Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. The degeneracy of the revolution
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
THE DEGENERACY OF THE REVOLUTION 55
But apart from this intrinsic limitation reducing ad
ab-surdurn the right of self-determination as a State-building
device, Bolshevism has given itself the lie by constantly
interfering with those parts of Russia which had availed
themselves of that right. In Finland, the Ukraine, and the
Crimea, which had declared for a separation from Russia
and an independent national existence, Petrograd Bolshevism
carried on civil war. In the Baltic Provinces, in so far as
they had not been overrun by the Germans, the population
clamouring to be separated from Bolshevist rule were
subjected to continuous outrages against life and property
to punish them for exercising their right of self-determination.
Thus, this much-vaunted new socialistic panacea has not
only in theory but in practice shown itself to be highly
misleading, disastrous, and devoid of the very elements of
constructive policy.
Historical experience has proved over and over again that
the existence of small States is no guarantee whatever against
the recurrence of wars, but rather the contrary, and that the
formation of large States entails, ipso facto, the pacification
of all the territory comprised by them. Classical Hellas and
mediaeval Italy were brought to ruin by decentralisation
setting up small communities pretending to be independent
of each other. The result has been constant warfare between
all these miniature States, to their final mutual destruction.
On the other hand, the Pax Romana imposed peace upon the
vast territory of Roman possessions on people of very different
races, and as soon as the restriction was broken the central
power was always able to extinguish the flames. On the
territory of modern Germany there used to be incessant
feudal warfare owing to the fact that the central power was
too weak to prevent strife. Russia, having enlarged her
territory to the proportions it assumed prior to the outbreak
of the present war, abolished the system of war upon all the
territory she occupied, preventing hostilities occurring
between Muscovites on the one side, and on the other the
Poles, the Livonian Order, the Republics of Novgorod and
Pskoff, the Caucasians, the Tartar Khanats of the South,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
