Project Gutenberg #17350
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
Bertrand Russell
1920Russell's first-hand report on Soviet Russia in 1920 and his critique of Bolshevik theory, written after meeting Lenin.
Project Gutenberg #17350 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for The Missing Workbook from public-domain source metadata
Section 17 of 17 Page 2 of 2
CONDITIONS FOR THE SUCCESS OF COMMUNISM
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the incumbrances of injustice and tyranny and rapacity which obstruct the growth of the human spirit, to replace individual competition by collective action, the relation of master and slave by free co-operation. This hope has helped the best of the Communists to bear the harsh years through which Russia has been passing, and has become an inspiration to the world. The hope is not chimerical, but it can only be realized through a more patient labour, a more objective study of facts, and above all a longer propaganda, to make the necessity of the transition obvious to the great majority of wage-earners. Russian Communism may fail and go under, but Communism itself will not die. And if hope rather than hatred inspires its advocates, it can be brought about without the universal cataclysm preached by Moscow. The war and its sequel have proved the destructiveness of capitalism; let us see to it that the next epoch does not prove the still greater destructiveness of Communism, but rather its power to heal the wounds which the old evil system has inflicted upon the human spirit.