Meanwhile the clock of “modern times” is running down. Within Western culture, that is the very civilization that in recent centuries has dominated a quarter of the world and acquired so little consciousness in its experience with the rest, what once were but faint signs of breakdown are now in bold evidence. Not even the brilliant wizardry of high technological achievement can mute the rumblings from the degenerating mechanism. It is the occasion of opposition and contradiction and the moment of opportunity. That is because the times that mark the dissolutions of civilizations compound the maturations of both internal and external processes.

the coterminous social revolutions and nationalist upheavals within the Russian Empire