Since the general strike and revolution of 1905, every student of Russia, now furnishing the greatest drama of the world's history, understood that there was a complete political upheaval going on in the vast country of the Moscovites. And, as the revolution of 1905 had not made a clean sweep of the old system of Tsarism, Cossackdom, grafting bureaucrats and pogrom-organizing police, it was generally anticipated that, soon or late, a new revolution would come and topple over the old political system.
A parliamentary governed, democratic republic was the most sanguine prediction for Russia. More cautious ones, having greater bourgeois sympathies for such a government, predicted a constitutional monarchy—a la England—for Russia, and no one dared to dream of something entirely new, something outside the beaten paths of theory, logical conclusions of history, laws of economic development, etc., as set forth by the high moguls of knowledge, socialist savants and prognosticians of social movements.
But, if the truth is often stranger than fiction, the outcome of a social situation, a social crisis, more often over-reaches every anticipation, no matter how scientifically based or accurately calculated they may claim to be.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 did this in a world-startling manner and degree. It has put the pseudo scientific prophets to shame and sent them back to the kindergarten class! To grasp this overwhelming fact the programs of the main Russian political parties prior to 1917, must be considered.
Of the bourgeois parties, the Monarchists stood for the order of 1905 ante: the Octobrists for the fulfillment of the Tsar's manifesto of October 30th, 1905—nothing added and nothing taken away; the Cadets for a constitutional government after the English pattern, which meant that the Duma's powers
