THE POWER--THE DUMA--THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT--THE HIGH
COMMAND--THE SOVIET OF WORKMEN'S AND SOLDIERS' DELEGATES.
Russia's exceptional position, confronted on the one hand with a world
war and on the other with a revolution, made the establishment of a
strong power an imperative necessity.
The DUMA, which, as I have already said, unquestionably enjoyed
the confidence of the country, refused, after lengthy and heated
discussions, to head the Revolutionary power. Temporarily dissolved
by the Imperial ukaze of February 27th, it remained loyal, and "did
not attempt to hold an official sitting," as it "considered itself a
legislative institution of the old régime, co-ordinated by fundamental
law with the obviously doomed remnants of autocracy." (Miliukov,
_History of the Second Russian Revolution_.) The subsequent decrees
emanated from the "private conference of the members of the Duma." This
body elected the "temporary Committee of the Duma," which exercised
supreme power in the first days of the Revolution.
When power was transferred to the PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT, the Duma
and the Committee retired to the background, but did not cease to
exist, and endeavoured to give moral support and a _raison d'être_
to the first three Cabinets of the Government. On May 2nd, during
the first Government crisis, the Committee still struggled for the
right to _appoint_ members of the Government; subsequently it reduced
its demands to that of the right to _participate_ in the formation
of the Government. Thus, on July 7th, the Committee of the Duma
protested against its exclusion from the formation of a new Provisional
Government by Kerensky, as it considered such a course as "legally
inadmissible and politically disastrous." The Duma, of course, was
fully entitled to participate in the direction of the life of the
country, as, even in the camp of its enemies, the signal service
was recognised which the Duma had rendered to the Revolution "In
converting to it the entire front and all the officers" (Stankevitch:
_Reminiscences_). There can be no doubt that, had the Soviet taken the
lead in the Revolution, there would have been a fierce struggle against
it, and the Revolution would have been squashed. It might, perhaps,
have then given the victory to the Liberal Democracy, and would have
led the country to a normal evolutionary development. Who knows?
The members of the Duma themselves felt the strain of inactivity
which was at first voluntary and later compulsory. There were many
absentees, and the President of the Duma had to combat this attitude.
Nevertheless, the Duma and the Committee were quite alive to the
importance of the trend events were taking. They issued resolutions
condemning, warning, and appealing to the common sense, the heart,
and the patriotism of the people, of the Army, and of the Government.
The Duma, however, had already been swept aside by the Revolutionary
elements. Its statesmanlike appeals, full of the clear consciousness of
impending perils, had ceased to impress the country, and were ignored
by the Government. Even a Duma so peaceable that it did not even fight
for power aroused the apprehensions of the Revolutionary Democracy, and
the Soviets led a violent campaign for the abolition of the Council
of the State and of the Duma. In August the Duma relaxed its efforts
in issuing proclamations, and when Kerensky dissolved the Duma at the
bidding of the Soviets, nineteen days before the expiration of its five
years' term, on October 6th, this news did not produce any appreciable
effect in the country. Rodzianko kept alive for a long time the idea
of the Fourth Duma or of the Assembly of all Dumas as the foundation
of the power of the State. He stuck to this idea throughout the Kuban
campaigns and the Ekaterinodar Volunteer period of the anti-Bolshevik
struggle. But the Duma was dead....
None can tell whether the Duma's abdication of power was inevitable
in the days of March, and whether it was rendered imperative by the
relative strength of the forces that struggled for power, whether
the "class" Duma could have retained the Socialist elements in its
midst and have continued to wield a certain influence in the country,
acquired as a result of its fight against autocracy. It is at least
certain that, in the years of trouble in Russia, when no normal,
popular representation was possible, all Governments invariably felt
the necessity for some substitute for this popular representation,
were it only as a kind of tribune from which expression could be given
to different currents of thought, a rock upon which to stand and to
divine moral responsibilities. Such was the "Temporary Council of
the Russian Republic" at Petrograd in October, 1917, which, however,
had been started by the Revolutionary Democracy, as a counter-blast
to the contemplated Bolshevik Second Congress of Soviets. Such was
the partial constituent Assembly of 1917, which was held on the Volga
in the summer of 1918, and such the proposed convocation of the High
Council and Assembly (_Sobor_) of the Zemstvos in the South of Russia
and in Siberia in 1919. Even the highest manifestation of collective
dictatorship--"the Soviet of People's Commissars"--which reached a
level of despotism and had suppressed social life and all the live
forces of the country to an extent unknown in history, and reduced
the country to a graveyard, still considered it necessary to create a
kind of theatrical travesty of such a representative institution by
periodically convoking the "All-Russian Congress of Soviets."
The authority of the Provisional Government contained the seed of its
own impotence. As Miliukov has said, that power was devoid of the
"symbol" to which the masses were accustomed. The Government yielded
to the pressure of the Soviet, which was systematically distorting all
State functions and making them subservient to the interests of class
and party.
Kerensky, the "hostage of Democracy," was in the Government. In a
speech delivered in the Soviet he thus defined his rôle: "I am the
representative of Democracy, and the Provisional Government should look
upon me as expressing the demands of Democracy, and should particularly
heed the opinions which I may utter." Last, but not least, there were
in the Government representatives of the Russian Liberal Intelligencia,
with all its good and bad qualities, and with the lack of will-power
characteristic of that class, the will-power which, by its boundless
daring, its cruelty in removing obstacles, and its tenacity in seizing
power, gives victory in the struggle for self-preservation to class,
caste and nationality. During the four years of the Russian turmoil the
Russian Intelligencia and Bourgeoisie lived in a state of impotence
and of non-resistance, and surrendered every stronghold; they even
submitted to physical extermination and extinction. Strong will-power
appeared to exist only on the two extreme flanks of the social front.
Unfortunately it was a will to destroy and not to create. One flank has
already produced Lenin, Bronstein, Apfelbaum, Uritzki, Dzerjinski, and
Peters.... The other flank, defeated in March, 1917, may not yet have
said its last word. The Russian Revolution was undoubtedly national in
its origin, being a mode of expressing the universal protest against
the old régime. But, when the time came for reconstruction, two forces
came into conflict which embodied and led two different currents of
political thought, two different outlooks. According to the accepted
phrase, it was a struggle between the Bourgeoisie and the Democracy.
But it would be more correct to describe it as a struggle between the
Bourgeois and the Socialist Democracies. Both sides derived their
leading spirits from the same source--the Russian Intelligencia--by no
means numerous and heterogeneous, not so much in respect of class and
wealth as of political ideas and methods of political contest. Both
sides inadequately reflected the thoughts of the popular masses in
whose name they spoke. At first these masses were merely an audience
applauding the actors who most appealed to its impassioned, but not
altogether idealistic, instincts. It was only after this psychological
training that the inert masses, and in particular the Army, became, in
the words of Kerensky, "an elemental mass melted in the fire of the
Revolution and ... exercising tremendous pressure which was felt by
the entire organism of the State." To deny this would be tantamount to
the denial, in accordance with Tolstoi's doctrine, of the influence of
leaders upon the life of the people. This theory has been completely
shattered by Bolshevism, which has conquered for a long time the masses
of the people with whom it has nothing in common and who are inimical
to the Communist creed.
In the first weeks of the new Government the phenomenon became
apparent, which was described in the middle of July by the Committee of
the Duma in its appeal to the Government in the following words: "The
seizure of the power of the State by irresponsible organisations, the
creation by these organisations of a dual power in the centre, and of
the absence of power in the country."
* * * * *
The power of the Soviet was also conditional in spite of a series of
Government crises and of opportunities thereby provided for seizing
that power and wielding it without opposition and unreservedly (the
Provisional Government offered no resistance). The Revolutionary
Democracy, as represented by the Soviet, categorically declined to
assume that rôle because it realised quite clearly that it lacked
the strength, the knowledge, and the skill to govern the country in
which it had as yet no real support. Tzeretelli, one of the leaders
of Revolutionary Democracy, said: "The time is not yet ripe for
the fulfilment of the ultimate aims of the proletariat and for
the solution of class questions.... We understand that a Bourgeois
Revolution is in progress ... as we are unable fully to attain to our
bright ideal ... and we _do not wish to assume that responsibility
for the collapse of the movement_, which we could not avoid if we
made the desperate attempt to impose our will upon events at the
present moment." Another representative, Nahamkes, said that they
preferred "to compel the Government to comply with their demands by
means of perpetual organised pressure." A member of the Executive
Committee of the Soviet, Stankevitch, thus describes the Soviet in his
_Reminiscences_, which reflect the incorrigible idealism of a Socialist
who is off the rails and who has now reached the stage of excusing
Bolshevism, but who nevertheless impresses one as being sincere: "The
Soviet, a gathering of illiterate soldiers, took the lead because
it asked nothing and because it was only a screen covering what was
actually complete anarchy." Two thousand soldiers from the rear and
eight hundred workmen from Petrograd formed an institution which
pretended to guide the political, military, economic and social life
of an enormous country. The records of the meetings of the Soviet,
as reported in the Press, testify to the extraordinary ignorance and
confusion which reigned at these meetings. One could not help being
painfully impressed by such a "representation" of Russia. An impotent
and subdued anger against the Soviet was growing in the circles of the
Intelligencia, the Democratic Bourgeoisie and the Officers. All their
hatred was concentrated upon the Soviet, which they abused in terms
of excessive bitterness. That hatred, often openly expressed, was
wrongly interpreted by the Revolutionary Democracy as abhorrence of
the very _idea of Democratic Representation_. In time the supremacy of
the Petrograd Soviet, which ascribed to itself the exceptional merit
of having destroyed the old régime, began to wane. A vast network
of Committees and Soviets, which had flooded the country and the
Army, claimed the right to participate in the work of the State. In
April, therefore, a Congress was held of the delegates of Workmen and
Soldiers' Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet was reorganised on the basis
of a more regular representation, and in June the All-Russian Congress
of Representatives of the Soviets was opened. The composition of this
fuller representation of Democracy is interesting:--
Revolutionary Socialists 285
Social Democrats (Mensheviks) 248
Social Democrats (Bolsheviks) 105
Internationalists 32
Other Socialists 73
United Social Democrats 10
Members of the "Bund" 10
Members of the "Edimstvo" (Unity) group 3
Popular Socialists 3
Trudovik (Labour) 5
Communist Anarchists 1
Thus, the overwhelming masses of Non-Socialist Russia were not
represented at all; even the elements that were either non-political
or belonged to the groups of the right and were elected by the Soviets
and Army Committees as non-party members, hastened for motives
altogether in the interests of the State to profess the Socialistic
creed. In these circumstances the Revolutionary Democracy could hardly
be expected to exercise self-restraint, and there could be no hope
of keeping the popular movement within the limits of the Bourgeois
Revolution. In reality the ramshackle helm was seized by a block of
Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, in which first the former and
then the latter predominated. It is that narrow partisan block which
held in bondage the will of the Government and is primarily responsible
for the subsequent course of the Revolution.
The composition of the Soviet was heterogeneous: intellectuals,
bourgeoisie, workmen, soldiers and many deserters. The Soviet and the
Congresses, and especially the former, were a somewhat inert mass,
utterly devoid of political education. Action, power and influence
afterwards passed therefore into the hands of Executive Committees
in which the Socialist intellectual elements were almost exclusively
represented. The most devastating criticism of the Executive Committee
of the Soviet came from that very institution, and was made by one
of its members, Stankevitch: the meetings were chaotic, political
disorganisation, indecision, haste, and fitfulness showed themselves
in its decisions, and there was a complete absence of administrative
experience and true democracy. One of the members advocated anarchy in
the "Izvestia," another sent written permits for the expropriation of
the landlords, a third explained to a military delegation which had
complained of the Commanding Officers that these officers should be
dismissed and arrested, etc.
"The most striking feature of the Committee is the preponderance of the
alien element," wrote Stankevitch. "Jews, Georgians, Letts, Poles, and
Lithuanians were represented out of all proportion to their numbers
in Petrograd and in the country."
Russia during the turmoil.
+----------+----------+-----------+-------+-----------+
| | | | | |
Anarcho-Communists | Non-Party | Non-Party Conservatives
######## | ----#### | -------- --------
| (Peasants) |
| Workmen (few) |
| |
Socialists Liberals
| --------
+-----------+-------------+ |
| | | +--------------+
| Non-Party | | |
| ----#### | Constitutional- Radical-
| Mostly Workmen | -------- --------
| | Democrats Democrats
Social-Democrats Populists
| |
+--+---+----+ +---------------+-----------+
| | | | | |
Bolsheviks | Edinstvo Social Popular Labour
######## | -------- Revolutionaries -------- --------
| | Socialists "Trudovik"
Mensheviks |
| +------+-------+
+---+-----------+ | | |
| | Left Centre Right
Internationalists Defencists #### ---### ----
######## --------
-------- Defencists
----#### Partly Defencist
Partly Defeatist
######## Defeatists
The following is a list of the first Presidium of the All-Russian
Central Committee of the Soviets:--
1 Georgian
5 Jews
1 Armenian
1 Pole
1 Russian (if his name was not an assumed one).
This exceptional preponderance of the alien element, foreign to the
Russian national idea, could not fail to tinge the entire activities of
the Soviet with a spirit harmful to the interests of the Russian State.
The Provisional Government was the captive of the Soviet from the very
first day, as it had under-estimated the importance and the power
of that institution, and was unable to display either determination
or strength in resisting the Soviet. The Government did not even
hope for victory in that struggle, as, in its endeavour to save the
country, it could not very well proclaim watchwords which would have
suited the licentious mob and which emanated from the Soviet. The
Government talked about duty, the Soviet about rights. The former
"prohibited," the latter "permitted." The Government was linked with
the old power by the inheritance of statesmanship and organisation, as
well as the external methods of administration; whereas the Soviet,
springing from mutiny and from the slums, was the direct negation of
the entire old régime. It is a delusion to think, as a small portion
of the moderate democracy still appear to do, that the Soviet played
the part of "restraining the tidal wave of the people." _The Soviet
did not actually destroy the Russian State, but was shattering it,
and did so to the extent of smashing the Army and imposing Bolshevism
on it._ Hence the duplicity and insincerity of its activities. Apart
from its declarations, all the speeches, conversations, comments,
and articles of the Soviet and of the Executive Committee, of its
groups and individuals, came to the knowledge of the country and of
the Front, and tended towards the destruction of the authority of the
Government. Stankevitch wrote that not deliberately, but persistently,
the Committee was dealing death-blows to the Government.
Who, then, were the men who were trying to democratise the Army
Regulations, smashing all the foundations of the Army, inspiring the
Polivanov Commission, and tying the hands of two War Ministers? The
following is the personnel elected in the beginning of April from the
Soldiers' Section of the Soviet to the Executive Committee:--
War-time Officers 1
Clerks 2
Cadets 2
Soldiers from the rear 9
Scribes and men on special duty 5
I will leave their description to Stankevitch, who said: "At first
hysterical, noisy, and unbalanced men were elected, who were utterly
useless to the Committee...." New elements were subsequently added.
"The latter tried consciously, and in the measure of their ability, to
cope with the ocean of military matters. Two of them, however, seemed
to have been inoffensive scribes in Reserve Battalions, who had never
taken the slightest interest in the War, the Army, or the political
Revolution." The duplicity and the insincerity of the Soviet were
clearly manifested in regard to the War. The intellectual circles of
the Left and of the Revolutionary Democracy mostly espoused the idea
of Zimmerwald and of Internationalism. It was natural, therefore, that
the first word which the Soviet addressed on March 14, 1917, "To the
Peoples of the Whole World," was:
"PEACE."
The world problems, infinitely complex, owing to the national,
political, and economic interests of the peoples who differed in their
understanding of the Eternal Truth, could not be solved in such an
elementary fashion. Bethmann-Holweg was contemptuously silent. On
March 17th, 1917, the Reichstag, by a majority against the votes of
both Social Democratic parties, declined the offer of peace without
annexations. Noske voiced the views of the German Democracy in saying:
"We are offered from abroad to organise a Revolution. If we follow
that advice the working classes will come to grief." Among the Allies
and the Allied Democracies the Soviet manifesto provoked anxiety,
bewilderment, and discontent, which were vividly expressed in the
speeches made by Albert Thomas, Henderson, Vandervelde, and even the
present-day French Bolshevik, Cachin, upon their visits to Russia. The
Soviet subsequently added to the word "Peace" the definition, "Without
annexations and indemnities on the basis of the self-determination of
peoples." The theory of this formula promptly clashed with the actual
question of Western and Southern Russia occupied by the Germans;
of Poland, of Roumania, Belgium, and Serbia, devastated by the
Germans; of Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, as well as of the servitude,
expropriations, and compulsory labour which had been imposed upon all
the countries invaded by the Germans. According to the programme of the
German Social Democrats, which was at length published in Stockholm,
the French in Alsace-Lorraine, the Poles in Posen, and the Danes in
Schleswig were only to be granted national autonomy under the sceptre
of the German Emperor. At the same time, the idea of the independence
of Finland, Russian Poland, and Ireland was strongly advocated. The
demand for the restoration of the German colonies was curiously blended
with the promises of independence for India, Siam, Korea.
The sun did not rise at the bidding of Chanticleer. The _ballon
d'essai_ failed. The Soviet was forced to admit that "time is necessary
in order that the peoples of all countries should rise, and with
an iron hand compel their rulers and capitalists to make peace....
Meanwhile, the comrade-soldiers who have sworn to defend Russian
liberties should not refuse to advance, as this may become a military
necessity...." The Revolutionary Democracy was perplexed, and their
attitude was clearly expressed in the words of Tchkeidze: "We have
been preaching against the War all the time. How can I appeal to the
soldiers to continue the War and to stay at the Front?"
Be that as it may, the words "War" and "Advance" had been uttered.
They divided the Soviet Socialists into two camps, the "Defeatists"
and "Defensists."[17] Theoretically, only the right groups of the
Social Revolutionaries, the popular Socialists, the "Unity" ("Edistvo")
group, and the Labour party ("Trudoviki") belonged to the latter.
All other Socialists advocated the immediate cessation of the war and
the "deepening" of the Revolution by means of internal Class War. In
practice, when the question of the continuation of the war was put to
the vote, the Defensists were joined by the majority of the Social
Revolutionaries and of the Social Democrat Mensheviks. The resolutions,
however, bore the stamp of ambiguity--neither war nor peace. Tzeretelli
was advocating "a movement against the war in all countries, Allied and
enemy." The Congress of the Soviets at the end of May passed an equally
ambiguous resolution, which, after demanding that annexations and
indemnities should be renounced by all belligerents, pointed out that,
"so long as the war lasts, the collapse of the Army, the weakening
of its spirit, strength and capacity for _active_ operations would
constitute a strong menace to the cause of Freedom and to the vital
interests of the country." In the beginning of June the Second Congress
passed a new resolution. On the one hand, it emphatically declared that
"the question of the advance should be decided solely from the point of
view of purely military and strategical considerations"; on the other
hand, it expressed an obviously Defeatist idea: "Should the war end by
the complete defeat of one of the belligerent groups, this would be
a source of new wars, would increase the enmity between peoples, and
would result in their complete exhaustion, in starvation and doom."
The Revolutionary Democracy had obviously confused two ideas: the
_strategic victory_ signifying the end of the war and _the terms of the
Peace Treaty_, which might be humane or inhuman, righteous or unjust,
far-seeing or short-sighted. In fact, what they wanted was war and
an advance, but _without a victory_. Curiously enough, the Prussian
Deputy, Strebel, the editor of _Vorwaerts_, invented the same formula
as early as in 1915. He wrote: "I openly profess that a complete
victory of the Empire would not benefit the Social Democracy."
There was not a single branch of administration with which the Soviet
and the Executive Committee did not interfere with the same ambiguity
and insincerity, due on the one hand to the fear of any action contrary
to the fundamentals of their doctrine, and on the other to the obvious
impossibility of putting these doctrines into practice. The Soviet
did not, and could not, partake in the creative work of rebuilding
the State. With regard to Economics, Agriculture, and Labour, the
activities of the Soviet were reduced to the publication of pompous
Socialist Party programmes, which the Socialist Ministers themselves
clearly understood to be impracticable in the atmosphere of War,
Anarchy, and Economic crisis prevailing in Russia. Nevertheless, these
Resolutions and Proclamations were interpreted in the factories and
in the villages as a kind of "Absolution." They roused the passions
and provoked the desire, immediately and arbitrarily, to put them
into practice. This provocation was followed by restraining appeals.
In an appeal addressed to the sailors of Kronstadt on May 26th, 1917,
the Soviet suggested "that they should demand immediate and implicit
compliance with all the orders of the Provisional Government given in
the interests of the Revolution and of the security of the country...."
All these literary achievements are not, however, the only form of
activity in which the Soviet indulged. The characteristic feature of
the Soviet and of the Executive Committee was the complete absence of
discipline in their midst. With reference to the special Delegation
of the Committee, whose object it was to be in contact with the
Provisional Government, Stankevitch says: "What could that Delegation
do? While it was arguing and reaching a complete agreement with the
Ministers, dozens of members of the Committee were sending letters
and publishing articles; travelling in the provinces, and at the
Front in the name of the Committee; receiving callers at the Taurida
Palace, everyone of them acting independently and taking no heed of
instructions, Resolutions, or decisions of the Committee."
Was the Central Committee of the Soviet invested with actual power? A
reply to this question can be found in the appeal of the Organising
Committee of the Labour Socialist Democratic Party of July 17th. "The
watchword 'All-Power to the Soviets,' to which many workmen adhere, is
a dangerous one. _The following of the Soviets represents a minority
in the population_, and we must make every effort in order that the
Bourgeois elements, who are still willing and capable of joining us
in preserving the conquests of the Revolution, shall share with us
the burdens of the inheritance left by the old régime, which we have
shouldered, and the enormous responsibility for the outcome of the
Revolution which we bear in the eyes of the people." The Soviet, and
later the All-Russian Central Committee, could not, and would not,
by reason of its composition and their political ideas, exercise a
powerful restraining influence upon the masses of the people, who had
thrown off the shackles and were perturbed and mutinous. The movement
had been inspired by the members of the Soviet, and the influence and
authority of the Soviet were, therefore, entirely dependent on the
extent to which they were able to flatter the instincts of the masses.
These masses, as Karl Kautsky, an observer from the Marxist Camp, has
said, "were concerned merely with their requirements and their desires
as soon as they were drawn into the Revolution, and they did not care a
straw whether their demands were practicable or beneficial to society."
Had the Soviet endeavoured to resist with any firmness or determination
whatsoever the pressure of the masses, it would have run the risk of
being swept away. Also, day after day and step by step, the Soviet was
coming under the influence of Anarchist and Bolshevik ideas.