ABSTRACT
When the First World War came to an end, there was an immediate revolutionary surge in the defeated countries. In Germany, the so-called Weimar Republic was set up, within which the Social Democrats became, and long remained, the largest single political party. Russia herself was perhaps not ripe for socialist revolution; but a revolution in Russia could provide the spark which would start the conflagration of world revolution in countries like Germany, or Britain, or France, which were ripe. Vladimir Lenin, it was hoped, would pull Russia out of the war, where upon the Germans would be free to deal with the western Allies. Bolshevism is constantly shown as a terrible threat in cartoons of the period. Sometimes it is personalized as Lenin. This cartoon, Spartakus, was drawn while the movement still posed a serious challenge to the authorities of the new German republic.
