Russia as an Object Lesson
to the World
Herbert Photos, Inc
Russia has the world’s largest army. Here they are seen on winter parade past the Kremlin, Moscow
The Soviet government sets the stage for a great series of experiments in governing a vast
nation. A survey of its progress and a prophecy of its outcome
By William G. Wirth
ITH unrest, dissastisfaction, and rebellion
seething in the hearts of the Russian people
because of the three factors I mentioned
in my last month’s article (the tyrannous
autocracy of the Czars, increasing indus-
trialization creating an influential workers’
class who lived in the psychology of protest against
exploitation, and the peasants’ demand for land), all
that was needed was the pulling of the trigger, for the
gun of revolution was loaded.
The World War was the occasion. If it be true
that the ushering in of this cataclysmic conflict
has changed the complexion of the world so that it
will never be what it was before 1914, this is most
certainly true of Russia. Russian autocracy wel-
comed this struggle, for they considered it would
do what wars had done in the past: make the people
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forget their grievances in the patriotism of the
moment. However, it did not work out that way.
And this was largely the fault of the government of
the Czar. The record of the graft in the Russian
armies that participated in the World War is a
sorrowful one. The soldiers were poorly clothed and
insufficiently fed. They were often without needed
arms and ammunition. What made a wretched
situation worse were the pro-German sympathies
of the Czarina, aided and abetted by that mystic
monk Rasputin, of whom so much has been written
since the days of 1917. This weird figure, who
threw such a cloud over the court at Petrograd,
did all he could for the Germans. The result was
that, in many cases, the German general staff knew
the plans of the Russian army attacks before the
Russian officers knew them themselves. It is no
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE