Page 159 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

arduously acquired civilisation. The proof ofthat which has become
a bloody reality is given to us by the Russian Revolution, regarding
whose course liberal or Jewish newspapers maintain a silence that
stands in remarkable contrast to their other fusses; the right-wing
papers however, during the war, suppressed data that spoke in such
a clear language in order to preserve the home front. The warning
came too late to them: even in Germany the Jews were the leaders
of the anti-German idea.
Let us turn to the facts of the Russian upheaval. There can
be no doubt that all the Russian people longed for the end of the
Tsarist rule. One who was a product of this form of government
must acknowledge that the movement for self-affirmation in
economic as well as communal and intellectual fields was thwarted
many times, that the rule of a corrupt bureaucracy was an oppressive
one.
Thus the whole of Russia felt as if it were freed from a
nightmare when the news of the overthrow of the Tsar raced from
the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The suppressed consciousness
of the state citizen emerged everywhere with a force that one that
one never considered to be possible and the leaders believed they
had every ground to look optimistically to the future and to hope to
be able to resolve the tightly coiled questions in a peaceful manner.
But soon centrifugal forces came into play in the form of soldiers'
councils.
These soldiers' councils, which developed in all cities, were,
even if prepared long in advance, yet in their combination of a truly
spontaneous nature. In the confusion of the circumstances crafty
intriguers were able to gain entry very quickly and, with their
demagogic knack, to win the workers for their aims, as faithful
bodyguards and later as the battering-rams of the overthrow. The
head of the decisive Workers' and Soldiers' Council of Petersburg
was at the beginning a former Duma member, Chkheidze from
Grusina. 314

314
[Nikolai Chkheidze (1864-1926) was a Georgian aristocrat who represented
the Georgian Social Democrats in the Russian Duma from 1907 to 1916 and
supported the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks.]
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