Like our Government in India, they live in terror of popular risings,
and are compelled to resort to cruel repressions in order to preserve
their power. Like it, they represent an alien philosophy of life,
which cannot be forced upon the people without a change of instinct,
habit, and tradition so profound as to dry up the vital springs of
action, producing listlessness and despair among the ignorant victims
of militant enlightenment. It may be that Russia needs sternness and
discipline more than anything else; it may be that a revival of Peter
the Great's methods is essential to progress. From this point of view,
much of what it is natural to criticize in the Bolsheviks becomes
defensible; but this point of view has little affinity to Communism.
Bolshevism may be defended, possibly, as a dire discipline through
which a backward nation is to be rapidly industrialized; but as an
experiment in Communism it has failed.
There are two things that a defender of the Bolsheviks may say against
the argument that they have failed because the present state of Russia
is bad. It may be said that it is too soon to judge, and it may be
urged that whatever failure there has been is attributable to the
hostility of the outside world.
As to the contention that it is too soon to judge, that is of course
undeniable in a sense. But in a sense it is always too soon to judge
of any historical movement, because its effects and developments go on
for ever.
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