81
from anarchy and of enabling it to continue, freely and normally, after its own fashion, its own complex and profound evolution. I understood that to fight against the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia meant to fight against Russia, attempt to overthrow it and to consign the country to definite ruin. But not for one moment did I give credit to those projects for the regeneration of humanity which were haunting the minds of the leaders of the Russian revolution. Not for one second, had it occurred to me to regard it otherwise than from the theoretic point of view, as representing a purely documentary interest, on the theses strongly expounded by Lenin on State and Revolution, on the final crisis of Capitalism, of monopolies and trusts of which Imperialism was only the last stage, its superior phase, on the proletarian Revolution destined to break the state mechanism of the former bourgeois capitalist state o oppression and to assure by means of the temporary Dictatorship of the proletariat (that is to say unfortunately with the absence, of equality and justice for ail,—which the oppressors, dictators of yesterday are so hypocritically clamorous for to-day)—in short, the passage towards a new life, perhaps far off, still very far off from us, but towards which we must direct, resolutely and without weakness, all our efforts and aspirations.
Until then, the international character, the World social import of the Russian proletarian revolution had escaped me. It revealed itself suddenly with irresistible power and in a flood of astonishing logic that never for one moment belied itself. The policy followed by the Prole-
