Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/77

 Rh workers. As in the days before the revolution in 1905, the flame broke out in June, in the Caucasus. In Baku, 40,000 workers were on a general strike. The flames leaped over to Petersburg. On the 17th of June 80,000 workers in Petersburg laid down their tools, on the 20th of July, 200,000 were out, July 23rd, the general strike movement was spreading out all over Russia, barricades were being built, the revolution was on its way. A few more months and it would have come, its flags fluttering in the wind. A few more years, and perhaps the whole world-political constellation would have been changed, imperialism, perhaps, would have received a firm check in its mad impulse.

But German reaction checked the revolutionary movement. From Berlin and Vienna came declarations of war, and the Russian revolution was buried beneath its wreckage. "German guns" are shattering, not Czarism, but its most dangerous enemy. The hopefully fluttering flag of the revolution sank down amid a wild whirlpool of war. But it sank honorably, and it will rise again out of the horrible massacre, in spite of "German guns," in spite of victory or defeat for Russia on the battlefields.

The national revolts in Russia which the Germans tried to foster, too, were unsuccessful. The Russian provinces were evidently less inclined to fall for the bait of Hindenburg's cohorts than the German Social-Democracy. The Jews, practical people that they are, were able to count out on their fingers that "German fists" which have been unable to overthrow their own Prussian reaction can. hardly be expected to smash Russian absolutism, The Poles, exposed to the tripleheaded war, were not in the position to answer their "liberators" in audible language. But they will have remembered that Polish children were taught to pray the Lord's prayer in the German language with bloody welts on their backs, will not have forgotten the liberality of Prussian anti-Polish laws. All of them, Poles, Jews and Russians had no