Part 5 (2/2)

How did it happen then that in such a situation the liberals turned out to be in power? How and by whom were they authorised to form a government as the result of a revolu-tionary which they had dreaded, which they had resisted, which they tried to put down, which was accomplished by ma.s.ses completely hostile to them, and accomplished with such audacity and decisiveness that the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers arising from the in-surrection became the natural, and by all unequivocally recognised, master of the situation?

Let us listen now to the other side, to those who surrendered the power. ”The people did not gravitate toward the State Duma,” writes Sukhanov of the February days, ”they were not interested in it, and never thought of making it either politically or technically the centre of the movement.” This acknowledgement is the more remarkable in that its author will soon devote all his force to getting the power handed over to a committee of the Sate Duma. ”Miliukov perfectly understood,” says Sukhanov further, speaking of the negotiations of March, ”that the Executive Committee was in a perfect position either to give the power to the bourgeois government, or not to give it.” Could it be more categorically expressed? Could a political situation be clearer? And nevertheless Sukhanov, in direct contradiction to the situation and to himself, immediately adds: ”The power destined to replace czarism must be only a bourgeois power ... we must steer our course by this principle. Otherwise the uprising will not succeed and the revolution will collapse.” The revolution will collapse without Rodzianko!

The problem of the living relations of social forces is here replaced by an a priori scheme and a conventional terminology: and this is the very essence of the doctrinairism of the intelligentsia. But we shall see later that this doctrinairism was by no means Platonic: it ful.lled a very real political function, although with blindfolded eyes.

We have quoted Sukhanov for a reason. In that .rst period the inspirer of the Execu-tive Committee was not its president, Cheidze, an honest and limited provincial, but this very Sukhanov, a man, generally speaking, totally unsuited for revolutionary leaders.h.i.+p. Semi-Narodnik, semi-Marxist, a conscientious observer rather than a statesman, a jour-nalist rather than a revolutionist, a rationaliser rather than a journalist-he was capable of standing by a revolutionary conception only up to the time when it was necessary to carry it into action. A pa.s.sive internationalist during the war, he decided on the very .rst day of the revolution that it was necessary just as quickly as possible to toss the power and the war over to the bourgeoisie. As a theorist-that is, at least in his feelings of the need that things should be reasoned out, if not in his ability to ful.l it-he stood above all the then members of the Executive Committee. But his chief strength lay in his ability to translate into a language of doctrinairism the organic traits of all that many-coloured and yet nevertheless h.o.m.ogeneous brotherhood: distrust of their own powers, fear of the ma.s.ses, and a heartily respectful att.i.tude toward the bourgeoisie. Lenin described Sukhanov as one of the best representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, and that is the most .attering thing that can be said of him.

Only in this connection it must not be forgotten that the question is here of a new capi-talist type of petty bourgeoisie, of industrial, commercial and bank clerks, the functionaries of capital on one side, and the workers' bureaucracy on the other -that is of that new middle caste, in whose name the well known German social democrat Edward Bernstein under-took at the end of the last century a revision of the revolutionary conceptions of Marx. In order to answer the question how a revolution of workers and peasants came to surrender the power to the bourgeoisie, it is necessary to introduce into the political chain an interme-diate link: the petty bourgeoisie democrats and socialists of the Sukhanov type, journalists and politicians of the new middle caste, who had taught the ma.s.ses that the bourgeoisie is an enemy, but themselves feared more than any thing else to release the ma.s.ses from the contradiction between the character of the revolution and the character of the power that issued from it, is explained by the contradictory character of this new petty bourgeois par-t.i.tion wall between the revolutionary ma.s.ses and the capitalist bourgeoisie. In the course of further events the political ro1e of this petty bourgeois democracy of the new type will fully open before us. For the time being we will limit ourselves to a few words.

A minority of the revolutionary cla.s.s actually partic.i.p.ates in the insurrection, but the strength of that minority lies in the support, or at least sympathy, of the majority. The active and militant minority inevitably puts forward under .re from the enemy its more revolutionary and self-sacri.cing element. It is thus natural that in the February .ghts the worker-Bolshevik occupied the leading place. But the situation changes the moment the victory is won and its political forti.cation begins. The elections to the organs and inst.i.tu-tions of the victorious revolution attract and challenge in.nitely broader ma.s.ses than those who battled with arms in their hands. This is true not only of general democratic insti-tutions like the city dumas and zemstvos, or later on, the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, but also of cla.s.s inst.i.tutions, like the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. An overwhelming majority of the workers, Menshevik, Social Revolutionary and non-party, supported the Bolsheviks at the moment of direct grapple with czarism. But only a small minority of the workers un-derstood that the Bolsheviks were different from other socialist parties. At the same time, however, all the workers drew a sharp line between themselves and the bourgeoisie. This fact determined the political situation after the victory. The workers elected socialists, that is, those who were not only against the monarchy, but against the bourgeoisie. In doing this they made almost no distinction between the three socialist parties. And since the Menshe-viks and Social Revolutionaries comprised in.nitely larger ranks of the intelligentsia-who came pouring in from all sides-and thus got into their hands immediately an immense staff of agitators, the elections, even in shops and factories, gave them an enormous major-ity. An impulse in the same direction, but an incomparably stronger one, came from the awakening army. On the .fth day of the insurrection the Petrograd garrison followed the workers. After the victory it found itself summoned to hold elections for the Soviet. The soldiers trustfully elected those who had been for the revolution against monarchist of.cers, and who knew how to say this out loud: these were volunteers, clerks, a.s.sistant surgeons, young war-time of.cers from the intelligentsia, petty military of.cials-that is, the lowest layers of that new middle caste. All of them almost to the last man inscribed themselves, beginning in March, in the party of the Social Revolutionaries, which with its intellectual formlessness perfectly expressed their intermediate social situation and their limited polit-ical outlook. The representation of the garrison thus turned out to be incomparably more moderate and bourgeois than the soldier ma.s.ses. But the latter were not conscious of this difference: it would reveal itself to them only during the experience of the coming months. The workers, on their part, were trying to cling as closely as possible to the soldiers, in or-der to strengthen their blood-bought union and more permanently arm the revolution. And since the spokesmen of the army were predominantly half-baked Social Revolutionaries, this fact could not help raising the authority of that party along with its ally, the Menshe-viks, in the eyes of the workers themselves. Thus resulted the predominance in the soviets of the two Compromise parties. It is suf.cient to remark that even in the soviet of the Vyborg district the leading ro1e in those .rst times belonged to the worker-Mensheviks. Bolshevism in that period was still only simmering in the depths of the revolution. Thus the of.cial Bolsheviks, even in the Petrograd Soviet, represented an insigni.cant minority, who had moreover none too clearly de.ned its tasks.

Thus arose the paradox of the February revolution. The power was in the hands of the democratic socialists. It had not been seized by them accidentally by way of a Blanquist coup; no, it was openly delivered to them by the victorious ma.s.ses of the people. Those ma.s.ses not only did not trust or support the bourgeoisie, but they did not even distinguish them from the n.o.bility and the bureaucracy. They put their weapons at the disposal only of the soviets. Meanwhile the socialists, having so easily arrived at the head of the soviets, were worrying about only one question: Will the bourgeoisie, politically isolated, hated by the ma.s.ses and hostile through and through to the revolution, consent to accept the power from our hands? Its consent must be won at any cost. And since obviously a bourgeoisie cannot renounce its bourgeois programme, we, the ”socialists,” will have to renounce ours: we will have to keep still about the monarchy, the war, the land, if only the bourgeoisie will accept the gift of power. In carrying out this operation, the CQ ”socialists,” as though to ridicule themselves, continued to designate the bourgeoisie no otherwise than as their cla.s.s enemy. In the ceremonial forms of their wors.h.i.+p was thus introduced an act of arrant blasphemy. A cla.s.s struggle carried to its conclusion is a struggle for state power. The fundamental character of a revolution lies in its carrying the cla.s.s struggle to its conclusion. A revolution is a direct struggle for power. Nevertheless, our ”socialists” are not worried about getting the power away from the cla.s.s enemy who does not possess it, and could not with his own forces seize it, but, just the opposite, with forcing this power upon him at any cost. Is not this indeed a paradox? It seems all the more striking, because the experience of the German revolution of 1918 did not then exist, and humanity had not yet witnessed a colossal and still more successful operation of this same type carried out by the ”new middle caste” led by the German social democracy.

How did the Compromisers explain their conduct? One explanation had a doctrinaire character: Since the revolution is bourgeois, the socialists must not compromise them-selves with the power-let the bourgeoisie answer for itself. This sounded very implacable. In reality, however, the petty bourgeoisie disguised with this false implacability its ob-sequiousness before the power of wealth, education, enfranchised citizens.h.i.+p. The right of the big bourgeoisie to power, the petty bourgeois acknowledged as a right of primo-geniture, independent of the correlation of forces. Fundamentally we had here the same almost instinctive movement which has compelled the small merchant or teacher to step aside respectfully in the stations or theatres to let a Rothschild pa.s.s. Doctrinaire arguments served as a compensation for the consciousness of a personal insigni.cance. In only two months, when it became evident that the bourgeoisie was totally unable with its own force to keep the power thus delivered to it, the Compromisers had no dif.culty in tossing away their ”socialistic” prejudices and entering a coalition ministry-not in order to crowd out the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, in order to save it-not against its will but, on the contrary, at its invitation, which sounded almost like a command. Indeed, the bourgeoisie threatened the democrats, if they refused, to let the power drop on their heads.

The second argument for refusing the power, although no more serious in essence, had a more practical appearance. Our friend Sukhanov made the most of the ”scatteredness” of democratic Russia: ”The democrats had at that time no stable or in.uential organisations, party, professional or munic.i.p.al.” That sounds almost like a joke! Not a word about the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies from this socialist who is acting in the name of the soviets. As a matter of fact, thanks to the tradition of 1905, the soviets sprang up as though from under the earth, and immediately became incomparably more powerful than all the other organisations which later tried to compete with them (the munic.i.p.alities, the co-operatives, and in part the trade unions). As for the peasantry, a cla.s.s by its very nature scattered, thanks to the war and revolution it was exactly at that moment organised as never before. The war had a.s.sembled the peasants into an army, and the revolution had given the army a political character! No fewer than eight million peasants were united in companies and squadrons, which had immediately created their revolutionary representation and could through it at any moment be brought to their feet by a telephone call. Is this at all similar to ”scatteredness”?

You may say to be sure, that at the moment of deciding the question of power, the democracy did not know what would be the att.i.tude of the army at the front. We will not raise the question whether there was the slightest basis for fearing or hoping that the soldiers at the front, worn out with the war, would want to support the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is suf.cient to remark that this question was fully decided during the next two or three days, which the Compromisers pa.s.sed in the backstage preparation of a bourgeois government. ”The revolution was successfully achieved by the 3rd of March,” concedes Sukhanov. In spite of the adherence of the whole army to the soviets, the leaders of the latter continued with all their strength to push away the power: they feared it the more, the more completely it became concentrated in their hands.

But why? How could those democrats, ”socialists,” directly supported by such hu-man ma.s.ses as no democracy in history ever had behind it-ma.s.ses, moreover, with a con-siderable experience, disciplined and armed, and organised in soviets-how could that all-powerful and apparently inconquerable democracy fear the power? This apparently intri-cate enigma is explained by the fact that the democracy did not trust its own support, feared those very ma.s.ses, did not believe in the stability of their con.dence in itself, and worst of all dreaded what they called ”anarchy,” that is, that having seized the power, they might along with the power prove a mere plaything of the so called unbridled elements. In other words, the democracy felt that it was not called to be the leader of the people at the moment of its revolutionary uprising, but the left wing of a bourgeois order, its feeler stretched out toward the ma.s.ses. It called itself, and even deemed itself ”socialistic,” in order to disguise not only from the ma.s.ses, but from itself too, its actual role: without this self-inebriation it could rot have ful.lled this ro1e. This is the solution of the fundamental paradox of the February revolution.

On the evening of March 1, representatives of the Executive Committee, Cheidze, Steklov, Sukhanov and others, appeared at a meeting of the Duma Committee, in order to discuss the conditions upon which the soviets would support the new government. The programme of the democrats .atly ignored the question of war, republic, land, eight-hour day, and con.ned itself to one single demand: to give the left parties freedom of agitation. An ex-ample of disinterestedness for all peoples and ages! Socialists, having all the power in their hands, and upon whom alone it depended whether freedom of agitation should be given to others or not, handed over the power to their ”cla.s.s enemy” upon the condition that the latter should promise them . . . freedom of agitation! Rodzianko was afraid to go to the telegraph' of.ce and said to Cheidze and Sukhanov: ”You have the power, you can arrest us all.” Cheidze and Sukhanov answered him: ”Take the power, but don't arrest us for pro-paganda.” When you study the negotiations of the Compromisers with the liberals, and in general all the incidents of the interrelation of the left and right wings at the Tauride Palace in those days, it seems as though upon that gigantic stage upon which the historic drama of a people is developing, a group of provincial actors, availing themselves of a vacant corner and were playing out a cheap quick-change vaudeville act.

The leaders of the bourgeoisie, we must do them justice, never expected anything of the kind. They would surely have less dreaded the revolution if they had counted upon this kind s from its leaders. To be sure, they would have miscalculated even in that case, but at least together with the latter. Fearing, nevertheless, that the bourgeoisie might not agree to take the power on the proposed conditions, Sukhanov delivered athreatening ultimatum: ”Either we or n.o.body can control the elements ... there is but one way out-agree to our terms.” In other words: accept the programme, which is your programme; for this we promise to subdue for you the ma.s.ses who gave us the power. Poor subduers of the elements!

Miliukov was astonished. ”He did not try to conceal,” remembers Sukhanov, ”his satis-faction and his agreeable astonishment.” When the Soviet delegates, to make it sound more important, added that their conditions were ”.nal,” Miliukov even became expansive and patted them on the head with the remark: ”Yes, I was listening and I was thinking how far forward our workers' movement has progressed since the days of 1905 . . .”In the same tone of the good-natured crocodile the Hohenzollern diplomat at Brest-Litovsk conversed with the delegates of the Ukranian Rada, complimenting them upon their statesman-like maturity just before swallowing them up. If the Soviet democracy was not swallowed up by the bourgeoisie, it was not Miliukov's fault, and no thanks to Sukhanov. The bour-geoisie received the power behind the backs of the people. It had no support in the toiling cla.s.ses. But along with the power it received a simulacrum of support second-hand. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, lifted aloft by the ma.s.ses, delivered as if from themselves a testimonial of con.dence to the bourgeoisie. If you look at this operation of formal democracy in cross-section you have a picture of a twofold election, in which the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries play the technical role of a middle link, that is, Kadet electors. If you take the question politically, it must be conceded that the Compro-misers betrayed the con.dence of the ma.s.ses by calling to power those against whom they themselves were elected. And .nally from a deeper, more social point of view, the question presents itself thus: the petty bourgeois parties, having in everyday circ.u.mstances shown an extraordinary pretentiousness and satisfaction with themselves, as soon as they were raised by a revolution to the heights of power, were frightened by their own inadequacy and hastened to surrender the helm to representatives of capital. In this act of prostration is immediately revealed the terrible shakiness of the new middle caste and its humiliating de-pendence upon the big bourgeoisie. Realising or only feeling that the power in their hands would not last long anyway, that they would soon have to surrender it either to the right or the left, the democrats decided that it was better to give it to-day to the solid liberals than to-morrow to the extreme representatives of the proletariat. But in this view also, the role of the Compromisers, in spite of its social conditioning, does not cease to be a treachery to the ma.s.ses.

In giving their con.dence to the socialists the workers and soldiers found themselves, quite unexpectedly, expropriated politically. They were bewildered, alarmed, but did not immediately .nd a way out. Their own betrayers deafened them from above with argu-ments to which they had no ready answer, but which con.icted with all their feelings and intentions. The revolutionary tendencies of the ma.s.ses, even at the moment of the Febru-ary revolution, did not at all coincide with the Compromise tendencies of the petty bour-geois parties. The proletariat and the peasantry voted for the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries not as compromisers, but as opponents of the czar, the capitalists and the landowners. But in voting for them they created a part.i.tion-wall between themselves and their own aims. They could not now move forward at all without b.u.mping into this wall erected by themselves, and knocking it over. Such was the striking quid pro quo comprised in the cla.s.s relations as they were uncovered by the February revolution.

To this fundamental paradox a supplementary one was immediately added. The liberals agreed to take the power from the hands of the socialists only on condition that the monar-chy should agree to take it from their hands. During the time when Guchkov, with the monarchist Shulgin, already known to us, was travelling out to Pskov to save the dynasty, the problem of a const.i.tutional monarchy was at the centre of negotiation between the two committees in the Tauride Palace. Miliukov was trying to convince the democrats who had come to him with the power in the palms of their hands, that the Romanovs could now no longer be dangerous, that Nicholas, to be sure, would have to be removed, but that the czarevich Alexei, with Mikhail as regent, could fully guarantee the welfare of the country: ”The one is a sick child, the other an utterly stupid man.” We will add also a characterisation which the liberal monarchist s.h.i.+dlovsky gave of the candidate for czar: ”Mikhail Alexan-drovich has tried every way possible to avoid interfering in any affairs of state, devoting himself wholeheartedly to horse-racing.” A striking recommendation, especially if it were repeated before the ma.s.ses. After the .ight of Louis XVI to Varennes, Danton proclaimed in the Jacobin Club that once a man is weak-minded he can no longer be king. The Russian liberals thought on the contrary that the weak-mindedness of a monarch would serve as the best possible decoration for a const.i.tutional rgime. However, this was a random argu-ment calculated to impress the mentality of the ”left” simpletons a little too crude, however, even for them. It was suggested to broad circles of the liberal Philistines that Mikhail was an ”Anglomaniac”-without making clear whether in the matter of horseracing or parlia-mentarism. But the main argument was that they needed a ”customary symbol of power.” Otherwise the people would imagine that anarchy had come.

The democrats listened, were politely surprised and tried to persuade them ... to declare a republic? No. Only not to decide the question in advance. The third point of the Executive Committee's conditions read: ”The Provisional Government shall not undertake any steps which would de.ne in advance the future form of government.” Miliukov, made of the question of the monarchy an ultimatum. The democrats were in despair. But here the ma.s.ses came to their help. At the meetings in the Tauride Palace absolutely n.o.body, not only among the workers, but among the soldiers, wanted a czar, and there was no means of imposing one upon them. Nevertheless, Miliukov tried to swim against the current, and to save the throne and dynasty over the heads of his left allies. In his history of the revolution he himself cautiously remarks that towards the end of the 2nd of March the excitement produced by his announcement of the Regency of Mikhail ”had considerably increased.” Rodzianko far more colourfully paints the effect upon the ma.s.ses produced by this monarchist manoeuvre of the liberals. The moment he arrived from Pskov with the czar's abdication in favour of Mikhail, Guchkov, upon the demand of the workers, went from the station to the railroad shops to tell what had happened, and having read the act of abdication he concluded: ”Long live the Emperor Mikhail' The result was unexpected. The orator was, according to Rodzianko, immediately arrested by the workers, and even apparently threatened with execution. ”He was liberated with great dif.culty, with the help of a sentry company of the nearest regiment.” Rodzianko, as always, exaggerates a little, but the essence of the matter is correctly stated. The country had so radically vomited up the monarch that it could not ever crawl down the people's throat again. The revolutionary ma.s.ses did not permit even the thought of a new czar.

Facing such a situation the members of the Provisional Committee sidled away from Mikhail one after another-not decisively, but ”until the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly” and then we shall see. Only Miliukov and Guchkov stood out for monarchy to the end, continuing to make it a condition of their entering the cabinet. What to do? The democrats thought that without Miliukov it was impossible to create a bourgeois government, and without a bourgeois government to save the revolution, Bickerings and persuasions went on without end. At a morning conference on March 3, a conviction of the necessity of ”persuading the grand duke to abdicate”-they considered him czar then, after all!-seemed to gain the upper hand completely in the Provisional Committee. The left Kadet Nekrasov even drew up a text of the abdication. But since Miliukov stubbornly refused to yield, a decision was .nally reached after further pa.s.sionate quarrels: ”Both sides shall present before the grand duke their opinions and without further argument leave the decision to the grand duke himself.” Thus an ”utterly stupid man,” to whom his older brother overthrown by the insurrection had tried, in con.ict even with the dynastic statute, to slip the throne, unexpectedly became the super-umpire on the question of the state structure of the revolutionary country. However improbable it may seem, a betting compet.i.tion had arisen over the fate of the state. In order to induce the duke to tear himself away from the stables for the throne, Miliukov a.s.sured him that there was an excellent possibility of collecting outside of Petrograd a military force to defend his rights. In other words, having barely received the power from the hands of the socialists, Miliukov advanced a plan for a monarchist coup detat. At the end of the speeches for and against, of which there were not a few, the grand duke requested time for re.ection. Inviting Rodzianko into another room Mikhail .atly asked him: Would the new authorities guarantee him only the crown, or also his head? The incomparable Lord Chamberlain answered that he could only promise the monarch in case of need to die with him. This did not at all satisfy the candidate. Coming out to the deputies after an embrace with Rodzianko, Mikhail Romanov ”pretty .rmly” declared that he would decline the lofty but risky position offered to him. Here Kerensky, who personi.ed in these negotiations the conscience of the 'democracy, ecstatically jumped up from his chair with the words: ”Your Highness, you are a n.o.ble man'-and swore that from that time on he would proclaim this everywhere. ”Kerensky's grandiloquence,” comments Miliukov dryly, ”harmonised badly with the prose of the decision just taken.” It is impossible to disagree. The text of this interlude truly left no place for pathos. To our comparison with a vaudeville played in the corner of an ancient amphitheatre, it is necessary to add that the stage was divided by screens into two halves: in one the revolutionises were begging the liberals to save the revolution, in the other the liberals were begging the monarchy to save liberalism.

The representatives of the Executive Committee were sincerely perplexed as to why such a cultured and far-sighted man as Miliukov should be obstinate about some old monarchy, and even be ready to renounce the power if he could not get a Romanov thrown in. Mil-iukov's monarchism, however, was neither doctrinaire, nor romantic; on the contrary, it was a result of the naked calculation of the frightened property-owners. In its nakedness indeed lay its hopeless weakness. Miliukov the, historian, might, it is true, cite the exam-ple of the leader of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie, Mirabeau, who also in his day strove to reconcile the revolution with the king. There too at the bottom it was the fear of the property-owners for their property: the more prudent policy was to disguise it with the monarchy, just as the monarchy had disguised itself with the church. But in 1789 the tradition of kingly power in France had still a universal popular recognition, to say nothing of the fact that all surrounding Europe was monarchist. In clinging to the king the French bourgeoisie was still on common ground with the people-at least in the sense that it was using against the people their own prejudices. The situation was wholly different in Russia in 1917. Aside from the s.h.i.+pwreck of the monarchist rgime in various other countries of the world, the Russian monarchy itself had been irremediably damaged already in 1905. After the 9th of January, Father Gapon had cursed the czar and his ”serpent offspring.” The Soviet of Workers' Deputies of 1905 had stood openly for a republic. The monar-chist feelings of the peasantry, upon which the monarchy itself had long counted, and with references to which the bourgeoisie camou.aged its own monarchism, simply did not ex-ist. The militant counter-revolution which arose later, beginning with Kornilov, although hypocritically, nevertheless all the more demonstratively, disavowed the czarist power-so little was left of the monarchist roots in the people. But that same revolution of 1905, which mortally wounded the monarchy, had undermined forever the unstable republican tendencies of the ”advanced” bourgeoisie. In contradicting each other, these two processes supplemented each other. Feeling in the .rst hours of the February revolution that it was drowning, the bourgeoisie grabbed at a straw. It needed the monarchy, not because that was a faith common to it and the people; on the contrary, the bourgeoisie had nothing left to set against the faith of the people but a crowned phantom. The ”educated” cla.s.ses of Russia entered the arena of the revolution not as the announcers of a rational state, but as defend-ers of medieval inst.i.tutions. Having no support either in the people or in themselves, they sought it above themselves. Archimedes undertook to move the earth if they would give him a point of support. Miliukov was looking for a point of support in order to prevent the overthrow of the landlord's earth. [1] He felt in this operation much nearer to the calloused Russian generals and the hierarchs of the orthodox church, than to these tame democrats who were worried about nothing but the approval of the liberals. Not being in a position to break the revolution, Miliukov .rmly decided to outwit it. He was ready to swallow a great deal: civil liberty for soldiers, democratic munic.i.p.alities, Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, but on one condition: that they should give him an Archimedian point of support in the form of monarchy. He intended gradually and step by step to make the monarchy the axis of a group of generals, a patched-up bureaucracy, princes of the church, property-owners, all those who were dissatis.ed with the revolution, and starting with a ”symbol,” to create gradually a real monarchist bridle for the ma.s.ses as soon as the latter should get tired of the revolution. If only he could gain time. Another leader of the Kadet Party, Nabokov, explained later what a capital advantage would have been gained if Mikhail had consented to take the throne: ”The fatal question of convoking a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly-in war time would have been removed.” We must bear those words in mind. The con.ict about the date of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly occupied a great place between February and October, during which time the Kadets categorically denied their intention to delay the summoning of the people's representatives, while insistently and stubbornly carrying out a policy of postponement in fact. Alas, they had only themselves to rely on in this effort: the monar-chist camou.age they never got. After the desertion of Mikhail, Miliukov had not even a straw to grab.

1. In Russian, the words earth and land are the same. [Trans.]

CHAPTER 10.

THE NEW POWER.

The beleted Russian bourgeoisie, separated from the people bound up much more closely with foreign .nance capital than with its own toiling ma.s.ses, hostile to the revolution which had triumphed, could not in its own name .nd a single justi.cation for its pretence to power. And yet some justi.cation was necessary, for the revolution was subjecting to a ruthless examination not only inherited rights but new claims. Least of all capable of present-ing convincing arguments to the ma.s.ses was the President of the Provisional Committee, Rodzianko, who arrived at the head of the revolutionary nation during the .rst days of the uprising.

A page in the court of Alexander II, an of.cer of the Cavalier Guard, head of the n.o.bles of his province, Lord Chamberlain under Nicholas II, a monarchist through and through, a rich landlord and agrarian administrator, a member of the Octobrist Party, a deputy in the State Duma, Rodzianko was .

<script>