Excerpt from Russia the Struggle for Peace I do not pretend that everything in Russia is good and that the Revolution has to answer for no sins, nor do I intend to hide its failures or to be silent about them. The time has come to speak about Russia, it may be with regret, but certainly without bitterness or passion. It will be for the future historian of the Great Russian Revolution to trace its beginnings. Such an historian will no doubt go back many decades into the past. He will begin its story at least from the date of the liberation of the Serfs in 1861 and will record the causal chain of events from that point. We, as contemporaries of the Revolution, have another task, and are face to face with other and more actual problems. We are too near to the scene; we see the actors too clearly and ascribe to them a far greater r61e than will history. We are active to praise and to condemn. In short, we are at this stage unable to judge the Revolution historically. The main questions of interest, to friends and enemies of the Revolution alike, are these' First, how far was the Revolution the result of the War and how far was the struggle for peace which followed the Revolution inherent in it? In other words, did the peace policy of the revolutionary democracy express the true purpose of Russia at the time; or were the Soviets, with all that they stand for, really alien to the maple and to the Revolution? Secondly, was the disintegration of Russia and the dissolution Of the Russian Army inevitable, or was Russia torn to pieces and made helpless by the verv acts of the leaders of the Revolution? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.