easy to discern the underlying significance and purpose of some of the most
important events. On every hand there were strikes and uprisings, many of
them without any sort of leadership or plan. Strikes which began over
questions of wages and hours became political demonstrations in favor of a
Constituent Assembly. On the other hand, political demonstrations became
transformed, without any conscious effort on the part of anybody, into
strikes for immediate economic betterment. There was an intense class
conflict going on in Russia, as the large number of strikes for increased
wages and shorter hours proved, yet the larger political struggle dwarfed
and obscured the class struggle. For the awakened proletariat of the
cities the struggle in which they were engaged was economic as well as
political. They wisely regarded the political struggle as part of the class
struggle, as Plechanov and his friends declared it to be. Yet the fact
remained that the capitalist class against which the proletariat was
fighting on the economic field was, for the most part, fighting against
autocracy, for the overthrow of Czarism and the establishment of political
democracy, as earnestly, if less violently, than the proletariat was. The
reason for this was the recognition by the leading capitalists of Russia of
the fact that industrial progress was retarded by the old régime, and that
capitalist development requires popular education, a relatively high
standard of living, political freedom, and stability and order in
government. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for the great associations
of manufacturers and merchants to unite in urging the government to grant
extensive political reforms so long as the class conflict was merely
incidental.

What had begun mainly as a class war had become the war of all classes
against autocracy. Of course, in such a merging of classes there
necessarily appeared many shadings and degrees of interest. Not all the
social groups and classes were as radical in their demands as the organized