598
LEON TROTSKY
tum back on itself. The bureaucracy has turned backwards; but though
the bureaucracy controls many things, it hardly controls the course of
history. The ahistorical character, the Karatayev-like quality of our
masses has disappeared forever. There can be no returning to it. Like–
wise, we are finished for good with the apostolate of the intelligentsia.
After three years of smug prostration the intelligentsia has begun
to straighten up again. What a pitiful spectacle!
It
would be naive,
though, to believe that it can ever again return to the epoch preceding
the 1905 Revolution. History does not repeat itself. However great the
intelligentsia's past significance, henceforth it can only play a subol
o
-
dinate role. Its heroic "substitutive" role has now passed into historical
eternity.
(Translated from the Russian
by
Philip Ralw and Irwin Weil .)
(Footnotes and Translat ors' Note sup/Jlied
by
Philip Rahv.)
