ments
published in _The Class Struggle_, of New York, a pro-Bolshevist magazine;
the collection of documents published by _The Nation_, of New York, a
journal exceedingly generous in its treatment of Bolshevism and the
Bolsheviki; and of the mass of material published in its excellent
"International Notes" by _Justice_, of London, the oldest Socialist
newspaper in the English language, I believe, and one of the most ably
edited.

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made of friendly service rendered and
valuable information given by Mr. Alexander Kerensky, former Premier of
Russia; Mr. Henry L. Slobodin, of New York; Mr. A.J. Sack, Director of the
Russian Information Bureau in 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, whi