the East. It was followed by increased
Soviet activity and by substantial Soviet successes, especially in the
Caucasus, where both Georgia and Armenia were Bolshevized in the spring
of 1921.

These very successes, however, awakened growing uneasiness among Soviet
Russia's nationalist proteges. The various Oriental nationalist parties,
which had at first welcomed Moscow's aid so enthusiastically against the
Entente Powers, now began to realize that Russian Bolshevism might prove
as great a peril as Western imperialism to their patriotic aspirations.
Of course the nationalist leaders had always realized Moscow's ultimate
goal, but hitherto they had felt themselves strong enough to control the
situation and to take Russian aid without paying Moscow's price. Now
they no longer felt so sure. The numbers of class-conscious
"proletarians" in the East might be very small. The communist philosophy
might be virtually unintelligible to the Oriental masses. Nevertheless,
the very existence of Soviet Russia was a warning not to be disregarded.
In Russia an infinitesimal communist minority, numbering, by its own
admission, not much over 600,000, was maintaining an unlimited despotism
over 170,000,000 people. Western countries might rely on their popular
education and their staunch traditions of ordered liberty; the East
possessed no such bulwarks against Bolshevism. The East was, in fact,
much like Russia. There was the same dense ignorance of the masses; the
same absence of a large and powerful middle class; the same tradition of
despotism; the same popular acquiescence in the rule of ruthless
minorities. Finally, there were the ominous examples of Sovietized
Turkestan and Azerbaidjan. In fine, Oriental nationalists bethought them
of the old adage that he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon.

Everywhere it has been the same story. In Asia Minor, Mustapha Kemal has
arrested Bolshevist propaganda agents, while Turkish and Russian troops
have more than once clashed on the disputed Caucasus frontiers. In Egypt
we have already seen how an amicable arrangement between Lord Milner and
the Egyptian nationalist leaders was facilitated by the latter's fear of
the social revolutionary agitators who were inflaming the fellaheen. In
India, Sir Valentine Chirol noted as far back as the spring of 1918 how
Russia's collapse into Bolshevism had had a "sobering effect" on Indian
public opinion. "The more thoughtful Indians," he wrote, "now se