The second main group of opposition is dominated by the
Mensheviks . Their chief leaders are Martov and Dan. Of
these two, Martov is by far the cleverer, Dan the more
garrulous, being often led away by his own volubility into
agitation of a kind not approved by his friends. Both are
men of very considerable courage. Both are Jews.
The Mensheviks would like the reintroduction of
capitalists, of course much chastened by experience, and
properly controlled by themselves. Unlike Spiridonova and
her romantic supporters they approved of Chicherin's offer
of peace and concessions to the Allies (see page 44). They
have even issued an appeal that the Allies should come to
an agreement with "Lenin's Government." As may be
gathered from their choice of a name for the Soviet
Government, they are extremely hostile to it, but they fear
worse things, and are consequently a little shy of exploiting
as they easily could the dislike of the people for hunger and
cold. They fear that agitation on these lines might well
result in anarchy, which would leave the revolution
temporarily defenceless against Kolchak, Denikin,
Judenitch or any other armed reactionary. Their
non-Communist enemies say of the Mensheviks:
"They have no constructive programme; they would
like a bourgeois government back again, in order
that they might be in opposition to it, on the left"
On March 2nd, I went to an election meeting of workers
and officials of the Moscow Co-operatives. It was
beastly cold in the hall of the University where the
meeting was held, and my nose froze as well as my feet.
Speakers were announced from the Communists,
Internationalists, Mensheviks, and Right
Social Revolutionaries. The last-named did not arrive.
The Presidium was for the most part non-Communist,
and the meeting was about equally divided for and
against the Communists. A Communist led
off with a very bad speech on the general European
situation and to the effect that there was no salvation for
Russia except by the way she was going. Lozovsky, the
old Internationalist, spoke next, supporting the Bolsheviks'
general policy but criticizing their suppression of the
press. Then came Dan, the Menshevik, to hear whom I had
come. He is a little, sanguine man, who gets very hot as he
speaks. He conducted an attack on the whole Bolshevik
position combined with a declaration that so long as they
are attacked from without he is prepared to support them.
The gist of his speech was: 1. He was in favour of fighting
Kolchak. 2. But the Bolshevik policy with regard to the peasants will,
since as the army grows it must contain more and more
peasants, end in the creation of an army with
counter-revolutionary sympathies. 3. He objected to the
Bolshevik criticism of the Berne, delegation (see page 156)
on very curious grounds, saying that though Thomas,
Henderson, etc., backed their own Imperialists during the
war, all that was now over, and that union with them would
help, not hinder, revolution in England and France. 4. He
pointed out that "All power to the Soviets" now means "All
power to the Bolsheviks," and said that he wished that the
Soviets should actually have all power instead of merely
supporting the Bolshevik bureaucracy. He was asked for
his own programme, but said he had not time to give
it. I watched the applause carefully. General
dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs was obvious,
but it was also obvious that no party would have a chance
that admitted its aim was extinction of the Soviets (which
Dan's ultimate aim certainly is, or at least the changing of
them into non-political industrial organizations) or that was not
prepared to fight against reaction from without.
I went to see Sukhanov (the friend of Gorky and Martov,
though his political opinions do not precisely agree with
those of either), partly to get the proofs of his first volume
of reminiscences of the revolution, partly to hear what he
had to say. I found him muffled up in a dressing gown or
overcoat in an unheated flat, sitting down to tea with no
sugar, very little bread, a little sausage and a surprising
scrap of butter, brought in, I suppose, from the country by a
friend. Nikitsky, a Menshevik, was also there, a hopeless
figure, prophesying the rotting of the whole system and of
the revolution. Sukhanov asked me if I had noticed the
disappearance of all spoons (there are now none, but
wooden spoons in the Metropole) as a symbol of the
falling to pieces of the revolution. I told him that though I
had not lived in Russia thirty years or more, as he had, I
had yet lived there long enough and had, before the
revolution, sufficient experience in the loss of fishing
tackle, not to be surprised that Russian peasants, even
delegates, when able, as in such a moment of convulsion as
the revolution, stole spoons if only as souvenirs to show
that they had really been to Moscow.
We talked, of course, of their attitude towards the
Bolsheviks. Both work in Soviet institutions. Sukhanov
(Nikitsky agreeing) believed that if the Bolsheviks came
further to meet the other parties, Mensheviks, etc.,
"Kolchak and Denikin would commit suicide and your
Lloyd George would give up all thought of intervention." I
asked, What if they should be told to hold a Constituent
Assembly or submit to a continuance of the blockade?
Sukhanov said, "Such a Constituent Assembly would be
impossible, and we should be against it." Of the Soviets,
one or other said, "We stand absolutely on the platform of
the Soviet Government now: but we think that such a form
cannot be permanent. We consider the Soviets perfect
instruments of class struggle, but not a perfect form of
government." I asked Sukhanov if he thought counter
revolution possible. He said "No," but admitted that there
was a danger lest the agitation of the Mensheviks or others
might set fire to the discontent of the masses against the
actual physical conditions, and end in pogroms destroying
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike. Their general theory
was that Russia was not so far developed that a Socialist
State was at present possible. They therefore wanted a state
in which private capital should exist, and in which factories
were not run by the state but by individual owners. They
believed that the peasants, with their instincts of small
property-holders, would eventually enforce something of
the kind, and that the end would be some form of
democratic Republic. These two were against the offering
of concessions to the Allies, on the ground that those under
consideration involved the handing over to the
concessionaires of the whole power in northern Russia-railways,
forests, the right to set up their own banks in the
towns served by the railway, with all that this implied.
Sukhanov was against concessions on principle, and
regretted that the Mensheviks were in favour of them.
I saw Martov at the offices of his newspaper, which had
just been suppressed on account of an article, which he
admitted was a little indiscreet, objecting to the upkeep of
the Red Army (see page 167). He pointed eloquently to the
seal on some of the doors, but told me that he had started a
new paper, of which he showed me the first number, and
told me that the demand for it was such that although he
had intended that it should be a weekly he now expected to
make it a daily. Martov said that he and his party were
against every form of intervention for the following
reasons:
1. The continuation of hostilities, the need of an army and
of active defence were bound to intensify the least desirable
qualities of the revolution whereas an agreement, by
lessening the tension, would certainly lead to moderation of
Bolshevik Policy. 2. The needs of the army overwhelmed
every effort at restoring the economic life of the country.
He was further convinced that intervention of any kind
favoured reaction, even supposing that the Allies did not
wish this. "They cannot help themselves," he said,
"the forces that would support intervention must be
dominated by those of reaction, since all of the
non-reactionary parties are prepared to sink their
differences with the Bolsheviks, in order to defend the
revolution as a whole." He said he was convinced that
the Bolsheviks would either have to alter or
go. He read me, in illustration of this, a letter from a
peasant showing the unreadiness of the peasantry to go into
communes (compulsion in this matter has already been
discarded by the Central Government). "We took the land,"
wrote the peasant in some such words, "not much, just as
much as we could work, we ploughed it where it had not
been ploughed before, and now, if it is made into a
commune, other lazy fellows who have done nothing will
come in and profit by our work." Martov argued that life
itself, the needs of the country and the will of the peasant
masses, would lead to the changes he thinks desirable in the
Soviet regime.