class struggle. For the awakened proletariat of the
cities the struggle in which they were engaged was economic as well as
political. They wisely regarded the political struggle as part of the class
struggle, as Plechanov and his friends declared it to be. Yet the fact
remained that the capitalist class against which the proletariat was
fighting on the economic field was, for the most part, fighting against
autocracy, for the overthrow of Czarism and the establishment of political
democracy, as earnestly, if less violently, than the proletariat was. The
reason for this was the recognition by the leading capitalists of Russia of
the fact that industrial progress was retarded by the old regime, and that
capitalist development requires popular education, a relatively high
standard of living, political freedom, and stability and order in
government. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for the great associations
of manufacturers and merchants to unite in urging the government to grant
extensive political reforms so long as the class conflict was merely
incidental.

What had begun mainly as a class war had become the war of all classes
against autocracy. Of course, in such a merging of classes there
necessarily appeared many shadings and degrees of interest. Not all the
social groups and classes were as radical in their demands as the organized
peasants and city workers, who were the soul of the revolutionary movement.
There were, broadly speaking, two great divisions of social life with which
the Revolution was concerned--the political and the economic. With regard
to the first there was practical unanimity; he would be a blind slave to
theoretical formulae who sought to maintain the thesis that class interests
divided masses and classes here. All classes, with the exception of the
bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the
establishment of a constitutional government, elected by the people on a
basis of universal suffrage, and directly responsible to the electorate.

Upon the economic issue there was less agreement, though all parties and
classes recognized the need of extensive change. It was universally
recognized that some solution of the land question must be found. There can
never be social peace or political stability in Russia until that problem
is settled. Now, it was easy for the Socialist groups, on the one hand, and
the moderate groups, upon the other, to unite in demanding that the larg