But for us, Russian Social Democrats, there can be no doubt that, from the point of view of the working-classes and of the toiling masses of all the Russian peoples, the lesser evil would be a defeat of the Tsarist monarchy.
Russia's military prestige was at a low ebb, her finance in a state of chaos, the Tsarist regime discredited and the country in the throes of revolution.
But, while the Tsarist regime, unable to denationalize a homogeneous population of a different religion and language, initially conceded a minimum of rights to the Polish nation, in Lithuania proper from the outset an unrelenting system of tyranny was established which was designed to break by force every non-Russian element in the country.
The dark forces that guarded the tsarist autocracy are going under.
At moments of heightened class struggle, the Bolsheviks actively agitated for workers ' defense militias against the tsarist state forces.
