p The First World War, which lasted a little over four years, inflicted incalculable damage upon mankind. Casualties totalled some 10.000,000 killed and 20,000,000 wounded and maimed. Unparalleled chaos reigned in industry and agriculture. And the heavy loss of life in battle, the widespread poverty, starvation and epidemics had driven millions of people to despair.

Besides disastrously affecting the economic situation of the belligerent nations the war aggravated class contradictions to the extreme; and it was natural, in the situation, that the heroic example the Russian proletariat had set by overthrowing the autocratic regime that ruled Russia should have had a great impact upon workers, poor peasants and soldiers everywhere, and given a powerful impetus to their revolutionary struggle.