Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/35

 not more crime, more wrongdoing, more disorder than in the well-guarded capitals of Western Europe.

To whom or to what is the credit due for this calm, for this relative tranquillity, this almost peaceful development of the most subversive revolution that the world has ever known?

Surely, in the first instance, to the character of the Russian people. In Russia the man of the people, when he is sober, is infinitely more peaceful, more docile, more sociable in a word, than the workman or peasant of our own countries.

But he must be sober.

In 1905, when vodka was to be had at every street-corner, when the rebels began by pillaging the alcohol stores in many towns, frightful scenes of bestiality took place, such as, for instance, the butcheries of Kischineff and the massacres of Odessa and the industrial centres of the Caspian Sea. If it has been otherwise this time, it is because the Revolution of 1917 has been a dry Revolution.

Assuredly, while prohibition is general, it is not absolute. Though one cannot