Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/47

 Potressovs in Russia, have been shouting lustily against Out "illusions" of the revolutionists, against the "illusions" of the Basel Manifesto, against the "vain farce" of urging the conversion of the imperialistic war into a civil war. They have sung hymns of praise to the strength, tenacity and adaptability which they ascribe to Capitalism, while they are aiding the capitalists in "adapting," taming, deceiving and disuniting the working classes of the various countries.

But, "he who laughs last laughs best." The bourgeoisie was not long able to delay the coming of the revolutionary crisis produced by the war. This crisis is growing with irresistible force In all countries. It is natural that in Czarist Russia, with its colossal lack of organization and with the most revolutionary proletariat in the world (not due to any specific characteristic of this proletariat, but because of its living in the memory of 1905), the revolutionary crisis should burst forth earlier than anywhere else. This crisis was called forth, or rather hastened, by a series of most serious defeats inflicted on Russia and her allies. These defeats disorganized the whole mechanism of an antiquated government and the old order of things, arousing the opposition of all classes of the people; they incensed the army and practically wiped out the reactionary officer class, consisting of the worn-out nobility and the most effete elements of bourgeois officialdom, replacing this class with a predominantly bourgeois and petty bourgeois staff of varied origin.

But, if military defeat played the role of a negative factor, hastening the outbreak, then the alliance of Anglo-French finance, of Anglo-French Imperialism, with the Octobrist-Cadet Capitalism of Russia appears as a factor that speeds the crisis after it has arrived.

This phase of the matter, for reasons that are clear, is, in spite