Russian Revolution

“ And, indeed, the Russian Revolution was the first revolution ever to be achieved by the soldiers going over to the people not only without the co-operation of the officers, but actually against their will. The Revolution was a soldier's revolution. It was a revolution of the workers, peasants and soldiers. The workers were struggling for political and industrial freedom; the peasants realised in the Revolution their age-long struggle for land. The soldiers rose in revolt against all the cruelty and degradation of barrack life and discipline. ”

“ For the last three years we have had a steady stream of sensational events, until it seemed that nothing could stir up in us more than a passing in terest. But the Russian revolution is an event of such startling proportions, pregnant with such high hopes for the welfare of mankind that even the most jaded mind grasps its tremendous significance. ”

“ Tired 3 soldiers lay sleeping in heaps in every hall and corridor. The vaulted lobby, where Duma members had flitted silently, was packed almost to the roof with all manner of truck, baggage, arms, and ammunition. All night long and the next I laboured with the revolutionists to turn the Tauride Palace into a revolutionary arsenal.
Thus began the revolution. And after? Everyone knows now how the hopes of freedom were blighted. Truly had Russia’s foe, Germany, who despatched the proletarian dictator Lenin and his satellites to Russia, discovered the Achilles heel of the Russian revolution! ”

“ Whether or not the Soviets will prove permanent, no one can say. But this much is certain; just as the French revolution sent a thrill around the world, and planted in the hearts of the common people the wonderful dream of freedom from kings and ruling classes, just so the Russian revolution has brought to the working masses the dream of freedom from masters and landlords. ”

“ The Russian revolution had just overthrown the most reactionary and apparently the most firmly established of autocratic Governments, and no one in Western Europe or America doubted that Russia would jump in six months as far as England, France and America had painfully toiled in two centuries, and become and remain a free democracy. If Russia had had a revolution, might not Germany have a revolution, too? ”

“ For the Russian loves the soil with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind. His folk-songs are full of affectionate descriptions of it. His plough and his harrow are to him more than mere wood and iron. He loves to think of them as living things, as personal friends. Barbaric instincts have been aroused by the Revolution, and this simple but exalted mentality will remain in abeyance as long as those continue to rule who despise the peasant’s primitive aspirations and whose world-revolutionary aims are incomprehensible to him. ”

“ The first Russian Revolution, therefore, turned Russia into a debating society and a political scramble. The liberal forces of the country, unaccustomed to action or responsibility, set up a clamorous discussion whether Russia was to be a constitutional monarchy, a liberal republic, a socialist republic, or what not. ”

“ That is to say, the STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my whole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. ”

“ IT must be left to the future historian to paint the complete picture of Russia before the Revolution. Russia at this moment is too engrossed with actualities, too interested in the present to turn her eyes back to the past. But for any clear understanding of how the Revolution came about, and what were the reasons that created the Revolution and why Russia took this course, it is necessary to point out, even if only in a general way, the main features of Russian public life at the moment of the fall of the Monarchy. ”

“ Just in this halt in the march along a false path, and in showing the possibility and inevitableness of indicating and making a different path, one easier, more joyful, and more natural than the one the Western nations have travelled, lies the chief and mighty meaning of the Revolution now taking place in Russia. ”

“ The peasantry ... represented at least seven-eighths of the total population of Soviet Russia. Their number and their economic importance, in the final analysis, decides the fate of the revolution! How much fantasy, and what fantastic faith in miracles must one have under such conditions to believe that the Russian Revolution is a Communist revolution in its inherent character and its ultimate results? ”

“ THESE studies might well be entitled "The Russian Revolution," for since the days of Peter, Russia has been in a chronic condition of revolution, and the problem of the revolution is one of the leading interests of all philosophers of history and statesmen in Russia. We may indeed say that the problem of revolution is preeminently the problem of Russia. ”

“ If the Allied Governments and Press welcomed the Russian Revolution in the hope that it would prove the great stimulus for war to a victorious end, much the same ideas prevailed in the minds of the Russian Liberal bourgeoisie. ”

“ Yet I go much further. It is not only Bolshevism, Marxism, and Governmentalism which are fatal to revolution as well as to all vital human progress. The main cause of the defeat of the Russian Revolution lies much deeper. ”

“ In Austria, for example, manhood suffrage was introduced as an outcome of the pressure exercised by the Russian revolution. It is true that the victory of the reaction in Russia was acclaimed by the European reaction, but it cannot be said that the delight in Europe was by any means intense.
The interest in the Russian revolution does not. attach solely to the political aspect of the question. The philosopher of history sees in the revolution the great religious and ethical problem of the age. ”

“ It is not such broad human analogies which we are investigating. It must be obvious to the most superficial observer that there are between the two situations analogies much more special, much more unexpected, much more striking. Indeed so striking do they seem, that the Russian Revolution of 1905 may verily appear at first sight as a second edition, alas, not always corrected nor improved, but only expanded—of the Revolution of 1789! ”

“ Every Revolution is a change of a people's relation towards Power. [1] Such a change is now taking place in Russia, and we, the whole Russian people, are accomplishing it. Therefore to know how we can and should change our relation towards Power, we must understand the nature of Power : what it consists of, how it arose, and how best to treat it. ”

“ In every possible form of manifestation the Russian democracy has endeavoured to make clear the real meaning of the Revolution. It has sought to make the West realise that to Russia the Revolution is not a means to victory, or a means at all, but the very end in itself, and itself the sole and highest victory that European democracy has achieved in the war.
Let us try to realise what the Revolution means. For Russia the Revolution is a coming into existence. Russia had no civilisation; Russia was not a nation ”

“ The Russian revolution, occurring at any other time than in the midst of a war affecting the interests169 of all nations, would have been regarded sympathetically, and its excesses would have been deemed inevitable. ”

“ POLITICAL SITUATION The Soviet form of government is firmly established. Perhaps the most striking fact in Russia today is the general support which is given the government by the people in spite of their starvation. Indeed, the people lay the blame for their distress wholly on the blockade and on the governments which maintain it. The Soviet form of government seems to have become to the Russian people the symbol of their revolution. ”

“ It is all that and much more: it is the brains and nerves and heart and soul. It is the organized intelligence, driving force, courage, and idealism—the very seat of life of the revolution. Without it the whole movement would have collapsed long, long ago ”

“ The most striking parallel between the French and the Russian revolutions lies in the facility with which both were snatched away from the sane and intelligent men who began them and placed in the hands of fanatics, who turned them into mad orgies of blood and terror. ”

“ Liberty was dead and brutal autocracy reigned supreme. Politically and industrially, the workers and peasants were destitute of right and justice. They were mercilessly abused and robbed at the whims of their heartless masters. But the day of reckoning finally came: with a mighty effort the downtrodden slaves turned against their tormentors and finished with them.
Never has human history been made so rapidly as during the tremendous Russian revolutionary drama. Great event has followed great event with bewildering speed. ”

“ In Russia a revolution is bursting into flame, and they slander utterly the Russian proletariat, representing the workman as a mere unconscious elemental force, a barbarous horde, ready to destroy, to wipe out completely all that exists, and incapable of creating anything but anarchy. ”

“ I went to Russia a socialist by conviction, an ardent sympathizer with revolution, having known personally some of the brave men and women who suffered imprisonment and exile after the failure of the uprising in 1905-6. I returned from Russia with the very clear conviction that the world will have to wait awhile before it can establish any coöperative millenniums, or before it can safely hand over the work of government to the man in the street. ”

“ The Russian Revolution has a quite peculiar character, which is the result of the peculiar trend of our whole social and historical development, and which in its turn opens before us quite new historical prospects. ”

“ The soviets, or councils of soldiers’ and workmen’s delegates, which have spread like wildfire throughout the country, are the nearest thing to a government that Russia has known since the very early days of the revolution. ”

“ You may be sure that the international section of the French and English Socialists are deeply and honestly interested in the battle which the Council of Workers and Soldiers is waging for peace and democracy and that they believe as you do, that the Russian Revolution can attain victory only if it is not paralyzed by the poison gas of world war. ”

“ There is a fortune waiting for the capitalist who will take cold, soft drinks to Russia, and he will have besides the fortune the additional satisfaction of bringing hope to the sodden victims of vodka.
An army that will obey orders; a government that will govern; leaders in business, in transportation, in agriculture and a people willing to obey those leaders; education, wholesome life. Russia needs all these, and in her coming mighty struggle to achieve them the whole world of democracy, and especially our United States, must lend willing and sympathetic help and guidance. ”

“ If therefore there were risks to the Entente cause in a Russian revolution, there were also perils in its postponement; and it might well be thought that a Liberal Russia would be bound more closely and logically to the Western Powers than autocracy ever could be. A revolution would at least clarify the issue between the combatants and give a more solid basis of political principle to the Entente. ”

“ There is no doubt that the Russian Revolution is properly the guide for the Communist elements of the world and many of the secondary as well as fundamental features of the revolution will find their place in the international revolution. ”

“ At any rate, there is much talk now of the Germans working through this disreputable creature.
I asked a Russian if there could be a revolution.
There seems to be no hope. Russia, apparently, lacks the coördination and singleness of purpose necessary for one. And so many unseen influences are at work. There is no agreement among the people as to what they want. Each faction is secretly encouraged to war against the other in order to weaken each other and blur the reason and end in the people's minds. ”

“ This emergence of the proletariat, its independent class policy and class organizations, the Soviets, constitutes the decisive feature of the Russian Revolution,—an emergence definite and sufficiently aggressive to conquer power for the revolutionary proletariat. ”

“ On the streets of Moscow the instinct of self-preservation strove alongside with an awakened consciousness; the first struggled brutally like a wounded animal, while the second embodied in the persons of the revolutionaries, strove heroically like a man inspired by the great fire of the ideal.
"The proletariat is beaten, the revolution is stamped out," shrieks our reactionary press in malignant delight. ”

“ The speech of the British Ambassador during the first official reception by the Provisional Government aroused universal indignation, and was equally sharply criticised in the Liberal and in the Socialist Press. ↑ We live, without any doubt, in a revolutionary epoch, and the Russian Revolution is only the forerunner of the great changes which await the world. ”

“ This is of the most vital importance, for all nations have their eyes on the Russian revolution and are pinning their hopes and fears upon it. If it succeeds it will eventually provoke world revolution. But if it fails, not only will labor everywhere suffer over-whelming defeat, but a mighty blow will have been dealt at the very concept of revolution itself. ”