Russian democracy had been doing ever since the Revolution. Whatever the consequences, it was the Government's duty to refuse to undertake that frivolously adventurous offensive. The responsibility for the consequent disaster rests on the Government and on all those who impelled them to this senseless and suicidal policy.
The disaster in Galicia unbound the conflicting- forces in Russia. The power of the moderate elements, who were responsible for the offensive, was fundamentally shaken. The counter-revolutionary forces came out into the open. For a short time there was a revived unity of the democracy in fighting against them, but soon the democracy underwent the final split which led to the Bolshevik revolution.
The struggle for a general peace was practically at an end. The democracy who had sustained such a blow, such a disappointment, at the hands of the Allied Governments, tried an appeal to the Allied Socialists and working classes. They hoped to get peace by a conference of the workers' international. But on this occasion the imperialists were once more stronger than the workers. The Stockholm Conference was vetoed by the French, Italian, and British Governments. The working classes of the Allied countries accepted unconditional victory as the only way to peace. This was a death-blow to the Soviet of the moderates. They lost all their influence and all their standing. After the Stockholm Conference was overthrown, the leaders of the first Soviet were eclipsed.
The Bolshevik Revolution of November tried new methods to bring about a general democratic conclusion of the war. A few months earlier their methods would probably have been crowned with success. As it was, deprived of an army, faced with the general hostility of Russia's propertied classes, pursued by the malevolence of the Allies, they had at length to submit to a disastrous separate peace.
