The Limits of Experiment, 1917–1927

Abstract

The outside world could make little sense of the October Revolution in its early years. Even the spelling of ‘Bolsheviks’ gave trouble. The meteoric passage of Lenin’s party from the shadows of pre-1917 clandestinity to power and renown in Petrograd baffled and, except among groups of the political far left, terrified those seeking to understand it. Wartime disruption of communications impeded analysis. Another problem was that the Bolsheviks said they were socialists and yet, unmistakably, they differed basically from most socialists in countries to the West. Fantastic stories gained currency. A vogue grew up for the traveller’s tale of depravity and torture. The Bolsheviks supposedly had descended upon Russia like a new Mongol horde; but, unlike Genghis Khan, they were held to be pursuing a meticulously articulated grand plan. Alas for Mother Russia! The Bolshevik Central Committee was deemed to have pre-ordained for her a nightmare of social engineering. The assumption was rife that Lenin and his associates had already determined exactly how and when to realise their objective. Russia was to be the first experimental grist in the Bolshevik mill. The rest of the globe would shortly follow.