ABSTRACT
The conservative assumption on Bolshevism’s lack of durability was of very brief duration. It continued to animate parts of the more emphatically laissez-faire side of the movement throughout the Cold War, but for the majority of the conservatives it was really relevant only during the First World War, indeed only for about a year from the Bolshevik coup. The road to the totalitarian image was paved by the events leading to the Bolshevik separation from the First World War. As long as a conceivable chance remained of Bolshevik cooperation with the Allies, conservatives had been ready to consider plans to that effect, even given their strong reservations about the Bolsheviks on other points. In early 1918 documents originally spread by the Provisional Russian government and purporting to show that the Bolsheviks were taking orders from Germany began to be taken seriously.
