Eugen Peter Schwiedland · 1922
Schwiedland’s brief journal book review presents Brailsford’s interpretation of Bolshevik rule through three connected questions: its political viability, its transformative social effects, and the prospect of relief from revolutionary coercion. The review chiefly reports Brailsford’s position; it offers no sustained independent assessment of his evidence.
Verf. ist der Meinung, daß keine der anderen Oppositionsparteien in Rußland die Revolution zu einem günstigeren Verlaufe hätte bringen können, als die Bolschewiken.
English translation: The author holds that none of the other opposition parties in Russia could have brought the revolution to a more favourable course than the Bolsheviks.
This comparative judgment grounds the account of the regime’s durability. Peasants and industrial workers supported the Bolsheviks against the Entente and the Whites out of gratitude for landownership and personal freedom respectively. Their continued allegiance is attributed to Lenin’s adaptability to realities: political survival rests on practical responsiveness as well as revolutionary achievement.
The review’s conceptual centre is an account of emancipation as the release of initiative. Brailsford credits the republic with opening opportunities for intellectually active people, strengthening the individualistic peasant, and enabling those willing to work to lead active lives. Its historical significance is expressed through a stark developmental contrast between a supposedly medieval Russian, shaped by Tatar rule and serfdom, and a twentieth-century European. Schwiedland reports this hierarchical modernization narrative while acknowledging that its gains emerged through revolutionary atrocities.
Die Blockade Rußlands habe im Lande eine tiefe Sehnsucht nach Frieden und das höchste Bedürfnis nach Friedensarbeit geweckt.
English translation: The blockade of Russia is said to have awakened in the country a deep longing for peace and the utmost need for peaceful work.
The closing movement links that longing to an expectation that governmental interference in everyday life and compulsory, often distressing communal arrangements will cease. The review thus records a tension within Brailsford’s favourable interpretation: a revolution credited with liberating personal activity still subjects individuals to intrusive collective constraints. Peaceful reconstruction is presented as the hoped-for means of resolving it.
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