Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/212

 their readiness to die with ecstasy under this red rag, for Constantinople and the Straits.

But the imperialistic cloven hoof of Milyukov was sticking out too plainly. In order to win over the awakened masses and guide their revolutionary energy into the channel of an offensive on the external front, more intricate methods were required—but, chiefly, different political parties were needed, with platforms that had not yet been compromised, and reputations that had not yet been sullied.

They were found. In the years of counter-revolution, and particularly in the period of the latest industrial boom, capital had subjected to itself and had mentally tamed many thousands of revolutionists of 1905, being in no wise concerned about their Laborite or Marxist "notions." And among the "Socialistic" intellectuals there were therefore rather numerous groups whose palms were itching to take part in the checking of the class struggle and in the training of the masses for "patriotic" ends. Hand in hand with this intelligentsia, which had been brought into prominence in the counter-revolutionary epoch, went the compromise-workers, who had been frightened definitely and finally by the failure of the 1905 Revolution, and had since then developed in themselves the sole talent of being agreeable to all sides.

The opposition of the bourgeois classes to Czarism—upon an imperialistic foundation, however—had, even before the Revolution, provided the necessary basis for a rapprochment between the opportunist Socialists and the propertied classes. In the Duma, Kerensky and Cheidse built up their policy as an annex to the progressive bloc, and the "Socialistic" Gvozdyevs and Bogdanovs merged with the Guchkovs on the War Industry Committees. But the existence of Czarism made an open advocacy of the "government" patriotism standpoint very difficult. The Revolution cleared away all obstacles of this nature. Capitulating to the capitalist parties was now called "a democratic unity," and the discipline of the bourgeois state suddenly became "revolutionary discipline," and finally, participation in a capitalist war was looked upon as a defense of the Revolution from external defeat.

This nationalistic intelligentsia, which the social-patriot Struve had prophesied, invoked and trained, in his paper Vyekhi, suddenly met with an unexpectedly generous support in the helplessness of the most backward masses of the people, who had been forcibly organized as an army.