Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/24

 12 of the "knock-out-blow" policy—nevertheless the Revolution would have been inevitable. It might have come under less startling circumstances and probably a little later, but it would have come all the same.

The more we know about the Revolution and the forces that brought it about, the more we become convinced that the Revolution was not a dramatic and sudden act. The Revolution was not the beginning of a new development, but rather the end of a process begun long ago.

If by revolution we conceive a sudden and a dramatic cataclysm, then I am sure there was in Russia no revolution at all. Revolution, as I conceive it, is the long process of dying away and decomposition of an old social and political order and the upgrowing of a new social structure. The moment the new order presents its claims and takes possession of the political institutions of the State—that is the Revolution. Certainly the earlier the new order asserts itself and the more vitality the old order still retains, the more violent and the more dramatic is the revolution.

The Russian Revolution was bloodless and not at all violent, because the new order had put in its claims at a very late stage in the development of its own strength and in the corresponding decomposition of the old. At the moment of the Revolution the Russian Monarchy was virtually a corpse, without a trace of vigour or vitality. Its mortal sickness was upon it before the war. The war enormously hastened the end.

The tragedy of Russia is that the war not only definitely destroyed the Monarchy, but undermined the economic foundations of the State. The new order was crippled by the war even before it was enthroned.