The Bogy of Civil War
THE refusal of the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries to join with the Cadets—although the democracy could perfectly well form a government and rule Russia without them, and even against them—alarmed the bourgeoisie into preparing schemes to frighten the democracy.
"Spread terror to the utmost!" Such is the watchword of the whole bourgeois Press. "Terrify as much as you can! Lie, slander—above all things terrify!"
The Stock Exchange Gazette attempts to stir up panic by means of forged information about Bolshevik plots. The rumour is spread that Alexiev has resigned and that the Germans have broken through the Russian lines in the direction of Petrograd—as if it had not been proved that it was just the "Kornilovian" generals (with whom Alexiev is undoubtedly connected) who have no hesitation in throwing open the front to the Germans in Galicia, before Riga[1] and before Petrograd, and stirring up in the army violent hatred against G.H.Q. To incite the danger of civil war you are forced to use intimidation of the democracy in the most consistent and convincing way. In fact, the stirring up of the civil war bogy is the most widespread method of intimidation. Observe how this idea, very prevalent in petty bourgeois centres, is described by the Rostov-on-the-Don local committee of the party of Freedom for the People.[2] To quote from their resolution of September 1 (cf. Ryetch No. 210):—
"… Considering that civil war would abolish all the victories of the revolution and drown in rivers of blood our young and as yet unestablished freedom, the committee considers it necessary for the good of the revolutionary victories to protest strongly against the tendency to extend the revolution, a tendency which is dictated by the impracticable Socialist utopians."
We see here the clearest, the most distinct, detailed and most thought-out expression of the fundamental thought that appears continually in the publications of the Ryetch, in the articles by
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