ABSTRACT
An intrinsic part of the new liberal pre-war and pre-Bolshevik agenda as it had been, the lefts wartime effort to speed up social control was directed against Bolshevism only in the limited and incidental sense that it expected an absence of liberal reform to cause Bolshevik-style violence. It was assumed that the Bolsheviks did not want to allow German penetration of Russia but could not resist unless thus aided by the West, and that if they were aided they would quickly proceed towards Western-style social democracy. Wilson was in fact engaging in a liberal intervention for social control. What the Presidents plans indicated was the pervasiveness of the materialist assumption that Bolshevik excesses were rooted in social conditions and the expectation that spontaneous moderation social control, in other words would result from considered assistance to existing progressive movements.
