Part 5 (1/2)

In registering the events of the last days of February the Secret Service also remarked that the movement was ”spontaneous,” that is, had no planned leaders.h.i.+p from above; but they immediately added: ”with the generally propagandised condition of the proletariat.” This appraisal hits the bull's-eye: the professionals of the struggle with the revolution, before entering the cells vacated by the revolutionists, took a much closer view of what was happening than the leaders of liberalism.

The mystic doctrine of spontaneousness explains nothing. In order correctly to appraise the situation and determine the moment for a blow at the enemy, it was necessary that the ma.s.ses or their guiding layers should make their examination of historical events and have their criteria for estimating them. In other words, it was necessary that there should be not ma.s.ses in the abstract, but ma.s.ses of Petrograd workers and Russian workers in general, who had pa.s.sed through the revolution of 1905, through the Moscow insurrection of De-cember 1905, shattered against the s.e.m.e.novsky Regiment of the Guard. It was necessary that throughout this ma.s.s should be scattered workers who had thought over the experience of 1905, criticised the const.i.tutional illusions of the liberals and Mensheviks, a.s.similated the perspectives of the revolution, meditated hundreds of times about the question of the army, watched attentively what was going on in its midst-workers capable of making rev-olutionary inferences from what they observed and communicating them to others. And .nally, it was necessary that there should be in the troops of the garrison itself progressive soldiers, seized, or at least touched, in the past by revolutionary propaganda.

In every factory, in each guild, in each company, in each tavern, in the military hospital, at the transfer stations, even in the depopulated villages, the molecular work of revolution-ary thought was in progress. Everywhere were to be ” What's the news”? and from whom one awaited the needed words. These leaders had often been left to themselves, had nour-ished themselves upon fragments of revolutionary generalisations arriving in their bands by various routes, had studied out by themselves between the lines of the liberal papers what they needed. Their cla.s.s instinct was re.ned by a political criterion, and though they did not think all their ideas through to the end, nevertheless their thought ceaselessly and stub-bornly worked its way in a single direction. Elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacri.ce, seeped down through the ma.s.s and created, invisibly to a super.cial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanics of the revolutionary movement as a conscious process. To the smug politicians of liberalism and tamed socialism everything that hap-pens among ma.s.ses is customarily represented as an instinctive process, no matter whether they are dealing with an anthill or a beehive. In reality the thought which was drilling through the thick of the working cla.s.s was far bolder, more penetrating, more conscious, than those little ideas by which the educated cla.s.ses live. Moreover, this thought was more scienti.c : not only because it was to a considerable 'degree fertilised with the methods of Marxism, but still more because it was ever nouris.h.i.+ng itself on the living experience of the ma.s.ses which were soon to take their place on the revolutionary arena. Thoughts are scienti.c if they correspond to an objective process and make it possible to in.uence that process and guide it. Were these qualities possessed in the slightest degree by the ideas of those government circles who were inspired by the Apocalypse and believed in the dreams of Rasputin? Or maybe the ideas of the liberals were scienti.cally grounded, who hoped that a backward Russia, having joined the scrimmage of the capitalist giants, might win at one and the same time victory and parliamentarism? Or maybe the intellectual life of those circles of the intelligentsia was scienti.c, who slavishly adapted themselves to this liberalism, senile since childhood, protecting their imaginary independence the while with long-dead metaphors? In truth here was a kingdom of spiritual inertness, spectres, super-st.i.tion and .ctions, a kingdom, if you will, of ”spontaneousness.” But have we not in that case a right to turn this liberal philosophy of the February revolution exactly upside down? Yes, we have a right to say: At the same time that the of.cial society, all that many-storied superstructure of ruling cla.s.ses, layers, groups, parties and cliques, lived from day to day by inertia and automatism, nouris.h.i.+ng themselves with the relics of worn-out ideas, deaf to the inexorable demands of evolution, .attering themselves with phantoms and foreseeing nothing-at the same time, in the working ma.s.ses there was (taking place an independent and deep process of growth, not only of hatred for the rulers, but of critical understanding of their impotence, an acc.u.mulation of experience and creative consciousness which the revolutionary insurrection and its victory only completed.

To the question, Who led the February revolution? we can then answer de.nitely enough: Conscious and tempered workers educated for the most part by the party of Lenin. But we must here immediately add: This leaders.h.i.+p proved suf.cient to guarantee the vic-tory of the insurrection, but it was not adequate to transfer immediately into the hands of the proletarian vanguard the leaders.h.i.+p of the revolution.

CHAPTER 9.

THE PARADOX OF THE FEBRUARYREVOLUTION.

The insurrection triumphed. But to whom did it hand over the power s.n.a.t.c.hed from the monarchy? We come here to the central problem of the February revolution: Why and how did the power turn up in the hands of the liberal bourgeoisie?

In Duma circles and in bourgeois ”society” no signi.cance was attributed to the agi-tation beginning the 23rd of February. The liberal deputies and patriotic journalists were a.s.sembling in drawing rooms as before, talking over the questions of Trieste and Fiume, and again con.rming Russia's need of the Dardanelles. When the decree dissolving the Duma was already signed, a Duma commission was still hastily considering the question of turning over the food problem to the city administration. Less than twelve hours be-fore the insurrection of the battalions of the Guard, the Society for Slavic Reciprocity was peacefully listening to its annual report. ”Only when I had returned home on foot from that meeting,” remembers one of the deputies, ”I was struck by some sort of awesome silence and emptiness in the usually lively streets.” That awesome emptiness was forming around the old ruling cla.s.ses and already oppressing the hearts of their future inheritors.

By the 26th the seriousness of the movement had become clear both to the government and to the liberals. On that day negotiations about a compromise were going on between the czars ministers and members of the Duma, negotiations from which even subsequently the liberals never lifted the curtain. Protopopov states in his testimony that the leaders of the Duma bloc demanded as formerly the naming of new ministers from among people enjoying social con.dence: ”This measure perhaps will pacify the people.” But the 26th created, as we know, a certain stoppage in the development of the revolution, and for a brief moment the government felt .rmer. When Rodzianko called on Golytsin to persuade 111.

him to resign, the Premier pointed in answer to a portfolio on his desk in which lay the completed edict dissolving the Duma, with the signature of Nicholas but without a date. Golytsin put in the date. How could the government decide upon such a step at the moment of growing pressure from the revolution? Upon this question the ruling bureaucrats long ago arrived at a .rm conviction. ” Whether we have a bloc or not, it is all the same to the workers' movement. We can handle that movement by other means, and up till now the Ministry of the Interior has managed to deal with it.” Thus Goremykin had spoken in August 1915. On the other hand, the bureaucracy believed that the Duma, in case of its dissolution, would not venture upon any bold step. Again in August 1915, in discussing the question of dissolving a discontented Duma, the Minister of the Interior, Prince Sherbatov, had said: ”The Duma will hardly venture upon direct disobedience. The vast majority are after all cowards and are trembling for their hides.” The prince expressed himself none too nicely, but in the long run correctly. In its struggle with the liberal opposition, then, the bureaucracy felt plenty of .rm ground under its feet.

On the morning of the 27th, the Deputies, alarmed at the mounting events, a.s.sembled at a regular session. The majority learned only here that the Duma had been dissolved. The news seemed the more surprising as on the very day before they had been carrying on peace negotiations with the ministers. ”And nevertheless,” writes Rodzianko with pride, ”the Duma submitted to the law, still hoping to .nd a way out of the tangled situation, and pa.s.sed no resolution that it would not disperse, or that it would illegally continue its sessions.” The deputies gathered at a private conference in which they made confessions of impotence to each other. The moderate liberal s.h.i.+dlovsky subsequently remembered, not without a malicious pleasure, a proposal made by an extreme left Kadet, Nekrasov, a future colleague of Kerensky, ” to establish a military dictators.h.i.+p handing over the whole power to a popular general.” At that time a practical attempt at salvation was undertaken by the leaders of the Progressive Bloc, not present at this private conference of the Duma. Having summoned the Grand Duke Mikhail to Petrograd, they proposed to him to take upon himself the dictators.h.i.+p, to ”impel” the personal staff of the government to resign, and to demand of the czar by direct wire that he ”grant” a responsible ministry. In those hours, when the uprising of the .rst Guard regiments was beginning, the liberal bourgeoisie were making a last effort to put down the insurrection with the help of a dynastic dictator, and at the same time at the expense of the revolution to enter into an agreement with the monarchy. ”The hesitation of the grand duke,” complains Rodzianko, ”contributed to the letting slip of the favourable moment.”

How easily a radical intelligentsia believes whatever it wants to, is testi.ed by a non-party socialist, Sukhanov, who begins in this period to play a certain political ro1e in the Tauride Palace. ”They told me the fundamental political news of those morning hours of that unforgettable day,” he relates in his extensive memoirs: ”The decree dissolving the State Duma had been promulgated, and the Duma had answered with a refusal to disperse, electing a Provisional Committee.” This is written by a man who hardly ever left the Tau-ride Palace, and was there continually b.u.t.tonholing his deputy friends. Miliukov in his history of the revolution, following Rodzianko, categorically declares: ”There was adopted after a series of hot speeches a resolution not to leave Petrograd, but no resolution that the State Duma should as an inst.i.tution not disperse as the legend runs” ”Not to disperse” would have meant to take upon themselves, however belatedly, a certain initiative. ”Not to leave Petrograd” meant to wash their hands of the matter and wait to see which way the course of events would turn. The credulousness of Sukhanov has, by the way, mitigating circ.u.mstances. The rumour that the Duma had adopted a revolutionary resolution not to submit to the czars decree was slipped in hurriedly by the Duma journalists in their infor-mation bulletin, the only paper published at that time owing to the general strike. Since the insurrection triumphed during that day the deputies were in no hurry to correct this mistake, being quite willing to sustain the illusions of their ”left” friends. They did not in fact undertake to establish the facts of the matter until they were out of the country. The episode seems secondary, but it is full of meaning. The revolutionary ro1e of the Duma on the 27th of February was a complete myth, born of the political credulity of the radi-cal intelligentsia delighted and frightened by the revolution, distrusting the ability of the ma.s.ses to carry the business through, and eager to lean as quickly as possible toward the enfranchised bourgeoisie.

In the memoirs of the deputies belonging to the Duma majority, there is preserved by good luck a story of how the Duma did meet the revolution. According to the account of Prince Mansyrev, one of the right Kadets, among the deputies who a.s.sembled in great numbers on the morning of the 27th there were no members of the prsidium , no lead-ers of parties, nor heads of the Progressive Bloc: they already knew of the dissolution and the insurrection and had preferred as long as possible to refrain from showing their heads. Moreover, at just that time they were, it seems, negotiating with Mikhail about the dictators.h.i.+p. ”A general consternation and bewilderment prevailed in the Duma,” says Mansyrev. ”Even lively conversations ceased, and in their place were heard sighs and brief e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns like It's come or indeed frank expressions of fear for life.” Thus speaks a very moderate deputy who sighed the loudest of all. At two o'clock in the afternoon, when the leaders had found themselves obliged to appear in the Duma, the secretary of the prsidium brought in the joyful but ill-founded news: ”The disorders will soon be put down, because measures have been taken.” It is possible that by ”measures” was meant the negotiations for a dictators.h.i.+p, but the Duma was downcast and awaited a decisive word from the leader of the Progressive Bloc. ”We cannot adopt any decision at the present moment,” Miliukov announced, ”because the extent of the disorders is unknown to us; likewise it is unknown upon which side a majority of the local troops, workers and social organisations will take their stand. It is necessary to gather accurate information about this, and then will be time enough to judge the situation. At present it is too soon.” At two o'clock in the afternoon of February 27 it is still for liberalism ”too soon”! ”Gather information” means wash your own hands and await the outcome of the struggle. But Miliukov had not ended his speech-which, by the way, he began with a view to ending in nothing-when Kerensky came running into the hall in high excitement: An enormous crowd of people and soldiers is coming to the Tauride Palace, he announces, and intends to demand of the Duma that it seize the power in its hands! The radical deputy knows accurately just what the enormous crowd of people is going to demand. In reality it is Kerensky himself who .rst demands that the power shall be seized by a Duma which is still hoping in its soul that the insurrection may yet be put down. Kerensky's announcement is met with ”general bewilderment and dis-mayed looks.” He has however not .nished speaking when a frightened Duma attendant, rus.h.i.+ng in, interrupts him: the advanced detachment of the soldiers has already reached the Palace, a detachment of sentries stopped them at the entrance, the chief of the sentries, it seems, was heavily wounded. A minute later it transpires that the soldiers have entered the Palace. It will be declared later in speeches and articles that the soldiers came to greet the Duma and swear loyalty to it, but right now everything is in mortal panic. The water is up to their necks. The leaders whisper together. We must get a breathing s.p.a.ce. Rodzianko hastily introduces a proposal, suggested to him by somebody, that they form a Provisional Committee. Af.rmative cries. But they all want to get out there as quickly as possible. No time for voting. The president, no less frightened than the others, proposes that they turn over the formation of the committee to the council of elders. Again af.rmative cries from the few still remaining in the hall. The majority have already vanished. Such was the .rst reaction of the Duma, dissolved by the czar, to the victory of the insurrection.

At that time the revolution was creating in the same building only in a less showy part of it, another inst.i.tution. The revolutionary leaders did not have to invent it; the experience of the Soviets of 1905 was forever chiselled into the consciousness of the workers. At ev-ery lift of the movement, even in, wartime, the idea of soviets was almost automatically reborn. And although the appraisal of the ro1e of the soviets was different among Bol-sheviks and Mensheviks-the Social Revolutionaries had in general no stable appraisals-the form of organisation itself stood clear of all debate. The Mensheviks liberated from prison, members of the Military-Industrial Committee, meeting in the Tauride Palace with leaders of the Trade Union and Co-operative movements, likewise of the right' wing, and with the Menshevik deputies of the Duma, Cheidze and Skobelev, straightway formed a ”Pro-visional Executive committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies,” which in the course of the day was .lled out princ.i.p.ally with former revolutionises who had lost connection with the ma.s.ses but still preserved their ”names.” This Executive Committee , including also Bolsheviks in its staff summoned the workers to elect deputies at once. The .rst session was appointed for the same evening in the Tauride Palace. It actually met at nine o'clock and rati.ed the staff of the Executive Committee, supplementing it with of.cial representa-tives from all the socialist parties. But not here lay the signi.cance of this .rst meeting of representatives of the victorious proletariat of the capital. Delegates from the mutinied reg-iments made speeches of greeting at this meeting. Among their number were completely grey soldiers, sh.e.l.l-shocked as it were by the insurrection, and still hardly in control of their tongues. But they were just the ones who found the words which no orator could .nd. That was one of the most moving scenes of the revolution, now .rst feeling its power, feeling the unnumbered ma.s.ses it has aroused, the colossal tasks, the pride in success, the joyful failing of the heart at the thought of the morrow which is to be still more beautiful than to-day. The revolution still has no ritual, the streets are in smoke, the ma.s.ses have not yet learned the new songs. The meeting .ows on without order, without sh.o.r.es, like a river at .ood. The Soviet chokes in its own enthusiasm. The revolution is mighty but still naive, with a child's naiveness.

At the .rst session it was decided to unite the garrison with the workers in a general Soviet of Workers' arid Soldiers' Deputies. Who .rst proposed this resolution? It probably arose from various, or rather from all sides, as an echo of that fraternisation of workers and soldiers which had this day decided the fate of the revolution. From the moment of its formation the Soviet in the person of its Executive Committee, begins to function as a sovereign It elects a temporary food commission and places it in charge of the mutineers and of the garrison in general. It organises parallel with itself a Provisional revolutionary staff-everything was called provisional in those days-of which we have already spoken above. In order to remove .nancial resources from the hands of the of.cials of the old power, the Soviet decides to occupy the State Bank, the Treasury, the Mint and the Printing Of.ce with a revolutionary guard. The tasks and functions of the Soviet grow unceasingly under pressure from the ma.s.ses. The revolution .nds here its indubitable centre. The workers, the soldiers, and soon also the peasants, will from now on turn only to the Soviet. In their eyes the Soviet becomes the focus of all hopes and all authority, an incarnation of the revolution itself. But representatives of the possessing cla.s.ses will also seek in the Soviet, with whatever grindings of teeth, protection and counsel in the resolving of con.icts.

However, even in those very .rst days of victory, when the new power of the revolution was forming itself with fabulous speed and inconquerable strength, those socialists who stood at the head of the Soviet were already looking around with alarm to see if they could .nd a real ”boss.” They took it for granted that power ought to pa.s.s to the bourgeoisie. Here the chief political knot of the new rgime is tied: one of its threads leads into the chamber of the Executive Committee of workers and soldiers, the other into the central headquarters of the bourgeois parties.

The Council of Elders at three oclock in the afternoon, when the victory was already fully a.s.sured in the capital, elected a ”Provisional Committee of Members of the Duma” made up from the parties of the Progressive Bloc with the addition of Cheidze and Keren-sky. Cheidze declined, Kerensky wiggle-waggled. The designation prudently indicated that it was not a question of an of.cial committee of the State Duma, but a private committee of a conference of members of the Duma. The leaders of the Progressive Bloc thought to the very end of but one thing: how to avoid responsibility and not tie their own hands. The task of the committee was de.ned with meticulous equivocation: ”The restoration of order and conducting of negotiations with inst.i.tutions and persons.” Not a word as to the kind of order which those gentlemen intended to restore, nor with what inst.i.tutions they intended to negotiate. They were not yet openly reaching out their hands toward the bear's hide: what if he is not killed but only badly wounded? Only at eleven o'clock in the evening of the 27th, when, as Miliukov acknowledged, ”the whole scope of the revolutionary movement had become clear, did the Provisional Committee decide upon a further step, and take in its hands the power which had fallen from the hands of the government.” Imperceptibly the new inst.i.tution had changed from a committee of the members of the Duma to a committee of the Duma itself. There is no better means of preserving the state juridical succession than forgery. But Miliukov remains silent about the chief thing: the leaders of the Exec-utive Committee of the Soviet, created during that day, had already appeared before the Provisional-Committee and insistently demanded that it take the power into its hands. This friendly push had its effect. Miliukov subsequently explained the decision of the Duma Committee by saying that the government was supposed to be sending loyal troops against the insurrectionists, ”and on the streets of the capital it threatened to come to actual battle.” In reality the government was already without troops, the revolution was wholly in the past Rodzianko subsequently wrote that in case they had declined the power, ”the Duma would have been arrested and killed off to the last man by the mutinied troops, and the power would gave gone immediately to the Bolsheviks.” That is, of course, an inept exaggeration, wholly in the character of the respected lord Chamberlain; but it unmistakably re.ects the feelings of the Duma, which regarded the transfer of power to itself as an act of political rape.

With such feelings the decision was not easily arrived at. Rodzianko especially stormed and vacillated, putting a question to the others ”What will this be? Is it a rebellion or not a rebellion?” The monarchist deputy Shulgin answered him, according to his own report: ”There is no rebellion in this at all; take the power as a loyal subject ... If the ministers have run away somebody has got to take their place . . . There may be two results: Everything quiets down-the sovereign names a new government, we turn over the power to him. Or it doesn't quiet down. In that case if we don't take the power, others will take it, those who have already elected some sort of scoundrels in the factories. . .” We need not take offence at the low-cla.s.s abuse directed by the reactionary gentleman toward the workers: the revolution had just .rmly stepped on the tails of all these gentlemen. The moral is clear: if the monarchy win we are with it; if the revolution wins, we will try to plunder it.

The conference lasted long. The democratic leaders were anxiously waiting for a deci-sion. Finally, Miliukov came out of the of.ce of Rodzianko. He wore a solemn expression. Approaching the Soviet delegation Miliukov announced: ”The decision is reached, we will take the power . . .” ”I did not inquire whom he meant by we,” relates Sukhanov with rap-ture, ”I asked nothing further, but I felt with all my being, as they say, a new situation. I felt that the s.h.i.+p of the revolution, tossed in the squall of those hours by the complete caprice of the elements, had put up a sail, acquired stability and regularity in its movements amid the terrible storm and the rocking.” What a high-.ying formula for a prosaic recognition of the slavish dependence of the petty bourgeois democracy upon capitalistic liberalism! And what a deadly mistake in political perspective. The handing over of power to The handing over of power to the liberals not only will not give stability to the s.h.i.+p of state, but, on the contrary, will become from that moment a source of headlessness of the revolution, enor-mous chaos, embitterment of the ma.s.ses, collapse of the front, and in the future extreme bitterness of the civil war.

If you look only backward to past ages, the transfer of power to the bourgeoisie seems suf.ciently regular: in all past revolutions who fought on the barricades were workers, ap-prentices, in part students, and the soldiers came over to their aside. But afterwards the solid bourgeoisie, having cautiously watched the barricades through their windows, gath-ered up the power. But the February revolution of 1917 was distinguished from former revolutions by the incomparably higher social character and political level of the revolu-tionary cla.s.s, by the hostile distrust of the insurrectionists toward the liberal bourgeoisie, and the consequent formation at the very moment of victory of a new organ of revolution-ary power, Soviet, based upon the armed strength of the ma.s.ses. In these circ.u.mstances the transfer of power to a politically isolated and unarmed bourgeoisie demands explanation.

First of all we must examine more closely the correlation of forces which resulted from the revolution. Was not the Soviet democracy compelled by the objective situation to re-nounce the power in favour of the big bourgeoisie? The bourgeoisie itself did not think so. We have already seen that it not only did not expect power from the revolution, but on the contrary foresaw in it a mortal danger to its whole social situation. ”The moderate parties not only did not desire a revolution,” writes Rodzianko, ”but were simply afraid, of it. In particular the Party of the People's Freedom, ”the Kadets” as a party standing at the left wing of the moderate group, and therefore having more than the rest a point of contact with the revolutionary parties of the country, was more worried by the advancing catastrophe than all the rest.” The experience of 1905 had too signi.cantly hinted to the liberals that a victory of the workers and peasants might prove no less dangerous to the bourgeoisie than to the monarchy. It would seem that the course of the February insurrection had only con.rmed this foresight. However formless in many respects may have been the political ideas of the revolutionary ma.s.ses in those days, the dividing line between the toilers and the bourgeoisie was at any rate implacably drawn.

Instructor Stankevich who was close to liberal circles-a friend, not an enemy of the Pro-gressive Bloc-characterises in the following way the mood of those circles on the second day after the overturn which they had not succeeded in preventing: ”Of.cially they cel-ebrated, eulogised the revolution, cried ”Hurrah' to the .ghters for freedom, decorated themselves with red ribbons and marched under red banners.... But in their souls, their conversations tte--tte, they were horri.ed, they shuddered, they felt themselves captives in the hands of hostile elements travelling an unknown road. Unforgettable is the .gure Rodzianko, that portly lord and imposing personage, when, preserving a majestic dignity but with an expression of deep suffering despair frozen on his pale face, he made his way through a crowd of dishevelled soldiers in the corridor of the Tauride Palace. Of.cially it was recorded: The soldiers have come to support the Duma in its struggle with the gov-ernment. But actually the Duma had been abolished from the very .rst day. And the same expression was on the faces of the members of the Provisional Committee of the Duma and those circles which surrounded it. They say that the representatives of the Progressive Bloc in their own homes wept with impotent despair.”

This living testimony is more precious than any sociological research into the correla-tion of forces. According to his own tale, Rodzianko trembled with impotent indignation when he saw unknown soldiers, ”at whose orders is not recorded” arresting the of.cials of the old rgime and bringing them to the Duma. The Lord Chamberlain turned out to be something in the nature of a jailer in relation to people, with whom he had, to be sure, his differences, but who never the less remained people of his own circle. Shocked by his ”arbitrary” action Rodzianko invited the arrested Minister Sheglovitov into his of.ce, but the soldiers brusquely refused to turn over to him the hated of.cial. ”When I tried to show my authority”, relates Rodzianko, ”the soldiers surrounded their captive and with the most challenging and insolent expression pointed to their ri.es, after which more ado they led Sheglovitov away I know not where.” Would it be possible to con.rm more absolutely Sankevich's a.s.sertion that the regiments supposedly coming to support the Duma, in reality abolished it?

The power was from the very .rst moment in the hands of the soviet-upon that ques-tion the Duma members less than anybody else could cherish that illusion. The Octobrist deputy s.h.i.+dlovsky, one of the leaders of the Progressive Bloc, relates how, ”The Soviet seized all the Post and Telegraph bureaux, the wireless, all the Petrograd railroad stations, all the printing establishments, so that without its permission it was impossible to send a telegram, to leave Petrograd, or to print an appeal.” In this unequivocal characterisation of the correlation of forces, it is necessary to introduce one slight correction: the ”seizure” of the Soviet of the telegraph, railroad stations, printing establishments, etc., meant merely that the workers and clerks in those enterprises refused to submit to anybody but the Soviet.

The plaint of s.h.i.+dlovsky is admirably ill.u.s.trated by an incident which occurred at the very height of the negotiations about the power between the leaders of the Soviet and the Duma. Their joint session was interrupted my an urgent communication from Pskov, where after his railroad wanderings the czar had now come to a stand, stating that they wanted Rodzianko on the direct wire. The all-powerful President of the Duma declared that he would not go to the telegraph of.ce. Look here, you've got the power and the sovereignty,” he continued excitedly. ”you can, of course, arrest me maybe you are going to arrest us all, how do we know' This happened on the 1st of March, less than twenty-hours after the power was ”taken over” by the Provisional Committee with Rodzianko at its head.