Page:George Pitt-Rivers - The World Significance of the Russian Revolution (1920).pdf/50

 34 their heads,' should be seized by a blind fate and placed in the seat of power, instead of ending his days as a 'sadist' in a ward for violent lunatics?"

The importance of 'sadism' as a revolutionary motive is widely recognised by psychologists. There is much evidence in the writings of revolutionaries and syndicalists that it exists as a motive in the unconscious, at times becoming wholly conscious and very plainly articulate; as, for instance, in the writings of those worshippers of "violence for the sake of violence" (e.g., M. Georges Sorel's Refléxion sur la Violence). In their vision of the "New Birth of Society," it is the blood of the Caesarian section they hope to practise on the expiring mother society, not the fate of the offspring which is their chief concern.

Medical men and psychologists may be referred to Dr. Iwan Bloch's very instructive contribution to the psychology of the Russian Revolution contained in Chapter XXI. of his book on the Sexual Life of Our Time. The part played by sadism as a revolutionary motive is revealed in the authentic journal of an "algolagnistic revolutionist" herein published.

Now that the terrorist period appears to have burned itself out to a very great extent in Russia, it is well that we should realise that it was an essential and deliberately designed phase of the Bolshevik plan, and that, as it was manifested with the same maniacal ferocity, wholesale butchery and bestiality, in Hungary, so would it be an inevitable prelude to any successful attempt to establish the same régime in any other European country. Mob licence and destruction would be encouraged and tolerated only as a means to preparing the way for the new dictators and for placing them in power.