No sympathizer with Russia—­certainly no Socialist—­can fail to wish that this indulgent criticism were true.  Its acceptance would lighten the darkest chapter in Russian history, and, at the same time, remove from the great international Socialist movement a shameful reproach.  But the facts are incompatible with such a theory.  Instead of being fanatical idealists, incapable of compromises and adjustments, the Bolsheviki have, from the very beginning, been loudly scornful of rigid and unbending idealism; have made numerous compromises, alliances, and “political deals,” and have repeatedly shifted their ground in accordance with political expediency.  They have been consistently loyal to no aim save one—­the control of power.  They have been opportunists of the most extreme type.  There is not a single Socialist or democratic principle which they have not abandoned when it served, their political ends; not a single instrument, principle, or device of autocratic despotism which they have not used when by so doing they could gain power.  For the motto of Bolshevism we might well paraphrase the well-known line of Horace, and make it read, “Get power, honestly, if you can, if not—­somehow or other.”

Of course, this judgment applies only to Bolshevism as such:  to the special and peculiar methods and ideas which distinguish the Bolsheviki from their fellow-Socialists.  It is not to be questioned that as Socialists and revolutionists they have been inspired by some of the great ideals common to all Socialists everywhere.  But they differed from the great mass of Russian Socialists so fundamentally that they separated themselves from them and became a separate and distinct party. That which caused this separation is the essence of Bolshevism—­not the ideals held in common.  No understanding of Bolshevism is possible unless this fundamental fact is first fully understood.  Power, to be gained at any cost, and ruthlessly applied, by the proletarian minority, is the basic principle of Bolshevism as a distinct form of revolutionary movement.  Of course, the Bolshevik leaders sought this power for no sordid, self-aggrandizing ends; they are not self-seeking adventurers, as many would have us believe.  They are sincerely and profoundly convinced that the goal of social and economic freedom and justice can be more easily attained by their method than by the method of democratic Socialism.  Still, the fact remains that what social ideals they hold are no part of Bolshevism.  They are Socialist ideals.  Bolshevism is a distinctive method and a program, and its essence is the relentless use of power by the proletariat against the rest of society in the same manner that the bourgeois and military rulers of nations have commonly used it against the proletariat.  Bolshevism has simply inverted the old Czarist regime.