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23 The learned fools and old women of the Second International who arrogantly and contemptuously turned up their noses at the many "factions" in Russian Socialism and the stubbornness with which they fought one another, were unable, when the war deprived them of their blessed "legality" in all the advanced countries, to organize anything even approximating such free (illegal) interchange of views and such free (illegal) hammering-out of the right views, as did the Russian revolutionists in Switzerland and other countries. Just because of this inability of theirs, both the downright social-patriots and the "Kautskians" of all countries have proved the worst kind of traitors to the proletariat. And if the Bolsheviks were able to attain victory in 1917–1920, one of the principal causes of this victory was that Bolshevism already, in 1914, had mercilessly unmasked all the abomination, turpitude and criminality of social-chauvinism and "Kautskianism" (to which Longuetism in France, the views of the leaders of the Independent Labor Party and the Fabians in England, and of Turati in Italy, correspond), while the masses, from their own experience, were becoming more and more convinced of the soundness of the views of the Bolsheviks.

Czarism, now hoary with age, had created, under the heavy blows of this tormenting war, a tremendous destructive power which was now directed against it. In a few days, Russia was turned into a democratic, bourgeois republic, more free, considering the state of war, than any other country in the world. The Government was beginning to be formed by the leaders of the Opposition and Revolutionary parties, just after the manner of the most "strictly parliamentary" republics. The fact that a man had been a leader of the opposition, though in the most reactionary parliament imaginable, aided him in his subsequent career in the Revolution.

The Mensheviks and the "Socialist Revolutionaries" mastered, in a few weeks, all the tricks and manners, arguments and sophistries of the European heroes of the Second International, of the ministerialists and other opportunist worthies.