russian; and the Soviet system itself is an extension of the primitive Russian Mir and Artel.
This does not mean that, if Lenin’s system did not establish Communism and if it was guilty of many sins of omission and commission, it has brought no good to Russia or to the peasant masses in particular. Bolshevism awakened their sense of freedom and the consciousness of their own strength. They learned the power of organization. They became convinced of the need for hard work, Lenin himself and not a few leaders
