Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/13

Rh ism of the western nations. The social consequences were identical with those in other countries: the liberals and intellectuals generally became lackeys of Imperialism; democracy and liberal ideas were accepted within the limits of the new autocracy necessary to promote the interests of die imperialistic bourgeoisie. All social groups, on the whole and essentially, except the proletariat, became reactionary and counter-revolutionary.

The imperialistic bourgeoisie, accordingly, enthusiastically accepted the war against Germany and Austria, and for the Dardanelles, Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the promotion of its imperialistic interests generally as against the Imperialism of Germany. But their hopes of a profitable victory lagged, as the corrupt and inefficient beaureaucracy of the Czar bungled the management of the war. Defeat, instead of victory, stared the imperialists in the face. The bougeoisie tried through extra-parliamentary means to avert the collapse. This was not sufficient. There was no decline in the patriotic enthusiasm of the bourgeoisie, but their representatives in the Duma began to criticize the policy of the government,—a criticism, mark you, strictly within the limits of legality, the Duma and the existing system. Not only was this criticism not at all revolutionary, it was distinctly counter-revolutionary. The bourgeoisie and the liberal land-owners, represented by the Constitutional-Democrats (the Cadets) did not want a revolution, nor did they want an overthrow of Czarism; their policy insisted upon an aggressive war against Germany, upon adequate bourgeois representation in the government, upon an international policy in accord with the Entente, upon using Czarism for the bourgeoisie. With the support of Anglo-French capital and the governments of the Entente, the bourgeoisie plotted to compel the abdication of Czar Nicholas, after coming to the realization of the imposibility of "reaching" Nicholas; they intrigued for a palace revolt to place upon the throne a "strong" Grand Duke who would recognize the necessity of an aggressive bourgeois policy in accord with the requirements of Russian capitalistic Imperialism.

But the bourgeoisie miscalculated. The workers and peasants did make a revolution against the bourgeoisie, and they definitely completed the proletarian tendency of the revolution by acting against the bourgeois republic and expropriating the bourgeoisie by means of the revolutionary dictatorship of the; proletariat. The threat of 1905 had become the reality of 1917.