The action of the Executive Committee was thus rendered very difficult.  But it continued to fight, to publish an organ, to commission delegates, to entertain continued relations with the provinces and the country.

XII

Conclusion

Morally, Bolshevism was killed in the eyes of the workers in the course of these days when a peaceful demonstration was fired upon, the Constituent Assembly dissolved, the Peasant Congress (and, very soon, the Congress of the Agricultural Committees) dispersed.  The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party issued an order for new elections to the Soviets, thinking thus to eliminate automatically the Bolsheviki.  And, in truth, when at Petrograd and in the provinces, these elections began, the Revolutionary Socialists and the Mensheviki received the majority and the Bolsheviki were snowed under.  But these new elections were thwarted by many circumstances:  first, because of the lessening of production the workmen were discharged in a body and quit the factories; second, the Bolsheviki put obstacles in the way of the elections and sometimes openly prohibited them.  Nevertheless, wherever they could be held, the results were unfavorable to the Bolsheviki.

Finally, when the working classes clearly saw the shameful role played by the Bolsheviki in the matter of peace, when they saw the Bolsheviki humbly beg for peace at any price from the Germans, they understood that it was impossible to continue to tolerate such a government. The Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist party published a Manifesto appealing to an armed fight against the Bolshevik government and the German gangs that were overrunning the country.

The frightful results of this “peace,” so extolled by the Bolsheviki, rendered even the name of the Bolshevist government odious in the eyes of every conscientious and honest man.

* * * * *

But Bolshevism still endures, for it is based on the armed force of the Red Guard, on the supineness of the masses deprived of a political education, and not accustomed to fight or to act, and from ancient habit of submitting to force.

The causes which produced Bolshevism are:  first, the accumulation of all the conditions of the historic past of the Russian people; second, their psychic character and their habits; third, the conditions of the present time; and fourth, the general situation of the world—­that is to say, the war.

We also note the vague and hesitating policy of the Provisional Government; the lack of political education among the people, ready to follow him who promises the most; small development of civic sentiment; the want of any attachment whatever to the state—­that of the Romanov having never given anything to the people and having taken all from them.  Czarism took from the miserable peasant his last penny under