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Bolsheviks, even if they formed an international proletariat, yet they had one centre and one chief: St. Petersburg and Lenin. The mighty Russian dreams of conquest here appeared in a new garb. The conquest of the world which so many highstrung Russian souls had imagined in the time of Tsarism, now cropped up again in a new shape: a proletariat world dictatorship under Russian leadership. If this dim goal was not reached, what had formerly constituted the Russian Empire should at least be retained under the Russian sceptre—the sceptre of the Russian proletariat.
Now, as regards Finland specially, we see the tendencies of Bolshevism reflected in some observations from this time. At a congress in St. Petersburg on the 5th December, 1917, Lenin says: "Let the bourgeoisie despicably and pitiably quarrel over and bargain about the frontiers. The working-men in all countries and of all nationalities will not let themselves be divided for so paltry a reason. We are just about to conquer Finland." This is indeed plain speaking. Finland may emancipate herself from Russia as much as she likes, it will not influence the labourers. Thanks to them the Russian Bolsheviks reconquer the country and so "self-determination" is disposed of.
On the 19th December the official Bolshevik organ at Helsingfors has the following item: "There is one thing the bourgeoisie have not realised, that self-determination of the nations is conceivable if only the bourgeois upper class power be crushed." That is to say that self-determination is a delusion, for when the "bourgeois upper class power" is replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, there will be no nations any more, only classes.
When finally the Bolshevik Government acknowledged the independence of Finland, it was, as one of its members,
