It is customary among the apologists of Bolshevism in the West to excuse its harshness on the ground that it has been produced by the necessity of fighting the Entente and its mercenaries.  Undoubtedly it is true that this necessity has produced many of the worst elements in the present state of affairs.  Undoubtedly, also, the Entente has incurred a heavy load of guilt by its peevish and futile opposition.  But the expectation of such opposition was always part of Bolshevik theory.  A general hostility to the first Communist State was both foreseen and provoked by the doctrine of the class war.  Those who adopt the Bolshevik standpoint must reckon with the embittered hostility of capitalist States; it is not worth while to adopt Bolshevik methods unless they can lead to good in spite of this hostility.  To say that capitalists are wicked and we have no responsibility for their acts is unscientific; it is, in particular, contrary to the Marxian doctrine of economic determinism.  The evils produced in Russia by the enmity of the Entente are therefore to be reckoned as essential in the Bolshevik method of transition to Communism, not as specially Russian.  I am not sure that we cannot even go a step further.  The exhaustion and misery caused by unsuccessful war were necessary to the success of the Bolsheviks; a prosperous population will not embark by such methods upon a fundamental economic reconstruction.  One can imagine England becoming Bolshevik after an unsuccessful war involving the loss of India—­no improbable contingency in the next few years.  But at present the average wage-earner in England will not risk what he has for the doubtful gain of a revolution.  A condition of widespread misery may, therefore, be taken as indispensable to the inauguration of Communism, unless, indeed, it were possible to establish Communism more or less peacefully, by methods which would not, even temporarily, destroy the economic life of the country.  If the hopes which inspired Communism at the start, and which still inspire its Western advocates, are ever to be realized, the problem of minimizing violence in the transition must be faced.  Unfortunately, violence is in itself delightful to most really vigorous revolutionaries, and they feel no interest in the problem of avoiding it as far as possible.  Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends.  But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.

II

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS