Bolshevism | Page 3

the United States; Dr.
Boris Takavenko, editor of La Russia Nuova, Rome, Italy; Mr. William
English Walling, New York; and my friend, Father Cahill, of
Bennington.
Among the Appendices at the end of the volume will be found some
important documents containing some contemporary Russian Socialist
judgments of Bolshevism. These documents are, I venture to suggest,
of the utmost possible value and importance to the student and general
reader.
JOHN SPARGO,
"NESTLEDOWN," OLD BENNNIGTON, VERMONT, _End of
January, 1919_.

BOLSHEVISM
CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
I
For almost a full century Russia has been the theater of a great
revolutionary movement. In the light of Russian history we read with
cynical amusement that in 1848, when all Europe was in a
revolutionary ferment, a German economist confidently predicted that
revolutionary agitation could not live in the peculiar soil of Russian
civilization. August Franz von Haxthausen was in many respects a
competent and even a profound student of Russian politics, but he was
wrong in his belief that the amount of rural communism existing in
Russia, particularly the mir, would make it impossible for storms of
revolutionary agitation to arise and stir the national life.
As a matter of historical fact, the ferment of revolution had appeared in
the land of the Czars long before the German economist made his
remarkably ill-judged forecast. At the end of the Napoleonic wars many
young officers of the Russian army returned to their native land full of
revolutionary ideas and ideals acquired in France, Italy, and Germany,
and intent upon action. At first their intention was simply to make an
appeal to Alexander I to grant self-government to Russia, which at one
time he had seemed disposed to do. Soon they found themselves
engaged in a secret conspiratory movement having for its object the
overthrow of Czarism. The story of the failure of these romanticists, the
manner in which the abortive attempt at revolution in December, 1825,
was suppressed, and how the leaders were punished by Nicholas
I--these things are well known to most students of Russian history. The
Decembrists, as they came to be called, failed, as they were bound to
do, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their efforts were
altogether vain. On the contrary, their inspiration was felt throughout
the next thirty years and was reflected in the literature of the period.
During that period Russian literature was tinged with the faith in social
regeneration held by most of the cultured intellectual classes. The
Decembrists were the spiritual progenitors of the Russian revolutionary
movement of our time. In the writings of Pushkin--himself a
Decembrist--Lermontoff, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, and many

others less well known, the influence of the Decembrist movement is
clearly manifested.
If we are to select a single figure as the founder of the modern social
revolutionary movement in Russia, that title can be applied to
Alexander Herzen with greater fitness than to any other. His influence
upon the movement during many years was enormous. Herzen was
half-German, his mother being German. He was born at Moscow in
1812, shortly before the French occupation of the city. His parents were
very rich and he enjoyed the advantages of a splendid education, as
well as great luxury. At twenty-two years of age he was banished to a
small town in the Urals, where he spent six years, returning to Moscow
in 1840. It is noteworthy that the offense for which he had been sent
into exile was the singing of songs in praise of the Decembrist martyrs.
This occurred at a meeting of one of the "Students' Circles" founded by
Herzen for the dissemination of revolutionary Socialist ideals among
the students.
Upon his return to Moscow in 1840 Herzen, together with Bakunin and
other friends, again engaged in revolutionary propaganda and in 1842
he was again exiled. In 1847, through the influence of powerful friends,
he received permission to leave Russia for travel abroad. He never
again saw his native land, all the remaining years of life being spent in
exile. After a tour of Italy, Herzen arrived in Paris on the eve of the
Revolution of 1848, joining there his friends, Bakunin and Turgeniev,
and many other revolutionary leaders. It was impossible for him to
participate actively in the 1848 uprising, owing to the activity of the
Paris police, but he watched the Revolution with the profoundest
sympathy. And when it failed and was followed by the terrible reaction
his distress was almost unbounded. For a brief period he was the victim
of the most appalling pessimism, but after a time his faith returned and
he joined with Proudhon in issuing a radical revolutionary paper,
_L'Ami du Peuple_, of which, Kropotkin tells us in his admirable study
of Russian literature, "almost every number was confiscated by the
police