Ten Days That Shook the World | Page 5

hand, the masses of the people
wanted real industrial and agrarian democracy.
William English Walling, in his book, “Russia’s Message,” an account of the Revolution
of 1905, describes very well the state of mind of the Russian workers, who were later to
support Bolshevism almost unanimously:
They (the working people) saw it was possible that even under a free Government, if it
fell into the hands of other social classes, they might still continue to starve….
The Russian workman is revolutionary, but he is neither violent, dogmatic, nor
unintelligent. He is ready for barricades, but he has studied them, and alone of the
workers of the world he has learned about them from actual experience. He is ready and
willing to fight his oppressor, the capitalist class, to a finish. But he does not ignore the
existence of other classes. He merely asks that the other classes take one side or the other
in the bitter conflict that draws near….
They (the workers) were all agreed that our (American) political institutions were
preferable to their own, but they were not very anxious to exchange one despot for
another (i.e., the capitalist class)….
The workingmen of Russia did not have themselves shot down, executed by hundreds in
Moscow, Riga and Odessa, imprisoned by thousands in every Russian jail, and exiled to
the deserts and the arctic regions, in exchange for the doubtful privileges of the
workingmen of Goldfields and Cripple Creek….
And so developed in Russia, in the midst of a foreign war, the Social Revolution on top
of the Political Revolution, culminating in the triumph of Bolshevism.

Mr. A. J. Sack, director in this country of the Russian Information Bureau, which opposes
the Soviet Government, has this to say in his book, “The Birth of the Russian
Democracy”: The Bolsheviks organised their own cabinet, with Nicholas Lenine as
Premier and Leon Trotsky— Minister of Foreign Affairs. The inevitability of their
coming into power became evident almost immediately after the March Revolution. The
history of the Bolsheviki, after the Revolution, is a history of their steady growth….
Foreigners, and Americans especially, frequently emphasise the “ignorance” of the
Russian workers. It is true they lacked the political experience of the peoples of the West,
but they were very well trained in voluntary organisation. In 1917 there were more than
twelve million members of the Russian consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the
Soviets themselves are a wonderful demonstration of their organising genius. Moreover,
there is probably not a people in the world so well educated in Socialist theory and its
practical application.
William English Walling thus characterises them:
The Russian working people are for the most part able to read and write. For many years
the country has been in such a disturbed condition that they have had the advantage of
leadership not only of intelligent individuals in their midst, but of a large part of the
equally revolutionary educated class, who have turned to the working people with their
ideas for the political and social regeneration of Russia….
Many writers explain their hostility to the Soviet Government by arguing that the last
phase of the Russian Revolution was simply a struggle of the “respectable” elements
against the brutal attacks of Bolshevism. However, it was the propertied classes, who,
when they realised the growth in power of the popular revolutionary organisations,
undertook to destroy them and to halt the Revolution. To this end the propertied classes
finally resorted to desperate measures. In order to wreck the Kerensky Ministry and the
Soviets, transportation was disorganised and internal troubles provoked; to crush the
Factory- Shop Committees, plants were shut down, and fuel and raw materials diverted;
to break the Army Committees at the front, capital punishment was restored and military
defeat connived at.
This was all excellent fuel for the Bolshevik fire. The Bolsheviki retorted by preaching
the class war, and by asserting the supremacy of the Soviets.
Between these two extremes, with the other factions which whole- heartedly or
half-heartedly supported them, were the so-called “moderate” Socialists, the Mensheviki
and Socialist Revolutionaries, and several smaller parties. These groups were also
attacked by the propertied classes, but their power of resistance was crippled by their
theories.
Roughly, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries believed that Russia was not
economically ripe for a social revolution—that only a political revolution was possible.
According to their interpretation, the Russian masses were not educated enough to take
over the power; any attempt to do so would inevitably bring on a reaction, by means of

which some ruthless opportunist might restore the old régime. And so it followed that
when the “moderate” Socialists were forced to assume the power, they were afraid to use
it.
They believed that Russia must pass through the stages of political and economic
development known to Western Europe, and