o,"
impossibilism drives many, who see the utter sterility of its results,
into the opposite direction, that of opportunism for the moment
without much thought for the future.

Until their "coup de rue" of November, 1917, the Russian Bolsheviks
regarded themselves as the extreme Left of the Russian Social-Democratic
Party. But latterly they have dropped the name Social-Democrat--so much
the better for Social-Democracy--and have adopted that of the "Russian
Communist Party"--so much the worse for Communism, for towards
Communism the Social-Democratic Commonwealths of the future are bound
to tend. "Bolshevism" to-day, where it is honest, is in the main a
revival of the Anarchism of Bakunine, together with a policy of armed
insurrection, and a seizure of political power which shall install the
"dictatorship of the proletariat." That is the dividing line between
the Bolsheviks and their Social-Democratic opponents, the Mensheviks,
and their far more numerous and powerful antagonists, the Social
Revolutionaries, who obtained an overwhelming majority in the
Constituent Assembly which the Bolsheviks dissolved by force. The
Social Revolutionaries seek the emancipation of the peasants and
workers by democratic means--the only safe and sure way--though they
were quite ready to use force for the overthrow of Tsardom, happily
effected in March, 1917. Unhappily, though, Bolshevik terrorism, with
its complete inability to carry out its promises of "peace and bread"
for the Russian people, and certain European financial interests are
together rehabilitating reaction in Russia, and the people and the
peasants may be driven to put up with some new autocratic regime in the
hope that it may shield them from the present terrorism and secure them
something to eat.

Bolshevist Intolerance.

Innumerable instances could be given of the bitter intolerance of the
honest Bolshevik fanatics towards all sections of the International
Socialist movement with which they have not agreed. Paul Axelrod, one
of the founders of Russian Social-Democracy, in a pamphlet published at
Zuerich in 1915, entitled "The Crisis and the Duties of International
Social-Democracy," reproaches Lenin with seeking to carry into the
internal struggles of the Socialist Parties in Europe "specifically
Russian methods" which aim directly at creating troubles and divisions,
and branding without any distinction "nearly all the known and
respected bodies of International Soc