rfare in moments of
great calamity, as, for example, during disasters like the Johnstown flood
and the Messina earthquake, or amid the ravages of a pestilential plague.
Marx, to whom we owe the formulation of the theory of class struggle which
has guided the Socialist movement, would never have questioned this
important truth; he would never have supported class separatism under
conditions such as those prevailing in Russia at the end of 1905. Only
doctrinaires, slaves to formulae, but blind to reality, could have
sanctioned such separatism. But doctrinaires always abound in times of
revolution.

By December the government was stronger than it had been at any time since
the Revolution began. The zemstvos were no longer an active part of the
revolutionary movement. Indeed, there had come over these bodies a great
change, and most of them were now dominated by relatively reactionary
landowners who, hitherto apathetic and indifferent, had been stirred to
defensive action by the aggressive class warfare of the workers.
Practically all the bourgeois moderates had been driven to the more or less
open support of the government. December witnessed a new outburst in St.
Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities. Barricades were raised in the streets
in many places. In Moscow, where the most bitter and sanguinary struggles
took place, more than a thousand persons were killed. The government was
better prepared than the workers; the army had recovered no little of its
lost morale and did not refuse to shoot down the workers as it had done on
previous occasions. The strikes and insurrections were put down in bloody
vengeance and there followed a reign of brutal repression indescribably
horrible and savage. By way of protest and retaliation, there were
individual acts of terrorism, such as the execution of the Governor of
Tambov by Marie Spiridonova, but these were of little or no avail. The
First Revolution was drowned in blood and tears.

CHAPTER II

FROM REVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION

I

No struggle for human freedom was ever wholly vain. No matter how vast and
seemingly complete the failure, there is always something of enduring good
achieved. That is the law of progress, universal and immutable. The First
Russian Revolution conformed to the law; it had failed and died in a tragic
way, yet its failure was relative and it left something of substantial
achievement as the foundation for fresh hope, courage, and effort. Czarism