In an interview dated November 21, and published in the _New York
Times_ in a special cable from Petrograd, Leon Trotzky in defending the
attitude of the people toward the Bolsheviki _coup d'etat_ is reported
to have said substantially the following: "All the bourgeoisie is
against us. The greater part of the intellectuals is against us or
hesitating, awaiting a final outcome. The working class is wholly with
us. The army is with us. The peasants, with the exception of exploiters,
are with us. The Workmen's and Soldiers' government is a government
of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants against the capitalists and
landowners."
On the other hand my father, Ivan Petrunkevitch, floorleader of the
Constitutional Democratic party in the first Duma and since that time
owner and publisher of the Petrograd daily _Rech_ writes in a private
letter dated June 12: "... the present real government, i. e., the
Council of Soldiers' and Workmen's Deputies, whose leaders are neither
soldiers nor workmen, but intellectuals, etc." Nothing has happened
during the months intervening between the letter and the interview
to change the composition of the Council appreciably. It is true that
Kerensky who was vice-president of the Council has been meanwhile
deposed; that Tshcheidze had to relinquish the presidency in the Council
to Trotzky long before Kerensky's downfall; but the leaders of the
Council still are intellectuals, are well educated men, some of them
well known writers on political and economic questions and withal very
different from the masses which they lead and which they purport to
represent. In justice to those who had to give way to the Lenine-Trotzky
crowd of supporters, I wish to state emphatically that I do not want to
put them on the same plane. Tseretelli, Plekhanov, Tshcheidze, and
their co-workers are men of great courage, high ideals, and personal
integrity. On the other hand their successors in power are men of a
totally different type. The integrity of many of their number has been
openly questioned, the accusations, published & broadcast, remained
unanswered, and no suit for libel was brought by the men thus accused.
Lenine was put under suspicion of having accepted German help and of
having planned with Germany's agents the disorganization of the Russian
army. It has been even charged on apparently good evidence that the
leaflets distributed at the front were printed with German money.
Trotzky was accused by Miliukov in the _Rech_ (June 7) of having
received $10,000 from German-Americans for the purpose of organizing the
attack on Kerensky's government. Ganetsky was forced to leave Denmark
by an order of the Danish government, having been convicted of dishonest
dealings in a Danish court. Zinoviev is accused of forgery. Others are
also under suspicion which has been only increased by the arrest and
imprisonment of Burtzev who is known for his untiring efforts to
hunt down traitors to the cause of the Russian Revolution and who had
important evidence in his possession. It is also a remarkable fact that
the majority of the present leaders are known broadly only under
assumed names. Lenine's true name is Uljanov, Trotzky's--Bronstein,
Zinoviev's--Apfelbaum, Sukhanov's--Gimmer, Kamenev's--Rosenfeld,
Steklov's--Nakhamkis, and a number of others whose identity is not
even always known. Trotzky's assertion that the Workmen's and Soldiers'
Government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants is
therefore nothing but a perversion of facts.
There is, however, nothing extraordinary in the fact itself that
intellectuals are the real leaders of all Russian parties. Better
education and wider knowledge of the affairs of the world have always
appealed to the dark masses who realize only dimly their own desires and
grasp at any concrete formulation of reforms which contains a tangible
promise or seems to express those desires. At the same time they often
put their own meaning into the words of their leaders, which is true
even of factory workers in the larger cities. As for the peasants,
representing about 90 per cent of the entire population, they are still
very poorly educated, questions of national import remain outside their
horizon, and even their language is not the language of the educated
Russian, inasmuch as it lacks the rich vocabulary of modern life and
is devoid of the very conceptions to which this vast treasury of words
applies. Their mind, great as it is in its potentialities, still moves
in the furrows of familiar ideas abhorring things too much at variance
with inherited traditions or actual experience. Yet in the turmoil of
revolutionary activity the peasants are going to have their say and
may become the decisive factor, because they are voters and are casting
their votes for those leaders whose words they believe to contain the
greatest promise and the least menace of a general disruption of their
accustomed mode of life.
We are thus brought back, for the present at least, to the necessity
of recognizing that even the state of anarchy under which Russia is
laboring, even the rule of the renowned proletariat so much trumpeted
about by Lenine and Trotzky, is in reality the work of intellectuals,
an answer of the masses to the call of their leaders, a groping for
principles beyond their perception.
It suffices a very casual examination of the programs and resolutions of
various political parties to see the truth of this statement. They
are expressive of the opinions of the leaders, not of the masses; are
couched in the language of the educated Russian, not in that of the
workman or peasant and, except for the concluding slogans like "Peace,
Bread, and Land," are alien to the very spirit of the masses. In this
respect all parties are confronted with the same difficulty since all
strive to get the support of the masses, yet have to express principles
evolved through careful and extensive study of national, political, and
economic problems, strange to the uneducated mind. For the same reason
the methods of surmounting the difficulty differ in many respects and
are characteristic of each party.
The Conservative Intellectuals of Russia early realized the necessity of
meeting the peasant on his own ground and the advantage of appealing
to him in his own language. The idea of a benevolent ruler, an
all-suffering motherland, and an all-unifying church exercised a
powerful appeal upon the imagination, for a long time superseding and
forcing into the background the growing, elemental, and unfulfilled
longing for more land. The ideology of a perfect monarchy is so simple
and its shortcomings so easily attributable to dishonesty of officials,
that it answered the peasant's thoughts as long as he was not able to
see the folly of distinguishing between the system and its realization,
but separated in his mind the image of his loving monarch from the cruel
reality of everyday life as he still distinguishes between the faith and
the priest. The great mistake of all conservatives is that they seek to
bring about a state of perfect justice by improving only the quality
of the ruling body without changing the conditions of life of the ruled
mass. Yet even so the Conservatives had quite a following among the
peasants up to the time of the revolution of 1917 and in a way may still
have a future before them.
The Octoberists find no support in the masses and do not make any
serious attempt to gain it. They frankly acknowledged themselves as the
party of industry and trade, having no wider interests at heart than the
maintenance of order and law throughout the country. Their leaders were
forced into a revolutionary attitude only at the time when there was
danger of a universal collapse of Russia if the tsar's government
persisted, and they may be forced to join in a counter-revolution,
if their interests are again endangered. Their ideology is that of
a capitalistic class and their power depends entirely on the future
development of industry and trade in Russia. For the present they are
nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their activity in place of
class interest, they lack unity of purpose and are deserted by their
own former supporters among their employees. Trade and industry are
disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.
The Constitutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find
their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various
pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists,
scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all classes
and demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian
legislation of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of
vision includes the sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous
elements of the vast whole, but their ideology is still based on the
long outworn idealistic capitalism and for this reason alone does not
and cannot appeal to not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in
this respect the most striking example. It is worked out in great detail
and is aimed at a betterment of the condition of peasants without deep
injury to the present landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant
to more land, it provides for future state ownership of land to prevent
it from falling into wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle
of landownership, nor the injustice of present ownership, and for that
reason elaborates a method of compensation for compulsorily alienated
land through universal taxation.
To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation
is to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the
land in each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be
paid yearly from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it
were, in which the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the
land, while its present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under
this system the peasants will get all land available, but 90 per cent
will have to pay for what is owned by a small fraction of even the
remaining 10 per cent of the entire population. The proposed scheme
proved to be too radical for the tsar's government in 1906 and caused
the downfall of the first Duma. It provoked at the time bitter comment
in Germany also, where the conservative and national-liberal press
accused the Russian Constitutional Democratic party of putting forward
impossible demands and of attacking the very principle of property
ownership. Yet the principle underlying the proposed reform is
unquestionably capitalistic and is the chief cause of the hatred and
contempt which the party enjoys on the part of Social-Democrats.
In the beginning of the sixties the conservative land committee
appointed by Alexander II, composed of hereditary landowners, avowed
enemies of any economic liberation of peasants, out of fear that private
ownership of land might enrich the peasants and make them dangerous to
the established order, devised a scheme of communal ownership of land
and unconsciously taught the peasants the principles of socialism. In
1907 Constitutional Democrats opposed the bill of the Government for the
dissolution of land communities and substitution of private for communal
land ownership at the request of individual peasants. The objection
raised was on the ground that peasants suddenly possessed of a chance
to get ready money would sell their land to a few exploiters and being
unable to put it to good use would rapidly become paupers. The best
men in the Duma opposed Stolypin's bill, and the law was introduced by
stealth and promulgated during a forced recess of the Duma. Contrary
to expectation the law neither led to the results desired by the
Government, nor to those feared by Constitutional Democrats. It
remained a dead letter. Few members of peasant communities applied for
separation. The Government tried to boost its scheme by building at its
own expense model, fake peasant homes. The peasants had already their
own idea as to remedies in regard to land shortage and did not want any
substitute.
The difficulty of making the peasant respect the principle of private
ownership of land is due to many causes. The most liberal minded
landowners were usually those who spent their winters in various
occupations in large cities and used their estates as summer homes and
a partial source of income. The work of supervision was only too often
intrusted to utterly unscrupulous and uneducated managers belonging to
the peasant class, while the neighboring peasants were employed as
day laborers in the field and garden. This kind of labor was already
available, because peasants were unable to derive sufficient income from
their own land to pay the heavy taxes and to support their families.
Scarcely any landowners understood anything of agriculture and few paid
any attention to it. I know splendid estates which brought in miserable
incomes, not normal even under the antiquated system of four year crop
rotation and quite absurd if measured by standards of modern American
farming, yet sufficient to place at the disposal of the owners a
splendid mansion in Moscow or Petrograd and a no less splendid summer
home on their estate. There, during the hot summer days, the owners were
enjoying their comfort in idleness and talking of reforms necessary for
the benefit of the peasants, while peasant women were cutting the wheat
for them with sickles, stooping and sweating under the scorching rays of
the sun. The superintendents of those estates enriched themselves at the
expense of the blind or careless and carefree owners under the very eyes
of the peasants who hated the superintendents, pitied or despised the
liberal owners, as the case might be, and gloomily compared their own
poverty and labor with the ease and wealth of their employers.
The more thrifty and less liberal owners, who remained the greater part
of the year on their estates, were perhaps more respected but still less
liked. Any attempt at careful management of the estate was invariably
considered to be a sign of stinginess or of hardheartedness. The idea of
property is not clearly defined in the mind of the average peasant who
considers plants that are not planted but grow wild to be a gift of God.
In disputes involving such cases the line between rightful possession
and theft is difficult to draw, and men who took the controversy to
court were invariably hated. A glaring example of this kind was an
otherwise liberal minded landowner, a well known professor of sociology,
who spent three-quarters of a year in lecturing at a foreign university
of which he was a member and who was finally murdered on his own estate.
The home life of even liberal intellectuals was another barrier between
them and the masses. Not only was coarse food considered to be good
enough for domestics, but they seldom, if ever, had a decent corner
for themselves in the house and their miserable wages were out of all
proportion with the long hours of service required. Many families had
guests almost daily, the company sitting around a samovar, discussing
and conversing until one or two in the morning, while the sleepy
domestics were stealing a nap in the anteroom, ready to appear at the
call of the mistress. The table had to be cleared after the guests and
the family retired for the night and the breakfast had to be prepared,
boots polished, stoves heated, rooms cleaned in the early morning. For
the master might rest until ten or eleven, but the children have to be
at school by eight and the servants must be ready to serve them. And
though many families kept professional servants, the country homes
depended almost entirely in winter as well as in summer on local help.
Attempts to improve the condition of peasants were numerous and in
some respects successful, but found an obstacle on the one hand in the
attitude of the Government and on the other in the conservatism and
suspicion of the peasants themselves. Fire insurance and cooperative
enterprises helped to a certain degree, but an almost complete absence
of expert agriculturists in the ranks of the landowners prevented them
from demonstrating on their own estates the value of applied knowledge
as well as from teaching the peasants how to increase the productivity
of the land through intensive farming. Thus it came to pass that the
vast majority of landowners, both conservative and liberal, remained
strangers to the people among whom they lived, whose labor they
employed, and for whose welfare many were in earnest concerned. The
Constitutional Democratic party is strong in the cities. In the country
it has no followers and in the sweeping incendiary fires of 1905-06
estates were burned which belonged in several cases to men who spent
their life in fighting for freedom against the tsar's government.
No less unfortunate is the party in its relation to the class of factory
workers. That part of its program which relates to the labor question
embraces a number of important reforms meeting almost all demands of the
working class. The barrier between them is the capitalistic principle.
A perusal of the lists of Constitutional Democrats who have subscribed
large sums for the Russian liberty loan will show why workmen speak of
them as capitalists even though the party has accepted the principle of
progressive income taxation. There is a feeling of intense hatred toward
all Constitutional Democrats on the part of all workmen.
Nothing is more instructive than the rapid change in the position which
the Constitutional Democratic party occupied in the eyes of the people
after the revolution. Before the outbreak of hostilities all parties
were against war. But soon, under the influence of the German methods
of warfare in Belgium, France, and Russia, the feeling changed. Even the
Mensheviki among the Social-Democrats declared themselves in favor of
war and the only party remaining firm in condemning all war was that
of the Bolsheviki. The entrance of the Turks into the war was almost
considered a godsend by the Constitutional Democrats, Octoberists,
and Conservatives in the Duma because it cleared the way for a final
settlement of the Balkan problem and promised the elimination of Turkey
from Europe. Long after Sazonov was removed, when the consent of England
and France to give Russia free hand in Constantinople and the Straits
was read in a telegram before the Duma, a general outburst of enthusiasm
took place, the members demanding to know why Sazonov, who was justly
credited with this achievement, was in retirement and not in charge
of the foreign office which he should have held by right. Miliukov's
speeches and writings on the future settlement of the Balkan problem
were jokingly spoken of as his dissertation for the degree of foreign
secretary. At home the party was pursuing a policy of patient endurance,
postponing strife for the future until the crimes of the tsar's
government made further silence impossible. At that time the whole
tissue of treason was not yet known, but enough was in evidence
to demand vigorous protest. Not being a revolutionary party the
Constitutional Democrats abstained from any action not strictly within
the law and merely condemned the activity of the Government. They
desired amelioration of the fundamental laws, but even that they would
have preferred to accomplish by persuasion rather than by force. In fact
they considered socialist demands unreasonable, socialization of Russia
premature, and any violent overthrow unwise and hazardous. For the
latter opinion they found support in the failure of the uprising of
the working class in 1905-06, when the punitive expeditions proved the
loyalty of the army to the throne. Consequently the attitude of the army
in the memorable days of the March revolution was a great surprise to
them. At the same time they attributed to themselves the lion share in
the overthrow, presumably on the ground that masses follow leaders and
the Constitutional \ Democrats were the only ones who had a chance for
open protest in the Duma and made use of it. This delusion led to a
series of tactical errors and cost them dearly. In all elections they
polled a comparatively small vote. Trying to save Russia for the Allies
they failed to meet the Russian Socialists on their own ground and were
forced to explain away differences of opinion much too thoroughgoing
to be explained away. In a country which is in the throes of the
most remarkable revolution ever witnessed, they tried to apply
non-revolutionary methods and drew on themselves the suspicion of
the masses of being counter-revolutionists. From the very moment when
Miliukov announced the passing of the supreme power from the Tsar to
Grand Duke Michail, when his words were answered by angry shouts
in favor of a democratic republic, the position of the party became
precarious. They had either to revise their own program and to catch up
with the rush of the progressive current, or else to find themselves in
the role of inundated rocks over which the waters flow. The announcement
that the party would support a demand for a republic was too late
to change the first impression, while the proposition to accept
unconditional expropriation of land in place of the compensation plan
was defeated in heated debate at the party convention. Under normal
circumstances the party would have probably been steadily losing
support, but the arrest and imprisonment of the best and highly honored
leaders by the Bolsheviki is bound to put fresh vigor into their efforts
and give new life to their cause.
The leaders of the Bolsheviki themselves have fallen into error of
a different kind. Being primarily a party of the wage earning day
laborers, the program of the Bolsheviki puts the interest of the
proletariat above everything else. From insufficient observation of
peasant life and the fact that peasants want socialization of land,
they jump to the conclusion that the country is ready for complete
socialization. Only the more educated leaders among them realize that
such a conclusion is premature. But to bring about the necessary change
in as near a future as possible, the leaders of the Bolsheviki have
fanned hatred of the proletariat toward the "bourgeois" classes. One
must give them credit in this respect. They know the value of simple
language when they put this hatred into words. Listen to the Russian
Marseillaise: "Rise, brothers, all at once against the thieves, the
curs--the rich ones! Against the vampire Tsar! Beat them, kill them--the
cursed evil-doers! Glow, dawn of better life!" The simple ideology, the
easy catch phrases in which the language of this ideology is couched,
the primeval character of the passion aroused, contribute to the success
which the party enjoys among working people and homeless paupers.
Therein lies the power of the Bolsheviki. But reaction is bound to come
and here again the peasants will play the chief role. All accounts of
conversations with peasants tend to show that they have very vague ideas
of socialism. In fact the Social-Democrats have not taken the trouble
to acquaint the peasants with the principles of their teaching, leaving
that field almost entirely to the influence of socialist-revolutionists.
Among the intellectuals none have come nearer to the understanding of
peasant psychology than those men and women who from the first espoused
the cause of the peasant. Realizing the space separating educated
men from their less fortunate brothers, they gave up their life as
intellectuals and "went among the people." They donned peasant garb and
acquired peasant tongue. From this group of workers for freedom later
the Socialist-revolutionary party developed. "All land for the peasant"
is their slogan, while their promise to expropriate all land without
any compensation naturally meets with approval on the part of the
land-hungry peasants. Moreover, their program does not demand immediate
complete socialization of Russia, leaving that to a gradual process of
evolution and change of existing conditions. In the ten years preceding
the first revolution thousands of young intellectuals joined the party
and fought the tsar's regime. They showed a degree of self-abnegation
found only in people whose heart is kindled with the true spirit of
devotion to a great cause. The revolution of 1905 would never have taken
place but for their organized "terror from below." The high regard held
for them by the widest circles has caused their rise in power during
the first two months of the revolution of 1917. But tactical errors
committed by the leaders of the party as well as dissensions within the
party itself contributed to a rather rapid change of sentiment toward
them on all sides. In a measure as the Constitutional Democrats
vigorously objected to their policy to put into life as soon as possible
the agrarian reforms promised by them, the Social-Democrats on their
part attacked them for their moderation in other demands. For some
reason not yet clear, Kerensky was slighted in the very beginning of
his political career when his nomination to the executive council of the
Socialist-revolutionist party was opposed by a large majority. Just as
the Constitutional Democrats made a series of tactical errors due to the
fact that they thought themselves representative of the spirit of
the Russian people, whereas in reality they stood sponsors only for
a relatively small minority, even so the Socialist-revolutionists
misjudged the attitude of other parties toward themselves. They
overrated the ability of the masses to distinguish between their
attitude toward war in general and the necessity to continue the present
war. They overrated the ability of the soldiers to distinguish between
slavish obedience and military discipline. They tried to play the
role of a center. They tried to mediate between Social-Democrats and
Constitutional Democrats and naturally failed in this attempt. Some of
their leaders, notably Mr. Tschernov, were accused by Constitutional
Democrats of being pro-German if not actual German agents. Others,
including Kerensky himself and even Mme. Breshkovsky, were accused
by the Bolsheviki of having been almost bribed by the capitalistic
interests of America, England, and France. Needless to say that the
accusations had no basis whatever in actual facts and represent simply
an ugly outgrowth of misguided jealousy of the masses to guard their
dearly won right to a social revolution against those whom they consider
the worst enemies of socialism, and the desire of unscrupulous leaders
to profit by it. Thus the Socialist-revolutionists were gradually
relegated in the mind of the extremists to the great body of the hated
"bourgeois." Only in their rightful element, among the peasants, they
continue to enjoy a great deal of popularity, and the returns to the
Constituent Assembly show that theirs will be the absolute majority even
though they lost some of their popularity.
The progress of the Russian Revolution presents a sad spectacle of an
almost complete failure on the part of the majority of intellectuals to
understand the spirit of the times and to guide the masses through the
labyrinth of errors. In days past the Russian intellectuals were the
forefighters for freedom and the Russian people will ever be indebted
to them for this. They prepared the soil for the revolution by spreading
ideas of freedom by all means at their disposal. They weakened the
tsar's power and thus contributed to its overthrow by persistent attacks
upon the system of autocratic government. They helped to awaken the
spirit of self-consciousness in the masses. But they did not evolve new
principles. They did not open wide avenues for the development of a
new order of social organization. They misunderstood the masses and
consequently were unable to control the forces set loose. And if Russia
is going to be saved from utter ruin amidst the clamor and strife of
party leaders and to evolve a new democratic system, it will be due not
to the intellectuals, but to the great spirit of the dark masses of the
Russian peasants.
FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FORCES BEHIND THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION