Page:Karl Radek - Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism - tr. Patrick Lavin (1921).djvu/33

26 the counter-revolutionary troops had run away to Versailles) the avoidance of the use of violence within the walls of Paris was assured. Says Kautsky himself: "The enemy which was dangerous to it (the Commune) stood without the walls of its community and could not be reached by the agency of terrorism. The virtue of the Commune, therefore, consists in the imitation of the people of Nürnberg, who did not hang any one they did not catch. Our comrade Dzierschinski, the chief of the Extraordinary Commission in Moscow, whom Kautsky abhors, has most assuredly not caused the death of one of the most dangerous enemies of Soviet Russia in so far as such enemies are out with the Soviet community and are not to be reached by the agency of terrorism. The means of defense employed by the Commune was not terrorism, but war against the Versaillese. The Commune had conducted this war in such a manner that it hastened its downfall by several months. The armies of the counter-revolution existed merely as scattered remnants of the defeated and demoralized Napoleonic army. The Commune had a military preponderance as far as men, munitions, and the spirit of the people were concerned. It had on its side the working class of all the large towns of France. It permitted its strength to be split-up and dissipated; it did not seek the trembling enemy, then merely collecting its thoughts, but allowed him to surprise it, it knew only the heroism of a fight to the death, and nothing of the organizing of war. That this is an example of the dictatorship which is to be imitated, even Kautsky will not assert.

What were the reasons for this complete failure of the Commune? It had a sufficient number of officers who had voluntarily placed themselves at its service. It had in the Pole, Dombrowsky, a good military leader. The masses of the people were prepared for any sacrifice as was shown by their reckless fight when the Versaillese poured into the town. The reason for this want of offensive spirit on the part of the Commune, without which a strong defence is impossible, was the absence of a clearly-defined goal, which was due to the