in the rear, are tested practically. In the spontaneous development of the struggle, the Soviet form of organization is born. The disputes, in these days, on the significance of Soviets, anticipate the great struggle of 1917–1920. The interchange of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms in the struggle, of the tactics of boycott and the tactics of participation in parliament, of legal and illegal methods, and likewise their interrelation and connection–all this is distinguished by wonderful richness of content. As far as the acquisition by masses and leaders, by classes and parties, of the fundamentals of political science is concerned, one month of this period was equivalent to a whole year of "peaceful," "constitutional" development. Without a general rehearsal in 1905, the victory of the October revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.
The Years of Reaction (1907–1910).
Czarism triumphant. All revolutionary and opposition parties are shattered. Depression, demoralization, schism, dispersal, renegacy, pornography instead of politics. A strenthening of the drift to philosophic idealism; mysticism, as the outer garb of counter-revolutionary tendencies. At the same time, it is the great defeat which gives the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in intelligent understanding, ability and skill in carrying on the political struggle. Friends are better known in misfortune. Defeated armies learn their lesson well.
Triumphant Czarism is compelled, nevertheless, to push forward the disintegration of what remains of the pre-bourgeois, patriarchal state of Russia. She moves along the path of bourgeois development with remarkable rapidity. Illusions, originating outside of and above all classes, that it was possible for Russia to avoid capitalism, are crushingly shattered. The class-struggle assumes altogether new and more intense forms.
The revolutionary parties must continue their training. Heretofore they learned to attack. Now they understand that they must add to their knowledge of attack a knowledge of how best to retreat. It becomes necessary to understand—and the
