Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/59

 Rh the necessity of proceeding at once to its most energetic fulfilment.

"The catastrophe is already on the country, and only the creative efforts of the whole people under the direction of the State can hope to save Russia. The State must consciously take on itself the gigantic task of saving the country, destroyed as it is by the ravages of war and of the Tsar's régime."

This programme shows quite clearly that the revolutionary democracy was conscious that the exhaustion of the country had already reached the dimensions of a catastrophe, and that its first and foremost task was to find out ways and means of stopping the disintegration.

This economic and financial policy of the democracy, although representing a considerable change in the economic and social relations of the country, by no means constituted a social revolution. The free play of economic interests, whereby the minority was enriched in proportion as the majority became impoverished, was to be replaced by a new order, under which the State would take control of the economic activities of the country, setting a limit to the increasing wealth of the few, and guaranteeing a minimum of existence to the many. In this country, where people are becoming more and more conscious of the danger of economic exhaustion and of the imperative need of applying drastic measures of State control and State organisation, there is no need to emphasise that the above programme of the Soviet was not Socialism.

Had the democracy been allowed to carry out this programme, anarchy would have been checked, and the disintegration of Russian industry would have been arrested. Unfortunately this programme was never put into action, and State control was not applied till the October Revolution, when the Bolshevik State took over the mortal remains of what was once the industrial system of Russia.

The first Coalition Government was created with the threefold purpose: first, of inaugurating an "active"