But for our purpose it is not at all necessary to undertake such an impossible analysis of social events by which we would ascertain the percentage of every component part. It is not here, in the first place, a question of criticizing bolshevism, but the question is of getting a clear understanding of the revolution in Russia and what it has given to us. The main purpose is that ^e revolutionary workers, for whom this book is written, may learn a lesson from it, and that they, at the outbreak of a revolution in their own country, may have the experiences of the Russian revolution at their disposition. The purpose of this book is, consequently, not counter-revolutionary but revolutionary. If the workers after a true and exact description of the conditions in Russia should come to a partial or entire rejection of such conditions for their own country, it should not be allowed to mean a rejection of the social revolution, but only a lesson, how not to do it ivhen revolution breaks out in their own country. This is the main purpose of this book, and the descriptions from Russia which I give, true to facts and without coloring or concealing, should be subordinated to this purpose.
If conditions in Russia are not such as many a man has hoped, or as he had pictured to himself the advent of the social revolution, he should consider that the Russian revolution did not come at a time when the Russian workers and peasants in their great masses were prepared to organize their economic and political life according to the principles of liberty, but that the revolution found the ivorkers entirely unprepared. Adding thereto the comparatively low technical development of the Russian worker, one might thereupon ask oneself whether one had imagined that the revolution would come in the forms it took in the brain of a few theorists or far-advanced revolutionaries.
Let us put this question to ourselves : Being that the Russian revolution did not bring what we had hoped for, would we rather wish that it had not come? Only an anti-revolutionist could have such a negative wish. But every revolutionary must stand by the revolution like a soldier with rifle at his side, with his heart, with his whole feeling and sympathy. And how could we otherwise? We, who have always striven for, hoped for, and worked for the revolution, should we now, when she has come, whom we have sung about in our songs, draw back from her, like a loveless mother from a misshapen child? No, the revolution is here. It is not what we had hoped. It is a deformed, perhaps partly substituted child. But it is our child. We are the parents. It is up to us to recognize the child, to take care of it, to bring it up, to change its form and to make it into as strong and free and proud a child as possible.
AUGUSTINE SOUCHY.
Berlin in December, 1920.
Diagram of the Socialist and Anarchist Movements of Russia and Ukraine
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
alists 1005 feadetffieffein
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
Pan. CUtiivewalist) Anarchists
Individualist Anarchists
Communist Anarchists
Syndicalists
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
See chapter, "The Socialist Movement in Russia", pages 17 to 31 also chapter 'The Socialist Movement in Ukraine", pages 129 to 1
If a book is worth reading it is worth studying.
Workers and Peasants in Russia and Ukraine
The Socialist Movement in Russia
AS the main purpose of this book is to give a presentation of the Russian revolution and the conditions It has created, the socialist parties or movements which exist in Russia will be described only to the extent that it is necessary for an understanding of Russian conditions and the revolution.
The Marxists (Social-Democrats)