On the other hand, many favorable conditions were present. With respect to natural resources, Russia is one of the richest countries in the world. She has practically everything necessary to a healthy and self-sufficing industrial life. Over this wealth the bolehevists had full control. Lenin, the bolshevist chief, is conceded to have been a remarkable executive, so that the socialist experiment was conducted by a man not only well versed in Marxian doctrine, but capable of exercising an intelligent and authoritative control of the government. The bolshevist territory was blockaded by Great Britain, France, and the United States, but trade connections between Russia and the two last-named countries had been unimportant. Trade connections with Germany and Sweden on the west, and China on the east, were not broken off.
It is clear that the socialist experiment in Russia was attended by important advantages and disadvantages. Whether or not bolshevism had an absolutely fair trial is as yet impossible to say. On the other hand, the disastrous failure of the experiment would seem to indicate that it could not have met with any great degree of success under fairly favorable conditions. The admissions of the bolshevist leaders themselves, together with the conclusions of the most impartial investigators of the experiment, justify the conclusion that socialism in Russia failed because it was based upon false principles. The bolshevists have been accused of having instituted a reign of terror, bringing in its train lawlessness, murder, desecration of the church, and the most brutal savagery. Into these charges we cannot go; it is enough that the most reliable evidence goes to show that bolshevism, as a nation-wide application of socialist doctrine, was a failure.
154. FAILURE OF BOLSHEVIST PROPAGANDA BEYOND RUSSIA.—Bolshevism, in common with other varieties of socialism, sought to break down national barriers and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in all of the countries of the world. Some of the milder socialists in western Europe and America disavowed the acts of the Russian group, but the majority of socialists beyond Russia appear to have at least secretly sympathized with the bolshevists. Encouraged by this attitude, Lenin and Trotzky frankly admitted their intention of fomenting world-wide revolution. The bolshevist government appropriated large sums for propaganda in countries beyond Russia, and socialist sympathizers everywhere advocated an attempt to overthrow "world capitalism." In the period of unrest immediately following the World War there was some response to bolshevist propaganda in a number of countries, but sounder opinion prevailed, and in 1920 Lenin admitted that the workingmen of Europe and America had definitely rejected his program. The one case of nation-wide socialism had proved too great a failure not to impress the laboring classes in the more advanced countries of the world as a visionary and unworkable scheme.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT
1. Why is bolshevism of interest to students of American democracy?
2. Explain the origin of the bolshevists.
3. How did the bolshevists come into power?
4. To what extent was the bolshevist constitution liberal?
5. To what extent did it restrict the suffrage?
6. What did the bolshevist constitution say concerning a "red" army?