Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/123

 (4) that all "governments," without exception, can not begin the war "without danger to themselves"; (5) that the governments "fear a proletarian revolution"; (6) that the governments should remember the Paris Commune (1. e., a civil war), the revolution of 1905 in Russia, etc., etc. All these are very clear ideas. There is no guarantee in them that the revolution will take place. In them is emphasized the precise consideration of facts and tendencies. Any one who on the basis of these ideas and arguments states that the expected advent of the revolution turned out to be an illusion, exhibits not a Marxist but a Struvist and a renegade police relation to the revolution.

For a Marxist there is no doubt that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation, and moreover not every revolutionary situation leads to a revolution. What are the signs of a revolutionary situation? We will probably not err, if we cite the following three leading signs:

(1) The impossibility of the ruling classes to preserve their domination without change of form; one or another crisis "at the top," a political crisis of the ruling class, creating a breach through which the indignation and dissatisfaction of the masses bursts through. For the approach of the revolution it is insufficient that only "those on the bottom" did not want to, but also that those "on the top" no longer can live as before.

(2) The more than usual increase of the needs and misery of the exploited classes.

(3) The marked growth, because of mentioned causes, of the activity of the masses who in "peaceful periods" permit themselves to be robbed in quiet—and in stormy ones are drawn to independent, historical action, under the influence of those "at the top" as well as the entire atmosphere of crises, without these objective changes, independent of the will not only of separate groups and and [sic] parties, but of separate classes as well, revolution, according to general conceptions, is impossible. The conjunction of all these objective changes is what is called a revolutionary situation. There was such a situation in Russia in 1905 and during all revolutionary periods in the West. But there was the same revolutionary situation in the sixties of the last century in Germany and in 1859–1861and 1879–1880 in Russia although no revolutions occurred at the time. Why? Because not from every revolutionary situation there arises a revolution—but only from such in which there is joined with the objective changes a subjective change as well, viz, the