The individuality of truth in nature is an extremely costly lesson that must be assimilated repeatedly whenever one country believes that all it has to do is to follow in the footsteps of another. Certain political observers, trained in the Russian school, for example, have tried to make popular the belief that revolutions all over the world must follow the Russian pattern of 1917. This belief is then brought over to Spain and mechanically applied.
Memory is substituted for concrete living analysis.
Glib phrases are trotted out, uttered by Russians in the past, which are made to pass for eternal verities to which all people must give obeisance or face annihilation. In a sense the Spanish Revolution is quite like the Russian. Both countries had an absolute monarchy which was overthrown by workers and peasants headed by intellectuals stifled by the old regime. Both countries are agrarian with, none the less, a proletariat that has been engaged in struggles for freedom for some time. But from there on the similarity begins to taper away.