In the Western World, the hope inspired by Bolshevism is more
immediate, less shot through with tragedy. Western Socialists who have
visited Russia have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the
present régime, and have disseminated a belief among their followers
that the millennium would be quickly realized there if there were no
war and no blockade. Even those Socialists who are not Bolsheviks for
their own country have mostly done very little to help men in
appraising the merits or demerits of Bolshevik methods. By this lack
of courage they have exposed Western Socialism to the danger of
becoming Bolshevik through ignorance of the price that has to be paid
and of the uncertainty as to whether the desired goal will be reached
in the end. I believe that the West is capable of adopting less
painful and more certain methods of reaching Socialism than those that
have seemed necessary in Russia. And I believe that while some forms
of Socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even
worse. Among those that are worse I reckon the form which is being
achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as a more insuperable
barrier to further progress.

In judging of Bolshevism from what is to be seen in Russia at present,
it is necessary to disentangle various factors which contribute to a
single result. To begin with, Russia is one of the nations that were
defeated in the war; this has produced a set of circumstances
resembling those found in Germany and Austria. The food problem, for
example, appears to be essentially similar in all three countries. In
order to arrive at what is specifically Bolshevik, we must first
eliminate what is merely characteristic of a country which has
suffered military disaster. Next we come to factors which are Russian,
which Russian Communists share with other Russians, but not with other
Communists. There is, for example, a great deal of disorder and chaos