Pioneers Of The Russian Revolution (1919)

The sufferings endured by the Russian revolutionaries were sometimes terrible, I repeat the word, but they did not tend to discouragement-far from it. The author may be permitted to remember that he also did not flinch under persecution: outlawed for many years in his own country for the crime of visualizing it happier, more desirable and more honored in the mirage of international solidarity, on this account also he was but little liked by the adherents of the later false tenets that ravaged, without shame, the harvest that had been so hardly sown for all. Anyone will understand, with all desirable clearness, the profound difference that exists between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the French Revolution of 1789. No one was better qualified to write this review than Dr. Angelo S. Rappoport, who knows both France and Russia so thoroughly. The comparisons, or the parallels a la Plutarch, that one reads now and then in the papers too often evoke nothing but a smile. The relative failure of 1905 involved the fall of Tsarism in 1917. I remember well what the illustrious and sincerely regretted geographer Elisee Reclus quite calmly said to me at the New University of Brussels in 1905; " This is the greatest revolution the world has ever seen " " The most profound," I answered. "It is the same thing as I see it," he replied. The book of Dr, Angelo S. Rappoport proves the truth of these remarks. I would also draw attention to the pages devoted to Lavrov and Bakounine, and at the same time express my hope that the author of The Pioneers of the Russian Revolution will enlarge the field of his operations.