ABSTRACT
I cannot tell the long story in detail here, but it is important to bear in mind at least the general outlines of it, in order that the connection of events might not be forgotten too soon. The first step consisted in preparatory attempts to use the whole of International Socialism against such national fractions of it as had contracted a “sacred union” or burgfrieden with the bourgeois parties and Governments. When this attempt failed, the second step was immediately set in motion. It was to detach “revolutionary” fractions of International Socialism from patriotic “majorities,” to connect them together, to work out their common doctrine and tactics, based on the general weariness of the masses, and, finally, to use their growing disaffection for revolutionary experiments in “Communist” Socialism. The third step was reached as soon as one of these attempts had succeeded at the point of least resistance, which was Russia. Its chief aim and meaning was to transform the national revolution which broke out against the Tsarist Autocracy into a social revolution against the bourgeois and “capitalist” classes. With German help and with a kind of half-conscious con-nivance of Moderate Socialism, this aim has also been attained. Then a fourth step followed which consisted in an attempt to substitute civil war amongst the classes for international war in the trenches. At least two countries, Russia and Germany, were to be implicated, in order that this attempt might succeed and that international strikes might be stopped. But in Germany social revolution was late in coming, and it was Russia alone that had meantime to suffer from the consequences of her military breakdown in the trenches and the internal social war. The fifth step was taken after the Armistice. It consisted in an attempt to use the Bolshevist dictatorship of the proletariat on a larger scale as a fuel to kindle a similar fire amongst the peoples of both Central Empires and the Entente Powers indiscriminately. Whether this will be the last and the least successful step of the Bolshevist scheme, or the first one in some new series of coming events, it is impossible to foresee and useless to foretell. But for anyone who wishes clearly to trace consecutive events, it is necessary to keep firmly in mind their development by way of the five stages mentioned. They may be classified as follows:
(1) The disruption of the Second “International”; (2) The Zimmerwald-Kienthal doctrine as a basis for the Third, the “revolutionary”
International; (3) The Bolshevist advent in Russia; (4) Brest-Litovsk-a temporary eclipse of Bolshevist schemes for Europe; and (5) A renewed Bolshevist attack on the bourgeoisie and democracy in Europe, through
the intermediary of European “Spartacists.”
