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At first their intention was simply to make an appeal to Alexander I to grant self-government to Russia, which at one time he had seemed disposed to do. Soon they found themselves engaged in a secret conspiratory movement having for its object the overthrow of Czarism.
But then what is this principle of Czarism, which is not a submission to divine right, but which causes one man to sustain, perhaps to place, another in a position which puts his own life at the mercy of the other's mere caprice?
It is not only the precise forms of oppressive power used by them that are identically characteristic of Czarism and Bolshevism, but their underlying philosophy. Both forms of dictatorship rest upon the philosophy of might as the only valid right.
"We desired peace and we have done everything humanly possible to secure that end. But when war is forced upon us by Russian Czarism, then, whatever the final decision may be, we must drop all class distinctions and differences of every kind, to form a single, determined people, prepared to defend Germany's independence and greatness against the enemy even to the last drop of blood."
Czarism took from the miserable peasant his last penny under form of taxes; it took his children from him for war; for the least act of disobedience to authority he was whipped. He wallowed in misery and in ignorance, deprived of every right, human or legal. How could he, this wretched and oppressed peasant develop civic sentiments, a consciousness of his personal dignity?
Strong as the cry of the soldiers was for peace and sincere as their belief had been that the revolution had freed them not only from czarism and all that went with it, but also from the awful business of killing and maiming in which they had been engaged for almost three years, it gradually dawned on them that this was not yet time.
Yet the fact remained that the capitalist class against which the proletariat was fighting on the economic field was, for the most part, fighting against autocracy, for the overthrow of Czarism and the establishment of political democracy, as earnestly, if less violently, than the proletariat was.
When Kerensky, who had been counted a laborite in the period of Czarism, joined the S. R.'s Party after the victory of the Revolution, that party's popularity began to grow in proportion as Kerensky mounted the rungs of power. Out of respect, not always of a platonic nature, for the War Minister, many colonels and generals hastened to enrol in the party of the erstwhile terrorists.
Before leaving the Volksstaat the author only wishes to state that it lays the axe on every conception of morality, religion and social order which we esteem. In the place of existing conditions, it would erect a mob tyranny more degrading to the individual than Czarism or Republicanism.
"Just as one hundred and fifty thousand lordly landowners under Czarism dominated the one hundred and thirty millions of Russian peasants, so two hundred thousand members of the Bolshevik party are imposing their proletarian will on the mass, but this time in the interest of the latter."
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