CHAPTER XI

"We know that it may take a long time before help can come from you, Comrades, American Workingmen, for the development of the revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with various rapidity (how could it be otherwise!) We know full well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days. We are counting on the inevitability of the international revolution. But that does not mean that we count on its coming at some definite date. We have experienced two great revolutions in our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that revolutions cannot come either at word of command nor according to prearranged plans. We know that circumstances alone have pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new stage in the social life of the world not because of our superiority but because of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the outbreak of the international revolution, revolutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of setbacks and serious overthrows.... "We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international Socialist revolution comes to our assistance with its armies. But these armies exist, they are stronger than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer imperialism, with its brutalities, continues. Workingmen the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and their Scheidemanns. Inevitably labor is approaching communistic Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone is capable of preserving culture and humanity from destruction. We are invincible, for invincible is the Proletarian Revolution."