Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/191

 Rh incident was magnified and made a subject of excitement. Many sheer inventions were circulated and wildly discussed in the Press—for instance, the "republic of Schüsselburg," which never existed. It is true that such inventions and exaggerations lived, in each case, only for a day or two, or sometimes only for a few hours, but they did their work in stirring up agitation and fear among the citizens. Needless to say that every lie and every baseless accusation, every absurd exaggeration, was diligently circulated abroad. But subsequent corrections and denials were seldom even mentioned afterwards in the foreign Press.

The meaning of all this super-induced agitation and excitement was on the one hand to arouse the Government to fight the more consistent and decisive elements in the democracy, and on the other hand to frighten the people and split the democracy. The propertied classes themselves had not the power to "fight anarchy," and had they tried to do so would only have revealed their counter-revolutionary intentions and welded the democracy together against them. Instead, they paid every compliment to the moderate elements of the democracy, and tried to inspire them firmly to resist the demands of the Left. Unfortunately the course of events favoured the tendency to split. The extreme elements in the Soviet, whose popularity was growing, ventured to emphasise their differences with the moderates in face of the counter-revolutionary danger. On the other hand, the moderate elements began to be influenced more and more by the Machiavellian whispers of the bourgeoisie, and there began an open feud within the democratic camp, to the unconcealed delight of all imperialists in Russia and in the Allied countries. The imperialist papers in the Allied countries cautiously suggested the dawn of a "renaissance" in Russia.