or describe a number of things to which
one objects. Our own Press, for instance, flings "Bolshevik" and
"Bolshevism" at everybody and everything that it denounces, or against
whom and which it seeks to raise prejudice. In this respect it has
often overreached itself, for it is causing some to accept the Russian
Bolsheviks at their own estimation, because they know that many of the
things styled "Bolshevist" are not as bad as they are made out to be.

In Russia "Bolshevik" means majority, and "Menshevik" minority. Their
real significance was purely an internal one for the Russian
Social-Democratic Party. It is important to make this point clear, for
now and again we come across British supporters of and sympathisers
with the Russian Bolsheviks who take the name as a proof that the
Government of Lenin and Trotzky actually represents the majority of
the Russian people! Nothing is more contrary to the fact. The
Bolshevist "coup de rue" of November, 1917, was as complete a
usurpation of power as that of Louis Napoleon in 1851. True it was a
usurpation by professed Socialists, supposedly in the interests of the
Russian working class, but it was no less a usurpation and an attack
on democracy which only success in the interests of the Russian
working class could possibly justify. The forcible dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks two months afterwards, because
the elections did not go in their favour, compelled them to take the
road to complete domination, and they are now unable to retrace their
steps, even if, as is reported, the more honest of them wish to do so.

Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Social Revolutionaries.

The terms "Bolshevik" and "Menshevik" (majority and minority) arose
from the division in the Russian Social-Democracy which had shown
itself at the Congress held in London in 1903. The difference is
generally assumed to be one of tactics--of a readiness to co-operate
with other parties for certain definite objects under certain special
conditions ("Menshevik"), or of complete antagonism and opposition to
all other parties every time and all the time ("Bolshevik"). But the
difference lies deeper than that. "Bolshevism" is, in effect, the
Russian form of "impossibilism." From this the thorough-going
Social-Democrats of all countries have to suffer at times. By
divorcing the application of Socialist principles and measures from
the actual life of the day, and arguing and discussing "in vacu