88 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE TRAGEDY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 89 As the moderates were being kicked and cuffed by their Allies in Paris, London and Washington, as their demands for a revision of the old secret treaties being refused, and their pleadings for permission to meet at Stockholm ignored their credit among the masses of Russian revolutionists was diminishing. And when Cambon slapped them in the face by announcing that Skobeleff would not even be admitted into the holy sanctuary of the Allied Conference at Paris, their influence was at an end.
The Bolshewikiso reasoned the Russian workmen and soldiers or at least very many of them were evidently right. All governments and governing classes are alike. capitalist democracy is a contradiction in terms. The thing does not exist. We have dilly dallied enough with the policy of the moderates of begging and pleading at the courts of Messrs. Wilson, LloydGeorge Co. Let us give the Bolshewiki a chance to try their fighting tactics, perhaps we shall fare better. The governments of the democratic countries having failed us, let us try our luck with the peoples of the autocratic Central Powers. For all we know they may be ripe for a revolution, even as we were nine months ago, although there was no surface indications of it.
There isn much that we have to lose any way so why not try?
The attempt to knock at the door of the German working class for the general and democratic peace which the Entente ruling classes and their governments have denied them commonly referred to as the Bolshewik uprising, led to the armed conflict which we are now witnessing. It is primarily a conflict between two revolutionary factions, divided not so much on the question of the aims and purposes of the revolution as on the means of obtaining that peace which is absolutely necessary for Russia, if the revolutionary gains are to be maintained. Unfortunately, these two factions cannot and will not be permitted to fight this battle out alone. The civil war dividing the revolutionary elements of Russia cannot but endure to the benefit of the reactionary elements of that country, strengthening the gathering forces of the counter revolution. The attempted Bolshewik uprising of last July was followed immediately by the Korniloff rebellion. the first serious move towards a counterrevolution. The Bolshewik uprising having failed, Kerensky was in a position to call upon them for assistance in meeting this first attempt at counter revolution, and the united forces of the revolutionary elements proved equal to the task of coping with the counter revolutionary danger. But now that the Bolshewiki have succeeded in overthrowing the Kerensky government, the elements back of it must fall back upon Korniloff, if they are to assert themselves at all, thus strengthening the hands of the reaction. And even should the Socialist and other radical revolutionary elements refuse to join hands with the Korniloffs, Miljukoffs, et tutti quanti, in an effort to dislodge the Bolshewiki, that would not change the situation any. The Korniloffs are there, and so are the Miljukoffs, and many other elements much worse than these. retirement of the non Bolshewiki revolutionary elements from the field of battle if such a thing were at all conceivable would only serve to accentuate the counter revolutionary character of the forces arrayed against the Bolshewiki, thus sealing the doom of the Revolution in the event of the success of those forces, which seems alniost inevitable.
But this is not all. Were this all, we could hope against hope for a Bolshewiki success deriving comfort and encouragement from the evident courage and ability with which the Bolshewiki leaders have thus far handled a bad situation and the apparent confidence which they enjoy among the revolutionary elements of Petrograd and the north generally. The worst of it is, that even a complete success by the Bolshewiki would lead us nowhere.
We are firmly convinced that should the Bolshewiki be let alone and permitted to give their own tactics a fair trial which would be the best thing under the circumstances they would find themselves within a very short time just where the Kerensky government found itself after six months of fight for a just and democratic peace. For, unless the unexpected happens, the hopes which the Russian extremists place upon the German proletariat are doomed to disappointment, even as the hopes which the moderates have placed in the democracies of Europe and America.