360 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
goal to be attained, every step to be taken, considers what
are the real forces to be used, how they are to be acquired,
and how each step can lead to the next.
In this search for c means3 there is a danger that bol-
shevism has not avoided. The c means ' now fill the entire
horizon. When the workers have come to power in the
belligerent countries, thought the bolshevik leaders in 1917,
or when socialism is c constructed 5 in the U.S.S.R., an-
nounced the rulers of the Soviet State in 1928, then the era
of£ principles' will begin ; until then they can be dispensed
with. Meanwhile everything becomes a c means', people,
parties, tactics, individuals. Revolutionary, like industrial
or any other kind of technique, tends to develop inde-
pendently and subordinate to itself the men and purposes
that it ought to serve. In consequence technique becomes
such an important part of political action that specialists are
required, ' professional revolutionaries \ It is they who
draw up plans of campaign for dragging the masses from
objective to objective up to the final victory ; they who hold
in their hands the thread which leads eventually to the
promised land ofe principles \ This idea, the roots of which
may be found in the Russian revolutionary tradition
(Bakunin, Narodnia Volia}^ and which was fostered by the
struggle against the Tsarist regime, flourished again after
the failure of the plans which Lenin made during the war,
and which inspired his activities in the years 1917-20.
Lenin thought that in the conditions created by the war the
working class was bound to take power anyhow and any-
where, in the first country in which the c imperialist front'
could be broken. Russia offered the first chance because the
Tsarist regime collapsed under the weight of its own help-
lessness. It did not much matter that Russia was a back-
ward country in which the proletariat was a small minority ;
what did matter was to profit from the country's social
weakness so as to seize power and hold on until revolution
had broken out in other countries, especially in Germany.
Then the Russian working class would pass on the torch
to the proletariat of the more industrialized countries.
Meanwhile the position had to be held and all necessary
compromises made with the Russian peasantry until the