The peace and quiet in Germany and Russia was deceptive and Europe was granted only a short pause for breath. Nevertheless, around 1923 an era was brought to an end. In the years 1917–23 the traditions of rebellion and resistance, which had come into being in 1789, made themselves felt in our part of the world on a grand scale for the last time. Only in Russia did the revolution continue and the result was not only that the Western labour movement split apart, but also that Europe became divided into two camps. Eventually the contrast between communism on the one hand and socialism and capitalism on the other caused a dichotomy the like of which had not been seen since the sixteenth-century Reformation. The confused quarrel between Martov and Lenin at the Second Party Congress in 1903 was thus followed by an unexpected development which was by no means concluded in 1923. Nevertheless, Martov's death in 1923 and that of Lenin in January 1924 certainly marked the end of an era. The Russian communist party, which had experienced a considerable transformation in the years 1917–23, was only afterwards to undergo a complete metamorphosis. Stalin's bureaucratic Moloch no longer in any way resembled the revolutionary vanguard which Lenin had drawn up on paper in 1902. In 1923 democratic socialism was as good as dead in Russia. In the West it would continue to exist, though its significance would be greatly altered.