Petrograd, thus saving that city, and probably with it the revolution itself. When the Red Army, disorganized and demoralized, was flying before Wrangel's victorious soldiers, thousands of special Communist shock troops were thrown into the fray. They not only stopped Wrangel, but sent him reeling back to final defeat. And during the recent Kronstadt revolt the burden of the struggle fell upon the Communists. Large numbers of them perished in the terrible battle to reduce the great rebellious fortress. The Communist Party congress was in session at the time; it mobilized some 300 of its members and sent them to the front. Half of them never came back. And so it has gone all through the revolutionary period: the Communists have sacrificed themselves without stint or limit. It is said that of the total number of Communists in Russia when the revolution began, not more than 20 per cent are now alive. The gaps in the revolutionary ranks have been filled from the growing generation of militants.
The Communists are not among "those pastors who point out to others the steep and thorny path to Heaven, while they themselves the primrose path of dalliance tread." They work harder and live simpler than anyone else in Russia. The opposition, usually masked under the title of non-party, try to make out that they are a favored class who get the best of everything. But the Party's heroic record of self-sacrifice eloquently refutes that. And then the fact that the organization remains so small proves that the heavy duties attaching to membership greatly outweigh any alleged privileges that may come from it. If this were not so the Party would be many times as large as it is now.
The Communists are guided by a great ideal and they are altogether unsparing of themselves in seeking its realization. Moreover, their very lives are at stake. Whenever the counter-revolutionary generals captured a body of soldiers or a town during the civil wars they always killed every Communist they found. With these examples in mind—not to speak of what happened in Finland, Hungary, and elsewhere—the Russian revolutionists are convinced that the fall of the Soviet Government would be the signal for a gigantic massacre of Communists from which probably but few would
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