Page:George Pitt-Rivers - The World Significance of the Russian Revolution (1920).pdf/24

 8 (4) That it was not the tyranny of the Russian governments, nor the supposed discontent of the masses which caused them to fall, but their weakness, growing incompetence and the sinister machinations of Jews and international doctrinaires, which finally culminated in their collapse under the appalling strain of the War. In other words, it fell, not because it was autocratic, an autocracy at least implies an autocrat with a will and a purpose, but because it had long ceased to be autocratic, and was merely weak, incompetent, and lacking in policy, will and purpose.

We now approach the question: What are the opposing forces in the struggle? To suppose that the barbarous terms "Bolshevism" and "anti-Bolshevism" do any more than supply two very misleading labels which explain nothing, is to show a signal lack of power to appreciate the situation and to probe beneath the surface scum of verbal obscurantism. Before the long foreseen, utter, and inevitable collapse of the White Anti-Bolshevik Armies, the Red Army representing Bolshevism, and the White Army under Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenitch, were composed, for the most part, entirely of the same material, that is to say the Russian element in both armies was identical. The rank and file on both sides were Russians of the same class, with the same sympathies, and the same interests. They were ignorant and illiterate Russian peasants, whose only clear and all-compelling motive was to get enough food and clothing to keep them from death by starvation and cold. The very