Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/18

XVI The definite success of the proletarian revolution in Russia depends not alone upon the Russian masses, but much more upon the revolutionary action of the masses in the rest of Europe. The Russian Revolution cannot accomplish that which the French Revolution accomplished—wage war upon the whole of Europe. The strength and the weakness of the proletarian revolution in Russia is precisely that the other European nations are much more highly developed economically. Revolutionary France was the most advanced nation economically in Europe (except England), and this greater economic power was a source of unparalleled political and military vigor to France, making feasible a war against all of Europe. But the proletarian revolution in Russia is vulnerable to a concerted attack of European Imperialism, because the other nations of Europe can mobilize infinitely superior economic forces; simultaneously, this situation is one favorable to the Russian Revolution, since the higher stage of economic development in the other nations prepares the conditions for supplementary revolutionary action, which alone can ultimately preserve the Russian Revolution. Monarchic Europe could not produce a revolution in accord with that in France; modern Europe can produce a proletarian revolution in accord with that in Russia. The proletarian revolution in Russia requires and struggles for the Social Revolution in Europe. The revolution of the proletariat is an international revolution.

The proletarian revolution in Russia, the climax of the war, marks the entry of the international proletariat into a new revolutionary epoch. In this epoch the Social Revolution is no longer an aspiration, but a dynamic process of immediate revolutionary struggles.

The new epoch is an epoch of revolutionary struggles, in which the proletariat acts definitely for the conquest of power. This new revolutionary epoch has been objectively introduced by Imperialism, and subjectively initiated by the proletarian revolution in Russia. Imperialism creates a revolutionary situation, a crisis and a breach in the old order through which the proletariat may break through for action and the conquest of power.

This is an historic fact of the utmost importance. It means the preparation of the proletariat for the final struggle against Capitalism, the necessity of clear-cut, uncompromising action in the activity of Socialism;—it means, moreover, the revolutionary reconstruction of Socialist policy and tactics, in accord with the