Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/124

 capacity of the revolutionary class to effect revolutionary mass actions, sufficiently powerful to break down or undermine the old government which will never "fall," not even in periods of crises, if it is not "overthrown."

Such is the Marxist attitude toward revolution, which was very often expressed and acknowledged and confirmed for us Russians by the experiences of the year 1905. The question is what was expected in this connection by the Basel manifesto in 1912 and what did take place in 1914–15.

A revolutionary situation was expected, briefly described by the phrase "an economic and a political crisis." Did it take place? Undoubtedly, yes. The Socialist-Chauvinist, Lensch (who was much more honest in expressing his views, than the hypocrites Cunow, Kautsky, Plekhanov & Co.), even said that we are living through a peculiar revolution (vide page 6 of his pamphlet, "German Social-Democracy and the War," Berlin, 1915). The political crisis was self-evident. Not one of the governments was sure of the next day, not one was free from the danger of a financial collapse, loss of territory or expulsion from its own country (as, for instance, the Belgian government was expelled). All the governments are living at the edge of a volcano; all are making appeals to the heroism of the masses.

The political regime of Europe is completely shaken and no one will deny that we have entered (and entering further still—I am writing this on the day when Italy has entered the war.) into an epoch of great political disturbances. If Kautsky two months after the declaration of war wrote (Oct. 2, 1914, The Neue Zeit) that never is the government so strong and the parties so weak as at the commencement of a war, it is but one of the samples of the counterfeit historical science of Kautsky for the benefit of Sudekum and other opportunists. Never does a government require the agreement of all the parties of the ruling classes and the ""peaceful subservience" to their "rule" of the exploited classes, as in times of war. "At the commencement of war," especially in a country expecting a quick victory, the government "appears" all-powerful, yet nobody, at no time, and nowhere in the world, connected the expectation of a revolutionary situation exclusively with the moment of commencement of the war, and therefore never idenified "the appearance" with the actuality.

That the European war will be burdensome, beyond comparison with others, everybody knew and acknowledged. The experiences