Although somewhat belatedly, I cannot refrain from answering the article by A. Alexeev, which appeared in Rassviet on July 27.

In this article, the author defends the socialists and quite definitely asserts that socialists fight against Bolshevism, also that Bolsheviks regard socialists as their most irreconcilable and dangerous enemies. Nothing contradicts this statement so much as experience itself, and the events of the last sixteen years.

Perhaps it is very difficult for the author to reject a teaching which he has entertained and preached all his life. Perhaps Mr. Alexeev is not able to observe inconsistency, even in that which life has proved to be impractical. However, young and more flexible minds at present see clearly that socialism 2has suffered a crushing defeat in the battle of life, and has been thrown out on the refuse pile by historic events.

We Russians, in the light of the last fifty years, can easily establish the cause which led our native land first to revolution and then to Bolshevism, as one of the stages of the same destructive process.

It is no secret to any one that ideas of every line of socialism and internationalism had played the leading part in the world long before Bolshevism in its modern and most distorted forms had predetermined the course of the revolution. No matter how strenuously the Socialists try to disentangle themselves from Bolshevism, the idea of Bolshevism itself is of the flesh and blood of socialism. There is so much in common between Bolshevism and Menshevism that, to people not versed in the political party squabbles, it is not clear wherein a philosophically grounded distinction does exist. Even a well-informed man can find the distinction only in the methods of application.

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Of course, to such a cultured man as Mr. Alexeev, Communist methods are intolerable and incomprehensible, crude and erroneous. Undoubtedly, he is horrified by the means the Bolsheviks employ "to establish economic equality and eliminate exploitation". But he can hardly set himself apart from Bolshevism, and say that he is entirely absolved from the actions and crimes perpetrated by Bolsheviks in Russia. Not at all, for all that is taking place in our native land had been prepared by him or his colleagues in thought and action who, through scores of years, "sowed the wind"; he should not now wonder that, through reflection of Russian ignorance of sociological laws, the Russian revolution reveals its ugly, contorted face. The socialists of all schools have "sowed the wind" among the naive Russian people, and now we all are gathering the tempest.

Bolshevism is the European theoretical socialism embodied in forms understandable to the Russian rebel. Socialism in its Russian expression led to a fiasco, and brought the once mighty world state of 160 million people to the brink of ruin and national paralysis.

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Let us consider to what extent socialism has justified itself in the West, in such a culturally developed country as Germany.

Alexeev knows, that, prior to the appearance of Nazism, Germany was the classical country of socialism, and the cradle of the theorists of this social system. Nowhere else in the world have the ideas of socialism received such wide acceptance as in the country of Marx and Engels. The socialist movement in Germany counted its followers by the million. The movement was bulwarked by a tremendous economic and political rampart in the form of powerful workers' organizations. And yet, what has happened? What do we observe today?

Replacing socialism with an incredible rapidity came Nazism (National Socialism), an entirely new movement led by an obscure son of an Austrian shoemaker; and socialism, which took scores of years to develop, is now filed away in the archives of history. During the short period of four years, Hitler has accomplished a great deal more than the Socialists accomplished during the last seventy years.

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Alexeev dislikes Nazi methods, to be sure. He condemns their tactics in their attempts to reach their goal. He, like the Jews, to whom the question of resistance to Nazism is a deeply rooted racial and nationalistic problem, vehemently protests against the horrors of Nazism. He protests against regeneration of the nationalism in Germany which lived through the destructive influences of socialism.

The experience of Germany shows us that Nazism has grown and developed there in a comparatively short time. It was planted there, not with the help of a whip, as Bolsheviks try to graft socialism to Russia, but was taken up by the German people as a movement leading toward national regeneration and national power. Data on elections to the German parliament prior to the appearance of Nazis at the helm of power very convincingly prove that, within three years, the National Socialist party has developed from a very small group into a powerful political organization, into the hands of which full authority was finally placed.

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It was no accident that Nazism in Germany appeared, grew, and gained ground. It became a factor only after socialism, represented by the Social Democrats, had led the German people into a blind alley from which Germans could not extricate themselves.

Socialism completely ruined Russia, where the great mass of the people still remains inert and indifferent toward national and social problems.

This, however, could not have happened in Germany. The German national spirit found in time a means for the salvation of Germany and the road toward her regeneration.

Millions of German socialists are now wearing the swastika insignia on their sleeves instead of the red flag.

For us Russians, the experience of Germany and the events accompanying it, should serve as a valuable lesson.