THE FIRST WORLD WAR dramatically
changed socialism's place in the polity. From
being the enemy within, social democrats
throughout Europe joined the patriotic consensus,
upholding national security against
foreign aggression and keeping the domestic
truce while the war was on. As states pushed
their subject populations to unparalleled sacrifices,
the resulting transformations of public
culture were extraordinary. This extended
wartime emergency stoked nationalist loyalties
to unprecedented intensity, easing the integration
of labor movements into the patriotic
consensus and making the “national
interest” into moderate socialism's new hegemonic
frame. Remarkably, given the pre-1914
histories of intransigent exclusion, socialists
also entered governments for the first time.

During the same period the major revolutionary
upheaval centered on Russia profoundly
changed Europe's political geography.
Initially, the Left's enthusiasm for
events in Russia was entirely ecumenical, inspiring
moderate socialists no less than anarchists,
syndicalists, and other radicals. But
sympathy for overthrowing tsarism, the epitome
of reactionary backwardness, was one
thing; supporting the Bolsheviks was quite
another. Welcoming Russia into the democratic
camp in February 1917 became by
October something far more sinister: for the
first time, a revolutionary socialist party had
come violently to power. Renouncing the
Left's traditional parliamentarism, Bolshevism
claimed the new class-based legitimacy
of the soviets instead. The ominous-sounding
“dictatorship of the proletariat” entered
public circulation.

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