There are two things that a defender of the Bolsheviks may say against the argument that they have failed because the present state of Russia is bad.  It may be said that it is too soon to judge, and it may be urged that whatever failure there has been is attributable to the hostility of the outside world.

As to the contention that it is too soon to judge, that is of course undeniable in a sense.  But in a sense it is always too soon to judge of any historical movement, because its effects and developments go on for ever.  Bolshevism has, no doubt, great changes ahead of it.  But the last three years have afforded material for some judgments, though more definitive judgments will be possible later.  And, for reasons which I have given in earlier chapters, I find it impossible to believe that later developments will realize more fully the Communist ideal.  If trade is opened with the outer world, there will be an almost irresistible tendency to resumption of private enterprise.  If trade is not re-opened, the plans of Asiatic conquest will mature, leading to a revival of Yenghis Khan and Timur.  In neither case is the purity of the Communist faith likely to survive.

As for the hostility of the Entente, it is of course true that Bolshevism might have developed very differently if it had been treated in a friendly spirit.  But in view of its desire to promote world-revolution, no one could expect—­and the Bolsheviks certainly did not expect—­that capitalist Governments would be friendly.  If Germany had won the war, Germany would have shown a hostility more effective than that of the Entente.  However we may blame Western Governments for their policy, we must realize that, according to the deterministic economic theory of the Bolsheviks, no other policy was to be expected from them.  Other men might have been excused for not foreseeing the attitude of Churchill, Clemenceau and Millerand; but Marxians could not be excused, since this attitude was in exact accord with their own formula.

We have seen the symptoms of Bolshevik failure; I come now to the question of its profounder causes.

Everything that is worst in Russia we found traceable to the collapse of industry.  Why has industry collapsed so utterly?  And would it collapse equally if a Communist revolution were to occur in a Western country?

Russian industry was never highly developed, and depended always upon outside aid for much of its plant.  The hostility of the world, as embodied in the blockade, left Russia powerless to replace the machinery and locomotives worn out during the war.  The need of self-defence compelled the Bolsheviks to send their best workmen to the front, because they were the most reliable Communists, and the loss of them rendered their factories even more inefficient than they were under Kerensky.  In this respect, and in the laziness and incapacity of the Russian workman, the Bolsheviks have had to face special difficulties which would be less in other countries.  On the other hand, they have had special advantages in the fact that Russia is self-supporting in the matter of food; no other country could have endured the collapse of industry so long, and no other Great Power except the United States could have survived years of blockade.