their hands), and, therefore, deserve pity. The Bolsheviks consciously went to meet misfortune (the conquest of power), and, therefore, there is no forgiveness for them either in this or the future world. Such a formulation of the question may seem incredible in its internal inconsistency. None the less, it follows quite inevitably from the position of the Kautskian “Independents,” who draw their heads into their shoulders in order to see and foresee nothing; and, if they do move forward, it is only after having received a preliminary stout blow in the rear.
“To humiliate Paris,’ writes Kautsky, “not to give it self-government, to deprive it of its position as capital, to disarm it in order afterwards to attempt with greater confidence a monarchist coup d’état – such was the most important task of the National Assembly and the chief of the executive power it elected, Thiers. Out of this situation arose the conflict which led to the Paris insurrection.
“It is clear how different from this was the character of the coup d’état carried out by the Bolsheviks, which drew its strength from the yearning for peace; which had the peasantry behind it; which had in the National Assembly against it, not monarchists, but SRs and Menshevik Social Democrats.
“The Bolsheviks came to power by means of a well-prepared coup d’état, which at one blow handed over to them the whole machinery of the State – immediately utilized in the most energetic and merciless manner for the purpose of suppressing their opponents, amongst them their proletarian opponents.
“No one, on the other hand, was more surprised by the insurrection of the Commune than the revolutionaries themselves, and for a considerable number amongst them the conflict was in the highest degree undesirable.” (Page 56.)