Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/23

 Rh a speedy conclusion of the war. And the revolutionary democracy was able in about a fortnight's time after the Revolution to formulate the purpose of the Revolution with a clearness and prophetic foresight such as is only possible in moments of spiritual exaltation.

The Revolution was pacifist, not in principle, but as a matter of necessity. If the Revolution had taken place a year or two before, the same revolutionary democracy of Russia would certainly have conducted a revolutionary war.

As matters stood, the Counter-Revolution dressed itself in a bellicose cloak, not because it was devoted to the Allied cause, or disliked Germany, or was patriotic; but simply because the hated revolutionary democracy was pacifist. If the Revolution had insisted on continuing the war the Counter-Revolution would for the same reason have assumed a pacifist mask.

If the Revolution does not succeed in killing the war, the war will destroy the Revolution—that was felt and believed by everyone in Russia. It was the universal creed. The counter-revolutionists knew and believed this quite as well as the revolutionists. And there is not the slightest doubt that they shouted so loudly for the war and "our noble Allied cause, which Russia must not desert," simply and solely because they knew that the longer the war dragged on and the longer the process of Russia's economic disintegration continued the easier it would be for them to destroy the Revolution.

The struggle for peace, in short, was the struggle for the consolidation of the Revolution, and the shouts that were raised for going on with the war were but a means for undermining and destroying the Revolution.

No doubt the many sins of the dastardly Government and of the putrescent Court stimulated the Revolution. But even if Rasputin had never existed and the Empress had been as virtuous as, say, the wife of the Procurator of the Holy Synod; if the Tsar had been more patriotic than the Editor of the Novoie Vremia, or Protopopov, his crazy Minister, had been quite sound and a supporter