Another Crown Topples
The unnatural alliance of the Czar and the free peoples.—The
first Duma and the revolt of 1905.—The Zemptsvos and the people
against the pro-German officials.—The death of Rasputin and other
signs of unrest.—The revolution of March 1917.—The Czar becomes
Mr. Romanoff.—Four different governments within eight
months.—Civil war and a German effort for peace.
It will be recalled that the great war was caused in the first
place by the unprovoked attack of Austria on Serbia and the
unwillingness of Russia to stand by and see her little neighbor
crushed, and that England came in to make good her word, pledged
to Belgium, to defend that small country from all hostile
attacks. Thus the nations of the Entente posed before the world
as the defenders of small nations and as champions of the rights
of peoples to live under the form of government which they might
choose. You will remember that when the central powers said that
they were ready to talk peace terms the nations of the Entente
replied that there could be no peace as long as the Danes, Poles,
and Alsatians were forcibly held by Germany in her empire and as
long as Austria denied the Ruthenians, Roumanians, Czechs,
Slovaks, Serbs, and Italians in their empire the right either to
rule themselves or to join the nations united to them by ties of
blood and language. France and Great Britain especially were fond
of saying that it was a war of the free peoples against those
enslaved by military rule—a conflict between self-governed
nations and those which were oppressing their foreign subjects.
Replying to this the central powers would always point to Russia.
Russia, said they, oppressed the Poles and Lithuanians, the
Letts, the Esthonians, the Finns. She, as well as
Austria-Hungary, has hundreds of thousands of Roumanians within
her territories. Her people had even less political freedom than
the inhabitants of Austria and Germany.
The nations of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the
Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact
there is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid
of a Russian victory. They did not want the war to be won by the
one nation in their group which had a despotic form of
government. On the other hand the high officials in Russia were
not any too happy at the thought of their alliance with the free
peoples of western Europe. Germany was much more their ideal of a
country governed in the proper manner than was France. As you
have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian court were of
German blood and secretly desired the victory of their
fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep
all power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of
seeing Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up
and demand more liberty.
You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time
of the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were
threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at
all sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of
his people away from their own wrongs.
At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the
cry from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of
elective government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give
in. So he called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been
explained, could talk and could complain, but could pass no laws.
The first Duma had had so many grievances and had talked so
bitterly against the government, that it had been forced to break
up, and Cossack troops were called in to put down riots among the
people at St. Petersburg, which they did with great ferocity. All
this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a
feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand
dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that
the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere
puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand
dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This
strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power
in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone could
keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince,
the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of
the ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy’s food
whenever Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few
days. The poor little prince, of course, was made sick;
whereupon, the Empress would hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon
whose arrival the Czarevitch “miraculously” got well. In this
manner this low-born fakir obtained such a hold over the Czar and
Czarina that he was able to appoint governors of states, put
bishops out of their places, and even change prime ministers.
There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use his
influence in their behalf. It is a sad illustration of the
ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could
have gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.
The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos.
These were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia,
elected by the people to decide all local matters, like the
building of roads, helping feed the poor, etc. They had been
started by Czar Alexander II, in 1862. Although the court was
rotten with graft and plotting, the Zemptsvos remained true to
the people. They finally all united in a big confederation, and
when the world war broke out, this body, really the only
patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the grand dukes
and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the hands of
the enemy.
It was a strange situation. The Russian people through the
representatives that they elected to these little county
assemblies were patriotically carrying out the war, while the
grand dukes and the court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this
trouble, were, for the most part, hampering the soldiers, either
through grafting off the supplies and speculating in food, or
traitorously plotting to betray their country to the Germans.
With plenty of food in Russia, with millions of bushels of grain
stored away by men who were holding it in order to get still
higher prices, there was not enough for the people of Petrograd
to eat.
As you were told in a previous chapter, the German, Sturmer, was
made prime minister, probably with the approval of the monk,
Rasputin. Roumania, depending on promises of Russian help, was
crushed between the armies of the Germans on the one side and the
Turks and Bulgars on the other, while trainload after trainload
of the guns and munitions which would have enabled her armies to
stand firm was sidetracked and delayed on Russian railroads.
“Your Majesty, we are betrayed,” said the French general who had
been sent by the western allies to direct the army of the king of
Roumania, when his pleas for ammunition were ignored and promise
after promise made him by the Russian prime minister was broken.
Of all the countries in Europe, with the possible exception of
Turkey, Russia had been the most ignorant. The great mass of the
people had had no schooling and were unable to read and write. It
was easier for the grand dukes and nobles to keep down the
peasants and to remain undisturbed in the ownership of their
great estates if the people knew nothing more than to labor and
suffer in silence. There was a class of Russians, however, the
most patriotic and the best educated men in the state, who were
working quietly, but actively, to make conditions better. Then
too, the Nihilists, anarchists who had been working (often by
throwing bombs) for the overthrow of the Czar, had spread their
teachings throughout the country. Students of the universities,
writers, musicians, and artists, had preached the doctrines of
the rights of man. While outwardly the government appeared as
strong as ever, really it was like a tree whose trunk has rotted
through and through, and which needs only one vigorous push to
send it crashing to the ground.
It is generally in large cities that protests against the
government are begun. For one thing, it is harder, in a great mob
of people, to pick out the ones who are responsible for starting
the trouble. Then again it is natural for people to make their
protests in capital cities where the government cannot fail to
hear them. A third reason lies in the fact that in large cities
there are always a great number of persons who are poor and who
are the first ones to feel the pinch of starvation, when hard
times arise or when speculators seize upon food with the idea of
causing the prices to rise. Starvation makes these people
desperate—they do not care whether they live or not—and, as a
result, they dare to oppose themselves to the police and the
soldiers.
There had been murmurs of discontent in Petrograd for a long
time. This was felt not only among the common people, but also
among the more patriotic of the upper classes. In the course of
the winter of 1916-17, the monk, Rasputin, as a result of a plot,
was invited to the home of a grand duke, a cousin of the Czar.
There a young prince, determined to free Russia of this pest,
shot him to death and his body was thrown upon the ice of the
frozen Neva.
About this time the lack of food in Petrograd, the result largely
of speculation and “cornering the market,” had become so serious
that the government thought it wise to call in several regiments
of Cossacks to reinforce the police.
These Cossacks are wild tribesmen of the plains who enjoy a
freedom not shared by any other class in Russia. They are
warriors by trade and their sole duty consists in offering
themselves, fully equipped, whenever the government has need of
their services in war. They were of a different race, originally,
than the Russians themselves, although by inter-marrying they now
have some Slavic blood in their veins. Their appearance upon the
streets of Petrograd was almost always a threat to the people.
Enjoying freedom themselves and liking nothing better than the
practice of their trade—fighting—they had had little or no
sympathy with the wrongs of the populace, and so were the
strongest supporters of the despotic rule of the Czar. At times
when the Czar did not dare to trust his regular soldiers to
enforce order in Petrograd or Moscow, for fear the men would
refuse to fire upon their own relatives in the mob, the Cossacks
could always be counted upon to ride their horses fearlessly
through the people, sabering to right and left those who refused
to disperse.
[Illustration: Crowd in Petrograd during the Revolution]
The second week of March, 1917, found crowds in Petrograd
protesting against the high prices of food and forming in long
lines to demand grain of the government. As day succeeded day,
the crowds grew larger and bolder in their murmurings. Cossacks
were sent into the city, but for some strange reason they did not
cause fear as they had in times past. Their manner was different.
Instead of drawing their sabers, they good naturedly joked with
the people as they rode among them to disperse the mobs, and were
actually cheered at times by the populace. The crowds grew larger
and more boisterous. Regiment after regiment of troops was called
in. The police fired upon the people when the latter refused to
go home. Then a strange thing happened. A Cossack, his eyes
flashing fire, rode at full tilt up the street toward a policeman
who was firing on the mob, and shot him dead on the spot. A shout
went up from the people: “The Cossacks are with us!” New
regiments of troops were brought in. The men who composed them
knew that they were going to be ordered to fire upon their own
kind of people—their own kin perhaps, whose only crime was that
they were hungry and had dared to say so. One regiment turned
upon its officers, refusing to obey them, and made them
prisoners. Another and another joined the revolting forces. It
was like the scenes in Paris on the 14th of July, 1789. The
people had gathered to protest, and, hardly knowing what they
did, they had turned their protests into a revolution. Regiments
loyal to the Czar were hastily summoned to fire upon their
revolting comrades. They hesitated. Leaders of the mob rushed
over to them, pleading with them not to fire. A few scattering
volleys were followed by a lull, and, then with a shout of joy,
the troops last remaining loyal threw down their arms and rushed
across to embrace the revolutionists. At a great meeting of the
mob a group of soldiers and working men was picked out to call
upon the Duma and ask this body to form a temporary government.
Another group was appointed to wait upon Nicholas II and tell him
that henceforth he was not the Czar of all the Russias, but plain
Nicholas Romanoff. Messengers were sent to the fighting fronts to
inform the generals that they were no longer to take orders from
the Czar, but from the representatives of the free people of
Russia. With remarkable calmness, the nation accepted the new
situation. Within two days a new government had been formed,
composed of some of the best men in the great empire. The Czar
signed a paper giving up the throne in behalf of himself and his
young son and nominating his brother Michael to take his place.
Michael, however, was too wise. He notified the people that he
would accept the crown only if they should vote to give it to
him; and this the people would not do.
[Illustration: Revolutionary soldiers holding a conference in the Duma]
The government, as formed at first, with its ministers of
different departments like the American cabinet, was composed of
citizens of the middle classes—lawyers, professors of the
universities, land-owners, merchants were represented—and at the
head of the ministry was a prince. This arrangement did not
satisfy the rabble. The radical socialists, most of whom owned no
property and wanted all wealth divided up among all the people,
were not much happier to be ruled by the moderately well-to-do
than they were to submit to the rule of the nobles. The council
of workingmen and soldiers, meeting in the great hall which had
formerly housed the Duma, began to take upon themselves the
powers of government. Someone proclaimed that now the Russian
people should have peace, and when Prof. Milioukoff, foreign
minister for the new government, assured France and England that
Russia would stick by them to the last, a howling crowd of
workingmen threatened to mob him. “No annexations and no
indemnities,” was the cry of the socialists. “Let us go back to
conditions as they were before the war. Let each nation bear the
burden of its own losses and let us have peace.” After a stormy
session, the new government agreed to include in its numbers
several representatives of the soldiers and workingmen. Prof.
Milioukoff resigned and Alexander Kerensky, a radical young
lawyer, became the real leader of the Russian government.
[Illustration: Kerensky (standing in automobile) reviewing Russian
troops]
Germany and Austria, meanwhile, had eagerly seized the advantage
offered by Russia’s internal troubles. Their troops were ordered
to make friends with the Russians in the trenches opposite. They
played eagerly upon the new Russian feeling of the brotherhood of
man and freedom and equality, to do away with fighting on the
east, thus being able to transfer to the western front some of
their best regiments. As a result the French and English, after
driving the Germans back for many miles in northern France were
at last brought to a standstill. The burden of carrying the whole
war seemed about to fall more heavily than ever upon the armies
in the west. Talk of a separate peace between Russia and the
central powers grew stronger and stronger. The Russian troops
felt that they had been fighting the battles of the Czar and the
grand dukes and they saw no reason why they should go on shooting
their brother workingmen in Germany.
At this point Kerensky, who had been made minister of war, set
out to visit the armies in the field. Arriving at the battle
grounds of eastern Galicia he made rousing speeches to the
soldiers and actually led them in person toward the German
trenches. The result was a vigorous attack all along the line
under Generals Brusiloff and Korniloff which swept the Germans
and Austrians back for many miles, and threatened for a time to
recapture Lemberg. German spies, however, and agents of the peace
party were busy among the Russian soldiers. They soon persuaded a
certain division to stop fighting and retreat. The movement to
the rear, begun by these troops, carried others with it, and for
a time it seemed as though the whole Russian army was going to
pieces. Ammunition was not supplied to the soldiers. The
situation was serious and called for a strong hand. Kerensky was
made prime minister and the members of the government and the
council of workingmen and soldiers voted him almost the powers of
a Czar. He was authorized to give orders that any deserters or
traitors be shot, if need be, without trial. Under his rule the
Russian army began to re-form, and the situation improved.
In November, 1917, a faction of the extreme Socialists called the
Bolsheviki (Bŏl-shĕ-vï′kï) won over the garrisons of
Petrograd and Moscow, seized control of the government, forcing
Kerensky to flee, and threatened to make peace with Germany.
These people are, for the most part, the poor citizens of large
cities. They have few followers outside of the city population,
for the average Russian in the country is a land owner, and he
does not take kindly to the idea of losing his property or
dividing it with some landless beggar from Petrograd.
The revolt of the Bolsheviki, then, simply added to the confusion
in the realm of Russia. That unhappy country was torn apart by
the fights of the different factions. Finland demanded its
independence, and German spies and agents encouraged the
Ruthenians living in a great province called the Ukraine, to do
the same. The Cossacks withdrew to the country to the north of
the Crimean peninsula, and the only Russian armies that kept on
fighting were those in Turkey. These forces had been gathered
largely from the states between the Black and Caspian Seas.
Having suffered persecution in the old days, they had hated the
Turks for ages and needed no orders from Petrograd to induce them
to take revenge.
Finally the Bolshevik government agreed to a peace with the
central powers which gave Germany and Austria everything that
they wanted. The Russian armies were disbanded and the Germans
and Austrians were free to turn their fighting men back to the
western front. In the meantime, the Ruthenian republic, now
called the Ukraine, was allowed by the Bolsheviki to make a
separate peace with Germany and Austria. The troops of the
Germans and Austrians began joyously to pillage both Russia and
the Ukraine, hunting for the food that was so scarce in the
central empires. However, for a whole year hardly anybody in
Russia had been willing to do a stroke of work. The fields had
gone untilled while the peasants, drunk with their new freedom,
and without a care for the morrow, lived off the grain that had
been saved up during the past years. As a result, whatever grain
the enemy found proved spoiled and mouldy, hardly fit to feed to
hogs. As the Germans went about, taking anything that they wished
and as food grew scarce, the unrest in Russia grew greater.
The Bolshevik government had not set up a democracy—a government
where all the people had equal rights: they had set up a tyranny
of the lower classes. The small land owners, the tradesmen, the
middle classes were not allowed any voice in the government. When
the first National Assembly or Congress was elected and called
together, the Bolsheviki finding that they did not control a
majority of its members, disbanded it by force.
Little by little people began to oppose this rule. They objected
to being robbed of their rights by the rabble just as much as by
the Czar.
When the Russian armies were disbanded, there were some troops
that refused to throw down their arms. Among them were the
regiments of Czecho-Slovaks. These men had been forced, against
their will, to serve in the Austrian army. They were from the
northern part of the Austrian empire, Bohemia and Moravia. They
were Slavs, related to the Russians, speaking a language very
much like Russian, hating the Germans of Austria and anxious to
free their country from the empire of the Hapsburgs. When General
Brusiloff made his big attack in June, 1916, these men had
deserted the Austrian army and re-enlisted as Russians. They
could not get back to Austria for the Austrians would shoot them
as deserters. Of course, the Austrian and the German generals
would make no peace with them. Therefore, this army, 200,000
strong, kept their own officers and their order and their arms
and refused to have anything to do with the cowardly peace made
by the Bolsheviki. Several thousand of them made their way across
Siberia, across the Pacific Ocean, across America, across the
Atlantic to France and Italy, where they are fighting by the
thousands in the armies of the Entente. The main body of them,
however, are still in Russia (August 1, 1918), holding the great
Siberian railway, fully ready to renew the war against the
central powers at any time when the patriotic Russians will rise
and help them. The problem of how to get aid to the Czechs
without angering the Russian people is a big one for the allied
statesmen.
The trouble with the Russians is that they are not educated; the
result of this is that they readily believe the lies of spies and
tricksters, that would never deceive an educated man.
Questions for Review
Was the Russian government as harsh as that of Germany?
Why was Russia a source of weakness to the Entente?
Why was Rasputin killed?
Why did the Czars prefer the Cossacks?
What classes fought after the Czar’s downfall?
How did the central powers take advantage of Russia’s
troubles?
How did the peace with the Bolsheviki help Germany?
Explain where the Czecho-Slovak army came from.