ABSTRACT
The revolution came in Russia not because Russian culture and Russian intelligence in general were in advance of that of other countries, but for the opposite reason, because Russia was a backward country, which nevertheless possessed a proletariat. The leadership even of the Bolshevik party—since Stalin threw out the internationalists and inaugurated a reign of strictly Russian, where not indeed Georgian, mediocrities in its guiding groups—is in large areas, notwithstanding the Marxian credo, a retrograde leadership. The influence of Russian ways of thinking upon the forward-going experimental portions of the human race is vast and subtly engineered, and the best artists, generally speaking, are a forward-going experimental tribe. Toward the French writer Henri Barbusse their attitude is one of desperate patience with an obtuse and unruly pupil. Barbusse insists upon solidarizing with the communist movement, and is even willing to pronounce the key-word dialectic, but he is about as apt or willing to understand Marxism as Al Smith.
