Part 9 (2/2)

It remains to ask-and this is no unimportant question, although easier to ask than answer : How would the revolution gave developed Lenin if Lenin had not reached Russia in April 1917? If our exposition demonstrates and proves anything at all, we hope it proves that Lenin was not a demiurge of the revolutionary process, that he merely entered into a chain of objective historic forces. But he was a great link in that chain. The dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat was to be inferred from the whole situation, but it had still to be established. It could not be established without a party. The party could ful.l its mission only after understanding it. For that Lenin was needed. Until his arrival, not one of the Bolshevik leaders dared to make a diagnosis of the revolution. The leaders.h.i.+p of Kamenev and Stalin was tossed by the course of events to the right, to the Social Patriots: between Lenin and Menshevism the revolution left no place for intermediate positions. Inner struggle in the Bolshevik Party was absolutely unavoidable. Lenin's arrival merely hastened the process. His personal in.uence shortened the crisis. Is it possible, however, to say con.dently that the party without him would have found its road? We would by no means make bold to say that. The factor of time is decisive here, and it is dif.cult in retrospect to tell time his-torically. Dialectic materialism at any rate has nothing in common with fatalism. Without Lenin the crisis, which the opportunist leaders.h.i.+p was inevitably bound to produce, would have a.s.sumed an extraordinarily sharp and protracted character. The conditions of war and revolution, however, would not allow the party a long period for ful.lling its mission. Thus it is by no means excluded that a disoriented and split, party might have let slip the rev-olutionary opportunity for years. The role of personality arises before us here on a truly gigantic scale. It is necessary only to understand that role correctly, taking personality as a link in the historic chain.

The ”sudden” arrival of Lenin from abroad after a long absence, the furious cry raised by the press around his name, his clash with all the leaders of his own party and his quick victory over them-in a word, the external envelope of circ.u.mstance-make easy in this case a mechanical contrasting of the person, the hero, the genius, against the objective condi-tions, the ma.s.s, the party. In reality, such a contrast is completely one-sided. Lenin was not an accidental element in the historic development, but a product of the whole past of Russian history. He was embedded in it with deepest roots. Along with the vanguard of the workers, he had lived through their struggle in the course of the preceding quarter century. The ”accident” was not his interference in the events, but rather that little straw with which Lloyd George tried to block his path. Lenin did not oppose the party from outside, but was himself its most complete expression. In educating it he had educated himself in it. His divergence from the ruling circles of the Bolsheviks meant the struggle of the future of the party against its past. If Lenin had not been arti.cially separated from the party by the conditions of emigration and war, the external mechanics of the crisis would not have been so dramatic, and would not have overshadowed to such a degree the inner continuity of the party's development. From the extraordinary signi.cance which Lenin's arrival received, it should only be, inferred that leaders are not accidentally created, that they are gradually chosen out and trained up in the course of decades, that they cannot be capriciously re-placed, that their mechanical exclusion from the struggle gives the party a living wound, and in many cases may paralyse it for a long period.

CHAPTER 17.

THE ”APRIL DAYS”.

ON THE 23rd of March the United States entered the war. On that day Petrograd was burying the victims of the February be revolution. The funeral procession-in its mood a procession it triumphant with the joy of life-was a mighty concluding chord in the sym-phony of the .ve days. Everybody went to the funeral: both those who had fought side by side with the victims, and those who had held them back from battle, very likely also those who killed them-and above all, those who had stood aside from the .ghting. Along with workers, soldiers, he and the small city people here were students, ministers, ambas-sadors, the solid bourgeois, journalists, orators, leaders be of all the parties. The red cof.ns carried on the shoulders of workers and soldiers streamed in from the workers' districts to Mars Field. When the cof.ns were lowered into the grave there sounded from Peter and Paul fortress the .rst funeral salute, startling the innumerable ma.s.ses of the people. That cannon had a new sound: our cannon, our salute. The Vyborg section carried .fty-one red cof.ns. That was only a part of the victims it was proud of. In the procession of the Vyborg workers, the most compact of all, numerous Bolshevik banners were to be seen, but they .oated peacefully beside other banners. On Mars Field itself there stood only the members of the government, of the Soviet, and the State Duma -already dead but stubbornly evading its own funeral. All day long no less than 800,000 people .led past the grave with bands and banners. And although, according to preliminary reckonings by the highest military authorities, a human ma.s.s of that size could not possibly pa.s.s a given point without the most appalling chaos and fatal whirlpools, nevertheless the demonstration was carried out in complete order-a thing to be observed generally in revolutionary processions, dominated as they are by a satisfying consciousness of a great deed achieved, combined with a hope that everything will grow better and better in the future. It was only this feeling that kept order, for organisation was still weak, inexperienced and uncon.dent of itself. The very fact of the funeral was, it would seem, a suf.cient refutation of the myth of a bloodless 236.

revolution. But nevertheless the mood prevailing at the funeral recreated, to some extent the atmosphere of those .rst days when the legend was born.

Twenty-.ve days later-during which time the soviets had gained much experience and self-con.dence-occurred the May 1 celebration. (May I according to the Western calendar April 18 old style.) All the cities of Russia were drowned in meetings and demonstrations. Not only the industrial enterprises, but the state, city and rural public inst.i.tutions were closed. In Moghilev, the headquarters of the General Staff, the Cavaliers of St. George marched at the head of the procession. The members of the staff-unremoved czarist gener-als marched under May 1 banners. The holiday of proletarian antimilitarism blended with revolution-tinted manifestations of patriotism. The different strata of the population con-tributed their own quality to the holiday, but all .owed together into a whole, very loosely held together and partly false, but on the whole majestic. In both capitals and in the in-dustrial centres the workers dominated the celebration, and amid them the strong nuclei of Bolshevism stood out distinctly with banners, placards, speeches and shouts. Across the immense facade of the Mariinsky Palace, the refuge of the Provisional Government, was stretched a bold red streamer with the words: ”Long Live the Third International!” The authorities, not yet rid of their administrative shyness, could not make up their mind to re-move this disagreeable and alarming streamer. Everybody, it seemed, was celebrating. So far as it could, the army at the front celebrated. News came of meetings, speeches, banners and revolutionary songs in the trenches, and there were responses from the German side.

The war had not yet come to an end; on the contrary it had only widened its circle. A whole continent had recently-on the very day of the funeral of the martyrs-joined the war and given it a new scope. Yet meanwhile throughout Russia, side by side with soldiers, war-prisoners were taking part in the processions under the same banners, sometimes singing the same song in different languages. In this immeasurable rejoicing, obliterating like a spring .ood the delineations of cla.s.ses, parties and ideas, that common demonstration of Russian soldiers with Austro-German war-prisoners was a vivid hope-giving fact which made it possible to believe that the revolution, in spite of all, did carry within itself the foundation of a better world.

Like the March funeral, the 1st of May celebration pa.s.sed off without clashes or ca-sualties as an ”all-national festival.” However, an attentive car might have caught already among the ranks of the workers and soldiers impatient an even threatening notes. It was be-coming harder and harder to live. Prices had risen alarmingly; the workers were demanding a minimum wage; the bosses were resisting; the number of con.icts in the factories was continually growing; the food situation was getting worse; bread rations were being cut down; cereal cards had been introduced; dissatisfaction in the garrison had grown. The district staff, making ready to bridle the soldiers, was removing the more revolutionary units from Petrograd. At a general a.s.sembly of the garrison on April 17 the soldiers, sens-ing these hostile designs, had raised the question of putting a stop to the removal of troops. That demand will continue to arise in the future, taking a more and more decisive form with very new crisis of the revolution. But the root of all evils was the war, of which no end was to be seen. When will the revolution bring peace? What are Kerensky and Tseretelli wait-ing for? The ma.s.ses were listening more and more attentively to the Bolsheviks, glancing at them obliquely, waitingly, some with half-hostility, others already with trust. Underneath the triumphal discipline of the demonstration the mood was tense. There was ferment in the ma.s.ses.

However, n.o.body-not even the authors of the streamer on the Mariinsky Palace-imagined that the very next two or three days would ruthlessly tear off the envelope of national unity from the revolution. The menacing event whose inevitability many foresaw, but which no one expected so soon, was suddenly upon them. The stimulus was given by the foreign policy of the Provisional Government, i.e., the problem of war. No other than Miliukov touched the match to the fuse.

The history of that match and fuse is as follows : On the day of America's entry into the war, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, greatly encouraged, developed his programme before the journalists: seizure of Constantinople, seizure of Ar-menia, division of Austria and Turkey, seizure of Northern Persia, and over and above all this, the right of nations to self -determination. ” In all his speeches ”-thus the historian Miliukov explains Miliukov the minister-” he decisively emphasised the paci.st aims of the war of liberation, but always presented them in close union with the national problems and interests of Russia.” This interview disquieted the listeners, ”When will the foreign policy of the Provisional Government cleanse itself of hypocrisy? ” stormed the Menshevik pa-per. Why does not the Provisional Government demand from the Allied governments an open and decisive renunciation of annexations' What these people considered hypocrisy, was the frank language of the predatory. In a paci.st disguise of such appet.i.tes they were quite ready to see a liberation from all hypocrisy. Frightened by the stirring of the democ-racy, Kerensky hastened to announce through the press bureau: ”Miliukov's programme is merely his personal opinion.” That the author of this personal opinion happened to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs was, if you please, a mere accident.

Tseretelli, who had a talent for solving every question with a commonplace, began to insist on the necessity of a governmental announcement that for Russia the war was ex-clusively one of defence. The resistance of Miliukov and to some extent of Guchkov was broken, and on March 27 the government gave birth to a declaration to the effect that ”the goal of free Russia is not domination over other peoples, nor depriving them of their national heritage, nor violent seizure of alien territory,” but ”nevertheless complete obser-vance of the obligations undertaken to our Allies.” Thus the kings and the prophets of the two-power system proclaimed their intention to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven in union with patricides and adulterers, Those gentlemen, besides everything else that they lacked, lacked a sense of humour. That declaration of March 27 was welcomed not only by the entire Compromisers' press, but even by the Pravda of Kamenev and Stalin, which said in its leading editorial four days before Lenin's arrival: ”The Provisional Government has clearly and de.nitely announced before the whole people that the aim of Russia is not the domination of other nations,” etc., etc. The English press immediately and with satisfaction interpreted Russia's renunciation of annexations as her renunciation of Constantinople, by no means intending of course to extend this formula of renunciation to herself. The Russian amba.s.sador in London sounded the alarm, and demanded an explanation from Moscow to the effect that ”the principle of peace without annexations is to be applied by Russia not unconditionally, but in so far as. it does not oppose our vital interests.” But that, of course, was exactly the formula of Miliukov: ”We promise not to rob anybody whom we don't need to.” Paris, in contrast to London, not only supported Miliukov but urged him on, suggesting through Pal'

eologue the necessity of a more vigorous policy toward the Soviet.

The French Premier, Ribot, out of patience with the terrible red tape at Petrograd, asked London and Rome Whether they did not consider it necessary to demand of the Provisional Government that they put an end to all equivocation. ”London answered that it would be wise ”to give the French and English socialists, who had been sent to Russia, time to in.uence their colleagues.”

The sending of allied socialists into Russia had been undertaken on the initiative of the Russian Staff-that is, the old czarist generals. ”We counted upon him,” wrote Ribot of Albert Thomas, ”to give a certain .rmness to the decisions of the Provisional Government.” Miliukov complained, however, that Thomas a.s.sociated too closely with the leaders of the Soviet. Ribot answered that Thomas ”is sincerely striving” to support the point of view of Miliukov, but nevertheless promised to urge his amba.s.sador to a more active support.

The declaration of March 27, although totally empty, disquieted the Allies, who saw in it a concession to the Soviet. From London came threats of a loss of faith ”in the mili-tary Power of Russia.” Pal'eologue complained of ”the timidity and inde.niteness” of the declaration. But that was just what Miliukov needed. In the hope of help from the Allies, Miliukov had embarked on a big game, far exceeding his resources. His fundamental idea was to use the war against the revolution, and the .rst task upon this road was to demoralise the democracy. But the Compromisers had begun just in the .rst days of April to reveal an increasing nervousness and fussiness upon questions of foreign policy, for upon these questions the lower cla.s.ses were unceasingly pressing them. The government needed a loan. But the ma.s.ses, with all their defensism, were ready to defend a peace loan but not a war loan. It was necessary to give them at least a peep at the prospect of peace.

Developing his policy of salvation by commonplaces, Tseretelli proposed that they de-mand from the Provisional Government that it despatch a note to the Allies similar to the domestic declaration of March 27. In return for this, the Executive Committee would un-dertake to carry through the Soviet a vote for the ”Liberty Loan.” Miliukov agreed to the exchange-the note for the loan-but decided to make a double use of the bargain. Under the guise of interpreting the declaration, his note disavowed it. It urged that the peace-loving phrases of the government should not give anyone ”the slightest reason to think that the revolution which had occurred entailed a weakening of the role of Russia in the com-mon struggle of the Allies. Quite the contrary-the universal desire to carry the world war through to a decisive victory had only been strengthened.” The note further expressed con-.dence that the victors ”will .nd a means to attain those guarantees and sanctions, which are necessary for the prevention of new b.l.o.o.d.y con.icts in the future.” That word about ”guarantees and sanctions,” introduced at the insistence of Thomas, meant nothing less in the thieves' jargon of diplomacy, especially French, than annexations and indemnities. On the day of the May 1 celebration Miliukov telegraphed his note, composed at the dictation of Allied diplomats, to the governments of the Entente. And only after this was it sent to the Executive Committee, and simultaneously to the newspapers. The government had ignored the Contact Commission, and the leaders of the Executive Committee found themselves in the position of everyday citizens. Even had the Compromisers found in the note nothing they had not heard from Miliukov before, they could not help seeing in this a premeditated hostile act. The note disarmed them before the ma.s.ses, and demanded from them a direct choice between Bolshevism and imperialism.

Was not in that direction, and suggests indeed that his design went even farther. Already in March Miliukov had been trying with all his might to resurrect that ill-fated plan for the seizure of the Dardanelles by a Russian raid, and had carried on many conversations with General Alexeiev, urging him to carry out the operation-which would in Miliukov's cal-culations place the democracy with its protest against annexations before an accomplished fact. Miliukov's note of April 18 was a similar raid upon the ill-defended coastlines of the democracy, The two acts-military and political-supplemented each other, and in case of success would have justi.ed each other. Generally speaking, one does not condemn a victor. But Miliukov was not destined to be a victor. Two to three hundred thousand troops were needed for the raid, and the plan fell through because of a mere detail: the refusal of the soldiers. They agreed to defend the revolution, but not to take the offensive, Miliukov's attempt upon the Dardanelles came to nothing, and that broke down all his further plans. But it must be confessed that they were not badly worked out-provided he won.

On April 17 there took place in Petrograd the patriotic nightmare demonstration of the war invalids. An enormous number of wounded from the hospitals of the capital, legless, armless, bandaged, advanced upon the Tauride Palace. Those who could not walk were carried in automobile trucks. The banners read: ”War to the end.” That was a demonstration of despair from the human stumps of the imperialist war, wis.h.i.+ng that the revolution should not acknowledge that their sacri.ce had been in vain. But the Kadet Party stood behind the demonstration, or rather Miliukov stood behind it, getting ready his great blow for the following day.

At a special night session of the 19th, the Executive Committee discussed the note sent the day before to the Allied governments. ”After the .rst reading.” relates Stankevich, ”it was unanimously and without debate acknowledged by all that this was not at all what the Committee had expected.” But responsibility for the note had been a.s.sumed by the government as a whole, including Kerensky. Consequently, it was necessary .rst of all to save the government. Tseretelli began to ”decode” the note, which had never been coded, and to discover in it more and more merits. Skobelev profoundly reasoned that in general it is impossible to demand ”acomplete coincidence of the aims of the democracy with that of the government.” The wise men harried themselves until dawn, but found no solution. They dispersed in the morning only to meet again after a few hours. Apparently they were counting upon time to heal all wounds.

In the morning the note appeared in all the papers. Rech commented upon it in a spirit of carefully prepared provocation. The Socialist Press expressed itself with great excitement. The Menshevik Rabochaia Gazeta, not yet having succeeded like Tseretelli and Skobelev in freeing itself from the vapours of the night's indignation, wrote that the Provisional Gov-ernment had published ”a doc.u.ment which is a mockery of the democracy,” and demanded from the Soviet decisive measures ”to prevent its disastrous-consequences.” The growing pressure of the Bolsheviks was very clearly felt in those phrases.

The Executive Committee resumed its sitting, but only in order once more to convince itself of its incapacity to arrive at a solution. It resolved to summon a special plenary session of the Soviet ”for purposes of information ”-in reality for the purpose of feeling out the amount of dissatisfaction in the lower ranks, and to gain time for its own vacillations. In the meantime all kinds of contact sessions were suggested with the aim of bringing the whole agitation to nothing.

But amid all this ritual diddling of the double sovereignty, athird power unexpectedly intervened. The ma.s.ses came out with arms in their hands. Among the bayonets of the soldiers glimmered the letters on a streamer: ”Down with Miliukov!” On other streamers Guchkov .gured in the same way. In these indignant processions it was hard to recognise the demonstrators of May 1.

Historians call this movement ”spontaneous” in the conditional sense that no party took the initiative in it. The immediate summons to the streets was given by a certain Linde, who therewith inscribed his name in the history of the revolution. ”Scholar, mathematician, philosopher,” Linde was a non-party man-for the revolution with all his heart and earnestly desirous that it should ful.l its promise. Miliukov's note and the comments of Rech had aroused him. ”Taking counsel with no one,” says his biographer, ”he acted at once, went straight to the Finland regiment, a.s.sembled its committee and proposed that they march immediately as a whole regiment to the Mariinsky Palace . . . Linde's proposal was accepted, and at three o'clock in the afternoon a signi.cant demonstration of the Finlanders was marching through the streets of Petrograd with challenging placards.” After the Finland regiment came the soldiers of the 180th Reserve, the Moscow regiment, the Pavlovsky, the Keksgolmsky, the sailors of the 2nd Baltic .eet. The commotion and whole factories came out into the streets after the soldiers.

”The majority of the soldiers did not know why they had come,” af.rms Miliukov, as though he had asked them. ”Besides the troops, boy workers took part in the demonstra-tion, loudly (!) proclaiming that they were paid ten to .fteen roubles for doing it.” The source of this money is also clear: ”The idea of removing the two ministers (Miliukov and Guehkov) was directly inspired from Germany.” Miliukov offered this profound ex-planation not in the heat of the April struggle, but three years after the October events had abundantly demonstrated to him that n.o.body had to pay a high wage for then people's hatred of Miliukov.

The unexpected sharpness of the April demonstration is explained by the directness of the ma.s.s reaction to deceit from above. ”Until the government achieves peace, it is neces-sary to be on our guard.” That was spoken without enthusiasm, but with conviction. It had been a.s.sumed that, up above, everything was being done to bring peace. The Bolsheviks, to be sure, were a.s.serting that the government wanted the war prolonged for the sake of robberies. But could that be possible? How about Kerensky? We have known the Soviet leaders since February. They were the .rst to come to us in the barracks. They are for peace. Moreover, Lenin came straight from Berlin, whereas Tseretelli was at hard labour. We must be patient. . . . Meanwhile the progressive factories and regiments were more and more .rmly adopting the Bolshevik slogans of a peace policy: publication of the secret treaties; break with the plans of conquest of the Entente; open proposal of immediate peace to all warring countries. The note of April 18 fell among these complex and wavering moods. How can this be? They are not for peace up there after all, but for the old war aims? All our patience and waiting for nothing? Down with . . . but down with whom? Can the Bolsheviks be right? Hardly. But what about this note? It means that somebody is selling our hides, all right, to the czar's allies. From a simple comparison of the press of the Kadets and the Compromisers, it could be red that Miliukov, betraying the general con.dence, was intending to carry on a policy of conquest in company with Lloyd George and Ribot. And yet Kerensky had declared that the attempt upon Constantinople was ”the personal opinion of L-Miliukov.” . . . That was how this movement .ared up.

But it was not h.o.m.ogeneous. Certain hot-headed elements among the revolutionists greatly overestimated the volume and political maturity of the movement, because it had broken out so sharply and suddenly. The Bolsheviks developed an energetic campaign among the troops and in the factories. They supplemented the demand to ”remove Mil-iukov,” which was, so to speak, a programme-minimum of the movement, with placards against the Provisional Government as a whole. But different elements understood this dif-ferently: some as slogans of propaganda, others as the task of the day. The slogan carried into the streets by the armed soldiers and sailors: ”Down with the Provisional Government! ”inevitably introduced into the demonstration a strain of armed insurrection. Considerable groups of workers and soldiers were quite ready to shake down' the Provisional Govern-ment right then and there. They made an attempt to enter the Mariinsky Palace, occupy its exits, and arrest the ministers. Skobelev was delegated to rescue the ministers, and he ful.lled his mission the more successfully in that the Mariinsky Palace happened to be unoccupied.

In consequence of Guchkov's illness, the government had met that day in his private apartment. But it was not the accident which saved the ministers from arrest; they were not seriously threatened. That army of 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers, which had come into the streets for a struggle with the prolongers of the war, was plenty enough to do away with a far solider government than that headed by Prince Lvov, but the demonstrators had not set themselves this goal. All they really intended was to show their .st at the window, so that these high gentlemen should cease sharpening their teeth for Constantinople and get busy as they should about the question of peace. In this way the soldiers hoped to help Kerensky and Tseretelli against Miliukov.

General Kornilov attended that sitting of the government, reported the armed demon-strations which were taking place, and declared that as the commander of the troops of the Petrograd military district he had at his disposition suf.cient forces, to put down the disturbance with a mailed .st: he merely, awaited the command. Kolchak, who happened accidentally to, be present, related afterwards, at the trial which preceded his execution, that Prince Lvov and Kerensky spoke against the, attempt to put down the demonstration with military force. Miliukov did not express himself directly, but summed up the situation by saying that the honourable ministers might of course reason as they wished, but their de-cision would not prevent their removal to prison. There is no doubt whatever that Kornilov was acting in agreement with the Kadet centre.

The Compromise leaders had no dif.culty in persuading the soldier demonstrators to withdraw from the square before the Mariinsky Palace, and even go back to their barracks. The commotion which had over.owed the city, however, did not recede to its banks. Crowds gathered, meetings a.s.sembled, they wrangled at street corners, the crowds in the tramways divided into partisans and opponents of Miliukov. On the Nevsky and adjoining streets, bourgeois orators waged an agitation against Lenin-sent from Germany to over-throw the great patriot Miliukov. In the suburbs and workers' districts the Bolsheviks tried to extend the indignation aroused against the note and its author to the government as a whole.

At seven in the evening the plenum of the Soviet a.s.sembled. The leaders did not know what to say to that audience, quivering with tense pa.s.sion. Cheidze explained to them at great length that after the session there was to be a meeting with the Provisional Govern-ment. Chernov tried to scare them with the approach of civil war. Feodorov, the metal worker, a member of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, replied that the evil war was already here, that what the soviets ought to do was to rely upon it and seize the power in their hand so ”Those were new and at that time terrible words,” writes Sukhanov. ”They hit the very centre of the prevailing mood and received a response such as the Bolsheviks had never met in the Soviet before, and did not meet for along time after.”

The pivot of the conference, however, was an unexpected speech by Kerensky's favourite, the liberal socialist, Stankevich: ”Comrades,” he asked, ”why should we take any 'action' at all? Against whom marshal our forces ? The sole power that exists is you and the ma.s.ses which stand behind you.... Look there! It is now .ve minutes to seven.” -(Stankevich pointed his .nger to the clock on the wall, and the whole a.s.sembly turned in that direction)-”Resolve that the Provisional Government does not exist, that it has resigned. We will com-municate this by telephone, and in .ve minutes it will surrender its authority. Why all this talk about violence, demonstrations, civil war?” Loud applause. Elated shouts. The or-ator wanted to frighten the soviets with an extreme inference from the existing situation, but frightened himself with the effect of his own speech. That unexpected truth about the power of the Soviet lifted the a.s.sembly above the wretched pottering of its leaders, whose main occupation was to prevent the Soviet from arriving at any decision. ”Who will take the place of the government?” An orator replied to the applause. ”We? But our hands tremble. . . .” That was an incomparable characterisation of the compromises-high and mighty leaders with trembling hands.

Prime Minister Lvov, as though to supplement Stankevich from the other side, made the next day the following announcement: ”Up till now the Provisional Government has received unwavering support from the ruling organ of the Soviet. For the last two we

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