THE RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS
One of the main contentions of the extremists of the Russian revolution
concerns the self-governing rights of the states, large and small,
which make up the empire. I met no one in Russia who did not agree that
each one of the states had a right to local autonomy, but I met many
who feared greatly lest the empire should be dismembered and should
fall apart into a number of small, weak states. Especially disastrous
would this be, both to Russia and to the Allies, if it happened during
the war. That Germany is doing everything in her power to bring about
this end is proof enough that it would be disastrous to the Allies.
Germany’s army and navy and German diplomacy are working overtime
to separate the Russian states. The enemy forces are working now to
isolate the Baltic states and Finland, and German agents are busy all
over the empire spreading the propaganda of secession.
“The right of small peoples to govern themselves” is one of the
easiest gospels in the world to preach. As a principle it is not even
debatable. In practice, however, it very often is far from expedient
or practicable. But the recently liberated Russians, each separate
language and racial group smarting from remembered wrongs inflicted by
the old government, took fire with the idea of self-government, and in
every corner of Russia are found provinces, governments, even cities,
repudiating the central government and setting up republics of their
own. Provisional governments were created last summer in provinces of
Siberia, in the rich province of Ukrania, in the town of Kronstadt, in
the Siberian towns of Tomsk and Tsaritsine, and in a number of other
localities. Finland very early started an agitation for a separate
government, and only the closing of the Diet and the prevention by
armed force of the convening of a new Diet stood in the way of a
socialist manifesto of separation. The Socialists are the majority
party in the Diet, and they counted on the support of enough people
in the three “bourgeois” parties--the Swedish, old Finnish and young
Finnish parties--to carry their measure through.
Every one of these attempts at secession was marked by riots, murders
and excesses of every kind. A report from Kirsanoff, a city that
wanted last June to be a republic all by itself, told of a garrison of
soldiers who broke loose, fell on the inhabitants of the town, robbed
and murdered them, outraged women, burned houses, looted shops and
generally behaved like maddened animals. There seemed to be no reason
why the soldiers, who had previously behaved like decent men, should
have been seized with sudden criminal mania. Liberty simply acted on
their systems like a deadly drug.
It was the same thing in Kronstadt, only in Kronstadt they developed a
drug habit, so to speak. This fortified town of some 60,000 inhabitants
is situated at the mouth of the Neva on the Gulf of Finland. The
fortress of Kronstadt, which dominates the town, in normal times
constitutes one of the chief defenses of Petrograd, a few miles up the
river. The Gulf of Kronstadt, on which the fortress stands, is the
chief station of the Baltic fleet. With a strong garrison, a fleet of
battleships and a well-organized Bolsheviki, Kronstadt was able for
many weeks to defy the Provisional Government, to maintain what it
called a government of its own, and to commit more horrible crimes and
more stupid excesses than almost any other place in Russia. Murder
on a wholesale scale marked the progress of the revolution in the
fortress and on the battleships. More than a score of young officers in
training were killed in the fortress in one day last spring. They were
not even arrested and tried on any charges. They were just butchered.
A number of other officers were killed, including the commandant and
vice-commandant of the fortress, and other officers were thrown into
cells and kept there for months without even the farce of a trial.
Kronstadt set up a republic in late May and by mid-June the orgy was in
full swing. The civil population looted and robbed, and the soldiers
and marines aided and abetted them heartily. Once a band of looters
sacking a warehouse were arrested by the militia police after a lively
shooting match and put in jail. Cases where the militia actually
arrested thieves were so rare in Russia last summer that this one
received considerable newspaper publicity. The papers were obliged to
record that, a few hours after the men were arrested, a crowd of armed
soldiers and sailors demanded the liberation of the prisoners. Of
course their demands were honored.
The provisional government was able to keep Finland in partial check
by threatening to withhold cereals and other provisions from her in
case of secession. But Kronstadt, being a fortress, had plenty of
provisions, as plenty goes in Russia these days. Kronstadt had more
food and fuel than Petrograd. That is why her orgy was able to last so
long. It lasted until the days of the July revolution, when thousands
of loyal troops were recalled from the front to restore order, many
of the ringleaders of the mutinous troops were expelled from the army
and several regiments were disbanded in disgrace. The orgy still goes
on to a certain extent in the fortress, and no one knows yet how far
disaffection among the naval forces went.
The Kronstadt Soviet, or Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates,
covered itself with glory during the existence of the republic. The
Soviet, or one of its committees, undertook the solving of the housing
problem as follows: The committee went all over the town and inspected
houses and apartments. They inquired in each case at the different
places the amount of the rent, and then they proceeded to cut down
the rent, one-third to one-half. They didn’t say anything about the
reduction to the landlord, but they passed the word around to the
Tavarishi. A perfect exodus of renters out of their apartments into
bigger and better ones ensued. Everybody moved, and when rent day came
around and the landlords or their agents called on the new tenants they
were calmly told: “Not on your life is my rent thirty rubles a month.
It is fifteen rubles, and if you don’t take that you will get nothing.”
The landlords appealed to the Soviet, but all the satisfaction they got
there was a threat of confiscation. “You’ve robbed the working class
long enough,” said the Soviet. “We ought not to pay you any rent, and
perhaps after a while we won’t.”
From one point of view not the least outrage the Soviet perpetrated
on the helpless population of Kronstadt was an attempt to talk it to
death. There is a fine cathedral in Kronstadt and in front of it, as
is customary in Russia, a large open square. In this square the Soviet
erected a speaker’s stand and every day the population, or as much of
it as could get into the square, assembled and listened for hours to
fervid oratory. The people had to come because the Soviet ordered them
to, and very likely they enjoyed themselves at first. Even in Russia,
however, a continual political meeting, carried on three months at a
time, every day at 5 p. m., must be a trial.
Tomsk was another city where the right of small peoples to govern
themselves was demonstrated last summer. In the newspapers of June
8, old style, appeared a telegram from Tomsk to Minister-President
Kerensky, the Minister of Justice and the all-Russian Council of
Deputies, Workmen and Soldiers, then in session in Petrograd. The
telegram was sent by the commanding general of loyal regiments and it
read in part thus: “Criminal and mutinous soldiers in company with
other criminal elements of the population have organized themselves
into bands and have set themselves systematically to pillage and
assassination. Under the flag of anarchy they have looted the banks,
the shops, business houses of all kinds. They were prepared to murder
all heads of public organizations, and declared that they would next
move on to other towns and cities and continue their robberies there.”
The telegram went into more particulars of these outrages, and closed
by saying that martial law had been established in Tomsk on the 3d
of June, 2,300 persons had been arrested and the city, thanks to the
presence there of a few brave and loyal troops, was now in order.
Thus the tale could be continued. Finland, usually a peaceful, orderly,
law-abiding and intelligent country, by far the most enlightened in
Russia, lost its head completely over the right of small peoples’ idea.
Helsingfors has seen days of violence in the old years of rule by fire
and sword. But Finland has never answered with fire and sword, but by
the most intelligent kind of passive resistance. With the revolution
passive resistance became violence. Most of this, it is true, came from
soldiers and sailors of Sveaborg, the island fortress of Helsingfors.
Murder of officers went on there and in the town also. Marines pursued
their hapless officers through the streets, cutting them down with
swords and knives, shooting them and killing them by torture before the
eyes of women and children. The townspeople did no such shocking deeds
as that, but there were bloody strikes and many riots, and finally the
attempt to open an illegal diet and to force a separation from the
empire. Kerensky handled that situation very well, sending the best
men in the government to Helsingfors, where some kind of a truce,
temporary no doubt, but a truce, was patched up.
Kerensky’s fiercest battle last summer was with Ukrania, where a
real government was established. It was real enough at all events to
force a kind of recognition from the central Provisional Government.
Ukrania is an enormous territory in the south of Russia. It extends
into southwestern Siberia and southward to the Black Sea. Odessa is
its principal port, and within its borders are many important cities.
Kiev is one of the largest of these. About 35,000,000 people inhabit
the Ukraine, as it is called in Russia. The people are not Russian,
strictly speaking. They are Slavs, but they have a language of their
own, a literature, a culture. They have been Russian subjects for
nearly 300 years.
The Ukraine is a self-contained country and could be made a very rich
one. It is rich already in agricultural resources, the “black earth”
of certain regions producing the most splendid crops of wheat and
other grains. The fruits of the Ukraine are the best in Russia, and
the vineyards furnish grapes for excellent wines. Russia would be poor
indeed without this country.
Last June the Ukranian Rada, or local diet, voted to establish a
republic, restore the old language and customs, and cut themselves off
absolutely from the Russian empire. They actually created a provisional
government on the spot. Some of the more moderate members of the Rada
favored remaining in the empire as a federated state having complete
autonomy, and this was finally accepted, I believe, by the majority.
But immediately the Bolsheviki of the south began to clamor for
separation, and the Ukranians in the army began to show dangerous signs
of unrest. A congress of Ukranian armies was held in Kiev in the middle
of June, in which it was decided that the armies of the south and
southwest ought to be completely and exclusively made up of Ukranians.
If this had been done the Rada would have been in a perfect state to
dictate terms of any kind to the Russian Provisional Government.
As it was there was considerable dictating done. The military Rada,
meeting in June in Odessa, served notice on the Provisional Government
that unless the Ukranian soldiers were prevented from forming their own
regiments no more soldiers of their force would be sent to the front.
The Ukranian regiments were formed, some of them in Petrograd, and the
strains of the national hymn, “Ukrania is not dead,” were heard on the
streets, played by military bands or sung by soldiers, almost as often
as the classic “Marseillaise.”
Kerensky made a frantic dash to Odessa, to Kiev and other cities of
the Ukraine. He took with him Tereshtshenko, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and one or two other ministers, and they met the new
provisional government in parley. The result was that Kerensky made a
complete surrender, recognized the provisional government--at least
informally--and agreed that the Ukraine should be a separate state.
There was a perfect tempest of protest when the ministers returned
to Petrograd. The rest of the ministry declared that Kerensky had
overstepped his authority in committing the entire government to a
policy which ought to have been left to the constituent assembly to
decide. They said that his act, entered into without the knowledge or
consent of the full government, was illegal. Perhaps it was; but it
stood, and all the most aggrieved ministers could do about it was to
resign.
The greatest task ahead of Russia is federation, and she probably will
in the end learn how to give autonomy to her states and establish a
central government which will bind all the states together in happy
union. But she has years of strife and monumental effort ahead of
her before the task is done. The wisest men in Russia--even Prof.
Miliukoff, who lived for years in the United States--appear to be in
a complete fog on the subject of federation. Half the wise men want
an empire like Great Britain or Germany, with practically all the
power in one central governing body. The other half see nothing ahead
but dismemberment of the empire. Nobody apparently can see Russia as
another United States.
I believe that part of our responsibility, after the war--perhaps
before that time comes--will be to teach Russia how to establish a
peaceful federation on republican lines. Russia perhaps does not need
to be taught democracy. When she emerges from this present anarchy she
may be trusted to establish a safely democratic civilization.