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INTERNATIONAL SITUATION (Continued) (4)

When the Russian Revolution took place it was believed that the im-
mediate effect would be the energetic conduct of the war without "graft" but the
fighting spirit declined and the army was rent by a wave of "democratization"
which practically rendered 90% of all the officers uselees--the good as well
as the bad, because it was almost humanly in possible for any man with a
Russian officer’s training to adapt himself to such violently changed condi-
tions. The line of authority was broken never to be restored in this war.

Civil and industrial life were also upset in an analagous manner.
The appeal to finish the war and then adjust spacial differences as between
Labor and Capital, fell upon deaf ears. After the consumnation of the
act of overthrow of the "old power" the Duma endeavored to control the situa-
tion, but they were unable to "get to the people" and to convince them. Per-
haps their lives of enforced inaction had ill fitted these intelligents for
active measures. And the social differences were so great in Russia that
the intelligents did not know how to talk to the people. Again the Fourth
Duma was elected under an imperial decree, which did not grant equal suffrage
but gave the majority of the seats to these, when the Autocracy considercd
"safe" and this discredited the Duma in the popular mind. They seemed to
forget that the Duma had been the battleground of the popular liberties, that
the members had once and again been made to suffer for their attacks on the
autocracy, that the Duma had been, a evan though it could not pass such legis-
lation,- a school of parlamentarism in the country while waiting for something
better.

Russia, isolated from the progress of Western Europe, from the
Renaissance and the Reformation, was behind the Western countries in having
no solid Middle Class. There were the nobles and great landowners, the
limited number of large factory owners and capitalists, the "intelligentsia"
(those who are not only enlightened but who consciously work for the attain-
ment of a political and economic ideal for themselves and others) and the
factory workers in the cities--few in number but concentrated and quite
"class-conscious", - and finally the backbone of the whole country 85% of
illiterate or very backward peasants. A great many of the intelligents
who, as Kautzky pointed out, were not tributary to capital, that is whose
living was not bound up with the prosperity of the well-to-do, as architects,
professional men, artists, etc. in other countries, were keenly conscious of
the situation of the workman and peasant and worked, -sometimes very impac-
tically to alleviate it. These people were ardent Socialists and Socialism
came to take the Labor movement under its wing in Russia, just as it has in
Germany and Belgium.

On the plan of the Workmen’s Council (Sovyet) of 1905 a Sovyet was
formed in 1917 of Workmen and Soldiers and this Sovyet, well organized and
knowing how to talk to the people, gained in power at the expense of the
Duma and finally shelved the latter altogether. Russians are versatile
and reckless and have little to lose in life, hence they are willing to take
chances and subject to the domination of theories, which practical experience
would teach them to reject, and which more experienced peoples would not seek
to apply. The Sovyet seen became a battleground between those who wanted
a Socialistic State in Russia at once and the renunciation of the Capitalist
War, and those who were more moderate and saw that not only would this be im-
possible, but the attempt would do harm.

The extremists were called Maximalists or Bolsheviks. In June a

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