PBC0138: despair at collapse

PBC 138 conveys nationalists’ despair at the abrupt loss of order and security following the Bolshevik coup. The drastic devolution into chaos in 1917 inspired various comparisons with the destructive forces of the world. One description, as swift as the February Revolution’s overnight coup, simply states, “The old world has burned” (W488). Another compares the world to a “flat plate, smashed by a child’s foot” as the “sun hangs over a sick person in a crumpled bed” (W143).