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| Title | What has become of the Russian Revolution |
| Creator (LCNAF) |
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| Contributor (Local) |
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| Publisher | International Review |
| Date | 1937 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Subject.Topical (Local) |
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| Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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| Genre (AAT) |
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| Language | English |
| Type (DCMI) |
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| Original Item Extent | 63 pages; 22 cm |
| Original Item Location | HN523.Y8613 1937 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304536~S11 |
| Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
| Use and Reproduction | In Copyright |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Image 7 |
| Format (IMT) |
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| File Name | uhlib_2209396_006.jpg |
| Transcript | INTRODUCTION It is especially important to understand the social character of the U.S.S.R. because of its socialist claims. The great interest of non-Russians in the Soviet State sprang from the social connotations of the Russian Revolution. This interest increased—and at the same time changed its class complexion—with the stabilization of the Bolshevik regime. It took on an element of doubt in face of the present, apparently constant, succession of Moscow executions. Immediately after October 1918, the Western labor parties that were affiliated with the Communist International "talked revolution." Whether this purpose was fulfilled consciously or unwittingly, the call for revolution in the West served as a means to defend the Russian Bolshevik government against foreign intervention. The neo-communist belief in the immediacy of a world revolution, to be modelled everywhere on the Petrograd coup of 1918, was countered by a wave of anti-Soviet villification and exaggeration which swept along illustrious writers and very serious organs of public intelligence. With the introduction of the first Five Year Plan—and the first pangs of the great depression—the pro-Soviet viewpoint began to find a new instrument of expression. Authors that could not be called communist began to present in writing the panorama of a "Soviet paradise" in which the dreams of the traditional social reformer seemed already realized or about to reach incarnation. Little known literary folk attained prominence with volumes presenting seductive pictures of a more or less perfectly working society in Russia. Books dealing with the wonders of the U.S.S.R. were devoured by the depression-hit intellectuals of the West. There came into being a distinct category of "pro-Soviet" authors. These specialists drank deep of the inspiring stuff provided them by the publicity bureaux of the Russian government and wrote accounts of a Soviet society that were filled with greater and greater enthusiasm and were more and more at variance with the truth of the situation. These writers mistook appearances for reality and "paper" claims for facts. No more than the "pure communist" party writers of the early twenties did they try. or want to, .unravel the problem of the historic significance of Russian Bolshevism. Just as the first had mistaken the Russians' attempt to deal with the breakdown of the national economic process for the introduction of communism, so did the new Western Sovietists mistake the Soviet program of the industrialization and modernization of that backward country for the construction of socialism. Much of the rhapsodic pro-Sovietism of the Western intellectuals was the result of the efforts of the incomparable publicity experts in the employ of the Russian State. But much of it was the work of the malicious demons of the depression. The scared Western intellectuals sought and found a Holy Land in the mysterious East. The old "revolutionary" communism seemed to be replaced with a different (no more critical) outlook—that of Intourism. And the latter was reinforced with a new social emotion, springing from |