The "proletariat" had then a free hand so far as the most
numerous class in Russia was concerned.
Just as the capitalist class reached the threshold of the revolution
psychologically below par, so the wage-earning class in developing the
will to rule outran all expectations and beat the Marxian time-schedule.
Among the important contributing factors was the unity of the industrial
laboring class, a unity broken by no rifts between highly paid skilled
groups and an inferior unskilled class, or between a well-organized
labor aristocracy and an unorganized helot class. The economic and
social oppression under the old r?gime had seen to it that no group of
laborers should possess a stake in the existing order or desire to
separate from the rest. Moreover, for several decades, and especially
since the memorable days of the revolution of 1905, the laboring class
has been filled by socialistic agitators and propagandists with ideas of
the great historical role of the proletariat. The writer remembers how
in 1905 even newspapers of the moderately liberal stamp used to speak of
the "heroic proletariat marching in the van of Russia's progress.
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