Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/73

 Rh gift of the Bismarck soldiery. Prussia at that time, as today, can give to other peoples nothing but its own junker rule. The republican France was the ripe fruit of inner social struggles and of the three revolutions that had preceded it. The crash at Sebastopol was in effect similar to that of Jena. But because there was no revolutionary movement in Russia, it led to the outward renovation and reaffirmation of the old regime.

But the reforms that opened the road for capitalist development in Russia during the 60's were possible only with the money of a capitalist system. This money was furnished by western European capital. It came from Germany and France, and has created a new relationship that has lasted down to the present day. Russian absolutism is now subsidized by the western European bourgeoisie. No longer does the Russian Ruble "roll in diplomatic chambers" as Prince William of Prussia bitterly complained in 1854, "into the very chambers of the King." On the contrary, German and French money is rolling to Petersburg to feed a regime that would long ago have breathed its last without this life-giving juice. Russian Czarism is today no longer the product of Russian conditions; its root lies in the capitalist conditions of western Europe. And the relationship is shifting from decatedecade [sic] to decade. In the same measure as the old root of Russian absolutism in Russia itself is being destroyed, the new, west-European root is growing stronger and stronger. Besides lending their financial support, Germany and France, since 1870, have been vieing with each other to lend Russia their political support as well. As revolutionary forces arise from the womb of the Russian people itself to fight against Russian absolutism, they meet with. an ever growing resistence in western Europe, which stands ready to lend to threatened Czarism its moral and political support. So when, in the beginning of the 80's the older Russian socialist movement severely shook the Czarist government and partly destroyed its authority within and without,