The Topeka state journal., 1919-11-21
THE RUSSIAN REVoLUTIoN.

Late news from Russia indicates
that Lenine Is steadily winning his
way over all opposition. His forces
are scoring victories over the oppos-
ing armies. Yudenitch's men are
leaving him, Denikin has been brought
to halt and Kolchak has been driven
from his capital. What does it all
mean?
An editorial in the Christian Science
Monitor may throw some light on the
situation. In part it follows:.
The Bolshevist government in Rus
sia has not merely put on all it's
brakes, it has reversed it's engines.
The Red Terror is now excused as
necessity of the hour: a little while
ago anyone who denounced it. was de-
nounced, in turn, as a slanderous re-
dictionary. Evidence, however, is not
/ disposed of by the simple process of
denial, and so the world is faced by
the apologetical gamut of an earlier
Jacobinism. 1t was the invasion of
France, declared the apologists of '9S,
which generated the passions and ex-
cesses of that year: it was the inter-
vention of the allies, declare the apollo
gists of Bolshevism, which caused the
Red Terror'in Russia.
The question, then, which arises.
and it has something more than a
mere speculative interest attached to
| it, is, Will Lenine be able to maintain
himself where Robespierre failed +?
Certainly he is Intellectually far
more adaptable, and he is cum
bered. in Trotzky, with no aca-
demical revolutionary like Saint
Just; indeed, SO much greater is
his influence than that of Trotzky,
that he may almost be said to be play
ing a lone hand. Besides, he has one
'SS. 1t is this, that the Bolshevist
leaders are practically without COM
! petitors in the great process of recon-
struction. and they have taken advan-
tage of this completely to, change their
policy. Disraelis famous simile of
the Wings and their clothes might be
applied to them with duplicated force
| and with refined irony As they walk
| about Moscow today they are arrayed
in all the political habiliments of the
Mensheviki. They are yearning to
strain the once despised peasant to
their bosoms. whilst the bourgeois
organizer finds the right hand of fell
| lowship extended to him, with a flat
tering salary grasped in its palm.
| Strangest of all, here, in the Ultima
Thule of Communism, they have re-
vived private industrial enterprise.
The difference between the French
revolution and the revolution in Rus
sia is essentially this, that the one be-
gan and ended in politics. whilst the
other has developed into economies
For Napoleon to esta ablish the First
Empire was, for this reason, compare
lively easy: in a way, he buttressed
the movement for return to law and
order for which the nation was crav-
ing, after the horrors of the orgy o1
the guillotine- But, today, to return
to the Tzardom would be to take away
the land from the peasants, and the
factories from the operatives: and I
nation of peasants and operatives will
never listen to the wiles of a Koltchak
not even tho he were a NapoleoniC
one. That is why the revolution oi
1888 could be partially reversed; an6
that is why the revolution in RuSaie
, stands in spite and not by reason OF
; the Red Terror.
This does not justify the Red Ter
ror. it does not palliate ane of the
: crimes of Lenine, but it dos explain
the failure of Judenitch and .
Koltchak, and the growing failure O
Dcnikin. All three of them. whate1el
their personal merits or dement's. be
: long to the most worthless, the leas
; trusted. and the altogether suspect
, officer class; and so. in the, eyes of tn,
peasants and the proletariat, stand al
ready judged and condemned.