Bolshevism has, no doubt, great changes ahead of it. But the
last three years have afforded material for some judgments, though
more definitive judgments will be possible later. And, for reasons
which I have given in earlier chapters, I find it impossible to
believe that later developments will realize more fully the Communist
ideal. If trade is opened with the outer world, there will be an
almost irresistible tendency to resumption of private enterprise. If
trade is not re-opened, the plans of Asiatic conquest will mature,
leading to a revival of Yenghis Khan and Timur. In neither case is the
purity of the Communist faith likely to survive.
As for the hostility of the Entente, it is of course true that
Bolshevism might have developed very differently if it had been
treated in a friendly spirit. But in view of its desire to promote
world-revolution, no one could expect--and the Bolsheviks certainly
did not expect--that capitalist Governments would be friendly. If
Germany had won the war, Germany would have shown a hostility more
effective than that of the Entente. However we may blame Western
Governments for their policy, we must realize that, according to the
deterministic economic theory of the Bolsheviks, no other policy was
to be expected from them. Other men might have been excused for not
foreseeing the attitude of Churchill, Clemenceau and Millerand; but
Marxians could not be excused, since this attitude was in exact accord
with their own formula.
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